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HOMELAND SECURITY

Setting Up a Siege? Antifa Has Armed Guards, Stockpiled Weapons at Portland Autonomous Zone By Tyler O’Neil,

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2020/12/09/setting-up-a-siege-antifa-has-armed-guards-stockpiled-weapons-at-portland-autonomous-zone-n1200966

The antifa occupiers at the autonomous zone that sprung up in Portland this week appear to be preparing for a siege. As PJ Media’s Victoria Taft reported, antifa squatters took over a house in Portland and when the government rightly evicted them, they set up an autonomous zone.

On Wednesday, Portland’s police chief reported that antifa has fortified barricades, stockpiled weapons, set up armed guards, and threatened to kill police officers. Both the police chief and the mayor have urged the rebels to lay down their arms, but it appears they are refusing to do so.

“We want a peaceful & safe resolution to the occupation of public space on N Mississippi Ave. We are greatly concerned about the fortification of barricades, stockpiling of weapons, armed sentries, attacks on journalists & threats to kill officers in graffiti in this public space,” Chief Chuck Lovell tweeted on Wednesday. “I encourage those involved to reach out to our demonstration liaisons so we can discuss a peaceful outcome.”

“We are aware of the stockpile of weapons and the presence of firearms. We are aware of the threats to the community, to media, to police. We’ve seen the attacks. The Portland Police will enforce the law and use force is necessary to restore order to the neighborhood,” Lovell added in a brief speech about the autonomous zone.

‘Bought by Beijing’: Pompeo Warns of China’s Threats to US Colleges

https://www.theepochtimes.com/bought-by-beijing-pompeo-warns-of-chinas-threats-to-american-colleges_3611289.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-09-5

American colleges are becoming “hooked on Chinese Communist Party cash,” while Beijing works to siphon cutting-edge U.S. research to China, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned on Dec. 9.

“So many of our colleges are bought by Beijing,” Pompeo said during a speech at the Georgia Institute of Technology, outlining Beijing’s aggressive efforts targeting U.S. research institutions. He added that the Chinese regime’s influence on American academics and students jeopardizes academic freedom, as it seeks to suppress critical voices on campus.

“Americans must know how the Chinese Communist Party is poisoning the well of our higher education institutions for its own ends, and how those actions degrade our freedoms and American national security. If we don’t educate ourselves, if we’re not honest about what’s taking place, we’ll get schooled by Beijing,” Pompeo warned.

The state secretary cited a recent investigation by the Department of Education, which found that universities received almost $1.5 billion in contracts and gifts from China from 2014 to 2020.

“We cannot allow this tyrannical regime to steal our stuff to build their military might, brainwash our people, or buy off our institutions to help them cover up these activities,” Pompeo said.

China honeytrap spy targeted Eric Swalwell as her useful fool By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/12/china_honeytrap_spy_chose_eric_swalwell_as_her_targetted_useful_fool.html

Rep. Eric Swalwell is famous for yelling about Russian influence with outrageous claims against President Trump, even calling for a ‘presidential crimes commission,’ but based on a year-long investigation from Axios, he’s the one who has some spy problems, and they ought to be embarrassing at least. He was China’s idea of the perfect fool.

According to a year-long investigation from Axios:

A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a yearlong investigation.

…and…

The woman at the center of the operation, a Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang, targeted up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country who had the potential to make it big on the national stage.

Through campaign fundraising, extensive networking, personal charisma, and romantic or sexual relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors, Fang was able to gain proximity to political power, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials and one former elected official.
Even though U.S. officials do not believe Fang received or passed on classified information, the case “was a big deal, because there were some really, really sensitive people that were caught up” in the intelligence network, a current senior U.S. intelligence official said.
Private but unclassified information about government officials — such as their habits, preferences, schedules, social networks, and even rumors about them — is a form of political intelligence. Collecting such information is a key part of what foreign intelligence agencies do.

Among the most significant targets of Fang’s efforts was Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).

Biden’s DHS: Department of Homeland Surrender Alejandro Mayorkas, architect of DACA, picked by Biden to head DHS. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/under-biden-dhs-would-become-department-homeland-michael-cutler/

On May 5, 2005 the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims conducted a hearing on the topic, New ”Dual Missions” Of The Immigration Enforcement Agencies.

I was one of the four witnesses who testified at that hearing.

One paragraph in particular from Chairman Hostettler’s statement at that hearing back then, is of particular significance today, as we consider what will happen if Joe Biden is sworn in as President of the United States:

The 9/11 terrorists all came to the United States without weapons or contraband—Added customs enforcement would not have stopped 9/11 from happening. What might have foiled al Qaeda’s plan was additional immigration focus, vetting and enforcement. And so what is needed is recognition that, one, immigration is a very important national security issue that cannot take a back seat to customs or agriculture. Two, immigration is a very complex issue, and immigration enforcement agencies need experts in immigration enforcement. And three, the leadership of our immigration agencies should be shielded from political pressures to act in a way which could compromise the Nation’s security.

Now we come to Biden’s choice for the vital position of Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. Remember Biden has pledged to create a massive legalization program for unknown millions of illegal aliens. The DHS enforces and administers America’s immigration laws and thus would bear the responsibility for administering this ill-conceived program.

I addressed my concerns about this amnesty in my earlier piece: “Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ is Bunk.”

Are the 1,000 Chinese Science Spies Who Fled Trump Crackdown Waiting for Beijing Biden? Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/12/are-1000-chinese-science-spies-who-fled-trump-daniel-greenfield/

Don’t worry. They’ve got their return trip tickets ready and waiting in case ‘Beijing Biden’ ends up in the White House.

A top Justice Department official said more than 1,000 foreign researchers affiliated with the Chinese military left the United States following a crackdown this summer that resulted in half a dozen members of China’s People’s Liberation Army studying in the U.S. being arrested and charged with lying on their student visa applications.

They include the nice sorts of folks who were researching how to rob our country of all its secrets.

One researcher was under orders to study the exact layout of a medical lab in order to replicate it in China, federal agents alleged. Another stole software code that his adviser at the University of Virginia had developed over two decades, the government alleged.

After the Chinese government became aware of the FBI interest in these individuals, Chinese diplomats quickly warned Chinese researchers about the FBI probe and urged them to wipe clean their electronic devices and social media chats, he said.

The Biden Terrorism Account Small investments help prevent major distractions later on.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-terrorism-account-11607038651?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Two decades after 9/11, Washington understandably is concerned more with great-power competition than terrorism. But a new report from the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) is a reminder that terror groups remain a global scourge.

First, some good news: In 2019 the death toll from terrorism around the world fell for the fifth year in a row, according to IEP’s Global Terrorism Index. Deaths declined 59% between 2014 and last year, but nearly 14,000 people still died in terrorist incidents. While far-right political terrorism is on the rise, the report notes that it’s generally less lethal than Islamist terrorism and “the absolute number of far-right attacks remains low.”

One reason for declining deaths is that the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State made the world safer. The report attributes 942 killings over 339 attacks to the group in 2019. It marks the first time that ISIS has been responsible for fewer than 1,000 deaths since it became active in 2013.

“Despite the decrease in activity from ISIL in the Middle East and North Africa, ISIL’s affiliate groups remain active across the world, and have become especially prominent in sub-Saharan Africa,” according to the report, which uses an alternative acronym for ISIS. “The expansion of ISIL affiliates into sub-Saharan Africa led to a surge in terrorism in many countries in the region. Seven of the ten countries with the largest increase in terrorism were in sub-Saharan Africa.”

China Is National Security Threat No. 1 Resisting Beijing’s attempt to reshape and dominate the world is the challenge of our generation. :John Ratcliffe

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-is-national-security-threat-no-1-11607019599?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Ratcliffe is U.S. director of national intelligence.

As Director of National Intelligence, I am entrusted with access to more intelligence than any member of the U.S. government other than the president. I oversee the intelligence agencies, and my office produces the President’s Daily Brief detailing the threats facing the country. If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point, it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.

The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party.

I call its approach of economic espionage “rob, replicate and replace.” China robs U.S. companies of their intellectual property, replicates the technology, and then replaces the U.S. firms in the global marketplace.

Take Sinovel. In 2018 a federal jury found the Chinese wind-turbine manufacturer guilty of stealing trade secrets from American Superconductor. Penalties were imposed but the damage was done. The theft resulted in the U.S. company losing more than $1 billion in shareholder value and cutting 700 jobs. Today Sinovel sells wind turbines world-wide as if it built a legitimate business through ingenuity and hard work rather than theft.

The Terrorist Attacks You’ve Never Heard Of By Isaac Schorr

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/the-terrorist-attacks-youve-never-heard-of/

A malicious strain of cyber warfare is targeting our health-care system.

T he American health-care system is under siege. Not only by a deadly novel coronavirus, unleashed by the evil and inept Chinese Communist Party, but also by cyberterrorists whose acts of aggression are just as condemnable and deadly as those of a suicide bomber or hijacker.

On October 28, the University of Vermont (UV) Health Center in Burlington was crippled by an attack on its systems. At the time, the nation’s eyes were set — solely and squarely — on the upcoming election. Thankfully, Ellen Barry and Nicole Perlroth at the New York Times have done yeoman’s work reporting on the attack and its aftermath. So now that the election is behind us, we can identify, name, and address this new kind of national-security threat.

“We expect panic,” declared one hacker in the run-up to the attack. To be sure, for staff working the day the attack came, panic set in when workstations were suddenly rendered inoperable, as were the backup computers. So were the pneumatic tubes used for transporting blood samples and test results, and — worst of all — the electronic medical-record system, which was only restored on November 22, nearly a month after the attack.

The attack on the UV Health Center is not the first act of cyber terror on U.S. health-care infrastructure. The Russian group believed to be responsible for the Burlington attack has, per the FBI, made somewhere around $61 million in ransoms over a 21-month period in 2018 and 2019. In early October, eResearchTechnology, a Philadelphia firm that sells software used in clinical trials — including for certain coronavirus vaccines — was locked out of its data by ransomware — a kind of malware that remains in place until the hackers who have sicced it on you are paid. Hospitals in California, Oregon, Montana, Tennessee, and upstate New York have been similarly afflicted by hackers, who have even gone so far as to release patient data — Social Security numbers, dates of birth, ages, hiring dates, and contact details — on the dark web.

What a Biden Administration Means for Border Security by Chris Farrell

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16795/biden-administration-border-security

“Whenever Obama was in there, drug cartels were so bad that it didn’t seem like anybody was fighting the drug cartels… the cartels ruled everything. They ran the dope, they trafficked the young girls, and there were so many more killings.” — Border resident, US Southwest.

“Trump had more Customs and Border Patrol agents at the border. Cattle crossings from Mexico were checked, inspected and limited. The cartels have used cattle to move dope for years. Now they’ll go back to moving cattle and laundering money back through the crossing here [Santa Teresa, NM] with less law enforcement. It will be a serious step backwards.” — Border resident, US Southwest.

The Americans paying the very high price for Biden/Harris reckless open borders policy are in border communities. Biden’s reversals spell doom for overloaded (and closed) hospitals, schools, public housing, and courts. Remember: Biden (and the rest of the Democratic presidential field) promised free healthcare to all illegal aliens.

U.S. Customs Service Officer Patricia Cramer, president of the Arizona chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union, revealed in an interview that persons crossing into the United States from Mexico are not health-screened in any way. No temperature taken, no cursory visual exam, nothing.

Remember: In “COVID-world,” you cannot go to the gym, and you must “social distance” in absurd ways — but the border is open, and no one is screened.

A Biden administration means two dramatic and dangerous reversals on Trump policies that will endanger the American public: 1. Termination of President Trump’s signature 2016 campaign issue — The Wall; and 2. Loosening of immigration restrictions.

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1,” Biden told National Public Radio earlier this year. “I’m going to make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it.”

Biden is not really promising any border protection at all. It sounds good, but it is a hollow falsehood. Most of the American public does not know about or has forgotten the $30 billion dollar disaster known as “SBInet.” We have been down this “high-tech virtual wall” road before. The only winners were defense contractors. The virtual wall does nothing to deter or prevent unlawful entry across the border. It merely provides surveillance and recording of the illegal activity. Thousands of hours of video recordings of such crossings are available on the internet right now. Technology contractors are encouraged that a Biden administration would like to continue watching and recording millions of people entering the country illegally.

US Urgently Needs to Challenge China’s Chokehold on Rare Earth Materials by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16754/china-rare-earth-materials

The Chinese Communist Party’s near monopoly on most of these 17 rare earth materials (REM) is by now a US national security vulnerability of enormous strategic importance…. China’s October 13 decision to curtail the export of these vitally needed rare earth materials should serve as an urgent warning to the U.S. to begin developing an independent supply chain of these materials.

The Defense Department has not acted with the sense of urgency demanded by the president…. Consequently, if US-China relations plummet to the point where conflict appears imminent, America’s military would be disadvantaged should the Chinese decide to sever exports of REM to the US market.

The US would do well… by quickly decoupling its economy from dependency on China for rare earth materials — and if possible, from everything else.

One of China’s most significant advantages in the race to dominate future hi-tech industrial production, among just about everything else, is its chokehold on “rare earth materials” (REM). These are materials — and the raw minerals from which they are extracted and processed — vital to the manufacture, for instance, of advanced weapons, fossil-free alternative energy systems, communication devices, computer products, and microelectronic networks.

It is an area in which China has already established dominance . The Chinese Communist Party’s near monopoly on most of these 17 rare earth materials is by now a US national security vulnerability of enormous strategic importance. China’s October 13 decision to curtail the export of these vitally needed rare earth materials should serve as an urgent warning to the US to seriously begin developing an independent supply chain of these materials.