The Anglosphere and Free Enterprise

In case you have missed it an need a pick-me-up this weekend; enjoy the view. As South-Africa, Canada, and the USA all have a little claim on Elon Musk, we should share the love.

BZ to all involved.

Fullbore Friday

A great American;

Born October 27, 1913 near Lodge Grass, Montana, Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow is the last living person with a direct oral history from a participant of the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

His grandfather, White Man Runs Him was a scout with General Custer and died in 1925 when Medicine Crow was 11 years old.

Dr. Medicine Crow’s grandparents lived before the United States Government sent Indians to a reservation in 1884. His father was a boyhood friend of Chief Plenty Coups and had advised Plenty Coups to go to the nation’s capital to present the Indians cases for preserving their ancestral land.
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Prior to WWII, Medicine Crow – who was the first of his tribe to graduate from college – was studying for an advanced degree in anthropology before volunteering for the Army and being sent to Europe.

It was on the European battlefields Medicine Crow completed all of the four tasks needed to become a Crow War Chief. As a scout he led several successful war parties deep behind enemy lines; he stole German horses; he disarmed an enemy; and he touched an enemy (counted coup) without killing him.

KTVQ.com | Q2 | Continuous News Coverage | Billings, MT

Diversity Thursday

Sorry about the orientation, but this is how I got it from the Salamander Underground, and I kind of like it that you have to put your head in an unnatural position to read this diktat.

This is another DivThu that really just writes itself - with a little "I told you so years ago" vibe that I love so much.

This PP presentation was given by Kathleen Ponder at the Navy's Strategic Thinking Workshop for Flags/SES. As one would expect none of those in the audiance raised an eyebrow and in fact, many joined in for the nonsensical discussion including "Microaggression."

Why would someone push back, when they would simply be slandered by the Commissar running the self-criticism class.

My favorite bits, you may have others,

Implicit Bias – a bias in judgment and/or behavior that results from subtle cognitive processes that often operate at a level below conscious awareness and without intentional control - beliefs or simple associations that a person automatically makes between an object and its evaluation.

Yes friends, you may act as if you are 100% equal opportunity, but at your core you act in a racist, sexist, and homophobic manner (or some combo or another). We can't prove that you are, but you are because we say so. You cannot prove that you are not, so, again, you have to accept that you are.

As such,

Our task as leaders:
• Understand where our personal implicit biases come from;
• Develop strategies for challenging our own implicit biases;
• Assist others who report to us to challenge their implicit biases.

Ok. Accept that you are biased. Make affirmative actions to make up for these biases that no one can show actually exists. Like a multi-level-marketing scheme, "assist" those whose careers we hold in our hands to do the same.

Warfighters being told they are bigots who don't know how to lead by someone with an undergrad degree in speech pathology with a doctorate in Curriculum and Counseling.

In the name of all that is holy.




Man, I wish I had the audio of the microaggression discussion. The Salamander Underground simply must work harder.

White or grey?

Which is the hull color that is best addressing the issues as China pushed in to the sea?

I am discussing over at USNIBlog. Stop by and give it a read.

When you answer is, "pour more concrete" - you've lost me

The last week seemed to be a, “I’m going to complain about why we can’t seem to build anything right anymore” to Sal week.

I’ve had the pleasure of exchanging notes to something that has been a stable since the start of this blog last decade; the unending and seemingly avoidable dysfunction that is our procurement system – one where we have not been able to produce a well designed warship since the end of the Cold War era DDG-51, and haven’t had an aircraft program blow up in our face since we adopted the 2nd place finisher in the 1970 light fighter program. (and no, the P-8 does not count – it is a converted airliner and our version does not have a MAD. The FA-18E/F does not count as “new aircraft” either).

Why? The problem is both personality based and the system we have designed to control the personality problem. Both are made worse by something else; narcissism.

The timid, the weak, and the insecure enable the narcissist. Combine narcissism in one strong will person with a gaggle of handpicked obsequious lickspittles in tow, toss in a contempt for history and the hard learned lessons of previous generations, leaven with a embittered resentment for the very real talent of those who came before – and you get that modernist and post-modernist mindset. In the Navy, those people are transformationalist, and their mantra is Transformation!TM

Can you find any other reason that explains the failure of the A-12, LCS, DDG-1000, ACS, and the long slow birth of V-22 and F-35 – or the Tiffany show pony that still is LPD-17?

It is there that I find a tie-back to another passion of mine that I don’t cover as much as I used to on this blog – architecture and the nightmare that has been modernism and post-modernism.

In a blindingly honest takedown of Zaha Hadid and her "Tomorrowland meets Logan's Run" style, Harry Mont shows how it is done;

In my 16 years as a journalist, she was the rudest interviewee I’ve ever met. She kept me waiting for an hour at her Clerkenwell office, before rearranging the interview for another day. And then she rearranged it twice more. Not that she did any of the rearranging – her extremely polite assistant did all that sort of thing.

When I finally got to see her, she never apologised for summoning me to her office and then putting me off. She was like a spoilt, medieval queen: grumpy, humourless, entitled, used to her orders being obeyed instantly, careless of the disruption those orders created.

Narcissistic, too. Her flat was empty, except for objects she’d designed herself: a curved sofa, a swooping table and a futuristic tea set. There was little sign of pleasurable human occupation: no books, no CDs. A lone iPad on a table displayed revolving pictures of her own works. The walls, floor and ceiling were monochrome white, with black metal-framed windows. A rectangular cavity housed a fireplace, filled with identical beige pebbles.
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her first real building, a small fire station in Germany, never really worked for its intended purpose: ‘Its shrieking concrete angles and disruptive interiors photographed very well and were dutifully recorded in the magazines, but were not much liked by the firemen. It was decommissioned and is now an exhibition centre.’

Yes, some of her buildings made for dramatic, swirling sights on the outside. But the inside of buildings is just as – if not more – important.
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Her Evelyn Grace Academy in Brixton was praised for its bold, zig-zag shape, with a running track piercing its heart. I thought it was certainly original enough when I went round it, with the usual Hadid trademarks: curves, skewed angles and asymmetrical shapes. Inside, though, the classrooms, gym and dining area were a dreary mass of concrete, steel and glass planes, with a few zig zag motifs and primary colours slapped on. I’d have much preferred to be taught in one of the elegant Victorian terraced houses flanking the academy – with their brick, plaster and stone, full of history and detail. The Evelyn Grace Academy wasn’t much different from the 1970s Grange Hill School of Education Architecture – which also did nothing to please the poor children inside.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. In our interview, Hadid professed to admiring Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens tower block in Poplar, built in 1972. Robin Hood Gardens is the perfect example of a concrete and glass horror, loathed by the public at large, but adored by modern architects.
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‘Most artists, or people who think of themselves as such, have to get the public to watch or listen before they can sod it,’ wrote Amis, ‘Architects are different. They have the unique power of sodding the consumer at a distance, not just if he lives or works in the building concerned, or just when he passes it a couple of times a day, but also when he happens to catch sight of it miles away on the skyline.’

Architects are also, Amis added, deeply subject to the principle of how it will go down at the club – ‘i.e. in the circle of his colleagues, his friends in the profession, certain critics and a more or less specialised and expert section of the public. The effect of this is to drive him towards the technically stimulating, the obscure and the ‘sophisticated’ and away from the older goals and values of whatever can be called pleasing, straightforward, entertaining, popular.’

Zaha Hadid went down extremely well at the club; not so well with the people who have to live and work in – and pay for – her buildings.

Sometimes it is OK to speak ill of the dead - especially when they are subject to a bunch of virtue-signaling praise by those who are as obsequious as she was narcissistic.

Art and architecture is critically important to the culture at large and deserves to be openly and aggressively debated.

And yes, this applies to more than architecture.

We'll have more maritime directly-related discussion tomorrow.

USS SIROCCO (PC-6) - Bravo Zulu

In the finest traditions of the naval service ... like from the beginning of the republic.

BZ to the crew of the USS Sirocco (PC-6).

The U.S. Navy says it has seized a weapons shipment in the Arabian Sea from Iran likely heading to war-torn Yemen.

The Navy said in a statement Monday that the USS Sirocco on March 28 intercepted and seized the shipment of weapons hidden aboard a small dhow, a type of ship commonly used in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.

The Navy said the shipment included 1,500 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 200 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and 21 .50-caliber machine guns. It said those aboard the dhow were released after sailors confiscated the arms.

I'm old enough to remember when we wanted to get rid of all these PC to the USCG ... is it too soon to discuss a proper ... and I mean proper ... follow on to this bit of kit?

Yes, too soon. Let's just show the wee crew's good work to start the week off right.

Undersea Lawfare, on Midrats

Since its ascendency to the premier maritime power, the US Navy - especially in the area of undersea warfare - has been at the leading edge of using technology to get a military edge.

During the Cold War, significant and steady progress in the first two steps of the kill chain against submarines, location and tracking, made the prospect of engaging superior numbers of Soviet submarine forces manageable.

We continue that tradition today, but to keep ahead of growing challenges, we have test. Build a little, test a little, learn a lot will stop dead in its tracks without testing in the real world. Computer simulation is only so good.

When it comes to submarines especially, you have to get in the water with them.

Knowing our technological track record an operating a generation or two ahead of some potential adversaries - are there ways they can negate our edge - or at least buy time while they catch up?

Are we vulnerable to potential challengers using national and international law against us? Undersea Lawfare?

Our guests for the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern to discuss will be Rear Admiral J. Michael "Carlos" Johnson, USN (Ret.) and Captain Michael T. Palmer, USN.

As a stepping off point, we will be using their article in the latest Naval War College Review; UNDERSEA LAWFARE - Can the US Navy Fall Victim to This Asymmetrical Warfare Threat?

RADM Johnson retired after 33 years of service as a naval aviator that included combat in Vietnam, Libya, the Balkans, and the Persian Gulf. He commanded the John F. Kennedy Battle Group, CVW-8, and VFA-86. Ashore he served on the staffs of the CNO as Director of Aviation Plans and Requirements) and the J3 of EUCOM.

Captain Palmer is an active-duty JAG and an adjunct assistant professor at ODU. He served as environmental counsel to the CNO; U.S. Fleet Forces Command; and Commander, Navy Region Mid-Atlantic.

Join us live if you can with the usual suspects in the chat room and offer up your questions for our guest, but if you miss the show you can always listen to the archive at blogtalkradio or Stitcher. 

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.