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2021-12-25 Africa North

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Posted by badanov 2021-12-25 00:00|| || Front Page|| [16 views ] Top

#1 Oh... saw the headline and thought it was a Woke Opera company performing Timbuktu Tannhäuser-- ein minnesinger im blackface

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2021-12-25 04:05|| 2021-12-25 04:05|| Front Page Top

#2 “Never interfere with your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
~ Napoleon

Posted by Besoeker 2021-12-25 06:41|| 2021-12-25 06:41|| Front Page Top

#3 De Gaulle agreed with his predecessor. But he tried to warn his American friends not to take over from France in Indochine, as some Russians apparently want to do today in West Africa.

De Gaulle recalled:

"On May 31, 1961, President Kennedy arrived in Paris brimming over with dynamism, he and his dazzling and cultivated wife forming a remarkably attractive couple. They were surrounded by an atmosphere of lively curiosity, and the welcome they were given by the public was enthusiastic in the extreme.

"The official receptions In the capital and at Versailles were of the greatest splendor. But the main thing, of course, was the series of meetings between the President, seconded by Dean Rusk and Gavin, and myself accompanied by Debre Couve de Murville and Alphand.

"...what Kennedy offered me in every case was a share in his projects. What he heard from me in reply was that Paris was by all means disposed to collaborate closely with Washington, but that whatever France did she did of her own accord.

"When the President reverted to the question of the Congo where, at the instigation of the US, the U.N. Secretary‐General, Dag Hamrnarskjold, was setting up a government to replace that of Patrice Lumumba, I declined to have anything to do with the operation. But it was above all on the subject of Indochina that I pointed out to Kennedy how far apart our policies were. ...In South Vietnam, after having encouraged the seizure of dictatorial power by Ngo Dinh Diem and hastened the departure of the French advisers, ... Kennedy gave me to understand that the American aim was to establish a bulwark against the Soviets in the Indochinese peninsula. But instead of giving him the approval he wanted, I told President Kennedy that he was taking the wrong road.

“' You will find,' I said to him, 'that intervention in this area will be an endless entanglement. Once a nation has been aroused, no foreign power, however strong, can impose its will upon it. ...

“ 'We French have had experience of it. You Americans wanted to take our place in Indochina. Now you want to take over where we left off and revive a war which we brought to an end. I predict that you will sink step by step into a bottomless military and political quagmire, however much you spend in men and money.'

"Kennedy listened to me. But events were to prove that I had failed to convince."

- from the last volume of Gen. de Gaulle's “Memoirs of Hope, Renewal end Endeavor"

Posted by Merrick Ferret 2021-12-25 17:43|| 2021-12-25 17:43|| Front Page Top

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