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How Did Biden Admin Retroactively ‘Discover’ Chinese Balloons in the U.S During the Trump Years?

The Biden administration has been trying to plug a gigantic hole in their story about Chinese spy balloons flying over U.S. territory during the Trump administration with no one in the government aware of it.

Initially, the Biden administration sought to deflect attention from their failure to shoot down the balloon by noting that Chinese spy balloons transited U.S. territory three times during the Trump years. But when several Trump administration officials hotly denied that charge, Biden administration officials changed their story. They claimed that the balloons were only over U.S. territory briefly — skirting Hawaii and flying over part of Florida — unlike this latest spy balloon, which traversed the entire width of the country. They also claimed that the balloons weren’t detected.

But how do we know this if the balloons weren’t detected and national leaders weren’t informed of their presence?

The American military had a “domain awareness gap,” according to Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command.

“Every day as a NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” VanHerck said. “And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out, but I don’t want to go into further detail.”

What’s a “domain awareness gap”? General VanHerck didn’t define the term, but Breaking Defense offered a partial explanation.

When VanHerck speaks of a “domain gap,” he’s referring to the U.S. Northern Command not having “the correct mix of sensor capabilities.”

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Evidence-based medicine publisher held up mask meta-study because it lacked ‘right answer’: author

November 2020 was a busy month for published scientific research that could have undermined developing COVID-19 policies, if released a few months sooner.

That’s when the CDC divulged that Red Cross blood samples from the previous winter revealed that 2% of donors from the West Coast had COVID antibodies in mid-December 2019, raising the question of how “15 days to slow the spread” could work in March 2020.

The researchers behind a Danish randomized controlled trial (RCT) of mask-wearers that ended in June 2020 finally reported their findings — no effect on infection rates — five months later after struggling to find a major publisher.

The first update of mask meta-research in nine years, covering studies through January 2020, also finally came out 10 months later, likewise showing no effect on respiratory infections. 

That review’s findings were reaffirmed in an update last week by the same group of specialists in charge of “acute respiratory infections” for Cochrane, an international research collaborative often deemed the “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine.

An ARI group member had harsh words for Cochrane in an interview Sunday with medical scientist-turned-journalist Maryanne Demasi, accusing the U.K.-based medical charity of stifling and undermining his group’s 2020 review to minimize its impact on developing COVID policies.

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‘Loophole’ excuses WHO officials accused of misconduct

A confidential UN report into alleged missteps by senior World Health Organization staffers in the way they handled a sexual misconduct case during an Ebola outbreak in Congo found their response didn’t violate the agency’s policies because of what some officials described as a “loophole” in how the WHO defines victims of such behaviour.

The report, which was submitted to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last month and wasn’t released publicly, was obtained by The Associated Press. The WHO did not respond to requests for comment.

The UN investigation comes after a 2021 review by a panel appointed by Tedros found that three WHO managers fumbled a sexual misconduct case first reported by the AP earlier that year, involving a UN health agency doctor signing a contract to buy land for a young woman he reportedly impregnated.

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By Shooting Down Balloon, the Expensive, Useless F-22 Fighter Finally Won a Dogfight

When it officially entered military service in 2005, the U.S. Air Force hailed the F-22 Raptor as an “exponential leap in warfighting capabilities.”

American taxpayers ultimately paid $67 billion to buy 187 of the planes, which had been in development since 1986 “to project air dominance, rapidly and at great distances” with technical capabilities that “cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter aircraft.”

On Saturday, the F-22 scored its first-ever victory against an airborne adversary when it shot down…a balloon.

There may not be a better metaphor for the costly grandiosity of the American military than the use of a multi-million-dollar fighter jet to dispatch an unarmed, unmaneuverable opponent. But the fact that the F-22 had never won a dogfight before its decisive victory over what may or may not have been a Chinese spy balloon is a nice illustration of why the United States has the world’s most expensive military by a massive margin.

In short, it’s because the Pentagon buys lots of expensive toys that have no use.

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Ukrainian Forces Using Drone-Dropped Chemical Weapons in Donbass, DPR Chief Says

Donbass People’s Militias and Russia’s regular Army began finding evidence of suspected Ukrainian preparations to employ chemical weapons last spring. Kiev and its Western sponsors have issued counterclaims, accusing Russia of using or preparing to use its non-existent chemical weapons stocks.

Ukrainian forces have resorted to the use of chemical weapons in the Artyomovsk (Bakhmut) and Ugledar directions on the front line in the Donbass, Donetsk People’s Republic head Denis Pushilin has announced.

“According to the statements of our forces, and commanders who came forward with such information, there are facts of the use of chemical compounds causing sickness among our servicemen not only in the Artyomovsk direction, but also in the Ugledar direction,” Pushilin said in an interview with Russian media on Monday.

Pushilin said he has been receiving such reports for at least three weeks now. “They are dropping [chemical weapons] from drones on the locations of our forces,” the DPR head clarified.

Earlier in the day, Yan Gagin, an advisor to Pushilin, similarly told Russian media about the employment of chemical agents by the Ukrainian side, and said the agents being used were causing severe dizziness, nausea, and vomiting among some fighters.

Gagin indicated that chemical weapons have been used by the Ukrainian side for some time now, with attacks happening “along the entire front line as substances causing nausea, choking and coughing,” and the chemicals being “sprayed from special containers installed on drones.”

According to the World Health Organization, symptoms like dizziness, nausea, and coughing may be signs of exposure to potentially deadly nerve agents.

The official said some Ukrainian troops have been openly boasting of their possession of these illegal weapons online, posting videos of specially-designed drones and imported gas grenades on social media. Gagin urged for information about the use of these illegal weapons to be systematically gathered and sent to the United Nations.

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More Evidence That The West Sabotaged Peace In Ukraine

Days after the war in Ukraine began it was reported by The New York Times that “President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has asked the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to mediate negotiations in Jerusalem between Ukraine and Russia.” In a recent interview, Bennett made some very interesting comments about what happened during those negotiations in the early days of the war.

In a new article titled “Former Israeli PM Bennett Says US ‘Blocked’ His Attempts at a Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal,” Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview posted to his YouTube channel on Saturday that the US and its Western allies “blocked” his efforts of mediating between Russia and Ukraine to bring an end to the war in its early days.

On March 4, 2022, Bennett traveled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin. In the interview, he detailed his mediation at the time between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which he said he coordinated with the US, France, Germany, and the UK.

Bennett said that both sides agreed to major concessions during his mediation effort.

…

But ultimately, the Western leaders opposed Bennet’s efforts. “I’ll say this in the broad sense. I think there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin and not [negotiate],” Bennett said.

When asked if the Western powers “blocked” the mediation efforts, Bennet said, “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.”

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Looks Like Cops Put a Fake MLK Quote on a Police Cruiser for Black History Month

The police department in Columbus, Ohio is celebrating Black History Month with a themed cop car, which uses a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Be the peace you wish to see in the world.” 

Just one of the many problems with this move is that it appears MLK never said that.

The Columbus Division of Police unveiled the car it dubbed “History 1” Wednesday, saying in a social media post that the car will “celebrate the achievements of African Americans & recognize their roles in our history.” The video announcing the car plays excerpts from King’s legendary “I Have a Dream” speech.

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Chinese Police Sold Organs From Executed Prisoners, Witness Says

It’s not uncommon to see someone breaking down in tears in hospitals. So when Guo Zhigong, who was being treated for aplastic anemia, tried to help a fellow patient who was crying, he didn’t expect to hear a story about China’s opaque organ transplant business.

The patient, in his 40s, was worried about a kidney transplant scheduled the next day in eastern China’s Qingdao city. The promised organ was from a prisoner due to be executed hours before the life-saving surgery. They had already undergone blood matches.

But what followed was another eye-opener: the family of the executed appeared to have no knowledge that a part of their loved one’s body had been sold by the police.

The patient’s wife was told to give cash gifts to the police, Gao recalled what the woman told him. The police, according to the woman’s recount, told the father of the executed prisoner that he didn’t have all the necessary documentation to recover the body. This was an excuse the police gave so that they could keep the body for their grisly business.

“Once they got the body, the organs were sold to hospitals,” Guo, who now lives in the UK, told The Epoch Times. “This is the source of the kidney.”

That incident occurred in the early 1990s, when there was no voluntary organ donation system in China. Most kidneys, livers, corneas, and other organs for transplantation were taken from executed prisoners, the regime admitted in 2005. Prior to that, the authorities denied that it stripped organs from executed inmates, a practice that has long been criticized by human rights groups given that prisoners lack the ability to provide free consent.

But abuses in China’s transplant industry do not end there. Over the past decade-and-a-half, detailed accounts from informants and extensive research papers have shown that organs have been removed even before prisoners died.

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Disney+ Cartoon Demands Reparations And More With ‘Slaves Built This Country’ Song

Disney has gone for woke yet again with a recent episode of the cartoon series “Proud Family” — which featured kids singing a song about reparations that America “owes” to black Americans and about how “slaves built this country.”

The recent episode that aired on Disney+, titled “Louder and Prouder,” reviews the history of Juneteenth when the kids discover their town’s founder was a slave-owner. The song opens with the line, “This country was built on slavery — which means slaves built this country” — and that line was repeated over and over throughout.

“We the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering,” the song continued. “And continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in a systemic prejudice, racism and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.”

In the cartoon, that last line was punctuated by four black students glaring while the only white student on the stage with them held a sign that read “still has not atoned for.”

“Slaves built this country,” they shouted again, claiming, “We made your families rich,” as they listed plantation owners, northern bankers, New England ship-owners, the Founding Fathers, and current senators among those who had profited on the backs of slaves.

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