Thanks for Keeping Us Independent

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I’ve been remiss.

I had plans to send out a thank you note to all the people who donated during our fundraiser. But then a family issue came up and I haven’t gotten it done yet.

Nevertheless, this piece of news made me realize I need to issue a heartfelt thank you immediately.

I am very excited to announce that tomorrow, we are launching a project with our friends at the New Republic to bring Lawfare content and writers to the New Republic‘s web site. Astute readers may have noticed that we have been sharing a certain amount of content with the New Republic over the past few weeks. The partnership aims to build on this relationship, situating Lawfare‘s expertise in national security legal issues within the New Republic‘s broader policy focus.

We are calling the project, which is being sponsored by the Northrup Grumman Corp., “Security States.” [my emphasis]

Some national security commentary gets sponsored by a drone manufacturers and spy companies (the announcement also led me to realize that Brookings itself gets $1 to $2.5 million a year from Booz h/t Katherine Hawkins).

Ours gets sponsored by you.

To all of you who help keep us independent, you have my profuse gratitude.

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11 replies
  1. scribe says:

    Well, there goes your chance of ever being hired by The New Republic.

    D’ya know when they’re going get around to renaming it? I heard somewhere “The New Empire” was leading in the internal polls….

  2. allan says:

    Thank you for giving us something to keep independent!

    And for another chapter of Even the Liberal Brookings Institution:
    Pages 23-23 of the annual report you linked to describes Brookings’ activities on “Metropolitan Policy”.
    Here is one of those Brookings experts yapping on NPR this morning about how important it is that cities get involved in public-private partnerships:

    http://www.npr.org/2013/09/30/225748243/chicago-s-privatized-parking-meters-sours-airport-lease-deal

    As opposed to letting governments take advantage of record low interest rates, intermediaries like JPMC, which gave Brookings between $1 and $2.5 million, should be involved.
    Because … even the liberal Brookings Institution.

  6. FFEIN says:

    Thank you for doing all the hard work of keeping us informed on details we would otherwise not know from just watching TV or reading the newspapers (what’s let of them). You are amazing.

  7. klynn says:

    Thank you Marcy.

    Oh my. It is as though you and your readers “called this” weeks ago.

    On September 19th klynn wrote:

    “Thank you. I am amazed at how he is focusing a disinformation campaign against the facts you are presenting…He is simply showing that his resume does give him away…Brookings…Hoover…Just wonder when his non-ideological discussion of hard national security choices will actually happen?

    Rules of practice in being “non-ideological”: 1. He needs to cut his BS. 2. He needs to stop using an editorial and patronizing tone. 3. He must engage the facts, all the facts, in a honest discussion, not just some of the facts and shape his personal perspective as God’s word.

    When you write a blog that is described as “non-ideological” it means you write in a context of, “… unaffiliated with or unrelated to ideology.” When you write a blog that has an ideological bent but claim it is non-ideological, it appears your writing is serving a specific purpose that is not non-ideological.”

    – See more at: http://www.emptywheel.net/2013/09/19/ben-wittes-brookings-buck-naked/#sthash.s88vXmeE.dpuf

    He will need to rewrite his blog description for TNR.

  9. thatvisionthing says:

    @shoirca: That explains it. Funny thing, I was listening to the podcast of Harry Shearer’s Le Show from Sunday, and he was reporting on a news story about fracking industry local efforts being run as a military psyops. An industry guy at a fracking conference was telling the audience to download the Army/Marines Counterinsurgency Manual and use it because they’re facing an insurgency (that would be the American people opposing fracking). Another industry guy tells how he hires former psyops guys for work in Pennsylvania.

    I just did a ddg search on “fracking psyops” to find the story and got many results to choose from. I redid the search as “fracking psyops site: npr.org” and got only one result. Clicked in it but didn’t see “psyops” – in fact the story was pro fracking. Did a search on the page. “Psyops” is in the comments. Someone trying to educate NPR.

    Here’s Harry’s podcast – the story is at 21:40: http://harryshearer.com/le-shows/september-29-2013/

  10. thatvisionthing says:

    @thatvisionthing: Looking more at the NPR story, which embeds a youtube about a pro-fracking group calling itself Enough is Enough; video provided by something called Energy In Depth. NPR even includes a transcript of the youtube in case you don’t want to click and watch. But commenter Hydratwo gives this background, as NPR didn’t:

    http://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2011/12/06/dimock-the-other-side-speaks/#comment-385597773

    “The “Energy In Depth” project would not be possible without the early financial commitments of: El Paso Corporation, XTO Energy, Occidental Petroleum, BP, Anadarko, Marathon, EnCana, Chevron, Talisman, Shell, API, IPAA, Halliburton, Schlumberger and the Ohio Oil and Gas Association. “However, none of these major oil and gas companies, or the industry’s largest trade association – the American Petroleum Institute – are acknowledged on the ‘About Us’ page of Energy In Depth’s website.

    Thank you, independent commenter.

  11. thatvisionthing says:

    @thatvisionthing: Finally, I did find Harry’s original story from CNBC here: http://www.cnbc.com/id/45208498 It has two spots where audio clips are to be embedded (“click below”) but I only see blanks. I can find them on the Internet Archive though: http://web.archive.org/web/20111109205341/http://www.cnbc.com/id/45208498 – and they’re a bit longer than what Harry played.

    Trying to be as helpful as NPR, here are transcripts of the two clips, with the speakers identified from the story. These were recorded at a 2011 oil industry conference in Houston.

    Clip #1:

    Matt Carmichael, manager of external affairs for Anadarko Petroleum, speaking on topic “Understanding How Unconventional Oil & Gas Operators are Developing a Comprehensive Media Relations Strategy to Engage Stakeholders and Educate the Public.” So, again this is all industry stuff. Let’s talk about this plan and how we executed our media plan. If you’re a PR representative in this industry in this room today, I recommend you do three things. These are three things that I’ve read recently that are pretty [word unclear]. Download the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual (audience reaction), because we are dealing with an insurgency. There’s a lot of good lessons in there, and coming from a military background I’ve found the insight in that extremely remarkable. With that said, there’s a course provided by Harvard and MIT twice a year. It’s called “Dealing with an Angry Public.” Take that course, and tie that to the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual is that a lot of the officers in our military are attending this course. It gives you the tools, it gives you the media tools on how to deal with a lot of the controversy that we as an industry are dealing with. And third, thirdly, I have a copy of Rumsfeld Rules, if you’re all familiar with Donald Rumsfeld, that’s kind of my Bible by the way I operate.

    Clip #2:

    Matt Pizzarella, Range Resources communications director, in session “Designing a Media Relations Strategy To Overcome Concerns Surrounding Hydraulic Fracking.” I think we have to get out ahead of all these issues. Everybody knows this. We’ve talked a lot about it. One thing that we’ve worked a lot on at Range is just getting more proactive in the community. It’s not something that we’ve done before. In other parts of the nation it makes no sense for us to do that. In other parts, in Pennsylvania for instance, we have several – I think Matt raised the issue of looking to other industries, in this case the Army and the Marines. We have several former psyops folks that work for us at Range because they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments. Really all they do is spend most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that that, but very much having that understanding of psyops in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania.

    And I’m kind of surprising myself here, but thank you to CNBC for posting the audio clips and the story in the first place.

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