Enduring Terror Forever: From Al-Qaeda to ISIS-K

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker and first posted at AsiaTimes (emphasis ours),

It was 20 years ago today. Asia Times published Get Osama! Now! Or Else…The rest is history.

Retrospectively, this sounds like news from another galaxy. Before Planet 9/11. Before GWOT (Global War on Terror). Before the Forever Wars. Before the social network era. Before the Russia-China strategic partnership. Before the Dronification of State Violence. Before techno-feudalism.

Allow me to get a little personal. I was back in Peshawar – the Islamic Rome, capital of the tribal areas – 20 years ago after a dizzying loop around Pakistan, tribal territory, a botched smuggling op to Kunar, biding time in Tajikistan, arriving by Soviet helicopter in the Panjshir valley, a harrowing road trip to Faizabad, and a UN flight that took ages to arrive.

In the Panjshir, I had finally met “the Lion”, commander Masoud, then plotting a counter-offensive against the Taliban. He told me he was fighting a triad: the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the Pakistani ISI. Less than three weeks later he was assassinated – by two al-Qaeda ops disguised as a camera crew, two days before 9/11.

No one, 20 years ago, could possibly imagine the subsequent slings and arrows of outrageous – terror – fortune. Two decades, $2.3 trillion and at least 240,000 Afghan deaths later, the Taliban are back where they were: ruling Afghanistan. Masoud Jr in theory leads a “resistance” in the Panjshir – actually a CIA ops channeled through CIA asset Amrullah Saleh, former Afghan Vice-President.

Al-Qaeda is a harmless skeleton, even rehabilitated in Syria as “moderate rebels; the new bogeyman in town is ISIS-K, a spin-off of the Islamic State in “Syraq”.

After negotiating a stunning package deal with the Taliban, the Empire of Chaos is concluding a humiliating evacuation from the land it bombed into democracy and submitted for two decades. Once again the US was de facto expelled by a peasant guerrilla army, this time mostly consisting of Pashtuns, descendants of the White Huns – a nomad confederation – as well as the Sakas, nomadic Iranic peoples of the Eurasian steppes.

The CIA shadow army

ISIS-K, the new viper’s nest, opens multiple Pandora boxes that may lead to the new incarnation of the Forever Wars. ISIS-K has claimed responsibility for the horrific Kabul suicide bombing.

ISIS-K is apparently led by one ghostly emir Shahab al-Mujahir (no photo, no biography details), supposed to be an urban warfare expert who previously worked as a mere mid-level commander for the Haqqani network.

In 2020 media-savvy ISIS-K released one of his audio messages in Pashto. Yet he may not be Pashtun, but actually from some latitude in the Middle East, and not fluent in the language.

Even CENTCOM commander Gen Mackenzie has admitted that the US military are sharing intel on ISIS-K with the Taliban – or rather vice-versa: Taliban spokesman Zahibullah Mujahid in Kabul stressed that they warned the Americans in the first place about an imminent threat to the airport.

The Pentagon-Taliban collaboration is by now established. The perennial CIA shadow wars are a completely different ball game.

I have shown in this in-depth investigation how the top priority for the Taliban is to target the ramifications of the CIA shadow army in Afghanistan, deployed via the Khost Protection Force (KPF) and inside the National Directorate of Security (NDS).

The CIA army, as I explain, was a two-headed hydra. Older units harked back to 2001 and were very close to the CIA. The most powerful was the KPF, based at the CIA’s Camp Chapman in Khost, which operated totally outside Afghan law, not to mention budget.

The other head of the hydra were the NDS’s own Afghan Special Forces: four main units, each operating in its own regional area. The NDS was funded by the CIA and for all practical purposes, operatives were trained and weaponized by the CIA.

So the NDS was a de facto CIA proxy. And here we have the direct connection to Saleh, who was trained by the CIA in the US when the Taliban was in power in the late 1990s. Afterwards, Saleh became the head of the NDS – which happened to work very closely with RAW, Indian intel. Now he’s a “resistance leader” in the Panjshir.

My investigation was confirmed right away by the deployment of Task Force Pineapple last week, an operation carried out by CIA/Special Forces to extract the last sensitive intel assets from Kabul who were being chased by the Taliban.

In parallel, serious questions are piling up regarding the Kabul suicide bombing and the immediate MQ-9 Reaper response targeting an “ISIS-K planner” in eastern Afghanistan.

This page has been carefully tracking prime information regarding what could be described as the Abbey Gate Massacre, not surprisingly buried by Western mainstream media.

The You Tube channel Kabul Lovers, for instance, is engaging in street-level journalism that puts to shame every multi-million dollar TV network. A military officer who examined the bodies of many of the bombing victims at Kabul Emergency Hospital claimed that most were not victims of the suicide bombing: “All victims were killed by American bullets, except maybe 20 people out of 100.” The full, original report, in Dari, is here.

Scott Ritter, for his part, has emphasized the need of “perspective” on the claimed drone strike against ISIS-K “from an actual drone expert like Daniel Hale, but they put him in jail for telling the truth about how bad our drone program actually is when it comes to killing the right people.”

By now it’s established that contrary to Pentagon claims, the drone strike hit a random house in Jalalabad, not a moving vehicle, and there was “collateral damage”: at least 3 civilians.

And the civilian death toll of a subsequent missile strike on another alleged “ISIS-K planner” in a car in Kabul is already at 9 – including 6 children.

The Syria-Afghanistan rat line

The much-lauded Pentagon offensive against ISIS in “Syraq” has been derided all across the Axis of Resistance as a massive farce.

Over the years, we have had exposés coming from Moscow; Tehran; Damascus; Hezbollah; and some of the People’s Mobilization Units (PMUs) in Iraq.

Hezbollah’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly asserted how “the US have been using helicopters to save ISIS terrorists from complete annihilation in Iraq/Syria and transporting them to Afghanistan to keep them as insurgents in Central Asia against Russia, China and Iran.”

The extremely well informed Russian Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, has pointed out that Russia had received the same information from local tribal leaders. Even former President Hamid Karzai – now a key negotiator forming the next Taliban-led government in Kabul – has branded ISIS-K a “tool” of the United States.

It’s important to remember that ISIS-K has become much more powerful in Afghanistan since 2020 because of what I describe as a shadowy transportation ratline from Idlib in Syria to Kunar and Nangarhar in eastern Afghanistan.

Of course there is no smoking gun – yet: but what we do have is a serious working hypothesis that ISIS-K may be just another CIA shadow army, in collaboration with the NDS.

All that, if confirmed, would point to a dark future: the continuation of the Forever Wars by other means – and tactics. Yet never underestimate the counter-power of those no-nonsense descendants of White Huns and Sakas.

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Enduring Terror Forever: From Al-Qaeda to ISIS-K

China Ramped Up Cyberattacks On Australia After Prime Minister Morrison Asked For Investigation Into Covid

In case there was any doubt that new waves of hackers wreaking havoc around the world are often working in China's best interest, look no further than Australia.

After the country's relationship with China recently soured, it suffered from "wave after wave" of cyberattack, according to a new Bloomberg report.

The incidents started in April 2020 when Chinese bots "swarmed" Australian government networks after Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an independent investigation into Covid's origins. The bots undertook a "massive and noisy attack" with little attempt to hide what they were doing. 

“It was just a door knock, like someone walking up and ringing your doorbell,” said Robert Potter, chief executive officer of Internet 2.0, an Australian cybersecurity firm.

Following Morrison's call, Australia dealt with "months of active hacks" at places like the parliamentary email network, the Bureau of Meteorology and the departments of defense and health.

Beijing denied involvement but experts tracked much of the activity to "systems used by China-based advanced persistent threat groups", Bloomberg reported.

Potter continued: “China’s cyber reach is detectable on almost every government server. It isn’t subtle and it increases and decreases in a way that correlates to our overall relationship.” 

The campaign against Australia was one of the largest seen across the world over the last year, despite ubiquitous hacks, cracks and ransomware attacks that took place globally over the last 12 to 18 months.

It prompted Australia to announce in June 2020 that a “state-based cyber actor” was “targeting Australian organizations across a range of sectors, including all levels of government, industry,” the report says.

“There are not a large number of state-based actors that can engage in this type of activity,” Morrison said, alluding to China. China, of course, denied the allegations, stating: “Australian government and media have wrongly accused China of hacking many times before based on insufficient evidence.”

Australia’s director-general of security, Mike Burgess, didn't seem too keen on placing blame on China, stating of the espionage. "we all do it".

He said on Sky News back in March: “If I’m pointing my finger at you accusing you of espionage, I’ve got three fingers pointing back at me. Sometimes, though, it is right that governments do it because someone’s overstepped a line — it’s not just the theft of a military secret, it’s something else more offensive to our nation or damaging to our nation. And that’s the judgement governments are best placed to make.”

Meanwhile, China has accused Australia of pandering to Washington, and has quietly started to threaten Australia with the $16 billion in revenue it brought to the continent in 2019. 

Ambassador Cheng Jingye said: “It is up to the people to decide. Maybe the ordinary people will say “Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?”

Hugh White, a former intelligence official who is now an emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, told Bloomberg: “China’s treatment of Australia has been distinctive if not unique. I haven’t been able to identify another country that had pressure placed on it over such a broad range of areas.”

White continued: “The Chinese have been eager to look for the opportunity to show the rest of Asia what’s at stake as they make their decisions about how they position themselves in relation to the US and China. Australia is the perfect victim for that.”

You can read Bloomberg's full report here. 

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China Ramped Up Cyberattacks On Australia After Prime Minister Morrison Asked For Investigation Into Covid

Taliban Says Kabul Airport To Resume Operation Within Days

The Taliban has announced it plans to have Kabul's international airport up and running again within a mere "days". This just as Washington has formally declared its 20-year long war and occupation "over". 

Senior Taliban leader Anas Haqqani told Al Jazeera at around the same time that the last American military plane departed Hamid Karzai International Airport overnight that "We are ready to resume the airport’s operation. We will do it within days."

Source: AFP/Getty Images

In the statements he also called the US forces exit from the country a "great" event and said it was a "historical" day. 

Immediately after the last US military transport plane departed, Taliban fighters could be seen walking around and inspecting hangars where American Chinook helicopters were left behind, though US officials were widely cited as saying they and other aircraft left at Kabul airport had been "disabled" before the US departed.

The Taliban were seen celebrating into the night while flaunting American military uniforms and gear and posing for photographs.

The Taliban fighters celebrated their victory by raising their gloved fists and American weapons in the air, chanting "Takbir" and "Zendabar."

20 years of American occupation in Afghanistan reached the end of a chapter. https://t.co/BmS2T6rAI7 pic.twitter.com/wSEMDWR0ro

— Marcus Yam 文火 (@yamphoto) August 31, 2021

Additionally, Haqqani told Al Jazeera that "The government will take shape in the following few days." The report said further:

In a tweet following the US withdrawal, Haqqani said that "we made history again. The 20-year occupation of Afghanistan by the United States and NATO ended tonight."

Haqqani had told Al Jazeera in an earlier interview that the overall aims of the new government will be "to maintain and be faithful to what we are fighting for. To serve the Afghan people and to serve Islam".

#Afghan Air force planes, including A29 Super Tucanos and MD 530s helicopters. Some of the #Taliban's haul after #US withdrawal. Many seem to have been disabled. pic.twitter.com/aqV31dKX7v

— Nabih (@nabihbulos) August 31, 2021

"We have covered about 90 to 95 percent and we will announce the final outcome in the following few days," he said of the new Taliban rule, though noted it remains too early to name who will be part of the cabinet.

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Taliban Says Kabul Airport To Resume Operation Within Days

China Divorce From Capitalism Steals Joy From Stocks

By Garfield Reynolds, Bloomberg Markets Live commentator

Investors want to move past the turmoil caused by China’s crackdowns. But doing so risks overlooking the profound shift as Xi Jinping’s government makes a decisive turn away from free markets, radically altering the dynamics in the coming decade, particularly for equities.

I warned before that China would be a big source of disruptions for investors this year, and that has certainly been the case. There are likely some fund managers left bruised after regulatory storms helped wipe out their investments in particular sectors or companies -- New Oriental Education is now a $3 billion company instead of a $33 billion one, for example.

However, focusing on particular pain points obscures the real dangers because it makes it all too easy for investors to shrug and move on to trying to find winners and losers.

China’s market capitalization just reached a record high above $12 trillion. So what, if the Shanghai Composite and the CSI 300 indexes are still well below their February price peaks? Value has not so much been destroyed as shifted, would be one view. So go out and chase it even if that means poring over all manner of old Communist Party speeches or seeking out new corners of the internet where prophets can offer a guide to where profits can be made.

The problems with that sort of approach are two-fold. First, it downplays the constant refrains that put profits at odds with the needs of Chinese society -- or as Li Guangman Ice Point Commentary put it -- “a transformation from capital-centered to people-centered.” Clearly, China’s authorities will pay no mind to any losses inflicted on investors, especially foreign ones.

Secondly, this “profound revolution” signals China’s move to play an ever-greater part in the global economy could reverse. That’s an even greater danger for the more gradual increase in its financial markets role, which had been built around expectations a state still run by the Communist Party would move relentlessly to integrate with the reigning capitalist consensus.

The evaporation of those assumptions creates a far more volatile outlook for economies and markets. There are already signs that China’s economic rebound is wilting because of both the crackdowns and the virus.

Rewarding innovative companies by suddenly telling them they are too profitable, or that they have been running their businesses all wrong, won’t result in a stronger economy. Propagating opinion pieces that inveigh against “sissy stars” and the worshipers of the West could also limit creativity and crimp growth.

It is also possible China’s economy ends up stronger than ever, or that its share and bond markets scale ever greater heights. Governments all around the globe are playing a larger role in economies and markets, and a hefty dose of authoritarianism would be one way to accelerate efforts to reduce carbon emissions, for example.

Investors may be setting themselves up for more pain if they switch to traditional dip-buying mode for Chinese assets in particular and EM equities in general. More broadly, expect slower global growth, a much rougher ride for risk assets, and increased volatility that will hurt many passive-investment ETF strategies.

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China Divorce From Capitalism Steals Joy From Stocks

China's "Lehman Moment" Approaching: Evergrande Warns Of Default Risk From Cash Crunch

When even George Soros cautions that China is about to face a major financial crisis, writing in an FT op-ed that China's property boom is coming to an end, and that Evergrande - the largest real estate company which it over $300 billion in debt has been quietly dubbed China's Lehman - "is over-indebted and in danger of default. This could cause a crash."

But it's not just Soros - overnight, the company itself, whose plight we have chronicled for the past 12 months while others have only recently woken up to its threat - warned that it risks defaulting on borrowings if its all-out effort to raise cash falls short, rattling bond investors in the world’s most indebted developer.

“The group has risks of defaults on borrowings and cases of litigation outside of its normal course of business,” the Shenzhen-based company said in an earnings statement on Tuesday. “Shareholders and potential investors are advised to exercise caution when dealing in the securities of the group.”

As previously reported, the cash-crunched company said it was exploring the sale of interests in its listed electric vehicle and property services units, as well as other assets, and seeking to bring in new investors and renew borrowings. But sharp discounts to swiftly offload apartments at a loss - the developer plans to sell its Hong Kong office tower HQ to Yuexiu Property Co. for just HK$10.5 billion ($1.3 billion), a third less than the HK$15.6 billion it sought - cut into margins, helping push net income down 29% to 10.5 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) in the first half of the year, in line with an earlier profit warning.

With Beijing refusing to come to the company's assistance (unlike the recent bailout of bad debt giant Huarong which two weeks ago finally got a state rescue after months of speculation as to its fate) Evergrande’s bonds sank toward fresh lows as investor confidence in its ability to repay debts has continued to erode.

“Evergrande’s gross margin could compress further on the potential fire sale of its properties,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Lisa Zhou. The gauge of profitability is the lowest among major developers tracked by BI due to aggressive promotions and price cuts, Zhou wrote in a note.

And in another blow to the imploding real-estate conglomerate, even long-term allies are signaling they’ve had enough. Chan Hoi-wan, chief executive officer of Chinese Estates Holdings Ltd. and wife of Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau, made her first sale of Evergrande shares, cutting her holdings to 8.96% from 9.01%, a filing showed.

Evergrande’s 8.75% note due 2025 fell 1.5 cents on the dollar to 33.7 cents, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. Its shares earlier closed 0.7% lower in Hong Kong trading, taking this year’s decline to 71%.

Adding to the confusion, company executives refrained from commenting on the results (perhaps in response to the recent urging from Beijing that the company should keep its mouth shut), leaving investors and analysts to parse through the statement for guidance on its financial health.

Revenue recognized from projects delivered plunged 17% to 222 billion yuan, the lowest for the same period in four years. Gross margin almost halved to 12.9% from six months earlier, the lowest since at least 2008.

More troubling is that Evergrande said some property development payables were overdue - i.e., in technical default - leading to the suspension of work on some projects, but it added that the company is negotiating with suppliers and construction contractors to resume the work.  “The group will do its utmost to continue its operations and endeavor to deliver properties to customers as scheduled,” it said.
For more details on the earnings, click here.

Additionally, while the company's borrowing fell, total liabilities that include bills owing to suppliers edged up to 1.97 trillion yuan, near a record high. Evergrande’s debt shrank to 572 billion yuan, the lowest in five years, according to Bloomberg calculations. That’s down 20% from 717 billion yuan at the end of last year and 15% from 674 billion yuan in March. But in what appears to just be a case of reshuffling liabilities, trade and other payables climbed 15% from six months earlier to a record 951.1 billion yuan.

Separately, the company still falls short on two of China’s so-called three red lines - metrics imposed by regulators on developers as part of a crackdown on leverage in the industry. It has pledged to meet all three by December 2022. One measure -- the ratio of cash to short-term borrowings, a gauge of liquidity -- worsened in the period to 36% from 47% at the end of last year, as its cash and equivalents plunged to the lowest in six years, Bloomberg calculations based on the results show.

With banks, suppliers and homebuyers exposed to the real estate giant, any collapse could roil China’s economy, raising questions over whether it might receive state support. Regulators urged Evergrande to resolve its debt woes in a rare public rebuke earlier this month. The problem - as is becoming obvious - is that Evergrande will not be able to resolve its "debt woes" without a bankruptcy or state bailout.

But will Beijing bail out the company if it realizes that there are no more options?

Addressing this question, UBS analyst Kamil Amin wrotes last week that "increased defaults coupled with above-average spread volatility in the Asia credit market throughout this year had led us to believe that the notion of "too big to fail" was diminishing. Instead, the Huarong rescue package illustrates to us that the notion does in fact still hold but be likely limited to higher quality SOE names, where spillover risks are much more profound."

Does Amin expect to see the same level for state support for Evergrande? "We are not yet convinced. Firstly, the issuer is a POE not an SOE and secondly, we expect the Chinese authorities to continue reigning in on excess leverage in the property sector and let defaults/restructurings drift higher. This view is consistent with the price action we have seen (Figure 2), with other higher quality SOE names across the financial sector having tightened post the Huarong news (China IG: -5bp), while China HY and Evergrande spreads have continued to trade >1150/5000bp."

Judging by the continued selling of both Evergrande bonds and stocks, consensus agrees. Yet when faced with the task of cleaning up after what would be a huge shock to the system - and at $300 billion, Evergrande is orders of magnitude bigger than Lehman ever was - will China blink, or will Soros be right?

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China's "Lehman Moment" Approaching: Evergrande Warns Of Default Risk From Cash Crunch

Taliban Move To Ban Opium Production, But Could It Majorly Backfire?

Via South Front (emphasis ours),

The Taliban have vowed to reduce Afghanistan’s opium trade, according to a report by the WSJ.

This is incredibly suspect, as the movement’s primary bankrolling comes from poppy growing and opium production.

The Islamic group’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid vowed to crack down on the production of narcotics, saying “nobody can be involved” in the heroin trade.

Taliban leaders have been telling farmers in the southern province of Kandahar to stop cultivating opium poppies, according to the WSJ report.

Farmers are unhappy but have no choice but to comply should the Taliban begin to enforce the ban, the outlet cites a Kandahar grower as saying.

“We can’t oppose the Taliban’s decision. They are the government,” said the farmer.

He added that the Taliban has assured people that they would have an “alternative crop,” such as saffron, to grow.

Saffron, however, is not nearly as lucrative as producing as producing narcotics.

The ban on a crop that has traditionally been a crucial part of the local economy has resulted in prices of raw opium skyrocketing across the country.

Local farmers in poppy-growing regions like Kandahar, Uruzgan, and Helman provinces said raw opium prices have tripled, from about $70 to about $200 per kilogram. In the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, the price of opium has doubled, according to locals.

The poppy-planting season is due start in about a month.

“If the Taliban prohibit the cultivation of poppy, people will die from starvation, especially when international aid stops. We still hope they will let us grow poppies. Nothing can compensate for the income we get from growing poppies,” a poppy farmer in the Chora district of Uruzgan was quoted as saying.

Afghanistan is the world’s leading producer of opium, with its share in the global market standing at over 80%.

Poppy cultivation offers the rural population in the war-torn country a much-needed lifeline. In 2017, annual opium production was valued at $1.4 billion, or 7.4 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, according to the UN.

The Taliban have used taxes on the drug business to bankroll they endeavors for a while. After seizing the country’s capital Kabul, the issue of the narcotics trade surfaced amid the Taliban’s new plans for governance.

“We are assuring our countrymen and women and the international community, we will not have any narcotics produced. From now on, nobody’s going to get involved (in the heroin trade), nobody can be involved in drug smuggling,” Taliban Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters in Kabul at an August 18^th press conference.

Before 2001, when the US invaded, Taliban had banned opium production. Production was down by 90%.

The Taliban eventually ceased to mete out punishment for cultivating drugs, cracking down only on use of drugs.

After 2001, during the two decades of deployment of Western forces in the country, the US spent some $9 billion in a crackdown on the drug trade. US efforts included paying farmers to destroy their poppies, funding Afghan eradication teams, and urging people to grow saffron, pistachios, or pomegranates instead.

This, however, pushed many of the local population to join the Taliban’s ranks.

The ban on the opium growing is a risky move, as the country is in an economic crisis, and a precarious one at that.

The US froze Afghanistan’s central bank assets and foreign aid, as well as the local currency – the afghani is reeling, on the brink of collapse.

Stopping the drug production and trade could be used as a bargaining chip to receive funds, and have resources released to be used by the Taliban government.

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Taliban Move To Ban Opium Production, But Could It Majorly Backfire?

US & Israel Working On 'Plan B' If Iran Nuclear Talks Fail

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the US and Israel are working to develop a "Plan B" for if the indirect negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal fail. According to The Times of Israel, Gantz warned if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it would trigger an "international arms race," a comment that ignores the fact that Israel already has a nuclear arsenal and is the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East.

"The United States and Israel share intelligence information, and the cooperation with the United States in this field is only getting stronger. We are working with them in order to establish a Plan B and to demonstrate that if there is no deal, other activities will begin, as President Biden said," Gantz said.

Naftali Bennett, via The Times of Israel

During a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Friday, President Biden said if diplomacy with Iran fails, he was ready to "turn to other options." Iran took Biden’s comment as an illegal threat.

Bennett presented Presented Biden with an Iran strategy described as a "death by a thousand cuts." Ahead of the meeting, Bennett told The New York Times that he would continue Israel’s covert attacks against Iran, which the US tacitly endorses by never condemning them.

The constant threats from Israel are part of the country’s strategy to sabotage a US return to the JCPOA. When the JCPOA talks began in April, Israel carried out an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. The attack led Tehran to increase some uranium enrichment to 60 percent, which is still lower than the 90 percent needed for weapons grade.

Israel uses Iran’s increase in enrichment as evidence Tehran is racing to develop a bomb when that is not the case. If Israel’s real concern was uranium enrichment, it would favor a JCPOA revival since the agreement restricts Iran’s enrichment levels to 3.67 percent.

NEW: Bennett went to Washington to recast his relationship with the Dems. But behind the smiles, #Israel's aim is to ensure the failure of the #Iran nuclear deal and to keep Joe Biden in check on Iran, Iraq, Syria, @DanielLarison writes in @TheCradleMedia https://t.co/rjnQYEgPoj

— Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) August 31, 2021

The JCPOA talks have been on hold since June 20th. Iran’s new President Ebrahim Raisi has signaled that he is ready to return to the negotiating table, but it’s not clear when the talks might resume.

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US & Israel Working On 'Plan B' If Iran Nuclear Talks Fail

China Insists The US "Pay Its Share" In Afghan Reconstruction While "Reflecting On Failure"

China is pledging support to the Taliban government now in charge of Afghanistan for reconstruction of the country, but is continuing to add insult to injury in the wake of the disastrous US evacuation and pullout from Kabul of the last two weeks.

"China has pledged to help reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan after American troops have completely withdrawn, but demands that Washington also pay its share," The South China Morning Post writes in a Tuesday report. China's foreign ministry went so far as to demand that Washington "reflect on its failure" after closing down its longest running war in history.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin issued scathing criticism during a press briefing Tuesday, saying the United States' starting the war in Afghanistan in the first place is ultimately "the reason for public livelihood and economic difficulty in the nation."

Via SCMP

"The US has to take up responsibility and cannot just leave the chaos behind," Wang emphasized. "The US has to work with the international community to provide economic and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, maintain the normal operations of the government, maintain social stability, stop the currency depreciation and inflation, and let Afghanistan go on the path of peace," he said.

Alternately he touted China's reconstruction efforts as part of a new 'peaceful start' for Afghanistan: "China will support the peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan on the basis of respecting the wishes and demands of Afghanistan." 

The stinging rebuke was laced with repeat comments on Washington's need to 'learn its lesson' in the failure of the Afghan war:

The US had to learn that military intervention would only lead to failure and that China supported the building up of an inclusive government in Afghanistan that cut off ties with terrorist forces, he added.

Meanwhile, China is already flexing its diplomatic muscles at the United Nations, given that on Monday the UN Security Council passed a resolution demanding the Taliban ensure safe passage for people wanting the leave Afghanistan, while at the same time allowing humanitarian groups to provide aid inside the country.

Monday's UN Security Council vote which saw China and Russia abstain...

Crucially China and Russia were the only countries that abstained, given that "the resolution failed to address terrorist organizations such as Islamic State and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which Beijing has blamed for attacks in Xinjiang."

The clear message was that the 'hypocritical' US cares neither about counter-terrorism nor humanitarian aid and thus backed the resolution merely as a face-saving ploy on the global stage - from Beijing's perspective at least.

Diplomatic jockeying over 'humanitarian motives' and counter-terror concerns aside, as we and others have been highlighting lately, the Taliban now controls colossal untapped mineral deposits, in particular what's likely the world's largest lithium deposits. This fact alone likely explains China's suddenly becoming "friendly" to the Taliban regime over the past weeks.

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China Insists The US "Pay Its Share" In Afghan Reconstruction While "Reflecting On Failure"

You Too Can Now Own A Fractional Share Of The Original Doge Meme NFT

With the retail daytrading army abandoning meme stonks - as small, retail trades of 1-10 options now account for just 18.3% of total volumes, the lowest since April-2020...

... and turning their attention to NFTs, where volumes have gone absolutely batshit insane in the month of August surpassing the initial peak craze from March by orders of magnitude...

... and where Elon Musk's favorite market manipulation joke of a cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, still has a whopping $36 billion market cap, it was only a matter of time before someone read what we wrote back in March..

Since NFTs are potentially the biggest securitization scheme in history (every asset is eligible, that's $500 trillion), how long until Goldman launches Collateralized NFT Obligations

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 6, 2021

... and put all of the above together, with the following result: you, too, can now own a piece of the original Doge meme - that sold as a non-fungible token for 1,696.9 ethers, or about $4 million in June...

... by purchasing a fractional ownership of the NFT in the form of $DOG tokens that will be available for sale on Wednesday.

In other words, while until now only the securitization itself (i.e., the NFT) was sold and/or resold, starting tomorrow the enterprising owner, PleasrDAO, of the original infamous Shiba Inu image that graces every digital "joke" Dogecoin token, will sell fractional ownership shares to it in the form of sub-tokens which anyone can buy starting tomorrow.

Given the memetic characteristics -  a securitization of a securitization of a joke of a token - sub-$1 price and vocal fan base, Bloomberg believes that the opportunity is likely to attract the attention of retail investors.

As Bloomberg explains, the process will work with Fractional.art first “fractionalizing” the NFT before it goes to a “batch auction” sale on Miso - a decentralized-finance protocol - which will then distribute fractional NFT $DOG tokens (not to be confused with actual $DOGE tokens, or Dogecoins) to participants. After that, the a decentralized Sushiswap exchange will allow the tokens to be bought and sold separate from $DOGE, or Dogecoin.

Naturally, PleasrDAO - a collective of DeFi leaders, early NFT collectors and digital artists - will retain majority ownership so it can cash out at some astronomical price if enough idiots launder money bid up the value of the NFT to some ridiculous number.

“Doge is unquestionably the king of all memes, and PleasrDAO could not be more excited to invite anyone in the world to own a piece of something so integral to the cultural history of the internet,” said Jamis Johnson, chief pleasing officer of PleasrDAO, in an email.

“The future is bright for communities built around the shared possession of an idea and we believe fractionalized Doge, the Mona Lisa of the internet, will be a shining example of this odd new world we live in.”

Think of it as hypercubic financial engineering for the Gen-z-eration.

Which means that the question now is this - can we reach the patently absurd state where given enough demand for $DOG, the fractional ownership token of the Doge meme, the value of the NFT that is at the heart of the original Dogecoin meme "joke" token (which even according to its creators should be worthless but clearly isn't) is higher than the market cap of all Dogecoins in circulation?

With said market cap just above $36 billion, the insanity in the market would have to be especially acute for this to happen, but with those idiots in the Marriner Eccles building still injecting $120BN per month and then draining them right back in via their Reverse Repo facility as the entire market has become one giant, multi-trillion monetary circle-jerk, that probably means that within a week, we will have a new batch of teenage millionaires who bought a tiny claim of a jpeg of a dog for under a dollar, and who can now retire.

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You Too Can Now Own A Fractional Share Of The Original Doge Meme NFT

California Port Pileup Shatters Record And Imports Still Haven’t Peaked

By Greg Miller of FreightWaves

From anchorage stats to forward arrivals, ocean bookings, and inventory-to-sales numbers, all the latest data paints the same picture: The U.S. congestion crisis has never been more severe than it is now — and it’s getting worse.

Hope for any relief this year has vanished. French carrier CMA CGM is the latest in a long line of market participants to push back its timeline on normalization. Capacity constraints “are expected to continue until the first half of 2022,” CMA CGM warned on Friday.

Alarmingly, America’s import system — which is already stretched to the limit — looks like it will have to handle even higher volumes next month.  The likely outcome: Carriers will be forced to cancel more sailings as terminal berths max out and ships get stuck at anchor, even more cargo will get “rolled” (pushed to a future sailing), and importers will face even longer delays and even less slot availability as they scramble to build inventories for holiday sales.

More ships stuck at anchor than ever before

According to the Marine Exchange of Southern California, there were 47 container ships at anchor or drifting off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Sunday, a new all-time high. The earlier high of 40 at anchor was set on Feb. 1 and matched several times last week. The tally rose to 44 on Friday and stood at 46 on Monday.

Pre-COVID, an average of 16 container ships were at berths or at anchor on any given day (with any ships at anchor being a rare occurrence). On Sunday, there were 76 box ships either at berths, at anchor or drifting — 4.8 times the pre-COVID level.

(Chart data: American Shipper based on data from Marine Exchange of Southern California. Data bi-monthly Jan 2019-Nov 2020; daily Dec 2020-present)

There are now almost 60% more container ships at anchor than at berth. The Marine Exchange data shows that Los Angeles/Long Beach terminals accommodated an average of 28 ships each day this month. All the rest is overflow that heads to the so-called “parking lot” in San Pedro Bay.

Automatic identification system (AIS) ship-positioning data from MarineTraffic revealed extreme congestion in Southern California on Monday, with more than a half-dozen ships forced to drift because anchorage spots were full.

Container-ship positions as of Monday afternoon (Map: MarineTraffic)

Even higher volumes on the way

“The expected spike in imports generated by the peak season and pre-shipped cargo is already here, making the operation more complex,” said Hapag-Lloyd on Friday, referring to congestion in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Hapag-Lloyd said that it does not expect California anchorages to clear in 2021.

The Port of Los Beach’s WAVE report, which estimates future arrivals, predicts volumes will rise in the weeks ahead. It forecast loaded import volumes of 120,928 twenty-foot equivalent units for the last week of September, up 34% from the estimated 89,980 TEUs of imports due to arrive next week.

Signal, the Port of Los Angeles’ planning tool, shows the same upward trend, with import volumes of 178,426 TEUs expected the week of Sept. 12-18, up 49% from an estimated 120,070 TEUs this week.

Another forward indicator is a proprietary index of shippers’ bookings on FreightWaves’ SONAR platform. The index has risen sharply in recent weeks, implying higher volumes arriving at U.S. ports in late September and into October.

Indexed to Jan. 2019; 10-day moving average of bookings as of date of departure. (Chart: FreightWaves SONAR. To learn more about FreightWaves SONAR, 

click here

.)

Inventories not even close to being replenished

Despite record imports in the first eight months of this year, U.S. retail sales continue to outpace inventory replenishment. Assuming sales don’t collapse and businesses seek to reach pre-COVID inventory-to-sales levels, imports still have a long way to run due to restocking.

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) produces a monthly report that includes an index of sentiment on customer inventories. That index fell to 25 points in July, the lowest level in its history.

(Chart: FreightWaves SONAR)

The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes detailed monthly data on retail inventories and inventory-to-sales ratios. While there is a lag — the June numbers were published on Friday — the data underscores the magnitude of America’s inventory restocking challenge. 

Jason Miller, associate professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business, provided inflation-adjusted BEA figures excluding motor vehicles and automotive parts (which skew the data). This data shows that retail inventories are now substantially higher than pre-COVID, but sales have been so high that the inventory-to-sales ratio is far below where it was pre-COVID. The level of inventory to sales actually fell slightly in June, to 0.94 months of sales.

(Chart: Jason Miller)

Miller also compared the June sales and inventory figures for specific categories of wholesale and retail imports. 

(Chart: Jason Miller)

The rise in sales far outpaced the rise in inventories — in some categories, inventories fell — which helps explain the ongoing flood of cargo into U.S. ports and the unprecedented pileup of ships at anchor off Los Angeles/Long Beach.

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California Port Pileup Shatters Record And Imports Still Haven’t Peaked

24 Students, 3-Year-Old California Boy Among Americans Stranded In Afghanistan

If the Biden administration's estimate of 'close to 100' people stranded in Afghanistan is even remotely accurate, around 25% of them are students, along with a three-year-old boy from Sacramento, California.

Behshta, 21, holds a school picture showing her youngest sister Neda, 9 Photo: Renée C. Byer rbyer@sacbee.com

As the Sacramento Bee reports, San Juan Unified school district staff confirmed that 24 students are stranded in Afghanistan.

"Our office has been in close contact with the San Juan Unified School District, and have urgently flagged the students’ information with the State Department and Department of Defense," said staffers from Sacramento Congressman Ami Bera's office, adding "We have not received an update from the State Department or the DOD."

It’s unclear when more Sacramento-area residents will board flights to return from Kabul. It’s been more than two weeks since Taliban leaders took control of country’s capital.

Evacuation flights ferried tens of thousands of people from Kabul before and after a bombing at the airport killed more than 170 people, including 13 service members. Marine Sgt Nicole Gee of Roseville was among US military service members killed. -Sacramento Bee

According to the report, a number of refugees will be resettled in Sacramento - one of the largest destinations for special visa holders - and home to approximately one out of every nine Afghan natives living in America. Around 9,700 Afghans live in Sacramento County - more than any other in the US, according to census data.

Another stranded child, a 3-year-old Sacramento boy, is "going through a harrowing ordeal right now, unable to escape Afghanistan," according to ABC7 News, which is not revealing his identity, that of his social worker father, or any other family members who are all US permanent residents, "for fear of them being captured by the Taliban."

"I received a call Sunday morning at about 6 a.m. from a friend of mine who's an active duty Marine Corps officer stationed overseas, and he basically felt like his hands were tied and he needed some help getting this family out," said veteran's advocate, James Brown, in a statement.

"They've also made numerous phone calls to the White House, to the Secretary of Defense's Office, and to the Secretary of State's office escalating this family's case all the way to the top for us," said Brown, who also contacted Representative Jackie Speier and her staff.

Speier wrote a letter To Whom It May Concern, "I believe it is of particular and urgent concern that these individuals be allowed to pass through the gate and be given safe refuge at Hamid Karzai International Airport ... so that they might be available for departure."

Armed with that letter, the boy, his father and several other family members approached the airport, but the Taliban attacked.
Brown said, "And they were stopped by a Taliban checkpoint, and they received physical beatings at the gate and they were pushed back where they had to flee and return to a safe house."

The I-Team spent Monday funneling questions through our ABC News colleagues in Washington to officials at the White House and State Department. -ABC7 News

So, if the stranded Americans represent just 10% of everyone who wanted to get out of Afghanistan, it begs the question - why were so many children left behind?

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24 Students, 3-Year-Old California Boy Among Americans Stranded In Afghanistan

Visualizing The Size Of The World's Rockets, Past & Present

The SpaceX Starship might be the next rocket to take humans to the moon; and while it's not the first, and likely won't be the last.

Starting in the mid-20th century, Visual Capitalist's Omrio Wallach notes, humanity has explored space faster than ever before. We’ve launched satellites, telescopes, space stations, and spacecrafts, all strapped to rocket-propelled launch vehicles that helped them breach our atmosphere.

This infographic from designer Tyler Skarbek stacks up the many different rockets of the world side-by-side, showing which country designed them, what years they were used, and what they (could) accomplish.

How Do The World’s Rockets Stack Up?

Before they were used for space travel, rockets were produced and developed to be used as ballistic missiles.

The first rocket to officially reach space—defined by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale as crossing the Kármán line at 100 kilometers (62 miles) above Earth’s mean sea level—was the German-produced V-2 rocket in 1944.

But after World War II, V-2 production fell into the hands of the U.S., the Soviet Union (USSR), and the UK.

Over the next few decades and the unfolding of the Cold War, what started as a nuclear arms race of superior ballistic missiles turned into the Space Race. Both the U.S. and the USSR tried to be the first to achieve and master spaceflight, driving production of many new and different rockets.

As the Space Race wound down, the U.S. proved to be the biggest producer of different rockets. The eventual dissolution of the USSR in 1991 transferred production of Soviet rockets to Russia or Ukraine. Then later, both Europe (through the European Space Agency) and Japan ramped up rocket production as well.

More recently, new countries have since joined the race, including China, Iran, and India. Though the above infographic shows many different families of rockets, it doesn’t include all, including China’s Kuaizhou rocket and Iran’s Zuljanah and Qased rockets.

Rocket Range Explained and Continued Space Aspirations

Designing a rocket that can reach far into space while carrying a heavy payload—the objects or entities being carried by a vehicle—is extremely difficult and precise. It’s not called rocket science for nothing.

When rockets are designed, they are are created with one specific range in mind that takes into account the fuel needed to travel and velocity achievable. Alternatively, they have different payload ratings depending on what’s achievable and reliable based on the target range.

• Suborbital: Reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere and comes back down. It won’t be able to complete an orbital revolution or reach escape velocity.

• LEO (Low Earth orbit): Reaches altitude of up to ~2,000 km (1242.74 miles) and orbits the Earth at an orbital period of 128 minutes or less (or 11.25 orbits per day).

• SSO (Sun-synchronous orbit): Reaches around 600–800 km above Earth in altitude but orbits at an inclination of ~98°, or nearly from pole to pole, in order to keep consistent solar time.

• GTO (Geosynchronous transfer orbit): Launches into a highly elliptical orbit which gets as close in altitude as LEO and as far away as 35,786 km (22,236 miles) above sea level.

• TLI (Trans-lunar injection): Launches on a trajectory (or accelerates from Earth orbit) to reach the Moon, an average distance of 384,400 km (238,900 miles) from Earth.

But there are other ranges and orbits in the eyes of potential spacefarers. Mars for example, a lofty target in the eyes of SpaceX and billionaire founder Elon Musk, is between about 54 and 103 million km (34 and 64 million miles) from Earth at its closest approach.

With space exploration becoming more common, and lucrative enough to warrant billion-dollar lawsuits over contract awards, how far will future rockets go?

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Did A Fake Banksy NFT Just Sell For $336,000?

A mysterious NFT that appeared on Banksy's website has blogs across the web asking whether or not a "fake" NFT just sold for $336,000.

On the morning of August 31, a link was posted on Banksy's website to an auction for an NFT. The link showed an image similar in style to those of CryptoPunks, a collection of NFTs that have been selling for astronomical prices. 

According to the blog Elliptic, when the NFT was posted, it had the title "Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster".

It was liked to an NFT marketplace called OpenSea, where an NFT featuring the image sold for 100 ETH, or about $336,000.

The page was then promptly removed from the Banksy website and the OpenSea auction ended early, leaving some to wonder whether or not the NFT was actually an "authentic" Banksy or whether his website had been hacked to promote a scam.

Even the bidder who bought the piece, an NFT investor named "Pranksy", speculated that it could be a "very elaborate hoax".

So my bid of 100 ETH was accepted for the potential #Banksy first #NFT on @opensea.

The link was removed from his website so it could have been a very elaborate hoax, my guess is that is what it will be, only time will tell!https://t.co/EEmElqIvBZ pic.twitter.com/Pbs5zrht05

— Pranksy 📦 (@pranksy) August 31, 2021

Banksy's agency then denied involvement with the NFT, telling CNBC that he "has not created any NFT artworks."

The agency said: "Any Banksy NFT auctions are not affiliated with the artist in any shape or form."

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Did A Fake Banksy NFT Just Sell For $336,000?

Shocking Video Shows 2 Men Beaten & Robbed While Women Twerk Over Unconscious Bodies

Shocking footage from a security camera in Chicago's expensive River North neighborhood (which hosts restaurants, shops and art galleries, among other businesses) explicitly reveals how bad the city's crime problem has gotten. In the video, two men can be seen being viciously kicked and beaten by a group of young men, who strip them of their shoes, empty their pockets, and - before it's all over - twerked over the victims' unconscious bodies.

According to a local Fox affiliate, the two men were attacked on State Street near Kinzie at about 0130 local time on Saturday morning.

The first victim could be seen arguing with some of the attackers before a punch was thrown, and he was quickly knocked down and beaten.

Then, the video shows the second man walking by, minding his own business when he was sucker punched and beaten to the ground.

At one point, as the victims are laying in the street, some women block traffic just a few feet away so they can twerk.

The men were stripped of virtually all their belongings, with the attackers even taking their shoes.

Businesses say the security situation in the popular Chicago neighborhood, which is teeming with nightlife, has deteriorated substantially since the start of the pandemic. The manager of a cigar shop in the area told Fox 32 that they're now forced to close before 2200 on Friday and Saturday, because the area becomes to dangerous to operate in.

A worker at a nearby Subway shop spoke to a news crew and demanded that the mayor "do something about this."

Police say they're racing to identify suspects from the video.

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Shocking Video Shows 2 Men Beaten & Robbed While Women Twerk Over Unconscious Bodies

CDC Director To Restart Gun Research Amid Spate Of Mass Shootings

For the first time in decades, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) will restart research into the gun violence epidemic across the U.S. CDC researchers will be on a mission to collect enough data to enable the agency to create solutions to prevent gun-related deaths, accidental gun deaths, and/or suicides.

CDC director Rochelle Walensky spoke with CNN over the weekend and revealed her new plan to research guns and gun-related violence. 

"Every day, we turn on the news, and there are more young people dying," Walensky said. "I swore to the president and to this country that I would protect your health. This is clearly one of those moments, one of those issues, that's harming America's health."

The CDC has remained silent for decades about guns, tackling other epidemics as tens of thousands of people die from firearm-related injuries every year. 

The Gun Violence Archive, a monitoring platform of gun violence and mass shootings, recently recorded 452 mass shootings in 41 different states (and Washington D.C.) in the 236 days of 2021. For comparison, in all of 2020, there were 393 mass shootings. 

GVA's mass shooting map shows most of the shootings occurred East of the Mississippi. 

Breaking down GVA's numbers, the U.S. is averaging nearly two mass shootings per day. 

Walensky said, "something has to be done about this," adding that Americans are sick and tired of turning on the nightly news and hearing about mass shooting stories.

So her strategy is simple: Restart the CDC's gun research arm that will find out, based on "science," why gun violence is rampant. 

"My job is to understand and evaluate the problem. To understand the scope of the problem. To understand why this happens and what are the things that can make it better," she said

Walensky hopes that gun owners don't associate the CDC's upcoming research with "gun control." 

She continued: "I'm not here about gun control. I'm here about preventing gun violence and gun death." 

This brings us to her boss, President Biden, whose administration members are on a mission to limit or ban guns. 

We recently laid out, in a gun policy note titled "Puzzle Pieces All Laid Out" - How ATF Has Plan To Classify Semi-Automatic Rifles As "Machine Guns" that stricter gun control is coming with and if the ATF could have it their way, ban the AR-15 platform. 

Liberal politicians could use Walensky's research as statistics to make the case why gun control is needed to reduce mass shootings. 

So the (rhetorical) question we ask is: Why now is the CDC suddenly focused on trying to tackle another "epidemic": gun violence, with an administration that desperately wants more gun control? 

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CDC Director To Restart Gun Research Amid Spate Of Mass Shootings