Comment: When influence outweighs commerce, it is beyond time to change the system. It is no longer a commodity nor service; it is leverage.

See also:

• Missed opportunity: House Judiciary says Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Google have "monopoly power," should be split
• Facebook briefly takes down Elizabeth Warren's ads on breaking up Facebook
• Facebook abusing monopoly of power for profit and working with US Deep State to censor news
• Feds and 48 states hit Facebook with antitrust lawsuit: 'Buy or Bury' strategy with competitors

Comment: If YouTube bans this podcast, watch it on the NewsReal Rumble or Odysee channel:

Comment: RT reports that Afghans who worked for the Brits have, unsurprisingly, been left to fend for themselves:

UK embassy guards help diplomats board Kabul evac flight... then told they're ineligible for rescue & sent home - reports

Around 125 Afghans hired to guard the British Embassy in Kabul have been informed they will receive no protection from the UK government, the Guardian reported, noting they were rejected as they didn't work "directly" for London.

The 125 local guards, as well as around a dozen other Afghan embassy staffers, were turned away after applying for the UK's "Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy" (ARAP), designed to help Afghans resettle after working under British agencies, according to the Guardian.

© LPhot Ben Shread / UK MOD / Handout via Reuters
British citizens and dual nationals residing in Afghanistan board a military plane for evacuation from Kabul airport, Afghanistan, August 16, 2021

The guards were told that their jobs were terminated through an informal notice only - leaving them confused about their employment status immediately after helping British diplomats flee the country last Saturday. They were also reportedly asked to return company computers, radios and body armor.

"We risked our lives for them, and now we find ourselves in this bad situation - not just us, but our families are at risk," said one ex-guard who declined to be named.

"We worked in frontline positions, doing the most dangerous work to keep British officials safe."

The employees were told that they were not eligible for assistance or protection because they "were not directly employed by her majesty's government," having only worked as private contractors under GardaWorld, a Canada-based security firm.

Of around 160 foreign GardaWorld staffers that applied for help, only 21 translators were accepted for assistance and relocation. But the former guards insist that their work deserves recognition from UK authorities. Some of the rebuffed workers have written to the government to request they be added to the list, arguing that "contractors are human too."

The Western establishment will throw people and even entire countries under the bus once they're done using them. This is standard operating procedure and should perhaps be a lesson to anyone thinking of making a similar pact.

The embassy employees - including some who worked at the facility for more than a decade - initially applied for the ARAP program last month, prior to an all-out Taliban takeover of Afghanistan over the last two weeks. They now say they fear reprisals from the Islamist group as their jobs were "in the public eye," voicing skepticism in Taliban vows to give amnesty to those who worked under the Western-backed Afghan government.

"We have been doing a very dangerous job for the British embassy, and we are in a terrible condition," another former employee told the Guardian.

"We are known as British embassy staff; our lives are now at risk"

The Taliban have declared an amnesty on all workers and they have a lot to lose if they do not keep these promises, in particular with regards to the international community. But that's not to say that those guards working for foreign governments, that may have betrayed their community, won't have to fear reprisals from locals.

"No one asked whether we are safe or not. No one asked whether our lives are in danger or not," another guard said.

The president of GardaWorld's Middle East division, Oliver Westmacott, noted that formal termination letters had not been sent out yet, but added "The reality is on Saturday when the contract was demobilised, we sent people home."

"We are going to honour people's salaries, certainly up until the date that they stopped working, and we have every intention of giving people a final gratuity payment or severance."

However, Westmacott warned that his company still needed to secure agreement from the Foreign Office as to how much of the workers' salaries it would reimburse, saying "otherwise we are materially out of pocket."

The UK Foreign Office, meanwhile, told Sky News that it was "monitoring the situation with GardaWorld closely" and is "in contact with them to provide any required assistance," though did not specify any plans to actually help the former workers.

In addition to the UK's ARAP program, the government also rolled out a separate "Afghan Citizens' Resettlement Scheme" earlier this week, vowing to take in 20,000 Afghans over the next 5 years, and 5,000 by the end of 2021. Though the figure mirrors similar relocation plans unveiled by the US and Canada, the British scheme was slammed as too little, too late by critics, some noting that around 550,000 Afghans have already been displaced this year alone.

RT reports that the the Brits have rejected a request by the US to stop embarrassing them following an operation where the Brits had to rescue via airlift Americans who were stuck in a hotel in Kabul, just 200m from the airport, to enable their eventual evacuation:

Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division has told his British colleague to stop "embarrassing" the US troops guarding the Kabul airport by venturing into the city to rescue people, at least according to one Washington columnist.

Major General Christopher Donahue has asked the commander of the 22nd Special Air Service (SAS) Regiment of the British Army to stop their operations beyond the perimeter of the Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA), because they were "embarrassing the United States military in the absence of similar US military operations," Washington Examiner columnist Tom Rogan claimed on Friday.

"I understand that the British officer firmly rejected the request," Rogan added.

Elements of the 82nd Airborne are part of the 6,000-strong US force deployed at HKIA, which also includes parts of the 10th Mountain Division and the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. They were sent in to secure the airport after the surprise Taliban takeover and chaotic scenes of desperate Afghans clinging onto US troop transports last Sunday.

Only a "small number" of US troops went outside the HKIA perimeter for a "short amount of time" on Friday, in order to bring in 169 people that were unable to get in through the gates, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Friday, referring to a group President Joe Biden described at an earlier press conference as American citizens.

Around the same time Rogan posted his claim, AP had reported that several CH-47 Chinook helicopters operated by the 82nd "flew into Taliban-held Kabul" to "scoop up would-be evacuees," whom the agency described as "Afghans, mostly women and children." AP attributed this to US officials who requested anonymity.

Kirby initially said he could not confirm this. Later in the day, however, he said that the three Chinooks actually took part in the evacuation of the 169 Americans - not Afghans - stuck at a hotel about 200 meters away from the airport and unable to get in using the roads.

AP also claimed that CIA and DIA officers and special operations forces on the ground in Afghanistan were gathering US citizens and Afghans who worked for the US military at predetermined pick-up sites outside Kabul, to fly them into the airport. That claim was impossible to verify.

© USMC/Lance Cpl. Nicholas Guevara/handout
US Marines at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, August 20, 2021.

According to media reports, both British and French commandos have ventured into Kabul to ferry groups of their nationals from the city to the airport, while no such effort has been undertaken by the US troops.

Rogan blamed the situation on a "bureaucratic tug of war between the State Department, Pentagon, and White House," and said that relations with the British, French and other allied governments in Kabul were made worse by US failure "to communicate adequately, or in some cases, to communicate at all, on their intentions and actions." However, they all admit that only the US military could provide the airfield defense and air traffic control currently at HKIA.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley have repeatedly said the US military does not have the capability to extend the security perimeter into Kabul. Biden argued that it wasn't necessary, since the Taliban are letting Americans with the proper papers through their checkpoints anyway. However, Austin and Milley told members of Congress later in the day that some Americans were physically abused by the Taliban at a checkpoint.

We shouldn't rely on any comments from Biden : Something is wrong with the President

"I hope this isn't true," Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume tweeted in response to Rogan's claim. "One part of it is true, though. What the British are doing to get their people out certainly is making the US look bad."

Rogan gained notoriety in May 2018, when he urged Kiev to bomb the newly opened bridge connecting mainland Russia with the Crimean peninsula, describing it as an "outrageous affront to Ukraine's very credibility as a nation." He later claimed to have received support from Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, who promised to protect him from ending up in a Russian maximum-security prison. Klimkin said he never spoke to the man, however, and the call turned out to be the work of the notorious Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus.

If this is how the evacuation plan went, when they had 18 months to prepare and weren't even under attack by a military force, one can only imagine the West's behaviour in the country over the past two decades:

• UK will work with Taliban "if necessary" - UK PM Bojo
• Pepe Escobar: How Russia-China are stage-managing the Taliban
• Taliban fighters killed & captured after Afghan militias seize 3 districts just north of Kabul - reports
• As America's attempt to Westernise Afghanistan by force fails, Kabul may now find its place in Russian & Chinese-dominated Eurasia

Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: The Great (End)Game - Closing the Afghan War, Opening the 'Covid War'?

Comment:

• Ashli Babbitt's family to sue police, officer who shot her at US Capitol: Beyond 'rookie' blunder
• Husband of US Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt sues police for records revealing identity of officer who killed her
• The shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Capitol police has echoes of BLM icon George Floyd's murder... but no golden coffin for her

Comment: - Or physical gold (and even better) undervalued silver - kept in your own possession. And even better than that - being stocked up with as many of life's day to day necessities that one can reasonably store.

Comment: It's likely that the Trump administration's plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan was rejected out of petty partisanism, not based on any logical rejection of the plan. The results speak for themselves.

See also:

• The Afghanistan Debacle, Zalmay Khalilzad and The Great Reset
• Taliban declares Afghanistan an 'Islamic Emirate' on country's Independence Day
• Afghanistan: Taliban seized US military biometric devices, report claims
• Afghanistan: The End of the Occupation and the Use of Feminism as Propaganda
• The Afghanistan exit debacle: Incompetence, distraction or something more sinister?
• We failed Afghanistan, not the other way around
• Russia won't deploy troops to Afghanistan, instead focusing on making 'peaceful' contact with Taliban, top Moscow officials reveal
• Anti-war activists mock CNN as it cries over $1T worth of 'desperately needed' minerals left behind in Afghanistan

Comment: As noted in the article Something is wrong with the President, it was predicted months ago (some would say this has been known for years) that US withdrawal would result in the near immediate fall of the Kabul government, and so the idea that Europe was taken unawares by American action is rather dubious. Further, it's likely that there are some in the establishment who are taking advantage of the optics of the messy situation - because it's not all 'chaos' in the country, the Russian embassy reports it's actually "safer than before" - as well as the ensuing disruption can provide cover to achieve other, nefarious, goals.

Regardless, Bojo and his allies are a little late to the party because Russia and China are already working with the Taliban to stabilise the situation in Afghanistan, and Russia has been talking with all parties for a number of years now. Moreover, it's likely that the Taliban and the people of Afghanistan may be a little wary of working with those that, just a few months ago, were threatening to reignite war on their country:

• Pepe Escobar: How Russia-China are stage-managing the Taliban
• Taliban fighters killed & captured after Afghan militias seize 3 districts just north of Kabul - reports
• As America's attempt to Westernise Afghanistan by force fails, Kabul may now find its place in Russian & Chinese-dominated Eurasia

Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: The Great (End)Game - Closing the Afghan War, Opening the 'Covid War'?

Comment: The dire state of Ukraine is also reflected in its regional politics, with the following high profile murders occurring in just the last month:

• Mayor of key Ukrainian city found shot dead as Kiev cracks down on country's popular 'pro-Russian' opposition party
• Head of Belarusian activist group found hanged in Ukrainian park after vanishing while out jogging, Kiev cops open 'murder' probe

Comment: See also:

• 120+ retired US generals sign letter questioning Biden's mental health, 2020 election result, warn of 'tyrannical govt'
• Biden passes alzheimer's test with flying colors, silencing doubters
• Pepe Escobar: How Russia-China are stage-managing the Taliban
• As America's attempt to Westernise Afghanistan by force fails, Kabul may now find its place in Russian & Chinese-dominated Eurasia
• 'Safer than before': Russian Embassy in Kabul sees no reason to evacuate as Taliban takes over security - ambassador

And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: The Great (End)Game - Closing the Afghan War, Opening the 'Covid War'?