08/30/21

Gen. McKenzie Rejected Taliban’s Offer for Control of Kabul

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Just 24 hours before a suicide bomber detonated an explosive outside Hamid Karzai International Airport, senior military leaders gathered for the Pentagon’s daily morning update on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

Speaking from a secure video conference room on the third floor of the Pentagon at 8 a.m. Wednesday — or 4:30 p.m. in Kabul — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin instructed more than a dozen of the department’s top leaders around the world to make preparations for an imminent “mass casualty event,” according to classified detailed notes of the gathering shared with POLITICO.

During the meeting, Gen. Mark Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned of “significant” intelligence indicating that the Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate, ISIS-K, was planning a “complex attack,” the notes quoted him as saying.

Commanders calling in from Kabul relayed that the Abbey Gate, where American citizens had been told to gather in order to gain entrance to the airport, was “highest risk,” and detailed their plans to protect the airport.

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“I don’t believe people get the incredible amount of risk on the ground,” Austin said, according to the classified notes.

On a separate call at 4 that afternoon, or 12:30 a.m. on Thursday in Kabul, the commanders detailed a plan to close Abbey Gate by Thursday afternoon Kabul time. But the Americans decided to keep the gate open longer than they wanted in order to allow their British allies, who had accelerated their withdrawal timeline, to continue evacuating their personnel, based at the nearby Baron Hotel.

American troops were still processing entrants to the airport at Abbey Gate at roughly 6 p.m. in Kabul on Thursday when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest there, killing nearly 200 people, including 13 U.S. service members. Read more here.

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08/30/21

Chairman Bob and the New Socialist America

By: Cliff Kincaid

On his way out the door of the New York governor’s office, Andrew Cuomo gave clemency to a communist terrorist, David Gilbert. Then a California parole board voted to free the Palestinian Marxist killer of Robert F. Kennedy, Sirhan Sirhan.

On a recent trip to New York, I visited Revolution Books, which functions as a headquarters for the Revolutionary Communist Party of Bob Avakian, a one-time associate of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Known as “Chairman Bob,” he is the authentic Maoist. Mao’s Little Red Book is still for sale there.

A film was being shown about Avakian’s role in global communism and how his “New Communism” describes the course of current events.  He proposes a “Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.”

Some people may laugh. But I am not laughing anymore.

What’s fascinating to know is that Avakian urged communists to vote for Joe Biden for president.

We are seeing in real-time why this dedicated Maoist communist made this decision. These communists seemed to anticipate — or know in advance – that the puppet masters behind Biden and associated with Barack Hussein Obama would accelerate the collapse of what they call American imperialism.

“A defeat of the world’s most powerful imperialist country has big repercussions,” their latest video notes.

While they don’t endorse the “reactionary” forces of the Taliban, they nevertheless note that the Islamist victory in Afghanistan will fuel Muslim fundamentalist movements around the world and cause more conflicts in the West.

The other part of the story is that China and Russia are poised to take advantage of this conflict and disarray in the West. It’s actually an old story, reflecting active Muslim cooperation with — or subjugation by — Communist powers over the course of history.

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08/27/21

More Terrifying Details on the Bagram Prison Release

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

Fox News’ Pentagon reporter Jennifer Griffin asked the Department of Defense press director Admiral Kirby how many prisoners were at the prisons at Bagram. Kirby’s answer was merely thousands, and nothing more specific. To be candid, the military knows precisely how many were there and their full militant criminal backgrounds. This all was until Bagram was turned over to the Afghan forces and subsequently to the Taliban which released all prisoners. In January 2002, the U.S. government began detention operations in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Field in Parwan province. For many years, detainees were held at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility, a converted Soviet aircraft machine plant.

So, what about more details? Well, that prison system was known as Gitmo Part 2 and was pressured to be closed for years. After some open-source investigations, there are some interesting details as follows:

…In 2014, the BBC was finally granted access to a Bagram prison. The Afghan Review Board (ARB), is/was the committee responsible for the prisoner issue, had announced that it would be releasing some of the inmates. The ARB said these men could not be prosecuted because of a lack of evidence.

The Nato-led international peacekeeping force (ISAF) quickly came out and slammed the decision, saying the detainees were dangerous terrorists and had “blood on their hands.”

…Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Bagram is a “Taliban-making factory” where innocent people are indiscriminately mixing with extremists and being indoctrinated. Now that some of these prisoners have been released – some of them to the most troubled regions where the Taliban hold sway – the question is, will American fears be realized?

…Before the prison break, Bagram Air Base, including its prison, which holds 5,000 inmates, surrendered to Taliban control, the Associated Press reported. Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi said the former U.S. base that held both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters was taken over on Sunday. Other Taliban gains include Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul after the government collapsed.

…The other large prison was located in Kabul and those prisoners have been released as well. Thousands of inmates, including former Islamic State and al-Qaeda fighters, were released from a prison on the outskirts of Kabul — Pul-e-Charkhi — as well as another facility at Bagram airbase as the Taliban called for a “peaceful transition” of power. source

…Many liberal groups packaged as human rights organizations have long mobilized to close not only Guantanamo but all the prisons in Afghanistan. Now, they seem to have fallen silent given the present conditions in Afghanistan. However, the most disgusting organization advocating for closures of terror prisons which I found somewhat unexpectedly was old man George Soros and his Open Society. Yup….that guy.

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08/27/21

America Has Lost its Moral Compass

By: Cliff Kincaid

The disgraced former CIA director David Petraeus, once called “America’s greatest living general,” is lecturing America that we didn’t try hard enough at building a democratic Muslim nation in Afghanistan. This retired General cheated on his wife with his biographer, as he bungled the military operation in Afghanistan and then took over Obama’s CIA.

The Wall Street Journal devotes a whole story to the self-righteous ramblings of this man who disgraced the uniform and betrayed his wife but then built a lucrative career in the financial and high-tech world.

The Wall Street Journal story has these headlines: “David Petraeus Reflects on the Afghan Debacle. He offers unsparing words about Trump and Biden, a defense of nation-building, and he says U.S. soldiers may have to re-enter Kabul in force to rescue Americans.”

His role as commander of forces in Afghanistan is just as disgraceful as his personal life.

Under the headline, “China is Big Winner in Afghanistan,” Peter Flaherty of the National Legal and Policy Center notes that with the Taliban takeover and the terror group’s ties to Beijing, China will dominate the economy.  “Afghanistan has significant mineral resources, including rare earth elements, which are increasingly under Chinese control worldwide,” he points out.

But another outcome is China’s control of a narco-state.

The Afghan Army praised by Petraeus developed a reputation as the “Hashish Army,” as many in the Afghan army and police forces were taking drugs and engaging in pedophilia. A Journal article from 2010 noted, “Use of marijuana, opium, and heroin among Afghan troops, even while on patrol, is just one of the challenges coalition forces face in working with the Afghan National Army…” A 2013 documentary,  “This is What Winning Looks Like,” showed Afghan soldiers using drugs as evidence surfaced of Afghan police commanders sexually abusing young boys.

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08/26/21

2021 Afghanistan is not 1975 Vietnam

By: Yoram Ettinger | CCNS

  1. In 1975, the US disengagement from Vietnam fulfilled the goal of the Viet Cong, thus ending the US-Vietnam conflict.

In 2021, the US disengagement from Afghanistan advances – but does not fulfill – the goal of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and therefore does not end the conflict between the US and Islamic terrorism.

In 1975, the vision and strategic goal of the Viet Cong was limited to the territory of Vietnam, consistent with an eventual peaceful coexistence and cooperation with the resourceful US.

In 2021, the 14-century-old vision and strategic goal of Islamic terrorism is not limited to the territory of Afghanistan. It is driven by fanatic imperialism, striving to subordinate the “infidel” West – and especially “The Great US Satan” – which is perceived to be the key obstacle on the way to Islamic global domination. Islamic terrorism is determined to establish a global Islamic society, ruled by the Quran and Sharia (“divine law”), which is inconsistent with peaceful coexistence with the “infidel” US, irrespective of its involvement in Afghanistan. In fact, it requires a decisive war against the US, including terrorism on the US mainland.

In 1975, the US was involved in a Vietnam civil war, faced with the choice of fighting in the Vietnam trenches, or disengage and spare itself a war.

In 2021, the US is fighting against an intrinsic, anti-US Islamic terrorism, faced with the choice of confronting Islamic terrorists in their own trenches (which is costly), or disengaging and gradually shifting the war to the US trenches (which is dramatically costlier).

  1. In 2021, US policy-makers are reminded that the Taliban and all rogue regimes are not impressed by – and are not willing to adopt – the Western values of human rights, democracy, international law, and peaceful coexistence.

Moreover, rogue regimes are not impressed by US diplomacy, as they are by effective US counter-terrorism and posture of deterrence.

Islamic terrorists don’t seek popularity in the international community. They seek to intimidate the international community all the way to submission, peacefully or militarily.

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08/25/21

How Can US Debt be Rated AAA?

By: Ed Butowsky | CCNS

You’re in your shiny Ferrari, going 150 miles per hour on a smooth highway when you suddenly realize you’re heading straight toward a cliff at the edge of the Grand Canyon. And now you have to choose:

You can slam on the brakes and pray your car stops in time, or you can put the pedal to the metal and play out the final scene of Thelma & Louise.

It’s one or the other. That’s all there is — unless you’re the United States of America, in which case you have a third option right out of a Roadrunner cartoon:

You move the cliff.

America’s national debt is rapidly approaching $29 trillion, a hole we dig wider and deeper at a recent pace of nearly $2 trillion a year. We currently owe $7.1 trillion of our debt to foreign countries. Our debt per citizen is nearly $86,000. Our debt per taxpayer is nearly $228,000.

We’re at the edge of the Grand Canyon, dangling by our fingertips, and we’re making the mind-boggling choice to stay there. We’re deep in debt, we’re digging ever deeper every day, and our interest payments are due.

And what do we do? We move the cliff. We print more money, and we use it to pay our interest. Meanwhile, our debt level just keeps increasing.

If the United States were a corporation, it would be insolvent — deep in debt, unable to pay its bills, the greatest bankruptcy in the history of the universe.

That’s a scary thought, for sure. But it’s also a cold fact, and we have to stop ignoring it.

The U.S. maintains an AAA credit rating, the highest rating possible, from the Big Three credit-rating agencies: S&P Global Ratings (formerly Standard & Poors), Fitch Ratings, and Moody’s Investors Service.

But it’s hard to see how it merits that rating. An AAA rating reflects an extremely high ability to pay back interest and debt. There are only two companies — Microsoft and Johnson & Johnson — that have AAA ratings. An AA rating, just a notch below AAA, also shows a high ability to pay back interest and debt. Even an A rating is highly coveted.

Generally speaking, investors in companies with any of these ratings don’t fret about the companies’ solvency. They feel the businesses make more than enough money to handle their expenses. But that logic just doesn’t apply to the AAA-rated United States.

In 2011, during the Great Recession, S&P, Moody’s and Fitch placed a negative outlook on Treasury debt. S&P even cut our rating from AAA to AA+. But by 2014 they all returned their outlooks to “stable” as the immediate debt ceiling crisis passed. Since then, Fitch has been the only one of the three to flip its outlook back to “negative” during the COVID pandemic. It cited a deterioration in U.S. public finances as well as the lack of a firm plan to address the growing debt.

Where’s the logic in our top-of-the-world rating? Would you invest in a company that loses money every year and can’t sell enough of its product to pay back its debt? Would you invest in a company that spends about $7 trillion a year and brings in $3.1 trillion in tax revenue? Would you do it knowing that the company is poised to increase spending?

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08/24/21

Top Afghan Govt Officials Smuggled into Turkey

By: Denise Simon | Founders Code

It has been noted that the Turkish military had been providing security at the Hamid Karzai International Airport and the Taliban has told Turkey that their services are no longer needed.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid on Tuesday said that there was no need for the presence of Turkish troops at the Kabul airport and the Islamist group would secure the airport by themselves, Afghan 1TV channel reported.

Additionally, Turkey has evacuated more than 1400 people while other countries are still scrambling to do the same by the hard August 31 deadline as announced by President Biden after CIA Director Burns met with Taliban leaders on Tuesday.

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Meanwhile, Iran has restarted exports of gasoline, natural gas, and oil to Afghanistan, following a request from the Taliban, Iran’s Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Union said Monday.

Taliban cut tariffs on imports of fuel from Iran up to 70%, a spokesperson of the union told Reuters.

As for smuggling top Afghan officials out, read on:

APPROXIMATELY 40 SENIOR OFFICIALS in the government of deposed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani have been secretly smuggled to Turkey in recent days. They include Afghanistan’s intelligence chief, according to reports in Turkish media. They claim that the Afghan officials were smuggled out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan by Turkish military and intelligence operatives. The latter reportedly hid the officials among crowds of Turkish citizens who were evacuated from Kabul in recent days, as the Taliban were entering the Afghan capital.

Turkish media said the Turkish embassy in Kabul had developed evacuation plans earlier this summer, as the Taliban were conquering large swathes of territory throughout the countryside, including a number of provincial capitals. These plans were put in place for the benefit of Turkish expatriates who lived and worked in Afghanistan However, according to reports, Turkish embassy officials also reached out to “Afghan officials, who have close ties with Turkey” and informed them of the evacuation plans.

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