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Afghanistan’s collapse leaves allies questioning U.S. resolve on other fronts

Afghanistan’s collapse leaves allies questioning U.S. resolve on other fronts

The Washington Post reports: The Taliban’s stunningly swift advances across Afghanistan have sparked global alarm, reviving doubts about the credibility of U.S. foreign policy promises and drawing harsh criticisms even from some of the United States’ closest allies. As Taliban fighters entered Kabul and the United States scrambled to evacuate its citizens, concerns grew that the unfolding chaos could create a haven for terrorists, unleash a major humanitarian disaster and trigger a new refugee exodus. U.S. allies complain that they…

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Afghan women’s defiance and despair: ‘I never thought I’d have to wear a burqa. My identity will be lost’

Afghan women’s defiance and despair: ‘I never thought I’d have to wear a burqa. My identity will be lost’

The Guardian reports: In a market in Kabul, Aref is doing a booming trade. At first glance, the walls of his shop seem to be curtained in folds of blue fabric. On closer inspection, dozens and dozens of blue burqas hang like spectres from hooks on the wall. As the Taliban close in on Kabul, women inside the city are getting ready for what may be coming. “Before, most of our customers were from the provinces,” says Aref. “Now it…

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Al Qaeda won’t return to Afghanistan — it’s already there

Al Qaeda won’t return to Afghanistan — it’s already there

Jason Burke writes: As the Taliban prepare to rule Afghanistan after sweeping across the country in less than a week, an obvious question is what does this mean for the future of al-Qaida and other extremist Islamist groups committed to waging a global jihad. There is no doubt that the astonishing rapidity of the Taliban’s victory will deliver a tremendous boost to Islamist extremists everywhere – whether al-Qaida, Islamic State, fighters in Mozambique or Syria, or jihadi fanboys in bedsits…

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Biden administration prompts largest permanent increase in food stamps

Biden administration prompts largest permanent increase in food stamps

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration has revised the nutrition standards of the food stamp program and prompted the largest permanent increase to benefits in the program’s history, a move that will give poor people more power to fill their grocery carts but add billions of dollars to the cost of a program that feeds one in eight Americans. Under rules to be announced on Monday and put in place in October, average benefits will rise more than…

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What would it take to break up Big Oil?

What would it take to break up Big Oil?

The Guardian reports: Ayisha Siddiqa doesn’t want fossil fuel companies to determine her future anymore. The industry has promoted climate denial for longer than the 22-year-old has been alive. Rather than watch companies pad their profits as the world burns, Siddiqa has a radical solution in mind. “Abolish these oil companies, finish them, get rid of them, no more,” she said. The report found that 25 oil and gas industry organisations spent at least $9.5m to place more than 25,000…

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The return of the Taliban

The return of the Taliban

Jon Lee Anderson writes: Watching Afghanistan’s cities fall to the Taliban in rapid succession, as the United States completes a hasty withdrawal from the country, is a surreal experience, laced with a sense of déjà vu. Twenty years ago, I reported from Afghanistan as the Taliban’s enemies took these same cities from them, in the short but decisive U.S.-backed military offensive that followed the 9/11 attacks. The war on terror had just been declared, and the unfolding American military action…

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Afghan security forces face despair and feelings of abandonment

Afghan security forces face despair and feelings of abandonment

The New York Times reports: How the Afghan military came to disintegrate first became apparent not last week but months ago in an accumulation of losses that started even before President Biden’s announcement that the United States would withdraw by Sept. 11. It began with individual outposts in rural areas where starving and ammunition-depleted soldiers and police units were surrounded by Taliban fighters and promised safe passage if they surrendered and left behind their equipment, slowly giving the insurgents more…

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‘Why were we even there?’

‘Why were we even there?’

The Washington Post reports: Speaking from his home in Tucson, Army veteran John Whalen sighed as reports came in that Kandahar, the second-largest Afghan city, had fallen to the Taliban. “It’s just frustrating,” Whalen said over the phone. “We knew that this would happen. Now, all the people who went and served, are like, ‘Why did my friend die?’ ” “I ask that question, too,” Whalen said. Whalen said two of his friends were killed just a dozen miles from…

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Iran’s health system ‘beyond disastrous’ from Covid surge

Iran’s health system ‘beyond disastrous’ from Covid surge

The New York Times reports: Hospital medics in Iran are triaging patients on the floors of emergency rooms and in cars parked on the roadside. Lines stretch for blocks outside pharmacies. Taxis double as hearses, transporting corpses from hospitals to cemeteries. In at least one city, laborers are digging mass graves. Iran is under assault from the most cataclysmic wave yet of the coronavirus, according to interviews with physicians and health workers, social media postings from angry citizens, and even…

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Xi’s dictatorship threatens the Chinese state

Xi’s dictatorship threatens the Chinese state

George Soros writes: Xi Jinping, the ruler of China, suffers from several internal inconsistencies which greatly reduce the cohesion and effectiveness of his leadership. There is a conflict between his beliefs and his actions and between his public declarations of wanting to make China a superpower and his behavior as a domestic ruler. These internal contradictions have revealed themselves in the context of the growing conflict between the U.S. and China. At the heart of this conflict is the reality…

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The UN climate panel tries to cut through the smog

The UN climate panel tries to cut through the smog

Bill McKibben writes: We all live in two worlds: a physical one and a social one. The new report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was released on Monday, is ostensibly about the physical world. It states—even more clearly and forcefully than it has stated in all its reports back to 1995—that humans are wrecking that physical world. Setting it on fire. But precisely because none of that is news, especially after the climate events of this northern-hemisphere…

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The Texas governor surrenders to the coronavirus

The Texas governor surrenders to the coronavirus

Adam Serwer writes: A year and a half into the pandemic, Texas is running out of hospital beds. The Texas Tribune reported on Tuesday that nearly 10,000 COVID-19 patients are in intensive-care units, some in areas where hospitals are close to capacity. Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order asking hospitals to delay elective procedures and authorizing local facilities to seek out-of-state medical staff to help with the coronavirus surge, which is approaching levels not seen since winter. Despite…

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Having lost the war in Afghanistan, U.S. hopes to avoid a repeat of its ignominious flight from Saigon

Having lost the war in Afghanistan, U.S. hopes to avoid a repeat of its ignominious flight from Saigon

The New York Times reports: American negotiators are trying to extract assurances from the Taliban that they will not attack the U.S. Embassy in Kabul if the extremist group takes over the country’s government and ever wants to receive foreign aid, three American officials said. The effort, led by Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief American envoy in talks with the Taliban, seeks to stave off a full evacuation of the embassy as they rapidly seize cities across Afghanistan. On Thursday, the…

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‘We’re in trouble’: Rural America can’t escape Delta

‘We’re in trouble’: Rural America can’t escape Delta

Politico reports: Steven was finally getting his Covid-19 shot because Mama told him to. And nobody crosses Mama. Standing between the fried bread and slushie stands at the Uinta County fairgrounds in southwestern Wyoming, the 42-year-old in the Trump 2020 hat said “Mama” — his wife — forced him to get vaccinated because of the Delta variant. “The missus is worried about me going out on a trucking trip,” said Steven, who declined to give his last name. “I don’t…

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Andrew Cuomo’s war against a federal prosecutor

Andrew Cuomo’s war against a federal prosecutor

Ronan Farrow writes: In April, 2014, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo placed a call to the White House and reached Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama. Cuomo was, as one official put it, “ranting and raving.” He had announced that he was shuttering the Moreland Commission, a group that he had convened less than a year earlier to root out corruption in New York politics. After Cuomo ended the group’s inquiries, Preet Bharara, then the U.S. Attorney…

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Trump asked his AG about legal strategy to overturn election, Rosen tells senators

Trump asked his AG about legal strategy to overturn election, Rosen tells senators

Politico reports: Donald Trump asked the country’s top legal official in late December about a conspiratorial draft complaint aimed at overturning the 2020 election results, according to a previously unreported account of Trump’s phone call with former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen. Rosen persuaded Trump the lawsuit wasn’t a good idea, he told Senate investigators last weekend, two sources familiar with his testimony said. The previously unreported details underscore how hard DOJ lawyers worked to shoot down the increasingly harebrained…

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