Sleepless in Midland

If China wanted to ruin the American economy they hit on the right strategy

Few rational observers can ignore what China did. Regardless of how the virus developed and got released, what China did afterward certainly was war like. Redstate.com has a quote from Peter Navarro from a TV appearance that sums it up nicely. To wit:

We know that patient zero in China was about mid-November. It was in Wuhan. We know that ground zero had the P-4 weapons lab, where the virus likely came from. For the next two months, we know that China hid the virus from the world behind the shield of the World Health Organization.

And, as they did that, they sent gleaming passenger jets from China, not into the rest of China from Wuhan, but to places like New York and Milan, seeding the world with what would become a pandemic.

As they did that, we also know, Maria, from their own customs data that they vacuumed up virtually all of the world’s personal protective equipment, including over two billion masks.

And we also know that, today, what China is doing, sitting on that stockpile of what we call PPE, is, they are selling it at profiteering prices to some. And, to other countries, they are actually putting pressure on those countries to deny the virus came from China or to talk about Taiwan or to do other things.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. And what that means for us here is, this morning, Americans won’t go to church because of the China virus. Sons and daughters of America won’t be taking their mothers to brunch. Tomorrow, 33 million Americans won’t be going to work, and millions of children in America will be home climbing the walls, instead of learning, reading, writing, and arithmetic.

So, that’s the China problem that we face. President Trump built the most powerful and beautiful economy in the world in three years.

The Chinese Communist Party took it down in 60 days.

Source: White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro Points out How Frighteningly Fast Communist China Took Down Our Economy.

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2:54 PM 5/11/2020

the Steele dossier -- Russian disinformation?

It was just a couple of years ago that WaPo proclaimed that "the U.S. intelligence community has concluded that the Russians engaged in an elaborate operation to swing the election to Trump." And the Steele dossier was intended to prove that Russia had compromising evidence on Trump that could be held over him once in office.

The Steele dossier turned out to be a bucket of malarkey, and the FBI knew it.

But where did that Steele dossier come from? Call this a conspiracy theory if you want, but here's a thought. The dossier may have been disinformation created by the KGB or some other entity controlled by Russia. They didn't think it was worth anything, but when Steele came asking, they said among themselves, "What the heck, give him all that leftover junk."

Lo and behold, that discontent within the U.S. they've been seeking actually came about. And it came about with major credit going to the Steele dossier and its use by U.S. intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and politicians. Someone might get into the KGB hall of fame for this.

This would not be the first time a foreign country tried to use disinformation to shape American thought. But it could be the most successful so far.

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1:30 PM 12/22/20196

Enemies will use intel about us on us

It's heartening to learn that writers with some influence are concerned with the theory that China is compiling information on Americans. Samantha Ravich is one such writer. She has an impressive resume and recently wrote Artificial Intelligence and the Adversary. Here's an excerpt:

... Beijing already hoards vast quantities of data about its own 1.4 billion people, none of whom have privacy rights under the Communist regime.

Nevertheless, Beijing isn’t satisfied. It has turned its sights on the U.S. and has already exfiltrated some of the most sensitive information on the American people and military. These include repeated breaches since 2013 of medical systems and databases, and the decadelong targeting of the U.S. Navy’s ship-maintenance records and the names and personal details of 100,000 of its personnel.

In time, through artificial intelligence, China will be able to use Americans’ data against us. Personalized medical records could become personalized bioweapons, for instance.

This next passage is both terrifying and mystifying:

Personalized medical records could become personalized bioweapons, for instance. In 2017 Zhang Shibo, a retired Chinese general, wrote that biotech could provide China an offensive capability through the creation of “specific ethnic genetic attacks.” As for the stolen Navy data, understanding how the U.S. maintains its fleets will help China point out vulnerabilities in U.S. weapons systems and ship design to be exploited during a confrontation.

“Specific ethnic genetic attacks.” Understanding what each of those words means doesn't help to understand the phrase. Perhaps it means an involuntary assault on a person's DNA based on race. In any event, it's certainly sounds scary.

And it drives home the point that while China might be a trading partner, it is certainly not a friend.

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2:51 PM 12/9/2019

Iran demonstrates how tyrants quell protesters -- by killing them

I caught a couple of minutes of Brian Hook's briefing on C-Span. And in it he described a horrific scene. Here's a snippet from the State Dept -- website:

Good morning.  I have three announcements today on Iran, but I will first start by addressing the atrocities the Iranian regime has committed against its own people.  On November 16th, protests were spreading throughout the country.  In Mahshahr, a city in southwest Iran, a number of Iranian demonstrators blocked a road.  The State Department has received videos of what happened next.  Without warning, the IRGC opened fire on the protesters, killing several people.  Many of the protesters fled to nearby marshlands to escape.  The IRGC tracked them down and surrounded them with machine guns mounted on trucks.  They then sprayed the protesters with bullets.  Between the rounds of machine gun fire, the screams of the victims can be heard.  In this one incident alone, the regime murdered as many as a hundred Iranians and possibly more.  When it was over, the regime loaded the bodies into trucks.  We do not yet know where these bodies went, but we are learning more and more about how the Iranian regime treats its own people.

Iran is ruled by tyrants, and this is the way tyrants act toward dissenters.

How fortunate we are to live in a country that tolerates dissent, and we're probably fortunate that the Brits were not that brutal when the colonies were stirring prior to the American revolution. Hopefully the tolerance we are currently experiencing will last a few more generations.

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1:09 PM 12/8/2019

Dusko Popov and the Pearl Harbor warning J. Edgar Hoover ignored

There was a lot of hand wringing after the terrorist attack on the twin towers about the failure of intelligence agencies to connect the dots prior to the attack.

Dots weren't connected prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor either. The dots that weren't connected were actually microdots -- a spy technique involving tiny dots containing microscopic print hidden on an innocent looking piece of typed paper.

There's a fascinating book with the intriguing title "Into the lion's mouth: the true story of Dusko Popov : World War II spy, patriot, and the real-life inspiration for James Bond" by Larry Loftis. Popov was a spy -- actually a double agent ostensibly working for the Germans during World War II but helping the The U.S. and Britain.

Popov had been given a questionnaire for information the Germans wanted him to retrieve from the Americans, and parts of it concerned a British attack on a naval base in Italy and how the Americans defended Pearl Harbor. It's obvious now that the Germans were gathering this information for Japan.

This information was made available to J. Edgar Hoover, but Hoover sat on it. Hoover's disgust of Popov's playboy lifestyle may have clouded Hoover's judgment. Hoover either deliberately withheld crucial intelligence or didn't comprehend the significance.

In any event, with that forewarning Pearl Harbor could have been better defended.

References: Scandal of the Century – New Book Claims USA Knew Of Pearl Harbor Plans For Months
The Tricycle Affair
FBI Skullduggery: Was J. Edgar Hoover Criminally Negligent or Treasonous?

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1:35 PM 12/7/2019

In a war our enemies will be using that personal information they got about us on the internet

In an article titled The Future Of Information Warfare Is Here — And The Russians Are Already Doing It Tom Ricks tells us of a sneaky way the Russians tricked Ukrainian soldiers, quoting Army Col. Liam Collins:

“The Russians are adept at identifying Ukrainian positions by their electrometric signatures,” writes Collins. One would expect that, but the thing that impressed me what came next.

“In one tactic, soldiers receive texts telling them they are ‘surrounded and abandoned.’ Minutes later, their families receive a text stating, ‘Your son is killed in action,’ which often prompts a call or text to the soldiers. Minutes later, soldiers receive another message telling them to ‘retreat and live,’ followed by an artillery strike to the location where a large group of cellphones was detected.”

Surely this particular tactic won't work again. But it's a constant battle to stay ahead in any arena that relies on technology.

From time to time we hear of some big hack resulting in the loss of gigabytes of personal information about citizens. When we factor in the possibility that an enemy may have a dossier on each soldier it's even more important to guard against what that information can do to hurt them.

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3:07 PM 12/1/2019

Finally, some potentially good news about EMP protection

The prospect of an electromagnetic pulse attack has kept anyone who read William R. Forstchen's book, "One Second After" nervous for almost a decade. And those of us who hoped the people in charge would ramp up protection were left in the dark, so to speak.

But president Trump was prescient enough to issue an executive order that might stimulate those people who could actually make a difference. See Trump orders historic plan to thwart EMP, warns attack would be ‘debilitating’ from earlier this year.

The Electric Power Research Institute issued a report in April that suggested an EMP attack might result in as much damage as had been predicted.

But some steps could be taken to minimize the problems. The article Scientists Are Zapping Fake Electrical Grids to Help Us Survive an EMP Attack tells us some of the ways they might do it. Here's an excerpt:

The results showed that although some parts of power lines and transformer equipment were damaged by the pulses, they weren’t as drastically affected as some predictions presumed. And with the control houses, some structures held up better than others — namely the ones made with mostly metal, not concrete. The conductive qualities of metal make the control house act like a Faraday Cage, absorbing and dissipating the incoming energy so none reaches the electronics inside. While the modern-day metal control house designs weren’t totally EMP-proof, they did have better shielding qualities than their concrete counterparts.

The concept of a Faraday Cage has been with us for a long time. And if protecting the control houses actually works, then more power to them. But, it's probably too soon to stop worrying, especially with since cyber attacks would be so much simpler for an adversary to pull off.

P.S. That EPRI report is not without serious criticism. See EPRI EMP Report: Selling Snake Oil to America.

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4:33 PM 9/6/2019

Obama's fast and furious scheme mimicked KGB trick before Czech invasion in 68

So I started reading "The Spy and the Traitor" by Ben Macintyre about cold war spying, and ran across an interesting parallel near the very beginning.

In 1968 the KGB was planting fake news, posters, and other things to give the false impression that Czechoslovakia was about to erupt in a violent counterrevolution so that the Soviet crackdown that followed might appear justified.

Among the things the KGB did was this:

They distributed inflammatory posters calling for the overthrow of Communism, and planted arms caches, wrapped in packages conveniently marked "Made in the USA," which were then "discovered" and denounced as proof of an imminent insurrection.

Gosh, that sounds familiar. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Eric Holder did something similar in the early days of the Obama administration. It was called "Fast and Furious," and it too dealt with arms. You'll recall the history. Firearms were supposed to have been sold legally in the U.S. but somehow ending up in Mexico. The goal was to influence voters to accept stricter gun control laws. Fortunately, it backfired. But unfortunately, their aggressive illegal efforts ended up killing innocent people. That would have been an acceptable risk to the Soviet Union, and it was probably acceptable to the Obama administration. After all, as the famous dictator once said, "You have to break some eggs to make an omelet.

In any event, "The Spy and the Traitor" is a good book, so far. Hopefully, it will be as interesting as another of Ben Macintyre's books, Rogue Heroes about the start of Britain's SAS.

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2:40 PM 7/1/2019

War between U.S. and Iran has moved to the cyber front

President Trump opted out of a missile strike on an Iranian facility, but the front line in this skirmish has shifted to the Cyber arena.

AP sources: US struck Iranian military computers this week:

The cyberattacks — a contingency plan developed over weeks amid escalating tensions — disabled Iranian computer systems that controlled its rocket and missile launchers, the officials said. Two of the officials said the attacks, which specifically targeted Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps computer system, were provided as options after Iranian forces blew up two oil tankers earlier this month.

But there's this:

There was no immediate reaction Sunday morning in Iran to the U.S. claims. Iran has hardened and disconnected much of its infrastructure from the internet after the Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli creation, disrupted thousands of Iranian centrifuges in the late 2000s.

Let's hope our own systems have been hardened and disconnected from the internet, too. Because: Iranian Hackers Launch a New US-Targeted Campaign as Tensions Mount:

Analysts at two security firms, Crowdstrike and Dragos, tell WIRED that they've seen a new campaign of targeted phishing emails sent to a variety of US targets last week from a hacker group known by the names APT33, Magnallium, or Refined Kitten and widely believed to be working in the service of the Iranian government. Dragos named the Department of Energy and US national labs as some of the half-dozen targeted organizations. A third security firm, FireEye, independently confirmed that it's seen a broad Iranian phishing campaign targeting both government agencies and private sector companies in the US and Europe, without naming APT33 specifically. None of the companies had any knowledge of successful intrusions.

Finally, the Dunce of the Month award -- cyber category -- has to go to that municipal employee who downloaded ransomware at a municipal office that will ultimately cost the taxpayers of Riviera Beach, Florida, $600,000.

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11:55 AM 6/23/2019

Another sobering EMP warning

With international threats and hot spots in the news on a daily basis, most of us already know what an electromagnetic pulse attack is. And most of can imagine what dreadful places our lovely communities would become in a long term electrical blackout. Nevertheless, it never hurts to be reminded with articles like this one found at Washingtonexaminer.com: Military warns EMP attack could wipe out America, 'democracy, world order'.

Here's a link to the official report in PDF: Electromagnetic Defense Task Force (EDTF) 2018 Report.

It's sobering stuff. And here's a new acronym to learn: BST. The report linked above introduces BSTs this way:

This paper introduces the concept of BLACK START TEAMS (BST) and their value to the enterprise as a method to ensure installation continuity of command in the wake of an EMP or Geomagnetic Disruption (GMD) event. A BST is a pre-equipped, geographically distributed team of personnel whose role is to “kick-start” an installation’s baseline operations under extreme electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) circumstances.

Here's they way they describe the BSTs:

Black Start Teams

A strategic concept of operations (CONOPS) modeled after immortal jellyfish: biological organism grows to adulthood, then reverts to larva stage through trans differentiation; next regrows to adulthood. This is an indefinite cycle.

BST members provided training and equipment to revert an installation to baseline ops by preparing members to respond from home or community to mission objective, ensuring key post-event objectives are met.

Must first prepare family of BST members for self-sufficiency to ensure member ability to depart home for mission objective(s)—all members pre-briefed on individual roles and CC’s intent/objectives.

Modeled after the immortal jellyfish. Hmm. That "reversion to larva stage" may be a polite way of saying that any survivors will have to learn to live as humans did a couple of centuries ago.

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4:27 PM 12/2/2018

Project Spartacus -- no, not Cory Booker -- a different kind of pulse attack

Anyone who read "One Second After" by William R. Forstchen had the living daylights scared out of them as they pondered what their own lives would be like following an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. We all probably figured that we would not be among the 90% who perished during the first year without electricity.

There have been lots of meetings designed to encourage those in the industry to harden their facilities and equipment against the kind of surge an EMP could produce. But it's hard for the outsider see that anything has actually been done, other than hold meetings.

Nonetheless,Lt. Gen. Steven L. Kwast has organized another meeting. See ‘Project Spartacus’ aims to save electric grid from nuclear, solar attack:

Kwast has created “Project Spartacus” to address an electromagnetic pulse type attack of the grid, either from an enemy or terrorist group or solar storm. At his summit, 40 national organizations and 150 governmental officials met in the largest official EMP meeting of its kind.

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey weighed in:

“If you have 30 to 40 percent of the electricity, you may end up having cold showers and warm beer but at least you can continue to function and rebuild. If the whole grid goes down, you are back in the dark ages literally and figuratively,” he told Secrets during the summit.

“If you end up with zero instead of 40 percent, for example, it’s not just that you have a serious problem with rebuilding, it’s that your civilization and constitution are gone. That’s the end of everything,” he added.

Let's hope they came up with something that will prevent that happening.

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1:39 PM 9/11/2018

Rogue Heroes -- British SAS in WWII

The origin of the British SAS is a fascinating story told well by Ben Macintyre in "Rogue Heroes." Mr. Macintyre described how David Stirling, a rogue in his own right, created the organization that wrecked havoc on the Nazis in the Middle East during WWII and which eventually became the famous British SAS.

I found the book at the local library after watching Mr. Macintyre talk about it on C-SPAN. That episode can be seen here.

In any event, for your entertainment and education, here's an excerpt from the book which is one anecdote demonstrating how cunning Stirling was. This one happened to be an interaction with Winston Churchill which pretty much sealed the deal to put the SAS on track to become what it eventually became. To wit:

On the evening of August 8, David Stirling shaved, bathed, climbed into his brother's dinner jacket, and prepared to launch a charm offensive against Winston Churchill.

The invitation to a private dinner with the prime minister at the British embassy in Cairo was almost certainly the result of Randolph Churchill's enthusiastic letters to his father, describing the exploits of L Detachment and its fearless young leader. Stirling certainly believed that "Randolph had been talking to his father in much the manner in which I had hoped." Fitzroy Maclean, now fully recovered from the car crash, also received an invitation.

The other guests included General Alexander, the newly arrived commander in chief, and Field Marshal Jan Smuts, South Africa's prime minister and a member of the Imperial war cabinet. In the space of a few days, Stirring went from blowing up planes with machine guns to dining with prime ministers in evening dress. It was a strange war.

Churchill was stopping off in Cairo on the way to Moscow for his first face-to-face meeting with Stalin, an encounter that his wife, clementine, characterized as "a visit to the ogre in his den." The prime minister was in ebullient form, wearing a bow tie and his velvet "siren suit" -- a military-style one-piece boiler suit that would not become fashionable again for another seventy years, until the invention of the "onesie." From the head of the table, Churchill held forth, "pink-faced and beaming." A great deal was eaten, and a great deal more was drunk. "It was little unreal," Stirling later recalled. "A table set with the best of silver and served with the best food, with the British prime Minister at the head of the feast, just 40 miles or so from the Allied front line." At one point, Churchill challenged Smuts to a game: who could recite more Shakespeare without stopping? After fifteen minutes the south African leader, a brilliant scholar with a prodigious memory, ran out of quotations, but Churchill continued, unstoppably. It took several minutes before Smuts realized that Churchill was not reciting genuine verse at all, but a sort of mock-shakespeare of his own extempore invention.

After dinner, cigars were lit, brandy was poured, and Stirling and Maclean were summoned over to accompany the prime minister as he strolled around the elegant embassy gardens. The two young men were the type of adventurers Churchill adored, swashbucklers, daredevils, and, above all, amateurs. He was well aware that Maclean had used his election to the House of commons as a ruse to get into the war, and he thoroughly approved.

"Here," he said, turning to Smuts, is the young man who has used the Mother of Parliaments as a public convenience."

Stirling and Maclean had been warned that they should on no account discuss the impending attack on Benghazi with Churchill. (The prime minister was regarded by some of his staff as an inveterate gossip and a major security risk with a habit of turning top secret information into amusing after-dinner entertainment.) They ignored this injunction. For the next few minutes' Churchill listened intently as the two young officers described L Detachment, its methods, successes, and plans for the future. Insisting that this was "a new form of warfare we were developing" with "awesome potential," Stirling suggested that the unit might have an important role to play behind the lines in Europe at a later stage in the war.

Churchill was "bowled over" by Stirling, intrigued by the contrast between the young man's gentle demeanour and his ferocious pursuit of the enemy." When the prime minister rejoined Smuts in the embassy drawing room, he described to him Stirling's record of destruction and quoted the famous lines from Byron's Don Juan: "He was the mildest-mannered man / That ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." The continuation of that quotation also fitted Stirling's character: "With such true breeding of a gentleman' / You never could divine his real thought."

Before leaving, Stirling asked Churchill, Smuts, and Alexander to sign a piece of paper, as a souvenir. of the evening.

The next morning Stirling was still nursing his hangover when a note arrived at Peter's flat. From Sir Leslie Rowan, Churchill's private secretary, it read: "I have been asked by by my chief to ask you, to let me have, for him, without further delay, the short note for which he called on what you would advise should be done to concentrate and coordinate the work you are doing. I have been asked to make sure that this is in my hands today. I can be got at the embassy." Leaving aside the civil service circumlocution' the import was clear: Churchill was intrigued and wanted to hear more, now.

Stirling immediately set to work on his brother's typewriter, and bashed out a two page memo, headed "Top Secret," written so fast it included several spelling mistakes and missing words: "All existing Special Service Units in the Middle East be disbanded and selected personnel absorbed, as required, by L Detachment . . . Control to rest with the officer commanding L Detachment and not with any outside body. .... The planning of operations to remain as hitherto the prerogative of L Detachment." In other words, Stirling proposed to take over all special forces, extract anyone he wanted for his own team, and then run operations exactly as he saw fit. This scheme, he said, would increase "versatility and resourcefulness [with] obvious advantages from the point of view of security." But it would also leave him free from interference, with the unstated implication that the bureaucrats at headquarters were incompetent, interfering gossips. It was a power grab, pure and simple, and it worked.

That evening, Stirling was summoned back to the embassy for further discussions. Running up the embassy staircase, he cannoned into the bulky form of the prime minister himself. "The irresistible force meets the immovable object," grunted Churchill. This is known, in philosophy, as the "sword and shield paradox," a conundrum in which two absolute forms of power are pitted against each other. But it also captured something of Churchill's wartime philosophy: immovability would bring victory ("We shall never surrender"), but it must be combined with overwhelming and dramatic force. War was nor just a matter of bombs and bullets, but of capturing imaginations. Stirling displayed just the right combination of daring and romance. Henceforth, Churchill would allude to him as the "Scarlet Pimpernel" - a reference to the hero of Baroness Orczy's novel, Sir Percy Blakeney, a wealthy, foppish Englishman on the outside, but in reality a master of the secret, undercover war. Stirling was just the sort of figure Churchill had been seeking to inject some panache into the North African war.

The encounter with Churchill would ensure the future of the SAS; it was also of immediate practical use. Stirling took the "souvenir" signed by two prime ministers and the commander in chief of the Middle East, and typed above the signatures: "Please give the bearer of this note every possible assistance." Seekings and Cooper, the unofficial SAS quartermasters, now found that supplies, vehicles, weapons, and ammunition, hitherto so tricky to secure, could be obtained simply by flourishing this note. Stirling had no qualms whatever about this blatant forgery: Churchill had become a staunch supporter of the unit and so, he insisted, "in a sense it was authentic."

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1:00 PM 9/9/2018

Air Force General is doing a good job of scaring us into acceptance of $716 billion plan

This is a little bit scary, in an old fashioned cold war sense. General In Charge Of U.S. Northern Command: U.S. Homeland 'No Longer A Sanctuary':

O’Shaughnessy continued, “We have to think about our defense in different ways than we have in the past. That means we need to fundamentally re-think when we say homeland defense how we’re going to do that against a peer competitor …

One threat to the U.S. comes from Russia, whose hypersonic glide missiles allegedly have the capability to fly an arced trajectory high into the atmosphere on an intercontinental ballistic missile, evading missile defense systems.

Air Force Chief of Staff General Dave Goldfein told Military Times, “It’s probably dangerous for us to think we can physically be a sanctuary when we’re in competition below a level of armed conflict, and we have a couple of new domains that our adversaries are operating in: cyber and space. … Our competitors have studied the way we fight and the way we operate and are investing in and training in ways to take those advantages away from us.”

Hopefully, the defense department will put that $716 billion to good use.

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3:44 PM 9/5/2018

Army MREs are getting a tasty upgrade

"An army marches on its belly." That famous quote has been attributed to various warriors ranging from Frederick the Great to Napoleon Bonaparte. And military planners throughout history knew how important it was to keep the fighters fed.

These days the MRE is the standard field ration. And they are getting a makeover. See Here's Everything in the New Pizza MRE, Headed to the Field Soon. They appear to be simple foods sealed in a vacuum package. That's something anyone can produce at home, so there had to be more to it.

So note this interesting factoid from After years of anticipation, the pizza MRE is finally coming to the field:

All MREs need to have a shelf life of at least three years when stored at 80 degrees or below in order to be viable as an option, according to the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center. ...

Here's how they conducted a speedy test for that duration:

MREs are placed in a 100-degree box for six months during testing in order to simulate the three-year life span at under 80 degrees. The mass produced pizzas were turning brown under the testing, a problem that had not surfaced during the initial testing of the lab-made pizzas.

The browning was not a safety issue, but more of a quality issue.

“We want to make sure we give [troops] a quality product,” Natick spokesman David Accetta told Army Times in February.

Officials later found a fix for the browning — rosemary extract.

Mmmmm! Vacuum packed pizza!

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1:34 PM 6/2/2018

Let us hope American's enemies believe Trump's bluster as much as Dems do

Donald Trump is a bombastic blowhard. Anyone who doesn't know that hasn't been paying attention. So when he taunts Little Rocket Man, aka Kim Jong Un, most of us know it's bluster. But Kim seems to take it literally. We should be grateful for that. But do Democrats take it literally, too? It certainly seems so, based on lines such as this one in the WaPo: Senate confirms Mike Pompeo as Trump’s next secretary of state. Note this part:

The Senate confirmed Mike Pompeo as secretary of state Thursday despite lingering objections from Democrats who have questioned his record of hawkish policy positions and past controversial statements about minority groups.

(Bold added.)

Making your enemies think you are crazier than they are is a pretty good defense. Trump has gotten a lot of mileage out of that tactic, and he's found a Secretary of State who might be able to help him pull it off. Hopefully, it will continue to work on America's enemies as well as it works on Democrats.

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3:54 PM 4/26/2018

Graffiti at Russian Embassy in London -- poisonous pen makes a funny point

In most cases graffiti is simple vandalism by people who can't really create anything. There are certainly some exceptions, though. Some of them are quite creative. And some make point: And here's an example of graffiti that makes a point and gets a laugh:

One would guess that the customer is expected to pay before the food arrives.

This comes to us by way of Dailystar.com in Novichokolate from Putin? Graffiti irony near Russian embassy tackles nerve attack.

Yum!

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5:33 AM 3/17/2018

Here's another great speech by General Kelly -- Six Seconds toLive

Yesterday we talked about the speech General Kelly gave to explain what happens to a Marine when he is killed and what a casualty officer has to do. (See General Kelly's story brought tears to my eyes.) General Kelly has had experience with death. The print edition of the Wall Street Journal had a "Notable and Quotable" column with an excerpt of a speech he gave in 2010 to commemorate two fallen Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter. Found at another site, here's an excerpt from Everybody should read General John Kelly's speech about two Marines in the path of a truck bomb:

Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.

Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines. ...

A truck loaded with explosives barged through the barricade.  The Marines stood their ground and started firing their weapons. The Iraqi police officer who were supposed to help ran away to save their own lives. Security cameras captured some of the attack. And here's Kelly describing what the recording showed:

The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have know they were safe … because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.

The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.

The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.

Six seconds.

Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty … into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

Holy cow! I'm speechless. Little wonder that military institutions are held in such high esteem.

(If above link doesn't work, maybe this one will: A must read eulogy by General Kelly, just 4 days after his son was killed in action.)

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1:18 PM 10/23/2017

More warnings about EMPs

This post was originally going to be about how the local newspaper -- The Midland Reporter-Telegram -- is too reliant on a Houston Chronicle columnist for information about the petroleum industry all while the local paper brags that this part of the country leads the nation in petroleum production. But the post got hijacked by this article: As North Korea threatens electromagnetic pulse attack, questions over lapses in US grid security rise.

This wasn't a new threat, Kim Jong Un has been threatening something bad for a very long time, and it is certainly no secret that his missile crew has the capability to deliver a nuclear bomb into the air and explode it high over the U.S. We've been told that 90% of the people in the U.S. would be dead within a year. That's merely conjecture, but it certainly sounds reasonable given that everything we currently take for granted will disappear and roving gangs of armed marauders will be scouring residential neighborhoods for scraps.

For a sampling of a best case scenario, look at the news from Puerto Rico following their utility wipe-out. But at least there the personally owned electrical devices still work.

Anyway, utilities on the mainland don't appear to be all that prepared for an EMP power interruption. Maybe they they really are prepared and are just keeping it secret. But that seems doubtful given how they would have to spend money to do it. And while it seems reasonable that utility commissions would grant authority to raise rates for that, there doesn't appear to be any evidence that the utilities have asked.

So let's get back to the original purpose of this post. An article by Chris Tomlinson that was in the Houston Chronicle was presented to readers of the Midland Reporter-Telegram recently as top of the front page news. Here's the link to Too much energy creates a challenge for Texas electricity grid.

Tomlinson explains in that column how all the natural gas in Texas is driving down prices and hurting the electric utilities. He closes with this:

Texas led the nation in doing away with government-regulated monopolies and introducing less-regulated competition. That has led to some of the lowest power prices in the country and a boom in industrial construction.

The state should not abandon its faith in the competitive market by fixing the game to protect incumbents. Driving out the old and inefficient is what the market is all about, and we should welcome the creative destruction created by our enormous energy potential.

But what about putting some money into protecting the grid from an EMP attack? The MRT.com is very fond of Mr. Tomlinson's columns, so maybe they could request him to address that issue in one of his columns.

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1:06 PM 9/26/2017

A few more pics from AirSho 2017

These photos were taken Sunday morning on AirSho weekend at the area they call the Bomber Ramp.

This snarling beast is an A-10 Warthog -- the highly resilient, low-altitude, close air support aircraft that has survived numerous attacks from enemies in the field as well as from those in government who want to take the planes out of service. The Air Force is apparently putting them on display to reinforce their popularity among air show attendees. Probably not a bad idea.

Then there's that MIG-17. Shhh. That big bad bear is hibernating.

North Korea made the EMP threat more than theoretical

Yeah, it's the alarmist tabloid Dailymail.co.uk, the information they share about EMPs has been common knowledge for a long time. Here it is at How North Korea could wipe out electrical networks across the US with a high-altitude EMP blast. And here it is again at bostonherald.com: Electromagnetic pulse attack on grid could ‘cripple’ society.

Serious people have been warning about it for a long time. And while various agencies and utilities pay lip service, there's no assurance that they've hardened the grid. Maybe they did but are keeping it secret for security reasons. We can only hope.

Meanwhile, Kim Jong Il seems to be embracing the "mutually assured destruction" relationship. He probably wouldn't want to spend the rest of his days hunkering in some bunker deep underground. So we're probably stuck with it.

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9:54 AM 9/4/2017

The lesson Kim Jong Un learned from the Iraqi invasion

The lesson should have been that threats against the U.S. will be met with considerable force, regime change, and possibly death to the dictator. But along came Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and other Democrats who not only abandoned the American president but made him into the villain. They neutered the lesson that America's enemies should have learned.

Muammar Gaddafi took the lesson to heart early on and turned in some of his offensive weaponry. But he gave up too quickly. Along came Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to neuter the lesson and make him a target.

What did Kim Jong Un learn? For one, the American voter is mercurial, and a cowboy warmonger will get targeted by Democrats, made into a cartoon, and eventually be defeated by Casper Milquetoast. The second lesson is that if he gave up his weapons he still could end up in a grave.

So we continue to hear Kim boasting: North Korea says it won’t give up nuclear weapons and that entire U.S. mainland is within firing range. Thanks Nancy, Harry, Chuck.

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1:30 PM 8/8/2017

Trump dumps military push for transgenders

What's not to like about this?

Source.

The Obama agenda was more focused on identity politics than on protecting America.

Democrats made a U turn on missile defense, so at least they value the nation to that extent

When Ronald Reagan advocated a missile defense system years ago Democrats were dead set against it. Derision is a typical tactic of lefties, and in that case they called it "Star Wars" to try to express how fanciful the whole idea was. But with fits and starts the program went ahead anyway.

Fast forward to the present. North Korea makes weekly verbal threats against the U.S., and all too frequently they test some aspect of their weapons program to demonstrate their capability. The closer they get to a functional delivery system of a nuclear weapon the more seriously many Americans take those threats.

So it's refreshing to see "Star Wars" actually took shape. See Pentagon to test new anti-missile system in wake of North Korea threat.

There are probably a few hold-overs from the 80s when Democrats were so vehemently opposed to it. But for the most part, they are silent these days.

Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear Democrats admit they were wrong? Yeah, but don't count on it. In hit-and-run partisan politics the only objective seems to be to get negative headlines for the opponent then move on to something else knowing that any rebuttal will not get the same coverage.

Why Russia is trolling the Alaskan borders, probably to gather electronic information about our defense systems

The news sites tell us that Russian planes are getting very close to our boundaries at Alaska. See Russia Sends Its Most Advanced Fighters to U.S. Coast. Are they testing testing our nerve with a game of chicken?

More likely they're testing our electronic countermeasures and their counter-counter measures. We did it in the 60s to the Russians in Cuba and probably continue to do it wherever appropriate.

I'm reading Annie Jabosen's book, "Area 51, An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base." It's probably not one the UFO fanatics might think from the title. But it contains a lot of history about the spy work that came out of the Nevada Test and Training Range of which Area 51 is a small part. One project occurred during the cold war and involved a bomber flight with a missile in the hull toward Cuba but just shy of Cuba's airspace. Here's an excerpt:

"'We had the nose cone off and part of the skin off too. The missile was loaded on a stand inside the plane. It was my job to watch the electronics respond," [Thornton "T.D."] Barnes explains. The airplane and its crew took off from the airbase and headed for Cuba. The plan was for the airplane to fly right up to the edge of Cuban airspace but not into it. Moments before the airplane crossed into Cuban airspace, the pilot would quickly turn around and head home. By then the Russian radar experts working the Cuban radar sites would have turned on their systems to track the U.S. airplane. Russian MiG fighter jets would be sent aloft to respond. The job of Project Palladium was to gather the electronic intelligence being sent out by the radar stations and the MiGs. That was the first step in figuring out how to create a jamming system for the A-12 at Area 51.

The Cubans and their Russian patrons could not have had any idea whether the Americans were playing another game of chicken or if this act meant war. "Soviet MiGs would scramble toward us," Barnes recalls. "At the time, ECM [electronic countermeasure] and ECCM [electronic counter-countermeasure] technology were still new to both the plane and the missile. We'd transmit a Doppler signal from a radar simulator which told their MiG pilots that a missile had locked on them. When the Soviet pilots engaged their ECM against us, my job was to sit there and watch how our missile's ECCM responded. If the Soviet signal jammed our missile and made it drift off target, I'd tweak my missile's ECCM electronics to determine what would override a Soviet ECM signal." Though primitive by today's standards, what Barnes and the NSA agents with him inside the aircraft did laid the early groundwork for electronic warfare today. "Inside the airplane, we'd record the frequencies to be replayed back at Fort Bliss for training and design. Once we got what we wanted we hauled ass out of the area to avoid actual contact with Soviet planes."

I picture Vlad Putin saying, "Annie Jacobsen, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!"

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3:46 PM 5/7/2017

EMPs -- another warning we shouldn't ignore

The good news is that DARPA is working to protect the electric grid from attack. The bad news is that they are only concerned with cyber-attacks and the defense won't be ready til 2020. That's the gist of this Washingtonexaminer article: Getting ready: Pentagon to protect electric grid from massive attack.

But enough people have been warning of missile delivered overhead nuclear explosives that plenty of us are worried. They say a paralysis of the electric grid -- which a massive exposure to gamma rays would do -- is a very real threat given so many of our enemies are or soon will be able to deliver a nuclear armed missile.

There's that ominous prediction that if the electricity goes off 90% of the population will perish within the first year -- not a welcome prospect. From time to time I order some dried food to tide me over while I fend off the gangs of armed urban marauders aiming to kill me for whatever scraps of food I have left. But worst of all, this blog will go dark once the power goes off.

Anyway, here's a roundup of some articles I've collected on the subject:

Could North Korea Destroy the US?
Getting ready: Pentagon to protect electric grid from massive attack
Winning the Cyber-War Under Trump
Texas May Become a Testing Ground for Defending the Grid From EMPs The Cyber Threat: Cybercom Trains for Infrastructure Attack as Power Companies Play Down Threat to Grid
Government, Industry Studying Threat of Nuclear EMP Attack on Electric Grid
FBI Warns of Cyber Threat to Electric Grid
Former CIA Director Warns of Nuclear-Generated Electromagnetic Pulse Attack
Air Force warns of 'coordinated physical attacks' on electric grid

Enjoy your day.

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1:49 PM 4/19/2017

Let them eat cake while missiles fly -- Trump's art of deterrence

One of the most colorful news item of the past few weeks was Donald Trump gushing over the beautiful chocolate cake he and the Chinese President Xi Jinping ate as missiles struck that base in Syria. It sounded absolutely delicious.

Many now suggest that that and the MOAB attack in Afghanistan were attempts to deter North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Did it work to that effect? We don't know yet, but it was a good effort.

It brings to mind the movie quote from the one and only Dr. Strangelove:

Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the FEAR to attack.

Niall Ferguson has a commentary in which he addresses North Korea's military capability. In short, except for the possible nuclear or dirty bomb, it's not that great. See Are we on the brink of a second Korean War?. But there's this astute observation:

Remember: Brinkmanship is only effective if your adversaries believe that you are more prepared to go over the brink than they are. Nor should the domestic political benefits of successful brinkmanship be forgotten.

Commentators say Kim Jong-un is crazy. But they say that about Donald Trump, too. That works for me -- crazy is a pretty good defense. If we can convince Jong-un that we are crazier than he is then it just might produce in his mind sufficient fear for effective deterrence.

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12:31 PM 4/18/2017

Expect North Korea to use human shields to protect its missiles

The use of the MOAB in Afghanistan the other day (Good Thursday?) was a pretty good demonstration of what a non-nuclear bomb could do. Seems like a pretty big bomb to kill only 39 ISIS fighters. But you go to war with the systems you have, to paraphrase a famous man.

The size of the damage area for the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) was impressive with a radius of one mile. And it was probably a flex of the muscle meant to instill some fear in our enemies. Was Kim Jong-un watching CNN that day?

The Russian Pravdareport.com says this:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered 25 percent of Pyongyang residents to leave the city immediately.

In accordance with the order, 600,000 people should be urgently evacuated. Experts note that the evacuation will most likely be conducted due to extremely strained tensions in relations with the United States of America.

That was the day before the Mother of All Bombs was dropped, and that bomb might give Kim an idea. If he plants enough civilians around his military targets then the U.S. will be reluctant to bomb them.

Would there be babies? Trump, who just the other day avenged the death of babies, would have to make a tough choice.

2:22 PM 4/14/2017

How do we know it was Assad who gassed those babies? Just wondering.

Are the intelligence sources who proclaimed Assad responsible for the gas attack the same ones who have provided all that fake news in the past?

Remember Saddam's weapons of mass destruction? Remember the Gulf of Tonkin? Remember how Putin conspired with Trump to win him the election?

It's hard to know who to believe these days. After all, there's at least the possibility ISIS could have planted some sarin containers on the ground hoping Syria would bomb them and release the gas.

Is it too much to ask for the source of the information placing blame?

They may be 100% correct. But these days it's difficult for the average news consumer to give credibility to everything we are told.

Addendum: I began reading Annie Jacobsen's "Phenomena" during lunch Friday. And in the first few pages she described how a famous astrologist named Louis de Wohl wrote columns for American newspapers in the early 40s. Remarkably, he made some predictions that proved true. But they weren't true, they were fake news stories planted by the British. For you see, the astrologist was actually working for British intelligence assigned to help "organize American public opinion in favor to aid Britain." Once the U.S. entered the war, he went back home to England where he directed his propaganda work at the Nazis.

Gears in the Obama political machine helped grind down Obamacare repeal effort

Beating Democrats is tough. They're organized, dedicated, and they've got lots of spare time. That came into play recently when Republicans tried to repeal Obamacare. Republicans bore most of the blame for that unsuccessful attempt. But Democrats were working hard behind the scenes. See Louise Radnofsky's article, How Democrats Aided in the Demise of the GOP’s Health Bill. (Behind paywall. Possibly still archived here. Excerpts:

And it was former leaders from the Obama White House, Department of Health and Human Services and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who worked on many parts of the successful behind-the-scenes campaign to chip away at the GOP majority, tapping old relationships, data and experience of the bitter passions sparked by a health-policy debate to keep Republicans’ rifts fresh.

Together, they worked the Republican governors, who were lukewarm to the GOP bill, and the centrist Republicans from swing districts, many of whom withheld support from the bill last Friday and contributed to its withdrawal from the House floor.

“It’s like breathing for a number of these people,” said Chris Jennings, a Democratic health-policy consultant who served in the Clinton and Obama White Houses, of his colleagues’ work. “They are huge assets who are being tapped. It has been their lives and they know the policy, process and politics inside out.”

Ms. Radnofsky provides a cast of characters, then this:

Other senior figures called and texted one another, exchanged ideas, and provided updates on what they were doing after they cleared out their desks. Many of their key assistants followed them, deferring finding “real jobs” for weeks or months.

(Emphasis added by me.)

Proponents of the leftist agenda are highly motivated, and they've got nothing better to do. Do the rest of us have a chance? We'll need to stay vigilant.

1:30 PM 4/6/2017

troubling future -- while our kids huddle in safe spaces with their participation trophies, Iranian kids train to shoot us

It's always troubling to hear that our enemies are training their children to kill us. It's reminiscent of the post WWII stories about how the Japanese had trained their soldiers in brutality.

Obama's misguided overtures to Iran have produced nothing but fear in Americans. And it's no help to see articles like this from thesun.co.uk: war games --Iran opens chilling kids’ military theme park with AK47s where children as young as 8 fire bullets at US flags and effigies of the Israeli PM. Excerpt:

The City of Games for Revolutionary Children park lets youngsters dress up in full combat gear and pretend to be attacking Iran’s enemies like Israel and the West.

They are shown how to fire plastic bullets and artillery shells at US flags and at an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ...

There’s also assault courses where they can learn to scale walls and crawl under ropes and through barbed wire while orders are barked at them by trainers and the sound of machine gun fire is played through speakers.

It is aimed at boys aged 8-13 and entry is free to the park near Mashad, Iran’s second largest city.

Not to worry. They will be no match for our own kids when they emerge from their safe spaces full of the confidence they got from their participation trophies.