AP’s Top Ten & Countdown to shutdown.
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Contractor access back in the crosshairs. Contributor Marc Selinger takes a look at the Inspector General’s report on the Navy’s security procedures and DoD’s responses to the most recent violence: “The Pentagon announced Sept. 17 . . . a review of physical security and access to all military installations worldwide following the mass shooting at Washington Navy Yard. Earlier in the day, the Navy indicated that Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has directed a ‘rapid review’ of security procedures at all Navy and Marine Corps bases. The review is to be completed by Oct. 1, two weeks after the Navy Yard shooting.”
2. Foreign Policy deep dive. Contributor D.B. Grady puts the Department of State back under his microscope as the agency awaits appointment of new IG Steve A. Linick: “To reestablish trust and credibility, one of Linick’s first tasks as inspector general must be to bring in new faces not previously seen at State. He will need to establish an open-door policy that will allow employees to report malfeasance directly to him without fear of the retaliation that is currently so prevalent. Linick must make whistleblower protection within the State Department a priority. For all its rhetoric about the virtues of whistleblowing, the U.S. government seems reflexively to retaliate against anyone who speaks out against corruption.” See D.B. Grady’s companion piece, “Government Oversight and the Critical Role of Inspectors General.” Read Linick’s resume.
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Egypt’s “New War.” Just outside Cairo, more violence as government establishes control. Reuters’ Yasmine Saleh reports, “Egyptian security forces clashed with gunmen on the outskirts of Cairo on Thursday as the army-backed government moved to reassert control over an Islamist-dominated area where political violence broke out last month. A police general was killed in an exchange of gunfire outside the town of Kerdasa, 14 km (9 miles), from the capital. . . . authorities say they are in a new war on terror against Islamist militants. State media have labeled the Muslim Brotherhood, the group that propelled Mursi to power last year, as an enemy of the state.” Aljazeera.Com reports, “Kerdassah, known for producing and selling fancy fabrics is 14km from the Egyptian capital and known to be an Islamist stronghold.”
2. AFRICOM’s Boko Haram – its rise. Aljazeera.Com’s Yvonne Ndege and Azad Essa narrate the history of Nigeria’s home-grown terrorist threat: “Established in 2002 in Maiduguri, Boko Haram spent 2002-2009 consolidating its base, spreading its disdain for Western education and government corruption, culminating in the creation of alternative schools and attacking symbols of state power, most commonly police stations in northern Nigeria. . . . Since 2010 violence has intensified and on May 15, 2013 President Goodluck Jonathan was forced to declare a state of emergency in three of the states affected by Boko Haram. . . . The group believes that strict Islamic law should be imposed in Nigeria. Little is known about its leadership or members.”
3. No nukes for Iran, vows Rouhani. LATimes.Com’s Ramin Mostaghim and Carol J. Williams report, “Iran will never develop nuclear weapons, President Hasan Rouhani vowed Wednesday in his first U.S. media interview since his inauguration last month. Rouhani also said in the interview in Tehran with NBC News . . . that he has the authority to cut a deal with the United States and other Western countries to allay their fear that Tehran’s uranium enrichment activity is aimed at creating weapons-grade fuel for a nuclear bomb. . . . Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said that nuclear weapons development would conflict with Islamic values. He joined the chorus of voices professing willingness to compromise Tuesday when he advocated ‘heroic flexibility’ in Tehran’s negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency and six world powers demanding an end to Iranian uranium enrichment.”
4. Afghanistan’s “young militants ready to die.” Also from LATimes.Com, Mark Magnier reports from Kabul, “Afghanistan’s detention system does little to stem the spread of extremism among young people or adults, analysts say, and may actually harden those inside by allowing them to cultivate networks of like-minded individuals. Facilities are overcrowded, understaffed and highly dependent on the honesty and commitment of their directors or wardens. . . . Children and teenagers enlisted into extremism are influenced by family members, human smugglers or recruiters at hard-line seminaries just across the border in Pakistan, rehab center administrators said. The youngsters are taught to hate “infidels” and are promised virgins in paradise.” Also in Afghanistan, former Afghan Senator joins the Taliban: “Qazi Abdulhai reportedly joined Taliban group along with a number of his supporters. He was also a former commander of Afghan local police (ALP) forces in Kohistan area.” Finally, Taliban kill 16 and abduct 24 in Badakhshan.
5. Afghans are heading to college in record numbers. AP’s Nahal Toosi reports from Kabul, “It’s a remarkable trend in a nation where just 12 years ago the Taliban government barred girls from attending school and many educated Afghans were forced to flee. Some 7,870 students attended Afghan colleges before the U.S.-led invasion in 2001; today, the figure is up around 26-fold to almost 204,000, as many as a fifth of them women, according to the Ministry of Higher Education. The growth has been possible in part because Afghan leaders realized that the country’s public universities, decimated by years of war, couldn’t meet the demand for seats. So in 2006 they legalized private higher education.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Outsourcing ad infinitum may be at the heart of the Navy’s security vulnerabilities. GovExec.Com works to unravel the tangled-up mess: “The Navy Installations Command reached outside normal competitive channels to procure a flawed and risky commercial access control system that has allowed 65,000 contractors to routinely access its bases. The procurement process involved purchases on government credit cards 51 cents below the $2,500 maximum allowed, the Defense Department Inspector General said in a report released this week.”
2. $22 million: virus as threat to national security. BizJournals.Com’s Lauren K. Ohnesorge reports, “Durham drug developer BioCryst (Nasdaq: BCRX) has landed another government contract, this time one that is worth up to $22 million to develop an antiviral. The five-year contract starts with an initial award of $5 million from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The compound, BCX4430, is being investigated as a treatment for Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic fever that the government believes could represent a threat to national security. . . . BioCryst’s last government contract, $235 million to develop flu treatment peramivir, could soon pay off. Despite having failed to meet endpoints in a Phase 3 trial, peramivir is moving forward for potential approval anyway, due to recent FDA guidance.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Googling at immortality. Time’s Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman explain Google’s latest brain-child: “It is launching Calico, a new company that will focus on health and aging in particular. The independent firm will be run by Arthur Levinson, former CEO of biotech pioneer Genentech, who will also be an investor. Levinson, who began his career as a scientist and has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, plans to remain in his current roles as the chairman of the board of directors for both Genentech and Apple, a position he took over after its co-founder Steve Jobs died in 2011. In other words, the company behind YouTube and Google+ is gearing up to seriously attempt to extend the human life span.”
2. HP’s fall fashion. VentureBeat.Com contributor Dean Takahashi takes a look at Hewlett-Packard’s anti-Apples: “The machines reflect more creative designs that are aimed at bringing back the mojo to personal computers in an age of smartphones and tablets. The refresh is based on new Haswell-based processor technology from Intel, which is now in full production on its new generation of faster and more power efficient chips. HP’s line-up shows its emphasis on new computer form factors, a choice of operating systems, and new services and software that make computing easier.” Time joins the review: “In October, Leap will take a baby step with the HP Envy 17 Leap Motion SE. It’s the first laptop with an embedded Leap Motion controller, and it uses a new module that’s 70 percent thinner than the one inside Leap’s standalone sensor. The Envy 17 will go on sale at “select U.S. retailers” and HP’s website for $1050.”
3. Just don’t spy on our finances. Revelations of NSA’s snooping in the EU’s financial affairs causes another furor in Germany. Der Spiegel reports, “The recent revelations regarding the degree to which the US intelligence agency NSA monitors bank data in the European Union has infuriated many in Europe. ‘Now that we know what we have long been suspecting, we have to protest loudly and clearly,” Jan Philipp Albrecht, a legal expert for the Green Party in the European Parliament . . . He is demanding a suspension of the SWIFT agreement, which governs the transfer of some bank data from the EU to anti-terror authorities in the United States.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Sado-masochistic fun: Palin v. Rove. Once you start reading about Palin, it’s just hard to stop, no matter how much it hurts. Reuters contributor Nicholas Wapshott takes a look at the latest follies: “The most recent episode in the long-running Punch and Judy show between Sarah Palin and Karl Rove is shedding light on the schism between old-school Republicans and the Tea Party insurgents who are steadily pushing them aside. It appears it is not merely Palin’s personal antipathy to Rove that drives her spleen but a contempt for the dark arts he employs. It is no surprise, perhaps, that the anti-intellectualism that underpins many of the Tea Party’s most absurd and offensive stances – the insistence that evidence of global warming is invented; the notion that women who are raped do not conceive; the belief that Darwin’s theory of evolution is contradicted by the Bible; the failure to understand that all economics is Keynesian; and so on – also informs Palin’s assault on the science practiced by Rove and every other established political strategist around the world.”
2. Jennifer Flowers’ olive branch, with thorns. The Daily Mail’s exclusive with Jennifer Flowers – remember her? – won’t have Hillary dancing, but it’s an entertaining read: “She said: ‘We have some unresolved issues that it would be nice to sit down and talk about now. He was the love of my life and I was the love of his life and you don’t get over those things.’”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. In bed with Der Spiegel. Cranky ol’ Don Rumsfeld’s long awaited interview with a former enemy of his policy, Der Spiegel: “That is not what I said. My point is that it is not a wise move if you lack a vision with sufficient clarity to gain majority support in the country and the Congress. As President of the United States, it is unwise to go to Congress to ask for support for the use of force and to be defeated. I believe such an action by the Congress would have been unprecedented. And if a president can’t gain support in the US Congress, we should not be surprised that gaining support from the nations of the world would be just as difficult.”
2. A few tough questions in the wake of The Navy Yard. DefenseMediaNetwork.Com contributor Robert F. Dorr argues, “Although many Americans favor gun control, we need to live in the real world. In the real America in which we live, there’s no prospect that Americans will ever have difficulty acquiring and using guns. In my opinion, we’ll never see an end to the occasional, tragic mass shooting. But the Navy Yard slaughter raises questions and may teach us some lessons.”
3. Neo-centrist – foreign policy of the future? Politico.Com contributor Jonathan Schanzer argues for a neo-centrist policy that “will embrace America’s power, but not abuse it. It might reject aspects of neoconservatism, but not the important moral commitments or valid views of global dangers that gave rise to that movement. It will reject aspects of the Obama Doctrine, but not the need for a somber accounting of the potential costs of putting boots on the ground or getting embroiled in expensive foreign conflicts. And above all, it will reject the growing isolationist wings of both parties, which seek to retreat from the world’s problems and renounce American exceptionalism in the process.”
4. Stop freakin’ out over internet surveillance. USNews.Com contributor Daniel Gallington argues, “the idea that we have somehow ‘betrayed’ or ‘subverted’ the Internet (or the telephone for that matter) is – as my mom also used to say – ‘just plain silly.’ Such kinds of inaccurate statements are emotional and intended mostly for an audience with preconceived opinions or that hasn’t thought very hard about the dangerous consequences of an Internet totally immune from surveillance. In fact, it seems time for far less sensationalism – primarily by the media – and far more objectivity. In the final analysis, my mom probably had it right: ‘Those kind of people, sure.’”.
THE FUNNIES
2. Shut it down. I thought it was already.
