[Photos] A Day at the Saigon Zoo: 1967

History

For generations of Saigoneers, a visit to the city’s Zoological and Botanical Garden is an important milestone of their childhood. However, in the following collection of photos, we get a glimpse of the zoo’s more somber past through the lens of a photographer only known as Ken.

The Saigon Zoo, the eighth oldest in the world, opened its doors to the public for the first time in 1869, featuring an orchid garden and an amusement park, along with two animal and plant conservation areas.

In these photos, taken in 1967, the garden appears more like a spiritual retreat than a zoo, with several wide shots of the buildings’ distinctly eastern architecture and dragon-shaped ornamentation but only two close-ups of the animals.

Under soft lighting and a film-style tint, the subjects at the Saigon Zoo, from moon bears to Buddhist monks, are cast with a contemplative mood not typically associated with a family-oriented attraction.

More @ Saigoneer

SUNRISE - Nguyen Ba Chuc

Every football season, Saigon's Binh Thanh's beautiful Binh Loi Bridge turns into a prime location for depressed sports fans — who gamble their life savings away with each match — to commit suicide. That's where Nguyen Ba Chuc comes in: for over 50 years, Chuc and his wife have saved countless people from drowning, be it due to sport-betting debts or heartbreak. Enjoy the life story of Nguyen Ba Chuc, Saigon's unofficial "river guardian."

Trump-Russia 2.0: Dossier-Tied Firm Pitching Journalists Daily on 'Collusion'

Via Papa

Caputo, the former Trump aide, wants an investigation of Jones: “I want to know who Dan Jones is talking to across the investigations – from the FBI to the Southern District of New York to the [Special Counsel’s Office] to the Department of Justice, to Congress.”

Key Democratic operatives and private investigators who tried to derail Donald Trump’s campaign by claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin have rebooted their operation since his election with a multimillion-dollar stealth campaign to persuade major media outlets and lawmakers that the president should be impeached.

The effort has successfully placed a series of questionable stories alleging secret back channels and meetings between Trump associates and Russian spies, while influencing related investigations and reports from Congress.

The operation’s nerve center is a Washington-based nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project, or TDIP. Among other activities, it pumps out daily “research” briefings to prominent Washington journalists, as well as congressional staffers, to keep the Russia “collusion” narrative alive.

More @ Real Clear Investigations

British Police Investigate Catholic Woman for ‘Hate Crime’ of Using ‘Wrong Pronoun’

British police reportedly held an investigation into a Catholic mother after she used the “wrong pronoun” for a transgender person, and she will face a recorded interview with police to determine whether she committed a “hate crime.”

According to the Telegraph, Catholic commentator Caroline Farrow “allegedly used the wrong pronoun when referring to” transgender rights activist Susie Green’s “transgender daughter.”

In response, Green reportedly filed a complaint with the police, which led to an investigation of Farrow.

More @ Breitbart

Here’s Why Donald Trump Still Does Not Like John McCain

President Donald Trump explained why he did not like the late Senator John McCain, listing reasons why on Wednesday after taking the stage at an Ohio battle tank factory.

Trump asked the hundreds of gathered employees if he should talk about his ongoing feud with the deceased senator. After several of the employees shouted “Yes!” Trump continued, “I have to be honest. I never liked him much. Hasn’t been for me. I really probably never will.”

Here is Trump’s list of grievances:

More @ Breitbart

Lines On the Back Of a Confederate Note: "Representing Nothing on God's Earth Now"

Shortly after the Civil War ended, Major Sidney A. Jonas, late of General Stephen D. Lee’s staff, made his way to Richmond, hoping from there he could find transportation to his home in Aberdeen, Mississippi. Although he and his companions were broke, the sympathetic owner of the Powhatan hotel gave the former Confederates lodging for the night.

While a guest at the Powhatan Jonas wrote a poem that came to be loved throughout the South, a mournful dirge to the lost Confederacy known by the simple title “Lines on the back of a Confederate Note.” Years later Jonas wrote an account of how the poem came to be written, which was published in Volume 14 of Watson’s Magazine:

More @ Mississippians In The Confederate Army

Give Me A Ticket Back

Via Ngọc Trong Đá

I was flabbergasted when I found out this was *Filipino as many items depicted are the same in Vietnam.  I have often said that if you visually move the Philippine Islands towards Vietnam on a world map, you will see how they were one eons ago.  People are very similar as well as  some food and more.

*The one I found on Facebook had been edited

Border Patrol catches 400 illegal aliens in five minutes

The Border Patrol said that it caught more than 400 illegal immigrants trying to break into the U.S. in El Paso, Texas, during one five-minute span Tuesday morning.

The migrants came in two separate mini-caravans. One, with 194 people, was found at 2:45 a.m. after they came across the border wall near a local high school. Five minutes later a group of 252 people was nabbed in downtown El Paso.

More @ The Washington Times

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West Wing Reads 

President Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) not only replaces and modernizes the decades-old NAFTA—it’s “chock full of provisions that will help American small businesses boost exports and safeguard their intellectual property,” writes Karen Kerrigan, president of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, in the Press and Journal. “Congress needs to approve USMCA as soon as possible.”

Chicago Police Union Wants A Federal Investigation Into City's Prosecutor Over Her 'Interference' In Jussie Smollett Case

Via Billy

CWB Chicago, which has covered the Smollett case from the beginning, reports that Chicago's police union requested the investigation in a letter to John R. Lausch, the U.S. Attorney in Chicago on Monday.

More @ The Daily Wire

My Daddy Owns A Gun and So Should You

Via Gary

I was six-years-old when Daddy sat me down. He said: “Son, there comes a time in every man’s life when he stops bustin’ knuckles and starts bustin’ caps and usually it’s when he becomes too old to take a whopping.”

I don’t own a gun to kill people; I own a gun to keep from being killed.

I don’t own a gun because I’m evil. I own a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

I don’t own a gun because I hate the government. I own a gun because I understand the limitations of my government.

I don’t own a gun because I’m angry. I own a gun so that I don’t have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared if I needed one.

I don’t own a gun because I want to shoot someone. I own a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.”

I don’t own a gun to make me feel like a man. I own a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the ones they love.

I don’t own a gun because I feel inadequate. I own a gun because unarmed and facing danger, I am inadequate.

I don’t own a gun because I love it. I own a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful to me.

Police protection is an oxymoron. Free citizens must protect themselves because police do not protect you from crime, they just investigate the crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.

Personally, I own a gun because I’m too young to die and too old to take a whoopin’!
That lesson from Daddy came with a history lesson as well.

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control:From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

In 1911, Turkey established gun control:From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated

Germany established gun control in 1938:From 1939 to 1945, 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

China established gun control in 1935:From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

Guatemala established gun control in 1964:From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

Uganda established gun control in 1970:From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

Cambodia established gun control in 1956: From 1975 to 1977, one million educated people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

56 million defenseless people were rounded up and exterminated in the 20th Century because of Gun Control. With guns, we are ‘citizens’, without them, we are ‘subjects’.

During World War 2, the Japanese decided not to invade America because they knew most Americans were armed. Gun owners in the USA are the largest armed forces in the world.

Daddy owns a gun… and you bet your ass his kids do and grandkids will too.

When Real Historians Understood Calhoun

A review of Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, Vol II. (Washington, 1900) edited by J. Franklin Jameson.

It is a fitting crown to Professor Jameson’s efforts in promoting the estab­lishment and successful career of the manuscripts commission and a most substantial proof of the material services rendered to the advancement of the study of history in the United States by the Historical Association by which the expense of supporting the commission has been borne.

More @ The Abbeville Institute

A Party Quite Revolutionary

The Republican Party, even after subjugating Americans in the South in 1865 and holding the North under virtual martial law during the war, “maintained its power by force and fraud, known as Reconstruction.” The author below asserts that it “would have been far better to allow the American Union to dissolve at the will of the people” . . . as there was “nothing whatever in the legacy of the founders or in the theory of self-government to prevent this, or that argues against it.”
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.org  The Great American Political Divide

A Party Quite Revolutionary

“Though it is not widely known, the Confederacy had commissioners in Washington ready to make honorable arrangements – to pay for the federal property in the South, assume their share of the national debt, and negotiate all other questions. Lincoln would not deal with these delegates directly. Instead, he deceived them into thinking that Fort Sumter would not be reinforced – thus precipitating reaction when reinforcement was attempted. Even so, the bombardment of Fort Sumter was largely symbolic. There were no casualties, and, remember, almost all other forts in the South had already peacefully been handed over.

Sumter itself did not necessarily justify all-out civil war; it was simply the occasion Lincoln was waiting for. Even after the War progressed it would have been possible, with a Northern government on traditional principles, to have made peace short of the destruction that ensued.

Or it would have been possible, as millions of Northerners wanted, to have sustained a war for the Union, a gentlemen’s disagreement over the matter of secession that was far less destructive and revolutionary than the War turned out to be. Many Northerners favored this and supported the War reluctantly and only on such grounds – a suppressed part of American history. A great deal of death and destruction, as well as the maiming of the Constitution, might have been avoided by this approach.

This did not happen. Why?

Because, in fact, for Lincoln and his followers it was the revolution that was the point. Throughout the War and Reconstruction, the Republican Party behaved as a revolutionary party – though sometimes using conservative rhetoric – a Jacobin party, bent on ruling no matter what, on maintaining its power at any cost. At times they even hampered the Northern war effort for party advantage. It is very hard to doubt this for anyone who has closely studied the behavior of the Republicans during this period rather than simply picking out a few of Lincoln’s prettier speeches to quote.

Lord Acton, the great English historian of liberty, wrote: “The calamity . . . was brought on . . . by the rise of the republican party – a party in its aims and principles quite revolutionary.” And when it was all over, Acton remarked that Appomattox had been a greater setback for the cause of constitutional liberty than Waterloo had been a victory. James McPherson, the leading contemporary historian of the Civil War, though he approves rather than deplores the revolution that was carried out, agrees that it was a revolution.”

(Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture, Clyde N. Wilson, Foundation for American Education, 2006, excerpts pp. 138-139)