1970

Beatles confirmed split – bad vibes killed flower power. Lennon’s increasingly political role – Nixon set out for détente and to end America’s involvement on Vietnam – but this was a far cry from the Love and Peace demands – it involved more bombings, more killings, more repression, more injustice and more threats.

January 1970
A New Decade
On the 1st  of January France banned weapons sales to Israel.
Revolution in Libya – Gaddafi takes over.
The end of the 60s is underlined further. The last studio performance of The Beatles was on January 2nd followed by their protracted end.
Jim Morrison was sentenced to 8 months hard labour for indecent exposures & profanity. Overturned on appeal. The Doors began work on Morrison Hotel / Hard Rock Café – rawer, more basic sound – released in April and went to #4.

Mitrione was kidnapped and killed in Uruguay

CHINA
The US State Department announced Warsaw talks between US and China to resume on January 20th 1970 – it was the first time that a US spokesperson referred to the “PRC” by its official name. Ambassador Stoessel and State Dept officials went to meetings in Warsaw.
Stoessel made it clear to China that the US under Nixon would reduce US military presence in SE Asia and be willing to back away from US policy toward Taiwan.

The Band’s eponymous LP recorded in 1969, got a January release. Though not a big hit, was widely influential. The LP got to #9 in the US, and The Band enjoyed a run of minor US hits through 69 and 70. See p. 88 of the RnR Discography. LP Stage Fright followed in November (?), going to #5.

January 26 - Mick Jagger is fined £200 for possession of cannabis.
February 1970
There were negotiations between West Germany and the USSR over no-use of military power; first round on 30th January1970 to 18th February, second round 3rd to 21st of March1970.
Brandt signed the treaty between Moscow and West Germany on 12th August.
Brandt signed cooperation treaty between Poland and West Germany on the 7th December.
February 2nd – B52s bombed the HCM Trail in retaliation to VC raids in the south.

musical interlude
Beach Boys seemed washed up. They were America’s biggest band 10 years before. Now they could barely scrape into the charts.The Vietnam War and associated rasing in political awareness of the American youth had not been kind to them. They looked homespun, cosy and from another era.
Substandard (or was it?) albums – 20/20 released Feb 1969 made it to #68; single june 69 - Breakaway #63; single Feb 1970, Add Some Music To Your Day - #64; singles, Slip On Through, Sep 1970, and Tears In The Morning, November, failed to chart; LP in November Sunflower, failed to chart. It would be a while before they had another hit.
In the 70s soul music got funky. From Wiki - “By 1970, most members of James Brown's classic 1960s band had” walked out, soon after the release of he single “Funky Drummer” “and The Famous Flames singing group had disbanded, with original member Bobby Byrd the only one remaining with Brown. Brown and Byrd employed a new band that included future funk greats, such as bassist Bootsy Collins, Collins' guitarist brother Phelps "Catfish" Collins and trombonist and musical director Fred Wesley. This new backing band was dubbed "The J.B.'s", and soon became the most rhythmically innovative band in the history of popular music. The band made its debut on Brown's 1970 single "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine". Although The J.B.'s went through several lineup changes, with the first change occurring in 1971, the band remained Brown's most familiar backing band.
As well as the Funk – there was the rise of soul music as a major force in black and mainstream music. Freda Payne had  a major pop hit with “Band of Gold” written by H,D,H. The RnB stations didn’t take to it, so it sold as a pop record. Chairmen of the Board “Give Me Just A Little More Time” also H,D,H – the singer Norman Johnson with a unique voice.
Prog Rock too – an early example came from Britain in June – Barclay James Harvest debut released was not a hit – heavy use of the Mellotron. Panned by critics.

February 11 - Osumi, Japan's first satellite, is launched on a Lamba-4 rocket.
Magic Christian released on February 12th starring Sellers and Ringo Starr.
February 14 - "The Who: Live at Leeds" recorded.
February 17 - MacDonald family massacre: Jeffrey R. MacDonald kills wife and children at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, claiming drugged-out "hippies" did it.
Nixon made an address on February 18th – he announced to the general population that the US has been making overtures to China.
February 18 - jury finds the Chicago Seven defendants not guilty of conspiring to incite a riot, in charges stemming from the violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Five of the defendants are found guilty on the lesser charge of crossing state lines to incite a riot.
CHINA - Nixon made an address to Congress on Feb 18th and said that the US has made overtures to China  “which underlined our willingness to have more normal and constructive relationship.” Warsaw talks continued on February 20th.
CHINA  - Warsaw talks continued on February 20th.
On February 21st 1970 Kissinger began a series of secret talks with Le Duc Tho new leader of North Vietnam. These talks continued for two years while the Paris talks remained in deadlock. Half of all Americans polled believed war to be morally wrong.

March 1970
March 1 - Rhodesia severs its last tie with the United Kingdom, declaring itself a racially-segregated republic.
Second round of negotiations between West Germany and the USSR over no-use of military power on 3rd to 21st of March1970.
March 5 - The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty goes into effect, after ratification by 43 nations with clause that the west ignored – check - became valid on the 5th March 1970. Ratification documents went to Moscow, Washington and London.
March 6 - A bomb being constructed by members of the Weathermen and meant to be planted at a military dance in New Jersey, explodes, killing 3 members of the organization.
March 11 - Henry Marrow is murdered in a violent hate crime in Oxford, North Carolina.
Travel restrictions to China were eased on March 15th.
March 18 - General Lon Nol ousts Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia. “There is…incontrovertible evidence that Lon Nol was approached by agents of American military intelligence in 1969 and asked to overthrow the Sihanouk government.” ‘The Price of Power’, Seymour Hersh.
The Lennons suggested setting up a ‘loose organisation of radio stations – Peace station network (PSN) promoting peace and the 3 – 5 July 1970 Mosport Peace Festival. Head of radio station WJWL in Canada contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on 18th March 1970. He was told to write to the FBI.
The Mosport location was vetoed by the authorities and PSN got very little radio broadcast – Lennon never played in Canada again .
19th March 1970- The PM of East Germany, W.Stroph, met bundeskanzler Brandt in Erfut.
March 21 - The first Earth Day proclamation is issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto.
March 25 - The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight (700 mph/1127 km/h). UK and France in collaborative effort – but why?
March 31 - NASA's Explorer I, the first American satellite and Explorer program spacecraft, reenters Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit; the US army brought a murder charge against My Lai Massacre (see 1968) participant Captain Ernest L. Medina.

April 1970
10th April - McCartney announced that the Beatles had disbanded, and also the release of his new solo album. Finally McCartney sued in UK to dissolve the Beatles's legal partnership in December.

Nixon, shaken by the huge public dissent brought on by the Vietnam War atrocities, ordered a draft plan for redirecting and co-ordinating domestic intelligence-gathering activities. Tom Charles Huston, former Army intelligence officer, and something of an intellectual in the White House put together a 43 page document called the Huston Plan.  It recommends intensification of electronic surveillance and penetrations against individuals and groups “who pose major threats to national security”; increased use of mail covers (opening private mail); more surreptitious entries (burglaries); increased recruitment of informants on campuses; deployment of undercover military operatives to work against certain groups in the US; the creation of an inter-agency intelligence command responsible for internal security . Sounds like East Germany. After 5 days Nixon stopped it, but many of the elements in the report were implemented. Later….
Tom Charles Huston, a former Army Intelligence officer, was something of an intellectual in the Nixon White House, and his ambition, according to John Dean, was "to become the domestic equivalent of Henry Kissinger." Huston served on the White House's Internal Security Committee, which kept in touch with the police on demonstrations. He kept a scrambler telephone locked in his safe, and he studied Communism. Detente, however, was of little interest to Huston. Since the summer of 1969, at John Ehrlichman's request, he had been examining the role of foreign Communists in United States campus disorders.
To his disgust, neither the CIA nor the FBI had been able to discover such links. Huston was sure that this was because of the pusillanimity with which they approached the task - even J. Edgar Hoover was now reluctant to allow FBI "black bag jobs" and wiretaps without specific authorization from the Attorney General, and he refused absolutely to cooperate with the CIA. Huston was placed in charge of internal security affairs in the White House, and in April 1970 he persuaded Haldeman that the President must order the country's intelligence chiefs to draw up a coordinated plan for gathering intelligence on domestic dissidents. The meeting, fixed for early May, was postponed by the howls of anger that greeted the invasion [of Cambodia].

April 1 - Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, banning cigarette television advertisements in the United States, starting on January 1, 1971.
April 11 - Apollo program: Apollo 13 (Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert) is launched toward the Moon.
On April 13, an oxygen tank in the spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission and return in 4 days. Sounds like a good idea for an exciting film.
April 16 – Rev. Ian Paisley won a by-election to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland (??).
April 17: Apollo 13 crew after splashdown.
April 17 - Safe return & splashdown of Apollo 13 (Apollo program).
April 21st - CHINA - Brezhnev reacted to anti-soviet campaign in China. The same day the Beijing People’s Daily published an editorial calling for overthrow of the Soviet government.
22nd April - three leading Chinese papers condemned Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and attacked Brezhnev’s policies.
April 24 - China's first satellite (Dong Fang Hong 1) is launched to orbit using a Long March-1 Rocket (CZ-1).
April 29th - CHINA - The US eased trade restrictions still further, and the same day, the US forces in Indo-China, secretly invaded Cambodia.

Nixon admission triggers  protests
Nixon made a televised speech on april 30th to announce the invasion of US troops into Cambodia  to disrupt so-callled North Vietnamese sanctuaries. After Nixon’s announcement regarding the bombing of Cambodia the shit hit the fan. The public were stunned. And shocked. Stunned and shocked.
Four men resigned from Kissinger’s NSC staff (one was Roger Morris).
Kissinger claimed that this was “the cowardice of the eastern establishment.” There was a massive tidal wave of public protest across the USA. Nixon’s response was abusive calling the protesters “bums blowing up campuses”.

The morning after the invasion, before its full impact on America was clear, Nixon drove with Kissinger across the Potomac for a briefing at the Pentagon. His remarks in the corridor about "bums blowing up campuses," and "get rid of this war, there'll be another one," were published, and they fired the rage that was beginning to spread among students everywhere. His conduct inside the briefing was even more alarming. The Joint Chiefs were there, as was the Secretary of Defense; they had assembled to inform the Commander in Chief of the progress of the operation. To their consternation, Nixon did not seem interested. Agitated, he cut the briefing short and began an emotional harangue, using what one of those present calls "locker-room language." He repeated over and over again that he was, "going to clean up those sanctuaries," and he declared, "You have to electrify people with bold decisions. Bold decisions make history. Like Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill-a small event but traumatic, and people took notice." General Westmoreland tried to warn him that the sanctuaries could not really be cleaned up; within a month the monsoon would make the area impassable. (Laird later thanked Westmoreland for trying to introduce a note of realism.) Nixon was unimpressed and threatened to withdraw resources from Europe if they were needed in Indochina. "Let's go blow the hell out of them," he shouted, while the Chiefs, Laird and Kissinger sat mute with embarrassment and concern.
From all over the country Senator George McGovern received about $100,000 in contributions to buy television time to reply to Nixon. And, in Vietnam, Major Hal Knight, who was still burning the true records of the continuing Menu missions, was appalled at the President's assertion that until now the United States had respected Cambodia's neutrality. The invasion and its aftermath increased his disillusionment with the Army and later led to his decision to resign and eventually to reveal the Menu story. For Robert Drinan, a Jesuit priest running for the House of Representatives in the Fourth District of Massachusetts, the invasion was an enormous boon: ''It turned the district around," he said. He won the seat, and when Knight testified before Congress about Menu in July 1973, it was Drinan who, to the consternation of his more cautious colleagues, asserted that the President had been waging an illegal war and introduced an early motion to impeach.
After the invasion a third of American colleges and universities closed or were disrupted as the rejuvenated Vietnam Moratorium Committee called for "immediate massive protests." The President reacted belligerently in both public and private. He assured his staff that the fact that few enemy had been found was not important; it was the infrastructure of the sanctuaries that he was after. His language was crude: "It takes ten months to build up this complex and we're tearing the living bejeesus out of it. Anything that walked is gone after that barrage and the B-52 raids." He abused members of Congress who criticized the invasion, and he declared, "Don't worry about divisiveness. Having drawn the sword, don't take it out-stick it in hard . . . Hit 'em in the gut. No defensiveness. "
On many campuses the Reserve Officers Training Corps buildings were attacked or sacked. One, Kent State in Ohio, already had a connection with Cambodia: Sihanouk had once been given a fine welcome there by students who listened, raptly, to his denunciations of the American press. Afterward the Prince wrote that "My short stay at Kent somewhat consoled me for all the disappointments we have had with America and the Americans."
After the ROTC building was burned, Governor James Rhodes, taking his cue from Nixon and Agnew, declared that he would "eradicate" rioters and demonstrators there-"They're worse than the Brown Shirts and the Communist element and also the nightriders and the vigilantes. They're the worst type of people we have in America." The next day the National Guard that he had ordered onto the campus turned and, in a volley, shot fifteen students, four of them dead.
US troop were ordered into neutral Cambodia on the 1st of May and 15,000 US and SV attacked NVA supply bases in Cambodia. NVA and VC withdraw into Cambodia leaving their weapons and ammunition stores behind.
The White House reaction to the killings was that they were predictable. So was the response. Over the next few days between 75,000 and 100,000 protestants[sic] converged on Washington. Buses were drawn up all around the White House, and Alexander Haig told one journalist that troops had been secretly brought into the basement in case they were needed to repel invasion. It was a trying time. When Walter Hickel, Secretary of the Interior, warned Nixon (in a letter that was leaked to the press) that history showed that "youth in its protest must be heard," he was fired. But Nixon did seem to realize, for a time, that concessions must be made. The most important - which made nonsense of any military rationale for the invasion-was to declare that United States troops would penetrate only twenty-one miles into Cambodia and would be withdrawn by June 30.

May 1970
May 1 - Demonstrations against the trial of the New Haven Nine, Bobby Seale, and Ericka Huggins draw 12,000.

On May 2nd, US colleges and campuses erupted over the invasion. Troops were brought in to manage the dissent. The protests continued until on May 4th someone gave the order to shoot at a protesters on the campus of Kent State University, Ohio, four students killed, and nine wounded. In the aftermath 400 colleges and universities shut down over the country. Government buildings in Washington are surrounded by nearly 100,000 protesters. Nixon calmed the situation by talking to the crowd, but the protests go on into the next day.
May 8 - Unionised construction workers attack about 1,000 students and others protesting the Kent State shootings near the intersection of Wall Street and Broad Street and at New York City Hall, leading to the Hard Hat riot.
May 9 - In Washington, D.C., 100,000 people demonstrate against the Vietnam War.

On May 2, the White House learned that William Beecher, of The New York Times, had still another story that the President did not wish to see published. He was about to reveal that just before the invasion Nixon had resumed the bombing of North Vietnam. Kissinger made several calls to New York Times editors to pressure them into dropping the story. He failed. Alexander Haig called Robert Haynes, the FBI agent who had brought over previous transcripts of taps for Kissinger and Nixon to read. According to an FBI memo, Haig said the new leak had been "nailed down to a couple of people," but he asked for four taps, on "the highest authority"-that is, the President himself. Among them, for the first time, was William Beecher. Haig also asked for a tap on William Sullivan, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs, and that the tap on Laird's military assistant, Colonel Robert Pursley, which had first been placed in May 1969, then lifted, be replaced. And it was now that Richard Pedersen, Rogers' assistant, was tapped. For the first time, Haig asked that office as well as home telephones be tapped.
Pursley's tap, and Pedersen's, can have had little to do with plugging leaks. Pedersen had, on White House orders, been cut off from all information regarding Cambodia since mid-April. When he obtained his file from the FBI Pedersen says he was convinced that the White House's purpose was to catch him or his superior, William Rogers, in an indiscretion or criticism of the President's policy that could be used against them. It could apply to Pursley and Laird as well. William Safire has pointed out that the two taps "enabled Kissinger to preview the opinions of their bosses, Laird and Rogers. This gave Henry a bureaucratic advantage, to say the least." (On May 12 Haig again called the FBI and said Kissinger wanted two more taps-on Tony Lake, who had submitted his resignation to the National Security Council, and Winston Lord, Kissinger's loyal Special Assistant. The taps were installed, but from now on the FBI summaries were sent to Haldeman.)
Rogers' misgivings about the invasion were reflected in the ranks of the State Department, where virtually no one knew what was happening in Cambodia. Two hundred and fifty foreign-service officers signed a petition of protest, and sent it to Rogers. The story leaked to The New York Times, and Clark Mollenhoff, a reporter from the Des Moines Register, who had become, for a time, a diligent Nixon aide, called Pedersen to demand that the list of signatories be sent over to the White House. Although he was angered by the demonstration, Rogers refused; he knew the effect this would have on the careers of those involved.

On the 5th of May 1970 the US Senate stopped financial support to US troops in Cambodia as of June 30th
USSR – CSSR (Czech Republic) bilateral support treaty on the 6th May.

Within a few days of the invasion, columnists and diplomatic correspondents were speculating on the division between the White House and Rogers. Kissinger complained to Safire that the foreign-service establishment was taking advantage of Rogers' vanity to circulate the story that his reasonableness toward Hanoi was being overruled. Kissinger himself saw clearly that his duty lay in giving the fullest support possible to the President in his hour of need. "We are all the President's men," he repeated, "and we must act accordingly." His loyalty and the fervor with which he tried to rally morale was, for his colleagues, very moving. "Henry was a fighter, a real inspiring leader," John Ehrlichman later recalled.
Inevitably, there was a price to be paid; total loyalty to the President on this issue was not compatible with the intimate relationship that Kissinger had hoped to maintain, and till now had largely succeeded at, with his liberal friends at Harvard. On May 8 a group of them, led by Thomas Schelling, descended upon him. (They discovered, to their embarrassment, that Kissinger had provided them all lunch at his expense; it was not a very convivial occasion.) Schelling began by saying he should explain who they were.
Kissinger interrupted, "I know who you are . . . you're all good friends from Harvard University."
"No," said Schelling, "we're a group of people who have completely lost confidence in the ability of the White House to conduct our foreign policy, and we have come to tell you so. We are no longer at your disposal as personal advisers."
Each of the men around the table-among them, Richard Neustadt, author of Presidential Power; Adam Yarmolinsky, Professor of Law and adviser to both Kennedy and Johnson; Francis Bator, who had worked on Johnson's National Security Staff-put his objections to Kissinger. They pointed out that the invasion could be used by anyone else in the world as a precedent for invading another country in order, for example, to clear out terrorists. Schelling told him, "As we see it there are two possibilities. Either, one, the President didn't understand when he went into Cambodia that he was invading another country; or, two, he did understand. We just don't know which one is scarier." Kissinger said he thought he could persuade them all was well if he could talk to them off the record. They refused to be drawn in; they shook hands and left.
Others of his friends suggested that Kissinger should resign, as his aides, Lake, Morris, Watts and Larry Lynn had done, but he brushed aside all such demands. "Suppose I went in and told the President I was resigning," he was reported as saying. "He could have a heart attack and you'd have Spiro Agnew as President. Do you want that? No? So don't keep telling me to resign."
In fact, though the public and the private denunciations of his former colleagues and the criticism of the "Eastern establishment," together with the defection of the "liberals" on his staff, may have been personally painful to Kissinger, professionally they were useful. If he had, as he sometimes claimed, been concerned to demonstrate to men like Mitchell, Rebozo, Haldeman and Ehrlichman that his loyalty, as well as his intellect, had been transferred with other baggage from Harvard to the White House, it was the invasion of Cambodia that enabled him to do so. This was, from the start, the President's battlefield and his chief foreign-policy adviser never discouraged him. To judge by the interest he subsequently showed in Cambodia, Kissinger did not share Nixon's enthusiasm for this new theater of war. But his unstinting support during the invasion and willing participation in decisions that were made from April 1970 on helped to ensure the final eclipse of William Rogers. As the war spread through Cambodia, Henry Kissinger's control over policy was underwritten.

Then on May 8 the President gave a rather low-key press conference at which he identified his goals with those of the students. During that night he made over 50 telephone calls, including 8 to Kissinger, 7 to Haldeman, and 1 each to Norman Vincent Peale and Billy Graham. At 5 A.M. on May 9 took his Cuban valet, Manolo Sanchez, to talk to students who were holding vigil at the Lincoln Memorial. Nixon tried to assure them that he and they were really fired by the same purposes, talking to them about surfing, football and the way travel could broaden minds. Egil Krogh, an aide to Presidential assistant John Ehrlichman, followed Nixon to the Memorial and was deeply moved by the episode. This, he felt, was a President for whom he would do almost anything. Nixon himself had fewer illusions. When he finally got back to the White House after a detour to the House of Representatives, where he had his valet deliver a speech to the empty chamber, he said, "I doubt if that got over." Indeed, his soft approach soon wore thin. A few days later, as he leafed through photographs of two more students shot dead protesting the invasion at black Jackson State College in Mississippi, he asked its black president, "Look, what are we going to do to get more respect for the police from our young people?"
Kissinger later confided that Nixon was on the edge of a nervous breakdown in May 1970. According to Nixon, Kissinger also had doubts about the "incursion" after Kent State. Nixon says he reminded Kissinger of Lot's wife: "I said Henry, we've done it. Never look back." In public Kissinger took the advice. This was a trying moment, but it was one that required firmness. ''They'd driven one President from office," he later remarked. "They'd broken Johnson's will. Were they trying to break another President?" Whether Kissinger thought this was the real problem, he realized, according to Nixon's speechwriter, William Safire, that the invasion offered him perhaps a unique opportunity, in Safire's words, for "winning on another front: the battle between his National Security Council and William Rogers' State Department."
As far as the White House was concerned, Rogers had not distinguished himself by his advice or attitude before the invasion; Melvin Laird had done little better. Laird issued public denials of the reported rift between him and the White House on the invasion. But within the circle of his own staff he expressed his dismay. At one of his daily Vietnamization meetings he complained that he had been led to understand that the invasion of the Fish Hook would be principally a South Vietnamese effort. In fact, there were now 12,000 American and only 6,000 Vietnamese troops there. He was concerned that Kissinger was running WASSAG without proper consultation with his office .

May 11 - Lubbock Tornado: An F5 tornado hits downtown Lubbock, Texas, the first to hit a downtown district of a major city since Topeka, Kansas in 1966 (28 are killed).
May 14 - In the second day of violent demonstrations at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi, state law enforcement officers fire into the demonstrators, killing 2 and injuring 12. Less well known – is it because they wuz black?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings
On May 18th China cancelled a day’s talks in Warsaw and on June 20th suspended talks altogether in protest at the invasion of Cambodia.
May 18th China cancelled a day’s talks in Warsaw and on
May 26 - The Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 becomes the first commercial transport to exceed Mach 2.
27th May East German p.m. Stoph visited West German Kassel.

“Let It Be” album – The last new album by the Beatles, was released in May, went to number 1 both sides of the Atlantic, spawning #1 singles Let It Be and Long & winding Road.

June 1970
June 1 - Soyuz 9, a two man spacecraft, is launched in the Soviet Union.

Gay Riot
In the summer one year after Stonewall about 200 Chicagoans took to the streets of their city with signs carrying simple message such as “I am GAY” (Good As You). 1970
In Greenwich Village – the beginning of major resistance by gay men and lesbians to discrimination. Police raided the Stonewall Inn and were caught off-guard by the amount of resistance from customers. Police had to barricade themselves inside the Inn to protect themselves from the patrons who were throwing bricks and bottles.
From Wikip – “On Saturday morning, June 28, 1969, not long after 1:20 a.m., police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village. A number of factors differentiated the raid that took place on June 28 from other such raids on the Stonewall Inn. In general, the sixth precinct tipped off the management of the Stonewall Inn prior to a raid. In addition, raids were generally carried out early enough in the night to allow business to return to normal for the peak hours of the night. At approximately 1:20 a.m., much later than the usual raid, eight officers from the first precinct, of which only one was in uniform, entered the bar. Most of the patrons were able to escape being arrested as the only people arrested “would be those without IDs, those dressed in the clothes of the opposite gender, and some or all of the employees” (Duberman 192).
Details about how the riot started vary from story to story. According to one account, a transgender woman named Sylvia Rivera threw a bottle at a police officer after being prodded by his nightstick (Duberman). Another account states that a lesbian, being brought to a patrol car through the crowd put up a struggle that encouraged the crowd to do the same (D’Emilio 232). Whatever the case may be, mêlée broke out across the crowd—which quickly overtook the police. Stunned, the police retreated into the bar. Heterosexual folk singer Dave van Ronk, who was walking through the area, was grabbed by the police, pulled into the bar, and beaten. The crowd’s attacks were unrelenting. Some tried to light the bar on fire. Others used a parking meter as a battering ram to force the police officers out. Word quickly spread of the riot and many residents, as well as patrons of nearby bars, rushed to the scene.
Throughout the night the police singled out many transgender people and gender nonconformists, including butch women and effeminate men, among others, often beating them. On the first night alone 13 people were arrested and four police officers, as well as an undetermined number of protesters, were injured. It is known, however, that at least two rioters were severely beaten by the police (Duberman 201-202). Bottles and stones were thrown by protesters who chanted “Gay Power!” The crowd, estimated at over 2000, fought with over 400 police officers.
The police sent additional forces in the form of the Tactical Patrol Force, a riot-control squad originally trained to counter Vietnam War protesters. The tactical patrol force arrived to disperse the crowd. However, they failed to break up the crowd, who sprayed them with rocks and other projectiles.
Eventually the scene quieted, but the crowd returned again the next night. While less violent than the first night, the crowd had the same energy as it had on the previous night. Skirmishes between the rioters and the police ensued until approximately 4:00 a.m.. The third day of rioting fell five days after the raid on the Stonewall Inn. On that Wednesday, 1,000 people congregated at the bar and again caused extensive property damage.”
References in original text

His task, Huston  later testified, became "even more important" after the invasion and Kent State. H. R. Haldeman later confirmed this, saying that "Kent State marked a turning point for Nixon, a beginning of his downhill slide toward Watergate." The protests over the invasion demonstrated as nothing else had ever done, Huston said, the need for controls upon, and information about, American protest. "We were sitting in the White House getting reports day in and day out of what was happening in the country in terms of the violence, the number of bombings, the assassination attempts, the sniping incidents-40,000 bombings, for example, in the month of May . . ." (sic).
The session Huston had suggested took place on June 5. Nixon met with Hoover, CIA Director Richard Helms, Vice-Admiral Noel Gaylor (Director of the National Security Agency), General Donald Bennett (Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency), and Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Huston. He showed no trace of the publicly conciliatory President who had tried to identify himself with the aims of the protestants. Speaking from a paper prepared by Huston, Nixon asserted that "hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans-mostly under thirty-are determined to destroy our society." They were "reaching out for the support-ideological and otherwise-of foreign powers." He complained about the quality of the intelligence that had so far been gathered, and appointed Hoover chairman of a new Inter Agency Committee on Intelligence. It was to have a staff working group, which would write a report on how better information could be gathered.
Hoover made his objections to the intrusion by Huston, "a hippie intellectual," very clear; but, goaded on by Huston, the working group did produce recommendations for the removal of almost all restraints on intelligence gathering. Many of its suggestions involved breaking the law. The other agency directors did not object, but when Hoover saw the more extreme options, he refused to sign the report unless his objections were typed onto each page as footnotes. This infuriated his colleagues, but eventually, to Huston's relief, they all signed the document and he carried it back to the White House.
Huston had a few good days. He informed Richard Helms that from now on everything to do with domestic intelligence and internal security was to be sent to his own "exclusive attention" in the White House, adding "Dr. Kissinger is aware of this new procedure." He then selected the most radical options in the ad-hoc committee's report and recommended their implementation to the President. "The Huston Plan," which Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, Chairman of the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, later described as evidence of a ''Gestapo mentality," suggested that the intelligence community, with the authority of the President, should now be allowed to intercept and transcribe any international communication; read the mail; burgle homes; eavesdrop in any way on anyone considered a "threat to the internal security"; spy on student groups. Huston admitted to Nixon that "Covert [mail] coverage is illegal and there are serious risks involved" and that use of surreptitious entry "is clearly illegal; it amounts to burglary. It is also highly risky and could result in great embarrassment if exposed." But in both cases, he assured the President that the advantages outweighed the risks.
Nixon approved the plan, and though Hoover quickly managed to have it rescinded, the fact of the President's blessing was to be a key cause of his fall. The discovery of the plan in the summer of 1973 helped enormously to build such Congressional outrage that the legislature was finally able to force the White House to end the massive bombing of Cambodia, which was just beginning to spread as Huston formulated his proposals in summer 1970. It would become a crucial part of the impeachment proceedings. When, much later, Nixon was asked by David Frost to justify his action he blandly produced a new version of Presidential infallibility: "Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
Huston's rationalization resembled the reasons Henry Kissinger gave for the need to prolong the war as long as he thought it necessary to allow him to claim an "honorable" withdrawal. Huston thought of himself as a conservative but, as did Kissinger, he professed that the real threat to the United States was the rise of the reactionary right, and that the New Left would provoke every repressive demagogue in the United States. He argued that he and the intelligence community were protecting the country from its worst enemy, the far right, by "monitoring" its second-worst enemy, the New Left. As the Church committee put it, to Huston the plan was justified because it "would halt repression on the Right by stopping violence on the Left."
After Huston's ambition "to become the domestic equivalent of Henry Kissinger" was thwarted, he came to realize that he had been wrong. He now believes that the sanctions of criminal law are a more appropriate response to the threat of violence than unrestrained, illegal intelligence gathering, and he dismissed the right-wing backlash argument as specious. Henry Kissinger's attitude did not change. Long after the war ended he still called up the fear of the right not only to justify his decisions but also to refuse further discussion of Indochina. "The time has come to end the Vietnam War debate," he said on one occasion in 1977. "It could backfire, you know. If it continues, sooner or later the right wing will be heard from, too. And then we could have a very nasty controversy."

Charles Manson Killing Spree
At the trial, which began June 15, 1970,[67] the prosecution's main witness was Kasabian, who, along with Manson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel, had been charged with seven counts of murder and one of conspiracy.[22] Not having participated in the killings, she was granted immunity in exchange for testimony that detailed the nights of crimes.[23][18][96] A deal not to seek the death penalty against Atkins had been withdrawn when she, Atkins, repudiated the grand jury testimony on which the indictments had been secured.[97] Because Van Houten had only participated in the LaBianca killings, she was charged with two counts of murder and one of conspiracy. Wiki
Because of his conduct, including violations of a gag order and submission of "outlandish" and "nonsensical" pretrial motions, Manson's reluctantly-granted permission to act as his own attorney had been withdrawn by the court before the trial’s start.[98]
- Wikipedia Charles Manson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

June 8 - A coup in Argentina – a new junta of service chiefs.

June 10 - Nixon signs a measure lowering the voting age to 18.
June 11 - first female US generals: Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington.
June 18 - general election in the UK 1970: Heath becomes Prime Minister.
June 18th Roberto M Levingston became president after coup in Argentina.
June 20th China suspended talks altogether in protest at the invasion of Cambodia.
June 20th suspended talks altogether in protest.
June 24 - The United States Senate repeals the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
June 28 - U.S. ground troops withdraw from Cambodia.
The US ended the Cambodian invasion on June 30th. US Senate had withdrawn finance. Was it because of the pressure from China?
The rug was being pulled from underneath Nixon’s plans to win the Vietnam War. US Senate had stopped financial support to US troops in Cambodia as of June 30th and the US Senate repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on June 24th. The last US troops withdrew from Cambodia 5 days later.

July 1970
Uruguay
Dan Mitrione was finally kidnapped in Tupamaros on July 31, 1970, by the Tupamaros. They do not torture him. They demand the release of some 150 prisoners in exchange for him. With the determined backing of the Nixon adminstration, the Uruguayan government refuses…Mitrione’s dead body is found on the back seat of a stolen car
“Mr Mitrione’s devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere” – RON ZIEGLER, WHITE HOUSE SPOKESPERSON.

They proceeded to interrogate him about his past and the intervention of the U.S. government in Latin American affairs. They also demanded the release of 150 political prisoners. The Uruguayan government, with U.S. backing, refused, and Mitrione was later found dead in a car, shot twice in the head and with no other visible signs of maltreatment (beyond the fact that, during the kidnapping, Mitrione had been shot in one shoulder -- for which he had evidently been treated while in captivity).
After being released from prison the leader of the Tupamaros, Raul Sendic, revealed that Mitrione had not been suspected of teaching torture techniques to the police. He had trained police in riot control and was targeted for kidnapping as retaliation for the deaths of student protestors. [10] – Wiki

Mitrione’s “office of public safety” had trained over a million policeman in the third world. Ten thousand received advanced training in the US. The OPS was finally abolished by congress in the mid 70s. But within a year DEA agents are engaging in many of the same activities the OPS had been carrying out. 1975 report of the General Accounting Office.
“The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect” DAN MITRIONE, HEAD OF THE US ‘OFFICE OF PUBLIC SAFETY’ IN MONTEVIDEO 1969 TO 1970 .

On Friday, July 24, the first day of testimony, Charles Manson appeared in court with an X carved into his forehead and issued a statement that he was "considered inadequate and incompetent to speak or defend [him]self" — and had "X'd [him]self from [the establishment's] world." Over the following weekend, the female defendants duplicated the mark on their own foreheads, as, within another day or so, most Family members did, too.
The prosecution placed the triggering of "Helter Skelter" as the main motive. The crime scenes' bloody White Album references — pig, rise, helter skelter — were correlated with testimony about Manson predictions that the murders blacks would commit at the outset of Helter Skelter would involve the writing of "pigs" on walls in victims’ blood. Testimony that Manson had said "now is the time for Helter Skelter" was supplemented with Kasabian’s testimony that, on the night of the LaBianca murders, Manson considered discarding Rosemary LaBianca's wallet on the street of a black neighborhood. Having obtained the wallet in the LaBianca house, he "wanted a black person to pick it up and use the credit cards so that the people, the establishment, would think it was some sort of an organized group that killed these people." On his direction, Kasabian had hidden it in the women's rest room of a service station near a black area. "I want to show blackie how to do it," Manson had said as the Family members had driven along after the departure from the LaBianca house.
Ongoing disruptions
During the trial, Family members haunted the entrances and corridors of the courthouse. To keep them out of the courtroom itself, the prosecution subpoenaed them as prospective witnesses, who would not be able to enter while others were testifying. When the group established itself in vigil on the sidewalk, each hard-core member wore a sheathed hunting knife that, being in plain view, was being carried legally. Each was identifiable by the X on his or her forehead.
Some Family members attempted to dissuade witnesses from testifying. Prosecution witnesses Paul Watkins and Juan Flynn were both threatened; Watkins was badly burned in a suspicious fire in his van. Former Family member Barbara Hoyt, who had overheard Susan Atkins describing the Tate murders to Family member Ruth Ann Moorehouse, agreed to accompany the latter to Hawaii. There, Moorehouse allegedly gave her a hamburger spiked with several doses of LSD. Found sprawled on a Honolulu curb in a drugged semi-stupor, Hoyt was taken to the hospital, where she did her best to identify herself as a witness in the Tate-LaBianca murder trial. Before the incident, Hoyt had been a reluctant witness; after the attempt to silence her, her reticence disappeared.

August 1970
On August 4, despite precautions taken by the court, Manson flashed the jury a Los Angeles Times front page whose headline was "Manson Guilty, Nixon Declares," a reference to a statement made the previous day when U.S. President Richard Nixon had decried what he saw as the media's glamorization of Manson. Voir dired by Judge Charles Older, the jurors contended that the headline had not influenced them. The next day, the female defendants stood up and said in unison that, in light of Nixon's remark, there was no point in going on with the trial. On October 5, denied the court's permission to question a prosecution witness whom the defense attorneys had declined to cross-examine, Manson leaped over the defense table and attempted to attack the judge. Wrestled to the ground by bailiffs, he was removed from the courtroom with the female defendants, who had subsequently risen and begun chanting in Latin. Thereafter, Older allegedly began wearing a revolver under his robes.
Defense rests
- Wikipedia Charles Manson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eric Burden & War – released July 1970 – “Spill The Whip” went to #3 followed by LP “EB declares war” in September went to #18.
August 7 - Harold Haley, Marin County Superior Court Judge, is taken hostage and murdered, in an effort to free George Jackson from police custody.
August 17 - August 18 - The U.S. sinks 418 containers of nerve gas into the Gulf Stream near the Bahamas.
August 17 - Venera program: Venera 7 is launched. It will later becomes the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from another planet.
August 26 - The Women's Strike For Equality takes place down Fifth Avenue in New York City.
On August 26-August 30 - The Isle of Wight Festival 1970 took place on East Afton Farm off the coast of England. It was conceived as a fund raising event for a local swimming pool. Some 600,000 people attend the largest rock festival of all time. Artists include Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Doors, Chicago, Richie Havens, John Sebastian, Joan Baez, Ten Years After, Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Jethro Tull.
Toronto peace festival – Lennon, Ono, Clapton, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, September 1969.
From the fall of 1970 the JCS considered that Nixon was out of control. December 1970 the military’s spy, Radford, was put on assignment as military aide-de-camp to Kissinger’s deputy, Haig, on a trip to Saigon and Phnom Penh. – silent coup.
Eleven leaks by Stephen W Linger revealed the Air Force cloud seeding program over Laos, US monitoring of South Vietnamese, President Thieu’s private conversations and Admiral (Mavers?) receipt of FBI surveillance reports on anti-war and black dissident groups in the US.
Robinson, under Kissinger, drew up “duck hook” plan – top secret study on the escalation of Vietnam War. In Autumn 1970 Robinson helped draft Nixon’s secret warning to Soviets to keep missiles out of Cuba.

The Popular Unity Government 1970 to 1973
In Chile the left’s candidate gained 36.2% in September’s presidential elections. Divisions on the right and some smaller radical and Christian party’s support for the left made it a certainty that Chilean Congress would confirm Dr. Salvadore Allende as the next president.
The MIR in Chile saw Allende’s election as an opportunity – even if he was “borgeois” from their point of view.
Allende wanted to restructure Chilean industry, not to make it competitive internationally but to ensure it met the basic needs of Chile – particularly the poor. Industry had been geared up to the needs of the Middle Class – massive over-capacity in car production to produce a passable imitation of the range of brands open to US consumers .
To do this, state intervention was required, under both Frei and Allende governments, to develop basic resources such as Chile’s fisheries and forestry.
Chilean army commander Rene Schneider is shot in Santiago.
The government declared a state of emergency. Scheider died on October 25th.
Popular Unity’s approach was to reorder the economy to suit the needs of all the people. Part of Chile’s problems stemmed from the financial strain which these changes put on the national economy. Instead of importing expensive goods from US and other western countries, Chile could save money by producing their own goods. And not any old money but foreign currency – US dollars? But instead it was shelling out increasing amounts to keep factory plant running or to buy new machinery from the US to replace outdated/obsolete plant. Chile needed a massive cash injection to modernise their industry, but the US had seen to it that they would receive no international loans. So the renewal was paid for by copper exports, which provided Chile with their foreign currency. But the price of copper was not reliable – it fluctuated. Popular Unity demanded guaranteed prices for Third World’s primary products at conference of UNCTAD held in 1973.
The middle class elite felt themselves to be western and participating in the new social order – capitalism, corporatism, shopping - but the masses were doomed to be forever on the outside looking in – this created a social strain. Look at the poor and their problems…
Brazil’s problems were similar – the coup in 1964 led to a concentration of income in the hands of the upper middle classes to create a class of car buyers.
Food shortages led to a plan to take land from large landowners and give to peasants to produce for local consumption. Supported by the Christian Democrats and Jacques Chonchol crossed over to administer the programme.  Promotion of construction and raising worker’s wages to re-inflate the economy.  Effect redistribution of income downwards.  Keynesian – to motivate industrialists to produce more for the growing new market of the poor in order to lessen the squeeze on their profits.
Industry had to be nationalised – offended all those who had most power to detroy it.
Ineffective opposition
The US cut off Chile’s exisiting commercial credits but flooded the country with money to aid the opposition. There was hypocrisy in opposition who voted with Allende but took money to campaign against him.
Disputes over money paid to compensate the copper industry during nationalisation – but the opposition failed to win popular support.
Fears
As a result of the elite PR campaign some were disturbed by fears of atheism and ‘totalitarianism’ which a Marxist government might bring – campaign to pressure private and religious education began and block modest proposals for comprehensive schools – drew support from religious figures, army generals, and many housewives and old women from slums.
The government upset peasants by mishandling land redistribution. They were joined by German farmers in thesouth, small capitalists with their own authoritarian traditions.
Allende antagonised small businessmen, even though the government wished to help them not to be exploited by big corporations – they were disturbed by the nationalisations – their employees supported nationalisation which made the owners fearful.
Shortages of middle class staples such as beef also helped mobilise middle class/elite opposition to Allende.

Edward Korry – US ambassador in Chile. US state Department quickly gave Korry “maximum authority to do all possible, short of a Dominican Republic type action to keep Allende from taking power.”
The Chilean rich took their money out of Chile. Attempted to get congress to vote against Allende’s ratification – to get Frei in power – but he refused to comply. ITT and US embassy were furious at Frei’s refusal.
General Viaux, was leader of the open army mutiny against Frei. A mutiny which was instigated by the CIA. In a plan to fake a ‘left wing kidnapping’ of lead of Chilean Armed forces, Scheider., Scheider was killed in the attempt. This stopped Allende’s removal before taking power. Three daily papers La Segundo, Las Ultimas Novicas and El Mercurio, all owned by Edwards family – cynical campaign in defence of democracy.
Other corporations that reacted badly were Pepsi and Chase Manhattan Bank. Nixon owed a certain amount to Donald Kendall, president of Pepsi, for giving him his first corporate account when as a young lawyer he had joined Mitchell’s New York firm. Within 11 days of Allende’s victory, in a series of meetings in Washington the decision to shaft Chilean democracy was taken . Discussion with interested parties and CIA director Richard Helms – Kissinger went with Helms to Oval office where Nixon stated that Allende was not to assume office. ITT offered over $1m to the CIA for use against the 1970 Allende campaign and later spent, with CIA assistance and participation by other US companies, some $700,000 in the campaign . The president failed to mention he had approved CIA covert action programs costing $400,000 to stop Allende .

Stones – Altamont was depressing – affect on band? – Yas Yas live LP came out in September and got to #6.
The film “Performance” was released…..

September 1970
September 1 - An assassination attempt against King Hussein of Jordan precipitates the Black September crisis.
September 3-September 6 - Israeli forces fight Palestinian guerillas in southern Lebanon.
September 5 - Vietnam War: Operation Jefferson Glenn begins - The United States 101st Airborne Division and the South Vietnamese 1st Infantry Division initiate a new operation in Thua Thien Province (the operation ends in October 1971).
Nixon went on telly to propose a “stand-still” cease fire in which all troops stop shooting and remain in place pending a formal peace agreement. There was no response from Hanoi. The US would have benefited as it would have given them the chance to train personnel and bring in extra resources, take stock and consolidate. NV did not have the luxury of any of these, as there were no extra resources to bring in, and no extra personnel to train. They obviously though Nixon was taking the piss.
By September, after four months of regular bombardment, there were one million Cambodian refugees  – one sixth of the population.
September 6 - The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacks 4 passenger aircraft from Pan Am, TWA and Swissair on flights to New York from Brussels, Frankfurt and Zürich.
September 7 - Fighting breaks out between Arab guerillas and government forces in Amman, Jordan.
September 7 - An anti-war rally is held at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, attended by John Kerry, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland.
September 8-September 10 - Jordanian government and Palestinian guerillas make truces they keep breaking.

A decidedly out of touch and distinctly old fashioned Elvis Presley began his first concert tour since 1958, in Phoenix, Arizona at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, on September 9th.
September 10 - Cambodian government forces break the siege of Kompong Tho after 3 months.

September 15 - King Hussein of Jordan forms a military government with Muhammad Daoud as the prime minister.
September 18 - Jimi Hendrix died from choking on his own vomit while unconscious due to a barbiturate overdose in London.

September 20 - Syrian armored forces cross the Jordanian border.
September 21 - Palestinian armored forces reinforce Palestinian guerillas in Irbidi, Jordan.
September 27 - Richard Nixon begins a tour of Europe, visiting Italy, Yugoslavia, Spain, the United Kingdom and Ireland. and ended on October 5th
September 28 - Gamal Abdal Nasser dies; Vice President Anwar Sadat is named temporary president of Egypt.
September 29 - The U.S. Congress gives Nixon authority to sell arms to Israel;
In Berlin, Baader-Meinhof Gang members rob 3 banks, with loot totaling over DM200,000.

October 3 - In Lebanon, the government of Prime Minister Rashid Karami resigns.

October 4 Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose inside her hotel room in Los Angeles, California.

Elections in Pakistan originally set for October 5th 1970, post-poned till 7th December due to cyclone.

October 8 - The U.S. Foreign Office announces that renewal of arms sales to Pakistan.
October 8 - Vietnam War: In Paris, a Communist delegation rejects U.S. President Richard Nixon's October 7 peace proposal as "a maneuver to deceive world opinion."
October 9 - The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia.

October 12 - Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will withdraw 40,000 more troops before Christmas.
October 13 - Saeb Salam forms a government in Lebanon.
 
Canadian October Crisis
So-called because it was a crisis, and it happened in Canada, and in October.
October 5 - The Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) kidnaps James Cross in Montreal and demands release of all its imprisoned members. Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte was the second statesman kidnapped by members of the FLQ terrorist group.
The next day the Canadian government announces it won't meet the demand, beginning Quebec's October Crisis.
October 16 - October Crisis: The Canadian government declares a state of emergency and outlaws the Quebec Liberation Front after Pierre Laporte is found killed in South Montreal.
October 17 - Anwar Sadat officially becomes President of Egypt and named Mahmoud Fawzi as his prime minister on 20th.

October 20 - The Soviet Union launches the Zond 8 lunar probe.
October 21 - A U.S. Air Force plane makes an emergency landing near Leninakan, Soviet Union. The Soviets release the American officers, including 2 generals, November 10.
October 24th – south Vietnamese forces began a new offensive into Cambodia, but the December Cooper-Church amendment to US defense appropriations bill forbid use of any US ground based troops in Laos or Cambodia.
October 25 - The wreck of Confederate submarine Hunley is found off Charleston, South Carolina, by pioneer underwater archaeologist, Dr. E. Lee Spence,[1] then just 22 years old. Hunley was the first submarine in history to sink a ship in warfare.
October 26 - U.S. and Soviet space researchers meet in Moscow.
27th Ocotber - USSR protested against Turkish and US violations of USSR airspace.
October 28 - In Jordan, the government of Ahmed Toukan resigns; the next prime minister is Wasfi Al-Tal.
October 30 - In Vietnam, the worst monsoon to hit the area in 6 years causes large floods, kills 293, leaves 200,000 homeless and virtually halts the Vietnam War.

By October (1970?) Nixon was reduced to passing messages to China via Pakistan’s Yahya Khan. He proposed high level talks in Beijing with a promise not to enter an anti-China alliance with the USSR. The Chinese response was “we would be glad to receive a high level person…to discuss the withdrawal of American forces from Taiwan.” Nixon and Kissinger only received this reply on December 9th. The US wanted the talks to be about more than just Taiwan
Messages via this backchannel were hand written, no copies kept and destroyed after being passed. Only Yahya Khan kept copies of all the correspondence. Communications occurred through November and December. The Chinese were a little suspicious due to lack of communication for 20 years. “A linkage was established between the minding up of the war in Vietnam and the withdrawal of & US forces from Taiwan and the Taiwan Straits”. The Chinese accepts the US initiative but then went silent for three months.

The Weathermen
As well as the Vietnam protests, the Weathermen – organised anti-war demo “days of rage” in October. Stonewall riots – see below. And the various Black Power Groups…

November 1970
November 3 - Mid Term Elections Democrats sweep the U.S. Congressional midterm elections.
http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch24y.htm
Allende took power in Chile and the World Bank stopped loans – they do not lend to lefties.
November 4 - Vietnamization - The United States turns control of the air base in the Mekong Delta to South Vietnam.
Nov 5 The United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in 5 years (24 soldiers died that week, which was the fifth consecutive week the death toll was below 50; 431 were reported wounded that week, however). And on November 10 for the first time in 5 years, an entire week ends with no reports of United States combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.
November 9 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 17.
November 9 - Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6-3 not to hear a case by the state of Massachusetts, about the constitutionality of a state law granting Massachusetts residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
November 10 - The Soviets release the American officers, including 2 generals, captured on October 21.
November 12th - My Lai raises its ugly head again with trial of Lt. William Calley.
November 13 - Hafez al-Assad comes to power in Syria, following a military coup; 1970 Bhola cyclone: A 120-mph tropical cyclone hits the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people (considered the 20th century's worst cyclone disaster) – major humanitarian disaster. Yahya Khan dictator of Pakistan who’d been invited to China, had to postpone planned elections.
November 14 - A fatal airplane accident in West Virginia, Southern Airlines Flight 932, killed  all 75 onboard, including 42 players and coaches from University football teams.

On November 16, the prosecution in the Manson trial rested its case. Three days later, after arguing standard dismissal motions, the defense stunned the court by resting as well, without calling a single witness.  Speaking about the trial in a 1987 documentary, Krenwinkel said, "The entire proceedings were scripted — by Charlie."[114]
Older said it had become obvious the defendants were acting in collusion with each other and were simply putting on a performance.[118]
- Wikipedia Charles Manson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Famous counterculture dickhead Jim Morrison was accused of interfering with a hostess in flight, during November – later acquitted.

November 17 - Luna program: The Soviet Union lands Lunokhod 1 on Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) on the Moon. This is the first roving remote-controlled robot to land on another world, and is released by the orbiting Luna 17 spacecraft. The world was already bored with the Moon, however. Lunokhod I lasted 10 months.
November 18 - U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for US$155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government (US$85 million is for military assistance to prevent the overthrow of the government of Premier Lon Nol by the Khmer Rouge and North Vietnam);
The United Nations Security Council demands that no government recognize Rhodesia.
November 19 - European Economic Community prime ministers meet in Munich.
November 20th Nixon dropped troop levels to 334,600.
November 21 - Syrian Prime Minister Hafez al-Assad formed a new government but retains the post of defense minister;
Vietnam War: Operation Ivory Coast - A joint Air Force and Army team raids the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to free American POWs thought to be held there (no Americans are killed, but the prisoners have already moved to another camp; all U.S. POWs are moved to a handful of central prison complexes as a result of this raid). LEGAL?

Luis Echeverria became president of mexico on December 1st 1970.
1974 was the first year that the U.S. embassy in Mexico was required by Washington to report on the human rights situation. Congress had inserted Section 32 to the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973, calling on Nixon to deny U.S. economic and security assistance to nations that interned or imprisoned citizens for political purposes. On April 19, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Joseph John Jova sent a reply to a query from the State Department that minimized the government's involvement in violations, while providing thinly-veiled justification for illegal tactics used by the government in its crackdown on armed opposition .

December 2 - The United States Environmental Protection Agency begins operations.
December 3 - October Crisis: In Montreal, Quebec, kidnapped British Trade Commissioner James Cross is released by the Front de Libération du Québec terrorist group after being held hostage for 60 days. Police negotiate his release and in return the Government of Canada grants 5 terrorists from the FLQ's Chenier Cell their request for safe passage to Cuba.
December 7 - Giovanni Enrico Bucher, the Swiss ambassador to Brazil, is kidnapped in Rio de Janeiro; kidnappers demand the release of 70 political prisoners; The U.N. General Assembly supports the isolation of South Africa due to its apartheid policies.

Elections in Pakistan reset to 7th December due to cyclone. The cyclone had hit in November and that was followed by a tidal wave. West Pakistan failed to organise any kind of relief putting the Easterners in a rebellious kinda mood. The elections occurred after this mood had set in but even so were considered to be free and fair.
The people united against the government and for the Awami League – the main opposition party in the East, led by Sheik Mujibar Rahman. The Awami League won 167 out of 169 seats – all in the East with none in the West.
Source:  www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/china/filmmore/reference/interview/khan01.html 
After the elections in December the fate of Pakistan rested with three men, Mujibar of the East, Bhutto of the West and Khan himself.
The Awami League had enough seats to take the majority of the seats in the National Assembly. Khan tried to persuade the two to come to an accommodation. Mujibar insisted that he should form a government and Bhutto disagreed. He declared his party, the PPP, would not attend the inaugural session of the assembly thereby buggering up the new constitution.
On December 10th Nixon warned Hanoi that more bombing raids may occur if North Vietnamese attacks continued against the South.
December 15 - The USSR's Venera 7 becomes the first spacecraft to land successfully on Venus and transmit data back to Earth.

A visit from the King
Elvis Presley turned up at the White House on December 21st.
The meeting was initiated by Presley, who wrote Nixon a six-page letter requesting a visit with the President and suggesting that he be made a "Federal Agent-at-Large" in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.
- from The Nixon-Presley Meeting: The Documentation The National Security Archives6
December 22nd Cooper-Church Amendment to US defence appropriations bill forbid the use of any US ground troops in Laos or Cambodia.
December 23 - The North Tower of the World Trade Center is topped out at 1,368 feet, making it the tallest building in the world.

“Four years after Malcom’s [X] assassination, the FBI took credit for it and called it the result of its successful stimulation of the feud between Malcom and Elijah Muhammed.
“My Life as a Radical Lawyer” – William M Kunster.
Cointelpro operation to produce offensive anti-white colouring book under BPP heading causing BPP financial supporters to withdraw. See page 55.

By end of year troop levels were dropped to 280,000. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had little knowledge of planned withdrawals of their own troops.  Agreements were in the making with Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu, and Haig was in talks with Cambodia’s Lon Nol. To the JCS it seemed that the VC learned in advance of bombing raids; and which arms caches and base camps the US had targetted . Remember that in 1970 Kissinger had opened up secret talks with North Vietnam which continued all through 1971.
An estimated 60,000 soldiers “experiment” with drugs according to US command. Two hundred cases of “fragging” – unpopular officers attacked with fragmentation grenades- many units subject to racist attacks.
Heroin
What was Vietnam’s influence on drug use? Heroin smugging by the state?
An Air America helicopter  - local military commander at Long Pot asserts that General Vang Pao’s officers have been shipping opium out of the village on air America helicopters since 1970. Micheal Levine discusses heroin trade in Vietnam in interview on DiNardo Conspiracy. With Alfred McCoy by Paul DeRienzo.
There is a question over how aware the CIA was of extensive movement of opium out of Laos. A Christian Science Monitor correspondent reports one charter pilot that “opium shipments get special CIA clearance and monitoring on their flights southward out of the country”. Some 30,000 service men in Vietnam are addicted to heroin.

Almost 11 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed in Vietnam from 1961 to 1970 (Elite Deviance by David R Simon & D Stanley Eitsen (p.279)).

Notes 1970
Rickover – a nuclear reactor from Seawolf dumped in the Atlantic in 1970s – prototype submarine – “fall from grace” Gregory L Vistica.

FBI infiltrators inside the BUF then tried to get the group to back such a demand a demand and Bureau contacts in the media made sure the story received wide publicity. “

Air America helicopter lands at Long Pot village, northern Laos. The local military commander at Long Pot asserts that General Vang Pao's Meo officers have been shipping opium out of the village on Air America helicopters since 1970.

Michael Levine discusses heroin trade in Vietnam in an interview at DiNardo Conspiracy

Rickover had dumped the nuclear reactor from Seawolf into the North Atlantic in the 1970s, an environmental nightmare that is still kept secret today. Few objected openly, but privately many submariners had troubled consciences about a hot reactor sitting on the seabed. The reactor gave off so much radiation when it was in service on a prototype submarine that the Navy allowed Seawolf to be stationed in only two ports, New London and Key West.
Fall from Grace - Gregory L. Vistica p.138

Almost 11 million gallons of Agent Orange were sprayed in Vietnam from 1961 to 1970, even though it was one of the most toxic chemicals known.
Elite Deviance - David R. Simon & D. Stanley Eitzen p.279

For many years, the UN has been blocked by the great powers, primarily the United States - not the Soviet Union or the Third World. Since 1970, the United States has vetoed far more Security Council resolutions than any other country (Britain is second, France a distant third and the Soviet Union fourth).
What Uncle Sam Wants - Noam Chomsky p.62

On September 2nd / 3rd (?) Ho Chi Minh, aged 79, died of a heart attack. Le Duan took over. September

Nixon and China -
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OhAyCe5K31oC&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=warsaw+talks+with+china+1971&source=web&ots=CHakgPs0_t&sig=iW-EOvN64JTgWtOmzZK-3GuP1Mc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result

US Counter FOBS at the end of 1970 by launching IMEWS (Integrated Missile Early Warning Satelite). The satellites were placed in Geostationary orbit.

Common wealth sugar agreement expires in 1974.  Yaounde convention?

Cuba
“Castro tried but failed to mobilise the whole Cuban population to produce a ten-million ton sugar harvest” Andrain 1988.
“the 1970 sugar harvest fell short by 1.465 million tons” Azicri 1990.
“effectively ended the radicalism of the 190s economy and began an era of greater orthodoxy. ”Kapcia 1996.
“a total reorganisation of the political system was initiated” Leo Grande 1978.
“a strengthening of all political institutions and an expansion of mass participation in the policy process. After improving its internal coordination and control, the PCC finally began to take over direction of the political system”.LeoGrande 1981.
“The PCC quadrupled in size in just six years (1969 to 1975)” Perez McDonald 1989.
“the ten million ton effort” though a record “ had been made at the expense of all other secotrs” and ”could not adequately compensate for the damage inflicted everywhere else in the economy.” Perez 1995.
De Gaulle died 9th November 1970.