Quotes of the Day:
“Never start moving your own lips and teeth before the subordinates do. The longer I keep quiet, the sooner others move their lips and teeth. As they move their lips and teeth, I can thereby understand their real intentions. . . . If the sovereign is not mysterious, the ministers will find opportunity to take and take."
—Han Fei-tzu
“When opponents are unwilling to fight with you, it is because they think it is contrary to their interests, or because you have misled them into thinking so."
—Sun Tzu
"When I get home and people ask me,'Hey, Hoot, why do you do it, man? What are you? Some kind of war junkie? I won't say a goddamn word. Why? They won't understand. They won't understand why we do it. They won't understand that it's about the men next to you. And that's it. That's all it is."
-–"Hoot" in Blackhawk Down playing Norm Hooten
1. U.S. regains seat on U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing Trump withdrawal
2. The Fall of A Country: The Untold, Eyewitness Story Of Afghanistan’s Collapse
3. ‘Accountability’ Marine gets light sentence; judge blasts command
4. Marine officer pleads guilty to disrespecting senior officials, says his life spiraled down after posting viral videos
5. Don’t Commit To Defense Of Taiwan – OpEd
6. Air Force scrubbed hijacking claim from news release after CENTCOM disputed story
7. LinkedIn Social Network Is Leaving China, but Microsoft Remains
8. The Sgt. Maj. of the Army wants leaders to stop scheduling training just for the sake of it
9. We ‘Blew It’ On Battling COVID Disinfo, Army Says
10. The real bias in news coverage is different than you might think according to new study
11. A Nobel for Journalists Is a Direct Challenge to Authoritarians
12. One of the world’s most popular iOS apps right now was developed by Chinese
13. China and the U.S. Sabotage Their Own Tech Companies
14. 1/2 The pursuit and neutralizing of Al Qaeda's Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines; lessons learned. David Maxwell
1. U.S. regains seat on U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing Trump withdrawal
This begs the classic question: "What do you do now Lieutenant?" There is a lot of work to do here. And there are a lot of enemies – documented human rights abusers – on this council.
U.S. regains seat on U.N. Human Rights Council, reversing Trump withdrawal
The United States has rejoined the United Nations Human Rights Council, part of what the Biden administration says is its intent to deepen American engagement with the world, but the move drew sharp criticism from Republicans.
The United States’ election to a three-year seat on the 47-member body reverses President Donald Trump’s 2018 decision to withdraw in protest of the council’s inclusion of nations with poor rights records and what critics have called its disproportionate focus on criticism of Israel.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the decision provided evidence of President Biden’s determination to renew American leadership overseas and said participation in the council would provide U.S. officials a forum for addressing global rights abuses.
Blinken also noted what he described as the council’s “serious flaws,” citing, as the previous administration did in 2018, the organization’s attention to Israel and its membership. Experts have said countries such as China have used their seats on the council to advance their own vision of human rights or fend off criticism of their own actions.
“We will work hard to ensure the council upholds its highest aspirations and better supports those fighting against injustice and tyranny around the world,” Blinken said in a statement. “The path towards the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms will be filled with challenges. The United States commits to continue this steadfast pursuit.”
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Biden’s ambassador to the United Nations, said the United States would use its seat to advance human rights in places including Ethiopia, China, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and Afghanistan, and advocate for religious tolerance and minority and other rights.
Since its establishment in 2006, the council has largely been viewed along partisan lines in the United States. President George W. Bush’s administration did not support participation; the Obama administration did.
Sen. James E. Risch (Idaho), the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the United States should not provide credibility to a body that includes countries such as Venezuela and Cuba. “The Biden administration will pat itself on the back for rejoining this flawed body,” he said. “However, it will have done so without securing any necessary reforms, while failing to support human rights around the world.”
Nikki Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, also decried the move.
“If President Biden truly cared about human rights, he would keep us far away from the cesspool that is the UN Human Rights Council,” she said in a statement to Fox News.
The move follows other efforts to restore U.S. multilateral engagement, such as the decision this year to rejoin the Paris climate accord.
“This is just another symbolic way of saying, ‘The U.S. is back,’” said Richard Gowan, United Nations director at the International Crisis Group.
But Gowan said that U.S. membership could also have practical benefits, for example providing a venue to help collectively track violations by Afghanistan’s new Taliban government and potentially building international consensus on how to respond.
“There is some genuine leverage the U.S. acquires by being on the council,” he said.
Jamil Dakwar, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s human rights program, described the move as encouraging in as statement but said the United States also needed to address its own record.
“From ending mass incarceration to dismantling systemic racism to protecting immigrants’ rights, the Biden administration must take bold action to advance human rights and racial justice at home and abroad,” he said.
John Hudson contributed to this report.
2. The Fall of A Country: The Untold, Eyewitness Story Of Afghanistan’s Collapse
Is this the "Paul Harvey" - the rest of the story?
Excerpts:
Ghani was supposed to meet his generals at the defense ministry on August 15 to announce he was stepping down in order to enable talks about a power-sharing deal with the Taliban to go ahead. The understanding was that Taliban gunmen would not enter the capital until the deal was done. But Ghani blew it. He betrayed his office and his country, and by running away he left a power vacuum for the Taliban to fill.
Cruelty is now official government policy. Since declaring victory in Kabul, the Taliban have looted at will. They hunt down their enemies and kill them. They beat women in the streets. As they stifle the media that the United States spent $1 billion developing, the Taliban are getting away with rape and murder. It should be no surprise. Their “government” includes men sanctioned as terrorists by the United States and the United Nations; the interior minister is wanted by the FBI with a $10 million bounty on his head.
With terrorists in charge of Afghanistan, gunfire is now inside the palace and figurehead leaders have gone missing. The leaders of the Taliban and Haqqani gangs are fighting each other over the spoils of America’s longest war. Their victory is fissuring along tribal and factional fault lines. After a chaotic few weeks that have seen governance replaced by revenge, panic, fear and despair, we don’t even know who is in charge in one of the world’s most strategically important countries. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan citizens are now at the mercy of murderous criminals. And we in the West are entirely to blame. We have ceded Afghanistan to jihadists intent on our destruction.
As for what happens next? Whatever comes, and whenever it does, no one can say we weren’t warned.
The Fall of A Country: The Untold, Eyewitness Story Of Afghanistan’s Collapse | The Daily Wire
DailyWire.com
On the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, while the names of the dead were being read aloud one by one in a somber New York ceremony of remembrance, the terrorists, child abusers and drug dealers responsible for the atrocity celebrated their victorious return to power in Afghanistan.
It was no coincidence that September 11 was the date the Taliban originally picked to inaugurate their new government in Kabul — but wiser heads in China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan prevailed; even for America’s worst enemies, such blatant contempt was a step too far.
Instead, the Taliban held a flag-raising ceremony inside the tessellated walls and manicured grounds of the presidential palace, “officially” replacing the Islamic Republic’s black, red and green flag with the white banner of their Islamic Emirate. And the new regime’s armed enforcers continued as they began a few weeks before, hunting down opponents to torture and kill.
The Taliban are a criminal cartel who produce and traffic most of the world’s heroin. They beat women, torture journalists, and murder at will, all in the name of God. They kidnap children and then brainwash them in religious schools that churn out platoons of suicide bombing foot soldiers for their brutal jihadist crusade.
All this they do now with impunity, pumped up with what a friend in Kabul calls “victory madness,” after vanquishing the United States and its “puppet” government in one of the greatest humiliations of modern history.
I have just spent three months in Afghanistan, reporting on the end of the war, just as I reported on its beginning two decades ago. I have spent years on the ground in this war-torn country, witnessing and reporting on that historic arc of hope and despair, of violence and courage, of corruption, lies and hubris, covering all sides of America’s longest war.
I watched as America bombed the Taliban into submission, securing “victory” for the West on October 7, 2001 — and I found myself aboard the last commercial flight out of Kabul on August 15 this year, aghast as the same band of unreformed Taliban thugs swarmed in to retake the capital city.
In the intervening years, I strove to tell the story of this war. I saw men, women and children shot, blown up, maimed, cut down as they ran from American bombs, or were beaten to death by their fellow Afghans, their bodies thrown away like so much garbage. I saw corruption on a breath-taking scale, and poverty that made me cry – and I reported on it all. I was regularly threatened and am now designated a “high value target” for revealing the Taliban’s sex slavery practices. I was even chased by Taliban gunfire across wheat fields lit only by stars. I have lost friends and colleagues to guns and suicide bombers.
For 20 years, I chronicled how this war was being fought. Now I can tell you how it was lost.
Squandered Lives, Treasure and Trust
After two decades, billions of American dollars and over 100,000 American and Afghan lives, Afghanistan is now a symbol of surrender, retreat, and failure.
The balance of global power has shifted — away from the West and towards dictatorship — and there is nothing the United States can do to regain its moral authority. The trust of the world is lost, for generations to come. And the people of Afghanistan, left standing in shock, grief, anger, and disbelief at their betrayal, are now the living symbols of America’s shame.
Charkint district uprising forces take position in Charkint district of Balkh province, Afghanistan, Jun 29, 2021. (Massoud Hossaini)
After two decades of promising the people of Afghanistan that they would never be abandoned, the United States and its 29 NATO allies have done just that: turned their backs on the people who believed them. Afghanistan’s 35 million people — most under the age of 35 and heavily invested in America’s promise of democratic rights and freedom — have just been betrayed by their “best friends.” Many are now living in fear and horror, which is all the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies and Pakistani secret service sponsors have to offer.
Every day, I am bombarded with desperate calls from people trapped inside Afghanistan. They are living in fear for their lives, pleading for my help to get out of the prison their country has become. Every day, I am sent photographs and videos of the senseless and barbaric cruelty of the Taliban — and of the bravery of ordinary Afghans, most notably women, who dare to stand up to these violent new rulers only to be beaten, detained, tortured and killed. Every day, terrified friends whisper the latest atrocities over the phone as they wait for the knock on the door that tells them their turn has come.
The West’s Self-Delusion
The West was shocked by what happened in Afghanistan this summer because the Taliban and their fellow travellers in academia, media, diplomacy, politics and aid have been gaslighting the world. The reality of the Taliban is being wilfully ignored. Experts are shouted down on live television if they address the Taliban’s embrace of terror and crime, or their close association with al-Qaeda and the Haqqani network (terrorist groups that they swore to former President Donald Trump they would cut ties with, and then never did).
Gone from the public discourse is the fact that they are the biggest drugs-producing, trafficking and processing gang in the world. That theirs has been a war for money, power and resources, cloaked in religion and anti-American rhetoric, waged by impoverished and ignorant foot soldiers. That for 20 years and more they have been funded and armed by Pakistan as it sought to build a bulwark against Indian influence in South Asia. That their new best friends are China and Russia. That by leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban, the United States and NATO have created a much more dangerous world, especially for the West.
It’s what HR McMaster, the retired three-star U.S. Army General who was one of Trump’s national security advisers, calls the slick new Taliban public relations machine combined with the West’s “amnesia and self-delusion”. McMaster accurately pinned the Taliban as hypocrites who preach piety but are “sadistic pedophiles … sexual abusers and pimps” who kidnap boys to be indoctrinated into suicide bombers in Pakistani religious schools. Up to a million boys are being brainwashed in these madrassas at any one time, a zombie army I watched these past few months, crossing the border from Pakistan in droves to fight and die for the Taliban.
“The boys, having been subjected to the most extreme forms of abuse during their childhoods, are taught to consider their own lives worthless. For them, abuse and horror in life confirm that death is a blessing — and a suicide bombing that kills their enemies the best possible way to die. They recognize that they are merely ammunition to be expended or ‘tools to achieve God’s will’, as one Taliban commander put it,” McMaster writes. “The cost of helping the Taliban will include the abuse and brainwashing of millions of boys, the elimination of education for girls and the consignment of future generations of Afghans to the Dark Ages.”
My Return to Kabul
I returned to Kabul in May this year after four years in London, where I now live after reluctantly leaving the role of Afghanistan bureau chief for the Associated Press in 2017. As soon as I landed in Kabul, old friends and colleagues stepped forward to reunite, a testament to the true and enduring nature of Afghan friendship. Chief among these former colleagues and friends is Massoud Hossaini, Afghanistan’s Pulitzer prize-winning photographer. We have worked together for more than 10 years, and trust each other implicitly. We immediately agreed to “get the band back together” and cover the end of this war, America’s longest.
Massoud was there in early 2016, when I’d received death threats in apparent retaliation for a story I’d written about a mobile radio station broadcasting into Nangarhar from Pakistan. A text signed by IS-K, the local franchise of the Islamic State group, read: “Warnin! (sic) Because of your article our Radio Station was bombed. Wait for revenge soon. IS KHORASAN.”
I knew the broadcasting truck had been hit by a U.S. drone strike a few days after my story was published, killing at least five people. I also knew that ISIS don’t waste time sending death threats; they just kill.
As bureau chief for The AP, I was pretty high profile, and investigations by both Afghan and US police and intelligence agencies immediately got underway. Very soon, it was concluded — as I’d expected — that the threats had come from inside my own bureau. Any large group will include extremists, and there were a couple of men among the 40 or so who worked for me who didn’t like having a foreign woman as their “Boss.”
Despite episodes like this, I’d truly enjoyed the years I’d served as bureau chief in Kabul, from 2009-2017 — and I was glad to get back to Afghanistan this summer. My return to cover the Taliban’s advance couldn’t have been better timed. Massoud and I traveled across the country, visiting front lines and areas the Taliban had overrun and then lost. We went places no other reporters were going, covered stories no other reporters were covering. We had access, knowledge, and contacts, and were unrestricted by the “security” rules that news organizations rely on. Now, we could cover what we believed were the important stories.
“What would happen after the guns went silent?”
Before Massoud and I hit the road, I spent a few weeks in Kabul meeting with as many people as would have me. I was astonished by my welcome. I’d tweeted a photo of the “Welcome to Kabul” sign at the airport when I arrived, and immediately people began getting in touch. Officials in the Republic’s government sent me armoured cars with armed guards to bring me to tea and lunch, organized big formal dinners for me, and dropped by my place for long, frank discussions about the war and the peace talks that had been grinding on since September 2020. The then-insurgents were stalling negotiations while they rolled out their battlefield strategy, using the threat of escalated violence to extract concessions.
Most worrying about all of these meetings — and a two-hour interview with the Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid — was that no one seemed to have a plan. Not one person in government or the armed opposition with whom I met — ministers, deputy ministers, senior advisers, spokesmen, former officials, political activists, rights advocates, as well as the Taliban’s representative — could answer my question: “What’s the plan?”
Members of Herat militias from Ismail Khan forces beat an alleged Taliban insurgent as a government security force tries to intervene during a clash with Taliban forces inside Herat city, Afghanistan, Aug. 2, 2021. (Massoud Hossaini)
Truth is, there was no plan. No one had any idea what was going to happen in the next round of peace talks, or on the battlefield, even as the Taliban began gaining ground at an alarming rate. Nor could anyone comment on the likelihood of a ceasefire — which the Republic had been calling for and the Taliban had made conditional on President Ashraf Ghani leaving office. What would happen after the guns fell silent? What would a government that included the Taliban look like? I don’t believe they were holding their cards close. They mostly stayed off the record — except for the Taliban spokesman — and talked openly. They simply had no clue. So why were they so intent on talking to me? I can only conclude they had nothing better to do. Their phones didn’t ring, or were on silent and went unanswered. I suspected I was the entertainment, a diversion from doing nothing, someone who would listen. I found it very disturbing.
Even more disturbing was the phenomenal extent of corruption. Brazen, blatant, profound, unimaginable in its scale, and, I believe, one of the main causes of the government’s collapse. Ghani, installed as president after not one but two flawed elections that he probably didn’t rightfully win, enabled a culture of graft in the yes-men around him that meant his administration was incapable of performing the most basic obligation of government: keeping the people of his country safe.
Ghani was self-obsessed, arrogant and stupid. “He was isolated and paranoid, and it was this paranoia that led to the collapse of the country,” said a friend who worked with him. Ghani believed he was the smartest person in every room he walked into, and he refused to listen to experts on everything from fighting the war to Covid-19. He fired those who dared question him; turnover at every level of government — cabinet ministers, district police chiefs, and every post in between — was astonishing. Consequently, there was no consistency in policy and no strategy. He burned through officials with any ability and was left with people who were corrupt, inept or both.
Instead of dealing with endemic poverty and persistent hunger — the United Nations says that one million Afghan children are currently in danger of starving to death — Ghani enabled corruption on a grand scale, either by benign neglect, via specific policies that allowed his cohort to skim vast amounts of money from procurement budgets, or by active involvement in embezzlement and money laundering schemes. Investigations now underway may determine where all those billions went; as I learned, the money certainly did not go to support the military, despite U.S. taxpayers having spent more than $80 billion intended for developing, training, equipping and maintaining Afghan troops.
Congress had actually created a Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction to follow the $145 billion allocated since 2002 “to build the Afghan National Security Forces, promote good governance, conduct development assistance, and engage in counter-narcotics and anti-corruption efforts.” In that time, SIGAR warned repeatedly that too little was being done to combat corruption, which it described as an “existential threat” to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. And so it turned out to be.
The Last Stand
In July, I went to Bamiyan province in the central highlands. My plan had been to ride through the mountain passes to meet with a rebel militia leader called Ali Pour. He’d denied shooting down an Afghan National Army helicopter a couple of months earlier, but after some investigation, I decided that he probably had. And so, along with Massoud, I went looking for other stories.
What we found and reported shook the Taliban to its core, unleashing a vitriolic campaign aimed at undermining me as a professional journalist. The story I wrote, accompanied by Massoud’s photographs, drilled down to the very basis of who the Taliban are. What we are seeing in Afghanistan today is the truth of that reporting.
Bamiyan is the center of a region called Hazarajat, populated mostly by people of the Hazara minority, who are Shiite (most Afghans, including the Taliban, are Sunni). Hazaras have been demonised and discriminated against for more than a century — especially in recent years by the Taliban and others, like IS-K and the Haqqani network. Their lands have been stolen, the women kidnapped, the men enslaved, and they have been slaughtered in huge numbers. A wizened man wearing rags and plastic sandals picking through garbage on the side of a Kabul street, a common sight, is more likely than not to be a Hazara. It is the cruel pecking order of Afghan society.
In Bamiyan province, however, Hazaras have created a haven. They’ve even developed a tourism sector that attracts people from all over the world to an annual skiing competition, for instance, and a gorgeous national park with turquoise lakes called Band-i-Amir. It is where the exquisite giant Buddha statues once stood, until the Taliban destroyed them in early 2001 by order of al-Qaeda.
By June, Hazarajat had been surrounded by Taliban forces. The former head of the Afghan government secret service, Rahmatullah Nabil, and I had a long conversation about the Taliban’s strategy, which was starting to become clear as it picked up speed. First, they took border crossings, cutting off trade and revenues. Then they took districts — administrative regions like counties — surrounding provincial capitals. In this way, first the landlocked country and then major cities were besieged. The Population panicked. Soldiers and police were overwhelmed, sometimes slaughtered; more and more they surrendered, sometimes without firing a shot. As the U.S. military drawdown mandated in Trump’s deal with the Taliban accelerated, the air support that fighters on the ground depended on (their only real edge over the insurgency) faltered, as Americans doing the maintenance on jet bombers and helicopters left the country.
Hazarajat had been left to last, Nabil told me. When I landed in Bamiyan’s provincial capital, also called Bamiyan, in mid-July, the city was almost empty. More than 25,000 families, I was told, had left — terrified the Taliban were coming and would kill them, as they had done to Hazaras in the past.
Herat militiamen from Ismail Khan forces stay alert during a clash with Taliban forces inside Herat city, Afghanistan, Aug. 2, 2021. (Massoud Hossaini)
Bamiyan wasn’t yet lost, however; Hazaras had formed militias to fight alongside the police to push the Taliban back. But what I saw and heard from the police on the frontline in Du Ab district confirmed the extent of the corruption that was crippling the country’s fighting forces and which led to the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. The young men there had repelled a Taliban onslaught, with the loss of one man, after retreating under orders for a few days while the militants overran and ransacked their base. When I met them, they told me they hadn’t eaten meat or eggs for a month. They ate three-day-old bread brought to them in a sack from the nearest town. For dinner there was only boiled rice.
All the members of this unit wore different uniforms; when I asked why, they said that, like all police in Afghanistan, they had to buy their own uniforms. This dog’s dinner of fatigue patterns was what they found at the local bazaars. One of them slapped his 10-year-old Kalashnikov rifle; another showed me a helmet with the holes of a bullet that had gone in one place and out another. “The Taliban have M4s,” he said, the very M4s that the United States had supplied to Afghanistan’s police and army. Many of the firearms and other military supplies were stolen and sold on the black market, much of it ending up in the Taliban’s arsenal.
When the police in Du Ab were paid, irregularly, they didn’t receive their full salary, they said; it was pilfered before it reached their bank accounts, despite high-tech systems designed to prevent fraud. By the time the Taliban entered Kabul victorious, the police nationwide, of all ranks, hadn’t been paid at all for three months.
“We Fight for Ourselves”
When I asked the frontline fighters in Du Ab if they fought for the government of Ashraf Ghani, the answer was comically immediate: No. We fight for ourselves, for our families, for our property, to keep the Taliban out of Bamiyan. The answer to that question was the same everywhere I went. The choice between the government propped up by the West for 20 years and the Taliban was between “bad and worse,” as more than one person put it. A friend whose foundation was doing nationwide polling said that nowhere in the country did Afghans of any age approve of the government. But even more, he said, no one wanted the Taliban back in power.
The reasons for the hatred of the Taliban were not just rooted in the collective memory of their brutal, autarkic 1996-2001 regime. Reports had been filtering out from districts they had rolled over of how they treated the residents, especially women. Anecdotal stories were emerging of girls’ schools closed, women forced to stop working and remain indoors, only allowed out with a male relative and then only fully covered. Most terrifying, the Taliban were said to be kidnapping girls and women to “marry” to their fighters. None of these reports had been definitively confirmed — until I went to Saighan district, in a remote valley in Bamiyan.
Residents in Saighan, as well as the provincial governor, Tahir Zohair, and senior security officials, told me that the Taliban fighters who took control in mid-July had demanded the names of all the local girls and women, including the wives and widows of men in the armed forces. The orders were issued from the mosques, they said. They wanted the names so they could track down the girls and women, and then give them as prizes to the young men who had rampaged across the country with them. The girls and women of Saighan were the booty, the reward for winning the war, the sex slaves of success.
A Bamiyan police soldier shows a room looted by Taliban forces, during an interview with the Foreign Policy in a police bace in Ghandak village of Shebar district in Bamiyan city, Afghanistan, Jul 18, 2021. (Massoud Hossaini)
This barbarous practice is part of the Taliban’s extreme interpretation of Islam, an academic at the American University of Afghanistan, Omar Sadr, told me. According to their sick doctrine, to the victor belong the spoils, and that includes the women. It is ideologically sanctioned kidnapping and rape. It is also ethnic cleansing — Pashtun Taliban taking women of non-Pashtun ethnicity. It is the very essence of the Taliban’s jihadist evil.
I Knew It Was Over
In August, I went to Herat, the wealthy, cultured province bordering Iran. When Massoud and I landed at the airport, the road into the capital (also called Herat) was closed, occupied by the Taliban. We waited five hours and then hitched a ride with a driver who had just dropped off some officials on their way to Kabul. He barrelled down that highway at about 120 miles per hour. We checked into an empty hotel, put on our body armour and went to meet warlord Ismail Khan. He’d deployed his private army to fight the Taliban alongside the armed wing of the intelligence service. At 72, Ismail Khan was hoping for a political and popular comeback, after being forced into the wilderness for a few years by Ghani. Video footage of him jogging across a bridge at the head of his men had transformed him into a folk hero and the hope of Herat.
That hope was short-lived. We hung out with his fighters for a day, and watched them beat to death two Taliban men they found hiding in a house. They threw the bodies into the street and pumped them full of bullets and shouted “Allahu Akbar,” God is great. Which is what the Taliban chant when their child suicide bombers detonate themselves. That’s when I knew it was over, that Herat was falling and Kabul wouldn’t be far behind. The Taliban’s battlefield atrocities — beheading, dismembering, eye-gouging, and booby-trapping bodies — was no different to how these Taliban prisoners were being treated before me. And God was the justification for unspeakable violence on all sides of this horrible, dehumanising war. We were trapped in Herat for five days, as the Taliban advanced into the city and kept rocketing the airport. When we got back to the capital, Massoud and I bought our tickets out.
We were ambivalent at first. But as the date of our departure drew closer, our conviction that it was time to go became stronger. Bank machines were out of cash. Ghani refused to announce his resignation on live television. Contacts at the highest levels of government were disappearing. Airplane tickets were sold out for weeks. Gunfire got closer to the city. On the morning of our departure, all visible signs of security, the previously ubiquitous “ring of steel,” had disappeared. We were wheels up at 9.10 am; by the time we landed in Istanbul five hours later, Ghani and his closest advisers had run away, and Taliban gunmen had entered the capital.
The world then witnessed the calamitous effort to evacuate tens of thousands of foreigners and Afghans who had worked with the Americans and internationals. I have serious doubts about the veracity of the figures being touted by Washington and London about how many people they got out. One friend says that the Afghan National Army soldiers responsible for letting people into the airport gave preference to their own relatives and friends, whether they were eligible or not. Many people who need to get out did not, and still have not.
The chaos at the airport was, I suspect, orchestrated by the Taliban and the Haqqani network whose goons are in charge of the capital’s security. The suicide attack that killed 13 U.S. soldiers, though claimed by ISIS-K, was also likely Haqqani — too good an opportunity to miss for the bloodthirsty scion of the gang, Sirajuddin, Afghanistan’s new interior minister as well as deputy leader of the Taliban. By blaming it on IS-K, he successfully manipulated the United States into promising to cooperate with the Taliban in wiping out his rival terrorists.
A Black Hole Of Despair
Meanwhile, a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding at warp speed.
Afghan people have no jobs, the banks have no money, food prices are soaring. People who fled to Kabul to escape fighting elsewhere are camping in desperate conditions on any open ground, including parks. There are no public services, no law and order. Resistance is being mercilessly crushed — including an armed effort in the Panjshir Valley, 80 miles northeast of Kabul. Looting of private homes, offices, and embassies continues. Afghanistan has fallen into a black hole of despair.
The educated middle classes have either fled, whisked from danger in the chaotic evacuation program that the U.S. and U.K. governments can’t help congratulating themselves for, or are in hiding, hoping like hell for a chance to leave before they are hunted down and killed. A new class of Afghan refugees is arriving in the United States and Europe, bewildered and traumatized by what they’ve just been through. They ought to be welcomed and thanked and supported and protected; instead they are often made to feel as interlopers, lucky to be amongst us. We played an undeniable role in the destruction of their country, their hopes, their aspirations, their futures. And now we compound that insult as a symptom of our own shame. If we look away, perhaps we can convince ourselves it never happened.
All this could have been avoided if the departure of the United States and its allies had been better managed. While President Biden is largely to blame for the collapse of the Afghan state, President Trump bears much responsibility for the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan. Like it or not, his desire to end the “forever war” led him into a flawed bilateral deal with crooks and terrorists.The Taliban did not stick to their pledges, like ending attacks against U.S. troops and cutting ties with al-Qaeda. They escalated the violence on the battlefield as leaders sat down for “peace talks” in Qatar and dinner receptions in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Islamabad. At no stage were the people of Afghanistan consulted about Trump’s plan to put the Taliban in power. Indeed, Ghani was pressured by Trump’s envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, most of them battlefield commanders who promptly returned to the fight.
Biden’s decision to stick with the deal was greeted in Kabul with shock and dismay, but should have come as no surprise: his views on large military footprints, and his preference for small counter-terrorism forces are well known. By the time he took office, American troops in Afghanistan were down to just 2,500. He stretched the deadline for completing the drawdown from May 1 to August 31, which should have given Ghani time to finally allow his generals to come up with a strategy. Biden even summoned Ghani to Washington in June to tell him that no matter how fervently he might pray for it to be otherwise, the United States’ presence in Afghanistan was over. Again, Ghani failed; he never developed a strategy And the Taliban marched on.
When Those in Power Run Away
Why was there such a need to leave Afghanistan? Bagram Air Base was one of the best security assets in the world, just several hundred miles from the borders of Pakistan, Iran and China. The American security presence in other parts of the world has endured since World War Two. Yet the U.S. military turned the lights off in the most contentious part of the world and left in the middle of the night ahead of the Fourth of July. A military kit, estimated to be worth billions, was left behind and is now in the hands of the Taliban, the Haqqani, and probably al-Qaeda.
The Biden administration ignored intelligence warnings that Afghanistan’s fighting forces were in danger of collapsing — even as they were collapsing before my eyes. Instead, the White House repeated the lies of two decades, through the Bush, Obama and Trump years, of progress and stability and victory — that there would be no “Saigon moment” in Afghanistan. Until, of course, there was.
Just like the last commercial jet that flew me out of Afghanistan on August 15, President Ashraf Ghani and his closest associates also fled their country that day, in helicopters that took them and their wives to Uzbekistan. They’d heard gunfire outside their palace in Kabul, guards shooting in the air to disperse a bank run, and thought the Taliban had entered the city. They hadn’t.
Ghani was supposed to meet his generals at the defense ministry on August 15 to announce he was stepping down in order to enable talks about a power-sharing deal with the Taliban to go ahead. The understanding was that Taliban gunmen would not enter the capital until the deal was done. But Ghani blew it. He betrayed his office and his country, and by running away he left a power vacuum for the Taliban to fill.
Cruelty is now official government policy. Since declaring victory in Kabul, the Taliban have looted at will. They hunt down their enemies and kill them. They beat women in the streets. As they stifle the media that the United States spent $1 billion developing, the Taliban are getting away with rape and murder. It should be no surprise. Their “government” includes men sanctioned as terrorists by the United States and the United Nations; the interior minister is wanted by the FBI with a $10 million bounty on his head.
With terrorists in charge of Afghanistan, gunfire is now inside the palace and figurehead leaders have gone missing. The leaders of the Taliban and Haqqani gangs are fighting each other over the spoils of America’s longest war. Their victory is fissuring along tribal and factional fault lines. After a chaotic few weeks that have seen governance replaced by revenge, panic, fear and despair, we don’t even know who is in charge in one of the world’s most strategically important countries. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan citizens are now at the mercy of murderous criminals. And we in the West are entirely to blame. We have ceded Afghanistan to jihadists intent on our destruction.
As for what happens next? Whatever comes, and whenever it does, no one can say we weren’t warned.
Lynne O’Donnell is an Australian journalist, author and analyst. Between 2009 and 2017, she was bureau chief in Kabul for The Associated Press and the French news agency AFP.
Massoud Hossaini is a freelance photojournalist. In 2012, his work in Kabul won him the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
3. ‘Accountability’ Marine gets light sentence; judge blasts command
Excerpt:
The judge described alleged leaks to the press and the command’s pretrial confinement order as raising the “specter of unlawful command influence.” It was not officially argued or determined in court, however, whether senior Marine Corps leaders were responsible for the media obtaining these documents.
‘Accountability’ Marine gets light sentence; judge blasts command
“I feel good,” Scheller said as he walked in to learn his sentence. He came back outside to add, “we’ll see what they do.”
Less than an hour later, he walked out without a word after Col. Glen Hines, the Marine Corps judge who decided his sentence, rejected the prosecution’s requested punishment and sharply criticized the Corps’ handling of the case.
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“I am being held accountable for my actions," Scheller said. "The general officers should be held accountable for their failures."
Hines said Scheller’s videos in their full context showed a man who appeared “to be in pain,” “confused” and “significantly frustrated,” rather than a rogue and potentially-violent Marine, that his lawyers argued was depicted in the charge sheets.
The judge described alleged leaks to the press and the command’s pretrial confinement order as raising the “specter of unlawful command influence.” It was not officially argued or determined in court, however, whether senior Marine Corps leaders were responsible for the media obtaining these documents.
The previous day, Scheller had pleaded guilty to all charges against him as part of a plea agreement with the Corps, concluding a saga that began when he took to social media Aug. 26 to demand accountability from senior leaders for their perceived failures in Afghanistan.
He continued to make social media posts and videos against the wishes — and later orders — of his chain of command, ultimately finding himself locked in the brig.
Scheller was convicted of violating Article 88 (contempt toward officials), Article 89 (disrespect toward superior commissioned officers), Article 90 (willfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer), Article 92 (dereliction in the performance of duties), Article 92 (failure to obey an order or regulation) and 27 specifications of Article 133 (conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman).
Hines directed a forfeiture of $5,000 pay for one month, noting the mitigating circumstances. He would have taken two months of pay, but the judge awarded Scheller credit for his nine days in the brig.
The forfeiture of the pay was the only aspect the judge had power over, due to the pretrial agreement.
Prosecutors had requested that Scheller forfeit $5,000 of pay a month for six months, in addition to a letter of reprimand.
Scheller will also resign his commission under the agreement and receive an honorable discharge or general under honorable conditions as part of the agreement, so long as Navy Secretary Carlos del Toro signs off on the character of the discharge, prosecutors said.
Tim Parlatore, Scheller’s attorney, said that the judge’s decision sends a message to senior leaders.
“When senior leaders [or] certain people decide to take certain actions like leaking medical records, like putting somebody in pretrial confinement [when there is] no risk of flight, there should be consequences,” he said.
The Marine Corps confirmed the letter of reprimand and forfeiture of pay. Training and Education Command Spokesman Capt. Sam Stephenson declined to comment on the outcome of the case.
The money is unlikely to be an issue for Scheller despite him losing his retirement benefits through the resignation.
He has raised more than $2.5 million through controversial former Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher’s Pipe Hitter Foundation. That money, according to the foundation’s website, is to be used not only for his legal defense, but also emergency relief funds, relocation expenses and transition out of the military, possible loss of military benefits and retirement, and family support for his wife and three children.
‘Contemptuous words’
The judge, who said he had not seen Scheller’s viral videos before the trial, did not completely absolve the Marine of culpability for his actions, though.
Hines singled out Scheller’s violation of Article 88 for contempt of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in his Aug. 26 video.
Article 88 — which criminalizes “contemptuous words” against certain civilian leaders — is extremely “serious” and “corrosive,” Hines said, and can “degrade public trust” in the military and its civilian authorities.
Scheller’s historic conviction appears to be only the second known court-martial for Article 88 since the Uniform Code of Military Justice was adopted in 1950, based on a review of legal literature by Marine Corps Times. Most officers who toed the line of Article 88 receive corrective action other than punitive.
During the Vietnam War, an Army lieutenant was convicted of violating Article 88 after carrying a sign calling then-President Lyndon B. Johnson a fascist.
The Marine also deserves blame for the saga playing out in the public sphere, resulting in a media circus that doesn’t occur for “99 percent” of other courts-martial, the judge said.
But the Corps’ proposed punishment for Scheller’s transgressions, for which everyone in the courtroom agreed he should be held accountable, paled in comparison to the mitigating factors, Hines explained.
In a trial where post-sentencing time in the brig was not even an option, the command’s decision to lock Scheller up while awaiting trial was “a very rare thing,” Hines said.
He also revealed that the Marine signed his plea agreement while in the brig.
Hines blasted apparent leaks of documents that included Scheller’s medical records, as attorney Parlatore claimed at trial, as “very disturbing,” “unfair” and “illegal.”
Scheller didn’t comment as he left the courtroom, but Parlatore was pleased, as were his co-counsel, Brian Ferguson and Jeremiah Sullivan.
“I think that the judge’s decision was very fair — he definitely considered all of the facts,” Parlatore told gathered reporters after Hines pronounced the sentence. “I think that this is a good adjustment [to the prosecution’s recommended sentence], and so we’re very pleased with the result here.”
Davis Winkie is a staff reporter covering the Army. He originally joined Military Times as a reporting intern in 2020. Before journalism, Davis worked as a military historian. He is also a human resources officer in the Army National Guard.
4. Marine officer pleads guilty to disrespecting senior officials, says his life spiraled down after posting viral videos
Excerpts:
After the first video posted, Scheller was fired as the commander of the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Lejeune, a sprawling Marine Corps base that is home to tens of thousands of Marines in coastal North Carolina.
Aware of the possibility of more negative consequences, Scheller nonetheless posted a second video on Aug. 29 in which he said he was resigning his commission and that if viewers followed him they could bring “the system down.”
Scheller posted two more videos, including a second in a khaki service uniform in which he solicited donations through a nonprofit called the Pipe Hitter Foundation. It was launched by the family of retired Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder in Iraq in 2019. Soliciting donations while in uniform went against Marine Corps policy, Scheller acknowledged under oath on Thursday.
After defying orders to stop posting on social media several times, Scheller was thrown in the brig in September. He said on Thursday that he thinks he was “imprisoned illegally,” but acknowledged he had been warned several times by a commanding officer, Col. David Emmel.
“I understand that the chain of command did not want me to post on social media after the gag order,” Scheller said under questioning by Hines. “That much was clear.”
Marine officer pleads guilty to disrespecting senior officials, says his life spiraled down after posting viral videos
CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — A Marine officer pleaded guilty on Thursday to several criminal charges in connection with viral videos he posted criticizing senior officials during the messy U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying that he knew he was being disrespectful and wanted to call out what he perceived as "incompetence."
Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, a combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, testified that he knew he was defying orders and that his life began “spiraling” after he posted his first video in August. He said his wife left him, fellow Marine officers turned their backs on him and the Marine Corps opened an investigation into his actions. Scheller said he continued posting after receiving positive feedback from backers, including elected officials.
“Many Gold Star families, junior enlisted Marines and members of Congress reached out to support my statements,” Scheller said, referring in part to the families of service members who died in the line of duty.
Scheller pleaded guilty to charges that include disrespect toward superior commissioned officers, willfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer, and dereliction in the performance of duties. An agreement reached between Scheller and the Marine Corps holds that a military judge, Col. Glen Hines, can sentence him to no more than a letter of reprimand and a seizure of two-thirds of his pay for up to 12 months, which would cost Scheller tens of thousands of dollars.
Scheller became a cause celebre among conservatives who faulted the Biden administration for the chaotic end to the 20-year war.
Among the witnesses called by Scheller’s defense team were Rep. Louie Gohmert (R.-Tex.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), two of the most controversial members of Congress. They questioned why Scheller has been prosecuted for his actions when senior U.S. officials such as President Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, have not. Greene, under oath, called for the impeachment of Biden for his handling of Afghanistan and said her office has been flooded with calls in support of Scheller. She also accused U.S. troops who carried out a drone strike that killed civilians in the closing days of the United States’ withdrawal of “war crimes.”
But Scheller immediately ran afoul of numerous military regulations and laws. He agreed as part of his guilty plea that service members do not have the same freedom of speech to criticize senior U.S. officials as civilians, and he acknowledged that he disobeyed a direct order to stop posting his criticisms on social media.
Scheller's first video was posted hours after an Aug. 26 suicide bombing by the Islamic State killed 13 U.S. troops and more than 170 Afghans at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Appearing in a camouflage uniform in his office, he questioned why senior defense officials, including Austin, had allowed Bagram air base to be turned over to Afghan forces in July before an evacuation of civilians was carried out.
In subsequent videos, Scheller also criticized Gen. David H. Berger, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and said that he was referring criminal charges against Marine Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the chief of U.S. Central Command, for making poor recommendations about the war.
In an 11-page stipulation of facts discussed in court, prosecutors laid out 27 instances in which Scheller disrespected senior officials and brought discredit to himself as a Marine Corps officer. Scheller signed the document as part of the plea deal.
After the first video posted, Scheller was fired as the commander of the Advanced Infantry Training Battalion at Camp Lejeune, a sprawling Marine Corps base that is home to tens of thousands of Marines in coastal North Carolina.
Aware of the possibility of more negative consequences, Scheller nonetheless posted a second video on Aug. 29 in which he said he was resigning his commission and that if viewers followed him they could bring “the system down.”
Scheller posted two more videos, including a second in a khaki service uniform in which he solicited donations through a nonprofit called the Pipe Hitter Foundation. It was launched by the family of retired Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was acquitted of murder in Iraq in 2019. Soliciting donations while in uniform went against Marine Corps policy, Scheller acknowledged under oath on Thursday.
After defying orders to stop posting on social media several times, Scheller was thrown in the brig in September. He said on Thursday that he thinks he was “imprisoned illegally,” but acknowledged he had been warned several times by a commanding officer, Col. David Emmel.
“I understand that the chain of command did not want me to post on social media after the gag order,” Scheller said under questioning by Hines. “That much was clear.”
Testimony is due to continue in court on Thursday afternoon as Hines deliberates how to sentence Scheller.
5. Don’t Commit To Defense Of Taiwan – OpEd
Excerpts:
The wealthy island can carry out this strategy by purchasing even more weapons from the United States, including offensive ballistic and cruise missiles. Reluctance by the United States to sell such offensive weapons—to discourage a Taiwan standing behind a U.S. defense shield from provoking a war with China—would melt away after the United States made clear that no such shield for Taiwan would exist in the future. The Taiwanese would be responsible for their own deterrence. This new reality would make Taiwan smarter about the weapons it buys.
Taiwan’s self-defense is far from hopeless, and a debt-ridden United States needs to make clear that it is disentangling from likely futile defenses of non-strategic, far-flung outposts near potentially adversarial nations.
Don’t Commit To Defense Of Taiwan – OpEd
China, under the leadership of strongman Xi Jinping, has become more assertive in East Asia, recently increasing military flights near Taiwan, which it regards as an errant province. Of course, this has spun up the interventionist foreign policy establishment in the United States. For example, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently advocated removing the public ambiguity surrounding whether the United States would defend Taiwan if attacked by China. Yet making this informal alliance an explicit one is an extremely bad idea.
Some allege that Taiwan is strategic to the United States, because in any war with China it would be like having a giant aircraft carrier off the coast of our adversary or because the offshore island is near important trading routes. Although the Chinese want Taiwan reincorporated into China primarily because of domestic nationalist sentiments, their military is probably painfully aware of Taiwan’s potential for use as a large base from which the United States could attack China. This threat is vivid for China, given that it was carved up by Western powers in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries, including the U.S. contribution of forces to Western military suppression of the anti-colonial Chinese revolt labeled the Boxer Rebellion.
Of course, if the Chinese had the use of bases on Cuba, off the U.S. coast, the United States would not stand for it—as the Cuban Missile Crisis with the Soviet Union during the Cold War showed. As for America protecting sea lanes for trade, China depends heavily on international commerce for economic prosperity and has little incentive to restrict such trade, thus raising the hackles of the entire world.
More important, Taiwan’s value as a base in any U.S. military dust-up with a nuclear-armed China pales in comparison with the role a U.S. defense of the island could play as a cause of that potentially cataclysmic war in the first place. China would have a much easier time attacking Taiwan than the United States would have defending an island halfway across the world. When push comes to shove, China is much nearer to Taiwan than is the United States and feels much more strongly about getting it back than does the United States about protecting it.
Thus, making an explicit U.S. commitment to do so should be avoided. Any significant U.S. armed confrontation with China has the potential to go nuclear, and the United States would need to answer the ultimate question of whether it wants to sacrifice Los Angeles (and other U.S. cities) to save Taipei. The answer should be a resounding, “No!”
The fallback argument for interventionists is the rather imperial one used throughout the Cold War, that “American credibility” with its many other wards around world would be undermined if the United States failed to defend Taiwan. This argument was used to entangle the United States in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, which also were fought over non-strategic areas in the adversary’s sphere of influence.
More generally, in its decades as a superpower, the United States has lost sight that alliances, formal or informal, are not ends in themselves but means to an end: enhanced security for the United States, its people, and its way of life. Alliances that drag countries into needless war do not enhance security, as the Europeans found out in the First World War. Moreover, the United States has declined economically since 1970, all the while wasting resources on defending wealthy nations around the world, including Taiwan. The United States has forgot that economic strength underpins other indices of national power, including military prowess.
Yet all is not lost for Taiwan. Islands have intrinsic security because amphibious assaults across water are one of the most difficult military undertakings, especially in the age of satellite reconnaissance and precision-guided munitions. It has been a long time since a major amphibious assault has been undertaken successfully. Taiwan, as a small nation in the sphere of influence of a major power, can use the porcupine strategy, not aiming to win a war but merely making the damage inflicted on China great enough to discourage an attack. Taiwan already has a good air force that should make China skittish about a vulnerable amphibious attack force of surface ships.
The wealthy island can carry out this strategy by purchasing even more weapons from the United States, including offensive ballistic and cruise missiles. Reluctance by the United States to sell such offensive weapons—to discourage a Taiwan standing behind a U.S. defense shield from provoking a war with China—would melt away after the United States made clear that no such shield for Taiwan would exist in the future. The Taiwanese would be responsible for their own deterrence. This new reality would make Taiwan smarter about the weapons it buys.
Taiwan’s self-defense is far from hopeless, and a debt-ridden United States needs to make clear that it is disentangling from likely futile defenses of non-strategic, far-flung outposts near potentially adversarial nations.
6. Air Force scrubbed hijacking claim from news release after CENTCOM disputed story
What happened here?
Excerpts:
Buried within an official Air Force news release published Tuesday was the startling claim that there had been an intelligence tip that five people on a commercial aircraft intended to hijack the plane during the August Afghanistan evacuations.
And while the news release posted on the Moody Air Force Base’s homepage by Lt. Col Kristen Duncan of 23rd Air Wing Public Affairs assured that, “the situation was handled,” it didn’t clarify that there was never actually a potential hijacking situation to begin with.
...
“During the Afghanistan evacuation mission, an intel tip indicated the possibility of a plot to highjack a particular commercial flight that was preparing to depart the airfield,” he said, confirming the original story that an intel tip noted the possibility of a hijacking.
In the original article, Duncan — who was recounting the story of Lt. Col. Brian Desautels, 71st Rescue Squadron and Personnel Recovery Task Force commander of Air Force troops deployed to Afghanistan —wrote that, “on one occasion after they received an intel tip, five people onboard one of the commercial flights intended to hijack the aircraft.”
But unlike in the original news release, Urban clarified that the tip turned out to be unfounded and that there was no hijacking attempt that needed to be handled.
So, while Duncan quoted Desautels’ in the original news release as saying that “the situation was handled,” there was never actually a situation to be dealt with at all.
“Ground traffic controllers diverted the plane to a safe location on the airfield where security forces boarded the plane and determined that there was no active attempt to highjack the aircraft,” Urban confirmed for Military Times.
Public Affairs’ officials for 23rd Air Wing were not immediately available for comment.
Air Force scrubbed hijacking claim from news release after CENTCOM disputed story
This story has been updated with additional information from U.S. Central Command:
Buried within an official Air Force news release published Tuesday was the startling claim that there had been an intelligence tip that five people on a commercial aircraft intended to hijack the plane during the August Afghanistan evacuations.
And while the news release posted on the Moody Air Force Base’s homepage by Lt. Col Kristen Duncan of 23rd Air Wing Public Affairs assured that, “the situation was handled,” it didn’t clarify that there was never actually a potential hijacking situation to begin with.
But within 24 hours of a CNN article reporting that CENTCOM denied the potential hijacking claim, the Moody AFB’s news release was quietly scrubbed of any mention of the event or the related intel tip, and with no notification that the news release had been changed.
“I am unaware of any attempt to hijack a plane at Hamid Karzai International Airport,” Lt. Josie Lynne Lenny, a spokeswoman for CENTCOM, had told CNN Thursday afternoon.
And when asked for clarification about the incident by Military Times Friday, Army Maj. John Rigsbee, a spokesman for CENTCOM, said no hijacking attempt had occurred and that there was confusion that contributed to how the information was released.
He additionally noted that the 23rd Air Wing had “updated” its initial story.
“During the Afghanistan evacuation mission, there was never any hijacking attempt on a plane at Hamad Karzai International Airport,” Rigsbee said in a statement to Military Times.
Rigsbee said that although the Moody press release had been sent to CENTCOM officials for approval — which was noted in an editorial disclaimer on the release stating that it had been vetted for operational security specifically by CENTCOM — it was sent to the wrong section at the command.
Navy Capt. William Urban, lead spokesman for CENTCOM, made a statement to Military Times Friday evening attempting to clarify the situation.
“During the Afghanistan evacuation mission, an intel tip indicated the possibility of a plot to highjack a particular commercial flight that was preparing to depart the airfield,” he said, confirming the original story that an intel tip noted the possibility of a hijacking.
In the original article, Duncan — who was recounting the story of Lt. Col. Brian Desautels, 71st Rescue Squadron and Personnel Recovery Task Force commander of Air Force troops deployed to Afghanistan —wrote that, “on one occasion after they received an intel tip, five people onboard one of the commercial flights intended to hijack the aircraft.”
But unlike in the original news release, Urban clarified that the tip turned out to be unfounded and that there was no hijacking attempt that needed to be handled.
So, while Duncan quoted Desautels’ in the original news release as saying that “the situation was handled,” there was never actually a situation to be dealt with at all.
“Ground traffic controllers diverted the plane to a safe location on the airfield where security forces boarded the plane and determined that there was no active attempt to highjack the aircraft,” Urban confirmed for Military Times.
Public Affairs’ officials for 23rd Air Wing were not immediately available for comment.
Rachel is a Marine Corps veteran and Master's candidate at New York University. She's currently an Editorial Fellow for Military Times.
7. LinkedIn Social Network Is Leaving China, but Microsoft Remains
I am worried about LinkedIn. Many of my friends and colleagues (and me!) are receiving connection requests from people we know and their linkedin pages are surprisingly accurate. But now when we receive such requests we check with the period and have found that the linked in page was not created by them. Linked in seems to be ripe for phishing attacks. This has been happening to some of my Korea watcher colleagues so I wonder if north Korea is behind that.
Excerpts:
When LinkedIn launched its China version in 2014, the company said it understood that it had to adhere to requirements of the Chinese government, but that it was worth the trade off.
“While we strongly support freedom of expression, we took this approach in order to create value for our members in China and around the world,” wrote Mohak Shroff, senior vice president of engineering at LinkedIn, referring to the decision to enter the Chinese market. Mr. Shroff made the comments in a blog post Thursday announcing the pullback from China.
LinkedIn wouldn’t comment beyond the blog post.
A tightening regulatory landscape governing algorithms, data collection and processing has heightened the challenges for Microsoft and other multinational corporations operating in China.
Chinese authorities introduced draft regulations overseeing the use of algorithmic recommendations this year. Once those rules are in effect, Microsoft’s search engine Bing may have to tweak its algorithms, should regulators require them to do so after a review, Carly Ramsey, head of the Greater China political and regulatory risk team at consulting firm Control Risks.
LinkedIn Social Network Is Leaving China, but Microsoft Remains
Software giant will have to navigate rising restrictions in China as it looks for growth for Bing, Teams and cloud
WSJ · by Aaron Tilley and Liza Lin
LinkedIn said it made the decision to shut down in China after “facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements.” Those same factors could lead Microsoft to pull out other products in China, said Paul Triolo, head of the global technology policy practice at Eurasia Group, a political-risk consulting firm.
“What’s the upside?” he said. “If you went into China hoping to see some liberalization around censorship 10 years ago, you were willing to be patient and establish a foothold. That calculus seems to not be getting better in the near term.”
Weeks before LinkedIn announced its pullback from China, Microsoft was reminded by Beijing that it must follow rules in China. In September, Microsoft President Brad Smith spoke with Xiao Yaqing, the head of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, during which they spoke about Microsoft’s expansion in China, according to a statement from the ministry.
Chinese officials want Microsoft to increase its investment in China’s digital and automation industries but also want the company to comply with its regulations, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Microsoft declined to comment about LinkedIn’s decision this week. It didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment about its meetings with Chinese officials.
Since opening an office in China in 1992, Microsoft has worked to get a foothold in the country. Despite setbacks in the country, such as pirated software, the company has tried to take the long-term strategic view, former Microsoft China executives have said.
China remains a small part of Microsoft’s business, contributing less than 2% of its overall global sales, Mr. Smith said in September.
LinkedIn had some success in China, garnering more than 50 million users there, making it the website’s third-largest market behind the U.S. and India. Still, LinkedIn remains a small part of Microsoft’s overall business, generating about 6% of the company’s total revenue in its most recent fiscal year.
For a social network like LinkedIn, international growth is often the biggest source of new user growth, said Dan Morgan, a portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co., which is an investor in Microsoft. Leaving China could result in a drop off in revenue and subscriber growth, he said.
When LinkedIn launched its China version in 2014, the company said it understood that it had to adhere to requirements of the Chinese government, but that it was worth the trade off.
“While we strongly support freedom of expression, we took this approach in order to create value for our members in China and around the world,” wrote Mohak Shroff, senior vice president of engineering at LinkedIn, referring to the decision to enter the Chinese market. Mr. Shroff made the comments in a blog post Thursday announcing the pullback from China.
LinkedIn wouldn’t comment beyond the blog post.
A tightening regulatory landscape governing algorithms, data collection and processing has heightened the challenges for Microsoft and other multinational corporations operating in China.
Chinese authorities introduced draft regulations overseeing the use of algorithmic recommendations this year. Once those rules are in effect, Microsoft’s search engine Bing may have to tweak its algorithms, should regulators require them to do so after a review, Carly Ramsey, head of the Greater China political and regulatory risk team at consulting firm Control Risks.
Bing, which launched in China in 2009, could be more sensitive to new restrictions, analysts said. It is a distant third in the search-engine market in China with a less than 4% market share, behind domestic search engine rivals Baidu, with an 82% share, and Sogou, with a more than 7% share, according to Statcounter.
In June, Bing’s presence in China drew criticism in the U.S. when it was discovered that the search engine blocked results globally for the iconic “Tank Man” image linked to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. At the time, Microsoft blamed the block on “accidental human error” and restored the image.
Another growing business for Microsoft has been Teams, its videoconferencing and workplace-collaboration product. At the start of the pandemic, between late January and early March in 2020, Microsoft said it had seen a 500% increase in meetings, calls and conferences taking place via Teams in China.
Where Microsoft is unlikely to back down in China is in the company’s core cloud business services, Brad Reback, an analyst at Stifel Financial Corp., said. Microsoft operates its cloud business in China, including the cloud-computing service Azure and business applications suite Office 365, through a partnership with China’s 21Vianet Group.
Unlike Azure’s strong position elsewhere, Microsoft is far behind China’s industry leaders in the nation’s cloud-computing market. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , Huawei Technologies Co. and Tencent were the three largest vendors in China’s cloud-computing market in the past quarter, according to researcher Canalys. Microsoft’s Azure had a 2% market share in China in the second quarter of the year versus Alibaba’s 34% share, according to data from Canalys.
WSJ · by Aaron Tilley and Liza Lin
8. The Sgt. Maj. of the Army wants leaders to stop scheduling training just for the sake of it
The paradox is that filling all the space on the training schedule makes units less productive. Leaders and troops at all levels need white space.
A friend commented on this article when he flagged it. These comments are worthing considering:
Thinking is working. Recreation is re-creation. We need to enforce and respect white space. (Equally true for over-eager S-3s who feel they haven’t demonstrated their brilliance if they haven’t choked the maneuver graphics with detailed symbolic instructions. Give those commanders some white space).
The Sgt. Maj. of the Army wants leaders to stop scheduling training just for the sake of it
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The concept of “free time” is not exactly a priority in the military. There’s almost always something else to do or somewhere else to be.
But maybe, according to Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston, a bit of a break is exactly what some units need.
At the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference this week, Grinston told enlisted leaders that they needed to “stand up” for their soldiers, and sometimes that includes making time for them to rest and recover from training, or if not that, then they should at least take some time to get to know the people they lead. It’s a crucial piece of the Army’s “People First” initiative which hinges on putting the wellbeing of soldiers and their families first as a means to improve a unit’s readiness. It makes sense: Knowing your soldiers means knowing how they’re doing, what challenges they’re facing, and what’s important to them.
“[S]ome organizations are now giving mandatory white space,” he said at the AUSA forum, referring to a period of time that’s left intentionally blank on a unit’s schedule. “And I encourage you all to do that. Say no, you are not allowed to put anything on the calendar so that soldiers could just talk to their people. I think we’ve got to do more of that.”
Sergeant Major of the Army Michael A. Grinston gives opening remarks in the U.S. Army People First Take Force Solarium at West Point, N.Y., March 15, 2021. The Solarium brings together Soldiers with under two years of service from all demographics to discuss serious issues within the Army, and to help develop solutions to rebuild an Army-wide culture of dignity, trust and respect. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Gregory Muenchow)
He told one story about sitting in on an unnamed battalion’s training meeting, where he heard the commander talking about all of the training they had on the schedule: an exercise on Friday, and on Monday the unit was going “right back to the field” for two weeks, and then would do a 26-mile foot march as soon as they came out of the field.
“I asked a question,” Grinston recalled of the meeting. “I said, ‘According to your unit [standard operating procedure], what is your standard for recovery?’ And then it hit, just at that moment it dawned on the battalion commander that he was not following his own [standard operating procedure].”
He went on to urge nominative sergeants major to remind commanders of the Army’s holistic health and fitness approach. The approach requires leaders to not just prioritize physical fitness, but also mental and spiritual wellness as well as nutrition and getting enough sleep. But it’s been a tough sell.
It’s not the Army way to leave white space on the calendar, Grinston said — ”If there’s anything white on the calendar it’s like the worst thing on the planet” — but sometimes taking care of your people means doing exactly that.
Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston addresses a spouse of an 82nd Airborne Division Paratrooper on Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Sept. 1, 2021. The purpose of the visit was brief senior leaders across Fort Bragg and to meet with spouses of Paratroopers. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Jacob Moir)
It all comes back to what he and other Army leaders have been relentlessly pushing for the past two years: Building cohesive teams, because tight-knit units will likely have fewer instances of sexual assault or harassment and fewer suicides. To build a cohesive team, Army leaders say, superiors need to know their subordinates, and soldiers need to trust that their leaders will have their backs.
The Army is never going to run out of things to tell leaders to do, Grinston said, which means they have to stand by their decision to do whatever it is they need to do to put their people first. That might mean checking in with soldiers, calling their families to introduce themselves so the family members know who to contact in case of an emergency, or visiting soldiers’ homes to see how things are going, as Grinston said he recently did with his team.
Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston shares advice with an enlisted Soldier from Charlie Battery, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment during a visit on Dec. 16, 2020, Ali Al Salem Airbase, Kuwait. Grinston along with Secretary of the Army Gen. James McConville visit deployed areas to ensure standards are upheld and boost Soldier morale by showing their appreciation for all their hard work. (Photo by U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. Jermaine Jackson)
“I shut the door and I told the [Chief of Staff], I said, ‘I’m going,’” Grinston said. “A lot of times we’re not even willing to shut the door and tell our boss this is important for my organization and I’m going to go do it.”
Ultimately, Grinston put it this way: Either you take the time to do these things now, or you could find your unit “consumed” by something even worse, that will demand even more time and attention.
“Take care of your people. It doesn’t take a lot of time,” he said. “If you don’t have time to go do those small things, you may find yourself consumed with something extremely bad and it will consume all your time and you will do it. If you have a death in that organization, you still stop everything you’re doing. So you might as well stop everything you’re doing and call your people and know their families before something really bad happens in that organization.”
More great stories on Task & Purpose
Haley Britzky is the Army reporter for Task & Purpose, covering the daily happenings in the Army and how they impact soldiers and their families, as well as broader national security issues. Originally from Texas, Haley previously worked at Axios before joining Task & Purpose in January 2019. Contact the author here.
9. We ‘Blew It’ On Battling COVID Disinfo, Army Says
We ‘Blew It’ On Battling COVID Disinfo, Army Says
The U.S. Army scrutinized its response to the pandemic, and found fault with its strategic communications efforts.
The U.S. Army’s COVID-19 response leaders had plenty to say about its successes in the face of the pandemic, but also readily identified one facet of the operation where they failed.
“We blew it in a lot of ways. And the biggest lesson learned is the value of strategic communications,” Paul Ostrowski said during the U.S. Army Association’s annual conference this week. Ostrowski, who recently retired as a three-star, served on Operation Warp Speed as director of supply, production and distribution for the program.
Ostrowski said OWS staff estimated—from the “politics,” “social media,” and “surveys” —that around half of Americans were going to get the vaccine. Another 20 percent were “anti-vaxxers” who were never going to get the vaccine. And another 30 percent of Americans fell into the “moveable middle.”
“Where we failed was the movable middle, and we’re paying that price today,” he said.
He said that neither OWS nor the U.S. Army were specifically tasked with strategic communications efforts, which fell to “other entities within the executive branch architecture.”
Still, Ostrowski and others involved in the effort said the Army needs to do better, by “understanding the power of social media” and orchestrating a “coordinated effort” between Army Cyber, G2, and the Army’s chief of public affairs.
“We have to have a synergistic, coordinated approach and not just be on the offensive but also on the defense,” Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. Scott Dingle said. “And that’s one of the lessons that we’ve learned through this COVID environment.”
Strategic communications were also complicated because issues related to COVID-19 were highly politicized—and the Army must still remain apolitical in its efforts, said Todd Semonite, who served as the Chief of Engineers and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during the early stages of the pandemic.
“The best advice I can give is ‘stay in your lane’,” Semonite said in response to a question about navigating the politicization of COVID-19. “We as DoD are apolitical. We don’t have an opinion one way or the other on political decisions. We execute those decisions that come down, and at the end of the day we've got to continue to be able to make sure we don't get caught in the middle.”
How exactly the Army plans to gain the strategic communications edge while also remaining apolitical was unclear.
“Social media has completely changed the landscape of this country, and frankly, the world. And until we get ahead of that, until we take that on as another domain, we're going to continue to be challenged in that particular arena,” Ostrowski said. “And that is our biggest failure. The fact that we did not follow through with an effective strategic campaign to move the movable middle from the left side, i.e. not getting the vaccine, into the correct side, getting a vaccine.”
Ostrowski still said the Army needs to do better at strategic communications—and not just for pandemic response.
“The piece that we always seem to fail to take into account is the nuts and bolts of fighting is the strategic communications piece. We continue to fail in that particular venue no matter what,” he said.
10. The real bias in news coverage is different than you might think according to new study
Excerpts:
To examine how political discourse has changed over time, the researchers collected all transcripts from MSNBC and Fox News Network telecasts for the period Jan.1, 2011 through March 21, 2021, which were available from the Nexis Uni® database. To make the Fox and MSNBC archives as comparable as possible, the researchers coded broadcast programs as “news” or “opinion,” and examined these against daytime/evening and weekday/weekend dichotomies. Analyses included a machine learning approach to assess the extent to which the archives from the three presidential elections and two networks could be distinguished, as well as the features that are most important in driving these effects.
The real bias in news coverage is different than you might think according to new study
[Oct 15, 2021: Florida Atlantic University]
Broadcast screen shots from Fox News and MSNBC (CREDIT: Creative Commons)
Two of America's major cable news networks – Fox News and MSNBC – anchor opposing ends of the political spectrum and, as a consequence, are the focus of an international study led by two Florida Atlantic University researchers on the social psychology of three United States presidential elections (2012, 2016 and 2020) through the lens of language.
The audiences of each of the networks is highly partisan: about 93 percent of those who identify Fox News as their main news source identify or lean Republican, while 95 percent of those who primarily rely on MSNBC identify or lean Democratic. The messages broadcast on these networks can be expected to resonate with their respective audiences.
For the study, researchers compared the two cable news networks using natural language analysis by quantifying key psychosocial and sociopolitical markers analyzed in more than 52,000 Fox News and MSNBC transcripts comprising some 283 million words. They used weekday evening telecast contents to compare the 2020 presidential election with the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.
Results, published in the journal Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, showed distinct linguistic styles in the two networks. Transcripts of Fox News and MSNBC telecasts differed substantially on a dimension that the researchers labeled as the “Personalizing-Formal Index,” comprised of differences in measures of pronoun use (second person vs. impersonal), analytic content, and noun use.
Fox News transcripts were marked by “personalizing” speech, including words such as “you” and “your;” this language style connects speakers directly to their audience. MSNBC transcripts were more “formal,” marked by words such as “it” and “it'll;” this language is more indirect, describing objects and ideas about the world.
There were similarities as well as differences between the networks, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both networks showed increases in words associated with communion and sharing; but language associated with positive emotion dropped dramatically, only on MSNBC. Differences between the networks were especially volatile during the 2020 presidential campaign. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, the language style of the two networks did not demonstrate increasing divergence over time.
“Even against the backdrop of multiple wars abroad, racial injustice, mass shootings and the COVID-19 pandemic, the year of the 2020 presidential election, together with the campaign and impeachment that preceded it and the lawsuits and insurrection that followed, stands out in the language of Fox News and MSNBC,” said Kevin Lanning, Ph.D., corresponding author and a professor of psychology and data science, FAU Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, John D. MacArthur Campus at Jupiter. “The language of these two networks was never more distinct, and never more volatile, than during coverage of political events associated with the last presidential election. Yet the differences in language of the two networks were primarily in measures of linguistic style, including noun and pronoun use. Sociopolitical dictionaries largely tailored to assess left-right differences in language use, including moral metaphors and foundations, grievances, values, and personality, showed relatively modest effects.”
To examine how political discourse has changed over time, the researchers collected all transcripts from MSNBC and Fox News Network telecasts for the period Jan.1, 2011 through March 21, 2021, which were available from the Nexis Uni® database. To make the Fox and MSNBC archives as comparable as possible, the researchers coded broadcast programs as “news” or “opinion,” and examined these against daytime/evening and weekday/weekend dichotomies. Analyses included a machine learning approach to assess the extent to which the archives from the three presidential elections and two networks could be distinguished, as well as the features that are most important in driving these effects.
11. A Nobel for Journalists Is a Direct Challenge to Authoritarians
As the Washington Post says "democracy dies in darkness." Despite all the criticism of the media we need a strong fourth estate to hold governments accountable. If you support democracy you must want a free press and a demand for them to hold governments accountable through aggressive reporting.
Excerpts:
Nobel Prizes also have the power to inspire. The decision in 1990 to award the Nobel to Gorbachev for initiating reforms that culminated in the dismantling of the Soviet Union was widely regarded as having influenced then-South African President F.W. de Klerk to see through the process of reform that he had begun, ultimately earning his portion of a 1993 Nobel shared with Nelson Mandela. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s 2002 Nobel for his post-presidency conflict resolution and human rights efforts helped elevate a model that encouraged his successors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to form foundations to tackle global problems. The announcement of the award to Ressa and Muratov has unleashed tweets and posts by journalists worldwide who see themselves in the winners and may be inspired to persevere.
Less predictable is how the awards will reverberate within the winners’ home countries. In the Philippines, Ressa’s nemesis, President Rodrigo Duterte, is retiring, in part due to plummeting poll numbers. Luz Rimban of the Asian Center for Journalism told Agence France-Presse that honoring Ressa was “like the world telling Duterte, ‘Hands off Philippine journalism.’” Meanwhile, Muratov’s statement that the prize should have gone to the jailed dissident and opposition leader Alexei Navalny must have rankled Putin. But by raising the question of whether the Nobel Prize money, coming from Norway, would render him a foreign agent subject to stigma and deportation, Muratov also shined a harsh spotlight on a registration requirement that has become one of Russia’s main tools of media repression.
With journalists crushed by financial pressures and intimidated by physical and online threats, these Nobel Prizes need to be seen as a starting gun. The United States—along with other governments, media companies, and civil society institutions—must intensify its pressure on governments in Russia, the Philippines, and elsewhere that egregiously violate the rights of reporters. Congress should pass the Jamal Khashoggi Press Freedom Accountability Act to punish governments that murder journalists. The U.S. military’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan left scores of vulnerable journalists behind, drawing attention to the imperative of new emergency visa regimes that can enable endangered reporters to flee to freedom.
Today, people around the world praise Ressa and Muratov for their courage and their work. Tomorrow, they must make good on that praise by taking action to fight the long arm of authoritarianism that threatens to silence journalists and writers around the world.
A Nobel for Journalists Is a Direct Challenge to Authoritarians
Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov’s award will make leaders like Duterte and Putin think twice before attacking reporters—but only if democratic governments bolster the free press.
Journalists prefer to tell the story than to be its subject. But with credible reporting under political and financial pressure, the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s recognition of Maria Ressa, CEO of the Rappler news outlet in the Philippines, and Dmitry Muratov, editor in chief of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, with this year’s Nobel Peace Prize gives a needed boost to unflinching, fact-based journalism.
Only twice before has a journalist won the Nobel Peace Prize for their writing. The first came in 1933, when the British editor and activist Norman Angell won for his book The Great Illusion, a bracing plea about the dangers and futility of war. Then, as war again loomed in 1935, Germany’s Carl von Ossietzky won for revealing that the Reich was rearming in violation of the Treaty of Versailles—a scoop that got him shipped to a concentration camp. He would die in state custody before the war he foretold even began.
This year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awakened to the reality of a world in which geopolitical battles are increasingly waged through the medium of narrative and the contest to control information. The choice to honor Ressa and Muratov reminds the world that journalists’ contributions to peace go beyond predicting—or trying to prevent—war. Today, there is democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe and South America, the snuffing out of democracy in Hong Kong and Myanmar, and tightening strictures on dissent in Russia, China, Iran, and elsewhere.
Journalists prefer to tell the story than to be its subject. But with credible reporting under political and financial pressure, the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s recognition of Maria Ressa, CEO of the Rappler news outlet in the Philippines, and Dmitry Muratov, editor in chief of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, with this year’s Nobel Peace Prize gives a needed boost to unflinching, fact-based journalism.
Only twice before has a journalist won the Nobel Peace Prize for their writing. The first came in 1933, when the British editor and activist Norman Angell won for his book The Great Illusion, a bracing plea about the dangers and futility of war. Then, as war again loomed in 1935, Germany’s Carl von Ossietzky won for revealing that the Reich was rearming in violation of the Treaty of Versailles—a scoop that got him shipped to a concentration camp. He would die in state custody before the war he foretold even began.
This year, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awakened to the reality of a world in which geopolitical battles are increasingly waged through the medium of narrative and the contest to control information. The choice to honor Ressa and Muratov reminds the world that journalists’ contributions to peace go beyond predicting—or trying to prevent—war. Today, there is democratic backsliding in Eastern Europe and South America, the snuffing out of democracy in Hong Kong and Myanmar, and tightening strictures on dissent in Russia, China, Iran, and elsewhere.
By honoring members of the press, the Nobel committee recognized that investigative journalism represents one of the most powerful yet overlooked tools in the fight against global authoritarianism. More than ever, journalists and independent media outlets provide an essential corrective to state-dominated media outlets that aim to perpetuate autocrats’ power, as well as to the deluge of unreliable, obfuscating information that is shared online. By honoring members of the press, the Nobel committee recognized that investigative journalism represents one of the most powerful yet overlooked tools in the fight against global authoritarianism, corruption, and aggression. Yet this weapon is weakening and in need of urgent shoring up.
The crisis facing journalism and the crisis befalling democracy are related. Authoritarian rulers have understood that traditional, independent media outlets have for some time been in difficult financial straits. The migration online of advertising revenue that used to support newspapers and magazines has led to an estimated $30 billion revenue loss in 2020 alone for free-standing newspapers worldwide, according to Oxford University’s Reuters Institute.
At the same time, in a media-soaked society, authoritarians view hard-hitting reportage as a direct threat to their rule and use extreme means to counter it. Targeted killings of journalists worldwide spiked in 2020, with the number killed doubling over the year before—something the newly named Nobel laureate Muratov knows all too well, having seen six members of his newspaper’s staff killed since 2000.
Last year also saw an all-time high in the recorded number of journalists in jail, 274—the fifth consecutive year that this grim census has numbered above 250. Beyond actual violence and prosecutions, authorities plague journalists with threats, extrajudicial intimidation, audits, registration requirements, visa hurdles, travel prohibitions, and an ever-evolving array of other hurdles. Governments are also reaching beyond their own borders to target and menace journalists who have fled to exile.
Saudi Arabia’s murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi attracted worldwide attention, but there have been many other instances of states targeting journalists with violence or imprisonment: Iran’s execution of Ruhollah Zam, for example, or Belarus’s flight hijacking in order to capture Belarusian blogger Roman Protasevich. These brazen attacks highlight a worsening global pattern. The choice of Ressa and Muratov in particular, from amid countless courageous journalists worldwide, spotlights the problem of rulers who use overt legal harassment, violence, and intimidation to muzzle the press.
Ressa has faced bogus charges of securities and exchange fraud, libel, cybercrime, and tax evasion in an endless string of politically motivated legal attacks that have resulted in arrests, trials, and prison terms that have bedeviled her for more than four years. And though Muratov’s Novaya Gazeta was initially funded in part by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who allocated a portion of his own Nobel Peace Prize purse to underwrite the newspaper, it has been the target of not just lawsuits but also violent attacks resulting in the killings of six journalists. Ressa and Muratov’s award spotlights all those reporters around the world who work under dangerous conditions to expose wrongdoing and hold brutal leaders to account.
Read More
The last time a working journalist was honored, it was a German editor as World War II loomed.
The rift with the European Union has left Belarus at the mercy of Moscow.
Amid these troubling trends, it’s fair to ask what a Nobel Peace Prize can actually achieve. Many people consider the award purely symbolic, a mere laurel that achieves nothing concrete. The last time a writer was awarded with the peace prize was in 2010, when it went to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese essayist and founder of the Independent Chinese PEN Center. That recognition failed to derail a tragic fate: Liu remained in prison in China, and his wife, Liu Xia, was put under house arrest despite being accused of no crime. When he was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2017, Beijing authorities wouldn’t allow him to travel to the West for treatment, arguing that his case was advanced and everything possible was being done. He died and was buried at sea, depriving his family and supporters of even a grave to visit.
Similarly, when Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, she remained a prisoner in her own home at the hands of a junta for nearly 20 more years. She was finally freed, but even after being elected as a democratic ruler (and coming under thunderous criticism for betraying her role as a peacemaker by sanctioning attacks on Myanmar’s minority Rohingya Muslim population), she remained sharply constrained by the country’s military, which ousted her last year and sent her back into house arrest. Ressa and Muratov are therefore under no illusions that even this most prestigious honor offers any guarantee of protection or freedom.
By bringing about public recognition of an urgent cause, the award can spark meaningful change both for the individuals involved and for the principles and values for which they stand. But the Nobel Prize and other newsmaking awards given to besieged journalists can nevertheless make a substantial difference. Ideally, the awarding of the Peace Prize to recognize ongoing work rather than as a valedictory lap for a treaty or cease-fire functions as a challenge to the world to advance the ideals embodied by the people it honors. By bringing about public recognition of an urgent cause, the award can spark meaningful change both for the individuals involved and for the principles and values for which they stand.
At the individual level, prizewinners gain access to corridors of power and levels of media visibility that raise the price for governments that seek to mess with them. Leaders may be reluctant to capitulate to international pressure, but they are also inclined to escape the negative press that results from overt mistreatment of an international luminary. When Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi faced threats tracing back to Tehran for her legal and advocacy work, the intimidation made international headlines and ultimately died down.
Although Russian President Vladimir Putin seems impervious to global calls for respect for human rights, his administration put out a statement of congratulations to Muratov—suggesting at least some responsiveness to world opinion. In the face of a global campaign on behalf of Ukrainian filmmaker and writer Oleg Sentsov, a political prisoner who received the 2017 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, Putin surprised rights advocates by freeing the activist in a 2019 prisoner swap.
Nobel laureates can also use their star power to spark important programs and projects. Wangari Muta Maathai, the 2004 Kenyan laureate, recognized for her work on environmentalism, inspired the United Nations’ billion tree project, responsible for planting more than 13 billion trees since its inception in 2006.
Ressa has championed the need for new resources and strategies to combat the harassment and intimidation of women journalists. Her prize stands to generate vital attention and resources for that cause.
Beyond the individual level, Nobel Prizes have the potential to drive forward global debates and policy initiatives. Ressa serves as co-chair of the International Fund for Public Interest Media, which aims to mobilize government funding for independent outlets worldwide. Her Nobel recognition may assist activists hoping to utilize the Biden administration’s upcoming democracy summit as a vehicle to jump-start donations. With luck, the prize’s emphasis on embattled and endangered journalists will prompt governments and foundations concerned about freedom of the press to invest not only in journalism itself but also in stepped-up advocacy and protection to ensure that as media outlets gain resources and clout, they are fortified against the inevitable backlash of intensified threats against them.
Nobel Prizes also have the power to inspire. The decision in 1990 to award the Nobel to Gorbachev for initiating reforms that culminated in the dismantling of the Soviet Union was widely regarded as having influenced then-South African President F.W. de Klerk to see through the process of reform that he had begun, ultimately earning his portion of a 1993 Nobel shared with Nelson Mandela. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s 2002 Nobel for his post-presidency conflict resolution and human rights efforts helped elevate a model that encouraged his successors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to form foundations to tackle global problems. The announcement of the award to Ressa and Muratov has unleashed tweets and posts by journalists worldwide who see themselves in the winners and may be inspired to persevere.
Less predictable is how the awards will reverberate within the winners’ home countries. In the Philippines, Ressa’s nemesis, President Rodrigo Duterte, is retiring, in part due to plummeting poll numbers. Luz Rimban of the Asian Center for Journalism told Agence France-Presse that honoring Ressa was “like the world telling Duterte, ‘Hands off Philippine journalism.’” Meanwhile, Muratov’s statement that the prize should have gone to the jailed dissident and opposition leader Alexei Navalny must have rankled Putin. But by raising the question of whether the Nobel Prize money, coming from Norway, would render him a foreign agent subject to stigma and deportation, Muratov also shined a harsh spotlight on a registration requirement that has become one of Russia’s main tools of media repression.
With journalists crushed by financial pressures and intimidated by physical and online threats, these Nobel Prizes need to be seen as a starting gun. The United States—along with other governments, media companies, and civil society institutions—must intensify its pressure on governments in Russia, the Philippines, and elsewhere that egregiously violate the rights of reporters. Congress should pass the Jamal Khashoggi Press Freedom Accountability Act to punish governments that murder journalists. The U.S. military’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan left scores of vulnerable journalists behind, drawing attention to the imperative of new emergency visa regimes that can enable endangered reporters to flee to freedom.
Today, people around the world praise Ressa and Muratov for their courage and their work. Tomorrow, they must make good on that praise by taking action to fight the long arm of authoritarianism that threatens to silence journalists and writers around the world.
12. One of the world’s most popular iOS apps right now was developed by Chinese
Probably old news for many. But we should wonder why this was developed by the Chinese police. Or perhaps we already know why.
One of the world’s most popular iOS apps right now was developed by Chinese police
Published October 15, 2021
TikTok was the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide in September, according to US research firm Sensor Tower. The dominance of the video app, owned by China’s ByteDance, would probably not surprise many people, not least the parents of any teenagers or aspiring influencers. But the popularity of another Chinese app that month might.
Developed by China’s ministry of public security, “the national anti-fraud center” was the second most downloaded iOS app in September after TikTok, according to Sensor Tower’s monthly report this week. The analytics firm didn’t reveal the number of downloads for the Chinese app, which helps citizens block suspicious phone numbers and report malware, but it exceeded interest in YouTube, What’s App, and Instagram.
The app, which was launched in March by the ministry, first made it to Sensor Tower’s top 10 most downloaded iOS apps list in August, ranking seventh. Its rapidly growing popularity comes amid an unceasing marketing campaign by Chinese police, who have promoted it as a way for citizens to take back control from internet scammers. Their efforts have included giving citizens prop eggs printed with slogans promoting the app (one such slogan reads: “Internet scamming has many tricks, even this egg is fake”). Police officers have also held live streams on video apps encouraging citizens to download the app.
The app has only scored 2.6 out of 5 on Apple’s Chinese App Store, and some users have complained about being forced to install it. “I was stopped by two traffic police officers because I forgot to wear a helmet when driving an electric scooter. But after questioning me for not wearing a helmet, the officers asked me to download the anti-fraud app,” one reviewer wrote. “I don’t understand why I had to install it and why did the officers look like two salespeople?”
Concerns over surveillance
The app is targeted towards telecom scams, which are among the most rampant crimes in China. In 2020 alone, Chinese police reportedly cracked around 250,000 such cases and helped citizens to avoid a loss of around 120 billion yuan ($19.2 billion).
But there are concerns over the extent to which the app is surveilling users. Some Chinese users say they have been questioned by local police for accessing overseas websites including Bloomberg after installing the app. Others say the app requires 29 permissions from users, including live monitoring of call logs and texts, according to the Financial Times.
The app’s disclaimer on user privacy says it collects data on users’ personal details such as their ID number and device information, as well as information uploaded by users for reporting potential scams, including screenshots, call log, and text messages. “We won’t disclose that information to the public or any third party without your prior consent. But in situations involving national security, we will use relevant data strictly and prudently in accordance with relevant laws and regulations,” it said.
China’s data laws, especially those on what information tech firms can collect from users, are among the world’s strictest. But any reassurances in the app on user privacy from the ministry are outranked by laws that allow data collection for national security reasons, says Valentin Weber, a cyber research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
Under China’s anti-espionage and intelligence laws, individuals and corporates have basically no power to refuse data requests of their data from the government. As a result, the app’s privacy policy should be “strongly questioned,” Weber says.”There are few to no limits on what data Chinese authorities can collect or what they do with it thereafter.”
13. China and the U.S. Sabotage Their Own Tech Companies
A provocative subtitle.
Excerpts:
A House bill package currently under consideration would force U.S. tech companies to grant competitors direct access to U.S. data and digital infrastructure—including app stores, marketplaces and search engines—without requiring strong security requirements or safeguards. An industry white paper concludes: “This could entitle foreign companies, including those that are beholden to our adversaries, to seek access to source code associated with U.S. platforms, and to U.S. users’ data and behavioral insights.”
Ms. Klobuchar also is building a coalition for severely restricting the ability of large U.S. companies to acquire innovative technologies by buying U.S. startups. With this new Senate legislation now in play, House leaders likely will move their companion bills to the floor soon. Given the feverish hatred of big tech by Democrats and Republicans alike, these bills stand a great chance of becoming law.
If Ms. Klobuchar’s measures are embraced by Republicans, the consumer-welfare standard would be no more, and the FTC would become a regulatory leviathan. Her approach includes giving the FTC the power to levy a death-penalty fine on U.S. companies of 15% of their total U.S. revenue for the years the violation occurred. Ms. Klobuchar’s rectification campaign would bring American capitalism under the control of a woke bureaucracy.
The U.S. has one advantage over China: an independent judiciary that might halt this madness. If not for that, in the contest between China and the U.S. the question may be: Who will lose more?
China and the U.S. Sabotage Their Own Tech Companies
Xi Jinping and Joe Biden wage their version of Maoist rectification drives against successful firms.
WSJ · by Robert H. Bork Jr.
Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the virtual U.N. Biodiversity Conference, Oct. 12.
Photo: Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
China is investing $1.4 trillion to overtake the West in critical technologies by 2025. Beijing aims to control the commanding heights of 5G wireless, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain—technologies that promise to coordinate control between digital services and machines through the Internet of Things.
Xi Jinping’s China seeks to dominate these technologies so it can monitor, and thereby control, the world. Washington, suddenly alert to this threat, is trying to limit the penetration of world markets by Chinese tech giants like Huawei.
The winner may be clear by the time the next U.S. president is sworn in. But victory won’t necessarily go to the country that invests the most or has the smartest scientists or developers. It may be the government that inflicts less damage on its tech sector for purely ideological reasons.
For decades, the Chinese Communist Party’s tolerance of capitalism spawned some of the world’s most innovative technology companies. China had nine of the top 20 technology firms by market value in 2018. Revenue from China’s software-development industry is projected to grow to $1.2 trillion this year with 14.5% of that booked as profit.
With armies of software engineers and oceans of capital, Mr. Xi could best the West simply by keeping his hands off the Chinese economy. Instead, he is busy waging a Maoist rectification campaign against China’s most innovative companies. This began with the cancellation of Ant Group’s initial public offering and the forced groveling of its founder, billionaire tech entrepreneur Jack Ma. Since then Mr. Xi has targeted Chinese businesses with restrictions and launched a “common prosperity” campaign against the wealthy. Mr. Xi’s cultural revolution undoubtedly will be sophisticated compared with the original, but the effect will be similar. Mr. Xi’s recklessness will dull his country’s technological edge when he needs it most.
Given Mr. Xi’s self-defeating strategy, President Biden might be able to win this race by doing nothing. Unfortunately, that hardly seems possible in today’s Washington. Proving that the U.S. is also capable of self-sabotage, the Biden administration and Congress are launching a campaign against our most successful companies.
The administration is attempting to jettison more than four decades of adherence to the consumer-welfare standard in antitrust enforcement. Under this standard, courts and enforcers judge a merger, acquisition or commercial practice on its impact on consumers. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Lina Khan and her team of progressive advocates are reorienting antitrust enforcement in a way that they acknowledge isn’t “value neutral.” In a policy memo to all FTC staff, Ms. Khan declared the mission of the agency would change to a “holistic approach” to protect “workers and independent businesses as well as consumers.” Another FTC commissioner has said antitrust enforcement will now be dedicated to “equity” while promoting “racial inclusion.” Fine sentiments, but as standards for antitrust enforcement these buzzwords are too vague for any company to predict what the law requires. Such vagueness would give the FTC and other regulators a standard resembling China’s, by which any company can be prosecuted, extorted and forced to recite the regime’s ideological slogans.
In Congress, a bipartisan coalition led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) recently announced new Senate legislation aimed at big tech that would prohibit large U.S. tech firms from giving priority to their own goods and services, likely killing popular services like Amazon Prime’s free shipping. The legislation would require these firms to be “interoperable” with competitors, a provision that easily could result in China accessing immense amounts of U.S. customer data.
A House bill package currently under consideration would force U.S. tech companies to grant competitors direct access to U.S. data and digital infrastructure—including app stores, marketplaces and search engines—without requiring strong security requirements or safeguards. An industry white paper concludes: “This could entitle foreign companies, including those that are beholden to our adversaries, to seek access to source code associated with U.S. platforms, and to U.S. users’ data and behavioral insights.”
Ms. Klobuchar also is building a coalition for severely restricting the ability of large U.S. companies to acquire innovative technologies by buying U.S. startups. With this new Senate legislation now in play, House leaders likely will move their companion bills to the floor soon. Given the feverish hatred of big tech by Democrats and Republicans alike, these bills stand a great chance of becoming law.
If Ms. Klobuchar’s measures are embraced by Republicans, the consumer-welfare standard would be no more, and the FTC would become a regulatory leviathan. Her approach includes giving the FTC the power to levy a death-penalty fine on U.S. companies of 15% of their total U.S. revenue for the years the violation occurred. Ms. Klobuchar’s rectification campaign would bring American capitalism under the control of a woke bureaucracy.
The U.S. has one advantage over China: an independent judiciary that might halt this madness. If not for that, in the contest between China and the U.S. the question may be: Who will lose more?
Mr. Bork is president of the Antitrust Education Project.
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WSJ · by Robert H. Bork Jr.
14. 1/2 The pursuit and neutralizing of Al Qaeda's Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines; lessons learned. David Maxwell
1/2 The pursuit and neutralizing of Al Qaeda's Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines; lessons learned. David Maxwell @DavidMaxwell161 @FDD
1/2 The pursuit and neutralizing of Al Qaeda's Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines; lessons learned. David Maxwell @DavidMaxwell161 @FDD
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V/R
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow
Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Phone: 202-573-8647
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
FDD is a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
