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The East China Sea can be a busy place, even at 2.30 in the morning. Nevertheless, a U.S. warship has technological eyes and ears that can operate miles into the distance. It was a clear, relatively quiet, night. The only ship nearby had been a Filipino-flagged container vessel out of Nagoya bound for Tokyo. It had passed on the warship’s starboard beam, maybe a mile or so away, some twenty-five minutes previous.

The guided-missile destroyer was on a routine patrol. Apart from the watch at their stations, most of the hands were asleep in their bunks. The USS Fitzgerald wasn’t on high alert. Her commander was in his cabin, a junior officer in temporary command. Apparently, no-one noticed the huge bulk of the heavily-laden container ship bearing down on them until it was too late to take evasive action. The huge vessel had a deadweight of almost 40,000 tons, the Fitzgerald a mere 8,900 tons. It was no contest.

The container ship, ACX Crystal, rammed the Fitzgerald on her starboard side just forward of the bridge structure. The vessel’s huge bulbous bow ripped into the hull of the warship below the waterline like a great battering ram. For seven of the sleeping sailors below decks death was instantaneous. Sea water engulfed their quarters. The commander’s cabin was crushed by the impact, it’s occupant severely injured, needing immediate airlift to a land-based hospital.

The ACX Crystal, having suffered only superficial structural damage, turned about, onto its original course and continued on to its destination, Tokyo. The USS Fitzgerald managed to stay afloat long enough to be towed back the fifty-six miles to its home port of Yokosuka in Japan.

The container ship had been on a easterly course when it first encountered the Fitzgerald. It steamed on for twenty-five minutes, then made a 180 degree turn and back-tracked westward, ramming the Fitzgerald some twenty-five minutes later.

^{Course of the ACX Crystal}

The true position of the Fitzgerald at the time of the incident has not been made public. There’s no way of knowing her exact location at the time the container ship first passed by her, but the moment of impact is fairly obvious from the above image. It begs the question: what caused the captain of the ACX Crystal to turn about and retrace his steps until he rammed the warship?

Given that, immediately following the incident, the container ship resumed its original course, almost as though nothing had happened, it seems unlikely the ship had developed a fault requiring her to return to her port of departure. Had a crew member been lost overboard? Was the container ship returning in an attempt to locate him? There’s no mention of the ACX Crystal not having a full crew when it arrived in Tokyo.

It’s hard to envisage any scenario other than the ACX Crystal being deliberately used to sink the Fitzgerald. A terrorist attack using a 40,000 ton battering ram?

There are still many unanswered questions. Was the Fitzgerald in sight of the ACX Crystal fifty minutes before the incident? Why didn’t the Fitzgerald’s watch notice the huge vessel bearing down on them?

^{ACX Crystal}

Even if the container ship was showing no lights, it’s inconceivable the Fitzgerald’s highly sophisticated radar equipment missed it. Why did the larger vessel not stop to render assistance to the badly damaged warship?

Washington is certainly alarmed at the upsurge of ISIS in the Philippines. This from CBS less than one month ago:

Video obtained by The Associated Press from the Philippine military indicates an alliance of local Muslim fighters, aligned with IS, are coordinating complex attacks. They include the Islamic State’s purported leader in Southeast Asia: Isnilon Hapilon, a Filipino on Washington’s list of most-wanted terrorists, with a $5 million bounty on his head.

U.S. officials are assessing whether any of the estimated 1,000 Southeast Asians who traveled to Iraq and Syria in recent years are fighting in Catholic-majority Philippines. They fear ungoverned areas in the mostly Muslim region around Marawi could make the area a terror hub as in the 1990s.

Then, the Philippines was a base of operations for al-Qaida leaders like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef, who plotted in 1994-95 to blow up airliners over the Pacific. The plot was foiled. But the same men were instrumental in the 9/11 attacks on the United States. ^[1]

The ACX Crystal was being operated as a ‘bareboat charter’. That means the charter company supplies its own crew and master, and is responsible for all costs i.e. port fees, fuel, insurance, and all other expenses. ACX Crystal was chartered to Sinbanali Shipping Inc of Manila, Philippines, since 2014. There’s not much information on Sinbanali, but it’s known that the master and crew of the ACX Crystal were all Filipinos.

The US Navy is carrying out an investigation into the Fitzgerald incident, and so far is keeping its findings secret. Maybe, in time we’ll learn more. Maybe we won’t. For now the near loss of the USS Fitzgerald, and the resulting deaths of seven of its crew, remain a maritime mystery.

^{[1] “Islamic State threat in Southeast Asia raises alarm in Washington” CBS, May 26th 2017}

A rabbit warren is still a rabbit warren no matter what fancy name you give it.

It never ceases to amaze me how those with so much have no thought for, regard for, or knowledge of, those with so little. The massive fire this week at Grenfell Towers in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, serves to highlight this in such a way even the media commentators are having trouble hiding their disgust at the manner in which the richest borough in the city has penny-pinched on providing safe housing for those much less well-off than themselves.

The poor folk of Grenfell Towers, and the other high-rise rabbit warrens on that ‘housing complex’, have some well known neighbours. The Beckhams live in the borough, as do Jeremy Paxman (well-known broadcaster and political hob-nob), Sir Richard Branson, Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, James Dyson (vacuum cleaner mogul), J K Rowling, Sir Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bernie Ecclestone…and the list goes on – there’s a short list of fifty of the wealthiest people in the country, listed HERE (courtesy of the Evening Standard), all Kensington and Chelsea residents . They’re all neighbours of those residents who lived, and died, in Grenfell Towers.

How house prices compare:

£1,369,708
Average in Kensington and Chelsea

£220,094
Average for UK

£66,384 Increase in average Kensington and Chelsea price since 2016
Source: Land Registry

Of course, the rich and famous mostly vote Tory. Well, it saves them money, particularly when one of their political representatives…

…the “Right Honorable” Brandon Lewis MP, now Minister for Immigration, but in 2014 was Minister for Housing, refused to consider regulations that would have forced building developers to fit sprinkler systems, on the grounds “…it might discourage house building.”

The former Conservative housing minister warned against increasing fire safety regulations to include sprinklers because it could discourage house building.

As the death toll from the Grenfell Tower blaze rose to 12 [now 17, and rising], it emerged Brandon Lewis, who was recently promoted to immigration minister, declined in 2014 to force building developers to fit sprinklers.

A sprinkler system would have “undoubtedly” saved lives at the Grenfell Tower blaze, the managing director of the Fire Protection Association told The Independent.

“Whether they’d have stopped that fire spreading at the speed it did up the outside of that building is another matter,” Jon O’Neill said. “But to have had sprinklers in that building would have created an environment where it would have been easier to rescue people and increase survivability.”

Mr Lewis’ department [Housing] declined to bring in regulation forcing developers to fit sprinklers while he was in charge.

He told MPs: “We believe that it is the responsibility of the fire industry, rather than the Government, to market fire sprinkler systems effectively and to encourage their wider installation.”

He said the Tory Government had committed to being the first to reduce regulations nationwide. ^[1]

He openly admitted that the Tory government was hellbent on reducing safety regulations throughout the country. The only possible reason – more profits in the pockets of the wealthy developers and to hell with the lives and suffering of the peasants that are housed by them – they’re expendable.

Chief of these racketeers, prime minister Theresa May, has been forced to agree to a public enquiry into the tragedy at Grenfell Tower. Anything less would have caused her loss of face. Public enquiries in the UK cost a lot of money (paid by taxpayers), make a lot of noise, and generally result in a whitewash.

We’ll wait and see what this one brings, but they’ll likely make sure to drag it out until the media memory of Grenfell Tower has faded, and other news replaces it in the headlines.

“Grenfell Tower”: they truly believe that by giving them fancy names they can make them appear respectable.

^{[1] “Grenfell Tower: Tory minister declined to include sprinklers in fire safety rules as it could discourage house building” The Independent, June 15th 2017}

Fifteen years in America taught me a lot about the people, the country, and the way it was governed. What I learned from the people was that they are as much a mixed bunch of human beings as one would find in any nation on earth. You’ll find the good, the bad, and the ugly, wherever you go.

The country was just too big for me. I lived on a small island most of my life, and if I can’t smell the sea in the wind I feel smothered. There’s a lot of ground to cover in America if you want to get, well, almost anywhere, apart from a Menards or a McDonalds, or some other national chain store existing in just about every town from ‘sea to shining sea’. They all sell the same stuff, serve the same burgers, and the Walmart in Portland, Maine will look identical to the one in downtown Los Angeles, both inside and out. Not that that’s so unusual these days, the big chain stores in the UK are going the same way, and every store you enter that’s the French equivalent of Walmart (known as E. Leclerc) is as near identical to the last one as it’s possible to make it. It’s called progress, but I’m not sure for whom.

As for the US government, you’d better read some of the back posts on this blog if you’re in any doubt of my views on that bunch of corrupt, money-laundering, look-after-number-one-and-stuff-the-rest, all-too-powerful, crap baskets.

I mentioned the good, the bad, and the ugly. No, I’m not referring to any spaghetti western, I’m back to people. American people. There’s ugly folks everywhere, and I’m not talking physical. I’m referring to an ugliness of the soul, the mind, the character. There’s more of those sort of ugly people in America than anywhere else I’ve been, though I guess ISIS has its share, and that guy in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, certainly takes some beating.

Why are there more ugly people in America than elsewhere? Guns. Guns create so much ugliness they make a rattlesnake seem endearing by comparison. Guns have created such a mindset among certain sections of the U.S. populace that common sense no longer exists for them. Take one very influential man – Alex Jones…

…Jones is a fat, ugly, beast of a man who runs a radio show that would make any person of sanity and intellect throw up within five minutes of listening to it. Yet his show is fawned over by millions. Why? Because he’s a god of the gun nutter. He makes stuff up to stir madness and angst in his listeners. And that’s something else about Jones’ listeners, they’re not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. In fact, it’s probably right to say most of them barely have a glimmer in them. If they had, they’d not believe a word of the drivel emanating from Jones, or others like him on that unique American horror-experience known as ‘Talk-Radio’.

On December 14th 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a young man massacred twenty-six people. Twenty of them were children between the age of six and seven. Six adults were also killed. He used a pistol and an automatic rifle to commit his heinous crime. Needless to say, the parents of those dead kids were deeply traumatized and have still not come to terms with their loss.

Such sensitivities are lost on Alex Jones. He broadcasts to his listeners that the whole massacre was a put-up job by the U.S. government. He says the kids were acting, pretending to be shot, that the parents were pretending and in reality no-one was hurt. This ugly idiot claims it was all a hoax perpetrated solely for the purpose of passing strict gun control legislation through the U.S. Congress.

Despite some efforts by the parents of these young victims to push for tighter gun controls, nothing has been done to enact any control on these ugly, arrogant, individuals who believe they have a right enacted under the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, to keep and use lethal weaponry that has no place other than under lock and key in a military armoury.

Now, the Sandy Hook school massacre is in the news again. A major national media network, NBC, is broadcasting an interview with Alex Jones, allowing him a national TV platform to crucify the parents of the slain children all over again. To add insult to injury NBC will air the programme on June 18th – Father’s Day! ^[1]

Jones believes he has a right to broadcast his ‘opinions’ because of something else enshrined in the US Constitution – freedom of speech. But ‘freedom’ can be an ugly word when uttered by a mouth filled with hate and loathing.

America calls itself ‘civilised’. It will never be civilised while 300,000,000 guns are on the loose in a nation of 300,000,000 people.

Fifteen years in America taught me a lot about the people, the country, and the way it was governed.

So now I live in France.

^{[1] “Sandy Hook rage over Megyn Kelly’s Alex Jones interview” BBC, June 13th 2017}