A daughter of Jersey and a fallen Marine

I have to agree with this woman. Whitney Houston tragically died but it was by her own actions and in actions. This mother lost her son in the line of battle. Flags should be lowered for Phillip McGeath, a Marine who died serving his country. Not for a multimillionaire who squandered her fortune and who's actions directly led to her death.

Mother Of Fallen Marine Offended By Half-Mast Flag For Houston « CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

ARLINGTON (CBSDFW.COM) – Flags will be lowered in New Jersey Saturday, the day of Whitney Houston’s funeral. But a Marine mom in Arlington says it’s an honor Houston doesn’t deserve.

When Phyllis McGeath heard Gov. Chris Christie had ordered flags lowered to half-staff for Houston, she said she felt a pain deep inside her.

“I was hurt and offended. Disappointed. Saddened,” she said. “I felt like the honor that was given to my son was tarnished.”

McGeath had three sons who were active duty Marines.

Her oldest, Philip, was killed by a suicide bomber just four weeks ago in Afghanistan. He was 25.

“They killed my son.They took his body away from me,” she said, overcome by emotion.

Arizona, the McGeath’s former home state, lowered their flags in his honor.

“That honor meant a lot to me,” McGeath said.

McGeath says Houston is not deserving of that same honor.

“Nothing against Ms. Houston because she was a beautiful singer and I was a fan for years,” McGeath said.

But, “It was like putting them on the same level. And I know how my son lived. And I know through the media how Ms. Houston lived,” she said.

New Jersey’s Governor, Chris Christie, defended his decision to lower the flags in his state saying he wasn’t honoring Houston as a role model but as “a daughter of New Jersey.”...

Again she died not in the line of duty for other but by a tragic accident. A formal symbol of morning is not requried.

...Christie is a conservative Republican. He’s also a former U.S. Attorney who recently called for mandatory drug treatment for non-violent offenders. But he said Houston’s substance abuse issues shouldn’t negate her achievements.

“There but for the grace of God go I,” he said...

One, to whomever wrote this crap Christie may be a Republican but he's no conservative. Also I don't question Houston's achievements in music/arts or that anyone can fall victim of drug abuse. But that is not giving you life for something greater than yourself. A Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine fall in the line of duty he was serving something more than himself. Ms Houston was serving what when she died?

That Marine gave a lot...much more than Ms Houston ever did.

...Christie approved a similar order when Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band member Clarence Clemons died last June....

And you had no business doing that with all due respect.

Governor, with all due respect there are other ways you can honor a "daughter of New Jersey" such as a proclamation, resolutions, etc. Lowering of the flag to half staff is reserved for more deserving people and yes, that Marine deserved it. Ms Houston did not.

Ike said it best when he was asked if he ever made a mistake in his term as President.

“Yes, two and they are both sitting on the Supreme Court!”

After Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement, a leftist (ain’t they all) columnist of the Washington Post commented on how she came into her time on the bench a conservative but she “grew” and “matured”, discovering the Constitution must “breath” to modern times.

In other words she starting to find things she liked in the document and people are too stupid to see them.

Now we come to this judge in the Ohio who seems to have had a change of heart on the death penalty. In and of itself I have no issue with. If over his life he changes view on a major issue, so be it. But to stand up there and say he can give a fair judgment on this issue is beyond credibility

Senior Associate Justice Paul Pfeifer

Ohio Justice Rejects Death Penalty Law He Wrote « CBS Cleveland

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — As a young state senator 30 years ago, Paul Pfeifer helped write Ohio’s death penalty law. Today, as the senior member of the state Supreme Court, he’s trying to eliminate it.

It’s not uncommon for sitting judges to change their mind on the death penalty — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously said in 1994 he would no longer “tinker with the machinery of death” — but Pfeifer may be the only one to argue so ardently against a capital punishment law he himself created, and yet continue to rule on death penalty cases.

“I have concluded that the death sentence makes no sense to me at this point when you can have life without the possibility of parole,” Pfeifer said in his most recent public comments, testifying in December in favor a bill to abolish Ohio’s law. “I don’t see what society gains from that.”

Fair enough Mr Pfeifer, if you don’t think society should execute someone, so be it. But you are lying if you say you can be fair and impartial on a capital case. If you recluse yourself, fair enough. But I think that won’t happen.

…At least two county prosecutors say Pfeifer should stop ruling on death sentences, including Hamilton County prosecutor Joe Deters, who said that Pfeifer’s actions were inappropriate. “It gives rise to a credible inference that he cannot be fair to both sides,” Deters said recently.

Bettman, a University of Cincinnati law professor and former state appeals court judge….

…Pfeifer, a Republican, has always charted his own course on the court. For years he was a member of a foursome — two Democrats and two moderate Republicans — dubbed “the Gang of Four” for a series of 4-3 rulings that critics said were anti-business and favored Democrats and their causes …

…Pfeifer made similar statements in court opinions over the years. He took his position public in 2001, calling unsuccessfully for an independent panel to review the law. He began to complain that prosecutors were overusing the statute, seeking death sentences in domestic quarrels that went bad instead of for the worst of the worst killers.

He often cites the case of Richard Nields, who murdered his girlfriend in their southwestern Ohio home in 1997, then stole her car and travelers’ checks, as an example of overreaching by prosecutors.

“This case is not about robbery,” Pfeifer wrote in his dissent to the court’s 2001 decision upholding Nields’ death sentence. “It is about alcoholism, rage and rejection and about Nields’ inability to cope with any of them.” Ultimately, Gov. Ted Strickland agreed and in 2010 changed Nields’ sentence to life without parole.

In January 2011, Pfeifer made his strongest statements to date, calling on Gov. John Kasich to empty death row.

Pfeifer says he’s required as a judge to take positions to make laws better, hence his current stand. He’s also required to rule according to the law and the Constitution, which he says he does. Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor says she’s comfortable Pfeifer is following the law and not showing bias

This makes less sense than having George Stephanopoulos hosting a Republican debate or Danny Rather interviewing a Bush. Forgive me, it goes beyond the pale.

Mr Pfeifer, show some integrity and just recluse yourself.

Security Weekly: Meth in Mexico: A Turning Point in the Drug War? February 16, 2012

By Ben West


Mexican authorities announced Feb. 8 the largest seizure of methamphetamine in Mexican history -- and possibly the largest ever anywhere -- on a ranch outside of Guadalajara. The total haul was 15 tons of pure methamphetamine along with a laboratory capable of producing all the methamphetamine seized. While authorities are not linking the methamphetamine to any specific criminal group, Guadalajara is a known stronghold of the Sinaloa Federation, and previous seizures there have been connected to the group.


Methamphetamine, a synthetic drug manufactured in personal labs for decades, is nothing new in Mexico or the United States. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has led numerous crusades against the drug, increasing regulations on its ingredients to try to keep it from gaining a foothold in the United States. While the DEA's efforts have succeeded in limiting production of the drug in the United States, consumption has risen steadily over the past two decades. The increasing DEA pressure on U.S. suppliers and the growing demand for methamphetamine have driven large-scale production of the drug outside the borders of the United States. Given Mexico's proximity and the pervasiveness of organized criminal elements seeking new markets, it makes sense that methamphetamine would be produced on an industrial scale there. Indeed, Mexico has provided an environment for a scale of production far greater than anything ever seen in the United States.


But last week's methamphetamine seizure sheds light on a deeper shift in organized criminal activity in Mexico -- one that could mark a breakthrough in the violent stalemate that has existed between the Sinaloa Federation, Los Zetas and the government for the past five years and has led to an estimated 50,000 deaths. It also reveals a pattern in North American organized crime activity that can be seen throughout the 20th century as well as a business opportunity that could transform criminal groups in Mexico from the drug trafficking intermediaries they are today to controllers of an independent and profitable illicit market.


While the trafficking groups in Mexico are commonly called "cartels" (even Stratfor uses the term), they are not really cartels. A cartel is a combination of groups cooperating to control the supply of a commodity. The primary purpose of a cartel is to set the price of a commodity so that buyers cannot negotiate lower prices. The current conflict in Mexico over cocaine and marijuana smuggling routes shows that there are deep rifts between rival groups like the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas. There is no sign that they are cooperating with each other to set the price of cocaine or marijuana. Also, since most of the Mexican criminal groups are involved in a diverse array of criminal activities, their interests go beyond drug trafficking. They are perhaps most accurately described as "transnational criminal organizations" (TCOs), the label currently favored by the DEA.


Examples from the Past


While the level of violence in Mexico right now is unprecedented, it is important to remember that the Mexican TCOs are businesses. They do use violence in conducting business, but their top priority is to make profits, not kill people. The history of organized crime shows many examples of groups engaging in violence to control an illegal product. During the early 20th century in North America, to take advantage of Prohibition in the United States, organized criminal empires were built around the bootlegging industry. After the repeal of Prohibition, gambling and casinos became the hot market. Control over Las Vegas and other major gambling hubs was a business both dangerous and profitable. Control over the U.S. heroin market was consolidated and then dismantled during the 1960s and 1970s. Then came cocaine and the rise in power, wealth and violence of Colombian groups like the Medellin and Cali cartels.


But as U.S. and Colombian law enforcement cracked down on the Colombian cartels -- interdicting them in Colombia and closing down their Caribbean smuggling corridors -- Colombian producers had to turn to the Mexicans to traffic cocaine through Mexico to the United States. To this day, however, Colombian criminal groups descended from the Medellin and Cali cartels control the cultivation and production of cocaine in South America, while Mexican groups increasingly oversee the trafficking of the drug to the United States, Europe and Africa.


The Mexican Weakness


While violence has been used in the past to eliminate or coerce competitors and physically take control of an illegal market, it has not proved to be a solution in recent years for Mexican TCOs. The Medellin cartel became infamous for attacking Colombian state officials and competitors who tried to weaken its grasp over the cocaine market. Going back further, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel is thought to have been murdered over disagreements about his handling of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Before that, Prohibition saw numerous murders over control of liquor shipments and territory. In Mexico, we are seeing an escalating level of such violence, but few of the business resolutions that would be expected to come about as a result.


Geography helps explain this. In Mexico, the Sierra Madre mountain range splits the east coast and the west from the center. The Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean coastal plains tend to develop their own power bases separate from each other.


Mexican drug traffickers are also split by market forces. With Colombian criminal groups still largely controlling the production of cocaine in jungle laboratories, Mexican traffickers are essentially middlemen. They must run the gauntlet of U.S.-led international interdiction efforts by using a combination of Central American traffickers, corruption and street-gang enforcers. They also have to move the cocaine across the U.S. border, where it gets distributed by hundreds of street gangs.


Profit is the primary motivation at every step, and each hurdle the Mexican traffickers have to clear cuts into their profit margins. The cocaine producers in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia can play the Sinaloa Federation and Los Zetas (as well as others) off of each other to strengthen their own bargaining position. And even though keeping the traffickers split appears to create massive amounts of violence in Mexico, it benefits the politicians and officials there, who can leverage at least the presence of a competitor for better bribes and payoffs.


For Mexican drug traffickers, competition is bad for the bottom line, since it allows other actors to exploit each side to get a larger share of the market. Essentially, everyone else in the cocaine market benefits by keeping the traffickers split. The more actors involved in cocaine trafficking, the harder it is to control it.


The Solution


Historically, organized criminal groups have relied on control of a market for their source of wealth and power. But the current situation in Mexico, and the cocaine trade in general, prevents the Mexican groups (or anyone) from controlling the market outright. As long as geography and market forces keep the traffickers split, all sides in Mexico will try to use violence to get more control over territory and market access. We assume that Mexico's geography will not change dramatically any time soon, but market forces are much more temporal.


Mexican criminal organizations can overcome their weakness in the cocaine market by investing the money they have earned (billions of dollars, according to the most conservative estimates) into the control of other markets. Ultimately, cocaine is impossible for the Mexicans to control because the coca plant can only grow in sufficient quantity in the foothills of the Andes. It would be prohibitively expensive for the Mexicans to take over control of coca cultivation and cocaine production there. Mexican criminal organizations are increasing their presence in the heroin market, but while they can grow poppies in Mexico and produce black-tar heroin, Afghanistan still controls a dominant share of the white heroin market -- around 90 percent.


What Mexicans can control is the methamphetamine market. What we are seeing in Mexico right now -- unprecedented amounts of the seized drug -- is reminiscent of what we saw over the past century in the infancy of the illegal liquor, gambling, heroin and cocaine markets: an organized criminal group industrializing production in or control of a loosely organized industry and using that control to set prices and increase its power. Again, while illegal methamphetamine has been produced in the United States for decades, regulatory pressure and law enforcement efforts have kept it at a small scale; seizures are typically measured in pounds or kilograms and producers are on the run.


Mexican producers have also been in the market for a long time, but over the past year we have seen seizures go from being measured in kilograms to being measured in metric tons. In other words, we are seeing evidence that methamphetamine production has increased several orders of magnitude and is fast becoming an industrialized process.


In addition to the 15 tons seized last week, we saw a record seizure of 675 tons of methylamine, a key ingredient of methamphetamine, in Mexico in December. From 2010 to 2011, seizures of precursor chemicals like methylamine in Mexico increased 400 percent, from 400 tons to 1,600 tons. These most recent reports are similar to reports in the 1920s of U.S. liquor seizures going from barrels to shiploads, which indicated bootlegging was being conducted on an industrial scale. They are also eerily similar to the record cocaine seizure in 1984 in Tranquilandia, Colombia, when Colombian National Police uncovered a network of jungle cocaine labs along with 13.8 metric tons of cocaine. It was the watershed moment, when authorities moved from measuring cocaine busts in kilograms to measuring them in tons, and it marked the Medellin cartel's rise to power over the cocaine market.


A True Mexican Criminal Industry?


Anyone can make methamphetamine, but it is a huge organizational, financial and legal challenge to make it on the industrial level that appears to be happening in Mexico. The main difference between the U.S. labs and the Mexican labs is the kind of input chemicals they use. The U.S. labs use pseudoephedrine, a pharmaceutical product heavily regulated by the DEA, as a starting material, while Mexican labs use methylamine, a chemical with many industrial applications that is more difficult to regulate. And while pseudoephedrine comes in small individual packages of cold pills, methylamine is bought in 208-liter (55-gallon) barrels. The Mexican process requires experienced chemists who have mastered synthesizing methamphetamine on a large scale, which gives them an advantage over the small-time amateurs working in U.S. methamphetamine labs.


Thus, while methamphetamine consumption has been steadily growing in the United States for the past two decades -- and at roughly $100 per gram, unpure methamphetamine is just as profitable on the street as cocaine -- it is even more profitable for Mexican traffickers. Methamphetamine does not come with the overhead costs of purchasing cocaine from Colombians and trafficking valuable merchandise through some of the most dangerous countries in the Western Hemisphere. Precursor materials such as methylamine used in methamphetamine production are cheap, and East Asian producers appear to be perfectly willing to sell the chemicals to Mexico. And because methamphetamine is a synthetic drug, its production does not depend on agriculture like cocaine and marijuana production does. There is no need to control large swaths of cropland and there is less risk of losing product to adverse weather or eradication efforts.


For the Mexican TCOs, industrializing and controlling the methamphetamine market offers a level of real control over a market that is not possible with cocaine. We expect fighting over the methamphetamine market to maintain violence at its current levels, but once a group comes out on top it will have far more resources to expel or absorb rival TCOs. This process may not sound ideal, but methamphetamine could pick the winner in the Mexican drug war.

Security Weekly: Meth in Mexico: A Turning Point in the Drug War? Copyright STRATFOR.COM

A Tale of Two Brainworms

Been a musical day and I'm going to go postal before it's over.

All week I've had this one song in my head, Greatest Love of All by Whitney Houston. A little history. This is without question the most f#$%ing overplayed song in the history of music. Summer of 1986 I was driving all night to Fort Knox KY and what do I hear over four states on dozens of radio stations. Yep, Ms Houston. I make it to my friend's apartment and as I'm walking up the stairs what do I hear coming out of his apartment. GLOA. Pardon me while I puke and I was ready to get back in the car and just drive all night again.

I leave the next day and all the way to Fort Riley, Kansas. Yep, all over the freaking state.

And to make it perfect my company commander loved the song and we had one cadet who sang it. The cadet really did have a beautiful voice but I finally looked up and asked, "God, what have I done to piss you off this much!?"

Since this morning I've been having a battle between Whitney and What a Wonderful World from the Sons of Anarchy soundtrack.

Great album...and getting the Whitney song away from head.

Have a great almost weekend!

Honey, this is my day care center!

Thanks Dawn for the picture

What's going on in the World Today 120215

Kinda back on board...hope you had a great weekend!

 HYPERLINKS MAY REQUIRE AN EMAIL:  

USA

Except where noted courtesy STRATFOR.COM

EUROPE

NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT

ASIA

Limits in the Modernization of India's Air Force | STRATFOR

China's Looming Pension Crisis | STRATFOR

AFRICA

NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT

RUSSIA

The Next Stage of Russia's Resurgence: Central Asia | STRATFOR

IRAN

Iran's Deterrence Strategy in the Strait of Hormuz | STRATFOR

Iran: Tehran Director-General Vows To Confront Feb. 14 Rallies February 11, 2012

Tehran Governor-General Morteza Tamaddon said Feb. 11 that he will confront any opposition rallies held Feb. 14 in the city, Iranian news agency YJC reported. Tamaddon Hsaid all security systems are on alert after social media and opposition groups called for rallies.

Iran: Homemade Nuclear Rods To Be Placed In Research Reactor February 15, 2012

Nuclear fuel rods will be placed in a Tehran research reactor Feb. 15, Iranian deputy nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri said, Xinhua reported, citing the semi-official ISNA news agency. Bagheri said Iran has begun enriching uranium to 20 percent itself since Western countries are not assisting.

IRAQ

Iraq: Turkey Strikes PKK Targets February 12, 2012

Turkish fighter jets carried out airstrikes Feb. 11 against two Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) targets in the Zap and Hakurk regions of northern Iraq, the Turkish military said, Today's Zaman reported Feb. 12.

Iraq: Weapons, Jihadists Moving To Syria - Official February 11, 2012

Iraqi Deputy Interior Minister Adnan al-Assadi said Feb. 11 that weapons and jihadists are now moving from Iraq to Syria to oppose the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, AFP reported. Al-Assadi said the weapons are being transported from Baghdad to Mosul and then into Syria through crossings near Rabia and the Syrian city of Abu Kamal. He said weapon prices are rising because they are being sent to the Syrian opposition.

ISRAEL

A Concerted Effort To Kill Israeli Diplomats? | STRATFOR

Israel: Iran Behind Attacks In India, Georgia February 13, 2012

Iran and Hezbollah are behind the car bomb attack on Israeli officials in India and the thwarted attack in Tbilisi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Feb. 13, Haaretz reported. Israel will continue to work against the terror Iran produces, Netanyahu said. There have been several attempts to target Israeli citizens and Jews in different countries, but these attacks were stopped through cooperation with local forces, Netanyahu added.

AFGHANISTAN

NOTHING SIGNIFICANT TO REPORT

MIDDLE EAST

Special Report: Hamas In Transition STRATFOR


SOUTH OF THE BORDER

Polarization and Sustained Violence in Mexico's Cartel War | STRATFOR

MISC

Geopolitical Calendar: Week of Feb. 13, 2012  

Now this report brings up an interesting question

I remember hearing something about this late last year. Now beside the physical evidence we know this is likely because the Northern Fleet is kinda know for it's nuclear accidents. But again, read the article and see if the question comes out at you?

Russia faced major nuclear disaster in 2011-report
By Guy Faulconbridge

MOSCOW, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Russia came close to nuclear disaster in late December when a blaze engulfed a nuclear-powered submarine carrying atomic weapons, a leading Russian magazine reported, contradicting official assurances that it was not armed.

Russian officials said at the time that all nuclear weapons aboard the Yekaterinburg nuclear submarine had been unloaded well before a fire engulfed the 167-metre (550 feet) vessel and there had been no risk of a radiation leak.

But the respected Vlast weekly magazine quoted several sources in the Russian navy as saying that throughout the fire on Dec. 29 the submarine was carrying 16 R-29 intercontinental ballistic missiles, each armed with four nuclear warheads.

"Russia, for a day, was on the brink of the biggest catastrophe since the time of Chernobyl," Vlast reported. The 1986 disaster in modern-day Ukraine is regarded as the world's worst nuclear accident.

Neither the Russian Defence Ministry nor the office of Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who has responsibility for military matters, would immediately comment on the report. A spokesman for the navy could not be contacted.

SPARKS FLY

The fire started when welding sparks ignited wooden scaffolding around the 18,200-tonne submarine at the Roslyakovo docks, 1,500 km (900 miles) north of Moscow and one of the main shipyards used by Russia's northern fleet.

The rubber covering of the submarine then caught fire, sending flames and black smoke 10 metres (30 feet) above the stricken vessel. Firemen battled the blaze for a day and a night before partially sinking the submarine to douse the flames, according to media reports.

Vlast reported that immediately after the fire the Yekaterinburg sailed to the navy's weapons store, an unusual trip for a damaged submarine supposedly carrying no weapons and casting doubt on assurances that it was not armed....

Now the question. Who is bigger liar? The Russians or Reuters/Vlast? Something to consider.

I really love how the article strings this along.

"K-84 was in dock with rockets and torpedoes on board," the magazine said, adding that apart from the nuclear weapons the submarine was carrying torpedoes and mines as well as its two nuclear reactors.

The magazine said that if one of the torpedoes had exploded it could have threatened the nuclear missiles, leading to an extremely dangerous nuclear accident.

IF a torpedo has exploded then it could have threaded the missile. How, if I might ask? I don't know. The missiles are on the other side of the conning tower from the torpedoes and the nuclear warhead is encased by serious medal. The chain reaction is not going to be set off by a fire by an atomic detonator.

Again something to consider before you put your name to an article Mr Faulconbridge.

Geopolitical Weekly: Disparity in the Covert War Between Iran and the West, February 14, 2014

Within thirty minutes of each other on Monday, a "sticky bomb" attached to the back of a van detonated in New Delhi, India, and, more than 3,200 kilometers (2,000 miles) away, an aware driver in Tbilisi, Georgia, discovered and reported what was essentially a grenade duct-taped to the undercarriage of his vehicle, enabling police to defuse the device. Both vehicles were connected to the Israeli Embassy in the respective capitals. The device that exploded seriously wounded an Israeli Embassy employee and wife of an Israeli defense attache and inflicted less severe injuries on the driver and two bystanders.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu almost immediately pointed the finger at Iran. Iran just as quickly characterized the entire affair as an Israeli fabrication intended to discredit Tehran. This sort of rhetorical exchange has been the normal state of affairs for years now.

There is a covert war raging between Israel and the United States on one side and Iran on the other. It is difficult to ignore the persistent and tactically consistent assassinations of Iranian scientists associated with the country's nuclear program -- assassinations in which sticky bombs have figured prominently -- as well as the Stuxnet computer worm that targeted Siemens industrial software important to Iran's uranium enrichment efforts. At this point, it is hard to find a more rational explanation for the assassinations and sabotage than that Israel or the United States -- or, more likely, both in collaboration -- are working to undermine Iran's nuclear program.

Similarly, it is difficult to separate the most recent attacks in New Delhi and Tbilisi from arrests in Azerbaijan and Thailand that purportedly disrupted terrorist plots aimed at Israeli diplomatic targets and an apparent threat to Israeli interests in Bulgaria. There was also an admittedly odd plot to conduct attacks on American soil against U.S., Saudi and Israeli targets.

Monday's events merely reinforce the existence of an already obvious campaign on both sides. But the remarkable aspect is the disparity between the two efforts. By and large, Stuxnet as well as the larger sabotage and assassination campaign against Iran have been consistently professional and effective. On the other hand, the Iranian counterattack has been repeatedly foiled or exposed as ineffective or even inept.

Tehran may not be employing its most capable assets. It is possible that these attacks have been conducted via ill-conceived contract work or poorly trained proxies simply for the sake of deniability. But while the trend of attempted attacks against Israeli and U.S. interests could be interpreted as a warning of worse to come, they stand in stark contrast to the consistently effective attacks against Iranian interests on Iranian territory.

Stratfor has argued that the principle Iranian deterrent to attack is its ability to attempt to disrupt maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's seaborne oil trade passes. No matter how good the military response is to such an attack, no military in the world can control the markets' reaction to even short-term disruptions, and that calculus has become only more compelling during the global economic crisis. Iran has thus gone out of its way to showcase this deterrent through recent and upcoming military maneuvers.

But its other deterrents may have begun to decline. It has yet to demonstrate a capability to covertly attack opposing interests abroad, a reputation for which it has long held credibly. This does not mean that Tehran does not wield such a capability, but the principal purpose of this capability is deterrence, not reprisal. Once the United States or Israel has initiated an attack on Iran as part of the covert war, Tehran's strategy of deterrence has, by definition, failed. As time passes, the United States continues to reinforce its own installations and those of Israel with more and newer ballistic missile defenses against Iran's ballistic missile arsenal. And while American diplomats and Western contractors remain vulnerable to direct attack in Iraq, now that the U.S. military withdrawal has been completed, it is far easier to remove the remaining presence than has been the case in close to a decade.

The deterrent Iran derives from its power over the Strait of Hormuz continues to hold sway. But while Stratfor is dismissive of the impact of sanctions (based on their scattered track record), they are not without their impact over time. Sanctions will not bring down the regime in Tehran, but Iranians have a far higher standard of living than, say, the average North Korean. In this context, the correlation of increasingly expensive food staples on the streets in Iran and the apparent ineffectual application of Iranian power abroad raises questions about the status of Iranian power in the region.

It is difficult to understate the significance of the continued survival of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, which is increasingly dependent on Iranian support. And the durability of Iranian power from the border of Afghanistan, through Iraq, where Iranian power currently peaks, all the way to the Mediterranean that the continued survival of the al Assad regime entails has potentially fundamental implications. But as the United States and its allies extract themselves from Afghanistan, American military power becomes more flexible in comparison to the fixed nature of Iranian power in the region. At some point, American power in the region will begin to converge with the limitations of Persian power in an Arab-dominated region. The question is at what point those powers converge.

Disparity in the Covert War Between Iran and the West Copryight STRATFOR.COM

How to look around and see what's happening in your neighborhood.

Sometimes the information you need is staring you right in the face.

How To Gather Intel

Use free fliers, public bulletin boards, and the civic center marquee to gather intel that will plug you in at your station.


by William Harvey


Being the newest officer in the precinct makes life harder than it should be, because you have to dig for every morsel of information to get ahead. Some of the old heads seem tuned in to things, and you're left out of the loop. Yes, being new to the city or precinct sucks. So how can you develop a system of building intel for you? No, you can't rent an informant from a cop shop or buy a bottle of instant intelligence. You must work on it.


You go into any coffee shop or convenience store and there are assorted fliers. These free papers, fliers, or "fish wrappers" have good information. It may give you no more than which small club may have a blues singer, or list a gathering. Sooner or later, it will pay off. I recall a sergeant who told me one of the FNGs (fabulous new guy/girl) had information on an underground unlicensed club that led to a great case on the operation. That little flier had paid off. These often individually published fliers are focused on some smaller, under the radar activities that are harmless at best. But, they offer ideas or leads about the beat's activity.


These are especially prominent in college towns. There are so many varied interests, music scenes, and special interests that flourish there. Internet cafés and blogs typically stay within their expected circles.


While in a café or coffee shop, look for bulletin boards. I know several officers who scan these for moving sales, yard sales, and the like. The local internet listings haven't run these out of business. These bulletin boards and free posting areas are still out there, so give them a gander.

Years ago I worked in Savannah, Ga., and the downtown precinct had a civic center. I was taught by my Field Training Officer (FTO) to read the civic center's marquee and make note of whom or what was occurring. We all know that certain bands and performers have their own special following. On some nights, we had to concentrate on the post-concert activities and carnage.


As you perform your daily patrol duties, you'll find a plethora of information that's free for the taking. Of course, you'll have to do some analysis and research to see if it has any potential value to you on patrol. You may not find the major break that solves a big case. But you will develop positive patrol habits that will stick, which will keep you a leg up on the other officers. Who knows, you might impress one of the old guys with some good information that they didn't know about.

As a long time spook I can tell you most of what you need to know is right in front of you. Most of what I briefed was open source with a quick look at the classified side to make sure it all aligned.

Good way to gather info here.

Officer Down

Reserve Deputy Don Williams
Dale County Alabama Sheriff's Office
End of Watch: Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Age: 55
Tour: 17 years
Badge # 26-77

Reserve Deputy Don Williams died after being involved in a single vehicle accident on South Union Avenue, near Martin Street, in Ozark.

He had just completed serving civil papers when his patrol car left the roadway and struck several parked cars. It is believed that he may have suffered a medical emergency prior to the accident.

Deputy Williams had served as a reserve deputy with the Dale County Sheriff's Office for 17 years. He is survived by his wife and six children.

Rest in Peace Bro…We’ll Continue The Watch

Day is done, Gone the sun, From the lake, From the hills, From the sky. All is well, Safely rest, God is nigh.

As goes California so goes the nation....

Now any rational human looking at this statement but I gotta say I find this article concerning the LA Police Department intriguing.

LAPD Pioneers High-Tech Crime-Fighting ‘War Room’ « CBS Los Angeles



LOS ANGELES (CBS) — The LAPD is fighting crime from a high-tech war room that gives it eyes all over the city. The surveillance hub is now a model for police forces around the world and KCAL9 got an exclusive tour inside from Chief Charlie Beck.

“We are targets on our own soil,” says Beck. “We have to be ready.”

What began as a grass roots idea following the 9/11 terrorist attacks is now a state-of-the-art real-time analysis critical response center. It’s called RACR, and it’s located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

“This is a system that cuts through the red tape, that gets information to the people that need it,” says Chief Beck. He calls it “the brains of the department, twenty-four/seven.”

Police in the activity center monitor live feeds of city and traffic cameras, counter-terrorism information, and real-time crime mapping, with cutting edge software.

“If we didn’t have that we would be operating blind,” says Capt. Sean Malinowski, the Commanding Officer at RACR. “Essentially we’re always activated here.”

RACR is a critical crime-fighting tool at the center of every high profile incident in the City of Los Angeles.

“We have some real-time tools that help us analyze crime as it’s happening,” says Malinowski. “And then we feed that information out to the geographic areas and to patrol divisions.”

RACR is relied upon during events like dignitary visits from the Royals and President Obama, as well as the recent Occupy LA showdown and arrests.

“We had eyes on that, both through video cameras that the city owns, and also through video streams that were provided by the actual Occupy LA protesters,” says Malinowski.

Most recently, RACR was invaluable in putting an end to the Hollywood arsons.

Malinowski says RACR plotted each arson fire incident as it happened, creating a three-square-mile geographic hot spot that resulted in the quick arrest of accused fire starter Harry Burkhart.

“At the time he was taken into custody, this area was flooded with sheriffs and with LAPD officers,” says Malinowski. “Based on the fact that we kind of could see his movements in real time.”

RACR was born in a functioning bomb shelter, four stories below the Los Angeles Civic Center.

LAPD Commander Blake Chow remembers a time when tracking crime at RACR was done by hand. “There was very little technology,” says Chow, and RACR had no budget.

Police operated with dry erase boards, personal computers, and simple monitors.

“When we built RACR, there was no template to look at,” says Chow. “There was no police department we could go look at and ask them, ‘how did you build it?’”

Today LAPD’s RACR is the standard operating model for law enforcement agencies worldwide. It’s used as a guidebook on how to protect communities and fight crime.

I can hear the usual suspects screaming about the right to privacy, etc, but I will point out they are monitoring things on the street. I.E. in public view. If it's visible to John Q Public then you have no now reasonable expectation of privacy so get over it.

Good work LAPD!

The feds do it again

I remember that moron mayor from New York saying the Times Square bomber was"...Home-grown, maybe a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something..."

And who can forget how the idiot in charge at DHS said the big threat out there was not Islamic extremists who took down the towers but veterans returning from the war.

Now they come out and tell us who a cop needs to worry about. Gangs from South American. Naa. Islamic extremists? Inner city gangs? Nope. No, sovereign citizens!

FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as "sovereign citizens," believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Routine encounters with police can turn violent "at the drop of a hat," said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI's counterterrorism division.

"We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement," he said.

In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a "sovereign citizen" in traffic.

Last year, an extremist in Texas opened fire on a police officer during a traffic stop. The officer was not hit.

Legal convictions of such extremists, mostly for white-collar crimes such as fraud, have increased from 10 in 2009 to 18 each in 2010 and 2011, FBI agents said.

"We are being inundated right now with requests for training from state and local law enforcement on sovereign-related matters," said Casey Carty, an FBI supervisory special agent.

Let me see this. Two officer tragically killed by two morons (who are thankfully no longer with us) and another moron shoots at an officer. We have a serious threat to law enforcement, the people in general, etc. Forgive me if I don't take this as true. Not that I'm saying the authors are lying but they are putting out a BS report.

An old cliche is "routine traffic stop". There is no such thing. You have no idea what you have pulled over. It could be a nice old lady on her way to the library who just accidentally went through the light. Or you could have a wanted felon who's mind was more on getting out of town instead of paying attention to his driving. I've pulled over two men in a car for an expired registration once and the driver was wanted for a third degree felony.

My point. This report and the propaganda being put out by the feds is worthless. If you want a real threat you may want to take a look at illegal immigration. I live in the Houston area and in the last ten years six Houston PD officers have been killed or injured by illegal aliens in the area. Maybe feds if you would do your job (like securing the border, not letting people with no ties to this country out on parole pending trial, deporting illegals, etc) that would help officer safety.

FBI agents said they do not have a tally of people who consider themselves "sovereign citizens."

J.J. MacNab, a former tax and insurance expert who is an analyst covering the sovereign movement, has estimated that it has about 100,000 members.

So we're taking the word of a tax and insurance agent to see how many nuts we have out there. Great. And I'm paying how much of my tax dollars for this crap.

Eric Holder's just-us department is a real work. He let's the Black Panthers walk on a slam dunk case of voter intimidation, he ships guns to Mexican gangs without the knowledge of the Mexican government and he's shacking down legit business left and right for his boss man, B Hussein Obama.

I just pray a future Attorney General purges the Justice Department of his minions. And then we can have professionals run law enforcement in federal law enforcement again.

Security Weekly, Mexico's Presidential Election and the Cartel War, February 9, 2012

By Scott Stewart

Mexico will hold its presidential election July 1 against the backdrop of a protracted war against criminal cartels in the country. Former President Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) launched that struggle; his successor, Felipe Calderon, also of the PAN, greatly expanded it. While many Mexicans apparently support action against the cartels, the Calderon government has come under much criticism for its pursuit of the cartels, contributing to Calderon's low popularity at the moment. The PAN is widely expected to lose in July to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which controlled the Mexican presidency for most of the 20th century until Fox's victory in 2000. According to polls, the PAN has lost credibility among many Mexican voters, many of whom also once again view the PRI as a viable alternative.

In our effort to track Mexico's criminal cartels and to help our readers understand the dynamics that shape the violence in Mexico, Stratfor talks to a variety of people, including Mexican and U.S. government officials, journalists, business owners, taxi drivers and street vendors. At present, many of these contacts are saying that the Calderon administration could attempt to pull off some sort of last-minute political coup (in U.S. political parlance, an "October surprise") to boost the PAN's popularity so it can retain the presidency.

The potential election ploy most often discussed is the capture of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, the leader of the Sinaloa cartel, who is widely believed to be the richest, most powerful drug trafficker anywhere. The reasoning goes that if the government could catch Guzman, Calderon's (and hence the PAN's) popularity would soar.

Still, very real questions exist about whether such an operation really would give the PAN the boost it needs to retain the presidency, however. North of the border, the re-election of U.S. President Barack Obama has not been guaranteed by the May 2011 death of Osama bin Laden. Political considerations aside, the factors that have helped Guzman avoid capture thus far are the very same factors that inhibit the Mexican government's ability to capture him. While we don't put a lot of stock in these rumors of an election surprise, we do see them as a good reason to examine the factors that have protected Guzman.

Plata o Plomo
As we noted in our annual cartel report, Mexico's cartels have begun to form into two major groupings around the two most powerful cartels, the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas. These two cartels approach business quite differently. The common Mexican cartel expression "plata o plomo" (literally translated as "silver or lead," the Spanish phrase signifying that a cartel will force one's cooperation with either a bribe or a bullet) illustrates the different modes of operation of the two hegemonic cartels.

Los Zetas, an organization founded by former Mexican special operations soldiers, tends to apply a military solution to any problem first -- plomo. They certainly bribe people, but one of their core organizational values is that it is cheaper and easier to threaten than to bribe. Rather than retain people on their payroll for years, Los Zetas also tend toward a short time horizon with bribery.

By contrast, people like Guzman and Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garcia, founders of the Sinaloa cartel, have been producing and trafficking narcotics for decades. Guzman and Zambada got their start in the trafficking business working for Miguel "El Padrino" Angel Felix Gallardo, the leader of the powerful Guadalajara cartel in the early 1980s. Because they have been in the illicit logistics business for decades, the Sinaloa leaders are more business-oriented than military-oriented. This means that the Sinaloa cartel tends to employ plata first, preferring to buy off the people required to achieve its objectives. It also frequently provides U.S. and Mexican authorities with intelligence pertaining to its cartel enemies rather than taking direct military action against them, thus using the authorities as a weapon against rival cartels. While Sinaloa does have some powerful enforcement groups, and it certainly can (and does) resort to ruthless violence, violence is merely one of the many tools at its disposal rather than its preferred approach to a given problem.

Thus, Sinaloa and Los Zetas each use the same set of tools, they just tend to use them in a different order.

Guzman's Web
Within his home territory of rural Sinaloa state, Guzman is respected and even revered. An almost-mythical figure, he has used his fortune to buy good will and loyalty in his home turf and elsewhere. In addition to his public largesse, Guzman has bribed people for decades. Unlike Los Zetas, the Sinaloa cartel leadership tends to take a long view on corruption. It will often recruit a low-level official and then continue to pay that person as he rises through the ranks. This long-term approach is not unlike that taken by some of the more patient intelligence services, along the lines of the Soviet recruitment of the "Cambridge Five" while they were still students. Quite simply, Guzman and the Sinaloa cartel have had police and military officers, politicians, journalists and judges on their payroll for years and even decades.

This intelligence agency-like approach has permitted the Sinaloa leadership to construct a wide web of assets with which to gather intelligence and serve as its agents of influence. At the street level, all Mexican cartels employ lookouts called "halcones," Spanish for "falcons," who provide their cartel masters with early warning of law enforcement or rival cartel activity in the halcones' area of responsibility. Higher-ranking officials on a cartel's payroll essentially serve as high-level halcones who provide early warnings when government operations against the cartel are being planned. Such advanced warning allows the cartels to protect their shipments and leadership.

Once an official or politician is on a cartel payroll (a situation similar to a network of sources run by an intelligence agency), he is subject to blackmail should he stop cooperating. And the relationship between a politician and the cartels can go beyond just cash. It can also involve the murder of a rival or provide other forms of non-cash assistance in the attainment of political power.

Whatever the relationship entails, once a cartel gets its hooks into a person, it tends not to let go -- and the person thus entangled has little choice but to continue cooperating, since he can be subject to arrest and political or financial ruin if he is caught. He also can be assassinated should he decide to quit cooperating. No Mexican politician wants to become the next Raul Salinas de Gortari, the brother of former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who the U.S. government alleges made hundreds of millions of dollars in dirty money, much of it from cartel figures. Raul Salinas' arrest in 1995 for murder, the subsequent money laundering charges brought against him, and questions about what his brother Carlos knew about his activities were important factors in the 2000 presidential election in which the PRI lost.

This fear of being linked to a figure like Guzman serves as a strong deterrent to his arrest. Guzman has been operating as a high-level narcotics trafficker in Mexico for decades now, and a big part of his operations has involved bribery. For example, in November 2008, Mexico's drug czar, Noe Ramirez Mandujano, was arrested and charged with accepting $450,000 a month from Zambada and the Beltran Leyva brothers, who were aligned with Sinaloa at the time.

If Guzman were to talk to authorities after his arrest, he could implicate a number of very powerful political and business figures. Indeed, it is likely this fear led to the delicate treatment he received after his 1993 arrest in Guatemala and his subsequent conviction in Mexico for narcotics trafficking and bribery. Guzman was able to continue to run his criminal empire from behind bars, and it was only when it appeared that Guzman might face extradition to the United States that he chose to escape from his comfortable prison cell in January 2001. Since his escape, he undoubtedly has continued to add strands to the web of protection surrounding him.

We must also note that without Guzman, the dynamics that drive the Mexican cartels would continue, and other leaders or even organizations would rise to take his place. Killing or arresting an individual will not be the end of Mexico's criminal cartels.

If Guzman is concerned that he could be killed rather than captured, like his former associate Arturo Beltran Leyva, it is possible that he could have prepared some type of insurance document incriminating powerful people on Sinaloa's payroll. As a deterrent to Guzman's killing, Sinaloa could threaten to release such a document should Guzman be killed.

That said, a long line of powerful Mexican cartel leaders have been arrested. Guzman's mentor, Felix Gallardo, was arrested in 1989 in large part due to U.S. pressure on the Mexican government in the wake of the torture and murder of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Enrique Camarena. Gulf cartel founder Juan Garcia Abrego, also a protege of Felix Gallardo, was arrested in 1996. Garcia Abrego allegedly was linked to Raul Salinas and other high-ranking officials in the government of then-President Ernesto Zedillo. Garcia Abrego's successor as leader of the Gulf cartel, Osiel Cardenas Guillen, was arrested in 2003 and, like Garcia Abrego, was deported to the United States and convicted in a U.S. court; he is currently incarcerated in the "Supermax" penitentiary in Florence, Colo. Indeed, Guzman and Zambada are the last of Felix Gallardo's proteges still at large.

Along with Zambada, Guzman has been a high-profile fugitive for three decades now. He has not survived that long by being careless or stupid. It would be very difficult to track down such an individual in a short window of time established by political calculations unless those responsible already know his exact location and have chosen not to arrest him thus far. The Calderon administration and the PAN have struggled with public perceptions for some time now, making it likely that if high-level PAN officials knew where Guzman was and wanted to arrest him for the public relations bump such an operation could provide, they already would have done so.

Still, Guzman is one of the most wanted individuals in the world, and large teams of Mexican and U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agents are trying to locate him. Therefore, it is possible that Guzman could be arrested before the election in July. Any operation to capture him would be tightly compartmentalized for fear it could leak out to high-ranking halcones in the Mexican (or U.S.) government. Indeed, special Mexican units working closely with U.S. counterparts and segregated from any outside contact so that they cannot betray their mission -- or the intelligence that led to it -- normally carry out such sensitive operations. This means such an operation would likely be beyond the control of Mexican politicians to mandate, although they could conceivably provide actionable intelligence to the forces involved in such an operation.

Interestingly, with all the chatter of an election surprise floating around Mexico, any arrest at this point would be met with a great deal of skepticism. The arrest of such a powerful figure would almost certainly become very politicized with all parties attempting to use it to their advantage -- and dodge any connections they might have to Sinaloa. Such an environment would serve to bring more attention to the issue of corruption and collusion between the cartels and the government. And that could end up hurting rather than benefiting the PAN in the upcoming presidential election.

Mexico's Presidential Election and the Cartel War COPYRIGHT STRATFOR.COM

Now this is a stud!

You gotta love it when a man doesn't let a literal bad break stop him from going after what he wants.

As a former Marine, Spartanburg (S.C.) Police Officer Keith Soules is bringing his never-say-die approach to accomplishing his dream of joining the agency's tactical team.

Officer Soules lost part of his leg in a motorcycle accident about a year ago, but his disability hasn't kept him from trying out for the Spartanburg PD's tactical team. Officer Soules tells WJBF that a role on the team would bring "the gratification of taking someone who's wanted for a violent felony and bringing them to justice ... that's real rewarding."

Don't need to add anything more. Good luck Officer Soules.

The Very Last World War I Veteran Has Died

History marches on..

The Very Last World War I Veteran Has Died - Global - The Atlantic Wire

A British woman who served with the Royal Air Force for the last two months of World War I was the last known veteran of the war when she died in her sleep Saturday night. Florence Green joined the RAF at the age of 17 and died just before her 111th birthday, which would have been Feb. 19. She had been a mess steward with the air force, the BBC reported, serving in two U.K. air bases after she joined up on Sept. 13 1918. The Allies signed the armistice with Germany on Nov. 11, 1918. Green follows Claude Choules, a Royal Navy sailor who was the last WWI combatant before he died in May 2011, and Frank Buckles, the last American veteran of the war, who died in February 2011. All were 110 years old.

I recall the words of General Patton in the last year of his life

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Speech at the Copley Plaza Hotel, Boston Massachusetts, 7 June 1945

Let us thank God women like Miss Green lived. RIP

Day is done, Gone the sun, From the lake, From the hills, From the sky. All is well, Safely rest, God is nigh. 

Wooo....everything is so green!

Brings a new meaning to The Big Apple!

Nearly 800 Pot Plants Found In NYPD Raid Of Bronx Building In The Morris Park Section « CBS New York

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — You might call it a marijuana mega mansion.


Police raided a five-floor commercial building in the Bronx Tuesday afternoon that was filled with marijuana plants from wall to wall.


The building, located on Morris Park Avenue, had nearly 600 plants, some measuring 7 feet.


Police called the operation a sophisticated pot factory that was cranking out millions of dollars worth of weed


“It’s sad. I mean why didn’t the cops pick up on this before?” a neighbor asked.


Police told CBS 2’s Derricke Dennis they just got the tip late last year from a neighbor. They said they checked the building’s electric bill and found it to be sky high. So after weeks of surveillance, officers moved in with a search warrant, arresting three adult males and shutting down a 50-pound a month operation that netted $250,000 every 30 days...


...CBS 2′s John Slattery said there were no sleeping quarters inside, but the building fostered the perfect environment for growing the plants. There was an elaborate set-up of water and air filtration systems, plus heat lamps. Slattery reports that the drugs were allegedly packaged on the top floor.


Neighbors in the area said they were surprised and never suspected anything...

Right. Here is the article with some more pictures. Man someone was making some cash off this.

I need air!

A good friend of mine used that as he finally drank a bit much and had to throw up on the side of the road after a night out. That was a historical occasion. He has drunk many a good man under the table.

The thing that killed him off? Jameson's Irish Whiskey. Since then every one of his friends had made sure we have a bottle at the ready, "Mike, want some Jameson's?" (And no, it was not me....another Mike).

I'm a long time Scotch lover but I gotta say Irish Whiskey is always welcome. Along with Jameson's I keep a bottle of Redbreast Irish Whisky which is smooth as a baby's bottom. I kinda recall killing off a bottle of that at a friend's wedding in Denver....kinda...the memory of the night is kinda weak!

Interesting article on Irish Whiskey from this weekend.

Irish whiskey now outsells Scotch single malt in the United States | Irish News | IrishCentral

The US Distilled Spirits Council (DISCUS) recently released their reports on sales for spirits in 2011. The findings show that Irish whiskey has outsold single malt Scotch in the US.

Just-Drinks reports that with the new sales figures , the United States has now become a key battle ground where Irish whiskey outsells single malt Scotch.

During the calendar year of 2011, Irish whiskey sales rose by 24% to 1.7m nine-litre cases, while Scotch single malt whisky sales increased by only 9.5% to 1.4m cases.

According to Just-Drinks, Ireland’s beloved Jameson's brand whiskey is helping to bolster the upward growth of sales.

What’s driving the growth of Irish whiskey sales? “Irish whiskey is enjoying a renaissance at the moment. The bigger companies have come in with enough commercial muscle to expand production, sales and grow the brands,” said Kieran Tobin, chairman of the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland.

Similarly, younger American generations seem to be discovering and enjoying Irish whiskey’s “smooth and sweet texture.”

“On the other hand, let's not get carried away,” writes Chris Mercer for Just-Drink. “If blended Scotch is included in the Scotch figures then one can add a further 6m cases to Scotch sales. Include bulk, bottled malt and grain Scotch, too, and the total Scotch figure is 9m cases.”...

And I mostly drink single malt scotch myself. But many a night I've spent on the porch with a good cigar, good book and Redbreast in the glass. Life is good!

Geopolitical Weekly: Afghanistan: Moving Toward a Distant Endgame, February 7, 2012

By George Friedman

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested last week that the United States could wrap up combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2013, well before the longstanding 2014 deadline when full control is to be ceded to Kabul. Troops would remain in Afghanistan until 2014, as agreed upon at the 2010 Lisbon Summit, and would be engaged in two roles until at least 2014 and perhaps even later. One role would be continuing the training of Afghan security forces. The other would involve special operations troops carrying out capture or kill operations against high-value targets.

Along with this announcement, the White House gave The New York Times some details on negotiations that have been under way with the Taliban. According to the Times, Mullah Mohammad Omar, the senior-most leader of the Afghan Taliban, last summer made overtures to the White House offering negotiations. An intermediary claiming to speak for Mullah Omar delivered the proposal, an unsigned document purportedly from Mullah Omar that could not be established as authentic. The letter demanded the release of some Taliban prisoners before any talks. In spite of the ambiguities, which included a recent public denial by the Taliban that the offer came from Mullah Omar, U.S. officials, obviously acting on other intelligence, regarded the proposal as both authentic and representative of the views of the Taliban leadership and, in all likelihood, those of Mullah Omar, too.

The idea of negotiating with the Taliban is not new. Talks, as distinct from negotiations, in which specific terms are hammered out, have gone on for some time now. Several previous attempts have ended in failure, including one instance when the supposed representative proved to be a fraud. However, according to the Times report, the negotiations took on a degree of specificity last summer. They began in November 2010, initiated by a man named Tayyab Agha, who claimed to speak for Mullah Omar. The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama regards authenticating the present offer as unimportant and the intermediary as having authority; the question on the table is the release of Taliban captives as a token of American seriousness.

The Taliban see themselves as already having made a major concession. Their original demand was the complete withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan as a precondition for negotiations. The talks have continued in spite of the U.S. refusal to comply. The Taliban shifted their position to a very specific timetable for withdrawal, something Panetta may have been hinting at last week, though not on a timetable to the Taliban's liking. Two more years of combat operations -- not to mention an unspecified time in which U.S. special operations forces will continue working in Afghanistan -- is a long time. In addition, the United States has not delivered on the release of the Taliban, an issue that has not emerged as a campaign issue in the U.S. presidential election.

Still, U.S. operations have become less aggressive. This is in part due to the season: It is winter in Afghanistan, a time of year when large-scale operations are not practical in many areas. At the same time, we are not seeing the level of operations we have seen in previous winters after Obama increased the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. This in part reflects a realization of the limits of U.S. military power in Afghanistan. Regardless of the motive, the Taliban interpret it as a signal -- and it is understood in Washington as a signal, too.

The Pakistani-Taliban Channel

To get negotiations going, the United States had to reach two conclusions. The first was that negotiations could not happen without Pakistani involvement. U.S. accusations that current and former military figures in Pakistan maintained close ties with the Taliban undoubtedly were true. Conversely, this meant Pakistan represented a clear channel the United States could use to reach the Taliban. That channel permitted the Obama administration to conclude that it had no hope of meaningfully dividing the Taliban.

Certainly, the Taliban are an operationally diffuse group. Even so, Mullah Omar is at their center, with the political operatives surrounding him representing the political office of the Taliban. The line of communications with the Taliban runs through Pakistan and terminates with Mullah Omar. This means that U.S. hopes of splitting the Taliban politically and conducting factional negotiations are not realistic. Particularly after a series of attacks and suicide bombings in Kabul last fall, it also became apparent that the United States would not be able to manage negotiations at arm's length using Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his advisers as the primary channel.

The Pakistanis and the Taliban also had to face certain realities. The Taliban had claimed that the United States and its allies in Afghanistan had lost. This underpinned their demand for an immediate U.S. withdrawal; their offer to permit this without harassment was made under the assumption that the United States had a defeated military force at risk.

The reality was that, while the United States had not won the war in Afghanistan and in all likelihood could not defeat the Taliban militarily, it was far from defeated. The United States remained, and remains, able to conduct operations in Afghanistan as and where it wishes. The Taliban have not reached the point where they can operationally defeat the forces arrayed against them. Where large Western forces exist, the Taliban must decline combat and disengage or be annihilated. As important, there is no overwhelming pressure from the American public to withdraw -- something not true of some U.S. allies. However, in this election, Obama is likely to be challenged by candidates supporting his position in Afghanistan or wanting a more aggressive stance. Mitt Romney, for example, not only rejected the idea of releasing Taliban fighters, but also said in response to a question that his strategy in Afghanistan was to "beat them." 

The United States could hypothetically remain in Afghanistan indefinitely given the current cost and force structure. But we would argue that defeating a guerrilla force with sanctuary and support across the border in Pakistan, an excellent intelligence capability and units able to operate independently is unlikely. But neither, for that matter, can the Taliban defeat the coalition forces.

Stalemate in Afghanistan

This makes for a stalemate, one the Americans hope to solve by creating an Afghan state under Karzai and a security and military force able and willing to engage the Taliban. As I have argued in the past, the core problem with this plan is the same problem that existed during the Vietnamization phase of the Vietnam War. The Afghan military must recruit troops, and some of the most eager volunteers will be Taliban operatives. These operatives will be indistinguishable from anti-Taliban soldiers, and their presence will have two consequences. First, the intelligence they will provide the Taliban will cause the Afghan army offensive to fail. Second, shrewd use of these operatives will undermine the cohesion and morale of the Afghan forces. Surprise is crucial in locating, engaging and destroying a guerrilla force. Afghan security forces will face the same problem the South Vietnamese army did; namely, they will lack the element of surprise and at least some of their units will be unreliable.

Accordingly, the U.S. strategy of using the stalemate to construct a capable military force accordingly looks unlikely to succeed even leaving aside the issue of the fragmentation of the Afghan nation and the Karzai government's internal problems. The Taliban are intimately familiar with the U.S. dilemma and are positioned to choose from two strategies. One is to increase their tempo of operations and so increase American casualties prior to the November elections. But this strategy would see Taliban casualties increase even more dramatically, and its impact on the elections would be unclear to say the least. The Taliban are more likely to pursue the second strategy, which involves accepting the stalemate and permitting the United States to try to build an Afghan military.

Like the Taliban, the United States is aware of the difficulty of building an Afghan army. It also understands that deploying troops in Afghanistan is unlikely to lead anywhere. It does not have to flee defeat in Afghanistan, but there are strategic reasons for leaving, beginning with the fact that the military situation is about as satisfactory as it likely ever will be. Improving the situation would incur costs without yielding anything like victory. With the United States reducing its military budget, serious issues emerging in Iran and throughout the Arab World, and a new emphasis by the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force on the Pacific, the world is moving on. A violent yet frozen conflict in Afghanistan simply does not benefit the United States.

This, of course, leaves a crucial question: Will Afghanistan become a base for al Qaeda or follow-on transnational jihadist groups in the event of a U.S. withdrawal? It is true that these groups can form anywhere, but the fact is that they did form in Afghanistan while Mullah Omar was in charge. The negotiators undoubtedly have promised that, in exchange for withdrawal, they will take responsibility for suppressing jihadist elements. But trusting the Taliban, or trusting those in Pakistan who took violent offense at the killing of Osama bin Laden, poses obvious risks for the United States. In truth, it does not increase the risk much: Afghanistan is not necessary for the jihadists, but it is naturally fragmented and the threat of its re-emergence as a sanctuary is always there. Even so, the issue will remain a sticking point in the negotiations. The United States will want a residual force to deal with the jihadist threat, something the Taliban and Pakistan will oppose.

The Pakistani Role

In this sense, the negotiations really come down to Pakistan and the burden it is willing to undertake in the event of a U.S. withdrawal.

The United States does not trust the Taliban or many of those Pakistani officials speaking to and for the Taliban. But the United States also knows two things. First, that the future of Afghanistan is of fundamental interest to Pakistan. Instability or Indian or Iranian influence in Pakistan is not in Pakistan's interest. Therefore, the Pakistanis will play a leading role in Afghanistan as they did after the end of the Soviet occupation. Second, the United States knows that India remains Pakistan's major adversary. The Pakistanis have tried to play the China card to make the United States nervous about Pakistan. But the fact is that the Chinese People's Liberation Army does not have the training and logistics to support Pakistan against India, and the last thing Pakistan wants is a large Chinese military deployment in Pakistan. Indeed, that is the last thing China wants.

The issue over time will boil down to this: The United States will want a coalition government in which Taliban elements take Cabinet positions in the current structure of the Karzai regime. The Taliban will want an entirely new government in which elements of the existing power structure (Karzai has promised not to seek a third term when his current one ends in 2014) might have a position but that would be an altogether new regime. In either case, the Taliban assume, as the North Vietnamese assumed a generation ago, that a political settlement followed by a U.S. withdrawal would, after a "decent interval," result in a Taliban-dominated regime.

Ultimately, the United States could remain in Afghanistan indefinitely and there is nothing the Taliban could do about it. But the United States cannot defeat the Taliban. The Taliban have nowhere to go and no desire to leave. The United States has other issues to attend to and no overriding strategic interest in Afghanistan. From the American point of view, its presence in Afghanistan does not reduce Islamist threats to the homeland but it does absorb military resources.

What the United States is engaged in now, as it was in 1971, is the complex process of crafting a political path from the current situation to the inevitable end. This isn't easy, since the manner in which the United States withdraws will influence its position in the region as much as its indefinite presence would. This is why the administration is so eager to pursue the current initiative and prepared to release prisoners as a gesture. It is also why the Taliban will accept a coalition government for a while, and why Pakistan will make and likely honor guarantees.

However this war is brought to an end will be a complex and time-consuming process, during which the fighting will continue. But then the how is never trivial in ending a war.

Afghanistan: Moving Toward a Distant Endgame COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

For those of you who think we don't have enough government....

I've often said any bureaucracy has only one reason to exists and that is, to exist. If it doesn't the people who man it must actually get jobs and that may screw up their life plans.

I've had arguments with people in the past who actually think the economy is under regulated. Here is a greater example of a government agency run a mock.

For Now, Government Still Lets You Pick Your Own Roommate

The people of the United States ordained a Constitution of limited government.  As time passes, the people have more of the “government” and less of the “limited.”  Americans must work at maintaining their freedoms.  Defense of the constitutional freedom of association involved in choosing roommates to share housing illustrates the effort required.  Government has attempted to regulate our ability to choose a roommate, but efforts to resist that intrusion pay off in preserved liberty.

Tricia Rowe, a 31-year-old single woman who owned a three bedroom, single-family house, wanted a roommate.  She posted on a church bulletin board a notice that said, “I am looking for a female Christian roommate.  Rent is $375/mo, which includes utilities.”

On Thursday, July 15, 2010, an overcast day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Elizabeth Vezino of an organization calling itself the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan filed a complaint stating under oath that she believed that Ms. Rowe’s roommate-wanted notice expressed “an illegal preference for a Christian roommate, thus excluding people of other faiths.”  The Michigan Department of Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) went into high gear.

Luckily for Ms. Rowe, the Alliance Defense Fund took up her cause and provided legal representation.  Ms. Rowe invoked her freedom of association under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as a defense against the claim that her statement preferring “a female Christian roommate” illegally discriminated.  Ultimately, HUD ruled sensibly that “in light of the facts provided and after assessing the unique context of the advertisement and the roommate relationship involved in this particular situation potentially involving the sharing of personal religious beliefs, the Department defers to Constitutional considerations in reaching its conclusion” that “there is No Reasonable Cause to believe that the Act was violated in this matter.”

In a separate case, Roommates.com provided a well-known roommate locator service over the Internet.  The service asked customers to create a profile identifying among other things their gender, sexual orientation, and whether children would live with them, and provided a space for “Additional Comments.”  Individuals could search the Roommates.com database for potentially compatible roommates.

In California, organizations called the Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley and the Fair Housing Council of San Diego filed lawsuits against Roommates.com, alleging that questions seeking disclosure of gender, sexual orientation and familial status discriminate in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act.

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the Housing Council claims that Roommates.com had discriminated in violation of the Act in helping people find roommates to share housing.  The Court characterized the issue as follows:

There’s no place like home.  In the privacy of your own home, you can take off your coat, kick off your shoes, let your guard down and be completely yourself.  While we usually share our homes only with friends and family, sometimes we need to take in a stranger to help pay the rent.  When that happens, can the government limit whom we choose?  Specifically, do the anti-discrimination provisions of the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) extend to the selection of roommates?

The Court indicated that a roommate’s unfettered access to one’s home implicated considerations of safety, privacy, property protection, and the constitutional freedom of association.  Noting that it sought to avoid constitutional difficulties that would arise from government regulation of roommate selection, the Court construed the key term “dwelling” in the FHA to mean an independent housing unit and a not shared living unit.
The Court held that “[b]ecause we find that the FHA doesn’t apply to the sharing of living units, it follows that it’s not unlawful to discriminate in selecting a roommate” and therefore “Roommate’s facilitation of discriminatory roommate searches does not violate the FHA.”...

How many man-hours, how much money, etc was wasted on this. A great reform would be loser pays in civil actions. And until we get common sense corrections abuses like this will continue. Thank God this Miss Rowe had a friend in her corner.

Makes you wonder if we need a cabinet level Department of Housing and Urban Development. Oh did I say that?

Guns and morons...like HIZONORDAMAER

I have nothing by contempt for the moron who currently occupies Gracie Manor. When a criminal tried to blow up Time Square his first comment was how this was someone who was upset with Obamacare passing. People are leaving the city to escape the high taxes which leads to declining revenue so what does he do..increase the rates even more. And when the police department is short of officers he can't help but damned he can hire more meter maids.

Now his idiot is going to put his ugly face on TV during the most watched event in the year. Thankfully I didn't see it but his stupidity comes through on this report.

Special Report: Bloomberg reloads in push for gun control

(Reuters) - Among the slick, million-dollar ads for the likes of Pepsi and Honda during the Super Bowl this Sunday, viewers in Washington will see a far more modest spot. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino will be sitting on a couch touting an issue most politicians avoid like the plague: gun control.

The two mayors, whose local teams face off in the big game, are making the pitch for Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), the organization they co-founded in 2006.

Murder has been on the decline in New York and other major American cities for years, but the mayors say they still see too many dead cops and teens. On Tuesday night, Bloomberg was at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan visiting a New York police officer who had just been shot in the face in Brooklyn.

"We have someone who's dedicated his life to protecting all of us, who has had a much too close brush with death tonight because of what appears to be an illegal gun," Bloomberg told a news conference. He added that more Americans have been killed by illegal guns since 1968 than were killed in World War II.

Of course he uses a cop's almost death at the hands of a criminal to push his agenda. But I did some checking on his stats and they don't really match up. In WWII the US lost approximatley 418 thousand men and women in combat. According to the US Department of Justice's states in the US there are been from 1976-2006 around 350 thousand murders with firearms. Granted this doesn't cover 68-75 or 07 to now so one has to wonder where he gets these states. But notice he says these were done with Illegal weapons. What is an illegal weapon in your mindset Mr Bloomberg. I know the ones shipped to Mexico in Fast and Furious were illegal but again what is your definition. He probably means any firearm because in his mind all weapons not owned by the state or limited people (like his bodyguards) are illegal.

Now this in funny.

"We have to face the fact that both Democrats and Republicans have for a while viewed this as the third rail of American politics," said John Feinblatt, who helps run MAIG as Bloomberg's chief advisor for policy and strategic planning. (Bloomberg is an independent; Menino is a Democrat.)

Democrats, who are more likely than Republicans to favor some restrictions on gun ownership, made a conscious decision to stay away from the gun issue in the 2010 midterm congressional elections. The aim: protect the so-called Blue Dog conservative Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, who didn't toe the party line on gun control. Most were defeated anyway.

Bloomberg is a leftist democrat in all but name. He changed his affiliation to succeed Giuliani and changed it to independent later on. He also got the city council to let him run for a third term. Gee worked out well for them.

Also those Blue Dog Democrats were liberal in everything but name for the most part. They may have voted against gun right but they were good little boys and girls on Obamacare, speeding, Dodd-Frank, etc.

...New York's activist mayor cannot simply restrict handguns in his city - as he has done with smoking and transfats. Two Supreme Court decisions - District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago - have declared such local initiatives unconstitutional. Instead, Bloomberg launched MAIG, which now has 600 members nationwide. Although it has a handful of private donors, the bulk of MAIG's $4 million budget comes out of the mayor's own pocket.

"He's putting his money where his mouth is," said Carolyn McCarthy, a Democratic congresswoman from Long Island. She entered politics after a 1993 shooting spree on the Long Island Rail Road left her husband dead and her son severely injured.

...In the past, advocates for stricter gun controls held marches, rallies and candlelight vigils. MAIG has taken a far more activist approach, conducting undercover investigations and sting operations that are then dramatically revealed to the press.

In 2009, New York City contracted the security firm Kroll Inc. to send undercover agents to gun shows in Ohio, Tennessee and Nevada to show how people who could not pass a background check easily bought guns.

MAIG also used undercover investigators to expose gun dealers who sold to "straw purchasers," buyers intending to quickly resell the guns on the black market. Another investigation identified online gun sellers who did not require background checks.

Bloomberg launched another probe after the January 2011 shooting in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 13, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Using city money, he sent undercover investigators to Arizona to repeat the gun show sting and prove how easy it was for someone like Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, to get a gun.

Gee, nice of him to check up on crime in other states. Hey Mr Mayor, maybe if you had such concern about crime in the city you're mayor of there would not be such a problem with it.

...REAL CHANGE

Members of the MAIG say they are not trying to take guns away from their legal owners, just to close loopholes that allow criminals to get guns and move them around undetected.

"It's a serious safety issue," said Margaret Stock, the Democratic mayor of Butler, Pennsylvania, the town of 13,000 where Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum spent part of his childhood. "If an officer gets shot with an illegal gun I'm responsible."

There is the problem. No Miss Stock, you are not responsible for a cop getting shot with a firearm. Nor is the manufacturer of the gun or the ammunition or the retail seller of the gun. The person reasonable if the piece of s#$% who shot the cop. A simple fact you leftist can't comprehend or don't want to acknowledge because it pushes against your agenda. And we know what it is, the effective removal of the 2nd Amendment via legislation or judicial activism

..."We're a big hunting community, but this is illegal handguns, it's a totally different issue," Stock said. "I had a little bit of backlash from local members of the NRA that I was somehow anti-gun. That was not the intent of the coalition."...

See how every gun used to commit a crime is an illegal gun. Just what makes it illegal? If it was manufactured outside the US and shipped in under the radar and used in the commission of a crime I don't question it's illegal. However if someone breaks into my house and steals my pistol then uses it in a robbery the gun is not illegal. The acts of breaking into my house, stealing the gun and using it in the robbery are the unlawful acts of a criminal. If we follow these people's logic I should be held accountable for the robbery because my gun was used, even though it was stolen. The criminal is where law enforcement should concentrate his efforts. But that won't happen under a liberal's direction.

UPDATE: Who says Da Mayor doesn't know his job:

From Buzzfeed.com

...The Mormon Church owns one of the most active and unregulated gun sale portals on the web, according to a national investigation released by the New York City Mayor's office...

Cool. Transfat, salt, smoking and guns on the other side of the country cool are critical issues for this man. Budget deficits, people running from the city, lack of firemen and cops are things he doesn't need to be concerned with. But he wants to see how the Mormons in Utah are doing with guns.

Who voted for this moron?