Pink Floyd release first new song since 1994 for Ukraine

Yahoo – AFP, April 7, 2022 

David Gilmour: 'We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile
act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people
murdered by one of the world's major powers' (AFP/JOHN D MCHUGH) (JOHN D MCHUGH)

Pink Floyd have written their first new song in almost 30 years to support Ukrainians, the band announced on Thursday. 

"Hey, Hey, Rise-Up!" will be released on Friday, and be used to raise funds for humanitarian causes linked to the war. 

It samples Andriy Khlyvnyuk, from one of Ukraine's biggest bands BoomBox, singing in Sofiyskaya Square in Kyiv in a clip that went viral. 

Khlyvnyukh abandoned a world tour to return to Ukraine and help defend his country. 

"We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world's major powers," Pink Floyd said on their official Twitter feed. 

In a press release, band leader David Gilmour said he had been moved by Khlyvnyuk's video: "It was a powerful moment that made me want to put it to music." 

He was able to speak with Khlyvnyuk from his hospital bed in Kyiv, where the singer was recovering after being hit by shrapnel in a mortar attack, the record company said. 

"I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future," Gilmour said. 

The image accompanying the song is of a sunflower, and was inspired by a viral video showing a Ukrainian woman insulting two armed Russian soldiers. 

In it, she tells the soldiers: "Take these seeds and put them in your pockets. That way sunflowers will grow when you all rest here." 

It is the first original music from Pink Floyd since 1994's "The Division Bell". 

Gilmour tweeted his opposition to the war soon after Russia's invasion, saying: "Putin must go". 

The band has also pulled their music from Russian and Belarusian streaming sites in protest at the invasion.

Trump sides with Kim criticism of US-SKorea war games

Yahoo – AFP, 9 August 2019

US President Donald Trump said he had received a 'very beautiful' letter
from North Korea's Kim Jong Un

US President Donald Trump told reporters Friday he agreed with Kim Jong Un's opposition to US-South Korea war games, after receiving what he was a new letter from the North Korean leader.

"I got a very beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un yesterday," Trump said. "It was a very positive letter."

"He wasn't happy with the war games," Trump added, referring to new military exercises between US forces and the South Korean military that began this week.

"As you know, I've never liked it either. I've never been a fan. And you know why? I don't like paying for it," the US leader said.

Trump received Kim's three-page letter on Thursday after Pyongyang undertook four missile tests in the past two weeks that it said were a response to the joint exercises between the South and the United States.

While the weapons fired were not the medium- and long-range ballistic missiles that have posed an implicit threat to Japan and the United States, they were seen to be a new type of extremely fast, short-range guided ballistic missile that could pose a potent danger to South Korea.

On Tuesday North Korea threatened more weapons tests, and said the US-South Korea war games were "an undisguised denial and a flagrant violation" of the diplomatic process between Pyongyang, Washington and Seoul.

Trump continued to play down the missile tests and said he could have a third summit with Kim in the future.

"I think we'll have another meeting," he said.

"In the meantime I'll say it again. There have been no nuclear tests. The missile tests have all been short-range. No ballistic missile tests, no long-range missiles," he said.

John McCain's Hanoi Hilton jailer recalls 'stubborn' POW

Yahoo – AFP, Tran Thi Minh Ha, with Jenny Vaughan in Hanoi, August 26, 2018

Tran Trong Duyet, the former director of the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton' prison, grew
to respect the young John McCain (AFP Photo/Nhac NGUYEN)

Haiphong (Vietnam) (AFP) - As a prisoner of war in the "Hanoi Hilton", navy pilot John McCain was known as uncompromising, frank and an avid reader who fiercely debated the war with his Vietnamese jailers.

One of them, the former director of the infamous Hoa Lo prison, recalls verbally sparring with the famous inmate and says McCain's refusal to budge on his views eventually earned his admiration.

"It was his stubbornness, his strong stance that I loved when arguing with him," retired colonel Tran Trong Duyet told AFP.

In the decades following the Vietnam War, McCain -- who died Saturday at the age of 81 -- forgave the enemies who once held him captive, and helped reconcile the two countries that today enjoy strong ties.

His five and a half years in prison began in October 1967 when McCain was thrown into the French-built jail after his Skyhawk divebomber was shot down over Hanoi's Truc Bach lake.

Fished out with a broken leg and two broken arms he was shipped to the cold, crowded facility where some 500 prisoners of war were held.

His captors quickly learned McCain's father was a navy admiral, and the young prisoner soon developed the nickname "Crown Prince".

John McCain's flight suit is displayed at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’, now a museum in

the Vietnamese capital (AFP Photo/HOANG DINH Nam)

The early years were grim.

McCain was held in solitary confinement and suffered from dysentery. For months on end, he was fed only bread and pumpkin soup. He communicated with fellow inmates by tapping codes on the thick concrete walls.

In his memoirs, McCain wrote that solitary "put me in a pretty surly mood" and that he would ward off depression by hollering insults at guards.

And then there were the interrogations and beatings.

"Ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes," McCain wrote after his 1973 release, recalling one brutal session.

"For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards. My left arm was broken again and my ribs were cracked."

English classes, jokes

Duyet denies McCain or others were mistreated and says he punished any fellow guards who stepped out of line.

"There was no torture, Vietnamese people saved him," Duyet said in an interview earlier this year at his home in the port city of Haiphong, where he displays both photos of American POWs and more recent images of himself in military uniform posing with US officials.

Tran Trong Duyet, John McCain's wartime jailor, points to photos of US prisoners 

of war on display at his home (AFP Photo/Nhac NGUYEN)

By the end of McCain's long years in prison, Duyet said his relationship with McCain started to warm.

"Out of working hours, we considered each other friends," he said. "He taught me English... he had good teaching skills."

In his post-prison writings, McCain said things got easier for him in the early 1970s, which he called the "coasting period".

He read propaganda texts about Vietnam communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, and was allowed to roam the prison yard with fellow Americans, who named different sections of the compound after Vegas hotels.

His former jailor preferred to focus on the rosier memories, recalling how they joked, shared stories about family and travel, and even dished about women.

"We laughed together and agreed that women are the same everywhere -- they like flattery, they like to sulk, and they're jealous," he told AFP, smiling.

'America's POW'

McCain left the navy in 1981 for a long career in politics, most notably as Republican Senator for Arizona. But his "Hanoi Hilton" experience resonated throughout his life.

Donald Trump said during the campaign for the presidency that McCain was "not a war hero" because he was captured in Vietnam.

Hoa Lo prison, which has been turned into a museum, was home to 500 prisoners 

of war when McCain was held there (AFP Photo/Nhac NGUYEN)

The controversial comments inflamed his throngs of supporters, many of whom saw his time as a POW as a defining experience.

"John McCain will always be America's prisoner of war, that experience is now inseparable from the name John McCain and the person that has been John McCain," said Alvin Townley, author of "Defiant" about American POWs held in Hoa Lo.

McCain was also celebrated for his role in reconciling the United States and Vietnam, which in the half century since the war's end have become close allies.

"(His) openness towards Vietnam and the willingness to revisit not only the country, but his experiences there have certainly helped heal a lot of wounds," Townley said.

McCain visited the Southeast Asian country several times after the restoration of diplomatic ties in 1995, even returning to the "Hanoi Hilton" -- now a popular tourist attraction -- for an emotional meeting with another former jailer.

Duyet never got a chance to reconnect with McCain, but imagined what he might say if he had.

"If he came to Vietnam, I would greet him, not as a former prisoner and a jailer, but as two veterans, from both sides of the battlefield, now meeting again in the spirit of reconciliation," he said.

When informed of McCain's death, Duyet said Sunday he was "so sad."

"Please if you can, convey my condolences to his family for me."

Dutch Korean war veterans urge Rutte to bring back five dead soldiers

DutchNews, August 1, 2018

A Korean veterans remembrance ceremony in 2017. Photo: vox-voks.nl 

An organisation representing Dutch veterans who fought in North Korea has asked prime minister Mark Rutte to do his best to recover the bodies of five Dutch soldiers who died in the country in the 1950s. 

Three of the five soldiers were reported missing in 1951, 52 and 53, a fourth is known to have died in 1951 and the fifth was taken prisoner and died there, website Nu.nl said on Wednesday.

‘Only when their bodies are returned will the families be able to say goodbye to their loved ones in a meaningful way,’ the VOKS said in a letter to Rutte. 

The letter goes on to refer to the return of the bodies of several dozen US soldiers who died in North Korea in line, with an agreement struck between US president Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. 

The Netherlands contributed 4,700 soldiers to UN efforts to end the Korean war of 1950 to 1953. 

The five missing soldiers should be buried in the UN cemetery in Busan, South Korea, where 117 other Dutch soldiers who died in the conflict were laid to rest, the VOKS said. 

The prime minister’s office said in response to the letter that while it had great sympathy for the organisation’s request, repatriating the bodies ‘will probably not be easy to realise’.

Related Article:

Trump praises Kim over return of war dead amid summit skepticism

Trump praises Kim over return of war dead amid summit skepticism

Yahoo – AFP, Francesco FONTEMAGGI, 27 July 2018

US President Donald Trump praised North Korea's Kim Jong Un for returning
the remains of more than 50 US servicemen killed during the Korean War

Amid skepticism over his rapprochement with Kim Jong Un, US President Donald Trump praised the North Korean leader on Friday for returning remains believed to be those of more than 50 US servicemen.

Trump pointed to the handover of 55 boxes said to hold the remains of US troops killed during the Korean War as evidence that his overtures to the North Korean strongman were bearing fruit.

"I want to thank Chairman Kim for keeping his word," Trump said during an appearance at the White House after tweeting that it was a "great moment for so many families."

Trump has hailed his June summit with Kim in Singapore as effectively ending the North Korean nuclear threat.

But it contained only a vague commitment on Pyongyang's part to work towards the "denuclearization of the Korean peninsula" -- a long way from the complete, verifiable and irreversible disarmament demanded by Washington.

With Trump facing criticism that concrete post-summit progress was scant, he welcomed the repatriation of the remains -- which came on the 65th anniversary of the end of the war -- as evidence that the talks were a success.

"I want to thank Chairman Kim in front of the media for fulfilling a promise that he made to me," he said.

The White House said it was 'encouraged' by the return of the remains and 

the 'momentum for positive change'

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration was "encouraged by North Korea's actions and the momentum for positive change."

More than 35,000 Americans were killed during the 1950-53 war and 7,700 are still listed as missing in action -- most of them in North Korea.

A US military C-17 cargo plane carrying the purported remains of the more than 50 US servicemen landed at a US air base in South Korea on Thursday.

A formal repatriation ceremony is to be held in Hawaii on August 1, attended by Vice President Mike Pence. The remains will then be analyzed there.

North Korea has previously been accused -- most notably by Japan -- of faking the remains of foreign citizens and using them as a bargaining chip.

'Step in the right direction'

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday described the repatriation as setting a "positive tone for other things, more important things in terms of international diplomacy.

"This humanitarian act, obviously, is a step in the right direction," Mattis said.

A chaplain performs a blessing aboard a US military aircraft over the 55 

cases of remains returned by North Korea to the United States

He added that the remains of French and Australian soldiers who fought alongside the Americans could be found in the boxes handed over by Pyongyang.

"You noticed that there was a UN blue flag on each of the boxes," Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.

"We don't know who's in those boxes."

Michael Fuchs, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said "the return of remains is important, and can be viewed as a potential confidence building measure."

But Fuchs, a former US deputy assistant secretary for East Asia, added on Twitter that North Korea may be "picking off low hanging fruit to make it seem like they are making concessions in the overall negotiations."

Fuchs noted reports that Pyongyang has started dismantling a facility seen as a testing ground for intercontinental ballistic missiles -- a move welcomed earlier this week by Trump.

"The destruction of the nuke test site was not observed by inspectors, so the details can't be verified -- same goes for the dismantling of the engine test site," Fuchs said. "And these steps are reversible. And none touch on the core issue - NK nukes."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was grilled about North Korea's sincerity by members of the US Senate during testimony this week.

More than 35,000 Americans were killed on the Korean Peninsula during the war

He acknowledged North Korea was continuing to produce nuclear fissile material but insisted that "progress is happening" and said Trump remains "upbeat about the prospects of North Korean denuclearization."

Asked if the goal was for this to be achieved by the end of Trump's first term in office, Pompeo replied "yes," and added: "More quickly if possible."

Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was among those who remained skeptical.

"I am afraid that at this point the United States -- the Trump administration -- is being taken for a ride," Markey said.

US President Donald Trump praised North Korea's Kim Jong Un for returning the remains of more than 50 US servicemen killed during the Korean War

The White House said it was 'encouraged' by the return of the remains and the 'momentum for positive change'

A chaplain performs a blessing aboard a US military aircraft over the 55 cases of remains returned by North Korea to the United States

More than 35,000 Americans were killed on the Korean Peninsula during the war.

N. Korea, US hold talks on war dead repatriation

Yahoo – AFP, 15 July 2018

The latest US-North Korea talks began at the border truce village of Panmunjom
on Sunday, the South's Yonhap news agency said

North Korean and US military officials met Sunday to discuss repatriation of the remains of American troops killed during the Korean War, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.

Returning the remains of the US soldiers who perished during the 1950-53 conflict was part of a deal signed by the North's leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump during their landmark summit last month.

The latest talks began at the truce village of Panmunjom on the inter-Korean border, according to the South's Yonhap news agency.

In a statement, Pompeo said the meeting was "productive and co-operative and resulted in firm commitments." He added that further talks would start on Monday to arrange details including the transfer of remains already held in North Korea.

"Additionally, both sides agreed to re-commence field operations in the DPRK to search for the estimated 5,300 Americans who never returned home," he said, using the initials of North Korea's official name.

TV news footage earlier on Sunday showed vehicles with US army plates and believed to be carrying American officials heading to the heavily fortified border.

Pompeo, who visited Pyongyang earlier this month to flesh out details of the denuclearisation deal signed by Kim and Trump, had previously said that the meeting would take place on or around last Thursday.

The North did not show up at the border on Thursday but contacted the United States on the same day to offer to meet on Sunday, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said last week.

"We will be ready," she said.

Dozens of wooden coffins to carry the American remains have reportedly been brought to the southern side of the border in recent weeks.

The White House has hailed the summit between Kim and Trump in Singapore as a major breakthrough toward disarming the isolated, nuclear-armed North in exchange for easing of sanctions and other help with economic development.

Pompeo met with Kim's key aide during his latest trip to Pyongyang but as soon as he left, the North's foreign ministry berated him over his "unilateral and gangster-like" demands.

Trump on Thursday signaled optimism however, unveiling a letter from Kim in which the young leader hailed the "start of a meaningful journey" and tweeting "Great progress being made!"

US-NKorea summit back on, Trump says after meeting Kim envoy

Yahoo – AFP, Andrew Beatty and Dave Clark, June 1, 2018

US President Donald Trump (R) poses for photographs with North Korea's Kim
Yong Chol (L) at the White House after their Oval Office talks (AFP Photo/SAUL LOEB)

Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump said Friday he will meet North Korea's Kim Jong Un as originally scheduled on June 12 for a historic summit after extraordinary Oval Office talks with a top envoy from Pyongyang.

Speaking after more than an hour of talks with Kim Yong Chol in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that denuclearization -- and a formal end to the decades-old Korean war -- would be on the table in Singapore.

But the US leader warned that he did not expect to immediately sign a deal to bring a halt to the North's nuclear program.

"I never said it goes in one meeting. I think it's going to be a process, but the relationships are building and that's very positive," he said, after waving farewell to the North Korean envoy, Kim's right-hand man.

Ending the war

Trump said they had discussed formally ending the Korean War, which has been largely frozen since an armistice ended hostilities, but not the underlying conflict, in 1953. Since then, there have been occasional clashes on the divided peninsula.

"We talked about it. We talked about ending the war," Trump said.

"Historically it's very important, but we'll see. We did discuss that, the ending of the Korean War. Can you believe we're talking about the ending of the Korean War?"

Washington is determined that Kim should agree to what US officials call the "complete, verifiable and irreversible" end of North Korea's nuclear weapons and intercontinental missile programs.

Chronology of diplomatic tensions between the US and North Korea

(AFP Photo/Sophie RAMIS)

Kim says he is committed to "denuclearization" in some form, but he is expected to demand security guarantees -- one of which could be an formal end to the conflict with the US and South Korea.

Most expert observers are skeptical that even an unprecedented summit between the two leaders can lead to a rapid breakthrough, and Trump admitted it would be a long and difficult process.

"We're not going to go in and sign something on June 12. We never were. I told him today, 'Take your time'," he said, adding nevertheless that he expects "a really positive result in the end."

Kim Yong Chol, vice chairman of the ruling party executive and the most senior North Korean to visit the United States in 18 years, spent almost 90 minutes in the Oval Office.

Afterwards, Trump and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo walked the North's small delegation to their waiting cars, smiling and shaking hands in front of the media before the motorcade pulled away.

Security guarantees

North Korean officials said Kim Yong Chol was expected to return to Pyongyang shortly. Meanwhile, discussions between US and North Korean officials continue in Singapore and in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

On Thursday, Kim Jong Un told Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that his commitment to denuclearization remains "unchanged and consistent and fixed," but experts warn he will seek concessions from Washington.

US President Donald Trump (R), flanked by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, 

shakes hands with North Korean Kim Yong Chol (L) outside the White House 

(AFP Photo/Saul LOEB)

In addition to an end to the war, he is likely to seek international recognition as well as guarantees against any strike by the US forces stationed in South Korea.

As expected, Kim Yong Chol handed Trump a letter from Kim that may clear up some of the questions. The US leader said the missive was "very nice" -- but then admitted he had not yet read it. An aide later confirmed he did after the talks.

The Oval Office talks and letter delivery came only a week after Trump threatened to consign the entire process to history, abruptly cancelling the summit in a sharply worded letter, only to revive preparations shortly afterwards.

Trump said that, after Friday's talks, the parties are "totally over that and now we're going to deal and we're going to really start a process."

Since the short-lived boycott threat, diplomats from both countries have conducted an intense flurry of talks, culminating this week when Pompeo sat down in New York with Kim's envoy.

'Their decision'

Pompeo said on Thursday that, after what have now been two meetings with Kim Jong Un and three with Kim Yong Chol, he believes the North is at least ready to consider addressing US demands for denuclearization.

"I believe they are contemplating a path forward. They can make a strategic shift. One that their country has not been prepared to make before. This will obviously be their decision," he said.

The flurry of diplomacy has also seen a rapprochement on the Korean peninsula, with the two Koreas holding high-level talks Friday at the border truce village of Panmunjom.

The meeting followed two landmark summits between the leaders of North and South Korea in the last five weeks.

North and South Korea agreed to hold more meetings throughout this month to carry out the agreements reached between their leaders at the April summit, according to a joint statement issued after Friday's talks.

South Korea repatriates remains of 20 Chinese soldiers

Yahoo – AFP, March 28, 2018

Chinese ambassador to South Korea, Qiu Guohong, places a flag on a casket 

containing the remains of Chinese soldiers from the Korean War at Incheon 

airport (AFP Photo/KIM HONG-JI)

Seoul repatriated the remains of 20 Chinese soldiers killed during the Korean War on Wednesday, its defence ministry said, reflecting warming ties between the former Cold War foes.

South Korean soldiers handed over lacquered wooden caskets covered with red Chinese flags to Chinese honour guards at Incheon airport, west of Seoul, where they were loaded onto a Chinese air force cargo plane.

The transfer brought the total number of Chinese remains repatriated since a 2013 agreement to 589.

The repatriations took place ahead of China's annual Qingming -- tomb-sweeping -- festival, when many people visit and clean the graves of their ancestors.

An estimated three million Communist Chinese troops played a crucial role in support of the North during the 1950-53 conflict, known in China as the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.

They saved the North from defeat as US-led United Nations forces drove Kim Il Sung's army back towards the Chinese frontier in late 1950, before the two sides ended up in a stalemate along what is now the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula.

Casualty figures remain disputed but Western estimates commonly cite a figure of 400,000 Chinese deaths, while Chinese sources give a death toll of about 180,000.

S. Korea well prepared if N. Korea attends Olympics: organisers

Yahoo – AFP, Jan 3, 2018

Lee Hee-Beom says the South is well prepared should North Korea decide
to attend the Winter Olympics (AFP Photo/JUNG Yeon-Je)

Seoul (AFP) - Host South Korea is well prepared should North Korea decide to take part in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, with a cruise ship ready to transport and accommodate its athletes, organisers said Wednesday.

Lee Hee-Beom, head of the 2018 Olympic organising committee, said they had long been preparing for the North's attendance at what he described as the "largest-ever winter festival in history".

"We're making preparations in case North Korea sends not only its athletes but a cheering squad and support staff as well," Lee said.

"The International Olympic Committee has also said several times that it would support North Korea's participation," Lee added.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un said in a new year speech that his country wished success for the Olympics, to be held from February 9-25, and would consider sending a delegation.

Kim also announced the reopening of a hotline with the South to discuss attending the Olympics, as a "significant first step" in improving ties.

Seoul and organisers have billed the Winter Games as a "peace Olympics" and have been keen for the North to take part.

But the main venues are just 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the heavily fortified border and the build-up to the event has been overshadowed by high tensions over the North's nuclear and missile tests.

Governor Choi Moon-Soon of Gangwon province, where the event is sited, has said the province is willing to send a cruise ship to the North to take its delegation to the South's port of Sokcho near the Olympic venues.

Choi said he had made the offer to a North Korean official, who reacted positively and promised to convey it to leader Kim.

"A cruise ship will be a convenient solution to the problems with security and lodging," the governor said.

When the North attended the 2002 Asian Games in the South's port city of Busan, its delegation arrived on a cruise ship and used it as a floating hotel during the event.

South Korea proposed high-level talks with Pyongyang on January 9, after the North's leader Kim Jong-Un called for better relations pic.twitter.com/FiaHVjXNYt

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 3, 2018

Timeline showing past hotlines between the two Koreas, and details of other international hotlines pic.twitter.com/MQh9oHH3o9

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 3, 2018

Japan emperor meets Vietnam kin of Tokyo's WWII soldiers

Yahoo – AFP, March 2, 2017

Japan's Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko arrive for a meeting in Hanoi with
family members of Japanese veterans living in Vietnam on March 2, 2017
(AFP Photo/MINH HOANG)

Japan's royal couple on Thursday listened to the tearful stories of Vietnamese children who were abandoned by their Japanese soldier fathers after WWII, a symbolic meeting in Hanoi aimed at healing wounds between the former war foes.

The 83-year-old Japanese emperor Akihito and his wife, Michiko, are on their first visit to Vietnam, the latest in a series of trips to former battlegrounds.

The elderly couple shook hands and comforted more than a dozen children of the some 700 Japanese military men who decided to stay in Vietnam for a decade after their country's defeat in the second world war.

It was under Akihito's father Hirohito that Japan first sent troops into Vietnam in 1940 when the country was a colony of France.

After the war many of the soldiers stayed on, married Vietnamese women and began raising families as they helped revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh secure independence from Paris, a little-known chapter of the two countries shared histories.

But they were ordered to leave the country in 1954 and "encouraged" by the Vietnamese government to leave their families behind, said Hatsuhisa Takashima, the emperor's press secretary.

"It might be possible that Vietnamese authorities thought that it was not good for Vietnamese people to jump to a quite new environment," he said.

The half-Japanese children left behind often endured painful ostracisation at home, while their mothers struggled to raise families on their own and were criticised for cosying up to the former occupying forces.

"I understood that families of ex-Japanese soldiers here encountered many difficulties," Emperor Akihito said after listening to tearful stories of separation.

"We are thankful for the attention by the Japanese emperor and empress," said 94-year-old Nguyen Thi Xuan, a former war bride who raised three half-Japanese children on her own and never remarried.

"War brought nothing to us. I only want peace for both countries of Vietnam and Japan," Xuan said.

Tran Duc Dung, whose Japanese father trained Vietnamese military men during the war, said he was eager to forget the hardships and discrimination his family faced.

"It's time to close all that happened in the past. My only wish now is to be recognised by the Japanese government as a Japanese citizen," Dung told AFP.

Akihito's visit is laden with personal symbolism.

Under Hirohito, considered an emperor god by his followers at the time, Japan embarked on its rapid and often brutal colonial expansion across Asia that still stalks regional relations.

But Vietnam and Japan have built up a warm relationship since diplomatic relations were established in 1973, pushed together by business ties and, increasingly, a mutual suspicion of China.

Japan is now a top aid donor and a leading investor in the communist country. It also welcomes thousands of Vietnamese to its universities.

Akihito and Michiko will fly to Hue the former imperial capital on Friday and then on to Thailand on Sunday. 

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"Wild Cards" (3) - Nov 19 - 20, 2016 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)- (Text version)

Kryon.com, November 19, 2016

This live channelling was given in Wilmington, North Carolina

Lee Carroll

To help the reader, this channelling has been revisited [by Lee and Kryon] to provide even clearer understanding. Sometime information is even added or condensed. Often what happens live has implied energy within it, which carries a kind of communication that the printed page does not. So enjoy this enhanced message given in Wilmington, NC.

Greetings, dear ones, I am Kryon of Magnetic Service.

Today I want to talk about wild cards. I wish to help explain what or who they’ve been over time, but in order for this explanation to be understood and accepted and beautiful to your soul, you’re going to have to do some pretending.

Adjusting Your Attitude

If you were a scientist coming from another planet to observe Human history, you would need to do it without emotion or bias. I can tell the story about wild cards, both for your grandfathers and for you, but there is often emotion and bias involved. Because of this, I will say one thing, and you may hear another. Dear ones, it can’t be that way for you to understand this message.

Warning: What comes next has to be disengaged from what you think you know, or from the emotions of who you think you are, what you think has happened, or even from what you feel is historical. Remember, in his pretending scenario, you’re aliens coming from another planet to learn what has happened. You’re pretending so you will disengage. Pretend history will be told to you about a race you’re not part of. This is so you will have no attachment to anything as you listen. This is the only way you will understand this lesson today. It is the only way you will begin to understand the beauty of a spiritual system that pushes you when you need to be pushed.

Wild Cards Examined

Wild card, as used in spiritual language, is a term that is difficult to define. Wild cards can be events, they can be inventions, they can involve one Human or a few. They can be one of many things or many of one thing, but they follow a timeline that you can look at. We want to talk about some of the wild cards that you’ve had in the past, and some attributes of their occurrence that you might not have thought of.

The basic attribute of any kind of wild card is that it’s a surprise event. It’s often shocking, sometimes revealing, but always a surprise. We’re also going to do some of the numerology as we go, and also take a look at the energies that help define what the energy is around specific wild cards.

Numerology is an ancient system that helps define an energy around something. For instance, an event may seem to be one thing, but the numerology will tell a story around it that may be more explanatory. When you see what we will call synchronized numerology – the same numbers repeated around a wild card – it’s very telling, for there are no accidents.

Dear Kryon, you might ask, “Does spirit create wild cards for the planet?” Answer: No, you do. Your consciousness at a certain point in time gives an allowance for a wild card. Sprit is ready to enhance some wild card scenarios and not others. But the energy and consciousness of humanity allows for their occurrence.

A wild card can be a person, an invention, a thing, an event, a new system or a new paradigm that changes the planet. It is unexpected, sometimes startling and often dramatic in its influence. If it’s an invention, it has to be outside of the purview of what would normally have occurred through the evolution of science or the timing of expected scientific evolution. It is often a paradigm shifter, and it’s usually from one person. When you see that, you will know there it’s a wild card. It isn’t always an individual invention, and sometimes it’s collective. But, dear one, you can tell because every single wild card takes everybody by surprise.

Wild Cards in History

You’ve had a number of them, and I’ll list a few so you get the idea. You’ll also get to see a system of singularity that comes to inventors. You’ll see this as I go.

Tesla was a wild card. His ideas were unexpected, controversial and advanced to a degree that even to this day those in electronic engineering shake their heads. They will take a look at what he invented and will comment, “How is it possible for any one person to have seen that? If you study alternating current, it’s a conundrum. Phase relationships of alternating current are brilliant beyond brilliant.” This was Tesla.

However, what you know about him is only what he brought to you. Now, a brilliant mind like that would have other things, don’t you think? Indeed, he did, so you might ask, “Well, where are those other things?” The answer is that those other things were stopped cold – all of them. He only was able to promote the one thing that you needed for the planet. The brilliance of his mind had many other profound ideas, but he was unable to proceed. He saw ways to alter mass in his workshops, but couldn’t. He was frustrated that he didn’t have the elaborate tools to be precise enough to make it work on a regular basis. That’s just one. Transmission of electricity without wires through the ground was the other. However, it would not have been correct at the time for those things to have been presented to humanity. You weren’t ready, but you were ready for alternating current, one of the most needed inventions for the time. Tesla died frustrated, poor, in a small room and alone. He came to do one thing, and was stopped from anything else, then he passed. If you have analyzed the people who were wild cards in your history, there is a pattern.

Other wild card inventors have come into the planet just because the earth was ready for a specific invention. Remember, Spirit does not give the information, but allows for it to be released, often all at once, all over the earth. Let me give you some examples.

Another wild card is the Wright brothers. Isn’t it odd to you that it wasn’t that long ago that you got powered flight? It was just yesterday! Some of your relatives were alive when flight was discovered! Dear ones, the Chinese have been flying kites for thousands of years. Don’t you think that they knew the dynamics of a bird? Do you think that century after century after century occurred and nobody figured out how to sustain flight with any kind of power source? Two bicycle makers figured it out!

That’s odd enough, but the fact that they only beat the French by two weeks is something worth looking at. That’s odd! It’s almost like this profound invention was ready to be given to the planet simultaneously, all over the earth, at the same time. Whoever got to it first would be the ones who got the credit. The real oddity is the timing. It’s not logical that it was so hidden, then suddenly so many were working on it all at once.

The Wright brothers were here to show it to you, then stop. All they did was what you saw at Kitty Hawk. They never went past basic wing warping, and did not have first intuitive thought about ailerons, or the basics of flight control today. For them, it stopped there. Dear ones, there was great frustration, and perhaps even health issues from it, from having others take the basics and develop flight so fast beyond them. Dysfunction and sorrow followed them both, and they died without ever being able to participate fully beyond the initial invention. One died far earlier than the other, creating sorrow for the one left behind. They came to do what they did and move on. This is more common than you know with wild cards, especially when it comes to inventions that change this planet.

Who invented the radio? Was is the Italian Guglielmo Marconi, or our frustrated wild card Tesla? Marconi got the credit, but the invention was everywhere, ready to be claimed. The earth was ripe and ready for it, and it was delivered to the consciousness of the planet at the right time. But both men got it at the same time, apart from each other. I’m giving you things to think about.

We have told you that there are wild card inventions coming in the future. One in particular is ready, but you will not receive it until the time is right. It’s almost like there’s a thinking ceiling on what you can do. We even gave you some of the attributes of the coming invention, but not the one who will bring it. We’re not even concerned that you’ll do it in advance, because we know the wild card is coming. An invention is coming. It is an invention that will rewrite physics as you know it. You’d see the patterns in quantum fields, and there would be the big aha! It would be like reinventing the wheel.

“Kryon, why can’t we have it now? What’s stopping it?” We told you, it’s too easy to weaponize. When you reach the point where you won’t weaponize it, it’s yours. All this is coming. It’s natural, and it will come when it’s time just like the Wright brothers, just like Tesla, just like Einstein.

Einstein was a genuine wild card. He was not a quantum thinker at all, but what he presented is still alive and well today and they’re still looking inside the atom for the concepts he gave you. So I will make this statement: Einstein isn’t finished yet, because the very concepts that continue to be received from his work are going to be applied to the invention of the century. So the Einsteinean principles, even though they are not quantum, will be very much involved in what is coming. You might say he was a wild card and continues to be one. The joke is that his concepts last and last, outside of time, yet his main ideas were with time. If you asked Einstein if he was happy with what he brought to the planet, he would tell you no. He was frustrated that he didn’t get to do what he really wanted. Like Tesla, he felt that something was just “out of reach” and he didn’t get to do it.

Then there was World War II. Dear ones, pretend you are an alien scientist. Disengage your emotion. You’ve come in from another planet to look at this.

World War II (WWII) was not a wild card, but the man who created and enhanced it was. This planet was teetering on the edge of ultimate dark energy and destruction. Nobody expected it. The most despicable old energy card played itself out exactly as it should have, with the consciousness of this planet going to where it had brought itself. You had just finished World War I (WWI), yet WWII ignited and continued. So WWII was simply an extension of WWI. You did it again, only this time the weapons were getting bigger and more able to destroy all of humanity. Remember the prophecy of your scripture? You were headed for mass destruction. WWII would become World War III, and by the year 2000, you would be almost gone.

As I mentioned, WWII wasn’t the wild card, rather it was the man who led the lowest consciousness in recent history who was. He was the wild card, and you know of whom I speak. This wild card killed millions of people who were not even participants in the military portion of the war. Genocide had begun, a race war had begun, and many were following his lead. It showed the darkest side of humanity – more than you had ever seen before, and it almost targeted the demise of civilization if he had won.

It was a horror wild card, and the planet had created it. However, when it was over, the entire world took a breath and for a moment, just for a moment, there was a glimmer of realization: “This cannot go on, for we will do it again.” Many things took place due to this realization. Without the wild card, you would not have the European Union, you would not have the United Nations or any attempt at unity on Earth. Disengage from your logic and emotion, dear ones. These things were not created from Spirit, but rather from the depth of lower humanity. This is the dark side at its worst, showing itself with almost free reign, but the world objected to it and started to climb out of it. It was the beginning over half a century ago of what you’re starting to see now in the shift.

The amazing shift that you’re in right now is something that goes slow. It didn’t happen all at once. The Cold War was a natural occurrence out of the consciousness that was part of the end of WWII. But, dear ones, you could never have the shift if that Cold War had continued the way it was. Enter another wild card: The Soviet system fell over.

The Cold War could not continue, and it was stopped in the form it was in. Dear ones, for those reading now, that was one of the biggest wild cards of all. The consciousness of earth said “no” and it ended. That was a huge wild card. It changed everything; it wasn’t expected; nobody saw it coming, and it changed everything. It may not have changed things immediately to the way you want it right away, but it created that which you needed at that time.

Then there was Steve Jobs. He was a wild card. What he did had little to do with technology, for that would have happened anyway soon enough. Instead, it had to do with the paradigm of the business of music on Earth. He freed it, and the paradigm of how music is obtained and heard will never be the same. However, Steve Jobs did basically one thing for all of you, and then he died. Do you see any kind of connecting of the dots to some of the inventors who come and give you the one thing, then leave? If he had lived, would there be more? Yes, but you’re not ready for it. Consciousness has to support what happens.

Yes, it would seem we have left some things out – the invention of DNA, the atomic bomb, etc. However, these were not wild cards. These are your civilization, within a normal evolution of science. Wild cards are very unexpected things, and there are more coming your way.

The Wild Card of 2016

Remember: No emotion now. You have come from another planet and you’re looking at the end of 2016 – and there is the election. Understand without bias.

So for 2016, let’s do the numerology. You add the numbers and get nine. Nine is completion in simple numerology, and when you see a nine it often means the completion of something. Often it is of a time cycle, an energy or the completion of a paradigm. But it’s very strong.

The nines are stronger than many of the other numerological aspects and you feel them. The president-elect (at this writing) is a strong wild card. He is scheduled to become the 45th president. What a coincidence! Forty-five is a nine. A nine and a nine together are more than significant. They tell a story about what is happening. I will tell you something else. This story is not finished yet and there is more coming. You don’t know what you don’t know, so don’t make up your mind in advance about any outcomes. You’re from another planet, remember? There’s no emotion, no bias, no politics and nothing to judge. Look at it for what it is.

A big stick has just been inserted into what is normal and it’s going to be turned. As the big stick turns, other things will respond that never would have responded otherwise. I wish to tell you, dear one, old soul, relax with upcoming wild cards. They do what they do on purpose so that you will have a better civilization in the future. Sometimes they show you what won’t work, and sometimes they change paradigms that would have never changed otherwise. But what you have now is a profound wild card. That is the message.

It’s so common for you to respond certain ways when you are invested in the process. The knee-jerk reaction is expected or you wouldn’t be a Human. However, for this lesson, you’re from another planet and you’re looking down and you’re seeing it. Pretend.

Isn’t that interesting about a nine and a nine together? It means that truly the end of something is here. Perhaps it’s the end of the old way things were done? Perhaps it’s a shake-up of the system so it can correct itself? Don’t dare make up your mind where it’s going, because it’s not finished yet. However, wait a moment. Did you also realize that 2017 is a “one” year? Not only is the energy one of completion with a double nine, but it moves into “a new beginning” (the definition of a one in numerology).

I have more to tell you about numerology, and also something that will be clearer about this whole situation. I will give this to you in the next channelling.

Can you relax in the face of uncertainty when it’s your own country? Can you relax in the face of not knowing what’s next? When you’re so involved, can you disengage from either side of the fray? That is the test of a Lightworker.

There’s something else coming. Dear ones, this is beautiful. No matter what you think and no matter what your reaction is to this channelling, what is happening is correct for your time and needed for your immediate future. I will speak of this later. The beauty is when you step away and see how grand it is, that Spirit cares enough that it would allow a big stick to occur that would stir your complacency at this time. The real reason? The shift is here.

How do you feel? I want you to relax and smile at what the shift has brought you. For those of you who felt all the “shift talk” was nonsense, this may be your wake-up call. It’s real. Here it comes.

This is the message of the day. I am Kryon, in love with humanity, and for good reason.

And so it is.

KRYON