Monday, November 11, 2019
#veteransday2019 - Remembering The 1st Veterans Memorialized By Veterans Day
KATHLEEN KELLEY RUSHLOW
In the United Kingdom, Veterans Day is celebrated with red paper poppies pinned to lapels in remembrance of those who served in World War I. The practice caught on after the bloody battlefields of France bloomed with red poppies following the war. Every year, British people wear these red flower pins for about a month leading up to Nov. 11, and buying one of these paper flowers funds veterans groups. The U.K. memorializes the end of World War I with purpose and style.
In the United Kingdom, Veterans Day is celebrated with red paper poppies pinned to lapels in remembrance of those who served in World War I. The practice caught on after the bloody battlefields of France bloomed with red poppies following the war. Every year, British people wear these red flower pins for about a month leading up to Nov. 11, and buying one of these paper flowers funds veterans groups. The U.K. memorializes the end of World War I with purpose and style.
Veterans Day began as a commemoration of World War I, that 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 when the guns were silenced and the armistice was called and peace came at last. After four long years of fighting in the "war to end all wars," the dead numbered an estimated 9 million troops. Nearly 120,000 were Americans.
Nov. 11 was originally Armistice Day in the United States, though it wasn't ratified by Congress until 1938. By the mid-1950s veterans groups urged Congress to change the day to honor Americans who had served in all wars, removing the distinctive honor for those who served in World War I.
So here we are now, 101 years after the Armistice of 1918, and many Americans have all but forgotten World War I. Americans reenact the Civil War, salute the remaining veterans of World War II with Honor Flights to the monuments and Arlington National Cemetery and for years have remembered Vietnam War vets with Rolling Thunder on Memorial Day. (That holiday honors all war dead.) But where are the World War I remembrance ceremonies on this important day that ushered in the many wars of the last century?
The nation's capital has a tremendous World War II Memorial, a moving Korean War Memorial and an iconic Vietnam War Memorial. The only World War I memorial in the city is a small stone gazebo, dedicated to those who served from Washington, D.C. A new national World War I memorial is planned near the White House, but it's now more than 100 years since the guns were silenced. It's too late for those troops. They're long gone and mostly faded from our collective memory. But here's the story of one of them.
Sgt. Charles Kelley, Company C of the 12th Machine Gun Battalion, joined Gen. Pershing's American Expeditionary Forces in France in late summer of 1918. He was 18 years old. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive, which began in September 1918, Kelley, according to Pentagon records, "led his platoon in the attack with great bravery against strongly held enemy trenches. Shortly after reaching his objective he was wounded in the throat. He refused to be evacuated, but continued to actively command his men until the night of Oct. 1, by which time, due to his wound, he had lost the power of speech."
The Meuse-Argonne offensive was the single bloodiest battle in American history with more than 26,000 Americans killed. For his heroism, Sgt. Kelley was honored with the Distinguished Service Cross, second only to the Medal of Honor. My family has worked to get him upgraded to a posthumous Medal of Honor for his courage and bravery, but the Army says too much time has passed. There are no more eyewitnesses. It's true. We — his family — had never realized his heroism while he was alive. We never realized what the initials DSC meant on his gravestone at Arlington National Cemetery. It was only a few years ago that we looked up his records to see what he'd done to earn this high honor.
But now, we salute our grandfather. We honor him and all those of that generation who courageously took on a fight that cost the lives of so many and ultimately did nothing to end or prevent war.
Today I am wearing a red paper poppy on my lapel in the memory of the tens of thousands of Americans, as well as the millions worldwide killed in a war that ended 101 years ago, but has all but been forgotten by Americans.
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/11/777635075/remembering-the-1st-veterans-memorialized-by-veterans-day
1971 Bangladesh genocide By Pakistani Army - ‘We lay like corpses’: Bangladesh’s 1970s rape camp survivors speak out
Award-winning documentary Rising Silence preserves the testimony of some of the 200,000 women abducted during the country’s war of independence.
In 1971, during the nine-month war that gave Bangladesh its independence from then West Pakistan, four sisters – Amina, Maleka, Mukhlesa and Budhi Begum – were abducted by Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators. They were among the more than 200,000 women held in rape camps and were detained for two and a half months.
“Twenty-two of us would lie like corpses in that room,” says Maleka as she explains how her elder sister Buhdi, “unable to bear the pain”, died before they were released.
Four decades on, Mukhlesa, who had crouched in water trying to evade the kidnappers, shows film-maker Leesa Gazi the sites of atrocities she witnessed. She explains how the soldiers took the women with them wherever they went, placing them to the fore as a human shield.
The sisters’ stories are part of Gazi’s award-winning documentary, Rising Silence, screened on Tuesday in London, which preserves the testimony of some of the few women who are still alive, several of whom have died since filming.
Gazi, a British-Bangladeshi actor and playwright, was herself a teenager when she first heard about the “Birangona” women. Their stories had been strangely absent from her school history books but her father, a former freedom fighter, described seeing hundreds of women standing back to back in trucks on their way to the capital, Dhaka. Gazi resolved to find out more about their story.
A founding member of the Komola Collective, which tells stories from a female perspective, Gazi has now met more than 80 Birangona. Her early meetings in 2010 initially led to a play.Many of the women are poor and frail. Most lost their livelihoods, their children, parents or husbands, but for Gazi, that does not define them. Her concern is that they are dying out and with them their rich stories, and so she returned with a camera.
The film has been shown in Bangladesh, Iceland, Italy and the Netherlands, winning honours at festivals from Dhaka to Moondance, and most recently at the Asian Media Awards.
Gazi argues that if we ignore or dismiss historic sexual violence, then it will never stop. “We need to pay attention and listen to survivors’ stories,” she says.
What the women had experienced was one of the first recorded examples of rape being used as a weapon of war in the 20th century. “We could dismiss their accounts as isolated incidents of a forgotten war in a distant land, committed nearly 50 years ago. The problem is that the same pattern of sexual violence and rape in armed conflicts continues to be used today,” she says, referencing events in Myanmar and South Sudan. Society was often “not there”, for the women affected, Gazi argues, but she celebrates the fact that “women were there for each other”.
Uncovering the women’s stories has left Gazi with big questions. “Sometimes I ask myself, how can a woman’s body instigate so much hatred and so much violence?”Again, she sees a pattern. “If we need to shame a family, we go after their daughters, if we need to shame a community, we go after their daughters, if we need to shame a country, we go after their daughters. That’s the same mindset that’s transcending in war and conflicts and we must stop it.”Gazi insists the film is not about rape. “It is about the strength of women who have picked themselves up after facing brutal physical and emotional abuse.” Instead it shows “their will to survive, and their fighting spirit in the face of rejection and stigma, for the sin of having been raped”.
Since 2015, the Bangladeshi government has begun giving pensions to the Birangona in recognition of what the women contributed to the birth of the nation.
Mukhlesa Begum shows Gazi the Khuniya pond in Thakurgaon district, explaining how it turned red during the war. The bodies of more than 2,000 freedom fighters are believed to have been dumped here. “People piled on people,” she says.
“We saved four people from there. People were disappearing from Bangladesh. We had to save them – Hindu, Muslim, or Santal [indigenous people]. We had to free our country.”
https://dailytimes.com.pk/496637/we-lay-like-corpses-bangladeshs-1970s-rape-camp-survivors-speak-out/
India's Nuclear Arsenal Keeps Growing, And That's Bad News For Pakistan and China
By Michael Peck
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In addition, “India continues to modernize its nuclear arsenal, with at least five new weapon systems now under development to complement or replace existing nuclear-capable aircraft, land-based delivery systems, and sea-based systems.”
Unlike the missile-centric U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, India still heavily relies on bombers, perhaps not unexpected for a nation that fielded its first nuclear-capable ballistic missile in 2003. Kristensen and Korda estimate India maintains three or four nuclear strike squadrons of Cold War-vintage, French-made Mirage 2000H and Jaguar IS/IB aircraft targeted at Pakistan and China.
“Despite the upgrades, the original nuclear bombers are getting old and India is probably searching for a modern fighter-bomber that could potentially take over the air-based nuclear strike role in the future,” the report notes. India is buying thirty-six French Rafale fighters that carry nuclear weapons in French service, and presumably could do for India.
India’s nuclear missile force is only fifteen years old, but it already has four types of land-based ballistic missiles: the short-range Prithvi-II and Agni-I, the medium-range Agni-II and the intermediate-range Agni-III. “At least two other longer-range Agni missiles are under development: the Agni-IV and Agni-V,” says the report. “It remains to be seen how many of these missile types India plans to fully develop and keep in its arsenal. Some may serve as technology development programs toward longer-range missiles.”
“Although the Indian government has made no statements about the future size or composition of its land-based missile force, short-range and redundant missile types could potentially be discontinued, with only medium- and long-range missiles deployed in the future to provide a mix of strike options against near and distant targets,” the report noted.
India is also developing the Nirbhay ground-launched cruise missile, similar to the U.S. Tomahawk. In addition, there is Dhanush sea-based, short-range ballistic missile, which is fired from two specially-configured patrol vessels. The report estimates that India is building three or four nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, which will be equipped with a short-range missile, or a bigger missile with a range of 2,000 miles.
It’s an ambitious program. “The government appears to be planning to field a diverse missile force that will be expensive to maintain and operate,” the report points out.
What remains to be seen is what will be the command and control system to make sure these missiles are fired when—and only when—they should be. And, of course, since Pakistan and China also have nuclear weapons, Indian leaders may find that more nukes only lead to an arms race that paradoxically leaves their nation less secure.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/indias-nuclear-arsenal-keeps-growing-and-thats-bad-news-pakistan-and-china-94831
5, including 2 cops, killed in firing incident in Pakistan
At least five persons, including two policemen, have been killed in Pakistan's Punjab province after gunmen opened fire on a police vehicle, according to media reports.
The attack took place on Sunday in Arbi Tibba area of the Rajanpur district where a police team was conducting a raid after receiving information about the presence of the fugitives in the locality, the News International reported.
The police van was fired upon by the assailants. Five persons, including two policemen were killed and two other police personnel were injured, Geo News reported.
The injured have been admitted to a hospital, the report said.
However, no one has claimed immediately responsibility for the attack.
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/pakistan-firing-incident-1617991-2019-11-11
The attack took place on Sunday in Arbi Tibba area of the Rajanpur district where a police team was conducting a raid after receiving information about the presence of the fugitives in the locality, the News International reported.
The police van was fired upon by the assailants. Five persons, including two policemen were killed and two other police personnel were injured, Geo News reported.
The injured have been admitted to a hospital, the report said.
However, no one has claimed immediately responsibility for the attack.
https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/pakistan-firing-incident-1617991-2019-11-11