FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Bridging the job gaps. Contributor Diana Rodriguez with sage advice on patching up the holes in your resume: “Those who have worked closely with government contracting are aware of the transiency of the contracting community, so they tend to have a more open-minded attitude toward resumes with frequent job changes. That said, the moniker ‘job hopper’ isn’t a resume boost for anyone.”
2. Run for the Roses. Team ClearanceJobs.Com prominent in The Army Ten Miler: “ClearanceJobs was proud to be a sponsor of this year’s Army Ten-Miler. More than 35,000 runners participated in this year’s race, which promotes the Army, celebrates esprit de corps, and supports Army fitness goals. Proceeds from sponsorship and race registration go to support U.S. Army Morale Welfare and Recreation programs. Nearly 50 runners joined the ClearanceJobs team this year . . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Panic in the Philippines, and desperation. Reuters’ Andrew R.C. Marshall and Stuart Grudgings report from Tacloban, “Desperation gripped Philippine islands devastated by Typhoon Haiyan as looting turned deadly on Wednesday and survivors panicked over delays in supplies of food, water and medicine, some digging up underground water pipes and smashing them open. . . . More than 250 U.S. forces were on the ground too, and a senior Marine official told Pentagon reporters he expected that number to grow every day. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington will arrive later this week, carrying about 5,000 sailors and more than 80 aircraft. It has been joined by four other U.S. Navy ships.”
2. Obama: “Pleading” with Congress on Iran. AP’s Bradley Klapper reports from Washington, “The Obama administration is pleading with Congress to allow more time for diplomacy with Iran, but faces sharp resistance from Republican and Democratic lawmakers determined to further squeeze the Iranian economy and wary of yielding any ground in nuclear negotiations. . . . The administration sees itself on the cusp of a historic breakthrough, so much so that Obama hastily dispatched Kerry to Switzerland last week for the highest-level nuclear negotiations to date. The talks broke down as Iran demanded formal recognition of what it says is its right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and as France sought stricter limits on Iran’s ability to make nuclear fuel and on its heavy water reactor to produce plutonium, according to diplomats.”
3. In Syria, Assad forces making progress. Aljazeera.Com reports, “Syrian troops have clashed with rebels on the southern outskirts of Damascus and in the northern city of Aleppo . . . in a flare-up that is part of a government push to advance and retake opposition-held areas. . . . Emboldened Assad troops have in recent weeks made advances on the battlefield, taking back at least four strongholds in the northern province of Aleppo and south of Damascus. This week, government forces recaptured the town of Sbeineh, adjacent to Hejeira.”
4. Opium – in Afghanistan, it’s back, and more prolific than ever. Remember, we spent inordinate amounts of money working to out-market the crops. Khaama.Com reports, “The United Nations office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced Tuesday that the opium cultivation in Afghanistan has reached a record level. UNODC officials in Kabul said over 200,000 hectares planted with the poppy for the first time in Afghanistan, which shows an increase of 36 percent as compared to last year. The officials further added that most of the rise was in southern Helmand province of Afghanistan.” [At least it adds some color to the place.] Also from Khaama.Com, Taliban none too happy about loss of Haqqani leader: “The Taliban militants group in Afghanistan strongly condemned the assassination of senior Haqqani Network leader, Nasiruddin Haqqani. Taliban following a statement on Tuesday called the attack on Nasiruddin Haqqani a cowardly terrorist attack of the enemy, and said Nasiruddin Haqqani’s death was a great loss to the Islamic Emirate and the entire Afghanistan.”
5. Al Qaeda and affiliates continue to threaten. LongWarJournal.Org’s Thomas Joscelyn reports, “During testimony before the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament on Nov. 7, top British officials discussed the ongoing threat from al Qaeda and affiliated groups. Sir John Sawers, the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, said the ‘biggest’ threat to the UK is from terrorism, namely ‘al Qaeda and its many, many branches.’ Al Qaeda has been ‘emerging and forming and multiplying in a whole new range of countries, and of course that poses extra challenges, extra threats to us,’ Sawers said. ‘There is no doubt that, especially over the last 12 months really, the threat has emerged.’”
6. Homeless Veterans – funding to make them a thing of the past. WaPo’s Josh Hicks reports, “The Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday announced a nearly $14 million surge in funding for programs to assist homeless veterans. The agency approved nearly $9 million in grants for transportation and renovated housing for homeless veterans, in addition to roughly $5 million to boost services for special populations such as women, the elderly and those who are chronically or mentally ill. . . . A national count in January 2012 found more than 62,000 homeless veterans, a 17 percent decline compared to the previous year. The Obama administration has vowed to drive that number down to zero by 2015.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. DISA’s $45 million cloud dissipating. FederalTimes.Com’s Nicole Blake Johnson reports, “The Defense Information Systems Agency is considering canceling its planned $450 million commercial cloud contract, following lower than expected demand for those services. . . . At an industry event in July, a DISA official said the agency expected up to 10 awards under the $450 million contract. A final request for proposal was supposed to be released in August. Meanwhile, some DoD components have already struck deals with commercial vendors to host public data in the cloud. For example, several websites under the secretary of the Navy are now being hosted in the cloud.” See also DefenseOne.Com., Pentagon’s Cloud Email System.
2. GSA’s procurement problems loom. Also from FederalTimes.Com’s Sean Reilly, “Flawed internal safeguards have helped lead to botched procurements and other recurrent problems in the General Services Administration’s Washington, D.C., regional offices, the agency’s inspector’s general said in a report released Tuesday. The report contains little new information, instead summarizing findings from earlier audits covering the period from fiscal 2007 to 2012. But it underscores the magnitude of the cleanup job that GSA officials say is already well under way. . . . In a five-page response, GSA managers acknowledged past weaknesses at the National Capital Region, but touted numerous changes made in the last two years, such as seeking to strengthen acquisition management at the Public Buildings Service and improve internal controls at the Federal Acquisition Service.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Time’s Person of the Year: Snowden(?) DefenseMediaNetwork.Com’s Rich Cooper explains, “Think of all of the persons who have betrayed America’s security interests. From Benedict Arnold to Aldrich Ames, Edward Snowden topped them all armed only with his conscience, his computer savvy, his laptop and thumb drives. His actions have left the Obama Administration and the nation’s intelligence apparatus embarrassed and scrambling in an almost Keystone Cops manner trying to deny, justify, explain and “spin” the reasons for saying and doing what Snowden’s revelations revealed that they were doing. As a result, American allies are fuming that their phones have been monitored by the NSA, while the enemies of the U.S. are overtly grateful to have been granted access to the very information that tells them the methods and extent of the United States’ intelligence gathering about them and others around the world.”
2. Bill Gates – His Plan to Save the World. In Wired.Com, Gates explains: “We want to give our wealth back to society in a way that has the most impact, and so we look for opportunities to invest for the largest returns. That means tackling the world’s biggest problems and funding the most likely solutions. That’s an even greater challenge than it sounds. I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems. You could make a good case for poverty, disease, hunger, war, poor education, bad governance, political instability, weak trade, or mistreatment of women. Melinda and I have focused on poverty and disease globally, and on education in the US. We picked those issues by starting with an idea we learned from our parents: Everyone’s life has equal value. If you begin with that premise, you quickly see where the world acts as though some lives aren’t worth as much as others. That’s where you can make the greatest difference, where every dollar you spend is liable to have the greatest impact.”
3. Wiring Africa – Samsung’s Target. Reuters’ reports from Cape Town, “Samsung Electronics expects to supply half of the smartphones sold in Africa this year and aims to double these sales on the continent in 2014, an executive said. Africa has a growing young population that is increasingly tech savvy and urbanized. This is attracting foreign sellers of consumer products like smartphones, especially as markets stagnate or shrink in more developed nations. Although smartphones are gaining popularity across the continent, they are still a novelty.”
potomac two-step
1. His words have no meaning – get a new writing team! “Senator Rand Paul gave his first major speech in the wake of a recent plagiarism scandal Tuesday to cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. But while his staff added 33 footnotes to the publicly released version of his speech about U.S. foreign policy, just because everything was correctly cited didn’t necessarily make it accurate. The restructuring seemed to be effective so far in that the content of Paul’s speech was entirely original. But, some of the arguments that the Kentucky senator made did not match the facts associated with his own footnotes.”
2. Homeland Security – everybody loves to hate: “The Department of Homeland Security consistently ranks near the bottom among federal agencies for job satisfaction in the government’s annual employee survey, and that trend didn’t change last week when the 2013 results came out. Homeland Security’s job-satisfaction score this time around stands at 57 points, the second-lowest among all executive-branch departments and a decline of four points compared to its 2012 number. Only Housing and Urban Development, with a score of 56, fared worse. This is a persistent problem for the department. It became so glaring that Congress held a hearing last year to examine the issue.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. How your (our) computer (computers) have changed the world. Aljazeera.Com contributor Eric Garland argues, “The vast majority of users never stop to think about who owns those networks. In every country, the data is processed by a large corporate entity with direct ties to the government. Just as computers have become ever more powerful in sensing and processing, people have signed up in droves to provide an avalanche of personal data through networks they scarcely understand. In the past five months, the world has become aware of how much power some governments possess to spy on individuals and heads of state alike. The most important revelations have come from the now-ubiquitous Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian.”
2. Cut Defense – Save Security. Cannot be done? Eric Shnurer argues it can: “there are ways to cut defense spending without hurting military capabilities. Besides maintaining its war-fighting capability, DoD, like any entity, maintains a back-office bureaucracy to oversee its business functions. That overhead accounts for roughly 40 percent of its budget. It’s hard to compare different industries, or even government agencies, but one examination of 25 industries showed average overhead rates ranging from 13 to 50 percent, with the average across all industries being 25 percent.”
3. Rouhani – wilting rose. Aljazeera.Com contributor Ali Ansari argues, “Hassan Rouhani’s surprise victory in the June 14 elections, unleashed a wave of expectation and hope. . . . Rouhani may have campaigned as a reformist but he finds that he is increasingly having to govern as a conservative. This is proving to be a particularly difficult political balancing act, and unsurprisingly, in some quarters, the lustre is beginning to wear off.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Play Giarism.
2. Clear evidence.
3. Despair.
