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  1. #76
    Thailand Expat
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    ^It has to be very comforting for the population that they do not have state controlled (and brain washing) media like in other countries?

  2. #77
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    U.S. officials say intel on Russian bounties was less than conclusive. That misses the big picture.


    But the debate over that narrow issue obscures a larger consensus. U.S. intel agencies have long assessed that Russia backs our enemies in Afghanistan.


    WASHINGTON — A growing chorus of American officials have said in recent days that the intelligence suggesting Russians paid "bounties" to induce the Taliban to kill American service members in Afghanistan is less than conclusive.


    But the debate about that narrow and contested issue distracts from a larger, often-overlooked consensus, current and former military and intelligence officials say.


    U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed for years that Vladimir Putin's Russia is supporting America's enemies in Afghanistan with cash and weapons. And President Donald Trump has said nothing publicly about it, even as he has pursued warmer relations with Putin and Russia, including ordering his intelligence agencies to cooperate with Russia in the Middle East.


    "We should always remember, the Russians are not our friends," Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters this week. "And they are not our friends in Afghanistan. And they do not wish us well."

    MORE U.S. officials say intel on Russian bounties was less than conclusive. That misses the big picture.

  3. #78
    In Uranus
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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    "We should always remember, the Russians are not our friends," Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters this week. "And they are not our friends in Afghanistan. And they do not wish us well."
    Tell the orange moron that.

  4. #79
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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    "We should always remember, the Russians are not our friends," Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters this week. "And they are not our friends in Afghanistan. And they do not wish us well."
    Who needs a friend in Afghanistan, anyway?

  5. #80
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Can everyone who made disparaging remarks about this blatant lie apologize now for shitting on Russia and being so gullible ? These are stories that intel agencies MAKE UP to serve political needs for a given time. They are LIES that they themselves always walk back. I have bets going on 2 more of these kinds of stories that will end with the same result.

    U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops
    Last edited by Backspin; 16-04-2021 at 11:21 AM.

  6. #81
    Hangin' Around cyrille's Avatar
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    So do you think they'll be paying out on the basis of an NY Post story?

    If so then there's more than one moron involved.

  7. #82
    Thailand Expat AntRobertson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Backspin View Post
    this blatant lie
    A senior administration official told a group of reporters that the US intelligence community “assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks [on] U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier.”
    You could be a Russian asset but for the fact having a moron like you would only be a liability.

    Meanwhile:

    Russian agent shared 2016 Trump polling data as part of election interference efforts, Biden administration confirms - CNNPolitics

  8. #83
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cyrille View Post
    So do you think they'll be paying out on the basis of an NY Post story?

    If so then there's more than one moron involved.
    Second link is MSN news. Not NY Post. It was a made up story. Just admit it and move on.

  9. #84
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    The CIA Used To Infiltrate The Media. Now The CIA Is The Media.


    So the mass media aggressively promoted a CIA narrative that none of them ever saw proof of, because there was no proof, because it was an entirely unfounded claim from the very beginning. They quite literally ran a CIA press release and disguised it as a news story.

    This allowed the CIA to throw shade and inertia on Trump’s proposed troop withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany, and to continue ramping up anti-Russia sentiments on the world stage, and may well have contributed to the fact that the agency will officially be among those who are exempt from Biden’s performative Afghanistan “withdrawal”.

    In totalitarian dictatorships, the government spy agency tells the news media what stories to run, and the news media unquestioningly publish it. In free democracies, the government spy agency says “Hoo buddy, have I got a scoop for you!” and the news media unquestioningly publish it.

    In 1977 Carl Bernstein published an article titled “The CIA and the Media” reporting that the CIA had covertly infiltrated America’s most influential news outlets and had over 400 reporters who it considered assets in a program known as Operation Mockingbird. It was a major scandal, and rightly so. The news media is meant to report truthfully about what happens in the world, not manipulate public perception to suit the agendas of spooks and warmongers.

    Nowadays the CIA collaboration happens right out in the open, and people are too propagandized to even recognize this as scandalous. Immensely influential outlets like The New York Times uncritically pass on CIA disinfo which is then spun as fact by cable news pundits. The sole owner of The Washington Post is a CIA contractor, and WaPo has never once disclosed this conflict of interest when reporting on US intelligence agencies per standard journalistic protocol. Mass media outlets now openly employ intelligence agency veterans like John Brennan, James Clapper, Chuck Rosenberg, Michael Hayden, Frank Figliuzzi, Fran Townsend, Stephen Hall, Samantha Vinograd, Andrew McCabe, Josh Campbell, Asha Rangappa, Phil Mudd, James Gagliano, Jeremy Bash, Susan Hennessey, Ned Price and Rick Francona, as are known CIA assets like NBC’s Ken Dilanian, as are CIA interns like Anderson Cooper and CIA applicants like Tucker Carlson.
    The CIA Used To Infiltrate The Media. Now The CIA Is The Media. – Caitlin Johnstone


    I mean jeez- no matter how 'patriotic' or 'pro-American' you may consider yourself to be, aren't you guys starting to resent the fact that you are being treated like Idiots?

  10. #85
    Thailand Expat Backspin's Avatar
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    There seems to be more jailings lately. So I won't repost the MSN news article that reported that the intel was shakey on this. By the US's own admission.

  11. #86
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    ‘The intelligence coup of the century’
    For decades, the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries.

    For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret.

    The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for U.S. troops during World War II. Flush with cash, it became a dominant maker of encryption devices for decades, navigating waves of technology from mechanical gears to electronic circuits and, finally, silicon chips and software.

    Read more:
    Compromised encryption machines gave CIA window into major human rights abuses in South America
    As the U.S. spied on the world, the CIA and NSA bickered
    The Swiss firm made millions of dollars selling equipment to more than 120 countries well into the 21st century. Its clients included Iran, military juntas in Latin America, nuclear rivals India and Pakistan, and even the Vatican.
    But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company’s devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.

    The decades-long arrangement, among the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War, is laid bare in a classified, comprehensive CIA history of the operation obtained by The Washington Post and ZDF, a German public broadcaster, in a joint reporting project.

    The account identifies the CIA officers who ran the program and the company executives entrusted to execute it. It traces the origin of the venture as well as the internal conflicts that nearly derailed it. It describes how the United States and its allies exploited other nations’ gullibility for years, taking their money and stealing their secrets.

    The operation, known first by the code name “Thesaurus” and later “Rubicon,” ranks among the most audacious in CIA history.

    “It was the intelligence coup of the century,” the CIA report concludes. “Foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries.”

    From 1970 on, the CIA and its code-breaking sibling, the National Security Agency, controlled nearly every aspect of Crypto’s operations — presiding with their German partners over hiring decisions, designing its technology, sabotaging its algorithms and directing its sales targets.

    Then, the U.S. and West German spies sat back and listened.

    They monitored Iran’s mullahs during the 1979 hostage crisis, fed intelligence about Argentina’s military to Britain during the Falklands War, tracked the assassination campaigns of South American dictators and caught Libyan officials congratulating themselves on the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...nes-espionage/

  12. #87
    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
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    Afghanistan: US exit is with caveats

    April 22, 2021 by M. K. BHADRAKUMAR


    "The United States and NATO are yet to begin the withdrawal of their forces from Afghanistan but the eyes are cast over the horizon at what lies after the ‘forever war’ formally ends. The US exit strategy in Afghanistan assumes the look of that random arbitrariness of a lottery that was the case with its Iraq war ending inconclusively in 2011. Evidence is piling that the US president Joe Biden’s declaration of April 14 on total troop withdrawal by September 11 may not be the last word on that topic. The Pentagon commanders and the CIA seem to be “tweaking” the decision.

    On the day after Biden spoke, the New York Times reported under the byline of two of the paper’s noted senior correspondents that “the Pentagon, American spy agencies and Western allies are refining plans to deploy a less visible but still potent force in the region to prevent the country (Afghanistan) from again becoming a terrorist base… Pentagon is discussing with allies where to reposition forces.”

    The report mentioned that although NATO forces would formally withdraw, Turkey, a member of the alliance, “is leaving troops behind who could help the C.I.A. collect intelligence.” Besides, some of the Pentagon contractors (mercenaries) who include 6000 American personnel could also be redeployed.

    The Times report also disclosed that “Pentagon actually has about 1000 more troops on the ground there than it has publicly acknowledged. The murky accounting results from some Special Operations forces having been put “off the books” … to include some elite Army Rangers, who work under both the Pentagon and the C.I.A.” Pentagon might even slip these undisclosed troops into Afghanistan after the departure deadline of September 11.

    On the same day as the Times report appeared, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking from Kabul, confirmed to the media after talks with Afghan government officials that “even when our troops come home, our partnership with Afghanistan will continue. Our security partnership will endure. There’s strong bipartisan support (in Washington) for that commitment to the Afghan Security Forces.”


    Blinken sidestepped the scale of future CIA presence in Afghanistan — the tricky part. But Moscow solved the riddle when the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova alleged on April 17 that “there are persistent reports that the US is itself giving support to terrorist groups, including ISIS, in Afghanistan, and that Washington plans to build up the presence of its intelligence service in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan as it withdraws its troops from that country.”

    Zakharova said, “these circumstances are giving rise to serious concern not only in Russia but in other countries of the region as well. We are looking forward to receiving explanations from the American side.” Indeed, this is not the first time that Russia has alleged a nexus between the US intelligence and ISIS to destabilise the Central Asian region.

    In fact, on April 19, Russia conducted a major air strike at a remote region near Palmyra in Syria against camps for terrorists in which 200 terrorists were killed. The Russian statement alleged that terrorists were being trained in the US-controlled al-Tanf zone in the border region in southeast Syria straddling the Baghdad-Damascus highway.


    Earlier, in January, Shanghai Cooperation Organization officials were also quoted as voicing concern over “growing” numbers of ISIS fighters being transferred from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan.

    Suffice to say, even as the US and NATO are preparing to formally withdraw forces from Afghanistan, Pentagon and CIA are calibrating their future operations in the country, notionally to assist Afghan security forces but in reality, in pursuit of the larger regional interests of Washington, which today narrow down principally to the containment of Russia and China. The Afghan state structure is in meltdown and the US special forces and CIA operatives would have operational freedom to do they want.

    Interestingly, after his return from Kabul, Blinken announced on Tuesday an “additional civilian assistance” of $300 million to the Kabul set-up “as part of our commitment to invest in and support the Afghan people.” This is laughable, coming as it does at a juncture when, as Washington Post reported from Kabul recently, “The scramble for peace in Afghanistan is fracturing Kabul’s political leadership and undermining the U.S.-backed government.” Is Blinken so hopelessly out of touch with the situation in Kabul? In reality, this appears to be Washington’s gift to the power brokers in the Afghan security establishment.

    The bottom line is that the CIA is pushing ahead with its blueprint to use Afghanistan as a staging post to destabilise Russia, Iran and China. On the other hand, the postponement of the high-level conference in Istanbul from 24th April to 4th May means that the peace process has been derailed and the Doha Pact’s May 1 deadline for US troop withdrawal stands erased. Put differently, Washington has shifted the goal post and has also in the bargain granted a fresh lease of life to the Ashraf Ghani regime.

    Perhaps, India is the only friend Washington genuinely has in the region today to lean on. Blinken telephoned External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar on Monday “to reaffirm the importance of the US-India relationship and cooperation on regional security issues.” The White House readout claimed that the two ministers “agreed to close and frequent coordination” over the Afghanistan situation.


    Indeed, at a hearing at the House Armed Services Committee in Washington on Tuesday, the commander of the US Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr. has said that for conducting future operations in Afghanistan, the US will “firstly require heavy intelligence support” and American diplomats are working now “to find new places in the region” to base the intelligence assets.

    Surely, Pakistan cannot be one of those “new places”. Against this complicated backdrop, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi arrived in Tehran on Wednesday for talks with the Iranian leaders. The press reports from Tehran speak of Iran’s willingness to cooperate with Pakistan (here and here). But it is no secret that the two countries have different outlooks, interests and priorities in Afghanistan.

    Having said that, both countries might also sense today a certain congruence of interests in the emergent situation with the Afghan peace process in suspected animation, the Doha Pact in cold storage and the Taliban resentful, and the US finessing its options. The extent to which Tehran and Islamabad can reconcile their approaches and coordinate will no doubt impact the future course of events. Conceivably, that is also what Moscow and Beijing would expect.

    As things stand, the continuing instability in Afghanistan and the derailment of the peace process can only work to Washington’s advantage to reset the clock and rearrange its pawns and proxies on the chessboard for a fresh game to begin. The prospect for an inclusive interim government in Kabul has receded lately. Certainly, Pakistan has beenunder pressure to restrain the Taliban.

    Can it be mere coincidence that terrorists chose this moment to stage a well-planned, professionally executed attack in Quetta, shattering the country’s internal situation? Who stands to gain? There are no easy answers. A sense of déjà vu would only be natural."

    https://www.indianpunchline.com/afgh...-with-caveats/
    A tray full of GOLD is not worth a moment in time.

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