- Adbot
-
ADBOT LOVES YOU
|
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2024 14:32
|
|
- Nick Soapdish
- Apr 27, 2008
-
|
https://www.duffelblog.com/2020/05/generals-who-failed-to-defeat-taliban-explains-how-to-kill-a-virus/
quote:WASHINGTON — Numerous general officers who contributed to America’s slow-motion failure in Afghanistan would like you to take their advice on how to defeat the coronavirus pandemic, sources confirmed today.
“I think our advice is particularly timely for government officials. We know how to walk away from a disaster where people died with our reputations intact,” said retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who ended his career as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. “If you think you face a similar situation, I am actually a consultant now, and I can assist.”
McChrystal, who is most famous for his strategic insight that the United States should “muddle along” in Afghanistan, called the U.S. response to coronavirus “pathetic.” He has also argued that the country should employ counterinsurgency doctrine in order to defeat coronavirus, a doctrine best noted for its failure to defeat the Taliban.
Retired Adm. Bill McRaven, who like McChrystal commanded Joint Special Operations Command during America’s long and mostly unsuccessful counterterrorism campaign after 9/11, has different advice.
“The key thing is to make your bed every morning,” McRaven recently told government leaders at a $10,000-a-seat Zoom masterclass on leadership. “Just make your bed to flatten the curve.”
Former SEAL McRaven’s advice has had a major impact on governors around the country, who have been making their beds in records numbers. For his exceptional contributions, the University of Phoenix recently granted McRaven an honorary doctorate in epidemiology.
Other senior leaders have weighed in as well. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, former top commander in Vietnam Gen. William C. Westmoreland posthumously emphasized the importance of a metrics-based approach to such importance operations.
“You need to decide what is worth counting, count it, and make decisions to change that count,” Westmoreland wrote through a medium. “Maybe you count bodies, maybe you count infections. Whatever you count, if you don’t take a data-driven, scientific approach, you are doomed to failure.”
|
#
¿
May 11, 2020 17:59
|
|
- Nick Soapdish
- Apr 27, 2008
-
|
https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1259937970565427206?s=20
quote:During the 2020 Democratic primary, Joe Biden had to answer for his repeated attempts to work with Republicans to try to cut Social Security benefits. Biden responded by pretendinghe never tried to cut the program, and by insisting he would try to expand it as president. This prompted some of his defenders to wonder why Social Security was even an issue, when presumably the Democratic Party and Donald Trump himself have publicly insisted they would never dream of trying to slash one of the most popular social programs in history.
Fast forward to the present and you will now understand why Social Security continues to be a huge point of contention: It’s because some powerful people in the Democratic Party still do dream of normalizing the idea of cutting Social Security, and those folks are now getting a boost from Donald Trump’s administration.
This sordid little cautionary tale started last week. As lawmakers such as Bernie Sanders, Ed Markey and Kamala Harris were unveiling a proposal to give workers a $2,000 stipend during the coronavirus crisis, University of Pennsylvania professor Natasha Sarin countered with a research paper pushing an alternate idea: “Allowing workers to tap their Social Security wealth to finance consumption today.”
Instead of giving workers money in the same way the government is giving corporations trillions of dollars, or instead of vastly expanding unemployment benefits, Sarin and her cohorts want Americans to “borrow against their retirement benefits,” effectively turning Social Security into a reverse mortgage. This, they argue, “may well be superior to alternatives already legislated because it delivers relief to households that need it most.”
Echoing Biden’s own anti-deficit rhetoric when he pushed Social Security cuts, the researchers conclude: “In exchange for relatively small cuts in scheduled benefits, the government can send sizable checks to most households in a fiscally neutral way.”
Bold policies out of the Biden camp :eyeroll:
|
|
#
¿
May 11, 2020 21:22
|
|
- Nick Soapdish
- Apr 27, 2008
-
|
I hadn't thought about Dostum since leaving there in 2017 but gently caress that guy and the horse he rode in on from the north
https://twitter.com/NYTimesAtWar/status/1261662448261701633?s=20
quote:KABUL, Afghanistan — The two sides in the monthslong dispute over Afghanistan’s presidential election are close to signing a power-sharing deal, the terms of which include a significant promotion for a former vice president who is accused of abducting, torturing and attempting to rape a political rival while in office.
The agreement to promote Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum to marshal, a military rank awarded only twice before in Afghanistan’s history, comes as the government is preparing for peace talks with the Taliban, and as Afghans who lost loved ones to terrorist attacks and other atrocities demand that accountability for such crimes be central to those negotiations.
Preparations for the talks have been shadowed by the dispute over the election, which was held in September. In February, President Ashraf Ghani was declared to have been re-elected, but his main opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, called the results fraudulent and took the oath of office at the same time that Mr. Ghani did.
The deadlock raised concerns that the Afghan government would be divided and weakened in talks with the Taliban, who have been emboldened by a deal with the United States that has led to the start of an American withdrawal. After significant pressure from the United States, including the cutting-off of $1 billion in aid, representatives of Mr. Ghani began talks with Mr. Abdullah on power-sharing — just as in 2014, when a presidential contest between the same two men led to a similar dispute.
According to the text of their new deal, which was seen by The New York Times on Saturday, Mr. Abdullah will take charge of the peace process with the Taliban. He and Mr. Ghani will each appoint the same number of cabinet ministers, with Mr. Abdullah also having a significant share in the appointment of governors. Mr. Ghani is to remain president.
And General Dostum — a former vice president under Mr. Ghani who became one of Mr. Abdullah’s key backers — will become a marshal, a promotion that Mr. Abdullah had promised in return for his support, and to which Mr. Ghani has now consented. The deal is expected to be signed in the coming days.
“The agreement is final, but discussions continue on some of the details,” said Fraidoon Khwazoon, a spokesman for Mr. Abdullah.
A senior official close to Mr. Ghani said that giving General Dostum the rank of marshal, which he characterized as an honorary title, was one small part of a desperate effort to prevent the political crisis from devolving into a civil war, and to let the government focus on negotiating an end to the conflict with the Taliban. He called it a poison pill that Mr. Ghani was swallowing to prevent bloodshed.
Enayatullah Babur Farahmand, a political aide to General Dostum who has denounced the accusations as false and a conspiracy against him, said the promotion would be long-overdue recognition for the military role the general had played in toppling the Taliban government in 2001, on the back of the U.S. invasion.
General Dostum, who has a history of alleged human rights abuses, was accused in 2016 of abducting and attempting to rape Ahmad Ishchi, a fellow Uzbek and a former deputy who became a political rival.
Mr. Ishchi broke down on national television as he described the episode, saying the vice president had beat him up in front of thousands of people at a sports arena; brought him to a home he owned, where he tortured him for days and tried to rape him; then ordered his guards to sexually assault him with the barrels of their guns. The abduction happened in daylight, and medical reports after Mr. Ishchi’s release showed injuries consistent with sexual assault, as well as bruises on his body.
There were outcries and promises of justice, within Afghanistan and internationally. The United States and the European Union called for investigations. Mr. Ghani said that no one was above the law and that justice would be served.
But though the case has remained open, General Dostum has returned to the center of national politics, after a stint in exile in Turkey.
Mr. Ghani’s team toyed with the idea of seeking the general’s support in the 2019 election. And Mr. Abdullah, whom General Dostum ended up backing, promised that if elected, one of his first official acts would be to make General Dostum a marshal. Senior American officials visited the general at his home, posing for photos with him. The top American commander even presented the general with gifts, appearing to pin on his chest what the U.S. military later said was a “commander’s coin and a NATO pin.”
Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said the general’s pending promotion summed up how justice and accountability had been regarded in Afghanistan since 2001, when the United States invaded and the country’s new political structure was formed at a conference in Bonn, Germany.
“A strongman defies arrest, an investigation thwarted at the highest levels — nothing illustrates as well the post-Bonn embrace of impunity,” Ms. Gossman said. “This does not bode well for those hoping the government will speak for victims in the peace talks.”
An official close to Mr. Ghani said that while the government had failed to bring General Dostum to court, it had done what was possible in a fragile situation against a powerful strongman, who had thousands of armed followers and support from neighboring countries: It had forced him into exile for 15 months, even turning back his plane when he first tried to return, and stripped him of all executive authority as vice president.
Although reports of General Dostum’s promotion have been circulating for weeks, there have been no signs of objection from the Western countries that had called for an investigation of Mr. Ishchi’s accusations. Instead, most of them have pressured Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah to reach an agreement, progress toward which was welcomed on Friday by Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation.
“The decisions made to form an inclusive government are decisions that the Afghans are making,” Mr. Khalilzad told reporters in Washington. “But I generally am of the view that any process for peace requires a balance between requirements of justice and requirements of ending a war.”
General Dostum, 66, who has repeatedly switched sides during four decades of brutal war in Afghanistan, hopes to cement a legacy as a champion of his minority Uzbek people, having become Afghanistan’s first Uzbek vice president. Mr. Ghani, who made the general his 2014 running mate despite having once called him a “known killer,” tried to marginalize him soon after taking office. Infuriated, General Dostum responded with erratic shows of force.
There has been little accountability for any of the warlords involved in Afghanistan’s 1990s civil war, which left Kabul in ruins and plunged the country into bloody chaos that still continues. Many of those men grew prosperous with the backing of the United States military over the past two decades. But while most of them polished their images and showed some public restraint, General Dostum still resorted to brutal ways in crushing potential rivals to his power.
Mr. Farahmand, the aide to General Dostum, said Mr. Ishchi’s accusations could not prevent the general’s promotion, because they had not been supported by any court ruling.
When pressed that the abduction had happened in front of a large crowd, and that Mr. Ishchi had bruises and wounds to show immediately after his release, Mr. Farahmand said, “I am not saying he wasn’t beaten, I am not saying he didn’t have bruises, but he was not raped — I can say that 100 percent.”
Asked why, if the accusations were false, General Dostum had refused to cooperate with investigators or appear in court to clear his name, Mr. Farahmand said the courts were not impartial and that the government had conspired to marginalize the general. He cited a 2016 attack on the general’s convoy, which Afghan officials blamed on the Taliban but General Dostum called the work of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency.
“This was a political conspiracy — this was the excuse to eliminate General Dostum,” Mr. Farahmand said. “They couldn’t eliminate him physically, they came for character assassination.”
Lara Jakes contributed reporting from Washington.
|
|
#
¿
May 16, 2020 15:23
|
|
- Nick Soapdish
- Apr 27, 2008
-
|
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/29/how-western-media-would-cover-minneapolis-if-it-happened-another-country/
quote:If we talked about what is happening in Minneapolis the same way we talk about events in a foreign country, here’s how the Western media would cover it. The quotes and those “quoted” in the piece below are fictional.
In recent years, the international community has sounded the alarm on the deteriorating political and human rights situation in the United States under the regime of Donald Trump. Now, as the country marks 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, the former British colony finds itself in a downward spiral of ethnic violence. The fatigue and paralysis of the international community are evident in its silence, America experts say.
The country has been rocked by several viral videos depicting extrajudicial executions of black ethnic minorities by state security forces. Uprisings erupted in the northern city of Minneapolis after a video circulated online of the killing of a black man, George Floyd, after being attacked by a security force agent. Trump took to Twitter, calling black protesters “THUGS”’ and threatening to send in military force. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts!” he declared.
“Sure, we get it that black people are angry about decades of abuse and impunity,” said G. Scott Fitz, a Minnesotan and member of the white ethnic majority. “But going after a Target crosses the line. Can’t they find a more peaceful way, like kneeling in silence?”
Ethnic violence has plagued the country for generations, and decades ago it captured the attention of the world, but recently the news coverage and concern are waning as there seems to be no end in sight to the oppression. “These are ancient, inexplicable hatreds fueling these ethnic conflicts and inequality," said Andreja Dulic, a foreign correspondent whose knowledge of American English consists of a semester course in college and the occasional session on the Duolingo app. When told the United States is only several hundred years old, he shrugged and said, “In my country, we have structures still from the Roman empire. In their culture, Americans think that a 150-year-old building is ancient history.”
Britain usually takes an acute interest in the affairs of its former colony, but it has also been affected by the novel coronavirus. “We’ve seen some setbacks with the virus, but some Brits see the rising disease, staggering unemployment and violence in the States and feel as if America was never ready to govern itself properly, that it would resort to tribal politics,” said Andrew Darcy Morthington, a London-based America expert. During the interview, a news alert informed that out of the nearly 40,000 coronavirus deaths in the United Kingdom, 61 percent of the health-care workers who have died were black and or have Middle Eastern backgrounds. Morthington didn’t seem to notice. “Like I was saying, we don’t have those American racism issues here.”
Trump, a former reality-TV host, beauty pageant organizer and businessman, once called African nations “shithole countries." But he is now taking a page from African dictators who spread bogus health remedies, like Yahya Jammeh of Gambia, who claimed he could cure AIDS with bananas and herbal potions and pushed his treatments onto the population, resulting in deaths. Trump appeared to suggest injecting bleach and using sunlight to kill the coronavirus. He has also said he has taken hydroxycholoroquine, a drug derived from quinine, a long-known jungle remedy for malaria. Doctors have advised against using the treatment to prevent or treat the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, Americans desperate to flee will face steep challenges to cross borders, as mismanagement of the coronavirus and ethnic tensions in the country have made them undesirable visitors. But some struggling American retailers, like Neiman Marcus, are hoping to lure shoppers with traditional 19th-century colonial travel fantasies through neutral khakis and cargo shorts as part of a “Modern Safari” collection. “Utilitarian details & muted tones meet classic femininity,” reads a caption under the photograph of a white woman. Pith helmets were not included in the accessory lineup.
Some nations are considering offering black Americans special asylum. “Members of the white ethnic majority are forming armed militia groups, demanding their freedom to go back to work for the wealthy class who refer to workers as ‘human capital stock,’ despite the huge risk to workers,” said Mustapha Okango, a Nairobi-based anthropologist. “This is a throwback to the days when slavery was the backbone of the American economy. Black slaves were the original essential workers, and they were treated as non-human stock.”
Africa could be an ideal asylum destination, as several African countries have managed to contain the coronavirus outbreak through aggressive early measures and innovations in testing kits. Senegal, a nation of 16 million, has only seen 41 deaths. “Everyone predicted Africa would fall into chaos,” Okango said. “It is proof that being a black person in this world doesn’t kill you, but being a black person in America clearly can.” The African Union did not respond to requests for comment, but it released a statement that said “we believe in American solutions for American problems.”
Around the world, grass-roots organizations, celebrities, human rights activists and even students are doing what they can to raise money and awareness about the dire situation in America.
“It’s sad that the Americans don’t have a government that can get them coronavirus tests or even monthly checks to be able to feed their families,” said Charlotte Johnson, a 18-year-old Liberian student activist, who survived the Ebola pandemic. “100,000 people are dead, cities are burning, and the country hasn’t had a day of mourning? Lives don’t matter, especially not black lives. It’s like they’re living in a failing state.”
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2020 18:08
|
|
- Adbot
-
ADBOT LOVES YOU
|
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2024 14:32
|
|
#
¿
May 1, 2020 18:12
