[thought for the day] saturday evening

Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

[George Orwell, 1949]

[yesterday's men] when your race is run

Because when you're told to start
How far can you go
When your race is won
And you already know

Because when you're told to stop
How far will you go
When your race is run
And you already know

Yesterday's men hang on to today,
To sing in any old way,
It must get better in the long run
Has to get better in the long run

Will it get better in the long run
Will we be here in the long run

[d day] the german perspective

It's difficult to get good source material from the German perspective due to the lack of English language German accounts and the Nazi and Allied propaganda of the time.

However:

German students' perspective is one of liberation, not defeat.

The German Army from D-day to Villers-Bocage:

The Allied landings on the Normandy beaches in June 1944 were brilliantly executed but proved to be just the opening phase of a desperately-fought campaign. The German Army responded to the invasion with as much ferocity and force as it could muster, showed tenacity and determination and turned the struggle for Normandy into a brutal and prolonged campaign.

Here is an account of the U.S. Exercise Tiger which went wrong:

Lured across the English Channel by an unexpected frenzy of radio chatter, the Nazi predators sliced through the waves toward an unknown enemy. It was shortly after midnight on April 28, 1944. Within a matter of 2-1/2 hours, an ambush by a German E-boat flotilla had brought misery to hundreds of American families.

A secret dress rehearsal for D-Day had been interrupted with deadly consequences. As hundreds of American servicemen floundered amid the burning oil and cold water off England's southern coast, futile cries of "help" and "mom" echoed across the darkness. At least 749 U.S. sailors and soldiers would be dead by dawn.

Code-named Exercise Tiger, the ill-fated D-Day dry run was at the time America's costliest incident of the war (only Pearl Harbor was worse). The attack claimed more than three times as many lives as the amphibious landing at Utah Beach in France, the assault they had been practicing for at Slapton Sands in picturesque Devon county.

Steve Sadlon, who was a radio operator aboard the first landing craft struck by the German E-boats that night, recalls being awakened by the "scraping" sound of a torpedo that failed to detonate. Moments later, an explosion ripped through LST 507, which was fully loaded with trucks, military equipment and soldiers. (LST is an acronym for Landing Ship, Tank.)

"It was an inferno," said Sadlon, speaking from his home in Ilion in upstate New York. "The fire was circling the ship. It was terrible.

"Guys were burning to death and screaming. Even to this day I remember it. Every time I go to bed, it pops into my head. I can't forget it."

This disaster may have helped the D Day invasion and the subsequent campaign.

The enemy on D Day:

Opposed to the Allies was the so-called Army Group B of the German Army, consisting of the Seventh Army in Normandy and Brittany, the Fifteenth Army in the Pas de Calais and Flanders, and the LXXXVIII Corps in Holland -- all under command of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

Commander of all German forces in western Europe was Field Marshal von Rundstedt who, in addition to Group B, also had at his disposal Group G composed of the First and Nineteenth Armies. In all, Von Rundstedt commanded approximately fifty infantry and ten Panzer divisions in France and the Low Countries.

[airbus faulty again] monotonous regularity

Faulty speed meters

Speaking at a press conference in Paris, the director of France's air accident investigation agency, Paul-Louis Arslanian ... confirmed that the missing jet had had a problem calculating its speed, adding that it was a recurring problem on the A330s and that Airbus was undertaking a replacement programme. "We have seen a certain number of these types of faults on the A330," Mr Arslanian said. "There is a programme of replacement, of improvement." But he insisted the planes were safe in the meantime.

AIRBUS: One, two, three, four, five.

[key stages 1-10] in becoming a worker bee

1. In this pluralistic, all inclusive society, anyone will be given a chance to belong:

I believe passionately in the definition of civil society of Mr Mandela, who says that civil society is anyone who stands up.

2. Only the brightest and best will be accepted into this exclusive group:

Common Purpose are looking for candidates who are:

*senior decision-makers within the area covered by the programme
*interested in contributing to the future of their area.

3. Applicants will be considered according to their:

*current responsibility as a leader through work or community activity
*involvement within the area covered by the programme
*likely contribution to the perspectives and dynamics of the group
*ability to participate fully in the Common Purpose programme.

4. You're expected, when you first hear the gobbledegook spoken, not to question or ask for a translation but to adopt the new mode of speech as is; most likely you will already be adept in Bureaubamboozle:

Multi-organisational working, cross-boundary working and the global-national-local interface each raise their own set of organisational dynamics which must be surfaced and worked with if collaboration is to be effective.

5. On the grounds that you are now 'one of us' on probation, when we present you with questionable programmes we're involved in, you are expected to go along with and even embrace these:

InfraGard is an information sharing and analysis association of businesses, academic institutions, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other participants dedicated to sharing information and intelligence …

Robert S. Mueller, III, Director Federal Bureau of Investigation:

I want to turn for a moment to counterintelligence intrusions and economic espionage. There is no shortage of countries that seek our information technology, our innovation, and our intelligence—information we have spent years and billions of dollars developing. The simple truth is we do not protect cyber space to the same degree we protect our physical space. We have in large part left the doors open to our business practices, our sensitive data, and our intellectual property.

We understand that we must continue to work closely with all of you—members of the private sector and the academic community. Think of the fusion center as a hub, with spokes that range from federal agencies, software companies, and ISPs, to merchants and members of the financial sector.

Industry experts from companies such as Cisco, Bank of America, and Target sit side-by-side with the FBI, postal inspectors, the Federal Trade Commission, and many others, sharing information and ideas. Together, we have created a neutral space where cyber experts and competitors, who might not otherwise collaborate, can talk about cyber threats and security breaches.

Members from a host of industries, from computer security to the chemical sector, share information about threats to their own companies, in their own communities, through a secure computer server. We are also reaching out to academia. In 2005, we created the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board. We asked your president, Graham Spanier, to lead the group. We knew it wouldn't be an easy sell, because of the perceived tension between law enforcement and academia.

Therefore, as we've dropped big names and painted a picture of an ongoing grand work in progress which ants like yourself are now privileged to contribute towards, it is expected you'll be in awe and won't draw attention to anomalies such as why exactly ' we must continue to work closely with all of you', wshen there is no necessity whatsoever. This is above you, so stop analysing and get on-board.

6. There are assumed collective mental positions which, if you're to work under this roof, you will subscribe to.

‘A “slide” is a prefabricated, politically correct, blanket pop opinion, “view” or “take” upon a particular issue of general interest which is designed to preclude further consideration, analysis or investigation of the issue in question.

This paper seeks to fill this gap, by drawing both upon theoretical literature and experience with successful change facilitation practices from Europe and the US. Its focus is on the cognitive aspects of strategic orientation and provides a practical guide to those who use this process.

7. You are expected to contribute to discussions by parroting the gobbledegook of the adepts and following the 'paint by numbers' easy guide on how to think, in order to arrive at your position, which will inevitably lead to group acceptance and a sense of well-being.

Beyond Bullets, addressing Groupthink, wrote:

It's fine to assume these things, as long as we're aware that our default mode of presenting and informing also means that there is little room for thinking, challenging, dialogue and debate -- a fertile breeding ground for groupthink. The way we use PowerPoint only adds fertilizer to this stagnant pool, because a slide filled with bulleted text only increases the illusion of certainty for presenters and the feeling of passivity for audiences.

8. You must develop a vocabulary of ad hominem, e.g. 'pseudo', 'shill', in order to tear down any diverse opinion and to ridicule the one[s] from whom it emanated.

Lest anyone be confused, this is quite the opposite situation from when former NYT pseudo-reporter/White House shill, Judy Miller, was subpoenaed and went to jail for failing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak case. In her case she was refusing to name White House officials who were involved in government wrongdoing in which she had a role.

9. On a mock-scientific basis, your 'irrational' beliefs will be challenged and reframed.

The NLP Milton model uses non-specific and metaphoric language allowing the listener to fill in the gaps, making their own meaning from what is being said, finding their own solutions and inner resources, challenging and reframing irrational beliefs.

Grinder and Bandler stated that there were a few common traits expert communicators – whether top therapists, top executives or top salespeople – all seemed to share:

Everything they did in their work, was pro-active (rather than reactive), directed moment to moment by well-formed outcomes rather than formalized fixed beliefs.

A Well-formed outcome is a term originating in neuro-linguistic programming for an outcome one wishes to achieve, that meets certain conditions designed to avoid (1) unintended costs or consequences and (2) resistance to achieving the goal resulting from internal conflicting feelings or thoughts about the outcome.

If the Little Red Book says your view is irrational, please believe that your view is irrational and will need to be corrected.

10. You are now ready to take your place as a worker bee in the hive, contributing your small part to the Great Work of Ages. By the way, you are forbidden to view such degenerate films as 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' or to suggest that we'll all soon be subject to Nurse Ratched.

[death of a government] a musical tribute

So, on with the Doc Martens, boys and girls and let's help this government out of its misery ...

[By the way, top backing band, the Blockheads, didn't you think?]