This Week in History

HISTORY, 6 Nov 2023

Satoshi Ashikaga - TRANSCEND Media Service

Vecteezy

6 – 12 November 2023

The Video of the Week:

Gaza Palestine 🇵🇸 Walking Tour | Gaza Strip Before The Attack 2023 | فلسطين غزة – YouTube

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06 November

1943   World War II: The 1st Ukrainian Front liberates Kyiv from German occupation.

1971  The United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.

[1]      Cannikin Test:

• Cannikin Nuclear Test Footage
• Livermore – Cannikin
• Largest Underground Nuclear Testing Project Cannikin 5 Megatons – YouTube

[2]      Hydrogen Bomb:

• Thermonuclear weapon
• Hydrogen Bomb: How it works – in detail. Atomic vs Nuclear.
• Hydrogen Bomb vs Atomic: What Is the Difference?

1985   Colombian conflict, leftist guerrillas of the 19th of April Movement seize control of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá.

2002  Jiang Lijun is detained by Chinese police for signing the Open Letter to the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.

2016  Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launch an offensive to capture the city of Raqqa from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

[1]      ISIL:

• Who, what and where is ISIL?
• How the US Created the Islamic State: Talking Heads – YouTube
• ISIS Is The Hand Of America, Created By The U.S., Says Syrian Ambassador To India – YouTube
• Is It ISIS or ISIL?
• History of the Islamic State
• Timeline: the Rise, Spread, and Fall of the Islamic State

[2]      Syrian Civil War and ISIL:

• Syrian Civil War Facts
• Isis and the Syrian Civil War
• Opposition–Islamic State conflict during the Syrian civil war
• Iraq, ISIS and the Syrian War

[3]      ISIL, the U.S. (CIA) and the Syrian Civil War:

• America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group
• American intervention in the Syrian civil war
• Iran’s Former Intel Minister: Mossad, MI6, And CIA Created Islamic State
• Did Obama ‘Order the CIA to Train Islamic State’?
• Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq
• CIA-MI6 planned to assassinate Syrian leaders in 1957
• The U.S. and the Aftermath of ISIS

[4]      The U.S./CIA Support for ISIL/Syrian Rebles:

• Terrorists Supported by America: U.S. Helicopter Delivering Weapons to the Islamic State (ISIS), Shot Down by Iraqi “Popular Forces”
• ISIS weapons arsenal included some purchased by U.S. government
• Does the US Support ISIS? Yes and Here Are 5 Times the US Actively Did
• Syria: CIA Sends Weapons to Terrorists Within Next Weeks
• CIA begins weapons delivery to Syrian rebels
• In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA
• How ISIS Got Weapons From the U.S. and Used Them to Take Iraq and Syria

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07 November

1893  Women’s suffrage: Women in the U.S. state of Colorado are granted the right to vote, the second state to do so.

1900  The People’s Party is founded in Cuba.

1907  Jesús García saves the entire town of Nacozari de García by driving a burning train full of dynamite six kilometers (3.7 miles) away before it can explode.

• The story of Jesus and the Dynamite train nobody gets right – Jesús García – YouTube

1917  World War I: The Third Battle of Gaza ends, with British forces capturing Gaza from the Ottoman Empire.

1918  The 1918 influenza epidemic spreads to Western Samoa, killing 7,542 (about 20% of the population) by the end of the year.

1918  Kurt Eisner overthrows the Wittelsbach dynasty in the Kingdom of Bavaria.

1920  Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow issues a decree that leads to the formation of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

1944  Soviet spy Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German World War I veteran, is hanged by his Japanese captors along with 34 of his ring.

[Richard Sorge, Nazis, and Hotsumi Ozaki]

• The Secret Life of Communist Richard Sorge, Hitler’s Nemesis and the World’s Greatest Spy
• An anti-fascist spy who defied Hitler’s Nazis and was betrayed by Stalin
• Why does Russia want to dig up the ‘greatest spy of all time’ Richard Sorge from a Tokyo cemetery?
• Tokyo Espionage: Legendary Soviet Spy Richard Sorge

1949  The first oil was taken in Oil Rocks (Neft Daşları), the world’s oldest offshore oil platform.

1956  Suez Crisis: The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution calling for the United Kingdom, France and Israel to immediately withdraw their troops from Egypt.

[1]      Suez Crisis in the Cold War Era:

• The Other Side of Suez (BBC Documentary) – YouTube
• British History: Showdown at Suez
• British History in depth: The Suez Crisis
• The Suez Crisis (1956) | Origins
• “The SuezCrisis was provoked by an American and British decision not to finance Egypt’s construction of the Aswan High Dam...”
• Timeline of the Suez Crisis

[2]     Suez Crisis and the Protocol of Sèvres:

• Operation Kadesh – the Suez Crisis 1956
• The Protocol of Sevres 1956 Anatomy of a War Plot

[3]      CIA, MI6, Mossad and the Suez Crisis:

• Eden Wanted Nasser Murdered As MI6 Plotted Regime Change In Egypt, Syria, And Saudi Arabia
• “The documents show that MI6 continued to target Egypt’s President Nasser after the 1956 Suez crisis”
• Suez Crisis: The MI6 secretary with a ringside seat
• “Less is known about MI6 and the CIA collusion with Iraq and Jordan before – and immediately after – Suez…”
• Mossad finally reveals how master spy Eli Cohen who came close to being Syria’s defence minister was caught

[4]      FIRST UNITED NATIONS EMERGENCY FORCE (UNEF I):

• Revisiting the first United Nations peacekeeping intervention in Egypt and the Gaza Strip, 1956-1967
• UN DOCUMENT A/3256

1956  Hungarian Revolution: János Kádár returns to Budapest in a Soviet armored convoy, officially taking office as the next Hungarian leader. By this point, most armed resistance has been defeated.

1957  Cold War: The Gaither Report calls for more American missiles and fallout shelters.

1983   Cold War: The command post exercise Able Archer 83 begins, eventually leading to the Soviet Union to place air units in East Germany and Poland on alert, for fear that NATO was preparing for war.

[Able Archer 83]

• Able Archer: The NATO exercise that almost went nuclear
• Able Archer 83 Nearly Sparked Nuclear War With the Soviets
• The Soviet False Alarm Incident and Able Archer 83
• Full article: Able Archer: How close of a call was it?
• Newly released documents shed light on 1983 nuclear war scare with Soviets.
• The Able Archer 83 Sourcebook

1989  East German Prime Minister Willi Stoph, along with his entire cabinet, is forced to resign after huge anti-government protests.

2004  Iraq War: The interim government of Iraq calls for a 60-day state of emergency as U.S. forces storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

• This will change how you think about the Iraq War. – YouTube
• How US propaganda won Iraq’s ‘battlespace’ | The Iraq War
• The shadow of the Iraq war lingers on

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08 November

1937  The Nazi exhibition Der ewige Jude (“The Eternal Jew”) opens in Munich.

1942  World War II: French Resistance coup in Algiers, in which 400 civilian French patriots neutralize Vichyist XIXth Army Corps after 15 hours of fighting, and arrest several Vichyist generals, allowing the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers.

[Vichy Regime/Vichy France]

• Operation Torch – November 8, 1942
• Vichy France
• Government of Vichy France
• Vichy anti-Jewish legislation
• 33 French Resistance Facts: Vichy Regime During WW2!
• “The authoritarian government led by Marshal Pétain participated in Jewish expulsions and turned France into a quasi-police state”
• Philippe Pétain | World War II Database
• Why America Supported the Vichy Regime
• The Internal Contradictions of the Vichy Regime
• Confronting the Histories of Vichy and European Fascism
• Vichy Holocaust collaboration timeline

1950  Korean War: United States Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown, while piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight in history.

1957  Operation Grapple X, Round C1: The United Kingdom conducts its first successful hydrogen bomb test over Kiritimati in the Pacific.

1965  The British Indian Ocean Territory is created, consisting of Chagos Archipelago, Aldabra, Farquhar and Des Roches islands.

1968  The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic is signed to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety by standardizing the uniform traffic rules among the signatories.

2002  Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences”.

2004  Iraq War: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

2006 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Israeli Defense Force kill 19 Palestinian civilians in their homes during the shelling of Beit Hanoun.

2020  Myanmar holds the 2020 general election, re-electing a government led by the National League for Democracy, which is deposed by the Burmese military the following February during the 2021 Myanmar coup d’état.

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09 November

1917  The Balfour Declaration is published in The Times newspaper.:

[1]      Britain’s True Motivation Behind the Balfour Declaration:

• Who was behind the Balfour Declaration?
• “The final version of the Declaration was actually written by Leopold Amery, a British official who…was a secret and fervent Zionist.”

[2]      The letter that led to the founding of Israel:

• How Israel Was Created – YouTube
• How Zionists Came to Palestine Under British Protection (Documentary) – YouTube

1953  Cambodia gains independence from France.

1965  A Catholic Worker Movement member, Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.

1970  Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6–3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.

1979  Cold War: Nuclear false alarm: The NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early-warning radars, the alert is cancelled.

1989  Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall: East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel to West Berlin.

1993  Stari Most, the “old bridge” in the Bosnian city of Mostar, built in 1566, collapses after several days of bombing by Croat forces during the Croat–Bosniak War.

1994  The chemical element darmstadtium is discovered.

1998  Capital punishment in the United Kingdom, already abolished for murder, is completely abolished for all remaining capital offenses.

2014  A non-binding self-determination consultation is held in Catalonia, asking Catalan citizens their opinion on whether Catalonia should become a state and, if so, whether it should be an independent state

2020  Second Nagorno-Karabakh War: An armistice agreement is signed by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia.

[Second Nagorno-Karabakh War]

• Azerbaijan-Armenia: The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh explained
• The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: A Visual Explainer
• A Renewed Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: Reading Between the Front Lines
• Confidence and Catastrophe: Armenia and the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War
• The Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in a Global South Perspective
• Lessons Learned from the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War

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10 November

1821  Cry of Independence by Rufina Alfaro at La Villa de Los Santos, Panama setting into motion a revolt which led to Panama’s independence from Spain and to it immediately becoming part of Colombia.

1918  The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, receives a top-secret coded message from Europe (that would be sent to Ottawa and Washington, D.C.) that said on November 11, 1918, all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.

1942  World War II: Germany invades Vichy France following French Admiral François Darlan‘s agreement to an armistice with the Allies in North Africa.

1970  Vietnam War: Vietnamization: For the first time in five years, an entire week ends with no reports of American combat fatalities in Southeast Asia.

[Vietnam War]

• Louis Armstrong – What a Wonderful World
• List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War (1970)
• Vietnam War timeline: 1968 to 1970
• Vietnam War Timeline – Lead-Up, Battles & Deaths
• The Vietnam War: The Pictures That Moved That Most
• 44 Declassified Vietnam War Photos The Public Wasn’t Meant To See
• Anti-Vietnam War Movement | Stanford History Education Group

1975  Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the United Nations General Assembly passes Resolution 3379, determining that Zionism is a form of racism.

[UNGA Resolution 3379 and Its Revocation]

• Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination
• Racism and racial discrimination/Revocation of resolution 3379
• N. REPEALS RESOLUTION LINKING ZIONISM TO RACISM
• US and Israel rewrite history of UN resolution that declared Zionism is racism
• The Battle on Zionism at the UN
• Race, Palestine, and International Law

1989  Germans begin to tear down the Berlin Wall.

• Life Behind the Berlin Wall – Full Video – YouTube

2006  Sri Lankan Tamil politician Nadarajah Raviraj is assassinated in Colombo.

[1]      Sri Lankan Civil War:

• Overview of the Sri Lankan Civil War
• TIMELINE: Sri Lanka’s 25-year civil war
• The Sri Lankan Civil War and Its History, Revisited in 2020
• The Sri Lankan Conflict
• Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
• Sri Lanka crisis: How war heroes became villains
• Roots Of Ethnic Contestation In Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province

[2]      War Crimes in the Sri Lanka:

• War crimes during the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War
• UN to collect evidence of alleged Sri Lanka war crimes

[3]      Sri Lanka and the Foreign Intelligence Community:

• Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War
• RAW: India’s External Intelligence Agency
• The Politics Behind the CIA Controversy in Sri Lanka
• Mossad in Sri Lanka

2020  Armenia and Azerbaijan sign a ceasefire agreement, ending the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, and prompting protests in Armenia.

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11 November

1215  The Fourth Council of the Lateran meets, defining the doctrine of transubstantiation, the process by which bread and wine are, by that doctrine, said to transform into the body and blood of Christ.

1865  Treaty of Sinchula is signed whereby Bhutan cedes the areas east of the Teesta River to the British East India Company.

1918  World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne.

1919  Latvian forces defeat the West Russian Volunteer Army at Riga in the Latvian War of Independence.

1923  Adolf Hitler is arrested in Munich for high treason for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.

1940  World War II: The German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail from the Automedon, and sends it to Japan.

1962  Kuwait‘s National Assembly ratifies the Constitution of Kuwait.

• History of Kuwait
• List of wars involving Kuwait
• Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
• Israel–Kuwait relations
• KUWAIT STANDS WITH PALESTINE

1965  Southern Rhodesia‘s Prime Minister Ian Smith unilaterally declares the colony independent as the unrecognised state of Rhodesia.

1967  Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong and turned over to “new left” antiwar activist Tom Hayden.

1968  Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated. The goal is to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh trail, through Laos into South Vietnam.

[1]      Timeline of the Vietnam War:

• 1968 in the Vietnam War
• Outline of the Vietnam War

[2]      Commando Hunt: 11-November 1968 to 29 March 1972:

• Military Assistance Command, Vietnam
• List of allied military operations of the Vietnam War (1968)

1972  Vietnam War: Vietnamization: The United States Army turns over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam.

1975  Independence of Angola.

2004  The Palestine Liberation Organization confirms the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.

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12 November

1912  First Balkan War: King George I of Greece makes a triumphal entry into Thessaloniki after its liberation from 482 years of Ottoman rule.

1918  Dissolution of Austria-Hungary: Austria becomes a republic.

1920  Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes sign the Treaty of Rapallo.

1927  Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

1933  Nazi Germany uses a referendum to ratify its withdrawal from the League of Nations.

1938 Nazi Germany issues the Decree on the Elimination of Jews from Economic Life prohibiting Jews from selling goods and services or working in a trade, totally segregating Jews from the German economy.

1940  World War II: The Battle of Gabon ends as Free French Forces take Libreville, Gabon, and all of French Equatorial Africa from Vichy French forces.

1940  World War II: Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrives in Berlin to discuss the possibility of the Soviet Union joining the Axis Powers.

1948  Aftermath of World War II: In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentences seven Japanese military and government officials.

1956  Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia join the United Nations.

1956  In the midst of the Suez Crisis, Palestinian refugees are shot dead in Rafah by Israel Defense Force soldiers following the invasion of the Gaza Strip.

1969  Vietnam War: Independent investigative journalist Seymour Hersh breaks the story of the My Lai Massacre.

1971  Vietnam War: As part of Vietnamization, U.S. President Richard Nixon sets February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam.

[1]      Vietnam War:

• The Pentagon Papers: The view from the Oval Office
• The Kissinger Telephone Conversation Transcripts
• Vietnam War Timeline – Lead-Up, Battles & Deaths
• Vietnam War timeline: 1971 and beyond
• Vietnam: The Downward Spiral | US History II (OS Collection)
• Nixon Prolonged Vietnam War for Political Gain

[2]      Protest Music of the Vietnam War:

• Vietnam protest song – YouTube
• John Denver – Anti War Protest 1971 – YouTube

1975  The Comoros joins the United Nations.

1977  France conducts the Oreste nuclear test as 14th in the group of 29, 1975–78 French nuclear tests series.

[1]      French Nuclear Tests:

• France and weapons of mass destruction
• 1975–78 French nuclear tests
• Database of nuclear tests, France

[2]      French Nuclear Tests in Polynesia:

• The human cost of France’s nuclear tests in the Pacific – YouTube
• Testing Bombs in French Polynesia
• French nuclear tests contaminated 110,000 in Pacific, says study
• Macron: France owes ‘debt’ to Polynesians over nuclear tests
• New study on nuclear testing in French Polynesia reveals France’s ‘censorship and secrecy’

1982  USSR: Yuri Andropov becomes the General Secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev.

1990  Crown Prince Akihito is formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan.

1990  Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.

1991  Santa Cruz massacre: The Indonesian Army open fire on a crowd of student protesters in Dili, East Timor.

2001  War in Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, ahead of advancing Afghan Northern Alliance troops.

[1]      The U.S. War in Afghanistan:

• Costs of the Afghanistan war, in lives and dollars
• Costs of the 20-year war on terror: $8 trillion and 900,000 deaths

[2]      G.W.Bush, Enron, UNOCAL, D. Cheney and Halliburton:

• 10 Bush-Bin Laden Connections That Raised a Few Eyebrows
• Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline
• The Enron Pipeline Connection To 9/11
• ENRON and the Taliban had an oil deal – and covered up 9/11 threat?
• Enron’s Close Ties to Bush
• Bush’s Enron Deal
• Enron: The Bush Connection
• Is Enron Behind The War In Afghanistan?
• Unocal and the Afghanistan Pipeline
• Enron, UNOCAL, Cheney & Afghanistan
• Cheney Reveals Enron Meeting
• The Enron Story Everyone Is Missing
• The Enron-Cheney-Taliban Connection?
• Dick Cheney’s Halliburton: a corporate case study
• USA: Unocal Advisor Named Representative to Afghanistan

[3]      The U.S. National/Corporate Interest in Afghanistan:

• Once upon a time USA invited Taliban to USA
• Does Afghanistan have oil?
• Afghanistan: It’s About Oil
• Afghanistan Oil Pipeline
• Oil and 9-11: The Connection
• The US War in Afghanistan and the Grab for Central Asian Oil
• “The War Is Worth Waging”: Afghanistan’s Minerals and Natural Gas
• OIL SECRETS BEHIND U.S. WAR ON AFGHANISTAN
• CENTRAL ASIAN OIL, ENRON, AND THE AFGHANISTAN PIPELINES
• The Deadly Pipeline War: U.S. Afghan Policy Driven by Oil Interests
• S. Bases in Afghanistan Located Along Projected Oil Pipeline Route
• TAPI Pipeline Project and the US-NATO Troop Withdrawal from Afghanistan.
• Pipeline Politics: Oil, Gas And The US Interest In Afghanistan

[4]      From 9/11 to the U.S. War in Afghanistan:

• Pipelines to 9/11 – Secrets behind world events
• Afghanistan War: How did 9/11 lead to a 20-year war?
• How The CIA Funded a Terrorist Organization – YouTube
• How America Created Al-Qaeda. One of history’s greatest ironies
• US planned war in Afghanistan long before September 11
• What Did 9/11 Have to Do with Afghanistan?
• How U.S. Generals Lied on 9/11 Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

[5]      Operation Northwoods, 9/11 and the War on Terrorism?:

• “The article argues that the Bush administration has used the threat of terrorism as a pretext to implement a wide range of policies that had been decided upon in advance of the 9/11 attacks…”
• Declassified 1960s documents offer blueprint for 9/11
• Ex-FBI agents accuse top CIA, FBI officials of 9/11 coverup
• Canestraro Declaration – 20 July 2021
• Operation Northwood
• Operation Northwoods, The U.S. False Flag Plot To Incite A War With Cuba
• Operation Northwoods: Blueprint for 9/11?
• Operation Northwoods: The Pentagon’s Scripts for Overthrowing Castro
• New report reveals what President Bush knew leading up to 9/11 attack
• Witness: With President Bush after the planes hit on Sept 11
• Dramatic new details released of Bush, Cheney dealing with 9/11 attacks
• Thousands of Israelis Were Absent from the WTC on 9/11?
• United States government operations and exercises on September 11, 2001

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Satoshi Ashikaga is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. Having worked as researcher, development program/project officer, legal protection/humanitarian assistance officer, human rights monitor-negotiator, managing-editor, and more, he prefers a peaceful and prudent life.  His previous work experiences, including those in war zones and war-torn zones, constantly remind him of the invaluableness of peace.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 6 Nov 2023.

Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: This Week in History, is included. Thank you.

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