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Operation Argon
Operation Argon (sometimes denoted simply as ''Operation Cabinda'') was an unsuccessful military operation carried out by South African special forces in May 1985 with the objective of destroying six fuel storage tanks at Malongo in Angola's Cabinda exclave. Background On 13 May 1985 a modified South African Navy Daphne submarine carrying a nine-man Recce team, as well as a back-up team, left Saldanha Bay and travelled to a spot some way off the Angolan coast near its border with Zaire. The area contained oil storage installations run by the Angolans and Gulf Oil, and because of this, several large military bases were also placed in the vicinity. The team had to travel by sea, and then by land, distances that were too far to travel in one night. They therefore had to spend a night ashore, and planned a ruse to make it appear that they had infiltrated from the East from Zaire, rather than from the sea. Infiltration The Recces landed on the coast at night on 20 May foll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Border War
The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angola from 26 August 1966 to 21 March 1990. It was fought between the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), an armed wing of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO). The South African Border War resulted in some of the largest battles on the African continent since World War II and was closely intertwined with the Angolan Civil War. Following several years of unsuccessful petitioning through the United Nations and the International Court of Justice for Namibian independence from South Africa, SWAPO formed the PLAN in 1962 with material assistance from the Soviet Union, China, and sympathetic African states such as Tanzania, Ghana, and Algeria. Fighting broke out between PLAN and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aerial Photography
Aerial photography (or airborne imagery) is the taking of photographs from an aircraft or other airborne platforms. When taking motion pictures, it is also known as aerial videography. Platforms for aerial photography include fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or "drones"), balloons, blimps and dirigibles, rockets, pigeons, kites, or using action cameras while skydiving or wingsuiting. Handheld cameras may be manually operated by the photographer, while mounted cameras are usually remotely operated or triggered automatically. Aerial photography typically refers specifically to bird's-eye view images that focus on landscapes and surface objects, and should not be confused with air-to-air photography, where one or more aircraft are used as chase planes that "chase" and photograph other aircraft in flight. Elevated photography can also produce bird's-eye images closely resembling aerial photography (despite not actually being aerial shots) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Yves Ollivier
Jean-Yves Ollivier (born 8 October 1944 in Algiers, Algeria) is a French businessman who works primarily in the commodities sector in emerging markets. In addition to his business ventures, Jean-Yves Ollivier is active as a parallel diplomat, using his personal relationships with heads of states to facilitate mediation and peace processes in Africa. He is the President of the Brazzaville Foundation. Biography Career Jean-Yves Ollivier began his career in the 1960s. He started working for trading companies doing business between Europe and Africa, including Strauss Turnbull & Co, JA Goldschmidt SA, and Grainex. During the first half of the 1970s, following the first world oil shock, he started working in the oil and gas sector. In 1980, he started his own oil trading company, Vitank, in association with Henk Vietor, Peter de Savary and Arhmed Mannai. From 1984 to 1989, he was head of the Coal Trading Corporation (CTC). In 1994, he created Gestilac SA, and in 2002, PanAf Con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solitary Confinement
Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment in which the inmate lives in a single cell with little or no meaningful contact with other people. A prison may enforce stricter measures to control contraband on a solitary prisoner and use additional security equipment in comparison to the general population. Solitary confinement is a punitive tool within the prison system to discipline or separate disruptive prison inmates who are security risks to other inmates, the prison staff, or the prison itself. However, solitary confinement is also used to protect inmates whose safety is threatened by other inmates by separating them from the general population. In a 2017 review, "a robust scientific literature has established the negative psychological effects of solitary confinement", leading to "an emerging consensus among correctional as well as professional, mental health, legal, and human rights organizations to drastically limit the use of solitary confinement." The United Nations ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson (né Burns; born October 8, 1941) is an American political activist, Baptist minister, and politician. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as a shadow U.S. senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He is the founder of the organizations that merged to form Rainbow/PUSH. Former U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. is his eldest son. Jackson hosted '' Both Sides with Jesse Jackson'' on CNN from 1992 to 2000. Early life and education Jackson was born in Greenville, South Carolina, to Helen Burns (1924–2015), a 16-year-old high school student, and her 33-year-old married neighbor, Noah Louis Robinson (1908–1997). His ancestry includes Cherokee, enslaved African-Americans, Irish planters, and a Confederate sheriff. Robinson was a former professional boxer who was an employee of a textile brokerage and a well-known figure in the black community. One year after Jesse's birth, his mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luanda
Luanda () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city in Angola. It is Angola's primary port, and its major Angola#Economy, industrial, Angola#Culture, cultural and Angola#Demographics, urban centre. Located on Angola's northern Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast, Luanda is Angola's administrative centre, its chief seaport, and also the capital of the Luanda Province. Luanda and its metropolitan area is the most populous Portuguese language, Portuguese-speaking capital city in the world and the most populous Lusophone city outside Brazil, with over 8.3 million inhabitants in 2020 (a third of Angola's population). Among the oldest colonial cities of Africa, it was founded in January 1576 as ''São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda'' by Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais. The city served as the centre of the Slavery in Angola, slave trade to Brazil before its prohibition. At the start of the Angolan Civil War in 1975, most of the white Portuguese left as refugees, princ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cabinda (city)
Cabinda, also known as Chioua, is a city and a municipality located in the Cabinda Province, an exclave of Angola. Angolan sovereignty over Cabinda is disputed by the secessionist Republic of Cabinda. The city of Cabinda had a population of 550,000 and the municipality a population of 624,646, at the 2014 Census. The residents of the city are known as ''Cabindas'' or ''Fiotes''. Cabinda, due to its proximity to rich oil reserves, serves as one of Angola's main oil ports. History The city was founded by the Portuguese in 1883 after the signing of the Treaty of Simulambuco, in the same period as the Berlin Conference. Cabinda was an embarkation point for slaves to Brazil. There are considerable offshore oil reserves nearby. Geography Cabinda is located on the Atlantic Ocean coast in the south of Cabinda Province, and sits on the right bank of the Bele River. It is north of Moanda (DR Congo), north of Congo River estuary and south of Pointe-Noire ( Rep. Congo). Districts The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Army
The South African Army is the principal land warfare force of South Africa, a part of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), along with the South African Air Force, South African Navy and South African Military Health Service. The Army is commanded by the Chief of the Army, who is subordinate to the Chief of the SANDF. Formed in 1912, as the Union Defence Force in the Union of South Africa, through the amalgamation of the South African colonial forces following the unification of South Africa. It evolved within the tradition of frontier warfare fought by Boer Commando (militia) forces, reinforced by the Afrikaners' historical distrust of large standing armies. Following the ascension to power of the National Party, the Army's long-standing Commonwealth ties were afterwards cut. The South African Army was fundamentally changed by the end of Apartheid and its preceding upheavals, as the South African Defence Force became the SANDF. This process also led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mercenary
A mercenary, sometimes also known as a soldier of fortune or hired gun, is a private individual, particularly a soldier, that joins a military conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather than for political interests. Beginning in the 20th century, mercenaries have increasingly come to be seen as less entitled to protections by rules of war than non-mercenaries. The Geneva Conventions declare that mercenaries are not recognized as legitimate combatants and do not have to be granted the same legal protections as captured service personnel of the armed forces. In practice, whether or not a person is a mercenary may be a matter of degree, as financial and political interests may overlap. Modern mercenary organizations are generally referred to as private military companies or PMCs. Laws of war Protocol Additional GC 1977 (APGC77) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flanking Maneuver
In military tactics, a flanking maneuver is a movement of an armed force around an enemy force's side, or flank, to achieve an advantageous position over it. Flanking is useful because a force's fighting strength is typically concentrated in its front, therefore, to circumvent an opposing force's front and attack its flank is to concentrate one's own offense in the area where the enemy is least able to concentrate defense. Flanking can also occur at the operational and strategic levels of warfare. Tactical flanking The flanking maneuver is a basic military tactic with several variations. Flanking an enemy entails attacking from one or more sides, at an angle to the enemy's direction of engagement. There are three standard flanking maneuvers. The first maneuver is the ambush, where a unit performs a surprise attack from a concealed position. Units friendly to the ambushing unit may be hidden to the sides of the ambush site to surround the enemy, but care must be taken i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AK-47
The AK-47, officially known as the ''Avtomat Kalashnikova'' (; also known as the Kalashnikov or just AK), is a gas-operated assault rifle that is chambered for the 7.62×39mm cartridge. Developed in the Soviet Union by Russian small-arms designer Mikhail Kalashnikov, it is the originating firearm of the Kalashnikov (or "AK") family of rifles. After more than seven decades since its creation, the AK-47 model and its variants remain one of the most popular and widely used firearms in the world. The number "47" refers to the year the rifle was finished. Design work on the AK-47 began in 1945. It was presented for official military trials in 1947, and, in 1948, the fixed- stock version was introduced into active service for selected units of the Soviet Army. In early 1949, the AK was officially accepted by the Soviet Armed Forces and used by the majority of the member states of the Warsaw Pact. The model and its variants owe their global popularity to their reliability u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RPD (weapon)
The RPD (russian: ручной пулемёт Дегтярёва, Ruchnoy Pulemyot Degtyaryova, English: Degtyaryov hand-held machine gun) is a 7.62x39mm light machine gun developed in the Soviet Union by Vasily Degtyaryov for the 7.62×39mm M43 intermediate cartridge. It was created as a replacement for the DP machine gun chambered for the 7.62×54mmR round. It is a precursor of most squad automatic weapons.Woźniak, Ryszard: ''Encyklopedia najnowszej broni palnej—tom 4 R–Z'', page 32. Bellona, 2002. It was succeeded in Soviet service by the RPK. History Work on the weapon commenced in 1943. Three prominent Soviet engineers were asked to submit their own designs: Vasily Degtyaryov, Sergei Simonov and Alexei Sudayev. Among the completed prototypes prepared for evaluation, the Degtyaryov design proved superior and was accepted into service with the Soviet armed forces as the 7.62 mm Ручной Пулемёт Дегтярёва, PПД (RPD, ''Ruchnoy Pule ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
