Tuesday, January 8, 1974. Suppressing dissent and the news.

South Korean President Park Chung-hee  issued an emergency decree making it illegal "to deny, oppose, misrepresent, or defame" the president's decisions.  The same decree prohibited reporting on dissent  "through broadcasting, reporting or publishing, or by any other means."

He must have been concerned about "fake news".

Park started his adult life as an army officer in the Japanese puppet Manchukuo Imperial Army.  After serving a little over two years in that entity during World War Two, he returned to the Korean Military Academy and joined the South Korean Army.  He was a figure in the 1961 military coup in South Korea.  After large scale protests in 1979 he was assassinated by  Kim Jae-gyu, the director of the KCIA, and a close friend of his after a banquet at a safe house in Gungjeong-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Kim Jae-gyu would be hanged the following year for the action.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association approved allowing amateur athletes to play as professionals in a second sport.

Blog Mirror: Henry Kissinger, 1923-2023. War criminal

I was surprised to see this article by Reich, and I thought it would be on the late stages of the Vietnam War, but I'll note that I too am not a Kissinger fan.

Henry Kissinger, 1923-2023. War criminal

Friday, October 19, 1973. The Oil Embargo spreads.

Libya announced that it would completely halt oil exports to the United States.  The U.S. Federal Reserve regards this as the beginning of the full Arab Oil Embargo.

President Nixon rejected the Appeals Court decision that he turn over tapes to Federal investigators.  Instead, he proposed to have them transcribed, and then reviewed by Democratic Senator John C. Stennis.  Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox rejected the offer and resigned the following day.

Solutions for the Yom Kippur War were being discussed on an international level.

Elizabeth II, on a trip to Australian, signed the Royal Styles and Titles Act and assumed the title of "Queen of Australia".  She had previously been "Elizabeth the second, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Australia and her other realms and territories, queen, head of the Commonwealth.".

Tuesday, October 16, 1973. Doubling the price of oil and false peace.

OPEC doubled the price of oil from $2.18/bbl to $5.12/bbl.  It didn't consult with the oil companies before doing so, and in some ways initiated in the modern, post, post World War Two, economy.

$5.12?  Yes, that's what it was.

That would be $33.75 adjusted for inflation.

The UK and Iceland came to an agreement to end the Cod War.

Henry Kissinger and Lê Đức Thọ were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  The North Vietnamese negotiation, however, did not accept it, stating:

However, since the signing of the Paris agreement, the United States and the Saigon administration continue in grave violation of a number of key clauses of this agreement. The Saigon administration, aided and encouraged by the United States, continues its acts of war. Peace has not yet really been established in South Vietnam. In these circumstances it is impossible for me to accept the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace which the committee has bestowed on me. Once the Paris accord on Vietnam is respected, the arms are silenced and a real peace is established in South Vietnam, I will be able to consider accepting this prize. With my thanks to the Nobel Prize Committee please accept, madame, my sincere respects.

Friday, September 21, 1973. Kissinger confirmed as Secretary of State.

Henry Kissinger was confirmed as Secretary of State by the Senate.  He had been serving as National Security Advisor under Nixon prior to that.

Kissinger is still alive at age 100 and still occasionally gives his views on foreign policy.  Born in Weimar Germany, he immigrated with his parents in 1935 and served in the U.S. Army during World War Two.

A practitioner of realpolitik, I'm frankly not a fan, and regard him as complicit with Nixon in a cynical abandonment of the South Vietnamese.

Ford Motors introduced the lighter, disappointing, Mustang II, demonstrating the decline in American automobiles of the early 1970s as the realitites of being a petroleum importing nation started to set in.