On September 16

On this day in ...

... 1963 (45 years ago today), in Kuala Lumpur, The New York Times reported, "The country of Malaysia came into being this morning with the raising of her new flag and the release of 101 white pigeons." The country was formed by a federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and Sabah. Unrest ensued, and Singapore withdrew 2 years later.

... 1974, U.S. President Gerald Ford announced that men who'd evaded the draft or deserted from the armed forces during the Vietnam War could get amnesty by completion of 2 years' public service. Cases of men already punished would be reviewed by a clemency board. It was estimated that nearly 13,000 evaders and deserters were fugitives, and that 4,500 of them had found refuge in Canada. (Today it's reported that the number who fled north was much larger -- depending on the source, 30,000 or 90,000 or 125,000.) Canada has become less welcoming, however; this past July Canada expelled an American who'd deserted from service in the Iraq War.

On January 30, ...

... 1972, in Derry, the 2d largest city in the North of Ireland, British paratroopers opened fire on unarmed civil rights demonstrators. In the end 14 persons died, all but 1 on the day, and others were wounded. In the Associated Press photo at left, Father Edward Daly waves a white hankerchief as others carry a casualty out of the line of fire.
Among those present on that Bloody Sunday was a youth who'd celebrated his 18th birthday just weeks before. When the shooting started he crouched behind a concrete abutment, just yards away from some of those who died. On the anniversary of the event in 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle published an op-ed by Peter D. O'Neill, that youth. The op-ed appeared on what happened to be the day of the much-vaunted elections in Iraq. O'Neill noted that after the shootings in Derry the local people had turned away from occupying troops, and, in words that proved sadly prophetic, wrote of his concern that the same thing might happen in Iraq:

It is the lesson of Bloody Sunday that, from Fallujah to Nasiriyah, from Mosul to Baghdad, we can expect violence every day that foreign troops remain on Iraq's soil. We can hope for no positive change without a full withdrawal of coalition forces -- a solution called for this week by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma -- so that Iraqis may take the lead in their own affairs. Based on Bush's second inaugural address, however, we can look only to four more years of unlearned and ineffective policy. And so we can muster no optimism about today's elections in Iraq.

... 1913, Britain's House of Lords rejected a bill that would have accorded to Ireland Home Rule, a modicum of self-government.

On October 7, ...

... 1942 (65 years ago today), U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced that once World War II came to an end, the United States would work with Britain and other countries to assure "that the 'war criminals' who had been guilty of barbarism against the civilian populations in enemy occupied countries be surrendered to the United Nations for punishment." The statement foreshadowed the International Military Tribunals that would be convened years later at Nuremberg and Tokyo.
... 1937 (70 years ago today), Maria Szyszkowska (left) was born in Warsaw, Poland. A member of Poland's Senate as well as an academic and author, she opposes Poland's participation in the Iraq War. She also has championed the rights of gay men and lesbians by inter alia introducing legislation aimed at recognizing civil unions for same-sex couples.