The Kingdom of Denmark is preparing to claim ownership of the North Pole, according to a Danish media report.
In a document leaked to the Danish newspaper Information, Denmark will ask the United Nations to recognize the North Pole as a geologic extension of Greenland, the vast Arctic island that is a Danish territory. Danish Foreign Minister Lene Espersen confirmed the annexation attempt, Information reported.
According to The Copenhagen Post, “The kingdom is expected to make a demand for the continental shelf in five areas around the Faroe Islands and Greenland, including the North Pole itself.”
Phi Beta Iota: As much as we respect the Danish, this is a very BAD idea and should be promptly rejected (and vetoed) by the members of the UN Security Council. Both the North and the South regions are perfectly positioned to be what they have always been–commons–and to be administered by a hybrid trust that relies on transparency, truth, and trust to assure both regions are not “owned” by any mere state, but rather held in trust for all. How these two regions are managed could ultimately be a model for how we mange the Earth as a whole.
Government attorneys this week asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by author Anthony Shaffer who claimed that his freedom to publish a memoir of his military service in Afghanistan had been violated. The government said that Mr. Shaffer's book, “Operation Dark Heart,” which appeared last September in censored form, contained properly classified information which the author has no right to publish.
What makes the case doubly strange is that uncensored review copies of the book are in circulation, along with the redacted version that has become a best seller. As a result, the case provides a unique opportunity for the public to assess the quality of official classification practices in real time by comparing the two (pdf).
The government has “unlawfully imposed a prior restraint upon the plaintiff by obstructing and infringing on his right to publish unclassified information,” author Shaffer stated in his December 14, 2010 complaint (pdf) against the Department of Defense and the CIA.
Not so, said the Justice Department in its new motion to dismiss (pdf), dated May 16. The book contains classified material and “Plaintiff has no First Amendment right to publish classified information.”
This week the government also told Mr. Shaffer's attorney, Mark S. Zaid, that several previously censored words or sentences in the book could now be disclosed. “While classified eight months ago, [they] no longer remain classified.” So, for example, the Justice Department said that this sentence was properly classified last September but is now unclassified and may be made public:
“Dawn was an awkward time of day when night-vision goggles were not effective, and it was hard to distinguish anything more than gray and purple shapes.”
A listing of other newly declassified words and sentences in the book was provided by the Justice Department on May 16.
A side-by-side presentation of several censored and uncensored pages from Mr. Shaffer's book, including some passages that have since been declassified and some that have not, may be found here (pdf).
The Public Interest Declassification Board, a White House advisory body, was asked by President Obama to develop recommendations for a “fundamental transformation” of the national security classification system. The Board developed several proposals of its own and solicited others from interested members of the public. All of those, including one from the Federation of American Scientists, have now been posted online for public comment.
The Board will hold a public meeting on May 26 at the National Archives to discuss the proposals.
While well-intentioned, the process suffers from several limitations. First, the President did not specify what manner of “transformation” he had in mind. This is problematic because the path selected for transformation naturally depends on the desired goal. Second, the Board has no particular influence or leverage that it can exert to advance its ultimate recommendations. Even at the White House, most relevant national security personnel seem to be unaware of or uninterested in the Board's deliberations. Finally, there is no internal incentive to drive transformation and no visible leadership to compel it.
In truth, the classification system is undergoing transformation at every moment, but mostly in undesirable ways. Thus, during President Obama's first full year in office, the number of “original classification decisions,” or new secrets, grew by 22.6 percent, according to the latest annual report (pdf) from the Information Security Oversight Office.
Phi Beta Iota: In combination with the now documented and incredibly unconstitutional belief of the Department of Justice that it has the right to lie to the Court anytime it wishes to, and a Congress that abdicated its Article 1 responsibilities right after Newt Gingrich led the “revolution” that ended any form of bi-partisanship, it can safely be said that the US Government is out of control–not just on classification, but on everything else as well. This is UGLY.
The strategy calls for officials from the State Department, the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the Commerce Department and the Department of Homeland Security to work with their counterparts around the world to come up with standards aimed at preventing theft of private information and ensuring Internet freedom. A fact sheet released by the White House also promised that the United States would respond to attempted hacking “as we would to any other threat to our country.”
Phi Beta Iota: The degree of ignorance and hubris in the US Government is nothing short of astonishing. They have no idea what they are doing and think that “strategic communication” of intent is somehow going to move the ball forward. Only truth builds trust–the US Government is all out of truth….and trust.
The first Congressional vote on these guarantees, as embedded in the 2012 federal budget, could happen in an Appropriations subcommittee as early as June 2.
We ask that you contact the White House and your Senators and US Representatives as often and forcefully as you can. You can do that on your own, or through the NIRS Action Alert linked through NukeFree.org:
( http://nukefree.org/loan-guarantee-battle-heating-take-action ).
Tell them it's time we scrap the failed atomic power experiment, and embrace the green-powered future we need to survive.
This is a battle that we can win. Defeating these handouts will have a HUGE impact.
Please join us. This definitive turn away from atomic power CAN happen.
Phi Beta Iota: The Hill is letting us down when it fails to provide context. This “debate” over tax cuts is either criminal insanity or insanely criminal. As long as the federal government is BORROWING one trillion dollars a year “in our name,” any discussion that does not begin with “stop borrowing” is unconstitutional, illegitimate, and grounds for the impeachment of every member now serving in the Senate and the House, including Ron Paul if he does not bring this basic fact forward in public.
The U.S. is hiring the Russians to deliver sensitive equipment and supplies to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Because the U.S. military has a shortage of the highly dependable and amazingly versatile C-17 airlifter and thus we do not have enough airlift planes of our own. To make matters worse, we have no credible plan to resolve this problem.The need for C-17s will continue to grow because each year older, less reliable and less capable C-5A airlifters dating back to the 1960s are being retired from the fleet because they are over 40 years old and beginning to fail. Notwithstanding current and future shortages, the Obama Administration plans to cease future purchases of the much needed and much used C-17 airlifter.
Phi Beta Iota: Lacking intelligence and integrity, the US Government is incapable of creating a competent, affordable, sustainable national defense strategy, force structure, or campaign plan. We are our own worst enemies, and particularly inept at acquisition–we can no longer procure a major system of systems. We do need an Air Force that is equipped for long-haul, but first we need a Secretary of Defense and a President willing to be honest about their need for both intelligence (decision-support) and integrity.
