Cut to the News
Cut through the clutter to today's top news
September 1, 2021
Good morning
Welcome to today's top news.
Leading the News . . .
The last US planes left Afghanistan . . . With Kabul’s airport being without air traffic control services as a result of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. airlines are now barred from flying over much of the country without prior authorization. "Due to both the lack of air traffic services and a functional civil aviation authority in Afghanistan, as well as ongoing security concerns, U.S. civil operators, pilots, and
U.S.-registered civil aircraft are prohibited from operating at any altitude over much of Afghanistan," the FAA said. U.S. civil operators may continue to use "one high-altitude jet route near the far eastern border for overflights. After a U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan for nearly 20 years, the last U.S. planes have left the war-ridden country. Fox Business
In secret texts, U.S. military officials lamented leaving Americans behind in Kabul . . . President Biden declared to a puzzled country on Tuesday that the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan was an "extraordinary success," while his Pentagon portrayed a prosaic, workaday process to repatriate Americans still stranded in the war-torn country. But text messages between U.S. military commanders and private citizens mounting last-minute rescues
tell a far different story, one in which pleading American citizens were frantically left behind at the Kabul airport gate this past weekend to face an uncertain fate under Taliban rule while U.S. officials sought to spread the blame between high-ranking generals and the State Department. "We are f*cking abandoning American citizens," an Army colonel assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division wrote Sunday in frustration in a series of encrypted messages that detailed the failed effort to
extricate a group of American citizens, hours before the last U.S. soldiers departed Afghanistan. Just the News
Biden takes responsibility for Afghanistan decision . . . and then blames Trump . . . President Biden in remarks at the White House Tuesday suggested Donald Trump was to blame for the disaster that has unfolded in Afghanistan: My predecessor, the former President, signed an agreement with the Taliban to remove U.S. troops by May the 1st, just months after I was inaugurated. It included no requirement that the Taliban work out a
cooperative governing arrangement with the Afghan government, but it did authorize the release of 5,000 prisoners last year, including some of the Taliban’s top war commanders, among those who just took control of Afghanistan. White House Dossier
Pope inadvertently quotes Putin to chide West's Afghan war . . . Pope Francis has criticized the West's recent involvement in Afghanistan as an outsider's attempt to impose democracy — although he did it by citing Russia's Vladimir Putin while thinking he was quoting Germany's Angela Merkel. Asked during a radio interview aired Wednesday about the new political map taking shape in Afghanistan after the United States and its allies
withdrew from the Taliban-controlled country after 20 years of war, the pope said he would answer with a quote that he attributed to the German chancellor, whom he described as "one of the world's greatest political figures." "It’s necessary to stop the irresponsible policy of enforcing its own values on others and attempts to build democracy in other countries based on outside models without taking into account historic, ethnic and religious issues and fully ignoring other people’s
traditions," the pope said, using his own translation into Spanish. Fox News
Putin knows it well, as the Soviets learned it the hard way that you can't enforce your own values on another, differently minded population. The difference is that the Russians were faster learners than the Washington Establishment "experts." Took'em 10 years instead of 20.
US ambassador accuses Blinken of leaving hundreds of Afghan women behind to die in botched evacuation . . . Despite a catastrophic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and bureaucratic red tape hindering outside rescue efforts along the way, non-government groups have been and are still working to help bring U.S. citizens and stranded Afghan allies to safety.
Among those at greatest risk under Taliban rule are women, who make up roughly half the country’s population and were severely oppressed during the Islamist group’s previous time in power in the late 1990s, according to Ambassador Kelley Eckels Currie, the former U.S. ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues and now a member of the Vandenberg Coalition foreign policy think tank. "[The Taliban] are basically promising to treat them like a little less subhuman, essentially" she said Fox News
Biden to talk Russia, anti-corruption with Ukraine's president . . . Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is finally getting his meeting at the White House on Wednesday as President Biden hosts him for a visit that is expected to focus primarily on Russian aggression and Ukraine’s own anti-corruption efforts.
Biden will make clear the United States’ support for Ukraine’s security and will announce a new $60 million security assistance package for Kyiv in the face of Russia’s provocations near Ukraine’s border and its continued occupation of the Crimean peninsula. Both leaders are also expected to announce a revamped Strategic Partnership Commission, a new strategic defense framework, and new initiatives to address climate change and bolster Ukraine’s energy
independence. The Zelensky visit will offer Biden the chance to shift the focus to another foreign policy priority, namely the challenge posed by Russia. The Hill
Biden's failed policies with the regard to the Russia-Ukraine issue is another disaster waiting to happen. The Washington Establishment keeps pumping American taxpayers' hard-earned dollars into corrupt governments, chasing a pipe dream of democratizing differently-minded populations.
How moronic is this? Biden, by removing sanctions from Nordstream 2, has already gifted to Putin an additional geopolitical-energy weapon to use against Ukraine, . Now Joe wants to bolster Ukraine's energy independence. Morons are running the country.
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‘Spiral into crisis’: The U.S.-China military hotline is dangerously broken . . . After months of delays, the Pentagon and China’s People’s Liberation Army last week initiated their first direct contact since Biden took office. That meeting, a video call carried by the U.S.-PRC Defense Telephone Link, focused on "maintaining open channels of communication between the two militaries." It’s a step. But former senior U.S. military officials
warn that better, and more regular, means of communication are necessary to prevent a possible future confrontation between U.S. and Chinese military forces in the Indo-Pacific region.
“There should be a sense of urgency about this,” said retired Adm. Scott Swift, former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Swift said unpredictable “triggers” may fuel a U.S.-China military conflict that could overwhelm current bilateral crisis communication systems. Admiral Joseph W. Prueher, former U.S. ambassador in Beijing, is now concerned that a future incident involving U.S. and Chinese military forces in the Pacific could “run amok” because of what he describes as
“non-existent” bilateral military communications channels. Politico
Speaking of hotlines, MOLINK, the US-Russian hotline -- which also exists to mitigate miscalculations and decrease the probability of unintentional conflict, including a nuclear escalation -- is a similar disaster. I was stunned when learned that the Russian language requirement for the US intel/military officers who man this link is 2, on the DLPT scale (top of the scale is 5.) 2 is actually considered "advanced."
I spoke with folks whose language proficiency is 2. They could barely order a "borsch" in a Russian canteen. Imagine how such "experts" would de-escalate a nuclear or cyber Armageddon.
Biden likely to lean on drone warfare in Afghanistan . . . The Biden administration is expected to increasingly rely on drone surveillance and strikes for counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan following Monday's U.S. exit from the country after 20 years of war. The drone attacks that President Biden authorized – including a Friday strike in Jalalabad near the Pakistan border that killed two militants, and a Sunday strike in Kabul
that destroyed an ISIS-K car bomb – suggest that military operations are likely to persist. But with boots no longer on the ground, the administration is limited in its options to deter terrorist threats, a situation complicated by limited intelligence and the reconnaissance needed to guide any future strikes. The administration’s new reliance on unmanned aerial vehicles limits the options when it comes to conducting effective counter-terrorism operations. The Hill
Yep, more 'techMology,' as Sasha Baron Cohen, would say. Forget about learning to understand the adversary, as Sun Tzu taught us. Keeps working out great for us.
Biden blindsided by radical Islam and Americans pay with their lives . . . To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it. Washington was blindsided by the Imperial Japanese on December 7, 1941. Our leaders were clueless about the intentions and capabilities of the Japanese military until they hit us at Pearl Harbor. Washington was blindsided again on September 11, 2001. Our leaders simply couldn’t
imagine that anyone would hijack jet planes, turn them into ballistic missiles, and fly them into buildings. In 2014, President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden were blindsided by the explosive rise of the Islamic State. Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden pulled all US forces out of Iraq in 2011, creating the very vacuum into which ISIS surged. The group’s genocidal rampage across Iraq and Syria was horrific. Last week, Mr. Biden – now Commander in Chief – was blindsided
again. Having fundamentally misunderstood the nature and threat of the evil posed by the Taliban and ISIS in Afghanistan, Mr. Biden has pulled all US forces out of Afghanistan. Once again, Mr. Biden is creating a vacuum into which radical Islamist jihadists are surging. And Americans are paying with their lives. Washington Times
The answer to this problem is strategic intelligence, which has been ignored for a couple of decades now. The spy agencies have been chasing bright and shiny objects, the 'whoop-de-do intelligence' - things that you can count, the proverbial Order of Battle: number of troops, weapons, etc. They've ignored strategic intelligence, information that is impossible to count - the worldview and mindsets of the adversaries that shape their leaders' intentions
and war fighting style.
The said result is that US military has achieved tactical brilliance, but it doesn't compensate for the Washington Establishment's strategic incompetence. It doesn't win wars. Such ignorance kills Americans.
Fire Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley and DIA Director, Scott Berrier immediately.
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In Leaving Afghanistan, U.S. Reshuffles Global Power Relations . . . After Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government collapsed on Aug. 15, Beijing couldn’t contain its glee at what it described as the humiliation of its main global rival—even though Washington said a big reason for withdrawal was its decision to focus more resources on China. In a briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying highlighted the
death of Zaki Anwari, a 17-year-old Afghan soccer player who fell from the landing gear of an American C-17 as it took off from Kabul airport. “American myth down,” she said. “More and more people are awakening.” In Russia, too, state media overflowed with schadenfreude, albeit tempered by concern about the Afghan debacle’s spillover into its fragile Central Asian allies. “The moral of the story is: don’t help the Stars and Stripes,” tweeted Margarita Simonyan, editor in chief of Russia’s
RT broadcaster. “They’ll just hump you and dump you.” But now that America’s 20-year Afghan war has come to an end, the gloating is turning to a more sober view of how the war and the withdrawal will affect the global balance of power. Wall Street Journal
In pure military terms, neither Russia, nor China are a direct match to the United States, which has the best war fighting force in military history, from the capability and training stand point. But both Russia and China have developed strategies that bypass US conventional superiority, in the event of a kinetic conflict with the United States. Moscow believes that such a 'shooting war' with Washington is inevitable.
Putin is also excellent at exploiting the perceived weakness of his opponents, such as Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
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Biden admin urges pregnant women to get vaxxed, but safety will not be known until 2025 . . . Pregnant or breastfeeding women in the military will therefore qualify for an exemption from the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a move at odds with the Biden administration's messaging campaign to inoculate all Americans ages 12 and older. Military guidelines exempt pregnant or breastfeeding troops from every vaccine
requirement, except for the flu and tetanus shots. The Pfizer vaccine will not be added to the list, according to a Pentagon spokeswoman, which would allow servicewomen to opt out of the COVID-19 mandate upon request. The policy stems from the fact that federal regulators have yet to complete studies into the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy and safety for lactating and pregnant women. Pfizer has until 2025 to return results of the study to the agency. Washington Free Beacon
Politicians Should Never Force Anything Into Our Bodies . . . Politicians love force. The idea of leaving us alone to make our own decisions goes against their nature. To be sure, civilized society sometimes needs government force: police to punish killers, soldiers to protect us from foreign invaders, environmental police to stop my smoke from flowing to your lungs… But the political class always goes too far. Now some want
medical police to force everyone to get vaccinated. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. “It has!” you say. “I have to get vaccinated to keep my job, for my kids to attend school, to go to the movies, a restaurant, etc.” That’s force, absolutely. But it’s not mandatory. There’s an out—we don’t have to work for the government, eat indoors, or go to a movie theater. We can home-school our kids. We still have choice. So far, politicians haven’t sent police into homes to force
everyone to get vaccinated. They did do that once. Daily Signal
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Bernie Sanders Runs Out of Billionaires . . .
Spending plans: $4.5 trillion. Billionaire net worth: $4.4 trillion. Bernie Sanders held a rally in Iowa over the weekend to sell his $3.5 trillion budget proposal, and he also had kind words for President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan. As usual, Mr. Sanders assailed America’s “billionaire class,” which he said is refusing to pay its “fair share” of taxes. “We are living in a nation where the people on top are doing phenomenally well,” Mr. Sanders told the crowd. “They have
so much money, they don’t even know what to do with it, and now some of them are off in outer space spending their billions. Well, we think maybe it might be a good idea, before you go off to outer space, to start paying attention to the struggles of working families on the ground.” The trouble with this story is that Bernie has already run out of billionaires. There are 724 of them in the U.S., according to the 2021 Forbes billionaires list, released in April. At that point their
collective net worth was $4.4 trillion, although that figure has presumably since risen along with the stock market. Wall Street Journal
VIDEO: Russian-born immigrant speaks the truth about the destructive and totalitarian nature of socialism . . . Listen to my forecast about how the Bernie socialism story ends. Censored But Not Silenced
Rebekah Koffler: USSR 2.0 -- my adopted US homeland is giving me flashbacks to the Russia I fled . . . Under socialism, everything was provided by the government free or nearly free. But the cruel joke was on the people: nothing was available.
We stood in line for hours to get basic staples. You got in line before you even knew what it was for because there was an indefinite shortage of everything. You waited 10 to 15 years to get a telephone installed in a government-owned apartment or buy a car. We had no necessities, like sanitary products or toilet paper.
Socialism simply does not produce enough goods and services: Who would work harder for the same paltry, barely subsistence-level wage as everyone else? We had a saying, "The government pretends to pay us, and we pretend to work." Fox News
Having read the WSJ article about Bernie's socialist pipe dream, I thought I'd share my Op-Ed with you again. I am outraged by the lies that the elites spread about socialism.
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Biden’s Open Border Is Killing Migrants at Record Rate . . . Biden’s policy has been interpreted as a giant flashing welcome sign. As a result, the number of migrants caught illegally crossing the border has skyrocketed to records not seen in over two decades, as more than 1.4 million people have been detained just since Biden took office. Biden's “compassionate” rhetoric has ironically led to record numbers of migrants
dying in their attempts to illegally cross the southern border. Since the 2020 election, U.S. Border Patrol has found the bodies of 383 dead migrants, with likely many more unaccounted for in the remote desert regions along the U.S. southern border with Mexico. The Border Patrol notes that if the trend continues, the number of dead migrants is on pace to surpass 2005, the worst year on record. Patriot Post
Pro-Antifa teacher brags about turning students into radicals in Project Veritas video . . . An Antifa-friendly California high school teacher said his mission is to transform his students into left-wing revolutionaries, as shown in an undercover video released Tuesday by Project Veritas. Gabriel Gipe, who teaches AP government at Inderkum High School in Sacramento, said in the undercover footage that he offers extra credit to his
students for attending protests and other events promoted by groups such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation. “I have 180 days to turn them into revolutionaries,” he told the undercover Project Veritas reporter about his students. Washington Times
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Owner surrenders pet cougar kept in New York City apartment . . . Animal welfare authorities in New York said a cougar is on its way to Arkansas after being surrendered by an owner who was keeping the 80-pound animal in a Bronx, N.Y., apartment. The Humane Society of the United States, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the New York Police Department and the Bronx Zoo worked together to rescue the animal after
the owner contacted authorities to say they could no longer care for the 11-month-old cougar.
Investigators said the owner had purchased the cougar as a cub from an out-of-state seller and recently decided to find a new home for the big cat once it started to show signs of aggression.
"Wildlife like cougars are not pets," Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Basil Seggos said in a news release. "While cougars may look cute and cuddly when young, these animals can grow up to be unpredictable and dangerous."
The cougar was taken to the Bronx Zoo temporarily and now is being transported to a new home at the Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas. UPI
As a cat lover, I could see how the owner fell in love with a cute little cougar.
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Rebekah
Rebekah Koffler
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