THE TALIBAN WAVE GOODBYE & SHOUT GOOD RIDDANCE

The self-styled murderous saints of the western world have bid an unfond adieu to Afghanistan. It is very likely that in the not too distant future Iraq will see their retreating backsides too. Then Syria.

It’s back to the past for some, a brand new future for others. And the end of a rather tawdry wet dream for America and its love of violent death inflicted on weaker, brown-faced races.

A great many Americans have a totally false concept of how the world sees them, or more accurately how it sees their elites. Perhaps if their mass media would announce more readily the results of a bi-annual poll asking which nation most threatens world peace they might prick up their ears and learn something about this. The USA never fails to be the top pick worldwide when it comes to this poll. Most people who live outside of the USA are totally unsurprised by this result. Not so I think, many within it.

The conditioning of the average American is cradle to grave. It is not just done to them however, it is also very much done by them. The mythologies involved are highly seductive.

Who wants to dwell very long on a history of genocide or slavery? Most people would rather hear about a pioneering spirit, an attitude of derring-do, bravery, heroism, religious devotion and idealism, the kind of stuff that makes you puff out your chest with pride. Slaughtering virtually an entire nation whose land you stole from them is not the kind of stuff that helps you strut about telling everyone you are exceptional. Nor is the enslavement of millions just to make a buck.

And what happens to those Americans with a conscience and a tendency to look at historical fact rather than fantasy, those who with clear eyes see that those “mistakes” of the past (genocide and slavery) were not odd anomalies perpetrated by a few “bad apples”. What happens to those who point to the abuses of Abu Ghraib and then to the memos generated by Donald Rumsfeld and his assisting stenographers concerning torture (enhanced interrogation if you’d prefer)? They, not those who indulge in the abuses seen in that prison, get the criticism. They are told to leave America if they don’t like it. They are subjected to the abuse required to keep the well-conditioned safe in their bubble of fantasy concerning their “patriotic” elites.

In recent times the Democratic Party even redeemed the CIA who in previous decades were well known for their lies, dirty tricks, coups, surveillance and assassinations. Using Russia as a ploy it became the go-to source for all things saintly and sure. Presumably the NSA is safe from Edward Snowden’s revelations also on the same kind of basis. And, it appears to be a cross-party consensus that Julian Assange, not the perpetrators of crimes against humanity within the U.S. military is the guilty one.

Certainly the Taliban are about as far from being saintly as human beings can be. However, as most of those who ventured to Afghanistan in any kind of position of responsibility knew well, there was hardly a cigarette paper’s width between them and those Afghans who replaced them in 2001. This fact however was not to be spoken of. Only positive messages were kosher and fit for consumption by superiors who could not abide bad news. Bad news going up encouraged bad news coming down, news that ended promotion prospects and just possibly an entire career. No, things HAD to be going well… even though they were going down the shitter on a constant basis.

So don’t shed too many tears over the totem human rights issues that have been used previously to engender your dedicated support for mass murder, torture and lies. You will shed them in vain. The bleeding hearts who are spilling virtual crocodile tears onto your TV screens are lying to you now as they have all along. The fundamentals of the wars they engage in are about wealth, influence and power and not one whit about human rights. The human rights issue is what they use to snare your support for their atrocities against others to the point of mass murder.

So it’s bye-bye to the western horde of the cynical, the criminal, the naive and idealistic, those who sought to fine-tune a society that was always going to reject their social engineering sooner or later. As you played western audiences they played you. As the saying goes, you can’t buy an Afghan, you can only hire him. They retain their own inner life, culture, behaviours, attitudes, likes and dislikes no matter what kind of conditioning you may wish to lay upon them.

Now they are free of you.

Some, who you paid the equivalent of a king’s ransom to will miss you, or rather, will miss your money.

All the rest will simply wave goodbye… and shout “Good Riddance!”

All the rest will simply wave goodbye… and shout “Good Riddance!”

AFGHANISTAN: HOW IS AMERICA GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD NOW?

How many movies have you seen where America saves the world?

Unless you are of a very intellectual bent I suspect you have seen a great many. The images and messages contained within those films slip easily into the subconscious after a while. Whether you are aware of the CIA and U.S. military input or not, it’s there most of the time, and all the time where the good-guy army is required to save the day.

So… there’s something wrong with the picture emerging from Afghanistan is there not?

The most technologically advanced military in the world armed to the teeth with the best weaponry available was forced to skedaddle after twenty years of being fought to a standstill.

As in Vietnam the U.S. military, for all its near sci-fi technologies observing, monitoring, listening-in and targeting, was unable to defeat a guerilla force of lightly-armed, hardly-trained individuals who wore no body armour or uniform of any kind.

The picture developing from the facts above depicts certain interesting things about the future ability of the United States to do anything similar to its exploits in Afghanistan and in addition every nation across the Middle East.

Donald Rumsfeld must be rolling in his grave.

The bluff of unlimited U.S. military power as the world’s greatest threat to the guys in the black hats (or towels) has been called.

It’s an undignified prospect to see all the tub-thumping busted and all those neocon egos deflated. The image of North America as any kind of bastion of this, that and the other has been busted. Its image now consists of a very different type of picture than that which its elites wish to convey. One of torturers and child killers, of savage and murderous attacks on wedding parties, that of liars and propagandists, arm-twisters, bullies and mass murderers.

The prostitutes who hang out with the raving skinhead neocons of the United States are not faring much better these days either. The craven UK in particular. Its elites are now falling over one another to spout raving idiocies about getting back into Afghanistan. The British Empire is so indelibly fixed in their addled brains that tiny melting union jacks fill their eyes and obscure their view. The UK, along with the USA, is finished as a threat-mongering bully, its future finger-pointing threats will now be greeted by uproarious laughter rather than aby form of trepidation.

Britannia cannot even rule the airwaves as the terminally partial BBC has shown ever since it began its utterly biased and irresponsibly scant coverage of the Ukraine coup-regime’s murderous atrocities. The reputation of the BBC is as low as its reputation of integrity these days. In a similar fashion CNN, Fox News and the dregs of U.S. mainstream media news are treated increasingly with a well-earned curl of the lip.

America is imploding in chain-reaction division while its murderous military emissaries return from Afghanistan in shame. Far from providing an example for the world as its elites claim, the social, political, corporate and belligerent military cultures of the USA place it annually at the top of the poll for most dangerous threat to the well being of the world.

Far from saving the world, America was on track to destroy it. Its humiliation in Afghanistan will make it hesitate momentarily… but very soon, invigorated by its love of fantasy over fact it will continue in its ignorance.

AFGHANISTAN: DUNCES, COWARDS & DEMOCRATIC DICTATORS

A few days ago a man who was a close associate of Osama bin Laden, Amin-ul-Haq, arrived in Afghanistan to have his hand kissed by adoring Afghans.

What does this say about the environment the Americans have presided over for the last twenty years?

The collapse of the Afghan Army that the USA, UK and others trained, armed and financed for the last twenty years speaks volumes also.

Then there was the speedy exit of the Afghan president, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.

A house of cards has fallen. Paper tigers have been burned. The dogs of war have left, tails between their legs.

What does it all mean?

You have to go back to 2001 and the fevered atmosphere after 9/11 for the answers.

Something had to be done.

No political superstructure can survive the humiliation and rage felt on that day without the powers-that-be beating their breasts, determined to prove they are not weak or vulnerable by striking back.

No real consideration of what a truly effective strategy might be in response to events of that day appears to have been considered. Any peacemakers, negotiators and diplomats still in place must surely have known that their services were no longer required.

The Warhawks were now fully in command. George ‘Dubya’ Bush was the perfect malleable foil for their long-held conclusions regarding the USA’s exceptionality and ability to use threats and brute force to get its way. It was to be the New American Century after all and the ‘Pearl Harbour Event’ they had hoped for had arrived.

Anyone casting any doubt on the project they or their newly strung puppets now had in mind was easy meat, a few words of condemnation directed at them as lily-livered traitors would suffice to see them neutralized. No doubt most if not all of them saw the way the wind was blowing and remained totally silent. The USA was going to prove just how powerful it was and nothing approaching logic or common sense was going to get in its way.

The atmosphere prevailing at that time excluded all those who deigned even obliquely to wonder if the knee-jerk response to violence and the jingoistic fervour that accompanied were advisable. These were consigned to the outer darkness and labelled in the files kept at that time as possible candidates for a terrorist sleeper cell. At best they were collaborators acting for the enemy.

Those who were around at the time had the example of the French to judge by. The French joined Russia and China in resisting the rush to war against Iraq and warning of dire consequences. Their reward? To have ‘French Fries’ renamed ‘Freedom Fries’ and the revival of the term, ‘Cheese-eating surrender monkeys’. Who was going to risk their career or at least their chances of promotion by speaking out in an official capacity against the war and invasion that was obviously going to take place? And the coming attack upon and invasion of Afghanistan had so much more support than even targeting Iraq.

This fever of total positivism regarding the Afghan War remained present within the U.S. military throughout the entire twenty-year tragedy and dark farce that then ensued. Reports travelling upwards had to talk of progress and gains made. Selective use was made of starting points where the period immediately afterwards had some elements in them that could be bigged up to seem impressive. The entire Afghan house of cards was built on the lies gleaned from a wholly erroneous interpretation of what was going on. It was well known to all sending reports upward that this was what the chain of command required of you, indeed demanded of you. Thousands of careers depended upon it. And masses of security analysts, think tank members, pundits and mainstream media staffers depended upon it too. A closed circle of self-created delusion was served up to the democratic dictators back in Washington and Whitehall.

A war was being fought and lost on the basis of public relations fabrications. Careers were maintained on the backs of thousands of corpses and destroyed lives. Meanwhile, the directors and board members of military industrial complex corporations were delirious with joy at the money they were making. A neat parcel of evil criminality and deception was created with a nice neat bow of mutual consent upon it.

A few did their best to warn others of what was happening in the most discreet ways possible, mindful of the disaster they could bring down upon themselves by deigning to speak the objective truth concerning how badly the war was going. And in fact, just how futile it had been from the start.

Most maintained their silence and their careers, providing what was expected. Most will without doubt fervently hope that their lack of integrity will remain unnoticed while their superiors cast blame elsewhere with further fantasies and deceptions.

Will the truth emerge of the subterfuge and fantasy that cost tens of thousands of lives and destroyed the hopes of tens of thousands more? It is extremely unlikely. Does western mainstream media want to play its part in this revelation? Again unlikely. Do the top brass of the U.S. or UK armies? Why would they? What about international courts and their judiciary? Do you detect any enthusiasm for that?

The most likely outcome is that everything will be swept under the carpet and more lies will be added, more misdirection, misinformation and some new distraction presented as soon as possible as the FINAL delusional “solution” to Afghanistan.

AFGHANISTAN: THE FOREVER FAILURE?

The USA has been conducting a war against every individual, group and nation that refuses to bow down to its demand to dictate how they should think, associate, speak and govern. The allies of the USA, the UK and others in Europe and elsewhere have acted as prostitute powers willing to support its dictates.

Whatever the USA touches in its most violent mode turns inevitably into a disaster, most times for the populations it touches, once in a while there is catastrophic blowback. In Vietnam and Afghanistan, both cases transpired. The casualties are not only to be found in terms of those who lost their lives on both sides, though these are the most tragic casualties of all. Further casualties have been brought about by continual hubris and callous disregard for both history and the social, political and military challenges involved. The various categories of casualty within these factors will cause a devastating ripple effect over the decades to come.

The safe-at-home, armchair generals, of the political and neoconservative elites were so fixated on their ‘Forever War’ that all possible negative consequences of their precipitate actions were almost totally disregarded. Not only were they disregarded, but a terminally deep ignorance was also displayed, along with a chronic delusion that convinced them their murderous activities would be universally applauded and welcomed in the nations targeted. In short, they looked forward to a state of continual warfare where the USA could endlessly flex its military muscles.

The corporations within the USA’s Military Industrial Complex to whom the neoconservatives and their political puppets in Washington identified with on a Siamese twin basis, were naturally delighted, rubbing their hands in glee at the prospects of endlessly rising profits. So too the other vampirical industries such as Cheney’s Halliburton. War was and remains so very good for business.

How are these forever wars looking now in the aftermath of the USA and its minions fleeing from Afghanistan? How soon will the figures and figureheads behind such wars contemplate another? Clearly not soon at all. Right now in the financial and budgeting departments of Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and BA Systems among others, certain individuals will be preparing reports on the likely hit they are likely now to take.

The humiliation of the scrambled U.S. retreat from Vietnam on the 30th of April 1975 provides an almost mirror image of the underestimation of the Taliban and overestimation of the Afghan army in recent weeks:

‘Chaos, unrest, and panic broke out as hysterical South Vietnamese officials and civilians scrambled to leave Saigon. Martial law was declared. American helicopters began evacuating South Vietnamese, U.S. and foreign nationals from various parts of the city and from the U.S. embassy compound. Operation Frequent Wind had been delayed until the last possible moment, because of U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin's belief that Saigon could be held and that a political settlement could be reached. Frequent Wind was the largest helicopter evacuation in history. It began on 29 April, in an atmosphere of desperation, as hysterical crowds of Vietnamese vied for limited space. Frequent Wind continued around the clock, as People’s Army of Vietnam tanks breached defences near Saigon. In the early morning hours of 30 April, the last U.S. Marines evacuated the embassy by helicopter, as civilians swamped the perimeter and poured into the grounds.

On 30 April 1975, People’s Army of Vietnam troops entered the city of Saigon and quickly overcame all resistance, capturing key buildings and installations. A tank from the 304th Division crashed through the gates of the Independence Palace at 11:30 am local time and the Viet Cong flag was raised above it. President Dương Văn Minh, who had succeeded Huong two days earlier, surrendered to Colonel Bùi Tín.’

Wikipedia

At the time of the total defeat of the USA and its ignominious retreat in Vietnam, there seemed extremely little chance that any such debacle would be repeated. However, only 26 years later the 20-year war upon Afghanistan would be mounted.

How long will the political and neoconservative elites of the USA lick their wounds this time? Already their counterparts within the UK are making the kind of belligerent noises that signal a continuing lust for war. Will the voices of their brothers and sisters in spirit in the USA begin to chime in, seeking a renewed opportunity to sound the war drums?

Never say never they say. Forever is a long time. The indomitable desire within western elites to demonstrate their “superiority” and “exceptional” status is surely only temporarily diminished. Using familiar tactics of deception such as the ‘human rights’ issue and other bleeding heart concepts manipulated for their use such as ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, more “justifications” for bullying, blood-letting and the breaking of international law will be found before too many years pass.

Meanwhile, we will certainly see war conducted using other means. Sanction regimes will be ramped up, financial penalties, banning of foreign companies and an entire range of propaganda slanders will be used as weapons. The true motives of bolstering western economic power and its attendant geopolitical influence will remain unmentioned. Instead, the emotional buttons underlying propaganda will be harped on to an even greater degree than already seen. The spooks, both within western governmental agencies and across a plethora of non-governmental agencies, will be tasked with weaponizing every possible issue.

For now, the USA and its bloodthirsty allies will retreat into their dens and contemplate their navels, working out how to run their murderous campaigns better next time. Think tanks will examine the remaining targets for regime change using somewhat altered algorithms, scenarios and paradigms. The Pacific rather than the plains and deserts of Central and South Asia or even the terrains of the Middle East will be scrutinized.

Afghanistan will retreat to become a virtual irrelevancy… that is until China and Russia prove it to be otherwise. Until then the retrenchment will continue and another theatre of war will be given major emphasis, that theatre being the location of the main event, the escalating war of the USA and the rest of the West against China. This will become almost the sole front for the continuing forever war.

Failure is not an option for the USA or its allies. The goal of achieving full spectrum dominance worldwide is undiminished. Only the pathway to that goal has altered due to the loss of the Afghan War, its route has shifted and it has been determined that the speed of travel and engine power in travelling that route MUST be enhanced.

The failure of the USA and its allies in Afghanistan does not, therefore, signify an end to their determination to fulfil the goal of unipolar hegemony. The failure will not by any means be seen as a full stop forever, but rather as a comma, an interim moment to pause for breath and recharge batteries for the fight ahead.

The end game war it was clear was coming and that has been a somewhat phoney war till now, and which will now enter its most dangerous phase, the West’s war against China.

THE NEW TALIBAN: AN UNKNOWN QUANTITY

Following the blitzkrieg gains of the Taliban and its taking power in Kabul the USA, UK and their minions have been ejected from Afghanistan. The hubris-permeated inveterate liars of the West are gone. Now we will see what the new Taliban are made of.

The final murderous assault by the USA before it departed in humiliation has left ten dead family members including six children, among them two-year-old Sumaya.

In multiple reports from ex-servicemen and state department employees who served in Afghanistan, we are hearing of a propaganda campaign of lies that began almost from the start of the invasion. All the positive gloss that was put on the Afghan campaign for almost the entirety of its occupation was based on bare-faced lies engendered by fears of demotion or worse.

Those at the bottom of the chain of command reporting officially to their superiors and those at the top reporting officially to their political elites continually hid the awful truth. That awful truth was that the western attack upon and invasion of Afghanistan was doomed from the start and that countless lives were lost for no good reason.

All that being said, what now? What is the net effect of the last twenty years going to be? How will the new Taliban now govern, in a different style and substance from before or simply through a surface patina of semantically-driven PR while those far from Kabul carry on as before?

From today onwards we will find out.

The Taliban certainly have the firepower to take on any who may seek to take control of Afghanistan or any part of it from them.

The Taliban potentially now have a total of 167 aircraft of a great diversity of types including Black Hawk helicopters, at least 3,000 Humvee vehicles, over 3,500 M4 Carbines and 31 Mobile Strike Force Vehicles.

Will the USA continue to use its assassination drones in Afghanistan after this point? This is a question U.S. officials do not appear to have answered as yet. If they do the consequences are unpredictable and potentially lethal for any hoped-for peace in the region.

After twenty years of violence on top of all the many decades of the same in the years previously will the people of Afghanistan finally experience a greater degree of peace and stability?

If Russia, China and Iran have anything to do with it, with help also from Pakistan, they will.

Only the behaviour of the new Taliban government and its shock troops can say and as all we know at this point is that they are a completely unknown quantity. We can only hope their actions match their words of recent weeks and that Afghans do now gain some well-deserved respite from war.

THE DICTATORSHIP WESTERN ELITES CALL DEMOCRACY

Hands up those who live in the western world and who believe their vote every once in a while has a meaningful effect in determining their future.

Perhaps those with their hands up vote Green or another rather fringe party where there can sometimes be a moderating effect, this is true for instance in Germany where the Green Party does have a large following and thus can sometimes achieve serious changes. But what about the rest of you, especially anyone looking in from the USA or UK?

The USA, in my long considered estimation, has a sham democracy, exacerbated by a two-party system that works as a cosy cabal operated through big money, corporate influence and the lobby system. This system, dominated by the Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma, Medical Insurance Industry and Big Oil is what generates policy, not the politicians. The politicians essentially work for the directors, board members and stockholders of the corporations within these industries. The rest is theatre.

When politicians are involved in policy-making it is 99% at the behest of the groups listed above. When it is not their influence is never wholly consigned to the background either. The Sword of Damocles is wielded first by those who fund the U.S. political class, then by mainstream media, followed by private citizens who provide funding for ideological reasons in the main, and lastly, and a long last, by the lowly rest of the U.S. population. These latter tend to be helpless in the face of the others bombarding them with the messages, missives and memes that one of the two main parties wish them to be brainwashed by. TV “news” and establishment talking points dominate. The result is that North American brains get permeated by a nightly dose of mesmeric conditioning mixed with just another form of combined fascination and entertainment such as a two-horse race might engender.

When one of the two elites primarily on offer wins the big prize the interest of western populations (the UK has a very similar situation to the U.S.) slackens considerably, enlivened once in a while by some manipulated or real political scandal. That waning interest is based on my initial comments, that it is well known among western populations that voting changes little and most commonly, nothing. Nothing of fundamental importance at least.

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” - Emma Goldman

The assertions above are most clearly shown at times of war.

Millions took to the streets to show their disapproval of the clear intent of the USA and UK (along with others within their orbit) to go to war in Iraq. This massive protest against the determination of George W. Bush and Anthony Blair to attack and invade Iraq based on a pack of lies and propaganda counted for nothing. The die was set. The plans were made, the troops were on the ground and it just needed a few more lies by Colin Powell at the United Nations to get dubious consent to go ahead.

The governments of the USA, UK and many (if not all) in Europe do not operate by the consent of their populations. They will say they do, of course. But it is becoming ever clearer to a wider and wider audience that they do not. Take the current diplomacy-free stance of the USA, UK and their allies to Russia and China. Are the policies of the West advancing the wishes of western publics or is there an entirely geopolitical agenda that runs diametrically counter to their interests?

Does the average adult citizen and family member of the West want war? Isn’t it true that peace is by far the most favoured option? Peace, cooperation and the creation of a level of stability and well being that will allow their families and offspring to thrive, able to look forward in hope rather than in fear and trepidation. With climate change effects being seen more and more frequently to devastating effect and with humanity in the grip of a worldwide pandemic with undoubtedly more to come… how many households want to see a third world war added to the list of existential threats we face?

Yet western elites appear completely deaf and blind to the desires of the citizens. They appear to be marching to a different drum entirely, focused on completely alien goals to the man and woman in the street. And too they seem to be in a state of complete disregard concerning their hopes and desires. They clearly regard them as irrelevant, presenting an irritating distraction, one that detracts to an unwelcome degree from their desire to instil a jingoistic desire for endless division and war within them.

What degree of power can we imbue a vote with in such circumstances?

When nations are at war, truth is the first casualty, to paraphrase a well known saying. Western audiences are being treated with war propaganda every day that dawns. The economic rivals to the western corporations who run the West through its populations are China, and less so, Russia. The wars being waged against them are primarily economic wars, fought to maintain influence, to hold onto markets and the money that flows from them. The politicians work in tandem with the corporations on these aims, all wrapped up in a ball of potential death and destruction, mixed with concepts of loss of empire, status and destiny.

What we are seeing from the West is truly a murderous mix of influences.

So, who thinks voting for either of the two main parties in either the USA or UK will change a damn thing regarding all this?

Let’s see them… hands up.