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Oil Is A National Security Issue, The Next Great Space Race
Any of you who know me understand that I have considered oil as a national security issue for many years. Even as Obama calls for clean energy technology the truth is little or nothing practical has been done to lead us to these goals and time is slipping away.
While this a simple issue to understand, what is not simple is actually breaking free from oil. However, if we do not we will be tossing our children to a living hell racked with war and terrorism. As seen by 9/11 not only are we buying oil from people who wish to destroy us, we are killing our environment in the process.
The Solution as I see it:
Stage 1
Authorization of short term oil production and drilling in the US, Increased Mileage standards and Production through Ethanol thorough cellulose based waste material. I believe we can accomplish this thought myco culture of waste materials
Stage 2.
Authorization of Nuclear plants for electricity generation, Solar Cell Embedding in All National Highway systems to form a massive solar grid, and hybrid tax incentives.
Stage 3. Use nuclear plants to develop Hydrogen along with the electricity. From there we would take the hydrogen and use it as a new combustion martial allowing us to retrofit the million and million if vehicles on the road.
In conclusion, the only way this will occur is if it’s called a National security issue and the Army Core of engineers and other are called in as they were with the Highway systems, the dam and infrastructure systems, the great space race and many more.
“Many time we find or selves with nothing to do but speak out and raise our voices in the hope that it shall be heard. “
History of the National Security State with Gore Vidal
Donate at therealnews.com Gore Vidal, Ray McGovern, Lawrence Wilkerson and Antonia Juhasz. The legendary author discusses his thesis on the construction of the national security state and a retired CIA officer responds. 2 additional interviews provide in-depth analysis from inside the halls of power.
Top 10 Reasons Why Conservatives Are Weaker On National Security
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time,” is a quote often attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Yet, as wise a man as our 16th President was, apparently ex-mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani disputes this saying and believes that all of the people can be fooled all of the time. Recently in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Giuliani said of the December 25, 2009, attempted terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 by Nigerian born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: “What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did – one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush.” Perhaps “Mr. 9/11” was not trying to fool all of the people. Maybe he was genuinely amnesiac (and so too might Stephanopoulos have been since he did not challenge Giuliani’s bizarre statement). Giuliani apparently forgot that 9/11 and the attempt by Richard Reid – the shoe bomber – to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 both happened on Bush’s watch
I don’t think most people are amnesiac when it comes to the biggest attack ever to have occurred on US soil. I do believe Giuliani was trying to capitalize on the false idea that most people have that conservatives are strong on national security – and by extension the war on terrorism – and that liberals are weak. However, it wasn’t the strange omission of 9/11 that most struck me about Rudy’s statement; it was the recommendation that Obama should somehow follow Bush’s example on fighting terrorism. I decided to examine what some of those right things G.W. Bush and his conservative cohorts did or did not do prior to and after the most calamitous act of terrorism ever to have occurred on American soil. These are my top ten reasons why Rudy and company should pipe down when trying to portray the failed underwear bomber incident as a sign of Obama’s weakness on terror. Paul Schaeffer play some delusional background music for us.
1. The Bush Administration failed to act upon the (PDB) presidential daily briefing of August 6, 2001 which warned of an eminent attack by Al Qaeda upon the US. Seventeen days later George Tenet, former director of the CIA, was briefed on the report by the FBI that Zacarias Moussaoui had been taking flying lessons – in a 747 trainer.
2. The Bush Administration ignored warnings in January 2001 from the outgoing Clinton national security team that Al Qaeda and its sleeper cells in the U.S. were the major security threat facing the U.S.
3. Bush ignored the Hart-Rudman Commission set up by Clinton by Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Gary Hart (D-CO0 and Warren Rudman (R-NH). The commission’s final report issued in January 2001 warned of large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil, and specifically of “a weapon of mass destruction in a high-rise building.”
4. The Bush Administration failed to take action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan even after determining in February 2001 that Al Qaeda was responsible for the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole.
5. Bush announced a New Office of National Preparedness for Terrorism within FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) but cut FEMA’s Budget by $200 million.
6. The Bush Administration continued to oppose for more than a year any independent investigation of the intelligence failures that preceded 9/11. President Obama, being “Mr. The Buck Stops Here” that he is, not only ordered such a review, but has accepted full responsibility for security weaknesses that may have lead up to this attempt at a terrorist attack.
7. In the summer of 2002, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works approved by 19-0 a bill to tough security standards at chemical plants. The chemical industry lobbied Republicans to reject it, and the White House let the bill die.
8. In March 2002 Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham asked the Bush Administration for $380 million to protect nuclear weapons facilities. The White House approved $26 million of Abraham’s request.
9. During the Bush Administration, The Coast Guard estimated it would cost $4.5 billion to secure U.S. seaports. In the year and half following 9/11, they received just $318 million.
10. The INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) a year and a half after 9/11 had 14 agents to track down 1,200 illegal immigrants from countries were Al Qaeda was active. Bush turned down $52 million request to hire more agents.
I wondered as I watched Rudy, and listened to other conservatives, if any of these facts rang a bell. I wondered where this chorus of conservative voices was in opposing these actions which frustrated the war on terrorism and weakened American’s security under G.W. Bush. I wonder if they really want Obama to be more Bushian in the strategies he employs in war on terror. I wonder if they will continue on in defiance of Abraham Lincoln’s aphorism. They are always boasting that Lincoln was a Republican. Perhaps they should heed that great Republican’s words about the uselessness of trying to continue to misshape people’s perceptions about reality.
I am a native Missourian with a B.A. in English and minors in creative writing and Journalism. I attended the University of Missouri and edited have several newspapers and newsletters. I have worked in several fields but lately have worked in the legal field (not an attorney). My site is www.myhumbleopinion.org
Toronto Emergency Locksmith Services and Canadian National Security
Not a lot of people know this, but the unique skills of Toronto Emergency locksmith tradesmen make a vital contribution to the national security of Canada. At first this might sound hard to believe, because national security is more readily associated with intelligence agencies, the military, and the police. However, the various national security agencies regularly require Toronto emergency locksmith services for a range of locksmithing tasks.
Several agencies and organizations are involved in protecting Canada and its citizens from perceived and real threats, through a wide range of intelligence gathering and day-to-day security activities. As part of these activities, Toronto emergency locksmith tradesmen are often called on to perform unique as well as more mundane tasks.
Toronto emergency locksmith specialists perform a range of tasks connected with improving security at residential and business properties. In particular, Toronto locksmiths are called in immediately after property break-ins, and help with securing a property so as to minimize the chances of a repeat break-in. Toronto locksmiths also assist with car lockouts and broken keys stuck in the ignition. Fitting new locks on doors and windows, re-keying locks, and fitting high security locks are all within a typical working day for a Toronto emergency locksmith. Locksmiths are also highly skilled at gaining entry to properties without causing damage to doors and locks.
The various services performed by locksmiths make an important contribution to Canadian national security. There are all kinds of examples. Once, a Toronto emergency locksmith was paid to break into a safety deposit box in a Toronto bank, because the security services suspected that the box contained large sums of Canadian dollars earned through criminal activity. Another Toronto locksmith was asked to help gain entry into the house of a suspected terrorist. In another case, a local locksmith was asked to break into a vehicle that was thought to have been purchased using counterfeit money.
Canadian security agencies prefer to hire a Toronto emergency locksmith instead of recruiting and training their own people for such tasks. The primary reasons are connected with the vast experience and the impeccable local knowledge that are the domain of local locksmiths.
The regular outsourcing of tasks by Canada’s security agencies and organizations to Toronto emergency locksmith specialists is testament to both the reputation and availability of these valued tradesmen. No doubt, the range of tasks that local locksmiths perform for the various security agencies helps them hone new skills and keep them up-to-date with the latest security challenges.
JohnM is a writer for Compucall. To learn more about Toronto emergency locksmith services, visit www.gtalocksmith.com.
U.S. national security threatened by Mexican Drug Cartels
By Michael Webster: Syndicated Investigative Reporter. July 14, 2009 at 4:30 PM PDT
AP Photo/El Debate de Culiacn-Carla Sajaropulos
A dozen bound and tortured bodies were discovered dumped on the side of a remote highway in Michoacán. Police found the latest victims of the ongoing battle between rival drug traffickers on Monday. A threatening message was located near the beaten bodies of 11 men and one woman piled up and wrapped in a tarp, police revealed at the scene. Sadly, this has become a frequent occurrence: Last week, police found four bodies and a menacing note in the same spot.
This reoccurring brutality stems from opposing drug cartels fighting over cocaine smuggling routes running up from Central America into the United States, the world’s top drug consumer. Because Mexico’s drug trade has become a very lucrative business—pulling in billions a year—having control of these routes ensures a hand in that money.
Despite thousands of Mexican troops dispatched to numerous drug hot spots throughout the country, bloodshed has not decreased. U.S. authorities have offered a helping hand, pledging $1.4 billion through the Merida initiative in an attempt to help Mexico combat the cartels.
The alarming rise of violence in Mexico perpetrated by warring Mexican drug trafficking organizations and the effects of that violence on the United States, particularly along the U.S. Mexican Southwest Border. The responsibility for this ongoing violence rests with a limited number of large, sophisticated and vicious criminal organizations known as Mexican Drug Cartel (MDC’s) or as the U.S. Government prefers to call them Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) – not individual drug traffickers acting in isolation. Their illicit drugs are destined for communities throughout the United States, Mexico and Europe. They generate billions of illegal dollars annually. These organizations support candidates for local and national office and bribe officials and particularly Mexican law enforcement all the way from a local Mexican cop on the beat to the highest levels of the Mexican Federal police and all levels in between.
These organizations also use violence to protect trafficking routes throughout Mexico and deep into the U.S. These organizations retaliate against individuals, organizations and uncooperative law enforcement personal thought to have betrayed them, and to intimidate both Mexican and American law enforcement and both countries citizens. Drug-related murders in Mexico doubled from 2006 to 2007, and more than doubled again in 2008 to approximately 6,200 murders. Almost 10 percent of the murders in 2008 involved victims who were law enforcement officers or military personnel. To date in 2009 there have been approximately 4,000 drug war-related murders in Mexico. During the last decade the surrogates of Mexican drug cartels meaning Mexican gangs and American gangs have expanded their presence across the United States and dominate the US drug trade and operate in over 230 American cities and are expanding at an alarming rate.
The U.S. Government has in the past concentrated on arresting low level drug dealers and users. Rarely was any high ranking operative much less Mexican Drug Cartel members tracked down or brought to justice.
From the lowly drug user to the small time dealer the old war on drugs rarely seemed to be able to find and arrest those who operated in the upper rungs of the drug trade. Very few drug organized growers, producers, processors or those that finance the illicit drug trade here in this country much less organizations like the Mexican Drug Cartels have been brought to Justice.
Now that the U.S. has done away with the term “War on Drugs” according to the government a new approach is being developed whereby the U.S. Government working with other governments plan to get to the root of the problem by dismantling transnational organized criminal groups, such as confronting the Mexican Drug Cartels as criminal organizations, rather than simply responding to individual acts of criminal violence.
Pursued vigorously, and in coordination with the efforts of other U.S. Government agencies and with the full cooperation of other Governments like Mexico, the U.S. believes this strategy can and will neutralize the organizations causing the violence.
U.S. Government documents show that during a report to Congress this month by Lanny A. Breuer an assistant attorney general in the criminal division United States Department of Justice stated that “the department’s strategy to systematically dismantle the Mexican drug cartels, which currently threaten the national security of our Mexican neighbors, pose an organized crime threat to the United States, and are responsible for the scourge of illicit drugs and accompanying violence in both countries. He begins by emphasizing the priority that this issue commands at the highest level of the department’s leadership, including the U.S. Attorney General himself.
Most recently, on June 5th, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Attorney General Holder, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Napolitano, and Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) Director Kerlikowske released President Obama’s National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy (Strategy), designed to stem the flow of illegal drugs and their illicit proceeds across the Southwest Border and to reduce associated crime and violence in the region.
This Strategy directs Federal agencies to increase coordination and information sharing with State and local law enforcement agencies, intensifies national efforts to interdict the southbound flow of weapons and bulk currency while stopping illicit contraband from being trafficked north, and calls for continued close collaboration with the Government of Mexico in efforts against the drug cartels. The Strategy is an important component of the Administration’s national drug control policy and complements the Administration’s comprehensive efforts to respond to threats along the border.
In his remarks on the Strategy, Attorney General Holder stated, “Drug trafficking cartels spread violence and lawlessness throughout our border region and reach into all of our communities, large and small.” He further noted, “By focusing on increased cooperation between the U.S. and Mexican governments as well as enhanced communication within U.S. law enforcement agencies, the National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy we introduce today provides an effective way forward that will crack down on cartels and make our country safer.”
Another important component of the department’s efforts to neutralize the powerful Mexican drug cartels is the Mérida Initiative, a partnership between the Government of Mexico and the United States. The Mérida Initiative presents new opportunities for expert collaboration on many fronts. With Mérida funded programs coordinated by the Department of State, the Department plans, among other things: (1) to place two experienced federal prosecutors in Mexico to work with their counterparts in prosecutorial capacity-building; (2) to assign a forensics expert in Mexico; (3) to assist Mexican law enforcement and our interagency partners in strengthening and developing vetted teams and task forces that can work with U.S. federal law enforcement agencies to attack the cartels across the range of their criminal conduct; (4) to advance fugitive apprehension with U.S. law enforcement agencies and extradition with our Criminal Division experts; (5) to assist Mexico in developing an asset management system to deal with the assets seized and forfeited in criminal cases; (6) to assist Mexican law enforcement and prosecutorial offices in strengthening their internal integrity; (7) to assist Mexican law enforcement officials and prosecutors in enhancing evidence collection, preservation and admissibility; and (8) to provide expert consultations on victim assistance and witness protection issues. At the same time, as an operational matter, the department continues to work closely with Mexico as it addresses the issue of cartel-related public corruption, including through investigative assistance.
Further the report goes on to say that the department’s strategy to identify, disrupt, and dismantle the Mexican drug cartels has five key elements and supports the National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy. First, the strategy employs extensive and coordinated intelligence capabilities. The Department pools information generated by our law enforcement agencies and federal, state and local government partners, and then uses the product to promote operations in the United States and to assist the efforts of the Mexican authorities to attack the cartels and the corruption that facilitates their operations. Second, through intelligence-based, prosecutor-led, multi-agency task forces that leverage the strengths, resources, and expertise of the complete spectrum of federal, state, local, and international investigative and prosecutorial agencies, the department focuses its efforts on investigation, extradition, prosecution, and punishment of key cartel leaders. As the department has demonstrated in attacking other major criminal enterprises, destroying the leadership and seizing the financial infrastructure of the cartels undermines their very existence. Third, the Department of Justice, in concerted efforts with the Department of Homeland Security, pursues investigations and prosecutions related to the trafficking of guns and the smuggling of cash and contraband for drug-making facilities from the United States into Mexico. Much of the violence and corruption in Mexico is fueled by these resources that come from our side of the border. Fourth, the department uses traditional law enforcement approaches to address the threats of cartel activity in the United States.
These threats include the widespread distribution of drugs on our streets and in our neighborhoods, battles between members of rival cartels on American soil, and violence directed against U.S. citizens and government interests. This component of the department’s strategy will inevitably include investigations and prosecutions of U.S.-based gangs that forge working relationships with the Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTOs).
Fifth, the department prosecutes criminals responsible for federal crimes involving murder, trafficking, smuggling, money laundering, kidnapping and violence. The ultimate goals of these operations are to neutralize the cartels and bring the criminals to justice.
Related Articles: Mexican Drug Cartels dominate drug trafficking in more than 230 U.S. cities
American’s most dangerous gangs working for Mexican Drug Cartels By
Sources:
National Southwest Border Counternarcotics Strategy
Office of National Drug Control Policy
June 2009
STATEMENT OF
LANNY A. BREUER
ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
WILLIAM HOOVER
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR FIELD OPERATIONS
BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, FIREARMS AND EXPLOSIVES
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
ANTHONY P. PLACIDO
ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR FOR INTELLIGENCE
DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
BEFORE THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HEARING ENTITLED
“THE RISE OF MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS AND U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY”
DEA
FBI
AP Photo
El Debate de Culiacn-Carla Sajaropulos
Laguna Journal
U. S. Border Fire Report
The Christian Science Monitor
America’s leading authority on Venture Capital/Equity Funding. A trustee on some of the nations largest trade Union funds. A noted Author, Lecturer, Educator, Emergency Manager, Counter-Terrorist, War on Drugs and War on Terrorist Specialist, Business Consultant, Newspaper Publisher. Radio News caster. Labor Law generalist, Teamster Union Business Agent, General Organizer, Union Rank and File Member Grievances Representative, NLRB Union Representative, Union Contract Negotiator, Workers Compensation Appeals Board Hearing Representative. Investigative Reporter for print, electronic and on-line News Agencies.
National Security Council
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John McCain’s Rage is a National Security Concern
bravenewpac.org During last night’s debate, John McCain said we need “a cool hand at the tiller,” but McCain has proven to be a loose cannon. He has accosted his Congressional colleagues on both sides of the aisle on everything from the federal budget to diplomatic relations. He is known for hurling profanities rather than settling disagreements calmly. His belligerence is legendary. Even conservative Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi has said, “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.” When someone earns the nickname “Senator Hothead,” the public ought to call his character into question. McCain’s propensity to explode undermines his abilities as a rational decision maker, particularly on national security issues — which could prove disastrous considering our country is already involved in two wars. McCain’s temper is critical to his decision-making abilities, and his character must be discussed. As Drew Westen writes, “The political brain is an emotional brain. It is not a dispassionate calculating machine, objectively searching for the right facts, figures and policies to make a reasoned decision.” That why it’s so crucial people know the real Senator Hothead.
