Afghanistan war cost more than $2T and 240,000 lives, report finds

When you add up the cost of Defense and State Department funds sunk into Operations Enduring Freedom and Resolute Support, then throw in the cost of caring for the conflicts’ veterans and the interest on the money borrowed to cover it all, you’re looking at over $2 trillion, according to a report released Friday.

The Costs of War Project detailed its most recent estimates, finding that most of the money came out of $933 billion in DoD overseas contingency funding. The rest includes: $443 billion in DoD base budget increases to support the war; $296 billion to care for veterans; $59 billion in State overseas contingency funds; and $530 to cover the interest on the money borrowed to fund 20 years of deployments.

Those funds do not, however, include the amount the United States government is obligated to spend on lifetime care for American veterans of this war, nor does it include future interest payments on money borrowed to fund the war.

“The DoD spending, at over $900 billion in Afghanistan, is the tip of the iceberg,” Neta Crawford, the project’s lead researcher, said in the release. “The costs of the Afghanistan war include its escalation into Pakistan, millions of refugees and displaced persons, the toll in lives of combatants and non-combatants, and the need to care for America’s veterans.”

President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that the U.S. would begin drawing down its remaining 2,500 troops from Afghanistan on May 1, with a Sept. 11 deadline for full withdrawal.

The Costs of War Project also estimates that 241,000 people have died because of the war in Afghanistan, which includes more than 2,400 American service members and least 71,344 civilians; 78,314 Afghan military and police; and 84,191 opposition fighters. These figures do not include deaths caused by disease, loss of access to food, water, infrastructure, and/or other indirect consequences of the war.

More than 20,000 U.S. troops have been wounded.

The data is compiled from DoD reporting and budgeting documents starting in 2001.

“We report these estimates so that the American people will have a better understanding of the scale of the effort and its consequences,” she added. “The American people also lost some transparency here. A more comprehensive accounting is yet to be completed. It would include not just money that may or may not have been well spent, but the count of those wounded, those who lost limbs, and the tremendous psychological toll of decades of war on combatants and noncombatants and their families.”

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/04/16/afghanistan-war-cost-more-than-2t-and-240000-lives-report-finds/

ICE removes Salvadoran national wanted for aggravated homicide

LOS ANGELES - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers removed a 37-year-old Salvadoran national wanted for aggravated homicide in El Salvador and turned him over to law enforcement authorities there, April 9.

Cesar Enrique Castro-Martinez was unlawfully present in the United States and considered a public safety enforcement priority for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).

On July 30, 2013, the Third Instance Court Judge of Criminal Matters, Santa Ana, El Salvador, issued an arrest warrant for Castro-Martinez and Interpol published a Red Notice for his arrest, May 15, 2019.

ERO officers in Los Angeles received a referral from Interpol identifying Castro-Martinez as the subject of an arrest warrant and Red Notice, and arrested him during a targeted enforcement operation in Irvine, California, Aug. 26, 2019. An immigration judge ordered Castro-Martinez removed to El Salvador, Feb. 4.

ERO El Salvador and its Security Alliance for Fugitive Enforcement (SAFE) taskforce provided assistance in effecting Castro-Martinez’s removal.

ICE continues to implement interim civil immigration enforcement priorities directed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to focus its limited resources on threats to national security, border security and public safety. ICE carries out its duty to enforce the laws of the United States in accordance with the Department’s national security and public safety mission.

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-removes-salvadoran-national-wanted-aggravated-homicide

Politicians Concerned about Violence Should Start by Ending Their Wars and Their Police State

On April 8, 2021, President Biden addressed the public concerning new executive orders he is planning on putting through. This will be on top of the forty-eight other executive orders that have already come from the man who just last October was saying, “I have this strange notion—we are a democracy … [there are] things you can’t do by executive order unless you are a dictator. We’re a democracy, we need consensus.” He’s already surpassed both Trump and Obama in executive orders issued during the first four months of their respective presidencies.

It looks like the next EOs Biden aims at mandating are related to the topic of gun control: “Gun violence in this country is an epidemic. Let me say it again. Gun violence in this country is an epidemic.” This is ironic coming from the former vice president of the Obama administration, which started regime change wars in countries like Yemen, Libya, and Syria which in large part included supplying certain “moderate” rebel groups like al-Nusra and ISIS with weapons, cash, and intelligence support that was ultimately used to slaughter innocent men, women, and children.

Weapons to Libya

In his most recent book, Enough Already, Scott Horton (2021) fully displays just how devastating the foreign policies of all the US presidents going back to Jimmy Carter have been for people living in the Middle East. For example, in Libya, the Obama administration had been secretly allowing weapons to arrive from Qatar during the attempted overthrow of then dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The story was that the US was helping “moderate” Libyan rebels overthrow their brutal dictator in order to bring liberty and democracy to the turmoiled country. However, as Scott makes abundantly clear: this was completely false and the Obama administration was really “taking the terrorists’ side against Gaddafi in Libya … they were Libyans who had just come home from fighting America in Afghanistan and Iraq War II” (2021, pp. 163, 165). It is especially worth pointing out that some of these terrorist groups receiving support from Obama were “a bunch of horrible anti-black racists” who had “cleansed the predominantly black town of Tawergha … many of whom were tortured and killed, their property put to the torch” (2021, p. 166). Apart from the murder and rape of innocents in Libya, the US government’s actions under Obama and Biden left the country in a state of devastating civil war and also opened the doors for modern-day chattel slave auctions. Even Obama admits that Libya was a “shit show.”

Weapons to Syria

Libya became a weapons pipeline for rebels in Syria—who were also being backed by the United States government—and it was headed by the CIA’s own director, David Petraeus. Again, Scott Horton, quoting journalist Seymour Hersh, points out that these weapons were being delivered to “jihadists, some of them affiliated with al Qaeda” (2021, p. 172). In Syria, a similar regime change was occurring just as had happened to Gaddafi. This time the target was President Bashar al-Assad. The hope was that if the US could overthrow Assad, they’d “further isolate Iran” by removing “Iran’s only Arab ally,” Syria (Horton 2021, p. 182). It should come as no surprise, however, that in the US’s endeavor to conduct another regime change, they would again be caught up in giving weapons and support to terrorists who also wanted to overthrow Assad. During this time (2012), Libya’s insurgency was basically controlled by terrorist organization al-Nusra. When the US worked to get weapons into the hands of these “moderate” rebels, they were really just ending back up in the hands of Islamist extremists whom the US had been going to war against just years before. Once again, the Obama administration made the US responsible for aiding the some of the most horrific insurgency groups, who

murdered children, used suicide car and truck bombs against civilian and military targets, blindly shelled civilian neighborhoods, used torture, carried out mass-executions of captured army soldiers, executed people with crucifixions and beheadings. (Horton 2021, p. 196)

https://patriotrising.com/politicians-concerned-about-violence-should-start-by-ending-their-wars-and-their-police-state/

BLM Activist Calls ‘Rioting & Looting’ ‘Legitimate’ Response to ‘State Violence’

Bree Newsome, a longtime activist and Black Lives Matter supporter, is condoning rioting and looting as a ‘legitimate’ response to what she claims is ‘state violence’ against blacks and other minorities.

Newsome gained the national spotlight in 2015 for scaling the flag pole at the South Carolina Statehouse to cut down a Confederate flag and now posts her radical ideas daily on Twitter where she goes by the handle Defund & Abolish Police.

“I’m definitely in the camp of defending rioting & looting as a legitimate, politically-informed response to state violence,’ Newsome tweeted Tuesday. ‘I’ve tweeted on this topic many times & I’m always willing to engage people in good faith discussion of why I hold that position.”

“Far from making the argument people think it does, the hand-wringing over property damage & looting in situations like this only highlights how this society treats Black people as less than human,” Newsome tweeted.

“No one has difficulty understanding targeted property damage as a political act when it’s white ppl,” Newsome wrote. “Depicting Blk &/or poor ppl as mindlessly looting just to ‘take advantage’ of social unrest [fostered by actions of the police] serves a racist fantasy of Black ppl being lawless.”

“The whole function of the focus on looting is to say, ‘look— this is why we need police even if they frequently murder people'”, Newsome wrote. “Black ppl are just waiting for any opportunity to steal & the police are the only ones protecting the property.”

“That offends many people’s sensibilities b/c people are so fully indoctrinated into white supremacy that they’ve never interrogated who is allowed to damage property & why,” Newsome tweeted. “The police are simultaneously damaging property during a riot they incited but that is deemed acceptable.”

“Half of the political establishment continues to defend the actions of the 1/6 riot, arguing that the people who damaged property that day were justifiably outraged,” Newsome tweeted. “The Boston Tea Party is also framed as a justified political act. It’s only Black ppl who must protest quietly.”

I’m definitely in the camp of defending rioting & looting as a legitimate, politically-informed response to state violence. I’ve tweeted on this topic many times & I’m always willing to engage people in good faith discussion of why I hold that position.

— DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE (@BreeNewsome) April 13, 2021

The UK Daily Mail reported on Newsome’s commentary:

Her impassioned remarks come in the midst of the trial of the former police officer who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, and days after another Minnesota cop fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright.

Newsome is outspoken about her belief that racial injustice in policing cannot be resolved with reforms to the current system, and that police departments should be abolished, defunded and the funds redirected to community services.

Her remarks in defense of rioting and looting drew strong criticism from conservative commentators, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

“BLM leader Bree Newsome no longer talks about ‘peaceful protests.’ She doesn’t want those any more,” Carlson said of her recent tweets.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/16/blm-activist-calls-rioting-looting-legitimate-response-state-violence/

America’s ‘worst intelligence failures' attempted to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop scandal

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine has described the moment she was offered Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” by Rudy Giuliani after the waterlogged device was dropped off to a repair shop in Delaware.

Ms Devine’s upcoming book, which is titled “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide”, will explore the inside story behind revelations about Joe Biden’s son and his laptop.

Discussing claims the laptop story was Russian disinformation, Ms Devine said it was “a scandal”.

“You had 50 former spooks, basically people like John Brennan and James Clapper and George Tenet, I mean these people have been responsible for some of America’s worst intelligence failures,” she told Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton.

“Right up to the Russia collusion hoax that they foisted on the country and tried to hobble the Trump Administration with, and Donald Trump – which all turned out to be untrue, completely a lie”.

“And then – I mean why anyone gives them any credibility after that track record – they turn around and, on zero evidence, claim in their expert opinion that the laptop and our story is Russian disinformation”.

“I can tell you, the laptop was real, it belonged to Hunter Biden, he was in the middle of one of his many crack benders, he dropped it off – it was waterlogged – at this Mac repair shop in Delaware.”

Ms Devine said the laptop “found its way to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani”.

“Who ended up ringing me up one Saturday night, and offering it to me,” she said.

“The information that my colleague there – Emma-Jo – managed to glean out of the laptop has never been refuted; none of the Bidens have ever said that’s not the laptop”.

“It is irrefutable, and that’s why you see Hunter Biden in these interviews for his own book, dissembling, pretending.”

https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6249151922001

Hackers leak database with over 500,000 emails used to sign up to website in support of jailed Russian opposition figure Navalny

Hackers have compromised a database containing the email addresses of people who had registered on a website in order to campaign for opposition figure Alexey Navalny's release from prison. It is now readily available online.

Keeping their identities anonymous, the hackers have sent emails to Navalny's supporters, threatening to use their email addresses to gather extra information, before eventually selling the database to advertising companies. The leaked file contains 529,570 different addresses, although many of them have not been verified.

The website, set up on March 23, aims to collect information about 500,000 Navalny backers, with the aim of mobilizing an extensive database once they hit the figure. To sign up, a supporter just needs to enter their location, which can be either their house or street, and an email address. Once the email is confirmed, the person is placed on an interactive map, which currently has 440,217 people.

The initiative, set up by Navalny's right-hand man, Lithuania-based Leonid Volkov, seeks to show the authorities that a considerable number of Russians are behind the opposition figure. The hackers, however, aren't very happy about the idea.

"Keep participating in the movement of this IT wizz Volkov, and we'll keep getting new data about you, haha," the email, sent to the entire database, cajoled. "In the meantime, we'll start de-anonymizing emails, and soon we'll know your names, addresses, phone numbers. Next, we'll sell your data to advertising companies."

Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, confirmed the hack as real, but assured those on the database that their only listed data is their email address. The Anti-Corruption Foundation is listed by the Ministry of Justice as a Foreign Agent.

Writing on the Team Navalny telegram channel, Zhdanov suggested that the issue lies with the third-party service used to send out communications.

"The biggest mean thing malicious users can do is to send you a nasty email, which will probably end up in spam," he said. "We apologize for the trouble caused."

This is not the first time Navalny supporters have had their information exposed online. In February, Moscow daily Kommersant wrote that an archive of personal information about 28,000 people was leaked on the web, including telephone numbers.

The opposition figure is currently in prison after being judged to have broken the terms of a suspended sentence, handed to him in 2014 due to a case involving French company Yves Rocher.

https://www.rt.com/russia/521268-hackers-leak-database-navalny/