Article by Mike Miller in RedState

Shocking Texts Reveal Army Major Knew Americans Waving Passports Were Abandoned at Kabul Airport

They knew.

Despite Joe Biden’s delusional declaration on Tuesday that the chaotic, ill-conceived evacuation from Afghanistan was an “extraordinary success.” Despite White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki curtly admonishing Fox News’ Peter Doocy: “I think it’s irresponsible to say Americans are stranded; they are not.” Despite the entire administration desperately continuing to put lipstick on Biden’s Afghanistan pig.

They knew.

As reported by Just the News, a series of desperate text messages between U.S. military commanders and private citizens mounting last-minute rescues tell a far different story than that presented by the Biden administration. “We are f*cking abandoning American citizens,” wrote an Army colonel, detailing how frantic, pleading Americans —waving U.S. passports — were rejected at the Kabul airport, as three empty rescue flights waited nearby, hours before the last American troops left Afghanistan.

Former Special Forces officer and war correspondent Michael Yon, who was working between private networks and the U.S. military to rescue stranded Americans, provided Just the News with a series of text messages and emails that reveal not only the desperation of Americans left behind; but of his own, as well.

Yon told Just the News podcaster, John Solomon:

“We had them out there waving their passport screaming, ‘I’m American!'”

“People were turned away from the gate by our own Army,” Yon said.

“I personally know and was involved in an operation two nights ago,” Yon told Solomon, describing how he and a “tight cadre” tried to shepherd four American citizens” — a woman and three children — onto an evacuation flight. First, they had to pass through Taliban checkpoints to get to the gate to the airport.

And, incredibly, this:

We had Taliban take them to the south gate. That’s how they got through the checkpoint.

My God. The Taliban took the terrified family to the gate.

Once they reached the gate, the family waved their passports, while screaming that they were Americans. And incredulously, American forces wouldn’t come and get them, according to Yon.

Yon then contacted an Army colonel who had knowledge of the evacuation process. In the exchange, according to Just the News, the colonel messaged Yon that people were being turned away from the airport. “Yes, are f**king abandoning American citizens.”

Assuming Yon’s account — backed by three dozen text and email exchanges with frontline Army officials in Afghanistan, according to Just the News — was true, who made the call? Who made the decision to abandon Americans? How high up was that decision made?

In a  blistering email to an Army major whose team had tried to coordinate the rescue before abandoning it, Yon wrote:

You guys left American citizens at the gate of the Kabul airport. Three empty jets paid for by volunteers were waiting for them. You and I talked on the phone. I told you where they were. Gave you their passport images. And my email and phone number. And you left them behind.

And then this dagger: “Great job saving yourselves. Probably get a lot of medals.”

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), the top Republican on the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations, fired off a letter to the Pentagon on Monday expressing his concerns that Americans had been knowingly abandoned at the airport.

Johnson told Just the News the texts and emails provided by Yon confirmed his worst fears and raised serious questions about whether the Biden administration has been misleading the public.

I’m not sure what planet President Biden and members of his administration are on, but here on planet Earth, his withdrawal from Afghanistan is an abysmal failure.

What we’ve been hearing from people working the evacuation is completely different from the administration’s rosy spin.

These texts confirm my worst suspicions and should serve as further justification to dramatically increase the vetting process before granting refugees legal status and rights.

“Rosy spin”? Biden lying? Nah, no way. I mean it’s not as if “Joey from Scranton” has embellished, plagiarized, and been caught in bald-faced lies, multiple times, throughout his nearly 50 years in D.C.

No — wait.

Speaking of “being less than forthcoming,” Psaki on Wednesday refused to comment on whether Biden pressed now-former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in a July 23 phone call to “change the perspective” that his country was rapidly falling to the Taliban, according to a transcript provided to Reuters.

In the call, Biden offered aid if Ghani could publicly project he had a plan to control the spiraling situation in Afghanistan. “We will continue to provide close air support if we know what the plan is,” he said. What is that? Carrot and stick? Implied threat? Whatever we call it, it is quintessential Joe Biden.

Check out these recent, related articles:

Biden to Go Back on Vacation, as Even His Own People Are Horrified Americans Left Behind

Jen Psaki Goes Into Full Gaslighting Mode on the Leaked Call but Trips Over Her Own Words

The Actual Number of Afghan Allies Evacuated Leaves the Biden Administration Flailing

 

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2021/09/02/shocking-texts-reveal-army-major-knew-americans-waving-passports-were-abandoned-at-kabul-airport-n436747

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Joe Manchin Crushes Democrat Dreams and Leaves the Far-Left in Panic Mode

Bonchie reporting for RedState

I’ve often been hard on Sen. Joe Manchin and for good reason. Too often in the past, he’s presented himself as an unshakable moderate in order to keep his seat in deep-red West Virginia, while at the same time folding on major issues when he gets to Washington.

Yet, I have to give him credit. Under immense pressure from the far-left of his party, including the leadership in Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Manchin appears to be stiffening his spine. I’m not saying to trust him just yet, but it’s a good sign.

Today, Manchin penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal announcing that he’s not going to go along with the massive, irresponsible, freedom-crushing, $3.5 trillion reconciliation budget proposed by the Democrats. Instead, he’s urging a pause in order to pare things down.

The nation faces an unprecedented array of challenges and will inevitably encounter additional crises in the future. Yet some in Congress have a strange belief there is an infinite supply of money to deal with any current or future crisis, and that spending trillions upon trillions will have no negative consequence for the future. I disagree.

An overheating economy has imposed a costly “inflation tax” on every middle- and working-class American. At $28.7 trillion and growing, the nation’s debt has reached record levels. Over the past 18 months, we’ve spent more than $5 trillion responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Now Democratic congressional leaders propose to pass the largest single spending bill in history with no regard to rising inflation, crippling debt or the inevitability of future crises. Ignoring the fiscal consequences of our policy choices will create a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans.

To be sure, there’s some weasel language in there, but I think Manchin’s use of the inflation issue, which is a major, middle-class crushing problem, is strategic. He knows his party has no answer to his concerns so he can challenge them without worry, and that gives him the reasoning he needs to stand firm. Remember, this is a senator from West Virginia who has indicated he might want to run for governor again one day. Manchin has nothing to gain and everything to lose by folding to his left flank.

It also doesn’t appear that he’ll be standing alone, as Sen. Kyrsten Sinema continues to down the reconciliation bill as well. While Manchin is at least trying to appease his party with reasoned argument, Sinema continues to just do whatever the heck she wants, and it drives her left-wing detractors insane.

All of this has the far-left reeling and flailing desperately in an attempt to find a way to punish Manchin.

As a Republican, nothing would make me happier than to see Schumer and the Democrat leadership go scorched earth on Manchin. But I think they realize they don’t hold those cards, and to act as if they do would just end in Manchin switching parties, handing the Senate back over to the GOP.

That is the issue for the far-left. They want to govern as a super-majority, but they have nowhere near the numbers necessary to do so. All the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez mean tweets in the world won’t change that. The frustration is palpable, but Manchin has no reason to throw them a bone. The smart play would be to butter him up and try to extract as much out of him as possible. Yet, no one ever accused the far-left of being smart so they are whining on Twitter instead. That’s good news for fiscal conservatives, as it likely pushes Manchin further into his corner.

In the end, I’m sure Manchin will agree to some level of spending that is largely objectionable to most Republicans. But  when you don’t have a majority, you have to take the wins where you can get them. It would be a major win if Manchin succeeded in lessening the damager here. Let’s hope he holds the line.

X22, Red Pill news, and more-Sept 2

 

Happy Thursday! Here's tonight's news:

The Biden Presidency Has Institutionalized ‘America Last’

Commentary by John Hayward via threadreader

"America First" policy was ignorantly caricatured as isolationism, but in the end, nothing leaves the American people as isolated as globalism.

China, Russia, and the other bad actors swooping in to capitalize on Biden's hideous debacle in Afghanistan have a valid point buried in their opportunistic rhetoric: governments that claim not to act in their own national interests are irrational, and therefore undependable.

There is a remorseless logic to the arguments employed by the Chinese Communist Party to build their new worldwide Axis of Evil. They're unabashedly nationalist, China First all the way, but they present themselves as tough but honest and reliable business partners.

China tells its clients that dealing with the Western world is dealing with hysterics and schizophrenics, liable to abandon their allies at the drop of a hat, because the pursuit of goals other than national interest makes them unstable and unpredictable.

Sign on with Team China, on the other hand, and you'll never get screwed over by sudden shifts in domestic politics. Regimes that cut deals with Beijing can do whatever it takes to stay in power, without any human rights judgments. China will protect you from Western sanctions.

It's a path of darkness that we would not want to emulate in full, but we do need to understand its appeal, and see why disasters like the Afghanistan nation-building project and its clown-show grand finale help the Axis of Evil land its sales pitch.

America First is even more important because we are a representative republic. Dictatorships (and would-be dictators among the Western Left) always criticize free nations as irrational, inefficient, and hysterical compared to disciplined, centrally controlled authoritarianism.

The citizens of free nations should insist on governments that pursue their national interest with clarity to counter the authoritarian critique. Of course we should want government that puts our safety and security first for domestic reasons, but it helps us internationally too.

America First doesn't mean isolation - it means engaging rationally with national interest clearly defined and emphasized, to reach sustainable agreements which are less subject to the shifting winds of public opinion. It is the antithesis of nation-building debacles.

In the end, America Last policy is unpredictable and unsustainable. It's subjective and mercurial. It leads to the sort of murky goals and muddied reporting we got out of Afghanistan for decades - officials lying to each other AND the American people to sustain an illusion.

With an America First perspective, the importance and purpose of the military becomes clear. You don't have politicians looking at a gun and seeing a hammer, screwdriver, and spoon. Use of the military becomes rare, swift, and decisive - nothing else suits our national interest.

We are passing from an age of political illusions and ideological fantasies, which lasted much longer than it should have, into a world where clarity of purpose is vital. We cannot afford a globalist government of shrieking hysterics while our ice-cold enemies are playing chess.

And we're not doing our allies any favors with America Last, either. It's illogical and unsustainable. It's ALWAYS going to end with frantic politicians pointing fingers at everyone else for their failures, and as Biden is demonstrating, that's awful for our alliances. /end

NCIS franchise Season premiere info dump from CBS

 

What's 1 of the best parts of September? Waking up from a small nap to find CBS did a big info dump on the franchise you love and there's all this Season premiere info to report on and digest!

CBS not only released the press releases for all 3 NCIS's, but also pics from 2 of the shows! Here they are:

NCIS LA:

“Subject 17” – While Callen suspects Hetty of keeping secrets about his past and Joelle surfaces in her quest to capture Katya, NCIS must track down an informant whose life is in danger. Also, Kensi and Deeks work to expand their family, on the 13th season premiere of NCIS: LOS ANGELES, Sunday, Oct. 10 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

Pics: https://www.viacomcbspressexpress.com/cbs-entertainment/photos/?episode=20297

NCIS:

Blood in the Water” – As the NCIS team searches for Gibbs after wreckage from his boat is discovered, they find out he was tracking a serial killer with journalist Marcie Warren (Pam Dawber), who wrote an exposé on him, on the 19th season premiere of NCIS, Monday, Sept. 20 (9:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+.

NCIS Hawaii:

Pilot” – Vanessa Lachey stars as Special Agent in Charge of NCIS Pearl Harbor Jane Tennant, who, with her unwavering team of specialists, balances duty, family and country, while investigating high-stakes crimes involving military personnel, national security and the mysteries of the sun-drenched island paradise itself. In the premiere episode, an experimental Naval aircraft crashes on Oahu, and Tennant and her team must find who is behind it before classified state secrets are exposed, on the series premiere of NCIS: HAWAI`I, Monday, Sept. 20 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network and available to stream live and on demand on Paramount+. Series also stars Alex Tarrant, Noah Mills, Yasmine Al-Bustami, Jason Antoon, Tori Anderson and Kian Talan.

Pics: https://www.viacomcbspressexpress.com/cbs-entertainment/photos/?episode=20000

I love having all this info! Drop your reactions down below. :)))

The lessons of Afghanistan are…

 Steve Israel (Former Congressman) for The Federalist

The lessons of Afghanistan are usually learned too late

In 2008, several other members of Congress and I visited a group of Marines in a desolate part of the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. They were deployed near a river on the outskirts of a town called Musa Qala (“Fortress of Moses”). It featured vast stretches of moonscaped terrain; barren rock formations; dust everywhere.  

There – 13 years ago – I learned from one Marine how the war in Afghanistan would end. I saw his prediction play out in horrifying reality over the past two weeks.

The most valuable intelligence I received about Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t come from classified briefings or testimony in congressional committee chambers. It came from warfighters deployed in remote areas of the military theater; in forward operating bases marked by sandbags and makeshift watchtowers.

I’ve visited these places more than a dozen times. In most cases, the interactions were minded by senior officers and, therefore, tempered in their candor. They were polite but not especially revealing. Military leaders, it seemed to me, thought that anything we needed to know could be conveyed in carefully scrubbed PowerPoints over coffee or tea. 

But once in a while, there was a revelatory exchange from someone whose only agenda was to keep the soldier next to him or her alive. 

It happened in Musa Qala. I found myself in a quiet discussion with a warfighter from my home state of New York who was preparing for imminent battle against the Taliban across the river, up the road, in the town. The question (after the usual queries about health, family, supplies, etc.) was this: “What does victory look like?”

He didn’t respond immediately. For a while he just gazed towards the nearby town and seemed to be chewing on his answer; or wondering whether he should answer at all. Then, finally, he told me everything I ever needed to know about the war in Afghanistan and how – or if – it would end. I’ll paraphrase. 

Musa Qala, he told me, was on the other side of the river. It consisted mostly of mud-bricked dwellings and businesses. Two years earlier, the Taliban had come to town, killed its leader and imposed its rule. British forces responded and chased Taliban fighters to nearby sanctuaries. Then the Taliban returned, and Danish troops were called in. Then British forces, again. Then a truce was declared at the end of 2006. Then, within months the Taliban attacked and reoccupied Musa Qala. Then in late 2007 the British led yet another attack and forced a Taliban retreat, until they returned again. Then the Americans were deployed, which is what put that Marine in a forward operating base that day in 2008. 

Sitting at a mud-caked table, the warfighter told me that his unit would fight in Musa Qala within days and likely kill a bunch of Taliban. The survivors “will retreat up there” he said, pointing to some distant hills. The Americans would secure the women’s health clinic, which we had built, strengthen the local police and support good and transparent governance.

Then, he said (again, paraphrasing): But sir, at some point we’ll be redeployed to another town a hundred clicks away. As soon as we’re gone, the Taliban will come back, blow up the maternity ward, threaten the police and kill any leader who resists them. Then we’ll return, or the Brits or someone else, and this will keep going on and on. 

Sobered by his assessment, I asked him an admittedly inappropriate question: “Based on that, should we be staying here?”

He properly answered, “That’s why they pay you the big bucks, sir. To figure it out.”

There are many hard and legitimate questions to ask about the circumstances that unfolded so tragically when we left Afghanistan on Monday. We have heard them from cable TV pundits, partisans and everyday Americans who want to understand. 

Most of all, we grieve for the 13 U.S. service members who lost their lives, perhaps taking some solace in the knowledge that they contributed to the largest airlift in U.S. history — the evacuation of 120,000 men, women and children in 17 days.

But at the core of it all is the lesson I learned that day in 2008. It was taught to me by a Marine who was willing to sacrifice his life over a small town he’d probably never heard of growing up in America; and knowing that as heroic as he was, he was fighting in a never-ending cycle that would not turn out well.

I do not know what happened to that young Marine. God, I hope he’s okay. I think of him often and even wondered last week whether it was possible he was there at the Abbey Gate trying to rescue Afghan lives. Probably not, because our talk was over a decade ago — one decade in a two-decade war that saw American warfighters and diplomats coming and going, fighting and dying, enemies occupying and retreating and occupying again.

Which brings me to another lesson I learned during that trip. I had brought along Steven Tanner’s book “Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban.” In it is a quote by an Afghan tribal leader that has stayed with me: “We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood. We will never be content with a master.” The statement was made to a British official…over 200 years ago.

The timeless lessons of Afghanistan are usually learned too late. 

Steve Israel represented New York in the U.S. House of Representatives over eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015. He is now the director of the Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University. Follow him on Twitter @RepSteveIsrael.

Top general: ‘It’s possible’ US could …

 Top general:

‘It's possible' US could coordinate with Taliban on ISIS-K

Ellen Mitchell - The Hill 09/01/21 03:30 PM EDT

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley on Wednesday said “it’s possible” the U.S. military could coordinate with the Taliban on any future counterterrorism operations against ISIS-K in Afghanistan.

U.S. commanders communicated daily with the Taliban last month to facilitate the evacuation of thousands of people from the Kabul airport as the United States ended its 20-year conflict in the country. The two sides also reportedly had a secret agreement to have Americans escorted to the airfield.

The Pentagon hit ISIS-K targets following last week’s suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members. The Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility for the attack outside the Kabul airport.

“We don’t know what the future of the Taliban is, but I can tell you from personal experience that this is a ruthless group, from the past, and whether or not they change remains to be seen,” Milley told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday. “As far as our dealings with them at that airfield or in the past year or so, in war, you do what you must in order to reduce risk to mission and force, not what you necessarily want to do.”

Pressed on any possibility of coordination with the Taliban against ISIS-K, Milley replied: “It’s possible.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who spoke alongside Milley, said U.S. commanders worked with the Taliban “on a very narrow set of issues” to get as many people evacuated as possible.

“I would not make any leaps of logic to broader issues.” Austin said. “It’s hard to predict where this will go in the future with respect to the Taliban.”

He later added: “We’re going to do everything that we can to make sure that we remain focused on ISIS-K, understanding that network and at the time of our choosing in the future, hold them accountable for what they’ve done.”

The U.S. military and its allies evacuated more than 124,334 people from Afghanistan, including nearly 6,000 American citizens, on 778 flights since the end of July, Milley said.

Of those evacuees, 20,000 are being housed in seven staging bases in five countries under U.S. Central Command, with another 23,000 in seven staging bases in four countries in Europe. 

As of Wednesday morning, about 20,000 Afghans had arrived at eight different military installations throughout the United States, including Fort Lee, Va.; Fort McCoy, Wis.; Fort Bliss, Texas; and Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J.

Austin said he will travel next week to meet with partners who helped shuttle and temporarily house Afghans during the evacuation and relocation process.

“Some of those brave Afghans will be coming to make new lives with their families in America. After careful screening by our security partners, and we are sheltering some of these evacuees at some of the military facilities here at home, and I'm proud of the way our military communities have welcomed them,” Austin said.

He added that the Pentagon has “continued to tackle security challenges” around that world, which includes “relentless counterterrorism efforts against any threat to the American people from any place.”

Austin also paid tribute to the 13 U.S. service members who died last week.

“Our forces risked their own lives to save the lives of others, and 13 of our very best paid the ultimate price. And many of them were too young to personally remember the 9/11 attacks. The United States military will always honor their heroism. We mourn with their families, and we owe them support through the days and years ahead,” Austin said.

Is Our Military Woke, Broke or Both? - Victor Davis Hanson

Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people—along with the wars it fights abroad.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

The fall of Kabul is not the end, as Joe Biden seems to think, of the Afghanistan nightmare. 

It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.

In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 servicemen, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise. We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul. We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival. Such statements are either untrue or absurd.

On the very day of the killing of Americans, the command sergeant major of the U.S. Army callously reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength in commemorating not the dead, but Women’s Equality Day. 

If so, then is the opposite of diversity—unity—our weakness? Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram airbase in the middle of the night without opposition?

Recently the Office of Naval Intelligence, in reaction to the Kabul news, warned all its active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize their Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership. 

That is true. And indeed, the U.S. Marine Corps just relieved from active duty a lieutenant colonel who posted a video accurately blaming the military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare. 

But until January 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander-in-chief with impunity.

Recently retired General Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific slur that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan where they presumably would be left to die. Hayden earlier had compared Trump’s border facilities to the German death camps. 

Other generals and admirals in 2020 variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving to be removed from office sooner than later. None of these retired politicized four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.

Fifty retired intelligence officials on the eve of the November balloting signed a letter preposterously suggesting that Hunter Biden’s missing laptop—his third to be lost—and its incriminating contents might be “Russian disinformation.” They used their stature and positions for political purposes to convince the American people that a true story was a lie. 

Recently retired General Joseph Dunford and Admiral Mike Mullen have blasted retired top brass who had questioned Biden’s cognitive ability. 

Again, OK. But they should have issued that warning earlier when the violations of fellow retired officers were even more egregious in the election year 2020. 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley apologized for doing a photo-op with President Trump, erroneously buying into the lie that Trump had ordered rioters cleared from Lafayette Square for the staged picture. 

Yet the politicized Milley never offered a correction of his first apology. Worse, Milley leaked to toady journalists that he was so angry with Trump that he “considered” resigning. 

Think of that irony. If Milley considered a politicized resignation to rebuke Trump over the false charge, then surely he could now consider a real resignation after overseeing the worst military disaster of the last half-century in Kabul. 

A busy Milley had promised to root out white supremacy from the ranks while recommending that his soldiers read Ibram X. Kendi’s racialist diatribes. 

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin likewise vowed an internal audit of military personnel to chase the phantoms of white supremacy. Does Austin also profile his targets by their being “overrepresented” in terms of the dead in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America’s top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country. 

The Pentagon needs to stop virtue signaling about diversity days, culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees, and rooting out supposed white conspiracists. 

Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram Air Base was abandoned by night? Why suddenly are the terrorist Taliban our supposed “partners” in organizing our surrender and escape?

Which general allowed over $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban—a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S. aircraft carriers? 

Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?

Who left behind 7,000 biometric scanners that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?  

Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people—along with the wars it fights abroad.

Afghan evacuee boy who ate poisonous mushrooms dies in Poland

 

A five-year-old Afghan boy evacuated from Kabul after the Taliban takeover has died in Poland after eating poisonous mushrooms, officials say.

The boy's six-year-old brother, who also ate the mushrooms, had a liver transplant but is critically ill, a doctor said.

The boys were staying at a refugee centre near Warsaw after arriving in Poland with their family on 23 August.

They ate the mushrooms a day later and were taken to hospital.

"Unfortunately, we were unable to help both boys," the hospital's director, Dr Marek Migdal, said on Thursday, confirming the death of the five-year-old boy.

He had suffered irreversible brain damage and was unable to have a liver transplant, unlike his brother.

The outlook for the brother was unfavourable, because he had shown signs of severe brain damage, Dr Migdal said.

A 17-year-old Afghan girl had also been receiving medical treatment after eating mushrooms at the same centre. She has since been discharged from hospital after recovering.

The poisonings are under investigation, prosecutors say.

Polish media reports say an Afghan family picked the mushrooms from a forested area and made a soup with them.

Local officials have denied media reports that the refuges picked and ate the mushrooms because they were not being given enough food.

 

 

The evacuees are given "three meals a day", said Jakub Dudziak, a spokesman for the Office for Foreigners, which is dealing with Afghan evacuees in Poland.

He said employees of centres for foreigners had been instructed to warn Afghan citizens not to eat wild mushrooms.

The Polish government says there are more than 250 poisonous species of fungi in the country, some of which can be deadly.

The Afghan brothers were part of a family evacuated from Kabul by the Polish military. Poland evacuated more than 1,000 Afghans who had worked with Nato forces in the country.

Most of the evacuees will stay in Poland but others who were evacuated by Polish troops on behalf of third countries or international organisations will go elsewhere.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-58421631 

 

 

 

8 More Politically Correct But Factually…

Elle Reynolds for The Federalist

8 More Politically Correct But
Factually False Words And
Phrases To Stop Using
Immediately

Elle Reynolds
Published September 1, 2021

If constantly flip-flopping on senseless COVID-19 restrictions hadn’t undermined the credibility of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enough, the agency appointed itself language police last week with a list of acceptable (and not acceptable) terminology. From instructing English-speakers to deny biological realities with terms like “assigned male/female at birth” to touting unnecessary word salads like “people with self-reported income in the lowest income bracket” (instead of “poor people”), the CDC guide is full of catchphrases that sound messy and cloud meaning.

In the face of confusing and inaccurate language diktats from federal bureaucrats, The Federalist is here to help. Back in April, we brought you “10 Politically Correct But Factually False Words And Phrases To Stop Using Immediately,” including words and phrases like “mainstream media,” “abortion doctors,” and “cisgender.”

10 Politically Correct But Factually False Words To Stop Using IMMEDIATELY | @_etreynolds pic.twitter.com/54lBbgzojz

— The Federalist (@FDRLST) April 19, 2021

1. ‘Progressive’

“Progressive” is an inherently positive adjective, implying that anything it describes is “progressing” toward something better. In America, the political Progressive movement that gained steam at the beginning of the 20th century viewed America’s systems of limited government as outdated, instead wanting to use federal power to usher in radical social change.

Today’s self-styled “progressives” follow suit, seeking to use governmental and cultural levers to force social upheaval on Americans. To concede their “progressive” description is to buy into the assumption that anyone who doesn’t support their agendas is backward and regressive. Instead of “progressive,” say “leftist” or just describe the particular individual or group’s agenda more specifically.

2. ‘Pregnant Persons’

This shouldn’t even need to be said. Women can get pregnant. Men can’t.

The same goes for other nonsense terms like “people who menstruate” or “breastfeeding persons.” To reduce women to their physical and reproductive abilities is dehumanizing and inappropriate, and these terms deny basic biological realities.

3. ‘Antiracism’

Everyone in his right mind opposes racism, but today many agendas that fly under the banner of “antiracism” are actually just racism in disguise. By slapping the label of “antiracism” on these actions and ideas, activists can automatically discredit anyone who challenges them.

As linguist and writer John McWhorter explains, “The new religion might be called ‘antiracism,’ but it features a racial essentialism that’s barely distinguishable from racist arguments of the past.”

In the name of so-called “antiracism,” grifters like Ibram X. Kendi advocate actual racist policies like racial discrimination, and school districts like one in Atlanta segregate students by race. This isn’t antiracism, this is racism redux.

4. ‘Assault Weapon’

When the left can’t use facts (which is often), they resort to feelings. This is why they deploy the phrase “assault weapon” to elicit an emotional response. Adding “assault” to something makes it sound scarier, and the gun control lobby has been largely successful in convincing Americans there is a cut-and-dried category of guns that assault you and guns that supposedly don’t.

Practically anything — from brass knuckles to a two-by-four to a rubber slingshot — can be used as a weapon to assault a victim. Just because a rifle looks vaguely like the kind of firearm used by military forces does not magically confer “assault” status.

Sometimes, the phrase “assault weapon” or “assault rifle” is used to describe a rifle with selective-fire capabilities (i.e., a rifle that can switch between semi-automatic or fully automatic modes). The terms are often applied to civilian AR-15s, however, which do not necessarily have selective-fire options. (It’s also worth noting that the “AR” in “AR-15” doesn’t stand for assault rifle, it refers to the company Armalite Rifle.)

5. ‘Liberal’

Like “progressive,” the term “liberal” is a self-congratulatory term that automatically makes whatever it describes sound like a good thing. “Liberal” originates from the Latin term “liber,” meaning “free,” and who wouldn’t want to be on the side of freedom?

It’s become commonly used as the catchall opposite of “conservative,” but “liberalism” has traditionally described the Western system of thought and government that came out of the 18th century Enlightenment and emphasizes self-government and individual rights. Today’s leftists who advocate for federal micromanagement of your life are not the heirs of this tradition, and you shouldn’t let them tell you otherwise.

6. ‘Investment’

There’s nothing wrong with the word “investment” itself, but it has quickly become useful jargon to make bloated federal spending programs sound financially sound. Investments generate a return based on the creation of value, not redistributed earnings.

But you’ll still catch people like New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez calling the nearly $2 trillion price tag of the “American Rescue Plan” a “bold investment” in “our families, our children and our nation’s health,” or President Biden calling his (additional) proposed $2 trillion spending spree a “generational investment.” Someone remind these folks that investments are supposed to generate positive returns.

7. ‘Stimulus’

Like “investment,” the word “stimulus” can still be accurate in its place, but it’s become a buzzword to endear to us the reckless redistribution of taxpayer money. Calling giant federal spending bills “stimulus packages” or “COVID relief” distracts from the reality that such pork-barrel spending bills have hurt small businesses and have been shown to not actually help the economy, as their effects continue lurching the country into inflation.

8. ‘Sex Worker’

Selling sex for money is prostitution, and the exploitation of women, children, or anyone else by prostitution is not to be accepted or glamorized, no matter how much The New York Times and others want it to be. Moreover, sexual exploitation on a screen is still sexual exploitation, and still damages the lives of every party involved.

Bonus: ‘Not Stranded’

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki apparently thinks “not stranded” is the new way to describe the situation of Americans who are, by the administration’s own account, stranded in Afghanistan thanks to the ineptitude of Biden and his advisers.

Don’t be like the Biden administration, using phrases that mean the opposite of the truth.

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Watchdog Report: Fauci’s NIAID Funded Experiment Forcing Dogs To Be ‘Eaten Alive’ By Infected Flies

Evita Duffy reporting for The Federalist

Recently discovered photos and government records appear to show that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division of the National Institute of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), shipped part of a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia, Africa to perform cruel experiments on beagles.

The White Coat Waste Project (WCW), the nonpartisan watchdog group that discovered the experiments, reported that scientists used the taxpayer funds to “drug beagles and lock their heads in mesh cages filled with hundreds of infected sand flies.” According to WCW, the dogs were “eaten alive” by the flies.

Earlier last month, WCW also reported that the Fauci-run NIAID spent $424,455 in taxpayer funds on experiments to infest beagles with parasite-carrying flies at the University of Georgia. The beagles were reportedly “vocalizing in pain” during the experiment and were scheduled to be euthanized in June 2021.

Unlike the first beagle experiment, the most recently uncovered one was performed overseas in Tunisia where, according to WCW, “the NIH has no oversight and there are no laws protecting animals used in experiments.”

In the Tunisia study, the researchers starved the flies to make them hungry and “the sand flies were then allowed to feed on the sedated dogs…”

In a second part of the Fauci-funded experiments in Tunisia, experimenters locked beagles in cages alone in the desert for nine consecutive nights, using them as bait to attract infectious sand flies.

Photo of the beagle cages in the desert from the published study.

WCW also reported that Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is also responsible for shipping tax dollars to Wuhan, China for dangerous gain-of-function experiments, which the majority of Americans believe caused the pandemic.

In July, a coalition of House Republicans issued a letter demanding answers from the NIH about its funding of wasteful animal testing overseas.

https://twitter.com/repfredkeller/status/1419750633775804423?s=21

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for this government waste and abuse,” said Mackie Burr, Director of WCW’s Digital & Grassroots Development.