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How The US Government Blew $1 Billion In Taxpayer Funds On "Ghost Schools" In Afghanistan
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
BuzzFeed News obtained internal Ministry of Education data for 2011 that has never before been made public. For Afghanistan overall, the data showed 1,174 schools — almost 1 in every 12 — was a ghost school, an educational facility that the Afghan government publicly claimed was open but that was, in fact, not operating. In the provinces that are the most dangerous to monitor — and into which the U.S. poured the most aid money — that proportion soared. In Kandahar province, where DeNenno served, a full third of the 423 schools the Ministry of Education publicly reported as open in 2011 were not functioning, and in Helmand, it was more than half.
But teacher salaries continued to go to these ghost schools — and still do, according to numerous Afghan and U.S. sources. While the Afghan government puts in some of its own money to pay teachers, more than two-thirds of teacher salaries are provided through a World Bank fund, to which the United States is the biggest donor. The World Bank fund did not respond to requests for comment, but USAID said that World Bank financial controls guard against salaries going to ghost teachers.
And just as with ghost students, the U.S. government has known about ghost teachers for years. Back in 2005 and 2006, an internal education ministry task force calculated that at least $12 million in salaries were going to so-called ghost teachers annually, according to several former employees of the USAID contractors embedded in the ministry. A scathing, confidential 2013 USAID audit of the Afghan education ministry obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals that the United States had been injecting hundreds of millions of dollars for more than a decade into a ministry marred by an “inadequate payroll system” and lacking even the most basic auditing practices.
In some areas, the belief that ghost schools have enriched fat cats at the expense of Afghan children has stoked such widespread ire that American education aid is actually doing the opposite of what the U.S. intended: It’s turning locals against the government.
– From the Buzzfeed article: Ghost Students, Ghost Teachers, Ghost Schools
In the wake of so many wasteful, inhumane and disastrous foreign policy failures, the U.S. government has been desperate to highlight some significant successes in order to justify all of these tragic foreign imperial blunders.
One such supposed success relates to education in Afghanistan, an area into which some $1 billion in taxpayer money has been spent to build schools and pay teachers according to Buzzfeed. U.S. Government officials have consistently trumpeted all of the good work that has been done in this regard, but there’s one slight problem. Not only are most of the statistics complete bogus, but in many cases, a lot of this U.S. wealth that was meant to be targeted for education, has gone straight to the coffers of some of the most ruthless warlords in the county. How could this happen you ask? Here’s how.
From Buzzfeed:
Nearly four years later, water seeps through the leaky roof and drips onto students in this more than $250,000 construction. Doors are cut in half; some are missing altogether. There is no running water for the approximately 200 boys — and zero girls — who attend. But the school did enrich a notorious local warlord. In exchange for donating the land on which the school sits, he extracted a contract from the U.S. military worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Over and over, the United States has touted education — for which it has spent more than $1 billion — as one of its premier successes in Afghanistan, a signature achievement that helped win over ordinary Afghans and dissuade a future generation of Taliban recruits. As the American mission faltered, U.S. officials repeatedly trumpeted impressive statistics — the number of schools built, girls enrolled, textbooks distributed, teachers trained, and dollars spent — to help justify the 13 years and more than 2,000 Americans killed since the United States invaded.
But a BuzzFeed News investigation — the first comprehensive journalistic reckoning, based on visits to schools across the country, internal U.S. and Afghan databases and documents, and more than 150 interviews — has found those claims to be massively exaggerated, riddled with ghost schools, teachers, and students that exist only on paper. The American effort to educate Afghanistan’s children was hollowed out by corruption and by short-term political and military goals that, time and again, took precedence over building a viable school system. And the U.S. government has known for years that it has been peddling hype.
BuzzFeed News exclusively acquired the GPS coordinates and contractor information for every school that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) claims to have refurbished or built since 2002, as well as Department of Defense records of school constructions funded by the U.S. military.
At least a tenth of the schools BuzzFeed News visited no longer exist, are not operating, or were never built in the first place. “While regrettable,” USAID said in response, “it is hardly surprising to find the occasional shuttered schools in war zones.”
USAID program reports obtained by BuzzFeed News indicate the agency knew as far back as 2006 that enrollment figures were inflated, but American officials continued to cite them to Congress and the American public.
All they do is lie. Constantly, and about pretty much everything.
As for the schools America truly did build, U.S. officials repeatedly emphasized to Congress that they were constructed to high-quality standards. But in 2010, USAID’s inspector general published a review based on site visits to 30 schools. More than three-quarters suffered from physical problems, poor hardware, or other deficiencies that might expose students to “unhealthy and even dangerous conditions.” Also, the review found that “the International Building Code was not adhered to” in USAID’s school-building program.
This year, BuzzFeed News found that the overwhelming majority of the more than 50 U.S.-funded schools it visited resemble abandoned buildings — marred by collapsing roofs, shattered glass, boarded-up windows, protruding electrical wires, decaying doors, or other structural defects. At least a quarter of the schools BuzzFeed News visited do not have running water.
By obtaining internal records from the Afghan Ministry of Education, never before made public, BuzzFeed News also learned that more than 1,100 schools that the ministry publicly reported as active in 2011 were in fact not operating at all. Provincial documents show that teacher salaries — largely paid for with U.S. funds — continued to pour into ghost schools.
Some local officials even allege that those salaries sometimes end up in the hands of the Taliban. Certainly, U.S.-funded school projects have often lined the pockets of brutal warlords and reviled strongmen, which sometimes soured the local population on the U.S. and the Afghan government.
One place where it’s a lot less than it’s cracked up to be is the province where America poured more aid money than almost any other: Kandahar, home to Zhari district, where DeNenno’s school sits.
Habibullah Jan had fled the country, but when the Americans overthrew the Taliban in 2001, he returned and reimposed his checkpoints. With more than 2,000 men under his command and, soon, a seat in parliament, he became the most powerful man in Zhari. When his old foe the Taliban began to surge in 2005, the Americans turned to him for help.
To put it plainly: The U.S. allied itself with a warlord so oppressive and kleptocratic that he helped create the Taliban in the first place.
You really can’t make this stuff up.
Few American soldiers knew that Haji Lala and Habibullah Jan were brothers, let alone of Habibullah Jan’s role in fomenting the Taliban. “I liked Haji Lala,” a soldier in DeNenno’s unit said. “I’m pretty sure he did some bad stuff, but for us he was helpful.” He added, “I knew he was a warlord, but he was our warlord.”
America: Apple pie, democracy and Afghan warlords.
One of the most common payments the military made was compensation. If U.S. soldiers killed an innocent bystander, or blew up a civilian’s house, or killed someone’s sheep, commanders would pay compensation. The amounts were often modest — from less than $100 to more than $25,000 — but in total they added up to more than $2.5 million, from which strongmen could take a cut. DeNenno said that Haji Lala would sometimes tell the Taliban, “Go blow up this area because we wanna get the Americans to pay for it.”
The American taxpayer, the biggest patsy on earth, as usual.
But the goal was never just to educate children. Education was also a means to advance America’s short-term military and political objectives. In 2003, a National Security Council–led “Accelerating Success” program demanded that USAID hasten its work and complete 314 schools by June 2004. The reason: The U.S. wanted achievements — statistics — to extol ahead of the Afghan presidential election.
As a result of the NSC directive, USAID Director Patrick Fine wrote in an October 2004 internal memo, first obtained by the Washington Post, “awards were made without having design specifications, without agreed sites selected or surveyed or a process to do this, and without adequate consultation with either the [Ministry of Education or Ministry of Health] or the beneficiary communities.” The target numbers, he continued, “had gained a life of their own and were driving USAID to continue to rush the process.”
Profiteers exploited that rush. A full reckoning of the waste and outright fraud has never happened, in part because cases of corruption have often been hidden for years.
When an accountant went to federal investigators in 2006 with evidence that one of USAID’s largest contractors, Louis Berger Group, had been defrauding the agency of millions for years, the investigation was kept under federal seal until late 2010. Only then did the Justice Department reveal that two executives had pleaded guilty to fraud and announce the deal it had reached behind closed doors: The company as a whole would avoid criminal charges and be allowed to continue winning government contracts in exchange for implementing new financial controls and paying nearly $70 million in fines. Since the whistleblower came forward, USAID has awarded the company contracts worth more than 10 times what it was fined.
Looks like Louis Berger was handed out some banker justice. Must be nice.
From 2008 to at least August 2013, USAID claimed it had built or refurbished more than 680 schools in the country since the U.S. invaded — a figure the agency sometimes used to counter bad press and that it repeated on Twitter and in blog posts, press releases, and a report from USAID’s Office of the Inspector General, not to mention in Secretary Clinton’s submission to Congress.
But over the last two years, USAID has quietly whittled away at that number without explaining what happened to the more than 115 schools it no longer says it built or refurbished. After BuzzFeed News pressed for an answer, Larry Sampler, the head of USAID’s Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, said the agency had “revised its operational definition of school construction” to a “stricter definition.”
Less than 20 miles southeast of DeNenno’s school, Deh-e-Bagh Primary School was recorded in U.S. military records as completed in 2012, at cost and up to standard. The nine-room building, along with latrines and a security wall, would allow children to go to school regularly and provide a “tangible source of community pride and legitimacy” for local elders and the Afghan government, the records say.
But Deh-e-Bagh Primary School has never seen a single student. Only partially completed in 2012, its doors have never opened. There are no latrines, no running water. Without a security wall surrounding it, the building has deteriorated. Windows are smashed. Rooms are littered with construction materials.
That same year, 2012, a military unit distributed supplies to the Sher Mohammad Hotak Primary School, located just a few miles down Highway 1 from DeNenno’s base. Fifty girls attended the school, according to the unit’s records. In photos the unit posted to Facebook, both girls and boys are seen smiling and collecting new backpacks. Together, USAID and the Pentagon have pumped more than $200,000 into the school.
But in an unannounced visit to the school this March, not a single girl was in attendance. Instead, the seven tents that made up the school were filled with boys, some of whom had no chairs or desks. They sat on rocky ground, fading backpacks emblazoned with the Afghan flag next to them.
It was that way across Afghanistan, with school after school visited by BuzzFeed News showing fewer students than were on the books. In 2011 and 2012, USAID sent monitors to many of the schools it had funded to check the number of students and other key information. Since then it has relied almost exclusively on data provided by the Afghan Ministry of Education to determine how many students and teachers are in schools. But no matter who came up with the official count, it often exaggerated the reality on the ground.
At the USAID-funded Mujahed Sameullah Middle School in Kunar province, for example, there were fewer than 50 boys, sometimes sitting two per classroom. That’s only about a fifth of the 274 boys USAID’s quality assurance monitors recorded in 2011 or the 264 the Afghan government told BuzzFeed News are currently enrolled. Overall, in the schools BuzzFeed News visited for which comparison data was available, official figures overcounted students by an average of nearly a fifth — and girls by about two-fifths.
In response to questions, USAID said that it takes seriously any allegations of falsified data and “will continue to work with the ministry to improve reliability.” It also said that beginning in 2012, the agency and other donors recommended that the ministry tighten that standard from three years to one. To date, the ministry has not done so. Still, USAID told BuzzFeed News that while it could not “be absolutely sure of all attendance numbers in all Afghan schools at all times,” in general it “is confident in overall attendance numbers provided by the MoE.”
But Elizabeth Royall, a U.S. liaison to the ministry in 2011 and 2012, said, “There was a lack of scrutiny. I would just report MOE numbers, and that’s what we went with.”
The U.S. just went with the ministry’s numbers for teachers, too. And those numbers were used to pay salaries — even when the teachers weren’t teaching.
BuzzFeed News obtained internal Ministry of Education data for 2011 that has never before been made public. For Afghanistan overall, the data showed 1,174 schools — almost 1 in every 12 — was a ghost school, an educational facility that the Afghan government publicly claimed was open but that was, in fact, not operating. In the provinces that are the most dangerous to monitor — and into which the U.S. poured the most aid money — that proportion soared. In Kandahar province, where DeNenno served, a full third of the 423 schools the Ministry of Education publicly reported as open in 2011 were not functioning, and in Helmand, it was more than half.
But teacher salaries continued to go to these ghost schools — and still do, according to numerous Afghan and U.S. sources. While the Afghan government puts in some of its own money to pay teachers, more than two-thirds of teacher salaries are provided through a World Bank fund, to which the United States is the biggest donor. The World Bank fund did not respond to requests for comment, but USAID said that World Bank financial controls guard against salaries going to ghost teachers.
And just as with ghost students, the U.S. government has known about ghost teachers for years. Back in 2005 and 2006, an internal education ministry task force calculated that at least $12 million in salaries were going to so-called ghost teachers annually, according to several former employees of the USAID contractors embedded in the ministry. A scathing, confidential 2013 USAID audit of the Afghan education ministry obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals that the United States had been injecting hundreds of millions of dollars for more than a decade into a ministry marred by an “inadequate payroll system” and lacking even the most basic auditing practices.
In some areas, the belief that ghost schools have enriched fat cats at the expense of Afghan children has stoked such widespread ire that American education aid is actually doing the opposite of what the U.S. intended: It’s turning locals against the government.
At one point, the provincial police chief shouts out who he thinks are commandeering the payments: “Everyone knows the salaries of teachers come to the province, and then they go to the Taliban.”
Military spending under the CERP program required very little paperwork for most projects. The point was to help win a war. But that flexibility means, quite literally, that the military does not know what it spent on education in Afghanistan, or what it got for its money. The military conceded that many CERP projects were not entered into “procurement database systems” but said it “does maintain extensive project records.” Last year, however, the Defense Department told the special inspector general for Afghanistan Reconstruction just how little it knew: For more than 40% of CERP projects, the Pentagon could not say who ultimately received its money.
Pressed by BuzzFeed News, the Pentagon said it could not provide an exact number of schools it actually built. It also could not say how the more than $250 million in CERP funding earmarked for education was actually spent. To try to drill down on those figures, BuzzFeed News filed a Freedom of Information request and obtained CERP funding records — but found that entire projects were missing, including Joe DeNenno’s permanent school.
“The CERP database was an absolute mess, literally a disaster,” one government official familiar with the records said. “Saying disaster doesn’t even do it justice.”
Since 2002, the United States has invested more than $1 billion to provide education to Afghan children. But the American government does not know how many schools it has built, how many Afghan students are actually attending school, or how many teachers are actually teaching. What’s certain is the numbers for all of those are far less than what it has been peddling.
While it’s bad enough U.S. taxpayer’s were sent a bill for $1 billion to fund education in Afghanistan when we have so many enormous domestic problems of our own, it’s downright criminal that so much of this money was irresponsibly wasted in political schemes, not to mention some of it going to directly to murderous warlords. Then again, none of this should surprise you. We are all familiar with the seemingly endless list of humanitarian disasters created by inept U.S. foreign policy since 9/11, such as:
More Foreign Policy Incompetence – U.S. Humanitarian Aid is Going Directly to ISIS
Afghan President Hamid Karzai Slams U.S. Foreign Policy in Farewell Speech
America’s Disastrous Foreign Policy – My Thoughts on Iraq
The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya
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Were they studying why lesbians get fat?
After the story broke that the military just happened to be stationed next to the opium fields not guarding them but just next to them. And heroine from Afghanistan skyrocketed how could anyone not expect this to happen?
Fudge pack all you ignorant raycisses. Me ghost became very educated and affluent in Afghanistan.
The state aka tribe "who cares its their money, and the extra debt just lets them be more enslaved to us"
Wasted $1 billion? Amateurs!
What is that, like, 6 hours worth of QE?
Three Cups of Tea anyone?
How The US Government Blew $1 Billion In Taxpayer Funds On "Ghost Schools" In Afghanistan
Correction:
How The Obozo Admin Blew $1 Billion In Taxpayer Funds On "Ghost Schools" In Afghanistan...
And enabled the spread of ISIS to boot!
this fraud and abuse is bipartisan.
bush started the wars in afghanistan and iraq; obama kept them going and added more.
israel calls most of the shots no matter who's in office.
And the $18 billion flown in to Iraq that mysteriously disappeared, etc, etc. War is so profitable for the right people.
said Hillary.
Started working at home! It is by far the best job I have ever had. I just recently purchased a Brand new BMW since getting a check for $5476 this 8-week past. I began this 10 months ago and I am now bringing home at least $87 per hour. I work through this link. Go here... www.earnmore9.com
wooh wooh
wooh!
www.earnmore9.com
effin US officials should be prosecuted for fiduciary malefesence and sent to the worst hellhole prison we have, and they should lose their pension and all personal property
dirtyy, rotten, SOB's
No No No No
This money wasn't wasted
Lots of people got nice new boats and houses from it.
what's one pallet of cash between friends hey?
Just like Detroit basically.
United Suicide Bombers Union.
Man, I could think of a lot more interesting things to do with $1 billion.
For $1 billion, I could pay for a Delta IV launch, which means all I need to do is build my own spaceship and I can fly beyond earth orbit. Before you laugh at this, I'm well aware that it would be a one-way trip... but I'd still be the first human to leave earth's gravity well. And yeah, I'd have a wikipedia page forever. We all go sometime, only a select few of us achieve actual fame.
I could also buy myself a massive private yacht and leave all developed nations behind permanently, probably have girls in bikinis surrounding me in perpetuity.
Not sure what the problem is when you can just print money. Which is where we are. and have been and will ultimately, as we all know WILL
lead to mucho problemos..just a matter of time. Did they start the debt clock yet?
George W. Bush Middle Skool
Made possible by the good people at the Clinton Foundation
"How The US Government Blew $1 Billion In Taxpayer Funds On "Ghost Schools" In Afghanistan"
"How Zion and the MIC paid themselves $1 Billion from Loot Stolen from the American people On "Ghost Schools" In Afghanistan"
Fixed it.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
There is no such thing or person called a "taxpayer"; in the same way their is no such thing or person called a loot-payer in reference to a mugger. They take it, it becomes theirs, and it is no longer yours. Power only utilizes the word "taxpayer" to give their victims the feeling of some control over what has been stolen from them.
chump change. hell they spend $20B PER YEAR on air conditioning alone in iraq and afghanistan. they lost like nine pallets OF CASH in iraq.
where is Hillary?
oh wait, those emails were considered personal -
NoVa
ITT ISIS tech, sign up today.
Afcrapistan is the same as it was 200+ years ago. You can add some drapes to the mud wall, but the people are uneducated and tribe oriented. The British got routed, the Russians got routed, and the USA should never have put one motherfucking boot on the ground there.
I'm a proud graduate of the Kerry Opium Echange Student Alliance. A lot of the missing money went up in smoke.
An AG course on how to cultivate and yield a better and more potent POPPIE CROP. Maybe add a little potash.
To the Afghanistan was nothing but CIA establishing Poppy fields crowd I ask the following:
What do you think about the mexican cartels demanding that their farm slaves cultivate poppy instead of cannibus now? Who made that decision? Jew bankers? CIA? Illuminati? ECB? IMF? Obama? George Bush? Halliburton? The Carlyle Group? Wolfowitz? Cheney? Scooter Libby? Zombie Reagan? The mafiosa?
BTW Tyler, love the tags. Fat Cats and Mohammad.
remember to vote...
and of course keep paying those tributes to the IRS = Federal Reserve.....
Pallet of Cash! Sounds like Weimar.
Well apparently Russia and SA have forgiven each other for their trists in Afghanistan because now they are engaged in massive nuclear energy agreements, oil alliance, housing, military equipment etc.
Going to be pretty uncomfortable for all those US military boys locked on SA military bases when the whole damn country is full of Russian contractors.
New King in SA (not the same one that crashed oil to pin the Russians down), new leadership in Iran, the chess board is changing quickly. Oil wont be cheap for long.
Didn't Richard Burton and Lizzy Taylor marry 4 times? Just lovers' tiffs Missy No! s/c
I am going to go ahead and voluntarily retract that comment because immediately after making it I tripped over my dog and jammed and sprained my finger. It is the size of a hotdog already, can't be a good sign...lol Wine Tuesday it is!
I'm jealous as i lost both hands shaking them with a Goldman VICE President.
Can remember falling down the stairs at a party, cracking 3 ribs, broke my nose and suffered severe concussion; my large brandy was intact. You see good things do happen.
That's awesome, I don't feel so bad now. I actually hadn't drank a thing but that damn 125 lb behemoth changed floor positions on me unexpectedly. Probably keep her around just in case the food supply runs short down the road though.
I'm a huge dog lover, their loyalty is incredible, just like our loyalty to the IRS (getting emotional now realising all those taxes i paid went to good causes). s/c
I was joking I would never eat my dog. I am pretty close to a major population center from which thugs will emanate so I figure I will just borrow PODS long pig recipe book.
Like the bags of cash disappearing in Iraq.
Bernanke printed millions more.
Millions?
Bwhahaha.
More like TRILLIONS.
Odd that these folks think they're fooling anybody.
"Quick! Get that billion dollar helmet ready for the F-35!"
The bast one was the retard from United Space Alliance saying and I quote "we will grab the falling satellite from space in the air by a helicopter."
As far as I'm concerned the CEO's should be arrested for having that be said in public.
ALL THE MONEY IS GONE FOLKS!
Move along...
Move along...
It ain't over until the fat lady stops loading paper and ink into the printers.
$140+ Billion to Iran in the "Nuke" treaty...gratis...
Now if you’re a mainstream broadcaster and you’re looking to objectively describe that reality in an impartial, forensic way free of ideological bias, then the phrase you want to use will be British and American plans to bring democracy to the Middle East.
- Robert Newman
++ Julia, robert newman's solo performance about the history of oil is excellent - highly recommend it to anyone, on YT, have fun!
Warlords who happen to be peadophiles. And have little boy slaves "satisfy their needs".
I'm not making this up.
My Kingdom is not of this World said Jesus. He was offered the world if he bowed down to Satan. He declined and was crucified. Those who did bow down to Satan have ruled and continue to rule the World.
The world is ruled at all levels and aspects of society (including religion) by psychopaths that rule over the sheeple. You either are one or become one if you get into a position of power. All it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.
the concept of Jesus was to be in this world but not "attached" to it, kind of like Buddha teaching about non-attachment...being in the light, out of the darkness...
A Good Warlord Is Hard to Find
This AWAYS happens when there is NO accountability when you give power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Our country is so corrupt. Most of this money was stolen by cronies of the Gov and military or by bribes to corrupt Afghan officials. I represented some Homeland Security employees -largely black females making about 90 grand a year and whose job was to locate hgundreds of millions of dollars of missing military equipment and supplies. They didn't do shit -just sat on their asses and filed EEO complaints -I kid you not. I concluded that these incompetents were put in solely to make sure the missing equipment and supplies were never found -nor the perpetrators who stoled them.
Same with the Canadian participation in the invasion of Afghanistan: troops battle 10-ft Afghan marijuana
Kreiger writes: "The American taxpayer, the biggest patsy on earth, as usual." However, on a per capita basis, Canadian taxpayers were similarly so. Meanwhile, as always, I do not understand why Mike Kreiger continues to rely upon Hanlon's Razor presumptions so much, such as in the way that his conclusion was worded:
9/11 was an extremely successful inside job, false flag attack, that was deliberately designed to become the excuses to start more genocidal wars, as well as to prepare to impose democidal martial law on North Americans. Given that the people who control the people that control the governments of North America are criminally insane liars, that routinely get away with mass murders, it is taking understatement to a ridiculous extreme to speak about "humanitarian disasters created by inept U.S. foreign policy since 9/11."
The foreign policy of the U.S. government is directed by people whose psychopathic proportions are too criminally insane to fully comprehend. To take at face value any of their claims to be engaged in anything remotely like being "humanitarian" is RIDICULOUS! Rather, in my opinion, their longer term plans are based on deliberately driving the "War on Terror" that they started to become a self-fulfilling prophesy, that will enable them to develop excuses to start using weapons of mass destruction, in order to kill hundreds of millions, if not billions of people.
The problems, and implicit solutions, that the ruling classes face, and are preparing to implement, were summarized in this little video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkCEOSgLRt4
Zbigniew Brzezinski: It Is Infinitely Easier to Kill a Million People than it is to Control ThemThe deeper problems are that the death control systems are necessarily central to everything else, BUT, the existing death control systems are based on the maximum possible deceits, while the controlled opposition groups that surrounds those death controls being operated through the maximum possible deceits tend to stay within the same bullshit frame of reference regarding death controls in general.
In my opinion, Mike Kreiger tends to be a rather typical reactionary revolutionary, who grossly understates the situation, due to too superficial an analysis. The deeper problems are the ways that natural selection pressures drove the development of the existing artificial selection systems. Those developments were due to the history of successful warfare being based on backing up deceits with destruction, morphing to become successful finance based on enforcing frauds. It is within that context that there is almost nothing but a core of organized crime, surrounded by layers of controlled opposition, which sociopolitical institutions are operated by the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites, which is the real context in which all so-called humanitarian and charitable activities are taking place.
In the case of Afghanistan, it was overrun by the organized crime gang that styles itself as Islamic, then was repeatedly overrun by various Western Empires, all which later invasions were done without much success. The most recent manifestation of that was that 9/11 was an inside job, false flag attack, which Afghanistan had nothing to do with, but which became the excuse for a NATO alliance to invade. Since that War in Afghanistan was always merely another War based on Deceits, of course, all of its alleged humanitarian projects were nothing more than cruel jokes. Anyone who believed that there was anything genuinely "humanitarian" or "charitable" happening was some sort of political idiot. (But, of course, those kinds of political idiots can have the most successful careers within various controlled opposition groups.)
It is difficult for people who want to continue to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, based upon false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals, to go through the severe cognitive dissonance it takes to comprehend the degree to which everything they believed in was bullshit, including what they thought the "solutions" to those problems should be. As Cognitive Dissonance has previously stated on Zero Hedge: "The absolute best controlled opposition is one that doesn't know they are controlled."
Mike Kreiger's articles are demonstrations of how that works, which are similar to most of the content republished on Zero Hedge. There is usually an excessive reliance on Hanlon's Razor, in ways which are NOT a good application of the Occam's Razor principle, due to how those presumptions are based on deliberately ignoring the evidence that indicates there is NOT incompetent stupidity at the core, but rather, quite competently organized crime at the core. There is ONLY the appearance of incompetent stupidities, in the form of apparently "inept foreign policies" from the perspective of the layers of the controlled opposition groups, which have swallowed the huge lies about those phenomena hook, line and sinker.
Furthermore, those who rely upon taking for granted their favourite old-fashioned dualities are not able and willing to start using unitary mechanisms to better understand what is really happening, and therefore, what it would take to actually have more realistic resolutions of those problems. The most intense paradoxes are due to natural selection pressures demanding that there must be some death control systems, while the existing human systems developed due to that to become the most socially successful when done in the most deceitful ways.
The intense paradoxes revolving around the government of the USA's policies, as well as all other NATO countries' policies, are that those are all actually the result of the best organized gangs of criminals controlling the governments of those countries. Meanwhile, those who operate at that core of organized crime, or who are the pyramidion people in those social pyramid systems, also control their apparent opposition. The ruling classes spout RIDICULOUS bullshit with respect to "humanitarian wars" and so on and so forth, while mostly their controlled opposition tends to accept that bullshit at face value.
Even those few who perceive the degree to which the basic systems are debt slavery, backed by wars based on deceits, tend to STILL continue to stay within taking for granted the dualities of false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals, especially when proposing bogus "solutions" to those problems. However, the intense paradoxes that we should appreciate are those regarding how and why natural selection pressures drove the development of artificial selection systems to become what actually exists today. After doing that, one may begin to understand that the unitary mechanisms that we should develop ought to become better death control systems. That is particularly imperative because of the development of weapons of mass destruction, that make it infinitely easier to kill a million people, than to control a million people.
What is actually happening is that the ruling classes are deliberately setting up the conditions whereby they will be able to kill hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, in their efforts to continue to be able to control. They appear to be getting away with that because they have no genuine opposition that is not also controlled. However, overall, the whole system is spinning more and more seriously out of control!
The first generation that grew up within systems of atomic bombs backing up globalized electronic frauds is still alive today. Despite those technologies becoming trillions of times more powerful and capable than ever before in human history, the same basic social pyramid systems, which are based on a core of organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups, are still the ones that are attempting to employ those technologies. If anything, the ruling classes believe in some of the most old-fashioned religions and ideologies, while the people they rule over also believe in various other old-fashioned religions and ideologies.
To over-simplify, my basic view is that the events on 9/11/2001 were a false flag attack, most probably done by Zionists, in order to blame on Muslims, so that the "War on Terror" could get going as a self-fulfilling prophesy, by using 9/11 as an excuse to start genocidal wars, as well as also enable preparing to impose democidal martial law on North Americans, and other NATO countries.
Inside of that context, OF COURSE, "humanitarian" projects were always nothing more than cruel hoaxes, with the most oxymoronic of those cruel jokes being "humanitarian war." However, since there is practically no genuine opposition, but the only publicly significant opposition is controlled, because those opposition groups still think in the same basically bullshit ways that the biggest bullies originally promoted, we typically see an overuse and misuse of Hanlon's Razor with respect to those events. While it is true that most of the controlled opposition groups act out of their incompetent stupidity, the core of organized crime is not doing that. Rather, they have excelled in becoming so extremely psychopathic that they are psychotic, and what they are doing has become runaway criminal insanities ...
+10 Rad MJ - but of course the Coalition of the Willing would desire to send the crack Canuks to battle those Giant crops of Afghanistan, for outside of some leafy s. american lands, the rugged BC wilderness hosts the Gigantic BC Bud strains, mammoths for sure....surely those AFghani scrubs would be shown their place against the Mighty Bud Fighters
- as for 9/11, your remarks are on target, however we should also keep in mind the surplus office sq footage in Manhattan, with the prevailing expansion happening in Asia, it was overbuilt - and the asbesos issue...but ultimately strike a blow to the heart of the United States as we knew it...outside of the Pentagon, the concentration of USA interests in the WTC complex was massive and deep. the disruption was tremendous - the destruction of key agency's was thorough. We learned disaster capitalism and chaos theory and trauma based mind control ...
_++ RAD MJ for continuing to earn 1st place for length of posts, way to go Rad ! :)
Brzezinski: "It Is Infinitely Easier to Kill a Million People than it is to Control Them" - Good
Hitler: "It Is Infinitely Easier to Kill a Million People than it is to Control Them" - Bad
Afghanistan is a backward country that has been the graveyard of empires for thousands of years. All good will intended and common people there in desperate need, why do countries keep on trying to make something out of it? (Because war is a racket and plenty of money to be made there by contractors while wasting tax payers money on phantom schools, etc).
Define backward Joe?
Lack of Banking Institutions.
Short on edumukation, MSM propaganda.
Difficult for US to find trustworthy local agitators to edumakate in subversive activities.
Difficulty in setting up colour revolutions.
Problem defeating Taliban terrorists armed with pre soviet kalashnikov's.
I'll take backward if it means starting afresh as when i look around me at the sorry excuses for human beings, constantly on their mobiles & computers but still pathetically, painfully ignorant of whatsapp(ning) in this 'progressive civilized' western democraceee, i'm blown away.
Up voted you by the way.
It was modernising quite rapidly until the US launched its terrorists against the Afghan government in the late 20th century.
$1 billion?
Why are you wasting our time with chump change?
I'd rather read about the Kardashians.
true that - now what has happened to Kourtney since Disick was playing around in Europe with that other chick?
and what's with this being reported that Caitlyn hasn't even been ticketed for that fatal auto accident that happened prior to Caitlyn's coming out? new dashcam video is out,
/ss
I lied.
I don't want to know about the Kardashians. Unless they all fall into the abyss.
This country is becoming so decadent, corrupt and controlled that we can all look forward soon to some black athlete celebrity shoving his wing wang up Kim kardashian's fat ass on national TV. Then perhaps a threesome with Caitlan jenner. That's where we're heading. Sick country we live in. The transformation to total deadence is almost complete.
Skrillex - Syndicate [HD]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3TrjEuXuNw (2:29)
tight
Personally, I see know reason as to why Ghosts should not be educated.
The purpose is to destroy America, Americans and the dollar while enriching the corrupt Military Industrial Complex, banksters and politicians who who not give a damn that all of that is part of a depopulation faction, in America and the world. What some of them fail to see is that their lard asses are on the chopping block as much as ours are.
Amateurs indeed. In Jersey we blew 6 billion on 'No-Schools'... had to be 10 years go. Can't even print money and stilll got 'er done.
What a bunch of jerks. You expect when you invade a country the subjugated people would be more cooperative in accepting the values you force on them.
Unfortunately this is business as usual for the US in Afghanistan;
http://www.businessinsider.com/100-billion-in-aid-squandered-in-afghanis...