WWII
Dayle in Limoux – Day #65
September 8, 20221926-2022
I think this is just about my favorite capture of Queen Elizabeth, before her reign. WWII, 1945.
France 24
Text translated: “Elizabeth II, a life for the crown.”
From the BBC with the announcement of Her Majesty’s passing.
15 prime ministers served Queen Elizabeth beginning with Winston Churchill. She also met 13 of the last 14 U.S. presidents. LBJ was the one president she did not meet in person.
I read this evening Elizabeth reigned as Queen for 30% of U.S. history. 30%. In the UK, an astounding 80% of the residents have only ever known one monarch – Elizabeth II.
Hers was truly a remarkable life, well lived in service and duty, serving until the very end.
These captures are from the day this week she welcomed Liz Truss as Prime Minister, about 48 hours before her death. It would be her final public appearance.
Dame Helen Mirren shared her memories of the Queen. Mirren was awarded the Oscar for her performance portraying Elizabeth II in the 2006 film,‘The Queen.’
As the news was being received the Queen had died, a rainbow appeared over Buckingham Palace and London.
🤍
[Getty Images]
I was finishing (!) the book, ‘The Manuscript,’ on the little French balcony when I received a push notification about the Queen’s passing.
It became eerily quiet very quickly. It almost felt as if we were suddenly in a vacuum. Nothing. Silence. Even the sassy ducks stopped their incessant quacking for a bit. Then I heard someone across the river start playing the British National Anthem. The sound carried across the water.
So much to share about the powerful final pages. This book has become almost a sacred text for me. I’ll post more tomorrow. This evening, with the quiet, a feeling of reverence in the streets of Limoux, contemplation for a woman who lived her life in dignified service for her country and people for 70 years, beginning at the age of 27.
“I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”
This speech was given on her 21st birthday, 21 April 1947, while on a tour with her parents and sister in South Africa.
‘In a speech broadcast on the radio from Cape Town, the Princess dedicated her life to the service of the Commonwealth.’ [Royal.uk]
In six years, she would honor her promise.
As the new British Prime Minister remarked speaking to the parliment:
“The whole house will agree never has a promise been so completely fulfilled.”
Tomorrow’s front page.
Bonne nuit.
🖤
W A R
February 23, 2022Will we not ever leave behind the most deadly century in human history?
“The 20th Century’s atrocities of war (42 million persons killed in the Second World War alone), of nuclear power (Hiroshima and Nagasaki as curtain raisers on this) and of ecological degradation, were not caused by evils forces ‘out there’ or ‘abroad somewhere.’ These happened and are happening at the hands and minds of university graduates and our university intelligentia. The 20th century accomplished mass slaughters of our species…90 million killed in military conflict and another 80 million killed in social pogroms by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others. Zbigniew Brzezinski calls this the ‘politics of organized insanity.’ These numbers are, as Brzezinski observes, ‘more than the total killed in all previous wars, civil conflicts, and religious persecutions throughout human history.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, as James Garrison points out, intuited a century earlier that human rationality was heading towards an ‘orgy of violence.’ We have passed through that orgy. What now? What is education’s role in all of this? It is time for some morality. For some choices. For some wisdom. It takes ethics and morality to use power humanely. It takes wisdom to curb knowledge, to steer it for the greater good, to turn the lead of power (knowledge) into the gold of wisdom. […] If our species cannot move from knowledge to wisdom, we are doomed (pp.59-60).
-Matthew Fox, 2006
War. Death. Annihilation.
One. Man.
One.
Again. And again. And again.
“War means pain, mud, blood and the death of thousands…tens of thousands of deaths.”
-Journalist based in Moscow for the NYTimes, Anton Troianovski
Photograph by Pierre Crom / Getty
“When Putin encounters Ukrainian resistance, he will respond the only way he knows: with devastating force. The loss of life will be staggering. Watching it will make it impossible to live and to breathe.”
-New Yorker writer Masha Gesson
The Crushing Loss of Hope
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-crushing-loss-of-hope-in-ukraine
Lieutenant Igor Demischuk of 🇺🇦 Ukraine’s 95th Airborne Brigade.
Killed in action in Donbas on February 21.
He was 29.
Posted on social media by Illia Ponomarenko @IAPonomarenko 🇺🇦 Defense reporter with The Kyiv Independent. “A village guy from Donbas in a crusade for something better.”
War,
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.
‘Radical Reforms’
April 4, 2020Rutger Bregman:
“Wow, Financial Times editorial today. ‘Radical reforms — reversing the policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table. (…) Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.'”
FINANCIAL TIMES
EDITORIAL BOARD
Virus lays bare the frailty of the social contract
Radical reforms are required to forge a society that will work for all
If there is a silver lining to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is that it has injected a sense of togetherness into polarised societies. But the virus, and the economic lockdowns needed to combat it, also shine a glaring light on existing inequalities — and even create new ones. Beyond defeating the disease, the great test all countries will soon face is whether current feelings of common purpose will shape society after the crisis. As western leaders learnt in the Great Depression, and after the second world war, to demand collective sacrifice you must offer a social contract that benefits everyone.
Today’s crisis is laying bare how far many rich societies fall short of this ideal. Much as the struggle to contain the pandemic has exposed the unpreparedness of health systems, so the brittleness of many countries’ economies has been exposed, as governments scramble to stave off mass bankruptcies and cope with mass unemployment. Despite inspirational calls for national mobilisation, we are not really all in this together.
The economic lockdowns are imposing the greatest cost on those already worst off. Overnight millions of jobs and livelihoods have been lost in hospitality, leisure and related sectors, while better paid knowledge workers often face only the nuisance of working from home. Worse, those in low-wage jobs who can still work are often risking their lives — as carers and healthcare support workers, but also as shelf stackers, delivery drivers and cleaners.
Governments’ extraordinary budget support for the economy, while necessary, will in some ways make matters worse. Countries that have allowed the emergence of an irregular and precarious labour market are finding it particularly hard to channel financial help to workers with such insecure employment. Meanwhile, vast monetary loosening by central banks will help the asset-rich. Behind it all, underfunded public services are creaking under the burden of applying crisis policies.
The way we wage war on the virus benefits some at the expense of others. The victims of Covid-19 are overwhelmingly the old. But the biggest victims of the lockdowns are the young and active, who are asked to suspend their education and forgo precious income. Sacrifices are inevitable, but every society must demonstrate how it will offer restitution to those who bear the heaviest burden of national efforts.
Radical reforms — reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades — will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.
The taboo-breaking measures governments are taking to sustain businesses and incomes during the lockdown are rightly compared to the sort of wartime economy western countries have not experienced for seven decades. The analogy goes still further.
The leaders who won the war did not wait for victory to plan for what would follow. Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, setting the course for the United Nations, in 1941. The UK published the Beveridge Report, its commitment to a universal welfare state, in 1942. In 1944, the Bretton Woods conference forged the postwar financial architecture. That same kind of foresight is needed today. Beyond the public health war, true leaders will mobilize to win the peace.
D-Day 75
June 6, 2019
75 years ago today, the Greatest Generation proved what they were made of. The invasion of Normandy was literally and figuratively the line in the sand past which the Nazis would not be allowed to go.
160,000 Allied soldiers participated in the D-Day Invasion. It is estimated that 4,413 of them died. One can only imagine the energy, the courage, the fear, and the prayers that were uttered on that night, this night, in l944.
Several years ago I visited the beaches at Normandy, where barges still rest in the water along the coastline. It was one of the most moving, haunting experiences of my life and I will never forget it. On this day, may we all remember.
Once the invasion had begun, Roosevelt led his nation in prayer. There is no doubt that he meant every word from the bottom of his heart.
In honor of those who came before us, let us in our time rise up and do what is ours to do. May those who lost their lives that day, and those who fought with them, be forever blessed.
The Atlantic
David Frum
The French military defeat in 1940 had torn apart social wounds dating back decades and longer. Conservative and Catholic France reinterpreted the battles of 1940 as a debacle only of the liberal and secular France that had held the upper hand since the founding of the Third Republic in 1871 and especially since the Dreyfus affair that began in 1894. When the reactionary French writer Charles Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration, he supposedly replied, “It’s the revenge of Dreyfus.”
[…]
The French military defeat in 1940 had torn apart social wounds dating back decades and longer. Conservative and Catholic France reinterpreted the battles of 1940 as a debacle only of the liberal and secular France that had held the upper hand since the founding of the Third Republic in 1871 and especially since the Dreyfus affair that began in 1894. When the reactionary French writer Charles Maurras was sentenced to life imprisonment for collaboration, he supposedly replied, “It’s the revenge of Dreyfus.”
[…]
But the human impulses on which the fascists and communists of the 1930s battened? Those do remain with us. They have been a powerful resource to extremists of all kind in our unsettled present moment after the Great Recession of 2008–09 and amid the mass developing-world migration flows of the 2010s. Trump is their most conspicuous beneficiary, but not their only beneficiary. They trouble France; they trouble us.
[…]
This time, no D-Day is called for to defeat them—just a renewed commitment to the ideals for which D-Day was launched 75 years ago by soldiers of so many lands, including the France that has taken so long to make its entire peace with this complicated anniversary.
Full article:
Ben Ferencz
Netflix/Deadline
Amanda N’Duka
‘Prosecuting Evil’ Docu Producers Secure Rights To Story of Nuremberg Prosecutor Ben Ferencz For Scripted Project
Ben Ferencz, a lifelong advocate of “law not war”, became the lead prosecutor in the Einsatzgruppen case at Nuremberg after witnessing Nazi concentration camps shortly after liberation. In his first trial, at age 27, all 22 Nazi officials who were tried for murdering over a million people, were convicted. Ferencz went on to advocate for restitution for Jewish victims of the Holocaust and later assisted in the establishment of the International Criminal Court.
Avrich directed the documentary, which had its world debut at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival and is now available to screen on Netflix.
Avrich’s Melbar Entertainment Group and Theroux’s Sugar Shack Productions will produce the scripted projects.
“This is an extraordinary honor to tell the story; one of the most iconic and historic figures of our time,” said Avrich. “I feel a real responsibility to continue to bring this important story to as many people as we can, this time through a scripted project.”
“I am thrilled to help bring this prestigious, inspiring and historic story to the big screen,” remarked Theroux. “Ben has led an incredible life and it is a privilege that Barry and I have been allowed to share it with the world in a new capacity.”
Benjamin B. Ferencz was born in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania in 1920. When he was ten months old his family moved to America. His earliest memories are of his small basement apartment in a Manhattan district – appropriately referred to as “Hell’s Kitchen.” Even at an early age, he felt a deep yearning for universal friendship and worldpeace.e
After he graduated from Harvard Law School in 1943, he joined an anti-aircraft artillery battalion preparing for the invasion of France. As an enlisted man under General Patton, he fought in every campaign in Europe. As Nazi atrocities were uncovered, he was transferred to a newly created War Crimes Branch of the Army to gather evidence of Nazi brutality and apprehend thecriminals.s
“Indelibly seared into my memory are the scenes I witnessed while liberating these centers of death and destruction. Camps like Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dachau are vividly imprinted in my mind’s eye. Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget-the crematoria aglow with the fire of burning flesh, the mounds of emaciated corpses stacked like cordwood waiting to be burned…. I had peered into Hell.” (From Planethood,1988)8
On the day after Christmas 1945, Ferencz was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army with the rank of Sergeant of Infantry. He returned to New York and prepared to practice law. Shortly thereafter, he was recruited for the Nuremberg war crimes trials. The International Military Tribunal prosecution against German Field Marshal, Herman Goering and other leading Nazis was already in progress under the leadership the American Prosecutor, Robert M. Jackson on leave from the USSupreme Court..
The U.S. had decided to prosecute a broad cross section of Nazi criminals once the trial against Goering and his henchmen was over. General Telford Taylor was assigned as Chief of Counsel for 12 subsequent trials. Ferencz was sent with about fifty researchers to Berlin to scour Nazi offices and archives. In their hands lay overwhelming evidence of Nazi genocide by German doctors, lawyers, judges, generals, industrialists, and others who played leading roles in organizing or perpetrating Nazi brutalities. Without pity or remorse, the SS murder squads killed every Jewish man, woman, and child they could lay their hands on. Gypsies, communist functionaries, and Soviet intellectuals suffered the same fate. It was tabulated that over a million persons were deliberately murdered by these special “action groups.
Ferencz became Chief Prosecutor for the United States in The Einsatzgruppen Case, which the Associated Press called “the biggest murder trial in history.” Twenty-two defendants were charged with murdering over a million people. He was only twenty-seven years old. It was his first case.
All of the defendants were convicted. Thirteen were sentenced to death. The verdict was hailed as a great success for the prosecution. Ferencz’s primary objective had been to establish a legal precedent that would encourage a more humane and secure world in the future.
In 1988 Ferencz wrote PlanetHood with Ken Keyes, Jr., to offer practical steps for the average citizen to take to help establish international law and urge U.N. reform. Receiving critical acclaim from its readers, with over 450,000 copies printed and served as an inexpensive and easy-to-read “Key To Survival and Prosperity.”
Is it too late?
April 6, 2018
”Fascism poses a more serious threat now than any time since the end of WWII.”
NYTimes/Opinion
4.6.18
Madeleine Albright, US Secretary of State from 1997-2001
“What is to be done? First, defend the truth. A free press, for example, is not the enemy of the American people; it is the protector of the American people. Second, we must reinforce the principle that no one, not even the president, is above the law. Third, we should each do our part to energize the democratic process by registering new voters, listening respectfully to those with whom we disagree, knocking on doors for favored candidates, and ignoring the cynical counsel: “There’s nothing to be done.”
[…]
To me, greatness goes a little deeper than how much marble we put in our hotel lobbies and whether we have a Soviet-style military parade. America at its best is a place where people from a multitude of backgrounds work together to safeguard the rights and enrich the lives of all. That’s the example we have always aspired to set and the model people around the world hunger to see. And no politician, not even one in the Oval Office, should be allowed to tarnish that dream.”
_____________________________________
[full article]
“On April 28, 1945 — 73 years ago — Italians hung the corpse of their former dictator Benito Mussolini upside down next to a gas station in Milan. Two days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker beneath the streets of war-ravaged Berlin. Fascism, it appeared, was dead.
To guard against a recurrence, the survivors of war and the Holocaust joined forces to create the United Nations, forge global financial institutions and — through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — strengthen the rule of law. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down and the honor roll of elected governments swelled not only in Central Europe, but also Latin America, Africa and Asia. Almost everywhere, it seemed, dictators were out and democrats were in. Freedom was ascendant.
Today, we are in a new era, testing whether the democratic banner can remain aloft amid terrorism, sectarian conflicts, vulnerable borders, rogue social media and the cynical schemes of ambitious men. The answer is not self-evident. We may be encouraged that most people in most countries still want to live freely and in peace, but there is no ignoring the storm clouds that have gathered. In fact, fascism — and the tendencies that lead toward fascism — pose a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II.
Warning signs include the relentless grab for more authority by governing parties in Hungary, the Philippines, Poland and Turkey — all United States allies. The raw anger that feeds fascism is evident across the Atlantic in the growth of nativist movements opposed to the idea of a united Europe, including in Germany, where the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland has emerged as the principal opposition party. The danger of despotism is on display in the Russia of Vladimir Putin — invader of Ukraine, meddler in foreign democracies, accused political assassin, brazen liar and proud son of the K.G.B. Putin has just been re-elected to a new six-year term, while in Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, a ruthless ideologue, is poised to triumph in sham balloting next month. In China, Xi Jinping has persuaded a docile National People’s Congress to lift the constitutional limit on his tenure in power.
Around the Mediterranean, the once bright promise of the Arab Spring has been betrayed by autocratic leaders, such as Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt (also just re-elected), who use security to justify the jailing of reporters and political opponents. Thanks to allies in Moscow and Tehran, the tyrant Bashar al-Assad retains his stranglehold over much of Syria. In Africa, the presidents who serve longest are often the most corrupt, multiplying the harm they inflict with each passing year. Meanwhile, the possibility that fascism will be accorded a fresh chance to strut around the world stage is enhanced by the volatile presidency of Donald Trump.
If freedom is to prevail over the many challenges to it, American leadership is urgently required. This was among the indelible lessons of the 20th century. But by what he has said, done and failed to do, Mr. Trump has steadily diminished America’s positive clout in global councils.
Instead of mobilizing international coalitions to take on world problems, he touts the doctrine of “every nation for itself” and has led America into isolated positions on trade, climate change and Middle East peace. Instead of engaging in creative diplomacy, he has insulted United States neighbors and allies, walked away from key international agreements, mocked multilateral organizations and stripped the State Department of its resources and role. Instead of standing up for the values of a free society, Mr. Trump, with his oft-vented scorn for democracy’s building blocks, has strengthened the hands of dictators. No longer need they fear United States criticism regarding human rights or civil liberties. On the contrary, they can and do point to Mr. Trump’s own words to justify their repressive actions.
At one time or another, Mr. Trump has attacked the judiciary, ridiculed the media, defended torture, condoned police brutality, urged supporters to rough up hecklers and — jokingly or not — equated mere policy disagreements with treason. He tried to undermine faith in America’s electoral process through a bogus advisory commission on voter integrity. He routinely vilifies federal law enforcement institutions. He libels immigrants and the countries from which they come. His words are so often at odds with the truth that they can appear ignorant, yet are in fact calculated to exacerbate religious, social and racial divisions. Overseas, rather than stand up to bullies, Mr. Trump appears to like bullies, and they are delighted to have him represent the American brand. If one were to draft a script chronicling fascism’s resurrection, the abdication of America’s moral leadership would make a credible first scene.
Equally alarming is the chance that Mr. Trump will set in motion events that neither he nor anyone else can control. His policy toward North Korea changes by the day and might quickly return to saber-rattling should Pyongyang prove stubborn before or during talks. His threat to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement could unravel a pact that has made the world safer and could undermine America’s reputation for trustworthiness at a critical moment. His support of protectionist tariffs invites retaliation from major trading partners — creating unnecessary conflicts and putting at risk millions of export-dependent jobs. The recent purge of his national security team raises new questions about the quality of advice he will receive. John Bolton starts work in the White House on Monday.
What is to be done? First, defend the truth. A free press, for example, is not the enemy of the American people; it is the protector of the American people. Second, we must reinforce the principle that no one, not even the president, is above the law. Third, we should each do our part to energize the democratic process by registering new voters, listening respectfully to those with whom we disagree, knocking on doors for favored candidates, and ignoring the cynical counsel: “There’s nothing to be done.”
I’m 80 years old, but I can still be inspired when I see young people coming together to demand the right to study without having to wear a flak jacket.
We should also reflect on the definition of greatness. Can a nation merit that label by aligning itself with dictators and autocrats, ignoring human rights, declaring open season on the environment, and disdaining the use of diplomacy at a time when virtually every serious problem requires international cooperation?
To me, greatness goes a little deeper than how much marble we put in our hotel lobbies and whether we have a Soviet-style military parade. America at its best is a place where people from a multitude of backgrounds work together to safeguard the rights and enrich the lives of all. That’s the example we have always aspired to set and the model people around the world hunger to see. And no politician, not even one in the Oval Office, should be allowed to tarnish that dream.”