Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Bush stubbornly defends U.S. war on terrorism

President Bush is stubborn on most things. He is not always right, or Right, but he does pick a choice and stick with it instead of taking a poll every day to see if he should change his position.

Let's keep killing terrorists until they lose the will to fight. Then we can negotiate.


globeandmail.com: Bush stubbornly defends U.S. war on terrorism: "In his swan song speech yesterday to the United Nations, the world body that refused to authorize his attack on Iraq, U.S. President George W. Bush staunchly defended his controversial war record and warned that 'the world must continue to confront terrorism.'

Mr. Bush said wars to topple the Taliban and oust former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been worthwhile. 'Afghanistan and Iraq have been transformed from regimes that actively sponsor terror to democracies that fight terror,' he told the annual gathering of world leaders at the opening of a new UN General Assembly session.

Iran's fiery President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who spoke later in the day, looked on, waving to watchers in the public gallery and, at one point, giving a 'thumbs down' as Mr. Bush denounced Tehran's Islamic theocracy as one of the last few nations - he also named Syria - that 'continue to sponsor terror.'"

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Student, car debt quietly added to bailout plan

Washington Times - Student, car debt quietly added to bailout plan: "In the dark of night over the weekend when most people were snoozing, the Treasury dramatically expanded its bailout plan to include buying student loans, car loans, credit card debt and any other "troubled" assets held by banks.

The changes, which were included in draft language that also opened the bailout program to foreign banks with extensive loan operations in the United States, potentially added tens of billions of dollars to the cost of the program.

Although it was a major addition to what was already the nation's largest-ever bailout, it did not become part of the debate between Democrats and the Treasury over details of the program. A Monday counterproposal by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd included such consumer loans as well as mortgages, just as the Treasury's draft did Saturday night.

"The costs of the bailout will be significantly higher than originally considered or acknowledged," said Joshua Rosner, managing director of Graham Fisher & Co., who charged that the Treasury and Federal Reserve have not been "forthright" about the ultimate cost to the public. The plan gives Treasury the discretion to buy the non-mortgage loans and securities in consultation with the Fed.

Conservatives cited the move as a sign that the massive plan to take over bad mortgage debt already is opening the door to further government bailouts. "

You’re decent, but just confused and stupid.

Good stuff!

ht to something

Rachel Lucas » Blog Archive » You’re decent, but just confused and stupid.: "Good morning, hillbilly mouth-breathers! How are we today? Did we put our shoes on the correct feet and wipe all the drool off our faces before heading outside to plant turnips and whup our kids? Good, good.

Now go find a Democrat to help you read the rest of this post. I’ll try not to use words that are too big or fancy but if you come across something you don’t understand, your Democrat friend is right there to explain everything.

I’ve been concerned ever since I ran the reader poll that showed me that 95% of you are ignorant racists with sexual inadequacies. The world told you what to do but you won’t listen and I guess that’s because you’re just too dumb to know how dumb you are."

Monday, September 22, 2008

Sit and Dwell or Run Like Hell

Sit and Dwell or Run Like Hell: Operations & Tactics at Officer.com: "Sit and Dwell or Run Like Hell
Rethinking School Active Shooter Procedures

Posted: Monday, September 22, 2008
Updated: September 21st, 2008 07:04 PM EDT

KEITH R. LAVERY
Security Strategies Contributor

At the start of each school year students enter their new classrooms with seemingly high aspirations, full of energy and look forward to meeting their new teachers and classmates. Traditionally, the focus of education has been delivering up to date curriculum so that our kids leave the classroom with knowledge, skills and abilities that make them marketable. We want them to be productive, law-abiding citizens. That's the way it used to be; it was the central focus. Today, there are competing influences within our local school districts other than offering a good education. Safety has become a paramount concern given the ever growing incidents of active shooters in our academic environments.

As a former law enforcement officer, police/security professional trainer, and current educator, I have a unique perspective on school violence. I know of other teachers whose number one concern isn't developing the young minds in their midst, but rather keeping their kids safe (and themselves too) for the 7 hours they have them. I've seen the trend and the resulting changes not only from an officer trained to respond to an incident in "Quad" fashion, but as a teacher performing lock downs. However, when evaluating the typical school lock-down procedure (as a teacher with the mindset of a cop) in response to an armed aggressor inside of the building, something just doesn't make sense.

The notion that students, staff and faculty should immediately take cover and hunker down when a gunman enters the school is based on the conventional physical security supposition, better known as the 4 Ds. Basically, Delay, Deter, Detect, and Deny, with great emphasis placed on Delaying the gunman from entering rooms packed with kids, via a locked door, and blasting away. As we all know, the strategy is to stall for time so that 3 - 4 officers can arrive on scene, form up, tactically enter, find and neutralize the shooter. My issue is not taking fault with the 4 Ds in general, because the concept is useful and well established, but I argue that lock-down procedures are inherently flawed, because we focus on the wrong D first.

Any basic police academy rookie will attest that shooting range qualification is rather easy when your target is standing still. Later in my career, when I went through the SWAT Qualification Course I found that my shooting skills were really put to the test when firing on the move in confined spaces. This simply highlights what common sense denotes to be true: If you are the shooter then you want your target to be standing still; if you are the target then you want to be moving.

Academia is filled with complex learning theories. Genetic Epistemology is one of them. To an educator it means there are studies that centralize the accumulation of knowledge and its limitations. Further deduced for the working cop, that same theory means that just because someone is smart doesn't mean they know everything. Instead of always being the instructor, educational administrators should be the student once in a while and learn from those who earn a-living dodging bullets, notably law enforcement and the military. Police Officers are trained to seek cover and concealment as they move. Small unit infantry tactics taught in the U.S. Army stress "Shoot, Move, and Communicate". The underlying principle: a moving target is hard to hit. Since this is true then why are we conditioning our kids through lock-down drills to stay still? Are school lock-down procedures leading them to the slaughter?

We need to focus on using the right D in its appropriate order, which begins with Detecting a threat before it arrives at your front door. What have we learned after enduring mass killings in our schools over the last decade? Someone always knew that someday it would come, because the killers told people. The victims chose to think the threat would never materialize. We need to develop situational awareness training for teachers, staff and faculty that serve as a means to cultivate, vet, process and disseminate information, much like debriefing confidential informants in the drug enforcement world.

Deterring a potential gunman begins with appearance. If the facility looks unprotected or is determined to be easily infiltrated (entering without being immediately challenged) then your location becomes the target rather than someone else. When the mass killing of our children is the goal of a murderer, regardless of age, then the physical security appearance of our schools better look robust. Recently, I attended a review of a new high school that was scheduled to be open this fall semester. No expense was spared by the school board to make the school look as if it were an ivy-league college campus. Of course, planning for physical security was an after-thought; kept to a minimum.

When the gunman arrives we need to invoke mass movement so that the shooter will be Denied the aid of a static target. Police Officers are trained in a technique called "Shot Avoidance", which helps them negate the chance they will be hit by the first rounds fired. This technique could very easily be added into any gym class and applied to sports or fitness. The students would have fun learning the mechanics of the movement, while not knowing that they are actually learning how to avoid gunfire. It's a skill hopefully they will never need, but if they need it they have it.

If a shooter enters the north side of the building, and a PA announcement clearly states "gunman North side of the building" then everyone situated in the East, West and South sides of the facility needs to get out of the building, not lock-themselves down. If you can see the shooter in this environment, then he/she can see you. That is when you use cover and concealment (a.k.a. lock-down), Delaying the lethal encounter. Notice that delaying anything does not guarantee it will not occur, it only slows time down. Hopefully, reinforcements arrives faster than repeated trigger pulls.

As a nation founded on the principals of Christianity, and filled with many good, God fearing, men and women we would like to say that there is no such thing as "acceptable casualties" when it comes to our children. However, that statement is not true, is it? If it were, then the funding of school security would always be a priority and huge, sweeping, changes to active shooter protocols would have been mandated across the country the first time students were killed by a gunman. That hasn't happened has it? What I have suggested above is A way to better our response to such catastrophes, but not the only way. Each district faces unique challenges, special circumstances and their security plan must be looked at individually. If students are expected to treat a serial killer entering their school the same way they would a tornado then perhaps the true killer isn't the gunman; it's us.



Keith R. Lavery, M.A., is a full-time criminal justice educator teaching secondary education and having taught law enforcement, criminal justice and security courses at the post-secondary level. Keith had a very diverse police career for over 17 years, working in urban and rural law enforcement settings with assignments ranging from patrol to specialized functions, and to stay current in the field, works part-time as a patrol officer in Northeastern Ohio. Keith is currently the Law Enforcement Liaison for the Cleveland, Ohio, Chapter of ASIS International.
"

The Jawa Report: Muslim Ex Boyfriend Charged in Murder of Two Sisters in Britain

The Jawa Report: Muslim Ex Boyfriend Charged in Murder of Two Sisters in Britain: "Muslim Ex Boyfriend Charged in Murder of Two Sisters in Britain

murderedsisters0922.jpg
A man has been charged in the murder of two sisters murdered in their flat last week in Birmingham.

Via BBC: A man from Birmingham has been charged with the murder of two women who were found dead at their flat in the city.

The bodies of Yasmine Larbi-Cherif, 22, and her 19-year-old sister Sabrina were discovered on Monday.

Forensic tests revealed the pair, who lived at Jupiter Apartments near the city centre, died of stab wounds.

The original BBC report about the murders described the scene as...

challenging, forensically".

He added there was a "substantial amount of blood" inside many of the rooms

Charged in the murder is Mohammed Ali who has been identified as the ex-boyfriend of the elder sister.

Which makes the questions in this weekly standard article all the more relevant.

That being said, I see three significant issues. First, there is a question about rights that are due to specific political communities. Are the rights provided to women under British marriage or inheritance law a baseline that they are due, or can they freely contract to be given fewer rights? We have in fact already seen this happen under the sharia tribunals. In a recent inheritance dispute described by the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal’s Siddiqi, a deceased man’s estate was divided between his three daughters and two sons. The Times reports: “The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.”

This fact raises a question about how voluntary individuals’ accession to the sharia tribunals will actually be. Are women (for example) going to be forced by their families into marriages under sharia that provide them with fewer rights than they would have under British law?

Well the women could obviously choose to not use the Sharia court. Of course there will be er uh reactions from the Muslim community for choosing British common law over Sharia. A girl who wants to keep her head needs to keep that in mind. Too often families or others who feel their honor has been damaged resort to murder to restore it. "

Officials: Pakistani Troops Open Fire on U.S. Choppers

My big question with this report is, are the Pakistanis going to be terrorized into the Taliban camp? Just as the Spaniards decided to follow Al Qaida orders rather than face more bombs.

If the West gets involved, this will be seen as proof that the current government is too weak to fight the terrorists. If the West fails to help, then the government will be under constant attack because it is too weak to fight back and the lack of Western aid will be seen as a victory for the terrorists who are giving the orders to the Pakistani government.

Either way, the terrorists are winning. Once they take over, it will be a toss up as to which country will invade them first. The US and Israel both know they are at the top of the list to receive Pakistani nukes, with India and China being the next countries on the list. India has tolerated a lot of violence over the years in the name of Peace. China hates the terrorists who are constantly attacking and killing to force China to like Islam. I am putting my money on India, as the closest Power. With the US providing needed aid.

Besides, the US government is most likely still going to dominated by the Far Left who will refuse to intervene even if a city is nuked.


FOXNews.com - Officials: Pakistani Troops Open Fire on U.S. Choppers - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News: "U.S. helicopters flew into Pakistan's militant-infested border region, but returned to Afghanistan after troops and tribesmen opened fire, intelligence officials said Monday.

The U.S. denied Monday there was any incursion but the reports threatened new rifts between Washington and its key anti-terror ally days after a truck bomb killed 53 people at a luxury hotel in Islamabad.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan is under growing U.S. pressure to act against al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents sheltering in its border region and blamed for rising attacks on coalition troops in Afghanistan as well as suicide bombings in Pakistan.

U.S. officials believe that al-Qaida's leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding somewhere along the border.

Late Monday, Dubai-based TV channel Al-Arabiya said it had received a tape from a shadowy group calling itself 'Fedayeen Al-Islam' — Arabic for 'Islam commandos' — claiming responsibility for Saturday's bombing at the Marriott hotel in Islamabad and calling on Pakistan to end cooperation with the United States."

How you can help to save some cherished words from oblivion - Times Online

How you can help to save some cherished words from oblivion - Times Online: "It may appear agrestic to ask, but The Times is calling on its readers to come to the rescue of words that risk fading into caliginosity.

Dictionary compilers at Collins have decided that the word list for the forthcoming edition of its largest volume is embrangled with words so obscure that they are linguistic recrement. Such words, they say, must be exuviated abstergently to make room for modern additions that will act as a roborant for the book.

Readers who vilipend the compilers’ decision and vaticinate that society will be poorer without little-used words have been offered a chance to save them from the endangered list Collins, which is owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times, has agreed that words will be granted a reprieve if evidence of their popularity emerges before February, when the word list is finalised.

Times readers can help to lift the malison on their favourite word by voting for it at the Comment Central weblog on Times Online, which will use its influence to persuade the public that the winning word is compossible with everyday speech."

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Intelligence: Witness Protection On The Afghan Border

Intelligence: Witness Protection On The Afghan Border: "Witness Protection On The Afghan Border

September 20, 2008: The U.S. intelligence network in Pakistan, along the Afghan border, has been under construction for more than a decade. While the Taliban and tribal unrest has made it easier for the government, and the U.S. (via the Special Forces or CIA) to recruit informants in the Pakistani border areas, the Taliban has responded by launching witch hunts, killing unpopular or suspicious tribesmen, after accusing them of being spies. The point is made, even if justice is not served.

The informant network is getting lots of key Taliban and al Qaeda leaders killed. Several times a month, GPS guided missiles are fired from Afghanistan, or from UAVs overhead, and kill people who appear to have been identified by locals. The Americans pay large rewards for information that leads to a successful attack. While the Taliban are killing anyone they suspect of being an informer, most of the dead appear to be innocents who simply looked guilty to increasingly paranoid Taliban.

The growing use of cell and satellite phones in the tribal areas has caused the Taliban and al Qaeda no end of grief. These devices are very popular with the tribesmen, despite the known danger of the phones being tapped into by the Americans, or used by informants to let the Americans know where a terrorist big shot will be staying for the night. The Taliban will try to seize all cell and satellite phones in a particularly sensitive area, but this is difficult to do. Blowing up cell phone towers is very unpopular, and hurts the Taliban users as well.

Cell phones can get you killed. If the Taliban grab someone they consider suspicious, and find a cell phone on him, they will just kill the guy, to be on the safe side. Some tribesmen carry two cell phones. There's the fancy one they like to show off to friends, and the cheap burner they will use in public places. Show off a fancy one in the wrong location, and you are marking yourself for a mugging.

Naturally, the CIA and U.S. Army Special Forces don't talk about their informants in the tribal areas. But some of the chatter in the area is remarkably well informed about the matter. For example, the CIA first began recruiting informants during the 1980s, in support of the operations in Afghanistan against the Russians. This network was allowed to lie fallow in the early 1990s, but was revived after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in the mid 1990s, and especially after al Qaeda arrived a few years later. Some tribesmen have gotten quite rich off the informant game, and then disappeared. Not to an early grave, but apparently into some kind of "informant protection program" exile. Occasionally one of these exiles will break the rules and ring up old friends, just to see how things are going. For the Taliban, they aren't going well at all. "
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