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

Matthew Ehret
New Eastern Outlook
Sat, 14 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
rocket taking off
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.
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Cell Phone

Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?

Preston Byrne
prestonbyrne.com
Sun, 15 Aug 2021 10:21 UTC
taliban social media whatsapp

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.
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Binoculars

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


RT
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 10:06 UTC
Taliban Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar
© 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:

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Arrow Up

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

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Thu, 19 Aug 2021 09:45 UTC
Russia china afghanistan cooperation
© Associated Press
Russia's presidential envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov with a Taliban delegation in 2019.
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:

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Arrow Up

Court rules German newspaper Die Welt published lies about Russia Today


RT
Wed, 18 Aug 2021 13:24 UTC
Die Welt RT
© (L) Die Welt; (R) RT Deutsche;
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

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No Entry

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


Sputnik
Mon, 16 Aug 2021 08:45 UTC
Ghani
© Reuters / Afghan Presidential Palace
FILE PHOTO: Afghanistan's ousted president, Ashraf Ghani.
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.
See also: As America's attempt to Westernise Afghanistan by force fails, Kabul may now find its place in Russian & Chinese-dominated Eurasia

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



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Attention

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

Edward Snowden
edwardsnowden.substack.com
Tue, 17 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
Person falling
© Unknown
Person falling from jet plane taking off from airport in Kabul, Afghanistan
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.

NYT headline
© New York Times
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.

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USA

The US government lied for two decades about Afghanistan

Glen Greenwald
greenwald.substack.com
Mon, 16 Aug 2021 00:00 UTC
Taliban
© Al Jazeera/YouTube
Taliban give exclusive interview to Al Jazeera after taking control of the presidential palace
Kabul, Afghanistan • August 15, 2021
"The Taliban regime is coming to an end," announced President George W. Bush at the National Museum of Women in the Arts on December 12, 2001 — almost twenty years ago today. Five months later, Bush vowed: "In the United States of America, the terrorists have chosen a foe unlike they have faced before. . . . We will stay until the mission is done."

Four years after that, in August of 2006, Bush announced: "Al Qaeda and the Taliban lost a coveted base in Afghanistan and they know they will never reclaim it when democracy succeeds. . . . The days of the Taliban are over. The future of Afghanistan belongs to the people of Afghanistan."

For two decades, the message Americans heard from their political and military leaders about the country's longest war was the same. America is winning. The Taliban is on the verge of permanent obliteration. The U.S. is fortifying the Afghan security forces, which are close to being able to stand on their own and defend the government and the country.

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Question

Ex-ambassador to Afghanistan: 'I'm left with some grave questions' about Biden's ability to lead

Mychael Schnell
The Hill
Tue, 17 Aug 2021 11:06 UTC
Ryan Crocker
© AP/Musadeq Sadeq
The U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker at US embassy in Kabul, 2011
Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker said Friday that he has "some grave questions" about President Biden's "ability to lead our nation as commander-in-chief" after the Taliban seized control of the country following U.S. troop withdrawal.

Crocker, who led the U.S. Embassy in Kabul from 2002 to 2003, then again from 2011 to 2012, told The Spokesman-Review:
"I'm left with some grave questions in my mind about his ability to lead our nation as commander-in-chief. To have read this so wrong - or, even worse, to have understood what was likely to happen and not care."
Crocker, who also represented the U.S. in Afghanistan under the Bush administration from 2002 to 2003, said the collapse of Afghan forces amid the U.S. troop withdrawal was the result of
"a total lack of coordinated, post-withdrawal planning on our part. That's why this is all so sad. It is a self-inflicted wound."
The former ambassador told the news outlet that the "direction" of the Taliban's military offensive was "predictable," but the "trajectory was not."


Comment: The video offers some fairly straight-forward observations by Mr. Crocker.

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Footprints

Suspected terrorists crossing border 'at a level we have never seen before,' outgoing Border Patrol chief warns

Anna Giaritelli
Yahoo News
Mon, 16 Aug 2021 12:47 UTC
unsecured border
© Unknown
The unsecured US Southern Border
Unprecedented numbers of known or suspected terrorists have crossed the southern border in recent months, the outgoing Border Patrol chief said.

The head of the Border Patrol, Rodney Scott, told his 19,000 agents before retiring on Aug. 14 that their national security mission is paramount right now despite the Biden administration's focus on migrant families and children who are coming across the United States-Mexico boundary at record rates. Scott said in a video message to agents, obtained by the Washington Examiner:
"Over and over again, I see other people talk about our mission, your mission, and the context of it being immigration or the current crisis today being an immigration crisis. I firmly believe that it is a national security crisis. Immigration is just a subcomponent of it, and right now, it's just a cover for massive amounts of smuggling going across the southwest border — to include TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That's a real threat."
TSDB refers to known or suspected terrorists, as identified in the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database.
"Your peers or you are taking criminals, pedophiles, rapists, murderers, and like I said before, even TSDB alerts off the streets and keeping them safe from America. Even if we processed several thousand migrants that day and even if thousands of them were allowed into the U.S., you still took those threats off the street, and I think that's worth it. So please don't ever undersell how important your mission is."
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