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<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2>Two of my favorite bands who are currently
touring and recording are the Beastie Boys and Rancid. Both are really popular.
One of the three members of the Beastie Boys, Adam Yauch, is heavily involved
with the Free Tibet campaign. He co-founded the Milarepa Fund in 1994 to
help spread awareness. Three years ago the Dalai Lama made a speech at Harvard
and Yauch went along to give the Fund's first donation which was to the Harvard
chapter of Students for a Free Tibet. Here's where Rancid come into it. Yauch's
future wife, Dechen Wangdu, was the representative for the Students for a Free
Tibet that day. Wangdu is a huge fan of Rancid and Yauch asked the band to play
at their wedding reception - they were married May 31st. Now Rancid is a little
more clear-eyed when it comes to politics. They list Chomsky as a big
inspiration, have a song titled Harry Bridges, and are accused of being Clash
knock offs. Rancid is also one of three big bands of the 90s punk revival, the
others being the Offspring and Green Day. Rancid did play the reception and two
of the members asked if the Beastie Boys would play at their wedding receptions.
But, the Beastie Boys will be unable to because of touring. Hopefully someone
out there finds this interesting. Anyway, the following is from the NYT
obituaries. Keep an eye out for the following phrase:"These guys kill a lot
of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me." </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>New York Times 7/16/98</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000000 size=2></FONT></NYT_DATE><NYT_HEADLINE version = 1.0
type = " "><!--ELEMENT HEADLINE-->
<H2>Nguyen Ngoc Loan, 67, Dies; Executed Viet Cong Prisoner</H2>
<H5>By ROBERT McG. THOMAS Jr.</H5></DIV>
<DIV>Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the quick-tempered South Vietnamese national police
commander whose impromptu execution of a Viet Cong prisoner on a Saigon street
in the Tet offensive of 1968 helped galvanize American public opinion against
the war, died on Tuesday at his home in Burke, Va. He was 67 and had operated a
pizza parlor in nearby Dale City.
<P>A son, Larry Nguyen, said the cause was cancer.
<P>In a long war that claimed two million lives, the death of a single Viet Cong
official would hardly have seemed noteworthy, especially in a week when
thousands of insurgents were killed mounting an offensive that included the
beheading of women and children in Saigon.
<P>But when Brig. Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan raised his pistol on Feb. 1, 1968,
extended his arm and fired a bullet through the head of the prisoner, who stood
with his hands tied behind his back, the general did so in full view of an NBC
cameraman and an Associated Press photographer.
<P>And when the film was shown on television and the picture appeared on the
front pages of newspapers around the world, the images created an immediate
revulsion at a seemingly gratuitous act of savagery that was widely seen as
emblematic of a seemingly gratuitous war.
<P>The photograph, by Eddie Adams, was especially vivid, a frozen moment that
put a wincing face of horror on the war. Taken almost at once with the squeeze
of the trigger, the photo showed the prisoner, unidentified and wearing black
shorts and a plaid shirt, in a final grimace as the bullet passed through his
brain. Close examination of the photo, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969,
showed the slug leaving his head.
<P>For all the emotional impact, the episode had little immediate influence on
on the tide of American involvement in the war, which continued seven years
longer, until the evacuation of Saigon in 1975. Indeed, it was a full four years
after the execution that another indelible image of the war created a new round
of revulsion, the sight of a screaming 9-year-old girl as she ran naked along a
road after having been burned in a South Vietnamese napalm attack.
<P>The execution changed General Loan's life.
<P>One of 11 children of a prosperous mechanical engineer, Loan, a native of
Hue, had graduated near the top of his class at the University of Hue and begun
a career as a jet pilot in the South Vietnamese Air Force.
<P>As a close friend of Nguyen Cao Ky, the swashbuckling pilot who became South
Vietnam's premier in 1965, Loan, then a colonel, was put in charge of the
national police and gained an immediate reputation among western reporters for
his flashpoint temper and towering rages at the scenes of Viet Cong attacks
against civilian targets.
<P>Some of those who knew him said that Loan would not have carried out the
execution of the prisoner if there had not been reporters and photographers on
the scene. But Loan insisted his action was justified because the prisoner had
been the captain of a terrorist squad that had killed the family of one of his
deputy commanders.
<P>Even so, the killing and other summary executions by the South's military
during the Tet offensive drew immediate rebukes from American officials, and a
few days after the incident, Ky, the former premier who had become Vice
President, said the prisoner had not been a part of the Vietcong military but
was "a very high-ranking" political official.
<P>Loan later suggested that the execution had not been the rash act it appeared
to be but had been carried out because a deputy commander he had ordered to
shoot had hesitated.
<P>"I think, 'Then I must do it,' " he said. "If you hesitate, if
you didn't do your duty, the men won't follow you."
<P>Vo Suu, an NBC cameraman at the scene, recalled that immediately after the
shooting the general walked over to a reporter and said, "These guys kill a
lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me."
<P>When he was severely wounded while charging a Viet Cong hideout three months
later and taken to Australia for medical treatment, there was such a local
outcry against him that he was taken to Walter Reade Hospital in Washington,
where he was repeatedly denounced on the floor of Congress.
<P>Back in Saigon, Loan, who had been relieved of his command after his
wounding, seemed a changed man, one who devoted his time to showering presents
on orphans.
<P>At the fall of Saigon his pleas for American help in fleeing the country were
ignored but he and his family escaped in a South Vietnamese plane.
<P>Once his presence in the United States became known there was a move to
deport him as a war criminal, but the efforts fizzled and Loan, whose right leg
had been amputated, settled in northern Virginia, where he eventually opened his
pizza parlor, which he operated until 1991 when publicity about the proprietor's
past led to a sharp decline in business.
<P>As a message scrawled on a restroom wall put it, "We know who you
are."
<P>In addition to his son, of Burke, Loan is survived by his wife, Chinh Mai, a
daughter, Nguyen Anh of Fairfield, Va., three other children, a number of
brothers and sisters and nine grandchildren.</P></DIV></BODY></HTML>