#storiesthatmatter — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #storiesthatmatter, aggregated by home.social.
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The Mexican Chronicles – Seven
Then we went through the normal – for some people – shit, with the store-men, to get our kit. Don’t really like rear echelon soldiers, and with good reason. In the SADF we called them jam-stealers; this lot proved no different. What was really surprising was the lack of kit issued. We got: boots: 1 pair, shirts: 2, trousers: 2 pairs, sheets: 1 pair, blanket: 1, mossie net: 1, underpants: 3 pairs, socks: 2 pairs.
That’s not the bad part. What was worrying, was what we didn’t get: mess equipment, water bottle, webbing, groundsheet, spade. Even worse – no assault rifle!
A white boy in an African country at war, in a soldier’s uniform with no weapon? Not good at all, safe camp or not. We spent most of the first day packing kasse (Army steel cupboards) and tents onto vehicles. It was a strange feeling, wearing commie cammos in a strange land with a bunch of generally unfriendly guys. I learned later these ou-manne had only been there a week or two longer than us. Assholes! My pay number was 158 and a few on the payroll were still in Pretoria; this was early days for Executive Outcomes.
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Bimbi’s Letters
BIMBI’S LETTERS
In any military situation the Brass knows that letters from home are important for morale, so Executive Outcomes set up a similar system to what most of us had known in the SADF. Obviously without all the bullshit, like having to do push-ups if your letter smelt of perfume. Every plane that came in had some mail for us. We could get stamps at the canteen and our letters would be posted from “The House” in Pretoria. My mail was mainly from Charmaine; she even sent some drawings based on what I wrote about camp life.
We had been in Angola for a few months when I noticed that Bimbi never received any mail. So I watched to see if he ever sent any out; he did not. I knew he had a wife and kids living in Phalaborwa, although he was Congolese. At this stage the South African news was full of stories, some actually true, of a bunch of South African mercenaries in Angola. A few guys had been killed already and the newspapers were having a field day. Charmaine kept a photo of three bodies; dead and half-naked, that Savimbi had sent to the South African news services as a warning to keep South African soldiers out of his country. I’m sure all the wives and girlfriends were eagerly waiting for mail.
One day I asked Bimbi why he did not write, would his wife not be worrying about him? Now, Bimbi was a really black man, not some shade of brown. If he could have, he would have blushed. The story was, he and his wife had no common written language. Although he could speak five or six languages, he could only write in French. His wife, being from Venda, probably had never even heard French before she met Bimbi.
I offered to write on his behalf, and, after much cajoling, Bimbi arrived in my tent late one night. It was touching to see how embarrassed this hard-assed ex-5 Recce soldier was; so shy about his personal life. He told me to write that he was well and to ask how are the kids. That was it! When I asked if I should write that he missed his wife, he nearly crawled under the bed. I then teased him further. I asked if I should tell her how much he loved her, too. We eventually sent a letter off. His next embarrassment came when Goodness, his wife, replied. The poor bugger couldn’t read English either. So he snuck into my tent late one night again and very shamefacedly asked me if I would mind reading his letter. The cost to him must have been enormous. He was pleased that his family were all well. Bimbi was a truly brave man, in every respect, and I liked him all the more for it.
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The Mexican Chronicles – Six
Caba Ledo
After attending to the basics, the first thing I noticed was the heat. We had flown along a coastline for the past hour or more, so I knew that we were close to the sea. There was not another plane in sight. We had flown in at 32000 ft., which I believe is out of range for SAM 7s, and had dived to ground level at an alarming rate of descent for the same reason. The second thing I noticed was that the bush was not as thick as I would have expected. A white soldier in cammos climbed on the wing to refuel the Kingair, which took off as soon as possible, again for obvious reasons.
The guy that was refuelling the plane?
His name was Michael da Silva, I never met him or spoke to him while in EO, so never knew his name then, you shall meet him later in the original story he was un-named, here we shall read a LOT more about him, apart from the food story, his linking me up with Jack Murphy, and having Eeben Barlow contact me about HIS revised version of his book Against All Odds. I nearly go a mistaking ID mention in it, lucky Eeben does his research! Ja. But that happened 20 years after EO was disbanded, plus a few …. discussions with Sargeant Pelsur, not very pleasant ones! Asshole.
Back to Caba Ledo now
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The Mexican Chronicles – Five
, a civilian courier service that flew us in and out. We handed in our passports and Trevor and I made acquaintance with our first real live Selous Scout, Bruce. He was in his late forties or early fifties and rather outspoken. We eventually climbed aboard a Kingair, along with a bull terrier, which let off the most terrible farts for the next six hours. Apparently he belonged to RMS Reima at the training camp called Longa. That dog did a bit worse than just fart a bit farting while at Rio Longa.
On this first trip no one had any booze, not even I, as we were clueless about the “security” at the airport. Keep in mind that Lanseria at this time was a couple of small buildings, nothing like it looks now. Over the years since then I did notice that the airport was a hotspot for all kinds of illegal shit. Once it was upgraded the illegal shit was transferred to our military , the Air Force bases. When a tagged Rhino Horn left Hoedspruit at a few hundred kilometres an hour I wrote that it is the military and got shot down for that. But. The Gupta Business proved that I was on track. I slept on and off, and by the time we landed didn’t know if I wanted more desperately to piss or smoke. Did both simultaneously.
Big Five Wars is my main mission for now and they also get updated regularly.
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The Mexican Chronicles – Four
………climbing into bed with me every morning after her mother had left for work, just in panties and a T-shirt! I had to go – anywhere! So far nothing too serious had happened, but it was coming. I went. Charmaine took us to the airport; that early in the morning, Lanseria is dead quiet. We looked around and saw a couple of other chaps standing around looking confused. You can’t really waltz up to someone and ask, ‘Where is the flight for the “gonnabe” mercenaries,’ can you? Besides, although we had a good idea that it was to Angola, we weren’t supposed to know where we were going anyway. We all stood around until some reasonably well-dressed guy came and asked us what we were looking for. We met the pilots from Capricorn Systems, a civilian courier service……..
to be continued
Big Five Wars is my main mission for now and they also get updated regularly.
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1枚のチャートが物語る、エヌビディアのAI独占状態が緩やかに衰退している理由 – Benzinga Japan https://www.yayafa.com/2830798/ #AgenticAi #AI #ArtificialGeneralIntelligence #ArtificialIntelligence #NVIDIA #semiconductor #semiconductors #StoriesThatMatter #エージェント型AI #人工知能 #汎用人工知能
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The Correspondent is a poignant film about an Australian journalist imprisoned in Egypt, highlighting press freedom. READ MY FULL REVIEW.
https://ontherunmovies.com/the-correspondent-2024/
#TheCorrespondentFilm #JournalismMatters #TrueStory #PressFreedom #HumanRights #CourageInJournalism #KrivStenders #PeterGreste #AustralianCinema #ResilienceInFilm #DocumentaryDrama #CinematicTruth #SilentStrength #FilmReview #PoliticalThriller #BehindTheHeadlines #StoriesThatMatter #ArtOfStorytelling #CinematicExperience #SocialJusticeFilm
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20 #BannedBooks they don’t want you to #read
#BookBans aren’t just a thing of the past—they’re happening right now, and they’re #targeting #storiesthatmatter.
https://www.intomore.com/entertainment/books/20-banned-books-they-dont-want-you-to-read/
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Diversity Behind the Scenes of Film and Television | Journey to Diversity Workplaces https://cutt.ly/owHpo9gD #J2DW #DiversityInMedia #MediaForAll: #PayEquity #StoriesThatMatter #PayEquityInMedia #ChangeTheNarrative #cdnpoli @cdnpoli
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If you work in interactive journalism, documentary, games, social video or VR -- the Peabody Awards are now open to you for #StoriesThatMatter using these media. We gave our first awards in these categories last year. I'm on the interactive board of jurors, so feel free to reach out with questions. Get more details here: http://bit.ly/3KwIu3E
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Walking the Path of Progress, Stay Mindful of the Stories You Tell Yourself, for They Shape the Destination. #MindfulNarratives #SelfStoryInfluence #ShapeYourJourney #DestinationDesign #ProgressAwareness #StoriesThatMatter #CreateYourPath #JourneyToSuccess #MindfulDestination
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Freue mich total auf das Event von und mit Holger Gelhausen:
#StoriesThatMatter: Jeder kann KI-Storytelling (Texte, Bilder, Videos) - Pure Online - 2. Jun. | Hopin
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Hi @bookstodon peeps. As the New Year began, I was reading this tiny beauty, by the magical storyteller Martin Shaw. It’s only 32 pages, but is a story full of wonder and beauty, containing wild women, the deep secrets of earth, whale-men (& Wales), and more than I can express here. If you haven’t yet discovered https://hedgespokenpress.com/ do seek out their pocket-size offerings.
#bookstodon #books #bookrecs #amreading #witchesofmastodon #magical #StoriesThatMatter #reading #NewYear