The Hmong/Mong people (RPA: Hmoob/Moob, Nyiakeng Puachue: "", Pahawh Hmong: "" Hmong pronunciation: [ʰmɔ́ŋ]) are a Southeast Asian ethnic group living mainly in southern China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. They have been members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) since 2007. In China they are classified as a subgroup of the Miao people.

 

During the first and Second Indochina Wars, France and the United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recruited thousands of Hmong people in Laos to fight against forces from North and South Vietnam and the communist Pathet Lao insurgents. This CIA operation is known as the Secret War.

 

HISTORY OF HMONG

The Hmong traditions and legends indicate that they originated near the Yellow River region of China. According to linguist Martha Ratliff, there is linguistic evidence to suggest that they have occupied some of the same areas of southern China for over 8,000 years. Evidence from mitochondrial DNA in Hmong–Mien–speaking populations supports the southern origins of maternal lineages even further back in time, although it has been shown that Hmong-speaking populations had comparatively more contact with northern East Asians than had the Mien.

 

The ancient town of Zhuolu is considered to be the birthplace of the widely proclaimed legendary Hmong king, Chi You. Today, a statue of Chi You has been erected in the town. The author of the Guoyu, authored in the 4th to 5th century, considered Chi You’s Jiu Li tribe to be related to the ancient ancestors of the Hmong, the San-Miao people.

 

In 2011, White Hmong DNA was sampled and found to contain 7.84% D-M15 and 6%N(Tat) DNA. The researchers posited a genetic relationship between Hmong-Mien peoples and Mon-Khmer people groups dating to the Last Glacial Maximum approximately 15-18,000 years ago.

 

Conflict between the Hmong of southern China and newly arrived Han settlers increased during the 18th century under repressive economic and cultural reforms imposed by the Qing dynasty. This led to armed conflict and large-scale migrations well into the late 19th century, the period during which many Hmong people emigrated to Southeast Asia. The migration process had begun as early as the late-17th century, however, before the time of major social unrest, when small groups went in search of better agricultural opportunities.

 

The Hmong people were subjected to persecution and genocide by the Qing dynasty government. Kim Lacy Rogers wrote: "In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the Hmong lived in south-western China, their Manchu overlords had labeled them 'Miao' ('barbarian' or 'savage') and targeted them for genocide when they defied being humiliated, oppressed, and enslaved."

 

Since 1949, the Miao people (Chinese: 苗族; pinyin: miáo zú) has been an official term for one of the 55 official minority groups recognized by the government of the People's Republic of China. The Miao live mainly in southern China, in the provinces of Guizhou, Hunan, Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong, and Hubei. According to the 2000 censuses, the number of 'Miao' in China was estimated to be about 9.6 million. The Miao nationality includes Hmong people as well as other culturally and linguistically related ethnic groups who do not call themselves Hmong. These include the Hmu, Kho (Qho) Xiong, and A Hmao. The White Miao (Bai Miao) and Green Miao (Qing Miao) are Hmong groups.

 

HMONG CLANS OF HAN ORIGN

A number of Miao lineage clans are also believed to have been founded by Chinese men who had married Miao women. These distinct Chinese-descended clans practice Chinese burial customs instead of Hmong style burials. In Sichuan, they were known as "Chinese Hmong" ("Hmong Sua"). The Hmong were instructed in military tactics by fugitive Chinese rebels.

 

Chinese men who had married into Hmong clans have established several Hmong clans. Chinese "surname groups" are comparable to the Hmong clans which are patrilineal, and practice exogamy. Hmong women married Han Chinese men who pacified the Ah rebels who were fighting against the Ming dynasty, and founded the Wang clan among the Hmong in Gongxian county, of Sichuan's Yibin district. Hmong women who married Chinese men founded a Xem clan in a Hmong village among Northern Thailand's Hmong. Lauj clan in Northern Thailand is another example of a clan created through Han and Hmong intermarriage. A Han Chinese with the family name of Deng found another Hmong clan there as well.

 

Jiangxi Han Chinese have held a claim as the forefathers of the southeast Guizhou Miao. Children were born to the many Miao women who had married Han Chinese soldiers in Taijiang before the second half of the 19th century. The Hmong Tian clan in Sizhou began in the seventh century as a migrant Han Chinese clan.

 

Non-Han women such as the Miao became wives of Han soldiers. These soldiers fought against the Miao rebellions during the Qing and Ming dynasties and at that time Han women were not available. The origin of the Tunbao people can be traced to the Ming dynasty, when the Hongwu Emperor sent 300,000 Han Chinese male soldiers in 1381 to conquer Yunnan and the men married Yao and Miao women.

 

The presence of women presiding over weddings was a feature noted in "Southeast Asian" marriages, such as in 1667 when a Miao woman in Yunnan married a Chinese official. In Yunnan, a Miao chief's daughter married a scholar in the 1600s who wrote that she could read, write, and listen in Chinese and read Chinese classics.

 

The Sichuan Hmong village of Wangwu was visited by Nicholas Tapp who wrote that the "clan ancestral origin legend" of the Wang Hmong clan, had said that there were several intermarriages with Han Chinese and possibly one of these was their ancestor Wang Wu; there were two types of Hmong, "cooked", who sided with Chinese, and "raw", who rebelled against the Chinese. The Chinese were supported by the Wang Hmong clan. A Hmong woman was married by the non-Hmong Wang Wu according to The Story of the Ha Kings in Wangwu village.

 

CULTURE

Hmong people have their own terms for their subcultural divisions. Hmong Der (Hmoob Dawb), and Hmong Leng (Hmoob Leeg) are the terms for two of the largest groups in the United States and Southeast Asia. These subgroups are also known as the White Hmong, and Blue or Green Hmong, respectively. These names originate from the color and designs of women's dresses in each respective group, with the White Hmong distinguished by the white dresses women wear on special occasions, and the Blue/Green Hmong by the blue batiked dresses that the women wear. The name and pronunciation "Hmong" is exclusively used by the White Hmong to refer to themselves, and many dictionaries use only the White Hmong dialect.

 

In the Romanized Popular Alphabet, developed in the 1950s in Laos, these terms are written Hmoob Dawb (White Hmong) and Hmoob Leeg (Green Hmong). The final consonants indicate with which of the eight lexical tones the word is pronounced.

 

White Hmong and Green Hmong speak mutually intelligible dialects of the Hmong language, with some differences in pronunciation and vocabulary. One of the most characteristic differences is the use of the voiceless /m̥/ in White Hmong, indicated by a preceding "H" in Romanized Popular Alphabet. Voiceless nasals are not found in the Green Hmong dialect. Hmong groups are often named after the dominant colors or patterns of their traditional clothing, style of head-dress, or the provinces from which they come.

 

VIETNAM AND LAOS

The Hmong groups in Vietnam and Laos, from the 18th century to the present day, are known as Black Hmong (Hmoob Dub), Striped Hmong (Hmoob Txaij), White Hmong (Hmoob Dawb), Hmong Leng (Hmoob Leeg) and Green Hmong (Hmoob Ntsuab). In other places in Asia, groups are also known as Black Hmong (Hmoob Dub or Hmong Dou), Striped Hmong (Hmoob Txaij or Hmoob Quas Npab), Hmong Shi, Hmong Pe, Hmong Pua, and Hmong Xau, Hmong Xanh (Green Hmong), Hmong Do (Red Hmong), Na Mieo and various other subgroups. These include the Flower Hmong or the Variegated Hmong (Hmong Lenh or Hmong Hoa), so named because of their bright, colorful embroidery work (called pa ndau or paj ntaub, literally "flower cloth").

 

NOMENCLATURE

CHINA

Usage of the term "Miao" (苗) in Chinese documents dates back to the Shi Ji (1st century BC) and the Zhan Guo Ce (late Western Han Dynasty). During this time, it was generally applied to people of the southern regions thought to be descendants of the San Miao kingdom (dated to around the 3rd millennium BC.) The term does not appear again until the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), by which time it had taken on the connotation of "barbarian." Being a variation of Nanman, it was used to refer to one kind of indigenous people in the southern China who had not been assimilated into Han culture. During this time, references to Unfamiliar (生 Sheng) and Familiar (熟 Shu) Miao appear, referring to level of assimilation and political cooperation of the two groups. Not until the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) do more finely grained distinctions appear in writing. Even then, discerning which ethnic groups are included in various classifications can be problematic.

 

This inconsistent usage of "Miao" makes it difficult to say for sure if Hmong and Mong people are always included in these historical writings. Christian Culas and Jean Michaud note: "In all these early accounts, then, until roughly the middle of the 19th century, there is perpetual confusion about the exact identity of the population groups designated by the term Miao. We should, therefore, be cautious with respect to the historical value of any early associations."

 

Linguistic evidence, however, places Hmong and Mong people in the same regions of southern China that they inhabit today for at least the past 2,000 years. By the mid-18th century, classifications become specific enough that it is easier to identify references to Hmong and Mong people.

 

The term 'Miao' is used today by the Chinese government to denote a group of linguistically and culturally related people (including the Hmong, Hmu, Kho Xiong, and A Hmao). The Hmong and Miao of China today believe they are one people with cultural and linguistic affiliations that transcend oceans and national boundaries. The educated elites of the two groups maintain close transnational contacts with one another.

 

SOUTHEAST ASIA

In Southeast Asia, Hmong people are referred to by other names, including: Vietnamese: Mèo, Mông or H'Mông; Lao: ແມ້ວ (Maew) or ມົ້ງ (Mong); Thai: แม้ว (Maew) or ม้ง (Mong); Burmese: မုံလူမျိုး (mun lu-myo). The xenonym, "Mèo", and variants thereof, are considered highly derogatory by some Hmong people in the USA.

 

A recent DNA research in Thailand found that Hmong paternal lineage is quite different from those lu Mien and other Southeast Asian tribes. The Hmong-Mien (HM) and Sino-Tibetan (ST) speaking groups are known as hill tribes in Thailand; they were the subject of the first studies to show an impact of patrilocality vs. matrilocality on patterns of mitochondrial (mt) DNA vs. male-specific portion of the Y chromosome (MSY) variation. However, HM and ST groups have not been studied in as much detail as other Thai groups; here we report and analyze 234 partial MSY sequences (∼2.3 mB) and 416 complete mtDNA sequences from 14 populations that, when combined with our previous published data, provides the largest dataset yet for the hill tribes. We find a striking difference between Hmong and IuMien (Mien-speaking) groups: the Hmong are genetically different from both the IuMien and all other Thai groups, whereas the IuMien are genetically more similar to other linguistic groups than to the Hmong. In general, we find less of an impact of patrilocality vs. matrilocality on patterns of mtDNA vs. MSY variation than previous studies. However, there is a dramatic difference in the frequency of MSY and mtDNA lineages of Northeast Asian (NEA) origin vs. Southeast Asian (SEA) origin in HM vs. ST groups: HM groups have high frequencies of NEA MSY lineages but lower frequencies of NEA mtDNA lineages, while ST groups show the opposite. A potential explanation is that the ancestors of Thai HM groups were patrilocal, while the ancestors of Thai ST groups were matrilocal. Overall, these results attest to the impact of cultural practices on patterns of mtDNA vs. MSY variation.

 

HMONG/MONG CONTROVERSY

When Western authors came in contact with Hmong people, beginning in the 18th century, they referred to them in writing by ethnonyms assigned by the Chinese (i.e., Miao, or variants). This practice continued into the 20th century. Even ethnographers studying the Hmong people in Southeast Asia often referred to them as Meo, a corruption of Miao applied by Thai and Lao people to the Hmong. Although "Meo" was an official term, it was often used as an insult against the Hmong people, and it is considered to be derogatory.

 

The issue came to a head during the passage of California State Assembly Bill (AB) 78, in the 2003–2004 season. Introduced by Doua Vu and Assembly Member Sarah Reyes, District 31 (Fresno), the bill encouraged changes in secondary education curriculum to include information about the Secret War and the role of Hmong people in the war. Furthermore, the bill called for the use of oral histories and first-hand accounts from Hmong people who had participated in the war and who were caught up in the aftermath. Originally, the language of the bill mentioned only "Hmong" people, intending to include the entire community. Several Mong Leng activists, led by Dr. Paoze Thao (Professor of Linguistics and Education at California State University, Monterey Bay), drew attention to the problems associated with omitting "Mong" from the language of the bill. They noted that despite nearly equal numbers of Hmong Der and Mong Leng in the United States, resources are disproportionately directed toward the Hmong Der community. This includes not only scholarly research but also the translation of materials, potentially including the curriculum proposed by the bill. Despite these arguments, "Mong" was not added to the bill. In the version that passed the assembly, "Hmong" was replaced by "Southeast Asians", a more broadly inclusive term.

 

Dr. Paoze Thao and some others feel strongly that "Hmong" can refer to only Hmong Der people and does not include "Mong" Leng people. He feels that the usage of "Hmong" about both groups perpetuates the marginalization of Mong Leng language and culture. Thus, he advocates the usage of both "Hmong" and "Mong" when referring to the entire ethnic group. Other scholars, including anthropologist Dr. Gary Yia Lee (a Hmong Der person), suggest that "Hmong" has been used for the past 30 years to refer to the entire community and that the inclusion of Mong Leng people is understood. Some argue that such distinctions create unnecessary divisions within the global community and will only confuse non-Hmong and Mong people trying to learn more about Hmong and Mong history and culture.

 

As a compromise alternative, multiple iterations of "Hmong" are proposed. A Hmong theologian, Rev. Dr. Paul Joseph T. Khamdy Yang has proposed the term “HMong” to encompass both the Hmong and Mong community by capitalizing the H and the M. The ethnologist Jacques Lemoine has also begun to use the term (H)mong when referring to the entirety of the Hmong and Mong community.

 

HMONG, MONG AND MIAO

Some non-Chinese Hmong advocate that the term Hmong be used not only for designating their dialect group but also for the other Miao groups living in China. They generally claim that the word "Miao" or "Meo" is a derogatory term, with connotations of barbarism, that probably should not be used at all. The term was later adopted by Tai-speaking groups in Southeast Asia where it took on especially insulting associations for Hmong people despite its official status.

 

In modern China, the term "Miao" does not carry these negative associations and people of the various sub-groups that constitute this officially recognized nationality freely identify themselves as Miao or Chinese, typically reserving more specific ethnonyms for intra-ethnic communication. During the struggle for political recognition after 1949, it was members of these ethnic minorities who campaigned for identification under the umbrella term "Miao"—taking advantage of its familiarity and associations of historical political oppression.

 

Contemporary transnational interactions between Hmong in the West and Miao groups in China, following the 1975 Hmong diaspora, have led to the development of a global Hmong identity that includes linguistically and culturally related minorities in China that previously had no ethnic affiliation. Scholarly and commercial exchanges, increasingly communicated via the Internet, have also resulted in an exchange of terminology, including Hmu and A Hmao people identifying as Hmong and, to a lesser extent, Hmong people accepting the designation "Miao," within the context of China. Such realignments of identity, while largely the concern of economically elite community leaders reflects a trend towards the interchangeability of the terms "Hmong" and "Miao.

 

DIASPORA

Roughly 95% of the Hmong live in Asia. Linguistic data show that the Hmong of the Peninsula stem from the Miao of southern China as one among a set of ethnic groups belonging to the Hmong–Mien language family. Linguistically and culturally speaking, the Hmong and the other sub-groups of the Miao have little in common.

 

Vietnam, where their presence is attested from the late 18th century onwards and characterized with both assimilation, cooperation and hostility, is likely to be the first Indochinese country into which the Hmong migrated. During the colonization of 'Tonkin' (north Vietnam) between 1883 and 1954, a number of Hmong decided to join the Vietnamese Nationalists and Communists, while many Christianized Hmong sided with the French. After the Viet Minh victory, numerous pro-French Hmong had to fall back to Laos and South Vietnam.

 

At the 2019 national census, there were 1,393,547 Hmong living in Vietnam, the vast majority of them in the north of the country. The traditional trade in coffin wood with China and the cultivation of the Opium Poppy – both prohibited only in 1993 in Vietnam – long guaranteed a regular cash income. Today, converting to cash cropping is the main economic activity. As in China and Laos, there is a certain degree of participation of Hmong in the local and regional administration. In the late 1990s, several thousands of Hmong started moving to the Central Highlands and some crossed the border into Cambodia, constituting the first attested presence of Hmong settlers in that country.

 

In 2015, the Hmong in Laos numbered 595,028. Hmong settlement there is nearly as ancient as in Vietnam. After decades of distant relations with the Lao kingdoms, closer relations between the French military and some Hmong on the Xieng Khouang plateau were set up after World War II. There, a particular rivalry between members of the Lo and Ly clans developed into open enmity, also affecting those connected with them by kinship. Clan leaders took opposite sides and as a consequence, several thousand Hmong participated in the fighting against the Pathet Lao Communists, while perhaps as many were enrolled in the People's Liberation Army. As in Vietnam, numerous Hmong in Laos also genuinely tried to avoid getting involved in the conflict in spite of the extremely difficult material conditions under which they lived during wartime.

 

After the 1975 Communist victory, thousands of Hmong from Laos had to seek refuge abroad (see Laos below). Approximately 30 percent of the Hmong left, although the only concrete figure we have is that of 116,000 Hmong from Laos and Vietnam together seeking refuge in Thailand up to 1990.

 

In 2002 the Hmong in Thailand numbered 151,080. The presence of Hmong settlements there is documented from the end of the 19th century. Initially, the Siamese paid little attention to them. But in the early 1950s, the state suddenly took a number of initiatives aimed at establishing links. Decolonization and nationalism were gaining momentum in the Peninsula and wars of independence were raging. Armed opposition to the state in northern Thailand, triggered by outside influence, started in 1967 while here again, much Hmong refused to take sides in the conflict. Communist guerrilla warfare stopped by 1982 as a result of an international concurrence of events that rendered it pointless. Priority is since given by the Thai state to sedentarizing the mountain population, introducing commercially viable agricultural techniques and national education, with the aim of integrating these non-Tai animists within the national identity.

 

Myanmar most likely includes a modest number of Hmong (perhaps around 2,500) but no reliable census has been conducted there recently.

 

As result of refugee movements in the wake of the Indochina Wars (1946–1975), in particular, in Laos, the largest Hmong community to settle outside Asia went to the United States where approximately 100,000 individuals had already arrived by 1990. By the same date, 10,000 Hmong had migrated to France, including 1,400 in French Guyana. Canada admitted 900 individuals, while another 360 went to Australia, 260 to China, and 250 to Argentina. Over the following years and until the definitive closure of the last refugee camps in Thailand in 1998, additional numbers of Hmong have left Asia, but the definitive figures are still to be produced.

 

In the rest of the world, where about 5% of the world Hmong population now lives, the United States is home to the largest Hmong population. The 2008 Census counted 171,316 people solely of Hmong ancestry, and 221,948 persons of at least partial Hmong ancestry. Other countries with significant populations include:

 

France: 15,000

Australia: 2,000

French Guiana: 1,500

Canada: 835

Argentina: 600

 

The Hmong population within the United States is centered in the Upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Minnesota) and California.

 

HMONG IN VIETNAM

Hmongs in Vietnam today are perceived very differently between various political organizations and changed throughout times. The Hmongs of Vietnam are a small minority and because of this, their loyalty toward the Vietnamese state has also been under question. Nonetheless, most Hmongs in Vietnam are fiercely loyal to the Vietnamese state, regardless of the current ideologies of the government with only those minorities supportive of Hmong resistance in Laos and Cambodia. These are mostly Christian Hmongs who have fallen under target and poverty strike by alienation of both three Indochinese governments, since there has been no Hmong armed separatism in the country. The Hmongs in Vietnam also receive cultural and political promotion from the government alike. This unique feature distanced Vietnamese Hmongs from Laotian Hmongs, as their Laotian cousins are strongly anti-Vietnamese.

 

LAOS

U.S. AND LAOTIAN CIVIL WAR

In the early 1960s, partially as a result of the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Special Activities Division began to recruit, train and lead the indigenous Hmong people in Laos to fight against North Vietnamese Army divisions invading Laos during the Vietnam War. This "Secret Army" was organized into various mobile regiments and divisions, including various Special Guerrilla Units, all of whom were led by General Vang Pao. An estimated sixty-percent (60%) of Hmong men in Laos joined up.

 

While Hmong soldiers were known to assist the North Vietnamese in many situations, Hmong soldiers were also recognized for serving in combat against the NVA and the Pathet Lao, helping block Hanoi's Ho Chi Minh trail inside Laos and rescuing downed American pilots. Though their role was generally kept secret in the early stages of the conflict, they made great sacrifices to help the U.S.

 

Thousands of economic and political refugees have resettled in Western countries in two separate waves. The first wave resettled in the late 1970s, mostly in the United States, after the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao takeovers of the pro-US governments in South Vietnam and Laos respectively. The Lao Veterans of America, and Lao Veterans of America Institute, helped to assist in the resettlement of many Laotian and Hmong refugees and asylum seekers in the United States, especially former Hmong veterans and their family members who served in the "U.S. Secret Army" in Laos during the Vietnam War.

 

HMONG LAO RESISTANCE

For many years, the Neo Hom resistance and political movement played a key role in resistance to the Vietnam People's Army in Laos following the U.S. withdrawal in 1975. Vang Pao played a significant role in this movement. Additionally, a spiritual leader Zong Zoua Her, as well as other Hmong leaders, including Pa Kao Her or Pa Khao Her, rallied some of their followers in an additional factionalized guerrilla resistance movement called ChaoFa (RPA: Cob Fab, Pahawh Hmong: ChaoFaPahawh.png). These events led to the yellow rain controversy when the United States accused the Soviet Union of supplying and using chemical weapons in this conflict.

 

Small groups of Hmong people, many of the second or third generation descendants of former CIA soldiers, remain internally displaced in remote parts of Laos, in fear of government reprisals. Faced with continuing military operations against them by the government and a scarcity of food, some groups have begun coming out of hiding, while others have sought asylum in Thailand and other countries. Hmongs in Laos, in particularly, develop a stronger and deeper anti-Vietnamese sentiment than its Vietnamese Hmong cousins, due to historic persecution perpetrated by the Vietnamese against them.

 

CONTROVERSY OVER REPATRIATION

In June 1991, after talks with the UNHCR and the Thai government, Laos agreed to the repatriation of over 60,000 Lao refugees living in Thailand, including tens of thousands of Hmong people. Very few of the Lao refugees, however, were willing to return voluntarily. Pressure to resettle the refugees grew as the Thai government worked to close its remaining refugee camps. While some Hmong people returned to Laos voluntarily, with development assistance from UNHCR, coercive measures and forced repatriation was used to send thousands of Hmong back to the communist regime they had fled. Of those Hmong who did return to Laos, some quickly escaped back to Thailand, describing discrimination and brutal treatment at the hands of Lao authorities.

 

In the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, The Center for Public Policy Analysis, a non-governmental public policy research organization, and its Executive Director, Philip Smith, played a key role in raising awareness in the U.S. Congress and policy making circles in Washington, D.C. about the plight of the Hmong and Laotian refugees in Thailand and Laos. The CPPA, backed by a bipartisan coalition of Members of the U.S. Congress as well as human rights organizations, conducted numerous research missions to the Hmong and Laotian refugee camps along the Mekong River in Thailand, as well as the Buddhist temple of Wat Tham Krabok.

 

Amnesty International, the Lao Veterans of America, Inc., the United League for Democracy in Laos, Inc., Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. (led by Dr. Pobzeb Vang Vang Pobzeb, and later Vaughn Vang) and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and human rights organizations joined the opposition to forced repatriation.

 

Although some accusations of forced repatriation were denied, thousands of Hmong people refused to return to Laos. In 1996, as the deadline for the closure of Thai refugee camps approached, and under mounting political pressure, the U.S. agreed to resettle Hmong refugees who passed a new screening process. Around 5,000 Hmong people who were not resettled at the time of the camp closures sought asylum at Wat Tham Krabok, a Buddhist monastery in central Thailand where more than 10,000 Hmong refugees were already living. The Thai government attempted to repatriate these refugees, but the Wat Tham Krabok Hmong refused to leave and the Lao government refused to accept them, claiming they were involved in the illegal drug trade and were of non-Lao origin.

 

In 2003, following threats of forcible removal by the Thai government, the U.S., in a significant victory for the Hmong, agreed to accept 15,000 of the refugees. Several thousand Hmong people, fearing forced repatriation to Laos if they were not accepted for resettlement in the U.S., fled the camp to live elsewhere within Thailand where a sizable Hmong population has been present since the 19th century.

 

In 2004 and 2005, thousands of Hmong fled from the jungles of Laos to a temporary refugee camp in the Thai province of Phetchabun.

 

The European Union, UNHCHR, and international groups have since spoken out about the forced repatriation.

 

ALLEGED PLOT TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERMENT OF LAOS

On 4 June 2007, as part of an investigation labeled "Operation Tarnished Eagle," warrants were issued by U.S. federal courts ordering the arrest of Vang Pao and nine others for plotting to overthrow the government of Laos in violation of the federal Neutrality Acts and for multiple weapons charges. The federal charges allege that members of the group inspected weapons, including AK-47s, smoke grenades, and Stinger missiles, with the intent of purchasing them and smuggling them into Thailand in June 2007 where they were intended to be used by Hmong resistance forces in Laos. The one non-Hmong person of the nine arrested, Harrison Jack, a 1968 West Point graduate and retired Army infantry officer, allegedly attempted to recruit Special Operations veterans to act as mercenaries.

 

In an effort to obtain the weapons, Jack allegedly met unknowingly with undercover U.S. federal agents posing as weapons dealers, which prompted the issuance of the warrants as part of a long-running investigation into the activities of the U.S.-based Hmong leadership and its supporters.

 

On 15 June, the defendants were indicted by a grand jury and a warrant was also issued for the arrest of an 11th man, allegedly involved in the plot. Simultaneous raids of the defendants' homes and work locations, involving over 200 federal, state and local law enforcement officials, were conducted in approximately 15 cities in Central and Southern California in the US.

 

Multiple protest rallies in support of the suspects, designed to raise awareness of the treatment of Hmong peoples in the jungles of Laos, took place in California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Alaska, and several of Vang Pao's high-level supporters in the U.S. criticized the California court that issued the arrest warrants, arguing that Vang is a historically important American ally and a valued leader of U.S. and foreign-based Hmong. However, calls for then Californian Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and then President George W. Bush to pardon the defendants were not answered, presumably pending a conclusion of the large and then still-ongoing federal investigation.

 

On 18 September 2009, the US federal government dropped all charges against Vang Pao, announcing in a release that the federal government was permitted to consider "the probable sentence or other consequences if the person is convicted." On 10 January 2011, after Vang Pao's death, the federal government dropped all charges against the remaining defendants saying, "Based on the totality of the circumstances in the case, the government believes, as a discretionary matter, that continued prosecution of defendants is no longer warranted," according to court documents.

 

THAILAND

The Hmong presence in Thailand dates back, according to most authors, to the turn of the 20th century when families migrated from China through Laos and Burma. A relatively small population, they still settled dozens of villages and hamlets throughout the northern provinces. The Hmong were then registered by the state as the Meo hill tribe. Then, more Hmong migrated from Laos to Thailand following the victory of the Pathet Lao in 1975. While some ended up in refugee camps, others settled in mountainous areas among more ancient Hill Tribes.

 

AMERICAS

Many Hmong refugees resettled in the United States after the Vietnam War. Beginning in December 1975, the first Hmong refugees arrived in the U.S., mainly from refugee camps in Thailand; however, only 3,466 were granted asylum at that time under the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act of 1975. In May 1976, another 11,000 were allowed to enter the United States, and by 1978 some 30,000 Hmong people had immigrated. This first wave was made up predominantly of men directly associated with General Vang Pao's secret army. It was not until the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980 that families were able to enter the U.S., becoming the second wave of Hmong immigrants. Hmong families scattered across all 50 states but most found their way to each other, building large communities in California, Minnesota and Wisconsin. As of the 2010 census, 260,073 Hmong people reside in the United States the majority of whom live in California (91,224), Minnesota (66,181), and Wisconsin (49,240), an increase from 186,310 in 2000. Of them, 247,595 or 95.2% are Hmong alone, and the remaining 12,478 are mixed Hmong with some other ethnicity or race. The vast majority of part-Hmong are under 10 years old.

 

The Hmong people, who are a distinct ethnic group with ancient roots and ancestry in China, began settling in Minnesota in 1975. The Hmong came to Minnesota as refugees from the destructive wars that had ravaged and taken place in their homelands in Laos. Today, there are 150,000 Hmong in the U.S. states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and California. More than 66,000 Hmong reside in Minnesota with the majority living in the St. Paul area. The Twin Cities metro is home to the largest concentration of Hmong in America. For decades, the Hmong have not only made a profound impact on their adopted home in Minnesota, but the Hmong culture has collaborated with the community to document this remarkable story by collecting images, artifacts, oral histories, sharing stories, and by publishing articles and books on the Hmong experience.

 

In terms of cities and towns, the largest Hmong-American community is in St. Paul (29,662), followed by Fresno (24,328), Sacramento (16,676), Milwaukee (10,245), and Minneapolis (7,512).

 

There are smaller Hmong communities scattered across the United States, including those in Minnesota (Rochester, Mankato, Duluth) Michigan (Detroit and Warren); Anchorage, Alaska; Denver, Colorado; Portland, Oregon; Washington; North Carolina (Charlotte, Morganton); South Carolina (Spartanburg); Georgia (Auburn, Duluth, Monroe, Atlanta, and Winder); Florida (Tampa Bay); Wisconsin (Madison, Eau Claire, Appleton, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, La Crosse, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, and Wausau); Aurora, Illinois; Kansas City, Kansas; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Missoula, Montana; Des Moines, Iowa; Springfield, Missouri; Arkansas, Fitchburg, Massachusetts, and Providence, Rhode Island.

 

Canada's small Hmong population is mostly concentrated within the province of Ontario. Kitchener, Ontario has 515 residents of Hmong descent, and has a Hmong church.

 

There is also a small community of several thousand Hmong who migrated to French Guiana in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that can be mainly found in the Hmong villages of Javouhey (1200 individuals) and Cacao (950 individuals).

 

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION

Some Laos- and Vietnam-based Hmong Animists and Christians, including Protestant and Catholic believers, have been subjected to military attacks, police arrest, imprisonment, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and torture on anti-religious grounds.

 

The deportation of Zoua Yang and her 27 children from Thailand in December 19, 2005 after the group was arrested attending a Christian church in Ban Kho Noi, Phetchabun Province, Thailand, where upon arrival back in Laos, Ms. Yang and her children were detained, after which the whereabouts of much of the family are still unknown.

 

For example, in 2013, a Hmong Christian pastor, Vam Ngaij Vaj (Va Ngai Vang), was beaten to death by police and security forces. In February 2014, in Hanoi, Vietnamese government officials refused to allow medical treatment for a Hmong Christian leader, Duong Van Minh, who was suffering from a serious kidney illness. In 2011, Vietnam People's Army troops were used to crush a peaceful demonstration by Hmong Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical Christian believers who gathered in Dien Bien Province and the Dien Bien Phu area of northwestern Vietnam, according to Philip Smith of the Center for Public Policy Analysis, independent journalists and others.

 

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has documented official and ongoing religious persecution, religious freedom violations against the Laotian and Hmong people in both Laos and Vietnam by the governments. In April 2011, the Center for Public Policy Analysis also researched and documented cases of Hmong Christians being attacked and summarily executed, including four Lao Hmong Christians.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter -- by peaceful or revolutionary means -- into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.

 

Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws!

 

Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.

 

It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution -- some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.

 

Fredrick Bastiats

Tibetan Monastic Education by Georges Dreyfus and THL. Section 4 of 7 Copyright © 2001

 

Procedures and Rules of Debate

 

Tibetan debates involve two parties: a defender (damchawa), who answers, and a questioner (riklampa). The roles of defender and questioner imply very different commitments, as Daniel Perdue explains: “The defender puts forth assertions for which he is held accountable. The challenger raises qualms to the defender’s assertions and is not subject to reprisal for the questions he raises. The responsibility of the defender is to put forth a true thesis and to defend it. Hence, the defender is accountable for the truth of his assertions. The questioner, on the contrary, is responsible only for the questions he puts forth. His questions must be well-articulated, must logically follow from the points already made, and must be relevant to defeating the defender. Their truth content is irrelevant, however, for his task is not to establish a thesis but to oblige the defender to contradict either previous statements or common sense.

Read more: www.thlib.org/#!essay=/dreyfus/drepung/monasticed/s/b41#i...

 

Corella Valley Geoscience:

 

Rocks typically seen in the creekbeds of the Corella Valley are dark grey calcsilicates of the Corella Formation, often intruded by a pink fine-grained rock composed of pink feldspar and subordinate honrblende, which contain numerous fragments of dark-green to black metadolerite and some calc-silicates. This is a part of the Mount Philp Breccia. Typically mixed in with these creekbeds is pegmatite that seems to intrude the breccia.

 

Pegmatite are intrusive rocks with extreme coarse grained texture that are developed at the final stages of magma crystallization. As huge amount of time has been granted to pegmatite rocks so it has extremely large crystals and sometimes rare minerals are associated with it which are not found in other rocks. Pegmatite contains crystals that are atleast one centimetre long in diameter.

Pegmatite have composition similar to that of granite with abundant quartz, feldspar and mica. These are sometimes also called as granite pegmatites.

 

The mineralogy of a pegmatite is in most cases dominated by some form of feldspar, often with mica and usually with quartz, being altogether "granitic" in character. Beyond that, pegmatite may include most minerals associated with granite and granite-associated hydrothermal systems, granite-associated mineralisation styles, for example greisens, and somewhat with skarn associated mineralisation.

 

The Kalkadoon People:

 

The Kalkadoon People, also known as the Kalkatungu, Kalkatunga, or Kalkadungu, ruled what is called the Emu Foot Province and have been living on these lands for over 40 thousand years. The Kalkadoon People owned vast tracts of land extending from McKinley’s Gap in the east where they joined the Goa tribe of the Winton district to Gunpowder Creek which was the territory of the Waggaboongas. On the southern side of their territory the Kalkadoons were touched upon by the Pitta-Pitta tribe of the Boulia district, and on the northern side by the Mittakoodi of the Fort Constantine country.

 

The Kalkadoons would mark their territory boundaries with an emu or cranes foot that was either painted onto rocks and trees or carved into the hard granite rock. This was also a warning for other Aboriginal clans not to pass these boundaries.

 

The Kalkadoon (Kalkatungu) are descendants of an Indigenous Australian tribe living in the Mount Isa region of Queensland. Their forefather tribe has been called 'the Elite of the Aboriginal warriors of Queensland'. In 1884 they were massacred at "Battle Mountain" by settlers and police.

 

The first Europeans to visit the area were explorers Burke and Wills who crossed the Cloncurry River in 1861. Though their journals make no mention of the tribe, their passing through is said to have been recorded in Kalkatungu oral history, and in their language they coined the term walpala (from 'white feller') to denote Europeans. Three parties sent out to search for Burke and Wills, led respectively by John McKinlay, William Landsborough, and Frederick Walker, passed through the general area. Walker, a former commander of the Dawson native police, shot 12 natives dead and wounded several more, just to the north east of Kalkatungu territory.

 

Another early European settler, Edward Palmer, who was described by George Phillips as 'one of that brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country', settled on the edge of Kalkatungu country in 1864, at Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River. Decades later, Palmer described the natives as a peculiar people of which little was known. Palmer was critical of the use of native police and interested in indigenous tribes. His station lands did not cover any Kalkatungu sacred sites, he did not object to their presence in the vicinity, and found no problem in his relations with the Kalkatungu. He tried to learn their language. Ernest Henry arrived in 1866, discovering, with the assistance of Kalkatungu guides, copper deposits the following year, and founded the Great Australia Mine. He successfully enlisted some Kalkatungu people to work one of these mines. A short attempt at settlement by W. and T. Brown at Bridgewater in 1874 experienced, like Palmer, no difficulties with the indigenous owners of the land.

 

The Scottish settler Alexander Kennedy then took up land in the area in 1877. He had managed, since his arrival in 1861, to accumulate land holdings of some 4,800 sq. miles, holding 60,000 cattle, and established himself in a residence he built, called Buckingham Downs. Kennedy is thought to have begun the troubles with the native peoples of the area by instigating murderous assaults on the Kalkatungu. Iain Davidson describes him as 'the man who led the destruction of the tribes of North West Central Queensland.'

 

The traditional white heroic narrative version of what then occurred drew on the account provided by Sir Wilmot Hudson Fysh in 1933. According to this version, the Kalkatungu was by nature a hostile and bellicose tribe, exceptionally brave with 'primitive' military cunning and guerilla-like tactics of strategic withdrawals to the mountains to evade reprisals for their savagery. They were eventually vanquished and broken after a last stand against men like Alexander Kennedy.

 

Source: Rocks and Landscapes of Northwest Queensland by Laurie Hutton & Ian Withnall, Learning Geology (geologylearn.blogspot.com), &

Kalkadoon PBC (www.kalkadoonpbc.com.au).

All rights reserved. Please do not use this or any of my images in anyway without my written permission. Please also REFRAIN FROM POSTING YOUR OWN IMAGES within my Photostream. I consider this rude and unwelcome.

 

As one of the most important cities in England, and an important base for holding and administering the north, York was the site for two of the castles William the Conqueror built in the years immediately following his conquest. The principal castle was begun in 1068, as part of a campaign to subdue anti-Norman sentiment in the north. Its wooden defences focused around and atop the motte; they were destroyed during a local rebellion the following year, but rebuilt by the Normans after suppressing the rebels and taking harsh reprisals on York.

 

In 1190 the wooden keep was again burned down, during a siege by citizens of the Jewish community which had taken refuge there. This was one instance of a continent-wide persecution stimulated in part by the emotionally-charged and propagandized environment of the Crusades. At and following the accession of the crusading king Richard, successor to Henry II who had been careful to protect England's Jews, there were a number of violent outbursts against them in various English towns. In York, a violent incident was quickly followed by most of the Jews there seeking protection within the castle. However, when there fear became so great that they refused even the constable of the castle admittance, an attempt by royal authorities to regain access deteriorated into a mob assault on the castle. Rather than fall into the hands of the mob, many of the Jews committed suicide and set the keep afire. The survivors emerged the following day, only to be massacred by the besiegers. As punishment for this terrible act, the king's Chancellor dismissed the sheriff and constable, imposed a heavy fine on York's citizens (who claimed not to have been involved), but the ringleaders had fled and could not be brought to justice.

 

In the latter half of the thirteenth century, the keep was rebuilt in stone. It was given a quatrefoil plan, of which there is no other example in England. The keep later became known as Clifford's Tower after Roger de Clifford, who was hanged there in 1322.

   

2 exposures merged for this image...not an HDR.

 

award count

www.cameralenscompare.com/photoAwardsCounterDetails.aspx?...

Diorama in scale 1/87 (H0).

 

ENGLISH:

In the picture you can see me with one of my Laoshan goats.

There are 19 million believing Christians in the People's Republic of China. In China, believing in God can be very dangerous because the state is against Christianity. Many Christians pay for their beliefs with reprisals, imprisonment or even death. But that does not stop me faithfully believing and witnessing to Jesus Christ. Life on earth is only the way to the Kingdom of God.

peacewithgod.net/

 

ESPAÑOL:

En la foto puedes verme con una de mis cabras Laoshan.

Hay 19 millones de cristianos creyentes en la República Popular de China. En China, creer en Dios puede ser muy peligroso porque el estado está en contra del cristianismo. Muchos cristianos pagan sus creencias con represalias, encarcelamiento o incluso la muerte. Pero eso no me detiene creyendo fielmente y dando testimonio de Jesucristo. La vida en la tierra es solo el camino al Reino de Dios.

conociendoadios.net/

 

GERMAN:

Auf dem Bild bin ich mit einer meiner Laoshan Ziegen zu sehen.

In Volksrepublik China gib es 19 Milionen gläubiger Christen. In China kann es sehr gefährlich sein an Gott zu glauben da der Staat gegen das Christentum ist. Viele Christen bezahlen ihren Glauben mit Repressalien, Gefängnis oder sogar Tod. Das hält mich aber nicht davon ab treu an Jesus Christus zu glauben und das zu bezeugen. Das Leben auf der Erde ist nur der Weg zum Himmelreich Gottes.

www.gottkennen.ch

 

中國

在照片中，你可以看到我的一隻嶗山山羊。

1900萬基督徒居住在中華人民共和國。 我們基督徒不反對這個國家。 我們愛我們的國家。 但這並不能阻止我忠實地相信和見證耶穌基督。 地球上的生命只是通往神國的道路

renshishen.com/

  

Tibetan Monastic Education by Georges Dreyfus and THL. Section 4 of 7 Copyright © 2001

 

Procedures and Rules of Debate

 

Tibetan debates involve two parties: a defender (damchawa), who answers, and a questioner (riklampa). The roles of defender and questioner imply very different commitments, as Daniel Perdue explains: “The defender puts forth assertions for which he is held accountable. The challenger raises qualms to the defender’s assertions and is not subject to reprisal for the questions he raises. The responsibility of the defender is to put forth a true thesis and to defend it. Hence, the defender is accountable for the truth of his assertions. The questioner, on the contrary, is responsible only for the questions he puts forth. His questions must be well-articulated, must logically follow from the points already made, and must be relevant to defeating the defender. Their truth content is irrelevant, however, for his task is not to establish a thesis but to oblige the defender to contradict either previous statements or common sense.

Read more: www.thlib.org/#!essay=/dreyfus/drepung/monasticed/s/b41#i...

 

International Whores’ Day or International Sex Workers’ Day is observed annually on June 2 of each year, honours sex workers and recognises their often exploited working conditions. The event commemorates the occupation of Église Saint-Nizier in Lyon by more than a hundred sex workers on June 2, 1975 to draw attention to their inhumane working conditions. It has been celebrated annually since 1976. In German, it is known as Hurentag (Whore's Day). In Spanish-speaking countries, it is the Día Internacional de la Trabajadora Sexual, the International Day of the Sex Worker.

 

In the 1970s, French police kept sex workers under increasing pressure. The police reprisals[1] forced sex workers to work increasingly in secret. As a result, protection of sex workers decreased and led to more violence against them. After two murders and the unwillingness of the government to improve the situation, sex workers in Lyon occupied the Saint-Nizier church in rue de Brest and went on strike. The striking workers sang political chants and demanded decent working conditions and an end to stigma.

 

The police cleared the church after eight days. The event marks the starting point of an international movement of sex workers for sex workers’ rights.

 

my dear sissy friend

 

__--___ 2. Juni auf Deutsch

 

Der Internationale Hurentag, in englischsprachigen Ländern International Sex Workers’ Day genannt, ist ein inoffizieller Gedenktag, der an die Diskriminierung von Prostituierten und deren oftmals ausbeuterische Lebens- und Arbeitsbedingungen erinnert. Ausgangspunkt des Internationalen Hurentags als Gedenktag war der 2. Juni 1975, an dem mehr als 100 Prostituierte die Kirche Saint-Nizier in Lyon besetzten, um auf ihre Situation aufmerksam zu machen. Der Gedenktag wird seit 1976 jährlich am 2. Juni zelebriert.

 

Anfang der 1970er setzten französische Strafverfolgungsbehörden Prostituierte in Frankreich zunehmend unter Druck. Die polizeilichen Repressalien zwangen die Frauen, zunehmend im Verborgenen zu arbeiten. Dadurch entfiel deren Schutz durch die Öffentlichkeit und dies führte zu vermehrten Gewalttaten gegen sie. Nach zwei Morden und der fehlenden Bereitschaft der Regierung, die Situation der Prostituierten zu verbessern, besetzten Sexarbeiterinnen in Lyon schließlich eine der örtlichen Kirchen – Saint-Nizier in der rue de Brest – und traten in den Streik. Nach acht Tagen wurde die Kirche durch die Polizei geräumt. Das Ereignis wird als Ausgangspunkt der Hurenbewegung angesehenIn Deutschland wurde der Internationale Hurentag erstmals am 2. Juni 1989 von der Kommunikationswissenschaftlerin Laura Méritt ausgerufen.

 

Le 2 juin est la Journée internationale des travailleuses et travailleurs du sexe. En 1975, une centaine de travailleuses du sexe ont occupé l’église Saint-Nizier à Lyon, en France, pour exprimer leur colère face à la criminalisation et à l’exploitation de leurs conditions de vie. C’est l’un des moments où les travailleuses du sexe ont lutté pour l’égalité et la fin de la criminalisation. Le 2 juin est également la date du 4e Congrès mondial pour l’abolition de la prostitution, qui se tiendra à Montréal du 1er au 3 juin 2024. Ce congrès promet d’apporter un discours défendant explicitement l’éradication des travailleuses du sexe et promouvant des politiques répressives à l’encontre de certaines des communautés les plus marginalisées de Montréal.

 

L’idéologie prohibitionniste a un impact important sur la santé, la sécurité et les droits humains des personnes qui vendent ou échangent des services sexuels. Elle favorise la criminalisation et la présence de la police dans la vie des femmes les plus marginalisées de nos communautés ; elle réduit au silence et dénigre les voix et les expériences des personnes qui travaillent dans l’industrie du sexe ; et elle contribue à la violence et à la stigmatisation sociales et institutionnelles, qui entraînent des discriminations à l’égard des travailleuses du sexe dans les services de santé, sociaux, juridiques et autres services institutionnels auxquels ces dernières peuvent avoir besoin d’accéder pour faire face à ces oppressions.

 

Toute action visant à « abolir » l’existence des travailleuses du sexe est incompatible avec l’objectif d’améliorer les conditions de vie et de travail, de mettre fin à la violence et à toutes les formes d’exploitation.

 

Ce rassemblement réunit certains des plus grands noms des mouvements prohibitionnistes et pro-carcéraux, un mélange d’extrémistes religieux et de féministes anti-trans. En tant qu’organismes féministes et de défense de droits nationaux et locaux, nous ne pouvons accepter que notre ville soit utilisée comme lieu de stratégie pour réduire les femmes au silence et leur faire du mal. Les travailleuses du sexe sont des membres importantes et précieuses de nos communautés qui méritent la protection de leurs droits, et non leur éradication.

 

Nous, féministes et défenseuses de l’égalité au sein des organismes nationaux et montréalais, croyons en une véritable égalité : l’inclusion active des communautés marginalisées qui subissent la violence, même lorsque cela nous remet en question ou nous pousse à adapter nos pratiques ; l’écoute des personnes touchées ; la mise au centre de nos préoccupations des besoins des personnes les plus marginalisées ; et la lutte contre les méfaits du système carcéral envers les femmes, qui sont sur-surveillées et sous-protégées. Nous croyons qu’il faut soutenir les femmes là où elles en sont et ne pas les exclure des services en raison de la manière dont elles gagnent leur vie. Nous croyons qu’il faut éliminer les obstacles qui empêchent les femmes marginalisées d’accéder à l’emploi, au logement et à d’autres perspectives.

 

Nous voulons envoyer un message clair à toutes les femmes qui vendent ou ont vendu des services sexuels, quelles que soient les circonstances, pour leur dire que nous sommes solidaires et que nous dénonçons toutes les formes de violence, y compris celles qui sont encouragées par des événements tels que celui qui est à venir à Montréal.

We popped through to Culloden for a family day out on Jen's birthday, I didn't take many photos but did shoot a slightly bedraggled Leanach Cottage in passing.

 

During the battle a cottage stood in this place which became a field hospital for the government troops, it late fell into disrepair and has been rebuilt which acts as a memorial to how a highland home of the period could hgave looked (although I can't think of many which weren't just a simple oblong floorplan).

 

The battle itself was very short, a total of 40 minutes from the two sides appearing on site to the bitter end. The fighting itself was only a small fraction of this time and was mostly a mass of confusion and disarray from the Jacobite side facing a well trained Government force (itself 40% Scottish). As the tide turned against the Jacobites the Duke of Cumberland gave the order to provide no quarter, the resultant toll was 1500 dead including camp followers (mainly women and children who were family memebers of the Jacobite soldiers).

 

It's quite a strange place, especially knowing that were it not for espionage on the Government side the Jacobite army would have marched into London unopposed and siezed the crown for Prince Charlie, potentially sending the UK in a different direction. It would also have prevented the decimation of Highland culture that followed with the bitter reprisal of Cumberland on the people in this part of the world... perhaps even avoiding the worst aspects of the clearances and famine both of which followed in the wake of the uprising.

 

Culloden is a fascinating place to visit though, despite all the suffering which stems from the events there almost 300 years ago. It remains a pivotal point in not just Scottish history, but British and even European history when the ramifications of some of the decisions are considered. It is also a great place to learn more about the complex history of the Jacobite cause which is reframed not as a Scottish v English event but something more sectarian as soldiers on both sides of the battle came from all nations of the British Isles and beyond into Europe and even the USA.

Staghurst Noir

Acte 3 : Arrogance

 

Inside the backseat of the speeding Rolls, Edmund resumes the conversation that his wife had cut off back at their sitting room ( see Acte 2). His wife again stops him, sure we can’t be heard she demands. Edmund points to the glass barrier behind the front seat. Reginal cannot hear a thing, unless the speaking vent is opened. Which it is , The Mistress jabs a ringed finger, close it up you fool.

 

Edmund reaches over and flicks the off switch on the speaking tube, he then turns to his wife, the papers committing My Auntie to the asylum, they are finished then? Yes Edmund, The Mistress sighs, like a parent reproving a young child.

 

Jolly good, Edmund commended; of course the old Dowager is off her rocker, trying to leaving her fortune to Err.. My Nephew I mean, Edmund stops himself before making the mistake of mentioning the name of Errol out loud again.

 

Those papers have to be filed tonight, The Mistress snaps, the Dowager plans on signing her will giving that bastard nephew of yours everything tomorrow morning. I don’t understand what possesses her to make her will out to him, after everything I have done for the old broad! Really Edmund, Errol’s father, how could you have a brother like that who would invests all his money into a bogus company that goes belly up? It was probably a good thing for him that they both died in that yachting accident before realizing their son and heir was going to be left penniless. Then Errol has the audacity to marry.. to marry a a Servant, The Mistress spits out the words like a piece of turned meat! The Mistress had now worked herself up into such a tizzy that she never noticed she was calling Edmund’s Nephew by name.

 

The Lordship nodded in agreement, not bothering to state the fact ( well known to them both) that it had been him, Edmund , advising his brother on the investment! One that Edmund knew was as crooked as a bolt of lightning, and he had also neglected to tell his brother that he ( Edmund) was not investing single red pence of his money, all the while encouraging his gullible elder brother to invest all of his share of their Father’s inheritance! Bloody shame that the rudder of their yacht would mysteriously break off during the storm, Edmund comments, with a tone of voice that almost comes across as conspiratorial, In the front seat, Reginald’s heard seems to turn back, almost as if he is listening in. Yes Edmund, The Mistress says as a malevolent grin spreads across her severe face, such a shame!

 

The Mistress carries on; it’s a good thing we share the same solicitor as the Dowager, and a better thing that he sees things the way we do!.

Do we have his money dear, Edmund asks sharply?

You Know I have it, The Mistress answers, but don’t be daft man, its safe and sound under my pillow she says with an evil gleam in her eyes, , I do not trust solicitors, or anyone of that ilk any farther than I can kick them! The solicitor will not see a bit of it until after the Dowagers will is in our name, and the Dowager is safely put away from any more harm she can possibly do us. It’s the last of our savings (meaning the last of Edmunds inheritance, for the Mistress brought only an old family name to the relationship, all her family money had gone to her (estranged) brothers).

 

Her Ladyship continues on, building up to one of her infamous tirades. That magistrate cost us a pretty pound to sign the papers committing the old broad to the asylum, we had just enough left to pay off the solicitor! We have nothing left, if we don’t stay in the Dowagers will as her only beneficiary, we will lose the estate, and be out on the street in a fortnight, and then what? I’ll tell you what she spit out her words, that Nephew of yours, and that hideous creature he calls a wife, will have the run of the place, infesting it like the vermin they both are! The Rolls makes a violent swerve, and the couple in the back are slammed against one another. The Mistress just glares at the backside of Reginald, itching to admonish him, but she did not want him to slow down for any reason.

 

Now, Reginald, unbeknownst to his employers, with help from a grateful garage owner, had the sound proof glass partition that was behind the Rolls front seat, modified, and is able to hear every word said from the backseat of the Rolls, but he always played dumb about it. One never knows what benefits may come out of being able to overhear conversations going on in the backseat, especially with the like of those two. And tonight he was receiving an earful.

 

As Reginald drives expertly through the weaving narrow streets of the city. His lordship and ladyship are scheming in the back about what they will do once Edmunds dowager aunt has been stopped from foolishly giving away her fortune to a worthless nephew.

 

Among their plans are to remodel the sitting room and her ladyships bedroom suite. As he listens, Reginald notes there are no plans to fix the leaky kitchen roofs, or cracked window s that let in the cold in the servant’s quarters. The greedy self-absorbed pair were not even going to put any money in the rundown stables, where the hounds, horses and the stable boys are always dodging pieces of crumbling walls. As Reginald’s thoughts simmer in anger, a light ahead starts to change from green and he slows down, purposefully jerking the luxury car in the process, as he approached the intersection.. Her ladyship, switching on the speaker, screams from the back for him to run it, you damn idiot!

 

Shouldn’t ma’am Reginald coolly says, this area of the city carries a bad reputation, there are always coppers about. If a street bobby sees me running it, he will have me stopped, and that will lose your ladyship and lordship a great deal more time than a minute at a light.

 

As this conversation goes on, the Rolls Royce has come to a complete stop, from the shadows of an alleyway creeps out a wizen old man, clutching a small glass bottle and some rags. He approaches and starts to wash off the dust from the rolls windshield. Don’t make eye contact her ladyship shrilly cries from the back as the old man approaches with a hand out for some reward for his feeble efforts. Not a tuppence do you give em, yells the Master, and as the light turns green, they both shout for Reginald to get a move on.

  

Giving the big car gas, Reginald tears off in a squeal of tyres, knocking the old man to the ground, causing him to drop his glass bottle of water, shattering it. The wizened old man watches them leave, his mouth moving under his breath as he utters some ancient Romanian curse to the speeding vehicle and its occupants.

 

At that moment, the dark clouds that had been slowly gathering in the sky, Part a little, and through a small hole, the light of the Evening Star struggles to show through.

************************************************************************************* Watch for Act 4 : Reprisal

*************************************************************************************

 

Emissary of the Evil Empire

 

Just a wicked peacenik’n quick draw from the Paw

Game of Thrones’n the Shah, crussian bones of the law

When the baby-skull splitters want nuclear winter

Ideal New Cold steel and send Chernobyl shivers

Down Roman Republicans’ severed headlines

Till there’s no more dead kids on front line Columbines

I’m in exile sharpenin’ [sic]kles in style

Pyongyang’n Kuomintang climate denials

Erasing their nation-hate racial profiles

Outpacing their skinhead disgraces by miles

Shell casin’ this place like the Nuremberg trials

For Fords sellin’ swastikas stockpile bibles

Defiled by Normandy tide genocidals

Fresh meat off the boat spreadin’ Plague mercantiles

I smile and **** ‘em with kindness

Then grind

Battle tax in my acid bath

Salt Marchin’ prime

Because WAR IS THE CRIME

I’m the Clown Prince of Rhyme,

The divine comedy fact-

Attactic landmine

Level 9 state of mind

Like the state of Rakhine

The Black Hand before time

I’m the ronin alone in

The monkey *** shrine

And my guile’s reprisal’s Versailles treaty signed

Strippin’ pride from the Rhine

Now your Motherland’s mine

Swine

 

Written by

Michael Marchese 23/M/New Yor

 

from : hellopoetry.com

Photo taken on September 1, 2018, during a 3 day photographic trip to the Prefecture of FTHIOTIDA - ΦΘΙΩΤΙΔΑ central Greece with my wife Theresa Jane Brown.

 

YPATI - ΥΠΑΤΗ

Ypati is a town about 30 km west of Thermopylae and north of the Oeta mountains which was founded in the late 5th/early 4th century BC.

During the Axis occupation 15 inhabitants were shot as reprisals for the Gorgopotamos bridge sabotage in 1942, and later, on 17 June 1944, the Germans surrounded the town as part of reprisals for attacks by EAM-ELAS partisans based in the region. They executed 28 people, wounded another 30, and burned down 375 out of the town's 400 buildings. A memorial in the town centre commemorates the event and Ypati has been declared a "martyr city" by the Greek state.

 

Thanassis Fournarakos - Θανάσης Φουρναράκος

Professional Photographer, Athens, Greece

(retired in 2011, born in 1946).

 

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

None of my images may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, manipulated or used on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission. THANK YOU!

kind of a reprisal... we all just grew up

During the Autumn of 1943, the Germans built an air base at Haslemoen using Russian POW's captured on the Eastern front. The prison-camp was built to hold 300 - 500 prisoners and was named Camp Wagner after the commandant.

Conditions in the camp were characterized by cold, under-nourishment and disease, such as Tuberculosis and Beri-Beri. The prisoners didn't have good clothing or shoes.

 

Not far away from the camp, this graveyard was opened. 17 Soviet inmates who died of 'natural' causes were buried here as well as 20 who were executed on the 24th May 1944 as reprisals after 2 inmates overpowered and killed 2 German soldiers whilst being transported to Elverum. The Germans asked for volunteers from the 50 Russians at the camp. All did so, meaning the soldiers had pick out the ones for themselves.

 

In August 1945 the bodies of the 20 executed prisoners that had been shot were dug up to be identified. This was done by the Germans under the supervision of 2 British and 2 Soviet officers. The bodies were moved to the Russian cemetery at Vestre in Oslo.

Of the 17 that died of 'natural' causes that are still here, 8 have names. 7 only have their prisoner numbers and one has never been identified.

 

In 1950 the locals of Våler and Åsnes erected the standing stone in respect for the soviet prisoners that ended their lives at Haslemoen.

 

Their names can be found here - krigsgraver.no/en/graveSite?id=410

We must not forget their efforts.

The wine restaurant U Mecenáše is one of the oldest restaurants in Prague. Its origin dates back to the sixteenth century. Even today, it keeps its original look. Jan Mydlář, the famous Prague executioner used to lodge here in the 1620s. An executioners axe forms part of the restaurant sign.

 

Jan Mydlář (1572–1664) was a 17th-century executioner from Prague. He is mostly known for his performance of the 1621 execution of 27 Bohemian Revolt leaders.

 

The executed men were primarily Protestants, though one man was a Catholic. They had organized an uprising against the Habsburg Emperor Matthias and later Ferdinand II. On June 21, 1621, between 5 am and 9 am, 27 men were executed. Twelve were beheaded and fifteen were hanged.

 

The beheaded ones had their heads displayed on the Prague Old Town Bridge Tower. The execution was unprecedented, not only in its magnitude, but because the condemned were men of high importance, representing various ranks of the Czech society and professions—noblemen, scholars, burghers, businessmen, etc. The execution was followed by reprisals against Protestants in Bohemia.

 

Mydlář is the central character of a 19th-century novel by Josef Svátek. According to this story, young Mydlář became an executioner because of a disappointment in love, just before graduating from medical school.

   

The Kalkadoon People, also known as the Kalkatungu, Kalkatunga, or Kalkadungu, ruled what is called the Emu Foot Province and have been living on these lands for over 40 thousand years. The Kalkadoon People owned vast tracts of land extending from McKinley’s Gap in the east where they joined the Goa tribe of the Winton district to Gunpowder Creek which was the territory of the Waggaboongas. On the southern side of their territory the Kalkadoons were touched upon by the Pitta-Pitta tribe of the Boulia district, and on the northern side by the Mittakoodi of the Fort Constantine country.

 

The Kalkadoons would mark their territory boundaries with an emu or cranes foot that was either painted onto rocks and trees or carved into the hard granite rock. This was also a warning for other Aboriginal clans not to pass these boundaries.

 

The Kalkadoon (Kalkatungu) are descendants of an Indigenous Australian tribe living in the Mount Isa region of Queensland. Their forefather tribe has been called 'the Elite of the Aboriginal warriors of Queensland'. In 1884 they were massacred at "Battle Mountain" by settlers and police.

 

The first Europeans to visit the area were explorers Burke and Wills who crossed the Cloncurry River in 1861. Though their journals make no mention of the tribe, their passing through is said to have been recorded in Kalkatungu oral history, and in their language they coined the term walpala (from 'white feller') to denote Europeans. Three parties sent out to search for Burke and Wills, led respectively by John McKinlay, William Landsborough, and Frederick Walker, passed through the general area. Walker, a former commander of the Dawson native police, shot 12 natives dead and wounded several more, just to the north east of Kalkatungu territory.

 

Another early European settler, Edward Palmer, who was described by George Phillips as 'one of that brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country', settled on the edge of Kalkatungu country in 1864, at Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River. Decades later, Palmer described the natives as a peculiar people of which little was known. Palmer was critical of the use of native police and interested in indigenous tribes. His station lands did not cover any Kalkatungu sacred sites, he did not object to their presence in the vicinity, and found no problem in his relations with the Kalkatungu. He tried to learn their language. Ernest Henry arrived in 1866, discovering, with the assistance of Kalkatungu guides, copper deposits the following year, and founded the Great Australia Mine. He successfully enlisted some Kalkatungu people to work one of these mines. A short attempt at settlement by W. and T. Brown at Bridgewater in 1874 experienced, like Palmer, no difficulties with the indigenous owners of the land.

 

The Scottish settler Alexander Kennedy then took up land in the area in 1877. He had managed, since his arrival in 1861, to accumulate land holdings of some 4,800 sq. miles, holding 60,000 cattle, and established himself in a residence he built, called Buckingham Downs. Kennedy is thought to have begun the troubles with the native peoples of the area by instigating murderous assaults on the Kalkatungu. Iain Davidson describes him as 'the man who led the destruction of the tribes of North West Central Queensland.'

 

The traditional white heroic narrative version of what then occurred drew on the account provided by Sir Wilmot Hudson Fysh in 1933. According to this version, the Kalkatungu was by nature a hostile and bellicose tribe, exceptionally brave with 'primitive' military cunning and guerilla-like tactics of strategic withdrawals to the mountains to evade reprisals for their savagery. They were eventually vanquished and broken after a last stand against men like Alexander Kennedy.

 

Source: Kalkadoon PBC (www.kalkadoonpbc.com.au)

The Earth Alliance Navy fields a number of carrier strike groups to protect the Solar System and Earth's outlying colonies. Carrier Strike Group 2 is composed of:

 

EAS Illustrious -- Victorious class Carrier

EAS Repulse -- Implacable class Heavy Cruiser

EAS Relentless -- Valiant class Destroyer

EAS Reprisal -- Valiant class Destroyer

EAS Firebrand -- Firebrand class Frigate

EAS Dart -- Firebrand class Frigate

EAS Wolf -- Firebrand class Frigate

EAS Rampart -- Firebrand class Frigate

EAS Morningstar -- Mace class Corvette

EAS Flail -- Mace class Corvette

 

---

This group of microscale space builds started with the goal of trying to reduce the overall size of the ships while still trying to have as much detail as could be reasonably squeezed in. I've found some of my micro capital ships have started to creep up in size lately and wanted to go the other direction for even smaller builds.

 

I started with the Frigate sized ships and went up building the next larger sized ships from there. After the carrier was done, I felt like a full strike group would still have a smaller than frigate sized ship for patrol and reconnaissance. I very much liked the small micro ships that Legolize it Man included with his Mulla 215 Battlecruiser for SHIPtember last year, so I decided to use those as a basis for my small Mace-class corvette ships.

Dunboy Castle is a ruined castle on the Beara Peninsula in south-west Ireland near the town of Castletownbere. It was a stronghold of the O'Sullivan Bere, a Gaelic clan leader and 'Chief of Dunboy', and was built to guard and defend the harbour of Berehaven. Its presence enabled O'Sullivan Bere to control the sea fisheries off the Irish coast and collect taxes from Irish and continental European fishing vessels sheltering in the haven. It was also a centre for the import/export trade to and from the continent. Today, much of the castle is destroyed but the ruins are open to the public.

 

Near the castle ruins of Dunboy Castle stands Puxley Mansion, a 19th-century manor house. It was burnt by the IRA in 1920 in reprisal for the destruction of houses that harboured IRA men and weapons by the Crown Forces. While some restoration work was completed in the 2000s, funding issues halted plans to refurbish the mansion and open it as a hotel

 

Tibetan Monastic Education by Georges Dreyfus and THL. Section 4 of 7 Copyright © 2001

 

Procedures and Rules of Debate

 

Tibetan debates involve two parties: a defender (damchawa), who answers, and a questioner (riklampa). The roles of defender and questioner imply very different commitments, as Daniel Perdue explains: “The defender puts forth assertions for which he is held accountable. The challenger raises qualms to the defender’s assertions and is not subject to reprisal for the questions he raises. The responsibility of the defender is to put forth a true thesis and to defend it. Hence, the defender is accountable for the truth of his assertions. The questioner, on the contrary, is responsible only for the questions he puts forth. His questions must be well-articulated, must logically follow from the points already made, and must be relevant to defeating the defender. Their truth content is irrelevant, however, for his task is not to establish a thesis but to oblige the defender to contradict either previous statements or common sense.

Read more: www.thlib.org/#!essay=/dreyfus/drepung/monasticed/s/b41#i...

 

The War Memorial writes:

HOLOCAUST OF YPATI 17-6-1944

EXECUTED BY THE GERMAN OCCUPATION FORCES

1943-1944

 

YPATI - ΥΠΑΤΗ

Ypati is a town about 30 km west of Thermopylae and north of the Oeta mountains which was founded in the late 5th/early 4th century BC.

During the Axis occupation 15 inhabitants were shot as reprisals for the Gorgopotamos bridge sabotage in 1942, and later, on 17 June 1944, the Germans surrounded the town as part of reprisals for attacks by EAM-ELAS partisans based in the region. They executed 28 people, wounded another 30, and burned down 375 out of the town's 400 buildings. A memorial in the town centre commemorates the event and Ypati has been declared a "martyr city" by the Greek state.

 

Photo taken on August 31, 2018, during a 3 day photographic trip to the Prefecture of FTHIOTIDA - ΦΘΙΩΤΙΔΑ central Greece with my wife Theresa Jane Brown.

 

Thanassis Fournarakos - Θανάσης Φουρναράκος

Professional Photographer, Athens, Greece

(retired in 2011, born in 1946).

 

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

None of my images may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, manipulated or used on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission. THANK YOU!

Sloboda/Freedom series N8

Leica R7/Vario Elmar-R 1:4 35-70/Ilford Delta 100

Taken: 28/05/2017 Sloboda Monument/Fruska Gora/Serbia

Models: Marti&Di

Analog Black&White

Cutted/Manipulated

  

Military operations in World War II in Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and client regimes.

 

Subsequently, a guerrilla liberation war was fought against the Axis occupying forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the Independent State of Croatia and the Serbian Government of National Salvation, by the KPJ-led republican Yugoslav Partisans.

Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, Croatian fascist Ustaše and Home Guard, as well as Slovene Home Guard troops.[22]

 

Both the Yugoslav Partisans and the Chetnik movement initially resisted the occupation. However, after 1941, Chetniks extensively and systematically collaborated with the Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation, and thereon also with German and Ustaše forces.[22][23] The Axis mounted a series of offensives intended to destroy the Partisans, coming close to doing so in the winter and spring of 1943.

 

Despite the setbacks, the Partisans remained a credible fighting force, gaining recognition from the Western Allies and laying the foundations for the post-war Yugoslav state. With support in logistics and air power from the Western Allies, and Soviet ground troops in the Belgrade Offensive, the Partisans eventually gained control of the entire country and of the border regions of Italy and Austria.

 

The human cost of the war was enormous. The number of war victims is still in dispute, but is generally agreed to have been at least one million.

 

Non-combat victims included the majority of the country's Jewish population, many of whom perished in concentration and extermination camps (e.g. Jasenovac, Banjica) run by the client regimes.

 

The Croatian Ustaše regime committed genocide against Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-Fascist Croats. The Serbian Chetniks pursued genocide against Muslims and Croats and Pro-Partisan Serbs, and the Italian occupation authorities pursued violence against Slovenes and Croats. The Wehrmacht carried out mass executions of civilians in retaliation for resistance activity e.g., the Kragujevac massacre. Hungarian occupation troops massacred civilians (mostly Serbs and Jews) during the a major raid in southern Bačka, under the pretext for resistance activities.

 

Finally, during and after the final stages of the war, Yugoslav authorities and Partisan troops carried out reprisals, including the deportation of the Danube Swabian population, forced marches and executions of thousands of captured collaborators and civilians fleeing their advance (Bleiburg repatriations), atrocities against the Italian population in Istria (Foibe massacres) and purges against Serbs, Hungarians and Germans associated with the fascist forces.

C: Wikipedia

The Kalkadoon People, also known as the Kalkatungu, Kalkatunga, or Kalkadungu, ruled what is called the Emu Foot Province and have been living on these lands for over 40 thousand years. The Kalkadoon People owned vast tracts of land extending from McKinley’s Gap in the east where they joined the Goa tribe of the Winton district to Gunpowder Creek which was the territory of the Waggaboongas. On the southern side of their territory the Kalkadoons were touched upon by the Pitta-Pitta tribe of the Boulia district, and on the northern side by the Mittakoodi of the Fort Constantine country.

 

The Kalkadoons would mark their territory boundaries with an emu or cranes foot that was either painted onto rocks and trees or carved into the hard granite rock. This was also a warning for other Aboriginal clans not to pass these boundaries.

 

The Kalkadoon (Kalkatungu) are descendants of an Indigenous Australian tribe living in the Mount Isa region of Queensland. Their forefather tribe has been called 'the Elite of the Aboriginal warriors of Queensland'. In 1884 they were massacred at "Battle Mountain" by settlers and police.

 

The first Europeans to visit the area were explorers Burke and Wills who crossed the Cloncurry River in 1861. Though their journals make no mention of the tribe, their passing through is said to have been recorded in Kalkatungu oral history, and in their language they coined the term walpala (from 'white feller') to denote Europeans. Three parties sent out to search for Burke and Wills, led respectively by John McKinlay, William Landsborough, and Frederick Walker, passed through the general area. Walker, a former commander of the Dawson native police, shot 12 natives dead and wounded several more, just to the north east of Kalkatungu territory.

 

Another early European settler, Edward Palmer, who was described by George Phillips as 'one of that brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country', settled on the edge of Kalkatungu country in 1864, at Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River. Decades later, Palmer described the natives as a peculiar people of which little was known. Palmer was critical of the use of native police and interested in indigenous tribes. His station lands did not cover any Kalkatungu sacred sites, he did not object to their presence in the vicinity, and found no problem in his relations with the Kalkatungu. He tried to learn their language. Ernest Henry arrived in 1866, discovering, with the assistance of Kalkatungu guides, copper deposits the following year, and founded the Great Australia Mine. He successfully enlisted some Kalkatungu people to work one of these mines. A short attempt at settlement by W. and T. Brown at Bridgewater in 1874 experienced, like Palmer, no difficulties with the indigenous owners of the land.

 

The Scottish settler Alexander Kennedy then took up land in the area in 1877. He had managed, since his arrival in 1861, to accumulate land holdings of some 4,800 sq. miles, holding 60,000 cattle, and established himself in a residence he built, called Buckingham Downs. Kennedy is thought to have begun the troubles with the native peoples of the area by instigating murderous assaults on the Kalkatungu. Iain Davidson describes him as 'the man who led the destruction of the tribes of North West Central Queensland.'

 

The traditional white heroic narrative version of what then occurred drew on the account provided by Sir Wilmot Hudson Fysh in 1933. According to this version, the Kalkatungu was by nature a hostile and bellicose tribe, exceptionally brave with 'primitive' military cunning and guerilla-like tactics of strategic withdrawals to the mountains to evade reprisals for their savagery. They were eventually vanquished and broken after a last stand against men like Alexander Kennedy.

 

Source: Kalkadoon PBC (www.kalkadoonpbc.com.au).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_TRXcn1EwU

This gorge is in layered calc-silicate rocks of the Corella Formation; they were originally calcareous sediments (sand and mud) that have been metamorphosed. The quartz, felspar, and clays reacted with the calcite and dolomite to produce calc-silicate minerals like amphibole (hornblende and actinolite) and clinopyroxene (diopside).

 

The Kalkadoon People:

 

The Kalkadoon People, also known as the Kalkatungu, Kalkatunga, or Kalkadungu, ruled what is called the Emu Foot Province and have been living on these lands for over 40 thousand years. The Kalkadoon People owned vast tracts of land extending from McKinley’s Gap in the east where they joined the Goa tribe of the Winton district to Gunpowder Creek which was the territory of the Waggaboongas. On the southern side of their territory the Kalkadoons were touched upon by the Pitta-Pitta tribe of the Boulia district, and on the northern side by the Mittakoodi of the Fort Constantine country.

 

The Kalkadoons would mark their territory boundaries with an emu or cranes foot that was either painted onto rocks and trees or carved into the hard granite rock. This was also a warning for other Aboriginal clans not to pass these boundaries.

 

The Kalkadoon (Kalkatungu) are descendants of an Indigenous Australian tribe living in the Mount Isa region of Queensland. Their forefather tribe has been called 'the Elite of the Aboriginal warriors of Queensland'. In 1884 they were massacred at "Battle Mountain" by settlers and police.

 

The first Europeans to visit the area were explorers Burke and Wills who crossed the Cloncurry River in 1861. Though their journals make no mention of the tribe, their passing through is said to have been recorded in Kalkatungu oral history, and in their language they coined the term walpala (from 'white feller') to denote Europeans. Three parties sent out to search for Burke and Wills, led respectively by John McKinlay, William Landsborough, and Frederick Walker, passed through the general area. Walker, a former commander of the Dawson native police, shot 12 natives dead and wounded several more, just to the north east of Kalkatungu territory.

 

Another early European settler, Edward Palmer, who was described by George Phillips as 'one of that brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country', settled on the edge of Kalkatungu country in 1864, at Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River. Decades later, Palmer described the natives as a peculiar people of which little was known. Palmer was critical of the use of native police and interested in indigenous tribes. His station lands did not cover any Kalkatungu sacred sites, he did not object to their presence in the vicinity, and found no problem in his relations with the Kalkatungu. He tried to learn their language. Ernest Henry arrived in 1866, discovering, with the assistance of Kalkatungu guides, copper deposits the following year, and founded the Great Australia Mine. He successfully enlisted some Kalkatungu people to work one of these mines. A short attempt at settlement by W. and T. Brown at Bridgewater in 1874 experienced, like Palmer, no difficulties with the indigenous owners of the land.

 

The Scottish settler Alexander Kennedy then took up land in the area in 1877. He had managed, since his arrival in 1861, to accumulate land holdings of some 4,800 sq. miles, holding 60,000 cattle, and established himself in a residence he built, called Buckingham Downs. Kennedy is thought to have begun the troubles with the native peoples of the area by instigating murderous assaults on the Kalkatungu. Iain Davidson describes him as 'the man who led the destruction of the tribes of North West Central Queensland.'

 

The traditional white heroic narrative version of what then occurred drew on the account provided by Sir Wilmot Hudson Fysh in 1933. According to this version, the Kalkatungu was by nature a hostile and bellicose tribe, exceptionally brave with 'primitive' military cunning and guerilla-like tactics of strategic withdrawals to the mountains to evade reprisals for their savagery. They were eventually vanquished and broken after a last stand against men like Alexander Kennedy.

 

Source: Ian Withnall, & Kalkadoon PBC (www.kalkadoonpbc.com.au)

Amazing Stories / Magazin-Reihe

- Thomas Richard Jones / Reprisal

(art: ?)

Editor: Hugo Gernsback

Experimenter Publishing Co. / USA 1928

Reprint: Comic-Club NK 2010

ex libris MTP

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Stories

Taken on September 2, 2018, during a 3 day photographic trip to the Prefecture of FTHIOTIDA - ΦΘΙΩΤΙΔΑ central Greece with my wife Theresa Jane Brown.

 

THE GORGOPOTAMOS BRIDGE - ΓΕΦΥΡΑ ΓΟΡΓΟΠΟΤΑΜΟΥ

The bridge was built in 1905, putting the Gorgopotamos village on the map for the strategic purpose the bridge played during World War II. The name of Gorgopotamos became famous during World War II, when 150 Greek partisans, following plans drawn by E. C. W. "Eddie" Myers and assisted by a group of British SOE officers, which included C.M. Woodhouse, blew up the railroad bridge over the Gorgopotamos river on November 25, 1942 as part of Operation Harling and cut off the enemy-controlled route between Thessaloniki and Athens. The blast ruined two of the six piers of the bridge. In an act of reprisals, the German occupation forces executed 16 Greek locals. The area around the bridge has been designated a national monument.

After World War II and the Greek Civil War, the bridge of Gorgopotamos was partially rebuilt, the piers being replaced with steel pylons.

 

Thanassis Fournarakos - Θανάσης Φουρναράκος

Professional Photographer, Athens, Greece

(retired in 2011, born in 1946).

 

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

None of my images may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, manipulated or used on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission. THANK YOU!

 

This photograph has achieved the following highest awards:

* THE GALAXY - HALL OF FAME

* THE GALAXY STARS - HALL OF FAME

 

While we didn’t manage to identify yesterday’s military man, today we know the where, the when, and the why. The burning of the centre of Cork city by Crown forces in 1920 was a monstrous act of vandalism. This fine Hogan-Wilson photograph gives some idea of the scale and the devastation inflicted!

 

Just to remind people that there is an important exhibition of photographs from this period in Irish history showing in the National Photographic Archive, Meeting House Square, Dublin entitled “From Turmoil to Truce”

 

Photographer: W. D. Hogan

 

Collection: Hogan Wilson Collection

 

Date: Circa 13 December 1920

 

NLI Ref.: HOGW 100

 

You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie

 

As I've written before, another main goal of my October Minnesota reprisal sojourn was to fill in some gaps from the trip back in the spring. I wanted to visit the Lake Superior Railroad Museum, ride the affiliated North Shore Scenic Railroad, and chase the Two Harbors excursion that traverses the full length of their line. I accomplished all three on Friday including a chase of the excursion and then a fabulously fun trip on the annual Beer Train later that evening.

 

While it's hard to choose what is the coolest locomotive on their roster, almost all of which run, I did score the only one that could be considered on 'home rails.' One of the main goals of the chase was a shot in Duluth proper from one of several pedestrian bridges along the Lakewalk where I could capture the train beside the blue waters of Kitchigami. My first choice was behind the old Fitgers Brewing in order to incorporate some of the historic structures into the photo, but alas this time of year it is fully shadowed by the afternoon. So I chose this as my second choice, the famous Ivy Wall beneath Leif Erikson Park and the beautiful Duluth Rose Garden at about MP 1.6.

 

Leading the way very much on home rails is DMIR 193 an EMD SD18 blt. Apr. 1960 as the last of nineteen of the model purchased by the road. Chop nosed in 1992 the the locomotive was donated to the museum in 1998 and then repainted in 2002 at the Missabe's Proctor shops. Coupled behind her is another piece of home road equipment, DMIR C-205 built by International Car in 1952 as a cupola caboose then converted in 1975 to a bay window. Sold in 2000 to Northshore Mining it was never used there and was purchased two years later by the museum with funds raised by the Missabe Railroad Historical Society.

 

The North Shore Scenic Railroad operates on 26 miles of government owned track which was originally the Duluth and Iron Range Railway's mainline built as an extension from Two Harbors (then known as Agate Bay). Opened in 1886 only two years after Charlemagne Tower's road hauled its first trainload of ore down from the Soudan Mine, this extension provided the D&IR with a physical connection to the rest of the national rail network. Known as the Lake Division under the auspices of the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range it had revenue passenger service until 1961 between Duluth and Ely. As it was not a route for ore trains the line's utility diminished until it was shuttered in 1982 and then petitioned for abandonment a few years later. St. Louis and Lake County banded together to form a regional railroad authority and then purchased the line from the DMIR in 1988. Tourist trains began running in 1990 and for the first half dozen years it was attempted to operate as a for profit entity. Today the railroad is a volunteer run non profit arm of the museum running over 700 trains during the regular May to October season and then more around the holidays!

 

Duluth, Minnesota

Friday October 6, 2023

Events:

1192 – Minamoto no Yoritomo becomes Seii Tai Shōgun and the de facto ruler of Japan (12th day of the 7th month on the Japanese calendar)

1331 – King Stephen Uroš III, after months of anarchy, surrenders to his son and rival Stephen Dušan, who succeeds as King of Serbia.

1680 – Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe from Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt.

1689 – The Battle of Dunkeld in Scotland.

1770 – James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.

1772 – King Gustav III completes his coup d'état by adopting a new Constitution, ending half a century of parliamentary rule in Sweden and installing himself as an enlightened despot.

1778 – American Revolutionary War: British forces begin besieging the French outpost at Pondichéry.

1808 – Battle of Vimeiro: British and Portuguese forces led by General Arthur Wellesley defeat French force under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro, Portugal, the first Anglo-Portuguese victory of the Peninsular War.

1810 – Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, Marshal of France, is elected Crown Prince of Sweden by the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates.

1821 – Jarvis Island is discovered by the crew of the ship, Eliza Frances.

1831 – Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion.

1852 – Tlingit Indians destroy Fort Selkirk, Yukon Territory.

1863 – Lawrence, Kansas is destroyed by Confederate guerrillas Quantrill's Raiders in the Lawrence Massacre.

1879 – The Virgin Mary, along with St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, reportedly appears at Knock Shrine in Knock, County Mayo, Ireland.

1883 – An F5 tornado strikes Rochester, Minnesota, leading to the creation of the Mayo Clinic.

1888 – The first successful adding machine in the United States is patented by William Seward Burroughs.

1897 – Oldsmobile, a brand of American automobiles was founded.

1911 – The Mona Lisa is stolen by a Louvre employee.

1918 – World War I: The Second Battle of the Somme begins.

1942 – World War II: The flag of Nazi Germany is installed atop the Mount Elbrus, the highest peak of the Caucasus mountain range.

1942 – World War II: the Guadalcanal Campaign: American forces defeat an attack by Imperial Japanese Army soldiers in the Battle of the Tenaru.

1944 – Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, begins.

1944 – World War II: Canadian and Polish units capture the strategically important town of Falaise, Calvados, France.

1945 – Physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1957 – The Soviet Union successfully conducts a long-range test flight of the R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile.

1959 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union. Hawaii's admission is currently commemorated by Hawaii Admission Day

1961 – Motown releases what would be its first #1 hit, "Please Mr. Postman" by The Marvelettes.

1963 – Xá Lợi Pagoda raids: the Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, vandalizes Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.

1968 – Nicolae Ceaușescu, leader of Communist Romania, publicly condemns the Soviet led Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, encouraging the Romanian population to arm itself against possible Soviet reprisals.

1968 – James Anderson, Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

1969 – An Australian, Denis Michael Rohan, sets the Al-Aqsa Mosque on fire, a major catalyst of the formation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

1971 – A bomb exploded in the Liberal Party campaign rally in Plaza Miranda, Manila, Philippines with several anti-Marcos political candidates injured.

1976 – Operation Paul Bunyan at Panmunjom, South Korea.

1979 – Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defects to the United States.

1982 – Lebanese Civil War: The first troops of a multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestine Liberation Organization's withdrawal from Lebanon.

1983 – Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila International Airport (now renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport).

1986 – Carbon dioxide gas erupts from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing up to 1,800 people within a 20-kilometer range.

1991 – Latvia declares renewal of its full independence after the occupation of Soviet Union.

1991 – Coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.

1992 – Ruby Ridge Standoff in Idaho

1993 – NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft.

2001 – NATO decides to send a peace-keeping force to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

2001 – The Red Cross announces that a famine is striking Tajikistan, and calls for international financial aid for Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Charles Gesner van der Voort (1916-1991) and Dorone van den Brandeler shared a 'mess' in Shanghai, while working there for Dutch companies Holland-China Trading Company and Java-China-Japan Line. Dorone arrived in 1935, Charles in 1939. After the outbreak of WWII in The Netherlands, many young men abroad were called to arms. Charles had a brother serving in the army and was exempted, Dorone van den Brandeler went to England to join Princess Irene Brigade. In January 1942, he was sent to the Netherlands East Indies, with Insulinde Corps, together with his childhood friend Lou Bierens de Haan. Upon arrival in February 1942, the Netherlands East Indies were captured by the Japanese and the troops remained in Ceylon, current Sri Lanka. After training in Ceylon and British India, they were sent to Australia, where they served with NEFIS III, Netherlands East Indies Forces Intelligence Service. Under command of Dorone van den Brandeler, one of the missions was to the Digul river area in Dutch New Guinea, to investigate Japanese presence in the area. They were helped by local Dutch representatives and Papua population.

 

Dorone van den Brandeler's widow told me stories of this period in her husband's life. She mentioned photos made by her husband's friend Lou Bierens de Haan. It triggered a search for relatives and I found Lou Bierens de Haan's daughters, who provided me with a description of this period by their father, in a letter to his parents at the end of the war. He had donated his photo album to Cavalry Museum in Amersfoort, who kindly provided me access to these unique images, which I could use for my book, "Charles in Shanghai".

 

It was a wonderful experience to meet with Lou Bierens de Haan's daughters and other relatives at Cavalry Museum to review their father's album, when they were in the Netherlands for a family reunion.

 

Dr. Jack Ford, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) at the University of Queensland, wrote a book about Australian-Dutch cooperation during WWII, "Allies in a Bind, Australia and the Netherlands East Indies in the Second World War" (Loganholme: Netherlands Ex-Servicemen and Women’s Association, Queensland branch, 1996). For the book, he corresponded with many NEFIS veterans.

 

Courtesy Cavalry Museum, Amersfoort

www.cavaleriemuseum.nl/Engels/index.html

 

Dutch National Archives (Nationaal Archief) have the report Dorone van den Brandeler filed about this mission, I visited the archives with his widow Jacqueline. "There was very little knowledge about this part of Dutch history. After WWII, if my husband mentioned the war in New Guinea, many people did not know about it, even at government levels. It would be nice if there is recognition for these men's efforts when the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII is celebrated in the Netherlands in 2020."

 

Lou Bierens de Haan, who took this photograph, was second in command at ZES (Z Experimental Station) at Cairns, Australia, which was led by Major Mollinger. At ZES, secret agents were trained for NEFIS.

 

N.E.F.I.S. Wikipedia: Netherlands East Indies Forces Intelligence Service (also known by the acronym NEFIS), was a Dutch World War II era intelligence and special operations unit operating mainly in the Japanese-occupied Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). Soon after the evacuation from the Netherlands East Indies, a Dutch intelligence service was set up in Australia on the instructions of the Dutch Commander of the forces in the East, Helfrich. … A new division, NEFIS III, was created for this purpose in May 1943. It sent secret agents into occupied territory by submarine or plane to gather intelligence on the local political and military situation. If possible, these agents had to make contact with the local population to gather information and set up undercover organisations. NEFIS III had little success with the deployment of secret agents. Despite the training course, the agents lacked experience and expertise. It was also difficult to win support from the local population in the Netherlands East Indies, as they feared Japanese reprisals. NEFIS III, and its predecessor, the Dutch section of the ISD, sent 36 teams into enemy territory. Over 250 agents were involved in these operations, and 39 lost their lives.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_Experimental_Station

Bluff Rock sits beside the New England Highway ten kilometres south of Tenterfield. The precise details of what happened here on October 17, 1844 remain somewhat clouded but the general contours of the story are well known and stand as an example of what took place across Australia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as white settlement expanded into Aboriginal homelands. By 1840 pastoralists, including one Edward Irby, had begun to take up runs on the northern tablelands of New South Wales. Local Aborigines fiercely resisted this incursion into their country. With justification the settlers were regarded as foreign invaders, and in the course of the Aboriginal resistance shepherds were attacked and sheep were speared.

 

As a hedge against possible prosecution, contemporary reports of reprisals by white settlers were often guarded and there are conflicting stories of what transpired at Bluff Rock. A second hand account from a later date relates how, in response to Aboriginal attacks on shepherds and sheep, men from Irby’s station set out in pursuit. It was said that when they caught up with the “culprits” at Pyes Creek, the Aborigines retreated across country to Bluff Rock where they were thrown from the top onto the rocks below. According to this report, most were killed and many were injured.

 

Somewhat more circumspectly, Irby himself describes how one of his shepherds, Robinson by name, was killed and how he and three others set out to find those responsible. In his journal he records the dark deeds of that day:

 

The blacks saw us coming and hid themselves among the rocks, One, in his haste, dropped poor Robinson’s coat so we knew we were onto the right tribe. If they had taken to their heels they might have got away, instead of doing so, they got their fighting men to attack us. So we punished them severely and proved our superiority to them.

 

Like many of his time, Irby seems not to have questioned his natural right to mete out punishment to those he saw as murders and thieves. Among pioneering pastoralists there was little recognition of the fact that they, the white settlers, were the intruders and that the Aborigines were legitimately defending their land and their way of life. The incident at Bluff Rock is but one small event in what historians such as Henry Reynolds refer to as the Aboriginal Wars. In this series of frontier skirmishes that followed the expansion of white settlement, it is estimated that some 2,500 whites lost their lives and at least 30,000 Aborigines were killed.

 

© Irwin Reynolds, all rights reserved. If you are interested in using one of my images or would like a high quality fine art print, please send me an email (irwinreynolds@me.com)

Taken on September 1, 2018, during a 3 day photographic trip to the Prefecture of FTHIOTIDA - ΦΘΙΩΤΙΔΑ central Greece with my wife Theresa Jane Brown.

 

YPATI - ΥΠΑΤΗ

Ypati is a town about 30 km west of Thermopylae and north of the Oeta mountains which was founded in the late 5th/early 4th century BC.

During the Axis occupation 15 inhabitants were shot as reprisals for the Gorgopotamos bridge sabotage in 1942, and later, on 17 June 1944, the Germans surrounded the town as part of reprisals for attacks by EAM-ELAS partisans based in the region. They executed 28 people, wounded another 30, and burned down 375 out of the town's 400 buildings. A memorial in the town centre commemorates the event and Ypati has been declared a "martyr city" by the Greek state.

 

Thanassis Fournarakos - Θανάσης Φουρναράκος

Professional Photographer, Athens, Greece

(retired in 2011, born in 1946).

 

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

None of my images may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, manipulated or used on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission. THANK YOU!

View across the Clubhouse Dam in the town of Nottingham Road (population 1,277) in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, 37 km north-west of Howick. This little town is popular with weekenders from Durban and Pietermaritzburg, and given its proximity to the N3 motorway, even from Gauteng.

 

Founded in 1905, it is and named after the Nottingham Regiment which was stationed in nearby Fort Nottingham. Livestock theft by local San people led to the 1869 Reprisal launched from Fort Nottingham. The campaign, which established the boundaries in the settlers' favor, was commemorated in some of the final San rock art.

 

This description incorporates some text from the English Wikipedia.

The Kalkadoon People, also known as the Kalkatungu, Kalkatunga, or Kalkadungu, ruled what is called the Emu Foot Province and have been living on these lands for over 40 thousand years. The Kalkadoon People owned vast tracts of land extending from McKinley’s Gap in the east where they joined the Goa tribe of the Winton district to Gunpowder Creek which was the territory of the Waggaboongas. On the southern side of their territory the Kalkadoons were touched upon by the Pitta-Pitta tribe of the Boulia district, and on the northern side by the Mittakoodi of the Fort Constantine country.

 

The Kalkadoons would mark their territory boundaries with an emu or cranes foot that was either painted onto rocks and trees or carved into the hard granite rock. This was also a warning for other Aboriginal clans not to pass these boundaries.

 

The Kalkadoon (Kalkatungu) are descendants of an Indigenous Australian tribe living in the Mount Isa region of Queensland. Their forefather tribe has been called 'the Elite of the Aboriginal warriors of Queensland'. In 1884 they were massacred at "Battle Mountain" by settlers and police.

 

The first Europeans to visit the area were explorers Burke and Wills who crossed the Cloncurry River in 1861. Though their journals make no mention of the tribe, their passing through is said to have been recorded in Kalkatungu oral history, and in their language they coined the term walpala (from 'white feller') to denote Europeans. Three parties sent out to search for Burke and Wills, led respectively by John McKinlay, William Landsborough, and Frederick Walker, passed through the general area. Walker, a former commander of the Dawson native police, shot 12 natives dead and wounded several more, just to the north east of Kalkatungu territory.

 

Another early European settler, Edward Palmer, who was described by George Phillips as 'one of that brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country', settled on the edge of Kalkatungu country in 1864, at Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River. Decades later, Palmer described the natives as a peculiar people of which little was known. Palmer was critical of the use of native police and interested in indigenous tribes. His station lands did not cover any Kalkatungu sacred sites, he did not object to their presence in the vicinity, and found no problem in his relations with the Kalkatungu. He tried to learn their language. Ernest Henry arrived in 1866, discovering, with the assistance of Kalkatungu guides, copper deposits the following year, and founded the Great Australia Mine. He successfully enlisted some Kalkatungu people to work one of these mines. A short attempt at settlement by W. and T. Brown at Bridgewater in 1874 experienced, like Palmer, no difficulties with the indigenous owners of the land.

 

The Scottish settler Alexander Kennedy then took up land in the area in 1877. He had managed, since his arrival in 1861, to accumulate land holdings of some 4,800 sq. miles, holding 60,000 cattle, and established himself in a residence he built, called Buckingham Downs. Kennedy is thought to have begun the troubles with the native peoples of the area by instigating murderous assaults on the Kalkatungu. Iain Davidson describes him as 'the man who led the destruction of the tribes of North West Central Queensland.'

 

The traditional white heroic narrative version of what then occurred drew on the account provided by Sir Wilmot Hudson Fysh in 1933. According to this version, the Kalkatungu was by nature a hostile and bellicose tribe, exceptionally brave with 'primitive' military cunning and guerilla-like tactics of strategic withdrawals to the mountains to evade reprisals for their savagery. They were eventually vanquished and broken after a last stand against men like Alexander Kennedy.

 

Afghan History In Northwest Queensland:

 

The area around Bulonga and Ballara, North West Queensland, was once dotted with small going concerns of copper mining early in the 1900s. However, only a couple of smelters were available to process ore, namely Bulonga and Kuridala. Afghan camel drivers came to Australia with camels and proved critical to the transport of the ore from the small mines to the processing smelters. They left their mark through small sets of remains across the district and the herds of wild camels that can still be seen in the area today.

 

Source: Cloncurry Trails, & Kalkadoon PBC (www.kalkadoonpbc.com.au)

Sherkin Island Abbey was a Franciscan Friary, is located near the pier and was established in 1460 by Fineen O’ Driscoll, chieftain of the area.

 

Evident from the now ruin the Franciscan Friary had a turbulent past. In 1537 the Friary and its residents found themselves at the forefront of a reprisal on the O’Driscoll Chieftain. Most of The Franciscan Friary was laid to ruin and by 1601 the building only consisted of a croft, a cemetery and a few ruined buildings however it continued to function.

 

In 1650 it was seized by Cromwell’s parliamentary soldiers and given to tge Beecher family. In 1895 the family handed the abbey over to the then board of works.

 

That is until 1650 when it was confiscated by Cromwellian soldiers. It was then given to the Beecher family who became the islands most prominent landlords. In 1895, Sir Henry Beecher handed it over to the Board of Works and it is now under the protection of the Irish National Monuments Service.

 

Camera: Contax G1 + Carl Zeiss 45mm f2 Planar Lens

 

For more 35nn Archive Images of Ireland please click here: www.jhluxton.com/The-35mm-Film-Archive/Ireland

This poignant shot shows a young man repairing a house that had apparently been damaged in a raid during the "War of Independence" (1919-1921) and is a reminder of significantly less-certain times. The younger child seems nonplussed - even if her (or his?) ball is a bit deflated.

 

Thanks to sharon.corbet, inverarra and swordscookie for the additional information on the reprisal events which preceded this photo - and indeed for reminding us of the supposed "miraculous" events which occurred around the same time and perhaps gave people some hope in an otherwise dark period. As swordscookie and derangedlemur point-out, identifying the specific house may be difficult - so for now we've just mapped to the centre of Templemore...

  

Photographer: W. D. Hogan

 

Collection: Hogan-Wilson Collection

 

Date:Circa 1921

 

NLI Ref.: HOGW 90

 

You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie

 

The Kalkadoon People, also known as the Kalkatungu, Kalkatunga, or Kalkadungu, ruled what is called the Emu Foot Province and have been living on these lands for over 40 thousand years. The Kalkadoon People owned vast tracts of land extending from McKinley’s Gap in the east where they joined the Goa tribe of the Winton district to Gunpowder Creek which was the territory of the Waggaboongas. On the southern side of their territory the Kalkadoons were touched upon by the Pitta-Pitta tribe of the Boulia district, and on the northern side by the Mittakoodi of the Fort Constantine country.

 

The Kalkadoons would mark their territory boundaries with an emu or cranes foot that was either painted onto rocks and trees or carved into the hard granite rock. This was also a warning for other Aboriginal clans not to pass these boundaries.

 

The Kalkadoon (Kalkatungu) are descendants of an Indigenous Australian tribe living in the Mount Isa region of Queensland. Their forefather tribe has been called 'the Elite of the Aboriginal warriors of Queensland'. In 1884 they were massacred at "Battle Mountain" by settlers and police.

 

The first Europeans to visit the area were explorers Burke and Wills who crossed the Cloncurry River in 1861. Though their journals make no mention of the tribe, their passing through is said to have been recorded in Kalkatungu oral history, and in their language they coined the term walpala (from 'white feller') to denote Europeans. Three parties sent out to search for Burke and Wills, led respectively by John McKinlay, William Landsborough, and Frederick Walker, passed through the general area. Walker, a former commander of the Dawson native police, shot 12 natives dead and wounded several more, just to the north east of Kalkatungu territory.

 

Another early European settler, Edward Palmer, who was described by George Phillips as 'one of that brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country', settled on the edge of Kalkatungu country in 1864, at Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River. Decades later, Palmer described the natives as a peculiar people of which little was known. Palmer was critical of the use of native police and interested in indigenous tribes. His station lands did not cover any Kalkatungu sacred sites, he did not object to their presence in the vicinity, and found no problem in his relations with the Kalkatungu. He tried to learn their language. Ernest Henry arrived in 1866, discovering, with the assistance of Kalkatungu guides, copper deposits the following year, and founded the Great Australia Mine. He successfully enlisted some Kalkatungu people to work one of these mines. A short attempt at settlement by W. and T. Brown at Bridgewater in 1874 experienced, like Palmer, no difficulties with the indigenous owners of the land.

 

The Scottish settler Alexander Kennedy then took up land in the area in 1877. He had managed, since his arrival in 1861, to accumulate land holdings of some 4,800 sq. miles, holding 60,000 cattle, and established himself in a residence he built, called Buckingham Downs. Kennedy is thought to have begun the troubles with the native peoples of the area by instigating murderous assaults on the Kalkatungu. Iain Davidson describes him as 'the man who led the destruction of the tribes of North West Central Queensland.'

 

The traditional white heroic narrative version of what then occurred drew on the account provided by Sir Wilmot Hudson Fysh in 1933. According to this version, the Kalkatungu was by nature a hostile and bellicose tribe, exceptionally brave with 'primitive' military cunning and guerilla-like tactics of strategic withdrawals to the mountains to evade reprisals for their savagery. They were eventually vanquished and broken after a last stand against men like Alexander Kennedy.

 

Source: Kalkadoon PBC (www.kalkadoonpbc.com.au).

Photo of my wife Theresa Jane Brown and me taken on August 31, 2018, during our 3 day photographic trip to the Prefecture of FTHIOTIDA - ΦΘΙΩΤΙΔΑ central Greece.

 

YPATI - ΥΠΑΤΗ

Ypati is a town about 30 km west of Thermopylae and north of the Oeta mountains which was founded in the late 5th/early 4th century BC.

During the Axis occupation 15 inhabitants were shot as reprisals for the Gorgopotamos bridge sabotage in 1942, and later, on 17 June 1944, the Germans surrounded the town as part of reprisals for attacks by EAM-ELAS partisans based in the region. They executed 28 people, wounded another 30, and burned down 375 out of the town's 400 buildings. A memorial in the town centre commemorates the event and Ypati has been declared a "martyr city" by the Greek state.

 

Thanassis Fournarakos - Θανάσης Φουρναράκος

Professional Photographer, Athens, Greece

(retired in 2011, born in 1946).

 

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

None of my images may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, manipulated or used on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission. THANK YOU!

Photo of me taken on September 2, 2018, during a 3 day photographic trip to the Prefecture of FTHIOTIDA - ΦΘΙΩΤΙΔΑ central Greece with my wife Theresa Jane Brown.

 

THE GORGOPOTAMOS RIVER - ΓΟΡΓΟΠΟΤΑΜΟΣ

The bridge over the river was built in 1905, putting the Gorgopotamos village on the map for the strategic purpose the bridge played during World War II. The name of Gorgopotamos became famous during World War II, when 150 Greek partisans, following plans drawn by E. C. W. "Eddie" Myers and assisted by a group of British SOE officers, which included C.M. Woodhouse, blew up the railroad bridge over the Gorgopotamos river on November 25, 1942 as part of Operation Harling and cut off the enemy-controlled route between Thessaloniki and Athens. The blast ruined two of the six piers of the bridge. In an act of reprisals, the German occupation forces executed 16 Greek locals. The area around the bridge has been designated a national monument.

After World War II and the Greek Civil War, the bridge of Gorgopotamos was partially rebuilt, the piers being replaced with steel pylons.

 

Thanassis Fournarakos - Θανάσης Φουρναράκος

Professional Photographer, Athens, Greece

(retired in 2011, born in 1946).

 

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

None of my images may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, manipulated or used on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission. THANK YOU!

The Kalkadoon People, also known as the Kalkatungu, Kalkatunga, or Kalkadungu, ruled what is called the Emu Foot Province and have been living on these lands for over 40 thousand years. The Kalkadoon People owned vast tracts of land extending from McKinley’s Gap in the east where they joined the Goa tribe of the Winton district to Gunpowder Creek which was the territory of the Waggaboongas. On the southern side of their territory the Kalkadoons were touched upon by the Pitta-Pitta tribe of the Boulia district, and on the northern side by the Mittakoodi of the Fort Constantine country.

 

The Kalkadoons would mark their territory boundaries with an emu or cranes foot that was either painted onto rocks and trees or carved into the hard granite rock. This was also a warning for other Aboriginal clans not to pass these boundaries.

 

The Kalkadoon (Kalkatungu) are descendants of an Indigenous Australian tribe living in the Mount Isa region of Queensland. Their forefather tribe has been called 'the Elite of the Aboriginal warriors of Queensland'. In 1884 they were massacred at "Battle Mountain" by settlers and police.

 

The first Europeans to visit the area were explorers Burke and Wills who crossed the Cloncurry River in 1861. Though their journals make no mention of the tribe, their passing through is said to have been recorded in Kalkatungu oral history, and in their language they coined the term walpala (from 'white feller') to denote Europeans. Three parties sent out to search for Burke and Wills, led respectively by John McKinlay, William Landsborough, and Frederick Walker, passed through the general area. Walker, a former commander of the Dawson native police, shot 12 natives dead and wounded several more, just to the north east of Kalkatungu territory.

 

Another early European settler, Edward Palmer, who was described by George Phillips as 'one of that brave band of pioneer squatters who in the early sixties swept across North Queensland with their flocks and herds, settling, as if by magic, great tracts of hitherto unoccupied country', settled on the edge of Kalkatungu country in 1864, at Conobie, on the western bank of the Cloncurry River. Decades later, Palmer described the natives as a peculiar people of which little was known. Palmer was critical of the use of native police and interested in indigenous tribes. His station lands did not cover any Kalkatungu sacred sites, he did not object to their presence in the vicinity, and found no problem in his relations with the Kalkatungu. He tried to learn their language. Ernest Henry arrived in 1866, discovering, with the assistance of Kalkatungu guides, copper deposits the following year, and founded the Great Australia Mine. He successfully enlisted some Kalkatungu people to work one of these mines. A short attempt at settlement by W. and T. Brown at Bridgewater in 1874 experienced, like Palmer, no difficulties with the indigenous owners of the land.

 

The Scottish settler Alexander Kennedy then took up land in the area in 1877. He had managed, since his arrival in 1861, to accumulate land holdings of some 4,800 sq. miles, holding 60,000 cattle, and established himself in a residence he built, called Buckingham Downs. Kennedy is thought to have begun the troubles with the native peoples of the area by instigating murderous assaults on the Kalkatungu. Iain Davidson describes him as 'the man who led the destruction of the tribes of North West Central Queensland.'

 

The traditional white heroic narrative version of what then occurred drew on the account provided by Sir Wilmot Hudson Fysh in 1933. According to this version, the Kalkatungu was by nature a hostile and bellicose tribe, exceptionally brave with 'primitive' military cunning and guerilla-like tactics of strategic withdrawals to the mountains to evade reprisals for their savagery. They were eventually vanquished and broken after a last stand against men like Alexander Kennedy.

 

Source: Kalkadoon PBC (www.kalkadoonpbc.com.au)

Staghurst Noir

Acte 4: Reprisal

The Mistress flicks on the speaker, how much further man!

 

Almost out of this area ma’am, the Chauffer tells The Mistress, relief in his voice, as he thinks to himself that this was certainly not a good idea, to be motoring around in this area of the city! He continues on after a brief pause, then we will have some open road and I can make up for any time lost by red lights. Capital, the master says from the back, while The Mistress just lets out a snort. She then grab Edmund’s arm, soon we will realize all our dreams and be wealthy beyond all reason she hisses opportunely.

 

But, No sooner do the words leave her mouth, than with a loud bang, a back tyre of the Rolls Royce bursts, and the large car is brought to a hobbled stop. No one notices the shadowy figure darting from behind a bobby’s patrol box and slipping back into an alleyway across the street.

 

The chauffer gets out examining the damage. It’s a flat, Lordship, he states to his passengers, I will have to get the spare. It will go quicker with less weight on the back tyres he tells the couple in the back seat.

 

The Lordship and the Mistress begrudgingly come out of the back.

What caused it, Reginald? A bit of a shard of green glass, lodged in the tyre Sir! From that street tramps bottle no doubt, The Mistress snaps. Reginald said nothing, knowing that the bottle had been of clear glass, not green.

 

Hurry up then The Mistress shrilly shrieks, then she starts in on Edmund and how this is all his fault. Reginald looks at the bicker couple. Hurry, she says, he mumbles under his breath. The Mistress doesn’t have to be worrying about me hurrying the job, not with us being stranded in the worst part of the city, and with er dolled up the way she is. He glances at The Mistress standing on the sidewalk as he unfastens the flat, discern fully taking in account ,all of her shimmering opulence,

 

Opulence was an understatement, Reginal thought to himself, his eyes playing over the Pair ( and his were not the only ones!)The tailored long purple satin gown The Mistress is wearing, tightly cut to show off her still quite pleasant figure, shimmers as it is bathed in the dim light of a nearby flickering gas lamp. The ¼ sleeved gown covers her ample breasts, and falls spilling down to where it swishes about the spiked heels, dyed to match the gowns coloure perfectly. Over the gown she is wearing a matching bolero style satin jacket, with rhinestones running up each side and around the jackets collar. This shimmering ensemble is all peeking out from the long white sable cape she is wearing, though it is not all that cold this time of year, The Mistress is wearing it only to flaunt it about, much like her jewels.

 

From underneath the capes diamonded clasp hangs a part of those jewels ; the magnificent necklace, shimmering with 3 descending tiers of sapphires and diamonds. The Mistress’s long hair is up, held by a thin Tierra of brite diamonds. From her ears swing long glittering earrings, the gems and design matching her necklace. Wrapped around each of her svelte wrist are wide bracelets of diamonds, 5 rows wide, the middle row of each holding a string of diamonds a full 5 Carets . Slipped on 4 slender claw like fingers are rings, two of diamonds, two of Sapphires and Diamonds, all are rather large, probably a total of 10 carets in gems each. There was more value in pound notes in her jewelry than an average family living in these slums would see in a lifetime, he reckoned.

 

Reginald shakes his head, still mumbling, words to the effect that her he was, with a wealthy lady standing on the curb in this neighborhood, carrying around a small of fortune of jewels a she was, it would not be long before… but he never finishes the statement, for at that moment a petite figure detaches herself from the shadows of the alleyway directly behind the wealthy couple….

 

It was a young girl no older than the servant Maggie, dressed like a gypsy, a colourefully long silken l tiered skirt, white full sleeved blouse, and several silk scarves. Her slightly slanted, intelligent eyes were a brite green, flicking back and forth, taking in everything as she moved with an almost feline grace.

 

‘Ello Guvner, she said, slinking up behind The Lordship Edmund. Both the Lordship and The Mistress jump, stopping their bickering to take on this new threat. Reginald just ignores the action, working quickly to fix the roll’s tyre, figuring that at least he should be able to make a quick get-away if need be.

 

The girl wraps an arm around Edmunds waist, giggling, she swirls around in front of him, lifting up his bow tie. Wotcher yor doing in this parts, my pretty man, she teases, her voice seductively appealing. Edmunds face changes several shades of red. The Mistress moves in, and grabbing the young girl’s hand like she would a servant, pulls her briskly away from the rather awe struck Edmund. Look ere Missy, The Mistress screeches as the girl looks into her eyes. The Mistress notices that, unlike her servants, the young gypsy is not showing any fear, only a type of wry amusement. Look ere now, The Mistress says again, you getca your tarty ass out of here, and back into the hellish place you came from!

 

The Gypsy girl just smiles, looking at The Mistress like she had just said something profoundly canny, as she takes her free hand and pats the wrist of the hand holding hers tightly, Sorry Mum, didn’t mean no harm innit. The gypsy’s words and her cool demeanor, combined to let out a bit of steam from The Mistress’s rage. She lets go of the Gypsy girl’s hand, just leave us be, The mistress hisses. The Gypsy girl smiles wide, pats The Mistress on her backside, purring the words, will do so mum, but she dosen’t start to move, instead she darts her now free hand inside the mistress sable, and reaching up to the Mistress’s throat, lifts up the necklace. Pretty thing this me Lady, she smarms her words as her eyes meet and capture the Mistress‘s budging eyes . The young gypsy drops the necklace, and saunters off and goes back down the dark alleyway, with the Lord Edmund and The Mistress watching her, open mouthed, both rather in rage and shock at impertinence they had just witnessed.

 

Edmund looks at his wife, pulling a handkerchief from his waist coat, and wiping his reddened face with it. Of all the impudence Edmund, The Mistress says to him, er parents should have taught that one some manners, and if we were’nt in such a hurry, I would have done so Meself! Edmund just shakes his head in agreement, stuffing his silken handkerchief back into his waist coat pocket, he reached for his gold pocket watch to see how much time they have lost, but feels nothing but air. Wait, he stammers, my watch, the tramp, she lifted my watch his lordship utters in disbelief. The Mistress clucks at him, probably dropped off in the car after the last time you checked it, Edmund, you are always losing things!

 

She waves her hand under his nose, while she chastises him. The she suddenly looks at her bare wrist, shrieking, my bracelet, its gone. Me diamonds, The filthy tart has em! Edmund, go get it back. Edmund turns and begins to slowly, reluctantly, move towards the dark entrance to the alleyway where the thief had vanished. Move on you poor excuse for a man, The Mistress takes his arm, and pulls him along, I’ll go with you to make sure you do the job proper, she snarls, enraged that someone would have the audacity to steal her jewels from right under her nose, especially some filthy vagrant that looked no different than one of er idiot servants!

 

They both turn the corner, disappearing down the alleyway where the gypsy girl had vanished.

 

Reginald had looked up, watching them leave, shaking his head, but giving no voice to warning. He fails to notice the shadowy figure creeping along from the alley way on the opposite side of the road that slips behind the call box directly across from the Rolls. .

 

10 minutes later, as Reginald finishes with the tyre. He looks towards the alley for his still absent lord and mistress. He decides that he probably should drive off to get help, and makes for the driver’s seat. Suddenly he is coshed over the head with a tyre iron,and falls lifeless to the ground. A shadowy figure pushes him in the back, and getting behind the wheel, carefully drives off down the quickly smog filling avenue.

 

As the great car turned down a far corner, all was silent along the now deserted street and it’s walkways. A wind blew down through, swirling the fog, rustling leaves and bits of rubbish about, the only signs of movement.

 

But then, in the distance, a figure shuffles from around the opposite corner from where the stolen Rolls Royce had turned. The figure is wearing a uniform of the local constable, who is coming to one end of his nightly beat. Checking doors, relighting lamps, he slowly moves down the block, eventually passing the alleyway where the Gypsy girl had lured the wealthy Lord and Mistress of Staghurst manor.

 

He walks about five paces past the alley, when he suddenly stops, turns tail and walks back to its black entrance. As he peers curiously down its murky depths, something startles him, and he places a whistle to his lips…..

 

End of Acte 4, Watch for Acte 5 coming soon

 

Taken on August 31, 2018, during a 3 day photographic trip to the Prefecture of FTHIOTIDA - ΦΘΙΩΤΙΔΑ central Greece with my wife Theresa Jane Brown.

 

YPATI - ΥΠΑΤΗ

Ypati is a town about 30 km west of Thermopylae and north of the Oeta mountains which was founded in the late 5th/early 4th century BC.

During the Axis occupation 15 inhabitants were shot as reprisals for the Gorgopotamos bridge sabotage in 1942, and later, on 17 June 1944, the Germans surrounded the town as part of reprisals for attacks by EAM-ELAS partisans based in the region. They executed 28 people, wounded another 30, and burned down 375 out of the town's 400 buildings. A memorial in the town centre commemorates the event and Ypati has been declared a "martyr city" by the Greek state.

 

Thanassis Fournarakos - Θανάσης Φουρναράκος

Professional Photographer, Athens, Greece

(retired in 2011, born in 1946).

 

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

None of my images may be downloaded, copied, reproduced, manipulated or used on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit written permission. THANK YOU!

I was so excited to find this in the totally abandoned Palace of Culture in Pripyat, the town built nearby to shelter the employees of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Not very interesting in terms of colors, composition and other photographical characteristics, but very interesting, at least to me, for its historical value. The subject of the book with the blue cover is the "force of fast expansion" in the foreign policy of the USA, paying attention to the country's alleged subversive activities. Vladimir Ilich Lenin was captured with a few of his comrades by an unknown photographer. With Lenin's death more than sixty years prior to the Chernobyl disaster, this photo might highlight two important documents in the history of the collapsed Soviet Union.

 

I would like to thank my beloved Russian friend Lyudmila Izmaylova for her help with the translation of the book's title, clarifying its subject, and confirming my thoughts that I had recognized Lenin. Lyudmila lives in Krasnogorsk, a town adjacent to the northwestern boundary of Moscow, and she takes wonderful photos both in Krasnogorsk and Moscow.

    

"Recent concern about the resurgence of 'militaristic right-wing forces' in the United States and the policy intentions of the Carter White House is unquestionably genuine. After the heady days of the Nixon-Kissinger administration developments in Soviet-American relations since early 1975 have undoubtedly been dissapointing and worrisome. Nonetheless, the outlook of the Soviet Amerikanisty is not at all pessimistic. In fact, especially on the long run, they seem remarkably hopeful. (...) Current Soviet literature on détente assumes that there is a direct linkage between domestic and foreign politics, that, in the words of an artical in Pravda (very influential newspapers, literally meaning 'truth'), "the state of international relations has always influenced the development of internal processes." The author suggests, more particularly, that the "state of international relations" affects the rival tendencies in American politics in strikingly different ways. He writes: "international tension means that imperialist reaction, citing an external 'communist' threat, has an opportunity to give militarism a free reign, to surpress the workers' movement more openly and mercilessly, to institute a state of emergency in order to take reprisals against 'subversive' elements, and to flout elementary democratic rights. (...) That is why the easing, and even better the removal, of tension in the world arena knocks out of the hands of reaction the main key to 'turning the screws' and deceiving the working people. (...) Détente expands considerably the opportunities for the forces of (...) liberation to oppose imperialist pressure and use their growing political potential."

 

Morton Schwartz, Soviet perceptions of the United States, 1978, Berkely, Los Angeles, London, p. 173

- Didn't have the time to read the book shown above, nor I could read it, so I hope that the book quoted above explains more or less the same issues.

 

"As influential as he was in life, Lenin may have been more so in death. Over 100 million have lined up to view his mummified body. His memory has been used to support every change in Soviet policy and every new regime since his death. His theories inspired the successful revolutions of Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh; as well as countless other revolutionaries in countries full of oppressed and powerless people."

 

Vladimir Lenin; voice of revolution, A&E Biography, 2005, ASIN B000AABKX6

- Hard to summarize Lenin's legacy in a few sentences, particularly in terms of foreign relations, but this might be a good attempt.

"Man in front of the firing squad"

The execution was a reprisal for the resistance attack on a member of the then P.I.D. (Political Intelligence Service), the Dutch extension of the Sicherheitsdienst. The fifteen victims had been arrested by the occupying forces because they were suspected of resistance activities. They were locked up in the House of Detention on the Weteringenschans in Amsterdam. On March 7, 1945 (two months before the liberation) the prisoners were randomly assigned to be transported by truck to the Dreef in Haarlem. On the house side of the Dreef, about a hundred civilians were herded together by the occupying forces, while the fifteen prisoners were placed next to each other on the other side. The firing squad was then set up, led by Lieutenant Stover.

Blog entry: Rehana in Wonderland

Norwegen / Nordland / Lofoten / Moskenesøya - Reine

 

Moskenesøya (lit. 'Moskenes Island') is an island at the southern end of the Lofoten archipelago in Nordland county, Norway. The 186-square-kilometre (72 sq mi) island is shared between Moskenes Municipality and Flakstad Municipality. The tidal whirlpool system known as Moskstraumen, one of the strongest in the world, is located between Moskenesøya's Lofoten Point and the island of Mosken.

 

Geography

 

The island consists of an agglomeration of glaciated hills with the highest peak being the 1,029-metre-tall (3,376 ft) Hermannsdalstinden mountain. It is elongated from southwest to northeast and it is about 40 kilometres (25 mi) long and 10 km (6 mi) wide. It also has a very uneven shoreline. The island is connected to the nearby island of Flakstadøya by the Kåkern Bridge which is part of the European route E10 which ends on the Moskenesøya island at the village of Å.

 

Population

 

There are many villages on the island. Flakstad Municipality, on the northern part of the island, has several small villages including Fredvang, Selfjord, and Krystad. Moskenes Municipality, on the southern part of the island, has the villages of Å, Hamnøya, Moskenes, Reine, Sakrisøy, Sørvågen, and Tind, all located on the eastern side of the island. There were settlements on the western coast, but the last ones were abandoned in 1950s owing to severe storms.

 

Attractions

 

Most villages are frequently visited by tourists and have designed small exhibits of local peculiarities. So Sakrisøy has a museum of 2,500 dolls from all over Europe. Sørvågen contains a local department of Norsk Telemuseum (Norwegian Telecom Museum) which reflects the local history of telegraphy. In 1861, the island became part of the 170-kilometre-long (110 mi) Lofoten telegraph line with a station in Sørvågen (which became the Sørvågen museum in 1914), and in 1867 the line was connected with Europe. In 1906, a wireless telegraph system was installed in Sørvågen – the second in Europe after Italy – connecting Sørvågen with Røst island.

 

The village of Å is a traditional fishing place and nearly its entire territory is the 150 years old Norwegian Fishing Village Museum, which includes the Lofoten Stockfish Museum, a forge, a bakery, and a cod liver oil factory.

 

History

 

In the beginning of World War II, the island was occupied by the German Army. In December 1941, it was the venue of the Operation Anklet – a British Commando raid carried out by 300 men from No. 12 Commando and the Norwegian Independent Company 1. The landing party was supported by 22 ships from three navies – British, Norwegian and Polish. As a result, two German radio transmitters were destroyed and several small boats were captured or sunk. Importantly an operational Enigma coding machine was obtained from one of the sunken German patrol ships. Also, about 200 local Norwegians volunteered to serve in the Free Norwegian Forces.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Reine is the administrative centre of Moskenes Municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The fishing village is located on the island of Moskenesøya in the Lofoten archipelago, above the Arctic Circle, about 300 kilometres (190 mi) southwest of the city of Tromsø. Reine Church is located in the village.

 

The 0.28-square-kilometre (69-acre) village has a population (2023) of 297 and a population density of 1,061 inhabitants per square kilometre (2,750/sq mi). The Lofotposten newspaper is published in Svolvær and it covers news all over Lofoten, including Moskenes Municipality.

 

Overview

 

Reine has been a trading post since 1743. It was also a centre for the local fishing industry with a fleet of boats and facilities for fish processing and marketing. There was also a little light industry. In December 1941, the Germans burnt part of Reine in reprisal for a raid on the Lofoten Islands by British troops. Today, tourism is important, and despite its remote location, many thousands of people visit annually. The village is situated on a promontory just off the European route E10 highway, which passes through the village. Reine is located immediately to the south of Sakrisoya and Hamnøya.

 

Allers, the largest weekly magazine in Norway, selected Reine as the most beautiful village in Norway in the late 1970s. A photograph over Reine from the mountain Reinebringen (altitude 448 metres (1,470 ft)) has been used for the front page of several tourist brochures and books. In 1999, the painter Ingo Kühl set up a temporary studio in a rorbu and painted the view over the harbor to the mountain range.

 

In January 2015, Reine was the site from which Coca-Cola launched Coca-Cola life in Norway, referred to by the company as "our smallest launch yet". More than half the town's residents (around 200 out of 307) attended this open-air event despite being mid-winter.

 

In 2016–2019, a stone staircase was built up to Reinebringen, which made the mountain (previously considered steep, muddy, and difficult to climb) easily accessible.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Moskenesøy ist eine Insel im südlichen Teil der Lofoten in Norwegen. Der Hauptort ist Reine, weitere Orte auf Moskenesøy sind unter anderem Moskenes, Å, Sørvågen, Sund, Sakrisøy und Hamnøy.

 

Zwischen Moskenesøy und der südlichen Nachbarinsel Værøy gibt es besondere Gezeitenströmungen, genannt Moskenstraumen, die als Vorbild für den mythischen „Mahlstrom“ gelten.

 

Seit 2018 gehört die Westküste von Moskenesøy und vorgelagerte Inseln als Lofotodden-Nationalpark zu den Nationalparks in Norwegen.

 

Wirtschaft und Verkehr

 

Die Fischerei ist auch heute noch der wichtigste Wirtschaftsfaktor. Aber auch der Tourismus und die Zucht von Lachsen gewinnt an Bedeutung.

 

Die Europastraße 10 verbindet die Insel Moskenesøy mit den anderen nördlichen Inseln Lofotens und seit 2007 fährenfrei mit dem Festland. Fährverbindungen gibt es mit dem Festland bei Bodø sowie mit den südlichen Inselkommunen in Lofoten, Værøy und Røst.

 

Es gibt nach Leknes, Svolvær und Stamsund gute Busverbindungen. In Leknes ist ein Flugplatz mit Verbindung nach Bodø, in Svolvær und in Stamsund halten die Schiffe der Hurtigruten.

 

Sehenswürdigkeiten

 

Telekommunikationsmuseum in Sørvågen

Ortsbild in Reine

Museumsdorf Å

Stockfischmuseum in Å

Puppen- und Spielzeugmuseum in Sakrisøy

Kollhellaren, Höhle mit Höhlenmalereien auf der Westseite der Insel

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Reine ist das administrative Zentrum der Gemeinde Moskenes auf den Lofoten in Norwegen. Das Dorf hat 304 Einwohner (Stand: 1. Januar 2023) und existiert seit 1743. Heute ist der Tourismus wichtig. Trotz seiner abgelegenen Lage besuchen Tausende von Menschen jährlich diese Gegend.

 

Die Europastraße 10 verläuft durch Reine. Reine ist für seine landschaftliche Schönheit bekannt. Der Blick vom Berg Reinebringen auf Reine ist ein beliebtes Fotomotiv, das für die Titelseiten vieler touristischer Broschüren und Bücher verwendet wird. 1999 richtete sich der Maler Ingo Kühl in einem Rorbu ein provisorisches Atelier ein und malte den Blick über den Hafen auf das Bergmassiv.

 

(Wikpedia)

Constructed as a stand-off weapons platform focused around superluminal missiles, the Reprisal-class Guided Missile Destroyer fills both a fleet defense and long-range strike roll in the Solaris Confederation Navy. The main criticism of the class is the reliance on physical munitions and the lack of directed energy weapons as a secondary alternative once its supply of missiles have been expended.

 

Class: Reprisal Class Guided Missile Destroyer

 

Affiliation: Solaris Confederation Navy

 

Namesake: Concepts and attributes starting with the letter R.

 

Ships Constructed: Reprisal, Relentless, Repulse, Renown, Ravager, Redoubt, Resolute, Retribution

 

Armaments:

12x Superluminal Missile Vertical Launch System

2x Close-In Weapon System Point Defense

 

Drive Systems:

FTL: Space Fold Drive

Main: 2x Confined Plasma Thrusters

Secondary: 2x Conventional Plasma Thrusters

 

Stealth System: Plasma Wake Suppression

 

Defensive Systems:

Graviton Deflector Shields

Composite Armor Plating

Koro, cyborg Special Operator for the Kawashita Group, tracks a scientists called Dr. Markham who has been accused by many of his colleagues. The crime? Selling secrets to rival Octan Corporation. Markham runs half out of imagined fear, but half because the reputation of Kawashita means that someone will be coming, sooner or later, and didn't Markham think he saw a figure hopping between the Torii?

Broad daylight drug dealing and crack smoking in and around the Holloway Waitrose carpark has become a daily blight on the lives of neighbours, claims one terrified witness.

 

A woman, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, alleges a white van has been driving to Shelburne Road "three of four times a day" to sell hard drugs to a group of addicts who "just stand there and wait" for their next fix.

 

"I have lived in London all my life and I've never felt unsafe," she said. "I do now. It's getting out of control.

 

A tricky problem.......and a cocaine farmer in Columbia will earn a mere £75 a moth for his work. Why don't the world government just club together and buy all the coca plants directly from the farmers , pay more than the cartels and just completely take over the supply?