Donald Trump has signed an executive order to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile, which will include cryptocurrencies forfeited to the government.
The reserve will start with approximately 200,000 bitcoins already owned by the US government. These were not bought but rather they were forfeited to the US government as part of criminal or civil cases.
Those 200,000 bitcoin are worth about $17.5 billion today and I can only wish it were Zimbabwe with that kind of stockpile. It’s peanuts for the US but would be a game changer for Zim.
Anyway, the crypto reserve is a fulfilment of a campaign promise Trump made and aims to stabilize the cryptocurrency market. Crypto bros contributed millions upon millions to both Trump and Kamala’s campaigns and these are the fruits, I guess.
Following the announcement, 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.
That lack of active buying and transparency in the US government’s crypto strategy is why the price fell despite the supposed good news that the US was creating a crypto reserve.
A White House crypto summit is scheduled for today, featuring industry leaders like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Chainlink Labs CEO Sergey Nazarov, where Trump is expected to deliver remarks. More details about the reserve are expected to be revealed there.
It shouldn’t be long till we get more clarity on what the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve means for the crypto market as a whole. It could have an impact on some other crypto assets as Trump has said he would like to see those included in the reserve.
For now, the uncertainty surrounding the government’s intentions—whether it will simply hold or eventually sell its holdings—means prices may be volatile. That’s compounded by the fact that this could all be done by the parliament (congress) in the US.
Regardless, the fact that crypto is now being discussed at these high levels means its legitimacy may be growing. Whether that turns out to be a blessing or a curse for the industry remains to be seen.
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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?
“……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.
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?
—
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.
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.
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….
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
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.
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.
—
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.
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.”
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.’ ”
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
On deck
Yung Joc its going down
Spice So mi like it
Vybz Kartel Spice Conjugal
Alkaline Pretty Girl team
Fleetwood Mac Everywhere
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.
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
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.
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
Thank you people of Russia for the helicopters. I just saw an Air Ambulance flyby. Nice machines.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
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?’
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.’
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.
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.’
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.
* * *
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.
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…..
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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 . . .’
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.
This article rocks for today’s music quiz! Artist of the Day Soundmap
Nailed my gaming fix with this gem! Hypckel
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.
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.
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%
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.
Boyz dzangu ko Nyathi?
Maggies!
Nema Super.
Totenga pa Helensvale.
Papi?
pa Hood.
Haa bho!
Chimboisa Nisha pirori.
🔥🔥🔥
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.
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.
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.
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)
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?
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.)
Engineers who make(made) planes can also make cars. SAAB, BMW (The logo is actually a propeller taken from their earonautic foundations) and Mitsubishi.
APPLY ONLINE AT
http://applyonline.uct.ac.za
Apply online using a working email address that is not shared with another UCT applicant.
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.
Misti Mist, what is for supper tonight?
Kasadza nema chunks,cabbage with chillies from the jardim.
Happy days Mist. Small mercies.
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
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….
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…..
Busta Rhymes Mariah Carey – What you want (video)
Lets discuss tomorrow tikamutswa na Dziva Musikavanhu.👊
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yanga iri road yekwa Landas here.
Hemono, ma strip roads akawanda.
Dumped he in the bush.
Deep.
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.
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.
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