Afghanistan: Not one more cent!

We have given to the Afghan government and people, over $60 billion.

Not one more cent.  Not a penny.  Not a farthling. Not a Half-Penny.  Not ... anything.

Hopeless Afghan struggle to save boy sex slaves

Anuj CHOPRA

19 December 2016

Quivering with quiet rage, Shirin holds a photo of his teenage brother-in-law, who now lives as the plaything of policemen, just one victim of a hidden epidemic of kidnappings of young boys for institutionalised sexual slavery in Afghanistan.

Shirin is among 13 families AFP traced and interviewed across three Afghan provinces who said their children were taken for the pervasive practice of "bacha bazi", or paedophilic exploitation, in Western-backed security forces.

Their testimonies shine a rare spotlight on the anguished, solitary struggles to free sons, nephews and cousins from a tradition of culturally-sanctioned enslavement and rape.

Shirin recalled how his 13-year-old brother-in-law screamed and writhed as he was taken from his home earlier this year by a police commander in southern Helmand.

"When I begged for his release, his men pointed their guns and said: 'Do you want your family to die? Forget your boy'," Shirin told AFP in Lashkar Gah.

"Our boys are openly abducted for bacha bazi. Where should we go for help? The Taliban?"

The heart-wrenching stories, mostly from Helmand but also from neighbouring Uruzgan and northern Baghlan, were revealed after AFP reported in June how the Taliban are exploiting bacha bazi in police ranks to mount deadly insider attacks.

The report, denied by the insurgents, prompted an Afghan government investigation.

AFP is withholding the names of the victims and the accused police commanders as many of the boys are still being held captive.

- 'Crazed with grief' -

A common theme in the testimonies collected from stricken families was that of helplessness. Their boys were mostly abducted in broad daylight; from their homes, opium farms and playgrounds.

Once taken captive, they can be shuffled among police checkpoints, complicating efforts to trace them.

Sometimes they emerge into the open as policemen flaunt their spoils.

For fathers like Sardarwali, the crushed hope of such an encounter is almost too much to bear.

After months of fruitless searching, he caught a glimpse of his kidnapped son in a crowded marketplace in Helmand's Gereshk district.

The child -- a slight boy who loved nothing better than playing with his siblings -- was dressed in a fine embroidered tunic and wore a bejewelled skull cap.

Sardarwali was desperate to reach out to his son, to hold him -- but did not dare approach the bevy of policemen that surrounded him.

"I watched him disappear into the distance," Sardarwali said.

"His mother is crazed with grief. She cannot stop crying: 'We have lost our son forever.'"

Parents' agony of losing a child to sexual slavery is compounded by concerns that in captivity their boys will become addicted to the opiates some are given to make them submissive.

Worse still, many fear they could be taken to reinforce frontlines, where police are suffering record casualties in their fight against the Taliban.

Or -- as one Helmand family shockingly discovered –- get killed in the crossfire as insurgents over-run the checkpoints where they are held.

Still, some families take grim solace in the knowledge they are not alone. Their villages are full of bacha bazi victims, many discarded when their beards begin to show.

- 'Unconscionable' -

Bacha bazi has seen a chilling resurgence in post-Taliban Afghanistan, where it is not widely perceived as homosexual or un-Islamic behaviour.

Young boys dressed effeminately have an ornamental value in a society where the genders are tightly corralled. Their possession is a mark of social status, power and masculinity.

The practice has spurred a violent culture of one-upmanship within police ranks, as officers jealously compete to snatch the most beautiful boys, said a former top Helmand security official.

"Often the only escape for enslaved bachas is to make a deal with the Taliban: 'Liberate me and I will help you get my abuser's head and weapons'," the official said, referring to insider attacks.

The Afghan government has said it has zero tolerance for child abusers in security ranks.

[Really, so is that why several high ranking members of the previous administration have been directly implicated in this behavior!]

 

But Uruzgan government spokesman Dost Mohammad Nayab acknowledged nearly every provincial checkpoint had a bacha. He fears any move to extricate them could see angry policemen abandoning their posts, paving the way for the Taliban.

"It is difficult to separate policemen from their bachas in this security situation," Nayab said, explaining that police serve as a pivotal first line of defence against insurgents.

Trump Election: Retreat from the World

It is true everyone has a right to their opinion, but some opinions are weighted differently than others!

I recall during the election, and immediately thereafter - the inane punditry from the misinformed and uneducated, that Trump would retreat from the world.  Trump would step back from action around the globe and would instead build fortress Americana and relinquish our role in the world.

Do you all recall such drivel?

I do.  It was daily, and in multiple reports.  Sometimes repeated 2-3 times in an article.

And then there was Henry Kissinger.

Not someone you could say was an isolationist.  He was there for some of the most COLD of the Cold War period.  From Vietnam to China to the Soviet Union ... not a Dove by any measure.

Interesting.  With more than 40 years of experience.  Well, on CBS Face the Nation, the former Secretary of State made an insightful comment -


"Donald Trump is a phenomenon that foreign countries haven't seen." 

"So it is a shocking experience to them that he came in to office. At the same time, extraordinary opportunity."

 

Kissinger said every country now has to consider two things.

 

"One, their perception that the previous president, or the outgoing president, basically withdrew America from international politics, so that they had to make their own assessments of their necessities," he said.

 

"And secondly, that here is a new president who's asking a lot of unfamiliar questions. And because of the combination of the partial vacuum and the new questions, one could imagine that something remarkable and new emerges out of it."

 

 

Hmmm.  Just the opposite of all that drivel we heard.  In fact, an insight for the Obama supporters - he did just what many people claimed he had been doing ... withdrawing from the world, leaving opportunity for disaster.

 

 

 

 

 

Phone Calls!

So Donald Trump called the President of China last week, spoke to him.  Outrageous!

He called Putin!  Scandalous.

He called the Philippine President!   Oh My God.  What has he done!

He spoke to the President of Taiwan!

Liberals are going bat-shit crazy.  They are out of their minds!

My prediction - we will develop a better relationship with Russia than any re-set button accomplished, than any diplomacy by the Secretary of State ever accomplished.  We will have a better relationship with the Philippines (no more son of a bitch comments).  The Chinese will, respect us.  And we will stop pretending about so many things in the world.  Refreshing.

On January 21, 2009, at approximately 12:45-1:00 pm, Barack Hussein Obama made his first phone call as President of the United States.  In the decades past, that phone call had ALWAYS AND EVERY SINGLE TIME been to the Prime Minister of Canada.  Mr. Obama changed all that.  I am sure he consulted with the State Department as has become such an issue, and suggestion to Trump, recently, given that Trump did not ... Obama called ... the leader of the Fatah political party in the West Bank - Mahmoud Abbas.


Yep.

So, liberals, go bat-shit crazy over this, just remember ... Obama had 8 years of phone calls, and none of his foreign policy has worked out well.

The books will be written and will not all be kind.

It looks like Abbas / Palestinians are the last piece of foreign policy Obama works on as he leaves the White House.  Interesting.

Bat-shit crazy.  Off you go.

Donald Trump and his phone calls

Trump speaks to Taiwan:

"In an extraordinary and perhaps unprecedented break with decades of U.S. foreign policy and diplomatic protocol, President-elect Donald Trump spoke to Taiwan President Tsai Ying-wen on 12/2.  The US cut official diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979 after recognizing the communist government in Beijing as the sole legitimate government of both China and the breakaway republic. No U.S. president (or president-elect) has had formal contact with a Taiwanese head of state since, though the two countries maintain an unofficial relationship. According to a spokesperson for the Trump transition team, he and President Tsai discussed the "close economic, political, and security ties" between the two countries. The call will likely anger China — China considers the divorced island a territory; President Tsai is pro-independence — and could possibly provoke a response. The incoming administration will probably face new challenges as it tries to cultivate a relationship with the rising global power, especially in light of Trump's campaign promise to withdraw from the TPP."

 Might this cause a disturbance in the force?  Yes, it will.  

However, we may find, at the end of the day, China is a lot more smoke and mirrors than the economy it pretends to be.  Numbers inflated, doled out like condoms at Planned Parenthood, by the Chinese government.  We may yet see change!  There may yet be hope in China.

We pretend an awful lot.  Maybe we should stop.

Russian TV - War Footing

But I suppose Donald Trump is a bigger issue than war with Russia or deterioriating relations between the US and Russia.  Between Iran and US.  Between the US and ... practically everyone.

War Talk Returns to Russian TV as U.S. Ties Hit DeepFreeze 

Henry Meyer meyerhenry4 

October 10, 2016 — 7:19 AM PDT Updated on October 11, 2016 — 8:15 AM PDT 

Russian state television is back on a war footing.

This time, the ramped-up rhetoric follows the collapse of cease-fire efforts in Syria. As the U.S. and Russia accused each other of sinking diplomacy, Moscow increased its military presence in the Mediterranean and Baltic regions, and suspended a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. A prime-time news program warned that the U.S. wants to provoke a conflict.

The sudden escalation puts the relationship back into the deep freeze it was in at the peak of the crisis over Ukraine in 2014, which also sparked a wave of hostility in state media. That anti-U.S. campaign ended as the Kremlin sought to ease Western punitive measures imposed over the Ukrainian crisis -- hopes that now seem to be in tatters.

“Offensive behavior toward Russia has a nuclear dimension,” Russian state TV presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said in his “Vesti Nedelyi” program on Sunday. “Moscow would react with nerves of iron to a Plan B,” he said, referring to any possible U.S. military strike in Syria.

The Kremlin’s control over Russian media has in part helped keep President Vladimir Putin’s approval rating above 80 percent during the country’s longest recession in two decades and portrayed military deployments in Crimea and Syria as victories against western encroachment.

Sanction Threat

The rise in tensions could lead to new sanctions against the Kremlin, which some members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party have sought to penalize over Syria. It risks blowing off course efforts to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, which provoked the worst standoff since the Cold War after Putin annexed Crimea and backed pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Following the collapse of months of diplomacy, Russia is pursuing an air campaign in Syria to bolster its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, against U.S.-backed rebels and establishing permanent bases there. The Obama administration suggested that Russian actions in Syria could amount to war crimes and blamed Russia for cyber attacks aimed at disrupting the U.S. election.

The result will be the “ossification of U.S.-Russian relations at an abysmally low level,” said Cliff Kupchan, chairman of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk consultancy. “Deep mistrust of Putin will now be structural and unanimous among U.S. policy makers.”

Hollande, Merkel

In a signal of the renewed rupture, Putin canceled a planned trip to France next week after his French counterpart Francois Hollande refused to appear alongside him at a ceremony to inaugurate a Russian religious center in Paris. Hollande said he was only willing to meet Putin to discuss Syria amid French calls for a halt to the bombing of the city of Aleppo, where a quarter of a million civilians are trapped. “It will be to Russia’s shame if there isn’t a stop to the killings in Aleppo,” Hollande said.

There is a possibility that Putin will meet the leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine in Berlin the same day as the planned French trip for “Normandy format” talks, Kremlin foreign-policy aide Yuri Ushakov suggested Monday in Istanbul. These talks are aimed at solving the military conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russia supports separatists fighting the government.

Bombs, Missiles

Over the past week, Russia stepped up its confrontation with the U.S. over its bombing in Aleppo, where it says it is fighting terrorists. Russia on Oct. 8 vetoed a French-proposed United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an end to air attacks on the northern city.

Russia deployed the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Syria and reinforced its presence by sending three missile ships to the Mediterranean. It confirmed Western media reports it’s stationed Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad exclave sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. Poland’s defense minister said the action caused the “highest concern.”

“The world has got to a dangerous phase,” former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said in an interview with state news service RIA Novosti on Monday.

‘Dangerous Games’

Both the Iskander and the Kaliber missiles carried by these ships can be fitted with nuclear warheads, Kiselyov said in his program. The presenter is known for making provocative statements critical of the U.S. He bragged in 2014 that Russia is the only country capable of turning the U.S. to radioactive dust.

After a strike by the U.S.-led coalition on a Syrian army base last month that the Pentagon said was a mistake killed dozens of soldiers, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it won’t allow a repetition. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an interview with state-run Channel One broadcast Sunday said Russian defenses can protect the Syrian army from any U.S. attack and warned the American military to desist from “dangerous games.”

Alexei Pushkov, a senator who headed the lower house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee until recently, in a Twitter post raised the specter of a confrontation like the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which brought the U.S. and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.

Russia won’t back down, said Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament. The risk of military clashes between the U.S.-led coalition and Russian military in Syria “is rising every day,” he said.

For Putin, the only strategy is to raise the bet, said Eurasia’s Kupchan. “He’s masterfully playing a weak hand to the detriment of U.S. security and economic interests,” he said.

(A previous version of this story was corrected to fix the Eurasia Group chairman’s first name.)