I tested out a new cane (it's really pretty - purple with colourful flowers) & used my umbrella hat for our rainy day hike today.
We ran into 3 younger hikers with a super rad Aussie shepard dog along the trails & 2 of them complimented me on my blue hair. I responded with - I love colourful things! I'm wearing a mini circus tent on my head, as you can see! Then we all laughed 
Chicken with Preserved Lemon Soup.
A delectable #Khmer ethnic dish known for its aromatic flavors. This traditional comfort soup features chicken & preserved lemons.
https://cambodiarecipe.com/recipe/chicken-with-preserved-lemon-soup
#Pioneering female #Chinese #American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, who worked with Robert #Oppenheimer on the #ManhattanProject, was also the first to confirm #QuantumEntanglement – just 14 years after Albert #Einstein questioned the phenomenon. The largely forgotten achievement was included in a profile of Wu, one of the most influential experimental physicists of the 20th century, published in the December 2024 issue of Physics Today.
Wu is also believed to have been the only Chinese scientist involved in the Manhattan Project, the World War II initiative to develop an #AtomicBomb led by Oppenheimer, who affectionately referred to her as Jiejie, which means elder sister, the article said.
Wu’s experiment – detailed in a paper published in 1950 – was conducted before the #scientific community had fully grasped the significance of quantum entanglement, the article noted.
#Tesla uses #ChineseCourts to #SilenceCritics & make them pay.
Tesla has won nearly 90% of its #lawsuits in China, showing how Musk has thrived in a system in which regulators, the media & the courts must all answer to the #CCP.
It's not common practice for automakers — in #China or elsewhere — to sue their customers, but Tesla has pioneered an aggressive #legal strategy & leveraged the #patronage of powerful leaders in the Chinese Communist Party to silence critics, reap financial rewards and limit its accountability.
#Vietnamese #doctor Tran Thi Hien has made significant strides in developing a #CancerTreatment derived from #BreastMilk.
Early trials on bladder #cancer patients have shown promising results & the next phase of testing will focus on colorectal cancer patients.
Melchora Aquino (January 6, 1812 – February 19, 1919) was a #Filipino revolutionary. Aquino was known as "Tandang Sora" (tandang means "old") because of her old age during the #Philippine #Revolution (1896-1899). She was known by Philippine revolutionary soldiers as Tandang Sora, an acknowledgement of her wisdom & seniority. She was considered a Filipino counterpart to British nurse, Florence Nightingale. She was also known as the "Grand Woman of the Revolution" & "Mother of Balintawak" for her contributions.
Aquino was born on the feast of the Epiphany & named after Melchior, one of the Three Wise Men. She was the daughter of peasants, Juan & Valentina Aquino & she never attended school. Yet, she was literate at an early age. Also talented as a singer. She performed at community events & at Mass for church. She was often chosen for the role of Reyna Elena during the "Santacruzan", a big pageant commemorating Empress Helen's finding of the Cross of Christ, celebrated in the #Philippines in May.
Her husband, Fulgencio Ramos, a cabeza de barrio (village chief) died when their youngest child was 7 & she was left as a single parent for their 6 children. Tandang Sora continued life as an hermana mayor, active in celebrating fiestas, baptisms & weddings. She worked hard to give her children an education. She became a self taught nurse & her medical services helped to save many lives during the Philippine Revolution.
Aquino operated a store, which became refuge for revolutionaries. In 1896, when she was 84 years old, the Philippine revolution began. Her store served as a make-shift hospital where she provided medical care for sick/wounded revolutionists. She also provided food, shelter, encouragement, and prayers for the soldiers, even hosting 1,000 men in her home’s yard during the Cry of Balintawak. Secret meetings of the #Katipuneros ( #AntiColonialism revolutionaries) were often held at her house. She & her son, Juan Ramos, were present in the Cry of Balintawak & witnessed the tearing up of the cedulas(Spanish issued ID papers).
When the #Spaniards learned about her activities & her knowledge to the whereabouts of the Katipuneros, she was arrested by guardia civil on August 29, 1896. She was held captive in the house of a cabeza de barangay of Pasong Putik, Novaliches. Then transferred to Bilibid Prison in Manila. While in prison, she was interrogated & refused to divulge information. She was deported to Guam, Marianas Islands by Governor General Ramón Blanco. In Guam, she & a woman named Segunda Puentes were placed under house arrest in the residence of a Don Justo Dungca.
After the United States took control of the Philippines in 1898, Tandang Sora, like other exiles, returned to the Philippines in 1903. She later became an active member of the Philippine Independent Church.
She died at her daughter Saturnina's house in Banlat on February 19, 1919, at the age of 107. She received full state honors after her death. After years of being unnoticed for her efforts in the revolution. Her remains were first interred at the Mausoleum of the Veterans of the Revolution at the Manila South Cemetery. These were then transferred to the Himlayang Pilipino Memorial Park in Quezon City in 1970 & finally at the Tandang Sora National Shrine in 2012.
Ref: "The Tandang Sora bicentennial". Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines. February 26, 2021
Ref: Doran, Christine (1998). "Women in the Philippine Revolution". Philippine Studies. JSTOR 42634272
https://www.jstor.org/stable/42634272
Ref: https://filipiknow.net/surprising-facts-about-melchora-aquino/
Ref: Kirstin Olsen, ed. (1994). Chronology of women's history. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313288036
Ref: Augusto V. de Viana, "In the Far Islands,: The Role of Natives from the Philippines in the Conquest, Colonization and Repopulation of the Mariana Islands. 2004.
Ref: Isagani R. Medina, "Melchora Aquino Wife of Fulgencio Ramos," In: Women in the Philippine Revolution, Rafaelita Hilario Soriano, ed. Quezon City: Printon Press, 1995.
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons.
My family saw this happen.
Their neighbors in Boyle Heights were rounded up in 1942.
Only to be forced into the same poverty and bullshit that Blacks and Latinos were going through after they came home from the camps.
#losangeles #asianmastodon https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-31/japanese-americans-returned-home-from-prison-camps-to-one-of-the-countrys-greatest-swindles
I'm posting about Teochew & Vietnamese revolutionaries this week. I wasn't taught anything about the heroes & heroines from both of my cultural backgrounds because I grew up in Canada, with white colonial education. My mind was heavily colonized by that. I started the decolonization of my mind journey in the 90s & am going to be doing it for rest of my life because the colonial programming runs deep.
I want people to learn more about the brave #Chinese & #Vietnamese people who took many risks & sacrificed a lot for their peoples. I want people to learn that my peoples & our ancestors, from both my backgrounds, weren't uneducated savages & we didn't need to be controlled by colonizers or imperialists. Many of our ancestors & their comrades were strong revolutionaries, who were very intelligent, dignified & courageous.
10 January 1973, negotiations broke down when #Kissinger demanded the release of all #AmericanPOWs in North Vietnam once a peace agreement was signed, but offered no guarantees about #VietCong prisoners being held in South Vietnam.
Thọ stated: "I cannot accept your proposal. I completely reject it".
Thọ wanted the release of all prisoners once a peace agreement was signed, which led Kissinger to say this was an unreasonable demand. Thọ, who had been tortured as a young man by the French colonial police for advocating Vietnamese independence, shouted:
"You have never been a prisoner. You don't understand suffering. It's unfair".
Kissinger finally offered that the United States would use "maximum influence" to pressure the South Vietnamese government to release all Viet Cong prisoners within sixty days of a peace agreement being signed. On 23 January 1973, at 12:45 pm, Kissinger and Thọ signed the peace agreement.
In his book “Our Vietnam: The War 1954–1975,” U.S. journalist A.J. Langguth says that despite Kissinger’s protestations for Tho to be quiet, during one session of the talks he shouted at Kissinger for over an hour:
“For more than ten years, America has used violence to beat down the Vietnamese people-napalm, B-52s. But you don’t draw any lessons from your failures. You continue the same policy. Ngu xuan! Ngu xuan! Ngu xuan!”
The translator refused to tell Kissinger what Ngu xuan meant (massively stupid) for fear of causing offence.
Luu Van Loi, who was with Tho at the conference as a member of the negotiating team, wasn’t happy with #Kissinger either. “Kissinger was dodgy; he always brought up irrelevant matters at the start of meetings, and only mentioned the important stuff out for discussion at night. He must have thought that the old Le Duc Tho was sleepy and tired. But he knew nothing about Tho! The longer the negotiation went, the more alert Tho got.”
Kissinger seemed to agree with Luu Van Loi when he expressed his astonishment: “Sometimes he talked for hours straight. I said, ‘I’ve heard this countless times,’ but Tho responded ‘You’ve heard it countless times but you haven’t remembered it, let me repeat…’”
Thọ told Kissinger at their first meeting that "Vietnamization" was doomed, dismissively saying in French: "Previously, with over one million U.S and Saigon troops, you have failed. Now how can you win if you let the South Vietnamese Army fight alone and if you only give them military support?"
In April 1970, Thọ broke off his meetings with Kissinger, saying that there was nothing to discuss. An attempt by Kissinger to talk to Thọ again in May 1970 was rejected with a note reading "The U.S. words of peace are just empty ones"
In July 1971, Kissinger taunted Thọ with news that President #Nixon would be visiting China soon to meet #MaoZedong, telling him that the days when the North Vietnamese could count of the supply of Chinese arms were coming to close. Thọ showed no emotion: "That is your affair. Our fighting is our preoccupation, and that will decide the outcome for our country. What you have told us will have no influence on our fighting".
2 May 1972, Thọ had his 13th meeting with Kissinger in Paris. The meeting was hostile; the North Vietnamese had just taken Quang Tri City in South Vietnam, which led Nixon to tell Kissinger "No nonsense. No niceness. No accommodations". During the meeting, Thọ mentioned that Senator William Fulbright was criticizing the Nixon administration, leading Kissinger to say: "Our domestic discussions are no concern of yours". Thọ snapped back: "I'm giving an example to prove that Americans share our views". When Kissinger asked Thọ why North Vietnam had not responded on a proposal he sent via the Soviet Union, Thọ replied: "We have on many occasions said that if you have any question, you should talk to directly to us, and we shall talk directly to you. We don't speak through a third person".
August 1972, Kissinger promised Thọ that he would pressure Nguyễn Văn Thiệu to resign if Thọ agreed to a peace deal before US presidential elections. Thọ told Kissinger that the timetable for Thiệu's departure was no longer an immediate concern & he wanted some $8 billion in reparations for the war damage. Kissinger told Thọ that he wanted to tell the world about their secret meetings since 1970 to give the impression that Nixon was making progress on peace in Vietnam, a suggestion Thọ rejected, saying it's not his job to assist Nixon's reelection campaign.
20 November 1972, Kissinger met Thọ again in Paris. Kissinger no longer aimed at secrecy & was followed by paparazzi as he went to a house owned by the French Communist Party where Thọ was waiting for him. Kissinger announced the Americans wanted major changes to the peace agreement made in October to accommodate Thiệu, which led Thọ to accuse him of negotiating in bad faith.
Thọ: "We have been deceived by the French, the Japanese and the Americans. But the deception has never been so flagrant as of now".
Putting more pressure, Nixon told Kissinger to break off talks if Thọ wouldn't agree to changes he wanted. Kissinger told Nixon: "While we have a moral case for bombing North Vietnam when it does not accept our terms, it seems to be really stretching the point to bomb North Vietnam when it has accepted our terms and when South Vietnam has not". December 1972, talks had broken & Nixon decided to resume bombing North Vietnam.
After the Christmas bombings of 1972, Thọ was in particularly savage mood towards Kissinger.
8 January 1973 in a house in the French town of Gif-sur-Yvette, Kissinger arrived to find nobody at the door to greet him. When Kissinger entered the conference room, nobody spoke to him. Sensing the hostile mood, Kissinger speaking in French said: "It was not my fault about the bombing". Before Kissinger could say anymore, Thọ exploded in rage, saying in French:
"Under the pretext of interrupted negotiations, you resumed the bombing of North Vietnam, just at the moment when I reached home. You have 'greeted' my arrival in a very courteous manner! You action, I can say, is flagrant and gross! You and no one else strained the honor of the United States"
"You've spent billions of dollars and many tons of bombs when we had a text ready to sign". Kissinger replied: "I have heard many adjectives in your comments. I propose that you should not use them". Thọ answered: "I have used those adjectives with a great deal of restraint already. The world opinion, the U.S. press and U.S. political personalities have used harsher words".
#French #colonial authorities imprisoned him from 1930-1936 & again from 1939-1944. The French imprisoned him a "tiger cage" cells in the prison on Poulo Condore (Côn Sơn Island) in the South China Sea. Poulo Condore was the harshest prison in all of French #Indochina. During his time in the "tiger cage", Thọ suffered from hunger, heat, torture & humiliation. He was a teenager & these prison experiences hardened him.
After his second release he returned to Hanoi in 1945 to help lead the #VietMinh, the #VietnameseIndependence organization, as well as a revived communist party called the #VietnamWorkersParty. He was senior Viet Minh official in southern Vietnam until the #GenevaAccords of 1954. From 1955 he was a member of the Politburo of the Vietnam Workers’ Party, or the Communist Party of Vietnam(renamed in 1976). During the Vietnam War (1955–75) Tho oversaw the #VietCong insurgency that began against the South Vietnamese government in the late 1950s. He carried out most of his duties during the war while in hiding in South Vietnam.
“The Nobel Committee made a big mistake,” he said in an interview with UPI a decade later. “This is a prize for peace. The thing here is, who is the one that has created peace? The ones who fought against the U.S. and established peace for the country are us, not the U.S. However, the Nobel Committee has put the invader and the invaded as equal – that is something I cannot accept, and that is the reason why I declined the prize.” When asked if he’d accept the prize now that the country is free, he replied, “Yes, but only if the prize is awarded to me only.”
https://tienphong.vn/uy-ban-giai-nobel-da-sai-lam-dang-tiec-post611381.tpo
Lê Đức Thọ's "insolence" towards Western politics helped to gain his country control over Saigon, Vientiane & ousted a pro-Western government in Phnom Penh. Within Vietnam, Lê Đức Thọ is remembered as a revolutionary leader who played a pivotal role in the country’s struggle for independence & reunification. He is honored as a key figure in Vietnam’s history.
Despite his involvement in peace negotiations, Lê Đức Thọ remains a controversial figure, among those who view him as a symbol of the repressive communist regime in Vietnam. The communist government’s human rights abuses & suppression of dissent have led to criticism of his role in the post-war government.
Lê Đức Thọ (14 October 1911 – 13 October 1990), was a #Vietnamese #revolutionary general, diplomat & politician. Tho was the first #Asian to be awarded the #NobelPeacePrize, jointly with US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973, for their work on Paris Peace Accords, but refused the award.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1973/tho/facts
"However, since the signing of the Paris agreement, the United States and the Saigon administration continue in grave violation of a number of key clauses of this agreement. The Saigon administration, aided and encouraged by the United States, continues its acts of war. Peace has not yet really been established in South Vietnam. In these circumstances it is impossible for me to accept the 1973 Nobel Prize for Peace which the committee has bestowed on me. Once the Paris accord on Vietnam is respected, the arms are silenced and a real peace is established in South Vietnam, I will be able to consider accepting this prize. With my thanks to the Nobel Prize Committee please accept, madame, my sincere respects."
https://web.archive.org/web/20110403165243/http://www.blackandwhitecat.org/2010/12/11/why-le-duc-tho-refused-his-nobel-peace-prize/
"Unfortunately, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee put the aggressor and the victim of aggression on the same par. ... That was a blunder. The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the greatest prizes in the world. But the United States conducted a war of aggression against Vietnam. It is we, the Vietnamese people, who made peace by defeating the American war of aggression against us, by regaining our independence and freedom."
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/12/17/Personality-Spotlight-Le-Duc-Tho-Vietnams-poet-revolutionary/1693535179600/
Woke up.
Made some chai tow kway. Classic Teochew food. Especially eaten on lunar new year, which starts in 2 days.
In our #Teochew language, chai tow means “radish or turnip“, while kway means “cake”. The dish was originally from Southern China & Teochew immigrants brought it to Singapore in the late 19th century.
I like eating them by dipping into a soy sauce/red vinegar/hot chili paste sauce mix.
I love Cheryl Braganza's #activism #artwork.
Please check out her website.
Cheryl Braganza is a #Montreal artist, poet, writer, pianist & cancer survivor who works actively with organizations that focus on human rights, in particular, #WomensRights.
Braganza was born in Bombay, India. She studied in Pakistan, Italy & the UK before immigrating to Canada in 1966. Braganza is a natural born #artist & works in many different art genres & mediums. She's been involved in #HumanRights activism for decades.
She has exhibited her paintings in various countries, most recently in #Quebec, working in oils, acrylics, batik & mixed media. She is self-taught but has taken art courses in Rome, London, École de Beaux Arts, Montréal, Concordia Fine Arts Faculty Montréal, Centre de Textiles, Montréal(silk-screen) & with Helmut Gerth, Suzanne B. Moyers (silk painting), Helena Fletcher, Jan Phillips (Creative Consciousness) & Gregg Kreuz (portrait painting) among others.
"I want my art to play a role in lifting people's spirits, in challenging their assumptions, in provoking thought ..... thus promoting dialogue between peoples towards peace. Je désire que le regard porté sur mon art provoque la réflexion et invite le dialogue des peuples vers la paix." - Cheryl Braganza.
This is one of my fave #art #illustration tributes to #MotherEarth.
Illustration created by: Jess X Snow, Long Live Our Mother, Amplify.
#JessXSnow is a #Chinese #Canadian filmmaker, muralist & poet. Best known for their independent short films, children’s books & community murals about #migration, #EnvironmentalJustice, #solidarity, #abolition & #healing.
https://www.jessxsnow.com/
