Category Archives: Ukraine

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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What could you do?

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South Kansas City was aroused yesterday afternoon to the sound of sirens, police and ambulances. In an upper-middle class neighborhood, five people were shot, three fatally in the quiet of the afternoon. The shootings occurred, if I understood the reports correctly, in five different homes. The five people were victims of a single invader, so we’re told.

It is a tragedy and it leads to a number of questions.

  1. Could it happen here, where I live? Yes, it could. No neighborhood nor home is invulnerable.
  2. Can the police protect me? No. I have no doubt the police desperately wish they could but there aren’t enough to post a cop in every home. The old adage, “When seconds count, the cops are minutes away,” is still true. I live only a few hundred yards from the police station and it would STILL take minutes to reach my home.
  3. I don’t like guns, isn’t a phone call to 911 sufficient? No, see #2 above. First, you must have your phone on you, second you must dial 911…and wait for them to answer, and third, you must be calm enough to tell them what is happening. Few people, in a personal emergency, can do all that in the few seconds they have.
  4. I have a gun in the house, that should be enough. No, it isn’t. Do you know where it is? How quickly can you get it in your hands? Is it loaded? Many families with small children won’t keep loaded weapons easily on hand. Is it in a safe? Can you open the safe in a few seconds, absolutely in less than a minute?
  5. Well, what can I do? Carry a weapon and either keep it within arms reach or on your person at all time. Practice with it, get training in how to defend yourself and how to use your weapon, practice until you needn’t have to think in an emergency, you react.

I hear so many women claim, “I couldn’t shoot anyone!” Stop and think of the consequences. Could/would you shoot someone to protect your children? Your husband or family?

Some men say the same, with all the usual responses. The actual answer for both men and women is that you will do whatever is necessary to protect your family and yourself—or you and they will die.

It’s a harsh statement but that doesn’t change the reality. The world is not safe. It has never been and never will be. We can prepare ourselves for the reality. We can train, teach our family to prepare and train them how to defend themselves and others even if it is nothing more than to train your children to flee and seek protection. Know your neighbors, communicate with them, ask if your neighbor will watch out for you, your children and family, watch your home when you’re away and be a place of shelter if necessary.

I carry a weapon. It is something I put on when I dress in the morning, and it is next to me on the nightstand when I go to bed at night. If someone breaks in to my home, I have a weapon within reach in seconds. I am determined I will protect myself and my family. So can you. You needn’t be a victim waiting to be found.

If one of those five victims had a weapon close at hand and knew how to use it, perhaps one or more of the others would have remained unharmed. More and more police chiefs and sheriffs are admitting they are powerless to protect anyone. The first responder for your personal defense is you.

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I wrote an article a week or so ago about the parallels with current events in the Ukraine and China to those just prior to WW2. Obama, like the bungling Chamberlain, is placing the United States into harm’s way and our military is woefully unprepared, undermanned, undertrained and underequipted. The democrats/liberals/socialists have been all too successful in emasculating the US armed forces.

Obama Authorizes Sending Additional Troops To Iraq

Posted: Updated:

President Barack Obama has authorized a State Department request for additional troops in Iraq.

Obama ordered approximately 350 additional military personnel be sent to Iraq “to protect our diplomatic facilities and personnel in Baghdad,” according to a Tuesday statement from the office of the White House press secretary. The statement notes that the troops will not be serving in a combat role upon arrival.

The Defense Department confirmed that 405 troops will be deployed to Iraq, allowing for 55 military personnel who have been in Iraq since June to redeploy outside of the country and resulting in a net increase of 350 troops on the ground.

“This action was taken at the recommendation of the Department of Defense after an extensive interagency review, and is part of the President’s commitment to protect our personnel and facilities in Iraq as we continue to support the Government of Iraq in its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” according to the White House statement.

The numbers being sent are too few to be effective. In reality, all they can be…are targets. There are few good troops in the Middle-east. None of them are in Iraq.

But Obama isn’t placing our troops in harm’s way only in Iraq, he’s sending them to the Ukraine as well.

U.S., allies to stage exercises in West Ukraine as battles rage in East

By Peter Apps. WASHINGTON Tue Sep 2, 2014 1:41pm EDT

(Reuters) – As fighting between the army and Russian-backed rebels rages in eastern Ukraine, preparations are under way near its western border for a joint military exercise this month with more than 1,000 troops from the United States and its allies.

The decision to go ahead with the Rapid Trident exercise Sept. 16-26 is seen as a sign of the commitment of NATO states to support non-NATO member Ukraine while stopping well short of military intervention in the conflict.

The annual exercise, to take place in the Yavoriv training center near Ukraine’s border with Poland, was initially scheduled for July, but was put back because early planning was disrupted by the crisis in the eastern part of the country.

“At the moment, we are still planning for (the exercise) to go ahead,” U.S. Navy Captain Gregory Hicks, spokesman for the U.S. Army’s European Command said on Tuesday.

NATO stepped up military activity in its eastern member states after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March, and is expected to agree at a summit in Wales this week to create a new rapid reaction force of several thousand troops.

In addition to staging air force exercises, the United States is moving tanks and 600 troops to Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for joint maneuvers in October, replacing a more lightly armed force of paratroopers.

But Rapid Trident will entail the first significant deployment of U.S. and other personnel to Ukraine since the crisis erupted.

President Barack Obama will visit Estonia on Wednesday to reassure the former Soviet Baltic states of U.S. support, and Estonia’s prime minister on Tuesday called for a more visible NATO presence in eastern Europe.

Washington has promised Ukraine $52 million in non-lethal security aid and has already provided combat rations, body armor, radios and other equipment. Pentagon leaders have met with Ukrainian counterparts to discuss a range of cooperation, but, for now, arms supplies have been ruled out.

“It is very important to understand that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming,” Obama told reporters at the White House last week.

Once again, Obama is acting, or rather reacting, too late with too little. Our troops in the Ukraine will be nothing more than targets, just as they are in Iraq.

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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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Cold War II

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The adages goes, “those who fail to understand History are doomed to repeat it.” That is so true for our government. Obama and the dems have emasculated our military while destroying our economy. We are seeing a scenario reminiscent of mid-1980s, when Ronald Reagan’s plan to force the USSR into economic failure succeeded. The US won the Cold War by outspending the USSR—forcing them to compete until their spending ruined them.

This time around, the roles are reversed. The former USSR, the empire Putin wants to restore, is recovering from its economic collapse and it is rebuilding its military and returning to it’s expansionist history to restore the Russian Empire. We need only to look at the Crimea and the Ukraine for proof.

In fact, Putin’s Foreign Minister has announced the beginning of the next Cold War.

Russian Prime Minister: We Are ‘Approaching a Second Cold War’

7:08 AM, May 20, 2014 • By DANIEL HALPER

Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev says that “we are slowly but surely approaching a second cold war.” He also said that U.S. President Barack Obama could be “more tactful politically” and that he’s disappointed in some of the decisions Obama has made.

“Yes, I believe that President Obama could be more tactful politically when discussing these issues. Some decisions taken by the US Administration are disappointing. We have indeed done a lot for Russian-US relations. I believe doing so was right. The agreements that we reached with America were useful. And I’m very sorry that everything that has been achieved is now being eliminated by these decisions. Basically, we are slowly but surely approaching a second cold war that nobody needs.

Medvedev continues about the incompetency of Obama. Putin and Medvedev would not be making these statements, pushing, being aggressive in the Crimea, sending ‘agent provocateurs’ into the Ukraine, if the United States had the ability and the determination to counter him.

When Ronald Reagan was president, we had a 600 ship navy, twelve carrier battle-groups, troops in Europe, commitments from our NATO allies requiring a level of competency in their militaries and navies, and an equally strong US Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Now, the democrats and Obama have created an unsustainable welfare state, reduced out military forces, destroying their morale with repeated back-to-back deployments and, when they can no longer meet the physical requirements, the veterans are discarded into a Veterans Administration that ignores their needs.

But Putin isn’t our only enemy. China looms in the west. They’ve made extraordinary territorial claims to vast segments of the western Pacific, imperialistically seizing resource rich areas from a number of neighboring countries—countries who, by treaty, look to the United States for defense.

http://i.imgur.com/m8Vuf.gif

China’s Exclusive Economic Zone

Just this week, we watched an approaching confrontation between China and Viet Nam. We don’t have any treaty obligations with Viet Nam, but we do with the Philippine Islands, Taiwan and Japan.

How an oil rig sparked anti-China riots in Vietnam

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN, May 19, 2014 — Updated 1307 GMT

http://thediplomat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/thediplomat_2014-05-08_15-06-31-386x231.pngHong Kong (CNN) — When China’s state-owned oil company dispatched an oil rig to a contested area of the South China Sea it flicked a match on a long-smoldering dispute with its communist neighbor Vietnam.Analysts say Beijing must have known the move would elicit some reaction, but it clearly didn’t predict having to evacuate thousands of Chinese nationals desperate to put some distance between them and violent Vietnamese protests.“The whole episode seems to reek of miscalculation, perhaps by both sides, but it demonstrates how volatile how this region can be,” said Alexander Neill, Shangri-La Dialogue Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Asia (IISS).At issue is the positioning of an oil rig in waters claimed by both China and Vietnam. Vietnam claims the rig’s presence is “illegal” while China says it has every right to drill, and has castigated the Vietnamese government for failing to ensure the safety of its nationals.To understand the issue, it’s vital to look at the exact position of the rig.Where is the rig?In early May, Beijing announced the HD-981 rig would be parked at sea for exploratory work until mid-August. Owned by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the rig is anchored in Lot 143, about 120 nautical miles east of Vietnam’s Ly Son Island and 180 nautical miles from China’s Hainan Island, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).Analysis co-authored by CSIS experts said China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs appears to be basing its right to be there on the assumption that one of the Paracel Islands, which it claims as its own, is 17 miles north, allowing it to claim its own continental shelf in the region.China calls the contested Paracel Islands the Xisha Islands, while in Vietnam they’re known as the Hoang Sa Islands.Vietnam says the rig site is clearly on its continental shelf, and moreover is in its Exclusive Economic Zone. Hanoi has demanded that China remove the offending rig, escort vessels from the region and hold talks to settle the issue.The Chinese rig was escorted to the region by naval vessels and fighter jets, drawing Vietnamese boats to the area and raising tensions at sea. The Vietnamese have accused Chinese vessels of ramming and blasting its boats with water cannon. The Chinese say any conflict was provoked by Vietnamese harassment.

The column was just updated with the following bullet points.
  • China evacuates thousands of nationals from Vietnam amid territorial dispute
  • Protests erupted after China’s state oil company sent a rig to disputed territory
  • Vietnam says the rig site is on its continental shelf and within its Exclusive Economic Zone
  • China says the rig will be there until mid-August, has sent ships to guard the site
Another report tells of Chinese troops massing on the border next to Viet Nam. The report states that “Conflict Between China And Vietnam Is Imminent.“

Conflicts in the east with Putin, conflicts in the west with China and Obama and the dems, as well as our military and naval forces, are completely unprepared. I think we are entering another of those “interesting times” mentioned in the Chinese curse.

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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.

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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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The chickeeeens have come hoooome…

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Those of us who are conservative in our politics and outlook in life knew this was coming. Obama and the democrat leadership in Washington is, and has always been, a joke. We knew the world thought so. Now, Putin has rubbed our faces in the mess of that lack of leadership in Washington. Others around the world are taking advantage of that joke.

We are seeing the consequences of the democrat and liberal rape of our nation. We are astonishingly in debt. We have massive unemployment. Our borders are open to our enemies and criminals and our military has been eviscerated and is worn out. The military is being lead by political generals, useless and unable to lead and they are creating more dissension in the ranks. Just ten years ago we were the most powerful and recognized leader in the world. All that is gone. We’re now the mockery of the world and Putin has proved it.

Mockery greets Obama’s new sanctions against Russian officials after Crimea action

By Ben Wolfgang – The Washington Times, Monday, March 17, 2014

President Obama on Monday slapped Russia with the kinds of economic sanctions not seen since the Cold War, but the administration’s supposed hard line was met with mockery and a “collective shrug” in Moscow, Kiev and Washington.

One day after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, the White House and its partners in the European Union responded by targeting high-ranking officials in Moscow along with pro-Russian figures responsible for the unrest in Ukraine.

The move adds even more tension to a dramatic standoff between Russia and the West, but early signs suggest the latest round of sanctions will have little impact on Russian President Vladimir Putin as he moves toward annexation of Crimea and, some fear, an all-out invasion of Ukraine.

Even some of those directly affected by the U.S. and European sanctions laughed them off and openly mocked Mr. Obama.

“Comrade Obama, what should those who have neither accounts nor property abroad do? Have you not thought about it?” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said in a message on Twitter. He is one of the seven Russian officials directly targeted by the president in an executive order signed Monday morning. “I think the decree of the President of the United States was written by some joker.”

The sanctions specifically target officials close to Mr. Putin, though neither the Russian president nor Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was among those named.

…

In Kiev, where a new government is trying to fend off Mr. Putin and prevent the loss of Crimea, reactions to the latest round of sanctions were lukewarm at best.

“The first reaction here … is sort of a collective shrug,” said Chris Miller, editor of the Kyiv Post who briefed reporters during a conference call hosted by the Wilson Center.

Mr. Miller said the sentiment is “these sanctions are too soft, too late. They don’t target those high up enough, closer to Putin.”

…

The prime minister of Crimea also blasted the U.S. president, tweeting a digitally altered picture of Mr. Obama in a Russian military uniform.

“Interestingly, after the success of the company in returning Crimea, Barack is getting the rank of colonel?” tweeted Sergey Aksyonov.

Despite all of that criticism, the White House is sticking by its strategy and arguing that the sanctions will have a dramatic impact.

Look at that last paragraph. No one, not in Crimea, nor Russia, nor here, believes these sanctions on…how many, a dozen of Putin’s flunkies, will work. What else has Obama done? He sent a flight of F-16s to Poland. Yawn.

Ukraine, after the breakup of the old Soviet Union, was a nuclear power. The West, the EU, NATO and the US guaranteed their security if they destroyed their nukes. The Ukraine did so.

Now they have been invaded and territory seized by a resurgent Russia eager to rebuild the old Soviet Empire. What has the West done? Nothing. If it weren’t so credible, I’d say we’re reliving Neville Chamberlain returning home after giving Czechoslovakia to Hitler prior to World War II.

“Peace in our time,” Chamberlain said. Yeah, for a few months and no one was prepared to stop Hitler before the world was engulfed in war.

How Neville Chamberlain’s words haunt the Crimean crisis

Updated: March 15, 2014 18:29:00

The US secretary of state, John Kerry, right, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, in London to discuss the crisis in Ukraine. Brendan Smialowski / Reuters / March 14, 2014

Sect’y of State John Kerry with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov

Decades of Soviet domination may have left this southern corner of Ukraine looking a bit beaten up around the edges, but my overriding feeling was that this was a place that was waking from a long, deep sleep.

The port of Sebastopol had an air of wistfulness that only places with a rich and brutal history can manage, while a visit to the defunct subterranean Russian submarine base in nearby Balaclava bay was made even more attractive by the low cost of admission and the fact that the only other visitors to the attraction were a couple from Slough.

Similarly memorable were afternoons spent at the Tsar’s Livadia Palace on the shores of the Black Sea, and Checkov’s dacha, a beautiful sunlit villa high in the hills above Yalta, in which he wrote his incomparable play The Cherry Orchard. Crimea, clearly, was the next great European tourist destination. I could only bless my luck that I’d got in before it was all sanitised for the package holiday industry that would inevitably follow with Ukraine’s sublimation into European politics and culture.

But that was then. With dizzying speed the region has been occupied, liberated or annexed (according to your view) by Russian troops and, with the EU and America still fumbling for a response, the Crimean government has called a referendum, due to be conducted today, to ask its inhabitants whether it should rejoin the Russian Federation.

Most tellingly, the wording of the ballot paper offers no choice for preserving the current status quo. There are only two questions on it: do you wish to join the Russian Federation now, or choose to become independent?

From the Kremlin’s point of view, the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Kiev last month was nothing less than a western-inspired plot, one that has left the millions of Russian-speaking inhabitants in Crimea and eastern Ukraine isolated and vulnerable. To those on the other side of the political divide, Russia’s occupation is a barefaced land grab.

What is undeniable is that Vladimir Putin’s bold strategy has wrong-footed the West. His opponents are threatening to impose sanctions, but who would they really hurt? With the world’s economies so inextricably entwined, there’s scarcely a country in Europe whose own balance of payments wouldn’t be disrupted by a trade embargo. And yet the only other option, military intervention to prop up the teetering Ukrainian government, is unthinkable.

In London on Friday John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, held last-ditch talks in an attempt to diffuse the situation before today’s deadline. But with the referendum so close at hand, the talks were never likely to prosper. Six hours spent in private consultation brought no major breakthrough. After the collapse of the talks Mr Kerry warned Russia of “very serious steps” if it annexes Crimea.

Strong words of course, and yet it all seems too little, too late. Indeed, a full two days before the ballot, the Russian flag was already flying above the entrance to the Crimean Parliament in the provincial capital, Simferopol, while street signs were being methodically altered from the Ukrainian language into Russian. Somebody somewhere already knows the outcome.

And with civil unrest already igniting in cities such as Donetsk, and Russian troops conducting military manoeuvres on Ukraine’s eastern border, the fear is that annexing Crimea may well prove the curtain raiser to a far more turbulent future for central Europe. The prospect of this beautiful and doleful country being torn apart once more by forces beyond its control is too dreadful to contemplate; yet it now seems a genuine possibility.

When Nazi Germany annexed the area of German-speaking Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland in spring 1938, the response from the now discredited British prime minister Neville Chamberlain summed up the parochial view of many to events in central Europe at the time. He described the incident as “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of which we know nothing”. Modern politicians would do well to learn from Mr Chamberlain’s folly.

As so many have said, history is cyclical. When we don’t study history, examine the parallels to current events, examine the consequences of history in those parallels, we repeat the errors and mistakes of the past. I believe, we are about to repeat one of those errors. This time, instead of Britain being the one in peril, it will be us.

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1980s Redux

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When Hillary and Obama were kissing up to Putin, Hillary’s infamous “reset button,” the left irrationally assumed the Cold War was over; a long-dead confrontation between the West and the old Soviet Union.

They were wrong. the interregnum was just a period of regrouping and rearming…for Russia and the former communist that how rule her. Russia was too weak to maintain control of its empire in the 1990s—they aren’t anymore. They are rebuilding their empire once again; Belarus, Georgia, now the Crimea.

Why the Crimea? Because of Sevastopol, the old Soviet Union’s strategic naval base in the Black Sea. The base is in the Ukraine, although Putin, ‘scuse me, Russia retained basing rights.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2014/01/ukraine-protests-map-k.jpgIt wasn’t enough and the Ukraine controlled access to the area for food, fuel and power. Putin’s seizure of Crimea eliminated those potential risks…for Russia. Ukraine lost naval access to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea beyond that.

On the other side of their common boarder, China is flexing its military muscles. They have laid claim to a broad undersea oil and gas region; a region also claimed by Japan, Taiwan and further south, by Viet Nam, and the Philippine Islands. Not long ago, China declared the region an aerial no-fly zone.

While neither Russia nor China can truly be called communist anymore; they’re more like state corporatists, they still have many political ties. This week, those ties resurfaced. China is giving Putin half-hearted support. It’s an apparent ploy for reciprocity if/when China moves to land troops on those disputed Pacific Islands or attacks Taiwan.

So, democrats and Washington liberals, the Cold War isn’t over. It’s just moved into a new stage; one Russia and China are, by rebuilding their military, prepared for, while Obama and the democrats have bee working diligently to demoralize and disarm our military and armed services.

The world has been and is a dangerous place. It’s not filled with rainbows and unicorns. With our navy and army reduced to pre-WW II levels, we’re setting ourselves up for another surprise attack—like Pearl Harbor and 9/11. The democrats in Washington, and some RINOs, can not care less.

By the way, what does Tom Clancy’s book, Red Storm Rising, have in common with this?

 

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