IMPORTANT READS

MIDDLE EAST PEACE - It takes bold US leadership to effect a change in the Israeli-Palestinian discourse, and Biden may well be the right president at the right time that will ultimately serve the Israelis as much if not more than the Palestinians. 

The slaughter of at least 79 Afghan civilians and 13 American servicemen at Kabul airport has propelled the Afghan offshoot of Isis to the top of the news agenda, as it was intended to do.

CUBA WATCH - The strategy of the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba committee has focused on ending the US embargo of Cuba through extensive outreach to union struggles, nurses protests for adequate PPE, civil rights and Medicare for All rallies, campaigns against police killings and brutality, Palestinian marches and every opportunity to win new support. 

SCOTUS WATCH - The conservative U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned order in the dead of night Wednesday leaving Texas' draconian abortion ban in place, a move that effectively overturns Roe v. Wade and imperils reproductive rights across much of the United States.

MIGRANT WATCH - The United States has long branded itself as a safe haven for refugees fleeing war and persecution abroad.

STATE OF THE STATE - For the first six months of 2021, the number of companies relocating their headquarters out of California is running at twice the rate of recent years and is showing no signs of slowing, according to a study issued today by Spectrum Location Solutions and the Hoover Institution.

WAR FOR HIRE - On August 12, the military contractor CACI International Inc. told its investors that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is hurting its profits.

E RECALLUS UNUM - The recall—the tool being used in an attempt to remove Gavin Newsom as California’s governor before his term is over—might seem strange or novel. It’s neither. The recall is nearly as old as democracy itself.

THE U.S. WAR MACHINE-The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s re-ascendance are producing some incredible lamentations about the decline of American power.

CLIMATE WATCH - In recent months, Washington has had a lot to say about China’s ever-expanding air, naval, and missile power.

MILITARY INDUSTRY - The United States emerged from its victory in World War II as the world's preeminent superpower. Its annual military budget—about three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year—exceeds the aggregate of the next ten countries in the world.

SOCIAL MEDIA SHAM-The former president of the people of Alabama is asking a Florida judge to issue a preliminary injunction in his beef with YouTube

PROTECTING THE PLANET - The Biden EPA has put a stop to use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food crops, thereby reversing a decision by the Trump administration to allow it to continue to be sprayed on vegetables and fruit in spite of an Obama administration order in 2015 to ban the pesticide for public health reasons.

CLIMATE POLITICS - Our son was born just after midnight on New Year’s Day, in the middle of a blizzard and at the apex of a plague.

WORDS ON WAR - The next war on Afghanistan will be a silent war, one waged behind the shadowed windows of board rooms and bank vaults, an economic war, fought with sanctions and debt–weapons indiscriminate as cluster bombs–that will almost certainly inflict much more misery and death than the hot war of the last 20 years. It’s already started.

WORDS ON WAR - The victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan is looking unstoppable as they capture the big provincial cities of Kandahar, Herat and Ghazni without meeting effective resistance from Afghan government forces.

IN RETROSPECT - At a U.S. Special Forces camp near Kandahar, Afghanistan, on December 5, 2001, the Taliban offered an unconditional surrender. Furthermore, they would disband and disarm: a military force would no longer exist. 

THE ROOT - Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released its first trove of demographic data from the 2020 census, leading many to divest in cryptocurrency and put all of their money in the rapidly emerging washcloth market.  

TWISTING TWITTER - On Monday morning, during a live BBC news broadcast, journalist Yalda Hakim was interrupted by a phone call from a Taliban spokesman, Suhail Shaheen.

SOCIETAL TRUTHS - Rocky, the code name given to me by the far left in the Portland, Oregon protest movement, was born out of pure existential spiritual crisis, the kind that has plagued me my entire life.

EYE SPY - We have just learned about a powerful spyware known as Pegasus, manufactured and leased by the Israeli company NSO Group and capable of extracting just about every kind of data stored in a smart phone.