Are Spy Agencies Once Again Lying to Justify War Against Syria?

The U.S. government’s main “classified” claim is that it intercepted communications from the Syrian government both before and after the chemical weapons attack which implicate at least some people in Assad’s government. For example, the Washington Post notes:

Unknown to Syrian officials, U.S. spy agencies recorded each step in the alleged chemical attack, from the extensive preparations to the launching of rockets to the after-action assessments by Syrian officials. Those records and intercepts would become the core of the Obama administration’s evidentiary case linking the Syrian government to what one official called an “indiscriminate, inconceivable horror” — the use of outlawed toxins to kill nearly 1,500 civilians, including at least 426 children.

Who would have intercepted those communications?

You guessed it … likely the National Security Agency, the American agency tasked with intercepting foreign communications.

The NSA has consistently been caught lying about what it is and isn’t doing. Read more >>

US military attack on Syria could begin Thursday and will involve three days of missile strikes

An American military attack on Syria could begin as early as Thursday and will involve three days of missile strikes, according to "senior U.S. officials" talking to NBC News. The Washington Post has the bombing at "no more than two days," though long-range bombers could "possibly" join the missiles. "Factors weighing into the timing of any action include a desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week," reports CNN, citing a "senior administration official."

The New York Times, quoting a Pentagon official, adds that "the initial target list has fewer than 50 sites, including air bases where Syria's Russian-made attack helicopters are deployed." The Times adds that "like several other military officials contacted for this report, the official agreed to discuss planning options only on condition of anonymity."

Thus do the legal and moral requirements of secret military operations lose out in this Administration to the imperatives of in-the-know spin and political gestures.

It's always possible that all of this leaking about when, how and for how long the U.S. will attack Syria is an elaborate head-fake, like Patton's ghost army on the eve of D-Day, poised for the assault on Calais. But based on this Administration's past behavior, such as the leaked bin Laden raid details, chances are most of this really is the war plan. Read more >>

NSA Analysts Intentionally Abused Spying Powers Multiple Times

Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. 

Some National Security Agency analysts deliberately ignored restrictions on their authority to spy on Americans multiple times in the past decade, contradicting Obama administration officials’ and lawmakers’ statements that no willful violations occurred.

“Over the past decade, very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities have been found,” the NSA said in a statement to Bloomberg News. “NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and cooperates fully with any investigations -- responding as appropriate. NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities.”

The incidents, chronicled in a new report by the NSA’s inspector general, provide more evidence that U.S. agencies sometimes have violated legal and administrative restrictions on domestic spying, and may add to the pressure to bolster laws that govern intelligence activities. Read more >>

Walmart Threatens To Pull Out Of D.C. Over Minimum Wage

On Tuesday afternoon, Walmart officials, lobbyists, and an upper executive paid a visit to the Washington D.C. Council. What could bring out the muscle of the world's largest retailer? The prospect of a raised minimum wage.

As The Washington Post reports, D.C. Council members are voting Wednesday on a bill that would demand mega-retailers pay their employees at least $12.50 an hour, with Walmart the clear target.

Walmart, which pays its hourly associates an average of $8.84 an hour, according to Glassdoor, threatened to stop at least three of the six planned Walmart stores from opening in the city if the bill succeeded, forcing the council to decide: Are no new Walmart jobs better than poorly paid ones?

In a Post op-ed published Tuesday, Walmart regional general manager Alex Barron called the bill "an eleventh-hour effort" that is "arbitrary and discriminatory" and "discourages investment in Washington."

Update, 07/10/13, 5.50 p.m. EDT: The city council passed the bill by a vote of 8 to 5. It is now headed to the desk of the mayor, who has indicated that he may veto it.

The ultimatum was "immensely discouraging," Mayor Vincent C. Gray told the Post, since six new stores -- three of them already under construction -- that Walmart is planning would employ 1,800 people, bringing needed jobs, cash, affordable retail, and fresh produce to the capital's poorer neighborhoods. Barron said even the three stores underway could be scrapped if the bill becomes law, pending a review of "financial and legal implications." Read more >>

Revealed: Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

*Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism 
*Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch
*Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls
*Company says it is legally compelled to comply

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month. Read more >>

Majority Views NSA Phone Tracking as Acceptable Anti-terror Tactic

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

― Mark Twain


A majority of Americans – 56% – say the National Security Agency’s (NSA) program tracking the telephone records of millions of Americans is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism, though a substantial minority – 41% – say it is unacceptable. And while the public is more evenly divided over the government’s monitoring of email and other online activities to prevent possible terrorism, these views are largely unchanged since 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, conducted June 6-9 among 1,004 adults, finds no indications that last week’s revelations of the government’s collection of phone records and internet data have altered fundamental public views about the tradeoff between investigating possible terrorism and protecting personal privacy.

Currently 62% say it is more important for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy. Just 34% say it is more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats.

These opinions have changed little since an ABC News/Washington Post survey in January 2006. Currently, there are only modest partisan differences in these opinions: 69% of Democrats say it is more important for the government to investigate terrorist threats, even at the expense of personal privacy, as do 62% of Republicans and 59% of independents. Read more >>

America's largest companies are collaborating with the biggest GOVT spying operation in history

Headquarters of the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. 

The disclosures involving this (and the prior) administration's Big Brother surveillance state, which would make Nixon blush with envy are now coming fast and furious (one wonders - why now: even that bastion of liberalism the NY Times, has turned against Obama).

Although while the Guardian's overnight news that Verizon (and most certainly AT&T as well among others) was cooperating with the NSA on spying on US citizens, so far at least the internet seemed, if only to the great unwashed masses, immune.

That is no longer the case following news from the WaPo exposing PRISM, a highly classified program, which has not been disclosed publicly before. "Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy."

What PRISM does is to allow the NSA and the FBI to tap directly "into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time." Read more >>

IRS targeted groups that criticized the government

At various points over the past two years, Internal Revenue Service officials targeted nonprofit groups that criticized the government and sought to educate Americans about the U.S. Constitution, according to documents in an audit conducted by the agency’s inspector general.

The documents, obtained by The Washington Post  from a congressional aide with knowledge of the findings, show that on June 29, 2011, IRS staffers held a briefing with senior agency official Lois G. Lerner in which they described giving special attention to instances where “statements in the case file criticize how the country is being run.” Lerner, who  oversees tax-exempt groups for the agency, raised objections and the agency revised its criteria a week later.

But six months later, the IRS applied a new political test to groups that applied for tax-exempt status as “social welfare” groups, the document says. On Jan. 15, 2012 the agency decided to target “political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, social economic reform movement.,” according to the appendix in the IG report, which was requested by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has yet to be released. Read more >>

House Republicans Unanimously Vote Down Minimum Wage Increase

House Republicans voted unanimously against raising the federal minimum wage Friday.

A proposal by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour over the next two years and increase the wage for tipped employees to 70 percent of the minimum wage was defeated, with every House Republican voting against the motion. On the Democratic side, six lawmakers voted against the measure, and 184 Democrats voted for it.

Miller's proposal was more than a dollar higher than what President Barack Obama proposed during his State of the Union address in February. Obama said in his speech that Congress and the White House should work to "raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour."

The proposal by Miller was offered as an amendment to the SKILLS Act, which Republicans in the House passed Friday afternoon, over strong Democratic opposition. According to the Washington Post, the act will eliminate or consolidate 35 federal programs and create a Workforce Investment Fund to help those searching for a job acquire the skills needed in the workforce. In his State of the Union, Obama said that he hoped to "cut through the maze of confusing training programs," but the White House said it opposes the House bill, the Post reports. House Democrats argued that the bill eliminates programs for veterans, the disabled, and other groups, and voted overwhelmingly against it. The bill now goes to the Senate. Read more >>

Virginia Wants to Mint Its Own Coins

Virginia is apparently for haters of the Federal Reserve: One state legislator wants the state to mint its own coins in case the US dollar collapses. It may sound pie-in-the-sky, but Virginia's House of Delegates agreed yesterday to set up a $17,000 panel to explore the move, reports the Washington Post. The Virginian-Pilot sees the measure by Republican Bob Marshall as a "conservative shout-out," but Marshall insists he's serious.

“We can’t mint money, but we can mint gold and silver coins,” he explained previously, reports NBC News. “It sounds like a small difference, but it is a difference legally. If you look closely on a [dollar] bill, it doesn’t say that it’s money. It says it is legal tender ‘for all debts, public and private.’” What's more, Virginia isn't alone in considering the notes, reports CNN. Here's the nitty-gritty of Marshall's bill.

Source

Big Brother, Kill Lists, and Secrecy: What to Expect From Obama’s Second Term

Following Barack Obama’s significant electoral victory, the ways in which the President will interpret his new “mandate” are still very much up for debate. While pundits, many of whom got the election seriously wrong, fumble to come up with new predictions, an analysis of Obama’s track record and statements on national security policy can be quite illuminating.

Two momentous stories of the past few weeks can help us evaluate current and future prospects for our Constitutional rights, a year after Osama bin Laden’s death and a decade after 9/11. One grim harbinger of what’s to continue: a nighttime drone strike in Yemen that killed three “al-Qaida militants” was carried out within 24 hours of Obama’s victory speech.

But even more important was the bombshell story that appeared in the Washington Post on October 23, revealing the existence of a new database within the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) that will list suspected terrorists and militants slated for extrajudicial assassination.

The article details the creation of a “next-generation targeting list called the ‘disposition matrix’” which “contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled” to kill them, including the ability to map “plans for the ‘disposition’ of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.” Read more >>

Drinking water in 35 American cities contains large amounts of likely carcinogen

Image via WikipediaA US environmental group has found that drinking water in 35 American cities contains hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The study by the Environmental Working Group -- the first nationwide analysis measuring the presence of the chemical in US water systems -- is to be made public on Monday, the daily reported.

The group found hexavalent chromium in the tap water of 31 out of 35 cities sampled. Of those, 25 had levels that exceeded the goal proposed in California, which has been trying aggressively to reduce the chemical in its water supply.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to set a limit for hexavalent chromium in tap water. The agency is reviewing the chemical after the National Institutes of Health, deemed it a "probable carcinogen" in 2008.

Hexavalent chromium has long been known to cause lung cancer when inhaled, and scientists recently found evidence that it causes cancer in laboratory animals when ingested. It has been linked in animals to liver and kidney damage as well as leukemia, stomach cancer and other cancers. More...

FBI building a database with names of those merely acting suspiciously

Image by The Girl 78 via FlickrMonitoring America
Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.

The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.

Other democracies - Britain and Israel, to name two - are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.

This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger Top Secret America created since the attacks. In July, The Washington Post described an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it. More...

BP: Pressure only rose to "about 6,700 psi"

"...the pressure rose to about 6,700 psi". And who knows if we can even believe that!

Washington's Blog

Initial Results from Well Integrity Test Are Inconclusive
As Coast Guard admiral Thad Allen has explained, sustained pressure readings above 8,000 pounds per square inch (psi) would show that the wellbore is more or less intact, while pressures of 6,000 psi or less would mean there could be major problems:

We are looking for somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 PSI inside the capping stack, which would indicate to us that the hydrocarbons are being forced up and the wellbores are being able to withstand that pressure. And that is good news.

If we are down around in the 4,000 to 5,000, 6,000 range that could potentially tell us that the hydrocarbons are being diverted someplace else, and we would have to try and assess the implications of that. And as you might imagine, there are gradations as you go up from 4,000 or 5,000 PSI up to 8,000 or 9,000. …

We will at some point try to get to 8,000 or 9,000 and sustain that for some period of time, and these will be done basically, as I said — if we have a very low pressure reading, we will try and need (ph) at least six hours of those readings to try to ensure that that is the reading. If it’s a little higher, we want to go for 24 hours. And if it’s up at 8,000 or 9,000, we would like to go 48 hours just to make sure it can sustain those pressures for that amount of time.

The former director of Sandia National Laboratories says the pressure readings so far have been ambiguous.

As the Washington Post points out:

The initial pressure readings are in an ambiguous range, and officials will have to make a difficult judgment call on whether to keep the well shut in or reopen it, according to Tom Hunter, retired director of the Sandia National Laboratories and a member of the federal government’s scientific team overseeing the test.

“If it were a lot higher, it would be an easier decision to make,” Hunter said.

***

Hunter, who witnessed the test from BP’s war room in Houston, told The Washington Post that the pressure rose to about 6,700 psi and appeared likely to level out “closer to 7,000.” He said one possibility is that the reservoir has lost pressure as it has depleted itself the past three months.

“It’s just premature to tell. We just don’t know whether something is leaking or not,” Hunter said.

We will need to wait another 24 hours or so – and engineers will have to continue monitoring sonar and visual images (both help determine if any oil is leaking from the seafloor), and seismic data (to determine if there are any new leaks below the seafloor) – before engineers can determine how stable the well is.

Democrats covet Americans' pensions in stealth

Image by Silvio Sousa Cabral via Flickr

investors.com
Democrats have obliquely admitted they covet Americans' pensions. Last week, congressional Republicans told them to stay away. The shame is that they had to do anything at all.

The first rumblings were heard in the 1990s, when Democrats were said to be coming after our retirement accounts. Back then, the warnings were easy to pass off as hyperbole or a cranky conspiracy theory. Today, they pass as prescient.

In January, Bloomberg reported the "U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and individual retirement accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry."

Alarms went off. In February, former House Speaker New Gingrich and policy analyst Peter Ferrara warned in our "On The Right" column that "Washington is developing plans for your retirement savings."

"The idea," they said, "is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.

"They will tell you that you are 'investing' your money. ... But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds."

Last week, Connie Hair wrote the following in Human Events about the Annual Report of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class released in February:

"The radical solution most favored by Big Labor is the seizure of private 401(k) plans for government disbursement — which lets them off the hook for their collapsing retirement scheme. And, of course, the Obama administration is eager to accommodate their buddies."

Hair says a "backdoor bull's-eye is on your 401(k) plan and trillions of dollars the government would control through seizure, regulation and federal disbursement of mandatory retirement accounts."

Republican lawmakers are taking the threat seriously. They have expressed to the administration through a letter their "strong opposition to any proposal to eliminate or federalize private-sector defined contribution pension plans." These congressmen know that among their Beltway brethren there exists an eagerness to "essentially dismantle the present private-sector 401(k) system, replacing it instead with a government-run investment plan."

This isn't the first time Democrats have eyed Americans' retirements. In 1993 the Washington Post reported that the Clinton administration considered an "unprecedented effort by the federal government to deal with its budget woes by turning to the more than $4 trillion in cash, stocks and other investments held by pension funds."

They made another pass in 2008, when Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research who was invited by Democrats to testify, brought the idea of government "guaranteed retirement accounts" to the House subcommittee on income security and family support. Such accounts would be administered by the Social Security Administration. "Contributions" would be required and the payout would be a lean 3%.

Ghilarducci didn't suggest that 401(k)s be eliminated, but she didn't have to. She supports removing the favorable tax treatment they receive, which would virtually destroy their reason to exist.

To close the loop, we refer back to the White House's middle-class task force report. It mentions guaranteed retirement accounts as a way to "give workers a simple way to invest a portion of their retirement savings in an account that was free of inflation and market risk and, in some versions under discussion, would guarantee a specified real return above the rate of inflation."

Or, as Gingrich and Ferrara say, the government would treat ostensibly private retirement savings the same negligent way it's treated Social Security. Let's not forget: The courts have ruled that Washington isn't obligated to pay back a dime it's seized from paychecks to fund Social Security.

Don't think Washington would never wreck private pensions in the name of the collective good. It happened in Argentina, and if the same group that's determined to take over the U.S. health care system stays in power long enough, it could happen here.

Behind closed doors, AIG employees have contempt for taxpayers

Transcript reveals anger of AIG employees toward politicians, public
Brady Dennis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 4, 2010; A16

During the national furor that erupted last year after American International Group paid more than $165 million in bonuses, the voices of those vilified for receiving the payments remained silent, at least in public.

But behind closed doors, employees at AIG's Financial Products division -- the very unit whose trading had hastened the insurance giant's collapse -- were defiant, saying they were merely getting what they were due, recoiling at public accusations that they were behind their capitalizing on the company's massive taxpayer bailout.

"I will stand behind every action I have taken in this company from Day One," one employee said, according to a newly obtained transcript of a conference call the division's head held last March with some of his staff.

But when another employee asked whether the staff would be getting a second round of bonuses promised for March 2010, his colleagues burst into laughter, apparently considering this a preposterous notion amid the public outrage.

Yet they did see that money, at least most of it. Last month, under a deal in which employees agreed to take a cut in their upcoming retention bonuses in return for an accelerated payment, AIG paid out about $100 million to employees at the firm. AIG is scheduled to pay the last of the bonuses this month.

Even so, neither time nor money has softened the employees' feelings of wrongful persecution and their anger over becoming the subjects of scorn and ridicule. Seldom was that sense of victimhood more clear or more visceral than in the conference call of March 23, 2009.

Gerry Pasciucco, who had been hired to wind down Financial Products after the AIG bailout, was in Wilton, Conn., broadcasting his image and his voice to shaken, frustrated and furious employees in London, Paris and Hong Kong. Pasciucco quickly encountered a buzz saw of complaints over demands that they forgo the bonuses they were due. Emotions were running especially high in the London boardroom, where scores of staffers had gathered around a large table.

"I think it violates everything I believe in, and it's un-American," one employee said that day, according to the transcript of the call.

"This country is supposed to stand on due process," said another. The names of the staff members were redacted from the transcript obtained by The Washington Post.
'Missing the point'

The employees said that the corporate leaders who had driven the firm into the ground were already gone from the company. Those who had remained behind to help clean up the mess and repay the taxpayer bailout were due their compensation, they told Pasciucco.

"You made a commitment to us, and we made a commitment to you. And for anybody to look beyond that, as the politics and the media are at the moment, is missing the point," said an employee. "You can't expect us to just roll over and ignore that commitment because there is a bunch of immoral bigots that intend us to do something different. It's not going to happen."

Another was even more irate, lashing out at the public for scapegoating AIG employees. "To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved."

And then he turned on politicians who had joined the anti-AIG posse. "They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, none of us cares about the institution," he said, adding: "They really don't care, and I really don't care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine."

The AIG retention bonuses have rankled many in the public because the company has received a federal rescue package of about $180 billion in loans, stock investments and other commitments from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department. Closing down AIG Financial Products' trading portfolio has been vital to stemming further losses and repaying the public money.

As the employees were confronting Pasciucco last spring, lawmakers in Washington were contemplating a 90 percent tax on the bonus payments. AIG's chief executive, Edward M. Liddy, had been berated on Capitol Hill. Employees had received anonymous threats, some violent.
'Is this blackmail?'

Pasciucco wanted to assuage their angst that day. But he also had another goal: persuading them to return 50 percent of the bonus money in hopes that New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo would not make their names public, as he was threatening. Employees fumed, accusing Cuomo of "blackmail" and "extortion." They complained that they were being forced to pay "protection money."

"Is this blackmail? To a certain extent, it is," Pasciucco told employees that morning. "If the only reason you would give money back is because you are afraid for your family and you are afraid for your safety, then it is."

He agreed that the manner in which some Washington officials had responded to the furor was despicable. "I think it's distasteful. It's unfair. It's unjust. I agree with you, it's not American. It is McCarthy-ite. . . . It will be viewed as a horribly dark period."

Still, he tried to offer a dose of realism. The retention payments might have been guaranteed by contract, he said, but Financial Products had made bad bets that cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Although the decision to return part of their money was voluntary, he said, such a pledge might help employees defuse some of the public anger.

"I am not laying this out that it's the right, moral thing to do, but I am telling you that you are naive if you think that you can ignore the political reality around this as you make your decision," he said, adding: "I am just going to caution you that if you are not lionized and . . . garlands of roses are not put around your shoulders, you shouldn't be surprised."

Fourth Generation war on American soil

Image via Wikipedia

William S. Lind
One of the ongoing themes of this column has been gangs and the role they play in a Fourth Generation world. Here in the United States they already serve as an alternative primary loyalty (alternative to the state) for many urban young men. Gangs will likely be a major player in 4GW because gang members are expected to fight. Those who won’t do not remain gang members.

The November 15 Washington Post had a story about gangs in Salinas, California, that deserves close attention from 4GW theorists. Salinas is reportedly overrun with Hispanic gangs. The Post wrote that its homicide rate is three times that of Los Angeles. It quoted a Salinas police officer, Sgt. Mark Lazzarini, on one of the classic results of state breakdown, chaos:

“Only half of our gangs are structured; the Norteños,” he said. “The southerners are completely unstructured. Half of our violence is kids who get into a car and go out and hunt. These kids don’t know their victims. How do you stop that? It’s very chaotic.”

Salinas’s new slogan might be, “Salinas: where even the lettuce has tattoos.”

But what is interesting in the Post’s article is not the gangs themselves. It is a new response to the gangs. Salinas has brought in the U.S. military to apply counter-insurgency doctrine to a situation on American soil. The Post reports that:

Since February combat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan have been advising Salinas police on counterinsurgency doctrine, bringing lessons from the battlefield to the meanest streets in an American city…

“It’s a little laboratory,” said retired Col. Hy Rothstein, the former Army career officer in Special Forces who heads the team of 15 faculty members and students (from the Naval Postgraduate School), mostly naval officers…

Rothstein…notes the “significant overlap with how you deal with insurgencies and how you deal with cities that are under siege from gangs.”…

Leonard A. Ferrari, provost of the naval Postgraduate School, embraced the project from the start, hearing…an opportunity for a school “in transition from just a defense institution to a national homeland and even a human security institution.”…

“The idea was, not just Salinas,” Ferrari said, “but is there a national model for this”

From the perspective of 4GW theory, this is an important development. The Naval Postgraduate School is a DOD institution, part of the U.S. government. Its involvement in Salinas marks the federal government’s formal recognition of Fourth Generation war on American soil, and the need for a “national model” to counteract it. If we must involve the U.S. military to lead counterinsurgency efforts in American cities, then it is difficult to deny that we face something like insurgencies in those same cities. Again, the significance is that this is now formally admitted by the U.S. government, not merely noted by “outside the beltway” observers of 4GW.

The U.S. military officers advising Salinas on how to wage an anti-gang counterinsurgency are doing so as volunteers, according to the Post, to avoid Constitutional issues. But the camel’s nose is obviously inside the tent. Many wars have begun by sending “volunteers.” If, as likely, the volunteers prove insufficient, regular troops will follow.

As someone who believes in a strictly limited federal government, the government envisioned by our Founders, I find this troubling. But from a 4GW perspective, I also know it is inevitable. As I have said time and again, the main Fourth Generation threat we will face will be on our own soil, not halfway around the world, where we are currently pouring our strength out into the sand. We will come to regret that waste bitterly.

Objectively, what the Washington Post has reported is a milestone, to be neither praised nor regretted but merely noted. It denotes another step toward 4GW here at home. It is a step we cannot avoid. As both imported and domestically-generated Fourth Generation entities ramp up their warfare on American soil, the U.S. military will be drawn in. As is the case in 4GW overseas, it will probably fail. Old Uncle Karl was right: the state will wither away. But what follows will not be communism. It will be chaos.

Note: Regrettably, the d-n-i website, which had become the worldwide “go to” forum on 4GW, is shutting down. It is a major loss. Fortunately, John Robb has agreed to carry all my columns on his website, Global Guerrillas. All my archived columns will also be moved there from d-n-i, as will the important K.u.K Austro-Hungarian field manuals on Fourth Generation war.

More than 30 lawmakers in House investigated: leaked report

Nearly half the members of a House panel in control of Pentagon spending are facing a probe by Congressional ethics investigators, the Washington Post reported.

The revelations came in a cyber-hacked confidential report leaked to the newspaper and reported in its Web site.

Two House ethics offices are probing whether Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, and six other lawmakers funneled millions in federal funds to clients of an influential lobbying firm in exchange for campaign contributions, the paper reported.

The lobbying outfit, PMA Group, founded by a former Capitol Hill aide, has been under criminal investigation by the Justice Department, the newspaper said.

Details of the House ethics probes were contained in a confidential House report prepared in July that indicated more than 30 lawmakers and several aides are under scrutiny in probes of defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling.

Members of the ethics committee and their staffs sign oaths not to disclose details of past or present investigations. But the 22-page report was accidentally released by a low-level staffer who was working from home via a file-sharing network, committee chairman Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Cal.) told The Post.

The staff member was fired, Lofgren said.

"No inference to any misconduct can be made from the fact that a matter is simply before the committee," Lofgren said.

Besides Murtha, two lawmakers previously identified in the inquiry, Reps. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.) and James Moran (D-Va.), were named in the report.

Also named were: Reps. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), Marcy Kaptur, (D-Ohio), C.W. (Bill) Young (R-Fla.), and Todd Tiahrt, (R-Kan.). The committee has not issued a formal announcement that they are under investigation.

The committee, which announces when it begins a formal investigation, said it is probing whether Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cal.) used her influence to help a bank in which her husband owned stock.

Separately, the panel is also investigating whether Rep. Laura Richardson failed to disclose required information on her financial disclosure forms and received special treatment from a lender.

Waters, third highest ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee and chairwoman of its subcommittee on housing, came under scrutiny after former Treasury Department officials said she helped arrange a meeting between regulators and executives at One United Bank last year without mentioning husband Sidney William's financial ties to the institution.

Williams, holds at least $250,000 in the bank's stock and previously had served on its board. Waters' spokesman, Michael Levin, said Williams was no longer on the board when the meeting was arranged.

The committee's probe of Richardson will determine if she violated House rules by failing to disclose property, income and liabilities on her financial disclosure forms.

The committee is also looking into whether she received an impermissible gift or preferential treatment from a lender, "relating to the foreclosure, recession of the foreclosure sale or loan modification agreement" for her property in Sacramento.

Richardson said she has been subjected to "premature judgments, speculation and baseless distractions that will finally be addressed in a fair, unbiased, bipartisan evaluation of the facts."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/10/30/2009-10-30_congressional_defense_appropriations_panel_rocked_by_ethics_probe_leaked_by_hack.html#ixzz0VQoJ8PQI

The end of the newspaper business

The Media Death Spiral

The circulation figures for the top 25 dailies in the US are out, and they're horrifying. The median decline is well into the teens; only the Wall Street Journal gained (very slightly).

I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren't there. At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . .

For twenty years, newspapers have been trying to slow the process with increasingly desperate cost cutting, but almost all are at the end of that rope; they can't cut their newsroom or production staff any further and still put out a newspaper. There just aren't enough customers who are willing to pay for their product what it costs to produce it.

The numbers seem to confirm something I've thought for a while: we're eventually going to end up with a few national papers, a la Britain, rather than local dailies. The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the New York Times (sorry, conservatives!) are weathering the downturn better than most, and it's not surprising: business, politics, and national upper-middlebrow culture. But in 25 years, will any of them still be printing their product on the pulped up remains of dead trees? It doesn't seem all that likely.

I met a freelancer this weekend who is doing all the things that most journalists did to get where they are, writing on the margins of the news business in the hopes of getting up enough of a portfolio to worm her way into the center. I wanted to give her hope . . . but the fact is, at the center there are now more existing journalists than jobs for them, meaning the outsiders have very little chance.

Maybe there will be jobs, online. But if so, more web outfits are going to have to get into the habit of paying salaries that will support an adult middle-class life. Right now, a lot of web outfits tend to churn through twenty-somethings who are also building their resumes . . . but I'm not sure how well this works in a world where a job churning out blog copy for pennies a word is the last stop in a journalistic career, rather than the first.

Peace Prize Winner Obama to Send 45,000 More Troops to Afghanistan

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

WAR IS PEACE

The BBC is reporting that the Obama administration has told British officials that it will announce a "substantial increase" in U.S. forces for Afghanistan.

The report, attributed to British sources, follows today's announcement that 500 additional British troops would be sent to Afghanistan if certain conditions are met.

According to the BBC's Newsnight program, "the US could next week announce plans to send up to 45,000 extra servicemen and women."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the report, saying President Obama has made no final decision on troop numbers.

Earlier today, Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged more troops on the condition that Afghan President Hamid Karzai reduce corruption and improve his government's performance, and if they have the necessary equipment, if other NATO allies also bolster their forces and if more Afghan soldiers are trained. About 9,000 U.K. personnel are in Afghanistan now.

On Tuesday, AFP reported:

In an unannounced move, President Barack Obama is dispatching an additional 13,000 US troops to Afghanistan beyond the 21,000 he announced publicly in March, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The additional forces are primarily support forces -- such as engineers, medical personnel, intelligence experts and military police -- the Post said, bringing the total buildup Obama has approved for the war-torn nation to 34,000.

"Obama authorized the whole thing. The only thing you saw announced in a press release was the 21,000," a defense official familiar with the troop-approval process told the daily.

The report, posted on the newspaper's website late Monday, came as Obama weighs a request from the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for more combat, training and support troops, with several options including one for 40,000 more forces.