Friday, 23 January 2015
British beach is washed away overnight... then reappears
© SWNS.com
The sand on Porthleven beach was washed away by a freaked tide then "brought back" a few hours later.
A British beach which was stripped of all its sand overnight by a freak high tide for the first time in living memory, has miraculously been restored.
Porthleven is a favourite holiday spot for tourists visiting Cornwall and is famed for its pristine golden sands nestled below the quaint seaside town.
But during the recent bad weather so much sand vanished that the once yellow shoreline is now dotted with jagged rocks covered in seaweed and algae.
Overnight on Wednesday a severe high tide removed all the sand - leaving it a rocky not sandy beach.
Photos from the scene show promenade steps that used run down into the lush sand now leading to a sharp drop onto rocks.
An oceanographer from Porthleven, Alan Jorgensen, said that he has never seen the level of sand so low in all his years in the village.
He said: "I am sure it will come back in time but I've never seen it like this before. It was a bit of a surprise to be honest."
Karen Wall, 42, from Porthleven, said: "I've seen it fluctuate, but just going by my mother's wisdom - she's been past that beach every day for 74 years - she's never seen it as bare."
Councillor Andrew Wallis said: "The beach has never had this little sand in living memory.
"This area is quite prone to long shire drift and sometimes it is more extreme than others. This time was definitely on the more extreme side."
However, as locals were scratching their heads as to what had happened the sand was deposited back onto the beach.
Mr Wallis, who lives around the corner from the beach, said that the beach returned "completely naturally" confirming that "Mother Nature" put the sand back, not the council.
Experts calculated that nearly a million tonnes of sand were lost off British beaches last year, with popular beaches in Newquay, Bude and Perranporth also left bare.
Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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North Dakota pipeline leaked 3 million gallons of brine in oil drilling
Cleanup is underway after nearly 3 million gallons of brine, a salty, toxic byproduct of oil and natural gas production, leaked from a pipeline in western North Dakota, the largest spill of its kind in the state since the current energy boom began.
The full environmental impact of the spill, which contaminated two creeks, might not be clear for months. Some previous saltwater spills have taken years to clean up. A contractor hired by the pipeline operator will be on site Thursday, assessing the damage.
Operator Summit Midstream Partners LLC detected the pipeline spill on Jan. 6, about 15 miles north of Williston and informed North Dakota officials then. State health officials on Wednesday said they weren't given a full account of the size until Tuesday.
Inspectors have been monitoring the area near Williston, in the heart of North Dakota's oil country, but it will be difficult to assess the effects of the spill until the ice melts, said Dave Glatt, chief of the North Dakota Department of Health's environmental health section.
"This is not something we want to happen in North Dakota," Glatt said.
The spill presently doesn't threaten public drinking water or human health, Glatt said. He said a handful of farmers have been asked to keep their livestock away from the two creeks, the smaller of which will be drained.
Brine, also referred to as saltwater, is an unwanted byproduct of drilling that is much saltier than sea water and may also contain petroleum and residue from hydraulic fracturing operations.
The new spill is almost three times larger than one that fouled a portion of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in July. Another million-gallon saltwater spill in 2006, near Alexander, is still being cleaned up nearly a decade later.
Summit Midstream said in a statement Wednesday that about 65,000 barrels of a mix of freshwater and brine have been pumped out from Blacktail Creek. Brine also reached the bigger Little Muddy Creek and potentially the Missouri River.
Glatt said the Blacktail Creek will be completely drained as part of the initial cleanup, but the water and soil will have to be continuously tested until after the spring thaw because some of the contaminated water has frozen. The Little Muddy Creek will not be drained because it is bigger than the Blacktail Creek and the saltwater is being diluted.
"We will be monitoring to see how quickly it gets back to natural background water quality conditions, and we are already starting to see that," Glatt said of the Little Muddy Creek. "It's getting back pretty quickly."
Summit Midstream's chief operating officer, Rene Casadaban, said in a statement that the company's "full and undivided attention" is focused on cleaning up the spill and repairing any environmental damage.
Spokesman Jonathan Morgan did not immediately confirm exactly when the spill began. It also was not clear what caused the pipeline to rupture. Glatt said the company has found the damaged portion of pipeline and it was sent to a laboratory to determine what caused the hole.
North Dakota has suffered scores of saltwater spills since the state's oil boom began in earnest in 2006.
A network of saltwater pipelines extends to hundreds of disposal wells in the western part of the state, where the briny water is pumped underground for permanent storage. Legislation to mandate flow meters and cutoff switches on saltwater pipelines was overwhelmingly rejected in the Legislature in 2013.
Wayde Schafer, a North Dakota spokesman for the Sierra Club, called the brine "a real toxic mix" and "an extreme threat to the environment and people's health."
"Technology exists to prevent these spills and nothing is being done," said Schafer. "Better pipelines, flow meters, cutoff switches, more inspectors - something has got to be done."
Daryl Peterson, a grain farmer from Mohall who has had spills on his property, said the latest incident underscores the need for tougher regulation and enforcement.
"Until we start holding companies fully accountable with penalties, I don't think we're going to change this whole situation we have in North Dakota," said Peterson, a board member of the Northwest Landowners Association.
Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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Koos Jansen: Financial system reset to gold coming soon?
Koos Jansen
Anyone who has been paying attention to the global economy the past years can agree with me our central bankers have conducted miserable monetary policy and have taken the insufficient measures to fight crises. All major economies have embarked in printing unprecedented quantities of money, but the only thing they bought was time. Quantitative easing on such a scale is like kicking the can determined to reach the end of the road. The future looks anything but sanguine.
Where is this going? Are our leaders truly gonna allow for the international monetary system to implode? Is there no plan B? And we are supposed to believe gold isn't of any significance in economics?
In our current highly unstable economic environment the price of gold is relatively low, according to gold proponents like me. In addition, we can see immense flows of physical gold going from West to East that are guaranteed not to return in the foreseeable future. If the price of gold isn't suppressed, my previous two observations can only be explained as physical supply outstripping demand since April 2013 - when the price of gold declined substantially to its current relative low levels. But perhaps there is more than meets the eye.
I would like to share a theoretical explanation for the observations just mentioned, supported by historic diplomatic documents that provide some guidance through the present fog.
Let's start just before gold was removed from the system:
In the sixties France stepped out of the London Gold Pool, as it didn't want to waste any more gold on the war the US was waging against Vietnam. The London Gold Pool was a joint effort by the US, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and the UK to peg the price of gold at $35 an ounce. But because the US was printing dollars to finance the war in Vietnam - this devalued US dollars - a lot of gold was required to maintain the price at $35. Shortly after France left the Pool it collapsed in March 1968. From the IMF:
While the total number of U.S. dollars circulating in the United States and abroad steadily grew, the U.S. gold reserves backing those dollars steadily dwindled. International financial leaders suspected that the United States would be forced either to devalue the dollar or stop redeeming dollars for gold.
The dollar problem was particularly troubling because of the mounting number of dollars held by foreign central banks and governments: In 1966, foreign central banks and governments held over 14 billion U.S. dollars. The United States had $13.2 billion in gold reserves, but only $3.2 billion of that was available to cover foreign dollar holdings. The rest was needed to cover domestic holdings. If governments and foreign central banks tried to convert even a quarter of their holdings at one time, the United States would not be able to honor its obligations.
And that is exactly what happened; in 1971 the US closed the gold window, no longer could foreign central banks convert dollars into gold (except on the open market). As I've written before: (i) Europe, most notably France was not amused and wanted to revalue gold, (ii) the US was very persistent to completely phase out gold from the monetary system in order to leverage the power of the US dollar hegemony.
I've found documents that connect the past with the present. On February 24, 1970, French President Pompidou met with US President Nixon in Washington DC. The oncoming quotes are from the US minutes of the meeting:
Turning to France, the President [Pompidou] said he wished to emphasize again that - as distinguished from the positions of some of his predecessors in this office - he would not comment on the independent French policy. He might have his own views but he felt that a strong independent France devoted to the same goals as we are is in the interest of the US. A strong Europe in the economic sense might seem not to be in the US interest, in the long term it was. What we need is a better balance in the West. It is not healthy to have just two superpowers; in such a situation there is more chance of a conflict than when there are more centers of power. Greater strength of the European economies, an independent French policy, and, in Asia, a stronger Japan, would eventually make for a more stable world. The position of the U. S. at the end of World War II was not healthy. Twenty-five years had passed and things were changed. This we regarded as a healthy development.
In the final analysis with three billion people on earth if civilization is to survive ... this will be decided by the Soviet Union, by China, and eventually Japan, by Western Europe, by that he meant France, Britain and Germany and the United States. Africa is moving along, but it is a century away.
Latin America is also moving but it is fifty years or more away. In Asia, India and Pakistan will have enormous difficulty in simply keeping pace with their increase in population. We have a great responsibility to use the power we have to build the kind of a world that keeps the forces of expansion in check and thus give the forces of freedom a chance to grow in their own way and not like tin soldiers lined up behind the biggest one.
Pompidou's idea was clearly to spread economic power across the globe for a more balanced, peaceful and prosperous world. We can also read the first signs of a unified Europe between the lines. Pompidou is one of the best forecasters I've ever read, what he said 45 years ago has more or less happened by now. However, Pompidou's ideology could not coexist along the dollar hegemony. The US, therefore, embarked in divide and conquer, a notorious strategy to gain and maintain power. The next quotes are from a telephone conversation on March 14, 1973, between Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser, and William Simon, Under Secretary of the Treasury:
K: ... I've just been called to the President. Let me tell you - Shultz has sent me a copy of the cable that Volker gave him - that Volker sent him about the interventions, and he has asked for my views. I basically have only one view right now which is to do as much as we can to prevent a united European position without showing our hand.
S: Okay. Well, I interpret that as less intervention, which is a good idea, and I think George will be very happy with that comment. Do as much as we can to prevent a unified European position.
K: I don't think a unified European monetary system is in our interest. I don't know what you think for technical reasons, but these guys are now helping to put it to us.
S: Yes, sir.
K: I don't know whether that's true in the short term, but I'm convinced that that's true in the long.
S: I just agree with you a thousand percent.
K: So I'd rather play with them individually. You know, if it were a question of supporting an individual currency, I'd be much more inclined to do that.
S: Yes, such as the mark.
K: That's right.
S: Yes, sir.
K: Does that make sense to you?
S: Yes it does.
K: You understand, my reason's entirely political, but I got an intelligence report of the discussions in the German Cabinet and when it became clear to me that all our enemies were for the European solution that pretty well decided me.
S: Yes, sir. Well, I pass. I'm going to be talking to George on the telephone.
K: Be careful. Everything in Bonn is tapped.
S: I promise you I will.
Next, from Wikileaks, a report of a meeting held by all European Ministers of Finance about gold, written to the American Ministry Of Foreign Affairs on April 23, 1974 (Europe and the US were debating this issue for a few years):
INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT, WHAT CAME OUT OF ZEIST WAS A CONSENSUS ON CERTAIN SUBSTANTIVE PROPOSITIONS THAT ARE TO BE FURTHER EXPLORED BEFORE THEY ARE SUBMITTED TO A NEXT MEETING OF THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE EEC [EU]. IF AT A LATER STAGE THE COUNCIL REACHES AGREEMENT ON A CERTAIN POSITION, THE FURTHER PROCEDURE COULD BE THAT THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY FORMULATES A FORMAL PROPOSAL ON HOW TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM OF GOLD IN THE PERIOD BEFORE THE REFORM OF THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY SYSTEM.
IN ZEIST, MINISTERS HAVE AGREED ON TWO GENERAL PROPOSITIONS. FIRST, THEY HAVE RE-ASSERTED THAT THE SDR SHOULD BECOME THE PRINCIPAL RESERVE ASSET IN THE FUTURE SYSTEM, AND THAT ARRANGEMENTS FOR GOLD IN THE INTERIM PERIOD SHOULD NOT BE INCONSISTENT WITH THAT GOAL. SECOND, THEY HAVE AGREED THAT SUCH INTERIM ARRANGEMENTS SHOULD ENABLE MONETARY AUTHORITIES TO EFFECTIVELY UTILIZE THE MONETARY GOLD STOCKS AS INSTRUMENTS OF INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENT.
THERE WAS A CONSENSUS AMONG MINISTERS THAT AN INCREASE OF THE OFFICIAL GOLD PRICE, ALTHOUGH IT MIGHT SERVE THE SECOND OBJECTIVE, WOULD BE INCONSISTENT WITH THE FIRST. IN ORDER TO MOBILIZE MONETARY GOLD AS AN INTERNATIONAL RESERVE ASSET, THEY HAVE AGREED THAT:
1) MONETARY AUTHORITIES SHOULD BE PERMITTED TO BUY AND TO SELL GOLD BOTH AMONG THEMSELVES, AT A MARKED-RELATED PRICE, AND ON THE FREE MARKET. THE MONETARY AUTHORITIES WOULD HAVE COMPLETE FREEDOM TO BUY OR TO SELL GOLD, AND WOULD HAVE NO OBLIGATION WHATEVER TO ENTER INTO ANY PARTICULAR TRANSACTION.
2) CERTAIN DELEGATIONS ARE OF THE OPINION THAT GOLD TRANSACTIONS WITH THE FREE MARKET SHOULD NOT, OVER A CERTAIN PERIOD OF TIME, LEAD TO A NET INCREASE OF THE COMBINED OFFICIAL GOLD STOCKS.
3) IN ORDER TO APPLY THESE PRINCIPLES, VARIOUS PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS CAN BE ENVISAGED. TWO WERE MENTIONED IN PARTICULAR. ONE IS THAT MONETARY AUTHORITIES PERIODICALLY FIX A MINIMUM AND A MAXIMUM PRICE BELOW OR ABOVE WHICH THEY WOULD NOT SELL OR BUY ON THE MARKET. THE OTHER CONSISTS IN CREATING A BUFFER STOCK TO BE MANAGED BY AN AGENT WHO WOULD BE CHARGED BY THE MONETARY AUTHORITIES TO INTERVENE ON THE MARKET SUCH AS TO ENSURE ORDERLY CONDITIONS ON THE FREE MARKET FOR GOLD.
Now we know what Europe was planning in seventies, this explains a lot better what occurred later on. Remember the Washington Agreement On Gold? Just before the euro was introduced in 1999, all European central banks collaborated in a program called the Central Bank Gold Agreements (CBGA), or the Washington Agreement On Gold, to jointly manage gold sales. (note, Eurozone aggregated gold reserves currently still transcend US reserves)
In 1991 the Dutch central bank (DNB) held 1,700 tonnes in official gold reserves, currently it holds 613 tonnes. When the Dutch Minister Of Finance, J.C. de Jager, was questioned about these sales in 2011 he answered:
Question 6: Can you confirm that since 1991 DNB has sold 1,100 tonnes of the 1,700 tonnes it owned...
Answer 6: Since 1991 DNB sold 1,100 tonnes. At the time DNB determined that from an international perspective it owned a lot of gold proportionally. It decided to equalize its gold holdings relative to other important gold holding nations.
Right, so since the seventies Europe wanted to spread economic power across the globe, replace the dollar as the world reserve currency and sold parts of its official gold reserves "to equalize its gold holdings relative to other important gold holding nations". These types of plans aren't realized overnight; it can take decades, it can even take more decades than estimated. Who knows? We can be in the final stage right now.
Not so long ago I published a Wikileaks cable from 1976 wherein China expresses its particular interest in gold and SDR's. Of course this is all just a theory, but it seems as if the redistribution of the chips, physical gold flowing from West to East, is all part of orchestrated preparations for the next international monetary system, anchored by gold. This system would require gold to be spread among the major economic power-blocks proportionally.
Jean-Claude Trichet, former president of the European Central Bank, said on November 4, 2014:
The global economy and global finance is at the turning point in a way, ...new rules have been discussed not only inside the advanced economies, but with all emerging economies, including the most important emerging economies, namely, China.
Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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City of New Orleans passes sweeping smoking ban
© Rauluminate
Update: Amendments added to the ordinance slightly changed the final ban to not effect parks or outdoor shopping malls, according to the . Fines will also begin at $50. A previous version of this story said fines began at $100.
New Orleans passed a far-reaching smoking ban on Thursday that prohibits lighting up in bars, casinos, private clubs - even in the car while waiting in line at a drive-thru.
Claiming there is no "constitutional right" to smoke, the New Orleans City Council unanimously voted to outlaw smoking and electronic cigarettes in indoor and outdoor public places.
The ordinance, which goes into effect in 90 days, applies to bars, casinos, parks, private clubs, any business establishment, recreational areas, sports arenas, theaters, and a host of other places.
"[T]here is no legal or constitutional 'right to smoke,'" the ordinance said. "Business owners have no legal or constitutional right to expose their employees and customers to the toxic chemicals in secondhand smoke. On the contrary, employers have a common law duty to provide their workers with a workplace that is not unreasonably dangerous."
The ordinance was coauthored by Democratic councilmembers LaToya Cantrell, a former "community organizer," and Susan Guidry.
The smoking ban carries $50 fines for a person who smokes a cigarette, natural or synthetic marijuana, or e-cigarettes in "public places."
Public places include aquariums, laundromats, parking structures, trailer parks, condos, restaurants, shopping malls, outdoor stadiums and amphitheaters, libraries, theaters, lobbies, and more.
The ordinance applies to private clubs, private and semi-private rooms in nursing homes, places of employment, correctional facilities, school buses, and all schools and colleges.
The ordinance goes further to banning smoking in many outdoor areas, including construction sites. Outdoor recreational areas, including amusement parks, athletic fields, beaches, fairgrounds, gardens, golf courses, parks, plazas, skate parks, swimming pools, trails, and zoos, will also be affected.
Smoking will also be banned within 25 feet of parks and bus stops.
Violations are filed as a "public nuisance." A second violation carries a $200 fine, and a third, if committed within the last year, can be as high as $500. Businesses can also have permits suspended if they allow smoking on their premises.
New Orleans residents will also no longer be able to smoke in their cars while waiting to use an ATM.
Smoking is now banned in "all outdoor service lines, including lines in which service is obtained by persons in vehicles, such as service that is provided by bank tellers, parking lot attendants, and toll takers."
"In lines in which service is obtained by persons in vehicles, smoking is prohibited by both pedestrians and persons in vehicles, but only within twenty-five (25) feet of the point of service," the ordinance said.
According to the ordinance, smoking is only allowed in private homes, private residences, and private vehicles, but even they have restrictions if they are used for childcare.
Smoking rooms in hotels will still be allowed, and in retail tobacco stores. However, tobacco retailers will not be allowed to sell products "within 300 feet of any park, church, public library, school, or any childcare facility."
E-cigarettes were included in the ban because their use in public "creates concern and confusion and leads to difficulties in enforcing the smoking prohibitions."
The ordinance had support from groups such as "Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights," but was opposed by the French Quarter Business League and bar owners on Bourbon Street.
One smoker said the ban goes against what New Orleans is all about.
"It's not New York, it's not Seattle, it's a party town," said Elizabeth Stella. "A bar is not a health spa and alcohol is not a spa drink."
Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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'We didn't even really know who we were firing at' - former US drone operator
© Reuters/U.S. Navy/Erik Hildebrandt
Former US drone sensor operator Brandon Bryant admits he "couldn't stand" himself for his participation in the country's drone program for six years - firing on targets whose identities often went unconfirmed.
Since 2001, and increasingly under the Obama administration, the US has been carrying out drone strikes against targets believed to be affiliated with terrorist organizations in countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. The program, which has been shrouded in secrecy, has been routinely criticized for the high number of resultant civilian casualties.
Pakistan's Peshawar High Court ruled in 2013 that the attacks constitute a war crime and violate the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Meanwhile the Obama administration continues to insist that drone warfare is a precise and effective method of combat.
According to data collected by the human rights group Reprieve and published last November, attempts to kill 41 targeted individuals across Pakistan and Yemen resulted in the deaths of some 1,147 people. Often a kill requires multiple strikes, the group noted.
Bryant, who worked as a sensor operator, manning drones' cameras and other intelligence gathering hardware, worked from an airbase in Nevada. The operator who left his post in 2011 spoke harshly of the program and the leadership responsible for approving it.
"There was no oversight. I just know that the inside of the entire program was diseased and people need to know what happens to those that were on the inside," he told RT's Anissa Naouai. "People need to know the lack of oversight, the lack of accountability that happen."
Bryant decried the "black hole putrid system that is either going to crush you or you're going to conform to it, and apologized to families of victims whose deaths he was responsible for. By his estimation, he helped kill some 1626 people. "I couldn't stand myself for doing it" he added.
"I'm sorry that the mistake happened. I'm doing everything that I can to prevent further mistakes from happening."
Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
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How the CIA made Google: Inside the secret network behind mass surveillance, endless war, and Skynet
In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, western governments are moving fast to legitimize expanded powers of mass surveillance and controls on the internet, all in the name of fighting terrorism.
US and European politicians have called to protect NSA-style snooping, and to advance the capacity to intrude on internet privacy by outlawing encryption. One idea is to establish a telecoms partnership that would unilaterally delete content deemed to “fuel hatred and violence” in situations considered “appropriate.” Heated discussions are going on at government and parliamentary level to explore cracking down on lawyer-client confidentiality.
What any of this would have done to prevent the Charlie Hebdo attacks remains a mystery, especially given that we already know the terrorists were on the radar of French intelligence for up to a decade.
There is little new in this story. The 9/11 atrocity was the first of many terrorist attacks, each succeeded by the dramatic extension of draconian state powers at the expense of civil liberties, backed up with the projection of military force in regions identified as hotspots harbouring terrorists. Yet there is little indication that this tried and tested formula has done anything to reduce the danger. If anything, we appear to be locked into a deepening cycle of violence with no clear end in sight.
As our governments push to increase their powers, INSURGE INTELLIGENCE can now reveal the vast extent to which the US intelligence community is implicated in nurturing the web platforms we know today, for the precise purpose of utilizing the technology as a mechanism to fight global ‘information war’ — a war to legitimize the power of the few over the rest of us. The lynchpin of this story is the corporation that in many ways defines the 21st century with its unobtrusive omnipresence: Google.
Google styles itself as a friendly, funky, user-friendly tech firm that rose to prominence through a combination of skill, luck, and genuine innovation. This is true. But it is a mere fragment of the story. In reality, Google is a smokescreen behind which lurks the US military-industrial complex.
The inside story of Google’s rise, revealed here for the first time, opens a can of worms that goes far beyond Google, unexpectedly shining a light on the existence of a parasitical network driving the evolution of the US national security apparatus, and profiting obscenely from its operation.
The shadow network
For the last two decades, US foreign and intelligence strategies have resulted in a global ‘war on terror’ consisting of prolonged military invasions in the Muslim world and comprehensive surveillance of civilian populations. These strategies have been incubated, if not dictated, by a secret network inside and beyond the Pentagon.
Established under the Clinton administration, consolidated under Bush, and firmly entrenched under Obama, this bipartisan network of mostly neoconservative ideologues sealed its dominion inside the US Department of Defense (DoD) by the dawn of 2015, through the operation of an obscure corporate entity outside the Pentagon, but run by the Pentagon.
In 1999, the CIA created its own venture capital investment firm, In-Q-Tel, to fund promising start-ups that might create technologies useful for intelligence agencies. But the inspiration for In-Q-Tel came earlier, when the Pentagon set up its own private sector outfit.
Known as the ‘Highlands Forum,’ this private network has operated as a bridge between the Pentagon and powerful American elites outside the military since the mid-1990s. Despite changes in civilian administrations, the network around the Highlands Forum has become increasingly successful in dominating US defense policy.
Giant defense contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton and Science Applications International Corporation are sometimes referred to as the ‘shadow intelligence community’ due to the revolving doors between them and government, and their capacity to simultaneously influence and profit from defense policy. But while these contractors compete for power and money, they also collaborate where it counts. The Highlands Forum has for 20 years provided an off the record space for some of the most prominent members of the shadow intelligence community to convene with senior US government officials, alongside other leaders in relevant industries.
I first stumbled upon the existence of this network in November 2014, when I reported for VICE’s Motherboard that US defense secretary Chuck Hagel’s newly announced ‘Defense Innovation Initiative’ was really about building Skynet — or something like it, essentially to dominate an emerging era of automated robotic warfare.
That story was based on a little-known Pentagon-funded ‘white paper’ published two months earlier by the National Defense University (NDU) in Washington DC, a leading US military-run institution that, among other things, generates research to develop US defense policy at the highest levels. The white paper clarified the thinking behind the new initiative, and the revolutionary scientific and technological developments it hoped to capitalize on.
The Highlands Forum
The co-author of that NDU white paper is Linton Wells, a 51-year veteran US defense official who served in the Bush administration as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, overseeing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other spy agencies. He still holds active top-secret security clearances, and according to a report by Government Executive magazine in 2006 he chaired the ‘Highlands Forum’, founded by the Pentagon in 1994.
Linton Wells II (right) former Pentagon chief information officer and assistant secretary of defense for networks, at a recent Pentagon Highlands Forum session. Rosemary Wenchel, a senior official in the US Department of Homeland Security, is sitting next to him
New Scientist magazine (paywall) has compared the Highlands Forum to elite meetings like “Davos, Ditchley and Aspen,” describing it as “far less well known, yet… arguably just as influential a talking shop.” Regular Forum meetings bring together “innovative people to consider interactions between policy and technology. Its biggest successes have been in the development of high-tech network-based warfare.”
Given Wells’ role in such a Forum, perhaps it was not surprising that his defense transformation white paper was able to have such a profound impact on actual Pentagon policy. But if that was the case, why had no one noticed?
Despite being sponsored by the Pentagon, I could find no official page on the DoD website about the Forum. Active and former US military and intelligence sources had never heard of it, and neither did national security journalists. I was baffled.
The Pentagon’s intellectual capital venture firm
In the prologue to his 2007 book, A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity, John Clippinger, an MIT scientist of the Media Lab Human Dynamics Group, described how he participated in a “Highlands Forum” gathering, an “invitation-only meeting funded by the Department of Defense and chaired by the assistant for networks and information integration.” This was a senior DoD post overseeing operations and policies for the Pentagon’s most powerful spy agencies including the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), among others. Starting from 2003, the position was transitioned into what is now the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. The Highlands Forum, Clippinger wrote, was founded by a retired US Navy captain named Dick O’Neill. Delegates include senior US military officials across numerous agencies and divisions — “captains, rear admirals, generals, colonels, majors and commanders” as well as “members of the DoD leadership.”
What at first appeared to be the Forum’s main website describes Highlands as “an informal cross-disciplinary network sponsored by Federal Government,” focusing on “information, science and technology.” Explanation is sparse, beyond a single ‘Department of Defense’ logo.
But Highlands also has another website describing itself as an “intellectual capital venture firm” with “extensive experience assisting corporations, organizations, and government leaders.” The firm provides a “wide range of services, including: strategic planning, scenario creation and gaming for expanding global markets,” as well as “working with clients to build strategies for execution.” ‘The Highlands Group Inc.,’ the website says, organizes a whole range of Forums on these issue.
For instance, in addition to the Highlands Forum, since 9/11 the Group runs the ‘Island Forum,’ an international event held in association with Singapore’s Ministry of Defense, which O’Neill oversees as “lead consultant.” The Singapore Ministry of Defense website describes the Island Forum as “patterned after the Highlands Forum organized for the US Department of Defense.” Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed that Singapore played a key role in permitting the US and Australia to tap undersea cables to spy on Asian powers like Indonesia and Malaysia.
The Highlands Group website also reveals that Highlands is partnered with one of the most powerful defense contractors in the United States. Highlands is “supported by a network of companies and independent researchers,” including “our Highlands Forum partners for the past ten years at SAIC; and the vast Highlands network of participants in the Highlands Forum.”
SAIC stands for the US defense firm, Science Applications International Corporation, which changed its name to Leidos in 2013, operating SAIC as a subsidiary. SAIC/Leidos is among the top 10 largest defense contractors in the US, and works closely with the US intelligence community, especially the NSA. According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, the first to disclose the vast extent of the privatization of US intelligence with his seminal book Spies for Hire, SAIC has a “symbiotic relationship with the NSA: the agency is the company’s largest single customer and SAIC is the NSA’s largest contractor.”
Richard ‘Dick’ Patrick O’Neill, founding president of the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum
The full name of Captain “Dick” O’Neill, the founding president of the Highlands Forum, is Richard Patrick O’Neill, who after his work in the Navy joined the DoD. He served his last post as deputy for strategy and policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, before setting up Highlands.
The Club of Yoda
But Clippinger also referred to another mysterious individual revered by Forum attendees:
“He sat at the back of the room, expressionless behind thick, black-rimmed glasses. I never heard him utter a word… Andrew (Andy) Marshall is an icon within DoD. Some call him Yoda, indicative of his mythical inscrutable status… He had served many administrations and was widely regarded as above partisan politics. He was a supporter of the Highlands Forum and a regular fixture from its beginning.”
Since 1973, Marshall has headed up one of the Pentagon’s most powerful agencies, the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), the US defense secretary’s internal ‘think tank’ which conducts highly classified research on future planning for defense policy across the US military and intelligence community. The ONA has played a key role in major Pentagon strategy initiatives, including Maritime Strategy, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Competitive Strategies Initiative, and the Revolution in Military Affairs.
Andrew ‘Yoda’ Marshall, head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) and co-chair of the Highlands Forum, at an early Highlands event in 1996 at the Santa Fe Institute. Marshall is retiring as of January 2015
In a rare 2002 profile in Wired, reporter Douglas McGray described Andrew Marshall, now 93 years old, as “the DoD’s most elusive” but “one of its most influential” officials. McGray added that “Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz” — widely considered the hawks of the neoconservative movement in American politics — were among Marshall’s “star protégés.”
Speaking at a low-key Harvard University seminar a few months after 9/11, Highlands Forum founding president Richard O’Neill said that Marshall was much more than a “regular fixture” at the Forum. “Andy Marshall is our co-chair, so indirectly everything that we do goes back into Andy’s system,” he told the audience. “Directly, people who are in the Forum meetings may be going back to give briefings to Andy on a variety of topics and to synthesize things.” He also said that the Forum had a third co-chair: the director of the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA), which at that time was a Rumsfeld appointee, Anthony J. Tether. Before joining DARPA, Tether was vice president of SAIC’s Advanced Technology Sector.
Anthony J. Tether, director of DARPA and co-chair of the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum from June 2001 to February 2009
The Highlands Forum’s influence on US defense policy has thus operated through three main channels: its sponsorship by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (around the middle of last decade this was transitioned specifically to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, which is in charge of the main surveillance agencies); its direct link to Andrew ‘Yoda’ Marshall’s ONA; and its direct link to DARPA.
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