Wretchard.com

This wasn’t just a territorial battle, a fight over the land of Afghanistan. It was also a cultural clash. It was a war between one side that has very strong beliefs and is more than willing to die for them, and another side that doesn’t know what it stands for anymore and would rather avoid risk and self-sacrifice if at all possible. I’ll leave you to decide which of these is the Taliban, and which the US.

Brendan O’Neill

This is worse than Saigon

America’s humiliation in Afghanistan confirms that the woke West is utterly incapable of standing up for itself.

The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said Sunday the Taliban is blocking a half dozen planes with American citizens and permanent residents, as well as Afghan interpreters, from departing Afghanistan, accusing the militant group of holding the flights “hostage.”

Forbes

Top House Republican Says Taliban Holding 6 Planes With Americans, Afghans ‘Hostage’

Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, says “zero” Americans have left the country since U.S. troops withdrew.

Beijing has rebuffed American calls to make more public pledges on climate change before a UN climate summit in November, insisting it should follow its own plan rather than bowing to US pressure, according to a person familiar with the two countries’ negotiations.

SCMP

China ‘tells US envoy John Kerry it will follow its own climate road map’

Source says the sides did not reach agreement and China has its own plans on climate matters, after talks Beijing describes as ‘candid, in-depth and pragmatic’.

The attacker, a known supporter of Islamic State, was shot dead by police.

BBC

New Zealand supermarket stabbing: Government to toughen anti-terror laws

The Auckland attacker has now been identified as Sri Lankan Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsudeen.

1. Supreme Court abortion decision;
2. Joe Manchin
3. Bad jobs report
4. Afghanistan disaster

Analysis: Supreme Court and Joe Manchin tighten Biden’s political straitjacket

Both the premise and promise of Joe Biden’s presidency and a possibly brief Democratic grip on Washington are suddenly on the line, as the legacy of past electoral disappointments and harsh realities of power suddenly converge.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on Thursday claimed Beijing was “ready to invest in and reconstruct” Afghanistan as he set out hopes that China would provide a gateway into global markets

Telegraph

Taliban declare China their closest ally

Group’s spokesman says Beijing is ‘ready to invest in and reconstruct’ Afghanistan

The billionaire entrepreneur matched the heights of America’s tech legends but failed to heed warnings that Chinese leader Xi Jinping still called the shots

WSJ

Jack Ma’s Costliest Business Lesson: China Has Only One Leader

The billionaire entrepreneur matched the heights of America’s tech legends but failed to heed warnings that Chinese leader Xi Jinping still called the shots.

Former British soldier, Ben Slater’s, mission to evacuate 400 Afghans via a third country has failed. His staff have been turned away at a land border. Slater called on the Foreign Office to help his staff escape after ‘complete disaster’ at border

Taliban arrests former British soldier as 400 Afghans he is trying to evacuate are turned away at border

Ben Slater called on the Foreign Office to help his staff escape after ‘complete disaster’ at border

The court’s order, which rejected an emergency request by clinics and abortion-rights advocates, marks a turning point in the legal battle over abortion rights and comes the day the Texas ban went into force. While not a final ruling on the measure’s constitutionality, the court’s action validates, at least temporarily, a novel attempt by Texas lawmakers to insulate antiabortion legislation from court challenge.

The unsigned order came on a 5-4 vote, with most of the conservative justices in the majority.

WSJ

Supreme Court Declines to Block Restrictive Texas Abortion Law

A new measure, known as the fetal-heartbeat law, bars the procedure after about six weeks of pregnancy. Abortion providers had sought to prevent it from taking effect.

The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces — and it’s using US equipment and data to do it.

NY Post

Taliban kill squad hunting down Afghans — using US biometric data

The Taliban has mobilized a special unit, called Al Isha, to hunt down Afghans who helped US and allied forces — and it’s using US equipment and data to do it.

“What gulag?” I said.

“The construction crew,” he said: the men in blue jumpsuits from China. Their barracks were straight out of a Russian novel, he said, puffing on a cigarette. Didn’t I know I was living smack in the middle of a huge story?

Politico

Meth, Vanilla and ‘Gulags’: How China Has Overtaken the South Pacific One Island at a Time

What’s happening in Tonga is a microcosm of China’s expanding global influence and why the United States is losing ground fast.

This is in keeping with the strategies of presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump of reducing U.S. forces in the Middle East in order to minimize risk. Trump, however, increased the United States’ air defense capabilities in the region after Iranian drones struck a Saudi oil facility in 2019. The Biden administration’s withdrawal appears to be driven by the need to deploy these weapons in other regions. Thus, the question is where are these weapons going, and has something happened to make the transfer necessary? It is difficult to believe that the transfer is designed for near-term threats, since the pending public transfer of significant defensive weapon systems might force a potential enemy to speed up the initiation of war, to get first strikes in before the weapons are installed.

George Friedman

US Withdrawal From the Middle East | Geopolitical Futures

The United States is withdrawing air defense capabilities from several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan, with most of the

Roger Simon writes:

In a sense, the current governor and the editor of the state’s most prominent paper are correct, this recall election is about values. But are they the values of a rich class ….

Elder Versus Newsom: Two Radically Different Views of the Soul of America

Commentary LOS ANGELES—Sunday evening I was standing in an excited crowd at a Long Beach fundraiser for Larry …

“And he’s still alive.”

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,” Biden said. Days before the call, the U.S. carried out air strikes to support Afghan security forces, a move the Taliban said was in violation of the Doha peace agreement.

Reuters

Exclusive: Before Afghan collapse, Biden pressed Ghani to ‘change perception’

In the last call between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Afghanistan counterpart before the Taliban seized control of the country, the leaders discussed military aid, political strategy and messaging tactics, but neither Biden nor Ashraf Ghani appeared aware of or prepared for the immediate danger …

When Taliban fighters seized control of Kabul two weeks ago, the invading units made a beeline for two critical targets: the headquarters of the National Security Directorate and the Ministry of Communications.

Their aim — recounted by two Afghan officials who had been briefed separately on the raid — was to secure the files of intelligence officers and their informers, and to obtain the means of tracking the telephone numbers of Afghan citizens. That could be disastrous for hundreds of thousands of people who had been working to counter the Taliban threat.

NYT

Some Afghans say that enemies of the Taliban have begun to disappear.

World|Some Afghans say that enemies of the Taliban have begun to disappear.

But it also contains details on the individuals’ military specialty and career trajectory, as well as sensitive relational data such as the names of their father, uncles, and grandfathers, as well as the names of the two tribal elders per recruit who served as guarantors for their enlistment. This turns what was a simple digital catalogue into something far more dangerous, according to Ranjit Singh, a postdoctoral scholar at the nonprofit research group Data & Society who studies data infrastructures and public policy. He calls it a sort of “genealogy” of “community connections” that is “putting all of these people at risk.”

MIT Technology Review

This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban

By capturing 40 pieces of data per person—from iris scans and family links to their favorite fruit—a system meant to cut fraud in the Afghan security forces may actually aid the Taliban.

On Saturday night I had just sat down to have a drink with a friend when he got a call. He apologized for having to take it, but it was urgent: it was about the Afghan women’s orchestra. They were stuck in Kabul and desperate to get out. He was involved in the effort to extract them.

Bari Weiss

Inside the Underground Railroad Out of Afghanistan

A list of 500 Afghans was shared with me. Then I was asked to choose five.

New at the Belmont Club. The enemy always gets a vote, however masterful Washington’s new plan.

Joe’s Next Surefire Over the Horizon Strategy

Plan B

Joe Biden “will remember” comments about his mental acuity emanating from senior figures in the UK, and will “bear a grudge” against Britain, sources told the Telegraph

Telegraph

Joe Biden ‘holds grudges’ and will punish Britain for Afghanistan criticism, allies say

British Cabinet insiders were quoted as suggesting the US president ‘looked gaga’ and described him as ‘doolally’