Category Archives: Security

Austrian Stage Accident

The BBC tells of a strange security incident in the Vienna theater, when a weapon prop turned out to be the real thing. An actor cut his own throat on stage:

The audience is said to have applauded what they thought was a stunning special effect, and only realised something was wrong when the actor staggered off stage to receive treatment.

Austrian police launched an investigation and have not ruled out the possibility of foul play, Austrian media reported.

They were told that the knife had been bought at a local shop.

“The knife even still had the price tag on it,” one officer said.

There are advantages to using props that are not very realistic, one of which is reducing the risk of using a real one by accident.

MRAP and Predictable Disasters

The US Pentagon under President Bush stands accused of failing to address and respond to known risks to Marines. The Department of Defense does not mince words in their report, according to USA Today:

When field commanders first began requesting MRAPs, military officials saw the armored Humvees as a more immediate option to countering IEDs, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. “The threat has evolved and our force protection measures have evolved with it,” he said.

The Marines requested the inspector general’s investigation in February after an internal report accused the Corps of “gross mismanagement” of the urgent request for MRAPs. Hundreds of Marines died unnecessarily because of delays in fielding the vehicles, said the Jan. 22 study by Franz Gayl, a retired Marine officer and civilian science adviser.

Two U.S. senators — Democrat Joe Biden of Delaware, now the vice president-elect, and Republican Kit Bond of Missouri — demanded an investigation after details of Gayl’s study were published.

The summary report is available here:

…the Department entered into operations in Iraq without having taken available steps to acquire technology to mitigate the known mine and IED risk to soldiers and Marines.

Classic example of security negligence in management.

A Visitor

by Mary Oliver

My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
wildly at the door,
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between his hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open

and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
pathetic and hollow,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,
and lit the lamp,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.

© Mary Oliver