November 22, 2017 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
Source of Samples of Yersinia pestis for Gilles Vergnaud
Saddam Hussein was indeed developing
biological weapons perhaps like many nations and so the fear of French Defense
establishment was not unfounded.
The French Defense Ministry provided Gilles
Vergnaud with 61 samples of Yersinia pestis that they had obtained from Vietnam
in 1964-66.
What was so special about 1964?
I think you may very well know the answer
though not in its completeness.
1964 was the year when the Gulf of Tonkin
incident took place.
US was unofficially involved in Vietnam as
early as 1950 when American military advisors began arriving in what was then
French Indo China with American money supporting the French government who in
turn considered this tiny Asian nation as their colony.
America got interested in it simply because
communist giants Soviet Union and China were backing North Vietnam.
North Vietnamese government and the Viet
Cong wished to unify the two nations and they saw this as a colonial war to get
rid of European invaders.
For ten years United States played what can
be modestly put forth a fairly passive role and from 1961 onwards it began to
unload and amass its troops there.
Its megaships were already patrolling the
waters of Vietnam, and one them the destroyer USS Maddox happened to be
patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin.
Gulf of Tonkin is a body of water that is
located off the coast of Northern Vietnam and forms the northern arm of the
South China Sea.
Lyndon Johnson made a claim (most likely a
deliberate false one), that the destroyer USS Maddox was pursued by three North
Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats and then attacked with torpedoes and gun fire.
Strangely enough, in this so called
provocation, no American lives were lost and yet six North Vietnamese sailors
lost their lives and six more wounded.
Now gentleman, this indeed is a strange
tale if we ever heard one.
But it all makes sense if you knew what happened
after this is so called Gulf of Tonkin incident.
The incident was politicized miles away in Washington
DC where Congress passed the Gulf of Toknin Resolution on August 7, 1964.
This resolution granted President Lyndon
Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian nation whose government
faced the threat from “communist aggression”.
In short, it gave Lyndon Johnson complete
freedom to deploy conventional military force in Southeast Asia without formally
declaring war.
The American Empire was ready now to
demonstrate its awesome military might against a tiny Southeast Asian country which
would feature in almost all of the great movies that Hollywood would churn out
for the next two or three decades.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
Advertisements
Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
No comments:
Post a Comment