Category Archives: National Defense

Relabeling

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What is relabeling? It means to change your outward appearance to more accurately reflect your organizations goals and purpose. That has lead to today’s leading story. The question you must ask yourselves, “Is this true? Or, is it about to be true?”

Headline from somewhere on the Internet…

Democrat Party to Relabel Itself

June 31st, 2015
OldDemSymbol

Old DNC Symbol

The DNC announced today that is was discontinuing the use of its century old icon, the Donkey, as its political symbol. After a complaint from PETA claiming the symbol was unfair to depict the party as a “beast of burden,” and after the party agreed that the symbol was inappropriate since many of its members haven’t held jobs nor worked for generations, the DNC announced it was adopting a new symbol more in line with its half century history and political goals.

NewDNCsymbol

New DNC LOGO

AltNewDNCSymbol

Alternate DNC LOGO for official vehicles

The DNC said the new symbol was adopted from the organization that has been closely aligned with the DNC since the 1960s, supporting the party and financing some leading democrat leaders. The DNC said it was finally time to openly display their aims and goals with their new symbol. The DNC included an alternate symbol in their announcement suitable for banners and bumper stickers, especially for official party vehicles.

Party leaders, activists across the the country and academia applauded the announcement.

Yes, I’m feeling snarky this morning.

***

Is the US and NATO acting to blunt Putin’s aggression? He thinks so. NATO troops and armored forces entered Poland for a well publicized military exercise. It is to be a show of force against Putin’s aggression in Crimea and the Ukraine.

Putin is not amused and threatened retaliation. The Cold War has returned at a time when Obama is desperate to have a legacy, any legacy, now that his major accomplishment, Obamacare, may be crippled if the Supreme Court blocks federal subsidies for Obamacare recipients. One pundit said, “You can end communism in Russia, but you can’t remove the KGB from the Russian.” The Russian in this case is Putin. He has reverted to his previous KGB mentality.

The NATO exercise is not impressing the world’s military organizations. NATO has relied too long on the US for their security. NATO and the EU has sacrificed their militaries to feed their socialist states. Now, when the Cold War has resumed and with the US military resources still tied to the Mideast, NATO is barely able to field any forces to repel Putin if he invades the rest of the Ukraine…and perhaps the former EastBloc countries.

Even if the US was not sill involved in the Mideast, the US has reduced it’s military to a century-old level. The US Navy has fewer ships than it did prior to World War I. Much of the US war stocks, built up in Europe during the earlier cold war, has been expended during Gulf Wars I and II. With the military reductions imposed by Obama and the democrats, those war stocks have not been replenished. In some cases during military actions in Iraq and elsewhere, the US Navy ran out of cruise and land attack missiles.

Those miliary stocks have been slowly replaced. If at all. Some of the tooling needed to build more missiles was destroyed by DoD orders when the contracts expired. Now, when more missiles are needed, those tools are gone and it will be expensive to remake them.

But Putin isn’t the only aggressor on the horizon, The PRC, Communist China to everyone but the socialists around the world, is building a military base in the territory claimed by several other nations.

China builds new island military bases in South China Sea

Posted: May 20, 2015 8:06 PM CDT Updated: May 27, 2015 8:06 PM CDT
 
The new islands have been called unsinkable aircraft carriers. (Source: CNN)

The new islands have been called unsinkable aircraft carriers. (Source: CNN)

The new islands have been called unsinkable aircraft carriers. (Source: CNN)

SOUTH CHINA SEA (CNN) – It’s a tense confrontation between China’s military and an American spy plane monitoring disturbing developments in disputed waters hundreds of miles off the Chinese coast.

China’s activity in the South China Sea has peaked the interest of the U.S. military.

“Foreign military aircraft. This is the Chinese Navy. You are approaching our military alert zone.”

High above the South China Sea, the radio crackles with a stern warning.

“You go!”

The source of dispute appears on the horizon, seemingly out of nowhere.

Islands, manmade by China, located hundreds of miles from its coastline.

CNN got exclusive access to classified U.S. surveillance flights over the islands.

The first time journalists have been allowed on the operational mission by the state of the art P-8 Poseidon, America’s most advance surveillance and sub-hunting aircraft.

Three islands are the target of the mission. It’s the three islands that have been the focus of China’s building in the South China Sea over recent years.

China’s alarming creation of entirely new territory in the South China Sea is one part of a broader military push that some fear is to push U.S. dominance in the region.

Sailing its first aircraft carrier, equipping its nuclear missions with multiple warheads, developing missiles to destroy aircraft carriers, and now building military bases far from its shores.

For the U.S., the islands are a step too far. And the flight is a part of a new and old American military response that may soon include sailing U.S. warships close by as well.

In just two years, China has expanded the islands by 2,000 acres. The equivalent of 1,500 football fields and counting, an engineering marvel in waters as deep as 300 feet.

An American commander talks about what he sees.

“It appears to be a buildup of military infrastructure and not to mention we were just challenged probably 30 minutes ago and the challenge came from the Chinese Navy. And I’m highly confident that it came from a shore on this facility,” said Capt. Mike Parker, commander in the U.S. Navy.

What used to be the fiery cross reef now has early warning radar and an airport tower and a runway long enough to handle every aircraft in the Chinese military.

Some are calling it China’s unsinkable aircraft carrier.

The videos of the island taken from the P-8 advanced surveillance cameras never before declassified.

In a sign of just how valuable that China views them, the new islands are already well protected.

“There’s obviously a lot of surface traffic down there… uhh… Chinese warships and Chinese coast guard ships,” said Lt. Commander Matt Newman, mission commander in the U.S. Navy.

And there is proof. The Chinese navy ordering the P-8 out of the airspace not one, not twice, but eight times on the mission.

“This is the Chinese Navy. This is the Chinese Navy. Please go away quickly.”

And like the surveillance video, the audio of these warnings never before shared with the public.

What is interesting is there are also civilian aircrafts, there was a Delta flight on that same frequency. And when it heard that challenge it piped into the frequency to say what’s going on?

The Chinese Navy then reassuring them but as the flight crew says that can be a very nerve wracking experience for civilian aircraft in the area.

And the more China builds the more frequently and aggressively it warns away U.S. aircraft.

The crucial issue facing American voters in the coming national election is who to choose to lead us in the coming troubled times? Some of the candidates are isolationists, although they refuse to acknowledge the label. If a military confrontation occurs in the Ukraine or in the South China Sea, will our next President refuse to act, claiming it is not our business, or will he defend our allies and national security?

As much as some libertarians deny the fact, we cannot sit isolated from the world. We are dependent on allies and, if we are to have allies, they must be able to depend on us. The US and India has entered into talks discussing areas of mutual interest…the South China Sea, being one. India has a common border with China and has had military border disputes with China before.

When we choose a new President, we must chose one who is unafraid to remain involved in the world because the world will not be afraid to be involved in us.

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Friday Follies for September 12, 2014

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I made a mistake yesterday…a math error really. I had calculated that 110 votes were needed in the Missouri House to overturn Governor Jay Nixon’s veto. I was wrong. It was 109 votes that was needed.

At the end of yesterday’s post, I made a little rant about needing just one more vote to override the veto on SB 523 that prohibited RFID tracking of public school students. I thought the veto had been sustained. I was wrong. The veto on SB 523 was overturned. Yay!!

***

Democrats are going crazy…well more than they usually are. As November and it’s midterm election grows closer, the democrats sink deeper in the outhouse. Real Clear Politics released their Battleground poll and it’s not good—for the democrats. The poll shows them 18 points down, overall.

BATTLEGROUND POLL SHOWS DEMS DOWN BY 18 POINTS
If this week’s polling is any evidence, Democrats are facing an even tougher road come November. With President Obama’s approval sinking below former president George W. Bush’s, the latest Fox News poll finds Republicans hold the advantage as they seek to reclaim the Senate. In states with active U.S. Senate races, likely voters say they would back the Republican a 9-point margin. And when looking at the results in just the 14 Fox News battleground states the GOP edge widens to 18-point margin.  Fox News: “The president recently claimed that ‘by almost every measure’ the nation’s economy and American workers are better off now than when he took office. Voters dismiss his boast as ‘mostly false’ by a 58-36 percent margin. That includes 37 percent of Democrats who think it doesn’t ring true.”

[The battleground list: Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, New Hampshire, South Dakota and West Virginia] — FOX Newsletter, September 12, 2014.

The Battleground poll is not the only indicator that the dems are losing their base. Their so-call War on Women campaign is failing, too. In fact, it appears their campaign has boomeranged against them.

Dem base cracks up – WaPo: “Women surveyed [in the WaPo/ABC News poll] said they disapprove of [President Obama ] by a 50 percent to 44 percent margin — nearing an all-time low in the poll. It’s almost the reverse of the 55 percent to 44 percent breakdown for Obama among female voters in 2012, according to exit polls…His approval rating among women has slipped four percentage points from a year ago and 16 points since his second inaugural in January 2013, when his approval was 60 percent among the group. Among younger voting-age Americans, Obama’s approval rating stood at 43 percent. That marked an 11-point drop since June among those 18 to 29 years old.” — FOX Newsletter, September 12, 2014.

When you add to these polls other indicators, such as the massive override yesterday of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon’s vetos on such controversial issues as Abortion, Gun Rights, and Open Carry, it doesn’t take a genius to know that the dems are in trouble. It couldn’t happen to a better party.

***

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIL, the Islamic State of the Levant, as Obama calls it, is at war with the US, so said Obama the other night. What’s the difference between ISIS and ISIL? The included territory. The Levant is the old 19th century name for that portion of the Mediterranean coast from southern Turkey down to the Sinai peninsula. It includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and…Israel. No one includes Israel as ISIS territory except Obama.

But continuing, we, as a nation, are upset at seeing a stream of barbarity by ISIS. People wonder how civilized people could do such massive murder and mayhem. The answer is quite simple. ISIS and their Islamic followers are not civilized. They have not progressed to a social and cultural level where a nation is possible. They are stuck in a primitive culture, in stasis, that grants loyalty only to the family, clan, or at best, tribe.

Tom Kratman, author, lawyer and retired US Army Lt. Colonel, wrote an article for a web-magazine. He drew on his experience, acquired during Gulf War I and later, to write why Islamists behave as they do. Kratman speaks and writes bluntly—but he knows well of what he says.

Why Are Arab Armies So Generally Worthless?

Mon, Sep 1 – 9:00 am EDT | 2 weeks ago by

http://www.everyjoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/lines-of-departure-arab-army.pngAs an American soldier, I found that one of the best and most satisfying things about the first Gulf War, the liberation of Kuwait, was that we’d never again have to listen to how great the Israelis were. We’d seen the Arabs, met them, and went through them like a hot knife through butter. What did Tzahal have to teach us?

It’s a complex set of problems they have, the armies of the Arab world. Here’s a true story that will illustrate a lot of that why. It’s also a story I’ve told before in the essay, Training for War1:

During Bright Star 85, the Egyptian Army, which is one of the better Arab armies, set up some tents for us as Wadi Natrun, northwest of Cairo. The officer in charge of the detail looked at the Americans, looked at the tents (which were, by the way, better than ours), looked at the Americans…

He was thinking that an American’s signature on a hand receipt would do him no good if one of those very good and very expensive tents grew legs and went to hide in a shipping container. He put his platoon in formation, held up three fingers, and announced, “I need three guards.”

Every man reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wallet and began peeling off notes. That is to say, they were offering bribes, baksheesh. The three who came up with the smallest bribes were picked to guard the tents. These three then proceeded to squat by the road, hold hands, and cry like babies.2 And it was sort of understandable that they cried because for the next four days they got no food or water except what our men gave them out of pity; their officer just didn’t care.

That’s what you fight when you fight Arab armies, and that’s why we went through them like lightning. They’re a collection of demoralized bipedal sheep, usually led by corrupt and connected human filth. Exceptions? Sure there are exceptions; I’ve met a few. That’s why we call them “exceptional.” Shazly, the Egyptian general who got the army across the Suez, was an exception. He’s dead. Baki Zaki Youssef, the then young lieutenant of engineers who figured out how to breach the sand wall on the eastern bank of the Suez is old now. That he’s also a Copt, a Christian, may also suggest something about the problems of the Muslim mass.3

The Arabs are what the sociologists like to call “amoral familists.” This means that they are nearly or totally incapable of forming bonds of love and loyalty with anyone not a blood relation. Even then, the degree of blood relation determines where loyalty legitimately lies. The saying in the area is: “Me and my brother against my cousin; me, my brother and my cousin against the world.” This not only allows a superior to extort baksheesh from non-relations, but identifies him as an idiot – a weak idiot, actually – if he does not.

The Arab private? He’s no more a coward than anybody else. Indeed, as an individual, I might rate him above, or even substantially above, the human norm. But he is just one man, alone.

With us, the very broad us within the western military tradition and some eastern military traditions, or with Israelis, who are very western, “It’s all of us against all of them. They’re toast.” With him? With that poor dumb-shit Arab private? “It’s all of them against me alone. I’m toast.” He knows no one in his unit cares about him; after all, he doesn’t care about any of them, either. They’re just not family. So when that private is placed in the loneliest position in the world, the modern battlefield? He runs or surrenders at the first sign things are going badly. (He’ll be fine as long as they are going well, though. Note: Things rarely go well.) Defeat is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy that has been fulfilled so often at this point that an Arab who didn’t expect it probably ought be locked up for his own good.

Add in the fantasy mindset. Don’t forget “Insh’allah,” (Which is like “mañana,” but without the sense of urgency) which makes it somewhat impious to train really well since it is all the will of God anyway. Insh’allah also provides an excuse for bad behavior on the battlefield. Add in a set of social values that despise and loathe physical labor.

Militarily, they’ve got nothing going for them.4

This may piss some people off; the Israelis have routinely stomped the Arabs so badly not because the Israelis are so great. In fact, outside of a few units the Israelis are just decent citizen soldier militia, nothing very special. But fighting the Arabs even just decent militia can shine.

I suggested in footnote four, below, that there is a way to make better Arab units, but it has three severe limitations and problems. The first of these is closely related to what I said above, Arabs rarely if ever can form bonds of loyalty and love with non-blood relations. Hence, one forms units of blood relations. They will fight like hell for each other, their fathers and uncles, their brothers and cousins, and for the glory of the clan. What happens then, though?

The first problem is that the units so formed are also the power, standing and security of their clan. They can only afford to lose or to risk so much without damaging that power, standing and security. They won’t usually run. Surrender is rare indeed. Still, there comes a point when they simply have to retire in good order.

The second problem is a problem from the point of view of the government that raises the blood-based units. In an organization that is formed from a clan or tribe, the loyalty of everyone, from the rank and file to the commanding officer, is not to the government. It isn’t to the country, which is a pretty weak concept in the Arab world anyway. Family and faith matter there a great deal; countries little or not at all.

I don’t know if the third problem is inevitable, but I’ve seen it just about enough to suspect so.

Watch the commander of a battalion of the Saudi Haras al Watiny, the National Guard.5 Watch how he acts with his driver. Tactfully nose about to see what the familial relationship is with that driver. Odds are, the driver – driving, not being driven, is the prestige and power position amongst the Saudi Arabs – is the battalion commander’s uncle, hence senior in the clan. He is the real battalion commander. He exercises real political control over the battalion. He may let the youngster pretend that said youngster is in charge. The above may differ in details, but the trend generally holds.

__________

1 http://www.amazon.com/Training-War-Essay-Tom-Kratman-ebook/dp/B00JQI9TH2/ref=pd_rhf_gw_p_d_3 Note the temptingly low price.

2 Although there does appear to be a fairly strong element of bisexuality in the Arab male’s makeup, no, men holding hands doesn’t mean that.

3 I’m really not a huge fan of most people, but I’ll state for the record that if there are any people living I’d go out of my way to shake the hand of, Lieutenant Baki Zaki Youssef is not least among them. Neither would Shazly have been.

4 The Arab Legion is a partial exception to this, as is the Saudi National Guard, but they are highly limited exceptions.

5 The Haras al Watiny is the Saudi version of balance of power/separation of powers. They’re not as heavily equipped as the Saudi Army, not nearly, but they don’t need to be because they’re much tougher. Much. Personally, I quite like the Haras as, indeed, I like the Saudis.

Tom Kratman writes a weekly column, Lines of Departure, on the Every Joe Website.
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Is history repeating itself?

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A number of writers and bloggers, myself included, have noted the similarities of our current events to those just prior to World War I. If you take a step back and look at the underlying issues, our times also mirror events during the 1930s just before World War II.

Putin wants to restore Russia to its former USSR status. While the former USSR was nominally Communist, it was governed by a closed group, a political party that operated as an oligarchy. Hitler, like Putin after him, wanted to restore Germany to the status it held before World War I with its world-wide empire. Germany, like the USSR, was nominally socialist but was governed by an oligarchy masquerading as the National Socialist Workers Party, the Nazis.

Hitler took the Rhineland breaking Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact in 1936. The Rhineland was a demilitarized zone in western Germany, that created a buffer between isolating Germany from Belgium and France.

The Treaty of Versailles, signed in July 1919–eight months after the guns fell silent in World War I–called for stiff war reparation payments and other punishing peace terms for defeated Germany. Having been forced to sign the treaty, the German delegation to the peace conference indicated its attitude by breaking the ceremonial pen. As dictated by the Treaty of Versailles, Germany’s military forces were reduced to insignificance and the Rhineland was to be demilitarized.

In 1925, at the conclusion of a European peace conference held in Switzerland, the Locarno Pact was signed, reaffirming the national boundaries decided by the Treaty of Versailles and approving the German entry into the League of Nations. The so-called “spirit of Locarno” symbolized hopes for an era of European peace and goodwill, and by 1930 German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann had negotiated the removal of the last Allied troops in the demilitarized Rhineland. — History.com.

Two years later in march of 1938, Hitler annexed Austria into the growing German Empire. The Anschluss, as it was called, is exactly like the annexation of Crimea into Putin’s resurgent Russian Empire.

Before the end of 1938, Hitler, through political maneuverings, absorbed the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia when Neville Chamberlain of Britain and Édouard Daladier of France refused to intervene.

http://gdb.voanews.com/CBBF0236-4C48-427A-8268-A80B0BECB923_cx0_cy10_cw0_mw1024_s_n.jpgI should note that Russian armored forces has entered the Ukraine and the Ukraine is left defenseless after the US and NATO have refused to honor security agreements between them and the Ukrainian government.

Ukraine says Russian forces cross border in tanks, armored vehicles

By Annie Gowen and Karoun Demirjian August 25 at 11:12 AM

KIEV — Ukraine charged that Russian forces crossed into eastern Ukraine early Monday in military vehicles, including tanks, as Russia vowed to send a second humanitarian aid convoy into the country this week to deliver emergency supplies to areas held by pro-Moscow separatists.

Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said Russian military vehicles with the insignia of the separatists’ self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic “violated the state border of Ukraine” near Novoazovsk in the southern part of Donetsk region.

It was the latest, and one of the most forceful, accusations from Kiev that Russia has been directly supplying weapons, personnel and other assistance to the separatists fighting government troops in eastern Ukraine.

…

Lysenko said at least 10 tanks, two armored vehicles and two trucks from russia crossed into Ukrainian territory at 5:20 a.m. Monday, potentially bound for the key port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov. The highway leading to Mariupol is currently under control of the Ukrainian military, he said.

The Russian military vehicles flying rebel flags moved toward the village of Shcherbak, where they engaged in battle with soldiers of a Ukrainian border unit, Lysenko said in a briefing Monday. He said the Ukrainian forces then called for reinforcements and managed to stop the advance of the convoy just outside the villages of Shcherbak and Markyne. The villages are north of the larger town of Novoazovsk, about five miles from the Russian border.

The rest of the article can be found here, at the Washington Post website.

The first question is if Putin’s incursion into the Ukraine is like that of Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939. The difference is that in 1939, Britain and France actually honored their treaties with Poland. Today, after Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, Obama couldn’t be bothered and is playing golf somewhere and the EU nations and NATO have emasculated themselves by depending on the US military to provide their defense. The similarities between today and the open scenes of World War II are astounding.

On the other side of the world, similar scenes are playing. In the 1930s, Imperial Japan invaded China in a quest for natural resources. As an island nation, Japan had few, if any, resources needed for an industrialized society. It lacked oil, iron and coal. China and the territory around the South China Sea, Indo-China, the Philippines, and Dutch East Indian Islands, had all those resources in abundance. The problem facing Japan is that the territory belonged to other European powers…until an opportunity arose when those powers became embroiled in war.

Communist China is acting Imperial Japan of the 1930s. China has arbitrarily and in violation of a number of Open Seas treaties, laid claim to much of the South China Sea—and the resources that lay underneath those shallow waters. China started drilling in territory claimed by Vietnam that sparked riots and the movement of Chinese troops to the Vietnamese border.

China has expanded their military and has recently taken to harassing US Navy maritime patrol planes. In 2001, a Chinese fighter colliding with a US Navy EP-3 patrol aircraft causing the US plane to make an emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. China asserted its right to harass aircraft after this latest incident.

China rejects U.S. criticism over jet encounter

BEIJING Sat Aug 23, 2014 1:19pm EDT

(Reuters) – China on Saturday called US criticism of an approach by one of its jets to a US Navy patrol plane off the Chinese coast earlier this week “completely groundless” and said its pilot had maintained a safe distance from the US aircraft.

The strongly-worded statement attributed to Ministry of National Defense spokesman Yang Yujun was a response to a diplomatic complaint the Pentagon filed with Beijing on Friday.

The complaint concerned an August 19 encounter about 215 km (135 miles) east of China’s Hainan Island in which a Chinese fighter jet came within meters (yards) of a US P-8 Poseidon anti-submarine and reconnaissance plane and, the US claimed, performed acrobatic maneuvers around it.In its statement, the Chinese defense ministry said the J-11 jet was conducting routine checks and described the pilot’s actions as professional.The United States’ frequent short-range reconnaissance missions threatened the safety of both militaries, it said.

It urged the US to reduce short-range reconnaissance against China and to respect international law and conventions.

Yes, more and more the world appears to be entering a new stage for conflict, a conflict on the scale of earlier world wars. And, like those earlier wars, the United States and Europe are woefully unprepared for conflict.

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The Crazy Years

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Robert A Heinlein’s ‘Future History’ had a period during the latter half of the 20th Century called the Crazy Years. From a late 1940s, 1950s viewpoint, Heinlein, in some of his books, included headlines that would seem farcial when viewed through the lenses of the common culture at that time.

One definition of ‘Crazy Years’ was proposed by writer John C. Wright.

The main sign of when madness has possessed a crowd, or a civilization, is when the people are fearful of imaginary or trivial dangers but nonchalant about real and deep dangers. When that happens, there is gradual deterioration of mores, orientation, and social institutions—the Crazy Years have arrived. — John C. Wright.

How accurate! People up in arms about being offended at common words while ignoring the infusion of our enemies through their ‘open border’ policies.

Heinlein’s future history has been documented in his novels and short stories. While the fictional time period of the Crazy Years, as viewed by Heinlein’s timeline, was in the past century, if you use Wright’s definition above, the Crazy Years are now.

http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133417/143913341701.jpg

One technique used by Heinlein was to include fictional headlines in his stories, headlines that may have appeared on some tabloid of the time. One such headline, if I remember it correctly, was, “Two-headed boy born to…” We only need to view the headlines on Drudge to see the parallels of our current condition to the Crazy Years Heinlein foresaw over half a century ago. Below is a random sampling from Drudge. If you read them as if they appeared in one of Heinlein’s stories, a viewpoint of the early 1960s, no one would believe they were real.

State Department hires firm to coach witnesses on Congressional testimony...

Mystery 'Water Vigilante' Cuts Flow to Homes...

Border Patrol: Feds Releasing Murderers Into USA...

School District Defends 9th Grade Sex-Ed Book Detailing Bondage...

Heinlein would have been astounded…well perhaps not. He had a cynical view of people. Writer Sarah A Hoyt has a more descriptive view of our current times. She calls them the, “fracking insane years.”

I’m here to tell you these are not the crazy years, these are the fracking insane years.  Yesterday I went for a long walk and because I didn’t have my son – he was volunteering at the hospital – and therefore had to stay off the more interesting parts of downtown, I took an audio book to keep me company.  The book, because I’m writing space opera and trying to internalize his rhythms (and also because I really am trying to avoid using his terminology, etc, by reminding myself what it is.  I grew up with it, and to me it just means “science fiction” but of course it’s more than that), was Methuselah’s Children by Robert A. Heinlein.

When he hits the description of the Crazy years – you know, kids striking for less homework, more pay (for going to school) and eating clay sandwiches and such, I thought “Brother, you didn’t know from crazy.” — Sarah A. Hoyt.

Sarah Hoyt is right! Look at the mess along our southern border. Obama has created an environment where our country is actually being invaded, not by armed troops, although some of the drug gangs will substitute nicely for that, but by teenagers and younger children sent here on a false promise of prosperity. A horde of potential, and some actual, parasites with no skills, no education, nothing to allow them to actually build an independent life within the United States.

The libs say the invasion is irresistible. Others say it’s not but it would be disruptive from the infiltrators already in the country. The inflow can be halted. We’ve done it before. But the disloyal opposition, the libs and open border advocates, is ably abetted by the establishment politicians of all parties in Washington.

How, do you ask, could be end the invasion? It’s simple—enforce the laws currently on the books, deploy troops along the border to combat the armed incursions from Mexico and the cartels, end all benefits and assistance to illegals in the US regardless of their method of entry, and finally, cut ALL federal money to any city, county and state that refuses to enforce those immigration laws, i.e., the Sanctuary Cities.

I would bet, when the federal funding ends, San Francisco and the other Sanctuary Cities, and states like California, would quickly change—or succumb to chaos. On second thought, the libs and their Marxist supporters would probably welcome chaos believing they could win a coup—at least at the state level. Considering California, I’m not sure if that would be any different from the current state of the state’s politics.

The bottom line is that we could reverse the influx of illegal aliens if we had the desire and backbone. Unfortunately, we have neither in the federal government. We truly live in “fracking insane years!”

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It’s Monday!

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Urg!

That was my usual response before I retired. I was fortunate during my last working years to be able to work from home. I told people my morning commute was thirty steps downstairs to my home office. After I retired, I continued most of those habits…writing this blog being one.

Last Friday, I wrote a post about the apparent downward spiral to war in Eastern Europe. It is arguable whether the Ukraine is European. My definition is that all of the territory west of the Ural and the ‘stans, are European, if only by religion and heritage. The major religions are the Catholic varieties—Roman, Greek and Russ ion Orthodox. Those areas mark the furthest extent of the Turkish/Islamic advance of the 16th and 17th Century.

But Eastern Europe is not the only area where war warnings exist. WesPac is a potential point of conflict as well. Finally, someone in the Pentagon and Washington is looking westward instead of eastward.

Amid Chinese Aggression, Obama Affirms U.S. Defense of Japan’s Senkaku Islands

April 24, 2014 at 3:49 pm

During his trip to Japan, President Obama publicly affirmed long-standing U.S. policy that the bilateral security treaty applies to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands. China claims sovereignty over the islands and, in recent years, has tried to intimidate Japan—much as Beijing has bullied the Philippines in pursuit of its extralegal territorial claims in the South China Sea.

President Obama’s statement was a welcome and proper confirmation of U.S. support for a critical Pacific ally.

During a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Obama declared, “let me reiterate that our treaty commitment to Japan’s security is absolute, and Article 5 [of the bilateral security treaty] covers all territories under Japan’s administration, including the Senkaku Islands.”

While this was the first time Obama publicly affirmed the parameters of the U.S. defense commitment to Japan, it is consistent with the long-standing policies of his predecessors. As Obama pointed out, “this isn’t a ‘red line’ that I’m drawing; it is the standard interpretation over multiple administrations of the terms of the alliance…There’s no shift in position. There’s no “red line” that’s been drawn. We’re simply applying the treaty.”

In 2004, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage stated that the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty “would require any attack on Japan, or the administrative territories under Japanese control, to be seen as an attack on the United States.”

During a 2010 flare-up of tensions between China and Japan over the Senkakus, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, “we have made it very clear that the [Senkaku] islands are part of our mutual treaty obligations, and the obligation to defend Japan

The Obama administration’s public reassurance to Japan is meant to deter China from behaving aggressively. In recent years, Beijing has used military and economic threats, bombastic language, and enforcement through military bullying to extend its extra-legal claims of sovereignty in the East and South China Seas.

In November 2013, China declared an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea, including the Senkaku Islands. Beijing threatened to use its military to enforce the ADIZ. Washington condemned this declaration as a provocative act that exacerbated tensions in the region and increased the risks of a military clash.

Beijing is also attempting to divert attention from its own actions by mischaracterizing Japan as a threat to regional security. China’s bellicose actions have fueled regional concern and triggered a greater Japanese willingness confront Chinese expansionism and strengthen its military. This willingness to defend its territory has been mischaracterized as a resurgence of Japan’s 1930s imperial militarism.

One of Japan’s problems isn’t with Chinese aggression. Their problem is toothless assurances from the United States when a significant portion of the US Naval Fleet…is along dockside, awaiting repairs, upgrades, or lacking the funding to return to the fleet.

According to sources, there are 430 ships believed to be in active service. That includes ships under construction and in reserve. The majority of these ships were built in the late 20th Century, some dating as far back as the 1960s. The Fleet is aging.

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), USS Enterprise (CVN 65), USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) — Norfolk Naval Yard, December 2012.

During the Bush years, we had twelve carriers afloat, each carrier being the center of a battlegroup. That number has been reduced to ten. The photo to the left, taken over the Christmas and New Years holidays in 2012. Reduced those battlegroups on the high seas, from ten to five for a short period.

With those ship’s crews on leave for the holidays, how quickly could they have responded if the Chinese chose to ignore the treaty between Japan and the US? My guess would be a month to retrieve the crews, top off consumables and sail to the trouble area.

Does Obama’s, Kerry’s and Hillery’s statements affirming that US/Japanese alliance hold water? I don’t know. The question really is, does the Chinese believe it does.

***

Clive Bundy is in the news again. He stepped in it, big time. He had an interview with a reporter from the New York Times. The NYT did it’s usual hatchet-job, taking Bundy’s words out of context, changing the order, doing their usual job putting Bundy in the worse light possible. The MSM took it an ran with it.

In the end, Bundy did say those things. However his statements does not change the facts about the BLM’s aggression and overt attempts of land grabbing.

In response to the NYT interview, this column appeared in The American Thinker.

Why It’s Okay to Hate Cliven Bundy

By J.R. Dunn, April 28, 2014

It has become clear that Cliven Bundy was transgressed by the New York Times, his words taken out of context and retailed in such a way as to mean something they were not. Bundy is no racist, and the attempt to make him look like one is another step downward in the collapse of American national media.

But conservatives still have a right — in fact, a responsibility — to be annoyed with Bundy.

To wit: Bundy did not walk, not stumble, did not swerve into the trap set by the New York Times.  He was not ambushed, he was not taken by surprise. He instead ran full tilt and threw himself into that trap, exactly like the kid at the end of Million Dollar Hotel.

Bundy sat across from a reporter for the NYT, the most vicious, calculating, untrustworthy, and dishonest nest of vipers in the entire U.S. media network, and talked straight to him about matters of import and controversy, under the impression that he would understand and transmit his thoughts the way that he actually expressed them.

Nobody, a full century into the progressive era, seventy years into the epoch of big government, and fifty years after the mass media turned anti-American as a matter of course, has any right to do this. Nobody has a right to be that stupid, to be that ill-informed, or to be that self-centered.

Granted that Bundy, a lifetime Nevada rancher, is not the epitome of sophistication. He is not the typical Times reader, even for Nevada. He may well have never held a copy of the paper in his hands, much less read it. But that’s no excuse, because the status and nature of the New York Times has become a truism of American political culture. It is the bastion of left-wing thought in the media, the source from which everyone else takes their cue. In conservative circles, it’s what amounts to a punchline.

Bundy must have heard of this, at least vaguely. And yet he went out, and kindly loaded up Adam Nagourney’s pistol for him, then turned around, took his hat off, and waited for the bullet. The living portrait of middle-American conservatism in the 21st century.

How many times does this have to happen? How many Todd Akins do we need giving bizarre lectures on female biology exactly as if he knew what he was talking about? How many O’Donnells do we need providing ammunition to Bill Maher? How many Mourdocks? Even Sarah Palin, one of smartest political figures we’ve got, fell for this her first time out. (Granted, she was given plenty of help by McCain’s staff.)

I have been interviewed by newspaper reporters several dozen times in my various careers in business, writing, and conservative politics. How many times was I quoted correctly? Not once. Not a single time. Reporters typically mangle quotes, misunderstand what you’re saying, shift contexts, or deliberately rearrange statements to make them work the way they want. (And there’s nothing you can do about this. Once you speak to a reporter, what you have said is the newspaper’s property.  That’s right. Your words no longer belong to you — according to their interpretation. Your statement is theirs, to do with as they see fit, with no input from you, the schmuck who merely spoke the words. Of course, there’s no legal backing for this whatsoever. But there’s no legal backing for airline baggage handlers destroying expensive musical instruments. Yet they still get away with it.) The first time you see this it’s annoying. The second time it’s infuriating. The third time it’s expected.

Why do they do this? Not necessarily out of maliciousness or stupidity. (Though  that’s true often enough.) It’s the culture. The idea that newspapers are there to print “facts,” Who-what-where -when-and-why, is mythology gone with Jimmy Olsen and His Gal Friday. Today, reporters work with certain formats, to which they are expected to fit any related story.  One such concept is “every conservative is a hate-filled, fanatic Neanderthal.”  A corollary of this is “All Nevada ranchers are demented racists.”

Papers higher on the food chain, along with magazines and broadcast and cable networks, have agendas which these stereotypical patterns are used to support. I doubt I need to detail the nature of these agendas.

From these realities certain rules can be derived.

1) These people are not on your side.

2) Anything you say can and will be used against you.

3) Nothing you say will ever be used to support your position (or any conservative position at all.)

So what can we do in this situation? A friend of mine long experienced in public relations puts it very simply: you tell them exactly what you want them to say in the exact words that you want them to say it with. No ambiguity, no complications, no diversions. Then you stop. You don’t say any more. You add nothing. You don’t answer their questions. Their questions are not intended to shed light on your ideas or to develop detail. They are meant to trip you up and that is all. Anybody who acts as if they are truly interested in what you think about them there Negroes or legitimate rape is speaking as the enemy. You don’t feed them. You don’t hand them the weapon to strike you down with. You say “good afternoon” and turn on your heel.

The article continues at the website. It is a lesson to be learned. The media are not our friends, regardless of the medium and the reputation of the reporter. You are always on record and the media, like rapacious piranha, are waiting to feed upon you.

Politicians and candidates take note. Be careful what you say. If you are a conservative, the bottom-feeders are waiting for you to make a mistake or to misspeak.

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George McGovern—then and now

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I haven’t heard much about this on the broadcast and print news…George McGovern died. Many of the younger folk won’t know who he was. He was the socialist…democrat candidate for President in 1972 running against Nixon. Nixon was up for his second term after beating Hubert Humphrey in 1968.

He was beaten by Nixon in a landslide. The democrats blamed the fiasco over VP candidate Senator Thomas Eagleton (D-MO). The real reason was not Eagleton’s issues, but the fact that McGovern wanted to appease the Russians and the North Vietnamese. His plan would be an effective disassembly of our military—cutting it in half in the case of the Navy and Air Force. The plan would be a withdrawal of the US forces opposing the Soviet Union, Communist China and the other dictatorships in eastern Europe and around the world.

I remember seeing a chart in Time magazine with the comparative size of our military compared to the Soviets before and after McGovern. It’s my belief that chart destroyed McGovern’s chances for the Presidency.

The before chart was bad. The US Army was 1/4th the size of the Soviet army, The long-range US Air Force bombers was on par with the Soviets. But it was our Navy—a true three ocean Navy that outclassed the Soviets. Except for submarines. There, we had a clear advantage in nuclear subs. The Soviets had many more diesel-electric subs that we did. In fact, at that time, most US diesel-subs were being decommissioned.

The after McGovern chart was horrible. The ground forces situation was worse. The US bomber force was cut in half as well as our land-based ICBMs. The Navy was reduced to nine fleets, if I remember correctly, and the Navy ballistic subs were cut as well. All this at a time the Soviets were pushing all around the world.

McGovern lost handily as he deserved.

Now that you’ve had a history lesson, compare McGovern’s plan with Obama’s. Our armed forces are in disarray and demoralized. The Navy is smaller than our Navy before WW I. We no longer have a long range bomber force. Most of our remaining long-range bombers—the B-52s and B-1bs have been converted to carry conventional bombs. Only a few remain in their original nuclear configuration. Few, if any, are on ramp alert.

And what is happening on the other side of the world? China is preparing to seize the oil and gas rich South China Sea, a territory also claimed by Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippine Islands. Putin just completed an exercise of their nuclear forces and is deploying a new-generation of mobile ICBMs. We, on the other hand, decommissioned our last ICBM upgrade, the Peace-Keeper ICBM, as part of the S.T.A.R.T. treaty. Putin is ignoring the treaty when it suits him.

There are reports that Putin is placing MRBM missile in Cuba as Khrushchev attempted to do 50 years ago. He’s also rebuilding Russian bases around the world.

The world is not a safe place. As our ability to extend a military presence around the world declines, those who oppose us will fill in the gaps left by our withdrawal. The result will endanger us all.

After the debate last night, focus groups said Obama had a better handle in foreign policy than Romney. We are truly in danger if half the country really believes that.

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Friday Follies for July 13, 2012

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I didn’t realize until this moment that today is Friday the 13th!  Heh!  I don’t care. I’m not superstitious. 

***

Last night was the local ‘Pub monthly meeting.  It was held in the new county HQ. There were few chairs—standing room only. To say “crowded” was an understatement. Our meetings are usually more for meetin’ ‘n greetin’, the politician’s favorite past-time. This one was no exception. I’m not much of a talker. My leg had been hurting all day so we slipped out after grabbing a yard sign for a friend who’s running for office.

One thing struck me.  The “usuals”, those who come to almost every meeting, were there.  There too were some who rarely attend. The reason they were attending is that the Missouri primary is less than a month away and a number of the office holders have primary opponents. I saw several office holders present that I haven’t seen since the county ‘Pub Christmas dinner. Funny how the hot breath of unemployment, in this case losing office, makes a politician more visible to the public.

Many of these folks have become good friends. I’ve supported many with cash, passed out flyers, stood outside polls to help persuade those who arrive still undecided on a candidate. I do my bit, small though it be, to support those who have the same ideals as my wife and I.  But I will describe these events as I see them and will undoubtedly ruffle a feather or two.

I’m not criticizing. It’s human nature. The closer we come to an election, the greater the need to meet with other candidates, make or reaffirm alliances, and for some, to do a little plotting.  I have named myself an Observer of these events. I’m not interesting in running for public office, with one minor exception. But frequently, these meetings make great theater.

***

Some news on the national front. Romney has finally gotten some backbone.  He has publicly called Obama a liar.  It’s about time! As others have said, Romney should treat Obama with the same tactics he treated Santorum, Gingrich and others.  Those were Romney’s fellow Republicans. He must not be less lenient to Obama.

Whether this tactic is working won’t be known from some time yet but there is some early indications that Obama is in deep, deep trouble. His tactics aren’t working.

Polls Prove Romney Outsmarted the Media … Again

For weeks, all we’ve heard in reference to the media/Obama-led attacks against Romney’s so-called outsourcing and offshore accounts is the following: “Romney needs to respond… Romney doesn’t have a response… It’s time for Romney to respond.” Across the media spectrum, we’ve heard this from Obama’s Media Palace Guards on Twitter, in op-eds disguised as straight news, and from television’s talking heads. The media has quite purposefully turned this call for Romney to respond into an incessant drumbeat. But…

It’s a trap.

You see, the outsourcing charge is a bald-faced lie and the offshore-account charge is nothing more than a smear. It was the Washington Post that started the outsourcing lie and it was an Occupy-supporter in Vanity Fair who started the offshore-account smear.

A lie is a lie is a lie.

And a lie can’t gain much traction because, other than the false charge, there’s nothing else for the corrupt media to talk about. But one way to extend a false narrative is to pressure the victim of the lie to respond. A response automatically gives the narrative another few days of life, but as a result only does more damage to the victim. Therefore… a trap.

By not responding, the Romney campaign played a nerve-wracking (for his supporters) game of chicken but ultimately made the wise decision not to feed this narrative fire — to not be the ones who gave the lies artificial life through the pointless act of trying to prove a negative.

And today, polls show Romney made the exact right decision:

Two things have become clear in the presidential race over the past month. One, it’s evident that President Obama’s campaign team believes, with good justification, that attacking Romney’s record at Bain Capital to portray him as a wealthy, out-of-touch millionaire is their most effective line of attack. Second, it’s becoming clear that the attacks are doing more to buy the Obama campaign time than seriously change the trajectory of the race.

For all the attention paid to the effectiveness of President Obama’s Bain-themed attacks, it’s remarkable how Obama has been stuck right around 47 percent for a very long time.  As the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza documented, the president’s team has handily outspent Romney and his allied super PACs, pouring in $91 million into eight swing states in an early spending barrage intended to make Romney seem an unacceptable challenger.  But for all that effort, the numbers haven’t moved much at all: The latest ABC News/Washington Post poll out today shows the race deadlocked at 47 percent. Yesterday’s USA Today/Gallup swing state poll showed Obama statistically tied with Romney, the exact same result the survey showed one month ago.

Meanwhile, in the coming months, Romney should have a spending advantage, having significantly outraised Obama over the last two months.  Along with the RNC, the campaign has $160 million cash-on-hand, a total that will likely be greater than the Obama team’s money. (The Obama campaign tellingly didn’t release their cash-on-hand figures.)  That will allow Romney to match or surpass Obama on the airwaves, having survived a period when he was outgunned.

One of the pieces of bait the media used to try and get Romney to respond was to bring up the damage the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did to John Kerry in ’04. The myth is that Kerry ignored the criticism of his war record for too long and that this cost him the election.  

But that is a myth. The difference between the Swift Boat Vets questioning Kerry’s biography about his time in Vietnam and the media/Obama led outsource/offshore attacks is that the Vets were telling the truth and Obama and the media are lying. There’s absolutely no upside for Romney to breathe life into a false narrative from a defensive crouch. None.

According to that new Washington Post poll, both men are tied at 47/47.   But had a gullible Romney blinked and been fooled into letting himself get wrapped ’round the axle of these false charges, not only would the media have blown both stories up into something much bigger and longer-lasting (which is why they were begging Romney to respond), but today’s poll numbers would likely look entirely different. Obama and the media had set up a no-win situation.

But what they didn’t count on was Romney refusing to play.

If you look at the state of the race today, we have 119 days to the election, Romney and the Republicans raised $106 million last month, $35 million more than Obama and the Democrats.

Obama has already spent a ton of money and begun to punch himself out with his best attacks.

Romney, however, hasn’t even gotten started and has 16 weeks to expose before the voting public this president’s failed record. And to do so only after people are paying attention.

The media is brilliant at creating a false reality that has nothing to do with what’s happening out there in the world. If you watch CNN and MSNBC, you would think the roof was caving in on Romney over outsourcing and his personal wealth, but that’s what the media wants us to believe in order to control the narrative and to get Romney to dance to their tune. 

Thank heaven, Romney isn’t falling for it.

Right now it’s Obama who’s acting erratic and panicked and like a loser, not Romney.

I like our chances and I love the discipline I’m seeing from Team Romney.

***

This will be a bit short.  It caught my eye. Due to my experiences with Sprint before I retired, I have had some exposure to this issue.

The core issue is buying Chinese chips and telecom equipment. The intelligence community is concerned those items may contain Trojans that could provide the Chinese a gateway into our innermost secure voice and data networks.

Sprint, like most of the telecom providers, have governmental contracts to create private and secure voice and data networks for various federal agencies, like the FBI and IRS, as well as for the Department of Defense.  By contractual requirement, the hardware, the equipment used to created these private networks must be domestic.  In cases of a unique requirement, a waiver can be granted if there is sufficient justification. That is rare, however. There really isn’t a requirement that can’t be fulfilled with a domestic product.

The question arises with those domestic vendors.  Does their equipment contain Chinese components?  In many cases, since the US chip production has mostly fled overseas, the only source for some specialized components is…Chinese.

Now it appears that the fears of our Intelligence Agencies that those Chinese components do contain Trojans, gateways to external communications monitors, have been verified.

 

FBI Targets Chinese Firm Over Iran Deal

Feds: Telecom giant ZTE illegally shipped U.S.-made components

JULY 12–The FBI has opened a criminal investigation targeting a leading Chinese telecommunications firm that allegedly conspired to illegally ship hardware and software purchased from U.S. tech firms to Iran’s government-controlled telecom company, a violation of several federal laws and a trade embargo imposed on the outlaw Islamic nation, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The federal probe, launched earlier this year, has also uncovered evidence that officials with the Chinese company, ZTE Corporation (ZTE), are “engaged in an ongoing attempt to corruptly obstruct and impede” a Department of Commerce inquiry into the tainted $130 million Iranian transaction, according to a confidential FBI affidavit.

Officials with ZTE allegedly began plotting to cover up details of the Iranian deal after Reuters reported on the transaction in late-March. The news agency revealed that the telecom equipment sold to Iran was a “powerful surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile, and Internet communications.” Included in the material sent to Iran were products manufactured by U.S. firms like Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Dell, and Symantec.

Concerned that they could no longer “hide anything” in the wake of the Reuters report, ZTE lawyers discussed shredding documents, altering records, and lying to U.S. government officials, according to an insider’s account provided to FBI agents by a Texas lawyer who last year began serving as general counsel of ZTE’s wholly owned U.S. subsidiary. ZTE, the world’s fourth largest telecom equipment manufacturer, is publicly traded, though its controlling shareholder is a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

The FBI probe is being run out of the bureau’s Dallas office by agents assigned to a counterintelligence and counterespionage squad. Like the Department of Commerce investigation (and a related congressional inquiry being conducted by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence), the FBI opened its case following the March 22 Reuters story by reporter Steve Stecklow.

…

During a May 2 interview with two FBI agents, Yablon provided a startling account of his interaction with ZTE representatives who were once eager to devise strategies that would allow them to sell phones containing U.S. made components to “banned” countries. But following the Reuters story, Yablon recalled, the Chinese officials sought to obscure details of the illegal backdoor Iranian deal and, in the process, stymie U.S. government investigators circling the multinational company.

The FBI affidavit reveals that ZTE recently informed the Department of Commerce that it would not comply with an administrative subpoena served on the company seeking records of the nine-figure Iran transaction. Yablon told the FBI that he learned that ZTE officials “had contacted the PRC [People’s Republic of China] government, which was prepared to advise [the company] that if it complied with the DoC administrative subpoena, it would be violating PRC law.”

Days after the Reuters story was published, Yablon recalled, he spoke with ZTE lawyer Xue Xing Ma (also known as “Marsha”), who said the company was concerned about how the news outlet obtained a copy of the 907-page packing list for the system shipped to Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI).  “Marsha told Yablon the corporation was concerned because it could no longer ‘hide anything,’” reported Agent Carwile.

The story gets more weird as it progresses. Evidence now in FBI hands appear to prove the Chinese have sold, illegally, US technology to countries under export and technology embargoes.  It also presents information that the systems were designed to provide monitoring gateways to allow those governments to spy on their citizens.

This issue will not be resolved soon.  Government regulations that has driven our production overseas, or has driven our production out of business must be abolished. We’ve become our own worse enemy under a government who appears to be a willing accomplice to our foreign and domestic enemies.