G-7 leaders can’t sway Biden to delay Afghanistan withdrawal
AP – The United States clashed with some of its closest allies over President Joe Biden’s insistence on sticking to an Aug. 31 Afghanistan withdrawal date that will shut down a frantic international evacuation effort from Taliban rule.
Biden insisted after virtual talks with leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies Tuesday that the U.S. and its closest allies would “stand shoulder to shoulder” in future action over Afghanistan and the Taliban, despite disappointing them in their urgent pleas now to allow time for more airlifts.
The U.S. president was adamant that the risk of terror attacks was too great to accede to appeals from G-7 leaders to keep what are now 5,800 American troops at Kabul’s airport beyond the end of the month, anchoring the airlifts.
Britain and other allies, many of whose troops followed American forces into Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago to deal with the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, had urged Biden to keep American forces at the Kabul airport longer. No country would be able to evacuate all their citizens and at-risk Afghan allies by the Aug. 31 deadline, allied officials had said.
“We will go on right up until the last moment that we can,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had openly lobbied to keep the airport presence after Aug. 31. Johnson acknowledged he was unable to sway Biden to extend the U.S. military presence in Tuesday’s talks.
“But you’ve heard what the president of the United States has had to say, you’ve heard what the Taliban have said,” he said.
A senior French official, speaking anonymously in accordance with the French presidency’s customary practices, said President Emmanuel Macron had pushed for extending the Aug. 31 deadline but would “adapt” to the American sovereign decision. “That’s in the hands of the Americans,” he said.
In a partial show of unity, G7 leaders agreed on conditions for recognizing and dealing with a future Taliban-led Afghan government, but there was palpable disappointment Biden could not be persuaded to extend the U.S. operation at the Kabul airport to ensure that tens of thousands of Americans, Europeans, other third-country nationals and all at-risk Afghans can be evacuated.
The meeting of the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.S. served not only as a bookend to the West’s 20-year involvement in Afghanistan that began as a response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks but also a resigned acknowledgment from European powers that the U.S. calls the shots.
Biden Says U.S. Is on Track to Finish Evacuation by Deadline
NYT – The president said the risk of a terrorist attack at the Kabul airport was growing with every day U.S. forces are on the ground.
President Biden said on Tuesday that the United States was on track to end its two-decade military involvement in Afghanistan by his Aug. 31 deadline.
But the president, speaking at the White House, said he had spoken to military leaders so that they would be prepared to “adjust that timetable, should that become necessary.”
U.S. forces are still working around the clock to evacuate Americans and some of their Afghan allies from Kabul, the capital.
“It is a tenuous situation,” Mr. Biden said.
“We are currently on pace to finish by Aug. 31,” he said. “The sooner we can finish, the better. Each day of operations brings added risk to our troops.”
Afghans kept in wretched conditions at US base in Qatar
Pentagon says the US is working on improving conditions for Afghan evacuees at the US base following reports of wretched conditions.
Al Jazeera – Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby says the US is working on improving conditions for Afghan evacuees at a US airbase in Qatar after video footage obtained by media outlets showed them living in inhuman conditions.
Photos and video footage shared with Al Jazeera showed hundreds of Afghans crowded together in unsanitary conditions in a hangar at Al Udeid airbase in Qatar.
Afghan refugees who sent the pictures to Al Jazeera said they were being kept in the sweltering heat where several people had fainted as they waited in long queues to use the toilet or receive food and water. Most did not have any spare clothes and were unaware of what their final destinations would be.
Responding to the reports, Kirby said nobody was making excuses for the conditions at the base.
“Everybody’s focused on trying” to improve the conditions, Kirby told Axios on Tuesday.
Taliban will no longer allow Afghans to go to Kabul airport for evacuation, spokesman says
NBC – The Taliban said Tuesday that the group will not allow Afghan nationals to leave the country and opposes any extension of evacuation flights, a development that comes one week before U.S. and coalition forces are slated to depart Afghanistan.
“We are not in favor of allowing Afghans to leave,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters during a news conference Tuesday.
“They [the Americans] have the opportunity, they have all the resources, they can take all the people that belong to them but we are not going to allow Afghans to leave and we will not extend the deadline,” he said, adding that evacuations carried out by foreign forces after Aug. 31 would be a “violation” of a Biden administration promise to end the U.S. military’s mission in the country.
“The way to the airport has been closed now. Afghans are not allowed to go there now, foreigners are allowed to go but we have stopped Afghan nationals to go because the crowd is more, there is danger that people will lose their lives, there might be a stampede,” Mujahid said, according to an interpreter during the broadcast.
Hannity: Biden just signed death certificate of ‘every Afghan’ who helped US over last 20 years
Fox – President Biden “humiliated” America with his botched Afghanistan withdrawal that left U.S. citizens abandoned and stranded allies behind Taliban lines. Fox News host Sean Hannity told viewers Tuesday.
“We are now day ten of Americans held hostage, trapped behind enemy lines — and clearly President Biden is letting the Taliban call all the shots,” Hannity said at the top of the latest edition of “Hannity.”
“Your commander-in-chief has now humiliated this entire country and is being bullied into submission by the terrorists, the Taliban,” the host continued. “He will not commit to keeping U.S. forces past the Taliban’s Aug. 31 deadline. He will not commit to ensuring the rescue of all of our citizens and our Afghan partners that we promised we would get out if this day ever came.”
By agreeing to the Aug. 31 evacuation date demanded by the Taliban, Biden has essentially “signed the death certificate of every Afghan that has helped the U.S. in the last 20 years,” Hannity said.”Apparently, they [Taliban] even have access to computer data so that these people will be hunted down, they will be murdered, their families will be murdered. Joe seemed to care less,” Hannity asserted.
He continued, “Women and children have been gassed, they’ve been whipped and stabbed. Many evacuees have been forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars to hire private military contractors to escort them to the airport.”
With Biden poll numbers plunging, Democrats worry Afghan exit may impact next year’s elections
Biden at 41% approval, 55% disapproval in new national poll
Fox – The distressing images out of Afghanistan appear to be having an instant political impact.
President Biden has been facing a barrage of bipartisan criticism for over a week-and-a-half for his handling of the hastily organized evacuation efforts, where U.S. forces are rushing to rescue as many Americans and allied civilians as quickly as possible following the lighting fast takeover of the capital city of Kabul by repressive Taliban forces. The president’s being accused by both Republicans and some Democrats for underestimating the Taliban and overestimating the strength of the now collapsed U.S. backed Afghan government and military.
Amid the crisis in Kabul, the president’s approval rating is plunging, according to two new public opinion surveys released on Tuesday.
Biden’s numbers stand at 41% approval and 55% disapproval in a new USA Today/Suffolk University national poll. That’s a dramatic drop for a president whose approval rating, until a week and a half ago, had averaged in the low to mid 50s since taking over in the White House in late January. While Democrats are sticking with the president – 87% give him a thumbs up on the job he’s doing – his approval among independents stood at just 32%.
It’s a similar story in a key general election battleground state.
Biden’s numbers dropped from 50% approval-49% disapproval last month to 44%-54% now, according to a University of New Hampshire survey released on Tuesday. A contributing factor appears to be Afghanistan – Biden’s 48%-46% approval on foreign policy last month in the Granite State poll plummeted to 36%-60% in August.
It’s not just Afghanistan that’s troubling Americans. Amid rising inflation and a spike in COVID cases due the highly contagious delta variant, an NBC News poll released on Sunday indicated president’s approval rating on combating the coronavirus pandemic dropped from 69% in April to 53% earlier this month. And Biden stood at 47%-49% on handling the economy, down from 52%-43% in April.
“President Biden’s overall approval has taken a turn for the worse due to his awful job performance rating on Afghanistan,” Suffolk Political Research Center director David Paleologos highlighted. “His approval on immigration and the economy are also upside down. The only issue keeping him remotely in the game is his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, where he is barely at 50%.”
Israeli leader to meet with Biden as tensions grow in Middle East
Al Jazeera – Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s meeting with President Joe Biden comes as tensions rise with its regional arch enemy, Iran, and as Israel renews its bombardment of the besieged Gaza Strip amid Palestinian protests.
Bennett, in his first state visit overseas since taking office, was scheduled on Wednesday to meet with senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and on Thursday with Biden.
After deal with moderates, House Democrats move forward on $3.5 trillion budget
Yahoo News – The House moved forward on a $3.5 trillion budget plan Tuesday, as the Democratic leadership tries to keep its members united around President Biden’s agenda.
The 220-212 vote was delayed after a group of 10 moderate Democrats said they would not vote yes on the budget until House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure deal that passed the Senate earlier this month. After negotiations, Pelosi said she was committed to passing the bipartisan deal by Sept. 27. Every House Democrat voted in favor of the bill, including the holdouts.
The bipartisan deal, negotiated by moderates in the Senate, contains about $550 billion in new money to spend on roads, bridges, waterways, public transit, railways, the power grid and broadband internet. Lawmakers from the progressive wing of the party have cited its lack of provisions related to climate, many of which are contained in the larger budget deal.
Supreme Court reinstates Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy
The court’s three liberal justices opposed the move
Fox – The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a court order requiring the Biden administration to reinstate a Trump-era immigration move known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy.
The policy, implemented by former President Donald Trump, requires asylum seekers at the southern border to stay in Mexico while they await hearings in U.S. courtrooms to determine their eligibility and status.
Three of the court’s more liberal justices – Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer – would have accepted the application for a stay.
The Department of Homeland Security released a statement disagreeing with the ruling.
“The Department of Homeland Security respectfully disagrees with the district court’s decision and regrets that the Supreme Court declined to issue a stay,” the statement said. “DHS has appealed the district court’s order and will continue to vigorously challenge it. As the appeal process continues, however, DHS will comply with the order in good faith. Alongside interagency partners, DHS has begun to engage with the Government of Mexico in diplomatic discussions surrounding the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).”
The statement continued: “DHS remains committed to building a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system that upholds our laws and values. DHS continues to process individuals in accordance with U.S. law and our mission. Pursuant to the CDC’s Title 42 public health order, DHS continues to expel single adults and families encountered at the Southwest Border.”
A federal judge in Texas had previously ordered that the program be reinstated last week. Both he and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused the administration’s request to put the order on hold.
California Wildfires: Lake Tahoe surrounded by thick, apocalyptic layer of smoke as highway closes, resorts shut down
California News Times – South Lake Tahoe, CA (KGO)-Air quality in the Lake Tahoe area is currently at dangerous levels as firefighters fight nearby Caldor Fire As of Tuesday morning, it has grown to over 117,000 acres.
The fire is burning southwest of Lake Tahoe in the El Dorado National Forest. The fire is only 9% contained, threatening more than 17,000 acres around the lake.
The video shared with ABC7 shows the heavy smoke and bright orange sun above Lake Tahoe.
The area is submerged in gray smoke and a hazy sky, and drivers on the road are barely looking at the pavement in front of them.
According to airnow.gov, South Lake Tahoe has an air quality index of 349, which is considered “dangerous”. The air quality index ranges from 0 to 500.
More than 270 homes were destroyed in central Tennessee as flash flooding killed 18, officials say
CNN – More than 270 homes in central Tennessee were destroyed in deadly flooding that killed 18 people and left three still unaccounted for days later, officials said Tuesday.
A damage assessment conducted in Humphreys County showed 271 homes were destroyed by Saturday’s flooding, according to a news release from the county’s emergency management agency. Another 160 homes had major damage, and 28 had minor damage.
Middle Tennessee was smacked with heavy rain Saturday, leading to devastating flash flooding that ripped homes from their foundations and sent residents scrambling as it washed through communities. Up to 15 inches of rain fell over a six-hour period, officials said.
China slams US ‘scapegoating’ before COVID origin report release
China decries the US ‘politicisation’ of efforts to trace the origin of the virus ahead of the release of a US intelligence report.
Al Jazeera – China has criticised the “politicisation” by the United States of efforts to trace the origin of the coronavirus, demanding a US military laboratory be investigated, shortly before the release of a US intelligence community report on the virus.
The US report is intended to resolve disputes among intelligence agencies considering different theories about how the coronavirus emerged, including a once-dismissed theory about a Chinese laboratory accident.
“Scapegoating China cannot whitewash the US,” Fu Cong, director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ arms control department, told a news briefing on Wednesday.
The US report was due to be completed by a Tuesday deadline but it would take a few days to prepare an unclassified version for public release, the White House press secretary said this week.
Largest US Food Distributor Having Trouble Keeping Shelves Stocked; Price Shock Imminent
ZeroHedge – One of the defining features of the early phases of the covid pandemic, when public fear was rampant and when few wanted to take chances that supply chains would remain viable, is that for a brief period US supermarkets resembled those of the USSR circa the late 1980s: many items were in short supply, and some – notably toilet paper, clorox, and perishables such as milk – were out of stock for weeks.
Fast forward to today when fears about the Delta strain are being fanned by the liberal media, the US may be facing a similar shortage of key products… only this time for a very different reason: not a surge in demand, but rather a drop in supply.
According to Bloomberg, some of the largest U.S. food distributors are “reporting difficulties in fulfilling orders as a lack of workers weighs on the supply chain.” Take distribution giant Sysco, North America’s largest wholesale food distributor, which is turning away customers in some areas where demand is exceeding capacity.
Worse, food inflation is about to soar: the company said prices for key goods such as chicken, pork and paper products for takeout packaging are climbing amid tight supplies. In particular, production has slowed for high-demand, labor-intensive cuts like bacon, ribs, wings and tenders, Sysco said. And if intermediate and final wholesale prices are “rising”, just wait until they emerge on the consumer side.
The culprit for the coming price shock? Biden’s catastrophic stimmies and universal basic income which has unleashed havoc on the US job market and led to historic labor shortages:
“There are certain areas across the country that are more challenged by the labor shortage and our volume of orders is regularly exceeding our capacity,” Sysco Chief Executive Officer Kevin Hourican said in a letter to clients earlier this month. “This has, unfortunately, led to service disruptions for some of our customers.”
Hourican’s troubling observations were confirmed by an analysis from DecaData, which tracks retailer transactions with shoppers and manufacturers; it showed that retailers are bumping up against manufacturer capacity as they stockpile ahead of the holiday season. In July, the incidence of suppliers limiting or putting a cap on orders from customers was more than double what it was in January, its data show.
Another major distributor, United Natural Foods is having trouble getting food to stores on time. The company blamed not just labor shortages, but also delays in the procurement of some imported goods like cheese, coconut water and spices, as causing the problems.
“We anticipate additional supplier challenges in the short term with gradual improvement through the fall and winter,” a United Natural Foods representative said. The company’s top priority is to support customers “by working diligently to recover and bring their shelves back to normal inventory levels as quickly as possible.”
Translation: it’s about to get bad as the double whammy of insufficient workers and snarled supply chains leads to shortages of key perishables and, logically, must higher prices.
Delta to charge unvaccinated employees more for insurance
CNN – Delta Air Lines is putting a new deadline on unvaccinated employees that will require them to take weekly Covid tests and, depending on their insurance, pay a $200 per month surcharge.
Delta (DAL) CEO Ed Bastian made the announcement in a company-wide memo, which the company shared with CNN. The airline says may of its employees are already vaccinated, but it has room for improvement.
“While we can be proud of our 75% vaccination rate, the aggressiveness of the variant means we need to get many more of our people vaccinated, and as close to 100% as possible,” said Bastian.
Webcams, Baby Monitors, and More: Flaw on 83 Million Devices Allows Hackers to Eavesdrop and Take Over Devices
Threat Post – A remote attacker could exploit a critical vulnerability to eavesdrop on live audio & video or take control. The bug is in ThroughTek’s Kalay network, used in 83m devices.
Security researchers have discovered a critical flaw that affects tens of millions of internet-of-things (IoT) devices – one that exposes live video and audio streams to eavesdropping threat actors and which could enable attackers to take over control of devices, including security webcams and connected baby monitors.
The flaw, tracked as CVE-2021-28372 and FEYE-2021-0020 and assigned a critical CVSS3.1 base score of 9.6, was found in devices connected via ThroughTek’s Kalay IoT cloud platform.
The alarm was sounded on Tuesday by Mandiant, in coordination with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and ThroughTek. Mandiant’s Red Team discovered the vulnerability in late 2020.
“CVE-2021-28372 poses a huge risk to an end user’s security and privacy and should be mitigated appropriately,” according to Mandiant’s post. “Unprotected devices, such as IoT cameras, can be compromised remotely with access to a UID and further attacks are possible depending on the functionality exposed by a device.”
The world has already been inundated with tales of what can happen when these kind of devices are misconfigured or riddled with vulnerabilities, and this just adds to the growing pile of scary headlines. For example, in February, a vulnerability affecting multiple baby monitors was found to expose hundreds of thousands of live devices, potentially allowing someone to drop in and view a camera’s video stream.
As Mandiant explained, the flaw would enable adversaries “to remotely compromise victim IoT devices, resulting in the ability to listen to live audio, watch real time video data, and compromise device credentials for further attacks based on exposed device functionality. These further attacks could include actions that would allow an adversary to remotely control affected devices.”
As They Ban People for Citing Pfizer’s Own Data, Judge Finds Twitter Profited from Child Porn
Free Thought Project – Late last month, Alex Berenson, a prominent skeptic of the government’s response to COVID-19, was unceremoniously banned from Twitter for a week. His crime? He cited Pfizer’s own clinical trial data.
“Blocked again, for a week this time,” Berenson said on his Substack. “For this tweet, which is completely accurate and does nothing but quote PFIZER’S OWN CLINICAL TRIAL DATA.”
After pulling the misleading tag, Berenson was banned and given no means of recourse.
Sadly, Berenson is not alone in his struggle to apply critical thought to the current tyrannical and outright unscientific madness unfolding in front of our eyes. In the last few months, TFTP has been shadow banned and have watched in real time as our organic reach dwindles to almost nothing. The big tech censors are actively snubbing out those who don’t line up to unquestioningly accept everything the mainstream media and the government tell us.
In the meantime, the social media giants Twitter and Facebook remain unfazed as they keep their insidious relationships with the US government thriving. While banning those who question the status quo, Twitter is alleged in a lawsuit to have victimized children by knowingly allowing a video of them to go viral.
The victims are suing the platform alleging that it benefited financially by failing to remove the video featuring the children — which was retweeted thousands of times and garnered nearly 200,000 views.
To be clear, this was not a mistake that simply didn’t pick up on the nature of the content. The boy and his mother, according to the lawsuit, repeatedly contacted Twitter about the content, but the social media giant allegedly didn’t suspend accounts distributing it until a federal agent from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intervened.
In fact, according to the lawsuit, Twitter even responded to the boy and his mother via email and said the child porn did not violate its policies. According to the suit, an email shows Twitter telling John Doe on Jan. 28, 2020, that it “reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time.”
“What do you mean you don’t see a problem?” the minor asks in a response that same day. “We both are minors right now and were minors at the time these videos were taken. We both were 13 years of age.”
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, The Haba Law Firm PA, and the Matiasic Firm PC represent the plaintiffs. Cooley LLP represents Twitter.
The case is Doe v. Twitter, Inc., 2021 BL 313988, N.D. Cal., No. 21-cv-00485, 8/19/21.
Twitter has not confirmed any details about the incident. But the attorney representing the family says the video going viral — despite the heavy-handed censorship on the platform — shows that they are more concerned with censoring political speech than protecting children
Health chiefs recall batch of diabetes medicine Metformin after cancer-causing chemical find
Mail Online – A batch of a common diabetes medicine has been recalled after it was found to contain a chemical that causes cancer.
Pharmacies stocking the affected drug — an oral solution known as metformin — were told to pull it after finding ‘unacceptable’ levels of nitrosodimethylamine.
The chemical, shortened to NDMA, is a known carcinogen once used in the commercial production of rocket fuel.
But this use was stopped after unusually high levels of the compound were found in air, water and soil samples collected near manufacturing plants.
Britain’s medical watchdog said the move was purely precautionary and there was no proof it has caused any harm to patients.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency urged Brits not to stop taking the drug without consulting a GP because suddenly stopping is risky.
Officials said the affected batch contained 10,000 150ml bottles of generic metformin hydrochloride that were first distributed in December.
About 20million prescriptions are written for metformin every year, most commonly in tablet form.
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