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Empathy is the bridge that opens up to the other side
PETROFILM.COM EUROPE
Information and Interpretation
from a European Perspective
Información e Interpretación
desde una perspectiva Europea
EUROPE-USA
A TRANS-ATLANTIC PARTNERSHIP
UNA COLABORACIÓN TRANSATLÁNTICA
EMPATHY RESPECT DIGNITY
EMPATÍA RESPETO DIGNIDAD
Harald Dahle-Sladek
Founder and Editor-in-chief
Fundador y editor en jefe
To contact the Editor-in-chief with questions, comments and inquiries about lectures or consultations, please e-mail us at haroldsworld@petrofilm.com
Oslo, Norway
歐洲分析與解釋
אמפתיה כבוד כבוד
ניתוח, מידע עם פרספקטיבה אירופית
تجزیه و تحلیل ، اطلاعات از یک چشم انداز اروپایی
АНАЛИЗ ИНФОРМАЦИИ С ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ
ИЗ ЕВРОПЫ
דיאלוג עכשיו ДИАЛОГСЕЙЧАС
DIALOGUENOW
Institute for Empathetic Dialogue formation
and Conflict Resolution, Oslo Norway.
Instituto para la formación del Diálogo Empático y Resolución de Conflictos, Oslo Noruega
عزت احترام به همدلی یکپارچه سازی
The Foreign Ministry Tehran
Creating dialogue and common ground
with the Islamic republic of Iran 1998-2022.
ایجاد گفت و گو و زمینه مشترک با ایران 1998-2022
Updates from
Washington, D.C.
Denmark
Danske Bank Pleads Guilty to Fraud on U.S. Banks in a Multi-Billion Dollar Scheme to Access the U.S. Financial System.
Largest Bank in Denmark Agrees to Forfeit $2 Billion.
Danske Bank A/S (Danske Bank), a global financial institution headquartered in Denmark, pleaded guilty today and agreed to forfeit $2 billion to resolve the United States’ investigation into Danske Bank’s fraud on U.S. banks.
According to court documents, Danske Bank defrauded U.S. banks regarding Danske Bank Estonia’s customers and anti-money laundering controls to facilitate access to the U.S. financial system for Danske Bank Estonia’s high-risk customers, who resided outside of Estonia – including in Russia. The Justice Department will credit nearly $850 million in payments that Danske Bank makes to resolve related parallel investigations by other domestic and foreign authorities. Continues further down.
Switzerland
Glencore International AG
Entered Guilty Pleas to Foreign Bribery and Market Manipulation Schemes. Swiss-Based Firm Agrees to Pay Over $1.1 Billion
Glencore International A.G. (Glencore) and Glencore Ltd., both part of a multi-national commodity trading and mining firm headquartered in Switzerland, each pleaded guilty today and agreed to pay over $1.1 billion to resolve the government’s investigations into violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and a commodity price manipulation scheme.
Luxembourg
haroldsw
BANGKOK
Between 1980 and 1983 I made three films in Bangkok and one In Pattaya and on Kho Larn. The ones I did in Bangkok was about Thai Airways and SAS and ICP Frionor fish producing factory and one at Hotel Oriental with Thai TV3. I met Neil Davis, who introduced me to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand FCCT. (See introduction further down). At that time the FCCT was located in the colonial style building at Oriental Plaza shopping center, below.
The FCCT was in the same local on the first floor at the Bamboo Bar was. Paul Vogle worked at the Bangkok Post were I met him, and we talked about making a story together about "Yellow Rain", the defoliant which was sprayed over the North Vietnam and Laotian green leaves. I was ready to go to Vietnam and Laos and write about it, but it did not materialize.
FCCT Bamboo Bar August 1982
Niel Davis sitting left. Everybody that was there in the Bamboo Bar that evening wrote their name to wish me welcome to the FCCT. Niel Davis was the first to sign on with the "Warmest Welcome" to FCCT. At the time Niel was the President of FCCT.
The legendary Australian cameraman Neil Davis was one of the great Indochina correspondents to take up residence in Bangkok, and was president in 1981. Immensely popular and widely respected, Davis and his soundman, American Bill Latch, were killed by wild gunfire from tanks during an attempted coup on September 9, 1985.
No one was ever charged in their killings, and there was international outrage that something so minor should have claimed their lives. The club was split as never before – or since – over how to respond to the tragedy.
Surviving friends of Davis and Latch include Indochina veterans Derek Williams, who was with CBS News and then AsiaWorks, and James Pringle, formerly with Reuters and Newsweek. Another close friend, John McBeth of the old Far Eastern Economic Review visits the club whenever he is in town from Bali, where he retired with his wife Yuli Ismartono, another old FCCT president when she was correspondent for Jakarta’s Tempo magazine.
After The Oriental, the FCCT sought a roof of its own, moving through a succession of premises, mostly hotels, all of which had drawbacks. In 1981, the club was located in The Oriental Plaza, a charming Thai ‘colonial’ building resting on traditional solid teak piles. It was near The Oriental and the Chao Phraya river once more – but this time without a view. Located far from any news bureaus, the club was on the wrong side of Bangkok’s diabolical traffic, and attendance suffered.
In 1984, the FCCT relocated to an eyrie atop The Dusit Thani, one of Bangkok’s leading hotels, with a breathtaking city view across Lumpini Park. Unfortunately, many correspondents were loath to traipse through a five-star hotel lobby to reach the club, particularly with so many other more diverting watering holes available nearby.
Neil Davis with Vietnam President Lon NoL 1972
THERE WAS A COUP IN 1985
Swedish cameraman Claes Bratt at the center of the picture, holding his 16mm film camera and smoking his trade mark sigarette.
NIEL DAVIS
(1934-1985)
FRIEND AND VETERAN NBC CAMERAMAN IN THE VIETNAM WAR
NBC Cameraman Niel Davis, born in Tasmania, lies dead on the street in Bangkok after being hit by a shrapnel from a firing tank. His soundman was also hit. My friend’s untimely death on 9 September 1985 meant that his ‘as told to’ story now had to be a biography, with his many friends and colleagues providing essential information and photographs about his varied life and career. Fortunately journalists and camera people have largely endorsed One Crowded Hour. I think Neil would have haunted me forever if they hadn’t! I’m sorry he wasn’t able to read it, and I still miss him.
PAUL VOGLE
(1932-2001)
I met Paul in Bangkok Post where he worked; that was in 1982. He was a generous and mild-mannered person, with a huge experience from the Vietnam war. Paul and I discussed the rumors of the so-called "yellow rain" the poisonous chemical that was used as a defoliant over dense vegetation in Vietnam. I said to Paul that I could be interested to go in (to Vietnam) and investigate these rumors. He thought it a very exciting idea, but we didn't explore it further as there obviously were many un- knowns and dangers connected to the "yellow rain" poisonous defoliant.
The fall of Saigon April 29, 1975
An Air America helicopter crew member helps evacuees up a ladder on the roof of 18 Gia Long St. in Saigon on April 29, 1975, shortly before the city fell to advancing North Vietnamese troops. An erroneous caption once described the helicopter as atop the U.S. Embassy. File Photo by Hugh Van Es/UPI
UPI Correspondent Paul Vogle
one who did not make it back for the tenth aniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, despite the almost two decades he spent in Vietnam. Vogle's memorable account of the last flight from Danang in 1975 was one of the thruly great stories to come out of the war.
A genuinly professional journalist.
WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI) - It was April 29, 1975, the last day of the Vietnam War, and people were desperate to get out of Saigon.
UPI photographer Hubert Van Es captured what became an iconic image of the fall of the city: a line of people trying to board a helicopter atop a building.
Van Es died in 2009. But in a recollection of the event for The New York Times in 2005, he told the story of the photo - and why most people are mistaken about what it shows.
About 11 a.m. that day, the evacuation of the foreign press corps began. Van Es, along with UPI Bureau Chief Alan Dawson and reporter Paul Vogle, decided to stay longer. About 2:30 p.m., Van Es was the only photographer in the office when he was alerted that a helicopter had landed on the roof of a nearby apartment building where the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency station chief and some officers lived.
"I grabbed my camera and the longest lens left in the office - it was only 300 millimeters, but it would have to do - and dashed to the balcony," he wrote in the Times piece. "Looking at the Pittman Apartments, I could see 20 or 30 people on the roof, climbing the ladder to an Air America Huey helicopter. At the top of the ladder stood an American in civilian clothes, pulling people up and shoving them inside."
It took off with only about a dozen people inside.
Van Es rushed to transmit the photo, which in those days was done via radio signal.
Somewhere in the editing process, an erroneous caption was attached, stating that the helicopter in the photo was atop the U.S. Embassy roof, since that had been the main evacuation site -- and the scene of much panic and chaos as North Vietnamese troops were closing in.
Dan Southerland, who had landed in Vietnam as a rookie reporter for UPI before moving on to the Christian Science Monitor, recalled watching South Vietnamese civilians pressing to get through the embassy gates to safety.
In a recent interview with UPI, Southerland said he assumed many of the South Vietnamese people he knew would be mistreated under the new regime. So he spent his last days in Saigon attempting to arrange for several people to get onto military airplanes or helicopters.
"Fortunately, I was able to get several Vietnamese out, but I was unable to persuade my old interpreter to leave," said Southerland, who is now an executive editor with Radio Free Asia. "He was convinced that the Communists would do him no harm because he was relatively poor. He was wrong. He was interrogated and beaten up and finally had to flee a few years later by boat."
Ken Englade was a UPI field reporter from the Saigon bureau who worked seven days a week for three weeks at a time in the northern part of South Vietnam. Late on the 29th, he, too, was at the embassy gates.
"We had a staff meeting... to decide who wanted to try to make it off the embassy roof and who wanted to stay," he said in a recent interview.
He, Vogle and and UPI staffer Bert Okuley decided to evacuate.
"When we got to the embassy, there was a large but subdued crowd in front of the gate," Englade said. "We had to force our way through. Vietnamese were forcing slips of papers into our hands with their names in the belief that someone inside would recognize them and come to their rescue. It didn't happen."
"I also had to fend off several women who tried to give their babies," Englade said. Englade, Okuley and Vogle were about halfway through the crowd when Vogle, tears streaming down his face, said, "'I can't do it. These are my people.'"
Vogle turned around and walked back.
Meanwhile, UPI audio editor Tom Foty, who now anchors radio newscasts for CBS News, was in New York City, taking Dawson's final radio spots and putting them on the network for subscribers: "I was on duty when the North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon."
CBS TV aired those reports in its nightly broadcast anchored by the legendary journalist Walter Cronkite, who had also begun his career at UPI.
LAST PLANE OUT OF DANANG
Journalists can work a lifetime and never get that elusive "BIG story," the one that splashes your byline across the front page, "top fold," of the New York Times or leads every evening broadcast on television network news. But Paul Vogle did, and it nearly cost him his life.
It was March 1975. The final victorious Communist offensive was sweeping down the length and breadth of South Vietnam. Da Nang, the country's second-largest city, was about to fall, and UPI sent Vogle to cover the final moments.
Ed Daly, the pistol-packing, tough-talking president of World Airways, was sending two of his 727 airliners north to pick up refugees from the terror-stricken Vietnamese port city.
The scene at the former U.S. air base there was one of utter chaos. Thousands of panicked civilians as well as deserting South Vietnamese troops lined the 10,000-foot asphalt strip.
World Airways chief pilot Ken Healy first made a low-level pass over the runway, then decided to set the bird down while the other aircraft circled overhead. That's when all hell broke loose.
The plane taxied toward the old Air Vietnam ramp where civilians were anxiously waiting. But suddenly, jeeps and other vehicles full of angry South Vietnamese soldiers, chased the plane, it's ramp open to the tarmac.
The deserting troops tried to fight their way aboard, ahead of screaming Vietnamese women and children. They knew this was the "last flight" out of Da Nang.
Paul Vogle described the frenzy into his cassette tape recorder:
MOBS OF PEOPLE ARE PUSHING AND SHOVING, THOUSANDS TRYING TO GET ABOARD. THE PLANE IS TAXIING AWAY FROM THE MOB.
THE CREW IS SCARED. THE MOB IS PANIC-STRIKEN. THERE'S A MAN WITH AN M-16 (RIFLE) POINTED AT US, TRYING TO GET US TO STOP.
WE'RE LOADING MORE PEOPLE. THE PANICKED CROWDS ARE RUNNING AFTER US. WE JUST PASSED A POTHOLE IN THE RUNWAY. A JEEP, A PICK-UP TRUCK, JUST CRUMPLED UNDER AN ENGINE . . . THEY'RE IGNORING THE ENGINES ... PEOPLE ARE GRABBING AT THE STAIRS.
SOLDIERS ARE RUSHING THE PLANE RIGHT NOW. DALY IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RAMP. HE'S TRYING TO PUSH THE SOLDIERS BACK. WE'RE BEING MOBBED!"
[At this point, Vogle's humanity shines. He stopped being a newsman long enough to shout to the wild crowd in Vietnamese: IT'S ALL RIGHT. IT'S ALL RIGHT. WE'VE GOT ROOM FOR EVERYBODY. DON'T PANIC." But the mob is crazed with fear. They continue to claw at the ramp. The huge mass of people weigh heavily on the stairs, and the plane is in danger of being over-whelmed and unable to take-off.]
MEN WITH GUNS ARE FIGHTING EACH OTHER. THE PILOT GOOSES THE ENGINE.
[The roar of screeching jets in the background can be heard as Healy keeps the plane moving.]
PEOPLE ARE STORMING ABOARD, SHOUTING . . . PUSHING . . . SOLDIERS, CIVILIANS. PEOPLE ARE CLIMBING UP ON THE WINGS NOW . . . THEY'RE FALLING OFF!
SOLDIERS ARE FIRING INTO THE AIR TO SCARE OTHERS AWAY . . . WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE LYING ON THE GROUND. SOME ARE TRYINGTO LIE IN FRONT OF THE WHEELS!
[The engine noise picks up, and Vogle is now screaming into his recorder:]
A MAN JUST FELL OFF THE RAMP . . . I SEE A BODY, COVERED IN BLOOD. THEY'RE (THE VIETNAMESE) HANGING ONTO THE STAIRS, BUT ARE FALLING OFF AS WE TRY TO GET AIRBORNE."
Healy threw the throttle, and the over-loaded jet surged into the air, headed for the temporary safety of Saigon.
Egil Budde in SAS sent me to Bangok to cover Norwegian export of Salmon
Here I am taking down an SAS freighter at Gardermoen Airport Oslo I sat in the cocpit to Arlanda Airport to further unload salmon there.
Photo Harald Dahle
"One Crowded Hour"
NEIL DAVIS
COMBAT CAMERAMAN 1934-85
By Tim Bowden
As I lay there half-reclining, with blood streaming down from my head and hands, a North Vietnamese soldier ap- peared literally a metre away over a slight rise.
My first reacion was, ‘What a fantast- ic shot!’ I looked down to adjust the focus and swing the turret of the cam- era onto a wide-angle lens.
I mean, there was this man coming to kill me, and my first reaction was to get onto the right lens to get this dramatic shot.
Neil Davis stayed on in Saigon after the fall, and collected the Safari suit he had ordered from his regular tailor, Mr Minh, just before the end of the war.
Neil Davis, on assignment in Asia for NBC
Here Neil Davis is leaping over a creek in with his Bell & Howell camera held high in the delta region of South Vietnam in 1967. Photo: Peter Arnett.
A still picture taken from Neil Davis’ most famous footage – and world scoop – when he was the only cameraman who dared film the North Vietnamese tank No 843 smashing down the gates of Saigon’s Independence Palace in April 1975. It was the moment that symbolised the Communist victory.
FALL OF SAIGON 29.4.1975
Luxembourg
haroldsw