I have always had a huge interest in the SSW and, like many of us, that stemmed from learning about family experiences. What follows is a thread on my great uncle’s service. Sadly he passed away when I was young but thankfully he wrote down some of his wartime experiences.

Lt Keith Best served in 2 Troop of 591 squadron attached to 9th Parachute Battalion. 2 Troop formed part of the force that was to be dropped on the heavy gun battery at Merville. Unfortunately, things did not go to plan…
“When we got across the Channel there was a lot of flak and our pilot seemed to be taking evasive action…We began to get thrown about inside and then the red and a green lights came on in what seemed to be unusually quick succession and we were bundled out of the door…
As I found out later, instead of finding the drop zone near Varaville, the RAF put us down well east of the River Dives and ten or fifteen miles off target on higher ground near the village of St Pierre-Azzif. There was nothing I could do about getting to Merville on time.
A map showing the considerable distance between Saint-Pierre Azif (top right) and Merville.
“At dawn I found myself in a farmyard watching a very old lady milking a cow. She looked me up and down, gave me a directional jerk of her head and carried on milking. Soon after I was joined by a local man who led me to the church of St Pierre-Azif and down into the crypt
where I found a collection of odds and sods from 9 Para and some of my sappers. There were some wounded and injured who were left concealed at the church. There were some who elected to get out of uniform and try their luck getting back in disguise (they were successful)
and the rest of us set off westwards. We travelled by night and lay up during daylight.”

A photo of me in 2018 outside the church.
“I cannot give you a blow by blow account of everything that happened during that time but there are some things that have stuck in my mind…We tended to be looking for ways to justify our roles as invaders and liberators. I soon pooped off my stock of explosives on anything
hat seemed handy and we did our best to spread alarm and despondency among the enemy. Above all, I remember the unlimited hospitality and help we enjoyed from the Normans who put themselves at great risk by feeding and concealing us in daylight. There was one occasion where
I was buried in a hayloft, searched by German soldiers poking their rifles around in the hay. There was another occasion which left me with a funny feeling for some years and which although diminished, continues today. In our journey westwards we had to cross a main road
and there was single German sentry. I used my knife on him.

We slowly made progress westwards, past Glanville, Branville, Douville, heading towards the River Dives which we planned to cross opposite Varaville. One day, we laid up in a ditch on a farm west of Dozule
planning to cross the river that night. At dusk, there was a commotion in from of us and we saw the farmer, his wife and children walking towards us. Behind them followed a line of German troops. Behind us advanced another line who started shooting.
Keith spent the remainder of the war as a POW at Oflag 12B. He wrote extensively about his time there so I will do another thread soon. Hope you enjoyed.

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global health policy in 2020 has centered around NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) like distancing, masks, school closures

these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.

this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.

let's look.


above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.

we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.

this is devastating to the case for NPI.


clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.

barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.

this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.

there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.

this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.

everyone got the same R

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The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.