Month: January 2021

Authored by John Kiriakou via ConsortiumNews.com,

Former acting CIA Director Mike Morell, who has disingenuously argued for years that he had nothing to do with the agency’s torture program, but who continued to defend it, has taken himself out of the running to be President-elect Joe Biden’s new CIA director.

The decision is a victory for the peace group Code Pink, which spearheaded the Stop Morell movement, and it’s a great thing for all Americans.  Now, though, we have to turn our attention to Biden’s nominee to be director of national intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines.

Haines is certainly qualified on paper to lead the Intelligence Community. A longtime Biden aide, she has the president-elect’s confidence. But that’s not good enough. Haines is exactly the kind of person who shouldn’t be in a position of authority in intelligence. She is the kind of neoliberal intelligence apologist whom so many of us have opposed for so many years.  Don’t just take my word for it, though.  Look at her record.

Haines first began working for Biden when she served as deputy general counsel of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was its chairman.  When Biden became vice president in 2009, Haines moved to the State Department, where she was the assistant legal adviser for treaty affairs.  After only a year, she moved to the White House, where she became deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs, the National Security Council’s chief attorney.

That’s quite a position. What it means was that her job was to legally justify President Barack Obama’s decisions on such intelligence issues as drone strikes and whether to release the CIA Torture Report.  She served there under CIA Director John Brennan.  Obama apparently liked the job she did for him because in 2013, he named Haines deputy director of the CIA (DD/CIA).

Haines was the first woman to be named DD/CIA, and she served again under Brennan, who proved time and again that he was no fan of congressional oversight. Haines’s attitude was similar to Brennan’s: The CIA was going to do what it was going to do, and she would make no apologies for it.

There were three controversial areas where Haines made a name for herself and for which she should have to answer in a confirmation hearing: The CIA’s refusal to release the Senate Torture Report and the decision to hack into the Senate Intelligence Committee’s computer system; the CIA’s decision to not punish those officers who carried out the hack and who killed and tortured prisoners beyond even what the Justice Department said was permissible; and the government’s drone program, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians were killed.

Haines’ Torture Cover-Up

You may recall that in December 2014, the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released a heavily redacted version of the executive summary of the committee’s torture report, the result of years of investigation using primary-source CIA documents. The executive summary was about 525 pages long, just a fraction of the nearly 6,000-page complete report. And the release of the 525 pages was the result of protracted negotiations between the committee and the CIA.

In the end, the public heard a few details of what the CIA’s prisoners underwent at secret prisons around the world. But the full story was never made public. It likely never will be. And that’s thanks to Avril Haines.

Earlier that year, then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein took to the Senate floor in a very unusual display and accused CIA Director Brennan of spying on her committee’s staff members. Specifically, Feinstein said that CIA officers had hacked into the Senate’s computers to see what it was that committee investigators were focusing on.

The hacking was unprecedented, and Feinstein referred it to the Justice Department for prosecution.  Attorney General Eric Holder, however, chose not to pursue the case.  Brennan took responsibility for ordering the hacking and he made no apologies for it. But his top aide, his assistant, his legal adviser through the episode was Avril Haines. She has never explained her decisions in support of the hack.

Furthermore, it was Haines who overruled the CIA’s inspector general and who decided not to punish those CIA officers who hacked into the committee’s computers, or those CIA officers who had gone over and above what the Justice Department had authorized in its “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” program, killing and maiming prisoners.

In the end, not only were no CIA officers punished, but the leaders and most prominent officers in the torture program were promoted, in some cases into some of the most sought-after positions in the CIA.  I know this to be true. I worked for them.

Haines and Drones

One area in which Haines has not received a great deal of media coverage has been her role in the drone program.  When Haines was the National Security Council’s top lawyer, Brennan was the keeper of the so-called kill list. It was Haines who took phone calls in the middle of the night asking her for legal authority — permission — to launch missile attacks from drones.  She has never answered for her actions.

Now is the time for Americans to put down their collective foot on Biden’s national security appointees.  Morell was utterly inappropriate for a senior position in the Biden national security apparatus. Haines is, too. She has, very simply, committed crimes against humanity.  I’m under no illusions that Biden is a progressive or that he will differ greatly from previous Democratic presidents on national security.

But I do believe that wrong is wrong.  Avril Haines is exactly the kind of person we don’t want running the Intelligence Community.  This is the moment for opponents of her nomination to lobby senators on the Intelligence Committee. There’s still time to defeat her.

* * *

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

Between the devastating springtime COVID-19 outbreak to the protests, violence and looting inspired by the killing of George Floyd, New York City has had a difficult year.

But as 2020 draws to a close, residents of quiet Rego Park, best known to many Americans as the neighborhood from “King of Queens”, are facing off against a fresh horror: hyperaggressive squirrels.

According to the local Patch website, at least five people in the neighborhood have been bitten or scratched by squirrels on 65th Road and 65th Drive within the last month. One woman who spoke to the reporter was forced to seek treatment at a nearby hospital for squirrel bites and scratches after one such attack, which began when she opened her front door to let in a team of movers, and the squirrel lunged at her.

Here’s more from Patch:

They include Micheline Frederick, who had to go to the hospital after a squirrel attack so vicious that it left her hands and arms covered with bites – and her snowy front yard stained with blood. “He was angry and he was vicious,” Frederick told Patch of the Dec. 21 attack.

“This was more than just a bite. This thing was fighting with me.” Frederick said she was holding her front door open for two movers when the squirrel ran up to her and scurried up her leg. She threw the squirrel off of her, but it pounced back onto her and started biting and scratching her.

Residents have reportedly sought help from 911 and filed complaints with 311, the citywide hotline for quality of living complaints, to no avail. Though rabies is reportedly extremely rare in squirrels (the city apparently hasn’t recorded a single case of rabies in squirrels since the early 1990s) the victim interviewed by Patch said she was tested for the disease as a precaution due to the number of bites.

The attack left her pinky finger “pretty chewed up” and her hand bruised black and blue for days, she said. She had at least eight bites, prompting physicians at a nearby urgent care center to send her to the emergency room for rabies shots. “Because I had so many, they wanted to be safe rather than sorry,” she said. The NYC Department of Health says squirrels are rarely infected with rabies. Since the agency started tracking New York City rabies cases in 1992, it has never identified a case of a squirrel with the disease. With rabies being an unlikely, but not impossible, explanation, Rego Park residents say the city has declined to intervene.

With the city presumably occupied with other more pressing efforts like fining restaurant owners and other small business owners, the people of Rego Park have mostly been left on their own.

Authored by Nicole Hao and Annie Wu via The Epoch Times,

Around this time last year, Chinese authorities acknowledged that an “unknown” form of pneumonia was spreading in the city of Wuhan.

But it was already too late. What we now know as COVID-19 had already broken out across the city and possibly beyond.

In the months that followed, authorities bungled prevention measures and covered up the number of infections. They enacted travel restrictions weeks too late – as Chinese travelers seeded outbreaks around the world – and prevented international researchers from visiting the country to investigate the origin of the virus that causes COVID-19.

A global pandemic ensued that has claimed millions of lives, brought economies to a halt, and disrupted people’s livelihoods.

People wearing facemasks as they wait at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan on Jan. 24, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

As the virus spread around the world, the regime in Beijing began an aggressive campaign to spread disinformation claiming that the virus didn’t originate in China; that propaganda offensive continues today.

Meanwhile, the regime punished citizens who dared to publicize information that didn’t fit its narrative: that authoritarian control had succeeded in containing the disease.

But in interviews with The Epoch Times, citizens tell of a different reality: draconian lockdown measures have deprived them of basic rights, while authorities continue to suppress information about new clusters around the country.

As a new wave now hits Beijing and parts of northeastern China, locals are once again kept in the dark as authorities seal off neighborhood after neighborhood.

Residents wait for groceries delivered to an entrance of a sealed residential compound, after new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Dalian city, Liaoning Province, China, on July 23, 2020. (China Daily via REUTERS)

Coverup Culture

China’s initial response was rife with missteps.

Wuhan health authorities only confirmed the outbreak on Dec. 31, 2019, after whistleblower doctors had shared information on social media.

Government documents leaked to The Epoch Times have since revealed that COVID-19 cases may have surfaced months earlier. Wuhan hospital data shows that patients were hospitalized with symptoms similar to COVID-19 as early as September 2019, while several people died in October 2019 from pneumonia, lung infections, and other COVID-19-like conditions.

In the early weeks of the epidemic, the Chinese regime continually downplayed the crisis and denied that the disease could be transmitted among humans. The World Health Organization repeated Beijing’s claims, and would wait until Jan. 30 to declare the outbreak a global health emergency.

Chinese authorities didn’t implement containment measures until Jan. 23, with a lockdown on Wuhan. However, by then, 5 million people had already left Wuhan, amid a typical peak season for domestic and international travel for the Lunar New Year holiday.

Chinese officials in protective suits checking on an elderly man wearing a facemask who collapsed and died on a street near a hospital in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 30, 2020. (HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images)

Tight Control

Chinese authorities soon adopted a so-called “fire blanket style” procedure to contain the disease domestically.

Once a person is diagnosed with COVID-19, the local government detects the patient’s recent close contacts and the places he has recently visited, via China’s ubiquitous surveillance camera system. One internal Chinese government document obtained by The Epoch Times shows that more than a million people nationwide were being closely monitored for their risk of contracting COVID-19 during the month of May.

During lockdowns, people are prevented from leaving their homes. Usually, authorities mandate that only one person per household can go outside every two to three days, and can only spend an hour or two to shop for basic necessities.

Suspected patients are isolated at government-designated quarantine centers, including some that reportedly had unsanitary conditions and a lack of medical care.

In areas with serious outbreaks, such as Wuhan, Suifenhe, Beijing, and Shanghai, authorities created makeshift hospitals with only wall partitions separating one patient from another. Some complained that the hospitals were “like death camps.”

Patients with mild symptoms of the COVID-19 are resting at night in the makeshift hospital set up in a sports stadium in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 18, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

A Year of Outbreaks

Despite the containment measures, new clusters continue to emerge throughout China.

Authorities usually require mass nucleic acid testing soon after. During an outbreak in October in the eastern city of Qingdao, authorities claimed that after testing all 11 million residents, they found zero new infections.

International experts and local residents view such glowing accounts with skepticism. A day after authorities made that announcement, some residents told The Epoch Times that they hadn’t yet received their test results.

Local governments also continued to cover up the scale of new outbreaks. The Epoch Times has on several occasions obtained internal government data that revealed figures much higher than what had been publicly reported, such as in Beijing, and Shandong, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces.

Governments typically shared little information with citizens. In one classified document issued in February, Chinese authorities explicitly stated that epidemic-related documents were to be treated as top secret.

“During the time period of combating the virus, all types of urgent documents, urgent notices, urgent events… internally shared sensitive information, and any information that the [government] leaders haven’t approved to disclose to the public” would be considered state secrets, the document said.

Chinese students hold a memorial for Dr. Li Wenliang, who was the whistleblower of the coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, and caused the doctor’s death in that city, outside the UCLA campus in Westwood, Calif., on Feb. 15, 2020. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)

Disinformation

The Chinese regime switched tactics around March, as countries around the world were responding to their own outbreaks.

On March 12, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, claimed in a Twitter post that the CCP virus was brought to Wuhan by the U.S. Army. His baseless claim, and other similar accusations by Chinese diplomats, sparked widespread condemnation by Western officials.

On Nov. 29, the Chinese state-run Global Times published an article suggesting that the virus originated on the Indian subcontinent. Recently, Chinese state-run media misquoted scientists’ research to claim that the virus originated in Italy.

The Chinese regime and its media have also been promoting the theory that local COVID-19 outbreaks stemmed from frozen food supply chains. Authorities claim they detected virus strains on imported frozen salmon, shrimp, pork, beef, and other foods from a range of countries, such as Norway, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, and Germany.

The WHO states that the possibility of infection from contact with food and food packaging is slim. Disease experts also say it’s unlikely the virus can spread through frozen food.

Residents wait to be tested for the COVID-19 in Qingdao, eastern China’s Shandong Province on Oct. 12, 2020. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Censorship

From the beginning, Wuhan authorities silenced whistleblower doctors such as Ai Fen and Li Wenliang, who were first to note on social media that their hospitals were admitting patients with a new, potentially contagious, pneumonia-like disease. They were summoned by police and reprimanded.

Li, who later died of the disease himself, has been described as a martyr.

Fang Bin, Chen Qiushi, and other citizen journalists who documented the Wuhan outbreak, including visits to local hospitals and funeral homes, have gone missing. Fang and Chen’s whereabouts remain unknown.

On Dec. 28, Zhang Zhan was sentenced to four years in prison, becoming the first known citizen journalist to be sentenced for providing first-hand information about the epidemic in China.

Netizens also reported being detained by local police after they posted outbreak-related information on social media.

Internal documents obtained by The Epoch Times showed that propaganda authorities heavily suppressed information about the pandemic that didn’t align with official narratives.

Chinese security personnel wearing protective masks march through Tiananmen Square in Beijing on April 4, 2020. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

The populace is getting fed up with the way local authorities are handling the situation.

In March, residents under lockdown in Wuhan heckled a group of Chinese officials touring the area, shouting complaints from their apartments, such as, “It’s fake, everything’s fake!”

Recently in the northeastern city of Dalian, college students were barred from leaving campus as the city reported new COVID-19 cases. They complained about the suddenly imposed quarantine.

“I believe if the Dalian government continues to insist on not allowing students to leave, students could become restless. They could even join together to resist,” one student said.

While populations across the globe rang in the new year and are now enjoying the holiday, wondering what 2021 will hold, tensions in the Persian Gulf between the US and Iran just grew hotter.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr reports Iran’s forces in the Persian Gulf are now on high alert, possibly in preparation for some level of either offensive or defensive action.

“Iranian maritime forces in the Persian Gulf raised readiness levels in last 48 hours,” Starr writes based on a US defense official. But it remains that it’s “not clear if moves are ‘defensive’ because expect US attack, or are signals Iran preparing for operations in the Gulf against the US,” the official said. 

The Pentagon is bracing for many “unknowns” ahead of Sunday, which marks the one year anniversary of the killing of IRGC Quds Force Gen. Qassem Soleimani by US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport. Days ago the US flew a pair of B-52 bombers over the Persian Gulf as a “warning” aimed at deterring any Iranian attempt at retaliation for the Jan, 3rd, 2020 death of the popular Iranian general.

Threats and counter-threats have continued to be issued throughout the week, with the latest coming from Iran’s military on Friday, according to the AP:

The top commander of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard [Gen. Hossein Salami] said Friday that his country was fully prepared to respond to any U.S. military pressure as tensions between Tehran and Washington remain high in the waning days of President Donald Trump’s administration.

So essentially both sides are poised with fingers on the trigger in anticipation of a provocation by the other side in an intensifying standoff which could very easily escalate into the very conflict both hope to avoid. Iran’s Foreign Ministry has further charged that Trump is attempting to generate a provocation or “pretext for war” – specifically with the prior B-52 flyover.

Just In: Iranian maritime forces in the Persian Gulf raised readiness levels in last 48 hours: US official with latest info. Not clear if moves are “defensive” because expect US attack, or are signals Iran preparing for operations in the Gulf against the US, official said. #Iran

— Barbara Starr (@barbarastarrcnn) January 1, 2021

Gen. Salami said at a commemoration event Friday at Tehran University that “Today, we have no problem, concern or apprehension toward encountering any powers. We will give our final words to our enemies on the battlefield.“

Iran’s official media accounts in English have also been active ahead of the Soleimani death anniversary under the hashtag #WillNeverForgetWillNeverForgive.

By committing a craven act of terror against Gen Soleimani, the US violated int’l law & the UN Charter in a blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.

The US’ lawlessness in full show.#Iran won’t rest until bringing those responsible to justice.#WillNeverForgetWillNeverForgive pic.twitter.com/nUscWM2CDo

— Iran Foreign Ministry 🇮🇷 (@IRIMFA_EN) January 1, 2021

Meanwhile there’s been mixed signals out of Washington: on the one hand there’s been clear and aggressive ‘deterrence’ messaging such as the latest bomber flyover, but on the other yesterday the Pentagon announced it is bringing the USS Nimitz supercarrier home from the gulf region.

As the AP explained of the move: “Sending the aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, home to the U.S. West Coast would seem at odds with the idea that a show of force is needed to deter Iran. This might reflect a split within the defense establishment on whether Iran poses a heightened threat to strike in the waning days of the Trump administration.“

Authored by Benjamin Zeisloft via Campus Reform,

The Ivy League is a group of the United States’ eight most prestigious universities. The schools produce many of the nation’s future political leaders, businessmen, scientists, and engineers.

The Ivy League is also rife with leftism, as Campus Reform reported throughout 2020.

1. Harvard University

Students at Harvard asked administrators to ban Trump administration alumni from serving as faculty members, teaching fellows, and guest speakers.

An open letter to Harvard administrators said that although Harvard usually hires officials from outgoing presidential administrations, students are “extremely concerned” about the Trump administration’s impacts on “fundamental democratic institutions.”

The students request a “system of accountability” for “high-level political appointees and Trump administration consultants before they are invited as fellows or to teach or speak on campus.”

Harvard, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s second highest-ranked university.

2. Cornell University

Students at Cornell University can use their status as a “person of color” to exempt themselves from the university’s flu vaccine mandate.

“Students who identify as Black, Indigenous, or as a Person of Color (BIPOC) may have personal concerns about fulfilling the Compact requirements based on historical injustices and current events,” said Cornell Health’s vaccine requirement FAQ.

Cornell, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s eighteenth highest-ranked university.

3. Yale University

The U.S. Department of Justice concluded an investigation into Yale, stating that it illegally discriminates against White and Asian-American applicants in its undergraduate admissions process in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

White and Asian-American applicants have a one-tenth to one-fourth chance of admission compared with African-Americans who have the same or similar qualifications, according to the Justice Department.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Eric Dreiband stated that it is “past time for American institutions to recognize that all people should be treated with decency and respect and without unlawful regard to the color of their skin.”

Yale, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s fourth highest-ranked university.

4. University of Pennsylvania

Students at the University of Pennsylvania boycotted classes on Election Day in the interest of “wellness.” However, they also used the boycott to push demands oriented toward defunding the school’s police department.

One student told Campus Reform that canceling classes on election day is “unreasonable all around,” since it teaches students that “if you don’t get your way in something or don’t like the result of something, you can just avoid your responsibilities.”

The end result is a “breed of entitled citizens,” the student added.

Penn, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s eighth highest-ranked university.

5. Dartmouth College

More than 1,000 students, alumni, and faculty at Dartmouth signed a petition demanding that the school dissociate itself from the conservative student newspaper the Dartmouth Review.

The Review addressed the letter with an editorial entitled “An Overdue Response to the College Jacobins.”

“It was only a matter of time before the crosshairs would be set on The Review, and in the typical fashion, it manifested in an attempt to stifle rational discourse by appealing to a higher power,” the conservative newspaper stated. “It’s unfortunate that this type of intellectual cowardice has come about on campus, and I would argue that it is antithetical to the pursuits of liberal institutions such as our own wherein debate ought to be fundamental in the search for higher truth. I guess in the post-modern age, truth no longer matters much. Go figure.”

Dartmouth, according to US News and World Report, is the nation’s thirteenth highest-ranked university.

6. Brown University

Students at Brown created a “Burn Brown Book,” which contained a progressive wish list that included defunding the police and “free” college.

Written entirely in memes and slang, the book tells students — who pay nearly $60,000 in tuition each year — how to “dismantle” the institution.

A series of articles shows readers the necessary information to successfully carry out their insurrection. One essay argues that Brown should adopt Critical Muslim Studies and Critical Hawai’ian Studies departments as valuable “decolonial disciplines that unsettle white, liberal, secularism as normative.”

7. Princeton University

The Daily Princetonian — Princeton University’s student newspaper — published an editorial encouraging the university to punish “racist speech.”

“For too long, White people, and particularly White men, in this country and on this campus, have held the power to decide what constitutes acceptable speech and action,” says the piece. “They have consistently deemed racist, and particularly anti-Black, fictions acceptable.”

The Daily Princetonian suggests “anti-racist training for those who transgress the harassment policy.”

8. Columbia University

Columbia Law’s Human Rights Institute criticized the Trump administration on its website in a piece entitled “Human Rights Must be at the Top of the Biden Agenda.”

“The past four years highlight how calculated disregard for human rights at home and abroad disrupts lives, fuels fear and insecurity at our university, and leads to injustice in our communities and around the world,” said the group.

The group then suggested that the Biden administration undo Trump’s “regressive policies” that inflicted “significant harm.”

Home Depot is recalling more than 19,000 ceiling fans after reports that the fan’s blades can detach, fly off and cause “injury or property damage” while in use.

The product in question is the King of Fans Hampton Bay 54 inch Mara Indoor/Outdoor fan, according to NBC News. Of course, if you’re about to look up and check to see if you have the same fans installed at your house, make sure you turn it off first.

The company says it has received 47 reports of blades detaching from the fan, “including two reports of the fan blade hitting a consumer and four reports of the blade causing property damage”.

#Recall: Hampton Bay 54-inch Mara Indoor/Outdoor Ceiling Fans. Blades can detach while in use, posing an injury hazard. Get replacement. CONTACT: 866-443-1291, MaraRecall@kingoffans.com, or https://t.co/7JpA5LbS3Z. Full recall notice: https://t.co/bpKY0Of1mS pic.twitter.com/wn95trBbgF

— US Consumer Product Safety Commission (@USCPSC) December 23, 2020

The King of Fans said that the decision to recall the fans is voluntary and in cooperation with U.S. and Canadian regulatory agencies. 

The company said in a statement: “The Hampton Bay 54 in. Mara Indoor/Outdoor ceiling fans are being voluntarily recalled in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada. There have been consumer reports that the fan blades on the Hampton Bay 54 in. Mara Indoor/Outdoor Ceiling Fan may detach due to an isolated manufacturing defect with the assembly of the fan blade’s locking clip to the fan flywheel, where one of the two screws retaining the locking clip is not adequately secured to the flywheel. If this occurs, the blade may detach from the fan during use, posing an injury hazard.”

“On behalf of King of Fans and The Home Depot, we apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you. We take pride in the quality of our products, and the safety of our customers is our priority,” the notice continues – because “sorry we’ve decapitated your and/or your family members” doesn’t quite have a great ring to it.

The fans were sold exclusively at Home Depot and online from April to October, the article notes. There were about 182,000 fans in the U.S. and 8,800 in Canada in total. Home Depot says about 80,000 of the fans were sold.

“We’re committed to the safety and quality of our products so we contacted the Consumer Product Safety Commission and voluntarily recalled the product and stopped sales when we discovered the issue,” the retailer said.

Authored by GQ Pan via The Epoch Times,

Two Minnesota legislators who believe their state’s COVID-19 death count is inaccurate are calling for a nationwide audit to find out how many people died from something other than the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus but were added to the pandemic death totals.

Republican State Rep. Mary Franson said she has enlisted a team to examine data provided by Minnesota’s health department. Her team allegedly found that COVID-19 was blamed for some deaths clearly not linked to the respiratory disease.

“We found clear-cut examples from the Minnesota Department of Health’s own files—public records—of suicide, a drowning, an auto accident where the passenger was ejected from the vehicle, we found dementia … and strokes,” Franson said during an interview with Fox News, adding that she was “so shocked at what I found that I just could not keep silent.”

“The citizens of our country are being led in fear, and that fear is leading them to make irrational decisions based on the governors with their shutdowns,” she added.

“So we need this audit. We need the truth.”

Franson was joined by Republican State Sen. Scott Jensen, a practicing physician. Jensen has become the subject of two state probes earlier this year for arguing that the federal and state guidelines on reporting COVID-19 deaths could pressure local authorities to misclassify and inflate their numbers, and that doctors and hospitals are motivated to do so for more health care dollars.

“If you could hit a threshold of 161 admissions to your hospital with COVID-19 diagnosis between January and June, you received $77,000 of additional money for each one of those admissions” through the CARES Act, Jensen told Fox News.

“I don’t think there’s any questions that reverse incentives have been created.”

In response to the allegations, the Minnesota Department of Health said the way it classifies COVID-19 deaths is consistent with the guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We’re absolutely following the national guidance on how we are doing our death reporting from COVID-19,” Infectious Disease Director Kris Ehresmann told Fox News. “If someone had tested positive for COVID and then subsequently died, we would review the death certificate and motor vehicle accident would be the cause of death and so it would not be considered a COVID death.”

According to the state health officials, more than 413,000 Minnesotans have tested positive for the CCP virus since March and 5,262 people have died. The Health Department reported on Wednesday that 38,284 people across the state have received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

Footage has emerged of an unidentified flying object spotted in the skies over Leeward Oahu, Hawaii, earlier this week. 

Hawaii News Now says multiple videos show “what appears to be a glowing‚ oblong mass — both in the sky and in the water.” 

The incident occurred on Tuesday and was immediately reported to law enforcement authorities. Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration were also notified. They said “no aircraft incidents or accidents” were in the region at the time.” 

“Something is in the sky. What is that?” a resident said in one video. 

Misitina Sape filmed the blue, glowing UFO and told Hawaii News Now the footage was shot in the late evening near Haleakala Avenue in Nanakuli.

Minutes later, a woman named Moriah spotted the mysterious flying object passing over Princess Kahanu Estates.

“I look up and then I was like oh s***!,” she said. “I started calling my husband and them because they were all in the garage. I was like hey. Come look up there. See if you see what I see. They all said yea!.

“I don’t know what it was. This one was going so fast,” Moriah said. 

She was able to follow the flying object for a few miles until – how she put it – the “object appeared to drop into the ocean.” 

Moriah can be heard in one video saying, “(It) went land in the water. Whatever it is.”

She told Hawaii News Now that the object appeared to be larger than a telephone pole and made no noise. 

“We called 911,” Moriah said, “For have like one cop or somebody for come out and come check em out.”

FAA spokesperson Ian Gregor said the agency was notified of a plane that may have crashed in the area “but had no aircraft disappear off radars. And no reports of overdue or missing aircraft.”

Meanwhile, the latest COVID-19 relief and government funding bill includes a 180-day countdown for the government to reveal what they know about mysterious flying objects. 

During the pandemic, sightings of UFOs in the skies over New York City surged on a year over year basis. 

Earlier this month, Haim Eshed, former head of Israel’s Defense Ministry’s space directorate, told Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper that aliens exist and have been waiting to show themselves but added they remain secret because “humanity isn’t ready” for the reveal. 

Via PlanetFreeWill.news,

In what can only be described as turning morality on its head, a Seattle council member has introduced legislation that could allow courts to dismiss misdemeanor crimes, such as theft and assault, that were committed because of poverty or while a person was experiencing symptoms of a mental illness or substance abuse, reports the Seattle Times.

Introduced by city Council member Lisa Herbold in late October, the legislation is a continuation of the cities “woke” social justice efforts in the wake of the George Floyd police encounter. With the bill crafted under the label “poverty defense,” its defenders say that it aims to ease the burden of usual court rulings on lower income residents but has some worried it will pave the way for crimes like assault, harassment, communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, and more, to go unpunished.

“I think when you’re talking about folks who are committing offenses to survive or because of underlying mental-health or substance-use issues, incarceration does not have the deterrent effect people believe it has,” Herbold said.

King County Director of Public Defense Anita Khandelwal, when defending the bill, used the example of someone without shoes stealing a pair from Goodwill and explained an attorney could acquit the thieve of wrong doing on the basis that they didn’t own a personal pair of shoes before the crime.

A similar example would be a person guilty of a carjacking being acquitted of the crime based on the fact they did not own a car because they could not afford one.

From the Seattle Times:

Drunk or high driving and domestic-violence assault are carved out as exceptions in the bill, but what’s left in has been troubling to some who point to misdemeanors like non-domestic assault, harassment, communicating with a minor for immoral purposes and more.

In a statement published Friday, police- reform group Mothers for Police Accountability worried that a person committing assault would be acquitted “by simply asserting that they were suffering from anxiety or depression or the ‘triggering’ of some past trauma or some other symptom of a mental disorder, including alcoholism and addiction.”

Some also expressed concern about what would then happen once people with behavioral health issues were back on the street, and criticized the idea for lacking a plan to then address the behavioral health and economic issues at the root of people’s behavior.

University’s Crime & Justice Research Center director Jacqueline Helfgott says the bill could have a huge impact on public safety, likening the effect to decriminalizing up to 90% of misdemeanor crimes in Seattle if attorneys follow the bill strictly.

Seattle police, who have seen their departments become the target of the leftist movement to “defund the police,” have come out against the bill, saying it would “endanger the safety and rights of all people of Seattle.”

“Seattle Police Department officers will continue to focus on holding individuals accountable who commit one of the thousands of assaults or thefts that occur in our community each year,” a statement from the city’s police force reads.

After first being introduced in October, the bill was tabled over a budget process but it is expected to come back up for consideration over the winter.

The leftist force behind the bill

Behind the push for this piece of legislation, which couldn’t come at a worse time for Seattle residents as homicides in the city have recently climbed to their highest level in more than a decade, is the leftist organization called Decriminalize Seattle that opposes policing and the criminal legal system.

As Judicial Watch reports:

The group has called for defunding the Seattle Police Department by at least 50% and reallocating the funds to “community led health and safety systems.” It also demands the release of protestors arrested during recent violent uprising without charges. An organizer with Decriminalize Seattle, identified as one of the law’s catalysts in the media, says “what we’ve already known is that the misdemeanor system is basically a system of cycling people in poverty through municipal court over and over again without meeting their basic needs.”

This is yet another example of the city falling under pressure from radical left wing organizations.

When signing off on the city’s 2021 budget, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan slashed the SPD’s budget by nearly 20% and diverted the funding into “community spending” which King 5 news reports was a hat tip to the “defund the police” movement but ended up disappointing activists who said it was not enough.

The Irony

Council member Lisa Herbold’s lax stance on law enforcement is being highlighted after she reportedly called the police after someone threw a rock at her house on Dec. 11.

Herbold reportedly told police that “she was on the west side of the living room near the kitchen when she heard a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot and dove into the kitchen for cover.”

How ironic that she would want this person punished but is promoting the idea that if a crime was committed, the potential criminal could be allowed to walk scot-free if they were acting on their poverty or mental ill-ness. How inconsiderate of her …

A monster storm explosively intensified in the northern Pacific near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands on New Year’s Eve, battering the region with hurricane-force winds, heavy seas, and torrential rains, according to Reuters. 

“It’s the most intense storm ever recorded in the North Pacific, excluding typhoons,” said Brian Brettschneider, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist with the National Weather Service (NWS). 

The storm is classified as a “bomb cyclone” after meteorologists recorded barometric pressure of 921 millibars, a record-low reading for the region, equivalent to the center of a Category 4 hurricane. 

Wind Speed Map

In western Aleutians, waves greater than 50 feet were seen with winds more than 80 mph, or on par with a Category 1 hurricane. The islands are barely populated, and the storm poses a limited risk to humans, but the area is a heavily used commercial shipping route between Asia and the US. 

Wave Height Analysis 

Brettscheneider said the real threat of the storm is aircraft or vessels in the region. 

Unlike hurricanes, these large and powerful storms go unnamed,” Capital Weather Gang’s weather expert Jeff Halverson wrote back in 2015. 

The National Weather Service’s (NWS) Ocean Prediction Center (OPC) tweeted Thursday night: 

“Here is the latest surface analysis showing a strong storm with winds to #hurricaneforce moving toward the Bering Sea. The central pressure is 921 MB making it one of the strongest storms to ever impact the North Pacific. Winds are expected to reach 95 kts near the low center!” 

Satellite imagery of the storm is impressive. 

Global mosaic visible/IR imagery shows just how large the strong low impacting the North Pacific is. Notice how far the sprawling cold front (long band of clouds stretching SW) extends from the cyclone. pic.twitter.com/276m3z4Xlq

— NWS OPC (@NWSOPC) January 1, 2021

Late last night, NWS-OPC tweeted:

“The #HurricaneForce low near the Aleutians continues to produce extreme conditions. Buoy 46071 (circled in red) is observing seas greater than 50 ft. Note in the insert the 58 ft measurement.”

The jet stream is likely to carry the weather disturbance into the Pacific Northwest next week.