Morning music
Saturday quiz
Well, this week I scored the same as political journalist John Rentoul— 7/10. I did not know the answers to questions 6, 7, and 8 (in fact I had read about the last, but had forgotten it).
Historical note
On this day, 80 years ago, backstabbers attempted to kill Adolf Hitler and then to seize power in Berlin and over the Third Reich: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_July_plot.
Classical Hochverrat [“high treason”].
I am willing to accept that some of the conspirators acted out of a sense of higher duty, and with the idea of bringing a halt to the war on the Western Front, and so also bringing a halt to the devastating aerial bombing of Germany (which eventually killed as many as 800,000 people). However, to attempt the assassination of the head of both state and government at such a time of crisis can only be seen as treason, if the term has any meaning [see also https://ianrobertmillard.org/2020/01/08/treason-is-a-matter-of-timing/].
The conspirators wanted to call a halt, via armistice or truce, on the Western Front but continue to fight Stalin’s Soviet Union on the Eastern Front. They seem to have believed that the Americans and British would have accepted that. Not impossible, but very unlikely. Roosevelt and Churchill, at the Casablanca Conference in early 1943 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_Conference] had jointly called for the war against the German Reich to be fought until the latter declared unconditional surrender.
I cannot but feel some understanding of the motives of the 20 July 1944 conspirators, despite their treason, and despite their attempt to kill Hitler. They wanted to keep Germany, and all Central Europe, from being completely obliterated. They were unaware at the time of the progress being made by Jewish scientists in the USA towards the development of an atomic bomb (originally planned to be used against Germany, not —primarily— Japan); had they known of it, they would perhaps have felt doubly justified.
The 20 July plotters gambled for the highest stakes, and lost.
I do not “condone” the actions of the plotters; neither do I “condemn” them (and my views make no difference either way). Let history judge. Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht [“the history of the world is the judgment of the world”— Schiller].
Let us hope that creatures of evil such as Ursula von der Leyen do not succeed in provoking or instigating another such regional or world war, which would be, this time, even more devastating for Germany, all of Europe, and the world as a whole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_von_der_Leyen
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Britain 2024
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13652631/Roma-police-Leeds-riots-locals.html
“Inside the Roma community ‘persecuted’ by police: How violent Leeds riots were the latest act of lawlessness to hit a deprived suburb where ‘a problem for one is a problem for all‘.
Many have large families, and around 5,000 Roma are now believed to live in the deprived neighbourhood, attracted by its spacious three-story terraces and low house prices.
Harehills has long been one of the most ethnically diverse areas of Leeds.“
[Daily Mail]
Even that Daily Mail report, if you read it in full, bends over backwards to be “nice” and “liberal” towards the Roma Gypsy “community”.
If I comment here about the bastards, no doubt the “usual suspects” will make yet another malicious complaint to the police (our new poundland Stasi) about me, which would be (again) a bore and a nuisance, so I shall allow the readers of the blog to read between the lines, as in other police states.
More tweets
I have been blogging about that, and in greater detail, since 4 July 2024, and indeed even before then.
Ian Robert Millard 