So far, no one in this administration can explain to the public how and why Cash for Clunkers, Obamacare, buying into GM, threatening Boeing, the second stimulus, or new regulations on business were supposed to create more jobs or economic growth. The common denominator in all these failed efforts is the assumption that a technocrat with an Ivy League certificate knows far more about business than those who conduct it. Usually the more suspect the doctor, the more framed degrees on the waiting-room wall.
In Inspire, radical Yemeni-American preacher Anwar al-Awlaki explains that AQAP settled on attacking cargo planes because the jihadis foes would be faced with a dilemma once AQAP placed bombs on these planes. You either spend billions of dollars to inspect each and every package in the world, he wrote, or you do nothing and we keep trying again. Awlaki further explained, The air freight is a multi-billion dollar industry. FedEx alone flies a fleet of 600 aircraft and ships an average of four million packages per day. It is a huge worldwide industry. For the trade between North America and Europe, air cargo is indispensable and to be able to force the West to install stringent security measures sufficient enough to stop our explosive devices would add a heavy economic burden to an already faltering economy.
Inspire also explains that large-scale attacks, such as those of 9/11, are in its view no longer required to defeat the United States. To bring down America we do not need to strike big, it claims. In such an environment of security phobia that is sweeping America, it is more feasible to stage smaller attacks that involve less players and less time to launch and thus we may circumvent the security barriers America worked so hard to erect. (Al-Qaeda, however, has not abandoned catastrophic attacks entirely: its attempt to execute multiple Mumbai-style urban warfare attacks in Europe in late 2010 shows that these efforts continue.) The Foreman-Ali analogy is apt: al-Qaeda thinks it is turning the U.S.s strength against it, envisioning the elevated security spending exhausting America and making it more vulnerable.
The fundamental problem with the U.S.s system of homeland defense is that it has been structured in an expensive manner from top to bottom. One striking example is the U.S.s hesitance to embrace a system of terrorist profiling (most notably in airports), which produces inefficiencies. As Sheldon Jacobson, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign computer science professor who has studied aviation security since 1996, has noted: Spending billions of dollars on screening the wrong people uses up finite resources. If we keep focusing on stopping terrorist tactics rather than stopping the terrorists themselves, the aviation security system will never reach an acceptable level of security.
The problem is that if we simply slash our national security spending without making our system of defending against the terrorist threat more efficient and effective, well end up less safe. Thus, a critical challenge the U.S. now faces is improving the efficacy of the system, even as it reduces its expenditures in an effort to escape from al-Qaedas rope-a-dope.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/22/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
"Security phobia sweeping America" > The Lefties will be dancing in the streets, until such time our future Commie-Socialist Govt has then righteously arrested + gulagged for public Personal, Group? behavior in contrary to being a proper Socialist.
#3
Or you say"Fuk It" and don't ship either to or from that area.
Shouldn't take too Long of being cut off to make the People wipe out your Taliban, to the last man,woman or thing.
(Or is that being redundant)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
11/22/2011 6:36 Comments ||
Top||
#4
For some reason the computer I posted that one on threw up. Post is fixed. Computer is being punished by having Windows installed on it.
Posted by: Fred ||
11/22/2011 8:59 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Profile profile profile!
Do the full security test if Mo's name is anywhere in the person's name.
No air freight - hell no freight - on muz origin stuff into the USA.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
11/22/2011 9:06 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Profiling works, and despite cries of "racism", the response is to point out that European airports use profiling, and it works. And no, limiting profiling to just "behavior" is stupid.
Profiling must be "holistic".
Second, America must reach the conclusion that the problem is Muslims, so the solution must be about Muslims. And I didn't say the solution must be with the agreement of Muslims, but enforced on them as a group.
America must say to Muslims that their beliefs *can be* a threat to our people, so ALL Muslims *must be* and *shall be* under scrutiny.
Yet this *might* be mitigated by Muslims "cleaning their own house" of those individuals who promulgate violence and extremism. They must not embrace them, support them, encourage them, or give them money or solace. Instead they must reject them, and support society by expelling them, and turning them over to the authorities as repulsive and dangerous criminals, that harm Muslims as much as non-Muslims.
A people is not stereotyped by their best and brightest, but by their worst and most repugnant. A people are appreciated by society if they encourage their children to succeed and contribute to society, and reject and expel its members that take from and offend society.
There is no racism in any of this. And if these truths are embraced, America can give up a vast amount of its paranoia and police state apparatus as unnecessary and abusive, and return to a state of freedom and liberty.
Which we lived with comfortably when faced with far worse threats.
#7
I don't buy this. It would be far easier to inspect each and every package than to deal with protecting against passangers. Increased security at airports has numberous effects for Al Queda such as an annoyed population who blame TSA and the ability of Muslim travelers to create scares that eventually wears us down.
If they were to target cargo planes the cost of shipping would go up $1 a package which few would notice or gripe about and if one got through it would be the loss of a small crew. Hardly the big even Al Queda tries for.
Rope-a-dope is right. I don't buy this.
On the other hand, for someone like Saddam it would have been brilliant. Cause the US to build up in Kuwait at enormous expense and then comply until we draw down. Then repeat and eventually the cost becomes so high the US would back off.
#8
Cutting off freight traffic from selected countries might be a useful tool to punish countries that overtly support terror, but it doesn't remove the threat since the potential perpetrators aren't limited to those countries.
What al-Awlaki didn't quite understand is that packages, unlike people, don't mind being a little delayed and can stand much more robust sensor probing. Yes, there are delays, costs and technical challenges involved, but those are being worked and in many cases have been solved.
Deployment takes time and money.
International agreements that allow packages to be scanned at point of origin are preferable to scanning on arrival. However, such agreements need to protect critical technologies and information re: operational limitations. Those issues, too, are being worked.
Moreover, the resulting technologies have other potential uses which may in time make the investment quite profitable for us.
We just need to outlast these sons of b1tches and not be afraid to use our strengths to defend ourselves.
#3
The article insinuates a lot. What it doesn't say is why the Republicans still fight for lower taxes (because they believe in the Laffer Curve) despite the fact that wealthy Democrats in blue states would be the primary beneficiaries of such tax cuts (principles).
The left simply cannot understand not shivving your enemy at every opportunity.
#8
The Democrats believe everything comes from a central government. The Republicans believe in the freedom and intelligence of a free market. Through honesty and hard work, one might make it. The crony capitalism or socialism doesn't work except for an elite few. There's not much honesty in redistribution of wealth--taking from one person and giving to another based on some distorted view of social justice.
#9
Forget about taxing the rich, or not, that is not the issue.
The utterly stupendous waste of federal spending is the main issue. All this talk about favoring the rich only serves to divide the electorate & distract them from what is goind on.
#10
Yeah, because Jon Corzine an Warren Buffet are such good Republicans, along with the rest of the Goldman Sachs crowd that pumped about $850,000 into the Obama campaign.
#2
Unfortunately, he never explains how Norquist supposedly "enables Muslim Brotherhood access to the highest levels...". If there's a case to be made, make it. Don't just throw out accusations.
#5
Spencer is best at revealing the quranic basis of jihad terror. Who else is doing it? Norquist makes money by coloring all carpet humpers as benign. He's a ___
Folks: when the quran sez "jihad is prescribed to you," every slave of allah takes notice. By ideology every muslim is a dangerous fanatic. When they have the numbers they crush those of different beliefs.
Posted by: Bill Schwarzeneggar4060 ||
11/22/2011 13:39 Comments ||
Top||
#6
Spencer is not the only person to warn of Norquist's ties, nor was he the first.
The Muslim Brotherhood Inside the Conservative Movement
The front groups that the Muslim Brotherhood set up were identified in the captured document. Among them were the Muslim Students Association, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American Society, and the Council on American Islamic Relations or CAIR. The latter was set up to be a so-called civil rights organization whose purpose was to use the American Constitution to advance the Brotherhoods aims....
The late Mahboob Khan was an American Muslim, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the founders of the Muslim Students Association. He was also instrumental in creating the Islamic Society of North America. Mahboob Khans widow today sits on the board of one of the regional organizations of the Muslim Brotherhood front CAIR.
Mahboob Khan also founded three mosques in California, which preach the totalitarian doctrines of the Brotherhood. In 1993 Mahboob Khan and one of his mosques hosted the Blind Sheik Abdul Rahman just two months before the Sheiks terrorist group blew up the World Trade Center, killing six people and wounding more than a thousand. In 1995 Mahboob Khan and his mosque in Santa Clara, California hosted and held a fund-raiser for Ayaman al-Zawahiri, a member of the Brotherhood and the number two man in al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden.
The Muslim Brotherhood has been wildly successful in its plan to become part of Americas civil culture and to infiltrate the institutions of Americas civil government, including the White House and both political parties, and the conservative movement as well.
Suhail Khan is the proud son of Mahboob Khan and his protégé, as he is also the protégé of the convicted terrorist Abdurahman Alamoudi.
Sponsored by his longtime patron Grover Norquist, who has been a pillar of the conservative movement, Suhail Khan was given a White House appointment in the Bush Administration and facilitated Alamoudis access to the president. Suhail then became an Undersecretary of Transportation where he received a top security clearance. With Grovers support Suhail has also been made a board member of the American Conservative Union and was the moderator of a panel on Religious Liberty yesterday at this event.
Suhail Khan used his offices in the Bush White House with Grovers connivance to carry water for the terrorist Sami al-Arian in an attempt to ban the use of secret evidence in terrorist trials a proposal that thanks to Grovers immense political influence was actually endorsed by President Bush and was only thwarted by the 9/11 terror attacks.
That's only some of the specific, publicly articulated concerns that many have voiced about Norquist. The material is easily found online.
"Documentation shows that he has deep ties to supporters of Hamas and other terrorist organizations that are sworn enemies of the United States and our ally Israel. He pointed out that around the years 2000 and 2001, Mr. Norquists firm represented Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was convicted two years later for his role in a terrorist plot and who is presently serving a 23-year sentence in federal prison.
Norquist, reported Wolf, also associated with terror financier Sami Al-Arian, according to Mary Jacobys reporting in March 2003, in the St. Petersburg Times. Al-Arian pled guilty in 2006 'to a charge of conspiring to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a specially designated terrorist organization, in violation of U.S. law,' and is under house arrest, according to a Department of Justice press release. The Palestinian Islamic Jihads paramilitary wingthe al-Quds Brigadeshas conducted numerous attacks, including large-scale suicide bombings, according to the National Counterterrorism Center.
These are the kinds of people for whom Norquist opened doors. Norquist, said Wolf, served as a key facilitator between Al-Arian, Alamoudi and the White House. In June 2001, Al-Arian was among the members of the American Muslim Council invited to the White House complex. ... The next month, the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedoma civil liberties group headed by Al-Ariangave Norquist an award for his work to abolish the use of secret intelligence evidence in terrorism cases.
Wolf also pointed out that Norquist even used Americans for Tax Reform to circulate a petition in support of the Ground Zero Mosque,' which 70% of Americans oppose. Why would Americans for Tax Reform, Wolf asked, circulate a petition in support of the Ground Zero Mosque?.
#1
But if the Waffler-in-Chief doesn't have the ballz to send that 'indespensable' foreign policy tool in to snuff the bad guys, then all that hardware is nothing more than the world's most expensive unscheduled owner-operator airline.
They ain't made to look pretty sitting in front of the hangar, buttface.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
In Inspire, radical Yemeni-American preacher Anwar al-Awlaki explains that AQAP settled on attacking cargo planes because the jihadis foes would be faced with a dilemma once AQAP placed bombs on these planes. You either spend billions of dollars to inspect each and every package in the world, he wrote, or you do nothing and we keep trying again. Awlaki further explained, The air freight is a multi-billion dollar industry. FedEx alone flies a fleet of 600 aircraft and ships an average of four million packages per day. It is a huge worldwide industry. For the trade between North America and Europe, air cargo is indispensable and to be able to force the West to install stringent security measures sufficient enough to stop our explosive devices would add a heavy economic burden to an already faltering economy.
