They Walk the Line: Nelson and Nick.
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCE JOBS.COM
1. But I didn’t inhale. Editor Lindy Kyzer scares ‘em straight: “If you’ve served time in prison, you will have a difficult time getting a security clearance, but it’s not impossible.”
2. Pay the piper. Still strapped for cash? William Henderson’s treatise on debt and clearances explains, “Excessive indebtedness increases the temptation to commit unethical or illegal acts in order to obtain funds to pay off the debts. Most Americans who betrayed their country did it for financial gain—about half were motivated by a real or perceived urgent need for money and about half by personal greed.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Live to ride. Ride to live. Bob Bergdahl, Bowe’s dad, leads POW-MIA rally and encourages us to “remember everyone, regardless of nationality, who [has] suffered during the 12-year conflict in Afghanistan that began following the Sept. 11 attacks.” AP reports that Bergdahl’s father sees his son as “’part of the peace process.’” Also see, “Kerry presses Taliban to revive Afghan peace bid”: “Kerry on Saturday declined to comment on the prospect of Taliban prisoners being freed. ‘It’s just not where the process is,’ he said.”
2. The times they are ‘a changin.’ Government Exec’s Kellie Lunney reports on a new bill making its way through the House that would “allow veterans discharged from the military for being gay to update their records to reflect honorable service, making them eligible for benefits.” For a look back at another pivotal moment, see “Meet Tammy Smith, America’s First Openly Gay General,” in which Tom Ricks comments, “’It is an interesting moment, in part because it is so uncontroversial.”
3. Kerry does Bollywood. GulfNews.Com picks up Agence France-Presse’s report: “Kerry, on his first visit to India as the top US diplomat, opened talks with Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid days after the US started a cautious but immediately troubled bid to hold peace talks with Taliban insurgents. . . . India was among countries at the top of the hit-list for the Taliban regime, which provided refuge to Islamic extremists and imposed an austere brand of Islam from 1996 until the US-led war following the September 11, 2001 attacks.”
4. It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. San Diego Union-Tribune’s Jeanette Steele writes, “Nature has stacked the deck against females for upper body strength” after describing requirements for SEAL candidates: “Between 50 and 90 push-ups in two minutes. Same for sit-ups. Ten pull-ups, but more like 18 to stay competitive. Run a mile and a half in 10 minutes. Swim 500 yards — that’s five football fields — in 12 minutes, sidestroke. Those are the physical requirements to merely knock on the front door at the Navy SEAL training compound in Coronado, where all SEALs are made.” Go ahead, fool Mother Nature.
5. Heading ‘em off at the pass. AFRICOM embraces partnership principles to increase African states’ security capacities (and keep African states from ever becoming havens for terrorists): reports Rich Bartell of US Army Africa Public Affairs, “’ The Togolese Forces were extremely eager to learn. They picked up the concepts quickly and adapted them to the equipment and resources they had available . . . ‘”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. All knowing masters of time, space, and dimension. Drake Bennett and Michael Riley report from the Isenberg Institute of Strategic Satire, “Booz Allen Knows All, Sees All, Charges All.” Another secret Snowden betrayed? “It’s safe to say that most Americans, if they’d heard of Booz Allen at all, had no idea how huge a role it plays in the U.S. intelligence infrastructure. They do now.”
2. My father shovels soot at the ship yard. DefenseNews.Com’s Chris Cavas announces that “once again, Virginia — overwhelmingly — employs more shipyard workers than any other state, while Maine and Mississippi count on the industry for more than two percent of their gross domestic product (GDP).” Shipbuilder’s Council of America is proud to point out, “’jobs in the shipyard industry paid $73,630 on average in 2011. That’s 45 percent more than the $50,786 national average for the private sector economy.’”
3. Buy it now: $7.3 billion. Also in DefenseNews.Com, only four days left: “Bidding on South Korea’s US $7.3 billion program to buy 60 new combat jets will end June 28 after 10 days of maneuvering among three competitors.” Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and EADS “are required to submit the prices of their aircraft and other spare parts to South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA). . . . participants will be required to rebid multiple times per day, said DAPA spokesman Baek Yoon-hyung.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Where’s Waldo? Reuters reports, “Russia defiant as U.S. raises pressure over Snowden.” Sending the White House a California hello from the Kremlin, “Russian officials were defiant, saying Moscow had no obligation to cooperate with Washington after it passed the so-called Magnitsky law, which can impose a visa ban and asset freeze on Russian officials accused of human rights violations.” Now, everyone’s heard about the bird.
2. Tech Bully. Cramer calls Apple’s next baby a “’clear loser’” before its even born, reports Venture Beat’s John Koetsier: “not only has Cramer not seen any good news from Apple for months, he’s also predicting that the company’s next product, due in September, ‘is a clear loser,’ as he seems to believe that Apple is incapable of pulling out of a ‘tailspin.’ That’s a fairly remarkable statement, even from Cramer. He is, of course, the financial analyst who predicted two years ago that an ‘overpriced’ LinkedIn IPO would ‘destroy everyone,’ so he is not unknown for hyperbole and bombast. But predicting the utter failure of a future, unreleased product?” Also see Cyberbullying.
3. Global War Against Wikileaks (G-WAW). Stuart Stevens of The Daily Beast addresses Wikileaks new diplomatic overtures: “So now WikiLeaks has its own diplomats? The group has gone from whistleblowing aimed at those in power to acting like some kind of faux state that welcomes immigrants bearing secrets. . . .The crime here is the stealing of secrets not the publication of those secrets by legitimate news organizations. Context and scope matter, as they always do.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. A Tale of Two Jeffies. Flake and Sessions bang heads on immigration reform – a battle that may well predict the next Republican presidential nominee: Washington Post-er Ed O’Keefe explains, “In many ways, the two men represent the two Republican parties that emerged from the GOP’s dismal showing at the polls in 2012: one eager to modernize and grow, the other steadfast in its conservative principles, determined not to be coerced into politically expedient compromise. The side that prevails on immigration will probably be the dominant face of the GOP going into next year’s midterm elections and the 2016 presidential campaign.”
2. Dancing in the dark. Reuters’ James Pomfret and Lidia Kelly report, “U.S. warns countries against Snowden travel”: “The United States continued efforts to prevent Snowden from gaining asylum. It warned Western Hemisphere nations that Snowden ‘should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States,’ a State Department official said. U.S. Senator Charles Schumer charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely knew and approved of Snowden’s flight to Russia and predicted ‘serious consequences’ for a U.S.-Russian relationship already strained over Syria and human rights.”
3. Tap dance. Winning this year’s award (already) for Exaggerated Hyperbolic Understatement, General Keith Alexander describes Snowden: “’clearly an individual who’s betrayed the trust and confidence we had in him. . . . an individual who is not acting, in my opinion, with noble intent . . . .’” Yah think?
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. End of the war as we know it. Armed Forces Journal’s Joe J. Collins predicts and advises in a piece we all should read: “The war on terrorism as we know it is coming to an end. For the United States, the big campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan are over or winding down. The campaign against al-Qaida-inspired terrorism has taken a sharp turn toward a better but more complex condition. Pushed by weakened but adaptive enemies, the active theaters are shifting, and the war we know is fading. With serious changes in all three of the major campaigns of this war, it is time to reassess the authorities that underpin the war and the ways and means that are needed for the future. The first step in getting the future right is to reassess the past 11½ years with an eye toward trends.”
2. Take a Prozac. New York Times’ Richard Haass advises, “The biggest strategic question facing America is how to extend this respite rather than squander it”: “For the three and a half centuries of the modern international era, great powers have almost always confronted rivals determined to defeat them and replace the global order they worked to bring about. In the last century, this process unfolded three times. The results were violent, costly and dangerous, and included two world wars and a cold war. Today, there are threats, but they tend to be regional, years away or limited in scale. None rises to the level of being global, immediate and existential. The United States faces no great-power rival. And this is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.”
3. No more nukes! POTUS takes all the fun out of world domination. Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman and former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph write, “The Obama administration’s intention to ‘lead by example’ reflects its deep ideological commitment to disarmament. No other country is following the U.S. lead. None has followed in adopting a policy of developing no ‘new nuclear warheads.’ None has followed in allowing its nuclear weapons infrastructure to rust out from within as a consequence of budget cuts and policy neglect. And none will be persuaded by the latest presidential endorsement of ‘nuclear zero.’”
4. Weiss sucks the fun out of Superman. Boston Globe’s Joanna Weiss reads too much into an afternoon at the picture show: “Superman uses his laser-eye powers to take down a government surveillance drone. This, we suddenly realize, is the scope of his modern challenge. Forget about changing costumes in a phone booth. This time around, Superman has to hide from the NSA. . . . we’ve all willingly succumbed to powerful intrusions on our lives. One of the striking things about the Edward Snowden leak, this revelation about how far the government can legally reach into our movements and communications, is how many people seem to be perfectly blasé about the implications.”
THE FUNNIES
2. I am Superman.
3. Forbidden Fruit.
4. Snooperman.
