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]