"The stunning Taliban victory last month in Afghanistan is drawing attention now to even graver consequences: the extent to which the US reliance on contractors may have heightened the difficulties of the Afghan security forces."
"I think we would have to look to the U.N. and groups that have a reputation for being able to truly assist people in Afghanistan, and then reparations through dismantling the war system."
As the last U.S. forces leave Afghanistan, ending the longest war in U.S. history, we go to Kabul to speak with Danish Afghan journalist Nagieb Khaja, who was once kidnapped by the Taliban and later embedded with them on a reporting assignment. He has been investigating Sunday’s U.S. drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians, More
The main recipient region in 2016–20 was Asia and Oceania (accounting for 42 percent of global arms imports), followed by the Middle East (33 percent), Europe (12 percent), Africa (7.3 percent), and the Americas (5.4 percent).
Chayes: " ... the behavior of those Afghan leaders that we, the United States, kind of put forward toward their own citizens, and the role of U.S. officials and U.S. development organizations in reinforcing and protecting and enabling, I mean, just an unbelievably corrupt and abusive governmental system, so that, you know, my Afghan friends, who were not in university — they were ordinary villagers in and around Kandahar — they just didn’t know what to make of it. It was like, 'Look, the Taliban shake us down at night, but the government shakes us down in the daytime'”
"The vast bulk of military expenditures today have nothing to do with keeping us safe. And the advocates for war are a small minority – politicians, militarists, weapons makers, oil companies, and relatively small fanatical groups like al Qaeda."
Includes Biden's full speech to the U.S. nation and responses of the panelists.
All are welcome to all Hiroshima/Nagasaki Remembrance events in Minneapolis./St. Paul, August 5, 6, and 8
The return of the Taliban to power will be one more signpost of the end of the American empire — and nobody will be held accountable.
"The cost of war, to many veterans, is a deep and permanent wounding of the soul and the conscience."
"The U.S. government is a lawless entity. It violates the law, including its own Constitution, whenever it wants. The requirement that no wars be fought absent congressional authority is not some ancillary bureaucratic annoyance..."
"Capitalists profit when they adeptly shift costs onto others (humans, other animals, the planet itself). This includes enforcing poor labor safety, crushing labor unions, and polluting the natural world. We, the people, see so much pollution and harm because that’s how the system is designed. Those are intentional byproducts of capitalism."
