Category: Professor's Classroom

What Does It Take For A Security Clearance?

The major story a few weeks ago was the War Department leak and the arrest of a National Guardsman for that leak.

Apparently the War Department is using its clout with the MSM to have the story slowly die and be replaced with nonsense like the Correspondents Party.

Many have asked just how could this part-time soldier have access to such sensitive info and how did he get a security clearance?

I am glad you asked.

Jack Teixeira, 21, had a top-secret security clearance which gave him access to sensitive and highly classified government documents. The case has prompted questions about the clearance process and the subsequent red flags that seem to have gone unnoticed after it was granted.

In 2018, a year before he joined the Massachusetts Air National Guard, Mr Teixeira was suspended from high school after being overheard making threats and discussing weapons.

The same year, he made an application for a firearms identification card which was denied over police concerns about his remarks.

Neither incident prevented him from passing the background checks needed to get security clearance for his job as an IT specialist in an intelligence unit.

In the US, security clearances are issued by a wide array of government agencies ranging from the CIA to the Department of Energy. The vast majority are issued by the defence department, according to ClearanceJobs.com, a job portal focused on government jobs that require clearances.

Most agencies have four main levels of security clearance: confidential, secret, top-secret, and “sensitive compartmented information”, which has been called “above top secret”, and can include material from intelligence sources.

The process of obtaining a security clearance begins with a suitability check to determine eligibility for the job, and applicants then have to fill in an exhaustive form. Standard Form 86, or SF86, includes personal data such as education and employment history, details of family and associates, and foreign travel and connections. It also asks about criminal history, military service, and financial issues.

…..read on….

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65415971

Personally I think there are too many ‘security consultants’ with access to sensitive info….this will not stop the abuse and as long as there are more ‘consultants’ than military it will continue to be a problem.

And the beat goes on.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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The Long Peace

The war ended in1945 with the defeat of the axis powers…..and Europe entered into an age of reconstruction and a long peace(?).

Then there is Asia.

Japan surrendered after the US dropped 2 nukes on their homeland….unfortunately Asia did not have the same reaction to the end of the war.

Violence erupted everywhere….China, Vietnam, Indonesia so on and so on….But why was there little peace in the Far East?

And yes this is one of those historical perspectives that I have become famous for throwing at my readers.

Decolonisation is one reason for the eruption of violence across the Asian continent. The outbreak of civil wars from the ruins of the Second World War was another historical phenomenon that contributed to the instability of the region, as local actors sought to take advantage of the changes in the balance of power on the ground to build new postcolonial states to their liking. Ho Chi Minh and his Communist Party may have defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu, but they also attacked non-communist nationalists who had rejected their right to rule an independent – communist – Vietnam. If the communists dominated their Vietnamese adversaries during the First Indochina War, in Indonesia a series of violent civil clashes saw the non-communist Republicans led by Sukarno vanquish their communist competitors. The Chinese civil war is another example that Spector analyses: civil and national wars of liberation continued across Asia beyond 1945, something that Europe did not encounter (with the important exception of Greece).

The Cold War did much to spread violence across the Asian continent. The key moment was the victory of the Chinese communists over the nationalists in 1949, prompting American efforts to contain the potential Sino-Soviet threat to the region. Contesting ideologies were part of the problem. So were security concerns. The spectre of the Japanese march across the Pacific in 1941-42 was never far from American minds. But the same was true for Mao, who feared the possibility of another hostile invasion coming from the sea. Spector deftly shows how, between 1950 and 1954, the Americans and the Chinese clashed directly in Korea and indirectly in Vietnam, entangling their struggles for ideological influence and national security with the civil and colonial wars that had been brewing across the continent for years.

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/review/fight

Some of the problems the US is having in Asia these days can be traced back to the end of World War 2…..

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World War Two Behind The Scenes

I like history but most people deplore the thought of remembering anything they do not understand.

There are many things about this war that few know anything about….basically because because they do not want to know they had rather believe the lopsided stories they have been told.

About the only thing anyone can recall is that ill-fated statement by Chamberlain (a post for another day)

Me? I like to look beyond the popular crap and do a deeper dive.

So were there any efforts to avoid World War 2….beyond that famous statement by Chamberlain…..( I know there will be inevitable condemnation of Chamberlain’s efforts…please don’t)

There are many military historians who are familiar with the battlefield history of World War Two but few know much about the diplomatic history of the war when it comes to peace initiatives, long suppressed by liberal establishment historians, to terminate the war, in many cases years before it ended in actual history, or even prevent it from happening at all. Americans have been indoctrinated to believe since grade school that the war could not have been averted and that our only mistake was not invading and crushing Nazi Germany in its cradle when it was still military inferior and in the process of rebuilding its armed forces following the crushing disarmament constraints of the Treaty of Versailles.

According to the dominant historical narrative, Hitler could not be trusted to keep any of his agreements so any negotiated peace settlement would only delay the inevitable. The only problem with this accepted historical narrative of the war is that none of it is true. These peace offers, which have been largely covered up and/or erased from the annals of history, serve to convincingly rebut the myth that Hitler, an evil dictator who mass murdered five to six million Jews, was undeterrable and unappeasable. They provide convincing evidence that World War Two was, in fact, neither a necessary nor inevitable war to stop a dictator who was bent on nothing less than world conquest as Americans have been taught to believe.

However, the most glaring historical misconception of the war by far, which has since been used to justify numerous wars including an indefinite, unnecessary, destabilizing and incredibly dangerous prolongation of America’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, was that it was Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler with the Munich Agreement that caused the outbreak of World War Two and therefore the chief lesson of the war is that we must never accommodate our adversaries or else they will be emboldened to invade other countries and perhaps start another world war. In fact, it was not the British policy of accommodating Nazi Germany that caused the outbreak of World War Two but rather it was Chamberlain’s decision to abruptly abandon it and issue an ill-considered British military guarantee against a German invasion that Hitler had never previously considered, in view of the fact that Hitler had spent the previous five years trying to cultivate Poland as an ally against the USSR, that resulted in the outbreak of the war.

https://dpyne.substack.com/p/lost-opportunities-for-peace-the

There is always more to any war than what lopsided history has taught…..this includes all wars….including the most recent one that all have very strong opinions about as a bit deluded that they are)

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Reagan’s Assault On Social Security

No news dump for today…Still recovering from the eye injury….Sue has taken my PC and tablet away from me….but she left my phone for me to entertain myself….I hope to be back 100% on Monday….thanx for bearing with me while I get my eye back to normal….I will try to get caught up with my comments then.

As usual the GOP is attacking Social Security every time they have some small amount of power they want to screw the seniors of this country.

But where did all this hatred begin with?

To answer that question easily….it began with Reagan in the 1980s.

In 1983, just before signing legislation that cut Social Security benefits, then-President Ronald Reagan declared that “we’re entering an age when average Americans will live longer and live more productive lives.”

But Reagan’s assumption of ever-rising life expectancy in the U.S. turned out to be false, according to a new analysis, a fact with painful consequences for those who saw their Social Security benefits pared back thanks to the 1983 law’s gradual increase of the full retirement age—the age at which one is eligible for unreduced Social Security payments.

As Conor Smyth wrote Monday for the People’s Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, the Social Security Amendments of 1983 hiked the full retirement age “from 65 in 2000 to 67 at the end of 2022.”

“What this actually meant was not that the age at which people could retire and start drawing Social Security benefits changed—that remained at 62,” Smyth explained. “Instead, by raising what’s called the full retirement age (FRA) by two years, the law effectively cut benefit levels across the board, regardless of the age that any particular individual began claiming Social Security benefits. The result is that those retiring at 62 today face a 50% greater penalty for retiring before the change than they would have before 2000.”

The 1983 law was an outgrowth of a special presidential commission headed by Alan Greenspan, a right-wing economist who would go on to serve as chair of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/reagan-social-security-cuts

This is a perpetual thing….if it is a GOP Congress then seniors benefits are in danger….which is amazing because the GOP’s greatest supporters are those that will suffer the most if they ever fulfill their wish of destroying the Social Security program.

Why is that?

Are these voters uninformed or just ignorant?

Why does anyone vote against their best interests?

Why?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

 

GOP–Where It All Began

There are many opinions running around the internet on the GOP….most of it is all about the party for the last 15 or so years…..but how many have nay damn idea where it all began and why?

That’s right….you are in for some knowledge….I know that is a bad word these days of idiots….there is no such things as bad knowledge just morons that cannot find the time to pull their heads of of their asses to learn something.

The year is 1854…..the place was Ripon, Wisconsin…..

Trying times spawn new forces. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 divided the country at the 36° 30′ parallel between the pro-slavery, agrarian South and anti-slavery, industrial North, creating an uneasy peace which lasted for three decades. This peace was shattered in 1854 by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Settlers would decide if their state would be free or slave. Northern leaders such as Horace Greeley, Salmon Chase and Charles Sumner could not sit back and watch the flood of pro-slavery settlers cross the parallel. A new party was needed.

Where was the party born? Following the publication of the “Appeal of Independent Democrats” in major newspapers, spontaneous demonstrations occurred. In early 1854, the first proto-Republican Party meeting took place in Ripon, Wisconsin. On July 6, 1854 on the outskirts of Jackson, Michigan upwards of 10,000 people turned out for a mass meeting “Under the Oaks.” This led to the first organizing convention in Pittsburgh on February 22, 1856.

The gavel fell to open the party’s first nominating convention, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 17, 1856, announcing the birth of the Republican Party as a unified political force.

The Republican Party name was christened in an editorial written by New York newspaper magnate Horace Greeley. Greeley printed in June 1854: “We should not care much whether those thus united (against slavery) were designated ‘Whig,’ ‘Free Democrat’ or something else; though we think some simple name like ‘Republican’ would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery.”

https://www.ushistory.org/gop/origins.htm

In the beginning the GOP was not all that bad….as late as 1956 their platform was something that even a hard Leftist like me could have supported.

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History’s Evil Women

Women’s History #6

It is women’s history month and most posts are about the accomplishments of women like Rosa Parks, Susan B. Anthony, Gertrude Bell, etc…..but who has ever mentioned those women that were just plain damn evil?

Let me one of the first to bring you the 10 most evil women in history….

Number 10…Mary Queen of Scotland

Mary was the only child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to live past infancy. Crowned after the death of Edward VI and the removal of The Nine Days Queen-Lady Jane Grey, Mary is chiefly remembered for temporarily and violently returning England to Catholicism. Many prominent Protestants were executed for their beliefs leading to the moniker “Bloody Mary.” Fearing the gallows a further 800 Protestants left the country, unable to return until her death. It should be noted that Elizabeth I shares position 10 on this list for her equally bad behavior.

Number 9….Myra Hindley, a murderer….

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were responsible for the “Moors murders” occurring in the Manchester area of Britain from 1963 to 1965. Together these two monsters were responsible for the kidnapping, sexual abuse, torture, and murder of three children under the age of 12 and two teenagers, aged 16 and 17. A key found in Myra’s possession led to incriminating evidence stored at a left-luggage depot at Manchester Central Station. The evidence included a tape recording of one of the murder victims screaming as Hindley and Brady raped and tortured her. In the final days before incarceration, she developed a swagger and arrogant attitude that became her trademark. Police secretary Sandra Wilkinson has never forgotten seeing Hindley and her mother Nellie, leaning against the courthouse eating sweets. While the mother was obviously and understandably upset, Hindley seemed indifferent and uncaring of her situation.

There are more waiting for you to learn about their lives.

https://listverse.com/2007/09/09/top-10-most-evil-women/

This ends my women’s history series….hopefully my readers learned something and will retain what they learned.

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To Arrest A President

Yes more history from the old Professor.

All the blah blah about the possibility of the arrest of an American president, Donald Trump. Many have raised concern because no American president has been arrested so why start a precedent now.   (Personally I think many of them should have been….but that is just me)

There are the so-called Dems that keep going on and on without much thought behind their idiotic ramblings.

All that aside has any president ever been arrested?

Glad you asked….yes there has been one incident.

There is a lot of hullaballoo about whether former President Trump will soon be indicted, but there is one former president who was definitely arrested while in office: Ulysses S. Grant. The crime, per the Washington Post, was born of “Grant’s love of fast horses,” and ended with the arrest of a sitting president by a Black man who had served in his army during the Civil War. The Post cites a 1908 story in the Washington Evening Star in which one since-retired police officer, William H. West, gave a bit of a tell-all about the time in 1872 in which he arrested his former boss. It goes a little like this:

DC cops had been getting complaints of speeding carriages; there had been an accident, and West was investigating when another group of scofflaws sped toward him. He flagged them down, including one man driving “a pair of fast steppers,” per the Star story, which “he had some difficulty in halting.” It was the president, He was less than pleased, asking West, “what do you want with me?” West informed him that he was “violating the law by speeding along this street,” and further had “set an example for a lot of other gentlemen.” Grant made his apologies, said it would never happen again, and was let off with a warning. But the next night, West again busted Grant going so fast that, per the Post, “it took him an entire block to stop.” Grant told West he had no idea he was going so fast.

This time West wasn’t having it. He told the Star that Grant was smiling and looked like a busted schoolkid. West’s quote, which granted is recalling a 36-year-old incident, is thus: “I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it. For you are the chief of the nation, and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest.” And so he did. Grant and some other alleged speeders went down to the DC pokey, and the sitting president of the United States of America had to pony up $20 as collateral. A trial was held for the drivers the next day, and fines and a “scathing rebuke” were issued. But the president, dear readers, was a no-show.

If Trump is arrested he would not be the first.

But that was then and this is now….different times indeed.

So what will all this notoriety do for his possible campaign?

First of all, let’s get the obvious question out of the way: No, the indictment of Donald Trump does not bar him from running for president. In fact, even a conviction likely wouldn’t put the kibosh on his presidential campaign. “There are actually not that many constitutional requirements to run for president,” a law professor explains to the Washington Post. “There is not an explicit prohibition in the Constitution in respects to having a pending indictment or even being convicted.” The Post notes, however, that practically speaking, it could be difficult to run for president and face a criminal trial at the same time.

Do not excited right now.

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Women’s History #5

World War 2 brought the capabilities of women as spies and resistance participants to the forefront…..these brave women were part of the war effort working for a section known as the S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive)….

There numbers were decimated by either incompetent leadership or a spy within the organization….I feel it was a little of both.

But let’s look at the brave women of World War 2……

After France signed an armistice with Germany in June 1940, Great Britain feared the shadow of Nazism would continue to fall over Europe. Dedicated to keeping the French people fighting, Prime Minister Winston Churchill pledged the United Kingdom’s support to the resistance movement. Charged with “set(ting) Europe ablaze,” the Special Operations Executive, or SOE, was born.

Headquartered at 64 Baker Street in London, the SOE’s official purpose was to put British special agents on the ground to “coordinate, inspire, control and assist the nationals of the oppressed countries.” Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton borrowed irregular warfare tactics used by the Irish Republican Army two decades before. The “Baker Street Irregulars,” as they came to be known, were trained in sabotage, small arms, radio and telegraph communication and unarmed combat. SOE agents were also required to be fluent in the language of the nation in which they would be inserted so they could fit into the society seamlessly. If their presence aroused undue suspicion, their missions could well be over before they even began.

Extensive training in resisting interrogation and how to evade capture underscored the gravity of their missions. Fear of the Gestapo was real and well-founded. Some agents hid suicide pills in their coat buttons in case they could not escape. They knew it was unlikely they would see their homes in the British Commonwealth again, but accepted the risk.

Irregular missions required irregular materiel. The SOE Operations and Research section developed unique devices for agents to use in sabotage and close-range combat. Their inventions, including an exploding pen and weapons hidden in everyday objects like umbrellas and pipes, would even inspire Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Operations and Research also developed a foldable bike called the Welbike, but it was unreliable on rough terrain. Most of the groups’ inventions, like waterproof containers that protected agents’ supplies during parachute jumps, were more practical.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Female-Spies-Of-SOE/

I have watched several documentaries on those women and their stories need to be told and told often.

Sadly their contributions to the war effort have mostly been overlooked or forgotten…..that needs to change.

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China’s Foreign Policy

Oh boy this post ought to get the opposition juices flowing.

Some predict that we are inching closer to an all out war with China (some want it to be with Russia)….to understand China’s outlook to foreign policy one should actually know what their policy is and why….

China’s orchestration of the renewal of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia should be a wakeup call to the Biden administration’s national security team, particularly to Antony Blinken’s Department of State. China’s success exposes flaws in American national security policy, particularly the policy of nonrecognition as well as the reliance on the use of military force to achieve gains in international politics. Our instruments of power are not working.

Mao Zedong often cited a Chinese proverb from the Han Dynasty that “No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat; as long as it can catch mice, it is a good cat.” Deng Ziaoping cited this proverb to justify radical changes in domestic policy. Xi Jinping has implicitly put this aphorism to work in national security relations by maintaining the importance of correct political relations with all countries regardless of their ideological orientation. As a result, China has stable relations with most of its friends and adversaries.

Conversely, for the past century, the United State has obtusely relied on a policy of non-recognition of countries that Washington simply didn’t favor for idealogical reasons. The Soviet Union had to wait for 16 years to gain recognition from the United States, which ultimately required President Roosevelt’s understanding of the futility of ignoring the Kremlin at a time when allies were going to be needed against the dangerous new leadership in Germany. The role of the Soviet Union in World War II was central to the allied victory. Three-fourths of the German army were concentrated on the eastern front.

China’s Foreign Policy: Lessons for the United States

On the foreign policy front….this is the full text of the peace proposal for the Ukraine conflict….I have read many condemnations of the Chinese proposal….and yet few have actually read the proposal…. but that is normal lots of opinions with actually no information other than hatred for one side or the other.

https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202302/t20230224_11030713.html

The US is concerned over the China proposal…..there is a concern that the world will become war weary and approve of the Chinese proposal.

Now I pause for the inevitable condemnation…blah, blah, blah.

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How Soon We Forget

Back in the day, the early 1980s, I was teaching a class on US foreign policy and the first day I handed out a map of Asia and asked the class to circle Vietnam on the map…..only one junior in class got the question right and he was one of the last units to leave the country….

I thought then that it was sad that so many students did no idea about the war that was over less than 10 years before.

That memory came back after I read an article in ‘The Conversation” about the last Iraq War.

The United States invaded Iraq 20 years ago in March 2003, claiming it had to disarm the Iraqi government of weapons of mass destruction and end the dictatorial rule of President Saddam Hussein.

U.S. soldiers captured Saddam in December 2003. And a 15-month search revealed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction to seize.

But the conflict between Western powers and Iraq dragged on until 2011. More than 4,600 American soldiers died in combat – and thousands more died by suicide after they returned home.

More than 288,000 Iraqis, including fighters and civilians, have died from war-related violence since the invasion.

The war cost the U.S. over $2 trillion.

And Iraq is still dealing with widespread political violence between rival religious-political groups and an unstable government.

Most of these problems stem directly or indirectly from the war. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the war that followed are defining events in the histories of both countries – and the region. Yet, for many young people in the United States, drawing a connection between the war and its present-day impact is becoming more difficult. For them, the war is an artifact of the past.

I am a Middle East historian and an Islamic studies scholar who teaches two undergraduate courses that cover the 2003 invasion and the Iraq War. My courses attract students who hope to work in politics, law, government and nonprofit groups, and whose personal backgrounds include a range of religious traditions, immigration histories and racial identities.

https://theconversation.com/its-been-20-years-since-the-us-invaded-iraq-long-enough-for-my-undergraduate-students-to-see-it-as-a-relic-of-the-past-199460

How sad is that?

Americans fought and died and no one gives a crap.

Just as Vietnam has become a forgotten war so shall Iraq…..and this scenario will happen all over again because no one wants to remember the sacrifice of their countrymen.

A bunch of candy ass morons!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”