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POPSCrucial foreign policy and security issues facing the Obama Some of the most notable of the day's speakers were General David Petraeus, World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen, USAID Administrator Henrietta Fore, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, General Tony Zinni, former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General Lakhdar Brahimi, and Chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness Ashraf Ghani.
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POPSU.N. on Israeli War Crimes
The Goldstone Report now has been approved overwhelmingly by the UN General Assembly. The report calls for Israel to investigate it's war crime accusations...and for the Palestinians to investiage theirs -- and says the slow starvation of over a million and half people in the Gaza Strip should stop. Now, it seems it goes to the Security Council. Which means, if things go as usual, the USA will veto it and it will end there. The USA has does similar actions at the UN for decades, protecting Israel, no matter what. The USA House of Congress has even gone on record, this week, opposing this war crimes report. Israel yesterday seized a ship with weapons and said they come from Iran and this was a war crime...also pointing out that Russia, the USA, China, etc. are all guility of war crimes. The conclusion appears to be that war is a war crime. Everybody's guilty. And let's just forget it. ...um, except when talking about the Nazi's of WWII or the Bosnian Serbs curre
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POPSOur Tax Dollars At Work-Blackwater
More from the article as follows: "The Nisour Square shooting was the bloodiest and most controversial episode involving Blackwater in the Iraq war. At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded." "Those responses deeply worried Blackwater officials. Before the Nisour Square shootings, the company had operated in Iraq without a license largely because the Iraqi government had never enforced the rules. Being blocked from the country would have been costly — the State Department deal was Blackwater’s single biggest contract. From 2004 through today, the company has collected more than $1.5 billion for its work protecting American diplomats and providing air transportation for them inside Iraq." "
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POPSBlackwater:Ain't Misbehaving, Saving My Contracts for You
Of course the US government was blind to this - they didn't want to know, they turned a blind eye to what Blackwater was doing because it would have been too hard to arrange for another contractor to do all the security missions that it had ongoing. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are as many private contractors as there are uniformed military personnel. Most of them are not security guards as Blackwater's most visible function was. The lack of oversight is abhorrent but not surprising; the State Dept's failure to can this company is inexcusable. My only observation on this article is to suggest how the US government got into this predicament, and it's pretty easy to see. The Bush administration wanted to hold onto the fiction of a few conservative principles, one of those being the concept of a small federal government. Since it already blew that "principle" with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, I'm betting there was White House guidance that directed "no mo
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POPS Advance To The Rear!
(Well, in fairness, even if the president did declare back in 2008 this war was a vital national security interest, and he did signal last spring he was on board with counterinsurgency, and even if he did appoint Gen. Stanley McChrystal to get the job done in May, the general’s recommendations only arrived in August, and the president didn’t look at them until, what, late September, and he’s been really busy this whole time letting Congress bollix his health-care initiative, throwing Eastern Europe under the bus and flying to Copenhagen, that kind of thing, so he’s only been able to squeeze in seven high-level national security meetings, or is it eight? Is it so unreasonable to ask for new options on top of the new options that he asked for on top of the new options that McChrystal gave him? Meanwhile, China’s ass wants kissing and then we’re into the holidays … ) OK, I get that the political piece is vitally important, and for Eikenberry, up to his armpits in scheming
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POPSUS Afghan Envoy Urges Caution on Troop Increase And whose side, exactly, is he on??? Undermine and put at risk those who are there by lack of support and back-up or go all out and get the job done. Which has, traditionally, been the American way? Every day that the so-called CIC delays, the more imperiled our loved ones become.
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POPSThe Record is Clear' - Dick Cheney is Not Credible For certain, Cheney is not the only one pressing Obama to hurry his Afghanistan strategy. The Neo-Conservatives have taken to every media outlet that will have them; and, if they're not talking about Afghanistan, they're second guessing the president's diplomacy with Iran, Russia, etc... For reasons I find incomprehensible, media outlets -- and not just Fox News, mind you -- treat them as if their credibility isn't completely lacking when it comes to matters of national security. That ship sailed months, if not years before Obama's election. Consider the scathing rebuke of Cheney issued by Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.), senior adviser for the National Security Network:
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POPSMysterious Private Security Firm Gets Control Of Empty Jail In Small Montana Town This is what happens when a town is desperate for money and they have no qualms about selling their soul to a renegade paramilitary force. APF plans to build a training facility “where law enforcement will get sniper training and learn "DNA analysis" skills”. APF refuses to divulge the source of the $30 million that will be used to fund this endeavor. According to their Blackwater-esque website http://www.americanpolicegroup.com/special.html they will be capable of providing training for all types of law enforcement organizations. It seems all those rumors of the ‘coming police state’ have just received another reason to ‘validate’ their fears. http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/nwocomingpoliceindex.shtml http://www.etherzone.com/2005/rose101705.shtml http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/171541-the-coming-police-state http://www.davidicke.com/content/view/26440
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POPSFighting Fraud
To put it into perspective, ACORN received about $53 million of federal funding over the past 15 years. Meanwhile, Blackwater, the private military contractor to which the U.S. government has farmed out security duties, may owe the government as much as $55 million for allegedly failing to fulfill the terms of one of its federal contracts. Yet Blackwater (now known as Xe), a company that has five of its employees facing murder charges in a massacre of Iraqi civilians in 2007, got a $217 million contract from the Obama administration to provide security in Iraq. The former Haliburton subsidiary, KBR, got $80 million in contract bonuses to provide electrical wiring in Iraq -- wiring that has fatally electrocuted 16 soldiers and two contractors. They haven’t been defunded by Congress. According to the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, the biggest three defense contractors -- Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman -- have been cited 109 times for misconduct since 199
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POPSFrom both sides of his mouth!!!!! This latest move by the administration follows a pattern replicated countless times by Obama since assuming the presidency in January: denounce the lawless behavior of his Oval Office predecessor while continuing, even expanding, the reach of unaccountable security agencies that subvert constitutional guarantees barring "unreasonable searches and seizures."
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POPSGet Top Rated Bullguard Internet Security Suite for FREE! Note: Following this link and downloading the program before the offer period begins will not enable you to obtain a free license. 2) Download BullGuard Internet Security. (Disregard the fact that the download says "Free copy for 2 months". Following the link directly from techsupportalert.com ensures that the download provides a full, 1 year licence). 3) Install the product Although this offer comes with full support from Bullguard we will also endeavor to answer any general queries ourselves via the this thread in the Gizmo's Freeware forum. http://www.techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/security/2223-bullguard-i... Bullguard Internet Security contains all of the features you would expect from a suite of this type: On-access and on-demand scanning Security updates every 2 hours Webfiltering for proactive website scanning Rootkit detection capabilities Protection against identity theft A powerful firewall Intrusion and transmission detection
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POPSProtests flare in Iran's capital .... "....opposition protesters warned the Obama administration -- which is seeking to engage Iran to defuse a confrontation over Tehran's nuclear program -- that now's not the time for a deal." Hmmm....and this: "...Protesters chanted, "Death to the dictator" and "Russia is the den of espionage,".....
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POPSA New Meaning to "Freedom of the Press" "I think it is a compromise we can live with and it seems to be a compromise the White House can live with. It's certainly better than the status quo," Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
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POPSPainstaking Baby Splitting to protect population centers, or one that makes counterterrorism the main focus of U.S. efforts in the country, which would rely on relatively fewer American troops. … The timing of Obama’s decision on Afghanistan remains up in the air. But his request for another meeting with the military chiefs " and the expectation that he will meet again with his top national security advisers before reaching a conclusion " may leave him too little time to decide the issue before he travels to Asia on Nov. 11. I’m afraid that’s just not enough time for him to recognize that he is the President of the United States, that the buck stops with him, that he’ll never make everyone happy, that his current direction is more likely to make no one happy, that extended indecisiveness is its own kind of decision and, in time of war, fundamentally, it gives him enough time to grow a set. Also that, no matter how he painstakingly he splits it, it’s his baby now.
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POPSFBI Demands Tattoo Shops Rat On Customers It is not merely “extremist symbols.” In addition, the FBI literature instructs tattoo shops to be on the look-out for people who change hair color, style of dress, or shave beards between visits. Suspicious people also include those with missing fingers or hands, chemical burns, strange orders or bright colored stains on clothing. Read the handout below for more absurd “extremist” indicators according to the FBI.
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POPS'Fear detector' being developed that will be able to sniff out terrorists Evidence that the smell of fear is real was uncovered by US scientists last year who studied the underarm secretions of 20 terrified novice skydivers. The researchers found that people appear to respond unconsciously to the sweat smell of a frightened person. Scientists at City University London now hope to develop security sensor systems that can detect the human fear pheromone. Team leader Professor Tong Tun told The Engineer magazine: 'The challenge lies in the characterisation and identification of the specific chemical that gives away the signature of human fear, especially the fear in relation to criminal acts.'
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POPSAny Way these Firms Can be Experts in Everything? What these government contractors are expert at is: 1. Placing job sites in states and districts of Congressional Members who serve on funding committee for Defense, IT, and Homeland Security. 2. Have Political Action Committees that donate money to candidates on same committees. 3. Having paid representatives at every meeting in Congress or government agency that could affect their funding.
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POPSDanger--America Becoming Statist: First Bush, Now Obama Note: First the Security or Police State then the Nanny State. This is a must-read article, and hopefully an eye-opener to those still stuck in the "left" or "right" paradigm of thinking of partisan politics, both of which pick and chose which parts of the Constitution they want to dismantle for desired ends. Put the Bush and Obama policies together, sprinkle in a couple more terrorist attacks, and one or two more state-caused financial calamities, and you have a recipe for . . . * The destruction of American liberty * The blossoming of a Leviathan State
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POPSFake Security Software In Millions Of Computers Oh Boy! A new computer scam. ""In terms of the number of people who potentially have this in their machines, it's tens of millions," Weafer said." It was also impossible to tell how much cyberthieves made off with but "affiliates" acting as middlemen to convince people to download the software were believed to earn between 1 cent per download and 55 cents. TrafficConverter.biz, which has been shut down, had boasted that its top affiliates earned as much as $332,000 a month for selling scam security software, according to Weafer."
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