The chaos in Afghanistan could have reportedly been avoided altogether if President Joe Biden had accepted the Taliban’s initial offer for the U.S. to have full control of Kabul and the airport.
According to a report from the Washington Post, as the Taliban began taking control of Afghanistan, senior U.S. military leaders met with Taliban political leader Abdul Ghani Baradar in Doha, Qatar, where an offer was made for the United States to have control of Kabul until all U.S. troops had withdrawn; the offer was declined. From the report:
In a hastily arranged in-person meeting, senior U.S. military leaders in Doha – including McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command – spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political wing.
“We have a problem,” Baradar said, according to the U.S. official. “We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”
Throughout the day, Biden had remained resolute in his decision to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan. The collapse of the Afghan government hadn’t changed his mind.
McKenzie, aware of those orders, told Baradar that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.
On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.
As the days unfolded, the security in Kabul became increasingly hostile, culminating in the terrorist attack last week that killed 13 American servicemembers and 160 Afghans. According to a report from Politico last week, the Biden administration entrusted the Taliban so intensely with securing the city that they were allegedly given a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies in the region.
When pressed about this list, Biden did not deny its existence:
There have been occasions where our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said, for example, “This bus is coming through with X number of people on it made up of the following group of people. We want you to let that bus or that group through.”
So yes there have been occasions like that, and to the best of my knowledge, in those cases, when the bulk of that has occurred, they have been let through. But I can’t tell you with any servitude that there has actually been a list of names. There may have been, but I know of no circumstance. That doesn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Republicans on Twitter ceased on the Washington Post’s report and put the Biden administration on blast for not taking the Taliban’s initial offer:
If the reports are true, and the Biden administration willfully gave control of Kabul to the Taliban, they have yet again shown their complicity for a terrorist takeover. https://t.co/qmrWSgJpmn
Want to know what incompetence looks like ? Read this? We could have kept Kabul..we only asked for airport, It was Austins decision to leave Embasey – not even a threat- all have to fired..Sec’y of state in Hamptons as war was lost!! https://t.co/E4cfnoYOaN
Joe Biden checked his watch in the middle of receiving the bodies of fallen US Marines killed in Afghanistan.
During an event in which Joe Biden presided over the bodies of fallen US Marines during the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base, the President appeared to check his watch, drawing national outrage as many viewed the move as inconsiderate and selfish given the circumstance and setting.
In the middle of a dignified transfer ceremony for the fallen US Marines that were recently killed in Afghanistan, Joe Biden appeared to check the time on his wristwatch, drawing outrage from many who viewed the move as incentive, inconsiderate, and selfish.
Biden appears to check his watch during the dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base. pic.twitter.com/oMsBefnmfS
“Biden checking his watch at the ceremony of our fallen heroes is the most disrespectful thing I have ever seen. Are they an inconvenience to you POTUS? I want an explanation,” tweeted one Twitter user. “Joe Biden checking his watch after removing his hand over his heart so disgusting…our government hates us,” tweeted another. “Utter disrespect. He looks at his watch during the ceremony of 13 fallen American heroes killed in Afghanistan. Their ages were less than half of Biden’s time in politics! Biden voters will call this “edited video” because they are brainless. #BidenMustGo,” tweeted third Twitter user.
This would not be the first time Americans slammed Biden over his apparent lack of sympathy with regards to his Afghanistan Disaster. Just one day before the 13 Marines were killed, Biden smirked when reporters asked him about the situation in Afghanistan. The smirk outraged the heartbroken mother of Rylee McCollum, a fallen US Marine who tragically died as a result of the bombing in Afghanistan, who ultimately condemned Biden and Democrat voters over the death of her son on a radio show hosted by Andrew Wilkow, as National File previously reported.
“My son is gone, and I just want all you Democrats who cheated in the election, or who voted for [Biden] legitimately, you just killed my son…with a dementia-ridden piece of crap who doesn’t even know he’s in the White House, he still thinks he’s a Senator,” said McCollum, who later noted that “I wanted my son to represent our country, to fight for my country, but I never thought that a feckless piece of crap would send him to his death and smirk on television while he’s talking about people dying, with his nasty smirk. The dementia-ridden piece of crap needs to be removed from office. It never would have happened under Trump.”
In related news, the US military has relieved Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller from duty after he released a heartfelt video critiquing the tragic Afghanistan withdrawal following the Kabul bombings that killed up to 13 American service members. “My chain of command is doing exactly what I would do…if I were in their shoes. I appreciate the opportunities AITB command provided. To all the news agencies asking for interviews…I will not be making any statements other than what’s on my social platforms until I exit the Marine Corps,” explained Scheller. However, Scheller appears to be optimistic about his future aspirations, despite being relieved of duty.
Curtin University Professor Joe Siracusa joined Sky News over the weekend to discuss the fallout of the Afghanistan disaster on the Biden presidency.
Siracusa says Joe Biden’s presidency “is finished” and it can’t survive the fallout over his administration’s “messy” withdrawal from Afghanistan. Mr Siracusa was kind, adding that Joe Biden had an opportunity to withdraw from Afghanistan as “gracefully as he could” but it turned out to be quite “messy.”
Professor Siracusa reasoned, “And now he’s angered 60 percent of the American people for not doing it properly. At the end of all this is that I think Biden has lost his credibility and I think the Biden presidency is finished – he can’t survive this.”
The Taliban have confirmed that they have access to the database and have mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces
(Firstpost) Taliban fighters have access to a large amount of biometric data of persons who helped the US and their NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence, several media reports said. This crucial data landed into their hands courtesy of the US, who left the embassy amid a chaotic evacuation.
These reports come only days after it was found that US officials in Afghanistan had “naively” handed over a “kill list” comprising names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to the Taliban so they could be allowed to enter the Taliban-controlled perimeter around the Hamid Karzai International Airport. What the documents actually did was help identify Afghan staff members and job applicants who were inadvertently left behind at the abandoned British Embassy in Kabul.
The biometric programme
The US had started collecting and collating data from some 3,00000 Afghans in 2009, mainly prisoners and Afghan soldiers. Then a biometrics center was opened in November 2010. US officials aimed to compile information on as many as 25 million Afghans that would allow them to spot Taliban infiltrators. But it evolved into a way to identify Afghans hired or visited by the US forces. Eventually, everyone who worked with the Afghan government or the US military — including interpreters, drivers, nurses, and secretaries — was fingerprinted and scanned for the biometric database over the past 12 years.
The Afghan Automated Biometric Identification System (AABIS), administered by about 50 Afghans at the Interior Affairs ministry in Kabbul, registered fingerprints, iris scans, and other biographical data. The data were registered using hand-held scanners. Report has it that the US forces had 7,00 pieces of equipment.
After news broke about the security lapse, US officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database can be remotely deleted.
In wrong hands
All of this has now become the property of the Taliban, which has wrested control of the entire country and took whatever the US officials didn’t manage to take along.
In fact, Washington-based wire service platform Zenger News has learned that the Taliban have mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to cannibalize this biometric data and hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces. Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the brigade commanders of the Al Isha unit, told the news agency his unit is using the US-made hand-held scanners to tap into the database and positively identify any person who helped the NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans who try to deny or minimize their role will find themselves contradicted by the detailed record.
He said, “We’re in control of the interior ministry and the national biometric database they kept. We have everyone’s data with us now — including journalists and so-called human rights people. We haven’t killed a single foreign journalist, have we? We aren’t arresting the families of these people [who are on the blacklist] either,” he said. “But American, NDS [Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security] and RAW’s [India’s Research and Analysis Wing] puppets won’t be let off. They will always be watched by Al Isha. Those who were barking about having US dollars in their pockets till a few days back — they won’t be spared. They can’t be spared, can they?”
But Haqqani was quick to add that Al Isha was only “keeping an eye” on people who worked for America or the National Directorate of Security — the former Afghan government’s intelligence agency — and added that “The matter is being blown out of proportion by the foreign media and it’s nothing more than a campaign to malign us,” he said. He contended that the database was used to spare the lives of foreign journalists.
The Al Isha
The existence of the Al Isha unit had never been confirmed by the Taliban, until now, when the Haqqani Network — a terror group aligned with the Taliban — finally acknowledged its existence. The network is “the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group targeting US, coalition, and Afghan forces,” according to the US National Counterterrorism Center.
The Al Isha unit comprises nearly 1,100 people and it is spread out into many of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. It is one of the three groups under the Khalil Haqqani Brigade, which is a military unit of more than 2,000 fighters that is named after Khalil Haqqani, who has a $5 million bounty on his head and leads the Badri 313 unit, which recently mocked the iconic photo of US Marines raising an American flag on Iowa Jima.
Khalil Haqqani is the brother of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani, who mentored Osama Bin Laden and later served as a cabinet minister for the Taliban in the 1990s.
Interestingly, Taliban political spokesperson Suhail Shaheen has declined to comment on the existence of the Al Isha, and the use of the biometric database.
The Pakistan connect
When Zenger asked about reports that Pakistani intelligence officers were supervising the Al Isha unit’s use of biometric data, Haqqani did not deny it. “You are not that naive — you know the answer to that,” he said. “But what I can say is, it’s not necessary to train everyone in Pakistan. The Emirs [local Taliban chieftains] are quite capable of training the foot soldiers to handle the equipment.” This suggests Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, has access to America’s biometric database.
The news outlet also quoted an Afghan national army corps commander, who said, “The Afghan Taliban are incapable of handling the biometric equipment or the database. Every search party is overseen by a Pakistani officer or a member of the Haqqani Network.”
Legendary British comedian John Cleese is sick of cancel culture. The “Monty Python” star has a new documentary series called “Cancel Me,” where he questions why the new woke generation is trying to censor everyone, even for harmless jokes.
“Cancel Me” will “set forth into the minefield of cancel culture to explore why a new ‘woke’ generation is trying to rewrite the rules on what can and can’t be said.” The series will speak to activists attempting to cancel people as well as victims of cancel culture, including some famous faces, according to Variety.
“I’m delighted to have a chance to find out, on camera, about all the aspects of so-called political correctness,” the 81-year-old Cleese said. “There’s so much I really don’t understand, like: how the impeccable idea of ‘Let’s all be kind to people’ has been developed in some cases ad absurdum.”
“I want to bring the various reasonings right out in the open so that people can be clearer in their minds what they agree with, what they don’t agree with, and what they still can’t make their mind up about,” the “Fawlty Towers” star explained.
Danny Horan, who oversees documentaries on U.K.’s Channel 4, said the network welcomed the show “because we felt we needed to address [cancel culture] somehow and [Cleese has] very strong views on that.”
“I think there’s a lot of things to address in that series that he is very keen to understand what happened and why it’s happened,” Horan said. “And of course, you know, he was a comedian for the last few decades who had a lot of comedy [some of which now] feels outdated so he’s questioning some of that as well. So I think it’d be really interesting. It’s an area that he’s exploring.”
Earlier this month, a fan asked Cleese if proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test was required to see his upcoming comedy tour, to which the comedian snarkily replied, “No, you just need a certificate promising that you have not attended specifically to be offended.”
After being hit with a barrage of insults and accusations that he was transphobic, Cleese retaliated by saying, “If you can’t control your own emotions, you’re forced to control other people’s behavior That’s why the touchiest, most oversensitive and easily upset must not set the standard for the rest of us.”
This is a strange thing to have to tell someone, but here’s some advice that could have saved Kristin Pitzen’s some problems: Social media reaches beyond California.
Given that’s the whole point of social media, it seems like an odd bit of knowledge to relay. Even when you have your account on Twitter or Facebook set to private, if you post something particularly cretinous, if it rubs one of your friends wrong and you’re in a position of authority, there’s a good chance that it’s going to go wide, with decided swiftness.
In this case, Pitzen apparently didn’t even try to hide it. When the teacher in Southern California’s Newport-Mesa Unified School District posted about what she thinks of the American flag in her classroom on TikTok (there isn’t one), it was entirely public.
While she didn’t identify herself on her account, it didn’t take long for her identity to be sussed out. Her opinion might play well in Southern California. It probably doesn’t do so well when exported outside of the Golden State, however.
Here’s a brief summary of what she said regarding Ol’ Glory: She doesn’t have it in her classroom because she “lost” it, but if her students want to say the Pledge of Allegiance they can say it to the LGBT rainbow flag.
According to the U.K. Daily Mail, the school district is now investigating Pitzen after the high school English teacher’s clip about the Pledge of Allegiance got attention this week.
“OK, so during third period, we have announcements and they do the Pledge of Allegiance,” Pitzen said at the beginning of the video.
“I always tell my class, stand if you feel like it, don’t stand if you feel like it, say the words if you want, you don’t have to say the words.”
“So my class decided to stand but not say the words — totally fine,” she said. “Except for the fact that my room does not have a flag.”
“It used to be there,” she said, pointing and laughing. She said that while the school was closed for the pandemic, she took it down — adding, in a stage whisper, that she did it “because it made me uncomfortable.”
“And I packed it away, and I don’t know where, and I haven’t found it yet,” she added, laughing in a way that indicated she wasn’t exactly looking for it — if, indeed, she had “lost” it in the first place.
When one of her students said it was “kinda weird that we stand and then we say it (the Pledge of Allegiance) to nothing. And I’m like, ‘Oh, well, I’ve got to find it, I’m working on it, I got you.’”
At this point, a laughing Pitzen makes it clear she had no intention of looking for the flag.
“In the meantime, I tell this kid, ‘We do have a flag in the class that you can pledge your allegiance to.’ And he like, looks around and goes, ‘Oh, that one?’”
In a separate video, she showed off all of the flags she had collected and put around her classroom for Pride Month back in June, putting her hand over her heart and saying, “I pledge allegiance to the queers.”
She shows off all the pride flags in her classroom and says “I pledge allegiance to the queers” pic.twitter.com/eQXe1OfPoW
Even in the People’s Republic of California, this is a bit iffy — particularly given she teaches in Orange County, not known for being the bluest part of the state. But the social part of social media means people who don’t live in Pitzen’s bubble got to see it. Shocker of shockers, they thought the disrespect for the flag — as well as coercing a student to pledge allegiance to the LGBT flag — was appalling.
What’s so disturbing is that these people post this thinking no one will care — like she’s not doing something wrong.
Well, now the district is investigating her.
Parents: remember to have conversations with your kids about their teachers, what they teach and how they teach it. https://t.co/3wN1kppBGe
Even inside California, conservatives — notably Richard Grenell, former President Donald Trump’s acting director of national intelligence — were outraged at the video.
What kind of parent would allow their child to be taught by this wacko?
Why are parents turning their kids over to someone they don’t know?
“What kind of parent would allow their child to be taught by this wacko? Why are parents turning their kids over to someone they don’t know? I’d like to talk to people who think this is good?!?” Grenell tweeted.
Apparently, the school district is talking to people, too.
“We are aware of this incident and are investigating,” Annette Franco, public relations officer for the district, told Fox News.
“While we do not discuss employee-related matters, we can tell you that showing respect and honor for our nation’s flag is a value that we instill in our students and an expectation of our employees. We take matters like this seriously and will be taking action to address it.”
That doesn’t exactly sound like they were pledging allegiance to the queers.
From the early stage of the fallout, it seems like even Pitzen might be getting the idea that the video wasn’t such a great idea.
“The original TikTok has since been taken down – along with all of Pitzen’s social media accounts – but has been viewed on Twitter more than 1.2 million times,” the Daily Mail reported.
I know this might come as a surprise to some in California, but yes, many millions of Americans still do respect the American flag. Possibly not knowing anyone who feels like that, Pitzen decided to tell the world her feelings, and how she manipulates her students.
To her, it was all a great big laugh — particularly the part where she had a student pledge allegiance to the LGBT flag. LOL, amirite?
Perhaps — if you’re a liberal social media influencer and not a teacher. Pitzen isn’t getting paid to have yuks with the American flag or coerce the students in her charge to pledge allegiance to her pet cause. Hopefully, once the investigation is complete, she won’t be getting paid with public money at all.
Fortune 500 corporate boardrooms increasingly have embraced a “woke” agenda — such as Gillette lecturing its shavers about toxic masculinity and Bank of America having guest speakers declare capitalism evil.
In response, some Wall Street players now are offering exchange traded funds (ETFs) that exclude left-wing companies, taking a page from the activist playbook that created investment programs to boycott enterprises deemed environmentally unfriendly.
A pair of investment programs that launched in the last year — the American Conservative Values ETF and the 2ndVote Advisers ETF — are led by directors who seek companies that have not launched ad campaigns or issued bulletins that they think prioritize liberal politics more than profits.
In the process, the ETFs seek to influence not only the behavior of investors but also of company directors.
“I sometimes say this real slow when talking to professional economists, but we believe the companies that focus on their profits will be better investments than those that focus on social justice,” said Andy Puzder, a director of 2ndVote Advisers.
On Friday, the American Conservative Values ETF said it had dumped shares in several companies that have recently embraced critical race theory in seminars and training, according to investigative reports by Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
“Recent actions by Bank of America Corp., Lowe’s Co. Inc., American Express Co. and Nasdaq Inc. have caused considerable concern and outrage among politically conservative investors,” the American Conservative Values said in a statement, adding that it would encourage investors to boycott those companies.
William Flaig, CEO of the American Conservative Values ETF, said reports of left-wing-mandated training at those companies required the fund to dump shares during one of its rebalancing periods.
“In light of news that these companies have instituted employee training based on critical race theory, which teaches that America is an inherently racist and evil country, we cannot in good faith continue investments into these with our investors’ money,” Mr. Flaig said.
Similarly focused investment vehicles have existed for some time, such as Ave Maria Mutual Funds, which seeks to direct investor money to companies that hold true to Roman Catholic values.
The new stock portfolios seek to combat not only what company directors may say or do but also what increasingly powerful asset managers may direct a company to do.
So far, the 2ndVote Advisers’ Life Fund and its ESG Neutral Fund are beating the S&P 500 year-to-date average, with the latter returning 27.1% in 2021, according to the fund. (ESG is shorthand invented by leftist investors for judging a company’s “environmental, social and corporate governance.”)
The American Conservative Values ETF, meanwhile, is “seeking to boycott ownership of companies that are most hostile to conservative values,” Mr. Flaig said.
Since its inception in November, the American Conservative Values ETF has seen returns of 38.57%, according to its prospectus.
At the moment, the heaviest weighted stocks in 2ndVote Advisers’ ESG Neutral Fund are Fortune 500 companies like agribusiness Mosaic Co., Brighthouse Financial annuities and travel tech firm Sabre.
Some Silicon Valley stocks also may be included, as their returns have been too soaring for investors to ignore, even if the conservative managers bristle at censorship by Twitter or Facebook.
“FAANG [Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google] can’t be ignored,” Mr. Flaig said.
There is no purity in the process of weeding out left-wing firms, the directors of the funds told The Washington Times, noting that companies are not all liberal or all conservative and fund managers have to maintain some flexibility.
“Recall that many of our holdings are liberal companies, there is only so much advocacy we can do and still confidently deliver predictable large-cap returns,” Mr. Flaig said.
Recent corporate activity seems to shrink the available pool of conservative investments. Stories of Verizon, Raytheon and others mandating critical race theory seminars for executives and staff reflect a commitment to a leftist outlook, the directors said.
“Coke, Delta, Disney, Nike, Blackrock,” said Mr. Flaig, rattling off a list of flagship American brands that have established left-wing policies in recent months. “You can see there a suppression of First Amendment rights and a hostility to conservative values.”
Dan Grant, CEO of 2ndVote Advisers, said it takes a kind of aggressive posturing against conservative ideas to land a company on the fund’s “no-buy” list.
2ndVote Advisers derives its name from the idea of what people do with their money represents their second choice after the one they make in voting, as well as expresses support for the Second Amendment.
The ETF weighs six factors to rank companies from 1 (most liberal) to 5 (most conservative). Not one company among the thousands tested has scored a 5 across the board, and the highest overall scores were a handful of 4s.
Nearly three-quarters of the companies in the S&P 1500 — 73% — graded out with a score of 1 or 2 and 27% earned a 3, according to Mr. Grant.
Ratings are subject to change, as the American Conservative Values ETF’s Friday announcement showed.
“We try to stay on top of the news cycle,” Mr. Flaig said.
However, he noted that the news cycle could be misleading. Statements from company executives do not automatically earn a disinvestment because often such statements amount to something of a PR stunt and a closer look at the company’s balance sheet and bottom line might reflect less political posturing, Mr. Flaig said.
Last week, U.S. authorities announced an investigation into Deutsche Bank’s asset management arm, which regulators in the Biden administration believe used ESG statements as publicity more than investment guidelines.
Even Tariq Fancy, who invented the ESG concept while running “sustainable investing” at the BlackRock investment management company, has acknowledged that actually running a company along “green” lines as opposed to just talking about doing so are two completely different things.
“In truth, sustainable investing boils down to little more than marketing hype, PR spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community,” Mr. Fancy wrote in a USA Today op-ed in March.
All that language has proved profitable for asset managers, however, as millions have poured into ESG funds, which doubled in 2020.
The divide between what a company says and what it does may strike ESG supporters and regulators examining Deutsche Bank as a drawback, but for the conservative funds managers it is a plus. Even Mr. Fancy noted that “to advance real change in the environment simply doesn’t yield the same return.”
Managers at 2ndVote Advisers and American Conservative Values say that investors like BlackRock have been able to boost liberal politics more than profits in some companies via the huge positions they have acquired in those firms.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink isn’t shy about this. In a recent letter to investors, he noted BlackRock’s commitment to having companies it backs “carbon neutral” by 2050, a goal he acknowledged would require a “transformation” of the U.S. economy as it is wrenched away from cheap, reliable energy sources.
“Transform the U.S. economy?” American Conservative Values’ Mr. Puzder said. “Larry Fink has a radical environmental agenda, but who the hell elected Larry Fink to transform the U.S. economy?”
Investors voting large blocs of shares have reshaped corporate boardrooms, but what the new conservative-based funds seek to do is reimpose balance, according to Mr. Grant.
“If you treat everybody fairly, you’ll score just fine,” he said of 2ndVote’s investing metrics. “The question we ask is, Is a company actively trying to restrict what the right is doing? What we don’t want is investment in companies that declare, ‘We’re not being neutral; we are opposed to half the country.’”
“If you’re fair, if you’re not prohibiting free speech, or only matching employee donations to liberally approved charities or retaliating against employees who exercise their rights, then there’s no problem,” Mr. Grant said. “If you treat everybody fairly, you’ll score just fine.”
‘Poor old man. Just wants a porch and a rocking chair.’
The US president met the Israeli prime minister on Friday, with their conversation focusing on the two countries’ “historic partnership”, COVID cooperation, and the supposed “threat” to Israel and the Middle East “posed by Iran”.
“Sleepy Joe” trended on Twitter in the United States over the past 24 hours over a video showing US President Joe Biden looking like he’s literally fallen asleep during a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet during the latter’s Friday visit to the White House.
The viral footage, captured by CSPAN and other media and shared countless times, features a masked, almost completely motionless, Biden clasping his hands and slumped over with his eyes shut for nearly 30 seconds as Bennett drones on about writing “another chapter in the beautiful story of the friendship between our two nations”.
Users on CSPAN’s YouTube channel fumed over the footage, with one suggesting that the president could be replaced “with a paper cutout and a cassette recorder”, which “would have more presence and energy than Biden himself”.
“You can tell he’s not taking any of this in. He’s up there concentrating on not doing anything stupid. He couldn’t handle that, so he fell asleep instead”, another user wrote.
“Turns out ‘Sleepy Joe’ was a very well chosen nickname by Trump”, a third chimed in, referring to the former president’s epithet for Biden on the campaign trail in 2020.
“My dad used to do this. ‘Rest his eyes’ when he wasn’t engaged, but not fully asleep. Poor old man. Just wants a porch and a rocking chair”, one sympathetic user added.
Biden’s blue check defenders on Twitter rushed to dismiss claims that the president was catching some Z’s during his meeting with Bennett, with Politico and Washington Post journalist Lois Romano tweeting that he “did not fall asleep” and CNN reporter Daniel Dale suggesting that “this ‘Biden asleep’ stuff is nonsense”.
Dale pointed out that Biden’s hands were moving throughout Bennett’s monologue, and noted that he replied immediately as soon as the Israeli prime minister had finished talking.
The debate quickly degenerated into back-and-forth partisan debate, between Democrats and Republicans in the US and between Bennett and Benjamin Netanyahu supporters in Israel.
Friday’s “Sleepgate” wasn’t the first time Biden has been accused of catnapping during public events, with detractors criticising him for it and others expressing compassion for him as a human being, while asking about his mental state and ability to run the country.
The Bennett-Biden meeting took place one day after the deadly bombing at Kabul Airport, in which over 180 people, including 13 US troops, were killed and hundreds of others were hurt. The bombings led the president to hold meetings with security staff over the next several days to determine the US response, which has included at least one drone strike against the Daesh-Khorasan* fighters who claimed responsibility.
Forty-four-year-old BBC Radio Newcastle host Lisa Shaw trusted science enough to get her first dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine in late April.
What was the cause of her death? Can we blame the vaccine?
According to BBC, Newcastle coroner Karen Dilks says we can.
“Lisa died due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination,” Dilks said, according to the outlet.
Dilks described the cause as “clearly established.” However, she said the vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia that Shaw experienced — a condition that causes the brain to swell and bleed — is considered “very rare.”
BBC reported that Shaw was transported to the University Hospital of North Durham via ambulance on May 13 after presenting the news with a severe headache that had lasted for several days.
Dr. John Holmes, who treated Shaw upon her arrival, said she described these headaches as “shooting and stabbing” across her forehead and behind her eyes.
Tests conducted on Shaw revealed several blood clots in her brain, and the finding led doctors to move her to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary neurology specialist unit, the BBC reported.
There, Dr. Christopher Johnson administered treatment.
Johnson said Shaw remained conscious for several days while at the unit, but on May 16 her symptoms escalated.
Her headaches became more severe, and she began struggling with her speech.
Imaging indicated she had suffered a brain hemorrhage, and doctors attempted to relieve the mounting pressure on her head by removing part of her skull, the BBC reported.
It was too late, however, and Shaw passed away five days later, on May 21.
Are you still worried about getting vaccinated against COVID-19?
In light of stories such as Shaw’s, many Americans still are. And considering some of the serious side effects we’ve heard about — and even death — maybe there’s a good reason for the skepticism.
Medical professionals across the spectrum still maintain that such drastic side effects are “extremely rare.”
But from anaphylaxis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, thrombosis and myocarditis to reports of deaths following the jab(s), it’s naturally concerning — regardless of how “extremely rare” these reactions might be.
Are you willing to risk it?
I will never tell anyone whether to get vaccinated. Not only is that decision personal; I maintain it is never wise to accept advice from those who don’t have to live with the consequences of that advice.
I do say, however, that it’s important to make sure everyone is aware of the potential side effects of these vaccines — no matter how rare they might be.
After all, an educated patient is the best decision-maker.
Scripture is clear on the matter, as both groups find themselves endangered at the hands of the Taliban.
On Sunday, August 15, the Taliban entered Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and quickly took control of the city. Haunting images and videos depict the desperation of the Afghans trying to flee as the Taliban returns to power. There is grave concern for what the Taliban’s swift takeover will mean for the future of religious and ethnic minorities and especially for a whole segment of the population rendered vulnerable by their takeover –– women and girls.
Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesperson, said in a press conference from Kabul that “the group would honor women’s rights and an independent media, but within the ‘frameworks’ of Islamic law.” He went on to promise that “there will be no violence against women” and that “women would be allowed to work and study.” Despite this lip service, the older generation of Afghans remember the oppressive conditions for females when the Taliban took control in 1996.
At that time, Taliban leaders declared an Islamic emirate, imposing a harsh interpretation of the Koran and enforcing it with brutal public punishment. They pledged to put Islamic values first and to battle corruption. During the Taliban’s reign of terror, women’s basic freedoms “were severely restricted, other human rights were limited and executions were carried out in public,” according to a news report in Axios. Women were barred from attending school, from working outside the home, and from leaving the house without a male chaperone. Widows couldn’t work and begging was their only means of survival. Underground schools formed for girls, as older women quietly defied the Taliban’s brutal oppression of women.
Not only is Afghanistan a dangerous place to be a woman, it’s also an extraordinarily dangerous place for Christians. According to Open Doors USA’s annual World Watch List, the second-most dangerous place to be a Christian in the world is Afghanistan, only very slightly less oppressive than in North Korea. It’s nearly impossible to live freely as a Christian in Afghanistan, as Christian converts must either flee or risk facing “honor” killings at the hands of their Muslim family. Sadly, the intense persecution of Christians has not diminished over the past 20 years. While Afghans were able to enjoy other types of liberty, religious freedom was not upheld or protected.
Massive biometric database of Afghans who helped US, RAW in Taliban’s control now
The Taliban have confirmed that they have access to the database and have mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces
(Firstpost) Taliban fighters have access to a large amount of biometric data of persons who helped the US and their NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence, several media reports said. This crucial data landed into their hands courtesy of the US, who left the embassy amid a chaotic evacuation.
These reports come only days after it was found that US officials in Afghanistan had “naively” handed over a “kill list” comprising names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to the Taliban so they could be allowed to enter the Taliban-controlled perimeter around the Hamid Karzai International Airport. What the documents actually did was help identify Afghan staff members and job applicants who were inadvertently left behind at the abandoned British Embassy in Kabul.
The biometric programme
The US had started collecting and collating data from some 3,00000 Afghans in 2009, mainly prisoners and Afghan soldiers. Then a biometrics center was opened in November 2010. US officials aimed to compile information on as many as 25 million Afghans that would allow them to spot Taliban infiltrators. But it evolved into a way to identify Afghans hired or visited by the US forces. Eventually, everyone who worked with the Afghan government or the US military — including interpreters, drivers, nurses, and secretaries — was fingerprinted and scanned for the biometric database over the past 12 years.
The Afghan Automated Biometric Identification System (AABIS), administered by about 50 Afghans at the Interior Affairs ministry in Kabbul, registered fingerprints, iris scans, and other biographical data. The data were registered using hand-held scanners. Report has it that the US forces had 7,00 pieces of equipment.
After news broke about the security lapse, US officials have not confirmed how many of the 7,000 scanners were left behind or whether the biometric database can be remotely deleted.
In wrong hands
All of this has now become the property of the Taliban, which has wrested control of the entire country and took whatever the US officials didn’t manage to take along.
In fact, Washington-based wire service platform Zenger News has learned that the Taliban have mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to cannibalize this biometric data and hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces. Nawazuddin Haqqani, one of the brigade commanders of the Al Isha unit, told the news agency his unit is using the US-made hand-held scanners to tap into the database and positively identify any person who helped the NATO allies or worked with Indian intelligence. Afghans who try to deny or minimize their role will find themselves contradicted by the detailed record.
He said, “We’re in control of the interior ministry and the national biometric database they kept. We have everyone’s data with us now — including journalists and so-called human rights people. We haven’t killed a single foreign journalist, have we? We aren’t arresting the families of these people [who are on the blacklist] either,” he said. “But American, NDS [Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security] and RAW’s [India’s Research and Analysis Wing] puppets won’t be let off. They will always be watched by Al Isha. Those who were barking about having US dollars in their pockets till a few days back — they won’t be spared. They can’t be spared, can they?”
But Haqqani was quick to add that Al Isha was only “keeping an eye” on people who worked for America or the National Directorate of Security — the former Afghan government’s intelligence agency — and added that “The matter is being blown out of proportion by the foreign media and it’s nothing more than a campaign to malign us,” he said. He contended that the database was used to spare the lives of foreign journalists.
The Al Isha
The existence of the Al Isha unit had never been confirmed by the Taliban, until now, when the Haqqani Network — a terror group aligned with the Taliban — finally acknowledged its existence. The network is “the most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group targeting US, coalition, and Afghan forces,” according to the US National Counterterrorism Center.
The Al Isha unit comprises nearly 1,100 people and it is spread out into many of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. It is one of the three groups under the Khalil Haqqani Brigade, which is a military unit of more than 2,000 fighters that is named after Khalil Haqqani, who has a $5 million bounty on his head and leads the Badri 313 unit, which recently mocked the iconic photo of US Marines raising an American flag on Iowa Jima.
Khalil Haqqani is the brother of the late Jalaluddin Haqqani, who mentored Osama Bin Laden and later served as a cabinet minister for the Taliban in the 1990s.
Interestingly, Taliban political spokesperson Suhail Shaheen has declined to comment on the existence of the Al Isha, and the use of the biometric database.
The Pakistan connect
When Zenger asked about reports that Pakistani intelligence officers were supervising the Al Isha unit’s use of biometric data, Haqqani did not deny it. “You are not that naive — you know the answer to that,” he said. “But what I can say is, it’s not necessary to train everyone in Pakistan. The Emirs [local Taliban chieftains] are quite capable of training the foot soldiers to handle the equipment.” This suggests Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, has access to America’s biometric database.
The news outlet also quoted an Afghan national army corps commander, who said, “The Afghan Taliban are incapable of handling the biometric equipment or the database. Every search party is overseen by a Pakistani officer or a member of the Haqqani Network.”