The income of the average American family is nine per cent lower than it was a decade ago, and it gets harder and harder to get a job. And now this survey showing that young adults, even when they have some work, are working full-time jobs less and less.
DENNIS JACOBE, Chief Economist – The Gallup Organization
WORSE:
We have reached the Orwellian state of continuous war. Who are we fighting? That's a secret. You are required to pay for it, but you are not entitled to know.
Hoax exposed: Gen. Dempsey rebuffs speculations he called for Syria raids
“In truth, the calls for ‘kinetic strikes’ on Syria came from Senator John McCain of Arizona, a member of the Israeli lobby who met with Al Qaeda leaders in the Arab country in late May, 2013.”
IMHO, bad call by the AG. What Snowden did could very easily cause US deaths if not immediately then sometime down the road. I see no fundamental difference between him and Julius and Ethel Rosenburg, the two WWII traitors who compromised the atomic bomb to the Soviets and were later tried, convicted, and executed. How would the AG conceivably explain guaranteeing Snowden's life to the loved ones of some future casualty of his treachery? A lot of people have spent a lot of their lives, and some have lost their lives, protecting classified information. This makes a mockery of all that.)
Just to show us that the national security state doesn't lack for a wicked sense of ironic humor, I see this DARPA topic in the new SBIR solicitation out today:
“Investigate the national security threat posed by public data available either for purchase or through open sources. Based on principles of data science, develop tools to characterize and assess the nature, persistence, and quality of the data. Develop tools for the rapid anonymization and de-anonymization of data sources. Develop framework and tools to measure the national security impact of public data and to defend against the malicious use of public data against national interests.”
(Personally, I'd recommend (1) re-engineering government to see openness as less of a threat, and to focus on making vulnerable systems, where the government has a responsibility, less so, e.g., ratchet back stock trading so it's not the province of millisecond traders and flash crashes, but actually first serves the need for capital investment; and (2) giving *everyone*, and not just the state, more privacy in their transactions on what are essentially common carriers… this “metadata” being snarfed up by the NSA is data about*me*, and I want to pay Verizon to complete my phone calls, not to be in the “information about me” business.)
Seated on a stool before an audience packed with spooks, lawmakers, lawyers and mercenaries, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer introduced recently retired CENTCOM chief General James Mattis. “I’ve worked with him and I’ve worked with his predecessors,” Blitzer said of Mattis. “I know how hard it is to run an operation like this.”
Reminding the crowd that CENTCOM is “really, really important,” Blitzer urged them to celebrate Mattis: “Let’s give the general a round of applause.”
Following the gales of cheering that resounded from the room, Mattis, the gruff 40-year Marine veteran who once volunteered his opinion that “it’s fun to shoot some people,” outlined the challenge ahead. The “war on terror” that began on 9/11 has no discernable end, he said, likening it to the “the constant skirmishing between [the US cavalry] and the Indians” during the genocidal Indian Wars of the 19th century.
“The skirmishing will go on likely for a generation,” Mattis declared.
Mattis’ remarks, made beside a cable news personality who acted more like a sidekick than a journalist, set the tone for the entire 2013 Aspen Security Forum this July. A project of the Aspen Institute, the Security Forum brought together the key figures behind America’s vast national security state, from military chieftains like Mattis to embattled National Security Agency Chief General Keith Alexander to top FBI and CIA officials, along with the bookish functionaries attempting to establish legal groundwork for expanding the war on terror.
Partisan lines and ideological disagreements faded away inside the darkened conference hall, as a parade of American securitocrats from administrations both past and present appeared on stage to defend endless global warfare and total information awareness while uniting in a single voice of condemnation against a single whistleblower bunkered inside the waiting room of Moscow International Airport: Edward Snowden.
For those who have not seen from one of the Army's premier thinkers. Opposition rebuttal follows from a consistent defense naysayer.The issues can also be framed in a couple of other ways, from the conventional and special operations perspectives:
CONVENTIONAL: “Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and the man who leads that gains the victory.”
SPECIAL OPERATIONS: “Humans are more important than hardware. Quality is more important than quantity.”
FORT BENNING, Ga. — ”A GREAT deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep,” the novelist Saul Bellow once wrote. We should keep that in mind when we consider the lessons from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — lessons of supreme importance as we plan the military of the future.
Our record of learning from previous experience is poor; one reason is that we apply history simplistically, or ignore it altogether, as a result of wishful thinking that makes the future appear easier and fundamentally different from the past.
In wake of Benghazi attack, internal probe finds Afghanistan posts vulnerable
U.S. diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan have serious security lapses that pose “unnecessary risk to staff,” including poor emergency preparedness and inadequate protections that might allow classified materials to fall into the hands of attacking enemies, according to an internal report that raises fresh questions about the State Department’s commitment to safety in the aftermath of the Benghazi tragedy.
The confidential State Department inspector general’s report, obtained by The Washington Times under the Freedom of Information Act, directly criticizes the department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security for failing to perform a physical inspection before approving the security plan for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, which was the target of a brash attack by Taliban insurgents two years ago.
When IG investigators inspected the embassy in Kabul, they found inadequate emergency shelters, food, water rations, medical supplies and backup communication equipment that would be essential to repel or survive an attack, according to the report, which was released to The Times partly redacted for security reasons.
Similar inspections elsewhere found the U.S. diplomatic post in Afghanistan’s western city of Herat lacked an emergency action plan instructing employees on how to respond to an attack and that a Provincial Reconstruction Team outpost in Qala-e-Naw lacked an agreement with allied forces to provide a military response in case of attack.
“The lack of adequate emergency shelters [redacted] the lack of sufficient emergency supplies and equipment, the lack of redundancy in communications, the [redacted] absence of an agreement with the non-Department law enforcement on emergency assistance, and the inability to identify and destroy sensitive material unnecessarily increased the risk of injury to embassy staff and of compromising sensitive material during an emergency situation,” the report warns.
