Obama administration switches border security strategy before election year chron.com The Obama administration is cutting the 1,200 National Guard troops along the southwest border for the past 18 months to just 300 troops. It’s part of a Pentagon shift from boots on the ground to “air mobility support” for armed US Border Patrol agents. The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security announced the change in course today. The transition begins in January from two-man National Guard surveillance teams backing up Border Patrol agents on the ground to airborne surveillance and helicopter-borne movements of federal law enforcement to cover a wider area with fewer personnel. “The deployment of these new DOD technical assets, along with the additional DHS personnel on the ground, will enable DOD to reduce the number of National Guard troops at the southwest border while enhancing border security,” the administration said in a statement. The air support will be in place by March 1, the administration said. The Pentagon plans to spend $60 million for aerial support along the border — funds that will provide for Oh-58 Kiowa helicopters and UH-72 Lakota helicopters, as well as other fixed wing aircraft. The switch from National Guard surveillance teams to airborne surveillance and helicopter movements of law enforcement personnel will raise the profile of border security operations and “reduce enforcement response time,” administration officials said a statement. The shift stems from budget pressures and dramatic drops in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally. U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions dropped from 1.6 million in 2000 to 340,252 last year – an 80 percent drop over 11 years. The ranks of the U.S. Border Patrol have doubled since 2004 to 21,444 agents with more than 18,000 of those agents stationed on the southwest border from Texas to California.
Enter Tea Party Sarah, Ron Paul Spoiler Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com December 20, 2011 The republican establishment is frightened to death of the prospect of a Ron Paul win in Iowa and New Hampshire. They will do just about anything to make him go away. “Conservatives and Republican elites in the state are divided over who to support for the GOP nomination, but they almost uniformly express concern over the prospect that Ron Paul and his army of activist supporters may capture the state’s 2012 nominating contest — an outcome many fear would do irreparable harm to the future role of the first-in-the-nation caucuses,” writes Politico today. Sarah Palin Says There's Still Time to Get into 2012 Race http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj-Tjj_ucKs Prior to Iowa governor 1. Terry Branstad saying that if Paul wins the caucus it should be ignored, Chris Wallace of Fox News said that if Paul wins it does not count. Establishment pundits and operatives seem to think that if you ignore Ron Paul he will disappear. Less than two weeks before the Iowa caucus, Sarah Palin – who declared in October she would not run – arrives on the scene to shake things up. “It’s not too late for folks to jump in,” Palin told Fox News on Monday. “Who knows what will happen in the future.” “Any chance to see you making a play, even after Iowa, New Hampshire? There is time, Governor,” Fox’s Eric Bowling asked. Palin did not answer the question. According to the corporate media, it is far too late for Palin to get back in the race, but there is another possibility – she may be ready to enter the race and act as a spoiler to upset the Paul campaign and draw Tea Party voters away from him. 1. Jeb Bush also raised the prospect of a late entry in the race on Monday when the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed penned by the former Florida governor and scion of the Bush crime family. Jeb was ebullient about capitalism and came off sounding very presidential. “Efforts are underway by some wealthy Republican donors
and a group of conservative leaders to investigate whether a new Republican candidate could still get into the presidential race,” writes Steve Moore via Red State. “The talk is still preliminary and somewhat wishful, but it reflects dissatisfaction with the two leading candidates, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.” In fact, the effort to inject fresh blood – names thrown around include New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Donald Trump, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint – has nothing to do with Romney or Gingrich. The establishment would be satisfied with either. The idea is to derail Ron Paul. But even if Palin, Bush or any of the above do not throw their hats in the ring at this late hour, Republican establishment types are now murmuring about a brokered convention next year to negate the Paul Factor. The neocon war pigs are especially vocal about getting rid of Ron Paul and continuing the cycle of never-ending war and destruction. William Kristol over at The Weekly Standard is calling for a brokered convention – he calls it a “deliberative convention” – to defeat the will of the American people. “It’s a new political era. Perhaps that era will feature once again a real, deliberative convention – where the delegates, with the ghosts of Lincoln and FDR looking on, choose, on a second or third or fourth ballot, a compelling nominee and a consequential president,” Kristol writes. Regardless of what happens in Tampa next year, between now and then the Republican establishment will do everything they can to sabotage the Ron Paul presidential campaign. They are determined to keep the political system exactly the way it is despite the fact most Americans are desperate for real change and many of them have decided that Ron Paul is the only candidate with a plan to stop the nation’s downward death spiral and restore its constitutional heritage.
RON PAUL 2012 http://www.ronpaul2012.com/
The Arab Winter: Violence from a US-back Egyptian military junta Patrick Henningsen Infowars.com December 20, 2011 Now that the Arab Spring has come and gone, one of the features of the new Arab Winter is watching how a US/UK-backed brutal Egyptian military dictatorship has become increasingly more violent towards its own pro-reform, unarmed citizens. There are still a few readers left out there who will understandably be a bit confused and ask, “Wait a minute, I thought Egypt’s military dictator President Hosni Mubarak was ousted during the famous Arab Spring? I thought we brought democracy to Egypt?” The answer, of course, is ‘no’ – as democracy never made it to Egypt during the Arab Spring. Instead, the US and UK were under a very tight time table because of what was going on next door in Libya and could not afford to have a civilian government full of democratic idealists running that country. The stakes were just too high. At the time of Mubarak’s exit in Egypt, both the US and the UK, along with the other participating NATO countries, were busily engaged in a hot contest of regime change and the gradual private takeover of Libya’s economy. In order for NATO’s al-Qeada rebel army to succeed on the ground, and for NATO allies not to be seen breaking the UN’s Resolution 1973 guidelines by being caught directly supplying arms to their proxy army in Libya, they needed a solid ask-no-questions partner in the region for the duration of 2011. That partner came in the form of the new 2. Egyptian military junta, who obediently smuggled arms and al-Qaeda fighters over their western border into eastern Libya to help overthrow the regime of the late Col. Muammar Gaddafi. The Wall Street Journal reported on March 17, 2011: “Egypt’s military has begun shipping arms over the border to Libyan rebels with Washington’s knowledge, U.S. and Libyan rebel officials said… … The shipments-mostly small arms such as assault rifles and ammunition-appear to be the first confirmed case of an outside government arming the rebel fighters. Those
fighters have been losing ground for days in the face of a steady westward advance by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.” For this reason, and for the most part, our moral crusaders in the White House will keep their mouths shut if any reports of naked violence by the Egyptian police state are circulating around Washington DC. The state-sponsored violence appears to be getting much worse. by elfares boda.mov http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iboFV-yeTE&skipcontrinter=1 Regarding clashes this past weekend, the 1. Daily News Egypt reported: At least nine people have been killed and around 300 people injured in the two days of clashes, according to the Health Ministry. “The military council is either fed up or lacks vision in dealing with protests. It’s unbelievable what is happening; the revolution was meant to give us freedom,” said Aboul-Ela Madi, a member of the panel who resigned… … Aya Emad told the AP that troops dragged her by her headscarf and hair into the Cabinet headquarters. The 24-year-old said soldiers kicked her on the ground, an officer shocked her with an electrical prod and another slapped her on the face, leaving her nose broken and her arm in a sling. “It was a humiliating scene,” activist Mona Seif told TV network Al-Nahar about seeing soldiers slapping an old woman in the face. “I have never seen this in my life.” It is important to note that the likes of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and David Cameron are supporting this gruesome violence by the Egyptian State, even in the face of prima facia evidence that the military council is beating and killing its own political opponents. Unlike western crusades to capture the assets of Syria and Iran, following the template of Libya, you will hear no serious moral or lofty ‘human rights’ condemnations of Egypt’s supreme military council coming out of Washington or Whitehall. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Just look at how both the US and UK deal with their own protesters at home. After seeing Occupy Wall Street activists being intimidated, beaten and pepper sprayed by New York City law enforcement, Egypt’s military has cited those same heavy-handed US police actions against the OWS demonstrators in order to justify their own violent suppression in Cairo. The message to protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square is not so different than the one delivered to demonstrators in New York’s Zuccotti Park – and that is, “Pack up and go home now, or else you could be seriously hurt – or worse.” Notice now that the only regimes who are safe from US-UK or NATO routing them are the monarchies and the military dictatorships in the Middle East. This should tell you all you really need to know in order to understand the foreign policy of western countries today.