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Category: Afghanistan

  • We will defend till last moment says President Ghani

    Bashir Hotak, Kabul,

    The Political situation has deteriorated in Afghanistan due to unexpected withdrawal of US coalition forces. Citizens stood up against Taliban.

    According to a survey report, more than 200,000 people have been displaced from three provinces in just one week, due to fierce fighting and are forced to refuge in open fields.

    According to displaced Afghan’s, we are human and Muslims, Taliban or the government, solve problems through dialogue, people’s homes were destroyed, even many families did not bury their loved ones. We are forced to leave our homes and refuge in open fields with children, women and the elderly in scorching sun in 42 degree Celsius heat.

    In Taliban stronghold areas we lost our homes. On the other side government bombard our homes to target Taliban, we have nothing no food no water to drink and no shelter. What we do? Where we go and why this oppression to us?

    Taliban and the government listen to our pleas and stop fighting so that we can go back to our homes.

    According to reports, the Taliban have also advancing to capture the city of Kandahar city while city has been besieged for three days. According to Afghan security officials Taliban have suffered heavy casualties in Kandahar, they attempts to seize the city but government forces retaliate and they have been failed.

    According to the security forces, the Taliban tried hard for three days to capture the city, but they were severely defeated.

    They targeted Kandahar from outskirts of the Spin Boldak and Dund districts, but the timely Afghan defence and airial bombardment killed thirty-seven fighters and wounded more than fifty in a single day.

    The bodies of some people are still in the area while some of the bodies were taken away by their companions. Afghan forces assure the residents of Kandahar to show patience and unity, the situation will soon change and we will not allow the Taliban to take over Kandahar city.

    According to the Afghan forces, city of Herat also has been under intense attack for several days, but Taliban’s every attack has been foiled, there is no threat to the city and to civilians until the presence of forces, Residents and city should be safe in Herat.

    Following the Taliban’s advancements to capture towns, districts and cities. Former Jihadi leaders, Mujahideen (armed outfits) and civilians in country side have stood up against Taliban oppression. They are on front lines of war along with security forces to protect their areas.

    According to former Governor Ismail that we believe in the help and support of Allah Almighty, we are here with our security forces to defend Herat. We assure people of Herat that Taliban attacks will be responded with heavy resistance. They retaliated and not in position to capture the city.

    President Ashraf Ghani also determined to defend the city of Herat. President said that we will not hand over Herat to the enemy under any circumstances. President message to the Taliban fighters, that “We will defend Herat till last moment and will not allow capturing this city in any situation”.

    A week has passed since the battle for control of the city of Herat. Fresh troops have been sent from the capital Kabul to protect the Herat. Security forces advancing towards the outer gates of the city and expected to heavy gun battle with Taliban fighters.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • If Taliban are sincere, declare ceasefire immediately, Analysts.

    Bashir Hotak, Kabul,

    The Doha talks between United States and Taliban was reached to peace deal, its included the withdrawal of US troops and release of captured Talibans.

    The Taliban are bound on several clauses such of them were not to attack and capture cities and major highways, immediate twitch inter-Afghan dialogue with Afghan authorities and an immediate ceasefire or at least a reduction of war intensity, but all this did not happen accordingly as Doha peace deal talks and intensity increases.

    Taliban occupy dozens of districts as US troops withdrew from Afghanistan, and spectrum of war now extended in civilian territory.

    Taliban fighters have seized hundreds of districts and commercial ports in some parts of the country.

    While Spin Boldak- Durand Line, Sher Khan-Tajik border, two ports in Herat province, Turgundai, and commercial ports of Islam Qila and Abu Nasr Farahi in Farah province.

    Meanwhile Afghan security forces are conducting special operations to bring these commercial ports back under government control, a month has passed US forces withdrew; Talibans are still in control on these ports.

    According to Afghan Finance Ministry website, annual import and export from these five ports animatedly generates 70billion revenue and that was directly deposited in government treasury.

    An important question raised that how and where Taliban fighters will use this ports revenue, Afghan experts were expressing their concerns that Taliban-controlled trade routes are no longer crowded and some business communities are reluctant to take out their assets from these ports due to insecurity.Taliban are actively control these ports and receiving large sums of money.

    According to national news agency, Zabihullah Mujahid Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan, told that we collect taxes in a very systematic manner and generate revenue. In past this revenue annually deposited in treasury but now Taliban collects this revenue.

    The spokesman also said that Taliban have occupied more than two hundred districts in the country where millions of civilians need basic infrastructure, health facilities, education system and transport while Taliban keenly look forward for development of infrastructure and welfare of these citizens from this revenue.

    On the other side Analysts overseeing the Afghan situation have a lot of reservations on Taliban controlled ports, they said that Taliban have no credibility, if they were sincere with Afghans and  wants development on public welfare. They would not damage infrastructure while bombed hospitals, clinics, schools and government buildings in these districts even more that Taliban allow mass to looting public buildings in their control territory.

    If Taliban are sincere to the people, they should declare a ceasefire immediately, Analysts demanded.

    Some analysts highlight weak government policies and corruption in institutions and fear that revenue could be used for war. Once again Afghanistan grips in a series of wars that has entered in civilian territory.

    Analyst added that Taliban may spend money on arms purchases and bear foreign fighters’ expenses, including food and shelter. How much truth in this has not been confirmed by any source.

    Analyst said that it is noteworthy that NATO coalition forces withdrew in 2014 from Afghanistan, Taliban began occupying some districts. Electricity and utility bills imposed in areas under their control. News circulating that Taliban fighters not only continued to collect electricity bills from the citizens of these areas, but also collect usher and zakat, every farmer is bound to pay one tenth of their crop, food from the common residents including monthly protection money from mobile towers has been taken by force.

    For the past three years, Taliban collects toll tax and inter-provincial tax from freight vehicles on major highways. On average they collect 15,000 to 30,000 (Afghan currency) per vehicle.

    However, all this happened under nose of the government. The Government forces targets these Taliban controlled toll tax check posts from land and conduct several air strikes. However, after few days, Taliban regains these check posts and re-imposes taxes and recovery process.

    Interestingly, truck drivers, owners, traders and government officials, are forced to pay taxes, otherwise they are not allowed to move on these trade routes. Due to taxing to two different elements Taliban forces and Government authorities, the value of commodities increases, which directly affect ordinary Afghans.

    According to a report, compared to 2017, food prices in Afghanistan have increased by 70% while the graph of poverty has also risen up.

    Tax collection check posts set up by Taliban fighters on the highway north of the capital Kabul at Dand Ghauri in Baghlan Province and on the highway from Kabul to the northeastern provinces at Jir Khoshk in Baghlan Province, from Kabul. Roads leading to the southern areas have been set up in Muqur area of ​​Ghazni province.

    There are lot of unanswered questions left behind about where, how and in what way the money spend by Taliban.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Afghanistan, Failure and Second Thoughts

    It is a country other powers simply cannot leave alone.  Even after abandoning its Kabul post in ignominy, tail tucked between their legs, Australia is now wondering if it should return – in some form.  The Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs has been sending out a few signals, none of them definitive.  “We will not comment on intelligence matters,” a spokesman for foreign minister Senator Marise Payne stated tersely earlier this month.

    The spokesman was, however, willing to make general remarks about a belated return.  When, he could not be sure, but Canberra’s diplomatic arrangements in Afghanistan “were always expected to be temporary, with the intention of resuming a permanent presence once circumstances permit.”  Australia continued “to engage closely with partners, including the Afghanistan government and coalition member countries.”  Rather embarrassing remarks, given the sudden closure of the embassy on June 18.

    The Australian response, confused and stumbling, is much like that of their counterparts in Washington.  While the Biden administration speeds up the departure of troops, the cord to Kabul remains uncut though distinctly worn.  In April, the US House Services Committee was told by General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, head of US Central Command, that the Pentagon was “further planning now for continued counterterrorism operations from within the region.”

    Amanda Dory, acting undersecretary of defense for defense policy, also informed members that the Pentagon remained interested in considering “how to continue to apply pressure with respect to potential threats emanating from Afghanistan.”  Hazily, she claimed that the department was “looking throughout the region in terms of over-the-horizon opportunities.”

    Such window dressing does little to confront the situation on the ground, which looks monstrously bleak for the increasingly titular Kabul government.  General Scott Miller, top US military commander in Afghanistan, clumsily admitted in June that, “Civil war is certainly a path that can be visualized if this continues on the trajectory it’s on right now.”  The hasty withdrawal from Bagram airbase on July 2 certainly gave the Taliban much scope to visualize that fact.

    Unceremoniously hung out to dry in the Doha agreement forged by the US and the Taliban, the frail and terminal regime has imposed a month-long countrywide curfew to address the vigorous onslaught.  According to the interior ministry, the curfew is intended “to curb violence and limit the Taliban movements”, though it would not apply to Kabul, Panjshir and Nangarhar.

    The US Air Force has also made a dozen airstrikes in southern Afghanistan, concerned by the Taliban’s push towards Kandahar, the second-largest city in the country.  “The United States has increased airstrikes in support of Afghan security forces in the past several days,” announced General McKenzie.  “And we’re prepared to continue this heightened level of support in the coming weeks if the Taliban continue their attacks.”

    Such actions are only band aid measures at best.  The surrender of Afghan soldiers to the Taliban across numerous districts is inking the writing on the wall.  The response from Kabul is that the Afghan army is behaving strategically, refocusing attention on protecting urban centres.  In reality, they have lost both their mettle and the plot, with the Taliban in control of some 85 per cent of the country’s territory, including critical border checkpoints.  As a reminder of their emerging dominance, ghoulish material such as video footage showing the execution of 22 elite Afghan commandos, trained by US forces, terrifies government soldiers.

    But McKenzie is a picture of hope over experience.  “The Taliban are attempting to create a sense of inevitability about their campaign.  They’re wrong.  There is no preordained conclusion to this fight.”

    Other countries are also bubbling with concern, which, when translated into security matters, imply future interference.  Russia, bloodied and bruised by its own Afghanistan experience, casts a concerned eye at the Taliban train.  “The uncertainty of the development of the military-political situation in this country and around it has increased,” stated Russia’s grave foreign minister Sergey Lavrov earlier this month.  “Unfortunately, in recent days we have witnessed a rapid degradation of the situation in Afghanistan.”  It was “obvious that in the current conditions there are real risks of an overflow of instability to neighbouring states.”

    Moscow shares, with Washington, a dark paternalism towards the country.  While the Biden administration has shown less interest of late, Moscow is looking for reassurance against impending chaos.  “It is the feeling in Moscow,” reasoned Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the Moscow-based Russia in Global Affairs, “that the US is not able to, or even interested in, maintaining a presence in the region to guarantee any particular future direction in Afghanistan.”  The implications of this are ominous enough.

    The emptying of the barracks does not put an end to the prying and meddling from non-Afghan personnel.  The country will still host a myriad of special forces and intelligence officials.  Excuses for maintaining some militarised footprint will be traditional: the threat posed by terrorism; the thriving opium trade.  The contractor business will also boom.  A Taliban victory promises a slice of violence for everybody, but so does the presence of this feeble Afghan government.

    The post Afghanistan, Failure and Second Thoughts first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Top US General Won’t Commit To Ending Afghanistan Airstrikes

    The war in Afghanistan is meant to be effectively over, with the last US troops leaving by the end of August. McKenzie, however, suggests that the US intention to continue to support its partners means that they’ll continue to “offer” airstrikes to Afghanistan. McKenzie didn’t want to admit to intentions to carry out more airstrikes, but did concede that the US has been stepping up airstrikes, and believes they’ve had a “good effect” in the fighting.

    The post Top US General Won’t Commit To Ending Afghanistan Airstrikes appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Afghanistan War Outcome: Hope for Sovereign Nations Fighting the Scourge of Neocolonial Imperialism

    Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

    Exits of Netanyahu and Trump: chance to dial down Mideast tensions

    The Iraqi geopolitical analyst, Ali Fahim, recently said in an interview with The Tehran Times: “The arrival of [newly elected Iranian President] Ebrahim Raisi at the helm of power gives a great moral impetus to the resistance axis.” Further, with new administrations in the United States, Israel, and Iran, another opportunity presents itself to reinstate fully the 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, as well as completely lift the US economic sanctions from Iran.

    Let us wait and see after Raisi is in power in August 2021. It is a fact that, since the Trump administration pulled out of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal, tensions have been on the rise. One can legitimately suspect that the Trump pull-out had as its real intentions: first, to provoke Tehran; second to undo one of the only foreign policy achievements of the Obama administration, which was negotiated by John Kerry for the US. The Trump administration also used unfair economic sanctions on Iran as a squeeze for regime-change purposes. This was a complete fiasco: the Islamic Republic of Iran suffered but held together.

    As far as military tensions in the region, there are many countries besides Syria where conflicts between Iran-supported groups and US-supported proxies are simmering, or full blown. The US does its work, not only via Israel in the entire region, but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, and presently Turkey in Syria. Right now conflicts are active in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Palestine, but something could ignite in Lebanon at any time.

    Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

    Iran views itself as the lead supporter of the resistance movement, not only through its support for regional allies like Hezbollah and Bashar al-Assad, but also beyond the Middle-East, for Maduro in Venezuela. The upcoming Iranian administration does not hide its international ambition. For better or worse, Iran sees itself as a global leader of smaller nonaligned countries that are resisting US imperialism, be it Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, or Venezuela. Even though Iran is completely different ideologically, it has replaced the leadership of Yugoslavia’s Tito or Cuba’s Castro. Both were not only Marxists but also leaders of the nonaligned movement during the Cold War, when the US and the USSR were competing to split the world in two. Now the dynamics have shifted because of China’s rising global influence, and the Iran Islamic Republic thinks it has a card to play in this complex geopolitical imbroglio.

    Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

    In the US, Europe and Gulf States, Raisi has been categorized as a hardliner cleric and judge, but this gives Raisi more power than he will have as president. In Iran, major foreign policy issues are not merely up to the president to decide but a consensus process involving many. In the end such critical decisions are always signed off by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei has already indicated that he supports going back to the 2015 nuclear deal. During his electoral campaign, Raisi, who is close to Khamenei despite previous opposition, said that if elected he would uphold the 2015 landmark nuclear agreement.

    Photo Credit:  Gilbert Mercier

    Ottoman empire revival under Erdogan

    Turkey’s President, Recep Erdogan, often behaves as a modern day Sultan. He is shrewd and extremely ambitious. He fancies himself to be the global leader, politically and militarily, of Sunny Islam. Under Erdogan, Turkey has flexed its military muscles, either directly or through Syrian proxies, not only in Syria, but also in Libya, as well as in Turkey’s support for Qatar in the small Gulf State’s recent skirmish with Saudi Arabia. Erdogan thinks he now has a card to play in Afghanistan. More immediately and strategically, the serious issue on Erdogan’s plate is called Idlib.

    Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

    The problem of the pocket of Idlib has to be resolved, and unfortunately, for all the civilian population that has been and will be in the crossfire, it can only be solved by a full-on military operation, with troops from Bashar al-Assad and Russia. Turkey is, of course, adamant about keeping a military presence and influence within Syria to prevent a complete Assad victory. Time will tell, but the war of attrition has to end. For this to happen, Russia has to commit to face Turkey from a military standpoint. If Russia is ready for a direct confrontation with Turkey, then Bashar al-Assad’s troops, and Russian forces bringing mainly logistic and air support, should prevail.

    What should make this easier is the fact Erdogan has overplayed his hand for quite some time. This includes his tense relationships with his supposed NATO allies, many of whom, including France, Greece and even Germany, would not mind having him out of NATO altogether.

    There are important factors that explain, not only why Erdogan is quite popular with Turks, but also why his position could become precarious. Erdogan is playing on the Turkish nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire.

    From one Empire to two others: the Sykes-Picot agreement

    To understand better this imperial dynamic, we must go back to the middle of World War I, when the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany. In 1916, the Sykes-Picot secret agreement effectively sealed the fate of post World War I Middle-East. This British-French agreement, in expectation of a final victory, was a de-facto split of the Ottoman Empire. In the resulting colonial or imperial zones of influence, a euphemism for an Anglo-French control of the region, the British would get Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf area, while France would take control of Syria and Lebanon. More than 100 years later, the misery created by this imperialist deal lingers in the entire region, from Palestine, with the 1948 English-blessed creation of the Zionist state of Israel, to Iraq. France put in place two protectorates in Syria and Lebanon, in which the respective populations did not fare much better. Even today, French governments still act as if they have a say in Lebanese affairs.

    Photo Credit from the archive Magharebia

    The weight of history and the nostalgia of 600 years of rule in the Middle-East are why some Turks — especially Erdogan — feel entitled to an intrusive role in the region. The unfortunate story of the Middle-East has been to go from one imperialism to another. With the American empire taking over in the mid-1950s, the only competition during the Cold War became the USSR. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US had carte blanche. It became more blunt about the exploitation of resources, regime-change policies and its role as the eternal champion of the sacred state of Israel. Quickly, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar became the US’ best friends in the Arab world. I have called this alliance between the West, Israel and the oil-rich Gulf states an unholy alliance. It is still at play, mainly against Iran.

    Photo Credit: David Stanley

    Since the collapse of the USSR, the US empire has tried to assert a worldwide hegemony by mainly two different approaches: support of autocratic regimes like those in the Gulf States, or pursuit of regime change policies to get rid of sovereign nations. This is what I have identified as engineering failed states: a doctrine at play in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen. Often, Islam soldiers of fortune — called at first freedom fighters as in Afghanistan, or the so-called Free Syrian Army — have mutated down the line into ISIS terrorists. Once the mercenaries developed independent ambitions, they served a dual purpose: firstly, as tools of proxy wars; secondly as a justification for direct military interventions by the empire and its vassals. Since the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq the bottom line results have been the same: death and destruction. Tabula rasa of Iraq, Libya and Syria, with countries left in ruins, millions killed, and millions of others turned into refugees and scattered to the winds. The numbers are mind boggling in the sheer horrors they reflect. According to the remarkable non-partisan Brown University Costs of War project, since the start of the US-led so-called war on terror, post September 11, 2001, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere the direct cost in people killed has been over 801,000. So far, the financial burden for US taxpayers has been $6.4 trillion.

    Photo credit from the archives of Newsonline

    Does Erdogan think he can do better than Alexander the Great with Afghans?

    Apparently Erdogan’s imperial ambitions reach as far as the land of the Pashtuns. The Taliban already control about 85 percent of Afghanistan. While most NATO troops have either left or are in the process of doing so, Erdogan has volunteered Turkish troops to secure Kabul’s airport. Some in the Middle-East speculate, rightly or wrongly, that Erdogan plans to send to Afghanistan some of his available Syrian mercenaries, like those he has used in Libya. Even if this is rubber stamped by regional powers like Pakistan or Iran, which it won’t be, such a direct or proxy occupation will fail. If Turkish or Syrian mercenaries, or any other foreign proxies for that matter, try to get in the way of the Taliban, they will be shredded to bits.

    Does Erdogan think he is a modern day version of Alexander the Great? This is plainly laughable! The Taliban are resuming control of Afghanistan, and that is the reality. Something Afghans agree upon is that they want all occupying foreigners out. This will include Turkish and Syrian mercenaries.

    Photo Credit:  Gilbert Mercier

    Post Netanyahu Israel: more of the same for Palestinians?

    For the Palestinians living either in Gaza or in the occupied territories, one element that has changed in Israel is that Netanyahu is no longer in power. It would be naive to think that the new Israeli administration will be less Zionist in its support for Jewish settlers expanding their occupation of Palestinian land, but we might see a small shift, more like a pause in Israel’s bellicose behavior.

    Lebanon on the brink: opportunity for Israel to attack Hezbollah?

    Despite Lebanon’s dreadful political and economic situation, Israel would be ill advised to consider any military action. Hezbollah is a formidable fighting force of 70,000 men, who have been battle hardened for almost a decade in Syria. Vis a vis Iran, a direct aggression of Israel is even less likely. With Trump gone, it seems that Israel’s hawks have missed out on that opportunity. Furthermore, it would be borderline suicidal for the Jewish state to open up many potential fronts at once against Hezbollah, Hamas, and Bashar al-Assad’s army. All of them would have the backing and logistic support of Iran.

    Once the 2015 nuclear agreement is in force again, with the Biden administration, the tensions in the region should significantly decrease. It is probable that in the new negotiations, Iran will request that all the US economic sanctions, which were put in place by the Trump administration, be lifted.

    Photo credit from Resolute Support Media archive

    Neocolonial imperialism: a scourge that can be defeated

    One thing about US administrations that has remained constant pretty much since the end of World War II is an almost absolute continuity in foreign policy. From Bush to Obama, Obama to Trump, and now Trump to Biden, it hardly matters if the US president is a Democrat or Republican. The cornerstone of foreign policy is to maintain, and preferably increase, US hegemony by any means necessary. This assertion of US imperial domination, with help from its NATO vassals, can be blunt like it was with Trump, or more hypocritical with a pseudo humanitarian narrative as during the Obama era.

    The imperatives of military and economic dominance have been at the core of US policies, and it is doubtful that this could easily change. Mohammed bin-Salman‘s war in Yemen is part of this scenario. Some naively thought MBS would be pushed aside by the Biden administration. The clout of the Saudis remained intact, however, despite the CIA report on the gruesome assassination of a Washington Post journalist in Turkey. All evidence pointed to bin-Salman, but he was not pushed aside by his father. Under Biden, MBS is still Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, and de-facto autocratic ruler. The Saudis’ oil and money still have considerable influence in Washington.

    The Saudis understand very well that, since the 1970s, their real geopolitical power has resided in the way they can impact global oil prices. They can still make the barrel price go up or down to serve specific geopolitical interests. For example, recently the Saudis tried to help the US regime change policy in Venezuela by flooding the global market to make oil prices crash. Saudi Arabia and its United Arab Emirates ally have used the black gold as an economic weapon countless times, and very effectively.

    The great appetite of the Saudis for expensive weapons systems is another reason why they have a lot of weight in Washington and elsewhere. How can one oppose the will of a major client of the corporate merchants of death of the military-industrial complex?

    Photo Credit from archive of DVIDSHUB

    History will eventually record the 20-year Afghanistan war as a defeat and perhaps the beginning of the end for the US empire that established its global dominance aspiration in 1945. People from countries like Yemen, Palestine, as well as Mali, Kashmir, and even Haiti, who are fighting against an occupation of their lands, respectively, by the imperial little helpers Saudi Arabia, Israel, France, India and the United Nations, should find hope in what is going on in Afghanistan. My News Junkie Post partner Dady Chery has explained the mechanics of it brilliantly in her book, We Have Dared to Be Free. Yes, occupiers of all stripes can be defeated! No, small sovereign nations or tribes should not despair! The 20-year US-NATO folly in Afghanistan is about to end. The real outcome is a victory of the Pashtuns-Taliban that is entirely against all odds. It is a victory against the most powerful military alliance ever assembled in history. Yemenites, Palestinians, Tuaregs, Kashmiris, Haitians and other proud people, fighting from different form of neocolonial occupations, should find inspiration from it. It can be done!

    Photo Credit from the archive of Antonio Marin Segovia

    The post Afghanistan War Outcome: Hope for Sovereign Nations Fighting the Scourge of Neocolonial Imperialism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Biden Tried to Absolve Himself for Afghanistan Aftermath — But He Voted for War

    President Joe Biden speaks about the situation in Afghanistan from the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 8, 2021.

    Former president George W. Bush recently took a break from painting portraits of the wounded soldiers he fed into the maw of dual wars 20 years ago to complain about the end of one of those wars. In a rare interview, given to German news agency Deutsche Welle (DW), Bush had himself a nice little sad about the fact that the Biden administration was finally shutting down U.S. military involvement in the two-decade bottomless pit that was, and will ever be, his Afghanistan conflict.

    Calling the withdrawal a “mistake,” Bush said, “I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad and sad.” Of course, the results of U.S. intervention (and its aftermath) in Afghanistan are indeed bad and sad. After 20 years of war, thousands of dead, wounded and traumatized U.S. servicemembers and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians killed, severely injured or displaced, absolutely nothing of substance was accomplished beyond lining the pockets of the warmaking industry. Despite U.S. propaganda to the contrary, the women and girls who suffered unspeakable abuse at the hands of the Taliban before the war are threatened with the same fate now, because U.S. intervention was never actually about human rights — and imperial war and militarism aren’t solutions to human rights abuses in any event.

    After the interview, DW reached out to Kabul-based journalist Ali Latifi for his thoughts on Bush’s comments. “I think it’s very interesting that he’s suddenly, you know, concerned about women and children,” said Latifi. “His war made a lot of widows and made a lot of children orphans.”

    A number of comparisons have been made to the U.S.’s scrambling retreat from Vietnam 46 years ago. While sailors are not pushing perfectly good helicopters off the flight decks of Navy ships to make room for fleeing U.S. personnel, the onrushing chaos in Afghanistan cannot be denied. A major effort is underway to evacuate Afghan translators and others who aided the U.S. war effort. There is no good way to end an unwinnable war. “A hundred percent we lost the war,” special operations forces Marine Raider Jason Lilley told Reuters. It was time to go.

    But are we going? Mr. Bush can rest easy on that score, because while virtually all U.S. military forces have been withdrawn, the private military contractors (read: mercenaries) remain in Afghanistan in force. In fact, those companies are hiring at an enormously escalated rate, as they rush more private soldiers into the country to fill the gaps left by the U.S. military.

    “Contractors are a force both the U.S. and Afghan governments have become reliant on, and contracts in the country are big business for the U.S.,” reported New York Magazine back in May, when the withdrawal was in its early stages. “Since 2002, the Pentagon has spent $107.9 billion on contracted services in Afghanistan, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis. The Department of Defense currently employs more than 16,000 contractors in Afghanistan, of whom 6,147 are U.S. citizens — more than double the remaining U.S. troops.”

    If the war is over, and ultimately lost, why do these contractors remain? For that, you’ll have to ask the mining industry, not that the leaders of that industry tend to do much talking. They’re too busy, see. Afghanistan holds upwards of 1,400 mineral fields containing lucrative materials like barite, chromite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore and lead. The country has huge reserves of natural gas, as well as petroleum. The gemstone mines turn out emeralds, rubies, red garnet and lapis lazuli.

    Mining interests from all over the world had their eye on Afghanistan’s natural riches long before the war began, and that interest has never waned. Back in 2018, Donald Trump claimed the U.S. was “getting very close” to achieving a safer strategic situation there so those resources could be exploited. “In a partial survey conducted by the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, the country’s mineral wealth is estimated at $3 trillion,” reported CNBC at the time, “more than enough to compensate for the war’s cost.”

    There was always more to that war than September 11 and terrorism, and those resources likely offer part of the reason why the U.S. spent thousands of lives, trillions of dollars and more than 7,300 long days trying to make that country safe for plunder.

    Any student of history could have told them: Empires don’t tend to fare well in Afghanistan. U.S. assistance during the Soviet war there only strengthened that reality.

    Hearing George W. Bush pule about our withdrawal from Afghanistan is galling, as he and his administration — in combination with almost all the Democrats and Republicans in Congress at the time — own majority stock in blame for this debacle. Both Presidents Obama and Trump stayed in that war for a combined 12 years. Nothing got better, because neither wanted to be the White House left standing without a chair when the music stopped. They did not want defeat and retreat on their records, and so it finally fell to President Biden to say enough, thanks in part to many years of pressure from grassroots antiwar movements.

    Yet Biden is not without culpability in all this. In a CBS interview in February of 2020, the topic of withdrawal from Afghanistan was raised by host Margaret Brennan, who asked if Biden would bear responsibility if the U.S. withdrew and the nation collapsed into chaos. “Do I bear responsibility?” Biden replied. “Zero responsibility.”

    A nasty echo of Trump in those words, and far from the truth besides. In September of 2001, then-Senator Biden voted with 97 other senators to give Bush the authority to wage war in Afghanistan. That vote also approved what has become known as the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), one of the most broad, violent and insidious pieces of legislation ever to pass through Congress. That AUMF is why the U.S. was legally able to remain in Afghanistan for 20 years, and served as a blueprint for the 2002 AUMF, which gave us the Iraq War. Biden voted for that, as well.

    If you voted for it, Mr. President, you’re responsible for it, too. It’s a big ol’ crap sandwich, and everyone gets to take a bite.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Kabul: Rockets land near presidential palace during Eid prayers

    Kabul/Web desk:

    Rockets fired at around 8:00 am (0330GMT) on Tuesday were heard across the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses the presidential palace and several embassies, including the US mission.

    According to the spokesperson on interior ministry Mir Wais Stanekzai, at least three rockets landed in the Afghan capital ahead of a speech by President Ashraf Ghani marking the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha.

    “Today the enemies of Afghanistan launched rocket attacks in different parts of Kabul city; all the rockets hit three different parts. Based on our initial information, we have no casualties. Our team is investigating” said the spokesperson.

    The attack interrupted an outdoor gathering for prayers in the palace compound attended by President Ashraf Ghani, television images showed. The prayers continued amid the sound of explosions, however, minutes after the attack, Ghani Ghani began an address to the nation in the presence of some of his top officials from an outdoor podium, broadcast on local media.

    Insecurity has been growing in Afghanistan, largely drove by fighting in its provinces as foreign troops withdraw and Taliban insurgents launch major offensives, taking districts and border crossings. Unlike some previous years, the Taliban did not declare a ceasefire during the Eid holiday this year.

     

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Reckoning And Reparations In Afghanistan

    Yet, unquestionably, the warring party in Afghanistan with the most sophisticated weapons and seemingly endless access to funds has been the United States. Funds were spent not to lift Afghans to a place of security from which they might have worked to moderate Taliban rule, but to further frustrate them, beating down their hopes of future participatory governance with twenty years of war and brutal impoverishment.

    The post Reckoning And Reparations In Afghanistan appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Taliban establish monopoly and imposes government by force, says Zalmay Khalilzad.

    Afghanistan,

    US Special Representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad stated in an interview with a foreign newspaper, that for peace in Afghanistan, we have made it clear to Taliban that we and many other countries will not recognize those who form governments by force and will not provide any support.

    Two issues were important for reaching an agreement for stability, development and peace in Afghanistan and that is acceptable to Afghan people and has the support of neighbors, donors and other countries around the world, it requires understanding political issues and prioritizing public opinion, Zalmai added.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • CIA Stories: Death Squads In Afghanistan

    As the US Empire makes its major military retreat from Afghanistan, learn about the CIA forces that will be staying behind—and their disturbing 20-year track record of war crimes.

    The post CIA Stories: Death Squads In Afghanistan appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • In Foreign Policy Australia Proves to be a Slow Learner

    Quod deus vult perdere prius dementat. (Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad).

    One of the more enduring mysteries of Australian foreign policy is its continued adherence to the American way of war. One has only to look at the history of the post-World War II period to be presented with a host of examples of where Australia has followed the United States into one war after another where a compelling Australian national interest is impossible to identify.

    This history of adherence began in Korea in the war that raged in that country between 1950 and 1953. It will be recalled that for years following World War II both the North and the South of Korea waged a guerrilla campaign against each other. The war commenced when the North invaded the South and made major moves on the Southern capital of Seoul and were on the verge of capturing it.

    The United States, already alarmed at the Communists taking over China the previous year, reacted to the North’s invasion of the South.  Taking advantage of the temporary non-presence of the Russians in the Security Council, and with China’s seat still held by the defeated Nationalists (a disgrace that lasted a further 22 years) the United States pushed through a resolution in the Security Council authorising military intervention.

    Australia was one of the countries that willingly joined this ostensible United Nations action to restore the status quo in Korea. An expeditionary force was rapidly gathered and succeeded in expelling the North from the South of Korea. The United States commander Douglas MacArthur was not content with restoring the status quo. He invaded the North and moved all the way to the Chinese border. We now know that his intention was to invade China and endeavour to restore the Nationalist government. That, of course, was never mentioned at the time.

    The United States presence on their border brought the Chinese into the war and they rapidly succeeded in pushing the United States and its allies, including Australia, back south of the border. Stalemate then ensued for the next two years until an uneasy peace deal was reached. This has never been ratified and the North and South of Korea are still technically at war.

    Australia’s next involvement in United States aggression was to take part in the war on Vietnam which was precipitated by the South of the country refusing to allow a national election that would undoubtedly have been won by the North’s Ho Chi Minh.

    Australia’s involvement in that fiasco lasted more than a decade before the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972 saw that government withdrawing Australian troops. That action earned the animosity of the Americans, who together with their agent, the Governor General John Kerr,worked tirelessly for the defeat of the Whitlam government which they achieved in November 1975. Since that time no Labor government has dared to cross the United States. Australia’s foreign policy is an unbroken chain of adherence to United States aggression ever since.

    This manifested itself in 2001 when Australia joined the attack on Afghanistan. That commitment ended only two weeks ago when Australian troops were unilaterally and suddenly withdrawn from Afghanistan. The fate of the hundreds of Afghanis who worked with Australian troops during that 20 years is still undecided. They appear to have been abandoned, although public pressure may force a change of heart by the government.

    One of the least mentioned features of that conflict was that the Labor Party, although opposing the initial engagement, did nothing to withdraw Australian troops during the six years they were in government during that 20 year involvement.

    Similarly, Australia was among the first of the western nations to join the entirely illegal invasion of Iraq. Again, the Labor Party retained that commitment when they were in power, although they initially opposed it. The Australian troops still occupy that country despite a unanimous resolution of the Iraqi parliament demanding that they leave. The Australian government does not bother to justify its position to the Australian parliament and in that they are unchallenged by the Labor opposition. That commitment is also rapidly approaching the 20th anniversary.

    Australia’s most recent show of support for United States aggression has been to join the so-called “freedom of navigation” exercises in the South China Sea. It is in Australia’s willingness to join in blatantly anti China exercises that the gap between self-interest and adherence to United States aggression is most marked. China is Australia’s largest trading partner by a considerable margin, although the future of that relationship is now seriously in doubt. There can be no clearer example of a country pursuing a foreign policy that is manifestly at odds with its national interest than the Australian government conflict vis-à-vis China.

    The United States alliance goes beyond joining a succession of wars of minimal national interest to Australia. The United States has a number of military bases in Australia, of which arguably the most important is the electronic spying facility at Pine Gap in the Northern Territory. This base had also been targeted by the Whitlam Labor government. It is absolutely no coincidence that the sacking of the Whitlam government by the attorney general John Kerr occurred the day before Whitlam was to announce to the Australian parliament his government’s intention of closing the Pine Gap facility.

    That also is a policy that has been abandoned by the Labor opposition. Their foreign policy is not indistinguishable from that of the Liberal government. The fate of the Whitlam government, the last to demonstrate even an inkling of foreign policy independence, is a lesson has been well absorbed by the president Labor leadership.

    Even the ignominious United States withdrawal from Afghanistan has been insufficient to encourage even a modicum of rethinking Australia’s foreign defence stances. It can only be a matter of time before Australia follows the United States into yet another war of aggression somewhere in the world. There is no reason to believe that the eventual outcome of that conflict will differ in any way from the experience of the past 70 years: vast expense, huge loss of human life and eventual humiliating retreat.

    China may eventually demonstrate to the Australians that there is a price to pay for this endless adherence to the violence of a fading empire. It is a price that Australia will not bear lightly.

    The post In Foreign Policy Australia Proves to be a Slow Learner first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Journalist killed while covering clash between Afghan forces and Taliban, Reuters.

    Spin Boldak, Afghanistan,

    Journalist Danish Siddiqui was killed on Friday while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters near a border crossing with Pakistan, an Afghan commander said, Reuter’s reported.

    According to Reuter’s, Afghan Special Forces had been fighting to retake the main market area of Spin Boldak when Siddiqui and a senior Afghan officer were killed in what they described as Taliban crossfire, the official told Reuters.

    Siddiqui had been embedded as a journalist since earlier this week with Afghan Special Forces based in the southern province of Kandahar and had been reporting on fighting between Afghan commandos and Taliban fighters.

    “We are urgently seeking more information, working with authorities in the region,” Reuters President Michael Friedenberg and Editor-in-Chief Alessandra Galloni said in a statement published on Reuters web site.

    “Danish was an outstanding journalist, a devoted husband and father, and a much-loved colleague. Our thoughts are with his family at this terrible time.”

    Siddiqui told Reuters he had been wounded in the arm by shrapnel earlier on Friday while reporting on the clash. He was treated and had been recovering when Taliban fighters retreated from the fighting in Spin Boldak.

    Siddiqui had been talking to shopkeepers when the Taliban attacked again, the Afghan commander said.

    Reuters was unable to independently verify the details of the renewed fighting described by the Afghan military official, who asked not to be identified before Afghanistan’s Defence Ministry made a statement.

    Siddiqui was part of the Reuters photography team to win the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis.

    Since 2010, Siddiqui’s works was covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Rohingya refugee’s crisis, the Hong Kong protests and Nepal earthquakes.

    Taliban fighters had captured the border area on Wednesday, the second-largest crossing on the border with Pakistan and one of the most important objectives they have achieved during a rapid advance across the country as U.S. forces pull out Reuters publicized on its Web Site.

     

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Afghanistan: US pulls out, supports warlord take-over

    After nearly two decades of war, occupation and political meddling, the occupying United States and NATO forces have withdrawn from Afghanistan, leaving Afghans to pick up the pieces, reports Pip Hinman.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Sunday Funny Pages: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    ❖

    Hey kids! Got some fun and relatable comic strips for you to share on social media:

    Image

    Garfield knows what’s up:

    Marmaduke dropping truth bombs, as usual:

    Image

    This is pretty insightful. Whoever does the Dilbert comic should consider getting into political commentary:

    I’d honestly never noticed Family Circus has such biting social commentary:

    Image

    Man I forgot how high-brow this comic was:

    ❖

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    BREAKING: Sources report violent right-wing extremists have seized the US Capitol, established a globe-spanning empire, and murdered millions of people.

    ❖

    Think tank name translation guide:

    Foreign = War
    Policy = Crimes
    Democracy = Neoliberalism
    Strategic = Murderous
    International/Global = Imperialist
    Relations = Domination
    American = Oligarchic
    Research = Indoctrination
    Institution/Institute/Council/Center/Foundation/House = Propaganda Firm

    ❖

     

     

    Me, an idiot: It’s disturbing how government-tied Silicon Valley oligarchs exert so much control over people’s access to free speech.

    You, a genius: It’s not a free speech issue because you can still take your opinions down to Ye Olde Printing Presse and distribute them manually on horseback.

    ❖

    We haven’t talked enough about how the US military not only lied for twenty years about their stated goals in Afghanistan nearly being accomplished, but it turns out they were also lying about doing anything during that time that could possibly have led to their stated goals being accomplished.

    Seeing the “Afghan government” just melting under the Taliban after the US pretended to spend twenty years building it up is like paying someone billions of dollars to build a palace and then after twenty years checking it out and realizing the whole thing is a stage play set made of cardboard.

    A military which can afford to spend trillions on a twenty-year war which accomplished literally nothing besides making horrible people wealthy is a military that needs its budget slashed to ribbons.

    ❖

    When your elected officials never ask “How do we solve this problem?” but rather “How do we solve this problem without upsetting rich people or warmongers?”, most of the problems will necessarily remain unsolved. This is of course entirely by design, because the circumstances which created the problems were set up by and for the rich people and warmongers.

    ❖

    Anyone who accuses you of working for a foreign government when you criticize US imperialism is accidentally admitting that they cannot imagine any possible scenario under which someone might criticize the worst impulses of the most powerful people on earth without being paid to. They’re giving you a very embarrassing insight into the way they think and live. They’re telling you that they are unprincipled hacks who never question authority and only speak from within the framework of blind sycophantic loyalty.

    ❖

    It was a major propaganda victory for imperial narrative managers to convince people that being skeptical of any claim about a foreign government made by the US — no matter how flimsy the evidence — is the same as Holocaust denial.

    ❖

    The poor have all the responsibility and none of the wealth or power, and for the rich it’s the exact opposite: all of the power and wealth but none of the responsibility. Nobody ever tells them “See all that plastic in the ocean? That’s your fault. Fix it.” They burn the world for fun and profit and face no consequences. They’re a bunch of spoiled little boys with flamethrowers.

    ❖

    If it had just been “Let’s end racism” instead of “Let’s end racism by supporting horrible corporate warmongers” there’d be a lot less racism today.

    Any time I talk about racial justice I get people calling it “identity politics” when it’s really not; becoming conscious of racial injustices in our society isn’t about promoting any political party or politician, it’s about becoming conscious. But people assume that because it’s been so exploited for so long.

    If people weren’t so acutely aware of the disgusting ways in which race and racism have been leveraged to promote the political agendas of absolutely horrible people and parties, that aversion to seeing this stuff would not be there. It doesn’t take a genius to recognize phoniness, opportunism and cynicism when you see it; most people can smell it a mile away. This causes a rejection of the examination of the problem of racism which would not be there otherwise.

    The fact that racism has been exploited in a way that prevents it from being healed is itself a metastasis of that same racism.

    ❖

    Stomp out the authentic revolutionary impulse and you’re left with inauthentic revolutionary impulse. You don’t kill people’s impulse to rise up and push for change, you just get them doing it in weird, ridiculous, ineffective ways. Hence the pseudo left and “populist” right.

    Most of the bizarre things about western politics in general and US politics in particular ultimately boil down to this. “Okay we need to overthrow the elites and change things… let’s elect that rich casino guy for president.” All the IDpol and shitlib stuff, same thing.

    If the door to real leftward movement hadn’t been bolted shut, you wouldn’t see one side trying to change things by freaking out about immigrants and trans people and the other side trying to change things by punching them in black bloc without either threatening real power. What you’d see is change.

    This situation of course suits those in power just fine. They’re happy to have the right advancing their interests and the left shrieking impotently at anything that moves for all eternity. That’s why they spent generations deliberately turning that into the existing reality.

    ___________________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on , , Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi,  or . If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at  or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded,  to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, . 

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Boris Johnson says no to inquiry into disastrous 20-year Afghanistan war

    Boris Johnson doesn’t want an inquiry into the 20 year long Afghanistan war. In his withdrawal announcement on Thursday 8 July, he said:

    I don’t think that that is the right way forward at this stage.

    He added that internal investigations had already taken place and mentioned that the Chilcot Report into Iraq had cost millions.

    Johnson had already told the Commons Liaison Committee on Wednesday 7 July that he would not comment until the planned announcement on Thursday. However, he did admit during the hearing that he was concerned about the security situation there.

    He told the committee:

    We have to be absolutely realistic about the situation that we’re in, and what we have to hope is that the blood and treasure spent by this country over decades in protecting the people of Afghanistan has not been in vain.

    Meanwhile, the US withdrew the bulk of its remaining forces on 4 July – US Independence Day – in strange circumstances. AP reported that the military forces based at Bagram Airbase left quietly at night. And they didn’t even tell the local Afghan commander they were going. During the early part of the war, Bagram became notorious as a site of US torture.

    Fierce fighting

    The suggestion that the UK was ever in the business of protecting Afghans is, of course, contestable. But on the ground, the security situation appears to be spiralling out of control. Reports warn of a quick Taliban advance into new territory and cities.

    The western city of Qala-i-Naw was the scene of fierce fighting on 7 July. Taliban forces reportedly captured the local police station before being beaten back by Special Forces.

    Neighbouring countries are also concerned. Tajikistan closed its border and mobilised military reserves. Meanwhile Iran hosted talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Turkey and Russia also shut consulates in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in response to Taliban gains locally.

    Inquiry?

    John Chilcot led the last inquiry into a major war; in that case, Iraq. The Chilcot Report was announced in 2009 and was eventually published several years behind schedule in 2016. It was 2.6m words long and made a number of important findings. They included that the military action had not been warranted and that claims about Weapons of Mass Destruction, used to justify the assault, had been made with unjustified confidence.

    Then-PM Tony Blair, who also led Britain to war in Afghanistan, faced withering criticism. But the inquiry had no legal powers to bring any of the Iraq War leaders to trial.

    It remains to be seen if there will be an inquiry into Afghanistan. But if there is, the 20 year scope of the war is likely to make it even more complex than Chilcot’s investigation into Iraq.

    Featured image via EliteForcesUK/Sgt James Elmer.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Biden Acknowledges “Over the Horizon” Air Attacks Planned Against Taliban

    “Over-the-horizon” air operations, possibly directed at the Taliban, may rely very heavily on drone assassination and drone targeting for manned aircraft.

    On July 2, fleeing questions from reporters about U.S. plans in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden sought refuge behind the July 4th Independence Day holiday, yet obliquely acknowledged that the U.S. will use some level of “over the horizon” air attacks to prevent the Taliban from taking power, attacks that will include drones and manned aircraft, possibly even B-52s.

    Here is a portion of President Biden’s remarkable exchange with the press, which occurred at the close of his comments on the June, 2021 jobs report:

    Q    Are you worried that the Afghan government might fall?  I mean, we are hearing about how the Taliban is taking more and more districts.

    The President:  Look, we were in that war for 20 years.  Twenty years.  And I think — I met with the Afghan government here in the White House, in the Oval.  I think they have the capacity to be able to sustain the government.  There are going to have to be, down the road, more negotiations, I suspect.  But I am — I am concerned that they deal with the internal issues that they have to be able to generate the kind of support they need nationwide to maintain the government.

    Q    A follow on that thought on Afghanistan —

    The President:  I want to talk about happy things, man.

    Q    If there is evidence that Kabul is threatened, which some of the intelligence reports have suggested, it could be in six months or thereabout, do you think you’ve got the capability to help provide any kind of air support, military support to them to keep the capital safe, even if the U.S. troops are obviously fully out by that time?

    The President:  We have worked out an over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added, but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have, which we’re helping them maintain.

    Q    Sir, on Afghanistan —

    The President:  I’m not going to answer any more quick question on Afghanistan.

    Q    Are you concerned —

    The President:  Look, it’s Fourth of July.

     *****

    When the President refers to “over-the-horizon capacity that we can be value added” he is referring to a plan, that appears might cost $10 billion, to fly drones and manned attack aircraft from bases as far away as Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait to assist the current Afghan central government in defending itself against the Taliban.

    His statement is the first acknowledgement that  the “over-the-horizon” air operations, that reportedly may rely very heavily on drone assassination and drone targeting for manned aircraft, will be directed at the Taliban.  In Congressional testimony in June, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that “over-the-horizon” operations would focus on “elements that can possibly conduct attacks against our homeland”, suggesting Al Qaeda and ISIS as targets but not foreclosing attacks against the Taliban.

    The President’s remarks about “over the horizon” as “value added” flowing into “but the Afghans are going to have to be able to do it themselves with the Air Force they have”, is reminiscent of former President Richard Nixon’s attempt to argue that the puppet government of Viet Nam was developing the power to defend itself, attempting to cover U.S. tracks out of the horribly disastrous U.S. colonization project in Viet Nam.

    “Our air strikes have been essential in protecting our own remaining forces and in assisting the South Vietnamese in their efforts to protect their homes and their country from a Communist takeover”, Nixon said in a 1972 speech to the nation.

    The apparent U.S. decision to continue to assist the Afghan central government from the air comes in company with a New York Times report saying that President Biden has placed “temporary limits on counterterrorism drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional battlefield zones like Afghanistan and Syria, and it has begun a broad review of whether to tighten Trump-era rules for such operations, according to officials.”

    A similar report in Foreign Affairs, says that there has been an apparent reduction in U.S. drone attacks, and details elements of a “bigger rethink” process that the Biden Administration is said to be going through to limit civilian deaths and reevaluate how the U.S. should respond to “the overseas terrorist threat.”  A goal of the Administration, the report says, is to end the U.S. “forever” wars.

    It must also be said, however, that these reports indicate that President Biden fully intends to continue the U.S. drone assassination/pre-emptive killing policy of Bush, Obama and Trump, possibly with more care for civilians casualties but in defiance of international principles of war, as outlined on BanKillerDrones.org, that would rule out the use of weaponized drones and military drone surveillance altogether whether inside or outside a recognized combat zone.

    It appears that the reformist talk from Biden officials, much of it unattributed and therefore having no accountability, is intended to divert and placate those of us citizens who are revulsed by continuing drone atrocities, such as those leading 113 peace, justice and humanitarian organizations who signed a letter demanding “an end to the unlawful program of lethal strikes outside any recognized battlefield, including through the use of drones.”  Apart from the view, noted above, that drone attacks and surveillance are illegal anywhere, we have the question of the U.S. having turned the entire world into a potential “recognized battlefield.”

    Even though U.S. ground forces have largely left Afghanistan, it is clear that the Biden administration considers Afghanistan a legitimate battlefield for U.S. air forces.

    In President Biden’s “value added” remark, one can see a clear message: regardless of talk of a more humanitarian policy of drone killing and ending “forever” wars, the president has decided that prolonged civil war in Afghanistan is in the interest of the U.S.  Possibly this is because continued turmoil in Afghanistan will be unsettling and preoccupying to her neighbors, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and China.  Possibly it is because a civil war will make it easier for corporations and banks to exploit Afghanistan’s mineral, fossil fuel and opium wealth.

    Certainly, continued U.S. air assaults in Afghanistan will generate money for U.S. military contractors.

    With continuing U.S. air and commando attacks, Afghanistan can turn into a Libya, a divided, stalemated, suffering, bleeding country, where Turkey, Russia and China test their weapons and seek advantage.

    Indeed, the U.S. is negotiating with Turkey, over the objection of the Taliban, to maintain “security” at the Kabul International Airport.  Undoubtedly, the Turkish political/military/corporate elite, who have their own expansionary ambitions, will use its drones, among them the semi-autonomous Kargu 2, to try to hold the airport and surrounding territory.

    The Black Alliance for Peace released a statement on June 25, opposing “any effort to prolong the U.S. war on the Afghan people, including efforts to keep the United States engaged in any form in Afghanistan.”   The statement expressed concern for “the continued operation of U.S. special forces and mercenaries (or contractors) in Afghanistan, as well as U.S.-pledged support for Turkish military defense of Kabul International Airport, a site that has continued to be a major U.S. military stronghold to support its imperial presence.”

    President Biden would do well to heed this statement, along with a petition to him, circulated by BanKillerDrones.org, urging no further U.S. air attacks against the Afghan people.

    Now that Independence Day has passed, perhaps the President will be more willing to answer questions about the real goals of “over the horizon.”

    The post Biden Acknowledges “Over the Horizon” Air Attacks Planned Against Taliban first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Nick Mottern.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Pakistani embassy in Kabul arranges safe return of citizens.

    Zaka Mohsin, Riyadh,

    The Pakistani embassy in Kabul is taking measures for safe return of Pakistanis to Saudi Arabia via Afghanistan after Kingdom suspend flights operations to Afghanistan on July 4.

    According to the Pakistani ambassador in the Afghan capital Kabul, Pakistani workers were leaving for Saudi Arabia after completion of 14-day quarantine in Afghanistan but on July 4, after the flight operation was suspended, about 4,000 Pakistanis were stranded in Kabul.

    For their return, the Pakistani embassy in Kabul is taking credible measures to provide them accommodation and food, as well as transportation to Torkham border. Pakistani consulate also provides aid to reach their areas in Pakistan. So far, about 1,500 Pakistanis have been returned.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Leaving Bagram Airbase: The Day the US Imperium Turned Tail

    From the Bagram Airbase they left, leaving behind a piece of the New York World Trade Centre that collapsed with such graphic horror on September 11, 2001.  As with previous occupiers and occupants, the powers that had made this venue a residence of war operations were cutting their losses and running.

    Over the years, the base, originally built by the Soviets in the 1950s and known to US personnel as Bagram Airfield, became a loud statement of occupation, able to hold up to 10,000 troops and sprawling across 30 square miles.  It was also replete with cholesterol hardening fast food restaurants (Pizza Hut, Burger King), jewellers, car dealerships and such amenities as swimming pools, spas and cinemas.

    Bagram also had room to accommodate the unfortunates captured in that anomalously worded “War on Terror”: detainees, many al-Qaeda suspects, faced torture in what came to be known as Afghanistan’s Guantanamo.  US forces relinquished control of the prison, now sporting the benign name of Parwan Detention Facility, to Afghan security forces in December 2014. Ill-treatment of prisoners continued.

    After two decades, it seemed that the US armed forces could not wait to leave.  The departure date, scheduled for September, was being brought forward, though President Joe Biden denied that anything had changed.  “A safe, orderly drawdown,” stated the Pentagon press secretary John Kirby, “enables us to maintain an ongoing diplomatic presence, support the Afghan people and the government, and prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for terrorists that threatens our homeland.”

    There was little fuss in the way things unfolded on July 1 – at least initially.  The New York Times observed that the final withdrawal “occurred with little fanfare and no public ceremony, and in an atmosphere of grave concern over the Afghan security forces’ ability to hold off Taliban advances across the country.”

    The signal for chaos and mayhem had been given.  Darwaish Raufi, Afghanistan’s district administrator for Bagram, found himself confronting an ominous spectacle.  There had been confusion and uncertainty about the logistics of the operation.  With the base unsecured, around 100 looters capitalised, seizing gas canisters and laptops.  “They were stopped and some have been arrested and the rest have been cleared from the base.”  The district governor was left puzzled.  “American soldiers should share information with the Afghan government, especially local officials, but they didn’t let me know.”

    US military spokesman Colonel Sonny Leggett disagreed.  “All handovers of Resolute Support bases and facilities, to include Bagram Airfield, have been closely coordinated, both with senior leaders from the government and with our Afghan partners in the security forces, including leadership of the locally based units respective to each base.”

    Across the country, the Taliban are smacking their lips in anticipation of further gains.  “We consider this withdrawal a positive step,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. “Afghans can get closer to stability and peace with the full withdrawal of foreign forces.”  So far, the peace negotiations move at snail-like speed.  The Taliban refuse to declare a ceasefire.  Districts in the country have been falling with regularity to their forces.  Demoralised Afghan soldiers have been leaving their posts, though this is justified on the basis of strategic soundness (urban centres need protection).

    With a security vacuum gapingly prominent in parts of the country, regional militias have promised to mount resistance.  “Having reached home,” Nishank Motwani, Deputy Director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation in Unit in Kabul gloomily remarked, “Americans and allied forces will now watch what they fought so hard to build over 20 years burn down from afar and knowing that the Afghan men and women they fought with risk losing everything.”

    Former UK chief of the defence staff Lord David Richards could hardly improve on that, telling the BBC that, “A country that we promised a huge amount to now faces … almost certain civil war, with the likelihood that the Taliban will get back to where they were in 2001, occupying most of the major cities and the majority of the country.”

    General Richard Dannant, formerly chief of the general staff, kept matters paternalistic; as with other civilising missions of imperial days past, he wrote of a task that had failed.  “Taliban force of arms has prevailed, and the people of that country have been denied the chance to choose a better way of life.”

    The Biden administration continues to offer its model of hollow assurance for an ally it has cut loose, accompanied by a promise to provide security assistance to the value of $3 billion in 2022.  The President’s meeting with President Ashraf Ghani and chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah on June 25 saw the recapitulation of unconvincing themes.  All three “concurred on the need for unity among Afghan leaders in support of peace and stability”.  Biden “reaffirmed the US commitment to fully support intra-Afghan negotiations.”  Despite the departure of US troops, “the strong bilateral partnership will continue.”

    In a State Department briefing on July 1, officials continued to patch up the façade of support.  When asked by a journalist how the US could claim to be supporting the Afghan government “when we’re not going to be there”, department spokesperson Ned Price was prepared with some casuistry: “we are withdrawing our military forces, as the President announced, but we intend to maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul.”  The country would not be abandoned; support would be undiminished.

    At a White House press conference, Biden suggested how far down Afghanistan, and its fate, features in US policy circles.  In a moment of frankness, he put a halt to questions on that doomed country and wished to “talk about happy things, man.  I’m not going to answer any more questions on Afghanistan.”  It was a matter of priorities.  “It’s the holiday weekend. I’m going to celebrate it.  There’s great things happening.”  Just not in Afghanistan.

    The post Leaving Bagram Airbase: The Day the US Imperium Turned Tail first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UK foreign policy link to nine times increase in asylum queues

    UK asylum queues have grown massively since 2010. New figures obtained by the Refugee Council say that waiting lists are nine times longer than they were a decade ago. But a quick look at where asylum seekers are coming from tells a very important story. Thousands are fleeing countries where the UK and its major allies have waged literal or economic wars.

    The Refugee Council’s new report, titled Living in Limbo, warns that as of March 2021 there were over 66,000 asylum seeker awaiting “an initial decision from the Home Office“. This is nine times the number of people waiting in 2010.

    Interventions

    When countries of origin are taken into account, the long list of asylum seekers starts to make sense. For instance, a 2019 House of Commons report lists Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia and Venezuela, as the top five asylum seeking nationalities in the EU. Pakistan, Nigeria, and Iran all made the top ten. These are counties which have suffered, or are suffering, occupation or intervention by the UK and its allies.

    UN figures for 2020 on UK asylum put Iraq and Iran in the top four. The same document highlights that Iraqi and Iranian children were very prominent among Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) figures.

    Right-wing claims

    Despite right-wing claims, UN figures show that the UK takes few refugees relative to other countries. The vast majority stay in their “region of displacement”. Turkey and Pakistan had the most as of 2019, with 3.6 million and 1.4 million respectively.

    The UK also doesn’t have a high number of asylum seekers overall. Again, according to UN figures, Germany, France, Spain, and Greece all have tens of thousands more.

    Offshoring

    This hasn’t stopped UK officials pushing for hardline policies to deal with asylum seekers and refugees.

    On 28 June, it was reported that the UK was again considering ‘offshoring’ asylums seekers like Australia, whose refugee policies have been widely criticised.

    UK officials are in talks with Denmark, Al Jazeera reported. In June, the Danes passed a law to deport refugee outside the EU And Rwanda was mentioned as a possible destination for asylum seekers.

    Accountability?

    Bashing poor and desperate people is what UK governments are all about. But the figures tell a story. A majority of displaced people in the EU, and many who make it to the UK, are victims of UK foreign policy. There are reasons that places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria are so well represented in refugee statistics and the UK’s ever-growing asylum-seeker backlog.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Takver.

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The Known Knowns of Donald Rumsfeld

    “On the morning of September 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld ran to the fire at the Pentagon to assist the wounded and ensure the safety of survivors,” expressed a mournful George W. Bush in a statement.  “For the next five years, he was in steady service as a wartime secretary of defense – a duty he carried out with strength, skill, and honor.”

    Long before Donald Trump took aim at irritating facts and dissenting eggheads, Donald Rumsfeld, two times defense secretary and key planner behind the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was doing his far from negligible bit. When asked at his confirmation hearing about what worried him most when he went to bed at night, he responded accordingly: intelligence.  “The danger that we can be surprised because of a failure of imagining what might happen in the world.”

    Hailing from Chicago, he remained an almost continuous feature of the Republic’s politics for decades, burying himself in the business-government matrix.  He was a Congressman three times.  He marked the Nixon and Ford administrations, respectively serving as head of the Office of Economic Opportunity and Defense Secretary.  At 43, he was the youngest defense secretary appointee in the imperium’s history.

    He returned to the role of Pentagon chief in 2001, though not before running the pharmaceutical firm G.D. Searle and making it as a Fortune 500 CEO.  It was under his stewardship that the US Food and Drugs Administration finally approved the controversial artificial sweetener aspartame.  A report by a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry had claimed that the drug “might induce brain tumors.”  This did not phase Rumsfeld, undeterred by such fanciful notions as evidence.

    With Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980, and Rumsfeld’s membership of the transition team, the revolving door could go to work. The new FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., was selected while Rumsfeld remained Searle’s CEO.  When Searle reapplied for approval of aspartame, Hayes, as the new FDA commissioner, appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the 1980 findings.  When it became evident that a 3-2 outcome approving the ban was in the offing, Hayes appointed a sixth person.  The deadlocked vote was broken by Hayes, who favoured aspartame.

    In responding to the attacks of September 11, 2001 on US soil, Rumsfeld laid the ground for an assault on inconvenient evidence.  As with aspartame, he was already certain about what he wanted.  Even as smoke filled the corridors of the Pentagon, punctured by the smouldering remains of American Airlines Flight 77, Rumsfeld was already telling the vice-chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff General Richard Myers to find the “best info fast … judge whether good enough [to] hit SH@same time – not only UBL.” (Little effort is needed to work out that SH was Saddam Hussein and UBL Usama/Osama Bin Laden.)

    Experts were given a firm trouncing – what would they know?  With Rumsfeld running the Pentagon, the scare mongers and ideologues took the reins, all working on the Weltanschauung summed up at that infamous press conference of February 12, 2002.  When asked if there was any evidence as to whether Iraq had attempted to or was willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, given “reports that there is no evidence of a direct link”, Rumsfeld was ready with a tongue twister.  “There are known knowns.  There are things we know we know.  We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.  But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”  This was being frightfully disingenuous, given that the great known for Rumsfeld was the need to attack Iraq.

    To that end, he authorised the creation of a unit run by the under-secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, known as the Office of Special Plans, to examine intelligence on Iraq’s capabilities independently of the CIA.  Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who served in the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit a year prior to the invasion, described the OSP’s operations in withering terms.  “They’d take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don’t belong together.”

    One of Rumsfeld’s favourite assertions – that Iraq had a viable nuclear weapons program – did not match the findings behind closed doors. “Our knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear) weapons program,” claimed a report by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “is based largely – perhaps 90% – on analysis of imprecise intelligence.”

    None of this derailed the juggernaut: the US was going to war.  Not that Rumsfeld was keen to emphasise his role in it.  “While the president and I had many discussions about the war preparations,” he notes in his memoirs, “I do not recall him ever asking me if I thought going to war with Iraq was the right decision.”

    With forces committed to both Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States found itself in the situation Rumsfeld boastfully claimed would never happen.  Of this ruinously bloody fiasco, Rumsfeld was dismissive: “stuff happens.”  Despite such failings, a list of words he forbade staff from using was compiled, among them “quagmire”, “resistance” and “insurgents”.  Rumsfeld, it transpired, had tried regime change on the cheap, hoping that a modest military imprint was all that was necessary. The result: the US found itself in Iraq from March 2003 to December 2011, and then again in 2013 with the rise of Islamic State.  Afghanistan continues to be garrisoned, with the US scheduled to leave a savaged country by September.

    Rumsfeld was not merely a foe of facts that might interfere with his policy objective.  Conventions and laws prohibiting torture were also sneered at.  On December 2, 2002, he signed a memorandum from General Counsel William J. Haynes II authorising the use of 20-hour interrogations, stress positions and the use of phobias for Guantanamo Bay detainees.  In hand writing scrawled at the bottom of the document, the secretary reveals why personnel should not be too soft on their quarry, as he would “stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”  The results were predictably awful, and revelations of torture by US troops at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 led him to offer his resignation, which President Bush initially rejected.

    By November 2006, military voices had turned against him.  With the insurgency in full swing and Iraq sliding into chaos, the Army Times called for the secretary’s resignation.  “Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised.  And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear the brunt.”  Bush eventually relented.

    It is interesting that so little of this was remarked upon during the Trump era, seen as a disturbing diversion from the American project.  When Trump came to office, Democrats and others forgave all that came before, ignoring the manure that enriched the tree of mendacity.  The administration of George W. Bush was rehabilitated.

    In reflecting on his documentary on Rumsfeld Errol Morris found himself musing like his protagonist.  “He’s a mystery to me, and in many ways, he remains a mystery to me – except for the possibility that there might not be a mystery.”  The interlocutor had turned into his subject.

    The post The Known Knowns of Donald Rumsfeld first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Classified documents found at Kent bus stop hint at reality of UK military strategy

    Secret military documents found at a Kent bus stop show us how British foreign policy works. The papers were reportedly found by a member of the public and then ended up with the BBC.

    The documents contained important details of a naval confrontation between Russian forces and a UK warship. And an investigation is being conducted into their loss. The documents provide a brief snapshot of the UK’s international conduct and also ask serious questions about it.

    Crimea clash

    On 23 June, the destroyer HMS Defender passed close to waters claimed by Russia. The ship had left Odessa, where UK defence firms had signed a deal with Ukraine to build military bases and supply patrol ships.

    Aboard were BBC journalists. Defender found itself ‘buzzed’ by Russian aircraft and ships. The journalists filmed the events. And the entire incident was framed as one of Russian aggression.

    However, the surprise discovery of the papers turns the UK narrative on its head.

    Theatre

    Among the details revealed by the BBC after receiving the documents were plans for the Crimean mission, dubbed Op [Operation] DitroIte. And the BBC‘s reporting appears to show officials discussing possible outcomes of the ship’s passage. Their comments suggest that the UK sought an aggressive reaction from Russia.

    A Powerpoint slide in the files shows two possible routes. One was close to Crimea and likely to attract what officials term a “welcoming party”. But the other did not pass through contested waters.

    The BBC reported:

    Alongside the military planning, officials anticipated competing versions of events.

    We have a strong, legitimate narrative”, they said, noting that the presence of the embedded journalists (from the BBC and Daily Mail) on board the destroyer “provides an option for independent verification of HMS Defender’s action.

    Arms exports

    The documents contained details of arms exports.

    The BBC was cagey about what it disclosed. On the arms exports its says:

    The bundle includes updates on arms exports campaigns, including sensitive observations about areas where Britain might find itself competing with European allies.

    The shadow war

    The files also suggested that high-level discussions were underway about Afghanistan troop deployments after withdrawal this year.

    Because the US appears to have requested UK special forces troops stay in the country after withdrawal in 2021. The BBC reported few details, saying they could endanger lives.

    The files acknowledged great danger to any troops who remain, for instance:

    “Any UK footprint in Afghanistan that persists… is assessed to be vulnerable to targeting by a complex network of actors,” it says, noting that “the option to withdraw completely remains.”

    Behind-the-scenes

    Naturally, the BBC released very little about the files.

    And it appears the Crimea incident was stage-managed at the British end to shape public perceptions. So it seems quite likely the BBC were onboard to report the UK narrative.

    These files may only represent a snapshot. But subjected to stage-managed events like Crimea, it’s no wonder the public can’t easily understand Britain’s role in the world. Moreover, serious questions need to be asked about how the UK media works with the UK military.

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Royal Navy

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • The Afghanistan Evacuation

    The Biden administration announced that it will accelerate plans to relocate Afghans who worked with the U.S. military. Their situation demands the most urgent response possible.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • How The CIA Turned Afghanistan Into A Failed Narco-State

    Afghanistan – The COVID-19 pandemic has been a death knell to so many industries in Afghanistan. Charities and aid agencies have even warned that the economic dislocation could spark widespread famine. But one sector is still booming: the illicit opium trade. Last year saw Afghan opium poppy cultivation grow by over a third while counter-narcotics operations dropped off a cliff. The country is said to be the source of over 90% of all the world’s illicit opium, from which heroin and other opioids are made. More land is under cultivation for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca production across all of Latin America, with the creation of the drug said to directly employ around half a million people.

    The post How The CIA Turned Afghanistan Into A Failed Narco-State appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Right And Wrong Lessons From Afghanistan: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    ❖

    Your efforts to understand the world will fail unless you account for the fact that (A) echo chamber dynamics have a vastly under-appreciated effect on the way we all take in information, and (B) that rich and powerful people are actively trying to manipulate your perception of reality.

    ❖

    The correct lesson from Afghanistan instantly beginning to revert back to Taliban control the moment the western occupation ends is not that the occupation needs to continue, it’s that it should never have happened in the first place.

    “Oh no, bad things are happening because we’re leaving!” No, bad things are happening because you went in. You spent two decades hammering that poor nation with bombs and war crimes, and now they’re just going right back to where they were before you inflicted that upon them. Everything that’s happening in Afghanistan today is the fault of the invaders.

    The argument that the occupation has been a boon for human rights is just plain false, and is premised on the idea that the western empire should invade every nation with illiberal cultural values and force it to change at gunpoint. Even if that ridiculous premise were accepted, it has been clearly established that such a thing is impossible.

    How fucking obnoxious is it that westerners are now wringing their hands over the fact that when they stop forcing Afghanistan to be a certain way at gunpoint, the fate of Afghanistan starts being determined by Afghans? Enough with this white man’s burden bullshit, freaks.

    ❖

    Don’t tell people not to fantasize about Jeff Bezos’ icy body spinning through the vacuum of space for all eternity. It’s kink-shaming.

    ❖

    How to be an American leftist:

    • Focus exclusively on domestic policy in the most warmongering nation on earth
    • Criticize governments who are resisting US interventionism instead of US interventionism
    • Pay more attention to obscure abstract concepts than nonstop mass murder

    ❖

    US politicians always have Twitter bios like “Father of Kelly, husband of Leanne (she’s the real boss!), VERY amateur shower singer,” instead of like, “Rapist of Syria, murderer of Yemeni kids, destroyer of your children’s future.”

    ❖

    Yemen alone completely invalidates the moral authority of the US-centralized power alliance to determine what rules the world should play by.

    ❖

    It’s not actually possible to be excessively critical of the US empire. There’s a common notion that there needs to be some kind of “balance” between criticism of the US power alliance and its enemies. No there doesn’t; the US government is objectively far worse than any other. No other government is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, working to destroy any nation which disobeys it, and waging nonstop wars which have killed millions and displaced tens of millions just since the turn of this century.

    Criticizing the US empire far more than its rivals is balance; criticizing it the same as you’d criticize US-targeted governments is what would be imbalanced, because the US and its allies are far, far more murderous and destructive than anyone else. It should be criticized more. You’re not being impartial if you pretend the US is as bad as China, Russia, Iran, etc; you’re being heavily biased in favor of the US, because you’re greatly helping to advance the interests of the far worse government by placing it on equal footing with the others.

    You see so many dry, elitist wankers acting like they’re being detached and impartial by treating all governments equally, when in reality they’re being anything but. All governments are not equal; one is clearly and demonstrably far, far more destructive than any of the others.

    ❖

    It’s just so amazing how many leftists yell at journalists like Aaron Maté and Glenn Greenwald for using Tucker Carlson’s show to get important perspectives out to a mainstream audience compared to how few leftists yell at other mass media outlets for refusing to platform those important perspectives at all. Like there’s a whole sector of Twitter which seems to spend all its energy bitching about anti-imperialists going on Carlson to share anti-imperialist perspectives, and if you search their tweets you’ll find zero posts yelling at CNN or MSNBC for never platforming anti-imperialists.

    Dissident ideas need to get out to the mainstream. The fact that no other outlets ever platform those ideas besides Tucker Carlson is the thing which should outrage people.

    ❖

    If you’re not despised by the Intercept-TYT-Bellingcat media faction, your work probably isn’t that good.

    ❖

    So much of what the CIA used to do covertly it now does overtly; NED, working in media punditry, etc. Pretty soon they’ll just be openly selling narcotics door to door like Girl Scout cookies.

    ❖

    Fun fact: among people who tell you you’re only socialist because you’ve never studied economics, exactly zero percent of them have ever read a book by a Marxian economist.

    ❖

    If I were a thieving oligarch or a murderous imperialist I would be very happy that Americans are all focused on arguing about critical race theory.

    ❖

    Come read my superintelligent Marxist essay about why the left should remain a highly exclusive club no bigger than the size of a public library speaking event. Medium says it’s just a 97-minute read. It’s got over six views and counting. Hope you like footnotes!

    ❖

    Hey remember when Wonder Woman came out the same year Hillary Clinton was supposed to become president and invade Syria, and the villain was a guy who murders villagers with poison gas, including children? That was a bit weird, huh?

    Like there was literally a scene where Wonder Woman finds a village of civilians killed with poison gas, and screams about how awful the bad guys are for “Killing people they cannot see! Children. Children!!” How many other superhero movies have you seen where the bad guy just kills kids with poison gas?

    Hillary had been openly planning to invade Syria with tens of thousands of US troops to cripple Assad’s air defenses and control Syrian air space, a very dangerous and deadly move which would have required a lot of consent manufacturing.

    And you can say well it was set in World War 1, poison gas was a big thing then. Okay, but why set it in World War 1? The character Wonder Woman didn’t exist until 1941. There was no reason it had to be set during a time when poison gas was a big thing, but they chose to anyway.

    ❖

    They say youth is wasted on the young. No, youth is wasted on schoolwork.

    ❖

    Psychedelics are useful not for the hallucinations they provide but for the hallucinations they remove.

    ❖

    I have a conspiracy theory that plutocrats conspire with secretive government agencies to advance murderous and exploitative agendas, and I have another conspiracy theory that some deep force of nature within us is conspiring to awaken humanity from the propaganda of our rulers.

    Humanity is becoming more conscious. Awkwardly, sloppily, like a toddler, we’re becoming more and more aware of what’s going on inside us and what’s going on outside us. There are a lot of ugly things which wish to remain hidden as the light expands, but they can’t hide forever.

    _________________________

    The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at  or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on , , Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi,  or . If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded,  to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, . 

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • California Rent Forgiveness Shows It’s Possible to Shift Our National Priorities

    Renters and housing advocates attend a protest to cancel rent and avoid evictions in front of a court house on August 21, 2020, in Los Angeles, California.

    Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people have found themselves out of work, clinging to credit cards or a savings account, making use of the local food bank, and worrying about making the rent each month as the cash dried up.

    The relief packages passed by Congress were a lifeline for many, from the checks to the extended unemployment benefits and, perhaps most importantly, the eviction protections for those who simply couldn’t make rent because there was no work. The peril was ever-present, even with that help; if that firewall fell and landlords were allowed to evict for unpaid rent, the avalanche of immediate homelessness could have quite possibly been a country-killing event. Untold thousands put out on the street in the middle of a lethal pandemic? Unspeakable.

    Every time the nation has come to the expiration deadline for the last set of eviction protections, landlord coalitions pushed to have them end and renter’s groups pleaded to have them extended. To this point, they have been extended each time, but protecting people from the collapse of the economy has become another conservative plaything; a number of Republican governors have moved to slash unemployment benefits under the long-running racist, classist lie that relief money makes people not want to work. How soon until they try to apply that argument to rent?

    On Monday, however, the state of California, responding to sustained pressure from organizers and activists, showed the country a whole new way to go:

    Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will pay off all the past-due rent that accumulated in the nation’s most populated state because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate…. California has $5.2 billion to pay off people’s rent, money from multiple aid packages approved by Congress. That appears to be more than enough to cover all of the unpaid rent in the state, according to Jason Elliott, senior counselor to Newsom on housing and homelessness.

    While employment among middle- and high-wage jobs has exceeded pre-pandemic levels, employment rates for people earning less than $27,000 a year are down more than 38% since January 2020, according to Opportunity Insights, an economic tracker based at Harvard University. “The stock market may be fine, we may be technically reopened, but people in low-wage jobs — which are disproportionately people of color — are not back yet,” said Madeline Howard, senior attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

    How deeply embedded into the national psyche is the capitalist ethos? If an announcement like this came under the headline, “Spaceship From Planet XQ41 Appears Above Sacramento, Pays All Rent, Departs Through Hole in Sky,” my level of surprise would have been pretty much the same. How long was I asleep last night? What country is this?

    Bless my heart, it’s the United States of America, where government — local, state and federal — can actually help people if we choose to make doing so a priority. The federal government did so with the relief bills, states like California took their own necessary steps like this, and local governments along with activists labored mightily to keep as many people afloat as possible. Cries of “socialism” were muted for much of the pandemic, because even a Republican knows a boat with no bottom is going to sink no matter what Ronald Reagan or Grover Norquist has to say about it.

    To be sure, California’s historically robust economy is one of the main reasons why this action was possible. “The most trusted measure of economic strength says California is the world-beater among democracies,” reports Bloomberg News. “The state’s gross domestic product increased 21 percent during the past five years, dwarfing No. 2 New York (14 percent) and No. 3 Texas (12 percent), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gains added $530 billion to the Golden State, 30 percent more than the increase for New York and Texas combined and equivalent to the entire economy of Sweden. Among the five largest economies, California outperforms the U.S., Japan and Germany with a growth rate exceeded only by China.”

    Again, we return to the idea of priorities. President Bill Clinton amassed a huge budget surplus at the end of his second term, but it was all but gone by April 2001 because the Bush administration gave it away to its rich friends in the form of tax breaks. The rest of us — many of us, anyway — got $300 and a suddenly fragile national economy that was almost immediately knocked reeling by September 11. The rest of those funds, along with trillions more, were squandered on two failed wars that stole the economic future from a generation of Americans.

    In 2001 and 2002, Congress passed Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to lay the groundwork for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The economic damage done by the money wasted on these bloody endeavors is almost impossible to quantify, but real enough to make California’s statewide rent amnesty seem a laughable fantasy, until it happened.

    Last week, almost 20 years after its inception, the repeal of the 2002 AUMF regarding Iraq was passed by the House. Its ultimate demise will be voted on by the Senate on June 22. The far more muscular 2001 AUMF remains intact, but there is a groundswell of support for ending it, as well. Congress has to deal with its little brother first, and then we shall see.

    Among many other shabby things, the combined 39 years given to those two authorizations were the sign and signal of our national priorities. The money spent on those wars left us uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19, as all the social and medical infrastructure needed to combat it was revealed to be cash-starved and withered to the point of collapse. Only when we embraced some “socialist” policy priorities were we able to pull back from the brink. Note well: Rep. Barbara Lee was right.

    Newsom could have argle-bargled about “job creators” and pulled a Bush, using his state’s budget surplus as an ATM for the wealthy and corporations. Instead, thanks to pressure from progressives, he paid the rent and delivered billions in tax relief to small businesses affected by the pandemic. The fact that this is remarkable tells us all we need to know about how far gone our priorities have become, but more importantly, it tells us what we can accomplish if we choose to change them.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Hungary’s LGBT protests and Juneteenth Day: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Bidens cabinet serious efforts for Pak-Afghan region.

    Fazal Khaliq, Washington D.C.,

    A virtual meeting of American and Pakistani journalists was arranged with Senator Chris Van Hollen to explain the Pak-Afghan peace, trade and economic development bill. The event was hosted by US Democratic leader Tahir Javed.

    The new government took the office in US and serious efforts are being made for peace, progress and economic development in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

    New cabinet plans are occurring to create industrial zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which will boost economic growth and reduce unemployment in both the countries.

    Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen has introduced a bill in the US Senate on the same road map.The key points are that finished goods in these industrial zones will be exported to the US, which will be duty free.

    According to economists, the development of Pakistan and Afghanistan is interdependent. If the two countries work together to promote industry and trade, the country’s problems and unemployment can be reduced.

    The virtual conference was attended by Shahid Ahmad Khan from Boston along with prominent Pakistani journalists Sohail Warraich, Muhammad Malik, Kamran Shahid, Adil Abbasi, Shazia Zeeshan, Rehman Azhar, Farrukh Potafi and Shehzad Iqbal.

    Journalists also questioned the policies of the new US administration

    Democrat leader Tahir Javed says US currently exports 5 billion to 6 billion from Pakistan. If the house pass this bill then this export foretasted be increase 10 percent and this 6 billion export arise to 50 to 60 billion dollars and with this, Pakistan will make rapid progress.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Battle station: the celebrity podcast that explains modern warfare

    Carey Mulligan on Syria, playwright James Graham on the Troubles … the Imperial War Museums’ new podcast brings celebrities and experts together to understand recent armed struggles

    Comedian and author Deborah Frances-White is sitting at a table, in the shadow of a Spitfire which soars above her head. She is being interrogated on everything she knows about one of the most violent conflicts in recent decades. What comes to mind when she thinks of the Yugoslav wars? “I think of words like Milošević, Serbo-Croatia, Bosnia … I think there’s a star on the flag?” she flounders. “I remember there was a Time magazine cover with a man at the end of the war.”

    Frances-White is in the hot seat because she is a guest on Conflict of Interest, a new podcast from the Imperial War Museums (IWM) – the Spitfire above her head is hung from the ceiling of its London museum’s atrium, and her interrogator is Carl Warner, the IWM’s head of narrative and curatorial.

    I think about all the things I don’t know, all the time, and I feel very ashamed

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Gaza damage and Glasgow raids: human rights this fortnight in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • What critics of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan get wrong

    Within hours of President Joe Biden’s announcement that US forces will leave Afghanistan by September 11, 2021, objections and remonstrations appeared across US media. These protests are nearly all disingenuous, false and specious, and meant to utilize fear to continue a tragic and purposeless war.

    The post What critics of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan get wrong appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.