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Senate Republicans Feign Opposition To Infrastructure Bill

Bill Collier August 17, 2021

After joining Democrats to pass the first draft of the bloated, heavily ideological and cronyist “infrastructure bill”, the Republicans have succeeded in passing a series of meaningless amendments that will be promptly dropped in the “budget reconciliation process.” This process allows anything framed as a spending measure, including mandating that all new cars be built with an interlock device and tracking technology, to be passed without a single Republican vote.

The Republicans put out a memo in which they claimed to have put the Democrats in a difficult position over their amendments. These amendments included things like preventing federal funding of abortion and preventing the restriction of fracking, and a prohibition on Critical Race Theory.” The Republicans could have prevented this by not voting for the first version of the bill, the one tailored to pass with fewer poison pills but which is also radically ideological and filled with crony handouts and vote-buying schemes. But the GOP leadership voted for the Bill, demonstrating the fighting spirit of the Afghan National Army.

The jumped-up claims that they are truly putting Democrats in a difficult position are an attempt to fool their base into believing that voting GOP matters in an election. But in reality the GOP at the national level is a faux opposition party, soundbiting one way, and yet acting as supine collaboration to the Democratic Party’s totalitarian ambitions.

The entire Republican Party is a hollowed-out wreck without a soul, substance, or fight and is either off acting like crazed angry bloggers with nothing more than red-meat reactionary rage or as moderate voices whose chief pleasure is getting the Partisan Press to say a few nice things about them.

The infrastructure bill is a radical, partisan, and authoritarian intolerable act that any thinking and intelligent population would positively rebel against and any elected politician would be run out of office for supporting. Thinking and intelligence can hardly be considered traits of an electorate “educated” by partisan-run public schools entirely focused on ideological, irreligious, anti-family indoctrination and almost incidentally focused on science, math, reading, and the like. Democrats control the education establishment almost as a youth wing of their Party and most teachers are more partisan revolutionary hack than actually teacher.

The GOP leadership, instead of condemning and resisting with vigor, has played collaborator to, despite its symbolic but not substantive “amendments” which will most definitely be dropped from the reconciliation package. This may stem from decades of public school indoctrination and mental health abuse within a partisan-run education system that is itself all symbolism over substance.

Basically, the Senate Republicans aren’t capable of understanding that they are collaborators, that their opposition is symbolic and meaningless, and that if the Democrats ever gain the monopoly power they crave, these useless idiots in the opposition will have won no favor for their collaborative efforts. While it is virtually impossible for Democrats to achieve this aim without literally becoming a totalitarian junta or something like that, and while this is also impossible given the US political structure, if this ever happened the collaboration party would be tossed aside like waste.

In the end, the Democrats won’t vote on these amendments, they simply won’t write them into the reconciliation version of the bill. On that ground, they won’t have meant anything, but the fact the Republican leadership in the Senate voted for the first part of this monstrosity is all the substance one needs to observe in order to accuse the GOP leadership of collaboration with the radicals who run the Democratic Party.

Finding gaps for freedom in this emerging authoritarian environment where the opposition is a collaborationist party will become increasingly difficult for freedom seekers and the skilled freedom builder who can organize people locally to defy this trend will become extremely valuable. If this bill passes, the freedom builders will have much work to do in order to help people organize at a sufficient local scale to build their own gaps for freedom which allow them to avoid these intolerable acts and their edicts as much as possible, without becoming outlaws.

The collaboration party, the GOP, will continue to offer insubstantial opposition that is merely words and the individual who is not either very rich or connected to a local network of freedom seekers led by freedom builders, will find their own horizon of possibilities shrinking and their basic human rights, human dignity, and human flourishing undermined.

What the Senate Republicans have done is give Democrats one more step closer to monopoly power and a government and mega corporation controlled economy, culture, and civil society all exploited to benefit the few at the expense of the many. There are many reasons the Democrats will fail, but Republicans aren’t one of those reasons.

Corporate DNC Seeks to Undermine GOP Covid Governance in Texas

Freedomist Editor August 16, 2021

As the DNC and the Corpowoketarianz become more and more dependent on one another for power, they will inceasingly walk lock step with each other in terms of the types of human action governnce they are willing to attempt to affect using coercive action, be it the direct action of the state, or the soft-power extension of the state (the part the DNC controls), the Corpowoketarianz, the American international corporations that all decided to go all-in with the Corpowoketarianz agenda and surrender any semblance of Bill-of-Rights-Based Americanism in how they treat their employees and their customers.

The Corpowoketarianz are most likely at the zenith of their power, and I have little doubt the government-powered faction of this unholy alliance will eventually move to strike down the power the corpowoketarianz currently poesses, but, for now, the state and the corporation are one, and will be for the near-foreseeable future. Texas is becoming a battleground of sorts, a proving ground, really for corowoketarianz power. If the corpowoketarianz, through the use of their considerably market monopoly power, a power protected directly by state guns, can flip Texas blue, then the end is near for all political parties outside the DNC-Corpowoketarianz one.

Once that power consolidation is complete, the infighting between the very wealthy families of tech and the very wealthy families of legacy (government and legacy business) will begin. I am betting the old guard will eventually purge and claim the toys of the new guard (the wealthy new corpowoketarianz feudal lords and ladies) for themselves. But let’s hope we never have to ask theat question, as it is on that will never be answered if they faill to consolidate political party power.

In Texas, the GOP is against mandates in general regarding Covid. The official DNC policy is mandate and control and capitalize on this ’emergency’ to continue to sieze wealth from the many that is given to their billionaire allies while also developing habits of police-state submission and expectation from the masses. And our American corporations, the corpowoketarianz, have signed on, for the sake of their government ally, their brother in seditious arms, the DNC.

This is not to suggest that I know exactly how to handle our Covid reality, or that mandates, be it vaccines or masks, might or might not be justified, this is to suggest that the usefulness to we the poors, the powerless, is the least of the concerns or motivations for the DNC and the Corpowoketarinz that do its soft power bidding.

Texas GOP’s All-In Focus on Culture War Spurs Corporate Backlash – Bloomberg

From www.bloomberg.com
2021-08-12 15:17:31

Excerpt:

Business and politics are colliding in Texas, where Republican Governor Greg Abbott is facing backlash over a conservative social agenda that companies say will make it harder for them to attract and retain the best talent.

The latest flare-up came Wednesday, when Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, a Democrat, issued an executive order that requires masks be worn inside businesses and schools, defying Abbott’s ban on such mandates. Issues like voting rights and the treatment of transgender children have also recently divided the governor and corporations operating in the state. Dell Technologies Inc., Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. have publicly criticized priorities of the Republican-dominated state government.

It’s an awkward position for a politician who has painted himself as a champion of economic development, ready to tout successes in luring Oracle Corp., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Tesla Inc. to the Lone Star State and helping oversee the nation’s biggest jobs increase from 2010 to 2020. But facing re-election next year along with declining popularity and ultra-conservative challengers in the Republican primary vote, Abbott has pushed for legislation that plays well with his base even if it’s increasingly at odds with major corporations.

“Since the time George W. Bush was governor, we have seen that economic development as a cornerstone for growth for the Republican party in Texas,” said Jim Riddlesperger, a political science professor at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. “What he is doing here is playing to the audience for the Republican primary and not to the general public.”

There’s a risk to that strategy come general election time, amid an influx of newcomers from companies relocating to the state as well as pandemic-era transplants lured by warm weather and zero income taxes. Many of those new residents have a more liberal disposition than life-long Texans, threatening the Republican party’s dominance of the state, which boasts the world’s ninth-largest economy.

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Belarus Cancels Extremist News Sites

Freedomist Editor August 16, 2021

PGC – There are a lot of people out there that call themselves ‘leftists’ who also claim to support consensual exchange, while at the same time continue to support the DNC version of leftism that uses moral supremacist tactics to create police state powers for corporations and governments alike.

Though warned long ago that their tactic of ‘punching Nazis’ would lead to what we see today, Corpowoketarianizm, where their very core ideals have been commodified and altered to fit the agenda of the same billionaires these leftists claim to want to stop, these consensual-seeking leftists continued to stand behind the DNC as corpowoketarianizm spread throughout the land, starting in our colleges and universities, spreading like the plague in social media, then extending to our financial institutions which emboldened the rest of the corporate world to join in with full zeal, seeing the opportunity to elimiate competition among the poors by perepatuating divisions amongst the powerless.

Now we see in Belarus, a dictatorship in the truest sense of the term, the tactic of stigmatiizng people based on the label extremist being used to shut down news outlets that don’t advance the party line. It’s the government itself that’s doing this, though, to be sure, if government had an industry in its back pocket, it too would be happy to use that soft power over direct state power. They must envy the position of the DNC compared to themselves.

They had to actually pass anti-extremist laws, which was easy enough to do in a disarmed country with no Bill of Rights sown into the fabric of the narratives of a people, such as we still have in America today. They passed the laws and had no legal roadblocks to impede them such as the government would face in America, even now.

They are well within the ethical standards of the corpowoketarianz that currently occupy our lands. They are using the label extremist to cancel the extremists, just as the corporations are using that label to cancel opposition to the one-party–to-be-DNC. Eventually, it is hoped by the DNC, they will be able to declare people extremists too and use the full power of the state to cancel them as well.

Belarusian court bans Tut.by and affiliated news website Zerkalo.io as ‘extremist’

From cpj.org
2021-08-16 16:15:17

Excerpt:

Stockholm, August 16, 2021 – Belarus authorities should refrain from contesting the appeal of news website Zerkalo.io against its designation as “extremist,” and cease using the country’s anti-extremism laws to stifle independent reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On May 18, authorities raided the offices of the independent news website Tut.by, interrogated about 130 members of its staff, blocked the outlet’s website, and detained at least a dozen employees for suspected tax evasion, according to CPJ reporting from the time and Anna Kaltygina, former news desk manager at Tut.by, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

Several of the outlet’s employees fled Belarus, and on July 8 launched Zerkalo.io as a temporary replacement for Tut.by, according to Kaltygina, who now works as the acting editor-in-chief of Zerkalo.io. Belarus authorities blocked access to the website within the country immediately after its launch,…

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Key Insights On The Collapse of Afghanistan

Bill Collier August 16, 2021

From WION out of India, the collapse of the US-backed government in Kabul is invoking images of the fall of Saigon as panicked locals realize the retreat of the US means the new masters of their country will seek their vengeance. The sheer terror and chaos are a culmination of 20 years of bad policy that cannot solely be laid at the feet of either Trump or Biden, of Democrats or Republicans. It has been a massive bipartisan failure at the gross expense of tens of thousands people, including American troops whose lives were forever changed by their deployment there.

Let’s look past the partisan spin and blame game DC is so famous for and debunk some common partisan narratives.

Biden Isn’t The Author Of This Disaster

President Biden certainly didn’t do anything to mitigate the debacle that has been the “war on terror” during his 8 years as Vice President. But the genesis of the collapse of the US-backed government in Kabul begins in 2001. The knee-jerk response to the Al Qaeda attack, which saw the US focus on “nation-building” and embrace the myth “better to fight the bad guys overseas than at home.”

We didn’t fight the bad guys, we engaged in nation-building. When US and Northern Alliance troops were closing in Al Qaeda, the US suddenly STOPPED the attack and Bin Laden got away. Ideally, had this attack been pushed to its conclusion, the bad guys are gone, the war is over. Sure, the US could back the Northern Alliance as it did the Mujahideen, but we went for an invasion to save people who weren’t trying to save themselves.

Instead of snuffing the real bad guys out, the US let them go, perhaps due to incompetence, perhaps for other geopolitical reasons. The nation-building idea was always bad and once the US entered the land and began its han-fisted approach to Afghani politics, the stage was set for what happened, albeit after much loss of mostly civilian lives.

Donald Trump’s Withdrawal Agreement Was Bad

Donald Trump wanted out and he was willing to make nice with the Taliban, on the grounds they promised, on paper, to foreswear the use of terrorism or hosting terrorism. It was not expected this would be observed, but if it wasn’t, well, we have plenty of bombs for that. Whatever one thinks of Trump, he knew when to hold and when to fold, and it was time to fold. But his plan involved militarily supporting a withdrawal and leaving in May, not August. His plan wasn’t followed the US arbitrarily reneged on the deal.

It’s true it may seem Trump was naive about the Taliban and that they weren’t going to follow the deal. But Trump’s calculus was to stop the bleeding and cut losses but to make sure the withdrawal of US personnel and collaborative Afghanis was orderly and on time.

A better deal wasn’t to be had and none of the critics have proposed better alternatives that would have worked.

The US Is On Retreat and Only Taliban Backers Like China and Pakistan Benefit

One alternative view is that the seemingly precipitous withdrawal is an abject defeat. But the geopolitical calculus is possible mote subtle. The US is aligning against China and its position on Afghanistan leaves it vulnerable to Russia, Pakistan, and the “Stans” and constrains their hand against China. In essence, China, allied to Pakistan, and Russia, patron of the Stans, could hold US forces hostage.

China may indeed be falling for a clever trap in which they become embroiled in the morasse of Afghani trial politics. The Taliban may be making nice with Beijing now but it’s ability to keep its word is nil. The love betweem Islamists and Communists is notoriously low, which is the nicest thing one may say about the Communists.

Biden Blew It By Changing The Date of Withdrawal

It is true Biden abandoned the original agreement and plan, thus making the blaming of Trump laughable as the plan executed was not Trump’s plan. The negotiations with the Taliban were nixed and so was the withdrawal date, which did in fact violate the agreement.

While this was used as a pretext by the Taliban to present this change as an affront to Afghanistan itself, it is flimsy logic to say this alone ruined the plan. Biden needed, or wanted, more time to effect withdrawal and vastly over-estimated the potential of Afghan forces. The major deviation was dismissing the Taliban, but one can hardly argue against viewings these people as brutal savages as opposed to making nice with them.

The Taliban don’t keep agreements. Biden knew this and ditched the idiotic pretext, but it may have led to a miscalculation of many things, such as the strength of the enemy and of allies. Merely changing the date of withdrawal may have fed Taliban propaganda, but that’s about it.

What’s The Conclusion?

The collapse of the US-backed government in Afghanistan was essentially ensured when US and Allied forces tried to defend people who didn’t want to fight for themselves and tried nation-building in a land that basically rejected the values upon which that effort was based.

Saigon 2.0 As Kabul Falls To Taliban

Bill Collier August 15, 2021

Backed by China and Pakistan, the Taliban are poised to take Kabul and end the 20 year exmpiremnt in nation-building with a staggering defeat. The Taliban were estimated by the US “intelligence community” to be incapable of matching the larger and better equipped Afghan national army, which either switched sides or evaporated. Billions in US weapons seized make the Talbin a creditable force in the region.

The Afghan people seem to be of three types: cowards who flee the first signs of battle, people who don’t want freedom and are willing to accept tyranny, people who may want freedom but only as a handout at others’ expense. Exceptions to this can be found, a brave Afghani willing to stand for freedom is rare and would not be able to realistically hold their ground on the midst of such a moribund and corrupt population.

The Epoch Times covered the stunning evacuation of US embassy in Kabul in scenes reminiscent of the fall of Saigon.

Meanwhile, the President and Vice President have left Kabul after the President spoke of a peaceful transition of power but the Vice President vowed to fight the Taliban to the death and never, ever sit under the same roof as them.

The main change in protocol for this Biden withdrawal over the Trump withdrawal was that Biden cut off all talks with the Taliban and seems to have bought the false narrative that Afghan army, strong on paper, with limited US air support, could hold the line. What happened was that the army turned, fled, or was bought off and in many cases, after surrendering and believing they would be spared, they write slaughtered. Trump thought he could engage the Taliban, mostly to keep them from supporting terror groups like Al Qaeda, in the future in a power-sharing arrangement.

Both approaches would likely have ended in the same space.

Efforts to rescue the 20,000 or more Afghanis who would face execution for collaboration with the Americans are under way. There are no plans for the women and children whose menfolk so thoroughly let them down. There are also no plans to punish China and Pakistan, without whose help this would not have been possible.

Will The US Re-Engage In Afghanistan?

Bill Collier August 13, 2021

US forces are being airlifted back into Afghanistan in a desperate bid to save US citizens and Afghani collaborators from the Taliban advance.

As the Taliban marches into the remaining “free” areas of Afghanistan, a feat nobody who was watching matters is surprised about, the temptation to “save” Afghanistan from itself may be great. The amount of money made by the defense industry is staggering, but the gain of this policy is negligible. In the end, despite massive aid and training, the people of Afghanistan don’t want freedom, they want a throwback to the most archaic and barbaric religious ideology known to modern humanity.

The US is now sending in troops to rescue US citizens and Afghani collaborators with the US in scenes that will potentially be more dramatic than the fall of Saigon. The Taliban, backed by China and Pakistan and freshly armed with captured US war booty, are about to turn the country back into a terrorist safe haven and 7th century hellscape in which Christians are martyred and women become chattel.

The blame lies with every US President since Bush II, the neocon “genius” who promised that everyone wants “democracy” if only US forces fought for their freedom, even though the actual people being “liberated” never have. But the consequences are to the American people, both in terms of lost lives, changed lives through injury and psychological damage, and trillions of dollars, most of which lined corporate pockets.

The drumbeat of war will begin as soon as, once again, Afghanistan hosts the next terrorist act against the US. Outraged people will want revenge and will forget that this story keeps repeating with no successful end in sight. The propensity of the ruling class to foment conflicts which they profit from has never been greater.

But from the perspective of the average Afghani, most of whom lack the courage and conviction needed to resist the ideology of the Taliban, life will become a horror freak show. The ruthlessness and arbitrary brutality of the Taliban falls on people even if they desperately try to comply with the overwhelming edicts of this throwback religious sect. Nobody, not even a faithful Taliban member, is safe from the possibility of being brutalized and murdered for reasons they cannot even fathom.

Every Afghani who aided the Americans, and there are hundreds of thousands, is going to face dire consequences, and so is their family. The precipitous withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan, brokered by Trump and then carried out months later than planned by Biden, means that almost none of these people will be safe. Simply importing all of them to the US is not a practical solution. Moreover, they didn’t collaborate with the US to have to leave their homeland, many just wanted to make money or, in some cases, they wanted to move their country into the 21st century.

Sending in US troops to Kabul to effect an emergency evacuation while the President practically begs and then cajoles the Taliban, who have no fear of the US, may morph into saving the army of collaborators who have, mostly, turned tail and fled from the enemy. Plaintiff cries to save the Afghani collaborators have already begun and this pressure is coming from the right and left.

But the pressure to just put this behind us, cut our losses, including human losses, and move on is greater. Any “engagement” is likely to be covert and concealed, possibly carried out by mercenaries (contractors), and possibly by buying off more Afghanis to trade money for propping up a corrupt puppet regime. There is no popular support or willingness to sacrifice or fight to save Afghanistan from the China and Pakistan backed Taliban.

Afghanistan and Iraq have been a gross debacle, they have caused massive losses to the US and they have only made things worse in those lands. This is a bipartisan debacle no US President since Bush II has had the moral courage and tenacity to stop. Biden is the last unfortunate President who must oversee the final collapse which was inevitable way back in 2001 when the plan became “nation building” for a population that wouldn’t fight for its own freedom.

US re-engagement in Afghanistan would only serve the defense industry and, while it is unlikely, one can never underestimate the corruption and foolishness of America’s real political shot-callers.

Waining Vaccine Efficacy Raises Questions

Bill Collier August 13, 2021

Bill Collier- According to reports, the Covid-19 vaccines are losing 6% efficacy every 2 months, albeit only against mild infections, while the efficacy of the vaccines against death is reportedly at near 100% and very effective against serious illness. But if the vaccines are so quickly, at 6% per month, losing efficacy against mild illness, will it remain effective against serious illness or death a year from injection?

Hesitancy and doubt about the vaccines versus faith in the vaccines and fear the unvaccinated are only making this worse for everyone else is dividing society. The heart of the issue here is not that disinformation is out there and some of it is ridiculous, the core problem is a strong distrust of leading institutions. The faith of the public in lending institutions, from the White House and the CDC to the Press, is waning and all these institutions have earned that distrust.

The more brute force and authoritarian the response to the unvaccinated gets, the more people suspect and fear the vaccine is somehow either dangerous or ineffective. It doesn’t take a leap of logic to see that if the vaccines are losing efficacy against a minor level of infection that eventually they will lose efficacy against serious levels.

Arguments against vaccines range from weird theories of microchips to allegations the vaccine is “leaky” and actually leading to new varients and that these varients may not be protected against by the vaccines over the next year. Arguments for mass vaccination focus on how the unvaccinated may spread the virus and keep it alive, the basic idea being that if everyone is vaccinated at once then the virus will quickly dissipate. But this isn’t the case with influenza, the flu, which requires an annual shot.

It all comes back to trust. People who refuse the vaccine do not trust the officials and institutions pushing the vaccine. The retort that one has to believe everyone involved is deliberately lying in some conspiracy doesn’t mollify anyone’s fears. Accusing people of conspiracy theory thinking and denigrating them doesn’t tend to convince them.

Do I think, as the Publisher of The Freedomist, that the vaccines are somehow going to make everyone sick eventually and/or become useless? No. My own hesitancy is related to a practical need to ensure that I am able to take care of my wife, who has an illness that requires constant personal care.

Me being incapacitated is not good for her and people getting the vaccine have become very sick for up to a few weeks. For the risk to the unvaccinated this is actually seen as worth it, and I totally get that, but the consequences to my wife if I become incapacitated can be just as bad. Moreover, if she gets quite sick, with her underlying illness, it could cause her to take a turn for the worse.

But many have deeper fears and concerns, they do not have faith the vaccines will remain effective and, worse, they fear it will actually cause health issues in the long term. The draconian lockdown on information, deplatforming people who dare question the vaccine, has backfired in its intended effect: the feeling is “they” are hiding something.

Those who start or spread misinformation are insidious, but those who may be concealing information about problems with the virus are also insidious. Sorting out who is either spreading misinformation or concealing information is virtually impossible as one cannot trust sources and authorities these days.

My own instinct is, frankly, not to trust the skeptics and their claims, like that the vaccines alter your DA or that the entire system is geared toward some depopulation scheme. I strongly doubt that all the people involved in the vaccines are part of some conspiracy to make the population sick or make them infertile in order to reduce the human population. That’s insane and bizarre.

On the other hand, the government and the CDC have proven to be liars and to cover up the worse, grossest crimes. The list of “conspiracies” actually conducted and eventually exposed is too long to mention. We all know about how the “intelligence community” has lied over and over for political reasons and how all these endless wars have only made the defense industry rich at the expense of American and innocent foreign lives.

The idea anyone is knowingly pushing a vaccine that makes people infertile or eventually makes them sick doesn’t pass the test of logic. But the idea a rushed vaccine with waning efficacy is being pushed by desperate politicians who need a big win to prevail in elections is quite plausible. The use by both sides of this issue for political gain is also problematic: the anti-mask and pro-mask crowds are basically split between Republicans and Democrats, both sides insisting the other side is using bunk science.

The waning efficacy of the vaccines for minor illnesses and its inability to prevent the vaccinated from carrying the virus is a fact acknowledged by the vaccine companies themselves. The logical next step feared by many is that this waning efficacy is that people who are vaccinated will begin to get very ill or die. I personally know a number of people who were vaccinated who became quite ill, although this is anecdotal and, in the main, the statistics show the vaccinated are most unlikely to get seriously ill or to die.

My own concerns are twofold:

I certainly fear the consequences of getting this virus. I have been exposed to it three times and thankfully did not get sick.

On the other hand, I sincerely fear the vaccine may make me sick enough to struggle to properly care for my wife, I fear that she will take a turn for the worse if she has a bad reaction to the vaccine, and I fear the vaccine will lose its efficacy and give a false sense of security.

I don’t have a strong reason to trust the authoritarians who are demanding everyone get vaccinated and I certainly don’t buy into the wild claims against the vaccine, which have a political motivation. If I had no concern about the consequences if I have a bad reaction to the vaccine, in light of my caregiving duty, I would be vaccinated. If my wife had no underlying illness that could be seriously impacted by a bad reaction to the vaccine, I would urge her to get it. As it stands, she has substantial concerns.

The waning efficacy of the vaccines will continue to make it difficult to get people to get the vaccine and the authoritarian and insulting response to these people will only make it worse.

Afghanistan, The Legacy of America and What She Left Behind

Freedomist Editor August 12, 2021

PGC – It looks like the Taliban are set to take full control of Afghanistan and once again become a world player on a world stage with a whole nation-state behind them that will have nation-states like China and Russia coming in to try and get a little piece of the action. China, for sure, has, for now, the inside track, but that could turn after a couple of years of Chinese presence in the land where Empires die.

Donald J Trump was heading us down this path as well, but one does not know how much different, if at all, his withdrawal would have been. Our withdrawal appears to be sudden and unmerciful. We are knowingly leaving behind hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people with more than enough positive interactions with our soldiers to put their families under threat for death, slavery, or worst, sex slavery.

We knew full well what the Taliban was and its highly coercive assumptions regarding the nature of human governance. For the Taliban, their religious leaders are like little gods, or at least manifestations of the wisdom of Allah, that speak with infallibility, leaders willing to consign to death anyone who dares not believe in the particular Allah this group holds at its heart.

Life is not much among those not of the orthodox faith of the Taliban, and we Americans knew it, but we left, hardly with any plan to evacuate hardly anyone that put their lives, their families lives at risk to cooperate wtih the Americans, to even enter some of their programs, to dare dream one day something like America will happen in Afghanistan, and there will be no more bombs, no more Taliban, only open squares to argue about non-essential politics.

Even here in America, though, those days are fast ending, but still, compared to the people of Afghanistan, we are still a golden light of free thought and action, ideally, yes, but also physiologically still significantly true as well. America is hope and wonder compared to the conditions that Afghanis found themselves under while America was there. Now that America has left, well, for many, this is the end. Life itself will be over, and it will end violently for many of them. Many will be beaten, taunted, paraded around in cages. Some will be beheaded. Some will be burned alive. Some will be raped until they die.

The methods of death set aside for these American sympathizers, well, it’s pretty ghastly, and we knew it, and we left without any real effort to rescue those who once rescued us. This withdrawal has done more damage to America’s credibility, gravitas on the world stage than all of the little ways we have been letting down our allies through the second part of the 20th and early part of the 21st Centuries have combined. It might even be the culmination of this period in American geopolitical history, and it might mark the end of it, an age when America commanded the moral high ground, but now, after Afghanistan, can no longer be trusted as an ally in a risky situation.

Taliban could take Afghan capital in 90 days amid rapid Taliban gains: US intelligence

From www.channelnewsasia.com
2021-08-11 02:24:00

Excerpt:

Taliban fighters could isolate Afghanistan’s capital in 30 days and possibly take it over in 90, a US defence official told Reuters on Wednesday (Aug 11) citing US intelligence, as the resurgent militants took control of an eighth provincial Afghan capital.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the new assessment of how long Kabul could stand was a result of the rapid gains the Taliban had been making around the country as US-led foreign forces leave.

“But this is not a foregone conclusion,” the official added, saying that the Afghan security forces could reverse the momentum by putting up more resistance.

The extremists now control 65 per centof Afghanistan and have taken or thre

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America’s Real Power, the Carrier, Survives Major Ship Killer Test

Freedomist Editor August 12, 2021

The US Navy recently sent one of its stellar aircraft carriers into the lion’s den, the strike of the so-called ‘ship-killer’ missiles. The USS Gerald R Flord withstood a series of attacks by ship killer missiles to demonstrate the resilance of US Aircraft Carriers against such threats that enemies such as China and Russia claim they have against us.

The aircraft carrier is still, even in current year, the apex predator of miliitary power and there is still no one close who can field the quality and amount of aircraft carriers that the United States can still sustain. By putting their aircraft carrier through such tests, the US Military just displayed a powerful visual rebuttal to the seriousness of the threat the Chinese and Russians thought they possessed.

After surviving beyond the percussive power of the so-called ship-killer missiles, the US Carrier proved itself still the apex predator of the seas. So long as America holds that title, the power of all nation-states in the physical is considerably limited compared to the United States, whose power resides now almost entirely in her far superior Navy, which starts with her Aircraft Carrier Task Forces, which project real physical power like nothing else human-made on the face of the planet.

If and when the Aircraft Carriers become moot, the reality of power of this planet will be signficiantly re-aligned in ways that might be difficult to prognosticate, but, most likely, it leads to a more disbursed power structure than we currently have today, but also increased local production and manufacturing due to rising cost of internataional shipping with rise in piracy worldwide. The death of the carrier might, in the end, potentially lead to less disparity in power signficiantly compared to where we are today where so many of our large-scale systems continue to merge with others until we are down to a handful of major corporations and governments dictating the reality to the overwhelming majority, and not in their interest, in the interst of those who find themselves advantaged in power in the first place.

US’ aircraft carrier shock trial tells China it doesn’t fear ship-killer missiles, observer says

From www.scmp.com
2021-08-11 12:00:24
Liu Zhen
Excerpt:

The US Navy’s successful completion of explosion impact trials for aircraft carrier the USS Gerald R. Ford has sent a message to China and Russia that it is not worried about

missiles dubbed “ship-killers”, a Chinese military observer said.

The US’ newest and most advanced nuclear carrier’s third and final full ship shock trial was completed on Sunday off the coast of Florida, following the previous such trials on June 18 and July 16, the American navy said in a press release on Monday.

The carrier suffered no major casualties and less damage than expected, officials said.

In the trials, held in the Atlantic Ocean, 40,000lbs (18 tonnes) of explosives – equivalent to a 3.9-magnitude earthquake – were detonated under water, each time taking place closer to the carrier. Data on the impact on the vessel was collected.

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Andrew Cuomo Resigns, But Not Because of the Thousands of Nursing Home Covid Deaths

Freedomist Editor August 11, 2021

PGC – Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned yesterday as he saw the writing on the wall in Albany. The Dems and Reps were gathering, almost in bipartisan glea, to prepare to take the once love governor of America down.

They were going to impeach him, but not because of the thousands of deaths that appeared to be maybe perhaps grossly not necessary, the deaths that resulted when some governors, of which Cuomo was the biggest offender, put thousands of Covid patients into nursing homes, leaving to thousands of elderly deaths as the virus raced through these nursing homes in the first few months of the pandemic.

What happened in New York, Pennsylvania, and Michinga will not be investigated by the Federal Justice Department, nor does any state have any such investigations currently being conducted regarding how the governors in these state all chose to put the early infected in with the elderly in confined spaces that were made inaccessible to the loved ones of the elderly, but not the unrelated infected.

Instead,Governor Cuomo was felled because he committed a sin that in the DNC is far worse than possibly ordering thousands of elderly to their deaths, he had sexually inappropriate behavior with woman. Now, granted, his ‘sins,’ if even parlty true, paint him as an untrustworthy lech of a man who does deserve the fate he’s getting, but long before this recent evidence emerged that showed the brutal seriality of his sexual offenses, the evidence against his mishandling of the nursing homes in the early months of the pandemic were enough to have him impeached long before now.

But for the DNC, the sin of lletting the inconvenient die, be they on their way out or on their way in, is far less of a sin to concern ourselves with than sexual misconducts. I say all this with one caveat, that so far there is no evidence to suggest Cuomo ever raped anyone, and if and when such an allegation emerged, then the comparisons at least much closer than they are given the facts as they have been shared so far.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigns

From www.dailytelegraph.com.au
2021-08-10 18:53:56

Excerpt:

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has resigned over sexual harassment claims.

The 63-year-old has denied all wrongdoing but said the move was the right thing to do to let the government get back to work.

A month-long independent investigation concluded Governor Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women after 11 – including current and former aides – came forward with accusations.

Calls for his resignation and impeachment grew from both sides of politics following the findings of the investigation.

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