lithium

When Taliban fighters entered Kabul on Aug. 15, they didn’t just seize control of the Afghan government. They also gained the ability to control access to huge deposits of minerals that are crucial to the global clean energy economy.

insh

Investigative journalist Azmat Khan, who has reported extensively in Afghanistan, says President Joe Biden has not yet addressed the chaos unleashed by the collapse of the Afghan government. In remarks on Monday, Biden “really focused on the decision to end the war” and ignored criticism about chaos at the Kabul airport and the abandonment of thousands of Afghans who helped the U.S. over the last 20 years.

730

Tonight (18/08/2021), Leigh Sales on the Seven Thirty report (7:30) on ABC-TV interviewed John Howard who of course is still fondly enamoured with "the National Interest" and his decision to go to war blah blah blah... I suppose you can see that pathetic little man wriggles out of seeing the damage done while pouring glory upon himself at: https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/former-prime-minister-john-howard-speaks-to-7.30/13501812

zb

In view of the sad news in Afghanistan, we [Les Crises] stand out from this important interview of 1998, which it is fascinating to see that it has had no impact in our collective memory.

Recall that Zbigniew Brzezinski was President Carter's adviser on security affairs - and that Barack Obama appointed him foreign affairs adviser during his presidential campaign ... See also this post on his famous book The Grand Chessboard.

Interview:

mugs

How do empires end? The answer seems to be what Mike Campbell says in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises when he’s asked how he went bankrupt: “gradually, then suddenly.”

blink

The scenes at Kabul airport are reminiscent of the chaos in Saigon in 1975 when pro-American Vietnamese desperately tried to flee before the arrival of communist forces. So how does the US’s campaign in Afghanistan compare with the Vietnam war?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a US broadcaster at the weekend: "This is not Saigon."

But military historians might beg to differ.

vox

the suicide

BERLIN, May 12, 2153 – Within the ivy-covered walls of Farben University, a great battle is now raging. But although the Reich's ancient capital has seen its share of warfare down through the centuries, today's combatants have no swords, no guns, no bio-disrupters – just words and pictures, marshalled on either side of a fierce debate that has split the staid academic world in two, and is beginning to spill over into national politics as well. It all revolves around a simple question: Was the German Empire a good thing or a bad thing?

sunni

THE ARTICLE below is a half-truth disguised as gospel. One has to realise that Bin Laden was a SAUDI first and foremost — financed by the USA and Saudi Arabia. He got blamed for a lot of things "he did not do" as he became a turncoat.

Very few (none) articles actually mention the synergy between the Taliban and the Saudis, and there is a good (bad) reason for this: Saudi Arabia, the most inhumane government on the planet is a friend of the US because of oil. Very few pundits are thus game to involve the Saudis with the Taliban, while blaming everyone else from Russia, China and Iran.

spin

There is no good solution to the Afghan dilemma that US President Joe Biden inherited from his predecessors. As one of his last acts in office Donald Trump had already announced that he intended to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan. And his predecessor Barack Obama missed the opportunity to prepare the withdrawal with the valid argument that the invasion had actually become obsolete after Osama bin Laden's death.

pentagone

On Sunday, the Taliban movement asserted that it had established control over all districts of the Afghan capital city of Kabul, as Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country. Western countries, including the US, are evacuating diplomatic personnel from Kabul.

holidays

For departing to the Camp David presidential retreat for a weekend vacation in the middle of several internal and foreign crises that the United States is facing, President Joe Biden has received an unflattering nickname from the conservative critics - "commander-in-absence".

intransigence...

Intransigence is experienced by many of us daily. It may even dominate our own emotional repertoire. Now, though, as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announces rising Covid infections and accumulating deaths, this unhelpful trait seems increasingly endangering.

AI

Are you scared yet, human?

This Panorama/4C program looks at the problems of Artificial Intelligence (https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NC2103H026S00) … We have done our best here to follow the AI caper since the inception of this site (2005)... If you live outside Australia, your link might be different: 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000wft2/sign/panorama-are-you-scared-yet-human

con

The technology roadmap sketched by Morrison and Taylor is a con. It is in fact a statement of support for the fossil fuel industry which is heavily subsidised by and a significant donor to the Liberal and National Parties.