Biden 'Confesses' - There Was No Insurrection!
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While not long ago President Biden claimed the unarmed crowd that entered the US Capitol building was the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War, yesterday he told gun owners they'd need F-15s and nuclear weapons if they wanted to overthrow the government. So...what gives? Also today: CDC says Covid deaths now "preventable" and cases of post-vaccine heart inflammation skyrocket. Watch today's Liberty Report: Biden 'Confesses' - There Was No Insurrection! Click on the headline to read the full story from
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President Joe Biden’s new gun control crusade challenged the US founding fathers as well as the Democrats’ own January 6 “insurrection” narrative, by arguing armed citizenry would have no hope against an oppressive government. “Those who say the blood of patriots y'know and all the stuff about how we're going to have to move against the government. Well the tree of liberty is not watered with the blood of patriots,” Biden said on Wednesday, announcing new gun control actions from the White House. “What's happened is, that there never been, if you wanted, you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons,” he continued. Biden was presumably referring to the quote by Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the third US president, who famously wrote in 1787 that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants,” in response to the recently quashed Shays’ Rebellion. The current president argued that the “Second amendment from the day it was passed limited the type of people who could own a gun and the type of weapon you could own,” such as cannons. The amendment itself contains no such provision, however, and merely says that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Biden’s bizarre claim that the US government – or rather, the military at its disposal – could only be countered by fighter jets and maybe nuclear weapons was quickly challenged online by people pointing out that the Afghans and the Vietnamese seemed to have managed just fine without.
Another group of critics noted that Biden’s words directly contradict his own narrative about the January 6 riot at the US Capitol – when protesters disrupted the joint session of Congress that sought to certify his election – as an “insurrection” that threatened the very survival of “our democracy.”
Biden’s argument about the US government having nuclear weapons wasn’t even original – Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-California) famously made the same claim in November 2018, as part of his proposal for a “mandatory buyback” i.e. confiscation of weapons. Swalwell’s presidential bid crashed and burned, but his fellow Democrat currently in the White House seems to have picked up the torch. It wasn’t the only thing Biden “recycled,” either. The part about deer wearing Kevlar vests was taken from his address to Congress at the end of April, while “we're not changing the constitution, we're enforcing it,” was taken from his remarks announcing executive orders against “ghost guns” earlier that month – better remembered for his claim that “no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.” The White House has reluctantly admitted that shootings and homicides across the US have drastically increased, but blamed “summer” and lack of job opportunities rather than local prosecutors and police refusing to enforce the law in many cities in the name of “racial justice” and “equity.” Instead of cracking down on violent offenders or enforcing strict gun control laws in Democrat-run cities, the administration is going after “merchants of death,” blaming “rogue gun dealers” for the proliferation of illegal weapons on the streets. Biden’s other proposed measures involve “community policing” investing in social programs such as “community violence interventions,” and expanding “summer programming and employment opportunities” – even as unemployment in the country remains at record-high levels after the Covid-19 pandemic. The part about giving teenagers jobs so they’d be too busy to resort to violent crime appears to echo the infamous 2015 argument by State Department spokesperson Marie Harf that the US “cannot kill our way out” of the war against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists, should address “root causes” of terrorism such as “a lack of opportunity for jobs.” Reprinted with permission from RT. ‘F-15s and Nuclear Weapons’: Biden Brushes off Point of 2nd Amendment & Undermines ‘Insurrection’ Narrative in Gun Control Push Click on the headline to read the full story from In the latest sign that the US government’s War on Domestic Terror is growing in scope and scale, the White House on Tuesday revealed the nation’s first ever government-wide strategy for confronting domestic terrorism. While cloaked in language about stemming racially motivated violence, the strategy places those deemed “anti-government” or “anti-authority” on a par with racist extremists and charts out policies that could easily be abused to silence or even criminalize online criticism of the government. Even more disturbing is the call to essentially fuse intelligence agencies, law enforcement, Silicon Valley, and “community” and “faith-based” organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, as well as unspecified foreign governments, as partners in this “war,” which the strategy makes clear will rely heavily on a pre-crime orientation focused largely on what is said on social media and encrypted platforms. Though the strategy claims that the government will “shield free speech and civil liberties” in implementing this policy, its contents reveal that it is poised to gut both. Indeed, while framed publicly as chiefly targeting “right-wing white supremacists,” the strategy itself makes it clear that the government does not plan to focus on the Right but instead will pursue “domestic terrorists” in “an ideologically neutral, threat-driven manner,” as the law “makes no distinction based on political view—left, right or center.” It also states that a key goal of this strategic framework is to ensure “that there is simply no governmental tolerance . . . of violence as an acceptable mode of seeking political or social change,” regardless of a perpetrator’s political affiliation. Considering that the main cheerleaders for the War on Domestic Terror exist mainly in establishment left circles, such individuals should rethink their support for this new policy given that the above statements could easily come to encompass Black Lives Matter–related protests, such as those that transpired last summer, depending on which political party is in power. Once the new infrastructure is in place, it will remain there and will be open to the same abuses perpetrated by both political parties in the US during the lengthy War on Terror following September 11, 2001. The history of this new “domestic terror” policy, including its origins in the Trump administration, makes this clear. It’s Never Been Easier to Be a 'Terrorist' In introducing the strategy, the Biden administration cites “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” as a key reason for the new policy and a main justification for the War on Domestic Terror in general. This was most recently demonstrated Tuesday in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s statement announcing this new strategy. However, the document itself puts “anti-government” or “anti-authority” “extremists” in the same category as violent white supremacists in terms of being a threat to the homeland. The strategy’s characterization of such individuals is unsettling. For instance, those who “violently oppose” “all forms of capitalism” or “corporate globalization” are listed under this less-discussed category of “domestic terrorist.” This highlights how people on the left, many of whom have called for capitalism to be dismantled or replaced in the US in recent years, could easily be targeted in this new “war” that many self-proclaimed leftists are currently supporting. Similarly, “environmentally-motivated extremists,” a category in which groups such as Extinction Rebellion could easily fall, are also included. In addition, the phrasing indicates that it could easily include as “terrorists” those who oppose the World Economic Forum’s vision for global “stakeholder capitalism,” as that form of “capitalism” involves corporations and their main “stakeholders” creating a new global economic and governance system. The WEF’s stakeholder capitalism thus involves both “capitalism” and “corporate globalization.” The strategy also includes those who “take steps to violently resist government authority . . . based on perceived overreach.” This, of course, creates a dangerous situation in which the government could, purposely or otherwise, implement a policy that is an obvious overreach and/or blatantly unconstitutional and then label those who resist it “domestic terrorists” and deal with them as such—well before the overreach can be challenged in court. Another telling addition to this group of potential “terrorists” is “any other individual or group who engages in violence—or incites imminent violence—in opposition to legislative, regulatory or other actions taken by the government.” Thus, if the government implements a policy that a large swath of the population finds abhorrent, such as launching a new, unpopular war abroad, those deemed to be “inciting” resistance to the action online could be considered domestic terrorists. Such scenarios are not unrealistic, given the loose way in which the government and the media have defined things like “incitement” and even “violence” (e. g., “hate speech” is a form of violence) in the recent past. The situation is ripe for manipulation and abuse. To think the federal government (including the Biden administration and subsequent administrations) would not abuse such power reflects an ignorance of US political history, particularly when the main forces behind most terrorist incidents in the nation are actually US government institutions like the FBI (more FBI examples here, here, here, and here). Furthermore, the original plans for the detention of American dissidents in the event of a national emergency, drawn up during the Reagan era as part of its “continuity of government” contingency, cited popular nonviolent opposition to US intervention in Latin America as a potential “emergency” that could trigger the activation of those plans. Many of those “continuity of government” protocols remain on the books today and can be triggered, depending on the whims of those in power. It is unlikely that this new domestic terror framework will be any different regarding nonviolent protest and demonstrations. Yet another passage in this section of the strategy states that “domestic terrorists” can, “in some instances, connect and intersect with conspiracy theories and other forms of disinformation and misinformation.” It adds that the proliferation of such “dangerous” information “on Internet-based communications platforms such as social media, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, all of these elements can combine and amplify threats to public safety.” Thus, the presence of “conspiracy theories” and information deemed by the government to be “misinformation” online is itself framed as threatening public safety, a claim made more than once in this policy document. Given that a major “pillar” of the strategy involves eliminating online material that promotes “domestic terrorist” ideologies, it seems inevitable that such efforts will also “connect and intersect” with the censorship of “conspiracy theories” and narratives that the establishment finds inconvenient or threatening for any reason. Pillars of Tyranny The strategy notes in several places that this new domestic-terror policy will involve a variety of public-private partnerships in order to “build a community to address domestic terrorism that extends not only across the Federal Government but also to critical partners.” It adds, “That includes state, local, tribal and territorial governments, as well as foreign allies and partners, civil society, the technology sector, academic, and more.” The mention of foreign allies and partners is important as it suggests a multinational approach to what is supposedly a US “domestic” issue and is yet another step toward a transnational security-state apparatus. A similar multinational approach was used to devastating effect during the CIA-developed Operation Condor, which was used to target and “disappear” domestic dissidents in South America in the 1970s and 1980s. The foreign allies mentioned in the Biden administration’s strategy are left unspecified, but it seems likely that such allies would include the rest of the Five Eyes alliance (the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand) and Israel, all of which already have well-established information-sharing agreements with the US for signals intelligence. The new domestic-terror strategy has four main “pillars,” which can be summarized as (1) understanding and sharing domestic terrorism-related information, including with foreign governments and private tech companies; (2) preventing domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence; (3) disrupting and deterring domestic terrorism activity; and (4) confronting long-term contributors to domestic terrorism. The first pillar involves the mass accumulation of data through new information-sharing partnerships and the deepening of existing ones. Much of this information sharing will involve increased data mining and analysis of statements made openly on the internet, particularly on social media, something already done by US intelligence contractors such as Palantir. While the gathering of such information has been ongoing for years, this policy allows even more to be shared and legally used to make cases against individuals deemed to have made threats or expressed “dangerous” opinions online. Included in the first pillar is the need to increase engagement with financial institutions concerning the financing of “domestic terrorists.” US banks, such as Bank of America, have already gone quite far in this regard, leading to accusations that it has begun acting like an intelligence agency. Such claims were made after it was revealed that the BofA had passed to the government the private banking information of over two hundred people that the bank deemed as pointing to involvement in the events of January 6, 2021. It seems likely, given this passage in the strategy, that such behavior by banks will soon become the norm, rather than an outlier, in the United States. The second pillar is ostensibly focused on preventing the online recruitment of domestic terrorists and online content that leads to the “mobilization of violence.” The strategy notes that this pillar “means reducing both supply and demand of recruitment materials by limiting widespread availability online and bolstering resilience to it by those who nonetheless encounter it.“ The strategy states that such government efforts in the past have a “mixed record,” but it goes on to claim that trampling on civil liberties will be avoided because the government is “consulting extensively” with unspecified “stakeholders” nationwide. Regarding recruitment, the strategy states that “these activities are increasingly happening on Internet-based communications platforms, including social media, online gaming platforms, file-upload sites and end-to-end encrypted platforms, even as those products and services frequently offer other important benefits.” It adds that “the widespread availability of domestic terrorist recruitment material online is a national security threat whose front lines are overwhelmingly private-sector online platforms.” The US government plans to provide “information to assist online platforms with their own initiatives to enforce their own terms of service that prohibits the use of their platforms for domestic terrorist activities” as well as to “facilitate more robust efforts outside the government to counter terrorists’ abuse of Internet-based communications platforms.” Given the wider definition of “domestic terrorist” that now includes those who oppose capitalism and corporate globalization as well as those who resist government overreach, online content discussing these and other “anti-government” and “anti-authority” ideas could soon be treated in the same way as online Al Qaeda or ISIS propaganda. Efforts, however, are unlikely to remain focused on these topics. As Unlimited Hangout reported last November, both UK intelligence and the US national-security state were developing plans to treat critical reporting on the COVID-19 vaccines as “extremist” propaganda. Another key part of this pillar is the need to “increase digital literacy” among the American public, while censoring “harmful content” disseminated by “terrorists” as well as by “hostile foreign powers seeking to undermine American democracy.” The latter is a clear reference to the claim that critical reporting of US government policy, particularly its military and intelligence activities abroad, was the product of “Russian disinformation,” a now discredited claim that was used to heavily censor independent media. This new government strategy appears to promise more of this sort of thing. It also notes that “digital literacy” education for a domestic audience is being developed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Such a policy would have previously violated US law until the Obama administration worked with Congress to repeal the Smith-Mundt Act, thus lifting the ban on the government directing propaganda at domestic audiences. The third pillar of the strategy seeks to increase the number of federal prosecutors investigating and trying domestic-terror cases. Their numbers are likely to jump as the definition of “domestic terrorist” is expanded. It also seeks to explore whether “legislative reforms could meaningfully and materially increase our ability to protect Americans from acts of domestic terrorism while simultaneously guarding against potential abuse of overreach.” In contrast to past public statements on police reform by those in the Biden administration, the strategy calls to “empower” state and local law enforcement to tackle domestic terrorism, including with increased access to “intelligence” on citizens deemed dangerous or subversive for any number of reasons. To that effect, the strategy states the following (p. 24): The Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security, with support from the National Counterterrorism Center [part of the intelligence community], are incorporating an increased focus on domestic terrorism into current intelligence products and leveraging current mechanisms of information and intelligence sharing to improve the sharing of domestic terrorism-related content and indicators with non-Federal partners. These agencies are also improving the usability of their existing information-sharing platforms, including through the development of mobile applications designed to provide a broader reach to non-Federal law enforcement partners, while simultaneously refining that support based on partner feedback.Such an intelligence tool could easily be, for example, Palantir, which is already used by the intelligence agencies, the DHS, and several US police departments for “predictive policing,” that is, pre-crime actions. Notably, Palantir has long included a “subversive” label for individuals included on government and law enforcement databases, a parallel with the controversial and highly secretive Main Core database of US dissidents. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the “pre-crime” element of the new domestic terror strategy explicit on Tuesday when he said in a statement that DHS would continue “developing key partnerships with local stakeholders through the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) to identify potential threats and prevent terrorism.” CP3, which replaced DHS’ Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention this past May, officially “supports communities across the United States to prevent individuals from radicalizing to violence and intervene when individuals have already radicalized to violence.” The fourth pillar of the strategy is by far the most opaque and cryptic, while also the most far-reaching. It aims to address the sources that cause “terrorists” to mobilize “towards violence.” This requires “tackling racism in America,” a lofty goal for an administration headed by the man who controversially eulogized Congress’ most ardent segregationist and who was a key architect of the 1994 crime bill. As well, it provides for “early intervention and appropriate care for those who pose a danger to themselves or others.” In regard to the latter proposal, the Trump administration, in a bid to “stop mass shootings before they occur,” considered a proposal to create a “health DARPA” or “HARPA” that would monitor the online communications of everyday Americans for “neuropsychiatric” warning signs that someone might be “mobilizing towards violence.” While the Trump administration did not create HARPA or adopt this policy, the Biden administration has recently announced plans to do so. Finally, the strategy indicates that this fourth pillar is part of a “broader priority”: “enhancing faith in government and addressing the extreme polarization, fueled by a crisis of disinformation and misinformation often channeled through social media platforms, which can tear Americans apart and lead some to violence.” In other words, fostering trust in government while simultaneously censoring “polarizing” voices who distrust or criticize the government is a key policy goal behind the Biden administration’s new domestic-terror strategy. Calling Their Shots? While this is a new strategy, its origins lie in the Trump administration. In October 2019, Trump’s attorney general William Barr formally announced in a memorandum that a new “national disruption and early engagement program” aimed at detecting those “mobilizing towards violence” before they commit any crime would launch in the coming months. That program, known as DEEP (Disruption and Early Engagement Program), is now active and has involved the Department of Justice, the FBI, and “private sector partners” since its creation. Barr’s announcement of DEEP followed his unsettling “prediction” in July 2019 that “a major incident may occur at any time that will galvanize public opinion on these issues.” Not long after that speech, a spate of mass shootings occurred, including the El Paso Walmart shooting, which killed twenty-three and about which many questions remain unanswered regarding the FBI’s apparent foreknowledge of the event. After these events took place in 2019, Trump called for the creation of a government backdoor into encryption and the very pre-crime system that Barr announced shortly thereafter in October 2019. The Biden administration, in publishing this strategy, is merely finishing what Barr started. Indeed, a “prediction” like Barr’s in 2019 was offered by the DHS’ Elizabeth Neumann during a Congressional hearing in late February 2020. That hearing was largely ignored by the media as it coincided with an international rise of concern regarding COVID-19. At the hearing, Neumann, who previously coordinated the development of the government’s post-9/11 terrorism information sharing strategies and policies and worked closely with the intelligence community, gave the following warning about an imminent “domestic terror” event in the United States: And every counterterrorism professional I speak to in the federal government and overseas feels like we are at the doorstep of another 9/11, maybe not something that catastrophic in terms of the visual or the numbers, but that we can see it building and we don’t quite know how to stop it. Who Is A 'Terrorist' In Biden’s America? Click on the headline to read the full story from
Apparently the "rules-based order" that the Biden Administration touts does not apply to the United States, as the Justice Department announced yesterday it was seizing the websites of dozens of foreign news outlets, including the Iranian government-funded PressTV. Is taking down foreign news sites a good look for the US? This and more on today's Liberty Report: Freedom Of Press? US Govt. Seizes Dozens Of Foreign News Websites Click on the headline to read the full story from With June 2021 being the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s “war on drugs,” an ever-increasing number of editorials and op-eds are calling for an end to the drug war. This is an extremely positive sign, not only because it brings America closer to ending this evil, immoral, and destructive government program, but also because it shows the power of ideas on liberty. The intellectual climate was entirely different back in 1989, when I started The Future of Freedom Foundation. Back then, it was mostly only libertarians who were calling for an end to the drug war — and not all libertarians at that. The idea of drug legalization was considered weird, bizarre, and beyond the pale of legitimate discourse. People were simply not ready to hear such a radical message. After all, the argument went, anyone who favored drug legalization obviously favored drug use and drug abuse. People simply could not understand that advocating an end to the drug war did not necessarily connote support of drugs themselves. Back then, I was appearing on lots of talk-radio programs. I knew that I could always light up the phone lines by calling for drug legalization. People were outraged that anyone could possibly favor such a position. I was once invited to deliver a talk on libertarianism to a libertarian club at a public high school in Houston. Parents of a student in the club learned that I favored drug legalization. They called a member of the school board, who called the principal, who called the club’s sponsor, who called me. You would have thought that World War III had broken out. In the end, they let me deliver my talk, which included the case for legalizing drugs. I emphasized both the moral and the utilitarian case for drug legalization. I said that a free society necessarily is one in which people are free to ingest whatever they want to ingest, no matter how harmful. I also pointed out the horrific consequences of the drug war, especially in terms of drug gangs and drug cartels, just like when booze was criminalized. The girl whose parents made the call to the school board, was in the audience. So were her parents. I can only imagine how embarrassed she must have been. During the Q&A session, one student raised his hand and asked, “Why is it that some people are so scared to consider different ideas?” Before I could answer, another student responded, “It’s what happens to you when you get old.” We devoted the April 1990 issue of our journal Future of Freedom, which was then called Freedom Daily, to the drug war. Included in that issue was a reprint of an article by Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning libertarian economist, entitled “An Open Letter to Bill Bennett,” which had appeared in the September 7, 1989, issue of the Wall Street Journal. As the federal government’s so-called drug czar at that time, Bennett was charged with enforcing the drug war. Friedman beseeched him to bring an end to the drug-war insanity. The article is well worth reading today. It is a perfect indictment of the war on drugs, even though written more than 30 years ago. Friedman wrote: Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore. Of course the problem is demand, but it is not only demand, it is demand that must operate through repressed and illegal channels. Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery, theft and assault.That wasn’t the first time Friedman advocated an end to the drug war. Back in 1972, the year after Nixon declared his war on drugs, Friedman wrote an article entitled “Prohibition and Drugs,” which appeared in the May 1, 1972, issue of Newsweek. That article is also well worth reading today. Friedman wrote: Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?…. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.Finally, it’s worth mentioning what John Erlichmann, Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser, said about the drug war, according to author Dan Baum in an article in Harper’s Magazine: The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.For the past 50 years, libertarians have been leading the way toward ending this horrific government program. Today, the drug war is teetering, held in place mostly by the people who are benefiting from it, i.e., drug lords and drug-enforcement personnel. The progress is a testament to the power of ideas on liberty and to the importance of adhering to principle when it comes to advancing liberty. Let’s keep pushing until we see the end of this evil, immoral, failed, and destructive government program. Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation. Libertarians and the Drug War Click on the headline to read the full story from In the later years of an abusive relationship I was in, my abuser had become so confident in how mentally caged he had me that he’d start overtly telling me what he is and what he was doing. He flat-out told me he was a sociopath and a manipulator, trusting that I was so submitted to his will by that point that I’d gaslight myself into reframing those statements in a sympathetic light. Toward the end one time he told me “I am going to rape you,” and then he did, and then he talked about it to some friends trusting that I’d run perception management on it for him. The better he got at psychologically twisting me up in knots and the more submitted I became, the more open he’d be about it. He seemed to enjoy doing this, taking a kind of exhibitionistic delight in showing off his accomplishments at crushing me as a person, both to others and to me. Like it was his art, and he wanted it to have an audience to appreciate it. I was reminded of this while watching a recent Fox News appearance by Glenn Greenwald where he made an observation we’ve discussed here previously about the way the CIA used to have to infiltrate the media, but now just openly has US intelligence veterans in mainstream media punditry positions managing public perception. So Much Of What The CIA Used To Do Covertly It Now Does Overtly Click on the headline to read the full story from
Last week the US House voted to repeal the 2002 authorization to attack Iraq. After nineteen years and perhaps a million dead Iraqis, nothing was achieved by the war but death and destruction. Has Washington learned its lesson? Also today, WHO says no jab for kids! And Fauci's corrupt partner is shown the door. Watch today's Liberty Report: It's About Time! Congress Votes To Repeal Iraq War Authorization Click on the headline to read the full story from The Afghan government forces the US had trained are quickly losing the fight against the Taliban. The US has promised a complete retreat from Afghanistan. But it has now a plan to keep a foot in the door by staying in control of Kabul's international airport. That plan is likely to fail. When the Soviet troops left Afghanistan the government forces they had supported held out for three more years. Then the Soviets cut off all while the US continued to support the various Pashtun warlords and Mujahedin. Without Soviet resupply the government forces had to give up. Now the US occupation forces are leaving the country. But the government and the forces they are leaving behind are much less prepared to survive than the ones the Soviets had backed. The speed at which the Taliban are now taking over lets me assume that it will take only a few month until the Afghan government forces collapse completely. Afghanistan has about 400 districts. The Taliban already controlled for some time more than 50% of the countryside but had usually refrained from taking the district centers. That has now changed. Between May 1 and June 14 this year the Taliban took control of 34 districts in Afghanistan. During the last week they added a dozen more, 4 of those on Sunday alone. Remarkably a lot of the districts the Taliban took were not in primarily Pashtun regions but in the north where the population is often Uzbek, Tajik or from other ethnic minorities. Before the US invasion those populations were often anti-Taliban. The tactics the Taliban are using shows little variance. They first attack checkpoints and small strongholds around the district center to then besiege the main strongholds of the government military and police. Tribal elders are then send in to communicate Taliban requests to surrender. The Taliban do promise not to harm anyone who does so. They are only asking the soldiers to disarm and to register their names with them. They provide them with enough money to travel back home. The government is no longer able to resupply and reinforce besieged positions. Its meager airforce lacks the helicopters to do so. The few old Soviet made MI-19 are still flying. The Afghans can maintain those mostly themselves. Years ago Afghanistan wanted to buy more of theses from Russia. But the US Congress intervened. The weapon lobby demanded that the Afghan airforce should buy and fly US made aircraft. UH 60 Blackhawk helicopter and other US made aircraft were delivered. These were less capable and more complicate and expensive that the Russian stuff. The Afghans had no capabilities to maintain them. US contractors were hired to do that. But now those contractors are leaving together with the US troops. The Blackhawks get grounded one by one and soon none will be none left to fly. With no chance of getting relieved the holdouts in the various district centers now tend to give up instead of fighting to the end. Each day hundreds of soldiers surrender and are welcome by the Taliban. They leave behind an enormous amount of weapons, trucks and ammunition for the Taliban to use in their next operations. Attempts by the government forces to regain control of Taliban held districts have failed. Last week a US trained commando unit of some 50 soldiers tried to recover the Dawlat Abad district center in Faryab Province. The plan was for some 50 commandos to go in first with some 170 soldiers and police ready to follow them. Air support was supposed to be available. The commandos went in, got cut off and within an hour half of them were dead. Those who were supposed to follow and support them had feared an ambush and had never left their bases. The promised air support never arrived. The Afghan army is demoralized and does not have the support it needs to hold its positions. It will soon fall apart. China has recognized this and it urges its citizens to leave the country. A week ago the Turkish President Erdogan floated the idea that Turkish troops could be used to 'secure' the international airport of Kabul. The idea seemed to have originated in Washington DC. After Erdogan's announcement the Taliban immediately rejected it: Turkey should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan under the 2020 deal for the pullout of US forces, a Taliban spokesman said on Thursday, effectively rejecting Ankara's proposal to guard and run Kabul's airport after US-led NATO forces depart.During the last week President Biden visited NATO and had a meeting with Erdogan. He gave the plan a go: US President Joe Biden agreed to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's requests to support Ankara’s forces as they retain control of Kabul International Airport after American and NATO troops withdraw from Afghanistan this summer, a senior US official said Thursday.One does not protect diplomatic missions by holding the main airport of a foreign country. There must be other reasons why this was put on the table. The CIA has tried to get drone-bases in countries neighboring Afghanistan to continue its drug smuggling business fight against al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Negotiations were held with Pakistan but Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan publicly rejected the plan: In an interview with Axios HBO, Imran Khan categorically stated that he would not allow the US to use Pakistan as a base for its Afghan operations.Pakistan was under pressure to accept a CIA base as it is in need of a loan from the IMF which the US controls. China though does not want more CIA meddling in or around Afghanistan. Last year the US took the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) off its terrorist list. China fears that the CIA will to stir up trouble in Xinjiang by training and equipping radical Uighur ETIM forces in or near Afghanistan. It now seems to have provided Pakistan with sufficient support to avoid further US pressure. With no other country around Afghanistan willing to support the CIA it needed to find a way to stay in Afghanistan. Turkish control of the airport of Kabul would allow it to keep drones within the country and to stay in contact with its networks on the ground. A country that has its main international airport controlled by foreign forces is not sovereign. Such a position can thus only be temporary. When the Taliban take Kabul, and there is little that lets me believe that they will have trouble to do so, the airport will come under fire. The Taliban have by now captured enough long range artillery to put it under siege and to bomb it to smithereens. US air support for the Turkish forces would have to come from the wider Middle East and would have to cross through Pakistani airspace. A long term defense of the airport is therefore not possible. So what is the real plan behind the attempt to keep a US or NATO foot in the door of Afghanistan? Would the US or NATO consider an attack on Turkish and possible Hungarian forces at the airport in Kabul as a trigger to eventually re-invade the country? Does that make any sense? Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama. The War On Afghanistan Is Lost But The US Still Tries To Keep A Foot In Its Door Click on the headline to read the full story from
President Biden has announced new sanctions are pending on Russia over the alleged poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny last year. This move comes less than a week after what has been billed as a successful Biden/Putin meeting. Also today - "insurrectionists" to the gulag while rioters and looters are set free. Mayor Lightfoot declares "racism" a health crisis and passes out $10 million in Covid funds to fight it. Watch today's Liberty Report: Say What? US Planning New Sanctions...On Russia! Click on the headline to read the full story from
Will the Great Pandemic permanently unleash governments around the world? Covid-19 is enabling politicians to turn freedom from an individual right into a conditional bureaucratic dispensation. Defining down freedom was exemplified by the G-7 Summit that became a ludicrous and hypocritical Lockdowners Victory Lap. The G-7 leaders, meeting in Cornwall, issued a communique pledging to “protect individuals from forced labour and to ensure that global supply chains are free from the use of... Read the rest of the story by clicking on the Title link, below... Defining Down Freedom Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute |
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