NYT Columnist Friedman: Solution To Immigration Is A ‘High Wall With A Big Gate’

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained on Wednesday on CNN how he thinks the U.S. government can solve the situation at the border, following his trip there. Friedman’s appearance on the network corresponded with his op-ed from the day before, in which he described the port of entry at San Diego a “troubling scene.”

“The whole day left me more certain than ever that we have a real immigration crisis and that the solution is a high wall with a big gate — but a smart gate,” Friedman wrote, which Blitzer read on the air. “Wolf, I’m as radically pro-immigration as they come. But, it’s pretty clear to me and unless we can assure a significant number of Americans that we can control our border, we’re never going to have proper immigration flow. I think we need, we desire, and that we actually have a moral responsibility given our history as a nation of immigrants,” Friedman stated. “We have a president who actually, when you think about it, Wolf, he has the chops with his base. If he were to sit down, call Nancy Pelosi up, say ‘we’re going up to Camp David. You bring your immigration team, I’ll bring mine. I’ll leave Stephen Miller at home,’ and we will actually sort out a compromise here. Where, cause Democrats were ready to fund more border security, but at the same time we’re going to create a legal pathway for people here, limits the number of ICE arrests and we’re going to have a rational inflow of people,” he continued.

The Trump administration has enacted a series of new policies in an attempt to curb illegal immigration. Aside from his desire to build the wall, the administration has begun cracking down on the “catch and release” policy, tightening HUD’s requirements, while also signing a memorandum on Monday that recommended travel restrictions on countries who have a high rate of visa overstays.

https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/04/24/nyt-friedman-immigration-border-wall/

Trump Is Wasting Our Immigration Crisis

The system needs to be fixed, but “the wall” is only part of the solution.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/opinion/trump-immigration-border-wall.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur

Russia Launches Deadly Doomsday Submarine

Russia launched a new Belgorod submarine designed to carry nuclear drones capable of creating devastating tidal waves. The submarine, known as Special Project 09852, is a nuclear-powered special purpose and research submarine, Russian News Agency TASS reported Tuesday. The Russian Navy said the submarine is designed to carry “Poisedon” drones and will be used starting in 2020 according to TASS.

“The main feature photographed which raises questions is a bulge on the lower hull,” defense analyst H.I. Sutton wrote in a blog post. “This may relate to retractable steerable thrusters for precise position holding.” Russia’s United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) and the Sevmash Shipyard in Severodvinsk originally said the Belgorod was intended for research in ocean explorations, search and rescue operations, underwater installations, and monitoring of underwater routes. However, a Russian news outlet reported in 2017 that the Belgorod had new lengthened chambers designed to hold the Poisedon drones, making it the largest submarine in the Russian Navy according to TASS.

Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed the Poisedon drones in a state of the nation address in March 2018, according to Business Insider. The drones are nuclear torpedoes with ranges up to 100 megatons and speeds of 125 mph, which could send catastrophic waves of radiation throughout the ocean and onto continents for decades, according to Business Insider. Putin reportedly said in statements in 2018 that the drones would render U.S. defense systems useless, according to Fox News.

https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/04/25/russia-nuclear-submarine/

Exclusive–Sen. Marco Rubio: At Their Own Peril, Countries Embrace China

China is playing a zero-sum game internationally and willing to win at all costs. That certainly won’t be Chinese President Xi Jinping’s message to world leaders at the second Belt and Road Initiative Forum in Beijing this week, but that is the reality.

For the last two decades, China fooled the world into believing it would embrace the rules-based international order and become a responsible stakeholder. Instead, China has used its membership in the World Trade Organization as an instrument for its economic advancement aimed directly at the expense of other more developed member states. Moreover, it has tightened its one-party authoritarian rule, increased repression of domestic dissent, and escalated human rights abuses within its borders. And it is building up its military’s might—including new capabilities to menace Taiwan, Japan, and other neighbors to threaten U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific region, and to project power globally.

China now is trying to fool the world again by luring foreign governments to join its Belt and Road Initiative with extravagant promises of Chinese investment for their infrastructure projects. Some countries have already learned hard lessons from Beijing’s debt-trap diplomacy. For example, Sri Lanka was forced to give a Chinese state-owned company majority control of its $1.3 billion Hambantota port for 99 years after it defaulted on a Chinese loan, and Pakistan is now seeking to drastically curb borrowing from China as it faces a mounting debt crisis. Yet these and other cautionary tales aren’t deterring everyone. Last March, Italy became the first G7 nation to sign on to the Belt and Road Initiative. Alarmingly, the United Kingdom appears willing to allow some Chinese hardware into the development of their 5G network. More countries in Europe and other regions may soon follow. This is stunningly naive.

China’s mercantilist goal is simple—undermine foreign competition by stealing intellectual property and trade secrets, and artificially propping up Chinese state-directed actors at the expense of its trading “partners.” In addition to debt-trap diplomacy, Beijing’s long list of aggressive tactics also includes targeting U.S. and other foreign industries for eventual displacement, violating foreign sanctions laws and export controls, and working through state-directed actors, like Huawei and ZTE, to steal trade secrets and gain unfair advantages. Indeed, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative reports that China’s intellectual property theft costs the U.S. as much as $600 billion annually—an amount that exceeds the collective profits of the top 50 companies on last year’s Fortune 500 list. Chinese state-directed theft of American ingenuity amounts to the greatest transfer of wealth in human history.

China’s actions are not just part of an unprecedented effort to supplant America’s role as the leading economic and military power. Rather, they are in direct contradiction to the most deeply held values by the U.S. and fellow democracies. They are also deeply rooted in Chinese Communist Party’s view of history—that it is China’s rightful place to be the most powerful nation on earth, and that the last hundred years are an aberration. Look no further than the target date set by President Xi for China to cement its global dominance: 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

As we in the U.S. are learning—sometimes more slowly than we should—China’s long-term threats to national security and economic security far outweigh the short-term benefits from Chinese foreign investment or increased exports to China. Unfortunately, it seems many countries around the world are either unaware of China’s long-term threats or else willfully ignoring the real risks in exchange for access to Chinese markets, loans, and other short-term economic benefits.

China’s rise poses this century’s most significant threat not only to the security and economic interests of America and other democracies, but also to the values of freedom and openness that we hold dear. Beijing’s upcoming Belt and Road Initiative Forum and other efforts to woo the world do not change this. So long as China remains under the Communist Party’s totalitarian rule, the free world must remain clear-eyed about China’s challenge to our hard-won international order.

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2019/04/25/exclusive-sen-marco-rubio-at-their-own-peril-countries-embrace-china/

Sri Lanka Media: 11 Mosques Near Easter Bomber’s Home ‘Openly’ Preached Fundamentalism

Sri Lanka’s Daily Mirror newspaper published a bombshell report Thursday revealing that the suspected Easter jihad mastermind preached in a neighborhood hosting at least 11 mosques known to practice some form of Wahhabism or fundamentalist Islam.

Wahhabism is a traditionally Saudi fundamentalist ideology of Sunni Islam named after Muslim scholar Muhammad bin Abd al Wahhab widely accused of inspiring the birth of several Sunni jihadist groups, such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Sri Lanka bombings. The report casts further doubt on claims by senior Sri Lankan officials that they were not aware of any impending attacks on Christians or threat of jihadi terrorism on their soil. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena announced Tuesday he had asked for the resignations of his head of national police and secretary of defense after a letter surfaced from Indian intelligence agencies warning prior to the massacre that Islamic terrorists were planning to attack Christians in the country on Easter. The president denied knowledge of the letter, as did the nation’s prime minister, both condemning the senior intelligence agents who kept the information from them.

Local and international media reports have identified Zahran Hashim, the founder of a Sri Lankan Islamist group known as National Thawheed Jama’ath (NTJ), as the “mastermind” of the attacks. At press time, authorities do not believe he personally conducted any of the six suicide attacks. Some reports claim a man appearing in Islamic State propaganda claiming responsibility for the attack – the only one not covering his face – is Hashim. In the Daily Mirror report, Hashim’s sister Mohomed Hashim Madaniya claimed the entire Hashim family went “missing” a week before the attacks and distances herself from the suspected jihadist. The alleged current head of the NTJ, Moulavi Thawufeek, also distances the group from Hashim and claims that NTJ had been warning Sri Lankan police for years that Hashim was spreading violent Islamic beliefs through sermons at his mosque. Hashim is believed to have founded NTJ in 2011. Sri Lankan police still identify him as the leader of the group. Conflicting reports have identified NTJ as a splinter group from a larger similarly named outfit called the Sri Lanka Tawheed Jama’ath, though it is unclear what relationship the groups have or if they ever truly split apart.

Deputy Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene went further to say that Hashim’s group “had split from the main body” of the NTJ, which he founded. Hashim had made a name for himself with thousands of followers on Facebook and Youtube with jihadist screeds calling for violence against non-Muslims. All those speaking to the Daily Mirror claim they distanced themselves from him after he began publishing the videos. A representative for the Badriya Mosque in Kattankudy, the neighborhood where Hashim preached, told the newspaper that the area hosted nearly a dozen fundamentalist mosques: Katankudy [sic] a small area of land with one of the highest density of population comprises 63 mosques. 8 of the mosques follow the Fundamentalist strand openly and the other barring 3 mosques follow “different degrees of wahabist ideology” H. M Ameer from the Badriya Mosque told the Daily Mirror. “The Jammiyathul Ulama are also supporters of the Wahabi ideology” he and Jaseem told the Daily Mirror.

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2019/04/25/sri-lanka-media-11-mosques-near-easter-bombers-home-openly-preached-fundamentalism/

Apple CEO Tim Cook: Big Tech Needs to Be Regulated

Apple CEO Tim Cook argued this week that the big tech Masters of the Universe need to be regulated by the government to protect user privacy. In an interview this week at the TIME 100 Summit in New York, Apple CEO Tim Cook called for more regulation on the technology industry. “We all have to be intellectually honest, and we have to admit that what we’re doing isn’t working,” Cook said during the event. “Technology needs to be regulated. There are now too many examples where the no rails have resulted in a great damage to society.”

Cook spoke in depth about some of the negative impacts of technology on society. He claimed that is not Apple’s goal is to ensure that their users are using their Apple devices as much as possible. “Apple never wanted to maximize user time,” Cook argued. “We’ve never been about that. We’re not motivated to do that from a business point of view, and we’re certainly not motivated from a values point of view.” Speaking directly about the impact that smartphones have had on users’ social lives, Cook said that too much time on a smartphone is a bad thing. “If you’re looking at a phone more than someone’s eyes, you’re doing the wrong thing,” Cook added.

Breitbart News reported in 2017 that Cook had been criticized over his refusal to condemn China for their censorship of the Internet. “Cook’s appearance lends credibility to a state that aggressively censors the internet, throws people in jail for being critical about social ills, and is building artificial intelligence systems that monitors everyone and targets dissent,” an analyst from Human Rights Watch wrote at the time. “The version of cyberspace the Chinese government is building is a decidedly dystopian one, and I don’t think anyone would want to share in this ‘common future.’ Apple should have spoken out against it, not endorsed it.”

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/04/25/apple-ceo-tim-cook-big-tech-needs-to-be-regulated/