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Taliban fighters upset, feel betrayed that US military left non-working helicopters: report

Greg Norman
Fox News
Thu, 02 Sep 2021 00:00 UTC
Taliban Helicopter
© AFP Getty Images
Taliban member inspects a damaged helicopter at Kabul airport.
Taliban fighters are feeling angry and betrayed Wednesday after discovering that Afghan National Army helicopters abandoned at Kabul's airport have been rendered inoperable by departing U.S. troops, according to a report. A U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson told Fox News on Wednesday:
"We disabled/demilitarized that equipment at Hamid Karzai International Airport prior to our departure."
An Al Jazeera reporter who toured a hangar on the military side of the airport said in a video that the terrorist group
"expected the Americans to leave helicopters like this in one piece for their use. When I said to them, 'why do you think that the Americans would have left everything operational for you'? They said because we believe it is a national asset and we are the government now and this could have come to great use for us."
Meanwhile, the Taliban are hoping to get the commercial side of the airport reopened for flights in the coming days, Al Jazeera reports.

Comment: Well, that decision is being raked over the coals by more practical-minded (and outspoken) individuals:
On Tuesday, Donald Trump said Washington should demand that the Taliban return each and every piece of American military hardware or crack down on the militant group.

Former US President Donald Trump has shared a video of the Taliban holding a military parade in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar to celebrate the end of the American troop exit from the nation.

The short clip, published on Trump's Telegram page on Thursday, showed what looked like US-made armoured vehicles, part of the American military hardware that was captured by the Taliban following its takeover of Afghanistan on 15 August.

The ex-POTUS wrote in Thursday's post:
"There is nothing disabled about the equipment that the United States gave to the Taliban. Just more made up lies!"
He was apparently referring to Monday's statement by General Kenneth F. McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, who said that American troops disabled armoured vehicles, aircraft, and weapons systems that they abandoned at the Kabul Airport before the remaining American servicemen boarded the last flights out of Afghanistan.
"We demilitarised those systems so that they'll never be used again. We felt it more important to protect our forces than to bring those systems back. [...] They'll never be able to be operated by anyone again."
Chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, for his part, said the only US equipment left operable at the airport was
"a couple of fire trucks and forklifts so that the airport itself can remain more operational going forward. [The Taliban] can inspect all they want. They can look at them, they can walk around, but they can't fly them. They can't operate them. We made sure to demilitarise, to make unusable, all the gear that is at the airport — all the aircraft, all the ground vehicles."
The claims came after Trump called on Washington to press Taliban fighters to immediately return the $85 billion worth of US military equipment the militant group seized after they came to power in Afghanistan on 15 August.
"If it is not handed back, we should either go in with unequivocal military force and get it, or at least bomb the hell out of it."
Shortly after the fall of Kabul, several videos were shared on social media appearing to show what looked like Taliban fighters posing next to UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and apparently taking a joyride in one.
Do they not work? Or, was disablement a faux caveat created to head off political and public outrage, provide lucrative replacement contracts for the MIC and cover Joe Biden's a**? (Meanwhile, the Taliban thumb their nose and turn to China.)

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Attention

Kim Jong Un orders tougher measures to fight climate change, COVID-19

Thomas Maresca
UPI
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 05:02 UTC
Kim Jong-un
© EPA-EFE/KCNA
North Korea leader Kim Jong-un
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called on officials to tighten COVID-19 prevention measures and to improve damage control for extreme weather caused by climate change, state media reported on Friday.

Kim led a politburo meeting of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea on Thursday, state-run Korean Central News Agency reported. The isolated country has been struggling economically while facing food shortages due to a prolonged border closure and flood damage from typhoons.

At the meeting, Kim said that protecting against the effects of climate change was
"more important than anything else such as river improvement, afforestation for erosion control, dike maintenance and tide embankment projects. Disastrous weather is getting ever more pronounced worldwide and our country is also lying vulnerable to its danger."
North Korea has seen its crops severely impacted by a series of typhoons over the past two summers as well as a heatwave and drought this year. In June, Kim acknowledged that the food situation was "getting tense."

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Up

Taliban celebrates in Kabul after claiming it has captured Panjshir province, resulting in full control of Afghanistan


RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 16:54 UTC
taliban
© Afghanistan Reuters/Stringer
Taliban forces at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan
Celebratory gunfire has erupted over Kabul amid reports that the Taliban has defeated the Panjshir Valley 'resistance'. The latter's commander earlier rejected the claims.
Tracers streaked across the night sky on Friday evening local time, reminiscent of celebrations on Tuesday following the departure of the last US airplane from Kabul. There were different reports as to the occasion, however, with RT's senior correspondent Murad Gazdiev hearing both talk of victory in Panjshir and the arrival of the Taliban's leader.
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Megaphone

Stop politicizing Covid-19, Russia's Putin & China's Xi tell world, calling for cooperation to beat virus instead


RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 19:44 UTC
medical workers
© Sputnik / Kirill Braga
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that using the coronavirus to score political points is undermining faith in authorities across the world and worsening the pandemic, in a joint call with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping on Friday.

The two world leaders appeared at the Eastern Economic Forum, held in Russia's Far East capital, Vladivostok. "It is even more important now, in my opinion, to discard politicization and fight together to overcome the pandemic and its consequences. This is vital for all of humanity," Putin said. In addition, he argued, efforts to use the unprecedented crisis to sideline rivals and bolster influence is hurting confidence in public health messages.
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Arrow Up

BRICS development bank admits UAE, Bangladesh, Uruguay as new members


Reuters
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 11:31 UTC
BRICS sudáfrica
© REUTERS / Mike Hutchings
The New Development Bank (NDB) set up by the BRICS group of nations said on Thursday it had admitted the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Bangladesh as members in its first expansion push.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - a group of major emerging economies known as BRICS - launched the bank in 2015 and started formal talks with potential new members last year.

"New members will have in NDB a platform to foster their cooperation in infrastructure and sustainable development," said NDB President Marcos Troyjo in a statement.

Comment: Whilst BRICS forges ahead with mutually beneficial deals which would likely improve life for many and that could potentially make the world a safer place, the US just signed off an additional $24 billion in 'defense' spending.

See also:

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Russian Flag

Kremlin to Kiev: Drive to join US-led NATO bloc, bring Western forces near Russia presents serious security risks

Jonny Tickle
RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 18:17 UTC
Ukraine flag Nato flag
© Getty Images / Caspar Benson; (inset); Getty Images / Valentyn Semenov / EyeEm
Ukraine Flag (inset); NATO flag
The Kremlin has warned that the publicly stated aspiration of Ukraine to join the American-led NATO military bloc poses a danger to Russia, which is completely opposed to the build-up of Western armed forces near its borders.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed on Thursday that Washington is encouraging Kiev to continue its attempts to join both the Cold War-era analogue to the long-disbanded Warsaw Pact and the European Union - measures which he said would put the two Western organizations directly on Kiev's long border with Russia.

Comment: Ukraine has offered itself up as a pawn in the new Great Game with Russia. Foolish doesn't begin to cover it.

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Black Magic

How The National Review sold its soul to Google

Emerald Robinson
emeralddb3.substack.com
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 17:51 UTC
national review magazine trump
© AP/TheStreet
And why Jonah Goldberg and David French got thrown out

There were rumors in the summer of 2018 that an audiotape was circulating that would send shockwaves through the think tanks of Washington and the conservative intellectual movement in particular. A top Google executive had been recorded telling his fellow employees that Google generously donated to conservative think tanks and magazines to dampen criticism of their anti-conservative bias. In essence, Google was buying off Conservatism Inc. and the GOP establishment to stay silent while Google monitored, harassed, and excluded Trump supporters. If true, the tape sounded like a smoking gun: incontrovertible evidence of the corruption and double-dealing of Conservatism Inc. that would permanently discredit it with Republican voters.
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Dollar

Brilliant new book Woke Inc exposes cynical big-business' tactics, used to shower itself in virtue and to silence woke critics

Damian Wilson
RT
Mon, 30 Aug 2021 17:48 UTC
woke inc
Using disingenuous, profit-driven stands on race, gender and other woke issues, mega-rich corporations are unelected moral guardians of society, flogging virtue to consumers who buy their products to feel good about themselves.

Back in 2019, razor manufacturer Gillette launched a grievously ill-considered advertising campaign addressing toxic masculinity, just as the #Metoo movement was gaining speed, using images portraying sexism, bullying and aggressive male behaviour.

The idea was to twist the company's slogan from "The best a man can get" to the "The best a man can be." It sucked big time and hilariously backfired, causing huge reputational damage to the business, as customers turned their backs on this impossibly woke nonsense.

Having bought Gillette products for years, I have never bought them since and never will again.

It's just the sort of incident that Vivek Ramaswamy explores in his forensically researched Woke Inc: Inside the Social Justice Scam, where paying lip-service to critical theories on race and gender has become a commercial imperative in the 21st century.

And it's not just about consumer products and what they say about us, it's about what we say and where we say it.

Ramaswamy looks at how mega-wealthy tech giants like Facebook, Twitter and Google feel that it is within their scope to not only determine who's entitled to freedom of speech, but also what they should be saying. These are the same guys who banned the then-president of the United States from their social-media platforms.
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NPC

CNNBS: DHS fears Taliban takeover could 'inspire' uprising by US insurrectionists & white supremacists


RT
Thu, 02 Sep 2021 17:29 UTC
pround boys taliban
© Reuters / Kevin Mohatt; Reuters / Stringer
(L) A member of the Proud Boys gestures during a rally in Denver, Colorado; (R) Taliban fighters stand outside the Interior Ministry in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 16, 2021.
With President Joe Biden declaring the US pullout from Afghanistan complete and the war over, his government is shifting focus to enemies at home, namely "white supremacists" and "extremists" allegedly cheering on the Taliban.

"White supremacist and anti-government extremists have expressed admiration for what the Taliban accomplished, a worrying development for US officials who have been grappling with the threat of domestic violent extremism," CNN reported on Wednesday afternoon.


Comment: The hidden logic: if you support the pullout of American troops from Afghanistan (regardless of what you think of the Taliban), you are probably a white supremacist or anti-govt extremist.



Only one official is mentioned by name, however - John Cohen of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security. His concern came from a teleconference call with law enforcement on Friday, which CNN says it obtained, when Cohen said these groups were "framing the activities of the Taliban as a success."


Comment: If that is what the chatter is saying, these chatterers are objectively correct: the Taliban successfully took control of the country and got the Americans to leave.


Another source for the story is SITE Intelligence Group, an NGO run by professional "extremist tracker" Rita Katz. Their August 26 weekly bulletin contains a single quote by an anonymous person on a Telegram channel praising "farmers and minimally trained men" who fought to "take back their nation back from globohomo."
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Eye 1

Black Mirror: Flying 'medical' drone to 'automatically' check Italy beachgoers' temperatures in case of Covid


RT
Fri, 03 Sep 2021 16:34 UTC
police drone
© PHOTOPQR/L'EST REPUBLICAIN/MAXPPP
Italian officials want a drone to fly around and measure the temperatures of people relaxing on a beach near Rome in order to track Covid-19 and prevent health emergencies.

The 'medical' drone was scheduled to patrol the beaches of Ostia, a suburb of Rome, on Saturday and Sunday, but the experiment was postponed due to a bad weather forecast.

According to local health officials, the drone would "automatically" measure temperatures while hovering at least 25m above the water and staying at least 30m away from people. Test flights were planned to last for five hours, between 11am and 4pm.

Comment: There will be no escape from the surveillance. All in the name of keeping everyone "safe". China pioneered the technique, which was then adopted around the world:

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