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.
Especially if you follow me on twitter, it should be fairly obvious that I’m not a Trump supporter. That didn’t stop me recently from taking the eldest Wee Salamander and heading out to a Trump rally. Why? It wasn’t because I like crowds – I don’t and neither does my daughter. It isn’t because she is a Trump supporter, she isn’t. We went because I believe in primary sources. Way too many people I know are self-selecting their information and are caught up in a self-feeding human centipede of emotion based politics. There is no better primary source than yourself, so I took the opportunity to teach something to my daughter again and we went to the Trump rally. We went there because when the chance presents itself, you should listen to candidates in person. If HRC was in town, I’d go as well. I wasn’t so much interested in the candidate as I was wanting to get a flavor for his supporters. It has gotten personal not just against the candidate, as against his supporters. This is well beyond the anti-Trump version of my occasional tongue-in-cheek “ObamaVoter” snicker against Moonbats – this has moved on to violence against citizens who just happen to support someone. There is a lot of violence related to the Trump campaign, but it isn’t by Trump supporters – it is by anti-Trump types who go in to Orwellian 2-minute hates against anyone showing support of Cheeto McEgo. That is not healthy in a republic, so time to find out for myself who these people are who are drawing out violent opponents. Gathering my Human Terrain Team of two, the Wee Salamander and I put on our weekend casual Trumpist mufti and headed on down to the show. The Line: Yes, the famous line outside Trump events. We walked from the front of the line to the back. If the front was 6-o’clock, the end of the line went counter-clockwise to the 11-o-clock position. In the walk up the line, beside how orderly it was, what caught me a little off guard was how young it was. It was also easily 50-50 male female, at the most 60-40 male to female. There were a lot of 20-35-yr old people and young couples in the crowd. Most dressed in weekend sub-tropical casual except for those who came directly from work. There were four guys still in their AC Repair company uniforms right behind us, talking to two trial lawyers who walked down from their office. By the time we got in through security and moved in, 90% of the seats were already taken and there were a few thousand people behind us. The Vendors: The vendors selling T-shirts, hats, buttons, etc, were the same ones I see at baseball and football games. 90% of the ones walking around were black, and 85% of the people in their target audience were by appearances white. So, no big change there. Up near the front were the “tent” vendors. They were all about 90% white if you include the Lebanese/Palestinians as white, which I do. It was there that you saw the only possible “alt-right” presence in one goober who was selling Confederate battle flags with “Trump 2016” on them. He wasn’t doing all that much business – so bully to my hometown for that. “Hillary for Prison 2016” and standard issue Trump t-shirts and buttons were the most popular, as where the ubiquitous “Make America Great Again” hats. As you passed by the vendors, you got closer to the door and the fun stuff; the protestors. The Protestors: Besides one guy how looked like a meth-addict screaming in front of a TV camera like an over-caffeinated MSNBC guest, the protestors were mostly well behaved. Almost as if they were a setup by a performance artist, the first one you came to was some guy with a bullhorn who was dressed like a member of the New Black Panther Party with a couple of guys “tough-guy” posing to either side of him. I could only understand him the few seconds I walked by him, but at that time he was yelling about how black people need to take control of their own destiny blah, blah, blah. Next to him were the mostly spoiled white rich kid bunch dressed in black with their faces covered waving around red-banner flags. Of course, they were doing that in exactly the space the police were telling them. They seemed mostly to direct their venom not at those in the line, but at the press cameras. Nice to see those guys haven’t changed much since the 1980s. After them were the honest protestors with the actually hand made signs quoting John Lennon, calling all the people in line rascists, or in a roundabout way asking what’s so wrong about peace love and understanding. They looked bored, and slightly embarrassed by having to share space with the New Black Panther Party and Trust Fund COSPLAY brigade. I actually took a little video I may post later. Sorry, but both the Wee Salamander and myself had to laugh while walking by. The Politicians: What I didn’t expect was the Star Wars bar scene before you got to security where you had a bunch of candidates for local office there to shake hands. Trump may have scared away everyone from Mayor on up, but down ballot, there are plenty who are willing to associate with Trump. Not sure what to make of that, as those weren’t fringe locals. The Crowd: So, through the metal detector rather efficiently to the packed arena. 16,000 admitted, with a few thousand left outside. Impressive. There was more room on the floor, but it looked to me like security wouldn’t let them pack it in. As is our introverted nature, we went up to the rafters to the very back so we had easy access to the exits and no one at our back. A dislike of large crowds is a family trait. This also gave us a great view of the crowd. Like I mentioned, it was a younger crowd than I thought it would be. The most common demographic if I had to pick one? Young, middle class working white couples and groups of male co-workers. It was not a white out by any measure. If you consider that 80-90% of blacks in this area are Democrats, no shock that the audience was not representative of the ~30% of the population here that is black. I would say probably 5% was black. Those around me included and extended family of three generation and then a real funny guy two rows down who was there with his cute as a button blonde haired and blue eyed girlfriend. Trump voters being a bunch of racists? No. You can put that to bed right away. Also in this area, Asians are about 5% and “Hispanics” 9%. As such, I would say Asians and Hispanics were over represented as Trump supporters. It also seemed that 5% of the crowd was Albanian, Bosnian, Russian, Ukrainian or Russian. I can’t tell those languages apart, but I heard it as often as I heard Spanish, and we have a significant population of each here. There were two cases of protestors in the crowd being taken out that I saw. They were both your standard issue hippie wannabes – one straight out of central casting with beads and floppy hats. Of course, they both threw their hissy fits in front of the press gallery. The crowd response was to chant, “USA USA” as pro forma. Flynn & Trump: The introductory speaker was Flynn, who is about as good as one can get given that the local Republican party is full of Bush and Rubio loyalists still needing to wash their hair that day. As for Trump himself? Standard issue stump speech, but he took extra time to address the Khan issue, not to him directly, but about his meetings with Gold Star families locally. A lot of press bashing. The Bailout: We did not stay for the full length of time. As mentioned before, we don’t like crowds and we had seen enough. What was nice for me as a father was to hear my very independent and opinionated daughter come to the same conclusion that I came to; there is nothing wrong with Trump people. There is plenty of things to go after the candidate for, but we should stop with the smears, depersonalization, and invective towards his supporters. One big surprise on the way home, Dash-1 even said something to the effect, “Trump was not as bad as I thought he would be.” After two years at a liberal arts university, she still has her critical thinking skills. Neither one of us was swayed one way or another about Trump himself by going to the rally, but it did firm up one conviction that has built up for the last few months; the anti-Trump movement is even more anti-democratic than Trump himself. Nothing is more dangerous to a democratic system of governance than political violence, and the vilification to the point of instilling fear in to your political opponents that is a hallmark of the anti-Trump forces should give everyone pause. If you don’t like Trump, then go after Trump. If you find yourself ignoring or making excuses for those who promote violence against Trump, or fall in to the trap of painting Trumpists with the usual leftist smears of racists, sexist, homophobes etc – you should take a deep breath and then go find out for yourself.
-- To all COMNAVRESFOR commands and units with government issued devices:
The Pokémon GO, Poke Rader, and PokeFinder applications are not approved for government furnished devices. Reserve Sailors that have downloaded any of these applications should remove them immediately by following the instructions below:
1) Press and hold the application icon until the 'x' appears.
2) Select the 'x' to uninstall.
If you are unaware if it has been installed, please check that you have not used your personal Apple ID to log in.
1) Go to Settings iTunes & App Store
2) Validate the Apple ID
3) It should not be your personal Apple ID acct but your gov't email acct (as instructed in the iOS User Setup Guide)
4) If you are logged in with your personal Apple ID please select the Apple ID and select Sign Out and then sign in using your gov't Apple ID account.
Please contact the COMNAVRESFOR N6 department help desk with questions or concerns at 757-322-2489.
How in one FbF can you do justice to a ship with 20 Battle Stars like the USS O'BANNON (DD-450)? 17 in WWII (second only to USS ENTERPRISE (CV-6) ), and three in Korea.
Well - this has been such a iffy week - let us take a moment to reflect with a smile.
We aren't the only US Navy that has trouble getting its Sailors armed ... and we aren't the only US Navy with resourceful Sailors.
From the Destroyer History Foundation and Ernest A. Herr - BEHOLD!
On 5 April 1943, DesRon 21 was returning from a night of shelling Japanese shore installations deep in the New Georgia area of the Solomon Islands. Our destroyer, the O’Bannon, as part of this force, picked up a radar contact that turned out to be a large Japanese submarine cruising on the surface and apparently unaware of our presence. The Japanese lookouts undoubtedly were fast asleep.
We approached rapidly and were preparing to ram the sub. Our captain and other officers on the bridge were trying to identify the type of sub and decided, at the last minute, that it could be a mine layer. Not wanting to blow up ourselves along with the sub, the decision was made that ramming was not a wise move. At the last moment, the rudder was swung hard to avoid a collision and we found ourselves in a rather embarrassing situation as we sailed along side of the Japanese submarine.
On board the sub, Japanese sailors, wearing dark shorts and dinky blue hats, were sleeping out on deck. In what could be considered a rude awaking, they sat up to see an American destroyer sailing along side. Our ship however, was far too close to permit our guns lowered enough to fire and since no one on deck carried a gun, not a shot was heard. Ditto on the Japanese sub, no one there had a gun either. In this situation, no one seemed sure of the proper course of action and it probably would not have been covered in the manual anyway. Therefore everyone just stared more or less spellbound.
The submarine was equipped with a 3-inch deck gun and the sub’s captain finally decided that now was probably a good time to make use of it. As the Japanese sailors ran toward their gun, our deck parties reached into storage bins that were located nearby, picked out some potatoes and threw them at the sailors on the deck of the sub. A potato battle ensued. Apparently the Japanese sailors thought the potatoes were hand grenades. This kept them very busy as they try to get rid of them by throwing them back at the O’Bannon or over the side of the sub. Thus occupied, they were too busy to man their deck gun which gave us sufficient time to put a little distance between our ship and the sub.
Finally we were far enough away to bring our guns to bear and firing commenced. One of our shells managed to hit the sub’s conning tower but the sub managed to submerge anyway. At that time our ship was able to pass directly over the sub for a depth charge attack. Later information showed that the sub did sink. When the Association of Potato Growers of Maine heard of this strange episode, they sent a plaque to commemorate the event. The plaque was mounted in an appropriate place near the crews mess hall for the crew to see. Well, it was the crew’s battle.
BTW - as any WESTPAC guy will tell you, even today the Japanese have no idea what to do with a spud.
It looks like The Front Porch can close a file from the extended rant drawer and put it in the "victory" file;
The Navy’s most mocked camouflage uniform will soon be a thing of the past, the service announced today.
The Navy Working Uniform Type I, blue camouflage utilities commonly referred to as “blueberries,” will be replaced everywhere in the service by the forest-green NWU Type III camouflage utilities developed by Naval Special Warfare Command as a tactical uniform.
According to an announcement today by Naval Personnel Command, sailors will have the option of wearing either the NWU Type I or III beginning Oct. 1 of this year, and will be required to wear the NWU Type III as the primary working uniform ashore and in port by Oct. 1, 2019.
Well praise Buddha - another bad idea from a decade of bad ideas is finally done. I should have known better than make fun of the Turkish Air Force back in 2005, because a year later - well, you know the story from my opening salvo on the topic in March of 2006, "Sweating My Balls Off;"
Look at that heat-sink (higher res here). Everyone who has been deployed on the deck (not in the air looking down) to Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and/or Iraq during the summertime in the last 5 years raise your hands. The summer, heck spring and fall, direct sun of SW Asia should not be a shock to anyone. Throw in the deck of a CVN and think about how dark that uniform is. I am not going to even talk about the "blue theme." That BDU is going to give Sailors heat stroke and will do zip, zero, nada to anyone trying to hide in a desert environment.
I hope our Corpsmen get to wear Marine BDU. If you are Haji bringing your AK up on a group of Americans, if you even bother to aim, where are you naturally going to point....right! At the dark target against the light background. This is so wrong in so many ways. I like that they kept the hat and all, but just take the Marine or Army pattern, save some money, and get to the business of the Navy. I am sorry. I don't care about your desire to hide you paint stains (this won't do it BTW). This is the wrong answer. As we say in D.C. - I non-concur, sir.
All the reasons we are ditching this horrible uniform a decade later were known then. That is why we need to look very hard at the institutional mindset that got us here. This was the uniform no one asked for, liked using, or thought in hindsight was good. Well, some people did - but you know the type. The evidence was all there that we had options, but we ignored them. Why? It can only be mindless bureaucratic inertia and loyalty to personalities inside a toxic command climate. Then again, this is the same team that birthed LCS, so there you go. Enjoy this outstanding decision, but use this as an example. Remember the Blueberries for what they represented, and when you are wearing stars, don't be that guy.
As we have discussed often here and at Midrats, a critical part of the Strategic level battle against ISIS is to undermine their Strategic Center of Gravity: the religious justification for their existence. Everything done must be related to this. Very much in the Salamander approved possible Courses of Action is an outline of a Commander’s Intent – imperfect but good enough – that you could build both a Strategic and Operational Level plan around. Who would this Commander’s Intent come from? In this case, Blackwater Founder Erik Prince as told to SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon,
(1)…you have to take away any claim they have to a Caliphate. That means destroying any conventional force they have in Iraq or Syria…
(2)… a “Phoenix Program,” similar to the one employed in Vietnam that would capture or kill the funders of Islamic terror and that would even be the wealthy radical Islamist billionaires funding it from the Middle East, and any of the other illicit activities they’re in.
WHY ISIS FOREIGN FIGHTER NUMBERS ARE GROWING
(3)…destroy them on the Internet. … That means with a very capable IT program to dig in and find where these jihadist sites are being hosted, where they’re being issued from, and you go and find and finish them at the Internet server level and destroy their ability to communicate, even on the Web.
I think we can fold this in with PLAN SALAMANDER we’ve been consistent about over the last few years and have a Plan to work with. Have a better plan?
NB: In honor of the memory of Andrew Breitbart who I used to write for and greatly admire, I do not usually link to breitbart.com, but I am making the exception here.
If you can take your eye off the dumpster fire that is domestic USA politics at the moment, there is a significant turning point in the Syrian Civil War taking place right now that should get your attention. If you want to keep pace with the rapidly developing front around Aleppo, the live feed from Conflict News is the best place I have found. The US press is almost worthless, the British only slightly better. Perhaps we will deal with that disgrace later, but let's focus. The Syrian government finally encircled Aleppo, meeting up with quasi-allied Kurdish YPG held areas of the city.
This is the endgame for this critical bit of real estate, and the Islamist forces know it. On Sunday, they started a dramatic counter attack trying to open a supply line to the surrounded rebel held parts of the city;
VIDEO: Jabhat Fath al-Sham publish footage of two massive suicide car bombs that kicked off the "battle for #Aleppo" pic.twitter.com/0xN3NR4F0h
The Islamists rebels are making initial progress and "civilians" are burning tires in the city trying to help block Russian and Syrian air force attacks trying to blunt the relief column. As of this AM, they have yet to break through. It is only a matter of time until the whole city falls to pro-Assad forces, so I think this effort is too little, too late. As the noose tightens on that city, I think we will see a very bloody end game - as you usually see at the end of most sieges. How much longer will this civil war go on? Who knows, but it has spun off so many more conflicts and potential conflicts, that one should not expect peace anytime soon. As such, it does once again beg the question; if you desire to end suffering in Syria - who do you support? We have painted ourselves in to a corner where we won't/can't support Assad. By habit we seem to want to oppose Russia. The General Allen's American supported anti-Assad forces are a joke. The only forces left to support are the Kurds - an effort we should redouble - but they are not really anti-Assad right now, and will not be the Army to take Damascus. They, rightfully, just want to take and hold what they consider theirs. The best route continues to be what I outlined over a year ago; let Russia support Assad and kill Islamists to the west of Raqqa. Let the Kurds take and hold their historic lands and support their independence. Help the Iraqi push ISIS out of Iraq. If we do that, ISIS will be concentrated in central Syria and can then be dealt with in detail by pro-Assad forces on the ground as the hammer with the Kurds in their lands as the anvil, with Russians and our alliance plinking from the air. The politicians can figure out the rest from there, but there can be only one area of focus right now; kill as many ISIS forces as possible. If you hate what the Long War has done to Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Europe, and even in the USA - then you need to watch Syria. If you want to undermine ISIS' Strategic Center of Gravity, you have to attack their ideology and purpose. Take away their rump Caliphate? That is a start. As for Aleppo - once a relatively modern, multicultural, and secularesque city - look at what happened. History does not always move forward. There can be progress and regress. Nothing is guaranteed. Accept that far from being the exception, look at what happened in Aleppo as a return to the new normal. In an increasingly urban and destabilized world, there will be more Aleppos. More Grozny's. Behold the fruits of Islamism. Both the below videos are a bit dated, but they give a good background on the siege and what it means for one of the great cities of the Middle East. Too bad you have to rely on RT and Al Jazeera, but there you go;
