Général
de brigade Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Forces, photographed in
London, 1942.
This
looks interesting.
It
is about Charles de Gaulle's life between 1940 and 1944.
You
could make 3 or 4 separate feature length films on his life such as by focusing
on the events of 1968 or the period between his "comeback" in 1958 to
his granting of independence to Algeria.
I
would expect this movie to include depictions of his achievements as a military
officer.
De
Gaulle was among those who helped develop the theories associated with tank
warfare, a topic which is often dominated by the work of the German Heinz
Guderian. He was also the only French general to have mounted a successful counterattack
against invading German forces during "Fall Gelb".
Also,
this film will no doubt explore his close but complex relationship with British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He fled to England with only a few supporters
and then a death sentence awaiting him in Vichy.
But
he persevered and he gave Churchill "hell". Churchill and other Brits
were perplexed as to why de Gaulle should be so bold and "arrogant"
in his dealings with his hosts while in exile, but he felt that the fact that
he was in a weak position meant that he should be even bolder when defending France's
interests and its honour while the shame of capitulation and collaboration
surrounded French acquiescence to German occupation and the creation of Vichy.
I
hope the director recreates an episode where John Colville, Churchill's private
secretary, heard them shouting at each other at the top of their voices in a
rather violent way. Then a sudden silence descended on the place.
He
thought that they'd killed each other.
But
when he entered Churchill's office both men were sitting down and smiling at
each other, De Gaulle was smoking one of Churchill's cigars.
I
would also expect the film to cover the assassination attempt on him in Notre
Dame Cathedral.
The
man led an eventful life while living in interesting times!
Dmitri
Shostakovich composed a good deal of music that is accessible to the discerning
listener.
I
love this overture to the Soviet film titled The Gadfly, an historical
epic set against the backdrop of Italian freedom fighters battling to expel the
Austrian invaders from their land.
I
have the album as reconstructed
by Mark Fitz-Gerald and played by the Deutsch Staatsphilharmonic
Rheinland-Pfalz. The tempo of the overture and its reprise is faster than most
of the versions I have encountered in YouTube.
The
Gadfly
soundtrack also has a sweet, delicate tune referred to as "Romance"
which came to be well-known to many because it was used as the opening theme
music to Reilly: Ace of Spies, the epic mini-series produced in the
early 1980s on the life of the spy Sidney Reilly (nee Sigmund Rosenbloom).
The
journalist Piers Morgan sanctimoniously decries what he describes as the
"despicably cruel, heartless and abusive way that many people in (the) UK
and US have responded to the deaths of conservative politicians, Ann Widdecombe
and Lindsey Graham". He also claims that the "least kind people on
earth are ironically those on the #BeKind woke left". However, the truth
is that such anti-eulogies are not confined to any segment of the ideological
spectrum. And regarding Graham, the late U.S. Senator for South Carolina, the “abusive”
comments voiced on social media after his demise were largely unrelated to conservative
values, as they focused on his perpetual support for U.S. military intervention
and his slavish devotion to Zionist interests.
Graham arguably typified the profile of the bought and paid off U.S. politician
who is more apt at serving the interests of his donors than his constituents. He called for the murder of foreign leaders
and he also called for and condoned the mass murder of civilian populations,
both highly ironic given his training as a lawyer who as an active duty U.S.
Air Force officer and as a reservist advised pilots on the laws of war.
He was a man who slavishly promoted the United States war machinery which
alongside his promotion of the imposition of sanctions has directly and
indirectly resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent civilians.
Graham personally profited from his devotion to the U.S. military industry and
the Zionist lobby, both causes which have ultimately led to the diminution of
American moral standing among the global community of nations, as well as its
unmanageable trillion dollar sovereign debt.
Graham effectively admitted that U.S. policy was geared towards using Ukraine
as a proxy force for the purpose of "weakening" Russia. To him the
aid given to Ukraine -a country which has suffered from the migration of a good
deal of its population and the loss of what can be objectively estimated to be
the physical destruction of well over a million men- was worth it because it
led to the deaths of Russians. Few who heard it are unlikely to forget his
precise remarks:
And
the Russians are dying. The best money we’ve ever spent.
But
Graham's support for proxies employed by the American empire to achieve certain
geopolitical goals did not only include Ukraine. Along with John McCain, the
late U.S. Senator with whom Graham worked together for many years in drumming up
support for U.S. interventions, Graham approved of the use of Jihadist
extremists in operations dedicated to the overthrow of the secular,
anti-Zionist governments of Libya and Syria.
Indeed, Graham was pictured next to McCain as his colleague gave an award to
Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated and now defunct
Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), during a visit to Benghazi in late 2011 to
celebrate the overthrow of the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
So while it is distasteful to use abusive language against the dead, it is
important that Graham be acknowledged to be the perennial warmonger and corrupt
politician that he was.
Courtney
Pine captured during a solo performance at the Virgin Megastore, Oxford Street,
December 1989. Photo Credit: Adeyinka Makinde.
I
kept an eye on jazz music during the 1980s.
My
LP-buying focused on Miles Davis and John Coltrane and contemporary stars such
as Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Jordan. Miles of course released several albums
during the eighties until his death in 1991 and I acquired most of them.
I
did not consider myself an aficionado but was aware of the rise of the British
Jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine who led a group named the Jazz Warriors.
To
my surprise I encountered him playing saxophone during a solo in-store
performance at the now defunct Virgin Megastore at Oxford Street in December
1989. I spent a few minutes watching him with a few others during which time I
took several pictures.
I
had half-forgotten the incident but recently encountered the photographs while
rifling through old photos contained in a store box. He had apparently lost his
contract by this time but has been actively recording and performing to the
present day.
Image
generated by Grok as a result of instructions provided by the writer.
No
surprise that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has announced his
support for the Argentinean football team.
The country's president, Javier Milei, is the most rabidly pro-Zionist foreign
leader of any nation on earth. Milei's government has granted automatic
privileges to Israelis such as relating to pension rights and has been busily
preparing the Patagonian region of Argentina for Zionist colonisation.
It is remarkable how the Jewish state has a high degree of influence in a
country that was famous for shielding Nazi war criminals such as Eichmann,
Mengele, Priebke, Roschmann and Kutschmann. It was also for a time the base of
operations of Otto Skorzeny, the special forces officer of the Waffen-SS who
came to be known as Hitler's favourite commando.
Argentina is also, a country whose junta in the 1970s was unabashedly
anti-Jewish. The military government led by General Jorge Videla accused Jews
of financially supporting left-wing groups such as the Montoneros guerrillas.
David Graiver, a financier of Polish-Jewish descent allegedly acted as the
primary investment banker and money launderer for the Montoneros organisation.
As was the case with the leaders of Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, the junta
believed that Jews were at the heart of leftist movements including the other
prominent guerrillas, the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), the armed
wing of the Communist Workers' Revolutionary Party.
This resulted in the junta focusing a lot of its efforts on the Jewish
community during the "Dirty War" conducted against what were
designated as Marxist subversives between 1976 and 1983. Although Jews made up
1% of the population, they represented 10%-12% of los desaparecidos i.e.
the "disappeared ones".
Ironically, the Israeli state supplied significant amounts of weapons and gave
military training to the Argentinian military during the "Dirty War".
It was in this context as one of Argentina's primary arms suppliers that Israel
sold weapons and munitions to Argentina during its war against Britain over the
Falkland Islands.
But as mentioned earlier the transformation of Argentina from a country which
harboured Nazi criminals and which in the 1970s witnessed a rise in pro-Nazi
and anti-Jewish sentiment to one that has become one of the most vital allies of the Jewish state is noteworthy. Milei, the self-described "most Zionist
president in the world" has been at the heart of establishing the
"Isaac Accords" (the Latin American equivalent of the West Asian
"Abraham Accords"), has stood in solidarity with Israel in all its
conflicts and has introduced laws that provide a privileged status to Israelis
including Israeli Defence Force veterans suspected of committing war crimes in
war theatres such as Gaza and south Lebanon.
And Netanyahu's support for the Argentinean national football team can only be
bolstered by the perceived pro-Zionist sentiments of Lionel Messi. While Messi
has previously donated to hospitals in Gaza and to UNICEF projects in
Palestine, images of his visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem during a
"Peace Tour" in 2014 with his former team, FC Barcelona, have become
ingrained in the minds of both pro-and anti-Zionist fans of the game. During the
visit, Messi and his teammates wore traditional yarmulkes, prayed at the holy
site, and left handwritten notes between the ancient stones.
In contrast to Diego Maradona who avowedly supported left-wing causes and
left-wing regimes, Messi has striven to maintain a personal policy of political
neutrality. And Netanyahu appears to have respected this stance by justifying
his support for the Argentinean national team by referencing President Milei.
"Before Messi,Milei", Netanyahu joked, "He's a superstar."
Field
Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Staff
According
to Pepe Escobar, a Brazilian journalist and geostrategist who is based in East
Asia, Mossad, the foreign intelligence service of Israel, recently plotted to
assassinate Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir in Switzerland for
his role in brokering talks between the United States and Iran. However, while
it is difficult to ascertain the veracity of this claim, it is worth noting
that Zionism has a record of plotting and carrying out the assassinations of
statesmen who act against its perceived interests.
For
instance, the Zionist Stern gang of pre-Israel Palestine assassinated Lord
Moyne and Count Folke Bernadotte respectively in 1944 and 1948. Moyne was the
Middle East Envoy for Britain and Bernadotte was a UN Peace Mediator. The
former was gunned down in Cairo, while the latter suffered a similar fate
during an ambush in Jerusalem.
And
various British political and military
leaders were threatened with death through a letter bombing campaign by the
terrorist organisation Lehi, known to the British authorities as the Stern Gang.
The targets included Prime Minister Clement Atlee, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery,
then the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and even Sir Winston Churchill.
The
letter bombs were reportedly intercepted in the Italian city of Genoa.
The
threats extended to the British royal family. In 1946, extra security
precautions were taken to protect King George VI because of threats of Zionist
violence aimed at the state opening of Parliament. This followed a boast by a
leader of the Irgun, the larger organisation from which Lehi had split, that it
would “attack London’s heart and even Buckingham Palace itself.” In a front
page article of its June 8th, 1947 edition, the Australian newspaper
The Truth stated that the “"arrogant boasting of Jewish terrorists
and their cowardly threats, particularly that Princess Elizabeth, have
disgusted the world."
Ezer
Weizman, a future Major General who would become the commander of the Israeli
Air Force, joined a cell of the Zionist terror group Irgun to plot the
assassination of General Evelyn Barker, the head of Britain's military in
Palestine, by placing a mine on a road outside his home in England. However, the
group gave up the plan after arousing the suspicions of Scotland Yard.
Interestingly,
John Gunther Dean, a U.S. Ambassador to India in the 1980s alleged that the
MOSSAD had assassinated General Zia ul-Haq, the military ruler of Pakistan. Zia
died in a plane crash in 1988. Dean, who provided no evidence of this, based
his assumption on the fact that Israel did not want Pakistan to obtain a
nuclear weapon. He was censored by the U.S. State Department and forced to
retire on the grounds that he was "mentally unbalanced".
A
German Jew by heritage, Dean was targeted in a failed
assassination by Israel in 1980 while he was serving as the U.S. Ambassador
to Lebanon. Responsibility for the rocket attack on his motorcade in Beirut was
claimed by the FLLF (The Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners),
a phantom terror group formed and directed by the Northern Command of the IDF. Dean was able to trace the source of the
projectiles that targeted him to a shipment of arms in 1974 from the United
States to Israel. However, his findings were never officially investigated,
although he was officially rehabilitated.
The
rationale for an Israeli orchestrated assassination of Field Marshal Munir would
be consistent with previous assassinations conducted by Zionist terror militias
and later by the Israeli state on those seeking peaceful compromise. Count
Bernadotte’s murder arose from his belief that the Palestinian people were entitled
to the right of return, while Dean was targeted for his suggestion that Israel
should abandon its heavy-handed approach and enter into peace talks with the
Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The targeting in more recent times of
peace negotiators of Hamas and the Iranian state testify to a longstanding
policy embedded in the mentality of Zionists.
Lieutenant
Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, the General Officer Commanding the Federal Third Infantry
Division & the Officer Commanding Land Forces (left) and Commander James
Rawe, the Forward Control Officer of naval forces on the bridge of Rawe’s
vessel NNS Penelope during the amphibious attack on Oron, March 1968. (Credit:
Photo archive of the late Captain James Rawe).
A
post titled "The Liberation of Calabar, 1967" by a Facebook group
named "Ibibio History" reminds me that I urgently need to complete my
research project on all Nigerian Navy orchestrated landings during the civil
war. Several errors of fact and improbable analyses stimulated me to make the
following comments and observations.
These
are the thoughts I jotted down soon after encountering the post:
1.
The AI depiction of NNS Nigeria -a frigate- as a tiny patrol boat is a
bit of an eyesore. Nigeria was 314 feet and possessed an array of gun
armament vastly more than what a patrol boat would have.
2.
The date of "14th, September 1967" in the image should have been
removed as the combined operation occurred in October 1967.
3.
Benjamin Adekunle, the General Officer Commanding the Federal Third Infantry
Division, was a Lieutenant Colonel at the time - not yet a Brigadier or a
Colonel as the text later states.
4.
The text neglected to inform the reader how Major Anthony Ochefu, who the narrative initially
states was on NNS Nigeria, later "disembarked from (NNS) Lokoja."
5.
While Major Ochefu was on NNS Lokoja and successfully fought from a
landing site and captured key territory in Calabar, the narrative -even if
intended to be brief- ought to give an indication of how extremely tough it was
for the Federal troops.
For
one, the landing site was on lowland while the Biafran forces had taken up
defensive positions on highland. Calabar is situated on high ground overlooking
the Cross River. This meant that Ochefu and his troops were pinned down on the
landing vessel Lokoja and could not open its heavy steel bow door for a
considerable period because of the sheer volume of bullets smashing into the
metallic structure of Lokoja.
The
Federal side lost a lot of troops as they established a beachhead and slowly inched
their way up the hilly terrain.
6.
So, the sentence "small Biafran resistance was quickly overwhelmed"
is an untrue portrayal of what went down. The Federal commanders of the navy
and army expected the secessionist side to put up a spirited fight to preserve
their last port. The operation was not as easy as both landing accomplished
earlier at Bonny in July 1967 and at Sapele, Warri and Koko in September 1967.
At
Bonny overconfidence on the part of the Biafran leadership that the Nigerian
Navy was incapable of staging a landing because of the internal sabotage
carried out by defecting naval personnel of Eastern region origin at the Apapa
base, and by the thinking that the Nigerian Navy lacked the smarts to
orchestrate an amphibious landing led to a state of gross underpreparedness.
The
Biafrans failed to shift buoys at the entrance to the Bonny River which could
have directed Federal naval navigators towards shallow waters where thier ships would have run aground. They failed to set up watchtowers, plant incendiaries in the river and
station a garrison of appropriate strength to confront a potential invading
force. They even failed to anticipate an invasion by keeping daily tabs on the
rise and fall of the tide.
So
far as Warri, Sapele and Koko is concerned, the Nigerian Navy vessels were
extremely vulnerable to attacks while navigating the narrow rivers which were
too shallow for NNS Nigeria to participate. The Nigerian ships and
barges carrying soldiers of the Third Infantry Division would have been sitting
ducks for an organised ambush involving rocket-propelled grenades and
artillery.
But
things were different for the Calabar landing.
The
Biafran troops were well prepared. They laid Ogbunigwe bombs in
uncharted rivers they correctly anticipated some Nigerian Navy vessels would
use en route to attacking Calabar. They placed bombs on jetties, and they also
placed tape recorders with sounds of gunfire amplified by loudspeakers on trees
and other vantage points. The aim was to confuse the Federal soldiers as to
where gunfire was coming from.
7.
Another impediment to the Nigerian operation were an assortment of 105mm guns which the secessionist side fired from Oron, a town which is almost opposite to
Calabar on the other side of the Cross River estuary. Lt. COL. Adekunle had
wanted the operation to involve capturing both Calabar and Oron. But Commander James Rawe, the architect of the landing, successfully argued that the Federal
side would be better off focusing on Calabar so as not split up naval and army
resources. Rawe was aware of the "guns of Oron”, but it was a necessary
risk for naval and merchant vessels to run the gauntlet to secure the more
important target of Calabar.
Oron
was captured in the final amphibious operation six months later in March 1968.
8.
The conclusion is overblown.
The
poster writes: "This decisive operation marked a turning point in the
Nigerian Civil War, demonstrating the effectiveness of joint naval and ground
forces in reclaiming strategic territory."
Each
amphibious operation prior to the Calabar landing was incrementally important
in achieving the objective of creating a southern front and setting the scene
of the ultimate encirclement of secessionist Biafra.
.
Capturing Bonny town and securing the mouth of the Bonny River was important in
ensuring that the secessionist side would not control the production and export oil.
.
Capturing Warri, Koko and Sapele ensured that the Biafran side had no sea
outlet through the Mid-West after the Biafran attack on the Mid-West in August
1967. It also played a part in ensuring the recapture of the Mid-West by the
Third Infantry Division in combination with the Second Infantry Division which
was led by Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Muhammed.
It
should also be noted that the Nigerian Navy made an unopposed landing at
Forcados in August 1967 soon after the Mid-West invasion.
.
Capturing Calabar ensured that the Federal side could begin gaining territory
in a northward direction while completing the task of sealing off the border
with Cameroon.
I
hope to complete or write the bulk of what should be an 8,000 to 10,000-word
scholarly article over the coming summer months.
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian
Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other
officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War
College Nigeria.
First,
for all its glory-laden history of ruling the waves, it became apparent to all
after World War 2 and particularly after Suez that Britain was finished as a
global military power. And with the decolonisation of empire in Africa and
Asia, it was clear that the size and reach of the Royal Navy would have to be
reduced.
Secondly,
the ending of the ideological Cold War with the USSR ought to have further
curtailed the size a British maritime force. NATO should have been disbanded
and a new security architecture established on continental Europe which would
have involved Russia.
The
problem is that Britain has hung onto the coattails of the United States which
succeeded it as a world power. This has meant regular involvement in military
endeavours engineered by the United States, a situation that gives Britain's
political, military and intelligence leaders the false impression of been still
relevant in shaping a global dominium.
Felton
mentions in the style of a pub debate that if Britain had a Falklands-type
crisis, it would not be able to reclaim the islands.
But
he forgets to mention that had Margaret Thatcher's proposed cuts to the Royal
Navy gone through (she sacked her Navy Minister Keith Speed who opposed them)
Britain would not have been able to have mounted a task force in 1982.
Importantly,
Felton assumes that a large Royal Navy would be able to cope with any and every
type of Falklands-type emergency.Does
he think that the Royal Navy could have kept Hong Kong as a British colony if
Britain had refused to cede it to China in the 1990s?
He
also refuses to contend with developments in maritime warfare. The
Russia-Ukraine War and recent conflicts in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf have
exposed the limitations of naval vessels including the vulnerability of
aircraft carriers to shore-based ballistic missile and drone attacks.
The
Royal Navy in combination with other NATO and non-NATO navies led by the U.S.
Navy failed in the attempt to open up the Red Sea during continuous operations
under the Biden and Trump administrations. And the U.S. Navy has discovered
that it is incapable of opening the Strait of Hormuz given Iran's capability of
sinking any and all U.S. vessels if they pressed the issue.
And
while not all will go so far as to rule out aircraft carriers as obsolete in a
similar vein to the those who argue that tanks are, Felton should be aware of
the problems associated with developing new generation naval vessels. Just as
the U.S. military have had issues in developing the F35 fighter jet, the U.S.
Navy has admitted the failure of the development of the Zumwalt-class of naval
destroyers.
Given
these facts, why on earth would Felton propose that the Royal Navy can only be
effective with a multitude of frigates, destroyers and carriers?
A
more purposeful critique would have been to acknowledge the diminution of
Britain's world power status and the non-efficacy of maintaining a large global
naval force. He could have framed his argument by expounding on what a
repurposed British naval Force would look like.
This
would have encompassed the role that would need to be played by manned and
unmanned drones including those with an underwater role. Submarine warfare
remains a crucial aspect of waging modern wars and any cuts in this area should
be validly scrutinised.
A
correct means of addressing reforms to the naval service would be to calibrate
what quantities of equipment and manpower should be deployed for defensive and
offensive capabilities.
So
far as manpower is concerned Felton's focus on advertisements featuring females
and persons from non-white backgrounds points to a lazy but effective way of
rousing nationalistic sentiment and positioning the dire state of the armed
forces in the context of the culture wars. Felton makes the subtle but
unmistakable proposition that the navy has become mired in so-called "woke"
culture and is seeking to recruit "wogs" and "girlies" at
the expense of white males.
His
assertion that the army, although facing much the same problems as the navy, is
better off because it has recruited more soldiers of Gurkha and Fijian heritage
is a devious attempt at deflecting from the racialist undertone by invoking two
longstanding sources of loyal non-white manpower. What goes unsaid is the
unequal treatment both groups have been subjected to. Over twenty years ago
veteran Gurkhas took the British government to court in a racial discrimination
suit over their pensions, pay and conditions.
But
Felton fails to consider the reasons why young white working-class males no
longer have the urge to pursue a career in the military. As in the United
States there are issues related to the general physical conditioning,
competitive remuneration in the private sector, the physical demands of
military service and different attitudes held by the younger generation to
military service. Yet another challenge to recruitment which will become more
pronounced in the non-so-distant future is that of falling birth rates which is
shrinking the pool of potential recruits.
Britons who are well-versed in the maritime history of their nation unsurprisingly and understandably think of the Roya Navy - the Senior Service- as the heroic figures who
sank The Bismarck, whose plucky light cruisers backed up The Admiral
Graff Spee in the Battle of the River Plate, who went toe-to-toe with the
High Seas Fleet at Jutland and with imperious Nelsonian pride swiftly avenged
their defeat at the Coronel by destroying a German squadron during the Battle
of the Falklands. The British navy also played a decisive role in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade.
But of course, the Royal Navy had its dark side, subduing -in
the service of empire- a multitude of sovereign African and Asian city states
and kingdoms. It also served as the instrument for conducting gunboat diplomacy by, for instance, assuming the role of a debt-collecting Leviathan
Sea monster in the Don Pacifico Affair and by launching a series of amphibious assaults and blockades in the course of forcibly opening trade with China during the Opium Wars. Also, prior to 1807, the Royal Navy protected Britain's slave-based sugar economy by escorting slave ships and directly enslaving Africans who worked as labourers at dockyards on islands such as Jamaica and pressganging people into military service.
And notwithstanding the navy's laudible efforts in combating the drug trade on the high seas, its contemporary role alongside other branches of the British armed forces is
often mired by their supporting act to the hegemonic adventures of the U.S.
empire, endeavours in relation to which Britain has given diplomatic cover to American-instigated
conflicts which do not stand the test of morality and which consistently breach the strict application of international law.
The
question Felton does not address is precisely what an imperial-sized Royal Navy
would be doing in this age? Provoking Russia in the Baltic and Black Seas? Or
China in the Strait of Malacca? And does he envisage the Royal Navy follow the
same path as the U.S. Navy which itself has been repurposed as a piratical
maritime force which extrajudicially kills the occupants of speedboats far from
its national jurisdiction, enforces illegal blockades aimed at stealing the
natural resources of other nations such as Venezuela, as well as conducting medieval
like sieges with the objective of starving countries such as Cuba into
submission?
I
certainly believe Felton to be highly selective in terms of the information he
has deployed on this latest critique of the Royal Navy and would go as far as
to accuse him of sensationalism and even intellectual dishonesty.
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian
Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other
officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War
College Nigeria.
Tosches’
book was titled Night Train: The Sonny Liston Story in the United Kingdom in
contrast to its original American title The Devil and Sonny Liston.
My
discovery yesterday of the publication of this
article which examines Nick Tosches' biographical treatment of Charles
"Sonny" Liston has just inspired me to fish out my copy of the
Tosches book.
Sandwiched
between biographies on Joe Frazier and Louis Armstrong, I have not opened it
for a good number of years and can hardly believe how many years ago I acquired
it. Accompanying the inscription of my name is the date of purchase: "27
April 2000".
The
publication of Tosches' book was looked forward to by many boxing afficionados.
The last treatment of Sonny's life had been that of Rob Steen which was titled Sonny
Boy: The Life and Strife of Sonny Liston. It is another boxing biography
among my collections and again cannot help but marvel at the passage of time.
My inscription finishes with "20th of March 1993".
I
recall that many aficionados were not enthralled by Steen's book and even fewer
were thrilled by Tosches' effort.
It
took some time for me to appreciate that many readers of the sport of boxing
prefer what I would describe as a "meat and potatoes" stylizing of a
biography. In other words, one that is linearly arranged, devoid of the penmanship
of the hyper-intellectual overly devoted to thematic interludes on issues of
culture and philosophy.
While
the hard-boiled journalistic style of Budd Schulberg and the participatory
journalism of Norman Mailer and was largely appreciated by the average boxing
book reader, the efforts of writers such as Steen and Tosches were angrily
dismissed.
Why?
I
think Tosches was seen by many as fundamentally an interloper. In other words,
he was cynically a non-aficionado using the rich history of sport, its litany
of characters and the drama that intrinsically attaches to a contest between
two gloved combatants in a squared ring for the selfish purpose of enhancing
their credentials as a writer.
Also,
Tosches' emphasis on the Mafia underworld at the expense of giving a more
structured account of Liston's boxing career did not go down well. Neither did
his unflattering evaluation of Muhammad Ali as the apotheosis of
"mediocrity". Moreover, his penchant for "macho writing",
described by the New York Times's reviewer as "his complex, heavy-breathing
metaphors", struck boxing readers as akin to the exhibition of a show-off
circus juggler.
I
personally have no such qualms and seek to extract whatever knowledge and
enjoyment that I can from each biography I read regardless of the author's
stylization. If the biographer's aim is to present the "truth" and
the essence of a person, there are a variety of ways of achieving this,
including Tosches' strategy of framing Liston and his existence in America via
Aristotelian ideology.
And
I of course look forward to absorbing Narjisse Moumna's deconstructions of Nick
Tosches' method of attempting to uncover the truth and the essence of Charles
"Sonny" Liston.
Portrait
of U.S. Navy Captain Eugene Simon Karpe (Public Domain).
In
February 1950, Eugene Simon Karpe, who for the previous three years had served
as the U.S. Navy Attache to Romania, was returning to the United States when
his mutilated body was found in a train tunnel near Salzburg, Austria.
He
had been travelling on the Orient Express.
An
Austrian railway lineman told reporters that both of Karpe's legs had been
severed and found lying approximately sixty feet away from the rest of his
body.
There
had been no signs of struggle and no blood found inside the compartment. A
spokesman for Austrian National Railways stated that all the doors into the
train's sleeping cars opened inward and that if Karpe had lost his balance and
fell, one of the doors would have had to have been left open at the last stop.
Karpe
was said to have suffered from gout which made it difficult for him to stand
erect.
But
the reason why his death was suspected of being a political assassination
engineered by one or more of the secret services of the Communist Bloc is that
Karpe's close friend Robert A. Vogeler, an executive of the Hungarian
subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph, had been arrested, tried
and convicted in Hungary for what the authorities described as "espionage
and economic sabotage".
It
was speculated that the Hungarian authorities believed that Captain Karpe had,
along with Vogeler, been a member of an allied spy-ring and that his death had
been a political assassination. He had visited Vogeler's family in Vienna three
days before his death, and Vogeler's wife had spoken of receiving three
mysterious phone calls from a woman speaking perfect English who asked her:
"Have
you heard about your friend?"
The
caller then hung up. The calls occurred before news of Karpe's death was made
public.
On
his last visit to America, Karpe's brother-in-law recalled him saying the
following:
"I
kind of hate to go back to Europe. They are always keeping a close watch on me
and know every move I make."
"They"
referred to the communist authorities.
Karpe
was buried at Arlington Cemetery on March 16th, 1950.
In
1952 a Romanian named Ryan Petrescu confessed to having killed Karpe by pushing
him off the train prior to stealing important documents from him. He claimed
that he had done this with the help of two accomplices. He also told the
authorities in Switzerland who apprehended him that he had been acting under
"orders from a foreign organisation." However, the Swiss police who
disbelieved the 24-year-old law student's claim took no further action.
Karpe's
death remains shrouded in mystery to this day.
NB
.
While posted in Romania, Karpe was also a naval member of the Allied Control
Commission (ACC) -the joint governing body of the Allied powers in occupied
Germany and Austria after World War 2, which consisted of representatives from
America, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. It exercised supreme authority
to supervise demilitarization, denazification, and the administration of
post-war Germany.
.
During World War 2, Karpe served as the captain of a destroyer in the Pacific
theatre.
.
He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis in 1926.
.
He won the Legion of Merit and the Navy Commendation Ribbon.
Lt.
COL. Marcelino da Mata photographed in full dress uniform (AI-treated Public
Domain photograph).
Born
into the Papel ethnic group in Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea Bissau), da Mata
volunteered to serve in the Portuguese army in the early 1960s in place of his
brother who had been conscripted.
He
went on to fight in the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974) during which he
participated in 2,412 military operations -mostly in Portuguese Guinea.
The
most notable operations were:
.
Operação Tridente (1963/64)
.
Operação Mar Verde (1970)
Tridente
was a combined operation aimed at eliminating the guerrilla presence from the
Como Achipelago, while Mar Verde was the amphibious invasion of Guinea-Conakry.
He
was a member of the Portuguese Commandos, an elite unit which specialised in
counterinsurgency operations against the guerrillas of PAIGC (African Party for
the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde / Partido Africano para a
Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde) which was led by Amilcar Cabral.
The
guerrilla campaign was successful despite Cabral's assassination in 1973.
Da
Mata received the following medals:
.
Cruz de Guerra (War Cross) for acts of bravery. He received five in all.
.
Appointed to the Order of the Tower and Sword, Portugal’s highest military
decoration for valour.
He
remained in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution of 1974 and was detained
for a period. He served from 1960-1990. He lived quietly in Portugal until his
death in 2021 from complications related to COVID. He was 80 years of age.
Da
Mata's funeral was attended by senior military officials and his death acknowledged
by the Portuguese president.
Joseph
Edet Akinwale Wey, the Nigerian Chief of the Naval Staff photographed in 1968.
(AI colorised
via Grok).
This
photograph of J.E.A. Wey displays shoulder boards which consist of a large
eight-pointed star with a cross sword & baton and an eagle which reveal his
rank to be that of a rear admiral in the old style used by the British Royal Navy,
with the eagle replacing the royal cypher.
But
for me the photograph recalled the often-fraught history of distinguishing the
ranks worn respectively by rear admirals and commodores.
At
one point I suspected that his shoulder board could have represented a 1960s
era Nigerian translation of the rank of a Royal Navy commodore. And if so, that
the picture library where I discovered it would have been wrong about the year
in which the photograph of taken because Wey had been a commodore up to June
1967.
This
confusion between the shoulder boards of rear admiral and commodore stems from
the history of some naval captains been appointed as commodores. The first
issue to clear up is that the designation of commodore was in fact not a rank
but an appointment of a senior captain who exercised a high level of
responsibility. This covered roles at sea such as serving as the commander of a
squadron of ships or as the head of major shore establishments including naval
bases.
The
appointment was essentially temporary although it often formed a crucial
stepping stone for an officer enroute to becoming a rear admiral. Indeed, a commodore
(First Class) was entitled to wear the rank stripes of a rear admiral on the
lower sleeves of his reefer jacket. However, when wearing either a great coat
or the all-white service dress with a short, stand-up collar, commodores of the
1st class had a distinct set of shoulder boards (also known as
shoulder straps) which consisted of a large anchor, two small eight-pointed
stars arranged horizontally and royal cypher.
This
was depicted in the 1956 movie The Battle of the River Plate in which the
figure of Commodore Henry Harwood, the commander of the South Atlantic Squadron
was portrayed by the actor Anthony Quayle.
Anthony
Quayle as Commodore Henry Harwood in The Battle of the River Plate.
But
the mild confusion of the past has intensified in contemporary times.
In
1997, commodore became a substantive rank in the Royal Navy -equivalent to that
of an army brigadier. They also inherited the shoulder boards, once worn by
rear admirals, that is, the large eight-pointed star, cross sword & baton
and royal cypher. Thus, when the old-style rear admirals shoulder boards are
sold to collectors, a good many vendors often describe them as ones worn by
commodores.
It
means that images or depictions of rear admirals in the past may also be
misunderstood. An example of this can be found in the James Bond movie You Only
Live Twice which was released in 1967.Ian Fleming, the author of the novel upon which the film was based,
revealed ‘M’, the fictional head of the British Secret Service, to be a retired
vice admiral named Sir Miles Messervy ('M'). But in the movie the actor Bernard
Lee who portrays Messervy wears the old-style Rear Admiral's shoulder boards.
Today, a Royal Navy rear admiral’s shoulder boards consist of two eight-pointed
stars arranged vertically, a crossed sword & baton and royal cypher.
Bernard
Lee as the Ian Fleming created Sir Miles Messervy ('M') in You Only Live Twice
(1967). Lee is wearing the old-style shoulder boards of a Royal Navy rear
admiral which today would be worn by a commodore.
It
should be noted that the "confusion" over the Rear Admiral and
Commodore rank has its own story in the United States.
Originally
a title granted by the Secretary of the Navy to naval captains who as in the
case of the Royal Navy were granted special responsibilities such as the
command of a naval squadron, or as in the case of the famous Matthew C. Perry,
the commandant of a navy yard, the U.S. Navy in 1982 decided to create the
substantive one-star rank of "commodore-admiral". This was renamed “commodore” until
the rank of rear-admiral (Lower Half) was established in 1985. It retained its
one-star status in contrast to the two-star status of rear admiral (Upper
Half).
The
reformation of ranks was largely due to complaints made by disgruntled officers
from the other branches of the U.S. armed forces. For instance, army
brigadier-generals when embarked on joint operations often perceived themselves
as being superior in rank to rear admirals -despite their two-star status-
because they were originally promoted from the rank of captain, a senior rank
but one not that of a flag officer.
Meanwhile
in Britain, it was discovered that even after the transforming of commodore
from an appointment to a substantive rank, senior Royal Navy captains of six
years seniority were being paid the same salary as British Army brigadiers and
Royal Air Force air commodores. But as was the case with the United States
military, these issues have been sorted out to quell inter-service grievances,
as well as to establish uniformity with other militaries belonging to the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
And
as is the case with the Royal Navy, the contemporary Nigerian Navy rear admiral
does not wear the shoulder boards worn by Joseph Wey in 1968. Today they
consist of two small six-pointed stars arranged horizontally, a crossed sword
& baton and an eagle. In contrast, the board straps of a commodore display a
small six-pointed star, an anchor and an eagle.
Rear Admiral (left) and Commodore ranks in today's Royal Navy
Note.
Joseph
Wey was also a member of the Supreme Military Council and later became the
Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters. He was compulsorily retired in July 1975
after the coup which overthrew General Yakubu Gowon and brought Brigadier
Murtala Muhammed to power. His final rank was Vice Admiral.
Adeyinka
Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian
Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other
officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War
College Nigeria.
A
1978 poster titled “Ashura: Victory of Blood Over the Sword”.
The
argument that the Islamic Republic of Iran, established in the wake of the
Iranian revolution of 1979, has a moral compass will come as a shock to many of
the propagandized people of the West.
Iran supports the Palestinian cause. It sees the Palestinians as the victims of
a decades long programme of ethnic cleansing instigated by Zionist Israel which
is backed by the United States. It also supported left wing liberation
movements in South Africa and Central America. Israel was at the same time
supporting Apartheid South Africa and training right-wing death squads in Latin
America.
The Iranian Constitution has a clause making it mandatory to set aside funding
for liberation movements. This is something not understood by the West and most
Westerners who absorb all the conflated anti-Islamic propaganda of the Western
Mainstream Media.
The accusation that Iran is the greatest sponsor of global terror is untrue.
Most terrorist acts committed by militant Muslim groups are by Sunni
organisations such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. Iran's Shia ally -not proxy- in
Lebanon, Hezbollah exists simply because of Zionist Israel's coveting of
Lebanese territory up to the River Litani.
The West cannot digest the fact that far from introducing a regressive and
unenlightened culture as they believe all Islamic societies do, Iran has
maintained a scientific culture alongside the culture of poetry and philosophy.
The educational qualifications of many of their political leaders attests to
this. The late Ali Larijani for instance was a scholar who wrote three books on
Immanuel Kant's philosophy including one which focused on the mathematical
method in Kantian philosophy.
Iran's contemporary achievements in science can be ascertained from the amount
of patents registered by its citizens, the contributions of its academic
community to journals on physics, and of course from its ballistic missile and
drone-making programmes.
Iran has a multi-layered moral base which is simplistically distorted in the
West as a medieval hardline attitude against females and gays. They have no
idea that Iranian women undertake almost the full gamut of occupations from
taxi drivers to university professors. They do not all wear hijab and are not
forced to. Their literacy rate is far in excess of the time of the Shah when
rural illiteracy was widespread.
The West refuses to believe that Iran has for decades declined to make a
nuclear bomb just as it refused to retaliate against Iraq's use of chemical
weapons against Iranian soldiers and civilian populations during the Iran-Iraq
War of the 1980s. Both decisions, fatwas respectively by Ayatollah Khomeini and
Ayatollah Khamenei, were based on the view that usage of both in war is un-islamic.
Iran may be a theocratic state, but it has layers of democratic institutions
and decision-making processes which cannot rationally have it pigeonholed as a
despotic state ruled by a single dictatorial cleric. It is certainly more
democratic than the absolutist monarchies of the Gulf region who are allies of
the United States and subservient to Israeli interests.
Iran's lengthy heritage goes back to the Achaemenid Empire and its famous kings
such as Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius. Persia also produced many scholars and poets
during the highwater mark of Islamic achievement. They include the polymath
Omar Khayyam.
Belatedly, Iran is now being acknowledged in Western media as a
"civilizational state" -not only because of the aforementioned
history, but because of the resilience of its political and military leadership
in the face of a criminal war of aggression launched on it by the United States
at the behest of the State of Israel and its lobby.
Its people -including many who are not supporters of the Islamic form of
government- have also been resilient and have rallied to their leaders as they
have seen scores of innocent civilians killed by American and Israeli bombs in
deliberate attacks on population centres and non-military infrastructure.
This rallying around the flag in the face of an external aggressor is not a new
phenomenon. But the resilience of the Iranian population who have staged
rallies at squares, thoroughfares and bridges in defiance of American and
Israeli bombing ought to inform Western audiences about a national psyche that
is infused not only with a pride in being Persian but also from being a Shia
nation for hundreds of years.
The resultant synthesis of Iranian culture and Shia Islam has imbued the
country's people with the spirit of martyrdom for the cause of honour and
liberation.
They are after all the "children of Imam Husayn", the grandson of
Islam's Prophet, who sacrificed himself and his followers at the Battle of
Karbala against an unjust ruler.
And in this existential war against what they consider to be the
"unjust" regimes of America and Israel, they are willing to endure
sacrifices which the average Westerner is unable to comprehend.
I had the honour and
pleasure this morning to have delivered an online lecture on the landmark Bonnyamphibious operation to the participants on this year's Naval Warfare Course
(NWC 10) at the Naval War College Nigeria.
The lecture was presented
to 34 participants as part of the Module on Naval History. The participating
officers are mainly from the Nigerian Navy but with a component from the
Nigerian Army, Nigerian Air force and foreign allied navies, coming this year from
Ghana, Cameroon and Liberia. They are generally middle cadre officers i.e.
Lieutenant Commanders, Commanders and their equivalents in the other armed
services.
My thanks go to Captain
Ikenna Okoloagu, the Sponsor Director of the lecture, as well as other staff at
the college including Commodore Akinrisola Obisesan and Brigadier General S.O.
Agada who spoke after I had concluded my lecture by fielding questions from the
participants.
A photograph of me on Call Night at the
Middle Temple, left, and a record of my Call to the Bar of England & Wales
in the Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, February 5th, 1991.
Last
month marked 35 years since my Call to the Bar of England and Wales at the
Honourable Society of the Middle Temple during Michaelmas Term, 1991.
I
had been among the pioneer intake of the Bar Vocational Course which had been
inaugurated by the Council of Legal Education (CLE) at the Inns of Court,
School of Law (ICSL). The CLE, a supervisory body established to by the four
Inns of Court to regulate the legal education of barristers in England and Wales,
founded the School in 1852.
Call
Night did not only signify the passing of formal assessments, it represented
the culmination of keeping dining terms, that is, attending 12 formal dinners
at my Inn, the Middle Temple.
The
origins of the Middle Temple lie in the acquisition by lawyers in the 14th
century of land that had once been the site of the headquarters of the Knights
Templar before their overthrow and abolishment. King James I formal granted the
Temple estate to the Inns of Court by letters patent in 1608. This Charter
established that the land be used to educate and accommodate lawyers in
perpetuity.
Among
the famous members of the Middle Temple were the writers Charles Dickens and John
Buchan.
I
was called at Middle Temple Hall, an Elizabethan building which survived the
Great Fire of London in 1666.
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