The Liberation of Saigon / The End of the War.

by - Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:18

?
what do the millions of precarious think as they work?
what do the millions of non-regularised migrants think as they work?
what do the hundreds of millions of economic slaves think as they wake up each morning and know that one day etched in our memories americans clambered over each others back to hang off the last Hewey helicopter as it left Saigon?

Ho Chi Minh father of the Vietnamese Revolution washed dishes here.

by iosaf Sat Apr 30, 2005 12:13

There's a link.

Though I was born in during the Vietnam war I don't remember it, no more than many kids who were born during the Iraqi war will remember it. The year of my birth Washington "war memorial centre" saw opened one of its few centres and memorials not related to war, the JFK music and arts thing. Wasn't he a lovely man. Years after that war ended, I lived in central London and almost daily walked to work in another part of central London and often passed "the bullring" a roundabout on the south bank where over 70 people lived in a shanty town. That part of the city was re-developed at great cost, and where the shanty town had stood at the end of the XX century, an IMAX surround screen cinema took its place, showing videos of the height of our civilisation such as space exploration and endescopic surgery to the wondrous tourists.
Of course attempts were made to offer the shantytown dwellers accomodation in hostels and so on, they for some reason refused most of the help offered them, perhaps they were a community which preferred to live together rather than be rehabilitated and not the indigent alcoholic ingrates they were at the time portrayed.
So as a community they moved over the river, crossing the Thames bridge which in London offers the tourist the best views, and the suicide the best drop, and set up their shanty town at the back of a well known and very expensive hotel.
And above the service entry to that hotel, there is a little plaque and it reads-

"Ho Chi Minh the father of the Vietnamese revolution washed dishes here".

...I hope i'm making myself clear.

by miaow Sat Apr 30, 2005 11:31

the vietnam wall is opposite the korean wall.
the Lincoln memorial (which you will remember from the last scene of the remake of Planet of the Apes) is at the river side, and the recently built WW2 memorial is at the washington monument side, a pool of water sits in between all of them, and provides a suitable environment for frogs, toads and mosquitos to breed in. Just over at the tidal basin, there's the FDR memorial which is quite close to the Jefferson memorial, and were you to walk towards the river you could cross the memorial bridge to Arlington cemetery with over 120,000 soldier graves and many memorials. Or instead you might like to go back inland and visit the WW1 memorial or the civil war memorial taking time to admire the cherry trees which are also a memorial.

I never had the opportunity to reclaim war memorial central, but thought about it.

here's a wonderful link for lovers of Irish artists, it concerns Wicklow born Conor Walton, (no relation to Walton mountain) who at 34 years of age has been shortlisted for a big prize by an Oil company who invest in Art, in recognition of his portrait of Koko the Gorila who learnt American sign language in the 1970s and has just earned its place on the wall of the National Portrait Gallery in London, where you find quite a few Irish peoples' pictures oddly enough.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1591023,00.html

Well done Mr Walton!
& Well done Koko!
we're getting there.