WE ALL KNOW WHAT THE PIG SAUDIS DID FOR BIDEN AND THE PRICE OF OIL, THEY RUBBED HIS NOSE IN IT AND THEN PEED ON OL' JOE!
Just a few weeks after US President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, aimed at shoring up relations with the murderous regime, his administration has approved two massive arms sales worth more than $5 billion to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS GO WOKE FOR MUSLIMS. JOE WANTS TO KNOW HOW MUCH IS IN IT FOR HIS PARASITE GAMER LAWYER BROTHER JAMES BIDEN?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/08/two-sociopath-lawyers-joe-biden-and-his.html
The Saudis know where to pitch their bribes. They've always been in bed with the Bush crime family (Amazon book House of Bush, House of Saud). We may never know how much the Saudis dictators pumped into building the Bush, Clinton or Obama (all gamer parasite lawyers) presidential libraries, but we know the dictators,in fact, numerous Muslim dictatorships were very generous with the (gamer parasite lawyers) Clinton Foundation Family Slush Fund just as Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, under closet Muslim Barack Hussien Obama, was very genrou$ with the Muslim dictators. For all these filthy pols, just follow the money. They have and will sell us out to anyone!
For Hollywood, China and various Islamic nations mean hundreds of billions of dollars in profit to corporate enterprises, so human rights concerns are placed in the back seat. RAJAN LAAD
It is difficult to say, given the facts, which famous father has raised the better boy. Perhaps the most notable difference between Joe Biden and King Salman is that the elderly and infirm Saudi royal knew when it was time to call it quits and hand power to a younger generation. Biden does not appear to share this outlook. This is not to suggest that he should anoint Hunter as his heir apparent, although there's no question the whore-loving crackhead scion would get more votes than Kamala Harris. ANDREW STILES
GROWING ISLAMIC FASCISM IN AMERICA… will it be as bad as we witness is happening to Europe?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/04/growing-islamic-fascism-in-america.html
For Hollywood, China and various Islamic nations mean hundreds of billions of dollars in profit to corporate enterprises, so human rights concerns are placed in the back seat. RAJAN LAAD
Biden administration agrees arms sales to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to counter China’s growing influence
Just a few weeks after US President Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, aimed at shoring up relations with the murderous regime, his administration has approved two massive arms sales worth more than $5 billion to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It follows $650 million in air-to-air missiles sent to Riyadh in November 2021 for its criminal war against the civilian population in Yemen.
Included in the sales are Patriot missiles costing $3 billion for Saudi Arabia and a high-altitude missile system costing $2.2 billion for the UAE aimed at protecting the venal petro-monarchs from rocket attacks by Yemen’s Houthi-led rebel movement.
The US State Department, seeking Congress’s approval for the deal, said the proposed sale would “support the foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of an important regional partner. The UAE is a vital US partner for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East.”
Biden had pledged during his election campaign to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah state” due to its appalling human rights record and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s signing off on Saudi insider turned dissident Jamal Khashoggi’s gruesome assassination in 2018. He also promised to cut off or cut back on the sale of “offensive” weapons to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing their attacks on civilians in Yemen. But this has counted for nothing next to the more pressing needs of Washington’s geostrategic interests.
Last month, Reuters reported that the Biden administration was discussing lifting the ban on US sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Ever since Saudi and the UAE-led coalition invaded Yemen in April 2015, international human rights groups—including the New York-based Human Rights Watch and the London-based Campaign Against the Arms Trade—have documented the coalition’s use of US and UK weapons in unlawful airstrikes, including undoubted war crimes, breaching Washington and London’s own policies on arms sales. These two imperialist warmongers, which lose no opportunity to justify their bellicosity in the name of human rights, have also provided the Saudis and Emiratis with political and diplomatic cover at the UN, even as their blockade of the impoverished country has put millions at risk of famine.
The Guardian reported that the Biden administration is also exploring the setting up of a new international committee to document and report on human rights violations in Yemen that would include representatives from the Saudi and UAE puppet government in the country. An intensive lobbying campaign by Riyadh put a stop to an earlier United Nations Human Rights Council investigation into possible war crimes. One can only imagine the uproar that would follow if President Vladimir Putin were to be included in a panel to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
The political reasons Washington supports two of the most repressive regimes on the planet are clear. They are a key market for US arms and play a vital role on behalf of US imperialism in suppressing the working class in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and throughout the region and supporting Washington’s domination in the resource-rich Middle East. They have allied with Israel in a US-led anti-Iranian axis that threatens to push the region into another catastrophic war.
The economic reasons are less well-known. As the US became increasingly self-sufficient in oil, the petro-monarchs turned elsewhere for customers. By 2020, the Gulf countries were supplying 40 percent of China’s oil imports, with 16 percent of that coming from Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom’s trade with China has soared from $3 billion in 2000 to $67 billion in 2021, while its trade with the US rose from $20.5 billion to $24.8 billion in the same period. While much has been made of China’s 25-year $400 billion trade and investment agreement with Iran, even if it were actualized at some $16 billion a year this is still much less than Beijing’s trade with Riyadh.
Merchandise trade between the Middle East and China has increased significantly, totaling $272 billion in 2020. Furthermore, despite heavy pressure from Washington, no Middle Eastern country has banned the Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s 5G networks. Beijing is now the largest single regional investor and trading partner of 11 countries in the Middle East. Its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), aimed at placing China at the centre of global trade, is the basis of agreements with 21 countries in the region.
Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all have “comprehensive strategic partnerships” with China, while Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman and Qatar are “strategic partners.” Turkey has a “strategic cooperative relationship and Israel a “comprehensive innovation partnership” with China. Tel Aviv’s extensive links with China’s defence technology has on occasions put it at odds with Washington.
A critical element in China’s BRI has been its development and expansion of ports and industrial parks in Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Djibouti, China’s only overseas military base, to secure its shipment of goods to Africa, Europe and beyond.
Of even greater significance are the talks, reported in the Wall Street Journal last March, between Beijing and Riyadh over pricing some oil sales to China in yuan. Such a move that would undermine the dollar’s role in the global petroleum market. Under a 1970s agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia, all oil sales anywhere in the world are conducted in dollars, recycled back to the US and to a lesser extent Britain as sovereign reserve holdings in return for military support and security.
The petrodollar system has underpinned the US financial system, allowing it to finance its soaring debts—the US is the world’s largest creditor nation—and the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. While the US accounts for around 20 percent of global GDP, nearly 90 percent of international currency transactions and 60 percent of foreign exchange reserves are in dollars.
But foreign investment no longer finances US debt to the same extent as it once did. Since the 2008 financial crisis and more recently the pandemic crisis, the Federal reserve has sought to protect financial markets with quantitative easing and bought up US debt itself. As a result, foreign central banks’ and foreign investors’ holdings of US treasury bonds as a proportion of total US public debt have fallen by about 50 percent.
The prospect of Riyadh accepting payment in yuan is totally unacceptable to Washington. It would further and significantly undermine the dollar-based system, following on from Russia and Iran’s attempts to strike payments in different currencies under the pressure of US sanctions. Iraq’s efforts to avoid sanctions by selling its oil for euros was one of the factors that led the Bush administration to declare war on Iraq in 2003, despite opposition from the European powers.
Biden declared quite openly that his trip to Saudi Arabia last month was to bolster America’s position in the region, which had waned under his watch, against its rivals: “I want to make clear that we can continue to lead in the region and not create a vacuum, a vacuum that is filled by China and/or Russia.”
Relations with the Gulf States began to cool after President Barack Obama’s refusal to back Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak during the mass protests that were to bring down his government in 2011 and threaten Saudi clients in Bahrain and Yemen. They became more strained after Washington signed the 2015 nuclear accords with Iran—whom Riyadh and Abu Dhabi accuse of supporting the Houthi rebels who ousted Riyadh’s puppet government in Yemen in 2015—and did little to counter the Houthis’ missile attacks.
Russia’s successful thwarting of the attempted overthrow of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, orchestrated by Washington and heavily backed by Riyadh in particular, and of the US-organised coup against Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have also caused disquiet.
Biden’s billion-dollar arms sales are intended as a down payment on a renewed partnership. They were announced as China’s President Xi Jinping prepares to visit Saudi Arabia as early as this week—his first overseas visit since the COVID pandemic—where he is expected to be given an extravagant welcome, in contrast to its low-key reception of Biden in July. They follow shortly after Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Aramco signed a memorandum of understanding with China’s state-owned Sinopec for cooperation in areas, including “carbon capture and hydrogen processes.”
It is difficult to say, given the facts, which famous father has raised the better boy. Perhaps the most notable difference between Joe Biden and King Salman is that the elderly and infirm Saudi royal knew when it was time to call it quits and hand power to a younger generation. Biden does not appear to share this outlook. This is not to suggest that he should anoint Hunter as his heir apparent, although there's no question the whore-loving crackhead scion would get more votes than Kamala Harris. ANDREW STILES
GROWING ISLAMIC FASCISM IN AMERICA… will it be as bad as we witness is happening to Europe?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/04/growing-islamic-fascism-in-america.html
For Hollywood, China and various Islamic nations mean hundreds of billions of dollars in profit to corporate enterprises, so human rights concerns are placed in the back seat. RAJAN LAAD
Inside the Horror of Islamic Sex Slavery - and the Real War on Women
Last week marked the seventh annual commemoration of the Yazidi genocide, though you wouldn’t know it from watching establishment media. Nor would you know that there is an ongoing genocide of Christians taking place in Nigeria, nor that throughout the Islamic world countless women and girls are enduring kidnapping, forced marriages, forced conversions of Christians to Islam, genocidal rape, and/or widespread sex trafficking even in countries that are supposedly our allies in the War on Terror.
HILLARY AND OBOMB’S DIRTY SAUDIS DICTATORS…. the Saudis know where to pitch their birbes. They've always been in bed with the Bush crime family (Amazon book House of Bush, House of Saud). We may never know how much the Saudis dictators pumped into building the Bush, Clinton or Obama presidential libraries, but we know the dictators,in fact, numerous Muslim dictatorships were very generous with the Clinton Foundation Family Slush Fund just as Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, under closet Muslim Barack Hussien Obama, was very genrou$ with the Muslim dictators. For all these filthy pols, just follow the money. They have and will sell us out to anyone!.... DO A SEARCH FOR BARACK OBAMA AND SAUDIS!
How much as she sucked in?
DANCING WITH DICTATORS.... BOTH THE CLINTONS ARE EXPERT DANCERS!
Hillary’s Russian connection
“Facilitating strategic technology transfer in return for money is an old Clinton game. The Chinese bought their way to access of considerable space technology when Bill Clinton was president. Remember Charlie Trie, Loral, and the rest of the crew?”
TWO AMORAL SOCIOPAITHS!
The “Islamophobia” narrative that Muslims are particular victims of large-scale discrimination and harassment in the U.S. needed shoring up. But when the killer was identified, the whole thing blew up on the putative president and vice president. Not that they’ll ever admit that.
Biden and Harris Rush to Condemn ‘Hate Crime,’ But ‘Islamophobic’ Killer is…A Muslim
The Left sticks to its narrative, no matter how often it blows up in its face.
The Left’s view of the world is a series of fictions, fantasies, and delusions. Like all propaganda, this house of cards would collapse in a second if it weren’t constantly shored up with what Leftists claim is “evidence” or “proof” that their insanity — men can be women, Jan. 6 was an insurrection, and the rest — is actually real. And so when four Muslims were shot dead in New Mexico, Old Joe Biden and Kamala Harris rushed to condemn the killings and declare piously that “hate” has no place in America. The “Islamophobia” narrative that Muslims are particular victims of large-scale discrimination and harassment in the U.S. needed shoring up. But when the killer was identified, the whole thing blew up on the putative president and vice president. Not that they’ll ever admit that.
Biden’s Twitter wonk tweeted Sunday: “I am angered and saddened by the horrific killings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque. While we await a full investigation, my prayers are with the victims’ families, and my Administration stands strongly with the Muslim community. These hateful attacks have no place in America.” Not to be outdone, on the same day, Harris tweeted: “I am deeply disturbed by the killings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque. As law enforcement continues to investigate these heinous attacks, we remain clear that we stand with the Muslim community in New Mexico and around our country. Hate has no place in America.”
New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich (a Democrat, of course) started the ball rolling on Friday when he tweeted: “Muhammad Afzaal Hussain was a pillar in the UNM community and an incredible force for good. I’m very concerned by law enforcement reports that his murder may be linked to two other murders of Muslim men in Albuquerque. Racist, hate-fueled violence has no place in New Mexico.” Another Twitter user responded to Heinrich: “You misspelled christian white supremacist terrorism.”
There was actually no indication at that point or ever that these killings were racially motivated. Even the Washington Post reported on Monday that “the police have not determined a motive for the killings,” but that didn’t stop the Left’s propaganda machine from rolling onward. CJ Werleman, an “activist against Islamophobia” with 316,000 followers on Twitter, tweeted late Monday night: “Muslims, particularly Pakistani Muslims, are being targeted for assassination in New Mexico. The perpetrator is most likely a white supremacist but would not be surprised if we learn he/she is a Hindu nationalist.”
Of course, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) had to get in the act. On Friday, it offered a $5,000 reward for “information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the possibly bias-motivated shooting deaths of three Muslim men in New Mexico.” CAIR raised the reward to $10,000 the next day. (Police suspected that the same killer had also murdered a fourth Muslim last November.) CAIR also “called on the Biden administration to take a direct role in responding to the shooting spree” and got the tweets from Biden and Harris in response. CAIR reps appeared on CNN three times and MSNBC once (only once? What’s wrong with you, MSNBC?) to discuss the killings.
But then a suspect was caught. CBS News reported Tuesday that “Muhammed Syed, 51, was identified as the ‘primary suspect in the recent murders of Muslim men,’ police said Tuesday, and charged with murdering Aftab Hussein on July 26 and Muhammad Afzaal Hussian on Aug. 1. Detectives connected the two cases using bullet casings found at the two scenes. They are still investigating Syed’s possible involvement in the murders of Naeem Hussain on Aug. 5 and Mohammed Zaher Ahmadi on Nov. 7.”
Syed “appears to have known his victims,” and CAIR revealed that there are “early indications that the alleged killer may have been targeting particular members of the Shia community.” So the killings weren’t “Islamophobia,” but may have been another instance of the Sunni-Shi’ite jihad coming to America.
Biden and Harris were so anxious for some confirmation of the Left’s bogus “Islamophobia” narrative that they condemned these murders as hate crimes before any suspect had been located. They wanted people to think an “Islamophobe” was the murderer, no matter what the facts turned out to be. Will Biden and Harris now apologize for reinforcing a spurious victimhood narrative? Will CAIR run an information feature on the Sunni-Shi’ite jihad, which has claimed far more lives than “Islamophobia” ever has? Not on your life. The Left sticks to its narrative, no matter how often it blows up in their faces, as it did this time.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 25 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Biden’s Handlers Released 324 Unvetted Afghan Evacuees on Terror Watchlist Into the U.S.
It's all going according to plan.
Biden’s catastrophically botched withdrawal from Afghanistan was bad enough in itself, diminishing America’s standing in the world and projecting an image of weakness that has encouraged and emboldened enemies of our nation worldwide. The fallout from it, however, could be incalculably worse. A Defense Department (DoD) whistleblower has revealed that 324 of the Afghans whom U.S. forces brought to the United States as the disaster in Afghanistan was unfolding appeared on the department’s Biometrically Enabled Watchlist (BEWL), which includes terrorists, and yet were admitted into the country without being vetted. No one who has been watching the spreading dumpster fire that is the Biden administration could possibly be surprised.
Senators Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) have called upon the DoD to investigate. On Thursday, they wrote to DoD Acting Inspector General Sean O’Donnell about their “concern over new allegations raised by a Department of Defense (DoD) whistleblower. This information may show the Biden Administration’s failure to vet those evacuated from Afghanistan was even worse than the public was led to believe. The following allegations demand an immediate investigation by your office.” There should indeed be an investigation, but in these days of the hyper-politicization of everything and concomitant wokeification of the government bureaucracy, a genuinely illuminating investigation is about as likely to happen as Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis getting the Democrat nomination for president in 2024.
Epoch Times reported Friday that “the BEWL identifies individuals whose biometrics have been collected and determined by analysts to be threats or potential threats to national security, including known suspected terrorists.” But instead of stopping those who appeared on this watchlist, the whistleblower contents that “White House and DoD officials instructed agency personnel to ‘cut corners’ and not conduct full fingerprint tests on the evacuees at staging bases in Europe, ‘in order to promote the rushed evacuation from Afghanistan.’”
The whistleblower also charges that “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) staff were authorized to delete old biometric data at their discretion.” Really, what could possibly go wrong? Hawley and Johnson point out, with admirable understatement, that this is a “troubling development that could threaten national security and public safety.”
Yeah, it could. And as it was all initially unfolding, Joe Biden was doing what he does best: lying. Sensitive to criticism arising from the importation of unvetted Afghans in the U.S., Biden declared in September 2021 that “planes taking off from Kabul are not flying directly to the United States. They’re landing at U.S. military bases and transit centers around the world. At these sites where they are landing, we are conducting thorough scrutiny — security screenings for everyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident.” State Department spokesman Ned Price added: “Before anyone who is evacuated from Afghanistan comes to this country, they undergo a rigorous vet. Unless and until they complete that vet they will not be in a position to come to the U.S.”
In reality, however, there appeared to be a concerted effort to bring unvetted Afghans into the United States. At least 82,000 Afghans were brought to the U.S. without being vetted. In October 2021, Senate Republicans noted in a memo, accordingto the Washington Examiner, “senior officials across the departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State, and Justice described a disastrous screening and vetting process.” Immigration officials accepted uncritically what Afghans said about who they were, without making any effort to check their stories. According to the Examiner, “the large majority of people, approximately 75%, evacuated were not American citizens, green card holders, Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders, or applicants for the visa.”
Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) had been given to Afghans who aided U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In September 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas revealed that “of the 60,000 Afghans who have entered the U.S., nearly 8,000 are either U.S. citizens or residents, while about 1,800 are SIV holders, having obtained visas after assisting the U.S. military.” That meant that 52,000 of the 60,000 Afghans who had come into the country were not U.S. citizens or SIV holders. In November 2021, Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) stated that only 700 of the 82,000 Afghans now in the U.S. were SIV holders.
The Examiner noted that Biden’s reception of these Afghans “violated long-standing U.S. government policies for handling refugees.” This was a deliberate decision: “Refugees are to be screened and vetted before being admitted to the U.S. through an extensive process that includes multiple interrogations. Rather than follow the protocol, the Biden administration instructed federal law enforcement and military officials handling the evacuations and processing to adhere to less stringent standards.”
Hawley confronted FBI director Christopher Wray about all this Thursday. According to Epoch Times, “Wray wasn’t able to give a clear answer about the FBI’s efforts to track down and interview the 324 Afghan evacuees.” Once again, no one should be surprised. Clearly this is all going the way the Leftist elites want it to go.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a ShillmanFellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 25 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
Afghan Migrant Suspected of Killing Four over Islamic Religious Dispute
A Muslim migrant from Afghanistan has been charged in the killings of two other immigrants and is the suspect in yet two more killings, which are thought to be motivated by an Islamic religious dispute.
Muhammad Syed, 51, had been living in Alberqerque, New Mexico for roughly five years before the killings.
He had previously faced multiple domestic violence charges that were ultimately dismissed.
Police have found that Syed, a Sunni Muslim, was motivated at least in part by an “interpersonal conflict,” thought to be related to his daughter’s marriage to a Shiite Muslim.
Ahmad Assed, president of the Islamic Center of New Mexico, left, speaks at a news conference to announce the arrest of Muhammad Syed, a suspect in the recent murders of Muslim men in Albuquerque, N.M., as Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller listens, at right, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)
Three of the four victims all attended the Islamic Center of New Mexico, a Shiite Mosque.
President of the Mosque Ahmad Assed said that he was aware that the religious dispute might have been a motivating factor in the killings but noted that one of the four victims was a Sunni Muslim.
The New York Times reported that “police found several guns at Mr. Syed’s home and one in the car he was driving, and believed two of the weapons were connected to the killings of one man on July 26 and another on Aug. 1.”
A young man bows during the Dhuhr afternoon prayer at the Islamic Center of New Mexico, Sunday Aug. 7, 2022, after the fourth Muslim man was murdered in Albuquerque. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/The Albuquerque Journal via AP)
Tahir Gauba, a director of the Mosque, said that “the last two weeks have been nothing but nightmares,” commenting on the arrest of the suspect when he commented “Tonight the Muslim community will sleep in peace.”
Spencer Lindquist is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach out at slindquist@breitbart.com
GROWING ISLAMIC FASCISM IN AMERICA… will it be as bad as we witness is happening to Europe?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/04/growing-islamic-fascism-in-america.html
One Year Later, Inspectors Still Want to Know What Ex-President Did with Afghanistan’s Money
The office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has published its final report on the “theft of funds from Afghanistan,” with particular attention to “allegations concerning President Ghani and former senior Afghan officials.”
SIGAR concluded reports of Ghani fleeing Kabul with hundreds of millions of dollars were exaggerated, but a good deal of U.S. taxpayer money is still missing and Ghani was not eager to talk about where it went.
Ghani fled Kabul on August 15, 2021, ostensibly because he feared for his life as Taliban forces surrounded the capital. His critics, including some U.S. officials, said his sudden departure by helicopter made the Taliban takeover much worse because the triumphant insurgents expected Ghani to manage the transition of power after President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal.
Within hours of Ghani’s hasty exit from Kabul, the Russian embassy began spreading rumors that the deposed president looted the Afghan treasury on his way out, packing hundreds of millions of dollars into ground vehicles and his escape helicopter.
“Four cars were packed with money, and they tried to cram another bag of cash into the helicopter. Not all the cash managed to squeeze in, and some of the money was left lying on the airfield,” snorted an embassy employee, as quoted by Russia’s state-run Tass news service. This source also spoke to Western media, claiming eyewitnesses could verify his claims.
File/A man reads a newspaper displaying front page news about Afghanistan, at a stall in Islamabad on August 16, 2021 as the Taliban were in control of Afghanistan after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country and conceded the insurgents had won the 20-year war. (AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty)
Ghani released a statement from his refuge in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) denying the rumors he fled Afghanistan with bags full of cash.
“I was forced to leave Afghanistan with one set of traditional clothes, a vest and the sandals I was wearing,” he insisted, three days after fleeing Kabul.
At roughly the same time, Afghan Ambassador to Tajikistan Mohammad Zahir Aghbar was accusing Ghani of absconding with $169 million.
In its final report last week, SIGAR criticized Ghani for refusing to answer its questions directly, instead releasing statements through his attorney. The attorneys answered only six of the 56 questions SIGAR asked about stolen funds.
SIGAR noted that a great deal of money is missing from Afghanistan, but the wilder tales of Ghani escaping with a greater volume of cash than most helicopters would be capable of lifting are dramatic exaggerations:
The allegations that former President Ghani and his senior advisors fled Afghanistan aboard helicopters with millions in cash are unlikely to be true. The hurried nature of their departure, the emphasis on passengers over cargo, the payload and performance limitations of the helicopters, and the consistent alignment in detailed accounts from witnesses on the ground and in the air all suggest that there was little more than $500,000 in cash on board the helicopters.
That being said, it remains a strong possibility that significant amounts of U.S. currency disappeared from Afghan government property in the chaos of the Taliban takeover—including millions from the presidential palace and the National Directorate of Security vault. Attempts to loot other government funds appear to have been common. Yet with Afghan government records and surveillance videos from those final days likely in Taliban hands, SIGAR is unable to determine how much money was ultimately stolen, and by whom.
U.S. inspectors were deeply skeptical of Ghani’s claims that some of the cash he was apparently hoarding in his presidential palace was earmarked for charitable endeavors:
Multiple former senior officials were told that the $5 million found on the palace grounds was the president’s personal money and was declared in his assets. In response to questions from SIGAR about this large sum of cash, Ghani’s attorney said that “President Ghani had publicly announced his commitment to using his personal cash assets to establish a foundation in his ancestral village including a Presidential Library, an Islamic Studies Center, and an agricultural center.” However, this does not seem plausible even to the president’s own former staff. One former senior official said that “$5 million is a lot of money, and no one keeps that in their house.” Although such a scenario is possible, in our view, Ghani’s response explains why he would keep these assets liquid, but not why he would keep them as cash under the proverbial mattress for nearly 6 years.
SIGAR suspected Ghani did try to leave the country with a sizable bankroll, but based on messages between senior Afghan officials, the fabled bags of cash were left behind during Ghani’s hasty evacuation. The precise amount of money involved, and if it should all have been considered Ghani’s rightful personal property, was difficult to establish.
SIGAR also noted that Ghani and other top officials fled to Uzbekistan by helicopter, then spent about $120,000 chartering a flight to the UAE. The Uzbeks searched all of the fleeing officials and their staffers thoroughly, so it was unlikely they could have smuggled large amounts of cash through Uzbekistan. Eyewitness accounts from Uzbekistan suggested the charter flight consumed a great deal of the cash carried by the fleeing officials.
The Inspector General’s report hastened to add that while Ghani might not have departed Afghanistan with eight figures of cash tucked in his luggage, a huge amount of money was stolen. Ghani appears to have been sitting on a few million dollars’ worth of currency that was probably looted by the Taliban when it occupied his presidential palace in Kabul. A vastly larger sum vanished from the coffers of the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS).
Former senior officials of the NDS testified that its budget was about $225 million when the Taliban took over. Some accounts said the NDS had at least $70 million in its operating reserve.
This immense sum of cash was supposedly necessary because the NDS threw a lot of money at “anti-Taliban militias” and “local power brokers and communities.”
File/Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani (3L) gestures as he arrives ahead of a meeting at the Afghan Parliament house in Kabul on August 2, 2021. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
Cash payments to these local forces “soared as the country’s provinces fell one by one” to the Taliban blitzkrieg in the summer of 2021, “reaching a crescendo in the government’s final two weeks.”
“We used a lot of money to send and buy weapons at the end. The governors told us to push the people to help them protect different areas. NDS was the last organization to support them and work with them. We carried a lot of money to different people, like tribal leaders,” one former senior official explained.
SIGAR determined that on the day before Kabul fell, the huge NDS reserve of U.S. dollars “disappeared.” When the Taliban seized control of the NDS vault on August 15, “only a small reserve of Afghanis [local currency] remained.”
The fate of those missing millions remains murky. Some Afghan officials told SIGAR the money was seized by the Taliban, but those accounts could not be confirmed. The chain of custody for the literal keys to the money vault could not be nailed down. SIGAR noted that the manager who oversaw cash disbursements from the vault was replaced two weeks before the Taliban takeover; a former senior official said such personnel turnovers were a “common method to discretely steal funds amid the chaos,” and testified he himself was pressured to loot his agency’s treasury, with promises of a $20 million payoff if he complied.
“It remains a strong possibility that significant amounts of U.S. currency disappeared from
Afghan government property in the chaos of the Taliban takeover – including millions from the presidential palace and the NDS vault. Attempts to loot other government funds appear to have been common,” SIGAR concluded.
“With Afghan government records and surveillance videos from those final days likely in Taliban hands, SIGAR is unable to determine how much money was ultimately stolen, and by whom,” the inspectors glumly conceded.
A Year After Conquering Afghanistan, the Taliban Are Done Pretending to Be ‘Inclusive’
GROWING ISLAMIC FASCISM IN AMERICA… will it be as bad as we witness is happening to Europe?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/04/growing-islamic-fascism-in-america.html
Dad of Three Jumps Into Action as 'Allahu Akbar' Rings Out on Plane
A father of three prevented a potential tragedy with his quick action on a flight last week.
According to the U.K.’s Mirror, 35-year-old Phillip O’Brien was on a Jet2 flight from Cyprus to Manchester, England, when a passenger allegedly stripped to her underwear.
The passenger attempted to storm the cockpit twice and screamed, “Allahu Akbar,” a phrase meaning “Allah is the greatest” that has been used by Muslim terrorists during violent attacks.
She had alleged there were explosives on board, and she asked children who were with her whether they were “ready to die.”
O’Brien was able to get the woman in a hold, and crew members eventually helped secure her in a chair, the Mirror reported.
“Everything was normal and then shortly after take-off a woman walked up the aisle naked and banged on the cockpit door shouting ‘Allahu Akbar,'” O’Brien said.
“As you can imagine everyone was s***ing themselves.”
O’Brien said he first questioned why the staff on board the plane had not stopped the woman.
“I spoke to staff and said, ‘Why have you not put her to the floor?'” O’Brien said.
The staff reportedly told O’Brien they were not able to restrain the woman. O’Brien, who has worked in security in the past, said he could.
“So when the woman went to the cockpit again I took control, took her to the ground and at that point the pilot did an emergency landing to Paris,” O’Brien said.
The woman allegedly said her parents were members of the terror group ISIS. Her behavior suggested she may have been suffering from a mental illness.
After restraining her, O’Brien asked her why she was trying to storm the cockpit. He said she told him, “If I didn’t there’s going to be an explosion, and everybody is going to die.”
Jet2 confirmed the flight landed in Paris so a “disruptive passenger could be offloaded,” the Mirror reported.
A woman who was a passenger on the flight spoke to the U.K.’s Daily Mail about her experience.
“I was more worried about my daughter — she was so scared, she had a massive panic attack,” the woman said. “You were just terrified of what she was going to do when you closed your eyes.”
She said the woman’s strange behavior began just 10-15 minutes after the flight took off and lasted for hours.
“It was just crazy,” the passenger told the Mail. “At first it looked like she was drunk — she had the suitcase on her head. The cabin crew said she wasn’t drunk as they had smelt her breath. I don’t know how she got through security.”
Saudi Aramco Reports Record $48.4 Billion Quarterly Profits
Aug. 14 (UPI) — Aramco, the largely state-owned Saudi oil company, reported a 90% surge in second-quarter profits on Sunday.
Aramco reported $48.4 billion net income for the three-month period ending in June, thought to be one of the largest quarterly profits in history.
The quarterly earnings were up nearly double from its $25.5 net income during the same period last year and above analysts’ expectations of $46.2 billion.
It also reported half-year net income of $87.9 billion, widely surpassing other major oil companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP.
The Saudi Arabian government holds a 95% stake in Aramco and will take the majority of an $18.8 billion dividend set to be distributed before the end of October.
The company cited strong market conditions as a driving factor behind the earnings boom as oil prices rose as high as $130 per barrel earlier this year.
“Our record second-quarter results reflect increasing demand for our products — particularly as a low-cost producer with one of the lowest upstream carbon intensities in the industry,” Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser said.
Gas prices, however, have begun to recede some, with the national average in the United States falling to $3.99 per gallon last week, falling below $4 for the first time since March. It went as high as $5.02 onJune 14.
Nasser added Aramco expects post-pandemic recovery in oil demand to continue for the remainder of the decade despite “downward economic pressures on short-term global forecasts.”
“While global market volatility and economic uncertainty remain, events during the first half of this year support our view that ongoing investment in our industry is essential — both to help ensure markets remain well supplied and to facilitate an orderly energy transition,” he said.
The record profits for Aramco come after U.S. President Joe Biden faced criticism for being photographed fist-bumping Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during a visit to the Middle East last month.
Lawmakers said Biden’s actions indicated efforts to warm up to the oil-rich government despite Western intelligence indicating Mohammed was directly responsible for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in 2018.
GROWING ISLAMIC FASCISM IN AMERICA… will it be as bad as we witness is happening to Europe?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/04/growing-islamic-fascism-in-america.html
Ilhan Omar Once Again Shows How Much She Hates America …She was enraged by Christians singing hymns on a plane.
‘Normal Marital Argument’: Muslim Tells Wife He’ll Behead Her If She Doesn’t Wear A Hijab...Welcome to the New Europe.
ROBERT SPENCER
For Hollywood, China and various Islamic nations mean hundreds of billions of dollars in profit to corporate enterprises, so human rights concerns are placed in the back seat. RAJAN LAAD
Author Salman Rushdie Attacked on Stage in New York
Famed author Salman Rushdie, whose writings prompted the Supreme Leader of Iran to put a bounty on his head in 1989, was attacked ahead of a planned speech in New York on Friday, the Associated Press reports.
A man was witnessed storming the stage at the Chautauqua Institution and “punching or stabbing” Rushdie in the midst of the author being introduced, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene. Rushdie suffered an “apparent stab wound to the neck,” reports ABC News.
The Sun U.S. reports: “According to images from the scene, there were splatters of blood on the walls in the Chautauqua Institute after the attack on author Salman Rushdie just before his lecture.”
Rushdie was transported to hospital via helicopter. His condition is currently unknown. The man who is believed to have attacked the author has reportedly been detained.
New York State Police has launched a swift investigation into the attack
Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses” has been banned in Iran since 1988, as many Muslims consider it to be blasphemous. A year later, Iran’s late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie’s death.
A bounty of over $3 million has also been offered for anyone who kills Rushdie.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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