Delightful propaganda

Als een nacht met duizend sterren - Joeri Boom

Het boek waar ik het gisteravond over had. Ik heb het nog niet uitgelezen maar ben nu op ongeveer 2/3e en heb tot op heden elke keer moeite gehad om het boek weg te leggen.

In Als een nacht met duizend sterren toont bekroond journalist Joeri Boom hoe ingewikkeld het is om de krankzinnige werkelijkheid van een oorlog te vatten. Zeker als daar militairen uit eigen land bij betrokken zijn, en voorlichters over je schouder meekijken. Tijdens de Nederlandse missie in de Afghaanse provincie Uruzgan (2006 – 2010) ging Boom mee op levensgevaarlijke patrouilles en zocht hij vergeefs naar resultaten van opbouwprojecten. Hij raakte in de ban van het soldatenleven en worstelde met (zelf)censuur en de eenzijdigheid van embedded-verslaggeving. Pas toen het hem lukte los van Defensie in Uruzgan te werken, merkte hij hoe onvolledig zijn beeld van de missie was geweest. Met pakkende en schokkende voorbeelden laat Joeri Boom zien wat er allemaal verborgen ligt achter het zinnetje: 'Dit artikel is gecontroleerd door Defensie, er is niets in gewijzigd.'

Over de schrijver: Joeri Boom

The Dog is getting bigger

Annom previously posted about the extraordinary and biomimetic BigDog robot. They haven't been idle and Alpha Dog is the newest and much bigger version.

Especially watching it run was impressive, and of course its recovery from shoves.

The AlphaDog, as they’re calling it, was created to be basically the practical version of BigDog, which, while compelling and scary, was too loud and couldn’t carry enough stuff. AlphaDog, on the other hand, will carry 400 pounds of gear for 20 miles in a day, without needing to be refueled. -Article

Battle for Lybia: video made by a Lybian soldier

Green Toy Soldiers as Casualties of War

Artwork source.

Challenge: identify this helicopter

Photo of the year?

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, May 1, 2011.

ASM-135 ASAT

The ASM-135 ASAT is an air-launched anti-satellite multi stage missile from the cold war era. It is launched from a F-15A fighter jet making a supersonic zoom climb at an angle of 65 degree.

It used infrared sensors to home in on the target satellite. However, it did not know its own position and attitude with respect to the satellite and basically just kept its head in the direction of the target.

It was test-launched from a F-15 at an altitude of 12 km on 13 September 1985 and successfully destroyed the Solwind P78-1 satellite flying at an altitude of 555 km by hitting it with a relative speed of 6.6 km/s (24,000 km/h).

Quite amazing that it was able to hit the satellite.

Spot the sniper

At least 12,000 people have died this year in Mexico's drug war

Through Nov. 30, 12,456 people were killed, making 2010 the deadliest year since Mexican President Felipe Calderon began a government crackdown against traffickers in 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported. The death toll since the start of the drug war is nearly 30,200, said Mexican Attorney General Arturo Chavez. Other officials estimate the death toll at about 32,000.

Photo from Blog Del Narco which covers a lot of this.

War on Drugs... :(

The Sacred War

I think this is the music we heard at the big motherfucking thing 2 in kiev. It's about the Great Patriotic war:

Get up, the giant country,
Get up for mortal fight
With German horde uncounted,
With forces of the night

Chorus:
Let noble anger of the soul
Get boiled as a wave.
The peoples war, the holy war.
Well fight until the grave.

Let's give repulse to oppressors
Of all the ardent thoughts.
To rapers and to murderers,
Let's say the swear words.

Chorus

We will not let the darkened wings
Fly over Motherland.
The native country spacious fields
Are not for fiend's extend.
Chorus

For rotten fascist pack we've got
A bullet and a bomb.
The spawn of the planet Earth
Must get into the tomb.

Rules of Engagement

"WikiLeaks has released a classified US military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
The military did not reveal how the Reuters staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were injured.
After demands by Reuters, the incident was investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of Engagement"."


NY Times article from 2007.
Longer video with more civilians shot.

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You have probably all seen this by now, but fuck, they are too shoot-happy, report 6 armed men while it's 2 possibly armed and shoot civilians trying to help the wounded. This is only a news story because journalists are involved.

Operation Cornflakes

"Operation Cornflakes was a World War II Office of Strategic Services PSYOP mission in 1944 and 1945 which involved tricking the German postal service Deutsche Reichspost into inadvertently delivering anti-Nazi propaganda to German citizens through mail.

The operation involved special planes that were instructed to airdrop bags of false, but properly addressed mail in the vicinity of bombed mail trains. When recovering the mail during clean-up of the wreck, the postal service would hopefully confuse the false mail for the real thing and deliver it to the various addresses.

The content of the mail often included copies of Das Neue Deutschland, the Allies' German language propaganda news sheet. In addition, the postage stamps used were subtly designed to resemble the standard stamp with Adolf Hitler's face, but a close examination would reveal that his face is made to look like an exposed skull or similarly unflattering imagery. Also, the country identifier 'Deutsches Reich' (German Empire) read 'Futsches Reich' (Kaput Empire)."

Nuke it

Someone made a little program that show the effects of various nuclear bombs, ranging from the Hiroshima bomb to the Tsar Bomba, on a place of your choice. The picture below shows the heat damage a Hiroshima sized bomb would cause if dropped on Utrecht. You can play with it here. Click on the marker to see what the colors mean.

Simo Häyhä

Simo Häyhä (December 17, 1905 – April 1, 2002), nicknamed "White Death" by the Red Army, was a Finnish sharpshooter. Using a standard iron-sighted, bolt action rifle in the Winter War, he has the highest recorded number of confirmed kills in any major war. In temperatures between −20 and −40 degrees Celsius (−4 and −40 degrees Fahrenheit), dressed completely in white camouflage, Häyhä was credited with 505 confirmed kills of Soviet soldiers,^[2][4] and 542 if including the unconfirmed deaths.^[4] The unofficial Finnish frontline figure from the battlefield of Kollaa places the number of Häyhä's sniper kills over 800.^[5] A daily account of the kills at Kollaa was conducted for the Finnish snipers. Besides his sniper kills, Häyhä was also credited with over two hundred kills with a Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun, thus bringing his credited kills to at least 705.^[4] Remarkably, all of Häyhä's kills were accomplished in fewer than 100 days. Häyhä used a Finnish variant, M/28, of the Soviet Mosin-Nagant rifle (known as "Pystykorva" rifle, meaning "spitz"), because it suited his small frame (5 ft 3 in/1.60 m). He preferred to use iron sights rather than telescopic sights to present a smaller target (the sniper must raise his head higher when using a telescopic sight), to prevent visibility risks (a telescopic sight's glass can fog up easily), and aid concealment (sunlight glare in telescopic sight lenses can reveal a sniper's position). Another tactic used by Häyhä was to compact the snow in front of him so that the shot wouldn't disturb the snow, thus revealing his position. He also kept snow in his mouth so that when breathing he wouldn't reveal his position.

US finally stops the Afghanistan poppy eradication policy

The United States is set to overhaul its anti-drug strategy in Afghanistan by phasing out the destruction of opium poppy crops. Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, says the US policy has only put farmers out of business and engendered sympathy for the Taliban. -Aljazeera

Finally a somewhat more rational policy. Change we can believe in?

The Pacific - Trailer

At long last, here's the trailer for HBO's "The Pacific," the long-awaited follow-up to Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg's beloved WWII war epic "Band of Brothers." ... "I believe in ammunition!" "The Pacific" has reportedly a budget around $200 million which, if correct, would almost certainly make it the most expensive TV project of all time. The new mini has quite a legacy to live up to when it debuts next year.

I've blogged about this before when it was supposed to air in 2009 but it has been delayed to March 2010 :( I hope it's worth the wait. It's been delayed

Young World Leaders

Omaha Beach, 65 years ago

Photos of Nazi Germany, Part 3

I found some more pictures of Nazi Germany. Look at them here. older posts: part 1 and part 2