Homeland Security Updates

Via IPT News

As we enter 2009 and witness the first steps taken by President-elect Barack Obama and his administration, we thought it would be a good time to consider priorities.

The new President will have to tackle the economic crisis, which would be enough to keep everyone busy if that were the only challenge.

However, Barack Obama will be America’s first new Commander-in-Chief since 9/11. In the aftermath, our nation’s course fighting terror has been set only by the Bush administration.

We asked 2 men who’ve studied global terrorism for years what they think are the three biggest terrorism challenges facing the new administration.

Dr. Walid Phares is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington D.C. He is also a visiting fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy. Dr. Phares is the author of several books in English, French and Arabic. His most recent book is The Confrontation: Winning The War Against Future Jihad.

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Via Policeone.com

Beginning Monday, the Austin Police Department will have 92 new officers patrolling the streets, serving warrants and guarding city buildings and landmarks.

The parks and airport departments will have none.

After years of discussion and months of planning, the officers who worked for those agencies will become employees of the Austin Police Department, an estimated $2 million merger that officials say should improve the city’s overall quality of policing.

City officials said most residents probably won’t notice a big difference - officers directing traffic at the airport will only have different uniforms and patches, for instance.

However, officials said the merger, which City Council members approved last month, will place all of the city’s police operations under Police Chief Art Acevedo, decreasing the chance for confusion or misdirection in a natural disaster or other emergency. They also said it will create a citywide policing standard, making training and pay equal among all officers.

The consolidation includes about a dozen city marshals, whose primary responsibility is serving misdemeanor warrants for Austin Municipal Court.

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Via Reuters.com

Abu Ali vows that once the war in Gaza ends he will quickly repair his tunnel under the frontier with Egypt, one of the many underground links used by Palestinian smugglers that have been blasted by Israeli warplanes.

“Life cannot go on in Gaza if the tunnels are destroyed — they’re our only opening to the outside world,” he said, speaking inside the Palestinian enclave that has been blockaded by the Jewish state for more than two years.

Hundreds of tunnels have been carved out beneath the Gaza-Egypt frontier, providing a vital conduit to bring basic needs into the territory which has suffered an increasing stranglehold in the past 18 months.

Foodstuffs, building materials, medicines and electric equipment are all brought from Egypt through the passages — as well as weapons, notably rockets, and ammunition.

Such contraband provides smugglers with a profitable business. It is also a source of income for Hamas, the Islamist movement which has been the sole ruler in the Gaza Strip since June 2007.

The movement levies taxes on the smugglers’ income from the tunnels which are linked to the territory’s electricity grid with the blessing of Hamas.

Conscious that the goods, particularly weapons, flowing under the border are vital to Hamas in its conflict, Israel has bombed dozens of tunnels since Israel began its offensive on the Gaza Strip on December 27.

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Via Reuters.com

A French warship captured 19 Somali pirates on Sunday when it came to the rescue of two cargo ships threatened in the Gulf of Aden, the office of President Nicolas Sarkozy said.

The French naval vessel “Jean de Vienne” was on patrol off the Somali coast as part of a European Union anti-piracy force when it came to the rescue of a Croatian cargo vessel and a Panamanian ship crossing the Gulf of Aden.
The 19 Somali pirates, armed and equipped with equipment to board the vessels, were captured and have been handed over to Somali authorities, the statement said.

The incident came three days after another French vessel captured eight Somali pirates who attacked a Panamanian registered vessel.
Piracy off Somalia, one of the world’s busiest shipping areas, has soared over the past year, earning the pirates millions of dollars of ransom payments and pushing up maritime insurance rates.

The European Union set up an anti-piracy naval task force under British command last month involving warships and aircraft from several nations in the first such naval operation of its kind.

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Via CNSNews.com

The U.S. Army says a five-year program has successfully destroyed much of the nation’s deadly VX nerve agent – a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) that is slated for total elimination by international agreement. 

But an expert on chemical and biological weapons says the U.S. still has a large stockpile of the lethal weapon left.
 
The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency reported Monday that it destroyed the last landmine containing VX at its destruction sites in Anniston, Ala., on Dec. 24.
 
In fact, in the last five years, all VX munitions have been destroyed at five other disposal sites — Umatilla, Ore.; Newport, Ind.; Pine Bluff, Ark.; Tooele, Utah; and Johnston Island — approximately 800 miles southwest of Hawaii.  
 
“We have reached a truly remarkable milestone following more than five years of deliberate, but careful operations,” said Timothy K. Garrett, project manager at the Anniston destruction site. “All nerve agent munitions . . .  have been safely processed.”

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WSG will be closed starting tomorrow, Wednesday December 24th. We will be closed through Christmas and New Years. The offices will open to our normal office hours on Monday, January 5th. We wish everyone a happy and safe Holiday season.

Via National Terror Alert

A jury has found five men guilty of conspiring to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said Monday.

Via the Washington Post

Governors want to levy higher taxes next year on clothes, soft drinks, gasoline, auto licenses and other items that likely will hit low- and middle-income families struggling to make ends meet in a deepening recession the hardest.

Via CNSNews.com

China will “seriously consider” building its first aircraft carrier, the Ministry of National Defense said Tuesday in another sign of Beijing’s expanding military ambitions.
 
An aircraft carrier is “a symbol of a country’s overall national strength as well as the competitiveness of the country’s naval force,” said ministry spokesman Senior Col. Huang Xueping. He said China must ensure its maritime security and sovereignty but gave no timetable for launching such a vessel.
 
China’s navy usually stays close to its shores, though the government said Tuesday that it will send three ships to the Indian Ocean to deter pirate attacks on Chinese vessels.
 
An aircraft carrier would allow China’s navy to fight farther out at sea by providing air cover in places that land-based planes cannot reach. Military analysts see a Chinese aircraft carrier mainly as a deterrent to U.S. intervention in a possible conflict over Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as part of its territory.
 
“The Chinese government will take into overall account all of the relevant factors and seriously consider the relevant issue,” Huang said at a news conference in response to question about whether the time was right for China to build an aircraft carrier.

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Via CNSNews.com

The Phoenix Police Department has gotten some high-powered goodies courtesy of actor David Spade.
 
The one-time Phoenix resident donated $100,000 so that the department can buy approximately 50 AR-15 rifles.
 
Spade said he wanted to make the donation after seeing a TV news report about Phoenix officers having to buy their own rifles. Spade grew up in the Phoenix area and graduated from Arizona State University.
 
Phoenix Police Sgt. Alan Hill says the rifles will be given to patrol officers and that the agency was grateful for the gifts.

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