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.
A shortage of minority generals -- 62 out of 884 in the four combat branches -- is a fact that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld readily acknowledges and insists he's trying to remedy.
Make no mistake; the diversity mafia in the military is strong, dangerous (to your career), and powerful. Speak out against them and they will destroy you – worse than if you were a college academic. A perfect example can be found in the Montgomery Adviser article, “Military Short on Minority Generals.” Every couple of months, you will read something like this. Usually, I ignore them and read on – but being that this is “board results season” (see Appendix C for example) and my Millington spies (thanks for the hint) tell me the usual suspects are doing the usual things; I can’t help myself.
These people are stuck in ‘70s racial thinking and paternalistic policies. Through fear and inaction, they allow an obvious racial bias to exist in order to keep the political Storm Troopers out, and their pet theories in. Part of the problem is that policy is being made by people looking back 20-30 years to their own experience and acting as if nothing in the culture has changed. This is 2006, not 1976.
Both the Pentagon and Hawkins see minority officers as fundamental to the military's success. ... "It's because of the wealth of intellectual capital that's gained," Hawkins said. "Everybody who doesn't look the same doesn't think the same, so you need the wealth of that diversity that comes from having minorities of all races, ethnicities and gender."
Let's mini-Fisk that:
“Everybody who doesn’t look the same doesn’t think the same,..”
Though the statement isn't that clear, if a Caucasian officer said that, he would be typing out retirement papers now.
Right now, according to Shavers, the Pentagon is hoping to increase diversity two ways: by recruiting more promising minority students to become officers...
That is good. That is the way to go. Recruit hard, same standards, level playing field.
..and by helping guide the careers of newly commissioned minority officers. ... "I didn't really even think or believe in that and focus in on that until I was already a colonel selectee," he said. "And so that's why I'm telling you there were some blessings and people in my path that made this possible because, in all honesty, it could have just passed me by, and I'd have never known any difference."
That is bad. Let me tell you why. There are organizations and "mentors" that only work with officers of the same ethinc group. I am sorry, that has no place in the 21st Century. It is just wrong. The men and women joining the military now were born in the last years of the Reagan presidency not Jim Crow.
BG Hawking sounds like a solid, well-meaning officer – but he knows promotion is a zero-sum game. If you do not run a meritocracy, for a fixed number of slots, if you give extra weight due to your DNA, you justification is no different from skinheads and those wearing sheets. Discrimination, both positive and negative, is corrosive and wrong. If you treat your officers or enlisted different just because of their ethnic background you are a racist. I am sorry, I see it - I call it. You are following a wrong racist policy. Call it what you want, I don't care. It is what it is.
Hawkins commissions about 80 percent of the officers entering the Air Force, so he knows first-hand how stiff the competition is for talented minority candidates. "I see it all the time in this job, when I've got a corporation telling a minority individual that they will pay for all of their college and give them X number of thousands of dollars just to come into their company," he said.
That is the source of the problem that they should be spending time on. There is a limited pool of qualified talent in some ethnic groups (not Asian, South-Asian, or Southwest Asian - if you think the US holds back minorities, read Nicholas Kristof's latest). If you look at High School graduation rates, College graduation rates, incarceration rates, and crime statistics – the pool of degree holders without crime records are very small. Everyone wants “to look like America..” and will fight for that limited pool.
He tells a nice story, but does not explain how he would explain his policy to:
Mixed race officers. Why do they have to choose what side of the family they want to call themselves? If they don’t, who “classifies” them?
Why should the military give special attention to the son/daughter born in 1988 to a black lawyer and black doctor over the son/daughter born in 1988 in Bosnia who came over here at 7 yrs with nothing but the clothes on his back? Just on melanin content? Is that it?
Does a 6’2” blond haired, blue-eyed officer with the last name Gonzelez qualify as a Hispanic to him?
Does a dark skinned, brown haired, brown eyed female names O’Neil whose father was half Italian-Columbian / half Andean Indian, and whose mother was of mixed European bloodlines qualify as American Indian, Hispanic, or Caucasian? What? Who decides? Who verifies? What if sitting next to her is a person with lighter skin and blue eyes call himself “African-American.” Who decides, who verifies, who makes the call? The right answer should be “who cares,” but not since the Eugenics Movement of the early 20th Century and the Third Reich have we see people so concerned about race.
Why in 2006 should we allow serving 2-Star Admirals to push “select lists” to board members, and that list consist of people only of the same ethnic group of the Admiral?
Where in all of recorded history has a culture or nation survived where it has all owed/endorsed a multi-ethnic/multicultural Balkanization of its people?
If interested, there is a video of an interview with BG Hawkins here.
This time, it may be for good if the trend holds. The pattern is fairly predictable. First you have a society that wants nothing more but to be left alone to try new social policies and feel good about itself. The last thing it wants is to be told of the wolf at the door. Nazis or Islamists. It doesn't matter.
Then there are those who love the culture and want it to rise to the challenge and preserve its freedoms.
Then the established elites who do not have the moral ability to stand up for anything, and are used to talking out of or wishing away problems, turn on their fellow countrymen - seeing the guardians, the shepard's dogs, as the real problem, not the threat, the wolf closing in. They are distracted by the bearer of the bad news, and turn on those who would save them.
This will be a long, hard century for Europe. If this is where they let their elite take them, I am afraid that there is much blood coming. Much blood.
The percentage of work visas that would go to the highly educated or highly skilled would be cut in half to about 30 percent. The percentage of work visas that go to unskilled laborers would more than triple. In hard numbers for those categories, the highest skilled workers would be granted 135,000 visas annually, while the unskilled would be granted 150,000 annually.
The rest of the world is changing their laws to give favor to those who will ADD to the national skill base, not lower it. The economy of the 21st Century will be all bio and tech. These will not help it at all. This isn't the late 19th or early 20th century.
Don't give me that "Jobs Americans won't do...." crap either. Go to Minnesota or Denmark for that matter...."average" folks do that job. My ancestors used the same "we need the cheap labor..." argument as well. They based the whole foundation of their economy on it, and Sherman burned it to the ground. Try again.
Sen. Martinez, I want my money back from the last election. I should have sent it somewhere else.
One more thing. While you are stuck in traffic today, here is something from Powerline for you to chew on.
As we focus on what to do about illegal immigration, it's easy to lose sight of the issue of how much, and what type of, legal immigration we should permit. Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation puts that issue into sharp relief. He estimates that the Senate immigration reform proposal sponsored by Senators Hagel and Martinez would allow an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years -- fully one-third of the current population of the United States.
NB:Yes, I know. It is WED afternoon. I have to run off for a few days where there will be no Internet. I went ahead and posted THU's post, Fullbore Friday, and this the Sunday Funnies ahead of time so as to not upset some regular, and I might add, demanding readers. YOU know who YOU are. Anyway, I hope all have a good end of week and weekend; and scroll below for the goodies.
If you don't see my blog'n by MON afternoon.....send flowers and/or cash to your local charity - and we will call it even.
She still calls to some; well at least me. Look again at her stats.
Range: 8,900 nautical miles at 20 knots (16,500 km at 37 km/h), or 19,000 nautical miles at 10 knots (35,000 km at 18.5 km/h).
Plant: Eight 9-cylinder double-acting two-stroke MAN diesels two screws, 52,050 hp (40 MW). Yes, you read that right. A diesel-electric Pocket Battleship. Seven decades ahead of her time....
Guns: Six 11 inch (280 mm) guns in two triple turrets, eight 5.9 inch (150 mm) guns, six 150 mm guns eight 37 mm anti-aircraft guns ten 20 mm anti-aircraft guns eight 21 inch (530 mm) torpedo tubes in 2 quadruple mounts
All this in a ship 186 m long. Yep, you know where I am going with this. Imagine, using modern (not PPT or "in development") technologies to build a modern Pocket Battleship. Just think about it. Even if you don't want to spend what it takes to put titanium firemains in the LPD-17 to re-create the plant to build the 11" guns, I will give you 4 MK-71s instead. Thrown in a few MK-41 VLS cells....and you know where I am going. Ask the Marines. Ask the folks in SWOS what they think. Now think about the LCS and soon to be CANX DDG-1000.
Two great sites for info are here and here. There is some news as of late WRT her; the Graf Spee Project, and folks taking bits of her up one piece at a time. The one I want is already gone. The stern eagle. Here she is now, here is what she she looked like when attached. Bronze rulz.
Here she is in the ideal, the actual (like the false bow wave camo), and her final cruise to meet her end.
To round out the story, you should review her Skipper, Kapitän zur See Hans Wilhelm Langsdorff. IMAO, an honorable, conflicted man - who in the end - loved his Sailors more than anything else. There are worse things that can be said about a man. As is my habit, I ask the question; "What would you do?"
Unlike some of their countrymen, mature Canada may be waking up from the fog they have been in since they changed their flag, and are starting to realize that the world is a dangerous place, and good people need to have a means to back up their words.
Mr. O'Connor told a Senate committee on national security yesterday that the military has sufficient ground troops to remain in Afghanistan indefinitely. But when asked whether Canada could send soldiers to help maintain peace in Darfur, Mr. O'Connor said, "We would be greatly challenged to take on a commitment anywhere else in the world."
The minister later told reporters that other branches of the Canadian Forces might be able to provide some sort of assistance in a pinch if an international force is assembled to police a peace agreement in Darfur, where a civil war has killed at least 180,000 people in the past three years.
"We can't just instantly adjust the Armed Forces," he said. "It's what we have today that we have to deal with."
The whole, “Army you have, not Army you want..”
Mr. O'Connor said the Canadian army won't have additional ground troops to take on another major mission for at least several years.
Canada has 2,200 soldiers involved in the counterinsurgency operations to root out Taliban fighters in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his government will decide later this year how long Canada will keep troops in that war-ravaged country.
The Canadian Forces plan to recruit and train an additional 13,000 full-time personnel for all three services in the next several years. The current force strength is about 62,000.
Last week's federal budget pledged $5.3-billion in new defence spending over the next five years. This would boost the defence budget to almost $20-billion by 2010 from the current $14.5-billion.
Small by U.S. standards (they have ~32 million people, the US has ~300 million), but that is a 37% increase in $$$ (Canadian) and a 21% increase in manpower.Oh, and the Navy’s shipbuilding program could learn something from a retired Canadian General.
Mr. O'Connor, a former army general and retired defence industry lobbyist, said the military has wasted time and money over the years by requiring that military suppliers meet particular Canadian requirements for equipment. "We are abandoning Canadianizing everything."
The military, he said, spent 10 years and $15-million on research and development to get a uniquely Canadian helmet to protect "this peculiar Canadian head when they could have put a table out there with a Russian helmet, a Chinese helmet, an American helmet, a French helmet and said, 'Which helmet do you want?' "
Replace “helmet” with “Corvette sized warship” and you have some serious “out of the box” thinking that might, just might, get us back to 300 ships + and steady…might.
