Steve Peacock's U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor

U.S. Escalates Contractor Roles in Africa (WND)

My latest from WND. - S.P. 

The Obama administration suddenly is hunting for contractors to help haul military equipment and supplies to and from Egypt and other nations within the U.S. Africa Command’s area of responsibility, WND has discovered.

The endeavor comes at a time of heightened tensions in the Mideast and North Africa, as U.S. warships already have arrived in the Mediterranean and warships from Syrian ally Russia reportedly are on the way.

Though it remains unclear which specific operations the initiative may support, the Army nonetheless is rapidly moving toward obtaining private-sector assistance in the AFRICOM Surface Distribution Services, or ASDS, endeavor.

Continued at WND.com...

U.S. Census Bureau to Modernize eStatistics System -- in Bangladesh

The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics is modernizing it computer-assisted data entry system -- and the U.S. Census Bureau of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce is paying for it. The Bureau on Sept. 7 announced via Solicitation #51-SO-BC-11-00082 that it intends to award a noncompetitive contract to the Greenbelt, Md.-based Jmat Systems, LLC, to support the project. It says the sole-source contract is justified because the company "is the only known source with the knowledge and experience needed to provide additional in-country deployment, setup, configuration, and disaster recovery services" for the Bangladeshi endeavor.

The Bureau, however, did not offer justification as to why U.S. taxpayers are paying for it.