Report: US military too reliant on foreign suppliers

DAYTON, Ohio — A new report said urgent action should be taken to reduce the U.S. military’s dependence on foreign suppliers for raw materials, parts, and finished products needed to defend the nation.

“Remaking American Security: Supply Chain Vulnerabilities & National Security Risks Across the U.S. Defense Industrial Base,” was authored by retired Brigadier Gen. John Adams and commissioned and funded by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a domestic industry advocacy group that’s a partnership between U.S. manufacturers and the United Steelworkers union.

Considering Containment — Report coauthored by former Obama aide suggests containment must be considered

When a country goes nuclear, there is almost no way to contain it. The solution is prevention, and during the last five years weak foreign policy towards Iran hasn’t worked. To see what ‘containment’ of Iran would be like, take a look at how contained North Korea is.

Unlike Kim Jong Un, Ahmadinejad likely wouldn’t hesitate pulling the trigger on Israel, either. They don’t care about losing lives, let alone the entire country from repercussusions, so long as the Mahdi’s return can be quickened.

In hindsight, the Obama administration is, by design, intentionally giving them a free pass under the guise of ignorance — as you don’t make 1000 mistakes in a row and get to be called ignorant. Regardless of what Kahl says, this is an act of counsel and endorsement of containment.

One of the Obama administration’s most senior former Middle East officials says in a report released Monday that the United States needs to develop a plan to contain Iran should it develop a nuclear weapon.

Colin Kahl, who served as Obama’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East until December 2011 when he transitioned to the president’s reelection campaign, writes in a new report that “if all else fails” the administration could be forced to “shift toward containment [of Iran] regardless of current preferences.”

The Day the Dollar Dies

Twenty-one men representing China’s most powerful institutions file into a conference room atop the icc Tower looming over Victoria Harbor. The Politburo Standing Committee has mustered the ceos of China’s four largest banks, Sinopec, and several other state-owned multinationals, plus officers from the Central Military Commission and a pair of academics from China’s top technology universities.

The general secretary formally opens the meeting. “As you know, the United States of America continues to manipulate its currency,” he begins. “It is devaluing its dollar, which steals away trade and reduces the value of its debts. The Standing Committee manages the yuan’s value to protect our manufacturing base and support employment.”

The secretary leans back ever so slightly to say what everyone in the room already knows, and the reason why they are here. “Three days ago, the Federal Reserve System announced its sixth quantitative easing policy in the past seven years.”

And now, the marching orders.

Germany Snatches Gold from Cyprus

Just when it appeared the news cycle had moved on from Cyprus, the island nation came splashing back yesterday with news from the European Commission: Nicosia will be made to sell around three quarters, or €400 million (US$5.2 million), of its excess gold reserves. (“Excess?” Who has too much gold?)

What’s the big deal? ask some. When a person or nation is in a financial pinch, assets have to be liquidated.

True. But with Cyprus it’s not that simple. From the outset of this crisis, Cyprus has not been in control of its own destiny. Sure, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades was in on most, though apparently not all, of the discussions. Cyprus’s parliament voted on this and that, and ultimately “agreed” to the bailout agreement. But it was all smoke and mirrors. In the end, Cyprus was compelled to agree to a ruinous bailout package created and prescribed by Germany in consort with the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund. Now we learn from the Trioka that as part of the bailout agreement, Cyprus will have to sell the majority of its gold.

The important point to note is that this decision was effectively made by Germany and its ECB/EC/IMF allies, AND NOT CYPRUS.

Pentagon to Buy Russian Helicopters Despite Ban

In what can be considered today’s bizarre news, Washington is buying military helicopters from Russia. “International law” (no such thing) aside, this compromises national security, let alone increases dependency on an enemy nation like the US now does via NASA to bring our astronauts into orbit.

From the state-run (FSB/KGB) propaganda outlet, RIA Novosti:

WASHINGTON, April 4 (By Maria Young for RIA Novosti) – The US Department of Defense said Thursday it plans to sidestep a Congressional ban to purchase 30 helicopters from Russian state-owned defense firm Rosoboronexport, despite objections from US lawmakers who allege that the firm has equipped the Syrian government to commit brutal crimes against civilians.

“The Department of Defense (DOD) has notified Congress of its intent to contract with Rosoboronexport for 30 additional Mi-17 rotary-wing aircraft to support the Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF) Special Mission Wing,” Pentagon spokesman James Gregory told RIA Novosti in emailed comments.

Mexican drug cartels reportedly dispatching agents deep inside US

The cartels have literally controlled parts of Arizona for quite some time now, at least four years now, and have have used these years to flourish and expand northward. If the readership here is interested in learning a bit of history of how this partly came to be, a well-sourced book written years ago, entitled Red Cocaine would be a good place to start. The playbook once used by Mao Zedong to soften the public and set the stage for his “great leap forward” that lead to tens of millions of deaths, is likely being used in the same manner and inside the United States today. As history repeats itself, hopefully it isn’t repeating with this case in point.

Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the U.S. border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world’s most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits.

…

But a wide-ranging Associated Press review of federal court cases and government drug-enforcement data, plus interviews with many top law enforcement officials, indicate the groups have begun deploying agents from their inner circles to the U.S. Cartel operatives are suspected of running drug-distribution networks in at least nine non-border states, often in middle-class suburbs in the Midwest, South and Northeast.

Iran: 2013 Will be ‘Fall of American Empire’

The “American empire” will fall this year, the head of Iran’s Basij forces claimed Sunday, a message that was approved by the Islamic regime’s supreme leader.

“America should not think that with some diplomatic dialogue it can solve its dossier (problem) with the nation of Iran,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi said. “The path of this land is directed by the martyrs. America with its hollow slogans … thinks the Iranian nation will believe it.”

What We Can Learn from Communist Eastern Europe About Contemporary American Life

Double Reality was the situation under Communist rule in which one knew that everything was terrible but was daily  assaulted with the message that everything was wonderful. An important difference between the West today and the Soviet bloc experience from the late 1940s up to 1989 is that we at least can complain without getting hauled off to a reeducation camp.

What we also have in the West, however, is the implementation of a left-wing idea that supposedly applied to democratic capitalist society. The Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse called it “repressive tolerance” while the extreme leftist philologist Noam Chomsky called the other side of the equation, “manufacturing consent.”

In short, for the far left today,which has more power in the United States than ever before and arguably the same point applies (at least in the intellectual sphere) to Western Europe, Marcuse’s concept covers the side of, Let them talk but keep people from listening. The dissenters are ridiculed, their ideas distorted, they are accused of thought crimes, and when possible are ignored completely

China Stealing State Secrets

Benjamin Bishop, a defense contractor with top secret clearance, was arrested on March 15 for passing on state secrets to a 27-year-old Chinese spy. The severe breach in national security shows that beyond losing information via Chinese hackers, more traditional methods of espionage, such as the “honey pot,” are continuing to take their toll.

…

Mr. Bishop was compromised when he met the young woman during a conference on international military defense issues. The name of the woman has not been released, but is referred to as “Person 1.” What is known is that Person 1 was living in Hawaii on a student visa, and was most likely at the military meeting to target people such as Mr. Bishop, who have access to classified information.

The man who turned Iran nuclear

In a rare interview, the man dubbed “the father of Iran’s nuclear programme” tells how the project began under the Shah, who wanted to leave the option for a bomb open.

Now in his 80s, Akhbar Etemad remembers all too clearly the pressure the Americans tried to apply to him when he was head of Iran’s nuclear programme between 1974 and 1978.

Mr Etemad was the president of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation and it was under him that the country’s nuclear project began and flourished.

Tehran: Our commanders now authorized to open fire. Go home, Obama!

According to an authoritative leak, Washington has effectively cancelled the Europe-based missile shield system that was designed to protect that continent and Israel against Iranian ballistic missile attack. The cancellation was part of the plan announced by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week to install 14 additional missile interceptors in California and Alaska to build up United States defenses against a threatened North Korean attack.

Not only has the Obama administration reduced its missile defense commitment to Europe and Israel, debkafile notes that Washington persists in overlooking the tight coordination in tactics and diplomacy on nuclear issues between Pyongyang and Tehran.

Obama intimates US to strike Iran in a year if diplomacy fails

Iran can produce a nuclear weapon in just over a year and diplomatic efforts have just less than that to halt Iran’s drive to the bomb, US President Barack Obama said Thursday, intimating that should diplomatic efforts fail this year or early next year, America will be forced to carry out military action against Iran.

Contrary to statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the moment of truth concerning Iran’s nuclear program was spring 2013, Obama said that the US estimates that Iran can produce a bomb only in about a year given its current rate of progress.

“There is a window, not an infinite period of time, a window of time where we can resolve this diplomatically,” Obama said. ”Right now we think that it would take over a year or so for Iran to actually develop a nuclear weapon, but we obviously don’t want to cut it too close.”