Will the US Holding Bitcoin Force Governments to Take Crypto Seriously?

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167 responses

1. 

   March 7, 2025

   flysiddthesoulutionexe

   Akoma @Leonard Sengere or anyone who knows, iro 1 bitcoin riripavalue yemarrii?? Mind you on the tech side of things involved with money, ndoona sekuti most countries including us are not that well versed & legitimate about the whole thing. Ndikange ndichiziva nezve online forex trading nd wat wat do i quality as someone who knows?

   Reply
2. 

   March 7, 2025

   Always Off Topic

   “……Bitcoin prices fell by over 5% because the announcement also implied that the US government would not be buying crypto. Instead, it will just hold on to the crypto it seizes…..”

   The US does not have any money to buy Bitcoin with. They are 36 trillion plus, in debt, (yikes!!). How would they finance it and most importantly, what effect would that have on the USD, especially at these levels of 80 to 100 grand plus a pop, i don’t think it would be pretty. The USD is already on the defensive.

   Reply
3. 

   March 8, 2025

   Alicent Hightower

   How might the US government’s decision to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, even without active purchasing, pressure other Block Blast nations to reconsider their own cryptocurrency policies and potentially accelerate global adoption or regulation of digital assets?

   Reply
4. 

   March 8, 2025

   MYST

   Happy International Women’s Day to all women. We celebrate your ability to lead, nurture & care. #AccelerateAction #HerJoy.

   Reply
5. 

   March 8, 2025

   MYST

   Botcoin may eventually hit $1million.

   Reply
6. 

   March 8, 2025

   Rise and Kill First

   —
   ON JUNE 27, 1976, six months after the Kenyan attack was thwarted, Rabin and his cabinet convened for a
   meeting in the prime minister’s office, in the Kirya-Sarona in Tel Aviv.
   The ministers were discussing a proposal by Defense Minister Shimon Peres to increase the pay of IDF
   soldiers when, at 1:45 P.M., the military secretary entered the room and handed Rabin a note. Suddenly his
   face became grave. He cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “Before we go on, I have an
   announcement to make,” he said. “An Air France plane that took off from Lod at 9:50 has lost contact.
   Apparently hijacked. Apparently flying the other way. On the plane there are about eighty-three Israelis.”
   The military aide, Efraim Poran, told Rabin that intelligence agencies did not know yet who had
   perpetrated the hijacking and that he’d update him when more information came in.
   There was a moment, Rabin confided to an associate later, when he regretted not giving the okay to throw
   the Nairobi five into the sea.
   “Forget it,” Rabin told Poran. “I know. It’s Wadie Haddad.”
   There were four hijackers—two from the PFLP and two German leftist extremists. They had boarded the
   Paris-bound plane during a stopover in Athens, and after takeoff, they got up, drew guns, and burst into the
   cockpit, ordering the pilot to fly first to Benghazi, for refueling and to pick up three more terrorists, and
   then to Entebbe, Uganda.
   Wadie Haddad had proved once again that he was the best strategist in the terrorist world. He had learned
   from his own and others’ mistakes and had produced a large-scale operation based on accurate intelligence,
   meticulous preparations, and coordination with at least two despots, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi and
   Uganda’s Idi Amin, both of whom extended logistical assistance and asylum to the hijackers, far from
   Israel’s reach.
   Amin, an ex-boxer and a sergeant in the British Army, had seized control of Uganda with the assistance
   of the Mossad and the Israeli Defense Ministry, which maintained secret ties with the country. In exchange
   for bribes Amin received in suitcases with double bottoms, he awarded Israel large military and civilian
   contracts and gave the Mossad a free hand in Uganda.
   But Amin’s bloodlust and cruelty were matched only by his lust for money, and in 1972, when Qaddafi
   began offering him bigger bribes than Israel had, he expelled its representatives and became its avowed
   enemy. He agreed to host the hijackers and their hostages at Entebbe, 2,200 miles from Israel.
   Haddad believed that Israel would have no alternative but to negotiate with him. In Entebbe, his
   operatives released the 209 non-Israeli and non-Jewish passengers and the twelve Air France crew, though
   the crew, in a courageous act of solidarity, insisted on staying with the remaining eighty-three Israeli and
   eight non-Israeli Jewish passengers. The hijackers then demanded the release of fifty-three “freedom
   fighters” in exchange for the Israeli and Jewish hostages. This demand came via Idi Amin, who made
   telephone contact with Israel himself. The list of “freedom fighters” included Archbishop Hilarion Capucci,
   a man of the cloth who had used his diplomatic status to smuggle a large shipment of weaponry in his

   Mercedes sedan to Fatah cells in Jerusalem; Kozo Okamoto, one of the perpetrators of the 1972 Lod
   airport massacre; and the five terrorists who had been on the Nairobi mission, who Haddad was sure were
   in Kenyan or Israeli hands.
   The Mossad was in turmoil. There were now many who regretted that the Nairobi five had not been
   dumped into the sea. At a command meeting, Tsafrir said, “They want the five? With pleasure. Let’s fly
   them to Uganda and drop them from the plane onto the roof of the terminal so Haddad will realize that
   that’s all he is going to get from us.”
   Meanwhile, the IDF planned a rescue operation involving a huge force that would land in the area of Lake
   Victoria, then secure the whole airport and a wide swath of land around it. Rabin listened to the plan,
   growing angrier by the minute.
   “In the time that it takes to secure the whole area, the hijackers will slaughter all the hostages, and Idi
   Amin will have time to bring in reinforcements,” he fumed.
   “Rabin told the IDF that he wanted to see a plan in which no more than three minutes would elapse from
   the moment forces land until the rescue operation begins,” said the director general of the prime minister’s
   office, Amos Eiran. But from such a distance, without any intelligence, this seemed an impossible request.
   Lacking any viable alternatives, Rabin was inclined to comply with the hijackers’ demands. Though he
   loathed the idea, he saw no other way to save the hundred-plus innocent lives. But this action would entail a
   breach of the ironclad law laid down by Golda Meir and accepted thereafter as Israeli policy: no negotiations
   with terrorists. Shin Bet director Avraham Ahituv demanded that, if there truly was no other way, then, at
   the very least, no prisoners “with blood on their hands”—a phrase that has since been invoked repeatedly in
   similar situations—should be exchanged for hostages. In other words, only junior PLO functionaries, who
   had not been directly involved in spilling Israeli blood, could be considered for release. “Anyone who has
   killed a Jew,” said Ahituv, “must either be eliminated or die in an Israeli prison after being sentenced to
   life.”
   For four days, the debate continued. Demonstrations by relatives of the hostages raged outside the gates to
   the Kirya, within earshot of Rabin’s office. The daughter of the director of Israel’s main nuclear reactor was
   one of the hostages. He had access to Rabin and exerted heavy pressure on him to reach a compromise with
   the terrorists.
   If all that wasn’t enough, Rabin then received a secret report from the Military Censorship Bureau that it
   had barred the publication, in an Israeli daily newspaper, of a story that included all the details of Operation
   Heartburn. Ahituv informed Rabin that he had ordered the reporter’s phone to be tapped but had still not
   managed to determine the source of the leak. Rabin was furious: “I am really shocked…[that] it is
   impossible in this country to take a military correspondent and lock him up and grill him about where he
   got it from….This [leakage of information] is going to be a disaster for us.”
   Rabin understood that breaking Israel’s promise to Kenyatta of total secrecy about the Nairobi five would
   lead to a crisis in their relationship with Kenya. More important, disclosure of the affair could paint Israel,
   which was now asking for the world’s support against the hijackers, as a pirate state employing terrorist-like
   methods. On the other hand, how could Israel negotiate with the terrorists when both they and Kenya denied
   having any knowledge of their whereabouts?
   In the end, Caesarea came up with a solution that didn’t require a hostage-for-prisoner swap. Five years
   earlier, Harari had decided that he needed an operative who could pose as a pilot. Why, exactly? “Because
   perhaps we’ll need it one day” was his customary answer to any questions about preparations he’d made

   without any immediate cause. He persuaded Zamir to make the financial investment, and an operative code-
   named David underwent the lengthy training in Israel and Europe.
   Now the investment paid off, big-time.
   David rented a plane in Kenya and circled the Entebbe terminals and tarmac, taking photographs from
   the air. When he landed, he posed as a wealthy, pampered English hunter living in a Central African
   country who needed the assistance of the control tower on a number of matters. The Ugandan air controllers
   cooperated willingly and even had a drink with him, sharing their impressions of “the big mess of the last
   few days,” their term for the hostage situation in the nearby terminal.
   Twelve hours later, when Harari brought David’s detailed report and the hundreds of photos he had taken
   to Rabin, the prime minister’s face lit up. “This is just what I needed,” he said. “This is the intelligence for
   an operation.” Especially important to Rabin were the shots of Ugandan soldiers all around the terminal,
   which he took as proof that Wadie Haddad’s men hadn’t booby-trapped the building. “Idi Amin wouldn’t
   have allowed his men to be there,” he said. It was also clear from the pictures that the Ugandan force
   guarding the terminal was very small.
   Sayeret Matkal came up with an original and daring plan: A small Sayeret contingent would land, under
   cover of darkness, in an unmarked C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft, using the runway lights that
   were lit for a civilian cargo plane scheduled to land before it. The force would disembark and travel toward
   the terminal in a number of vehicles behind a black Mercedes similar to the one used by Idi Amin, in order
   to confuse the Ugandan guards. Close to the terminal, the force would dismount and storm the building from
   several different entryways, taking advantage of the surprise and confusion to eliminate the terrorists. All of
   this was supposed to be accomplished in less than two minutes. More IDF forces would land immediately
   afterward and would deal with the control tower, the Ugandan soldiers, and the Ugandan air force jets, so
   that they would not be able to pursue the Israeli planes once they took off with the hostages and troops
   aboard. Kenyatta agreed to allow the Israeli aircraft to land in Nairobi to refuel on the way back.
   Defense Minister Shimon Peres believed that the plan could succeed, and he pressed Rabin. On July 3,
   the prime minister gave the green light for the raid.
   The commanders of the operation asked Rabin what to do if they ran into Amin himself. “If he
   interferes, the orders are to kill him,” Rabin said. To which the foreign minister, Yigal Allon, added, “Even
   if he doesn’t interfere.”
   The Israeli task force set out for the mission on four planes. Each soldier was given a map of Uganda and
   a sum of money in American dollars, in case they were stranded and had to escape on their own. “But it was
   clear to us that this was mere talk, and that in fact this was an operation without a getaway plan. If
   something were to go wrong, we’d be stuck there and would have to fight to the death,” said Yiftach
   Reicher, the deputy to Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Benjamin and now commander of Sayeret Matkal.
   The first Hercules landed as planned. Reicher, who was in one of the Land Rovers following the black
   Mercedes, recalled the scene: “There was total silence and total darkness, blacker than black, in the huge,
   deserted airfield. Wide runways with nobody moving on them. All I thought to myself was ‘Mommy, this is
   scary.’ ”
   The element of surprise was almost lost when the force encountered two Ugandan guards and Netanyahu
   decided that they constituted a danger and opened fire at them with a pistol fitted with a silencer. The
   soldiers were not killed by the shots, and the man sitting behind Netanyahu, believing they were still
   dangerous, shot them with his unsilenced rifle.

   The sound of the rifle brought other Ugandan troops to the area, and a firefight began. The Israelis’
   vehicles reached the terminal and the charge began, but Netanyahu was hit, and he later died of his wounds.
   However, the terrorists were taken by surprise when the raiding party, headed by Muki Betser, broke into
   the terminal, and he killed all of them before they could get organized. Reicher’s force broke into an
   adjoining building manned by Ugandan troops and killed them, too. Another detail seized the control tower.
   Another destroyed eight Ugandan air force MiG fighters parked on the runway.
   All eight hijackers had been killed. Three of the hostages, caught in the cross fire, also died. Another
   hostage, an elderly Israeli woman who had been taken to the hospital the previous night, was murdered, on
   Amin’s instructions, in retaliation for the raid.
   But a hundred people had been rescued, and Israel had made no concessions. The operation became a
   model for how to handle hostage situations: no negotiation and no compromise with terrorists, but a steadfast
   willingness to go to extraordinary lengths and even to risk lives in order to free hostages.
   But though the raid on Entebbe was a significant tactical victory, the man who’d ordered the hijacking—
   the man Golda Meir had signed a kill order on more than six years earlier, the terrorist who’d been only
   slightly wounded by a barrage of RPGs fired through his Beirut office window, the zealot who’d survived a
   bomb dropped on a Beirut stadium in 1974, who topped Israel’s hit list, and who was the target of a
   number of assassination plans still on the drawing boards—was still alive and still at large.
   Rabin told the Mossad to spare no expense. Wadie Haddad must die.

   Reply
7. 

   March 8, 2025

   Rise and Kill First

   IN MAY 1977, ISRAEL’S Labor Party, which had ruled the country since its establishment in 1948, lost a
   national election for the first time. It was defeated by the Likud, a nationalist right-wing party led by
   Menachem Begin, the former commander of the Irgun, the anti-British underground. A combination of
   various factors—the discrimination and humiliation suffered by Jewish immigrants from Arab countries,
   revelations of corruption in the Labor Party, the shortcomings of the Yom Kippur War, and the ability of
   the charismatic Begin to take advantage of these factors and ride a wave of populism—led to an upset that
   shocked both Israelis and observers abroad.
   Begin was viewed by many foreign leaders and local top officials as an extremist and a warmonger. Some
   of the chiefs of Israel’s military and intelligence agencies were convinced that they would soon be replaced
   by partisans of the new government.
   But Begin’s initial moves as prime minister surprised everyone, foreign and domestic. At a dramatic
   summit meeting with Presidents Jimmy Carter and Anwar Sadat at Camp David in 1978, he agreed to a
   breakthrough peace treaty with Egypt that provided for Israel’s eventual total pullout from the Sinai
   Peninsula, conquered from Egypt in 1967. The withdrawal of the army, the dismantling of settlements, and
   the relinquishment of oil fields and tourism facilities were bitterly opposed by Israel’s right wing. But Begin,
   risking his own political standing, forced his party to comply. He also greatly strengthened the security
   alliance with the United States and bolstered the overarching authority of the Israeli Supreme Court.
   Internally, there was no purge. Indeed, Begin even asked two men with strong ties to Labor—Shin Bet
   chief Avraham Ahituv and Mossad head Yitzhak Hofi—to remain in their jobs. “It was very strange for
   us,” Hofi said. The Labor Party was hard-boiled and pragmatic when it came to matters of the military and
   intelligence. “But for Begin,” Hofi said, “the army was something sacred.”

   As a practical matter, that meant Begin gave the military and intelligence agencies carte blanche. He had
   been given very limited access to the intelligence community when he was leading the parliament
   opposition, and he had to be taught a great deal. But even after he’d been exposed to the nuts and bolts, his
   oversight was superficial at best. “It was as if he was hovering above us at eighty thousand feet,” said
   Mossad deputy chief Nahum Admoni.
   Begin signed off without question on all of the Red Page targeted killing orders that the Mossad
   submitted to him. The prime minister did not even insist on the standard operating procedure of having an
   aide transcribe meetings with the Mossad chief to approve sabotage and targeted killing operations. This
   surprised Hofi. “Rabin,” he said, “would bring the issue to be approved before a kind of inner cabinet.” But
   Begin signed off on operations “face-to-face, without a stenographer and without his military aide….I
   advised him that it was important to put things in writing.”
   The only point of disagreement between Begin and his intelligence chiefs was one of shading and
   priorities. At his first meeting with Hofi, he said he wanted the Mossad to launch a large-scale targeted
   killing campaign against at-large Nazi war criminals. “I told him,” Hofi said, “ ‘Prime Minister, today the
   Mossad has other missions that concern the security of Israel now and in the future, and I give priority to
   today and tomorrow over yesterday.’ He understood that, but he didn’t like it….In the end, we decided that
   we’d concentrate on one target, [Josef] Mengele, but Begin was a very emotional person and he was
   disappointed.”
   At the same time, though, Begin understood Hofi’s point. “Unlike other Israelis who saw the Holocaust as
   a one-time historical catastrophe,” said Shlomo Nakdimon, a prominent Israeli journalist who was close to
   Begin and served as his media adviser when he was prime minister, “Begin believed with all his heart that
   the lesson of the Holocaust is that the Jewish people must protect themselves in their own country in order to
   prevent a renewed threat to their existence.”
   Begin equated Yasser Arafat with Adolf Hitler and believed that the Palestinian Covenant, which called
   for the destruction of the Jewish state, was nothing less than Mein Kampf II. “We Jews and we Zionists,
   guided by experience, will not take the path taken by leaders in Europe and across the globe in the thirties,”
   Begin said in a fulminating speech in the Knesset on July 9, 1979, attacking the West German and Austrian
   chancellors, Willy Brandt and Bruno Kreisky, for their ties to Yasser Arafat.
   “We take Mein Kampf II seriously, and we shall do all we can—and with God’s help we will be able—to
   prevent the realization of the horror…uttered by that son of Satan [Arafat]…the leader of a despicable
   organization of murderers, the likes of which has not existed since the Nazis.”
   —
   SINCE 1974, AS TERROR attacks in Europe tapered off, Arafat had been putting special emphasis on political
   efforts in the international arena to obtain diplomatic recognition for the PLO and to present himself as
   someone who was ready to negotiate with Israel. Over Israel’s vociferous objections, official and overt PLO
   diplomatic missions were opened all over the world, including in Europe. At the height of this campaign, in
   November 1974, Arafat appeared before the UN General Assembly and delivered a speech that generally
   was accepted as being relatively moderate.
   Moreover, Arafat’s efforts to appear an advocate for a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
   began a thaw in relations between the PLO and the United States. Israeli intelligence was deeply concerned

   about a potential rapprochement between its main ally and its chief enemy. A December 1974 paper
   prepared by AMAN for then–Prime Minister Rabin warned that “the United States has an interest in
   acquiring maximal influence inside the PLO so that it will not remain an exclusively Soviet stronghold.” The
   paper also said, about Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was considered pro-Israel, “We do not find
   in his words an absolute negation of PLO with regard to the future.”
   Israel’s intelligence community wasn’t persuaded by the PLO’s diplomacy. To AMAN, it was nothing
   more than “a draft strategy for the liquidation of Israel.” While Arafat wooed American diplomats and was
   toasted at the United Nations, his people were continuing to attack Israeli citizens. “Arafat was the complete
   opposite of his ludicrous appearance. He was a kind of genius,” said Major General Amos Gilad, long a
   prominent figure in military intelligence. “He had two deputies for running terror operations, Abu Jihad and
   Abu Iyad, but, except in one attack, you won’t find any direct connection to Arafat. It’s like a zookeeper
   letting a hungry lion loose in the streets and it eats someone. Who’s responsible? The lion? Clearly it’s the
   zookeeper. Abu Jihad got directives in principle, and he did the rest on his own. Arafat didn’t want reports,
   didn’t take part in planning meetings, didn’t okay operations.”
   Arafat’s increased prominence on the world stage led to a sharp debate between the Mossad and AMAN
   about whether he was still a suitable target for assassination. Brigadier General Yigal Pressler, then head of
   the AMAN department that dealt with assassination targets, argued passionately that Arafat should be left at
   the top of the list: “He is a terrorist. He has Jewish blood on his hands. He orders his people to keep on
   carrying out terror attacks. Everything must be done to get rid of him.”
   The head of counterterror at the Mossad, Shimshon Yitzhaki, disagreed: “After Arafat’s speech at the
   UN, he has become a political figure. He’s the head of the snake, but the world has given him legitimacy,
   and killing him will put Israel into an unnecessary political imbroglio.”
   Ultimately, the latter opinion won the day. That meant that Arafat’s name was removed from the kill list
   and Wadie Haddad’s name was pushed to the top.

   Reply
8. 

   March 9, 2025

   Dzidzai

   When you watch the markets they go up and down. What you should be looking at are fads, bubbles and survivors.

   Bitcoin may eventually hit $1million. My reasoning. There are a finite number of coins, i’m not sure if they are finished yet and all you are now buying is a fraction of a coin. Demand and supply, terms we thought were just for school. As the population,awareness and incomes keep growing there will greater demand. Then the laggards will come.

   You actually do not have to go to school to understand some of these things although It should help.

   I used to have a card you could use to purchase here in Zimbabwe. Prepaid Mastercard from one of our banks. It stopped working around 2022 for that purpose. Some countries around the World banned Bitcoin others legalised. Where you come from can have a big bearing in life….

   Reply
9. 

   March 9, 2025

   MYST

   Its a sad life If you have to attach yourself to someone or something to make your life matter.

   Reply
10. 

    March 9, 2025

    SKY.NET

    There is a guy at a hedgefund who bet against something that was impossible.

    He reasoned the banks were dishing out sub prime mortgages. Basically its risky lending. For example If you earn 10K per month but want to buy a car that costs 8K per month in installments. It should ne a Red flad and the Bank manager should protect you from your self and kindly decline but her can offer you 1K per month. If you reason you can accept the latter.

    So they dished out mansions in plush surburbs to people essentially who couldn’t afford it on paper. Since those people now had big houses, they needed big phones and big cars too. Then their kids also needed to go to schools in the area. It was Only a matter of time before they defaulted on their payments.

    At the Hedgefund meanwhile investors were up in arms. How can you bet against a booming market. Many wanted to pull out, but a person who knows his stuff has to stay the course.

    The housing market came crashing down bringing down other markets and even national economies on the other side of the world as well with it, banks needed billions in bailouts and got them.

    On the internet people were speaking in forums. Satoshi Nakamoto an AI posted an alternative currency, one that would need a lot of computing power and electricity. It

    Reply
11. 

    March 9, 2025

    DOOM 3

    Can someone explain why bitcoin is mined better with graphics cards than CPUs.

    If an AI needed to visualise the world through videos, photos, maps and graphics It would need the biggest graphics card ever known to man in SLI and Crossfire.

    It would aslo need a way to purchase, what better than a digital coin.

    Trying to help mankind perhaps.

    Reply
12. 

    March 9, 2025

    Rise and Kill First

    Sharon’s response was typical. Testifying behind closed doors before a 1982 Knesset oversight panel on
    the secret services, he read from a sheaf of classified documents about the massacre of Palestinians
    perpetrated by the Maronites at the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in 1976, when Rabin and Peres were
    running the country. Sharon dwelled at length on the horrendous slaughter of children, the blades that
    slashed open pregnant women’s bellies.
    Peres responded angrily, “Who knew [what was going on]?”
    Sharon replied, “The Red Cross reported that during those days of the massacre, our ships prevented the
    entry of vessels carrying medical aid….You built the relationship and we continued it….You also helped
    them after the massacre. We didn’t complain to you then. And I would not have raised the matter if you did
    not behave the way you behaved….You, Mr. Peres, after Tel al-Zaatar, have no monopoly on morality.”
    Sharon’s menacing tone was clear. One of his aides hinted to the heads of the Labor Party that if they
    pushed for an official inquiry into the Sabra and Shatila massacre, these classified documents about their
    actions during the Tel al-Zaatar massacre would be leaked to international media as well. The criticism from
    the Labor Party duly died down.
    Public protests, however, were still ramping up as the official count of Israeli troops killed in Lebanon
    rose every day. Demonstrations were held outside the prime minister’s residence, with protesters shouting
    slogans and carrying placards condemning Begin and Sharon. Every day, the protesters updated a giant sign
    facing Begin’s residence that counted the number of dead soldiers from Sharon’s misbegotten war.
    Sharon seems to have been indifferent to the protests, but Begin was ailing. He sank deeper and deeper
    into what became a clinical depression, gradually losing the ability and desire to communicate with those
    around him, cutting himself off almost entirely from the apparatus of governance.
    “I watched Begin withering away, shrinking into himself,” said Nevo. “He realized that Sharon had
    hoodwinked him, that he had entered a swamp that he had not wanted to enter. The victims and the protests
    were killing him. The man was a very sensitive person, perhaps too sensitive.”
    His condition deteriorated so much that his aides refrained from reporting bad news to him, out of fear
    that he would slip over the edge.
    “I also saw him during his period of decline,” said Nahum Admoni, who became Mossad chief in
    September 1982. “I begin a briefing, and after a few minutes I see his eyes are shut and I don’t know
    whether he’s listening to what I’m saying, whether he’s asleep or awake. A very embarrassing situation, very
    embarrassing. I ask Azriel [Nevo], his military aide, ‘Do you think I should go on talking or stop?’…We
    didn’t refer the problem to anyone else, but everyone knew. Everyone knew this was the situation.”
    And yet, though nearly everyone around Begin knew he was hardly functioning, let alone fit to run a
    country at war, instead of moving to replace him, they decided to cover for him, and his aides worked to
    conceal his true condition from the Israeli public. The secretaries in his bureau went on typing out the prime
    minister’s schedule every day, but it was empty. “And so, to conceal it, I told them to classify the schedule
    ‘Top Secret’ so that no one could see it,” said Nevo, adding that he believed that he and the other bureau staff
    “were criminals, and we perpetrated a grave offense. You can’t hide the fact that the prime minister is
    actually not functioning, and acting as if he is. It calls to mind benighted regimes.”
    With Begin all but absent, Sharon was now free to do what he wished with the military. During this
    whole period, in fact, Sharon was effectively running the country, unconstitutionally and without any
    restraints. He even took charge of the Mossad, although it formally came under the prime minister’s

    jurisdiction. “He was practically commander in chief of the military, giving orders over chief of staff
    Eitan’s head,” recalled Aviem Sella, head of air force operations. “No one could stand up to him.”
    “Sharon dominated the meetings [of the cabinet],” Admoni said. “He never gave an accurate or full
    picture either at cabinet plenums or at sessions of the inner cabinet [which was supposed to decide defense
    issues]. There were also times when Sharon would introduce a subject, the cabinet would discuss it, make a
    decision, and Sharon would call us out after the meeting—the chief of staff [Eitan], me, the other officers—
    and say, ‘They decided what they decided. Now I’m telling you to do this or that,’ which was not exactly what
    they had decided.”
    With his well-deserved but also carefully cultivated image of a George Patton–like war hero, and his
    freedom from doubts or misgivings about getting what he wanted on a personal or national level, Sharon
    was known in Israel as “the bulldozer.” Cynical and ruthless, sometimes menacing, but more often
    charming and congenial, he had no qualms about twisting the truth when he deemed it necessary. “Arik,
    King of Israel,” his supporters used to sing about him, and during this time he did obtain almost
    monarchical rule.
    —

    Reply
13. 

    March 9, 2025

    Rise and Kill First

    YET DESPITE HIS NEWLY amassed power, Sharon was also a realist, and he quickly grasped after the death of
    Bashir Gemayel that his aspirations for Lebanon were not to be.
    Amin Gemayel, who was elected president instead of his brother, Bashir, was far less connected and
    committed to Israel, and after a short time he annulled the peace pact that Israel had forced him into. He
    was not a particularly strong leader: He lacked the charisma and aggression of his brother, as well as the
    ability or desire to drive all the Palestinians out of Lebanon.
    Sharon’s plans to kill Yasser Arafat, however, never faltered for a second. After the battles in Beirut were
    over and the PLO leaders and forces had been evacuated from Beirut, “Arik and Raful [Eitan] were dying,
    simply dying, to kill him,” said then–Brigadier General Amos Gilboa, head of AMAN’s Research Division.
    Sharon realized that by this point, Arafat was such a popular figure that an open assassination would only
    make him a martyr to his cause. So he instructed the intelligence organizations to intensify their surveillance
    of Arafat and to see if they could find a more subtle way to dispose of him.
    Operation Salt Fish morphed into Operation Goldfish. But the mission remained the same, and Sharon
    ordered that it be given top priority. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, the Goldfish team gathered in
    Eitan’s office. “We had a thousand matters that were a hundred times more important,” said Gilboa. But
    Sharon insisted.
    At that time, any intelligence about the PLO leader’s movements was partial at best. Wartime isn’t an
    ideal place to gather information, and because the PLO had not yet found a permanent base to replace the
    one in Beirut, its officials and militiamen were moving constantly, living out of suitcases all over the Middle
    East and Europe. Arafat was traveling frenetically, meeting leaders, mobilizing support, giving interviews,
    and shifting funds around. “When someone’s on that kind of routine, and yet under heavy protection, it’s
    hard for us to plan a hit operation against him,” one of Caesarea’s intelligence officers told the Goldfish
    forum.
    The Mossad told Sharon that under these circumstances, it was impossible for them to get to Arafat. At
    best, they could report on his whereabouts in whatever country he was visiting that day or whatever flight he

    was on the next. AMAN told the defense minister that Arafat often used an executive jet provided by Saudi
    Arabia and that the two pilots were carrying American passports. There was no question of shooting it
    down. “Nobody,” said AMAN’s Amos Gilad, “touches Americans.” The bottom line was that AMAN saw
    no possibility of assassinating him at that time. “We have to wait until he settles down in a permanent
    place,” said an AMAN representative at the Goldfish forum, “and then to begin planning an operation
    there.”
    But Sharon was in a hurry. And Arafat sometimes used other, private aircraft, too. Occasionally he even
    flew commercial. To Sharon’s thinking, blowing an aircraft out of the sky, especially over deep water,
    where the wreckage would be hard to find, was a perfectly acceptable way to deal with the issue.
    The next problem was how to be sure Arafat was on a certain flight. General Gilboa demanded that a
    number of operational steps be taken in order to ascertain whether he was: “From my point of view, it
    would be positive identification only if we could prepare in advance, before his arrival at an airport, and
    have someone there standing at the door to the plane to tell us, ‘That’s him; I saw him with my own eyes.’
    Then I could say, ‘The bells are ringing,’ ” an intelligence phrase meaning near total certainty.
    Once the basics of the plan were settled, Sharon pushed hard to get the mission rolling. He instructed air
    force commander General Ivri to keep fighter planes ready to intercept Arafat’s aircraft. Ivri grasped the
    potential for disaster in such an operation and once again informed chief of staff Eitan that he was not
    prepared to take orders directly from Sharon, and that IDF regulations required that all orders come via the
    Operations Directorate of the General Staff. This was not much of an obstacle for Sharon, and the orders
    that soon came down through the proper channels were largely the same, although words such as “shoot
    down,” “destroy,” and “eliminate” had been omitted.
    Finally, they found their opening in Greece. Arafat occasionally flew through Athens, with the consent of
    the locals. “The Greek authorities did not take rigorous measures against terrorism,” says Admoni, “and the
    PLO did more or less whatever it wanted to there.”
    On October 22, 1982, two Junction agents reported that Arafat would take off the next day in a private
    plane from Athens to Cairo. The Mossad immediately dispatched two Caesarea operatives to find out more
    details. The two operatives took advantage of lax security at the Athens airport and reached the area where
    private planes were parked, looking for Arafat.
    Back in Tel Aviv, Sharon kept up constant pressure for the operation to move ahead. The air force put
    two F-15 fighters on alert for immediate takeoff from the Tel Nof air force base, southeast of Tel Aviv. But
    Ivri, ever cautious, briefed the airmen himself. He understood the stakes. It was clear to him how disastrous
    it would be if Israel shot down the wrong aircraft. “You don’t fire without my okay,” he told the fighter
    crews. “Clear? Even if there’s a communications problem, if you don’t hear my order”—he emphasized that
    part: hear my order—“you don’t open fire.”
    At 2 P.M., one of the Caesarea operatives in Athens called Mossad HQ and said, “He’s here. Positive ID.”
    His excitement was audible. He reported that he had watched the PLO leader and his men making final
    preparations to board a DHC-5 Buffalo (a Canadian-made twin-engine cargo plane) with a tail painted blue
    with brown marks, and the registration number 1169.
    To Ivri, something seemed off. “I didn’t get this whole story,” he said. “It wasn’t clear to me why Arafat
    would be flying to Cairo. According to intelligence, he had nothing to look for there at the time. And if he
    was going there, why in that kind of a cargo plane? Not at all dignified enough for a man of his status. I
    asked the Mossad to verify that he was the man.”

    The two operatives insisted that they were certain. “The objective has grown a longer beard to mislead,”
    they reported, but they reconfirmed their positive identification.
    At 4:30 P.M., they reported that the plane had taken off. Ivri was informed, as was Eitan, who ordered it
    shot down. Ivri told his pilots to take off. The Buffalo is a very slow aircraft, especially when compared with
    the F-15, but the flight path was some distance away over the Mediterranean, out of the range of Israeli
    radar. The jets took off and headed for the anticipated interception point, but at a certain distance from the
    Israeli coastline they had to rely only on their onboard radar, with its limited range.
    Ivri still felt a pang of doubt. He told his aide to contact the Mossad and demand that they activate more
    means of making sure that Arafat was on the plane. He wasn’t showing any emotion, as was usual with him.
    “But we could see he was very worried,” said one of his subordinates who was there.
    Ivri needed to buy time. He knew that pilots could be overeager, that sometimes they’ll look for a reason
    to fire upon a target, interpreting a burst of radio static as an affirmative to shoot, for instance. He needed to
    calm twitchy trigger fingers. “Hold your fire,” he reminded his pilots over the radio. “If there’s no radio
    contact, do not open fire.”
    Sharon and Eitan weren’t in the bunker, but Eitan kept on calling Ivri to find out what was happening and
    to see whether the order to shoot down the plane had been given. Ivri gave the same reply each time: “Raful,
    we do not yet have positive confirmation that it is him.” This despite the fact that the Mossad had in fact
    already confirmed and then reconfirmed a positive identification.
    Separately, Ivri told AMAN and the Mossad that the visual identification was insufficient and he
    demanded yet another cross-checked confirmation that Arafat was on the plane.
    The F-15s’ radar screens picked up the blip of the Buffalo 370 miles into Mediterranean airspace. The
    fighters closed rapidly and flew tight circles around the lumbering target. They read the tail number, saw the
    blue and brown markings. They were positive they’d found the right plane.
    The lead pilot keyed his radio. “Do we have permission to engage?”
    Ivri, in the Canary bunker, knew that, by all accounts, the answer should be yes. His fighters had a
    positive visual ID and a clear shot in open skies over empty ocean. Their job—his job—was to eliminate
    targets, not select them.
    But Ivri’s doubts overcame him. “Negative,” he answered the fighter pilot on the radio. “I repeat: negative
    on opening fire.”
    He was still stalling for time, but he knew he couldn’t do so for much longer. His justification for
    delaying the attack—that he was waiting for additional information from the Mossad and AMAN—was
    weakening in the face of a chief of staff directly demanding over the phone that he give the attack order. Ivri
    understood that if he didn’t do so very soon, he would have to explain why to Eitan and, more troublingly, to
    Sharon.
    Tension was heightening in Canary. The minutes dragged on.
    And then, five minutes before five o’clock, only twenty-five minutes after the fighters took off, a phone
    jangled in Canary. It was the encrypted line connected directly to the Mossed. “Doubts have arisen,” the
    voice on the line said with embarrassment. It was the same intelligence officer who’d previously confirmed
    that Arafat had been identified as he boarded the aircraft.
    The Mossad had other sources who insisted that Arafat had been nowhere near Greece, and that the man
    on the plane couldn’t possibly be him.

    Reply
14. 

    March 9, 2025

    Rise and Kill First

    General Gilboa expressed his sharp opposition to these operations time and again. “It was clear to me
    that the air force would execute it as well as could be, and the plane would vanish forever. They do what they
    are told, and if you give them an order to build a pipeline to move blood from Haifa to the Negev, they’ll do
    it excellently and won’t for a moment ask whose blood it is, but I had additional responsibility.”
    As head of AMAN research, it was Gilboa’s job to evaluate the political impact of each operation. “I
    told chief of staff Eitan that it could ruin the state internationally if it were known that we downed a civilian
    airliner.”
    On one occasion, with a commercial plane believed to be carrying Arafat from Amman to Tunisia over
    the Mediterranean, and the Israeli jets closing in, Eitan asked Gilboa if he thought their target was definitely
    on the plane. The two were standing in the central space inside Canary.
    “Chief of staff, do you really want to hear what I think?” said Gilboa. Eitan nodded.
    Gilboa could feel his heart thumping in his chest. He stalled, elaborating all the many reasons for
    believing Arafat might be on the plane, then enumerating all the many reasons to doubt he was on the plane.
    Eitan grew impatient. “Gilboa,” he barked. “Yes or no?”
    “My gut feeling,” Gilboa said, “is that he isn’t on the plane.”
    Eitan turned around and went to the red encrypted phone at the side of the room. “Arik,” he said to the
    defense minister, waiting impatiently in his office, “the answer’s negative. We’ll have to wait for another
    day.”
    —
    THERE IS A LESSON taught in IDF training—a lesson so important that the basics are mandatory for every
    recruit, and the details are a critical part of the officer training program as well. The lesson dates back to
    October 29, 1956, when an Israeli Border Police unit, ostensibly enforcing a curfew in the village of Kafr
    Qasim, rounded up a large group of residents as they were returning from work. Then they shot them. They
    killed forty-three people, including nine women and seventeen children. The policemen claimed they were
    obeying an order to shoot curfew breakers, but Judge Benjamin Halevy, in one of Israel’s most important
    judicial rulings, said that soldiers must not obey an order that is clearly illegal. “The distinguishing mark of
    a manifestly illegal order,” Halevy wrote, “is that above such an order should fly, like a black flag, a
    warning saying: ‘Prohibited!’ Not merely formally illegal, not covered up or partly covered…but an
    illegality that stabs the eye and infuriates the heart, if the eye is not blind and the heart is not obtuse or
    corrupt.”
    This lesson, ingrained in every soldier, was undoubtedly one of the only reasons that a war crime was not
    committed, despite the fact that on five different occasions, F-16 and F-15 fighters were called upon to
    intercept and destroy commercial airliners carrying Arafat. Indeed, the air force command intentionally
    obstructed these operations, refusing to obey orders that they believed to be manifestly illegal. “When we
    received the order,” Sella said, “I went with Ivri to see Eitan. I told him, ‘Chief of staff, we do not intend to
    carry this out. It simply will not happen. I understand that the minister of defense is dominant here. No one
    dares to stand up to him, and therefore we will make it technically impossible.’ Raful looked at me and
    never said anything. I took his silence as consent.”
    On each of the five occasions, Israeli planes identified their target over the sea, Sella said, but the mission
    was sabotaged. Once, the radios on the flying command post, the air force Boeing 707, were silenced by

    being set to the wrong frequencies, blacking out communications long enough to make the whole operation
    impossible. A second time, Gilboa determined at the last minute that there wasn’t enough evidence that
    Arafat was on the target plane. A third time, Sella informed Eitan, falsely, that the target plane had been
    identified too late and there was a danger that the interception would be detected by a nearby maritime
    nation. On the other occasions, “we simply drew the time out until the plane had left the zones in which it
    would have been possible to hit them without discerning what had happened.”
    In the end, though, Sharon’s plans for an intentional war crime were finally derailed by his past
    unscrupulousness. Under intense pressure from the Israeli public and after heavy international criticism,
    Begin was compelled to establish a judicial inquiry into the massacre at the Beirut refugee camps. It was
    headed by the president of the Supreme Court, Justice Yitzhak Kahan, but the real force behind it was
    Aharon Barak, the opinionated and conscience-driven attorney general who had blocked the killing of the
    Nairobi terrorists and had since been appointed as a justice of the Supreme Court. For three months, the
    panel heard evidence from all the Israelis involved and pored over thousands of documents.
    This inquiry and its hearings made the first cracks in Sharon’s monolithic power. After listening to
    Barak’s penetrating questions, it didn’t take long for the chiefs of the defense and intelligence communities to
    understand that their careers were also on the line. They quickly hired attorneys, who then instructed their
    clients to lay the blame at someone else’s door. The commission soon became a spectacle of mutual
    recrimination.
    The Kahan Commission published its findings and recommendations on February 7, 1983. The
    Phalange was found to be directly responsible for the massacre, but the commission ruled that some Israelis
    had to be held accountable as well: “It is our opinion that a fear of a massacre in the camps if the Phalange’s
    armed forces were introduced there…should have been aroused in anyone who had anything to do with what
    was happening in Beirut.” The commission found that Prime Minister Begin had “a certain degree of
    responsibility,” but it placed most of the blame on Defense Minister Sharon, chief of staff Eitan, and
    AMAN chief Saguy, along with some other senior officers and Mossad director Admoni. The commission
    recommended that Sharon be dismissed immediately.
    Sharon refused to resign, so Begin and his ministers fired him.
    Then, on September 15, 1983, Begin himself, stricken by anguish and sorrow, resigned the premiership
    and was replaced by Yitzhak Shamir.
    For the time being, the hunt for Arafat was called off. The fallout from Sharon’s relentless hunt for him,
    and the enormous collateral damage that hunt created, had raised Arafat’s stature even further. Arafat was
    now a man of international prominence and prestige. Much of the world now considered him a statesman
    rather than a simple terrorist. “Gradually,” Gilboa said, “the awareness grew that Arafat was a political
    matter, and he must not be seen as a target for assassination.”
    “Of course,” Gilboa continued, “everyone under him in his organization was an entirely different matter.”

    Reply
15. 

    March 9, 2025

    Rise and Kill First

    ON MARCH 14, THE Israeli security cabinet under Prime Minister Shamir met again to discuss the killing of
    Abu Jihad. The prior approval of his elimination by various prime ministers over the years, including Levi
    Eshkol, Golda Meir, and Yitzhak Rabin, was not valid under a different premier. And even if the same man
    was heading the government, the security forces would still have to seek renewed approval if much time had
    gone by, because it was possible that the political circumstances had changed or the prime minister had
    changed his mind. Approval had to be given immediately before a targeted killing was carried out, the
    moment that operational readiness was reached, even if it had been green-lighted some time before.
    On the face of things, “Shamir could have made do with his own order to do away with Abu Jihad,” says
    Nevo. However, Shamir was aware that Abu Jihad was no ordinary target, and the reactions to hitting him
    could be out of the ordinary. He decided not to take sole responsibility and instead to bring the matter to the
    security cabinet for its approval. The Likud and Labor each had five ministers on the panel. Shimon Peres,
    head of the Labor Party and then serving as foreign minister, declared that he was firmly opposed to the
    assassination. “My information was that Abu Jihad was a moderate,” he said. “I thought it would be unwise
    to kill him.” The four other Labor members—including Rabin, who had already approved killing Abu
    Jihad earlier—expressed apprehension about the international condemnation that would be leveled at Israel,
    as well as the danger to Israeli soldiers and Mossad operatives, and they joined Peres in opposing the
    operation. Shamir and the four Likud representatives voted for it. A tie meant there would be no operation.
    Finance Minister Moshe Nissim, of Likud, decided to try persuasion. He asked Rabin to join him outside
    the meeting room. “Look at what the Intifada’s doing to us,” he said. “The public’s mood is very
    despondent. The IDF has in the past executed actions with great resourcefulness and creative thinking, but it
    hasn’t happened for a long time. We have to renew the sense in the world, in the international community—
    but first and foremost, among the citizens of Israel—that the IDF is the same IDF that has done marvelous
    things over the years. We have to carry out this mission for the sake of the national morale.” Politics, the
    withering of the national morale, demanded a blood sacrifice. Killing Abu Jihad, at least the way Moshe
    Nissim saw it, was an act more symbolic than practical.
    Rabin was persuaded. He returned to the cabinet room with Nissim and announced that he was changing
    his vote. By a vote of 6 to 4, Operation Introductory Lesson was given the green light.
    Nissim, who was the son of a chief rabbi of Israel, would never regret that he’d persuaded Rabin. “In the
    whole world,” he said, “there isn’t another army that is as meticulous as the IDF about values and norms of conduct and assuring that innocent people aren’t hurt. But there is a Talmudic precept: ‘If a man comes to
    kill you, rise early and kill him first.’ ”

    Reply
16. 

    March 9, 2025

    MYST

    — Rise and Kill First 2018: Ronen Bergman

    ALL OF THE ISRAELIS escaped Tunisia unharmed. The local police were busy responding to multiple, bogus
    reports made by the Caesarea operatives of a fleet of cars racing from Abu Jihad’s neighborhood toward
    downtown Tunis—exactly the opposite direction from the one taken by the assassins. The police set up
    roadblocks and searched dozens of cars. Three hours later, they found the rented Volkswagens and Peugeot
    abandoned on the beach.
    The next afternoon, Shamir was asked by a reporter about Israel’s involvement in the targeted killing. “I
    heard about it,” he said drily, “on the radio.”
    Abu Jihad was buried a few days later, with military honors. He had been made a martyr. Yasser Arafat
    walked behind the coffin with the widow, Intisar, and her eldest son, Jihad.
    At the time, the Israelis considered the killing of Abu Jihad to be a tremendous success. “Rabin thanked
    me later for persuading him,” Moshe Nissim said. “ ‘You cannot guess how right you were,’ he told me.
    ‘People are cheering me, shaking my hand, giving me the thumbs-up. What joy it has brought to the nation!
    What a feeling of high morale, how right it was for our deterrent force.’ ”
    Indeed, Abu Jihad’s death was a severe blow to the PLO. Abu Jihad was a seasoned and shrewd
    commander, and without him Fatah was able to launch far fewer successful attacks against Israel.
    But the immediate, professed reason for killing him was to dampen the Intifada—and by that measure,
    the assassination failed to achieve its goal. In fact, the targeted killing had precisely the opposite effect: The
    elimination of Abu Jihad greatly weakened the PLO leadership but bolstered the Popular Committees in the
    occupied territories, which were the true leaders of the uprising. And Israel still had no reply to the waves
    of protesters or the growing tide of international condemnation.
    With the benefit of hindsight, many Israelis who took part in the operation now regret it.

    Some believe that Abu Jihad’s powerful presence had a restraining and sobering effect on Arafat and that his voice would
    have been highly beneficial after the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority, in 1994. If the
    adored and charismatic Abu Jihad had been alive, Hamas might not have been able to consolidate its
    position and to dominate large parts of the Palestinian public.
    Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who was head of AMAN at the time of the assassination, and later chief of the
    General Staff, said that in an ideal world, “if we had known that a short time after Abu Jihad’s elimination,
    the PLO would take the diplomatic course, then perhaps we would have raided his house and first of all
    talked with him about his attitudes toward a compromise with Israel, and only then decided whether to kill
    him or not. In retrospect, his absence is indeed evident to a certain extent. He could have made a significant
    contribution to the peace process.”

    …..His home and office phone lines were monitored. Oded Raz, then an officer
    in the section of AMAN’s Research Division that dealt with terror, said that, “in following Abu Jihad, I
    came to know and respect the man we were facing off against. True, he was a terrorist, but also a model
    family man and an authentic leader who had the good of his nation in mind.”
    Still, the Israeli political and intelligence leadership wanted to kill him. The good of the Palestinian
    nation, to their minds, was a direct threat to the good of their own country.

    Reply
17. 

    March 9, 2025

    MYST

    There was man called Neville Gonisalan, he an Indian Christian. His People church at Baxter along Main Road in Cape Town.

    He was part of the couples that conducted pre marital counselling. He was the owner of a successful furniture business and was also an Arsenal. Those days Man United fans were rarely teased, we got really Well to the chagrin of the other couples as we ate into session time speaking about various things. From the couples there was a couple who didn’t make It but the others did, our resident keyboard player and his wife and a guy from Zim who was dating a lady from Nigeria. I don’t know what term you would use for me but essentially you know….

    He took a strong liking to me for some reason. He accepted to be one of my CV references and he used to ask me to pray after each session had ended. Zvikanzi wadiwa!

    He had a beautiful daughter and his wife was not bad looking at all. Neville was at great pains to explain about his daughter in case someone listening. In front of the church he said his daughter had refused a brand new Mercedes Benz for her birthday. She asked him to use those funds for a charitable cause. I could hear the pride in his voice, there is something about life, she would probably be able to buy her own one day in life if she so chose but she wasn’t about that life. Do not pray for an easy life, but pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.

    Neville died. I didn’t see him at church for a prolonged period. I was thinking he is off for business or some adventure. To my shock and horror his wife confirmed the news, it was a suprise to everyone. I miss him.

    Reply
18. 

    March 9, 2025

    MYST

    There was another couple there at the sessions a white couple and yes they also had a daughter.

    The father told us a story about his life. He had been born to aristocracy. Real aristocracy. Their family had a title he had a butler and a driver before he could read. You know white people are rich When other white people serve them in their home.

    Something happened and he left his titles and inheritance behind. Poverty soon followed and life on the street. As life goes circumstance changes and he Got Back onto his feet. Unfortunately not a life of aristocracy but a comfortable and fulfilling life nontheless.

    Everyone has a story and as long as the Umpire hasn’t called in the score There is something to do in so little time.

    Reply
19. 

    March 9, 2025

    MYST

    The last couple. It was one of the resident pastors and his wife.

    He said something I would never forget. He said I am just a pastor but if you see my car (Audi 0000) and my house…..

    This did not resonate with me, those things should be expected. As Africans we sometimes put the mundane as exceptional maybe because of our background and societal expectations. We do not realise that we set a low bar for ourselves. Clever people who realise this will toy with your expectations, have you in their pocket. Would you rather own a sizeable share in FIAT or would you want to drive a Ferrari, what would you choose. What people see or what they don’t see?

    Reply
20. 

    March 9, 2025

    MYST

    In first year Law we had a guest lecturer from the UK. I cannot his name but he was Welsh. I think his last name was Jones.

    I don’t how we got there in class but he said, If you ever buy a Ferrari in life it must be red. Have you seen a Maranello grey in colour with yellow Ferrari decals?

    If we were still allowed to import cars over 20 years old, would you buy a Maranello for $36,000 secondhand or a brand new SUV non German Brand locally for $80,000. Perhaps it boils down to utility, car knowledge rather pocket.

    Reply
21. 

    March 9, 2025

    MYST

    Someone was asking, with everything we post on socia media when we die is that our afterlife?

    I know I posted once. Very excitedly. It was the eve before I boarded a plane for the very first time in my life, coming back home in 2010. As a failed pilot this was the next best thing.

    I wrote I feel like the Wright brothers right now. One of my friends posted, ‘whatever’. How can you not share in someones excitment if they are your friend even when they are not. If it is frivilous why not ignore my posts, its almost voyeurism insint it.

    For some they spent their entire lives Jet setting for some off us a plane was something always out of reach and I love planes. As a kid I was always drawing helicopters and jets. Here was my dream coming true but someone felt someway about it.

    The other time it was to do with driving a formula one car. Hanzi you cannot do it. I was like, anyone can be taught to do something then comes your natural ability, skill and listening skills. Axcil Jeferries also former Highlands Junior School could have had a drive in F1 but its an incredibly expensive sport. A patriot his father tried in vain to lobby the government through the sports ministry. When Axcil got onto the podium in pole our flag will be seen by millions and they would play our national at Monza. What more could lift national morale. I remember his excitement when he bought a BMW M3 V8, he never got the drive he wanted but fell into a V8, not bad.

    When Richard Hammond sat in a Renault before Redbull. The engineers told him to drive faster he was going too slow around the track and the tires were not warming up sufficiently, Although he locked the brakes once the car came into the pits unharmed. Then they got the engine to sing the national anthem, Top Gears dizzy heights.

    At work we went for some bonding on the companies tab. We chose Go Karting in Kenilworth. Timothy Summerton won the race but I came a not so far second. A sport were split seconds matter. It was my first time in a go cart. I didn’t know the racing line or the braking points so I did It by feel and watching others go before me, but Timothy was so much faster on the hairpin for a big guy.

    When you stop dreaming and doing the things you love, you stop living.

    #schumi

    Reply
22. 

    March 9, 2025

    MYST

    MASTER 2
    Molecular Chemistry – Medicinal Chemistry
    Université de Rennes 1 – Vietnam National University, Hanoi

    SYNTHESIS OF
    COMMERCIAL DRUGS

    …Roche (1995)

    Anti-viral drug to slow the spread of
    the Influenza virus
    Sales 2009 = 2.7 billion €
    Review =Chem. Rev.2009,109, 4398

    ….Novartis (2001)
    Treatment of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML)
    First protein kinase inhibitor to reach the market
    Selective inhibitor for a hybrid tyrosine kinase (Bcr-Abl)
    Sales 2007 = $3 billion
    Off patent in 2015

    ….

    Reply
23. 

    March 9, 2025

    The Logistics of the Roman Army

    There are a number of cases in battle narratives in which soldiers
    are said to fight less effectively due to having skipped a meal before
    the battle.39Lack of water, was even more serious, and Appian attrib-
    utes Hannibal’s defeat at Zama partially to this factor.40Nevertheless,
    it was certainly possible for a soldier to live and fight on substan-
    tially less than the modern minimum daily requirement. Routine late
    medieval and early modern rations provided as little as 2500 calo-
    ries a day to soldiers.41
    The Romans, like most armies in history, drew their officer corps
    from the aristocracy.42Both in the Republic and under the Empire,
    the highest officers were drawn from the senatorial aristocracy, and
    others from the equestrian order (as it developed). There is no evi-
    dence of any height or weight requirements, but there was some
    societal disapproval of excessively fat officers. Cato the Elder ridiculed
    a fat equestrian:
    Where can such a body be of service to the state, when everything
    between its gullet and its groin it devoted to belly?43
    Appian, in relating the demise of Gaius Vetilius, who as comman-
    der of the Roman forces defeated in Spain in 148 B.C., was taken
    prisoner, says that:
    the man who captured [Vetilius], not knowing who he was, but seeing
    that he was old and fat, and considering him worthless, killed him.44
    The minimum age for entering the Senate was 25 years old, but
    youths of the senatorial class served in the military before this age.
    Tacitus notes that Domitius Corbulo’s son-in-law Annius Vinicianus
    was “not yet of senatorial age” (nondum senatoria aetate), but was, never-
    theless, the acting legate of the V Macedonica during the Armenian
    campaign of 61–63.45

    Rationing
    There are a handful of scattered references to the amounts of food
    issued to Roman soldiers, the best-known and studied being Polybius’
    figures for the Republican grain ration.46To go beyond these few
    pieces of data, and reconstruct the ration as a whole, one must rely
    on comparative evidence, as well as some educated guessing. Of
    course, the amounts of many items of the ration are conjectural.
    Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to set out the likely parameters for the
    amounts, in order to derive reasonable approximations.
    Many ancient states, such as the Greek city-states and the Car-
    thaginian Republic, expected troops to buy their own provisions out
    of pocket or with a food allowance.47The Roman army, in contrast,
    issued regular rations of grain, and probably other items. From the
    third century B.C., there is evidence of a set day on which the grain
    ration was distributed. Livy notes that in the crisis year of 216 B.C.
    “neither pay nor grain was being furnished to the soldiers and the
    crews at the proper date.”48Caesar also refers to a particular day
    on which the soldiers expect to receive their grain ration.49A scho-
    liast to Horace notes that “some people (nonnulli)” derive the term
    calo (military servant) from the word kalends, “first of the month”
    “because on that day they receive their rations (cibaria).”50While such
    etymologies are suspect, this does suggest that it was common knowl-
    edge that the Roman soldier received regular rations. Writing in the
    mid-second century B.C., Polybius discusses the military grain ration
    for both Roman and allied troops in some detail. The cost of the
    Roman soldiers’ rations was deducted from their pay, although the
    state paid for the allies’ rations.51This pattern continued through
    the Republic and beyond. Two passages in his commentaries show
    that Julius Caesar issued rations on a regular basis.52Pay records
    from the late first century show a deduction of 80 HS per stipendium
    for food (in victum), almost certainly a standard figure throughout the,

    Imperial period.53These uniform deductions for food strongly sug-
    gest the ration itself was regularized. There were several military
    advantages to this system: it ensured sufficient food and prevented
    over-eating and, particularly, over-drinking. The military danger of
    such over-indulgence was well-known to the ancients.54The Roman
    military ration did not represent the amount that a soldier needed
    or even actually received, but rather the amount to which he was
    entitled, according to his rank and status. Polybius notes that allied
    cavalry received twice the ration of allied infantry, and Roman cit-
    izen cavalrymen three times as much.55There is evidence, however,
    that on campaign all soldiers received the same rations, regardless
    of rank, the difference being made up afterward.56This makes sense,
    as it prevents waste and avoids transportation problems.
    Davies argued that the diet of a Roman soldier in a peacetime
    garrison would have resembled that of the local population, because,
    generally, the surrounding area provided most of a garrison’s food.57
    A study of animal remains in British and German military and civil-
    ian sites, however, shows that there was a distinct Roman military
    diet, and that it tended to influence surrounding diet, rather than
    vice versa.58In any case, it is clear that many foodstuffs, particularly
    wine, oil and relish, were shipped to military establishments, often
    from long distances.59On the other hand, problems of transporta-
    tion and storage constrained the variety and quantity of foods avail-
    able in wartime conditions, so that the diet of the soldier on campaign
    would have been more monotonous than in garrison. There does
    seem to have been a particular dietary regime associated with sol-
    diers: the Historia Augusta praises Severus Alexander for eating “mil-
    itary food (militaris cibus).”60
    Roman military law strictly controlled the collection of food by individual soldiers, but Roman soldiers, like soldiers in all ages, doubt-
    less did whatever they could to supplement their diet. For example,
    Sallust relates an incident during the Numidian campaign of 107 B.C.,
    in which an auxiliary soldier from a Ligurian cohort serving on a
    water party, stopped to collect edible snails.61The army permitted
    soldiers to supplement their rations with food purchased from sut-
    lers or merchants, who followed the army on campaign. Under nor-
    mal circumstances, the Romans strictly controlled the activity and
    the provisioning of the sutlers; for example, at the siege of Carthage
    in 146 B.C., Scipio Aemilianus ordered that food supplied by sutlers
    had to be “soldierly and plain” (stratiotikê kai psilê).62As plain as the
    Roman soldiers’ food may have been, as military diets go, theirs was
    a varied and healthy one.63
    Allied and Auxiliary Rations
    As with all aspects of the Roman military, most of our information
    on diet and rationing applies to legionaries. Scholars sometimes use
    the terms “legionary” and “Roman soldier” as if they were synony-
    mous, and even when a distinction is made, have a tendency to
    ignore the non-legionary forces.64Non-legionary troops, whether aux-
    iliaries or allies, may not have been “Roman” in the ethnic or legal
    sense, but they made up a substantial part of every Roman force
    during most of the period under discussion. During the Republic,
    Italian allies were required to provide troops to the Romans on
    demand by treaty; as noted above, these received a set ration, the
    cost of which was borne by the Roman state.65Italian allies made
    up a significant proportion of all Roman armies, down to their acqui-
    sition of Roman citizenship in 89 B.C. In addition to these allied
    troops, the Romans recruited auxiliaries from states outside the Italian
    confederation. These troops also received Roman rations.
    Spanish troops who defected to the Romans from Hannibal’s army
    in 214 B.C. were awarded double rations (duplicia cibaria).66

    As the Roman empire grew, it drew on such auxiliary soldiers from an ever-
    wider area. By the Third Macedonian War (172–167 B.C.) soldiers
    were present from as far west as Numidia, and as far east as Lydia
    and Phrygia.67In the imperial period auxiliary and allied forces
    always accompanied Roman armies in large numbers. For example,
    out of approximately 60,000 combatants in Vespasian’s army in
    Judaea, only some 20,000 were legionaries.68In the Flavian era many
    of the nominally independent “client” states were absorbed into the
    provincial structure of the empire and their armies integrated into
    the regular army.
    Ancient sources sometimes remark on the different eating habits
    of various ethnic groups. For example, when the Macedonian king
    Perseus prepared provisions for his Gallic auxiliaries, they included
    not only the normal grain and wine, but also “animals ( pecudes).”69
    This suggests that the Gauls were carnivorous. On the other hand,
    the Romans and Greeks also ate meat, so the allusion is uninfor-
    mative. Appian notes that both German and Numidian warriors
    “liv[ed] on herbs [or grass] ( poa),” and that the latter drank only
    water.70Caesar says that the British and German diet consisted of
    dairy products and meat.71It is difficult to ascertain the accuracy of
    such information and whether different ethnic groups retained their
    traditional eating habits when fighting for the Roman army.72The
    simplicity of a “barbarian” diet was certainly a literary topos, though
    primitive peoples certainly resort to non-traditional foods, when their
    normal food supply fails. These few references do not shed much
    light on the diet of barbarians as allies of the Romans. Given the
    contingencies of campaign logistics, it is unlikely that there was a
    significant difference in the food consumed during wartime by aux-
    iliary, allied, and Roman troops. There is no information on the
    composition and quantity of food eaten by Roman military servants
    but a comparison with Greek practice would suggest that they ate
    essentially the same diet as soldiers.73

    Reply
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    March 9, 2025

    The Logistics of the Roman Army

    Table II: Estimated Weight of Various Types of Wheat

    Pliny107 Duncan-Jones108 Rickman109

    Source ofvRoman lbs.kilogramskilogramskilogramskilograms
    Wheatper modiusper literper modiusper literper modius

    Gaul &
    Chersonese 20 0.750 6.46 0.759 6.55

    Alexandria &
    Sicily 20 5/6 0.781 6.73 0.791 6.82

    Africa 21 3/4 0.815 7.02 0.825 7.12

    Foxhall &
    Forbes sample 0.782 6.74

    NB. If the ancient Romans sourced their premium wheat Africa. Why do Modern Africans source their premium wheat not from Africa? Those issues on varities and growing conditions perhaps need more indepth study. There is a wheat variety that grows dryland in Mali or Sudan, thereabout.Grasslands our wheat season could be all year round. Saves forex and earns it. Priorities. MYST

    Reply
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    March 9, 2025

    The Logistics of the Roman Army

    The Non-Grain Ration (Cibaria)
    Although a diet of grain alone would have provided sufficient calo-
    ries and carbohydrates for the Roman soldier, it would not have
    supplied enough protein, vitamins and other nutrients to have main

    tained his health.110The Roman military diet by no means lacked
    non-grain elements: meat, cheese, vegetables (especially legumes), oil,
    vinegar and salt contributed significantly to the nutritional value of
    rations.111It is true that grain was the only component of the Roman
    soldier’s ration mentioned by Polybius, but Plutarch refers to others
    in the course of relating bad omens before M. Licinius Crassus’s
    defeat at Carrhae in 53 B.C.:
    It happened that when the soldiers’ rations were issued after they had
    crossed the [Euphrates] river, the lentils and salt were given out first;
    these foods are signs of mourning . . . and are set out as funerary
    offerings.112
    Frontinus notes that the Roman army consumed “food of all kinds,”
    and Appian says that living on only wheat, barley and game, with-
    out the addition of wine, salt and oil, was detrimental to the health
    of Roman soldiers fighting in Spain.113Interestingly enough, Dio
    Cassius puts a speech in the mouth of Queen Boudicca, in which
    she contrasts the variety of Roman military food unfavorably with
    the simplicity of British tribal diet:
    [The Romans] cannot bear up under hunger (and) thirst as we can . . .
    They require kneaded bread and wine and oil, and if any of these
    things fail them, they perish; for us, on the other hand, any grass or
    root serves as bread, the juice of any plant as oil, any water as wine.114
    The comparison, and the view of British diet is rhetorical, but it shows
    that the variety of Roman military diet was common knowledge.
    Like the term “frumentum,” “cibum” or “cibaria” was sometimes used
    to refer to the soldiers’ provisions as a whole—indeed this seems to
    be its primary meaning.115The frumentum and cibaria, however, that
    Caesar doubled as a reward to one of his units were both clearly
    part of the soldiers’ regular issue. In this context, frumentum clearly
    meant the grain ration and cibaria a ration of food other than grain.116

    This is confirmed by ostraka from Pselkis in Egypt which form two
    parallel series, one for the grain ration, and a separate one, labelled
    the cibaria, which includes other food items, such as wine and vine-
    gar, salt and lentils.117In the Pselkis ostraka the exact components
    of the cibaria appear to change, probably depending on the avail-
    ability of various items.
    The cibaria itself may well have been subdivided into various food
    classes. There is some evidence for such sub-categorization: the Historia
    Augusta refers to three elements in the camp diet (cibus castrensis): lari-
    dum or lardum (salt pork), caseus (cheese) and posca (sour wine and
    water).118The most obvious part of the soldier’s diet, grain, is not
    mentioned, and, in this case, cibus castrensis may well be a military
    synonym for cibaria. The biography of Hadrian in the Historia Augusta
    is one of its most reliable portions and may have drawn on that
    emperor’s military regulations and the author may be using techni-
    cal terminology.119A rescript from the Late Roman period, dated to
    360 A.D., gives the elements of a soldier’s ration as biscuit or bread,
    salt pork (laridum) or mutton, wine or vinegar, oil and salt.120Indeed,
    there is a remarkable continuity in the categories of foodstuffs con-
    sumed by western armies from antiquity onward: (1) bread, (2) salted
    meat, (3) beans (or peas), (4) cheese (or butter), (5) salt and (6) beer,
    wine and later coffee.121This is not to say that these categories of
    rations were necessarily part of any tradition or continuity, but rather
    that they reflect parts of the western diet suitable for the conditions
    of campaigning.
    For its part, Roman rations definitely included (1) frumentum (grain
    corresponding to the bread ration), and the cibaria was probably
    divided into six categories: (2) meat, especially salt-pork (laridum), (3)
    vegetables, especially lentils and beans ( faba), (4) cheese (caseus), (5) salt
    (sal), and (6) sour wine (acetum). In addition, Roman rations included
    (7) olive oil (oleum), which reflects the importance of this foodstuff in
    ancient diet.

    Meat
    Many 19th and early 20th century scholars insisted that the Roman
    soldier did not eat meat as part of his normal diet. As early as 1914,
    Stolle challenged this idea;122but Haverfield’s view was typical:
    . . . the Roman army which conquered the world and kept it in sub-
    jection was . . . mainly a vegetarian army.123
    Veith, in his influential work on the Roman army, accepted the veg-
    etarian theory, attributing reports of meat-eating in the Late Empire
    to barbarian elements in the army.124A ground-breaking study by
    Davies, however, proved that meat made up a significant part of the
    army’s regular diet throughout the Imperial period.125Indeed, archae-
    ologists have found large numbers of animal bones at almost all of
    the Imperial Roman military camps.126In addition, legal sources and
    inscriptions attest military occupations involved with the collection
    and preparation of meat, such as hunters and butchers, in the Imperial
    army.127Literary sources show that meat-eating goes back to the
    Republican period and was typical of military diet throughout the
    period under discussion. Plutarch indicates that the Romans con-
    sidered meat a normal part of a soldier’s meal: Cato the Elder
    (234–149 B.C.) was inclined to vegetarianism, but ate meat because
    it strengthened his body for military service.128Many other passages
    in literary sources refer to meat-eating among Roman soldiers: these
    will be discussed in the context of each individual type of meat.
    Horsfall has gone so far as to suggest that Roman investment in
    Epirus in the first century B.C. was driven by the profit gained in
    supplying meat to the Roman armies travelling on the Via Egnatia.129

    Beef
    The bones of oxen (boves) are attested at Roman military sites in
    greater numbers than any other animal.130It must be borne in mind
    that most of our excavated military sites come from Britain and the
    northern frontier, and that peacetime military diet there differed from
    that of the Mediterranean.131In addition, of course, campaign diet
    would have differed from garrison diet.
    The term pecus, like the English cattle, can refer to a number of
    different herd animals, but is most often used of beef cattle. Polybius
    mentions a strategem of Scipio Africanus during his campaign against
    Andobalus in Spain (206 B.C.), in which the army’s cattle were dri-
    ven ahead of the force to tempt the Spanish to seize them and pro-
    voke a battle.132Sallust notes that surrender terms negotiated in 112
    B.C. demanded that Jugurtha turn over cattle to the Roman army.133
    The army also obtained cattle as booty. These were sometimes sold
    for profit (Sallust notes that the undisciplined Roman army in Spain
    traded stolen cattle for luxuries),134but the army probably consumed
    at least some of such beef. Marius ordered cattle captured on the
    way to Capsa in 107 B.C. and distributed it equally among the cen-
    turies, almost certainly as food.135Cato the Younger drove cattle
    along with his army when operating in Libya, certainly in order to
    provide his men with their meat and Lucullus obtained cattle from
    the Spanish to make up the lack of provisions.136
    During Caesar’s conquest of Gaul the Romans captured large
    numbers of beasts,137and cattle were part of his army’s stores dur-
    ing the Civil Wars.138Caesar specifically mentions the large supply
    of beef his army at Dyrrachium enjoyed.139Appian wrote that in
    preparation for the siege of Mutina (44 B.C.), Decimus Brutus “slaugh-
    tered and salted all the cattle he could find in anticipation of a long

    siege.”140The use of beef as food by the army on campaign con-
    tinued in the Imperial period. When the Quadi negotiated a sur-
    render to Marcus Aurelius in 170, they turned cattle, as well as
    horses, over to the army.141During Septimius Severus’s Parthian
    campaign of 197, his army “drove off the cattle they came across
    for provisions.”142Finally, during Maximinus Thrax’s invasion of
    Germany in 234 –5, he turned over captured flocks to his troops.143
    The average ox weighs about 800 lbs. (363 kg.), and provides
    some 180 –225 kg. (400 –500 lbs.) of beef (bubula caro).144It could be
    eaten in a beef-broth, cooked on a spit or gridiron, or stewed.145
    Pork
    Pig (sus or porcus) bones are found at almost all Roman military sites,
    though in smaller numbers than beef, and there are fewer references
    to pigs as food in the literary sources.146Polybius notes that north-
    ern Italy was the main source of pork used to feed armies serving
    overseas:
    [T]he number of swine slaughtered in Italy . . . to feed the army is
    very large, almost the whole of them supplied by this plain [the Po
    valley].147
    The Historia Augusta says that pork was part of the standard camp-
    fare (cibus castrensis).148While these are the only explicit reference to
    pork in the Roman soldiers’ campaign diet, they both indicate that
    it was an important part of it.
    The Roman military ate pork in a number of forms: cooked,
    roasted or boiled, made into sausages ( farcimina), ham ( perna) or
    bacon (lardum/laridum).149In addition to its value as meat, the fat
    from pork can be used in making biscuit.150Smoked or salted pork

    was particularly important on campaign. Indeed, from the quarter-
    master’s, if not the soldier’s, point of view, salt pork has always been
    a favorite food for campaigning because it is cheap and long-lasting.
    In modern times, an average adult pig weighs between 45–150 kg.
    (100 and 330 lbs.) and about 75% of its weight produces edible
    meat.151Ancient pigs, however, were probably slightly smaller than
    modern ones, say between 40 and 70 kg. (90–150 lbs.).152A third-
    century papyrus from Oxyrhynchus records the collection of forty
    pigs, each weighing 50 Roman pounds (16.3 kg./36 lbs.) for an impe-
    rial visit, but Egyptian pigs tend to be quite small.153
    Mutton and Other Meats
    Of the main domesticated animals consumed in antiquity, the bones
    of sheep (oves) are the least commonly found at Roman military
    sites.154Nevertheless, modern armies sometimes substituted mutton for
    beef, as the U.S. Army did in the Southwest during the Mexican
    War,155and the use of sheep as campaign food is occasionally attested.
    According to Frontinus the consul Aulus Hirtius floated sheep car-
    casses down the Scultena river to the besieged troops (and civilians)
    at Mutina in 43 B.C.156After the defeat of the Peraeans in 67, dur-
    ing the Jewish War, the Romans seized sheep, certainly for the army’s
    consumption.157
    A sheep weighs from 66 to 100 lbs. (27–45 kg.), and upon slaugh-
    tering, about 45% of its weight is discarded as waste.158It could be
    cooked in many of the same ways as beef or pork. The Romans
    were particularly fond of lambs (agni) and kids (haedi).159Referring
    to the siege of Jerusalem in 70, the Talmud describes Romans eat-
    ing kids: although this story has apocryphal elements, it may go back
    to a reliable source.160
    In an emergency, soldiers might eat “all sorts of animals,” as Fron-tinus notes.161Lucullus’s army in Spain ate boiled venison and rab-
    bit, but only out of need.162Under extreme conditions, ancient armies
    turned when necessary to their pack-animals and horses (in that
    order) for emergency sustenance.163
    Sacrificial Meat
    The sacrifice of cattle and other animals (hostia) was a relatively fre-
    quent event in the army and a significant source of fresh meat.164It
    was a Roman custom to perform a “lustratio” or purification of the
    army before battle, and each soldier partook of what had been
    sacrificed to the gods.165Part of the lustratio, a sacrifice, called the
    suovetaurilia, involved the ritual killing of oxen, sheep and pigs.166Such
    a sacrifice is illustrated on several panels of Trajan’s column.167Just
    before the battle of Philippi, the Caesarean army, short of supplies,
    used wheat meal for the lustratio, but the army of Brutus and Cassius
    “distributed great numbers of cattle for sacrifice among their cohorts.”168
    Sacrifices also occurred on other occasions. Josephus notes that
    after the capture of Jerusalem in 70, Titus had “an immense num-
    ber of oxen sacrificed” and “distributed them to his soldiers for a
    banquet.”169A papyrus from Dura-Europus, dated ca. 223–227, con-
    tains a calendar of sacrifices performed by the military unit stationed
    there. In the preserved portion, the period of January 3rd to Septem-
    ber 23rd, there were 24 days in which cows or oxen, sometimes
    both, were sacrificed, and presumably consumed by the soldiers.170

    Reply
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    March 9, 2025

    The Logistics of the Roman Army

    Table III: Reconstruction of Roman Daily Military Ration

    Grain 8158502 sextarii1,95075 grams

    or Bread1, 137850
    or Biscuit 569650

    Roasted meat 1171601/2 libra64015 grams
    or Pork96 32 grams

    Vegetables
    (Lentils)–40–501/3 dry17010 gram

    Cheese 27271 1/2 unciae900 grams

    Olive oil 401 1/2 unciae35010 grams

    Wine/
    Vinegar3271601/2 liquid1900 grams

    Salt 21404 cochlearea00 grams

    Total 1,040–1,6291,117–1,3273,390142 grams

    PS/ When the Roman soldier offered Jesus Christ a sponge with sour wine (vinegar), It may not have been an act of malice but rather an act of kindness for sour wine was part of his rations. The Romans preferred sour wine and wine to water and thought the Numidians strange that drank only water. Lack of wine actually caused mutiny in one of the garrisons. Dzidzai

    Reply
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    March 9, 2025

    The Logistics of the Roman Army

    One should note that the combination of various elements of the
    ration resulted in a higher nutritional value than each individual ele-
    ment. For example, grain and beans eaten together provide protein.
    In fact, all the evidence indicates that the diet of the Roman sol-
    dier was excellent, both in quality and quantity.278 It is noteworthy
    that among the many complaints aired by mutinous legionaries in A.D. 14, none concerned bad food, normally a commonplace of mil-
    itary griping.279
    The Preparation of Food
    Modern armies generally utilize central facilities for the preparation
    of food: in such cases, cooks prepare the soldiers’ meals. These cooks
    are generally non-combatant soldiers or civilians, and they distrib-
    ute food to the troops in a ready-to-eat form. Stolle argued that the
    Roman army similarly used central bakeries.280In support, he cites
    an incident in which Cato the Elder wanted to convince some Spanish
    ambassadors that he was preparing to send them military assistance.
    He ordered warning to be given to one-third of the soldiers of each
    cohort to cook food (cibus) in good season and put it on board ship,
    and the ships to be made ready for sailing the third day.281
    This is, however, clearly a special circumstance: Cato wanted to sail
    in three days, and bread had to be quickly prepared, as baking could
    not be done on board ship. Indeed it is telling that Cato used rank
    and file troops, not cooks, for this preparation. Stolle’s second piece
    of evidence is from Pliny. While discussing Fortune, Pliny claims (cit-
    ing Cicero) that Publius Ventidius, who triumphed in 38 B.C., had
    once been a mulio castrensis furnaria, a mule-driver for a military bak-
    ery. This is a rather typical calumny, as Ventidius had actually been
    a military contractor—supplying pack animals to the army.282The
    “camp bakery” in question is probably a Ciceronian circumlocution
    for military supplies, although it might refer to a commander’s
    kitchen.283This single reference is a thin reed to reconstruct cen-
    tralized Roman military field-bakeries.284
    The argument for Roman soldiers preparing their own meals is
    much stronger. Sallust says that the undisciplined army of Postumius
    Albinus in Numidia in 110 B.C. “even sold the grain which was alloted

    them by the state and bought bread from day to day.”285When
    Caecilius Metellus took over this army, one of his reforms was to
    ban the selling of prepared or cooked food (cibus coctus) within the
    camp.286Soldiers would certainly not have paid for prepared food,
    if the army issued hot meals for free. Plutarch explicitly states that
    Roman soldiers prepared their own food. Tacitus criticizes Vitellius
    for issuing “prepared food” ( parati cibi) to each individual soldier “as
    if he were fattening gladiators.”287This passage only makes sense if
    it refers to the issuing of meals to soldiers lined up at a central
    kitchen, and if this practice was uncharacteristic of the Roman army’s
    normal practice in issuing rations. Herodian refers to Caracalla grind-
    ing his own grain and baking his own bread on campaign, “like a
    common soldier.”288On the other hand, Caesar implies that only
    the legionaries had the capability of preparing bread,289so perhaps
    auxiliaries relied on cooks.
    This characteristically Roman method of preparing food on open
    hearths at the squad level increased the army’s logistical flexibility.
    Armies with central kitchens must transport portable ovens in their
    train, or find such ovens in the surrounding region. The need for
    ovens to bake bread can be a serious logistical problem, particularly
    when the army is foraging to supplement, or supply, its grain.290
    The grain portion of the soldier’s ration could be eaten in two
    basic ways. The first was in the form of puls, a porridge or mush,
    similar to modern Italian polenta, made with water, salt and often
    with fat, oil or milk.291If available, spices, vegetables, bacon or fresh
    meat could be added: Napoleon’s troops invading Russia in 1812,
    ate rye cooked as porridge with meat and other foodstuffs.292During
    the African War (46 B.C.), Caesar collected oil and other provisions
    on a foraging expedition, and since the troops were “refreshed” with-
    out, apparently, having the time to make the wheat into bread, the
    army must have consumed the grain as puls on that occasion

    Reply
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    March 9, 2025

    The Logistics of the Roman Army

    Diet for the Sick and Wounded
    Many military forces prescribe special rations for hospitalized troops.377
    The Roman army was remarkable in pre-modern times for its at-
    tention to sick and wounded soldiers. By the Imperial period at the latest, legions had regular medical personnel, and legionary camps
    were furnished with hospitals.378Ancient medicine was preoccupied
    with the role of diet both in the creation and cure of illness,379and
    the same applied to military medicine. Appian says that the Cartha-
    ginian army, besieged during the Numidian War in 150 B.C., “fell
    sick of all kinds of diseases, due to bad food,”380and that Roman
    soldiers in Spain got dysentary from eating meat without salt.381
    Caesar’s forces at Pharsalus (48 B.C.), short of supplies and forced
    to eat roots, were stricken with “a kind of pestilential disease, occa-
    sioned by the strangeness of their diet.”382The disease was cured in
    a remarkable way:
    . . . after [Caesar] had taken the Gomphi, a city of Thessaly, he not
    only provided food for his soldiers, but also relieved them of their dis-
    ease unexpectedly. For they fell in with plenty of wine, and after drink-
    ing freely of it . . . by means of their drunkenness they drove away and
    got rid of their trouble, since they brought their bodies into a different
    habit.383
    The danger of over-eating in a malnourished state was also understood
    by the ancients. Appian notes that after the lifting of the siege of
    Mutina in 43 B.C., Brutus’s soldiers “fell sick by reason of excessive
    eating after their famine and suffered from dysentery.”384
    The Romans used some foodstuffs as medicines: Vegetius recom-
    mends eating fowl especially for sick soldiers, a cure also noted by
    Plutarch.385For a malady which attacked Aelius Gallus’s army march-
    ing through the Arabian desert during his campaign of 26–25 B.C.
    (which may have been heat-stroke), the Roman remedy was to drink
    and apply to the skin a mixture of olive oil and wine.386A papyrus
    from Masada, dating to the siege of 73, an account of medical sup-
    plies, lists “eating oil” (olei cib(arii)), which was perhaps intended for
    the same malady.

    Officers’ Diet and Meals
    Of course, as a rule, Roman officers ate a much better diet than
    common soldiers. The elements of the Roman aristocrat’s diet while
    on campaign were probably simpler than while in civilian life, though
    not by much. Certain commanders were indeed praised for the sim-
    plicity of their diet. For example, Frontinus says Cato would drink
    the same wine as the rowers in the fleet and that Scipio Aemilianus
    would munch on bread offered to him by his soldiers.388In his dis-
    cussion of Marius, a similar type, Plutarch remarks:
    . . . it is a most agreeable spectacle for a Roman soldier when he sees
    his general eating common bread (koinon arton) in public.389
    Roman historians applied a similar topos to soldier-emperors: Tacitus
    lauds Vespasian for dressing and bearing himself like a common
    soldier and says that “his food was whatever chance offered (cibo
    fortuito)”390and Herodian praises Septimius Severus, also a soldier-
    emperor, for “taking the same food and drink available to everyone.”391
    Conversely, our sources criticize leaders for overindulgence in food.
    Polybius disapproves of the Roman garrison commander of Tarentum
    in 212 B.C., Gaius Livius, for starting his feasts “early in the day” and
    says that it was about sunset, when “the drinking was at its height”
    that Hannibal seized the town by treachery. Livius, incapacitated by
    alcohol, fled to the citadel, where, after sobering up, he held out.392
    Tacitus slights Vitellius for his “extravagent dinners ( prodiga epula)”
    and says that “at midday he was tipsy and gorged with food.”393
    In balance, we can assume that most officers often ate quite well,
    even while on campaign. Civilian aristocrats who accompanied the
    army appear normally to have been fed on the army’s or the com-
    mander’s stores. At the beginning of the Actium campaign (31 B.C.)
    Octavian ordered senators and knights accompanying the army to
    bring their own provisions; Dio Cassius presents this as exceptional.

    Officers also benefited from offerings made by locals: for example,
    Sulla was offered fish as gift from some Greeks during his cam-
    paigning there in 87–86 B.C.395In general, while the army supplied,
    or at least paid for, provisions for high officers, one cannot speak
    of them receiving “rations” since the amounts and types of foods they
    ate depended entirely commander’s whim.
    The rule of eating together also applied to officers.396Since cen-
    turions had their own separate quarters, it seems likely that they ate
    there, probably together with the optiones and the standard bearers.
    The tribunes and the commander’s personal staff (which often in-
    cluded friends and relatives who served as informal aides-de-camps),
    as well as, perhaps, the most senior centurions, ate with the com-
    mander. Thus, the term contubernium came to refer to the commander-
    in-chief’s staff, who shared his meals.397
    Since, during the Republican period and well into the Empire,
    the Romans drew their officer corps almost exclusively from the
    aristrocracy, the meals of the commander and of the highest rank-
    ing officers, resembled the kind of formal meal enjoyed by the upper
    classes in peace-time. Though soldiers are said to “take food” (cibum
    capere),398officers “dine” (epulare).399While dining in the field was gen-
    erally not as elaborate an affair as in peacetime, being able to put
    on an elegant dinner party in the field was a sign of good breed-
    ing. Sallust has Gaius Marius, the very type of the “new man,” com-
    plain that: “[the aristocracy] say I am common and of rude manners,
    because I cannot give a banquet (convivium).”400Under normal cir-
    cumstances, though, a Roman commander ate in his praetorium in
    the manner of a Roman aristocrat, reclining on a couch.401In Roman
    aristocratic fashion, generals virtually never ate alone. Plutarch describes
    the two Liberators just before the battle of Philippi (42 B.C.):
    Brutus was full of hopefulness at supper, and after engaging in philo-
    sophical discussion, went to rest; but Cassius, as Messala tells us, supped
    in private with a few of his intimates. . .

    To the victors belong the spoils—including meals. After winning the
    battle of Pharsalus in 48 B.C., Caesar took Pompey’s camp, entered
    his tent and ate the defeated general’s supper.403
    While it was probably seldom actual practice, there was a topos of
    the good general who ate like a common soldiers. As “soldier emper-
    ors” both Septimius Severus and Severus Alexander receive praise
    for eating military rations (militaris cibus) with their troops.404Velleius
    Paterculus lauds Tiberius for sitting while he dined (cenavit sedens), at
    least in company.405Frontinus records the case of Gaius Titius, a
    prefect of a cohort, who was ordered to forgo banquets (convivia) by
    Calpurnius Piso because he had been defeated by slaves in the Sicilian
    Slave War of 135–2 B.C.406Generally, though, slaves would serve
    even the simplest meal of most Roman officers.
    Other Logistical Needs
    Firewood
    Since the Romans did not prepare their meals centrally, but rather
    issued uncooked grain to their troops, every eight-man contuberium
    needed its own cooking fire.407Of course, not just bread, but meat
    and vegetables, also needed to be cooked. Therefore, the army in
    the field had to collect a large amount of firewood or fuel daily.408
    Tacitus calls soldiers deprived of firewood “wretched,”409and Frontinus
    emphasized the danger that lack of firewood could lead to the eat-
    ing of undercooked meat, causing illness.410Caesar considered the
    lack of firewood as adverse a situation as an absence of water, fod-
    der, or grain,411 and Vegetius also emphasized the importance of
    firewood to the army.

    Reply
29. 

    March 9, 2025

    MYST

    Sometimes I wonder and worry about our youngsters. If you spend 7 days a week at the bar. Lets do some quick maths.

    A quart is $1.50 and you probably need 4 to feel something because of your tolerance. Thats $6 per day. $180 per day. Thats $2,160 per year.

    If you have access to land thats about 2 hectares Tobacco that gives a return of 24k. If you are in the system but still haven’t received land that shows how low in the pecking order you are.

    That could also be a tertiary qualification an investment in yourself and future or a Passo or Fit to put on the road in what ever form you please or a getaway holiday for 3.

    So instead of resenting and shadowing those that have you could get those things yourself without becoming a midawar or “Champs-Élysées Revolutionary.”

    $6 a day for some of you makes you middleclass in these parts and probably $2 per day makes you lower middle class. If you could predict the future what would you likely see….

    Reply
30. 

    March 9, 2025

    Cde. Border Gezi

    We are likely to see wealthy older and experienced men using younger, gullible, impressionable and desparate youth who understand little about life as a stand alone adult later on in life. We likely to.see their Youth robbed from them that they will only regret later on in life.

    Just like using child soldiers. Those children when grown up and can fully grasp what happened to them and how they were used will become a problem for their handlers and state.

    Every action in life has an opposite reaction.

    Reply
31. 

    March 10, 2025

    Dzidzai

    If you know your bible you are likely to see how the word becomes flesh.

    Joseph was betrayed by his own blood and the chief cause was jealousy and envy. His own brothers conived to kill him because he was handsome, charismatic and blessed with the gift of foresight through dreams. Bow down to you,you of all people, why and how his brothers asked, forgetting that Gods plan cannot be derailed no matter what they try, and their actions lead to the fufillment of prophecy instead of negating it.

    Not long after Joseph has been sold into slavery in a foreign land does a great famine stalk the land. Joseph then begins stirring in Egypt after a harrowing odeal.The ancient Israelites left their birth right and moved from Canaan to Egypt, not a decision taken lightly and probably due to getting rid of a boy who was supposed to help when the time came but they discarded him,and he went on to help another nation. If it was not for the Pharoahs that came after Joseph it can be argued the course of history may have turned out differently.

    The only reason that the Israelites moved away from Egypt was their enslavement and brutal treatment from subsequent Pharoahs who had long forgotten Joseph. If the Israelites had been treated fairly the dynamics in the Middle East and World may have turned out entirely different.

    Imagine 3/4 or more of your population leaving. Probably leaving only those who are too infirm or young to travel and the few elites enjoying a comfortable life.

    Imagine this happening in a modern state. Imagine a ruler of 30million people being left with on 7million people most of them non productive. A disaster of epic proportions, A massive economic and security risk. People running away, selling their most valuable possesions to get a passport or using whatever means to leave. Not long after the country will fail and fall into a death spiral all because men try and intervene in Gods planning.

    Reply
32. 

    March 10, 2025

    DJD

    On deck

    Yung Joc its going down

    Spice So mi like it

    Vybz Kartel Spice Conjugal

    Alkaline Pretty Girl team

    Fleetwood Mac Everywhere

    Reply
33. 

    March 10, 2025

    MYST

    Ward 21 Gully Gun

    Vybz Kartel Band Wagonist

    Chill Master Horror

    Reply
34. 

    March 10, 2025

    MYST

    Biri Marung Yah Straata

    Brick n Lace Love is wicked

    T.O.K Gal yuh ah lead

    Reply
35. 

    March 10, 2025

    Fantasma

    In 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider, scientists discovered the long-sought
    Higgs boson. Now the question is: Are there more types of Higgs bosons?
    What is a Higgs boson?
    What is a Higgs field? What is a Higgs boson?
    The Higgs field is a force field that acts like a giant vat of molasses
    spread throughout the universe. Most of the known types of particles
    that travel through it stick to the molasses, which slows them down
    and makes them heavier. The Higgs boson is a particle that helps
    transmit the mass-giving Higgs field, similar to the way a particle of
    light, the photon, transmits the electromagnetic field.
    When did scientists discover the Higgs boson?
    Scientists searched for the Higgs boson for more than two decades,
    starting with the LEP experiments at CERN in the 1990s and the
    Tevatron experiments at Fermilab in the 2000s. Years’ worth of LEP
    and Tevatron data narrowed the search for the Higgs particle. Then,
    in 2012 at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), two experiments,
    ATLAS and CMS, reported the observation of a Higgs-like particle.
    With further analysis the new particle was confirmed as the Higgs
    boson in 2013. About 7,000 scientists from more than 40 countries,
    including the United States, contributed to this discovery. It resulted
    in a Nobel Prize in physics to Peter Higgs and François Englert, who
    first had proposed the existence of the Higgs boson in 1964.
    The Higgs field provides mass to quarks and other elementary particles that are the building blocks of matter. The photon and the gluon do not interact with the Higgs field, and hence
    they have no mass. Whether the Higgs field is the origin of the mass of dark matter or the tiny mass of the three known types of neutrinos is not yet known.

    Reply
36. 

    March 10, 2025

    Dzidzai.Chidumba

    Let me give it try because no one ever taught me.

    Maita Nhewa
    Maita Simboti
    Maita Tsoka
    Vanodyira pasvipira
    Va Sena
    Varimi
    Va Tangwena
    Mhuka inopondera pachena
    Maita Nhewa
    Maita Simboti

    Reply
37. 

    March 10, 2025

    MYST

    Basic Radar Analysis
    Mervin C. Budge, Jr.
    Shawn R. German

    Preface
    This book is based on lecture notes for a three-course sequence in radar taught by Dr. Budge
    at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. To create this book, we filled in some details that
    are normally covered in lectures and added information in the areas of losses, waveforms,
    and signal processing. We also added a chapter on receiver basics.

    Chapter 1
    Radar Basics
    1.1 INTRODUCTION
    According to Skolnik and other sources, the first attempt to detect targets using
    electromagnetic radiation took place in 1904 (patent date for the telemobiloscope), when
    Düsseldorf engineer Christian Hülsmeyer bounced waves off a ship [1–5]. During the 1920s,
    several researchers, including R. C. Newhouse, G. Breit, M. A. Tuve, G. Marconi, L. S. Alder,
    and probably many others in the United States and other countries, were obtaining patents on,
    and conducting experiments with, radar. Although these appear to be the first instances of
    radar usage, the term “radar” was not applied then. The name for radar was coined in 1940 by
    two U.S. Navy officers (Lieutenant Commanders Samuel M. Tucker and F. R. Furth) as a
    contraction of RAdio Detection And Ranging [6–8]. As with many other technological
    advancements, significant early achievements in radar occurred during World War II. Since
    then, radar technology has grown rapidly and continues to advance at a quick pace. We now
    see wide application of radars in both commercial (airport radars, police radars, weather
    radars) and military (search radars, track radars) arenas.
    1.2 RADAR TYPES
    Radars can use two types of signals:
    • Pulsed, where the radar transmits a sequence of pulses of radio frequency (RF) energy;
    • Continuous wave (CW), where the radar transmits a continuous signal.
    When Hülsmeyer bounced electromagnetic waves off a ship, he used a CW radar; Breit and
    Tuve used a pulsed radar.
    CW radars typically use separate transmit and receive antennas because it is not usually
    possible to receive with full sensitivity through an antenna while it is transmitting a high
    power signal. Pulsed radars avoid this problem by using what we might think of as time
    multiplexing. Specifically, the antenna connects to the transmitter while the pulse transmits
    and connects to the receiver after the transmit phase. A transmit/receive (T/R) switch in the
    radar performs this switching function. Such pulsed-signal radars constitute the most
    common type because they require only one antenna.
    The two basic types of radars are monostatic or bistatic radars:
    • In a monostatic radar, the transmitter and receiver (as well as their associated antennas)
    are collocated. This is the most common type of radar because it is the most compact. A
    pulsed monostatic radar usually employs the same antenna for transmit and receive. A CW
    monostatic radar usually employs separate transmit and receive antennas, with a shield

    Reply
38. 

    March 10, 2025

    MYST

    Paul A. Czysz and Claudio Bruno
    Future Spacecraft
    Propulsion Systems
    Enabling Technologies for Space Exploration
    (Second Edition)

    Preface
    Humankind has been dreaming of traveling to space for a long time. Jules Verne
    thought we could reach the moon with a giant cannon in the 1800s. In the early
    1960s there was a dedicated push to develop the vehicle configurations that would
    permit us to travel to space, and back through the atmosphere, as readily and
    conveniently as flying on an airliner to another continent and back. That idea, or
    intuition, was necessarily coupled with advanced propulsion system concepts, that
    relied on capturing the oxygen within our atmosphere instead of carrying it onboard
    from the ground up, as rockets developed in Germany in the 1940s did, and as satellite
    launchers still do. During the 1960s the concept of space travel extended beyond our
    planet, to our Solar System and the Galaxy beyond (see Chapter 1), using power
    sources other than chemical, such as fission and fusion. Not much is left nowadays of
    those dreams, except our present capability to build those advanced propulsion
    systems.
    Traveling to space in the foreseeable future is a multi-step process. The first step is
    to achieve a two-way transport to and from orbit around our Earth, that is, a Low
    Earth Orbit (LEO), see Chapters 2, 4 and 5. This is a critical first step as it is the key to
    moving away from our Earth environment. For any future development in space,
    travel that transits to and from LEO must be frequent and affordable. From a vision of
    spacecraft parked in LEOs there are then several options. One is a Geo-Synchronous
    Orbit or Geo-Stationary Orbit (GSO) that is at an altitude of 35,853 km (22,278
    statute miles) and has an equatorial orbital period of 24 hours, so it is stationary over
    any fixed point on Earth. Another option for the next step is an elliptical transfer orbit
    to the Moon. The orbital speed to reach the Moon is less than the speed to escape
    Earth’s orbit, so the transfer orbit is elliptical, and requires less energy to accomplish
    (but more logistics) than reaching GSO. Depending on the specific speed selected, the
    time to reach the Moon is between 100 to 56 hours. In fact, the Apollo program
    selected a speed corresponding to a 72-hour travel time from LEO to the vicinity of the
    Moon (see Chapter 6): in terms of the time needed to reach it, the Moon is truly

    Reply
39. 

    March 10, 2025

    MYST

    So be of the best rugby games I have watched was Falcon College vs St John’s College. The Samoa team came and sangbwar cries. I was behind the tuckshop on Jubilee 1. St Johns didnt have a particulary good team but they put in an effort and they won. Close margin, they turned up on the day. There was a parent with glasses going manic. Super fan. Also guessed he was a parent.

    You lads need to know the maul is is an effective weapon its artillery. You.aslo ahve to be able to defend it. You sack it at the shoulders. Drop kick is a penalty. Torpedo is the best kick. Loosies run at tighties. Tighties run at loosies. Wingers should core many tries…

    Reply
40. 

    March 10, 2025

    MYST

    So I met Uriga at the school tuck shop. That day I had gone to visit. I coached Uriga rugby at Selbourne Routledge. He then went to Allan Willson were ai coached after. He kicked the winning points against Tynwald. I coached at Allan Wilson too, we use the scrum machine a lot.with the U16s. Got into some trouble I kept the team on field too late at practice. Also coached a lad who became a Churchill Bulldog. PE wanted Kampira but Kampira wanted Kampira.

    So I asked Uriga. Why did you leave AWS and he said because they also wanted to win. The game was stopped 15minutes that day. ID checks. In our day first team was U19. Some coaches want to win so much they hire players. I kinda defeats the purpose doesnt it. You need to take defeat and shake tje hand of the other player. Otherwise why even play in a charade.

    Remember to buy your hot dog at rugby. Teams need to tour.

    Reply
41. 

    March 10, 2025

    MYST

    Someone was teasing the PG on the internet. He said why do they wear yellow berets. Well maybe they want too.

    However, I tend to agree for a change. A red beret is better. Clearly distunguishable from the Para Maroon. Yellow is also one of the easiest colours to identify in the bush and at night.

    Reply
42. 

    March 11, 2025

    Dzidzai.Chidumba

    I miss Hon. Winston Chitando. The man knows his stuff. He has taken mining and madebit the biggest foreign currency earner above the tradition agriculture which is noean feat in a country where the economy founded on Agriculture.

    When he came to the Mining Indaba at CICC when he was still executive chairman at Mimosa I offered to drive him to the Airport the next morning. He accepted. Drove up to the hotel in my 316 slowish. It was the least I could do,the man had just bought us dinner the previous evening.

    The man knows his stuff and his heart is in the right place. We are blessed to have him. A patriot.

    Reply
43. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    So on the Defenve group Insqw that the Skylon space plane project from Reaction Engines was canned. The project was underfunded and investors probably didnt understand the significance of a reusable hybrid space plane that takes off and lands like the former space shuttles albeit under engine power. There was also potential for Mach 7 passenger travel reviving the Concorde dream. If I was Learjet, Embraer or Bombadier that may habe been a shrewd investment.

    If it were up to me I would invite the scientists over, plus the added advantage of a good climate, peaceful enviroment and lots of exploring to do in our wilderness areas. They would work on reviving their dream for a low cost space plane.

    Reply
44. 

    March 11, 2025

    Humanity

    James Harrison, an Australian who died last month at 88, was one of the most prolific donors in history, extending his arm 1,173 times.

    He may have also been one of the most important: Scientists used a rare antibody in his plasma to make a medication that helped protect an estimated 2.4 million babies in Australia from possible disease or death.

    Read more: https://nyti.ms/4bnUT6d

    Reply
45. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    “Preparedness, coalition-building, imagination, experiments, bravery … the less we know about the future, the more we’re going to need these tremendous sources of human, messy, unpredictable skills.”

    http://t.ted.com/DuJ1DjN

    Reply
46. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    History is one of our most undervalued resources for thinking about the future of humanity, says philosopher Roman Krznaric. Here’s how the past can help us move forward: http://t.ted.com/p6NBKmf

    Reply
47. 

    March 11, 2025

    Dzidzai.Chidumba

    Thank you people of Russia for the helicopters. I just saw an Air Ambulance flyby. Nice machines.

    Reply
48. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    Last fall, the restaurant Giglio in Lucca, Italy, made a surprising request: to have its Michelin star removed from the 2025 guide.

    For more than a century, the Michelin Guide has functioned as a culinary lodestar for chefs the world over.
    Now, some chefs say the prestigious award can become a gilded cage for restaurants loaded with financial and creative drawbacks.

    Read more: https://on.wsj.com/3EDGgzf

    Reply
49. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    Michael Sheen grew up poor, got rich, then lost everything backing the 2019 Homeless World Cup.
    ‌
    Now the actor’s giving away more of his money to help 900 total strangers. Doesn’t he think he’s done enough? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/mar/10/michael-sheen-interview-secret-million-pound-giveaway-port-talbot?utm_source=whatsappchannel

    Reply
50. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    *What kids wish but won’t say!*

    _Here are 10 things every child secretly hopes their parents would do._

    Know more: https://toi.in/ysjewll

    Reply
51. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    *Stay calm, stay focused!*

    _These meditation tips can help students reduce stress and improve concentration._

    Know more 🔗 https://toi.in/bckwull

    Reply
52. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    Mood for the Kusho Bani video dropping on friday. Me and my cuties. I’m gonna loose weight from hanging with these ones, go jaiviwa full time!!! Hahaha

    🎵: Cassper Nyovest x Big Hash – Right here WIMME

    Reply
53. 

    March 11, 2025

    Mark

    Meta AI will start to give you answers based on what preferences and information you’ve shared. For example, it’s helped me come up with creative bedtime stories for my daughters, so if I ask it for a new one, it remembers they love mermaids.

    Reply
54. 

    March 11, 2025

    Dzidzai.Chidumba

    For any organisation it starts with a logo.

    Its shows you have made the investment in a small detail that has big potential. If you scrimp in the minute details its a red flag from me.

    The Viva Mobile Network logo was designed a guy called Bryron Boshoff who at the time was CG student at one of the Colleges in South Africa. The chief reason I chose him is that his catalogue of work impressed me, and he had an online presence.So I sent him an email,he responded. I sent him a brief of the creative direction. He sent me a qoutation, I went to Stanbic bank did the transfer to his Capitec account. In two weeks he sent me a large zip file with all the work including the Adobe inDesign and Photoshop psd files in case I wanted to edit. When creatives meet and collaborate there is a spark. When I sent him the brief he said to me wow. He had something to work with, and he came up with a work of art.

    Look at the South African University logos some of them more than 100 years old. A quick test for someone who designs a work of art for you, just ask yourself if you would allow this person to draw a potrait of you.

    Our logo was copied shortly after by a new party called Viva Zimbabwe. I didn’t bother to envoke our IP protection from ARIPO. Why, well because we were not in the same line of work and secondly it is flattering for someone to copy you. It means our Logo and name were nice.

    Reply
55. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    *📢 Freedom in Africa Declining for 10 Years Straight 🌍📉*

    🌍🌍A new *report from Freedom House* says 2024 marked the 10th year in a row of *shrinking freedom across Africa.* The reasons? Armed conflicts, military coups, and unfair elections. 🚨⚠️ https://rfi.my/BRnq.w
    🔻 14 countries lost points in the rankings
    🔹 Only 5 showed improvement

    What do you think? Can this trend be reversed? 🤔💬 #Africa #Freedom #Democracy #HumanRights

    Reply
56. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    🔥 War in DRC is escalating! Rwandan-backed M23 fighters just took over Goma & Bukavu. The UN is warning of a bigger crisis—could this turn into a regional war? 👀💬https://rfi.my/BQs3.w Drop your thoughts! #DRC #M23 #BreakingNews

    Reply
57. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    Non-woven fabrics for military applications

    The grim reality of the race between protection and lethality is that no
    matter how assiduously the designer attempts to protect a user from death
    and injury, there is always something that can deliver a fatal or disabling
    wound through any given armor. Until humans so radically change their nature that they cease their desire to murder or maim their fellow creatures, this will remain true.

    Categories of military armor
    Ballistic-resistant materials for military purposes presently fall into three
    general categories:
    1. garments, such as vests.
    2. helmets.
    3. vehicle and structural reinforcement.
    Ballistic-resistant vests, jackets, and similar garments are often mainly for
    protection against shrapnel and bomb fragments. Protection from military
    caliber small arms is quite challenging in most cases because of the high
    velocities, low aspect ratios and hard surfaces of the projectiles. Although
    such high-level protection is vital, it is cumbersome for long-term use in
    field situations.

    Law enforcement armor needs
    Police protective equipment is usually designed for handgun threats and
    sharp instrument threats such as one would encounter from ordinary crimi-
    nals. Higher level protection is available for protection from more orga-
    nized criminal threats, terrorism and riots, but it is not normally issued for
    daily use. Police equipment is ideally designed for constant use against the
    most commonly expected threat.
    Police departments usually have to rely on city budget managers, city
    councils and mayors to receive whatever protective products they can get,
    and most such people are not suffi ciently educated about ballistic protec-
    tion to decide these life and death issues. The real dangers of daily situations
    in the life of a law enforcement offi cer are poorly understood by buyers,
    the press and the public. Even the end users are often ill-informed about
    what protective materials can and cannot do.

    It seems appropriate, therefore, to discuss what levels of protections are
    provided by various products and categories, and how the products are
    defi ned for specifi c end-uses.

    Reply
58. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    THE AQUARIUM is the headquarters of the GRU – Soviet Military
    Intelligence. There is only one way in, via special selection – and only
    one exit: through the chimney of the crematorium. As a young officer
    Viktor Suvorov commanded a tank company. But his skill and initiative
    soon led his superiors to take notice – and he was transferred to Military
    Intelligence. After training with SPETSNAZ – the Soviet SAS – he was
    posted abroad. This is the gripping personal story of his day-to-day work
    as a Soviet spy in Europe, and of why he defected rather than betray the
    one associate he admired.

    ‘A MASS OF RAW MATERIAL FOR THRILLER WRITERS, IT SHOULD BE READ ALSO BY THOSE WITH A SERIOUS INTEREST IN THE SOVIET UNION’

    TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

    ‘ANYONE WHO IS ALARMED AT THE LEAKAGE OF WESTERN TECHNOLOGY TO THE EAST WILL BE EVEN MORE ALARMED AFTER READING THIS ACCOUNT OF SOVIET MILITARY ESPIONAGE’
    GEORGE WALDEN MP

    Viktor Suvorov is in his thirties and now lives in the West
    with his family. He was himself a Soviet Army officer and
    saw the world outside the Soviet Union for the first time
    in 1968 when he was sent to Czechoslovakia. He is the
    author of The Liberators, a vivid personal account of life
    in the Soviet Army, and two works on the Soviet Army
    and Soviet military intelligence which have become stan-
    dard texts. Viktor Suvorov is not his real name.

    Prologue
    ‘We have a very simple rule: it’s a rouble to get in, but
    two to get out. That means that it’s difficult to join the
    organization, but a lot more difficult to get out of it.
    Theoretically there’s only one way out for any member of
    the organization – through the chimney of the crema-
    torium. For some it is an honourable exit, but for others it
    is a shameful and terrible way to go, but there’s only the
    one chimney for all of us. That’s the only way we can leave
    this organization. That’s the chimney over there . . .’ the
    man with grey hair points towards a huge picture window
    taking up the whole wall. ‘Have a good look at it.’
    At the level of the ninth floor I have a panoramic view
    of the vast, unbounded and deserted airfield stretching to
    the horizon. And if I look straight down I can see below
    me a labyrinth of sand-covered pathways running between
    thick rows of shrubs. The green of the plants in the
    garden and the burnt-up grass of the airfield are separated
    by an indestructible concrete wall protected by a thick
    network of barbed wire.
    ‘That’s it over there . . .’ Grey-hair points to a fat square
    chimney, no more than ten metres high, built on top of a
    flat asphalt roof. The black roof floats among the greenery
    of the lilac bushes like a raft in the ocean or an old-
    fashioned battleship, sitting low in the water with its funnel
    quite out of proportion. A thin transparent smoke is rising
    from the chimney.
    ‘Is that someone leaving the organization?’
    ‘No.’ Grey-hair laughs. ‘The chimney is not only our

    way out; it is also a source of energy for us and the
    guardian of our secrets. At the moment they are simply
    burning secret papers. It’s better, you know, to burn them
    than to keep them. When somebody leaves the
    organization the smoke is not like this; it is dense and
    oily. If you join the organization you too will one day rise
    into the sky through that chimney. But that’s not what
    we’re here for now. The organization is giving you a last
    chance to change your mind, a final opportunity to
    consider your choice. And to give you something to think
    about, I’ll show you a film. Sit down.’
    He presses a knob on the control panel and sits down in
    an armchair alongside me. With a faint scraping noise,
    heavy brown shutters cover the huge windows and
    immediately a picture appears on the screen without any
    title or other explanation. It is a black and white film,
    obviously old and rather scratched. It has no sound track,
    and the regular clicking noise of the projector can be
    clearly heard.
    On the screen there appears a high, gloomy room
    without windows, something between a factory workshop
    and a boiler house. In the foreground there is a furnace
    with fire-doors looking like the gates of a small castle,
    with grooves running into the furnace like rails into a
    tunnel. People in grey protective gowns are standing near
    the furnace. Boilermen. Then they showed a coffin. So
    this is a crematorium too. Probably the same one I have
    just been looking at out of the window. The men in
    gowns lift the coffin and place it on the guide rails. The
    fire-doors open smoothly to each side, the coffin is given
    a gentle push and it bears its unknown occupant into the
    roaring flames. Then the camera gives a close-up of a
    living person. A face swimming in perspiration. It is
    probably very hot near the furnace. The face is displayed
    from all sides for what seems an eternity. At last the

    camera pulls back to show the person full length. He is
    not in a gown. He is dressed in an expensive black suit,
    terribly crumpled. His tie is tightly screwed round his
    neck. The man himself is bound fast with steel wire to a
    stretcher, and the stretcher has been propped up against
    the wall so that the man can see the furnace.
    Next all the attendants suddenly turn their attention to
    the bound man. Their attention obviously gives him no
    pleasure. He lets out a scream. A terrible scream. There is
    no sound, but I can tell it is a scream that would make the
    windows rattle. Four of the attendants carefully lower the
    stretcher to the floor and then raise it again. The bound
    man makes an incredible effort to prevent this. The
    titanic strain is apparent in the expression on his face. A
    vein on his forehead stands out as though it is about to
    burst. But his effort to bite the hand of an attendant is in
    vain. His teeth only bite into his own lip, and a black
    trickle of blood begins to run down his chin. He certainly
    has sharp teeth. His body is firmly tied down, but it is
    wriggling about like that of a captured lizard. Submitting
    to an animal instinct, he begins to beat his head against the
    wooden handle of the stretcher and so assist his body. He
    is not fighting for his life, but for an easy death. His
    calculation is clear: to rock the stretcher over so as to fall
    with it off the guide rails and onto the concrete floor. This
    will mean either an easy death or loss of consciousness.
    You don’t fear even the flames if you are unconscious.
    But the attendants know their job. They simply hold on to
    the handles of the stretcher to stop it rocking. And the
    prisoner cannot get at their hands with his teeth even if he
    breaks his neck.
    They say that at the last moment of his life a man can
    perform miracles. Prompted by the instinct of self-
    preservation, all his muscles, all his mental and psycho-
    logical resources, all his determination to live are suddenly

    concentrated into one supreme physical effort to survive.
    The man is making that last effort. He strains his whole
    body to try to get free. He sits like a fox which, caught in
    a trap, bites and tears off its own bloody paw. Even the
    metal guide rails begin to shake. He strains to the point
    of breaking his own bones, and tearing his own tendons
    and muscles. It is a superhuman effort. But the wire does
    not give. And the stretcher slides smoothly along the
    rails. The furnace doors move aside again and the fire
    casts a white light on the soles of the man’s dirty patent-
    leather shoes. He tries to bend his knees in an effort to
    increase the distance between his feet and the roaring
    fire. But he can’t. The cameraman then shows the man’s
    fingers in close-up. The wire has bitten deeply into them.
    But the tips of his fingers are free, and with them too he
    is trying to slow down the movement towards the fire.
    His fingertips are spread out and tensed. If they could
    only come up against something the man would certainly
    hold on.
    Then suddenly the stretcher comes to a halt at the
    furnace itself. A new figure appears on the screen dressed
    in a gown like the other attendants and gives them a
    signal with his hand. The attendants obediently remove
    the stretcher from the guide rails and stand it again on its
    handles against the wall. What is wrong? Why the hold-
    up? It soon becomes clear. Another coffin is wheeled into
    the crematorium on a low trolley. It is already nailed down
    and very elegant, with a decorative fringe. It is the coffin of
    some highly esteemed person. Make way for it! The
    attendants lift it on to the guide rails and send it off on its
    last journey. Then there is an unbelievably long wait
    while it is consumed by the flames. At last it is the turn of
    the man bound to the stretcher, which is again placed on
    the rails. And once again I hear that silent scream which
    is probably enough to lift the furnace doors….

    Reply
59. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    ….If they are going to admit me into that organization I
    am ready to serve it loyally. It is a serious and powerful
    organization, and I like their ways. But I know damned
    well in advance that, if I am to depart through the short
    square chimney, it will never be in a coffin with fancy
    frills. That is not in my character. I am not the sort to get
    fancy treatment . . . Not me.
    ‘Time’s up. Do you want more time to think?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Another minute?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘All right, then, captain, I have the honour to be the
    first to congratulate you on joining our secret brother-
    hood, known as the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of
    the General Staff, or the GRU for short. The next move is
    for you to meet Colonel-General Meshcheryakov, the
    deputy head of the GRU and to call on Colonel-General
    Lemzenko at the Central Committee of the Party. I think
    they will take to you. Don’t try to be too clever, although
    it’s better on these occasions to ask a question than to
    remain silent. In the course of the examinations and
    psychological tests that we set you questions sometimes
    seem to force themselves upon you. Don’t let it worry
    you. Ask the question. Behave as you behaved here today
    and then everything will be all right. I wish you well,
    captain.’

    If you should ever think of making your career in the
    KGB, simply make your way to any provincial centre.
    There you will be sure to find a statue of Lenin on the
    main square. Behind it there will be, just as surely, a huge
    building with a colonnaded facade. That will be the
    headquarters of the regional committee of the Communist
    Party. And somewhere close by you will find the regional
    headquarters of the KGB. Just ask anybody on the square:
    anyone will show you. Yes, that grey, gloomy building
    over there, the one that Lenin is pointing at with his
    reinforced concrete hand.
    But you don’t necessarily have to apply to the regional
    headquarters. You can enquire in the ‘special department’
    at your place of work. There too everybody will help
    you: straight along the corridor and then to the right, the
    door covered in black leather.
    There are even easier ways of becoming an employee
    of the KGB. Just apply to the man in charge of the special
    department. There’s one to be found in every god-forsaken
    railway station and in every factory, sometimes in every
    workshop. There’s one in every regiment, in every
    college, in every prison, in every Party committee, in every
    design bureau, and masses of them in the Communist youth
    movement, the trade unions, and the special organizations.
    Just go up to them and say: I want to join the KGB! It’s
    another question whether they’ll take you in or not (of
    course they will!). But the path to the KGB is open for
    everybody and there’s no need at all to go looking for it.

    It’s by no means so easy to get into the GRU. Who do
    you apply to? Who do you ask for advice? Which door
    do you knock at? At the police station maybe? But the
    police would only shrug their shoulders: never heard of
    it. In Georgia the police even issue car number plates
    with the letters ‘GRU’, never suspecting that they could
    have some other, less obvious significance. A car with a
    ‘GRU’ plate could travel all other the country without
    causing any surprise and without anyone paying it special
    attention. For the honest citizen, as for the whole of the
    Soviet police force, those letters mean nothing and have
    no special associations.
    The KGB can count its voluntary workers in millions.
    The GRU has none. That is the main difference. The
    GRU is entirely secret. Since nobody knows about it,
    nobody can enter it on his own initiative. Even supposing
    that some volunteer were to come along, how would he
    set about finding the right door to knock at, to request
    admission? Would he be accepted? Not likely. Volunteers
    are not needed. In fact, a volunteer would be arrested at
    once and subjected to a long and very painful interrog-
    ation. He would have a lot of questions to answer. Where
    have you heard those three letters mentioned? How have
    you managed to find us? But most important: who helped
    you? Who? Who? Answer, you bastard! The GRU knows
    how to get the right answers out of people. They’ll get an
    answer out of anybody. I can guarantee that. They would
    inevitably discover who helped the volunteer. Then the
    interrogation would begin over again. Who talked to you,
    you skunk, about the GRU? Where did you hear about it?
    Sooner or later they would get back to the original
    source. It might turn out to be someone entrusted with the
    secret whose tongue had overstepped the mark. Oh, the
    GRU knows how to rip such tongues out! It tears them
    off along with the heads.

    Reply
60. 

    March 11, 2025

    Aquarium

    In the eighth tank the commander always took
    an axe with him so that whenever his gun got choked
    through rapid firing he could bring the axe-head down on
    the armour plating. On our last sortie, the commander of
    the third tank had switched on his radio transmitter and
    forgotten to switch it off, ruining communications
    throughout the company. The whole company could hear
    him grinding his teeth and howling like a wolf.
    ‘Hit ’em for six!’ I said quietly. But my whisper was
    carried thirty kilometres by radio, as though I was whis-
    pering the words into the ear of every one of my dear
    ferocious Asians. And they understood. Their Russian
    was terrible, but they understood ‘Hit ’em.’
    Another click in our ears and another shell case clat-
    tered out. The smell of the expended shells made your
    head spin. The poisonous smell had a powerful, brutalizing
    effect. My soldiers were intoxicated by the deafening
    noise, the power of their motors and the rattle of the
    machine-gun fire. No force in the world could hold them
    back now. All the drivers were behaving as though they
    had just been slipped off a leash. They yanked the driving
    levers with their great coarse hands, manhandled their
    machines and drove them straight into the heat of battle.
    Meanwhile I looked back, to make sure we were not
    being overtaken. Far away in the rear was the transporter
    with the white flag. It had dropped back, fallen by the
    wayside. I was sorry for the people in it: they had no
    powerful gun, no deafening noise, no intoxicating smells.
    They got no pleasure from life, didn’t know what it was.
    That was why their driver was so cowardly, carefully
    dodging stones and tree trunks. But there was no need to
    be afraid. You had to grab the machine with both hands,
    take it and throw it about. An armour-plated tank is a
    gentle thing. But if it feels that it is being ridden by a
    really strong man it will go wild too. It will take you at

    the gallop over granite boulders, trunks of ancient oaks,
    through craters and ditches. Don’t worry about ripping off
    the tracks or breaking a shaft. Just give it all you’ve got
    and it will sweep you along like a bird. A tank simply
    revels in battle: that is what it’s made for. Onwards!
    “Take your company out of the battle line . . .’ Sparks
    flew from under the tank tracks. The company rushed
    down to the defences of the missile battery. There was a
    crunching noise in my ears: either the tracks going across
    a steel plate or the gun-layer’s teeth grinding in my
    headphones. ‘. . . take your company out of the battle line
    . . .’ So as not to find themselves firing at each other,
    without further orders the tanks ceased fire and just went
    on growling like wolves tearing a deer to pieces. They
    were going head-on with their armoured breastplates into
    the fragile missile transporters and the cranes on the
    launch pads and were pushing the pride and glory of the
    missile artillery into the sticky black earth. Full speed
    ahead!
    ‘. . . take your company out of the battle line . . .’ Once
    again I could hear somebody’s distant squeaky voice and
    suddenly I realized that it was addressed to me. Damn!
    Who on earth, at such a moment of supreme, and almost
    sexual bliss, would want to drag people away from their
    favourite occupation? That blasted observer would make
    my stallions impotent! Who gave him the right to ruin a
    first-class tank company? An enemy of the people or a
    bourgeois saboteur? To hell with him! ‘Company – full
    speed ahead!’
    Then, banging my fist on the armour-plate and hurling
    into the air curses on the whole gang of staff officers who
    had never in their offices had the smell of powder in their
    nostrils, I gave the order:

    ‘Company – break away! Left wheel into the meadow
    in platoons!’
    My driver angrily pulled the left lever right over,
    nearly turning the heavy tank over on its right side and
    destroying a beautiful silver birch. Then he skilfully
    changed gears, put the tank quickly into top gear and sent
    it rushing through the bushes and over deep holes towards
    the meadow. Having swung the tank right round, he
    dropped the engine speed to a minimum so that it stood
    quietly in place, far ahead of the others, like an aircraft
    which has braked suddenly at the end of a runway. With a
    roar of disappointment the rest of the tanks thrust their
    way one after the other out of the forest and, breaking
    convulsively, formed up in a straight line.
    ‘Disarm! Guns open for inspection!’ I gave the order
    and then ripped the plug of the headphones out of its
    socket. The gun-layer cut off the intercom.
    The APC with the group of observers had fallen a long
    way behind. While it was trying to catch up with us I had
    time to check the equipment, to receive a report on the
    state of the tanks and the quantity of fuel and ammunition
    that had been used, and to draw up the company and hold
    it in the middle of the meadow ready to make my report.
    As we stood there I worked out in my mind the pluses and
    minuses, what I might be praised for and what punished.
    The company had started to leave the tank park eight
    minutes before its set time, and that was praiseworthy,
    something for which a company commander might
    sometimes be slipped a gold watch. At the beginning of a
    war they reckon in seconds. All tanks, all aircraft and all
    staff headquarters have to get out of danger at top speed,
    so that the enemy’s first terrible blow is delivered on
    deserted military camps. Eight minutes! Definitely a plus
    for me. All my tanks were in good

    shape and had remained so throughout the morning. That
    was a plus for my technical deputy. It was a pity that, due
    to the shortage of officers, I had no technical deputy: I
    had to do his work. We had avoided the strongholds in
    swift manoeuvres and had reported on them in good time
    and precisely. That was a plus for the commander of the
    first platoon. It was a pity that we didn’t have one: again
    the shortage. We had not missed the missile battery, we
    had sniffed it out and flattened it into the ground. And a
    missile battery, even the most broken-down one, could
    produce a couple of Hiroshimas. But, by stopping
    reconnaissance throwing my boxes of metal against the
    missiles, I had averted those Hiroshimas. For such action
    in a war they pin a very big medal on your chest and refer
    to it approvingly at lectures for a long time afterwards.
    At last the observer, a colonel, appeared. Hands white
    and spotlessly clean, boots glistening in the sun. With a
    look of distaste on his face he picked his way carefully,
    like a cat, round the puddles. The regimental commander,
    our chief, was also a colonel, only his huge hands were
    callused and obviously accustomed to hard work. His
    face was burnt brown with exposure to the frost, the sun
    and the winds of all the training grounds and ranges that I
    knew, unlike the pale features of the observing officer.
    ‘Straighten up! Easy! Dressing by the right!’
    But the colonel paid no heed to my report, cutting me
    off in the middle of a word: ‘You have fun, don’t you,
    lieutenant, in action! Like a little boy!’
    I remained silent, smiling at him. He didn’t seem to be
    finding fault with me; more like giving me a medal. But
    my smile seemed to make him even fiercer. The officers
    accompanying him remained grimly silent. They knew
    that Clause 97 of the Disciplinary Code did not permit
    him to criticize me in the presence of my subordinates

    Reply
61. 

    March 11, 2025

    Aquarium

    The majors and lieutenant-colonels knew that, by criticiz-
    ing me in the presence of my subordinates, the colonel
    was undermining not only my authority as a commander
    but the authority of the whole officer contingent of the
    glorious Soviet Army, including his own authority as a
    colonel. I seemed to be in the clear. So I went on smiling.
    ‘It is quite disgraceful, senior lieutenant, not to hear
    orders and not to carry them out.’
    My dear idiot colonel, I thought to myself, I would
    hang people who do not enjoy themselves in action and
    who are not intoxicated by the smell of blood – hang
    them on the gun barrels. This was just training, but if in
    real battle the tracks of our tanks were spattered with real
    blood and not make-believe my Asians would have become
    even more excited. That was not a sign of weakness. That
    was their strength. Nobody in the world would be able to
    stop them.
    ‘And then there’s the wall! You knocked down the wall
    of the park! That’s a serious offence!’
    I had forgotten altogether about the wall. Big deal. It
    had probably already been rebuilt. Wouldn’t take long.
    They only had to get ten prisoners from the glasshouse
    and they’d put a new wall up in a couple of hours. And
    how, my dear colonel, was I to know whether it was just
    an exercise or the real thing? And if it was war and the
    wall had remained standing, and 2,000 men and hundreds
    of first-class fighting vehicles had been destroyed in one
    group? Eh, colonel? You have a big title, you are known
    as the Chief of Intelligence of the 13th Army, so just
    enquire how many targets my Uzbeks discovered in one
    day. They don’t even speak Russian properly, but they
    know perfectly how to seek out targets. Praise them,
    colonel! Never mind about me, but give them a smile.
    And I kept smiling at him. I was standing with my back
    to the company and I could not possibly turn to look at

    them. But I knew very well that my whole company was
    smiling. Simply smiling, without any special reason. That’s
    what they were like, ready to display their teeth in any
    circumstances.
    The colonel was not pleased. He probably thought we
    were laughing at him. It made him furious. He ground his
    teeth, like the gun-layer in action. He was not capable of
    understanding or assessing our smiles. So he bawled
    straight at me:
    ‘Young man, you are not fit to command a company. I
    am removing you. Hand your company over to your
    deputy and have him take the company back to barracks!’
    ‘I don’t have a deputy at the moment,’ I told him,
    smiling.
    ‘Then hand over to the commander of the first platoon!’
    ‘There isn’t one.’ And, to save the colonel going
    through all the lower rank commanders, I explained: ‘I
    am the only officer in the company.’
    The colonel calmed down. All the fire went out of him,
    as though it had never been. The situation in which there
    is only one officer in a company is, in our Army, especially
    within the territory of the Soviet Union, practically uni-
    versal. There are plenty of people who want to be officers,
    but they all want to be colonels. Very few are attracted by
    the idea of going in as a lieutenant. That’s why there is a
    shortage at the lower end. There is a cruel shortage of
    officers. But people seem to forget about this at the top,
    in the headquarters staffs. That’s why it didn’t occur to the
    colonel that I could be the only officer in the whole
    company. He had removed me from my command, as he
    had a right to do. But the company had to be. returned to
    barracks. And it was impossible to send a company,
    especially a tank company, dozens of kilometres without
    any officers. That was an offence. It would probably be
    regarded as an attempt at a coup d’etat. So it was up to

    the colonel to take the fatal decision. Having removed a
    commander in circumstances where he had no deputy, he
    had taken personal responsibility for the company, and
    did not have the right to entrust the company to anyone
    else. If such a right were granted then every divisional
    commander could lead his troops out into the field,
    remove the commanders and replace them by others to
    suit his taste. Thus a coup could be carried out. But we
    don’t have coups, because by no means everyone is
    permitted to handle the delicate question of selecting and
    appointing key people. He had the right to dismiss people.
    To dismiss is easy. Everyone had the right to dismiss
    people. It was easy as killing a man. But to restore
    commanders to their posts is as difficult as returning a
    dead man to life. Well, colonel, I said to myself, do you
    think you can put me in charge of the company again? It
    won’t work. I am not worthy. Everybody heard you say
    that. You don’t have the right to put an unworthy man in
    charge of a company. And what if your superiors get to
    know that, close to the state frontier, you were removing
    properly appointed commanders from tank companies
    and putting unworthy officers in their place? What would
    happen to you?
    At this point it would have suited the colonel to get in
    touch with the commander of my battalion or regiment
    and ask him to take over his delinquent company. But the
    exercises were over. They had ended as suddenly as they
    had begun. Who would allow wartime communications to
    be used after the exercises were over? Officers who took
    such liberties in 1937 were shot. After that, no one was
    likely to get up to such tricks. So what about it colonel?
    Go on, take command of the company. But perhaps
    you’ve already forgotten how to lead a company? Maybe
    you’ve never led one? A whole career in staff jobs. There
    are plenty of such colonels. Every other job

    appears quite trifling. There doesn’t seem to be anything
    very complicated about leading a tank company. But the
    commands have to be given as laid down in the new
    regulations. The men in the company are not Russians,
    they won’t understand otherwise. Even worse if they
    misunderstand a command. Then your search troops will
    never find them, even with a helicopter over the forests
    and marshes. A tank is a heavy thing: it can run over a
    man, run off a bridge or sink in a bog. And the com-
    mander’s come-uppance is always the same.
    I was no longer smiling. The situation was serious and
    there was nothing to laugh about. I would have liked at
    that moment to have saluted smartly and said: ‘May I be
    dismissed, comrade colonel?’ After all, I had no status; I
    was neither a commander nor a subordinate. He had got
    himself into a mess and it was up to him to get himself
    out. He had wanted to take command, so let him com-
    mand. But the pleasure of seeing him in a tough spot soon
    faded in me. It was my very own company, my men and
    my machines. I was no longer responsible for the
    company, but I wasn’t going to drop it just like that.
    ‘Permit me, comrade colonel,’ I said, saluting smartly.
    ‘Allow me to lead the company for the last time. A sort of
    farewell to it.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said, curtly. For a moment it seemed to me as
    though out of habit he was going to give me the usual
    advice – don’t go too fast, don’t play about, don’t let the
    column get spread out. But he didn’t.
    ‘Yes, yes, you lead the company. Consider my order
    not having come into force. Take the company to barracks
    and hand it over there.’
    ‘Very good!’ I turned about sharply, but not without
    noticing the smiles on the faces of the colonel’s suite.
    What on earth was that: taking command for the time
    being? His officers knew very well that there was no such
    32

    Reply
62. 

    March 11, 2025

    MYST

    An officer was
    either worthy of commanding his unit and was entirely
    responsible for it, or he was not worthy and was removed
    immediately. To command for the time being – that was
    not a solution. His handling of the situation might cost
    the colonel dear. That was clear to me, and to his officers.
    But I hadn’t time to bother with it for the moment. I had a
    serious matter on hand. I was commanding the company.
    And I couldn’t care less who thought what, who did what
    or who was going to be punished for it.
    Before he gives the first command a commander has to
    assert his authority over his unit. He has to cast his eye
    over his troops in such a way that a slight movement runs
    through the ranks which freezes into silence, when
    everyone is aware that the commander’s orders are about
    to follow. But in tank troops commands are given in
    silence. There were two flags in my hands. I gave my
    orders with them.
    I held up the white flag. That was my first command.
    With that short sharp gesture I was in fact conveying a
    quite long message to my company: ‘I am now in com-
    mand of the company! I forbid all transmissions by radio
    until we meet the enemy. Attention.’ There are
    preliminary commands and executive commands. With a
    preliminary command an officer is, so to speak, taking
    hold of his subordinates with the reins of his own will.
    Then, having tightened the reins, the commander has to
    wait five seconds before giving the main command. His
    formation has to freeze in expectation, each man straining
    at the metal bit, quivering slightly, muscles flinching as if
    before a sharp blow, everyone awaiting the executive
    command as a good horse expects the whip.
    I raised the red flag and then dropped both of them to
    my sides together. The company burst into life, broke

    formation and began to clatter with the sound of heavy
    boots on the armour-plate.
    Maybe it was because the company was taking leave of
    me, or because they wanted to demonstrate their skills to
    the observers, or because they were just feeling angry and
    had no other way of expressing their anger. If only I had
    switched on a stop-watch! But even without it I knew
    immediately that my company was breaking the record
    for the division and perhaps doing even better than that. I
    knew that there were many genuine tank officers
    accompanying the colonel and that every one of them
    was admiring my Asians. I had seen a lot of records
    broken by tank units and I knew what they were worth. I
    had also seen hands broken and teeth knocked out. But all
    was going well for my lads at that moment. And I seemed
    to know in advance that not one of them would stumble or
    slip as he leapt into the hatch. I knew that nobody was
    going to get his fingers crushed by the lid. Not on this
    occasion.
    Ten engines started to whine in harmony. I climbed
    into the command hatch. Now the white flag held high in
    my hand meant: ‘I am ready!’ Nine flags went up in reply:
    ‘Ready! Ready! Ready!’ I swept the flag in a circle about
    my head and then pointed clearly to the east: ‘Follow
    me!’ And that was all. Elementary. Primitive? Yes. But
    there is no form of radio reconnaissance that can detect
    even four tank armies moving off at the same time. And
    against other forms of detection there are equally
    primitive but effective devices. That is why we always
    turn up unexpectedly. We may make the right or the
    wrong move, but it’s always unexpected. Even in
    Czechoslovakia, even with seven armies at once.
    The colonel-observer scrambled up onto his personnel
    carrier, his officers after him. The machine roared into

    life, made a sharp turn and set off for the camp by
    another route.
    The colonel’s suite of officers obviously loathed him.
    Otherwise they would have suggested that he ought to
    follow immediately behind my tank. After all, I was now
    a nobody, an impostor. To entrust the company to me
    was like a police chief entrusting a policeman he had
    dismissed with the arrest of a major criminal. Having had
    such an idea, he should at least have remained alongside,
    ready to intervene. Having handed the company over to
    someone else because you can’t lead it yourself, you
    should at least stay near to step on the brakes if need be.
    But no one had pointed out to the colonel that he had put
    his life into the hands of a young senior lieutenant. And a
    senior lieutenant who had been relieved of his command
    could play all sorts of dirty tricks, since he no longer
    belonged to the company. The colonel would have to carry
    the can. Perhaps his officers were confident that the senior
    lieutenant would bring the company back without any
    accidents, that he would not ruin the colonel’s future. But
    he could have done.
    It often happens that a division is whipped into action
    with an emergency alarm, rushes out into the fields and is
    then returned home. It makes very good sense. It
    becomes a habit. It means that when the division sets out
    on the real thing it acts as if it were going on maneouvres,
    without over-excitement. At the same time the enemy
    becomes less vigilant. Soviet divisions frequently burst
    out of their camps unexpectedly. So the enemy ceases to
    react.
    The roads were jammed with tank columns. The order
    to withdraw had obviously been given to the whole
    division simultaneously.

    Reply
63. 

    March 11, 2025

    Aquarium

    When a combat vehicle returns to its park, what is the
    first thing that has to be done? Of course. It has to be
    refuelled. Whether it is in good order or bad, it must be
    full of fuel. Who can tell when the next alarm will hit us?
    Every combat vehicle must be ready to repeat the exercise
    from the beginning at a moment’s notice. For that reason

    the tank park was again full of noise. Hundreds of vehicles
    were being refuelled. Every tank needed a minimum of a
    ton of fuel. The APCs are also very thirsty and so are the
    artillery tractors. All the transport vehicles had to be
    filled up. At the same time the fighting vehicles had to
    have their ammunition replenished. Each tank shell
    weighs 30 kilograms. Hundreds of them were brought up,
    two shells in a box. Each box had to be taken off its
    transport, the shells taken out and the packing removed
    from each one. Then each one had to be cleaned, the
    factory’s protective grease removed, and the shell placed
    in the tank. Cartridges also came in boxes, 880 to a box,
    and they had to be loaded into belts. In each machine-gun
    belt there were 250 rounds. The belts had to be loaded
    into their magazines, and there were thirteen of them in
    every tank. Then all the empty shell cases had to be
    picked up, and put in boxes and handed in to the stores.
    Gun barrels would be cleaned later. Each tank’s gun
    barrel in turn was polished for several hours a day and for
    serveral days in a row. But for the moment the barrels had
    only to be oiled. Then the tanks had to be washed down:
    a rough clean-up now and a thorough wash and clean
    later. Next the troops had to be fed. They had had no mid-
    day meal, so that they would have lunch and supper
    together. After supper everybody would be put on to
    servicing the vehicles. Everything had to be checked by
    the morning: motors, transmissions, suspensions and
    tracks. Where necessary the tracks would be replaced. In
    the fourth tank the torsion bar was broken on the left side.
    On the eighth the reduction gear was out of order. In the
    first tank company two motors had to be changed at once.
    Early the next morning the business of cleaning the barrels
    would begin. Everything must be in good order! Full
    speed! But then suddenly I had an empty feeling in my
    heart. I remembered that it would

    not be my job next morning to check on the servicing in
    my company. Tomorrow they might not even let me into
    the tank park. I knew that all the documents on my case
    had already been prepared and that I would be dismissed
    officially that same evening, not the next morning. I also
    knew that it was laid down that an officer should appear
    for his dismissal as smartly turned-out as he would to
    receive a decoration. My company knew that too. For that
    reason, while I was having words with the men filling the
    tanks, while I was checking the reports on ammunition
    used, and while I was crawling under tank number three,
    someone else was already putting a mirror polish on my
    boots, pressing my trousers and sewing a clean collar into
    my tunic. I got out of my dirty overalls and stepped
    quickly under a shower. Then I shaved carefully and
    slowly. At that moment an orderly arrived from regimental
    headquarters.
    The park still resounded with noise. A tractor was
    hauling a damaged transporter through the gates. There
    was the clang of empty shell cases. The huge ‘Ural’ lorries
    rumbled along loaded to the top with empty shell boxes.
    An electric welder was throwing up a firework display of
    sparks. By morning everything would be dazzlingly bright.
    For the moment there was nothing but mud, mud all
    around, noise and din, as on a big construction site. There
    was nothing to distinguish officers from soldiers. They
    were all in overalls, all filthy and all cursing. Through all
    this chaos came Senior Lieutenant Suvorov, the officer
    thinking about his career, his uniform pressed to
    perfection, with every button gleaming. The grease-
    stained tankmen stared after me. Everybody could see
    that the senior lieutenant was on his way to be dismissed.
    Nobody knew why he had been removed. On another
    occasion the senior lieutenant would not have been
    noticed by the other companies or, if they had noticed,

    they would have pretended not to. They would have
    fiddled about in their engines, sticking out their greasy
    backsides. But this man was on his way to be dismissed.
    So tankmen from other companies, unknown to me,
    raised their dirty hands to their grimy caps to greet me.
    And I returned their greeting and smiled at them. They
    smiled back as if to say: it could be worse, don’t give in.
    Outside the walls of the tank park was a whole military
    camp, surrounded by three rows of chestnut trees. Some
    new recruits were singing very loudly but not very har-
    moniously. They were doing their best but were still not
    in tune. A very keen corporal was shouting at them. Then
    the recruits saluted me. They were still very raw and
    understood nothing. For them a senior lieutenant was a
    very important figure, even higher than their corporal.
    With boots that seemed to have a very special shine on
    them: probably on his way to some celebration.
    I reached the headquarters building, where all was
    clean and quiet. The stairs were of marble, built by the
    Rumanians before the war. All the corridors were
    carpeted. I came to a semi-oval room brightly lit. In a
    transparent bullet-proof cone sealed with a crest was the
    regimental standard. Beneath the standard a soldier stood
    on guard. His short flat bayonet split up the last rays of
    the sun and scattered them in flashes of light on the
    marble. I saluted the regimental standard and an orderly
    saluted me. 3ut the man on guard did not stir. Because he
    was holding a sub-machine gun, and a man bearing arms
    does not have to use any other form of greeting. His
    weapon is his greeting to everybody.
    The orderly led me down the corridor straight to the
    office of the regimental commander. Strange. Why not to
    the chief of staff? The orderly knocked on the command-
    ing officer’s door, entered and closed the door firmly

    behind him. He came out again at once and stood aside,
    indicating that I was to enter.
    A lieutenant-colonel of medium height whom I did not
    know was sitting at the commander’s oak desk. I had
    caught sight of him among the officers accompanying the
    umpire that day. Who on earth could he be? Where was
    our commanding officer, where was the chief of staff?
    And why was a lieutenant-colonel sitting at the command-
    ing officer’s desk? Surely he wasn’t a more important
    officer than our commander? But of course, he must be
    more important, otherwise he would not be sitting at that
    desk.
    ‘Sit down, senior lieutenant,’ the lieutenant-colonel said
    without waiting for any greeting from me.
    I sat down, on the very edge of the chair. I knew that
    there would be some tough talk to follow and that I
    would have to jump to my feet. So I kept my back dead
    straight, as though I were on parade.
    Tell me, senior lieutenant, why did you smile when
    Colonel Yermolayev relieved you of command of the
    company?’
    The lieutenant-colonel’s eyes drilled right into me, as if
    to say: You’d better tell the truth – I can see right through
    you. I looked at him and the freshly laundered collar on
    his worn but clean and well-pressed tunic. What was I to
    reply?
    ‘I don’t know, comrade lieutenant-colonel.’
    ‘You were sorry to leave the company?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Your company performed with great skill. Especially
    at the very end. As for the wall, everybody agrees that it
    was better to knock it down than to expose the whole
    regiment to attack. It was not difficult to rebuild a wall . .
    .’
    ‘It has already been rebuilt.’

    ‘So listen to me, senior lieutenant. I am Lieutenant-
    Colonel Kravtsov and I am Chief of Intelligence of the
    13th Army. Colonel Yermolayev, who removed you from
    the company, thinks he is Chief of Intelligence, but he
    has been relieved of his post although he does not know
    about it yet. I have already been appointed in his place.
    We are now going round the divisions. He thinks he is
    carrying out an inspection, but in fact I am handling all
    the material and getting to know about the state of
    intelligence work in the divisions. None of his decisions
    or orders has any force. He issues instructions every day,
    but in the evening I submit my papers to the regimental
    and divisional commanders and all his orders are
    annulled. He has no idea that this is happening. He
    doesn’t realize that his shout is no more than a rustling in
    the forest. As far as the Soviet Army and our whole State
    are concerned he is already a zero, a private person, a
    failure expelled from the army without a pension. There
    will shortly be an announcement to that effect. So his
    order relieving you of your company has no force.’
    ‘Thank you very much, comrade lieutenant-colonel!’
    ‘Don’t be in too much of a hurry to thank me. He does
    not have the right to remove you from command of the
    company. Therefore I am removing you.’ And, with the
    change of tone he said, quietly but with authority: ‘I order
    you to hand over your company!’
    I have long been in the habit of meeting the hard blows
    of fate with a smile. But this blow was so sudden that I
    couldn’t raise a smile. I stood up, saluted and barked out:
    ‘Very good! I am to hand over the company.’
    ‘Sit down.’
    I sat.
    ‘There is a difference. Colonel Yermolayev removed
    you because he considered a company was too much for

    you. I am removing you because a company is too little
    for you. I have a job for you: chief of staff of the
    division’s reconnaissance battalion.’
    ‘But I am only a senior lieutenant.’
    ‘I am also only a lieutenant-colonel. But I have been
    selected and ordered to take over the intelligence work
    for the whole Army. I am now not only taking over my
    job; I am also forming my team. Some people I have
    brought along with me from my previous job. I was Chief
    of Reconnaissance of the 87th division. But I am now
    responsible for a field of activity many times bigger and I
    need a lot of intelligent and capable men on whom I can
    depend. The headquarters of the reconnaissance battalion
    is the least I can offer you. I shall also try you out in a
    more important job. That’s if you cope . . .’ He looked at
    his watch. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes to get your things
    together. At 21.30 our bus leaves for Rovno and the
    headquarters of the 13th Army. You have a seat reserved
    on it. I’ll take you onto my staff in the intelligence
    department at the headquarters of the 13th Army if you
    pass the examinations tomorrow.’
    I passed the examinations.

    Reply
64. 

    March 11, 2025

    Aquarium

    The most important item in the equipment of a Spetsnaz
    soldier is his footwear. Apart from his parachute, of
    course.
    A storekeeper who, to judge from the scar on his neck,
    had had long experience in the Spetsnaz himself, handed
    me a pair of boots from the store and I inspected them
    with interest. They are a form of footwear which is
    neither a boot nor a shoe, but something in between, a
    hybrid combing the best features of both. The boots are
    known officially as J-Bs – Jump-Boots.
    The boots are made from thick, soft ox-hide and weigh a
    good deal less than they appear to at first sight. There are
    lots of straps and clasps on each boot; two straps around
    the heel, one around the sole, and two around the calf.
    The straps are also very soft. Every boot is the result of
    thousands of years of experience. Since that was the way
    our ancestors embarked on campaigns – their feet wrapped
    in soft leather and tied up with straps – that was the way
    my boots were made – soft leather and straps.
    On the other hand, our ancestors never saw such soles
    as my boots had. They were thick, broad and soft. But
    their resilience did not mean that they were not hard-
    wearing. Each sole was made up of three thick layers,
    one on top of the other like scales, making the sole both
    tough and flexible. Similar scale-like layers are used in
    bullet-proof jackets. But they are not used in the boot
    soles to protect you from bullets, of course. They are to
    protect the soles of the feet from the spikes and stakes
    which are to be encountered in the approaches to specially

    important targets. With these soles it is even possible to
    run across fire. And they have one other use: they project a
    little at the sides and can be used for attaching ski-
    bindings.
    The pattern on the soles of our boots is copied from the
    soles of boots worn by the troops of our probable
    enemies. Depending on what area we are to operate in we
    can leave behind us the standard American, French,
    Spanish or any other footprints.
    That is not, however, the main deception. One of the
    Spetsnaz issue boots or jump-boots, has the heel at the
    front and the sole behind. So when a Spetsnaz soldier is
    going in one direction his footprints point in the other.
    The heels are, of course, made thinner and the soles
    thicker, so as to be comfortable on the feet and the
    reversal of heel and sole does not make it difficult to walk.
    The deception would be revealed almost immediately, of
    course, were it not that every Spetsnaz soldier has normal
    boots too. An experienced tracker would probably not be
    deceived, either. He would know that, in vigorous fast
    walking, the toe leaves a deeper impression than the heel.
    But do many people look closely at the footprints left by
    soldiers’ feet? Are there many who know that the toe
    leaves a clearer imprint? Do many people notice that
    footprints have suddenly appeared pointing the other way
    round? Are many able to assess what they see at its real
    value? Who would have thought of having a boot with
    the heel and sole reversed? To whom would it occur that
    if the footprints appeared to be going eastwards it meant
    that the man who made them was going west? What’s
    more, we are not stupid. Spetsnaz, like wolves, do not go
    around on their own. And like wolves we walk in each
    other’s footprints. You would never know how many men
    there were in a group – three or a hundred. And when
    several feet have trodden in one footprint it

    becomes practically impossible to detect whether the
    heels have made a deeper impression than the toes.
    Only one kind of sock is used with the Spetsnaz boots:
    a very thick sock made of pure wool. Wherever we go,
    into the permanent frost or the burning desert, we always
    wear exactly the same kind of socks: very thick, woollen
    and grey. Such socks keep your feet warm, protect the
    foot from perspiration, do not rub and do not wear into
    holes. Each Spetsnaz soldier has two pairs of socks.
    Whether for a day or a month, just two pairs. It’s up to
    him to make do.
    As for the rest of a Spetsnaz soldier’s clothing, his
    underwear is made of thin linen. It should be new but
    already used a little and laundered at least once. Over the
    thin underwear he wears a vest made of a thick string, so
    that there is always a layer of air about a centimetre deep
    between the underwear and the outer garments. This was
    cleverly thought out. If it’s very hot and you are running
    with sweat and your whole body is burning, the string vest
    is your salvation. Your clothes do not cling to your body
    and there is excellent ventilation. When it’s cold the air
    pocket protects the body like a feather duvet, and
    moreover, weighs nothing. The string vest has yet another
    purpose. If a mosquito get its nose through your clothes it
    reaches empty space and not the body. Only in very
    difficult circumstances does a Spetsnaz soldier allow himself
    to be driven out into the open. He spends his time in
    forests and marshes. He may lie for hours in a burning hot
    marsh or in fierce stinging nettles with clouds of
    mosquitoes buzzing around him. Only the string vest can
    save him then. Over it he wears trousers and a tunic of
    green cotton material. All seams are treble-stitched. The
    tunic and trousers are soft but hard-wearing. At the
    elbows, knees and shoulders the material is trebled for
    greater strength.

    Reply
65. 

    March 11, 2025

    Aquarium

    For him the Spetnaz soldiers were wild men,
    capable of great deeds and respecting few other men.
    They were ready to obey any officer put in charge of
    them, but they did not respect every one, and a Spetsnaz
    soldier, with his animal cunning, had thousands of ways
    of letting his commander know whether he respected him
    or not. So why did they respect Kravtsov? Because he did
    not conceal or try to conceal his animal nature. The troops
    were convinced that human nature was basically vicious
    and incorrigible. They had good reason. Every day they
    risked their lives and every day they had an opportunity to
    observe people on the brink of death. So they divided
    everybody into the good and the bad. A good person in
    their eyes was one who did not conceal the animal seated
    within him. But a person who tried to appear good was
    dangerous. The most dangerous were those who not only
    paraded their good qualities but who also believed within
    themselves they were indeed good people. The most
    loathsome disgusting criminal might kill a man, ten men
    or even a hundred. But a criminal will never kill people
    by the million. Millions are killed only by those who
    consider themselves good. People like Robespierre do not
    grow out of criminals but out of the most worthy and most
    humane types. The guillotine was invented, not by criminals
    but by humanists. The most monstrous crimes in the history
    of mankind were committed by people who did not drink
    vodka, did not smoke, were not unfaithful to their wives
    and fed squirrels from the palms of their hands.
    The men whose corn we were then eating were quite
    sure that a human being could be good only up to a
    certain point. When life gets difficult good people become
    bad and it can happen at the most awkward moment. If
    you don’t want to be caught napping it is better not to
    have anything to do with good people. Better have

    dealings with those who are now seen to be bad. You will at
    least know what to expect from them when your luck turns.
    In that sense Colonel Kravtsov was one of them. For
    example, if a shapely girl came down the street, with
    buttocks bouncing around like melons in a bag, the
    Spetsnaz soldiers would at least rape her visually, if in no
    other way. But Colonel Kravtsov did the same, quite
    unashamedly, and they respected him for it. The dangerous
    man is the one who does not stare after women and who
    tries to give the impression that he is not interested in
    such things. It’s among those people that you find secret
    sadists and murderers.
    Kravtsov was fond of the female sex and made no
    secret of it. He was also fond of power, and why should
    he conceal his feelings? He was very fond of power – any
    power. I felt it when I first saw him hitting a ‘puppet’. It
    was the apotheosis of might and merciless power.
    What we call a ‘puppet’ is actually a man. A special kind of
    man for training purposes. For example, you can hit him.
    But, unlike your partner in a match or your instructor, a
    ‘puppet’ also puts up a fight and may even kill you. That’s
    the whole point of using them. Our work is very risky and
    exceptionally responsible. Just imagine that in time of war
    a group of Spetsnaz who have the task of slitting the
    throats of some sleeping enemy soldiers hesitate because
    they are not used to killing or simply because they suddenly
    experience feelings of compassion, charity or humanity.
    They wouldn’t carry out their task and they might perish
    themselves and wreck a most important operation which
    might cost the lives of thousands of our soldiers. To prevent
    that happening, they invented the ‘puppets’. They invented
    them a long time ago and have been using them in various
    organizations for more than

    half a century. In the Cheka they are called ‘gladiators’, in
    the NKVD ‘volunteers’ and in Smersh ‘Robinsons’.
    A ‘puppet’ is a criminal who has been condemned to
    death. Those who are weak, old, sick, especially dangerous
    or who know too much are executed immediately after
    sentence has been passed. But others have their life
    extended by the state and are used for a variety of
    purposes. The whole of our nuclear industry has been
    built by such prisoners and is maintained by them. And
    the longer the sentence a man gets, the more dangerous
    the work. A person condemned to death is given the most
    dangerous work. But it is not only there that such people
    are employed. They are also used as training material. It
    suits everybody. They get their lives prolonged, and we
    have an opportunity for real-life training.
    There used to be enough ‘gladiators’, ‘volunteers’ and
    ‘Robinsons’ for everybody. Now there’s a shortage. Today
    the number of death sentences passed in the whole country
    is not more than two or three thousand a year. Half the
    people sentenced are disposed of without being put to any
    useful purpose. At the same time the number of
    organizations that have a use for people in death row is
    considerable: the VPK (the armaments industry), the GCh
    service (for fitting and servicing warheads), the Fleet (for
    replacing the active zones of the reactors in nuclear-
    powered submarines), the KGB, the MVD, the GRU, and
    Spetsnaz.
    Because we got only a few ‘puppets’ sent to us, they
    had to be kept in use for a long time. This meant that by
    no means all Spetsnaz could have training fights with
    ‘puppets’, but only specially selected people: certain for-
    eigners, and professionals, who are kept on the strength
    of Spetsnaz and who are being prepared for the most
    important tasks.
    A fight with a ‘puppet’ – very often a very tough

    criminal – is a serious and very risky business. You can
    hit him to your heart’s content but you mustn’t break any
    bones. But you must be careful. He doesn’t stick to our
    rules. He fights back. An animal rage burns within him.
    Sometimes he hides it in an effort to prolong his wretched
    life, sometimes he loses control of himself. Hit him, make
    the most of it! It’s not a phoney fight, not a form of
    onanism. It’s a real fight, involving a real risk.
    The colonel doesn’t have to take any risks, but every
    time he visits the penal battalion where our special
    training centre is hidden away, he puts on a tracksuit and
    visits the training room.
    A little water, nearly half a tin of coffee, a good portion
    of brandy, and over the camp-fire. It needs to be cooked
    for a long time. The moment it comes to the boil you take
    it away and then bring it back to the fire. The resultant
    liquid will make you want to leap in the air and kick out
    like a young goat. It puts life into you. The fumes tickle
    your nose, the smell intoxicates like the smell of gunfire.
    A grey sky. The dawn is coming. We are once again
    alone.
    ‘Has the KGB spilled a lot of our blood?’
    ‘Are you thinking of the whole Army or just military
    intelligence?’
    ‘Both the Army and the GRU.’
    ‘A lot.’
    I again remain silent, taking little sips at the drink
    which makes my whole inside burn as if from pepper.
    ‘Why did it happen?’
    ‘Because we were too naive. We were serving our
    country, but the Chekists were serving themselves.’
    ‘Could it happen again in the future?’
    ‘Yes, if we are as naive as we were.’
    112

    Reply
66. 

    March 11, 2025

    Aquarium

    He keeps fingering his hot mug in his hands. It seems
    to me as if he is balancing my fate on the palms of his
    hands. It is no accident that he has brought me to this
    place. He wants to talk to me alone. It is presumably up
    to me to say something – something he expects from me.
    ‘We shouldn’t allow it to happen again. For the sake of
    our country we don’t have the right to permit the KGB to
    be all-powerful.’ I suddenly felt that I had hit on the right
    key. ‘Before the war the Chekists destroyed our generals
    and our military intelligence and by so doing very nearly
    brought the Soviet state to its knees. For the sake of our
    motherland we have a duty not to permit it to happen
    again!’
    ‘What would you do in my position? Or in the position of
    General Obaturov? Or General Ogarkov?’
    ‘I would maintain close contact with a group. And I
    would consider a blow struck at one of our organization
    as a blow at all of us. We need solidarity.’
    Well, let’s assume that we have solidarity. Let’s assume
    that we are supporting each other. Then the KGB or the
    Party strikes at one of us. How would you reply to that?
    Does everyone resign?’
    I stare into the fire. What reply can one make? A
    military conspiracy is out of the question. We have to
    strike back at our enemies, but the blows have to be
    struck out of the blue by unknown people.
    ‘I think, comrade colonel, we would have to take
    action, not against the whole of the KGB, but against
    particular individuals, the most dangerous ones . . .’
    ‘But if I do that in the Carpathian military district
    everyone will know that it’s my work. They would soon
    get their hands on me . . .’
    ‘It’s solidarity we need,’ I said in an eager whisper. ‘If
    they hit our people in Siberia the reply must come in
    another place.’

    ‘What sort of reply?’
    ‘I don’t know. In my view, comrade colonel, we must
    devise some dirty tricks for the benefit of the enemy so
    that Chekists are removed from their jobs by other
    Chekists. They also have different groups squabbling
    among themselves.’
    ‘All right then, Suvorov, just remember for the rest of
    your days that this conversation never took place. You’ve
    knocked yourself out with those coffee grounds and
    you’ve been imagining things. Get it into your head once
    and for all, if you ever come to be arrested, that it’s better
    for you to remain a single enemy, a loner. If anyone
    should suspect that you are involved in some conspiracy
    they will torture you mercilessly in an effort to extract from
    you the names of your fellow conspirators. I haven’t had
    anything to say to you. It’s just that you told me all sorts
    of nonsense. And now listen carefully.’
    His voice changes completely and so does the
    expression on his face.
    ‘In a week’s time you will be picked out to take over
    control of a Spetsnaz group. You will be posted to the
    Storozhenets training camp. On the second day of the
    operation your group will split in two. From that moment
    you will disappear. You will make your way alone to
    Kishinev. You can go by night using freight trains. In
    Kishinev there is a teachers’ training college which has
    long been famous for its strong nationalism. Here is the
    slogan which you will write on the wall of the college at
    night.’
    He hands me a scrap of cigarette paper.
    ‘You don’t speak Moldavian, so you must learn these
    letters off by heart like hieroglyphics. Do it now. Try and
    write them down. That’s it. Once more. Now throw it all
    into the fire. Remember: you thought it all up yourself. If
    you get stopped anywhere say you got separated from

    your group. But nobody will be following our groups just
    now.’
    ‘What size should the letters be?’
    ‘Fifteen to twenty centimetres will be enough to get rid
    of the chairman of the KGB in Moldavia. It’s not in our
    military district but in the Odessa district. Maybe they
    will suspect the military, but the Spetsnaz commander of
    the Odessa district is a bitter enemy of the chairman of
    the Moldavia KGB and it will be impossible to implicate
    him.’
    ‘Do you think one slogan will be sufficient to bring
    down such an important guy?’
    ‘This is a rather special case. There have already been
    meetings taking place in the college and underground
    groups and leaflets. A lot of people have been arrested
    and hundreds expelled. They’re all scared stiff, and yet
    the whole thing suddenly flares up again. It’ll be tough on
    the KGB boys. And I repeat: you were on your own, you
    thought it all up yourself. You saw the slogan on a wall
    and learnt it off by heart without knowing what it meant.
    You haven’t forgotten?’
    ‘No.’
    We were dropped from three thousand metres. On the
    second day of the operation the group was divided into
    two parts. The officers in command of the newly formed
    smaller groups knew that from that moment they were
    acting without direct control from above.
    Five days later I reported back to Army headquarters.
    The staff received me with a lot of cheerful banter. I
    went straight to the Chief of Intelligence. I reported that 1
    had lost my bearings and was not able for a long time to find
    the right course back.

    Reply
67. 

    March 12, 2025

    MYST

    The SAS Tracking Handbook, Barry Davies BEM

    For my daughter Sarah,
    in the hope that you will also become a writer.

    In an age where humans rely more on technology and
    robotics, the potential of visual tracking seems to be an old
    hat with its true value totally misunderstood. There are so
    many misconceptions about tracking that the art has somehow
    lost its attraction, especially within the military. Visual
    tracking is seen as a skill associated with the Native
    American, San Bushmen, Iban, or Dyak trackers; an era in the
    past with no modern day significance. Today, electronic
    tracking, mobile phones, and drones take priority over the
    human eye.
    Yet a few have kept the skill alive, most of whom are retired
    Special Forces personnel that have successfully practiced
    their tracking skills during military operations. In the 1950s
    through the end of the Vietnam War, military commanders
    used the skills of the tracker to gain vital intelligence on the
    enemy,locatetheirposition,andthusenable
    search-and-destroy missions. This ability to locate, identify,
    pursue, and interpret those signs, as well as form reasonably
    accurate conclusions based on the evidence left by the quarry
    was invaluable. Now it is all but gone, replaced by drones and
    other high-tech battlefield surveillance.
    As modern warfare turns from raging tank battles to more
    isolated counter-terrorism, the need for visual trackers once
    more becomes a relevant military skill. No terrorist can move
    across any terrain without leaving some type of evidence.
    Gathering this evidence may well mean email or phone
    interception or the use of high flying drones; but in the
    jungles and mountains where technology is sparse; there is still a place for the visual tracker. In such areas, signs left by
    the quarry can reveal much about the enemy.

    During the Rhodesian War, the Selous Scouts
    were very skillful at doing this.
    SelousScouts—thefrontrunnersofmodern-dayvisual
    tracking, with a proven track record against an enemy in
    extremely hostile terrain.
    When it comes to military tracking, the Selous Scouts (1 SAS
    Regiment) were one of the most successful units ever. They
    were mainly engaged in a wide range of operations, from
    what was known as ‘fire-force’ actions on open battlefields to
    clandestine missions, deep within enemy territory. This
    ragged-looking force actually consisted of highly professional
    soldiers who showed exceptional courage against a bitter and
    unforgiving enemy.
    At the height of the War in 1976, the Selous Scouts numbered
    some 700 men. They worked in small units of four to six men
    who would parachute or heli-hop into the bush in hot pursuit
    of ZIPRA and ZANLA guerrillas. The Selous Scouts were
    lightly equipped, carrying mostly ammunition and water that

    enabled them to quickly track and close in on the fleeing
    guerrillas. Once spotted, the Scouts would call for soldiers of
    C Squadron SAS (Rhodesian) to parachute forward towards
    the guerrillas, in order to cut them off. The Selous Scouts
    methods were so effective that they accounted for killing
    more guerrillas than the rest of the Rhodesian Army put
    together. Along with the Rhodesian SAS, the Selous Scouts
    were disbanded in 1980 when Prime Minister Ian Smith
    handed over to Robert Mugabe’s government and Rhodesia
    became Zimbabwe. Most of the Selous Scouts made their way
    into the South African Army.
    Author’s Note: Captain Dave Dobson was one of the most
    outstanding officers of the Rhodesian SAS, having taken part
    in almost all of the actions during the conflict. In March of
    1977, the Rhodesian military decided to deal with a strong
    ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army)
    garrison, numbering some 100 terrorists, based one kilometer
    south of the town of Chioco in the northern Mozambique
    province of Tete. A and B Troops of C Squadron Rhodesian
    SAS, numbering twenty-two all ranks in total, were given the
    task of carrying out a raid on the terrorist camp.
    At dusk on the March 22, the assault force, under Captain
    Dave Dodson, was inserted by helicopter in two lifts from a
    forward base at Mtoko. Having been dropped approximately
    seventeen kilometers west of their objectives, Captain Dodson
    and his men moved off to an LUP in some thick undergrowth
    about a kilometer’s distance away where they lay up until the
    moon appeared. Marching throughout the rest of the night,
    they halted just before dawn and lay up until dusk on the
    following evening.

    At 2300 hours on March 23, the force moved up to its
    objective. In the distance, coming from the direction of
    Chioco, they could hear music and singing, which indicated
    that a major celebration was being held in the town. Captain
    Dodson sited a three-man 60mm light mortar team, whose
    task was to shell Chioco and its police station so as to prevent
    any attempt at reinforcement from the town during the attack
    on the camp. The camp itself consisted of a parade ground
    surrounded by barrack blocks on the three sides with the
    guard room being positioned nearest the town on the northern
    side. Between the buildings and the wire perimeter laid a
    series of defensive bunkers.
    The groups moved to within 500 meters of the camp, setting
    up a mortar position. As the four assault groups moved past
    the mortar position, they dropped off their packs and
    quantities of mortar bombs before moving up to a three-strand
    perimeter wire fence and taking up their positions. Just before
    first light, Captain Dodson’s and Sergeant Iain Bowen’s
    groups slid under the wire and positioned ten Claymore mines
    along the back walls of two barrack blocks on the western
    side of the parade ground. At the same time, Corporal Nick
    Breytenbach was setting eight more Claymores on the
    northern corner of the camp.
    The attack was launched at first light. Corporal Breytenbach’s
    Claymores were initiated first, followed a split second later by
    those of Sergeant Bowen. At the same time, Corporal Frank
    Booth tossed two fragmentation grenades into a bunker
    holding a number of terrorists. The four assault groups then
    commenced their advance through the camp, firing at
    everything that moved. Having cleared the barrack buildings,
    they turned their attention to the freedom fighers’ defensive

    positions, which comprised a network of trenches leading
    from inside the camp to outside the wire fence. The assault
    group threw grenades and ‘bunker bombs,’ 1kg explosive
    charges fitted with four-second fuses, into the trenches as the
    terrorists attempted to escape from the camp unseen. Some of
    those who succeeded in doing so encountered a stop group,
    positioned to the north of the camp, which picked them off.
    Meanwhile the 60mm mortar team was bombarding Chioco
    fromwhereFRELIMO(FrontfortheLiberationof
    Mozambique) troops and ZANLA terrorists were firing at the
    SAS.
    Sergeant Andy Chait’s assault group approached the camp
    from the south. Crossing a gully via a makeshift bridge, he
    and his men moved through a field of maize until they came
    under fire from terrorists in a trench to their front. These were
    engaged with AK-47s, fragmentation grenades, and an
    accuratelythrownwhitephosphorousgrenade,which
    exploded in the trench. Those terrorists, not incapacitated by
    the burning phosphorous, were dispatched as they fled. While
    clearing the trench, Sergeant Chait and his men came under
    fire from an RPD light machine gun and shortly afterwards he
    was seriously wounded in the thigh, suffering a ruptured
    femoral artery. Enemy fire, including shelling by some 75mm
    recoilless rifles sited in bunkers nearby, prevented the SAS
    medics from carrying out emergency treatment until they had
    moved him to cover behind some buildings. A medevac
    helicopter was called and this arrived a few minutes later.
    Unfortunately, the medic’s efforts were in vain, because
    Sergeant Chait died during the flight to Salisbury.
    Shortly afterwards, the SAS withdrew, leaving a scene of
    destruction with at least thirty-eight ZANLA terrorists dead

    and a large number wounded. They made their way over a
    distance of a few kilometers to an LZ from which they were
    extracted by helicopter under cover of four RRAF Hunters.
    The operation had been entirely successful and the enemy
    abandoned the camp.

    Reply
68. 

    March 12, 2025

    Dzidzai.Chidumba

    Ian Smith the former Rhodesian Prime Minister once said, not in a thousand years will there be black majority rule in Rhodesia, which quarters have said something similar in recent years?

    Ian Smith also said I dont think Robert Mugabe has fire a gun in anger. Robert Mugabe replied, I may not have fired a gun in anger but I am a revolutionary nonetheless.

    The land fight started in enerst with the Tangwena people from Nyanga and surrounding areas. The Rhodesian government confiscated large tracks of Tangwena land illegally then also confiscated 450 cattle. The numerous clan then had to be squatters on their own land, Rekai Tangwena’s crime support for the liberation struggle. In 1975 Rekai Tangwena aided Robert Mugabe and Edgar Tekere to escape to Mocambique taking himself with and making himself at the disposal of ZANLA. 5 years later Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.

    My grip, sekuru sacrificed a lot for the freedom of our people. Someone cannot take a ball point pen and reverse the Rhodesian governments actions and resettle the Tangwena people back on their ancestral land and give them back their cattle. The German government agreed to compensate Namibians on the other side of the world but we cannot help our brothers and sisters at home.

    Restitution, reconciliation and revolution are key in making countries change their trajacteroy. Countries that forget about their past, are highly religious but do not take care of widows and orphans are amongst the poorest in the world. Why? if you cannot.do the small thinhs well, things that may not even require a substantial amount, how ever could we do the big things for the people?

    Reply
69. 

    March 12, 2025

    Dzidzai.Chidumba

    I fail to understand but I have made peace with it. You try to support someone, they come after you, you challenge them as is your birth right and the reason people took up arms against minority rule and the person comes after you. You do not do anything and try live a quiet life,they still come after you.

    At least you know that whenever you are ready to talk, we are ready to listen. We are ready to let bygones be bygones, I am not your enemy but perhaps I could prove more useful in other ways. For the good of our people, each day we miss is an opportunity lost.

    There is a segment of the population I do not know how large; that is disenfrachised,bored,weary,frustrated,young and restless. You need me even though you may never acknowledge and I am ready to help if needed.

    I am also prepared to walk away if the people will it. If all our efforts are put into winning we may miss the wood for the trees there are so many other worthy causes out there.

    Reply
70. 

    March 12, 2025

    MYST

    Pa Dhinori there was a saying. Murungu akagwara akaisa gear rechi 5, rekudzoka kumawere…kkkk Till this day I don’t know what that means…

    Reversing: Secrets of
    Reverse Engineering

    Eldad Eilam

    Welcome to Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering. This book was written
    after years of working on software development projects that repeatedly
    required reverse engineering of third party code, for a variety of reasons. At
    first this was a fairly tedious process that was only performed when there was
    simply no alternative means of getting information. Then all of a sudden, a
    certain mental barrier was broken and I found myself rapidly sifting through
    undocumented machine code, quickly deciphering its meaning and getting
    the answers I wanted regarding the code’s function and purpose. At that point
    it dawned on me that this was a remarkably powerful skill, because it meant
    that I could fairly easily get answers to any questions I had regarding software
    I was working with, even when I had no access to the relevant documentation
    or to the source code of the program in question. This book is about providing
    knowledge and techniques to allow anyone with a decent understanding of
    software to do just that.
    The idea is simple: we should develop a solid understanding of low-level
    software, and learn techniques that will allow us to easily dig into any pro-
    gram’s binaries and retrieve information. Not sure why a system behaves the
    way it does and no one else has the answers? No problem—dig into it on your
    own and find out. Sounds scary and unrealistic? It’s not, and this is the very
    purpose of this book, to teach and demonstrate reverse engineering techniques
    that can be applied daily, for solving a wide variety of problems.
    But I’m getting ahead of myself. For those of you that haven’t been exposed
    to the concept of software reverse engineering, a little introduction is in order.

    What Is Reverse Engineering?
    Reverse engineering is the process of extracting the knowledge or design blue-
    prints from anything man-made. The concept has been around since long
    before computers or modern technology, and probably dates back to the days
    of the industrial revolution. It is very similar to scientific research, in which a
    researcher is attempting to work out the “blueprint” of the atom or the human
    mind. The difference between reverse engineering and conventional scientific
    research is that with reverse engineering the artifact being investigated is man-
    made, unlike scientific research where it is a natural phenomenon.
    Reverse engineering is usually conducted to obtain missing knowledge,
    ideas, and design philosophy when such information is unavailable. In some

    cases, the information is owned by someone who isn’t willing to share them.
    In other cases, the information has been lost or destroyed.
    Traditionally, reverse engineering has been about taking shrink-wrapped
    products and physically dissecting them to uncover the secrets of their design.
    Such secrets were then typically used to make similar or better products. In
    many industries, reverse engineering involves examining the product under a
    microscope or taking it apart and figuring out what each piece does.
    Not too long ago, reverse engineering was actually a fairly popular hobby,
    practiced by a large number of people (even if it wasn’t referred to as reverse
    engineering). Remember how in the early days of modern electronics, many
    people were so amazed by modern appliances such as the radio and television
    set that it became common practice to take them apart and see what goes on
    inside? That was reverse engineering. Of course, advances in the electronics
    industry have made this practice far less relevant. Modern digital electronics
    are so miniaturized that nowadays you really wouldn’t be able to see much of
    the interesting stuff by just opening the box.
    Software Reverse Engineering: Reversing
    Software is one of the most complex and intriguing technologies around us
    nowadays, and software reverse engineering is about opening up a program’s
    “box,” and looking inside. Of course, we won’t need any screwdrivers on this
    journey. Just like software engineering, software reverse engineering is a
    purely virtual process, involving only a CPU, and the human mind.
    Software reverse engineering requires a combination of skills and a thor-
    ough understanding of computers and software development, but like most
    worthwhile subjects, the only real prerequisite is a strong curiosity and desire
    to learn. Software reverse engineering integrates several arts: code breaking,
    puzzle solving, programming, and logical analysis.
    The process is used by a variety of different people for a variety of different
    purposes, many of which will be discussed throughout this book.

    Reply
71. 

    March 12, 2025

    MYST

    oxford world’s classics
    THE HISTORIES
    Polybius, son of Lycortas, was a statesman, soldier, explorer, and
    historian from the Greek city of Megalopolis in the Peloponnese.
    He was born in about 200 bc and died probably around 118. His
    career as a leading politician in the confederation of Peloponnesian
    states known as the Achaean League was cut short when he found
    himself among 1,000 Achaean leaders deported to Italy after the
    Roman victory over Macedon in 168. He spent seventeen years in
    exile in Rome where he befriended the young Scipio Aemilianus.
    He was with Scipio at the destruction of Carthage in 146, a year in
    which the Achaean League also met with destruction at the hands of
    Rome. Polybius played a major role in the reconstruction of Greece
    after this disaster. At some stage he retraced Hannibal’s march from
    Spain to Italy, and also sailed into the Atlantic and down the coast of
    west Africa. He wrote works (no longer extant) on tactics, on Rome’s
    war against Numantia in Spain, on the equatorial region, and on the
    great Achaean statesman Philopoemen, but his main literary enter-
    prise was the Histories, a study in forty books of Rome’s rise to world
    power and her method of rule in the years 220–146 bc. Only the
    fi rst fi ve books survive in full, but there are extensive excerpts from
    many of the others, including Book 12, an analysis of how to write
    history (and how not to write it), and Book 6, a study of the Roman
    constitution.

    BOOK ONE
    [1] If earlier historians had failed to eulogize history itself, it
    would, I suppose, be up to me to begin by encouraging everyone to
    occupy himself in an open-minded way with works like this one, on
    the grounds that there is no better corrective of human behaviour
    than knowledge of past events. But in fact it is hardly an exaggeration
    to say that all of my predecessors (not just a few) have made this
    central to their work (not just a side issue), by claiming not only
    that there is no more authentic way to prepare and train oneself for
    political life than by studying history, but also that there is no more
    comprehensible and comprehensive teacher of the ability to endure
    with courage the vicissitudes of Fortune than a record of others’
    catastrophes.
    Obviously, then, the general principle that no one should feel
    obliged to repeat what has often been well said before is particularly
    pertinent in my case. For the extraordinary nature of the events I
    decided to write about is in itself enough to interest everyone, young
    or old, in my work, and make them want to read it. After all, is there
    anyone on earth who is so narrow-minded or uninquisitive that he
    could fail to want to know how and thanks to what kind of political
    system almost the entire known world was conquered and brought
    under a single empire, the empire of the Romans, in less than fi fty-
    three years*—an unprecedented event? Or again, is there anyone who
    is so passionately attached to some other marvel or matter that he
    could consider it more important than knowing about this?
    [2] The extraordinary and spectacular nature of the subject I pro-
    pose to consider would become particularly evident if we were to com-
    pare and contrast the most famous empires of the past—the ones that
    have earned the most attention from writers—with the supremacy
    of the Romans. The empires that deserve to be compared and con-
    trasted in this way are the following.* The Persians once held sway
    over a huge realm, but whenever they endeavoured to go beyond the
    boundaries of Asia, they endangered not just their rule, but their very
    existence. The Spartans strove for leadership of the Greeks for a long
    time and achieved it, but maintained a secure grip on it for barely
    twelve years. Although in Europe Macedonian dominion extended

    220–
    217
    only from the Adriatic region to the Danube—nothing but a tiny frac-
    tion, you might think, of this continent—they later gained control of
    Asia too, by overthrowing the Persian empire; but despite the view
    that never had more places, nor greater power, been in the hands of a
    single state, they still left most of the known world in others’ hands.
    They made not the slightest attempt, for example, to take over Sicily,
    Sardinia, and Libya, and they were, to put it bluntly, completely
    unaware of the existence of the extremely warlike peoples of west-
    ern Europe. The Romans, however, have made themselves masters of
    almost the entire known world, not just some bits of it, and have left
    such a colossal empire that no one alive today can resist it and no one
    in the future will be able to overcome it. My work will make it possible
    to understand more clearly how the empire was gained, and no reader
    will be left in doubt about the many important benefi ts to be gained
    from reading political history.†
    [3] In terms of time, my work will start with the 140th Olympiad.*
    In terms of events, it will start with the so-called Social War in
    Greece,* the fi rst war fought by Philip V, the son of Demetrius II
    and father of Perseus, in which he fought the Aetolians, with the
    Achaeans as his allies; and it will start with the war for Coele Syria in
    Asia, fought between Antiochus III and Ptolemy IV Philopator; and
    with the clash between the Romans and Carthaginians in Italy and
    Libya, which is usually called the Hannibalic War. Aratus of Sicyon’s
    book* ended just before these events.
    Before this time, things happened in the world pretty much in a
    sporadic fashion, because every incident was specifi c, from start to
    fi nish, to the part of the world where it happened. But ever since then
    history has resembled a body, in the sense that incidents in Italy and
    Libya and Asia and Greece are all interconnected, and everything
    tends towards a single outcome. That is why I have made this period
    the starting point of my treatment of world events. For once the
    Romans had defeated the Carthaginians in the Hannibalic War, they
    came to think that they had completed the largest and most diffi cult
    part of their project of worldwide dominion, and so that was the fi rst
    time when they ventured to reach out for what was left—to cross over
    with an army to Greece and Asia.
    Now, if we were familiar and acquainted with the states that dis-
    puted universal rulership with each other, there would, I suppose,
    have been no need for me to go back in time and describe what their

    goals and resources were when they took on such an immense task.
    But since most Greeks are unfamiliar with the past history—the
    resources and achievements—of either Rome or Carthage,* I felt
    obliged to preface my history with this and the following book, to
    make sure that no one would have to interrupt his absorption in my
    account of events to wonder and enquire what the Romans’ inten-
    tions were, or what forces and resources they had, when they com-
    mitted themselves to this enterprise, which has given them dominion
    over all the land and sea in our part of the world. By means of these
    two books and the introduction they contain, I hope to make it clear
    to any reader that the whole process, from formulation of plans to
    their fulfi lment in imperial rulership over the whole world, was based
    on very reasonable grounds.
    [4] The point is that the distinctive feature of my work (which is
    at the same time the remarkable feature of our epoch) is this: Fortune
    has turned almost all the events of the known world in a single
    direction and has forced everything to tend towards the same goal.
    A historian, then, should use his work to bring under a single con-
    spectus for his readers the means by which Fortune has brought
    everything to this point. In fact, it was this in particular that originally
    prompted me to set about writing history—and then also the fact that
    no one else in our times has attempted to write a universal history,
    because otherwise I would have been far less inclined to do so. But
    I saw that most historians had concerned themselves with particular
    wars and with certain of the events that went along with them, while
    no one, as far as I knew, had even attempted to investigate the general,
    comprehensive organization of events, in the sense of asking when
    and why this scheme of things started, and how it was realized. And
    so I came to believe that it was absolutely essential for me not to over-
    look or leave in obscurity the fi nest thing Fortune has ever achieved,
    and the one from which we can learn most. For although Fortune is
    a constant presence in people’s lives, and though it is often creative,
    never before has it produced such an accessible piece or put on the
    kind of performance that it has in our time.
    It is impossible to gain this comprehensive perspective from
    writers of partial histories. That is the same as thinking that all it
    takes instantly to grasp the form of the whole world, and its order
    and arrangement in their entirety, is to visit, one by one, each of its
    outstanding cities—or, indeed, to look at sketches of them! Imagine

    Reply
72. 

    March 12, 2025

    MYST

    I once shared a dream I had with family. I dreamt an old Soviet helicopter landed at Dunolly Farm School. It brought about many murmurs and curious eyes and talk. Asi you are telling us you are going to be….no it was just a dream. Not all dreams we understand the meaning,so we must not jump to conclusions.

    However, imagine if a boy from the farm manages to get inugurated despite his age and all the things you did and said about him. If that thought doesn’t scare you I do not know what will Dzidzai. How will you manage all the personalities and legacy issues. How will you handle people who swore oaths to destroy you and never let this day come. Thats why we said be careful what you pray for….

    So lets imagine its your first day, what do you do.

    Well I will visit my kids and have lunch with them, play Street Fighter at Ashbrittle. Then I go back to work.

    How do you fix a problem that many cannot or would not fix and would have no one else fix it.

    Well if you are talking about the currency issue we are in this together. We have to launch the Great Dyke (GD) at some point, but what is the priority is,is the availability of foreign currency and balance of payments. It won’t be overnight buy key is to get agriculture,industry,tourism growing again. In a few years we may have the right conditions to launch the GD and increase salaries,and if forex is available things will tend to work,as long as we are trying and putting in place practical measures after consultation and counsel, confidence will drive an economic turn around faster than any policy.

    Then there are some things that can be done without a large capital outlay upfront but will stating point. For example, with the stroke of a pen we can start a Border Control, NAVY, Ecology Corps and Space Command. It will also be a nice way to reward the Colonels and other officers long waiting for a promotion, we promote sideways and others keep their jobs,thats growth. A good University can provide blueprints and plans for our buildings that will keep us warm in winter and cool in summer at the least cost and still be pleasing on the eye,plus nice logos and coat of arms. Why not make Bitcoin legal because people do it anyway,cheaper denomition gold coins not only as an economic tool but allowing people to own gold at some point in their life. Gestures of goodwill have far reaching consequences many of them extremly positive and it just takes the stroke of a pen. A pen in the right hands is mightier than a double edged sword.

    We will have to write many memos to many ministries. For example for termly school inspections to resume and be recorded and publicised with rankings and all required information to run a fine school. For monumemts and memorials for key places,events and personalities, things like that.

    Setting up steerimg committees for inter ministerial department collaboration. Using email for government business and securing it. Making sure our ministers plan,organise,lead amd control by selecting the best amd paying them well and coming up with standard operating proceedures that will be referenced by their succesors.

    Ah, I foresee you guys working me to death and sometimes not understanding me because of my slight accent yeku plaz…kkkk Do not be alarmed as long as you know we are together, just look at my eyes. I am also a bit camera shy so you wont have to see my mug that often. There are some languages that are universal, people can have a connection vasina kusangana.

    There is a lot to do and not a lot of time. Its a massive amount of work and a myriad of skills, empathy and intellect are required, are you not glad your education system produced an exotic for you?

    Then I woke up to the sound of, Mukoma Dzidzai pane munhu arikurasira marara mu garden menyu. Wo’ repoterwa nemwana munhu mukuru. I just looked at the mess and walked away. I cannot be bothered with such people, can you blame me. Ha Yah.

    Reply
73. 

    March 12, 2025

    MYST

    I have a small gripe. When we purchase airtime on credit, shouldn’t we be able to purchase data bundles with it? I mean technically its yours now plus a small commission unless there are different types of airtime. I’m just saying, its a bit controlling give customers freedom and they will open up their wallets more.

    Reply
74. 

    March 12, 2025

    Aquarium

    ‘There’s one thing I can’t understand about you, Suvo-
    rov: you don’t seem to find any pleasure in tormenting
    others. We have great possibilities for getting pleasure
    out of our own strength. You can torment a “puppet” to
    your heart’s content. But you seem to reject that pleasure.
    Why?’
    ‘Because it doesn’t give me any pleasure.’
    ‘That’s a pity.’
    ‘Is it bad for our profession?’
    ‘On the whole no. There’s an astronomical number of
    prostitutes in the world, but only very few of them get
    any pleasure out of their situation. For the majority of
    them it’s simply a very tough job and nothing else.
    Irrespective of whether she likes the work or not, her
    standard of living depends on her attitude to her work, on
    her sense of responsibility and on her diligence. You don’t
    necessarily have to like your profession, but you have to
    make an effort and show that you can work hard. What are
    you grinning about?’
    ‘That’s an interesting turn of phrase: “a hardworking
    prostitute”.’
    ‘It’s nothing to laugh about. We are no better than
    prostitutes. We do a not very clean job for somebody
    else’s satisfaction. We are very well paid for our hard
    work. You don’t particularly like your profession, but
    you’re hardworking and that’s good enough for me. Pour
    yourself another. You know best how much you can
    take.’
    ‘What about you?’
    ‘Only a little, really. Two fingers. Enough. Now, this is
    why I got you here. You can only survive on this stinking
    planet if you get other people by the throat. Our system
    enables us to do this. You can hang on to power by
    scrambling upwards, but only in a group. The group
    pushes one person upwards, and once he has got a bit

    higher he helps the whole group. There’s a Brezhnev
    group and a Kosygin group, there are groups in all the
    ministries and departments; everyone who is scrambling
    upwards has a group. Soon you will be getting your own
    group together, but remaining a member of my group.’
    Suddenly he grabbed me by the collar: ‘If you betray
    me you’ll be sorry!’
    ‘I shall not betray you.’
    ‘I know.’ There was a grim look in his eyes. ‘You can
    betray whomever you wish, but not me. Don’t even think
    about it. I know you’re not thinking about it. I can tell by
    the look in your satanical eyes. Drink up and let’s be
    going. It’s already late. Be at your desk by seven o’clock
    tomorrow morning. Get all your secret documents ready
    to hand over by nine. I have been made Head of Intelli-
    gence of the Carpathian military district. I am going to
    take with me into the Intelligence Directorate of the
    district’s HQ the majority of those people I brought here
    with me. Not all of them. But I’m going to pull you up
    with me. Don’t forget.’
    I just didn’t know what was the matter with me. Some-
    thing was wrong. I would wake up in the night and stare
    for ages at the ceiling. If they were to send me somewhere to
    die for some cause or other I could become a hero. I
    would not mind giving up my life – I had no further use
    for it. I would then lapse into a short restless sleep. I
    would feel as though I was being carried somewhere,
    flying high above the earth. Away from Kravtsov. Away
    from Spetsnaz. Away from the tough fighting. I was ready to
    fight, to strangle people. But what was the point of it all?
    Fighting for power is not at all the same as fighting for
    one’s country. But would fighting for my country really
    console me? I had already been defending my country’s
    interests in Czechoslovakia – not a very pleasant

    business, to tell you the truth. I flew ever higher in my
    dreams. From unattainable ringing heights I looked down
    on my unfortunate country, my mother-country. It was
    really very sick, but I couldn’t make out what it was
    suffering from. Sheer madness, perhaps, or schizo-
    phrenia. And I didn’t know how I could help. Somebody
    had to be killed, but I didn’t know who. Where was I
    flying to? To God, perhaps? But there was no God. All
    the same – the Lord preserve me.

    Reply
75. 

    March 12, 2025

    Aquarium

    We stick to the regulations, our manual and
    military law, we don’t break them . . . But how can one
    help him and stay within the law?’
    ‘Comrade colonel, maybe I can help in some way?’
    ‘How could you, Viktor, a senior lieutenant, help a
    lieutenant-general?’
    ‘I’ve got a long night ahead of me, I’ll do some thinking
    . . .’
    ‘Actually there’s no need to do a lot of thinking . . .
    Everything has been thought through. It’s action we need
    … I can hear the helicopter. That’s for me, no doubt. Look
    here, Viktor, there’s a personal friend of mine, the Head of
    Intelligence from the North Caucasus military district,
    Major-general Zabaluyev – one of Litovtsev’s colleagues –
    attending the exercises. He wants personally to watch the
    competition of the Spetsnaz forces, but he doesn’t want to
    embarrass the troops with his rank. Tomorrow he will take
    up position with you at this control post. He will be
    wearing our usual uniform: a grey overcoat without any
    distinguishing badges. He won’t interfere in the work of
    the groups. He just wants to observe what goes on and to
    have a chat with you. If you really want to help, why don’t
    you ask him?’
    I thought for a moment. ‘Do you feel, comrade colonel,
    that when the exercises are over I might have to go sick?’
    ‘I have given you no such order. If you feel it necessary,
    then of course. But just remember that it’s not so easy to
    go sick in our Army. You have to get a chit from a
    doctor.’
    ‘I’ll get one all right.’
    ‘Only watch out – there are times when a man feels ill
    but when the doctor doesn’t share his feelings. That’s
    very awkward. You have to go sick in such a way that the
    doctor has no doubt about it. You’ve really got to have a

    high temperature. You know what can happen: You feel
    ill yourself, but you’ve no temperature.’
    ‘I’ll have a temperature.’
    ‘All right, Viktor. I wish you well. Have you got
    something to give General Zabaluyev to eat?’
    ‘Yes, I have.’
    ‘Only don’t hit the vodka . . . unless he asks for it.’
    Nine days later I reported to Colonel Kravtsov’s office
    and informed him that I had gone sick following the
    exercise but that I was now feeling fine. He smiled at me
    and took me down a little. A well-trained intelligence
    officer never went sick, he said. You had to keep control
    of yourself. You had to drive the illness out of your body.
    Our bodies were subject to our will, and by sheer
    willpower you could drive any illness out of yourself,
    even cancer. Strong people didn’t get ill. Only the faint-
    hearted went sick.
    He was giving me a good talking-to, but was himself
    quite radiant. He just couldn’t suppress a smile. He smiled
    happily and openly. It was the way soldiers smile after a
    bayonet fight: just don’t touch our people! Touch them and
    we’ll have your guts out!
    A Spetsnaz soldier has many enemies. An early dawn
    and a late sunset are against you. The buzz of a mosquito
    and the roar of a helicopter are also enemies. It’s bad for
    you, my boy, when the sun’s in your eyes. It’s bad for you
    when you find yourself in a searchlight beam. It’s bad
    when your heart is galloping. It’s bad when thousands of
    electronic installations are scouring the ether, trying to
    catch the sound of your hoarse whisper and your bursting
    lungs. It’s always bad for you, brother. Really bad is
    when your principal enemy appears. They will think up
    many more different devices to catch you, anti-personnel

    mines and electronic sensors of every kind. They will set
    you against other soldiers, highly trained men. But your
    principal enemy always remains the same. Your principal
    enemy, my friends has its ears standing up, yellow fangs
    with drops of evil saliva, a grey fur and a long tail. Its
    eyes are brown with yellow spots and its coat is red-
    brown beneath the collar. It is your principal enemy
    because it is quicker than you. It detects your scent with
    its nose. And it has a tremendous leap when it hurls itself
    at your throat.
    That’s it, the enemy. The most important. The most
    important of all. See how it bares its fangs. Its hackles
    up, its tail too, and its ears flat just before it leaps. Now
    the brute jumps. It doesn’t growl; it just wheezes. Sticky
    saliva round its jaws, as though mad. The KGB provides
    a special entry in its records, headed ‘viciousness’. And
    the experts write terrible words under the heading: ‘Good
    viciousness’, ‘excellent viciousness’.
    This particular dog probably had only exclamation
    marks under the viciousness heading. It was called Mars
    and was the property of the KGB frontier troops. I
    wouldn’t say it was a huge dog. I have seen even bigger
    ones. But Mars was very experienced. And everybody
    knew it.
    On this occasion I had not been put against Mars.
    Today it was Zhenya Bychenko’s job. We shouted words
    of encouragement to him: hang on, Zhenya, give it to
    him, show him how they taught you to fight in Spetsnaz. It
    was not allowed and not the custom to shout advice on such
    occasions. Even the most excellent advice might at the last
    moment distract the fighter’s attention and allow the fierce
    animal to get its teeth into his throat.
    Zhenya was holding a knife in his left hand and a tunic
    in his right. But he hadn’t wrapped his hand in the tunic.
    He was simply holding it out with his hand stretched

    forward. The dog didn’t like that: it wasn’t what he was
    used to. Nor did he like the knife in the left hand. Why in
    the left hand? The dog was in no hurry. He shifted his
    animal eyes from the knife to the throat and from the
    throat to the knife. But he also eyed the tunic. Why had
    the man not wrapped it round his hand? With his canine
    reasoning the grey animal knew that the man had only
    one key hand and that the other one was only supporting
    and diverting. And the dog must not make a mistake. He
    must attack the hand which was the decisive one, the
    most dangerous. But maybe he should go for the throat?
    The dog shifted his eyes, trying to choose. Once he had
    made his decision his eyes would hold still and he would
    attack. The man in the arena and we who were watching
    were waiting for that very moment. Before it leapt the
    man would have a split second to strike a counter-blow.
    But Mars was experienced. He attacked suddenly without
    a snarl or a growl. He did not attack as other dogs do, he
    pounced without concentrating his eyes and without
    straining back before the leap. His long body was sud-
    denly suspended in the air. His mouth and his wild eyes
    flew at Zhenya without a noise of any kind. Nobody
    actually caught the moment when he sprang. We expected
    the jump a second later. And so in that silence the dog
    flew at Zhenya’s throat. But Zhenya’s tunic whipped
    across the dog’s eyes. We caught sight only of the sole of
    his black boot. The dog howled as it landed in the corner.
    We roared with delight. We howled like wild boars. We
    screamed with pleasure.
    ‘Cut him up, Zhenya! Cut the grey one! Give him the
    knife! Zhenya! The knife! Finish him off before he gets
    up!’
    But Zhenya did not attack the snarling animal. He did
    not try to kill the panting dog.

    Reply
76. 

    March 12, 2025

    Aquarium

    After handing my papers to a quite young senior lieutenant
    I presented myself to the officer who was now my former
    commander:
    ‘Comrade general, this is Captain Suvorov reporting on
    being transferred to the Tenth Chief Directorate of the
    General Staff.’
    ‘Sit down,’ said Kravtsov.
    I sat. He looked me straight in the eyes for a long time,
    and I withstood his stare. He was smartly turned out and
    looked very stern, without a suspicion of a smile.
    ‘You, Viktor, are entering into a very serious business.
    You are joining the Tenth, but I believe that’s only a
    cover. It seems to me that you will go somewhere higher
    up. Maybe even into the GRU. Into the Aquarium. They
    are simply not allowed to talk about it. But mark my
    words. You will arrive at the Tenth Chief, but you will be
    taken over by another outfit. That’s the way it will
    probably be. If my assessment of what is going on is
    correct, then you will have to go through very serious
    examinations. If you wish to pass them you must always
    be yourself. There is something crooked, something faulty
    about you. Don’t try to conceal it.’
    ‘I am not going to conceal it.’

    ‘And be good and kind. Always be good. All your life.
    Promise me?’
    ‘I promise.’
    ‘If you have to kill a man, be kind! Smile at him before
    you kill him.’
    ‘I’ll try.’
    ‘But if you are going to be killed don’t whine or weep.
    That will never be forgiven. Smile when they are trying
    to kill you. Smile at the executioner. By so doing you will
    make yourself immortal. Every one of us has to die some
    time. Die like a man, Viktor. Die with pride. Promise?’
    Next day a green coach delivered a group of officers to a
    deserted railway station where a military train was being
    put together. They had all been summoned to Moscow by
    the Tenth Chief Directorate of the General Staff. They
    were all going to become military advisers in Vietnam,
    Algeria, Yemen, Syria, Egypt. I was in the group. For all
    my friends, colleagues, commanders and subordinates
    from that moment I ceased to exist. The first point in the
    document that I had signed forbade me to have any
    contact with any of the people I had known in the past.

    As the train sped along the rails towards Moscow the
    boundless expanse of the country was spread out before
    me. A child waved at the train from a railway embank-
    ment. Poplars, birch trees, fir trees, ruined and looted
    churches, girls haymaking, factory chimneys. More chil-
    dren on an embankment, waving and smiling at me. One
    bridge after another. Then the train rumbled across the
    steel girders above the Desna river. Konotop, Bryansk,
    Kaluga. The regular beat of the wheels on the rail joints.
    The carriage was very noisy, and there was a lot of
    drinking going on. It was a military train, with no out-
    siders. There were only military advisers in my carriage.
    Potential advisers, anyway. They were all drinking to
    their future. To the Tenth Chief Directorate. To Colonel-
    General Okunev. Another bottle was going the rounds.
    Drink, captain! Bags of promotion for you! Thanks,
    major, for you too! Everybody’s eyes were bright. We
    were all little boys who were crazy about war. Had we
    gone away for training in order to come back capable of
    inspecting a battalion’s kit? No, we had been carried
    away by the glamour of war. And these were the lucky
    ones to whom the Tenth Chief Directorate had given their
    chance. So drink to the Tenth, lads!
    There were a lot of us in the carriage. Gunners, airmen,
    infantry, tank men. Yesterday they had not known one
    another. Now we were all friends. Another bottle was
    handed round. To you, my friends, to your success. To
    promotion. But where on earth was I going? In my
    documents it said Cuba, but that was only because there

    was nobody else in the group going to Cuba. Many were
    going to Egypt and Syria. Some were heading for
    Vietnam. If there had really been somebody marked out
    for Cuba, they would have thought up something else for
    me. Kravtsov was of course right in supposing that Cuba
    was just a cover. But he didn’t know much more. Kravtsov
    – now a general. I had seen him after his promotion, but
    then he had been in dust-covered overalls and a faded blue
    beret, like everybody else, with nothing to distinguish him
    from the Spetsnaz soldiery. I tried to imagine what he
    would look like in a real general’s uniform with gold
    epaulettes and wide stripes down his trousers. But I
    couldn’t do it. I see him always as he was at the time of
    our first meeting: in a clean tunic with a lieutenant-
    colonel’s epaulettes and the features of a young captain.
    Good luck to you, Kravtsov.

    Krasnaya Presnya is the biggest military rail junction in
    the world. Train after train. Thousands of people. All
    behind barbed wire and high fences. And all under the
    blinding glare of searchlights. Trainloads of tanks for
    Germany. Trainloads of recruits for Czechoslovakia. The
    clanging and rumbling of wagons on the move. Shunting
    engines putting the trains together. A train loaded with
    guns for the Far East. Then some big container trucks,
    with a guard as big as Brezhnev’s. Stores everywhere.
    Loading and unloading. A trainload of demobilized sol
    diers from Poland. Then there were prison trucks with
    long narrow windows covered with white paint. Grilles
    over the windows. Krasnaya Presnya is not just a military
    centre; it is also a transit prison. Soldiers with guard
    dogs. Red shoulder straps. A trainload of prisoners
    moved slowly into the special zone. Huge steel gates.
    Barbed wire. A blinding blue light. Trainloads of pris-
    oners. For Bodaibo. For Cherepovets. For Severodvinsk.

    For Zheltyye Vody. The huge grey building of the military
    transit camp. The group of advisers for South Yemen -to
    block B, room 217. Adviser for Cuba! That’s me. Captain
    Suvorov? Yes. Follow me. A smart young major led me
    past a long fence and stacks of green boxes. This way,
    captain. In a small courtyard there was an ambulance with
    red crosses on it waiting for us. After you, captain. The
    door was slammed shut behind me and the vehicle moved
    off. It stopped a couple of times, probably to be checked as
    it left the forbidden area. Then I was being driven
    through Moscow. I could tell that we weren’t going along
    a straight road but round the streets of a big city. The
    vehicle made frequent turns and stops, probably at traffic
    lights. But that was only my guessing. I could see
    nothing: the windows were opaque, as in a prison truck.
    What is 262 multiplied by 16? Quickly, in your head. It
    was not a very difficult sum. You had first to multiply by
    10, add half the product plus another 262. But the piercing
    eyes of the examiner made it difficult to think quickly.
    Wiping my forehead with the palm of my hand I raised
    my eyes to the ceiling and then lowered them again to
    look at the sheet of green paper covering the table. Right
    in front of me on the green paper covering the table one
    of my predecessors had solved this very sum in very faint
    pencil. It was written very clearly and accurately, but
    would be quite invisible to the examiner. I was going to
    make use of the ready-made answer when it occurred to
    me to wonder how my predecessor could have got hold
    of a pencil and how he could have used it under the
    searching gaze of the examiner. It was put there simply to
    tempt me. I raised my eyes, then thought again for a
    second and gave my own answer – 4192. The examiner
    then started his stopwatch and set me another question. I

    glanced quickly at the answer written on the table and
    saw that it was wrong. It was certainly a trick, an attempt
    to thrust ready-made but wrong answers on me. But the
    questions kept coming thick and fast, as if tumbling from
    a conveyor belt. ‘What is the specific weight on the ground
    of an American M60 tank? Why do spiral staircases in
    old castles go from left to right and not the other way
    round? How many weeks in a year? How much does a
    bucket of mercury weigh? What is the price of gold on
    the international market? Which firm produces the
    Phantom fighter? What is the output of steel in the Soviet
    Union? Which are the better anti-tank shells – American
    or French? What design faults are there in the rotary
    engine? When was the first Sputnik launched?’ There was
    no time to think up answers; at the slightest hesitation
    another question was set and then more and more. ‘What
    do you know about Chekhov?’ ‘He was a well-known
    sniper in the 138th rifle division of the 62nd Army.’ ‘Do
    you know Dostoevsky?’ What an odd question. Who
    doesn’t know Dostoevsky? ‘Nikolai Gerasimovich Dosto-
    evsky is a major-general, chief of staff of the 3rd Shock
    Army.’ For some reason the examiners gave a long laugh.
    But they accepted my answer: ‘Never mind, captain, your
    answers are not quite what we wanted, but they are
    correct and they give us quite a good idea of your
    character. If we laugh occasionally, pay no attention,
    don’t be embarrassed.’ Was I really ever embarrassed?
    It seemed to me as if I had been asked a million questions.
    Then I worked out that there had been only 5000 – fifty
    questions an hour, seventeen hours a day, for six days.
    Some questions needed five or ten minutes to answer,
    others took only a few seconds. You were not allowed to
    refer to anything or write anything down or consult with
    anybody. You had to reveal exactly what you knew and

    thought. What you had to avoid was trying to be too
    clever, to lie or to embellish things for the examiners. If
    you tried to skate round some tricky questions they would
    catch you out later contradicting yourself. The examiners
    changed round; sometimes there was only one, at other
    times the room was full of them. The examinee was alone
    from seven o’clock in the morning till midnight.
    There were no breaks. To go to the toilet you had to ask
    permission each time. The request might be approved
    immediately, but sometimes one had to ask two or three
    times. The food was brought directly into the classroom.
    Sometimes it was a magnificent repast which made you
    sleepy; sometimes for a whole day they would ‘forget’ to
    bring food and water, yet questioning went on the whole
    time. ‘What would you have done in the place of the
    gangsters who robbed the mail train in Great Britain?’
    ‘Imagine that all the buried money has been divided out
    and you have received your portion.’ ‘What do you know
    about Johann Strauss?’ ‘If you had to modernize the
    American B58 strategic bomber, to what would you
    attach special attention and why?’ ‘How many columns
    are there on the facade of the Bolshoi Theatre?’ ‘What
    type of woman attracts you specially?’ ‘What is 4416
    divided by 8?’ ‘How many vodkas can you drink at a
    sitting?’ ‘Here are photographs of some people whom you
    have seen in the last few days – you have three minutes to
    sort them out into ones that you have not seen at all, ones
    you have seen once and ones you have seen twice or
    more.’ The last two days were completely taken up with
    answering questions which had already been set during the
    first four days, but this time the test was undertaken in
    conditions of a strong radio interference. ‘You have one
    minute to cross out on this page all letters “B”, underline
    all the letters “T” and put a red ring around the letters
    “R”.’ At the same time a tape recorder

    was switched on which bellowed in your ear something
    completely different, like ‘”R” cross out, “A” underline,
    “U” encircle with a red ring.’ ‘You have three minutes to
    add up all the 3s on this sheet of paper on which are
    simply written hundreds of different numbers. Don’t pay
    any attention to what my colleague is doing. Begin.’ Then
    the colleague began to shake the table, make faces, shout
    obscenities in your ear, catch hold of you by the hand,
    strike your legs and shake the chair. But you were advised
    not to pay any attention to all this.
    At the end of one of these days you are in a state of
    complete collapse. That was the moment the examiners
    were waiting for, when you had sunk into a black abyss
    of exhaustion. They would rush into the room together,
    switch on the bright light and shake you awake. ‘262 by
    16.’ And they shout: ‘It’s so simple – don’t you remember?
    You’ve already done it; you did it this morning; it’s so
    simple.’ ‘4192,’ I mumble sleepily, and the light goes out.
    In the space of a week they got to know practically
    everything there was to know about me. They established
    the extent of my knowledge in every field which interested
    them. Apart from that they assessed my capacity for
    work, my memory, my resourcefulness, my ability to
    orientate myself, my honesty, the presence or absence of a
    sense of humour, my stamina, my reaction to various
    situations, my ability to remember faces, names, numbers
    and titles, my ability to take independent decisions, and a
    lot more besides.
    ‘You suit us very well, young man,’ a grey-haired man
    in civilian clothes told me, after I had endured a week of
    examinations and tests. ‘But there is only one way out of
    our organization. That is through the chimney of the

    crematorium. So think again. And so that you shall have
    something to think about, we’ll show you a film . . .’
    I thought that his face would pursue me in nightmares
    throughout my life. But that was not the case. I never
    dreamt of him. But I often thought about him, and there
    was something about the affair that I couldn’t understand.
    The official version said that a GRU colonel sold himself
    to the British and American intelligence services because
    he was fond of the opposite sex and that that was why he
    needed a lot of money. Let us suppose that was true. But
    if it was just a question of women why on earth did he
    not simply defect to the West? In America or Britain he
    would have had enough money and enough women to
    last him all his life. A man with the information he had
    would have been welcomed and treated at his true worth.
    He had plenty of opportunities to defect. But he didn’t do
    it. He went on working in Moscow, where he had no
    opportunity to spend that sort of money. Which meant
    that it wasn’t a matter of money or of women. So what
    was it then?
    If he had been nothing more than a womanizer he
    would have escaped and settled for women and money.
    But he didn’t. He finished up in the crematorium, the man
    I had seen silently screaming. But why, for goodness sake?
    I twisted and turned on the hot pillow and just couldn’t
    get to sleep. It was my first night without examinations.
    But was I being observed at night by closed-circuit
    television? Oh, to hell with it! I got out of bed and made a
    rude gesture to each corner of the room. If I was still being
    watched they wouldn’t be taking me to the Central
    Committee of the Party tomorrow. Then I decided that it
    wasn’t enough simply to make rude gestures, so I exposed
    to the camera, if there was one there, everything I had to
    show.

    Reply
77. 

    March 12, 2025

    MYST

    This way, please. Another grey-haired man produced
    some papers. The KGB sergeant saluted. This way. Grey-
    hair knew the way and led me along endless corridors.
    Red carpets. Vaulted ceilings. Leather padded doors. Our
    documents were checked again. This way, please. A lift
    took us silently to the third floor. Another corridor. A big
    ante-room with an elderly woman at a desk. Wait a
    moment, please. We waited. Come in, please. Grey-hair
    gave me a gentle push from behind, closed the door after
    me and remained in the ante-room.
    The office had a high ceiling and windows well above
    eye-level. There was no view at all from the windows,
    only a blank wall and the pigeons on the cornice. There
    was an oak desk, at which sat a very thin man wearing
    gold-rimmed spectacles. He was wearing a brown suit
    without any distinguishing marks – no medals or orders.
    It was so easy in the Army. You looked at a man’s
    epaulettes and you could say at once: comrade major or
    comrade colonel. But how could I break the ice here? I
    simply introduced myself:
    ‘Captain Suvorov.’
    ‘Hello, captain, how are you?’
    ‘I wish you health!’
    ‘We have studied you attentively and have decided to
    take you into the Aquarium, after suitable preparation, of
    course.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Today is the 23rd of August. Keep that date in mind,
    captain, throughout your life. That is the day on which
    you are being received into the nomenklatura1, and not
    just into the nomenklatura, but straight into a higher
    1 Nomenklatura – list of most important posts in the
    Soviet Union which can be occupied only by Party
    members with special experience and which carry
    numerous special privileges; the elite of Soviet
    society.(See: Nomenklatura by Prof. M. Voslensky,
    London 1984.)

    level – the nomenklatura of the Central Committee. Apart
    from all the other exceptional privileges you will receive
    yet another one. From today you are no longer subject to
    control by the KGB. From today the KGB has no right to
    put questions to you, to demand answers to them or to
    undertake any action against you. If you make any
    mistake, report it to the person in charge of you and he
    will report to us. If you fail to report it we shall know
    about your mistake all the same. But in any case any
    enquiry into your behaviour will be carried out only by
    top officials of the GRU or by the Administrative
    Department of the Central Committee. You are obliged to
    report any contact with the KGB to your chief. The well-
    being of the Central Committee depends on the way
    organizations and people who belong to the nomenklatura
    of the Central Committee are able to preserve their
    independence of all other organizations. The well-being
    of the Central Committee is also your own personal well-
    being, captain. Take pride in the confidence which the
    Central Committee has in our military intelligence and in
    you personally. I wish you well.’ I saluted smartly and
    left the room.
    A lake in the middle of a forest. Reeds around the shore.
    A birch wood above the banks. And behind a tall fence
    was our house in the country, our dacha. There was a
    tiny beach with some boats turned upside down, and on
    the other shore there were some more cottages made of
    logs. They were also enclosed in green fences. And they
    were also under guard. It was a very special area. They
    were country cottages, but cottages only for top com-
    rades. And it was not at all easy to get into this area. Oak
    woods, lakes, dense forests. Here and there red roofs, and
    more green fences. There was only one road leading to our
    lake. Wherever you turned you kept

    coming up against green fences. Beyond our fence there
    were other people’s cottages. Somebody was playing
    about with a volleyball. But we were not allowed to know
    who it was. And he had no right to snoop on us. On one
    side our fence is higher than on the other and we hear
    music coming from that direction in the evenings. Very
    pleasant music. Tangos.
    Ours was a very big dacha. There were twenty-three of
    us living there. But there was room for thirty. Each one
    had a little room to himself. The walls were made of pine
    logs. There was a smell of tar. A small landscape painting
    on the wall. A huge soft bed. A bookshelf. Downstairs
    was a hall with a large Asian carpet. We rose when we
    wished and did as we pleased. There was a good break-
    fast, a modest lunch and a luxurious dinner. In the
    evenings we used to sit round the fireplace. We drank.
    We went hunting. There were twenty-three of us and we
    had all in the past been officers at the middle level of
    Soviet military intelligence. The group included one
    lieutenant-colonel, two majors and one senior lieutenant.
    The rest were captains. One of us had been a fighter pilot.
    Two had been in the missile forces. There was a man
    from the parachute troops, a commander of a missile ship,
    a military doctor, a military lawyer. Altogether a pretty
    mixed bunch. We had been handed over by various
    commanders. Each one of us had for some reason or
    another landed up in the wake of some military intelli-
    gence officer at the divisional, Army or even higher level.
    Each one of us had been picked out by someone to join
    his personal group. It was out of those groups that the
    Aquarium selected its own candidates. Of course, when it
    took people away from the men directing military
    intelligence at the middle level, the Aquarium was careful
    not to take all of them or even the best. If today the
    Aquarium were to take all his best men away from

    Kravtsov, tomorrow people like him would not be so
    painstaking in the selection of their personal staff. Conse-
    quently the Aquarium is very careful about the way it
    takes people away from officers at the middle level, so as
    not to destroy their willingness to devote so much atten-
    tion to the selection of staff in the future.
    I slept a great deal. It was a long time since I had slept
    so soundly and so peacefully. I would get up late in the
    morning and go down to the lake. The weather was dull
    but the water was warm. I would swim for a long time,
    knowing that the sleep I was getting and the freedom I
    was enjoying were not for long. We were just being given
    the possibility to relax after the examinations before the
    beginning of the academic year. So I relaxed.
    A quick friendship ends in a long quarrel. I knew that
    and so did my comrades in the group. So we were not in
    a hurry to make friends. We tried each other out very
    carefully, chatting about trivialities and telling not very
    witty stories. We were sniffing around in a word. Mean-
    time we could drink. There was a rich choice in the huge
    bar. You could drink as much as you wanted. But we
    drank only in moderation. At some point we would
    become friends and would be able to trust each other. At
    some point we would be ready to support each other.
    Then we would really get drinking, like real officers. But
    not yet.
    We had been carefully measured, and here we all were
    in our new civilian clothes. Some of us were fated to
    wear uniform when we became generals. But some would
    remain in civilian clothes even when we reached the rank
    of general. That was the sort of service it was.
    ‘I am Colonel Peter Fyodorovich Razumov.’ With these
    words a rather plump man in a sports jacket with a

    volleyball in his hand introduced himself. ‘I am fifty-one
    and I have served for twenty-three years in the Aquarium.
    I’ve worked in three countries and spent sixteen years
    abroad. I have seven recruitments of agents to my credit.
    I have been awarded four orders for active service and
    numerous medals. I am going to be in charge of your
    group. You will of course think up a nickname for me.
    To save you trouble I will mention a few of my unofficial
    nicknames. One of them is Elephant. All the teachers and
    professors at the Military-Diplomatic Academy are called
    Elephants. The Academy itself is known as the
    Conservatory when we are talking about you, the younger
    generation, or as the Elephants’ Graveyard when we are
    talking about the staff. It is possible that one day one of
    your number will also become an Elephant and will come
    here to train some young elephants. Now I would like to
    talk to each of you separately. Captain Suvorov.’
    ‘Yes, comrade colonel.’
    ‘Call me simply Peter Fyodorovich.’
    ‘Very well.’
    ‘Drop the “very well”. You remain an officer of the
    Soviet Army. Moreover you are moving on to the highest
    level – the General Staff. But you can forget the “very
    well” for the time being. Can you not click your heels
    when you speak with your superior?’
    ‘No, I can’t, comrade . . . Peter Fyodorovich.’
    ‘Your first job, Viktor, is to learn how to sit in an
    armchair in a slightly relaxed position . . . You sit with a
    stiff back as if on parade. Civilian diplomats don’t sit like
    that. Understand?’
    ‘Yes.’
    I had wondered for a long time how it was possible to
    organize a secret school for intelligence officers and train
    them there for many years without anybody around being

    able to guess what was going on and without anybody
    being able to get a picture of us. In fact it’s very simple.
    The main building of the Military-Diplomatic Academy is
    situated in the centre of Moscow on Narodnogo Opel-
    cheniya Street. But that houses only the administration,
    the central co-ordinating part of the academy. The stu-
    dents are scattered in small groups all over Moscow.
    They know only the place where they study, and then
    only the inside of it. But they don’t know where it is
    situated.
    Every morning at 8.30 I would turn up for work at the
    research institute for electromagnetic radiation of the
    Soviet Ministry of Communications. It is next to the
    Timiryazev Park. What the institute really does and to
    whom it actually belongs is known to very few. At the
    end of the 1950s there was only a four-storey building
    with columns on this spot – a typical piece of Stalinist
    architecture, in yellow stucco. In those days there were
    probably no more than a couple of hundred people
    working there. But the institute expanded at a great
    speed. Now there are large numbers of huge grey six-
    storey blocks. They are built from grey brick without any
    facing, in the Khrushchev style, to save money. Further
    on there are gigantic glass-faced blocks reaching for the
    sky. White concrete and aluminium. That’s the grand
    style of the Brezhnev period.
    The research institute is now a colossal complex of
    many workshops, with various coloured pipes steaming in
    the frost as they weave their way in and out, and with
    snow-white buildings rising up above the chaos of railway
    lines leading off into the depths of huge hangars. The
    whole complex is divided into hundreds of zones and
    sections by means of barbed wire, grey concrete and wire
    netting mounted on brick walls. The brakes on a diesel
    locomotive screech. Five thirty-ton trucks are swallowed

    up in a secret workshop. No entry! The scientists are in a
    hurry. So are the workpeople. We work in three shifts,
    without a break. Thousands of people pour into the wide
    corridors. The morning shift. This is big-time science.
    Have your pass open for inspection! Zone 12-B. At the
    main entrance the crowd is split up into dozens of separate
    streams and hundreds of rivulets. What are their jobs?
    What problems are they working on? Better not ask, for
    your own sake. Yet another passageway. Barbed wire
    high up above. Show your pass! Carry on. Again the
    human stream splits into smaller streams. It’s quite right
    what they say in our text-books: the best place to hide is
    in a crowd, or a skyscraper.
    I am rushing to work, lost in a crowd of scientists
    working on a specially protected site. The scientists are
    shut off from each other by walls of fear and distrust,
    enormous pay packets and secret privileges. They have
    been caught out too often by dirty tricks played on the
    institute by security officers. The more you keep silent,
    the longer you live. Nobody asks any questions. Each one
    lives his own life within the walls of this cathedral of
    science. Hurry up now! It’s the beginning of the shift.
    My pass is checked once again and then I find myself in
    a heated corridor. This is the waiting room. All my
    friends are already there, the other twenty-two. The
    eighth group of the first course in the First Faculty of the
    Military-Diplomatic Academy of the GRU. For us the
    research institute is only an assembly point. Time to move
    into the departure hall next door. There’s no one inside it;
    only a big truck without a driver with an orange-coloured
    container loaded on it. The leader of our group unlocks
    the door of the container and we all go into it. Inside
    there are thick carpets and upholstered seats, as in a first-
    class aircraft cabin. But there are no windows. So we
    have no way of knowing where we are taken every

    day. And we never see the driver. He turns up only when
    he gets the signal and the doors of the container are shut
    from within. He probably hasn’t the slightest knowledge
    of our existence. Every day at 8.40 A.M. he comes into the
    hangar, gets into the driver’s cab and drives a ‘specially
    dangerous’ load from one secret site to another. There he
    backs his container into another hangar, gets out and goes
    into another room while the container is unloaded. Every
    evening he does the trip back. For the rest of the time he
    is driving other orange-coloured containers around
    Moscow. The containers may contain detonators for
    atomic bombs. Or it may be a deadly virus capable of
    destroying the whole of mankind. Or he may be transport-
    ing apparatus intended for genetic or meteorological
    warfare. How is he to know what’s in the containers?
    They are all identical, all orange-coloured. But he takes
    home a big pay packet. In such ‘scientific institutes’ as
    this one everybody, from the cleaners and night-staff, is
    very well paid. For the sake of secrecy – to keep them
    quiet.
    One after the other we jump down from the container
    onto the concrete. High up under the roof of the hangar a
    sparrow is chirping away. He alone sees all the secrets:
    who drives us, who cleans up the classrooms at night,
    who brings in our meals and cleans up the dining room
    after us. But we see no one. Everything is organized so as
    to prevent us from being seen. If there are people laying
    the tables in the dining room the doors leading to the
    classrooms cannot be opened. As soon as the cooks and
    waitresses have left the dining room and shut the doors
    behind them we get a signal – like Pavlov’s dogs -that all
    is ready. If our door into the dining room is open nobody
    besides us can go in. It’s all automatic. And the food is
    good. I never ate better, even in Czechoslovakia.

    Reply
78. 

    March 12, 2025

    HSBH164

    You will engage in very serious operations
    and if your stupid head lets you down some time, no
    amount of skill with a gun or your fists will help you. An
    officer who has exposed himself through his own mistake
    is no longer capable of obtaining secret information, and
    in that situation a gun won’t help him.
    ‘Japanese tricks for self-defence and attack and guns
    and knives are a sort of safety belt for someone working
    at a dizzy height above the ground. We simply don’t
    provide you with such a belt! The fact is that it is only
    those steel-erectors who make use of a safety belt who
    fall from high places. One day they forget to do up their
    belt and down they go. But those who never wear a
    safety belt never fall. Because they are always conscious
    of the fact that they are not strapped on. So they are
    always very careful. The safety belt reduces that constant
    caution.
    ‘If your head lets you down, you will have hundreds of
    professional policemen on your tail with cars, helicopters,
    dogs, gas, weapons and the last word in equipment. No
    gun is going to help you in such a situation. So we don’t
    give you one. We deprive you of every kind of illusion.
    Every one of you can rely only on his own head, his own
    intelligence. You may as well know now that there is no
    safety belt. One mental error, and you’re down the chute.
    This is the essence of the way we differ from the popular
    idea of a spy in dark glasses. And the achievements which
    our service has to its credit without recourse to dark
    glasses, sharp shooting or mighty blows with the hand are
    tremendous. The subject for today’s six-hour seminar is:
    methods of penetration by agents.’
    We started to study our notebooks. The training of
    officers in the GRU is radically different from what is
    written in novels. In the course of the next three years at

    the Military-Diplomatic Academy we were to hear quite a
    few surprising things.
    Man is capable of performing miracles. A man can swim
    the English Channel three times, drink a hundred mugs of
    beer, walk barefoot on burning coals; he can learn thirty
    languages, become an Olympic champion at boxing, invent
    the television or the bicycle, become a general in the GRU
    or make himself a millionaire. It’s all in our own hands. If
    you want it you can get it. Most important is to want
    something: the rest depends only on training. But if you
    simply train your memory, your muscles or your mind
    regularly, then nothing will come of your efforts. Regular
    training is important, but training alone decides nothing.
    There was the case of the odd character who trained
    regularly. Every single day he lifted a smoothing iron and
    continued this for ten years. But his muscles got no
    bigger. Success comes only when the training, of
    whatever kind (memory, muscles, mind, willpower,
    stamina), takes a man to the limit of his capacity. When
    the end of the training becomes torture. When a man cries
    out from pain and exhaustion. Training is effective only
    when it takes a man to the very limit of his capacity and
    he knows exactly where the limit is: I can do two metres
    in the high jump; I can do 153 press-ups; I can memorize
    at one go two pages of a foreign text. And each new
    training session is effective only when it becomes a battle
    to exceed your own achievement on the previous day. I’ll
    do 154 press-ups or die in the attempt.
    We were taken to watch future Olympic champions in
    training. There were fifteen-year-old boxers, five-year-
    old gymnasts and three-year-old swimmers. Look at the
    expression of their faces. Wait until the final moments of
    the day’s training, when you can see on a child’s face the

    grim determination to beat his own record of the day
    before. Just study them! One day they will bring home an
    Olympic gold to offer to our red flag with the hammer
    and sickle on it. Just look at that face: so much tension,
    so much pain! That’s the road to glory. That’s the path to
    success. To work only at the very limit of your capacity.
    To work at the brink of collapse. You can become a
    champion only if you are the sort of person who, knowing
    that the bar is about to fall and crush him, nevertheless
    heaves it upwards. The only ones who have conquered
    themselves, who have defeated their own fear, their own
    laziness and their own lack of confidence.
    Our ‘elephant’ had taken us to see young sportsmen in
    training for the Olympics.
    ‘That’s the way our country trains the people who are to
    defend its reputation in the world of sport. Do you really
    think that our country would take the training of our
    intelligence officers less seriously?’

    Reply
79. 

    March 12, 2025

    Delta.Zero.India

    There can be no mistake about
    it. But a factory has to have a name. If it says at the gates
    that it is a tractor factory that may mean that, apart from
    armaments, the factory produces something for tractors.
    But if the name at the gate tells you nothing, if it is
    something like ‘Uralmash’ or ‘Lenin Forge’ or ‘Hammer
    and Sickle’, then you can cast all doubt aside: it is an
    armaments factory pure and simple.
    The second rule of recruiting says that there is no need
    to clamber over the factory fence. People come out of a
    factory of their own accord. They go to libraries, to sports
    centres, to restaurants, to bars. Around a major factory
    there is bound to be an area where lots of workers live
    and where there are schools and nurseries for their
    children. There will be a medical centre, a tourist office,
    a park and so forth. You just have to find it all.
    The rules say that there’s no need to recruit the factory
    manager or the chief engineer. It’s easier to recruit their
    secretaries, who are by no means less well informed than
    their bosses. But unfortunately it is one of the conditions
    of our training in recruiting that we are forbidden to
    recruit women. Recruiting women, they say, is no training
    because it is too easy. It’s all right when you are working
    abroad, but not when we are being trained. It’s not really
    so bad. You can find a draughtsman or computer
    programmer, or someone in charge of secret documents
    or a copying machine.
    Every one of us was given a similar task and every one
    of us drew up his own plan, as if he were preparing for a
    major battle. Recruiting as part of training was no easier
    for us than the real thing. If you are arrested for such
    activity in any Western country there is only one conse-
    quence – you are sent back to the Soviet Union. But if
    you make a mistake under training and are arrested by

    the KGB the consequences are much more serious – you
    will never be allowed to travel abroad. When you are
    working abroad all your time is your own and there is no
    limit to what you can spend, whereas under training you
    have examinations to worry about – in strategy, in tactics,
    in the armed forces of the United States, in two foreign
    languages. You have to make the best of it. If you want
    to get on you have to pass your exams and do your
    recruiting.
    My first move was to draw in my mind a circle, about a
    kilometre across, round the vast factory site. Within that
    area I decided not to show myself under any pretext. I
    knew that every centimetre in that area was under
    observation by the KGB and that there was no point in
    my going there.
    One evening I was outside the zone waiting for the end
    of the day shift. A stream of people came rushing along
    the pavements. There was much noise, clatter and laugh-
    ter. A maelstrom of people.
    There was a great crowd at the bus stop, snow under-
    foot and freezing fog around the street lamps. People
    crowded noisily into the bars. But that did not interest me
    for the time being: that was the easy way and I would
    resort to chance meetings only if other ways did not turn
    up. What I needed now was a library, and I had no
    difficulty in finding the usual factory library nearby.
    Anybody could go in and I soon found myself among the
    bookshelves. As I moved along them I tried to see who
    was interested in what subjects. I needed a contact. I
    noticed a ginger-haired fellow in glasses studying books
    of science fiction. I decided to speak to him.
    ‘Excuse me,’ I said quietly in his ear. ‘Where can I find
    science fiction here?’
    ‘Right over there.’

    ‘Where exactly?’
    ‘Come here – I’ll show you.’
    I came across a contact on my third evening.
    ‘I’m looking for something about astronauts and about
    Tsiolkovsky.’
    ‘You’ll find it here.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘Come along – I’ll show you.’
    Spy films always depict intelligence officers as brilliantly
    eloquent and witty. The spy’s arguments are always
    irrefutable and his victim always agrees with his proposals.
    This is nonsense. In real life the reverse is true. The
    fourth law of recruitment says that every man has his
    head full of bright ideas and that everyone suffers, mainly
    because no one will listen to him. The biggest problem
    for everyone is to find a good listener. That’s impossible
    because everybody else is after the same thing, seeking
    their own listeners, so that they’ve no time to listen to
    other people’s silly ideas.
    Most important in the art of recruiting is the ability to
    listen patiently to one’s interlocutor. Learning to listen
    without interrupting is the guarantee of success. It’s a
    difficult art to acquire. But you can make a good friend if
    you are prepared to listen to him. I had found a friend. He
    had read all the books on Tsander, Tsiolkovsky and
    Korolev. And he talked also about others about whom it
    was not yet permitted to write books – about Yangel,
    Chelamei, Babakin, Stechkin. I just listened.
    We couldn’t talk properly in the library. In fact we
    were not supposed to talk at all. So I listened to him
    among the snowdrifts in a clearing in the woods where
    we went skiing. And in the cinema and in a little cafe
    where we drank beer.

    My friend was fascinated by the various systems of
    delivering fuel from the tanks to the rocket engines. The
    fuel can be delivered by means of either turbo-pumps or a
    displacement system. I listened and agreed with him. The
    first German rockets used turbo-pumps. Why then had
    that simple, cheap system been forgotten? Why, indeed?
    Although this method involved the use of very reliable and
    accurate pumps it would guarantee against a major
    accident – a burst tank full of fuel due to an increase in
    pressure in the displacement mixture. I agreed with this
    entirely.
    At our next meeting I had in my pocket a tape recorder
    in the form of a cigarette case. A wire from the recorder
    went down the sleeve of my jacket to my wristwatch,
    which contained a microphone. We sat in a restaurant
    chatting about the possibility of using nitrogen tetroxide
    as an oxidizing agent and liquid oxygen along with kero-
    sene as the main fuel. It seemed to him that, although this
    mixture was old-fashioned, it had been thoroughly tested
    and could be depended on for the next couple of decades.
    Next morning I played the tape over to Elephant. I had
    committed a fairly serious technical error: a microphone
    could not be put in a watch to record a conversation in a
    restaurant. The constant rattle of knives and forks next to
    the microphone is deafening, and our voices sounded too
    far off. This greatly amused Elephant and only when he
    had stopped laughing did he ask:
    ‘What does he know about you?’
    ‘That my name is Viktor.’
    ‘What about your surname?’
    ‘He didn’t ask.’
    ‘When’s your next meeting?’
    ‘On Thursday.’
    ‘Before then I will lay on a meeting for you in the 9th

    directorate of GRU Information. You will talk to an
    officer who analyses American rocket engines. Of course
    he knows a great deal about our motors too. He will
    provide you with the real questions, about the things
    which would interest him if you had got to know an
    American missile engineer. If you succeed in extracting
    from your bespectacled friend a sufficiently intelligible
    answer you can reckon yourself lucky . . . but not him.’
    The Information department of the GRU wanted to know
    what my friend could say about hydrogen fuel.
    We sat in a dirty bar and I told my friend that I didn’t
    think hydrogen fuel would ever be used. I don’t know
    why, but he thought I worked in the fourth shop in the
    factory. I had never told him that: I could hardly do so,
    since I didn’t know what the fourth shop was.
    He stared at me enquiringly for some time and then
    said: ‘That’s the way you people in the fourth think. I
    know how you always want to play doubly safe. You fear
    toxicity and the danger of explosions. That’s all very well.
    But think of the huge output of energy! The toxicity can
    be reduced and we are dealing with that in the second
    shop. Believe me: we shall be successful, and then limit-
    less possibilities will open up before us . . .’
    At the next table I thought I recognized a familiar back.
    Surely not Elephant? But it was. And along with him
    were some other rather impressive characters.
    Next morning Elephant congratulated me on having car-
    ried out my first successful recruitment.
    ‘It was just a training exercise. But never mind. If a
    kitten wants to become a real cat it has to start with
    fledglings and not with full-grown sparrows. Meanwhile
    you can forget all about hydrogen fuel. That’s none of
    your business.’

    Reply
80. 

    March 13, 2025

    Aquarium

    So there I was in the clearing. I was completely alone
    and ready to have my head or even other parts cut off if
    anyone had succeeded in following me. I had hidden a
    small box containing gold coins among some young fir
    trees nearby. If I were to be arrested during the meeting,
    gold coins would tell against me. I was supposed to be a
    poor tramp: where would I get hold of gold coins? The
    reason for the gold coins was that our ‘friend’ was a crafty
    one. He didn’t want to be paid in dollars or in marks but
    in gold. If something went wrong he would be able to
    explain that they had been left him by his great-
    grandmother.
    There was a long time to wait before the meeting. Huge
    pine trees rustled above my head. I asked myself who this
    ‘friend’ could be who was ready to hand over parts of the
    latest anti-tank missiles. A weapons designer? A general?
    The manager or owner of a missile plant? Who, apart
    from a general, an engineer or a factory owner, was in a
    position to get hold of parts of a missile? An ordinary
    worker might steal a single part, but each part was
    numbered. A guard might steal a whole missile, but they
    were all registered. How I wanted to be a big-time
    intelligence officer and recruit generals and engineers and
    obtain examples of the most up-to-date missiles.
    What a hope! In my worn-out suit and ragged sweater
    it would be rather awkward to meet an American general.
    What sort of an idea would he get of the GRU? Not to
    mention my battered car. Shameful.
    It was coming up to midday. Time for a meeting. I was
    holding a Japanese transistor in my hand. Some music
    was coming quietly over. I held the receiver with the
    aerial pointing to my left hand – that was the recognition
    sign. A watch with a dark green face was an additional
    means of recognition. Our friend would recognize me by
    those signs. He would have none. He would simply come

    up to me and ask the time and he would have to stop a
    little to my right. That would be sufficient for recognition
    purposes. It was already time. He was actually a minute
    late. Some general. Not much sense of discipline. At that
    moment a mud-bespattered tractor trundled out of the
    gate, driven by an old farmer smelling of manure. That
    was all I needed, for a tiresome old peasant like that to
    appear. I had arranged a secret meeting. For the last hour
    and a half there hadn’t been a single living soul to be
    seen, and now this old boy had to turn up just at the
    wrong moment. In a drawling voice he asked me the
    time. The time? I shoved the watch under his nose. Go
    on, get on your way. But he didn’t move. He stayed there,
    standing a little to my right. What do you want, old man?
    He pointed at his dirty old trailer. What on earth? Push
    off. I’ve a mind to … He also lost his temper. And it was
    only his anger that suggested to me that he was the
    ‘especially important’ agent whom they knew about in the
    Politburo and in whose work Kosygin himself took an
    interest.
    I had another look at him. Then at my watch. What
    doubt would there be? The general never existed. What-
    ever put it into my head that I would be meeting a
    general?
    Then I looked at the trailer. There, in amongst a pile of
    wood and covered by a dirty tarpaulin, were the broken
    parts of an anti-tank missile. Stabilizers, broken and
    twisted, a tangled mass of wires and printed circuits stuck
    together into a ball. I quickly took it all and hid it in the
    wooden boxes. I shook his hand, and ran to the car. But
    the German was banging on the car with his crutch.
    What did he want now, the old fool?
    He then indicated by a sign recognized all over the
    world that what he wanted was money. I had quite

    forgotten. I ran to the little fir tree, took the box from
    beneath the moss and gave it to him. He opened it and
    looked in with obvious pleasure. He examined the coins.
    He smiled. Go on, try them with your teeth, you old
    devil. What the hell do you need so much for? You’re
    soon for the grave. You can’t take it with you, you know.
    He simply smiled at me. Then I remembered my training.
    You have to smile at secret agents. To smile in a friendly
    way, with warmth and humanity. So I did as I had been
    taught. I smiled. Danke schon. He bowed to me, and
    pressed the money to his heart. I set off in my battered
    old car in one direction. He went off on his muddy tractor
    in another. A meeting had taken place.
    I dodged around the side roads, getting as far as
    possible away from the meeting. And quite unexpectedly I
    hit upon the relatively simple mechanics of this particular
    contact. There in Bavaria, not far from Ravensburg, was
    the base of the First American armoured division. The
    division was already equipped with the ‘Tow’ anti-tank
    missile, and the anti-tank units of the division were
    already firing the missiles, using dummy warheads. When
    the missile hit the target it didn’t explode but simply
    broke up. It was a genuine missile but without the
    warhead. That didn’t matter. Our warheads were no worse
    than the Americans’. It was not the warheads we were
    after at the moment, but the guidance system, the control
    mechanism and the chemical composition of all the
    components. And that is what I now had with me in the
    car. The mud would be removed and the wires
    disentangled. Whatever pieces were missing we would
    get our hands on next time. Whether they weighed a
    hundred kilograms or two hundred. Whatever could be
    got into the car.
    In the Soviet Army, when we fire ‘Shmel’ or ‘Falanga’
    missiles, miles and miles of tarpaulin sheets are spread

    out and whole regiments are sent to gather up the smallest
    fragments that fall. But with the Americans it’s the other
    way round. The don’t pick up the twisted bodies of the
    missiles, the crumpled circuits or the bent stabilizers.
    Consequently there is no need to recruit generals or
    designers. It is sufficient to make contact with a shepherd
    who tends his sheep on the vast lands near the military
    base. A forester, a road-mender or a lumberman can be
    an ‘agent of special importance’ and for thirty pieces of
    silver will deliver to you just what comrade Kosygin
    needs.
    I drove my battered car as fast as it would go along the
    wide German autobahns. Built by Hitler. Well built. I
    kept my foot down and wore a faint smile on my face.
    When I got back I would apologize to the Navigator and
    the First Deputy. I was not sure exactly why, but I would
    simply go up to them and say quietly: ‘Comrade general,
    forgive me, please.’ ‘Comrade colonel, forgive me if you
    can.’
    They are top-class intelligence officers. And that was
    exactly how to operate. Quietly and without attracting
    attention. I was ready to risk my career and my life for
    the success of our simple but brilliant operations. For the
    sake of our common aims. Forgive me.
    It is generally reckoned that a young spy, operating under
    cover of being a diplomat, a journalist or a businessman,
    should not be active in the first months of his appointment
    abroad. He has to get used to his role, to learn his way
    round the city and country in which he is working and get
    to know the laws, the customs and the way of life. Young
    officers in many intelligence services do just that in their
    first months – they are simply preparing themselves for
    carrying out important operations. At such a time the

    local police devote little attention to them: they have
    enough problems with experienced spies.
    But the GRU is a special kind of intelligence service. It
    is not like many other intelligence services. Since you are
    not being followed in the first months, you should take
    advantage of that fact, if nothing else.
    In my first months in Vienna I placed a packet in a
    dead drop, for a whole week kept under observation a
    place where a signal from someone was expected, took
    over some boxes one night in a wood and delivered them
    to the embassy, and withdrew some officers from an
    operation when our radio monitoring group detected
    increased activity on the part of police radios in the area
    of our operations. Everything I did was back-up for
    someone else’s operations, helping somebody, partici-
    pation in operations the purpose of which I did not know.
    Out of forty intelligence-gathering officers in our
    residency, more than half were doing the same kind of
    work. It was known as ‘covering the tail’. Those who did
    this work were spoken of with scorn as ‘Borzois’. The
    Borzoi is a hunting dog which doesn’t need a lot to eat but
    which can be coursed through fields and woods after foxes
    and hares. You can let it go after bigger animals but not
    on its own, only in packs. The Borzoi is made up of long
    legs and a small head.
    Everything in the world is relative. I was an officer of
    the General Staff. By comparison with hundreds of
    thousands of other officers in the Soviet Army I was a
    member of the top elite. Within the General Staff I was
    an officer in the GRU, that is in the highest grade
    compared with thousands of other officers in the General
    Staff. In the GRU I was a foreign service officer, which
    meant that I could be sent to work abroad. Foreign
    service officers belonged to a much higher class than
    those GRU officers who were not allowed to travel

    abroad. Even among the foreign service officers I also
    belonged to a superior caste, because I was engaged in
    intelligence-gathering, which was far more important than
    the work of maintaining security, dealing with technical
    questions or managing radio communications and moni-
    toring. But within that upper elite I belonged only to the
    rank and file. Intelligence-gathering officers are divided
    into two classes: ‘Borzois’ and ‘Vikings’. The ‘Borzois’
    are the oppressed, under-privileged majority in the upper
    class of intelligence officers. Each one of us worked under
    the total control of one of the Navigator’s deputies and
    practically never came face to face with the Navigator
    himself. We went hunting for secrets, or rather for people
    in possession of secrets. That was our main work. But
    apart from that we were used mercilessly to provide
    protection and support for secret operations at the true
    significance of which we could only guess.
    Above the Borzois are the ‘Vikings’, who in folk-myth
    tradition were ferocious, perfidious, quarrelsome, cheerful
    and daring men. The Vikings work under the personal
    control of the Navigator, with due respect for his
    deputies but operating mostly on their own. The most
    successful Vikings become deputies to the Resident. They
    no longer work without support but with a group of
    Borzois at their complete disposal.
    The Resident’s First Deputy kept an eye on everybody.
    He was himself a very active and successful intelligence-
    gathering officer, but in addition to his work of
    intelligence-gathering and managing his own group of
    Borzois he was in charge of the radio-monitoring group,
    he was responsible for the security and safety of the
    residency and for the work of all the officers, including
    the purely technical men. The only people not answerable
    to him were the cipher clerks. They were handled by the
    Navigator personally.

    Reply
81. 

    March 13, 2025

    MYST

    The door into our residency was green. It was a very
    low door, and you had to stoop to get through it. Many
    years previously some joker had brought from Russia a
    metal sign taken from an electric power pylon. It had a
    skull and crossbones on it and written underneath: ‘Keep
    out! Mortal Danger!’ The sign had been welded to our
    door and became our common talisman, protected as
    strictly as the secrets inside.
    ‘Do you realize that in the last war there were two
    categories of pilots in our air force? Some, the minority,
    had dozens of enemy planes to their credit, while the
    others, the majority, had practically none. The first lot
    had their chests covered in medals, while the others had
    just a couple. The majority of the first lot survived the
    war, while the others perished by the thousands and tens
    of thousands. The statistics of war make very painful
    reading. The majority spent no more than nine hours in
    the air before they met their end. Fighter pilots were shot
    down on average on their fifth sortie. With the first
    category the opposite happened: they carried out hun-
    dreds of sorties and each of them spent thousands of
    hours in the air . . .’
    The speaker was Major-general of the Air Force Kuch-
    umov, a Hero of the Soviet Union, a wartime ace, and
    one of the most determined officers in Soviet military
    intelligence after the war. On orders from the head of the
    GRU, he was carrying out an inspection of the GRU’s
    posts abroad operating under legal cover. He visited some
    countries as a member of a delegation dealing with arms
    control or something similar; in others he turned up as a
    member of a group of war veterans. But he certainly
    didn’t regard himself as a veteran; he was an active

    Reply
82. 

    March 13, 2025

    Team MIG

    The winds of change were blowing through the GRU and
    new people were coming to the top. But the names of the
    new men at the head of many of the most important
    departments and directorates meant nothing to me. There
    were some generals and admirals among them. But the
    name of the new head of the 5th directorate was only too
    well known to me. Kravtsov. Lieutenant-general. Five
    years previously, when I had entered the Academy, he
    had just received his first general’s star. Now he had two,
    and would probably have three very soon. All his
    predecessors in that job had been colonel-generals. The
    5th directorate! The whole Spetsnaz of the Soviet Army
    under the control of that wiry little fellow. He had under
    him the Spetsnaz troops and agent networks of sixteen
    military districts, four groups of forces, four fleets, forty-
    one armies and twelve flotillas. And he was still only forty-
    three. Much success to you, comrade general.
    Meanwhile I was having no success. I knew I had to
    find ways of getting at secrets, but I just didn’t have
    enough time of my own. Day and night, without any days
    off or holidays, I was working on agent support. Not a
    week went by without my adding another thousand
    kilometres on the speedometer. Sometimes the kilometres
    were added at a catastrophic rate, so that Seryozha
    Nestorovich, our mechanic, had to turn the kilometro-
    meter back on the First Deputy’s instructions to get rid of
    a few thousands. He had a special little tool for the job: a
    box and a long metal wire in a tube.
    I was not the only one whose kilometrometer he turned

    back. There were a lot of us Borzois in the residency, and
    every one of them was rushing around Europe like Henry
    Kissinger.
    A kilometrometer is a spy’s face. And we do not have
    the right to show our true faces. So Seryozha just kept
    turning.
    The Navigator rubbed his hands.
    ‘Come along in and sit yourselves down. Are we all
    here?’
    The First Deputy glanced round at us and counted
    heads. Then, with a smile at the Navigator, he said:
    ‘All here, comrade general, with the exception of the
    cipher clerks, a radio communications group and a radio-
    monitoring group.’
    The Navigator walked about the room looking at the
    floor. Then he raised his head and smiled happily. I had
    never seen him looking so cheerful.
    ‘Thanks to the efforts of Twenty-nine our residency has
    succeeded in obtaining information about the security
    arrangements at the forthcoming “Telecom 75” exhibition
    in Geneva. The GRU in the diplomatic missions in
    Marseilles, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Delhi managed to
    obtain similar information. But our information was the
    most complete and was obtained sooner than the others.
    For that reason the head of the GRU’ – and here he waited
    a moment so as to give the end of his sentence more
    weight – ‘so the head of the GRU has entrusted us with
    the task of carrying out a large-scale recruitment at the
    exhibition.’
    We howled with delight. We shook hands with Twenty-
    nine, whose name was Kolya Butenko. He was a captain,
    like me. He had arrived in Vienna after me but had
    already managed to recruit two new agents. He was a
    Viking.

    ‘Twenty-nine.’
    ‘Yes, comrade general.’
    ‘We are grateful to you.’
    ‘I serve the Soviet Union!’
    ‘And now listen. We’ll do the celebrating after the
    exhibition. You know how we carry out a large-scale
    recruiting effort – you are not children. The whole of the
    residency will go to the exhibition, and we shall all work
    purely on information-gathering. The GRU’s residency in
    Geneva under Major-general Zvezdin, and its residency
    in Berne under Major-general Larin, will be responsible
    for back-up. If for any reason we have to get out to
    France, the GRU residencies in Marseilles and Paris will
    be ready to help. The general command of the operation is
    in my hands. During the operation I shall have under me
    temporarily the head of the third department of the 9th
    directorate of the GRU Information Service, Major-
    general Feklenko. He will be arriving here at the head of
    a powerful delegation. Nikolai Nikolayevich . . .’
    ‘Here, comrade general.’ The deputy for information
    stood up.
    ‘The reception of the delegation, its accommodation
    and transport are your responsibility.’
    ‘Of course, comrade general.’
    ‘In the course of this large-scale recruitment drive we
    shall be employing the usual tactics. If anyone does
    anything stupid I shall sacrifice him in the interests of the
    success of the whole operation. My First Deputy’ – and
    the First Deputy stood up – ‘will acquaint each of you
    with those members of the delegation with whom you
    will be working. I wish you all success.’

    Reply
83. 

    March 13, 2025

    Aquarium

    A mass round-up! Dozens of spies against one victim.
    The victim senses that there are sharks on all sides and
    that there is no escape for him. Sometimes, when such a

    mass round-up takes place, with the participation of the
    entire contingent, like a wall of a Macedonian phalange, the
    victim cannot withstand it and commits suicide. More often
    he agrees to collaborate with us. If we had known about the
    American when he appeared in Austria, the whole
    irresistible might of the GRU would have been thrown at
    him. And if the Navigator had asked for help, then the
    Aquarium might have ordered the resources of several
    residencies to be concentrated on one recruitment. In these
    cases the victim shouts and struggles, coming up against
    our people wherever he turns. He might phone the police.
    Never mind, our boys can sometimes dress themselves up
    in police uniform. Then they can rescue him and advise
    him either to commit suicide or agree to the GRU’s
    proposals. When a whole horde of us are after one man,
    the unfortunate victim can phone every imaginable number
    and always receive the same reply. Drive him into a
    corner. Into a dead-end. There are various kinds of corners
    – physical and moral, financial dead-ends and deadly
    precipices. Or a man can simply be driven into a corner. A
    naked man in the corner of a bathroom. A naked man
    among those who are clothed always experiences an
    uncontrollable feeling of shame and helplessness. We
    know how to drive a man into a corner, how to humiliate
    him, and how to praise him to the heavens too. We know
    how to make him throw himself over the precipice and
    how to extend a helping hand at the right moment.
    ‘Lost in thought?’
    ‘Yes, Nikolai Tarasovich.’
    ‘Look what I’ve found.’
    I read the entry. A British couple from the little town of
    Faslane, the British submarine base. If the couple lived in
    Faslane it was very probable that they were connected
    with the ships. Perhaps he was captain of a

    ship, or maybe he simply worked in security at the base.
    Perhaps he was just a street sweeper at the naval base or
    near it, a milkman or the owner of a public house.
    Perhaps she worked in the library, or in the canteen, or in
    the hospital. Any of those positions would do
    marvellously – they would have contact with the crews,
    with the repair brigades and with the staff officers. If
    there were prostitutes at Faslane one could say with
    certainty that they were connected with the base too. And
    how! Through them it might be possible to obtain secret
    information that even the captains of the subs did not
    know.
    Faslane was too small. Every one of its inhabitants was
    connected in some way with the base. There’s a nuclear
    submarine base in France, but that is at Brest, a big city
    in which by no means everybody is connected with
    submarines. That is why we like to seek out very small
    towns in which there are military establishments of great
    importance, like Faslane. It would be very awkward for
    the GRU’s diplomatic residency in London to send its
    lads to Faslane. The authorities in Great Britain fre-
    quently catch our people and throw them out ruthlessly.
    You don’t even get into your stride. And the appearance of
    a stranger in a little town puts people on their guard. That’s
    why we were hunting there, in Austria. Among the
    inhabitants of those little towns, whose names sound so
    sweetly in the ears of a military spy.
    Night after night Nikolai Tarasovich and I spent going
    through the hotel registers. We could only wait and see
    whether one of those people would return to the same
    place a second time. If not we’d find others.
    The hotel registers recorded the past. A pity, because
    you couldn’t bring it back. But as we went through the
    books we obtained a clear idea of the scope of our future
    operations.
    * * *

    Reply
84. 

    March 13, 2025

    Dzidzai.Chidumba

    I sometimes get gifts, like a French adapter instead of my English style adapter, with a striped laptop. An envelope with an address and name. A robbery. Its a message and I get it. You are feeling some kind of way, shouldnt I be the agrieved party really?

    Off course you feed some of the tenants who accept and everyone around me. Who better to handle the mark.

    Why not devote your life to serving your nation instead like the oath you swore. I understand I may have put a spanner into your works but that was not off my doing, I left reluctanly but you have to respect my decision, what would you do in my shoes.

    You may not want to, but we have to respect each other because whether we like it or not we are connected by blood. Those grand children of yours are what matter most, its also your legacy and at some point we have to stop fighting and maintain cordial relations.

    Reply
85. 

    March 13, 2025

    C4

    You cannot love your grand child and hate the father. You cannot love your daughter and hate the father of her children. Ypu cannot love your kids and hate their father, especially if the kids adore their father, everyone must be allowed to have a redeeming quality…..

    Otherwise going to church and being religous is just a cover…..

    Reply
86. 

    March 13, 2025

    SAS

    Tracking and listening in to mobile phone conversations has
    been common practice for many years and it makes no
    difference who you are: royalty, the President, or someone
    who is a danger to society. Those that track the location of
    your mobile do so by triangulation of the phone masts your
    mobile is close to—or in some cases, accessing the GPS
    location in your phone. They sit in one of the many offices
    run by the NSA or their little sister GCHQ in UK, or there
    sub-monitoringofficeinOswestry,Shropshire.Mobile
    phones have become very sophisticated, as have the app’s
    designed to run on them—and we are all hungry to have the
    best and latest of both—but in doing so you run the risk of
    being tracked.

    Reply
87. 

    March 13, 2025

    C’est la vie

    PREMIERE PARTIE
    LA DEMOCRATIE LE “POUVOIR DU PEUPLE”
    LA BASE POLITIQUE DE LA TROISIEME THEORIE UNIVERSELLE
    “L’appareil de gouvernement”.
    Le problème politique de l’appareil de gouvernement” est le plus important de
    ceux qui se posent aux sociétés humaines.
    Souvent, le conflit qui surgit au sein d’une famille se ramène à ce problème. Ce
    problème est devenu très grave depuis l’apparition des sociétés modernes.
    Actuellement, les peuples affrontent ce problème persistant, et les sociétés
    supportent nombre de risques et de conséquences extrêmes qui en résultent.
    Elles n’ont pas encore réussi à lui trouver une solution définitive et
    démocratique. Ce Livre vert présente la solution théorique définitive au
    problème de “l’appareil de gouvernement”.
    De nos jours, l’ensemble des régimes politiques est le résultat de la lutte que se
    livrent les appareils pour parvenir au pouvoir: que cette lutte soit pacifique ou
    armée, comme la lutte des classes, des sectes, des tribus, des partis ou des
    individus, elle se solde toujours par le succès d’un appareil, individu, groupe,
    parti ou classe et par la défaite du peuple, donc de la démocratie véritable.
    La lutte politique qui aboutit à la victoire d’un candidat, avec, par exemple 51%
    de l’ensemble des voix des électeurs, conduit à un système dictatorial, mais sous
    un déguisement démocratique. En effet, 49% des électeurs sont gouvernés par
    un système qu’ils n’ont pas choisi, et qui, au contraire, leur a été imposé. Et cela
    c’est la dictature.

    Reply
88. 

    March 13, 2025

    Splinter Cell: Nightshade

    I don’t know if people know what they are getting themselves into by getting close to me. You can only stay at Sparta if you have balls of steel or patience and faith.

    Now there is a girl who is a 10 (not my ranking) but she is (Pamela), her voice is like the morning sunrise, her tears like the morning dew and her character like the Greek Phalanx. They didn’t want her to stay here because of that. Then a lady confessed to me. She is now ‘under government’, perhaps even pregnant, they want her to move into a core house and have made a match for her. Its embarrasing, when someone refuses to leave. If you give someone a government job, may it not be at their home. Let them go to work in some far off place then return home to rest and relax. Working at home is tedious and boring.

    That sounds like the work of a jealous group of people afraid of someone moving on. We had a good laugh when I borrowed her phone last time. People didn’t realise when Hinata indicated left that was the move on.

    Hell hath no fury…. no actually missed placed priorities. Then people started teasing and shouting at her and calling her names. It made me upset. Kinda like the same treatment I usually get, what a way to endear yourselves to someone.

    Then there is another girl who came claiming she was the honey pot. To me a honey pot shouldn’t say they are a honey pot, the mark makes that decision for himself. The first law of attraction is that the mark should initiate contact first, then you can consider yourself a succesful honey trap.

    Using state resources to stop love. Ha yah! Hardly a cool factor. If its meant to be it will be, if not it will not.

    Contradictory and contrived. You used to he so cool!

    Reply
89. 

    March 13, 2025

    Youth Wing

    We used to be so cool guys. Everyone envied and secretly wanted to be us. With our T Shirts, Regalia, Zambia’s,Overalls,Berets.

    We stood for something, we were revolutionaries, we were cadres we were unstoppable.

    Now our elders wont even enter the bar to drink with us.

    What do we stand for now? 30 pieces of Silver?

    Reply
90. 

    March 14, 2025

    MYST

    The Last Stand.

    When was the last time you rugby forward you studied the oppositions line out plays.

    You the managing director when is the last time you picked up a management journal. Hotel manager when was the last time you went through the hotel register, when was the last time you called frequent guests who dont come anynore to find out why or just wish them well.

    Dancer when was the last time you took up an exotic dance unknown to you.

    Soldier when was the last time you got in touch with people you did basic training with. When was the last time you showed initiative.

    Fund manager when was the last time you brushed up on futures and derivetives.

    Priest when was the last time you re-read the Bible, Revelations to Genesis.

    Student when was the last time you read things you do not know.

    Air traffic controller when was the last time you checked on your elecution.

    Stay at home husband when was the last time you baked.

    Parent when was the last time you saw you children run at sports day or playing their favourite sport.

    Reply
91. 

    March 14, 2025

    MYST

    The reason we school boy rugby is the passion, the war cries, the ladies, the fashion and the fact that these are semi-professional athletes who only play for school pride and nothing else.

    Reply
92. 

    March 14, 2025

    Aquarium

    The time passed very slowly. The lid of the thermos,
    which served me as a cup, had steam rising from it. A fat
    woman left a house and went down the street. Nothing of
    interest. A postman passed by on his bicycle. Then the
    streets were quite empty. A black Mercedes went down
    the street with a man in the back seat dressed in white
    robes: the representative of some poor country on his way
    to a meeting to demand money from richer countries.
    Diplomats from rich countries were also on their way to
    meetings. But the richer ones had more modest cars -they
    drove Fords and Volkswagens. The experts say that in the
    future the gap between the rich and the poor countries
    will get bigger. They should know. A bigger gap will
    mean that the diplomats from the poorer countries will
    travel in Rolls-Royce limousines, while the diplomats from
    the richer countries will probably switch to bicycles to
    save money.
    The fine hand on the very precise little chronometer
    went slowly round and round. The fat woman went past
    again. Again the sound of the tyres of a huge black
    limousine with tinted glass windows: some poor diplomat
    going to beg for aid. I again swept the street with the
    Zeiss binoculars, so as not to miss anything, to memorize
    the numbers and faces. There were not many of them. To
    memorize every little sign of life, every change. I had the
    Minox ready cocked, like an anti-aircraft gun on a tank,
    constantly prepared for action. Anything suspicious

    would be on film. The frames on a Minox film are tiny,
    so that you can get a great many on a short film.
    But what on earth was that? I hadn’t quite taken in what
    was going on. I was suddenly overwhelmed by an
    awareness of something terrible and irreparable. A very
    elegant Citroen had stopped on the street. I would have
    recognized it among a thousand other cars – it was the
    First Deputy’s Citroen. A woman got out of it, bent down
    quickly towards the First Deputy and kissed him. And that
    was the moment that my little Minox snapped. The
    woman got into a Fiat sports car and drove off. The First
    Deputy had long disappeared from the street.
    I sat in an armchair and bit my lips. The woman was
    certainly not the First Deputy’s wife. I knew his wife.
    Nor was the woman a secret agent. The Navigator knew
    the time and place of every operation, and he would
    certainly have banned all operations in my vicinity at that
    time. So it meant that the GRU was again trying me out.
    They had stuck me in that stupid room and put on a little
    comedy for me. Now they were waiting to see whether I
    would report the offence committed by the man I admired
    so greatly or whether I would try to cover up for him.
    That was why they had given me a camera, to be able to
    tell whether I had hesitated for even a moment or had
    used the camera immediately. They would also be able to
    tell from the photo whether my hands had been shaking
    or not.
    But I had other reasons for biting my lips. Another
    possibility remained. That quiet side-street was very suit-
    able for secret encounters of all kinds. Very few people
    were aware that I was sitting there in the hotel behind
    heavy shutters. Even the First Deputy might not know, if
    he had not been involved in the operation. And his
    mistress? An American woman? Or English? She was
    obviously foreign. Soviet women are not allowed to have

    cars when they are abroad. Certainly not sports cars.
    What would they need sports cars for? All cars belong to
    the Soviet state and are to be used only by those who are
    working to protect and increase the might of the state. If
    all this was not some kind of show put on to test me, then
    it was the end for the First Deputy. He faced a dismal
    end. It was the conveyor for him, the whole works. But it
    could be just a test for me. There had been plenty of
    them. I had acted exactly as I should have done – quickly
    and decisively. My unseeing eyes looked out on an empty
    street. Nobody was disturbing its peace. Only an
    unpleasant-looking, rather bent figure with a newspaper
    in his hand was hanging around the window of the shoe
    shop. Goodness knows what the fellow could find to
    interest him there.
    I leant back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. Then
    suddenly I leapt up, overturning the thermos. I grabbed
    the Minox and feverishly pressed the release. That was
    him\ Damn it all, that was the Green Friend. Once, twice,
    and then again the shutter clicked. To hell with all the
    Friends, along with Colonel-general Meshcheryakov, the
    First Deputy and his whore. Time was up. The Friend
    threw his newspaper into a rubbish bin and disappeared
    round the corner.

    Reply
93. 

    March 14, 2025

    Aquarium

    The quality of the photos might turn out to be unsatis-
    factory and that would reveal my mental state. That
    would draw attention to the fact that I did not want to
    report on the First Deputy and that I had hesitated.
    I stood up. I removed the telescopic lens from the
    camera. I packed the thermos, the lens, and the binocu-
    lars into a parcel and dropped them into a bowl. Some-
    body else would clear up after me. The Minox I held
    firmly in my left hand. Like that it would be easier to rip
    the film out if I were arrested. Ah, if only they would
    arrest me. Perhaps I could simulate being seized by the

    police? No, that wouldn’t work. The Consul-general
    would phone the police and be told that no one had
    attacked me. Then I should be put on the conveyor.
    I went out on to the street where the bright sunlight
    blinded me. No, in this joyful world things just couldn’t
    be that bad. It had been a routine check-up. A typical
    GRU provocation. And I had not taken the bait. At the
    Academy they had organized much worse check-ups for
    us. The lives of our closest friends were at stake. Then
    later it was explained that it had been just a little bit of
    play-acting thought up by our chiefs. Many of us didn’t
    pass those tests, and I did. And we were forgiven for a
    few minutes’ hesitation. We were, after all, only human.
    ‘Where did the Friend appear from?’
    I thought for a moment – should I tell a lie or not?
    ‘I didn’t notice, comrade general.’
    ‘You had a chronometer. Did he not turn up exactly on
    time?’
    I remained silent.
    ‘Did something confuse you? Was there something
    suspicious? Something you couldn’t understand or
    explain? What put you off?’
    ‘Your First Deputy . . .’
    A look of bafflement, then of pain appeared in his
    eyes.
    ‘. . . your First Deputy was at the meeting place twenty-
    two minutes before the Friend appeared . . . with a
    woman.’
    The bones on his fists stood out unnaturally white. His
    face was white too. Silently he studied the wall behind
    me. Then he asked, quietly and calmly:
    ‘You did not, of course, manage to take a shot of him?’

    It was difficult to tell whether he was asking a question
    or making a statement. Perhaps he was threatening.
    ‘In fact, I did.’
    I was afraid to look him in the eyes, so I looked down
    at my feet. The time dragged dully, unwillingly on. The
    clock on the wall ticked on – tick, tick, tick.
    ‘What are we going to do?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said, hunching my shoulders.
    ‘What are we going to do?’ He brought his fist down on
    the desk and at the same time I was sprayed with the spit
    from his mouth as he shouted: ‘ WHAT SHALL WE DO?’
    ‘Get ready to evacuate him,’ I said suddenly and crossly
    into his face.
    My shout calmed him down and he went quiet. He
    became just an unfortunate old man upon whom a great
    sorrow had descended. He was a strong character, but the
    system was stronger than any of us. It was stronger than
    all of us. The system was all-powerful. Any one of us
    could come under its inexorable axe. He was looking into
    emptiness.
    ‘You know, Vitya, in 1964 Colonel Moroz saved me
    from a death sentence. Since then I have taken him with
    me round the world. He recruited women. But such
    women! Such is life. He was very fond of them, and they
    fell for him too. I knew that he had a little something on
    the side. I knew he had a mistress in every city. I forgave
    him. But I knew that he would come unstuck one day. I
    knew. How can you hide such things in Austria? Can we
    do the evacuation between us?’
    ‘Yes, we can.’
    ‘Get the syringe from the cupboard.’
    ‘I’ve got it.’
    He pressed the button on his intercom: ‘The first cipher
    clerk.’

    ‘Here, comrade general,’ came the reply.

    ‘The First Deputy to me.’
    ‘Very well.’
    ‘Sit down,’ said the Navigator in a tired voice. He was
    already sitting at his desk, his left hand on the desk-top,
    his right hand in a drawer. That’s where it stayed. I was
    standing behind the chair in which the First Deputy was
    now sitting. The fact that the Navigator’s hand was in the
    drawer told the First Deputy everything. And my pres-
    ence told him that it was I who had observed him and
    had reported something back. He stretched out his whole
    body until his bones cracked and then quietly put his
    arms round behind the back of the chair. He knew the
    rules of the game. I slipped the handcuffs on him, then
    carefully turned up the sleeve of his jacket, undid the
    gold cuff-link and exposed his arm. I dipped a white
    napkin in gin from a green bottle and swabbed the place
    where the needle was to enter. I then filled the syringe
    with the slightly opaque liquid and inserted the needle
    carefully beneath the skin. Then I removed the needle
    and again wiped the arm.
    With a nod of the head the Navigator indicated that I
    was to leave. I left his office and as I closed the door I
    heard him say, in a voice empty of emotion:
    ‘Tell me all about it . . .’

    Reply
94. 

    March 14, 2025

    Aquarium

    I felt ill, really ill.
    Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. Only
    weak people feel ill. It is they who think up thousands of
    illnesses and give in to them and so waste their lives. It is
    weak people who invented headaches, sudden attacks of
    weakness, fainting fits and pangs of conscience. There
    are no such things in reality. All those troubles exist only
    in the imaginings of the weak. I don’t include myself
    among the strong. I am just normal. And a normal

    person doesn’t have headaches or heart attacks or nervous
    breakdowns. I have never been ill, never moaned and
    never asked anyone for help.
    But on that occasion I felt very bad. I had an unbear-
    able depression, a deadly depression. I could have killed
    someone!
    I was sitting in a little inn – in a corner, like a cornered
    wolf. The table-cloth on which I had placed my elbows
    was checked. Red and white. A clean table-cloth. A big
    mug of beer. The beer was like brandy in colour. It was
    probably very different to taste, but I couldn’t taste
    anything. There were two lions standing on their haunches
    carved on the sides of the beer mug. They were holding a
    shield in their paws. A beautiful shield and beautiful
    lions. Their pink tongues were sticking out. I was very
    fond of all sorts of cats: I loved leopards and panthers and
    black cats and grey cats. I also liked the lions depicted on
    the sides of the beer mugs. The cat is a beautiful animal,
    even domesticated. Clean and strong. A cat differs from a
    dog by its independent spirit. And how flexible they
    were! Why did people not worship cats?
    The people in the inn were all very cheerful. They
    probably all knew each other and were smiling at each
    other. Opposite me there were four healthy-looking peas-
    ants, with feathers in their hats and leather shorts down to
    their knees, held up by braces. They looked a very tough
    bunch with their ginger beards. There was already no
    room on their table for the empty beer mugs. They were
    laughing. What were they laughing about? I would have
    liked to hurl my beer mug into those laughing faces. Who
    cared if there were four of them or that they had fists like
    my regimental commander, as big as beer mugs
    themselves.
    Should I have a go at them? Let them kill me here on
    the spot. Let them crack my skull with an oaken stool or

    an Austrian beer mug. But they wouldn’t kill like that.
    They would throw me out of the bar and call the police.
    So should I have a go at the police? Or what about
    Brezhnev, who was due to arrive in Vienna soon to meet
    poor misguided Carter? Perhaps I might go for Brezhnev
    with an axe? Then they would certainly kill me.
    Only was it really worthwhile, dying at the hands of a
    policeman or of one of Brezhnev’s secret bodyguards? It
    was another matter to be killed by good strong people
    like those over there.
    They were still laughing.
    I have never really envied anybody. But now black
    envy slithered into my mind like a snake in the grass.
    How I wanted some shorts like theirs and a hat with a
    feather. I already had the mug of beer. What else could a
    man want to complete his happiness?
    They were rocking with laughter. One of them started
    to cough, and that stopped his laughing. Another one
    stood up, with a full mug in his hand, the froth coming
    over the top. He was also laughing. I looked him straight
    in the eyes. I don’t know what there was in my eyes, but
    when he met my stare the powerful Austrian, leader of
    the whole company, fell immediately silent, his face fell
    and his smile faded. He also looked me straight in the
    eyes with a fixed intent gaze. His eyes were clear and
    directed right at me. He compressed his lips and put his
    head to one side.
    Whether it was because my look had a cold, deathly air
    about it, or whether he had the impression that I was
    about to ruin myself, I do not know. I don’t know what he
    was thinking, but when his eyes met mine, that tough-
    looking peasant seemed to lose some of his fire. Everyone
    around him was laughing; the drink was having its effect.
    But he stood there with a long face, staring at the ground.

    I even began to feel sorry for him. Why had I with one
    glance spoilt the man’s whole evening?
    How long they stayed there I was not sure, but they
    finally stood up and left, the biggest one being the last to
    leave. He stopped in the doorway and looked at me,
    frowning. Then suddenly he heaved his whole mighty
    frame across to my table. He was as intimidating as a
    tank in battle. My jaw froze in anticipation of a crashing
    blow. But I wasn’t in the least afraid. Go ahead, Austrian,
    hit me! I had really wrecked his evening, and for that in
    our country you inevitably get punched in the face. That’s
    a tradition. He came up to me, his huge belly blocking
    the light. Hit me! I shan’t resist. Hit me, don’t spare me!
    He gripped my left shoulder with his huge fist and gently
    squeezed it. It was a powerful hand, but warm and
    friendly, not at all leaden. And it was as though human
    sympathy flooded through that hand. With my right hand
    I gripped his arm and squeezed it gratefully. I didn’t look
    him in the eyes, 1 don’t know why. I looked down at the
    table, while he made his way to the exit, clumsily and
    without turning round. A strange character, a being from
    another planet. But a human being, nevertheless. A good
    man. A better man than I was. A hundred times better.

    Reply
95. 

    March 14, 2025

    Artist of the Day Soundmap

    This article rocks for today’s music quiz! Artist of the Day Soundmap

    Reply
96. 

    March 14, 2025

    Hypckel

    Nailed my gaming fix with this gem! Hypckel

    Reply
97. 

    March 14, 2025

    SADC Space Exploration Agency

    Our progress appears to be impeded
    2.1MEETING THE CHALLENGE
    Prior to the 1930s flying in aircraft was costly and potentially dangerous. There were
    fewer passengers and less cargo than required for profitability without government
    subsidy. The Douglas Aircraft Company design team took the train to New York
    City to meet with TWA officials rather than fly the airliners of the day, as there just
    had been a series of accidents including the one that Knute Rockne, the Notre Dame
    football coach, had perished on. Gene Raymond, the Chief Engineer for Douglas
    used the newly dedicated GALCIT wind tunnel at California Institute of Technology
    (CalTech) to experimentally verify the aerodynamics of the new aircraft. Raymond
    used the latest aluminum stressed skin structure developed by Jack Northrop for the
    Lockheed’s aircraft fuselages. The engines were the new Wright Cyclones radial air-
    cooled engines that developed 900 horsepower. So Gene Raymond integrated the
    three principal elements for a successful aircraft from the newly demonstrated
    ‘‘industrial capability’’. In 1932, the Douglas Aircraft Company introduced the
    DC-2, and in 1934 the DC-3. The result was a commercial airliner that offered
    speed, distance and safety to the passenger and profitability to the airlines without
    subsidy. The aircraft was a sustained-use vehicle that flew hundreds of times per year
    and therefore at an affordable price. By 1939 the DC-3 was flying tens of thousands
    of passengers for the airlines worldwide.
    Like the DC-3, there were other aircraft built from the available state of the art.
    One such aircraft was the operational Mach 3-plus SR-71 developed by Clarence
    (Kelly) Johnson’s ‘‘Skunk Works’’1team at the Lockheed Burbank plant. The other
    aircraft was the North American X-15 research aircraft developed to investigate
    speeds up to Mach 6. The extensive wind tunnel testing established the aerodynamic
    characteristics of both. The structure was high-temperature nickel–chrome alloys for

    the X-15 and beta-titanium for the SR-71 in a structure analogous to a ‘‘hot’’ DC-3.
    The rocket engine for the X-15 was developed from earlier rockets and developed to
    a level not yet installed on an aircraft. The turbo-ramjet propulsion for the SR-71
    has yet to be duplicated 50 years later. For the X-15 the challenging goal was the
    flight control system that had to transition from aerodynamic control to reaction jet
    control at the edge of space. For the SR-71 the challenge was to design an integrated
    control system for both the engine inlets and the aircraft, and from high supersonic
    speeds to low landing speeds. This had not been done before, and it was accom-
    plished before the era of integrated circuits and digital control. The goal for the X-15
    was an approach to fly to space as frequently as could be expected of an aircraft-
    launched experimental vehicle. By 1958 the X-15 was approaching 300 successful
    flights. The X-15 was achieving flight speeds at almost Mach 6, and could briefly
    zoom to the edges of near-Earth space. Rockets of the day were single use and costly,
    with numerous launch failures. These aircraft were developed by engineers that did
    not ask, ‘‘What is the technology availability date?’’ but rather, ‘‘Where can we find a
    solution from what we already know or can discover?’’ And in both the X-15 and the
    SR-71, solutions that were not previously known were discovered and used to solve
    the problems in a timely manner. That spirit enabled the Apollo team to fabricate a
    Saturn V rocket of a size that was previously inconceivable, and succeed.
    2.2EARLY PROGRESS IN SPACE
    Also in 1957, during the International Geophysical Year (IGY), the USSR lofted the
    first artificial Earth satellite (Sputnik I) into low Earth orbit. Suddenly the focus was
    on catching up, and the space flight centered on vertical launch, expendable rockets
    and the experimental aircraft experience and capability were discarded. The USSR
    adapted a military intercontinental ballistic missile, the SS-6 Sapwood, to be the first
    launcher [Clark, 1988]. That launcher had the growth potential to become the
    current, routinely launched Soyuz launcher. The first Sputnik weighed 150 kg,
    while the payload capability of the launcher was about 1,500 kg. This is launch
    margin! The President of the United States rejected the suggestions coming from
    many sides to adapt military ballistic missiles, and insisted on developing a launcher
    sized specifically for the IGY satellite; that launcher, Vanguard, had almost no
    margin or growth potential. There was about a 4-kg margin for the payload
    weight. After a series of failures, the first United States Army military IRBM, the
    Jupiter missile, was modified into a satellite launcher and Explorer I was successfully
    launched. Since then, the former USSR, Russia, and all the other launcher-capable
    nations have focused on expendable launchers with the same strategy in ballistic
    missile utilization, that is they are launched for the first, last and only time.
    As discussed in Chapter 1, during the 1960s there was an enthusiasm to reach
    space together with a very intense effort to obtain the necessary hardware. Technical
    developments were ambitious yet technically sound and based on available or
    adapted/modified industrial capability. The difficulty was that the most capable
    vehicle configuration development, system designs, boosters and spacecraft were

    associated with a military establishment, primarily the US Air Force. One goal was
    to have an on-demand global surveillance with either a hypersonic glider with an
    Earth circumference range capability or a hypersonic cruise vehicle with a half-Earth
    circumference range capability. Another goal was to establish a manned orbital
    laboratory to assure a human presence in space and enable space-based research
    and earth/space observations. The spacecraft launchers proposed had the capability
    for frequent scheduled flights to support an orbital station with a 21 to 27 crew
    complement, crewmembers being on six months rotating assignments. With the
    government’s decision that space is not to be military but civilian, a civilian space
    organization must develop its own hardware and cannot use military hardware.
    Unfortunately most of the very successful system design efforts by the military
    organizations were discarded by the civilian organizations, with the result that the
    civil system never achieved the performance capability offered by the military
    systems.
    Before the Saturn V/Apollo Moon missions, the Apollo–Soyuz rendezvous and
    the short-lived Skylab experiment, the United States did have a dream to establish a
    space infrastructure and operational space systems. With the demise of the Apollo
    program and the elimination of the Saturn V heavy lift capability in view of a future,
    yet to be realized vehicle, there followed a 12-year period in which no crewed space
    missions were conducted, as all waited for the Space Shuttle to enter into operation.
    The dreamers, engineers, scientists and managers alike, with visions of future poss-
    ibilities, were put indefinitely on hold; the subsequent developments became myopic
    and focused on day-to-day activities requiring decades in development, and larger
    and longer funding profiles for minimal performance improvements. Armies of
    paper-tracking bureaucrats replaced small, dedicated, proficient teams.
    The United States is not the only nation that considered a space structure to
    establish an operational space infrastructure. In Figure 2.1 there is shown a diagram
    the author drew during discussions with V. Legostayev and V. Gubanov during the
    1985 IAF Congress in Brighton, England, illustrating the USSR vision of a space
    infrastructure. The sketch remains as drawn, with only the handwritten call-outs
    replaced by typed captions. This sketch shows a total space exploration concept,
    with certain capabilities unique to the Russian concept. One capability is a ground-
    based power generator–transmitter with the capability to power satellites, Lunar and
    Mars bases, and space exploration vehicles directly and also, via relay satellites,
    capable of powering other surface sites. In the 1930s Nikolai Tesla stated that,
    with his wave-based transmission system, a Mars base or spacecraft traveling to
    Mars could be powered from Earth with less than 10% energy losses. With many
    years spent translating Tesla’s notes and reports in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade,
    the Russians conducted many experiments using the cathode tubes that Tesla
    developed. One of the authors (PC) saw such a tube when visiting the Tesla
    Museum in Smylan, Croatia, in 1980. The remaining elements of the Russian
    vision in 1985 are in common with other space plans. Their concept is built
    around an orbital station and free-flying manufacturing factories (manned space
    stations have too many gravitational disturbances, ‘‘jitter’’, in the microgravity
    jargon, to be considered truly ‘‘zero-gravity’’). The space facilities are in low Earth

    Figure 2.1. A look to the future space infrastructure envisioned by Boris Gubonov and Viktor
    Legostayev of the former USSR, based on having Energia operational, circa 1984.

    orbit (LEO) and in geostationary orbit (GSO). So an integral part of the Russian
    space plan is an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) to provide movement of satellites and
    resources to and from LEO. Deep space exploration and establishing a permanent
    Moon base was also part of the total space plan (see Chapter 6). The important part
    of the Russian concept is that it is based on hardware capability that they already
    had in use or was in development. The key difference from other space plans is that
    their Energia launcher is a heavy-lift system that could launch either cargo payload
    vehicles (up to 280 tons) or a manned glider (Buran), see Figure 2.7. Energia was to
    provide a fully reusable heavy-lift system (Energia) and an aerospace plane (Buran)
    to support the orbital station and other human crewed systems.
    There was a space transportation vehicle in work at TsAGI [Plokhikh, 1983,
    1989] that could be considered analogous to the US National Aerospace Plane. This
    would be an orbital station resource supply vehicle, with Energia the workhorse of
    heavy-lift capability. The goal for the Russian and Ukrainian space groups was to
    greatly reduce the source of space debris, that is, inoperative satellites and third
    (spent) stages that remain in orbit [Legostayev and Gubanov, 1985]. Their
    approach would be to use Buran and the aerospace plane to return non-operative
    satellites to Earth from LEO for remanufacture. The orbital transfer vehicle would
    return non-functional satellites from GSO to LEO.

    Reply
98. 

    March 14, 2025

    MYST

    The power generation and transmission is based, as said,
    on concepts developed by the late Nikolai Tesla, with a reported progression of
    transmitted power up to 10 MW and efficiency over 75% from ground station to
    ground station. This historical database is archived also in the Tesla Museum in
    Belgrade, Serbia, as well as at Smylan.

    Just as the United States and the former Soviet Union had plans to develop
    space, so did Japan. In Figure 2.2 is a representation of an analogous plan presented
    by Japan’s space organizations as they considered the future. As with the Russian
    concept the Japan Space Organizations’ concept is built around an orbital station
    and free-flying manufacturing factories, again independent from the station because
    of microgravity jitter. Their plan is very comprehensive and indicates a desire to
    establish commercial space operations. There are large space facilities in LEO, Earth
    observation platforms in polar/Sun synchronous orbit and a variety of platforms in
    GSO. Integral to their space plan is an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) to provide
    movement of satellites and resources to and from LEO. Deep space exploration and
    establishing a permanent Moon base was also part of the total space plan. The Moon
    base was presented during a European Space Conference in Bonn, Germany, in
    1985. There was a space transportation vehicle in work at NAL (now JAXA)
    [Yamanaka, 2000]

    Figure 2.3. Aerospace Plane concept from Japan National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL).

    This future is build around an orbital stations and free-flying manu-
    facturing factories in LEO and in GSO. Deep space exploration spacecraft were
    planned to the Moon and planets. However problems with the engines for their
    H-II launcher and the downturn in their national economy put much of the
    Japanese vision on hold—or their vision was stretched out in time.
    So have many concepts envisioning the future, but the pioneers that expanded
    the scope of aviation are no longer there to make the dream reality. All that remains,
    it seems, are the skeptics, who say it is too expensive, or too dangerous, or imprac-
    tical, or irrelevant.

    Reply
99. 

    March 14, 2025

    Nikolai Vodka

    To think Tesla died alone and ‘poor’ is incredilous. Tesla invented a way to transmit electricity wirelessly throughout the world for the benefit of humanity. Unfortunately this put him at odds with the capitalist society of his adopted country, Thomas Edison remarked he wasn’t intrested unless he could put a meter to charge for usage and free global wireless energy made him a security risk to many parties…..Everyday we use one of Tesla’s inventions or research somehow, each time you switch on the electricity (AC) or drive an electric car or charge a phone wirelessly. Immortality! Trillionare in his own right.

    Lightcraft
    One of the limitations of the space launcher it the quantity of propellant that must be
    carried to achieve orbital speed. Even the most optimistic airbreathing system has a
    mass ratio of 4, so the propellant is three times the operational weight empty. During
    the 1984 International Astronautical Congress held at Brighton, England, Viktor
    Legostayev approached the author to discuss space developments in the Soviet
    Union [Legostayev, 1984]. Part of the material presented was an experiment where
    a vertical launch rocket used water as a propellant and the energy to vaporize the
    water and produce thrust was provided by a focused microwave generator. An
    altitude of about a kilometer was achieved. Material was also presented from the
    Nikolai Tesla museum in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In the translated Tesla manuscripts
    there was a discussion of projected electromagnetic energy with minimum transmis-
    sion losses. Tesla’s claim was that a base on the Moon or Mars could be powered by
    a suitably located generator on Earth. Legostayev presented some data to the effect

    that experiments projecting energy from Siberia to an orbiting satellite re-transmit-
    ting it to Moscow achieved the transmission efficiencies Tesla had predicted. The
    picture of the power generating tube Legostayev showed was identical to the tube the
    author saw at the small museum at Tesla’s birthplace in Smilyan, Serbia. In both
    cases the evidence supported that a remote-powered vehicle was possible.
    Professor Leik Myrabo, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York,
    has been developing a spacecraft based on focused electromagnetic energy (laser or
    microwave) for at least the last 20 years [Myrabo, 1982, 1983; Myrabo et al., 1987,
    1998; Myrabo, 2001]. In this case the vehicles are toroidal, the toroid forming a
    mirror to focus the received electromagnetic energy to vaporize and ionize water and
    air. Thus the propulsion system becomes an MHD-driven space launcher. Myrabo
    has recently demonstrated with USAF support a scale model propelled by a laser at
    Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, as shown in an Aviation Week article [Aviation
    Week and Space Technology, 2002]. The importance of the Myrabo concept is that is
    truly a combined cycle concept. Through a series of propulsion configuration adap-
    tations, the single spacecraft becomes four different MHD propulsion systems, all
    powered by projected power that can, in principle, reach low Earth orbital speed and
    altitude (Figure 4.42). The power projecting system can be on Earth or in orbit. If
    there is an orbital power generator, spacecraft can be powered to the Moon (see
    Chapter 6), or a satellite can be powered to geosynchronous orbit with a minimum of
    earthbound resources. If the power generator is placed on the Moon, then the system
    can provide propulsion to the nearby planets and moon systems. This concept is very
    interesting because it has the least onboard propellants of any system and hence the
    lightest weight.

    Reply
100. 

     March 14, 2025

     Engineers

     Why Is Latency Critical?
     Slow or inconsistently performing services can lose more custom‐
     ers than a system that is down. In fact, speed matters enough that
     Google Research found that introducing a delay of 100 to 400 ms
     caused a reduction in searches by 0.2% to 0.6% over 4 to 6 weeks.
     You can find more details at Speed Matters. Here are some other
     startling metrics:
     • Amazon: for each 100 ms, it loses 1% of sales
     • Google: if it increases page load by 500 ms, it results in 25%
     fewer searches
     • Facebook: pages that are 500 ms slower cause a 3% dropoff in
     traffic
     • A one-second delay in page response decreases customer satis‐
     faction by 16%

     Reply
101. 

     March 14, 2025

     Info.Sys

     Monitoring and Reporting on SLOs
     Now that you have well-defined SLOs, it is critical to monitor how you are doing in
     real-life in comparison to your ideal objectives. We have not gone into operational
     visibility in this book yet, but there are crucial things to discuss before moving on to
     the next topic.
     Our top goal in monitoring for service-level management is to preemptively identify
     and remediate any potential impacts that could cause us to miss our SLOs. In other
     words, we don’t want to ever have to rely on monitoring to tell us that we are cur‐
     rently in violation. Think of it like canoeing. We don’t want to know rapids are
     present after we are in them. We want to know what is happening that could indicate
     rapids there are downstream while we are still in calm waters. We then want to be able
     to take appropriate action to ensure that we stay within the SLOs to which we have
     committed ourselves and our systems.
     When monitoring, we will always rely on automated collecting and analysis of met‐
     rics. This analysis will then be fed into automated decision-making software for
     remediation, for alerting of human operators (aka, you), or for ticket creation for
     later work. Additionally, you will want to visualize this data for real-time analysis by
     humans, and potentially you will want to create a dashboard for a high-level view of
     current state. We’ll want to consider all three of these scenarios when we discuss the
     various indicators we will be monitoring.
     In other words, suppose that you have 10.08 minutes of downtime for the week, and
     by Tuesday, you’ve had three minutes of downtime over three days due to “Stop the
     World” Cassandra Garbage Collection events and one minute from a load balancer
     failover. You’ve used up 40% of the SLO already, and you still have four days left to go.
     Now is the time to tune that garbage collection! By having an alert after a certain
     threshold (i.e., 30%) create an email in the ticketing system, the database reliability
     engineer (DBRE) can jump right on this issue.
     Monitoring Availability
     Let’s use the availability SLO that we defined in the previous section. How do we
     monitor for this? We will need to monitor system availability as well as user-level
     errors to get an appropriate picture. As a reminder, our current sample availability
     SLO is as follows:
     • 99.9% availability averaged over one week
     • No single incident greater than 10.08 minutes
     • Downtime is called if more than 5% of users are affected
     • One annual four-hour downtime allowed, if:
     — Communicated to users at least two weeks ahead of time
     — Affects no more than 10% of users at a time

     Wrapping Up
     Service-level management is the cornerstone of infrastructure design and operations.
     We cannot emphasize enough that all actions must be a result of planning to avoid
     violations of our SLOs. The SLOs create the rules of the game that we are playing. We
     use the SLOs to decide what risks we can take, what architectural choices to make,
     and how to design the processes needed to support those architectures.
     Having completed this chapter, you should now understand the core concepts of
     service-level management, including SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs. You should know the
     common indicators that are used, including availability, latency, durability, and effi‐
     ciency. You should also understand the approaches to monitoring these indicators
     effectively to catch problems before your SLOs are violated. This should give you a
     good foundation to effectively communicate what is expected of the services you
     manage and to contribute to meeting those goals.
     In Chapter 3, we cover risk management. This is where we begin to evaluate what
     might affect the service-levels we’ve committed to meeting. Using these service-level
     requirements and recognizing the potential risks, we can effectively design services
     and processes to ensure that we fulfill the promises we’ve made to the business.

     Reply
102. 

     March 14, 2025

     MYST

     Laine Campbell and Charity Majors

     Database Reliability Engineering
     Designing and Operating Resilient
     Database Systems

     ….You will forever be in my hearts guys, but we all know what needs to happen. I am just one lad. Its now a question of fate. In the mean time lets try have fun and exchange ideas. A promise is not broken if you release me.

     Reply
103. 

     March 15, 2025

     MYST

     Vanhu vano fara handina pressure navo. Nice one lads tambotandara.🔥🔥🔥

     Happy Birthday DJ JO.🎂

     Subaru boxer engine bho! Asi Sandi arikutoda..kkkk

     Inwai muraradze guys.😜🍺

     Reply
104. 

     March 15, 2025

     MYST

     You can excuse my friend of many things but you can never accuse him of being a bad father.

     Reply
105. 

     March 15, 2025

     MYST

     All day I have kept myself occupied with imaginary thoughts. I was thinking today is a perfect day for going out. Tomutsa jagwa topakirana imomo tiri preferable a GD6, Borrowdale KFC maziBucket ne ma zinger mumota mune’ ma cooler box; Hunters, Castle, Zambezi, Black Label, Gold Blend Black, Nikolai Vodka Caramel & Tofee. Storm,Madison,Flame,Remington any will do, asi boyz dzangu dzino farira Everest,Breeze kana Roxbury saka standard, hapana unokumbira umwe, every is catered for.

     Ndisu uyo, Sam Levy, Hatcliffe, Domboshawa, Showground turn right Ngomakurira. Turn left pay for entry, don’t forget to leave a donation. We are to lazy to climb so we drive past AFM, Mapositori up the trail. If you hesitate its certain death,a long steep fall, just keep to the trail. What do you get from climbing Ngomakurira, vapfana veko told me its stress relief, a group of young boyz who I shared my chips with, found them on top and they showed me a cave with rock paintings, too bad its been defaced with matsito, who does that, some of those paintings are 3000 years old. Your ancestors left you clues, hints and tips,then we deface the wall.

     When I was there last time,I wanted to give them a lift but they said stop here! we cannot go any further. I said lads its okay I will drop you off at home its getting dark. They said no we cannot go any further. I was left pondering but had to respect their decision. Dai vaida kutora huni we would have waited for them, put them at the back of the BT50 and dropped them off regardless, but they couldn’t leave the Mountain for some reason. When said good bye they said if you come nack again we will show you the other cave, but for that one bring fire🔥 As lomg as you are clean do not be afraid no matter what you see…..🐠

     Reminds me ndakabhowanzirwa around 2012 ndirikubasa. 10 against 1. Zvikanzi futi kuZimbabwe hakuna KFC. Manje ta’nayo😜. Zvikanzi hamuna ma Ferrari, manje Boka anayo ye red futi🚀. Seka urema wafa.

     Reply
106. 

     March 15, 2025

     MYST

     Let me tell you about where I come from. J section.

     We have Doctors and Nurses, DJs, Musicians, C Numbers, Police, Airmen, Soldiers, Parks, Prisons, Teachers, Drivers, Conductors, National Service Youth at the Shops and two Spartans.

     One big happy family, we all find a way to live together in harmony, people of varying backgrounds and cultures.

     Reply
107. 

     March 15, 2025

     Rebel

     Boyz dzangu ko Nyathi?

     Maggies!

     Nema Super.

     Totenga pa Helensvale.

     Papi?

     pa Hood.

     Haa bho!

     Chimboisa Nisha pirori.

     🔥🔥🔥

     Reply
108. 

     March 15, 2025

     MYST

     Boyz kana tasvika ku Ngomakurira, ndichambo dira doro pasi kutenda vaDzimu vangu nevaridzi venzvimbo.

     Handisi kutambisa doro don’t worry, mutambo.

     Reply
109. 

     March 15, 2025

     Griffin

     Rasta kana tadzoka tirikuenda kubhawa straight here.

     Haa maya. Topfura pa Koala tichitenga nyama, via One Commando off course. Ndasuwa Beef ne Pork.

     Manheru boyz aziva kwake aziva kwake.

     Bho Rasta its plan.

     Varume sei pa Showground pachinzi pa Showground.

     Hameno, hasvisi zve Agricultural show here.

     Kune imwe.

     I think akawanda.

     Kunge Murambinda kana White House.

     Ko boyz, sei Mazowe ichinzi Mazowe.

     Haa guys chimbovharai Gold Blend.

     Iriku rohwa straight sha.

     Buju atombinda mu level.

     Manje manje inenge ya Vet

     kkkkk

     Haa boyz musadaro

     Mazowe inonzi Mazowr nekuti vachena vanga vasinga gone kuti Manzou.

     Ho’

     Nyabira i Nyavira

     Kariba i Kariva.

     Kudzidza hakupere amana.

     Rasta makambotengerwa Orange na Shamiso paMazowe muchienda Glendale kubhora.

     Sha ndanga ndakanganwa. Shamiso i simbi asi ranga riri bhebhi remu face saka you know. Plus ndi gunners, saka you know.

     Asi boyz makaona kuti makorokoza arikuvaka ma den shamwari pasi pesango, jagwa solar zvesebkumusha.

     Sha ukabata bhandi, wotoita something.

     Rasta hamudi tizopinda mugomba here.

     Ndakapinda kudhara ku Renco mine, munopisa

     Basa riye varume respect.

     Ndiro ngomo racho here iro.

     Tasvika

     Amana mozadonhe, tokusiya marara.

     Reply
110. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     If someone was 40 years old in 1980 it would mean they would be around 85 today. Our first cabinet as Zimbabwe was made up of 30, 40 year olds with the older members barely 50 years old.

     Take a moment to think about the implications. If you are good enough are you not old enough? or perhaps at 40 we are still diaper babies.

     The narrative can be changed to suit who ever wants it. Thats why I love Army life, that civilian thinking is removed completely. A 40 year old general will be daluted by a 60 year old colonel. A 24 year old 2nd Lieutenant will be saluted by a 40 year old Sergeant. They will even take orders from them and run around. If someone retains civilian thinking they may be hurt by this, that is why the Army is no place like any other. We take crazy and make it cool.

     Reply
111. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     If there is one thing we must impress on African people is imagination. You can do anything you can do things thought impossible. When a man designs a helicopter instead of laughing at him why not look at see how we can improbe on the design and make it practical. Rumwe rimwe harikombe churu. Imwe anogona electronics, imwe ma sketch and design, umwe is a mechanic, umwe umwe boiler maker,umwe welder, umwe is a test pilot,umwe MATLAB, umwe CAD, umwe programmer,umwe business analyst,umwe scurity officer, umwe ku avionics, umwe sales ne marketing, umwe espionage,umwe financing,umwe public relations and umwe is a manager that can bring different people together with one unifiying goal, to make a flying machine.

     Beginning construction on Raptor 01 on November 2, 1995, LMAS employees
     Tommy Cole (left foreground) and L. D. Fleeman (left background) load the lower
     cap on to the nose landing gear wheelwell sidewall (known as a “web”) while Den-
     nis Watts (right foreground) checks one of the frames that will be attached to the
     web. Harold Morris (right background) is doing a preinstallation check on the other
     web. This was the first phase of building the first forward fuselage section. (Lock-
     heed Martin Corporation.)

     A close-up view of an F-22 midfuselage section as it is placed in to its final assem-
     bly area at Fort Worth. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     Boeing crane operators and assembly mechanics load a “center keel” for
     the first Raptor’s aft fuselage section into an assembly fixture. (The Boe-
     ing Company.)

     On September 26,1996, Boeing employees moved the titanium alloy and
     composite material aft fuselage section for the first of nine EMD F-22As
     into position for high-precision automated drilling. A data-driven, laser-
     guided drilling machine then drilled more than 2000 holes into the struc-
     ture. (The Boeing Company.)

     The wings of Raptor 01 are shown in final assembly on May 29, 1996 at a Boeing
     facility in Seattle. Each F-22 wing measures about 16 ft (side of body) by 18 ft (lead-
     ing edge) and weighs about 2000 Ib on completion. (The Boeing Company.)

     A Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 engine is shown hanging from one of
     P&W’s old J75 turbojet engine (the engine used by the USAF F-105
     Thunderchief and F-106 Delta Dart fighters) slings. Two F119s, without
     their afterburners in operation, propel the F-22 past Mn 1.5. (Pratt & Whit-
     ney Large Military Engines.)

     The Lockheed Martin F-117A Nighthawk, which was a third-generation stealth aircraft, was a Skunk Works achieve-
     ment just like its SR-71A Blackbird stable mate—the first-generation stealth aircraft. The Have Blue prototypes were
     the second-generation. The fourth-generation is the Northrop Grumman B-2A Spirit, while the fifth-generation is the
     Lockheed Martin/Boeing F-22A Raptor. Thus, Lockheed is the hands-down leader in the creation of stealth aircraft
     products. Here are 17 F-117s at Langley AFB in late 1990, just before they were flown to Saudi Arabia for subsequent
     action in Desert Storm. (U.S. Air Force.)

     During its official unveiling ceremony inside Lockheed Martin’s Plant 10 facility in Palmdale, California, the first
     of two Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin/Boeing) YF-22A prototypes appears publicly
     for the first time on August 28, 1990. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     Although the Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 engine does not appear very complicated in this phantom view, it
     is an extremely advanced propulsion unit. It develops more than twice the thrust of current engines under
     supersonic conditions, and more thrust without afterburner than conventional engines with afterburner. (Pratt
     & Whitney Large Military Engines.)

     With Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor chief test pilot A. Paul Metz standing nearby, the large-scale F-22 paint
     application test model is shown. By using a highly sophisticated and fully computerized robot paint
     machine, Lockheed Martin can automatically paint the nine EMD F-22As as well as the 330 subsequent-
     production Raptors with predetermined paint schemes. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     The Boeing-developed tactical displays for the F-22 are shown on this sim-
     ulator. The defense display on the left gives pilots the information they
     need to protect themselves against threats. The situation display in the
     middle provides them with overall situation awareness and navigation
     information. The attack display on the right gives them the information
     necessary to attack a target. (The Boeing Company.)

     and/or use.
     There are six liquid crystal display (LCD) panels in

     Another view of an F-22 cockpit simulator shows a pilot firing
     a missile launch at a target. Note right hand on control stick
     and thumb on fire button. (Lockheed Martin Corporation

     LMAS quality assurance engineer Bryant McKee (African American, just had to put it outhere for our black people) uses an ad-
     vanced optical contour measurement system to examine
     and quantify surface variances of a test panel on May 15,
     1996 that is representative of an F-22 forward fuselage sec-
     tion. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     From the X (x-ray) files, LMAS quality assurance engineer
     Dave van Proyen uses an advanced x-ray system in May
     1996 to measure porosity in an aircraft part made of com-
     posite material. This new device, called the energy-sensitive
     x-ray system, uses an x-ray tube source (suspended above)
     with an eight-channel, energy-sensitive detector located
     below the part. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     In a demonstration of a tool that will be very important in the
     assembly of F-22s, LMAS’ Bryant McKee inspects the gap
     between the avionics bay access door and the forward fuse-
     lage of the YF-22A ATF prototype, circa early 1996. (Lock-
     heed Martin Corporation.)
     These include composite parts fabrication, painting,
     radar cross-section (RCS) verification, ground-based
     engine runs, and flight operations.

     Machinist Mike Osborne, Boeing Defense and Space Group manufactur-
     ing, uses a horizontal-boring mill to cut part of an F-22 aft fuselage frame
     in February 1995. A week earlier, the air vehicle Critical Design Review, a
     major milestone, was completed. (The Boeing Company.)

     Boeing uses advanced processes to build wing skins for the F-22. Agnes
     Ulrich, Boeing plastic bench mechanic, monitors an automated contour
     tape-laying machine that applies layers of advanced composite resin-
     impregnated tape on top of a precisely curved surface to form a wing skin.
     Automated fabrication replaces the conventional and labor-intensive hand-
     layup method. (The Boeing Company.)

     Reply
112. 

     March 16, 2025

     Call.Sign Nhengure 22

     otal and unyielding air supremacy is the number 1 requirement to achieve a complete
     victory against any well-equipped adversary in a modern war. The need to maintain
     complete air superiority is imperative. This need first became apparent during World
     War I, when, for the first time, aircraft were extensively used for all-out warfare.
     By the time the United States entered World War II, numerous advances in U.S. military
     aviation—especially in fighter-type aircraft—had been realized. No longer were U.S. Army
     and U.S. Navy biplane fighters armed only with two small-bore (.30-caliber) machine guns.
     Instead, following a paradelike succession of airframe and powerplant advancements, the
     Army and Navy had acquired a number of monoplane fighters with as many as four large-
     bore (.50-caliber) machine guns.
     These single-wing army and navy fighters of late 1941—the Grumman F4F Wildcat, Se-
     versky P-35, Curtiss P-36 Hawk, Bell P-39 Airacobra, and Curtiss P-40 Warhawk—quickly
     proved to be inadequate. They were demonstrably inferior to Germany’s Messerschmitt Bf
     109 and Japan’s Mitsubishi A6M Reisen (better known as the Zero).
     Experience quickly dictated that the Army and Navy acquire a variety of much improved
     fighter planes, heavily armed with six to eight .50-caliber machine guns. These included
     the Chance Vought F4U Corsair, the Grumman F6F Hellcat, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning,
     the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, the North American P-51 Mustang, and the Bell P-63 King
     Cobra. The F4F, P-39, and P-40 fighters had fought valiantly, but after 1942, the more
     advanced P-38, P-47, P-51, F4U, and F6F fighters excelled, allowing the United States to
     gain and maintain air superiority in all theaters of operation.
     The lesson was obvious. To prevent World War III, the United States had to continue to
     produce matchless fighter aircraft, able to secure air superiority. The new fighters would
     come just as the jet age unfolded.
     The first generation of post-World War II jet fighters included the Grumman F9F Panther,
     the McDonnell F2H Banshee, the Lockheed F-80 Shooting Star, and the Republic F-84 Thun-
     derjet. These provided the training and logistic base necessary for the development of the
     second generation of swept-wing aircraft that would be able to exceed the speed of sound.

     The North American XP-86 Sabre was originally designed with straight wings, but the
     acquisition of data on swept-wing aircraft from Germany resulted in a decision to give the
     wings a 35° sweep. When modified with swept wings, the USAF North American P-86
     became the first production aircraft capable of breaking the sound barrier, although this
     could only be done in a dive.
     The F-86 (the designation was changed from P for pursuit to F for fighter in 1948) went
     into combat against the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-15 during the Korean War. The MiG was
     marginally superior in performance to the early Sabres, but the superior pilot training,
     aggressiveness, and skill of the American pilots more than made up the difference.
     Although the exact kill ratio of MiGs to F-86s is still debated, a generally accepted num-
     ber is 792 MiGs shot down at a cost of 78 F-86s. Thirty-nine pilots became aces in the F-86,
     including the USAF “Ace of Aces” of the Korean War, Captain Joseph McConnell, who had
     16 victories.
     Despite its great success, the F-86, like any other fighter, had to be succeeded by the
     improved “century series” types. These were successively more expensive and complex,
     and included the North American F-100, the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, the Lockheed F-104
     Starfighter, the Republic F-105 Thunderchief, and the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger and
     F-106 Delta Dart.
     Yet by 1965, when the United States was about to enter the war in Southeast Asia, the U.S.
     forces had only two air superiority fighters. These were the excellent Chance Vought F-8
     Crusader and the McDonnell (McDonnell Douglas after 1967) F-4 Phantom. Both aircraft
     carried air-to-air missiles, but the F-8 was equipped with four 20-mm cannons from the
     start while the Phantom did not carry an internal gun until the advent of the F-4E. (Gun
     packs could be attached to external fittings.)
     The F-8 used its guns to great advantage in the dogfights with MiG-17s, -19s, and -21s,
     and achieved a much higher kill ratio than F-4s. All U.S. air-to-air missiles had been
     designed for use against bombers, and had to be carefully managed to be effective during
     combat with a fighter.

     Reply
113. 

     March 16, 2025

     Call.Sign Nhengure 22

     Out with the Old and In with the New
     The Soviet Union also continued to build many new fighter prototypes, and one of the
     most impressive of these was a fighter-interceptor aircraft designated MiG-25 and code-
     named Forbatby the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This new air-superiority-
     type fighter featured two very powerful turbojet engines and a speed approaching Mach
     number 3 (Mn 3)—three times the speed of sound. It had been developed as an all-out
     interceptor to challenge U-2s and SR-71s, and to meet and defeat the proposed trisonic
     B-70 bomber that did not enter production.
     As a part of an ongoing process, and to counter any challenge like that of the MiG-25,
     USAF officials had initiated its Fighter-Experimental (FX) program in 1966. This generated
     a heated debate on the appropriate size for a fighter, with the extremes ranging between a
     33,000-lb fighter and a 60,000-lb fighter.
     The long debate, and the experience gained in Southeast Asia, resulted in an intense
     competition between a number of U.S. airframe contractors. On December 23, 1969,
     McDonnell Douglas—builder of the F-4—was selected to build the FX. The FX was subse-
     quently designated F-15 and named Eagle.
     At Edwards Air Force Base, California, McDonnell Douglas chief test pilot Irving L. “Irv”
     Burrows made the first flight of the F-15A Eagle on July 27,1972 (USAF serial no. 71-0280).
     Further flight testing of this and subsequent F-15A/B aircraft quickly demonstrated the
     amazing capabilities of the extremely advanced air superiority fighter. It proved to be the
     most maneuverable, powerful, and agile fighter-interceptor aircraft ever produced for the
     USAF Tactical Air Command or TAG (Air Combat Command or ACC after June 1,1992).
     Approximately the size and weight of a World War IIB-25 Mitchell twin-engine bomber,
     the Mn 2.5+ F-15 instantly showed it could literally fly circles around any other fighter in
     the skies. With its unique higher engine thrust to airframe:powerplant weight ratio, it
     became the first airplane in the world to exceed the speed of sound while climbing straight
     up! At this writing, about 27 years later, the F-15 arguably remains the best fighter in the
     world. Yet with the advent of much improved fighters from other nations in the mid-
     1980s—particularly from the former Soviet Union, but also from Europe—the USAF began
     the process of selecting a successor to the F-15.

     Air Superiority Fighter Rivalry
     In the mid- to late 1980s, Russia put into service a pair of advanced fighter aircraft to counter
     American fighters, including the F-15, the F-14 Tomcat, the F-16 Fighting Falcon, and the
     F/A-18 Hornet.
     Two important fighter aircraft from the Soviet Union—the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-29
     Fulcrum and the Sukhoi Su-27 Flanker—had been operational since early 1985 and mid-
     1988, respectively. In response, the USAF initiated a program in mid-1983 to create a new
     air superiority fighter for the 1990s and beyond. Intended to counter both existing and
     future Soviet fighters, the new aircraft was called the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF).
     The USAF’s Aeronautical Systems Division (ASD) at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio,
     created its ATF System Program Office (SPO), and the ATF program was officially begun.
     ATF design concepts were solicited in September 1983. The ATF SPO awarded contracts
     valued at about $1 million each to seven airframe contractors: the Boeing Airplane Com-
     pany, General Dynamics, Grumman Aerospace Corporation, Lockheed Corporation,
     McDonnell Douglas Corporation, Northrop Corporation, and Rockwell International,
     North American Aircraft. The respective ATF concepts had to be received by the ATF SPO
     on July 31,1984.
     Two powerplant contractors—General Electric and Pratt & Whitney, were selected to
     participate in the ATF program under a 50-month duration Joint Advanced Fighter Engine
     (JAFE) program whereby each firm received identical $202 million contracts in October
     1983. One of these engines would ultimately provide the propulsion system for the winning
     ATF aircraft.

     Reply
114. 

     March 16, 2025

     Call.Sign Nhengure 22

     Under an $818 million contract from the USAF, Lockheed/Boeing/General Dynam-
     ics (later Lockheed Martin/Boeing) created two YF-22A ATF prototypes. On August
     29, 1990, the first of two YF-22AS was publicly unveiled for the first time at Lock-
     heed’s Site 10 facility at U.S. Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. (Lockheed
     Martin Corporation.)

     Evolution of stealth. In this rare photograph taken in January 1991, a Lockheed
     Martin F-117A Stealth Fighter, the world’s first operational aircraft designed to
     exploit low-observable or stealth technology, poses with the P&W YF119-powered
     YF-22A ATF prototype. While the former was designed on a two-dimensional com-
     puter program, the latter was created on a computer with three-dimensional capa-
     bility. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     At dawn on December 11,1990, pilots of the two YF-22As are completing their pre-
     flight checklists at Edwards AFB. Shortly after this photograph was taken, they took
     off and flew in formation for the first time. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     On November 28 and December 20, 1990, respectively, General Dynamics test
     pilot Jon Beesley and Lockheed test pilot Tom Morgenfeld fired nonexplosive AIM-9
     Sidewinder and AIM-120 Slammer air-to-air guided missiles. Both pilots were flying
     YF-22A number 2 when they made these live missile firings. YF-22A number 2 is
     shown after the missile firing with USAF Lt. Col. Jay Jabour at the controls. Note the
     illustrations of two missiles on the exterior of the right engine’s air intake. (Lock-
     heed Martin Corporation.)

     The YF-22A impressed the USAF with its vertical speed
     capability. The F-15C Eagle can exceed Mn 1.0 in a straight-
     up climb, and the F-22A Raptor will better that performance.
     (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)
     yaw.

     Two large all-moving tailplanes are canted outward
     at 50°. The wing features leading edge flaps, inboard
     flaps, and ailerons that droop. The trailing-edge con-
     trols function normally—with ailerons providing roll.

     Significantly fewer and more durable components than
     previous fighter engines. It is able to operate at super-
     sonic speeds for extended periods without augmenta-
     tion; the actual time remains classified. YF119 (see Table
     2-1) development started in 1983 and was selected over
     the YF120 to power the F-22 in April 1991.

     This three-dimensional, computer-generated rendering (CAD)
     shows the highly detailed ballistic vulnerability analysis
     model that was developed for the F-22A Raptor. Vulnerability
     analysis is conducted on an aircraft and its systems in order
     to determine their ability to withstand damage. (Lockheed
     Martin Corporation.)

     An excellent close-up view of the number two YF-22A as it
     rendezvous with a tanker. The first aerial refueling was
     accomplished on October 26, 1990. Note the excellent visi-
     bility afforded the pilot. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     Numerous models of the F-22’s final configuration had to be
     built for wing tunnel evaluations and other purposes, This is
     an exact %o-scale model of the aircraft that was crafted by
     expert modelmakers. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.) Cars need clay model makers, forget about mota dzewaya.

     The F-16 Fighting Falcon is a relatively small and light air combat fighter. A two-seat
     F-16 from Edwards is shown as it escorts Raptor 01 during its first flight. Their size
     comparison is interesting. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     Pratt & Whitney logo.
     (Pratt & Whitney Large
     Military Engines.)

     As mentioned above, the second YF-22A was used in the follow-on Dem/Val flight-test
     program in late 1991 and early 1992. Returning to Edwards after a test flight on April 25,
     1992, it experienced a series of pitch oscillations. With the landing gear retracted, the air-
     craft hit the runway, slid, and burned. Although no longer flightworthy, the external dam-
     age was later repaired, and it was airlifted to the Rome Air Development Center at Griffiss
     AFB, New York, where it received representative F-22 wings and empennage and is still
     being used to validate aircraft antenna patterns. Final disposition of the second YF-22A has
     not yet been determined. (See Tables 2-3 and 2-4.)
     TABLE 2-3 YF-22A SpecificationsTABLE 2-4 YF-23A Specifications
     Propulsion systemTwo 35,000-lb thrust class P&W
     YF119-PW-100 afterburning turbo-
     fan engines (PAV-1), or two
     35,000-lb thrust class GE YF120-
     GE-100 afterburning turbofan
     engines (PAV-2)
     Wingspan
     Wing area
     Length
     Height
     Empty weight
     Gross weight
     Service ceiling
     Maximum speed
     43 ft, 0 in (13 m)
     830 sq ft
     64 ft, 2 in (19.6 m)
     17 ft, 8.9 in (5.4 m)
     31,000 Ib (estimated)
     62,000 Ib (estimated)
     65,000 ft (estimated)
     Win 2.2+ (Mn 1.5+ in supercruise)
     Propulsion systemTwo 35,000-lb thrust class P&W
     YF119-PW-100 afterburning turbo-
     fan engines (PAV-1), or two
     35,000-lb thrust class GE

     YF120-
     GE-100 afterburning turbofan
     engines (PAV-2)
     Wingspan
     Wing area
     Length
     Height
     Empty weight
     Gross weight
     Service ceiling
     Maximum speed
     43 ft, 7 in (13.3 m)
     900 sq ft
     67 ft, 5 in (20.6 m)
     13 ft, 11 in (4.3 m)
     29,000 Ib (estimated)
     62,000 Ib (estimated)
     65,000 ft (estimated)
     Mn 2.2+ (Mn 1.5+ in supercruise)

     Reply
115. 

     March 16, 2025

     Staff Writer

     MYST Su-57 vs F22, who would win?

     With machines as advanced as this its all up to tue man in the box and the support enviroment for the mission.

     Secondly I wouldn’t want to find out.

     Reply
116. 

     March 16, 2025

     Call.Sign Nhengure 22

     The YF-22A was designed at the Skunk Works in 1988. The Lockheed Corporation
     (now Lockheed Martin Corporation) agreement in late 1992 to acquire the Tactical
     Military Aircraft business of General Dynamics Corporation (GD) linked Lockheed’s
     renowned advanced design and development skills with CD’s widely recognized
     integration and production expertise. The YF-22A and F-16 Fighting Falcon symbol-
     ize the strength and technological capabilities of this corporate union. (Lockheed
     Martin Corporation.)

     The P&W YF119-powered YF-22A banks left toward a moist Rogers Dry
     Lake (note water at lower right) at Edwards AFB in early 1992 during its
     second Dem/Val flight-test phase. Its exceptionally large all-titanium thrust
     vectoring exhaust nozzles are noteworthy. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.) Students, how make Titanium (stronger than steel) or does it occur naturally, Geo students is Titanium found locally?

     Reply
117. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     With its first-look, first-shoot, and first-kill capability, the F-22’s radar covers far more area than any current adversary’s radar.
     An enemy’s aircraft would be spotted and destroyed before it ever saw the Raptor. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     a distinguished scientist tells you it can’t be done, he is probably wrong. If a techno-nerd
     at Lockheed says it can be achieved, he is probably right.

     Reply
118. 

     March 16, 2025

     Nerds Rule

     The Raptor was designed with a three-dimensional computer program, unlike the F-117, which
     was designed with a two-dimensional one. As a result, the F-22 has a more sophisticated
     shape. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     To ultimately replace the Northrop Grumman F-14 Tomcat, operational
     since 1974, the U.S. Navy considered procurement of a carrier-based,
     swing-wing version of the F-22 called the NATF. Instead, it opted for
     improved F-14s called Super Tomcats and improved F/A-18s called Super
     Hornets. Other than its variable geometry wings (a la the F-14), the NAFT
     featured a beefier landing gear and arresting gear package for carrier land-
     ings. In addition, its stabilators and its cockpit and canopy were of differ-
     ent configurations. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     AVIONICS OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS
     PERFORMANCE
     • BASED ON ZONES OF OPERATIONAL INTEREST
     1 GENERAL SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
     2 TARGETS PRIORITIZATION BY ID AND/OR THREAT
     POTENTIAL
     3 ENGAGE OR AVOID DECISION
     4 DETECTION TO ALLOW DENIAL OF THREAT
     ADVANTAGE
     5 IMPLEMENTATION OF DEFENSIVE REACTIONS
     • AZIMUTH AND ELEVATION COVERAGE VARY BASED ON
     EXPECTED THREAT ENCOUNTERS AND TRADE-OFFS OF
     SENSOR PERFORMANCE
     • INFORMATION VARIES WITH EMISSION CONTROL MODE
     & AUTONOMOUS/ COOPERATIVE OPERATION
     A VAILABILITY/SUPPORTABILITY
     ‘ OPERATIONAL AVAILABILITY DETERMINES:
     – MAINTENANCE-FREE OPERATING PERIOD
     ” INTEGRATED ONBOARD DIAGNOSTICS
     REQUIREMENTS
     ” TWO-LEVEL MAINTENANCE SYSTEM
     The avionics operational requirements for combat-ready F-22s is shown
     here. During Desert Storm, USAF F-15Cs downed more than 30 aircraft with-
     out any losses. Moreover, their mission-capable rate was higher than 85 per-
     cent; that is, they were ready to fly into combat more than 85 percent of the
     time. The F-22’s mission-capable rate is to exceed 95 percent. (Lockheed
     Martin Corporation.)

     Reply
119. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     This view from directly above shows off the Raptor’s multihued light-to-medium-gray
     paint scheme. It will nearly disappear against blue or gray daytime skies when
     viewed from below. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     B
     y the time the Lockheed Martin/Boeing and Pratt & Whitney combination of airframe
     and powerplant had culminated in the form of the single-seat F-22A and the projected
     tandem-seat F-22B, world affairs had altered drastically. The Berlin Wall had been torn
     down, the Cold War had ended, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had dis-
     banded. The Persian Gulf War had been easily won, primarily by an unprecedented show-
     ing of modern airpower. Defense spending was cut back by almost 40 percent over the next
     5 years. Most military aircraft production programs were being either dramatically reduced
     or completely terminated.
     Unfortunately, even though military aircraft production totals shrink, their program
     costs often continue to rise. In the case of the F-22, the original 750-plane requirement
     costing an estimated $26.2 billion was quickly reduced to 648 aircraft that was estimated to
     cost some $86.6 billion. After the Bottom Up Review, completed by the DoD in September
     1993, the planned quantity of F-22s was reduced to 438 aircraft at an estimated cost of
     $71.6 billion. Then, in mid-May 1997, after the release of the Quadrennial Defense Review
     Report, the total F-22 production amount was reduced even further to 339 aircraft. In an
     effort to save funds, an F-22 production slowdown was required, which increased rather
     than decreased the single-unit price of each F-22. At this writing the cost of an F-22 now
     stands at about $90 million.

     ..Economies of scale. It costs less to produce more.

     Reply
120. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     With music, speeches, videos, and a laser light show, the premier EMD F-22A’s
     public debut on April 9,1997 was attended by some 2500 invited guests. General
     Richard Hawley, commander of the USAF’s Air Combat Command, the ultimate user
     of the aircraft, announced the official name for the next-generation fighter: Raptor.
     “This is the day we officially name a remarkable—in fact a revolutionary—new
     multimission fighter,” said Gen. Hawley. (The Boeing Company.)

     This head-on view of Raptor 01 during its rollout ceremony
     shows its deep, diamond-shaped fuselage to good advan-
     tage. Its very large engine air inlets are noteworthy. (Lock-
     heed Martin Corporation.)
     VISTA
     Flying a specially configured F-16 Fighting Falcon, test
     pilots completed tests on the first block of flight control
     laws for the F-22 in 1996, more than a year before the
     first flight of the actual aircraft.
     The flight control laws (the complex set of computer
     instructions that keep a modern fighter aircraft flying)
     for the F-22 were programmed in the Variable Stability
     In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA), a highly modi-
     fied, one-of-a-kind F-16D (86-0048) that, through a
     sophisticated control system, can emulate the flight
     characteristics of another airplane in flight.
     A total of 21 sorties totaling 26.8 hours were flown in
     the NF-16D (the official designation for the VISTA air-
     craft; with N meaning special test, permanent) in two
     test phases. The first test session was devoted to com-
     paring the baseline flying qualities of the F-22 to proposed and potential changes in the
     aircraft’s pitch and roll characteristics for landing, air refueling, and formation flying. The
     second phase focused on two aspects of F-22 flying qualities. The first aspect concerned
     how the control laws performed during an engine failure, and separately, two different fail-
     ures of the hydraulic system, including a dual hydraulic failure that resulted in mechanical
     failure of one horizontal tail, one rudder, an aileron on one wing, and a flaperon on the
     other wing. The second aspect considered the effects of not accurately achieving the pre-
     dictions of the F-22’s aerodynamics and structural characteristics. The so-called parameter
     variation test flights allowed for relatively large changes to be made in the Raptor’s stability
     and flight control power.
     In smooth air, the various failures and parameter variations were almost indistinguish-
     able from those of the baseline F-22. In more severe wind and turbulence, some differences
     could be noted, but the aircraft remained well behaved, and respectable landings could be
     made even with a severely degraded aircraft as a result of the simulated dual hydraulic fail-
     ure. In the final analysis, the overall results of the NF-16D VISTA tests were excellent.

     Reply
121. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     With AI and Windows 11 such things should be a walk in the park, for any serious nation.

     Can you imagine the F-15 was designed on paper in the 70s before Windows 95.

     Something wierd is going on in the world. With so much computing power and wealth we cannot design and operate a Concorde like plane, I also don’t know if humanity has been back to the moon.

     Nothing but a manned mission to Mars will break this maliase, the billionares have taken it upon themselves or else we would be spending all our efforts and resources on senseless uneding wars.

     Reply
122. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     There is someone who once made a comment on one of my Facebook posts. I cannot remember what it was about. They said, uyu anonzi Dzidzai tirikufambira nyaya dzako. I don’t know why you have to volunteer information, its not like I didn’t already know. In my team I would never accept you, careless talk costs lives, so I am glad you are on the otherside. Volunteered information is also how are learned about who is who in J section, good to know but I don’t need to know,why treat people differently?

     Maybe what ever is being done may not have the desire effect (like murder suicide), so we have to put it out there, maybe you would feel it, yes because we want to make you feel pain. We raise you up and drop you for maximum effect. Learnmore Jongwe if only you knew, no opposition person goes on national television, you were being raised for a fall and they will go for the things you love the most so you will be left in.a rage that cannot be undone, and you noriety and popularity becomes your undoing. Tried and tested method.

     Its like when someone borrows a battery and brings it back flat. I let it slide because of course you need to activate operatives in the area, does that mean when someone asks me for help I have to lack kindness and compassion, its justs someone doing their job. You do not have to change who you are, if its used against you so be it, if they did nothing you would have to pause and think, perhaps its not worthit and you are not worthwhile to spend resources on.

     Reply
123. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     Liftoff! Looking every bit like the bird of prey it’s named after, the Raptor breaks ground and takes
     wing or the first time on September 7, 1997. In addition to greater lethality and survivability, the
     R22 design calls or higher reliability, maintainability, and sortie (mission) generation rates than
     the F-15 it will replace. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     With its landing gear still extended, Raptor 01 performs a series of low-speed
     maneuvers to verify its handling characteristics. With its balance of increased
     speed and range, enhanced offensive and defensive avionics, and reduced observ-
     ability, threats that the F-15 will no longer be able to counter will be defeated by the
     F-22. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     LMTAS built the Iron Bird to fully evaluate each of the F-22’s ailerons, flaps, rudders, and other actuation devices- electrical
     wiring bundles and connections; hydraulic, oil, and other fluids’ plumbing; and so on. In the first view the F-22 Iron Bird does
     not have the nose attached, while in the next view, the nose is attached. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     Money-based breakdown of F-22 prime and support work share between LMAS in Georgia, LMTAS in
     Texas, and Boeing in Seattle. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     This wind tunnel model (designated D-6) was used primarily to build the
     aerodynamic database for the F-22’s design and is one of 23 models that
     were used in the Raptor’s wind tunnel test program. A total of 16,930
     wind tunnel test hours were completed validating the aerodynamic config-
     uration of the F-22. (Lockheed Martin Corporation.)

     F-22 Airframe-Mounted Accessory Drive
     Built by Boeing, the F-22 Airframe Mounted Accessory Drive (AMAD) transfers shaft power
     from the Air Turbine Starter System (ATSS) to the Fl 19 engines for engine starts, and from
     the engines to a generator and hydraulic pumps for the electrical and hydraulic systems.
     The AMAD transmits power required by the high-performance F-22 throughout the
     flight envelope and incorporates a highly reliable lubrication system that services the
     AMAD-mounted generator and ATSS as well as gearbox components.

     Flight-Critical Avionics and Systems
     To successfully create and market such an advanced tactical fighter as the F-22, its design-
     ers and developers had to incorporate numerous flight-critical avionics and systems,
     which are described in the text below.
     Vehicle Management System
     The vehicle management system (VMS) provides flight and propulsion control. The VMS
     enables the pilot to maneuver the F-22 to its maximum capabilities. The system includes
     hardware, such as the control stick, throttle controls, rudder pedals and actuators, air
     data probes, accelerometers, leading-edge flap drive actuators, and the primary flight
     control actuators. The VMS also encompasses the software that controls these devices;
     the VMS became operational when Raptor 01 was flown for the first time in September
     1997.
     The flight control software and flight control laws that underpin the VMS are tested in a
     specialized laboratory at LMTAS in Fort Worth. The VMS Integration Facility (VIP), as this
     lab is called, consists of an F-22 cockpit and flightworthy F-22 hardware and software. The
     VIF has been operational since March 1995.
     Utilities and Subsystems
     The utilities and systems for the F-22 include these subsystems: the integrated vehicle
     subsystem controller, environmental control system, fire protection, auxiliary power-
     generating system, landing gear, fuel system, electrical system, hydraulics, and arresting
     system.

     How the Raptor Is Expected to Perform When It Becomes Operational
     Air superiority is the prerequisite ass in all our military op on land, at sea
     The primary mission of the F-22 Raptor, fully armed with eight air-to-air missiles and its
     built-in 20-mm cannon, is air dominance. It is to gain and maintain complete air superi-
     ority throughout the entire theater of operations. Although air dominance is the F-22’s
     chief mission, it has a built-in secondary air-to-ground capability. In this scenario, loaded
     with two satellite-guided GBU-32 JDAMs, its air-to-air missiles, and its onboard 20-mm
     cannon, it can destroy two ground installations and still be able to engage and destroy
     enemy fighters.
     The F-22 could also serve in the so-called wild weasel role. Armed with two AGM-88
     high-speed antiradiation missiles (HARMs), a single F-22 could take out at least two
     ground radar installations while maintaining its fighting capabilities.
     For prestrike targeting information and poststrike bomb damage assessment (BDA),
     F-22s could be fitted with special equipment pods for high-speed photographic reconnais-
     sance and mapping duties. Although there are no announced plans to create any recon-
     naissance fighter or RF-22 aircraft, the Raptor could easily perform the reconnaissance
     role.
     The F-22 Raptor will be a multiple-mission aircraft. Whether intercepting bombers,
     fighting fighters, photographing or decimating ground-based facilities, it will be one very
     deadly warbird.

     Reply
124. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     AI please compile a requirements analysis for the production of an F22 like fighter aircraft, complete with the raw materials amd their exploitation, refining and fabrication together with plant equipment, and complete information systems and source code.

     AI note, preferable programming language is C++ on a linux based operating system. LCD must display information on a white background and the HUD must make use of multiple colours striking to the human eye.

     Reply
125. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     AI please create a wind tunnel and combat simulator based on Lead Pursuits Falcon F4 Balkans.

     AI how can machine learning be used to update the K44 (Widow Maker) avionics, vehicle managent system and data suite.

     Reply
126. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     AI what subjects must be studied at school for workers to be able to put together a fighter aircraft.

     AI design a low cost plant to manufacture the K44 (Widow Maker).

     AI how can radio waves be hacked for stealth purposes, preferably at the sub atom level.

     AI what is the link between electomagnetism, electricity, microwaves?

     Reply
127. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     So in theory to defeat HARMS you will meed a dummy radar site. How can tgus information be used to triangulate or lacote the position the misslie was fired from. AI please help…

     Reply
128. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     82
     AIRCRAFT CONTROL, APPLICATIONS
     OF SMART STRUCTURES
     JOHANNESSCHWEIGER
     European Aeronautic Defense
     and Space Company
     Military Aircraft Business Unit
     Muenchen, Germany
     INTRODUCTION
     Probably the most famous photograph in aviation, (Fig. 1)
     depicts the first successful manned powered flight on 17
     December 1903 by the Wright brothers. It also shows the
     first successful airplane that had an active structure. The
     Wright brothers’ design must definitely be called smart
     in many aspects and design features. They were among
     the first pioneers in aviation who had realized that un-
     coupled control about all three vehicle axes was required.
     They had done systematic experimental aerodynamic re-
     search to achieve the maximum possible aerodynamic per-
     formance. And they had learned how to design and manu-
     facture lightweight structures in their bicycle shop. Their
     solution for adequate roll control of the airplane, moreover,
     was more than one century ahead of the state of the art in
     aviation technology. As we are approaching the centennial
     celebrations of this remarkable event, no single airplane
     exists yet that uses a smart structural concept to control
     the flight of the vehicle.
     Rather than fighting the low torsional stiffness of their
     braced biplane wing design, they used this characteristic
     positively. By the sideways motions of the pilot, who lay on
     a sliding cradle, the wires attached to the cradle twisted
     the wing tips in opposite directions, thus producing the
     desired aerodynamic loads to roll the airplane. Figure 2
     from Orville Wright’s book (1) demonstrated this princi-
     ple, which is also a very good example of the importance
     of integrated or multidisciplinary design concepts, espe-
     cially in aeronautics. Unfortunately, this knowledge was
     lost and forgotten over the years, mainly because of more
     expert knowledge in single disciplines and more formal and

     recent years, some prophets in aerospace are trying to
     spread the news about this old idea again and develop some
     new ones. Weisshaar (2), for example, in 1986, cited the suc-
     cess of the Wright Flyer as a good example of the need for
     integrated design methods. The Wright Flyer also demon-
     strates that smart aircraft structures do not necessarily
     rely only on advanced active materials.
     Even earlier than that, active structural concepts were
     studied. Alois Wolfm¨uller (1864–1948), the producer of the
     world’s first motorcycle, bought the No. 2 model of the
     production glider “Normal-Segelapparat” (normal soaring
     apparatus) from Otto Lilienthal in 1894 (3). Both avia-
     tion pioneers were communicating about improvements in
     performance and maneuverability by controlling the air
     loads through flexible wing twist. Wolfm¨uller tried to im-
     prove performance by introducing a flexible hinge in the
     wings to modulate aerodynamic control forces by flexible
     deformations.

     Today, aircraft control is achieved by control surfaces at-
     tached to the main aerodynamic surfaces. These devices—
     aileron, elevator, and rudder—create the required forces
     and moments to control the motion of the aircraft about
     all three axes in space. Depending on the size and speed
     of the aircraft, these surfaces are actuated manually or by
     hydraulic systems. If the Wright brothers had used sepa-
     rate ailerons to roll the airplane, the additional structural
     weight might have been too much for the available power
     from the engine.
     The idea of active or smart structures to control air ve-
     hicles is as old as the earliest known attempts to fly in
     heavier-than-air machines. Early attempts by humankind
     to fly were usually based on efforts to understand and copy
     the flight of birds. Besides the difficulty in controlling an
     unstable flying vehicle, which requires to day’s high com-
     puting power or the complex neural network of animals
     to control their muscular systems, it is even more difficult
     to sense and actuate the dynamic motions of continuously
     deforming, flexible aerodynamic surfaces.
     In most of these efforts, the pilot was supposed to actu-
     ate birdlike aerodynamic surfaces to produce the required
     Only in recent years, after almost one century since the
     first successful powered flight, was it possible to design,
     build, and fly vehicles powered by the human body for the
     sole purpose of winning trophies.
     For these reasons, the first successes in aviation were
     possible only by using design concepts for almost “rigid”
     surfaces and natural stability of the vehicles. Nevertheless,
     a major contribution to the success of the Wright broth-
     ers was their “Smart Structures” flight control system for
     the roll axis. They were among the first pioneers in avi-
     ation who had realized that uncoupled control about all
     three vehicle axes was required. They had done systematic
     experimental aerodynamic research to achieve maximum
     possible aerodynamic performance. They had a combustion
     engine that had sufficient energy density available “just in
     time,” and they had learned how to design and manufac-
     ture lightweight structures in their bicycle shop.

     Reply
129. 

     March 16, 2025

     The Oracle

     Engineers who make(made) planes can also make cars. SAAB, BMW (The logo is actually a propeller taken from their earonautic foundations) and Mitsubishi.

     Reply
130. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     Good morning bóker tov
     Good evening érev tov
     Good night láylah tov

     (Hello! Good morning! shalom! bóker tov!
     – note that shalom normally comes first.)
     Another way to say goodbye is to use the word l’hitra-ot
     , whose literal meaning is close to the French au revoir
     or the English phrase ‘until we meet again’. l’hitra-ot is also often
     combined with shalom – shalom, l’hitra-ot!

     Reply
131. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City,

     Chapter VI: The Right of Property.

     Here is an institution of the ancients of which we must not form an idea from
     anything that we see around us. The ancients founded the right of property on
     principles different from those of the present generation; as a result, the laws by
     which they guaranteed it are sensibly different from ours.
     We know that there are races who have never succeeded in establishing among
     themselves the right of private property, while others have reached this stage only
     after long and painful experience. It is not, indeed, an easy problem, in the origin of
     society, to decide whether the individual may appropriate the soil, and establish such
     a bond between his being and a portion of the earth, that he can say, This land is
     mine, this is the same as a part of me. The Tartars have an idea of the right of
     property in a case of flocks or herds, but they cannot understand it when it is a
     question of land. Among the ancient Germans the earth belonged to no one; every
     year the tribe assigned to each one of its members a lot to cultivate, and the lot was
     changed the following year. The German was proprietor of the harvest, but not of the
     land. The case is still the same among a part of the Semitic race, and among some of
     the Slavic nations.
     On the other hand, the nations of Greece and Italy, from the earliest antiquity,
     always held to the idea of private property. We do not find an age when the soil was
     common among them;117 nor do we find anything that resembles the annual allotment
     of land which was in vogue among the Germans. And here we note a remarkable fact.
     While the races that do not accord to the individual a property in the soil, allow him
     at least a right to the fruits of his labor, — that is to say, to his harvest, — precisely
     the contrary custom prevailed among the Greeks. In many cities the citizens were
     required to store their crops in common, or at least the greater part, and to consume
     them in common. The individual, therefore, was not the master of the corn which he
     had gathered; but, at the same time, by a singular contradiction, he had an absolute
     property in the soil. To him the land was more than the harvest. It appears that among
     the Greeks the conception of private property was developed exactly contrary to what
     appears to be the natural order. It was not applied to the harvest first, and to the soil
     afterwards, but followed the inverse order.

     There are three things which, from the most ancient times, we find founded and
     solidly established in these Greek and Italian societies: the domestic religion; the
     family; and the right of property — three things which had in the beginning a
     manifest relation, and which appear to have been inseparable. The idea of private
     property existed in the religion itself. Every family had its hearth and its ancestors.
     These gods could be adored only by this family, and protected it alone. They were its
     property.
     Now, between these gods and the soil, men of the early ages saw a mysterious
     relation. Let us first take the hearth. This altar is the symbol of a sedentary life; its
     name indicates this.118 It must be placed upon the ground; once established, it cannot
     be moved. The god of the family wishes to have a fixed abode; materially, it is
     difficult to transport the stone on which he shines; religiously, this is more difficult
     still, and is permitted to a man only when hard necessity presses him, when an enemy
     is pursuing him, or when the soil cannot support him. When they establish the hearth,
     it is with the thought and hope that it will always remain in the same spot. The god
     is installed there not for a day, not for the life of one man merely, but for as long a
     time as this family shall endure, and there remains any one to support its fire by
     sacrifices. Thus the sacred fire takes possession of the soil, and makes it its own. It
     is the god’s property.
     And the family, which through duty and religion remains grouped around its altar,
     is as much fixed to the soil as the altar itself. The idea of domicile follows naturally.
     The family is attached to the altar, the altar is attached to the soil; an intimate
     relation, therefore, is established between the soil and the family. There must be his
     permanent home, which he will not dream of quitting, unless an unforeseen necessity
     constrains him to it. Like the hearth, it will always occupy this spot. This spot
     belongs to it, is its property, the property not simply of a man, but of a family, whose
     different members must, one after another, be born and die here.
     Let us follow the idea of the ancients. Two sacred fires represent two distinct
     divinities, who are never united or confounded; this is so true, that even intermarriage
     between two families does not establish an alliance between their gods. The sacred
     fire must be isolated — that is to say, completely separated from all that is not of

     itself; the stranger must not approach it at the moment when the ceremonies of the
     worship are performed, or even be in sight of it. It is for this reason that these gods
     are called the concealed gods, or the interior gods, Penates. In order that this
     religious rule may be well observed, there must be an enclosure around this hearth
     at a certain distance. It did not matter whether this enclosure was a hedge, a wall of
     wood, or one of stone. Whatever it was, it marked the limit which separated the
     domain of one sacred fire from that of another. This enclosure was deemed sacred.119
     It was an impious act to pass it. The god watched over it, and kept it under his care.
     They, therefore, applied to this god the epithet of ‘�������.120 This enclosure, traced
     and protected by religion, was the most certain emblem, the most undoubted mark
     of the right of property.

     Reply
132. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     To call Great Zimbabwe the ‘national shrine ‘ then to demonise those who follow the religion is contradictory, is it not.

     Reply
133. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City

     Let us return to the primitive ages of the Aryan race. The sacred enclosure, which
     the Greeks call ‘�����, and the Latins herctum, was the somewhat spacious enclosure
     in which the family had its house, its flocks, and the small field that it cultivated. In
     the midst rose the protecting fire-god. Let us descend to the succeeding ages. The
     tribes have reached Greece and Italy, and have built cities. The dwellings are brought
     nearer together: they are not, however, contiguous. The sacred enclosure still exists,
     but is of smaller proportions; oftenest it is reduced to a low wall, a ditch, a furrow,
     or to a mere open space, a few feet wide. But in no case could two houses be joined
     to each other; a party wall was supposed to be an impossible thing. The same wall
     could not be common to two houses; for then the sacred enclosure of the gods would
     have disappeared. At Rome the law fixed two feet and a half as the width of the free
     space, which was always to separate two houses, and this space was consecrated to
     “the god of the endosure.”121
     A result of these old religious rules was, that a community of property was never
     established among the ancients. A phalanstery was never known among them. Even
     Pythagoras did not succeed in establishing institutions which the most intimate
     religion of men resisted. Neither do we find, at any epoch in the life of the ancients,
     anything that resembled that multitude of villages so general in France during the
     twelfth century. Every family, having its gods and its worship, was required to have
     its particular place on the soil, its isolated domicile, its property.

     According to the Greeks, the sacred fire taught men to build houses;122 and, indeed,
     men who were fixed by their religion to one spot, which they believed it their duty
     not to quit, would soon begin to think of raising in that place some solid structure.
     The tent covers the Arab, the wagon the Tartar; but a family that has a domestic
     hearth has need of a permanent dwelling. The stone house soon succeeds the mud
     cabin or the wooden hut. The family did not build for the life of a single man, but for
     generations that were to succeed each other in the same dwelling.
     The house was always placed in the sacred enclosure. Among the Greeks, the
     square which composed the enclosure was divided into two parts; the first part was
     the court; the house occupied the second. The hearth, placed near the middle of the
     whole enclosure, was thus at the bottom of the court, and near the entrance of the
     house. At Rome the disposition was different, but the principle was the same. The
     hearth remained in the middle of the enclosure, but the buildings rose round it on four
     sides, so as to enclose it within a little court.
     We can easily understand the idea that inspired this system of construction. The
     walls are raised around the hearth to isolate and defend it, and we may say, as the
     Greeks said, that religion taught men to build houses. In this house the family is
     master and proprietor; its domestic divinity assures it this right. The house is
     consecrated by the perpetual presence of gods; it is a temple which preserves them.
     “What is there more holy,” says Cicero, “what is there more carefully fenced round
     with every description of religious respect, than the house of each individual citizen?
     Here is his altar, here is his hearth, here are his household gods; here all his sacred
     rights, all his religious ceremonies, are preserved.”123 To enter this house with any
     malevolent intention was a sacrilege The domicile was inviolable. According to a
     Roman tradition, the domestic god repulsed the robber, and kept off the enemy.124
     Let us pass to another object of worship — the tomb; and we shall see that the same
     ideas were attached to this. The tomb held a very important place in the religion of
     the ancients; for, on one hand, worship was due to the ancestors, and on the other, the
     principal ceremony of this worship — the funeral repast — was to be performed on
     the very spot where the ancestors rested.125 The family, therefore, had a common
     tomb, where its members, one after another, must come to sleep.

     Reply
134. 

     March 16, 2025

     Woolsack

     APPLY ONLINE AT

     http://applyonline.uct.ac.za
     Apply online using a working email address that is not shared with another UCT applicant.

     Reply
135. 

     March 16, 2025

     Smuts

     DATES BY WHICH TO APPLY
     The dates below are for coursework master’s degrees, honours degrees or PG diplomas. All research master’s and
     PhD applications remain open throughout the year.

     Please check the GSB website for application deadlines for GSB programmes.
     The submission date for coursework postgraduate programmes is 31 October …. unless otherwise specified below. After
     the submission date a selection process takes place. Where places remain available after the first round of selection,
     applications received after the closing date may be considered, depending on the department.

     Reply
136. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     Pana Tete varikurova ma number pa National FM.🔥🔥🔥🎸🎵

     Reply
137. 

     March 16, 2025

     Lone Wolf

     Misti Mist, what is for supper tonight?

     Kasadza nema chunks,cabbage with chillies from the jardim.

     Happy days Mist. Small mercies.

     Reply
138. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST⚡💀⚡

     Reminds me yesterday I was so upset with myself. So I cook my food once to save on gas and since its the same meal all day, it kinda makes sense.

     Just before I could eat my meal in the evening, I stepped on my pan and all the chunks spilled on the floor.

     I don’t have a lot of food to waste so I did anyone in my situation would do. I scrapped the chunks off the floor and had my evening meal like nothing happened, besides no one was watching.😁

     How do you step on a pan you may ask, well I don’t have a light in my room and can you believe the angle I stood on was so perfect the pan flipped over upside down…😂

     Reply
139. 

     March 16, 2025

     MYST

     The movie Top Gun increased recruitment by 25%.

     A PROPAGANDA MODEL C9

     SOURCING MASS-MEDIA NEWS:THE THIRD FILTER

     The mass media are drawn into a symbiotic relationship with powerful
     sourcesof information by economic necessity and reciprocity of inter-
     est.The media need a steady, reliable flowofthe raw material of news.
     Theyhave daily news demands and imperative news schedules that
     they must meet.They cannot afford to have reporters and cameras at
     all places where important stories may break. Economics dictatesthat
     they concentrate their resources where significant news often occurs,
     where important rumors and leaks abound, and where regular press

     conferences are held.The White House, the Pentagon, and the State
     Department, in Washington, D.C., are central nodesofsuch news
     activity.On a local basis, city hall and the police department are the
     subjectofregular news”beats”for reporters. Business corporations and
     trade groups are also regular and credible purveyors of stories deemed
     newsworthy. These bureaucracies turn OUt a large volume of material
     that meets the demands of news organizations for reliable, scheduled
     flows.Mark Fishman calls this”the principle of bureaucratic affinity:
     only other bureaucracies can satisfy the input needs of a news bureauc-
     racy.”62

     Government and corporate sources also have the great merit of being
     recognizable and credible by their status and prestige. This is important
     to the mass media. As Fishman notes,
     News workers are predisposed to treat bureaucratic accounts as
     factual because news personnel participate in upholding a norma-
     tive order of authorized knowers in the society. Reporters operate
     with the attitude that officials ought to know what it is their job
     to know….In particular, a newsworker will recognize an official’s
     claim to knowledge not merely as a claim, but as a credible,
     competent piece of knowledge. This amounts to a moral division
     of labor: officials have and give the facts; reporters merely get
     them.63

     Another reason for the heavy weight given to official sources is that the
     mass media claim to be “Objective” dispensers of the news. Partly to
     maintain the image of objectivity,but also to protect themselves from
     criticisms of bias and the threat of libel suits, they need material that
     can be portrayed as presumptively accurate.64

     This is also partly a
     matter of cost: taking information from sources that may be presumed
     credible reduces investigative expense, where as material from sources
     that are not prima facie credible, or that will elicit criticism and threats,
     requires careful checking and costly research.

     The magnitude of the public-information operations of large govern-
     ment and corporate bureaucracies that constitute the primary news
     sources is vast and ensures special access to the media.The Pentagon,
     for example, has a public-information service that involves many thou-
     sands of employees, spending hundreds of miIIions of dollars every year
     and dwarfing not only the public-information resources of any dissent-
     ing individual or group but the aggregate of such groups. In 1979 and
     1980,during a brief interlude of relative openness (since closed down),

     the U.S. Air Force revealed that its public-information out reachin-
     cluded the following:
     140 newspapers, 690,000 copies per week
     Airmanmagazine, monthly circulation 125,000
     34radio and 17 TV stations, primarily overseas
     45,000 headquarters and unit news releases
     615,000 hometown news releases
     6,600 interviews with news media
     3,200 news conferences
     500 news media orientation flights
     50 meetings with editorial boards
     11,000 speeches 65

     This excludes vast areas of the airforce’s public-information effort.
     Writing back in 1970, SenatorJ.W. Fulbright had found that the air
     force public-relations effort in 1968 involved1,305 full-time employees,
     exclusive of additional thousands that”have public functions collateral
     to other duties.”66

     The air force at that time offered a weekly film-clip
     service for TV and a taped features program for use three times a week,
     sent to 1,139 radio stations; it also produced 148 motion pictures,of
     which 24 were released for public consumption.67

     There is no reason
     to believe that the air force public-relations effort has diminished since
     the1960s.68

     Note that this is just the air force.There are three other branches with
     massive programs, and there is a separate, overall public-information
     program under an assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in the
     Pentagon. In 1971,an Armed Forces Journal survey revealed that the
     Pentagon was publishing a total of 371magazines at an annual cost of
     some$57million, an operation sixteen times larger than the nation’s
     biggest publisher.In an update in 1982,the Air Furee Journal lnterna-
     OQ7lal indicated that the Pentagon was publishing 1,203 periodicals.69

     To put this into perspective,we may note the scope of public-informa-
     tion operations of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
     and the National Council of the Churches of Christ (NCC), two of the
     largest oft he nonprofit organizations that offer a consistently challeng-
     ing voice to the views of the Pentagon.

     The AFSC’s main office infor-
     mation-services budget in 1984-85 was under $500,000, with eleven
     staffpeople.70 Its institution-wide press releases run at about two hun-
     dred per year, its press conferences thirty a year, and it produces about
     one film and two or three slide shows a year.It does not offer film clips,photos, or taped radio programs to the media.

     Reply
140. 

     March 16, 2025

     Lone Wolf💀

     This processofcreating the needed bodyofexperts has been carried
     outona deliberate basisandamassivescale.Backin1972,JudgeLewis
     Powell (later elevated to the Supreme Court) wrote a memo to the U.S.
     ChamberofCommerce urging business”tobuy the top academic repu-
     tations in the country to add credibility to corporate studies and give
     business a stronger voice on the campuses.”90 One buys them, and
     assuresthat-inthe wordsofDr. Edwin Feulner,ofthe Heritage
     Foundation-thepublic-policy area “is awash with in-depth academic
     studies” that have the proper conclusions. Using the analogyofProcter
     &Gamble selling toothpaste, Feulner explained that”Theysell it and
     resell it every day by keeping the product fresh in the consumer’s

     mind.”Bythe sales effort, including the disseminationofthe correct
     ideas to “thousandsofnewspapers,” itispossible to keep debate
     “within its proper perspective.”91
     Inaccordance with this formula, during the1970Sand early 1980s a
     stringofinstitutions was created and old ones were activated to theend
     ofpropagandizing the corporate viewpoint. Many hundredsofintellec-
     tuals were brought to these institutions, where their work was funded
     and their outputs were disseminated to the media by a sophisticated
     propaganda etfort.
     92
     Thecorporate funding and clear ideological pur-
     pose in the overall effort had no discernible effect on the credibilityof
     the intellectualssomobilized;onthe contrary, the funding and pushing
     oftheir ideas catapaulted them into the press.
     Asan illustrationofhow the funded experts preempt space in the
     media, table 1-4 describes the “experts”onterrorism and defense issues
     who appeared on the “McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour”in the courseofa
     year in the mid-1980s.We can see that, excluding journalists, a majority
     ofthe participants(54percent) were present or former government
     officials, andthatthe next highest category(15.7percent) was drawn
     from conservative think tanks.Thelargest numberofappearances in
     the latter category was supplied by the Georgetown Center for Strate-
     gic and International Studies (CSIS), an organization funded by con-
     servative foundations and corporations, and providing a revolving door
     between the State Department and CIA and a nominally private organi-
     zation.93Onsuch issues as terrorism and the Bulgarian Connection, the
     CSIS has occupied space in the media that otherwise might have been
     filled by independent voices.94
     Themass media themselves also provide “experts” who regularly
     echo the official view. John Barron and Claire Sterling are household
     namesasauthorities on the KGB and terrorism because theReader’s
     Digesthas funded, published, and publicized their work; the Soviet
     defector Arkady Shevchenko became an expertonSoviet arms and
     intelligence becauseTime,ABC-TV, and theNew York Timeschose to
     feature him (despite his badly tarnished credentials).95Bygiving these
     purveyorsofthe preferred view a great dealofexposure, the media
     confer status and make them the obvious candidates for opinion and
     analysis.
     Another classofexperts whose prominence is largely a functionof
     serviceability to powerisformer radicals who have come to “see the
     light.”Themotivesthatcause these individuals to switch gods, from
     Stalin (or Mao) to Reagan and free enterprise, is varied, but for the
     establishment media the reason for the change is simply that the ex-

     radicals have finally seen the erroroftheir ways.Ina country whose
     citizenry values acknowledgementofsin and repentance, the turncoats
     are an important classofrepentant sinners.Itis interesting to observe
     how the former sinners. whose previous work wasoflittle interest or
     an objectofridicule to the mass media, are suddenly elevated to promi-
     nence and become authentic experts. We may recall how, during the
     McCarthy era, defectors and ex-Communists vied with one another in
     talesofthe imminenceofa Soviet invasion and other lurid stories.96
     They found that news coverage was a functionoftheir trimming their
     accounts to the prevailing demand.Thesteady flowofex-radicals from
     marginality to media attention showsthatweare witnessing a durable
     methodofproviding experts who will say what the establishment wants
     said.

     Manufacturing Consent

     The Political Economy
     of the Mass Media

     EDWARD S. HERMAN
     and
     NOAM CHOMSKY

     Reply
141. 

     March 16, 2025

     Get Smarter.Everyday

     Legitimizingversus
     Meaningless Third World
     Elections:
     EISalvador
     Guatemala
     Nicaragua
     THlRDWORLDELECTIONSPROVIDEANEXCELLENTTESTING
     ground for a propaganda model. Some elections are held in friendly
     client states to legitimize their rulers and regimes, whereas others are
     held in disfavored or enemy countries to legitimizetheirpolitical sys-
     tems.Thisnatural dichotomization is strengthenedbythe fact that
     elections in the friendly client states are often held under U.S. sponsor-
     shipandwithextensive U.S.managementandpublic-relationssupport.
     Thus, in the Dominican Republic in I966, and periodically thereafter,
     the United States organized what have been called “demonstration
     elections”inits client states, defined asthosewhoseprimaryfunction
     is to convince the home population that the intervention is well inten-
     tioned,thatthe populaceofthe invaded and occupied country wel-
     comes the intrusion, and that they are being given a democratic choice.
     l
     Theelections inEISalvador in1982and1984weretruedemonstra-
     tion elections, and those held in Guatemalain1984-85 were strongly
     supported by the United States for image-enhancing purposes.The

     election held in Nicaragua in1984,by contrast, was intended to legiti-
     mize a government that the Reagan administration was striving to
     destabilize and overthrow.TheU.S. government therefore went to
     great pains to cast the Nicaraguan election in an unfavorable light.
     A propaganda model would anticipate mass-media supportofthe
     state perspective and agenda.Thatis, the favored elections will be
     found to legitimize, no matter what the facts; the disfavored election
     will be found deficient, farcical, and failingtolegitimize-again,irre-
     spectiveoffacts. What makes this another strong testofa propaganda
     modelisthat the Salvadoran and Guatemalan electionsof1982and
     1984-85 were held under conditionsofsevere, ongoing state terror
     against the civilian population, whereas in Nicaragua this was not the
     case.Tofind the former elections legitimizing and the Nicaraguan
     election a farce, the media would have had to use different standards
     ofevaluation in the two setsofcases, and, more specifically) it would
     have been necessary for them to avoid discussing state terror and other
     basic electoral conditions in the Salvadoran and Guatemalan elections.
     Aswewill see, the media fulfilled these requirements and met the needs
     ofthe state to a remarkable degree.
     Inorder to demonstrate the applicabilityofa propaganda model in
     these cases,wewillfirst describe the eJecrjon-propaganda framework
     that the U.S. government tried to foist on the media;wewill then
     review the basic electoral conditions under which elections were held
     in the three countries; and finally,wewill examine how the U.S. mass
     media treated eachofthe three elections.
     3.1.ELECTION-PROPAGANDA
     FRAMEWORKS
     TheU.S. government has employed a numberofdevices in its spon-
     sored elections toputthem in a favorablelight_Ithas also had an
     identifiable agendaofissues that it wants stressed,aswellasothers it
     wants ignored or downplayed. Central to demonstration-election man·
     agement has been the manipulationofsymbols and agenda to give the
     favored election a positive image.Thesponsor government triesto
     associate the election with the happy word “democracy” and the mili-
     tary regimeitbacks with supportofthe elections (and hence democ-
     racy).Itemphasizes what a wonderful thing it is to be able to hold any
     election at all under conditionsofinternal conflict, and it makes it

     appear a moral triumphthatthe army has agreed to support the election
     (albeit reluctantly) and abide by its results.
     Therefusalofthe rebel opposition to participate in the election is
     portrayedasa rejectionofdemocracy andproofofits antidemocratic
     tendencies, although the veryplanofthe election involves the rebels’
     exclusion from the ballot.2Thesponsor government also seizesupon
     any rebel statements urging nonparticipation or threatening to disrupt
     the election. These are used to transform the election into a dramatic
     struggle between, on the one side, the “born-again” democratic army
     and people struggling to vote for “peace,” and,onthe other, the rebels
     opposing democracy, peace, and the right to vote.Thusthe dramatic
     denouementofthe electionisvoter turnout,which measures the ability
     ofthe forcesofdemocracy and peace (the army) to overcome rebel
     threats.
     Official observers are dispatched to the election scene to assure its
     public-relations success. Nominally, their roleisto see that the election
     is”fair.”Theirreal function, however, is to provide theappearanceof
     fairness by focusing on the government’s agenda and by channeling
     press attention to a reliable source.3Theytestify to fairness on the basis
     oflong lines, smiling faces, no beatings in their presence, and the
     assurances and enthusiasmofU.S. and client-state officials.4But these
     superficialities are entirely consistent with a staged fraud. Fairness
     dependsonfundamental conditions established in advance, which are
     virtually impossible to ascertain under the brief, guided-tour conditions
     ofofficial observers. Furthermore, official observers in sponsored elec-
     tions rarely ask the relevant questions.5Theyare able to perform their
     public-relations function because the government chooses observers
     who are reliable supportersofits aims and publicizes their role, and the
     press gives them respectful anention.6
     “Off the agenda” for the government in its own sponsored elections
     are allofthe basic parametersthatmake an election meaningful or
     meaningless prior to the election-day proceedings. These include:(I)
     freedomofspeech and assembly;(2)freedomofthe press;(3)freedom
     toorganize and maintain intermediate economic, social, and political
     groups (unions, peasant organizations, political clubs, student and
     teacher associations, etc.); (4) freedom to form political parties, orga-
     nize members,putforward candidates, and campaign without fearof
     extreme violence; and(5)the absenceofstate terror and a climateof
     fear among the public. Also off the agendaisthe election-day “coercion
     package” that may explain turnout in terms other than devotion to the
     army and its plans, including any legal requirement to vote, and explicit
     or implicit threats fornotvoting.Otherissues that must be downplayed….

     Reply
142. 

     March 16, 2025

     Lone Wolf💀

     Thecase began when Mehmet Ali Agca shot and seriously injured
     Pope John PaulIIin St. Peter’s SquareonMay13,1981.Agca was a
     Turkish rightist and assassin long associated with the Gray Wolves, an
     affiliateofthe extreme right-wing Nationalist Action party. Initial
     Western news reports pointed out that Agca was a wanted criminal who
     had escaped from a Turkish prison in1979,and that his durable politi-
     cal affiliations had been with the Fascist right. His motives in shooting
     the pope were unclear. Agca’s friends were violently anti-Communist,
     so that, at first, pinning the crime on the East seemed unpromising.
     Two factors allowed a KGB-Bulgarian plottobe developed.The
     first was that in his travels through Europe in the Gray Wolves under-
     ground, which carried him through twelve different countries, Agca had
     stayed for a period in Bulgaria. Turkish drug dealers, who had connec-
     tjons with the Gray Wolves, alsopartidpatedin the drug trade in
     Bulgaria. There were, therefore, some “links” between Agca and Bul-
     garians) minimal factsthatwould eventually beputtogood use.
     Thesecond factor was Western elite needs and the closely associated
     flare-upofa carefully stoked anti-Communist fervor in the West. At
     the first meetingofthe Jonathan Institute, in Jerusalem, in July 1979,
     at which a large Western political and media contingent were present
     (including Claire Sterling, George Will, George Bush, and Robert
     Moss),3 the main theme pressed by Israeli Prime Minister Menahem
     Begin in his opening address, andbymany othersatthe conference, was

     the importance and utilityofpressing the terrorism issue andoftying
     terrorism to the Soviet Union.4Claire Sterling did this in herW81
     volumeThe Terror Network,which became the bibleofthe Reagan
     administration and the international right wing, and elevated Sterling
     to the statusofnumber one mass-media expertonthat subject.Terror-
     ism and Soviet evil were the centerpiecesofthe Reagan administra-
     tion’s propaganda campaign that began in1981,designed to support its
     planned arms increase, placementofnew missiles in Europe, and inter-
     ventionist policies in theThirdWorld.Thusthe shootingofthe pope
     byAgca in May1981occurred at a time when important Western
     interests were looking for ways to tie the Soviet Union to “international
     terrorism.”5

     THESTERLING-HENZE-
     KALBMODEL
     Although the initial media reaction to the shooting wasthatthe roots
     ofthe act would seem to lie in Turkish right-wing ideology and politics,
     some rightists immediately seized the opportunity to locate the origins
     ofthe plot in the Soviet bloc. Only six days after the assassination
     attempt, the Italian secret-service organizationSISMIissued a docu-
     ment which claimed that the attack had been announced by a Soviet
     officialata meetingofthe Warsaw Pact powers in Bucharest, Romania,
     andthatAgca had been trained in the Soviet Union. Subsequently, this
     “infonnation” was shown to have been fabricated bySI5MIor oneof
     its intelligence sources,butit entered the streamofallegations about
     the plot in a book published in West Germany and via further citations
     and leaks.6
     TheReader’s Digestsaw the propaganda opportunity presented by
     the assassination attempt quite early, and hiredbothPaul Henze, a
     longtime CIA officer and propaganda specialist, and Claire Sterling to
     investigate the topic. Sterling’s September1982article in theReader’s
     Digest,”ThePlot to Kill the Pope,” was the most important initiator
     ofthe Bulgarian Connection, and its ideas and thoseofPaul Henze
     fonned the basis for theNBC-TVprogram”TheManWho Shot the
     Pope-AStudyinTerrorism,” narrated by Marvin Kalb and first aired
     onSeptember21,1982.
     TheSterling-Henze-Kalb (SHK) model, in which Agca was an agent
     ofthe Bulgarians (and, indirectly,ofthe Soviet Union), quickly became

     the dominant frameofthe mass media, through the great outreachof
     theReader’s Digestand the NBC-TV program (which was repeated in
     revised form in January1983),and the ready, even eager, acceptanceof
     this view by the other mainstream media.7Themass mediainour
     sample-Newsweek, Time,theNew York Times,and CBSNews-all
     accepted and used theSHKmodel from the beginning, and retained
     that loyalty to theendofthe Rome trial in March1986.In the process
     they excluded alternative views and a great dealofinconvenient fact.
     With theReader’sDigest,theWall Streetjourna~theChristian Science
     Monitor,andNBC-TValso firmly adhering to theSHKline, it quickly
     established a dominant position throughout the mainstream media.
     In the balanceofthis and the following two sections,wewill describe
     theSHKmodel, discuss its weaknesses, and outline an alternative
     frame explaining Agca’s confession implicating the Bulgarians, which
     the media ignored. We will thenturnto a closer examinationofthe
     media’s gullible receptionoftheSHKview and its fit to a propaganda
     model.
     TheSHKmodel had the following essential elements:
     1.Motive.In Sterling’sReader’s Digestarticle, the preeminent motive
     in the assassination attempt was a Soviet desire to weaken NATO, to
     beaccomplished by implicating aTurkin the assassinationofthe pope:
     “TheTurkwas thereatSt. Peter’s to signal Christendom that Islamic
     Turkey was an alien and vaguely sinister country that did not belong
     inNATO.”This motive was accompanied (and soon supplanted) by the
     contention that the shooting was to help quell the Solidarity movement
     in Poland by removing its most important supporter. At one point Paul
     Henze suggestedthatthe intentofthe KGB was perhaps merely to
     “wing” the pope, not kill him,asa warning, as in a James Bond movie.
     Thecosts and risks to the Soviet blocofsuch a venture were never
     discussed by Sterling, Henze, or Kalb.
     2.TheproofofSovietandBulgarianinvolvement.Before Agca’s
     confession and his identificationofBulgarians in November1982,the
     evidenceonwhichSHKrelied was confined to the fact that Agca had
     stayed in Bulgaria in the summerof1980,and that Turkish drug traders
     with links to the Gray Wolves did business in Bulgaria. In November
     1982,Agca named three Bulgarians as his alleged accomplices and
     claimed to have been hired by the Bulgarians to do the job.Heoffered
     no credible evidence and named no witnesses to any dealings with
     Bulgarians,sothat the new “evidence” was simply Agca’s assertions,
     after seventeen monthsinan Italian prison.

     3.Theideologicalassumptions.Asthe case looked extremely thin,
     especially before Agca’s new confessionofNovember1982,the gaps
     were filled by ideological assumptions: This is the kindofthing the
     Soviets do.TheSoviet Union and Bulgaria have been actively striving
     to “destabilize” Turkey.aIfthere is no hard evidence it is because the
     Soviets are consummate professionals who cover their tracks and main-
     tain “plausible deniability.”TheKGB hired Agca in Turkey and caused
     him to use a rightist cover to obscure the fact that he was a KGB agent.
     Although Agca traveled through eleven other countries, his stay in
     Bulgaria was crucial because Bulgariaisa totalitarian state and the
     police know everything; therefore they knew who Agca was, and they
     must have been using him for their own purposes.

     PROBLEMSWITHTHE
     STERLING-HENZE-KALB
     MODEL
     Thebasic Sterling-Henze-Kalb model suffered from a complete ab-
     senceofcredible evidence, a reliance on ideological premises, and
     internal inconsistencies.Asproblems arose, the grounds were shifted,
     sometimes with a complete reversalofargument.
     IO
     An initial problem for the model was the Bulgarian-Soviet motive.
     Inthis connection,weshould note the extreme foolishnessofSterling’s
     original suggestion that the Eastern bloc went to the troubleoflocating
     a Turkish Fascist to shoot the pope in order to make Turkey look bad,
     and thereby to loosen its ties to NATO.Thatsuch a loosened tie would
     follow from a Turkish Fascist shooting the popeisnot sensible, noris
     it likelythatthe conservative Soviet leadership would indulge in such
     a fanciful plan evenifit had a greater probabilityof”success.”ll This
     theory assumed thatAgcawould be caught and identified as aTurk,
     but that he wouldn’t reveal that he had been hired by the Bulgarians
     and the Soviets. Subsequently, Sterling suggested that Agca was sup-
     posedtohave been shot in the square to assure his silence.Theamaz-
     ingly incompetent KGB failed to accomplish this simple task.SHKalso
     maintainedatvarious points that Agca may not even have known who
     hired him, so he couldn’t implicate the East. Later, when Agca claimed
     that he had been heavily involved with BulgariansinRome, Sterling
     and Henze lapsed into silence on the failureofthe KGB to maintain
     a semblanceofplausible deniability.

     SHKfinally settled firmly on the ideathatquelling the Polish Soli-
     darity movementwasthe real Soviet-Bulgarian motive. But this theory
     is as implausible as its predecessor, whenwetake accountoftiming and
     elementary cost-benefit analysis. Agca was allegedly recruited inTur-
     key long before Solidarity existed. In a variant Sterling versionofthe
     timingofhis recruitment, Agca was hired by the Bulgarians in July1980,
     which was still prior to the Gdansk shipyard strike, and thus before
     Solidarity appeared a credible threat to Soviet control.Therisks and
     costsofanassassination attempt would seemheavy-and,in fact, the
     costs to the Soviet Union and Bulgaria were severe based merely on the
     widespread belief in their involvement, even in the absenceofcredible
     evidence.Thesupposed benefits from the act are also not plausible.
     Theassassinationofthe pope, especially ifblamed on the Soviet Union,
     would infuriate and unify the Poles and strengthen their opposition to
     a Soviet-dominated regime. And the further costs in damaged relations
     with WesternEurope-whichwere extremely important to the Soviet
     Union in1981,with the gas pipeline being negotiated and with the
     placementofnew U.S. missiles in Western Europe a major Soviet
     concern-wouldseem to militate against taking foolishriskS.12
     A second problem with theSHKmodelisthatAgca had threatened
     to kill the pope in1979at the timeofa papal visit toTurkey-again,
     long before Solidarity existed. This suggests that Agca and the Turkish
     right had their own grievances against the pope and a rationale for
     assassinating him thatwasindependentofany Soviet influence.Itwas
     partly for this reasonthatSHKargue that Agca was recruited by the
     Soviet Union in Turkey before the pope’s visit there, setting him up for
     the later attack. But not only is this pure speculation unsupported by
     a traceofevidence, it failstoexplain why the entire Fascist press, not
     just Agca, assailed the pope’s visit in1979.Was the entire Fascist right
     serving Soviet ends?Theonly time this issue was ever raised in the mass
     media, on the “McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour”ofJanuary5,1983,Paul
     Henze stated in no uncertain terms that “therewasno [press] opposi-
     tion” to the pope’s visit in1979.TheTurkish journalist Ugur Mumcu,
     however, assembled a large collection of citations from theTurkish
     rightist pressofthe time to demonstrate that Henze’s statement was
     false.
     13
     A third problem for theSHKmodelwasthatAgca was a committed
     rightist, and therefore not a likely candidate for service to the Commu-
     nist powers (although perhaps amenable to fingering themasco-con-
     spirators in a prison context).SHKstrove mightily to make Agca out
     tobea rootless mercenary, but the best they could come up with was

     the factthatAgca didn’t seem to have been registeredasa memberof
     the Gray Wolves.14But all his friends, associates, and affiliations from
     high school days onward were Gray Wolves, and in his travels through
     Europe up to the timeofhis May13,Ig81,rendezvous, he moved solely
     through the Gray Wolves network. While in prison, Agca addressed a
     letter to Alparslan Turkes, the leaderofthe Nationalist Action Party
     ofTurkey, expressing his continued commitment and loyalty. This
     letter was bothersome to Sterling and Henzeasit is inconsistent with
     their depictionofAgcaasapolitical, and Sterling dismissed it without
     argument as a “laughably clumsy forgery.” A problem, however,isthat
     Agca’s letterwasintroducedasevidence in a trial in Ankara by the
     Turkish military authorities, usually adequateprooffor Sterlingof
     authenticity. She doesn’t mention this fact or examine their case. Ugur
     Mumcu devotes five pagesofhis bookAgcaDossierto a detailed ac-
     countofthe Turkes letter, describing the great pains the authorities
     took, including tapping outside experts, to establish its authenticity.
     Theconclusion on all sides wasthatthe letterwasgenuine.
     A fourth problem with theSHKmodelisthe notion that becauseof
     the efficiencyofthe Bulgarian secret police, Agca’s presence in Sofia
     must have been known to them, and he must therefore have been on
     their payroll. This assumed efficiencyisan ideological assumption un-
     supported by any evidence and contradicted by actual Bulgarian and
     Soviet performance.Thereisno evidencethatthe Bulgarians ever
     identified Agca, who was using a false passport. Furthermore, the con-
     tentionthatthe Bulgarian police know everythingwasrefuted in impor-
     tant testimony during the Rome trial on September22, Ig85,when Gray
     Wolves official Abdullah Catli stated that many Gray Wolves preferred
     to traverse Bulgaria because it was easy to hide in the largeflowof
     Turkish immigrant traffic throughthatcountry.
     A fifth problem for theSHKmodel was the factthatAgca seems to
     have gotten his gun through the Gray Wolves network, not from the
     Bulgarians, who presumably could have slipped it to him quite easily
     in Rome.InherReader’sDigeslarticle, Sterling traced Agca’s gun to
     Horst Grillmaier, an Austrian gun dealer who, according to Sterling,
     had fled behind the Iron Curtain after May13,Ig81,to avoid question-
     inginthe West.Itturned out later, however, that Grillmaier was a
     former Nazi who specialized in supplying right-wing gun buyers;that
     he had not disappeared behind the Iron Curtain at all; and that the gun
     had proceeded through a numberofintermediaries, to be transmitted
     to Agca by a Gray Wolves friend…..

     Reply
143. 

     March 16, 2025

     You thoughts are not your own

     Busta Rhymes Mariah Carey – What you want (video)

     Lets discuss tomorrow tikamutswa na Dziva Musikavanhu.👊

     Reply
144. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Rap music has had a profound effect on young people. In dress manner and thought. The glorification of violence, specifically gang related. Objectfying of women and exotic cars,dress,mannerisms and language.

     Per capita, black males are likely to died in gang related shootings, go to prison or remain in the projects.

     There is nothing wrong with exotic cars, when you buy a MacLaren P1 you are more than likely to get a small crowd hovering around you were ever you go. There is nothing wrong with it, its about how you got there that matters more. When @richrebuilds buys a McLaren P1 we are likely to presume its because of his Youtube channel. He has been through a lot, so its good to have a friend like Stephen, those lads have fun taking peoples women on dates in the open…kkkk you lads kkkk😄

     Reply
145. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     If you give me a business card with a @gmail instead of @.gov.zw domain I may think you are a con artist.

     Reply
146. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai.Chidumba

     Sometimes ka. You something. You will immediately know whats going on if you are still being attacked at your supposed worst, makes no.sense to me, why go after munhu asina basa, rombe, richatenga mota yemawaya, benzi…the list goes on some I don’t even know.

     When I read no one will starve I knew kumberi uko, sikelemu.

     When I heard landlord manyama I knew, sikelemu.

     I am probably the worst landlord in the world, serious because a home owner should have rights to protect them if not it messes with the housing markets, do not ask me why, it just does.

     So I was speaking to someone and they said Dzidzai the reason you do not have a lady is money. Not entirely, do you know you can meet someone in a bar and say Babe handei pa den, and she won’t expect anything from you.

     There is a girl I met. I think she was a virgin, I had to force money down into hand. I was like sha things are hard its just a token, you may need it. Then we shared a gold blend, then she said,sha hatichazivane, then we said our good byes,then she had to go. If you do not love someone why would you be interested in their love life specifically the lack of it. Why would seeing me with someone else pain you when you never wanted me? Or it has hedging a bet.

     Eaglesvale parents sports day is normally on mid March, vana vakamhanya here. Would have loved to see Raviro in the relay but I couldn’t walk twice, I still have many fond memories.

     You know one thing Zimbabwe inonakidza zvekuti you may get disracted. I have to go back to school, also meed to do more with the UNISA alumni. So my effprst cirrently are focusedbon that, it will be slow and pain staking considering domestic issues. At least this time I know I meed to attend all the lectures and keep notes, drinkups and parties are perfectly fine. There is one society I signed up for but didn’t really attend, SHAWCO and Habitat for Humanity.

     Reply
147. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     $170 for a passport, well played. Vamwe vakuuya for a passport, got it and ran back to the surburbs.

     So we got into a bit of an argument, I wanted to go to the Inkomo area. Then.she said enda kuchibhorani mvura yapera. Tyen I said, I go there everytime, those days it was working. You still habe a bit of water left, I need to go. Why don’t you go and get just one bucket, I will fill up tue tins when I get back. Then she.said kwedu ku.Sandton mvura inobuda mu tap. Then I said no mom, we are not at Sandton,we do what there. Then she got all moody. Then I went to Nyabira bar. Then I came back then I filled the tins.

     Then we went for my Dads memorial then her passport came out. I do not know how she came in the first place without a valid one. Then she took her lions share of my income then she promised to leave me with $4 dollars has, she suddenly had energy to carry thinhs around. Then she left me with a weeks worth of gas for a month, a $1 gas, it would have been better if she told me the truth. I would have planned. Then I had to cook on the fire. Then people around helped. Then I bought a phone and it caused some people to feel some kijd of way, then I lost in a bar. I woke up standing, with the girl sweeping the floor,then someone said I know who took your phone,the same guy who at Chikwanha said fack you mudzimu hautaure nechirungu,then the guys said sit he is just talking to himself,he is not bothering anyone, then they said see he is not violently youvare the one baiting him into a fight,I didnt saty for long after,it wasnt the same anymore. Bars are for enjoyment and stress relief, hoooo rhaiti ndapabata.

     Reply
148. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Pane munhu wandakambokumbira number akandinyima. Asi reason yake.I understood. Vanhu shuwa vanemakuhwa,vamwe havazvidi. They want a quiet life. Its perfectly normal kurambwa. You just have to suck it up

     Reply
149. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai

     Ndokumbirawo kubvunza guys. Nema netsero anoita imba. Munhu anemba obva kumba kwake ouya pa Sparta. Ok bho, but wozowomera futi that wotivhairira futi. You taking homes from legitimate home seekers. Well played.

     Hanzi neumwe, they were told when you die they can have the house and the car. Ah

     Reply
150. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai.Chidumba

     So the deal breaker.

     First we had to go to the hotel converted into a Church. Were the Lemba’s are. There is a Pastor there who once preached at Baxter. He is a Karateta originally from. Zambia. Mabelreign near the shops. Ibhad to renounce my totem and anything associated with it. I had to confess who I slept with, we both had to actually, low numbers for both. I crossedbmy hands my back. A contract under duress and deception is not valid.That man has a lot of Israeli flags in his office…kkkk

     Anyway for the marital counseling. The deal breaker was I had to take off my bandana,stop bute, mbira musics and return to church. The counsellor started off by giving glowing reports of himself. It wasbexpensive but he was willing to do it a favour to moms, well fine. He had a shrine, he had been to Israel so he put some touristy artifacts and voila he had a shrine. My ancestors do you see the things I do for you?, Mhondoro dzenyika mamuka here?

     Squire you asked why are you here, thats why.

     Reply
151. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai.Chidumba

     Why go to University instead of the job market. Well I am a bit behind world trends if I am at the Graduate School of Business I will meet people in the corporate enviroment, also need to do it properly this time, there is a debt to be paid.

     There little campus jobs like tutoring the under grads if you look you will find something even assisting with the IT.

     My kids are growing and soon they will want some sort of inheritance or higher education. Although I told them to join anyone of the forces,then build from there after your contract expires. That exposure is invaluable. I need to do right by them first before anyone else so thats the reason why I need to go. Insha Allah.

     Reply
152. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai.Chidumba

     I have found the topic for my dissertation.

     The Effects of Space Weather on Terrestial Communication

     I might as well start working on it now, and no two papers should be the same,if they are one of the two plagiarised,so you will have to be able to defend it in front of a panel of professors.

     Reply
153. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Can I tell you a joke, its a bit racist..kkkk😜

     What do you call a black man in a suit?….The defendant.😁

     Yoh. I saw that muma forums on the net a while ago. Its a brutal joke,but we have to lighten up,then it can be used against you. If someone teases you tease back but,you dont have to kill anyone over a stupid joke and they are many. You will find you may be friends in the end.

     Reply
154. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Whats on the movie playlist today, Furiosa what about you. Here are some classics, sometimes I don’t feel like watching action.

     The Kings Speech
     Good Fellas
     (Did they make Project Paperclip into a movie, they did I cannot remember the name)
     Anora
     Jurrasic Park (Boxset)
     (Buster Keaton’s) The General
     Amadeus
     (Carol Reed’s) The Third Man
     The Bridge Over the River Kwai
     K54 The Widow Maker
     Crimson Tide

     Do the Right Thing (Bill Nunn)
     Eve’s Bayou 1997
     The American Friend 1977
     Charlie Chaplin’s One A.M 1916
     Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing

     Pennies from Heaven
     Something Wild (Ray Liotta)
     Wicked
     Dune Part Two
     The Brutalist
     I’m still here
     A Complete Unknown
     The Substance

     Iron Eagle
     Top Gun 1987
     Tango and Cash
     Basic Instinct (Stalone, Stone)
     Nowhere To Run (Van Damme)
     Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor

     Mike Nichols’s The Graduate
     Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil
     Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky
     Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil
     Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust

     Reply
155. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Do you think sometimes our former colonisers think, man I think we did too good a job, its becoming to hard to reverse.

     Which was the last country to get colonised? What did they need to do to colonise people and keep them pacified? The gun alone cannot colonise people.

     Reply
156. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai.Chidumba

     Someone came over. We sat drinking Bootleg. He said do you know in Zimbabwe ZANU PF will rule forever. I said off course why do you think I joined, I never resigned, kusangodiwa hangu otherwise…

     Were it came from I do not know because I don’t like discussing politics, its draining. I would rather speak about football. Then he said some other things and left. Then I was like haah, let me go to bar.

     Reply
157. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Saka nyaya yaPeggy. Peggy was a prostitute, someone with a nice car picked her. Little did she know it was a monster, a serial killer anga atove nevanhu vakawanda pasi. She was pretty she loved to wear white. He raped her then killed her. Then he did what in English they call nechrophilia or something, kunyenga chitunha. Imika, vile, disgusting behaviour. Do you think her spirit would rest, sekuru i vavo got it easy if he is dead now, the ngozi comes for revenge, this is African culture, vazukuru will be left with the issues, and some would not even know what happened.

     I hope her soul finds rest.

     Reply
158. 

     March 17, 2025

     Saigon

     Yanga iri road yekwa Landas here.

     Hemono, ma strip roads akawanda.

     Dumped he in the bush.

     Deep.

     Reply
159. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai.Chidumba

     I had a discussion with a lady friend. She said when was the last time you had sex. I told her 2022. Then she said so what do you do. Then I said masturbate, its a perfectly normal biological function.

     She said do you know when people have sex they swap spirits. I said ah how do you know that then she said the Holy Bible.says so. I wanted to say were? but I don’t like those sorts of discussions they are draining.

     Then she said so if you masturbate you are sinning. Ah! no ways, then I said how? then she said its the Holy Bible…then I said hoo rhaiti ngati’te then, then she said no we have to wait for marriage. Haaah!….toot toot toot the number you have dialed is not connected succesfully.🌂

     Besides everyone does it, some couples even help each other, live a little.

     Reply
160. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai.Chidumba

     If someone comes to you and says, please extend your term. By all means. Take that deal anyone would. I would. Its allowed for a sovereign country to change the Constitution. Finish the work you started Sir.

     Reply
161. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Pane munhu ano drivaa a grey BMW next to Rio Zim kune ma weeping willows kana achiriko padhuze ne Cresta. Ndakambokuno muna Glenara pa government house.🔥🎸

     Reply
162. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai.Chidumba

     So I love cartoons. I used to sit down my kids to watch cartoons we were raised on. They wanted to watch Ryan and Reborn dolls, then I said please guys for me.

     We used to watch Voltron the one with the Lions. Thats the best one. Prince Lotor was a bad guy and he was in love with Princess Leila, the good guy in one of the lions also loved her. It made things very complicated. His father had a witch who used to call the Robeast and in each episode the blazing sword had to be used , COPS with Big Boss, Turbo something, Nightshade, Tails Spin, Spiral Zone eaeths most power soldiers, zone riders, Courage and crew, Visionaries, Widget the World watcher, Rotech, Samurai Pizza Cats, The Silver Brumby. Some of these were hand drawn no computers or at least in 2D.

     Friday night movie night. I miss it

     Reply
163. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Mukoma George was my superviser ku ADT. He went Bistol University on a ZNA scholarship.

     On the side he was a sales rep for Cobra. Its a Lager beer from India. I the entertainment rep for College House. We got the lads a pool table which I never played on. We also managed to get a bigger screen TV for our DSTV room. We used to have a 15inch, we needed something bigger for those.Super Rugby morningsbwhen the Stormers and Blue Bulls used to play Crusaders, Waratahs and the ACT Brumbies.

     Rugby is like a reigion in South Africa people used to ask for the keys to the TV room at 0530 with bloodshot hangover eyes.

     Leo Marquard had more boys so they could open their Bar almost every weekend. We could do it only once. When we did we had to make it count. So I.said mukoma.George our bar is open this weekend can you deliver so many cases of beer. He came through. I wasn’t there for the openong I was somewhere on Campus. When I came back, the guys saw me and came running. Dzidzai the beer is finished. Tsika Mutasa from Swaziland was the Finance rep. Ha we used to have lots of heated conversation about loosening the purse, he.was good at his job, but I also had to do mine. On this occasion it was clear the guys wanted their beer.

     We called mukoma George he came through with another delivery. Tsika paid. The music started again. Till this I haven’t tasted a Cobra Lager. One of the lads saw the beer and.said are they sponsoring us. I said yes, didn’t want to spoil his fun. I din’t ask mukoma.George for anything, and if he had offered anything to me it would have been an insult. I liked the product because we wanted to give the lads a night to remember and also support a brother from home. Every other race does it and it had a clear audit trail so bho.

     College House had the best bar and they used my old AIWA radio handed.down by my brothers to play Bon Jovi and the Gladiator theme over and over….

     Good times

     Reply
164. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST⚡💀⚡

     What are your most anticipated movies for 2025.

     The second movie I watched was Crocodile Dundee, not the first time I watched it but Laura took me on a date. She came to collect me with a Taxi pa Ximex, at that time I was busy with University applications towards the end of A Level. Then we went to Avondale. We watched the movie then went to Fantasy land and played pool. The she paid for another Taxi, thebshe dropped me off at home and went on her way home. She paid for the entire evening, I just had to make my way to town.

     Then people starting calling asking what happened, nothing but her friends were curious. Teenagers need places to hang out.

     Buzzfeed says;

     Mickey 17
     Snow White
     A Mine Craft Movie
     Jurrasic World: Rebirth
     A Simple Favor
     A Thunderbolts
     Fantastic Four: The First Steps
     Superman
     Wicked: For Good
     Avatar: Fire and Ash

     Reply
165. 

     March 17, 2025

     Dzidzai

     Miss Du Plessis would have a fit if saw me write ‘picked her’ instead of ‘picked her up’. Rest in peace maam. My English teacher was Afrikaner, life and its mysteries.

     Reply
166. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     COIN

     How the Selous Scouts were formed. Captain Ron Reid Daly was dissatisfied with life in the Rhodesian Army, he resigned mid war. The Army went and got him back under recommendation from other soldiers, in their words, we had lost a good man. How they got him back, they promoted him to Colonel skipping the rank of Major and Lt. Colonel, not a common occurence but an admission.

     He went around the units getting farm boys, those conversant in local languages and the bush. Tough guys….

     Then he solicited for the services of an Ecologist to train the recruits in bush craft,flora and fauna and tracking. If I am not mistaken the originator of Pfumvundza I think his name is Alan Savoy or a namesake or I have forgotten the name, Foundations for Farming. Yes that’s were Pfumvudza comes from, conservation agriculture from a former Selous Scouts. The ecologist also proposed stopping desertification by creating vast grass land and having herds of animals turn the soil instead of ploughing as it was made by nature.

     The Selous Scouts were a different type of grouping. Race was not an issue. The Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) now One Commando, Grey Scouts now Mounted and SAS did not allow black recruits. The black regiment was the Rhodesian African Rifles and the regular Army. The Selous Scouts accepted anyone who could come back from wafa wafa.

     The Selous Scouts were effective because they could assimilate, FRELIMO, ZANLA or ZIPRA fighters, and their bush craft made them a formidable adversary to come up against. Fire Force operations also gave them a tactical advantage not matched anywhere at the time by such a small force. Accounting for over 60% of casualties. Modern counter insurgency was born.

     Reply
167. 

     March 17, 2025

     MYST

     Good-bye guys, and thank you, we shared some interesting and sometimes crazy moments, it was fun while it lasted. I have so much more to say and share, but thoughts are forever with you.

     It was important for me to say good-bye properly, thank you for realeasing me from my promise. On to a new chapter in life. Those who won, well done,you were the better team. I walk away with my head held high, will be here for a while as I put my things together. Peace be with you!😭💔✌

     Reply