Secret services: a cornerstone of greed Alfred Dreyfus Alfred Dreyfus (French pronunciation: [al.fʁɛd dʁɛ.fys] ; 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935) was a French artillery officer of Jewish background whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most tense political dramas in modern French history. Known today as the Dreyfus Affair, the incident eventually ended with Dreyfus complete exoneration. Early life Born in Mulhouse (Mülhausen), Alsace in 1859, Dreyfus was the youngest of nine children born to Raphael and Jeannette Dreyfus (née Libmann). Raphael Dreyfus was a prosperous, self-made, Jewish textile manufacturer who had started as a peddler. Alfred was 10 years old when the Franco-Prussian War broke out in the summer of 1870, and his family moved to Paris following the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany after the war. Raphael spoke Yiddish and conducted business affairs in the German language; the first language of most of Alfreds elder brothers and sisters was German or one of the Alsatian dialects. Alfred and his brother were the only children to receive a fully French education. The childhood experience of seeing his family uprooted by the war with Germany prompted Dreyfus to decide on a career in the military. Following his 18th birthday in October 1877, he enrolled in the elite École Polytechnique military school in Paris, where he received military training and an education in the sciences. In 1880, he graduated and was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in the French army. From 1880 to 1882, he attended the artillery school at Fontainebleau to receive more specialized training as an artillery officer. On graduation he was assigned to the Thirty-first Artillery Regiment, which was in garrison at Le Mans. Dreyfus was subsequently transferred to a mounted artillery battery attached to the First Cavalry Division (Paris), and promoted to lieutenant in 1885. In 1889, he was made adjutant to the director of the Établissement de Bourges, a government arsenal, and promoted to captain. On April 18, 1891, the 31-year old Dreyfus married 20-year old Lucie Eugénie Hadamard (1870–1945). They went on to have two children, Pierre (1891–1946) and Jeanne (1893–1981). Three days after the wedding, Dreyfus learned that he had been admitted to the École Supérieure de Guerre or War College. Two years later, he graduated ninth in his class with honorable mention and was immediately designated as a trainee in the French Armys General Staff headquarters, where he would be the only Jewish officer. His father Raphaël died on 13 December 1893. At the War College examination in 1892, his friends had expected him to do well. However, one of the members of the panel, General Bonnefond, felt that Jews were not desired on the staff, and gave Dreyfus poor marks for cote damour (translatable as likeability). Bonnefonds assessment lowered Dreyfus overall grade; he did the same to another Jewish candidate, Lieutenant Picard. Learning of this injustice, the two officers lodged a protest with the director of the school, General Lebelin de Dionne, who expressed his regret for what had occurred, but said he was powerless to take any steps in the matter. The protest would later count against Dreyfus. The French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals. However within the Fourth Bureau of the General Staff General Bonnefonds prejudices appear to have been shared by some of the new trainees superiors. The personal assessments received by Dreyfus during 1893/94 acknowledged his high intelligence, but were critical of aspects of his personality. The Dreyfus affair In 1894, the French Armys counter-intelligence section, led by Lt. Colonel Jean Sandherr, became aware that information regarding new artillery parts was being passed to the Germans by a highly placed spy, most likely to be on the General Staff. Suspicion quickly fell upon Dreyfus who was arrested for treason on 15 October 1894. On 5 January 1895, Dreyfus was summarily convicted in a secret court martial, publicly stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devils Island in French Guiana. Following French military custom of the time Dreyfus was formally degraded by having the rank insignia, buttons and braid cut from his uniform and his sword broken, in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire before silent ranks of soldiers while a large crowd of onlookers shouted abuse from behind railings. Dreyfus cried out: I swear that I am innocent. I remain worthy of serving in the Army. Long live France! Long live the Army! In August 1896, the new chief of French military intelligence, Lt. Colonel Georges Picquart, reported to his superiors that he had found evidence to the effect that the real traitor was a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Picquart was silenced by being transferred to the southern desert of Tunisia in November 1896. When reports of an army cover-up and Dreyfus possible innocence were leaked to the press, a heated debate ensued about anti-Semitism, and Frances identity as a Catholic nation or a republic founded on equal rights for all citizens. Esterhazy was found not guilty by a secret court martial, before fleeing France. On 19 September 1899, following a passionate campaign by his supporters, including leading artists and intellectuals like Émile Zola, Dreyfus was pardoned by President Émile Loubet in 1899 and released from prison. He had been subjected to a second trial in that year and again declared guilty of treason despite the evidence in favor of his innocence. Dreyfus, however, officially remained a traitor in a French court of law and pointedly remarked upon his release: The government of the Republic has given me back my freedom. It is nothing for me without my honor. During that time, he lived with one of his sisters at Carpentras, and later at Cologny. On 12 July 1906, Dreyfus was officially exonerated by a military commission. The day after his exoneration, he was readmitted into the army with a promotion to the rank of Major (Chef dEscadron). A week later, he was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour, and subsequently assigned to command an artillery unit at Vincennes. On 15 October 1906, he was placed in command of another artillery unit at Saint-Denis. Dreyfus was present at the ceremony removing Zolas ashes to the Panthéon in 1908, when he was wounded in the arm by a gunshot from Louis Gregori, a disgruntled journalist, in an assassination attempt. Later life World War I Dreyfuss prison sentence in Devils Island had taken its toll on his health and he was granted retirement from the army in October 1907 at the age of only 48. As a reserve officer, he re-entered the army, as a Major of Artillery, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Serving throughout the war, Dreyfus rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Now in his 50s, Dreyfus served mostly behind the lines of the Western Front, in part as commander of an artillery supply column. However, he also performed front-line duties in 1917, notably at Verdun and on the Chemin des Dames. Finally, Dreyfus was promoted to the rank of Officier de la Légion dhonneur in November 1918. Dreyfuss son, Pierre, also served throughout the entire war as an artillery officer, receiving the Croix de Guerre for his services. Death Dreyfus died in Paris aged 75, on 12 July 1935, 29 years to the day after his official exoneration. Two days later, his funeral cortège passed the Place de la Concorde through the ranks of troops assembled for the Bastille Day National Holiday (14 July 1935). He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris. The inscription on his tombstone is in Hebrew and French. It reads (translated to English): Here Lies Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Dreyfus Officer of the Legion of Honour 9 October 1859 – 12 July 1935 Today, a copy of the statue of Dreyfus holding his broken sword stands at the entrance to the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris. The original can be found at Boulevard Raspail, n°116–118, at the exit of the Notre-Dame-des-Champs metro station. [wiki] Alfred Dreyfus Documentary │ Full video │ youtube/watch?v=YcKnFK3HBvs Greed Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice, cupidity, or covetousness, is the inordinate desire to possess wealth, goods, or objects of abstract value with the intention to keep it for ones self, far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort. It is applied to a markedly high desire for and pursuit of wealth, status, and power. As a secular psychological concept, greed is, similarly, an inordinate desire to acquire or possess more than one needs. The degree of inordinance is related to the inability to control the reformulation of wants once desired needs are eliminated. Erich Fromm described greed as a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. It is typically used to criticize those who seek excessive material wealth, although it may apply to the need to feel more excessively moral, social, or otherwise better than someone else. The purpose for greed, and any actions associated with it, is possibly to deprive others of potential means (perhaps, of basic survival and comfort) or future opportunities accordingly, or to obstruct them therefrom, as a measure of enhanced discretion via majority belongings-having and majority competitive advantage, thus insidious and tyrannical or otherwise having negative connotation. Alternately, the purpose could be defense or counteraction from such dangerous, potential leverage in matters of questionable agreeability. A consequence of greedy activity may be inability to sustain any of the costs or burdens associated with that which has been or is being accumulated, leading to a backfire or destruction, whether of self or more generally. So, the level of inordinance of greed pertains to the amount of vanity, malice or burden associated with it. [wiki] Espionage Espionage or, casually, spying involves a government, company/firm or individual obtaining information considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, as it is taken for granted that it is unwelcome and in many cases illegal and punishable by law. It is a subset of intelligence gathering, which otherwise may be conducted from public sources and using perfectly legal and ethical means. It is crucial to distinguish espionage from intelligence gathering, as the latter does not necessarily involve espionage, but often collates open-source information. Espionage is often part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern. However, the term is generally associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies primarily for military purposes. Spying involving corporations is known as industrial espionage. One of the most effective ways to gather data and information about the enemy (or potential enemy) is by infiltrating the enemys ranks. This is the job of the spy (espionage agent). Spies can bring back all sorts of information concerning the size and strength of an enemy army. They can also find dissidents within the enemys forces and influence them to defect. In times of crisis, spies can also be used to steal technology and to sabotage the enemy in various ways. Counterintelligence operatives can feed false information to enemy spies, protecting important domestic secrets, and preventing attempts at subversion. Nearly every country has very strict laws concerning espionage, and the penalty for being caught is often severe. However, the benefits that can be gained through espionage are generally great enough that most governments and many large corporations make use of it to varying degrees. Further information on clandestine HUMINT (human intelligence) information collection techniques is available, including discussions of operational techniques, asset recruiting, and the tradecraft used to collect this information. [wiki] Human beings are, neither raw material for making soaps, nor raw material for making money. Both, people, as well as Nations, when they are having unsatisfied need, with regard to their survival and/or regular comfort, they deploy their own material resources, their own intellect and their own work, always within the boundaries of civilization, and finally they satisfy those needs. In case that, their resources (material, intellectual, human) are not enough, there is always the possibility to ask for help, from the other people or Nations. But this possibility, in order for being effective, demands a previous establishment of a honest relationship between the people and/or between the Nations. The honest relationship between people and/or Nations is a quasi product of a corresponding high variety culture. Without an embodied culture of that kind, a honest relationship is impossible. And furthermore, the more lower a cultures variety is, the more probable it is, manifestations of greed to urge people and/or Nations to become mobilized in order to satisfy their needs far beyond the dictates of basic survival and comfort. People and/or Nations, who didnt cultivated promptly the moral virtues, they may find themselves having markedly high desire for and pursuit of wealth, status, and power. Espionage has been for almost ever, one of the usual, immoral means for people and/or Nations to involuntarily quasi export their own problems towards the other people and/or Nations. Espionage involves normal people, in small numbers who under secrecy, they try to gain confidential information. In our days, espionage has been replaces from an other eerie activity: the quasi espionage. Quasi espionage constitutes a mere atrocity: it involves people which have been influenced for being indifferent about the consequences of their choices, in large numbers and which operate obviously, for trying to gain the partial control of other people and/or Nations. As such, quasi espionage is easily becoming identified by innocent bystanders which, involuntarily, they become eye witnesses of illegitimate activities and for this reason they are targeted by quasi espionage for their becoming victims of slandering and/or of torturing and/or of marginalizing and/or of exterminating. The purpose of espionage is gaining confidential information, while, the purpose of quasi espionage is the destruction of people/Nations through instrumental and extreme, inner conflicts. Quasi espionage is not a prerequisite for the civilized survival of people/Nations. People/Nations may have honest and peaceful dialog with other people/Nations. People/Nations may honestly, peacefully and directly ask, from other people/Nations, for what they need. People/Nations who are employing quasi espionage are losing their trustworthiness and by this way, they become candidates for an unnecessary international marginalization which may last for many decades. People/Nations who are being involved with the atrocious quasi espionage are not nesessarily doomed. They are always having the option of the “road of return”: They should immediately stop all present torturing. They should provide all necessary support, from their countless tortured victims, only to those who are fully informed and they freely will to accept this support, in order for their complete financial, social, professional, etc., recovery. They should exonerate and reinstate the honor of all their slandered and/or marginalized victims. They should expose all show-trials and other judicial scams. They should compensate justly for all the damages they have caused at their victims and their lives. Quasi espionage constitutes an atrocious social phenomenon. This phenomenon follows a spiral course and ends, always, either at alienation, or at honest friendship.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 23:59:39 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015