KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - British teacher Gillian Gibbons was convicted of insulting Islam for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad and sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation from Sudan, one of her defense lawyers said Thursday.

Ali Mohammed Ajab, of Gibbons’ defense team, said she was found guilty of “insulting the faith of Muslims in Sudan” under Article 125 of the Sudanese criminal code, a lighter conviction than the original charge of inciting religious hatred. A charge later confirmed by a judge leaving the closed court session.

“I feel this is very serious and very unfair,” he told The Associated Press outside the courtroom. Ajab, who also works for the Khartoum Center for Human Rights, said the issue was raised by “hard-liners who are always trying to make some noise,” in an apparent reference to religious conservatives.

Ajab said his center would appeal the verdict, an opinion not shared by Gibbons’ employer.

Full Story Here:
Briton Convicted in Sudan Blasphemy Case

I keep hearing all of the human rights groups and women’s groups and religious groups crying out, ‘Where is the outrage?? This isn’t right!’ and I have to agree, it isn’t right, but it IS Islam, and not being right and being Islam go hand in hand as far as we that live in a Christian or Jewish world are concerned…

But Gibbons is not in a Christian or Jewish nation, she is in an Islamic nation and their law is the law of their land, there’s not too much we can say or do, she knew, or, maybe I need say it this way, she should have known what she was getting into when she went to Sudan, she’s white, she’s female, I am guessing she’s probably a Christian, having seen her pictures I know she’s not a Muslim at least, that was obvious from the way she was dressed, all things considered it would appear that the cards were stacked against her from the start…

Outrage?? Where is the OUTRAGE?? That’s the question that everyone is screaming, outrage at a moonbat Islamic court that gave her a sentence of 15 days in jail and deportation for letting her pupils name a teddy bear Muhammad?? That outrage?? Even that sentence is way overboard as far as our legal system is concerned, but the Sudan does NOT operate under our legal system…

She could have received a much more severe sentence, she could have received six months in prison and something like 40 lashes, as well a monetary fine, and the lashes alone would have likely been more than enough to kill her…

Outrage?? Malkin was on FOX News earlier, HERE, she was so angry she was cross-eyed, her neck veins were throbbing and her eyes were close to popping out of her head a time or 2…

Outrage, oh yeah, Malkin has outrage, and a cause, and she had it going on, but here’s the real deal, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, if you don’t like Rome, stay OUT of Italy, so to speak…

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The Daily Mail — When the U.S. Navy deploys a battle fleet on exercises, it takes the security of its aircraft carriers very seriously indeed.

At least a dozen warships provide a physical guard while the technical wizardry of the world’s only military superpower offers an invisible shield to detect and deter any intruders.

That is the theory. Or, rather, was the theory.

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.

The Americans had no idea China’s fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.

One Nato figure said the effect was “as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik” - a reference to the Soviet Union’s first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

Full Story Here:
Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise

Other than to point out the obvious, there is really not a lot to say, I will say this though, maybe I overlooked the story, the date is 10NOV and I was celebrating my birthday and that of the USMC and perhaps I just missed this one, or, maybe the MSM didn’t put it out there, I really don’t know, but I have to thank my blogging buddy Bloviating Zeppelin for posting it and making me aware of it’s existence…

This was a strategical faux pas of Biblical proportions, and I am certain that heads WILL roll, this is the type of thing that isn’t supposed to happen, ever…

I hope I honestly missed this story in the U.S. news sources, I rarely read British news sources, maybe I’d better start, and I haven’t been keeping up with Military.com too much lately, maybe they ran a post on it, in any case, it appears that The Daily Mail has some rather good sources…

Its 13 Song Class submarines are extremely quiet and difficult to detect when running on electric motors.

Any submarine is quiet when running on electric power but it is my understanding that the cavitation’s of the propellers is enough to give each sub an identifying sonar signature that is supposedly detectable at a fairly decent range, I may be wrong, I’m not as up on all of my Naval Warfare facts and figures as I need to be, but in any case, the boat can’t run on electric power forever, they have to surface to re-charge their battery system, maybe that was why they came up when and where they did, making a statement so to speak, ‘we have infiltrated you just that easily’, who knows, the Chinese mindset is totally different to ours…

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

He said: “It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.

Well, all I can say is, it better be…

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Local intelligence-sharing centers set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have had their anti-terrorism mission diluted by a focus on run-of-the-mill street crime and hazards such as hurricanes, a government report concludes.

Of the 43 “fusion centers” already established, only two focus exclusively on preventing terrorism, the Government Accountability Office found in a national survey obtained by The Associated Press. Center directors complain that they were hampered by lack of guidance from Washington and they were flooded by often redundant information from multiple computer systems.

The original concept behind fusion centers was to coordinate resources, expertise and information of intelligence agencies so the country could detect and prevent terrorist acts. The concept has been widely embraced, particularly by the Sept. 11 commission, and the federal government has provided $130 million to help get them off the ground. But until recently, there were no guidelines for setting up the centers and as a result, the information shared and how it is used varies.

Centers in Kansas and Rhode Island are the only two focused solely on counterterrorism. Other centers focus on all crimes, including drugs and gangs, said the GAO, Congress’ investigative and auditing arm. Washington state’s fusion center, for instance, has an all-hazards mission so it can focus on natural disasters and public health epidemics in addition to terrorism.

Full Story Here:
Intel Centers Losing Anti-Terror Focus

As anyone that has ever worked in or around the Intel business can tell you, information sharing between agencies is not something that happens to any great capacity, in fact, in many cases, Intel is deliberately withheld for various reasons, not the least of which is the desire to be the one that roosts on and then hatches the BIG egg…

Inter department and inter agency rivalry is rampant, do any of you remember Mad Magazine?? How about the Spy vs Spy cartoon?? That is a lot closer to the truth than any agency wants people to know…

“Although many of the centers initially had purely counterterrorism goals, for numerous reasons they have increasingly gravitated toward an all-crimes and even broader all-hazards approach,” according to a June Congressional Research Service report.

And that’s not an altogether bad concept, information sharing remains the top priority in MY opinion, cloak and dagger is OK if you’re dealing with a foreign agency and don’t feel that you can completely trust them but inter-agency mistrust can get a lot of people killed if everyone isn’t on the same page…

The centers can potentially tap into five separate federal databases containing case files on investigations, reports on suspicious incidents and research material on terrorist weapons and tactics. But not all of the facilities are in buildings that have adequate security to access those databases, GAO found.

And once again, cooperation is the key, as you can see in the original post, “The centers can potentially tap into five separate federal databases”, the key word is potentially, some agencies don’t want to share their databases and some just flat won’t share, inter-agency cooperation, that is what it’s going to take to keep this nation safe, that and never losing sight of the fact that terrorism is job 1, other crimes do fall into the equation and sharing that data is critical but terrorism and those that commit terroristic acts are the ones that must be stopped by any means necessary…

At the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center, watch commander Lori Norris said more federal money and guidelines could solve many of the center’s frustrations. Arizona’s fusion center has representatives from the state’s public safety, motor vehicles and liquor control departments, as well as its National Guard and city and county fire departments and federal agencies.

The Arizona center cannot access some of the federal information systems because its building does not meet security requirements. “We would be able to, but again, we don’t have the funding for that,” Norris said.

And something like this would be a great place to throw some federal money, get the building up to security standards, put in the proper blast doors, secure the walls and ceiling and be sure to put Norton or McAfee on the computer system too because I have seen some systems that were so wide open to attack that that the geek from the high school computer club could hack into the system in a very few minutes, and I am not being sarcastic, the DoD and State Department have been victims recently, the documentation is HERE , HERE, HERE and HERE…

Cooperation and security, we must have them both, this nation needs to examine where the tax dollars are going and then demand that OUR tax dollars be spent correctly, in making US safe…

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