Ojukwu warned us against another Biafra war - Ikokwu

                         
Chief Guy Ikokwu who fought alongside Chief Chukwuemeka
Odumegwu Ojukwu during the Biafra civil war has urged Igbos
clamouring for an independent Biafra state to desist from it
and heed to the warning of Ojukwu who warned that another
Biafra war must never be fought.

In an interview with Vanguard, Ikokwu who was a second
republic politician and Anambra State Chairman of the defunct
Nigeria Peoples Party however urged the federal government to
realize the agitation was a wake-up call to restructure the
country.

He said: ‘’Generally speaking and in line with what Chief
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, who was the first leader of
Biafra said, our people should not go for a second civil war. It
is in public domain. It is on Youtube and video. Anybody can
play it and listen to what he said.

“Saying that, he said history should be a lesson not only for
Nigeria but also for Igbo people and that the grave
implications of a civil war are such that the initiators do not
normally know where it would end and who and who would
suffer.

“In the first civil war, the majority of those who suffered were
the innocent people. More than a million people died and they
were not the ones who started the war or were fighting the
war.

“He said a second civil is not in the best interest of Nigeria,
that Nigeria should learn its own lesson and understand that
the Igbo always add value to anywhere they go. To any
situation they are called upon, they add value. They never go
anywhere to deteriorate the existing situation.

“Not only that they are so flexible that they can change their
culture – language and dressing that they and the natives will
almost look alike; that the main thing Nigeria should do is to
restructure the country into fiscal federalism as our founding
fathers – Herbert Macauley, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi
Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Dennis Osadebey, MI Okpara , etc,
who agitated and got. They fought for a federal structure and
this is embedded in our national anthem – in diversity we
stand, there is unity in diversity.

‘’That is where the Igbo stand. There should be unity in
diversity. We should use the diverse abilities of each group. The
Yoruba have where they excel. The Urhobo, Hausa, Fulani, Tiv,
Nupe, Kanuri, etc, each have where they excel. Use all these
diversifications to promote a united front so that on the whole,
the whole nation will rise up and be better for it.

“That is where we stand. There should be justice, equity and
fair-play. Once these three things are given, you will not find
any more resentment or demonstration by youths. At the
moment, majority of Nigerians believe in the six zonal
structure.


On the continued detention of Nnamdi Kanu, Ikokwu said it
was his release was important as the Radio Biafra he manged
was not a crime.

‘’The issue of Radio Biafra is not treasonable. Radio Biafra is
digital instrument registered in United Kingdom or America.
“It is not the first time. Professor Wole Soyinka had Radio
Kudirat, done abroad and broadcasting to Nigeria. NADECO
endorsed such foreign radios by Nigerians.


“It is a matter of freedom of information. If Kanu is guilty of
treason on account of Radio Biafra then millions of Nigerians
are guilty of treason in the social media because it is a digital
matter now. You take your smart phone and say whatever you
like – good, bad, rubbish, exemplary, etc.”

Source:Vanguard

Chief Guy Ikokwu who fought alongside Chief Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu during the Biafra civil war has urged Igbos clamouring for an independent Biafra state to desist from it and heed to the warning of Ojukwu who warned that another Biafra war must never be fought. In an interview with Vanguard, Ikokwu who was a second republic politician and Anambra State Chairman of the defunct Nigeria Peoples Party however urged the federal government to realize the agitation was a wake-up call to restructure the country.
Read more: https://www.naij.com/777018-ojukwu-warned-igbos-dont-want-listen-biafra-war-hero.html

Remote Freelance Academic Writer wanted | pay: $12 per 250-word page

                 
Seeking freelance writers with strong academic background and aptitude who speak and write English with native fluency and/or are native English speakers. Write in your area of specialty from your own location. This is a part-time freelance position as an academic ghostwriter offering above industry standard page-rate compensation. Our rates start at $12 per 250-word page with higher rates depending on the degree of difficulty, your level of expertise, and the time allowed to complete the project (starting rates for other US or Canadian firms are around $8-10 per 250 word page).

While we welcome applications from persons of all academic backgrounds (social sciences, humanities, science, etc.), we are especially interested in writers with nursing, public health, health sciences, business, finance and/or economic backgrounds and degrees (including PhD candidates) as well as writers with quantitative skills, science and legal backgrounds. We welcome applications from mature/older writers as well as applications from recent graduates. We are interested in hearing from academic writers who have current or past experience with other academic writing firms, as well as from writers without such experience but who have strong academic backgrounds.

Please be aware that this is a part-time, freelance opportunity, not a full-time position as a statutory employee. (You will be a "1099" independent contractor.) The job provides the opportunity to work at your own location, on your own schedule, and in an area of your own interest and expertise. This is a great opportunity for stay-at-home Moms and Dads, established freelancers seeking an additional income stream, and qualified individuals looking for supplemental income. While it would be unreasonable to suggest that the position affords "unlimited earning potential", it offers ambitious and hard-working writers earnings flexibility and the potential to earn full-time level income.

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Have your own writing/research tools; be able to write upper-division university-level academic essays and reports; have a strong academic background; have access to an academic research library and/or online academic databases (e.g., EBSCO, ProQuest, JSTOR); be willing to actually go to an academic library on some occasions; be able to deliver work as formatted Microsoft Word documents; meet deadlines; be able to produce expertly written, well-referenced and plagiarism free documents; be familiar with standard academic citation styles (MLA, APA, Turabian, Harvard, etc.) and be able to produce documents that comply perfectly with citation style requirements; have or be able to obtain a PayPal account to receive funds; and have a phone number and permanent email at which you can be reliably reached.

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Prior to beginning work, all writers are required to sign a contract which includes work-for-hire and anti-plagiarism provisions. Evidence of plagiarism in any work a writer produces for us is grounds for immediate termination and voiding of the contract. Prior to being paid for your first project, all writers are required to complete an IRS Form W-9 (Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Verification)for our files. In March of each year, if you were paid $600 or more for work you completed for us, you will receive an IRS Form 1099. Please do not use this application as an exercise in creative writing. We will require you to provide verification of your academic credentials. We are interested in good academic writers from all backgrounds and ultimately, the quality of writing trumps the impressiveness of your academic pedigree. Applicants who we feel are well-qualified for the position may be asked to submit an additional brief academic writing sample on a topic of our choosing prior to beginning work.

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Respond by email to writerjob@gmx.com Please include in a SINGLE plain text email: 1) a brief cover letter introducing yourself, stating why you are a good candidate for this position, and summarizing your access to academic research databases and/or academic libraries; 2) a plain text resume/summary of your experience and educational background/qualifications; and 3) a brief 500-1200 word sample (may be an extract rather than an entire paper) of your original unpublished academic writing. Please try to submit something that shows your research as well as your writing skills. Writing samples indicating proficiency in the fields of business, management, economics, and/or nursing will attract our preferential attention. Be sure to include your phone number; we will not respond to applications without phone numbers. Do NOT include attachments; respond exactly as indicated.

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We will be reviewing applications and contacting potential writers over the next few weeks (and certainly for at least as long as this advertisement is still visible). Due to the anticipated high volume of responses (based on past experience) we regret that we are unable to respond individually to all applicants. Please understand that our initial review process often takes a week or two, depending upon other business demands. If you meet our initial screening process and impress us with your writing sample, we will contact you and ask you to send your verification of academic credentials and to complete a very brief writing assignment on a topic and in a format of our choosing (you will be able to choose from a few options and you will be provided with a style sheet). Qualified applicants who successfully complete this step will be contacted to arrange a time for a telephone interview with the person who will make the final hiring decision. Such interviews are generally scheduled for the afternoons or evenings and can be scheduled on Saturday or Sunday (as well as during the week) if that works with your schedule. We are unable to schedule initial telephone interviews during morning hours.

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CONTACT INFORMATION:

Questions / applications: writerjob@gmx.com

Aug. 17, 1991:The Soviet Coup That Failed

                                 

THE plot was hatched at a bathhouse in downtown Moscow. At midmorning on Saturday, Aug. 17, 1991, the head of the K.G.B., Vladimir A. Kryuchkov, summoned five senior Soviet officials for a highly secretive meeting that he told them would be vital for the future of the U.S.S.R.

Wrapped in towels in the steam room, and later while cooling down over vodka and Scotch, the half-dozen die-hard Communist apparatchiks outlined a plan to overthrow the Soviet government. For the Soviet spymaster, the prime minister, defense minister and the other paunchy, half-naked co-conspirators, the stakes could not have been higher. And they had to act quickly.

The country was in a shambles, and the chaos of democracy and nationalism threatened to destroy it entirely, the K.G.B. chief warned. The Baltic states had already moved toward independence and something had to be done to silence Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, the noisy, newly elected president of the Russian republic, whose belligerent, man-of-the-people style made him by far the most popular politician in the country, mainly because of his attacks on the privileges of the Communist Party elite.

Likewise, the coup plotters insisted, the weak and spineless Soviet president and party boss, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, had to go. He had proposed signing a new treaty that would turn the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics into a looser federation of autonomous states, most of which intended to turn their backs on socialism. The treaty would mean the end of the U.S.S.R., and that could not be tolerated.

A plan was hastily formulated. One group of conspirators flew to Crimea, where Mr. Gorbachev was on vacation, with the goal of forcing him to abandon the treaty or resign. If he refused, a regiment of K.G.B. troops would hold him captive indefinitely at his seaside villa. The others would stay in Moscow, ready to take over the levers of power and use force to assert their authority if challenged.

A list was drawn up of the names of 200 people who would be immediately arrested, the first of whom was Yeltsin. The Lefortovo prison in Moscow was emptied in preparation for new prisoners, and 250,000 pairs of handcuffs were ordered to be sent to Moscow from a factory in Pskov.

Not one of the conspirators counseled caution or seemed to consider the law of unintended consequences: within a few days their ill-prepared coup attempt would bring forward all that they feared most. Their “patriotic action” would once and for all remove their beloved U.S.S.R. from the map.

The coup was a fiasco from the start. Mr. Gorbachev refused to resign or to shun the treaty. At dawn on Aug. 19, Muscovites woke to the announcement on radio and TV that an Emergency Committee had been formed to govern the country. Then, for several hours, the state-controlled airwaves went dead — except for a continuous loop of “Swan Lake” that played for hours. Most Muscovites were unaffected by the coup; their principal memories of it are the sound of Tchaikovsky.

The drama was confined to one small area — around the White House in Moscow, home of Russia’s Parliament — and lasted a few hours. The bungling putschists failed to arrest any of their targets or to control communications, and soldiers refused to fire on the crowds outside the White House.

To his own amazement, Yeltsin was not apprehended at the start of the operation. Indeed, the central image of the August coup is of a brave and vigorous Yeltsin climbing onto a tank to make a defiant statement denouncing the plotters. And he retained a telephone line enabling him to coordinate his support. This stirring scene was foolishly allowed to be shown on TV that evening, turning the obscure Yeltsin into a figure of world significance overnight.

The joke swiftly went around Moscow that you knew Communism must be through in Russia when the Bolsheviks couldn’t even mount a proper coup. At a news conference that evening, the nominal head of the Emergency Committee, the Soviet vice president, Gennadi I. Yanayev, was seen in public for the first time. A gray 53-year-old bureaucrat with nicotine-stained fingers and a shiny suit, he was visibly drunk. When he told the lie that Mr. Gorbachev was ill, his hands shook and his hairpiece began to slip.

For all the tragedy and farce of those three August days, the world has plenty for which to thank the incompetent conspirators who hastened the fall of an empire. Less than a week after the coup fizzled, two of its leaders killed themselves, the others were in jail and the Communist Party they sought to save was banned. Yeltsin, the party’s principal assassin, was the most powerful man in the country.

For a generation, the failure of Soviet Communism had been evident for all to see. The great experiment that once bred idealism ended in food lines and prison camps. Marx believed that man could be made perfect; Communists found that people had an irritating way of refusing to be perfected.

Yet despite the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989, hardly anyone in the summer of 1991 predicted that the U.S.S.R. itself would fall apart by the end of the year. It might have limped on for decades, as the Ottoman Empire did in the late 19th century, dying slowly amid civil wars. Yet the second most powerful country in the world simply withered away, not in the classical Marxist sense, but it literally ceased to exist. And the manner of its going was one of the best things. The Soviet people destroyed the Soviet Union, not outsiders, and not through violent conflict.

BUT what followed has not been a democratic idyll. Despite the putsch’s failure, some Soviet residue remains — a “coup culture” that breeds a winner-take-all view of politics. In Russia today, there is no concept of a loyal opposition, no separation of powers, no mass participation in political life and a news media that is far from free.

There was a fleeting opportunity for liberal democracy and genuine free markets to emerge in Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. But Yeltsin did little to develop civil society, the rule of law, the emergence of viable political parties or a modernized economy after the failed 1991 coup. A few people became very rich, adopting methods reminiscent of, but even more ruthless than, the 19th-century robber barons in the United States. But a middle class with a stake in how the country is run barely exists.

Yeltsin’s corrupt cronyism encouraged a gangster capitalism from which Russia is still suffering. But the few years that he and Mr. Gorbachev led the country together seem today a halcyon period for freedom in Russia.

Yeltsin’s handpicked successor, Vladimir V. Putin, reversed the few fledgling democratic reforms that had been made, turning Russia into a country that merely goes through the motions of democracy every few years while power remains concentrated in the same hands. Mr. Putin replaced a one-party state with a one-clique state of people around him — a pattern replicated elsewhere in the former Soviet Union — financed almost entirely by booming oil and gas revenues.

Today, he is one of the few to lament the Soviet Union’s passing. Mr. Putin, who in 1991 was a middle-ranking intelligence officer in St. Petersburg, left the K.G.B. during the coup. To him the collapse of the U.S.S.R. was “a major geopolitical disaster of the century.”

But for the millions who had to endure life under the Soviet yoke — born in bloodshed and kept alive for decades through intimidation — its end was long overdue.

Still,years later, as Mr. Putin’s continuing influence and popularity attest, the traditional Russian ideal of a strongman in the Kremlin remains. And depressing as it is, if dire economic times come again, a coup d’état still seems as likely a way as any for political change to occur in Russia or many former Soviet states. The Bolsheviks may have disappeared for good when Yeltsin climbed atop a tank in August 1991, but the legacy of authoritarian rule lingers.

Written By VICTOR SEBESTYEN

Victor Sebestyen is a Hungarian-born journalist and the author of “Revolution 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire.”

1945 Vietnam independence proclaimed

                                       
Hours after Japan’s surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. The proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence in declaring, “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!” and was cheered by an enormous crowd gathered in Hanoi’s Ba Dinh Square. It would be 30 years, however, before Ho’s dream of a united, communist Vietnam became reality.
Born in 1890, Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam as a cook on a French steamer in 1911. After several years as a seaman, he lived in London and then moved to France, where he became a founding member of the French Communist Party in 1920. He later traveled to the Soviet Union, where he studied revolutionary tactics and took an active role in the Communist International. In 1924, he went to China, where he set about organizing exiled Vietnamese communists. Expelled by China in 1927, he traveled extensively before returning to Vietnam in 1941.
There, he organized a Vietnamese guerrilla organization–the Viet Minh–to fight for Vietnamese independence. Japan occupied French Indochina in 1940 and collaborated with French officials loyal to France’s Vichy regime. Ho, meanwhile, made contact with the Allies and aided operations against the Japanese in South China. In early 1945, Japan ousted the French administration in Vietnam and executed numerous French officials.
When Japan formally surrendered to the Allies on September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh felt emboldened enough to proclaim the independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam. French forces seized southern Vietnam and opened talks with the Vietnamese communists. These talks collapsed in 1946, and French warships bombarded the northern Vietnamese city of Haiphong, killing thousands.
In response, the Viet Minh launched an attack against the French in Hanoi on December 19, 1945–the beginning of the First Indochina War. During the eight-year war, Mao Zedong’s Chinese communists supported the Viet Minh, while the United States aided the French and anti-communist Vietnamese forces. In 1954, the French suffered a major defeat at Dien Bien Phu, in northwest Vietnam, prompting peace negotiations and the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at a conference in Geneva. Vietnam was divided into northern and southern regions, with Ho in command of North Vietnam and Emperor Bao Dai in control of South Vietnam.
In the late 1950s, Ho Chi Minh organized a communist guerrilla movement in the South, called the Viet Cong. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong successfully opposed a series of ineffectual U.S.-backed South Vietnam regimes and beginning in 1964 withstood a decade-long military intervention by the United States. Ho Chi Minh died on September 2, 1969, 25 years after declaring Vietnam’s independence from France and nearly six years before his forces succeeded in reuniting North and South Vietnam under communist rule. Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after it fell to the communists in 1975.

Culled from the Internet

History:Sep 01, 1945 -Japan surrenders to end WWII

                              
Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II.
By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing of Japanese cities had left the country and its economy devastated. At the end of June, the Americans captured Okinawa, a Japanese island from which the Allies could launch an invasion of the main Japanese home islands. U.S. General Douglas MacArthur was put in charge of the invasion, which was code-named “Operation Olympic” and set for November 1945.
The invasion of Japan promised to be the bloodiest seaborne attack of all time, conceivably 10 times as costly as the Normandy invasion in terms of Allied casualties. On July 16, a new option became available when the United States secretly detonated the world’s first atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Ten days later, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, demanding the “unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces.” Failure to comply would mean “the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitable the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.” On July 28, Japanese Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki responded by telling the press that his government was “paying no attention” to the Allied ultimatum. U.S. President Harry Truman ordered the devastation to proceed, and on August 6, the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing an estimated 80,000 people and fatally wounding thousands more.
After the Hiroshima attack, a faction of Japan’s supreme war council favored acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, but the majority resisted unconditional surrender. On August 8, Japan’s desperate situation took another turn for the worse when the USSR declared war against Japan. The next day, Soviet forces attacked in Manchuria, rapidly overwhelming Japanese positions there, and a second U.S. atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese coastal city of Nagasaki.
Just before midnight on August 9, Japanese Emperor Hirohito convened the supreme war council. After a long, emotional debate, he backed a proposal by Prime Minister Suzuki in which Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration “with the understanding that said Declaration does not compromise any demand that prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as the sovereign ruler.” The council obeyed Hirohito’s acceptance of peace, and on August 10 the message was relayed to the United States.
Early on August 12, the United States answered that “the authority of the emperor and the Japanese government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers.” After two days of debate about what this statement implied, Emperor Hirohito brushed the nuances in the text aside and declared that peace was preferable to destruction. He ordered the Japanese government to prepare a text accepting surrender.
In the early hours of August 15, a military coup was attempted by a faction led by Major Kenji Hatanaka. The rebels seized control of the imperial palace and burned Prime Minister Suzuki’s residence, but shortly after dawn the coup was crushed. At noon that day, Emperor Hirohito went on national radio for the first time to announce the Japanese surrender. In his unfamiliar court language, he told his subjects, “we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.” The United States immediately accepted Japan’s surrender.
President Truman appointed MacArthur to head the Allied occupation of Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. For the site of Japan’s formal surrender, Truman chose the USS Missouri, a battleship that had seen considerable action in the Pacific and was named after Truman’s native state. MacArthur, instructed to preside over the surrender, held off the ceremony until September 2 in order to allow time for representatives of all the major Allied powers to arrive.
On Sunday, September 2, more than 250 Allied warships lay at anchor in Tokyo Bay. The flags of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China fluttered above the deck of the Missouri. Just after 9 a.m. Tokyo time, Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed on behalf of the Japanese government. General Yoshijiro Umezu then signed for the Japanese armed forces, and his aides wept as he made his signature.
Supreme Commander MacArthur next signed on behalf of the United Nations, declaring, “It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.” Ten more signatures were made, by the United States, China, Britain, the USSR, Australia, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, respectively. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz signed for the United States. As the 20-minute ceremony ended, the sun burst through low-hanging clouds. The most devastating war in human history was over.

After 19 days,Sep 19, 1939,the Polish Army collapses

                                    
Poland had been reborn as an independent nation after World War I and the collapse of Austria-Hungary, Russia, and Germany. Polish borders had been partly re-established by the Versailles Treaty but a series of armed conflicts with Germany, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, and Ukrainian nationalists, as well as a major war with the Soviet Union, gave the borders their final shape.
 During the course of the Polish-Soviet War (1919-20), Poland had been forced to rely on her own resources as help from the Western Allies had been slow in coming or had actively blocked by pro-communist unions in Europe. Because of the Polish-Soviet war and continuing Soviet efforts at infiltration thereafter, Polish military and political planning focused primarily on a future conflict with the Soviets. To this end, the Poles developed alliances with Rumania and Latvia. Poland's policy toward Germany was based on her alliance with France, but Polish-Czech relations remained cool. The problem with the French alliance, as far as the Poles were concerned, was the instability in French politics which resulted in constant indecision about the eastern alliances. As governments rose and fell in regular succession, French policies toward Poland and other allies changed.
ww2dbaseGerman military leaders had begun planning for war with Poland as early as the mid 1920s. Recovering the ethnically Polish territory of Pomerania, Poznan, and Silesia, as well as the largely German Free City of Danzig were the major objectives. Nevertheless, the restrictions of Versailles and Germany's internal weakness made such plans impossible to realize. Hitler's rise to power in 1933 capitalized on German's desire to regain lost territories, to which Nazi leaders added the goal of destroying an independent Poland. According to author Alexander Rossino, prior to the war Hitler was at least as anti-Polish as anti-Semitic in his opinions. That same year, Poland's Marshal Jozef Pilsudski proposed to the French a plan for a joint invasion to remove Hitler from power, which the French vetoed as mad warmongering.
ww2dbaseIn 1934, however, the Germans signed a non-aggression pact with Poland, providing a kind of breathing space for both countries. German efforts to woo Poland into an anti-Soviet alliance were politely deferred as Poland attempted to keep her distance from both powerful neighbors. As German power began to grow, however, and Hitler increasingly threatened his neighbors, the Poles began to revitalize their alliance but it backfired on them.
.Poland's strategic position in 1939 was weak, but not hopeless. German control over Slovakia added significantly to Poland's already overly long frontier. German forces could attack Poland from virtually any direction.
ww2dbasePoland's major weakness, however, was its lack of a modernized military. In the 1920s, Poland had had the world's first all-metal air force, but had since fallen behind other powers. Poland was a poor, agrarian nation without significant industry. While Polish weapons design was often equal or superior to German and Soviet design, it simply lacked the capacity to produce equipment in the needed quantities. One example was the P-37 Łos bomber, which at start of the war was the world's best medium bomber. Another example was the "Ur" anti-tank rifle which was the first weapon to use tungsten-core ammunition.
ww2dbaseTo motorize a single division to German standards would have required use of all the civilian cars and trucks in the country. This occurred despite heroic efforts by Polish society to create a modern military which included fundraising among civilians and the Polish communities in the USA to buy modern equipment. As a percentage of GNP, Polish defense spending in the 1930s was second in Europe, behind the Soviet Union but ahead of Germany. Yet, in real dollar terms, the budget of the Luftwaffe alone in 1939 was ten times greater than the entire Polish defense budget. Yet even this did not give the full picture, since the Polish defense budget included money to upgrade roads and bridges and to build arms factories.
ww2dbaseThe Polish leadership was also hamstrung by political rifts and by the legacy of Pilsudski's authoritarian rule which had retarded the development of modern strategic thinking and command. The top leadership was held by Marshal Edward Smigly-Rydz, who had been an able corps commander in 1920 but lacked the ability to command a complex modern army. Yet there were many able officers, such as Gen. Tadeusz Kutrzeba and Gen. Kazimierz Sosnkowski. Although overburdened by military brass, Poland had a solid corps of junior officers. The Polish Air Force, by contrast, was a very strong service.
On September 19,1939,there was a betrayal and the Junior Officers were put into confusion and they could not recover.

Compiled by Andrzej Egidiusz

Wilson Kiprugut:First Kenyan athlete to win an Olympic medal.

                            
Wilson Chuma Kiprugut (born 1938) is a retired Kenyan sprinter and middle-distance runner. He competed at the 1964 and 1968 Olympics and won two medals in the 800 metres event. He was the first Kenyan athlete to win an Olympic medal.

Buhari Hails France, Switzerland Relations With Nigeria

                                                   
Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari, on Thursday applauded the long history of economic relationship between his country and France on the one hand, and Nigeria and Switzerland on the other.
At separate bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the ongoing 71st United Nations General Assembly in New York, United States of America, the Nigerian leader welcomed more investment and economic partnerships.
“Nigeria is a fertile ground for handsome return on investments.
“Apart from your country’s close relationship with us, you have the same with most of our neighbours.
“We seek more collaboration, particularly in agriculture, mining and security,” President Buhari told Francois Hollande of France.
A spokesman for President Buhari, Femi Adesina, said that the President further briefed his French counterpart on the Presidential Committee on the North East, which he described as a one-stop mechanism on development partnership for a zone that had been ravaged in the over six years of insurgency by Boko Haram insurgents, and which needed urgent rebuilding.
Responding, President Hollande pledged that France would not only fully engage with Nigeria on different fronts, but would also provide humanitarian assistance in the North East.
“We will invest in Nigeria, we believe in her,” the French President said.
At another meeting with President Johann Schneider-Ammann of Switzerland, President Buhari sought his counterpart’s cooperation on speedy repatriation of Nigeria’s money stashed in that country, stressing that Nigeria needed such resources, particularly for infrastructure.
With the two countries having agreed on projects to which the returned funds would be deployed, President Schneider-Ammann promised quick action, as soon as the draft agreement was signed.
He also pledged consolidation of mutual trade relationships, infrastructural development as well as support in training and equipping of the Nigerian military.

Source: Channels Television

1378 in History:Cardinal Robert of Geneva, ‘Butcher of Cesena’, is elected as Avignon Pope Clement VII.

                                               

Clement (VII), original name Robert of Geneva, French Robert de Genève (born 1342,Geneva [Switzerland]—died Sept. 16, 1394,Avignon, Provence [France]) first antipope (1378–94) of the Western (Great) Schism that troubled the Roman Catholic church for 40 years.

After serving as bishop of Thérouanne, county of Artois, from 1361, he became archbishop of Cambrai, in the Low Countries, in 1368 and cardinal in 1371.
 As papal legate to northern Italy (1376–78), he pillaged Cesena in 1377, where 4,000 antipapal rebels were massacred in the war against Florence.He was a leader of the cardinals who declared the unpopular Italian pope Urban VI’s election invalid, and he was chosen antipope at Fondi,Papal States, as Clement VII  on Sept. 20, 1378. His coronation in October precipitated the Great Schism of the West (1378–1417). By the end of that year,France favoured Clement over Urban, whom England supported. European countries then split over the papal claimants, and the Eastern church generally sided with Clement. He hoped to dislodge Urban from the Vatican with help from French mercenaries who were occupying the castle of Sant’Angelo, Rome. After Sant’Angelo fell in April 1379, Clement retired to Naples, where Queen Joan I recognized him as pope. But the Neapolitans favoured Urban, and Clement soon settled at Avignon.
 The church’s dual papacy caused profound confusion in territories that were uncertain which pope to obey; the difference on this issue between England and France prolonged the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). France was especially given the chance to intervene in Italian politics. King Charles V the Wise of France not only recognized Clement but on the day of Clement’s death declared him “the true Shepherd of the Church.” Clement himself died convinced of his legitimacy.

Compiled by Andrew Page