From an article remembering the “Lion of Panjshir”

From an early age, Massoud adored poetry. After all, Afghanistan is the land of poetry and mysticism. He listened to a young Masood Khalili recite poems on Radio Afghanistan; the two ultimately established a lifelong friendship. Khalili went on to become the Afghan ambassador to Spain, while Massoud entered the military arena. Poetry, though, was always present in Massoud’s life; he typically kept at least one poetry book on his person at all times, and he read poems to his soldiers.

Keeping a poetry book “at all times” to “read poems to his soldiers…” is a line straight out of the American Civil War.

Although, since it says he was a student of the American Revolution, I wonder if he carried the poetry of Phillis Wheatley who penned these deep thoughts in 1772:

No more, America, in mournful strain,
Of wrongs and grievance unredressed complain;
No longer shall thou dread the iron chain
Which wanton Tyranny, with lawless hand,
Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land.

She obviously was way ahead of her time and a true revolutionary hero, who nobody in America ever hears about.

During the peak of her writing career, she wrote a well-received poem praising the appointment of George Washington as the commander of the Continental Army. However, she believed that slavery was the issue that prevented the colonists from achieving true heroism.

And yet, despite her hopes and optimism for a better outcome, the American dollar bill honors a man who fought to preserve and expand slavery. Food for thought when contemplating the importance of poets during revolutionary times.

An infamous blackface performance by Tesla indicates to me the company is promoting a fantasy of robots that invokes a discussion of slavery.

What do you see here?

Does a white man dressed all in black seem odd standing next to a robot made to appear like a black woman dressed all in white?

I mean if the robot is supposed to represent humans, why not also have that robot dressed all in black just like every man who gets on that stage?

And why not have the robot appear with a white face like the man standing next to it?

More to the point, is this a mock-up for a petite black woman standing next to her white male owner (e.g. why did Tesla announce 5’8″ and 125 lb with large hips as their ideal robot form when not even a prototype product exists)?

Several white men have reacted to me with shock and disgust when I bring up these simple observations.

One man literally sent me a message of black text on a white screen trying to tell me this robot face HAS to be black because a white interface doesn’t work.

I wrote back with black text on white interface “can you read this”?

Let’s go even deeper and take a look at some history of racism. It’s curious to me because those most familiar with the tragedy of blackface have NOT objected my comparison of the Tesla vision to slavery.

The influence of minstrelsy and racial stereotyping on American society cannot be overstated.

Thus I humbly ask that the sad and painful experience of a blackface performance be viewed by everyone, such as the following one, to learn real American racism history and gain perspective on harms today:

Now watch Tesla’s product pre-pre-announcement (no technology or product actually exists, it’s all just theory) in context of blackface dance, as it appears to have little purpose other than to use a product launch to put on a blackface stunt.

The surrounding commentary from Tesla doesn’t help move my impression in any way about the connections here.

…designed to eliminate “dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks,” like bending over to pick something up, or go to the store for groceries, Musk said. “Essentially the future of physical work will be a choice.”

That is slavery talk. Creating a robotic black woman “bending over” for him, getting groceries, making physical work optional for him… all of that is consistent with the narrative of slavery.

Bending over? Seriously. Musk is trying to say he is building a feminine robot to bend over for him, and wants to pass that off as something safety related?

In a seemingly like-minded comment, Musk emphasized an odd definition of how he expects to remain in control.

“We’re setting it such that it is at a mechanical level, at a physical level, you can run away from it and most likely overpower it”

They are shackling it so it can’t run too far, making it easy to leave it behind, and also be overpowered? Come on.

None of this makes any sense in terms of actual market needs, let alone actual security and safety controls (e.g. the “you” in his statement seems to imply a large white man). Musk claiming there will be “no shortage of labor” due to this robot announcement while in the next sentence saying “not yet though, because this robot doesn’t work ha ha ha” has to be evidence of an unhealthy mind.

It’s so far outside actual robotics and instead a sad display of tech-driven fantasy of white men with enslaved petite black women being physically dominated… it’s no wonder no women were on stage during such a presentation, or alone anyone black. On top of all that, I have to wonder who thought I was a good idea to have the petite blackface robot symbolically standing behind all these men, obscured by them.

Again, a bunch of men dressed in black in front of a black scene doesn’t make sense when the robot is supposed to be the focus. Might as well dress the robot in all black too? Something is just totally off with the disconnect, the clear dehumanization of a machine that is meant to appear as human as possible.

All that being said, it could be I’m totally wrong here. Maybe we’ll find out the look Tesla was going for instead was the executioner’s hood.

In 2006 a special international communication draft was released by the applied studies program of The Institute of World Politics (IWP) called “Ridicule as a Weapon, White Paper No. 7“. It contained sharp analysis such as this:

…U.S. strategy includes undermining the political and psychological strengths of adversaries and enemies by employing ridicule as a standard operating tool of national strategy. Ridicule is an under-appreciated weapon not only against terrorists, but against weapons proliferators, despots, and international undesirables in general. Ridicule serves several purposes:
• Ridicule raises morale at home.
• Ridicule strips the enemy/adversary of his mystique and prestige.
• Ridicule erodes the enemy’s claim to justice.
• Ridicule eliminates the enemy’s image of invincibility.
• Directed properly at an enemy, ridicule can be a fate worse than death.

More precisely, it offers this applied context:

The Nazis and fascists required either adulation or fear; their leaders and their causes were vulnerable to well-aimed ridicule. […] Like many in Hollywood did at the time, the cartoon studios put their talent at the disposal of the war effort. Disney’s Donald Duck, in the 1942 short “Donald Duck In Nutziland” (retitled “Der Fuehrer’s Face”), won an Academy Award after the unhappy duck dreamed he was stuck in Nazi Germany.

And then it concludes with this suggestion:

U.S. policymakers must incorporate ridicule into their strategic thinking. Ridicule is a tool that they can use without trying to control. It exists naturally in its native environments in ways beneficial to the interests of the nation and cause of freedom. Its practitioners are natural allies, even if we do not always appreciate what they say or how they say it. The United States need do little more than give them publicity and play on its official and semi-official global radio, TV and Internet media, and help them become
“discovered.” And it should be relentless about it.

And for what it’s worth John Lenczowski, a National Security Council staffer under President Ronald Reagan, founded the IWP.

A modern and somewhat nuanced take on what this all means today is captured in a new talk by General Glen VanHerck, head of US Northern Command:

“Rather than primarily focusing on kinetic defeat, for the defense of the homeland, I think we must get further left,” VanHerck told an audience at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium. “Deterrence is establishing competition by using all levers of influence as I conveyed, and most importantly, the proper use of the information space to demonstrate the will, the capability, the resiliency, and the readiness by creating doubt in any potential adversaries mind that they can ever be successful by striking our homeland.”

Putting “doubt in any potential adversaries mind that they can ever be successful”… is to ridicule them, as Rommel found out the hard way when he quickly lost all his potential to be an adversary.

A Report on the Office of Censorship from November 1945, by Byron Price (Director), has quite a lot of detail with regard to American culture during 44 months of national censorship operations.

Censorship’s work may be said to divide itself into two separate tasks. The first is to deprive the enemy of information and of tangibles, such as funds and commodities which he can use against our armies and our navies. The second is to collect intelligence of many kinds which can be used against the enemy. No censorship can fail to go dangerously afield unless it holds rigidly and resolutely to these basic purposes.

…the President issued the following statement outlining the bases of Censorship: “All Americans abhor censorship, just as they abhor war. But the experience of this and of all other nations has demonstrated that some degree of censorship is essential in war time, and we are at war.”

With all the news lately circulating about Texas hoarding weirdly pro-slavery revisionist narratives and denying history (e.g. struggle to remove revisionism and restore real history of the Alamo), it’s impossible to say Americans abhor censorship.

Without heavy censorship for example the myth of Davy Crockett finally would die, as historians repeatedly try to reveal he fought for slavery until being caught and executed.

Anyway, there are a lot of details from the WWII Office of Censorship in anecdotes like the following, which make for light reading:

Most of the censors, of course, were women, who traditionally have been preferred for the job.

Why? No more explanation about women is given. Here’s another one:

To prevent the transmission of secret information, the postal censors also had to stop such things as international chess games, for the symbols might or might not be entirely innocent.

I’ve always felt that way about chess. Also this:

One woman tried to get a letter past Censorship by concealing it in a basket of flowers which she carried off a plane at an American airport. She paid a $40 fine for censorship evasion.

Was it really concealed? I mean flowers are kind of unusual and draw attention, especially on a plane. At least she didn’t put the letter inside a bunch of balloons.

Speaking of balloons, Censorship asked Japan’s bombing campaign to be obscured from the people who were targeted until a generic “don’t touch the pretty balloons” warning finally became a compromise.

Late in 1944 voluntary censorship was presented with a unique problem in connected with the landing of Japanese bomb-carrying balloons in the western part of the United States… Censorship asked editors and broadcasters not to mention these incidents unless the War Department officially gave out information. There was complete compliance with this request, even when six persons were killed by one of the bombs in Oregon on May 5, 1945. Stories of the tragedy did not disclose the cause. […] The Japanese received neither information nor comfort about their fantastic scheme to attack the United States.

The Oregon Secretary of State today retells the bomb stories in much detail.

Taken as a whole the report consistently says that censorship must focus tightly on a narrow objective such as fighting against racism, fighting against pandemic and fighting against… I hate that I have to say it… enemies of democracy.

As the Office of Censorship report says on page 11:

It took pains to indoctrinate the censors and those charged with distributing intercepted information with the basic principle that only material having a direct bearing on the war should be reported.

All good food for thought when reading news about Tucker Carlson meeting with authoritarian leader of Hungary, Viktor Orban, before speaking at an anti-democracy gathering in Budapest.