TODAY'S NEWS WE ARE FOLLOWING:

Brother of Al Qaeda Chief: America Beware

When the U.S. Embassy here was besieged by protesters who took down the American flag and raised a black Islamist flag that looks similar to that of al-Qaeda, among the crowd was a man whom Western counterterrorism agencies are... »

America's Embarrassingly Redundant and Entangled Cyber Security Complex

The cyber security capabilities of the United States have come under scrutiny in light of recent high-profile Chinese penetrations of American corporate networks. In many ways, cyber has become the handwavium of warfare — step... »

EU Maps Out New Cyber Security Plan

The European Commission on February 7 launched a new cyber-security plan, aimed at safeguarding vital information systems and bolstering the bloc's defences against a growing criminal threat. The plan calls on member states to... »

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano: El Paso, Border Secure

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano pointed to El Paso as an example of an increasingly secure border during a visit Tuesday to highlight improvements in border security. Read complete story here. »

States Scramble with Legislation to Fend off Drones

States are responding to the rising concerns over drone use by police agencies and at least 11 have brought forth bills limiting the use of the technology, according to various media. Read complete story here. »

Quake Preparedness Focus of Drill

On Thursday, people at businesses, schools and organizations across the central United States will participate in an earthquake drill at 10:15 a.m. The drill is part of the Great ShakeOut Central U.S., which promotes earthquake... »

Napolitano to Visit US Border in Review of Immigration Controls

The Obama administration is dispatching a top Cabinet official on a two-day tour of the southwest border with Mexico amid calls from Republicans for stricter controls on illegal migrants as part of a potential deal to overhaul... »

Homeland Security Employee, His Son Arrested After Brawl

A Department of Homeland Security employee is accused of pointing a gun at tow-truck drivers during a brawl in Belle Isle late last month. Read complete story here. »

Homeland Security Posts Active Shooter 'Survival Guide' Video

The Department of Homeland Security has released a controversial, three-minute video giving everyday office workers a "survival guide" in the event of a mass shooting, CBS New York station WCBS-TV reports. Read... »

Al Qaeda Affiliate in Africa Looking to Strike More Western Targets, Intelligence Officials Say

With the U.S. military now planning a new drone base to track extremists in northern Mali, senior U.S. intelligence officials confirmed Thursday that the Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa aspires to strike more U.S. and other... »

Memorial Day 2010

 

Help America put the "memorial" back in Memorial Day.  Fly the flag.  In December 2000, Congress passed "The National Moment of Remembrance Act."  The National Moment of Remembrance encourages all Americans to pause wherever they are at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day for a minute of silence to remember and honor those who have died in service to the nation.  Perhaps none of us wearing the blue, or brown, or tan or green or any uniform of public safety, do not have a poignant personal connection to Memorial Day as we recall the service of a friend, brother or sister.  This year I think of Sgt. Franco Aguilar, killed last month, and Deputy Josie Fox, murdered earlier this year.  Both were former students and friends.  I remember, too, the many who stand a post today.  A son continuing in Army service and a daughter newly sworn as a deputy sheriff serve in our family.

 

The Athenian leader Pericles offered a tribute to the fallen heroes of the Peloponnesian War over 24 centuries ago that could be applied today to the 1.1 million Americans who have died serving the United States of America: "Not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions, but there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men."  God bless America and her soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coasties and deputies, troopers, officers, agents, all sworn to defend her and the glorious Constitution.   Hooah!

Clandestine Counter-Terror Measures

In an aggressive, yet risky, policy decision, General Petraeus has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine counter-terror measures by the military. The directive called, The Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force Execute Order, signed Sept. 30, authorizes sending special operators to both friendly and hostile nations. Their stated purpose is to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces. Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes.

According to The New York Times, the goals of this approach are to build networks that could “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” Al Qaeda and other militant groups, as well as to “prepare the environment” for future attacks by American or local military forces.

The order provides for small teams of American troops to fill intelligence gaps about terror organizations and other threats, especially emerging groups plotting attacks against the United States. This directive may authorize specific operations in Iran, such as gathering intelligence on its nuclear program or to identify dissident groups that might be useful for a future military offensive. Overall, however, the order appears focused on intelligence gathering — by American troops, foreign business people, academics or others — to identify militants and provide “persistent situational awareness,” while forging ties to local indigenous groups.

This policy is a double-edged sword. It reflects the Obama Administration's heavy emphasis on special operators, drones, intelligence operations and other "hearts and minds" methods in the "war on terror." As I argued in my new book: Terrorism and Public Safety Policing: Implications for the Obama Presidency, this approach has certain obvious benefits. It is designed to limit "collateral damage." It is designed to avoid angering civilian populations. While these are obviously worthwhile goals, in many circumstances it is next to impossible to distinguish between the "good guys" and the "bad guys." While ground intelligence may enhance our ability to make this distinction, the resultant military or drone attack may not be so discriminate. Indeed, radicals have families. Their families and their friends are often present in the location of the attack. They will die with the radicals. When this occurs, fellow tribal and townspeople may be angered. Hence, despite our best efforts, this dynamic is inevitable.

In addition, these methods will increase the risks to our special operators. While we have conducted special operations for many years, this new policy appears to double down on this method. This means more operations, more operators, and more risks. Using only statistical probabilities, one must come to the conclusion that it will increase our risks. This includes the substantial possibility of our soldiers being held as "spies." Can you picture the photos of these soldiers being trumpeted as "enemy combatants?" How ironic is this: As we largely abandon this legal status within our "war on terror," we will inevitably increase, likely substantially, the possibility that our soldiers will be deemed so by our enemies!

Our desire to avoid adversely impacting civilian populations will result in greater risks to our soldiers. It will also fail to prevent "collateral damage." While increasing our risks coupled with reducing adverse civilian population consequences, sounds on its face as "highly principled," the better characterization may be "politically correct."

Our desire to avoid adversely impacting civilian populations will result in greater risks to our soldiers. It will also fail to prevent "collateral damage." While increasing our risks coupled with reducing adverse civilian population consequences, sounds on its face as "highly principled," the better characterization may be "politically correct..."

A must Read, Islam once again in the US to attack us...Repel these attackers!

The questions that has come to my mind over the past several years is this:  Why is it OK for everyone in the world to criticize the US however if anyone in the US is critical of another, there seems to be an all out war on those Ideas?  Why is this?  Islam and Islamist seem to be in the largest majority of this category!  God forbid (whoops, Allah forbid) that someone not actually agree with this Fanatic Extremist Group!  Americans Stand Firm against this slight of hand by this fanatical group of unbalanced individuals as they don't speak for the masses!

Please read the following and be sure to follow the Links....you will be amazed!

Jihad on Camera: Hatred at UCSD, Lars Vilks Attacked

by David J. Rusin  •  May 14, 2010 at 9:29 am

http://www.islamist-watch.org/blog/2010/05/jihad-on-camera-hatred-at-ucsd-lars-vilks-attacked

Not long ago, some predicted that the newfound ease of recording and disseminating videos would keep Islamists on their best behavior during anti-Islamist events, thus bringing the familiar displays of hatred and thuggery to a close. Robert Spencer dubbed it the "YouTube effect," arguing that "jihadists, their allies, and their dupes have realized how bad they look when they try to intimidate and shout down anti-jihadists."

So much for that. If the numerous interruptions, all captured on video, of a February 8 talk at UC Irvine by Ambassador Michael Oren did not cast grave doubts on this theory, then two incidents from the past week certainly should. Big surprise: both occurred on campus as well.

The first was not a disruption, but a shocking admission from a Muslim Students Association (MSA) member at UC San Diego, following a lecture by activist David Horowitz on May 10 (video here). In the question-and-answer session, the keffiyeh-clad woman asked Horowitz to expound on "the connection between the MSA and jihad terrorist networks." He began with his standard riposte: "Will you condemn Hamas, here and now?" She refused to do so, leading to an exchange that ended with her coldly expressing support for genocide:

Horowitz: I have had this experience at UC Santa Barbara, where there were fifty members of the Muslim Students Association sitting right in the rows there. And throughout my hour talk I kept asking them, "Will you condemn Hezbollah and Hamas?" And none of them would. And then when the question period came, the president of the Muslim Students Association was the first person to ask questions. And I said, "Before you start, will you condemn Hezbollah?" And he said, "Well, that question is too complicated for a yes-no answer." So I said, "Okay, I'll put it to you this way. I am a Jew. The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn't have to hunt us down globally. For it or against it?!"

MSA member: For it.

The second incident took place a day later in Sweden, at a lecture on free speech given by Lars Vilks, the cartoonist who was targeted in a recent murder plot for representing Muhammad as a dog. Vilks started by exhibiting "what some might deem offensive pictures of Christian symbols," according to one report. Naturally, no trouble there. But then he ran a clip from a film that depicts the Islamic prophet going to a gay bar — and chaos promptly erupted (video here):

When Mr. Vilks showed a scene from the film at Uppsala University in Sweden, a protester charged the dais and hit him, breaking his glasses. Police were forced to detain or pepper-spray some unruly members of the crowd as other protesters yelled "Allahu akbar" — "God is great."

Islamists labor to conceal their actual beliefs and darker tendencies, but sooner or later their true selves burst through. Such repeated failures may be the Achilles' heel of the stealth jihad.

Related Topics:  Cartoons, Censorship, Demonstrations, Entertainment / Media, Free Speech, Lobby Groups, Schools (Non-Islamic)  |  David J. Rusin This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

Cops Cop Laid to Rest...Go Easy my Friend

While we have dedicated ourselves to fighting the GWOT and Stopping the Threats, both known and unknown we are taking the time to dedicate this page to Daryl Gates (LAPD, RET), a True Cops Cop.  Our SWAT father and a truly remarkable individual in the Police Community!  The following is from the City News Service.

Former LAPD Police Chief Daryl Gates Remembered

Written by ELIZABETH MARCELLINO, City News Service

Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates. Gates died at age 83. AP File /Phil McCarten LOS ANGELES (CNS) — With the strains of Frank Sinatra singing "My Way"echoing in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, thousands of law enforcement officers and civic leaders from across the state gathered today to remember former LAPD top cop Daryl Gates, who was eulogized as a one-of-a kind police chief. "Daryl was the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Police Department was Daryl," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told the crowd gathered at the funeral service for Gates, who died of cancer April 16 at his Dana Point home. Beck said Gates, 83, was held in high esteem by officers because "he respected the men and women of the Los Angeles Police Department ... Beck choked up as he recounted promising Gates that he "would care for his beloved department, and I will." The funeral service was preceded by a somber procession through downtown Los Angeles, with Gates' family and dignitaries escorting a hearse that carried Gate's flag-draped casket. The procession began at police headquarters and moved up Bunker Hill to the cathedral. Apair of Los Angeles Fire Department ladders were extended upward from both sides of Temple Street and adorned with a large American flag. Gates was chief from 1978 to 1992. During his administration at LAPD, Gates' universal popularity among rank-and-file officers was not as widespread outside the department's Parker Center headquarters. Some people saw him as a symbol of repression in parts of the city that erupted into rioting in 1992 when four white police officers were acquitted in the videotaped beating of black motorist Rodney King. Some elected officials said Gates' LAPD was caught unprepared as Los Angeles erupted into rioting while the chief attended a political fundraiser on the Westside. About $1 billion in property was lost amidst four days of lawlessness, and Gates resigned four months later. But Gates, personable and outspoken, was credited with professionalizing the department. He started the first police SWAT team and the widely adopted anti-drug program DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). He was infamous for over-the-top remarks, once saying that casual drug users should be shot. He also was pilloried for suggesting that black people were somehow physiologically more prone to dying in police chokeholds.

2010 Terror Cases

The following is a list of American Muslim extremists that have been charged or convicted on terrorism-related charges in 2010.

• May 3, 2010 - Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan, is arrested for trying to detonate a car bomb in Times Square.

• April 30, 2010 - New Yorkers Wesam El-Hanafi and Sabirhan Hasanoff are charged with providing computer systems expertise to Al Qaeda in an attempt to modernize the international terrorist network.

• April 27, 2010 - Syed Hashmi, an American citizen from Pakistan, pleads guilty to providing Al Qaeda with military gear to use against American forces in Afghanistan.

• April 23, 2010 - Zarein Ahmedzay, an American citizen from Afghanistan, pleads guilty to planning to detonate homemade explosives on the New York City subway system.  He and Adis Medunjanin, an American citizen from Bosnia, were charged in a superseding indictment in February 2010 with, among other charges, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in the U.S., receiving military-type training from Al Qaeda and providing material support to Al Qaeda.

• April 19, 2010 - New York businessman Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, who attempted to funnel thousands of dollars to a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, is sentenced to ten years in prison.

• April 2, 2010 - Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, an American woman from Colorado, is arrested and charged in an unsealed superseding indictment with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists in connection with a plot to murder a Swedish cartoonist whose depiction of the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog was printed in a Swedish newspaper in 2007.

• March 26, 2010 - Raja Lahrasib Khan, a naturalized American citizen from Chicago, is arrested for providing funds to an alleged terrorist leader in Pakistan and for planning to bomb a U.S. stadium. 

• March 18, 2010 - American citizen David Coleman Headley pleads guilty to helping plan the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai and another terror plot against the offices of a Danish newspaper that printed controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

• March 17, 2010 - Five American students – Ramy Zamzam, Umer Farooq Chaudhry, Ahmed Minni, Aman Hassan Yemer, and Waqar Hussain Khan – detained in Pakistan who planned to cross into Afghanistan to fight against U.S. troops are charged by Pakistan's anti-terrorism court with planning terrorist attacks in Pakistan and on Afghan and U.S. territory.

• March 9, 2010 - Colleen LaRose, an American woman from Pennsylvania, is charged in an unsealed indictment with recruiting potential terrorists online.  She also reportedly planned to murder a Swedish cartoonist whose depiction of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog was printed in a Swedish newspaper in 2007.

• March 7, 2010 - Sharif Mobley, an American citizen wanted by Yemeni officials for his alleged involvement in several terrorist attacks, is rearrested in Yemen after trying to shoot his way out of the Yemeni hospital where he was held.  Mobley was among 11 men arrested the previous week at the Sanaa home of an Al Qaeda member.

• March 4, 2010 - Akram Musa Abdallah, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Palestinian origin, is sentenced to 18 months in prison for lying to FBI agents about his fundraising activities for an American-based Muslim charity shut down by the government for funneling money to Hamas.

• February 22, 2010 – Najibullah Zazi, a U.S. permanent resident with alleged links to Al Qaeda, pleads guilty to planning a terrorist attack against the New York City subway system.  A month earlier, Mohammed Zazi, a U.S. citizen who had previously been charged with lying to federal authorities in connection with the case, was charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice for allegedly destroying liquid chemicals and other materials.

• February 18, 2010 - Three Miami-based businessmen – Khaled T. Safadi, Ulises Talavera and Emilio Gonzalez-Neira – are arrested in Florida for smuggling electronics to a Hezbollah-operated shopping center in Paraguay that serves as Hezbollah's central headquarters in the tri-border region of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

• January 22, 2010 - Mohamad Mustapha Ali Masfaka, a U.S. permanent resident from Syria, is charged in an unsealed indictment for lying to federal authorities about his affiliation with an American-based Muslim charity shut down by the U.S. government for funneling money to Hamas.   
• source ADL

DID you Know? Al-Qaeda Still alive and well

Saudi Arabia Disrupts Terror Plot - Massive Arrests

By William Tucker
Saudi Arabian security affairs spokesman Mansour al-Turki announced today that the Kingdom had arrested 113 militants - half of which are Yemeni. According to the KSA government, the militants were divided into three cells with two cells planning suicide attacks against oil and gas infrastructure. The Saudis did not come out and identify al-Qaeda by name, but they did use language typical of government officials that indicate al-Qaeda was indeed behind the plot. The size, scope and ambition of the plot show that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is still determined and capable of launching attacks regionally.
That being said there are other elements that need to be explored. For instance, the KSA government stated that in addition to the Yemenis involved in the plot individuals from Bangladesh, Eritrea and Somalia were also arrested. This is an interesting development because in the past two years al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been working directly with al-Shabaab in Somalia sharing information and cooperating in training and recruiting. Furthermore, the government of Eritrea has been accused of supporting al-Shabaab to counter Ethiopian influence with other Somalia militant groups. Although al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula suffered a large setback today the larger al-Qaeda network in the region is hardly a spent force.
Map credit: U.S. Department of Energy
http://www.inhomelandsecurity.com/intelligence/