Monday Mourning & Farewell Marion Barry and Viktor Tikhonov
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Military transition resumes. Editor Lindy Kyzer offers, “If you’re a veteran you can probably write an OER or NCOER without breaking a sweat. But writing a civilian resume may feel like heavy lifting. If you don’t know a skills summary from an objective statement, here are a few tips to consider. . . .”
2. Cybersecurity—the enemy is us. Contributor Chandler Harris explains, “Workers and contractors in more than a dozen agencies from the Defense and Education departments to the National Weather Service were responsible for more than half of cybersecurity breaches in the federal government . . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Nuclear talks stagnate. Reuters’ Louis Charbonneau and Frank Dahl report from Vienna, “Iran and six world powers are expected to adjourn nuclear negotiations on Monday and reconvene next month after the latest round of talks failed to clinch a final deal, a source close to the talks said. Details about the adjournment and resumption of negotiations were still being worked out, though the source said on condition of anonymity that Iran could not expect any new sanctions relief for the time being.” See also from The Atlantic, “The Many Iranian Obstacles in the Way of a Strong Nuclear Deal.”
2. Afghanistan plan expands. The Atlantic’s Allen McDuffee reports, “Caught between the promise to end the war in Afghanistan, demands from the Pentagon to carry out the military’s mission there, and worries over the possible emergence of another ISIS-like group, President Obama approved guidelines in recent weeks to allow the Pentagon to target Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The measure broadens previous plans that had limited the military to training and counterterrorism missions against al-Qaeda after 2014.” See also, “Obama widens post-2014 combat role for U.S. forces in Afghanistan” and “Suicide bomber kills 45 at Afghanistan volleyball match.”
3. Iraqis retake ISIS towns. Aljazeera.Com reports, “Iraqi forces have mounted their biggest operation since June, reclaiming two towns in the eastern province of Diyala from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters. In the province’s south on Sunday, Iraqi troops and Shia militias retook the town of Sa’adiya and were moving towards nearby villages. In the north, Kurdish Peshmerga forces retook the town of Jawlala and were securing the area. The two towns were considered key support centres for ISIL, which swept through the area in June. ‘Those victories have not just happened; instead, they were the results of strategic changing from defence to attack’ . . . .” Rudaw.Net reports, “Iranian troops not involved in Jalawla, Sadia fighting.” See also, “More jihadist training camps identified in Iraq and Syria.”
4. ISIS’ young warriors. AP’s Zeina Karam and Vivian Salama report, “Teenagers carrying weapons stand at checkpoints and busy intersections in Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul. Patched onto the left arms of their black uniforms are the logos of the Islamic Police. In Raqqa, the Islamic State group’s de facto capital in Syria, boys attend training camp and religious courses before heading off to fight. Others serve as cooks or guards at the extremists’ headquarters or as spies, informing on people in their neighborhoods. Across the vast region under IS control, the group is actively conscripting children for battle and committing abuses against the most vulnerable at a young age.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. $4.7 billion, 43 F-35s, Low Rate Lot 8. DoDBuzz.Com’s Kris Osborn reports, “The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin have finalized a $4.7 billion deal for 43 F-35 Lightning II aircraft including new fighters for the Air Force, Marine Corps and Navy along with five planes for international partners. The contract includes production and delivery of the aircraft, avionics, sensors and component technologies for the aircraft. The F-35 engines are procured separately through a Pentagon deal with Pratt & Whitney.”
2. Acquisition pivot to state actors. DefenseNews.Com’s Paul McLeary reports, “After spending 13 years fighting non-state actors in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, the US Defense Department is shifting its institutional weight toward developing a new acquisition and technology development strategy that focuses more on major state competitors . . . . A major part of this push is the new ‘offset’ strategy, which is looking to identify new technologies that the United States can use in order to deter or defeat those threats.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Craigslist hacked off line. VentureBeat.Com’s Chris O’Brien reports, “The online classifieds website Craigslist has been offline since last night, and is the apparent victim of hacker. The site either does not load, or it re-directs to random local versions. The problem was spotted by The Next Web. We’ve got a message into Craigslist PR and will update with a response. . . . ‘Users visiting the site [Sunday] evening were redirected to a site called Digital Gangster as a result of what looks like a DNS hijack.’”
2. Home network vulnerabilities. Also from VentureBeat.Com, “The webcam hack by Russian attackers is merely a foreshadowing of what’s to come if consumers don’t secure their connected homes. Late [Thursday] night, news broke that Russian hackers had breached home webcams around the world and connected them to a live stream, which broadcast the contents on a website. The site’s administrator reportedly told Sky News that the stunt was aimed at drawing awareness to bad security practices. The victims involved all failed to update their webcam’s default password.”
3. Life in space. Wired.Com contributor Astronaut Marsha Ivins explains, “There’s no way to anticipate the emotional impact of leaving your home planet. You look down at Earth and realize: You’re not on it. It’s breathtaking. It’s surreal. . . . But I’ve spent a total of 55 days in space, over the course of five missions for NASA, and I’ve learned that being out there isn’t just a series of breathtaking moments. It’s a mix of the transcendently magical and the deeply prosaic. It can be crowded, noisy, and occasionally uncomfortable. Space travel—at least the way we do it today—isn’t glamorous. But you can’t beat the view!”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Just say yes to sweets!: “The White House has its first female executive pastry chef. Susan Morrison will oversee the daily operations of the pastry kitchen at the executive mansion, the White House announced Friday. The former Ritz-Carlton Hotel pastry guru will begin her new gig ‘just in time to spearhead the always highly anticipated Holiday Gingerbread House’ . . . . President Obama made headlines when he praised [former executive pastry chef William Yosses’] sweet-treat prowess at a July reception, jesting a special ingredient might have been used in the chef’s recipes. ‘This is the problem,’ Obama said of Yosses, ‘we call Bill ‘The Crustmaster,’ because his pies, I don’t know what he does, whether he puts crack in them.’”
2. Pot calls the kettle: “Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday criticized a bipartisan House report that found no problems with the intelligence leading up to the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The South Carolina Republican . . . called the House Intelligence Committee report ‘full of crap’ and said it would not stop him from continuing to look into Benghazi next year when the GOP assumes control of the Senate, and with it expanded powers to conduct oversight of the Obama administration. The report was overseen by retiring House Intelligence panel Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. ‘I know Benghazi pretty well,’ Graham said. ‘I don’t believe that the report is accurate.’”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “The truth about beheadings.” Aljazeera.Com contributor Ibrahim Al-Marashi argues, “Beheadings are ISIL’s public executions, just as the guillotine, hanging, or lethal ejection, either in the town square or on TV, demonstrate the price of violating what the state deems as law and order. They serve as an internal policing mechanism, communicating to every member of ISIL the punishment for any ‘acts of treason’, or couched in ISIL’s terms, ‘apostasy’.”
2. “Will Politics Kill a Deal on Iran?” DefenseOne.Com contributor Joseph Cirincione argues, “Logic and fair debate is little heard in Congress these days. Show hearings are packed with deal opponents. National security concerns are pushed aside for short-term political gain. . . . If the talks in Vienna fail to reach an agreement to contain Iran’s nuclear program, it won’t be the fault of the negotiators. It will be politics that killed the deal.”
3. “Window on Westminster.” Rudaw.Net contributor Gary Kent argues, “Kurds have the right to leave Iraq, just as much as they agreed to rejoin it in 2003. This possibility came to the fore after the fall of Mosul but receded when Daish attacked Kurdistan in August.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Working hard.
2. Huh?
