Source: Civic Engineering, ONU. Sunrise over a row of cannon at the Antietam Civil War Battlefield at Sharpsburg, Maryland USATwo years ago an article called “The Decline of Historical Thinking” warned that too few people in America were studying the right stuff to understand society (foundation to engineering):
Lately, I’ve noticed a feature of economic inequality that has not received the attention it deserves. I call it “intellectual inequality.” I do not refer to the obvious and ineluctable fact that some people are smarter than others but, rather, to the fact that some people have the resources to try to understand our society while most do not. Late last year, Benjamin M. Schmidt, a professor of history at Northeastern University, published a study demonstrating that, for the past decade, history has been declining more rapidly than any other major, even as more and more students attend college.
Some people have the resources to try to understand our society while most do not.
The big question becomes how many of those with these resources are in any position to improve society. Evidence today suggests far too few, as “today’s civics crises” are being linked directly.
For many close observers, a direct line can be drawn from today’s civics crises to a long-standing failure to adequately teach American government, history and civic responsibility… and the cost is a citizenry largely ignorant of the work needed to sustain a democracy.
STEM fails when its graduates are “ignorant of the work needed to sustain a democracy”.
People like to ask me how I made a “transition” from history to a career in tech, when they instead should be asking others how dare they work in tech without a foundation in history.
Information technology is really about economics, information security is really about philosophy (ethics), and both depend on an understanding of history.
As an example of what it can look like, some indeed are taught STEM properly with a lens on history, as an ONU civic engineering blog explains:
Finding answers would take research, so the eight engineers became historians. They researched the Village of Forest. They studied artillery. They learned about the Civil War. They had historians come speak to their class.
Can you imagine a software engineer saying something even close to that, or imagine a “civic software engineer” title? How many big tech companies are inviting historians to come speak to engineering? No wonder so many in tech, suffering from deep intellectual inequality, are undermining democracy.
WARNING: DESPITE THIS CONVINCING VIDEO IN CIRCULATION, TOM CRUISE WAS NOT IN THE NAVY, DID NOT FLY JETS …ETC ETC
Something I’ve always known about Tom Cruise is that he is a fake. Literally. He is a paid actor, who makes a living from being a fake. He is highly paid because apparently his fakes are so good.
Now comes a stark warning that evidence has been found of Tom Cruise, the fake, being faked.
Deepfake videos of Tom Cruise show the technology’s threat to society is very real: We’re entering scary times.
Was Tom Cruise a threat to society already as a fake? The article doesn’t bother to address this very important and simple problem with its analysis.
It all begs the question of why should we be comfortable and trust a fake like Tom Cruise up until now, but then worry about someone else’s fake of his fakes.
Do we trust in Tom Cruise being a responsible fake more than someone who is faking Tom Cruise being a fake?
If we could achieve trust of one fake (a Scientologist of all things, who peddles in fake beliefs), why not achieve trust in the fake of that fake? Or maybe another way of asking it is who really is scared by a world where a Tom Cruise fakes being tall, or fakes being a Navy pilot?
Hint: some may be “scared” by the idea of agency and voice being held by those not in power, such that someone who doesn’t appear physically to be Tom Cruise can now have the same power that used to be reserved for Tom Cruise (thanks to technology, just like the technology Tom Cruise used to appear taller than he is).
In some sense, Tom Cruise is someone who battled with perception his whole life. He transformed his own physical appearance from something mundane into an unbelievable physical representation, thus mastering the art of a fake. Yet people celebrate him.
I’ve written about all this security theater before, and I continue to find it amusing that it is a security issue literally about theater that doesn’t seem to recognize the disconnect.
Additional food for thought: Americans have been spreading loads of fake traitor General Lee art after the Civil War. This is about the same as Americans erecting monuments to Osama bin Laden after 9/11. If anyone thinks the danger is new for Americans believing something is real that instead has been entirely faked… have I got some real news about scary times we’ve been in for over 100 years!
In 2016 the National Socialist Movement (NSM) of America, also known as Nazis, claimed to be “buoyed by a Donald Trump victory”, and announced a shift in symbols they considered headline-worthy:
The Odal rune, a less-well-known Nazi Germany symbol, will take the place of the swastika on all official uniforms and banners. Mr Schoep says it’s a gentler approach to preaching the same messages. “The party leadership has every intention to bring the party, our leaders, our members and supporters into the halls of government here in the United States, and to do that we must reach more of the public.”
What would the Nazi version of an odal rune look like in their campaigns to enter the halls of US government?
The CPAC 2021 event gives an obvious answer by creating a main stage in the shape of one:
German Strafgesetzbuch (Criminal Code) in section § 86a outlaws this use of the Nazi Odal rune, but since it’s being done in America…
Way back in 2014 this kind of thing used to be a huge problem. A London retailer was forced to apologize and recall a jacket that “inadvertently” displayed the Nazi odal.
Source: Mirror UK
Its £205 “grunge look” Horace hooded denim jacket featured an emblem worn by Second World War SS troops. The ancient Norse odal rune, which is similar to a swastika, was used to symbolise Adolf Hitler’s belief in a pure Aryan race.
Just to be clear an ancient Norse odal has straight arms, lacking the very distinctive up-turned “surrender” arms of the SS odal.
The Nazis shamelessly appropriated others’ symbols as their own and forever tainted them, so sometimes it can be hard to establish the shift from ancient symbol to Nazi beliefs. I’m not sure how much that matters though as the ADL documents how a Norse odal is often displayed by white supremacist groups in general, so it’s pretty clearly a symbol of hate.
In 2017 white supremacists marched with the straight-armed Norse odal. If you look carefully at a photo of hate groups “uniting” to attack America, there is a giant NSM banner with Norse odal.
See the NSM at the top of the banner with a Norse odal?
The man occupying the White House delivered the argument that Nazism was mainstream to the Republicans, exactly what NSM and white supremacist activists had promoted in their campaigns to wave a dog whistle flag and be seen as “many people” — wearing a red hat, waving an odal rune, instead of obvious Nazis with a swastika armband.
In 2018 a white supremacist activist published how the Republican party had become the Nazi vehicle for “legal” destruction of American government
If we want to abolish [democracy], we’ll first need to master it. […] We always gain power legally. This is more terrifying to our rivals than any number of street fighters or gunmen. They would rather lay down their own lives fighting us in the streets, than live to old age under our rule. If we really want to punish them, we must be Republicans, not revolutionaries.
Want a historian protip? Nazis hate more than anything else in the world being embarrassed and shamed. It is their kryptonite. They are so insecure in their sense of self worth, if they are made to feel embarrassed and shamed they lose bodily function and fall apart. The same article has this tell:
This is not to say we should descend into optics cucking. Far from it. Anyone who dares punch right should be descended upon with all of the venom we can muster. However, we should master the art of the dog whistle…
In other words, shame is toxic to the Nazis and so they still defend the interchangeability of a swastika and confederate battle flag, while also running “dog whistle” symbols to attract followers who normally would worry about the optics and obvious shame of being seen as Nazis.
It also is a repeat of more recent history, with “Christian Villain” training leaflets made by hate groups in America intended to help Nazis rebrand their image to “mainstream” anti-federal Western ranchers (pardoned by Trump) or an infamous anti-federal posse of sheriffs.
Click to enlarge
CPAC 2021 changes all this, because they went with an explicit symbol of Nazism.
It shows how Nazis are fully embraced by Republicans now, as they built a stage design for the very distinct Nazi “surrender arms” odal, which cannot be confused with any other use, time or affiliation other than Hitler.
CPAC went out of their way to use an exact symbol banned in Germany, used only by Nazis, which tracks back logically to 2016 NSM announcements that Donald Trump was their man to carry Nazism into American government.
Another consideration is that the SS wearing the odal infamously rejected allegiance to constitution or government, instead pledging to follow only Hitler. Before 1934, the German pledge had this opening phrase:
I swear loyalty to the Reich’s constitution…
After 1934 in a Nazi dictatorship, the pledge was changed to this:
I swear to God this holy oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler…
When I say “their man” I mean it would be further proof of this CPAC odal significance if we see Nazis at the same event trying to emphasize worship of a single man, instead of allegiance to a constitution.
Sure enough, CPAC was trotting out bizarre and gaudy statues of Trump for people to pledge themselves his obedient follower.
Source: UpWorthy
A golden statue wearing swim trunks and flip flops represents a mish-mash collision of the extreme right-wing evangelicals, the anti-government boogaloo and Nazis, if we really must parse this idol worship.
Of course, some always will say they can’t see any rune connection (as if planned and built stages just come out naturally this particular way), or say that a connection to NSM isn’t clear enough yet (as if the NSM repeatedly taking credit isn’t an admission of anything).
Such claims of blindness is precisely why the CPAC stage was in the shape of a Nazi odal instead of a swastika, as the NSM clearly explained for us at the start of this blog post.
Nazis love to play dumb and lie about their intentions and meaning, forcing their targets to waste time trying to stop the “permanent improvisation” of tyranny. A toddler-like complete lack of responsibility for actions is a defining characteristic of Nazism (not to mention Facebook management).
Perhaps it helps to put it like this: in October of 2020 viewers of a TV show complained that a man had the obvious Nazi symbol “88” clearly tattooed on his face. The TV program confidently countered that there was no connection; in fact they claimed a very important meaning that would shame anyone criticizing the 88.
At first the channel defended Lumsden, a joiner from Bristol, stating that similarity between his tattoos and Nazi symbols was “entirely incidental” and that background checks had confirmed he had no links or affiliations to racist groups or views. It was said the number 88 referred to 1988, the year of Lumsden’s father’s death.
Death of his father must have been so traumatic, that year so deeply meaningful, he incidentally put a large 88 permanently on his face. Makes sense, right? So everyone stopped thinking it was a Nazi symbol… until someone smart called the man’s father to confirm whether he died in 1988.
The Daily Mail subsequently tracked down Lumsden’s father Trevor, who lives close to his son and who declared to a reporter: “I’m here aren’t I? I’m alive and kicking, so I’m not dead yet.”
Such blatant disregard for truth is par for course with Nazis these days. If you want to read more about Nazi symbolism hiding in plain sight, I have another blog post that offers even more detailed background and modern examples.
CPAC wouldn’t have used the Nazi odal if they thought they couldn’t spin lame Lumsden-like excuses and get away being irresponsible for promoting Nazism. They also wouldn’t have used the Nazi odal if it didn’t promote Nazism.
Those are the basic facts for America today, and at this point it’s clear Trump is attempting to run on nothing more than the “white grievance” platform of Nixon and Reagan — white insecurity political influence of the KKK (heavily “Nazified” by David Duke, as Trump himself admired in 2000).
The Nazis really runed CPAC this year.
Update Feb 28: It’s been pointed out to me Russian “FSB operators love2rune“. They are linked to extremist white supremacist groups operating in foreign conflicts, adopting the Norse odal as a marker.
Source: @AliceAvizandum
This also was documented in 2014 by Ukrainian press. Alignment with symbols of Russian military foreign operations helps explains why in 2016 American Nazis announced they would be adopting the odal:
Here are some useful definitions for interpreting the continuously bad news about infrastructure and transit safety in South Dakota.
Gross Negligence: “…reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people’s rights to safety…”
Negligence: “…failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances. The behavior usually consists of actions, but can also consist of omissions when there is some duty to act (e.g., a duty to help victims of one’s previous conduct).”
In the nine years from 2009 to 2018, pedestrian deaths increased 51 percent from 4,109 to 6,227.
And here are five related cases for consideration.
First, 2013 San Francisco Uber staff exhibited reckless disregard for safety or lives of others, killed people in the street, and in 2018 was charged with misdemeanor:
Prosecutors charged Muzaffar with a misdemeanor after finding no evidence of gross negligence in the incident. He faces up to a year in jail at sentencing. Muzaffar’s attorney argued that a blind spot in the driver’s vehicle prevented him from seeing the family when he struck them.
Think for a minute about that defense tactic. You close your eyes, fire a gun towards an area with people, and then argue — because you prevented yourself from seeing them — you aren’t responsible for your conscious violation of other people’s rights to safety.
Or perhaps imagine you shoot into the woods where you know there are walking paths and say you can’t be charged because couldn’t see people you were killing as the trees you were hiding behind blocked your view?
Second, 2017 San Francisco law enforcement officer sitting in a car shot an unarmed running man, and in 2020 was charged with a homicide while on duty
…Officer Samayoa was seated in the passenger seat. Officer Samayoa pointed his gun and shot Mr. O’Neil through the passenger side window of the patrol car, killing Mr. O’Neil…
Third, Arizona has the highest pedestrian deaths in America. Over 70% of pedestrian fatalities are at night. Jaywalking is a fantasy crime invented by American car manufacturers, which has led to premeditated overconfidence by drivers they won’t be convicted for killing pedestrians.
In 2018 Uber staff exhibited reckless disregard for safety or lives of others, killed someone in an Arizona street at night (as easily predicted), and in 2020 their “safety driver” was charged with negligent homicide.
…a charge similar to manslaughter that carries a recommended sentence of 2.5 years. However, the grand jury also charged that the crime was committed with a “dangerous instrument” — namely the car. When negligent homicide is committed with a dangerous weapon or instrument, the recommended sentence increases to six years.
…one departing Uber engineer, Robbie Miller, sent a scathing email to the head of the self-driving program days before Herzberg’s death. “A car was damaged nearly every other day in February,” Miller wrote. “We shouldn’t be hitting things every 15,000 miles.” Miller pointed to an incident the previous week (nine days before Herzberg’s death) when an Uber test vehicle “drove on the sidewalk for several meters.” …the incident “was essentially ignored” until Miller brought it to the attention of management. But Uber escaped criminal liability for the crash.
Fascinating to note how “dangerous instrument” means use of an Uber increased the sentence for a “safety driver” yet no charges for Uber. This is like charging Boeing pilots for negligent homicide in the 737 MAX autopilot crashes, yet Boeing itself escaping liability.
Speaking of which, Tesla killing pedestrians seems almost completely unreported compared to all the attention paid to Uber for doing the same thing around the same time.
Fourth, Republicans around the country very politically tried to criminalize freedom of movement outside a vehicle such that no driver ever would expect to be held liable for reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others.
In North Dakota this even was characterized very narrowly as a way for white middle-aged women to “hit the accelerator” to kill Americans in the street and still be free of any charges.
…what would have happened to his mother-in-law if she panicked and hit the accelerator when she meant to hit the brakes. Should the bill pass, Kempenich’s mother-in-law could not be prosecuted nor sued. The bill would be good for Kempenich’s mother-in-law but perhaps not so good for anyone who gets hit by a car…
…author of a Texas bill to protect drivers who injure demonstrators found himself the target of outrage on social media this weekend after the hit-and-run death of a young woman…
Such an unbalanced mindset of American politicians criminalizing pedestrians is critical to understanding a terrible record of people in South Dakota being killed with cars.
Vehicle versus pedestrian collisions are fairly common in South Dakota. The state saw 140 such collisions in 2019, about one every 2.5 days. Eight pedestrians were killed and 132 were injured in 2019. So far in 2020, seven pedestrians have been killed. From 2014 to 2019, 50 pedestrians were killed on or along South Dakota roadways. Often in South Dakota, vehicle versus pedestrian collisions don’t result in serious criminal charges being filed.
The data suggests it’s more dangerous to walk on a road in South Dakota than ride a motorcycle.
Let me emphasize that again just to be clear. South Dakota doesn’t even have an adult motorcycle helmet requirement (it does require eye protection however), and still there are more pedestrian deaths each year than motorcyclists.
Far more people die each year from being hit by cars as they are walking in South Dakota then are killed by pretty much anything else (except poison, drowning and falling).
Source: South Dakota Government
Fifth, “run them over you won’t be charged” has been a social media campaign since at least 2016 encouraging Americans to kill each other using cars if they have political differences.
One tweet promoting this violence even suggested the sound of a dead American under vehicle wheels makes a sound like “Trump, Trump”.
Ok.
All of that is background to the news today that a South Dakota Attorney General in a car killed a man. Investigators proved “His face was in yours… think about that” yet the accused coldly dehumanized his victim to avoid charges of negligence.
He said he thought he killed an animal and he thought he looked hard enough (even though evidence proved he saw the man face-to-face and did not look very hard).
Think about that.
Because in South Dakota the dangerous instrument used to kill was a car…
…to charge him with manslaughter the state would have to prove he ‘consciously and unjustifiably’ disregarded a substantial risk — which it could not…
At best, [killing with a car] was negligent, which is insufficient to bring criminal charges in South Dakota… history of speeding: in the four years leading up to his election in 2018 he racked up six separate speeding tickets.
Six speeding tickets in four years perhaps you could say propelled this man into an Attorney General seat… in a state known to criminalize people walking in the street. His alleged negligence led predictably nonetheless to him claiming no liability at all for using a car to kill someone.
I’m curious about a theory posted in a rhyming-slang encoding guide meant to demystify some fun yet secretive communication:
…no cake can be eaten that has not been given (by a shopkeeper) and taken…
“Give and Take”, which rhymes with cake, is thus said to mean cake.
However, cake can be eaten alone. Cake also can be baked and not given away, only eaten. Does nobody in the rhyming slang context bake a cake and eat it themselves?
And that brings to mind something more like a “cake and eat it too” explanation:
…to have or do two good things at the same time that are impossible to have or do at the same time…
It looks like there are interesting cultural clues in a key to decoding signals, although the current reference may actually be incorrect or misleading.
News about Amazon seems to read like something straight out of a classic American novel and now makes me wonder if the company name is related, as I wrote here in 2015 about that book.
…when you talk to the platform engineers behind closed doors you will often find a modern version of Sinclair’s 1906 novel “The Jungle”; history has some very important lessons to be remembered…
Founder Jeff Bezos was reported to say competing with Bernie Madoff in hedge money made him feel like a loser.
Bezos reportedly confided to former AOL president Ted Leonsis that he quit his job at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw because Bernie Madoff “was kicking my ass.” The Amazon idea came to Bezos as he was researching online business opportunities for the hedge fund.
Madoff was later sentenced to 150 years in jail for crimes, what Bezos credited as “kicking”.
Bezos meanwhile gave up because too jealous of Madoff’s ill-gotten wealth; allegedly he thought a better get-rich strategy for a wealthy hedge gambler was to plunge his millions into gaming a vulnerable market into a forced monopoly (initially books). This was basically creating a tech platform for rent seeking (coerced trade that benefits only one side), which today we call Amazon.
In 2011 at BSidesLV I gave a presentation about the danger of big cloud companies operating like the movie 2001 by Stanley Kubrick — ship automation systems with too much authority detaining and terminating their own crew.
Google AI ethics team discusses next steps in a “private” chat while Google’s AI reads their lips
That presentation was the genesis of the book I have been writing since that time (and in 2012 I spoke about humans enacting a political coup using social media, a step beyond HAL). It has generated enough material so far to probably be a multi-volume set, although I tell myself to edit it down…
I recently had to explain that someone edited the Wikipedia entry on Woodrow Wilson to falsely claim that the very man who called for a return of the KKK, restarted the KKK as President, and led its rise to humanitarian disasters across America… was somehow “personally opposed to the KKK”.
Click image to enlarge:
Source: Wikipedia
That’s crazy talk.
It would be like saying General Grant was personally opposed to destroying the KKK. Wrong. Grant destroyed it. Wilson restarted it. Those are facts.
A totally false sentence about Woodrow Wilson entered into a Wikipedia post makes literally no sense, is obviously counter-factual, yet there it is… without any citation or reference at all.
It’s like someone from the KKK dropped in and thought it would be really funny for people to read “water in the ocean isn’t wet [citation needed]”.
The cost to disrupt and confuse with these attacks on weakly-anti-racist (also known as racist) systems is very low, the cost to defend (without proper anti-racist measures for prevention of racism) is high.
I’m finding this class of attack all over Wikipedia. Here’s another example from the very racist history of voucher schools, fraudulently trying to minimize their impact and use by white insecurity hate groups in America.
Click image to enlarge and see the crazy counter-factual statement that “all modern voucher programs prohibit racial discrimination” with [citation needed] right next to it:
That is just so factually wrong it’s amazing. Anyone apparently can get garbage to stick immediately on Wikipedia with a very tedious and long process to get it removed or corrected.
Actual analysis of failure to prohibit discrimination in modern voucher programs would be more like the following:
2016: “Dollars to Discriminate: The (Un)intended Consequences of School Vouchers… legislators appear to have neglected to construct policies that safeguard student access and ensure that public funds do not support discriminatory practices…”
2017: “Studies on charter schools in Indianapolis, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Texas, among other places, show that charter schools can lead to greater racial stratification.”
2017: “…as private school voucher programs grow to scale – statewide and even nationally in other countries – they can actually increase segregation…”
2020: “Century Foundation also proved that voucher programs across the country benefit the most advantaged students … continue the long-residual effects of racism.”
Wikipedia clearly has widespread integrity issues, weak editing/deployment pipeline process and quality is very low.
A Danish Jaeger Corps (Special Ops Force) officer named Helge Meyer thought he could help with supply-chain issues of the early-1990s by creating a… Bitchin’ Camaro (ala Dead Milkmen). Ooops, I mean Ghost Camaro (although Meyer oddly referred to the whole thing as being God’s Rambo, which sounds like a 16 year-old white kid from Minnesota spending dad’s money).
Meyer pitched US military leaders in charge of humanitarian efforts in Bosnia on a small and “fast” car for him to drive about, given the typical slow-moving military supply-chain. He asked the US to sponsor him, and supplied a 1979 Chevrolet car for the Americans to upgrade.
What else was from 1979…I mean besides gasoline for $0.75/gallon?
The first “Mad Max” movie was in 1979, starring a Ford with an engine that a character describes as “…last of the V-8s. She sucks nitro”.
And Mad Max was only a few years before “Knight Rider” became an American TV show centered on high-tech communications stuffed into a sports car.
One can guess Meyer was a fan of both.
For his project he had US military engineers juice his 1979 Camaro stock 5.7-liter V8 engine from 175 horsepower to 220 (more like a Camaro V8 of the early 1970s). Then they added nitrous for a double jump to 440.
Very Mad Max.
Then the US engineers added radar-defeating paint leftover from an F-117, giant infrared driving lights, run-flat foam-filled tires, a ground-to-air radio system for aircraft communication, kevlar doors and trunk, steel panels under and around the driver, body-heat sensors, fire extinguishers, night vision systems and a mine-clearing blade. Plus a personal armor system (PASGT) vest and helmet.
Very Knight Rider.
Indeed, DriveTribe called it “combining [Knight Rider] with Mad Max in order to save lives”.
One thing I’ve never seen discussed is why the engine wasn’t quieter, or even silent. In some cases story-tellers say they believe people felt joy when they could hear the loud V-8 coming, yet that seems completely counter to everything “ghost” about it.
Missed opportunity in the 1990s for US military engineers to produce a high-performance electric car to save lives like the 1980 Lektrikar II, if you ask me. After all, while electricity could still be found in Bosnia how was a gas-guzzling thing like this Camaro supposed to recharge its nitrous or avoid stopping for gas? Apparently it couldn’t go very far.
In 2006 I wrote about fast quiet special operations engines, when I briefly profiled the 1999 US Military RST-V Hybrid Electric Diesel: the “Shadow“. It had an electric-only mode with three huge “ghost” benefits: super fast, yet the heat and sound emissions were reduced to almost nothing.
Source: jalopnik
I guess anytime someone brings up the “ghost Camaro” car story, it could be a good conversation starter to ask why high profile emission signatures were favored over silent and clean options available.
This photo indeed explains the childish “God’s Rambo” mindset I alluded to above.
The “Aloners MC” is a German organization that flies the loser US Confederate battle flag as their logo. This is well known in Germany as symbolizing support for extreme right-wing terror groups (Nazism), given a Swastika flag is banned.
The Aloners also fly a 1% symbol next to their loser US Confederate battle flag, to symbolize they see themselves as above the law and irresponsible — thus “God’s Rambo” is reference to extreme right-wing politics, refusing to follow any laws.
Bottom line is the car wasn’t a ghost, it emitted a huge signature on purpose to let people know its presence from far away, and the man driving it can no sooner call himself a humanitarian wearing an Aloners MC shirt (promoting human slavery), than if he wore a Nazi swastika.
Here’s a sobering thought. At the same time as this guy’s operation, I knew personally some anti-fascist Germans who repeatedly drove a small diesel Volkswagen unmodified into Bosnia and survived. You’ll never hear about them or see them. They seem more like the real “ghost” deal than a show-boating Nazi club member infatuated with power unregulated, trying to emulate movies and television.
In terms of scale, UN humanitarian efforts in Bosnia were recorded as the largest operation in their history.
UNHCR managed to deliver some 950,000 metric tonnes of humanitarian assistance to some 2.7 million beneficiaries in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. It became UNHCR’s largest humanitarian operation ever. […] By the end of 1995 there were over 250 international humanitarian organisations operating under the UNHCR ‘umbrella’. The only major humanitarian organisation to operate outside the UNHCR framework was ICRC. […] By the end of 1995 there were more than 3,000 people from over 250 humanitarian organisations carrying valid UNHCR ID cards [and] over 2,000 vehicles from more than a 150 humanitarian organisations driving around Bosnia with UNHCR registration plates.
During the three-and-a-half year operation, the 21 nations supporting [UN] Provide Promise flew 12,895 supply missions (4,197 by USAF) and delivered 160,536 metric tons (62,801.5 by USAF) of humanitarian goods to Sarajevo. In addition, the USAF airlifters flew more than 2,200 airdrop sorties across Bosnia.
Here’s another sobering thought. Some journalists at the same time as the Camaro story started running aid on their own initiative and ended up building a hugely successful humanitarian organization.
People in Need organization was established in 1992 by a group of Czech war correspondents who were no longer satisfied with merely relaying information about ongoing conflicts and began sending out aid. It gradually became established as a professional humanitarian organization striving to provide aid in troubled regions and support adherence to human rights around the world. Throughout the 25 years of its existence, People in Need has become one of the biggest non-profit organizations in Central Europe.
Now that’s an impressive legacy; Šimon Pánek and Jaromír Štětina setup a system lasting to this day. Compare that with a gas-guzzling orange parade float paid for by American taxpayers that has been in some random guy’s garage after a very brief (albeit useful) stint down range.
So I hereby propose future stories about Helge Meyer use a little more context to point out the wild inconsistencies to his story:
Felt he needed US government to engineer an extremely expensive vehicle just for him and protect him with communications to networks, yet calls himself “alone”.
Made a car obnoxiously loud to alert people of his movements, yet promoted it as a “ghost”.
Said he did it as a warrior for god, yet poses for publicity in a white-supremacist t-shirt that violates most basic (modern) religious principles.
If the measure of the story is someone who did something selfless with technology in order to help others, there are surely far better examples than this hollow-sounding one.
I think the phrase that stands out for me most in this US Navy press report is “stateless”.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81) seized illicit shipments of weapons and weapons components from two stateless dhows during a maritime security operation in international waters off the coast of Somalia, Feb. 11-12.
It was a “flag verification” that led to the discovery, after these dhows were monitored for nearly two days in international waters.
Churchill’s Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) team and embarked joint service Advanced Interdiction Team (AIT) discovered the illicit cargo during a flag verification boarding conducted in accordance with international law and in international waters. The cache of weapons consisted of thousands of AK-47 assault rifles, light machine guns, heavy sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and crew served weapons. […] The original source of the weapons has not yet been identified. Churchill located the dhows and provided more than 40 hours of over watch and security for the ship and its boarding teams throughout the two-day operation.
“Source of the weapons has not yet been identified” seems odd as well, given 40 hours of over watch. Pretty clear these are Chinese-made RPG-7… so I guess the remaining question is who is buying and shipping them?
Source: US Navy Press Office, Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Louis Thompson Staats IV
Some speculate these are Iranian deals, and perhaps even headed for Yemen.
Ethiopia seems likely to top Chinese diplomats’ agenda for East Africa. China and Ethiopia have expressed their enthusiasm for expanding military ties, and officers from the Ethiopian military have even received training in China.
Another clue could come from the UAE Embassy attack plot in Ethiopia, disclosed February 3rd.
Ethiopia’s state-run media have said authorities arrested 15 people over a plot to attack the United Arab Emirates’ embassy in the capital, Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) on Wednesday cited a statement from the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) as saying that the suspects were working on foreigners’ direction.
The US Pentagon clarified “foreigners’ direction” to mean Iran was behind this plan to attack UAE embassies.
Rear Adm Heidi K. Berg, director of intelligence at the Pentagon’s Africa Command, said that Iran was behind the 15 people arrested in Ethiopia and that the “mastermind of this foiled plot”.
Tempted to say these were Chinese arms for a failed plot in Ethiopia diverted via Somalia smuggling network somewhere else. Or maybe they just didn’t get to the plot in time and were in limbo.
And I hate to admit it but the idea of these “stateless” caches of guns from unknown origin floating about reminds me of the latest story in America:
Untraceable ghost guns are now the emerging guns of choice across the nation. Nobody who could buy a serialized gun and pass a background check would ever need a ghost gun. Yet we allege Polymer80 has made it easy for anyone, including felons, to buy and build weapons that pose a major public safety threat.
