Democrats refuse to let rapists be deported, the apple doesn’t fall far from the Democratic assassin’s tree, Israel decapitates Hamas, more illegal alien voting schemes exposed, the boom falls on Eric Adams, Goines goes down, another Russian ammo dump goes boom, a commie sub sinks, Raptor 1 Cylon 0, and 50 Cent throws down some Diddy dirt for your amusement.
It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!
Man, Democrats sure love illegal alien rapists. “158 Democrats voted against a bill that would ensure ‘aliens who have been convicted of or who have committed sex offenses or domestic violence are inadmissible and deportable.’ The Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act (H.R.7909) bill was introduced by Republican Representative Nancy Mace.”
No, they really, really do. “ICE Detains Illegal Migrant Accused Of Raping Pre-Teen In Nantucket…More Than A Month After He Walked On Bail.” “After being charged with one count of rape of a child with a 10-year age difference and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, [Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo] was allowed to ‘walk free on bail’ and immigration authorities were never called, according to a report from the New York Post.”
“Ryan Wesley Routh Wrote of ‘Failed’ Assassination Attempt in Letter to ‘World’ Months Ago; Offered $150,000 Bounty to ‘Complete the Job.’” Plus a refresher to the would-be assassin the media already seems to be trying to memory hole: “While Trump was golfing at his International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida on September 15, a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle barrel with a scope sticking out of the fence and ‘engaged’ with the person, who was later identified as Routh, a Biden-Harris supporter and Democrat donor with an extensive criminal background.”
“Son of would-be Trump assassin arrested for child porn.” “Investigators say they discovered ‘hundreds’ of files with child pornography during a search of Oran Routh’s residence in Guilford County, North Carolina, on Saturday conducted ‘in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation.’ The two charges he faces include receipt of child pornography and possession of child pornography.”
In little more than a year, a once-obscure South American street gang has taken hold in the Big Apple, exploiting the migrant crisis to build a violent criminal enterprise from within the walls of city shelters.
Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-bred crew of thugs, now terrorize Gotham with gun-toting, moped-riding hoods, sell illegal guns under the very noses of private shelter security guards, and run sleazy prostitution rings in neighborhoods suddenly besieged by the marauding migrants.
The gang, which also peddles a lethal fentanyl mix called Tussi or “pink cocaine,” has grown so fast that it has so far overwhelmed both average New Yorkers and the city’s elite police force.
Given how many FBI arrests have been sprung on NYPD brass over the last few months, I’m not sure how well that “elite” appellation still applies.
“Not every migrant is here to commit crimes, not every migrant is a gang member,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny. “But these TDA guys hide very well in plain sight in the migrant community.
“We aren’t looking to grab the food delivery guy, but these guys go so far as to wear Uber Eats clothing, [use] the delivery bags while they’re out there committing their crimes,” the chief told The Post. “When we do arrest them, they are very eager to talk about the crime they have committed.
“They are unwilling to talk about TDA itself.”
The gang, whose name means “train from Aragua” (a state in north-central Venezuela) in Spanish, now runs citywide theft and robbery crews that have terrorized neighborhoods.
In Jackson Heights, a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue dubbed the “Market of Sweethearts” has become a testament to TDA’s muscle and influence, with vendors peddling stolen items and an open-air red light district that has migrant hookers walking the streets day and night.
Plus a feud between Tren de Aragua and rival illegal alien gang El Carro De Lost Caragijos 666, as well as a guide to gang tattoos. (Hat tip: TPPF.)
Former President Donald Trump has gained ground and is leading Vice President Kamala Harris in key Sun Belt states, according to a New York Times/Siena poll from Monday.
Trump gained in Arizona and is now leading Harris by five points with the two candidates polling at 50% and 45% among likely voters respectively, according to the poll. At the same time, Trump has also held onto his lead over Harris in Georgia by four points and in North Carolina by two points. (RELATED: Experts Say Major Swing State Is Once Again ‘Pivotal’ To Trump’s Chances Of Retaking White House)
While the Republican candidate is leading, a significant portion of likely voters across all three states are independents, according to the poll. On average, 31% of likely voters in the Sun Belt consider themselves Democrats, 33% identify as Republicans and 31% say they are independents.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project and the guerilla journalists at Muckraker have teamed up to unearth a little scheme down in Arizona — registering illegal aliens to vote. And shocker, I wonder which political party those new “voters” might be supporting? I’ll give you one guess, and I bet you’ll get it right.
The illegals Muckraker interviewed said they were registered to vote at grocery stores, while others reported activists visiting their apartment complex and encouraging them to register to vote. Why does this matter? In 2020, fewer than 11,000 votes tipped Arizona’s electoral votes to Biden.
Fast forward to today, and recent polling shows former President Donald Trump holding a narrow lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona, a critical swing state. With the race shaping up to be just as tight in 2024, the integrity of voter registration efforts takes on even greater significance — as does the lack of concern from the left.
It gets worse. The Oversight Project tried to track these individuals on the voter rolls but came up empty-handed — they were nowhere to be found.
This development comes just days after the Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled that nearly 98,000 people with unverified citizenship documents are still eligible to vote in state and local elections.
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s rabidly leftist Secretary of State who will forever be known for her anti-democratic drive to knock former President Donald Trump off the ballot, has suffered another election law loss in federal court.
The U.S. District Court for the Colorado District last week issued an order demanding the Democrat secretary of state release Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) reports suspected of containing dead registrants on the state’s voter rolls. The reports, according to a settlement, include individuals who may have died within the past three years.
It’s another significant election integrity victory for the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), and another stunning loss for election transparency-stifling Griswold and ERIC.
“PILF has knocked down ERIC’s wall of secrecy in the voter list maintenance process,” J. Christian Adams, president of the election integrity watchdog organization, said in a press release. “States cannot use third parties to hide election records that the public has a right to see.”
Griswold ultimately signed the stipulation after the court denied her original request to dismiss the case. Judge Philip Brimmer ordered the secretary of state’s office to disclose the requested 2021 ERIC Reports by Nov. 1. Brimmer did allow minimal redactions to the ERIC Report Key. With the agreement reached, the judge dismissed PILF’s claim that Griswold violated the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993.
The long awaited indictments of New York City Democratic Mayor Eric Adams finally comes down.
New York City mayor Eric Adams engaged in a nearly decade-long conspiracy that included accepting bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources to benefit his political career, according to the federal indictment unsealed Thursday morning.
Adams is accused of accepting free airline flights and staying in luxurious hotels on behalf of Turkish business and government officials who sought to influence him.
He sought foreign money in part to benefit his 2021 mayoral campaign, according to the indictment. But some of the criminal conduct Adams is accused of dates as far back as 2015 when he was the Brooklyn borough president.
Adams had been charged with five counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and to receive campaign contributions by foreign nationals; wire fraud; solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national in two instances; and bribery.
He is the first sitting New York mayor to face criminal charges.
The 57-page indictment accuses Adams of funneling illegal foreign money through U.S.-based straw donors, including at least two New York construction companies, to reap over $10 million in public-matching funds based on false certifications that his campaign complied with finance regulations. The funds provide “eligible candidates with public funds to match small-dollar contributions from New York City residents,” the charging document says.
Adams also received free or discounted travel benefits on Turkey’s national airline from a Turkish official, who facilitated the funneling of the straw donations to Adams. These overseas trips included flights from New York to Turkey, India, France, Sri Lanka, China and Hungary from 2015 to 2019. These trips are valued at more than $100,000.
Other luxurious benefits included “free rooms at opulent hotels, free meals at high-end restaurants, and free luxurious entertainment while in Turkey,” the indictment states.
In January 2022, when Adams was inaugurated as mayor, Adams agreed to accept foreign contributions intended for his 2025 campaign while meeting with a Turkish entrepreneur whom the indictment dubs the “Promoter.”
The Turkish government sought influence over Adams, in part, to get his help to open a new consulate building in the city before the country’s president visited in 2021, prosecutors say. The 36-story skyscraper would have failed a fire inspection at the time.
Prosecutors say Turkish officials cashed in on their influence with Adams and he pressured the fire officials to open the building, which they did because they “were convinced that they would lose their jobs if they didn’t back down.”
The question, of course, is how the boom fell on Adams, but Bill de Blasio’s wife “mishandled” hundreds of millions in homeless funds and never received an investigation…
“Ukraine Destroys ANOTHER Ammo Dump! In Kammenyi, Krasnodar Krai.” Here’s my quick, handy description of the different between an “oblast” and a “krai’: I have no frigging clue.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly voted 26–25 to recommend Antony Blinken be held in contempt of Congress following the diplomat’s failure to appear for Tuesday’s hearing.
“Secretary Blinken’s refusal to comply with the Committee’s subpoena — despite months of notice and offers of accommodations — warrants contempt,” the resolution read.
The Republican-led committee has long sought to host the secretary of state as it investigates the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan over three years ago that left 13 U.S. service members dead.
Israel took out Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut. You would think Hezbollah honchos wouldn’t be hanging around their headquarters in the current conflict, but Israel reportedly took out five senior Hezbollah officials. Not sure if this is the strike or not, but it’s pretty shock-and-awe:
These are JDAMs using either BLU-95 500 lb (230 kg) (FAE-II) BLU-96 2,000 lb (910 kg) thermobaric warheads.
The double slap sounds and the jet plumes of orange tinted smoke out of the impacts signify an underground tunnel network being 'serviced' by thermobaric munitions. https://t.co/sZZQ1ngaXA
The blue is Israel. The lack of counter-activity (which would be in red) suggests Israel may have already crushed Hamas in Gaza.
Here’s a very long range look at Lebanon and northern Israel, showing that while Hezbollah is still launching a few rocket attacks at Israel, Israeli air power is bombing the absolute snot out of Hezbollah, not only with strikes in southern Lebanon, but even all the way up near the northern border in the Bekaa Valley.
Israel is obviously able to hit targets in Lebanon with impunity.
You feel sorry for Lebanese civilians caught in the crossfire, but pity is tempered by the fact that Hezbollah is part of the ruling March 8 coalition.
International law expert covers Operation Grim Beeper. “In the context of distinction, necessity, proportionality these principles of the laws of armed conflict being adhered to in an exemplary fashion.”
Bill to strip the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations (like the Council on American-Islamic Relations) moves forward in the house.
“Pentagon to Send Additional U.S. Troops to Middle East as Regional Tensions Boil Over.” “The U.S. maintains about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria, primarily tasked with counterterrorism operations. U.S.-controlled military bases also exist in Turkey, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, with a total count of U.S. military personnel in the region numbering around 40,000, up from the 34,000 troops stationed in the Middle East before the October 7 massacre.” But wait! Kamala Harris said we had no troops in a war zone!
A woman from Warrington, Cheshire, has revealed how her attempt to report a sexual attack led to her own arrest while the perpetrator remained free to assault others for nearly two years.
Helen Ingham, 48, recently waived her right to anonymity in order to share her harrowing experience with law enforcement after reporting an assault by Ahmed Fahmy, 45, a hotel manager whose reign of terror against women spanned more than 15 years.
There, as here, the left doesn’t want foreign rapists deported…
Democrats chances to take the senate this year appear to be dim. Good.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday aimed at streamlining permitting laws to facilitate the domestic construction of semiconductor factories.
The bipartisan legislation passed by a vote of 257 to 125, with 49 members not voting, and now moves to the president’s desk for approval.
The bill passed the Senate last year, and was passed in the House of Representatives this week as the “Kelly-Cruz substitute amendment.”
Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) submitted the amended text of their Senate bill in December 2023.
When a bill passes as a “substitute amendment” in Congress, the original text is entirely replaced with new content. This new version of the bill, offered as an amendment, becomes the text that is voted on and passed.
It aims to accelerate the construction of U.S. semiconductor facilities, as the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act of 2022 has made over $50 billion available to promote domestic production and innovation.
It will also streamline federal permitting by designating the Department of Commerce as the lead agency for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews, exempting certain projects from NEPA, providing the Secretary of Commerce with greater authority to expedite reviews in coordination with state and local governments, and limiting court challenge timelines.
Snip.
Cruz supported one portion of the CHIPS Act but disagreed with another.
Cruz explained in 2023 that the CHIPS Act consisted of two key parts: the Facilitating American-Built Semiconductors (FABS) Act, offering a tax credit to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing investment, and the CHIPS Act itself, providing billions in direct subsidies to companies. While Cruz co-sponsored the FABS Act, he voted against the CHIPS Act due to his opposition to direct subsidies, favoring the more indirect incentive of the tax credit.
“Many companies have fired Gen Z workers just months after hiring them and several business owners said they are hesitant to bring on recent college graduates due to concerns about their work ethic, communication skills and readiness to do the job, according to a new survey. Six in 10 employers said they have already let go recent college graduates this year, while one in seven said they are inclined to refrain from hiring new graduates next year, according to a survey conducted by Intelligent.com.” Also: “Although they may have some theoretical knowledge from college, they often lack the practical, real-world experience and soft skills required to succeed in the work environment.” Also: “75% of companies reported that some or all of their recent college graduates were unsatisfactory.” There may be a bit of truth to this, but a lot of companies seem to be laying off and firing people of whatever age right now…
Seems like an Air Force F-22 Raptor shot down a UFO over Canada in 2023. This was during the Red Balloon Menace, but it sort of looks like a Cylon Raider from the BattleStar Galactica reboot.
Critical Drinker gives thumbs up on The Penguin. “Just the right balance between grounded realism and industrial gothic. It’s obviously still based on New York, but rundown, neglected, stricken by crime, corruption and decay. So basically just actual New York, then.”
I follow neither rap music nor Hollywood gossip, so I was only vaguely aware of Sean Combs, AKA Puff Daddy, AKA P. Diddy, AKA Diddy. I knew he was a rapper and a rap mogul with his own label, but that was about it, except for noting he was raided by the FBI back in March. And I’m never surprised when a rap star (or really, just about any rich entertainment figure) is involved in a drug or sex scandal.
But the sheer range of Mr. Combs alleged criminality is fairly breathtaking:
Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and William S. Walker, the Acting Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), announced that SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” was arrested last night and charged in a three count Indictment with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. The Indictment unsealed today alleges that between 2008 and the present, COMBS abused, threatened, and coerced women and others, and led a racketeering conspiracy that engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice, among other crimes….
According to the Indictment unsealed today:[1]
From at least 2008 through the present, COMBS led a criminal enterprise that existed to facilitate his abuse and exploitation of women, to protect his reputation, and to conceal his conduct. As part of that criminal enterprise, COMBS, along with other members and associates of the enterprise, committed crimes including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
Among other things, COMBS’ sexual abuse of women included causing them to engage in frequent, days-long sexual activity with male commercial sex workers, some of whom were transported over state lines. These events, which COMBS referred to as “Freak Offs,” were elaborate sex performances that COMBS arranged, directed, and often electronically recorded. To ensure participation in Freak Offs, COMBS used violence and intimidation, and leveraged his power over victims—power he obtained through obtaining and distributing narcotics to them, exploiting his financial support to them and threatening to cut off the same, and controlling their careers. COMBS also threatened his victims, including by threatening to expose the embarrassing and sensitive recordings he made of Freak Offs if the women did not comply with his demands.
COMBS’ efforts to control women included repeated physical abuse. COMBS assaulted women by, among other things, striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them. COMBS similarly assaulted witnesses to his abuse. These assaults often resulted in injuries to the victims, which took days or weeks to heal.
To commit these crimes, COMBS relied on his power as the leader of a multi-faceted business empire. Employees of COMBS’ businesses—including high ranking supervisors, security staff, personal assistants, and household staff—acted as COMBS’ intermediaries to, among other things, arrange travel and hotel rooms; stock the hotel rooms for COMBS’ commercial sex activity; contact or locate women and other individuals whom he targeted for abuse; and conceal and cover up the abuse. This criminal concealment included efforts to prevent law enforcement from learning about his abuse.
If you believe you are victim of a crime perpetrated by Sean Combs, please contact HSI at Sextrafficking_outreach@hsi.dhs.gov or via their mobile tip-line at 1-877-4-HSITIP, and reference this case.
* * *
COMBS, 54, of Miami, Florida, is charged with one count of racketeering conspiracy, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison; one count of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison; and one count of transportation for purposes of prostitution, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
That’s a fairly breathtaking array of sleazy, slimy criminality. And it doesn’t even mention some of the other allegations against Combs, so here are not one, not two, but three videos covering his illegal, unsavory antics.
First up, the originally Penguinz0 video that first clued me in to the magnitude of Combas alleged misdeeds.
“This is a moment for celebration. For so long, P. Diddy has gotten away with heinous crimes that tons of people knew about, from car bombs to assaults to sex crimes. It’s like P. Diddy was going for some kind of high score, trying to catch every possible crime like a Pokemon.”
“The allegations mirror 11 civil complaints filed against him since 2023.”
“Really, that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the P Diddy lore.”
“Also mentioned is that he had thousands of bottles of lube and baby oil that were seized from his home during those raids as part of his freak off supplies.”
“He also had tons of narcotics as well.”
“Diddy became infamous for his freak off parties that would go on for days, where he’d force attendees to not only stay there and perform non-consensual sex acts in front of him, but he would just be pumping them full of drugs and he would be watching while furiously masturbating like a coked-out goblin.” Sounds like the MO of Democratic megadonor and convicted sex offender Ed Buck.
“He’d allegedly distribute cocaine, Oxy, Xanax, GHB, MDMA and Ketamine.”
“He was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but drugs instead of candy.”
Oh, and he also had “Puffy Flavor Camp” for kids. I would really rather not imagine what went on there…
“They done caught the diddler.”
“50 Cent has been like, I would say, an elite level hater of P Diddy for quite a while.”
“In plain sight, right under everyone’s nose for years. Finally, though, they’re acting on all of this shit. Much like Epstein, it feels like everyone knew he was on some heinous shit, but no one came forward, cuz he’s so influential.”
“He had like a lot of dirt on everyone through throwing his Diddy parties, so I think that was a big piece of leverage for him and keeping people quiet for so long. But yeah, tons of people knew all about Diddy and the terrible shit.”
One young artist was told to perform sex on Diddy’s bodyguard in exchange for a record contract, only to be told it was a joke just before following through. “Which shows you how things have worked in Hollywood for literally ever. People use the impression of power and access in order to get people to do truly awful things with one another, and celebrities fall right into it, because when you’re a celebrity, they let you do what they want.”
Here’s a much longer Penguinz0 video on Diddy that goes into more details about the allegations, including the car bomb (you would think something like that would attract the attention of the authorities) and other women he’s abused. I haven’t watched all of it, but plunge on in if you need more details of Diddy’s Depravities.
Finally, a video from none other than Ben Shapiro:
“Here is my theory: everyone in Hollywood knew about all of it. And not only do they they know about all of it, they all participated in it. I don’t know what else to take away from many of the pictures of these so-called white parties.”
Video has surfaced of Diddy telling his guests to take their children home so the “real” party could begin.
“And the the pictures of the people who showed up to this thing are just amazing. I mean, he was dating, at one point, Jennifer Lopez from like 99 to 2001. But one picture alone at one white party was Kimora Lee Simmons, Russell Simmons, Damon Dash, Aaliyah, Diddy, Jennifer Lopez, Lisa Zane, Billy Zane, Victor Matthews, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Andre Harell and Veronica Webb.”
“Photos of the gatherings are like a time capsule of the late 90s. Howard Stern, Kelly Osborne, Aretha Franklin, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martha Stewart, Jay-Z and Beyonce, Mariah Carey and husband Nick Cannon, Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson, a young Kim Kardashian.”
“The parties were separated into tiers of access. There was general admission, then a series of tiers ending with entrance to the inner sanctum where the real partying went on.”
Khloe Kardashian tells a story on video about attending a party where “half the people were butt naked” and name checks Justin Bieber, “Quincy” (I’m assuming Jones), (Hannah?) Montana, etc. (I apologize. When I began this post, I didn’t realize it would have Kardashians in it…)
Bieber’s presence is not a shock because Diddy was “preying on young men.” There’s a supercringe video where Diddy brags about “hanging out” with Bieber for 48 hours. “We can’t really disclose, but it’s definitely a 15 year old’s dream.” He also talked about having legal guardianship of Usher. “It would be hard to imagine Justin Bieber was not abused by Diddy.”
“Free people of their morality and give them insane levels of power and wealth, and it turns out they do awful things with those things.”
“The story here, once again, is as it was with Jeffrey Epstein. The story about Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t really about Jeffrey Epstein, it was about who’s in the little black book. The story about Diddy here is not just about Diddy being abusive and awful, the story is who knew when and what did they do about it.”
“I don’t know when it became a de rigueur for powerful people in our society to simply go to random drug and sex parties as though this is the late Roman Empire, but that’s effectively what we have here, and again it’s not restricted to Hollywood.”
“We now know that [Dr. Jay Varma], the head of the New York City Health Commission was going to sex and drug parties in the middle of the pandemic in violation of covid protocols that he himself had written.”
The real Diddy story is that we have one of the worst “elite” classes in history.
Did Diddy contribute money to Democrats? Of course he did, but by the standards of celebrity music moguls, the amounts were rather paltry. $1,000 to Hillary Clinton in 1999 (remember how she became a New Yorker to run for the senate?), $2,000 to Al Sharpton in 2003, and $2,900 to Nina Turner (two ran two unsuccessful runs for Ohio’s 11th congressional district) in 2021. (I’m assuming the Sean Combs donations from Ohio, Arkansas and D.C. are from other people, as are the two donations from a Sean Combs in Los Angeles, 90048, because one is listed as “Sean L. Combs” and Diddy’s middle name is John. And I’m betting that Sean L. Combs is pretty pissed at his nomenganger’s crimes right now…)
Bonus from The Babylon Bee: “Justice Department Assures Americans Diddy Is Securely Locked Away In Epstein’s Old Cell.”
Edited to add: Please note that a photo being circulated of Kamala Harris standing with Sean Combs at an awards event is fake, as the original image showed her standing with Montel Williams.
Chris Williamson, as part of a longer interview with Eric Weinstein, asks what he thinks of Kamala’s vacuous, much-repeated phrase “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
He traces it directly back to Marxist thought.
EW: “There’s a line in Marx where [pause] Sometimes you hear certain phrases Like ‘A World to Win.’ AOC uses the phrase ‘We Have A World to Win,’ which comes from the end of The Communist Manifesto.”
EW: “It basically says you have to wipe out what has been to arrive in the new. And where’s it from what can be unburdened by what has been. It’s not a direct translation, but it occurs in Karl Marx.”
EW: “If you think about what Mao had to do to wipe out Chinese history, what Pol Pot had to do, you’re trying to wipe out memory, because the memory has all of this burden.”
EW: “Why do you think is it important to go after doctors and lawyers and teachers and professors? Because in some sense they are going to resist the New Order that you’re about to impose. You’re looking for a blank slate.” That’s why after the Khmer Rouge took over, they called it “Year Zero.”
On a trip to Vietnam, Weinstein sees the complex Dan Bau musical instrument in a window.
I become transfixed by it, and a woman says “I see you looking at this” in English. “Would you like to come in?” I said I don’t want to impose. She says “No, no, no, it’s not mine.” So she invites me in, and there’s this guy who appears to be brain dead. He’s like deformed. I’m not going to get through this. And he’s speaking very haltingly and I don’t know who he is. Something about music, something about journalism, something about a professional. I can’t really make out what’s happening. I’m asking about the instrument, and this woman brings him a guitar, and this deformed man starts playing some transcription, like Chopin, or some piano concerto on the guitar, at some incredible level. And I can’t even imagine that his body can do it, and so I have no idea where I am or what’s happening. And then he motions for like a book, and she brings a book. And it has all of these articles about this man tortured for his principled stand against communism. This man has been destroyed mind, body, to the point where it’s just painful to watch him.
Weinstein brings up the topic of a “nail house,” a house where the owner refuses to leave, so Chinese authorities literally build a road around their house.
EW: “They’ll build a highway to screw over the person who stands up and says ‘I will not move,’ and the idea is that that road is the future unburdened by what has been, and then there’s some hold out who won’t go along with the program.” Or as the Maoist proverb puts it, “The nail that stands up shall be hammered down.”
Weinstein asks Williamson if he knows what Harris’ father did for a living. He does not, but we know that her father was a Marxist professor. “As a man whose family comes from the far left, you recognize certain sorts of commonalities.”
Weinstein asserts that the Democratic Party is not communist, “But it is welcomed in a lot of neo-Marxian thought.” I would go further and say that the current ideological core of the Democratic Party is are true believers in Marxist social justice. “I would say AOC is straight up Marxist. I think Kamala is everywhere between crony finance and Marxism.”
Williamson thinks Harris is “unsophisticated,” but Weinstein disagrees. “Nothing in politics happens by accident.”
I believe that most Americans would prefer not to live through a Khmer Rouge Year Zero.
A third but brief post on Israel’s exploding pager attack against Hezbollah. Several people have expressed incredulity that Israel would go to the trouble of setting up “their own factory” to manufacture the exploding pages against Hezbollah. I suspect people are envisioning something the size of a Foxconn iPhone line, but for smaller runs of less cutting-edge products, modern contract manufacturing can usually do things in much smaller footprints. Pagers are old 1980s tech, most probably use off-the-shelf commodity parts you can find anywhere, and I suspect Israel set up something much smaller.
You don’t need a line of assembly workers, you need a pick-and-place machine to attach the surface-mount components to your circuit board. Pick-and-place machines are also old technology that have gone through many iterations, but you can literally run a circuit board a assembly line in your garage. Here’s a guy that uses a very old pick-and-place machine to make amusement park controllers using equipment in his own shed.
Note that his boards are roughly the same size as a pager (probably slightly bigger). His is a low-tech approach that allows him to do all the steps himself and requires hand-soldering for some components. With a few more machines and a few more people, I suspect Israel could easily have run their exploding pager line out of a space of 1,000 square feet or less. Everything save the explosive batteries probably used commodity pager parts, and even the special command sequence to trigger the explosion was probably programmed into a commodity controller chip.
Israel also has a modern, sophisticated electronics sector, so it’s possible they contract with one of their existing military electronics contractors to do a run, but I’m not sure anyone had an assembly line suitable for turning out old-tech pagers, as you wouldn’t want to alert Hezbollah agents with a circuit board that looked too modern.
There were a lot of sophisticated aspects to Israel’s supply chain attack, especially how they used human intelligence to insinuate themselves into Hezbollah’s procurement system to be in a position to provide the pagers. And producing batteries that actually held explosives was not a trivial task. But setting up an assembly line for the pagers once they had done all the upfront espionage work to get in a position to provide them was probably among the least difficult aspects of the operation.
Israel has injured thousands across Lebanon, with hundreds in critical condition and dozens more dead, this week in two waves of simultaneous explosions of electronic communications equipment targeting Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists.
The blasts — which may have killed 19 and wounded 150 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members — started on Tuesday afternoon around 3:30 p.m. local time when pagers used by Hezbollah started beeping with a message from their leadership.
After a few beeps, the pagers simultaneously exploded across the country, blinding hundreds, tearing off limbs, and leaving gaping holes in bodies.
The messages that the devices received were not from Hezbollah leadership; they were from Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus, and they were part of a multi-year plan.
There was initial confusion as to what happened when the explosions were reported. Various news reports said that malware had potentially been uploaded to the devices, causing the batteries to overheat and explode. Then reports surfaced claiming a small amount of highly explosive material had been placed into each device after Israel intercepted the devices after they were manufactured by a Taiwanese company.
However, none of those reports were accurate, according to a New York Times report that revealed that Israel never intercepted the pagers — it made them.
Hezbollah has forced tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate their homes in northern Israel since October 7 as the terrorist group fires drones, rockets, and missiles on a regular basis — having fired many thousands in nearly 12 months.
Israel has responded with precision strikes, killing more than 300 top Hezbollah commanders and numerous lower-level terrorists.
Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah pushed for the terrorists to abandon their phones and switch to low-tech pagers to avoid being tracked by Israel. Nasrallah had bragged that his strategy would “blind” Israel.
However, unbeknownst to Hezbollah, Israel had been secretly manufacturing the pagers that Hezbollah was buying for years.
The Taiwanese company Gold Apollo had contracted with a company called B.A.C. Consulting in Hungary to manufacture the pagers. B.A.C. Consulting was one of three shell companies that Israel created to mask the true manufacturer of the communications equipment: Israeli intelligence.
B.A.C. Consulting created real pagers for numerous customers to create the perception of a legitimate company in order to get picked up for the contract to produce the pagers for Hezbollah.
The pagers manufactured for Hezbollah were separate from those made for other clients, the report said. The pagers that Hezbollah received “contained batteries laced with the explosive PETN” and began shipping in 2022, the report said.
One of my objections to the “planted explosives” idea was that there was no way for explosives in the battery compartment to access the antenna circuitry to receive the detonation signal, but if Israel designed the pagers from the ground up to go boom then obviously that’s not a problem.
After the first round of explosions on Tuesday, Israel struck again on Wednesday, detonating Hezbollah’s backup communications equipment: walkie-talkies.
The explosions from the walkie-talkies were significantly larger than the explosions from the pagers because the devices were larger, meaning they could be packed with more explosive material. Videos posted online showed entire apartment units blown out and numerous cars engulfed in flames.
My other objection was that Israel would be better off gathering intel from the pagers than making them go boom, but if they manufactured them, they probably have all the intel they need on locations of leadership, warehouses, weapons, etc. It looks like Israel was the one that blinded Hezbollah, not the reverse.
It may also explain why Israel hasn’t assassinated Nasrallah yet: Because he’s evidently an idiot.
There’s been much speculation that with Hezbollah’s communications so compromised, Israel will now move decisively against them. And indeed, right now Israel is pounding the snot out of locations in southern Lebanon.
Plus Israeli F-15s are evidently flying over Beirut with evident impunity. (Lebanon couldn’t take down Israeli aircraft during the Lebanon War in 2006 either, mainly because they’re using old Soviet crap.)
A lot of MSM commentators have shrieked over and over again during the Israel-Hamas War that Israel was in trouble because they would face a two-front war when Hezbollah really got involved. That didn’t happen. Instead, Israel settled Hamas’ hash in Gaza (where it’s now mopping up), then hit a whole lot of militant factions on the West Bank (an under-reported story), all the while withstanding pinprick strikes from the Mullahs and their proxies while carrying out varied strikes in Syria and Iran.
Having accomplished all that, Israel seems to be moving decisively against Hezbollah. Now Israel is poised to enter a two-front war, but only on its own terms, not Hezbollah’s. It’s almost like Israel had its own Schlieffen Plan to defeat each of its enemies in turn before turning to the next, only competently executed. But with Hezbollah so disorganized, it may not even feel the need to launch a ground incursion into Lebanon.
The end result of the war Hamas’ terrorist atrocity started will be that Israel will be stronger and its borders more secure, all Israel’s terrorist enemies will be destroyed or weaker, and Iran will be shown, yet again, as a very weak horse using incompetent proxies.
Now, as a bonus, here’s a Habitual Linecrosser video on the subject.
Or, more specifically, why they decided to do the M1A3 rather than than M1A2SEP4. And the main reason is weight.
“This list of proposed capabilities for the new design that include:
An autoloader
New main gun new turret
Hypersonic gun launched missiles that maneuver in midair
The ability to pair with robots
Masking capabilities to reduce thermal and electromagnetic signatures
AI systems that detect incoming fire and prioritize return fire
Hybrid electric drivetrain
Reduction of crew from 4 to 3.
Reduction of weight from 75 tons down to sub 60 tons.
But the coolest thing is it’ll likely get a brand new sleek hull for the first time in 30 years.”
“US Army leadership [is] reversing course on decades of tank design philosophy to do a last minute complete overhaul from the ground up based on new lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.”
The gun-launched anti-tank guided missile is something the army has worked off and on for a long time. The Soviet’s had one, but mainly because their main guns were inaccurate at longer ranges. U.S. had a prototype ATGM that hit a T-72 at 8,600 meters. “But the Army never invested in it to go full rate production. Part of the reason for this might be because it’s also true that tank-launched ATGMs have a smaller warhead and they don’t perform as well against modern composite armor compared to the 1970s.”
So why does the army want it now? Line of sight studies in Latvia and Lithuania (i.e, the border with Russia) shows a whole lot of areas where it would be useful.
Tank optics are also a lot better now.
The new XM 360 cannon uses the same 120mm diameter, but save a full ton of weight by using composites, and delivers the same 17 megajoules of energy to the target as a conventional 140mm cannon, thanks to more efficient plasma ignition.
The Russo-Ukrainian War reveals a much more deadly threat environment for tanks. Drones are a huge threat.
“They’re going to link the new cannon to a remote-controlled, optionally manned turret by switching to an autoloader and making the turret interior smaller. That’s a lot less volume that has to be protected by heavy armor, which equates to a lot less tons of armor.” When we last checked with western tankers looking at the T-14s autoloader some six years ago, they were skeptical of both smaller crews (“all we do is maintain tanks, and they still break down”) and autoloaders (Abrams tank crews currently put shots on target faster than Russian crews with autoloaders). But since then, the Russo-Ukraine War happened and technology galloped furiously, and presumably higher crew survivability will make the tradeoff worthwhile.
M1A3 almost certainly wouldn’t have the cassette design that gives the T-72 its turret toss reputation. “Newly designed autoloading tanks can have all of their ammo secured behind a bulkhead blast shield and can work with blowout panels to prevent detonation from cooking the crew.”
“We’ve also seen from combat in Ukraine that the Abrams engine deck with it air intakes and radiators is a popular target point for drone swarms, so the army is looking at unique ways to keep the engine better protected from above without sacrificing cooling performance.”
“The new M1A3 Abrams tank would also upgrade from that puny 50 caliber machine gun to possibly the 30mm chain gun remote weapon station. The big advantage there is that it could fire specially made 30mikemikes that provide air burst capability for shooting down drones.” That sounds both awesome and the makings of an extremely complex turret with multiple automatic-feed weapon systems.
“We have to remember that systems enhancement packages was always supposed to be a stopgap temporary band-aid solution for the Abrams, because the service thought that they would do with that until a full replacement vehicle was chosen that’s how we ended up with like a dozen different variants of Abrams tanks with various levels of advanced features in the early 2000s.”
“The main difference between the M1A1 and A2 is its electronics. However, with this new M1A3, it’s now likely to have a whole brand new hull and turret. There’s conflicting reports on that, but I can’t see any other way that we get the kind of weight reductions that they’re looking for without a whole new hull.”
“The first version of the Abrams tank weighed 54 tons. The SEPV4 that was cancelled was on track to weigh over 75 tons. Add in a mine plow and it was going to break the scales at 83 tons.”
In May this year, an expert analysis board came to some sobering conclusions. “The M1A2SEP3 and 4 upgrades will improve effectiveness, but not restore dominance. Near transparency in all domains will significantly increase the lethality our forces will experience. We will continue to have to fight outnumbered, exacerbated by a low MBT operational readiness rate and aging fleet.”
“Lessons learned in Ukraine is that tanks are sometimes dead meat if they’re too heavy. They get stuck in the mud, they’re too slow not nimble enough to fire and then escape from drones that are searching for them.”
That same Latvian-Lithuanian study showed lots of no-go zones for Abrams due to their weight in muddy conditions. “From a tactical perspective a defending Force could easily mine trafficable routes, destroy bridges to complicate Abram’s combat operations during the wet season and funnel them into choke points.”
“The study recommends new band tracks to lower the ground pressure to help fix that problem along with the lighter weight.”
SEPV3’s heavier weight lowered operational range from 300 miles down to 264.
He references the role of tank in the army’s current FM3-0 Operations Guide, which you can read at the link.
Transcom says that SEPV3 is too heavy to transport for a lot of roles.
Meantime between failure for current tanks is 200 miles, which does seem worrisome.
“It will likely have the hybrid electric drivetrain that reduces fuel consumption by 50%.” He calls it the Prius of tanks, but it’s not ugly enough for that.
More stealth.
More active protection.
“The future of armored warfare, the way the army envisions it, is that they’ll be preparing for a major change to tank tactics unlike anything we’ve seen since the introduction of the Abrams in 1980 …they all seem to believe that the future will be a combination of manned and unmanned platforms that are integrated with aerial UAVs. The M1A3 is the first step in that direction.”
A major Abrams redesign was probably slightly overdue anyway, but the torrents of real-world information coming out of the Russo-Ukrainian War forced their hand to make more radical changes.
For your feel-good Saturday video, Daily Dose of Internet has complied a video of the dumbest criminal of the decade (or at least those caught on camera).
The guy who thought he could escape from the police while also towing his mobile home is an all-time classic.
A hotel in El Paso and its owner face a temporary injunction and restraining order from the El Paso County Attorney for alleged criminal activity and suspicions of housing Tren de Aragua gang members.
El Paso County Attorney Christina Sanchez filed an original petition for abatement of a common nuisance, an application for a temporary restraining order, a temporary injunction, and a permanent injunction against the Gateway Hotel.
“The Gateway Hotel’s reputation is as a business that does not properly document the guests that stay at the hotel, has narcotics trafficking, disorderly conduct, and violent crime,” read the lawsuit.
The first documented instance of a possible gang member was in June when police were called after a suspect shot a handgun in the air and made threats of violence.
Police later noted tattoos consistent with the gang Tren de Aragua on inhabitants of the hotel on several occasions while investigating calls of disorderly conduct and fire code violations.
In addition to criminal activity, the hotel has operated without a valid certificate of occupancy for the past six years and has failed three inspections by the El Paso Fire Department. The fire department noted holes in walls and ceilings throughout the entire building and sprinkler heads taped over.
One video cited in the suit shows individuals “partying” on the third floor with one gun being shot, men holding knives, and another holding a hatchet he allegedly used to assault individuals and cause damage to the hotel.
Additional police calls to the Gateway Hotel include failures to comply with sex offender registration, theft, aggravated assault, and narcotics—including marijuana and methamphetamines.
“Management does not attempt ‘to control the conduct of the guests and is negligently allowing gang activity to infiltrate the area,’” remarked a police officer in the suit.
Here’s a local media video:
“The El Paso County Attorney [is] filing a lawsuit for a temporary and permanent injunction against the hotel.”
There have been 700 police calls to the hotel in the last two years.
The hotel failed at least three inspections by the El Paso fire department.
The Biden Administration’s insistence on flooding the country with illegal aliens is the gift that keeps on giving. And Kamala Harris’ support for an illegal alien amnesty will insure that all the rapists, felons, thugs and murderers they brought in get to stay permanently.
One year ago, the Kerch Strait Bridge was hit for the second time, following the October 2022 attack. Russians tried to repair that damage, but the results seem to be…subpar.
👀💥 Kerch Bridge: As a result of the damage received, the structural elements of the bridge are degrading, which leads to the crumbling of its individual parts, – ATESH pic.twitter.com/99WgC1HaYX
I’m not an expert in bridge structural integrity, but that warping/sagging/bending doesn’t look good. In a video game, that looks like a structure you’d get once chance to jump off of before it collapses into the sea.
The Kerch Bridge, a strategically vital structure used by Russia to connect with occupied Crimea, is in need of urgent repairs and cannot survive structural damage, according to a Crimean-based pro-Ukrainian group.
“The Kerch Bridge is living its final days,” Atesh, a pro-Kyiv military partisan group of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, said in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
A partisan source, so take it with a grain of salt.
Denys Davydov covers the bridge damage in the first minute of this video:
“The Crimean Bridge looks very tired.”
“Those images appeared in Internet yesterday. Indeed, you may see some of the damages towards the railway part of the bridge. Which is quite strange, because there were no recent strikes reported. It means that this part of the construction wasn’t repaired properly after the first strike on the bridge.”
“You may say that those are just minor damages, and the bridge can still work. Yes, it works, but there is the feature which tells us that the bridge now has the limited capabilities for the transfer of the heavy cargo, and the structural damage of the bridge could be much more severe than we see just visually on those pictures.”
“So the clue that the bridge is not OK for the heavy cargo lies with this ferry, which Ukraine kaboomed around three weeks ago. Russia used this ferry to transfer the oil products, but somehow didn’t use the Kerch bridge. And with the new pictures that appeared on the Internet, we may understand that the bridge is not in a good shape.”
“So indeed, the Ukrainian attack on the Russian ferry fleet was a main destruction of the Russian supplies towards Crimea and the southern part of Ukraine, which is now partially occupied by the Russian Federation.”
From the limited information we have to go on, this analysis seems correct.
It can be hard to determine the truth of things coming out of a warzone, even with Russia’s notoriously poor operational security. But absent photo manipulation (which we can’t rule out without more firsthand evidence), it does appear that that the Kerch Strait Bridge is clearly slumping and may even be unusable, which will severely complicate Russian logistics in southern Ukraine.
Yesterday’s LinkSwarm talked about Venezuelan gangs ripping off Permian Basin oilfields, but that was hardly the only activity by the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang to make the news this week. That gang evidently took over at least one Aurora, Colorado apartment complex:
“The evidence we have reviewed indicates that gang members are engaging in flagrant trespass violations, assaults and battery, human traffic trafficking, sexual abuse of minors, unlawful firearms possession, extortion and other criminal activities.” Human trafficking? Where’s that “see something say something?” And sexual abuse or minors recalls the Rotherham Muslim rape gang scandal in the UK. Evidently “raping children” is just one of those jobs natives won’t do.
“According to the law firm’s report, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua has threatened to kill and, in certain instances, has apparently actively attempted to kill, members of Whispering Pines management.” Is “attempted murder” just not a serious enough charge for the police to get involved?
“A consultant for the property management company was severely beaten and stomped by gang members and was hospitalized the alleged incident recorded by building cameras with screenshots attached to the letter.” I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the property management company in question were derelict in their fundamental duties.
“The takeover began last November.” So this has been going on for over three-quarters of a year. Again, where were the police?
“The report recounts that this summer, the gang approached the property manager and told him they would help him out in exchange for half of all the rent that he collected.”
“The gang members then allegedly took over vacant apartments, and according to the document, moved families into those units and started collecting rent.”
The gang obviously didn’t fear property management or the police.
Here’s footage of that same gang operating openly in another apartment complex called The Edge:
Another video, which I am unable to relocate right now, showed a reporter on a street near an apartment complex where gangs had left stolen and stripped cars all down the sides of the street.
The question is how was the problem allowed to get so bad? How was the problem allowed to fester more that nine months?
In increasingly Democrat-controlled Colorado, are the police being told not to arrest illegal alien gang members?
