A very good summary of what led up to the failed Christmas Day Massacre. We got lucky that day. These are the questions that need to be asked. Will they be answered is another matter. This was a failure in leadership from the top.
Today we are gaining more and more clarity on the missteps that led up to a Nigerian Jihadist, who was armed with a powerful and sophisticated stealth bomb and trained by al Qaeda in Yemen, coming seconds away from inflicting a Christmas Day Massacre on Flight 253 over Detroit. And two things are becoming quickly apparent.
First is the glaring fact that news media is clueless about how things like intelligence gathering and the federal bureaucracy work. The root cause of this ignorance is because news reporters are inexperienced and unskilled spectators trying to grasp and convey these complex issues and actions to the public – and they do a terrible job of it. It is also due to the fact many of them are very much emotionally tied to this President as doe-eyed supporters (which is why you need political diversity on stories – not just in news rooms – to generate fair and balanced reporting). Biased and naive reporting seems to be the rule of thumb on this event.
The second aspect of this fiasco coming into focus is how the Obama administration changed the tone and pace of the war on terror. Toning down the ‘war on terror’ to a criminal investigation of ‘man-made-disasters’ has major impacts on our defenses. It fundamentally changes to nature of ‘the system’ which Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano infamously claimed had ‘worked’. Maybe it ‘worked’ as designed in its newer, lower key form. But it did not work in protecting this nation from attack. . .
I just received this from a colleague. It’s definitely worth a read. Peters and I are viewing the same elephant and are describing it in similar terms. You can see some of my similar thoughts in my recent piece:
On Christmas Day, an Islamist fanatic tried to blow up an airplane whose passengers were mostly Christians. And we helped.
Our government gets no thanks for preventing a tragedy. Only the bomber’s ineptitude preserved the lives of nearly 300 innocents.
How did we help Umar Abdulmutallab, a wealthy Muslim university graduate who decided that Allah wanted him to slaughter Christians on their most joyous holiday?
By continuing to lie to ourselves. Although willing — at last — to briefly use the word “terror,” yesterday President Obama still refused to make a connection between the action, the date and Islam.
Was it just a ticketing accident that led to a bombing attempt on Christmas? Was it all about blackout dates and frequent-flyer miles?
It wasn’t. You know it. And I know it. But our government refuses to know it. Despite vast databases crammed with evidence, our leaders — of both parties — still refuse to connect Islamist terrorism with Islam.
Our insistence that “Islam’s a religion of peace” would have been cold comfort to the family members of those passengers had the bomb detonated as planned.
Abdulmutallab’s own father warned our diplomats that his son had been infected by Islamist extremism. Our diplomats did nothing. Why? Because (despite a series of embassy bombings) the State Department dreads linking terrorism to Islam.
Contrast our political correctness with Abdulmutallab’s choice of Christmas for his intended massacre. Our troops stand down on Muslim holidays. A captive terrorist merely has to claim that a soldier dog-eared a Koran, and it’s courts-martial all around.
We proclaim that the terrorists “don’t represent Islam.” OK, whom do they represent? The Franciscans? We don’t get to decide what’s Islam and what isn’t. Muslims do. And far too many of them approve of violent jihad.
It gets worse. Instead of focusing on the religious zeal and inspiration of our enemies and how such motivations change the game, our “terrorism experts” agonize over whether such beasts as Abdulmutallab or Maj. Hasan, the Fort Hood assassin for Allah, are really members of al Qaeda or not.
As a Sunday Post editorial pointed out, al Qaeda’s far more than a formal organization; it’s an idea, a cause. If a terrorist says he’s al Qaeda, he is, even if he doesn’t have a union card from Jihadi Local 632.
We’re dealing with a global Muslim movement, not a Masons’ lodge. . .
This isn’t a revolt of the wretched of the earth. These terrorists are the Muslim-fanatic versions of Bill Ayers and the Weathermen, pampered kids unhappy with the world. Al Qaeda’s big guns are re- belling against privilege. There’s a lot of Freud in this fundamentalism. . .
We’re not just fighting men but a plague of faith. Until Washington accepts that, we’ll continue to reap a low return on our investments of blood and treasure.
On Christmas Day, a Muslim fanatic attempted to butcher hundreds of Christians (dead Jews would’ve been a bonus). Our response? Have airport security analyze the contents of grandma’s mini-bottle of shampoo — we don’t want to “discriminate.”
With our lies, self-deception and self-flagellation, we’re terror’s little helpers.
Ralph Peters’ latest book is “The War After Armageddon.”
The DHS secretary, appointed as a political favor, is endangering lives with her after-the-fact policing approach. (Also read Roger L. Simon:Fire Janet Napolitano Now)
[Edited slightly to correct several typos and formatting errors]
HT The New Editor
I haven’t posted much at FOF re the GWOT. I wrote extensively about this topic over at Rocket’s Brain Trust. If you’ve read my other posts on the failed Detroit attack, we need a major paradigm shift in our thinking and approach to the GWOT. We need to get our heads in the game and eyes on the ball. So far we’re fighting and defending against the last attack. Our enemy is not completely stupid! Whether this guy was a lone wolf or not, the bottom line is this ideology can radicalize even highly educated youth. This guy was not your average disaffected goat herder as Mark Steyn correctly says in his usual pithy flare.
We’re up sh-t creek without a paddle if the mindset of the DHS follows the insight of of Secretary Napolitano. The only reason this attack failed is “operator error.” This guy didn’t get it right in igniting the explosives in his underwear ala Reid the shoe bomber. Fortunately the passengers didn’t give him a second chance. Reid was not low hanging fruit either as he’s been portrayed by media accounts. He was to light the fuse with a lighter. Unfortunately after he was denied boarding on the previous day, he was let on the second day. This time without his lighter. No one told him the end of the fuse needed to be cut in a different manner so it could be lit with a match.
DHS Sec. Napolitano: “The System Worked” in Failed Bombing of Northwest Flight
posted at 12:17 pm on December 27, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Let’s see how many Hot Air readers agree with this statement by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano this morning. Under tough questioning by CNN’s Candy Crowley, Napolitano insisted that the failure of the bomb to explode showed that “the system worked” (click the image to watch):
Mark Steyn commented on the significance of this attack at NRO’s “The Corner” (See Instapudit’s link below). There is a message to all of us in law enforcement in satirist Steyn’s message. You can’t win a war by playing defense. You must play offense. You must know who the enemy is and the ideology that drives it. The Israelis learned this a long time ago. We are consuming scarce resources at great expense for a “feel good” sense of security that does little to provide actual security.
I’ve written about this before several years ago. Perhaps it’s time to dust this off and have these discussions again within the law enforcement community. To successfully defend this Country from those at war with us, we must force leverage our scarce police resources in the homeland. We must use the public as our eyes and ears. The 600K or so police officers/agents at the local, regional, state and federal level in this Country can’t possibly be everywhere at once. As I said to a fellow colleague of the Police Futurist International in a post to its egroup of the need to include the American public in the GWOT or whatever one wants to call it now:
Agreed when an attack is in progress [Citizens actively thwarting an attack in progress]. My point is we need a paradigm shift from one of first responders and reactionary responses to one of prevention. We’ve already lost once an attack is in progress. Our mission should be to prevent, deflect or disrupt an attack before it becomes operational. Jihadist terror cells stick out like sore thumbs in our culture before they become operational. They are very visible to the public if the public is informed what to look for. With the public acting as our eyes and ears, we can disrupts these cells. Even if we can’t prosecute because of sources and methods[*], it’s a win when an attack is thwarted.
[*] [This is the wall between domestic law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community.If information/intelligence is obtained in a manner that would preclude its introduction at trial e.g., the failure to advise of Miranda or monitoring of enemy communications, that is acted upon that results in the arrests of others unless other independent and untainted evidence exists, no criminal prosecution is possible.This is the doctrine of the “fruits of the poison tree” or the Exclusionary Rule.]
Read the two links in this last line of Instapundit’s (Prof Glenn Reynold) link to Steyn’s post at NRO’s “The Corner” regarding the use of the new/alternative/social media to provide a framework where the public can assist in protecting against terror attacks [See my concept of Mission Focused Strategic Communications below]:
Somebody should write something on this phenomenon. Maybe even, you know, a book!
On September 11th 2001, the government’s (1970s) security procedures all failed, and the only good news of the day came from self-reliant citizens (on Flight 93) using their own wits and a willingness to act.
On December 25th 2009, the government’s (post-9/11) security procedures all failed, and the only good news came once again from alert individuals.
As I wrote before, “The Traditional Law Enforcement/Criminal Justice System Paradigm is Ill Prepared to Fight this War on Terror –What should Our Domestic Rules of Engagement be?
AQ struck in a deliberate, unprovoked, pre-mediated attack to kill as many people as possible. This was an act of war. This is a war we cannot lose against a nontraditional enemy, which is stateless, and wears no distinctive military markings. This enemy seeks the violent overthrow of our government. These are not normal times. Once this is understood, then appropriate rules of engagement can be formulated while still protecting individual citizens’ rights. [I’m] . . . not advocating abridging fundamental Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. Reasonable investigators, making reasonable decisions given these special times, must be free to act without fear of second-guessing and repercussions. Such questioning inhibits decisive action to engage the enemy. A good read on this is an essay, “History’s Verdict,” by Victor Davis Hanson comparing the WWII military campaigns such as D-Day and with our expectation of perfection in this war. We must stay focused, our minds in the game, our eyes on the ball, and ignore the cries of foul from the bleachers. If we put our creative minds together we can definitely play the game smarter, out thinking and outmaneuvering the enemy in imaginative, creative, and innovative ways.
Once the ends of this Islamofascist enemy are understood, I’m sure our courts will give law enforcement considerable flexibility and latitude. This Country is as war. A clear and present danger can be demonstrated to invoke the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment prohibition against search and seizure without warrant. It’s no big secret that al Qaeda has gone high tech and taken this war into cyberspace. AQ is now using cyberspace for command and control, propaganda, and recruiting purposes. . .
. . . Our enemy is exploiting our tolerance and respect for individual rights, religious freedom, and other cultures. This is the classical ethical dilemma, of the relativistic good of the many vs. the good of the few. Collectively we must defend our Country against this foreign enemy that has infiltrated our society while at the same time striking a fair balance to protect the individual rights of the few. Given our Country must survive to protect the rights of the few, this in this unique circumstance . . .
I don’t for a minute believe our founding fathers intended to extend the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to a hostile embedded enemy, which seeks the violent overthrow of the government. The preservation of the Nation must come first. Collateral intrusions into the personal privacy of a few should not be a bar to actively pursing the enemy. Unrelated criminal activity inadvertently discovered while pursuing the enemy should continue receive the protection of the Exclusionary Rule.
Law enforcement’s mission must now be one of prevention e.g., to prevent, deflect, deter, and or to disrupt an attack.The risk of allowing a successful attack to occur is far too great.Our traditional role of investigation, arrest and prosecution of offenders is not effective in countering the attacks of our enemy at war with us. We’ve already lost if an enemy attack is successful besides who is there left to prosecute afterwards? We must “go for the ball” to prevent the enemy from launching an attack.The legal issues and whether a successful prosecution is possible can be dealt with later.
I’m not advocating the abridgment of our fundamental rights as citizens but I think it’s perverse to afford those rights to foreign nationals or those citizens that have become radicalized.Neither I’m advocating “water boarding” or other extreme measures.I would argue the doctrine of “exigent circumstances”applies in these instances e.g., the classic case of a bomb about to be detonated or a kidnapping.Our enemy has demonstrated on multiple occasions the will and ability to inflict mass civilian casualties.Law enforcement should not be punished when acting in good faith when pursuing active terror attacks on the homeland. For example in this latest thwarted attack based on my training and experience there could have been other terrorists on inbound flights to the US.I would have sought information and intelligence from this suspect without first advising him of Miranda. The WSJ agrees with my assessment in this OP/ED. Unrelated criminal activities inadvertently discovered while pursuing the enemy should continue receive the protection of the Exclusionary Rule. If this precludes a successful criminal prosecution so be it.I have no issues with detaining such foreign nationals as enemy combatants for the duration of this war based on probable cause findings in special military tribunals or courts.The thought of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian criminal court in New York City is beyond the pale.This will become a worldwide propaganda event for the enemy- let alone a significant security risk to the citizens of New York.
Here’s some of my previous thoughts on using the American public via the Blogosphere to force leverage scarce police resources:
Mission Focused Strategic Communication:
These new communications mediums [The Internet, the new/alternative/social media and the Blogosphere] are all key to a concept I’ve coined, MissionFocused Strategic Communication.
Simply stated this is keeping communications as horizontal as possible using the least common denominators. Keep the links short between those having the info and those who can act. A classic failure example of this is the 9/11. FBI field agents figured it out but the risk adverse hierarchical decision-making pyramids of the entrenched intel bureaucracy prevented timely action. The “new media” can be harnessed to force leverage scarce police resources by enabling citizen participation at very little cost. The concept is “spontaneous order.” This occurred at the World Trade Center and also in Katrina where people came together in an ad hoc manner, assessed the situation, and took independent action on their own ignoring official sources of information. In the end they were able to save themselves. Had they followed “official” sources of info they would have died. On the practical side for local law enforcement, blogs are an ideal tool for quick two-way communications between neighborhood watches, the local patrol officers, and detectives bypassing the traditional means of communications. Envision a supercharged virtual neighborhood and business watches without all the face-to-face meetings where old info is dispensed.
If the election were being held today in the light of the terrorism on the Delta flight from Amsterdam, I have little doubt that John McCain – whatever his deficiencies as a candidate – would have been elected president, possibly in a landslide. Who would want Barack Obama now – or his bizarre collection of czars and advisers, including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano?
Hours after the near disaster on the Delta flight, up popped the very Napolitano with the following statement: “I am grateful to the passengers and crew aboard Northwest Flight 253 who reacted quickly and heroically to an incident that could have had tragic results.”
Well, thanks a bunch, Janet. They certainly were heroic. But why did they even have to do it in the first place? What was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab doing on that plane anyway when he was already apparently on the terror watch list and his own father had given warnings to the US Embassy of his son’s religious extremism only a month before? Any comment about that?
I don’t know what annoys me more: Janet Napolitano saying “the system worked” when what she means is “the system failed, but smart passengers proved that the system is unnecessary”, or the moronic new rules the TSA is apparently putting into place in order to “prevent” future such occurances. The TSA’s obsession with fighting the last war is so strong that I expect any day to see them building wooden forts at our nation’s airports in order to keep the redcoats at bay. Every time they miss something, we have to give up more liberty. . .
UPDATE V:
I posted this summary of some of the thoughts here and some new material to the Police Futurist Int’l email group:
I was talking with a fellow Cassandra at Starbucks this morning who help me clarify my thinking. He’s probably a little left of center. He doesn’t believe “The One” would deliberately put the Country at risk. With “The One’s” advisers e.g., Napolitano, I would differ as this is all about style rather than substance. I don’t think this is intentional but one from lack of experience and naivety in the real world and from a frame of reference re the threat we are now facing e.g, Neville Chamberlain. Obama is still in campaign mode and so far hasn’t made the transition to one of being a leader that must make hard decisions quickly without the aid of focus groups to consider the political consequences. My friend has issues with Bush/Cheney’s view of Islamofascist terrorism as acts of war e.g., a traditional war with a nation/state of the past. He’s right to a point re our over use of the term “War” for other things like the War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Crime et al. This presupposes that these wars are winnable. Further it gives a false sense of expectation that our government will eventually win. When the government comes up short it creates discontentment.
My friend and I are looking at the same elephant. The real issue is how do we address this unique problem which in essence is a clash of cultures/ideologies – one that is modern (free will of men and equality of men and women) vs. one from Medieval times where man is inherently evil, women are chattel, and behavior must be controlled by Immans who interpret the will of G-d here on earth. We are at war with a transnational, asymmetrical enemy that is driven by a radical ideology that seeks our total destruction that is fueled by our dependence on oil and the great wealth that flows from it. Before the age of dependence on oil these ideologies did not pose a threat to our homeland. These countries are feudal in nature and do not share this great wealth with their people. In fact they keep them in check by this ideology and can divert the civilian anger conveniently to the Great and Little Satan as the root of all Evil. We have had our own religious/political driven radical sects/cults from time to time e.g., the Inquisition, the Holocaust, David Korisch and Jim Jones. David Korish and Jim Jones were recognize for what they were and were not funded by oil. BTW the Sauds are not our friends in this war that have brokered a deal with the Devil e.g., the hard line Wahhabi’s to fund their radical mosque and madrases to remain in power. Neither is the Iranian Regime which spends a great deal of its wealth pursuing a nuclear weapon and funding terrorist groups of both sides of the schism of Islam – Shi’ia and Sunni, to destabilize Lebanon and Israel. Notwithstanding the people of Iran notwithstanding that have been subjugated by a radical minority of Shi’ia sect of Islam.
Do read Geert Wilders’ message to the American people:
I’m tend to see the current world from the frame of reference as does Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does as reliving history circa 1938. There can be no appeasement of Evil e.g, Adolf Hitler and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
What is the solution? Weapons of mass destruction can now be launched by a group a few individuals that have the capacity to cause mass casualties. As I’ve written before the name of the game is prevention. We can’t allow an attack to occur. The concept of “first responders” is a misnomer. We’ve lost the game if an attack is successful. As I wrote in the above post:
I’ve written about this before several years ago. Perhaps it’s time to dust this off and have these discussions again within the law enforcement community. To successfully defend this Country from those at war with us, we must force leverage our scarce police resources in the homeland. We must use the public as our eyes and ears. The 600K or so police officers/agents at the local, regional, state and federal level in this Country can’t possibly be everywhere at once. As I said to a fellow colleague of the Police Futurist International in a post to its egroup of the need to include the American public in the GWOT or whatever one wants to call it now:
Agreed when an attack is in progress [Citizens actively thwarting an attack in progress]. My point is we need a paradigm shift from one of first responders and reactionary responses to one of prevention. We’ve already lost once an attack is in progress. Our mission should be to prevent, deflect or disrupt an attack before it becomes operational. Jihadist terror cells stick out like sore thumbs in our culture before they become operational. They are very visible to the public if the public is informed what to look for. With the public acting as our eyes and ears, we can disrupts these cells. Even if we can’t prosecute because of sources and methods[*], it’s a win when an attack is thwarted.
[*] [This is the wall between domestic law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community.If information/intelligence is obtained in a manner that would preclude its introduction at trial e.g., the failure to advise of Miranda or monitoring of enemy communications, that is acted upon that results in the arrests of others unless other independent and untainted evidence exists, no criminal prosecution is possible.This is the doctrine of the “fruits of the poison tree” or the Exclusionary Rule.]
Law enforcement’s mission must now be one of prevention e.g., to prevent, deflect, deter, and or to disrupt an attack.The risk of allowing a successful attack to occur is far too great.Our traditional role of investigation, arrest and prosecution of offenders is not effective in countering the attacks of our enemy at war with us. We’ve already lost if an enemy attack is successful besides who is there left to prosecute afterwards? We must “go for the ball” to prevent the enemy from launching an attack in the first place.The legal issues and whether a successful prosecution is possible can be dealt with later.
I’m not advocating the abridgment of our fundamental rights as citizens but I think it’s perverse to afford those rights to foreign nationals or those citizens that have become radicalized.Neither I’m advocating “water boarding” or other extreme measures.I would argue the doctrine of “exigent circumstances”applies in these instances e.g., the classic case of a bomb about to be detonated or a kidnapping.Our enemy has demonstrated on multiple occasions the will and ability to inflict mass civilian casualties.Law enforcement should not be punished when acting in good faith when pursuing active terror attacks on the homeland. For example in this latest thwarted attack based on my training and experience there could have been other terrorists on inbound flights to the US.I would have sought information and intelligence from this suspect without first advising him of Miranda. Denying the interception of enemy signal/communications is also perverse.
If we had not cracked the the German and Japanese codes, the outcome of WWII could have gone the other way.The WSJ agrees with my assessment in this OP/ED. Unrelated criminal activities inadvertently discovered while pursuing the enemy should continue receive the protection of the Exclusionary Rule. If this precludes a successful criminal prosecution so be it.I have no issues with detaining such foreign nationals as enemy combatants for the duration of this war based on probable cause findings in special military tribunals or courts.The thought of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian criminal court in New York City is beyond the pale.This will become a worldwide propaganda event for the enemy- let alone a significant security risk to the citizens of New York.
As I wrote before, “The Traditional Law Enforcement/Criminal Justice System Paradigm is Ill Prepared to Fight this War on Terror –What should Our Domestic Rules of Engagement be?
AQ struck in a deliberate, unprovoked, pre-mediated attack to kill as many people as possible. This was an act of war. This is a war we cannot lose against a nontraditional enemy, which is stateless, and wears no distinctive military markings. This enemy seeks the violent overthrow of our government. These are not normal times. Once this is understood, then appropriate rules of engagement can be formulated while still protecting individual citizens’ rights. [I’m] . . . not advocating abridging fundamental Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. Reasonable investigators, making reasonable decisions given these special times, must be free to act without fear of second-guessing and repercussions. Such questioning inhibits decisive action to engage the enemy. A good read on this is an essay, “History’s Verdict,” by Victor Davis Hanson comparing the WWII military campaigns such as D-Day and with our expectation of perfection in this war. We must stay focused, our minds in the game, our eyes on the ball, and ignore the cries of foul from the bleachers. If we put our creative minds together we can definitely play the game smarter, out thinking and outmaneuvering the enemy in imaginative, creative, and innovative ways.
Once the ends of this Islamofascist enemy are understood, I’m sure our courts will give law enforcement considerable flexibility and latitude. This Country is as war. A clear and present danger can be demonstrated to invoke the exigent circumstances exception to the Fourth Amendment prohibition against search and seizure without warrant. It’s no big secret that al Qaeda has gone high tech and taken this war into cyberspace. AQ is now using cyberspace for command and control, propaganda, and recruiting purposes. . .
. . . Our enemy is exploiting our tolerance and respect for individual rights, religious freedom, and other cultures. This is the classical ethical dilemma, of the relativistic good of the many vs. the good of the few. Collectively we must defend our Country against this foreign enemy that has infiltrated our society while at the same time striking a fair balance to protect the individual rights of the few. Given our Country must survive to protect the rights of the few, this in this unique circumstance . . .
I don’t for a minute believe our founding fathers intended to extend the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to a hostile embedded enemy, which seeks the violent overthrow of the government. The preservation of the Nation must come first. Collateral intrusions into the personal privacy of a few should not be a bar to actively pursing the enemy. Unrelated criminal activity inadvertently discovered while pursuing the enemy should continue receive the protection of the Exclusionary Rule.
Perhaps we should be honest with the American people. Yes this is a war but can we stay in a perpetual state of war? Will there be an end? The Modern World has been fighting this war of ideologies since the 8th/9th Century. There will be successful attacks. We can’t be 100% successful in preventing/diverting these attacks. This ideology has many of the same elements/attributes of other failed ideologies that couldn’t distribute goods/services equitably to the people and became totalitarian in nature with regard to the universal truth of the free will of men and women e.g., Nazism, Communism, Fascism, Maoism, Feudalism et al. This war will not be won in our lifetime. This is perhaps the fault of the Bush/Cheney Administration. While they said this war was going to be a long haul, they’re characterization was somewhat less and this is a source of discontentment.
We have never faced a similar threat to our very existence. Our current legal system as I wrote before is ill prepared to deal with this threat. We need to be realistic and analyze what is driving this threat. We must make the distinction between these attacks and traditional criminal events while at the same time protecting the fundamental Constitutional rights of our own citizens. We must be able to call a “shovel a shovel” and act accordingly. Whether we continue to call this a war or not our rules of engagement must change.
In my minds eye I keep seeing Det. Rosewood in Beverly Hills Cop I in the climatic scene near end of the movie when the detectives are “storming” Victor Maitland’s mansion (bad guy) to rescue the heroine. Det. Rosewood is making a “tactical approach” to the rear with the others. After taking numerous volleys of automatic weapons fire, Det. Rosewood stands up, completely exposing himself, and yells to the gunmen on the veranda, “Police – You’re all under arrest.” Of course this is followed by several more blasts of automatic weapons fire narrowly missing Det. Rosewood, who then dives back over a concrete railing. There are other similar parallels between the political correctness in this movie and our current situation. The time for political correctness has long since passed.
File under “Homeland Security is a Joke.”Milblogger/independent war correspondent extraordinaire Michael Yon reports that he was stopped at Sea-Tac airport and handcuffed by TSA agents:
This has been bouncing around the Net today. I’ve posted several comments at Police Futurist Intl of which I’m a member:
Here’s an interesting post that has nothing to do with either the pros or cons of this executive order but the MSM giving a pass to the Obama administration on this:
During his presidency, Ronald Reagan granted the global police agency Interpol the status of diplomatic personnel in order to engage more constructively on international law enforcement. In Executive Order 12425, Reagan made two exceptions to that status. The first had to do with taxation, but the second was to make sure that Interpol had the same accountability for its actions as American law enforcement — namely, they had to produce records when demanded by courts and could not have immunity for their actions.
Barack Obama unexpectedly revoked those exceptions in a change to EO 12425 last month, as Threats Watch reports:
UPDATE I:
This debate has continued on both at the Media Mythbusters and the Police Futurist Int’l egroups. Here my two cents worth so far:
FYI I just posted these thoughts in the other thread. I think we’re getting to the heart of this debate now. It’s not the current state of Interpol but what could happen in the future if system checks are not in place to protect abuses of our own Constitutional rights.
Bud, Olli, and Sid
I think this is why in this Country law enforcement bodies are subject to the Exclusionary Rule evolved through the courts and FOIA demands. This is a fundamental check on the over reach of power by law enforcement/executive branch of government violating Constitutional rights of citizens. Case in point just review the current Climategate scandal and how otherwise generally good scientists have had their ethics co-opted and were stonewalling on FOIA requests to reveal their source data and code for others to review. This is the same research that led up to COP15 where we were on the verge of making major changes in the world’s economy on now suspect research that was supposedly well settled.
My quip re the UN and like international bodies that seemed to be dominate/ co-opted by corrupt Third World countries is directly related to my concerns re granting immunity to any of these bodies whether as in Interpol’s case may not be a concern just yet. A case in point is the UN’s Commission on Human Rights. While well intentioned, this Commission has some perverse member countries that at times have chaired this Commission e.g., China, Zimbabwe, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Libya, Algeria, Syria, and of all places the Sudan.
I just have quirks about yielding sovereignty to these international bodies no matter how well intentioned they may be.
This might be a much ado about nothing but we should keep our eyes wide open. The Obama Administration has acted with rank amateurism e.g., DHS Secretary Napolitano. I just was an explanation to ensure they have considered all the ramification of this executive order are.
The Iranian nutcase is proceeding at flank speed to develop nuclear weapons while we contemplate our navels. Netanyaho is right that today’s world is much like it was in 1938 with the rise of the Third Reich. Even The One acknowledged this in his recent speech re that there is Evil in the world and sometimes war is necessary e.g., Hitler. Why can’t he connect the dots now? There is no easy political solution that will keep his poll ratings up. We need clear and decisive leadership and not campaigning. The dangers are too great.
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Kenneth Timmerman<timmerman.road@verizon.net>
Date: Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 8:12 AM
Subject: Timmerman/Newsmax: White House Wants to Stall Iran Sanctions
To: KRT 4 – Bloggers <timmerman.road@verizon.net>
White House Wants to Stall Iran Sanctions Wednesday, 16 Dec 2009 09:59 AM Article Font Size By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
Even before the House overwhelmingly passed long-stalled legislation Tuesday to impose sanctions on foreign suppliers of refined petroleum products to Iran, the Obama administration had asked the Senate to hold off on approving new sanctions on Iran until early next year.
So please allow me to explain in what I hope are easily digestible terms.
First and foremost — contrary to what you’ve likely read elsewhere in the blogosphere or heard from the few policymakers and pundits actually addressing the issue, it was not the temperature decline the planet has been experiencing since 1998 that Jones and friends conspired to hide. Certainly, the simple fact that the email was sent in November of 1999 should have allayed any such confusion.
In fact, the decline Jones so urgently sought to hide was not one of measured temperatures at all, but rather figures infinitely more important to climate alarmists – those determined by proxy reconstructions. As this scandal has attracted new readers to the subject, I ask climate savvy readers to indulge me while I briefly explain climate proxies, as they are an essential ingredient of this contemptible conspiracy.
Truth be told — even reasonably reliable instrumental readings are a relatively modern convenience, limiting CRU’s global measured temperature database to a start date somewhere in the mid-19th century. That’s why global temperature charts based on actual readings typically use a base year of 1850 or somewhere thereabouts. . .
MSM censorship of its critics & control of the news/thought/information of the day – The Savage Manslaughter Case & the Spokesman-Review
I was answering questions posed to me from other commenters in this open thread that has become a debate on the Climategate story as it develops. My comment was immediately removed by S-R Associate Editor/Editorial Writer Gary Crooks. Shades of former S-R Editor Steve Smith?
I posted this already once but it was apparently removed because I linked back to my own site re my criticism of this paper and it’s owners. I was calling to their attention their hypocrisy re criticism of their business dealings in this town that directly led to the death of Jo Savage and their refusal to cover this story to protect their owners from criminal prosecution. This is a dark little secret in this town that the owners of the paper are trying to keep secret. Little do they realize the power of the new social media to break the veil on these secrets e.g., the Catholic Church’s longstanding secret of its sexual abuses was broken my this new media in Boston in 2002 (See Shirky’s book “Here comes Everybody’).
In a normal political environment an inquisitive free press would serve as a check by educating and informing its readers on this abuse of power and lack of action by their governmental entities. These intertwined stories have great news value – The RPS Bond Fraud, the manslaughter death of Jo Savage, the underlying causes and their subsequent cover-ups. This story would be Page One Above the Fold in the paper of record. The press as a governmental watchdog by its reporting would drive public opinion that in turn would hold those elected/appointed officials accountable for their actions. Unfortunately in Spokane such information is squelched because the perpetrators own the local newspaper of record, The Spokesman-Review. The S-R functions as an instrumentality of this ongoing criminal enterprise/conspiracy to conceal its criminal acts by its self-censorship and under reporting of stories that involve the business/real estate interests of its owners – the Cowles Co.
Here’s the reply in this thread from Gary Crooks an associate editor and editorial writer for the Spokesman-Review. At least he’s acknowledging in the open his censorship. See my blog post for the other comments he’s removed without explanation to the readers of this thread. This is the very point I was making re the CRU and its attack and marginalization of its critics re Climategate.
Think the link will stay up on the 1,000th attempt?
Once more and all of your posts in this forum will be taken down.
I’ve now reposted it the link to my site. BTW I used a “tinyurl” link and did not post the title of my link and yet it was still pulled. Hence my reference to Lady’s McBeth’s lament, “Out Damn’d spot!” Lets see how long this one lasts.
Ron the Cop
Ron_the_Cop on December 04 at 9:56 a.m.Jeffrey,No I don’t ignore all the evidence. This is where your critical thinking skills come into play. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket and you take everything with a grain of salt and suspicion. This is because you are dealing with people. This is why you have a jury as the ultimate arbitrator of the facts based on witness testimony/evidence brought before them:The Futurist Magazine – Decision Making Under Pressure by Stan Shapiro
Yes, Gary, is being a pompous horse of an elitist aristocracy that is in decline – the MSM. It has lost its bearings and critical thinking ability along with putting aside it normal inquisitive/probing questioning, “Trust no one in authority/power.”
With the advent of the new/alternative/social media, the masses can now communicate directly with the masses without the filtering/biases of the MSM of what the news/thoughts of the day should be. The medium of expression is now essentially free. No longer do you need huge capital investments to publish/broadcast the news/thoughts of the day. Viewers and readers are free to read/watch sources that have demonstrated validity, reliability, and predictability of future events in their own personal lives. It’s the value of the content that now matters in this new market.
As I’ve said many times before we are living in a communications reformation period as great or greater that the reformation that took place with moveable type in Martin Luther’s time when control of news/thoughts/information of the day was wrested free of the elitist aristocracy and the Catholic Church e.g., Hewitt, Reynolds, and Shirky I’ve linked above in this thread.
I’m an optimist that there is a new symbiotic relationship possible between the MSM and the new media. The MSM cannot match the FREE resources of the distributive networks of experts that can fact check and crunch info e.g., crowd sourcing. The MSM does bring order to the process as a valued added service if it would truly follow its core journalistic principles. At least Gary does not delete your comments arbitrarily as he does mine when I call to his attention the hypocrisy of the S-R and its owners.
GMorton,
Yes you are correct regarding corporations are motivated by their own self-interests. Generally this is a good thing regarding the distribution of goods and services. Other ideologies have failed in this regard and become totalitarian in the process of doing so e.g., Socialism, Communism, Nazism, Maoism, Fascism, tribalism, and the rise of Islamofascism that seek to control the free will of the masses. There are times though when these self-interests become detrimental e.g., the tragedy of the commons. This is where there is a need for government to control the negative externalities e.g., pollution. Ideally this can be remedied by putting the outflow from a polluter above its intake on a river so that these costs are internalized or included in their bottom lines. Don’t get me started on our financial industry in the subprime credit market – pushing credit cards without any due diligence that caused ID theft to explode. What infuriates me is that our enemy in this current war whatever you may want to call it exploited this weakness. We were directly funding our enemy to kill our own troops on the ground in the ME.
For Immediate Release
December 3, 2009
Contact: Tom Kise
(916) 425-1314 or tkise@blackrockgrp.com
Los Angeles, CA — Today, Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, both members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and Oscar nominees, called on the Academy to rescind Al Gore’s Oscar in light of the Climategate revelations.
Simon, also the CEO of Pajamas Media and PJTV, said the following during his and Chetwynd’s co-hosted Poliwood program on PJTV:
I personally call for the Academy to rescind this Oscar.
[In] the history of the Academy … not to my knowledge has an Oscar ever been rescinded … I think they should rescind this one.
Climategate began on November 19th, when a whistleblower released a series of documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. These documents exposed a coordinated effort among climate scientists to distort the facts regarding man-made “Global Warming.”
I used a colleague’s article on critical thinking skills that will be published in the January 2010 issue of The Futurist Magazine – “Deciding Our Futures.” His article is titled, “Decision Making Under Pressure.“ (Link to article) This is a very good read. This is only for your noncommercial use unless you purchased it from the Futurist site below.
Deciding Our Futures As the world becomes more complex, the likelihood of making poor decisions about our future increases, as does the cost of bad outcomes. This special section offers insights from futurists on ways that we can come to grips with the flaws in our decision-making processes and improve our strategies for making critical decisions about the future. PDF Available.
1. Decision Making Under Pressure by Stan Shapiro
2. Decision Modeling by The Futures Group International
3. Robust Decision Making: Coping with Uncertainty by Robert J. Lempert, Steven W. Popper, and Steven C. Bankes
4. Managing Your Mind by Michael J. Mauboussin
Link to Dr. Stan Shapiro’s personal website on critical thinking skills, ER Think:
I used his example of the shuttle disaster as a familiar event to aid in the understanding of the death of Jo Savage in the RPS Parking Garage:
Decision makers . . . have a lot of responsibility and must quickly sort through complex data and information. The RPS Bond Fraud et al and the Savage manslaughter cases are not as complex as they may first appear. These cases are about the failure of critical thinking skills and ignoring of relative risk by our governmental decision makers. Let me remind you of a similar story that will give a familiar frame of reference from which to review the information I’m about to present.
A colleague of mine wrote an essay, “Shuttle Thinking,” that will appear soon as a feature article in an upcoming national business journal. The key point of the article is that even high-level management teams like NASA can succumb to fatally flawed decision-making when it comes to evaluating risk. The Columbia shuttle disaster involved pieces of foam breaking off from the external fuel tank – striking a very critical area of the shuttle’s left wing that eventually caused the catastrophic shuttle failure and the death of seven astronauts upon re-entry. Similar foam failures had occurred on numerous shuttle missions prior to Columbia, to the point that it became an accepted normal event. NASA engineers failed to recognize this structural failure as a risk. Because each prior foam event seemed to be minor, with no consequences, the engineers were emboldened ⎯ to continue to roll the dice. With each subsequent flight, the risk went unappreciated until that rare event occurred when, in the case of the Space Shuttle Columbia; the foam broke off and struck a vital area of the shuttle’s left wing. Keep rolling the dice and it will eventually come up craps. NASA management gambled and lost.
The Savage manslaughter case is an almost identical situation to the Space Shuttle cases. These parking structure barriers were failing with regularity, the RPS Parking Garage owners knew the barriers were failing, and RPS management chose to gamble our community’s safety by doing nothing. Similar to the NASA management — doing nothing worked— but only for a while. Because of the continued negligence of the garage owners, eventually another parking structure barrier failed — only this time, it resulted in the tragic death of Ms. Savage. The owners gambled—only this time, it was Jo Savage and her family that lost.
