No Negotiation: U.S. Rejects Peace Talks With Taliban

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The United States has rejected an invitation to join Russia-led talks on Afghanistan because they are unlikely to help bring peace, a State Department spokesman said Wednesday, as the Trump administration prepared to appoint a diplomatic veteran as a new special envoy for the war-battered nation.

Russia said that the Taliban will be joining the Sept. 4 talks in Moscow, along with representatives of several neighboring countries. It will be one of the insurgent group’s biggest diplomatic forays since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Sibghatullah Ahmadi told The Associated Press in Kabul that the government will not attend the meeting in Moscow, saying the peace process should be Afghan-led. He also said that “a peace process without the cooperation of the Afghan government would not be successful.”

The State Department official said that as a matter of principle, the U.S. supports Afghan-led efforts to advance a peace settlement. And, based on previous Russia-led meetings on Afghanistan, the Moscow talks are “unlikely to yield any progress toward that end.” The spokesman was not authorized to be quoted by name and requested anonymity.

The Taliban seemed unfazed by Washington and Kabul’s refusal to attend the Moscow meeting.

“Kabul and U.S. refusal to attend the Moscow meeting has no importance to us. We will attend,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told The Associated Press.

That decision comes as the group escalates attacks across Afghanistan. It has refused direct talks with Kabul, even as it seeks to raises its diplomatic profile in the region and calls for talks with the U.S. which it views as the real power behind the Afghan government.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo intends to appoint a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, to a special envoy post that would deal with the Afghan-Taliban peace process and Afghanistan’s integration into the administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, according to two U.S. officials and a congressional aide briefed on the plan.

Khalilzad, who did not respond to queries about his potential new role, is expected to visit South Asia soon, according to the officials, who were not authorized to publicly discuss personnel matters and spoke on condition of anonymity.

A native of Afghanistan who was educated at the American University in Beirut and the University of Chicago, Khalilzad is a diplomatic veteran in Republican foreign policy circles and has also served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations. He was considered for secretary of state by the Trump transition team, notably after introducing then-candidate Donald Trump at his first major foreign policy speech during the campaign.

Despite escalating violence in Afghanistan, the top U.S. commander there said Wednesday that the U.S.-led coalition sees hope in Taliban statements in recent months indicating interest in negotiations to end the 17-year war, and Afghan public and religious clerics’ desire for peace. He contended that could lead to political reconciliation.

“We have an unprecedented window of opportunity for peace now,” Gen. John Nicholson told Pentagon reporters from Kabul. His comments came just a day after rockets slammed into the heart of Kabul as Ghani delivered a speech for the Eid holiday, highlighting the precarious security even in the heavily protected capital.

Nicholson did not address the Russia talks. U.S.-Russian ties are increasingly strained. Washington has eyed Russian engagement in Afghanistan and its links to the Taliban with suspicion. Moscow says it is encouraging the insurgents to abandon hostilities and engage in a dialogue with the Afghan government.

Nicholson, who is slated to turn over command of the war next month, said the Taliban launched major assaults to take control of two provincial centers this year, and after tough battles the Afghans regained control. But he also acknowledged that the military campaign led by the Afghans and backed by the coalition is largely at a stalemate, and that the Afghan government has made little progress taking back additional population centers from Taliban control.

Nicholson took over the war effort in March 2016. In May of that year, 34 percent of Afghanistan’s districts were contested or under militant control or influence, compared with 44 percent as of May 2018, according to U.S. military figures. He will leave as the longest-serving U.S. commander of the coalition.

Nicholson’s time in charge included a key reversal in U.S. policy on the war — stretching from the troop drawdown ordered in the final years of the Obama administration through President Donald Trump’s endorsement last summer of a new strategy to increase U.S. and coalition presence, beef up the training and push for reconciliation.

Nicholson said that the Afghan Air Force and special operations units are growing in numbers and abilities, and that progress will have an increasing impact over the coming year. (For more from the author of “No Negotiation: U.S. Rejects Peace Talks With Taliban” please click HERE)

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ISIS Claims Responsibility for Deadly Attack Near Paris

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A man with severe psychiatric problems killed his mother and sister and seriously injured another woman in a knife attack Thursday in a Paris-region town, officials said.

Police shot and killed the man soon afterward.

The Islamic State group, which has a history of opportunistic claims, swiftly claimed responsibility.

French prosecutors weren’t treating the attack in Trappes, west of Paris, as a terrorism case, Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said. He noted the attacker suffered from serious mental health issues although he had also been flagged for glorifying terrorism.

Collomb said that the man killed his mother at her home and stabbed the other women outside.

Still wielding the knife, he then ignored police warnings and was shot and killed, the minister said after meeting officers and prosecutors in Trappes.

He described the man as “unstable, rather than someone who was engaged, someone who could respond, for example, to orders and instructions from a terrorist organization, in particular from Daesh.” Daesh is another name for IS.

A long-time friend of the attacker identified him as Kamel Salhi, 36.

The friend, Said Segreg, said Salhi had no obvious problems, didn’t abuse drugs or alcohol and wasn’t fervently religious.

A government official confirmed Salhi’s name and age. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss such details publicly.

Salhi was divorced and living with his mother, said Adama Traore, another of his acquaintances in Trappes.

The Islamic State group, via its Aamaq news agency, claimed responsibility.

The agency said the attack was motivated by calls from the IS leadership to attack civilians in countries at war with the extremist group.

Hours earlier, IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urged followers to attack enemies everywhere.

The Islamic State group, which has lost most of the territories it once controlled in Iraq and Syria, has been known to make opportunistic claims in the past, even when there was no established link between an attacker and the extremist group. (For more from the author of “ISIS Claims Responsibility for Deadly Attack Near Paris” please click HERE)

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Men Who Shot at U.S. Embassy in Turkey Were Drunk and Angry at Trump

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The two men accused of firing shots at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, reportedly confessed to being under the influence of alcohol and angry at President Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Turkey. . .

According to Turkish Minute, the two suspects, Ahmet Çelikten and Osman Gündaş, have criminal backgrounds and decided to shoot at the embassy after getting angered during a conversation.

“We were driving around the city in Osman’s car and drinking. We were talking about the Turkish lira, Trump’s threats and remarks. Under the effect of the alcohol, we got angry and decided to act,” Çelikten said. . .

The attack comes amid increased tensions between the two countries over the U.S. applying pressure to Turkey to free North Carolina Christian Pastor Andrew Brunson, who Turkey claims supported Kurdish militants and assisted in the 2016 coup against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The dispute has resulted in the U.S. applying sanctions to Turkey’s steel and aluminum imports, and Turkey boycotting U.S. electronic goods. (Read more from “Men Who Shot at U.S. Embassy in Turkey Were Drunk and Angry at Trump” HERE)

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Mueller Comes up Empty on Trump-Russia

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Lost in the drama surrounding Tuesday’s news — Paul Manafort’s convictions and Michael Cohen’s plea deal — is the reality that special counsel Robert Mueller has yet to unearth a single piece of evidence demonstrating collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Mueller’s team of Democrat prosecutors, which is supposedly tasked with investigating Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election, secured highly publicized guilty pleas from former Trump attorney Michael Cohen on entirely unrelated matters. The same applies to the convictions against short-lived Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort.

Nonetheless, many in the media have heralded the Manafort-Cohen news as proof that Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is justified. The Washington Post declared Tuesday’s news as Trump’s “worst day of the Russia investigation.”

In his appointment of Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein instructed the former FBI chief to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Mueller has entirely failed to find proof of coordination or collusion and has seemingly prioritized the latter vague, open mandate that he received from DAG Rosenstein in targeting individuals currently and previously associated with the president.

We have been told for over two years now, through a narrative crafted with targeted leaks in the mainstream media, that former national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn and low-level foreign policy aides Carter Page and George Papadopoulos were essential to Russian collusion efforts. Their alleged collusion with Russia continues to be the justification that Obama intelligence community officials give for their massive, rights-violating espionage operation against the Trump campaign.

Yet through all of the noise on cable news and in the legacy press, the public has not been presented with a single piece of evidence — other than the Steele dossier, a political opposition research and propaganda document sourced to Russia that was funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC — that any members of the Trump campaign or transition team colluded with the Kremlin. The Comey FBI declared Carter Page a Russian spy, yet Page remains free. Both Gen. Flynn and Papadopoulos appear to have been strong-armed into guilty pleas to charges unrelated to collusion and have long maintained that they did not conspire with the Kremlin. Papadopoulos is now reportedly reconsidering his guilty plea, while Mueller constantly delays Flynn’s sentencing hearing.

Mueller has charged several Trump campaign officials with offenses that have nothing to do with coordination with Russia, providing the legacy media with the fodder it needs to propagandize the public and repeatedly conflate the unrelated charges with Russian collusion. This has given the president’s detractors the ammunition they need to continue demanding that the special counsel stay afloat — and to continue challenging President Trump’s duly elected mandate, benefiting the Kremlin’s mission to further sow discord in the United States.

It has been 462 days since Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel. Since then, he has come up entirely empty on Russian collusion. Mueller now has two options: Produce the evidence, or concede that he has come up empty and put himself out to pasture. (For more from the author of “Mueller Comes up Empty on Trump-Russia” please click HERE)

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Country May Execute Its First Non-Violent Female Activist

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Saudi Arabia’s Public Prosecution is seeking the death penalty against a female human rights activist for her non-violent activist work.

According to Human Rights Watch, Israa al-Ghomgham is facing the death penalty along with four other activists for charges including “‘participating in protests in the Qatif region,’ ‘incitement to protest,’ ‘chanting slogans hostile to the regime,’ ‘attempting to inflame public opinion,’ ‘filming protests and publishing on social media,’ and ‘providing moral support to rioters.’” All of the activists and one additional activist who is not facing the death penalty, have been held in pretrial detention without legal representation for over two years.

The grounds for execution are reportedly based on ta’zir, a principle of Islamic law that gives a judge discretion over the sentence and definition of what constitutes a crime.

Al-Ghomgham is a Shia and the first female activist to ever face the death penalty, which, if executed, will set a dangerous precedent for other detained activists. She was arrested on December 6, 2015 after participating and documenting the 2011 demonstrations in the Eastern Province and calling for an end against discrimination for Saudi Shias.

In 2014 eight men were sentenced to death for their participating in the 2011 Eastern Province demonstrations, and an additional 14 were sentenced to death in 2016. (Read more from “Country May Execute Its First Non-Violent Female Activist” HERE)

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The Dossier: Is This the Right Plan to Win the Long War in Afghanistan?

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Trump reportedly considering new Afghanistan plan

President Trump has never been particularly happy with the Afghanistan war plan, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that he is reportedly entertaining various options on how to reduce U.S. troops’ footprint in the war-torn country.

According to NBC News, Trump has shown “renewed interest” in a plan drafted by Erik Prince, which calls for some private assets to replace American soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan. Prince, a former Navy SEAL and founder of the private military contracting giant Blackwater, has also acted as an unofficial adviser to Mr. Trump. Prince claims his plan, which calls for hiring private military contractors, would significantly reduce costs.

Many have taken to social media to criticize the plan. However, it’s also important to note that the U.S. is now 17 years into the Afghanistan war and the status quo is a complete stalemate, or worse, a slow decline. There is no end to the war in sight, and American soldiers continue to die on a regular basis, fighting to protect what’s left of a highly corrupt foreign government. Moreover, there isn’t much evidence that any of the jihadi groups currently operating in Afghanistan pose much of a threat to the American homeland. There is seemingly no grand strategy to win the war or exit the country in a timely manner.

It’s easy to slam Prince’s plan as radical, unproductive, or morally inappropriate. But at least he has presented a plan to move on from the never-ending, resource-draining, American soldier-killing war in Afghanistan.

South Africa begins seizing white-owned farms

In a deeply troubling development, the South African government has approved the first seizures of white-owned farmland.

Representatives from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) reportedly offered white farmers only ten percent of their land’s value prior to the unilateral seizure. The ANC has endorsed and fanned the flames of a climate of extreme hostility against the nation’s white Afrikaner minority.

Drive-by shooting targeting U.S. embassy in Turkey

At around 5 a.m. local time Monday, a drive-by shooting targeted the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey. The suspects fired several shots before taking off. No one was hurt in the incident.

Tensions continue to increase between the United States and Turkey. The Trump administration and the Erdogan regime are sparring over the imprisonment of U.S. Pastor Andrew Brunson. The United States government claims he is unfairly detained, while Ankara has claimed, without evidence, that he is a spy. It is believed that Turkey is using the pastor as a negotiating chip in seeking the extradition of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Manafort jury continues deliberations

Now into its third day of deliberations, a jury is currently deciding whether to convict former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort on charges related to tax evasion and bank fraud.

Although the legacy media is covering the case as if it’s the trial of the century, the charges against Manafort have nothing to do with his time on the Trump campaign or matters related supposed Russian collusion. (For more from the author of “The Dossier: Is This the Right Plan to Win the Long War in Afghanistan?” please click HERE)

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London Mayor Sadiq Khan Has Solution to Recent Terror Attacks — It Rivals His Knife Ban for Sheer Brilliance

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London Mayor Sadiq Khan responded to Wednesday’s reported terror attack by suggesting that vehicles be banned in certain parts of the city, particularly near the government buildings where Parliament meets.

Khan told BBC Radio that the important thing was to ensure that the people continued to have access to their government, but that measures to keep members of Parliament safe would benefit everyone.

“I think there would be lots of challenges if we would do the whole square. It is a thoroughfare for cars, vehicles and commercial deliveries going through London. So it’s possible to have a designed solution … in keeping our buildings and people as safe as we can do. And also not losing what is so wonderful about our city that is a vibrant democracy, people can walk around safely.”

Since July of 2016, when a man in a rented truck drove into a crowd in Nice, France, vehicle-based attacks have been on the rise — particularly in Europe where many cities have stricter regulations on guns and knives.

(Read more from “London Mayor Sadiq Khan Has Solution to Recent Terror Attacks — It Rivals His Knife Ban for Sheer Brilliance” HERE)

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After Trump Slams Turkish Government, Turkish Lawyers Accuse U.S. Military Officers of ‘Terrorist Ties’

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According to Stars and Stripes, the court papers accuse the officers of having connections to FETO, a group deemed a terrorist organization by Turkey, and call for the arrest of several officers associated with Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, including Col. John C. Walker, Col. Michael H. Manion, Col. David Eaglen, Col. David Trucksa, Lt. Col. Timothy J. Cook, Lt. Col. Mack R. Coker, and Sgts. Thomas S. Cooper and Vegas M. Clark. . .

The organization behind the filing, the Association for Social Justice and Aid, is reportedly a non-governmental organization of supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The legal action comes amid increasing tension between the two countries over Turkey’s refusal to release North Carolina Christian pastor Andrew Brunson, who Turkey claims supported PKK Kurdish militants and assisted a Turkish cleric based in Pennsylvania, who allegedly is responsible for the attempted 2016 coup against Erdogan.

The U.S. later officially imposed financial sanctions on two ministers and doubled steel and aluminum tariffs on Turkey, resulting in the Turkish currency hitting a record low of 7.23 per dollar.

An American spokeswoman for Incirlik Air Base told Stars and Stripes that the U.S. will continue to carry out their mission at the base and they are “proud of the relationship we have with our Turkish military partners.” (Read more from “After Trump Slams Turkish Government, Turkish Lawyers Accuse U.S. Military Officers of ‘Terrorist Ties'” HERE)

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Radioactive Sheep Bolster Nuclear Weapon Test Claim Against Israel

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Newly discovered data from radioactive sheep provides strong evidence that a mysterious “double flash” detected almost 39 years ago near a remote island group was a nuclear explosion.

Ever since the flash was observed by a U.S. “Vela” satellite orbiting above Earth in September 1979, there’s been speculation that it was produced from a nuclear weapon test by Israel. International researchers in the journal Science & Global Security analyzed previously unpublished results of radiation testing at a U.S. lab of thyroid organs from sheep in southeastern Australia in order to make their determination.

The flash was located in the area of Marion and Prince Edward islands, which are in the South Indian Ocean about halfway between Africa and Antarctica.

“A new publication sheds further light on the Vela Incident of 1979,” said Professor Nick Wilson, of Otago University at Wellington, who highlighted the findings but was not involved with the study itself. “[The research] adds to the evidence base that this was an illegal nuclear weapons test, very likely to have been conducted by Israel with assistance from the apartheid regime in South Africa.” . . .

The researchers conclude that iodine-131, which is an unstable radioactive form of the element iodine found in the thyroids of some Australian sheep, “would be consistent with them having grazed in the path of a potential radioactive fallout plume from a [September 22, 1979] low-yield nuclear test in the Southern Indian Ocean.” (Read more from “Radioactive Sheep Bolster Nuclear Weapon Test Claim Against Israel” HERE)

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Iran, N. Korea Grow Stockpile of Ballistic Missiles Capable of Striking U.S. Troops, Allies, Israel

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Iran and North Korea are growing their stockpile of ballistic missiles, including long-range missiles capable of striking U.S. assets, American allies, and even the continental United States, according to new congressional reports that shine a light on efforts by these rogue nations to advance their military capabilities.

North Korea continues to aid Iran with its advanced ballistic missiles program in defiance of international regulations barring such activity, according to the reports, issued by the Congressional Research Service. This includes an extensive proliferation network and multiple facilities dedicated to constructing short-range, medium-range, and long-range ballistic missiles.

Iran’s missiles, many of which are modeled off North Korean technology, are advanced enough to strike targets throughout the Middle East, including Israel, stoking fears that the next regional war—which many say is imminent—could present Iran an opportunity to show off its newest missile technology.

U.S. officials familiar with the Iranian and North Korean missile programs told the Washington Free Beacon that much of the recent technological progress by these rogue nations is the result of the Obama administration’s efforts to relax international regulations on such activity as part of the landmark nuclear agreement.

In the time since that agreement was reached, Iran has taken significant steps toward building, testing, and improving its ballistic missile technology, including long-range missiles that have been tested under cover of Tehran’s space program. (Read more from “Iran, N. Korea Grow Stockpile of Ballistic Missiles Capable of Striking U.S. Troops, Allies, Israel” HERE)

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