Zoe Bee: Am I WHITE TRASH? – Trash Food and the Diet of the Poor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNvQQhymT8o
Hellish living conditions are the new Kabul reality [“Trash heaps throughout the city, feces on sidewalks… The once-modern capital of Afghanistan… has been plunged back into the Dark Ages, literally, as electricity is shut off at night”]
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hellish-living-conditions-kabul-reality-110000304.html
Hellish living conditions are the new Kabul reality
By Tori Richards
August 29, 2021
Trash heaps throughout the city, feces on sidewalks, and armed guards at every street corner to hand out beatings — welcome to the new Kabul.
The once-modern capital of Afghanistan with a growing middle class has been plunged back into the Dark Ages, literally, as electricity is shut off at night, plunging 4 million people into darkness. This is life under the Taliban after their takeover two weeks ago.
“They are trying to save the power. If it’s night, why do you need the power? It must be dark,” said Afghan security consultant Nasser Waziri, parroting the Taliban’s thinking. “There is a curfew at night. At nighttime, you cannot go out. On every corner is a Taliban person, giving an order to go back home.”
If lack of power isn’t bad enough, the population must now contend with slow or nonexistent internet service. Afghanistan is primarily a cash nation, and residents purchase monthly cards at a store for internet access. Cards are no longer available, and banks do not have any money available for people to purchase any, Waziri said, adding that the Taliban want it that way so nothing can be documented.
With the lack of money and international trade that has stopped, inflation is rampant. For example, a bag of rice has almost doubled, Waziri said. No trucks are delivering goods on the streets.
“Everybody is scared — who is going to import to a terror state?” Waziri said.
The takeover is a brutal reality for many who have grown up under the freedom of Western influence, especially women who must now wear a burqa and cannot go outside without a male family member.
Afghans cannot listen to music either, as that is banned by the Taliban’s version of Islam. The most brutal example is the murder of beloved Afghan folk singer Fawad Andarabi, who was shot in the head on his farm.
Waziri shared photographs with the Washington Examiner of welts on the shoulder and neck of a friend who made the mistake of walking down the street with a cell phone. A Taliban guard grabbed her phone to check whether any music was uploaded, and when he found some, he beat her.
“If you see Kabul now, it’s garbage. Everywhere is garbage,” Waziri said. “[The Taliban] are animals — they go to the bathroom on each side of the street, and the whole city is smelling. One guy put out a [portable] toilet, and he got beaten and had to remove that. The Taliban said, ‘We have to do this a natural way.’”
The condition of Kabul now is reminiscent of what American troops found in 2001 when they captured a city that had been destroyed from the 1979 Soviet invasion. The streets had been torn up and littered with garbage and sewage while the electrical grid and water system had to be rebuilt, said retired Brig. Gen. Don Bolduc, who served in Afghanistan.
“I close my eyes, and I can smell it, and I can see it — I know exactly what is going on there today,” he said. “It was nasty. It was a big health problem and humanitarian crisis.”
Planes, guns, night-vision goggles: The Taliban’s new U.S.-made war chest
Planes, guns, night-vision goggles: The Taliban’s new U.S.-made war chest
By Idrees Ali, Patricia Zengerle, and Jonathan Landay
August 19, 2021
WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (Reuters) – About a month ago, Afghanistan’s ministry of defense posted on social media photographs of seven brand new helicopters arriving in Kabul delivered by the United States.
“They’ll continue to see a steady drumbeat of that kind of support, going forward,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters a few days later at the Pentagon.
In a matter of weeks, however, the Taliban had seized most of the country, as well as any weapons and equipment left behind by fleeing Afghan forces.
Video showed the advancing insurgents inspecting long lines of vehicles and opening crates of new firearms, communications gear and even military drones.
“Everything that hasn’t been destroyed is the Taliban’s now,” one U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
Current and former U.S. officials say there is concern those weapons could be used to kill civilians, be seized by other militant groups such as Islamic State to attack U.S.-interests in the region, or even potentially be handed over to adversaries including China and Russia.
President Joe Biden’s administration is so concerned about the weapons that it is considering a number of options to pursue.
The officials said launching airstrikes against the larger equipment, such as helicopters, has not been ruled out, but there is concern that would antagonize the Taliban at a time the United States’ main goal is evacuating people.
Another official said that while there are no definitive numbers yet, the current intelligence assessment was that the Taliban are believed to control more than 2,000 armored vehicles, including U.S. Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft potentially including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones.
“We have already seen Taliban fighters armed with U.S.-made weapons they seized from the Afghan forces. This poses a significant threat to the United States and our allies,” Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, told Reuters in an email.
‘MORE LIKE TROPHIES’
The speed with which the Taliban swept across Afghanistan is reminiscent of Islamic State militants taking weapons from U.S.-supplied Iraqi forces who offered little resistance in 2014.
Between 2002 and 2017, the United States gave the Afghan military an estimated $28 billion in weaponry, including guns, rockets, night-vision goggles and even small drones for intelligence gathering.
But aircraft like the Blackhawk helicopters have been the most visible sign of U.S. military assistance, and were supposed to be the Afghan military’ biggest advantage over the Taliban.
Between 2003 and 2016 the United States provided Afghan forces with 208 aircraft, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
In the last week, many of those aircraft were most useful for Afghan pilots to escape the Taliban.
One of the U.S. officials said that between 40 and 50 aircraft had been flown to Uzbekistan by Afghan pilots seeking refuge. Even before taking power in Kabul over the weekend, the Taliban had started a campaign of assassinating pilots.
Some planes were in the United States for maintenance and will stay. Those en route to Afghan forces will instead be used by the U.S. military to help in the evacuation from Kabul.
Current and former officials say that while they are concerned about the Taliban having access to the helicopters, the aircraft require frequent maintenance and many are complicated to fly without extensive training.
“Ironically, the fact that our equipment breaks down so often is a life-saver here,” a third official said.
Retired U.S. Army General Joseph Votel, who oversaw U.S. military operations in Afghanistan as head of U.S. Central Command from 2016 to 2019, said most of the high-end hardware captured by the Taliban, including the aircraft, was not equipped with sensitive U.S. technology.
“In some cases, some of these will be more like trophies,” Votel said.
FIGHTING AT NIGHT
There is a more immediate concern about some of the easier- to-use weapons and equipment, such as night-vision goggles.
Since 2003 the United States has provided Afghan forces with at least 600,000 infantry weapons including M16 assault rifles, 162,000 pieces of communication equipment, and 16,000 night-vision goggle devices.
“The ability to operate at night is a real game-changer,” one congressional aide told Reuters.
Votel and others said smalls arms seized by the insurgents such as machine guns, mortars, as well as artillery pieces including howitzers, could give the Taliban an advantage against any resistance that could surface in historic anti-Taliban strongholds such as the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul.
U.S. officials said the expectation was that most of the weapons would be used by the Taliban themselves, but it was far too early to tell what they planned to do – including possibly sharing the equipment with rival states such as China.
Andrew Small, a Chinese foreign policy expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said the Taliban was likely to grant Beijing access to any U.S. weapons they may now have control over.
One of the U.S. officials said it was not likely China would gain much, because Beijing likely already has access to the weapons and equipment.
The situation, experts say, shows the United States needs a better way to monitor equipment it gives to allies. It could have done much more to ensure those supplies to Afghan forces were closely monitored and inventoried, said Justine Fleischner of UK-based Conflict Armament Research.
“But the time has passed for these efforts to have any impact in Afghanistan,” Fleischner said.
Taliban seizing Afghan-American’s US passports outside Kabul airport
https://nypost.com/2021/08/20/taliban-seizing-afghan-americans-us-passports-outside-airport/
Taliban seizing Afghan-American’s US passports outside Kabul airport
By Hollie McKay
August 20, 2021
KABUL, Afghanistan — Scenes of chaos and calamity continue to unfold in and around Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, as thousands of embattled Afghans purport to push through Taliban barricades and escape the country before the Taliban takes full power.
In the latest blow to those running up against the clock, Afghan-Americans on Thursday said that Taliban fighters are now attempting to take their U.S. passports and identification orders in an attempt to stop them from leaving the country.
“I got to the gates and was about to show my passport, but the Taliban got it, and he said you are not allowed to go through and wouldn’t give it back,” one Afghan-American, who served for several years as an interpreter during the war and has his home in the U.S but requested anonymity for safety reasons, said. “I was lucky a U.S. marine was right there and forced him to give it back.”
According to several others, some have not been so lucky — hamstringing their chance to make it home ahead of the Taliban’s officially assuming of the throne.
“U.S. passports, driver’s licenses — they are confiscating those pieces of documentation from American citizens,” said Ephraim Mattos, a former Navy SEAL and founder of the humanitarian organization, Stronghold Rescue and Relief, which is working around the clock to evacuate Afghans interpreters and helpers. “They lose proof of who they are, and this has happened on multiple occasions in multiple places.”
President Joe Biden on Friday said they “know of no circumstance where American citizens are carrying an American passport” and not able to reach the airport.
“We’ve made an agreement with the Taliban,” Biden said. “So we know of no circumstance where American citizens are carrying an American passport for trying to get through to the airport, but we will do whatever needs to be done to see to get more.”
Other Afghan-Americans describe scenes of crowds getting crushed and even infant babies getting injured, of brutal beatings by some Taliban members to push back the sea of frenzied faces.
Initially, Afghan Special Forces were said to control some of the key roads toward the airport. But soon after darkness fell on Wednesday, the Taliban is said to have taken over. Minute-by-minute, the scene is simply becoming direr as the insurgency cements a more formidable grasp over the city’s checkpoints and routes.
Several U.S. officials also affirmed that the Taliban on Thursday ratcheted up its crackdown encircling the airport.
The group’s leadership has vowed to protect all Afghans and assured no acts of revenge would be tolerated, while at the same time stressing that citizens of the beleaguered country should not leave.
Meanwhile, in Herat, more than a week after the Taliban seized the provincial capital, residents have continued to paint a chilling portrait of intimidation as the waiting game for the U.S. departure draws near.
“Taliban are searching home by home in Herat and asking about me,” one business owner with long-term ties to the United States, who is currently in an undisclosed location outside of Afghanistan, said. “Then others came to the Kabul office and asked about the company and our clients and warned they would search for information.”
It is a jarring fact of simply not knowing what lies ahead, driving much of the desperation forward.“These people are our allies; we fought shoulder-to-shoulder with them. I saw them fight just as bravely as any American soldier, and they deserve our support. What our country is doing to them now is a complete disgrace,” Mattos added. “What is happening is significantly worse than Saigon.”
This is Racism: Blacks Are Four Times More Likely than Whites to Be Oppressed by Vaccine Mandates
This is Racism: Blacks Are Four Times More Likely than Whites to Be Oppressed by Vaccine Mandates
Critical Race Theory has finally been demonstrated in America, but those who promote CRT wouldn’t dare use this ironclad example.
By JD Rucker
August 13, 2021
Proponents of Critical Race Theory are often caught torturing the numbers to present statistics that match their premises. It’s challenging to demonstrate the effects of so-called “systemic racism” in America because the hard numbers simply do not match the rhetoric. But there is one issue in particular where the numbers do not lie, supporting their CRT claims. Systemic racism does exist in vaccine mandates and the numbers are undeniable.
According to a preprint study published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), minorities are far more likely to be “vaccine hesitant” than White Americans. Comically, the study claims that lack of vaccine access is part of the reason for this, a claim that defies logic at every conceivable level. Someone does not become “vaccine hesitant” because they have less access. If anything, lack of access may make them desire the jabs more.
Illogical conclusions of the study aside, the raw data is telling. Whites are the least hesitant Americans at 7.3%, followed by Asians at 10.0. Both Hispanics (15.6%) and mixed race or other (16.6%) were more than twice as likely to be concerned about the vaccines than their White counterparts. Black Americans are by far the most hesitant with over a quarter, 28.0%, claiming some degree of hesitancy in getting vaccinated for Covid-19.
Across the nation, private businesses are requiring both employees and patrons to show proof of vaccinations. Cities like New York and San Francisco have already initiated vaccine passport requirements for entry into just about any building. Travel is being curtailed for those who have not been vaccinated. Teachers and their unions are demanding vaccine mandates for both staff and students despite the unambiguous fact that children are not at risk from Covid-19 with a nearly 100% of those infected recovering from it.
There is no way to deny that these vaccine mandates will disproportionately affect minorities more than Caucasians. In short, vaccine mandates are blatantly racist.
Why Are Radical Leftists Not Speaking Out Against Vaccine Mandates?
This is it. This is the example of Critical Race Theory in action that radical progressives have been seeking in vain for years. They finally have a case study that is ironclad proof the system is working against minorities, particularly Black Americans, and they’re conspicuously ignoring it. Why? Because CRT may be near the top of their list of concepts to promote, but nothing in 2021 trumps vaccine mandates. Universal injections of experimental drugs is their top priority.
What we are seeing is demonstrable proof that the tenets of Critical Race Theory are driven by White radical progressives. If minorities were driving the narrative, they would latch onto the vaccine mandate statistics in a heartbeat. Why? Because nothing will oppress Black Americans more than vaccine mandates. Not cops. Not the judicial system. Not banks nor schools nor any of the other Critical Race Theory boogeymen. Vaccine mandates are demonstrably racist, but the White radical progressives driving the Critical Race Theory agenda dare not speak out against it as it suits them to punish those who choose medical freedom over tyranny.
It’s ironic that the first real example of systemic racism in modern America is the one topic the radical left dare not bring to light.
Taliban in Afghan capital Kabul start collecting weapons from civilians
Taliban in Afghan capital Kabul start collecting weapons from civilians
August 16, 2021
KABUL, Aug 16 (Reuters) – Taliban fighters in the Afghan capital, Kabul, started collecting weapons from civilians on Monday because people no longer need them for personal protection, a Taliban official said.
“We understand people kept weapons for personal safety. They can now feel safe. We are not here to harm innocent civilians,” the official told Reuters.
City resident Saad Mohseni, director of the MOBY group media company, said on Twitter that Taliban soldiers had come to his company compound to enquire about the weapons kept by his security team.
Leaked documents show Baltimore high schoolers perform math, reading at grade school level
Leaked documents show Baltimore high schoolers perform math, reading at grade school level
By Chris Papst
June 2, 2021
Baltimore (WBFF) – An alarming discovery out of Baltimore City Schools. Project Baltimore has obtained student assessment data that North Avenue does not release publicly. That data shows some students who could soon graduate, are performing at an elementary school level, academically.
Project Baltimore, over the years, has heard from many parents who say their children are being pushed through Baltimore City Schools without getting the education they need. Julie Gaskins told us back in 2018 that her seventh grader was doing math and reading at a second-grade level.
Project Baltimore also spoke with Gregory Gray, a Baltimore City Schools father, back in 2019.
“My son is really in desperate need of tutoring in math,” Gray told Project Baltimore. “And, how did my son pass if he didn’t know none of this math?”
Now, Project Baltimore has obtained student assessment scores from just one class, in one high school, that show how widespread the problem appears to be.
iReady is a system schools use to measure at which grade level a student is performing. In Baltimore City Schools, iReady assessments are given in math and reading, three times a year, to measure a student’s progress. The scores we obtained show some students are performing 10 grade levels below their age.
Fox45 News is not disclosing the school or the class to protect student identities. But we can report the iReady scores are for 11th graders in math and reading. Nine students completed the reading assessment, but only two scored at a high school level. One scored at a seventh-grade level. The other six scored at an elementary school level. In math, seven students completed the assessment. Two scored at a high school level. The rest, who are high school juniors in Baltimore City Schools, scored at an elementary level, including one student doing math at a first-grade level.
According to Education.com, a first-grade math worksheet includes simple addition and subtraction, like 2 plus 3 and 9 minus 7. First graders also do connect-the-dot puzzles where they draw lines in numerical order to create an image. The iReady assessments done by North Avenue, show that for at least one student, this is highest level of math they can do, yet that students made it to 11th grade in City Schools.
“They were passing students on who couldn’t read, who couldn’t compute,” said Carl Stokes, a former City Council member and charter school operator. “I know principals in schools who say, it happened to me, who said, ‘I can’t pass this student to the next grade. They’re not ready.’ North Avenue refused to allow us to fail the students without a fight. And we fought because we knew we would be hurting the kid.”
Stokes said at his charter school, which closed last year, about 90 percent of his incoming sixth graders, every year, were not reading or doing math at grade level. Ninety percent had iReady scores below the grade the students were in at the time.
“That’s the deal we have here. We have thousands of kids who are not getting an education, who get out of school or quit school and they have no skillset to sustain themselves. They can’t. They can’t get a decent job. They can’t live well,” said Stokes.
The iReady scores we have are for just 16 students in one class at one school. Project Baltimore has filed a public records request with City Schools for additional iReady scores, minus any personally identifying student information. We reached out to Baltimore City Schools for this story but did not receive a response.
Oregon Democratic governor Kate Brown signs bill to end reading and math proficiency requirements for high school graduation. Her spokesman, Charles Boyle, said this will help “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
August 11, 2021
Oregon’s Democratic governor, Kate Brown, just signed a bill that eliminates the reading and math proficiency requirements for high school graduation in Oregon’s government-run schools.
Brown’s spokesman, Charles Boyle, said this will help “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
Of course I totally disagree with Boyle. This will not help those students. On the contrary, it will hurt them.
I support high academic standards for students of all races and ethnicities. I hope the parents in Oregon will remove their children from these abominable, dumbed down government-run schools, and send their children to private schools. Not all private schools are expensive. Montessori schools, Marva Collins schools, and Catholic schools have a long term, proven track record of providing an excellent education to minority students, and they do so at a dollar cost that is far less, per student, than what the government-run schools spend on their dumbed down education.
Oregon governor signs bill ending reading and math proficiency requirements for graduation
By Kaelan Deese
August 10, 2021
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown privately signed a bill last month ending the requirement for high school students to prove proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic before graduation.
Brown, a Democrat, did not hold a public signing or issue a press release regarding the passing of Senate Bill 744 on July 14, and the measure, which was approved by lawmakers in June, was not added into the state’s legislative database until more than two weeks later on July 29, an unusually quiet approach to enacting legislation, according to the Oregonian.
Secretary of the Senate Lori Brocker’s office is responsible for updating the legislative database, and a staffer tasked with dealing with the governor’s office was experiencing medical issues during the 15-day time frame it took the database to be updated with the recently signed law, Brocker said.
SB 744 gives us an opportunity to review our graduation requirements and make sure our assessments can truly assess all students’ learning,” Charles Boyle, a spokesman for the governor, said in an email to the Washington Examiner. “In the meantime, it gives Oregon students and the education community a chance to regroup after a year and a half of disruption caused by the pandemic.”
The bill, which suspends the proficiency requirements for students for three years, has attracted controversy for at least temporarily suspending academic standards amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Backers argued the existing proficiency levels for math and reading presented an unfair challenge for students who do not test well, and Boyle said the new standards for graduation would aid Oregon’s “Black, Latino, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.”
The requirement for students to demonstrate proficiency in essential subjects on a freshman to sophomore skill level in order to graduate was terminated at the start of the pandemic as part of Brown’s Stay Home, Save Lives order in March 2020.
Democrats largely backed the executive order and argued in favor of SB 744’s proposed expansion, saying the existing educational proficiency standards were flawed.
“The testing that we’ve been doing in the past doesn’t tell us what we want to know,” Democratic Sen. Lew Frederick told a local ABC affiliate in June. “We have been relying on tests that have been, frankly, very flawed and relying too much on them so that we aren’t really helping the students or the teachers or the community.”
Supporters of the measure said the state needed to pause the academic requirements, which had been in place since 2009, so lawmakers could reevaluate which standards should be updated, and recommendations for new graduation standards are due to the Legislature and Oregon Board of Education by September 2022, the Oregonian added in its report.
Republicans criticized the proposal for lowering academic standards.
“I worry that by adopting this bill, we’re giving up on our kids,” House Republican Leader Christine Drazan said on June 14.
Still, the measure received some bipartisan support, with state Rep. Gordon Smith, a Republican, voting in favor of passage. The state House passed the bill 38-18 on June 14, and the state Senate voted 16-13 in favor of the measure on June 16.
While some lawmakers argued against standardized testing for skill evaluation, the state of Oregon does not list any particular test as a requirement for earning a diploma, with the Department of Education saying only that “students will need to successfully complete the credit requirements, demonstrate proficiency in the Essential Skills, and meet the personalized learning requirements.”
“Senate Bill 744 does not remove Oregon’s graduation requirements, and it certainly does not remove any requirements that Oregon students learn essential skills,” Boyle said, adding it is “misleading” to conflate the subjects of standardized testing with graduation requirements.
The Washington Examiner contacted the Department of Education but did not immediately receive a response.
TheReportOfTheWeek: McDonald’s NEW Saweetie Meal Review!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRS6l5h0By0
Cori Bush Defends Use of Private Security While Calling to Defund the Police: ‘Suck It Up’
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cori-bush-defends-private-security-141503464.html
Cori Bush Defends Use of Private Security While Calling to Defund the Police: ‘Suck It Up’
By Caroline Downey
August 5, 2021
During an interview with CBS News Wednesday, progressive Representative Cori Bush insisted that she needs private security to protect herself from threats while advocating for the “defund the police” movement.
“I’m going to make sure I have security because I know I have had attempts on my life. And I have too much work to do, there are too many people that need help right now for me to allow that. So if I end up spending $200,000, if I spend ten more dollars on it, you know what, I get to be here to do the work, so suck it up. And defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets,” she said.
https://twitter.com/MikeKBerg/status/1423257378993147907
Bush’s passionate defense of the defund the police movement comes after she disclosed to the Federal Elections Commission that she spent nearly $70,000 over the last three months on a personal security detail. Republican lawmakers, such as Representative Trey Gowdy, slammed her for her ‘hypocrisy,’ pointing out that her policy prescription would deny protection to average Americans who can’t afford private security.
Bush, a member of the progressive “squad,” has long pushed for drastic budget cuts for local police departments, which she accuses of upholding “white supremacy.” She suggested Wednesday that funding should be redirected to social welfare programs.
Major cities that cut their police budgets following mass demonstrations against police bruality have experienced a surge in crime in recent months. As these metropolitan areas become more prone to lawlessness, the popularity of the Defund the Police movement has declined.
For example, in San Francisco roughly 76 percent of citizens surveyed said they want a greater police presence in high-crime neighborhoods. Similarly, a May poll found that the majority of Portland residents reject Defund the Police and most support an increase in police officers.
Portland, which has had 53 homicides so far this year, recently resurrected a special police division dedicated to combatting violent crime after it was disbanded in the wake of social justice protests triggered by George Floyd’s death. After a year of negative treatment and politically-driven retaliation targeting law enforcement, however, the revamped Portland team is struggling to find recruits willing to apply for the role, officers told the Wall Street Journal.
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 