Displaying the most recent of 90433 posts written by

Ruth King

Chinese Media Threaten Taiwan after Kabul Debacle: ‘The Island’s Defense Will Collapse in Hours’ By Zachary Evans

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/chinese-media-threaten-taiwan-after-kabul-debacle-the-islands-defense-will-collapse-in-hours/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fourth

Chinese media outlets carried threats to Taiwan and criticisms of the U.S. during the chaotic American withdrawal from Kabul.

An editorial by the Global Times, a Chinese state-run outlet, took aim at Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party and President Tsai Ing-wen.

“From what happened in Afghanistan, [the DPP] should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and the US military won’t come to help,” the editorial states. “As a result, the DPP authorities will quickly surrender, while some high-level officials may flee by plane.”

The editorial called on the DPP to “keep cross-Straits [of Taiwan] peace with political means, rather than acting as strategic pawns of the US and bear the bitter fruits of a war.”

Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin also commented on the Afghanistan withdrawal on Twitter.

“After the fall of the Kabul regime, the Taiwan authorities must be trembling,” Hu wrote. “Don’t look forward to the US to protect them. Taipei officials need to quietly mail-order a Five-Star Red Flag from the Chinese mainland. It will be useful one day when they surrender to the PLA.”

In a separate tweet, Hu wrote, “Chinese netizens joked that the power transition in Afghanistan is even more smooth than presidential transition in the US.”

The head of China Daily‘s E.U. bureau, Chen Weihua, encouraged CNN anchor Jim Sciutto to explain to his son that the U.S. clearly lost the Afghanistan War.

From Biden to the Taliban with Love by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17655/turkey-afghan-migrants

The Afghans are facing possibly the world’s most brutal army of radical Muslims, now installed in Kabul, and armed with what US President Joe Biden said were “all the tools… and equipment of any modern military. We provided advanced weaponry,” which the Taliban has captured from the disintegrating Afghan National Army.

President Biden has, in fact, bestowed “advanced weaponry,” courtesy of US taxpayers, not only on the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS, but also on Russia, China and Iran, who will doubtless now reverse-engineer the abandoned materiel.

The Afghans have good reasons to flee their own country by the millions. Iran is their typical first stop.

Once in Iran, they are given easy and safe passage to Turkey — that is Iran’s gift to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Turkey is already home to nearly five million migrants. The arrival, over years, of another five million would paralyze Turkey, its economy, politics and relative safety. But Afghan migrants will not be only Turkey’s problem.

In 2020, Erdoğan threatened to flood EU countries with millions of Syrians…. The real number was just a couple of thousand. Erdoğan’s bluff had failed. Since then, he has not tried another Turkish government-sponsored migrant dump onto Greek territory.

If the Greek and EU border agencies do not want to relive the 2015 migrant crisis, they should review their blueprints to protect Greek territory from migrants and get ready for another inflow this year.

Locals in Istanbul were recently shocked to see hordes of young Afghan men in worn out uniforms, strolling aimlessly down neighborhoods that were already home to thousands of Syrian refugees. Later, Turkish police detained and expelled nine of the men. Hundreds of others are communicating with their relatives and friends in Afghanistan and Iran and most likely updating them on the illegal migration routes into Turkey — Afghans would typically pay smugglers $1,000 for the trip from Kabul to Van in eastern Turkey. With the victory of the Taliban and the collapse of the Afghan government, hundreds of thousands may be crossing via Iran into eastern Turkey, finally seeking the least dangerous (and least costly) route into European Union soil.

How China and Russia Spy on Us By Matthew Brazil

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/09/01/how-china-and-russia-spy-on-us/#slide-1

With differing capabilities and tactics, both infiltrate American institutions

Do China and Russia share a common set of opponents in world affairs? One might immediately think, yes, they do: the United States, the United King­dom, and their allies.

But an even more persistent danger for the world’s great authoritarians is the free flow of ideas. In their ambition to seize the territories of unwilling neighbors formerly governed without harsh restrictions on information, and in their gradual but relentless drive to control expression and religion, Beijing and Moscow show that they have little tolerance for criticism and no room to allow uncontrolled debate. These are the threats to state power that most trouble Zhongnanhai and the Kremlin.

Beijing and Moscow depend on controlling their own domestic narratives to maintain what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) calls “harmony.” This is why China’s Propaganda Department disciplines print media and why its National Radio and Television Administration controls broadcast outlets. With news on the Chinese mainland under strict control, Hong Kong is the penultimate frontier (the last major one being Taiwan) in Beijing’s drive to exert dominance over Chinese minds.

In Hong Kong, a territory once known for its free press, the CCP wages a continuing campaign against independent voices, such as the now-defunct Apple Daily. Its next targets may be the establishmentarian but stubbornly independent South China Morning Post and the scrappy Hong Kong Free Press — read them while you can.

Contrast this depressing picture with Russia’s. Vladimir Putin exerts direct and personal control over newspapers and broadcasters, as he “appoints editors and general directors, either officially or unofficially,” as the journalist Nataliya Rostova put it in 2015.

Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin enjoy a measure of approval (the former more than the latter) but lean on the crutch of media control to present a one-sided picture to their domestic audiences, pursuing different means to the same end: maximum control of ideas in society. This variance is reflected in how they conceive and execute interference and influence operations abroad.

Border Patrol Chief: Suspected Terrorists Crossing U.S. Border At Levels ‘Never Seen Before’ By Gabe Kaminsky

https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/16/border-patrol-chief-suspected-terrorists-are-crossing-u-s-border-at-levels-never-seen-before/

Amid a massive surge of migrants at the United States-Mexico border, the outgoing Border Patrol chief told his 19,000 agents prior to retiring over the weekend that known or suspected terrorists are coming into America “at a level we have never seen before.”

“Over and over again, I see other people talk about our mission, your mission, and the context of it being immigration or the current crisis today being an immigration crisis,” Rodney Scott, who retired Saturday, said in a video to employees.

“I firmly believe that it is a national security crisis. Immigration is just a subcomponent of it, and right, now it’s just a cover for massive amounts of smuggling going across the southwest border — to include TSDBs at a level we have never seen before. That’s a real threat,” he said.

The term “TSDB” is a reference to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Terrorist Screening Center Database. The database is used by government agencies and launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Scott’s comments come days after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data from July showed a 20-year record in arrests, more than 212,000, and a 13 percent increase from June. Due to migrants coming into the U.S. from Central America, the Biden administration has yanked over 40 percent of federal agents to assist in processing, custody care, and transport needs.

Our Military Is A Woke Joke Kurt Schlichter

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2021/08/16/our-military-is-a-woke-joke-n2594151

Ignore those pictures of the Afghan army that our military senior leader geniuses spent 20 years and zillions of dollars on disintegrating in the face of a pack of glorified mountain banditos from the Seventh Century – the real story is that, finally, America’s fighting men and women are fully aware of the urgency of accepting and validating the trans experience. And it’s even better if said trans people are BIPOC. Plus differently abled. 

Our broke, woke armed forces would be a hysterically funny punchline if the joke wasn’t, “The greatest military in human history walks into a bar, puts down trillions of dollars and buckets of American blood, and asks the bartender, ‘So, what would it look like if all the generals and admirals sucked-up to the garbage establishment that has totally failed the people of the USA?’”

Yes, it is a joke, a sick one. Fire all the generals. Invite a few back, maybe a dozen. Clean out the Pentagon. Can all the “Diversity Consultants,” “Equal Opportunity Officers,” “Climate Change Mitigation Specialists,” and every other strap-hanging oxygen thief who doesn’t contribute to the only thing the military should be focusing on right now – putting Chi Coms in graves.

Yeah, there’s been a strategic failure of epic proportions by our civilian establishment. We need to fix that at the ballot box by tossing out every Democrat and every Liz Cheney-esque combat tourist who delights in sending our young people overseas to get ground up in idiotic wars designed to enrich their cronies. Hardest hit at the end of Afghanistan: Haliburton, Raytheon, KBR, and a hundred other contractors you never heard of. Oh, and the Afghan people, but they never really figured into this calculus except in the abstract idea that we were going to convert a nation of savages into Lil’ Vermonters living the Norman Rockwell dream of community democracy.

Twenty years of failure. Twenty years. How far and fast we fell. I was there thirty years ago, in VII Corps main, contributing my car washing skills, when the greatest military force in human history annihilated a country’s entire army in 100 hours and barely broke a sweat doing it. Amazingly, we did it without giving a single thought to our alleged privilege – to the extent cracking over reeking half-barrels in wooden outhouses in the middle of the desert constituted privilege. 

Look at us now. Look at the generals, in their stupid throwback uniforms from the Forties that are supposed to make the gender studies seminar we call the US Army think it’s the same force that broke Hitler. It’s not. A serious organization does not alternate its designation of America’s most serious threat between the weather, “racism,” and other Americans who dissent from the generals’ bosses’ political priorities.

The Breonna Taylor story the left doesn’t want you to hear By John Mattingly

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/the_breonna_taylor_story_the_left_doesnt_want_you_to_hear.html

“Whether you’re a United States senator or a cop from Louisville, the Left doesn’t want your story to be told if you stand in their way. They want you to leave them alone as they divide America with their falsehoods.I, for one, won’t sit by idly and let that happen. I plan to tell the truth, no matter the cost.”

Since helping to execute a search warrant for evidence in a drug trafficking ring and being shot by Kenneth Walker — the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor — in the process, my life has never been the same.

Three days after the tragic death of George Floyd — which left the nation in an uproar — the 911 call in which Walker says that someone had broken in and shot his girlfriend was released to the public. Though I wanted to respond and set the record straight about what had transpired that night, I couldn’t say anything about the case, because my fellow Louisville Metro Police Department officers and I were under a gag order. The media and the social justice outrage mob were out to get us, we weren’t allowed to stand up for ourselves, and our mayor and chief refused to set the record straight with the facts leaving us involved to dangle in the wind.

My side of the story is completely different from what you’ve heard from the media. They want you to believe that I and my fellow officers are evil racists who barged into that apartment and killed Breonna while she slept. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and I learned pretty quickly that the media and our local government officials want to make sure you never learn the truth about what happened that night.

Earlier this year, my friends at Post Hill Press courageously agreed to publish my book giving an account of what really happened that night. But before we could even begin, their distributor, Simon & Schuster, publicly declared their refusal to distribute my book — without even reading the manuscript.

After spending the last year-and-a-half watching the media, celebrities, sports figures, attorneys, and politicians spread blatant lies about the situation without any accountability, I know I must do whatever I can to make sure the true story is told. I am grateful to my friends at Post Hill Press for all of their support and guidance, but after much consideration, I have decided it is best that I explore other publishing options for my book.

I cannot continue to sit by and watch the media twist the narrative of what happened that night into a work of fiction that serves to support their anti-police agenda.

The embarrassment that is Joe Biden By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/the_embarrassment_that_is_joe_biden.html

Although the White House had intended to keep Biden under wraps for as long as possible, the demand that he say something – anything – about the unfolding debacle in Afghanistan forced him to leave Camp David for a 20-minute statement, after which he refused to take any questions. The important part of what he said boils down to one sentence: We had to leave and everything that went wrong was Trump’s or the Afghans’ fault. Biden is a craven coward, a feckless fool, a dismal dummy, and a man who will soon have more blood on his hands than a thousand Lady Macbeths.

Biden began by explaining that, after 20 years in Afghanistan, it was time to leave. Few people would argue with that. Whether they supported the war in the beginning or not, it had become clear to everyone that we had no clear mission there other than making money for the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned us. It was not in America’s interests to remain.

So, we can skip that part of the speech. It was a straw man because Biden was defending a point with which no one disagrees. You’re neither a brave nor principled man when you claim, “I stand with everyone else!”

What people wanted to hear was what Biden had to say about the abrupt American pullout from Afghanistan, one seemingly made without any forethought about the needs of the American civilians there or the Afghan troops who, although they fought bravely, needed to feel Americans were at their back. Instead, we just left. And that’s where Biden showed what a disgusting little weasel he is.

The first person at whom Biden pointed his finger was Trump saying, effectively, he set me up!

When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban.  Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 — just a little over three months after I took office.

Who Else Is Tired Of All This Winning Under Biden?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/16/whos-tired-of-all-this-winning-under-biden/

n early July, President Joe Biden said the sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan wouldn’t cause a repeat of the Saigon disaster in Vietnam.

“None whatsoever. Zero,” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question about the chances of a repeat. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Five weeks later, that is exactly what happened, as the Taliban took over Kabul and, as the Washington Post reported it, the “U.S. scrambled to evacuate embassy staff and accelerate the rescue and relocation of Afghans who aided the U.S. military. Helicopters began landing at the U.S. Embassy early Sunday and armored diplomatic vehicles were seen leaving the area around the compound. … Smoke rose from the embassy’s roof as diplomats destroyed documents to keep them from falling into the Taliban’s hands.”

The White House was reportedly “stunned” by the Taliban’s rapid victory, and Biden had to interrupt his vacation to send thousands of troops back into Afghanistan to help evacuate U.S. personnel.

It is a colossal blunder, the repercussions of which we will be suffering for years.

But we’ve already grown accustomed to colossal blunders since Biden came into office. On every issue he has touched, Biden’s managed to quickly transform victory into failure.

At the southern border, which President Donald Trump had finally stabilized, Biden immediately started reversing every one of the previous administration’s policies, while announcing to the world that the U.S. would welcome illegal border crossers with open arms.

For all of 2020, the border patrol reported a total of 458,000 “encounters” at the southern border. In just six months since Biden took office, there’ve been more than 1 million, with the number increasing every single month since January.

The Pandemic Gave Americans A Taste Of Government ‘Help’ And They Didn’t Like It

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/17/the-pandemic-gave-americans-a-taste-of-government-help-and-they-didnt-like-it/

It’s fair to say Americans, especially the pre-revolution colonists, have always had a healthy skepticism of government. What’s frightening is some days we seem dangerously close to losing the unique quality that separates this country from every other.

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York posted last week in his Daily Memo some interesting data that tells us a lot about Americans’ attitudes about their government. He tracked a long-term Fox News survey in which respondents are asked which message they would send the government if they had the chance: “lend me a hand” or “leave me alone.”

Over the course of the last decade, only in August 2020 did a majority (57%) say it would ask for government help. In that same poll, 36% said “leave me alone.”

This year, however, the numbers were flipped – 47% said “leave me alone” while 44% still wanted aid.

In some years, the results showed a strong distrust of government. For instance, in 2014, 59% wanted to be free of the state while a mere 32% wished for help. In February 2016, the beginning of the last year of the Obama era, the numbers were 54-39 in favor of the “leave me alone” group.

But what is truly striking are the results from the last two surveys. After a large majority of Americans wanted the government to step in last year, no doubt due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was a fairly significant shift back this year to a yearning for independence.

Why? There can be no doubt Americans were lent a hand in 2020 and 2021, and they got it good and hard, to borrow a portion of one of American journalist Henry Louis Mencken’s more famous comments. Politicians panicked, petty tyrants exercised unearned authority, and this country suffered in ways few could have ever imagined.

Meanwhile, government “experts” lied, obfuscated, and contradicted themselves. As early as January of this year, long before the Delta variant set off another round of mask mandates and spiteful threats of more lockdowns, the Edelman Trust Barometer found that 57% of the country believed “government leaders” were “purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”

Afghanistan: We Never Learn As the Taliban waltzes into Kabul, the look of surprise on the faces of top officials should frighten us most of all Matt Taibbi

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/afghanistan-we-never-learn

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, when asked months ago about the possibility that there might be a “significant deterioration” of the security picture in Afghanistan once the United States withdrew its forces, said, “I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”

Alex Salvi @alexsalvinews
Secretary of State Blinken (July 7th): “We are not withdrawing, we are staying, the embassy is staying, our programs are staying … If there is a significant deterioration in security … I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”

Blinken’s Nostradamus moment was somehow one-upped by that of his boss, Joe Biden, who on July 8th had the following exchange with press:

Q: Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.

BIDEN: That is not true, they did not reach that conclusion… There is going to be no circumstance where you see people lifted off the roof of an embassy… The likelihood that you’re going to see the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.