Puppet Masters

Taliban acquires US military biometric devices that can identify Afghans who assisted coalition efforts - reports

RT
Wed, 18 Aug 2021 18:46 UTC

© AFP / Jose CABEZAS
An American ISAF solider from team Apache of Task Force Geronimo, 4th Platoon Delaware of the United States Army, collects biometric information from an Afghan villager in the village of Mans Kalay in Sabari, Khost district on August 4, 2012.

The Taliban has reportedly seized US military biometrics equipment that could expose Afghans who helped coalition forces - since they contain identifying data like iris scans and fingerprints as well as biographical information.

An unidentified Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) official told The Intercept that the Islamist group confiscated the Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE) devices during its offensive push last week. The report was backed up by three former US military personnel.

They told the news outlet that the portable devices could be used to access sensitive information from large, centralized military databases, but noted that it was still unclear how much of the biometric database collected on the Afghan population has been compromised.

According to a US Army Corps of Engineers presentation, HIIDE devices use the data collected to create a "portfolio" that can then be imported into Biometrics Automated Toolset (BAT) identification-processing software as a "digital dossier." This can be scanned against official watch lists for threats.

Besides tracking insurgents, the Pentagon was also reportedly keen to use the devices to gather unique data on 80% of the Afghan population to check for terrorist and criminal activity. Unnamed sources said biometric details of locals who helped the US were also collected and used in identification cards.

Comment: In addition to this gear, "a fair amount" of American weapons have fallen into the hands of the Taliban, according to the White House.

Diplomat: "Not even tanks" can stop large wave of Afghan refugees heading to Europe - Can Merkel, Macron and other leaders avert crisis?

Paul Joseph Watson
Summit News
Wed, 18 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC

Merkel and Macron scramble to prevent repeat of 2015.

Despite Europe heavily fortifying its borders since the 2015 crisis, a top diplomat warns that "not even tanks" can stop a potentially large wave of Afghan refugees heading to the continent.

Even before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, up to 30,000 people were fleeing the country every single week.

Humanitarian development worker Sybille Schnehage told German broadcaster WDR on Sunday, "We can assume that up to three million Afghans will make their way to Europe in the foreseeable future."

Schnehage explained how the refugees are intent on leaving the Middle East entirely and settling in European welfare havens where the state partially subsidizes their lives.

"I always ask people: Why don't you go to Saudi Arabia? They are Muslims. This is your culture. The answer is always: No, Germany is better."

Although many experts think that Europe's efforts to strengthen its ports of entry since 2015 will prevent a repeat of the 2015 invasion, others aren't so confident.

Hunter Biden is seen in unearthed footage telling prostitute that Russian drug dealers stole ANOTHER of his laptops

Josh Boswell
Daily Mail
Wed, 11 Aug 2021 19:24 UTC

Hunter Biden claimed Russians stole another one of his laptops for blackmail while he was close to overdosing in a Las Vegas hotel room, DailyMail.com can reveal.

The alleged incident would mean Hunter lost a total of three computers - the first abandoned at a Delaware computer store and the second seized by federal agents - each likely to hold sensitive information on President Joe Biden and the embarrassing pictures, videos and communications of his son.

The third laptop still appears to be missing - and was taken by Russian drug dealers after they partied with Hunter in Vegas, he told a prostitute in a conversation caught on camera.

Comment: The Gateway Pundit reports:

This is a national scandal like NOTHING this country has ever seen before.
Certainly, dirtbag Chris Wray and the FBI are on top of this?

And yet NOT ONE mainstream liberal outlet even ran the story!
NOT ONE!

Can you imagine the headlines and movies and books and harassing reporters if a Trump son or daughter ever did anything CLOSE to this?

This is really a defining moment in US history.

Ehret: Anglo-American unipolarists extend the geopolitical cage to space

Matthew Ehret
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC

Despite the reality, smaller minds obviously see space as merely a extension of the fixed rules of imperial geopolitics that have been used for millenia to keep human beings locked like rats in a cage managed by oligarchs, Matt Ehret writes.

75 years ago, Winston Churchill delivered a speech in Fulton Missouri announcing a new Iron Curtain that had descended upon the world with the free capitalist nations united under an Anglo-American alliance on the one side and authoritarian states organized under the control of the Kremlin. In the speech which put the nail into the coffin of FDR's vision of a US-Russian-Chinese alliance of win-win cooperation, Churchill announced that:

"Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States."

In the wake of this announcement, new mechanisms and operational procedures were brought online from the creation of the CIA after a purge of military intelligence which began with the dissolution of the OSS, to the establishment of a new security doctrine under NSC-75: 'A Report to the NSC by the Executive Secretary on British Military Commitments' which tied America's destiny to the preservation of British territorial possessions to keep independent-minded nations from falling under Soviet influence.

Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?

Preston Byrne
prestonbyrne.com
Sun, 15 Aug 2021 10:21 UTC

The Taliban seized control of Afghanistan and sought to use the messaging service to help it govern.

In the middle of a conflict, good analysis is hard to come by. Because adversaries do not telegraph their plans to one another, plans depend greatly on the fact patterns surrounding their execution, and no human mind can possibly observe, much less comprehend, the movements of all players on the battlefield, the course of a war, no matter how meticulously planned and no matter how eminently credentialed the planners, frequently defies the plan.

This phenomenon is known as the "Fog of War," a phrase which originated with Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz in his magnum opus, On War:

War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.

Crowd greets Taliban co-founder Baradar on return to Kandahar from exile in Doha

RT
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 10:06 UTC

© Twitter / @TOLOnews
August 18, 2021, Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is greeted on his return from exile.

A co-founder of the Taliban has returned to the birthplace of the Islamist group, Kandahar, to the cheers of the extremist group's supporters. He had been in exile in the Qatari capital.

On Tuesday night, Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar returned to Afghanistan from his exile in the Qatari capital, Doha. Footage shows the Islamist leader, thought to be around 50 years old, and his convoy being welcomed by followers as he entered the city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the radical group.

Comment:

China & Russia prepare for cooperation in Afghan 'reconstruction' under Taliban

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 09:45 UTC

Currently there's an abundance of speculation over how China and Russia are poised to "step into the Afghan gap" - as one analyst in FT has put it. Already in July, less than a month before the 'shockingly' fast Taliban blitz across all provinces and into Kabul, the West was perhaps surprised to see a Taliban delegation received so warmly by China's foreign minister Wang Yi in Tianjin.

It's now expected that China could be among the first countries to formally recognize the Taliban government, with the latter currently claiming it's newly "reformed" - the latest evidence of the hardline Islamist group's old school brutality fully on display notwithstanding.

Comment:

Court rules German newspaper Die Welt published lies about Russia Today

RT
Wed, 18 Aug 2021 13:24 UTC

The head of RT in Germany has challenged Die Welt to take responsibility for publishing untruthful facts harming RT DE's reputation. The claims were made in a column about alleged Russian disinformation printed by the newspaper.

Dinara Toktosunova, head of RT in Germany, called out the influential media giant Axel Springer's daily publication on Wednesday, citing two injunctions ordered by German courts. Both rulings dealt with the same opinion piece published by Die Welt last month, which was highly critical of the channel and made several claims that RT DE found objectionable. The district court in Berlin and Frankfurt sided with the channel, agreeing that the column stated untruthful facts about RT DE.

"I hope our colleagues will have the dignity to acknowledge their mistake," Toktosunova said on social media.

Comment: It's hardly surprising that a Western propaganda outlet would do such a thing, what is surprising is that the court actually had enough integrity to rule against the establishment controlled media, however it's unlikely this story will get the publicity it deserves: 'Smeared, shut out & shadow-banned': The inside story of how RT was branded a 'foreign agent' by free press-loving US officials

Ousted Afghan President Ghani fled Kabul in cars stuffed with CASH - Russian Embassy

Sputnik
Mon, 16 Aug 2021 08:45 UTC

On Sunday, Ashraf Ghani ostensibly fled Kabul for Tajikistan after Taliban* militants entered the Afghan capital without a fight.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who stepped down to prevent further violence in his country, was fleeing Kabul escorted with cars filled with cash, a Russian Embassy spokesman told Sputnik on Monday. Ghani reportedly left Kabul for Tajikistan, but his current location and status remain unknown.

"As for the collapse of the regime, it is most eloquently characterised by the way Ghani fled from Afghanistan: four cars were full of money, they tried to put part of the money into a helicopter, but everything did not fit. And some of the money was left on the runway", Russian diplomatic mission spokesperson Nikita Ishenko said.

Comment: A rather hypocritical statement from Ghani who was clearly willing to let the 'raw power' of the US invasion and occupation to confer him 'legitimacy'

RT reports that the Afghan embassy has demanded that Interpol arrest exiled president Ghani over 'treasury theft':

The Afghan ambassador to Tajikistan said in a press statement on Wednesday that he "demands" the "thieves" who stole from the Afghan people be arrested, including Ghani. The envoy said that he asked the Interpol to pay attention to the case.

The ambassador, Mohammad Zahir Aghbar, insisted that the former Afghan officials, including the ousted president, should be brought to an "international court" so that they could be tried and "the people's wealth and finances can be returned." The envoy said that the president and some other officials "stole" from Afghanistan's treasury.

Ghani left Afghanistan as the Taliban closed in on the capital last weekend, and later posted on Facebook to explain that he left his presidential post in an effort to thwart the "massacring" of civilians and avoid heavy bloodshed in Kabul.

Is that why he took a load of loot with him, too?

According to the Russian Embassy in Afghanistan, Ghani arrived at the Kabul airport with several cars laden with cash and valuables. On Wednesday, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) confirmed that the ousted Afghan president and his family were allowed into the country "on humanitarian grounds."

The Afghan embassy in Tajikistan also stated that First Vice President Amrullah Saleh was "officially the acting president" after Ghani's "escape" from Afghanistan. The embassy also posted photographs of Ghani's framed image being replaced with that of Saleh.

Saleh declared himself Afghanistan's new, legitimate leader in a tweet on Tuesday. He also said he was currently in the country and vowed not to give in to the Taliban militants, whom he described as "terrorists" and said he would not work with the Islamist regime.

It is unclear if Saleh wields any real power on the ground, despite his declarations on Twitter, since the Taliban is now in firm control of all major cities, including Kabul.

A spokesman for the militant group, Zabihullah Mujahid, held its first international media press conference on Tuesday, where he made numerous sweeping statements and said the Taliban is focused on forming a new government, claiming it would observe women's rights and pardon its wartime enemies.

A hell of our own making - reflections on the road to Kabul

Edward Snowden
edwardsnowden.substack.com
Tue, 17 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC

The last week has been hard for me, and yet I can only imagine what this week has felt like, and what the future will bring, for the people — the peoples — of Afghanistan.

Nearly 20 years after it was launched in the wake of 9/11, the long war in Afghanistan, one of the great cruelties of my generation, has unexpectedly reached its expectedly tragic conclusion.

I am certainly not sad to see it go, but it's difficult to avoid a profound sense of regret at the error of it all. When I recently spoke with Daniel Ellsberg, he pointed out that neither of us is entirely a pacifist. Dan and I agree, and are on-record agreeing, that certain wars are wrong, but if one can conceive of a "just" war — or at least a less-injust war — there are wrong ways to fight it, and particularly wrong ways to finish it. There are also, come to think of it, wrong ways to begin wars too — namely refusing to declare them.

The war in Afghanistan was not one of those wars — it was not justifiable. It was, is, and forever will be wrong, which means leaving is the right decision.

Comment: Unmasking delusions offers a hard but necessary road to awareness and understanding. To bring a nation to this juncture requires leadership with this goal foremost in importance. Few there are who comprehend this challenge and even fewer who will choose to embark.

Here's a rendition on a lyre of the oldest (awesome imo) known melody: [Link]

Animanarchy

" .. about 3,600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE.." That's the temperature at which all Silverstein Properties are pre rigged to melt in perfect,...

Jibrish

Bless their beautiful souls!

Eventide

And people in hell want ice water. R.C.

Rowan Cocoan

IT’S A FOURTH TURNING: WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? [Link] And Then Everything Happens at Once [Link]

just thinking

Puppet Masters

Taliban acquires US military biometric devices that can identify Afghans who assisted coalition efforts - reports

Diplomat: "Not even tanks" can stop large wave of Afghan refugees heading to Europe - Can Merkel, Macron and other leaders avert crisis?

Hunter Biden is seen in unearthed footage telling prostitute that Russian drug dealers stole ANOTHER of his laptops

Ehret: Anglo-American unipolarists extend the geopolitical cage to space

Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?

Crowd greets Taliban co-founder Baradar on return to Kandahar from exile in Doha

China & Russia prepare for cooperation in Afghan 'reconstruction' under Taliban

Court rules German newspaper Die Welt published lies about Russia Today

Ousted Afghan President Ghani fled Kabul in cars stuffed with CASH - Russian Embassy

A hell of our own making - reflections on the road to Kabul

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