Wednesday, March 26, 1975. A new king.

The 9th NVA Division attacked again at Chơn Thành Camp, apparently trying to retrieve disabled tanks, but was repulsed again by ARVN defenders.

Kissinger spoke to the press.

A Henry Kissinger Press Conference – March 26, 1975 – Past Daily Reference Room

Khalid ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, the Crown Prince and the younger half-brother of King Faisal, was crowned as the new King of Saudi Arabia.

Clela Rorex, the County Clerk for Boulder County, Colorado. issued a marriage license to Dave McCord and Dave Zamora who had consulted with the county's District Attorney who decided that there was nothing in Colorado's law that prohibited same sex marriage.

It was the first same sex marriage license issued in the US.

On April 24, Colorado State Attorney General Joyce Murdoch invalidated the license, as well as five others issued by Rorex.

Jaws premiered in an advance screening.

The Biological Weapons Convention banning the production or use of biologcial weapons, entered into force by its own terms.

Last edition:

Tuesday, March 25, 1975. A murdered king and evacuations.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Air Force of the Republic of Vietnam, Army of the Republic of Vietnam, Campaign 275, Crime, Da Nang, Hue–Da Nang Campaign, Music, Saudi Arabia, Tin-Ngai Campaign, U.S. Air Force, Vietnam War

Tuesday, March 25, 1975. A murdered king and evacuations.

King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed by his nephew, Prince Faisal bin Musaid.

The motivation for the murder by the US educated prince has never been determined.

The Tin-Ngai Campaign ended with NVA/VC forces in full control of Quảng Tin and Quảng Ngai Provinces.  Da Nang as the only major city in I Corps still held by the South Vietnamese and it was effectively surrounded.

The U.S Air Force organized an airlift to evacuate 10,000 people a day from Da Nang,

Hué's remaining defenders were evacuated by sea.

All of the events above I can recall, particularly the events surrounding the disaster at Da Nang.

The day prior, the ARVN had successfully held an NVA armored attack back at Chơn Thành Camp, destroying 7 T-54s with antitank rockets, recoilless rifles and RVNAF airstrikes. 

Linda Ronstadt released her cover of the Everly Brothers' 1960 song "When Will I Be Loved".

Last edition:

Monday, March 24, 1975. Huế falls to the NVA.

Labels: actors and actresses, Beavers, boxing, Campaign 275, Canada, Huế Vietnam, South Vietnam, Sports, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Wednesday, February 28, 1945. Saudi Arabia declares war.

Saudi Arabia declared war on the Axis powers.

German officer taken prisoner by U.S. Army, February 28, 1945.

The Red Army too Neustettin.

The Third Army too Bitburg.

German POWs taken by 4th Infantry Division, part of the 3d Army.  The US infantrymen have the typical late war disheveled look in spite of being part of the 3d Army.  At least two of three of the German POWs are Luftwaffe personnel.

The US conducts landings at Puerto Princesa on Palawan.

John Harlan Willis performed the actions that resulted in his being conferred a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor.

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Platoon Corpsman serving with the 3d Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division, during operations against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, 28 February 1945. Constantly imperiled by artillery and mortar fire from strong and mutually supporting pillboxes and caves studding Hill 362 in the enemy's cross-island defenses, Willis resolutely administered first aid to the many marines wounded during the furious close-in fighting until he himself was struck by shrapnel and was ordered back to the battle-aid station. Without waiting for official medical release, he quickly returned to his company and, during a savage hand-to-hand enemy counterattack, daringly advanced to the extreme frontlines under mortar and sniper fire to aid a marine lying wounded in a shellhole. Completely unmindful of his own danger as the Japanese intensified their attack, Willis calmly continued to administer blood plasma to his patient, promptly returning the first hostile grenade which landed in the shell-hole while he was working and hurling back 7 more in quick succession before the ninth exploded in his hand and instantly killed him. By his great personal valor in saving others at the sacrifice of his own life, he inspired his companions, although terrifically outnumbered, to launch a fiercely determined attack and repulse the enemy force. His exceptional fortitude and courage in the performance of duty reflect the highest credit upon Willis and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

Last edition:

Tuesday, February 27, 1945. Hard fighting on Iwo Jima.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Armor, boats and ships, British Army, Canadian Army, Heroes, Iwo Jima, Lebanon, Philippines, Red Army, United States Marine Corps, Weapons, World War Two

Thursday, February 26, 1925. Glacier Bay.

The Wahhabi raided into Transjordan.

President Coolidge established the boundaries of Glacier Bay National Monument, which is now Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve.

Last edition:

Wednesday, February 25, 1925. Preventing cruelty.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 Wyoming Legislative Session, Mental Health, Panama, technology, U.S. Navy, Wyoming

Wednesday, February 14, 1945. A great President and a great king, meet.

President Roosevelt met with King Ibn Saud on the USS Quincy.

Memorandum of Conversation Between the King of Saudi Arabia (Abdul Aziz Al Saud) and President Roosevelt, February 14, 1945, Aboard the U.S.S. “Quincy” 

February 14, 1945

I

The President asked His Majesty for his advice regarding the problem of Jewish refugees driven from their homes in Europe.6 His Majesty replied that in his opinion the Jews should return to live in the lands from which they were driven. The Jews whose homes were completely destroyed and who have no chance of livelihood in their homelands should be given living space in the Axis countries which oppressed them. The President remarked that Poland might be considered a case in point. The Germans appear to have killed three million Polish Jews, by which count there should be space in Poland for the resettlement of many homeless Jews.

His “Majesty then expounded the case of the Arabs and their legitimate rights in their lands and stated that the Arabs and the Jews could never cooperate, neither in Palestine,7 nor in any other country. His Majesty called attention to the increasing threat to the existence of the Arabs and the crisis which has resulted from continued Jewish immigration and the purchase of land by the Jews. His Majesty further stated that the Arabs would choose to die rather than yield their lands to the Jews.

His Majesty stated that the hope of the Arabs is based upon the word of honor of the Allies and upon the well-known love of justice of the United States, and upon the expectation that the United States will support them.

The President replied that he wished to assure His Majesty that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people. He reminded His Majesty [Page 3]that it is impossible to prevent speeches and resolutions in Congress or in the press which may be made on any subject. His reassurance concerned his own future policy as Chief Executive of the United States Government.

His Majesty thanked the President for his statement and mentioned the proposal to send an Arab mission to America and England to expound the case of the Arabs and Palestine. The President stated that he thought this was a very good idea because he thought many people in America and England are misinformed. His Majesty said that such a mission to inform the people was useful, but more important to him was what the President had just told him concerning his own policy toward the Arab people.

II

His Majesty stated that the problem of Syria and the Lebanon8 was of deep concern to him and he asked the President what would be the attitude of the United States Government in the event that France should continue to press intolerable demands upon Syria and the Lebanon. The President replied that the French Government had given him in writing their guarantee of the independence of Syria and the Lebanon and that he could at any time write to the French Government to insist that they honor their word. In the event that the French should thwart the independence of Syria and the Lebanon, the United States Government would give to Syria and the Lebanon all possible support short of the use of force.

III

The President spoke of his great interest in farming, stating that he himself was a farmer. He emphasized the need for developing water resources, to increase the land under cultivation as well as to turn the wheels which do the country’s work. He expressed special interest in irrigation, tree planting and water power which he hoped would be developed after the war in many countries, including the Arab lands. Stating that he liked Arabs, he reminded His Majesty that to increase land under cultivation would decrease the desert and provide living for a larger population of Arabs. His Majesty thanked the President for promoting agriculture so vigorously, but said that he himself could not engage with any enthusiasm in the development of his country’s agriculture and public works if this prosperity would be inherited by the Jews.

The raid on Dresden concluded with a nighttime raid by the RAF.

The USAAF bombed Prague.  The raid killed 701 people, destroyed houses and historical sites, in a country that was a victim of Nazi oppression. This was attributed to a navigational error.

The Red Army liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp.

The U-989 was sunk by the Royal Navy.

Last edition:

Tuesday, February 13, 1945. Dresden.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Allied Air Campaigns, Battle of Manila, Manila Philippines, Nazi Germany, Philippines, Royal Air Force, Siege of Budapest, The bombing of Dresden, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, War Crimes, Weapons

Friday, December 12, 1924. Soviet Gun Control.

The Central Executive Committee of the USSR issued a decree prohibiting the possession of almost all firearms, with the exception of shotguns for hunting, although much hunting in much of Russia, which was fairly common, was in fact done with rifles by necessity.

Following 1933, the penalty for violation was five years imprisonment.  In 1935 knives were added to the list.

During World War Two the ban was expanded with all firearms being required to be turned over to the state, although following the war, the USSR was awash in captured German weapons.  

Presently, rifles may be registered for hunting.

The USSR/Russia we might note, shares this status with Ireland, in being a country whose freedom, if you will, was brought about through the private exercise of arms, that then went around banning them.  In the USSR's case it isn't too surprising, as armed resistance against the Communists continued on into the 1930s in some areas and revived during the Second World War, to continue on until nearly 1950 after the war.

Truly, there's a lesson here.

1931 vintage Soviet hunting travel poster. Russia had a very vibrant hunting culture until the Communists came in.  Knowing that an armed populace would overthrow them sooner or latter, the Communists banned possession of rifles and pistols, which the Czar's government had not.  This poster shows a hunter taking on a grizzly bear with a double barreled shotgun, which might well end up in a bad result for the hunter.  Based upon the travels of a fellow I once knew who had hunted in the late stage USSR, later on you could hunt with a rifle, but it was a crappy rifle that belonged to the government you had to check out.  Interestingly, shotguns remain the one firearm produced in Russia which are somewhat good, although they are peculiar.

The first issue of the weekly Saudi Arabian newspaper Umm Al-Qura, the official newspaper of the Saudi government, was published

Last edition.

Wednesday, December 10, 1924. Buffalo Meat.

Labels: 1920s, 1923, 1924, Food, homosexuality, Mining, Nobel Prize, Sweden, Warren G. Harding, Yellowstone National Park

Friday, December 5, 1924. Shades of the modern Middle East

The Sultanate of Nejd, ruled by Abdulazia Ibn Saud defeated the Kingdom of Hejaz in Mecca itself.  Hejazi forces remained thereafter only at the port of port of Jeddah.

The State of Syria (Dawlat Sūriyā) was created within the French Mandate for Syria by Decree No. 2980.  This united the State of Aleppo and the State of Damascus under one common native assembly and administration.

Of course, in what was united, things are current disunited.

The State of Syria was smaller than contemporary Syria, in that it did not include the Alawite State.

The Italian fascists introduced legislation bringing about press censorship.

Last edition.

Thursday, December 4, 1924. Greed.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, 1924 at the Movies, Movies

Monday, October 13, 1924. Mecca captured.

Wahhabi forces took Mecca.

The Boston Bruins were added to the formerly solely Canadian National Hockey League.

Last edition:

Saturday, October 11, 1924.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Art, The Press

Monday, October 6, 1924. Ali of Hejaz becomes king.

Ali of Hejaz was proclaimed the King of Hejaz.  His predecessor King Hussein bin Ali had fled from Mecca to Jeddah to avoid the conquest of Nejd by the Sultanate of Nejd, led by Ibn Saud.

Atypically for an Arab monarch/chieftain, he was married just once.  He had five children.  He died in Baghdad in the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq in 1935.

Radio Marconi, the first public radio station in Italy, began broadcasting.

Last edition:

Friday, October 3, 1924. Insulting Kennesaw Mountain.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, baseball, British Empire, Egypt, Personalities, Scandal, United Kingdom

Wednesday. September 3, 1924. The massacre at Taif.

Troops of the Ikhwan sent by Sultan Ibn Saud of Nejd killed no less than 300 civilians in the city of Taif.

Last edition:

Tuesday, September 2, 1924. Glazman kills himself.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Communism, Communists, Joseph Stalin, Personalities, Russian Civil War, Russian Revolution, Stalin's' Purges, USSR

Friday, August 29, 1924. The start of the Second Saudi-Hashemite War.

The Sultanate of Nejd, led by King Abdulaziz ibn Saud, attacked the Kingdom of Hejaz, ruled by King Hussein bin Ali, British ally during World War One.

Flag of the joint kingdom of The Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd, which would become Saudi Arabia.

Hejaz contained Mecca and the city of Jeddah.  Citizens of Jejd had been barred from making the pilgrimage to Mecca, bringing on the war, and the thereby the birth of Saudi Arabia., at least as an immediate causa belli.  A more significant one may have been the end of British subsidies to both royal houses, removing restraint on both of them, and in the case of Hejaz, the ability to bribe other Arab principalities.

The Reichstag accepted the London protocol of the Dawes plan.

Last edition:

Thursday, August 28, 1924. The August Uprising.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, actors and actresses, August Uprising, California, California (Los Angeles), Ethnicities, Georgia, USSR

Monday, May 26, 1924. The beginning of the end for Hejaz.

The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 was signed into law.

Ikhwan fighters.

The Battle of Turubah was fought between the Kingdom of Hejaz and the Sultanate of Nejd.  The defeat of Hajaz by the Saudi forces of Nejd paved the way for modern Saudi Arabia.

Wilhelm Marx resigned as Chancellor of Germany.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, May 25, 1924. Coolidge at Arlington.

Labels: 1920s, 1924, Calvin Coolidge, Greece, Memorial Day

A Palestinian Solution (that nobody is going to do).

In this thread, I suggested a solution to the "Palestinian" problem isn't all that hard:

An uncomfortable truth.*

In reality, I'd partially already proposed it:

The Palestinian Problem and its Wilsonian Solution.

Those threads are pretty complete, but let's just set out the basic facts of the problem.

Part One:

• The Palestinian Mandate's Levantines didn't want any sort of Jewish state or any sort of "two-state solution in 1948".  The neighboring Arab states didn't want one either.
• World War Two made it inevitable that Jews would seek refuge in the region they'd held historically and up until 70.
• The British tried and failed to create a two-state solution, and then washed their hands of the matter and left.
• The Israelis won the 1948 war.
• During the 1948 war, a lot of Levantines left out of fear, rational calculation of danger, or were expelled.
• Just would have invited them back in, but the Israeli's were not in the mood for that, and the Arabs largely weren't either.  That is, having fought for it, the Israeli's decided to keep what they had in every sense, and the Arabs were still dedicated to the proposition of pushing them out.
• That's now over 70 years ago and almost everyone involved in the original drama is dead.

Part Two:

• The Arabs have been happy to support a Palestinian diaspora, partially, but not to invite them into their own countries.
• The Palestinians have been unwilling to come up with a new, permanent plan, that doesn't feature, at a bare minimum, the territory that was at least partially in Mandatory Palestine.
• Gaza and to a lesser extent the West Bank were solutions that Israel was willing to put up with, but not the Levantines, even as they took advantage of it.
• The "Palestinians" have been , to a large extent, living on the Arab and Global dole since Gaza and the West Bank were created as entities subject to self rule. They don't have work, and they don't have much to do, other than to do, what people who have an income, but no work, do. . . . fill in the blanks here.

Okay now for the elements of the solution.

Part One

• The Palestinian Levantines need work and need to be taken off the dole.
• In order to do that, the pipe dream of an independent Palestinian state inside the borders of Mandatory Palestine needs to be given up on, unless Jordan, which is a Bedouin state, wishes to become that entity, and it doesn't.

So, what can be done.  There are two, and only two, possibilities.

Solution Number One.

The Palestinian Levantines can be taken in by the Arab states that have work, which would include the Emirates, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia.*

Yes, that's radical, but if they were taken in, taken off the dole, and got to work, within a generation or two, this problem would be over, and they would be better off.

Solution Number Two.

Create a Palestinian state in the Sinai.

That has obvious geoengineering problems, but the Israelis confronted those inside Mandatory Palestine and the states of the Arabian Peninsula have faced them as well.  It's been proven that you can geoengineer these areas productively.  It has been done.

And in that state, Gaza could remain part of it.

This, of course, would require Egypt to give up Sinai, but frankly, it's not making much use of it anyway.

Footnotes:

*And probably Jordan as well, as the West Bank was part of Transjordan and probably ought just go back to Jordan.

Related threads:

An uncomfortable truth.*

1940s, 1948, 70, 70s, Al Nakba, Arabs, British League of Nations Mandates, Hamas, Israel, Israeli Hamas War, Levant, Ottoman Empire, Palestine, Palestinian Revolution, Roman Empire, The Holocaust

The Palestinian Problem and its Wilsonian Solution.

Arabs, British League of Nations Mandates, Israel, Israeli Hamas War, It was because of World War One, It was because of World War Two, Kuwait, MIddle East, Ottoman Empire, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia

Wednesday, March 5, 1924. An attempted caliphate.

Following the Turkish Assemblies abolishment of the caliphate, Hussein bin Ali, King of the Hejaz and Sharif of Mecca, was proclaimed the Caliph of all Muslims by Muslim leaders in Mesopotamia and Transjordania.  Global Muslim reaction was mostly negative and it didn't take.    This date is somewhat disputed, and it could have taken place a couple of days earlier, or later.

Last prior:

Tuesday, March 4, 1924. Waltzing Matilda.

Wednesday, January 9, 1974. Oil.

OPEC voted to freeze oil prices for three months.  Saudi Arabia had been willing to reduce them, but Algeria, Iraq, and Iran, had not been.

Ronald and Nancy Reagan upon Reagan's 1966 Gubernatorial victory, and one decade away from his first run for the GOP Presidential ticket.

Actor turned politician Ronald Reagan delivered California's State of the State address, noting the oil crisis but asserting it was an opportunity to develop resources, freeing the US from foreign petroleum.

Thursday, November 22, 1973. Oily shifting sands and tides.

Japan, which had not yet come under the Arab oil embargo, dropped its support for Israel and joined the United Nations in calling for a separate Palestinian state.  In doing so, it was seeking to avoid the oil sanction.

Saudi Arabia warned the US that it would reduce oil production by 80% if the US did not stop supporting Israel, and that the country would destroy its oil wells if attacked.

Saturday, October 20, 1973. The Saturday Night Massacre, Sydney Opera House, and Arab Oil Embargo.

Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox was dismissed by the Administration, and attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and deputy attorney General William B. Ruckelshaus resigned.  Cox was dismissed by Robert Bork, who later became an unsuccessful Supreme Court nominee, but who nonetheless was influential in the philosophy of the current Supreme Court.

The Sydney Opera House was inaugurated and opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

Saudi Arabia and Algeria halted petroleum exports to the U.S., the embargo now becoming a full-blown disaster.