There's a new "space power" in town:

China Readies Military Space Station

China is aggressively accelerating the pace of its manned space program by developing a 17,000 lb. man-tended military space laboratory planned for launch by late 2010. The mission will coincide with a halt in U.S. manned flight with phase-out of the shuttle.

The project is being led by the General Armaments Department of the People's Liberation Army, and gives the Chinese two separate station development programs.

Shenzhou 8, the first mission to the outpost in early 2011 will be flown unmanned to test robotic docking systems. Subsequent missions will be manned to utilize the new pressurized module capabilities of the Tiangong outpost.

Importantly, China is openly acknowledging that the new Tiangong outpost will involve military space operations and technology development.

Also the fact it has been given a No. 1 numerical designation indicates that China may build more than one such military space laboratory in the coming years.

"The People's Liberation Army's General Armament Department aims to finish systems for the Tiangong-1 mission this year," says an official Chinese government statement on the new project. Work on a ground prototype is nearly finished.

It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to dream up the havoc that taking out the GPS satellite system and a few choice communications & reconnaissance satellites will create in a shooting war. Take all this into account with President Obama's campaign pledge to "not weaponize space" and "slow development of future combat systems" and it's really starting to look like ceding this new arms race to the Chinese is a supremely bad idea.

What's even better is the Chinese are virtually rubbing our faces in it.

You know how sometimes you hear a campaign promise and actually hope the candidate is lying about it? This is one of those times.

So it begins. Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced the administration's intention to renew the 1994 Clinton Assault Weapons Ban.

It is not a surprise, since Joe Biden was one of the authors of the original bill, which still stands as one of the most useless pieces of legislation in the history of legislation...and that's saying alot.

What is even more galling, however, isn't just the reintroduction of the ban. This has been expected by most firearms owners, to be honest. We knew toward the end of the campaign when Obama looked dead into a t.v. camera and said, "Look, I'm not going to take your guns," that he was lying through his teeth. He has to give the far left voters something, and this looks like a gimme.

What's really galling is the how, when and why of the announcement:

Holder said that putting the ban back in place would not only be a positive move by the United States, it would help cut down on the flow of guns going across the border into Mexico, which is struggling with heavy violence among drug cartels along the border.

"I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum." Holder said at a news conference on the arrest of more than 700 people in a drug enforcement crackdown on Mexican drug cartels operating in the U.S.

A positive impact in Mexico? Now we're seriously considering trampling the Constitution of the United States of America because Mexico can't take care of its own problems? Seriously? And the words "at a minimum" are especially ridiculous. He just basically acknowledged this ban has no real purpose, except it might do some good for Mexico. Maybe. We're now pissing on the Constitution because it might help out the Mexicans.

That is not the minimum, Mr. Holder, that is the maximum and you damn well know it. Anyone who's ever looked at the real math behind the original AWB knows it was a spurious piece of legislation. Traditionally, the rates of assault weapons used in violent crimes have run around 1/5th of 1% (.2%). The ban had absolutely no measurable effect on violent crime in the United States.

Then why bring it up now? Several reasons come to mind:

1) The administration has to look like it's doing something about the border problem.

2) The administration is not going to be able to carry through on many of the promises that it made to the more radical leftists of the country to garner votes, and as I said before, this looks like an easy measure to push over to show that the lefties got some return on investment.

3) It is a quintessential stepping stone. As the Washington Post said about the original ban back in '94:

No one should have any illusions about what was accomplished (by the ban). Assault weapons play a part in only a small percentage of crime. The provision is mainly symbolic; its virtue will be if it turns out to be, as hoped, a stepping stone to broader gun control.

Of course, no one should be surprised at any of this coming from the mouth of Eric Holder. He is primed to easily surpass Janet Reno as the biggest joke of an Attorney General this nation has ever had. As someone who's lawfirm represented 17 Guantanamo Bay detainees and who's former law firm partner represented the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, we shouldn't be surprised that his legal philosophies are firmly rooted pretty far to the left of the center aisle. His confirmation shows that when it comes to the Constitution, this administration is only interested in upholding the rights of a specific segment of this nation's citizens.

Battle lines are forming, and Americans who screamed bloody murder about the Patriot Act and the treatment of foreign terrorists who wish nothing more than the obliteration of this nation are now going to stand aside and watch real, tangible assaults on our real liberties happen. Hope and change has quickly been replaced with rhetoric and fear mongering. The words of Samuel Adams in 1776 have never been truer than now:

The warm sunshine of influence would melt down the virtue which the violence of the storm rendered more firm and unyielding. In a state of tranquillity, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty, which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms, is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny. Ye abandoned minions of an infatuated ministry, if peradventure any should yet remain among us, remember that a Warren and Montgomery are numbered among the dead. Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plow, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

The spirit of liberty is something we must recapture as a nation, and before it is too late and our chains do not sit so lightly upon us.

After spending 7+ years doing everything they can to denounce and undermine the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it appears the Democratic leadership of the nation is poised to take credit for the successes that, up until a few months ago, they denied existed. After Al Qaeda's command structure has been completely decimated by both our military and diplomatic efforts, including the seizing of huge amounts of money and disrupting their training and financial networks, President Obama has declared that Al Qaeda will be defeated.

I'm glad to hear our new President is committed to the Cause, but while we're all focused on the Dems renewed vigor in the Long War overseas, we have a wee little problem developing right here in the U.S. While we've been killing jihadists over there, they've slowly and quietly been increasing their presence over here.

Back in November of 2008, KMSP Fox 9 in Minneapolis/St Paul broke the story of the Somali jihadists living in the Twin Cities area (archive link courtesy of Free Republic):

Young Somali men are vanishing off the streets of the Twin Cities. More than 20 have left in the last few months, and the community fears they’ve gone back to Somalia to fight in a holy war.

They’re known in the Somali community simply at The Missing. More than 20 young Somali men, between the ages of 17 and 22, who have left the Twin Cities in the last few months, without a single word to their families.

The families and community leaders believe the men have gone back to fight in a bloody civil war, in which Al Quiada is a major player.

Now it appears the NY Times is on the case with a similar story of recruitment of young Islamic youths in Minnesota (NY Times embedded links removed):

WASHINGTON — The FBI Director, Robert S. Mueller III, said Monday that a Somali-American man who was one of several suicide bombers in a terrorist attack last October in Somalia had apparently been indoctrinated into his extremist beliefs while living in the United States.

The problem is not nearly isolated to the Twin Cities area, and neither is it isolated to the Somali Islamic population.

Fox News recently released a video report on 35 suspected camps suspected of indoctrinating and training Islamist militants scattered across the U.S. belonging to the group Muslims of the Americas, which is an offshoot of Jamaat ul-Fuqra:



For the uninitiated, Jamaat ul-Fuqra is a terrorist group formed in 1980 by Muslim Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani. The stated mission of the group is to "purify Islam through violence."

Within 10 years of its formation, Fuqra's communes in the US attracted many Muslim converts-including some of those recruited in prisons. The JF is said to comprise of some 1,000 to 3,000 members in the US. Secrecy is the hallmark of the outfit and cadres are reportedly well versed in the use of aliases. The Fuqra’s structure is well concealed behind front outfits and consists of a network of safe houses and cells. Furthermore, the JF founder as well as cadres consistently maintain that it does not exist. JF members occasionally travel abroad for ‘paramilitary and survivalist training’ under Gilani's supervision.

Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who also calls himself the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr, is the chief of JF. Jamaat ul-Fuqra is headquartered in Hancock, New York.

...

Although Gilani, the reclusive chief of Fuqra resides in Lahore, Pakistan, most JF cells are located in North America. Fuqra members have purchased isolated rural properties in North America to live as a community, practice their faith, and insulate themselves from Western culture. The group has set up and funded rural communes that the US authorities allege are linked to murder, bombings and other felonies throughout the US and Canada. Currently, there are half a dozen Fuqra residential compounds in rural hamlets across the US sheltering hundreds of cadres, some of who have reportedly trained in the use of weapons and explosives in Pakistan.

Muslims of the Americas, a tax-exempt group established in the US in 1980 by Gilani, operates communes of primarily black, American-born Muslims in many states in the US, including in Binghamton in New York, Badger in California, York in South Carolina and Red House in Virginia. JF is reportedly linked through court documents to the Muslims of Americas. There is also a road in the name of Sheikh Gilani in the vicinity of Virginia. The cult houses between 100 and 200 people, many of them women and children in about 20 huge trailers. There is also a Virginia newspaper, the Islamic Post, founded by Sheikh Gilani.

The following is courtesy of Jihad Watch and the Canada Free Press about a visit by CFP in May 2007 to the camp located at "Islamberg", New York:

Islamberg is not as benign as a Buddhist monastery or a Carmelite convent. Nearly every weekend, neighbors hear sounds of gunfire. Some, including a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, have heard the bang of small explosives. None of the neighbors wished to be identified for fear of "retaliation."

"We don't even dare to slow down when we drive by," one resident said. "They own the mountain and they know it and there is nothing we can do about it but move, and we can't even do that. Who wants to buy a property near that?"

The complex serves to scare the bejeesus out of the local residents.

"If you go there, you better wear body armor," a customer at the Circle E Diner in Hancock said. "They have armed guards and if they shoot you, nobody will find your body."

At Cousins, a watering hole in nearby Deposit, a barfly, who didn't wish to be identified, said: "The place is dangerous. You can hear gunfire up there. I can't understand why the FBI won't shut it down."

Islamberg is a branch of Muslims of the Americas Inc., a tax-exempt organization formed in 1980 by Pakistani cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, who refers to himself as "the sixth Sultan Ul Faqr," Gilani, has been directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra or "community of the impoverished," an organization that seeks to "purify" Islam through violence.

Though primarily based in Lahore, Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has operational headquarters in New York and openly recruits through various social service organizations in the U.S., including the prison system. Members live in hamaats or compounds, such as Islamberg, where they agree to abide by the laws of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which are considered to be above local, state and federal authority. Additional hamaats have been established in Hyattsville, Maryland; Red House, Virginia; Falls Church, Virginia; Macon, Georgia; York, South Carolina; Dover, Tennessee; Buena Vista, Colorado; Talihina, Oklahoma; Tulane Country, California; Commerce, California; and Onalaska, Washington. Others are being built, including an expansive facility in Sherman, Pennsylvania.

JUF and Muslims of the Americas have been implicated in multiple terrorist incidents both here in the U.S. and abroad, including bombings in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980's, an attempted bombing in Toronto in 1991, and a member convicted in complicity of the 1993 WTC bombing. Daniel Pearl was on his way to interview Gilani when he was abducted and murdered in 2002. Gilani was questioned and released following Pearl's murder.

In other words, this is a very serious terrorist organization with infrastructure and facilities spread across the U.S. that has a history of keeping their jihad below the radar. They are active, and they are training, and the threat of an attack similar to the terrorist incidents in Mumbai is no longer looking like just a possibility, but an inevitability.

With the focus on our actions overseas, this group and other smaller, similar groups have flown under our radar for far too long. These are threats that need to be dealt with immediately and emphatically. We need to recognize that not only is Al Qaeda not the only terrorist threat to the U.S., they may not even be most dangerous terrorist threat to the U.S. International terrorism in general has a constant ebb and flow to it, with groups evolving, some becoming more prevalent as others fade. Al Qaeda has been the bogeyman of America since 9-11 with good reason, but they are not the only game in town and we ignore the others at great peril.

As our commitments abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan transition, we need to refocus some of our energies here, within our borders. The Obama administration has two choices: continue the current rhetoric to take credit for advances made overseas under former President Bush's watch, or adapt to a changing world that's including rapidly increasing threats here on our own soil. It is no longer a question that the rise of these groups on the North American continent is a failure of the previous administration. A new question appears: is the current administration more interested in taking credit for the previous administration's successes, or correcting its failures?

Soon, ACORN will begin battling other similar organizations for their "fair share" of between $4 -5 billion dollars of stimulus money earmarked for "neighborhood stabilization activities". Evidently, according to ACORN, breaking & entering, unlawful property damage and vandalism all qualify.

ACORN Trains Citizens To Protest Home Foreclosures

Near Patterson Park, the padlock on the door and the sign in the window tell part of Donna Hanks foreclosure story.

"The mortgage went up $300 in one month," said Hanks, former
homeowner.

She says the bank refused to modify her loan and foreclosed, kicking her out of the house in September.

The community group ACORN calls Hanks a victim of predatory lending.

"This is our house now," said Louis Beverly, ACORN.

And on Thursday afternoon, they literally broke the foreclosure padlock
right off the front door and then broke into the house, letting Hanks back in for the first time in months.

"We are actually trespassing, and so this is a way of civil disobedience to try to stay in the house," said Beverly. "Legally it's wrong, but homesteading is the only means that she has left to stay in her house. And we feel as though this is the right thing to do at this particular time to save this family."

Inside, there's spray paint on the walls and evidence that someone has possibly been remodeling.

The group says it was staging similar demonstrations in six other cities
nationwide while urging a moratorium on foreclosures. They want
that until President Obama's stimulus plan begins on March 4. The
plan is designed to help threatened homeowners.

"As you all can see, Donna is reclaiming her home, and she's putting a lock on her door at this time," said Beverly.

But that padlock won't stay there for long.

The current property managers told Eyewitness News they were unaware of ACORN's actions Thursday and were contacting the police and their lawyers.

Donna is not "reclaiming" her home. Donna is at least an accessory to breaking and entering and a few other fairly serious crimes. One is also left to wonder why Donna would be helping people to spray paint graffiti all over the inside of "her" own home.

"Predatory lending" will once again become a favorite buzzword of the left as they continue to attempt to shift responsibility for the foreclosure crisis from the poor spending habits of Americans to the evil banks and mortgage companies that only did what the left asked them to do to begin with: provided long term loans to people with marginal credit histories and marginal ability to make realistic repayment. You are now a "victim" if you can't plan a budget for more than a month at a time, evidently. The advancement of the culture of victimization continues.

As taxpayers, we should all be concerned that an organization with as sketchy a history as ACORN that is now actively supporting serious illegal activity not only has the ear of the President, but stands a good chance of receiving taxpayer money in the form of grants to escalate that activity. Taxpayer funded criminal activity isn't something the stimulus plan officially calls for...is it?