Douglas Caddy

The Republican Party’s flirtation with Fascism is becoming a Marriage https://www.juancole.com/2021/08/republican-flirtation-becoming.html

Peggy Noonan says Biden's reputation is forever tarnished. Unfortunate, the link is truncated. I got it off the Drudge Report. https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistan-withdrawal-fiasco-biden-mcchrystal-gates-holbrooke-obama-military-taliban-11630612285

Fascinating read whether it is true or not. https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/02/confessions-of-a-secret-controlled-demolitions-special-operative-for-911/?fbclid=IwAR3c3x65GYGp8BSrIJsuFJy7W7Hpc_e6FpisU7WQY10mSwGLGs4LuwCKIVs

The bottom line is that virtually everyone who closely follows foreign affairs as much as domestic affairs believes Biden has committed a geopolitical error of incalculable magnitude that puts our country in mortal danger. I concur in that assessment. Every office holder who is a Democrat will suffer politically even though each one played no role in what he did. Biden's judgment in implementing policy, foreign and domestic, must now be scrutinized carefully.

From the Overnight Report from The Hill: American and Afghan allies left behind in Afghanistan have entered a fraught and uncertain period of limbo following the definitive conclusion of U.S. military evacuations out of the country. Advocates estimate roughly 150,000 vulnerable Afghans still remain in the country after a U.S. evacuation effort ended early Tuesday, while those who assisted the U.S. military who may now wish to leave with their families could add another 100,000. Many who remain have gone into hiding over fear of violent retribution by the Taliban, likely targeted for work alongside American and coalition forces that battled and killed members of the Islamic-fundamentalist group over two decades of war. Confusion and fear: These groups of people face overwhelming confusion and fear over how to leave the country, from practical matters of appropriate travel documents and questions over when airports will reopen and how they will function — to the uncertainty of whether the Taliban will respond to international pressure to ensure safe passage. “The last few months have been incredibly challenging and disappointing for our clients, whose risk has increased exponentially with the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan,” Adam Bates, policy counsel with the International Refugee Assistance Project told reporters, noting that “the majority of our clients were not able to leave Afghanistan on an evacuation flight.” Who was left behind?: Out of more than 500 clients the International Refugee Assistance Project was trying to get out of the country, only about 130 were able to make it onto flights. Just a few dozen have made it onto U.S. soil. Rabbi Will Berkowitz, CEO of the refugee resettlement organization Jewish Family Services, said that group has 127 people on the ground in Afghanistan — 23 families that qualify for Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) to the U.S. who were left behind in the evacuations. The organization is gaming whether people can evacuate over land routes, but is distraught over whether access to cash and communication may be cut off at any moment. They have advised the people to stay in hiding over the next few days as the situation unfolds. The New York-based Women for Afghan Women was unable to secure evacuation for 500 of its most vulnerable staff. This group qualified for evacuation and refugee status for their association with a U.S.-government funded organization. Also left in Afghanistan are an estimated 150 journalists working for the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, media outlets funded by the American government. That group numbers 500 people including their families, according to a congressional aide.

The New Yorker magazine writer who wrote the biography of Joe Biden said on CNN today that the real number of hostages friendly to the U.S. that are still in Afghanistan is 200,000. Then there is this: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/taliban-show-off-captured-weapons-at-kandahar-victory-parade/ar-AANYCOi

'A less-than-zero result' - Putin on U.S. Afghan campaign https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1044003126426638&notif_id=1630510329987734&notif_t=watch_follower_video&ref=notif [I hope this link works for forum members}

Kirk: My primary interest in Biden's debacle in Afghanistan is not the political price all Democratic House and Senate candidates in 2022 and 2024 will pay for what he has done (as the Republican congressional candidates in 1974 paid for what Nixon had done.) My interest is the geopolitical ramifications of his actions. I was graduated in 1960 from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. My B.S. degree was in international relations. I was trained to become a foreign service officer. At the school I was the editor of the Foreign Service Courier, the student publication. I studied under the famed Professor Carroll Quigley who taught Civilization I and II. Clinton followed my graduation by enrolling in the School of Foreign Service seven years later. When he was president each year he returned to Georgetown U. to give a lecture in honor of Prof. Quigley. I did not go into the foreign service but instead enrolled in New York University Law School where I got my J.D. degree. In my opinion America and the free would will pay heavily in geopolitics for what Biden had done. In his speech yesterday he claimed he had ended the "Forever War." Then he went on to declare a new war, this one on terrorists who threaten America. Here is one geopolitical example of how this may backfire. The Taliban, ISIS-k and other terrorist groups that will now inhabit and control Afghanistan will proclaim that for every member of their organization that is killed by drone strike or otherwise, one of the 60,000 hostages that Biden left behind in Afghanistan will be killed along with his/her family members in retaliation. These hostages are our friends, our interpreters, our supporters and Biden's incompetent withdrawal left them behind, along with an unknown number of Americans. The Taliban boast that they defeated the world's greatest superpower. China now knows it can move against Taiwan. The terrorists now know they can move against America's homeland, maybe as proxies for China and Russia. Tony Blair was correct when he said that Biden's action was imbecilic. Doug

A very special program is lined up for The Donald Jeffries Show tonight, starting at 6 pm eastern time. Guests will be former Sirhan Sirhan attorney Laurie Dusek, and 96 year old Paul Schrade, who was shot himself that night in the Ambassador Hotel.

Thanks for Jeff Worcester II for calling this to public attention.

All in or All Out? Biden Saw No Middle Ground in Afghanistan. President Biden’s reductionist formula has prompted a debate over whether the mayhem in Kabul was inevitable or the result of a failure to consider other options. The New York Times August 29, 2021 From the article: Mark T. Esper, a defense secretary under Mr. Trump, agreed that the deal was flawed and in fact argued against drawing down further in the final months of the last administration before being fired in November. In recent days, he said, “there were more options available to President Biden” than simply continuing Mr. Trump’s withdrawal. “He could have tried to go back to the table with the Taliban and renegotiate,” Mr. Esper said on CNN. “He could have demanded, as I argued, that they agree to the conditions they established or they agreed to in the agreement and that we use military power to compel them to do that.” At this point, the die is cast. Mr. Biden made his choice. He wanted to be the president to end America’s longest war. Right or wrong, he has done so and on that, there is no middle ground.

Opinion article from today’s New York Times titled: It Shouldn’t Fall to Veterans to Clean Up Biden’s Mess From the article: As a Marine, I fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. As a journalist, I covered the war in Syria. Never have I witnessed a greater, swifter collapse of competence than what I have seen with the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan. Central to President Biden’s campaign was a promise that the candidate understood, deeply and personally, two essential things: empathy and service. Events in Afghanistan this week indicate this promise was, at worst, false and, at best, limited. Events in Afghanistan illustrate what happens when there is a breakdown in empathy. Events at the airport — desperation, death — indicate the extreme chaos that ensues when the commander in chief doesn’t actually understand the value of service.

First paragraph of the front page article in the Weekend Edition of The Wall Street Journal: “Twenty years ago, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to get rid of the Taliban. Today, American forces, battered by one of the bloodiest attacks of the war, are relying for their own security on the same group, whose members they were trying to kill just week earlier.”

Larry Elder's private charity was a bust, and questions swirl over where the money went https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/larry-elders-private-charity-was-a-bust-and-questions-swirl-over-where-the-money-went/ar-AANPg8U

Lead paragraphs from a front page article in the New York Times today: A group of seven Capitol Police officers filed a lawsuit on Thursday accusing former President Donald J. Trump and nearly 20 members of far-right extremist groups and political organizations of a plot to disrupt the peaceful transition of power during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. The suit, which implicated members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers militia and Trump associates like Roger J. Stone Jr., was arguably the most expansive civil effort to date seeking to hold Mr. Trump and his allies legally accountable for the storming of the Capitol. While three other similar lawsuits were filed in recent months, the suit on Thursday was the first to allege that Mr. Trump worked in concert with both far-right extremists and political organizers promoting his baseless lies that the presidential election was marred by fraud.

Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of Robert F. Kennedy assassination, seeks parole with no opposition from prosecutors Attorneys say that 53 years behind bars is sufficient punishment for the 77-year-old; Kennedy family declines to weigh in https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/08/25/sirhan-parole-hearing/

A Statistical Estimation of the Occurrence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Milky Way Galaxy Xiang Cai1 , Jonathan H. Jiang2 , Kristen A. Fahy2 , Yuk L. Yung3 1. Santiago High School, Corona, CA 2. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 3. Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2012/2012.07902.pdf

A Statistical Estimation of the Occurrence of Extraterrestrial Intelligence in the Milky Way Galaxy Xiang Cai1 , Jonathan H. Jiang2 , Kristen A. Fahy2 , Yuk L. Yung3 1. Santiago High School, Corona, CA 2. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 3. Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2012/2012.07902.pdf

https://gregolear.substack.com/p/american-guy-fawkeses?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo5NTk5NDEyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjo0MDMwMzMyMSwiXyI6IjVIYTBLIiwiaWF0IjoxNjI5ODMxNDM4LCJleHAiOjE2Mjk4MzUwMzgsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0yMDY5NSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.tRHbIgxmPq1W-WgMalYpwKg0wbQ1ytSdEpPr2lSf0H4