https://news.clearancejobs.com/2021/08/19/taliban-takeover-in-kabul-pakistani-invasion-complete-in-afghanistan/

In the end, the decision was made to remove all forces, and to remove the logistical support civilians that helped keep the young Afghan Air Force flying. After watching the events unfold this past weekend, it’s clear that the decision absolutely gutted the Afghan people, and doomed them to face the Taliban alone.

That decision fit neatly into the 20-year plan of the Pakistan military intelligence organization ISI. ISI were the ones who created the large Taliban force that invaded Afghanistan in the 1990s, after a small uprising was started near Kandahar. ISI are the ones that rehabilitated and built it even stronger after 2001 when the Taliban were removed from power. Two ISI generals announced publicly, at a February 2020 CENTCOM conference, that they would not go beyond helping America to get the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed late that month.

They publicly acknowledged that PakISI would continue to recruit, train, host, and arm the Taliban terrorist network and prepare it to strike when NATO left. And they kept their word. With China’s backing they said, they no longer needed America.

Pakistan used the 20 years of NATO assistance to Afghans to build a network of Afghan civilian leaders from town to district to national level that would help Pakistan to invade Afghanistan. As soon as President Biden announced a withdrawal in Afghanistan, the PakISI put their plan in motion. The Taliban bought their way through every major city and ultimately to Kabul.

SO MANY LIVES IMPACTED

The Taliban, with Al Qaeda and other foreign fighters in their ranks, avoided combat with the ANDSF wherever they could. They simply bought the loyalty of the civilians and the civilians asked the ANDSF to stop fighting. The tenet of civilian control over the military, a strength in America, was a deadly weakness in Afghanistan and Pakistan knew it. In Pakistan, the Army runs the country and the civilians bow to them.

We are now seeing some of the senior Afghan leaders who were bought by Pakistan visiting the Pakistan government to get their orders on how to run Afghanistan. Pakistan achieved its dream of a Pakistani-pliant government in Kabul with money and terrorism. This is no different than the Russian invasion of the Ukraine to steal part of their nation. Afghans got divided and picked off. Where the ANDSF fought in force, they did very well in killing large scores of Taliban forces, but eventually the ANDSF were told to stop fighting by their national level leaders as well.

https://hannity.com/media-room/trump-warned-us-watch-donald-trumps-major-warning-on-afghanistan-from-2017/

Unbelievable footage resurfaced Wednesday showing Donald Trump issuing a major warning on Afghanistan back in 2017, saying a “rapid exit” from the country would be “unacceptable” and create a “vacuum” filled by terror networks like ISIS and al Qaeda.

“My original instinct was to pull out. The consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. 9/11 -the worst terrorist attack in our history- was planned and directed from Afghanistan because that country was ruled by a government that gave comfort and shelter to terrorists,” said the President,.

“A hasty withdrawal would create a vacuum that terrorists -including ISIS and al Qaeda- would instantly fill just as happened before September 11th,” he added.

https://rumble.com/vlo75j-trump-called-it.html

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/noncitizen-voting-could-become-legal-in-new-york-city.html

The idea of noncitizens voting can sound almost oxymoronic at first. It’s ingrained in us that this particular form of civic participation is the privilege of the citizen, and it’s one of the few functional distinctions from navigating life as a permanent resident. This hasn’t always been the case, though. States permitted noncitizen voting well into the 20th century, culminating finally with Arkansas enacting restrictions in 1926, and New York City public-school parents could vote for the school board, regardless of immigration status, as recently as 2003.

A new movement to restore these rights has picked up steam recently, with a couple of small cities in Vermont this summer becoming the latest to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. But a sea change could be coming thanks to a bill that would let noncitizens living in New York City vote in local elections. It would apply to those who have permanent residency or some type of legal status that grants work authorization, such as a work visa — an estimate that runs to about 900,000 New Yorkers, or larger than the population of San Francisco. Its success would not only break the dam for similar initiatives around the nation, but shift the relationship between New York political leaders and a huge chunk of their constituencies, empowering immigrant-heavy communities even as it sets off a new front in the nationwide battle over voting rights.

While the past efforts failed to succeed for one reason or another, this latest bill has 34 out of 51 City Council members signed on as sponsors

They didn't know ?

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/08/26/china-nuclear-sites-twitter-trolls/?tpcc=recirc_latest062921

This summer, my former colleague Decker Eveleth discovered that China was constructing more than 100 missile silos in the country’s remote interior. I had spent the previous summer working with Eveleth on mapping China’s nuclear forces for a project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and had encouraged him to take a second look. Both of us expected he would find something, but the sheer number was a jolt.

A week or so after Eveleth shared his findings, another researcher named Matt Korda reported finding a second field large enough to eventually accommodate another 100 or more silos. “I usually have to pay someone to do that,” the commander of U.S. Strategic Command said at a conference. “If you enjoy looking at commercial satellite imagery or stuff in China, can I suggest you keep looking?” (Another group has now found a third site that they describe as early construction for a third field of silos, although it is in a very early stage of construction and differs in some respects from the first two sites, which are extremely similar.)

Two hundred or 300 silos is, potentially, a pretty big development. After all, China is thought to have just about 100 nuclear weapons that can reach the United States—that’s up from just 18 when I was a graduate student two decades ago.