Farewell, Sir David Frost & “Hello, good evening, and welcome.”
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Predicting the weather. Contributor Marc Selinger has his head in the clouds again, examining DoD’s decades-old weather satellite constellation orbiting the earth – the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. Selinger gets the Air Force’s forecast on the proposed Weather Satellite Follow-on systems: “’DOD has incorporated many lessons learned from prior programs into the WSF strategy,’ [Space and Missile Systems Center] told ClearanceJobs.com. ‘Legacy system capabilities will be stressed rather than significant performance improvement, with a goal to be as affordable as possible.’”
2. The Sunshine State – not just a place to retire. Contributor Chandler Harris lays out the immense opportunities Florida’s aerospace industry offers job-seekers: “Florida is joining the ranks of states pushing to educate job seekers and defense employers that the state remains a national leader in aerospace jobs, despite sequestration and budget cuts. . . . There are nearly 500 aerospace companies in Florida that employ an estimated 31,000 professionals . . . . The aviation industry in Florida has more than 1,590 companies and more than a hundred public use airports that support global commerce, aircraft technology testing, and manufacturing operations.” And there’s more.
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. First target, Congress. POTUS prepped the congressional battlefield with precision-guided phone calls to congressmen. Reuters’ Patricia Zengerle and Matt Spetalnick report, “Obama made calls to members of the House of Representatives and Senate, with more scheduled for Monday, underscoring the task confronting the administration before it can go ahead with using force in response to a deadly chemical attack blamed on the Syrian government. Dozens of lawmakers, some in tennis shirts or shirtsleeves, cut short their vacations and streamed into the corridors of the Capitol building for a Sunday afternoon intelligence briefing on Syria with Obama’s national security team.”
2. Worldwide Syrian Rollup. AP’s Syria pre-game: “Here’s a look at key Syria developments around the world Monday amid heightened tensions over potential military action . . . .”
3. Assad to Obama, “Bring it.” AP’s Albert Aji and Karin Laub report from Damascus, “Assad . . . tried to project confidence in his escalating showdown with the U.S., saying . . . that Syria is ‘capable of confronting any external aggression.’” In Assad’s rhetorical defense, he lays out the “T” card: “’The American threats of launching an attack against Syria will not discourage Syria away from its principles . . . or its fight against terrorism supported by some regional and Western countries, first and foremost the United States of America.’”
4. Opposing voices on Syria. DefenseNews.Com’s Paul Singer covers the myriad perspectives for and against the Commander-in-Chief’s proposal: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said that “it’s not clear whether American interests are at stake in Syria, or whether opponents of the Assad regime would be any more friendly to the United States.”
5. Irony of ironies: Egypt’s interim government to charge Morsi with murder. BBC reports, “Egypt’s state prosecutor says he has referred ousted President Mohammed Morsi for trial on charges of inciting the murder of protesters. The accusations relate to violence outside the presidential palace in Cairo last December when at least seven people were killed in clashes.”
6. Proposed: Jihad against Egyptian army. LongWarJournal.Org’s David Barnett reports, “In an audio message released to jihadist forums on Aug. 30, a spokesman from al Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) called on Egyptians to take up arms and fight the Egyptian army. The spokesman, Abu Muhammad al ‘Adnani al Shami, also denounced the Muslim Brotherhood and called on the Islamist group to repent ‘and turn back from the religion of democracy,’ according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence Group.” In turn, “The announcement of Adel Mohammed Ibrahim’s arrest came a day after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant called on Egyptian Muslims to wage ‘jihad’ against the army.”
7. In Afghanistan, action in Torkham, Wardak, Zabul, and Helmand. AP covers the Taliban’s failed attack against U.S. forces near Torkham gate. Khaama.Com reports, heavy clashes in Zabul between government troops and suicide bombers, 16 Taliban killed and 10 arrested in Wardak, and roadside bomb kills 12 civilians in Helmand.
CONTRACT WATCH
1. The A,B,C’s and 1,2,3’s of getting your foot in the government contracting door. Businessweek.Com contributor Karen Klein answers the question, “How do I get started?” Klein writes, “Contracting with local, state, or federal government agencies can be lucrative for small companies. Particularly valuable in uncertain economic times, government contracts can provide you with stable customers, prompt payment (15 days in many cases), and—often—a pipeline of repeat business.”
2. Ten more simple lessons on getting in good with the government. Entrepreneur.com explains, “The best way for a small business to grow is to have the federal government as a customer. The U.S. government is the largest buyer of goods and services in the world, with total procurement dollars reaching approximately $235 billion in 2002 alone. But many small businesses find it difficult to get a foot in the door. Many government agency buying practices–including contract bundling and the failure to go to outside established vendor networks–make it difficult for small businesses to bid on and win federal contracts. Here are 10 tips on how to get a piece of the billion-dollar federal procurement pie . . . .”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Changing your password as useless. Change it all you like – free hacking software will crack the code, anyway. Salon.Com’s Curt Hopkins explains, “The free password-cracking and -recovery tool oclHashcat-plus runs at 8 million guesses per second. . . . Over the weekend, the free password cracking and recovery tool oclHashcat-plus released a new version, 0.15, that can handle passwords up to 55 characters. It works by guessing a lot of common letter combinations. A lot. Really really fast.”
2. Another no-brainer: U.S. hacked Aljazeera. Der Spiegel reports that “It makes sense that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) would be interested in the Arab news broadcaster Al Jazeera. The Qatar-based channel has been broadcasting audio and video messages from al-Qaida leaders for more than a decade. The United States intelligence agency was so interested, in fact, that it hacked into Al Jazeera‘s internal communications system, according to documents from former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden that have been seen by Spiegel.”
3. Spying on the French Foreign Ministry. Also from Germany’s Der Spiegel, “America’s National Security Agency (NSA) targeted France’s Foreign Ministry for surveillance . . . . Dated June 2010, the ‘top secret’ NSA document reveals that the intelligence agency was particularly interested in the diplomats’ computer network. All of the country’s embassies and consulates are connected with the Paris headquarters via a virtual private network (VPN), technology that is generally considered to be secure. Accessing the Foreign Ministry’s network was considered a ‘success story,’ and there were a number of incidents of ‘sensitive access,’ the document states.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. A walk in the park. POTUS pauses and puts the Constitution and Congress on an appropriate, forgotten pedestal and may have changed course of U.S. military intervention for many administrations to come. McClatchyDC.Com reports that President Obama “didn’t even reach out to his inner circle until the last minute about the decision to go to Congress, a thought that not a single one of his closest advisers had even suggested. No one close to him pushed him to seek congressional approval. Instead he had been mulling it for awhile ‘entirely in his own head,’ one official said.”
2. When “No” just might end up meaning “Yes.” POTUS takes care to leave himself room to wiggle if Congress doesn’t sing his song. TheDailyBeast.Com’s Josh Rogin explains, “In his prepared statement, Obama didn’t say explicitly whether Congressional approval or disapproval would be a determining factor if and when he does decide to strike Syria. In fact, he asserted that he believed he had the constitutional authority to take the action without such approval.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. Obama is right. TheDailyBeast.Com contributor Michael Tomasky argues, “Barack Obama did the right thing Saturday, on a number of levels. The first and most obvious one: The Constitution calls for it. Yes, we’ve got a history now of more than 50 years of presidents not going to Congress. One of them is named Obama (on Libya). But . . . he did the right thing by the Constitution . . . . Kind of sad that it’s so stunning and refreshing to hear a president acknowledge that he shares constitutional power, but stunning and refreshing it was. This precedent will now be cited by congresses well into the future whenever a president wants to undertake a jolly little shoot-up, he’ll need to go to Congress first (for big, real, ground-troop wars, the pressure to consult Congress will always be great).”
2. Obama is right, but wrong. Aljazeera.Com contributor Dr. Alia Brahimi argues, “Western leaders are right to argue that the international community cannot turn away from what is happening in Syria today. However, any response must be directed at the situation in its entirety. The alternative to the proposed US strike is not inaction, but rather a more comprehensive approach which takes into account the underlying reality in which the horrors at al-Ghouta took place: the proxy war in Syria. Come what may, only talks aimed at achieving a ceasefire, including wrangling with Russia and Iran, will stop the downward slide in Syria. It seems worth now unleashing that inevitable diplomatic offensive, instead of a token salvo of missiles.”
3. Obama is wrong. Politico.Com contributor James Goldgeier argues, “After the stunning rejection of the use of military force in Syria by the British parliament, the United States now faces the prospect of action without the support of its closest ally. Yet even before the British vote, the likelihood that intervention in Syria could turn out as well as past U.S. interventions was quite low.”
4. Cyber-surveillance wars. Wired.Com contributor Patrick Gray argues that “contrary to popular discourse about tech companies actively participating in surveillance, the technology industry is naturally moving towards making its products harder to eavesdrop on.”
