A. Loewenstein Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

Head of Israel’s biggest “peace group” happy to protect colonies

Posted: 06 Oct 2011

If more evidence was needed of the moral collapse of the mainstream Israeli “peace movement”, this is it. The fact that the Israeli government would honour the group Peace Now is bad enough but the quotes from its leader are highly revealing, and depressing:

The Peace Now movement has recently received a certificate of merit from Defense Minister Ehud Barakfor its support of reserve soldiers.

The certificate was personally signed by Barak and Chief Reserve Officer Brigadier General Shuki Ben-Anat. “For your activity and care for employees serving in reserve duty. Your activity is commendable and greatly contributes to the IDF’s fortitude and the State of Israel’s security.”

The certificate was issued as part of a competition which honors organizations, businesses and companies whose workers serve as reservists and are supported in this by their workplace.

Peace Now Secretary-General said in response: “Each year I get to visit the territories as a combat reserve soldier despite the difficulty in following disputable orders such as guarding settlements or outposts, working in checkpoints and conducting tours in the West Bank.

“I believe than in a democratic country, the government makes the decision and as I am willing to guard settlements with my body I expect soldiers by my side to help in future evacuations.

He added: “The Right is trying to incite against the Left and take ownership of patriotism and loyalty to the State. A loyal citizen is a person who is willing to fight for the state’s future and work towards changing reality. I am glad about receiving the certificate but as far as Peace Now is concerned reserve duty is obvious and not anything out of the ordinary.”

Obama’s Wikileaks executive order that guarantees more secrecy

Posted: 06 Oct 2011

A government that truly believes in transparency would behave in the opposite way, reducing the increasingly secretive nature of officialdom. Obama fail:

By executive order, President Obama will instruct federal agencies today to better safeguard their classified secrets, to set up internal audit systems, and to make sure that reluctance to share critical intelligence in the aftermath of the Wikileaks exposure does not hamper collaboration across agencies.

The so-called “Wikileaks” executive order has been long awaited by the national security establishment and by the privacy and civil liberties communities. It was provided by the White House to National Journal. The order creates a government-wide steering committee to create and assess information sharing policies across the government, as well as a mechanism to determine whether internal auditing procedures work properly.

PFC. Bradley Manning, who the government believes provided Wikileaks with most of the classified cables and reports it released, was able to access State Department cables that were not germane to his work as a forward-deployed intelligence analyst in Iraq without being detected.

A new Insider Threat Task Force led by the Attorney General will develop a government-wide strategy to see whether agencies that handle classified information can weed out the malcontents and people whose behavior suggests they cannot handle sensitive information appropriately.

The result will be a beefing up of federal counter-intelligence programs.

The intelligence community has worried about an over-reaction, reasoning that analysts who want more access to classified information to solve a problem will second-guess their own efforts because they don’t want to trigger an investigation. The order does not specify how agencies ought to strike this balance, but suggests that each agency should establish policies that incorporate their own internal cultures, bearing in mind that the larger goal is to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

Obama’s executive order makes agencies primarily responsible for the information they obtain and share.

It also creates a Classified Information Sharing and Safeguarding Office to develop institutional knowledge about best practices across the government. This office will provide staff for the inter-agency steering committee, according to a White House fact sheet.

The executive order is the result of several months worth of a deliberation by a high-level task force formed after of the Wikileaks disclosure. The government has taken several steps to prevent Wikileaks-like incidents from happening again, including limiting the number of people with access to removable flash drives in classified environments and commencing a government-wide survey of existing internal auditing procedures.

Just how many private security forces will remain in Iraq?

Posted: 06 Oct 2011

Feral Jundi explains:

What is interesting about this is that DoS has been getting some pressure from folks in Congress as to how many security contractors will be on the ground in Iraq in the near future. So this number is coming directly from DoS as a projection for 2012. That number is 5,000 security contractors, which is the equivalent to a brigade in the military. Although that number does not include the logistics folks and other contractor types in country, but at least this gives some perspective as to the size of just the security element.

Now of course this is not new if anyone has been following along. June of last year, State said they would need between 6,000 and 7,000 security contractors for Iraq.  And I guess if you were to add the requirements of the OSC, 5,000 would be modified to be closer to the 6,000 figure. But who knows, and those numbers are not out there yet.

This is also significant, because our industry is giving State the ability to safely operate and perform their duties in Iraq. The troops are going to be gone, and instead of the Marines being ‘last out’, it will be contractors. lol (the Marine in me is not laughing though…lol)