'Sea drone warfare has arrived. The U.S. is floundering'

 The U.S. Navy's efforts to build a fleet of unmanned vessels are faltering because the Pentagon remains wedded to big shipbuilding projects, according to some officials and company executives, exposing a weakness as sea drones reshape naval warfare.

The lethal effectiveness of sea drones has been demonstrated in the Black Sea where Ukraine has deployed remote-controlled speed boats packed with explosives to sink Russian frigates and minesweepers since late 2022.

Yemeni-backed Houthi rebels have employed similar vessels against commercial shipping in the Red Sea in recent months, albeit without success.

These tactics have caught the attention of the Pentagon, which is incorporating lessons from Ukraine and the Red Sea into its plans to counter China's rising naval power in the Pacific, Pentagon Spokesman Eric Pahon told Reuters.

In a signal of the Pentagon's intent, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced an initiative in August - named Replicator - to deploy hundreds of small, relatively cheap air and sea drones within the next 18-24 months to match China's growing military threat.

This public show of commitment masks years of hesitation by the U.S. Navy to build a fleet of unmanned vessels despite repeated warnings this was the future of maritime warfare, according to interviews with a dozen people with direct knowledge of the U.S. sea drone plans, including Navy officers, Pentagon officials, and sea drone company executives.

Two Navy sources and three executives at sea drone manufacturers said the biggest impediment to progress has been a Department of Defense (DoD) budget process that prioritizes big ships and submarines built by legacy defense contractors.

"At some point, you hit the D.C. problem," said Philipp Stratmann, CEO at Ocean Power Technologies (OPT), a New Jersey-based firm that supplies the U.S. Navy with the WAM-V, an autonomous surface drone.

"You hit the fact that there is a military industrial complex that has the best lobbyists and knows exactly how the money flows and contracting works in the DOD."

A Navy spokesperson said it "acquires capabilities based on fleet demand signals", referring to the messages headquarters receive from commanders at sea.

The Navy has a budget of $172 million this year for small and medium-sized underwater sea drones, falling to $101.8 million in 2025, the spokesperson said. That's a tiny fraction of the $63 billion Navy procurement budget proposed by President Joe Biden's administration for 2025.

Military sea drones can range from missile-armed speed boats to minehunting miniature submarines and solar-powered sailboats equipped with high-definition spy cameras, underwater sensors and loudspeakers used to holler warnings at enemy ships.

But when the Navy has deployed sea drones on reconnaissance missions in recent years, it hasn't always had the fleet expertise to use them, the two Navy sources said, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.

There aren't enough Navy sailors trained to pilot drones or to analyze vast swathes of data sent back from the craft's cameras and sensors, the sources said.

The spokesperson said the Navy was in the process of improving its data collection and analysis from sensors.

Pentagon spokesman Pahon said the DoD has been "laser-focused on accelerating innovation over the last three years", including the use of sea drones.

Acknowledging budget challenges, Pahon said the Pentagon was using innovative ways to cross "the valley of death", a term used to describe the torturous approval process new inventions travel through to be purchased in large quantities.

REPLICATOR

One example Pahon cited was the Replicator program: the short-term, $500 million-a-year project is designed to cut through bureaucracy and fast track the deployment of thousands of cheap aerial and sea drones.

These drones will be used to match China's rapidly-growing air and naval power in the Asia-Pacific region, the Pentagon's Hicks said at the project's launch in August. She said Replicator is being funded mainly by reallocating funds from the existing Pentagon budget.

As part of the initiative, the Pentagon in January issued a solicitation for private companies to deliver small sea drones to the Navy, demanding production capacity of 120 vessels per year, with deployment beginning in April 2025.

On Monday, the Pentagon

said the Switchblade

-600, an aerial loitering munition made by AeroVironment Inc , was the first weapon publicly confirmed to be included in the Replicator initiative. The program's first tranche also includes undisclosed maritime surface products, other aerial drones and counter-drone systems (c-UAS), the Pentagon said.

Duane Fotheringham, president of unmanned systems at Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), the largest U.S. military shipbuilder, acknowledged the Pentagon and Navy had shown their "intent" to accelerate the deployment of sea drones but he said the industry wanted to see long-term funding in the defense budget.

"We hear the demand signal … but we all have to work together very closely to understand what that demand is and when it will be available," Fotheringham told Reuters.

At a cost ranging between $1 million and $3 million apiece, according to Navy and defense contractor sources, drones offer a relatively cheap and fast way to expand the Navy's fleet, especially as several large traditional shipbuilding projects - like a new class of frigate warships - are running years behind schedule.

The U.S. is testing using robot ships in active combat scenarios. But their more immediate use is for missions that are too costly and numerous for manned naval fleets.

This includes maritime surveillance, minehunting, and protecting critical undersea infrastructure, like gas pipelines and fiber-optic cables, four drone companies told Reuters.

Swarms of small sea drones could also act as a shield for valuable crewed assets like aircraft carriers and submarines, and tangle up troop-carrying ships in the event China tries to invade Taiwan, said Bryan Clark, an advisor to the Navy on autonomous craft and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute - a think tank headquartered in Washington.

Clark estimates the Navy has around 100 small drones for use on the ocean surface and another 100 underwater drones, while China has a similar-sized autonomous force that is growing fast. The Navy spokesperson declined to comment on how many drones it has in operation.

"Ukraine has shown how effective they can be and how they can be employed in current operations," Clark said. "The U.S. Navy needs to embrace that lesson and field combat (sea drones) right away."

The Navy's 5th fleet, which operates out of Bahrain, has been testing unmanned vessels for three years, led by its Task Force 59 unit.

The project has deployed surveillance drones built by private firms, including startups, as well as those backed by defense heavyweights like Lockheed Martin and HII.

"The situation in the Red Sea gives the work of Task Force 59 added urgency and we look forward to fielding solutions to help counter Houthi malign behaviour," Colin Corridan, commander of the task force, told Reuters.

MISSILE TEST

In October, the Navy carried out its first live missile test from an unmanned speedboat in the Arabian Peninsula.

The T38 Devil Ray, built by Florida-based sea drone firm MARTAC, successfully launched a miniature missile system to destroy a target boat, with a human operator ashore giving the order, according to a Navy announcement and video.

MARTAC's Chief Marketing Officer, Stephen Ferretti, referred questions about the operation to the Navy.

The use of unmanned vessels was expanded to the Navy's 4th Fleet in central America last year where they have been used to crack down on human smuggling off the northern coast of Haiti.

One of the companies operating there is Saildrone, a California-based firm that makes wind-, solar- and diesel-powered autonomous vessels that collect images and data with cameras and sensors.

Saildrone has circumnavigated Washington's funding politics. Because the company operates and maintains its own vessels, and charges a service fee for the data they collect, the Navy can pay to use the drones out of its operating expenses rather than procurement budget.

Saildrone launched the Surveyor, its largest vessel, which has been tailored for the military, at an event in March attended by Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti.

The drone firm, which also supplies coast guards and ocean survey departments, has a fleet of 130 vessels and is building several more every month, said Richard Jenkins, the company's founder.

"Right now, we are struggling to keep up with demand," Jenkins told Reuters in an interview. He declined to comment on how much Saildrone charges the Navy.

Ocean Aero builds the autonomous Triton vessel, which can move on the surface or underwater to collect data and hunt for mines using sensors. The company, which is backed by Lockheed Martin, opened a 63,000 feet manufacturing facility in Gulfport, Mississippi last October that is capable of churning out 150 Tritons a year.

Lockheed Martin did not respond to a request for comment.

HII was awarded a contract last October to build nine small underwater drones for the U.S. Navy's Lionfish program, with the potential for this to rise to 200 vehicles over the next five years. The contract could total $347 million, although that is far from guaranteed.

The Lionfish program - which is focused on the Indo-Pacific where the U.S. is vying for control with China - is based on HII's Remus 300, a minehunting drone that can be launched like a torpedo from a crewed ship or submarine.

These programs are proof that the Pentagon is trying to move faster to deploy sea drones, spokesman Pahon told Reuters.

"We know we need to keep pushing to stay ahead," he said.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/insight-sea-drone-warfare-arrived-165029690.html

Lead to universal, long-lasting flu shot

 Duke researchers have opened a new avenue in the attack against influenza viruses by creating a vaccine that encourages the immune system to target a portion of the virus surface that is less variable.

Their approach worked well in experiments with mice and ferrets and may lead to more broadly-protective influenza vaccines and less reliance on an annual shot tailored to that year's versions of the virus. Even with vaccines, influenza kills about a half-million people each year around the world.

This new vaccine approach, described May 1 in the journal Science Translational Medicine, is part of a 5-year-old effort to develop a longer-lasting universal flu vaccine that would be able to foil all versions of the virus.

Influenza strains are referred to by a shorthand code, H5N1 for example, that describes which flavors of two particular surface proteins it carries. The H (sometimes HA), is hemagglutinin, a lollipop-shaped protein that binds to a receptor on a human cell, the first step toward getting the virus inside the cell. The N is neuraminidase, a second protein that enables a newly made virus to escape the host cell and go on to infect other cells.

"On the virus particle, there's five to 10 times more hemagglutinin than neuraminidase," said Nicholas Heaton, PhD, an associate professor of molecular genetics and microbiology at Duke who led the research. "If we took your blood to see if are you likely to be protected from a strain of flu, we'd be measuring what your antibodies do to hemagglutinin as the best metric of what's likely to happen to you. The strongest correlates of protection have to do with hemagglutinin-directed immunity."

Vaccines teach the immune system to react to pieces of the virus that have been specifically tailored to the versions of influenza that are expected to be the most threatening in the coming flu season. The reason we need a new flu shot every fall isn't because the vaccine wears out; it's because the influenza virus is constantly changing the surface proteins that vaccines target.

Flu shots -- and immune systems -- tend to target the bulb-like "head" of hemagglutinin rather than the stalk. But the details of that head region also change constantly, creating an arms race between vaccine design and viruses. The stalk, by comparison, changes much less.

"A number of groups have gone through and experimentally mutagenized the whole hemagglutinin and asked 'which areas can change and still allow the hemagglutinin to function?'" Heaton explained. "And the answer is, you can't really change the stalk and expect it to continue to function."

So the Duke team sought to design proteins that elicit an immune response more focused on the stalk rather than the head. "The virus has evolved to have the immune system recognize these (features on the head region). But these are the shapes the virus can change. That is an insidious strategy," Heaton said.

Using gene-editing, they created more than 80,000 variations of the hemagglutinin protein with changes in one portion right on the top of the head domain and then tested a vaccine filled with a mixture of these variations on mice and ferrets.

Because of the broad variety of head conformations being presented to the immune system and the relative consistency of the stalks, these vaccines produced more antibodies to the stalk portion of hemagglutinin in response. "The opportunity for the immune system to see that (head portion) over and over and over like it needs to is compromised because there's diversity there," Heaton said.

In lab tests and animals, the experimental vaccine caused the immune system to respond more strongly to stalk regions because they stayed consistent. This boosted the immune response to the vaccine overall, and in some cases, even improved antibody responses to the head region of the protein as well.

"Antibodies against the stalk work differently," Heaton said. "Their mechanism of protection is not necessarily to block the first step of infection. So then our idea was, 'What if we can come up with a vaccine that gives us both? What if we can get good head antibodies and at the same time also get stalk antibodies in case the vaccine selection was wrong, or if there's a pandemic?'"

"Essentially, the paper says, Yes, we can accomplish that," Heaton said.

After a shot of the highly variant vaccine was administered in some experiments, 100 percent of the mice avoided illness or death from what should have been a lethal dose of flu viruses.

The next steps of the research will attempt to understand whether the same level of immunity can be achieved by presenting fewer than 80,000 hemagglutinin variants.

This research was funded in part with a contract from the NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (75N93019C00050). It also involved the use of the Duke Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, which received partial support for construction from the NIH/NIAID (UC6 AI058607)

Zhaochen Luo and Nicholas Heaton have a patent on the methods used to create large antigen libraries for this study.

Journal Reference:

1. Zhaochen Luo, Hector A. Miranda, Kaitlyn N. Burke, M. Ariel Spurrier, Madison Berry, Erica L. Stover, Rachel L. Spreng, Greg Waitt, Erik J. Soderblom, Andrew N. Macintyre, Kevin Wiehe, Nicholas S. Heaton. Vaccination with antigenically complex hemagglutinin mixtures confers broad protection from influenza disease. Science Translational Medicine, 2024; 16 (745) DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.adj4685

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/05/240501152953.htm

Marxist Health Officials Want You Committed

 By J.B. Shurk

One of the more insidious features of Marxism’s manipulation of language is its stigmatization of opposing points of view as some form of mental disorder.  Opposition to “gay marriage” is said to be a “sign” of homophobia.  Distrusting Islamic terrorists who celebrate 9/11 and shout, “Death to America,” is a “symptom” of Islamophobia.  Wanting the federal government to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law “reveals” underlying xenophobia.  Not wanting biological men to force their way into ladies’ locker-rooms and showers suggests that a person “suffers” from dreaded transphobia.  

Notice that all these purported psychiatric disorders are categorized as “phobias,” or more plainly, as “irrational fears.”  Marxists routinely use loaded medical language not only to demonize or disgrace their foes but also to transform any political disagreement into something that it is not.  Respecting marriage as a millennia-long institution that celebrates the bond between one man and one woman has nothing to do with being afraid of homosexuals.  Being prepared to defend yourself against those who want you dead does not mean your worries are unfounded.  Insisting that foreigners immigrate to the United States lawfully is entirely rational.  Ensuring that your mother, wife, sisters, or daughters are safe from strange (and frequently dangerous) adult men intent on intruding into their private spaces requires selfless courage.  Still, because Marxists depend upon distortions of reality to instigate cultural friction and manipulate the masses, opposition to whatever politically expedient wedge issue is currently being used as a battering ram against society must be diagnosed as a psychological abnormality.  You could say that Marxists are committed to the lie that opposition to Marxism rests on irrational fear.

Sure, communism murdered over a hundred million people in the twentieth century alone, but that’s no reason to fear an ideology that seeks only to empower the “common man.”  Right?  I don’t know whether it reveals more about the persistent malevolence of Marxism’s unashamed supporters or the human race’s inexhaustible supply of gullibility that Marx continues to lure willing disciples to further his vile legacy of mass starvation, torture, and death.  Marxism is the evil clown lurking in the sewer that reappears every generation to feast on tender human flesh, but almost every college campus in America would insist that such a description is hyperbole stemming from irrational fear.  To oppose socialism and communism today because of the murder spree the twin philosophies undertook in the past is Marx-o-phobic and should be treated like any other mental illness.

At least that’s what the psychologists and psychiatrists would say because Marxists took over the mental health profession long ago.  It is a well-known observation that wherever Marxists infiltrate, they soon corrupt.  Environmental science would not be fixated on the demonstrable lie that human energy consumption is precipitating catastrophic “climate change” if Marxists had not needed a global boogeyman to frighten national populations into embracing a centrally controlled economy.  President Trump would not be seated as a defendant in four separate criminal trials and scores of civil suits if Marxist prosecutors and judges were not committed to perverting the rule of law for ideological gain.  Schools and employers would not be selecting applicants based on the color of their skin or exotic sexual appetites if DEI, ESG and other Marxist initiatives had not elevated privileged mediocrity over hard work, skill, and merit.  Nobody would be so asinine as to call mathematics “racist” if Marx’s civilization-destroying acolytes had not first succeeded in permeating every level of education.  

Science and justice are dead because Marxists rise to power only after summarily executing knowledge and truth.  Once they have done so, Science works for Marx.  It is why the biological tenets of Lysenkoism thrived in the Soviet Union despite their glaring absurdities.  It is how “climate change” fearmongers can be wrong about every prediction (and flip-flop between prophecies of a cooling and warming Earth) and still be honored as “experts.”  And it is why entire chapters in medical textbooks are written that categorize the slightest opposition to Marxist orthodoxies as indicative of a troubling mental disease.

This makes sense, since communist societies have a long history of imprisoning political dissidents in psychiatric wards as an effectively humiliating alternative to criminally prosecuting ideological rivals.  What?  You don’t believe in the abolition of private property or that breadlines are the fault of anti-government, capitalist pigs?  You must be crazy!  Send this lunatic to the nuthouse!  

In the former Soviet Union, it was not unusual for a family member to “disappear” one day without any formal notice from the State or for heartbroken relatives to discover only years later that their loved-one had died during “treatment” in an insane asylum.  Similar human rights atrocities have occurred in Central and South American communist countries and still occur in communist China today.  Marxists are fond of sentencing their enemies to a nightmarish existence in which the body is trapped in a straitjacket and the mind is kept numb with a drip-feed cocktail of tranquilizers and other antipsychotics.

I must admit that Marxists’ proclivity for treating their enemies as mentally ill has made me reluctant to involve the government in the legitimate mental health crisis that afflicts the United States today.  Bright minds (including the late, great Charles Krauthammer) have long pointed to changes in civil commitment statutes over the last half-century that made it more difficult for patients to be committed against their will and the subsequent closure of government-run psychiatric hospitals throughout the country as being chiefly responsible for spikes in certain categories of violent crime.  A good deal of research on homelessness, addiction, suicide, and murder suggests that the trend toward deinstitutionalization since the 1960s has produced tragic results.  

On the other hand, I am extremely leery of returning certain involuntary commitment powers back to psychiatrists and government health “experts” when both professional communities pray at the altar of Marx.  Just as the Patriot Act was sold as a necessary national security measure before proving to be a grotesquely unconstitutional domestic surveillance weapon used against American citizens, empowering the federal government with renewed authority to fight mental illness sounds reasonable in theory but will most likely result in a substantial number of MAGA Americans being forcibly disarmed, prejudicially labeled, and involuntarily confined.  After all, in the eyes of a Marxist counselor or judge, is anyone more “dangerous” than an enthusiastic supporter of President Trump?  Sadly, J6 political prisoners know that answer all too well.

Make no mistake, Marxists are already using the language of mental health to intimidate political opponents.  A small Chicago suburb recently removed the only Republican from the village’s library board.  His “crime”?  He opposed “drag queen bingo,” criticized the board’s plan to replace the Pledge of Allegiance with a statement that the town’s land had been “stolen by white Christian men from the Indians,” and refused to post his “pronouns” on the library’s website.  The town’s Marxists insisted that these viewpoints made them feel “unsafe.”  “This has nothing to do with political affiliation, and everything to do with dangerous extremism,” one Marxist explained, before expressing dismay that the thought offender had refused to be re-educated. 

Meanwhile, in the UK, police officers and a government psychologist forced their way into a man’s home not because he had committed any crimes but rather because they had “a few concerns” about a social media post in which he had encouraged Christians to “stand up” after an Islamic terrorist stabbed a bishop in Australia.  “People raised concerns about your views…about what’s going on in Australia,” one police officer explained.  Just as in Illinois, jackbooted authoritarianism comes in the form of psychological “help.”

Marxism could be defined as a system in which insane tyrants rule and sane objectors are committed for their “health.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/marxist_health_officials_want_you_committed.html

Ongoing Jihadist Infiltration into America

 By Eileen F. Toplansky

Alleged pundits scratch their heads in puzzlement and ask: how did all these pro-Hamas outbursts suddenly appear on American universities?

They are, in fact, not some spontaneous eruption, but clearly the product of an ongoing jihadist campaign to infiltrate America’s school system.  Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, and Yasser Arafat before them have for decades educated American universities to jihad.  Recent events attest to their disturbing success.

One such group, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) was established in 2005 by University of California Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian.  AMP “is a major promoter of the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions (BDS) movement.”  Additionally, AMP is a major supporter of the pro-Hamas campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

SJP is “a highly influential campus organization with chapters based at approximately 200 American colleges and universities, where it organizes and sponsors anti-Israel events and campaigns more actively than any other student group in the nation.”

Several of AMP’s recent board members and key officials ... worked closely with, now-defunct Islamic extremist groups that funded terrorist activities, i.e., the Islamic Association for Palestine (which, until its dissolution in 2004, served as the chief U.S. propaganda arm of Hamas); the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (which from 1995-2001 contributed approximately $12.4 million in money, goods, and services to Hamas); and KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development (whose assets were frozen in 2006 by the U.S. Treasury Department because of its fundraising activities on behalf of Hamas).

Moreover, “American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called ‘Apartheid Wall,’ and [financial] grants to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activists.”  As the Investigative Project on Terrorism notes, “AMP routinely engages in anti-Israeli rhetoric, sponsors conferences that serve as a platform for Israel bashers, and openly approves ‘resistance’ against the ‘Zionist state.’”  In fact, “[a]n Arabic-language poster on display in its Chicago headquarters in 2016 included the phrase, ‘No Jew will live among them in Jerusalem.’”

Where is the money coming from to support Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)?

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) are receiving funds from a web of Hamas-linked organizations, according to new research by The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP).

The research, entitled ‘National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP): Antisemitism, Anti-Americanism, Violent Extremism and the Threat to American Universities,’ claims that non-profit organizations with links to the Hamas terror group were funding the student groups. 

The report named WESPAC, Tides, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Americans for Justice in Palestine (AJP), and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as the Hamas-linked funders.

In addition, in the November 2023 report, the Institute “uncovered that more than a billion US dollars had been provided to Texas A&M (TAMU)/ Texas A&M in Qatar (TAMUQ) by the Qatar Foundation, a Qatari regime–owned foundation, as part of a contractual agreement to pay for research projects, some which could contribute to the development of military applications.”

This dovetails with another alarming aspect of the jihadists in America — “Election Jihad.”  Daniel Greenfield clearly shows how Islamist political machines are transforming America and threatening both the United States and Israel.

Omar Ahmad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has asserted that “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.”

In fact, the past two election seasons have produced many “firsts” for the Islamist political machines.  Consider the following jihadist successes.

• In Delaware, Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton became the first Muslim elected to the state House in Delaware.  She stated that because of Israel, “baby Jesus is under rubble.”
• In Georgia, Rep. Ruwa Romman, a former communications director for CAIR, described the Oct. 7 attacks as caused by Israeli settler violence.
• In Ohio, Rep. Munira Abdullahi claims that Israel is the biggest child-killer in the world.
• In Texas, Rep. Salman Bhojani accused Israel in engaging in the mass killing of Palestinian civilians.
• In Illinois, Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, the state House’s first Muslim “Palestinian” elected to office, accused Israel of “genocidal language.”

These jihadist elections are changing state legislatures into hostile entities for America and Israel.  Jihadists are using our system to destroy our nation — e.g., Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Omar Fateh.

In fact, “Muslim voter turnout initiatives at mosques now feed into some of the billions flowing from Democratic Party allied organizations.”

For example, “My Muslim Vote is one of numerous national Islamic election operations that benefit from funding Democrats and their political allies on the Left.”

CAIR’s long record of antisemitism is cogently explained by Steve Emerson.  In essence, “[a] virulently antisemitic terror-tied group has managed to convince media and politicians that it has been magically transformed into a respectable legitimate ‘civil rights group.’”

Put succinctly, CAIR is Hamas.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism’s new book, CAIR’s Antisemitism Unmasked, meticulously documents that “it is through an obsessive, venomous focus on Israel that CAIR has sustained its lengthy record of antisemitic rhetoric.”

As Don Feder explains, “[t]o put 300,000 terrorist sympathizers in the streets of Washington on short notice, you need a well-oiled machine that constantly requires a cause to advance its agenda.”

One week, they’re marching against racism or protesting fossil fuels. The next, they’re demanding a cease-fire in Gaza — a lifeline thrown to Hamas.

Suddenly, pro-Hamas demonstrations are popping up all over the country, like poison mushrooms after a spring rain.

They’re the result of a coalition of radicals united by their hatred of America and the West — a coalition that reduces everything to a conflict between oppressors and the oppressed and which is willing to condone the most horrific violence to advance the revolution.

They are supported by groups with wealth, prestige and political clout — all resolutely leftist, if not openly Marxist.

The never-ending assault on America is certainly due to the integration by CAIR and its allies within the Democrat party’s electoral machine.  Democrats have an antisemitism problem!

It has become “so total that the Democratic operatives and donors of the Movement Voter Project are fundraising for it even though CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad was caught on video celebrating the Oct. 7 attack.”

The Islamist Political Action Committee plans “to mobilize one million Muslim voters” and “encourage and train 200 Muslim candidates to run for office.”

The work of the jihadists is not just limited to colleges.

In its early years, AMP disseminated its ideology to young people through the Aqsa Club, an afterschool program aimed at “educating high-school students about Palestine, its history, and current affairs.”

Under the rubric of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the following groups work to upend America.  Besides CAIR, there is the Muslim American Society (MAS), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), and the Mosque Foundation.

Of course, fundraising is fundamental, and “donors, in some cases Jewish, are donating to Islamist politicians and groups that are hounding Jews.”

It is way overdue for Jewish Democrats who, perhaps unknowingly, provide funding and comfort to Islamist political machines to be confronted.  They are aiding those who would destroy them and their fellow Jews.

Members of Congress must ensure that no federal grant money be given to community groups that defend terrorism and promote hate.

Once and for all, the idea of a two-state solution must be ended.

Finally, ending refugee resettlement is vital to defeating the rise and expansion of Islamist political machines.

Over the past several decades, Israeli governments and many in the Diaspora Jewish leadership failed to grasp the gravity of these deadly accusations and the implication for the massive outbreak of antisemitism and violence against Jews.

 Israel must now work with US federal and local officials to shutter every one of SJP’s campus chapters while enforcing Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This initiative must be maximized by a massive media campaign in the US exposing the terrorist roots of this jihadist-backed and supported organization that constitutes one of the greatest threats to Israel, the Jewish people and the United States itself since the Nazi era.

Our very existence as a nation depends it.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/ongoing_jihadist_infiltration_into_america.html

New York judge threatens to go banana republic on Trump over gag orders

 By Monica Showalter

The judge in the New York state trial of President Trump in the business records case over hush money payments to a porn star has threatened President Trump with jailtime for his claims that President Trump violated his gag order.

According to Reuters:

NEW YORK, May 6 (Reuters) - The judge in Donald Trump's criminal trial fined him $1,000 and held him in contempt of court for a 10th time on Monday for violating a gag order and warned that further violations could land the former president in jail.

 

Justice Juan Merchan said the nine $1,000 fines he had imposed so far did not seem to be deterring the wealthy business mogul from violating the order, which bars him from speaking publicly about jurors and witnesses in the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president.

 

“I do not want to impose a jail sanction and have done everything I can to avoid doing so. But I will if necessary,” Merchan said before the jury entered.

 

Imprisonment would be an unprecedented step in the historic trial, which stems from a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels in the final weeks of the 2016 election.

Of course he wants to jail him. He's got his hot little finger on the 'jail him' button and can't wait to push it. Everything about his past tells us that's what he wants to do.

One, take a look at what he claims is a violation of his 'gag order':

Merchan imposed the 10th $1,000 fine on Monday for an April 22 broadcast interview in which the former president said: "That jury was picked so fast - 95% Democrats. The area's mostly all Democrat."

Is the statement false? Absolutely not. So why should Trump talking about it be subject to a gag order ... unless of course, the aim is to cover up for the public that the trial looks just a little skeevy and banana-republic-like.

Jury of Trump's peers? Nope, not for a national figure like Trump, where approximately half the jury should represent the nation as Republicans, instead of solely Democrats who already hate him and are not neutral. What kind of a fair trial is that? Getting tried by a jury of one's political enemies, most of whom will be of the most rabidly Trump-hating sort? Would he like to see a trial of Obama being conducted by a Wyoming or Oklahoma jury of 100% Republicans?  The judge himself has donated to Democrats and progressives, too, which makes the kangaroo court feeling even stronger, like a Castro judge trying a dissident in Cuba, or some kind of clown-show court as is seen now in Nicaragua or Venezuela. Suuuuure, they'll all be fair.

Only a fool would believe it. And of course, he's doing this to Trump because he wants them to believe it.

The irony of this is that the whole setup of charges against Trump -- that he paid off a porn star to keep some kind of involvement with her private -- with an underlying crime of influencing the election (in spite of the payment going out after he was elected president), is that we see the judge doing the exact same thing -- trying to influence the public that this trial is somehow fair and not political, so that Trump's factual statement about the Democrat-slanted jury needs to be kept hidden from the public. It's not O.K. when Trump does it, but it's always O.K. when he does it. How do you like that double standard?

It gets worse when one considers the judge's history. According to Wikipedia:

In late 2022, Merchan oversaw the five-week criminal trial of the Trump Organization; the organization was convicted of 17 counts of tax fraud.

 He also presided over the criminal case of Donald Trump's former financial chief Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to his role in a 15-year-long tax-fraud scheme.[16][17] Weisselberg admitted to evading taxes by accepting $1.7 million in off-the-books compensation and entered a plea agreement, in which he testified against The Trump Organization and helped to secure the company's conviction.[18] Merchan sentenced Weisselberg to five months at Rikers Island and said he would have imposed a substantially longer sentence but for the plea agreement.[17]

O.K., so he's very reluctant to jail Trump or anyone, he tells the press, and his record shows that he really does let the real bad guys in his criminal cases off with lightweight sentences. But now we get to the case of Weisselberg and he's whining from the bench that he can't jail him even more, even though five months in Riker's Island is pretty substantial. He wanted to jail Trump's corporate lieutenant longer than he was allowed to, it made him unhappy, and for him to claim that he doesn't want to jail Trump sounds pretty disingenous. Of course he wants to jail Trump, why else would he keep trying to find petty violations on him?

The only thing that may be restraining him, thus far, and I don't know if it always will, is that his gag order itself is deeply unconstitutional, as legal experts have noted, given that gag orders are handed out to protect defendants. Trump is the defendant here, so gag orders should be handed out to his accusers, not to him. Or is the judge saying he's the one on trial here? That's a good question.

Legal scholar Jonathan Turley points out the factors he sees in why this gag order is problematic:

Turley, who says he believes gag orders often "run afoul" of free speech, took aim at Merchan's order, specifically, because he says it allows [former Trump fixer Michael] Cohen to publicly speak out against the former president while hindering Trump's ability to criticize his former fixer and attorney.

"It creates this perversity. You have people like Michael Cohen, who's going on the news every night attacking Trump, arguing against his election, but Trump can't criticize Michael Cohen or Stormy Daniels or the lead prosecutor," Turley said Sunday. "This election is going to turn, in significant part, on the weaponization of the legal system. And Trump is winning on that narrative. These judges are essentially gagging a presidential candidate on one of the chief issues of the presidential election."

So they can attack Trump all they like, and Trump is powerless to say anything in his own defense in public. No even-steven here, Trump is already guilty before the verdict is launched, so he's not allowed to complain.

Are the kangaroos starting to go 'boingggg'?

Turley points out that the Supreme Court is likely to look "harshly" on this order, given that the whole thing is political and Trump is the presidential frontrunner, with a lot of Democrats who openly want to shut him down:

"I think SCOTUS would look harshly at this order as it's currently written. If you want to try the leading presidential candidate right before the presidential election, you have to have some recognition that there's a political speech element here, which is paramount. And I don't think the judge recognized that with this order," Turley, an attorney and professor at the George Washington University Law School, responded.

The case itself reeks of politics, given that New York is awash in lawlessness, a veritable sump of crime and non-punishment, yet according to them, this is the case that is the most criminal thing that ever happened in New York, the one they're spending millions on to prosecute, a bookkeeping dispute in a case whose statute of limitations has run out, yet somehow hasn't when the target is Trump.

If that judge lets his desire to jail Trump get the best of him, the U.S. will become a laughingstock globally as the first nation that willingly chose to give up its superpower status and become a banana republic. Its credibility will be zero, and don't imagine anyone will do anything but laugh when the ruling Democrats speak of 'democracy.' The judge is threatening to jail the former president if he doesn't stop commenting on problems with his courtroom, which he wants everyone to think are on the up-and-up despite the ugly facts that he doesn't want to get out to the public. Such a sensitive soul he is. That's a banana republic right there. Anyone can be jailed for anything in such places and they often are. After that, the Navalny "solution" can happen and somehow, the security cameras weren't working.

It's disturbing as heck what these people will do to him if they get away with it -- and why voters must vote against this kind of political score-settling no matter what this partisan judge does to Trump. The kinds of charges being leveled at Trump are genuinely out of control and badly in need of some checks and balances. The last check and balance left is from the voters.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/new_york_judge_threatens_to_go_banana_republic_on_trump_over_gag_orders.html

Retail Theft Ring Busts Reveal Some Hard Truths

Los Angeles County Sheriff Department detectives proudly announced a complex and successful sting this week. 

A retail theft ring has been caught red-handed, with millions of dollars’ worth of make-up, perfume, pharmaceuticals, and more, stolen from stores in and around California, much of it still bearing store tags.  

Product has been recovered; at least a dozen locations have been revealed.  Multiple fences have been identified, with eight arrests announced at the start, and likely more to follow.  They will prove that shoplifting rings were organized to hit the stores that had what the fences wanted – from pharmacies like CVS to big box stores like Walmart.

The police are proud of their work, as well they should be; such a successful catch is – in itself – good for the community, and a badge of honor for the investigators involved.

Fifty or a hundred years ago, such a bust would have been earth-shaking in its impact.  Take an organized crime gang like this out of operation, and the community would be safer for years.

But will that be the case this time?

Of course not – because even though these particular ringleaders and locations have been taken out, the conditions that facilitated their creation are not being corrected, or even addressed.

Why are there all these crimes?  Why are so many criminals so unafraid of the system that they will brazenly steal, often in “flash mob” form, from stores with security cameras filming them and even security guards watching, impotently, from the door?  And why are there so many such crimes that this bust won’t even make a dent?

These are the issues that the politicians of Los Angeles – and frankly, those of most other major cities across America today – won’t even touch.  The politicians won’t bring it up, and the press (a.k.a., the pols’ P.R. agents) won’t even ask the questions.

But the taxpayers deserve to see these issues – the issues hinted at by this story but not tackled head on -- discussed and debated in the public square, especially in an election year.

Minimal Jail Time:

Where do these ringleaders get the army of foot soldiers to do the swiping, the smash-and-grabbing, the flash-mobbing?  For the past few decades, the leftist approach to the problem of urban crime has been to empty the jails and just hire more social workers.  They disregard or statutorily reduce sentencing guidelines for property crimes, so that even after shoplifters, burglars and other robbers are convicted, they are released back into the community almost immediately.  Should anyone be surprised that crime is rampant, when the government is knowingly releasing every thief they catch via a revolving door policy?

Foreign-Born Criminals:

As if that weren’t enough, the open borders policy of recent Democrat regimes has resulted in the importation of criminals from abroad. No, this isn’t xenophobia; it’s statistically undeniable. While standard legal immigration at least makes an effort to only grant immigration visas to honest, productive potential citizens, such vetting is impossible – intentionally – with the flood of illegal aliens we have seen flowing across our borders in recent decades. Crime gangs from Central and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, who would usually be thwarted by standard immigration processes, are able to blend in with the caravans and crowds of “asylum claimants” or join the ranks of what the Border Patrol calls "gotaways." Are we talking about ten percent of them? Fifteen? Twenty?  No way to tell.  But since we’re talking about millions and millions of illegal aliens every year, even if only 10% of them are criminals, that’s too many.

The End of Retail: 

Big or small, stand-alone or mall locations, retail nationwide is suffering an existential crisis.  It’s not just personal habits, and it’s not just the popularity of e-commerce.  Retailers are being crushed by crime.  From targeted flash mobs to riots -- from surreptitious pocketing of whatever’s easily nicked to a targeted focus on the specific wares that the fence is looking for – there is simply no way for any retailer to cover the current level of theft.  They try to hire more security guards; they install cameras, they put less product on the floor and keep more in the back.  But no matter what they do, the constant shrinkage causes more and more chains to give up on their urban footprint, and now sometimes their suburban locations, too.  We are approaching the point at which no chain in the country can afford to operate a location in America’s cities.

The $800 to $1,000 prosecution limit: 

One of the hallmarks of today’s progressive prosecutors – the many Soros-funded district attorneys of cities and counties like Los Angeles – is the public declaration that police resources are too valuable, and capitalist retailers too unimportant and undeserving of protection, to waste time on prosecuting “minor crimes” like retail theft valued under some arbitrary figure of $800 or $1,000.  This position has always been shameful and indefensible, but is all the more so in light of organized theft rings like the one in today’s news.  That $700 theft from this store and $750 theft in that store, and that $600 theft yesterday and the $650 theft tomorrow, will all add up.  They wind up being part of a multimillion dollar ring once the fences trade for it and add the loot to their off-the-books warehouses.  In truth, these $800 and $1,000 prosecution thresholds are just tools to protect the crime bosses from losing their foot soldiers.

The Impact on Society:

 But the most important reminder that this news story brings to mind is the big picture, the impact of all this retail theft on the other issues that plague America today, and our big cities in particular.  Inflation is killing our economy -- particularly devastating the working poor and middle class; this massive retail theft is a driver of that inflation.  Young people can’t get their first jobs -- and employed adults can’t get those part time jobs, that were once the standard way to get ahead; where have those jobs gone? The old retailers either spend more on guards so they can’t afford more cashiers, or they’re just closing up and moving away. Your son or daughter can’t get a job at the local mall if the local mall shut down because crime drove away both shopkeepers and shoppers alike. 

They haven’t said a word about any of these issues in the news coverage of this latest bust; they avoid it in every story about crime nowadays.  Boast about the capture, be proud of the good police work, but don’t ask the deeper questions.

The fact that rampant crime is not just tolerated but encouraged by the policies of the modern Democrat-run city and blue state government is absolutely off the table.

But if our elections are to have anything to do with the problems plaguing our communities, these issues have to be given the attention they deserve.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer and speaker. A one-time Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. Read his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I,  II, and III).

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/retail_theft_ring_busts_reveal_some_hard_truths.html