NC Renegades

Tomorrow’s webinar on Intelligence Preparation of the Community (IPC) is an open event.  I do a webinar each month for subscribers of Forward Observer Magazine, but tomorrow everyone is invited, so please share this with your family and friends.  This webinar is the only place on the entire web that has the information I present.

On 19 FEB at 6pm Pacific / 9pm Eastern, I’ll spend about two hours with everyone and talk about the Intelligence needs for a post-SHTF situation, how to collect that Intelligence information and how we organize it into an Intelligence product.

We’ll discuss threat types, how to dissect and analyze each threat, and how to analyze a community like an experienced Intelligence analyst.

The time to collect Intelligence is now when it’s freely available through the web or word of mouth.  A little work can help bridge the security gap.

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Things on the West Coast Ports are going from bad to worse (for those who missed it read “Catastrophic Shutdown Of America’s Supply Chain” Begins: Stunning Photos Of West Coast Port Congestion), and with no resolution in sight, it is now beginning to cripple the US economy. Here is a brief summary, courtesy of the WSJ, of how the near-strike is already impacting various businesses across the US:

• Ocean carrier Maersk Line has canceled some sailings, while China Ocean Shipping (Group) Co. said it will skip at least one port
• Shipping line CMA CGM Group said it has “adapted its schedule and has been modifying its ports call order.” China Ocean Shipping said it has canceled some port stops.
• Truckers that normally haul an average of five containers a day away from the Port of Oakland, Calif., are lucky to haul one.
• At the Port of Oakland, truck drivers can spend up to three days waiting in line before hauling one container out of the yard, says Henry Osaki, an employee at an Oakland-based trucking company.
• A West Coast customs broker said that her customers are being assessed as much as $300 a day for containers that sit too long on the docks, though the containers are trapped there.
• Levi Strauss & Co. said it was concerned it wouldn’t receive some products in time for spring deliveries.
• As of Monday, Honda Motor Co. was experiencing parts shortages at plants in Ohio, Indiana and Canada that will affect its production on multiple days over the next week.
• The Agriculture Transportation Coalition estimates that port delays and congestion have reduced U.S. agricultural exports by $1.75 billion a month, while the North American Meat Institute put losses to U.S. meat and poultry producers at more than $85 million a week, including hides and skins.
• The delays could cost retailers alone as much as $3.8 billion this year, according to an analysis by consulting firm Kurt Salmon. Adding in rerouting and carrying costs and other expenses could bring retailers’ total costs to $7 billion this year, the firm said.
• Bert von Roemer, owner of Serengeti Trading Co., a Dripping Springs, Texas, coffee importer began rerouting coffee beans he intended to ship to the West Coast to Houston, Norfolk, Virginia and New York. “I’m railing the coffee across” to roasters in California, he said. “It’s costing me about $2,000 extra per container,”

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I keep warning about Leo Gerald and his role in our future.

David DeGerolamo

• Everyone in the group should have the same model of radio. It makes logistics of accessories such as microphones and batteries easier.
• Radio model should have readily available accessories.
• Radios should be rugged enough for heavy field (ab)use.
• Radios should be capable of operating off of common alkaline batteries. Most HTs capable of doing so will take either AAs or AAAs.

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The U.S. Military is really good at killing people and winning wars.  For all the vitriol over the “lost wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, one thing is certain: the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces aren’t to blame.  Historically, politicians and civilian leadership and their policies are — whether that’s getting us into needless wars or ending them early, it makes no difference.

A central theme to Iraq and Afghanistan, and one of my largest complaints about those conflicts in which I served for three and a half years, is that we weren’t doing the things needed to win.  First, “victory” was not well-defined.  Were we killing UBL, were we defeating the Taliban, were we nation-building, or were we doing all three and more?  And second, we had a mission to “win” but weren’t given the resources necessary to win.  Soldiers and Marines aren’t nation-builders; and many of them showed up to their first or second deployments without understanding the way forward, which is a failure of leadership and education as much as it is of poor policy and lack of guidance.

So we cut and ran in Iraq, and left the country to its own devices, which had been a civil war since the mid-2000s.  And then along comes the Islamic State, and the Administration can’t figure out if they’re Islamic or un-Islamic (not that it particularly matters), and they can’t figure out a strategy that is a) sellable to the American public, b) sellable to the world community, c) sellable to Marxist ideologues, and d) congruent with the Administration’s policy that, deep down, Islamic State fighters are just misunderstood and angry because life is difficult.

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Any questions about our national security strategy? You elected children who appointed fools. Now the enemy is at the gates and in Washington, D.C.

Get ready for a rough ride.

David DeGerolamo