Lilibet was born at 11:40am local time, weighed 7 lbs 11oz and is now "settling in at home".
She is the Queen's 11th great-grandchild and is eighth in line to the throne. It means Prince Andrew, who was born as second in line in 1960, moves down to ninth place.
In a message of thanks on the couple's Archewell website, they said: "On June 4, we were blessed with the arrival of our daughter, Lili.
"She is more than we could have ever imagined, and we remain grateful for the love and prayers we've felt from across the globe.
"Thank you for your continued kindness and support during this very special time for our family."
The message adds that anyone wishing to send gifts is asked to "support or learn more about" organisations working for women and girls.
They have not released any photos of their daughter.
The Prince of Wales, Prince Harry's father, and the Duchess of Cornwall tweeted: "Congratulations to Harry, Meghan and Archie on the arrival of baby Lilibet Diana. Wishing them all well at this special time."
And the Duke of Duchess and Cambridge said: "We are all delighted by the happy news of the arrival of baby Lili."
Prime Minister Boris Johnson sent his "many congratulations" to the couple and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer welcomed the "wonderful news".
Prince Harry, 36, and Meghan, 39, met on a blind date and married in May 2018 in a ceremony at Windsor Castle. They welcomed their first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, a year later.
Meghan's friend, Misan Harriman, who took black-and-white photographs of the couple for their pregnancy announcement, tweeted his congratulations: "Lilibet has arrived! Congratulations to my brave friend and her lovely family!"
Prince Harry has publicly reflected on his approach to parenthood recently, saying he wanted to "break the cycle" of the "pain and suffering" of his upbringing with his own children.
He and Meghan quit their roles as senior working royals in March 2020. Speaking last month, the duke said moving to the US had not been part of the plan, but he felt he had to put his family and mental health first.
As a result of the move, Lilibet is the most senior royal in the current line of succession to be born overseas and she would be eligible to become president of the United States.
But like Archie, who was not entitled to a royal title when he was born, Lilibet would not be allowed to be a princess nor an HRH until the Queen dies and Prince Charles becomes king, under rules set down more than 100 years ago.
Their statement said it was with "great joy" that they welcomed Lilibet "Lili" Diana Mountbatten-Windsor to the world.
Duncan Larcombe, former royal editor at the Sun, said he thought the name was "the most royal name you could give".
"There's no doubt that the choice of name for Harry and Meghan's first daughter is the first significant - possibly the only - olive branch that the Sussexes as a couple have offered to the British Royal Family since... they walked away from the family," he told the BBC.
Lilibet - the Queen's family nickname - was coined when then-Princess Elizabeth was just a toddler and couldn't pronounce her name properly.
Her grandfather, King George V, would affectionately call her Lilibet, imitating her own attempts to say her name. It soon stuck and she became Lilibet to her family from then on.
Baby Lili's middle name, Diana, is in tribute to Prince Harry's later mother Diana, who died in a car crash in 1997 when he was 12 years old.
Lili's cousin, Princess Charlotte, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, also has Diana as one of her middle names, as well as Elizabeth.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-57378117
It is not easy to define the exact outline of the organization and actions of the networks of the French resistance, their principle of organization based on secrecy and the absence of archives. It is certain, however, that the Resistance played a vital role during Operation Overlord, which began on 6 June 1944 with the assault on “Fortress Europe”.
According to General William Donovan, head of the Office of Strategic Services (US intelligence agency), 80% of useful information during the Normandy landings was provided by the French resistance. Their role, often overlooked, deserves more attention.
The origins of the French resistance in Normandy
The German occupation of Normandy began in June 1940, four years exactly before the “D-Day”. The first actions of French resistance begin immediately, like the destruction on June 22 of the telephone cable connecting the aerodrome of Boos and the German headquarters of Rouen by Etienne Achavanne: the resistant of 48 years is finally arrested and shot on July 4, 1940. In the months that follow, the first networks come into being and adapt to the occupier. They decided to organize to evacuate the Allied airmen who had fallen in Normandy or to strike the lines of communication such as the railway lines. This is how the “Morpain group”, initiated by Gérard Morpain near Le Havre, or the Norman component of the “Alliance” network are born.
Photo of the derailment of the
Maastricht-Cherbourg train on 16 April 1942 in Airan, Normandy,
following the dismantling of the rails for several meters by the
resistance. 28 dead and 19 wounded are registered by the German soldiers
of the Kriegsmarine, returning from permission.
Photo: DR
Normandy, however, is not ideal for the development of refuges (“maquis”) because of its geography and its lack of difficult access plateaus as in the Alps or in the Pyrenees. But some secret sites still see the light, relying on the great forests of the region, such as the maquis of Champ-du-Boult (Commander Berjon) and “Surcouf” (Commander Leblanc).
On February 16, 1943, the Vichy government introduced the S.T.O., the Compulsory Labor Service, which forced thousands of French workers to work for Nazi Germany. This law pushes many volunteers into the ranks of the resistance, which reach the strength of about ten thousand men and women (including two thousand combatants) in Normandy. Faced with this sudden rise in power, the Germans react via its secret police, the Gestapo, which organizes several arrests attacking the main networks at the end of 1943, like the “Alliance” and “Zero-France” networks.
The French resistance also suffers from a multitude of organizations and committees, the number of which partly dilutes the opposition effort against the occupier. The clear and unified lack of command does not allow the resistance to act with all their potential: regional and national political opposition, especially between communists and Gaullists, but also between local groups and those supported by the British, undermine the relations of the combatants.
Nevertheless, on February 1, 1944, the various networks and movements managed to merge to give birth to the French forces of the interior (F.F.I.).
The relations between the Norman resistance and the Allies
When the Allies prepared their “invasion” of occupied France, at the Tehran conference on November 28, 1943, the French resistance rightly appears to them as still particularly nebulous. As a result, the Allies decide from the outset to prepare military operations without taking into account the military potential of existing networks. While they readily agree to analyze the information provided, there is no question of assigning them any responsibility for the conduct of essential tactical actions, strictly reserved for Allied conventional military forces. The representative of Free France, General de Gaulle, is not even kept informed of the precise preparations for Operation Overlord.
The Allied intelligence services, however, imagine a series of clandestine actions carried out by the resistance to facilitate the conduct of military operations from “D-Day”. These sabotage plans (like the Turtle, Blue, Violet, Red or Green plans) are coordinated in France by the Central Bureau of Intelligence and Action (BCRA), the intelligence and clandestine operations service of the Free France .
Communication, a key point for resistance, is the subject of particular attention with many schemes, both between the Resistance and with the Allies. Messages to London are sent via carrier pigeons and radio transmitters, while Allies broadcast a lot of information to the networks through “personal messages” thanks to the British radio show “London” Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
Franck Bauer, one of the famous
voices of the Radio-London broadcast on the BBC, including the famous
“personal messages” of the French who “speak to the French”.
Photo: DR
Because of the secrecy of their organization, the resistance fighters record a cruel lack of anti-tank means and heavy machine guns, which the Allies seek to fill by the parachuting of weapons and equipment. Specialized agents in transmissions, demolition or armaments are also dropped in France, through the S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive). This British special operations command, set up by Winston Churchill, also operates in neutral countries like Spain. Nicknamed “Jedburghs” and organized into a team of three, these agents have the mission to support and advise the Resistance of Europe: they are responsible for information on Allied actions, prepare supplies weapons, ammunition and other materials and install a viable communication system. The Jedburghs are able, if necessary, to take command of the local resistance units.
The Allies do not limit their preparations to Normandy alone: they also plan actions throughout France to slow the progress of German reinforcements. They also want to avoid systematic sabotage in order to preserve certain infrastructures that may be useful to the armies of liberation. For this purpose, precise instructions are transmitted to the resistor.
The information provided by the French resistance
The main feats of the Norman resistance before the start of Operation Overlord are essentially the acquisition of intelligence. If the Allies do not refrain from making millions of pictures of future landing beaches and landing zones, they receive a lot of information on the terrain, infrastructure, equipment and morale of the occupier.
From the beginning of 1942, the Germans began the construction of the “Atlantic Wall” against the possibility of an allied amphibious assault from England. They set up thousands of defensive positions, relying in particular on the local workforce: in Normandy, resistance fighters engage in various projects to secretly establish plans for these installations; some take the opportunity to slip sugar cubes into concrete mixers to reduce the strength of the concrete bunkers built along the coast. Copies of these plans then arrive in England where they are analyzed and updated by the intelligence services.
The information obtained by the resistance also allows the Allies to refine their degree of knowledge of the German units present in Normandy: the battle orders and the history of the various divisions present are detailed up to the level of the companies, allowing an estimation of their fighting value. Thus, the resisters inform London of the arrival in Calvados of the 352nd German infantry division from March 15, 1944, a unit seasoned by long months of fighting on the Russian front and represents a formidable opponent for the forces Allied.
Captain Kenneth Johnson of the 508th
PIR, HQ Co (82nd Airborne Division) interrogates civilians in
Ravenoville. His look shows a certain mistrust towards the Normans.
Photo: US National Archives
Resistance actions on D-Day
In order to increase the chances of success of the Overlord operation, the French networks receive a succession of orders to get into action, essentially through the “personal messages” of the B.B.C. Each coded sentence is sent to a particular network, which knows its meaning and date of execution, in order to begin the sabotage actions and to disrupt the German forces. Thus, from June 1st to 3rd, 1944, the first part of Verlaine’s verse is broadcast on the airwaves: “The sobs long violins of autumn …”, along with 160 other “personal messages”. These codes mean that some resistant (here the network “Ventriloquist” installed in Sologne) must be ready to carry out their sabotage actions. On June 5, 1944, at 9:15 pm, the following messages were broadcast: “… wound my heart with a monotonous languor”: the resistors have 48 hours to carry out the destruction. By inference, some networks probably established that Operation Overlord would take place in the next 48 hours.
At dawn on Tuesday, June 6, 1944, after the shock of the bombings and the first fights, members of the networks of resistance spontaneously went to the meeting of the allied forces, sometimes to serve as scouts. Their excellent knowledge of the terrain represented an undeniable added value for dismounted troops and airborne units. However, the Allies were wary of the information they could obtain from the French population and sought first to ensure that their interlocutors were not collaborators who could operate as double agents. Several Normans who approached the liberating soldiers were thus killed by mistake: this is the case of Michel de Vallavieille, 24 years old and future mayor of the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, targeted by soldiers Americans in the Utah Beach area then left for dead. Gustave Joret, a farm worker who gives information to the Allies on June 7 in Surrain, is wounded the same day by an American soldier when he joined a shelter during a bombing. He died of his wounds on June 12, 1944.
In total, nearly 1,000 sabotages were
carried out by the resistance from June 5 to 6, 1944. The risks incurred
by the resisters during these actions were particularly high: a large
number of them had very little military knowledge , and they opposed a
trained, seasoned and better equipped army. In the evening of June 6,
1944, the losses of resistance are estimated at 124 killed, wounded,
missing or taken prisoner.
However, the sudden and massive nature of these sabotages deeply surprised and helped to disrupt the German forces.
June 7, 1944: A lieutenant belonging
to the Civil Affairs of the 5th American Corps talks with Gustave Joret
in the area of Surrain, only hours before being seriously wounded by an
American soldier. He died as a result of his injury on June 12, 1944.
Photo: US National Archives
The drama of Caen prison
On D-Day, dozens of French resistance fighters are held by the Germans in Caen prison. While the aerial bombardment adds to the fear of seeing the Allied forces reach the capital of Lower Normandy, the jailers do not want the prisoners to flee to join the attackers. Initially, they plan to transfer them by train to a penitentiary institution in the Paris region. But the railway lines have suffered such degradation that any movement by this means is impossible.
The Germans then receive the order of the Gestapo of Rouen: they must shoot the prisoners. 87 resistant (the youngest being only 18 years old) thus passed by the weapons, in ranks of 6, in the courtyard of the prison. These performances are made in several times, part late morning and then early afternoon.
The bodies are then thrown into a mass grave. While the Anglo-Canadian forces are slow to seize Caen, the resistance is finally exhumed on June 29, 1944 and then moved by truck to a place still unknown to date.
One of the courts of Caen prison where were shot 87 resistant June 6, 1944.
Photo: DR
The role of the French resistance during the Battle of Normandy
After the landing, the Resistance continued to provide intelligence to the Allies throughout the Battle of Normandy. At the beginning of July 1944, when the front stagnated at the same time as it entered the war of hurdles, the acquisition of information on German positions and devices remained limited; the Allies ask the resistance, via the S.O.E., to obtain a maximum of information. From July 12 to 21, 31 resistance fighters provide information that is immediately exploited by the Americans: bombarding the armored groupings in the south of the Channel, they pierce the front as part of the operation Cobra from July 25.
In order to limit the arrival of future German reinforcements to Normandy after the landing, French commandos were parachuted above Brittany. These side operations took place in June (named Cooney Parties, Lost and Grog) and in August 1944 (Derry), with the participation of 538 paratroopers of the Special Air Service (S.A.S.). They coordinated the various resistance networks to fight effectively against the occupier.
The French resistance fighters of the company Morin at the Saint-Marcel maquis in Brittany.
Photo: DR
Its structural weakness and lack of resources paradoxically made the strength of the French resistance, because the Germans spent a grueling energy to understand its organization and the exact outline of its many devices, without ever managing to put an end to their activities.
General Eisenhower, commander-in-chief of Allied armies in Europe and thirty-fourth president of the United States, had to make the choice between coordinating the actions of the French resistance or favoring excessive actions during the outbreak of Operation Overlord. Because he was struggling to hide his concerns about the success of this daring assault, he finally made the choice of mass sabotage, at the risk of damaging potentially useful infrastructure as a result of the war.
The precise impact of the resistance in the conduct of the Normandy landings is not quantifiable, but there is no doubt that it played a leading role in the success of the Allied armies. According to Eisenhower, French resistance was invaluable during the liberation of Europe in 1944: without its major help, the fighting in France would have lasted much longer and would have caused more casualties in the ranks of the combatants.
https://www.dday-overlord.com/en/battle-of-normandy/resistance
posted by Dianny at Patriot Retort
Thursday, after he read my post about Fauci’s unexpected troubles, my brother asked me if this was the end for Fauci, or would the media do its thing and protect him. I told him it was the latter. In fact, the media was already white-knighting for Fauci.
But the thing you have to understand (and maybe you already do) the media aren’t white-knighting for Fauci in order to protect his reputation.
They’re white-knighting for Fauci to protect their reputations.
This is all about self-preservation.
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if, behind the scenes, some of the folks at CNN and MSNBC were in a rage over what these emails reveal.
I mean it was embarrassing as hell for these prats that they went full-on fan-girl over that felon Michael Avenatti.
But they turned Fauci into a demigod during a pandemic that took the lives of more than 600,000 Americans.
These emails exposing Fauci’s complicity in covering up a possible lab leak from a Chinese lab that Fauci’s agency was giving taxpayer money to is six hundred thousand times worse than sucking up to a Trump-hating ambulance-chasing shyster.
White-knighting for Fauci isn’t about coming to his defense; it’s about covering their own ass.
To show my brother how the white-knighting was already underway, I texted him a couple examples.
Like this one:
On Thursday, CNN tweeted, “Thousands of emails from and to Dr. Fauci reveal the weight that came with his role as a rare source of frank honesty within the Trump administration’s Covid-19 task force.”
Really? Is that what they reveal?
See, CNN is assuming that nobody in its ever-shrinking audience is going to actually sit down and read through all 3,000+ pages of emails. So CNN can spin their contents any way it wants — confident than no CNN viewer will say, “Hang on a tick. In an email on page 2,648 Fauci said …”
Yesterday Politico’s white-knighting for Fauci deployed the go-to “Conservatives pounce” tactic. In tweeting their article on how the emails are making attacks on Fauci “grow more intense,” Politco tweeted “Conservatives are amplifying attacks on Fauci after the release of his emails. And they’re fundraising off of it too.”
Damn those Conservatives and their pouncing fundraising!
Keep in mind, the Democrats used the COVID pandemic to amplify attacks on Trump all in hopes of beating him in November 2020. And, hang on to your hats Politico, they were even fundraising off of it too.
But wait! There’s more!
Democrats (and their media handmaids) are still using COVID to amplify attacks on Ron DeSantis. And not only that, they’re (*gasp*) fundraising off of it too!!!!
Naturally Politico also has to throw in the “conspiracy theory” angle — because what story about pouncing conservatives is complete with the conspiracy theory angle?
The headline in question for this bit of white-knighting for Fauci: “Attacks on Fauci grow more intense, personal and conspiratorial.”
In their defense of Fauci, Politico accuses conservatives of “cherry-picking individual emails” out of the bunch.
Well, yeah. When you have a document dump that consists of 3,234 pages of emails, some of the emails contained are probably fairly mundane. It isn’t as if every single page is going to include Fauci privately contradicting his public statements.
So what’s Politico’s point?
Hey, guys. Just because there are a few emails that show Fauci and his team knew the virus looked engineered while he was publicly scoffing at the idea that it was engineered is no reason to attack the poor man! Leave Fauci ALONE!!!!
While Politico blames conservatives, Fauci himself is claiming that any attacks on him are “really very much an attack on science.” (hat tip Breitbart)
And where did he make this narcissistic little comment?
Why in an interview on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, of course. Fauci has been using MSNBC to white-knight for him since the emails dropped.
Now, back to my brother’s initial question: is this the end for Fauci?
Hahahahahahaha!
No.
Nothing is going to happen to him. There will be no congressional hearings, no DOJ investigations.
Why would Congressional Democrats agree to investigate Fauci when they are far more interested in dragging out the January 6 melee at the Capitol all the way to the Midterms?
Likewise, the DOJ is way too busy tracking down every grandma who wandered through the Capitol on January 6 then throwing her in jail without bail to look into Fauci’s involvement in a pandemic that killed six hundred thousand Americans.
Fauci will face consequences around the same time Andrew Cuomo does.
Which is somewhere in the neighborhood of never.
The feigned outrage in Berlin — but mostly in Paris — at the US’s proxy use of Denmark’s intelligence services to intercept submarine cable traffic to spy on European leaders raises more than a wry smile. Allies have always spied on allies for legitimate reasons. Few have done so, and continue to do so, as much as the French.
As president of France and commander-in-chief of the French armed forces, Emmanuel Macron will be perfectly aware of this. The French foreign intelligence service, DGSE, runs an interception program on submarine cables that listens in to potential enemies and friends in similar fashion to the National Security Agency or Britain’s GCHQ.
The French army’s Emeraude program intercepts and deciphers rivals and friends’ encrypted international diplomatic and industrial communications from its listening posts around the world on remnants of the French empire. Indeed France is a member of the second most important western signals intelligence network known as ‘Nine Eyes’. Its partners, other than the Famous Five, are the Netherlands, Norway and…Denmark.
For someone with such an acute sense of history, Macron knows that France has a long history of intercepting and decoding friends and allies’ diplomatic traffic, or ‘safecracking’ their embassies. And the French have been excellent at it, partly as a result of their high-grade mathematicians able to crack sophisticated diplomatic codes.
Before World War One, the French were reading the diplomatic traffic of most of the European powers. In the 1920s, the French and British regularly intercepted and deciphered each other’s diplomatic correspondence.
In the late 1930s, with the prospect of war, the French (and British) wished to know whether they could enlist the US as an ally in an eventual war against Germany. It motivated them to bug and ‘safe-crack’ American embassies in Paris, London and elsewhere. From 1937, French intelligence services spied on France’s quasi-ally Belgium to discover how her recent declaration of neutrality might impact France in the event of war. These examples hint at why states spy on their friends and allies.
In the same way that nature abhors a vacuum, states abhor surprise. They seek to guard against a surprise move from their potential enemies, but also their allies, through intelligence gathering.
Lord Palmerston’s words of realpolitik hint at the problem:
‘We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and these interests it is our duty to follow.’
Wars are usually fought as coalitions; they are inter-allied. In peacetime, you build alliances for the eventuality of war. But is it not legitimate for a state to wish to know whether your ally, or potential ally, is dependable and loyal? Should they not seek to know whether their political commitment to take up arms is credible, whether their armed forces and economy are up to the job?
In short, is it not fair game to wish to know the strengths and weaknesses of your ally before it is too late? The great fifth century BC strategist Sun Tzu taught us in his Art of War to know oneself before you know your enemy. Are allies not an extension of ourselves?
Of course, embassies, defense attachés and liaison officers exist to communicate with one’s allies and uncover their true nature. But such honorable emissaries cannot always divine the true weaknesses of an ally or know the extent to which the information they share is objective. In 1939, Churchill reckoned France had the greatest army in Europe and France signed a pact with London not to make a separate peace…
In alliances, whatever the common aim, individual states still have different interests, different timescales for achieving them and different breakpoints.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the Dutch intelligence services were more preoccupied with spying on Nato members than Warsaw Pact states precisely to gauge their reliability. The German foreign intelligence service, the BND, also spied on US politicians under Obama, apparently preoccupied with Washington’s commitment to Nato. Today, how should the US feel about German politicians continued support for Nord Stream 2? This is where spying on friends and allies finds its justification.
Then there is the question of uncovering espionage within an alliance. The Cambridge Five spy ring did enormous damage not just to the UK, but to US and Nato interests. Should allies be allowed to monitor their partners in order to seek out potential foreign spies and test their systems? This would seem to be fair game among Five Eyes partners. Better to have the Americans spying on you than the Russians or Chinese.
Spying among friends and allies is commonplace. The moral shock from European political leaders is confected and hypocritical — and particularly so from one of the world’s foremost intelligence powers with a long history of spying on friends, France.
https://spectator.us/topic/macron-feigning-outrage-danish-spying-scandal/
Article by Michael Reagan in Townhall
Sunday is D-Day plus 77 years.
And on Memorial Day we honored and mourned all the men and women who’ve died while serving in our military.
So maybe it’s a good time for politicians and pundits from both sides of the aisle to quit pointing fingers at each other for a day and start thinking about what marking the date June 6, 1944 is all about.
It’s about honoring all those young soldiers who gave their lives for us so many years ago in World War II.
It’s about remembering all those brave young men who jumped out of airplanes and stormed the beaches of a foreign country, not knowing the language but knowing they were there to free the world from Hitler and his armies.
There are only about 300,000 World War II vets still living, and they’re all in their 90s and 100s.
We thank them each year on Memorial Day and D-Day and Veterans Day, but we need to thank them every day.
It doesn’t matter where they served – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, wherever – they deserve our constant and bipartisan respect.
On D-Day I always think about my father and what he did to serve the country during World War II.
He badly wanted to enlist in the Army but without his glasses he was legally blind.
Because he knew he’d never pass the Army’s eye exam, he went out and memorized the eye charts. It didn’t matter which line he was asked to read because he had it memorized.
Because of his bad eyes he couldn’t go overseas and he ended up serving in California, where he did more than 300 training films for the Army.
He rose to the rank of captain and before he retired he was offered the rank of major. He turned the promotion down, saying he believed anyone with a rank that high should be able to serve overseas.
My father was always fond of the military and I learned that attitude from him as a little boy.
When he drove me out to the ranch in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he’d always sing the Army, Navy and Marine Corps hymns.
He’d sing the songs as a way to get me to ask him questions and then he’d tell me stories about the amazing things American soldiers and sailors did at Pearl Harbor or on D-Day, or at Midway or the Battle of the Bulge.
Most young people today don’t know those stories and few have even heard of the battles where they took place.
And they also don’t understand how much the people of France and other places in the world truly love us for what our fathers and grandfathers did for them. All you have to do is travel to those places to find out.
A big problem today is that too many Americans have forgotten to love ourselves for what we are and for what we’ve done for the world.
We know America is not perfect – and never has been.
But the media, the progressive politicians and the hate-America crowd seem to be focusing today only on our flaws and our warts and our other imperfect parts.
We need to remember to love America for all the good things our men and women in the military have done for the world. Especially on Memorial Day and the anniversary of D-Day.
