Brickbat: You Thought Nashville’s Bachelorette Parties Were Bad…

New York City Police Department Officer Michael J. Reynolds was sentenced to two weeks in jail and three years probation after pleading no contest to aggravated criminal trespassing and three counts of assault in a Davidson County, Tennessee, court. Reynolds was in Nashville for the bachelor party for a fellow officer when he broke into the home next to his Airbnb after a night of drinking and terrorized the family living there.  A neighbor’s RING camera caught Reynolds saying “Try to shoot me, and I’ll break every f—ing bone in your f—ing neck.” He can also be heard using a racial slur, calling the victims “f—ing n——.” He left only when the family told him the police were in their way. Reynolds was suspended by the NYPD for 30 days and decommissioned but is still employed by the department.

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Brickbat: You Thought Nashville’s Bachelorette Parties Were Bad…

New York City Police Department Officer Michael J. Reynolds was sentenced to two weeks in jail and three years probation after pleading no contest to aggravated criminal trespassing and three counts of assault in a Davidson County, Tennessee, court. Reynolds was in Nashville for the bachelor party for a fellow officer when he broke into the home next to his Airbnb after a night of drinking and terrorized the family living there.  A neighbor’s RING camera caught Reynolds saying “Try to shoot me, and I’ll break every f—ing bone in your f—ing neck.” He can also be heard using a racial slur, calling the victims “f—ing n——.” He left only when the family told him the police were in their way. Reynolds was suspended by the NYPD for 30 days and decommissioned but is still employed by the department.

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Trump’s Inartful Dodges

During a policy retreat in September, Donald Trump attributed his signature orange hue, which seems to be caused by the amateurish application of bronzer, to energy-efficient lightbulbs. “The light’s no good,” he told House Republicans. “I always look orange. And so do you. The light is the worst.”

It was hardly the most consequential instance of Trump’s blame shifting in 2019, but it was part of a pattern for a president who seems constitutionally incapable of accepting responsibility. Here are some of the more memorable examples from the last year.

Border Song. “The federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only: because Democrats will not fund border security,” Trump said in January. Yet it was Trump who caused the shutdown by insisting on money for his “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border—money that Congress still has not approved.

Hanoi Shuffle. After his February meeting in Hanoi with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ended abruptly, Trump initially blamed Kim’s insistence on a complete lifting of economic sanctions in exchange for only partial progress on denuclearization, saying, “Sometimes you have to walk.” A few days later, he argued that Democrats had helped spoil the summit by inviting his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to testify while Trump was in Hanoi, which he said “may have contributed to the ‘walk'”—i.e., Trump’s own decision to end the meeting.

It’s Not the Crime. While it turned out that Trump was telling the truth when he denied that his campaign had illegally conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, his public and private efforts to impede, curtail, or stop investigations of that question needlessly prolonged the “witch hunt” he blamed on Democrats and the “Fake News Media.” Those efforts filled an entire volume of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s March report, which detailed obstructive behavior that made it look like Trump had something to hide.

18th Century Airports. During an Independence Day speech, Trump claimed the Continental Army “manned the air” and “took over the airports” during the Revolutionary War. He attributed the flub to a teleprompter failure that had forced him to extemporize.

Love Him or Leave. After Trump supporters at a July 17 rally chanted “send her back” when he mentioned Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.), who was born in Somalia, he claimed “I felt a little bit badly about it” and “started speaking very quickly,” which was not true. Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the spirit of the chant was especially implausible because just a few days before he had suggested that “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen”—a reference to Omar and three other minority representatives, all of whom were born in the United States—should “go back” to the countries they “originally came from.”

Do Us a Favor. To this day, Trump insists that his July 25 telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy—Exhibit A in the case for impeachment—was “perfect” and “totally appropriate,” even though his request for an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender to oppose him in this year’s election, alarmed several administration officials. Instead of conceding that it was even a little bit unseemly to mix foreign policy with his own political interests, Trump has blamed all the fuss on hostile underlings, treasonous Democrats, “corrupt journalists,” and even Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

First Resort. In October, Trump suddenly reversed plans to hold next June’s Group of 7 summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida, after his advisers and congressional allies warned him that the appearance of self-dealing and self-promotion would provoke an easily avoided controversy. Trump blamed Democrats who “went crazy” and reporters who cited “this phony Emoluments Clause.”

There was more, including Trump’s claims that the impeachment inquiry and the Fed were responsible for economic developments more plausibly linked to his trade war. But I have run out of space, which is what happens when you try to catalog this president’s inartful dodges.

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Trump’s Inartful Dodges

During a policy retreat in September, Donald Trump attributed his signature orange hue, which seems to be caused by the amateurish application of bronzer, to energy-efficient lightbulbs. “The light’s no good,” he told House Republicans. “I always look orange. And so do you. The light is the worst.”

It was hardly the most consequential instance of Trump’s blame shifting in 2019, but it was part of a pattern for a president who seems constitutionally incapable of accepting responsibility. Here are some of the more memorable examples from the last year.

Border Song. “The federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only: because Democrats will not fund border security,” Trump said in January. Yet it was Trump who caused the shutdown by insisting on money for his “big, beautiful wall” along the southern border—money that Congress still has not approved.

Hanoi Shuffle. After his February meeting in Hanoi with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ended abruptly, Trump initially blamed Kim’s insistence on a complete lifting of economic sanctions in exchange for only partial progress on denuclearization, saying, “Sometimes you have to walk.” A few days later, he argued that Democrats had helped spoil the summit by inviting his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to testify while Trump was in Hanoi, which he said “may have contributed to the ‘walk'”—i.e., Trump’s own decision to end the meeting.

It’s Not the Crime. While it turned out that Trump was telling the truth when he denied that his campaign had illegally conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, his public and private efforts to impede, curtail, or stop investigations of that question needlessly prolonged the “witch hunt” he blamed on Democrats and the “Fake News Media.” Those efforts filled an entire volume of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s March report, which detailed obstructive behavior that made it look like Trump had something to hide.

18th Century Airports. During an Independence Day speech, Trump claimed the Continental Army “manned the air” and “took over the airports” during the Revolutionary War. He attributed the flub to a teleprompter failure that had forced him to extemporize.

Love Him or Leave. After Trump supporters at a July 17 rally chanted “send her back” when he mentioned Rep. Ilhan Omar (D–Minn.), who was born in Somalia, he claimed “I felt a little bit badly about it” and “started speaking very quickly,” which was not true. Trump’s attempt to distance himself from the spirit of the chant was especially implausible because just a few days before he had suggested that “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen”—a reference to Omar and three other minority representatives, all of whom were born in the United States—should “go back” to the countries they “originally came from.”

Do Us a Favor. To this day, Trump insists that his July 25 telephone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy—Exhibit A in the case for impeachment—was “perfect” and “totally appropriate,” even though his request for an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender to oppose him in this year’s election, alarmed several administration officials. Instead of conceding that it was even a little bit unseemly to mix foreign policy with his own political interests, Trump has blamed all the fuss on hostile underlings, treasonous Democrats, “corrupt journalists,” and even Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

First Resort. In October, Trump suddenly reversed plans to hold next June’s Group of 7 summit at his golf club in Doral, Florida, after his advisers and congressional allies warned him that the appearance of self-dealing and self-promotion would provoke an easily avoided controversy. Trump blamed Democrats who “went crazy” and reporters who cited “this phony Emoluments Clause.”

There was more, including Trump’s claims that the impeachment inquiry and the Fed were responsible for economic developments more plausibly linked to his trade war. But I have run out of space, which is what happens when you try to catalog this president’s inartful dodges.

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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The Leftist Cult Vs. The Trump Cult: Similarities And Differences

The Leftist Cult Vs. The Trump Cult: Similarities And Differences

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Political demagoguery is a valuable and effective weapon in the arsenal of the establishment elites. As long as there is a wide ideological division between groups in society, biases and desires can be tapped and manipulated.  This allows those in power to direct vast portions of the public down one path or another. When fear of an enemy and the drive to “win” become more important than truth and evidence, the population has tied its own puppet strings and handed them over to the spin doctors.

This is why the false Left/Right paradigm has been so useful to the establishment for so long. Anytime the public starts to wake up to the web of control, all the elites have to do is push one or both sides of the political spectrum towards extremism and let the people rage at each other instead of picking up their torches and pitchforks and tearing down the oligarchy. This method of division and diversion keeps the masses occupied and feeling as though they are accomplishing something while actually accomplishing nothing.

As Carroll Quigley, globalist insider and mentor to Bill Clinton, admitted in his book ‘Tragedy And Hope’:

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy….Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”

The false Left/Right tactic has become more and more exposed in the past decade to the wider public, and so the elites had to change their methods to adapt to the growing awareness. Conservatives in particular have started to leave the plantation, and something had to be done to drag them back. The liberty movement has become a force in western life with tens of millions of members. It is an unpredictable element that the establishment needs to lock down and redirect if they ever hope to achieve their goal of a “new world order”.

The elites have used two tandem strategies in this effort:

First, they pushed leftist indoctrination towards full bore cultism.

Second, they have attempted to co-opt the leadership of conservatives and the liberty movement using a political puppet figure in order to bottleneck our energy and momentum.

Leftist culture has become increasingly erratic and unhinged (even more so than usual), informed by elements of a new social justice fanaticism; a kind of religious fervor where faith in ideological gatekeepers is more important than facts. The majority of the left, while not necessarily part of this “woke” religion, is still influenced by SJW rhetoric. Delusional notions of “patriarchy” and “inherent racism” and “inherent sexism” are woven into the Democrat mindset today. They see oppression everywhere, and victim group status has become the social currency they use to acclimate to a fantasy world where big government and entitlements are the solutions to all the world’s ills.

The conservative side of civilization doesn’t participate in the oppression fantasies of the left. We don’t even speak the same language, as the left’s very vocabulary has shifted into an academic babble-language they simply made up to describe social dynamics that don’t exist and gender politics that are biologically and scientifically absurd. Reconciling with leftists in any meaningful way has become nearly impossible, and fear of their fanaticism is causing conservatives to assume that whatever these people hate, must be good.

Enter Donald Trump, a kind of artificially created focal point machine, a figure that is designed to absorb liberty movement talking points and then regurgitate them in an alphabet soup puddle on Twitter. This rhetoric is relatively effective in that many conservatives recognize parts of the soup and find comfort that Trump “must be on their side”.

I have outlined in numerous articles Trump’s dubious background and behavior. To summarize, we often hear lip service from Trump on anti-globalism and anti-elitism, even though it is an undeniable fact that he has saturated his cabinet with globalists and elitists.

We heard anti-banker talking points from Trump during his campaign, even though Trump has a longstanding relationship to the Rothschild family and works side-by-side with Rothschild and Goldman Sachs bankers in the White House. We heard lots of anti-Federal Reserve discussion from Trump and observations that the current economy is an explosive bubble engineered by them; yet he now openly demands that the Fed inflate the bubble further while he takes full credit for the fake stock market rally.  We also heard many promises that US troops would be coming home and the long wars in the Middle East would end for America; this has not happened and likely will not happen as tensions with Iran continue to grow.

In other words, Trump is a skin job. A robot. A false conservative and false prophet of the liberty movement. He tells us what we want to hear while his actions say something entirely different. Yet, a lot of conservatives still listen to him, because they despise the collectivist religion of the left, they desperately want mainstream recognition and representation, and because they want to believe that there is a white knight out there in Washington defending their interests and their future.

The establishment understands these desires and exploits them. They understand that the more extreme the left becomes, the more tempted conservatives will be to jump blindly on the Trump bandwagon.

Mainstream media outlets like CNN have taken to referring to Trump’s base as a “cult” recently, which of course is the pot calling the kettle black; but it does not mean that the accusation is wrong. Trump’s base is indeed acting more and more like a cult, but primarily in reaction to the cultism of leftists. The crazier the left gets, the more Trump becomes a folk hero to the right. The more the media promotes fabricated Russiagate nonsense or Ukrainian conspiracy narratives, the more conservatives assume that the establishment is “trying to take down” Trump.

It is rather rudimentary reverse psychology – If the establishment media attacks Trump, then he must be “anti-establishment”. If the leftists hate Trump, then he must be good for conservatives. Nothing could be further from the truth, but if anyone points this out they will be immediately attacked as disinformation agents and purveyors of CNN talking points.

A common argument in defense of Trump is to ignore his associations and behavior entirely and focus on the prevailing circus surrounding him instead. People state indignantly that:

Trump is under attack! They are trying to impeach him! How can he be working with the globalists if they are trying to get rid of him…?”

I would point out that there is a usefulness to political theater that goes far beyond trying to remove a president from office. Again, the media viciously attacked Trump during his election campaign, but if one understands that public trust in the mainstream media has collapsed in the past ten years, then one also understands that media attacks on Trump would only cause more people to like him and vote for him. The question then needs to be asked: Does the establishment understand this inverse relationship in public psychology? Or, did they completely overlook it?

I seriously doubt they are overlooking it.

If this is the case, then the frothing leftist rage against Trump, while partially real, is also 4th Generation warfare designed to trick conservatives into developing their own cult-like fantasy that Trump is our fearless leader fighting the good fight even though his presidency is tightly intertwined with global elitists. The impeachment itself comes at a time when a large portion of the liberty movement is waking up to the Trump con game and is questioning many of his activities and associations.

The establishment has put a lot of effort into creating the Trump versus Leftist circus, and they really hate the idea that a number of people are refusing to pick a side.  For them, there is nothing worse than free thinkers who organize their own side separate from the false paradigm.

The impeachment, like Russiagate, is not designed to get Trump out of office. It is a Hail Mary attempt to pull liberty minded conservatives back into the Trump fold; to keep us predictable and under control. It is also designed to keep leftists feeling justified in their insanity. Remember, the crazier the left acts, the more fearful and malleable conservatives become.

The establishment likes Trump right where he is, and he will not be going anywhere, at least not until he has completely served his purpose. Whether that will be in the next year, or in another four years, it’s hard to say at this time. Obviously, the elites have to keep the left/right sideshow going at full volume until they are done using Trump as a distraction. They will “attack” him as often as needed to create the illusion that he is anti-establishment, and Trump will continue to play along to please his masters, many of them standing over his shoulder everyday in the White House.

The Leftist Cult and the Trump Cult are similar in their refusal to accept facts and reality, as well as their ability to double and triple down on delusions that are consistently debunked.

I have witnessed people on the Trump-train dismiss every blatant piece of evidence of Trump’s collusion with globalists on the basis that he is “keeping his enemies close”.  I have seen them ignore his support for Red Flag gun laws, his refusal to pull US forces out of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, his hostility towards Iran, his support for totalitarian governments like Saudi Arabia, etc.  They call it “4D chess” and simply move on.  I have seen them shrug off endless data showing economic decline and proclaim instead an “economic boom”.  I have seen them completely absorbed and distracted by the trade war and China while forgetting all about the banking elites that engineer most of the calamity in our society.

They act this way because they are afraid.  The political left frightens them, they are searching for a hero to save them, and they are willing to overlook almost any skeleton in Trump’s closet in order to make their fantasy version of him real.  But, the leftists are nothing more than a symptom – They are useful idiots, not the source of the disease.  And, Trump is not the hero conservatives are looking for anyway.  In terms of the liberty movement, Trump is irrelevant.  He’s a footnote.  The real work is being done by millions of activists breaking through decades of propaganda and exposing the truth.

The difference between the Leftist Cult and the Trump Cult is mostly intent: Leftists double and triple down on their lies because they are infatuated with collective power and they see the truth as an obstacle to the “greater good”. The Trump cult ignores facts and evidence on Trump because they are hyperfocused on collective defense. Leftists are seeking to micromanage the thoughts and behavior of the world while conservatives are seeking to solidify enough political protection to ensure they are left alone. The Leftist Cult wants to burn everything to the ground, erase history and rebuild the world in their image. The Trump Cult is trying to keep the last structures of American heritage alive; they have simply put their faith in the wrong champion.

The sad reality is, leftists and conservatives are likely far too alien to each other now to ever come to a diplomatic solution. The division in society is very real; it’s the division at the top that’s Kabuki theater. The liberty movement is the key to everything, as we are the constant target of establishment 4th Gen propaganda. If we didn’t matter, then the elites would not be spending so much time, money and energy trying to keep us in line. They need us to buy into the theater, otherwise we become an unknown element, a third party, a time bomb that could explode unexpectedly on them at any given moment.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden

Tue, 12/31/2019 – 23:55

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A Decade In Tech

A Decade In Tech

As the decade draws to a close, it’s time to look back at some of the things the past ten years have brought us. To think that people clinking their glasses on New Year Year’s Eve 2009 had no idea what an iPad was and couldn’t post a picture of the fireworks on Instagram.

As Statista’s Felix Richter rightfully points out, it was a different world back then.

Infographic: A Decade in Tech | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

While the 2000s will always be remembered as the eve of the smartphone era, the past decade brought us some of the world’s most beloved social media apps as well as several gadgets we wouldn’t want to miss today.

The PlayStation 4, launched in November 2013, went on to become the second best-selling video game console of all time. The Apple Watch (2015) helped wearables reach mainstream adoption and Amazon’s Echo rang in the smart speaker boom in 2014.

As for the next decade, we have no idea what to expect. 5G will surely be a big topic for the early 2020s and rumors suggest that augmented reality headsets could become a thing. With several technology companies among the world’s most valuable (not to mention most resourceful) corporations right now, it seems safe to say that the next decade won’t disappoint from a technological point of view.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 12/31/2019 – 23:30

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We Were Warned About The Deep State, But Refused To Listen

We Were Warned About The Deep State, But Refused To Listen

Authored by Larry Johnson via Sic Temper ZTyrannis blog,

Many of the critical tools employed in the coup to paint Donald Trump as a tool of the Russians and to manufacture a pretext for removing him from office, were created more than twenty years ago.

I am talking about the surveillance state that the American electorate has ignorantly accepted as necessary in order to keep us safe from terrorists.

Despite previous warning from whistleblowers like Russ Tice, Bill Binney, Ed Loomis and Kird Wiebe, no action to rein in the surveillance monster was taken until Edward Snowden absconded with the documents exposing the vast amount spying that the U.S. Government is doing to its own citizens. But even those weak efforts to supposedly rein in the NSA proved to be nothing more than mere window dressing.

The spying got worse. Just ask Donald Trump and the members of his campaign that were targeted first by the CIA and NSA and then by the FBI. Fundamental civil rights were trampled.

The real irony in all of this is that Barack Obama, as President, took credit for helping revise the laws in order to prevent the spying exposed by Edward Snowden. But under the Obama Administration, spying on political opponents–both real and perceived–escalated. We know for a fact that journalists, such as James Rosen and Sheryl Atkinson, were targets and their communications and computers attacked by the U.S. Government.

We know, thanks to a memo released by Judge Rosemary Collyer, that “FBI consultants” were making illegal searches of NSA material using the names of Donald Trump, his family and members of his campaign staff.

Some of this NSA material came courtesy of the Brits and their collection on U.S. targets. Some of this material came from the NSA’s own collection and storage of all electronic communications and was obtained using a nifty NSA tool called XKEYSCORE. Listen to Ed Snowden’s description. Also, take time to appreciate the irony that CNN and other journalists were actually trying to report real news. Now they are full blown apologists for the abuse of the intelligence collection tools.

Six years ago, former NSA Technical Director for Military and Geopolitical Issues, Bill Binney, and Russ Tice, a former NSA analyst, appeared on the PBS News Hour. Once again, they make very clear the enormous nature to the threat to our civil liberties.

Too bad Donald Trump did not listen to their warning.

Given the robust, wide ranging ability of the NSA to probe all communications by any person in the United States, it is remarkable that no real dirt on Donald Trump was ever uncovered. Had such information existed, it would be in the NSA’s storage vaults in Utah and crooked CIA analysts under Brennan’s direction would have found it and used it. But that did not happed. The best the intel folks could fabricate were the salacious claims attributed to reports ostensibly created by former British spy, Christopher Steele. Turns out that the titillating account that Trump hired hookers to perform coprophilia (could of been worse, coprophagia) was nothing more than idle bar talk.

What has happened to Donald Trump can happen to any of us. It is time to take this threat seriously and put the intel agencies back into a properly monitored corral. Otherwise, we will lose this Republic.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 12/31/2019 – 23:05

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America’s Top New Year’s Resolutions For 2020

America’s Top New Year’s Resolutions For 2020

For 2020, Americans are making the resolution to adopt healthy habits – concerning their finances as well as their bodies. A survey by Ipsos for Urban Plates has found that out of all participants who said they were making one or several new year’s resolutions, 51 percent wanted to manage their finances better and an equal amount wanted to adopt healthier eating habits.

As Statista’s Katharina Bucxhholz notes, more popular resolutions for the upcoming year also circled around improving one’s health, with a more active lifestyle and weight loss being favorite answers.

Infographic: America's Top New Year's Resolutions for 2020 | Statista

You will find more infographics at Statista

38 percent of participants wanted to improve their mental well-being or practice mindfulness, a sign of a growing awareness for these aspects of mental health. Despite environmental protection being an equally popular topic at the moment, only 22 percent of survey participants said they wanted to be more eco-friendly in 2020.

18 percent of Americans said they were making only one resolution, while an additional 20 percent said they would make more than one. The percentage of resolution-makers was highest among Hispanics. A total of 56 percent in that group said they were making one or more resolutions.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 12/31/2019 – 22:30

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Strategic Folly & The Consequences Of America’s Unending War In Afghanistan

Strategic Folly & The Consequences Of America’s Unending War In Afghanistan

Authored by Lawrence Sellin via The Modern War Institute,

If a recent article published by the Modern War Institute at West Point, “Don’t Let Kabul 2020 Look Like Saigon 1975: The Dangers of a Precipitous Afghanistan Withdrawal,” represents the prevailing American views on military strategy, then it goes a long way to explain why the United States lost the Afghanistan War.

The authors did get the premise right concerning the dangers associated with a precipitous withdrawal, but by getting all the basics wrong, they offer all the wrong solutions.

The article begins with a whopper, that “a US/NATO military withdrawal must be managed responsibly to conserve the hard-earned gains on issues like civil liberties and women’s rights made over the past eighteen years.”

No. Anyone who has spent any time in Afghanistan beyond the confines of a headquarters or a walled-in facility would know that is a not a valid reason to maintain a military presence in Afghanistan because it is simply not something within our capability either to establish or sustain.

A proper exit strategy is a process of burden shifting in a manner that protects vital US interests, while preventing US adversaries from unduly benefitting from a withdrawal.

Just like military leaders and policymakers over nearly two decades and through multiple administrations, the authors fail to address or even identify the true nature of the war in Afghanistan.

From that omission arises all the misinterpretations of the present situation and the mistaken prescriptions for the future—most notably, the recommendation for continued nation building.

The time is long overdue for a reality check.

First, the conflict in Afghanistan is not an insurgency. It is a proxy war being waged by Pakistan against Afghanistan and the United States. It is similar to Pakistan’s use of terrorist proxies against India in Kashmir.

Pakistan has always viewed Afghanistan as a client state and a security buffer against what it considers potential Indian encirclement and as a springboard to extend its own influence into the resource-rich areas of Central Asia.

The American counterinsurgency strategy was never winnable as long as Pakistan largely controlled the supply of our troops in landlocked Afghanistan and regulated the operational tempo through its proxy army, the Taliban, which has maintained an extensive recruiting, training, and financial support infrastructure inside Pakistan, all of which has been immune to attack.

Second, Pakistan has never been an ally of the United States, but a duplicitous partner, pursuing its own interests in coordination with its true ally, China, while being generously funded by us.

Nowhere have Chinese ambitions been more clearly and publicly articulated than in a June 2018 China Daily article by former Pakistani diplomat, Zamir Ahmed Awan, who works for the Beijing-controlled Center for China and Globalization [comments added].

New [Chinese] initiatives for peace in Afghanistan are welcome, and may change the scenario in the whole region. . . . I believe, American think tanks and leadership, especially military leadership has already realized that this war cannot be won. The only option is withdrawal, the sooner the better.

Pakistan can play a vital role in a sustainable solution to the Afghan conflict [controlling Afghanistan as a client state]. Complete withdrawal and an Afghan-led [Taliban-led] solution is the only permanent way out. Pakistan can facilitate an honorable and safe passage for US withdrawal.

Peace in Afghanistan will allow economic activity between Central Asia, Russia, China, and the Arabian Sea. . . . It can change the fate of the whole region. Chinese projects like the Belt and Road Initiative and the objectives of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization [SCO]. . . . At the recent SCO summit, the Afghanistan president was invited as a guest and observer. Hopefully, the country will soon join SCO. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor may also be extended to benefit Afghanistan in the near future if there is peace.

Since that article was published, China has offered to extend CPEC to Afghanistan; China will build a military facility in and deploy Chinese troops to Afghanistan; Afghan military personnel will be trained in China; and members of the Afghan Parliament have recommended that the Bilateral Security Agreement between the United States and Afghanistan be canceled, presumably to be replaced closer security ties with by China.

Ultimately, America’s most formidable adversary in South Asia will be China, on which future US strategic planning should focus.

China seeks global domination. One vehicle to achieve it is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a collection of infrastructure projects and a network of commercial agreements in 152 countries designed to link the entire world directly to the Chinese economy through interconnected land-based and maritime routes.

One element of BRI is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), an infrastructure and development project, the backbone of which is a transportation network connecting China to the Pakistani seaports of Gwadar and Karachi located on the Arabian Sea

The guarantor of that soft power approach is the hard power of Chinese military expansion.

China plans to establish a naval and air bases on the Arabian Sea within easy reach of the strategically important Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. That military facility will complement China’s already operational naval base in Djibouti, located at another strategic chokepoint, the entrance to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

With or without US approval or participation, China intends to incorporate Afghanistan into CPEC and exploit the estimated $3 trillion in untapped Afghan mineral resources.

The wild card in that scenario is Islamist extremism, of which Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is the true epicentre.

Islamist militancy has long been an element of Pakistan’s foreign and domestic policies. Any threat by these groups to Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is, therefore, largely self-created.

As early as the 1950s, Pakistan began inserting Islamists associated with its Jamaat-e-Islami party into Afghanistan.

In 1974, then Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto set up a cell within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) to begin managing dissident Islamists in Afghanistan.

Under President Zia ul-Haq (1977–1988), Pakistan pursued a policy of aggressive “Islamization” with the proliferation of religious schools and religious political parties, resulting in a society that became ever more extreme and intolerant. Ethnic separatism was suppressed and Islamist fighters were found to be useful proxies for the Pakistani military.

One source of America’s current dilemma in Afghanistan was a failure by the Reagan administration in allowing the Central Intelligence Agency to blindly outsource mujahideen funding to Pakistan’s ISI, which funneled American money and arms not to Afghan nationalists like Ahmad Shah Massoud, but to pro-Pakistani Islamists such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani.

It is an undisputed fact that the Taliban were created by the ISI, beginning in 1994, as a means of intervening in the Afghan civil war to influence the outcome in favor of Pakistani national interests.

Since its founding, the ISI and the Pakistani military have never stopped providing financial, logistical, and military support to the Taliban. The subterfuge underlying Pakistani policy was already apparent in the early days of the Afghanistan war.

The tens of thousands of madrasas, many unofficial, have offered a fertile recruiting source, not just for the Taliban, but for other Pakistan-based militant groups, such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for attacks against India.

Contrary to the suggestion by the authors, it would be foolhardy to pump ever more international financial support into the region, funding largely supplied by the United States, an approach that would only benefit our adversaries.

Quite the opposite is needed. Financial pressure should be brought to bear on Pakistan for its continued support of terrorism and steps should be taken to thwart Chinese economic and military expansion in the region, including closer cooperation with India.

The only bargaining chip the United States has in peace negotiations is our presence in Afghanistan. The “presence” argument is clearly unsustainable. Between now and the beginning of a withdrawal, the United States should be identifying new forms of leverage, in the short term, to bolster our negotiating position, and, in the long term, as a basis of a new South Asian strategy.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 12/31/2019 – 21:55

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZIgdhD Tyler Durden

California’s Woke Legislation For 2020: Students Can’t Be Suspended

California’s Woke Legislation For 2020: Students Can’t Be Suspended

Among the dumbest of the state of California’s new ‘woke’ legislation for 2020 is that it’s set to ban all public and charter schools from suspending students for ‘willful defiance’ in this upcoming year: 

A California bill that passed the Legislature would prohibit schools, including charter schools, from suspending students for willful defiance.

That means if a student is acting up in class, teachers and school officials will not be able to suspend them from school.

“Fast Times At Ridgemont High” (1982)

As if California public schools weren’t already woefully behind national education standards, despite the state pouring $90 billion into the system this year alone, schools will now be forced to keep kids on campus no matter their level of constant defiance and disruption to the educational process of others.

Under the law, SB 419, the only exception for which a student could still be suspended suspended will be for bringing a weapon or illegal drugs to school.

And what’s the rationale? Because of course, racism

As a local NBC affiliate reported earlier when the bill was passed by the state House and Senate:

The bill by Sen. Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, would ban the suspension of students in grades K-8 for refusing to obey a teacher or administrator, a practice known as willful defiance.

“I’ve dealt with a lot of these cases,” said Berry Accius, founder of Voice of the Youth, a nonprofit mentoring program in Sacramento. “Unfortunately, I’ve had kids that have been suspended for sometimes three months.”

Accius said school suspensions are used disproportionately against students of color.

“African American males and females, they are suspended at a higher rate — especially the African American males,” Accius said.

No doubt the jobs of California school teachers and administrators just got immensely harder. It will take effect starting July 1, 2020.

Commenting at The American Conservative, Rod Dreher skewers the initiative and predicts the following outcome: “Now state legislators, in their wisdom, have condemned elementary school teachers and the well-behaved students — black, white, Latino, Asian, whatever — to the tyranny of brats.”

And more: “Progressives are dismantling the ability of a basic social institution — the school — to defend itself, and to maintain order sufficient to fulfill its function.” Further, Dreher notes the inevitability that “when the parents who can afford to get their kids out of the public schools do so, progressives will call them racist.”

* * * 


Tyler Durden

Tue, 12/31/2019 – 21:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MNQsaK Tyler Durden