Quote:C Company (Capybara), 11th Cyber Battalion Activation Ceremony

FORT EISENHOWER, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES
07.11.2024
Photo by Steven Stover
780th Military Intelligence Brigade (Cyber)

FORT EISENHOWER, Ga. – Capt. Sean Cushman (right) passes the C Company (Capybara), 11th Cyber Battalion, guidon to 1st Sgt. Terry Spangler signifying his assumption of responsibility as the company’s senior enlisted leader at the Eisenhower Conference Center, July 11.

Quote:DUBAI, July 6. /TASS/. Moscow and Tehran have finalized integration of Russia’s Mir and Iran’s Shetab payment systems, Iranian Central Bank Governor Mohammad Reza Farzin said.

"During the meeting, the sides finalized the requirements to connect Russia’s Mir payment system to Iran’s Shetab and this project has entered the operational phase," Farzin said upon his return from St. Petersburg, where he had held talks with Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina. The IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

Farzin said that in the first state, which kicks off on August 22, "bank cards of Iran’s Shetab system can be used as Amber smart cards in all ATMs across Russia and Iranian citizens will be able to withdraw rubles from the Russian ATMs using their cards."

"The second stage [involves the possibility of] paying with Russian citizens’ cards in Iran," Farzin said, adding that in the third stage, Iranians will be able to pay with a Shetab card in Russian stores via an ordinary bank terminal.

TASS

Quote:For decades the Battle of Kursk has been widely believed to be the largest tank battle in history.

In particular the fighting at Prokhorovka on the 12th July is often reported to have involved anywhere from 1200 to 2000 tanks clashing at point blank range, resulting in the destruction of up to 1200 vehicles.

However since the end of the Cold War extensive research by historians in the Soviet and German archives have analysed records of the units that took part.  As a result it’s now generally accepted that these numbers have been greatly exaggerated and that Prokhorovka wasn’t the largest tank battle.

This post gives a very brief overview of the results of this research.  The numbers presented here are taken from ‘Kursk 1943:  A Statistical Analysis’ by Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson and ‘Demolishing the Myth’ by Valeriy Zamulin.

...
So if Kursk wasn’t the largest tank battle in history, what was?

It’s now generally accepted that it was the fighting around Brody and Dubno between the 26th and 29th July 1941, rather than Kursk.  This was part of the border battles fought at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.  It involved up to 3500 Soviet and 750 German tanks.  The battle was a heavy Soviet defeat, they lost hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers. Indeed by early July most of the units involved had been reduced to less than 10% of their tank strength.

Prokhorovka and the Myth of the Largest Tank Battle

Quote:NATO: Russia’s hybrid war against the West

In an article previously published on NATO Review, I explained that the nature of modern warfare is changing at a rapid pace. Consequently, wars are no longer merely about kinetic operations. This means that it is not just physical warfare, but also non-military strategies and tactics that define modern-day conflicts and wars.

What has also become commonplace is that kinetic operations - which by themselves have become increasingly complex - are combined with non-military strategies aimed at undermining the security of an antagonist. The combination of military and non-military instruments and strategies is done not randomly but in a synchronised way to achieve synergistic effects. In other words, it is this synchronised fusion that optimises the results.

The bottom line is that a particular country can potentially unleash physical force against an adversary to achieve certain goals. But if the use or threat of conventional or unconventional force is combined with and/or preceded by a degree of subversive tools such as cyber-attacks and disinformation, the overall damage inflicted on the antagonist can be optimised.

Despite state-driven hybrid warfare entailing a systematic integration of military, political, economic, civilian, and informational tools, it often plays out in grey zones below the threshold of a conventional war. In these grey zones, the military instrument is used unconventionally and innovatively to avoid attribution, responsibility, and sometimes even detection. So a hostile state can employ non-state actors or a non-attributable military force (like the “little green men”) in a clandestine war to deny involvement, but at the same time achieve strategic objectives.



Russia’s hybrid war – myth or reality?

One of the core facets of the common tools that states conflate to unleash hybrid warfare, such as non-state actors, political assassinations, espionage, cyber-attacks, electoral interference, and disinformation, is that there is ample room for plausible deniability – and there is often little evidence to establish culpability. Not all actions are disowned – sometimes aggressive posturing requires taking responsibility for one’s actions, but escaping culpability often offers strategic dividends. So when it was politically and strategically expedient to disown the "little green men” who invaded parts of Crimea in 2014, Russia did so (for a time).

...

Method behind the madness?

Moscow sees itself fighting a long war against what it deems a Western hegemony. It is in this context that Russian President Putin terms “Western elite” the enemy. What exactly he means by Western elite is kept ambiguous, perhaps for political expediency, but his ultimate nemeses are clearly the US and European powers who lead the global political and economic order.

Moscow’s hostility towards the West is just the tip of the iceberg. In terms of a grand strategy, Moscow, under President Putin’s leadership, desires a return to the power balance of the past wherein the Soviet Union was a superpower and could thus define the rules of the international order on a global level. But Moscow realises that it structurally cannot find much space in the international political order, which places a premium on values like freedom and democracy – ideals that are extremely limited in Russia. So the international order ought to be redefined in a bid to (re-)establish Russia’s ascendency over global politics and economy. This is apparent within the Primakov Doctrine – so-called for former Foreign and Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. The Doctrine posits that Russia should aim to establish a multipolar world so that the global order cannot be defined by a single power or pole. It is for this reason that Moscow aims to undercut what it views as Western power and Western influence around the world.

The biggest obstacle for Russia is that it has neither the hard power nor economic influence to be able to achieve this grand goal. Perhaps the Kremlin believes that its hybrid warfare toolkit can help it find a way around this issue. The idea is two-fold: enhancing Russia’s power capabilities through an integration of military and non-military means, and exploiting and exacerbating the internal vulnerability of Western powers. The goal is clear: truncate power asymmetry between Russia and Western powers in order to triumph over them.

Quote:Theodore Roosevelt’s opening line was hardly remarkable for a presidential campaign speech: “Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible.” His second line, however, was a bombshell.

“I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.”

Clearly, Roosevelt had buried the lede. The horrified audience in the Milwaukee Auditorium on October 14, 1912, gasped as the former president unbuttoned his vest to reveal his bloodstained shirt. “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose,” the wounded candidate assured them. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a bullet-riddled, 50-page speech. Holding up his prepared remarks, which had two big holes blown through each page, Roosevelt continued. “Fortunately I had my manuscript, so you see I was going to make a long speech, and there is a bullet—there is where the bullet went through—and it probably saved me from it going into my heart. The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.”

When Teddy Roosevelt Was Shot in 1912

Quote:Why the 1977 Blackout Was One of New York’s Darkest Hours

The blackout that hit New York on this day, July 13, in 1977 was to many a metaphor for the gloom that had already settled on the city. An economic decline, coupled with rising crime rates and the panic-provoking (and paranoia-inducing) Son of Sam murders, had combined to make the late 1970s New York’s Dark Ages.

Then lightning struck, and the city went dark for real. By the time the power came back, 25 hours later, arsonists had set more than 1,000 fires and looters had ransacked 1,600 stores, per the New York Times.

(07-15-2024, 03:13 AM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: Conspiracy theories, like history, may/may not always repeat, but they sure do rhyme.

(07-15-2024, 04:06 AM)NightskyeB4Dawn Wrote:

(07-15-2024, 03:13 AM)EndtheMadnessNow Wrote: Conspiracy theories, like history, may/may not always repeat, but they sure do rhyme.

And we learn nothing. Rinse and repeat, throughout eternity.

Maybe we are in a simulation. Trapped in a loop, with no way out, as long as we are living.

Then we bounce back from the guff after we pass on.

Quote:In full view of the public, this is the apogee of the choreomania that tormented Strasbourg for a midsummer month in 1518. Also known as the “dancing plague”, it was the most fatal and best documented of the more than ten such contagions which had broken out along the Rhine and Moselle rivers since 1374. Numerous accounts of the bizarre events that unfolded that summer can be found scattered across various contemporary documents and chronicles compiled in the subsequent decades and centuries. One seventeenth-century chronicle by the Strasbourg jurist Johann Schilter quotes a now lost manuscript poem:

    Many hundreds in Strassburg began
    To dance and hop, women and men,
    In the public market, in alleys and streets,
    Day and night; and many of them ate nothing
    Until at last the sickness left them.
    This affliction was called St Vitus’ dance.

Another chronicle from 1636 relates a less happy ending:

    In the year 1518 AD . . . there occurred among men a remarkable and terrible disease called St Vitus’ dance, in which men in their madness began to dance day and night until finally they fell down unconscious and succumbed to death.

The physician and alchemist Paracelsus visited Strasbourg eight years after the plague and became fascinated by its causes. According to his Opus Paramirum, and various chronicles agree, it all started with one woman. Frau Troffea had started dancing on July 14th on the narrow cobbled street outside her half-timbered home. As far as we can tell she had no musical accompaniment but simply “began to dance”.

Quote:Floppies keep floppin’

For the typical person, floppy disks are obsolete, but government bodies with already established and successfully running systems in place have been much slower to abandon the old storage medium. Besides the German Navy and US Air Force, Japan only last month officially stopped using floppy disks in governmental systems. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency plans to use 5¼-inch floppies to help run San Francisco's Muni Metro light rail system until 2030.

Four Brandenburg-class F123 warships employ floppies for data-acquisition systems

Quote:What is left for Yacht Rock Revue to prove? This top-notch group of musicians has already rocked onstage with John Oates, Eddie Money (RIP), and both versions of the band Player. They’ve trademarked the term “yacht rock,” both metaphorically and literally (U.S. Registration Number 3834195). From humble beginnings in a basement, touring in partnership with Live Nation and Sirius XM, they now headline sold-out shows across the country, from Webster Hall in New York to the Wiltern in L.A. While rising from bars to amphitheaters, they’ve ticked every box on the Rock Star Accomplishments bingo card. Except for one: Writing and singing their own songs.

Yacht Rock Revue

Quote:Mr Cassis met Mr Lavrov as part of Russia's chairmanship of the UN Security Council, as the head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) announced late on Tuesday via the X short message service. He had informed his counterpart about the peace summit for Ukraine, which had taken place in June on the Bürgenstock NW.

After the conference, the Federal Council stated that Switzerland would inform those countries that had not attended about the summit. This included Russia, which had not been invited.

"Weak will of the member states"

Cassis also addressed the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday. He lamented the fact that wars and poverty were becoming ever more widespread, as the text of his speech revealed. The fact that the United Nations does not seem to be up to date at the moment is due to the lack of will on the part of the member states to comply with the legal obligations they have imposed on themselves. It is time to regain the momentum that holds the international community together.

This requires trust and dialog. Cassis recalled Switzerland's efforts to strengthen these two elements - for example with the Ukraine conference at Bürgenstock NW.

Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in New York

Quote:Incredibly, after nearly 80 years in the marsh mud, one of the plane’s eight Browning .303 machine guns was still in working order when removed, and had to be deactivated. Paddy's son Brian, has paid a close interest to the restoration of the fighter plane and was recently photographed alongside the rebuild.

Although Hemingway survived the Battle of Britain, it was not the end of his adventure, as war continued to rage and he continued to fly. On 13 May, 1941, he was shot down for a third time, and his parachute failed to open properly, but incredibly, he landed on a large dung heap in the garden of the poet Walter de la Mare in London, which luckily broke his fall and saved his life. In recognition of his bravery, on 29 July 1942, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross from the King, but the RAF flight he took to London to receive the award crashed during take off - naturally, he survived.

Towards the end of the war, Hemingway was posted to Italy with the RAF's 43 Squadron. On 23 April 1945, he was flying a routine reconnaissance mission with three other pilots over German occupied Ferrara, when his Spitfire Mk IX was attacked by anti-aircraft fire. He managed to bail out but his parachute ripped the skin off his legs as he was tumbling through the air. He managed to land alive, behind enemy lines.

Hemingway somehow managed to stumble across a farmhouse and was luckily able to take refuge with the owners, who swapped his uniform for peasant clothes and allowed their young daughter (who Hemingway recalls was 7-8 years old) to take him through woodland paths avoiding German military posts and leading him to safety. Miraculously, the identity of the young girl has recently been revealed.

John "Paddy" Hemingway - The Last of The Few

Quote:The Cleveland Gazette hoped his killing would cause the federal government to intervene, but that never happened. The convention continued, and no one was ever tried for his killing. The new constitution and new laws did exactly what Cook had claimed — removed Black Mississippians from voting rolls and then kept them from regaining the right to vote through poll taxes and constitutional tests.

Other Southern states soon followed Mississippi’s lead, plunging the South into a legacy of disenfranchisement and discrimination. The measures proved so successful in barring African Americans that when the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965, less than 7% of Black Mississippians were allowed to vote.

Mississippi Today

Quote:On July 23, 1904, according to some accounts, Charles E. Menches conceived the idea of filling a pastry cone with two scoops of ice cream and thereby invented the ice cream cone. He is one of several claimants to that honor: Ernest Hamwi, Abe Doumar, Albert and Nick Kabbaz, Arnold Fornachou, and David Avayou all have been touted as the inventor(s) of the first edible cone. Interestingly, these individuals have in common the fact that they all made or sold confections at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, known as the St. Louis World’s Fair. It is from the time of the Fair that the edible “cornucopia,” a cone made from a rolled waffle, vaulted into popularity in the United States.

The origins of ice cream have been traced back as far as the second century B.C., although a specific date and inventor have not been indisputably credited. Noted figures known to have enjoyed the frozen treat include Alexander the Great (356 BCE-323 BCE), who is said to have eaten snow and ice flavored with honey and nectar, as well as Roman emperor Nero Claudius Caesar (37 AD-68 AD), who supposedly sent runners into the mountains for snow which was then flavored with fruits and juices. Although legend has it that Marco Polo brought back to Europe a Chinese method for creating an ice and milk concoction, recent scholarship indicates that if he did bring back such a recipe, it was probably not from China but from elsewhere along his route. Over time, recipes for ices, sherbets, and milk ices evolved and were served in the fashionable Italian and French royal courts. After the dessert made its appearance in the United States, it was served by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Dolley Madison. It also was set out for guests at the inauguration of Andrew Jackson.

The Ice Cream Cone

Quote:The Mary Poppins of Defamation? Nina Jankowicz Solicits Funds to Sue Fox News

After a public outcry forced the Biden Administration to kill its infamous Disinformation Government Board, Jankowicz became famous or infamous as the head of the board. She became an instant Internet sensation due to a musical number in which she sang “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation” in a TikTok parody of the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” After her brief stint in the Biden Administration, Jankowicz reportedly registered as a foreign agent with an British group to continue her disinformation work. She is now reinventing herself as the Mary Poppins of defamation and ostensibly seeking $100,000 to sue Fox News for defamation.

Quote:Judge dismisses disinformation expert's defamation suit against Fox News

The big picture: Nina Jankowicz alleged she resigned as executive director of the Biden administration's since-disbanded Disinformation Governance Board "as a result of Fox's false statements and the ensuing harassment."

    But Colm Connolly, chief judge of U.S. District Court in Delaware, ruled Monday that 36 of the 37 statements Jankowicz cited in her suit referred to the board and not her.

    Connolly wrote in his opinion that the other statement, by Fox News host Sean Hannity, which broadcast her image in a segment in which he said that "the Board was a 'department … dedicated to working with the special media giants for the purpose of policing information'" was "not defamatory" because the statement was "not false."

Quote:Hunter Biden drops lawsuit against Fox News over miniseries

Hunter Biden dropped his lawsuit against Fox News over a a fictionalized miniseries on him that President Biden's son alleged violated New York law by publishing nude photos and videos of him without his consent.

The big picture: Hunter Biden's lawyers filed court papers seeking to have the suit dismissed hours after his father withdrew from the 2024 race Sunday — though it wasn't immediately clear if this had any bearing on the legal action and his representatives did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment in the evening.

Quote:Biden’s Voldemortian Theory of Privilege: The President Whose Voice Must Not Be Heard

Biden’s Voldemortian theory of privilege is unlikely to succeed legally, but that is not the point. Garland knows that it is likely to succeed politically. With generally favorable judges in Washington, the Biden administration hopes to run out the clock on the election. If Biden wins the election or the Democrats win the House, there may be no ongoing investigation or justification to support the demand in court. Of course, unlike Voldemort, who simply did not want to be named, Biden wants to remain “he who must not be heard” outside of short, carefully controlled settings.

What Hur heard could therefore remain a privilege of office.

Quote:Police arrested hundreds of Black men, and the Ku Klux Klan began night rides into the Black community, spreading terror. The NAACP warned the newspapers that they were “sowing the seeds of a race riot by their inflammatory headlines.” Their prediction came true when a white mob in Washington began beating anyone with Black skin, including children.

Historian Carter G. Woodson, who went on to found Black History Month, recalled seeing a Black man shot: “I heard him groaning in his struggle as I hurried away as fast as I could without running, expecting every moment to be lynched myself.”

When police refused to intervene, Black Americans fought back. About 375,000 had served in World War I and were willing to fight for their rights. President Woodrow Wilson ordered 2,000 federal troops to regain control.

By the time the violence ended, as many as 39 were dead and 150 injured. Two Black men went to prison for decades for crimes for which they were likely innocent. Before the year ended, similar violence against Black Americans would take place in more than two dozen cities, killing up to 237 Black men in Elaine, Arkansas alone. The violence became known as “Red Summer.”

Mississippi Today

Quote:Harry S. Truman, Diary, July 25, 1945

President Truman told his diary on July 25, 1945, that he had ordered the atomic bomb used.

Emphasis has been added to highlight Truman’s apparent belief that he had ordered the bomb dropped on a “purely military” target, so that “military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.”

An image of the diary page is included below the text.

We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.

Anyway we “think” we have found the way to cause a disintegration of the atom. An experiment in the New Mexico desert was startling — to put it mildly. Thirteen pounds of the explosive caused the complete disintegration of a steel tower 60 feet high, created a crater 6 feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter, knocked over a steel tower 1/2 mile away and knocked men down 10,000 yards away. The explosion was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for 40 miles and more.

This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.

He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful...

    Truman quoted in Robert H. Ferrell, Off the Record: The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman (New York: Harper and Row, 1980) pp. 55-56. Truman’s writings are in the public domain.