I say this is a set up because Amaro Goncalves of Smith and Wesson and 20 other people were the target of a sting that almost any multinational corporation would have fallen into when doing business overseas. The question I have is why legal arms manufacturers are being targeted by the F.B.I. while Militant Islam is increasing it’s activity here and abroad?

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) – An executive of Smith & Wesson (SWHC.O) and 21 others have been charged with violating U.S. bribery laws after an undercover sting in which federal agents posed as arms-buying representatives of an African defense minister.

The defendants, including a senior Smith & Wesson sales official Amaro Goncalves, were accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, and conspiracy to commit money laundering tied to the sale of guns, body armor and other law enforcement equipment.

The FCPA prohibits the payment of bribes to foreign officials in order to secure business contracts.

[...]

Among those charged was the chief executive of Protective Products of America Inc (PPA.TO), R. Patrick Caldwell, who previously worked for the U.S. Secret Service for 27 years and was in charge of the division for the vice president’s protection. A spokesman for the service declined to say when Caldwell left the agency.

An attempt to reach Protective Products was not successful. Protective Products filed for bankruptcy protection last week and sought approval to be acquired by an affiliate of the private investment firm Sun Capital Partners Inc.

[...]

As part of the FBI sting operation, an unidentified business associate who was a former executive for an arms manufacturer arranged a meeting between the arms sales representatives and undercover FBI agents who posed as representatives of an African country’s minister of defense.

The agents told the sales representatives that in order to win a contract, they had to add a 20 percent “commission” to price quotes, half of which would go to the purported minister of defense and the rest would be split between the others.

In the case of the Smith & Wesson executive, Goncalves gave price quotes for two sales, a small one of 25 guns and a larger one with 1,800 pistols. He gave two price quotes for the transactions, including one that had its price inflated by 20 percent, the Justice Department said.

The two-and-a-half-year-long investigation involved 250 FBI agents, according to Mark Mendelsohn, deputy chief of the Justice Department’s fraud division. In connection with the indictments, 150 agents executed 14 search warrants across the country and British police executed another seven, Justice Department officials said.

Three of the defendants worked for unnamed British companies; another worked for an unnamed Israeli company, according to the indictments. The defendants sought to obtain contracts for the sale of products ranging from grenade and tear gas launchers to pistols, ammunition and explosive detection kits.

Breuer said the investigation was the largest action ever undertaken by the Justice Department against individuals in an FCPA case. He also said it marked the department’s first large-scale use of undercover techniques in an FCPA investigation.

That’s a lot of resources to trip up an American gun maker, some military equipment manufacturers from England and a Israeli arms company. Odd that no communist nations seem to be involved. Even more odd is that these companies will be supplying the enemies of Communists and Islamists in a less robust fashion now that they’ve been hauled into court when Isamofascism is gaining ground in several countries. Just an observation.

The American government gives billions in “aid” to oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia, aid they don’t need but is in fact a Jizya meant to make it easier for American interest in that part of the world. When dealing with third world nations corruption is part of the price of doing business. Everyone knows that but the government wasted the time of at least 250 F.B.I. agents while Muslim terrorists were sneaking underwear filled with explosives onto airplanes.

Are these the priorities we want the feds to have?

h/t The Firearm Blog

Former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter is a hero to the left for his constant Bush bashing and anti-war activism. He was also a critic of Bill Clinton who he claimed was too soft on Iraq in the 90s. These positions may seem odd until you realize that they are pretty much in line with the positions of communist groups like Worker’s World Party who use all American actions, hard or soft, to attack our supposed imperialism. For all his speaking “truth to power” Ritter has become a hero to the left who fiercely defends his long history of sexual perversion.

But now Ritter has been caught again propositioning teens online:

A former chief United Nations weapons inspector is accused of contacting what he thought was a 15-year-old girl in an Internet chat room, engaging in a sexual conversation and showing himself masturbating on a Web camera.

Scott Ritter of Delmar, N.Y., who served as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-98 and who was an outspoken critic of the second Bush administration in the run-up to the war in Iraq, is accused of contacting what turned out to be a Barrett Township police officer posing undercover as a teen girl.

The details are in this online affidavit of probable cause. But here’s a summary:

Officer Ryan Venneman was posing as 15-year-old “Emily” in an online chat room when he was contacted by someone using the name “Delmarm4fun.” This person, later identified as Ritter, told “Emily” he was a 44-year-old male from Albany, N.Y.

“Emily” told Ritter she was a 15-year-old girl from the Poconos, at which point Ritter asked for a picture other than the one “Emily” had posted on her account. Ritter then sent her a link to his Web camera and began to masturbate on camera.

“Emily” asked Ritter for his cell phone number, which he provided.

Ritter again asked “Emily” how old she was. Told she was 15, Ritter said he didn’t realize she was 15 and turned off his webcam, saying he didn’t want to get in trouble.

Ritter told “Emily” he had been fantasizing about having sex with her, to which she replied: “Guess you turned it off …”

Ritter then said: “You want to see it finish,” reactivated his

webcam and continued masturbating and ejaculated on camera.

The online conversation occurred in February 2009, but the investigation lasted until November, when Ritter was charged, because police had to undergo the lengthy process of obtaining court orders to get Ritter’s cell phone and computer information.

And this is the man the left trusted as a source of information? Of course, Ritter’s  history of preying on children goes back almost ten years:

This is not the first time Ritter has been in such trouble.

According to reports, Ritter was charged in a June 2001 Internet sex sting in New York, but that case was dismissed.

He had been charged with attempted child endangerment after arranging in an online chatroom to meet what he thought was a 16-year-old girl at a Burger King restaurant. The girl turned out to be an undercover policewoman.

Ritter said the criminal charge was a smear campaign in response to his criticizing U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The New York Post reported Ritter had been caught in a similar case involving a 14-year-old girl in April 2001, but that he was not charged.

Ritter’s been known to pal around with the A.N.S.W.E.R./World Can’t Wait/Democracy Now! crowd which as I have pointed out before have a history of using the Internet to lure, I mean recruit, teens to join their public protests. Since the groups are lousy with perverts like Ritter this is a bad idea. It’s also interesting that Ritter joined up with these groups when they first began pushing to recruit teens.

This is the kind of Youth Liberation liberalism I’ve spoken about in action. Parents, liberal or not, need to be cautious about what kind of political groups they allow their kids to affiliate with.

h/t News Real Blog

“Liberals” these days. I’ve never come across a more hateful and spiteful group on the Internet. But I guess the fact that Obama didn’t cause “The Change” ala 1980s hippy wet dream Ariel has gotten some of these people angry enough that they can’t hold in their inner Gestapo officer. All those solar powered rainbows and vegan unicorns never arrived in their sad and wasted lives and they need to take out their frustration on someone:

My wife Jenn Q. Public ended up on a “hate tweet list” created by liberal pundit/reanimated corpse Alan Colmes. Colmes claims that the Mrs. Tweeting to her followers that Colmes was an “asshole” after he made a childish dig at Sarah Palin is proof of rabid right wing hate. I guess we should be rounded up for thinking ill of douche bags.

If Colmes was truly worried about hatred on Twitter he would have mentioned the now thankfully defunct Murder Glenn Beck twitter account. The tweeter in question claimed that if enough people “followed” him he would murder Beck and made it clear this was not a joke. Many a lefty joined I’m told. Luckily there are screen shots:

Now that’s tolerance!

But it’s small beans compared to Obamunist “anti-war” group Code Pink who is running a banner ad on the English language version web page of the militant Islamist group The Muslim Brotherhood. The ad invites Wahhabist Muslims to join with them to “cleanse our country” of people on the right. Code Pink founder Jodie Evans is also promoting a campaign to kidnap George W. Bush and his wife.

Which also barely compares to the Florida chapter of A.N.S.W.E.R. which is organizing violence against Tea Party protesters by recruiting union thugs and militant Islamist groups. This is the same A.N.S.W.E.R. chapter that was filmed in a vicious gang assault against a 62-year-old man a few months ago.

But lest you think the Communists masquerading as Progressives pretending to be “liberals” have dropped their petty bigotry and abandoned the childish cattiness they’ve displayed for years in favor of “Direct Action,” take heart! I still get emails sent to me by people who can’t stand the thought that they might be responded to in a comment. Like “Jason” here who took exception to a post I wrote about how I thought Tila Tequila shouldn’t be called a whore:

Only a scumbag republican like yourself would write that Tila Tequila blog.

My post, it should be pointed out, was based solely around my disgust with the fact that while Tila Tequila was doing a charity event for breast cancer for the Keep a Breast foundation, which involved having plaster casts of her breasts made, she was attacked by professional misogynist Perez Hilton. I said it was wrong to call a woman stripping down for a good cause a whore and I put forward that nude modeling is hardly whoreish. But I guess only a “scumbag republican” thinks it’s unmanly to berate women for for being successful and attractive.

Look at all that tolerance! I would suggest to the few remaining classical liberals or even old fashioned Democrats on the left that it will soon be your turn to feel the tolerance that the left speaks of so much.

From my cold dead hands alert. With Democrats rushing through their agenda in anticipation of losing their super majority they may not be able to wait to enact the gun control agenda their leftist supporters want until after the mid-term and 2012 elections, which was the strategy many people felt they were going to use. Back in October Gun Owners of America pointed out that the vague language in the health care bill could be used to get gun control measures enacted without debate:

It is nearly certain that coverage prescribed by the administration will, to control costs, exclude coverage for what it regards as excessively dangerous activities.  And, given Sebelius’ well-established antipathy to the Second Amendment — she vetoed concealed carry legislation as governor of Kansas — we presume she will define these dangerous activities to include hunting and self-defense using a firearm.  It is even possible that the Obama-prescribed policy could preclude reimbursement of any kind in a household which keeps a loaded firearm for self-defense.

The ObamaCare bill already contains language that will punish Americans who engage in unhealthy behavior by allowing insurers to charge them higher insurance premiums.  (What constitutes an unhealthy lifestyle is, of course, to be defined by legislators.)  Don’t be surprised if an anti-gun nut like Sebelius uses this line of thinking to impose ObamaCare policies which result in a back-door gun ban on any American who owns “dangerous” firearms.

After all, insurers already (and routinely) drop homeowners from their policies for owning certain types of guns or for refusing to use trigger locks (that is, for keeping their guns ready for self-defense!).  While not all insurers practice this anti-gun behavior, Gun Owners of America has documented that some do — Prudential and State Farm being two of the most well-known.

The good news is that because homeowner insurance is private (and is still subject to the free market) you can go to another company if one drops you.  But what are you going to do under nationalized ObamaCare when the regulations written by Secretary Sebelius suspend the applicability of your government-mandated policy because of your gun ownership?

All of this is in addition to something that GOA has been warning you about for several months … the certainty that minimum acceptable policies will dump your gun information into a federal database … a certainty that is reinforced by language in the summary providing for a study to “encourage increased meaningful use of electronic health records.”

Remember, the federal government has already denied more than 150,000 military veterans the right to own guns, without their being convicted of a crime or receiving any due process of law.  They were denied because of medical information (such as PTSD) that the FBI later determined disqualified these veterans to own guns.

Barring that, the far left has already set an international gun grab in motion at the United Nations which will directly threaten your Second Amendment rights. Put aside ten minutes for this video, you’ll be glad you did:

Like I said, this is a from my cold dead hands alert because this is the line America cannot cross. Join the N.R.A. or G.O.A. now before your only option is to join a disarmed public completely at the mercy of government paramilitaries.

No cries of neo-colonialism from the left as George Galloway and his convoy of supposedly peaceful activists comprised mainly of White Europeans and American anti-Semities allied with militant Islamists took four Egyptian officers hostage and murdered one of them in clashes near the Egypt/Gaza border:

Protests over an international aid convoy to Gaza, led by George Galloway, turned violent today killing one Egyptian soldier and leaving dozens injured.

The Britain-based Viva Palestina convoy included more than 500 international activists bringing humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip in protest at the Israeli blockade of the coastal strip.

Scuffles between activists and Egyptian police broke out last night after part of the convoy was barred from entering Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinians rushed to the border to support the convoy, hurling rocks and opening fire at the Egyptian guards from across the border.

Activists said that one Egyptian soldier was killed in a gunfight, and that at least three Palestinians were taken to hospitals. Up to 50 activists were treated for minor injuries, and several have been detained by authorities.

Egypt has come under fire recently for supporting the Israeli blockade, and stepping up efforts along the Egyptian border to stop tunnel smugglers from moving supplies into Gaza. Egypt’s construction of an underground barrier to cut off the tunnels has drawn criticism from a number of neighbouring Arab states, who call the barrier a “wall of death.”

Egypt maintains that it is protecting its borders, and that aid to Gaza should be sent via internationally recognized channels.

One Jordanian activist who took part in the convoy said the group had refused to enter Gaza through its crossings with Israel, as they refused to recognize Israeli control of Gaza.

Speaking to Sky News Mr Galloway said that Egyptians had breached the agreement they had made with the convoy.

“It’s completely unconscionable,” he said.

Of course Galloway doesn’t think bringing a small army of thugs into a sovereign country and challenging that government’s authority with arms he has worked to keep out of the hands of his fellow citizens of the United Kingdom is at all questionable morally.

Via Atlas Shrugs here’s a video of the report:

Atlas also has a photo essay of a Palestinian market that debunks the starving Palestinian myth.

Speaking of debunking myths, this essay on the history of “Palestine” is a must read for anyone who really wants to understand the conflict.

Yes, Code Pink was involved. Oddly they have no press release on the murder of the Egyptian on their site.