The counter terrorism efforts in detecting terrorist threats

I wrote a few days ago about the terrorist attack and Canada and how it has affected that country with the government there saying that they will upgrade their anti terror laws and one news came out that the two people were known to Canadian authorities but they did not share this information with U.S. authorities because of the privacy laws and court rulings in Canada against doing that and I was thinking what? I can understand that there are some privacy issues but if a person is a known threat to a country, would it be not appropriate to inform the U.S. and other countries that if by any chance you see this guy in your country, be careful and keep them under surveillance. I know that everybody wants to gang up on the U.S. to intruding on everybody’s privacy but to its credit if it has not done so there would have been many terrorists attack on the U.S. soil. And nobody in the world can deny this fact that only the U.S. has the capability and the resources to detect terrorists’ threats and prevent them more successfully than any other country. I know that even this capability there have been terrorists attack in the U.S. and other country and nobody can be hundred percent vigilant against it but only with the cooperation between countries, the threats can be minimized. And with some in the security apparatus of the U.S. as saying that the northern border with Canada is highly susceptible to terrorists activities, it is time government of other countries set aside this privacy issue of their citizens aside to some extent and share intelligence with U.S. and other countries so that they avert any possible terrorists attack in their respective countries.

Learning to swim-2

As I told you before that by the end of the my swimming class, I will need to go back again to learn more as I was not feeling comfortable about the level of expertise that I have achieved and since my class ended recently I am no where as I was expecting myself to be. Apart from front float and back float, there was gliding and treading, jumping the pool, and paddling etc. I think that I was the last one who was still holding onto a noodle or a kickboard and a belt to float and even that time I was not properly floating or back floating. I just kept on going to the bottom of the pool which is no go. There is so much coordination that I did not know that swimming is going to be much harder than driving a car. Although if you know how to swim and drive, you will know that both needs coordination but swimming needs more coordination than in driving. There is seems to be the coordination of the foot and the legs and the hands and the arms and the mouth and the head and the neck and everything else in between and on top of that make sure that you are also breathing. I wish I would have learned swimming since I was little but now is not late either but since the winter is here, I will start going back again to beginning swimming classes and will learn it even if it takes me a year to do so.

U.S. Military budget cuts-2

Since the overwhelming part of Western and Eastern Europe who are members of NATO are under the U.S. nuclear umbrella and thus don’t have to spend much money on defense because of it but this ISIS threat is a different thing altogether. This is not a regular army (although there are trying to sort of) which you can face and have universal laws impose on them. They are in Europe's midst (not to sound alarmist but the ideology is attractive to some disillusioned Muslims and others) so the Europe which is ignoring this fact is doing at its own peril. But despite the fact that the whole of Europe's population is almost equivalent to the U.S. there is a great disparity among the different states' population and that is one of the reasons they don’t contribute that much to the collective defense of Europe. But if you see the Middle Eastern countries, they spend huge amounts of money for the defense without the security of the U.S. nuclear umbrella; Europe can do more to contribute to the defense of Europe and also to the world. But since the U.S. cannot ignore its responsibility as the world's sole super power, and increasingly relying on the military without giving it the proper tools and cuts in its budget is not the way to go. And U.S. is the only one with the means and capability to use its Military around the world. So let’s not tie the hands of it by cutting the Military budget when it is needed the most for our obligations and responsibilities.

U.S. Military budget cuts

As you know my opinion (as well as most of the people's opinion) change overtime depending on the prevailing circumstances. A few of my posts may have said that in order to reduce the deficit, defense budget has to be reduced but it cannot since the Republicans don’t want to touch it because of national security issues. I now officially reverse my stand on this issue as we see the whole world crumbling down around us with everybody except for the United States chickening out since it does not affect them in some way. If you see around us, there is the outbreak of Ebola, although a health emergency but the U.S. has already sent in around 4,000 troops to build facilities in Ebola ravaged countries. And the crisis in Ukraine, although contained needs to monitored and in this case U.S. is again taking the lead but not sending any troops, just providing intelligence and other logistics to European countries to make sure Russia does not step beyond what it has already done in Ukraine. Then we have this huge issue with ISIS, the Islamic Militant organization overrunning large pieces of land in Iraq and Syria and trying to establish a so called Caliphate based on supposed Islamic laws. Before the U.S. stepped in and have a loose coalition trying to stop ISIS, no country was willing to take the lead in countering this menace to the world. Most of the European countries except of France and Britain with major contributions were standing on the sidelines. I don’t want to criticize which European countries are contributing to this fight and which are not (although I gave only two major European powers names which are contributing to it) but Europe has a huge Muslim population susceptible to ISIS propaganda.