Day: December 27, 2023

Biden Admin Tried To Keep Chinese Spy Balloon Incident Hidden From Public

OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
3:20 PM – Tuesday, December 26, 2023

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/biden-admin-tried-to-keep-chinese-spy-balloon-incident-hidden-from-public/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

According to reports, the Biden Administration’s top authorities had planned to “conceal” China’s surveillance balloon from Congress and the public, until civilians in Montana saw the enormous white blimp.

In a January 27th phone call between President Joe Biden’s top military adviser General Mark Milley and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Chief General Glen VanHerck, which was recently revealed to the public, new information on China’s spy balloon shows that the Biden Administration initially planned to keep the balloon’s presence a secret.

In a new report from the press, a former senior authority claimed that the administration originally surveilled the Chinese surveillance balloon in an attempt to keep the situation under wraps.

“Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it,” the former senior U.S. official told the press.

The Chinese spy balloon entered U.S. airspace on January 28th and was later shot down on February 4th after already floating over several nuclear missile sites.

However, claims regarding how the incident was supposed to be concealed were denied by a senior Biden administration official, who said that quick decisions were taken to safeguard critical intelligence capabilities.

“To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking them,” the official told the press. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”

Milley called VanHerck during the January 27th phone call and said that the Pentagon initially planned to deliver F-22 jets and additional aircrafts to measure its size and characteristics.

Shortly after the call, targeting pods were utilized by U.S. military jets to identify and define the object as “a balloon the size of three school buses that had a large surveillance payload but no offensive capabilities.”

However, VanHerck maintained that the Chinese balloon program is still active and that the U.S. has no capability of being able to locate or track their efforts.

“It exposed significant gaps, long range gaps, for us to be able to see potential threats to the homeland.” VanHerck said. “I think that opened the eyes of a lot of people.”

VanHerck added that the U.S. is “not where it needs to be” in the progress of “deterrence options.”

“Time is the opportunity to create deterrence options or, if required, defeat options,” he said.

Officials asserted that the reputational damage that the spy balloon would cause to China and U.S. relations was a far greater threat than the balloon’s actual entry into U.S. airspace.

According to a senior administration official, “it caused so many problems.”

The balloon was shot down over open water off the coast of South Carolina.

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Israeli forces find explosives hidden inside UNRWA bags during raid of Gaza schools

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SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/12/israeli-forces-find-explosives-hidden-inside-unrwa-bags-during-raid-of-gaza-schools#; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

The IDF discovery of explosives hidden inside UNRWA bags during raids of northern Gaza schools is nothing new. Hamas’ use of hospitals and schools to launch military operations is part of the Palestinian terrorist strategy of exploiting human shields.

The NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence established the limitless extent to which Hamas’ uses human shields — including artillery fire from heavily populated areas, schools, hospitals and mosques. They also hide jihad operatives in these areas.

Most of the world ignores these atrocities while the UN continues to aid and abet Hamas and Palestinian propaganda by continuously diverting attention away Hamas’ routine practice of using human shields. The tally of dead civilians in Gaza is caused intentionally by Hamas and blamed on Israel.

The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center also conducted research on Hamas’ abuse of the civilian population as human shields and its use of Gaza’s civilian facilities for terrorism. See HERE.

Hamas even encourages Gazan kids to pose beside its weapons and rocket launchers “for souvenir photos,” while teaching them to be “proud of the resistance.”

Many of the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza who “were located hiding inside the Gaza schools…took part in the October 7 massacre” of Israeli citizens.

The vital necessity of Israel’s war in Gaza becomes ever more apparent.

“IDF finds explosives in UNRWA bags, clashes with Hamas in Gaza schools,” Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2023:

Israeli forces found dozens of explosive devices hidden inside UNRWA bags during a raid of northern Gaza schools where the IDF received intelligence of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists hiding, the Israeli military said Monday.

Forces from the IDF’s Nahal Brigade raided al-Rafaa and Zavaha schools in the areas of Daraj and Tuffah, where they also found a host of Kalashnikov rifles and 15 explosive belts ready for use.

IDF: Terrorist killed after shooting anti-tank missile at forces

During an exchange of fire with terrorists, a cell fired an anti-tank missile at Israeli forces, the IDF said, before being gunned down by a precision strike missile….

AOC likens Palestinians to Jesus in Christmas message, calls Israel a violent, occupying force

  BY 

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/12/aoc-likens-palestinians-to-jesus-in-christmas-message-calls-israel-a-violent-occupying-force#; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

As a purveyor of the most hateful anti-Jewish propaganda, AOC goes to such an extreme that she has forgotten that Jesus was a Jew from the house of David, and that the region of Judea wasn’t renamed “Palestine” until a century after the time of Christ. Also, as it is succinctly put in a Jerusalem Post article: “Jesus’s homeland is under attack by Islamic terrorists.”

“AOC slammed over Christmas message about Israel-Hamas war: ‘Jew hate,’” by Melissa Koenig, New York Post, December 25, 2023:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likens Palestinians to Jesus while describing Israel as a violent occupying force in an online Christmas post, prompting critics to slam what they call her blatant “Jew hate.”

In her Instagram story on Christmas Eve, the lefty New York Democrat shared a photo of a child in rubble in the Gaza Strip and said she is praying “for the peace and protection of the innocent in Gaza and the occupied territories.

“In the story of Christmas, Christ was born in modern-day Palestine under the threat of a government engaged in a massacre of innocents,” she wrote.

“He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power. Mary and Joseph, displaced by violence and forced to flee, became refugees in Egypt with a newborn waiting to one day return home.

“Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians, so much so that the Christian community in Bethlehem has canceled this year’s Christmas Eve celebrations out of both [fear for their] safety and respect,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.

“And yet, also today, holy children are still being born in a place of unspeakable violence — for every child born, of any identity and from any place, is sacred. Especially the children of Gaza,” AOC said…..