Far East Cynic

One of the biggest PR mistakes the Navy ever made was to take part in the filming of the Final Countdown in 1980. I streamed the movie tonight on Netflix-I was really suprised they had it available for streaming.

For those who are not so long in the tooth-The Final Countdown is about The USS Nimitz, being drawn through a time warp from 1980 to a couple days before the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor, and the crew must decide whether to launch a preemptive strike against the incoming Japanese carrier fleet with their more advanced air wing, or allow history to take its course. It stars Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, James Farantino, and Katherine Ross. As a movie-I think most will agree it sucks with a capital “S”. But for anyone who was in carrier aviation during the late 70′s and the early 80′s you can’t hate the movie totally. Because, at least for me, the movie was a trip back through time to a period in my own life.

In 1978, I was to make my first class midshipman cruise. Now having been regaled again and again with stories of Subic and pictures of the Senior’s Honey-ko’s, I knew where I wanted to go: Any ship in Westpac. In those days-they did not have “aviation cruises” or any other such nonsense.(Which is as it should be IMHO).  You either went to a ship or a submarine for four weeks-to learn about going to sea and what Division Officers were supposed to do. So I put in my wish list. Westpac, Westpac, Mediterranean.

Unfortunately the NROTC unit at The Citadel had an interesting policy in those days-if they even thought you had the major, and or the grades, to go nuke power-that was the kind of ship they were going to send you to. Since I was a Mathematics major ( only at the behest of mother Navy in order to get a scholarship) and my grades were pretty good, it wasn’t long before a note was found on the bulletin board. I was to see LCDR Porter as soon as possible to discuss my first class cruise. I recall thinking not a lot about it at the time-assuming I was going to be winging my way to Subic and my own honey-ko in no time.

Unfortunately, LCDR Porter had other ideas. “You have the grades to go nuclear power-so you have to go on a nuclear power cruise. What type of submarine do you want? Boomer or Fast Attack?”

“Umm, neither sir. They don’t get enough liberty.”

” Cruise is not about having fun”. ( I would come to hear these words more than a couple times in later years during my DH tour. I didn’t understand them then-and come to think of it, I still don’t understand them now).

“Well sir, I still want to see some ports. So put me down for a cruiser or a carrier”.

LCDR Porter’s face wrinkled up into a disgusted look-and I was dismissed.

As it turned out, I was ordered to the USS Nimitz. But not for 4 weeks- for 10 weeks. Which destroyed the nice little, decent paying summer job I had lined up when I got back. On the plus side-because it was a “nuke” cruise, I got commercial tickets to Spain for further transfer to the ship ( a process that ended up taking five days, and I got to join the ship in Livorno, Italy-just as the ship was begining its liberty swing up to Portsmouth UK and Wilhelmshaven Germany.

What does this have to do with the movie? Well because I was on the ship so long-there were 9 of us in the same boat-the powers that be, allowed us to concentrate of standing bridge watches for the tail end of the cruise. I was actually able to qualify as JOOW ( radio) and stood that watch in a bridge watch section. As a result, I got to know several of the bridge officers that you see in the movie.

The other thing about the movie is that the low visibility paint scheme was not anyone’s idea of a FITREP bullet yet. So the CVW-8 aircraft were brilliantly painted up :

“They’re going to let the Japs do it again!”

In the ready room scenes -I can recognize a lot of the folks-some of whom went on to do some really big things in Mother Navy. The pilot flying the helicopter at the end of the movie ( the one that gets blown up) later became Air Boss on USS America ( where I did my first three cruises). As an air boss he was, shall we say, less than popular, so there was always some mild cheering when the movie was played on the ship’s TV and the helo gets blown up.

There is also an interesting ( or not so interesting) post script to the movie. The flying scenes with Zero’s were shot in Key West. That’s why you can see a Viggie being towed off the line in one of the opening scenes. VF-84 was sent down on detachment and did the flying scenes ( remember this was pre-CGI).  A few years later, it was alleged that the squadron had under reported its flying hours expended on the movie, in return for a lot of “stuff” being left behind by the production company. At the time the CO had moved on to become CO of Test Pilot School. It became an ugly scandal (complete with “60 Minutes coverage”)-and he was forced to retire. Subsequently he went to law school and spent years trying to clear his name. As far as I know-whatever was taken was for the squadron, the CO did not profit one bit from it. But mother Navy still did not look kindly on it-when they were charging the film company 2560 dollars a flight hour. The guy had flown in Vietnam in the F-4 and was one of the first pilots to fly the F-14 in the early 70′s.

You can see some pictures of the detachment at Key West here.

Some trivia:

The E-2 shown flying is an E-2B from VAW-112. Because of AIMD bench configurations and the continuing introduction of E-2C aircraft to the fleet, West Coast squadrons were flying with East Coast Airwings and vice versa.

When an F-14 does a steep dive and pulls out just before crashing into the ocean while “playing” with one of the Zeroes, the “scream” the F-14 made was created by mixing the sound of the jet engines with the actual scream of the pilot’s wife when she saw that clip for the first time. (The guy had actually departed the aircraft and just barely recovered it in time).

During shooting of the opening shot where the CAG’s Tomcat is taking off from Pearl Harbor, the film crew actually underestimated the blast radius of the Tomcat’s exhaust and one of their cameras was blown over when the plane went to full afterburner, which resulted in the shot being filmed from a slightly different angle than originally planned.

The F-14′s used for the dog fight sequences were freshly delivered from Calverton NY.

As a movie-it was not so great. As a memory of a far better time-it does just fine. And seeing an air wing without Hornets? Well, that is just a bonus!

Don’t laugh-there is more truth here than you realize.

Spike has been running some great commentary on the effort by Hong Kong domestic helpers to win the right of abode in the Fragrant Harbor. Its a fascinating story-full of the kind of cheap slander all us gweilos used to be accused of ( and still are in certain corners):

For those who don’t know about this, an important component of Hong Kong’s economy is the domestic helper. Mostly female, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, they come here on special visas and are expected to work a 6 day week and usually a 16 hour work day (or more) and in return are paid roughly HK$3580 (US$500)(not sure what the current legal minimum is) plus room and board and a plane ticket for a home visit every two years. No matter how long they’ve been here, they can’t qualify for HK permanent resident status and if they lose their job, they have just two weeks to find another one or have to leave.

Many of these people are now banding together to protest what they see as unfair treatment by the government and demanding the ability to apply for permanent resident status after seven years. The upcoming lawsuit has thrown the HK government and many HK residents into a frenzy. The SCMP reports this morning that there is a “storm of opposition online” including, wait for it, a Facebook group. The name of the group on Facebook is ”Against foreign helpers obtaining right of abode. Protect the welfare of Hong Kong people from being seized” and that page has all of 1,200 likes. Given the number of people in Hong Kong who are on Facebook, I’m not sure that 1,200 “likes” should be enough to even qualify for news coverage.

Now, as Joe Biden would say-this is a big f*cking deal to Hong Kong’s ethnic Chinese population, who for the most part are the ones doing the demeaning of said Filipinos and enjoying a more comfortable life at their expense. In a fit that would do America’s Tea Party brigade proud-the Asia Sentinel noted this little tidbit:

The Philippines can always be relied upon to be a butt of derision in Hong Kong, a feature which was dramatically boosted lasted year by the slaying of Hong Kong tourists on a tourist bus thanks in part to the incompetence of the Manila police in dealing with a the bus hijacker. But the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong (DAB), an arm of the Communist Party and the territory’s largest party, has taken anti-Filipino sentiment to new levels.

In an attempt to present itself as the party of the common man and to divert attention from other grassroots issues, the DAB has launched a scare campaign suggesting that Hong Kong is in danger of being flooded with Philippine migrants, creating a huge rise in local unemployment and costing billions in welfare payments.

The issue has come up because seven Filipinos working in Hong Kong for more than seven years have taken the government to court asking for a judicial review of the refusal of its Commissioner for Registration and the Registration of Persons Tribunal to grant them permanent residence. Normally permanent residence status is granted to anyone who has been living in Hong Kong continuously for more than seven years but the government argues that this does not apply to foreign domestic helpers as they are not “ordinarily resident”.

  

The problem is-as Spike points out-there is no clear cut exclusion of these folks in Hong Kong’s Basic Law:

Article 24 of the Basic Law states, in part, “The permanent residents of the HKSAR shall be … (4) Persons not of Chinese nationality who have entered Hong Kong with valid travel documents, have ordinarily resided in Hong Kong for a continuous period of not less than seven years and have taken Hong Kong as their place of permanent residence …” It does not say “except for XXX.”

Article 25 states, “All Hong Kong residents shall be equal before the law.”

Article 39 states, “The provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and international labour conventions as applied to Hong Kong shall remain in force and shall be implemented through the laws of the HKSAR.”

Full stop. There may be those in Hong Kong who “do not want them here” and you are of course entitled to your opinion but there is no legal or ethical basis for denying them resident status if they otherwise qualify for it.

That has not stopped the government and other parties from fighting back.

The government is trying to enter as evidence estimates that “great numbers” of Filipino maids would become permanent Hong Kong residents in its fight against foreign domestic workers who are seeking right of abode.

But a High Court judge called an impromptu hearing yesterday to ask the government why it had applied to file new evidence only weeks before a judicial review begins.

Last week the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong released figures that said the city’s unemployment rate would rise to 10 per cent, from the current 3.5 per cent, if the maids prevailed in their effort for permanent residency. The party cited a government estimate that 500,000 people could settle in Hong Kong, costing an extra HK$25 billion a year in social spending, if domestic workers were granted permanent residence.

 

It is interesting to watch this drama play out-at least Hong Kong is going through the motions of letting the system have a chance before screwing these people over. In Singapore they probably would  just arrest them, deport them,  and import more Indonesians to fill the balance. There would certainly be no messing with the legal niceties. Of course,  as one of Hemlock’s commenter’s points out-exclusionary thinking is not just limited to the serving class.

Far less justifiable is the exclusion of qualified professionals, wherever they come from, who meet genuine market needs, including doctors, nurses, lawyers and other protected classes.

I know I would be happy to move to Hong Kong-but there is this little problem of finding a job there.

The good news , if you are Chinese, is that the odds of the maids winning are pretty small. After all,  this is now part of China ( an abomination in and of itself-DAMN YOU Margaret Thatcher!).

One possible explanation for the government-DAB scaremongering is that the case offers an opportunity for another ‘interpretation’ of the Basic Law, by which Beijing hands down an expedient new meaning that disregards the wording of the mini-constitution. But this sounds like a conspiracy theory; while the idea of eroding Western-style rule of law as an end in itself excites some pro-communist elements in Hong Kong, it discomforts the bureaucracy and business community, and arouses hostility among the media and public opinion.

The idea that Beijing is getting agitated about the prospect of an influx of non-ethnic Chinese into one rich, southern, largely autonomous city also sounds a bit far-fetched. Not that the Central People’s Government is in favour of diluting Han populations, but with train disasters and rebellious colonies in Tibet and Xinjiang to deal with, it must come low down their list of priorities.

I would not be so sure about that-this is China after all.

It will be interesting to watch in the weeks and months ahead. Even more interesting if I could get back to Hong Kong for a visit later this year. ( Hope does spring eternal).

While most of Congress was bending over backwards to suck Grover Norquists kneecaps, you probably missed this little tidbit from our legislative betters on Capitol Hill: 

Every right-thinking person abhors child pornography. To combat it, legislators have brought through committee a poorly conceived, over-broad Congressional bill, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011. It is arguably the biggest threat to civil liberties now under consideration in the United States. The potential victims: everyone who uses the Internet.

 

The good news? It hasn’t gone before the full House yet. 

The bad news: it already made it through committee. And history shows that in times of moral panic, overly broad legislation has a way of becoming law. In fact, a particular moment comes to mind. 

That name is what brought the anecdote back to me. A better name for the child pornography bill would be The Encouragement of Blackmail by Law Enforcement Act. At issue is how to catch child pornographers. It’s too hard now, say the bill’s backers, and I can sympathize. It’s their solution that appalls me: under language approved 19 to 10 by a House committee, the firm that sells you Internet access would be required to track all of your Internet activity and save it for 18 months, along with your name, the address where you live, your bank account numbers, your credit card numbers, and IP addresses you’ve been assigned. 

Tracking the private daily behavior of everyone in order to help catch a small number of child criminals is itself the noxious practice of police states. Said an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American.” Even more troubling is what the government would need to do in order to access this trove of private information: ask for it. 

I kid you not — that’s it. 

As written, The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011 doesn’t require that someone be under investigation on child pornography charges in order for police to access their Internet history — being suspected of any crime is enough. (It may even be made available in civil matters like divorce trials or child custody battles.) Nor do police need probable cause to search this information. As Rep. James Sensenbrenner says, (R-Wisc.) “It poses numerous risks that well outweigh any benefits, and I’m not convinced it will contribute in a significant way to protecting children.” 

Among those risks: blackmail. 

This is how our right to privacy dies-they wrap it up in a nice shiny wrapper and tell us it is for our own good. Jph Cole made a great point a couple of days back: “I can’t wait to see if the loudmouth “freedom” lovers in the tea party actually come out on the side of freedom. Although they are probably too focussed on keeping the Koch’s taxes low and making sure Michelle doesn’t have too many calories for lunch.”

Where is their outrage about this?  Not a peep to be heard-it gets in the way of making the rich even richer.