Good Morning, all, here are some random musings about the remote life and confusions.

She Kills People From 7,850 Miles Away

Her name is ‘Sparkle.’ She operates a drone. She is sick of whiny boys. And she is perfectly OK with dealing out death.
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Anne, an Air Force staff sergeant, was—and still is—a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) sensor operator or “sensor.” At Creech, she is assigned to a reconnaissance squadron flying missions over Iraq and Afghanistan.
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As she rode to work, Anne—or “Sparkle” as she’s known to her fellow drone operators—wasn’t focused on the desert outside her window. It was 2009 and President Obama was sending troops in a surge to Afghanistan. Sparkle’s mind was on a desert 7,000 miles away. Over the next 24 hours she would track an insurgent, watch as he was killed by a Hellfire missile, and spy on his funeral before ending her night with a breakfast beer and a trip to the dog park.
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The RPA has become the symbol of America’s ongoing wars, from Afghanistan to Somalia to Syria. And, 14 years after a U.S. “drone” first fired a missile at an al Qaeda operative, the morality and legality of remote strikes remains a matter of intense controversy.
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But for all the attention paid to RPAs, the men and women who operate the 21st century’s most divisive weapons system remain largely hidden from public view—except for reports about strikes, especially when a missile kills civilians. The Daily Beast interviewed more than two dozen Air Force officers and airmen in the RPA community last year at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico the RPA’s training base.
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She was flying with Patrick, a tall, lanky former B-1 bomber pilot. Patrick’s father-in-law, a former F-4 weapon systems officer, talked him into joining the Air Force with stories of low-level flying. Patrick deployed with a B-1 squadron and dropped bombs in Afghanistan, but because six months was too long to be away from his family, in 2009 he volunteered to fly MQ-9 Reapers instead. The RPA community, he thought, would be the best of both worlds. He could be home and still fly combat missions. Known as “Spade” at the squadron, the call sign comes from being a family man.
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Sparkle liked flying with Spade. He was laidback and trusted her to do the job. She had worked at a casino in Louisiana before she joined the Air Force for help in paying for college.
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“I use it to emasculate the enemy in the afterlife,” Sparkle said. “Many radical jihadists believe that being killed by a woman means they will not enter heaven. Considering how they treat their women, I’m OK with rubbing salt in the wound.
”
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Ok, I don't know why I picked this article to post here. I recommend reading it all. There is something that makes people who engage in "remote actions" lose their moral conscience and compass. May be it's the old problem of choosing to lose your job or to lose your morals. You can't eat without a job, so I guess people rather lose their moral conscience than their jobs. Like most "Good Germans" choose to hold their work while losing their morality in The Third Reich. I don't know how to get over that issue. It's one of those things that linger in my mind. Anyhow, it disturbs me a lot.

Well, there is a lot I can't grasp. For example Russia and Putin. So, I am aware of the anti-Russian propaganda and msm usually smearing Russia and Putin, as if they were still in Soviet Union times and in the cold war. I also couldn't ignore that RT is considered by many and probably is to a not negligible extent a biased pro-Russian news outlet. And I know, I don't know nothing about the whole thing, really. I read and forget and it all goes in and out without being processed, understood, researched, questioned, or retained in my mind. While reading, I get mad and then just drop the idea to research it in depth to make up my mind. It's just too much. But then, there is the EB and I still think I read the right sources ...

Some little stuff from how I grew up and the little bit I learned about the Russians.

In my childhood "the Russians" were the guys my mother's generation of women fled from during WWII. They were the guys, who raped my aunt in front of her father. But I got a very nice, kind and always helping cousin out of it (who silently as an adult helped some East Berliners to crawl through the tunnels into West Berlin. But that was so secret that we all learned about it only after his death). So, on my father's side, there was his younger brother, who got killed during the WWII by the Russians. My father was POW in Russian camps, but he lost his arm to US bomb attacks in Rumania. The only thing I remember my father saying about Russians is that "they have great souls and are wonderful people and can be very good friends, as long as they are not drunk". With regards to him being a POW in their prison camps, he said, it was all a matter of having bad luck or good luck in war. That's all. Not much, heh. But my father's library was full of books and they were all political. He just worked too hard and always fell asleep over them. Now I have those books and I fall asleep over them the same way. Sigh.

Communism (I didn't learn about the differences between Communism and Socialism, I just knew Social Democracy) was for me "East Germany", that meant being scared and angry passing from West Germany to West Berlin through East Germany. Police stopped you regularly, searched your cars, you had to hide news papers,("Der Spiegel" you better didn't take with you in the car. That's why I have still believe that "Der Spiegel" has been a good weekly news source for Germany for several decades now). East Germany to me as a child meant that the East Germans were not allowed to choose their professional fields, were not allowed to move freely, constantly had simply either not enough or bad food (my mother regularly sent care packages with food to the extended family members living in East Germany), were not allowed to get news from outside of East Germany, police officers would shoot anybody who tries to flee East Germany. You watched from the observation platforms over "The Wall" and into the "no-man's land" behind, stayed mum and turned around going on to do your daily business. I never gave a though about how East Germany felt to an East German kid. First time I thought about it, was when I read a bit about Merkel's biography. Another book I have to read. As a student I could have studied Marx, Lenin and Mao, Trotzky and Socialism and Fascism, but I didn't. I had not appetite to slog myself through the books, I studied Chemistry, that was bad enough.

So, yes, of course, communist East Germany, the Soviet Union was "the evil empire" to us at that time. I think we just walked around silently watching the GIs and the Russian or East German soldiers watching each other and read all about the nuclear arsenal both sides were building up in "Der Spiegel". West Germany was a hunkered down scared, silently watching the madness around them, unable to voice their feelings, as most were burdened with so much feelings of guilt to be without words. So, we became a surviving, rebuilding and taking care of the kids kind of society in the fifties and early sixties. At the same time we listened to what our parent's generation said about Voice of America (Uncle Sam's Propaganda Tool, mostly BS) and BBC (the source to go to, if you wanted to get at least some of the news correctly).

As a child or teenager I just got my clues through little things around me. For example, my parents families had live-in nannies.
A little side note:
(on both sides of my parents, one a bit better off small business man (great- and grandfathers) with its own company, the other a very modest civil servant for the German government after WWI in the Weimar Republic and during the rise of Nazi Germany. Yes, my grandfather on my mother's side was working for the Ministry of the Interior. His job was the only thing he had. He was very poor when he started his family around 1900 and went through the horrors of WWI. He carried the burden of feeding his family (5 kids) and took care of them silently and thus became a "bystander", the so-called "Good German". Privately he voiced his opposition to Hitler. He was no follower and not a guy who tried to resist the Nazis actively either. His wife was much more "taken" by Mr. Hitler apparently. Like the millions of other Germans. About my father's family, all I know is that none of them was in the NSDAP and basically were "The Good German" small, beaming business man, conservative, sports enthusiasts and family oriented. My grandfather's business saved all of the extended family to find a job after WWII. My siblings today don't admit that even their own, very well protected lives and their relative "wealth" was all dependent on the grandpa "grand-fathering" in all of my parents generations and then their kids got grandfathered in by their fathers. Now the grandkids got into it as well.. You could sense a bit of Buddenbrook's anchestyr in my father's side of the family, just that they weren't that rich and came from Berlin and not Northern Germany. None of them is really aware of their privilege. Insecurity and poverty hasn't touched their lives. So, yes, today, from the view point of many Americans , it would be white privilege. Other than my son, none of the grand-kids (my son's cousins) are aware of that fact either. They are untouched by racial encounters in their lives. They have no clue. If they "know" something it's remotely through the intertubes. But that doesn't touch you and it means you don't 'get" t.)

So getting back, both my parents' families had a "live-in Nanny" all their lives. It was not so much a matter of class feature than a matter of necessity for the nannies and for the women in my family, all having lots of kids. They stayed with the families their whole life and were considered beloved family members by the kids.
Another little side note:
(My father never forgot to contact his "nanny" til she died; my mother remembers how her "nanny" became her aunt while they were fleeing during WWII on foot from East to reach the Western zone and got help from US GI's transporting them with their trucks away from of the approaching Russians, who later occupied that area. In order to save the "nanny", she had to become my mother's aunt. No questions asked. I am pretty generous about faking something, when it comes to save your life, for that reason.)

So, it was nothing special for us children again to have a "live-in nanny" in the years after WWII. The first one was a war refugee herself and needed a roof over her head; so my parents let her live in the basement with all of us (three kids) in their tiny two-bedroom rambler right after 1949, the first rental house my father had after returning from Russia. My parents always paid and supported their "nanny/employees/adopted family members" well. When my parents were able to move into a bigger house in 1954, that nanny married and established heir own home. We got a new "nanny", a seventeen year-old girl from East Germany, who left her own family behind.(At that time you could still do it. The iron curtain was not built yet in all its glory and you could move from East to West without getting shot or jumping fences) I was eight years old at that time. She stood with my parents til they both died, ie til 2005. She married and bought a house across the street from my parent's house and was the one of my "mother's kids" that was the closest and most loyal to her. We are in contact still, even across the Atlantic and without the internet.

I am telling you all of that, because it was through her that I got a hint about today's post-Soviet Union regime, the post cold-war Russia, that made me think that I perhaps am not able to grasp today's Russia correctly. After Gorbachev and the fall of the Soviet Union, I had no specific anti-Russian feelings and was very hopeful. I was more upset about the constant anti-Russian, anti-Putin rhetoric here in the US than I was being skeptical of the Russians and Putin.

When my parents got bed-ridden and needed "end-of-life" nursing care, my parents got in-house nursing care through their German health care system. These nurses often were recent remigrants and former Russians with German anchestry, who were allowed to return back to Germany and repatriated. Within a couple of years we had a lot of Russians in our little town of 30,000 and many Russian women got jobs in the nursing aid fields. Here you can read in detail about those remigrates. Returning Back Home? Ethnic German late repatriates remigration - Types and motivations, if you are so inclined. It's detailed, I just scanned it, but I guess it is okay as a source.

I watched (and was amazed) that our "nanny" didn't like the "Russian nurses". She is one of the persons (herself nursing her disabled child with amazing grace and patience for well over 30 years) who you would never believe to have prejudices or feelings of hate. But, yes, she said she doesn't trust those Russian nurses. I wondered why and couldn't grasp what it was that made her feel that way. As I just was visiting Germany, I never could figure out what it was, but I didn't forget her reaction.

Later on, in the US, among my German colleagues, we had two, one from Poland tied to a Russian girl, and one correspondent married to a Russian woman and one other correspondent who had worked in the Moscow studio before. The correspondents had a pretty straight forward down to earth feeling for US and Russian propaganda. They loved both American people and Russian people, and basically weren't shy to see both sides' political lies and name them in appropriate modest tone (public TV). The Polish guy surprised me with a passionate remark saying that Snowden is someone, he would send to hell. Oops, another hint of unexpected hate. I didn't forget that reaction as well, and wondered why he had such feelings. I couldn't ignore those either. Later I read about "feelings" among the population in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which were more anti-Russian and tribal than I would have expected. Poland was more difficult for me to understand. With the Ukraine my suspicions just went off the chart. Oh well, what can I say. Confusion and frustration all around in my mind.

So I was surrounded by people, who were neither pro US nor pro Russia, but mostly anti-both with regards to many political issues. Or they were clearly anti-Russian and pro-US patriotic, which was a bit too much to remain unquestioned in my mind. But who cares about my mind anyway. And dummy me, felt I was not anti-Russian enough and I felt it's a nuisance to try to find out through the digital news coverage, what is fair and truthful reporting and what is not. I really started to hate the online news fog. All those smarty (and arrogant) experts roaming around, all those awful comments on blogs by self-identified people in the know, made me think that they all are either jerks, lying naives or covertly CIA and NSA, contracted to disperse paranoia among online readers and TV watchers. I was getting "sick" and on the verge to become one of those paranoids.

That's why I try to read "on both sides of the aisles", if I can recognize, who is on which aisle. That's why I allow myself to post this interview I saw this morning on Deutsche Welle. That guy is anti-Putin. Is DW now "neo-liberal" or a "German progaganda tool"? Can I evaluate this piece, if he is fair? No, I really can't and I am not willing just for the sake of "fitting in" not to read it or post it. So, let me know, what you know and help me out. And if you think I should waste my time to find out what is a lie and what's not, I have to say that There is a limit to my patience and stamina searching for truth on the intertubes. I am at the point where I refuse to get "impressed" by that kind of pressure too.

Putin runs Russia like the Mafia
[video:https://youtu.be/zjCnGli59Lo]

Enough Russian nonsense now.

I can't get the "remote" issue out of my head. All interactions that are important to our livelihood and survival we are forced to handle "over the internet" these days. We buy, sell, converse, research, read, listen, work, discuss, search for work, flirt, and even remotely engaging in sex. We are a living and managing our lives in a "remote" mode. It doesn't feel like "Mens sana in corpore sano" (A healthy mind in a healthy body). I feel people get in larger and larger numbers to a "Mens insania in corpore obesus infirmos" status. (How people like latin is beyond me..)

I have the distinct feelings in my guts that the "remote mode life-style" destroys our minds, humanity, morality, our peaceful survival and is a great danger to us. That's one of the reasons I don't like writing here or posting anything, as I am convinced that the impact on the human mind through digital communication is exponentially more intense and destructive than usually admitted.

I wanted to add more example to point to the "remote-mode life-style issues". But I am tired now. Talked too much along memory lines. So, may be next week. I will see.

Have a good day and may be talk to someone in person and enjoy the good life. It feels good.
[video:https://youtu.be/zJ82mHBtrc8]

P.S. Oh, and as you might have realized, I lived in Berlin in the late sixties to the late seventies, but not in the eighties and nineties and beyond. So, I missed out on the whole "new beginnings" for Berlin. I have found this very nice article as well, which may give you an impression what was so "unique" to Berlin after the fall of The Wall in the nineties.

Revisiting Berlin's wonder years.

Still, after the studied sophistication of London, where I'd lived before, East Berlin was raw and rugged and full of promise. Its appeal had a lot to do with the Japanese concept of "Wabi-sabi," defined by design guru Leonard Koren as "(…) a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete." By the time the Iron Curtain came down, it was a place in a state of advanced decay and its makeover was inevitable.We snuck in just in time to enjoy its dilapidated charms before they disappeared for good. Berlin has turned out fine. But the city I moved to all those years ago no longer exists. It's a lost world.
Now, as Werner Herzog says at the end of his book, "Conquest of the Useless," "All that is to be reported is this: I took part."

Yep, a lost world, that's how my whole home country feels to me these days.