China Tests New Space Capability With Hypersonic Missile, Surprises U.S.

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China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August that circled the globe before speeding towards its target, demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise.

Five people familiar with the test said the Chinese military launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle which flew through low-orbit space before cruising down towards its target.

The missile missed its target by about two-dozen miles, according to three people briefed on the intelligence. But two said the test showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than US officials realized.

The test has raised new questions about why the US often underestimated China’s military modernization.

“We have no idea how they did this,” said a fourth person. (Read more from “China Tests New Space Capability With Hypersonic Missile, Surprises U.S. ” HERE)

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17 American Christian Missionaries Abducted by Gang in Haiti

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A group of 17 U.S. missionaries, including children, were kidnapped by a gang in Haiti on Saturday, according to a voice message sent to various religious missions by an organization with direct knowledge of the incident.

The missionaries were on their way home from building an orphanage, according to a message from Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries.

“This is a special prayer alert,” the one-minute message said. “Pray that the gang members would come to repentance.” (Read more from “17 American Christian Missionaries Abducted by Gang in Haiti” HERE)

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Transhumanists Gather To Plan Global Transformation

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Transhumanism is a futuristic religion that exalts technology as the highest power. The movement’s goal is to merge man with machine. Their wildest prophecies seem ridiculous at first, until you consider the dizzying advances in bionics, robotics, neuroprosthetics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering.

Prominent figures gathered at the TransVision 2021 conference in Madrid over the weekend. Listening to the proceedings online, I heard a broad range of totalizing schemes. There were no Luddites or Amish onstage, but of course, Spain is a long haul for a horse-and-buggy. Besides, no unvaccinated person can legally cross the Spanish border. . .

Their radical ideas are hardly marginal. Transhuman values have been implicitly embraced by the world’s wealthiest technologists. Consider Bill Gates pushing universal jabs, Jeff Bezos’s quest for “life extension,” Elon Musk’s proposed brain implants, Mark Zuckerberg’s forays into the Metaverse, and Eric Schmidt’s plans for an American technocracy racing against China. . .

As a broad ideology, transhumanism is as relevant for the 21st century as communism was for the 20th century. In the mid-1800s, Karl Marx and his crew were mere socialist intellectuals. By 1923, the Bolsheviks had taken over Russia. By 1949, Mao had taken over China. In our age of all-pervasive technology, entire societies are revolutionized before anyone can grasp the change.

The futurists who gathered in Madrid last weekend — along with those preaching technocracy at the World Economic Forum — are laying the intellectual groundwork for a fully digitized social order. Today, it’s the Fourth Industrial Revolution — a global paradigm of total transformation — embraced by Microsoft, Alibaba, Sony, General Motors, Mozilla, and Salesforce, among many others. Tomorrow, the faithful proclaim, it will be artificial superintelligence, brain implants, and unstoppable killer drones. (Read more from “Transhumanists Gather To Plan Global Transformation” HERE)

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Are Guns Really the Problem? Man Allegedly Kills Multiple People With Bow and Arrow

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A man armed with a bow and arrow allegedly murdered several individuals at a town center in Norway on Wednesday night, according to police, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The attack occurred in the town of Kongsberg, about 50 miles outside Oslo, Norway, the NYT reported. The suspect was apprehended after allegedly killing five people and wounding others, Police Chief Oyvind Aas told reporters.

“The information we now have, this person carried out these actions alone,” Aas said. The alleged attack started around 6 p.m. when the suspect began making his way through the center of Kongsberg, police said, the NYT reported.

“The police currently have no concrete indications that there is a change in the threat level in the country,” authorities said in a statement, according to a translation by the NYT.

Norwegian police are not typically armed, but were given permission to carry weapons “due to the serious incident in Kongsberg,” the statement said. A suspect was in police custody half an hour after the attack began, the NYT reported. (Read more from “Are Guns Really the Problem? Man Allegedly Kills Multiple People With Bow and Arrow” HERE)

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Biden’s Sending Your Tax Dollars to Afghanistan

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The Biden administration has agreed to take money from U.S. taxpayers and send it to Afghanistan, where the power in control, the terrorist Taliban organization, already was given $80 billion in American war machinery when the president abruptly ordered U.S. troops to abandon their posts there, a report says.

The AP reports the the Taliban says U.S. “has agreed to provide humanitarian aid” to Afghanistan, which the report described as “on the brink of an economic disaster.”

“The statement came at the end of the first direct talks between the former foes since the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops at the end of August,” the report said.

While the Taliban statement confirmed a commitment to send humanitarian aid, the U.S. government statement worded it differently, revealing that the American government and the terrorists “discussed the United States’ provision of robust humanitarian assistance, directly to the Afghan people.”

The U.S. statement also made it clear it was not in the plans for the U.S. to recognize the terrorists as a government even though they took over the country in August when U.S. troops withdrew and the government that had been set up under U.S. supervision collapsed. (Read more from “Biden’s Sending Your Tax Dollars to Afghanistan” HERE)

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Homeless Heroin Addicts in Afghanistan Rounded up and Forced Into Rehab by the Taliban

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After coming to power in Afghanistan, the Taliban vowed to crack down on widespread drug addiction in the country.

The militant group has been conducting raids in Kabul to find and detain homeless men, often living under bridges, addicted to locally produced heroin and methamphetamine.

The Associated Press captured astonishing photos of one raid from earlier this week, where nearly 150 heroin addicts were rounded up, beaten, and forced into a rehab treatment center.

Homeless heroin users were rounded up by Taliban fighters and taken to the Avicenna Medical Hospital for Drug Treatment on the outskirts of Kabul.

The hospital was once Camp Phoenix, a military base established by the US army in 2003, but is now a drug treatment center that can accommodate 1,000 people. (Read more from “Homeless Heroin Addicts in Afghanistan Rounded up and Forced Into Rehab by the Taliban” HERE)

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Chinese President on Taiwan ‘Reunification’: Those ‘Who Betray Their Motherland’ ‘Will Come To No Good End’

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On Saturday, Chinese President Xi Jinping gave a speech at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing during which he pushed for “reunification” with democratically-governed Taiwan.

“National reunification by peaceful means best serves the interests of the Chinese nation as a whole, including our compatriots in Taiwan,” Xi stated.

“Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should stand on the right side of history and join hands to achieve China’s complete reunification, and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Xi continued, later adding, “Those who forget their heritage, betray their motherland, and seek to split the country will come to no good end; they will be disdained by the people and condemned by history.”

In response to Xi’s latest remarks, Taiwan’s China-policy-making Mainland Affairs Council issued a statement asking that China “abandon its provocative steps of intrusion, harassment and destruction.”

The communist dictatorship has recently ratcheted up its intimidation of Taiwan, sending nearly 150 military jets into Taiwanese airspace over the course of several days at the beginning of October. The island nation responded by scrambling jets “to warn away the Chinese planes, while missile systems were deployed to monitor them,” according to Reuters. (Read more from “Chinese President on Taiwan ‘Reunification’: Those ‘Who Betray Their Motherland’ ‘Will Come To No Good End’” HERE)

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Report: U.S. Special Operators Secretly Trained Taiwanese Forces

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The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Thursday quoted unnamed “officials” who said a contingent of about two dozen U.S. special operations and support troops have been deployed to Taiwan for at least a year to train their Taiwanese counterparts. The report drew a terse response from China, which objects strenuously to any number of American soldiers being stationed in Taiwan.

According to the WSJ, the clandestine training has included U.S. Marines teaching the Taiwanese small-boat combat tactics.

The officials quoted in the report described the training mission as “a small but symbolic effort by the U.S. to increase Taipei’s confidence in building its defenses against potential Chinese aggression,” with an eye toward teaching the Taiwanese how to take fullest advantage of simple and easily protected equipment that might not be targeted for immediate destruction in the event of a Chinese invasion.

The WSJ noted that Asian media has occasionally printed unconfirmed reports of U.S. Marines operating in Taiwan, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Christopher Maier told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a special operations training force should be deployed to Taiwan, without mentioning that one might already be there. (Read more from “Report: U.S. Special Operators Secretly Trained Taiwanese Forces” HERE)

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California Students Are Still Stranded in Afghanistan

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In August, as the Biden administration began what would become a chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, we learned that some California students and their families were stuck in the country.

San Diego County students who had been unable to flee first made headlines. Then, it was discovered that Sacramento-area students were in the same predicament. The last U.S. planes departed around midnight Aug. 30, though not every American citizen was able to make it aboard.

Although the San Diego students’ situation was the most discussed, there appear to be more students from around Sacramento still in Afghanistan. The situation is ever-changing, but here’s what I was able to find out about the remaining students:

There are dozens of Sacramento-area families still in the country, according to the San Juan Unified School District. Recently, three families — including seven students — made it back to the U.S. But about 38 students are still there. . .

The nearby Sacramento City Unified School District told The Times that an Afghan immigrant family with three children enrolled at Ethel I. Baker Elementary sought help in fleeing. The students have not yet returned to the school. (Read more from “California Students Are Still Stranded in Afghanistan” HERE)

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Taiwan President Says Country ‘Will Do Whatever It Takes To Defend Itself’ Against China

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Taiwan will not bend the knee to an increasingly aggressive communist China, the country’s president says, warning that the defeat of the island nation would signal that “authoritarianism has the upper hand over democracy” in today’s “global contest of values.”

Writing in the November-December edition of Foreign Affairs, President Tsai Ing-wen stated that while Taiwan does not seek military confrontation with China, it “will do whatever it takes to defend itself.”

“Amid almost daily intrusions by the People’s Liberation Army, our position on cross-strait relations remains constant: Taiwan will not bend to pressure, but nor will it turn adventurist, even when it accumulates support from the international community,” she wrote. “In other words, the maintenance of regional security will remain a significant part of Taiwan’s overall government policy.”

“Yet we will also continue to express our openness to dialogue with Beijing, as the current administration has repeatedly done since 2016, as long as this dialogue proceeds in a spirit of equality and without political preconditions,” she added. (Read more from “Taiwan President Says Country ‘Will Do Whatever It Takes To Defend Itself’ Against China” HERE)

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