• After 4 years CBP IA disabled vet still mired in employment procedures

    By Robert Lee Maril

    Lieutenant Commander J. Gregory Richardson (retired), a decorated Naval officer with almost thirty years of military service to his country, maintains that while employed as a GS-14 Senior Security Analyst in the Integrity Programs Division (IPD) at Customs and Border Protection Internal Affairs (CBP IA), his immediate supervisors and the Senior Executive at CBP IA repeatedly ignored his multiple medical issues. The failure of these supervisors, alleges Richardson, led to a deterioration in his medical conditions until, finally, he could no longer endure the pain from which he suffered. He missed many days at work, and this absenteeism, according to documents provided, was a major reason he was fired from IPD. Since 2013 Richardson has been seeking information from CBP about any investigations or reports about him while he was an employee.

  • Brexit will not weaken European security: Expert

    On Thursday U.K. citizens will vote in a referendum on whether Britain should remain a member of the European Union or exit the EU (“Brexit”). The most recent polls show a slight advantage for the “Remain” campaign, but pollsters say the vote is too close to call. Some security experts have argued that British exit from the EU would weaken Britain’s – and Europe’s – capabilities in the fight against terrorism, but Thorsten Benner, the director of the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, disagrees. He argues that it is unlikely we will see a fundamental weakening of European security should U.K. voters choose to leave the European Union.

  • White House: Uranium discovered by IAEA likely tied to Iran’s nuclear weapons program

    Obama administration officials concluded that particles of uranium found at Iran’s Parchin military base and revealed in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s final report on the country’s past nuclear activities were likely tied to the regime’s nuclear weapons program. The admission further underscores concerns that the IAEA’s investigation into Iran’s nuclear activities at Parchin should not have been closed following the report’s publication.

  • Tips on how to avoid ransomware attacks

    Individuals and businesses have become targets to a growing online fraud scheme known as ransomware. Ransomware is a form of malware used by cyber criminals to freeze your computer or mobile device, steal your data and demand that a “ransom” — typically anywhere from a couple of hundreds to thousands of dollars — be paid. The FBI, ransomware victims lost more than $18 million between April 2014 and June 2015.

  • Preparing for the worst case scenario

    The number of incidents involving armed attackers (active shooter incidents) has been on the rise over recent years with attacks taking place around the world — from the United States to India, from Norway to France to Kenya. Control Risks says that its Active Shooter training helps increase awareness of the threat and, in the worst case scenario, how best they can protect themselves.

  • Trump calls for profiling of Muslims, surveillance of mosques

    Providing more details about his response to the Orlando shooting, Donald Trump on Sunday proposed the profiling of Muslims by law enforcement, and the nation-wide implementing of a Muslim surveillance programs which was used for a while by the NYPD, but which was discontinued after it had failed to yield a single useful lead.

  • 2015 global forced displacement breaks records

    Wars and persecution have driven more people from their homes than at any time since the UN began keeping refugee records. A new, detailed study which tracks forced displacement worldwide found a total 65.3 million people were displaced at the end of 2015, compared to 59.5 million just twelve months earlier. The report found that, measured against the world’s population of 7.4 billion people, one in every 113 people globally is now either an asylum-seeker, internally displaced, or a refugee.

  • Tracking, analyzing how ISIS recruits through social media

    A team of researchers has developed a model to identify behavioral patterns among serious online groups of ISIS supporters that could provide cyber police and other anti-terror watchdogs a roadmap to their activity and indicators when conditions are ripe for the onset of real-world attacks. The researchers apply the laws of physics to study how terrorist support groups grow online, and how law enforcement can track activities.

  • U.S. diplomats call for "targeted military air strikes" against Assad's government

    More than fifty U.S. diplomats have circulated an internal memo to fellow Department of State employees, criticizing the administration’s policies in Syria and calling for air strikes against President Bashar al-Assad’s government forces. The “dissent channel cable” was signed by fifty-one mid-to high-level State Department officials involved in advising on Syria policy. The document calls for “targeted military air strikes” against Assad’s government.

  • ISIS has committed a genocide against the Yazidis: UN

    ISIS has committed the crime of genocide as well as multiple crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Yazidis, thousands of whom are held captive in the Syrian Arab Republic where they are subjected to almost unimaginable horrors. A new UN report says ISIS has sought to destroy the Yazidis through killings, sexual slavery, enslavement, torture, and inhuman and degrading treatment and forcible transfer causing serious bodily and mental harm, and the infliction of conditions of life that bring about a slow death.

  • Former IDF general: Hezbollah could fire 1,200 rockets daily into Israel during next war

    A former IDF general warned Israelis earlier this week that the next war with the Iran-backed Lebanese terror organization Hezbollah would lead to a barrage of rockets into Israel on an order of magnitude higher than anything Israel has yet faced. Major General (res.) Yitzhak Gershon said that the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah featured up to 160 rockets per day fired at Israel’s north. But given Hezbollah’s military buildup, “we need to expect up to 1,200 rockets in a day– it will be a completely different scenario from anything we’ve known.”

  • Labor MP killed near Leeds by gunman shouting “Britain First!”

    Jo Cox, 41, a Labor MP for Batley and Spen, has been shot and stabbed to death Thursday by a man shouting “Britain First!” She was attacked outside a library in the town of Birstall, West Yorkshire. Cox has been campaigning for the United Kingdom to stay in the EU – the referendum on this question is to be held Thursday, 23 June. Britain First, founded in 2011, is a far-right political party campaigning against immigration, multiculturalism, and what it sees as the Islamization of Britain. Members of Britain First conduct what they call “Christian patrols” outside of mosques and the homes of Muslim leaders.

  • Jo Cox’s killer is a neo-Nazi with ties to U.S., South African White supremacist groups

    Thomas Mair, the 52-year old Briton who on Thursday killed Jo Cox, the Labor MP, was a neo-Nazi with ties to U.S. and South African White supremacist groups. Mair has also purchased books from a U.S.-based neo-Nazi group, including manuals on how to build homemade guns and explosives. The police found a manual in his home on how to make a homemade pistol. Mair mail-ordered the books and manuals from National Vanguard Books in Hillsboro, West Virginia. The bookstore is owned by the National Alliance, which advocates the creation of an all-white homeland and the eradication of Jewish people.

  • The Orlando shooting: exploring the link between hate crimes and terrorism

    By Joshua D. Freilich, Jeff Gruenewald, Steven Chermak, and William Parkin

    Some are calling the mass shooting at an Orlando gay nightclub an act of terrorism. Others are calling it a hate crime against the LGBT community. President Obama declared it an “act of terror and an act of hate.” Can it be both? The Orlando tragedy demonstrates the importance of exploring difficult questions. For example, are terrorists who commit acts of hate and terrorists who target the government radicalized the same way? Are perpetrators motivated by far-right extremist views similar to those motivated by jihadist extremism? What factors helped push these perpetrators to violence, and what steps can be taken to stop it from occurring again? Answering these questions may help law enforcement identify, investigate, prosecute, and ideally thwart those who seek to turn to violence to achieve their goals.

  • “We don't have religious tests here”: Obama slams Trump’s call for singling out Muslims – including Muslim Americans -- for a different treatment

    On Tuesday, following a meeting with the National Security Council, President Barack Obama delivered remarks on the U.S. fight against ISIS. Obama used the second part of his speech for a pointed, and compelling, lecture on how, during the current political season, Americans should be careful to take the measure of politicians whose proposals evince no grasp or appreciation of the country’s core values and founding principles. This careful consideration is required because, in the name of securing the country against terrorism, there are simplistic, even absurd, nostrums being recklessly put forth as a panacea.