The January 2010 issue of the Homeland Security Report is available is available for Free download.

This month's issue covers:

It has become customary to fault intelligence and law enforcement agencies regarding security lapses after high profile incidents occur. The next steps after such lapses in security are predictable: Congressional hearings follow, and politicians posture before the public with staged indignation and finger pointing. Frankly, we are seeing a strategic smoke and mirrors approach by the Obama administration used to both divert and assign blame. Lives are in the balance, and now more than ever, Americans need to take responsibility for their safety and their neighbors’.

Often it doesn't get the attention that the Mexican cartel drug violence gets in the media. Frankly, quite often the media doesn't pay all that much attention to the cartel related violence in general, and there are still too many Americans that do not appreciate the true threat represented by the encroachment of Mexican drug violence into our streets. So, while independent of the Mexican cartel, activities of transnational gangs like MS-13 and the 18th St. Gang represent a considerable threat to US citizens.

The Aryan Circle is a large, growing and dangerous white supremacist prison gang based primarily in Texas, though it has a presence in a number of other states. It is active both in prisons and on the streets. It is an extreme and violent group, with a long track record of murder, including the deaths of two police officers in Bastrop, Louisiana, in 2007.

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This month's issue covers:

• Officer Safety Item
• Maritime, Aviation and Cybersecurity Challenges
• Gang Resource List
• Emergency Management Training
• December Sale - Terrorism Book
• Free Resources
• Links of Interest
• Lighten Up
• Terrorism Calendar

The Homeland Security Report can be downloaded from the Homeland Security Group website at: http://www.homelandsecuritygroup.info

It didn't trouble Burhan Hassan's mother that her son had been spending more time at the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center, Minneapolis's largest mosque. A 17-year-old senior at Roosevelt High, Hassan and his family had fled civil war in Somalia when he was a toddler. Some of the other Somali immigrants in the Cedar-Riverside housing project where he lived got drawn into gangs with names like Murda Squad and Somali Mafia. But Hassan was getting good grades and talking about going to college, says his uncle Abdirizak Bihi. When the boy didn't come home from school on Nov.

Gangs, like death, war, and taxes, have always been with us.  They are likely to remain a feature of everyday life. For the most part, gangs have been rather low priority in terms of domestic policy. In America in particular, gangs and other street-level criminal organizations have oscillated between objects of benign neglect and sensationalized panic over criminal ‘super-predators’. The global and foreign policy implications of gangs have been rarely considered.

“Pakistan charged seven men in last year’s Mumbai attacks on Wednesday, its first indictment in a case being monitored by India and the United States to see if Islamabad makes good on promises to bring those responsible to justice.

Despite a crackdown in the months following the attacks, analysts say Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani militant group blamed for the three-day assault on the financial center that killed 166 people, remains active and largely untouched by Pakistani authorities.

Border zones are incubators of criminal instability and violence. Weak state presence and the lucrative drugs trade is combining to challenge state sovereignty in acute ways. Consider Mexico, where the northern frontier with the US and southern border with Guatemala are contested zones. The bloody center of gravity of Mexico’s drug cartels is the ‘plazas’, the drug smuggling corridors that link the borders.

Apatzingan, Mexico - They hand out Bibles to the poor in the rural foothills of the state of Michoacán. They forbid drug use, build schools and drainage systems, and declare themselves the protectors of women and children.

But this is no church group. This is La Familia Michoacána, Mexico's newest drug-trafficking gang, which now reigns over Mexico's methamphetamine trade. What began as a self-declared vigilante group doing "the work of God," now is seen as the nation's most violent criminal group.