Tag: war

Don’t be surprised if the first naval battle of the 21st century goes unexpectedly poorly for the US Navy:

A three-month internal review conducted by senior U.S. surface fleet leaders found some or significant concerns with the ship handling skills of nearly 85 percent of its junior officers, and that many struggled to react decisively to extricate their ship from danger when there was an immediate risk of collision, according to an internal message obtained by Defense News.

Led by the Surface Warfare Officer School, officer of the deck competency checks were conducted on a random selection of OOD-qualified first-tour division officers (the newest officers in the fleet) in underway bridge navigation simulators fleet-wide between January and March. Of the 164 officers who were evaluated, only 27 passed with “no concerns.” Another 108 completed with “some concerns,” and 29 had “significant concerns,” according to the message, which was released by the Navy’s top surface warfare officer Vice Adm. Richard Brown.

Brown, who leads Naval Surface Force Pacific, termed the results “sobering.”

The evaluations raise distressing questions about the level of ship handling training junior officers get both prior to their arrival at their first command and when they arrive. In a Tuesday interview with Defense News at the Pentagon, Brown said the checks would be used to inform new training in development for young officers and that changes were already underway that show the Navy is serious about self-assessment and improvement in the wake of the twin disasters that claimed the lives of 17 sailors last summer.

Among the shortfalls identified in the checks:

• Officers struggled with operating radars and the associated tools at hand, an issue that emerged in the wake of the Fitzgerald accident.
• Officers had a firm grasp of the international rules of the road for navigating ships at sea, but struggled to apply them practically during watch standing, especially in low-visibility situations.
• Most officers were able to keep clear of close encounters with other ships in the simulator but those that found themselves in extremis “were often ill-equipped to take immediate action to avoid collisions”

The big advantage of the US Navy in the past – the fact that it was comprised of relatively intelligent American men – no longer exists. The Chinese Navy hasn’t caught up technologically yet, but it already possesses a considerably more intelligent officer corps that will likely prove to be more competent as well.

The US was defeated in the Syrian war-by-proxy by a much smaller, much less well-equipped Russian force, in much the same way the IDF was defeated by Hezbollah in 2006. It is very unlikely that this defeat passed unnoticed by military strategists around the world, or that it will be the last one suffered by the US military.

Philip Giraldi points out that the primary source of the recent, inexplicable anti-Russian antipathy is the fact that the (((neocons))) finally lost control of its government after more than 80 years.

I have long believed that the core hatred of Russia comes from the neocons and is to a large extent tribal or, if you prefer, ethno-religious based. Why? Because if the neoconservatives were actually foreign policy realists there is no good reason to express any visceral dislike of Russia or its government. The allegations that Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. are clearly a sham, just as are the tales of the alleged Russian poisoning of the Skripals in Winchester England and, most recently, the claimed assassination of journalist Arkady Babchenko in Kiev which turned out to be a false flag. Even the most cursory examination of the past decade’s developments in Georgia and Ukraine reveal that Russia was reacting to legitimate major security threats engineered by the United States with a little help from Israel and others. Russia has not since the Cold War ended threatened the United States and its ability to re-acquire its former Eastern European satellites is a fantasy. So why the hatred?

In fact, the neocons got along quite well with Russia when they and their overwhelmingly Jewish oligarchs and international commodity thieves cum financier friends were looting the resources of the old Soviet Union under the hapless Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s. Alarms about the alleged Russian threat only re-emerged in the neocon dominated media and think tanks when old fashioned nationalist Vladimir Putin took office and made it a principal goal of his government to turn off the money tap.

With the looting stopped by Putin, the neocons and friends no longer had any reason to play nice, so they used their considerable resources in the media and within the halls of power in places like Washington, London and Paris to turn on Moscow. And they also might have perceived that there was a worse threat looming. The Putin government appeared to be resurrecting what the neocons might perceive as pogrom-plagued Holy Russia! Old churches razed by the Bolsheviks were being rebuilt and people were again going to mass and claiming belief in Jesus Christ. The former Red Square now hosts a Christmas market while the nearby tomb of Lenin is only open one morning in the week and attracts few visitors.

This should give considerable hope to Americans, as AIPAC’s influence over the three branches of the US government is considerably more tenuous than the Bolsheviks’ historical control of the Russian government was.

Fortunately, the responsibility of actually governing their own land is fundamentally transforming the Israeli perspective and making smart men like Netanyahu more aware of the intrinsic dangers of attempting to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. That’s why he is openly encouraging the Diasporans to come home rather than act as a fifth column.

Giraldi is certainly correct in at least one regard. If the neocons were simply foreign-policy realists, we’d hear them talking incessantly about China, and to a lesser extent, India, not Russia.

And their grandsons promptly surrendered to the Pakistanis and the Windrush Generation. Winston’s Churchill’s brave words sound increasingly hollow three score and 18 years later.

I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government – every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength.

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Not only have the British failed to fight in the fields and streets against a much bigger invasion than they faced from the Wehrmacht, they didn’t even fight at all! I am increasingly convinced that if the US soldiers who went overseas to fight against the Germans and Japanese had any idea what their sacrifices would eventually entail, both at home and abroad, they wouldn’t have been willing to go.

Of course, the post-1965 American performance has been even worse than their erstwhile “British brethren” in this regard. To this very day, most of you still don’t see any problem at all with tens of millions of fellow citizens born American in China, India, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, and Portugal. Many of you, I have witnessed, even claim to prefer them to actual Americans, so long as they mouth platitudes of which you approve. I, on the other hand, am firmly convinced that the planet-wide Migration War is going to make the death toll of WWII look like a mild pre-game stretch. Never will have large-scale human suffering been more avoidable or more well-deserved. Almost everyone, from the highest government Minister to the lowest mudshark, is culpable to some degree.

No one reading here will ever be able to claim they were not warned. Repeatedly.

Anyhow, I tend to doubt clinging to the specious ideological doctrine of equality is going to provide anyone with much solace when three-quarters of the world’s population reenacts the post-imperial partition of India on a grander, more vicious scale. Those who claim “it can’t happen here” forget that it already has… most of it AFTER the writing of the Declaration of Independence.

UPDATE: Apparently I was right. The British who actually fought in WWII do not believe their sacrifices were worth it.

Hers was a small part in a huge, history-making enterprise, and her contribution epitomises her generation’s sense of service and sacrifice. Nearly 400,000 Britons died. Millions more were scarred by the experience, physically and mentally.

But was it worth it?

Her answer – and the answer of many of her contemporaries, now in their 80s and 90s – is a resounding No. They despise what has become of the Britain they once fought to save. It’s not our country any more, they say, in sorrow and anger. Immigration tops the list of complaints.

They are right to despise what passes for modern Britain. It is a despicable and half-conquered nation. So is modern America. Which is why both nations are rapidly disappearing from history. The Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution will soon be no more relevant to the 8 billion people on the planet than the Laws of Hammurabi or the Codex Justinianus. That will be the ultimate legacy of three generations of cowards, who were too afraid of being called names to defend their land, their traditions, and their people.

History doesn’t give a flying fuck about your foreign wives, your alien friends, your nice immigrant neighbors, or your exotic co-workers. ALL OF THEM are collectively the problem. ALL OF THEM have collectively adulterated and degraded the nation, which is why almost ALL OF THEM will either be excluded or the destruction of the Western nations that is already well underway will be completed. There will be no exceptions made for “being a nice person” or “loving baseball and apple pie” or “being a Christian”, only for being useful to the winners. Those nations with the will to survive will do so, those without it will vanish into the history books.

Thus has it always been, thus will it always be. The pendulum always swings back, sooner or later.

Think about how much mercy was shown to the Hindus of Bangladesh, the Cherokee forced to walk The Trail of Tears, the Germans ethnically cleansed from Eastern Europe, the Canaanites, and the whites of Zimbabwe. Those people had lived in those places for generations, in some cases, for centuries. How much mercy do you seriously believe will be shown to those who observably don’t even belong there in the first place?

Those who are still in denial about the inevitable consequences of mass immigration have the same mindset as the historical fools who denied that Adolf Hitler had any territorial ambitions outside the borders of Germany and asserted that Stalin was a man of peace. They should not be accorded even a modicum of intellectual respect, because they do not merit any.

It’s interesting that there was so little media coverage of a recent SNL skit implicitly portraying the assassination of President Trump. Can you even imagine the endless outrage if they had portrayed the implicit assassination of his predecessor? There would have been literal riots in several cities.

Saturday Night Live has parodied The Sopranos’ iconic last scene for its season finale, bringing back Alec Baldwin to play President Donald Trump.

The new episode’s cold open begins with Baldwin’s Trump picking a song from the jukebox at Holsten’s in Bloomfield, New Jersey – just as Tony Soprano did in the mafia drama’s 2007 series finale.

Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ blares through the diner as the bell above the door jingles, and in walks Rudy Giuliani, played by Kate McKinnon.

Baldwin’s Trump asks if he’s been on Fox News lately to which he answers ‘twenty times last night’, adding ‘I even confessed to crimes you didn’t do — what are they gonna do, arrest the President? I dare ya!’

In walks guest star Robert De Niro, portraying Muller. But Baldwin’s Trump is the only one who seems to notice him, as the rest of his coterie peppers him with inane legal advice. In a moment layered with multiple film references, the Mueller character gets up and walks slowly to the bathroom as the Journey song continues to blare. He pauses and turns to Baldwin’s Trump, pointing two fingers at his own eyes and then at Baldwin, the ‘I see you’ gesture De Niro’s character did in Meet The Parents.

The scene then cuts to black, just as the final scene of the Sopranos did to much controversy. Though fan theories on the Sopranos finale differ, many believe that Tony Soprano was killed by a hitman, who was seen walking into the diner’s bathroom shortly before the scene cuts to black.

By making it Mueller, SNL is giving itself plausible deniability. See, it’s just a metaphor for a legal and political takedown, right? But the combination of the hit scene with De Niro – remember, as Vito Corleone, he initially makes his mark by murdering Don Fanucci – is the real meaning underlying the skit.

Fortunately, it appears the God-Emperor is more than ready for this enemies.

It’s interesting to see how the mainstream media is belatedly discovering the fact that there is no longer any middle ground between Americans and the 100 million Not-Americans who invaded the dirt that turned out to lack the necessary magic. One has to wonder what they thought was going to happen in light of the post-1965 immigration changes. Were they really that ignorant of the consequences of every previous mass human migration?

More and more voices are raising concerns that the 2018 elections will ignite a terrible clash between supporters of President Trump and his increasingly agitated critics in a partisan battle that has been brewing for years.

Stanley Greenberg, former President Bill Clinton’s pollster, is warning of a “civil war.” Purdue University President Mitchell E. Daniels, former President Ronald Reagan’s political director and a two-term Indiana Republican governor, sees the nation dividing into feuding “tribes” that gravitate to tyrants who “bludgeon” opponents.

In two separate reports, the two opposites come to a similar conclusion that the nation and even families are terribly divided and that the media has played a big role in creating the split.

Daniels is well regarded as level-headed and has been dubbed the best university president in the nation. He has used his commencement addresses to push for openness and understanding, but this year he noted a shift to “tribalism,” where sides cluster in cliques.

“It’s no longer just a matter of Americans not knowing and understanding each other. We’ve seen these clusters deepen, and harden, until separation has led to anger, misunderstanding turned into hostility. At the individual level, it’s a formula for bitterness and negativity. For a self-governing people, it’s poison,” Daniels told his students this month.

Among the culprits he cited were biased media, the “anti-social media.” Said Daniels, “Our various modern media lead us to, and feed us from information sources that reinforce our existing biases. They put us in contact with other tribe members, but rarely those who see things differently. We’re starting to resemble ominously our primitive forebearers, trusting no one outside the tribe.”

And he called that “dangerous,” warning “almost all of history has belonged to the tyrants, the warlords, the autocrats, the totalitarians. And tribes always gravitate toward tyrants.”

He didn’t name names, mention President Trump or former President Barack Obama, on purpose. The reason: both sides and their mouthpieces are to blame. “It’s a general phenomenon,” he said in an interview in which he bemoaned “there is no overlap anymore.”

What I want every civic nationalist, every centrist, and every moderate to consider, and eventually, come to terms with is the fact that this is precisely the destiny they helped create. Every single identity-conflicted individual to whom I have ever spoken tries to carve out an exception for their wife, their children, their neighbords, their colleagues, their friends, and their immigrant grandparents. Every single one.

And that’s understandable. I have no problem understanding the temptation to do so, being an identity-conflicted first-generation immigrant myself. But this is a category error; the vast majority of the micro exceptions are totally irrelevant when it comes to the macro issue. Reality doesn’t care that you think it would be really terrible to be forced to choose between your nation and your neighbor, or between your family and your friend. War does not require your approval in order to take place.

Despite the largest invasion in recorded human history, most people in the United States have not been materially affected in a way they recognize. That is why they are oblivious to the obvious, and why they will most likely remain oblivious until it is far too late to do anything about the situation.

Donald Trump isn’t even trying to address the situation. The efforts of most politicians will only make things worse. Jordan Peterson’s Hail Mary assault on human nature will fail too. The desperate measures that are now required to salvage the nation and avert a war that will make the Civil War look like a casual warmup are on the level of those utilized for the Spanish Reconquista, and are not even close to being politically viable yet. Six years ago, I was warning you about this. Now the likes of Stanley Greenberg and Mitch Daniels are doing the same.

You have about 12-15 years to prepare for this now, possibly less, in my estimation.

Three Belgians, including two police officers, are fatally diversified in Liege:

Two police officers and a civilian have been shot dead by a man reportedly shouting Allahu Akbar, which led to a hostage situation at a high school in east Belgium.

The unnamed man opened fire in the centre of the city of Liege, at around 10.30am local time, after being stopped by officers for a routine document check. He killed two officers, a female bystander in a car, and injured a third officer. The man then reportedly took a female cleaner hostage inside the nearby secondary school, before being shot dead himself by an elite police unit.

Two other police officers were reported “seriously wounded”.  I wonder how long the police and the militaries of Europe are going to accept this situation. We’ve reached a point where Duterte-style death squads and military coups are beginning to look preferable to the fake democracy of the neo-liberal “open society” that is imposing death-by-diversity on everyone.

UPDATE: The killer was armed with a knife, attacked a pair of policewomen, took their guns, then killed them and the bystander, who was actually a 22-year-old man. Clearly the 2nd Amendment and white male patriarchy is to blame. The lesson: Diversity + Feminism = Dead White Women.

I’m just encouraged that politicians like Theresa May are calling the terrorist a coward. That will totally dissuade future attackers.

The campaign to equalitize the British military meets a setback:

The first woman to join an infantry regiment since defence chiefs lifted a ban on females serving in combat units has quit after just two weeks of training, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The recruit dropped out of an 18-week course this month after falling behind her male counterparts on endurance marches and failing other physical tests at a training base in Suffolk.

It is understood that when the woman resigned, she admitted having underestimated the physical requirements of being an infantry recruit. She also told officers that living in female-only accommodation made her feel ‘like an outsider’ and weakened her resolve. Her resignation is a huge blow to officials who are determined to integrate women into fighting units in the Army, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force.

The feminist notion that resolve can overcome reality tends to remind one of the WWI French generals’ firm belief that esprit was capable of overcoming machine guns.

The Weekly Standard attempts to redefine the term “protest”:

They’re not protests. They’re suicide-riots.

On Monday President Donald Trump fulfilled his campaign promise to move the United States embassy in Israel to the country’s capital, Jerusalem. As usual, the American and European media’s coverage interpreted the event in the worst possible light for the nation of Israel. One learns very little from our mainstream news sources about what the move may mean for the nations primarily concerned—Israel and the United States—but a great deal about the Palestinian “protests” happening along Israel’s southern border with Gaza: Headlines in the New York Times and Washington Post proclaimed (misleadingly) “Israel Kills Dozens and Wounds 1700 at Gaza Border” and “Over 50 Killed in Gaza Protests as U.S. Opens Embassy in Jerusalem.”

We put the word “protests” in quotation marks advisedly. In ordinary English usage, a protest is a collective action or gesture meant to bring pressure on a government or corporate entity. The Gaza “protests” are meant to bring pressure on Israel, but they’re intended mainly to kill and maim both Israelis and the Palestinian “protesters” themselves.

These demonstrations would be better described as suicide-riots. For nearly two months, Hamas and other militant factions have been encouraging young Palestinian men to storm the fence separating Gaza from Israel. The rioters cut holes in the fence, charge Israeli guards with crude weapons like axes, and lob fire bombs over the wall in attempts to set Israeli fields on fire. Hamas has pledged to massacre those on the other side of the fence, and these riots are expressions of that intention. Israeli defense forces are obliged to respond with force. An axe-clutching Palestinian insanely charging into Israeli territory isn’t a “protester” but a combatant and a terrorist. The fact that he doesn’t expect to prevail against the might of the Israel Defense Forces—he is in essence on a suicide mission—doesn’t somehow oblige Israeli soldiers not to use force to stop him. The Israelis have no choice but to fire back, and they do, often with deadly results.

If the Gaza protests are intended mainly to kill and maim Israelis, they are making an incredibly ineffective job of it, given the lack of Israeli casualties. On the other hand, these “suicide-riots” are proving to be very effective at bringing political pressure on the Israeli government from a broad global spectrum.

The Turks have expelled the Israeli ambassador. China has expressed serious concern. Russia has condemned the “indiscriminate” nature of the thousands of shootings. The UK government has urged restraint. These protests may be suicidal, but they are absolutely and without question protests, and to the extent their objective is to put international pressure on the Israeli government, they are successful.

Prime Minister Netanyahu clearly needs to read more Martin van Creveld than he has.

This is not what “winning the moral level of war” looks like:

Israeli snipers kill scores of Palestinians and wound 2,400 as 35,000 protesters rally against the US Embassy opening in Jerusalem overseen by Trump’s Middle East envoy Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka.

A 14-year-old was among 52 shot dead along the Gaza border on what is already the deadliest single day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since a 2014 war between the Jewish state and Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas.

At least 2,400 more have been injured with hundreds of them by live bullets, according to Gaza officials as the Palestinian government accused Israel of committing a ‘terrible massacre’ and Amnesty International called the bloodshed an ‘abhorrent violation’ of human rights.

Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is the right thing to do. It is not the responsibility of the US government to decide where a nation’s capital is located. But whatever Israeli general is responsible for handling the protesters is making a complete hash of it. If Israel was looking for foreign support in its desired war-by-proxy against Iran, this is most certainly not going to help.

I don’t know why Israel hasn’t established a separate gendarmerie for handling the West Bank and Gaza, because military history strongly suggests that using soldiers as police tends to fail as brutally as using police as soldiers does. And, as Martin van Creveld has repeatedly observed, one-sided war tends to have a demoralizing effect on the winner.

And, of course, it is reprehensible that so many New Israelis should be treated so violently when all they are seeking is a better life for them and their children on the other side of the fence. Especially when the Israeli economy would benefit so greatly from embracing 35,000 new citizens.

I sincerely hope France, Germany, and the UK are dumb enough to listen to Obama’s ex-officials and call what they wrongly imagine is the God-Emperor’s bluff on the Iran deal:

Two former Obama administration officials suggested that America’s European allies should punish President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the Iran deal and levying additional sanctions on the Islamic republic.

The European Union and individual European countries are obligated to take aggressive steps to preserve the Iran deal, in order to avoid becoming Trump’s “doormat,” Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson argued in an op-ed that ran in The New York Times Thursday. Both Simon and Stevenson were directors on former President Barack Obama’s National Security Council (NSC).

“The European Union could, for instance, announce the withdrawal of member-states’ ambassadors from the United States. Isn’t this what states do when diplomatic partners breach solemn agreements, expose them to security risks and threaten to wreak havoc on their economies? That is, after all, what the administration is threatening to do by courting the risk of a Middle Eastern war and applying secondary sanctions to European companies,” they argued. “Depending on the American response, European capitals might even follow up with expulsion of American ambassadors.”

“It would be hard to fault these moves as irresponsible, given that they would not impair vital security functions like intelligence-sharing and law enforcement coordination. They would, however, symbolize a stark diplomatic breach that could extend to other areas in which the Trump administration needs allied support,” the former Obama officials wrote. “Thus, the White House would face the first hard choice in this whole process: a full-blown crisis in trans-Atlantic relations. If the administration’s next move were to impose secondary sanctions on Europe, the Europeans could slap its own penalties on American multinational corporations, which in turn would place additional pressure on the White House.”

It’s truly remarkable how these once-powerful bureaucrats simply don’t understand the power calculus involved. Or, as it should be phrased, the power addition. The US runs a big balance-of-trade deficit with Europe, so any such action on the part of the European governments would affect them much more severely than it would affect the United States.

We are rapidly coming to the end of the peaceful period when butter mattered more than guns. Which is why Europe is waning in influence as Russia, and particularly China, are waxing. What mattered more to the Syrian government, Germany’s cars or Russia’s anti-aircraft systems? What was more important to defeating the Islamic State, UK banking institutions or Iranian military advisors?

Any such move on the EU’s part will help break the illusion of its power and offer further encouragement to the rising nationalist movements seeking to free their peoples from the EU’s chains. In the meantime:

H.J.Ansari Zarif’s senior advisor: “If Europeans stop trading with Iran and don’t put pressure on US then we will reveal which western politicians and how much money they had received during nuclear negotiations to make #IranDeal happen.”

If Trump doesn’t already know them, he should offer the Iranians something to go public with those names.