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HOMELAND SECURITY

The Jihad Plot Against New York City You Heard Nothing About By Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2020/09/26/the-jihad-plot-against-new-york-city-you-heard-nothing-about-n972477

“Let it be clear, I am against America. America is my enemy.”

This was written in an online chat by a man in Texas, Jaylyn Christopher Molina, who has been charged with conspiring with another American, Kristopher Sean Matthews of Elgin, South Carolina, to commit “Netflix worthy” terror attacks at Trump Tower and the New York Stock Exchange, which they thought would gain them “rock star status.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray claimed Thursday that white supremacists were the biggest terror threat the country faced: “Within the domestic terrorism bucket, the category as a whole, racially motivated violent extremism is, I think, the biggest bucket within that larger group. And within the racially motivated violent extremist bucket, people subscribing to some kind of white supremacist-type ideology is certainly the biggest chunk of that.”

With antifa and Black Lives Matter burning down city after city and threatening and intimidating Americans on an increasingly frequent basis, while white supremacist terror has been conspicuously absent, Wray’s assessment was curious in the extreme and ignored not just the obvious threat from the Left, but the ongoing terror threat from the stalwart allies of antifa and BLM: Islamic jihadists.

After all, antifa and Black Lives Matter would do nothing but applaud the desire of Matthews and Molina to “hit government centers.” They could have been antifa operatives when they talked of hitting the headquarters of the CIA, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Molina wrote: “We need to stick together, we need to defeat them, we need to take a lot of casualties, a lot of numbers.” Matthews stated: “I would hit places like that to send a message.” Would an antifa member have stood up and told them that they must not talk that way, but stick to peaceful protest?

Pompeo: Chinese Consulate in NYC Is Espionage Hub By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pompeo-chinese-consulate-in-nyc-is-espionage-hub/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the Chinese consulate in New York City is a center for espionage, in comments to the New York Post on Thursday.

Pompeo’s remarks came after the Justice Department charged an NYPD officer on Monday with spying for China. The officer, Baimadajie Angwang, is accused of arranging invitations for Chinese officials to NYPD events, in order to gain access to senior ranks of the NYPD.  Angwang is an ethnic Tibetan who also gathered information for China on Tibetans in the city.

The Justice Department alleged that Angwang was in contact with at least two consulate officials. Pompeo said there would likely be additional arrests of agents connected with the consulate.

Officials in the consulate are “engaged in activities where they’re crossing the line from normal diplomacy to the kinds of things that would be more akin to what spies are doing,” Pompeo told the Post.

In addition to the New York consulate, Pompeo warned that China’s spying efforts may extend to its United Nations personnel.

An October Surprise in the Waiting President Trump should take his shot for a hat trick on terrorism. By Lloyd Billingsley

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/16/an-october-surprise-in-the-waiting/

At the Republican National Convention last month, Carl and Marsha Mueller told the nation how in 2013 their daughter Kayla was kidnapped by Islamic State terrorists, tortured, and repeatedly raped by the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. During this 18-month ordeal, Kayla’s father explained, the government let them down, but “if Donald Trump had been president when Kayla was captured, she would be here today.”

That is uncertain, but another reality is undeniable.

Under President Trump, the U.S. military set up Task Force 814, named for Kayla’s August 14 birthday. In Operation Kayla Mueller last October, the task force took out al-Baghdadi. The ISIS chieftain was not the only terrorist in Trump’s sights. 

As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the RNC, “the president approved a strike that killed the Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani. This is the man most responsible for the murder and maiming of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Christians across the Middle East.” That went down on January 3, but President Trump still has unfinished business on the terrorism front. 

On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, U.S. troops prepared for deployment to Afghanistan. U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan, a self-described “soldier of Allah,” shouted “Allahu Akbar” and opened fire on the unarmed Americans. Hasan killed 13, including, Private Francheska Velez, 21 and pregnant. The soldier of Allah wounded 42 others, including Sargeant Alonzo Lunsford, an African American who took seven bullets from Hasan. 

The killer was never described as a racist, and the Obama Administration passed off the mass murder as “workplace violence,” not even gun violence. Vice President Joe Biden issued a 58-word statement expressing sympathy for the families of “the brave soldiers who fell today.” No word from the vice president about who killed the brave soldiers, in the “senseless tragedy.” 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) lamented the “unspeakable tragedy,” and “the losses of those who were killed.” On the other hand, the San Francisco Democrat failed to number the victims or name any of them. Pelosi also failed to call out Hasan and offered no thoughts on what might have motivated “the gunman” to murder 13 Americans.

Front Line Dispatch from China’s Economic War Against the U.S. We are engaged in an economic war with the CCP and the future of our nation is more important than any company’s quarterly earnings report. By Curtis Ellis

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/16/front-line-dispatch-from-chinas-economic-war-against-the-u-s/

The Chinese Communist Party’s economic war against the United States continues.

The CCP is preparing to launch a major campaign to fleece American investors of billions of dollars to fund its drive for global hegemony.

And it’s getting help from some of the biggest names on Wall Street, a virtual fifth column for the brutal Marxist-Leninist regime.

Here’s the latest dispatch from the front: Ant Technology Group (Ant Group), formerly known as Ant Financial Services Group, is a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, the e-commerce giant that made Jack Ma one of the world’s richest men. 

Ant provides financial technology (fintech) products and services. It’s expected soon to issue an initial public offering in Hong Kong and Shanghai to raise $30 billion—the largest IPO in history.

It’s important to reiterate the risks involved with investing in any CCP-controlled or affiliated company—which means any Chinese company. Even “private” Chinese companies are beholden to the Chinese government according to its National Intelligence Law and security laws and regulations.

When President Trump barred the pension funds of civilian and military employees of the federal government from investing in index funds that include Chinese companies, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien explained: 

The financial impact of this risk is significant: scandals involving Chinese companies in recent years have cost investors billions of dollars. In addition, the Chinese Government currently prevents companies with Chinese operations listed on U.S. exchanges from complying with applicable U.S. securities law, leaving investors without the benefit of important protections.

The Obama-Biden Administration struck the deal that exempts Chinese companies from U.S. securities laws. 

The Complex and International Fight for America’s Future By Gary Bernsten

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/12/the-complex-and-international-fight-for-americas-future/

Hugo Chavez understood fully that he was poisoning inner-city black youth with 26 tons of cocaine monthly, while simultaneously funding Black Lives Matter.

Recent sustained street protests, escalating intimidation, and violence by the Democratic Party’s leftist Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa activists have reached an untenable level of threat. Americans of all political parties, races, and faiths need to examine closely what is transpiring on America’s streets and stand with the founding principles of freedom, equality, and opportunity enshrined in our founding documents and improved upon by succeeding generations. 

America, the envy of the world, is under full assault by leftists determined to destroy it. The movement to defund the police is the first step in the establishment of a new order by anti-American radicals. The answer to that ambition must be no. 

As a veteran of the United States Air Force and a retired senior operations officer and chief of station in the CIA’s Clandestine Service, I normally write and lecture on national security, terrorism, and counter narcotics. What has transpired on America’s streets is well beyond domestic party politics. It has become a national security threat. 

There is an effort afoot to destroy the very foundation of American governance. 

Homegrown Radicals with Venezuelan Drug Money

Iran: “American Soil is Now Within the Range of Iranian Bombs” by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16437/iran-us-bomb-target

One day after the United Nations Security Council voted in favor of lifting the arms embargo on Iran, for instance, the ruling mullahs unveiled a ballistic missile that reportedly can reach the United States.

The report [by Iran’s state-controlled Afkar News] boasted about the damage that the Iranian regime could inflict on the US: “By sending a military satellite into space, Iran now has shown that it can target all American territory; the Iranian parliament had previously warned [the US] that an electromagnetic nuclear attack on the United States would likely kill 90 percent of Americans.”

The report also threatened the EU, which voted in favor of lifting the arms embargo against Iran: “The same type of ballistic missile technology used to launch the satellite could carry nuclear, chemical or even biological weapons to wipe Israel off the map, hit US bases and allies in the region and US facilities, and target NATO even in the far west of Europe.”

For Iran’s ruling mullahs, compromises and appeasement means weakness. The more the international community gives the mullahs, the more the regime apparently feels empowered to pursue its malign behavior.

Those who advocate pursuing a policy of appeasement toward the ruling mullahs as a means of changing the Iranian regime’s behavior fail to understand that the more the international community will give the mullahs, the more Tehran will become belligerent and emboldened. One day after the United Nations Security Council voted in favor of lifting the arms embargo on Iran, for instance, the ruling mullahs unveiled a ballistic missile that reportedly can reach the United States.

The headline of a report by Iran’s state-controlled Afkar News read in Farsi, “American Soil Is Now Within the Range of Iranian Bombs”. The report boasted about the damage that the Iranian regime could inflict on the US:

“By sending a military satellite into space, Iran now has shown that it can target all American territory; the Iranian parliament had previously warned [the US] that an electromagnetic nuclear attack on the United States would likely kill 90 percent of Americans.”

How Not to Fight Terrorism By Sam Westrop

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/fighting-terrorism-focus-on-extremists-radicalizing-next-generation/

Many efforts to prevent terrorism focus on terrorists who have already embraced violence, and not on the extremists who engender this violence and are busy radicalizing the next generation.

Despite media attention currently being focused firmly elsewhere, it is desperately important to remember that multiple terrorist attacks by both Islamist and far-right fanatics have killed and injured numerous Americans over the last year, and there is certainly no shortage of other terrorist plots in the works. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that in March the Trump administration quietly brought back the Obama administration’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program, three years after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) effectively shut it down.

While an enormous amount of national media outrage accompanied the initial closure of CVE, no media outlet seems to have noticed that it has now been re-established, except for two Qatari regime-linked publications, the Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera. Both outlets argue that the new program, named Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention, or TVTP, is identical to the CVE program it has replaced. They are right. The only difference is a shiny new name. And as with its predecessor, it is deeply flawed.

Trump’s TVTP, Obama’s CVE, and countless other programs countering extremism across the globe all operate on a long series of faulty premises. They operate without data or metrics for success. And they carefully avoid facts that are patently uncomfortable.

Chinese UCLA Researcher Arrested After Destroying Evidence In FBI Investigation, Throwing Hard Drive In Dumpster By Adrianna San Marco

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/31/chinese-ucla-researcher-arrested-after-destroying-evidence-in-fbi-investigation/

A Chinese researcher at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) was arrested Friday in a court hearing amid investigation in his ties to China, including possible leaking of sensitive software to the communist country. Earlier this year Guan Lei threw a damaged hard drive into a dumpster near his apartment, and attempted to flee the U.S.

Guan conducted research at UCLA since 2018, working with a professor  to develop “an optimization algorithm” and apply it to machine learning, the affidavit said.

Two days after being interviewed by the FBI, Guan attempted to board a flight from LAX to China, but was barred by Customs agents from the leaving the country. Six days later, FBI agents staking out his apartment saw Guan pull a computer hard drive from his sock and throw it into a trash can, wrote Agent Timothy D. Hurt.

The court affidavit states that when the FBI found the hard drive it “was irreparably damaged and that all previous data associated with the hard drive appears to have been removed deliberately and by force.”

A statement given by the the Department of Justice reveals that Lei was initially being investigated “for possibly transferring sensitive U.S. software or technical data to China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) and falsely denying his association with the Chinese military – the People’s Liberation Army – in connection with his 2018 visa application and in interviews with federal law enforcement.”

‘Diversity’ and ‘Inclusion’ Come Back to Bite a Minnesota University By Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2020/08/30/diversity-and-inclusion-come-back-to-bite-a-minnesota-university-n865428

In yet another of the seemingly endless string of jihad attacks and plots in the United States that the media almost universally ignores, Tnuza Jamal Hassan pleaded guilty Wednesday to federal terrorism charges. Back in January 2018, the winsome Ms. Hassan set a series of fires on the campus of St. Catherine University in Minnesota, after exhorting Muslim students to “join the jihad in fighting” and join jihad terror groups such as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or al-Shabaab. Students at St. Catherine University were shocked: but their school is “diverse!” How could this possibly have happened to them?

Hassan herself gave numerous indications that she was a hardened, convinced jihad terrorist. She said that she had set the fires in revenge for supposed American atrocities on “Muslim land.” She wrote a letter to her roommates that police said contained “radical ideas about supporting Muslims and bringing back the caliphate.” She told investigators that “she wanted the school to burn to the ground and her intent was to hurt people.” There was a daycare center in one of the buildings where Hassan set fires; eight adults and 33 children were there at the time.

One student said: “I never expected it. She was a first-year student, too, and that is especially scary.” Why would a first-year student setting a series of fires around campus be scarier than a third-year student setting them? The student did not explain, but if St. Catherine University is as much of a far-left indoctrination center as other universities and colleges are today, maybe the explanation is self-evident: by the third year, students are fully indoctrinated in hatred and violence.

China-connected Tencent’s tentacles extend to NASA, too By James Lowe

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/chinaconnected_tencents_tentacles_extend_to_nasa_too_.html

President Trump has been leading the U.S. against the Chinese theft of  American data and intellectual property.  The administration has ramped up its pressure campaign by threatening Gen Z social media platforms like TikTok, which observers fear could funnel data to China, and closing the Chinese consulate in Houston for being a source of espionage and intellectual property theft.

Now Trump has taken the unprecedented step of shutting down WeChat, which is owned by the Chinese company Tencent.  As suggested by the president’s executive order, Tencent, like many other regime-connected firms, is a threat because of its apps’ reported collection of large swaths of personal data.  It isn’t in the best interest of the nation’s security to allow the Chinese government easy access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information, which often occurs more than they realize.  

To protect national security, Trump is taking a harder stance than past administrations in the hope that it quells the growing Chinese threat.  Now Congress is doubling down to help him eliminate further threats that this adversary poses to American security.   Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) has introduced two new amendments to the latest NASA Authorization Act, which would require background checks of NASA’s private contractors to ensure that there aren’t any significant connections to China.  These amendments are needed now more than ever — especially when considering Tencent’s proximity to NASA.