Blog About Unissued Us Wwii Buckle Boots

allied powers wwii

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:24:39 -0400 | Posted in wwii medics

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii -- World War II veterans, their families and officials marked the 65th anniversary of the end of the war on board the same ship where Japan formally surrendered in 1945.

The battleship Missouri now houses a museum and is permanently moored at Pearl Harbor just behind the USS Arizona, which sank in the Japanese attack that pushed the U.S. into the war in 1941.

Sen. Daniel Inouye told the crowd Thursday that the two ships are the bookends of World War II.

The Hawaii Democrat said the Arizona represents the sacrifice and resilient spirit of the American people.

He said the Missouri speaks of America's triumphant victory, while the two send a strong message that Americans endure hardships, persevere and emerge victorious.

President Obama tonight declared that U.S. combat operations in Iraq are over. I wish we could say the same about shoddy thinking and slippery language.

Thus, the president reiterated his pledge to bring all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of next year; and he again promised that in Aug. 2011 U.S. troops “will begin [to] transition” out of Afghanistan. After all, he explained, “open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.”

But of course, no one is talking about “open-ended war.” That’s a red herring and a straw man of the president’s own making. What some of Obama’s critics are talking about is keeping U.S. ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. This, they reason, is the best way to ensure that our commitment to both countries is real, effective and enduring.

Obama insists that he wants that. He insists that America will remain committed to helping our Iraqi and Afghan allies for the long-term. Yet he asserts that this commitment can be sustained without U.S. ground forces. Obama seems not to understand what American troops there are doing and why. “Ending this war is not only in Iraq’s interest,” he declared; “it is in our own.

The United States has paid a huge price to put the future of Iraq in the hands of its people… We have met our responsibility. Now it is time to turn the page.

Obama makes it sound as if war is something that we and our allies (be they Iraqi or Afghan) can turn on or off — start, continue or end — at will. But that’s simply not true. The enemy gets a vote.

In truth, what the president didn’t say, but which needs to be said, is this: Wars can only be ended by winning or losing them; and the United States intends to win.

And I’m sorry, but no: the United States cannot simply “turn the page” on history, because history never ends. History presents us with challenges that, like it or not, we must forthrightly address and confront.

Indeed, the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and the broader Middle East is comprised of a series of difficult challenges which cry out for American leadership. And military involvement and commitment — including the deployment of U.S. ground troops — is an integral part of American leadership.

Obama, then, got it exactly backwards. He said that:

One of the lessons of our effort in Iraq is that American influence around the world is not a function of military force alone. We must use all elements of our power, including our diplomacy, our economic strength, and the power of America’s example to secure our interests and to stand by our allies…

To the contrary: one of the lessons of our effort in Iraq (and Afghanistan) is that American influence around the world depends in large measure upon the exercise of U.S. military power and the presence of U.S. ground troops. A related lesson is that the U.S. military — and in particular, our Army and Marine Corps — must be geared and equipped to fight unconventional and irregular conflicts in populated areas filled with noncombatants.

Yet, Obama canceled the Army’s premier modernization program, Future Combat Systems, while cutting and delaying other crucial ground-force modernization initiatives. The reason: budgetary constraints. The Defense Department, virtually alone amongst government agencies, has been asked to make “hard choices”; and so, weapon systems modernization has suffered the budget ax.

Nonetheless, the president said, with a straight face, that because of “a trillion dollars” spent on war over the past decade, we’ve shortchanged American prosperity. As tennis great John McEnroe used to say, “You cannot be serious!”

In truth, defense spending amounts to little more than four or five percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and is projected to decline to three percent of GDP by the middle of a second Obama term as president — an historic low at a time of war.

As for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they account for little more than one percent of the GDP, according to defense analyst Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute.

Obama is right that middle-class families are hurting. But they’re hurting because of the recession and the tax threat from swelling entitlement spending, not because of the costs of national defense. You could buy a lot of defense for the cost of the failed stimulus alone.

To his credit, Obama is not reckless. Instead, he is cautious, at least when it comes to defense and foreign policy. Thus, the New York Times reports that, on his first full day as president, Obama told his advisers: “Guys, before you start, there’s one thing I want to say to you, and that is: I do not want to screw this [Iraq] up.”

His admirable caution, pragmatism and prudence have served Obama well, especially when it comes to defense and foreign policy. It’s kept him from doing anything rash like precipitously withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. But it has not given him any insight into the nature of the (foreign policy) challenges and (military) threats that confront the United States in this, the early 21st Century. And here, Obama’s caution, pragmatism and prudence fail him.

You can follow John Guardiano on Twitter: @JohnRGuardiano

munich pact wwii

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:24:59 -0400 | Posted in wwii medics

Given your monicker, I suppose nobody could expect that once you'd been schooled so publicly, you'd be gracious.

You said: "I find it a real stretch to conclude that Chamberlain was... [trying to push] Germany towards the Soviet Union ... His actions over a long period of time, including not only international relations but he fierce opposition to rearmament right up until the last few months, speak otherwise."

This demonstrates your profound misunderstanding of what motivated appeasement. It was characterized from beginning to end by a lack of concern about the threat of fascism, and an absolute certainty that the great threat to Western democracies was Communism, particularly from within.

So I just noted that in fact opposition to rearmament was one way the British elite responded to the Communist threat, particularly in choosing butter over guns to keep the workers happy, throughout the 30s.

You were wrong, Cranky.

I also noted that once Hitler took power in 1933, and commenced with the Rhineland, the Anschluss, and so on up through the Sudetenland, in EVERY SINGLE INSTANCE, appeasement offered no resistance, precisely because they knew the guy wanted to fight somebody, and they hoped it wouldn't be them.

You were wrong, Cranky.

What did you think Churchill's point was when he said: "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last..." ?? Evidently, you never considered that Churchill just might have meant exactly what he said, instead of falling victim to his own cleverness -- which, to be fair, he often did.

And I pointed out, when you mis-represented Shirer on the point, that he understood it plainly (so did everybody else) before the war. It was only afterward, when he'd been fired from CBS in 1947 and then blacklisted in 1950, that Shirer's thinking on the anti-Communist goals of appeasement came to be 'enlightened', which is when The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" was published -- in 1960, by which time the blacklisted Shirer needed the money from what was, rightfully, a huge bestseller.

But it doesn't take a grasp of "11 dimensional chess" to understand why the fact that appeasement, the most unpopular foreign policy concept in the world, was a strategy against Communism might be just a bit volatile in the McCarthy era.

And as for your notion that getting enemies to fight each other has never worked: no less than Winston Churchill stated flatly that this was English policy toward the Continent for 400 years -- 'It has always been the policy of Great Britain to ally itself against any Power or group of powers that would tend to dominate the continent.'

Churchill wrote that in his Wilderness years about his ancestor John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, who 1) led British troops to defeat the union of Spain and France; 2) negotiated on behalf of the British Crown AND William of Orange, such that the Holy Roman Empire spent several years fighting with France (this is one of a gazillion examples that refute you that getting your adversary to fight your enemy never works), and 3) finally turned on his patron James II to invite William of Orange to take the British Crown, which he did.

From a purely historical point of view, one of the brilliant facts about John Churchill's utter betrayal of his friend, patron and king, is that its religious character (ensuring that Britain would remain Protestant) is that it both built on his prior military and diplomatic achievements that kept Catholic Spain and Catholic France from uniting before he put William on Britain's thrown, whcih eventually (the guy led an eventful life) enabled him to do it again.

Just to underscore the point, Churchill did it by betraying the guy who had promoted him from a servant, and it led directly to the most important example of the balance of powers principle before the 20th century when there was a mess after the Spanish king died. Suddenly, the Holy Roman Emperor (whom, you'll recall, Marlborough had maneuvered into fighting France twenty years before) was on the British side: it was precisely this sort of pitting adversaries against enemies until events caused 'em to change sides that made Britain a world power.

There's a REASON it was a British Prime Minister (Palmerston) who said that Britain has no permanent friends, nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.

Posted by: theAmericanist on September 4, 2010 at 5:22 PM | PERMALINK

Personal Takes

I had a picture of Alexander Dubček on my wall when I was a student studying international law. He represented the hope of many in Czechoslovakia and beyond that the communist party might evolve from within. He and the President of Czechoslovakia, Ludvik Svoboda (whose last name meant “freedom” in Czech), were for a brief moment during “the Prague Spring” the team that stood for the triumph of the human spirit, of freedom, within a communist party and under a communist government.

The threat was too great for the leaders of the Soviet Union, and after a summer of feints and betrayals and illusions, they sent their tanks across the frontier into the sovereign territory of Czechoslovakia, on August 20, 1968.

29 years earlier, Adolph Hitler had sent his tanks into Prague, following the betrayal of Chamberlain at Munich which recognized the annexation of the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia settled by ethnic Germans.

In March 1938, the linking together or annexation (“Anschluss”) of Austria was consummated at the barrel of a gun. The infamous Munich Pact followed on September 30, ceding the Sudetenland to Germany. On March 15, 1939 Germany invaded and took direct control of the rest of Czechoslovakia. The invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, followed months later, setting off World War II.

These events, for a young international lawyer, seemed together to define the core values of the structure and body of international law and institutions, which had begun following a terrible “world war” in the 17th century, the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), which at the Peace of Westphalia and through the pen of Hugo Grotius gave birth to the modern system of nation states and to the basic framework of principles and norms of international law.

The devastation and suffering that took place during The Thirty Years’ War underlined the need for rules governing the relations of princes and states. Three centuries later Hitler’s Anschluss and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia defined, in a sense, the core values of international law.

Those core values, which had become clear by the 20th century, included the sanctity of the human person and the principle prohibiting the threat or use of force against the political independence or territorial integrity of any state, except in self defense.

These values were defined by their utter violation, in much the same way that Albert Camus found that moral values were created by their brutal violation by Hitler’s armies and the Gestapo before and during World War II. Camus, who as editor of the French resistance newspaper Libération was a leader in the French resistance, articulated–particularly in “The Rebel” and his novel “The Plague”—a vision of how values acquired their substance and contours not through abstract logic, but more directly through the experience of the horrors of their violation.

So today, on August 20, 2010, let us salute the courage of Dubček and Svoboda in their struggle to put “a human face” on socialism. Years later, their countryman, Václav Havel, gave expression to the dream of freedom of the Prague Spring generation in a voice that resonated through Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and throughout the world. Havel became President of Czechoslovakia as a result of “the Velvet Revolution” in 1989.

I remember how in 1968, after the Soviet tanks had crushed the Prague Spring and the autonomous government of Alexander Dubček, it occurred to me that if there were ever a reform from within the Communist party led by a Soviet Dubček, there would be no Soviet tanks to crush the reform. As it turned out, I was only half right. Twenty years later, Mikhail Gorbachev, introducing glasnost and perestroika, led such a reform. Boris Yeltsin put down the reaction by overcoming tanks in 1991, leading to the breakup of the Soviet Union.

For insight into the Prague Spring, see Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), and the 1988 American movie of the same title, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Lena Olin, and Juliette Binoche.

The Trenchant Observer

www.trenchantobserver.com
E-mail: observer@trenchantobserver.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/trenchantobserv

Comments are invited.

hawiian language dictionary

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:25:02 -0400 | Posted in wwii reproduction helmets

Pages

Book Reviews & News Links
Hawai'i Readers' Bloggers
- Chris McKinney - Storyland
- Michael Little - A Little Romance
- Roger Jellinek - Open Book
- Thomas Cummings - Hawai'i Stories
Hawai'i Readers' Publishers
- Bamboo Ridge Press
- Bess Press
- Bishop Museum Press
- Calabash Books/Belknap Publishing & Design
- Curriculum Research & Development Group
- Independent Hawai'i Publishers
- Kamehameha Publishing
- Koa Books
- Madden Corporation - Island Heritage
- Mutual Publishing
- University of Hawai‘i Press
- Watermark Publishing

Most recent comments

Ann Inoshita on Miss Potter returns ...
Misty-Lynn Sanico on Miss Potter returns ...
Michael Little on The dream machine, part 2 ...
M.L. Sanico on The dream machine, part 2 ...
Makana Risser Chai on Calling All Reading Groups (or just Readers)
Carol at UH Press on Calling All Reading Groups (or just Readers)
Carol at UH Press on HART WOOD: Architectural Regionalism in Hawaii
Makana Risser Chai on Calling All Reading Groups (or just Readers)
Page Turner on Calling All Reading Groups (or just Readers)
Page Turner on Shakespeare and the World Cup ...

Meanings of names

Genuine Hawaiian names are unisex. Their literal meaning is usually quite clear, but there may be hidden symbolic meanings known only to the family. Old Hawaiians saw a name as the property of the name-holder, with a power to help or hurt its owner. A meaning that was too apparent might have attracted evil forces. And, just like in Hawaiian poetry, an allusion was considered more beautiful than a plain statement.

Coolness and rain symbolize happiness in a warm climate. Mist is a symbol of romance. Lei means a child, because a beloved child is carried like a lei on the parent's shoulders. A child can also be a flower or a bud, regardless of its sex. Modern parents tend to be more prosaic, calling a child a child, as in Keikilani and Kamalani, in which keiki and kama both mean "child". crystal brooch

Traditional naming practices cameo brooch

Old Hawaiians coined a new name for each child, with careful thought of its meaning. Names might be revealed in dreams or visions. Children could be named after relatives, but names were not copied from other families. Hawaii was a hierarchical society, and the name had to be suitable to one's social class and family gods. Names beginning with Kelii-("the chief") or ending in -lani("sky") were reserved for chiefs. The lowest social kauw (slave) class were only allowed to take simple names from natural objects.

Any incident at the time of birth might be commemorated in a name. A famous example was the Queen Liliuokalani ("scorching pain of the heaven"), called Liliu ("scorch") Kamakaeha ("the sore eye") in childhood. The name was chosen by her great-aunt Knau who was suffering from an eye-ache. A person might have several names, formal and informal, and names were changed if they seemed harmful. If a child fell ill, evil sorcery was often suspected. The parents might change the name into something repulsive, like Pupuka ("ugly") or Kkae ("excrement") in order to protect the child. Such names did not cause ostracism among Hawaiians, but foreign visitors were scandalized. An American writes in 1851:

"You might know that a people must have been vile from the vile names they assume and wear without shame - names that one would be unwilling to translate. All evil appetites and qualities, bodily organs and deformities, mischievous acts and vices, were turned into names."

In nineteenth century marriage documents, we can find several Hawaiians named, for example, Kamai ("the illness; the genitals"), Kaaihue ("the thief"), Kapela ("the filth") and Waiwaiole ("worthless"). However, the majority of names have quite pleasant meanings, or are simply descriptive. The most common names, used by both genders, were Kalua ("the second child, companion"), Keawe ("the strand", symbolic of lineage), Kamaka ("the eye", symbolic of beloved one), Keaka ("the shadow, essence"), Kealoha ("the love"), pnui ("big belly", sign of high social class), and Mhoe ("twin"). The most striking feature of nineteenth century names is their diversity. A unique name was the rule, not the exception. The ten most common names cover only four percent of the population.

Changes brought by western influence

Surnames did not exist in ancient Hawaii. Early converts might adopt a Christian name and use their Hawaiian name like a surname. In 1860 Kamehameha IV signed the Act to Regulate Names. Hawaiians were to take their father's given name as a surname, and all children born henceforth were to receive a Christian, i.e. English, given name. Hawaiian names were transferred into middle names. The law was not repealed until 1967.

After the annexation of Hawaii to the U.S., knowledge of the Hawaiian language deteriorated. Grandparents could give traditional names to the next two generations, but a baby born into a Hawaiian family in the 2000s is very unlikely to have any native speaker relatives. The English-speaking environment creates a pressure to melt Hawaiian names into the western naming system, as an established set of phonemes chosen for their exotic sound rather than their meaning. Names are borrowed from well-known persons, royalty, mythology, and songs. Mary Kawena Pukui, a traditional Hawaiian, expressed her unease with this practice:

"My name isn't supposed to be given away. My name is for me. But people are always naming babies after me, so I have many namesakes. I don't want any of them hurt if there's any kapu that goes with my name. So I pray, 'Since so-and-so named this child for me, then please do me the favor to oki the kapu and bless the name."

Phonetic renderings of western names, such as Kimo (Jim) and Lhela (Rachel), have become names in their own right. The film industry produces pseudo-Hawaiian names, from Aloma of the South Seas (1926) to Lilo & Stitch (2002). For many Hawaiian words, the okina (glottal stop) and kahak (macron to denote a long vowel) are important to the meaning of a word. They are often ignored in English texts, or okina are added where they don't belong. Hawaiian vowels should be pronounced clearly even when they are not stressed. The name of Malia Obama, when it is pronounced /mli/, is actually an English name of Hawaiian origin.

Popularity surveys

This information is based on a survey of Hawaiian given names of persons born in 19001989 and 20002005, from obituaries in Honolulu Advertiser and Honolulu Star-Bulletin 19942004, and samples of births and marriages on Oahu in Honolulu Star-Bulletin 20002005. It's a small sample with an uneven age distribution, and centered on Oahu. But no one else seems to have researched the subject at all.

The 3,750 persons in the survey had a total of 1,996 different names. 418 of these names had eight or more syllables (up to 44). The proportion of long names was diminishing but it took an upward turn in 20002005. Hawaiian names occur as middle names until the 1960s. Even today, middle names outnumber first names by four to one. A minority of parents have started giving nothing but Hawaiian names to their children. In births registered on Oahu 20012002, about 25% of girls and 15% of boys received at least one Hawaiian name.

Names with negative meaning have disappeared in this sample, and the unisex quality is waning. Many favorite names a hundred years ago, like Kealoha, Kalei, Leialoha, and Keonaona, were popular with both sexes. Today, the trendiest names are different for girls and boys. Modern parents seemed to think that the ending -lani belongs to women: 31% of women but only 11% of men had names ending in -lani (heaven), -o-ka-lani (of Heaven), -o-n-lani (of the heavens) or -mai-ka-lani (from Heaven), a recent innovation. Names beginning with the definite article Ka-/Ke- seem to have a masculine image: 46% of men but only 33% of women had such names.

Five percent of the women in this survey were named Leilani ("heavenly lei"). Other popular women's names included:

19001939: Kuulei ("my lei"), Leinala ("the fragrances are wafted"), Leialoha ("lei of love"), Leinani ("beautiful lei"), Leimomi ("pearl necklace")

19401969: Puanani ("beautiful flower"), Leialoha, Haunani ("beautiful snow"), Iwalani ("royal Frigatebird"), Uilani ("heavenly young beauty"), Ululani ("heavenly inspiration")

19701989: Malia (Mary), Khaulani ("heavenly dew"), Kuuipo ("my sweetheart"), Maile ("the maile vine"), Noelani ("heavenly mist"), Puanani

20002005: Malia, Noelani, Mhealani ("full moon night"), Kuuipo, Alana ("awakening" - although this is also an English name), Keikilani ("heavenly child")

Kalani ("the sky; the high chief") was a reasonably popular men's name in all age groups. Other popular names for men included:

19001939: Kealoha ("the love"), Kalei ("the lei"), Kamaka ("the eye/bud/beloved one")

19401969: Keala ("the fragrance", symbolic for high birth), Kwika (David), Kanani ("the glory"), Kameloha ("the beloved one")

19701989: Ikaika ("strong"), Kwika, Alika (Alex), Keola ("the life")

20002005: Kai ("sea"), Kekoa ("the courage"), Kainoa ("the namesake"), Ikaika, Kaimana ("diamond; powerful sea"), Keoni (John), Makana ("gift"), Ninoa ("the namesakes")

The Social Security Administration gives out annual lists of the top hundred names for boys and girls in the State of Hawaii, starting from the year 1960. They are based on first names while a Hawaiian name usually comes second. A few Hawaiian names make it into these lists every year. In 2008, they were Kaila ("style/the birthmark", although this is also an English variant of Kayla), Maile, Malia, Kalena ("the yellow"), Kiana (Diana), Alana and Kamalei ("lei child") for girls, and Kai, Kainoa, Keanu ("the coolness"), Kainalu ("billowy sea"), Ninoa, Kaimana and Kanoa ("the commoner, free man") for boys.

References

^ Pukui (1972), page 94

^ Pukui (1986), page 413, 456, 483, etc

^ Pukui (1972), pages 95-97

^ Pukui (1972), page 97

^ Henry Theodore Cheever: Life in the Sandwich Islands, or, The Heart of the Pacific, as it was and is, A.S.Barnes&Co, New York, 1851, pages 86-87

^ Hawaii State Archives: Marriage records of Oahu and Hawaii 1832-1910, Maui 1842-1910, Kauai 1826-1910, Molokai 1850-1910, Niihau 1849-1856. Persons with only one name are counted; most of them were born before 1860. More information can be found in Wiktionary:Appendix:Hawaiian given names

^ Pukui (1972), pages 98-99

^ Pukui (1972), page 100

^ Popular Baby Names by State

Pukui, Mary Kawena (1972), Nn i ke Kumu, Hui Hnai 1979, ISBN 0-9616738-0-X

Pukui, Mary Kawena and Elbert, Samuel H. (1986), Hawaiian Dictionary, University of Hawaii Press 1986, ISBN 0-8248-0703-0

Pukui, Mary Kawena, Elbert, Samuel H., and Mookini Esther T. (1974), Place Names of Hawaii, University of Hawaii Press 1974, ISBN 0-8248-0524-0

External links

Wiktionary:Appendix:Hawaiian given names: Most common names in the 20th and 19th century in aphabetical order, with data.

Honolulu Star Bulletin: There's more to Hawaiian names than meets the eye

Hawaiian naming practices

v d e

Personal names in world cultures

Akan Arabic Balinese Bangladeshi Belarussian Bulgarian Burmese Cambodian Canadian Czech Chinese Croatian Dutch Ethiopian Fijian Finnish Formosan French German Ghanaian Greek Hawaiian Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indian Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Jewish Korean Lao Latvian Lithuanian Malaysian Mongolian Okinawan Pakistani Persian Philippine Polish Portuguese Roman Russian Sakha Scottish Gaelic Serbian Sindhi Spanish (Hispano American) Thai Tibetan Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese Yoruba

Categories: Hawaiian language | Names by culture

Blog About Unissued Us Wwii Buckle Boots

integralewirtschaft.info

Categories

Archives

Recent Posts