Security

Germany Predicts US Market Failure

Leave a comment

The news in the Deutsche Welle is that Germany has been warning the US for a year about market failure and the need for tighter regulation:

Merkel said that she had tried to win support for greater transparency and regulation on international markets at the G-8 conference last year, but that governments including the US did not heed her.

They do not mince words in Germany about Bush’s so called “drunken” leadership:

On Sunday, Sept 21, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson called for other nations to set up similar rescue plans.

He did not provide further details, but US financial authorities have been working closely with their counterparts in Europe and Japan over the past 10 days to prevent a collapse of the interwoven global financial system.

[…]

“The Americans can’t make Germany accountable for their failure and their arrogance,” Poss [deputy parliamentary head of the Social Democratic Party (SPD)] said. “A similar rescue package is neither planned nor needed in Germany,” he added.

The article also points out that the current package proposed by Bush will actually lead to greater crisis during the McCain administration:

“I have doubts whether that method is really the most clever one,” Michael Meister, deputy parliamentary leader of Chancellor Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU) told business daily Handelsblatt.

Meister suggested that the $700 billion bailout by the US government could lay the fundaments for the next crisis. He compared it to the massive slashing of interest rates by the US Federal Reserve in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001 which he said had sowed the seeds for the current turbulence in capital markets.

I have seen some analysts already starting to suggest that disasters are all part of the underlying plan of the Bush administration. More market failure and more crisis creates the ideal condition for consolidation of power as well as an argument for extreme measures. After they failed to deregulate and privatize social security through normal legal means, they are hoping to declare an emergency and force a big sell-off to “save” America from the disaster they created.

Security

Historians Sue Cheney

Leave a comment

Dick Cheney is apparently fighting a lawsuit with historians over the right to destroy his official records.

A judge has ordered him to preserve files:

The lawsuit stems from Cheney’s position that his office is not part of the executive branch of government.

This summer, Cheney chief of staff David Addington told Congress that the vice president belongs to neither the executive nor legislative branch of government but rather is attached by the Constitution to Congress. The vice president presides over the Senate.

The lawsuit alleges that the Bush administration’s actions over the past 7½ years raise questions over whether the White House will turn over records created by Cheney and his staff to the National Archives in January.

In 2003, Cheney asserted that the office of the vice president is not an entity within the executive branch.

Two historians and three groups of historians and archivists joined CREW in filing the suit two weeks ago.

He has such hubris. What does he want to hide from historians? Why is he so intent on achieving the right to destroy public records?

I get the feeling Cheney is the sort of guy who would try to drive a truck in order to claim that traffic laws are written for “cars” and he should be exempt from enforcement.

Poetry, Sailing, Security

Sea-Fever

Leave a comment

from “Salt-Water Ballads” by John Masefield

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must down to the seas again to the vagrant gypsy life.
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Energy, Sailing, Security

Stiletto: Ultra-light Wave-piercing Navy Ship

Leave a comment

The story from the almost defunct Office of Force Transformation is that carbon fiber and wave-piercing tunnel hulls can achieve great efficiencies. This is very different from the old style of “shock and awe” city-sized mega-ships:

Stiletto is an 80 by 40 foot wave piercing hull built entirely of carbon fiber. It’s unique “M-Hull” shape (See figure 1) is designed to channel is the energy that normally is produced as wake in a conventional V-Hull craft up under the craft into tunnels created by the M-shaped hull form. […] Capable of speeds up to 50 knots, the craft passively lifts itself out of the water about a foot as it speeds along reducing drag.

So here you have a 60 ton, 88 foot long, 40 foot wide $6M ship launched in 2005. It is said to be in active duty fighting drug cartels. Awesome.

This is the A-Class of Navy warships. Sure they have short range, but nothing puts a smile on your face like efficiency on the water.

Here is the most interesting part:

The wave action and resulting rough ride of the V-Hull has, over the years, taken their toll on these SEALs such that nearly a third of them are medically discharged within just 10 years of service due to the pounding G-forces applied to their bodies.

Is that true? Soldiers can only make it 10 years if they ride on V-Hull boats?

The pounding and crashing from fast-speeds over waves seems quite different to me than G-force effects that drain blood, for example. I mean people already have isolated the issue of hull pounding and solved much of it with foils that lift, no?

In similar news the BOR90 continues to amaze everyone with its efficiency:

While sailing upwind in no more than 9 knots of breeze, they heeled the boat enough to sail on only the leeward float, making even speed with our media boat at roughly 26 knots.

Converting less than 10 knots of wind into 26 knots of speed on the water is cool. The top speed of this thing is expected to break 50 knots, which means (aside from rough weather) it could take on the Stilleto with none of the fuel issues. And it cost $60/lb to build, which is a mere $10/lb more than the Stilleto. Larry Ellison is definitely the type of guy to spend more than the Pentagon on a boat.

Just to re-iterate, the future of vessels clearly is in ultra-light wave-piercing multi-hulls. The V is as dated as the SUV…then again I do not see many people ready to convert to a more efficient model.

Might take a decade or so before we see widespread changes. Imagine Navy fleets of high-speed drone swarms launched from tubes instead of carriers with decks and associated destroyers, and two-seaters that snap together for high-speeds and communicate with one another to navigate.