Queen Elizabeth II

by William H. Benson

February 5, 2020

After George VI, King of England, passed away on Feb. 6, 1952, his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, then just 25, became Queen Elizabeth II on that day, although her coronation at Westminster Abbey did not occur for another 16 months, not until June 2, 1953.

As of this week, Elizabeth has completed 68 years as Queen, and she will turn 94 on April 21, 2020.

On Sept. 9, 2015, Elizabeth became the longest reigning monarch ever, when she surpassed Queen Victoria’s total number of days on the throne. On February 6, 2017, Elizabeth became the first British monarch to celebrate a Sapphire Jubilee, completing 65 years as the royal head of state.

On Nov. 20, 1947, when Elizabeth was just 21, she married Prince Philip Mountbatten. The royal couple celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary last November. He is now 98. In 2017, he retired from active royal duties and lives a quiet life at the family’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk.

With Philip, Elizabeth produced four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward.

The three oldest married, but then later divorced, Charles from Lady Diana, Anne from Mark Phillips, and Andrew from Sarah Ferguson. Edward though still remains married to his wife, Sophie.

Charles then remarried Camilla, Anne remarried Timothy Laurence, but Andrew remains single, although he and Sarah Ferguson share a residence at the family’s Royal Lodge in Windsor.

Prince Charles, heir apparent to the throne, turned 71 last November.

Each of the Queen’s four children produced two children of their own. Charles and Lady Diana had William and Harry. Anne and Mark Phillips had Peter and Zara Phillips. Andrew and Sarah Ferguson had two girls, Beatrice and Eugenie, and Edward and Sophie had Louise and James.

Thus, the Queen has eight grandchildren, four boys and four girls. Of those eight, Charles’ eldest son, William, is second in the line of succession to Great Britain’s throne. Lady Diana gave birth to William on June 21, 1982. He was 15 on Aug. 31, 1997, the day his mother died in a tragic car crash in Paris, France, when fleeing the paparazzi. He is now 37.

William met Catherine Middleton, or Kate, when both attended the University of St. Andrews, in St. Andrews, Scotland, fifty miles north of Edinburgh and the birthplace of golf. They began dating in 2003, and they married on April 29, 2011, also at Westminster Abbey.

Kate gave birth to Prince George, her firstborn son, on July 22, 2013. Now 6 ½, he is third in the line of succession to the throne, and would claim the title King George VII should he take the throne. Kate also gave birth to Princess Charlotte on May 2, 2015, and to Prince Louis on April 23, 2018.

Charles’ second son, Harry, was born on Sept. 15, 1984, and he was 13 when his mother, Lady Diana, was killed. Harry is now 35. He married Meghan Markle, a divorced bi-racial American actress, on May 19, 2018, and she gave birth to a baby boy, Archie Harrison, on May 6, 2019.

Beginning in Nov. of 2019, Harry and Meghan took a six-week break from royal duties, and celebrated Christmas at a luxurious waterfront mansion on Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada, rather than with the Queen and her extended family in the UK.

Then, on Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2020, Harry announced that he and Meghan will “step away from ‘senior’ royal roles and will work toward becoming financially independent. They will now divide their time between Britain and North America.”

The couple agreed to surrender their “Her Royal Highness” titles when they would represent the Queen, although they will retain their designations as Duke and Duchess of Sussex. They also agreed that when in the UK, they will reside in their home, Frogmore Cottage, but they want to repay the £2.4 million of public funds spent to refurbish the Cottage on their behalf.

Reporters have now confirmed that the couple want to purchase a home in Los Angeles, California, Meghan’s hometown, and live there this summer. Meghan may want to return to acting soon.

Then, on Nov. 20, 2019, Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second son, withdrew from his public duties because of intense negative reaction following a television interview on the BBC that focused on his connection with the convicted sex offender, the American Jeffrey Epstein.

The scandal forced the Queen to ask Andrew to move his private office out of Buckingham Palace.

Then, on Friday, Jan. 31, the UK withdrew from the European Union. After months of debate, Brexit finally happened. Who knows what will occur in the weeks and months ahead?

A country and a royal family that takes the Mountbatten-Windsor family name. Royalty does not exempt a family from divorces, a tragic death, a dissatisfied daughter-in-law, or a scandal.

Time’s illusions

by William H. Benson

January 24, 2020

Mother Nature builds chunks of time: a day, a month, a year.

From one sunup to the next defines a day.

One full moon to another full moon—29 ½ days—defines a month. On occasion though, two full moons will fit inside a 30 or 31 day calendar, and that second full moon becomes a Blue Moon. Our next Blue Moon will occur this year, in 2020, on Oct. 31, Halloween.

Nature dictates that a year shall last 365 ¼ days. For three consecutive years, we live 365 days, but then during leap year, the fourth year, we gather the four extra quarters into an extra day, Feb. 29. This year, 2020, is a leap year.

Human beings though have constructed additional blocks of time: the second, the minute, the hour, the week. Wise men from ancient Babylon divided a day into 24 hour slots, an hour into 60 minute units, and a minute into 60 second units, each derived from a base 12 system.

The length of a week though is arbitrary. The ancient Aztecs relied upon two weeks, one that included 13 days and another that included 20 days, and the two worked together.

The ancient Romans looked forward to their “nundinae,” the week’s final eighth day, market day, a tentative weekend, but it was Constantine, Rome’s emperor in 321 A.D., who adopted the seven-day week, due to influence from the East.

Because Christians celebrated the Lord’s Day on Sunday, Constantine set Sunday as the first day of the week, and because the Hebrew people celebrated the Sabbath on Saturday, the week’s seventh day, he set Saturday as the week’s final day. I agree, seven days is sufficient time for a week.

English-speaking people still honor the sun on the week’s first day, the moon on its second day, and certain other ancient gods on its other five days.

The ancient Anglo-Saxons paid homage to a god of war named Tui, and the Vikings had a god of war named Tyr. One or both contributed to the name Tuesday. The Anglo-Saxons’ chief god though was Woden, and we honor him mid-week, on Wednesday.

Thursday refers to Thor, the ancient Vikings’ god of thunder; Friday pays homage to Freya, the Teutonic goddess of love and beauty; and Saturday looks back to Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture.

What is unusual is that Spanish-speaking people call the week’s last day “sabado,” a reference to the ancient Hebrew people’s Sabbath.

We began a new year four weeks ago, in this month of January, although the ancient Romans began their new year in March, near the vernal equinox, in the springtime. A common belief holds that January derives its name from Janus, the two-faced Roman god that has one face looking to the left, back into the past, and a second face looking to the right, forward into the future.

Yet, certain ancient Roman farmers’ almanacs state that January derives its name from Juno, the goddess of marriage and childbirth, wife of Jupiter, and the queen god. From her we also get June.

A new year beckons us forward. Time—as measured in days, weeks, and months—stretches before us. Yet, time belongs to no one. It is a gift from the gods, or from Mother Nature, or the amazing fact that we are here, alive, together on planet Earth, and we wake up every morning.

If we master the seconds, minutes, and hours of our lives, we master the days, months, and years. Along the way, we learn some things, or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The years teach us things that the days never knew.”

The English poet, William Blake, wrote, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time. The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.”

Emerson also wrote an astonishing essay that he entitled, “Illusions.” He says that, “Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there is he alone with the gods alone. On the instant fall snowstorms of illusions.

“He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that and whose movement and doings he must obey. What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself.

“And when, by and by, for an instant, the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones—they alone with him alone.”

Oh, yes, time can seem an illusion. It jogs for the young, it sprints for the adult. We grip time and ride it as well as we can, but time slips away before we want it to. We wonder, how to slow down time?

I say, enjoy the year 2020, each second, minute, day, week, and month.

The Thirteenth Amendment

by William H. Benson

December 18, 2019

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and by it, he declared that “all persons held as slaves” within the rebellious states “are and henceforward shall be free.” Lincoln’s Proclamation freed some 3.1 million slaves within the Confederacy.

Eric Foner, historian and author of a recent book, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, said that Lincoln’s Proclamation was “the largest act of slave emancipation in world history. Never before had so many slaves been declared free.”

Yet, Lincoln’s Proclamation did not include the 800,000 slaves within the five border states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Missouri—those states that favored slavery but had refused to join the Southern states’ Confederacy.

Also, Lincoln feared that a future president might issue a proclamation that would undo his, or the courts may declare his unconstitutional.

As a result, some legislators in the Republican-held Congress insisted that now was the time to introduce an amendment to the Constitution that would eradicate and abolish slavery once and for all.

Lincoln came late to the campaign for a thirteenth amendment that would abolish slavery.

Instead, he argued for gradual emancipation, one state at a time, coupled with federal funds granted to slaveowners for the loss of their property, plus colonization, encouraging former slaves to migrate to Africa or Haiti or Central America, an idea that few slaves embraced.

Lincoln understood that to add an amendment to the Constitution was “a complex and cumbersome process.” The last amendment, the twelfth, was added in 1804, sixty years before. Also, the process is spearheaded by Congress and the state governments, with no presidential signature required.

On April 8, 1864, the Senate passed a resolution for a Thirteenth Amendment by a vote of 38 to 6.

Section 1 read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Thirty-two words to abolish 250 years of “unrequited labor.”

Section 2 read, “Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

The amendment fails to mention anything about compensation to former slaveowners and nothing about colonization. Instead, this was a legal measure meant to strike at the very heart of slavery.

In June of 1864, the amendment came to a vote in the House, but only 93 Representatives voted for it, not nearly the required two-thirds. It was then that Lincoln began to lobby hard for the amendment.

At one point just days prior to the decisive and close vote on January 31, 1865, Lincoln called two members of the House to the White House, and told them that they must procure two additional votes.

“How?” they asked.

He replied, “I am President of the U.S., clothed with great power. The abolition of slavery by constitutional provision settles the fate, for all coming time, not only of the millions now in bondage, but of unborn millions to come. Those two votes must be procured. I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done, but remember that I am President of the U.S., clothed with immense power.”

The final tally in the House was 119 to 56, two more than the required two-thirds. Wild applause broke out in the House when the votes were counted. Men wept, hugged each other, tossed their hats.

James S. Rollins, of Missouri, decided to vote for it, because Lincoln asked him to, and, as he said, “we can never have an entire peace in this country as long as the institution of slavery remains.”

Steven Spielberg’s 2012 movie, Lincoln, starring Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln, dramatized this close vote for the Thirteenth Amendment in the House.

On February 1, Lincoln signed his name and wrote the word “Approved,” to the text of the joint resolution that Congress sent him, although his signature was unnecessary. The Thirteenth Amendment is the only ratified amendment that a president ever signed.

As a result, February 1 is celebrated in some communities as Freedom Day.

Then, beginning on February 1, each state took up the issue of ratification. Illinois ratified the amendment first, and in early December of 1865, Georgia voted to ratify it, the last of the necessary 27 states to do so.

On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William Seward certified that the Thirteenth Amendment is now a part of the Constitution. Eric Foner though commented that, although the day is important in U.S. history, “December 18 has long been forgotten.” But slavery in the United States was gone.

Next time in these pages: the Fourteenth Amendment.

Edward Snowden
by William H. Benson
November 28, 2019

     Last time in these pages, I discussed John Doe, an employee at Mossack Fonseca, who revealed the extent of that Panamanian legal firm’s global enterprise to shelter its clients from paying income taxes.

     Whistle blowers, like John Doe, often make front page news, as much a motivating factor as “doing the right thing.” Yet, often they face severe retribution, even time in prison.

     A list of the more prominent whistle blowers of past decades include: Daniel Ellsberg, W. Mark Felt, Frank Snepp, Karen Silkwood, Frank Serpico, Linda Tripp, Mark Holder, Russ Tice, Bradley / Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange.

     On September 5, 2018, an “Anonymous” White House official published an essay in the “New York Times,” saying, “The dilemma is that many of the senior officials in Trump’s own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”

     Just weeks ago, that same “Anonymous” published his / her book entitled “A Warning,” and in it repeated the same charge, and pleaded with American voters “not to renew their contract with Trump.”

     Then, on August 12, 2019, a CIA analyst learned of Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call to Ukraine’s highest official. Once he or she blew the whistle, Congress started down the road of impeachment.

     My vote though for most notorious of all whistleblowers this century goes to Edward Snowden.

     A young man in his late twenties, who worked in Hawaii in 2013, as a high tech / computer wizard / contractor for the National Security Agency, Snowden grew alarmed when he learned details of the NSA’s massive surveillance of American citizens, as well as of citizens of other countries.

     Snowden learned that after 9-11, the NSA had developed systems that could capture and store all phone calls, text messages, and e-mails for almost every human being across the globe. He came to believe that it was wrong for the Federal government to invade an individual’s privacy to that degree.

     Snowden decided he would blow the whistle on the NSA’s “warrantless surveillance of the U.S. population,” plus he decided to submit thousands of electronic documents that he stole from the NSA and gave to three journalists, whom he met in Hong Kong on May 23, 2013.

     If Snowden would have just blown the whistle, and not stolen and leaked the documents, he would have avoided most of the legal troubles he now faces.

     Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder later said, that Snowden performed a “public service by triggering a debate over surveillance techniques, but still he must pay a penalty for illegally leaking a trove of classified intelligence documents.”

     On June 21, 2013, Snowden turned thirty. Two days later he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow, but once there Russian officials told him that his U.S. passport was invalid, and that he could not leave. For forty days he lived at Moscow’s airport, but then officials granted Snowden asylum in Russia.

      In September of this year, Snowden published his memoir, “Permanent Record,” and in its pages he says that he and his long-time girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, whom he married in 2017, at a courthouse, have learned to adapt to life in Russia, though cut off from family and friends in the U.S.

     He admits that he would like to return to the U.S., but he knows that Federal government officials would prosecute him, and that he would most likely receive a lengthy prison sentence, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange’s current fate.

     Snowden’s term of asylum in Russia will terminate in 2020, but he is confident that Russian officials will extend it for an additional three years.

     A debate over Snowden has now come to the forefront.

     Snowden claims that his release of classified documents to journalists, who then made them public six years ago, has “harmed no one and put no one’s lives at risk.” Some might agree, but Deputy Director at the NSA, Richard Ledgett, says Snowden’s statement “is categorically untrue.”

     NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers says that “Snowden’s surveillance leaks have had a ‘material impact’ on the agency’s ability to prevent or detect a terrorist’s plot.”

     Snowden says in his book, “Permanent Record,” that “whistle blowers” and “leaks” are nautical terms. “Ships spring leaks, and when steam replaced wind for propulsion, operators would blow a steam whistle at sea to signal intentions.” He says that some languages use a word that means “snitch.”

     One other interesting detail. In 2015, Daniel Ellsberg flew to Moscow to meet Edward Snowden.

     The two most well-known whistle blowers over the past fifty years now belong to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization that Ellsberg co-founded. Snowden has served as the non-profit’s president since early 2016, almost four years now.

John Doe and Mossack Fonseca

by William H. Benson

November 14, 2019

     Three weeks ago, I happened to watch an interesting movie, “The Laundromat,” starring Meryl Streep. The movie, I discovered, is not about washing and drying clothes, but rather it is about washing ill-gotten profits into clean money, and hiding assets in offshore companies to evade taxes.

     Based on actual events, the movie showcases two villains: Jüregen Mossack and Ramón Fonseca, founders of a Panamanian legal firm, Mossack Fonseca, with branches in thirty-five countries, that specialized in setting up offshore companies for wealthy individuals, politicians, and elected officials.

     Robert Palmer of Global Witness compared the baffling process of hiding assets in offshore companies to a Russian doll. “One company is hidden inside another, which is hidden in another, and so on, until it becomes impossible for a government to identify the actual person, and demand that he or she pay the taxes owed.”

     For example, a sports star can put his name’s rights into a series of offshore company to avoid taxes.

     The Panama Papers first came to light months after a Mossack Fonseca employee, code-named John Doe, sent an email in late 2015, to two reporters at a German newspaper, “Süddeutsche Zietung,” and asked, “Interested in data? I’m happy to share.”

     John Doe had somehow managed to copy every email, text document, image, and file, since 1977, from Mossack Fonseca’s clients, a total of 11.5 million documents, the largest cache of leaked documents ever in human history.

    John Doe sent this treasure trove to the two German reporters, who then decided to pass it on to a Washington D.C.-based organization, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

     Gerard Ryle, an official at the ICIJ, spoke on Ted Talk in June 2016, and explained that his organization’s first decision was to share the information with other journalists, something investigative reporters are loathe to do.

     The ICIJ invited 367 journalists from nearly 100 media organizations in 25 language groups across the globe to participate in the massive research. They allowed “native eyes to look at native names.” For example, Nigerians would look at the documents that pertained to Nigeria.

     The ICIJ also asked all journalists to sit on their stories for months, also something that investigative reporters are loathe to do, but then they agreed to release their stories on the same day, April 3, 2016.

     The ICIJ built a virtual newsroom, housed it in a safe and secure site, and then made the documents searchable and readable for the journalists, who went to work conducting research in courthouses, quizzing people, and building their accounts of tax evasion.

     Then, on April 3, 2016, at 8:00 p.m., German time, in dozens of newspapers across the globe, the ICIJ’s reporters published their stories simultaneously. As a result, “The Panama Papers exposed the rich and powerful as people who can hide vast amounts of their assets in offshore accounts.”

     Gerard Ryle of ICIJ explained that “Iceland’s prime minister owned an interest in a secret offshore company, named Wintris, Inc., that in turn had ownership in Iceland’s banks, the very issue of corruption that Iceland’s voters had elected him to fight and stamp out.”

     Once that story broke, Iceland’s prime minister resigned, the first of numerous resignations, and every month since then, stories of bringing people to justice because of the Panama Papers have appeared in newspapers.

     As of this date, governments have clawed back a total of $1.2 billion in taxes owed but not paid.

     In December of 2018, prosecutors  in the United States announced criminal charges against four men: “Ramses Owens and Dirk Brauer, former senior employees of Mossack Fonseca; Richard Gaffey, a Boston-based accountant; and Harald Joachim Vonder Goltz, a former U. S. taxpayer. All were charged with tax evasion, wire fraud, and money laundering.” Trial is set for January 2020.

     John Doe, as far as I know, remains unknown, but his devastating leak sunk Mossack Fonseca. The legal firm closed its doors in 2017. Reporters have quizzed him about his motivation, and he says,

     “ I decided to expose Mossack Fonseca because I thought its founders, employees, and clients should answer for their roles in these crimes, only some of which have come to light thus far. It will take years, possible decades, for the full extent of the firm’s sordid acts to become know.”

     Because John Doe blew a whistle and leaked his company’s once-private client files to the public, he lost his job, but prosecutors have brought dozens, if not hundreds, of people to justice for evading taxes and laundering dirty money. The world needs more whistle-blowers, like John Doe.