Wednesday, August 25, 2021

[Photos] Expansive Views of 1950 Saigon from Above


How often do you think about the Saigon River?

Unless you are driving across it or live within view, perhaps not very often. But the river is not only essential for the entire nation's imports and exports, bringing in many of the goods you encounter every day, but it was an essential element in Saigon's development. 

When the French made efforts to transform Saigon from a town into a city during the colonial period, they relied heavily on the river. Because most visitors arrived via the Saigon River, major monuments were placed to be visible from the port, with all major roads leading straight from the river. 

These aerial photos taken in 1950 reveal how massive and beautiful the river is, and also how integral it is to the orientation of Saigon's roads and buildings as part of the meticulously planned and arranged District 1.

Taken by French photographer Raymond Cauchetier, the black and white images also remind viewers how much smaller Saigon was not so long ago. It's hard not to look at the tree-lined streets and long for the days when the city had more greenery and fewer heat-trapping skyscrapers.

More @ Saigoneer

The Woke Crusade Against Western Civilisation: Classicists are recasting the ancient world as the cradle of racism.

 Via Billy

                               The woke crusade against Western civilisation

Cambridge University’s archaeology museum is to display signs explaining the apparent ‘whiteness’ and lack of ‘diversity’ among its ancient sculpture plaster casts – all as part of an anti-racism campaign.

This sounds like satire, but it’s not. Cambridge University’s Classics faculty really has chosen to focus on ‘the role of classical sculpture in the history of racism’. In effect, this ancient seat of learning is undertaking an act of cultural vandalism. It is seeking to recast Greek and Roman civilisation as the cradle of modern racism.

More @ Spiked

Eight Months in, Biden’s Cascade of Failure


The problem for America is that theories one through five are not always mutually exclusive, but more likely force multipliers of the present insanity. At some point, some brave congressional representative or Senator will finally have to say to Biden, in the spirit of Oliver Cromwell and Leo Amery:“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

A cognitively challenged Biden is pulled in every direction, by left-wing politicos collecting their debts, by his own spite, by his trademark narcissism, and by his hatred of all things Trump.

Almost everything Joe Biden has touched since entering office has turned to dross. None of his blame-gaming, none of his distortions, none of his fantasies and unreality can mask that truth.

The Afghan Catastrophe

More @ Independent Institute

Report: Despite Chip Shortage, Biden Administration Approves Sales to Huawei

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with US Vice President Joe Biden (L) inside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on December 4, 2013. Biden arrived in Beijing to raise concerns over a Chinese air zone ramping up regional tensions, looking to bolster ties while also underscoring …

U.S. officials have approved licenses for China’s Huawei to purchase hundred of millions of dollars of chips for its auto component business, a report from Reuters said Wednesday.

The report cites two unnamed sources.

From Reuters:

More @ Breitbart

Warning Gory Photos: Former Afghan Minister Claims Taliban Killing Children in Reign of Terror


Fearing bloodbath, Dems and GOP plead for more time in Kabul

 https://afn.net/media/2tyb0rzy/ap21231363811144.jpg?anchor=center&mode=crop&width=800&height=500

With a deadline ticking down for America to withdraw from Afghanistan, Republican lawmakers are slamming President Biden for bowing to the Taliban over the August 31 deadline, and even Democratic lawmakers are now warning Americans will likely be left behind when that happens.

President Biden has rejected the advice and pleas of others – from his own advisors to Great Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson – to end the deadline. Instead, for whatever reason, he has firmly decided Kabul’s airport will be surrendered to the Taliban six days from today.

That means an unknown number of Americans and Afghan allies will be left in the hands of the Taliban when the last transport plane, and last Army soldier and Marine, leaves the tarmac.

More @ AFN

Nigel Farage: 'No way' British parliament would vote for military cooperation with America under Biden admin

 

Nigel Farage, former Brexit party leader, slammed the Biden administration’s Afghanistan blunder Tuesday, arguing the crisis has led his country of Britain feeling "betrayed." Under Biden, Farage told "Fox & Friends First" that "there is no way a British parliament right now would vote for military cooperation with America."

NIGEL FARAGE: The medium-term problem is the resurgence of international terror, already evidence that extremist jihadi groups all over the world have taken great cheer from what the Taliban have done in Afghanistan. And so if we do find ourselves back engaged and, you know, let's be honest, the last few years, we've not seen major terrorist atrocities in the West. But if they start to happen again and we start to think, well, how do we go out again and try and stop these cells that are spreading international terror? How can we do it with the Americans? How can we do it with an ally that is treating us with contempt and betrayed us and into the bargain, many of our own citizens? 

More @ Fox

"There’s Gym Strong and Then There’s Farm Strong."

Via Huong via Marilyn
                                 May be an image of standing and outdoors

I worked many a summer on my Father's farms. The ones who lived on the farms got $4 a day plus houses, beef and pork. A regular day worker got $5 a day and the fast ones got $6 a day as I did. 🙂 The hands always teased me that the only reason I got $6 was because I worked for my Father. :)
 
“Farm work doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you anything. It reveals you.
 
There’s gym strong and then there’s farm strong. They’re mutually exclusive. The toughest women you’ll ever meet spend their days on a farm.
 
There are more uses for twine than you can possibly imagine. You can tie up a hole in a slow feeder, fashion a tail strap for a horse’s blanket, mend a broken fence and use it as a belt.
 
“Well that certainly didn’t go as planned,” is one thing you’ll say quite a bit.
 
Control is a mere illusion. The thought that you have any, at any given time, is utterly false.
 
Sometimes sleep is a luxury. So are lunch and dinner. And brushing your hair.
 
If you’ve never felt your obliques contract, then you’ve never tried stopping an overly full wheelbarrow of horse manure from tipping over sideways. Trust me, you’ll find muscles that you never knew existed on the human skeleton to prevent this from happening. 
 
When one of the animals is ill, you’ll go to heroic lengths to minimize their discomfort.
 
Their needs come first. In summer heat and coldest winter days. Clean water, clean bed, and plenty of feed. Before you have your first meal, they all eat. 
 
When you lose one of them, even though you know that day is inevitable, you still feel sadness, angst and emotional pain from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. And it’s a heaviness that lingers even though you must regroup and press on.
 
You’ll cry a lot. But you’ll never live more fully. You’ll remain present no matter what because you must. There is no other option. 
 
You’ll ask for so many miracles and hold out hope until the very last. 
 
You will, at least once, face-plant in the manure pile. You’ll find yourself saying things like, “we have maybe twenty minutes of daylight left to git ‘er done” whilst gazing up at a nonspecific place in the sky.
You’ll become weirdly obsessive about the weather.
 
You’ll go out in public wearing filthy clothes and smelling of dirt, sweat and poop. People will look at you sideways and krinkle their noses but you won’t care. 
 
Your entire day can derail within ten seconds of the rising sun. 
 
You can wash your coveralls. They won’t look any cleaner, but they will smell much nicer.
 
Farm work is difficult in its simplicity.
 
You’ll always notice just how beautiful sunrises and sunsets really are. 
 
Should you ever have the opportunity to work on a farm, take the chance! You will never do anything more satisfying in your entire life.” 
 
~~Author Unknown

The Brief: Joe Biden is a Profile in Cowardice and Incompetence: Only an incompetent president would remove our military from a war zone before first evacuating trapped Americans

Via Reg

                               

                                https://www.gopusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/dw680x408_biden_incompetent.jpg

This is Joe Biden’s America, fashioned in his own demented image. The Afghanistan debacle is just the latest iteration. Brace yourself and pop a Valium. You have another 3 years and 5 months to endure the insanity. At this rate, there won’t be much left of the America we once knew.

Only an incompetent president would remove our military from a war zone before first evacuating trapped Americans. Only a coward would blame everyone else for his own stupidity, then run and hide.

Joe Biden is guilty of both incompetence and cowardice. As such, he is unfit to serve as President. By abandoning thousands of Americans to the potential onslaught of the Taliban, he committed a gross dereliction of duty as commander in chief. Instead of protecting our citizens, he is endangering them.

In his short tenure, Biden has presided over a witless menagerie of policy failures. But Afghanistan is his most spectacular blunder. Biden’s conceit is now America’s humiliation. Our enemies are the winners.

More @ The Brief

The US remains Vietnam’s biggest export market, followed by China and the EU.


  • Vietnam’s economy is expected to grow by 6.5 percent in 2021 subject to how the country can control the latest COVID-19 outbreak
  • The US remains Vietnam’s biggest export market, followed by China and the EU.
  • We look at Vietnam’s sustainable trade industries suited for high-growth import and export.

The US was Vietnam’s largest export market in the first four months of the year with a value of US$30.3 billion, up 50 percent year-on-year with China coming in at second, followed by the EU according to Vietnam’s General Statistics Office (GSO).

We examine the five most sustainable trade industries, suited for high-growth export and import.

More @ Vietnam Briefing

Perfectly Preserved Mammoth Bone Dwellings Found in Ukraine May Be the Earliest Examples of Architecture

DATED

Perfectly Preserved Mammoth Bone Dwellings Found in Ukraine May Be the Earliest Examples of Architecture

 

 

Huts built from mammoth bones found along the Dniepr river valley of Ukraine (and also at locations in Moravia, Czech Republic, and in southern Poland) may be the earliest structures built by prehistoric man, and thus the earliest examples of architecture.

Some of the most notable of these mammoth bone huts were found in Mezhyrich, a village in central Ukraine, where in 1965, a farmer dug up the lower jawbone of a mammoth while in the process of expanding his cellar. Further excavations revealed the presence of 4 prehistoric huts, made up of a total of 149 mammoth bones.

These shelters date between 23,000 BCE and 12,000 BCE, and are thought to be some of the oldest dwellings known to have been constructed by pre-historic man, usually attributed to Cro-Magnons.

More @ Earthly Mission

Our Comfort in Dying


A review of Our Comfort in Dying (Sola Fide Publications, 2021), R. L. Dabney and Jonathan W. Peters, ed.

Dabney “was fearless and faithful in the discharge of every duty. . . . [He] was a Chaplain worth having.”  –Col. Robert E. Withers, Commander, 18th Virginia Infantry Regiment, 1861

In the current American dystopia, the life and ministry of an Old School Southern Presbyterian minister such as Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) is likely to be dismissed out of hand by many – though it will be to their shame – regardless (or perhaps in part because) of his towering intellect, unshakable convictions grounded in the Bible and its principles, and prescience regarding ideological afflictions (among them feminism and socialism) that came to fruition in later generations.[1] But for more mature students of history and culture who are willing to examine a man’s life in the context of his own time and place and whose reliance was on the whole counsel of God, a newly released work – with the main title, Our Comfort in Dying – may be highly recommended as an addition to one’s devotional and Southern history shelf at home. Comprehensively and beautifully edited by Jonathan W. Peters, including citations with enriching detail (such as excerpts from letters of soldiers who heard Dabney preach in their camps), the work makes available 20 of Dabney’s sermons, all of them preached in Virginia, most of them between May 1861 and June 1863.

More @ The Abbeville Institute