Gideon Writes

It’s not the devil,

It’s not hell,

It’s apathy

I ring the bell!

Wakeup!

Mind!

Care!

For the worry and the prospect

We all share!

Apathy is death

Infinity is on its side;

Ours , admittedly, is but a short ride.

Its grip is getting tighter,

It’s score is our age;

We dilute our rapture,

We water down rage.

Let’s chin-up, unfluff and fully realize:

We are going down in defeat, and never again rise,

Yet, let’s keep at it, and fight,

With all our might

That it won’t happen tonight.

Tomorrow is another day.

A robust payment platform, and reliable banking services are the prosaic fundamentals for economic sustainability and growth. Trade, innovation, financial gains motivate people to work harder, and see the fruit of their effort. Alas, some two billion people on this planet live without basic infrastructure, carry coins in their bags, lacking any mechanism for credit, or for handling value — neither to store, nor to pay.

Fortunately one infrastructure is both very affordable, and very present: cell phones. These popular devices may be turned into full fledged wallets, and into effective banking systems.

So why not order from the manufacturers of cell phones a very large number of a basic cell phone, designed specifically for talking, payment and banking. No frills, none of the expensive super-sharp screens, and fancy features.  At large numbers such dedicated phones will be readily affordable.  Target areas will be visited by project initiators who would give these phones away to the population, along with basic training how to use them, and from that moment on, the contributors will be able to download individually to phone holders an initial sustainable amount of cash — with repeated downloads as appropriate. And since this is digital cash, it can be tethered to a specified purpose: money for food, money for medicine, money for electricity, etc.

The direct distribution from the giving center to the individual recipient will eliminate the layers of middlemen and corruption.  People will readily use their phones as wallet — pay and get paid with them, store and transfer money, as necessary. Microcredits on one hand, taxation on the other hand, can all be accomplished via the phone.

Empowering people to bootstrap themselves into sustainability and eventual prosperity should be the ultimate goal. Trucks of food, free hospitals are temporary solutions. Education and a financial framework are the only investments that would make a lasting difference, and uplift deprived areas into self-supporting mode.  The cost of the physical phones, and the money to download to the users is an investment  in the fundamental solution of this pervasive problem that incessantly burdens the conscience of the developed countries, and will impress shame on us, until we find the leadership quality to effect a solution.

Let all the stakeholders come together on this!

For decades historians wondered why Hitler turned on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, (Operation Barbarossa) when he was at the zenith of his military conquests, and his goons dominated Europe.  Hitler was thoroughly evil, for certain, but he was a political genius nonetheless. Why make such a dumb move, and open the door for his ruin?

From a variety of emerging sources the picture makes more sense now.  Adolf Hitler, so profoundly immoral,  so purely cruel, and so inherently selfish, was incapable of comprehending Churchill thought process.  No sooner had Hitler established his dominance over France, Belgium, and Holland (following his conquest of Norway, Denmark, Poland, and Czechoslovakia) than he extended an olive branch, and a proposal for an honorable peace to England.  Hitler would leave Great Britain to remain free and in trade, the empire will thrive and bloom, and all he asked in return was that England would acknowledge Germany’s hold on Europe. Who would not readily embrace such an honorable pact with the force that has just proved itself as the mightiest in the world?

But Churchill rebuffed the Fuehrer, with no shade of hesitation.  Hitler was sure that the people of England will overthrow this ‘swine Churchill’ and sue for peace. He courted them in his Reichstag speeches. To no avail.

Finally it dawned on him, or so he thought. England and the Soviets are in cahoots.  They wait for the lion share of the German army to be bogged down in a difficult sea landing, and right then the Soviets will march against Hitler from the East.  That is what Hitler would do, and that is what Hitler concluded, Churchill and Stalin are doing.  There was simply no other explanation. The oratory about freedom against slavery, democracy against fascism, light versus dark, were just that — oratory. After all Hitler new a thing of two about oratory. It made no sense for British soldiers to die in order to liberate Holland, or for British cities to lay in ruin, vying to help Poland.

Enjoying what he believed was his brilliant mind that has uncovered the conspiracy against him, Hitler presently devised a solution. Since England would be shelled in her island, and pose no real threat, why not preempt the Russian bear, and meet surprise by an earlier surprise.

Defeating the Soviets will offer a relief to Japan, which then will become a greater threat to the US.  This will diminish any chances (which Hitler assessed as small anyway) for the US to meddle in the European conflict.

It all made perfect sense, and that’s the way it was.

Learning the lessons of World War I, the Belgians have spotted the junction of the Meuse River and the Albert Canal as the weak spot vis-a-vis another German invasion, and have built there the most impregnable fortification in Europe, Fort Eben Emael. The engineering and construction that went into the fort superseded anything the French built on the Maginot Line. Fort Eben Emael was designed to hold out indefinitely against the most massive assault by the Germans. Its fortifications, its massive guns, and dug in storage and reserve, were manned by some 1200 well trained troops.  Military mavens across Europe agreed that Fort Eben Emael is the strongest fortress on the continent.

Alas, in early May 1939, the celebrated fort surrendered after only 30 hours of battle.  What happened?  The Germans had the imagination to dream up a method of attack that the defenders failed to take into account. The Belgians failed in the imagination race.  Using an accurate replica of the fort the Germans meticulously trained a handful of special forces to use quiet gliders to land on the top of the fort, then drop explosives, and gas bombs into the gun barrels, and turret openings. The defenders were quickly paralyzed by the ensuing mayhem, and despite valiant sporadic resistance they never regained their footing, and by noon the next day the Belgians surrendered, opening the gates for the German Panzer divisions to rush westward, entrap the large British expedition force, and doom Europe into a five years nightmare.

Lesson: if your adversary wins the imagination race, he wins the war.  Material count, weapon superiority are no match to a superior imagination.