For A Few Dollars More: 1964

USE VIETNAM TIMELINE - http://vietnamresearch.com/history/vntimeline.html

In South Vietnam Minh was ousted in a bloodless coup. General Nguyen Khanh became leader. Secret US attacks. McNamara. Ho Chi Minh trail – “invoked as a pretext by US apologists. However 800,000 tons of bombs dropped by USAF on Plain of Jars – far from HCM trail cannot be explained this way.” CHOMSKY

Operation Plan 34A

CIA

USS Maddox – Gulf of Tonkin

1st attack against the US. There was an unsuccessful coup in the south by Buddhist militants. LBJ re-elected as president in a land-slide victory.

January

On January 3 1964, King appeared on the cover of Time magazine as its Man of the Year.

In January Ranger 6 hit the Moon close to its target but cameras failed.

The first of the new series, Ranger block III spacecraft, Lunar probe Ranger 6, launched on 30 January 1964 had a flawless flight, except that the television system was disabled by an in-flight accident and could take no pictures.

However, the next three Rangers, with a redesigned television, were to be completely successful.

7 Days after LBJ’s inauguration there was a coup in South Vietnam General Khanh seized control of the SVN government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Nguyen_Khanh

On January 30, 1964, General Nguyen Khanh led a bloodless military coup d'etat replacing Dương Văn Minh as Prime Minister. General Dương Văn Minh was placed under house arrest, but was allowed to remain as a figurehead chief-of-state. General Nguyen Khanh, assumed the leadership from the junta as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council that took over after Ngô Đình Diệm's assassination. During this time, Khanh's regime suffered several military setbacks such as the Battle of Long Dinh.

As 56,000 VC spread their successful guerrilla war throughout SVN, during 1964, they are reinforced by NVA regulars pouring in via the Ho Chi Minh trail. Responding to this escalation, LBJ approves Operation Plan 34A, CIA-run covert operations using SVN commandos in speed boats to harass radar sites along the coastline of NVN. - Sumner

The Beatles: Bigger Than Elvis

The Beatles arrived in the US on the 7th February, to appear on the Ed Sullivan show (9th February). They also performed at Carnegie Hall. See “The Love You Make” pp101 –

“December and January [1963/1964] in America would be months of grim mourning. The funeral dirges that played relentlessly for the dead President on American radio stations faded into the soft yet still sad Christmas cards of the season. By January the nation wanted desperately to hear something happy, to find a diversion, some distraction from the morbid tragedy that had intruded into their lives. America needed a tonic. Little would anyone have expected it to be a pop group.” From “The Love You Make” by Peter Brown & Steven Gaines.

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” released December 1963 went to number 45 on Billboard charts by 18th January. In February it reached number 1. Within 5 days the record had sold 1½ million copies. “Meet The Beatles” was rush-released and became the biggest selling LP in US history.

Within days of Epstein arriving in the US he’d picked up a young boy in his teens and into his hotel room. A photographer got picture of Epstein doing something that was illegal in 38 states – including in New York, where he was. The photographer was man-handled and his film stolen, $2000 cash offered as compensation. He was told to forget or be sued.

Beatles made their first live tv appearance in the US on 9th February 1964.

The NYT critic found the Beatles “incoherent…schematic(?!?)” but within days (9th Feb) they held the top 5 chart positions in the US. That was unprecendented, and had never happened since.

Back to England on the 22nd Feb.

U.S. Supreme Court rules that congressional districts should be roughly equal in population (Feb. 17).

The Warren Commission first met in February 1964.

The Commission took the sworn testimony of 489 witnesses, with 94 testifying before members of the Commission itself and 395 questioned in depositions by members of the Commission's staff. Additionally, 61 witnesses gave sworn affidavits, and two others made statements; in all, 552 witnesses. Over 3,100 pieces of evidence were accepted as exhibits. Wikipedia

The verdict – a complete whitewash – was released in September.

The FBI – Hoover’s priority was to protect himself and the FBI and to insist LHO was the lone assassin.

Within 4 hours Hoover declared himself “quite convinced they had found the right party”

Hoover briefed LBJ and LBJ wrote “evidence not strong…not strong enough to get conviction.”

But day after that Oswald was shot.

Hoover needed then to issue something to convince public that LHO did it.

Hoover’s insistence on speed led to the half bajed story that became the official story. P.316 for more, 317, 320

Bobby was too traumatised to get involved – let Hoover have a free and

Kenneth O’Donnell and David Powers – shots from behind the fence in front of the motorcade – agents refused to take this evidence – so they changed their testimony.

Hoover opposed Warren Olney’s appointment as Commission “Chief Counsel. Lee Rankin was appointed and concluded that “the FBI couldn’t be trusted.”

Hoover used Cartha De Loach to liaise secretly with two members of the Commission – Richard Russell and Gerald Ford.

Life Magazine reporter William Lambert probed into LBJ’s wealth – Hoover’s freeloading etc. came up – got into hands of Bobby K. – summers p.340

March

Prominent San Francisco defense attorney Melvin Belli agreed to represent Jack Ruby free of charge. Belli attempted to prove that Ruby was legally insane and that his family had a history of mental illness. On March 14, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice, for which he received a death sentence. Wikipedia

There was uproar in court and Ruby's defence said the verdict was "a victory for bigotry". Melvin Belli, chief defence counsel, said: "This was a kangaroo court, a railroad court and everyone knew it."

Ruby, who pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, was quickly led away to prison, where he will remain as his defence team was to launched their appeal.

The district attorney said after the trial that he thought the jury had been persuaded by Dallas police officers who reported that Ruby had planned to kill Oswald for two days and had meant to shoot him three times instead of once. [which conflicts with claim made that Ruby decided to kill Oswald on the spur of the moment]

Prosecutors argued that Ruby should die in the electric chair "because he mocked American justice while the spotlight was on Dallas". Defence lawyers had suggested that the prosecution wanted Ruby to go to the electric chair to compensate for their frustrations due to their inability to try Lee Harvey Oswald. They also argued that there was medical evidence to suggest that Ruby suffered from epilepsy and was subject to seizures and mental blackouts.

During the six months following the Kennedy assassination, Ruby repeatedly asked, orally and in writing, to speak to the members of the Warren Commission. Only after Ruby's sister Eileen wrote letters to the Warren Commission (and after her writing letters to the commission became publicly reported) did the commission agree to talk to Ruby. In June 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan and other commission members went to Dallas and met with Ruby. Ruby begged Warren several times to take him to Washington D.C., because he feared for his life and those of his family members, claiming among other things that "a whole new form of government is going to take over this country, and I know I won't live to see you another time." Warren refused Ruby's request. According to a record of Ruby's testimony, Warren declared that the Commission would have no way of providing protection to him, since it had no police powers. Ruby said he wanted to convince President Johnson that he was not part of any conspiracy to kill JFK. Wikipedia

Following the trial three psychiatrists recommended that he should have a "sanity hearing" amid reports that he was mentally ill. In an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, Ruby's lawyers argued that he could not have received a fair trial in Dallas due to the excessive publicity. The court agreed and ruled that his motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted, and so Ruby's conviction and death sentence was overturned. While awaiting a new trial, Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism in hospital on 3 January, 1967.

McNamara visited South Vietnam on March 6th to pledge support for Khanh. Upon arriving back at Washington he advised LBJ to increase military aid to shore up the sagging SV Army. The cost to the US of maintaining SV’s Army and managing conflict rises to $2m per day. US NSC recommends bombing North Vietnam and LBJ approves only the planning phase .

The first US combat troops arrived in Vietnam on March 8th. They joined 23,000 US military advisors already there.

LBJ approved the use of NAPALM – a petroleum based anti-personnel bomb that showers hundreds of explosive pellets upon impact – on March 9th.

Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment (June 11). AMERICAN REACTIONS?

Dylan’s “Bringing It All Back Home” released on March 22nd. The birth of folk rock – allegedly. It had one electric side, the other acoustic. Subterranean Homesick Blues was his first single to chart in the US (number 39) and the album got to number 6. His writing becoming increasingly surreal. Dylan spent much of the summer in 64 at Woodstock. CHECK WIKI page.

US intervention in Brazil in 1964 – CIA backed a military coup overthrowing the democratically elected government of left-wing Joao Goulert. – April 1st. Troop movements began on March 31st – Goulert was gone the next day.

The coup concentrated income in the hands of the upper middle classes at the expense of the poor. This created a new class of consumers – especially car-buyers.

Over the next 20 years General Castelo Branco created the first death squads - or bands of secret police who hunt down ‘communists’ for torture, interrogation and murder. They were trained by the CIA.

Brazil is destined to become a neo-Nazi security state which was inspiration for Argentina and all over Western hemisphere up to the 1980s.

Goulart had decreed nationalisation and radical land reform. Now he fled into exile. He had alarmed the landowners who the military worked for.

Land reform was abandoned and the Peasants’ League were suppressed. The Generals went on to launch “Operation Amazonia”, a vast plan to occupy and develop Brazil’s forest interior. Subsidies were offered to entrepeneurs, with cheap land, new roads, to set up large ranches of forest land. Land speculation became rife and the environment was catastrophically damaged.

The aims were for cheap beef to feed the cities and development for the future. The policy was embraced by the military for PR benefits as a propaganda tool to unite the nation .

Washington approved. It was called “the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid 20th century” by Lincoln Gordon the US ambassador in Brazil at the time.

The US supported Brazil as a stalwart of Kennedy’s “Alliance for progress” in Latin America. LBJ himself decided that an all out effort must be made to prevent a counter coup, and to build up regime’s security forces as fast and effectively as possible for the long run. “CIA Diary” Philip Agee.

Brazil received one of the region’s largest and most sustained programmes of US military assistance for equipment, arms and training and kept the military in power till 1985.

Look up “Reasons for the 1964 Coup” by Tyler Bray

Guatemala & Mexico 1964

http://www.nsarchive.org/NSAEBB/NSAEBB100/

documents published on 2nd November 2003

Guatemla’s “protracted and savage” internal conflict which raged 1963 to 1996. Tens of thousands Guatemalans led to Mexic. Most of them found a safe haven on Mexican soil.

Mexico had an “ambivalent ad at times contradictory policy toward the Guatemaan conflict.”

Mexico criticized the political violence andyet collaborated – secretly and selectively – with the repressve forces it opposed.

In July 1964 Mexico was the only country that rejected US demands at OAS that Latin America break its diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba.

Under a succession of PRI (government of Adolfo Lopez Mateos) governments Mexico maintained fiercely independent nationalist support for Castro and became Cuba’s strongest regional ally.

But Mexico had an “informal understanding with the US at highest levels to maintain relations with Cuba so one OAS country can have a foot in the door which might be helpful.”

Dean Rusk. November 12th 1964, recorded telling LBJ that US officials had agreed with foreign ministers of several Latin American nations on the “practical desirability” of Mexico maintaining an embassy in Havana.

Mexican diplomats communicated Cuban developments to the US.

Researcher – Kate Doyle director of NSA’s Mexico Project

See www.nsarchive.org

Command Operation – Green berets intervene against rebels 1966 - 67

Eduardo Frei, Christian Democrat candidate, won the Chilean 1964 election with 56% of the vote, offering “revolution in liberty” as an alternative to Marxist socialism.

The CIA used up a $20m budget in blocking Allende – it was twice as much as the amount spent by both parties in the US election of 1964 per voter – about $8 per voter. “Secret, Lies and Democracy” CHOMSKY.

The money was funnelled in through 1963 and 1964, much of it through the Agency for International Aid (AID) “The Price of Power” SEYMOUR M HERSH.

Ranger 7 was launched 28 July 1964. Impacted on the Moon 31 on July 1964 at 13:25:49 UT

Ranger 7, along with 8 and 9, were completely successful. It photographed its way down to target in a lunar plain, soon named Mare Cognitum, south of Copernicus crater. It sent more than 4,300 pictures from six cameras to waiting scientists and engineers. The new images revealed that craters caused by impact were the dominant features of the Moon's surface, even in the seemingly smooth and empty plains. Great craters were marked by small ones, and the small with tiny impact pockmarks, as far down in size as could be discerned—about 50 centimeters (16 inches). The light-colored streaks radiating from Copernicus and a few other large craters turned out to be chains and nets of small craters and debris blasted out in the primary impacts. WIKI

King attends the signing ceremony of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at the White House on July 2.

King was arrested on June 11th for demanding service at a whites only restaurant – he went to jail. - ?

During the summer, King experiences his first ‘hurtful rejection’ by black people when he is stoned by Black Muslims in Harlem.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 (July 2, 1964) outlawed segregation in the US schools and public places. The bill was amended prior to passage to protect women in courts , and explicitly included white people for the first time. It also started the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It also showed people how the blacks deserved to be treated like normal human beings.

In order to circumvent limitations on the federal use of the Equal Protection Clause handed down by the Civil Rights Cases, the law was passed under the Commerce Clause. Once it was implemented, its effects were far reaching and had tremendous long-term impacts on the whole country. It prohibited discrimination in public facilities, in government, and in employment, invalidating the Jim Crow laws in the southern US. It became illegal to compel segregation of the races in schools, housing, or hiring. Powers given to enforce the bill were initially weak, but were supplemented during later years. Wikipedia

LBJ signed the civil rights act of 1964 (DATE?)– Congress finally recognised that blacks were citizens protected by the constitution. Among other things it abolished literacy tests used in registering voters. Wikipedia

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Two shadowy incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin would provide Johnson and his team with the excuse to press for the passage of the resolution.

July 31st 1964 SVN Commandos in unmarked speed boats raid two NVN military bases on islands off the coast. USS Maddox in vicinity.

On August 2nd the US Navy destroyer Maddox was conducting one of these missions when it was attacked by four North VN patrol boats. Assisted by jets from the carrier Ticonderoga stationed nearby, the Maddox suffered no harm, while one of the NVN craft was destroyed and others severely damaged.

Johnson sent the Maddox and other destroyers back to the Tonkin Gulf, with instructions to respond to any attack. At this point, the JCS already had started selecting targets for eventual retaliations.

On the night of August 3rd, the Maddox and the C Turner Joy, patrolling the Gulf of Tonkin, detecting enemy boats and started firing in defense. After four hours of engagement, both ships left, unharmed. Later review of the incident indicates that the two destroyers were never attacked, and so it was confirmed by support pilots from the Ticonderoga. Press reports in the US greatly embellished the 2nd attack with spectacular eye-witness accounts although no journalists had been on board the destroyers.

LBJ was to use his newly won powers (Gulf Of Tonkin Resolution) in 1965 to deploy the first American combat troops in SVN and start retaliatory bombing raids against the North.

Chronolgy of events put together by George Bundy for LBJ: www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_i/255_308.html (document # 272)

Message to congress:

www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/tonkinsp.htm

Gulf of Tonkin resolution: www.nv.cc.va.us/home/nvsageh/Hist122/Part4/Tonkin.htm

On 31 July 1964 the USS Maddox commenced the first leg of a patrol in the Tonkin Gulf. Initially a routine patrol, it developed into a defensive action with global repercussions. On 2 August, Maddox, cruising in international waters, was closed in a torpedo run by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. During the ensuing skirmish, in which torpedoes were launched at Maddox, the destroyer put two of the Communist boats out of action with direct hits.

The FBI secretly initiated electronic surveillance at the democratic National Convention in August 1964 … Dr King – Time Magazine’s Man of the Year - was tapped.

“J Edgar Hoover: The Man and His Secrets” – Curt Gentry.

In August 1964, General Nguyen Khanh was faced with an attempted coup, rioting and demonstrations in the northern provinces, a massive labour strike in Saigon, and an armed revolt by Montagnards. wikipedia

The Return Of The Beatles

When they returned in August, for four weeks, see “The Love You Make” pp 134 – 141, they were a firmly established act, receiving message from Colonel Tom Parker, and a meeting with Dylan on 28th August in NYC.

The Beatles firs proper tour was on August 1964 – 34 days. Bomb threats in Las Vegas – Lennon was refusing to play southern gigs where the audience were “segregated and black people have to sit at the back, we’ve never played segregated gigs and we’re not going to start now.”

Vietnam

LBJ’s policy in VN was, to a large extent, prisoner of domestic politics. He worried that the effort in VN would threaten his policies at home. One of his obsessions was the slowing of his “Great Society” programs as the war’s cost spiralled out of control. In 1964, election year, he toughened his stand in VN to counterbalance Barry Goldwater’s “extremist campaign”.

The US National Security Council recommended the bombing of NVN.

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

In May, LBJ’s aides began work on a congressional resolution supporting the war policy in Vietnam. Shelved temporarily due to lack of Senate support but later became the basis of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

It was written designed to grant the president extraordinary powers to undertake military action in SE Asia. Two shadowy incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin would provide Johnson and his team with the excuse to press for the passage of the resolution.

The US Navy routinely conducted counter-insurgency and intelligence operations off the North VN coast. These operations, code-named DeSoto missions were designed to support SVN sabotage infiltrations. On August 2nd the US Navy destroyer Maddox was conducting one of these missions when it was attacked by four North VN patrol boats. Assisted by jets from the carrier Ticonderoga stationed nearby, the Maddox suffered no harm, while one of the NVN craft was destroyed and others severely damaged.

Even though Johnson downplayed the importance of the incident, he sent the Maddox and other destroyers back to the Tonkin Gulf, with instructions to respond to any attack. At this point, the JCS already had started selecting targets for eventual retaliations.

Despite the very questionable reliabilty of information, the news of the attack prompted Johnson to announce immediate retaliations against NVN, and on August 5th he presented his resolution to congress. The outcry of public opinion helped the resolution sail smoothly through congress, with senator Fulbright praising it as the only way prevent further expansion of the conflict. The measure was finally passed, with only two dissenting votes.

What LBJ didn’t say was that the Maddox was NVN waters carrying out illegal sabatoage operations. LBJ made the claim that the ship was attacked in international waters and that he was retaliating by ordering strikes in NVN. “The movement and the 60s” Terry H Anderson.

He used his newly won powers in 1965 to deploy the first American combat troops in SVN and start retaliatory bombing raids against the North.

5th August, 85% of American support LBJ’s bombing decision. McNamara and other aides lobbies congress for a White House resolution that will give a free hand in Vietnam. 6th August, confrontation in the senate – McNamara and Senator Wayne Morse (Oregon). Morse had been tipped off that Maddox was involved in raids against North Vietnam and not the victim of an unprovoked attack. McNamara denied the allegation. August 7th Tonkin Resolution was passed by Congress - overwhelming. LBJ was granted enormous power. Morse and Ernest Gruening (Alaska) were the only two to vote against Tonkin Reslotuion.

26th August – LBJ was nominated at the Dem National Convention .

On September 13, 1964, the South Vietnamese Air Force, under the leadership of Air Marshall Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, crushed a coup plot against General Nguyễn Khánh. Nguyễn Cao Kỳ's political star began to rise.

During his time in power, General Nguyễn Khánh established a new constitution, which the U.S. Embassy helped to draft, and Premier Trần Văn Hương drafted a statement that his country's differences with the United States arising from the military seizure of power on Dec. 20 had been eliminated.

General Nguyen Khanh was appointed to deal with the crisis caused by current Anti-government demonstrations. The day before this takeover, a 17-year-old Buddhist girl had burned herself to death in protest against the Trần Văn Hương regime. A struggle for political power began between General Nguyen Khanh and the activist Buddhist leader, Thich Tin Quang.

On September 26, 1964, the Vietnamese Revolutionary Council elected Phan Khắc Sửu as Chief of State and the former mayor of Saigon, Trần Văn Hương, as Premier, but General Nguyen Khanh retained real power under the title of commander in chief of the armed forces.

Sept 27th – LBJ assembled his top aides in White House to decide what to do in Vietnam.

November 3rd – with 61% of the popular vote, LBJ is re-elected with the biggest landslide victory in the history of the USA to date. Don’t underestimate the popularity of the Vietnam War. Democrats now command big majorities in both houses.

Warren Report conclusions

The Commission issued a published Report on September 27, 1964, formally titled Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but commonly referred to simply as "the Warren Report." The Report was 888 pages in length and contained 296,000 words.[3] The Commission had concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the assassination of Kennedy and that the commission could not find any persuasive evidence of a conspiracy, either domestic or foreign. The conclusion, that Oswald had acted alone, is today called the lone gunman theory.

1964 October 16th China threatening - tested its first atomic bomb and has amassed troops along its border with Vietnam, in response to US escalation.

Mississipi’s Burning

James Chaney, Michael Schwermer and Andrew Goodman, young activists, disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi on June 21st.

The FBI had “subversive” files open on one of the whites and Chaney, a 21 year old black. So on October 27th 1967, seven of the remaining 19 murderers of the three were convicted only of conspiring to deprive their victims of their civil rights and got 3 to 10 years in federal prison. The other 12 got off with no charges.

US District Judge Harold Cox put it “they killed one nigger, one jew, and one white man. I gave them what I thought they deserved.” “COINTELPRO PAPERS” WARD CHURCHILL AND JIM VANDERWALL.

The case was later mytholigised in the Hollwood film, Mississipi’s Burning.

While Fed authorities were out looking for the three civil rights workers n Southwest Mississippi they found two morebodies. They were 19 year olds, Henry Dee and Charles Moore, who had been beaten (to death?),tied to weights and then thrown alive into the Mississippi.

James Seale and another suspect were arrested. The case was passed to a local court and the judge threw out the charges. Seale pretended to be dead fromthen on. He was caught and stood trial I early 2007 aged 71. Carged with 2 counts of kidnapping, one of conspiracy to commit kidnapping. The other perp was said to be church deacon aged 72, and cooperating with authorities.

LBJ met with King, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, James Farmer, to seek support for his War on Poverty initiative. King is supportive – 18th January.

King and Malcom X met for the first and only time on 26th January. year

Election 1964

Spring Republican Party primaries pit Barry Goldwater against Rockefeller. Goldwater just won but was beaten by Johnson in the election. Dates

Goldwater was picked as candidate July 16th to 17th at the National Convention in San Francisco: “Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice.” he said.

Goldwater’s 5 electoral college votes came from Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Arizona.

LBJ chose Hubert H Humphrey as running mate in preference to Bobby.

LBJ Dem 61.1 486

Barry M Goldwater Rep 38.5 5

LBJ was re elected with 61% of the popular vote – the biggest landslide victory in the history of the USA up till then. The Vietnam war was very popular in America.

LBJ began his first complete term as President. He took the oath of January 20th.

“LBJ expanded his program of domestic reform which he believed would lead to a ‘Great Society’”. Encyclopedia Americana.

Democrtas held 100 seats in the Senate and 295 out of 435 congressmen. Liberals were strengthened.

November 1st, VC attacks US in VN at Bien Hoa air base. This, the first attack by VC on Americans, killed five Americans, two SVN, and wounds hundreds of others. LBJ refused recommendations for a retaliatory air strike against NVN.

On the 18th November after King criticised the FBI’s failure to protect civil rights workers, the agency’s director, Hoover, denounces King as “the most notorious liar in the country”.

November 21st … the FBI mailed an anonymous letter and tape of the King hotel room bugs to King and his wife. William Sullivan said on orders from Hoover via Hoover’s assistant Alan H Belmont.

“The American Police State” DAVID WISE.

Around the 23rd November (?) Hoover stated that the SCLC is “spearheaded by communists and moral degenerates”

1st December King met Hoover at the Justice Department and received the Nobel Peace Prize on the 10th.

December 1st – LBJ’s top aides – Rusk, Bundy – McNamara recommended a policy of gradual escalation of US military involvement in Vietnam.

December – Thousands of NVA arrive in South Vietnam via Ho chi Minh trail with Russian and Chinese weapons.

20th – another coup in the South. This time youing officers in the SVN Army oust the older Generals from government and seize control.

21st – an angry Ambassador Taylor summons the young officers to the US embassy then scolds them like schoolboys over the instability and endless intrigues plaguing South Vietnam’s government. Americans “are tired of coups”. This offends SVN’s new rulers who accuse USA of “colonialism”.

Now – 23,000 American miliatry advisors in SVN, 170,000 VC / Nva fighters in the people’s Revolutionary Army’ which has begun waging co-ordinated battalion-sized attacks against SVN troops in villages around Saigon.

The men of the hour – by December 64 –Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu. They were two up-coming military men who created an Armed Forces Council in Saigon. Within weeks the council took over most of the affairs of state. By Feb 65 Ky and Thieu could claim to be in charge of the government.

Bombings in South Vietnam was three times the scale of the bombing of the North and it continued to be much heavier, much more vicious. CHOMSKY AND DAVID BARSAMIAN IN “CHRONICLES OF DISSENT”.

“315,000 tons of air ordinance was dropped on SE Asia in 1965” – “Elite Deviance”, David R Simon and D Stanley Eitzen.

“BY LATE 1964 Harold Wilson’s newly elected Labour Government had already broken its election manifesto to unilaterally disarm Britain, and was in fact developing a full-scale nuclear weapons programme, in spite of wide-spread public protest. There was a marked reluctance by the British TV at the time to discuss the arms race, and there was especially silence on the effects of nuclear weapons - about which the large majority of the public had absolutely no information. I therefore proposed to the BBC that - using one small corner of Kent in southeastern England to represent a microcosm - I make a film showing the possible effects, during an outbreak of war between NATO and the USSR, of a nuclear strike on Britain.”

http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/warGame.htm

December 24th VC terrorists set off a car bomb at Brinks Hotel killing two Americans and 58 wounded. LBJ again refused air strikes in response.

James Brown’s Golden Era began: “Papa’s got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)”

Funk in 1967 - James Brown “Let Yourself Go”. Chicken scratch guitar (Jimmy Nolen and Alphonso Kellum) Brown becoming much more rythmic – melody is going. Aretha Franklin made her first recordings for Atlantic. Otis Redding made his final recordings for Stax / Volt.

“Cold Sweat”, “even the horns of the incomparable Maceo Parker and Pee Wee Ellis became percusion instruments, subservient to the groove”. “The first funk masterpiece” “the keystone of hip-hop.”

Scott Walker released “The Old Man is Back Again” which lamented the Soviet invasion of Prague.

Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited”

James Brown’s Golden Era began: “Papa’s got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)”

Nat King Cole died from lung cancer in 1965 date?

Film 1964 - 1969

“Fistful of Dollars” – Clint Eastwood – a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo”.

A Fistful of Dollars (Per un pugno di dollari in Italy and officially on-screen in the U.S. and UK as simply Fistful of Dollars) is a 1964 film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood. Released in the United States in 1967, it initiated the popularity of the Spaghetti western film genre. It was followed by For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), also starring Eastwood. Collectively, the films are commonly known as "The Dollar(s) Trilogy". This film was inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film Yojimbo (1961). In the United States, the United Artists publicity campaign referred to Eastwood's character in all three films as the "Man With No Name".

As this was the first film of the Spaghetti Western genre to be released in the United States,[citation needed] many of the European cast and crew took on American stage names. This included Sergio Leone himself, who was credited as "Bob Robertson".

Fistful of Dollars and its two sequels were shot in the Spanish province Almería. Wikipedia

Chaplin’s final movie: “ A countess from Hong Kong”. It was his first movie for 10 years and a complete turkey.

“You Only Live Twice” hit the cinemas and Connery quit as Bond.

1968 “Midnight Cowboy” made Jon Voight a star – Elvis had turned the role down.

Arts

Photographer Bruce Davidson spent two years in Harlem. See East 100th Street by Davidson.

1967 “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” – low ratings;

NBC’s hit of 1965 and 1966 “I Spy” – transformed greatly just before being cancelled.

Star Trek; time Tunnel; twilight zone;

Chaplin’s final movie: “ A countess from Hong Kong”. It was his first movie for 10 years and a complete turkey.

King is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10. Dr. King is the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for Peace at age 35.

For A Few Dollars More

1964

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