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ON LAND, IN THE AIR AND ON THE SEA SSI MEANS SECURITY.
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July Mid-Month 2009 |
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Your Bi-monthly Homeland Security News Source
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Upcoming Events
Register Now & Save $$$
 SSI's GSA Approved Programs CLICK HERE!
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A Call to Jihad, Answered in America
By Andrea Elliott
MINNEAPOLIS - The Carlson School of Management rises from the asphalt like a monument to capitalist ambition. Stock prices race across an electronic ticker near a sleek entrance and the atrium soars skyward, as if lifting the aspirations of its students. The school's plucky motto is "Nowhere but here."
For a group of students who often met at the school, on the University of Minnesota campus, those words seemed especially fitting. They had fled Somalia as small boys, escaping a catastrophic civil war. They came of age as refugees in Minneapolis, embracing basketball and the prom, hip-hop and the Mall of America. By the time they reached college, their dreams seemed within grasp: one planned to become a doctor; another, an entrepreneur.
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Message from SSI President, Henry Morgenstern:
Unfortunately, after November, with the growing demand on other SSI projects, I will no longer be in a position to put my contacts and knowledge of Israel at the disposal of SSI's Homeland Security Training Program in Israel. Of course, I want to continue. We have taken more groups to Israel during the past 6 years than any other group and have a trained a cadre of more than 400 people on how that country deals with the terror threat. This means that there are no further trips scheduled for the 2010 period.
I am urging you to enroll now in the August and November trips because it seems like these will be the last. This will be your last opportunity to allow the experts to show you how to deal with the threat of terror in your jurisdiction.
My best wishes to you and stay safe,
Henry Morgenstern
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By Erika Wurst
Metra adding security force to morning commuter lines
This week, as thousands of area residents ride the Burlington Northern or Union Pacific trains into Chicago for fireworks and a taste of the Taste, they'll likely notice increased security put in place for crowd control.
Coming soon, however, the same level of security might be seen on the regular morning commutes to work.
Metra commuter rail officials announced Tuesday that security teams from the federal Transportation Security Administration will soon be patrolling commuter trains in the Chicago area.
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August 17-21, 2009
Approved for Academic Credit through Saint Leo University
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New Product that will allow you to Fight Flooding with Water and NOT Sand - FloodSax®
FIGHT FLOODING with FloodSax®, the new technology distributed by SSI, engineered to replace the traditional sandbag: The answer to flood damage during Hurricane Season 2009.
As Floridians, we know how vulnerable we are to floods - damage from wind-driven rain, damages to balconies, garages, hangers,  storage facilities across the state. By many estimates, up to 26 percent of homes in Florida - one out of every four - are vulnerable to flooding of some kind.
Sandbags are the Old World answer. They are inconvenient, heavy to move, labor-intensive and simply impossible for residents of upper floors, senior residents and many more.
The 22 ounce FloodSax® deploy in seconds, absorbing and retaining up to 44 pounds of water, converting them into a better and much more effective solution. No need for time-intensive solutions. Five to five hundred vacuum-packed FloodSax® can be conveniently stored in a closet or garage and deployed immediately. FloodSax® is an effective solution against flooding, plumbing problems, and more.
Beyond being more green, FloodSax® are a more economical alternative to the sandbag because of the sandbags' heavily labor-intensive, time-intensive, transportation-intensive real costs.
Learn More...
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Homeland1.com is revolutionizing the way in which the homeland security community finds relevant news, identifies important training information, interacts with each other and researches product purchases. It is becoming the most comprehensive and trusted online destination for industry personnel and aspiring professionals alike.
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By Ken Silverstein, EnergyBiz Insider
 Sensitive nuclear information has leaked out. A 266-page document that is considered "highly confidential" but not "classified" and containing information on this country's civilian nuclear sites has been mistakenly made public.
On the whole, it is a stain on nuclear energy. And while the industry's foes will use the mishap as a public relations weapon, the matter does pose a broader, legitimate question, namely whether this country is prepared to ward off or to deal with any terrorist attack on its critical infrastructure.
Every utility in America has taken steps to safeguard the security of its facilities as well as develop robust systems that can continue to generate and deliver power if attacked. Preventing arbitrary acts is still an obstacle. But the erection of barriers along with emergency practices if disaster does strike has long been underway -- processes that experts say will keep the country's power flowing in times of crisis.
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Defending the City: NYPD's Counterterrorism Operations
 The NYPD has a highly developed counterterrorism program, due in large part to the strong support of city and department leaders such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who are both committed to having a strong counterterrorism program that effectively complements federal efforts. The NYPD is also by far the largest police department in the country. While most police departments have only a few hundred employees, the NYPD has 53,000 and an operating budget of $4 billion. In addition, the city currently has a very low crime rate. All of these factors make it relatively easy for the NYPD to devote significant resources to counterterrorism.
To say that the NYPD is filling in the gaps in federal counterterrorism efforts is not a criticism of the federal government, which is very good at acquiring information on individuals connected to overseas terrorist organizations. The NYPD, rather, has something the federal government lacks: plenary police power, which gives the department a broad ability to maintain public order, and a unique and important role in overall counterterrorism efforts.
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Scholarship available through BLACKHAWK! for an NTOA member to attend. CLICK HERE for more information.
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Bush-era Wiretap Program Had Limited Results, Report Finds
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Federal agents found much of the information produced by the Bush administration's top-secret warrantless surveillance program vague and difficult to use, a sweeping review of the program found.
Then-President George Bush and other top administration officials have said the program was a critical tool in preventing terrorist attacks. However, a report Friday by the inspectors general of the CIA, the Justice Department, the Pentagon and other agencies found that some FBI and CIA agents were frustrated by the secrecy surrounding the program.
Former CIA chiefs Michael Hayden and Porter Goss told investigators the wiretaps filled a gap in U.S. intelligence. One senior official quoted in the report called the wiretaps, dubbed the "President's Surveillance Program" by the report, "a key resource," while the FBI considered it "one tool of many" in their efforts to head off terrorist plots, the report states.
Read On... |
Study on Keeping Nuclear Bombs Away from U.S. Shows Misplaced Fear over Cost of 100% Overseas Cargo Scanning
 HANOVER, MD, June 24, 2009 - A two-tiered scanning-protocol for inspecting all containers at international ports could be the most affordable approach to ensuring containers moving through the global transportation system are not carrying nuclear bombs, according to a paper being presented at a services special interest group meeting of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).
The authors challenge the federal scheme now in place that relies on targeting only a small number of containers that U.S. authorities identify as "high-risk" for inspection. Based on detailed data, involving 900,000 containers, drawn from two of the world's largest port terminal operations, they found that there is a serious risk of large bottlenecks in international shipping should a raised security alert or actual terrorist incident require that the current inspection protocol be ramped up.
Read On...
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Unique opportunity for SWAT teams members who want to get ready to conduct Counter Terrorism Operations.
Garden Grove, CA - October 20-23, 2009 CALL NOW!
Train Hard - Play Hard!
The scope of this training is to teach SWAT team members how to conduct an operation with the special characteristics peculiar to terrorist incidents and accomplish the mission, whether there are hostages involved, IED's, booby traps, or suicide terrorists with maximum safety for: citizens, team members and surrounding assets. By nature, the operation may become more similar to a military operation because, as mentioned above, this is a criminal act with a strategic goal. It is part of an ideological struggle against a state or population and may be carried out by a professional team of well equipped terrorist subjects.
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Security Outside the Classroom
By Leischen Stelter
 Broward County Public Schools, the sixth largest school district in the country, mandated that all fifth- and eighth-grade students participate in an extra-curricular program tailored toward economic awareness, however, protecting the estimated 50,000 students who will rotate through this program presents several security challenges.
The Junior Achievement World Center, which is currently under construction and scheduled for completion in August, is designed to prepare students for economic and workforce issues they will face as adults by incorporating role-playing activities. Throughout the construction of the new facility, which began May 2008 on the Broward Community College campus, Melissa Aiello, president of Junior Achievement of South Florida said issues of security were always a factor. "We set up security early on and were mindful of the kinds of situations that can happen these days," she said. "We face unique challenges based on the number of students walking in the door." Aiello estimates that the facility will accommodate between 100 and 400 students per day.
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Did the Toppling of Saddam Hussein Lead to Recent Events in Iran?
By Christopher Hitchens
The most exciting and underreported news of the past few weeks in Iran has been that the emerging challenger to the increasingly frantic and isolated "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. And Rafsanjani has recently made a visit to the city of Najaf in Iraq to confer with Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani, a long-standing opponent of the Khamenei doctrines, as well as meeting in the city of Qum with Jawad al-Shahristani, who is Sistani's representative in Iran. It is this dialectic between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites that underlies the flabbergasting statement issued from Qum last weekend to the effect that the Ahmadinejad government has no claim to be the representative of the Iranian people.
One of the apparent paradoxes involved in visiting Iran is this: If you want to find deep-rooted opposition to the clerical autocracy, you must make a trip to the holy cities of Mashad and Qum. It is in places like this, consecrated to the various imams of Shiite mythology, that the most stubborn and vivid criticism is often to be heard-as well as the sort of criticism that the ruling mullahs find it hardest to deal with.
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Counterterrorism Group Sues Marriott Over Wilders Event
 By Rick Pedraza
The Florida Security Council, a counterterrorism organization targeting the growing threat of radical Islamic terrorism, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Marriott Hotel in Delray Beach, Fla., for breach of contract for its abrupt cancellation of an appearance by controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders.
The council was sponsor of a free speech summit and conference in April in South Florida honoring Wilders.
The cancellation of the event came as a complete surprise to security council Director Tom Trento, who stated, "The fact that the Marriott sent me an e-mail at 7 p.m. on a Friday night canceling our well-planned event made it very plain to me that something was up. I suspected there was more here than a breach of contract."
Wilders, a member of Parliament in the Netherlands and leader of the Party for Freedom, has been outspoken on the issues of Islamic extremism and freedom of speech. His views, including a call for a ban on the Quran, have forced him into guarded isolation.
Read On... |
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Huge Illegal Weapons Cache Found in Alexandria
By Jackie Bensen and Matthew Stabley
ATF: Operation converted semiautomatic guns to fully automatic
 Federal agents seized at least 75 guns in a raid Thursday.
John Walker, 50, of Alexandria, is accused of setting up an operation to illegally convert semiautomatic weapons into fully automatic weapons, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Such weapons frequently fall into the hands of criminals, giving them far more firepower than the police, agents said.
An undercover ATF agent purchased an AK-47 in the parking lot of a popular family restaurant. It had been altered to fire dozens of bullets with a single press of the trigger,
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Security Solutions International |
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Security Solutions International, Kendall Tamiami Executive Airport, 14300 S.W. 129th Street, Suite 204, Miami, Fl. 33186
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