One Pill Can Kill

Those dying from Fentanyl are not drug addicts, rather they are dying because they think they may be taking regular over the counter medication or simply eating candy. They are being poisoned. This White House has proven it does not care but the Drug Enforcement Agency DOES care.

Do you ever hear from the FBI that reports from the Southern border? How about U.S. Southern Command? How about Space Command? Yes, Space Command….

“We can use our space detection capabilities, optical cameras,” Croft told NBC 6. “We can track things within a couple of hours and see things moving.”

That includes being able to see what’s happening in places like Colombia and Venezuela, where intelligence experts fear drug traffickers and terrorist groups will join forces.

Around the clock, space and intelligence experts are sharing what they find.

Inside a room at Southern Command, there is a big screen that shows where the satellites are located. There is also a host of workstations where space experts can explain what they are seeing to representatives from the military and federal agencies.

“Space Command can provide a perspective to be able to identify and find some of these folks, the ways that they communicate, the ways they move,” said Lt. Col. Bobby Schmitt, who is with the U.S. Space Force and is assigned to coordinate what happens in orbit with Croft’s team. “Space Command provides the ability to see down and find these folks.” More here.

DEA Announces Results of Enforcement Surge to Reduce the Fentanyl Supply Across the United States

As part of the One Pill Can Kill initiative, the DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder during the period of May 23 through Sept. 8, 2022. The amount of fentanyl taken off the streets during this surge is equivalent to more than 36 million lethal doses removed from the illegal drug supply. Additionally, 338 weapons were seized, including rifles, shotguns, pistols, and hand grenades.

Read the details here.

Every adult across the country should be talking about this and every school regardless of age should be taking all precautions.

Rainbow fentanyl close up photo

As part of the One Pill Can Kill initiative, the DEA and its law enforcement partners seized more than 10.2 million fentanyl pills and approximately 980 pounds of fentanyl powder during the period of May 23 through Sept. 8, 2022. The amount of fentanyl taken off the streets during this surge is equivalent to more than 36 million lethal doses removed from the illegal drug supply. Additionally, 338 weapons were seized, including rifles, shotguns, pistols, and hand grenades.

Of the 390 cases investigated during this period, 51 cases are linked to overdose poisonings and 35 cases link directly to one or both of the primary Mexican cartels responsible for the majority of fentanyl in the United States – the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG). In addition, 129 investigations are linked to social media platforms, including Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and TikTok. These results build upon the One Pill Can Kill Phase II

results announced by DEA Administrator Anne Milgram in December 2021.

“Across the country, fentanyl is devastating families and communities, and we know that violent, criminal drug cartels bear responsibility for this crisis,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department, including the extraordinary professionals of the DEA, is working to disrupt and dismantle the operations of these cartels, remove deadly fentanyl from our communities, and save Americans’ lives.”

“For the past year, confronting the fentanyl crisis has been the top priority for DEA. The most urgent threat to our communities, our kids, and our families are the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG who are mass producing and supplying the fentanyl that is poisoning and killing Americans,” said DEA Administrator Anne Milgram. “The Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG are ruthless, criminal organizations that use deception and treachery to drive addiction with complete disregard for human life. To save American lives, the DEA is relentlessly focused on defeating the Sinaloa Cartel and CJNG by degrading their operations to make it impossible for them to do business.”

Fentanyl remains the deadliest drug threat facing this nation. In 2021, a record number of Americans – 107,622 – died from a drug poisoning or overdose. Sixty-six percent of those deaths can be attributed to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl.

Drug traffickers have expanded their inventory to sell fentanyl in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes

. Rainbow fentanyl was first reported to DEA in February 2022, and it has now been seized in 21 states.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin. Just two milligrams of fentanyl, or the amount that could fit on the tip of a pencil, is considered a potentially lethal dose.

As part of DEA’s ongoing efforts to educate the public and encourage parents and caregivers to talk to teens and young adults about the dangers of fake pills and illicit drugs, DEA has also created a new resource, “What Every Parent and Caregiver Needs to Know About Fake Pills.”

In September 2021, DEA launched the One Pill Can Kill enforcement effort and public awareness campaign to combat the fake pill threat and educate the public about the dangers of fentanyl pills being disguised and sold as prescription medications, despite these pills not containing any of the actual medications advertised. The only safe medications are ones prescribed by a trusted medical professional and dispensed by a licensed pharmacist. All other pills are unsafe and potentially deadly.

Additional resources for parents and the community can be found on DEA’s Fentanyl Awareness page.

 

Procedures for Continuity in Government due to Nuclear Armageddon

It remains unclear whether President Biden revealed information that may have been part of a classified White House briefing when he spoke of nuclear Armageddon at a fundraising event in New York several days ago. However, to even mention the words should spin up lots of meetings at the Pentagon and the National Security Council, much less discussions with other world leaders. Even more meaningful would be to be having rehearsals and conversations with all associated American military across the world to ensure readiness and procedures. Instead, we have a White House and president that is traveling talking about mid-term elections, abortion law, climate change and eating ice cream.

But read on….

Site R - Raven Rock Command Center Raven Rock

The following essay is an adapted excerpt from William Doyle’s new book, Titan of the Senate: Orrin Hatch and the Once and Future Golden Age of Bipartisanship, published by Center Street Books.

Newsweek: Suddenly, in the wake of Russian threats to use tactical nuclear weapons, the world faces the possibility of a nuclear war that President Biden has alarmingly but accurately said threatens Armageddon. Tensions have not been this high since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

It is worth remembering that when we talk about nuclear war, we are talking about the violent deaths of millions—perhaps billions—of people, and possibly the end of most life on the planet. President Dwight Eisenhower once said that if a nuclear war happens, “there just aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the street.”

Experts have long feared that a single nuclear detonation, even a small one, would instantly trigger an irreversible chain reaction leading to the widespread firing of nuclear weapons. As Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev put it in 1978, “The first time one of those things is fired in anger, everything is lost. The warring nations would never be able to put things back together.”

The precise choreography of launching nuclear weapons is veiled in secrecy, but speculative glimpses can be obtained through open-source accounts and interviews with nuclear experts. If an American president learns of an imminent nuclear attack, he or she would turn to the nearby military officer who carries a bulging briefcase nicknamed the “nuclear football,” the most powerful instrument of mass murder that humankind has ever created. It contains the codes and communications equipment that would enable the president to authorize the launch of nuclear weapons from submarines, land-based missile silos, cruise missiles, aircraft and other platforms.

In a nuclear crisis, the president can be flown by helicopter to the “backup Pentagon,” known as Raven Rock, or Site R, a small-city-size complex carved deep inside a mountain near Blue Ridge Summit on the Pennsylvania-Maryland state line and about seven miles north of the presidential retreat at Camp David.

Raven Rock is believed to serve as a fully equipped alternative to the Pentagon “war room,” or National Military Command Center, and it is believed to have been used by Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Author James Bamford described Raven Rock as “a secret world of five buildings, each three-stories tall, computer-filled caverns, and a subterranean water reservoir,” all underground and accessible by a helipad and a giant tunnel. According to author Garrett Graff, the site has “power stations, underground water reservoirs, a small chapel, clusters of three-story buildings set within vast caverns, and enough beds to accommodate two thousand high-ranking officials from the Pentagon, the State Department, and the National Security Council.” Graff added, “You can add to that list police and fire departments, a cafeteria, and everything else you would find in a normal small city.”

Through the football and other available communications tools, the president would be linked by voice and video to the Department of Defense’s National Military Command Center at the Pentagon, known as the “war room,” and to Strategic Command headquarters, or STRATCOM, at Offutt Air Force Base south of Omaha, Nebraska, which commands the nation’s arsenal of strategic nuclear weapons. If the secretary of defense, national security adviser, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could be reached, they and other high military officials would be patched into the call, but the decision to launch nuclear weapons would be the president’s alone, presumably in consultation with one or more of top military leaders. According to the late Bruce Blair, a former Minuteman missile launch control officer and nuclear weapons historian at Princeton University, if missiles were confirmed to be on their way toward the United States, the president could have “as little as six minutes” to decide on a course of action, including ordering the launch of hundreds of long-range strategic nuclear warheads that are immediately available to fire.

If the president decides to order a nuclear launch, he and his military aide would quickly review the options listed in a briefing book inside the football. The American version of the football is not believed to contain a “red button” or to consist primarily of elaborate computer-style gear—unlike Russian president Vladimir Putin‘s nuclear football, the Cheget, which is believed to consist mainly of a high-tech laptop device—but communications equipment and simplified charts illustrating the various options and targets to select from the latest U.S. nuclear war plan.

The military aide would reach into the football and produce a small object resembling a credit card, nicknamed the “Biscuit,” upon which is written the “Gold Code,” a sequence of alphanumeric symbols that the president would read aloud to authenticate his identity as commander-in-chief. This would be the final step to launch nuclear weapons, making the Biscuit the most dangerous object on the planet. But at least two American presidents have apparently managed to lose track of theirs. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the Gold Codes were kept on a Biscuit card that the chief executive usually carried on his own person rather than inside the football, Jimmy Carter is believed to have misplaced his Biscuit when his suit was sent to the dry cleaners. In 1981, Ronald Reagan’s copy was sealed away for five days by the FBI after George Washington University Hospital emergency room staff cut off Reagan’s thousand-dollar business suit and put the card in a medical bag in the wake of his attempted assassination.

President Bill Clinton kept his Biscuit and his credit cards wrapped up with a rubber band, but, incredibly, he managed to lose it for a substantial length of time, according to a top military official. “The codes were actually missing for months,” wrote General Hugh Shelton, Clinton’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001. “That’s a big deal—a gargantuan deal.”

Within three or four minutes of the president’s order, missiles would shoot out of their silos in the American Midwest, then about 10 minutes later the submarines would start firing missiles out of their tubes one at a time every 15 seconds. The ICBMs would fly high above the earth’s atmosphere and travel at speeds of 14,000 mph, descending on targets in, for example, Russia, China, or North Korea, in about 25 minutes. The submarine-launched missiles, fired from waters closer to their aim points, could have flight times of as little as 12 minutes. None of the missiles could be recalled. Given the poor performance of the Russian military in Ukraine, there is every reason to expect that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s missiles could misfire, malfunction, fly off course and strike unintended targets.

Not that it would matter much. If even a portion of the alert U.S. and Russian strategic missile forces is fired, large parts of the earth would plunge quickly into hell. Untold millions of people would be smashed, blasted, crushed, vaporized, and burned to death. The initial blasts would create radiation-filled shock waves of outward pressure that would topple skyscrapers, shred people with flying glass and debris, and hurl them across cities. Electromagnetic pulses from air bursts would decapitate the nervous systems of the world’s economy by blowing out fiber-optic lines, power grids, cell phones and electrical circuits, banking systems, and air traffic control networks.

The fireballs would transform into mushroom clouds of condensed water and debris that would rise high into the stratosphere, expand to 50-mile diameters, and shower the earth with radioactive fallout for decades to come. By the end of the first day, hospitals would be overwhelmed, mass fires would rage, and cities and suburbs would be consumed with riots, chaos, and attempted mass migrations. Nations would be in full-scale collapse, and hundreds of millions of people would be dead inside of a week.

This is what we are talking about when we talk about nuclear war.

And this is why total nuclear disarmament must be the most urgent priority of every government on Earth.

William Doyle is a New York Times bestselling, award-winning author and TV producer. His books include An American Insurrection: James Meredith and the Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 (Doubleday, 2002); Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story (co-authored with former U.S. Navy SEAL Dick Couch, HarperCollins, 2014); PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy (HarperCollins, 2015) Let the Children Play (co-authored with Pasi Sahlberg, Oxford University Press, 2019) and many others.

Are you a Victim of Quiet Quitting?

Customer service, support and quality across the country regardless of the industry is collapsing. Whether it be healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing, professionnal sports or education, employees just do maybe the bare minimum in their job performance to get by. No, they don’t want to quit their job, they want the paycheck, but they are part of a trend and it is hurting the economic stability of the whole country.

Customer service is collapsing, I can personally name at least 7 companies just in the last week I am dealing with beginning with T-Mobile and more from there.

Quiet quitting festers on TikTok.

The Wall Street Journal describes the employment scandal as follows:

Not taking your job too seriously has a new name: quiet quitting.

The phrase is generating millions of views on TikTok as some young professionals reject the idea of going above and beyond in their careers, labeling their lesser enthusiasm a form of “quitting.” It isn’t about getting off the company payroll, these employees say. In fact, the idea is to stay on it—but focus your time on the things you do outside of the office.

The videos range from sincere ruminations on work-life balance to snarky jokes. Some set firm boundaries against overtime in favor of family. Others advocate coasting from 9-to-5, doing just enough to get by. Many want to untether their careers from their identities.

Of course, every generation enters the workforce and quickly realizes that having a job isn’t all fun and games. Navigating contemptible bosses and the petty indignities that have always been inflicted on the ranks of working stiffs has never been easy. And many people who say, when they’re young, that they don’t care about climbing the corporate ladder end up changing their minds.

The difference now is that this group has TikTok and hashtags to emote. And these 20-somethings joined the working world during the Covid-19 pandemic, with all of its dislocating effects, including blurred boundaries between work and life. Many workers say they feel they have power to push back in the current strong labor market. Recent data from Gallup shows employee engagement is declining.

Clayton Farris, 41 years old, said that when he recently heard about the new term circulating on social media he realized he’d already been doing it by refusing to let work worries rule over him the way they used to.

The most interesting part about it is nothing’s changed,” he said in his TikTok video. “I still work just as hard. I still get just as much accomplished. I just don’t stress and internally rip myself to shreds.”

Across generations, U.S. employee engagement is falling, according to survey data from Gallup, but Gen Z and younger millennials, born in 1989 and after, reported the lowest engagement of all during the first quarter at 31%.

Jim Harter, chief scientist for Gallup’s workplace and well-being research, said workers’ descriptions of “quiet quitting” align with a large group of survey respondents that he classifies as “not engaged”—those who will show up to work and do the minimum required but not much else. More than half of workers surveyed by Gallup who were born after 1989—54%—fall into this category.

One factor Gallup uses to measure engagement is whether people feel their work has purpose. Younger employees report that they don’t feel that way, the data show. These are the people who are more likely to work passively and look out for themselves over their employers, Dr. Harter said.

Paige West, 24, said she stopped overextending herself at a former position as a transportation analyst in Washington, D.C., less than a year into the job. Work stress had gotten so intense that, she said, her hair was falling out and she couldn’t sleep. While looking for a new role, she no longer worked beyond 40 hours each week, didn’t sign up for extra training and stopped trying to socialize with colleagues.

“I took a step back and said, ‘I’m just going to work the hours I’m supposed to work, that I’m really getting paid to work,’” she said. “Besides that, I’m not going to go extra.”

Ms. West said that she found herself more engaged during meetings once she stopped trying so hard, and she received more positive feedback. She left the job last year and is now a full-time freelance virtual assistant making about 75% of her previous salary. She adjusted by moving back to her home state of Florida.

Zaid Khan, a 24-year-old engineer in New York, posted a quiet quitting video that has racked up three million views in two weeks. In his viral TikTok, Mr. Khan explained the concept this way: “You’re quitting the idea of going above and beyond.”

“You’re no longer subscribing to the hustle-culture mentality that work has to be your life,” he said.

Mr. Khan says he and many of his peers reject the idea that productivity trumps all; they don’t see the payoff.

Some online commenters pledged to relax on social media when they had downtime at work. Others say they will follow their job descriptions to the letter, instead of asking for additional assignments.

A new crop of quiet-quitting videos is starting to pop up, denouncing the move as a cop-out, not a cure-all for burnout or discontentment at work.

People who coast have been fixtures of the office for decades, but many of today’s less-invested employees have been able to skate by thanks to remote work, said Elise Freedman, a senior client partner at consulting firm Korn Ferry.

If the economy sours, Ms. Freedman said, less-engaged workers may be more at risk of layoffs. “It’s perfectly appropriate that we expect our employees to give their all,” she said.

Josh Bittinger, a 32-year-old market-research director at a management-consulting company, said people who stumble on the phrase “quiet quitting” may assume it encourages people to be lazy, when it actually reminds them to not work to the point of burnout.

After years of saying “yes” to everything, in hopes of standing out, Mr. Bittinger said he’s learned to say no more, reserves evenings for himself and avoids checking email on vacation.

“I get my job done, my projects done. I’m performing well and I get good feedback,” he said. “And I’m able to still take time to just step away from everything.”

The United States Submission to China

Scott Pelly of 60 Minutes aired an interview with President Biden and National Review noted this in part:

PELLEY: It’s the highest inflation rate, Mr. President, in 40 years.

BIDEN: I got that. But guess what we are. We’re in a position where for the last several months it hasn’t spiked. It has just barely, it’s been basically even, and in the meantime, we’ve created all these jobs, and prices have gone up, but they’ve been down for energy. The fact is that we’ve created 10 million new jobs, we’re in, since we came to office, we’re in a situation where we, the unemployment rate is up at 3.7 percent, one of the lowest in history, we’re in a situation where manufacturing is coming back to the United States in a big way, and look down the road, we have massive investments being made in computer chips and employment, so I, look, this is a process, this is a process.

Inflation is the top political concern for voters right now, and according to a recent poll, 59 percent of voters who name inflation as their top concern plan to vote Republican in November. “This is a process” is not likely to persuade them out of that choice.

***

Is it a process to allow China to have access to limitless investment in the United States in the form of real estate, technology, education and social media to list a few? Seems so –>

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What's Pushing China's Tech Sector So Far Ahead? - Knowledge at Wharton citation

Wharton summarizes it much the same way. In part:

Knowledge at Wharton: How has the tech sector in China been able to develop so quickly?

Fannin: Some of it has to do with venture capital investment. And some of that venture capital investment has come from Sand Hill Road [Silicon Valley], funded by our pension funds, our universities, our endowments, our family offices. But I also think a lot of it has to do with China’s own entrepreneurial culture. It’s innovating very fast. It’s moving very swiftly. They are working nonstop. China’s entrepreneurs and the tech sector are just very ambitious. It’s unstoppable.

Knowledge at Wharton: “Social” seems to be a key word when talking about the Chinese economy. Are e-commerce and social media playing big roles in China’s becoming such an influential global player?

Fannin: Social commerce is all about online shopping and sharing and prizes and games. It’s a business model that we really don’t have in the U.S. Social commerce has come on very strong. There is a [group-buying platform] called Pinduoduo, which went public in New York last year and has gone on to become one of these tech giants in just three years’ time. They are already China’s second-largest e-commerce player, and they’ve developed this whole new business model around social commerce.

WSJ: Chinese investment in U.S. venture-capital funds is flowing, demonstrating that economic ties between Silicon Valley and China remain deep despite political and national security risks, according to investors, government officials and a new report.

Chinese investment is on pace to reach about $880 million this year, the second-highest level in at least a dozen years, according to the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The report, a novel effort to quantify the opaque flow of money from China to U.S. venture-capital firms, shows Chinese government entities, funds, private individuals and corporations have invested at least $4 billion into U.S. venture firms since 2010, with at least another $3.5 billion going to U.S. private-equity firms.

Silicon Valley investors and national security analysts say Chinese capital continues to back U.S. venture-capital firms large and small, sometimes accounting for a fraction of a venture fund and at times much more. U.S. government officials say their primary concerns have less to do with the amount invested, but are more about the investors’ personal and business relationships in Beijing, ability to access technical information and influence at the venture-capital firm.

The issue, said government officials, is that the Chinese can use their roles as investors to gain know-how for launching a startup or scaling a technology company. Such insights can inform how Beijing funds and develops technology in areas strategically important to the U.S., such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence, according to the think tank report.

Chinese capital is found in large global funds Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, and smaller Silicon Valley firms including Playground Global, GSR Ventures, Foothill Ventures and 11.2 Capital, according to the report and investors at those firms.

“I think the Chinese are as aggressive as ever” in targeting U.S. startups, said Michael Brown, outgoing director of the Defense Department’s Silicon Valley Defense Innovation Unit and author of a 2017 report that drew national attention to the role of Chinese capital in U.S. startups.

Foothill Ventures said Chinese investors contributed 1.59% of its current assets under management, and GSR Ventures said less than 5% of its U.S. fund came from China. Chinese investors are contributors to Lightspeed’s China fund only, and Sequoia’s China unit operates independently, spokeswomen for the firms said. The other firms declined to comment.

The think tank report’s findings highlight an area of resilience in the U.S.-China relationship as the two countries decouple their economies and U.S. policies aim to limit Chinese investment in U.S. technology sectors. According to the report, Chinese investment this year is set to be around nine times greater than a decade ago and come in below only 2020, when more than $1.2 billion flowed to American venture-capital funds.

Tracking Chinese investment in the U.S. is challenging because the limited partners who fund venture-capital firms often don’t make public disclosures, sometimes use labyrinthine structures to shroud investments and frequently ask firms in which they have invested to keep their identities secret. The report’s authors said the dollar figures undercount the actual total.

“Limited partner capital flows are grossly underestimated for their strategic value and effect,” said Nathan Picarsic, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who co-wrote the report, called “The Weaponization of Capital,” along with his colleague Emily de La Bruyère. “Their influence shapes how the venture capitalist thinks, because the limited partners are the venture capitalist’s customers.”

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a Washington-based nonprofit with conservative leanings; its work advocates an aggressive U.S. response to challenges posed by China.

“China is always opposed to the U.S. generalizing the concept of national security and strengthening unreasonable investment review,” said Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington. He said the U.S. has used national security arguments to “put obstacles in the way of normal investment.”

nvolvement by Chinese investors varies. Many are seeking a financial return and don’t have or want access to nonpublic information about individual startups, venture investors said. Other limited partners request introductions to startup founders or presentations from them, and get quarterly updates on startups’ progress and insights into technology sector trends, they said.

In a 2020 lawsuit, former partners at Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Hone Capital allege that the firm’s Chinese investor, China Science and Merchants Investment Management Group Co., Ltd., directed them to bring around 20 startups each quarter to China to pursue partnerships, joint ventures and additional investment. The lawsuit, which is ongoing, alleges the demands were problematic because of “legal issues regarding sharing sensitive technology with China.”

“They leveraged the system in the U.S. to gain access to more than 300 companies,” said Purvi Gandhi, a former Hone Capital partner.

Biden lied about Afghanistan, Proof from General Frank McKenzie

We can never forget the tragic deaths of our war fighters in Kabul and prayer for those Gold Star families daily.

 

In spite of the lies, the consequences of this failed operation is worse than we can imagine and while Biden lied, this White House and the Pentagon continue to be passive on the whole deadly scandal.

Source: Authorities in Herat found a 10-ton cache of weapons marked with Chinese, Russian, and Persian (Pajhwak Afghan News) September 14, 2007 (RFE/RL) — U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte says Washington has complained to Beijing about Chinese weapons shipments to Iran that appear to be turning up in the hands of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Negroponte confirmed the U.S. concerns over China’s weapons deals with Tehran after a 10-ton weapons cache was discovered in the western Afghan province of Herat.

The cache found in Ghurian district, near the border with Iran, included artillery shells, land mines, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers with Chinese, Russian, and Persian markings on them.

Britain’s Foreign Office has also confirmed that it has complained to Beijing about Chinese-made HN-5 antiaircraft missiles confiscated from Taliban fighters who were captured or killed by British Royal Marines in Helmand Province. Beijing has said that it would investigate allegations that the weapons were forwarded to the Taliban through Iran.

When asked in Kabul on September 11 about the Taliban’s use of sophisticated new Chinese weapons, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte also suggested that Iran has been a transit point for Chinese arms deliveries to the Taliban.

“A subject that I have discussed with the Chinese in the past is the fact of their weapons sales to the country of Iran and our concern,” Negroponte said. “We have tried to discourage the Chinese from signing any new weapons contracts with Iran. We are concerned by reports — which we consider to be reliable — of explosively formed projectiles and other kinds of military equipment coming from Iran across the border and coming into the hands of the Taliban.”

“I have no doubt that Iran has been involved in channeling money and arms to various elements in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, for the last few years… There are Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns who are being funded by Iran.” — Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid

In June, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Washington had no evidence proving a direct role by the Iranian government in smuggling weapons to the Taliban. But Gates said Washington suspects Tehran is involved.

“I haven’t seen any intelligence specifically to this effect, but I would say, given the quantities we are seeing, it is difficult to believe that it is associated with smuggling or the drug business or that it is taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government,” Gates said.

***

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to properly vet and screen Afghan evacuees coming into the U.S. and may have allowed multiple national security and public safety threats into the U.S., according to a new report by the department’s office of inspector general.

The report by the DHS Office of Inspector General found that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “did not always have critical data to properly screen, vet, or inspect the evacuees.”

“We determined some information used to vet evacuees through U.S. Government databases, such as name, date of birth, identification number, and travel document data, was inaccurate, incomplete, or missing. We also determined CBP admitted or paroled evacuees who were not fully vetted into the United States,” the report says.

“As a result, DHS may have admitted or paroled individuals into the United States who pose a risk to national security and the safety of local communities,” the report continued.

FBI ‘ACTIVELY’ INVESTIGATING AFGHAN EVACUEES IN US FLAGGED AS SUSPECTED TERRORISTS, SECURITY THREATS: WRAY

***

Just some more important details:

US military equipment, including armoured vehicles worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each, have reportedly been spotted in Iran following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, several social media accounts have reported.

Kian Sharifi, a BBC journalist focused on Iranian politics and social media, tweeted on Wednesday several photographs of Humvees and other military vehicles on a highway connecting the central city of Semnan to the city of Garmsar, southeast of the capital Tehran.

Sharifi said the photos came from an Iranian Telegram channel, which speculated the vehicles were either sold by the Taliban to Iran, or were taken from Afghan soldiers fleeing the country after the group took over most of the country, including the capital, Kabul, last month.

According to the Russian outlet Sputnik’s Persian language service, Iran allegedly bought armoured US-supplied ground vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and helicopters belonging to the Afghan army. source in 2021

***

Taliban delivers US military vehicles to Iran | Arab News source and photographer

In addition to the weapons and military equipment these special forces brought with them to Iran, they have an intimate knowledge of the U.S. military and its tactics in the region, know-how that is highly sought after by Iran’s terrorist proxy groups and other jihadi militants.

“These commandos are trained, highly trained, on how we do signals intelligence, how we do human intelligence, how we operate,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.), a combat veteran, said in the report. “We know that the Taliban are hunting them down. They are seeking to force them through coercion to hand over that information so that they can use it and they can understand how we operate.”

Beyond Iran, Russia and China are also looking to recruit these forces for their inside knowledge about American military tactics. source

***

Was it really just $7 billion left behind?

The fall of the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan gave Taliban fighters access to more than $7 billion worth of American military equipment, according to data in a report submitted this week to U.S. lawmakers and confirmed by the Pentagon.

The findings, first reported by CNN, shed light on the extent to which Washington sought to build, support and maintain the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) as a counterbalance to the Taliban and terror groups such as al-Qaida and the Islamic State Khorasan.

The report also details the bounty of weaponry and equipment awaiting Taliban officials once the last U.S. troops left Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul on August 30, 2021, nearly two decades after the first U.S. forces arrived. source