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Dean Cheng, the senior research fellow at the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, joined SiriusXM hosts Rebecca Mansour and Rick Manning on Friday’s Breitbart News Tonight to discuss President Donald Trump’s “Space Force” proposal and compare it to China’s military space programs.

“When we think about modern warfare, what images do we associate? We associate Tomahawks, JDAMs homing in with that nose camera, and it goes dark, and you know you hit that target. What folks don’t realize is all the back-end that fed into that,” said Cheng.

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“What was that missile targeting? How did you even know that bunker was there? How did you tell the shooter – it could be a U.S. Navy cruiser or submarine, it could be a B-1 bomber, it could be a ground artillery unit – that it’s supposed to fire? How do you coordinate all those fires? How do you make sure that weapon got to that target, and how did you even pick up that picture? Every one of those things that I just mentioned goes through a satellite,” he explained.

Cheng said everything from GPS navigation to the accurate weather forecasts crucial for pinpoint airstrikes could be disrupted by attacks on America’s satellite network.

“If you don’t have space, all those cool weapons that we have won’t work, certainly not as well as they do today,” he said.

“When you think about the effort the U.S. military goes to avoiding civilian casualties – we don’t carpet-bomb cities anymore. We basically take sniper shots with 250 and 500-pound bombs. That’s only possible because of those satellites that allow us to know where the bad guys are, and as important, know where the bad guys aren’t, and then guiding those weapons to those targets,” he said.

Cheng said America’s enemies have paid “very, very close attention” to the America’s reliance on satellite intelligence and guidance for precision weapons.

“It doesn’t hurt their efforts to pick up information that we have a free society and a free press, and we talk about it and publish about it,” he observed.

“One of the things that they have concluded is that the American way of war is a space-based way of war. Take away the satellites and you cripple the American ability to fight – not just in Afghanistan or Syria, but potentially near China or near Russia,” he said.

He added that the Russians and Chinese are developing both anti-satellite weapons and “a whole array of other abilities to jam satellites, to dazzle satellites, to fire lasers at satellites.”

“The anti-satellite weapons that blow things up are the ones that we pay the most attention to because they generate a lot of debris, and that’s something physical that you can see, but also they’re working on the ability to simply shut down satellites – because at the end of the day that’s what matters, is preventing the information from flowing across all those satellite constellations,” he said.

“That’s what this whole Space Force is about,” said Cheng. “It is about creating a unified command, like Strategic Command or the transportation command or things like that, to basically run the space systems in support of a war.”

“But also they’re standing up a service because our military is kind of funny,” he continued. “The head of the Army doesn’t send the Army to war. The chief of naval operations doesn’t send the Navy to war. That’s all based upon the ‘cocoms,’ the combatant commands, the unified commands, obviously listening to the president of the United States and the secretary of defense.”

“The services exist to train, organize, and equip forces. In other words, they’re sort of the farm team, and the training ground, and spring training and all that for the forces, so that the combatant commands can have those forces available to them. It’s services that buy stuff. It’s services that train people. You need both pieces, somebody to buy and to train, as well as somebody to do the actual war planning and war conducting,” he said.

Cheng feared it will take “quite a while” for the U.S. to secure its assets in space against attack.

“The first thing is, the Pentagon is one of the world’s largest bureaucracies, and no bureaucracy changes quickly, especially when you’re creating new things. You’re always going to have opposition. You’re talking about budgets, you’re talking about resources. There’s always going to be some opposition,” he said.

“Second of all is, while the executive branch, the president, Secretary Mattis can make some changes, they can stand up a space command, creating a service is a legal issue so Congress has to get on board,” he continued. “As you can imagine, getting 535 congressmen and senators to agree on anything these days, including what time it is, is just about a miracle.”

“The third and most scary part is, we’re behind the 8-ball. The Chinese created something called the PLA Strategic Support Force on December 31, 2015. That includes their space forces as well as their hacking units, their electronic warfare units. It’s really China’s information superiority force. They’ve been at it for at least three years. They’ve probably been at it even before they were formally established,” Cheng estimated.

“The Russians created the Russian Aerospace Forces at about the same time, actually a little bit before. Both of our key potential adversaries have been thinking about warfighting in space for three, four, five years. By contrast, we really haven’t been thinking about it that hard. Part of it is that we had a previous administration that often shied away from even using the term ‘space warfare.’ Now we’re trying to play catch-up,” he warned.

Cheng compared the expense of creating a unified space command to safeguard America’s priceless satellites to taking out an insurance policy on an expensive home, or buying health insurance for children.

“You hope you don’t need it, you hope you don’t have to use it – but if you don’t have it when you do need it, you’re in deep trouble,” he said.

“Do you really think that the Russians and the Chinese have our best interests at heart?” he added. “If the answer to that is no, then you have to wonder: why are these two countries, both of which have a significant technology base, why have they created space forces?”

Cheng further encouraged listeners to think about the effect on daily life and commerce if our satellite network is knocked out.

“A lot of folks think, ‘Well, I don’t make calls that need satellites and things. I use a cell phone.’ Maybe you don’t have any family overseas, but when a communications satellite went on the fritz about 15 years ago, all of a sudden half the Midwest couldn’t get gas, because it’s satellites that hooked your credit card to the pump that allowed you to charge your gas,” he said.

“If you order anything from Amazon, how do you think you can track those packages? If you are worried about tornadoes or hurricanes, that’s weather satellites telling you that something is coming. Space is 95 percent dual use,” he noted.

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Few jobs are more important and crucial in today’s world than that of a teacher.

They are literally shaping the minds of the next generation, and that’s not any sort of hyperbole.

So when teachers flagrantly misuse their position of power, it’s a troubling sign for all involved.

As they should be, parents in the Boston suburb of Newton were not happy when the Federalist obtained some incriminating emails sent between a group of history teachers shortly after Donald Trump was elected in 2016. The emails can be found here.

The principal had originally told teachers to show their students different perspectives on hot-button issues, such as gun control and immigration laws.

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One of the teachers, David Bedar, accused Trump and his supporters of “nativism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc.”

“Personally, I’m finding it really difficult in the current climate to teach kids to appreciate other perspectives. … [T]he ‘other viewpoint’ might not really be an argument ‘about which reasonable people can disagree’ and might not lead to any kind of intellectual, policy debate; it might just be blatantly racist,” Bedar said.

Ed Urquiola, a parent of a student at Newton North High School, spoke about how the teachers’ biases were trickling down to other students with “Fox & Friends.” Urquiola’s son, who had recently attended a Trump rally, was subjected to anti-Semitic vitriol and ridicule from his fellow students.

“I think [the teachers] need to be re-educated and disciplined to some degree,” Urquiola said.

When pressed about whether the teachers should be fired, Urquiola leaned towards not employing them.

“I wouldn’t hire them for my business,” Urquiola said.

It’s readily apparent why this is such a disservice to students. An echochamber, whether it’s conservative or liberal, is no good to anyone. Open, difficult and uncomfortable discussion and debate are crucial to learning. It’s appalling and shameful that teachers would dare to strip that away from students.

Objectivity can be difficult, but there’s a reason that the school’s principal asked the teachers to at least try to observe some modicum of it.

“I am concerned that the call for ‘objectivity’ may just inadvertently become the most effective destructive weapon against social justice,” another teacher, Isongesit Ibokette, wrote in the emails.

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Because that’s what every parent wants children learning in school, right? A teacher’s idea of social justice instead of objective reality?

The Newton teachers’ attitude is such a breach of trust on so many levels. Parents are trusting teachers with their kids. Kids are trusting teachers that they are role models deserving respect. Teachers who are actually able to do their jobs in an objective and fair manner are trusting their peers to do the same. Frankly, it’s pathetic.

With teachers like these, it’s little surprise that more and more parents are resorting to homeschooling.

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Let me preface this entire story by just saying that I have nothing inherently against vegans.

Personally, I firmly believe that Man was created to consume and be sustained by meat-based protein.

So long as I’m not being preached to, a vegan’s diet is wholly their personal business and they can live their lives as they see fit.

But that’s the catch.

When it comes to someone’s personal business, I want it to stay that way.

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Getting in my face and telling me that I’m an immoral and depraved individual for liking a tasty filet mignon is not how you get me to see your cause.

And apparently, that method didn’t work when vegans accosted butchers in Leeds, England.

The incident in question, which occurred in late July according to mrctv.org, shows vegan protesters verbally abusing and interfering with the business of two butchers.

Now, the butchers likely could’ve called the police, considering the protesters were actually hampering their business.

Instead, the two took matters into their own hands and dispensed some Grade-A justice.

First, one of the butchers simply chased after the protesters, shooing them away with two fistfuls of meat. The flailing arms are a classic technique that has worked on pigeons for years.

The other butcher, however, went for the psychological warfare. The second butcher grabbed a pig’s head, and simply kept it’s dead eyes focused on the protesters.

While the slapstick antics are all good and fun, and exactly what obnoxious protesters deserve, it does underscore a darker side to all of that zeal.

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Again, it’s one thing for an adult to decide that a vegan diet would best serve them from a nutrition and morality standpoint.

But there is a real danger when they start trying to push that belief in an openly hostile manner.

It can affect another person’s livelihood, as seen in the video above. But even on a private level, people who feel the need to subject their children and pets to vegan diets are actively hurting their loved ones.

Growing children need actual protein in their developmental stages. And no, soy and tofu-based protein doesn’t cut it. But at least children can voice some semblance of protest.

Vegan pet owners who subject their cats and dogs to similar diets are actively working against nature. Canines and felines are natural-born carnivores. It’s blatantly ignorant to suggest otherwise.

Which is all to say, the aforementioned butchers should be commended for their restraint. Veganism may work for some. But to aggressively push it on those around you is worse than any treatment of animals (after all, we’re talking about the treatment of your fellow man) and those protesters lost all semblance of a moral high ground.

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A Canadian mosque known as the Ottawa Islamic Centre and Assalam Mosque recently lost its charitable status, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

The reason? An audit conducted by the Canada Revenue Agency looking into various speakers the mosque invited in 2012 and 2013 turned up some some unsavory characters making inflammatory comments.

According to the report, one of the more unscrupulous people who spoke at the mosque was Abu Usamah At-thahabi.

What was actually spoken inside the mosque was not recorded, but the audit noted a series of statements At-thahabi made that were recorded in “an undercover 2007 report by Britain’s Channel 4,” according to the Citizen. (At-thababi and his followers, as well as some British authorities, claimed their quotes were taken out of context for that report. But the documentary makers stood by it.)

His disparaging remarks covered a wide range of topics, from general hatred of non-Muslims to intellectually “deficient” women to gays.

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“No one loves the kuffar,” At-thahabi said, according to the Citizen, using an Arabic term for non-Muslims. “Not a single person here from the Muslims loves the kuffar, whether those kuffars are from the UK or from the U.S. We love the people of lslam and we hate the people of kuffar.”

He also called women “deficient.”

“Allah has created women deficient. Even if she gets a Ph.D. Deficient. Her intellect is incomplete,” he said, according to the report.

Some of his sharper words were reserved for homosexuals.

“Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain,” At-thahabi said in the report, according to the Citizen.

The Citizen also quoted from a video of At-thahabi available on YouTube.

“But even greater than that is the zina (adultery) of homosexuality and the zina of lesbianism. The prophet said, ‘Kill the one who does it and the one who it’s being done to. Kill the one who was on top and the one who was on the bottom, whether it’s a man or a woman.’”

Other people were mentioned in the report, from trying to recruit and radicalize terrorists to other forms of vile hatred.

But let’s stick with Canada’s response to the mosque: Yes, losing one’s charitable status is not good. But the mosque can continue to exist, unabated for the most part.

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But how is it that, while the mosque essentially gets a slap on the wrist for hosting speakers with a history of some pretty reprehensible comments (and no reason to think they weren’t repeated at the mosque), the Canadian Supreme Court virtually threatened Christian activists with jail time back in 2013?

The Canadian Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that a Christian preaching against homosexuality, even based on the contexts of the Bible, could be construed as hate speech. That is punishable with jail time.

So, Canada basically seems to be saying that if Christians have the audacity to cite their religious texts and disagree with homosexuality, they can go to jail.

But if Islamists host speakers with a history of citing their religious texts to promote actual violence and death against homosexuals, they simply lose their tax status.

As a free speech issue, both the mosque and the Christian church should operate without interference from the government, yet the Canadian government approves of sanctioning Christians with the possibility of prison, yet treats the arguably more murderous statements of militant Islam with wrist-slap severity.

Yeah, that makes sense.

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