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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2014 11:26:04 AM

How does a police department lose a Humvee?

Theft, fraud plague controversial Pentagon program spotlighted by Ferguson


Liz Goodwin, Yahoo News
Yahoo News

A police tactical team moves in to disperse a group of protesters on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo. The protests were sparked after Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, on Aug. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

One freezing day last December in the tiny town of Palestine, Ark., a young man climbed into the police department’s Humvee, turned it on, and drove off on a joy ride.

“It never crossed my mind” that anyone would do that, Palestine Police Chief Stanley Barnes said Wednesday of the incident. The Humvee, which the town of fewer than 700 people got for free through a controversial Pentagon program that gives old military equipment to local police departments, doesn’t have keys. But it’s easy to look up how to start one.

The possibility that the 5,000-pound Humvee might be stolen was so far from Barnes’ mind that it took a week before anyone on the small force noticed it was missing from the police station’s parking lot.

Once Barnes noticed it was gone, he sprang into action.

“We just do what police officers do — we find out who done it,” Barnes said. “People talk.”

A hunter reported seeing the vehicle, which was emblazoned with the police department’s logo, in the woods a county over. The thief had driven into a tree and completely wrecked it. Barnes sent a truck over to pick up the Humvee and tow it back to the station.

The police department now uses the massive wreck for parts for its other Humvee, which it also obtained from the Department of Defense Excess Property Program (DOD 1033) to help fight crime in the small town.

As odd as it may seem that a hulking armored personnel carrier could go missing from a police department, it’s not that uncommon an occurrence.

In fact, at least three other police stations have misplaced or been robbed of their government-issued Humvees in the past five years. Weapons turn up missing, too. Yahoo News found that local police departments like Palestine's have been suspended from the Pentagon 1033 program for misplacing at least 14 M16 assault rifles, 11 M14 assault rifles, 21 pistols and 10 shotguns. These figures don’t come close to representing the total number of weapons that have been stolen or lost over the life of the program, however — a figure the Defense Department has not released.

(Yahoo News/Gordon Donovan/AP)

In the wake of the controversy over the military-style police response to protests in Ferguson, Mo., President Barack Obama has announced that the White House is conducting a review of the 1033 program, to ensure it’s using taxpayer money wisely and is not giving police departments equipment they don’t need or shouldn’t have. A Senate committee will also examine the program in a hearing on Sept. 9.

Among the problems that Obama is likely to find is that the program lacks oversight and accountability. Once Pentagon weapons reach the 8,000 police departments — many of them in tiny towns — that participate in the program, the federal government has little control over them. The departments are not allowed to sell or dispose of any of the 1033 “controlled” items, which include small arms and tactical vehicles. An agency in each state takes over responsibility for checking the inventory once a year and reporting anything missing to the Defense Department’s Defense Logistics Agency.

But penalties for disappearing equipment are minimal. Police departments that lose semiautomatic assault rifles are not allowed to get any new gear from the program but are not required to return any of the equipment they have already received. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., for example, can keep the 89 M16s he got through the program, even though his department was suspended in 2012 after he lost one of those rifles along with nine Colt .45 handguns.

Losing a weapon or vehicle, even something as big and expensive as a Humvee, does not mean a police department will be automatically excluded from getting more free military equipment. If departments report the equipment missing within 24 hours, they can avoid suspension entirely. The sheriff’s department in St. Francois County, Mo., has not been suspended from the program even though a man stole its 1990 Humvee in May and went on a crime spree in it, robbing a convenience store before he was finally apprehended in St. Louis County.

And suspensions can be lifted fairly easily. The police department in Meridian, Miss., signed a “corrective action plan” letter promising to keep tighter control over its loaned weapons last March after it lost four M14 assault rifles from its arsenal; the letter will most likely result in its reinstatement. Meanwhile, Sheriff Tom Jones of Grant County, Wash., said he expects to be reinstated in the program after the Washington State Patrol finishes investigating the disappearance of one of its government-issued M16 assault rifles. “One of my chief deputies is overseeing getting back on the roster,” he said.

The program has also been a magnet for fraud. The police chief of Rising Star, Texas, William Jason Kelcy, was indicted in February on charges of illegally pawning and bartering more than $4 million of equipment he got from the program, including a machine gun. (Kelcy died before his trial took place.) Meanwhile, a police officer in Columbus, Ohio, was sentenced to two years in prison for selling federal 1033 equipment for profit in 2012. A municipal audit in Nashville, Tenn., in 2008 found more than $130,000 of the federal property missing and blamed a city official for its misuse.

The 1033 program has given away $5.1 billion in equipment to local police departments since it was first authorized by Congress in 1990, according to the Defense Logistics Agency. But it’s recently come under fire, since Ferguson protests over the police shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old man drew a martial police response that included cops using tactical vehicles — complete with rotating machine guns arming their turrets — for crowd control. (Ferguson police said they did not obtain weapons through the 1033 program.)

“There is a big difference between our military and our local law enforcement, and we don't want those lines blurred,” Obama said last month.

The president is ordering his staff to review the program to “ensure that ultimately these local law enforcement organizations and the Department of Defense are being good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” Press Secretary Josh Earnest said last week. The review will ask if the police departments are properly trained to use the equipment they’re getting, and if they need the gear in the first place.

Weapons make up just 5 percent of the equipment given out through the Pentagon program, and tactical vehicles like the Humvee Palestine lost make up less than 1 percent of the gear. Computers, sleeping bags, office furniture and other excess items account for the rest of the local windfall.

Police supporters argue that the free equipment helps them fight crime in an era of shrinking municipal budgets, and that it would be a waste to destroy vehicles and weapons the military no longer needs but has already paid for. Local police are responsible for paying for maintenance and training.

Yahoo News contacted the 35 states with police departments that have been suspended by the Pentagon over the past five years. Just 18 of the states responded with what equipment, if any, was missing in those law enforcement agencies that caused the suspensions.

The Defense Department won’t release a full list of missing equipment nationwide, so it’s impossible to know the full scope of the problem. It relies on state coordinators to ensure departments aren’t misusing or misplacing things, according to Defense Department spokesman Mark Wright.

“We’ve got some people … that run this program, but there’s no way we can keep track of 8,000 different agencies,” Wright said.

— Katie Bindley contributed to this report.



When police misplace their U.S. military gear


Missing: An untold number of weapons, and even a few Humvees, acquired by police departments from the Pentagon.
Magnet for fraud

"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2014 3:42:11 PM

Western Governments Step Up Efforts to Block ISIS Recruits

ABC News

Western Governments Step Up Efforts to Block ISIS Recruits (ABC News)


Alarmed by the attempt by a 16-year-old French girl to travel to Turkey this weekend allegedly to join the Islamic militant army of ISIS, the French government is urging parents to call a toll-free hotline if they know of anyone they believe may be considering joining the terror group.

It was the latest attempt by Western governments to prevent their citizens from joining the jihadist group where they could be trained in terror tactics and bring those lethal strategies back home.

Digital Feature: What Is ISIS?

One Midwest High School, Two American Terrorists

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The French teenager was arrested Saturday in the Nice airport in the south of France as she tried to board a plane to Turkey with the alleged intention of joining ISIS in Syria. Authorities announced that several hours later, they caught a 20-year-old man who had allegedly recruited her and paid for her plane ticket. The girl's parents reportedly had no idea about their daughter's plans and the statement said that airport police were responsible for her arrest.

In a statement released Sunday, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called on the parents of young people to use the hotline if their children exhibit "a disturbing trend of violent radicalization."

The hotline was established just over four months ago -- well before the threat posed by ISIS was fully understood by the American public -- and the Interior Ministry reports they have received almost 300 calls. A quarter of those calls were about children who were suspected of getting involved with the terrorist group and 45 percent were about suspicious women and girls. It is unclear how many of those calls led to arrests.

France is the Western country with the most citizens who have joined ISIS and militant fighters in Syria and Iraq. An estimated 700 French citizens have joined the cause, followed by 500 citizens of the United Kingdom who have come under similar suspicion.

Prime Minister David Cameron spoke at Parliament today calling for greater anti-terror legislation, including giving police the ability to seize passports at airports. He said that the measures will help address "specific gaps in our armory."

The proposed changes come three days after the British government increased their national terror threat level from "substantial" to "severe" for the first time in three years. The “severe” threat level is the second highest in the U.K.’s threat level system, topped only by “critical” which is used to indicate that an attack is “expected imminently.”

U.S. security forces took a different approach when they realized there was a 19-year-old woman in Denver who was planning on traveling to Turkey to join a jihadist group after connecting with a 32-year-old Tunisian man.

The woman, Shannon Maureen Conley, had eight interviews with police and FBI agents over the course of the six months leading up to her arrest at Denver’s international airport on April 8 – and the charging document reveals that she repeatedly spoke about her support of jihad and how she wanted to associate with terrorists in the hope of helping them. The Justice Department confirmed on Aug. 11 that a plea deal had been reached in the case but they did not release any information about what the deal entailed.

The British push to have police take passports away from suspected jihadist fighters comes nearly two months after the Australian government began doing so.

“I’ve canceled a number of passports on the advice of intelligence agencies,” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said June 16.

An estimated 150 Australians are believed to have joined the fighting in Syria.

“We are concerned that Australians are working with them [ISIS], becoming radicalized, learning the terrorist trade, and if they come back to Australia, of course it poses a security threat,” Bishop said.

American authorities have not announced specific steps they have taken to prevent citizens from joining ISIS or other Islamic groups, though they have reported an estimated 100 or so cases of U.S. citizens leaving the country to train and fight with ISIS. Special attention is being paid to Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota as nearly a dozen of the suspects have ties to the city.

The White House confirmed the death in Syria of Minnesotan Douglas McAuthur McCain, who records show was born in Chicago but was schooled in Minneapolis. An opposition group in Syria, the Free Syrian Army, claimed McCain was fighting with ISIS. The FSA also claimed another American ISIS member had been killed in recent fighting.

FBI officers have been aware of disaffected Muslim youths traveling abroad to join radical groups for years, as many Minnesotans went to fight in Somalia starting in 2007.

“In Somalia, it started as a nationalistic call… [but] we’ve now seen where some individuals perhaps are not interested or not inclined to travel to Somalia, [they] start to branch out to other hot spots around the globe, obviously Syria being among them,” Kyle Loven, the FBI’s Chief Division Counsel in Minneapolis, told ABC News.






France is urging parents to call a hotline if their children show "a disturbing trend of violent radicalization."
Teen arrested at airport



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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2014 4:16:50 PM

Pro-Russian rebels lower demands in peace talks

Associated Press

WSJ Live
Russia Calls for Immediate Cease-Fire in Ukraine



MOSCOW (AP) — Pro-Russian rebels softened their demand for full independence Monday, saying they would respect Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for autonomy — a shift that reflects Moscow's desire to strike a deal at a new round of peace talks.

The insurgents' platform, released at the start of Monday's negotiations in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, represented a significant change in their vision for the future of Ukraine's eastern, mainly Russian-speaking region.

It remains unclear, however, whether the talks can reach a compromise amid the brutal fighting that has continued in eastern Ukraine. On Monday, the rebels pushed Ukrainian government forces from an airport near Luhansk, the second-largest rebel-held city, the latest in a series of military gains.

The peace talks in Minsk follow last week's meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko. The negotiations involve former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma; Russia's ambassador to Ukraine; an envoy from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and representatives of the rebels.

Yet similar talks earlier this summer produced no visible results.

Unlike the previous rounds, this time rebels said in a statement carried by Russia's state-run RIA Novosti news agency that they are willing to discuss "the preservation of the united economic, cultural and political space of Ukraine." In return, they demanded a comprehensive amnesty and broad local powers that would include being able to appoint their own local law enforcement officials.

This deal is only for eastern Ukraine. There are no negotiations on handing back Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed in March, a move that cost Ukraine several major ports, half its coastline and untold billions in Black Sea oil and mineral rights.

The talks lasted for several hours Monday and were adjourned until Friday, when the parties are to discuss a cease-fire and an exchange of prisoners, rebel negotiator Andrei Purgin said, according to RIA Novosti.

The rebels' more moderate negotiating platform appeared to reflect Putin's desire to make a deal that would allow Russia to avoid more punitive Western sanctions while preserving a significant degree of leverage over its neighbor.

Over the weekend, the European Union leaders agreed to prepare a new round of sanctions that could be enacted in a week, after NATO accused Russia of sending tanks and troops into southeastern Ukraine. A NATO summit in Wales on Thursday is also expected to approve measures designed to counter Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said participants in Monday's talks needed to push for an immediate, unconditional cease-fire. He rejected claims by the Ukrainian government, NATO and Western nations that Russia has already sent troops, artillery and tanks across Ukraine's southeast border to reinforce the separatists.

"There will be no military intervention," Lavrov told students at Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, the first day of classes for schools and universities across Russia. "We call for an exclusively peaceful settlement of this severe crisis, this tragedy."

Despite the Russian denials, Ukrainian National Security Council spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko said on Monday that "not less than four battalions and tactical groups of the Russian armed forces are active in Ukraine." A battalion consists of about 400 soldiers.

In the past week, after losing ground to Ukrainian troops for nearly a month, the rebels opened a new front along Ukraine's southeastern Sea of Azov coast and are pushing back elsewhere. The coastal assault has raised concerns the rebels are aiming to establish a land corridor from Russia all the way to Crimea.

Lysenko said Monday that Ukrainian forces had been ordered to retreat from the airport in Luhansk in the face of an intensifying assault that he blamed on "professional artillery gunmen of the Russian armed forces."

On Sunday, missiles fired from the shore sunk one of two Ukrainian coast guard cutters 3 miles (5 kilometers) out to sea, Lysenko said. He said eight crewmen were rescued, but the Interfax news agency cited a spokesman for the border guards' service as saying two crewmen were missing and seven were rescued.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine between the separatists and the government in Kiev began in mid-April, a month after the annexation of Crimea. The fighting has killed nearly 2,600 people and forced over 340,000 to flee their homes, according to the U.N.

President Barack Obama and the leaders of NATO's other member countries will attend a summit in Wales that is expected to approve the creation of a high-readiness force to help protect member nations against potential Russian aggression.

"(This) ensures that we have the right forces and the right equipment in the right place at the right time," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday. "Not because NATO wants to attack anyone. But because the dangers and the threats are more present and more visible. And we will do what it takes to defend our allies."

The plan envisages creating a force of several thousand troops contributed on a rotating basis by the 28 NATO countries. Equipment and supplies for the force are to be stockpiled in Eastern Europe "so this force can travel light, but strike hard if needed," Rasmussen said.

An influential U.S. senator told reporters in Kiev that he would urge Obama to give Ukraine defensive weapons.

Decrying what he called "an invasion by Russia into Ukraine with thousands of soldiers, columns of tanks, missiles and other artillery," Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said "Ukraine has to be given defensive weapons so that it can defend itself from the aggression it is facing."

He declined to elaborate on what weapons he envisioned Ukraine receiving.

Menendez also characterized the conflict in broader terms.

"This is a Russian fight against Europe being fought on Ukrainian territory. Everything that Putin doesn't like, he sees in the Ukrainian people's desire to turn to the West," he said.

___

Heintz reported from Kiev, Ukraine. Lynn Berry in Moscow and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels this report.

Related Video








The insurgents now say they'd respect Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for autonomy in the country's eastern region.
Moscow's goal



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2014 4:24:42 PM

UK: Passports could be seized to fight terrorism

Associated Press



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Britain unveils powers to strip suspected Islamist fighters of passports


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LONDON (AP) — Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday proposed new laws that would give police the power to seize the passports of Britons suspected of having traveled abroad to fight with terrorist groups.

Speaking to Parliament, Cameron said his government is also working on plans to block such suspected British jihadi fighters from re-entering the U.K. The power to monitor such suspects who are already in Britain would also be strengthened.

The plans to widen Britain's anti-terror laws, which are likely to be approved by parliament, are aimed at preventing attacks by Islamist militants returning from terror training in trouble spots in the Middle East.

Like other Western countries such as the U.S., France and Germany, Britain is worried that citizens who travel abroad to join terror groups could threaten their home country when they return.

Intelligence and security services suspect that around 500 Britons have gone to fight in Syria and potentially Iraq. Cameron has described the extremism posed by the Islamic State group as the biggest security threat of modern times — surpassing that of al-Qaida — and said it poses a direct threat to Europe.

Britain's Home Secretary already has the authority to withhold passports in some cases, but Cameron said more is needed to ensure police at border crossings could act in time when they spot a suspect.

"We will introduce specific and targeted legislation to fill this gap by providing the police with a temporary power to seize a passport at the border, during which time they will be able to investigate the individual concerned," he said.

Authorities on Friday raised Britain's terror threat alert from "substantial" to "severe," the second-highest level, in response to the crises in Iraq and Syria and concerns that terrorist groups could target Europe. The alert means that an attack on Britain is "highly likely" — though the government did not provide information to suggest an attack was imminent.








Proposed anti-terror measures in Britain would allow police to seize the passports of suspected jihadi fighters.
'Severe' threat level



"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)

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Luis Miguel Goitizolo

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RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES?
9/2/2014 5:20:39 PM

Russia and NATO square off over Ukraine

AFP


WSJ Live
NATO Readies Unit in Response to Russia to 'Strike Hard'



Moscow (AFP) - Moscow declared NATO a "threat" to its security Tuesday after the Western military alliance announced plans to reinforce defences in eastern Europe because of Russia's alleged stoking of war in Ukraine.

Moscow's surprise declaration of a shift in its military doctrine came just ahead of a NATO summit in Wales on Thursday at which beleaguered Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will lobby US President Barack Obama for military help.

The Russian national security council's deputy secretary Mikhail Popov said NATO's plan for new defence units in eastern Europe was "evidence of the desire of US and NATO leaders to continue their policy of aggravating tensions with Russia."

"I have no doubt that the question of the approach of NATO members' military infrastructure to our border" will be taken into consideration as "one of the foreign military threats to Russia" when the country's defence doctrine is updated later this year, he said.

Popov added that Russia's 2010 military doctrine -- a document that already permits the use of nuclear weapons in case of grave national danger -- would focus more on overcoming NATO and its new European anti-missile defence system.

Ukraine on Tuesday reported losing 15 more soldiers in the latest day of clashes with Russian-backed insurgents whose ongoing offensive threatens to stamp Moscow's permanent hold on the eastern half of the ex-Soviet state.

The Ukrainian president's appeal for European military assistance in the face of Russia's alleged dispatch of crack troops into the conflict zone was dismissed at a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels at the weekend.

But NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that the 28-nation alliance would endorse the establishment of a force of "several thousand troops" that could be deployed within "very few days" to meet any perceived Russian military movements in eastern Europe.

The New York Times reported the rapid-response unit would be supported by new NATO members such as Poland that were once Soviet satellites but now view Russian President Vladimir Putin with fear and mistrust.

But the plan would be of no immediate help to Ukraine's government because since the country is not a member of NATO -- a point stressed by Obama in his rejection of calls to involve the US military.

London's Royal Institute for International analyst Affairs Robin Niblett added that "any type of overt military intervention (by NATO) is highly unlikely" because many members -- including Russian trade partners Italy and Austria -- do not see a sufficient threat in the Kremlin.

- 'No military solution' -

Poroshenko convened his national security and defence council late on Monday to discuss mounting setbacks in the mostly Russian-speaking regions in which the army had until recently put rebels on the back foot.

"The situation is difficult but the Ukrainian fighting spirit is stronger than that of the occupants," Poroshenko said in reference to more than 1,000 Russian soldiers that NATO believes the Kremlin has sent across the Ukrainian border in recent days.

Senior Ukrainian defence spokesman Andriy Lysenko added on Tuesday that "Russian armed forces are continuing to concentrate troops and military equipment in the towns and cities they had seized."

Moscow on Monday again denied either sending or planning to deploy troops into eastern Ukraine. Officials dismiss allegations that Russian intervention is being used to carve a land corridor from Russia to the Crimean peninsula -- another Ukrainian region which Russia took over in March.

Separatist commanders have termed Russian soldiers in their ranks as having come while off-duty or on vacation.

That admission prompted Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to declared that Kiev would abandon it non-aligned status and seek NATO membership in the coming years -- a development Russia would intensely oppose.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon responded to the Cold War-style rhetoric by cautioning "there is no military solution" and calling for "political dialogue."

An inconclusive round of European-mediated talks between Kiev and Moscow envoys and a few separatist leaders concluded in the Belarussian capital Minsk on Monday with only a tentative agreement to meet again on Friday.

Putin on Sunday hardened Russia's previous position of demanding only talks on autonomy for the region by noting that Kiev would have to discuss "statehood" for the two rebel eastern district.

Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov also confirmed that Putin had recently told European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso in private of Russia's ability to capture Kiev in two weeks if it wished.

But Ushakov said the comment "had been taken out of context and had a completely different meaning."

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NATO's plans for a quick-twitch team that could ward off Russian expansion into Ukraine draw an angry response.
'Aggravating'



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