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Monday, January 23, 2006
Israel Killed Arafat, says Assad
January 23, 2006
DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has caused outrage by accusing Israel of assassinating former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose death 14 months ago remains a mystery.
"Of the many assassinations that Israel carried out in a methodical and organised way, the most dangerous thing that Israel did was the assassination of president Yasser Arafat," Mr Assad told a gathering of Arab lawyers in what was billed as a speech on democratic reform.
"This was under the world's gaze and its silence, and not one state dared to issue a statement or stance towards this, as though nothing happened."
Arafat died in Paris on November 11, 2004, at the age of 75, after being rushed from his West Bank compound to a French military hospital.
Israel has denied being responsible for the deterioration in Arafat's health and has denied poisoning him.
Israeli officials said he had access to medical treatment, food, water and medication during the two years he spent in his compound in Ramallah, which was besieged by Israeli troops for months in 2002.
French doctors denied rumours that Arafat was poisoned but have refused to publish his medical reports, citing strict privacy laws.
Arafat aides had quoted doctors as saying he had a low count of platelets, which help the blood to clot. They later said he had gone into a coma, suffered a brain haemorrhage and lost the use of his vital organs one by one. But no definitive cause of death was announced.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17904974%255E2703,00.html
Posted at 10:23 pm by R7fel
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Thursday, January 19, 2006
Wilson Pickett Dies of Heart Attack at 64
Thursday, January 19, 2006; Posted: 5:48 p.m. EST (22:48 GMT)
Wilson Pickett, shown in 2001, is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Chris Tuthill of the management company Talent Source said Pickett had been suffering from health problems for the past year.
One of Pickett's children said he hoped his father received the proper recognition.
"He did his part. It was a great ride, a great trip, I loved him and I'm sure he was well-loved, and I just hope that he's given his props," Michael Wilson Pickett, the fourth of the singer's six children, told WRC-TV in Washington after his death.
A member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Pickett -- known as the "Wicked Pickett" -- became a star with his soulful hits in the 1960s.
"In the Midnight Hour" made the top 25 on the Billboard pop charts in 1965, and "Mustang Sally" did the same the following year.
Pickett was defined by his raspy voice and passionate delivery.
But the Alabama-born Pickett actually got his start singing gospel music in church.
After moving to Detroit as a teen, he joined the group the Falcons, which scored the hit "I Found a Love" with Pickett on lead vocals in 1962.
He went solo a year later.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.
Posted at 06:19 pm by R7fel
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006
| Pick up the Phone for Darfur Today! |
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Dear Felix,
We are approaching the moment of truth. Violence in Darfur continues to rise, and for the first time in recent news reports the United Nations (UN), the African Union (AU), and even the U.S. have indicated support for an urgent multinational intervention to stop the genocide in Darfur. In February, the U.S. will be the President of the UN Security Council, providing an ideal moment for the U.S. to lead the international community to stop genocide. We know that they will not take action without hearing strong public support, so we are asking you today to help us tip the balance. Please pick up the phone and call the State Department today!
Today is a national call-in day on Darfur. Please call the State Department with the following message:
"Hello. I am calling with a message for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about the genocide in Darfur. I have been encouraged by the Secretary's recent remarks in favor of a UN intervention. I am aware that the U.S. will become the President of the UN Security Council next month. Please use this window of opportunity to stop genocide in Darfur by instructing the U.S. Ambassador at the UN to introduce a resolution for a multinational intervention in support of the AU with a mandate to protect. As the violence continues to rise in Darfur, there is no more time to waste. Thank you."
You can reach the State Department comment line by calling: (202) 647-4000. The person at the switchboard might take your comment directly or, if the person is flooded with calls, you might be transferred to an automated comment line. In either circumstance, please leave a message.
For a longer explanation of how a multinational intervention would stop genocide, feel free to download a flyer or read Africa Action's statement on how the UN can stop genocide in Darfur. Feel free to utilize the updated talking points on the genocide in Darfur.
This national call-in day is a part of an escalation campaign that is building citizen pressure to push the Bush Administration to use this window of opportunity to take the action necessary to stop genocide. We will issue a new alert each week in January and early February with ways to get involved. Mark your calendars for our next call-in day to the United Nations on February 1st and the rally in Washington, DC on February 2nd.
Please spread the word about this important moment and help us to turn up the heat to protect Darfur.
Sincerely,
The Staff @ Africa Action
How the UN Can Stop Genocide in Darfur
January 17, 2006
December 2005 (Washington, DC) - As the security situation in Darfur, Sudan continues to deteriorate, there is a growing consensus around the need for a more robust mandate for the African Union (AU) mission and a larger international intervention force to support the AU and provide protection to the people of Darfur. Africa Action today declares that the United Nations (UN) is the appropriate vehicle for such an intervention, and that this is a viable option that should immediately be pursued by the international community.
Africa Action calls upon the U.S. to immediately introduce a resolution at the UN to "re-hat" the AU mission as a UN operation, granting it a strong civilian protection mandate from the international community, and to authorize a UN force to be deployed as soon as possible to the region. Based on African precedents, Africa Action asserts that such a UN action in support of the AU can and will provide critical support to the AU mission and provide security to the people of Darfur.
In this statement, Africa Action addresses the feasibility of such a UN intervention in Darfur. The organization offers new analysis of precedents where African regional bodies and the UN have cooperated effectively in peace enforcement and peacekeeping missions, and it applies lessons learned to recommend next steps on Darfur. Africa Action highlights the need for U.S. leadership at the UN to prompt such international action, and argues why this is the moment for such leadership to protect the people of Darfur.
An International Intervention is Necessary Now
Recent reports from the UN, humanitarian agencies and the media confirm a sharp deterioration in the security situation in Darfur. Already more than 400,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have been forced out of their homes since the genocide began in 2003. As the violence worsens, growing numbers of people are being attacked and displaced, humanitarian organizations face increasing risks to their operations, and there are new demands for a protection force to provide security to the region. An international intervention is essential to serve four main purposes: (1) Stop the killings, rapes and pillaging in Darfur; (2) Provide security to facilitate humanitarian assistance programs for internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees; (3) Enforce the African Union cease-fire between the Khartoum government and the rebel groups in Darfur to allow meaningful political negotiations to move forward in Abuja, Nigeria, and (4) facilitate the voluntary return of IDPs to their land and the reconstruction of their homes by providing a secure environment.
As the 7th round of peace talks between the Government of Sudan and rebel groups from Darfur continues in Abuja, Nigeria, an international intervention is necessary to deter violence in Darfur and to help create the climate for these talks to proceed productively and result in a comprehensive agreement. Once a political agreement is reached in Abuja, an international intervention force will be essential to facilitate the implementation of such an agreement.
The African Union Needs UN Support
The African Union has demonstrated important leadership in Darfur - brokering the April 2004 cease-fire, deploying 7,000 troops to Darfur to observe the cease-fire, and hosting successive rounds of peace talks between the Government of Sudan and the rebels. Now the AU needs international support to ensure the success of its mission in Darfur, both for the sake of its institutional credibility and for the sake of millions of vulnerable people in Darfur. At present, the AU mission lacks the mandate, the troop strength and the logistical capacity to stop the genocide and provide protection to the people of Darfur.
Responding to genocide and other crimes against humanity is a responsibility of the international community. The UN must act to reinforce the AU's efforts, as it has worked with African regional bodies in the past, to ensure the success of peacekeeping operations where the lives of millions of innocent civilians are at stake.
Precedents Prove Case for UN-African Peacekeeping Operation
Under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the Security Council may take such action as necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security. The members of the UN have previously shown their willingness and capability to invoke Chapter 7 peace enforcement and peace-building instruments in response to conflict in Africa. Now, the UN can and must furnish the AU with a strong civilian protection mandate and with international backing in the form of a UN peacekeeping mission to support the AU in Darfur.
Precedents show that the UN is a viable source for effective and appropriate international intervention to stop genocide and other crimes against humanity. The following examples also show instances of successful cooperation between African regional bodies, which intervened as "first responders", and the UN, which acted to reinforce their efforts with a larger international force.
(1) In Sierra Leone, after the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) intervened to enforce the peace in 1998, the UN Security Council acted in 1999 to authorize an international force with a robust mandate, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, to work alongside and coordinate with the ECOWAS mission. In late 1999, ECOWAS troops in Sierra Leone were "re-hatted" as UN peacekeepers, and transitioned into a UN mission the next year. The transition in early 2000 was initially rocky, but the Security Council rallied behind the mission and boosted its strength, and the mission was able to deter conflict and restore a secure environment to Sierra Leone.
(2) In Liberia, ECOWAS intervened to enforce the peace in 2003, and in August of that year it was granted the authority and mandate by the UN Security Council, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, to establish security and facilitate humanitarian assistance in Liberia and to pave the way for a UN intervention. The UN Security Council acted swiftly and decisively to authorize and deploy (within 2 months) a larger multinational intervention in Liberia. The ECOWAS troops acted as the first contingent of the UN mission to Liberia, and authority was successfully transferred to the UN operation in October 2003. This international operation has been successful in promoting peace and stability in Liberia.
(3) In Côte d'Ivoire, the UN Security Council granted authority to ECOWAS and to France in 2003 to take the necessary steps to provide security and protection in Côte d'Ivoire. In 2004, a UN operation was authorized to take over from the ECOWAS force and work alongside the French forces to facilitate the implementation of the peace agreement and to provide protection in Côte d'Ivoire.
(4) In Burundi, the AU authorized and deployed its first peacekeeping operation in 2003, when the institution was itself only one year old. The AU operation in Burundi faced financial and logistical challenges, but it was able to oversee the cease-fire and provide some stability. It coordinated with the UN to ensure a relatively smooth transition to a UN operation in Burundi after one year.
Also under a Chapter 7 mandate, the UN already has a precedent of authorizing and deploying a peacekeeping operation in southern Sudan. In March 2005, the UN passed a resolution establishing a UN mission in Sudan (UNMIS) with up to 10,000 personnel and a mandate to support the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. At present, UNMIS comprises some 4,000 troops from more than 50 countries, the majority of which are outside the African continent.
These examples illustrate several important lessons, which must now be applied to a UN intervention in support of the AU mission in Darfur. First and foremost, these precedents reveal that a UN-authorized Chapter 7 intervention force in support of an African-led force can be effective in providing security and protection. They show that the Security Council can act with swiftness and decisiveness to grant a robust mandate and troop strength to protect civilians, and they highlight that such an intervention can act as a deterrent to violence and as a catalyst to make a peace process successful.
Lessons Learned for Darfur
(1) "Re-hat" the African Union troops as UN troops:
The initial step of "re-hatting" African troops as UN troops carries several important benefits, and this must immediately be pursued to reinforce the AU mission in Darfur. Turning the AU troops into UN 'blue helmets' will save time on deployment, since these troops are already in the theater, pending the deployment of a larger UN force. It will help to retain the AU's valuable experience on the ground, where these troops have already been carrying out important work. The act of granting a UN mandate to African troops will also provide them with international authority and backing, which can offer an important boost to the troops themselves and can help increase the confidence of civilians in Darfur in the AU operation because of the broader international support. Certainly, the act of "re-hatting" the AU will also require careful preparation, to ensure that the troops are ready to accept their new mandate, and the rules of engagement and standards which accompany it, but this has worked in the past and must be immediately pursued in Darfur.
(2) Deploy a UN intervention force:
The deployment of a UN intervention force to support the AU mission must follow swiftly, and this force should comprise at least 20,000 troops from the international community. This number is recommended by various sources based either on the ratio of peacekeeping troops to population or on the ratio of peacekeeping troops to hostile forces in Darfur. The deployment of this UN force must be well planned and coordinated with the African Union at every level and it must be well timed. Such coordination will be imperative whether the UN operation deploys alongside the AU or whether it ultimately assumes authority for the mission in Darfur. Consideration may also be given to the use of forces from UNMIS (in southern Sudan) for a UN mission in Darfur.
These examples illustrate that, while such a UN mission in Darfur is a potentially complex undertaking, it is perfectly possible, and morally and politically imperative, for an international intervention to be successful in promoting peace and security in Darfur, as has been the case elsewhere.
The U.S. Must Lead UN Action
In order for a UN mandate and intervention to be authorized by the Security Council, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, there must be leadership from within the Security Council from a powerful nation with the political will and the resources to galvanize international support for this mission. This leadership must come from the U.S. for several reasons.
The U.S. is the only government to have declared that genocide is taking place in Darfur, and this provides it with a unique obligation to obtain international action on this crisis. The U.S. earlier prompted the UN to undertake an inquiry into the crisis in Darfur, and though the politically-comprised conclusion of the Commission of Inquiry failed to find genocidal intent on the part of the Sudanese government, the report confirmed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, and named civilian protection as an urgent priority. Other governments have failed to take a public position on what is happening in Darfur, but there is broad international recognition of ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity in western Sudan.
The U.S. has previously offered leadership on Darfur at the Security Council, authoring earlier resolutions condemning the violence in Darfur, threatening sanctions and calling on the Government of Sudan to stop the violence. But the U.S. has yet to call for an urgent international intervention to protect the people of Darfur. In the 15 months since the U.S. declared that genocide was taking place in Darfur, the U.S. has offered financial support for humanitarian efforts in Darfur, and U.S. officials have traveled back and forth to the region. But these limited actions cannot substitute for assertive international leadership to provide actual protection to the people of Darfur.
Possible Challenges in the Security Council
It is possible that the Security Council will not agree to intervene in Darfur even with U.S. leadership, because of the economic and diplomatic interests of some of the Permanent Members. China is the single largest investor in Sudan's oil sector, and Russia is Khartoum's major arms supplier. Neither one of these nations is in favor of the principle of intervention in the "internal affairs" of another state on the ground of human rights abuses. But a resolution on intervention could still pass the Security Council, as happened in March 2005 when the Security Council voted to refer war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and opposing nations abstained but did not veto the resolution.
These possible blocks offer no excuse for U.S. hesitation or inaction. The U.S. must discharge its own responsibility to act, first and foremost. It must issue the challenge to these nations by introducing a resolution calling for UN intervention in Darfur, and it must be willing to expend the necessary diplomatic capital to overcome their objections to a multinational force to stop the genocide. The U.S. has called the crisis in Darfur "genocide", and must have the courage of its convictions to bring this matter to the international community for immediate action, with a priority on civilian protection in Darfur. To fail to do so exposes a racial double standard, which this Administration can ill afford to maintain.
Africa Action Demands
In February 2006, the U.S. will hold the presidency of the United Nations Security Council for the period of one month. Between now and then, the U.S. must work within the UN to pave the way for the adoption of a new resolution on Darfur. In February, as President of the Security Council, the U.S. will have a unique opportunity and obligation to preside over the adoption of a resolution granting a robust civilian protection mandate to the African Union mission in Darfur and authorizing a broader UN intervention force to be deployed as soon as possible to support the AU effort.
The introduction and adoption of such a UN resolution is critical to the success of the AU in Darfur, and it is essential to save the lives of hundreds and thousands of vulnerable people, who urgently need protection from the international community. The Bush Administration faces growing public pressure for action to stop the genocide in Darfur. By acting now to introduce a resolution at the UN to re-hat the AU as a UN operation and deploy a complementary international force, the U.S. government would fulfill these calls for leadership in the face of genocide.
http://www.africaaction.org/newsroom/index.php?op=read&documentid=1603&type=15&issues=1024 |
Posted at 09:29 am by R7fel
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Friday, January 13, 2006
Judge Samuel J. Alito, Jr. Surely Will Be Confirmed
By Paul M. Weyrich
January 13, 2006
He was going to be subjected to a filibuster. Now it appears that Supreme Court Justice Nominee Samuel J. Alito, Jr. will get an up-or-down vote.
He was expected to be a real let-down after the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. If anything, Judge Alito out-performed Chief Justice Roberts. Judge Alito was going to be pinned down on abortion or else he would be rejected for the Supreme Court. Not only was Judge Alito not pinned down on abortion but he did not agree with Senators as Roberts had that Roe v Wade was “settled law.”
He surely was going to lose his composure at some point, thus giving Senators the opening for which they were looking. Judge Alito remained absolutely composed during and after answering more than 700 questions.
He was subjected to the best organized, most expensive, liberal campaign in history. Conservatives matched liberal activity dollar-for-dollar, call-for-call.
He would be fortunate if he could garner 52 votes to be confirmed by the full Senate. Now it appears that Judge Alito may get approximately 65 votes in his favor. He was not expected to get a single Democrat vote to confirm his nomination. Now it appears that Judge Alito could have 10 or more Democrats join Republicans in voting for him. He was expected to lose a minimum of three and perhaps a maximum of five Republican votes for confirmation. It now is possible that Judge Alito could get all 55 Republican votes.
Thus was the remarkable saga of the Senate confirmation hearings of Judge Alito this past week. Barring some wholly unexpected last minute revelation which would cause the confirmation hearings to be re-opened, the Alito nomination is headed for the floor of the United States Senate and an up-or-down vote, either the week of January 15 or the week of January 22. There was good reason for President Bush to call Alito after he finished his three days of testimony last Thursday. Simply put, Alito did a masterful job before that highly charged committee.
Nonetheless, the vote almost certainly will be 10 to 8, or strict party-line, to recommend the Alito nomination to the full Senate. If ten or more Democrats appear to be willing to vote for his confirmation, why the party-line vote out of the Senate Judiciary Committee? That Committee, as well as the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is stacked with the sharpest liberals in the Senate. These eight Democrats are barely representative of the 45 Senators who comprise the entire Democrat Conference in 2006 (44 Democrats and 1 Independent). When the nomination is scheduled for the Senate Floor all Senators will be able to vote.
Briefly, right up until the second day of questioning of Judge Alito there appeared to be some chance that the Alito nomination might be filibustered. That day the filibuster went out the window, in my view, because Democrats overreached and became, for the most part, mean-spirited and, in some cases, angry. That caused Senator Lindsay O. Graham (R-SC) to apologize to Judge Alito for the treatment he had received from Committee Democrats. That apology caused Mrs. Alito to burst into tears and became the lead story of that second day of the Alito confirmation hearings. That lead story continued to make headlines through the evening news cycle and clear through the morning news cycle of the third day of hearings. At that point, more reasonable Democrats told their leadership that they wanted no part of this charade.
A charade it was. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), former long-term Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said before the questioning began that he had been told that not a single Committee Democrat would vote for Alito. Hatch explained that “They’ve already made up their minds. Nobody will be listening.” During the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Chief Justice Roberts, Ranking Democrat Senator Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) surprised even his colleagues by announcing that he would vote in favor of the Roberts nomination.
We thought almost certainly that Leahy did so to provide himself the opportunity to contrast Alito with Roberts, thus justifying a vote against Alito. No doubt Leahy will attempt to do that, but it will be more difficult for him in that Alito did at least as favorable a job or perhaps even a little better job of appealing to the American people. Moreover, Alito’s answers were similar enough to Roberts that Leahy could be splitting hairs if he were to claim that Roberts satisfied him but Alito did not.
Left-wing groups which so greatly influence the Democratic Party were outraged when Leahy and Senator Herbert H. Kohl (D-WI) voted for Roberts in the Senate Judiciary Committee and were joined by 20 Democrats in the full Senate. The groups have been demanding a filibuster.
Even after many media liberals suggested that Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats went too far with Alito, Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (R-NV) praised his colleagues on the Committee when saying they did precisely what they were expected to do. While keeping the filibuster theoretically on the table, Reid said Democrats would meet early this week to determine their strategy. Unless threats from leftists and pro-abortion groups are so great that Democrats feel they have no choice, they will drop the filibuster and will not require that a vote against Alito be a mandatory party-line vote. That position would free up 10 to 12 Democrats who at least have expressed an open mind about Alito and voting for his confirmation.
There is much rejoicing in conservative circles about Alito. Our folks believe he would move the High Court to the right.
At the risk of being accused of dampening spirits, I will make two cautionary notes. First, we simply do not know how Justices will vote until they actually have been appointed to the High Court. Most are a disappointment in that respect. The late right-wing New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thompson, Jr. told me he would stake his career that we would love Judge David H. Souter as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court. Not! Only Justice Byron R. White, JFK’s sole appointment to the Supreme Court, was a surprise in the right direction. Second, having Alito on the High Court, contrary to public understanding, does NOT mean conservatives will be a majority on the High Court. Have we forgotten about Justice Anthony M. Kennedy?
Assuming that Judge Alito and Chief Justice Roberts typically would vote as followers of the Constitution, that would mean that they plus Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas will be in the conservative wing, with Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Brier, John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter in the liberal wing, leaving Justice Anthony M. Kennedy as the swing vote. Justice Kennedy, who allegedly is Catholic, has voted for abortion and sodomy rights and the right for the government to take your home and give your property to a developer if it means more money in the city coffers. Justice Kennedy once may have been a conservative, but if he ever was one, he is no longer a conservative. Unless the considerable intellects of Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas can persuade Kennedy, we more often likely are to see Kennedy voting with the liberals. This would mean that conservatives would have to wait for another retirement and would have to hope that the retirement would occur while George W. Bush is President and while Republicans control the Senate.
Assuming President Bush gives America another good nominee, and presuming the good health and willingness of Justices Scalia and Thomas to stay on the High Court, then and only then conservatives would have a majority. I take nothing away from an Alito victory. But I have to be honest about this. We are not there yet.
Paul M. Weyrich is the Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.
Posted at 10:29 pm by R7fel
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Thursday, January 12, 2006
The Famous Shining Trumpet Of A Voice
Birgit Nilsson, Soprano Legend
Who Tamed Wagner, Dies at 87
Published: January 12, 2006
Birgit Nilsson, the Swedish soprano with a voice of impeccable trueness and impregnable stamina, died on Dec. 25 in Vastra Karup, the village where she was born, the Stockholm newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported yesterday. She was 87.
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Louis Melancon/Metropolitan Opera Archives
Birgit Nilsson, the Swedish soprano, known for her Wagnerian opera roles, has died. She was 87. More Photos >
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Birgit Nilsson at The Metropolitan Opera in 1979, with the conductor James Levine. More Photos >
A funeral was held yesterday at a church in her town, the presiding vicar, Fredrik Westerlund, told The Associated Press.
Ms. Nilsson made so strong an imprint on a number of roles that her name came to be identified with a repertory, the "Nilsson repertory," and it was a broad one. She sang the operas of Richard Strauss and made a specialty of Puccini's "Turandot," but it was Wagner who served her career and whom she served as no other soprano since the days of Kirsten Flagstad.
A big, blunt woman with a wicked sense of humor, Ms. Nilsson brooked no interference from Wagner's powerful and eventful orchestra writing. When she sang Isolde or Brünnhilde, her voice pierced through and climbed above it. Her performances took on more pathos as the years went by, but one remembers her sound more for its muscularity, accuracy and sheer joy of singing under the most trying circumstances.
Her long career at the Bayreuth Festival and her immersion in Wagner in general, began in the mid-1950's. No dramatic soprano truly approached her stature thereafter, and in the roles of Isolde, Brünnhilde and Sieglinde, she began her stately 30-year procession around the opera houses of the world. Her United States debut was in San Francisco in 1956. Three years later she made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera, singing Isolde under Karl Böhm, and some listeners treasure the memory of that performance as much as they do her live recording of the role from Bayreuth in 1966, also under Böhm. The exuberant review of her first Met performance appeared on the front page of The New York Times on Dec. 19, 1959, under the headline, "Birgit Nilsson as Isolde Flashes Like New Star in 'Met' Heavens."
Playing opposite Karl Liebl as Tristan, Howard Taubman wrote, "she dominated the stage and the performance."
When she appeared at the end of the first act to take a solo bow, he wrote, the audience "roared like the Stadium fans when Conerly throws a winning touchdown pass."
Like so many distinctive artists, Ms. Nilsson considered herself self-taught. "The best teacher is the stage," she told an interviewer in 1981. "You walk out onto it, and you have to learn to project." She deplored her early instruction and attributed her survival to native talent. "My first voice teacher almost killed me," she said. "The second was almost as bad."
Birgit Nilsson was born in 1918. Her mother, evidently a talented singer, began Ms. Nilsson's musical education at 3, buying her a toy piano. She began picking out melodies on it.
She once told an interviewer that she could sing before she could walk. "I even sang in my dreams," she added. A choirmaster near her home heard her sing and advised her to study. She entered the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm in 1941.
Ms. Nilsson made her debut at the Royal Opera in Stockholm in 1946, replacing the scheduled Agathe in Weber's "Freischütz," who was too ill to go on. The next year she claimed attention there as Verdi's Lady Macbeth under Fritz Busch. A wealth of parts followed, from Strauss and Verdi to Wagner, Puccini and Tchaikovsky.
Her first splash abroad was 1951, as Elettra in Mozart's "Idomeneo" at the Glyndebourne Festival in England. From there, it was a short hop to the Vienna State Opera and then to Bayreuth. She took the title role of "Turandot," which is brief but in need of an unusually big sound, to Milan in 1958 and then to the rest of Italy.
Ms. Nilsson was suspicious of opera's recent youth culture and often remarked on the premature destruction of young voices brought on by overambitious career planning. "Directors and managers don't care about their futures," she once said. "They will just get another young person when this one goes bad."
In today's opera culture, the best managed voices tend to mature in the singer's 40's and begin to deteriorate during the 50's. (Singers like Plácido Domingo, flourishing in his 60's, might dispute such generalizations.) Yet at 66, when most singers hang onto whatever career remains through less taxing recitals with piano and discreet downward transpositions of key, Ms. Nilsson sang a New York concert performance of Strauss and Wagner that met both composers head-on.
"Ms. Nilsson did not sound young," Will Crutchfield wrote in The Times. "Soft and low notes were often precarious; sustained tones were not always steady." He continued: "The wonderful thing is that she doesn't let this bother her. There was never a sense of distress or worry."
The conductor Erich Leinsdorf thought that her longevity, like Flagstad's, had something to do with her Scandinavian heritage, remarking that Wagner required "thoughtful, patient and methodical people." Ms. Nilsson attributed her long career to no particular lifestyle or regimen. "I do nothing special," she once said. "I don't smoke. I drink a little wine and beer. I was born with the right set of parents."
In sheer power, Ms. Nilsson's high notes were sometimes compared to those of the Broadway belter Ethel Merman. One high C rendered in a "Turandot" performance in the outdoor Arena di Verona in Italy led citizenry beyond the walls to think that a fire alarm had been set off. Once urged to follow Ms. Nilsson in the same role at the Met, the eminent soprano Leonie Rysanek refused.
Ms. Nilsson was known for her one-liner humor. The secret to singing Isolde, she said, was "comfortable shoes." After a disagreement with the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland, Ms. Nilsson was asked if she thought Ms. Sutherland's famous bouffant hairdo was real. She answered: "I don't know. I haven't pulled it yet." After the tenor Franco Corelli was said to have bitten her neck in an onstage quarrel over held notes, Ms. Nilsson canceled performances complaining that she had rabies.
Ms. Nilsson was also a shrewd businesswoman and negotiated much of her own career. She never ranted or engaged in tantrums. She was also too proud to make outright demands. She would begin contract talks by refusing every offer and being evasive about her availability in general. This tack would continue until the impresario offered something she wanted. Ms. Nilsson's reply would be "maybe." Now in control, she would be begged to accept what she desired in the first place.
She could stand up to intensely wired conductors like Georg Solti as well. When Solti, in "Tristan und Isolde," insisted on tempos too slow for her taste, she made the first performance even slower, inducing a conductorial change of heart.
Partly because Ms. Nilsson was on the scene, Decca Records undertook the audacious and mammothly expensive project of making the first studio recording of Wagner's four-opera "Ring" cycle conducted by Solti and produced by John Culshaw. The effort took seven years, from 1958 to 1965. A film of the proceedings made her a familiar image for arts-conscious television viewers.
Ms. Nilsson's American career was derailed in the mid-70's by a squabble with the Internal Revenue Service, which had filed claims for back taxes. Several years later, cooler heads intervened: a schedule of payments was worked out, and Ms. Nilsson's ill-tempered hiatus from the United States ended. When she returned, Donal Henahan wrote in The Times, "The famous shining trumpet of a voice is still far from sounding like a cornet."
Ms. Nilsson appeared at the Met 223 times in 16 roles. She sang two complete "Ring" cycles in the 1961-62 season, and another in 1974-75. She was Isolde 33 times, and Turandot 52. The big soprano parts were all hers: Aida, Tosca, the Dyer's Wife in Strauss's "Frau Ohne Schatten," Salome, Elektra, Lady Macbeth, Leonore in Beethoven's "Fidelio," and both Venus and Elisabeth in Wagner's "Tannhäuser." For much of this time, the Met's general manager was Rudolf Bing. Ms. Nilsson, when signing a contract, was asked to name a dependent. She wrote in Bing's name.
James Levine, who conducted her in Wagner and Strauss at the Met, said yesterday: "Birgit was unique. Her voice, the dedication of her artistry, her wonderfully wicked sense of humor and her loyal friendship were in a class by themselves. I miss her already, as does the entire Met family." At Mr. Levine's 25th-anniversary gala at the Met in 1996, she spoke briefly and wittily, throwing in a brief and wholly professional Valkyrie hoot at the end.
Ms. Nilsson had by then retired to her childhood home in the Skane province of southern Sweden. Here her father had been a sixth-generation farmer, and here she had worked to grow beets and potatoes until she was 23. A decade ago an interviewer for The Times found her there: happy, serene and as unpretentious as ever. "I've always tried to remember what my mother used to tell me," she said. "Stay close to the earth. Then when you fall down, it won't hurt so much."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/arts/music/12nilsson.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
Posted at 05:43 pm by R7fel
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CWA: Awesome-Alito-A+ -Appoint
To: National Desk
Contact: Stacey Holliday of Concerned Women for America, 202-488-7000 ext. 126
WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 /Christian Wire Service/ -- Concerned Women for America (CWA) agrees with the many Americans who have concluded that Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel Alito has done a superb job despite blatant partisan attacks by some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“If ever there’s a pictorial dictionary, under ‘judge,’ it should simply display a photo of Samuel Alito,” said Jan LaRue, CWA’s Chief Counsel. “I knew he is brilliant and possessed a deep knowledge of constitutional law, but he’s left me with a greater appreciation of that and his numerous outstanding qualities. If anyone ever questioned the meaning of judicial temperament, they’ve seen him display it in the midst of baseless attacks on his record and character. Political commentators on the right and left concur that despite the left’s relentless attempts to sink his nomination, they haven’t laid a glove on him.
“He has conducted himself with dignity and honor, confirming his strong character. Led by Senators Kennedy, Feinstein, Durbin and Schumer, liberals have failed miserably in their attempt to discredit this outstanding nominee. If anything, they only proved that Alito has nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of, and everything to be admired for.”
"Judge Alito lived up to¯and beyond¯his outstanding reputation,” said Wendy Wright, CWA’s Executive Vice President. “His intellect and knowledge of the law were on display for all to see, and his judicial temperament placed him above despicable accusations. Senators would only be living up to their duty when they vote for him; any vote against squarely places a senator in opposition to judges who are intelligent, fair, unbiased, and beholden to the law and justice instead of special-interest demands."
Concerned Women for America (CWA) is the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.
Posted at 02:40 pm by R7fel
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Monday, January 09, 2006
Go Ahead, Try to Stop K Street
Christoph Niemann Published: January 8, 2006
WASHINGTON
IN 1872, some Republican elders, revolted by the rampant influence peddling of Ulysses S. Grant's administration, challenged him for re-election. "He has used the public service of the government as a machinery of corruption and personal influence," they complained, and "shown himself deplorably unequal to the task imposed on him by the necessities of the country."
Jack Abramoff's trading room was his Signatures restaurant, not the front of the old Willard Hotel, where favor seekers so besieged Grant that he helped popularize the label - lobbyist - that still clings to their descendants with a pejorative sting. But Mr. Abramoff's guilty plea last week to charges of fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials prompted similar revulsion among some of the Grand Old Party's canniest hands.
"I think as this thing unfolds, it'll be so disgusting, and the Republicans will be under such pressure from their base, that they will have to undertake substantial reform," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker (who himself had to pay $300,000 to settle a 1997 ethics case). "This is like Watergate."
But will things really change? After all, Grant himself won a second term, despite the failings that would eventually leave his legacy forever tainted, and his chief Republican antagonist, Horace Greeley, died defeated and insane three weeks after the election. Is corruption just a part of Washington's DNA? What else explains the grim resignation of Washington veterans who wonder when, not whether, some scandal will arise?
"The history of civilization, for starters," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, an ethics group. "This kind of problem is faced by all societies throughout all of history. It comes and goes in cycles, and becomes most prevalent when the activities are viewed as O.K. by the society where it's taking place."
For watchdogs like Mr. Wertheimer, and for many Democrats, such tolerance dates to the Republican takeover of Congress in the mid-1990's, when new leaders like Representative Tom DeLay of Texas began a campaign to fill the capital's K Street corridor with Republican lobbyists, and made it plain that those seeking to influence legislation would have to "pay to play," in the form of political contributions and other largesse.
Mr. DeLay, who was himself indicted last year in Texas on unrelated campaign finance charges and forced to step down from his post as House majority leader, has long had close ties to Mr. Abramoff. Now Mr. Abramoff's guilty plea increases the likelihood that Mr. DeLay will lose his leadership post for good, and raises the prospect that he - and other lawmakers - may be enmeshed in new legal troubles. The sheer scale of Mr. Abramoff's misdeeds - millions of dollars in kickbacks from Indian tribes, a luxury golf outing for politicians to Scotland, misuse of a tax-exempt foundation - make this an extraordinary case.
"There are all sorts of things that have gone on of the same generic kind," said Harry C. McPherson, who came to Washington 50 years ago this month as a Senate aide to Lyndon B. Johnson and has plied his trade as a lawyer-lobbyist since leaving the White House in 1969. "But this is truly a situation where the degree changes everything. It converts something that purists about government would find unpleasant into the utterly unacceptable - into crime."
But the problem is broader than Mr. Abramoff, Mr. DeLay or even the inherent potential for abuse in one-party rule of all three branches of government. It also has to do with the astounding growth of the lobbying industry, a growth that has tracked the growth of the federal government itself. The rise of government regulation - first in the New Deal and then in the 1960's and 70's - spawned a parallel rise in the private sector's efforts to master the new system. Between the early 1970's and the mid-1980's, the number of trade associations doubled; in the first half of the 1980's alone, the number of registered lobbyists quadrupled, according to The Washington Monthly.
A study by the Center for Public Integrity found that in the early 1990's, political donations from 19 major industries - including
pharmaceuticals, defense, commercial banking and accounting - were split about evenly between the two parties.
By 2003, the Republicans held a 2-to-1 advantage. Since 1998, the center found, more than 2,200 former federal employees had registered as federal lobbyists, as had nearly 275 former White House aides and nearly 250 former members of Congress. Many rules governing their conduct remain deliberately vague, and the House Ethics Committee has been paralyzed because of dysfunction and partisan disputes.
"The scandal here is not that the rules were broken; the scandal is the rules themselves," said Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts, who with a Republican colleague, Christopher Shays of Connecticut, and Senators John McCain and Russell D. Feingold, has been a leader in pressing to overhaul campaign finance and ethics rules. "Lobbying is part of our system, but there is a set of ethical standards and rules that ought to be followed."
Together with Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois and Mr. Feingold, Mr. Meehan has introduced legislation that would, among other things, require lobbyists to file quarterly financial disclosures, instead of semiannual ones and to disclose just whom in the government they lobbied. Former members of Congress would also not be able to lobby their colleagues for two years, as opposed to the current one year. Members would be required to submit detailed itineraries and descriptions of expenses for privately sponsored travel.
Mr. Gingrich has offered more ideas. He would allow unlimited fund-raising in members' states or districts, but bar fund-raising within the District of Columbia, and would require that all contacts between lobbyists and elected and appointed officials be posted weekly on the Internet. And he would shrink a government that has only grown further with post Sept. 11, 2001, spending.
"There is $2.6 trillion spent in Washington, with the authority to regulate everything in your life," he said. "Guess what? People will spend unheard-of amounts of money to influence that. The underlying problems are big government and big money."
Of course, the record suggests that for every loophole any new law might close, lobbyists will find a way to open another. The ban on so-called "soft money" contributions to political parties led to the rise of new special-interest spending groups, for example. Entrenched industries - and entrenched incumbents of both parties - can be expected to resist change that would threaten the way they know how to do business.
For their part, some lobbyists hope legislators intent on reform resist painting with too broad a brush.
"A lot of what we do is an enormous educational effort, to avoid what we consider even well-meaning but wrong-headed legislation," said Joseph Tasker, senior vice president for government affairs of the Information Technology Association of America, which represents companies like I.B.M. and Microsoft, on issues including privacy, piracy and Internet security.
"Congressmen don't know things; they're not experts in technology," he said. "In the mid-1990's, we were meeting with a Congressman about high-definition TV standards and we were talking about pixels and so on, and he said, 'Fellas, look, I'm trying to stay with you here, but one of the first times I ever took a ride on an airplane was when I came to Washington to take my seat and I remember looking out the window and I thought part of the wing was falling off when we landed, because the flaps came up.' "
And, this being Washington, even the best-intentioned efforts to stick to the rules can lead to overreaching silliness.
In 2004, David McKean, a veteran Senate aide, published a critically praised book on Thomas "Tommy the Cork" Corcoran, perhaps the most successful Washington lobbyist of the 20th century. But the Senate ethics committee advised him not to disclose on the dust jacket the name of the senator he worked for, John Kerry, lest he be seen as using his position for commercial gain.
The restriction hampered his ability to promote his book. Indeed, when a Washington bookstore inadvertently identified Mr. McKean's position in an advertisement, he had to cancel an appearance there. A very small victory, one would guess, for the capital's reputation.
Todd S. Purdum, a former reporter for The New York Times, is national editor of Vanity Fair.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/weekinreview/08purdum.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1136819375-sAlMXsQBYTzUkAfFYKRlWQ
Posted at 10:12 am by R7fel
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Sunday, January 08, 2006
Pope Attacks 'Culture of Death'
Sunday, January 8, 2006; Posted: 10:53 a.m. EST (15:53 GMT)
The pope baptizes a child in the Sistine Chapel Sunday.
The pontiff, abandoning his prepared sermon, compared the wild excesses of the ancient Roman empire to 21st century society and urged people to rediscover their faith.
"In our times we need to say 'no' to the largely dominant culture of death," Benedict said during his improvised homily in the frescoed Sistine Chapel where he was elected pope last April.
"(There is) an anti-culture demonstrated by the flight to drugs, by the flight from reality, by illusions, by false happiness ... displayed in sexuality which has become pure pleasure devoid of responsibility," he added.
Benedict did not spell out what he meant by a "culture of death", but the phrase was a rallying cry of his predecessor John Paul who regularly used the term to define abortion and artificial birth control.
With Michelangelo's dramatic depiction of the Last Judgment as a backdrop, Benedict attacked the "thing-infliction of mankind", suggesting that people had become little more than objects to be traded, picked up and discarded at will.
He singled out ancient Rome's Colosseum amphitheatre and the gardens of the emperor Nero, where Christians were once martyred, as a "real perversion of joy and a perversion of the sense of life."
"The anti-culture of death was a love of lies and of deceit. It was an abuse of the body as a commodity and as a product. Even in our times there is this culture and we must say 'No' to it," he said.
It was the first time since he became pope that Benedict has ignored the prepared text of his homily, sent to the media beforehand, and instead spoken at length off the cuff.
The official speech focused on the significance of baptism, which marks the admission of a person into the community of Christians.
Benedict was following in John Paul's footsteps by performing baptisms in the Sistine Chapel on the day when Roman Catholics remember Christ's own baptism in the river Jordan.
"This is a 'yes' to Christ, a 'yes' to the victors of death, a 'yes' to life," Benedict said before carefully pouring water on the heads of the babies - 5 girls and 5 boys.
John Paul baptized almost 1,400 infants during his 26-year reign, but was forced to miss the Sistine Chapel ceremony in the last two years of his pontificate because of ill-health.
Posted at 12:17 pm by R7fel
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Saturday, January 07, 2006
Lou Rawls, The Voice Wrapped In Silk
By Wil Haygood Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 7, 2006; Page C01
They were the Pilgrim Travelers and they were roaming the countryside in the 1950s singing their gospel. Black men in a time of segregation.
A day would unfold like this: A gospel fest in the afternoon, then dinner -- smothered chicken, collard greens, cornbread, maybe some sweet potato pie, whatever a kind host set on the table -- then back on the road. Jesse Whitaker was one of the Pilgrim Travelers, and so was the young Lou Rawls. Whitaker and the others always tried to upset Rawls by playing jokes, by ribbing him -- they looked on him as just a youngster. "We teased him a lot," Whitaker, 85 and the last surviving member of the Travelers, recalled yesterday from his home in Missouri. "But he was slow to anger."
If ever there was a cool-cool singer, it was Lou Rawls, who died yesterday at the age of 72 in California of brain and lung cancer. Rawls's recording career stretched across genres, covering pop, gospel, blues and jazz. "Lou had a big, strong voice," Whitaker says. "He could go up or down, whatever you needed in a song."
Rawls, raised poor in Chicago, cut his teeth in the world of gospel. There'd be church ladies inside those brick Chicago churches, patting young men on their heads, young men who sang so pretty, who hummed so fervently. Rawls was just one Chicago youth, Sam Cooke was another. Where other young men may have had different pursuits -- sports, the nightlife, dreams of teaching in black colleges -- Rawls and his ilk were in basements, singing "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well."
There seemed no better training ground for singers than gospel music, that world with its own rules -- natural-born singers believing in themselves, hungry for management and a road out of poverty. And the really good ones knew they'd be venturing away from the tent of gospel, sooner or later.
"During those days, gospel singers would drive 1,000 miles to make just $200. And then they'd spend that among themselves," says Bobby Womack, a longtime Rawls acquaintance, talking yesterday by phone from his California office.
Womack says he believes that Rawls had no problem walking the road from gospel to pop. "He believed in God. So I believe Lou said, 'I love singing so much, let me make a living doing it.' He knew it was hard to make a living in gospel."
Rawls and Cooke -- who himself went on to rhythm and blues fame before being shot dead by a motel employee in 1964 -- ventured out to heady Los Angeles together in the late 1950s. They played small nightclubs and lent each other dollar bills.
"Lou had both ambition and curiosity to explore different areas," says Peter Guralnick, who befriended Rawls while researching his recently published biography, "Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke."
Guralnick goes on: "Rawls marked off a territory of his own that was a takeoff from his gospel roots that had a sophisticated, uptown feel. He synthesized all these different elements from his upbringing -- blues, jazz, gospel."
The hits began in the 1960s with "Tobacco Road" and "Love Is a Hurtin' Thing" and "Your Good Thing (Is About to End)."
Rawls's singing style was masculine and confident. He looked up to Arthur Prysock, to Billy Eckstine, to Percy Mayfield. "He was an old-school singer," says Billy Vera, who produced or co-produced four of Rawls's albums, including the much-praised "Rawls Sings Sinatra." "He didn't write songs like Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles. You just gave him material that fit that wonderful voice. He was a singer rather than an auteur."
For all their gifts, Prysock and Eckstine were singing in smaller venues by the 1970s. Lodge halls offered a paycheck different from the Hollywood Bowl. Jazz singers had to scuffle.
Rawls, always savvy in the marketing of his career, told David Brokaw -- his publicist and later manager -- that he was going to call legendary songwriters Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. They were revered for their "sound of Philly soul" -- gritty and sweet tunes that were the rage of inner-city America from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s and featured, among others, Billy Paul and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes. "He had imagination," Brokaw says of Rawls.
Rawls's Gamble & Huff hits -- "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine," "Groovy People" -- were huge.
A whole generation that had become accustomed to lounge singer Lou Rawls had lost him to the disco era. "Lou had this innocent ego," Brokaw says. "Not arrogance. He was having fun in a kind of cocky way. These Gamble & Huff songs opened things up for him."
Rawls was offered $15,000, Brokaw says, to do a voice-over commercial for Budweiser. The commercial was a hit. Rawls wasn't satisfied. "He said, 'How do we make this bigger?' " Brokaw says.
Rawls proposed inviting Busch wholesalers and distributors to his shows. He'd chat with them backstage. "He'd take pictures. We got to know everybody," Brokaw says.
Rawls befriended beer magnate August Busch III. "August really loved Lou," Brokaw says.
Rawls also came up with an idea for a college fundraiser for the United Negro College Fund. He told Brokaw to call Busch, and Busch came aboard. Rawls eventually helped raise more than $200 million by hosting the annual event.
There were occasional acting gigs, more albums later in life. He talked to friends about his life, which he thought lucky: an Army paratrooper who was never hurt, survivor of an awful car accident (Sam Cooke also was in the car), a singer who escaped the harsh pavement of Chicago.
Last November, Lou Rawls was invited to a celebratory event in Cleveland, honoring Cooke at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was ailing, and there were many who believed he wouldn't make it. But there he was, the kid who used to have to tie string on the door of the old Oldsmobile to keep it from flying open when Jesse Whitaker was at the wheel during those true and lovely and struggling days of gospel traveling.
At the event, Lou Rawls sang "Jesus Be a Fence Around Me."
People cried.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/06/AR2006010601794.html?referrer=email
Posted at 11:53 am by R7fel
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| Hugh Thompson Jr., left, shakes hands with Lawrence Colburn at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in... |
Saturday, January 7, 2006 5:41 AM EST
The Associated Press
By JESSICA BUJOL
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hugh Thompson Jr., a former Army helicopter pilot honored for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs during the My Lai massacre, died early Friday. He was 62.
Thompson, whose role in the 1968 massacre did not become widely known until decades later, died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Alexandria, hospital spokesman Jay DeWorth said.
Trent Angers, Thompson's biographer and family friend, said Thompson died of cancer.
"These people were looking at me for help and there was no way I could turn my back on them," Thompson recalled in a 1998 Associated Press interview.
Early in the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson, door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Vietnamese civilians in and around the village of My Lai.
They landed the helicopter in the line of fire between American troops and fleeing Vietnamese civilians and pointed their own guns at the U.S. soldiers to prevent more killings.
Colburn and Andreotta had provided cover for Thompson as he went forward to confront the leader of the U.S. forces. Thompson later coaxed civilians out of a bunker so they could be evacuated, and then landed his helicopter again to pick up a wounded child they transported to a hospital. Their efforts led to the cease-fire order at My Lai.
In 1998, the Army honored the three men with the prestigious Soldier's Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving conflict with an enemy. It was a posthumous award for Andreotta, who had been killed in battle three weeks after My Lai.
"It was the ability to do the right thing even at the risk of their personal safety that guided these soldiers to do what they did," Army Maj. Gen. Michael Ackerman said at the 1998 ceremony. The three "set the standard for all soldiers to follow."
Lt. William L. Calley, a platoon leader, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the killings, but served just three years under house arrest when then-President Nixon reduced his sentence.
Author Seymour Hersh won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for his expose of the massacre in 1969 while working as a freelance journalist. The massacre became one of the pivotal events as opposition to the war was growing in the United States.
Hersh called Thompson "one of the good guys."
"You can't imagine what courage it took to do what he did," Hersh said.
Although Thompson's story was a significant part of Hersh's reports, and Thompson testified before Congress, his role in ending My Lai wasn't widely known until the late 1980s, when David Egan, a professor emeritus at Clemson University, saw an interview in a documentary and launched a letter-writing campaign that eventually led to the awarding of the medals in 1998.
"He was the guy who by his heroic actions gave a morality and dignity to the American military effort," Tulane history professor Douglas Brinkley said.
For years Thompson suffered snubs and worse from those who considered him unpatriotic. He recalled a congressman angrily saying that Thompson himself was the only serviceman who should be punished because of My Lai.
As the years passed, Thompson became an example for future generations of soldiers, said Col. Tom Kolditz, head of the U.S. Military Academy's behavioral sciences and leadership department. Thompson went to West Point once a year to give a lecture on his experience, Kolditz said.
"There are so many people today walking around alive because of him, not only in Vietnam, but people who kept their units under control under other circumstances because they had heard his story. We may never know just how many lives he saved." |
Posted at 10:03 am by R7fel
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