London Blitzkrieg

by William H. Benson

September 6, 2018

     The German Nazis decided to launch an aerial attack upon London, England, on September 6, 1940. The command to attack England came from no less than Hermann Göring, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, and the Führer himself, Adolf Hitler.

     The two Nazi leaders believed that a series of terrorizing airstrikes would melt British willpower to fight. A submissive United Kingdom would then permit the Nazis opportunity to march troops into the Soviet Union unhindered, and there to surprise an unprepared Joseph Stalin.

     Yes, Stalin was unprepared, but the Nazi leaders misjudged the English people’s determination to never surrender, unlike the rest of Europe that had capitulated before the German military juggernaut.

     On the afternoon and evening of September 7, 1940, some 300 German bombers lifted off from airstrips in Europe, headed west, crossed the English Channel, circled over London, and dropped 337 tons of bombs on London, cutting short the lives of 448 London citizens.

     Each day thereafter for the the next fifty-seven days, a stream of German bombs reined down upon London’s helpless citizens, mainly at night. The total death toll climbed to over 40,000 during the London Blitzkrieg, and thousands of buildings across the city were leveled, reduced to rubble.

     The strange thing is that the Nazi’s bombing campaign on London failed to diminish British resolve even one iota. Instead, the English people’s sense of determination strengthened. They learned to withstand the bombs that the Germans dumped on them each night, and they lived with the hope that one day they could repay the damage to the Germans.

     Winston Churchill told London’s citizens over the radio, “We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be.

     “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields, in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” The English people believed Churchill.   

     Also, because the Germans lacked sufficient intelligence on the ground in England, their bombs often missed their targets and failed to cripple England’s munitions factories. Once the bombs began to fall on the city, management packed up and moved their factories out of London, to the countryside.

     Once a London building was bombed at night, English laborers would show up the next morning, set to work, and in three or four weeks remove the rubble. Some 1,700 freight trains transported some 750,000 tons of bombsite stones to the countryside in eastern England, where workers would lay them into the ground to construct airstrips.

     The following spring, London’s citizens saw the numerous empty plots, the bare ground where houses and buildings once stood, and there they planted vegetables—peas, carrots, beets, potatoes, and tomatoes—in order to ease wartime food shortages, and they called their plots “victory gardens.”

     An expression comes to mind. “When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade.” In other words, the English people converted the rubble of their lives into something useful, and in the bare spaces where the Germans wrecked and destroyed what once had stood there, they planted a garden.

     The day came when British and American bombers took off from airstrips in England, flew across the English Channel, and dropped their bombs upon Nazi Germany’s cities. Of the several German cities bombed, Dresden suffered horrible damage.

     Between February 13 and 15, 1945, in four separate raids, 722 British Royal Air Force bombers and 527 U.S. Army Air Force bombers dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs on Dresden, causing a horrific firestorm that destroyed over 1,600 acres, and killed some 25,000 German citizens. Because it was Shrove Tuesday, many of the dead children were dressed in carnival costumes.

     The English historian Paul Johnson said, “This was not the work of lunatics. It was the response of outraged democracies corrupted by the war that the Nazis had started.”

     Three months later, on May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered, and the Third Reich disintegrated.

     In Voltaire’s novel, Candide, the French author allows a character to say, “We must take care of our garden. When man was put into the Garden of Eden, it was with an intent to dress it, and this proves that man was not born to be idle.” In other words, everyone should cultivate their own garden, even if it is in an area where a house or a building once stood.

Pete Rose, Mike Tyson, Lance Armstrong, and Roger Clemens

by William H. Benson

August 23, 2018

     On August 23, 1989, Pete Rose accepted a settlement with Major League Baseball’s authorities that included a lifetime ban from the sport. A debate has raged ever since that he deserves better.

     During a twenty-four year career, from 1963 to 1986, Pete Rose hit 4,256 times at bat, still a world record. Also, Pete hit 160 home runs, had a .303 batting average, and played on three World Series Championship teams, twice for the Cincinnati Reds, and once for the Philadelphia Phillies. His impressive statistics make him one of baseball’s greatest players ever.

     And yet, Pete gambled. At first, he bet on football games and horse races, but then, in the 1970’s, rumors surfaced that he was betting on baseball games, and even on his own team.

     He did this, even though he knew of Major League Baseball’s rule 21(d), that states “a player faces a ban of one year for betting on any baseball game, and a lifetime ban for betting on his own team.” Signs stuck on clubhouse walls remind all players that the penalties for gambling are heavy.

     In 1989, an investigation revealed that, as manager of the Cincinnati Reds, Pete Rose was placing bets on the outcome of his own team’s games. Although he denied the charges then, years later, in 2004, he published his book, My Prison Without Bars, and confessed that the allegations were true.

     On November 22, 1986, Mike Tyson earned the title of world heavy-weight boxing champion. At twenty years of age, he became the youngest champion ever, and he defended his title twenty-three times, before Buster Douglas defeated Tyson on February 11, 1990.

     And yet, Mike Tyson had a spending problem. The fourteenth highest paid athlete ever, Mike Tyson filed for bankruptcy in 2003, after making and spending $700 million. A lavish life-style, two divorces, a less-than-scrupulous promoter named Don King, and legal troubles—due to his rape conviction in March of 1992—all contributed to his financial collapse.

     After serving three years in prison, Tyson returned to the ring to fight the world heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield on June 28, 1997. During the third round, when Tyson and Holyfield were locked in a clinch, Tyson bit off a one-inch piece of cartilage from Holyfield’s right ear.

     The referee allowed the fight to continue, but Tyson again bit down on Holyfield’s left ear, scarring it, forcing the referee to disqualify Tyson and end the fight.

     Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France bicycle race an astonishing seven consecutive times, from 1999 through 2005, after his diagnosis and treatment for testicular cancer in 1996.

     And yet, in order to win, Armstrong cheated. He took drugs, “performance enhancing drugs” and “human growth hormones,” that gave him an advantage. Certain drugs saved Armstrong’s life when cancer nearly ended it, and other drugs helped him win a series of seven bicycle races.

     In 2012, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released a detailed report that included devastating sworn statements from several of Armstrong’s former teammates, including Floyd Landis, a government-protected whistleblower. The same agency banned Armstrong from all future competition, and the International Cycling Union then stripped him of his seven Tour de France wins.

     On January 17, 2013, Armstrong appeared on Oprah Winfrey and confessed that he had resorted to drugs in order to win races. Then, last April, Armstrong agreed to pay the federal government $5 million, to settle a civil fraud case. The U.S. Postal Service had paid $31 million between 2001 and 2004, to sponsor Armstrong’s team. Altogether, Armstrong’s deception has cost him “$100 million.”

     Roger Clemens, pitcher for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, appeared on 60 Minutes on January 6, 2008, and told Mike Wallace, “I work hard.” As for illegal substances, that “never happened.”

     On February 13, 2008, Clemens appeared before a Congressional committee and said, “I never use anabolic steroids or human growth hormone.” Two years later, on August 9, 2010, a grand jury indicted Clemens for making, what they believed were, false statements to Congress in 2008.

     At Clemens’s first trial in 2011, the judge declared it a mistrial, and, at the second, in June of 2012, the jury declared Clemens not guilty on all six counts of lying to Congress.

     Pete Rose gambled, and forfeited a spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Mike Tyson declared bankruptcy, was convicted of rape, and chomped down on ears. Lance Armstrong turned to drugs to win the Tour de France, but Roger Clemens’s guilt or innocence remains uncertain. He refused to confess to anything. Perhaps he was innocent.

“Good Morning, Vietnam”

by William H. Benson

August 9, 2018

     Two Viet Cong terrorists—Hynh Phi Long and Le Van Ray—parked their bicycles on the riverbank across from My Canh, the Mekong Floating Restaurant, in Saigon, and left behind bags strapped to their bikes’ handlebars that contained bombs aimed at the restaurant. The first bomb detonated at 8:15 p.m., on Friday, June 26, 1965, and the second, just minutes later.

     In Vietnamese, My Canh means “beautiful view.” It was a vessel, or a barge, that floated in the Mekong River, in downtown Saigon, connected to the riverbank by a twenty-five foot long gangplank, a popular establishment frequented by the Vietnamese, as well as by the French and American soldiers and civilian advisors. More than one hundred people were relaxing and dining on the barge that night.

     The twin bombs killed thirty-two people at the restaurant, including thirteen Americans. More than forty-two more were wounded. Minutes after the blasts, Maxwell Taylor, the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, arrived at the scene to survey the carnage. “He shook his head, got back into his car, unable to believe what had just happened.”

     Norman Schwarzkopf, a newly-minted officer and a West Point graduate, had arrived in South Vietnam that same day. He and another officer had wanted to dine that evening at My Canh, but due to jet lag they had selected the roof garden cafe atop their hotel, the Majestic.

     “We had just placed our orders when wham,” recalled Schwarzkopf in his 1993 autobiography, “It Doesn’t Take a Hero.” From the roof, he and his friend looked down and saw the wounded customers moving slowly across the walkway to shore. He said, “I watched as the second explosion blasted them from the gangplank into the water. That was my welcome to Vietnam.”

     An American airman name Adrian Cronauer had finished dinner and walked across the gangplank, but was still in the area, visiting with friends, when the two bombs exploded. He worked as a radio announcer, and wanted to report on his next day’s morning show, Dawn Buster, the bloodshed he had witnessed, but his superiors refused, because, they said, “it had not been officially confirmed yet.”

     Cronauer later said, “But I had seen it. I was there. All the news agencies knew! No; censorship ruled.” He decided to “swallow the stupidity and obey.”

     Headlines called it, “The Terrorist Attack that Shook the World.” The horrific crime was an example of maximum impact. “It was a trendy location during prime time, Friday evening, just after 8 o’clock, an international venue, and only a few blocks away from foreign news bureaus.”

     During the previous six months, the Viet Cong had bombed Saigon’s Brinks Hotel, the U.S. Embassy, and the airport terminal, but those terrorist acts had failed to shock the public and ignite the outrage that the bombing at My Canh did.  

     Fifteen years later, in the late 1970’s Adrian Cronauer wrote a script for a possible television show based on his experiences in Vietnam, similar to M.A.S.H. Years passed and his script languished in the reject pile. A movie producer saw the script, and converted it into the 1988 movie, Good Morning, Vietnam, that starred Robin Williams, a fictional account of Cronauer’s experiences.   

     Like Robin Williams did in the movie, Cronauer did stretch out the word “good,” but as a delay so that he could find the next record to play or the next page of news.

     Cronauer admitted that “if I had acted in real life as Robin Williams did in the film, I would still be serving time in the military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.” The one scene in the film not fictional though was the bombing of the restaurant, but called “Jimmy Wahs.”

     Cronauer said, “When I was stationed in Vietnam, I did interviews with the troops out in the field, and one of the reactions I got from them was frustration. They would be in hot pursuit of an enemy unit, but they would have to disengage because the unit would cross over some invisible barrier or border. Vietnam was fought as a no-win war.”

     Adrian Cronauer met Robin Williams at the film’s premiere showing. “The two men shook hands, and Williams said he was glad to meet Cronauer, who replied that he was glad to meet himself too.”

     Adrian Cronauer passed away last month on July 18, 2018, age seventy-nine, and Norman Schwarzkopf died December 27, 2012, age seventy-eight, both men veterans of the Vietnam war.

Liberia and Universal Basic Income

by William H. Benson

July 26, 2018

     According to the World Bank, of the world’s 872.3 million people who lived below the poverty line in 2014, 179.6 million, or 20% of the total, lived in India, and yet the ten poorest countries in the world lie with Africa. Officials in governments across Africa struggle with the rankest forms of poverty.

     For example, the west African country of Liberia ranks as the world’s fourth poorest country with a gross domestic product per capita of $934, or $2.65 earned per day for each of its 4.6 million people.

     Liberia, though, is one of the few countries in the world to experiment with “universal basic income,” a social program designed to help its ultra-poor.

     From 2009 until 2014, the European Union, plus Japan, deposited funds into Liberia’s “Social Cash Transfer Program.” Then, from it, Liberia’s officials issued monthly cash payments, equal to $200 in U.S. money, to slum residents in two of Liberia’s poorest counties: Bomi and Maryland.

     The results astonished officials, who expected people to squander the money on alcohol, drugs, trinkets, or gambling. Instead, the recipients spent the biggest share on food, no surprise there, but also on school, business enterprises, agricultural inputs, savings, and housing. Yes, even savings!

    One-third started their own businesses, and often they succeeded because their neighbors had the funds to spend, to purchase others’ products. The economy expanded with producers and consumers.

     Nathan Heller, author of a New Yorker article this month, said, “Universal Basic Income is, so far, a program that lives in people’s heads, untried on a national scale.” In addition to Liberia, officials in Kenya, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, Namibia, Uganda, India, and Switzerland have dabbled with U.B.I. on a small and temporary scale, and the results in each are either similar to Liberia’s or mixed.

     Some economists and thinkers approve of U.B.I. They point to the reduced poverty, the participants’ improved health, the new business ventures, the created jobs, the reduced school dropout rate, and women’s expanded power.

     With U.B.I., boys and girls now attend school, whereas before, their parents insisted they help on the farm or in the garden or at a job to produce sufficient food for the family to prevent hunger and starvation. The African country of Namibia ran a “Basic Income Grant” from 2007 until 2012, and witnessed its school dropout rate fall from 40% to 5% and finally to near 0%.

     Because women receive a cash payment from U.B.I. also, they no longer feel helpless and dependent upon a man—father, boyfriend, husband, or lover—for money to buy food or clothing.

     Critics though denounce U.B.I., because the social program takes dollars from the “few” who pay taxes and redistributes it to “everyone.” Heller says, “People have a visceral reaction to the idea of U.B.I.,” and that some “find such payments monstrous, a model of waste and unearned rewards.”

     Critics also say that U.B.I. reduces men and women’s incentive to work, and that the temptation to squander the cash payments on alcohol or drugs remains strong.

     The major criticism though is the price tag. One U.B.I. proponent, Annie Lowrey, “thinks a U.B.I. in the United States should be a thousand dollars monthly. This means $3.9 trillion a year, close to the current expenditure of the entire federal government.”

     In other words, if implemented in the United States, U.B.I. would double the federal government’s current expenditures. How to pay for a social program of that size? Lowrey suggests “new taxes on income, carbon, estates, pollution, etc.”

     Andrew Yang, a Democrat, is running for U.S. President in 2020, and he suggests that the Federal government should adopt U.B.I. Yang is the forty-three-year old son of immigrant parents from Taiwan, and is the founder of the non-profit, Venture for America.

     To pay for U.B.I., Yang suggests a Value Added Tax. Most European countries have now initiated this new tax, that assesses a tax at each step along the production chain.

     In addition to new taxes, some U.B.I. proponents call for a rollback of all existing social programs. They “see U.B.I. as a clean, crisp way of replacing gnarled government bureaucracy.”

     In other words, match new taxes to monthly cash payments and eradicate current Federal programs. This all seems extreme, “a quantum leap in social policy.” Nathan Heller asks, “Will the public stand for such a bold measure—and if so, could it ever work?” He provides few answers.    

J. K. Rowling

by William H. Benson

July 13, 2018

     Recently, I discovered that I can watch on YouTube certain commencement addresses at Harvard.

     In May this year, Mark Zuckerberg spoke, and last year it was Steven Spielberg’s turn. In 2013, Oprah Winfrey spoke, and Bill Gates in 2007. Other speakers include: Michael Bloomberg, David Souter, the late Daniel Moynihan, Alan Greenspan, Al Gore, and Colin Powell. This is a distinguished list, but the best, I think, is Joanne Rowling, aka J. K. Rowling, who spoke on June 5, 2008.

     I admit that I have never read any of J. K.’s Harry Potter books, because I do not enjoy the fantasy genre. A few weeks ago, in June, the media noted that twenty years have passed since the publication of her first Harry Potter book. I have listened to her recent crime detective novels that she writes under the pen name Robert Galbraith. They are ok, but I prefer Sue Grafton, Dick Francis, or Robert Parker.

     Harvard holds its commencement outside, in the Tercentenary Theatre area, between Widener Hall and the Memorial Church. On YouTube, she walks to the microphone and appears frightened, vulnerable, even intimidated, and she admits as much in her opening statement. She does not dwell on her phenomenal success with Harry Potter, but mentions her creation only in passing. 

     She begins with a few jokes about her own college graduation from Exeter College in the U.K., and then she turns serious. “I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the twenty-one years that have expired between that day and this.”

     She thought of two answers: “the benefits of failure,” and “the crucial importance of imagination.”

     To please her parents, she had agreed to study German and French at Exeter, majors that they thought more useful than literature, her first choice, but as soon as they drove away, she said, “I ditched German and scuttled off down to the Classics corridor.” She admits that there is no subject “less useful than Greek mythology for securing the keys to the executive bathroom.”

     After J. K. graduated from Exeter, she worked at a few temporary jobs, and then confessed, “a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. A short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain.”

     She tells the graduates that she “will not tell you that failure is fun,” but that it is “a stripping away of the inessential,” and that for her, “I was set free. I was still alive, and I had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.”

     She then turns to her second topic, the importance of imagination, but she takes an unexpected turn.

     At one of her day jobs after graduation, she had worked “at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.” It was her job to open the mail and read the letters of torture victims, who begged for help. She stared at the photographs. She read their words. The victims had smuggled the documents out of the African countries where rape and murder were constant terrors.

     She says, “Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.” Also, she says, “Every day I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically-elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.”

     She wonders about the reasons behind the brutality, and she arrives at the conclusion that “many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages. They close their minds and hearts to any suffering. They refuse to know.” In other words, they have no empathy, no capacity to know what their victims are feeling, no ability to imagine. They are cruel.

     Near the end of her address, J. K. quotes an ancient Greek, whose works she studied at Exeter. “Plutarch said, ‘What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.’ This is an astonishing statement, and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world.”

     She then advises the Harvard graduates of 2008 to stay close to, and remain friends with, their fellow graduates. She says, “At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again.” Indeed, I agree, it will not.

     J. K. finishes with a second quote from a Classic author, this one from the ancient Roman, Seneca, who said, “As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”