These endless wars have been one of the main ways of inducing the US to destroy itself, and to allow international finance to run the opium trade. In the Hemland province alone, opium production skyrocketed 400% under British occupation.
Afghanistan was and is a key opium producer for the international drug trade.
There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. - smedley butler
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. - smedley butler
War is just a racket... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. - smedley butler
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "Old Gimlet Eye",[1] was a senior United States Marine Corps officer who fought in both the Mexican Revolution and World War I. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, and Central America; the Caribbean during the Banana Wars; and France in World War I. Butler was, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (along with Wendell Neville and David Porter) and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot, and the media ridiculed the allegations, but a final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler's testimony.
Butler later became an outspoken critic of American wars and their consequences. In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he describes and criticizes the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those in which he had been involved, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them.
Yes. I'm very familiar with the Smedley Butler history. It's crucial right now because the same financial powers who tried to organize the fascist coup in the USA in the thirties are the same powers trying to do it again. While one could be cynical and argue that they already have, I think that would be wrong. Arguably, what blinds people the most when it comes to the question of defeating this stuff today is the very powerful and subtle demoralization campaign.
If people believe that all is lost, that the fight is over, then they become willing to accept or think "the unthinkable." Many will deceive themselves as they do it out of pure survival. The architects of psychological warfare and social engineering in the post war period understood this very much. But if a population actually still believes that the war can be won, that they can take their country back, then the ruling powers have a serious problem on their hands.
I think the greatest problem is that many drank the Koolaid and can't conceive of what a victory would look like today. But this is by design. As one of the leading Tavistock social engineers John Rawlings Rees said: "Winning wars is not about killing, it's about destroying the enemy's morale while maintaining one's own."
The media is always trying to project a sense that things are a "fait accompli," but they are not. The Wall Street and City of London banks are in serious trouble. They are sitting atop something like a 700 trillion - 1 Quadrillion dollar derivatives financial bubble.
All of their maneuvering is largely based around trying to get the kind of fascist totalitarian state in place before that thing pops. In this respect, Whitney Webb wrote a very interesting piece a while back: "WEF Warns of Cyberattack Leading to Systemic Collapse of the Global Financial System"
If you know the system is going to crash regardless of what you do, and you are trying to manage all these moving parts and control the "Narrative Matrix," it comes down to two options: either you can wait for something to trigger the collapse and be potentially caught off guard and lose control of the narrative, or if you really know you have no choice, then the question becomes how can we pop the bubble in such a way that we have the most possible control over a "controlled disintegration."
Knowing that their financial system is one giant house of cards, Whitney Webb's article stood out.
What they are most afraid of is that some kind of organized bankruptcy re-organization is proposed instead, whereby most of the worthless paper would be cancelled. That means most of the major Wall Street and City of London banks would essentially be vaporized.
They are in a serious bind. The latest Afghanistan PR meltdown is just another example.
This is gonna be fun to watch. A virulent form of fundamentalist Islam is going to oppress the living hell out of a bunch of Stone Age poverty riven illiterate cavemen and especially their women. A 20 year very successful project of transferring wealth from the US taxpayer to corporate military interests is winding down. Those who died, died for nothing, we return from whence we came.
The best outcome would be to do business with the Taliban and in exchange for not bombing the hell out of them ask them to minimize their atrocities. It should be easy to manage because the media is compliant and simply need to be asked not to cover Afghanistan anymore. Mission accomplished - again.
I don't plug myself into the Sunday Talk Shows so I'm guessing here, but I'd bet my mythical pile of one million dollars that the points Caitlin made are not discussed, the lessions learned remain obscured, the guilty remain free, the political criminality remains unpunished, and the unvarnished lies continue to receive nods of approval from our lettered betters thousands of miles removed from the action.
In other words, Washington staggers from one messy murdering blunder to the next unscathed.
Well, they certainly did not GAF about the Afghani women, as HRC and GW recently restated! Did I post this already?
GW destroyed the Afghani underground railroad for women. RAWA had secret routes in and out of Pakistan to help women escape. They begged GW not to invade, that they, RAWA, knew Osama was in Pakistan and because of their work they could deliver Bin Laden to him. GW and HRC love women so much, they invaded and did not take the advice of those saving women's lives. These routes that took decades to build, were destroyed.
Was it any wonder Bin Laden was found in plain sight?
I was member of Women in Black, did regular vigils, got informed. this is little known history that got buried. So, when HRC and the others were feigning AGAIN that they GAF about the women, I just screamed. Why not work with RAWA and Pakistan more closely?
Shitlibs are hypocrites Caitlin tells us. True enough. But I see the bigger problem as overreach, the endless arrogance and hubris of the left thinking they can manage everything. Do you ever notice a preponderance of losers on the left - people who have never ever done anything. How could they possibly know how to run things?
I think clearly the libertarian position makes the most sense. Actual hard science can achieve great marvels. In the social sciences we are duplicitous shitheads that make everything worse - stop! I think the libertarian position is that government is the enemy give people money and leave them alone, government doesn’t know better.
To blame a twenty year rape and pillage on only one political faction when it's clearly been a bi-partisan affair reveals more about your political prejudices than it does about the situation.
I think the conservatives are such cretins that I actually leave them out my criticism. I should probably make that a preface too my attack on the erstwhile good guys.
"Dana Burde shows how aid to education in Afghanistan bolstered conflict both deliberately in the 1980s through violence-infused, anti-Soviet curricula and inadvertently in the 2000s through misguided stabilization programs."
I agree with your analysis would only add that the sudden power of the Taliban in the same proportion of the fear that has become of the invaders has to do with the growing power of Russia and China. You can see that at the beginning of the week that has now ended, we had Merkle's trip to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin. We have to think about what was pending in the business with Russia and what was of enormous importance to this sudden outcome. Not as sudden as it sounds
I hope Caitlin is right - the only outcome that stabilizes Afghanistan is doing business with the Taliban. It’s their country it’s their religion it’s their God it’s their belief system it’s their culture. Women are going to have a rough ride there for a couple hundred years that is far preferable to bombing the living hell out of them and impoverishing America.
"Torn by four decades of war and desperate poverty, Afghanistan is believed to be sitting on one of the richest troves of minerals in the world. The value of these resources has been roughly estimated between $1-3 trillion."
"Afghanistan has vast reserves of gold, platinum, silver, copper, iron, chromite, lithium, uranium, and aluminium. The country’s high-quality emeralds, rubies, sapphires, turquoise, and lapis lazuli have long charmed the gemstone market. The United States Geological Survey (USGS), through its extensive scientific research of minerals, concluded that Afghanistan may hold 60 million metric tons of copper, 2.2 billion tons of iron ore, 1.4 million tons of rare earth elements (REEs) such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and veins of aluminium, gold, silver, zinc, mercury, and lithium."
I'm going to gamble now (August 15th) and predict that US re-invades or bombs the hell out of Kabul to avoid a reprise of "The Vietnam Syndrome". We'll see,
Trump’s Pledge to Exit Afghanistan Was a Ruse, His Final SecDef Says. Chris Miller now says talk of a full withdrawal was a “play” to convince a Taliban-led government to keep U.S. counterterrorism forces.
Perhaps Biden should be given Nobel Peace prize instead to swindler Obama...
I think most people forget the poppy and opium production in Afghanistan making them the world leader in this drug production, which the taliban tried to stop. This drug essentially funds their corrupt government and US government and CIA, and the US military actively protects these fields.
Well perhaps it’s more or less always been war for war and war profiteering sake. Nothing noble here. Possibly the profits have turned to liabilities. I guess the opium cartel is secure, and the Taliban have learned a lot about modern ways of terrorism and occupation from USA and Australian “engagements”.
If terroristic, misogynistic, child trafficing and pedophilia warlords from around the capitalist world are now cohorts of the Taliban lords, then I’m not surprised; water flows in the way of least resistance
These endless wars have been one of the main ways of inducing the US to destroy itself, and to allow international finance to run the opium trade. In the Hemland province alone, opium production skyrocketed 400% under British occupation.
Afghanistan was and is a key opium producer for the international drug trade.
This is correct!
Warning from 1920s: WAR IS A RACKET by Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler - FULL AudioBook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26O-2SVcrw0&t=1008s
There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. - smedley butler
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. - smedley butler
War is just a racket... I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. - smedley butler
Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (July 30, 1881 – June 21, 1940), nicknamed "Old Gimlet Eye",[1] was a senior United States Marine Corps officer who fought in both the Mexican Revolution and World War I. During his 34-year career as a Marine, he participated in military actions in the Philippines, China, and Central America; the Caribbean during the Banana Wars; and France in World War I. Butler was, at the time of his death, the most decorated Marine in U.S. history. By the end of his career, Butler had received 16 medals, five for heroism. He is one of 19 men to receive the Medal of Honor twice, one of three to be awarded both the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (along with Wendell Neville and David Porter) and the Medal of Honor, and the only Marine to be awarded the Brevet Medal and two Medals of Honor, all for separate actions.
In 1933, he became involved in a controversy known as the Business Plot, when he told a congressional committee that a group of wealthy industrialists were planning a military coup to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with Butler selected to lead a march of veterans to become dictator, similar to fascist regimes at that time. The individuals involved all denied the existence of a plot, and the media ridiculed the allegations, but a final report by a special House of Representatives Committee confirmed some of Butler's testimony.
Butler later became an outspoken critic of American wars and their consequences. In 1935, Butler wrote a book titled War Is a Racket, where he describes and criticizes the workings of the United States in its foreign actions and wars, such as those in which he had been involved, including the American corporations and other imperialist motivations behind them.
Yes. I'm very familiar with the Smedley Butler history. It's crucial right now because the same financial powers who tried to organize the fascist coup in the USA in the thirties are the same powers trying to do it again. While one could be cynical and argue that they already have, I think that would be wrong. Arguably, what blinds people the most when it comes to the question of defeating this stuff today is the very powerful and subtle demoralization campaign.
If people believe that all is lost, that the fight is over, then they become willing to accept or think "the unthinkable." Many will deceive themselves as they do it out of pure survival. The architects of psychological warfare and social engineering in the post war period understood this very much. But if a population actually still believes that the war can be won, that they can take their country back, then the ruling powers have a serious problem on their hands.
I think the greatest problem is that many drank the Koolaid and can't conceive of what a victory would look like today. But this is by design. As one of the leading Tavistock social engineers John Rawlings Rees said: "Winning wars is not about killing, it's about destroying the enemy's morale while maintaining one's own."
The media is always trying to project a sense that things are a "fait accompli," but they are not. The Wall Street and City of London banks are in serious trouble. They are sitting atop something like a 700 trillion - 1 Quadrillion dollar derivatives financial bubble.
All of their maneuvering is largely based around trying to get the kind of fascist totalitarian state in place before that thing pops. In this respect, Whitney Webb wrote a very interesting piece a while back: "WEF Warns of Cyberattack Leading to Systemic Collapse of the Global Financial System"
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/04/investigative-reports/wef-warns-of-cyber-attack-leading-to-systemic-collapse-of-the-global-financial-system/
If you know the system is going to crash regardless of what you do, and you are trying to manage all these moving parts and control the "Narrative Matrix," it comes down to two options: either you can wait for something to trigger the collapse and be potentially caught off guard and lose control of the narrative, or if you really know you have no choice, then the question becomes how can we pop the bubble in such a way that we have the most possible control over a "controlled disintegration."
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/01/federal-reserve-admits-it-pumped-more-than-6-trillion-to-wall-street-in-recent-six-week-period/
Knowing that their financial system is one giant house of cards, Whitney Webb's article stood out.
What they are most afraid of is that some kind of organized bankruptcy re-organization is proposed instead, whereby most of the worthless paper would be cancelled. That means most of the major Wall Street and City of London banks would essentially be vaporized.
They are in a serious bind. The latest Afghanistan PR meltdown is just another example.
This is gonna be fun to watch. A virulent form of fundamentalist Islam is going to oppress the living hell out of a bunch of Stone Age poverty riven illiterate cavemen and especially their women. A 20 year very successful project of transferring wealth from the US taxpayer to corporate military interests is winding down. Those who died, died for nothing, we return from whence we came.
The best outcome would be to do business with the Taliban and in exchange for not bombing the hell out of them ask them to minimize their atrocities. It should be easy to manage because the media is compliant and simply need to be asked not to cover Afghanistan anymore. Mission accomplished - again.
I don't plug myself into the Sunday Talk Shows so I'm guessing here, but I'd bet my mythical pile of one million dollars that the points Caitlin made are not discussed, the lessions learned remain obscured, the guilty remain free, the political criminality remains unpunished, and the unvarnished lies continue to receive nods of approval from our lettered betters thousands of miles removed from the action.
In other words, Washington staggers from one messy murdering blunder to the next unscathed.
Zbigniew Brzezinski with someone that looks like a young Osama bin Laden: https://www.workers.org/2017/06/31585/ and https://thefreethoughtproject.com/zbigniew-brzenski-dead-89/ this would be February 3, 1980
Ali Ahmad Jalali went up on twitter to call Frud Bezhan's tweet a bunch of fake news.
Well, they certainly did not GAF about the Afghani women, as HRC and GW recently restated! Did I post this already?
GW destroyed the Afghani underground railroad for women. RAWA had secret routes in and out of Pakistan to help women escape. They begged GW not to invade, that they, RAWA, knew Osama was in Pakistan and because of their work they could deliver Bin Laden to him. GW and HRC love women so much, they invaded and did not take the advice of those saving women's lives. These routes that took decades to build, were destroyed.
Was it any wonder Bin Laden was found in plain sight?
I was member of Women in Black, did regular vigils, got informed. this is little known history that got buried. So, when HRC and the others were feigning AGAIN that they GAF about the women, I just screamed. Why not work with RAWA and Pakistan more closely?
See:
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan - GW destroyed them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Association_of_the_Women_of_Afghanistan
https://www.liberationnews.org/using-womens-rights-to-html/?fbclid=IwAR1FVFm6ckG6LtYa8utPOOVe4cqYE1OPRQc4txcX13cYmFV4_7JnsSa-pIk
Shitlibs are hypocrites Caitlin tells us. True enough. But I see the bigger problem as overreach, the endless arrogance and hubris of the left thinking they can manage everything. Do you ever notice a preponderance of losers on the left - people who have never ever done anything. How could they possibly know how to run things?
I think clearly the libertarian position makes the most sense. Actual hard science can achieve great marvels. In the social sciences we are duplicitous shitheads that make everything worse - stop! I think the libertarian position is that government is the enemy give people money and leave them alone, government doesn’t know better.
To blame a twenty year rape and pillage on only one political faction when it's clearly been a bi-partisan affair reveals more about your political prejudices than it does about the situation.
I think the conservatives are such cretins that I actually leave them out my criticism. I should probably make that a preface too my attack on the erstwhile good guys.
What an absolutely empty, meaningless addition to this discussion
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/schools-for-conflict-or-for-peace-in-afghanistan/9780231169288
"Dana Burde shows how aid to education in Afghanistan bolstered conflict both deliberately in the 1980s through violence-infused, anti-Soviet curricula and inadvertently in the 2000s through misguided stabilization programs."
I agree with your analysis would only add that the sudden power of the Taliban in the same proportion of the fear that has become of the invaders has to do with the growing power of Russia and China. You can see that at the beginning of the week that has now ended, we had Merkle's trip to Russia to meet Vladimir Putin. We have to think about what was pending in the business with Russia and what was of enormous importance to this sudden outcome. Not as sudden as it sounds
What you're saying makes sense, Caitlin, but I sure hope it's not the reality.
I hope Caitlin is right - the only outcome that stabilizes Afghanistan is doing business with the Taliban. It’s their country it’s their religion it’s their God it’s their belief system it’s their culture. Women are going to have a rough ride there for a couple hundred years that is far preferable to bombing the living hell out of them and impoverishing America.
I want the US completely out of Afghanistan.
It's 'just' business as always.
"Torn by four decades of war and desperate poverty, Afghanistan is believed to be sitting on one of the richest troves of minerals in the world. The value of these resources has been roughly estimated between $1-3 trillion."
"Afghanistan has vast reserves of gold, platinum, silver, copper, iron, chromite, lithium, uranium, and aluminium. The country’s high-quality emeralds, rubies, sapphires, turquoise, and lapis lazuli have long charmed the gemstone market. The United States Geological Survey (USGS), through its extensive scientific research of minerals, concluded that Afghanistan may hold 60 million metric tons of copper, 2.2 billion tons of iron ore, 1.4 million tons of rare earth elements (REEs) such as lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, and veins of aluminium, gold, silver, zinc, mercury, and lithium."
https://thediplomat.com/2020/02/afghanistans-mineral-resources-are-a-lost-opportunity-and-a-threat/#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20Geological%20Survey%20%28USGS%29%2C%20through%20its,of%20aluminium%2C%20gold%2C%20silver%2C%20zinc%2C%20mercury%2C%20and%20lithium.
I'm going to gamble now (August 15th) and predict that US re-invades or bombs the hell out of Kabul to avoid a reprise of "The Vietnam Syndrome". We'll see,
Trump’s Pledge to Exit Afghanistan Was a Ruse, His Final SecDef Says - Defense One
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2021/08/trumps-pledge-exit-afghanistan-was-ruse-his-final-secdef-says/184660/
Trump’s Pledge to Exit Afghanistan Was a Ruse, His Final SecDef Says. Chris Miller now says talk of a full withdrawal was a “play” to convince a Taliban-led government to keep U.S. counterterrorism forces.
Perhaps Biden should be given Nobel Peace prize instead to swindler Obama...
I think most people forget the poppy and opium production in Afghanistan making them the world leader in this drug production, which the taliban tried to stop. This drug essentially funds their corrupt government and US government and CIA, and the US military actively protects these fields.
Well perhaps it’s more or less always been war for war and war profiteering sake. Nothing noble here. Possibly the profits have turned to liabilities. I guess the opium cartel is secure, and the Taliban have learned a lot about modern ways of terrorism and occupation from USA and Australian “engagements”.
If terroristic, misogynistic, child trafficing and pedophilia warlords from around the capitalist world are now cohorts of the Taliban lords, then I’m not surprised; water flows in the way of least resistance
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/taliban-announces-amnesty-urges-women-to-join-government/ar-AANpbhj?ocid=msedgntp