How do you persuade a fanatical fighter that it's not his duty to die?

 

During World War II almost all Japanese military servicemen died in action, refusing to surrender.  They regarded it as their sacred duty to the Emperor of Japan, whom they regarded as having divine origins and authority.  However, in the Marianas campaign, one Marine, Guy Gabaldon, began to go out beyond friendly lines and persuade Japanese soldiers and civilians to surrender rather than fight to the death.  His efforts were extremely successful, and led to anything between 1,000 and 1,500 Japanese surrenders (the exact figure is disputed).  He was awarded a Silver Star in recognition of his efforts, which I think was to undervalue them significantly.  The Marines clearly felt the same, because some years later his award was upgraded to a Navy Cross:  and now, after his death, there are proposals to upgrade it further, to the Medal of Honor.

This twenty-minute TV documentary examines his activities and achievements, as well as how other service personnel began to take the idea further.  I'm told that after the Marianas campaign, when the war moved on to the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, such tactics were more widely used, but I haven't been able to confirm that.

If you're interested in World War II, and the Pacific War in particular, this documentary is a must-see.

That's an episode of World War II combat history of which I'd never heard before.

Peter

Musical notation as a tool of espionage?

 

It sounds weird, but it actually happened in the 1980's.

Imagine this as the scenario for a thriller. Four folk musicians with a social conscience decide on a daring humanitarian mission. They'll visit a country famous for its cruel repression, and risk arrest and imprisonment by secretly meeting with persecuted individuals to smuggle out vital information about them disguised as musical notation.

It seems too outlandish even for a film. Yet it actually happened. Forty years ago, in 1985, when the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was still freezing, and no one suspected the Soviet system would collapse within four years, a quartet of American Jewish musicians visited the Soviet Union. Their aim was to help some of the millions of Jewish people who wanted to leave but were being denied the necessary exit visas. One of the four was Merryl Goldberg, who in the mid 1980s was a keen student of the saxophone and passionate about a form of Jewish folk music called klezmer.

Now she's co-authored a book, Notes of Deception, that describes those extraordinary few days when she and her fellow musicians defied the might of the Soviet Union.

But how would the information be smuggled out under the noses of the KGB officers, who would be sure to confiscate anything they deemed suspicious? The answer was: convert the names, addresses, telephone numbers and other information into musical notation, via a secret code. Goldberg admits it wasn't complex. "The important thing was it just looks like music, though anyone who read music would see it's kind of strange. It sounds like bad Schoenberg."

Vince Houghton, whose expertise in the history of spying and espionage made him an ideal co-author for the book, says there are two reasons it worked. "One is that hopefully there would be no KGB officer who was a professional musician who might realise that this is just garbage. The other is that the people using it were musicians. The code was actually a form of steganography, which means something that hides in plain sight, that no one would ever think was code. So it didn't need to be complex. I asked a cryptologist colleague how long it would take him to crack it, and he said he could do it over lunch."

There's more at the link.

The full article makes a fascinating read, and includes an example of the musical code.  I love the ingenuity of mind that could think of musical notation as a hidden-in-plain-sight form of cryptography, one that the most draconian of security states in the world at the time would be unlikely to detect.  That's really thinking outside the (music) box!

Peter

Two interesting bits of news, and a question for my readers

 

Two news reports caught my eye, both illustrating how dependent we've become on technology rather than older, mature methods.

Fridges in French supermarkets hit by cyber attack

Hundreds of French supermarkets have been hit by a cyber attack that caused their fridges and freezers to heat up, spoiling fresh and frozen food estimated to be worth millions of euros.

Hackers gained control of the software that regulates the temperatures of the refrigeration units, forcing some to warm to 50C (120F) overnight, according to one supermarket chain affected.

The chief executive of Coopérative U said several of its supermarkets had been hit by the "extremely serious and unprecedented" attack.

More than 100 of the chain's supermarkets were targeted, while 180 stores from Intermarché and its Netto brand were affected, with a spokesman saying that another 100 shops were urgently disconnected from the internet to prevent the same thing happening to them.

Britain urges ships to prepare for life without reliable GPS

Britain has warned shipowners that satellite navigation can no longer be taken for granted in some of the world’s busiest shipping regions, urging crews to practise navigating without GPS as jamming and spoofing become increasingly widespread ... interference across the Baltic, Black Sea, Middle East Gulf and parts of East Asia means satellite-derived positioning, navigation and timing information can no longer be relied upon everywhere.

The warning extends well beyond electronic charts. The agency identifies a long list of potentially vulnerable equipment, including ECDIS, AIS, autopilots, dynamic positioning systems, radar, gyrocompasses and GMDSS communications equipment. Ashore, vessel traffic services, pilotage systems, port management platforms and automated logistics systems are also exposed.

That navigation warning applies to any and every form of transport, of course, not just ships.  Some airlines now routinely double-check at least two, if not more, global navigation satellite systems such as GPS, GLONASS, BDS and Galileo against each other while in flight.  If too many of the systems show errors, they go back to taking star sights and navigating by what they can see on the ground.

As for the Internet-linked refrigerators . . . I can see that a large commercial enterprise might want to monitor its refrigerators and freezers in real time, so that repairs can be ordered immediately if something goes wrong.  However, what about security?  Isn't a major business vulnerability like that something that should have attracted serious attention long ago?  I'm sure it will get that attention now, but it's too late to avoid substantial losses.

I'm not by any means opposed to technology, provided it remains a reliable servant.  If it becomes a master instead of a servant, or if it can be corrupted and misused by criminals or other hostile actors, its usefulness has to be reassessed.  I can remember being taught navigation off the coast of South Africa back in the '70's, using compass bearings on shore objects, sextants, star sights, and the good old Decca Navigator system, first used to mark and sweep German minefields off Normandy prior to D-Day in 1944.  Decca has long gone now, of course, but there may come a time when something old but reliable like that will be sorely missed.

FIREARMS QUESTION

With the recent relaxation of regulations for the purchase and use of suppressors, I'm considering getting one or two of them to safeguard what's left of my hearing.  However, I note that most .30-caliber suppressors list their bore diameter as .308-inch.  That works fine for standard American ammunition, but several overseas equivalents (including the British .303-inch and the Soviet 7.62x39mm) are sized to .311-inch.  Can anyone tell me whether American .30-caliber suppressors have sufficient "safety margin" in their bores to allow their use with .311-inch bullets?  If not, do you think US manufacturers could supply their models slightly "bored-out" as a special order?  Alternatively, if one went up a bore size in the suppressor, what alternatives are there?  I don't know if suppressors are made for (say) the 8mm Mauser round, which would be .323-inch bullet diameter, and I'm not sure what the barrel threading would be.  What others might be suitable?

Peter

As with Britain, so with the USA???

 

So-called "welfare" payments (including entitlement programs, disability funding, and a host of other benefits) have all but crippled the British economy.  Here's how the Wall Street Journal views Britain's current crisis.

Disability payouts are no longer just for those most in need; they have become a financial crutch for a large swath of the population as wages stagnate and prices rise. 

It’s blowing up Britain’s welfare bill, hamstringing its politicians and imperiling its long-term financial stability.

Some seven million people—more than 10% of the population—now claim at least one or more sickness or disability benefits. The numbers are growing fastest among working-age people who should be powering the country’s economy, surging more than 60% in the past six years to 4.7 million from 2.9 million in 2019.

. . .

Many of the newer disability claims are for mental-health issues like depression, anxiety and ADHD, which can be harder for the government to verify than a physical disability. Between 2017 and 2025, disability claims for cancer doubled. But benefits claims for all psychiatric issues surged fourfold.

One benefit, created to help those with disabilities be more mobile, allows people to give up part of their welfare cash handout in return for a new car lease every three years. It now accounts for around one in every seven new car sales in the U.K. Among those who got new cars last year: 40 people whose primary medical condition was tennis elbow, 50 with wheat intolerance and 320 with dyslexia, according to government figures.

The scale of the payout has become a scandal. No other western country has seen such a rise in disability claims. In the U.S., the number of people getting federal disability payments has fallen in the past 15 years. The most recent figures show some 10.6 million working-age people in the U.S. claimed one or both main Social Security programs for people with a disability, in a country with a population five times bigger than the U.K.

There's more at the link (may be paywalled).  Whether the British economy (indeed, the British nation as we know it) can survive this ever-increasing burden remains to be seen.  Anytime any politician or party talks about reducing welfare expenditure, the beneficiaries of such welfare rise up in vehement, vocal opposition:  so the politicians dare not touch the subject, for fear of never being elected again (and/or of being un-elected as soon as the next election comes around).  The whole nation is caught in that trap.  Can't afford to pay for the benefits, and can't afford to cut them.

In the USA, the federal government has done a lot to cut back on entitlement spending, as the last paragraph above shows.  However, many states have implemented their own entitlement programs.  For example, a couple of weeks ago it was revealed that California is spending up to $11 billion every year on benefits for illegal aliens, who are not entitled to federal benefits at all.  "All told, a family of five in California with two illegal-alien parents, two US-born children and one illegal-alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year."  That's just one state, out of 50 in the Union.  How many others are taxing their citizens - and claiming refunds from Washington D.C. - to run their own such programs?  How much is it costing us, the taxpayers of this country?

The mainstream media is strangely silent about such matters, even when they're exposed through other sources.  Anyone would think that the media wants to grow the "dependent economy" at the expense of the market economy, and make taxpayers liable to support the millions who don't pay taxes.  There's a word for that.  They call it "socialism".

If you pay taxes, remember on November 3rd, and vote accordingly.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 331

 

Back from vacation, with memes collected from the Web while on the road and in our hotel.  Click any image for a larger view.