General Quarters

The Australian reports:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has declared the US-Japan security pact a “global alliance” following agreement on an unprecedented level of operational co-operation between American and Japanese forces.
[…]
The document also foreshadows a strengthening of tentative security links between Japan and Australia, the key southern partner in the Americans’ Asia-Pacific alliance network.
It calls […]

Blogger Varifrank has this entry on “context”, and how it’s (obviously) absent from the grey matter of almost all people who are in the reporting business.
My fav part? Easy! The TIMELINE - annotated, that is. 1998 is a particularly fine vintage, sir:
1998
Feburary: The United States Senate passes resolution 71, which urged […]

Of Arms and the Law found the recent UN report on crime.
A report on British crime figures. “A report released this week by the United Nations confirms what law-abiding Americans have known for quite some time. That being that criminals prefer victims who cannot fight back. Based on a crime survey of the […]

1st) Peggy Noonan in today’s WSJ. Elgato doesn’t share her cynicism, but this really put into words a feeling I’ve had for some time.
2nd) Jen Martinez has a post from a LTC in Fallujah, about how the US media is the enemy’s best ally. I could not agree more.

Military.com reports that the Navy and Marines have blocked commercial email sites from all overseas government computers and some here at home, if the computers are on NMCI (Navy-Marine Corp Intranet). While I appreciate the attention to Information Awareness and security, I think there should be some accomodation for servicemen and women and their families […]

Jens-Olaf has some amazing scans of photos from the Eastern Front durng World War I. They are largely from a German Army officer, many are unpublished. Some amazing images there, including this one of German warships in Riga, near the Baltic Sea:

[tip to Boing Boing]

Noah Shachtman at Defense Tech writes about possible big-time budget cuts coming the way of the Navy. The Pentagon is looking at some $13 - $15 billion in cuts for the 2007 budget. The Navy will feel part of that as it looks at losing $18 billion over the next six years. Yikes.

Little Green Footballs had this entry really dropped the ball here… and I got suckered in.
The American Friends Service Committee is planning to hold a series of parties all across the country when the 2000th US soldier is killed in Iraq
They called them parties, they are not. LGF did not bother to check the […]

From Michelle Malkin:
Berkeley’s Veterans Day ceremony, scheduled for Nov. 11, was abruptly canceled on Monday because the volunteer organizing committee split over the political content.
At issue was a proposal by the chairman, singer/songwriter Country Joe McDonald, to have Bill Mitchell, a co-founder of Cindy Sheehan’s organization, Gold Star Families for Peace, as the keynote speaker.
Mitchell’s […]

The last Aussie veteran of WWI to see active service has passed away.
William Evan Allan, 1899-2005 served the RAN in both world wars.

Fair winds and following seas, sir.

Welcome back, Sgt Hook. A staple of my early blog reading has returned to the ‘Net. Good to have you back, CSM.
[cross-posted at Swanky Conservative]

OK folks, if you haven’t clued in yet, it needs to be emphasized:
The media pulled this scripted, staged teleconference nonsense right out of a certain “southern facing” orifice.
I found this on the blog of a participant in the teleconference.
Yesterday, I (bottom right corner in the picture) was chosen to be among a small group of […]

I just got to peruse this book over luch with one of the authors. I have had the privilege of reviewing chapters over the course of writing the book, so this was like the birth of a niece or nephew (provided you’re on good terms with your sibling, of course).
The question to answer is […]

Brit blogger Blackrat took a wee voyage aboard HMS Trenchant: Gibraltar to the UK. And they let him take pics!

Here’s an excerpt:
I was suprised at just how roomy the submarine was. Its interior was functional, yes, and good use had been made of all available space, but there was more than enough room to […]

“Resolved, That a swift sailing vessel, to carry ten carriage guns, and a proportionable number of swivels, with eighty men, be fitted, with all possible despatch, for a cruise of three months, and that the commander be instructed to cruize eastward, for intercepting such transports as may be laden with warlike stores and other supplies […]

They hit the nail on the head, squarely, as usual.
Ayman al Zawahiri and George W. Bush don’t agree on much. But al Qaeda’s No. 2 leader and the U.S. President are in accord on one thing: Iraq is the central battlefield.
This is just one of the many insights into the mind of the terrorist […]

Austin Bay’s blog has some great analysis of the captured Zawahiri letter.
Zawahiri vacillates. At one level he knows Al Qaeda’s losing. But the US may buckle, folks, cut and run like Vietnam. Heck, Boxer, Sheehan, Kennedy, and the DailyKos, give Zawahiri hope.
Useful idiots indeed. More like traitors.
The column says “When Al-Qaida’s zealots blow up […]

Most likely not. The media glosses over, hell, forgets that which won’t bring down the Bush administration (these days).
Yet here we are - 5 years later.
Malkin writes of this extensively.
Too many of us were blind in 2000 — unable or unwilling or simply too uninterested to connect such blood-stained dots as al Qaeda’s 1993 […]

NOVA, that wonderful series on PBS, will be running a show tonight on the sinking of IJN Yamato, the largest BB of all time.

The final phase of the Pacific war during World War II saw a terrible new tactic: massed kamikaze attacks on American ships by Japanese planes. But the biggest kamikaze attack of all […]