Proactively “From the Sea”; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
Jews are at best 0.2% of the world population. Yes, 2/10th of 1%. ~14 million world wide. If you put them in one nation, it would be somewhere between Belgium and The Netherlands. Read your Old Testament; Sumerians, Assyrians, Hittites, Amorites, Phoenicians, Philistines, Moabites, and Edomites - they are all gone. Some such as Egyptians and Persians are still here, but their religion and culture are gone with time. The Jewish people remain. Also from recorded history we know that they have never been able to find peace, and their security has never been firm. Suppressed, Dhimmi'd, purged, pogrom'd, and liquidated - or at best, vilified, hated, loathed - and envied. The Jewish people already had a set culture, written tradition, and an organized civil society when my ancestors were barely out of the stone age. Yet the Jews remain. Over and over, tyrants destroyed their temples, scattered their people, and conducted wholesale murder. Yet they remain. What also remains is that base hatred of Jews that I have never understood. I recognize and can hear the excuses, but I will never understand it. There is no logic - there is only the most base emotion. Perhaps envy has a bit to do with it. If you are religious of certain persuasions, you know they are God's chosen people - for reasons and purposes best known to God. If you are not, then all you have is a people who survive when others do not. They prosper under oppression when others fail enjoying liberty. They make deserts bloom when others existed in dusty squalor. Perhaps it is that, perhaps that is only part of it. Jew hatred; I find anti-Antisemitism a bit too antiseptic. It waxes and wanes through time. Especially in Europe after a few decades rest, it is back. It is fueled in no small measure by Europe's import of masses of Muslims - giving fuel to an already present vibe in the host population. Like SJW in the USA, those who hate Jews will find any excuse, any veneer, any area of culture to bring their hate out if they can. Even, music. Even Reggae.
After failing in an attempt to have Jewish-American singer Matisyahu banned from a Spanish music festival, the BDS bigots had yet another trick to unveil as the star ascended to the stage on Saturday night.
...
Far from boycotting the reggae artist’s gig, the “hate Israel” crowd showed up en masse. And they came bearing flags, immense Palestinian flags, which they waved with gusto from every corner of the 20,000-strong crowd.
As Matisyahu took the mike and looked out to the audience, he was presented with an unmistakably hostile message. It was clear that those who sought to have him banished stood before him in protest. Then the catcalls started, with some chanting, “out, out.” It might easily have been unnerving, disorienting.
Some media are calling this "anti-Israel" protests. No, they are not protesting Israel. Matisyahu, AKA Matthew Paul Miller, is an American. An American Jew from New York. They are protesting the presence of a Jew. Same as the "anti-Israel" riots in France last year. Did they attack the Israeli embassy? No, they attacked Synagogues. That is not anti-Israel - that is Jew hatred. We should call it what it is. Enough of fuzzy words. We should call it what it is. What does one do in the face of such constant hate - simply because of your small, persecuted religion's refusal to die? What does a civilized person do? How does one stand their ground without degrading yourself to the level of the primitives attacking you? How does one respond to such confident, smug, and in your face hate?
Not to be cowed however, it was the spirited Matisyahu who had the last laugh.
...
But then he began to sing about Jerusalem.
Here's the vid.
The lyrics:
Jerusalem, if I forget you,
fire not gonna come from me tongue.
Jerusalem, if I forget you,
let my right hand forget what it's supposed to do.
In the ancient days, we will return with no delay
Picking up the bounty and the spoils on our way
We've been traveling from state to state
And them don't understand what they say
3, 000 years with no place to be
And they want me to give up my milk and honey
Don't you see, it's not about the land or the sea
Not the country but the dwelling of his majesty
Rebuild the temple and the crown of glory
Years gone by, about sixty
Burn in the oven in this century
And the gas tried to choke, but it couldn't choke me
I will not lie down, I will not fall asleep
They come overseas, yes they're trying to be free
Erase the demons out of our memory
Change your name and your identity
Afraid of the truth and our dark history
Why is everybody always chasing we
Cut off the roots of your family tree
Don't you know that's not the way to be
Rebuild the temple and the crown of glory
Years gone by, about sixty
Burn in the oven in this century
And the gas tried to choke, but it couldn't choke me
I will not lie down, I will not fall asleep
They come overseas, yes they're trying to be free
Erase the demons out of our memory
Change your name and your identity
Afraid of the truth and our dark history
Why is everybody always chasing we
Cut off the roots of your family tree
Don't you know that's not the way to be
Caught up in these ways, and the worlds gone craze
Don't you know it's just a phase
Case of the Simon says
If I forget the truth then my words won't penetrate
Babylon burning in the place, can't see through the haze
Chop down all of them dirty ways,
That's the price that you pay for selling lies to the youth
No way, not ok, oh no way, not ok, hey
Aint no one gonna break my stride
Aint no one gonna pull me down
Oh no, I got to keep on moving
Stay alive
Rebuild the temple and the crown of glory
Years gone by, about sixty
Burn in the oven in this century
And the gas tried to choke, but it couldn't choke me
I will not lie down, I will not fall asleep
They come overseas, yes they're trying to be free
Erase the demons out of our memory
Change your name and your identity
Afraid of the truth and our dark history
Why is everybody always chasing we
Cut off the roots of your family tree
Don't you know that's not the way to be
One man can make a difference; a calm professional with perspective and a firm grasp of the larger story around him. Regardless of which side of the Cold War you were on - everyone on this planet should know the name Vasili Arkhipov, Vice Admiral, Soviet Navy.
Above them, the U.S. navy were 'hunting by exhaustion' - trying to force the Soviet sub to come to the surface to recharge its batteries.
They had no idea that on board the submarines were weapons capable of destroying the entire American fleet.
Gary Slaughter, a signalman on board the USS Cony battleship, said: 'We knew they were probably having trouble breathing. It was hot as hell in there, they were miserable.
'Frankly I don't think we felt any sympathy for them at all. They were the enemy.'
The Americans decided to ratchet up the pressure, and dropped warning grenades into the sea. Inside the sub, the Soviet submariners thought they were under attack.
Valentin Savitsky, the captain of B59, was convinced the nuclear war had already started.
Savitsky hadn't counted on Arkhipov. As commander of the fleet, Arkhipov had the last veto. And although his men were against him, he insisted that they must not fire - and instead surrender.
It was a humiliating move - but one that saved the world. The Soviet submariners were forced to return to their native Russia, where they were given the opposite of a hero's welcome.
Historian Thomas Blanton told the Sun: 'What heroism, what duty, they fulfilled to go halfway across the world and come back, and survive.
Four decades passed before the story of what really happened on the B59 sub was discovered. It was after Arkipov had died in 1998 from radiation poisoning.
She said: 'He knew that it was madness to fire the nuclear torpedo. In Cuba, in honour of the 40th anniversary of the crisis, people gathered.
‘They said that the person who prevented a nuclear war was the Russian submariner Vasili Arkhipov. I was proud and I am proud of my husband always.’
Why did he die of radiation poisoining? Most of you know about the Soviet's first SSBN, the Hotel K-19? Well;
In July 1961, Arkhipov was appointed deputy commander or executive officer of the new Hotel-class ballistic missile submarine K-19. During its nuclear accident, he backed Captain Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev during the potential mutiny. While assisting with engineering work to deal with the overheating reactor, he was exposed to a harmful level of radiation. This incident is depicted in the American film K-19: The Widowmaker.
Take some time to give a nod to a professional. PBS gave him justice in an hour long documentary. Here is the preview:
A few quick items this Thursday that have been making the rounds this week that I wanted to pull together to give you something to ponder the next time you have to deal with one of the commissars from a branch of the socio-political, sectarian, hate filled, and bigoted world of the diversity industry. Good news, really. Subjects and examples we've discussed here for years are breaking above the background noise in the larger culture - if not taking our position, at least opening the discussion space. First; racial self-identification fraud. It is simple economics and human behavior that if you create a perverse incentive, the perverse will be incentivized. Through the years, we have chronicled here those in our Navy who have clearly taken advantage of the racial spoils system in place for their own gain; from the German "Hispanics" from Puerto Rico, to the "my grandmother grew up in SW Texas, and I grew up in the DC suburbs, so that makes me pretty much a leading "Hispanic" Flag Officer." Yes, we can go on for hours, and we all have our own examples of those that are gaming the system. This, however, is simply sublime;
Shaun King, a prominent leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, has been claiming to be biracial when he is actually a white man ... King, who won a full scholarship from Oprah Winfrey to the historically black Morehouse College, has been a leading activist against police brutality. He has said he is the son of a white woman and a black man in various accounts online, including in a philanthropic feature Rebel magazine published in 2012. ...
There is so much more there, but one thing is clear - he has made a living playing off racial strife he helped create. Strife invented in his own life, and strife he has created for others. You know, just like the diversity cadre we have in the Navy. Got to earn that paycheck, dontchaknow. There is advantage in lying and fudging as Ben Shapiro outlines;
With Milo Yiannopoulos’ shocking report that Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King is in fact white – according to Yiannopoulos, quoting blogger Vicki Page, “King is white and has been lying about his ethnicity for years” – taboo questions now arise about the nature of race in America.
King, of course, isn’t the first leading black activist with no black biological background: Rachel Dolezal, former head of the Spokane, Washington NAACP and adjunct professor of African-American studies at Eastern Washington, turned out to be a white woman.
...
All of this demonstrates one undeniable fact: being black in America in 2015 is perceived as a status symbol and an advantage. This does not deny the horrific and evil history of racism against black people in America. It also does not deny the fact that a disproportionate number of black people live in poverty and suffer as victims of crime (primarily from other black people, just as white people suffer crime primarily from other white people).
But Dolezal and King make it clear that America’s attempts to repair the effects of that horrific history have now made black skin advantageous for a certain subset of activists, which is why people like Dolezal and now allegedly King have masqueraded as black for personal advantage.In areas across American culture, blackness is beneficial. That’s why people like King and Dolezal seek its imprimatur, even under allegedly false pretenses.
....
For example, King allegedly received a scholarship to Morehouse College from Oprah Winfrey on the basis of his allegedly fake race. He apparently took a scholarship from a black person in order to attend Morehouse. But the fact that scholarships based on race are available from many foundations – and only to racial minorities – means that it is definitionally advantageous to be a member of a minority for purposes of obtaining one.
That’s true in terms of admission to universities as well: standards are lower for blacks generally at top universities. A Princeton University study showed that blacks receive a “bonus” of 230 points on SAT scores versus their competitors; by contrast, Asians are penalized 50 points. The same holds true for finding a position in academia. Rachel Dolezal began as a white artist at Howard University but quickly found herself marginalized. Then she became black, and her art found a place at the United Nations, and she received an adjunct professorship at Eastern Washington University.
Next, the false canard of evil, institutionally racist USA. The Economist brings up a topic that, how did former Attorney General Holder put it, makes cowards of us all. Well, not here - not for DivThu. Call us all the nasty name you want, stick your fingers in year ears, and hold your breath until you turn blue. I don't care - I prefer a fact based discussion. As we have documented here before, if you use objective criteria and give equal opportunity to all, you will not have a military, an officer corps especially, that "looks like America." Specifically and dramatically for native-born African-Americans, the educational and cultural metrics from birth to age 18 are at such variance with the population in general that you simply cannot make the numbers work unless you put your thumb on the scale. The common refrain from the Diversity Bullies is to point to the institutional discrimination and general nasty and unworthiness of the United States in order to guilt trip everyone in to forcing compliance. Classic power play and really rather ballsy. Different topic for a different day - let's refocus. To make the numbers work, first of all one needs to fix the subculture that is creating sub-par performance. It isn't race, it is culture. That is hard work of generations. Ahem. If it were as simple as skin color, hair, and bone structure ...
African migrants stand out from American-born blacks. Indeed, on most measures, they have little in common but their colour. With the exception of some refugees, who are often resettled in areas with cheap housing, they live mostly in the suburbs, rather than in inner cities. In Washington Ethiopians and Eritreans cluster in Silver Spring, a part of Maryland at the edge of the District of Columbia. They are older—the average African-born black in America is 37, against 29 for American-born blacks. And they are far more likely to be married: 52% are, against a figure of just 28% for American-born blacks.
They also tend to be well educated, according to Pew’s data. In 2013 35% had a bachelor’s degree or better, against a figure of 30% for all Americans and just 19% of American-born blacks (see chart). But despite these qualifications, they earn slightly less than most Americans. In 2013 the average household income for black Africans was $43,000. That is sharply higher than the $33,500 American-born blacks earn, but lower than the amounts earned by other immigrants and by white Americans. In Washington, Ethiopian and Eritrean men disproportionately work as taxi drivers, or in the city’s many East African restaurants.
...
What does this mean for America as a whole? Africans are just one group of black immigrants in America—Caribbeans and people from Latin America bring the total of people who identify as black and were born overseas to around 3.8m. One possibility is that their growth in numbers may help soften the historical racialised division of America’s population between those whose descendants moved willingly and those whose descendants were enslaved.
Many who profess to be leaders of the "African-American Community" - which seem to include quite a few white people with significant emotional and psychological problems, who continue to scrape away at scabs like it is still 1971, are only interested in promoting their own race-hate, their own power, paycheck, and for some - their own sad emotional need for attention. America - still a work in progress - is not as an institutional level the problem. People and culture are. Now, if only our Navy would start looking to the future instead of joining the forces of strife and division stuck in the Nixon Administration, we could all get along better. But still, there are metrics, and an inability to accept that we are a diverse nation. Wait, what? Yes, I said that. We are a gloriously diverse nation, and that is fine. As such, you have certain subcultures with a population as large as ours. Each sub-culture has its predilections and habits. The subcultures are slowly coming together as never before, but there are still distinctions. There are reasons most of the NBA is African-American; there are reasons that most of the USA Women's soccer team is mostly of European extraction. There are reasons that my N1 shop was once 80% black. There is a reason that towards the end of the last decade, the Commander of US and NATO forces in AFG were back-to-back McNeil, McKiernan, and McChrystal. If no one is being prevented institutionally from doing one thing or another on the basis of race, creed, color, or national origin - who cares? If all our nuclear engineers were of east-Asian extraction and got there by merit, who cares? If 8 of your 10 MAs have last names that end in a vowel or a "z," who cares? If all the SEALs jumping out the back of a C-130 look like a bunch of Vikings coming off a skeid, who cares? Additionally, in an all volunteer force where the first step to joining Special Forces is to ... volunteer, what are you to do? Go around and voluntold people based on self-identified race and ethnicity? Make them not DOR? Is there something related to race that makes the Russian, Chinese, or even Iranian SOF less useful? Well, it seems the scab pickers think there is.
Black officers and enlisted troops are scarce in some special operations units in highest demand, according to data provided by the Pentagon to USA TODAY. For instance, eight of 753 SEAL officers are black, or 1%.
An expert at the Pentagon on the diversity of commando forces said the lack of minorities robs the military of skills it needs to win.
"We don't know where we will find ourselves in the future," said Army Col. Michael Copenhaver, who has published a paper on diversity in special operating forces. "One thing is for sure: We will find ourselves around the globe. And around the globe you have different cultural backgrounds everywhere. Having that kind of a diverse force can only increase your operational capability."
Read the full article to read the whole series of tired old cliches that Copenhave trots out. What a tool of division.
Copenhaver's paper, written for the U.S. Army's War College, makes a practical argument for greater diversity among special operations forces: "U.S. special operators have long acknowledged they face challenges mixing in with foreign populations because they look so American."
Define "look American." Anyone who lives in Europe long enough knows that "look American" has more to do with how you dress, walk, and carry yourself - and you can tell from across the square when everyone is dressed for deepest winter. If you are white in Africa, everyone does not assume you are an American unless you dress, walk, and act like one - ditto the Middle East and Asia. I've pulled off a fairly good South African national more than once.
For the SEALs, the problem extends beyond the officer corps into the enlisted ranks. Of its enlisted men, 45 SEALs are black, or about 2% of the 2,242 members of its elite force. There are more SEALs — 99, or 4% of the enlisted force — who are Native Americans or Alaska natives.
Among Army Green Berets, 85% of its 1,494 officers are white and 4.5% are black. Its 5,947 enlisted Green Berets are 86% white and 5.4% black.
For the Air Force's para-rescue jumpers, highly trained airmen who search for missing troops, only one of 166 is black, or .6% of that force.
Oh, and like I said;
Some of the same forces that steer young African Americans from Army's combat specialties such as infantry and artillery — the breeding ground for the service's top leadership — appear to be in play among special operators, the senior Defense official said.
To address the problem, the Army urges young black officers to consider combat specialties, the official said. Promotion boards for officers give greater weight to diversity, and mentoring of minority officers is emphasized.
Well, lookee there. Look at what slipped out from under the skirt. Let's put that out there again.
Promotion boards for officers give greater weight to diversity ...
I'll just leave that there for you.
Stir conflict to keep the issue. Keeping the issue keeps the paid billets, appointments to boards, and contracts. Millions of dollars. Do it all the time while pushing patronizing and openly racist smears like, "People need leaders who look like they do. If they don't, the force suffers." Ummmm, yea. Tell that to the Gurkhas and the French Foreign Legion. Sad part is the great body of our fellow Americans who are of one degree or another a glorious mixed-up gaggle of DNA. We don't like to recognize that and worse, we force them to pick what part of the DNA they want to claim as their own - and to do it based on what is most beneficial. That is how you shame them in to being part of your sham. What can you do? Passive civil disobedience. Have those billets in your command? Gap them when you can. Do not have your Sailors waste their time filling out awards packets that define anything by race, creed, color, national origin ... or sex for that matter. Just don't do it. Sectarian conferences hosted by affinity groups? Not a penny of TDY money. Not a cent. Not a lost work day. Base visit by one of the traveling trainers. Don't promote. Don't encourage attendance. Do the minimum to keep yourself out of trouble. Like this;
The diversity of special operating forces is closely held information. U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees all the services' commandos, declined to provide data on the racial makeup of its forces. USA TODAY had to obtain that data from each service individually, a process that took months. The Marines did not produce the actual numbers of their special operations forces, only percentages.
SOCOM, based in Tampa, does not track that information on its nearly 70,000 civilian and military personnel, said Kenneth McGraw, a spokesman. Gen. Joseph Votel, SOCOM's commander, declined to speak to USA TODAY for this story, said Col. Thomas Davis, another SOCOM spokesman.
Bravo zulu. The underground is still active ... and growing.
Throughout the undeveloped and the fail-to-launch world, there are teaming masses driven by war and economics to look for some part of the world where they can escape the dysfunction and violence from where they came. They are taking advantage of modern transportation and porous borders to move at a scale and speed no one is prepared to deal with. Lacking the desire, ability, or ethos to stand where they are and change their home nations, they are instead hitting the trail, the rail, the open ocean, and even the aircraft to come to the only places on this planet that function and will take them in - the West and its global outposts, most notably, Western Europe and the primary Anglosphere (CANUKUS+AUS/NZD). There are problems with this in the 21st Century, there are no more open spaces. There are no longer small diverse groups coming in manageable numbers to a nation where in a generation they can be absorbed in the vast underpopulated frontier, earn their own living by the fruits of their own labor, and assimilate in to the culture. No, this is new. The migrants are coming in waves 100,000 strong, month by month to already crowded nations under economic stress and beset with welfare state largess. These nations do not demand new arrivals assimilate, and in a large measure, the new arrivals don't want to. With modern communication and entertainment a satellite dish away, they don't have to break from the home language and culture they are bringing and keeping is the same culture of violence, sectarianism, corruption and dependence that caused the source country's dysfunction in the first place. Their foreign and often hostile culture, if not checked to manageable numbers and smart policies, will overwhelm their target nations and inside half a century. Those nations as well will fail as their civil society fractures and loses its ability to function as designed for a nation and culture that no longer exists. A few decades ago there was a SCIFI futurist novel, the title escapes me, where one of the pivotal points was a memorial on a beach in Australia where thousands of refugees died - more to the point, killed. Forgot the reason, but it was an opening for to author to describe a new age of migration. Especially in Europe, and to a lesser effect and different context here, we are reaching that point outlined in the book. A point where a densely populated economically failed and violent world rushes, like drowning people all trying to get in the last remaining lifeboat, to the few places that work, and will force those working parts of the world to do what was in living memory unthinkable - kill to save their nations from being destroyed by charity.
Greece appealed to its European Union partners on Tuesday to come up with a comprehensive strategy to deal with a growing migrant crisis as new data showed 21,000 refugees landed on Greek shores last week alone.
That number is almost half Greece's overall refugee intake in 2014 and brings total arrivals this year to 160,000, even as it struggles with a debt crisis that has forced it to accept a third international bailout.
...
A spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR in Geneva said Greece needed to show "much more leadership" in dealing with the crisis.
But Greek officials said they needed better coordination within the European Union. "This problem cannot be solved by imposing stringent legal processes in Greece, and, certainly, not by overturning the boats," said government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili.
Nor could it be addressed by building fences, she said.
This is madness. What does the UN propose that the already bankrupt Greece do? Why Greece? Why not Turkey? Why not Iran. Of course we know why - those are not Western nations. The West, you see, it must be ... well ...
"The situation is already volatile and we have started seeing increased tensions with the local authorities and between different refugee groups," said Kirk Day, the aid agency's emergency field director on the island.
...
The Greek state eventually charted a passenger ship to house and process migrants in an attempt to ease conditions onshore, where many are living in tents, some in shelters made from cardboard boxes.
Gerovassili said more reception centers were required.
"We must have new reception facilities ... We cannot continue to see these tragic images of children, people living under such circumstances."
This will not end well. The migration wave will not slow down any time soon. Growing anarchy, extremism, economic stagnation, and demographics will keep the pressure building. Western nations are at the point where they must enforce firm policies now, or they will be forced to implement the harshest remedies later - that is, of course, if there is a desire to keep those nations together as founded. The time for easy solutions is past. The last generation or two threw that opportunity away. Doing nothing is not an option because, eventually, this migration will shift to invasion in the mind of a plurality of each nation's citizens. When that happens, if good political leaders do not act, the people will turn to whatever leader promises actions. That rarely is the better outcome. No nation is required to commit suicide, and leaders who desire to fundamentally transform their nations should not expect for their population to allow that change to be done against the will of the people - if indeed the people ever decide their national culture is worth defending anymore. Some nations are already going Honeybadger and are taking the steps they need to.
Earlier this month construction began on a 175 km (110 mile) razor wire border fence in Hungary to deter migrants, ...
History if far from over - and is far from teaching the copybook headings with a ruler to the knuckles.
The growing pushback against STEm-uber-alles should give more reasons to pause for our navy and its STEM-heavy biases. Can we ask for innovation, nuance, and creativity amongst leaders while at the same time demanding 85% come from a STEM background? Fareed Zakaria over at WaPo joins the discussion;
If Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country’s education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills. Every month, it seems, we hear about our children’s bad test scores in math and science — and about new initiatives from companies, universities or foundations to expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) and deemphasize the humanities. From President Obama on down, public officials have cautioned against pursuing degrees like art history, which are seen as expensive luxuries in today’s world. Republicans want to go several steps further and defund these kinds of majors. “Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?” asked Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott. “I don’t think so.” America’s last bipartisan cause is this: A liberal education is irrelevant, and technical training is the new path forward. It is the only way, we are told, to ensure that Americans survive in an age defined by technology and shaped by global competition. The stakes could not be higher.
This dismissal of broad-based learning, however, comes from a fundamental misreading of the facts — and puts America on a dangerously narrow path for the future. The United States has led the world in economic dynamism, innovation and entrepreneurship thanks to exactly the kind of teaching we are now told to defenestrate. A broad general education helps foster critical thinking and creativity. Exposure to a variety of fields produces synergy and cross fertilization. Yes, science and technology are crucial components of this education, but so are English and philosophy. When unveiling a new edition of the iPad, Steve Jobs explained that “it’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — that it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.”
...
Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are oriented around memorization and test-taking. I went through that kind of system. It has its strengths, but it’s not conducive to thinking, problem solving or creativity. That’s why most Asian countries, from Singapore to South Korea to India, are trying to add features of a liberal education to their systems.
...
No matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write.
