Multilectual Daily Online Magazine focusing on World Architecture, Travel, Photography, Interior Design, Vintage and Contemporary Fiction, Political cartoons, Craft Beer, All things Espresso, International coffee/ cafe's, occasional centrist politics and San Diego's Historic North Park by award-winning journalist Tom Shess
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Thursday, October 31, 2024
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
DESIGN. MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL'S B.I.G. LAS VEGAS SPLASH
The Athletics, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), and HNTB have unveiled the design for the A’s new ballpark project in Las Vegas on the Tropicana site. BIG will serve as the design lead and HNTB as the sports/hospitality designer and architect of record.
"The collaboration between BIG’s creativity and HNTB’s technical expertise allows for a truly innovative and bold design while ensuring an unmatched fan experience,” said Athletics Managing Partner and Owner John Fisher. “We hope to add to the dynamic atmosphere and liveliness of the Las Vegas Strip, creating a welcoming environment for all of Southern Nevada.”
Shaped by its location on the Las Vegas Strip, the 33,000-person capacity ballpark provides an outdoor feel with views of the city’s skyline. The tiered design will split upper and lower seating bowls to bring fans closer to the action than traditional ballparks and provide clear sight lines from every seat.
The roof's five overlapping layers, whose design is inspired by traditional baseball pennants, open to the north to allow for natural light and views up the Strip, while also limiting direct sunlight and heat from the south. The outfield features the world’s largest cable-net glass window, facing the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas Boulevards. The ballpark is currently designed to include an 18,000-square-foot jumbotron, which would make it the largest screen in MLB.
Design by BIG/Image by Negativ “Our design for the new Vegas home for the A’s is conceived in response to the unique culture and climate of the city,’” said Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Creative Director of BIG. “Five pennant arches enclose the ballpark - shading from the Nevada sun while opening to the soft daylight from the north.
A giant window frames a majestic view of the life of the Strip and the iconic New York New York hotel skyline. All direct sunlight is blocked, while all the soft daylight is allowed to wash the field in natural light. “The resultant architecture is like a spherical armadillo - shaped by the local climate - while opening and inviting the life of the Strip to enter and explore.
In the city of spectacle, the A’s ‘armadillo’ shaped design affords passive shading and natural light - the architectural response to the Nevada climate generating a new kind of vernacular icon in Vegas.”
The ballpark will occupy nine acres of the 35-acre Tropicana site. Bally’s and GLPI are working on a master plan for a related resort development. The specifics of that process, including towers, locations, and phases will be determined in the coming months.
“We are excited to continue to collaborate with Bally’s and GLPI on this project. Together, we see a unique opportunity for this site and look forward to seeing this vision come to life,” said Fisher.
Design by BIG/Image by Negativ “The A's have created a remarkable design that adds to the rich fabric of must-see attractions in Las Vegas,” said Bally’s Chairman Soo Kim. “This is a once-in-a-generation project, and we are thrilled for the opportunity to develop a comprehensive site plan at this iconic location. We look forward to sharing more on our plan in due course.”
The overall parking plan will be determined in partnership with Bally’s and GLPI.
The ballpark plan supports up to 2,500 on-site parking spots, as well as a two- to three-acre plaza that starts in the northwest corner of the site and extends to the ballpark’s main concourse.
The A’s are also working with Clark County and NDOT on traffic and transportation plans to ensure easy access to the stadium and will work with the Regional Transportation Commission on additional services such as the express bus service currently provided for T-Mobile Arena and Allegiant Stadium. Not only will this ease congestion, but it will reduce emissions.
Tuesday, October 29, 2024
Monday, October 28, 2024
MEDIA MONDAY / REVIEWING THE CAPTURED BIN LADEN HARD DRIVES
Captured family hard drive photo of Osama Bin Laden found him watching satellite TV in his Pakistan compound
National Geographic documentary narrated by prize-winning journalist Peter Bergen** reveals an extreme narcissist obsessed with religion, violence and porn.
Subsequent declassified hard drives taken from the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed reveal a groundbreaking look at his personal life—his deepest personal thoughts he never expected would ever be revealed to anyone.
Experts sift through the 470,000 digital files to piece together a roadmap into the mind of a mass murderer. Examine his contradictory personal psychology, relationship with family and religion as well as his legacy of violence and destruction.
View the documentary by CLICKING HERE. Or find it yourself on YouTube, where it was easily located.
**Peter Bergen is an American journalist, author, and producer who is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America, a professor at Arizona State University, and the host of the Audible podcast In the Room with Peter Bergen. He has written seven books and edited three books. Three of the books were New York Times bestsellers, four of the books were named among the best non-fiction books of the year by the Washington Post, and they have been translated into 24 languages. He produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, which aired on CNN.
Sunday, October 27, 2024
SUNDAY REVIEW / SHORT STORY BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Above: Vieux port de Cannes, 1918, oil on canvas by Paul Signac (1863-1935). Wikimedia Commons. |
LOVE IN THE NIGHT Short fiction
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
From the public domain: “Love in the Night” was first published in the March 14, 1924, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
The words thrilled Val. They had come into his mind sometime during the fresh gold April afternoon and he kept repeating them to himself over and over: “Love in the night; love in the night.”
He tried them in three languages—Russian, French and English—and decided that they were best in English. In each language they meant a different sort of love and a different sort of night—the English night seemed the warmest and softest with a thinnest and most crystalline sprinkling of stars. The English love seemed the most fragile and romantic—a white dress and a dim face above it and eyes that were pools of light.
And when I add that it was a French night he was thinking about, after all, I see I must go back and begin over.
Val was half-Russian and half-American. His mother was the daughter of that Morris Hasylton who helped finance the Chicago World’s Fair in 1892, and his father was—see the Almanach de Gotha, issue of 1910—Prince Paul Serge Boris Rostoff, son of Prince Vladimir Rostoff, grandson of a grand duke— “Jimber-jawed Serge”—and third-cousin-once-removed to the czar.
It was all very impressive, you see, on that side—house in St. Petersburg, shooting lodge near Riga, and swollen villa, more like a palace, overlooking the Mediterranean.
It was at this villa in Cannes that the Rostoffs passed the winter—and it wasn’t at all the thing to remind Princess Rostoff that this Riviera villa, from the marble fountain—after Bernini—to the gold cordial glasses—after dinner—was paid for with American gold.
The Russians, of course, were gay people on the Continent in the gala days before the war. Of the three races that used southern France for a pleasure ground they were easily the most adept at the grand manner.
The English were too practical, and the Americans, though they spent freely, had no tradition of romantic conduct. But the Russians—there was a people as gallant as the Latins, and rich besides!
When the Rostoffs arrived at Cannes late in January the restaurateurs telegraphed north for the Prince’s favorite labels to paste on their champagne, and the jewelers put incredibly gorgeous articles aside to show to him—but not to the princess—and the Russian Church was swept and garnished for the season that the Prince might beg orthodox forgiveness for his sins.
Even the Mediterranean turned obligingly to a deep wine color in the spring evenings, and fishing boats with robin-breasted sails loitered exquisitely offshore.
In a vague way young Val realized that this was all for the benefit of him and his family. It was a privileged paradise, this white little city on the water, in which he was free to do what he liked because he was rich and young and the blood of Peter the Great ran indigo in his veins.
He was only seventeen in 1914, when this history begins, but he had already fought a duel with a young man four years his senior, and he had a small hairless scar to show for it on top of his handsome head.
But the question of love in the night was the thing nearest his heart. It was a vague pleasant dream he had, something that was going to happen to him someday that would be unique and incomparable. He could have told no more about it than that there was a lovely unknown girl concerned in it, and that it ought to take place beneath the Riviera moon. The odd thing about all this was not that he had this excited and yet almost spiritual hope of romance, for all boys of any imagination have just such hopes, but that it actually came true. And when it happened, it happened so unexpectedly; it was such a jumble of impressions and emotions, of curious phrases that sprang to his lips, of sights and sounds and moments that were here, were lost, were past, that he scarcely understood it at all.
Perhaps its very vagueness preserved it in his heart and made him forever unable to forget. There was an atmosphere of love all about him that spring—his father’s loves, for instance, which were many and indiscreet, and which Val became aware of gradually from overhearing the gossip of servants, and definitely from coming on his American mother unexpectedly one afternoon, to find her storming hysterically at his father’s picture on the salon wall.
In the picture his father wore a white uniform with a furred dolman and looked back impassively at his wife as if to say “Were you under the impression, my dear, that you were marrying into a family of clergymen?”
Val tiptoed away, surprised, confused—and excited. It didn’t shock him as it would have shocked an American boy of his age. He had known for years what life was among the Continental rich, and he condemned his father only for making his mother cry.
Love went on around him—reproachless love and illicit love alike. As he strolled along the seaside promenade at nine o’clock, when the stars were bright enough to compete with the bright lamps, he was aware of love on every side.
From the open-air cafés, vivid with dresses just down from Paris, came a sweet pungent odor of flowers and chartreuse and fresh black coffee and cigarettes—and mingled with them all he caught another scent, the mysterious thrilling scent of love.
Hands touched jewel-sparkling hands upon the white tables. Gay dresses and white shirt fronts swayed together, and matches were held, trembling a little, for slow-lighting cigarettes.
On the other side of the boulevard lovers less fashionable, young Frenchmen who worked in the stores of Cannes, sauntered with their fiancées under the dim trees, but Val’s young eyes seldom turned that way. The luxury of music and bright colors and low voices—they were all part of his dream. They were the essential trappings of love in the night. But assume as he might the rather fierce expression that was expected from a young Russian gentleman who walked the streets alone, Val was beginning to be unhappy.
April twilight had succeeded March twilight, the season was almost over, and he had found no use to make of the warm spring evenings. The girls of sixteen and seventeen whom he knew, were chaperoned with care between dusk and bedtime—this, remember, was before the war—and the others who might gladly have walked beside him were an affront to his romantic desire.
So April passed by—one week, two weeks, three weeks—— He had played tennis until seven and loitered at the courts for another hour, so it was half past eight when a tired cab horse accomplished the hill on which gleamed the façade of the Rostoff villa.
The lights of his mother’s limousine were yellow in the drive, and the princess, buttoning her gloves, was just coming out the glowing door. Val tossed two francs to the cabman and went to kiss her on the cheek.
“Don’t touch me,” she said quickly. “You’ve been handling money.”
“But not in my mouth, Mother,” he protested humorously.
The princess looked at him impatiently. “I’m angry,” she said. “Why must you be so late tonight? We’re dining on a yacht and you were to have come along too.”
“What yacht?”
“Americans.” There was always a faint irony in her voice when she mentioned the land of her nativity. Her America was the Chicago of the nineties which she still thought of as the vast upstairs to a butcher shop. Even the irregularities of Prince Paul were not too high a price to have paid for her escape. “Two yachts,” she continued; “in fact we don’t know which one. The note was very indefinite. Very careless indeed.”
Americans.
Val’s mother had taught him to look down on Americans, but she hadn’t succeeded in making him dislike them. American men noticed you, even if you were seventeen.
He liked Americans. Although he was thoroughly Russian he wasn’t immaculately so—the exact proportion, like that of a celebrated soap, was about ninety-nine and three-quarters per cent. “I want to come,” he said. “I’ll hurry up, Mother. I’ll——”
“We’re late now.” The princess turned as her husband appeared in the door. “Now Val says he wants to come.”
“He can’t,” said Prince Paul shortly. “He’s too outrageously late.”
Val nodded. Russian aristocrats, however indulgent about themselves, were always admirably Spartan with their children. There were no arguments.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Prince Paul grunted. The footman, in red-and-silver livery, opened the limousine door. But the grunt decided the matter for Val, because Princess Rostoff at that day and hour had certain grievances against her husband which gave her command of the domestic situation. “On second thought you’d better come, Val,” she announced coolly. “It’s too late now, but come after dinner. The yacht is either the Minnehaha or the Privateer.”
She got into the limousine. “The one to come to will be the gayer one, I suppose—the Jacksons’ yacht——”
“Find got sense,” muttered the Prince cryptically, conveying that Val would find it if he had any sense. “Have my man take a look at you ’fore you start. Wear tie of mine ’stead of that outrageous string you affected in Vienna. Grow up. High time.”
As the limousine crawled crackling down the pebbled drive Val’s face was burning.
CHAPTER II
It was dark in Cannes harbor; rather it seemed dark after the brightness of the promenade that Val had just left behind. Three frail dock lights glittered dimly upon innumerable fishing boats heaped like shells along the beach. Farther out in the water there were other lights where a fleet of slender yachts rode the tide with slow dignity, and farther still a full ripe moon made the water bosom into a polished dancing floor. Occasionally there was a swish! creak! drip! as a rowboat moved about in the shallows, and its blurred shape threaded the labyrinth of hobbled fishing skiffs and launches.
Val, descending the velvet slope of sand, stumbled over a sleeping boatman and caught the rank savor of garlic and plain wine.
Taking the man by the shoulders he shook open his startled eyes. “Do you know where the Minnehaha is anchored, and the Privateer?”
As they slid out into the bay he lay back in the stern and stared with vague discontent at the Riviera moon. That was the right moon, all right. Frequently, five nights out of seven, there was the right moon. And here was the soft air, aching with enchantment, and here was the music, many strains of music from many orchestras, drifting out from the shore. Eastward lay the dark Cape of Antibes, and then Nice, and beyond that Monte Carlo, where the night rang chinking full of gold. Someday he would enjoy all that, too, know its every pleasure and success—when he was too old and wise to care.
But tonight—tonight, that stream of silver that waved like a wide strand of curly hair toward the moon; those soft romantic lights of Cannes behind him, the irresistible ineffable love in this air—that was to be wasted forever.
“Which one?” asked the boatman suddenly.
“Which what?” demanded Val, sitting up.
“Which boat?” He pointed.
Val turned; above hovered the grey, sword-like prow of a yacht. During the sustained longing of his wish they had covered half a mile. He read the brass letters over his head. It was the Privateer, but there were only dim lights on board, and no music and no voices, only a murmurous k-plash at intervals as the small waves leaped at the sides.
“The other one,” said Val; “the Minnehaha.”
“Don’t go yet.” It was a woman's voice.
Val started.
The voice, low and soft, had dropped down from the darkness overhead. “What’s the hurry?” said the soft voice. “Thought maybe somebody was coming to see me, and have suffered terrible disappointment.”
The boatman lifted his oars and looked hesitatingly at Val. But Val was silent, so the man let the blades fall into the water and swept the boat out into the moonlight.
“Wait a minute!” cried Val sharply.
“Good-bye,” she said. “Come again when you can stay longer.”
“But I am going to stay now,” he answered breathlessly. He gave the necessary order and the rowboat swung back to the foot of the small companionway.
Someone young, someone in a misty white dress, someone with a lovely low voice, had actually called to him out of the velvet dark.
“If she has eyes!” Val murmured to himself. He liked the romantic sound of it and repeated it under his breath—“If she has eyes.”
“What are you?” She was directly above him now; she was looking down and he was looking up as he climbed the ladder, and as their eyes met they both began to laugh. She was very young, slim, almost frail, with a dress that accentuated her youth by its blanched simplicity. Two wan dark spots on her cheeks marked where the color was by day. “What are you?” she repeated, moving back and laughing again as his head appeared on the level of the deck.
“I’m frightened now and I want to know.”
“I am a gentleman,” said Val, bowing.
“What sort of a gentleman? There are all sorts of gentlemen. There was a—there was a colored gentleman at the table next to ours in Paris, and so——” She broke off. “You’re not American, are you?”
“I’m Russian,” he said, as he might have announced himself to be an archangel. He thought quickly and then added, “And I am the most fortunate of Russians. All this day, all this spring I have dreamed of falling in love on such a night, and now I see that heaven has sent me to you.”
“Just one moment!” she said, with a little gasp. “I’m sure now that this visit is a mistake. I don’t go in for anything like that. Please!”
“I beg your pardon.” He looked at her in bewilderment, unaware that he had taken too much for granted. Then he drew himself up formally. “I have made an error. If you will excuse me I will say good-night.” He turned away. His hand was on the rail.
“Don’t go,” she said, pushing a strand of indefinite hair out of her eyes. “On second thought you can talk any nonsense you like if you’ll only not go. I’m miserable and I don’t want to be left alone.” Val hesitated; there was some element in this that he failed to understand. He had taken it for granted that a girl who called to a strange man at night, even from the deck of a yacht, was certainly in a mood for romance. And he wanted intensely to stay. Then he remembered that this was one of the two yachts he had been seeking.
“I imagine that the dinner’s on the other boat,” he said.
“The dinner? Oh, yes, it’s on the Minnehaha. Were you going there?”
“I was going there—a long time ago.”
“What’s your name?” She asked.
He was on the point of telling her when something made him ask a question instead. “And you? Why are you not at the party?”
“Because I preferred to stay here. Mrs. Jackson said there would be some Russians there—I suppose that’s you.” She looked at him with interest. “You’re a very young man, aren’t you?”
“I am much older than I look,” said Val stiffly. “People always comment on it. It’s considered rather a remarkable thing.”
“How old are you?” “Twenty-one,” he lied.
She laughed. “What nonsense! You’re not more than nineteen.”
His annoyance was so perceptible that she hastened to reassure him. “Cheer up! I’m only seventeen myself. I might have gone to the party if I’d thought there’d be anyone under fifty there.”
He welcomed the change of subject. “You preferred to sit and dream here beneath the moon.”
“I’ve been thinking of mistakes.”
They sat down side by side in two canvas deck chairs. “It’s a most engrossing subject— the subject of mistakes," she said, "Women very seldom brood about mistakes—they’re much more willing to forget than men are. But when they do brood——”
“You have made a mistake?” inquired Val.
She nodded.
“Is it something that cannot be repaired?”
“I think so,” she answered. “I can’t be sure. That’s what I was considering when you came along.”
“Perhaps I can help in some way,” said Val. “Perhaps your mistake is not irreparable, after all.”
“You can’t,” she said unhappily. “So let’s not think about it. I’m very tired of my mistake and I’d much rather you’d tell me about all the gay, cheerful things that are going on in Cannes tonight.”
They glanced shoreward at the line of mysterious and alluring lights, the big toy banks with candles inside that were really the great fashionable hotels, the lighted clock in the old town, the blurred glow of the Café de Paris, the pricked-out points of villa windows rising on slow hills toward the dark sky. “What is everyone doing there?” she whispered. “It looks as though something gorgeous was going on, but what it is I can’t quite tell.”
“Everyone there is making love,” said Val quietly.
“Is that it?” She looked for a long time, with a strange expression in her eyes. “Then I want to go home to America,” she said. “There is too much love here. I want to go home tomorrow.”
“You are afraid of being in love then?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t that. It’s just because—there is no love here for me.”
“Or for me either,” added Val quietly. “It is sad that we two should be at such a lovely place on such a lovely night and have—nothing.” He was leaning toward her intently, with a sort of inspired and chaste romance in his eyes—and she drew back.
“Tell me more about yourself,” she inquired quickly.
“If you are Russian where did you learn to speak such excellent English?”
“My mother was American,” he admitted. “My grandfather was American also, so she had no choice in the matter.”
“Then you’re American too!”
“I am Russian,” said Val with dignity.
She looked at him closely, smiled and decided not to argue. “Well then,” she said diplomatically, “I suppose you must have a Russian name.” But he had no intention now of telling her his name. A name, even the Rostoff name, would be a desecration of the night. They were their own low voices, their two white faces—and that was enough. He was sure, without any reason for being sure but with a sort of instinct that sang triumphantly through his mind, that in a little while, a minute or an hour, he was going to undergo an initiation into the life of romance. His name had no reality beside what was stirring in his heart.
“You are beautiful,” he said suddenly.
“How do you know?”
“Because for women moonlight is the hardest light of all.”
“Am I nice in the moonlight?”
“You are the loveliest thing that I have ever known.”
“Oh.” She thought this over. “Of course I had no business to let you come on board. I might have known what we’d talk about—in this moon. But I can’t sit here and look at the shore— forever. I’m too young for that. Don’t you think I’m too young for that?”
“Much too young,” he agreed solemnly. Suddenly they both became aware of new music that was close at hand, music that seemed to come out of the water not a hundred yards away.
“Listen!” she cried. “It’s from the Minnehaha. They’ve finished dinner.” For a moment they listened in silence.
“Thank you,” said Val suddenly.
“For what?”
He hardly knew he had spoken. He was thanking the deep low horns for singing in the breeze, the sea for its warm murmurous complaint against the bow, the milk of the stars for washing over them until he felt buoyed up in a substance more taut than air.
“So lovely,” she whispered.
“What are we going to do about it?”
“Do we have to do something about it? I thought we could just sit and enjoy——”
“You didn’t think that,” he interrupted quietly. “You know that we must do something about it. I am going to make love to you—and you are going to be glad.”
“I can’t,” she said very low. She wanted to laugh now, to make some light cool remark that would bring the situation back into the safe waters of a casual flirtation. But it was too late now.
Val knew that the music had completed what the moon had begun. “I will tell you the truth,” he said. “You are my first love. I am seventeen—the same age as you, no more.”
There was something utterly disarming about the fact that they were the same age. It made her helpless before the fate that had thrown them together. The deck chairs creaked and he was conscious of a faint illusive perfume as they swayed suddenly and childishly together.
CHAPTER III
Whether he kissed her once or several times he could not afterward remember, though it must have been an hour that they sat there close together and he held her hand. What surprised him most about making love was that it seemed to have no element of wild passion—regret, desire, despair—but a delirious promise of such happiness in the world, in living, as he had never known.
First love—this was only first love!
What must love itself in its fullness, its perfection be. He did not know that what he was experiencing then, that unreal, undesirous medley of ecstasy and peace, would be unrecapturable forever.
The music had ceased for some time when presently the murmurous silence was broken by the sound of a rowboat disturbing the quiet waves. She sprang suddenly to her feet and her eyes strained out over the bay. “Listen!” she said quickly. “I want you to tell me your name.”
“No.” “Please,” she begged him. “I’m going away tomorrow.”
He didn’t answer.
“I don’t want you to forget me,” she said. “My name is——” “I won’t forget you. I will promise to remember you always. Whoever I may love I will always compare her to you, my first love. So long as I live you will always have that much freshness in my heart.” “I want you to remember,” she murmured brokenly. “Oh, this has meant more to me than it has to you—much more.” She was standing so close to him that he felt her warm young breath on his face.
Once again they swayed together.
He pressed her hands and wrists between his as it seemed right to do, and kissed her lips. It was the right kiss, he thought, the romantic kiss—not too little or too much.
Yet there was a sort of promise in it of other kisses he might have had, and it was with a slight sinking of his heart that he heard the rowboat close to the yacht and realized that her family had returned.
The evening was over. “And this is only the beginning,” he told himself. “All my life will be like this night.” She was saying something in a low quick voice and he was listening tensely. “You must know one thing—I am married. Three months ago. That was the mistake that I was thinking about when the moon brought you out here. In a moment you will understand.” She broke off as the boat swung against the companionway and a man’s voice floated up out of the darkness. “Is that you, my dear?” “Yes.” “What is this other rowboat waiting?” “One of Mrs. Jackson’s guests came here by mistake and I made him stay and amuse me for an hour.” A moment later the thin white hair and weary face of a man of sixty appeared above the level of the deck. And then Val saw and realized too late how much he cared.
CHAPTER IV
When the Riviera season ended in May the Rostoffs and all the other Russians closed their villas and went north for the summer. The Russian Orthodox Church was locked up and so were the bins of rarer wine, and the fashionable spring moonlight was put away, so to speak, to wait for their return.
“We’ll be back next season,” they said as a matter of course. But this was premature, for they were never coming back anymore. Those few who straggled south again after five tragic years were glad to get work as chambermaids or valets de chambre in the great hotels where they had once dined. Many of them, of course, were killed in the war or in the revolution; many of them faded out as spongers and small cheats in the big capitals, and not a few ended their lives in a sort of stupefied despair.
When the Kerensky government collapsed in 1917, Val was a lieutenant on the eastern front, trying desperately to enforce authority in his company long after any vestige of it remained. He was still trying when Prince Paul Rostoff and his wife gave up their lives one rainy morning to atone for the blunders of the Romanoffs—and the enviable career of Morris Hasylton’s daughter ended in a city that bore even more resemblance to a butcher shop than had Chicago in 1892.
After that Val fought with Denikin’s army for a while until he realized that he was participating in a hollow farce and the glory of Imperial Russia was over. Then he went to France and was suddenly confronted with the astounding problem of keeping his body and soul together. It was, of course, natural that he should think of going to America.
Two vague aunts with whom his mother had quarreled many years ago still lived there in comparative affluence. But the idea was repugnant to the prejudices his mother had implanted in him, and besides he hadn’t sufficient money left to pay for his passage over.
Until a possible counter-revolution should restore to him the Rostoff properties in Russia he must somehow keep alive in France. So he went to the little city he knew best of all. He went to Cannes. His last two hundred francs bought him a third-class ticket and when he arrived he gave his dress-suit to an obliging party who dealt in such things and received in return money for food and bed.
He was sorry afterward that he had sold the dress-suit, because it might have helped him to a position as a waiter. But he obtained work as a taxi-driver instead and was quite as happy, or rather quite as miserable, at that.
Sometimes he carried Americans to look at villas for rent, and when the front glass of the automobile was up, curious fragments of conversation drifted out to him from within.
“——heard this fellow was a Russian prince.” . . .
“Sh!” . . . “No, this one right here.” . . .
“Be quiet, Esther!”—followed by subdued laughter.
When the car stopped, his passengers would edge around to have a look at him. At first he was desperately unhappy when girls did this; after awhile he didn’t mind anymore.
Once a cheerfully intoxicated American asked him if it were true and invited him to lunch, and another time an elderly woman seized his hand as she got out of the taxi, shook it violently and then pressed a hundred-franc note into his hand.
“Well, Florence, now I can tell ’em back home I shook hands with a Russian prince.” The inebriated American who had invited him to lunch thought at first that Val was a son of the czar, and it had to be explained to him that a prince in Russia was simply the equivalent of a British courtesy lord. But he was puzzled that a man of Val’s personality didn’t go out and make some real money. “This is Europe,” said Val gravely.
“Here money is not made. It is inherited or else it is slowly saved over a period of many years and maybe in three generations a family moves up into a higher class.”
“Think of something people want—like we do.”
“That is because there is more money to want with in America. Everything that people want here has been thought of long ago.”
But after a year and with the help of a young Englishman he had played tennis with before the war, Val managed to get into the Cannes branch of an English bank. He forwarded mail and bought railroad tickets and arranged tours for impatient sight-seers. Sometimes a familiar face came to his window; if Val was recognized he shook hands; if not he kept silence.
After two years he was no longer pointed out as a former prince, for the Russians were an old story now—the splendor of the Rostoffs and their friends was forgotten.
He mixed with people very little. In the evenings he walked for awhile on the promenade, took a slow glass of beer in a café, and went early to bed. He was seldom invited anywhere because people thought that his sad, intent face was depressing—and he never accepted anyhow.
He wore cheap French clothes now instead of the rich tweeds and flannels that had been ordered with his father’s from England.
As for women, he knew none at all. Of the many things he had been certain about at seventeen, he had been most certain about this—that his life would be full of romance. Now after eight years he knew that it was not to be. Somehow he had never had time for love—the war, the revolution and now his poverty had conspired against his expectant heart.
The springs of his emotion which had first poured forth one April night had dried up immediately and only a faint trickle remained. His happy youth had ended almost before it began. He saw himself growing older and more shabby, and living always more and more in the memories of his gorgeous boyhood.
Eventually he would become absurd, pulling out an old heirloom of a watch and showing it to amused young fellow clerks who would listen with winks to his tales of the Rostoff name. He was thinking these gloomy thoughts one April evening in 1922 as he walked beside the sea and watched the never-changing magic of the awakening lights.
It was no longer for his benefit, that magic, but it went on, and he was somehow glad. Tomorrow he was going away on his vacation, to a cheap hotel farther down the shore where he could bathe and rest and read; then he would come back and work some more.
Every year for three years he had taken his vacation during the last two weeks in April, perhaps because it was then that he felt the most need for remembering. It was in April that what was destined to be the best part of his life had come to a culmination under a romantic moonlight. It was sacred to him—for what he had thought of as an initiation and a beginning had turned out to be the end.
He paused now in front of the Café des Étrangers and after a moment crossed the street on an impulse and sauntered down to the shore. A dozen yachts, already turned to a beautiful silver color, rode at anchor in the bay. He had seen them that afternoon, and read the names painted on their bows—but only from habit.
He had done it for three years now, and it was almost a natural function of his eye.
“Un beau soir,” remarked a French voice at his elbow. It was a boatman who had often seen Val here before. “Monsieur finds the sea beautiful?”
“Very beautiful.”
“I too. But a bad living except in the season. Next week, though, I earn something special. I am paid well for simply waiting here and doing nothing more from eight o’clock until midnight.”
“That’s very nice,” said Val politely.
“A widowed lady, very beautiful, from America, whose yacht always anchors in the harbor for the last two weeks in April. If the Privateer comes tomorrow it will make three years.”
CHAPTER V
All night Val didn’t sleep—not because there was any question in his mind as to what he should do, but because his long stupefied emotions were suddenly awake and alive.
Of course he must not see her—not he, a poor failure with a name that was now only a shadow—but it would make him a little happier always to know that she remembered. It gave his own memory another dimension, raised it like those stereopticon glasses that bring out a picture from the flat paper. It made him sure that he had not deceived himself—he had been charming once upon a time to a lovely woman, and she did not forget.
An hour before train time next day he was at the railway station with his grip, so as to avoid any chance encounter in the street. He found himself a place in a third-class carriage of the waiting train. Somehow as he sat there he felt differently about life—a sort of hope, faint and illusory, that he hadn’t felt twenty-four hours before.
Perhaps there was some way in these next few years in which he could make it possible to meet her once again—if he worked hard, threw himself passionately into whatever was at hand. He knew of at least two Russians in Cannes who had started over again with nothing except good manners and ingenuity and were now doing surprisingly well.
The blood of Morris Hasylton began to throb a little in Val’s temples and made him remember something he had never before cared to remember— that Morris Hasylton, who had built his daughter a palace in St. Petersburg, had also started from nothing at all.
Simultaneously another emotion possessed him, less strange, less dynamic but equally American—the emotion of curiosity.
In case he did—well, in case life should ever make it possible for him to seek her out, he should at least know her name. He jumped to his feet, fumbled excitedly at the carriage handle and jumped from the train. Tossing his valise into the check room he started at a run for the American consulate. “A yacht came in this morning,” he said hurriedly to a clerk, “an American yacht—the Privateer. I want to know who owns it.”
“Just a minute,” said the clerk, looking at him oddly. “I’ll try to find out.”
After what seemed to Val an interminable time he returned. “Why, just a minute,” he repeated hesitantly. “We’re—it seems we’re finding out.”
“Did the yacht come?” Val asked.
“Oh, yes—it’s here all right. At least I think so. If you’ll just wait in that chair.”
After another ten minutes Val looked impatiently at his watch. If they didn’t hurry he’d probably miss his train. He made a nervous movement as if to get up from his chair.
“Please sit still,” said the clerk, glancing at him quickly from his desk. “I ask you. Just sit down in that chair.”
Val stared at him. How could it possibly matter to the clerk whether or not he waited? “I’ll miss my train,” he said impatiently. “I’m sorry to have given you all this bother——”
“Please sit still! We’re glad to get it off our hands. You see, we’ve been waiting for your inquiry for—ah—three years.”
Val jumped to his feet and jammed his hat on his head. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” he demanded angrily.
“Because we had to get word to our—our client. Please don’t go! It’s—ah, it’s too late.”
Val turned. Someone slim and radiant with dark frightened eyes was standing behind him, framed against the sunshine of the doorway. “Why——” Val’s lips parted, but no words came through.
She took a step toward him. “I——” She looked at him helplessly, her eyes filling with tears. “I just wanted to say hello,” she murmured. “I’ve come back for three years just because I wanted to say hello.”
Val was silent. “You might answer,” she said impatiently. “You might answer when I’d—when I’d just about begun to think you’d been killed in the war.” She turned to the clerk. “Please introduce us!” she cried. “You see, I can’t say hello to him when we don’t even know each other’s names.”
It’s the thing to distrust these international marriages, of course. It’s an American tradition that they always turn out badly, and we are accustomed to such headlines as: “Would Trade Coronet for True American Love, Says Duchess,” and “Claims Count Mendicant Tortured Toledo Wife.”
The other sort of headlines are never printed, for who would want to read: “Castle is Love Nest, Asserts Former Georgia Belle,” or “Duke and Packer’s Daughter Celebrate Golden Honeymoon.” So far there have been no headlines at all about the young Rostoffs. Prince Val is much too absorbed in that string of moonlight-blue taxi-cabs which he manipulates with such unusual efficiency, to give out interviews.
He and his wife only leave New York once a year—but there is still a boatman who rejoices when the Privateer steams into Cannes harbor on a mid-April night.
Saturday, October 26, 2024
COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / COFFEE HOUSES NEAR TODAYS NORTH PARK BOOK FAIR
Starting at GROUNDS ZERO 30th & North Park Way. Easy walking from book fair today.
Subterranean Coffee Boutique 3764 30th Street
Dark Horse 3794 30th Street (behind Swami’s)
Patisserie Melanie 3750 30th Street
Holsem Coffee 2911 University
Lovesong Coffee 3022 North Park Way
Caffe Calabria 3933 30th Street
Pinky’s Café 2864 University
Haven Coffee by Communal 3381 30th Street
Lazy Eye Coffee 4096 30th Street
Saigon Coffee 3994 30th Street
Parabola Coffee 3015 Lincoln (just off of 30th St.)
Figaro Dessert & Coffee 3011 University
Friday, October 25, 2024
FRIDAY & FRIENDS / SUCH A NICE THING TO DO 50 YEARS LATER
GUEST BLOG / By Marissa J. Lang, The Washington Post--The table was set. The pastries arranged. A white tablecloth dangled placidly in the early morning mist, surrounded by 12 golden-hued high-backed chairs. Five decades ago, a dozen friends gathered here, on the National Mall, for breakfast.
They wore morning coats and floor-length dresses, dined on oysters, drank champagne and danced together as a string quartet played in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.
The extravagant scene on July 19, 1974, drew in a Washington Post photographer, who captured the moment in an image that would ricochet around the country in newspaper reprints.
But the people and circumstances at the center of that famous picture remained a mystery to those who admired it, bought it, hung it on their office walls. They didn’t know who those young people were or why they had gathered for such an ornate affair near the Reflecting Pool.
They didn’t know that the specter of death had loomed over the rousing celebration or that the people at its center would go on to have a hand in many pivotal facets of American life — the civil rights movement, gender equity in schools, advocacy for blind and disabled people.
That is until Joyce Naltchayan Boghosian — the daughter of late Post photographer Harry Naltchayan, who captured the original image — met one of the participants a year ago and began to put the pieces together.
The Group. In the late 1960s, the government was hiring. A generation of young people flocked to the nation’s capital to find jobs they hoped to turn into careers |
That is how Janet Harley and Carolyn Buser, who were in their 20s, made their way from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., to Washington. When they arrived, the women went to the apartment of Rodger Poore, a college classmate and friend who lived in Southwest Washington and was looking to start up a regular bridge game.
Poore connected the pair to a neighbor, Dorothy “Dottie” Whalen, who offered them a place to stay until they could find their own home. Soon, acquaintances became friends and friends became almost family. They bonded over shared circumstances — nearly all of them worked for government agencies — and common interests: playing games, exploring the outdoors and holding boisterous, sometimes-outlandish, gatherings.
For birthdays, they threw elaborate celebrations: a “road rally” that involved driving around town from one place to another on a predetermined course; a scavenger hunt through Rock Creek Park; a costume party in which everyone dressed up as vegetables.
They reveled in one another’s successes and milestones. And they were there for one another’s hardships. When Harley was just 27 years old, she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. The news rocked the group. They could hardly understand it — how could their young friend be dying? She was so full of life and laughter, always down for another party or an adventure. She was an avid hiker and canoer. “How do you live with that news?” recalled Hilton Foster, a veteran and Howard University Law School graduate who became a core member of the group. “How do you just go on? What do you do?”
About a month before Harley’s 28th birthday, several of her friends came up with an idea: They would celebrate Harley’s life with the most over-the-top gathering their group had ever concocted. Just a few weeks earlier, President Richard M. Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, was photographed on the Mall drinking champagne during a picnic.
If she can do it, Buser and Foster thought, why can’t we?
Days later, Buser walked into the National Park Service’s headquarters to request a permit. Her ask was so unusual it got kicked all the way up to the head of the department, Manus J. Fish.
“You can’t have champagne on the Mall,” Buser, now 78, recalled being told. “I think they were afraid we would be raucous, left-wing radicals. And, of course, we were. But not on that day.”
Buser referenced the picture of the president’s secretary imbibing on the Mall. Eventually, the Park Service relented. The group got their permit, signed by Fish.
With Buser and Foster leading the charge, the plans for the day continued to get more elaborate. A string quartet. A catered meal. Limousines to pick everyone up in the morning.
Each time Buser paused to ask if it was getting too out of hand, she said, Foster would egg her on. All the while, they kept their plans a secret from Harley. Just after 5 a.m. on a Friday morning, Buser woke Harley up with a command: “Put this on,” she said, holding out Harley’s old prom dress — an item Harley’s mother had shipped from Ohio, without her daughter knowing.
Confused but intrigued, Harley complied. Nearby, her boyfriend, Wesley William Collins, waited in a horse-drawn carriage.
The Breakfast Memories vary on how much that morning cost to put on. Everyone pitched in to help cover what some said was a price tag of at least $2,000. (In today’s currency, accounting for inflation, that would amount to roughly $12,700.)
“It was a way of us saying we knew she wasn’t going to live forever, so you might as well do something spectacular now so she could enjoy it,” Whalen said. “And she did. And we all did. It was our way of celebrating being alive — and together.”
By 9:30 a.m., the party was over. The table was broken down and the group hurried home to change for work. When they got to their respective offices, several said, they were surprised to learn that their breakfast had been covered by the local news.
While driving home after work, Whalen heard a radio story that proclaimed a group of “Georgetown friends” had gathered on the Mall for an elegant affair (none of the members of the group, in fact, lived in Georgetown).
At Buser’s office, a television spot stopped everyone in their tracks and prompted a colleague to ask: “Isn’t that you?” But no one had noticed the Post photographer.
The Daughter
Boghosian always thought her father had the coolest job. He photographed presidents, heads of state, concerts, parades and film screenings. He got to meet celebrities like Mickey Rooney, Harrison Ford, Larry King, Sonny and Cher.
When Boghosian was a child, her father, Harry Naltchayan, a staff photographer for The Post for 35 years, would drive home in his Lincoln Continental smelling of developer and newspaper ink.
Often, he would bring prints home for her and her siblings, Anie, Neshan and Haik, and regale them with stories from his days. Each one was different, no assignment quite like the last.
The thought of pursuing that kind of life captivated the Naltchayan children. Neshan — who has also taken photos for The Post in his career as a professional photographer — and Boghosian soon began taking photos.
By the time Boghosian was 20, she had landed an internship at the White House, helping to file negatives and occasionally photograph events for Vice President George H.W. Bush.
She went on to work for an international wire service, where she recalls spending days outside the federal courthouse in D.C. shoulder to shoulder with her dad. Boghosian was 26 years old when her father died of a heart attack. He was 69.
After the funeral, as the family began to go through her father’s things and assemble thank-you notes to those who offered condolences and support,
Boghosian came across one of Naltchayan’s photographs: it featured the group she would later find herself calling “the breakfast club.” It was a masterpiece, she said. Her family ordered prints and sent out the photo to friends and family with handwritten notes inside.
The picture — dubbed at the time of its 1974 publishing in The Post “On the Mall: Breakfast for 12, At Dawn” — had for years been sold by The Post alongside other striking and historic images, including the moon landing, portraits of presidents and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering an impassioned speech before a crowd.
LEFT: The photo ran on the front of the Style section in the July 20, 1974, edition of The Post. (The Washington Post) RIGHT: Naltchayan's photo of people on the National Mall was advertised for sale in a 1996 edition of The Post, surrounded by photos of other powerful people and moments in history. (The Washington Post)
Naltchayan had shot countless photos for The Washington Post over his decades-long career. He won awards from the White House Press Photographers Association and World Press Photo. But this image, Boghosian said, had always seemed to her to be especially Washingtonian.
It’s why, as her own career took off and Boghosian received requests to give lectures and presentations, she always displayed that photo as a sample of her father’s work. “I always start out with him because he’s part of my story,” Boghosian, now 56, said. “If it hadn’t been for his influence and mentorship and character, I would, well, I don’t know. I don’t know what I would have done.”
Last year, Boghosian was invited to speak to the Northwest Neighbors Village, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting D.C. seniors. As she cued up her presentation, an email from the event organizer pinged her inbox. A woman in the audience had recognized her name and was familiar with her dad’s work. She was one of the 12 who had attended the breakfast.
The breakfast on the Mall recreation July 24, 2024.
The Recreation
Naltchayan’s photograph hangs in the homes of nearly everyone who attended the breakfast. Over dining room tables, in the hall, as living room centerpieces; the photograph has for decades served as a reminder of one of the biggest bashes they ever threw.
Still, over the years, members of the group said, they didn’t routinely talk much about that day. Then, in early 2023, they met Boghosian. She had so many questions about the photo, about them. She leafed through their scrapbooks with photographs and memorabilia from the day. They had saved the menu, the invitation, a letter of appreciation from one of the waiters. As the group took turns sharing memories,
Boghosian marveled at their life stories: Foster had marched for civil rights in Alabama alongside King and went on to work as a lawyer for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Buser successfully fought for education reform in Maryland’s prison system that guaranteed the right to special education classes for incarcerated adults.
Another member of the group became a federal discrimination lawyer and fought for expanded rights for blind people. At one point, Boghosian half-jokingly suggested they attempt to re-create the photo. Several of them dismissed the idea — initially.
Eventually, the group decided that, at the very least, it would be an opportunity to get together, which, since the start of the pandemic, had been harder to do. The photo recreation took about an hour. When it was over, no one was ready to go home. So the group, along with Boghosian, headed to a nearby D.C. restaurant and sat at another cloth-lined table. There, they ordered a bottle of champagne and raised their glasses to toast those who could no longer be with them: “Red,” Charlie, Wesley, and, of course, Janet. But this time, before they clinked their glasses, they added another name to the list: Harry Naltchayan.
Thursday, October 24, 2024
LOCAL. NORTH PARK BOOK FAIR THIS SATURDAY
The North Park Book Fair returns Saturday, October 26, 2024 🕰️ 10am – 5pm 📍 North Park Way from Ray St to Granada.
FREE Admission! All ages!
Dogs welcome!
Join us for the fourth edition of the famous North Park Book Fair, a celebration of literature, art, and community.
Located outside Verbatim Books [30th Street and North Park Way] in the heart of North Park.
More than 100 booths featuring San Diego booksellers, comic stores, zinemakers, small presses, literary collectives, local authors, PLUS art, food, live performances, music, and of course Halloween costume contests 🎃💕
It’s a street fair for book lovers you won’t want to miss!
Wednesday, October 23, 2024
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
ESPIONAGE / WHO’S LEAKING U.S. INTELLIGENCE THIS TIME?
Tehran as seen from the top of the Sky Lounge restaurant/bar |
GUEST BLOG / CNN Investigative reporting by Katie Bo Lillis, Evan Perez, Zachary Cohen, and Natasha Bertrand--The publication on social media of two classified US intelligence documents detailing Israeli preparations for an attack on Iran has set off a scramble inside the US government to discover how they were leaked, a closely held investigation in its early stages that is zeroing in on who had access to the documents.
On Monday, the White House said publicly that there are presently no indications that more documents beyond those two had been leaked or would be published.
But the exposure of the two documents — which appeared to have been produced by two Defense Department intelligence entities, the National Security Agency and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency — has deeply alarmed American officials at a profoundly sensitive moment in US-Israel relations.
The FBI is leading the investigation, working with Pentagon investigators and the intelligence community, according to US officials briefed on the matter.
In recent days, investigators have worked to authenticate the documents and determine who could have had access to them, the officials said. That focus is one indication that, for now, the FBI and other investigators are working off the theory that the breach most likely came from a government insider and not from a cyber intrusion.
Both documents were widely accessible products, according to two sources familiar with US intelligence. But at least one appears to be scanned from an officially printed briefing book.
That could provide investigators with a critical jumping-off point: The Defense Department, like other federal agencies, tracks when employees print classified documents. The pool of people who printed these pages would be relatively small, these sources said. But the investigation is still considered to be in its early stages, so no conclusions have been made, the officials say.
The FBI declined to comment.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday that officials do not yet know how the documents were released and that the Department of Defense is continuing its investigation. Kirby also said that “at this time” they have no reason to believe similar documents will be released. “We don’t have any indication at this point that there’s an expectation that there will be additional documents like this finding their way into the public domain,” he said.
The documents, dated October 15 and 16, began circulating online Friday after being posted on Telegram by an account called “Middle East Spectator.” They are marked top secret and have markings indicating they are meant to be seen only by the US and its “Five Eyes” allies — Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
One of the documents, which says it was compiled by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, says the plans involve Israel moving munitions around.
Another document says it is sourced to the National Security Agency and outlines Israeli air force exercises involving air-to-surface missiles, also believed to be in preparation for a strike on Iran.
CNN is not quoting directly from or showing the documents. Highlighting the sensitive nature of the leak, American officials were extremely tight-lipped about the investigation on Monday.
Officially, multiple agencies declined even to confirm that an investigation is ongoing. In a statement over the weekend, the Middle East Spectator account said it was “not aware of any additional leaked classified U.S. documents” and that it had “no connection to the original source, which we assume to be a whistleblower within the U.S. Department of Defense.”
According to one US official, it wasn’t what the documents described that is so worrying to the intelligence community but rather the fact that they leaked at all.
Although it’s quietly accepted that the US spies even on its allies, to have American surveillance of Israel leaked publicly risks straining relations at a moment when the US is desperately trying to bring to a close the series of interconnected conflicts in which Israel is now embroiled.
A major leak of US intelligence last year also strained the US’ relationships with allies and partners, including South Korea and Ukraine, after 21-year-old Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira posted highly classified information on the social media platform Discord.
In that instance, the FBI was able to move quickly to identify Teixeira, who had left behind an electronic trail that helped investigators quickly narrow their lens. Texeira is now serving a 16-year sentence for the leak, and the Pentagon has since said that it has narrowed the number of people with access to certain documents.
Monday, October 21, 2024
ESPIONAGE / HOW ISRAEL DESTROYED NUCLEAR REACTOR IN SYRIA BEING BUILT WITH NORTH KOREAN AID.
OPERATION OUTSIDE THE BOX
GUEST BLOG / By Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.-- Operation Outside the Box also known as Operation Orchard, was an Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear reactor, referred to as the Al Kibar site (also referred to in IAEA documents as Dair Alzour), in the Deir ez-Zor region of Syria, which occurred just after midnight (local time) on 6 September 2007.
The Israeli and U.S. governments did not announce the secret raids for seven months. The White House and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) subsequently confirmed that American intelligence had also indicated the site was a nuclear facility with a military purpose, though Syria denies this.
A 2009 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigation reported evidence of uranium and graphite and concluded that the site bore features resembling an undeclared nuclear reactor. IAEA was initially unable to confirm or deny the nature of the site because, according to IAEA, Syria failed to provide necessary cooperation with the IAEA investigation.
Syria has disputed these claims.
Nearly four years later, in April 2011 during the Syrian Civil War, the IAEA officially confirmed that the site was a nuclear reactor.
Israel did not acknowledge the attack until 2018. The attack reportedly followed Israeli top-level consultations with the Bush administration.
After realizing that the US was not willing to bomb the site after being told so by U.S. President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert decided to adhere to the 1981 Begin Doctrine and unilaterally strike to prevent a Syrian nuclear weapons capability, despite serious concerns about Syrian retaliation.
In stark contrast to the doctrine's prior usage against Iraq, the airstrike against Syria did not elicit international outcry. A main reason is that Israel maintained total and complete silence regarding the attack, and Syria covered up its activities at the site and did not cooperate fully with the IAEA.
The international silence may have been a tacit recognition of the inevitability of preemptive attacks on "clandestine nuclear programs in their early stages." If true, the Begin Doctrine has undoubtedly played a role in shaping this global perception.
According to official government confirmation on 21 March 2018, the raid was carried out by Israeli Air Force (IAF) 69 Squadron F-15Is, and 119 Squadron and 253 Squadron F-16Is, and an ELINT aircraft; as many as eight aircraft participated and at least four of these crossed into Syrian airspace.[
The fighters were equipped with AGM-65 Maverick missiles, 500-pound (230 kg) bombs, and external fuel tanks. One report stated that a team of elite Israeli Shaldag special-forces commandos arrived at the site the day before so that they could highlight the target with laser designators, while a later report identified Sayeret Matkal special-forces commandos as involved.
The Israeli attack used sophisticated electronic warfare (EW) capabilities, as IAF's EW systems took over Syria's air defense systems, feeding them a false sky-picture for the entire period of time that the Israeli fighter jets needed to cross Syria, bomb their target, and return.
On 6 March 2017, the Kibar nuclear site was captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces – a U.S.-backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab militia fighters – from a retreating ISIL force in northern Deir Ezzor province.
Pre-strike activity
In 2001, the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence service, was profiling newly inducted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Visits by North Korean dignitaries, which focused on advanced arms deliveries, were noticed. Aman, Israel's military intelligence department, suggested nuclear arms were being discussed, but the Mossad dismissed this theory.
In spring 2004, U.S. intelligence reported multiple communications between Syria and North Korea, and traced the calls to a desert location called al-Kibar. Unit 8200, Israel's signals intelligence and codebreaking unit, added the location to its watch list.
The Daily Telegraph, citing anonymous sources, reported that in December 2006, a top Syrian official (according to one article this was the head of the Atomic Energy Commission of Syria, Ibrahim Othman arrived in London under a false name.
The Mossad had detected a booking for the official in a London hotel, and dispatched at least ten undercover agents to London. The agents were split into three teams. One group was sent to Heathrow Airport to identify the official as he arrived, a second to book into his hotel, and a third to monitor his movements and visitors. Some of the operatives were from the Kidon Division, which specializes in assassinations, and the Neviot Division, which specializes in breaking into homes, embassies, and hotel rooms to install bugging devices. On the first day of his visit, he visited the Syrian embassy and then went shopping. Kidon operatives closely followed him, while Neviot operatives broke into his hotel room while he was having drinks with an unknown bar customer ( a woman) they found his laptop.
Chemical Warfare |
A computer expert then installed software that allowed the Mossad to monitor his activities on the computer. When the computer material was examined at Mossad headquarters, officials found blueprints and hundreds of pictures of the Kibar facility in various stages of construction, and correspondence.
One photograph showed North Korean nuclear official Chon Chibu meeting with Ibrahim Othman, Syria's atomic energy agency director. Though the Mossad had originally planned to kill the official in London, it was decided to spare his life following the discovery.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was notified. The following month, Olmert formed a three-member panel to report on Syria's nuclear program. The CIA was also informed and the American intelligence network joined the quest for more information. Six months later, Brigadier-General Yaakov Amidror, one of the panel's members, informed Olmert that Syria was working with North Korea and Iran on a nuclear facility. Iran had funneled $1 billion to the project, and planned on using the Kibar facility to replace Iranian facilities if Iran was unable to complete its uranium enrichment program.
In July 2007, an explosion occurred in Musalmiya, northern Syria. The official Sana news agency said 15 Syrian military personnel were killed and 50 people were injured. The agency reported only that "very explosive products" blew up after a fire broke out at the facility.
The edition of 26 September of Jane's Defence Weekly claimed that the explosion happened during tests to weaponise a Scud-C missile with mustard gas. A senior U.S. official told ABC News that, in early summer 2007, Israel had discovered a suspected Syrian nuclear facility, and that the Mossad then "managed to either co-opt one of the facility's workers or to insert a spy posing as an employee" at the suspected Syrian nuclear site, and through this was able to get pictures of the target from on the ground."
In mid August 2007, Israeli commandos from the Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit covertly raided the suspected Syrian nuclear facility and brought nuclear material back to Israel.
Two helicopters ferried 12 commandos to the site in order to get photographic evidence and soil samples. The commandos were probably dressed in Syrian uniforms. Although the mission was successful, it had to be aborted earlier than planned after the Israelis were spotted by Syrian soldiers.
Soil analysis revealed traces of nuclear activity.
However, there was disagreement between CIA director Michael Hayden and Mossad director Meir Dagan about whether the site should be bombed. Hayden was fearful that this would cause an all-out war, but Dagan was sure that Assad would not react, so long as the bombing was done covertly and not publicized.
Anonymous sources reported that once material was tested and confirmed to have come from North Korea, the United States approved an Israeli attack on the site.
Senior U.S. officials later claimed that they were not involved in or approved the attack, but were informed in advance. In his memoir, President G. W. Bush wrote that Prime Minister Olmert requested that the U.S. bomb the Syrian site, but Bush refused, saying the intelligence was not definitive on whether the plant was part of a nuclear weapons program.
Bush claimed that Olmert did not ask for a green light for an attack and that he did not give one, but that Olmert acted alone and did what he thought was necessary to protect Israel.
Another report indicated that Israel planned to attack the site as early as 14 July, but some U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, preferred a public condemnation of Syria, thereby delaying the military strike until Israel feared the information would leak to the press.
The Sunday Times also reported that the mission was "personally directed" by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
Three days before the attack, a North Korean cargo ship carrying materials labeled as cement docked in the Syrian port of Tartus. An Israeli online data analyst, Ronen Solomon, found an internet trace for the 1,700-tonne cargo ship, the Al Hamed, which allegedly was docked at Tartus on 3 September.
By 25 April 2008 the ship was under the flag of the Comoros, an island nation in the Indian Ocean neaar Madagasca.
Several newspapers reported that Iranian general Ali Reza Asgari, who had disappeared in February in a possible defection to the West, supplied Western intelligence with information about the site.
Target Alleged
Syrian nuclear reactor, after it was destroyed by Israeli air strike CNN first reported that the airstrike targeted weapons "destined for Hezbollah militants" and that the strike "left a big hole in the desert".
One week later, The Washington Post reported that U.S. and Israeli intelligence gathered information on a nuclear facility constructed in Syria with North Korean aid, and that the target was a "facility capable of making unconventional weapons".
According to The Sunday Times, there were claims of a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea. Syrian Vice-President Faruq Al Shara announced on 30 September that the Israeli target was the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Dry Lands, but the center itself immediately denied this.
The following day Syrian President Bashar al-Assad described the bombing target as an "incomplete and empty military complex that was still under construction". He did not provide any further details about the nature of the structure or its purpose.
On 14 October The New York Times cited U.S. and Israeli military intelligence sources saying that the target had been a nuclear reactor under construction by North Korean technicians, with a number of the technicians having been killed in the strike.
On 2 December, The Sunday Times quoted Uzi Even, a professor at Tel Aviv University and a founder of the Negev Nuclear Research Center, saying that he believes that the Syrian site was built to process plutonium and assemble a nuclear bomb, using weapons-grade plutonium originally from North Korea. He also said that Syria's quick burial of the target site with tons of soil was a reaction to fears of radiation.
On 19 March 2009, Hans Rühle, former chief of the planning staff of the German Defense Ministry, wrote in the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung that Iran was financing a Syrian nuclear reactor. Rühle did not identify the sources of his information. He wrote that U.S. intelligence had detected North Korean ship deliveries of construction supplies to Syria that started in 2002, and that the construction was spotted by American satellites in 2003, who detected nothing unusual, partly because the Syrians had banned radio and telephones from the site and handled communications solely by messengers. He said that "The analysis was conclusive that it was a North Korean-type reactor, a gas graphite model" and that "Israel estimates that Iran had paid North Korea between $1 billion and $2 billion for the project". He also wrote that just before the Israeli operation, a North Korean ship was intercepted en route to Syria with nuclear fuel rods.
The Operation F15Is and F16Is over the Mediterranean Sea in 2007 Ten Israeli F-15I Ra'am fighter jets (including aircraft '209') from the Israeli Air Force 69th Squadron armed with laser-guided bombs, escorted by F-16I Sufa fighter jets – including aircraft '432' from 253rd squadron and '459' from 119th squadron – and a few ELINT aircraft, took off from Ramat David Airbase. Three of the F-15s were ordered back to base, while the remaining seven continued towards Syria. The Israelis destroyed a Syrian radar site in Tall al-Abuad with conventional precision bombs, electronic attack, and jamming.
Electronic warfare
The IAF's Special Electronic Missions Aircraft, which reportedly took part in the operation Israel reportedly used electronic warfare to take over Syrian air-defenses and feed them a false-sky picture, for the entire period of time that the Israeli fighter jets needed to cross Syria, bomb their target and return. This technology which neutralized Syrian radars may be similar to the Suter airborne network attack system. This would make it possible to feed enemy radar emitters with false targets, and even directly manipulate enemy sensors.
In May 2008, a report in IEEE Spectrum cited European sources claiming that the Syrian air defense network had been deactivated by a secret built-in kill switch activated by the Israelis.
When the aircraft approached the site, the Shaldag commandos directed their targeting laser at the facility, and the F-15Is released their bombs. The facility was totally destroyed.
The Shaldag commandos were extracted, and all Israeli aircraft returned to base.
On their way back to Israel, the aircraft flew over Turkey and jettisoned fuel tanks over the Hatay and Gaziantep provinces. Immediately following the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, explained the situation, and asked him to relay a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that Israel would not tolerate another nuclear plant, but that no further action was planned. Olmert said that Israel did not want to play up the incident and was still interested in peace with Syria, adding that if Assad chose not to draw attention to the incident, he would do likewise. Israeli official statements
The first report about the raid came from CNN. Israel initially did not comment on the incident, although Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did say that "The security services and Israeli defence forces are demonstrating unusual courage. We naturally cannot always show the public our cards."
Israeli papers were banned from doing their own reporting on the airstrike.
On 16 September, the head of Israeli military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, told a parliamentary committee that Israel regained its "deterrent capability".
The first public acknowledgment by an Israeli official came on 19 September, when opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said that he had backed the operation and congratulated Prime Minister Olmert.
Netanyahu advisor Uzi Arad later told Newsweek "I do know what happened, and when it comes out it will stun everyone."
On 17 September, Prime Minister Olmert announced that he was ready to make peace with Syria "without preset conditions and without ultimatums".
According to a poll done by the Dahaf Research Institute, Olmert's approval rating rose from 25% to 35% after the airstrike.
On 2 October 2007, the IDF confirmed the attack took place, following a request by Haaretz to lift censorship; however, the IDF continued to censor details of the actual strike force and its target.
On 28 October, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Israeli cabinet that he had apologized to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan if Israel violated Turkish airspace. In a statement released to the press after the meeting he said: "In my conversation with the Turkish prime minister, I told him that if Israeli planes indeed penetrated Turkish airspace, then there was no intention thereby, either in advance or in any case, to—in any way—violate or undermine Turkish sovereignty, which we respect."
Syrian reaction Abu Mohammed, a former major in the Syrian air force, recounted in 2013 that air defenses in the Deir ez-Zor region were told to stand down as soon as the Israeli planes were detected heading to the reactor. According to a leaked diplomatic cable, the Syrian government placed long-range missiles armed with chemical warheads on high alert after the attack but did not retaliate, fearing an Israeli nuclear counterstrike.
Syria at first claimed that its anti-aircraft weapons had fired at Israeli planes, which bombed empty areas in the desert, or later, a military construction site. During the two days following the attack, Turkish media reported finding Israeli fuel tanks in Hatay and Gaziantep Province, and the Turkish Foreign Minister lodged a formal protest with the Israeli envoy.
In a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, Syria called the incursion a "breach of airspace of the Syrian Arab Republic" and said "it is not the first time Israel has violated" Syrian airspace. Syria also accused the international community of ignoring Israeli actions. A UN spokesperson said Syria had not requested a meeting of the UN Security Council and France, at the time the president of the Security Council, said it had received no letter from Syria.
On 27 April 2008, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, making his first public comments about the raid, dismissed the allegations that it was a nuclear site which was attacked as false: "Is it logical? A nuclear site did not have protection with surface to air defenses? A nuclear site within the footprint of satellites in the middle of Syria in an open area in the desert?"
Independent experts, however, suggested that Syria did not fortify its suspected reactor in order to avoid drawing attention and because the building was not yet operational.
Besides a nuclear program, Syria is believed to have extensive arsenals, as well as biological and chemical warheads for its long-range missiles.
On 25 February 2009, IAEA officials reported that Ibrahim Othman, Syria's nuclear chief, told a closed IAEA technical meeting that Syria built a missile facility on the site.
International reactions
No Arab government besides Syria formally commented on the incident. The Egyptian weekly Al-Ahram commented on the "synchronized silence of the Arab world." Neither the Israeli nor Syrian government has offered a detailed description of what occurred. Outside experts and media commentators have filled the data vacuum by offering their own diverse interpretations about what precisely happened that night. Western commentators took the position that the lack of official non-Syrian Arab condemnations of Israel's action, threats of retaliation against Israel, or even professions of support for the Syrian government or people must imply that their governments tacitly supported the Israeli action. Even Iranian officials have not formally commented on the Israeli attack or Syria's reactions.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked if North Korea was helping Syria in the nuclear realm, but replied only that "we are watching the North Koreans very carefully. We watch the Syrians very carefully."
The North Korean government strongly condemned Israel's actions: "This is a very dangerous provocation little short of wantonly violating the sovereignty of Syria and seriously harassing the regional peace and security."
On 17 October, in reaction to the UN press office's release of a First Committee, Disarmament and International Security meeting's minutes that paraphrased an unnamed Syrian representative as saying that a nuclear facility was hit by the raid, Syria denied the statement, adding that "such facilities do not exist in Syria."
However state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said that media reports had misquoted the Syrian diplomat.[60] On the same day, the IAEA's Mohamed ElBaradei criticized the raid, saying that "to bomb first and then ask questions later [...] undermines the system and it doesn't lead to any solution to any suspicion."
The IAEA had been observing the disabling of the DPRK Yongbyon nuclear facilities since July 2007, and was responsible for the containment and surveillance of the fuel rods and other nuclear materials from there.
Meanwhile, U.S. House Resolution 674, introduced on 24 September 2007, expressed "unequivocal support ... for Israel's right to self defense in the face of an imminent nuclear or military threat from Syria." The bill had 15 cosponsors, but never reached a vote.
On 26 October, The New York Times published satellite photographs showing that the Syrians had almost entirely removed all remains of the facility. U.S. intelligence sources noted that such an operation would usually take up to a year to complete and expressed astonishment at the speed with which it was carried out.
Former weapons inspector David Albright believed that the work was meant to hide evidence of wrongdoing.
On 28 April 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden said that a suspected Syrian reactor bombed by Israel had the capacity to produce "enough plutonium for one or two weapons per year", and that it was of a "similar size and technology" to North Korea's Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center.
In his memoir Decision Points, President George W. Bush claimed that the strike confirmed that Syria had been pursuing a nuclear-weapons program and that "intelligence is not an exact science", relating that while he had been told that U.S. analysts only had low confidence that the facility was part of a nuclear-weapons program, surveillance after the airstrike showed parts of the destroyed facility being covered up.
Bush wrote that "if the facility was really just an innocent research lab, Syrian President Assad would have been screaming at the Israelis on the floor of the United Nations". He also wrote that in a telephone conversation with Olmert, he suggested that the operation be kept secret for a while and then made public to isolate the Syrian government, but Olmert asked for total secrecy, wanting to avoid anything that might force Syrian retaliation.
In April 2011, after a lengthy investigation the International Atomic Energy Agency officially confirmed that the site was a nuclear reactor.
In 2012, the Non-aligned Movement adopted a statement according to which: 'The Heads of State or Government underscored the Movement's principled position concerning non-use or threat of use of force against the territorial integrity of any State.
In this regard, they condemned the Israeli attack against a Syrian facility on 6 September 2007, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and welcomed Syria's cooperation with the IAEA in this regard’.
Release of intelligence
On 10 October 2007, The New York Times reported that the Israelis had shared the Syrian strike dossier with Turkey. In turn, the Turks traveled to Damascus and confronted the Syrians with the dossier, alleging a nuclear program. Syria denied this with vigor, saying that the target was a storage depot for strategic missiles.
On 25 October 2007, The New York Times reported that two commercial satellite photos taken before and after the raid showed that a square building no longer exists at the suspected site.
On 27 October 2007, The New York Times reported that the imaging company Geoeye released an image of the building from 16 September 2003, and from this security analyst John Pike estimated that construction began in 2001. "A senior intelligence official" also told The New York Times that the U.S. has observed the site for years by spy satellite.
Subsequent searches of satellite imagery discovered that an astronaut aboard the International Space Station had taken a picture of the area on 5 September 2002. The image, though of low resolution, is good enough to show that the building existed as of that date.
On 11 January 2008, DigitalGlobe released a satellite photo showing that a building similar to the suspected target of the attack had been rebuilt in the same location. However, an outside expert said that it was unlikely to be a reactor and could be cover for excavation of the old site.
On 1 April 2008, Asahi Shimbun reported that Ehud Olmert told Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda during a meeting on 27 February that the target of the strike was "nuclear-related facility that was under construction with know-how and assistance from North Korean technicians dispatched by Pyongyang."
On 24 April 2008, the CIA released a video and background briefing, which it claims shows similarities between the North Korean nuclear reactor in Yongbyon and the one in Syria which was bombed by Israel.
According to a U.S. official, there did not appear to be any uranium at the reactor, and although it was almost completed, it could not have been declared operational without significant testing.
A statement from the White House Press Secretary on 24 April 2008, followed the briefing given to some Congressional committees that week. According to the statement, the administration believed that Syria had been building a covert reactor with North Korean assistance that was capable of producing plutonium, and that the purpose was non-peaceful. It was also stated that the IAEA was being briefed with the intelligence.
The IAEA confirmed receipt of the information, and planned to investigate. It was critical of not being informed earlier, and described the unilateral use of force as "undermining the due process of verification".
Syrian officials, however, denied any North Korean involvement in their country.
According to BBC News, Syria's ambassador to the UK, Sami Khiyami, dismissed the allegations as ridiculous. "We are used to such allegations now, since the day the United States has invaded Iraq – you remember all the theatrical presentations concerning the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
Mr Khiyami said the facility was a deserted military building that had "nothing to do with a reactor".
On 21 March 2018, Israel formally acknowledged the operation and released newly declassified materials including photographs and cockpit video of the airstrike.
Initial skepticism about the US and Israeli claims
Despite the release of intelligence information from the American and Israeli sources, the attack on the Syrian site was initially controversial. Some commentators had argued that at the time of the attack the site had no obvious barbed wire or air defenses that would normally ring a sensitive military facility.
Mohamed ElBaradei had previously stated that Syria's ability to construct and run a complex nuclear process was doubtful – speaking ahead of the IAEA inspection of the alleged Syrian nuclear site, which had been demolished, he said: "It is doubtful we will find anything there now, assuming there was anything in the first place."
The New York Times reported that after the publishing of US intelligence data on 24 April, "two senior intelligence officials acknowledged that the evidence had left them with no more than "low confidence" that Syria was preparing to build a nuclear weapon. However, while they said that there was no sign that Syria had built an operation to convert the spent fuel from the plant into weapons-grade plutonium, they had told President Bush last year that they could think of no other explanation for the reactor."
BBC Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus commented on the release of the CIA video that "Briefings about alleged weapons of mass destruction programmes have a lot to live down in the wake of the US experience in Iraq".
Aftermath
On 19 November 2008, IAEA released a report which said the Syrian complex bore features resembling those of an undeclared nuclear reactor and UN inspectors found "significant" traces of uranium at the site. The report said the findings gleaned from inspectors' visit to the site in June were not enough to conclude a reactor was once there. It said further investigation and greater Syrian transparency were needed. The confidential nuclear safeguards report said Syria would be asked to show to inspectors debris and equipment whisked away from the site after the September 2007 Israeli air raid.
On 19 February 2009, the IAEA reported that samples taken from the site revealed new traces of processed uranium. A senior UN official said additional analysis of the June find had found 40 more uranium particles, for a total of 80 particles, and described it as significant. He added that experts were analyzing minute traces of graphite and stainless steel found at and near the site, but said that it was too early to relate them to nuclear activity.
The report noted Syria's refusal to allow agency inspectors to make follow-up visits to sites suspected of harboring a secret nuclear program despite repeated requests from top agency officials.
Syria disputed these claims. According to Syria's IAEA representative Othman, there would have been a large amount of graphite had the building been a nuclear reactor. Othman continued, "They found 80 particles in half a million tonnes of soil. I don't know how you can use that figure to accuse somebody of building such a facility."
In a November 2009 report, the IAEA stated that its investigation had been stymied due to Syria's failure to cooperate.
The following February, under the new leadership of Yukiya Amano, the IAEA stated that "The presence of such [uranium] particles points to the possibility of nuclear-related activities at the site and adds to questions concerning the nature of the destroyed building. ... Syria has yet to provide a satisfactory explanation for the origin and presence of these particles".
Syria disputed these allegations, saying that there is not a military nuclear program in the country and that it has the right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the field of nuclear medicine. Syria's foreign minister said, "We are committed to the non-proliferation agreement between the agency and Syria and we (only) allow inspectors to come according to this agreement. ... We will not allow anything beyond the agreement because Syria does not have a military nuclear program. Syria is not obliged to open its other sites to inspectors."
Syria maintains that the natural uranium found at the site came from Israeli missiles.
On 28 April 2011, the head of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano declared for the first time that the target was indeed the covert site of a future nuclear reactor, countering Syrian assertions.
The site during Syrian Civil War During the Syrian Civil War, the reactor site fell to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant group in May 2014.
On 6 March 2017, the site was captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces – a U.S.-backed coalition of Kurdish and Arab militia fighters. Since then, the site has remained inside the territory governed by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
Claiming responsibility
On 22 March 2018, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officially took responsibility for destroying a nuclear reactor built in the northeastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zor in 2007 after a decade of ambiguity.
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