World

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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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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PGC – As the United States leave Afghanitan and a trail of broken alliances behind her, the Chinese under Chairman Xi have chosen to side with the Taliban in the war for the hearts and minds of the people.  The same nation-state that is regularly feted in American corporate markets, the same nation-state that has more infliuence over America’s media than the American people do, is busy cozying up with the Taliban in a bid to cull from the Afghan  mountains what gold they imagine they can if the Taliban welcomed their presence.

Perhaps the coal is the geo-political circumstance of Afghanistan itself, a bridge between what is commonly referred to as the Near East and the Far East.  But Afghanistan is a bridge ridged with mountains and difficult terrain, a land not easily tamed if the people of the land don’t will it.  America is not the first Empire to die in those mountains, and she won’t be the last.

So China is figuring on trying a different strategy, make nice with the might that is, a strategy America herself has deployed in the past as well.   It’s a dangerous gambit but fitting with China’s overal strategy of consolidating world power, gain power through influence where the soul eats and sleep, commerce.  If China can help the Taliban exploit the lands for capital for the cause, while getting the kind of cut China will hope to get, this can be a very productive relationship, not just economically, but geopolitically as well.  Still, it’s a dangerous game the Chinese play and it remains to be seen if they have the discipline to be a velvet glove master of a land of iron wills.

A Reluctant Embrace: China’s New Relationship with the Taliban

From warontherocks.com
2021-08-10 03:55:04
Yun Sun
Excerpt:

 

As the United States withdraws from Afghanistan and leaves a security vacuum there, is China moving in by cozying up to the Taliban? On July 28, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a high-profile official meeting with a delegation of nine Afghan Taliban representatives, including the group’s co-founder and deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. This was not the first visit by Taliban members to China, but the meeting was unprecedented in its publicity, the…

 

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PGC – The European Union has wanted to destabilize the nationlist spirits of its members for decades now, as a european bureaucratic leviathon would be much easier to manage for the wealthiest families of the continent than what they experience having to deal with multiple sovereignties across multiple borders.

The problem with the experiment is generally the people in these once-sovereign lands who get the short end of that deal eventually turn back to the one potential vehicle of power that can protect them from this European leviathon, your local nationalism.  So Britain Brexits, and in many other European countries there are political factions that are forming around the desire of the losers of the EU bureaucratic leviathon to break free by clinging to local nationalism.  Nationalism of the poles, nationalism of the Germans, Nationalism of the Beligans, etc, etc, etc.

The nationalists in these lands are achieving varying levels of success politically, but enough success that the families that be of Europe, I theorize, are now ready to stop using certain resources to undermine the nationalist trends, importing a shock-and-awe level of other nations radically different than the nations they are coming into (nations as in cultural people groups, not states), under states that are born from that very nation-state but are now seeking to undo their own source of historical power for the last 200 plus years, the nation and the state being one.

Now that the immigrants of Afghanistan have failed to be, in part, the poison pill that would undo these local nationalisms, the powers that are Europe have determined that even if their national lands, since they last occupied them, might be even more dangerous to life than they were before, these failed poison pills must go, lest they continue to foment even more local nationalisms by continuing to stay.

In the course of this story the people we forget are the pawns in the story, the ‘refugees,’ the ‘immigrants’ themselves, shuffled in with real needs but for purposes that never cared much about how their final journeys ever ended, so long as they worked to undo whatever power structures the ones who paid to have them flooded in were paying them to destroy.  Now that the usefulness is now in doubt, expect more European leaders, even previous refugee supporters, to suddenly support sending ‘them all back home.’

Six EU countries want to keep forced return of Afghans despite Taliban offensive

From www.euronews.com
2021-08-10 14:58:03

Excerpt:

At least six EU countries insist that the forced deportation of migrants back to Afghanistan continues despite the Taliban’s alarming gains in recent weeks.

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands wrote to the European Commission claiming that halting returns “sends the wrong signal and is likely to motivate even more Afghan citizens to leave their home for the EU.”

Adalbert Jahnz, the Commission’s spokesman for home affairs explained that “it’s up to each member state to make an individual assessment of whether the return is possible in a specific set of circumstances, that needs to take into account the principles, notable the principle of rule of law and other fundamental rights.”

 

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