HomelandSecurityLeader.com

By Michelle Says So

Yesterday I reported to jury duty for the first time. When that summons comes in the mail, most people are annoyed at the “inconvenience”, but for me, I was elated. Since my background is in law and true crime writing, I was praying to be selected for a juicy criminal case.

I shuffled into the court room for the “voir dire” process (an old French word for “truth“), in which both the prosecutor and the defendant’s counsel asks each potential juror questions to decide whether or not they want them on the jury.

In this first phase of voir dire, each side is entitled to what is called a peremptory challenge, a complete strategic move, in which either side can excuse a juror without giving a reason. When I found out the case was a felony trial my interest peaked! When I was told that it was a murder and rape case dating back to 1985, I put on the poker face because my insides were screaming for joy! I thought, this would be my moment to make a difference!

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Officer Down: Mexican Federal Police Chief Edgar Millan Gomez

Mexico: Examining Cartel War Violence Through a Protective Intelligence Lens (STRATFOR)
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Mexico’s long and violent drug cartel war has recently intensified. The past week witnessed the killings of no fewer than six senior police officials. One of those killed was Edgar Millan Gomez, acting head of the Mexican federal police and the highest-ranking federal cop in Mexico. Millan Gomez was shot to death May 8 just after entering his home in Mexico City.

Within the past few days, six suspects have been arrested in connection with his murder. One of the ringleaders is said to be a former federal highway police officer. The suspects appear to have ties to the Sinaloa cartel. In fact, Millan Gomez was responsible for a police operation in January that led to the arrest of Alfredo Beltran Leyva, the cartel’s second-in-command. Mexican police believe Beltran Leyva’s brother Arturo (who is also a significant player in the Sinaloa cartel structure) commissioned the hit.

During the same time period, violence from the cartel war has visited the family of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera, the Sinaloa cartel leader who has the distinction of being Mexico’s most-wanted drug kingpin. On May 8, Guzman Loera’s son Edgar Guzman Beltran and two companions were killed by a large-scale ambush as they left a shopping mall in Culiacan, Sinaloa.

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HSLEADER.com is organizing an interactive web community that includes homeland security officials, professional, investors, media and concerned citizens.

You are welcome to sign-up for the groups that fit your role within the homeland security community. To join a group, simply click on the link and look for the “Join” button.

The following groups are available…

Homeland Security Leadership and Officials

- Homeland Security Leadership (DHS and HS Officials)

- DHS Alumni Association

- Classification Management

- Emergency Management (Coming Soon)

- Fire & Rescue (Coming Soon)

- Intelligence Community (Coming Soon)

- Interview & Interrogation

- Law Enforcement (Coming Soon)

- Medical & EMT (Coming Soon)

- Military (Coming Soon)

Industry and Professionals

- Industry Leadership and Business Development

- Executive Protection

- Recruiter

Investors

- Angel (Invitation Only)

- Venture

- Institutional (Coming Soon)

Media

- Media (Professional) (Invitation Only)

- Media (Industry) (Coming Soon)

- Bloggers

Citizens

- Concerned Citizens

International

- International Leadership (Invitation Only) (Coming Soon)

- International Industry (Coming Soon)

By Just Cruzin 2 

Remember Lee Iacocca, the man who rescued Chrysler Corporation from it’s death throes? He speaks his mind, but makes his point in an election year. He has a new book, and here are some excerpts-

Lee Iacocca Says: “Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America ,not the damned “Titanic”. I’ll give you a sound bite: “Throw all the bums out!”

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From The Sidetrack

As a matter of perspective, the quest for relevance is a natural inclination for any public figure. When the historians and cherry-picking pundits mention your name five years on, what words will they follow it with? Leader? Visionary? Patriot? Politicized Department of Justice? Politicized Military? False Pretense for Invasion? General Douche-Baggery?

Secrecy, and a free, democratic government don’t mix - Harry S. Truman

Revisionists have painted the ideal for Republicans into a dichotomy of ideology; Reagan, good, Nixon, bad. It isn’t a bad policy for party reform, if you are of the conservative persuasion, and ignore the failure of Gipper Economics, Reagan Foreign Policy, Reagan’s Tax Policy, and Reagan’s “Ketchup Is A Vegetable” Children’s Health Policy, but it begs a question they will not answer. In their continued support for George Bush and his administration — expressed by congressional votes, campaigns, and policy backing — despite the obvious similarities, it remains unclear whether Nixon becomes the pariah because of his behavior, or simply because he got caught.

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From Malay Women in Malaysia, by Saidul A Shaari

Folks! First of all, let me express my thanks and appreciation to IslamWeb Dot Net for making this possible once again. All I can say is that they are really concerned with what is happening in Malaysia at the moment.

Islam, as represented in the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad , laid down human rights centuries before they were known to the modern world. The following are some of these rights:

1. The security of Life and Property:

In the address which the Prophet delivered on the occasion of the Farewell Hajj, he said: “Your lives and properties are forbidden to one another till you meet your Lord on the Day of Resurrection.” The Prophet has also said about the Thimmis (the non-Muslim citizens of the Muslim state): “One who kills a man under covenant (i.e., Thimmi) will not even smell the fragrance of Paradise.”

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The Muslim American gives a voice to Muslims who oppose terrorism.

Here is some information from their website…

Muslim Voices Against Extremism and Terrorism
MUSLIMS DENOUNCE TERRORISM

Question:  Where are the Muslim voices?
Answer:  They are listed here!

We began this section in 2001 and it has expanded to become a relatively comprehensive resource.  This is all completed by volunteer effort, and if you would like to help with the research needed to make this even more comrehensive and useful, please contact the editor. This resource of The American Muslim has received positive mention in the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University’s recently released report on internet-facilitated radicalization entitled:  ”NETworked Radicalization: A Counter-Strategy”. It is also listed as a resource on many other sites, and the new logo has already been picked up by 15 sites.  We hope that many more will do this, and that all the organizations working on related projects will be able to connect and work cooperatively.One hand clapping cannot make enough noise to drown out the extremists, but all of us together can make enough noise to be heard around the world.

Muslim Voices Against Extremism and Terrorism
MUSLIMS DENOUNCE TERRORISM
- Qur’an & Hadith against extremism (see also power point presentations)
- Part I Fatwas
- Part II Statements by Organizations
- Part III Statements and Articles by Individuals (see also power point presentations)
- Part IV A Few Quotes A-K, and A Few Quotes L-Z
- Part V The Muslim Majority Who Don’t Get Publicity (see also power point presentation)
- Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. Military
- Selective Hearing of Muslim Voices Against Extremism
- Sunni Shia Unity Resource - collection of articles

From PoliceMag.com, by Richard Valdemar

Fight politicians who would take guns from law-abiding citizens, giving gangs an undue advantage.

What’s the difference between an Assault with a Deadly Weapon and Murder? Answer: About an inch and a half. That would be the distance of the trajectory of a pistol or rifle bullet through your body, from your heart, brain stem, or other lethal clustering of circulatory vessels or nerve centers. The answer could also be “three to five minutes.” This would be the expected arrival time of paramedics or the extended travel time to a proper trauma center.

In the year 2006, 52 law enforcement officers were killed by firearms in the United States. But murder is a very poor measure of the criminal use of firearms against the police. After our experiences in treating gunshot victims first in WW II, and later in Korea and Vietnam, our scientific and medical skills to treat and save gunshot victims increased tenfold. In other words, if it were not for science we would have lost 10 times the officers we lost in 2006—that would mean a number more like 520 killed by gunfire.

A better statistic to measure the level of violence American police must face today would be the FBI criminal aggravated assault index, which would put us at about 300 aggravated or serious assaults per 100,000 people. This would make us about seven times more likely to be the victim of a serious assault in Washington D.C. than in most capitals in Europe. But why? Maybe we get shot more because we have more guns?

Full Editorial…

By John Sexton

I arrived in the U.A.E. last weekend to investigate the possibility of opening an office here to make it easier for clients with needs in the region. By all accounts, the economic growth in places like Dubai and Abu Dhabi is quite impressive. I was attending a CEO club dinner in Dubai on Monday night when an ex-patriate businessman asked me how we were different from Blackwater.

It was both a good and bad question to be asked, thousands of miles from home. If you believe the old adage: “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”, you might think that Blackwater is benefitting from all of the publicity. However, I could see in this man’s face that he had his own views about that company and I did not get the feeling that they were very supportive.

Then I remembered making a mental note of a headline I had read just before I left but did not have the time to write about it. The headline read; “U.S. offers cash to victims in Blackwater incident”. As far as I am concerned this is the last straw. Apparently the U.S. embassy has seen fit to offer sums of $12,500 to the mourning families. Firstly, this is of course a paltry amount by any standards. What I want to know is: why is the U.S. embassy taking it upon themselves to use tax payer’s money when the company in the middle of all of this has profited by hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraq?

Why should we, as tax payers, suffer when we did not profit or do anything wrong? It would have cost the owner of the company nothing to have issued an apology and it could have been done in a way so as not to appear as if he was accepting blame. Although I think there is very little chance of that happening unless he hires some some high-powered PR firm and they convince him that it is good for his reputation and business. Another step he could have taken would be to offer the families an interim payment to help them bury their relatives and ease the burden on the surviving family members. Maybe then the people over there would not hate Americans as much as they must do now.

I for one do not agree with subsidizing Eric Prince’s company as they reap huge financial rewards. I do not know how many people are aware of this development (that only made it on to page 19 of the Washington Post) but I think all tax payers should speak out and let the Government know that we do not want to be taken for fools.

http://whirledview.typepad.com, by CKR

It’s easy in the movies: put some dust the hero has picked up in the street into a machine with gauges and lights, wait a few seconds, and the answer glows on the monitor: North Korea. Or Iran. Or Russia.

If the bad guys explode a nuclear device in New York City, we’ve been assured, we can track them down. What we do if it’s a Russian device (or Pakistani or Israeli), we haven’t quite figured out yet. But we’ll know where it came from.

Not so much, said Carol Burns and Vayl Oxford to a House Homeland Security subcommittee on Wednesday. Burns is division leader for nuclear and radiochemistry at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Oxford is head of the Homeland Security Department’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office.

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