While Mark Levin is one of President Trump’s most vocal supporters, he is concerned about America’s fraternizing with Qatar — a country pitched as “one of the great leaders of the Middle East and the world.”

“I say no, Qatar is a very dangerous country,” says Levin.

He reminds us that in 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was brutally beheaded by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s chief of operations and the architect of 9/11. It was Qatar who sheltered KSM from the FBI — specifically the father of the country’s current ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Further, these same Qatari family members, Levin says, “are the sugar daddies for Hamas” — funding the terrorist organization for years, hosting its leaders, and acting as its political lifeline.

That hasn’t changed. Even though Qatar has been a key broker alongside the U.S. and Egypt in the tiered ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, it’s still on Team Hamas, Levin says.

Just last month, Sheikh Tamim delivered an address at the opening session of the 54th annual Shura Council.

He was clear about where Qatar’s loyalty lies: “Israel has violated all laws and norms governing relations between nations through its aggressive actions against the mediator and its attempt to assassinate members of a negotiating delegation. We consider this aggression to be state terrorism. And the global response was so powerful that it shocked those responsible. What’s happened in the Gaza Strip in the past two years amounts to genocide — a term that encapsulates all atrocities. It is regrettable that they remain incapable of enforcing its respect when it comes to the tragedy of our brotherly Palestinian people.”

This is a load of lies, says Levin. “The Israelis weren’t trying to take out the negotiators. They were trying to take out the Hamas leaders that [Sheikh Tamim] was protecting.”

“[Qatar] is [America’s] new best friend,” he laments.

“They’ve gotten into the West,” into “all parties, every aspect of our culture, our educational system. … They are behind the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, Hamas. They supported the Taliban, and they support the destruction of our universities and colleges.”

For Levin, Qatar’s billions and diplomatic handshakes can’t erase its track record. America’s “new best friend” remains a Trojan horse for terrorism and anti-Western ideology.

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​Levintv, Mark levin, Donald trump, Qatar, Middle east, Blazetv, Blaze media, Israel, Gaza, Hamas, Hamas attacks on israel 

Police officers in Florida probably got a little more than they bargained for after responding to a recent call about a disturbance in a home in the 1400 block of Bartell Avenue in Port St. Lucie.

Police said a 15-year-old female was in the middle of the road with a shovel and began to approach the arriving patrol car — and then struck the hood of the vehicle with the shovel.

‘Regardless of age, resorting to intentional damage of people or property in our city will result in an arrest.’

Police posted bodycam video of the incident, which took place around 4:45 p.m. Nov. 3. The teen appeared to strike the police vehicle with the shovel at least four times.

One officer can be heard on the clip remarking, “You kidding me?” as he exited the police vehicle to confront the teen with what appears to be a powered-up Taser.

A second officer can heard ordering the teen to “put the shovel down!”

The video shows the girl immediately tossing the shovel to the street — and apparently issuing some sort of hand gesture to officers, which is redacted in the police bodycam video.

Image source: Port St. Lucie (Fla.) Police Department video screenshot

Police said the girl was arrested and charged with felony criminal mischief and that she caused more than $1,200 in damage to the vehicle’s hood.

“Regardless of age, resorting to intentional damage of people or property in our city will result in an arrest,” police said in a Facebook post, adding that the girl was “taken into custody without incident.”

RELATED: Massive mall brawl: 300 teens descend upon shopping mall, run amok, fight — even with cops. TikTok influencer set ‘meetup.’

The video has received more than 140,000 views. The following is a small sampling of some of the accompanying comments:

“Happy the officers are safe and weren’t also attacked, just the car,” one commenter noted. “They never know what type of crazy they will deal with or how quickly a situation can turn dangerous, every single day.””The amount of value sharing this video adds to our community is astonishing,” another user said. “Thank you for your service.””I pray she receives the help she needs,” another commenter wrote. “Clearly something seems off here.””Exemplary de-escalation!” another user exclaimed.”15…. Where are the parents? What’s her story? Home life, personal life, abused, etc. [?]” another commenter mused. “Yes, she did wrong. Obviously. But [a] 15-year-old kid doesn’t just take a shovel for a good time. At 15, many can’t even control their emotions. Officers handle it without incident, thank God.”

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​Florida, Port st. lucie police department, Arrest, Bodycam video, Shovel, 15-year-old female, Damage to patrol vehicle, Felony criminal mischief, Crime 

A Biden-appointed federal judge who recently imposed nationwide restrictions on how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can make arrests is poised to potentially release hundreds of illegal aliens arrested by federal agents in the Chicago area.

Background

In May 2018, ICE arrested over 100 illegal aliens including numerous convicted criminal noncitizens in the Chicago area as part of Operation Keep Safe.

The National Immigrant Justice Center, an open-borders advocacy organization, swooped in to defend a handful of the illegal aliens who were captured, accusing the first Trump administration of Administrative Procedure Act and 4th Amendment violations.

The legal campaign to challenge the alleged warrantless arrest of the illegal aliens snowballed into a class-action lawsuit involving two additional activist groups and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which worked in a supporting role.

The plaintiffs managed to surmount the government’s attempt to have the case dismissed and in 2022 secured a settlement requiring ICE to follow specific procedures for apprehending illegal aliens without warrants in Illinois and five neighboring states.

The settlement, which ICE policy was augmented to reflect, was set to expire on May 12, 2025.

Biden judge obliges open-borders activists

In March, the NIJC challenged the second Trump administration’s warrantless arrests of dozens of illegal aliens in Illinois, requesting that ICE be held accountable for alleged violations of the 2022 settlement.

RELATED: A historian’s warning: The Democrats have gone full totalitarian

Photo by Anadolu/Getty Images

Despite the NIJC’s pending motion to enforce the settlement, ICE’s principal legal adviser Charles Wall circulated an email in June to all ICE employees indicating that the settlement was terminated and the corresponding policy was rescinded. The agency continued with its campaign to target illegal aliens in a manner unpalatable to the open-borders group, most recently as part of Operation Midway Blitz, which was launched in September.

‘They’ve been uniformly violating the consent decree.’

Amid ICE’s efforts to catch violent criminal noncitizens including rapists and members of the terrorist gang Tren de Aragua, the NIJC went running back to the court on Sept. 26, complaining of additional alleged violations of the consent decree and asking that the agreement be extended for another three years.

On Oct. 7, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings, a Biden appointee, ruled that ICE violated the settlement — which was supposedly kept alive past its expiration date by the NIJC’s pending motion to enforce — citing practices such as ICE agents allegedly carrying blank administrative arrest warrants and filling them in after detaining suspects.

Cummings not only granted an extension of the consent decree settlement until Feb. 2, 2026, but ordered ICE to apply the corresponding policy to all agents nationwide.

While attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security have argued that Congress has denied federal courts the ability to grant parole to large groups of illegal aliens in ICE custody, WLS-TV reported that Cummings is contemplating doing just that.

The Biden judge is expected to provide some insight during a hearing on Wednesday into whether he will order ICE to release illegal aliens on interim “alternatives to detention” such as ankle monitor programs or check-in appointments with immigration agents via mobile apps.

Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at the NIJC, told WLS that the number of illegal aliens arrested in violation of the consent decree is over 3,000 people.

“If they did not have a prior order of removal, in almost all circumstances, they’ve been uniformly violating the consent decree,” said Fleming.

Fleming added, “The bargain was if you violate this, the individual [is] eligible for release.”

While Fleming is clearly hopeful that Cummings will cut the whole lot loose, WLS legal analyst Gil Soffer suggested that “there’s a statute that makes it very difficult for the district court, federal district court, to require the government to take or not take any action in the immigration space.”

Blaze News has reached out to the DHS for comment.

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​Illegal alien, Criminal noncitizen, Immigration, Biden judge, Judge, Ice, Customs and border, Immigration and customs enforcement, Illinois, District court, Chicago, Politics 

The first thing Westerners notice in China’s Pearl River Delta is the friction, the palpable tension of timelines colliding. Walking through a Hong Kong market, one sees this new social phenomenon written in miniature. A street vendor, surrounded by handwritten signs, accepts payment via a printed QR code. This is not a quaint juxtaposition; it is the regional ethos. This cluster of cities — Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou — has been ranked the world’s number-one innovation hub, a designation that speaks to patents and R&D, but fails to capture the lived reality: a place where the old and the new are forced into a daily, unceremonious dialogue.

The story of Shenzhen is the region’s core mythology, a narrative of temporal compression. It is difficult to overstate the speed of this transformation. In 1980, Shenzhen was a small settlement, a footnote. Today, it is a metropolis of over 17 million, a forest of glass and steel dominated by the 599-meter Ping An Finance Center. This 45-year metamorphosis from “fishing village to tech powerhouse” is not just development; it is a deliberate act of will, “Shenzhen Speed” fueled by top-down policy and relentless, bottom-up human energy. Millions poured in, bringing with them an entrepreneurial hunger and a lack of attachment to the past. The resulting culture is one where, as a local observer put it, “nobody’s afraid to experiment.”

Of course, this relentless optimization has a human cost.

This experimental ethos is not confined to boardrooms; it is encoded into the infrastructure of daily life. In this, Hong Kong was the progenitor. Long before the “digital wallet” became a Silicon Valley buzzword, Hong Kong had made the seamless transaction a mundane reality. As early as 1997, its citizens were using the Octopus card not just for transit, but for coffee, groceries, and parking. By the 2000s, there were more Octopus cards in circulation than people.

On the nearby mainland, this convenience has achieved a totality. In Shenzhen and Guangzhou, cash is an anachronism. The QR code is the universal medium, scanned at luxury malls and roadside fruit stalls alike. The city’s nervous system has been externalized, compressed into the super-apps that handle chat, bills, ride-hailing, and food orders. The medium is the smartphone, but the message is speed. This expectation of immediate fulfillment has subtly, irrevocably reshaped social interactions.

Yet the operating thesis here is not displacement, but accommodation. Technology does not simply erase tradition but provides a new container for it. One can visit a Buddhist temple in Hong Kong and see patrons burning incense while making donations with a tap of their Octopus cards. In Guangzhou, the old ritual of yum cha, the gathering for tea and dim sum, persists, even as a diner at the next table uses a translation app. The ancient custom of giving red envelopes at Lunar New Year has not vanished; it has been reborn as a digital transfer on WeChat, and in the process, it has become even more popular among the young. The cultural narrative adapts.

RELATED: Without these minerals, US tech production stops. And China has 90% of them.

CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images

Nowhere is this synthesis of technology and identity more visible than in the region’s public spectacles. The city skyline is not a static sight, but a nightly performance. Every evening at 8 p.m., Hong Kong stages its “Symphony of Lights,” a choreographed ritual involving lasers and LED screens on over 40 skyscrapers. The city itself becomes a canvas, reinforcing its identity as a dynamic, luminous hub.

Shenzhen’s reply is a different kind of sublime, one that looks only forward. The city has become renowned for its record-breaking drone shows, sending thousands of illuminated quadcopters into the night sky to perform airborne ballets. These swarms of light, forming giant running figures or blossoming flowers, are a live illustration of algorithmic choreography. It is a 21st-century incarnation of fireworks, a new form of communal awe that declares, “We are the future.”

In the maker hubs, like Hong Kong’s PMQ or Shenzhen’s OCT Loft, new ideas are built on the skeletons of the old economy. In renovated police quarters and factory warehouses, 3D-printing workshops sit next to traditional calligraphy galleries. This is techne in its most expansive form, fusing high-tech engineering with aesthetic design.

Of course, this relentless optimization has a human cost. The “996” work culture, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, is the dark corollary to “Shenzhen Speed.” The “smart city” that optimizes traffic flow also deploys surveillance and facial recognition. There is a palpable tension between the Confucian ideal of a harmonious, orderly society and the individual agency of 17 million people.

The Pearl River Delta, then, is more than a story of economic success. It is a laboratory for the human condition in the 21st century. It is a place grappling day by day with the paradox of technology: its power to connect and to alienate, to liberate and to control. One future is being prototyped here, in the gesture of a street vendor holding out a QR code, a silent negotiation between what was and what is next.

​Tech, Culture