#Air Force 1 Low WP

[snkrbonbon]

Nike Air Force 1 Low WP

[b17project]

"Alice From Dallas" - Going Down

When continuing to investigate what happened exactly to the B-17F "Alice From Dallas" and its crew during this fateful day on August 17, 1943, I found out what is certainly the most detailed account of what happened this day.

Mr. Dirk Thielens from the Belgian association Task Force Liberty (https://www.taskforceliberty.be/) has written an exceptional account of all the events, especially unfoldind from the moment the aircraft was hit at 10.30 a.m by Flak to the aftermath of the crew landing in occupied territory.

You can find the original text written by Dirk Thielens here : https://www.taskforceliberty.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Alice-from-Dallas-deel-1.pdf I thank him very much for having accepted to publish the story he wrote on my blog.

I translated a part of it to English for sharing this incredible story :

"When they had reached the province of Limburg at 10:30 they were fired upon by German anti-aircraft (flak). A heavy shock wave was felt in the aircraft when they were hit by anti-aircraft shells. Immediately the right wing of the aircraft, which was full of fuel, caught fire.

Roy Claytor, the pilot, pushed the nose of the aircraft down to leave the formation. Alice from Dallas began to lose altitude rapidly and threatened to go into a left spin. At that moment Roy noticed that the left wing was also on fire and as a reflex he engaged the autopilot and shouted "bail out!" over the intercom. This was the order for the crew to buckle up their parachutes and bail out. Bombardier Kenneth Lorch did what he had to do in that situation. He opened the bomb hatch and dropped all the bombs, which were still on safe, at once after which he, navigator Oscar Amison and Engineer/top turret gunner John Burgin bailed out of the burning aircraft. While the pilot was still trying to to keep it somewhat under control, co-pilot Raymond Nutting also left the cockpit. Pilot Roy Claytor was meanwhile also standing between the two seats in the cockpit and holding the control column. Suddenly the nose of the aircraft went up and he was sucked into the space behind the cockpit. Roy managed to reach the escape hatch and open it, after which he could jump out of the burning crashing aircraft. He waited to open his parachute to get enough distance to the aircraft, in case it would explode in the air.

Roy saw seven parachutes hanging around him. So two parachutes were missing. These were Edward Musante and William Hinton. Apparently they had not gotten out of the aircraft in time. Musante had managed to jump, but his parachute got caught in the tail of the crashing aircraft and he was dragged down into the depths, to a certain death. Two Focke-Wulf 190s of the Luftwaffe circled the crashing aircraft but they did not open fire. They were probably just looking to see where the plane and the parachutes would land and then alert the German ground troops of the exact location. Roy Claytor opened his parachute at about 1,000 feet (+/- 300 meters) altitude.

He saw the remains of Alice from Dallas come down with a huge explosion a little further away. While hanging from his parachute he was thrown in all directions and landed with a thud in a meadow. For about a minute he was dazed and could not move. About thirty paces further on a dirt road one of his comrades also landed with a thud. Roy Claytor had to shout at him three or four times before he reacted. It was Raymond Nutting, the co-pilot. Raymond had only missed the softer grass field he was aiming for by a few meters because he did not dare to pull the ropes of his parachute at low altitude. They had barely managed to get up and had deployed their parachutes when they were surrounded by a few dozen Belgian civilians from the nearby village. (Probably Schoonbeek).

John Burgin had also jumped from the plane together with bombardier Kenneth Lorch via the forward escape hatch. They had first had to remove some escape equipment and blankets. They jumped from the plane at approximately 12,000 feet (+/- 4,000 meters) and opened their parachutes at an altitude of approximately 2,000 meters. John Burgin took off his flight helmet, goggles and oxygen mask and put them in his overalls. The B-17 circled dangerously in flames in its death throes. For a moment John thought the plane would come their way and drag him down. Fortunately it turned around just in time and left the two crew members unharmed. No detailed account of the facts is available from Kenneth Lorch, but from John Burgin there is. As he was hanging from his parachute and drifting quietly southwards, he saw the Germans busy on the ground. He saw Germans taking up positions on various roads. He was hanging above a forest and when he landed at the edge of the forest, a Belgian civilian was quickly standing next to him. He wasted no time with many words and immediately began to pull the parachute out of the branches of the trees. John quickly took off his flying gear. The parachute and the gear were thrown into old shell craters (probably from the fighting in May 1940) and filled with branches, grass and leaves to camouflage them. They heard a German truck approaching, the Belgian man walked up the forest road to see where the danger was coming from and then signaled to John to quickly walk in the other direction. Waist gunner Charles Bailey also did not hesitate to jump out of the plane when the order came. He always wore his parachute harness loose enough so that he could put his hands in his pockets during the flight. The waist gunner stands to the side of the plane in an opening behind his machine gun.

Flying at that altitude with an open door is a guarantee for freezing temperatures. When Charles opened his parachute, he was hit hard by the rather loose harness. So hard that he thought he was going to be torn to pieces. He pulled off his oxygen mask and dropped it. For a moment he thought he was going to land in a pond, but luckily he drifted off. As he descended, he realized that he should have paid more attention in the courses on what to do when landing behind enemy lines. Luckily, he remembered that you should try to hide your parachute as quickly as possible. Charles landed in a garden and his parachute got stuck in a pear tree. The landing itself was pleasant and easy. At least 50 people gathered around him in a circle.

They asked him if he was English or German. When he made it clear that he was American, they spontaneously started hugging and kissing him. He had not yet had breakfast and was spontaneously offered pears from the tree. After his parachute was lowered, he took off his leather jacket and his coverall. There was a piece of shrapnel in his leg and he tried to treat it with a piece of his parachute. While he was administering first aid to himself, the people made it clear to him that he had to get out of there and hide. The people took his equipment and he hid in a ditch. There they brought him food and civilian clothes. The people hung around in the area and strangely enough no Germans showed up. About an hour later they brought him a bicycle and from there his journey was organized.

Of the ten crew, eight managed to escape by parachute. Two crew members, Edward Musante and William Hinton, were killed. Charles Bailey later recalled: “Musante was the right side gunner and I was the left side gunner. I kept a close eye on him at all times because I was older than he was and he seemed to depend on me a great deal. He always had trouble understanding what was said on the intercom and I always made sure he knew what was being said. Also when the pilot gave the signal to jump I checked Musante and he got ready. We both went to the escape hatch and I pulled the lever and Musante went forward to jump. But suddenly he changed his mind and signaled me to go first. Two engines were on fire and the plane was descending very rapidly so I saw no reason to lose any time and jumped. After my parachute opened I tried to keep my eyes on the plane and count the parachutes but I could only see eight.” So what actually happened to Musante is not really clear.

Did he hesitate to jump at the last moment and thereby seal his fate? It is certain that he got caught in the tail with his parachute. Also William Hinton the ball turret gunner could not leave the plane in time. His body was found after the crash among the wreckage. Both crew members were temporarily buried in Genk on 20 August 1943 and were reburied in their home country after the war."

[sneakerscartel]

Nike Air Force 1 Low Pro Tech WP “Sequoia” Releases October 2024

[sneakerstad]

[vc_row][vc_column css=".vc_custom_1706697933946background-image: url(https://www.sneakerstad.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/nike-air-force-1-low-triple-white-heren-sneakers-wit.jpg?id=145240) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: contain !important;"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1706698026575background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.72) !important;*background-color: rgb(255,255,255) !important;"]Enschede, 31 januari 2024' In de dynamische wereld van streetwear en sneaker cultuur heeft de Nike Air Force 1 Triple White een blijvende stempel gedrukt als een onmisbaar icoon. Sinds zijn debuut in 1982 heeft deze sneaker niet alleen de harten van sneakerheads veroverd, maar heeft het ook een blijvende invloed gehad op de modewereld. De strakke en tijdloze esthetiek van de Triple White-variant van de Air Force 1 heeft het tot een veelzijdige keuze gemaakt, die moeiteloos kan worden geïntegreerd in elke outfit. Zijn kenmerkende volledig witte kleurenschema straalt een eenvoudige elegantie uit die zowel op het basketbalveld als op straat goed tot zijn recht komt.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_gallery type="image_grid" images="145240,145239,145238,145237" img_size="full"][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column css=".vc_custom_1706698004694background-image: url(https://www.sneakerstad.nl/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/nike-air-force-1-low-triple-white-heren-sneakers-wit-01.jpg?id=145237) !important;background-position: center !important;background-repeat: no-repeat !important;background-size: contain !important;"][vc_column_text css=".vc_custom_1706698128039background-color: rgba(255,255,255,0.72) !important;*background-color: rgb(255,255,255) !important;"]Wat deze sneaker onderscheidt, is niet alleen zijn esthetiek, maar ook zijn culturele impact. De Air Force 1 Triple White is niet slechts een schoen; het is een symbool van zelfexpressie, creativiteit en tijdloze stijl. Door de jaren heen heeft het zich aangepast aan verschillende subculturen en is het een canvas geworden voor artistieke samenwerkingen en individuele customizations. Nike heeft met trots vastgehouden aan de kernprincipes van de Air Force 1 Triple White, waarbij vakmanschap en innovatie hand in hand gaan. De schoen heeft zich aangepast aan de veranderende smaken en trends, maar heeft altijd zijn oorspronkelijke DNA behouden. Als eerbetoon aan het erfgoed van deze sneaker heeft Nike door de jaren heen verschillende iteraties uitgebracht, maar de Triple White blijft de meest iconische en gewilde variant. Het is een schoen die generaties heeft overbrugd en nog steeds relevant is in de moderne sneaker scene. Of je nu een doorgewinterde sneakerhead bent of net begint aan je reis in de wereld van streetwear, de Nike Air Force 1 Triple White blijft een tijdloze keuze die symbool staat voor stijl, erfgoed en vernieuwing. In een wereld die voortdurend evolueert, is deze sneaker een bewijs van de kracht van tijdloos design en blijft het een icoon dat de tand des tijds heeft doorstaan. Wil jij deze veel gezochte sneaker bemachtigen kijk dan of je maat nog leverbaar is: Nike Air Force 1 Triple White voor dames klik hier   |    Nike Air Force 1 Triple White voor heren klik hier[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[staygolddindjarin]

Grief

Chapter One: History

Din Djarin x Reader x a bunch of other star wars characters

Series Summary: Raised on Mandalore, born into a bloodline of warriors, no one ever expected for the daughter of a Clan leader to go rogue. Leaving the life of security and making the journey to fight in the war against the empire meant many things... giving up the way of the Mandalore, and giving up a solid future. A future that involves an arranged marriage to a foundling from another clan.

Chapter Warnings: Oof this ones kinda angsty right off the bat- ⚠️ attempted suicide?? Kinda?? Age gap (reader is underage, but don't worry it's just for the sake of backstory and also there's no spicy, so...) mentions of death and afterlife, fluff if you like squint really hard

A/n: hello there... I'm sorry to inflict tumblr with this atrocity, but wattpad had to deal with it so tumblr can too. I wrote a different version of this on my wp with an OC name, but I know that not everyone cares for that so this won't include that. Also this series will be such a slow burn... prepare yourself ahead of time because it's going to be agonizing

Words: 6.3k+

SERIES MASTERLIST UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Part 1/?

"Pehea gar mar'eyir ni...."

How did you find me....

He came and sat beside me, the sound of metal scraping agaisnt the ground when he knelt first.

"Gar cuyir te shi solus tion'ad comes olar jii.  Ni kar'taylir gar jate'shya gar mirdir Ni vaabir," He responded.

You are the only one who comes here now. I know you better than you think I do.

I heaved a deep breath before letting it out in an exhausted sigh. Speaking in my native tongue was something I always appreciated, but now sitting here it felt nearly uncomfortable, but there was a reason for that.

"I wanted to be alone," The words from my mouth were no longer in my language, and he shifted beside me, trying to convey his confusion without a word.

"Care to elaborate?" He suggested, his asking tone was harsh... but then so was everything else about him.

I didn't really feel like explaning my feelings at the moment. I didn't want to focus on the very thing he was asking about. Even though he wasn't absolutely sure of what he was asking.

"You wouldn't understand if I told you," I trailed off.

"Try me." His voice wasn't any softer, but the sincerity he rarely showed had seeped into his tone.

"I really don't think it's a good idea. You really won't understand, and for all I know you could make things worse off for me than they already are," I didn't like it when he let his guard down around me. I didn't like getting closer to him, even though I was supposed to.

"I can't force you. Whatever it is, I wouldn't get myself too worked up," He sounded hurt, but I couldn't bring myself to believe it was by my words. He was too strong to be wounded by such trivial things.

He moved in his seat, beginning to stand, and for some reason the thought of being alone like I had originally intended seemed like a horrible idea.

I reached out to grip his arm. I kept my gaze forward, knowing that even if I looked at him I could not see his eyes.

"Stay."

He didn't hesitate. He sat down again, and I no longer felt guilt for the hurt in his voice a moment prior.

We sat for a moment in silence, just looking over the cliffside, into the deep canyons that wove in between settlements and encampments of our tribes and clans.

"I don't want this life," I whispered. I had only half hoped he would be paying enough attention to hear me. My voice was soft enough that he might not have.

"What do you mean?"

I squeezed my eyes shut, regretting the choice to even say what I did. I felt a shiver go down my arms, and I felt the wind come into the old open cavern, making the air around me chill. My arms were exposed, for I didn't expect the cold tonight. I didn't expect to be here this long.

"I'll turn sixteen in four days. I will either take the creed, or deny everything I've ever been taught. I'd leave if I do that," I finally gave a glance in his direction. He looked back at me, or at least the beskar did. I could never tell where his eyes were.

"You want to leave?" That pained tone of his voice had returned. The one I felt guilty for without actually believing I had done anything to cause it.

I did. I wanted to get off this planet. Away from the responsibility of becoming what everyone expected of me.

"I have to. It's the only way I will ever be at peace, but I'm not sure if I truly have the strength to stand in front of my family and deny the creed."

I could run away. I had some friends who were planning to jump a transport and join the rebellion against the empire.

They had offered me to be apart of this, but I had refused, believing that I would follow in my ancestors footsteps and take the creed. My father had already provided the beskar for my helmet to be made. It was already in the armourer's possession. All that was left was for me to come of age.

"Where did you go, just now?" He noticed my lack of attentiveness to my current reality, and brought me back to where I was. On the drafty cliffside, with my legs hanging over the end.

"Nowhere. I was just thinking about the future," I had admitted. Though I felt the need to stay emotionally distant from him, and not let myself develop a closeness, I knew I could trust him with my life, which is why I even revealed these things to him in the first place.

"What do you think your future will look like?" The tone that brought me guilt had again left his voice, but was replaced by something else... was it fear? I could not even think of theorizing that he could ever be scared. He was one of the bravest in his clan. Never had he shown an ounce of fear to anyone or anything. How stupid of me to even wonder.

"Merc and his crew are gonna stow away on a crate transport tomorrow. He has contact with the rebellion. He said that I could go with them if I was up for it," I looked down, almost embarrassed at admitting a plan of escape to someone so loyal to this place. Even though he wasn't born on this planet, and even though he wasn't a blood member of any tribe, the foundling was more of a mandalorian than I could ever be.

"You've agreed?"

"No. Not yet," I shook my head. I didn't feel like my reasons were valid. Having him sit beside me, and ask me these things made me realize that I needed to explain myself further.

"Din, I want to be free. I don't want to spend the rest of my life under a code that is so restricting to me, binding my every decision. Everything I'd do would have to be following after the creed."

He didn't respond, and even though his features were shrouded under the reflective surface of his beskar, I could tell he was thinking of something.

"I'm not yet sixteen, but when I am... I don't want to be locked down under a piece of metal. I don't want to have to be bound to this planet or a clan. I want to go some place far away and be something that is different than what everyone expects of me. I want to fight battles against the empire, I want to make my own rules. I want to be free to marry who I love, and not be betrothed to whoever my father chooses for me," I finished off my speech about freedom, but realized the last sentence too late. I should have chosen a better set of words.

Din's head hung down, looking at the wrist guards he wore. He shook his head back and forth and before I could interject, he began speaking.

"So that's why...." he trailed off. I was honestly too scared to say anything now. Why must I speak so bluntly and hurtfully honest to people? Perhaps it is because I had never gotten close to him that now I had no fear in what I said to his face.

"If the reason you plan to leave your family is because of me, then-"

"No," I said harshly, catching him off guard. I was usually snippy with others, but I had never before shown a tendency to be angry or intense with my speech. "Believe me, this has nothing to do with you."

"You have always shown enthusiasm towards coming of age. It's only now, when we are arranged, that you show any difference," He brought on certainty in his voice that I nearly couldn't deny, but the truth was... it really wasn't about him. "I can converse with your father, the rest of the clan... I will find a way to break it off if it will make you stay."

"Din, I don't want you to do that. If you don't believe me when I tell you that you are not the cause of this, then so be it, but I will not have you ruining your good name in my favor, when it won't even stop me," The heat of the moment provided actual, physical warmth for me in the time I was running my mouth off, but now that I had finished, and begun to calm down, I felt the freezing air on my arms again, wrapping them around myself and drawing my legs closer to generate more body heat.

"Are you cold?" He changed the subject, needing something- anything else to say.

"Its not exactly warm up here," My voice was low and sarcastic, but at hearing my words, Din stood up and stepped behind me. Before I even had a chance to ask him what he was doing, I felt his thick woolen cape being draped around my shoulders.

I smiled softly, not even a real, full smile. More of just a small tug from the side of my lips. My real smile was saved for later.

"Thank you."

He nodded as he sat back down, letting his legs fall over the cliffside.

"So you're gonna leave with them, aren't you?" His head turned to face me, but I couldn't dare try and stare at the beskar while thinking of what I would do. This choice was the beginning of the rest of my life.

"I think so," I didn't think. Thinking was what I had been doing too much of. Now I was certain. This was my choice. I was going to start new, and become something different. I may have been born on mandalore, but I was definitely not a mandalorian.

I had a rush of confidence come through me until I remembered what this meant. It all hit me like a dropship coming out of hyperspace. What was I thinking?

"No," I whispered. Din didn't understand my sudden discouragement, but he would soon.

"Merc and his friends already denied the creed. He's a foundling. They all are," I started to tear up as I realized what would happen to my family. The loss of a child in a clan is bad enough, but my family hadn't done anything to dessrve this. They were caring. They had shown me love. They had given me the best life I could ask for on a planet with such a religion.

"Second thoughts?" He asked genuinely, scooting closer beside me as to maybe get more information from my body language, or even my breathing.

"I can't do this. My family would be ruined. If I ran away, they would be punished for it," I felt tears coming up in my eyes. My clan was good to me. The people were kind, and I found solace there. Even if I had always dreamt about something bigger, I couldn't bear to let ruin come upon my family name. It wasn't fair to let that happen, especially when the only thing in the way was my own selfishness. "I can't leave my family."

I let the tears stream down my face, not even bothering to wipe them away. The contrast of the cold wind on my hot, tear streaked face had helped to calm me down a little.

"If you plan on staying, you understand that I am apart of your future here, don't you?"

"Din, I already told you before... you are not the reason I want to leave," I tried my best to keep myself together, but with my wet cheeks and red, puffy eyes, I didn't see how that could be an option.

What if there was another way to freedom?

I sat, trying to think of some stories that the other clan members would talk about.

"Din?"

He hummed in response, keeping his gaze on me.

"Has anyone in your clan ever mentioned afterlife?" I maybe should have taken a different approach to this. He seemed to be rendered speechless by my topic of conversation, but I had to ask.

"You mean after death?" He asked me and I nodded.

"I've heard some stories."

I thought about how it had been described to me. A paradise, with never-ending happiness, and unlimted freedom. Freedom.

"After you die, you appear in the world as another life. You can do whatever you want and no one has consequences for any of it. It's like a world without chaos. Everything is perfect," I remember every word as it comes out of my mouth. The words that were spoken to me, more like taught to me when I was a bit younger by the elders who had retired from their days of battle.

"It sounds too easy." He said, ripping me out of my fantasy.

"That's the point. You don't have to worry about anything or anyone, because you can do as you please, and everything will still be the same. All you have to do is die...."

"Like being reborn into a different world."

"Exactly."

I hesitated to take my safety blaster from it's holster under my hip, and when I did, I looked at it before pointing it out in the distance and testing the trigger. It shot a blast of lazer energy out into the air, landing somewhere beneath us in the canyon.

I decided that this was not an act to pursue at the moment, for Din was sitting right beside me, and the sight of watching a young girl pull the trigger against her own head might be an unpleasant one. Even for him, though he has seen worse.

I put the blaster back in it's holster and stand up from the rocky ground. Din follows suit, looking down at me with quiet concern. I wouldn't have known it until now, but I wondered if he had come to care for me at all during these last few weeks we had been betrothed.

I'd known him the majority of my life anyways, so I knew he must have felt some sort of attachment to me, but in what form, I hadn't ever cared to ask.

He kept breathing heavily as he looked down at me for a few moments, and it almost sounded like he wanted to ask me something. The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn't bring himself to utter the words.

"Here's your cape back," I slid the material off my shoulders, trying to hand it back to him, but he pushed it back towards me.

"You should keep it for now. The sun is nearly down, it will only grow colder."

He reached his gloved hand up to my face, and I could swear I felt the warmth of his hand beneath the coarse leather.

I only nodded, and leaned forward, trying to lean my head into him, but he carefully stopped me, his hands on my shoulders. Instead he rested his helmet against my forhead, and the cold beskar wasn't such a bad feeling as it rested there.

"I won't let you down. I promise." He said, clueless of my plans for later tonight, after the tribes were asleep, and no one would be at the cliffside.

"I know you won't. You're a good man, Din Djarin." I paused, trying to gather better words. "A true Mandalorian if there ever was one."

The moment didn't last any longer because of how frigid the air was becoming. It was warmer back with the tribes, they always had a fire burning.

Without another word, we both left the old artillery cavern and hiked down the side of the canyon to get back to our own clan territory.

Once I was at the edge of mine, I turned around to utter a simple goodbye, and found that he was very close behind me. His hand came up and rested on my shoulder, lightly squeezing it.

Maybe this was the last time we would see each other. Tonight I would envoke my plan to freedom, to rebirth. Perhaps we would meet in another life. Perhaps I would have just enough memory of this life to try and find him in the next one. One where I will have freedom.

Tonight I had gotten closer to the metal clad Mandalorian than I ever had before. I didn't regret it. He listened to what I had to say, and there were few who ever did.

His hand fell from it's place on my shoulder, but I didn't let him walk away yet. I pulled him into an embrace, feeling him tense up for a moment before reciprocating. It took him a few seconds to let out the breath he was holding in, but when he did, he found himself relaxing into the comfort.

"Goodbye, Din," My voice wasn't sad, or overly sensitive in any way. I figured it actually sounded quite optimistic.

"You know I'll see you tomorrow." He said, reminding me of the clan meetings. Once a month the clans would gather and each tribe would go over the agenda for whatever was to happen soon. Battles were normally discussed, but tomorrow, me and a few of the others in the other clans would be talked about. Our ceremonial coming of age where we would take the creed.

"Yeah... right. Don't come looking for me, I don't plan on showing up," I said quietly, careful in anyone was to hear me.

He pulled me back at arms length and looked at me, but his black blast shield hid his features and I could not tell if he thought I was crazy or not.

"How come?" His voice was also quiet, as we noticed some of my clan passing by to get to the fire.

"Don't worry about it. You'll still see me tomorrow," I lied. Or did I? Everyone within the five neighboring tribes would probably see me tomorrow.

He nodded, pulling us all the way apart and stepping back.

"Good."

He didn't look like he was gonna walk away until I had gone into the hub of my clan's small village. I turned around and walked towards the large fire, seeing my mother. Her helmet was unmistakable. The pattern of the strill engraved into the side of the beskar. It was her signet. A worthy kill of her days in battle. I would never have one. I walked towards her when she noticed me.

Her modulated voice let out a small chuckle, before I stepped beside her.

"It is well to see you spending time with Din Djarin. Me and your father were afraid you may not have been fond of him," She kept her gaze on the fire, speaking only loud enough for me to hear her, given that the other mandalorians of our village were also gathering around the fire, conversing with each other the same way we were.

"I am fond of him, why would I not be?" I was unsure of what she meant. Sure, I had been keeping a distance between us since my father had arranged our marriage, but I never had shown that I wasn't fond of him. I was polite, and gave him attention when it was asked of me.

"Whenever I or your father bring up the discussion of your eighteenth birthday, you always seem to act like it's the plague," She was smirking under her helmet, and I could tell. I could always tell what face she made underneath her metal covering.

"Maybe it's the fact that I dread getting married at all. I'm not opposed to Din, though," I convinced her. I wouldn't have to try and do that again after tonight.

"Whatever it is, your father will be pleased to know you and him were in each other's company. Although I will stray from telling him you two were alone... you were alone, weren't you?" She turned her metal covered head, trying to figure out from the look on my face.

"Yes," I answered truthfully, knowing there was no point in lying. No damage could be done at this point, except for maybe towards Din.

"And what were you both doing?" She tilted her head, and I let mine drop. I would tell her the truth, because nothing bad could come from it. Or could it.

"We were just talking... about the future," I answered.

"Your marriage..." She suggested, and I nodded, knowing that it did come up in the conversation.

"Yes."

"I shudder to ask if consummating was apart of this conversation," She looked back at the fire, knowing how red my cheeks would turn and how embarrassed I would be.

"No, nothing like that. I can promise you," I shivered at the thought. Din was a good man, but I didn't necessarily need to be letting thoughts like that intrude my mind.

Everyone else around the fire seemed to be distracted by the glowing flames, and my mother was soon the same, so I suggested my absense.

"I'm going to go in for the night, get some rest. Big meeting tomorrow..." I said before reaching out and squeezing her hand tightly.

She nodded to me, and I took my leave, walking towards our living quarters on the opposite side of camp.

I wasn't looking where I was going, and brushed my shoulder against Merc, who was with Gander and Shyloh.

"Sorry, didn't see you coming," I told him, but he shook his head, optiing ti ask me a question instead.

"Don't worry about it, I was looking for you anyway... Did you think about the offer? We leave at sunrise on the north delivery tarmac," He informed me, but I didn't have an answer. I wasn't staying here, but I wasn't leaving either.

"You'll know if I show up," I gave him a smirk, partially just because I was glad to see someone's actual face tonight, and not just a metal facade.

"We can't wait up for you, just know that."

I nodded, letting them get by. Maybe I could go with them. Live this life freely without starting another one.

No.

My family will not be able to handle that. It's better off if I'm dead. At least they won't go on to believe that I betrayed them, turning my back on all loyalty they had ever taught me. They would nevwr wonder if I ever loved them or planned on keeping their wishes.

I could start fresh. They wouldn't have to worry about me anymore. And I wouldn't have to worry anymore either. Rebirth.

I went straight to bed, clutching the woolen blanket beside me close to my chest.

For some reason I felt a pang of guilt in my chest. Something that made the sting of salty tears swell in my eyes. I knew that what I was doing was best, but yet I started having a hard time justifying something so drastic. They would get on fine without me, wouldn't they? They would go on living by the creed. This is the way. They will find a way to go on without me, like they did before I was born. Din will be arranged with another girl as soon as I'm gone. Everything will be alright.

The wetness that spilled over my eyes and down my face lasted hours, even though my mind kept telling itself that it was at peace.

It was in the dead of night, when I gathered a few of my belongings into a knapsack, throwing it over my shoulder before leaving out the tattered window of my private space.

I ventured to the canyon, with the moons lighting my way. The planet was never truly dark, due to the brightness and the number of shinning moons, all the color silver.

I set my knapsack down on the edge beside me. By the end of this, I would be at the bottom, waiting to be found the next day. I just hoped it wouldn't be anyone I knew. Of course, the number of people who ever came out here was only two. Me, and Din Djarin.

I hoped he wouldn't find me. I hoped it would be someone from another tribe that was flying over, and happened to spot something at the base of the cliffside.

I pulled my flask to my mouth, taking a large drink. A bit spilled onto my chin, and I wiped it off, feeling the breeze on my face. It was much colder now than earlier tonight. I wasn't sure if I should pull the blanket from my belongings and wrap it around myself, or skip the process of making myself comfortable and just get this over with.

I leaned over, looking straight at the ground, hundreds of feet below me. My heart started racing, and I got scared. Why shouldn't I be? I have every right to be absolutely terrified. I closed my eyes, trying to scoot myself over the edge inch by inch, seeing if I would just drop.

I nearly panicked when my bottom hit a crack in the ground and I thought I was going over. My breath hitched in my throat and I instantly pulled myself back.

"This isn't as easy as I thought it would be," I murmered, beginning to feel the emotional side of everything rise to the surface again. It didn't help that with the absolute silence that circled around me, I couldn't have any single thing to distract me.

I stood to my feet, wrapping my arms around myself to ease the goosebumps rising on my skin from the frigid air.

I stood right on the edge, lifting a foot over and leaning forward, but before I could fall, I again caught myself, the adrenaline working overtime in my system and beginning to heat me up.

That wasn't going to work either. If I could, I would put a blaster to my temple and pull the trigger, but then it wouldn't look like an accident.

I paced around back and forth a few times, trying to calm myself down, to stop the whimpering and to make my tears cease. It wasn't working. I just needed to get this over and done with. A new life, with endless possibilities was waiting for me on the other side. Freedom was on the other side.

I wiped my face, even though it didn't stop me from crying, but it helped me to see clearer. I backed up, into the cavern, all the way inside until my back hit the wall of the ex artillery carvern. This was it. A new beginning. Rebirth. New life. Freedom.

I ran as fast as I could toward the edge, my eyes closed. I could feel the wind blowing against me even harder with my speed, and I could tell the edge was drawing near. Every step I took, I felt as though it was my last one.

I finally felt my foot hit the edge, but then I never fell. Instead, I was tackled to the ground. Whoever landed on top of me was heavy enough to hold me down, because half of me was hanging off the edge of the cliff.

I didn't dare even open my eyes. This was a sign. Someone stopped me.

I clinged onto whoever it was, and knew almost instantly who was laid over me when I heard him groan.

I cried even harder, my head buried in his armor clad chest, and my arms around his neck and his torso.

He was holding me tightly, one hand cradled my head into his neck, and the other firmly gripped my waist. He rolled us both over and I swear I felt him shaking.

"What were you thinking?" He stressed, his grip on me tightening as if he was scared to let go. I was scared too. I didn't want him to let go.

"You have to talk to me..."

I heaved a deep breath, deep enough to steady my voice so my whimpering didn't interfere with my words.

"I want out. I need to get out," I cracked in the middle of saying so few words, but they conveyed the message I was trying to get through.

"I can get you out, I promise.... But please don't ever try that again," His voice was full of worry, and as I suspected, he was trembling in fear.

"I'm sorry..." I cried some more, realizing that what I had done was now the biggest mistake I ever made, even if I was saved.

"It's okay. You're okay. I've got you," He spoke to me, my voice quieting down as my sobbing came to a slow halt.

I lifted my face from where I had burrowed it into his neck, looking up at him. I didn't know what his expression was, but something told me it was fearful, and worrysome.

"I have to get out of here," I repeated again. The last day or so it became my mantra, and would leave my lips often, even just to myself. Mostly just to myself.

"You're going to. You're going with Merc... when are they leaving?" He asked, his arms still around me like mine were for him.

"At sunrise. They're gonna jump a delivery ship on the north tarmac," I explained, my voice was now hoarse and thick, due to not only all the crying I had done, but also the cold night air that had entered my lungs.

"Sunrise isn't for a few hours..." he let me know, and I nodded, knowing we shouldn't probably leave yet, for the walk to the north tarmac wasn't very long from here.

"Din, if I leave, my family is going to get the fire for my decision. I can't let that happen," I told him, my voice had become more firm, and I needed to convey the importance of how much this meant to me.

"I give you my word, that as long as I live, nothing will happen to your family," He swore, and I could just feel his eyes staring into mine. So much so that for the first time since he put that helmet on, I knew where his eyes were.

"I trust you. And I know that you'll always keep your word," I nodded, a small smile finally forming on my face.

Since it got fairly quiet, and we were still entangled together,  I scooted off of Din and opted instead to take the seat beside him.

"I should tell you some things before I go. I just don't want to leave anything unresolved," I admitted, and he stayed silent, waiting for me to continue.

"I know this might sound horrible, but I hated the idea of getting too close to you. It was like if I had formed an emotional bond with you, I wouldn't be able to leave anymore. And the last thing on my mind had been to stay. I've wanted freedom for a while now, I was just always too scared to say anything. And when my father told me that you and him had come to an agreement for arranging a marriage.... it's like it all became more real to me. My freedom would be taken in just days. The creed of mandalore is sacred, and it's truly an amazing thing... but it isn't for everyone."

He sat and took everything in. All the words that just spewed from my mouth like I had been holding them in for ages went against everything I had ever learned. Everything that had ever been put into my mind was the opposite of what I wanted.

"You're young. You want more than what the creed can offer you. I think you'll be able to find what you want wherever you're going," He said, I knew there was more, for he didn't even mention anything that I had said about not wanting to be close to him, but when he stayed silent, I knew he was finished, and that I still had more to say.

"Din, I wanted to tell you that if I had to be married, I wouldn't have minded it being you," I admitted. I would leave no stone unturned before I was to just pick up and leave forever... maybe not forever, maybe someday I would return to my family, to Din.

"I can't say I don't feel the same," He seemed to become stiff next to me, but I soon found the reason when he suddenly reached for my hand with his gloved one.

I took it proudly, intertwining our finhers together.

"You know, I was only an eight year old kid when you took the creed. I have so many memories of you yourself, but whenever I recall them... I can't see your face. I've completely forgotten what you look like," I laughed a bit, though it was quite a sad thing actually. I could not remember him in a way that wasn't covered in metal. I remembered that he was a boy once, and that he would play with all the younger children in the clan set next to his. He played with me and the kids I lived next to. He was a lively, energetic boy. Always doing something... sometimes causing mischievous acts. He was so different now. But the change wasn't bad. Since he'd taken the creed he has been the most noble, fearsome, and trustworthy member of his clan. Completely honorable in every sense of the word.

"I don't look like I used to. It wouldn't do you any good to remember anyways," He chuckled under his helmet, and it brought a smile to hear the melodic sound.

"Well, if I'd stayed long enough to marry you I would find out for myself," I leaned my head on his shoulder, feeling comfort by his presence. If I had made the absolute decision to leave this planet earlier, I could have let myself grow a relationship with him. Romantic or not, he was easy to talk to, and I trusted him. He was a friend to me, and I never imagined more, but now his presence was just something that put me at such ease.

"Do you think you'll ever come back?" He pondered, seeing as just the tiniest moonrays shown down into the canyon ahead.

"Someday. I'll comeback and repay you."

"For what?"

"Saving my life," I replied. My attempt to throw my own life away had been pushed away but I had to bring it up. I owed him my life.

"Anyone would have done the same if they had seen," He insisted, and I shook my head.

"How did you even know I was out here?" My curiosity got the better of me, and I asked for an explanation.

"I couldn't sleep, I took a walk through Ronion until I found myself here. I saw you across from the mesa on the south side... I saw you lift your foot over the edge, I knew what you were trying to do," He said, his grip on my hand got tighter almost instantly.

"Thank you. If you hadn't been there, I would be at the bottm of this canyon." I let so much seriousness onto my voice, and it didn't sound like me.

"Don't thank me yet... not until I get you on the tarmac,"

We sat in silence after that, just looking out over the horizon. When the slightest bit of light hit the edge of the planet, we stood to our feet, gathering my knapsack and begining the journey to the north delivery tarmac.

We were there in no time, and before I could even look for them, Merc and his crew were in sight. They were all sitting with their backs against some cargo imports, waiting for the transport to arrive.

"Well, well, well... look at what the shriek hawk dragged in," Shyloh said, gesturing to me and Din.

"Djarin, I didn't expect to see you here," Merc raised an eyebrow at the sight.

"I'm just here to make sure she gets onto the transport safely," He assured them. I looked out of the corner of my eye, and in the brighter horizon I was able to see a cargo ship coming into the landing area.

"Our rides here," I said, and they all jumped up. Since the ships were automatically run, and don't even require droids, it was often very easy to hop aboard and be carried to another destination. Of course, there were only a few who ever wanted to leave.

I myself hadn't ever left Mandalore, neither had I traveled much even on the planet. Only a few trips to visit the the markets with my father. I never even went into the city, for it was told that in the city lived Mandalorians who did not keep the creed. The tribes were convinced that they hadn't actually ever taken the oath, and just wore the armor for the sake of doing it.

The ship's doors opened, pulling me out of my thoughts, and a conveyer belt folded down to let the cargo units be carried out onto the tarmac for later pickup.

"Alright, it's time to head out," Gander said, slinging his knapsack over his shoulder and boarding the transport.

The rest followed after him, but I still had one thing left to do. 

Din looked at me, waiting for me to join the others, but I came close to him one last time.

"You promise my family will be taken care of?" I asked, to which he simply answered with a firm nod. However the look on my face gave him reason to believe that his answer wasn't good enough, so he spoke instead.

"I give you my word. If they are not taken care of, I will let you strike me dead where I stand."

That was good enough for me. He truly meant it. He was a man of his word.

I pulled his head toward mine, resting ny forehead against his in a traditional mandalorian kiss. I pulled back when I heard my name being called from the transport.

"Goodbye, Din Djarin," I told him.

He didn't respond, he just let me go, watching intently as I boarded the ship before the doors closed.

The cargo transports were always on schedule, so as soon as the doors closed, it began lifting into the air. I looked out through the transparent view finder on the side, watching him stand as we began moving out of sight.

"You gonna miss him?" Shyloh asked, his brows furrowing as if he were sorry for me.

"Yes, I suppose I will."

I lost sight of Din, and realized we were leaving the atmosphere most likely preparing for a jump to hyperspace.

"But I'll see him again."

.

.

Tags are open ig...

A/n: please don't get too caught up in the age gap y'all it's just for backstory purposes because this story is eventually going to follow canon events.... (also i know that this doesn't really portray Mandalore correctly, but let's pretend it does because i had this idea)

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Tuesday 3 October 1837

7 40

11 50

fine morning F59 ½° at 8 35 and went downstairs to a Mr. Greenwood from H-x who brought a plan for the water wheel – breakfast with A- (and Mr. Gray came at 9) at 8 50 in about ¾ hour – then looking to see what sum of Lords rent A- owns to Lady William Gordon (vid. 30 August) and calculating for her she leaving the money £4.16.11 for SW. this morning to pay Mr. Lister the auctioneer who collects these rents -  off in the yellow carriage to Thorpe at 10 – took A- to Nicholsons’ shop, and staid with her there from 10 ¼ to 10 50, and then set her down (to walk to Cliff Hill) at the far end of  the northbridge at 10 55 and drove off to the White Lion for a ticket for the King x bar – off from the White lion at 11 and met Mr. J. Priestley on the road (he going into Norland) at 11 ½ and took him back in the carriage to his own house and alighted there about 11 ¾ and came way at 1 35 – both the brothers J and Walker P- the former brought his plan of his estimate and the greater intelligence of the latter much aided our conversation – said I had come over to tell JP.  he could do me a service and himself too – Explained – he seemed to know very little about coal – JP. said he must take advice and consider about it – yes! certainly – a matter of consideration to all parties but I should be glad of a determination as soon as possible as I should set about goit or steam engine as soon as I could – I was not fast – there were 2 sides of the brook, either would suit me – but I had preferred applying to P- first – I thought the drain or goit would be a benefit to him and on the other were the Mcaulays with whom I knew Mr. Stocks would have influence – P- wished to consult a disinterested person – I said no coal-person would be so – I mentioned Kitchingman Childe – and Matthew Naylor as valuing tenants damages for me, I thought £6 per DW. – and Mr. Cooke of Elland called in to value coal damages for me, and Illingworth Miss Walkers’ coal tenant, Mr. Rawsons’ great man and very clever, but he certainly would not be disinterested – I said they would tell him (JP.) that the privilege was worth thousands to me – of that I left him to judge for himself merely observing that if he thought so, I should give the thing up – I did not even offer him more than damages, because I thought the benefit, to him and the expense to me sufficiently great – it could not be done for less than 10/. per running yard – might be – probably would be a 2 thousand pounds job – might be (but SW.’s survey would shew) from 2 to 3 thousand yards long – WP. measured the plan from which, direct across from about the low end of waste-wood to the head of Walterclough mill new goit, seemed = 1100 yards explain the benefit of the goit to JP. his upper bed 60 or 70 yards deep at Dumb mill bridge and 51 yards at Walkerclough mill (vid. near the bottom of last page) – my goit would begin at about 40 or 42 yards below the surface; and if ever his coal was wanted would save him 30 or 40 yards of pumping he wished I would loose his coal – I said it was not in my power to do what except perhaps about the upper 1/3 of it – never thought of working my own coal but gently explained how forced into it – the communication between R. and me underground pretty near – mentioned the assa-faetida for the 10 acres sold I had only a price between the 2 prices sold at by my uncle and it was odd that

SH:7/ML/E/20/0138

that such objection was made to my sending anyone into R-���s pits – it was suspicious – I should have no objection to anyone going into my pits – if anything was wrong, I should be glad to be informed of it; if not, what need of mystery – the law of no use – must give a fortnights’ notice of a chancery injunction, and that time enough for stopping all up so that nothing could be found out – But now I was pretty much at ease – it was now discovered that R- could  not get the bit of coal I had wished to buy – for which R- bade 1 hundred and got me up to 5 hundred when I said he might have it – but they could not make a title to it – I believed also that he could not get Walker P-‘s coal – H- had offered a good price and was not likely to offer as much again    WP. knew of the throw that had been found but said H- had been at great expense and must have some coal to pay for it – I quietly said yes!  but he had a large quantity already and now that nobody could get WP.’s but H-, it made a great difference – if  I did not let my colliery and perhaps I should not H- was naturally my agent for it; and the colliery would in case be almost as good as his won, so that he would be in no want of coal – said I should be glad to see but the Messrs. P- at Shibden hall – nothing wanted but a table large enough; and they would learn from my plans in 2 minutes more than their own plans or mere talk could shew them in 2 hours – said I should be glad to avoid the smoke of an engine, but if obliged to have it, I should easily get over it – the chimney would be carried up into the hill and Mr. Harper thought the nuisance would be very small – I could a 14 horse English for £420 (vid. line 12 of yesterday) and the whole outlay engine house road and everything would not exceed £1000 nor would the daily expense exceed 10/. (including coal fireman and wear and tear) – at all rates the annual expense would not exceed £200; and then I should do my coal work and benefit nobody – Mr. JP. might think of this when they told him the privilege was worth thousands to me  and then judge for himself be it remembered I am not fast – if I was I must come into P-‘s terms yes! said P- ‘and you we all make what we can’ (How nicely characteristic!) he thought we should want some written document – yes! certainly said I – for my sake quite as much as yours – but that will be left to our attorneys – or I will shew you a rough draft of agreement for your perusal - I will shew you the old grant from Mrs. Firth to my grandfather – But we are both of us people who will come to the business without any wish to take any advantage one either side – oh! yes! to be sure, said JP- that their confidence in me may [?] with the length of the proposed goit je n’en sais rien – I doubt it – but SW. is to take the levels and I am to let JP. know the result and he will consider about and take advice and come over – In fear and trembling lest my goit and I should be too deep for him? I had told him his coal was not worth more than £10 an acre now – it could not got in one time – say 56 years how often would ten pounds double itself in that time? – Holt said I had coal enough of my own to last twenty colliers getting 150 years – Walker P- said my coal might not be so valuable for coal had been discovered in Soyland – a seam 9in. thick – in 1834 – some Lancashire colliers had come over but the property here was so divided nothing could be done – they thought it might be the Dule (Lancashire Dule or some such name) bed – WP. gave me a copy of the strata bored thro’ at Soyland mill (near Thorpe) in 1834 as follows  

                                    yards        ft.        in.

1 Shale                             6

2 Black ditto                    9

3 Gritty ditto                  16

4 Shale                             18

5 Iron stone                     1            .           6

6 Shale                             3            .           10

7 Iron stone                                   2          8

8 Shale                             20           1          6

9 Iron stone                                   1          6

10 Shale                            3

11 Iron stone                   1

12 Black shale                  4

13 Intermixed with          8

shale

14 Iron stone                    1        .           6

15 Left off in black            4       .           8

shale very soapy

                                         96      2         2

Had just written all the above of today in an hour at 4 ¼ - Miss Priestley with us the whole time – changed my dress before sitting down to my journal how will the matter end? shall I get the privilege or not? – then wrote as follows to ‘Mr. Samuel Washington, Crownest’ – ‘Shibden hall. Tuesday 3 October 1837 – Sir – I shall be obliged to you to let me know the earliest day you can take the levels of the brook, from the gapstead in the bit of wall between the Bunker hill and Parkfield in Lower Place land, going along Mr. John Priestley’s land down to the lowest extremity of my Southolm land – I am sir, etc. etc. etc. A. Lister’ – JP. particularly inquired what n° of vent pits I should require I said I could not exactly tell – something would depend upon himself air might be carried in pipes 200 or 300 yards and the drain would be so deep I should make as few vent pits as possible unless he gave me to leave to make as many as I liked and I found them cheaper than pipes – at any rate I should want the privilege of a place to bury the scale in – thought about 1 ½ yard cube per running yard would come out – but all should be buried so as to leave no nuisance – not a bit of scale to be seen – I should do it as I had done that in my own land – JP. had best come and see – But I thought I could manage very well with 6 vent pits in JP-‘s land supposing the length 1100 yards went downstairs at 4 ¾ - George gone for A- ¼ hour ago – out, about a little while then at 5 5 off to Mitham to send my note by little John – he went to Mr. George Robinson’s on Monday (yesterday) to work in the land and eat at home – walked forwards meaning to go to Crownest – met A- not far from on this side of Hipperholme lane ends – sent George back with the note and returned with A- and back at 6 – then out with Robert Mann seeing about road for the platform carts till 6 40 then ¼ hour with A- dressed – dinner at 7 10 – asleep – coffee –read the newspaper – came upstairs 5 minutes after A- at 10 pm at which hour F61° - fine till about noon – then a couple of hours rain or more afterwards tolerably fair – but damp warm disagreeable afternoon and evening – raining fast about 10 1/2 pm

[koreaunderground]

(2021/04/09) New Revelations on Germ Warfare: It’s Time for a Reckoning with Our History from the Korean War

[counterpunch.org][1]

  [1]: <https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/04/09/new-revelations-on-germ-warfare-its-time-for-a-reckoning-with-our-history-from-the-korean-war/>

# New Revelations on Germ Warfare: It’s Time for a Reckoning with Our History from the Korean War - CounterPunch.org

by Jeffrey Kaye

9-11 minutes

* * *

_The New York Times, which for years has maintained that U.S. airmen’s statements about use of biological weapons during the Korean War were “false confessions” obtained by Chinese and North Korean torture, never acknowledged the following submission sent to its opinion section in November 2020. I am publishing the article instead at CounterPunch, which is not afraid of uncomfortable truths._

![A picture containing textDescription automatically generated][2]

  [2]: https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2021/04/a-picture-containing-text-description-automatical.png

Screenshot from CIA pamphlet, “Baptism by Fire: CIA Analysis of the Korean War”.

It’s been 70 years since the beginning of the Korean War. For young adults in their twenties today, that’s ancient history. It is as distant to them as the 1905 Russo-Japanese War was to me when I was 20 years old! But in both China and North Korea, the memory of the Korean War and charges of war crimes against America from that war remain a vivid part of the national consciousness, stoked at various times by the regimes in charge.

The North Korean and Chinese allegations of American use of biological weapons during the Korean War made headlines at the time, and the controversy over U.S. Air Force officers admitting under enemy interrogation details of germ warfare attacks rocked the U.S. defense establishment. In 1998, scholars connected to the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) at the Wilson Center published documents that they claimed showed the germ warfare charges were a hoax, “a grand piece of political theater,” as Milton Leitenberg, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, [notably put it][3].

  [3]: <https://diplomacy21-adelphi.wilsoncenter.org/publication/chinas-false-allegations-the-use-biological-weapons-the-united-states-during-the-korean>

![Text Description automatically generated with low confidence][4]

  [4]: https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2021/04/text-description-automatically-generated-with-low.png

_From CIA document release, “Baptism by Fire,” File #_[ _1952-03-06a.pdf_][5]

  [5]: <http://web.archive.org/web/20170127160812/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/1952-03-06a.pdf>

But in 2010, the CIA declassified hundreds of communications intelligence, or COMINT, daily reports from the Korean War. U.S. historians have mostly ignored this release. Over the past few years, I have undertaken an examination of these documents and found more than two dozen that were pertinent to the biological warfare charges. As I demonstrated in a [September 2020 essay][6] on the topic at Medium.com, these [documents][7] vividly portray the reactions and responses of North Korean and Chinese military units responding to biological weapons attack.

  [6]: <https://jeff-kaye.medium.com/a-real-flood-of-bacteria-and-germs-communications-intelligence-and-charges-of-u-s-4decafdc762>   [7]: <https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7207516-BW-COMINT-Baptism-Files.html>

What follows are some samples from the entire batch of reports. The grammar and syntax can seem off at times, as the U.S. military and CIA lacked experienced linguists during this period.

Relying on information from the codebreakers at the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor of today’s National Security Agency, a top-secret March 6 CIA report read, “An unidentified Chinese Communist unit on 26 February reported that ‘yesterday it was discovered that in our bivouac area there was a real flood of bacteria and germs from a plane by the enemy. Please supply us immediately with an issue of DDT that we may combat this menace, stop the spread of this plague, and eliminate all bacteria.’”

Another CIA report stated that on 3 March a “North Korean coastal security unit in eastern Korea reported… that UN bacteriological warfare agents in the surrounding area had prevented the movement of transportation since 21 February. Later in the day the unit reported to Pyongyang that ‘Pupyong (just southwest of Hamhung)… is the contaminated area. According to the correct news, no one can pass through it. If you do not act quickly, the 12th and 13th guard stations will have fallen into starvation conditions.’” [Parenthesis in original]

Then we have the following from a 6 March report: “Two coastal security stations in northeastern Korea reported on 11 March that ‘the bacteria bomb classified as mosquito, fly, and flea were dispersed,’ and ‘an enemy plane dropped ants, fleas, mosquitos, flies and crickets.’” The emphasis on insects reminds us that the Communists alleged at the time that the U.S. was working secretly with the former scientists of Japan’s Unit 731, who experimented extensively with the use of insect vectors in germ warfare. During this period and for years afterward, the [U.S. falsely denied][8] that Japan’s scientists had committed war crimes and attacked China with biological weapons during World War II.

  [8]: <https://www.laguardia.edu/maus/files/ethics-ch-16.pdf>

According to a 21 March CIA COMINT report, “a North Korean message, probably from the 23rd Brigade in western Korea, reports the alleged dropping of bacteria in the area occupied by the ‘18th Regiment, 4th Division.’”

A 9 May report: ‘They dropped spiders and ants over Songjin city… today,’ a North Korean coastal security station in northeastern Korea reported…. The message continues that the alleged drop area has been isolated and is being investigated by ‘the plague prevention work committee.’”

Not all the reports verified the use of bacterial weapons. In a 25 March intercept from a North Korean battalion in the Hamhung area, a North Korean military sanitation officer, sent to affirm a supposed biological warfare attack “reported that the policeman’s report was false and that the flies ‘were not caused from bacterial weapon but from the fertilizers on the place.’” In other words, not only were the attacks not a hoax, but Communist officials examined such reports from the field on the spot and noted cases where the accusations were mistaken, or found in some cases that no insects carried infectious material.

As Milton Leitenberg stated in a [2016 essay][9], which otherwise maintained the germ war allegations were untrue, the charges themselves remain 70 years after the fact “an issue of great importance to those concerned with arms control and allegations of the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” He was right. This alleged war crime is of high importance, and achieving peace with nuclear-armed China and North Korea depends, in part, on being honest about past transgressions of the United States against those countries.

  [9]: <https://cissm.umd.edu/research-impact/publications/chinas-false-allegations-use-biological-weapons-united-states-during>

Both the alleged Soviet documents presented back in 1998 by Mr. Leitenberg and scholar Kathryn Weathersby, and also a later purported memoir by Chinese doctor Wu Zhili, which also [alleged falsification][10] of the BW evidence, cannot withstand the failure of those documents, whose provenance has always been obscure, to withstand independent corroboration by external sources of information, not least, from the CIA COMINT documents themselves.

  [10]: <https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-3957054041/a-chinese-admission-of-false-korean-war-allegations>

The Leitenberg/Weathersby documents allege that Communist in-fighting over the BW “hoax” led to a cessation of Communist charges of germ warfare by early 1953. But that’s not true. The charges continued throughout 1953 (as this [_New York Times_][11]article described) and for long afterward. Even more telling, the CWIHP documents failed to tell a coherent story, moving around the date of the alleged falsification of BW attack sites from _before_ to then _after_ an international team of investigators arrived to examine the charges. The date is crucial because the time to organize a large-scale deception — one that would involve hundreds of eyewitness reports given to investigators, the collection of bomb fragments, the testing materials and samples from alleged bacterial attack, etc. — would take some time, if it could be successfully done at all.

  [11]: <https://www.nytimes.com/1953/09/08/archives/germ-war-confessions.html>

There were other problems with the CWIHP documents, which only document from two to four sites of simulated biowarfare attack. But two investigation commissions documented dozens of sites of infection following U.S. air drops of contaminated insects, feathers, and other materials. Neither Mr. Leitenberg nor Ms. Weathersby has ever explained that issue, except to surmise that there may be documents that have yet to surface. In any case, the old fraud accusations seem moot now that we have evidence of Communist military units during the Korean War responding privately to each other regarding the vicissitudes of biological weapons attack.

Wherever the long denials of U.S. use of biological weapons during the Korean War may have originated, and no matter what the authority behind them, the denials fade away in the face of new unassailable documentation from U.S. government records of germ warfare attacks against North Korean and Chinese military units. The question now is how will U.S. historians, political scientists, the press, and the public respond to this turnabout regarding the old germ war charges.

![A picture containing text, outdoor, signDescription automatically generated][12]

  [12]: https://uziiw38pmyg1ai60732c4011-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/dropzone/2021/04/a-picture-containing-text-outdoor-sign-descript.png

Screenshot from CIA pamphlet, “Baptism by Fire: CIA Analysis of the Korean War”.

The U.S. record regarding the acknowledgment of atrocities during the Korean War is poor. In January 2001, President Clinton did issue a statement expressing “regret” for American killings in July 1950 of hundreds of unarmed South Korean civilians at No Gun Ri. As the _New York Times_ [noted at the time][13], Clinton’s “statement fell short of the apology many Koreans have demanded.”

  [13]: <https://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/11/world/army-admits-giacutes-in-korea-killed-civilians.html>

It is time for a reckoning with our past. If we expect change in China and North Korea, then there must be change in the United States. Author Nicolson Baker has recently called for the declassification of all records from the Korean War. Perhaps a President Joe Biden administration will consider revising a policy that has not worked for decades, and as part of a general peace offensive in the region, finally admit American responsibility for its actions, including use of biological weapons. With such an admission, the U.S. could then call for a turning of the page and a new day of openness and peaceful coexistence in East Asia.

[myhouseidea]

In the province of Palermo (Sicily) in the open countryside, an old family house of the seventies was completely renovated in line with the needs of an adult client with three children (2 boys and 1 girl). The apartment consists of an entrance / study area, a living-dining room, a kitchen, a laundry / ironing room with a food pantry, a toilet for guests (with forced ventilation), a night-time hallway, a storage room , a master bedroom with a dressing room and a bathroom, two bedrooms for two sons, with a shared bathroom, and a bedroom with a bathroom for the daughter in the bedroom. Photography by Giancarlo Lunetto

#gallery-0-6 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-6 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 25%; } #gallery-0-6 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-6 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

The 16 internal doors are all sliding doors without external finishes (Eclisse Syntesis® Line), able to disappear completely into the wall. A choice that reflects the formal and compositional cleanliness that characterizes the entire apartment. The heights of the various doors coincide with the heights of the servant spaces, 240 cm in the sleeping area, 270 cm in the entrance / study, in the living room and in the kitchen. Thanks to this solution it was possible to realize a space with two functions: the entrance / study. The two sliding doors, 130 cm wide and 270 cm high, allow open doors to have a passage space attached to the living room and to the kitchen / guest hallway, with closed doors to transform this space into a studio for those who need silence and privacy. The servant and served space were paved with planks of Iroko nailed solid. All the bathrooms have been paved and covered with an innovative eco-friendly material, “Ecomalta” by Oltremateria, while the kitchen and laundry floor is in 60×60 porcelain stoneware, rectified, cement gray color. The taps and fittings of all bathrooms are in stainless steel AISI 316 / L, satin finish (CEADESIGN). The kitchen is a “Bulthaup B3” with worktop, sink and sides in stainless steel combined with materials such as laminate, aluminum and wood. The wood-burning fireplace is in painted steel with a closed hearth (Piazzetta – MA 271 SL) All the lighting is recessed, with lamps and LED strips, warm white 3000K dimmable, except the chandelier placed above the dining table that is the same as the old house. Many items of furniture in the house come from the owners’ old apartment. The bookcase, the low TV-fireplace unit and all the built-in furniture have been handcrafted according to the design by the architect. The external windows of the living area and the kitchen are sliding “frameless” windows with perimeter profiles embedded in the walls, ceiling and floor to allow maximum incidence of natural light and a complete and wide view of the outside garden. (Company “Orama Minimal Frames”) In order to improve the levels of thermal-acoustic insulation and environmental comfort, a radiant ceiling system has been installed: an integrated heating and cooling system that exploits the ceiling capacity to exchange heat and cold by irradiation with the environment and with people ensuring high levels of comfort. The radiant system is completed with an air dehumidification system (it works in radiant cooling) both to prevent condensation from forming on the surface of the rooms and to ensure a feeling of comfort and healthy air in the rooms while maintaining the relative humidity less than 60 ÷ 65%. The intrados of this radiant system has a useful internal height of not less than 2.70 m for the rooms used as dwellings (2.90 for the living) and 2.40 m for the corridors, the lobbies, the bathrooms and the closets. The Heat Pump is a “Sherpa AQUADUE®” by Olimpia Splendid which, by combining an inverter-based air-water heat pump with a second water-water stage, ensures cooling or heating at the same time as high-DHW production temperature (up to 75 ° C), regardless of external weather conditions. Architect: arch. Ignazio Buscio Client: Private Location: Palermo, Sicily, Italy Design: 2014-15 Completion: 2016 Project Area: 198 ㎡ Main materials: wooden floorboards, matte tiles, resin, white matte paint, gres, steel, glass

Old family house by Ignazio Buscio In the province of Palermo (Sicily) in the open countryside, an old family house of the seventies was completely renovated in line with the needs of an adult client with three children (2 boys and 1 girl). 639 more words

[yhwhrulz]

Worthy Brief - March 22, 2022

Modern day miracles still happen!

Psalms 124:1-8 A Song of Ascents. Of David. If it had not been the LORD who was on our side— let Israel now say— if it had not been the LORD who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters. Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as prey to their teeth! We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped! Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

Studying some remarkable events in the history of World War 2, we find the deliverance of the allied armies at Dunkirk; a true story of Divine providence in modern history. It was on May 10, 1940, that Hitler unleashed his armies against France and Belgium. Within days, the British army found itself outmaneuvered and unprepared for the German blitzkrieg assault led by General Rommel and his 7th Panzer division.

The German high command began boasting of the demise of the allied armies, particularly the 300,000 soldiers of the British army sent by then Prime Minister Winston Churchill to protect France and the low countries of Europe. As the prospect of victory waned Churchill was prepared to announce an unprecedented military defeat of a third of a million soldiers.

But then a miraculous turn took place initiated by King George VI, who ordered the observance of a National Day of Prayer. The British Monarch, along with members of the cabinet, attended Westminster Abbey to pray, while millions of Britons all across the Kingdom in unprecedented unity, attended churches to join the King in prayer. Newspapers throughout the UK reported, "Nothing like it has ever happened before."

Then the miracles began: First, Hitler ordered his troops to halt their advance for no apparent reason, which angered his generals and continues to baffle historians to this day. Secondly, a massive storm broke out in Flanders which grounded the German Luftwaffe squadrons, allowing the allied armies to travel to the beaches at Dunkirk unhindered by the German air force. A third miracle involving the weather was that simultaneous with the storm which grounded the Luftwaffe, the English Channel was as still as a millpond...an unprecedented calm which allowed ships of every size to evacuate over 338,000 troops including 140,000 French, Belgian, Dutch and Polish soldiers from the beaches at Dunkirk.

Winston Churchill addressed the British nation and described the evacuation of Dunkirk as a “miracle of deliverance.”

The following Sunday, the nation in celebration of God’s answer to prayer, sang Psalm 124 throughout churches in the United Kingdom.

Be encouraged knowing that our God responds to prayer and is ready to act upon it at a moment's notice. The armies of darkness may surround us, in fact, they are sure to sooner or later; but we also know the Lord is standing ready to defend His own. "Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth" [Psalm 124:8]

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George, Baht Rivka, Elianna & Obadiah

Dallas, Texas

Editor's Note: We just posted a sermon, "Which Voice Will You Listen to in these days?" YouTube Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4168BwmOc&feature=youtu.be| Rumble Link- https://rumble.com/vy0847-sermon-which-voice-will-you-listen-to-in-these-days.html | Sermon Notes - https://worthy.tv/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/which-voice-last-days.pdf

Editor's Note: We'll be speaking in Texas over the next few weeks, let us know if you're in the area and would like to attend a service! If you would like us to minister at your congregation, home fellowship, or Israel focused event, be sure to let us know ASAP. You can send an email to george [ @ ] worthyministries.com for more information.

Editor's Note: Our preferred social media platform is Telegram [Follow us on Telegram -https://t.me/worthywatch]

[curegbm]

https://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-Most-Dangerous-Technology-Ever-Invented-Part-One.pdf 

THE MOST DANGEROUS TECHNOLOGY EVER INVENTED

Part One

In 1995, the telecommunications industry was preparing to introduce a dangerous new product to the United States: the digital cell phone. Existing cell phones were analog and expensive, owned mostly by the wealthy, used for only a few minutes at a time. Many were car phones whose antennas were outside the car, not held in one’s hand and not next to one’s brain. Cell phones worked only in or near large cities. The few cell towers that existed were mostly on hilltops, mountaintops, or skyscrapers, not close to where people lived.

The problem for the telecommunications industry in 1995 was liability. Microwave radiation was harmful. Cell phones were going to damage everyone’s brain, make people obese, and give millions of people cancer, heart disease and diabetes. And cell towers were going to damage forests, wipe out insects, and torture and kill birds and wildlife.

This was all known. Extensive research had already been done in the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Biologist Allan Frey, under contract with the U.S. Navy, was so alarmed by the results of his animal studies that he refused to experiment on humans. “I have seen too much,” he told colleagues at a symposium in 1969. “I very carefully avoid exposure myself, and I have for quite some time now. I do not feel that I can take people into these fields and expose them and in all honesty indicate to them that they are going into something safe.”

Frey discovered that microwave radiation damages the blood-brain barrier -- the protective barrier that keeps bacteria, viruses and toxic chemicals out of your brain and keeps the inside of your head at a constant pressure, preventing you from having a stroke. He discovered that both people and animals can hear microwaves. He discovered that he could stop a frog’s heart by timing microwave pulses at a precise point in the heart’s rhythm. The power level he used for that experiment was only 0.6 microwatts per square centimeter, thousands of times lower than the radiation from today’s cell phones.

Ophthalmologist Milton Zaret, who had contracts with the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, as well as with the Central Intelligence Agency, discovered in the 1960s that low-level microwave radiation causes cataracts. In 1973, he testified before the Commerce Committee of the United States Senate. “There is a clear, present and ever-increasing danger,” he told the senators, “to the entire population of our country from exposure to the entire non-ionizing portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The dangers cannot be overstated…” Zaret told the committee about patients who not only had cataracts caused by exposure to microwaves, but also malignant tumors, cardiovascular disease, hormonal imbalance, arthritis and mental illness, as well as neurological problems in children born to them. These patients ranged from military personnel exposed to radar to housewives exposed to their microwave ovens.

“The microwave oven leakage standard set by the Bureau of Radiological Health,” he told the committee, “is approximately 1 billion times higher than the total entire microwave spectrum given off by the Sun. It is appalling for these ovens to be permitted to leak at all, let alone for the oven advertisements to encourage our children to have fun learning to cook with them!” The microwave oven leakage standard, today in 2021, is the same as it was in 1973: 5 milliwatts per square centimeter at a distance of 5 centimeters. And the microwave exposure levels to the brain from every cell phone in use today are higher than that.

The Navy, at that time, was exposing soldiers to low-level microwave radiation in research being conducted in Pensacola, Florida. Echoing Frey, Zaret said these experiments were unethical. “I don’t believe it is possible,” he told the Senate committee, “to get informed, untainted consent from any young adult who agrees to be exposed to irradiation where you are not sure of what the end result is going to be… Also, that any children that he has at some future time may suffer from this irradiation.” He reemphasized the ethical problems with this research: “I think if it was explained fully to them and they still volunteered, for this project, one would question their mental capacity right off the start.”

Scientists experimenting on birds were just as alarmed by their results, and issued warnings about the environmental effects of the radiation our society was unleashing on the world that were just as dire as the warnings delivered to Congress by Milton Zaret, and the warnings delivered to the Navy by Allan Frey.

In the late 1960s and continuing through the 1970s, John Tanner and his colleagues at Canada’s National Research Council exposed chickens, pigeons and seagulls to microwave radiation, and found frightening effects at every level of exposure. Chickens exposed to between 0.19 and 360 microwatts per square centimeter for nine months developed tumors of the central nervous system, and avian leukosis – also a type of tumor -- of ovaries, intestines and other organs which in some birds reached “massive proportions,” on “a scale never seen before by veterinarians experienced with avian diseases.” Mortality was high in the irradiated birds. All the exposed birds, at every power level, had deteriorated plumage, with feathers lost, broken or with twisted and brittle shafts.

In other experiments, in which these researchers irradiated birds at higher power, the birds collapsed in pain within seconds. This occurred not only when the whole bird was irradiated but also when only its tail feathers were irradiated and the rest of the bird was carefully shielded. In further experiments, they proved that bird feathers make fine receiving aerials for microwaves, and speculated that migratory birds may use their feathers to obtain directional information. These scientists warned that increasing levels of ambient microwaves would cause wild birds distress and might interfere with their navigation.

Maria Sadchikova, working in Moscow; Václav Bartoniček and Eliska Klimková-Deutshová, working in Czechoslovakia; and Valentina Nikitina, who examined officers of the Russian Navy, found, as early as 1960, that the majority of people exposed to microwave radiation on the job -- even people who had ceased such employment five to ten years previously -- had elevated blood sugar or had sugar in their urine.

Animal experiments showed that the radiation directly interferes with metabolism, and that it does so rapidly. In 1962, V.A. Syngayevskaya, in Leningrad, exposed rabbits to low level radio waves and found that the animals’ blood sugar rose by one-third in less than an hour. In 1982, Vasily Belokrinitskiy, in Kiev, reported that the amount of sugar in the urine was in direct proportion to the dose of radiation and the number of times the animal was exposed. Mikhail Navakitikian and Lyudmila Tomashevskaya reported in 1994 that insulin levels decreased by 15 percent in rats exposed for just half an hour, and by 50 percent in rats exposed for twelve hours, to pulsed radiation at a power level of 100 microwatts per square centimeter. This level is comparable to the radiation a person receives today sitting directly in front of a wireless computer, and considerably less than what a person’s brain receives from a cell phone.

These were just a few of the thousands of studies being performed all over the world at that time that found profound effects of microwave radiation on every human organ, and on the functioning and reproduction of every plant and animal. Lieutenant Zory Glaser, commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1971 to catalogue the world’s literature on the health effects of microwave and radio-frequency radiation, collected 5,083 studies, textbooks and conference proceedings by 1981. He managed to find about half of the literature existing at that time. So about 10,000 studies had proven microwave and RF radiation to be dangerous to all life, already before 1981.

Cooking Your DNA and Roasting Your Nerves

In the early 1980s Mays Swicord, working at the National Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the Food and Drug Administration, decided to test his conjecture that DNA resonantly absorbs microwave radiation, and that even a very low level of radiation, although producing no measurable heat in the human body as a whole, may nevertheless heat your DNA. He exposed a solution containing a small amount of DNA to microwave radiation, and found that the DNA itself was absorbing 400 times as much radiation as the solution that it was in, and that different lengths of DNA strands resonantly absorb different frequencies of microwave radiation. So even though the overall temperature of your cells may not be raised to any detectable degree by the radiation, the DNA inside your cells may be heated tremendously. Swicord’s later research confirmed that this damages DNA, causing both single- and double-strand DNA breakage.

Professor Charles Polk of the University of Rhode Island reported essentially the same thing at the twenty-second annual meeting of the Bioelectromagnetics Society in June 2000 in Munich, Germany. Direct measurements had recently shown that DNA is much more electrically conductive than anyone had suspected: it has a conductivity of at least 105 siemens per meter, which is about 1/10 as conductive as mercury! A cell phone held to your head may irradiate your brain at a specific absorption rate (SAR) of about 1 watt per kilogram, which produces little overall heating. Polk calculated, however, that this level of radiation would raise the temperature in the interior of your DNA by 60 degrees Celsius per second! He said that the tissues cannot dissipate heat that rapidly, and that such heating would rupture the bonds between complementary strands of DNA, and would explain the DNA breakage reported in various studies.

And in 2006, Markus Antonietti, at Germany’s Max Planck Institute, wondered whether a similar type of resonant absorption occurs in the synapses of our nerves. Cell phones are designed so the radiation they emit will not heat your brain more than one degree Celsius. But what happens in the tiny environment of a synapse, where electrically charged ions are involved in transmitting nerve impulses from one neuron to another? Antonietti and his colleagues simulated the conditions in nerve synapses with tiny fat droplets in salt water and exposed the emulsions to microwave radiation at frequencies between 10 MHz and 4 GHz. The resonant absorption frequencies, as expected, depended on the size of the droplets and other properties of the solution. But it was the size of the absorption peaks that shocked Antonietti.

“And now comes the tragedy,” said Antonietti. “Exactly where we are closest to the conditions in the brain, we see the strongest heating. There is a hundred times as much energy absorbed as previously thought. This is a horror.”

Efforts by the EPA to Protect Americans

Faced with a barrage of alarming scientific results, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established its own microwave radiation research laboratory which operated from 1971 until 1985 with up to 30 full-time staff exposing dogs, monkeys, rats and other animals to microwaves. The EPA was so disturbed by the results of its experiments that it proposed, already in 1978, to develop guidelines for human exposure to microwave radiation for adoption and enforcement by other federal agencies whose activities were contributing to a rapidly thickening fog of electromagnetic pollution throughout our nation. But there was pushback by those agencies.

The Food and Drug Administration did not want the proposed exposure limits to apply to microwave ovens or computer screens. The Federal Aviation Administration did not want to have to protect the public from air traffic control and weather radars. The Department of Defense did not want the limits to apply to military radars. The CIA, NASA, Department of Energy, Coast Guard, and Voice of America did not want to have to limit public exposure to their own sources of radiation.

Finally, in June 1995, with the telecommunications industry planning to put microwave radiation devices into the hands and next to the brains of every man, woman and child, and to erect millions of cell towers and antennas in cities, towns, villages, forests, wildlife preserves and national parks throughout the country in order to make those devices work, the EPA announced that it was going to issue Phase I of its exposure guidelines in early 1996. The Federal Communications Commission would have been required to enforce those guidelines, cell phones and cell towers would have been illegal, and even if they were not illegal, telecommunications companies would have been exposed to unlimited liability for all the suffering, disease and mortality they were about to cause.

But it was not to be. The Electromagnetic Energy Association, an industry lobbying group, succeeded in preventing the EPA’s exposure guidelines from being published. On September 13, 1995, the Senate Committee on Appropriations stripped the $350,000 that had been budgeted for EPA’s work on its exposure guidelines and wrote in its report, “The Committee believes EPA should not engage in EMF activities.”

The Personal Communications Industry Association (CTIA), another industry group, also lobbied Congress, which was drafting a bill called the Telecommunications Act, and a provision was added to the Act prohibiting states and local governments from regulating “personal wireless service facilities” on the basis of their “environmental effects.” That provision shielded the telecommunications industry from any and all liability for injury from both cell towers and cell phones and permitted that industry to sell the most dangerous technology ever invented to the American public. People were no longer allowed to tell their elected officials about their injuries at public hearings. Scientists were no longer allowed to testify in court about the dangers of this technology. Every means for the public to find out that wireless technology was killing them was suddenly prohibited.

The telecommunications industry has done such a good job selling this technology that today the average American household contains 25 different devices that emit microwave radiation and the average American spends five hours per day on their cell phone, has it in their pocket next to their body the rest of the day, and sleeps with it all night in or next to their bed. Today almost every man, woman and child holds a microwave radiation device in their hand or against their brain or body all day every day, completely unaware of what they are doing to themselves, their family, their pets, their friends, their neighbors, the birds in their yard, their ecosystem, and their planet. Those who are even aware there is a problem at all view only the towers as a threat, but their phone as a friend.

 Arthur Firstenberg

Author, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life

P.O. Box 6216

Santa Fe, NM 87502

USA

phone: +1 505-471-0129

arthur@cellphonetaskforce.org

October 20, 2021

The last 26 newsletters, including this one, are available for downloading

and sharing on the Newsletters page of the Cellular Phone Task Force.

Some of the newsletters are also available there in

German, Spanish, Italian, and French.

[koreaunderground]

(eff.org)(2021/03/08) The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption and Tell Congress About All the Encrypted Phones It’s Already Hacking Into

[eff.org][1]

  [1]: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/fbi-should-stop-attacking-encryption-and-tell-congress-about-all-encrypted-phones>

# The FBI Should Stop Attacking Encryption and Tell Congress About All the Encrypted Phones It’s Already Hacking Into

Joe Mullin

10-13 minutes

Federal law enforcement has been [asking for a backdoor][2] to read Americans’ encrypted communications for years now. FBI Director Christopher Wray did it again last week [in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee][3]. As usual, the FBI’s complaints involved end-to-end encryption employed by popular messaging platforms, as well as the at-rest encryption of digital devices, which Wray described as offering [“user-only access.”][4]

  [2]: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/doj-and-fbi-show-no-signs-correcting-past-untruths-their-new-attacks-encryption>   [3]: <https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/SJC%20Oversight%20Hearing%20-%20FBI%20Director%20Wray%20SFR%20-%203.2.2021.pdf>   [4]: <https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1366804541451157504?s=21>

The FBI wants these terms to sound scary, but [they actually describe security best practices][5]. End-to-end encryption is what allows users to exchange messages without having them intercepted and read by repressive governments, corporations, and other bad actors. And “user-only access” is actually a perfect encapsulation of how device encryption should work; otherwise, anyone who got their hands on your phone or laptop—a thief, an abusive partner, or an employer—could access its most sensitive data. When you intentionally weaken these systems, it hurts our security and privacy, because there’s no magical kind of access that only works for the good guys. If Wray gets his special pass to listen in on our conversations and access our devices, corporations, criminals, and authoritarians will be able to get the same access.

  [5]: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/incoming-biden-administration-officials-should-change-course-encryption>

It’s remarkable that Wray keeps getting invited to Congress to [sing the same song][6]. Notably, Wray was invited there to talk, in part, about the January 6th insurrection, a serious domestic attack in which the attackers—far from being concerned about secrecy—proudly broadcast many of their crimes, resulting in hundreds of arrests.

  [6]: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/fancy-new-terms-same-old-backdoors-encryption-debate-2019>

It’s also remarkable what Wray, once more, chose to leave out of this narrative. While Wray continues to express frustration about what his agents can’t get access to, he fails to brief Senators about the shocking frequency with which his agency _already_ accesses Americans’ smartphones. Nevertheless, the scope of police snooping on Americans’ mobile phones is becoming clear, and it’s not just the FBI who is doing it. Instead of inviting Wray up to Capitol Hill to ask for special ways to invade our privacy and security, Senators should be asking Wray about the private data his agents are already trawling through.

### **Police Have An Incredible Number of Ways to Break Into Encrypted Phones**

In all 50 states, police are breaking into phones on a vast scale. An October report from the non-profit Upturn, “[Mass Extraction][7],” has revealed details of how invasive and widespread police hacking of our phones has become. Police can easily purchase forensic tools that extract data from nearly every popular phone. In March 2016, Cellebrite, a popular forensic tool company, supported “logical extractions” for 8,393 different devices, and “physical extractions,” which involves copying all the data on a phone bit-by-bit, for 4,254 devices. Cellebrite can bypass lock screens on about 1,500 different devices.

  [7]: <https://www.upturn.org/reports/2020/mass-extraction/>

How do they bypass encryption? Often, they just guess the password. In 2018, Prof. Matthew Green [estimated][8] it would take no more than 22 hours for forensic tools to break into some older iPhones with a 6-digit passcode simply by continuously guessing passwords (i.e. “brute-force” entry). A 4-digit passcode would fail in about 13 minutes.

  [8]: <https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/985885001542782978>

That brute force guessing was enabled by a hardware flaw that has been fixed since 2018, and the rate of password guessing is much more limited now. But even as smartphone companies like Apple improve their security, device hacking remains very much a cat-and-mouse game. As recently as September 2020, [Cellebrite marketing materials][9] boasted its tools can break into iPhone devices up to “the latest iPhone 11/ 11 Pro / Max running the latest iOS versions up to the latest 13.4.1”

  [9]: <https://cf-media.cellebrite.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/SolutionOverview_CAS_2020.pdf>

Even when passwords can’t be broken, vendors like Cellebrite offer “advanced services” that can unlock even the newest iOS and Samsung devices. Upturn research suggests the base price on such services is $1,950, but it can be cheaper in bulk.

Buying electronic break-in technology on a wholesale basis represents the best deal for police departments around the U.S., and they avail themselves of these bargains regularly. In 2018, the Seattle Police Department [purchased 20 such “actions”][10] from Cellebrite for $33,000, allowing them to extract phone data within weeks or even days. Law enforcement agencies that want to unlock phones en masse can bring Cellebrite’s “advanced unlocking” in-house, for prices that range from $75,000 to $150,000.

  [10]: <https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20394507-installment_101>

That means for most police departments, breaking into phones isn’t just convenient, it’s relatively inexpensive. Even a mid-sized police department like Virginia Beach, VA [has a police budget of more than $100 million][11]; New York City’s police budget is over $5 billion. The FBI’s 2020 budget request is [about $9 billion][12].

  [11]: <https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/06/26/how-much-money-goes-to-police-departments-in-americas-largest-cities/112004904/>   [12]: <https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/fbi-budget-request-for-fiscal-year-2020>

When the FBI says it’s “going dark” because it can’t beat encryption, what it’s really asking for is a method of breaking in that’s cheaper, easier, and more reliable than the methods they already have. The only way to fully meet the FBI’s demands would be to require a backdoor in all platforms, applications, and devices. Especially at a time when police abuses nationwide have come into new focus, this type of complaint should be a non-starter with elected officials. Instead, they should be questioning how and why police are already dodging encryption. These techniques aren’t just being used against criminals.

### **Phone Searches By Police Are Widespread and Commonplace**

Upturn has documented more than 2,000 agencies across the U.S. that have purchased products or services from mobile device forensic tool vendors, including every one of the 50 largest police departments, and at least 25 of the 50 largest sheriffs’ offices.

Law enforcement officials like Wray want to convince us that encryption needs to be bypassed or broken for threats like terrorism or crimes against children, but in fact, Upturn’s public records requests show that police use forensic tools to search phones for everyday low-level crimes. Even when police don't need to bypass encryption—such as when they convince someone to "consent" to the search of a phone and unlock it—these invasive police phone searches are used “as an all-purpose investigative tool, for an astonishingly broad array of offenses, often without a warrant,” as Upturn put it.

The 44 law enforcement agencies who provided records to Upturn revealed at least 50,000 extractions of cell phones between 2015 and 2019\. And there’s no question that this number is a “severe undercount,” counting only 44 agencies, when at least 2,000 agencies have the tools. Many of the largest police departments, including New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Boston, either denied Upturn’s record requests or did not respond.

“Law enforcement… use these tools to investigate cases involving graffiti, shoplifting, marijuana possession, prostitution, vandalism, car crashes, parole violations, petty theft, public intoxication, and the full gamut of drug-related offenses,” Upturn reports. In Suffolk County, NY, 20 percent of the phones searched by police were for narcotics cases. Authorities in Santa Clara County, CA, San Bernardino County, CA, and Fort Worth, TX all reported that drug crimes were among the most common reasons for cell phone data extractions. Here are just a few examples of the everyday offenses in which Upturn found police searched phones:

 * In [one case][13], police officers sought to search two phones for evidence of drug sales after a $220 undercover marijuana bust.  * Police stopped a vehicle for a “left lane violation,” then “due to nervousness and inconsistent stories, a free air sniff was conducted by a … K9 with positive alert to narcotics.” The officers found bags of marijuana in the car, then seized eight phones from the car’s occupants, and [sought to extract data from them][14] for “evidence of drug transactions.”  * Officers looking for a juvenile who allegedly violated terms of his electronic monitoring found him after a “short foot pursuit” in which the youngster threw his phone to the ground. Officers [sought to search the phone][15] for evidence of “escape in the second degree.”

  [13]: <https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20394694-sw_38982>   [14]: <https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20394714-st1700494a170155-search-warrant>   [15]: <https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20394724-affidavit-19-5271>

And these searches often take place without judicial warrants, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s clear ruling in [_Riley v. California_][16] that a warrant is required to search a cell phone. That’s because police frequently abuse rules around so-called consent searches. These types of searches are widespread, but they’re hardly consensual. In January, we wrote about how these [so-called “consent searches” are extraordinary violations][17] of our privacy.

  [16]: <https://www.eff.org/cases/supreme-court-cases-cell-phone-searches>   [17]: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/so-called-consent-searches-harm-our-digital-rights>

Forensic searches of cell phones are increasingly common. The Las Vegas police, for instance, examined 260% more cell phones in 2018-2019 compared with 2015-2016.

The searches are often overbroad, as well. It’s not uncommon for data unrelated to the initial suspicions to be copied, kept, and used for other purposes later. For instance, police can deem unrelated data to be “gang related,” and keep it in a “gang database,” which have often vague standards. Being placed in such a database can easily affect peoples’ future employment options. Many police departments don’t have any policies in place about when forensic phone-searching tools can be used.

### **It’s Time for Oversight On Police Phone Searches**

Rather than listening to a litany of requests for special access to personal data from federal agencies like the FBI, Congress should assert oversight over the inappropriate types of access that are already taking place.

The first step is to start keeping track of what’s happening. Congress should require that federal law enforcement agencies create detailed audit logs and screen recordings of digital searches. And we agree with Upturn that agencies nationwide should collect and publish aggregated information about how many phones were searched, and whether those searches involved warrants (with published warrant numbers), or so-called consent searches. Agencies should also disclose what tools were used for data extraction and analysis.

Congress should also consider placing sharp limits on when consent searches can take place at all. In our [January blog post][18], we suggest that such searches be banned entirely in high-coercion settings like traffic stops, and suggest some specific limits that should be set in less-coercive settings.

  [18]: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/so-called-consent-searches-harm-our-digital-rights>

[yhwhrulz]

Worthy Brief - March 22, 2022

Modern day miracles still happen!

Psalms 124:1-8 A Song of Ascents. Of David. If it had not been the LORD who was on our side— let Israel now say— if it had not been the LORD who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us; then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters. Blessed be the LORD, who has not given us as prey to their teeth! We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped! Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

Studying some remarkable events in the history of World War 2, we find the deliverance of the allied armies at Dunkirk; a true story of Divine providence in modern history. It was on May 10, 1940, that Hitler unleashed his armies against France and Belgium. Within days, the British army found itself outmaneuvered and unprepared for the German blitzkrieg assault led by General Rommel and his 7th Panzer division.

The German high command began boasting of the demise of the allied armies, particularly the 300,000 soldiers of the British army sent by then Prime Minister Winston Churchill to protect France and the low countries of Europe. As the prospect of victory waned Churchill was prepared to announce an unprecedented military defeat of a third of a million soldiers.

But then a miraculous turn took place initiated by King George VI, who ordered the observance of a National Day of Prayer. The British Monarch, along with members of the cabinet, attended Westminster Abbey to pray, while millions of Britons all across the Kingdom in unprecedented unity, attended churches to join the King in prayer. Newspapers throughout the UK reported, "Nothing like it has ever happened before."

Then the miracles began: First, Hitler ordered his troops to halt their advance for no apparent reason, which angered his generals and continues to baffle historians to this day. Secondly, a massive storm broke out in Flanders which grounded the German Luftwaffe squadrons, allowing the allied armies to travel to the beaches at Dunkirk unhindered by the German air force. A third miracle involving the weather was that simultaneous with the storm which grounded the Luftwaffe, the English Channel was as still as a millpond...an unprecedented calm which allowed ships of every size to evacuate over 338,000 troops including 140,000 French, Belgian, Dutch and Polish soldiers from the beaches at Dunkirk.

Winston Churchill addressed the British nation and described the evacuation of Dunkirk as a “miracle of deliverance.”

The following Sunday, the nation in celebration of God’s answer to prayer, sang Psalm 124 throughout churches in the United Kingdom.

Be encouraged knowing that our God responds to prayer and is ready to act upon it at a moment's notice. The armies of darkness may surround us, in fact, they are sure to sooner or later; but we also know the Lord is standing ready to defend His own. "Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made Heaven and Earth" [Psalm 124:8]

Your family in the Lord with much agape love,

George, Baht Rivka, Elianna & Obadiah

Dallas, Texas

Editor's Note: We just posted a sermon, "Which Voice Will You Listen to in these days?" YouTube Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4168BwmOc&feature=youtu.be| Rumble Link- https://rumble.com/vy0847-sermon-which-voice-will-you-listen-to-in-these-days.html | Sermon Notes - https://worthy.tv/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/which-voice-last-days.pdf

Editor's Note: We'll be speaking in Texas over the next few weeks, let us know if you're in the area and would like to attend a service! If you would like us to minister at your congregation, home fellowship, or Israel focused event, be sure to let us know ASAP. You can send an email to george [ @ ] worthyministries.com for more information.

Editor's Note: Our preferred social media platform is Telegram [Follow us on Telegram -https://t.me/worthywatch]