Afghanistan’s opium production skyrocketed in 2021, potentially providing the Taliban government a source of revenue between $1.8 billion and $2.7 billion. This according to a new report from the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
The war-torn nation’s illegal production ranked as the third-highest recorded since the United Nations began reporting it in 1994. It comprised between 9 and 14 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP and exceeded the value of all of the country’s officially recorded legal exports in 2020.
The surge in opium production comes as the U.S. government allocates millions to combat the spread of illicit drugs in the country, according to SIGAR’s latest report, released on Wednesday.
While the Taliban has vowed to combat opium production—even though it could serve as a lucrative source of revenue for them —SIGAR says it “has seen no evidence that the Taliban are enforcing or can enforce such a ban. On the contrary, the opium trade in Afghanistan appears to be flourishing.”
In fact, opium dealers, who once operated in the shadows while the U.S.-backed government was in power, are now selling their drugs from “stalls in village markets,” according to SIGAR’s report. “Opium poppy farmers, a key constituency for the Taliban, are likely to resist a ban,” the watchdog said.
The report quoted one opium seller as saying that the Taliban have “achieved what they have thanks to opium. None of us will let them ban opium unless the international community helps the Afghan people.”
The Biden administration, meanwhile, has renewed its efforts to inject millions of dollars in U.S. aid into the country without formal ties with the Taliban or officially recognizing its rule.
The State Department reported last year that the U.S. Agency for International Development had “suspended all contact with the Afghan government, and terminated, suspended, or paused all on-budget assistance.” The latest report, however, discloses that USAID has “resumed some off-budget,” U.S.-managed activities in Afghanistan.
The White House announced last month it sent an additional $308 million in humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, where poverty and hunger has run rampant since the Taliban in August 2021 retook control of the country amid a bungled evacuation of U.S. forces.
Afghanistan’s citizens are starving. More than half face a “tsunami of hunger,” according to the United Nations. This is the result of “record drought, rising food prices, internal displacement, and the severe economic downturn and collapse of public services following the Taliban’s return to power in August.”
Around 22.8 million Afghans will be at “potentially life-threatening levels of hunger this winter,” with around 8.7 million facing “near-famine conditions.” Another one million are at risk of dying, according to SIGAR, which cites statistics from a recent Integrated Food Security Phase Classification study.
Up to 97 percent of Afghanistan’s population is now at risk of slipping below the poverty line by mid-2022 “as a result of the worsening political and economic crises,” according to the report.
Additionally, the Biden administration’s failure to evacuate skilled Afghan soldiers who worked for the country’s former fighting force has likely led to them joining the ISIS terrorist group, according to the SIGAR report.
In an interview with former Afghan general Sami Sadat, SIGAR learned that “Afghan fighters, especially commandos and intelligence officers, could lead to IS-K’s resurgence. Sadat said these people would be especially vulnerable to IS-K recruitment. Sadat added that this issue needs to be addressed more systematically, noting that IS-K may have the capability to take eastern Afghanistan quickly and establish itself in Kabul within a year.”
Protesters begin streaming into the U.S. Capitol through the historic Columbus Doors on Jan. 6, 2021. (Video Still/U.S. DOJ)
By Joseph M. Hanneman for Epoch Times
January 28, 2022Updated: January 29, 2022
Kelly Meggs and other Oath Keepers could not do one of the major things federal prosecutors accuse them of – force their way into the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Jan. 6, 2021, through the famous Columbus Doors.
The two sets of historic doors that lead into the Rotunda were opened by someone on the inside, and not his client, says defense attorney Jonathon Moseley.
Department of Justice video widely circulated on Twitter this week shows a man trying to open the inner doors by leaning against them, before turning around as if listening to someone, then returning to the entrance and opening the left door for protesters.
“The outer doors cast from solid bronze would require a bazooka, an artillery shell or C4 military-grade explosives to breach,” Moseley wrote in a letter to federal prosecutors. “That of course did not happen. You would sooner break into a bank vault than to break the bronze outer Columbus Doors.”
The 20,000-pound Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda on the east side of the U.S. Capitol are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside using a security code controlled by Capitol Police, Moseley wrote in an eight-page memo.
‘Impossible and Cannot Be Done’
“Imagine how the prosecution will prove at trial what cannot be proven because it is not true,” Moseley wrote to prosecutors Jeffrey S. Nestler and Kathryn Leigh Rakoczy of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Who is going to testify that the defendants entered the Columbus Doors when the U.S. Capitol Police will begrudgingly testify that that is impossible and cannot be done?”
In a superseding indictment on Jan. 12, 2022, Meggs and 10 other members of the Oath Keepers were charged with seditious conspiracy, destruction of government property, obstruction of an official proceeding, civil disorder, tampering with documents, and other counts related to rioting on Jan. 6.
The indictment charges that Meggs led a “stack formation” up the Capitol steps to the entrance at the Columbus Doors. At 2:39 p.m., the doors were breached, and Stack One entered the Capitol with the mob, the indictment said.
Moseley said there’s one big problem with that accusation: it’s impossible to force entry from the outside. Only someone with the security code could release the locks—from the inside.
Video evidence submitted in the case showed the glass panes in the inner doors were cracked but intact, so no one accessed the building through the windows or by reaching for the inside door handles, he said.
“Therefore,” Moseley wrote. “Nobody opened the Rotunda doors from the outside. Someone opened the doors from the inside.”
Video shot by multimedia journalist Michael Nigro shows the outer bronze doors were partially retracted before a large crowd gathered outside the entrance.
The inner doors were closed and U.S. Capitol Police were stationed outside. Protesters sprayed police with pepper spray, threw items at them, and hit them with flagpoles.
A short time later, the inner doors were opened and hundreds of protesters streamed into the Rotunda, the video shows. A protester in the Rotunda is heard shouting, “Don’t vandalize the property!”
Capitol Tour Confirms Door Security
American sculptor Randolph Rogers designed the solid-bronze doors to depict scenes from the life of explorer Christopher Columbus. The doors were first installed in 1863, moved in 1871 to the central east entrance, and moved to the current location in 1961.
The doors are 17 feet high and weigh 20,000 pounds, according to the Architect of the Capitol. Once opened, the giant doors retract into pockets in the walls via built-in tracks.
First installed in 1863, the historic Columbus Doors depict scenes from the life of explorer Christopher Columbus. (Architect of the Capitol)
Moseley asked federal prosecutors for “any and all specifications, details and operational information about the so-called Columbus Doors.”
Moseley said he and an assistant took a tour of the Capitol on Jan. 22, along with other attorneys and investigators. The U.S. Capitol Police officers on duty were emphatic, he said, that the doors could not be opened from the outside.
“These are facts that in the supposedly largest nationwide investigation in the history of the U.S. since the kidnapping of the Charles Lindbergh baby or the search for Al Capone could easily have been investigated, check(ed), and determined before the U.S. Attorney’s Office presented false information to the grand jury,” Moseley wrote.
“For these purposes, I don’t care who opened the Columbus Doors from the inside, or why, or who they worked for. History will reveal all of that,” Moseley wrote. “History will care very much. But all I care about is that it wasn’t my client or any of these defendants, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office knows that or should have discovered it upon reasonable investigation.”
The Epoch Times asked the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia for comment on Moseley’s letter but received no reply.
The superseding indictment said Meggs and four other Oath Keepers became part of a mob that “aggressively advanced toward the Rotunda Doors, assaulted the law enforcement officers guarding the doors, threw objects, and sprayed chemicals toward the officers and the doors and pulled violently on the doors.”
The ‘mob’ breached the Rotunda entrance around 2:39 p.m., the indictment alleges.
Nigro’s video from outside the entrance shows a group of Oath Keepers near the Columbus Doors, which are clearly open at the time the men got near the threshold. By the time they entered the Capitol, dozens if not more than 100 people had flowed into the building, the video shows.
‘Baseless Prosecution’
Moseley accused prosecutors of crafting a case against the Oath Keepers that is “false and reprehensible.”
“This baseless prosecution is the greatest threat to the Republic since 1812. This prosecution is not about an attack on our Republic. This prosecution IS the attack on our Republic,” Moseley wrote, “seeking to criminalize political dissent, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of political association, and the right to petition the government for the redress of grievances.”
Moseley rapped federal authorities for “dishonestly trying to deceive the public” for eight months by concealing the fact that six demonstration permits had been issued for the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6.Implicit in those permits is the permission for people to have ingress and egress across the grounds to reach each event, he said.
This baseless prosecution is the greatest threat to the Republic since 1812.
— Jonathon Moseley
Moseley proposed a stipulation that both sides in the case agree none of the demonstrators or the defendants opened the Columbus Doors on Jan. 6 and that the government strike three paragraphs of the indictment that refer to defendants entering the Capitol because they are “untrue and withdrawn.”
Prosecutors refused that proposal.
News of the Columbus Doors issue comes as more video was released from the protective court seal. It shows large groups of Jan. 6 protesters peacefully streaming into the U.S. Capitol through wide-open doors. Among them was Rabbi Mike Stepakoff, who spent about five minutes inside the Capitol, doing nothing more than looking around and taking photos.
On his way out, Stepakoff stopped to shake hands with a police officer, and told him “Thank you for your service, we love you, and God bless you,” according to his attorney, Marina Medvin.
Rabbi Stepakoff was charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building, all misdemeanors.
Stepakoff pleaded guilty to the parading charge and received 12 months of probation. The other charges were dismissed. The government sought to punish him with a jail term “for events he did not partake in, for destruction and violence he did not witness, for severity he did not experience, and for an effect he did not cause nor could foresee,” Medvin said.
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There is so much hyperbole in the indictment that the DOJ’s own video refutes it’s not funny –Phoenix.
An elected judge was removed from the bench in Alabama by the state’s judicial oversight authority late last week over a series of unprofessional comments and other unbecoming actions.
Recently former judge Nakita Blocton of Jefferson County, Ala. was relieved of her duties and ordered to pay the costs of the proceedings that eventually ousted her from the court, according to a Dec. 10 special court order that resulted from a May complaint that was filed by the Yellowhammer State’s Judicial Inquiry Commission.
Noting a pattern and practice of “making inappropriate comments,” the nine judges on the panel highlighted instances in which Blocton referred to one judge as an “Uncle Tom,” called another judge a “fat bitch” and called an employee who worked for her a “heifer.”
Some of the former judge’s comments, the panel said, actually constituted “a pattern of abuse” directed towards her staff, attorneys who appeared before her and litigants in her courtroom. The “heifer” remark was cited again in this context, and the report says she also “belittled another employee” — without going into details.
And, when faced with the prospect of discipline over her behavior, Blocton apparently attempted to cover it up — albeit unsuccessfully.
“Judge Blocton also ordered employees to allow her to see their private cellphones so that information that might be relevant to the Commission’s investigation could be deleted and she instructed them to provide to her their private login information to their work computers,” the findings section of the order says.
Biden not only continues to use the cages, he goes one step further. He’s not only continuing to use the Obama cages, but now they’ve been renamed the Biden cages. Also Joe’s created tent cities and taken facilities that house hundreds and put thousands in those facilities.
The findings, published May 24 in the journal Nature, suggest that mild cases of COVID-19 leave those infected with lasting antibody protection and that repeated bouts of illness are likely to be uncommon.
“Last fall, there were reports that antibodies wane quickly after infection with the virus that causes COVID-19, and mainstream media interpreted that to mean that immunity was not long-lived,” said senior author Ali Ellebedy, PhD, an associate professor of pathology & immunology, of medicine and of molecular microbiology. “But that’s a misinterpretation of the data. It’s normal for antibody levels to go down after acute infection, but they don’t go down to zero; they plateau. Here, we found antibody-producing cells in people 11 months after first symptoms. These cells will live and produce antibodies for the rest of people’s lives. That’s strong evidence for long-lasting immunity.”
Now there’s been a part time coffee maker ( Secretary ) practicing medicine claiming that this persons medical research shows that there’s no such thing as antibodies. Well even the CDC disputes that. The WP
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has weighed in for the first time in a detailed science report released with little fanfare Friday evening. Reviewing scores of research studies and its own unpublished data, the agency found that both infection-induced and vaccine-induced immunity are durable for at least six months — but that vaccines are more consistent in their protection and offer a huge boost in antibodies for people previously infected.
These are the medical facts.
Studies demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.
Part of the weakness reflected a 15.5% drop in petroleum exports related to the drilling rig and refinery shutdowns
It’s one thing when our tax money is spent on building border walls and protecting the county. But social programs that protect the undocumented and waste tax dollars is another. Another month of just throwing good money out the window.
The September deficit topped the previous record of $73.2 billion set in June, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The deficit is the gap between what the United States exports to the rest of the world and the imports it purchases from foreign nations.
In September, exports plunged 3% to $207.6 billion while imports rose 0.6% to $288.5 billion. Part of the weakness reflected a 15.5% drop in petroleum exports related to the drilling rig and refinery shutdowns
The Biden Administration reached another record in September. The trade deficit reached the highest amount ever recorded in US history.
If there’s 99 then all are saved. No life threatening work site. Does that make any sense? How does COVID know company A has 100 employees and company B has 99 or 98 or 10? So what happens next? Does anyone even need to ask? Last year Biden said there would be no mandates.
OSHA can do a million page document, but if 50-100 K fans can be at a sporting event without dying or getting sick, so can 100 at work. See you in court.
CNBC reports that businesses have until after the holidays to implement Biden's COVID vaccine mandate pic.twitter.com/zt6FH3XsDu
I have to admit that I don’t fly Southwest that often but after the other day I’m convinced that I’ll be making it an airline worth looking at. So now the left wing fanatics and the MSM are upset about old Joe being called out for F ing up this country.
In less than 10 months this man has done damage that may take generations to fix. Now for some reason the fanatics think that firing a pilot will fix all the worlds ills. This is a movement that Joe will take to his grave. Jill may even put it on his headstone.
So for the foreseeable let’s let Joe know how we feel.
The Del Rio Port of Entry reopens after it was closed for over a week due to an influx of migrants, mostly Haitian, that had gathered under the bridge at the U.S.-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept., 25, 2021. (Paul Ratje/AFP via Getty)
As you know, the Feds do not arrest the undocumented. Why give them a hard time since they’re here looking for work and getting ready to vote for the 2022 elections. But the state of Texas said not so fast.
The announcement came from the Texas Military Department (TMD) and the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). The figures are as of Oct. 14 and include 1,300 arrests for criminal trespassing and 6,339 arrests for felony charges.
