Happy Birthday Old NFO!

Old NFO doesn’t want me to tell you that he’s 99 years old today. He’s throwing other numbers out to confuse you. Still, we wish you the happiest of birthdays, old friend. High speed, low drag, fangs out, shipmate!

Old NFO is on a Christmas hiatus (announced on his blog) and may not read any of this, so you can reprise any Old NFO Christmas miracles you may have witnessed. Ninety-nine years ago, the Volstead Act, which banned alcoholic beverages, was in place. Women gained the vote (19th Amendment) in the US, which may be why Old NFO said of women, “lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.” Calvin Coolage was president, and Arizona was new (on the order of 13 years) when Old NFO was born. People were just getting accustomed to 48 stars on the national flag. Old NFO wasn’t at Kitty Hawk when the first Wright Flyer took to the air, but it might have been because airplanes were still made of fabric.

There were telephones back then, but an operator had to connect your call for you – we’re talking way before the party line. The War to End All Wars had concluded, and the depression had yet to begin back when Old NFO was a baby. Some people claim that Old NFO started the Great Depression, but I think that’s a vicious lie. The Chinese know that he was born in the Year of the Ox. I’m not sure what that means. Some people have reminded me, “Old NFO is old enough to be your grandfather (or great-grandfather), LL, so show a little more respect.” They’re absolutely correct.

 

Bullet Points:

** Federal authorities recently charged eight Southeast Michigan men with running an international car theft and smuggling ring. The operation, which ran from July 2023 through August 2025, involved the recovery of over 350 stolen vehicles valued at approximately $35 million.

** Japanese shipbuilding capacity shifts to a military orientation (h/t Claudio). It seems to me that the US will likely try to piggyback some of its needs onto this Japanese (and ROK) capacity. It’s too bad that the US lost the ability to make ships quickly and effectively. That sort of heavy industrial base might come back, but it will take time, and the question is whether we have the time.

** Ben offers an opinion or two.

** LSP reprises the beloved Franklin books here on his blog.

** Russian African Adventurism – A British media outlet has published an investigation revealing how Russian structures linked to the Wagner PMC and other Kremlin security units are expanding their control over gold deposits in African countries. The gold extracted in this way is used to circumvent sanctions and directly finance Russia’s war against Ukraine. Since 2022, the volume of African gold exported to Russia is estimated at no less than $2.5 billion. While that sounds like a lot, overhead costs offset that figure. Profitable, yes. Russian mercenaries maintain control over African gold mines through systematic violence and intimidation of residents. After the introduction of sanctions, gold became a key source of funding for Russia’s war: it is easy to smuggle and “launder.” Against the backdrop of rapidly depleting domestic reserves — Russia has already sold off more than half of the gold reserves of its National Wealth Fund — the Kremlin is increasingly relying on “African gold” to finance the war. This once again confirms that Russia is not only waging aggression against Ukraine but is also exploiting vulnerable African states, using violence and corrupt schemes to sustain its wartime economy. Subrosa – Russia is finding it challenging to be Russia.

** Do Americans want stricter firearms laws? You can find the full report here: https://ammo.com/research/how-many-americans-want-stricter-gun-laws.

** Commie-Comedian-Lesbian Ellen Degenerate self-deported to England, which I thought was a thoughtful thing for the US. Now she’s threatening to return. No, Ellen, please stay there.

** Mexican bull riding – this time, they had an ambulance to haul the meat off.

 

Choosing Survival

(h/t Ken and Claudio) Taiwan just made the most significant defense move in its modern history: A $40 billion special military budget, part of a long-term push toward 5% of GDP on defense by 2030. The U.S., Japan, Taiwan, and every democracy in the region are staring at one date: 2027, the PLA’s target year to be “ready” to take Taiwan. That’s not analysis. That’s Beijing’s own planning. And Taiwan’s message is simple: “If you come for us, we’re ready.”

For 40 years, peace in the Taiwan Strait rested on two pillars:
1) The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act
2) Reagan’s Six Assurances
These weren’t slogans — they created clarity and deterrence. But the PLA is now testing that framework harder than ever: Record incursions, drills crossing toward Japan & the Philippines, and escalation in both East & South China Seas.

Beijing is signaling that altering the status quo by force is no longer unthinkable. Lai Ching-te’s $40B isn’t a reaction. It’s strategic continuity — reinforcing the deterrence that kept the peace.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Politics Are Still Turbulent. Instead of unity, the Legislative Yuan is fighting itself: Opposition politicians courting Beijing; Suspicions of CCP influence ops; Calls for “more dialogue,” even as China demands pre-conditioned surrender.

Beijing wants to absorb Taiwan like a malevolent amoeba, without a shot. They’re willing to buy off politicians to make that happen because wars are expensive.  Japan and the U.S. are watching closely. Washington’s stance: “We will help Taiwan — but Taiwan must show the will to defend itself.” This isn’t abandonment. It’s the same burden-sharing approach Reagan used in the 1980s. Japan sees the threat even more directly. As PM Takaichi said: “If Taiwan falls, Japan faces a crisis too.” A conflict in the Strait would threaten Japan’s survival, shipping lanes, and Okinawa immediately. Taiwan’s $40B is a message to both allies: “We’re serious. We’ll fight first. We won’t expect you to carry the full weight.”

The Old China cared about its global reputation. The New China does not. Termites unmasked.

 

 

Ft. Sumter

What follows are excerpts from the first volume of Shelby Foote’s Civil War Trilogy – in honor of Old NFO, who was born in the Deep South.

Lincoln up in Washington had most of these troubles, including the problem of holding the border states, and a greater one as well. Having first made up his mind, he must then unite the North before he could move to divide and conquer the South. He had made up his mind; he had stated his position; ‘The Union is unbroken,’ he had said. Yet while Europe applauded the forthright manner in which the Confederacy had set itself in motion, Lincoln faced division among the states that had remained loyal.

New Jersey was talking secession; so was California, which, along with Oregon, was considering the establishment of a new Pacific nation; so, even, was New York City, which, besides being southern in sentiment, would have much to gain from independence. While moderates were advising sadly, “Let the erring sisters depart in peace,” extremists were violently in favor of the split: “No union with slaveholders! Away with this foul thing! . . The Union was not formed by force, nor can force maintain it.”

On the other hand, whatever there was of native Union persuasion was sustained by economic considerations. Without the rod of a strong protective tariff, eastern manufacturers would lose their southern markets to the cheaper, vastly superior products of England, and this was feared by the workers as well as the owners. The people of the Northwest remained staunchly pro-Union, faced as they were with loss of access to the lower Mississippi, that outlet to the Gulf which they had had for less than fifty years.

Then, too, following Lincoln’s inaugural address, there was a growing belief that separation would solve no problems but would instead add others of an international character, with the question of domination intensified. In early April, the New York Times stated the proposition: “If the two sections can no longer live together, they can no longer live apart in quiet till it is determined which is master. No two civilizations ever did, or can, come into contact as the North and South threaten to do, without a trial of strength, in which the weaker goes to the wall. . . . We must remain masters of the occasion and the dominant power on this continent.”

Reading this, some men faced responsibility; they believed they must accept it as members of a generation on trial. ‘A collision is inevitable,’ one said. “Why ought not we test our government instead of leaving it — meaning the testing — to our children?”

Walking the midnight corridors of the White House after the day-long din of office seekers and divided counsels, Lincoln knew that his first task was to unite all these discordant elements. He knew, too, that the most effective way to do this was to await an act of aggression by the South, exerting in the interim just enough pressure to provoke such an action, without exerting enough to justify it. He had reasonable cause to believe that he would not have long to wait.

The longer the border states remained neutral, the less ashamed they were of their neutrality in the eyes of their sisters farther south, the more the Confederates were urged to force the issue. Roger Pryor, a smooth-shaven Virginian with long black hair that brushed his shoulders, a fire-eater irked that his state hung back, was speaking now from a Charleston balcony, advising the South Carolinians how to muster Virginia into their ranks “in less than an hour by Shrewsbury clock: Strike a blow!”

What Pryor had in mind was Fort Sumter, out in Charleston harbor, one of the four Federal forts still flying the Union flag in Confederate territory. Lincoln also had it in mind, along with the other three, all Florida forts: Pickens off Pensacola Bay, Taylor at Key West, and Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas. The crowd was delighted with Pryor’s advice. So would Lincoln have been if he had heard him, for by now he saw Sumter as the answer to his need for uniting the North.

The garrison at Fort Sumter had initially been relocated to the more vulnerable Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island. Still, the night after Christmas, six days after South Carolina seceded, Major Robert Anderson removed his eighty-two men to the strong fortress three miles out in the harbor. South Carolina protested to Washington, demanding that the troops return to Moultrie. Instead, Buchanan sent an unarmed merchant steamer, the Star of the West, with men and supplies to reinforce the fort; but when the Charleston gunners took her under fire, Union Jack and all, she turned back. That was that.

Though they ringed the harbor with guns trained on Sumter and no longer allowed the garrison to buy food at local markets, the Carolinians fired no shot against the fort itself, nor did the Confederate authorities when they took over in March. Buchanan, with his after-me-the-deluge policy, left the situation for his successor to handle as he saw fit, including the question of whether to swallow the insult to the flag. On the day after his inauguration, Lincoln received dispatches from Anderson announcing that he had not enough food to last six weeks, which meant that Lincoln had something less than that period of time in which to make up his mind whether to send supplies to the fort or let it go.

—

During this period, while Lincoln was making up his mind and seemed lost in indecision, a drama of cross-purposes played out in Washington, involving backstairs diplomacy and earnest misrepresentation. Secretary of State William H. Seward, leader of the Republican Party and a man of vast experience in public life, saw the new president as well-meaning but incompetent in such matters, as a prairie lawyer fumbling toward disaster, and himself as the Administration’s one hope to forestall civil war. He believed that if the pegs that held men’s nerves screwed tight could somehow be loosened, or at any rate not screwed still tighter, the crisis would pass; the neutral states would remain loyal, and in time even the seceded states would return to the fold, penitent and convinced by consideration. He did not believe that Sumter should be reinforced or resupplied, since this would be precisely the sort of incident likely to increase the tension to the snapping point.

In this, he was supported by most of his fellow cabinet members; for when Lincoln polled them on the issue — “Assuming it to be possible to now provision Fort Sumter, under all the circumstances, is it wise to attempt it?” — They voted five-to-two to abandon the fort. The Army, too, had advised against any attempt at reinforcement, estimating that 10,000 troops would be required, a number far beyond its present means. Only the Navy seemed willing to undertake it.

Lincoln himself, despite his inaugural statement that he would “hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government,” seemed undecided or, at any rate, did not announce his decision. Seward believed he would come around in time, especially given the odds among his counselors. Meanwhile, he, Seward, would do what he could to spare the Southerners any additional provocation.

Three of them were in Washington now, sent there from Montgomery as commissioners to accomplish “the speedy adjustment of all questions growing out of separation, as the respective interests, geographical contiguity, and future welfare of the two nations may render necessary.” They had much to offer and much to ask. The Confederate Congress, having opened the navigation of the lower Mississippi to the northern states, expected to secure in return the evacuation of Sumter and the Florida forts, along with much else.

Lincoln, however, would not see them. To have done so would have been to give over the constitutional reasoning that what was taking place in Alabama was merely a “rebellion” by private persons, no more entitled to send representatives to the rightful government than any other band of outlaws. Being also an official person, Seward, of course, could not see them either, no matter how much good he thought would proceed from a face-to-face conciliatory talk. Yet he found a way at least to show them the extent to which he believed the government would go in proving it meant no harm in their direction.

On March 15, the day Lincoln polled his cabinet for its views on Sumter, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John A. Campbell of Alabama, who had not yet gone South, came to Seward’s office to urge him to receive the Southerners. The Secretary regretfully declined, then added, “If Jefferson Davis had known the state of things here, he would not have sent those commissioners. The evacuation of Sumter is as much as the Administration can bear.”

Justice Campbell was alert at once. Here was Seward, guaranteeing, as the government’s Secretary of State, the main concession the commissioners were seeking. To make this even more definite, Campbell remarked that he would write to Davis at once. “And what shall I say to him on the subject of Fort Sumter?”

“You may say to him that before that letter reaches him — How far is it to Montgomery?”

“Three days.”

“You may say to him that before that letter reaches him, the telegraph will have informed him that Sumter will have been evacuated.”

Lincoln was still either making up his mind or reinforcing whatever decision he had already made. In this connection, he sent three men down to Charleston to observe the situation and report on what they saw. The first two, both southern-born, were Illinois law associates. Both reported reconciliation impossible, and one — the faithful Lamon, who had come through Baltimore on the sleeping-car with Lincoln — went so far as to assure South Carolina’s Governor Pickens that Sumter would be evacuated. The third, a high-ranking naval observer who secured an interview with Anderson at the fort, returned to declare that a relief expedition was feasible. Lincoln ordered him to assemble the necessary ships and to stand by for sailing orders; he would use him or not, depending on events.

At the same time, in an interview with a member of the Virginia state convention, which had voted against leaving the Union but remained in session, prepared to vote the other way if the Administration went against its sense of justice, Lincoln proposed a swap. If the convention were to adjourn sine die, he would evacuate Sumter. “A state for a fort is no bad business,” he said.

Nothing came of this, but at the end of March, when Lincoln again polled the cabinet on the question, the vote was three to three, with one member absent. Seward by now had begun to see that he might well have gone too far in his guarantees to the Confederate commissioners. When Justice Campbell returned on April 1 to ask why his promise of two weeks before had not been carried out, Seward replied with the straight-faced solemnity of a man delivering an April Fool pronouncement: “I am satisfied the government will not undertake to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor Pickens.”

“What does this mean?” Campbell asked, taken aback. This was something quite different from the Secretary’s former assurances. “Does the President design to resupply Sumter?”

“No, I think not,” Seward said. “It is a very irksome thing to him to surrender it. His ears are open to everyone, and they fill his head with schemes for its supply. I do not think he will adopt any of them. There is no design to reinforce it.”

Campbell reported these developments to the Confederate commissioners, who saw them in a clearer light than Seward himself had done. Restating them in sterner terms, the following day they telegraphed their government in Montgomery: “The war wing presses on the President, he vibrates to that side. . . . Their form of notice to us may be that of a coward, who gives it when he strikes.”

This, or something like this, was what followed; for though Lincoln himself had practiced no deception (at least not toward the Confederates), Seward’s well-meant misrepresentations had led exactly to that effect. By now, Lincoln was ready. On April 6, he signed an order dispatching the naval expedition to Fort Sumter. Yet Seward was still not quite through.

The following day, when Justice Campbell asked him to confirm or deny rumors that such a fleet was about to sail, Seward replied by note: “Faith as to Sumter fully kept. Wait and see.” Campbell thought that this applied to the original guarantee, whereas Seward only meant to repeat that there would be no action without warning; and this, too, was taken for deception on the part of the Federal government.

For one day after that, April 8, there appeared before Governor Pickens an envoy who read him the following message: “The President of the United States directs me to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only, and that if such an attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw men, arms, or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in the case of an attack upon the fort.”

Pickens could only forward the communication to the Confederate authorities at Montgomery. Lincoln had maneuvered them into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war. What was worse, in the eyes of the world, that first shot would be fired for the immediate purpose of keeping food from hungry men.

—

Davis assembled his cabinet and laid the message before them. Their reactions were varied. Robert Toombs, the fire-eater, was disturbed and said so: “The firing on the fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen, and I do not feel competent to advise you.” He paced the room, head lowered, hands clasped beneath his coattails. “Mr. President, at this time, it is suicide, murder, and you will lose us every friend in the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet’s nest that extends from the mountains to the ocean. Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal.”

Davis reasoned otherwise and made his decision accordingly. It was not he who had forced the issue, but Lincoln, and this the world would see and know, along with the deception practiced. Through his Secretary of War, he sent the following message to General P. G. T. Beauregard, commanding the defenses at Charleston harbor:

“If you do not doubt as to the authorized character of the agent who communicated to you the intention of the Washington government to supply Fort Sumter by force, you will at once demand its evacuation, and, if this is refused, proceed in such a manner as you may determine to reduce it.”

Beauregard sent two men out to Sumter in a rowboat flying a flag of truce. They rendered Major Anderson a note demanding evacuation and stipulating the terms of surrender: “All proper facilities will be afforded for the removal of yourself and command, together with company arms and property, and all private property, to any post in the United States which you may select. The flag which you have upheld so long and with so much fortitude, under the most trying circumstances, may be saluted by you on taking it down.”

Anderson received it sorrowfully. He was a Kentuckian married to a Georgian, and though he had been the military hero of the North since his exploit in the harbor the night after Christmas, he was torn between his love for the Union and his native state. If Kentucky seceded, he would go to Europe, he said, desiring “to become a spectator of the contest, and not an actor.” Approaching fifty-six, formerly Beauregard’s artillery instructor at West Point, he made the army his life, so that what he did he did from a sense of duty.

The Confederates knew his thoughts, for they had intercepted his reply to Lincoln’s dispatch informing him that Sumter would be relieved. “We shall strive to do our duty,” he had written, “though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war, which I see is to be thus commenced.” Therefore, he read Beauregard’s note sorrowfully, and sorrowfully replied that it was “a demand with which I regret that my sense of honor, and of my obligations to my government, prevent my compliance.”

Having written this, however, he remarked as he handed the note to the two aides, “Gentlemen, if you do not batter us to pieces, we shall be starved out in a few days.’

Beauregard, hearing this last, telegraphed it to Montgomery immediately. Though he knew that it was only a question of time until the navy relief expedition would arrive to add the weight of its guns to those of the fort, and despite the danger that hot-headed South Carolina gunners might take matters into their own hands, Davis was glad to defer the opening shot. The Secretary of War wired instructions to Beauregard to have Anderson state a definite time for the surrender. Otherwise, he repeated, “Reduce the fort.”

It was now past midnight, the morning of April 12; there could be no delay, for advance units of the relief expedition had been sighted off the bar. This time, four men went out in the white-flagged boat, empowered by Beauregard to decide without further conferences, according to Anderson’s answer. He heard their demand and replied that he would evacuate the fort “by noon of the 15th instant” unless he received “controlling instructions from my government, or additional supplies.”

This last, of course, with the relief fleet standing just outside the harbor — though Anderson did not know it had arrived — made the guarantee short-lived at best and therefore unacceptable to the aides, who announced that Beauregard would open fire “in one hour from this time.”

It was then 3:20 a.m. Anderson, about to test his former gunnery student in a manner neither had foreseen in the West Point classroom, shook the hands of the four men and told them in parting: “If we do not meet again in this world, I hope we may meet in the better one.”

Without returning to Beauregard’s headquarters, they proceeded at once to Cummings’ point and gave the order to fire.

—

Lincoln soon had cause to believe he had judged correctly. Sumter did indeed unite and electrify the North. That Sunday, when the news arrived by telegraph of the surrender in Charleston harbor, the White House was besieged by callers anxious to assure the President of their loyalty and support. Among them were senators and congressmen who pledged the resources of their states; their people, they said, would stand by the Union through fire and bloodshed.

It was a time for oratory and easy promises. Businessmen who formerly opposed war as economically unsound have now changed their line. They wanted it, now — as bloody as need be, so long as it was short and vigorous. In Pittsburgh, hangman’s nooses dangled from lampposts inscribed “Death to Traitors!” Here, as in other northern cities, secession sympathizers were bayed by angry crowds until they waved Union banners from their windows.

Down in Knoxville, Tennessee, the loyal newspaper editor William G. Brownlow declared that he would “fight Secession, leaders till Hell froze over, and then fight them on the ice.”

—

Vice President Alexander H. Stephens voiced the defiance of the Confederacy, crying, “Lincoln may bring his 75,000 troops against us. We fight for our homes, our fathers and mothers, our wives, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters! . . . We can call out a million people if need be, and when they are cut down, we can call another, and still another, until the last man of the South finds a bloody grave.”

Davis, with a sidelong glance at Europe and what history might say, reinforced the defensive character of these words in a message to Congress, which was called into an extra session on April 29. Though desirous of peace “at any sacrifice, save that of honor and independence,” he said, the South would “meet” — not wage — the war now launched by Lincoln. “All that we ask is to be let alone,” he added.

Spoken before the assembly, the words had a defiant ring like those of Stephens. Read off the printed page, however, they sounded somewhat plaintive.

Source: Foote, S. (1958). The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1, Fort Sumter to Perryville. New York: Random House.

 

In Bulgaria

(h/t Claudio) The situation in Bulgaria hasn’t changed all that much over the past few decades. When the Soviets were in charge, the place was run by organized crime, and, based on my current understanding, it still is. It’s provoking unrest among the younger generation, who aspire to a land freed from the mafia, Peevski, and Borisov. They’d like to see an end to the kleptocracy, but because it’s baked into everything, I wonder if they have the capacity to operate without it. The US has the same problem with the Deep State (permanent Washington DC establishment). Eliminating it is easy to say, but it’s tough to pull off when everyone’s rice bowl is somehow connected to it. In the US, systems like Social Security and Medicare have become essential to many people over time.

The Bulgarian situation (already heading toward the eighth snap parliamentary election since 2021) amplifies Russian soft power: the absence of a stable government → societal polarization → the spread of pro-Russian attitudes even among the political center.

The Turks subjugated Bulgaria for a long time. The Ottomans suppressed the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (which has now become a vehicle for Russian influence), and it’s a mess. Remember that Bulgaria is now part of NATO.

Bulgarian energy is Russian energy, with Lukoil holding a near-monopoly on oil and fuel (controlling ~95 % of tax warehouses): The Rosenets port functions as a de facto russian enclave with no Bulgarian oversight; Until 2024, Lukoil funnelled approximately $1 billion into Russia’s budget through a Bulgarian loophole in EU sanctions; Politicians (including Boyko Borisov and his predecessors) systematically avoided addressing Lukoil’s dominance for years. They’re paid to look the other way and, in many cases, have been eliminated if they push against the Russians.

 

Identify the Ship

1

Hint – from back when Canada had a real navy.

 

2

 

Identify the Aircraft

3

 

4

 

Parting Shot

The Germans are changing their tune. No longer do they want the million military age

Muslim men from savage lands living in their midst…Who would have guessed that it

would have gone so horribly wrong for them?

 

 

Make Germany Great Again

 

End