VIDEO: South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu talks to BBC – Jan 31, 1975 (Briefing on the conclusions of the Synod on the Family 2014.10.18)

The Paris Peace Accords of 1973 intended to establish peace in Vietnam and an end to the Vietnam War. It ended direct U.S. military combat, and temporarily stopped the fighting between North and South Vietnam. The governments of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), and the United States, as well as the Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) that represented indigenous South Vietnamese revolutionaries, signed the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam on January 27, 1973. The agreement was not ratified by the United States Senate.[1][2]

The negotiations that led to the accord began in 1968 after various lengthy delays. As a result of the accord, the International Control Commission (ICC) was replaced by International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) to fulfill the agreement. The main negotiators of the agreement were United States National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese politburo member Lê Đức Thọ; the two men were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts, although Lê Đức Thọ refused to accept it.

Ukraine’s Dystopian Descent into Military Dictatorship

The Ukrainian state continues its slow-motion collapse, this time with Poroshenko seeking to deal a death blow to the last remnants of the Rada. He has accused “half of the Verkhovna Rada” of being “a ‘fifth column’ which is controlled from abroad, whole factions” after they did not pass a bill labelling Lugansk and Donetsk’s governments as terrorist organizations.

Updated & Mapped: Four Ukrainian Regular Army Brigades Encircled & Wiped Out in month long ‘Southern Cauldron’ Battle (1/3 of it’s peacetime main army units). Will Western & Ukrainian Press Report It? Will N.Y.T. update it’s map?

Doubt if many were even aware there were three complete regular Ukrainian Army Brigades, two independent Regiments and a Regiment of Border Guards that had been cut-off without supplies and surrounded along a long finger against the Russian Border for the last month. There certainly has been no coverage beyond one piece by VICE news of frantic parents in Kiev protesting after calls from their surrounded soldier-sons.

Vice News: Russian Civilians Suffer from Bloody Military Campaign (VIDEO)

Two weeks after the separatist rebels of the Donetsk People’s Republic fled their stronghold of Sloviansk, Ukraine’s anti­-terror operation continues. In the neighboring region of Luhansk, the Ukrainian military has been battling with separatists for control of Luhansk city and its strategically important airport — but with both sides using artillery, homes are being destroyed and people are being killed. Meanwhile near Donetsk, fighting has reached outlying villages as the military looks to encircle separatist forces inside the city, who vow to make their last stand among its 1 million inhabitants.

Kelly McParland: Good news, the Americans hate the F-35 too (The Jet that Ate the Pentagon)

Good news: Foreign Policy magazine may solve the dilemma for you. The Washington-based magazine demonstrates that Canadian opponents aren’t alone in thinking the “fifth generation fighter” (which sounds significant but really only means there were four earlier ones, kind of like owning a “fifth generation Oldsmobile”) is a disaster waiting to happen. In “The Jet that Ate the Pentagon” it pretty much dismembers the argument for the plane, largely on the basis that it will be insanely expensive (even more insanely than the costs known at present, and which the federal government sought valiantly to disguise by letting Defence Minister Peter MacKay be in charge). And besides the expense, it says, the planes don’t work very well, and aren’t likely to.