Nearly two years after the U.S. killed 10 members of an Afghan family, including seven children, in a drone strike that prompted a rare apology from the Pentagon, the U.S. government has yet to make good on a pledge to compensate surviving relatives.
Sorry, there are other countries that need "saving."
US military officials are walking back claims that a drone strike Central Command (CENTCOM) launched on May 3 in northwest Syria killed a senior al-Qaeda leader after evidence emerged that a civilian was killed.
When the strike was first launched in Syriaâs northwest Idlib province, reports immediately emerged that the strike killed a sheep herder with no ties to any militant groups. The Associated Pressspoke with family members and neighbors of the victim, Lotfi Hassan Misto, who insisted he was innocent.
According to The Washington Post, Misto was a 56-year-old father of 10, and the paper spoke with terrorism experts who said it was unlikely he was affiliated with al-Qaeda.
âWe are no longer confident we killed a senior AQ official,â an unnamed military official told the Post. Another official claimed the person they killed was al-Qaeda but offered no evidence. âThough we believe the strike did not kill the original target, we believe the person to be al-Qaeda,â the official said.
CENTCOMâs initial press release on the strike did not name the person they killed. Since then, the command has refused to share any details of the operation or say why they could have targeted the wrong person.
The US military is notorious for undercounting civilian casualties or lying about them. The Pentagon is also known for investigating itself and finding no wrongdoing, even in instances of significant civilian deaths, such as the August 2021 Kabul drone strike that killed 10 civilians, including seven children.
Yes, we must see things from the Russian perspective. We must be sympathetic to their fear of being surrounded by hostile countries.
But we absolutely must not see things from the perspectives of those countries—from the Polish, Baltic, Czech, German, Swedish, Finnish perspective. We must not examine why they are hostile to an aggressive imperialist neighbor who openly threatens to invade and re-subjugate them.
Iâm sure many of you recall that earlier this year there was a showdown over the House Speakership of Rep. Kevin McCarthy.
Matt Gaetz: Because we do not trust Mr. McCarthy with power, because we know who he will use it for, and we are concerned it will not be for the American people. We trust Jim Jordan; I nominate him and Iâm going to vote for him.
Those events highlighted one of the more impressive grifter trains thatâs now docked in the U.S. capitol, the idea that you have this new generation of anti-imperialist lawmakers, many of whom just happen to be loyal to Donald Trump and his movement. While some members of the Freedom Caucus do consistently take on serious issues that should be confronted â including on war, civil liberties and the increasing power of tech companies â the newly launched select subcommittee to investigate the quote, âweaponization of the federal government,â itâs not being established to engage in the kind of rigorous investigation embodied by the House Committee on Assassinations, or by the Church Committee in 1975.
This new committee, itâs clear, is going to largely be a partisan lollapalooza of wacky theories and totally hypocritical attacks. Whatâs notable, however, is that by taking on issues that have long been associated with the political left in the United States, these Republicans, who have been banging the drums about the deep state, have unmasked just how much the established power within the current Democratic Party actually reveres the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the broader national security state. (...)
0:00 Johnâs upcoming book, How States Think: The Rationality of Foreign Policy
2:51 Is the US to blame for Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine?
10:00 Is Putin less rational than John assumes?
22:20 Why John is a Russia dove and a China hawk
29:50 Does China pose a threat to freedom around the world?
36:57 Why John thinks Chinaâs rise threatens American security
47:58 Has globalization made great-power peace possible?
56:14 Should the US defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion?
The United States has dispelled any doubts about its intentions to squeeze Chinaâs rise as a technology superpower. Starting with a mid-September 2022 speech by National Security Director Jake Sullivan that laid out the broad parameters of the case against China, the Biden Administration and the US Congress have taken a series of actions in the Sino-American tech war that go well beyond the early skirmishes sparked by the Trump Administration.
America is taking dead aim at the most advanced segments of Chinaâs tech aspirations, like artificial intelligence and quantum computing, that, in turn, are essential to the nationâs push for indigenous innovation and productivity enhancement. That is even more important in the face of Chinaâs stiff demographic headwinds that leave China with no choice other than to lever innovation for productivity enhancement.
Yet China has managed to cope with all this reasonably well. As was the case during the initial phase of the trade war dominated by Trumpâs tariffs, there has been some tit-for-tat retaliation. China has signaled its intention of restricting Micron Technologyâs operations in the mainland; Micron is Americaâs largest memory chip producer, and the Chinese market currently accounts for about 11% of Micronâs global sales. While Chinaâs action is hardly inconsequential, it pales in comparison to the measures the US has imposed on China in the past six months. I have been surprised at the limited scope of Chinese retaliation and suspect that there is more to come.
Chinaâs counter-offensive focuses on homegrown tech optionality. Huawei, Chinaâs leading technology company and first to get hit by tough US sanctions in 2019, is a case in point. Denied access to the US chips it required for its once globally dominant mobile phone business, Huawei moved aggressivity to develop an in-house work-around. It not only redirected its supply chain away from the US toward Taiwan and Japan, but it turned to its domestic semiconductor subsidiary, Hi-Silicon, to produce a new smartphone, the Mate 3.0, made without any US components.
Contrary to the profusion of Americaâs false narratives about Huaweiâs predatory thievery of US technology, the companyâs success has long been driven by its focus on research and development. While there has been an accelerated injection of government subsidies in recent years, Huaweiâs massive R&D efforts are largely self-funded, hitting approximately $25 billion (USD) in 2021, more than double the combined budgets of Alibaba and Tencent, which have the second and third largest R&D programs among Chinese tech companies. Reflecting its R&D-intensive strategy, Huawei has been especially effective in developing domestic alternatives to US sourcing of both software and hardware, with notable breakthroughs in electronic design automation and lithographic chip-making tools.
Chinese tech companies also appear to be benefitting from a second-best approach to chip processing speed. While denied access to the fastest processors of Nvidia and AMD, both Silicon Valley suppliers still offer lower-speed alternatives to a Chinese market that is very important to their businesses. Significantly, this option does not appear to compromise AI-related taskingâat least, not yet. That day will comeâpossibly ten years from now. But by then, Chinese and Western chip-making prowess could well be near parity.
Just weeks ago, American diplomats thought Sudan was on the verge of a breakthrough agreement that would advance its transition from military dictatorship to full-fledged democracy, delivering on the soaring promise of the countryâs revolution in 2019.
Sudan had become an important test case in President Bidenâs core foreign policy goal of bolstering democracies worldwide, which in his view weakens corrupt leaders and allows nations to more capably stand as bulwarks against the influences of China, Russia and other autocratic powers.
But on April 23, the same American diplomats who had been involved in the negotiations in Sudan suddenly found themselves shutting down the embassy and fleeing Khartoum on secret nighttime helicopter flights as the country spiraled into a potential civil war. (...)
After a relatively strong debut in his first year in office, the honeymoon is over for U.S. President Joe Biden, as approval ratings of U.S. leadership worldwide slid at the halfway mark of his term. (...)
Readers please note that the graphic represents change in status, not status. Russia's leadership approval stands at 21% (down 12%), the US at 41% and Germany's at 46%.
After a relatively strong debut in his first year in office, the honeymoon is over for U.S. President Joe Biden, as approval ratings of U.S. leadership worldwide slid at the halfway mark of his term. (...)
Ah, the enduring myth of the US State Department: simultaneously bumbling incompetents and all-powerful, capable of toppling governments at the snap of a finger.
If we're doing hyperbole: the only part of the (otherwise bad, bad, bad, bad, bad) government that can be believed 100% of the time. Until it eventually becomes untenable.
Don't fret either, Greenwald has libertarian sensibilities...
Ah, the enduring myth of the US State Department: simultaneously bumbling incompetents and all-powerful, capable of toppling governments at the snap of a finger...
This stuff in Ukraine started 10 around years ago when Ms. Nuland laid the groundwork for overthrowing the existing regime in what has been called the Maidan Revolution, IIRC. She was the one from the West who did the most stirring of the pot that got us to where we are today, imo.
And as noted in my post, is still around calling the shots.
Ah, the enduring myth of the US State Department: simultaneously bumbling incompetents and all-powerful, capable of toppling governments at the snap of a finger. It's almost as if a powerful, intrusive, and potently meddlesome neighbor motivated to destabilize Ukraine to facilitate seizing its territory and resources doesn't exist!
This is a long series of explanations of the snake pit that is Ukrainian politics and recent history. It's long because that history is absurdly complicated, as real life often is. It doesn't fit into neat tidy narratives no matter how you cram it into one and sit on the lid.
It's well-researched and decently literate about recent European history. RP, fret not—this all comes with a lefty spin.
And if you're put off by the prospect of watching an hour and a half of history lectures be assured this comes with a healthy dose of snark. The creator's channel is called Sarcasmitron, after all.
