The Mess in Syria : Now, if Congress would do its job . . . even occasionally

How'd we get involved in Syria, anyway? Something about "humanitarian interventions?" Well, according to Susan Rice, President Obama's National Security Advisor, it was the "least bad option.":

When White House senior advisers gathered that Friday evening in the Oval Office, Obama began with his description of the challenge he aimed to address. We did not have a clearly valid international legal basis for our planned action, he said, but we could argue that the use of banned chemical weapons made our actions legitimate, if not technically legal. Domestically, we could invoke the president’s constitutional authority to use force under Article II, but that would trigger a 60-day clock under the War Powers Act—meaning that if our actions lasted longer than 60 days, he would need to obtain congressional approval to continue military action. Therefore, before we used any significant force in Syria to address its chemical-weapons use, the president thought it best to invest members of Congress in the decision, and through them the American people.

As usual, Obama was thinking several plays down the field—to the potential need for military action against Iran, should diplomacy fail to force that country to give up its still nascent nuclear-weapons program. Once the precedent was established that Congress should act to authorize military action in Syria, we could insist on the same kind of vote should we need to confront Iran—a much higher-risk proposition that he would want Congress to own with us.

I admired the president’s logic, but disagreed with his assumptions. As Obama polled the aides assembled in the Oval, all agreed with him. He called on me last, as he often did in my role as national security adviser.

The lone dissenter, I argued for proceeding with military action, as planned. We had clearly signaled—most recently that morning in a strong speech by Secretary of State John Kerry—that we intended to hold Syria accountable through the use of force. Our military assets were in place. The UN had been warned. Our allies were waiting. As then–Vice President Joe Biden liked to say, “Big countries don’t bluff.” Finally, I invoked the painful history of Rwanda and predicted we could long be blamed for inaction.

Well, eventually off we went to a sort of war. The sort where we lose our troops for "not technically legal" reasons. And the "War Powers Act?" It's a joke:

The 1973 law was meant to prevent presidents from sustaining wars without congressional approval. But no one thinks the lawsuit will succeed. And the War Powers Act has never been successfully employed to end any military mission.

"The War Powers resolution really does not work," says former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN), who co-chaired the Iraq Study Group and the 9/11 Commission.

Instead, the War Powers Act has largely been used as it's being used now — as a political tool that allows Congress to criticize a president about the prosecution of a war.

Excellent piece in Military Times by John Robinson In supporting the Kurds in Syria, US has been playing fast and loose with the law

***
Does it matter that not likely a living soul in the current ISIS planned, authorized, or committed the 9/11 attacks, nor aided or harbored 9/11 perpetrators? Apparently, not a wit. Does it matter that the last administration recognized the 2001 AUMF had outlived its shelf-life and offered a new one, including ISIS language, to Congress? Nope; rejected. Does it matter that a bipartisan group of senators subsequently authored a similar AUMF, to accomplish the same thing? Nope; never left the starting blocks.

We’ve been playing fast and loose with the law ever since 2003, when we connected AQI with the 9/11 perpetrators and now, the chickens have come home to roost and we don’t like it.

We partnered with the enemy-of-my-enemy in Syria to fight the son-of-a-son and we made some friends. We confused that partnership with an alliance and that partnership grew to be as strong as an alliance.

But the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs reminded everyone on Thursday that our actual ally, Turkey, had been a NATO ally for the past 70 years. On Sunday, the new secretary of defense gently corrected his Sunday news show host, when she casually referred to our YPG partners as allies. “The Kurds have been very good partners,” the secretary affirmed. There’s a difference between a 70-year ally and a regional partner, no matter how distasteful you find your ally’s actions to be or how loyal you believe your partner to be.

In 2001, the commander in chief declared, “You are either with us, or with the terrorists.” NATO invoked Article 5, which states that an attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all of its members, for the first time, in response to the 9/11 attacks. NATO allies, including Turkey, aided the coalition effort in Afghanistan.

What if Turkey should invoke Article 5 now, in response to what it sees as a terrorist threat? US forces are withdrawing from areas of combat in northeastern Syria now, but can we see ourselves obligated to a fight on the sides of the allied Turks, against partner Kurds?

Rather than threatening sanctions, Congress should update an AUMF they’ve been dithering on for 16 years. Better still, let Congress declare war on Turkey, on behalf of the Kurds, as Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution authorizes them to do.

Fat chance. Why would they give up the chance to point fingers and assign blame that the current situation gives them?

Laws, apparently, are for little people.

U.S. Navy - 244 Years of Service

On Midrats 13 October 2019 - Episode 510: A Half-Baked Navy with Jimmy Drennan and Blake Herzinger

Please join us at 5pm EDT on the Navy's 244th Birthday, 13 October 2019 for some fun conversation during Midrats Episode 510: A Half-Baked Navy with Jimmy Drennan and Blake Herzing

Submarine Aircraft Carrier?

Everyone has half-baked ideas ... some quarter-baked and some three-quarters-baked ... that in a just world of their making would have a funding line.

Are there some ideas so far "out of the box" that they really should be "in the box?"

Find yourself saying, "If I were CNO/emperor/Chairman of the HASC for a day, I would..."?

Have some ideas that you are convinced our Navy needs to win, but everyone else thinks is impossible/stupid/insane?

Well, that is the Navy we're going to ponder today.

With our guests Blake Herzinger and His Exalted Saltiness Jimmy Drennan, EagleOne and I this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern will talk about our pet "half-baked ideas" that ... in all seriousness ... we'd like someone to at least give a serious thought to for a few seconds.

If you can't catch the show live and you use iTunes, you can pick up the episode and others and add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main show page - or you can just click here.

Navy AN-1 art liberated from H.I. Sutton's excellent Covert Shores site.

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: "The Navy Come Through" (1943)

 Heroics at sea.

U.S. Navy Armed Guards in action.

Finest traditions of the U.S. Navy.

Radio remake of a 1942 movie of the same name.

Friday Film: "The Hunter Killers" (1967)

PG&E Gives California a Glimpse of the Future and It's Ugly

California's power utility to cut off nearly 800,000 customers to avoid wildfire risk reports Axios

Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the California power giant, said early this morning that it has begun shutting off power to almost 800,000 customers in a bid to prevent fires when strong winds arrive.

Why it matters: Via the San Francisco Chronicle, "For PG&E, the shut-offs will mark a high-stakes test of a program the now-bankrupt company developed after being implicated in two years of catastrophic infernos."

The paper calls it the company's "biggest preemptive action to avert another destructive wildfire like those which took dozens of lives and destroyed thousands of homes over the past two years."

According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

The outages could last into next week, affect more than 2 million people and, by some estimates, cost businesses and residents more than $1 billion.

So why is this happening? Well, for one thing, you have a company forced into bankruptcy by the disastrous fires of the past and the heavy costs incurred as a result. They might be a little gun shy, you think?

Further, due to the distances from some of the sources of electricity, power lines run through forested areas. If power plants were located closer to major population centers, the need for lengthy power line runs would be lessened. As you may determine from the below, however, California has only one operating nuclear power plant,

The Diablo Canyon Power Plant is an electricity-generating nuclear power plant near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. Since the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, Diablo Canyon is the only operational nuclear plant left in the state.

Here's a map of the major power lines in California, with the red lines being those of PG&E:

 What is producing that electricity?

 Type of power plant:

And the amount of energy California gets from its neighbors (negative numbers means imported into California):

According to PG&E:

To protect public safety, PG&E has turned off power due to gusty winds and dry conditions combined with a heightened fire risk. Once the weather subsides and it is safe to do so, PG&E crews will begin patrolling power lines, repairing damaged equipment and restoring customers.


Outages (weather event plus restoration time) could last longer than 48 hours. For planning purposes, PG&E suggests customers prepare for outages that could last several days.

As you may recall from Forbes:

Yet, beyond power rates 45% above the U.S. average, California has another problem that makes it less of a model than some proclaim. California now imports 33% of its electricity supply from fast growing neighbors, with about 65% of that coming from the Southwest and 35% coming from the Northwest. These numbers increase most in summer months when air conditioning loads peak. Imports have been rising rapidly: in 2010, California "only" imported 25% of its power.

Per the U.S. Energy Information Administration, California imports because "its wholesale power markets in the region are relatively open and generation from outside the state is often less expensive." In fact, California imports about 6% of its electricity from out-of-state coal-fired power plants, with another 14% coming from "unspecified imports," of a cloudy origin that is generally attributed to hydropower, gas, nuclear, and other renewables.

Besides having the most expensive electricity west of the Mississippi River in the continental U.S., California already has the least reliable electricity. California easily leads the nation with nearly 470 power outages a year, compared to 160 for second place Texas, which is really amazing because Texas produces 125% MORE electricity! (here). California's reliability problems will be multiplied as more wind and solar enter the power mix, intermittent resources located in remote areas that cannot be so easily transported to cities via the grid. (emphasis added)

SO, you kill the most reliable,most environmentally friendly power plants - nuclear. You add in intermittent sources, the need to bring in power from outside the state, you rely on hydro power locations that are in the mountains and far from the cities, and you'll be the current mess.

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: Pacific Story "The Heartland of Asia" (1946)

Friday Films: The Retreat to Taiwan and Keeping It

Gulf of Guinea Piracy and Illegal Fishing: Expensive Crimes for the Neighborhood

Hellenic Shipping News reports Nigeria, Others Lose $2bn to Pirates' Attacks

Annually, Says Naval Chief

The Chief of Naval Staff, Rear Admiral Ibok Ekwe Ibas, has revealed that Nigeria and 15 other countries in the Gulf of Guinea are currently losing a sum of $2 billion to pirate attacks annually.

The Naval Chief’s revelation was coming two months after Nigeria was rated as number one in pirate attacks in the Gulf of Guinea in a report by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).

Ibas also confirmed THISDAY’s exclusive report that Nigeria loses several millions of dollars to illegal fishing and poaching on the nation’s coastal and territorial waters.

THISDAY report here:

Nigeria is losing $600 million annually to illegal and unreported fishing by foreign vessels as a result of lack of equipment such as Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Vessel Monitoring System (VMS), and adequate manpower to police the country’s vast coastline, THISDAY’s investigation has revealed.

THISDAY gathered that the country also spends $800 million annually on fish importation, being the fourth largest importer of fish in the world, after China, Japan and the United States.
***
The document titled, “Fisheries Crime Activities in West Africa Coastal Region,” showed that Nigeria spends about $800 million (N324 billion) to import fish to bridge the supply gap.

According to the document, Nigeria in 2018 imported fish worth $71 million, $56 million, $43 million and $174 million from Iceland, Russia, Norway and Netherlands respectively.

The document also showed that West Africa remains a global hotspot for illegal fishing with estimated losses of $2.9 billion.

The document further revealed that over 450 Chinese vessels fish illegally in Nigeria and the coast of West Africa, adding that, “a survey carried out by the West Africa Task Force showed that over 37 per cent of all fish caught in West Africa are caught illegally with China, Taiwan, Russia, South Korea, Spain, France and Thailand being the main countries responsible.

“This is aside vessels from other countries and artisanal fishing in Nigeria inland water ways in areas such as Badore, Epe and coastal areas in Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom and Cross Rivers states.”

Nigeria reports it has a project to deal with these issues, Deep Blue Project:

There is hope in the horizon for the high level of insecurity in Nigeria’s waterways as the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), has established the Integrated Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure known as Deep Blue Project to drastically reduce criminalities in the Gulf of Guinea.
***
He said, “The Deep Blue Project is a multi-pronged approach towards tackling insecurity in our territorial waters and the entire Gulf of Guinea. What we are doing is fulfilling the training aspect of the project and this will also be complemented by acquisition of assets, such as fast intervention vessels, surveillance aircraft, and other facilities, including a command and control centre for data collection and information sharing that will aid our goals of targeted enforcement.”

Wishing them the best of luck with that. The GOG is a huge area.

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 21 August - 25 September 2019 and HORN OF AFRICA/GULF OF GUINEA/SOUTHEAST ASIA Weekly Piracy Update for 19 -25 September 2019

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: Suspense "The Greatest Thief in the World" (1951)

James Mason in The Greatest Thief in the World.

The Battle of Leyte: The Army VIew

"The Boy Who Cried Wolf" A Political Fable for Our Times

If every announcement of a "wolf" is followed by "not a wolf" what happens down the road when there really is a wolf?

There's a moral here. Generating faux crisis after faux crisis creates "crisis fatigue" . . . which plays into some truly bad actors hands.

Just saying,

A Birthday Prayer and Poem

Seventy years ago I was born in a small town in the southwestern part of the State of New Mexico, USA, where my father worked as a mining engineer after his WWII service in the Army (horse cavalry and, later in the war, in the Air Corps).

We lived in New Mexico for a couple of years before the new Air Force recalled him to fly the skies over Korea and he became a career Air Force officer, which meant that for some 20 years our home was where he was sent when we could accompany him and somewhere temporary when we could not. Texas, Virginia, California (several places), Wyoming, Guam, Nebraska, Turkey, Michigan, and Florida were addresses acquired in our 26 moves as a family.

When I left for college, I began my own collection of places, some due to the Navy, some due to the corporate world after I left active duty- North Carolina, California (a couple of places), South Carolina, Georgia, Texas. Even in the Navy Reserve, I got to serve in different places, Houston, Corpus Christi, San Francisco, Washington, DC, Naples,Italy, Saudi Arabia. Some of those were for one weekend a month for a couple of years at a time, others were for months as recalls came for Desert Shield/Storm or Kosovo.

Along the way, I met many great people, some were the temporary friends made at a new base or ship or unit for the short period of time we spent together before the next transfer. Some became lifelong friends.

One became my wife, who for over the 53 years I have known her has been the center of my life, and our 48 years of marriage has passed by in a blink, but leaving me still deeply in love with the best person I know.

She is responsible for raising our four children as civilized humans who have families of their own as they travel their paths through life. My job was to get out of the way and let them blossom. I am in awe of all them.

But this birthday is, of course, not an end. As indicators of where my mind goes, I offer up to you a prayer and a poem.

The prayer is probably wrongly attributed to Sir Francis Drake:

Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storms will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push back the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.

This we ask in the name of our Captain,
Who is Jesus Christ.

The poem is by Tennyson:

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: Richard Diamond Private Detective "The Enigma of Big Ed" (1952)

Dick Powell makes it fun.

Friday Film: Operation Earnest Will - the U.S. Navy in the "Tanker War" presented by Stephen Phillips

"No War for Oil" Needed - Thanks to Fracking

For years here, I have been praising the concept of energy independence for the United States (see, e.g. Energy Wars: Fracking Our Way Ahead):

It's interesting that people who have previously argued that we should not fight "wars for oil" in our own national interest are willing (1) to commit our national forces and dollars to possibly fighting "wars for oil" for the interests of other countries and (2) that people who who are opposed to U.S. fracking on environmental grounds seem to be totally okay with the status quo of pushing environmental damage off to those second and third world countries who are resource rich but not in the protesters back yards - and condemning others in the world to be dependent on the whims of leaders in Russia and other undemocratic countries.
***
It also behooves Europe and Japan that the U.S., Canada and Mexico develop LNG export facilities to allow the export of natural gas to offset the Russian and Iranian power in using the "oil and gas weapon" against Europe.

The U.S. government should be encouraging U.S. companies to help Poland to explore its shale gas reserves as an offset to the Russians. While the estimated levels of Polish shale gas are fluctuating, there is gas there and it is both Polish and European interests to develop it.

It's not just the U.S. that has the potential to be "sitting pretty" as a result of the the shale boom.

You don't want to fight Iran for attacking Saudi Arabia?

Fine, continue to use the our oil and gas production to continue to inflict economic damage on the Iranians - our crude and NG is perfectly fungible for what Iran produces. The world will little note nor long remember what Iran and its surrogates are trying to do by disrupting the energy flow from the Arabian Gulf. Iran has gone to this well before, but this time the world has moved on from total reliance on Middle East oil and gas. The U.S. can be entirely energy independent of the Middle East.

In fact, it occurs to me that without the infusion of cash from the Obama Administration's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal with Iran, Iran would be soon be running on empty.

It is also worth noting that due to the wonders of its socialist dictatorship, Venezuela's oil production is not really a factor in the world market right now. If that situation could be reversed, the importance of Middle East energy supplies diminishes even further.

We just need to ride this out.

Oh, and build more nuclear power plants.

In the meantime, it seems demand for product is on a downward trend:

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 7 August - 11 September 2019 and HORN OF AFRICA/GULF OF GUINEA/SOUTHEAST ASIA Weekly Piracy Update for 5 -11 September 2019

Note the continued warning of hazards in the waters off the Arabian peninsula, including waters near to Iran and the Iranian surrogates in Yemen. Hazards include GPS spoofing.

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

Intermittent Posting

On the road.

Navy Film: “Escape from a Disabled Submarine” (1961)

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: The Life of Riley "The Football Games" (1945)

Fall is coming, football is here!

William Bendix

Gulf of Guinea Piracy: Nigeria Reaches Out to Japan for Help

Report that Nigeria's leader has asked Japan for assistance in fighting piracy and illegal fishing in the Gulf of Guinea here:

President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday in Yokohama, Japan, sought the support of the Japanese government in combating piracy in the Gulf of Guinea as well as illegal fishing in that region.

The President made the request during a bilateral meeting between the Nigerian delegation and Japanese officials led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Might get interesting if Japan helps out fighting the far seas Chinese fishing criminals.

An oil rich country of over 200 million should be willing to spend money on an adequate Coast Guard or Navy to patrol its own waters, vital sea lanes, and to join in regional operations with its neighbors to cut down on local thuggery and the foreign fishing fleets that are troubling western Africa. To be fair, Nigeria has recently added to its fleet Nigerian Navy commissions new vessels
:

The Nigerian Navy has commissioned into service 16 new vessels, including ten small boats and six patrol vessels, which will be used to enhance maritime security and protect the country’s oil and gas assets. It has also revealed that more vessels are on the way.
***
The vessels included the NNS Ekulu and NNS Nguru, two FPB 110

patrol boats delivered earlier this year by France’s Ocea. These 35 metre vessels were ordered in February 2017 and are to be equipped with two 12.7 mm and one 20 mm cannon each. Nigeria has also ordered five FPB 72s from Ocea, with the NNS Gongola and NNS Calabar delivered in January this year, after the NNS Shiroro and NNS Ose arrived in 2017. These four vessels were also commissioned on 3 September.

It is not clear what type of small boats were commissioned but it is likely they are 9.5 metre Guardian fast patrol boats built by Paramount Maritime. In November 2017 the Nigerian Navy accepted four of the type out of an order for 14 – the other ten, which are 8.5 metre long variants, were to be delivered progressively.

The Nigerian Navy has also taken delivery of a number of 8.2 metre long boats built by Nigerian company Epenal, with around 60 been delivered over the last year.

Whatever these additions, it needs more to allow it to be more assertive in protecting it home waters and its EEZ.

According to this, Nigeria's economy is about the same as the U.S. state of Ohio, which has only about 12 million residents. One problem is, of course, a certain level of corruption which diverts public monies into private hands. According to Transparency International, though, Nigeria is only the 144th most corrupt country out of 180 countries, which means it could be worse, I suppose.
It's not like the corruption in resource rich Russia or Venezuela, is it? If you are wondering, Somalia is #1 in corruption (180 out of 180).

Friday Films - Labor Day Selection

First a pre-US involvement in WWII cartoon of Army life:



How about a reminder that the Soviet Union (Russia) not only invaded Poland along with the Nazis, but took on the Finns in 1939:



A bit of Wyoming from 1947:



And a little look at the U.S. Coast Guard in Vietnam:

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 17 July - 21 August 2019 and HORN OF AFRICA/GULF OF GUINEA/SOUTHEAST ASIA Weekly Piracy Update for 15 - 21 August 2019

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: Nero Wolfe "The Girl Who Cried Wolfe (1950)

Nero Wolfe and his aide, Archie Godwin

On Midrats 25 August 2019 Episode 503: Missile Defense at Sea and Ashore with Tom Karako

Please join us on 25 August 2019 at 5pm EST for Midrats Episode 503: Missile Defense at Sea and Ashore with Tom Karako

Not since the last decade of the Cold War have ballistic missile defense, land based cruise missiles, as well as short, intermediate, and medium range ballistic missiles received this much attention outside the compartmentalized and esoteric warfare specialities they belong in.

With the realities of our century bidding farewell to the previous century's INF limitations, you shouldn't expect the topic to fade away anytime soon.

Shipboard and land based missile defense are rising to meet the threat - using both established capabilities and new ones emerging from the lab.

For the full hour this Sunday to discuss these and related topics, our guest will be Dr. Thomas Karako.

Tom is a senior fellow with the International Security Program and the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he arrived in 2014. His research focuses on national security, missile defense, nuclear deterrence, and public law. For 2010–2011, he was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, working with the professional staff of the House Armed Services Committee and the Strategic Forces Subcommittee on U.S. strategic forces policy, nonproliferation, and NATO.

He is also currently an adjunct professor in the Strategic Studies Program in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and a fellow with the Institute for Politics and Strategy of Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University and his B.A. from the University of Dallas.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Friday Film: The Nike Hercules Story (1960)

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: Have Gun, Will Travel "French Leave" (1960)

Back in the day, Have Gun Will, Will Travel started out on television and the radio show followed thereafter. This was unusual, as in most cases successful radio shows transitioned to television. History here:

And so it was that Have Gun, Will Travel premiered over Radio a year and a half after its Television rendition on November 23, 1958. Veteran Film, Radio and Television actor John Dehner was tapped to portray the mono-named Paladin. The great character actor Ben Wright was selected to portray 'Hey Boy' ('real name' Kim Chan) and as the series progressed Radio legend Virginia Gregg was tapped to portray Miss Wong, Hey Boy's ostensible lady friend.

John Dehner, the radio Paladin 

For the uninitiated, 'Paladin' (last name only) was a Renaissance Man: an adventurer, bon-vivant, gourmet, enologist, raconteur, gambler, and investment speculator--who also happened to be a very adept and deadly gun for hire. Based in San Francisco, Paladin occupied a suite of rooms at The Carlton Hotel. Most comfortable dressed as a dandy, Paladin's San Francisco 'valet' is Kim Chan, a Chinese immigrant who works primarily for The Carlton Hotel when not in the service of Paladin. Dubbed 'Hey Boy' since he began working in San Francisco, he appears to have at least two generations of roots in the San Francisco area.

While Paladin seemed to attract--and enjoy--an apparently limitless supply of female companions while staying at The Carlton, Hey Boy, by contrast, appears to have had only one steady female interest: Miss Wong, a well-educated, well-read friend of Hey Boy's family.

Paladin's daily routine, immediately after checking his financial investments, appears to have been poring over several newspaper subscriptions--for which he had a standing order--to check for possible new adventures. He has also apparently placed personal ads in numerous other newspapers of the day, advertising "Have Gun - Will Travel, Wire Paladin, San Francisco."

His adventures arrived by either wiring or posting his business card to potential interested parties or by answering responses to his personal services ads. Paladin's services don't come cheap: he customarily asked at least one thousand dollars for his services--plus expenses. But being the 'knight' he is at heart, he often took on causes at nominal or paltry charges on principle alone. Indeed, Paladin accepted $1.61 for one of his commissions.

Friday Film: Nautical Rules of the Road "The Halifax Incident" (1942)

Walt Disney Studios animated one of the worst maritime disasters of all time:

More here:

At 9:04:35 am the out-of-control fire on board Mont-Blanc set off her highly explosive cargo.[57] The ship was completely blown apart and a powerful blast wave radiated away from the explosion at more than 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) per second. Temperatures of 5,000 °C (9,000 °F) and pressures of thousands of atmospheres accompanied the moment of detonation at the centre of the explosion.[58][25] White-hot shards of iron fell down upon Halifax and Dartmouth.[59] Mont-Blanc's forward 90-mm gun, its barrel melted away, landed approximately 5.6 kilometres (3.5 mi) north of the explosion site near Albro Lake in Dartmouth, and the shank of her anchor, weighing half a ton, landed 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) south at Armdale.[60]

A cloud of white smoke rose to over 3,600 metres (11,800 ft).[61] The shock wave from the blast travelled through the earth at nearly 23 times the speed of sound and was felt as far away as Cape Breton (207 kilometres or 129 miles) and Prince Edward Island (180 kilometres or 110 miles).[25][62] An area of over 160 hectares (400 acres) was completely destroyed by the explosion,[60] and the harbour floor was momentarily exposed by the volume of water that was displaced. A tsunami was formed by water surging in to fill the void;[63] it rose as high as 18 metres (60 ft) above the high-water mark on the Halifax side of the harbour.[64] Imo was carried onto the shore at Dartmouth by the tsunami.[65] The blast killed all but one on the whaler, everyone on the pinnace and 21 of the 26 men on Stella Maris; she ended up on the Dartmouth shore, severely damaged. The captain's son, First Mate Walter Brannen, who had been thrown into the hold by the blast, survived, as did four others.[66] All but one of the Mont-Blanc crew members survived.[67]

Over 1,600 people were killed instantly and 9,000 were injured, more than 300 of whom later died.[25] Every building within a 2.6-kilometre (1.6 mi) radius, over 12,000 in total, was destroyed or badly damaged.[63] Hundreds of people who had been watching the fire from their homes were blinded when the blast wave shattered the windows in front of them.[68] Stoves and lamps overturned by the force of the blast sparked fires throughout Halifax,[69] particularly in the North End, where entire city blocks were caught up in the inferno, trapping residents inside their houses. Firefighter Billy Wells, who was thrown away from the explosion and had his clothes torn from his body, described the devastation survivors faced: "The sight was awful, with people hanging out of windows dead. Some with their heads missing, and some thrown onto the overhead telegraph wires." He was the only member of the eight-man crew of the fire engine Patricia to survive.[70]

Not So Subtle -- "Let's Send a Message in the Strait of Hormuz"

Prepared to counter potential small boat swarms when transiting near a minor annoyance:

STRAIT OF HORMUZ (Aug. 12, 2019) An AH-1Z Viper helicopter attached to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM) 163 (Reinforced), 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) takes off during a strait transit aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4). The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the 11th MEU are deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in support of naval operations to ensure maritime stability and security in the Central Region, connecting the Mediterranean and the Pacific through the Western Indian Ocean and three strategic choke points. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Dalton S. Swanbeck/Released)STRAIT OF HORMUZ (Aug. 12, 2019) 

You might note that "manned mobile gun platform" on the elevator behind the helicopters.

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 3 July - 7 August 2019 and HORN OF AFRICA/GULF OF GUINEA/SOUTHEAST ASIA Weekly Piracy Update for 1 -7 August 2019

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

Also this from the U.S. Maritime Administration:

2019-012-Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman, Arabian Sea, Red Sea-Threats to Commercial Vessels by Iran
Description:
This revised advisory cancels U.S. Maritime Advisories 2019-004 and 2019-008.

1. References: U.S. Maritime Alerts 2019-004A, 2019-003A, 2019-002A, and 2019-001A.

2. Issue: Heightened military activity and increased political tensions in this region continue to pose serious threats to commercial vessels. Associated with these threats is a potential for miscalculation or misidentification that could lead to aggressive actions. Vessels operating in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Gulf of Oman may also encounter GPS interference, bridge-to-bridge communications spoofing, and/or other communications jamming with little to no warning.

Since May 2019, the following maritime incidents have occurred in this region:

- Six attacks against commercial vessels (see U.S. Maritime Alerts 2019-002A and 2019-003A);

- Shoot-down of U.S. Navy remotely piloted aircraft over international waters;

- Attempted at-sea interdiction of Isle of Man-flagged M/V BRITISH HERITAGE;

- Seizure of ex-Panama-flagged M/V RIAH;

- Seizure of U.K.-flagged M/V STENA IMPERO (see U.S. Maritime Alert 2019-004A); and

- Detention and subsequent release of Liberian-flagged M/V MESDAR (see U.S. Maritime Alert 2019-004A).

In at least two of these incidents, vessels reported GPS interference. One vessel reportedly shut off its Automatic Identification System (AIS) before it was seized, complicating response efforts. Vessels have also reported spoofed bridge-to-bridge communications from unknown entities falsely claiming to be U.S. or coalition warships.

The United States is committed to safeguarding freedom of navigation, the free flow of commerce, and the protection of U.S. vessels and personnel in this region.

3. Guidance: The international community, including the United States, continues maritime security operations within this region. Vessels operating in this area are advised to review security measures, ensure AIS is transmitting at all times, and monitor VHF Channel 16.

a) To afford best protection in the region, U.S. flagged commercial vessels are encouraged to:

- Simultaneously register with both the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Office (UKMTO) and U.S. Fifth Fleet Naval Cooperation and Guidance for Shipping (NCAGS) Watch when entering the Indian Ocean Voluntary Reporting Area (VRA) by e-mailing them the Initial Report from Annex D of Best Management Practices to Deter Piracy and Enhance Maritime Safety in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea (BMP5).

- Provide transit plans for the Strait of Hormuz (SoH) and Persian Gulf (PG) to UKMTO and U.S. Fifth Fleet NCAGS via a single e-mail, including the time of entering/exiting the SoH Traffic Separation Scheme, an outline of the navigation plan for operating in the SoH and PG, and speed restrictions or other constraints.

- In the event of any incident or suspicious activity, call UKMTO or the U.S. Fifth Fleet Battle Watch and activate the Ship Security Alert System immediately.

- Answer all VHF calls from coalition navies.

- Utilize other reports included in Annex D of BMP5 as necessary, including both UKMTO and Fifth Fleet NCAGS on each of these reports.

b) All vessels should be aware that U.S. and other coalition naval forces may conduct maritime awareness calls, queries, and approaches to ensure the safety of vessels transiting the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman, and Arabian Sea. If a U.S. flag commercial vessel suspects it is being hailed from a source falsely claiming to be a U.S. or coalition naval vessel, the U.S. Fifth Fleet Battle Watch should be immediately informed.

c) If hailed by Iranian forces, U.S. flag commercial vessels should provide vessel name, flag state, and affirm that they are proceeding in accordance with international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention. The master should immediately inform the U.S. Fifth Fleet Battle Watch.

d) If Iranian forces seek to board a U.S. flag commercial vessel navigating these waters, the ship’s Master should, if the safety of the ship and crew would not be compromised, decline permission to board, noting that the vessel is proceeding in accordance with international law, and immediately inform the U.S. Fifth Fleet Battle Watch.

e) If Iranian forces board a U.S. flagged commercial vessel, the vessel should immediately contact the U.S. Fifth Fleet Battle Watch. The crew should not forcibly resist the boarding party. Refraining from forcible resistance does not imply consent or agreement to that boarding.

f) The Maritime Global Security website at https://www.maritimeglobalsecurity.org/ offers industry issued best practices, including BMP5, and guidance to mariners by geographic region and provides contact and subscription information for regional maritime security reporting centers.

g) Vessels operating in this area are advised to establish contact with both UKMTO and the U.S. Fifth Fleet NCAGS Watch, and to include both on all update or incident report emails, as detailed above. By including both as addressees on each email, awareness will be enhanced without creating an additional reporting burden.

Saturday Is Old Radio Day: Fibber McGee and Molly - Fish Tale (1944)

Does every fisherman have an "Old Muley?"



Many is the hour I have wasted spent joyously practicing my fly fishing technique.  Your results may vary.

And, yes, I know that's not a fly rod in the young fellow's hands.

Friday Film: Recruiting Nukes (1975)

Hey! Who keeps saying that pot is harmless? Well, pushers and others seeking to get rich off of it mostly. What if it isn't?

NY Post opinion piece by Miranda Devine The link between pot, shootings may be closer than we think

Even as evidence mounts of the health problems associated with marijuana, New York has insisted on joining other greedy states scrambling to legalize this deceptively dangerous drug.

It makes no sense at a time when American youth is suffering from an unprecedented mental health crisis.

And, in all honesty, we cannot rule out a connection between increasing marijuana use, mental illness and the recent spate of mass shootings by disturbed young males.

We don’t yet know much about the mental state or drug use of the El Paso or Dayton killers. But a former girlfriend of Dayton killer Connor Betts, 24, has indicated he was mentally ill, and two of his friends interviewed by reporters this week mentioned his previous drug use.
***
You can’t address the youth mental health crisis without considering the effect of rising teen marijuana use.

Among American teenagers, the drug’s “daily use has become as, or more, popular than daily cigarette smoking” according to the National Institute of Health’s 2017 Monitoring the Future study.

We’ve successfully demonized cigarettes while new laws send kids the message that marijuana is harmless.

Yet we’ve known for more than a decade of the link between marijuana and psychosis, depression and schizophrenia.

In 2007 the prestigious medical journal Lancet recanted its previous benign view of marijuana, citing studies showing “an increase in risk of psychosis of about 40 percent.”

A seminal long-term study of 50,465 Swedish army conscripts found those who had tried marijuana by age 18 had 2.4 times the risk of being diagnosed with schizophrenia in the following 15 years than those who had never used the drug. Heavy users were 6.7 times more likely to be admitted to a hospital for schizophrenia.

Another study, of 1,037 people in New Zealand, found those who used cannabis at ages 15 and 18 had higher rates of psychotic symptoms at age 26 than non-users.

A 2011 study in the British Medical Journal of 2,000 teenagers found those who smoked marijuana were twice as likely to develop psychosis as those who didn’t.

See also Another Threat to Society - "Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence":

A really interesting article from the Hillsdale College publication Imprimis Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence

Over the last 30 years, psychiatrists and epidemiologists have turned speculation about marijuana’s dangers into science. Yet over the same period, a shrewd and expensive lobbying campaign has pushed public attitudes about marijuana the other way. And the effects are now becoming apparent.

Almost everything you think you know about the health effects of cannabis, almost everything advocates and the media have told you for a generation, is wrong.

If you are concerned about the effects on our society of the promiscuous use of legal and illegal drugs, then this article about the relationship of marijuana to mental diseases, you should read this article.

The issues raised need far more exposure.

Not only should we be concerned about what the research reported on by Mr. Berenson indicates, we should also be concerned about the long-term effects on the bodies of habitual users of marijuana - if inhaling tobacco smoke or chewing tobacco are known cancer risks, it seems pretty obvious that doing the same sort of ingestion with another substance must pose some risk - one that the users of today will tomorrow being suing the legal purveyors of their supply for "misrepresentation" of the health benefits of their product.

Things are seldom as they seem, and, as with "feel good alcohol" use, there is a price to be paid down the road for the harm the purveyors of marijuana are doing with their "harmless buzz" pushing of their product.

Never the Criminal's Fault, Is It?

Anomie - "Disconnection from the moral norms and rules of a society"

Mass killings? Fraternity brothers encouraging suicide?

I recall something from the days when I studied sociology:

Anomie

...Durkheim argued that societies characterized by organic solidarity generated social solidarity not through sameness, but through interdependence. However, Durkheim also stated that this solidarity is precarious and can be abnormal, producing anomie as a consequence. Although Durkheim does not give a clear definition of anomie, it can loosely be defined as a feeling of disconnection from the moral norms and rules of a society. Under a state of anomie, there is not enough moral regulation in a society to counteract the individualism associated with a complex division of labor. In other words, a society that celebrates individualism runs the risk of forgetting to tell individuals what they can and cannot do. We can also think of it as a state of normlessness.

I would argue that in some of these cases the perpetrators of the criminal acts have found their way in "groups" - often solely on-line - that provide them with a different set of norms than those of the mainstream society.

Just as members of criminal gangs have their own ethos, so do these otherwise isolated (estranged?) individuals come to seek acceptance for their eccentricities in chat rooms full of other people suffering from the same exclusion from the main society as they do, who seemingly provide a new set of norms and acceptance that encourage such that some individuals decide that to act out against the society that has caused them to feel so adrift is perfectly okay. In terms of Transactional Analysis, these individuals feel they have no worth and that society also has no worth and they may seek revenge:

I'm not OK - You're not OK
This is a relatively rare position, but perhaps occurs where people unsuccessfully try to project their bad objects onto others. As a result, they remain feeling bad whilst also perceive others as bad.

This position could also be a result of relationships with dominant others where the other people are viewed with a sense of betrayal and retribution. This may later get generalized from the bullies to all others people.

I think that a person in such a state may seek to go out in a literal blaze of glory - by becoming, for instance, a major mass murderer as a way of saying, "I lived." I argue the issuance of "manifestos" by such people is a means of trying to reach into the future. The fact that such writings are often confused garbage simply reflects to confusion of the minds of their authors as they try to claim that their lives had some meaning.

This disconnection from the mainstream society, especially in this time of internet isolation, needs to be identified and addressed as a mental health issue.

U.S. Navy Office of Naval Intelligence Worldwide Threat to Shipping (WTS) for 26 June - 31 July 2019 and HORN OF AFRICA/GULF OF GUINEA/SOUTHEAST ASIA Weekly Piracy Update for 25 - 31 July 2019

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

U.S. Navy Office of Naval I... by lawofsea on Scribd

Iran Keeps Grabbing Ships on False Pretenses

Despite claims of this latest seized ship being a "tanker" it certainly looks like an offshore supply boat to me.

Thugs.

Saturday Is Old Radio Day (and so is Sunday, sometimes): Our Miss Brooks "Walter's Moving Van" (1955)

On Midrats 4 August 2019 - Episode 500: The War in Yemen, with Katherine Zimmerman

Please join us at 5pm (EDT) on 4 August 2019 for "Midrats Episode 500: The War in Yemen, with Katherine Zimmerman

It is a civil war, tribal war, religious war, and proxy war with local, regional, and global implications.

The specific and larger implications of the war in Yemen will be our

topic for the full hour with our guest Katherine Zimmerman.

Katherine Zimmerman is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the research manager for AEI’s Critical Threats Project. As AEI’s senior analyst studying terrorist groups, she focuses on the global al Qaeda network and covers the Salafi-jihadi movement and related trends in the Middle East and Africa. She also specializes in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Yemen, al Shabaab in Somalia, and al Qaeda in the Sahel.

Ms. Zimmerman has testified before Congress about the threats to US national security interests emanating from al Qaeda and its network. She has also briefed members of Congress, their staff, and US military, diplomatic, and intelligence community personnel. Her analyses have been widely published, including in CNN.com, Foreign Affairs, FoxNews.com, The Hill, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. She is a term member with the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the RESOLVE Network Research Advisory Council.

If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here.

Friday Film: "The River"

The Mississippi and its importance to this country - it is our core.



Digitized by AV Geeks.

Update: Yes, film seems to be from the late 1930's when the TVA was brand spanking new.