Secret Mercenary Syndicates | Society & Privacy vs. Technology | Martin Luther King Jr’s Legacy

SEASONED NUTS: QUOTABLE
 

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Ibid.

 
 
 
IN A NUTSHELL: MUST READ
 

SPECTRE, Blackwater, SMERSH, and SAMIR: In 1961 UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 other passengers were killed in a mysterious plane crash. The makers of a new documentary, Cold Case Hammarskjöld, have been investigating a murky militia called the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), that claimed to be behind the operation to take down the plane. Film makers located Alexander Jones, who has detailed his years as an intelligence officer with the group. Jones said when he answered a SAIMR advertisement in a South African newspaper decades ago, its leaders described themselves as anti-communists. The recruitment presentation included photos of the plane crash site and wreckage with purported members of SAIMR standing close by. “They didn’t tell us … that it was Hammarskjöld; they just said that they had taken out a very high-profile political opponent.”

Jones described what he did while part of the group as “clandestine operations. We were involved in coups, taking over countries for other leaders.” But racism was also a core group belief. “We were trying to retain the white supremacy on the African continent.” The mercenary group’s self-proclaimed “commodore” was Keith Maxwell, who liked dressing up in 18-century admiral costumes and talking about SAIMR’s roots in a Napoleonic-era treasure-hunting syndicate. What was really going on was far more sinister. Maxwell was extremely dangerous. “If he didn’t like you…if you posed a threat, he would take you out,” Jones said.

The plot to eliminate the UN chief was full of foreign intrigue and ties to both UK and US intelligence, with backing from mining interests that wanted access to Africa’s rich mineral resources. Hammarskjöld was a champion of decolonization; he had made powerful enemies with his support for newly independent states and opposition to white minority rule. On his final flight, he was heading for a secret meeting to try to broker peace in recently independent Congo.

 
 
 
MIXED NUTS: QUICK TAKES ON WORLD NEWS
 

79 Dead In Hellish Gas Explosion: Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been trying to put a stop to the illegal gas pipeline tapping that has contributed to the country’s state run oil giant Pemex losing $3 billion worth of fuel in 2018. On Friday one of those illegal taps caused a pipeline in the state of Hildalgo north of Mexico City to burst open, sending fuel spraying into the air and local residents rushing to collect it in buckets and barrels. Two hours later, the gushing pipeline exploded, turning what had been an excited gathering into a hellish inferno, killing 79 people and seriously burning 76 others. (NPR)

Got Too Much Milk?: Two booming industries in New Zealand, dairy farming and tourism, have combined to wreak havoc on the country’s once pristine rivers and lakes, 60% of which are now unfit for swimming due to contamination by farm effluent, garbage and human feces. Greenpeace started a Twitter campaign last week, #toomanycows, and more than 13,000 people have signed it so far. The campaign calls for a ban on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which has been the key driver of dairy intensification and expansion. New Zealand has a human population of about 4.7 million, but a cow population of right at 5 million. Water pollution could be a key issue for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in next year’s election. (Reuters)

Additional read: “10 Year Challenge: How the world has changed in a decade: If you’ve been pretty much anywhere on the internet in the last couple of weeks, you’ll have no doubt come across #10YearChallenge on social media.” (BBC)

You REALLY Don’t Look A Day Over 122: The chairman of the gerontology department for a naturalist society at Moscow State University is claiming the French woman holding the title of world’s oldest person who ever lived (she died at age 122 in 1997) was a fraud. Russian doctor Valery Novoselov sent emails to the two renowned French gerontologists who had validated the age of Jeanne Calment. Novoselov claimed a researcher he’d hired had concluded that Calment was not Jeanne, but her daughter Yvonne, who stole her deceased mother’s identity to avoid paying inheritance taxes, and was therefore not older than 100. Some gerontologists and demographers believe Jeanne’s case should be reinvestigated. Even the Wikipedia page for Jeanne Calment was edited to weave in doubt about her age. (WaPo)

Additional reads: “World’s oldest man dies in Japan aged 113: Masazo Nonaka, who enjoyed watching sumo wrestling and eating sweets, died at home” (Guardian) “The search for the “elixir of youth” has spanned centuries and continents – but recently, the hunt has centred on the Okinawa Islands, which stretch across the East China Sea. Not only do the older inhabitants enjoy the longest life expectancy of anyone on Earth, but the vast majority of those years are lived in remarkably good health too.” (BBC)

– “China’s Slowdown Looms Just as the World Looks for Growth: In the past, China has helped to pull the global economy out of weak spots. This time, it might not come through.” (NYT) And “China set to post slowest growth in 28 years in 2018, more stimulus seen” (Reuters) and “U.S. chipmakers may give clues on China hazard” (Reuters)

 
 
 
NUTS IN AMERICA
 

An American (Shutdown) Tragedy: President Trump announced a plan Saturday to reopen government and grant some temporary protections to some immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion in funding for his border wall. To bolster the president’s plan, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell says he will bring legislation to the floor for a vote that joins reopening government with wall funding. Democrats have said repeatedly they will not negotiate over border security until the government is reopened. McConnell has been refusing to allow a vote on a clean bill that just funds the government. Polls show the majority of people blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown and his advisers have been looking for an exit strategy. By combining government funding and wall funding in Senate bills no one in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s caucus would support, McConnell hopes to shift the blame on the shutdown to Democrats. (NYT)

Additional read: “Doug Jones Risks His Alabama Senate Seat Over the Shutdown and the Wall” (NYT)

Do Not Feed The Buzz: Thursday’s BuzzFeed News report that President Trump had instructed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, a felony, about ongoing plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, suffered a blow Friday after a spokesman for Special Counsel’s Robert Mueller’s office put out a statement that appeared to dispute that reporting. Although not precisely a denial of the ultimate truth of the report, the statement from Mueller’s typically silent office suggested BuzzFeed’s version wasn’t wholly accurate. Editor in chief Ben Smith said: “We wouldn’t have published it if we weren’t comfortable with it. We were careful and thorough.” BuzzFeed maintains its sources were two unnamed federal law enforcement officers with knowledge of the special counsel’s investigation who had reviewed the underlying documents corroborating Cohen’s statement. (NYT)

Additional read: “Inside the Mueller team’s decision to dispute BuzzFeed’s explosive story on Trump and Cohen.” (WaPo)

– “Students in Trump hats mock Native American; school apologizes: A Catholic school in Kentucky condemned a group of its students, many of whom wore “Make America Great Again” hats, after they were recorded harassing a Native American Vietnam veteran in a video that went viral on Saturday.” (Reuters)

– “The man who stood behind Trump: After his laugh was heard around the country, Joe Davidson is wondering: ‘I’m a good person. Isn’t that what people say about me?’”

– “How Jared Kushner Tried to Stop Me From Running the Trump Transition” (Politico)

 
 
 
LOOSE NUTS: FASCINATING NEWS
 

The 21st century will be dominated by whether and how society can manage and regulate technology: Apple’s CEO writes “You Deserve Privacy Online. Here’s How You Could Actually Get It” (Time) Jeff Bezos appreciates this sentiment: “The Sexts of Jeff Bezos and the Death of Privacy: We can’t look away. But we should.” And “The Jeff Bezos Affair, or: How a Divorce Becomes a Conspiracy Theory” (The Ringer) “Evan Spiegel’s old Stanford professor flamed the Snapchat CEO for failing to stop kids getting addicted to tech” (Business Insider)

Jeff Bezos’s divorce will still leave him a billionaire. Here are how other billionaire’s are thinking and spending their time and money: “Bill Gates: The Best Investment I’ve Ever Made: Global health groups that buy and distribute medicines are a sure bet for saving lives, but their government funding is now in danger, and even the biggest philanthropies can’t fill the gap” (WSJ) And “Howard Buffett’s Border War: A Billionaire’s Son Is Spending Millions in Cochise County” (Phoenix News Times)

Being high school valedictorian is no guarantee of a financial success: The Boston Globe’s “The Valedictorian Project” shows that 1 in 4 failed to get a bachelor’s degree within six years and 40 percent make less than $50,000.” At West Point I found that generally the best cadets didn’t make the best Army officers. (Boston Globe)

Martin Luther King Jr’s Legacy: “Republican congressman: My black dad taught me how to handle white supremacist rhetoric” (USA Today) “A new Supreme Court is poised to take a chunk out of MLK’s legacy” (CNN) “How black women were whitewashed by art: Where are all the beautiful, powerful, black-skinned females from mythology and history? They were erased by Western art, argues Sophia Smith Galer.” (BBC) “Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Solution to Poverty: In his final book, the civil rights leader laid out his vision for a universal basic income that would raise all Americans into the middle class.” (Atlantic)

 
 
 
LAST MORSELS
 

“God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

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