title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 1985, Mr. Potato Head received four postal votes in the run for mayor of Boise, Idaho in the "most votes for Mr. Potato Head in a political campaign" as verified by Guinness World Records.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 1987, Mr. Potato Head became "Spokespud" for the annual Great American Smokeout and surrendered his pipe to Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in Washington, D.C.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 1995, Mr. Potato head was featured in a leading role in the Disney/Pixar animated feature "Toy Story", with the voice provided by comedian Don Rickles. Potato Head returned in Toy Story's three sequels - "Toy Story 2" (1999), "Toy Story 3" (2010) and "Toy Story 4" (2019) - with Rickles reprising the role.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 1995, Mr. Potato Head Pals was made. This box has hats, mouths, and pairs of shoes in different colors. It also has four bodies and eight hands while the eyes and nose are the same and four cards and every card has each name and a spinner is also included.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 2000, Mr. Potato Head was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame at The Strong in Rochester, New York.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 2006, Hasbro also began to sell sets of pieces without bodies for customers to add to their collections. Some of these themed sets included Chef, Construction Worker, Firefighter, Halloween, King, Mermaid, Police Officer, Pirate, Princess, Rockstar, and Santa Claus. In the same year, Hasbro introduced a line called "Sports Spuds" with a generic plastic potato (smaller than the standard size) customized to a wide variety of professional and collegiate teams.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 2020, Hasbro announced a sustainable version of the toy known as "Mr. Potato Head Goes Green". This version was made from plant-based plastic derived from sugarcane.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In February 2021 Hasbro announced a new gender-neutral version of the toy line, dropping the formal gender titles, unveiling a new "Potato Head" logo, and offering an expanded playset. While continuing to offer the classic Mr. and Mrs. characters, Hasbro was praised by some for being progressive, while others called it a "PR stunt".


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In recent years, Hasbro had produced Mr. Potato Head sets based on media properties that Hasbro produces toys for under license. These include the "Star Wars"-themed "Darth Tater", "Spud Trooper", and "R2-POTATOO", a 2007 "Transformers" film-themed "Optimash Prime" (the appearance is based on Optimus Prime from the original television series), a pair of Spider-Man-themed "Spider-Spud / Peter Tater" (both red suit and black suit, to tie in with "Spider-Man 3"), an "Indiana Jones"-themed "Taters of the Lost Ark" set (which, despite the title, was released as a tie-in to 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"), an "Iron Man 2"-themed "Tony Starch", and a "Trick or Tater" version for Halloween in October 2008. An additional five "Star Wars"-themed potato heads were sold exclusively through Disney theme parks: "Luke Frywalker", "Yam Solo", "Spuda Fett", "Princess Tater", and "Darth Mash".


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 2009, "Bumble Spud" was produced based on "". A Kiss version of Mr. Potato Head was produced recently. Disney, in cooperation with Hasbro, also released "Chipbacca", "Mashter Yoda", and "C-3PotatO" in October 2009 at Disney Parks. To celebrate "Toy Story 3", five new Mr. Potato Heads were unveiled including Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Jessie, Mrs. Potato Head, and the classic Mr. Potato Head. To promote "The Looney Tunes Show", Hasbro unveiled Bugs Bunny-, Daffy Duck-, and Tasmanian Devil-themed Mr. Potato Head dolls.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 2011, it was announced at the New York Toy Fair that a second Elvis Mr. Potato Head (based on his 1968 TV special) would be released, as well as sets for "The Wizard of Oz" (Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Lion), the Three Stooges, and "Star Trek" (Kirk and Kor). These were all released through PPW toys. From Hasbro.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Since 2011, new models of the Mr. Potato Head toys, commonly referred to as Jason, have been produced. The Mrs. Potato Head version of the toy was also brought out in early 2012, commonly known as Rachel, and has a baked bean-like head. In 2012, Hasbro and PPW Toys released Mr. Potato Head in Batman form for the movie "The Dark Knight Rises". The model, known as "The Dark Spud", features Mr. Potato Head dressed up as the Caped Crusader. Before the release, the model was unveiled at the 2012 New York Toy Fair. In 2014, to celebrate "The Simpsons" 25th anniversary, a Homer Simpson Mr. Potato Head was produced.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 2019, "Toy Story 4"-themed Mr. and Mrs. Potato Heads were released. These versions feature the "Jason" model of the spuds with a mix of various parts, including the classic versions of the arms and shoes, (near) film-accurate facial features and the newer designs of the parts.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: On April Fools Day 2019, Hasbro jokingly announced that Mr. Potato Head would be replaced by "Mr. Avo Head", a hipster avocado.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Mr. Potato Head's popularity has led to some appearances in films and television. In 1985, Mr. Potato Head played a supporting role in "Potato Head Kids", his first dramatic television appearance. From 1998 to 1999, he had his own short-lived Fox Kids series "The Mr. Potato Head Show". In addition to film and television, the character has been the subject of a comic strip created by Jim Davis. Cartoonist Gary Larson included the character in several of his "The Far Side" cartoons. In commercial for Bridgestone tires during Super Bowl XLIII in 2009, Mr. Potato Head is driving a car and Mrs. Potato Head is nagging him.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Mr. Potato Head has also acted as spokesman for several causes. In 1987, Mr. Potato Head surrendered his pipe to become the spokesperson for the American Cancer Society's annual "Great American Smokeout" campaign. He performed the role for several years. In 1992, he received a special award from the President's Council for Physical Fitness. In 1996, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head joined the League of Women Voters and their "Get Out to Vote" campaign.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Larger-than-life versions of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head are "guests" in the 1980s section of Pop Century Resort at Walt Disney World in Florida.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 1990, the sketch comedy show "In Living Color" parodied the toy and entertainer Michael Jackson and his penchant for plastic surgery, offering children a multitude of different noses to represent different stages in Jackson's career. Jackson's vitiligo was also mocked when one child said the toy did not look quite right and then peels it, revealing white skin underneath.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Starting in the 2000s, Mr. and Mrs Potato Head also starred in commercials for other brands. An example is an ad for Lay's Potato Chips where Mr. Potato Head comes home to see Mrs. Potato Head eating them despite being a potato herself. At the end Mr. Potato Head joins in and tells her to keep it their "little secret".


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Mr. Potato head also appeared in "The Simpsons" episodes "In the Name of the Grandfather" and "The Spy Who Learned Me". A spoof of Mr. Potato Head named Mr. Carrot Head appeared in "The Simpsons" episode "" in 2011.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: A spoof named Mr. Zucchini Head appeared as a proposed new toy in the "Family Guy" episode "The King Is Dead" in 2000. In the "Family Guy" episode "He's Too Sexy for His Fat", when Dr. Bruce Kaplan unwraps Peter Griffin's bandaged face, he is revealed to have a Mr. Potato Head mask. In the "Brian Sings and Swings" episode, Stewie Griffin uses a Mr. Potato Head ear to change his bleeding ear. In the "April in Quahog" episode, the jury says that there is a blood-splattered Mr. Potato Head. In the "Fighting Irish" episode, Peter dresses up as Mrs. Potato Head.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Mr. Potato Head is also a character in the Disney/Pixar "Toy Story" franchise, voiced by Don Rickles. He was one of Andy's toys before being given to Bonnie.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In "Toy Story" (1995), Mr. Potato Head is shown to be moody towards Andy's other toys, though he is friends with Hamm the piggy bank (John Ratzenberger). When Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks) accidentally pushes Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) out of a window, Potato Head accuses Woody of doing it on purpose. At the end of the film, he is overjoyed to hear Andy's sister Molly getting a Mrs. Potato Head on Christmas.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In "Toy Story 2" (1999), Mr. Potato Head goes with Andy's other toys to rescue Woody, who has been stolen by Al McWhiggin (Wayne Knight). After Mr. Potato Head saves three Alien toys (Jeff Pidgeon) from falling out of a Pizza Planet truck, only for them to continually pester him, his wife Mrs. Potato Head (Estelle Harris) decides to adopt them, much to her husband's dismay.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In "Toy Story 3" (2010), Mr. Potato Head is one of Andy's remaining toys, alongside his wife, the Aliens, and others. The toys are donated to a daycare center and are later almost killed in a landfill incinerator. When the Aliens rescue the toys with a giant crane, Mr. Potato Head finally accepts them as his sons. Eventually, Mr. Potato Head and his friends are donated to a new owner named Bonnie (Emily Hahn).


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Mr. Potato Head has appeared in all three "Toy Story Toons" shorts: "Hawaiian Vacation" (2011), "Small Fry" (2011), and "Partysaurus Rex" (2012), with Rickles reprising the role in the first and third shorts.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: He also appeared in the Halloween special "Toy Story of Terror!" (2013), where he disappears and Bonnie's other toys must find him.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Mr. Potato Head appeared in "Toy Story 4" (2019). However, Rickles died in 2017 due to kidney failure, and did not record any lines for him for the film. With permission from Rickles's family, Pixar used unreleased lines that Rickles recorded in previous "Toy Story" films for his final performance as the character. Mr. Potato Head only had 7 lines in "Toy Story 4", which was dedicated to Rickles's memory. Mr. Potato Head first appears in the prologue of the movie. Later during the main events of the film, he and his wife join Bonnie and her parents on their RV road trip. At the end of the film, they say goodbye to Woody who chooses to stay with Bo Peep (Annie Potts).


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In "Buzz Lightyear: Mission Logs" in the episode "The Science of Adventure" Mr. Potato Head has a clock on his nose.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: In 1995, a computer game called "Mr. Potato Head Saves Veggie Valley" was released by Hasbro Interactive, aimed at young children.


title: Mr. Potato Head

text: Mr. Potato Head has also appeared as the host in all installments of the popular video game series "Hasbro Family Game Night". He also appeared in several "Toy Story"-based video games along with "Toy Story" Activity Center.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Mohammed Daoud Khan (), also romanized as Daud Khan or Dawood Khan (18 July 1909 – 28 April 1978), was an Afghan politician and general who served as prime minister of Afghanistan from 1953 to 1963 and, as leader of the 1973 Afghan coup d'état which overthrew the monarchy, served as the first president of Afghanistan from 1973 to 1978, establishing an autocratic one-party system.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Born into the Afghan royal family and addressed by the prefix "Sardar", Khan started as a provincial governor and later a military commander before being appointed as Prime Minister by his cousin, King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Having failed to persuade the King to implement a one-party system, Khan overthrew the monarchy with the backing of Afghan Army officers, and proclaimed himself the first President of the Republic of Afghanistan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Khan was known for his autocratic rule, and for his educational and progressive social reforms. Under his regime, he headed a purge of communists in the government, and many of his policies also displeased religious conservatives and liberals who were in favor of restoring the multiparty system that existed under the monarchy. Social and economic reforms implemented under his ruling were successful, but his foreign policy led to tense relations with neighbouring countries. In 1978, he was deposed and assassinated during the 1978 Afghan coup d'état, led by the Afghan military and the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). His body was discovered 30 years later and was identified by a small golden Quran he always carried. He received a state funeral.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Khan was born in Kabul, Emirate of Afghanistan, the eldest son of the diplomat Prince Mohammed Aziz Khan (1877–1933; an older half-brother of King Mohammed Nadir Shah) and his wife, Khurshid Begum. He lost his father to an assassination in Berlin in 1933, while his father was serving as the Afghan Ambassador to Germany. He and his brother Prince Naim Khan (1911–1978) then came under the tutelage of their uncle Mohammad Hashim Khan (1884–1953). Daoud proved to be an apt student of politics.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Educated in France, he served as a senior administrator in the Kingdom of Afghanistan, serving as Governor of the Eastern Province in 1934-35 and in 1938–39, and was Governor of Kandahar Province from 1935 to 1938. His father died when Daoud was 24.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In 1939, Khan was promoted to Commander of the Central Forces. As commander, he led Afghan forces against the Safi during the Afghan tribal revolts of 1944–1947. From 1946 to 1948, he served as Defense Minister, then Interior Minister from 1949 to 1951. In 1948, he served as Afghan Ambassador to France.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In 1951, he was promoted to General and served in that capacity as Commander of the Central Corps of the Afghan Armed Forces in Kabul from 1951 to 1953.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Khan was appointed prime minister in September 1953 through an intra-family transfer of power, replacing Shah Mahmud Khan. His ten-year tenure was noted for his foreign policy turn to the Soviet Union, the completion of the Helmand Valley project, which dramatically improved living conditions in southwestern Afghanistan, as well as tentative steps towards the emancipation of women, giving women a higher public presence, which led to significant amounts of freedom and educational opportunities for them.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: With the creation of an independent Pakistan in August 1947, Prime Minister Daoud Khan had rejected the Durand Line, which had been accepted as international border by successive Afghan governments for over a half a century. Khan supported a nationalistic reunification of the Pakistani Pashtun people with Afghanistan, but this would have involved taking a considerable amount of territory from the new nation of Pakistan and was in direct opposition to an older plan of the 1940s whereby a confederation between the two countries was proposed. The move further worried the non-Pashtun populations of Afghanistan such as the minority Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek, who suspected his intention was to increase the Pashtuns' disproportionate hold on political power.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Abdul Ghaffar Khan (founder of Khudai Khidmatgar movement), stated "that Daoud Khan only exploited the idea of reunification of Pashtun people to meet his own political ends. The idea of reunification of Pashtun people never helped Pashtuns and it only caused trouble for Pakistan. In fact it was never a reality". Moreover, Daoud Khan's project for the reunification of the Pashtun people failed to gain any support from Pashtuns in Pakistan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In 1960, Khan sent troops across the poorly-marked Durand Line into the Bajaur Agency of Pakistan in an attempt to manipulate events in that area and to press the Pashtunistan issue, but the Afghan forces were defeated by the Pakistani Tribals. During this period, the propaganda war from Afghanistan, carried on by radio, was relentless. In 1961, Daoud Khan made another attempt to invade Bajaur with larger Afghan army this time. However, Pakistan employed F-86 Sabres jets which inflicted heavy casualties against the Afghan army unit and the tribesmen from Kunar province who were supporting the Afghan army. Several Afghan soldiers were also captured and were paraded in front of international media, which in turn caused embarrassment for Daoud Khan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In 1961, as a result of his policies and support to militias in areas along the Durand Line, Pakistan closed its borders with Afghanistan and the latter severed ties, causing an economic crisis and greater dependence on the USSR. The USSR became Afghanistan's principal trading partner. Within a few months, the USSR sent jet airplanes, tanks, heavy and light artillery, for a heavily discounted price tag of $25 million, to Afghanistan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: As a result of continued resentment against Daoud's autocratic rule, close ties with the USSR and economic downturn because of the blockade imposed by Pakistan, Daoud Khan was asked to resign. Instead of resigning, Daoud Khan requested King Zahir Shah to approve new 'one-party constitution' proposed by him which would in turn increase Daoud Khan’s already considerable power. Upon rejection, Daoud Khan angrily resigned.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: The crisis was finally resolved with his forced resignation in March 1963 and the re-opening of the border in May. Pakistan continued to remain suspicious of Afghan intentions and Daoud's policy left a negative impression in the eyes of many Tajiks who felt they were being disenfranchised for the sake of Pashtun nationalism. He was succeeded by Mohammad Yusuf.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In 1964, King Zahir Shah introduced a new constitution, for the first time excluding all members of the Royal Family from the Council of Ministers. Khan had already stepped down. In addition to having been Prime Minister, he had also held the portfolios of Minister of Defense and Minister of Planning until 1963.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Khan was unsatisfied with King Zahir Shah's constitutional parliamentary system and lack of progress. He planned rebellion for more than a year before he, on 17 July 1973, seized power from the King in a bloodless coup, backed by a large number of army officers who were loyal to him, facing no resistance. Departing from tradition, and for the first time in Afghan history, he did not proclaim himself "Shah", establishing instead a republic with himself as President. The role of pro-communist Parchamite officers in the coup led to him receiving the nickname ""Red Prince"" by some.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: King Zahir Shah's constitution establishing a parliament with elected members and the separation of powers was replaced by a now largely nominated loya jirga (meaning "grand assembly"). The parliament was disbanded.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Although he was close to the Soviet Union during his prime ministership, Khan continued the Afghan policy of non-alignment with the Cold War superpowers. Nor did he bring drastic pro-Soviet change to the economic system.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In Khan's new cabinet, many ministers were fresh faced politicians, and only Dr Abdul Majid was a ministerial carryover from Khan's Prime Minister era (1953-1963); Majid was Minister of Education from 1953 to 1957, and from 1973 was appointed Minister of Justice until 1977. Initially about half of the new cabinet were either current members, former members or sympathizers of the PDPA, but over time their influence would be eradicated by Khan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: A coup against Khan, which may have been planned before he took power, was repressed shortly after his seizure of power. In October 1973, Mohammad Hashim Maiwandwal, a former Prime Minister and a highly respected former diplomat, was arrested in a coup plot and died in prison before his trial set for December 1973. This was at a time when Parchamites controlled the Ministry of Interior under circumstances corroborating the widespread belief that he had been tortured to death by the leftists. According to one account, Daoud Khan planned to appoint Maiwandwal as prime minister, leading to the Parchamite Minister of Interior, Faiz Mohammad, along with fellow communists, framing Maiwandwal in a coup plot, then torturing him to death without Daoud Khan's knowledge. Louis Dupree wrote that Maiwandwal, one of few Afghan politicians with an international reputation, could have been a leader in a democratic process and therefore a target for communists. One of the army generals arrested under suspicion of this plot with Maiwandwal was Mohammed Asif Safi, who was later released. Khan personally apologized to him for the arrest.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In 1974 he signed one of two economic packages that aimed to greatly increase the capability of the Afghan military. At this time, there were increasing concerns that Afghanistan lacked a modern army comparable to the militaries of Iran and Pakistan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In 1975, his government nationalized all banks in Afghanistan, including Da Afghanistan Bank, Afghanistan's central bank.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Khan wanted to lessen the country's dependence on the Soviet Union and attempted to promote a new foreign policy. In 1975 he visited some countries in the Middle East, including Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, all of which were anti-Soviet states, to ask for aid, He also visited India. Regarding the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Havana, Khan said that Cuba "only pretends to be non-aligned." Surprisingly, he did not renew the Pashtunistan agitation; relations with Pakistan improved thanks to interventions from the US and the Shah of Iran. These moves alerted the Soviets.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In 1977, he established his own political party, the National Revolutionary Party, which became the focus of all political activity. In January 1977, a loya jirga approved a new constitution. It wrote in several new articles and amended others - one of these was the creation of a presidential one-party system of government.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: He also began to moderate his socialist policies, although the 1977 constitution had a nationalist bend in addition to previous socialism and Islam. In 1978, there was a rift with the PDPA. Internally he attempted to distance himself from the communist elements within the coup. He was concerned about the tenor of many communists in his government and Afghanistan's growing dependency on the Soviet Union. These moves were highly criticized by Moscow, which feared that Afghanistan would soon become closer to the West, especially the United States; the Soviets had always feared that the United States could find a way to influence the government in Kabul.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: During his latter years in charge, his purge of communists in his government strained his relations with them, while his desire for one person rule created conflicts with the liberals who had been in charge during the monarchy. At the same time, his persecution of religious conservatives engendered enmity with them and their followers as well.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: As during his time as Prime Minister, Daoud Khan again pressed on the question of Pashtunistan, again leading to sometimes tense relations with Pakistan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Daoud hosted General Secretary of the National Awami Party Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Ajmal Khattak, Juma Khan Sufi, Baluch guerrillas, and others. Khan's government and forces also commenced training of anti-Pakistani groups to conduct militant action and sabotage in Pakistan. The campaign was significant enough that even one of Bhutto's senior colleagues, minister of interior and head of the provincial branch of Bhutto's party of/in the then-North-West Frontier Province (renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2010), Hayat Sherpao, was killed, ostensibly on the orders of the later-acquitted Awami Party. As a result, Afghanistan's already strained relationship with Pakistan further dipped and Pakistan likewise started similar kinds of cross-border interference. By 1975, Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, through its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had begun to engage in promoting a proxy war in Afghanistan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Since coming to power, under pressure from the PDPA and to increase domestic Pashtun support, Khan took a stronger line on the Pashtunistan issue and promoted a proxy war in Pakistan. Trade and transit agreements with Pakistan were subsequently severely affected.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: The year 1975 was a watershed in Afghan-Pakistan relations. Pakistan blamed Afghanistan for unrest in Bajaur agency and the bombing of a PIA B707 at Islamabad airport in 1975. The 130 passengers of PIA B707 had deplaned before the explosion took place and thus no one was harmed in the explosion inside the aircraft.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: At the same time, Afghanistan also faced several short lived uprisings in retaliation in eastern Afghanistan and in Panjshir valley, which Afghanistan blamed on Pakistan. There was also deployment of additional troops by both the countries along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: The same year Kabul was also quietly negotiating with Islamabad to defuse the tensions between the two countries. In early 1976, relations between the two countries improved and the leaders of the two countries, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Douad Khan, exchanged visits. Daoud Khan was also worried about the growing power of communists within his government so he started improving his relations with Pakistan and Iran. The same year Pakistan also provided aid to Afghanistan to help alleviate the suffering caused by earthquake and floods in northern Afghanistan. This gesture by Pakistan had helped mollify Afghan public opinion about Pakistan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: By October 1976, the head of Pakistan intelligence agency, Jilani was informing a US diplomat that Afghanistan was no longer creating troubles for Pakistan. By August 1976 relations with Pakistan had improved to a high degree. Later on, while promoting his new foreign policy doctrine, Daoud Khan came to a tentative agreement on a solution to the Pashtunistan problem with Ali Bhutto.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Khan met Leonid Brezhnev on a state visit to Moscow from 12 to 15 April 1977. He had asked for a private meeting with the Soviet leader to discuss with him the increased pattern of Soviet actions in Afghanistan. In particular, he discussed the intensified Soviet attempt to unite the two factions of the Afghan communist parties, Parcham and Khalq. Brezhnev described Afghanistan's non-alignment as important to the USSR and essential to the promotion of peace in Asia, and warned him about the presence of experts from NATO countries stationed in the northern parts of Afghanistan. Daoud bluntly replied that Afghanistan would remain free, and that the Soviet Union would never be allowed to dictate how the country should be governed.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: After returning to Afghanistan, he made plans that his government would downscale its relationship with the Soviet Union, and instead forge closer contacts with the West as well as the oil-rich Saudi Arabia and Iran. Afghanistan signed a co-operative military treaty with Egypt and by 1977 the Afghan military and police force were being trained by Egyptian Armed forces. This angered the Soviet Union because Egypt took the same route in 1974 in distancing itself from the Soviet Union.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: After the murder of Mir Akbar Khyber, the prominent Parchami ideologue, his funeral on 19 April 1978 served as a rallying point for the Afghan communists. An estimated 1,000 to 3,000 people gathered to hear speeches by PDPA leaders such as Nur Muhammad Taraki, Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Shocked by this demonstration of communist unity, Khan ordered the arrest of the PDPA leaders, but he acted too slowly. It took him a week to arrest Taraki, Karmal managed to escape to the USSR, and Amin was merely placed under house arrest. Khan had misjudged the situation and believed that Karmal's Parcham faction was the main communist threat. In fact, according to PDPA documents, Amin's Khalq faction had extensively infiltrated the military and they outnumbered Parcham cells by a factor of 2 to 3. Amin sent complete orders for the coup from his home while it was under armed guard, using his family as messengers.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: The army had been put on alert on 26 April because of a presumed coup. On 27 April 1978, a coup d'état, beginning with troop movements at the military base at Kabul International Airport, gained ground slowly over the next twenty-four hours as rebels battled units loyal to Daoud Khan in and around the capital.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Khan and most of his family were assassinated during the coup by members of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The coup climaxed in the Arg, the former chief Royal palace, on 28 April 1978, involving heavy fighting and many deaths. Shortly afterwards, the new military leaders announced that Khan was killed for refusing to pledge allegiance to the new regime.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: On 28 June 2008, his body and those of his family were found in two separate mass graves outside the walls of Pul-e-Charkhi prison, District 12 of Kabul city. Initial reports indicate that sixteen corpses were in one grave and twelve others were in the second. On 4 December 2008, the Afghan Health Ministry announced that the body had been identified on the basis of teeth molds and a small golden Quran, a present he had received from the King of Saudi Arabia, found near the body.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: On 17 March 2009, General Daoud was given a state funeral. His only surviving child, Dorkhanai, attended the funeral.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: News sources in the 1970s claimed that General Daoud Khan said he was happiest when he could "light his American cigarettes with Soviet matches."


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Mohammad Daoud Khan was retrospectively described as an "old-fashioned statesman, compassionate yet reserved and authoritarian" by "The Guardian"'s Nushin Arbabzadeh. Then-President Hamid Karzai hailed Khan's courage and patriotism in comments after his 2009 state funeral, saying he was "always thinking of the advancement and prosperity of the country." Some Afghans fondly consider him to be the best leader their country has had in modern times.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: During his time as prime minister and president, Khan was highly unpopular among the non-Pashtun minorities in Afghanistan because of his alleged Pashtun favouritism. During his regime, all significant positions in the government, army and educational institutions were held by Pashtuns. His attempt at the Pashtunisation of Afghanistan reached such an extent that the word 'Afghan' started being used to refer only to Pashtuns and not to the other minority groups who collectively formed a majority in Afghanistan.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Afghan armed forces were allied with Daoud Khan and supported his goal of promoting Pashtuns to higher posts in the Afghan armed forces. In 1963, Afghan Uzbeks were barred from becoming high-ranking officers in the Afghan armed forces. Similarly only a few Tajiks were allowed to hold the position of officer in the Afghan army, while other ethnicities were excluded from those positions.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: Daoud Khan viewed the Afghan armed forces as a crucial vector in the Pashtunisation of Afghan state. The Panjshir uprising in 1975 is also believed to be result of anti-Pashtun frustration which had been building up in Panjshir valley as result of Daoud Khan's policies.


title: Mohammed Daoud Khan

text: In September 1934, Daoud Khan married his cousin, the Princess Zamina Begum (11 January 1917 – 28 April 1978), sister of King Zahir (15 October 1914 – 23 July 2007). The couple had four sons and four daughters:


title: Robin Olds

text: Robin Olds (July 14, 1922 – June 14, 2007) was an American fighter pilot and general officer in the United States Air Force (USAF). He was a "triple ace", with a combined total of 17 victories in World War II and the Vietnam War. He retired in 1973 as a brigadier general, after 30 years of service.


title: Robin Olds

text: The son of U.S. Army Air Forces Major General Robert Olds, educated at West Point, and the product of an upbringing in the early years of the U.S. Army Air Corps, Olds epitomized the youthful World War II fighter pilot. He remained in the service as it became the United States Air Force, despite often being at odds with its leadership, and was one of its pioneer jet pilots. Rising to the command of two fighter wings, Olds is regarded among aviation historians, and his peers, as the best wing commander of the Vietnam War, for both his air-fighting skills, and his reputation as a combat leader.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds was promoted to brigadier general after returning from Vietnam but did not hold another major command. The remainder of his career was spent in non-operational positions, as Commandant of Cadets at the United States Air Force Academy and as an official in the Air Force Inspector General's Office. His inability to rise higher as a general officer is attributed to both his maverick views and his penchant for drinking.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds had a highly publicized career and life, including marriage to Hollywood actress Ella Raines. As a young man he was also recognized for his athletic prowess in both high school and college, being named an All-American as a lineman in college football.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds was born Robert Olds Jr. in Honolulu, Hawaii, on July 14, 1922, into an army family and spent much of his boyhood in Hampton, Virginia, where he attended elementary and high school. His father was Captain (later Major General) Robert Oldys (later Olds; 1896–1943), an instructor pilot in France during World War I, former aide to Brigadier General Billy Mitchell from 1922 to 1925, and a leading advocate of strategic bombing in the Air Corps. His mother, Eloise Karine Oldys (; 1896–1926), died when Robin was four and he was raised by his father. He had one younger brother, Stevan Meigs (1924–1988), two younger paternal half-brothers, Sterling Meigs "Dusty" (1935–1995) and Frederick A. (1936), born from his father's third marriage to Helen Post Sterling and an older maternal half-brother, Carter Nott (1919–1998), born from his mother's first marriage to Frederick Dickson Nott.


title: Robin Olds

text: Growing up primarily at Langley Field, Virginia, Olds virtually made daily contact with the small group of officers who would lead the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II (one neighbor was Major Carl Spaatz, destined to become the first Chief of Staff of the USAF), and as a result was imbued with an unusually strong dedication to the air service, and conversely, with a low tolerance for officers who did not exhibit the same. On November 10, 1925, his father appeared as a witness on behalf of Billy Mitchell during Mitchell's court-martial in Washington, D.C. He brought three-year-old Robin with him to court, dressed in an Air Service uniform, and posed with him for newspaper photographers before testifying.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds first flew at the age of eight, in an open cockpit biplane operated by his father. At the age of 12, Olds made attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point an objective to accomplish his goals of becoming an officer and a military aviator, as well as playing football.


title: Robin Olds

text: His father was made commander of the pioneer Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress equipped 2nd Bombardment Group at Langley Field on March 1, 1937, and promoted to lieutenant colonel on March 7. Olds attended Hampton High School where he was elected president of his class three successive years, and played varsity high school football on a team that won the state championship of Virginia in 1937. Olds was aggressive, even mean, as a player, and received offers to attend Virginia Military Institute and Dartmouth College on football scholarships.


title: Robin Olds

text: Instead of entering college after graduating in 1939, Olds enrolled at Millard Preparatory School for West Point in Washington, D.C., a school established to prepare men for the entrance examinations to the military academies. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Olds attempted to join the Royal Canadian Air Force but was thwarted by his father's refusal to approve his enlistment papers. Olds completed Millard Prep and applied for admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point. After he received a conditional commitment for nomination from Pennsylvania Congressman J. Buell Snyder, Olds moved to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, where he lived in the YMCA and supported himself working odd jobs. He passed the West Point entrance examination and was accepted into the Class of 1944 on June 1, 1940. He entered the academy a month later but after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Olds was sent to the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for flight training. This training ended a year later by Christmas 1942. Olds returned to West Point, hoping to graduate early and see action in the war.


title: Robin Olds

text: As a plebe, Olds played football on a freshman squad that began the season with three losses but finished 3–4–1 while the varsity won only one game in its second consecutive losing season. As a result, the new academy superintendent, Maj. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger, replaced the head coach (an Army officer) with Colonel Earl "Red" Blaik, a 1920 graduate and head coach at Dartmouth, who had recruited Olds in 1939.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds played on the varsity college football team in both 1941 and 1942. At 6 feet 2 inches in height (1.88m) and weighing 205 pounds (92 kg), he played tackle on both offense and defense, lettering both seasons. Army's record in 1941 was 5–3–1, with wins over The Citadel, VMI, Yale, Columbia, and West Virginia, a scoreless tie with Notre Dame, and losses to Harvard, Penn and Navy. The loss to the midshipmen was followed eight days later by the attack on Pearl Harbor.


title: Robin Olds

text: In 1942 he was named by "Collier's Weekly" as its "Lineman of the Year" and by Grantland Rice as "Player of the Year." Olds was also selected as an All-American as the cadets compiled a 6–3 record, beating Lafayette College, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, VMI, and Princeton, and falling to Notre Dame, Penn, and Navy. In the Army–Navy Game of 1942, which was played at Annapolis instead of Philadelphia, Olds had both upper front teeth knocked out when he received a forearm blow to the mouth while making a tackle. Olds returned to the game and reportedly was cheered by the Navy Third and Fourth Classes, which were assigned as the Army cheering section when wartime travel restrictions prevented the Corps of Cadets from attending. In 1985 Olds was enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds developed ambivalent feelings about West Point, admiring its dedication to "Duty, Honor, Country", but disturbed by the tendency of many tactical officers to distort the purpose of its Honor Code. In March 1943, Olds was braced by an officer upon returning from leave in New York City, and compelled on penalty of an honor violation to admit he had consumed alcohol. The infraction reduced him in rank from cadet captain to cadet private, characterized by Olds in his memoirs as "only the second cadet in the history of West Point to earn that dubious honor."


title: Robin Olds

text: He walked punishment tours until the day of his graduation in June. The incident left its mark on Olds such that when he became Commandant of Cadets at the Air Force Academy, use of the Honor Code as an instrument for integrity rather than as a tool for petty enforcement of discipline became a point of emphasis in his administration. During his Academy years Olds also acquired a strong contempt for alumni networking, commonly called "ring knocking", to the degree that he went out of his way to conceal his West Point background.


title: Robin Olds

text: By an act of Congress on October 1, 1942, during Olds' second class year, the academy began a three-year curriculum for the duration of the war for cadets entering after July 1939. Cadets applying to the Air Corps were classified as Air Cadets, with a modified curriculum which provided flying training but eliminated Military Topography and Graphics required for Ground Cadets. Olds' class was given an abridged second class course of study until January 19, 1943, when it began an abridged first class course.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds completed primary training in the summer of 1942 at the Spartan School of Aviation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and basic and advanced training at Stewart Field, New York. 208 cadets including Olds completed the course, while five classmates died in accidents. Olds received his pilot's wings personally from Gen. Henry H. Arnold on May 30, 1943, and graduated on June 1 as a member of the "Class of June 1943", 194th in general merit of 514 graduates.


title: Robin Olds

text: Second lieutenant Olds completed fighter pilot training with the 329th Fighter Group, an operational training unit based at Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale, California. His initial twin-engine training at Williams Field, Arizona, was in the Curtiss AT-9, followed by transition fighter training to the Lockheed P-38 Lightning in its P-322 variant. After gunnery training at Matagorda, Texas in the first half of August 1943, he was assigned to P-38 phase training at Muroc Army Air Field, California.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds was promoted to first lieutenant on December 1, 1943. In early 1944 he became part of the cadre assigned to build up the newly activated 434th Fighter Squadron and its parent 479th Fighter Group, based at Lomita, California. Olds logged 650 hours of flying time during training, including 250 hours in the P-38 Lightning, as the 479th built its proficiency as a combat group. It departed the Los Angeles area on April 15 for Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, and shipped aboard the USS "Argentina" for Europe on May 3. The 479th arrived in Scotland on May 14, 1944, and entrained for RAF Wattisham, in eastern England, where it arrived the next day.


title: Robin Olds

text: The 479th began combat on May 26, flying bomber escort missions and attacking transportation targets in occupied France in advance of the invasion of Normandy. Olds flew a new P-38J Lightning that he nicknamed "Scat II". Olds' crew chief, T/Sgt. Glen A. Wold, said that he showed an immediate interest in aircraft maintenance and learned emergency servicing under Wold. He also insisted his aircraft be waxed to reduce air resistance and helped his maintenance crew carry out their tasks. On July 24 Olds was promoted to captain and became a flight and later squadron leader. Following a low-level bridge-bombing mission to Montmirail, France, on August 14, Olds shot down his first German aircraft, a pair of Focke-Wulf Fw 190s.


title: Robin Olds

text: On an escort mission to Wismar on August 23, his flight was on the far left of the group's line abreast formation and encountered 40–50 Messerschmitt Bf 109s near Wittenberge, flying north at the same altitude in a loose formation of three large vees. Olds turned his flight left and began a ten-minute pursuit in which they climbed to altitude above and behind the Germans. Over Bützow, undetected by the Germans, Olds and his wingman jettisoned their fuel drop tanks and attacked, although the second element of the flight had been unable to keep up during the climb.


title: Robin Olds

text: Just as Olds began firing, both engines of his P-38 quit from fuel exhaustion; in the excitement of the attack he had neglected to switch to his internal fuel tanks. He continued attacking in "dead-stick mode", hitting his target in the fuselage and shooting off part of its engine cowling. After fatally damaging the Bf 109 he dived away and restarted his engines. Despite battle damage to his own plane, including loss of a side window of its canopy, Olds shot down two during the dogfight and another on the way home to become the first ace of the 479th FG. His combat report for that date concluded:


title: Robin Olds

text: Still in a shallow dive, I observed a P-38 and a Me 109 going round and round. It seemed that the 38 needed help so I started down. At about , the Jerry, still way out of my range, turned under me and slightly to the right. I rolled over on my back, following him and gave him an ineffective burst at long range. By this time I was traveling in excess of . My left window blew out, scaring the hell out of me. I thought I had been hit by some of the ground fire I had observed in the vicinity. I regained control of the aircraft and pulled out above a wheat field. I tried to contact the flight to get myself recognized, but observed an Me 109 making a pass at me from about seven o'clock high. I broke left as well as my plane could and the Jerry overshot. I straightened out and gave him a burst. He chandelled steeply to the left and I shot some more. He passed right over me and I slipped over in an Immelmann. As I straightened out at the top, I saw the pilot bail out.


title: Robin Olds

text: Although in "Dogfights" S1EP2, Robin Olds recounts this memory of the P-38 needing help with some variance. He says "I went on into the fight, got another one, BE (His wing man) got two others with one pass. Then I looked down and there was a North American P-51 Mustang, and where he came from; I have no idea." The Narrator then tells the viewers that the P-51 Mustang is being chased by two Bf 109s. Olds dove to help and in his excitement dove too fast. This led him to be subject to compressibility. Upon reaching the denser air at lower altitudes he regained control of his P-38 and pulled up. This led to his canopy window blowing out due to excess G forces. He said "It sounds like an exaggeration but I managed to pull out, right above this wheat field near the town of Rostock." That made him one of very few that have recovered from a compressibility event. "After that I had enough, I was ready to go home" But a string of tracer fire across his nose brought him right back into the fight, as a Bf 109 dove from behind on him. Weighing his options, he decided to risk it all and flat planed. While pulling hard on the yoke and turning hard left at 90°. That made him shutter into a high speed stall, the air combat equivalent of locking the brakes. The Bf 109 passed beneath him and as he rolled the nose down he fired, taking the Bf 109 out before heading home.


title: Robin Olds

text: He made eight claims while flying the P-38 (five of which are sustained by the Air Force Historical Research Agency) and was originally credited as the top-scoring P-38 pilot of the European Theater of Operations.


title: Robin Olds

text: The 479th FG converted to the P-51 Mustang in mid-September. On his second transition flight, at the point of touchdown during landing, Olds learned a lesson in "false confidence" when the powerful torque of the single-engined fighter forced him to ground loop after the Mustang veered off the runway. Olds shot down an Fw 190 in his new "Scat VI" on October 6 during a savage battle near Berlin in which he was nearly shot down by his own wingman. He completed his first combat tour on November 9, 1944, accruing 270 hours of combat time and six kills.


title: Robin Olds

text: After returning to the United States for a two-month leave, Olds began a full second tour at Wattisham on January 15, 1945. He was assigned duties as operations officer of the 434th Fighter squadron. Promoted to major on February 9, 1945, Olds claimed his seventh victory southeast of Magdeburg, Germany the same day, downing another Bf 109. On February 14, he claimed three victories, two Bf 109s and an Fw 190, but one of the former was credited only as a "probable".


title: Robin Olds

text: His final World War II aerial kill occurred on April 7, 1945, when Olds in "Scat VI" led the 479th Fighter Group on a mission escorting B-24s bombing an ammunition dump in Lüneburg, Germany. The engagement marked the only combat appearance of "Sonderkommando Elbe", a German Air Force squadron formed to ram Allied bombers. South of Bremen, Olds noticed contrails popping up above a bank of cirrus clouds, of aircraft flying above and to the left of the bombers. For five minutes these bogeys paralleled the bomber stream while the 479th held station. Turning to investigate, Olds saw pairs of Me 262s turn towards and dive on the Liberators. After damaging one of the jets in a chase meant to lure the fighter escort away from the bombers, the Mustangs returned to the bomber stream. Olds observed a Bf 109 of "Sonderkommando Elbe" attack the bombers and shoot down a B-24. Olds pursued the Bf 109 through the formation, and shot it down.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds achieved the bulk of his strafing credits the following week in attacks on Lübeck Blankensee and Tarnewitz airdromes on April 13, and Reichersberg airfield in Austria on April 16, when he destroyed six German planes on the ground. He later reflected on the hazards of such missions:


title: Robin Olds

text: I was hit by flak as I was pulling out of a dive-strafing pass on an airfield called Tarnewitz, up on the Baltic. Five P-51s made a pass on the airdrome that April day. I was the only one to return home...When I tested the stall characteristics of my wounded bird over our home airfield, I found it quit flying at a little over indicated and rolled violently into the dead wing ("note: the right flap had been blown away and two large holes knocked in the same wing"). What to do? Bailout seemed the logical response, but here's where sentiment got in the way of reason. That airplane ("note: "Scat VI"") had taken me through a lot and I was damned if I was going to give up on her...why the bird and I survived the careening, bouncing and juttering ride down the length of the field, I guess I'll never know.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds had not only risen in rank to field grade, but was given command of his squadron on March 25, less than two years out of West Point and at only 22 years of age. By the end of his combat service he was officially credited with 13 German planes shot down and 11.5 others destroyed on the ground. Olds became an ace on both of his combat tours and was twice awarded the Silver Star, for the mission of August 25 and for the achievements of himself and his squadron during his combined tours.


title: Robin Olds

text: As recognized by the American Fighter Aces Association, Olds was the only pilot to "make ace" in both the P-38 (5 victories) and the P-51 (8 victories).


title: Robin Olds

text: Returning to the United States after the war, Olds was assigned at West Point as an assistant football coach for Red Blaik. Apparently resented by many on the staff for his rapid rise in rank and plethora of combat decorations, Olds transferred in February 1946 to the 412th Fighter Group at March Field, California, to fly the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, which began a career-long professional struggle with superiors he viewed as more promotion- than warrior-minded.


title: Robin Olds

text: In April 1946, he and Lieutenant Colonel John C. "Pappy" Herbst formed what he believed was the Air Force's first jet aerobatic demonstration team. In late May, the 412th was ordered to undertake Project Comet a nine-city transcontinental mass formation flight. Olds and Herbst performed a two-ship aerobatic routine that thrilled the crowds at every stop, the highlight being a three-day layover in Washington, D.C. In June, Olds was one of four pilots who participated in the first one-day, dawn-to-dusk, transcontinental round trip jet flight from March Field to Washington, D.C.


title: Robin Olds

text: The jet demonstration performances with Herbst ended tragically on July 4, 1946, when Herbst crashed at the Del Mar Racetrack after his aircraft stalled during an encore of their routine finale in which the P-80s did a loop while configured to land. Later that same year Olds took second place in the Thompson Trophy Race (Jet Division) of the Cleveland National Air Races at Brook Park, Ohio, over the Labor Day weekend. In this first "closed course" jet race, six P-80s competed against each other on a three pylon course 30 miles in length.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds went to England under the U.S. Air Force/Royal Air Force Exchange Program in 1948. Flying the Gloster Meteor jet fighter, he commanded No. 1 Squadron at Royal Air Force Station Tangmere between October 20, 1948, and September 25, 1949, the first foreigner to command an RAF unit in peacetime. Following his exchange assignment, Olds returned to March AFB to become operations officer of the 94th Fighter Squadron of the 1st Fighter Group, flying North American F-86A Sabres, on November 15, 1949.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds was assigned to command the 71st Fighter Squadron, which was soon detached from the 1st FG to the Air Defense Command and based at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport in Pennsylvania. As a result, he missed service in the Korean War despite repeated applications for a combat assignment. Discouraged and at odds with the Air Force, in which he was seen as an iconoclast, Olds reportedly was in the process of resigning when he was talked out of it by a mentor, Maj Gen Frederic H. Smith Jr., who brought him to work at Eastern Air Defense Command headquarters at Stewart AFB, New York.


title: Robin Olds

text: Promoted to lieutenant colonel on February 20, 1951, and colonel April 15, 1953, while just thirty years of age and just short of ten years from his graduation from West Point, Olds served unenthusiastically in several staff assignments until returning to flying in 1955. At first on the command staff of the 86th Fighter-Interceptor Wing at Landstuhl Air Base, West Germany, Olds then commanded its Sabre-equipped 86th Fighter-Interceptor Group from October 8, 1955, to August 10, 1956. He then was made chief of the Weapons Proficiency Center at Wheelus Air Base, Libya, in charge of all fighter weapons training for the United States Air Forces Europe until July 1958.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds had administrative and staff duty assignments at the Pentagon between 1958 and 1962 as the Deputy Chief, Air Defense Division, Headquarters USAF. In this assignment he prepared a number of papers, iconoclastic at the time, which soon became prophetic, including identifying the need for upgraded conventional munitions (foretelling the "bomb shortage" of the Vietnam War), and the lack of any serious tactical air training in conventional warfare. From November 1959 to March 1960, his section worked intensely to develop a program reducing the entire structure of the ADC with the purpose of generating $6.5 billion for classified funding to develop the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.reconnaissance aircraft. Following his Pentagon assignment, Olds attended the National War College in Washington D.C., graduating in 1963.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds next became commander of the 81st Tactical Fighter Wing at RAF Bentwaters, England, a McDonnell F-101 Voodoo fighter-bomber wing, on September 8, 1963. The 81st TFW was a major combat unit in United States Air Forces Europe, having both a tactical nuclear and conventional bombing role supporting NATO. Olds commanded the wing until July 26, 1965. As his Deputy Commander of Operations Olds brought with him Colonel Daniel "Chappie" James Jr., whom he had met during his Pentagon assignment and who would go on to become the first African-American 4-star Air Force general. James and Olds worked closely together for a year as a command team and developed both a professional and social relationship which was later renewed in combat.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds formed a demonstration team for the F-101 using pilots of his wing, without command authorization, and performed at an Air Force open house at Bentwaters. He asserted that his superior at Third Air Force attempted to have him court-martialed, but the commander of USAFE, General Gabriel P. Disosway, instead authorized his removal from command of the 81st TFW, cancellation of a recommended Legion of Merit award, and transfer to the headquarters of the Ninth Air Force at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina.


title: Robin Olds

text: In September 1966, Olds was tapped to command an McDonnell Douglas F-4C Phantom wing in Southeast Asia. En route he arranged with the 4453rd Combat Crew Training Wing, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, (where Col. James was now Deputy Commander of Operations) to be checked out in the Phantom, completing the 14-step syllabus in just five days. His instructor was Major William L. Kirk, the 4453rd CCTW's Standardization and Evaluation officer, who had been one of Olds' pilots at RAF Bentwaters, and who later commanded the United States Air Forces Europe as a full general. Kirk accompanied Olds for practice firing of AIM-7 Sparrow and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles on the Point Mugu missile range while Olds was en route to Travis Air Force Base for his charter flight overseas. Olds rewarded Kirk by granting him a transfer to his command in Thailand in March 1967.


title: Robin Olds

text: On September 30, 1966, Olds took command of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, based at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base. A lack of aggressiveness and sense of purpose in the wing had led to the change in command (Olds' predecessor had flown only 12 missions during the 10 months the wing had been in combat). The 44-year-old colonel also set the tone for his command stint by immediately placing himself on the flight schedule as a rookie pilot under officers junior to himself, then challenging them to train him properly because he would soon be leading them.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds' vice commander was Col. Vermont Garrison, an ace in both World War II and Korea, and in December Olds brought in Daniel James Jr. to replace an ineffective deputy commander for operations, creating arguably the strongest and most effective tactical command triumvirate of the Vietnam War. The Olds-James combination became popularly nicknamed "Blackman and Robin". James was named 8th TFW Vice Commander in June 1967, succeeding Garrison, who had completed his tour. Olds took to the air war over North Vietnam in an F-4C Phantom he nicknamed "Scat XXVII", in keeping with his previous combat aircraft that all carried the "Scat" name.


title: Robin Olds

text: After suggesting the idea to Seventh Air Force commander Major General William Momyer, himself a former commander of the 8th TFW, Olds was directed to plan a mission designed to draw the North Vietnamese Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21s into an aerial trap, and "Operation Bolo" resulted.


title: Robin Olds

text: In October 1966, strike force Republic F-105 Thunderchiefs were equipped with QRC-160 radar jamming pods whose effectiveness virtually ended their losses to surface-to-air missiles. As a result, SAM attacks shifted to the Phantoms, which were unprotected because of a shortage of pods. To protect the F-4s, rules of engagement that allowed the MiG Combat Air Patrol to escort the strike force in and out of the target area were revised in December to restrict MiGCAP penetration to the edge of SAM coverage. MiG interceptions increased as a result, primarily by MiG-21s using high-speed hit-and-run tactics against bomb-laden F-105 formations, and although only two bombers had been lost, the threat to the force was perceived as serious.


title: Robin Olds

text: The Bolo plan reasoned that by equipping F-4s with jamming pods, using the call signs and communications codewords of the F-105 wings, and flying their flight profiles through northwest Vietnam, the F-4s could effectively simulate an F-105 bombing mission and entice the MiG-21s into intercepting not bomb-laden Thunderchiefs, but Phantoms configured for air-to-air combat.


title: Robin Olds

text: After an intensive planning, maintenance, and briefing period, the mission was scheduled for January 1, 1967. Poor weather caused a 24-hour delay, but even then, a solid overcast covered the North Vietnamese airbases at Phúc Yên, Gia Lam, Kép, and Cat Bai when the bogus strike force began arriving over the target area, five-minute intervals separating the flights of F-4s. Leading the first flight, Olds overflew the primary MiG-21 base at Phúc Yên and was on a second pass when MiGs finally began popping up through the cloud base. Although at first seemingly random in nature, it quickly became apparent that the MiGs were ground-controlled intercepts designed to place the supposed F-105s in a vise between enemies to their front and rear.


title: Robin Olds

text: The F-4s and their crews, however, proved equal to the situation and claimed seven MiG-21s destroyed, almost half of the 16 then in service with the VPAF without loss to USAF aircraft. Olds himself shot down one of the seven, for which he and the other aircrew were awarded Silver Stars. Follow-up interceptions over the next two days by MiGs against RF-4C reconnaissance aircraft led to a similar mission on a smaller scale on January 6, with another two MiG-21s shot down. VPAF fighter activity diminished to almost nothing for 10 weeks afterwards, thereby accomplishing the main goal of Operation Bolo: to eliminate or diminish the threat of MiGs to the strike formations.


title: Robin Olds

text: On May 4, Olds destroyed another MiG-21 over Phúc Yên. Two weeks later, on May 20, he destroyed two MiG-17s in what one of his pilots described as a "vengeful chase" after they shot down his wingman during a large dogfight, bringing his total to 16 confirmed kills (12 in World War II and four in Vietnam) and making him a triple ace. Olds states that following the shoot down of his fourth MiG, he intentionally avoided shooting down a fifth, even though he had at least ten opportunities to do so, because he had learned in the middle of June that Seventh Air Force, at the direction of Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown, would immediately relieve him of command to return to the United States as a publicity asset if he did.


title: Robin Olds

text: He was awarded a fourth Silver Star for leading a three-aircraft low-level bombing strike on March 30, 1967, and the Air Force Cross for an attack on the Paul Doumer Bridge in Hanoi on August 11, one of five awarded to Air Force pilots for that mission. He flew his final combat mission over North Vietnam on September 23, 1967.


title: Robin Olds

text: His 259 total combat missions included 107 in World War II and 152 in Southeast Asia, 105 of those over North Vietnam. "Scat XXVII" (F-4C-24-MC ) was retired from operational service and placed on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds was known for the extravagantly waxed (and decidedly non-regulation) handlebar moustache he sported in Vietnam. It was a common superstition among airmen to grow a "bulletproof mustache", but Olds also used his as "a gesture of defiance. The kids on base loved it. Most everybody grew a mustache." Olds started the mustache in the wake of the success of Operation Bolo and let it grow beyond regulation length because "It became the middle finger I couldn't raise in the PR photographs. The mustache became my silent last word in the verbal battles...with higher headquarters on rules, targets, and fighting the war." Returning home, however, marked the end of this flamboyance. When he reported to his first interview with Air Force Chief of Staff General John P. McConnell, McConnell walked up to him, stuck a finger under his nose and said, "Take it off." Olds replied, "Yes, sir."


title: Robin Olds

text: To tell the truth, I wasn't all that fond of the damned thing by then, but it had become a symbol for the men of the 8th Wing. I knew McConnell understood. During his visits to Ubon over the past year he had never referred to my breach of military standards, just seemed rather amused at the variety of 'staches sported by many of the troops. (It) was the most direct order I had received in twenty-four years of service.


title: Robin Olds

text: The incident with the mustache is given credit as the impetus for a new Air Force tradition, "Mustache March", in which aircrew, aircraft maintainers, and other airmen worldwide show solidarity by a symbolic, albeit good-natured "protest" for one month against Air Force facial hair regulations.


title: Robin Olds

text: We weren't allowed to dogfight. Very little attention was paid to strafing, dive-bombing, rocketry, stuff like that. It was thought to be unnecessary. Yet every confrontation America faced in the Cold War years was a 'bombs and bullets' situation, raging under an uneasy nuclear standoff." The Vietnam War "proved the need to teach tactical warfare and have fighter pilots. It caught us unprepared because we weren't allowed to learn it or practice it in training.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds often lamented the lack of an internal gun in the F-4C he flew during his tour in Vietnam, but would not allow his fighters to be equipped with the gun pods then available. While he knew that he would be capable of effectively using them, he was also aware that none of his pilots were trained in the use of a gun or dogfighting. He also reasoned that the drag of the pod would both degrade the performance characteristics of the F-4 while not gaining it any advantage against the more maneuverable MiG-17s and MiG-21s, result in unnecessary losses strafing worthless targets, and reduce the number of bombs carried by the Phantoms, the delivery of which was the 8th's primary mission.


title: Robin Olds

text: Operation Bolo, and P-38 dogfights Olds experienced were recreated using computer animation in the episode "Air Ambush", of The History Channel "Dogfights" series, first telecast on November 10, 2006. His fourth MiG kill in Vietnam was recreated in the season 2 episode "No Room For Error". Olds, then 84 years old, appeared as a commentator.


title: Robin Olds

text: After relinquishing command of the 8th TFW on September 23, 1967, Olds reported for duty to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in December 1967. He served as commandant of cadets for three years and sought to restore morale in the wake of a major cheating scandal. Olds was promoted to brigadier general on June 1, 1968, with seniority dating from May 28.


title: Robin Olds

text: In February 1971 he began his last duty assignment as director of aerospace safety in the Office of the Inspector General, Headquarters USAF, and after December 1971 as part of the Air Force Inspection and Safety Center, a newly activated separate operating agency located at Norton Air Force Base, California. Olds oversaw the creation of policies, standards, and procedures for Air Force accident prevention programs, and dealt with work safety education, workplace accident investigation and analysis, and safety inspections.


title: Robin Olds

text: Air Force Inspector General and Olds' West Point classmate Lt Gen Louis L. Wilson Jr. sent Olds to Southeast Asia in the autumn of 1971 to determine the state of readiness of Air Force pilots. Olds toured USAF bases in Thailand (flying several unauthorized combat missions in the process) and brought back a blunt assessment. Air Force pilots, he reported to the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen John D. Ryan (a former SAC general and bomber pilot often at odds with the tactical fighter community), "...couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag," because of a systemic lack of interest by the USAF in air-to-air combat training for fighter crews. He warned that losses would be severe in any resumption of aerial combat. Olds recalled that Ryan expressed surprise at this assessment and reflected his disagreement.


title: Robin Olds

text: When the Operation Linebacker bombing campaign began in May 1972, American fighter jets returned to the offense in the skies over North Vietnam for the first time in nearly four years. Navy and Marine Corps fighters, reaping the benefits of their TOPGUN program, immediately enjoyed considerable success. In contrast by June, as Olds had predicted, the Air Force's fighter community was struggling with a nearly 1:1 kill-loss ratio. To the new Inspector General, Lt Gen Ernest C. Hardin Jr., Olds offered to take a voluntary reduction in rank to colonel so he could return to operational command and straighten out the situation. Olds decided to leave the Air Force when the offer was refused (he was offered another inspection tour instead) and he retired on June 1, 1973.


title: Robin Olds

text: The President of the United States of America, authorized by Title 10, Section 8742, United States Code, takes pleasure in presenting the Air Force Cross to Colonel Robin Olds (AFSN: 0-26046), United States Air Force, for extraordinary heroism in military operations against an opposing armed force while serving as Strike Mission Commander in the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, Ubon Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand, against the Paul Doumer Bridge, a major north-south transportation link on Hanoi's Red River in North Vietnam, on 11 August 1967. On that date, Colonel Olds led his strike force of eight F-4C aircraft against a key railroad and highway bridge in North Vietnam. Despite intense, accurately directed fire, multiple surface-to-air missile attacks on his force, and continuous harassment by MiG fighters defending the target, Colonel Olds, with undaunted determination, indomitable courage, and professional skill, led his force through to help destroy this significant bridge. As a result the flow of war materials into this area was appreciably reduced. Through his extraordinary heroism, superb airmanship, and aggressiveness in the face of hostile forces, Colonel Olds reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds was briefly a stepbrother of author Gore Vidal after Olds' father married for the fourth time in June 1942, to Nina Gore Auchincloss. His father died of pneumonia on April 28, 1943, after hospitalization for constrictive pericarditis and Libman-Sacks endocarditis, at the age of 46, just prior to Olds' graduation from West Point.


title: Robin Olds

text: In 1946, while based at March Field, Olds met Hollywood actress (and "pin-up girl") Ella Raines on a blind date in Palm Springs. They married in Beverly Hills on February 6, 1947, and had:


title: Robin Olds

text: – Christina Eloise Olds (1952), formerly married to Eric Newman with whom she has a daughter, Jennifer Olds Newman;


title: Robin Olds

text: – Susan Bird Scott-Risner ( Olds; 1953–2018), she was married to David Scott-Risner. Her husband has three children from a previous relationship;


title: Robin Olds

text: Most of their 29-year marriage, marked by frequent extended separations and difficult homecomings, was turbulent because of a clash of lifestyles, particularly her refusal to ever live in government housing on base. Robin Olds and Ella Raines separated in 1975 and divorced in 1976. Robin married Abigail Morgan Sellers Barnett in January 1978, and they divorced after fifteen years of marriage.


title: Robin Olds

text: In his retirement at Steamboat Springs, Colorado, Olds pursued his love of skiing and served on the city's planning commission. He was active in public speaking, making 21 events as late in his life as 2005 and 13 in 2006.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds' fondness for alcohol was well known. John Darrell Sherwood, in his book "Fast Movers: Jet Pilots and the Vietnam Experience", posits that Olds' heavy drinking hurt his post-Vietnam career. On July 12, 2001, Olds was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and resisting arrest near his home in Steamboat Springs. Olds, briefly hospitalized during the incident for facial cuts, pleaded guilty in return for charges of weaving and felony vehicular eluding being dropped. Olds was placed on one year probation, and ordered to pay almost $900 in fines and costs, attend an alcohol education course, and perform 72 hours of community service.


title: Robin Olds

text: Days later, on July 21, 2001, Olds was enshrined at Dayton, Ohio, in the National Aviation Hall of Fame Class of 2001, along with test pilot Joe H. Engle, Marine Corps ace Marion E. Carl, and Albert Lee Ueltschi. He became the only person enshrined in both the National Aviation Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame.


title: Robin Olds

text: In March 2007 Olds was hospitalized in Colorado for complications of Stage 4 prostate cancer. On the evening of June 14, 2007 he died from congestive heart failure in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, a month before his 85th birthday. He was honored with a flyover and services at the United States Air Force Academy, where his ashes are housed, on June 30, 2007.


title: Robin Olds

text: Olds is remembered as the Class Exemplar of the Academy Class of 2011, which had begun Basic Cadet Training, the first step towards becoming Air Force officers, two days before Olds' funeral.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Annabelle Natalie Gibson (born 8 October 1991) is an Australian convicted scammer and pseudoscience advocate. She is the author of "The Whole Pantry" mobile app and its later companion cookbook. Throughout her career as a wellness guru, Gibson falsely claimed to have been diagnosed with multiple cancer pathologies, including malignant brain cancer, and that she was effectively managing them through diet, exercise, natural medicine, and alternative therapies. She additionally alleged that she had donated significant proportions of her income and her company's profits to numerous charities.


title: Belle Gibson

text: In March 2015, after reports identified Gibson's fraudulent claims regarding her charitable donations, media investigation revealed that she had also fabricated her stories of cancer, and lied about her age, personal life and history. Concerns were expressed that Gibson had led a profligate lifestyle, renting an upmarket town house, leasing a luxury car and office space, undergoing cosmetic dental procedures, purchasing designer clothes and holidaying internationally, using money claimed to have been raised for charity. With a collapsing social media support base, Gibson admitted in an April 2015 interview that her claims of having multiple cancers had been fabricated, stating that "none of it's true".


title: Belle Gibson

text: Her actions were described as "particularly predatory" and "deceit on a grand scale, for personal profit". On 6 May 2016, Consumer Affairs Victoria announced legal action against Gibson and Inkerman Road Nominees Pty Ltd (originally known as Belle Gibson Pty Ltd) for "false claims by Ms. Gibson and her company concerning her diagnosis with terminal brain cancer, her rejection of conventional cancer treatments in favour of natural remedies, and the donation of proceeds to various charities." On 15 March 2017, the Federal Court supported most of those claims, concluding that, "Ms. Gibson had no reasonable basis to believe she had cancer."


title: Belle Gibson

text: Gibson was born in Launceston, Tasmania. According to interviews she has given, she left her Brisbane family home at age 12 to live with a classmate, and later lived with a family friend. Gibson attended Wynnum State High School in Manly, Queensland, until dropping out in Year 10, although she also later claimed to have been homeschooled. She worked for some time as a trainee for catering supply company PFD Food Services in Lytton, but social media reflected that by late 2008 she had relocated to Perth, Western Australia. There, she was involved in the skateboarding culture and actively participated in its online community. Gibson subsequently moved from Perth to Melbourne in July 2009 and became a mother one year later, at age 18. Gibson launched "The Whole Pantry" mobile app in August 2013, at age 21.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Gibson reportedly told a prospective business partner in 2014 that she had "several names" that she went under, and in her most recent interview with "The Australian Women's Weekly" claimed "her mother changed her name five times". Gibson's corporate filings indicate that she is three years younger than she publicly claims to be.


title: Belle Gibson

text: After Gibson launched "The Whole Pantry" app, it was reportedly downloaded 200,000 times within its first month. It was voted Apple's Best Food and Drink App of 2013. Gibson soon after signed a book deal with Lantern Books, an imprint of Penguin Books, for an accompanying table top cookbook, which was published in October 2014. She further worked with Apple Inc. in September 2014 to transition the app as a privileged pre-installed default third party inclusion in the Apple Watch's April 2015 launch. By early 2015, it was estimated that in excess of $1 million had been made in sales of "The Whole Pantry" app and book. Gibson chronicled her battle with cancer on a blog of the same name, but "doubts about her claims surfaced after she failed to deliver a promised $300,000 donation to a charity".


title: Belle Gibson

text: Before doubts were raised about her health and charitable donation claims, Gibson had intended to expand her brand beyond the app, having earlier registered the domain "The Whole Life", and advertised in December 2014 to recruit an IT specialist to expand the app and brand portfolio. Both "The Whole Pantry" app and "The Whole Life" were registered by Gibson's partner, Clive Rothwell, in her corporate name. The Whole Pantry registrar was amended in March 2015 after the controversy broke.


title: Belle Gibson

text: While "The Whole Pantry" has unequivocally denied that Gibson ever helped anyone to reject conventional cancer treatment, Gibson has been quoted from her social media posts as claiming that she had "countless times helped others" to forgo conventional medical treatment for cancer and to treat themselves "naturally", as well as "leading them down natural therapy for everything from fertility, depression, bone damage and other types of cancer".


title: Belle Gibson

text: In interviews, Gibson claimed to have had malignant brain, blood, spleen, uterine, liver, and kidney cancers, which she attributed to a reaction to the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine. When the book was launched in November 2014, Gibson claimed in its preface that she had been "stable for two years now with no growth of the cancer", but her story soon emerged as inconsistent: she also told media outlets that the cancer had reached her liver and kidneys, and three months earlier had posted on "The Whole Pantry"s Facebook page that her cancer had spread to her brain, blood, spleen, and uterus. She previously claimed that she had undergone heart surgery several times and to have momentarily died on the operating table. Gibson also claimed to have had a stroke. However, she was unable to substantiate her medical claims nor name the doctors who diagnosed and treated her. She also did not bear any surgical scars from her apparent heart operations.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Gibson's and "The Whole Pantry"s statements regarding the benefits of exercise, healthy eating and a positive mindset were uncontroversial, being widely acknowledged as conducive to holistic well-being. However, on her now-deleted Instagram account and in other social media, Gibson also promoted more controversial or potentially dangerous alternative medical practices, including Gerson therapy, anti-vaccination, and the consumption of non-pasteurised raw milk.


title: Belle Gibson

text: The highly controversial Gerson therapy had been similarly promoted by another Australian wellness blogger, Jessica Ainscough, whose funeral Gibson attended when Ainscough died from cancer in late February 2015. With approximately 97% of the Australian population under seven years of age immunised, Federal vaccination policy heavily penalises parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, by denying access to significant welfare and other benefits, worth approximately $11,700 per annum. The sale of raw milk for human consumption is illegal in Australia and, in Victoria, one three-year-old died and another four children under the age of five became seriously ill after consuming non-pasteurised milk in 2014.


title: Belle Gibson

text: As Gibson's medical claims were being scrutinised, allegations emerged that charitable contributions raised in 2013 and 2014 had not been given to their intended causes. Gibson denied the charges, but Fairfax Media revealed that she had "failed to hand over proceeds solicited in the name of five charities" and had "grossly overstated the company's total donations to different causes." Two charities confirmed to "The Australian" newspaper that Gibson's company had used their names in fundraising drives but had either failed to deliver the donations or had inadequately accounted for the funds.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Gibson had claimed on a number of occasions in 2014 that "The Whole Pantry" had donated approximately $300,000 to charities, including maternal healthcare in developing nations, medical support for children with cancer, and funding schools in sub-Saharan Africa. In late 2014, when "The Whole Pantry" app was pre-installed on the Apple iPad, Gibson claimed through her Instagram account to be working with twenty different charities. Gibson has long claimed in her LinkedIn professional networking profile, established in February 2013, to be a philanthropist.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Gibson eventually admitted, in relation to fraud proceedings, that she had seriously overstated the level of charitable contributions that had been made. Subsequent media reports in March 2015 revealed that it could only be ascertained that an estimated $7,000 of the previously claimed $300,000 had been donated to a total of three charities, with at least $1,000 of the $7,000 reportedly having been donated only after Gibson became aware of the Fairfax investigation into her earlier claims. Another $1,000 of the $7,000 had been donated to a charitable cause under Rothwell's name, rather than Gibson's or the company name.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Also in March 2015, the parents of a young child with brain cancer, whom Gibson had befriended, came forward to report that they had been unaware that Gibson had earlier been claiming to be fundraising for their child's treatment on their behalf. The family had never received any funds from her or "The Whole Pantry", and suspected Gibson had been using information gleaned from the family's experiences to underpin her own claims to have brain cancer.


title: Belle Gibson

text: As the controversy grew, questions began to be raised about Apple, Penguin and the Australian media's lack of due diligence in "prima facie" accepting Gibson's claims of having multiple cancers, an issue taken up by the ABC's "Media Watch" program.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Apple Inc., in response to media enquiry in March 2015, declined to remove "The Whole Pantry" app from sale, stating that it was only concerned about the functionality of the app. However, "The Whole Pantry" was soon thereafter removed from inclusion in the Apple Watch launch. Apple subsequently deleted the app from the Apple Store, and removed it from all Apple Watch promotional material. Apple has not provided any public comment regarding the reasons behind the removal of the app, but an internal email from an Australian executive to the company's US office acknowledged that the removal would be subject to comment.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Lantern Books, when initially approached by investigative journalists, claimed it had not confirmed the validity of Gibson's cancer claims as it was not required for a cookbook. Soon after, as the controversy grew, Penguin withdrew the book from sale, citing a lack of response from Gibson to its queries relating to the media accusations. However, Fairfax reported that Penguin had, prior to publication of the book, already quizzed and videotaped Gibson on her cancer story, as recounted in the preface. Penguin agreed to pay A$30,000 to the Victorian Consumer Law Fund as a penalty for failing to validate the factual content of the book.


title: Belle Gibson

text: "Elle Australia" magazine, published by Bauer Media Group, admitted that following a laudatory December 2014 story on Gibson, they had received but ultimately dismissed anonymous claims that she was fabricating her story. A second Bauer magazine, "Cosmopolitan", which had awarded Gibson its 2014 "Fun Fearless Female" social media award, admitted that it too had received and dismissed a similar email. After Gibson's confessions, the magazine decided not to strip her of the award, stating that she had been "reader nominated and reader voted." However, a month earlier, "Cosmopolitan"s associate editor stated that they "put forward the nomination myself", indicating that the magazine not the public had been instrumental in promoting Gibson's award.


title: Belle Gibson

text: A conventional cancer research professional from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research also went public to state that, by failing to conduct basic fact checking and providing "unfiltered PR" to Gibson's untested claims, an uncritical media had been complicit in her "scam".


title: Belle Gibson

text: Once the controversy surfaced in the media, "The Whole Pantry" began removing any comments made on its (since deleted) Facebook page that questioned Gibson's claims, asserting that these comments only added to "the misinformation" of the initial Fairfax article. This selective deletion drew even more negative comment.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Simultaneously, posts that Gibson had made on her Instagram account that made reference to her cancers or charitable donations were also selectively deleted. Soon after, all posts were deleted from Gibson's and "The Whole Pantry"s Instagram accounts. Around the same time, individual postings about Gibson's cancer, and claims of having died briefly while under heart surgery, were also being selectively deleted by the administrator of her blog "at the request of a user". Accounts across a number of social media platforms were soon either abandoned, made private, or deleted in their entirety.


title: Belle Gibson

text: Gibson subsequently established another Facebook account under the alias Harry Gibson, which was made private and used to hit back at Facebook followers questioning her claims or speaking to the media.


title: Belle Gibson

text: In late April 2015, Gibson gave an interview to "The Australian Women's Weekly", in which she admitted to having fabricated all her cancer claims. Gibson attributed her deceit to her upbringing, and specifically to neglect by her now-estranged mother, claiming to having been forced to take care of herself and her brother since the age of 5. The interview was, however, described as an admission of deceit, without expression of regret or apology. In a May 2015 interview with the same magazine, Gibson's mother Natalie Dal-Bello refuted several claims Gibson had made about her family, including the false claim that her brother was autistic. Gibson's "Women's Weekly" interview was arranged by Bespoke Approach, and Gibson was provided "pro bono" representation by the company during the interview.


title: Belle Gibson

text: In June 2015, Gibson was rumoured to have received A$45,000 for an interview with Nine Network's "60 Minutes".


title: Belle Gibson

text: Consumer Affairs Victoria brought legal action against Gibson for allegedly breaking Australian consumer law. The regulator said it had conducted an in-depth investigation of Gibson's activities and applied to Australia's Federal Court for leave to pursue legal action. Gibson's publisher, Penguin Australia, has already agreed to pay A$30,000 to the Victorian Consumer Law Fund as a penalty for releasing "The Whole Pantry", which was not fact checked.


title: Belle Gibson

text: On 15 March 2017, Federal Court Justice Debra Mortimer delivered the decision that "most but not all" of the claims against Gibson were proven. Gibson did not appear in court for the decision. Justice Mortimer found that Gibson's claims had been misleading and deceptive, and that "Ms. Gibson had no reasonable basis to believe she had cancer from the time she began making these claims in public to promote "The Whole Pantry" Book and the apps in mid-2013", but there was not enough evidence to prove that she was not acting out of delusion.


title: Belle Gibson

text: In September 2017, Gibson was fined $410,000 for making false claims about her donations to charity. , Gibson had not yet paid the fine, and authorities were seeking power to charge her with contempt of court. A new trial was set for 14 May and she faced an undetermined number of years in jail if she did not attend. As of mid-September 2019, Gibson still had not paid, claiming to be broke, and Consumer Affairs Victoria were still seeking to enforce the penalty. In a 2017 letter later released by the Federal Court, Gibson had stated that she was $170,000 in debt, and had $5,000 to her name.


title: Belle Gibson

text: On 22 January 2020, the Sheriff's Office of Victoria raided Gibson's home in Northcote and seized items to recoup Gibson's unpaid fines, which, due to interest and costs, exceeded half a million dollars.


title: Belle Gibson

text: The day after the first raid, on 23 January 2020, a Shabo Media video from October 2019 surfaced in which Gibson was wearing a headscarf and speaking partially in Oromo language (referring to herself as "Sanbontu"), discussing the political situation in Ethiopia with an interviewer and referring to Ethiopia as "back home". She professed to have been adopted by the Ethiopian community in Melbourne after volunteering for four years, calling the adoption a gift from "Allah".


title: Belle Gibson

text: However, on the same day, the president of the Australian Oromo Community Association in Victoria, Tarekegn Chimdi, stated that Gibson was not a registered volunteer, "is not a community member and she's also not working with the community," and that he had only seen her at events two or three times. He expressed that nobody seemed to know who she was and he had only just learnt of her backstory, and expressed a desire for her to stop saying she is part of the community.


title: German military administration in occupied France during World War II

text: The Military Administration in France (; ) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied zone in areas of northern and western France. This so-called ' was established in June 1940, and renamed ' ("north zone") in November 1942, when the previously unoccupied zone in the south known as ' ("free zone") was also occupied and renamed ' ("south zone").


text: Its role in France was partly governed by the conditions set by the Second Armistice at after the success of the leading to the Fall of France; at the time both French and Germans thought the occupation would be temporary and last only until Britain came to terms, which was believed to be imminent. For instance, France agreed that its soldiers would remain prisoners of war until the cessation of all hostilities.


text: The "French State" ("") replaced the French Third Republic that had dissolved in defeat. Though nominally extending its sovereignty over the whole country, it was in practice limited in exercising its authority to the free zone. As Paris was located in the occupied zone, its government was seated in the spa town of Vichy in , and therefore it was more commonly known as Vichy France.


text: While the Vichy government was nominally in charge of all of France, the military administration in the occupied zone was a ' Nazi dictatorship. Nazi rule was extended to the free zone when it was invaded by Germany and Italy during ' on 11 November 1942 in response to Operation Torch, the Allied landings in French North Africa on 8 November 1942. The Vichy government remained in existence, even though its authority was now severely curtailed.


text: The German military administration in France ended with the Liberation of France after the Normandy and Provence landings. It formally existed from May 1940 to December 1944, though most of its territory had been liberated by the Allies by the end of summer 1944.


text: Alsace-Lorraine had been annexed after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 by the German Empire and returned to France after the First World War. It was re-annexed by the Third Reich (thus subjecting their male population to German military conscription.) The departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais were attached to the military administration in Belgium and Northern France, which was also responsible for civilian affairs in the wide "zone interdite" along the Atlantic coast. Another "forbidden zone" were areas in north-eastern France, corresponding to Lorraine and roughly about half each of Franche-Comté, Champagne and Picardie. War refugees were prohibited from returning to their homes, and it was intended for German settlers and annexation in the coming Nazi New Order ("Neue Ordnung").


text: The occupied zone (, , ) consisted of the rest of northern and western France, including the two forbidden zones.


text: The southern part of France, except for the western half of Aquitaine along the Atlantic coast, became the "zone libre" ("free zone"), where the Vichy regime remained sovereign as an independent state, though under heavy German influence due to the restrictions of the Armistice (including a heavy tribute) and economical dependency on Germany. It constituted a land area of 246,618 square kilometres, approximately 45 percent of France, and included approximately 33 percent of the total French labor force. The demarcation line between the free zone and the occupied zone was a de facto border, necessitating special authorisation and a laissez-passer from the German authorities to cross.


text: These restrictions remained in place after Vichy was occupied and the zone renamed "zone sud" ("south zone"), and also placed under military administration in November 1942.


text: The Italian occupation zone consisted of small areas along the Alps border, and a demilitarised zone along the same. It was expanded to all territory on the left bank of the Rhône river after its invasion together with Germany of Vichy France on 11 November 1942, except for areas around Lyon and Marseille, which were added to Germany's "zone sud", and Corsica.


text: The Italian occupation zone was also occupied by Germany and added to the "zone sud" after Italy's surrender in September 1943, except for Corsica, which was liberated by the landings of Free French forces and local Italian troops that became co-belligerents of the Allies.


text: After Germany and France agreed on an armistice following the defeats of May and June, Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and General Charles Huntzinger, representatives of the Third Reich and of the French government of Marshal Philippe Pétain respectively, signed it on 22 June 1940 at the Rethondes clearing in Compiègne Forest. As it was done at the same place and in the same railroad carriage where the armistice ending the First World War when Germany surrendered, it is known as the Second Compiègne armistice.


text: France was roughly divided into an occupied northern zone and an unoccupied southern zone, according to the armistice convention "in order to protect the interests of the German Reich". The French colonial empire remained under the authority of Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime. French sovereignty was to be exercised over the whole of French territory, including the occupied zone, Alsace and Moselle, but the third article of the armistice stipulated that French authorities in the occupied zone would have to obey the military administration and that Germany would exercise rights of an occupying power within it:


text: In the occupied region of France, the German Reich exercises all of the rights of an occupying power. The French government undertakes to facilitate in every way possible the implementation of these rights, and to provide the assistance of the French administrative services to that end. The French government will immediately direct all officials and administrators of the occupied territory to comply with the regulations of, and to collaborate fully with, the German military authorities.


text: The military administration was responsible for civil affairs in occupied France. It was divided into "Kommandanturen" (singular "Kommandantur"), in decreasing hierarchical order "Oberfeldkommandanturen", "Feldkommandanturen", "Kreiskommandanturen", and "Ortskommandanturen". German naval affairs in France were coordinated through a central office known as the "Höheres Kommando der Marinedienststellen in Groß-Paris" (Supreme Command for Naval Services in the Greater Paris Area) who in turn answered to a senior commander for all of France known as the "Admiral Frankreich". After Case Anton, the "Admiral Frankreich" naval command was broken apart into smaller offices which answered directly to the operational command of Navy Group West.


text: In order to suppress partisans and resistance fighters, the military administration cooperated closely with the Gestapo, the "Sicherheitsdienst", the intelligence service of the SS, and the "Sicherheitspolizei", its security police. It also had at its disposal the support of the French authorities and police forces, who had to cooperate per the conditions set in the armistice, to round up Jews, anti-fascists and other dissidents, and vanish them into "Nacht und Nebel", "Night and Fog". It also had the help of collaborationists French auxiliaries like the "Milice", the "Franc-Gardes" and the Legionary Order Service. The two main collaborationist political parties were the French Popular Party (PPF) and the National Popular Rally (RNP), each with 20,000 to 30,000 members.