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(Mick Hucknall of Simply Red - blue-eyed soul for the 80s)

Tonights installment of the Nights At The Roundtable Fundraiser Edition comes from Newcastle City Hall in 1989. A performance by Simply Red.

A bit of blue-eyed soul for your Sunday night.

. . .and if you are so inclined . .

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(The Stone Roses - Suddenly, music got jettisoned out of the doldrums)

I can't believe it's been 20 years since The Stone Roses released their first album. Up until that time music was going through a period of ennui. The 80s were coming to a close and things were getting a little complacent, musically. The Reagan Years could have something to do with it. MTV was busy converting the taste of most mainstream music into who was pretty and who was not - and that determined who would get a video made and who would languish in musical limbo. Radio saw the writing on the wall and playlists became tightly regimented, as corporate takeovers and mergers made freeform a thing of the past.

But then things took a brisk change. Seattle started pumping out Grunge and the UK started pumping out Madchester. And music suddenly took a turn for the better and The Stone Roses appeared.

As movements go, this one didn't last all that long. But it's presence and influence have been felt even to this day. And the first Stone Roses album, from which this cut This Is The One, is featured tonight, has become a classic, and is still fresh twenty years later.

You know you're on to something when you can make it sound timeless without much effort. And The Stone Roses are timeless.

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(The Berlin Wall - so after 28 years of grief, death and terror, it's over in a few minutes.)

With the relaxation on travel restrictions between East and West Germany, it was only a matter of time before the wall dividing the two Berlins became impractical and a relic of the Cold War. But the speed with which the change occurred took the rest of the world by surprise. As the day wore on and as reports came in as fast as they happened, it was slowly becoming apparent to the rest of the world that the Iron Curtain indeed was evaporating.

Mike Pulsiver (CBS News): "Witnesses are quoted as saying they have seen East German soldiers dismantling a section of the Berlin Wall as an incredible story keeps unfolding at breakneck speed."

The irony was, after so many years of a seemingly impregnable wall dividing the city and the endless attempts to escape to the West and the loss of life that happened during those attempts, the fact that the wall came down so quickly seemed ironic and in some ways strange. But the people of Berlin seized the moment and it became one huge party. The past was gone and there was no turning back.

As a bonus for our German friends, or those of you who want to brush up on your German, I've included a several news reports from German Radio from November 9-11, 1989. They are separated by a few seconds of silence between cuts.

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The clips go as follows:

1. Press Conference with Gunter Schabowski, DDR
2. Radio report
3. Radio DDR – 3 am news
4. Berlin Radio
5. SFB Radio – 8 am news
6. Comments by Walter Momper from Bonn
7. Jugenradio DT 64 – News 5pm.
8. Willy Brandt address
9. Address by Egon Krenz

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(Manuel Noriega 1989 - The smuggled cocaine turned out to be Tamales)

Twenty years ago this December we were busy overthrowing yet another government whose defacto head just happened to be on our CIA payroll. Sound familiar? Well, Manuel Noriega ran afoul of the Bush(Sr.) administration and, amidst a flurry of propaganda, set-ups and allegations, we landed a good sized invasion force in Panama and promptly unseated our former "buddy" and installed a more sympathetic head.

Face The Nation ran a q&a between Leslie Stahl, Deputy Secretary of State Bernard Aronson and Les Aspin (D-Wisconsin) on the fallout of the invasion and what was next.

Leslie Stahl: “Have we created a situation where he’s no longer the issue, and we’re the issue? I guess the main question right now is why didn’t our government plan for the situation that did develop, which was chaos and anarchy, and why wasn’t more done to build support or to anticipate the problems the new government would have? Endara, the man we did . . helped install says that when we came to him the night before or the night of our invasion it was like a punch in the stomach, he didn’t expect it, he hadn’t formed a government, he hadn’t thought about forming a government . . . .

Aronson: “That’s actually not true. He had done an awful lot of work in trying to form a government and plan a government. And I think one indication of that is in five days he’s named a senior Minister. He’s named a new commander for the public forces and a new deputy commander. His White House . . . U.S. Ambassador has already arrived in Washington, taking control of the embassy. His U.N. Ambassador has been named and gone to New York. His OAS Ambassador has been named. And in fact their new Ambassador told me they had a new economic team they wanted to send to Washington. So I . . what he was saying he didn’t know in advance that this military operation was coming and he was taken by surprise, and obviously he didn’t know, we didn’t know, it happened as a dangerously deteriorating situation.”

At the time of this broadcast (Sunday morning December 24), Noriega hadn't given himself up yet, and there was speculation this would be a drawn out operation with no plan in sight.

However, that changed within a matter of hours as Noriega gave himself up, and for some bizarre reason was arrested on a Cocaine charge (which turned out to be a bag of tamales . . .so go figure).

All part of our somewhat baffling foreign policy the last hundred or so years.

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(East German refugee in 1989 - Giddy relief mixed with nightsticks)

In what would eventually be the collapse of the Soviet Union and the former Eastern Bloc in general, the exodus from East Germany started hot on the heels of news that Hungary had decided to open its borders to Austria, allowing some 60,000 the opportunity to migrate West.

The floodgates opened and soon highways and embassies were jammed with East Germans, heading West.

John Holland (CBS News): “ The latest report is around 250 people approached the back fence of the West German Embassy which has been cordoned off by barricades and guarded by police. But when police saw the numbers of people coming the simply let them pass and they climbed over the back fence into the embassy, adding to the estimated 5,000 East German refugees believed to be in the embassy compound. West German Red Cross officials at this hour are saying that they cannot any longer accommodate new arrivals, but West German embassy sources say they are still coming in and place is still being made. And in some cases the embassy employees are giving up their offices in order to shelter refugees.”

The beginning of October was just the tip of the iceberg.

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(Blessed Are The Duped for they shall inherit the Shitstorm)

I was reminded just how insidious the Health Insurance Industry can be when it comes to potentially losing profits and power. In 1988 Congress passed a piece of legislation called the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act. It was regarded as a great leap in expanded healthcare coverage for seniors on Medicare. But then . . .

Rob Armstrong: “ When the Catastrophic Healthcare Act of 1988 was passed it was hailed as a quantum leap for the nation’s elderly. But within a very short time Senior Citizens groups were up in arms about the Supplemental Insurance Premium, an escalating surtax many said would eat into their savings or force them from their homes. Members of Congress have been hit with a barrage of hostile criticism and there is little doubt the surtax will be repealed”

Sound familar?

This news item, from September 30, 1989 gives some idea of what will probably happen if a decent Healthcare Bill is passed.

Not saying for sure. But just saying . . .

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( . . and then the screens went dark.)

The final few days of the Democracy movement in Tiananamen Square. After seven weeks, it ended quickly with a death toll still disputed but varying from 300 to 20,000. The crackdown came, the organizers and sympathizers were located, rounded up and imprisoned or executed and China tried desperately to pretend it never happened and hoped everyone would forget.

Twenty years later, they're still trying.

A postscript: Right after publishing this entry I got a note from John Amato pointing me in the direction of a Chinese-American guest blogger who covered for her students after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. I urge you to check it out. G.S.

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(Not thrilled to be there)

As the numbers swelled into the hundreds of thousands, the political tug-of-war continued. The students called off their hunger strike and rumors were everywhere. Deng Xiao Peng fell in step with the hardliners and pledged to break up the demonstration by sending in troops at dawn on the 21st if the student leaders didn't quit.

Dawn came and went and the PLA were still outside the city limits of Beijing, reluctant to move against the students, with thousands of students swarming to meet the troops pleading with them to join them. The waiting game was in full gear.

Here are clips from May 19-21, with reports and speculation flooding the airwaves.

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(It seemed like a great idea at the time)

Twenty years ago this month, hot on the heels of Glasnost and Perestroika within the Soviet Union, Chinese students tried for the same thing - a reform of government, an idealogical shift from hardline Mao-styled Communism to a more democratic approach, a relaxing of rigid policies and a free exchange of ideas and enterprise.

It was a little like a movement in the former Czechoslovakia twenty years before that. Prague Spring in 1968 and the liberal experiment of Alexander Dubcek. The climate in the Soviet Union was different that time, and the movement was quickly extinguished.

But it was thought since the mood had changed so much in the Soviet Union in those twenty years, why couldn't the mood change in China as well?

Lofty expectation but sadly, no. Or not in 1989 anyway.

Here are some clips from May 13-15 1989. As the confrontation wears on into June, I will add those to give some sort of timeline sense to the events that took place.

(the culprit)

Twenty years after, the effects linger on. In what has been described as the worst environmental disaster in recent times, the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill is still burned into many peoples memories. Caused by human error, it nevertheless made painfully clear the potential dangers that exist in offshore oil drilling and sea going crude oil transport. There have been improvements over the years with regard to hull design, but the fact of the matter is, human error beyond anything else stands as the biggest single threat to the environment.

And if you think that one's bad - wait. In a few days we'll be coming up on the 30th anniversary of another major environment disaster.

The hits just keep on comin'!