Thursday, October 26, 2017

Empire of Dust (2011)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lao Yang and Eddy both work for a company called CREC (Chinese Railway Engineering Company). They have just set up camp near the remote mining town of Kolwezi in the Katanga province of the RDC. The goal of the company is to redo the road - covering 300km - that connects Kolwezi with the capital of the province Lubumbashi. Lao Yang is head of logistics of the group. He is responsible for the equipment, building materials and food (mainly chickens) to arrive in the isolated Chinese prefab camp. The Congolese government was supposed to deliver these things but so far the team hasn't received anything. With Eddy (a Congolese man who speaks Mandarin fluently) as an intermediate, Lao Yang is forced to leave the camp and deal with local Congolese entrepreneurs, because without the construction materials the road works will cease. What follows is an endless, harsh, but absurdly funny roller coaster of negotiations and misunderstandings, as Lao Yan learns about the Congolese way of making deals.

Anonymous said...

A week or so ago, I saw a picture of Kennedy lying flat on his back on an autopsy table with the left side of his head showing. His left forehead, the left side of his head, and the left rear of his head were undamaged.

The shot that blew the right rear of his head off hit him in the right forehead, jolted his head to the left rear, and emerged from the right rear of his head, leaving a lot of his brain of the trunk of the car.

So the fatal shot came from the right front. This means the fatal shot came from behind the picket fence, on the far side of the grassy knoll from the Textbook Depository.

The diagram of Dealy Plaza makes clear that anyone in Lee Harvey Oswald's supposed sniper nest in the Textbook Depository would have had a long time to make a series of long, straight shots at Kennedy as his car drove straight toward the Textbook Depository, and an even better, closer shot as Kennedy's car slowed and virtually halted, right in front of the Depository, in order to make a sharp, hairpin turn onto the street that led to the waiting Corsican gunmen.

The trouble is, that series of easy shots was out of range of the gunmen waiting behind the picket fence. Also, any shots from the Depository, at that point, would have triggered a high-speed escape by Kennedy's car, making it a difficult shot for the gunmen.

eah said...

Visited Namibia in 2016, including Windhoek -- several large construction projects were underway; all the main contractors appeared to be Chinese.

Anonymous said...

Did you read the new(ish) Paul Theroux, The Last Train to Zona Verde?

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Train-Zona-Verde/dp/054422793X/ref=la_B000APWE3G_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1509474717&sr=1-7

He travels from Cape Town into Angola (through Namibia).

I'd be curious to see how your 2016 experience compared with his 2014 experience.

eah said...

@ Anonymous October 31, 2017 at 9:53 AM

Contrast the drawing done by Ida Dox under the auspices of the HSCA (linked below) with the testimony of the doctors/medical people who saw Kennedy in Dallas -- all of them said the back left of Kennedy's head -- the lower left parietal and occipital bones -- were blasted away, along with most of the brain in that area -- the wound, which they interpreted as an exit wound, was huge and obviously fatal -- Clint Hill, the Secret Service agent who caught and climbed aboard the car, then spread-eagled over the Kennedys, got a really good look at the wound on the way to the hospital and described it the same way in his deposition.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b_cV64lQW_M/UQl3dioE12I/AAAAAAAAEno/QMOHdPl9Kq4/s400/Kennedy+posterior_head_wound.jpg

eah said...

Suggestion: please don't comment as "Anonymous" -- instead choose "Name/URL", then some simple moniker as your "Name" -- eg mine is eah (my initials) -- you can leave the URL field blank -- this way you are still anonymous -- too many comments by multiple "Anonymous" commenters junks up a thread -- you cannot tell one "Anonymous" from another -- thanks.