Poetry, Security

The Other Alamo

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A poem by Martin Espada, recipient of the 2021 National Book Award for poetry, and as published in American War Poetry: An Anthology

In the Crockett Hotel dining room,
a chalk-face man in the medaled uniform
growls at a prayer
at the head of the veteran’s table.
Throughout the map of this saint-hungry city,
hands strain for the touch of shrines,
genuflection before cannon and memorial plaque,
grasping the talisman of Bowie knife replica
at the souvenir shop, visitors
in white biblical quote T-shirts.

The stones in the walls are smaller
than the fists of Texas martyrs;
their cavernous mouths cold drink the canal to mud.
The Daughters of the Republic
print brochures with Mexican demons,
Santa Anna’s leg still hopping
to conjunto accordions.
The lawyers who conquered farmland
by scratching on parchment in an oil lamp haze,
the cotton growers who kept the time
of Mexican peasant lives dangling from their watch chains,
the vigilantes hooded like blind angels
hunting with torches for men the color of night,
gathering at church, the capitol, or the porch
for a century all said this: Alamo.

In 1949, thee boys
in Air Force dress khaki
ignored the whites-only sign
at the diner by the bus station:
A soldier from Baltimore, who heard nigger sung here
more often than his name, but would not glance away;
another blonde and solemn as his Tennessee
of whitewashed spires;
another from distant Puerto Rico, cap tipped at an angle
in a country where brown skin
could be boiled for the leather of a vigilante’s wallet.

The waitress squinted a glare and refused their contamination,
the manager lost his crewcut politeness
and blustered about local customs,
the police, with surrounding faces,
jeered about tacos and senoritas
on the Mexican side of town.
“We’re not leaving,” they said,
and hunched at their stools
till the manager ordered the cook,
sweat-burnished black man, unable to hide his grin,
to slide cheeseburgers on plates
across the counter.
“We’re not hungry,” they said
and left a week’s pay for the cook.
One was my father; his word for fury
is Texas.

This afternoon, the heat clouds the air like bothered gnats.
The lunch counter was wrecked for the dump years ago.
In the newspapers, a report of vandals
scarring the wooden doors
of the Alamo
on the black streaks of fire.

Security

Ukraine Credits Drone Swarms With Defeating Entire Columns of Russian Armor

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The basics of battle being reported from the Ukraine war are like chapters right out of history. Small groups of Ukrainian volunteers on fast and light cycles (specifically “quads”, as in four-wheeled and motorized) are using forested flanking moves to attack the large slow-moving or stopped columns on paved roads.

Honchar describes these technological battles, and Aerorozvidka’s way of fighting, as the future of warfare, in which swarms of small teams networked together by mutual trust and advanced communications can overwhelm a bigger and more heavily armed adversary.

That sounds very much like warfare from the past to me (the sort of thing I was giving talks about at least 10 years ago, not least of all because I was working on swarm drones then).

Think about behavior of American soldiers marching as columns into guerrilla warfare lessons in 1898 Cuba.

Marching in column of fours we measured about a quarter of a mile in length: there being two hundred and fifty two rows with four or five feet between each. In passing a wagon or mud-puddle the column was forced to hault until the first four singled out and passed it; then forward four feet and stop while the next row of fours passed…

Perhaps worth noting here an important footnote in history about what helped the American military avoid defeat.

“If it hadn’t been for the black cavalry, the Rough Riders would have been exterminated.” Five black soldiers of the 10th Cavalry received the Medal of Honor and 25 other black soldiers were awarded the Certificate of Merit.

What’s novel and new in Ukraine is a a different footnote about airborne conflict.

…Aerorozvidka typically waits for the Russians turn off their jamming equipment to launch their own drones, and then it sends up its machines at the same time. The unit then concentrates its firepower on the electronic warfare vehicles.

The Russian defense system doesn’t allow Russia to attack, forcing it to be disabled.

Big oops for an offensive operation.

So when Russian defenses have to be lowered Ukrainians attack any systems that provide defense, much like if the Ukrainians were taking out anti-aircraft guns that stop firing when Russia tries to launch its own planes.

With Russian jamming and anti-aircraft systems destroyed, Russsian drone lessons from Syria are in question again as they leave their columns defenseless. Ukrainians can escalate their attacks, as I warned back in October 2019.

The following section on “gaps in electronic warfare shield” was particularly interesting as it emphasizes Russia’s current dependence (pun not intended) on primitive jamming systems and kinetic counter-measures.

The key point here being Russia doesn’t seem to have any air-to-air defenses in terms of drones (the sort of thing I’ve been talking about and working on for over a decade now) let alone an ability to learn and adapt from obvious mistakes. While Russians can slowly and manually locate drone launches the Ukrainian wheeled launchers (cycles) make forested evasion maneuvers a simple and effective form of obfuscation.

Or perhaps more to the point, Russia’s defense might even be destroying its own offense.

…sabotaging their own equipment and have even accidentally shot down one of their own aircraft, according to the head of Britain’s spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). […] Russia has lost 71 aircraft since February 24 (59 of which were destroyed)…

It all goes back to “lessons” I’ve pointed towards since before the start of the Ukraine war: military capabilities from corrupt puppets of a dictatorship (paper bears) are overestimated although still very dangerous to vulnerable populations.

Food, Security

Red Means Dead: U.S. Political Affiliation Correlated to Disease

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The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) has published data showing a large political party is killing its members like a primitive cult drinking Jel Sert’s Flavor Aid. Can you guess which one? Here is a clue from ABC.

“…the 10 states with the highest vaccination rates all voted for Biden in 2020, while nine of the 10 states with the lowest vaccination rates [did not].”

It really begs the question for who in the security industry did not vote for the party that stood for national safety and preserving life, given the other one actively opposed basic security.

The ABC goes on to say there was a vast discrepancy between red and blue beliefs as death correlated to political regions. Notably, the differences were measured in “access to adequate healthcare, and the disproportionate impact of the virus on communities of color.”

People taking drinking the red stuff experienced less healthcare, more racism.

And again, given our industry is supposed to care about information integrity, we have to wonder who voted for America having a national security breach of this magnitude.

…vaccination rates and receptivity to mitigation measures have also been influenced by factors including misinformation.

Can someone ethically be a security professional who goes on Fox news to whinge about stopping breaches (that have marginal likelihood and severity) while voting for a party that attacks the country en masse (killing literally millions)?

Once a vaccine was widely available the death rates shot up nearly 40% in “red” states. This is basically a United States security dashboard where user groups who refuse baseline precautions on political grounds alone are going permanently offline at an alarming rate.

Speaking of misinformation, Jel Sert’s official grape Flavor Aid page says its primary ingredient on the left side is sugar made from cornstarch (Dextrose), yet the nutrition label doesn’t list sugar at all on the right side.

Source: Jel Sert

Very strange, given that dextrose powder has about 4 calories per gram just like table sugar (sucrose) and quickly raises blood glucose levels. This 4 gram package mixed with water gives 16 calories of sugar and basically nothing else (including attempts to hide the sugar as vitamin C).

Dextrose is said to lead directly to weight gain, diabetes and heart disease if you believe the science in a large-scale study from April 2014 in JAMA Internal Medicine. Such warnings about the dangers of dextrose were echoed again in 2017 by BMJ OpenHeart. So how can a sugar product have a prominent list that doesn’t include sugar?

[FDA requirement to put on a nutrition facts list] added sugars include sugars that are added during the processing of foods (such as sucrose or dextrose)… For most Americans, the main sources of added sugars are sugar-sweetened beverages…

Again speaking of misinformation, Elon Musk originally said in early 2020 that COVID19 would be gone by April, and then in late 2020 that he did not believe in safety measures and would not get a vaccine. Two years later he has both gotten the vaccine and twice been tested positive for COVID-19.

If this sounds like misinformation from a prominent political voice in America, it gets even worse. News reports say he used his bully pulpit to convince people their lives didn’t matter.

…he spent months criticizing public health measures aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus, promoting misinformation about COVID-19 such as insisting it wasn’t very deadly, and baselessly casting doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines.

In fact, Elon Musk said in the most political way he would move his entire operations to a “red” state after California said it was applying pandemic precautions (as well as investigating racism) to protect his workers from abuse and death.

This is unfortunately consistent with him also telling the public lies about transportation safety, allegedly profiting from cutting corners in the low-quality deceptive Teslas that caused hundreds of preventable deaths… perhaps making it the Flavor Aid of cars.

All food for thought.