High Rate of H-1B Visa Fraud

by Moira Herbst

A report released Oct. 8 by the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) reveals that 13% of petitions filed for H-1B visas on behalf of employers are fraudulent. Another 8% contain some sort of technical violations.

The study, released to members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, marks the first time the agency, part of the Homeland Security Dept., has documented systematic problems with the controversial program. Technology companies, in particular, have come to rely on the H-1B visa program to bring in skilled foreign workers to fill jobs that employers claim can't be filled with U.S. candidates. Tech companies like Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Google (GOOG) have pushed to get more visas, claiming that a shortage of skilled workers is hampering U.S. competitiveness. Microsoft Chairman and co-founder Bill Gates has twice testified in front of Congress on the issue.

Critics say H-1Bs help U.S. companies replace American workers with less costly foreign workers. "The report makes it clear that the H-1B program is rife with abuse and misuse," says Ron Hira, assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "It shows the desperate need for an auditing system." However, both Presidential candidates, Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), have said they support expanding the program.

Program Abuses Alleged

A USCIS spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. The report's conclusion states: "Given the significant vulnerability, USCIS is making procedural changes, which will be described in a forthcoming document." A spokeswoman, Beth Pellett Levine, says Senator Chuck Grassley (D-Iowa), a longtime critic of the H-1B program, is drafting a letter to USCIS in response to the study.

The H-1B visa program has become increasingly controversial in recent years as groups such as the Programmers Guild and WashTech, which represent U.S. tech workers, allege it is being abused, resulting in mistreatment of foreign workers, wage depression, and the displacement of U.S. workers. The program was originally set up to allow companies in the U.S. to import the best and brightest in technology, engineering, and other fields when such workers are in short supply in America. But data released this year by the federal government show that offshore outsourcing firms, particularly from India, dominated the list of companies that were awarded H-1B visas to employ workers in the U.S. (BusinessWeek, 3/6/08) in 2007. Indian outsourcers such as Infosys (INFY), Wipro (WIT), and Tata (TCS.NS) accounted for nearly 80% of the visa petitions approved last year for the top 10 participants in the program.

There is also evidence that workers on H-1B visas are being mistreated. In a pending case (BusinessWeek, 1/31/08), H-1B workers for State Farm Insurance allege they were underpaid.

Critics say such instances of abuse represent the tip of an iceberg of deeper problems with the visa program. Academics and U.S. tech worker advocates point out the requirement that even employers who abide by the law—for example by paying the required "prevailing wage"—are able to underpay workers .

"We shouldn't forget that the major problem with the H-1B program are caused by massive loopholes that allow firms to legally pay below-market wages and force US workers to train foreign replacements," says Hira. "Those wouldn't show up in this investigation because they are entirely legal." Hira says that a bill proposed by Grassley and Senator Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) bill in 2007, S. 1035, would address both fraud and legal loopholes in the program.

Companies Not Named

The USCIS report, called H-1B Benefit Fraud & Compliance Assessment, is based on a sample of 246 H-1B petitions. It does not name companies involved in the study. The report says that 80% of the fraud or technical violations were uncovered during site visits.

Fraudulent cases include instances in which the visa worker was not working or had never worked at the specified location on the application. Technical violations involved situations in which the worker was paid at or below the prevailing wage, which companies are required by law to pay.

In other cases, the job duties were significantly different from the position listed on the visa petition. This could involve misrepresenting the skill set required or the location of the job. Accounting, human resources, business analyst, sales, and advertising occupations are more likely than other categories to involve fraud, according to the study. Other areas in which violations were found include computer-related occupations, and art and managerial jobs. "Until we make a conscious effort to close the loopholes, we're going to see continued abuse where people coming to this country on H-1B visas are working at Laundromats," said Grassley in a statement. He was referring to situations in which companies misrepresent what type of work the visa holder will do.

In the study, visa workers with only bachelor's degrees were subject to higher fraud or technical violation rates (31%) than those with graduate degrees (13%). Fraud and violations were more common for companies employing 25 or fewer employees and with annual gross income of less than $10 million.

Report: A disaster waiting to happen

(Compiler's note: I've been in this business long enough to know that this is the truth.)

By Jake Armstrong, The Times-Union

ATLANTA - Despite millions spent on technological upgrades, Georgia's first responders will likely face communication problems in the event of a large-scale disaster, according to a state audit released this week.

Law enforcement, fire departments and other response agencies have found ways to communicate with their neighboring counterparts for daily operations, such as car accidents.

But a major tornado or hurricane could fling into a disaster zone agencies that have not worked together before. A lack of familiarity among those agencies could cause difficulty in communications, especially when state agencies respond and find local agencies have changed their communications technology or procedures, the 46-page Department of Audits and Accounts report said.

While new radios with better technology fill in gaps that previously hampered communication, the state lacks an umbrella of leadership to coordinate improvements to communication, an ongoing effort since the 2001 terrorist attacks, the audit found.

The auditors recommended state leaders create a statewide committee for that job.

Currently, a subcommittee of the state Homeland Security Task Force administers a statewide plan for improving communications among agencies. But auditors say it lacks bylaws to define membership and its responsibilities are not spelled out.

That has left much of the coordination to local jurisdictions, with varying degrees of success, the audit said.

Richmond County appears to have successfully integrated its communications with surrounding agencies at state and federal levels.

Augusta-area responders encountered a chaotic scene when two freight trains collided nearly four years ago in Graniteville, S.C., killing nine people and wounding about 250. The wreck put responders from either side of the border together against a massive chemical spill.

But nearly all the agencies use the same radio frequencies and have been through the same incident-response training program, which prevented snags in communications among the agencies, said Col. Gary Powell of the Richmond County Sheriff's Office.

"We haven't had too much of a problem in Richmond County," Powell said.

The sheriff's office also trains with safety agencies from the Savannah River Site and Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro to prepare for emergencies involving radioactive materials, he said.

The state has distributed $100 million in federal funding for interagency communications since 2002.

In response to the audit, officials for the Georgia State Patrol, which operates a statewide communications network, said they believe the state is ready to respond to a large-scale disaster.

A financial apocalypse isn't nearly as scary as a nuclear one

(Compiler's note: Must read. This in my mind could also include an EMP version of muclear terrorism. rca)

By John Diamond

Nuclear terrorism, the most serious existential threat to our homeland, has fallen off our priority list. The startling crisis on Wall Street, and the threat it poses to Main Street, has relegated national security to an afterthought — when it should be anything but.

Four years ago, during the presidential campaign, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., agreed that the possibility that a terrorist group could obtain fissile material, fashion a crude nuclear weapon and set it off in an American city was our greatest threat.

This year, the topic barely got a mention in the presidential debates. Go to the websites of Barack Obama and John McCain and click on the "Issues" buttons. In neither case does the drop-down list include a separate category called "terrorism." Once you click through enough layers, you discover that they both agree on the importance of securing nuclear weapons material. Both have endorsed the concept of "a world without nuclear weapons." And they both support gradual but significant reductions in the U.S. and Russian arsenals.

The absence of a sharp disagreement between the candidates on responding to the nuclear terror threat might explain why it has all but disappeared from view as the fall campaign approaches. Yet perhaps our leaders and their constituents have not fully grasped the consequences of such an attack beyond the grim image of a mushroom cloud over an American city.

The aftershocks

As the Saga Foundation — a non-profit organization focused on the threat of terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction — argued in a recent white paper, the vast damage at and around a nuclear ground zero would be dwarfed in scope by the national and global economic aftershocks. These aftershocks would stem not only from the explosion itself but also from a predictable set of decisions a president would almost certainly have to make in grappling with the possibility of a follow-on attack.

Assuming, as the experts believe likely, that such a weapon would have to be smuggled into the country, the president could be expected to close the nation's borders, halt all freight commerce and direct a search of virtually any moving conveyance that could transport a nuclear weapon. Most manufacturing would then cease. In a nation that lives on just-in-time inventory, these developments could empty the nation's shelves in days.

The effects of post-attack decision-making go far beyond this example. If U.S. intelligence determined that one or more countries had somehow aided and abetted the attack, we would face the prospect of full-scale war. Even short of that, the nation would demand, and the president would almost certainly order, a level of retaliation at the suspected locus of the attacking group that would dwarf the post-9/11 military response. The possibility of follow-on attacks could transform our notions of civil liberties and freedom forever. And as former 9/11 Commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton has pointed out, a nuclear terrorist attack would prompt a collapse in public faith in the government's ability to protect the American people.

Think your 401(k) hurts now?

The presidential nominees, and the American people, should reconsider the tendency to view these two issues — economic crisis and the threat of catastrophic terrorism — as separate problems. A nuclear attack on a U.S. city would not only devastate the target and kill possibly hundreds of thousands, it would also create instantaneous national and global economic ripple effects with incalculable consequences.

To put it in personal terms, if you think things are tough in the nation's financial sector now, imagine what your 401(k) — or your paycheck — might look like six months after a nuclear detonation in Lower Manhattan or downtown Washington. Saga's study merely began what must become a much larger-scale effort to understand in the fullest detail possible the consequences of an act of nuclear terrorism, not only the attack itself but also the decisions that would almost certainly follow. The idea is not to depress people but to motivate them.

While some of the consequences are obvious, others are not, and it is the less understood aftershocks that could damage our world as well as transform it — and not for the better.

John Diamond is a Washington fellow of the Saga Foundation. He is also a former national security reporter for USA TODAY and author of The CIA and the Culture of Failure.

US Intelligece Worried About Terror-Narco Nexus

(Compiler's note: Must read. rca)

by Anthony L. Kimery

Al Qaeda and Hezbollah could form alliances with powerful Latin American narco-cartels

Ranking US intelligence officials’ open expression of concern Wednesday that Islamist jihad terrorist organizations could be forming alliances with Central and South American narco-terrorists came as no surprise to veteran Intelligence Community (IC) counterterror and counternarcotics officials who regularly talk to HSToday.us.

Indeed. What the IC officials who spoke at the SOUTHCOM and Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association sponsored conference in Miami, “Drugs and the Americas: What Are the Challenges and the Global Impact?” disclosed neatly dovetails with a variety of still classified intelligence from the late 1980s and early 1990s that was made available to HSToday.us.

That intelligence clearly shows that even that far back terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and the since defeated Abu Nidal Organization had made significant inroads toward establishing operational and financial conduits throughout the Americas – conduits that even twenty years ago had began to overlap with narco-trafficking infrastructure.

Consequently, the worries of intelligence officials twenty years ago about the intersection of terrorists and narco-trafficers is reason for alarm today, as IC officials have pointed out. ....

Biden's Secret Diplomacy

By Vladimir Bukovsky and Pavel Stroilov

Here before us is a Soviet archival document,* a top secret report by a communist apparatchik who had received a delegation of US Senators led by Joseph Biden in 1979. After describing routine arms control discussions, it quotes Biden as telling the Soviets off-record that he did not really care about the persecution of Russian dissidents. He and other Senators might raise human rights issues with their Soviet counterparts, but only to be seen by the public as defenders of human rights, not to have those problems really solved. They would happily take no for an answer. ...

Inside The Taliban

from Strategy Page

While the Taliban appear to be on a roll, internally they are in big trouble. A battle with the Pakistani army in Bajaur is going badly, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud has been sick for months, and recently died, from kidney failure. That means a messy succession struggle to determine the new top dog. Meanwhile, some leaders of the Afghan Taliban have been engaged in secret (well, not so secret anymore) negotiations (brokered by Saudi Arabia) with the Afghan government. These talks are not going well. But now it will get worse, as NATO announced a Winter offensive against the Taliban, taking advantage of the snow, bad weather and lack of mobility the Afghans suffer then. NATO has helicopters and air power, and has increasingly used this edge during the Winter. This year, the Taliban have announced that they will try to keep many of their gunmen operating during the Winter. To do this, you have to use the roads, at least when they are free of snow. That is less of a problem in southern Afghanistan, which is less frigid and snowbound. The smart money is on NATO in this one, and the Afghan Taliban cannot afford yet another loss at this point.

The Pakistanis also recognize that defeating the Taliban is more a matter of symbols than body count. The tribes have several hundred thousand potential recruits along the Afghan border, but only a few percent of those have joined the Islamic radical groups (al Qaeda, Taliban and several others you don't hear the names of much). Many more tribesmen oppose the Taliban, but most of these are not willing to go to war in support of these views. While the pro-Taliban tribesmen believe they are on a Mission From God, the effort is getting discouraging. The national backlash to the Marriott Hotel bombing on September 20th was noted, as are the other defeats. The Taliban are generally unpopular in Pakistan. Yes, the few guys with guns and bad manners will attract the journalists, but in this part of the world, the majority with better manners have guns as well. And increasingly they have been using them to show their displeasure with the Islamic radicals.

News stories about Pakistani troops exchanging fore with NATO and U.S. helicopters at the border appear to be more stories than news. Many of the border guards (a force recruited from local tribes) are pro-Taliban, and quick to fire on aircraft and any armed men they were not familiar with. That's been going on for decades, and was the cause of tension with the Russians in the 1980s. Real violence between Pakistan and the United States is unlikely, because the U.S. is the major financial and military supplier of the government. Without U.S. support, the military upgrades and the economy tank. Religion is one thing, defense and economics are something else (that is more important to more Pakistanis). Meanwhile, the government makes the right noises about "defending Pakistan's borders" while doing nothing to actually interfere with American operations on both sides of the border.

Pakistani officials admit that the U.S. appears to have a good intelligence network in the tribal areas, at least when it comes to al Qaeda and foreign Islamic militants, but not so much about the Taliban. That's because the tribesmen are more willing to talk about foreigners in their midst, than cousins mixed up with the Taliban. Pakistani intelligence agencies have better sources inside the tribes, mainly because many of the intel operators are from the tribes, either by blood or marriage.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani intelligence agency, the ISI, has been brought to heel by the new government, with the appointment of a new director. In the past, the ISI has refused to take orders from the government. How can this be? Simple, the ISI has, over the last three decades, become the effective tool of the government in dealing with troublemakers, and keeping top politicians informed on who is doing what to who. But the ISI is part of the military, and is full of Islamic conservatives, and men who sympathize with the Taliban and al Qaeda. The ISI has been willing to use those has files on the misbehavior of politicians and senior military men. But the ISI militants have been losing ground since September 11, 2001, as Islamic radicalism became more of a liability. The new director is an attempt to accelerate this process. But the Islamic conservatives are still a formidable bloc within the ISI, and things might get interesting.

Bombs, smaller ones, keep going off in the cities of the Pakistani tribal zones. Some of these are part of extortion efforts, to get businesses to pay their "taxes" to Islamic radicals, or just criminal gangs. There is some crossover between Islamic radicals and criminal gangs, and that becomes important because gangs can quickly drop the religious angle if that approach becomes a liability. But the extortion and violence continue, religion or not. Terrorist bombings became a major terrorist weapon in Pakistan after the government shut down the Red Mosque, and its Islamic radical operations, in July 2007. Since then, 1,188 people have died from suicide bomb attacks. But over 75 percent of the dead were civilians, and, as has happened so often recently, the public has become very hostile to Islamic militants. And in all those other nations, this led to heavy losses for the Islamic militants, and crippling of their abilities.

In Kashmir, more Islamic terrorists are trying to get across the border from Pakistan before the Winter snows close the easiest routes. Indian troops, using better sensors (especially heat sensitive ones) are catching more of these infiltrators, and killing or capturing them. This means hundreds of trained (in Pakistan camps) terrorists are put out of action, and the number of active Islamic terrorists in Kashmir continues to shrink (along with the number of violent incidents).

September 27, 2008: An example of how the Taliban make themselves unpopular occurred recently in the suburbs of Peshawar (one of the major Pushtun cities along the Afghan border). There, a group of Taliban began kidnapping women who are caught in public without a veil, and demanding a "fine" of $210 to release them. A similar bit of extortion was practiced on the drivers of busses carrying unveiled women. The Taliban did not grab all unveiled women, just those from families able to pay the fine. It's scams like this that push many tribesmen over the edge, meaning they pick up their guns and go after the Taliban. This happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan a few years after they took over there in the 1990s. It's happening a lot more quickly in Pakistan.

September 24, 2008: The U.S., and several other Western countries, have urged their citizens to stay away from Pakistan, and it take care of their security if they do come.

Ten Reasons to Be Concerned about Obama’s Stance on National Security

by Ryan Mauro

Click here for Part One; here for Part Two.

4. Wrong on Virtually Every Other Foreign Policy Issue

Sen. Obama isn't just wrong on the top foreign policy issues of Iraq, Iran and Russia, but also on virtually every other one that comes to mind. His strongest position is on Pakistan, where he advocates launching strikes on terrorists identified in that country if the government is unable or unwilling to go after them. This is an honorable position, although openly stating such an intention has extremely negative diplomatic repercussions and threatens the stability of the Pakistani government, which could allow radical Muslims to have an even greater safe harbor. Such statements are meant to be made in private, but at least this shows one area of the world where Obama is tough. Unfortunately, Obama still doesn't go far enough in developing a plan for handling Pakistan.

Sen. Obama declined to talk about the need to embrace the Pakistani tribes on the border in order to enlist them in fighting the insurgents, perhaps because saying so would again vindicate one of the strategies Gen. Petraeus and Sen. McCain advocated that caused the war in Iraq to turn around. At the first debate, Obama even failed to embrace this proven concept after McCain mentioned it. While Obama's call for unilateral strikes when necessary is refreshing and commendable, it does not appear that he recognizes that a greater counter-insurgency campaign that involves the tribes is needed. Air strikes and raids absent such a strategy will only increase resentment against the Pakistani government and the U.S. among the population and may even cause the Pakistanis to end their alliance with us. Ironically, Obama is advocating the same tactics he criticized in Afghanistan, when he said, "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there."

The one semi-bright spot of an Obama Administration doesn't even come from Obama, it comes from Joe Biden, and he deserves applause for his plan for Sudan. Sen. Biden has called for intervention in Darfur to create a No-Fly Zone over that part of Sudan and to send in NATO peacekeepers (approximately 2500 he said in one speech in Iowa). While it is good that someone has finally presented a plan for Darfur, Biden does not say which allies we can rely upon to help intervene, or how only 2,500 soldiers can stop the genocide. The government-backed militias, much like the situation in Iraq, will attack such peacekeepers in small groups, mixed among the local population in classic insurgency fashion. They will strike even more fear into the local population so they don't cooperate in providing intelligence.

If the Obama-Biden plan is to succeed, it will have to adopt counter-insurgency principles (again, like in Iraq) to kick out the Janjaweed and other insurgent and terrorist forces that will inevitably try to attack such peacekeepers. The focus on the no-fly zone demonstrates a pre-9/11 thinking, where conventional militaries are expected to be used to wage warfare, not unconventional forces like insurgents, militias, and terrorists. The plan calls for tackling the Janjaweed, yet neither Biden or Obama have called for the use of the tactics proven to work in Iraq and other counter-insurgency situations.

Obama's foreign policy is indeed one of contradictions. While he said he'd meet with Ahmadinejad and Chavez, he never even tried to meet with General Petraeus, the foremost authority of what's going on in Iraq. While he wants to strike a deal with Iran and North Korea, which would certainly involve financial aid packages, he opposes free trade agreements with critical U.S. allies like South Korea and Colombia, the latter of which is engaged in a battle with terrorists backed by Chávez. Obama says he favors pushing democracy and human rights in the region, yet wants to pull U.S. forces out of Iraq despite the fact it'd cause the Iraqis to lose such rights. He condemns the way Iran and other countries oppress their people, yet has made no indication that he'd like to see those regimes fall or that he'd even provide non-lethal aid to democratic opposition groups like Reagan did. He says he considers the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as terrorists, but didn't vote for a bill to label them as such. The only coherent message an Obama foreign policy sends is that there is no new strategy, tactic, or idea that should make our enemies worry. And it is for that reason that many of our enemies are supporting Obama.

5. America's enemies favor Obama's policies

When trying to figure out whether Obama's policies are good for national security, it is wise to ask how our enemies view them. The answer is clear: America's enemies favor Obama. This doesn't mean he is in league with them, or anti-American, but it should make voters ask why terrorists are so eager for him to win. What is it about Obama's policies that comfort them?

Let's look at some of these individuals. Ahmed Yousef, a top political advisor for Hamas, told Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily that "We like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win the elections." The Iranian and Syrian government-controlled media is also pro-Obama. The terrorist group FARC in Colombia, which is backed by Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, according to some of their computer files, seems eager for Obama to win.

The question of Obama's past associations with people like William Ayers should also be mentioned. Why did people like Ayers, the unrepentant former member of Weather Underground who bombed the U.S. Capitol, work alongside Obama? And if it's true that Khalid al-Mansour, a top advisor to a terrorism-supporting Saudi prince, helped raise money for Obama's education, then why? The argument here isn't that Obama is anti-American or shares their views, but something about his viewpoint and policies is bringing people like these to embrace him.

6. Obama will reduce the technological advantages the U.S. military possesses.

In a videotaped address, widely available on YouTube, Obama promises not to militarize space, not fund "unproven missile defense systems," to "slow our development of future combat systems," and to not build any more nuclear weapons, even though new bunker buster nukes are necessary to threaten deep underground bunkers and do far less damage than a normal conventional nuke would. These comments, particularly on "slow[ing] our development of future combat systems" deserves no further comment as most Americans know how critical our technological advances have been to saving the lives of our military men and women and protecting American national security. Future combat systems, as Obama describes them, are the most important asset the U.S. military has, and has saved an enormous amount of lives - including the lives of our soldiers, civilians, and even our enemies.

7. Inexperience

Sen. Obama would be the most inexperienced president in a century, perhaps even in America's history. He has never run a business, been in the military, authored a ground-breaking piece of legislation, or managed or run anything. He has not become go-to expert on any topic, certainly not foreign policy. He was in the Senate for less than two years before preparing to run for president, and during that time, did not show bold leadership on any issue with political consequences. In short, he has not conducted virtually any of the tasks required of a president. As demonstrated, this lack of experience has negatively affected his judgment on various national security and foreign policy topics, particularly with the "surge" which he incorrectly predicted would not work, and could not see was working when the verdict had already been given.

Supporters of Obama may argue that he will have experienced advisors. However, without the right experience and judgment, he cannot pick the correct advisors, nor can he decide which among them are correct. He will fall victim to the "White House bubble" as President George W. Bush did. The failures in Iraq were largely due to the President's inability to consider the viewpoints of those outside his Administration, such as Sen. John McCain, who were warning that the path we were on would lead to failure. The president, lacking experience in foreign affairs and having to rely upon advisors, could not know when such advisors needed to be disregarded. In a time of war, the U.S. must have a president who has the knowledge and experience to make the right calls and not rely upon advisors who will inevitably be wrong at some point. Sen. Obama does not have that experience.

What have we learned over the past 2,063 years?

(Compiler's note: A good friend, a patriotic American and fellow retired Marine forwarded this to me) bailout

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero (55 BC) Roman statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and philosopher

It’s not just ACORN: La Raza partner caught red-handed

By Michelle Malkin

ACORN isn’t the only one cornering the voter fraud market.

Democracia USA is a partner of open-borders La Raza (The Race) in an aggressive, nationwide Hispanic voter registration drive.

George Moneo at Babalu Blog reports that canvassers for Democracia USA have been caught on tape sabotaging electoral integrity.

Watch the video here.

Don’t expect the La Raza Twins to complain.

Hands up! You're under arrest for saying 'Hussein Obama!'

by Bobby Eberle

We have seen many changes in this great nation which have been brought about by left wing activists. As kids, we used to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Now, it's being attacked in the courts. We used to say a prayer in the morning before school or at football games. Socialists in America have deemed that "offensive" and the practice has all but disappeared. Christmas displays honoring the birth of Christ trigger convulsions by the Left, who say that we shouldn't make people feel "uncomfortable" with our manger scenes.

Now, we can't even say what we want to say in public because not only will the thought police be on patrol, but, using a recent event in Florida as an example, saying "Hussein Obama" in public might just get you a visit from the FBI. Just ask Florida's Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott who is under fire -- and investigation -- for referring to Obama at a campaign rally by his -- gasp -- full name. What is going on with America?

At a rally in Estero, Florida on Monday for Gov. Sarah Palin, one of the pre-rally speakers was Sheriff Scott. Now, anyone who has been to a political rally knows that the job of the warm-up speakers is to do exactly as the name implies: warm-up the audience. Whether the audience is cheering wildly or booing loudly, the pre-rally speakers are there to wake them up and get them going. So... according to ABC News, Sheriff Scott stepped to the podium and said, "On November 4, let's leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened."

Oh, the shock of it all! Speaking someone's full legal name in public! When asked about the "incident," Sheriff Scott responded by saying:

“I absolutely, unequivocally don’t regret saying it,” Scott told the News-Press on Monday. “In order to be a speaker at this event, I had to give my full name — Michael Joseph Scott — to the Secret Service, even though I’m the sheriff of Lee County. So why would I apologize? Is there some kind of double standard here where I have to give my full name, but I can’t use his?”

“Unless he changed his name, my position hasn’t changed,” said Scott of Obama. “It seems very clear to me that people have one of three stances on this thing: There are those who dislike it, there are those who like it, and there are those who think it’s a whole big deal about nothing, which is where I stand.”

As noted in the Cape Coral Daily Breeze, the Palin campaign responded by issuing the following statement:

“We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric which distracts from the real questions of judgment, character and experience that voters will base their decisions on this November.”

Fair enough. If Palin or anyone else wants to say the usage of Barack Hussein Obama is inappropriate, he or she has a right to do so. But Sheriff Scott also has a right to say what he wants to say without fear of reprisal by the government. However, according to a local Florida NBC affiliate, Sheriff Scott's remark has now earned him an investigation by the federal government.

The NBC station reports that officials with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel have started an investigation of the Sheriff under the question of "did he use his position as sheriff to influence an election? If so, he could be in violation of a federal election law called the Hatch Act." The basis the Feds are using is whether Scott was campaigning while on duty and in uniform.

Sheriff Scott responded to the NBC story with the following statement:

"I am on duty 24/7 and 365 whether in or out of uniform. Like every other elected official, I am aware of from President to Governor to State Representatives, etc. We engage in political activities whether for ourselves as candidates or for others. As of this writing, I am unaware of having done anything to generate all this attention other than using the senator's full name."

The question is this... If Sheriff Scott had not said "Barack Hussein Obama," do you really think he would now be under investigation? If you answered "no," then that should send a shiver down your spine, because it means that the government is imposing pressure and creating a public example of Scott for simply saying someone's name.

Whether the investigation leads to charges or legal action is not the point. The point is that government intimidation is being brought to bear for someone exercising his first amendment right to free speech. This is wrong, regardless of whether you think his usage of Barack Hussein Obama was appropriate or not. This is still America, isn't it?

Honor Killings and the Struggle of Moderate Islam

by M. Zuhdi Jasser

Recently on Pajamas Media, Supna Zaidi of Islamist Watch addresses the Atlanta murder and July 2008 “honor killing” of Sandela Kanwal. She asked the question concerning the July murder, “Does Islam Justify Honor Killings?” Her outrage over the murder and the increasing prevalence of ‘honor killings” in the Muslim world is not only understandable but an issue that deserves a much more resounding response from Muslims. As Ms. Zaidi astutely points out, “What kind of an ideology causes a man to show no remorse for murdering his own daughter, but rants and raves at being served ham sandwiches while in prison? The media picked up the story quickly and asked, "Is Islam to blame?" The facts she discusses about honor killings and their linkage to the practice of Islam by some and the corrupt legal protections in countries like Jordan and Pakistan are certainly true.

But Ms. Zaidi criticizes my comments on the issue in my brief CNN interview on the subject stating,

“Leaving honor killings at the doorstep of illiterate villagers, as Jasser does, ignores the problem on a humane level in favor of intellectual debate”

then she ends with this overriding conclusion:

“Neither Jasser nor Manji addresses the issue of accountability. Chaudhry Rashad was not raised in a vacuum. If moderates reinforce the line that honor killings are "dripping" with Allah or are part of Eastern culture, those prone to such violent acts will continue on the same path. No Muslim will claim theological authority to enforce change from the mosque. Nor will Muslims be forced to act now if the implication from Manji is that culture takes centuries to evolve. But if everyone starts pointing the finger at Muslim society collectively and asks, "why do you let this happen?" maybe change will finally come.

But the facts she uses to impugn my stance on the subject as articulated in the CNN interview in question of July 8, 2008 are mischaracterized. Her premise is clearly that even these “moderate Muslims” are apologists for an Islam which supports honor killings. As a dedicated anti-Islamist Muslim, it should be obvious to anyone who reviews my work that I share many of the goals against Islamists which Ms. Zaidi has in her work at Islamist Watch. But if the individuals she is watching include front line anti-Islamist Muslims like me, I am concerned that we are missing the real enemy while employing a self-defeating strategy. And that makes it even more important to correct the public record about my comments, moderate Islam, and honor killings.

First of all, a fair review of all of my comments in that interview, beyond the first few seconds, makes it clear that a very common mantra of mine about accountability in the Muslim community is again obvious despite Ms. Zaidi’s mischaracterization. I did point a finger directly at the Pakistani Muslim community in Atlanta for their apologetics. I did, contrary to her suggestions, call upon Muslims to act:

“Muslims need to stand up. I’m not going to say he’s not a Muslim. We don’t have a church that communicates or excommunicates people. What I am going to do is start a movement of Muslims that will stand up and say this is not only wrong; he should get the capital punishment. And we should start to have formal processes to protect daughters and children like his, so that when Muslims stand up and speak up – I don’t know if you heard the Pakistani community that stood up in Atlanta recently, in Georgia, and basically said that well, the family is depressed. Well, you know, they should stand up and say this is completely wrong, and immoral, and not Islam.”

If this isn’t demanding that Muslims become accountable against this barbarism, I don’t know what is. And I do take some umbrage with the implication from that I somehow care more about the victimization of Islam than about the real victim – Sandela Kenwal, a 25-year-old woman. Honor killings and the environment which feeds it is despicable and needs the full attention of Muslims across the globe. As I stated, clerics and medieval Islamism which fuels it needs reform and only Muslims can do that. But to dismiss Islam from being part of the solution, and to entirely dismiss endemic corruption, illiteracy, and the culture of misogyny as part of the problem is folly in my opinion. Over centuries Islam has become intertwined with all of these maladies, but moderates cannot be expected to modernize Islam while saying that “Islam is the problem” and especially we cannot submit that our own “reformed or post-modern” Islam is the problem.

Moreover, thus even more important than her mischaracterization of my comments, is the underlying implication about the standard to which anti-Islamist Muslims are going to be held in order to demonstrate our intellectual honesty or realism about whether the major problems in the Muslim community are also problems in “Islam.”

Ms. Zaidi stated “…with this, Muslims make honor killings a part of Islam.”

So the debate really comes down to this: what is Islam, what is not Islam, and who actually defines “Islam” as a faith?

As a genuine anti-Islamist Muslim I am working against the very same groups and ideologies Ms. Zaidi is in order to defeat the greatest ideological threat of the 21st century – political Islam. Make no mistake: we will never win this war of ideas by handing over the mantle of “Islam” to the radicals. Anti-Islamist Muslims calling what we practice “Islam” and calling out radical Islamists as “un-Islamic” is the best and in fact the only strategy from where I sit as a devout Muslim.

Ms. Zaidi’s rationale creates an untenable scenario for the very moderate Muslims she impugns. If moderate Muslims are going to be chastised for apologizing for Islam by stating that acts such as honor killings are “not Islam” (“our Islam,” that is), how does she expect us to be effective agents of change within “Islam”? We need to be credible, confident practitioners of our interpretation of our own faith of Islam in order to be perceived as what we really are – people who love our faith and don’t want to see it controlled and destroyed by the political agenda and corruption of Islamists. It is my belief, at least regarding our work as devout Muslims, that the most effective method of stimulating reform is to do so positively from a modernized Islamic position rather than negatively and critically as outsiders to “Islam” as Zaidi’s strategy implies.

I would suggest that Ms. Zaidi revisit this strategy where moderate Muslims are supposed to acknowledge that murderers like Chaudry Rashad are practicing Islam. And in fact, I do acknowledge in the interview that they believe they are practicing Islam and that there are many Muslims who empower what they do through a medieval interpretation of Islam which needs reform. But I certainly can say all of that without “giving up the farm” on what is Islam. This is an untenable proposition for anyone focused on internal reform and runs against the life experience of truly moderate Muslims who live a coherent moral Islam and are anti-Islamist.

She extends her critique further, stating,

“Leaving honor killings at the doorstep of illiterate villagers, as Jasser does, ignores the problem on a humane level in favor of intellectual debate. The more secular, educated elites o f Muslim countries may not be so backward as to commit such crimes themselves, but they know it is happening and prefer to look the other way…”

Without a doubt, the masters of apologia are Islamists who Ms. Zaidi so aptly monitors including various American Islamist organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Council), ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), and MAS (Muslim American Society). Few Muslims have been as critical as I have of their apologia and inability to be forthright with the public about the problems which arise from political Islam and the need for reform. Their apologia is obvious in their dissimulation and refusal to identify the ideologies and permutations of Islamism which feed Islamist-inspired terror. These organizations soak up the bandwidth of American media and governmental attention to Islam with victimology and obfuscation. They squander their resources and avoid needed areas of reform while they promote their agenda of “lawful Islamism” as Islamist Watch founder Daniel Pipes has astutely remarked. I hope those remain the types of groups Ms. Zaidi spends most of her time watching.

As President Abdurrahman Wahid mentioned in his 2005 Wall Street Journal piece “Right Islam vs.Wrong Islam,” anti-Islamist and anti-Wahhabi Muslims along with non-Muslims need to work to counter the Islamists in all of their permutations. We might as well pack up and go home and surrender to the Islamists if we are going to submit the realm of our own definition of Islam to the radical and politically motivated ideologies, behaviors, and corruptions of Islamists.

I am certainly realistic enough to fully understand if Zaidi felt that the “Islam,” which I was taught by my parents and grandparents and surrounding community, is not palpable in the public square and should work to assert itself in a more effective manner to change the dogmas which lead to the likes of Chaudry Rashad. I can also fully understand if Zaidi felt that the Islam which I practice, live, and teach my own children, seems to be very different from the radical Islam of Chaudry Rashad, HAMAS, Hezbullah, al Qaeda, or the political Islam (Islamism) of ISNA, CAIR, MPAC, ICNA, and MAS.

But, for the life of me, I cannot understand the wisdom of pushing forth the argument that Muslim realists like me or Irshad Manji, who are able to muster the courage to call a spade a spade should also give up the only fuel for our work which is the premise that we have a vision of Islam which is in harmony with the 21st century? I have previously repeatedly discussed the need for all Muslims to begin to more vociferously challenge the imams and clerics about the very reigns of our faith which they exploit to justify their own medieval pronouncements and backward Sharia which they do in the name of Islam. But just because these clerics call it “Islam” doesn’t make their Islam, my Islam or “our” Islam.

Strategically, once I, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, and all other anti-Islamist Muslims give up the mantle of faith to those who are Islamist and are corrupt, we truly become useless. I cannot in good conscience say anything publicly which I do not tell my own children at home. If my children were to ask me about the association of Islam with honor killings, I would as powerfully as possible tell them exactly what I said in that July CNN interview – that not only is that not Islam, it is un-Islamic and violates every tenet of the Islam we teach them at home. This is the same truth that millions upon millions of Muslims would tell their own children if asked the same question. This is, yet, in no way to deny the truths which Zaidi does rightly note as far as the linkage of Islam to the justification of honor killings in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan and many other Muslim communities.

Based upon Zaidi’s premise, I cannot see how there could ever be a truly anti-islamist Muslim. If true reformers are going to submit the realm of Islam to the barbarians of Islamism what are we to call the faith that we practice and the faith in which we believe?

Zaidi asks if Mr. Rashad “grew up in a vacuum.” Other anti-Islamist Muslims and I can also fairly ask if she believes we grew up in a vacuum. I am not ready, now or ever, to hand over the mantle of Islam to any radical, cleric, or Islamist regardless of how much work we have to do to correct the dogma of today which is “their Islam.”

Yes, we Muslims have a lot of work to do. But I cannot see the wisdom of activists with whom I clearly have so much in common intimating that we are somehow ignoring the real victim. I never made such a connection and in fact felt that the best way to advocate for this victim and the prevention of such heinous crimes again is to clearly separate Islam from these actions and call upon the Muslim community to do so.

From where I sit, somewhere within the house of Islam, if we are to diffuse the Islamist threat which Zaidi is also focused on defeating, it can only be done through a civil war over what is and what is not Islam. By attacking both sides, Zaidi leaves nothing but scorched earth with no starting point for a modern Islam.

I am not ready to relegate my children and my children’s children to a lifetime of having our faith dictated by the actions and beliefs of Islamists, their clerics and their enablers. I am fully aware of the reality of what is done in the name of Islam by Islamists and their enablers. I am also fully aware that this journey will be a long one towards modernity and enlightenment from within our faith of Islam whose legal tradition is still often guided by medieval pronouncements which have yet to be reformed. AIFD and I may be only a few steps down a path which is miles long. But Zaidi’s critique, if heeded by strategists, is dangerous, since it leaves reformers no answer today within the faith. The prevention of any future murders in the name of Islam demands that Muslims teach one another that such actions are not Islam and the legal pronouncements which say so need to be changed and defeated.

FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor M. Zuhdi Jasser is the founder and Chairman of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix Arizona. He is a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, a physician in private practice, and a community activist.

Federal Suit: Obama Not A “Natural Born Citizen,” Obama & DNC Try To Delay Production of Obama’s Birth Certificate ‘Till After Election

On August, 21, 2008, prominent lawyer, Hillary supporter, former Pennsylvania Democratic Party official and former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Philip J. Berg, filed a suit in Federal court in Philadelphia alleging that, because of several factual situations, Obama is not a “natural born citizen” as the Constitution requires all candidates for President to be (see http://obamacrimes.com/) and he uses as proof, among other things, the testimony of Obama’s paternal grandmother, a half-brother and half sister who say they witnessed that Obama was born, not in Hawaii as Obama claims, but in Kenya.

Most of these allegations could instantly be proven false if Obama were to produce the original, long form copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate for examination. Obama has consistently refused to do this and, instead, Obama’s campaign website and his online supporters have offered images of a shorter Hawaiian “certificate of live birth,” that many questioned documents experts say is a forgery and, doesn’t definitively answer the question anyway.

Now, in legal motions filed in Federal court by attorneys for Obama and the DNC this past Monday, October 6th, Obama and the DNC request that any “discovery” in this case, i.e. the actual production and examination of Obama’s original Hawaiian birth certificate, which Berg alleges does not exist because Obama was born in Kenya, be deferred until other legal issues are settled, in effect, postponing production of the birth certificate in question until after the November 4th Election.

This is truly a “Constitutional Crisis” and a Crisis for our Legal System and one that the MSM—deep, deep in the tank for Obama--wants no part in telling us exists, much less covering; you would think that the MSM would at least cover this story to debunk it and for a few laughs but, had I not gone to Berg’s website, I would not have known of this latest legal move, which was invisible because not reported by the MSM. The fact that Obama will not just produce this document—a thing easily done and likely to win him many political points, while at the same time, damaging his political enemies--to settle the issue, and the fact that Obama and the DNC are willing to spend money on delaying production of this original birth certificate, tells me that Obama doesn’t have one, because it doesn’t exist and if it doesn’t exist, Obama is disqualified from running for the Presidency, his campaign collapses and Obama, Democrats in general and the Democratic Party are thoroughly discredited and forever indelibly stained by this monumental fraud on the American people and our country’s democracy; thus, the stakes for Obama, for Democrats, for the Democratic Party and, most importantly, for our democratic form of government, could not be higher. I am sure there is much frantic activity behind the scenes and that the pressure on the Federal judge hearing this case is enormous.

Can you think of any sane reason why Obama would not pull out his original birth certificate for examination and immediately settle this bothersome, costly and “distracting” suit and this controversy? I can’t.

Obama and the DNC, aided by the silence of the MSM, want to keep this Federal suit, these developments, as unknown and quiet as possible, wants the action to be over before we even know that it happened; I suppose the likes of Greta Van Susteren wants to cover the monumentally important story of OJ’s new trial and tribulations, instead.

Obama and the DNC are hoping that if Obama wins in November, Obama’s Presidency will be a faite accompli, no one will have the guts or will want to go through the monumental Constitutional Crisis and Crisis in our Legal System that would ensue if attempts were made to remove a Constitutionally disqualified President-designate Obama from his position. The potential for riots in the streets by Obama’s outraged black supporters (always a threat of implied violence useful to Democrats) is only one of the many dire scenarios one can easily conjure up. Democrats control Congress and all the chairmen of key committees that would be involved in such a Constitutional Crisis are hard-core Democrats. The Democrats probably figure that once they win, they can try every trick in the book, they will fix this problem somehow and evade blame, play dumb, throw up a confusing barrage of conflicting information, say that the citizenship requirement is just an archaic “technicality,” unfair and unimportant, point fingers and say they didn’t realize there was a “Crisis,” and can count on most people to not want to “make waves,” “rock the boat,” or to want to be part of such a potentially cataclysmic upheaval endangering the peace and tranquility and the very fabric of our democracy--so, one way or the other--the Democrats will smooth things over and make this suit go away, to enter the Bermuda Triangle of unsolved and endlessly disputed controversies like the disappearance of Judge Crater, Chappaquiddick and the Kennedy Assassination.

So, the time to act is now, before the Election and the necessary awareness leading to calls for such action is what Obama and the DNC are trying to prevent, with their legal maneuvering and the MSM is also trying to prevent by their silence on this suit and this issue.

Opec members seek emergency meeting

By Carola Hoyos in London

Almost half the members of the Opec oil cartel are considering an emergency meeting in Vienna next month as oil prices dropped to their lowest level in nearly a year.

Almost half the members of cartel have in the past few days called on the group to act to halt the slide before their next official meeting scheduled to take place in Algeria in late December.

Iran, Libya, Nigeria, Iraq, Venezuela and Ecuador, whose economies tend to be most dependent on high oil prices and whose ministers are among the most hawkish of the 13-member group, have all lobbied for the cartel to drop output.

Their calls came as oil consuming nations moved to bolster their economies in a co-ordinated interest rate cut.

Oil prices on Wednesday resumed their slide towards $85 a barrel, a level last reached in December last year.

Nymex November West Texas Intermediate fell $3.06 to $87 a barrel, while ICE November Brent slid $2.96 to $81.

Opec’s next meeting was scheduled for December 18 in Algeria, but ministers are now saying they could meet on November 18 in Vienna, site of the group’s headquarters.

Opec controls nearly 40 per cent of the world’s oil supply, and at its meeting last month pledged to reduce its production by about 500,000 barrels a day in an attempt to boost prices. So far the group’s reduction has fallen far from that mark, but slowing production often takes more than a few weeks.

The world consumes about 87m barrels a day of oil.

A Positive Sign for the Grid

Although it’s somewhat unusual to see the words “good idea” and “Dept of Homeland Security” in the same sentence, it actually appears to have happened last week. ...

What Hackers Know about Control Systems that You Don't

Computers and electronics run our infrastructure and our world. Electronic signals support generation, transmission, and distribution of power that keeps our lights on and the water coming out of our taps. They also support the entire global industrial manufacturing infrastructure. They are so ubiquitous that at a recent industry conference, a top cyber agent at the FBI was quoted as saying, "Computers are everywhere. Most of you drove here in one."

Consider then the importance of availability and reliability of those electronic, or "cyber," systems that connect and, in some cases help to operate, critical infrastructure. Computers manage such important infrastructure as:

• Water distribution and wastewater collection systems
• Oil and gas pipelines
• Electrical utility transmission and distribution
• Rail and other public transportation

These systems are often interconnected and interdependent. Remember the power blackout in 2003 that started with one power station in Ohio, and eventually spread to darken seven US states and half of eastern Canada? It was caused by a cascading failure that impacted more than 508 generating units at 265 power plants, including 22 nuclear power plants. Power blackouts don't just affect the electricity to homes and retail businesses. Outages also impact:

• Oil and gas production
• Refinery operations
• Water treatment systems
• Wastewater collection
• Pipeline transportation systems
• Rail and most public transportation systems

Many of the companies who operate these critical infrastructure systems are now connecting them to their internal corporate networks, but without the customary security procedures that we are used to deploying in the typical IT environment. The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of cyber security currently lacking in control system environments today and the reasons behind these vulnerabilities. This document describes some actual events that demonstrate current control system vulnerabilities. This paper also discusses how an Internet Reputation Intelligence (a trusted Internet reputation system that augments the protection of all cyber systems) creates a proactive security model for control systems where other, traditional and reactionary, technologies fall short.
(PDF, 16 pages)

Carney: Department of Homeland Security needs to be reformed

by Daily Review

US Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.) said the Department of Homeland Security needs to be need reformed, adding that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be removed from the department’s domain. FEMA should be given “cabinet level status,” with direct access to the president, Carney said, as was the case under former President Bill Clinton, before FEMA became part of the Department of Homeland Security. “An organization as important as important as FEMA gets a guy like Michael Brown running it,” Carney said referring to the former director who resigned following Hurricane Katrina. “We need someone qualified running that organization and we need to fund (Homeland Security) adequately and staff it adequately.” Carney made his comments during an editorial board meeting with the Scranton Times-Tribune, owned by the same parent company as The Citizens’ Voice. Carney, who faces Republican Chris Hackett in the 10th Congressional District, is seeking his first re-election. He focused his comments on what he called his “bi-partisan” approach as a congressman, and the need to “reach across the aisle.” Registered Republicans outnumber Democrats in Carney’s district by about 32,000, making up 48.5 percent of the registered voters in the district, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. ...

Study of Data Mining for Terrorists Is Urged

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON — A federal panel of policy makers and scientific experts urged a government-wide evaluation Tuesday of programs that sift through databases looking for clues on terrorism, to determine whether the programs are effective and legal.

The federal government has made aggressive use of so-called data-mining tools since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as counterterrorism officials in many intelligence agencies have sought to analyze records on travel habits, calling patterns, e-mail use, financial transactions and other data to pinpoint possible terrorist activity.

The National Security Agency’s program for wiretapping terror suspects without warrants, the screening of suspicious airline passengers and the Pentagon’s ill-fated Total Information Awareness program, shut down by Congress in 2003 because of privacy concerns, have all relied on aspects of data mining.

But in a 352-page government study released on Tuesday, a committee of the National Research Council warned that successfully using these tools to deter terrorism “will be extremely difficult to achieve” because of legal, technological and logistical problems. It said a haphazard approach to using such tools threatened both Americans’ privacy rights and the country’s legitimate national security needs.

Mining through data patterns has been shown to work in commercial settings to predict what kind of toothpaste people may buy and what kind of movie they are likely to rent, or to detect casino card-counters or those engaged in credit card fraud.

But there is little evidence to confirm that the techniques work to actually find terrorists, despite the growing use in the last seven years, committee members said. Part of the problem, they said, is that the sample of known terrorists and actual attacks is so small that it is difficult to establish patterns of suspicious behavior.

The push to accumulate enormous amounts of information has also produced the risk of “a huge number of false leads” that could implicate people with no actual connections to terrorism, the committee said.

“More data does not mean better data,” said William J. Perry, the former defense secretary who was co-chairman of the panel, with Charles M. Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The National Research Council, a government-chartered nonprofit group, set up the panel in 2005 to study data mining at the request of the Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation.

Matt Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania computer science professor who has studied data mining but was not involved in the study, said one of the most important points made in the report — little understood by the public — was to underscore the “fundamental problems” in adapting commercial data-mining to the hunt for terrorists. The committee, Mr. Blaze said, “has performed a real public service.”

Timothy Edgar, the deputy for civil liberties in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at the White House, said his office had begun reviewing data-mining programs “on an ad hoc basis,” partly at the direction of Congress. But he said the committee’s recommendations laying out a framework for legal and operational concerns in a data-mining program could help to guide that effort.

“This is something the government could do in a more systematic way,” Mr. Edgar said.

Judge Orders 17 Detainees at Guantánamo Freed

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to release 17 detainees at Guantánamo Bay by the end of the week, the first such ruling in nearly seven years of legal disputes over the administration’s detention policies.

The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court, ordered that the 17 men be brought to his courtroom on Friday from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they have been held since 2002. He indicated that he would release the men, members of the restive Uighur Muslim minority in western China, into the care of supporters in the United States, initially in the Washington area.

“I think the moment has arrived for the court to shine the light of constitutionality on the reasons for detention,” Judge Urbina said.

Saying the men had never fought the United States and were not a security threat, he tersely rejected Bush administration claims that he lacked the power to order the men set free in the United States and government requests that he stay his order to permit an immediate appeal. ....

More than 300 arrested in immigration sweep

More than 300 suspected illegal immigrants were arrested Tuesday morning at a chicken processing plant near Greenville, S.C. -- the latest in a stepped-up federal enforcement effort that has resulted in the deportation of thousands of illegal workers in recent months.

Tuesday's raid was led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and involved hundreds of agents from numerous agencies. The target was Columbia Farms, a processing plant that had been the subject of a 10-month criminal investigation. ....

Intel Chief Praises Fusion Centers

by Mickey McCarter

Charlie Allen outlines DHS plans for remainder of 2008 Information-sharing between federal, state and local governments at national fusion centers has proven vital to alerting authorities to possible terrorist threats, such as those that might damage supply chain security, Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence Charles Allen told the Maritime Security Council in Washington, DC, Tuesday. "Our ability to move, analyze and act on information is our greatest strength. We must use the network and the information in that network, to push our defensive perimeter outward," Allen declared. The network in question--the National Fusion Center network--is staffed with intelligence officers who must pass threat information along to where it is needed, whether at the national level or in a city. To overcome old barriers to communication between federal, state and local analysts, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has worked to strengthen the National Fusion Center Network, deploying 25 officers to fusion centers nationally with 10 more to be assigned by the end of the year. DHS has further expanded secret clearance sites of the Homeland Security Data Network (HSDN) to 23 to facilitate access to secret information around the nation. The department plans to double the number of secret HSDN sites by the end of the year, Allen announced. Each fusion center with HSDN has Web pages to assist with information sharing. Meanwhile, agents in 45 states, the District of Columbia and seven federal agencies have access to the unclassified Homeland Security State and Local Community of Interest. DHS also will provide mobile intelligence training to fusion center personnel, starting next month. The DHS Offices of Privacy and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties also will provide mobile training to the centers to protect individual rights and privacies. The increase in fusion center activity has resulted in more intelligence products, Allen remarked. Nine intelligence assessments have been produced in collaboration with the fusion centers, DHS and others so far this year. State and local fusion centers also have served as an important source of intelligence for federal agencies. The DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis has passed along more than 140 homeland security intelligence reports from state and local sources to the national intelligence community, Allen reported. Last year, such reports accounted for 1.5 percent of intelligence reporting nationally, but it has accounted for 8 percent so far this year. "In two cases, [intelligence community] analysts used local information to write articles for the President's Daily Brief," Allen remarked. "Without the presence of a DHS officer in the state fusion center, this information would not have been available. This is the essence of the effort to share intelligence and information vertically and horizontally." The application of intelligence from federal, state and local stakeholders along with private businesses will continue to help secure unprecedented levels of containerized cargo--estimated to reach 492 million units in 2015, up from 192 million in 2005,according to the United Nations.

Homeland Security and Economic Recovery

by Phil Leggiere

Homeland security, resiliency linked to economic revitalization. As the depth and magnitude of the global financial crisis becomes apparent, calls to retrench public spending can be expected to accelerate, regardless of which party controls Congress and the White House. Understandable as this reflex may be, there are also costs of not spending. Perhaps nowhere are the long-term costs of not spending so potentially momentous as in the area of infrastructure. Last year, after the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis, author and homeland security analyst Stephen Flynn outlined 5 Disasters Coming Soon If We Don’t Rebuild U.S. Infrastructure in an article in Popular Mechanics. Click here to see full story Flynn envisioned the impact a magnitude 6.7 earthquake in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Valley could cause the 30 outdated, inadequate levees in the area. “Sixteen Delta islands would drown under 300 billion gallons of salt water from San Francisco Bay,” he wrote. “It would not only spell disaster for the residents, but also cause problems farther afield, contaminating the fresh water supply for two-thirds of California. Some 10 million people would face severe shortages over the many months the water supply took to recover.” Another Flynn scenario involved seepage through the numerous holes that have been discovered in the foundation of Kentucky’s 55-year-old Wolf Creek Dam. In a worst-case scenario, Flynn said, the mile-long structure, which holds back the largest manmade reservoir east of the Mississippi, would release a wall of water, inundating towns and cities downstream along the Cumberland River, including Nashville. Flynn further imagined a major earthquake in Los Angles or a terrorist attack at its harbor, which he calculated could lead to an extended closure of America’s largest port complex. If that occurred, Flynn said, Southern California’s inventory of refined fuels would be exhausted in two to three weeks, and 18 million people literally run out of gas. A shutdown also would disrupt the flow of 40 percent of the nation’s maritime containers, idling factories everywhere and leaving retailers with bare shelves within days. Truly renovating infrastructure would go beyond protecting existing infrastructure from attack. As Jena Baker McNeill, a homeland security policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, wrote in a recent paper entitled Building Infrastructure Resiliency: Private Sector Investment in Homeland Security: “As Americans have become increasingly obsessed with protecting infrastructure from terror¬ist attacks, they have focused less and less on keep¬ing that same infrastructure in good condition. The idea persists that installing ever more guns, gates, and guards is critical, and will prevent all threats. When everything is critical, however, nothing is critical. As a result, any security gains garnered by threat prevention are jeopardized, while adequate upkeep, the less glamorous of the two, is largely abandoned.” Click here to see report. “What we need instead is resiliency,” McNeill declared. “Resiliency,” she added, “does not mean that we need to forget the prevention-of-terrorism aspect of infrastructure. It simply means that prevention is not the end of the equation. We must change the infrastructure mis¬sion to one that aims to improve infrastructure ade¬quacy across the board while protecting high-risk targets. If we lack the ability to accommodate the infrastructure needs of the population, a cata¬strophic event would stymie the transportation and delivery of essential aid—whether goods or people. Well-maintained infrastructure can lessen or largely eliminate damage from an attack—minimizing loss of lives and property.” While McNeill’s points are compelling and increasingly acknowledged, positive economic arguments for infrastructure resilience have been sparse. In an essay in the current New York Review of Books entitled A New Bank to Save Our Infrastructure, investment banker Felix Rohatyn and Everitt Erlich, Senior Vice President and Director of Research for the Committee for Economic Development assay such an argument, outlining the case for a National Infrastructure Bank. They suggest that homeland security needs and economic recovery may be far more closely linked than is commonly acknowledged. Click here to see full article. “These are rare times of ferment in one of the most neglected fields of public policy—the nation's infrastructure, or what used to be known as public works, including roads, mass transit, bridges, ports and airports, flood control systems, and much else. We have been confronted with spectacular and tragic evidence of the inadequacy of these facilities in the failure of the levees in New Orleans and in the collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis,” they write. Putting the problem of aging, increasingly vulnerable infrastructure in historical context the authors recall that “Throughout US history, competent public investment decisions have been an essential complement to private investment, from the Louisiana Purchase and the Land Grant Colleges to the Interstate Highway System and the Internet. And the functions of infrastructure are still as essential as they have ever been, if not more so.” Contrasting that record with the present they note that China will spend $200 billion on its railways between 2006 and 2010—the largest investment in railroad capacity made by any country since the nineteenth century—while the US rail system continues to become more and more degraded at a time of great potential renewal. The Chinese also plan over the next twelve years to construct 300,000 kilometers of roads in rural China, as well as ninety-seven new airports. “The Chinese understand that economic power depends on these investments,” they conclude. A key problem in developing a coherent national plan for infrastructure renewal, Rohatyn and Ehrlich believe, is that responsibility for the nation's infrastructure is currently spread across federal, state, and local governments. For example, they say, “the federal government is responsible for maintaining wastewater systems, while states and municipalities handle drinking water. The federal government helps states, cities, and towns build and operate mass transit systems; and it builds bridges that are part of the Interstate system, while local governments build local roads and the picturesque covered bridges that appear on tourist postcards.” One key lesson of Hurricane Katrina, according to the authors, was the devastating consequences of these failures of coordination. “The state of Louisiana and its municipalities built flood control systems around levees while ignoring the deterioration of fragile wetlands in the Mississippi Delta,”, while “ Louisiana's congressional delegation steered federal funds toward navigation projects instead of flood control.” To begin to address the growing infrastructure crisis the authors argue in favor of “a new and different approach to selecting, financing, and managing infrastructure” conceptually laid out last year in a report by Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, a commission co-chaired by Rohaytn, along with former Senator Warren Rudman. The core idea of the CSIS commission proposal is to establish a National Infrastructure Bank, an institution that the authors describe as being similar to the World Bank, “an entity that evaluates project proposals and assembles a portfolio of investments to pay for them.” The bank, as they conceive it, “ would replace the various "modal" programs for highways, airports, mass transit, water projects, and other infrastructure, streamlining them and folding them together into a new entity with a new culture and purpose. Any project seeking federal participation over a set dollar threshold would have to be submitted to this bank. (Smaller projects would be left to states, cities, and towns, perhaps with an accompanying federal grant to be used at the discretion of the state or local government.) Rather than receiving grants through pre-set federal formulas or privileged congressional payments, states, cities, or other levels of government would come to the bank with proposals they wished to pursue.” The bank, they say, would have no preconceived, overarching plan for the nation's infrastructure. “Proposals for infrastructure investment would still predominantly come from state and local governments. Our plan would preserve almost entirely the existing balance of power between federal, state, and local government, but would change dramatically the way priorities are set and projects funded. That is because it would proceed project-by-project, and dollar-by-dollar, to find the best use of federal resources.” Doubtless with the recent travails of the mortgage scandals in mind, Rohatyn and Ehrlich emphasize that, “the bank's securities, whatever they may be, should not benefit from a promise of the government's full faith and credit (as has been enjoyed and abused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Only close scrutiny by investors can provide the kinds of discipline needed to ensure the bank's long-term success. If the bank wishes to support a proposed project—whether by writing a check, insuring a local bond, providing other credit guarantees, or lending its own money—its securities should each be carefully exposed and specifically targeted, allowing participating investors to evaluate the assets they buy.” “Regardless of the government's fiscal position,” they conclude, “ vital investments in transportation, water supply, education, and clean energy are necessary to maintain our future standard of living. Our political system pours money into war and tax breaks while relying on deficit finance. Those in charge then announce that there are no resources left to secure our economic future. The new bank we propose offers one alternative to such a dangerous set of policies.” The proposals may, or may not, be politically practical. At least two bills, one the National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2007, submitted by Senators Chris Dodd (D., Connecticut) and Chuck Hagel (R., Nebraska), both of whom served as members of the CSIS commission, the other offered in the House of Representatives by Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Massachusetts) and Representative Keith Ellison (D., Minnesota) outline an approach broadly similar to Rohatyn and Ehrlich. At the very least, however, they usefully sketch out the intersection between homeland security and sustainable development which is likely to be key to public policy going forward.

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Brits launch shoot-to-kill ops

LONDON -- Specialist agents for Britain's MI6 intelligence service, trained to pose as Muslim extremists, are leading two hand-picked SAS units to seek and destroy a secret bomb-making factory in Baghdad, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

Their first major success came last weekend when sharpshooters shot and killed Mahir Ahmad Mahmud Judu al-Zubaydi near his hideout in Baghdad's Adhamiya suburb.

The MI6 agents had identified him as the deputy commander of al-Qaida in the city and the mastermind behind a series of recent bombings. He died as he was on his way to a local mosque for Friday prayers.

"His removal will send shock waves through Baghdad's terrorist networks," said coalition spokesman Rear Admiral Patrick Driscoll.

Al-Zubaydi had been hunted for two years since he appeared on a video recording showing him shooting dead a Russian diplomat in the city. He was at the top of the SAS target list for having been credited with killing over 300 men, women and children with his bombs.

The MI6 agents are fluent in the local languages and live outside the highly protected Green Zone, moving from one hideout to another in the hostile Sunni Muslim areas of the city.

Their work is described as "the most dangerous of all the undercover operations in Iraq. Their prime targets are to not only destroy the factory, but to discover the terrorist cells where the bombers wait to strike," confirmed a senior intelligence officer in London.

Days before they had tracked down al-Zubaydi, the MI6 agents had established he was responsible for last month's killing of 35 civilians and injuring more than 100 others through roadside bombs created in the secret factory.

Bomb and casing fragments showed the explosives originally came from Iran -- and may possibly have been smuggled into the country with the knowledge of Iranian diplomats.