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Report: More than 50 jihadist cases in 29 states show ‘persistent terror threat’

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From The Center Square

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A new report published by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security states that “foreign jihadist networks and homegrown violent extremists” represent a “persistent terror threat to America.”

It identifies more than 50 cases in 29 U.S. states between April 2021 and September 2024, including dozens of attempts to provide material support to Islamic designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), ISIS, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, with individuals receiving military type training from ISIS and Hezbollah, and committing fraud.

The states where jihadist cases were identified include Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington.

The committee notes that increased threats to Americans heightened after an ISIS-K-orchestrated terrorist attack in Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021, that killed 13 U.S. service members. Terrorism threats also escalated after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, which killed an estimated 1,200 with 200 hostages taken.

“From the Biden-Harris administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and the spillover effects of the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against our ally Israel to the vulnerabilities caused by our wide-open borders, the United States is facing a dynamic and worsening terror threat landscape,” Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., said.

“Foreign jihadist networks like ISIS and Hizballah, as well as homegrown violent extremists ideologically motivated by these terrorist groups, present security threats to the homeland. The Department of Homeland Security’s mission is to protect the American people from every threat at our doorstep. The system is blinking red yet again, as even the head of the FBI has noted. Despite heightened threats from terrorists, the Biden-Harris administration continues to demonstrate weak leadership on the world stage and fails to admit its policy failures that brought us here. We must change course and take the necessary actions to protect the homeland.”

The report lists examples of convictions of foreign nationals and American citizens, nearly all Muslim men, in 29 states. Of the dozens cited, some include:

  • a Turkish man in Kentucky convicted of providing material support and receiving military-type training from ISIS;
  • two Jordanian illegal border crossers attempted to breach Marine Base Quantico;
  • a British Muslim held hostage Jewish parishioners in a Colleyville, Texas, synagogue;
  • a Pakistani man with ties to Iran charged in New York with attempting to commit an act of terrorism and murder-for-hire to assassinate American politicians;
  • a Moroccan man in Minnesota sentenced to prison for joining and fighting with ISIS in Syria, receiving military training from ISIS and providing assistance to ISIS;
  • a Muslim man in Florida sentenced to prison for supporting an FTO;
  • a Pakistani man in Minnesota sentenced to prison for multiple offenses including planning to conduct “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in the U.S.;
  • two brothers in Indiana sentenced to prison for providing material support to a terrorist organization, including manufacturing and selling weapons;
  • a Kosovo man in Brooklyn, New York, sentenced to life in prison for providing material support to ISIS and serving as a high-ranking member of ISIS;
  • an Uzbekistan national sentenced to centuries in prison for carrying out a terrorist attack in the name of ISIS in lower Manhattan in October 2017, killing eight;
  • a Muslim man in Pittsburgh sentenced to prison for attempting to provide material support to ISIS and planning to bomb a church in the name of ISIS; among others.

The report also highlights actions taken by the Departments of Justice and Treasury against individuals and groups connected to Islamic terrorist organizations.

It was released 23 years after 19 al Qaeda men hijacked four airplanes to commit the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history, killing nearly 3,000 people.

It was also released after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued its threat report for 2025, warning of terrorism threats surrounding the November election and the Israel-Hamas war. Prior to that, an international rescue organization issued an alert to Jews and Americans to remain vigilant in light of heightened terrorist threats leading up to the one year anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack and Jewish holidays.

In 2002, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act, creating the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to consolidate multiple federal agencies with one goal: to defend Americans from terrorist and national security threats. Twenty-three years later, DHS has serious deficiencies, and its policies are potentially creating national security risks, according to multiple reports published by the Office of Inspector General.

In the most recent report released, the OIG said current U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement practices “cannot ensure they are keeping high-risk noncitizens without identification from entering the country.” Likewise, the Transportation Security Administration “cannot ensure its vetting and screening procedures prevent high-risk noncitizens who may pose a threat to the flying public from boarding domestic flights.

“CBP and ICE have policies and procedures for screening noncitizens, but neither component knows how many noncitizens without identification documents are released into the country.”

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Chinese firms show off latest police-state surveillance tech at security expo

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From LifeSiteNews

By Angeline Tan

45 Chinese firms have showcased their latest police-state products and technologies, with one expert warning that the communist nation is doing so to normalize their method of surveillance and have it adopted abroad.

45 Chinese firms have showcased their latest police-state products and technologies, including state-of-the-art CCTV, precise DNA-testing technology and intrusive facial tracking software, at the inaugural Public Security Tech Expo in Lianyungang, located in China’s Jiangsu province.

Hosted by China’s First Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security, the 6-day tech expo which began on September 7 showed off advanced technologies in the domains of “criminal technology, police protective equipment, traffic management equipment, anti-terrorism rescue, and command and communication,” according to the forum’s website.

The website’s official description says “the main purpose of holding the Public Security Tech Expo (Lianyungang) under the framework of the Forum is to deepen technical exchanges and international cooperation in the field of public security science and technology equipment, share useful experience in the application of science and technology equipment to public security practice, and jointly improve the ability and level of maintaining public security.”

One firm participating in the expo, Caltta Technologies, featured a project aimed at “helping” the southern African nation of Mozambique establish an “Incident Response Platform,” extolling its abilities to harness data in “rapid target location.”

Tech giant Huawei was also at the expo, boasting that its “Public Safety Solution” is currently used in more than 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia. The United States sanctioned Huawei in 2019, castigating the firm as “an arm” of the Chinese surveillance state.

The expo also saw China’s Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science show off its new high-tech DNA testing technologies. In 2020, Washington banned the institute from accessing some U.S. technology after a number of Chinese firms decried the institute as being “complicit in human rights violations and abuses.”

In 2018, the U.S. Treasury stated that residents of Xinjiang “were required to download a desktop version” of the app “so authorities could monitor for illicit activity.”

Communist China has been slammed for jailing over one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang – claims Beijing vehemently denies. Nonetheless, critics have pointed out how China’s surveillance technologies have been used to draconically suppress dissidents in the Xinjiang province.

During the expo’s opening ceremony, China’s police minister praised Beijing for training thousands of overseas police officers this past year – and pledged to aid in the training of thousands more over the coming year.

According to UCA News, “China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression.”

The same UCA News article added:

Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out.

Notably, various foreign police officers said they hoped to use Chinese surveillance technology to police their own countries.

“We can learn from China,” said Sydney Gabela, a major general in the South African police service, according to UCA News.

“We wanted to check out the new technologies that are coming out so that we can deploy them in South Africa,” Gabela said.

China’s notoriety for being a highly-surveilled state goes back a long way. In 2023, The Economist ran an article detailing how the prevalence of CCTV cameras in Communist China, many bedecked with facial-recognition technology, “leave criminals with nowhere to hide.” A September 2019 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) also disclosed  that “the Chinese government has increasingly employed advanced technology to amplify its repression of religious and faith communities.”

The executive summary of the same USCIRF report stated:

Authorities have installed surveillance cameras both outside and inside houses of worship to monitor and identify attendees. The government has deployed facial recognition systems that are purportedly able to distinguish Uighurs and Tibetans from other ethnic groups. Chinese authorities have also collected biometric information—including blood samples, voice recordings, and fingerprints—from religious and faith communities, often without their consent. The government uses advanced computing platforms and artificial intelligence to collate and recognize patterns in the data on religious and faith communities. Chinese technology companies have aided the government’s crackdown on religion and belief by supplying advanced hardware and computing systems to government agencies.

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Economy

Immigration crisis is absolutely “On Purpose” Center for Immigration Studies testifies

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Citizens of western nations all over the world have been dumbfounded by the absolute collapse of immigration services in country after country.  Until very recently, agencies in charge of the flow of people into their nations did a reasonable job of securing borders.  Then something changed.

What used to be a trickle of illegal immigrants has turned into a torrent of millions.  Since 2020, over ten million illegals have entered the southern US. This week San Diego’s former Border Patrol Chief Agent Aaron Heitke testified at a hearing by the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security that far more than ten million illegals have entered.  Heitke says border patrol agents were so entirely overwhelmed “80% to 90%, sometimes 100% of the agents on duty [were taken] away from” the southwest border. There were miles of the border unmanned in Texas, Arizona and California, he said, where there was “no agent presence for weeks and months at a time.” This means of course that the unofficial number of migrant “gotaways” is far larger than the already shocking official numbers.

In Canada, illegal immigrants take a different path but the results are similar in terms of the percentage of immigrants compared to the general population.  Most undocumented migrants in the US pour in through the southern border.  Canada’s undocumented migrants tend to enter the county legally as refugee claimants, or with valid student, work, or visitor visas.  Then they simply stay.  While the official immigration numbers are in the 500,000 range, the undocumented migrants are easily twice that number.  As a result Canada’s population is absolutely skyrocketing, putting pressure on anyone trying to buy a home, making a lot more competition for entry level jobs, and contributing to inflation as the economy plays catch up with the number of consumers.

The influx of people into western nations has caught citizens off guard.  The question is, are the governments of western nations also surprised? It’s obvious that something is broken. The way our governments protect borders has changed in each of these nations (and it’s different in nations where people can simply walk over the border compared to nations like Canada and the UK where that’s not possible).

Another question is, who’s even looking into this? In times past we’d expect governments to hold inquiries into such nation challenging events.  Failing that, the media would be up in arms, demanding government officials do their jobs and investigating how things fell apart.  In nation after nation, the traditional media doesn’t seem all that interested. Surprising, because with an election bearing down on America, alternative news sites are reporting growing concerns millions of illegal immigrants will have access to voter registration forms and may help to choose the next President.

A research organization called Centre for Immigration Studies has found itself swamped in the 2020’s trying to keep track of what’s happening and who’s coming to the US. The Executive Director of The Center for Immigration Studies testified this week at an Oversite Committee Hearing into Biden Immigration Policies. The CIS is the nation’s only think tank devoted exclusively to the research of U.S. immigration policy to inform policymakers and the public about immigration’s far-reaching impact. Executive Director Mark Krikorian is one of the few people watching government specifically to answer questions such as “Is the largest border crisis in history some kind of accident?”  His answer is stunning and disturbing.

While this testimony applies to the United States, it very likely points to similar situations in other western nations.  The question for Canadians is, who’d looking into this in Canada?

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