#afghanistan vs taliban war 2021

[parichaytimes]

काबुल एयरपोर्ट को सैकड़ों आतंकवादियों ने घेरा, अमेरिकी सेना पर हमले की आशंका: US इटेलिजेंस

काबुल एयरपोर्ट को सैकड़ों आतंकवादियों ने घेरा, अमेरिकी सेना पर हमले की आशंका: US इटेलिजेंस

Image Source : AP Smoke rises from explosion outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. (AP) काबुल: अमेरिकी इटेलिजेंस एजेंसी के हवाले से फॉक्स न्यूज ने खबर दी है कि काबुल एयरपोर्ट को सैकडों आतंकवादियों ने घेर रखा है। ये सभी आतंकवादी मॉडर्न हथियारों से लैस हैं। इनमें कुछ फिदायीन हमलावर भी मौजूद हैं। यानी आशंका इस बात की है कि काबुल एयरपोर्ट के पास और भी हमले किए जा सकते…

[jedi-anakin]

2020 – what happened so far

(it’s impossible to include all, but I try my best)

January

January 1 – Palau became the first country to ban sun creams containing ingredients that are harmful to coral and marine life.

January 2 – The government of New South Wales, Australia, declares a state of emergency whilst the government of Victoria, Australia declares a state of disaster amid large bushfires that have killed as many as 500 million animals.

January 3 – A US drone strike at Baghdad International Airport kills Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

January 5 – Iran pulls out of the 2015 nuclear deal, will not limit its uranium enrichment.

January 7 – 56 people are reported killed and over 200 injured in a crush at the funeral of general Qasem Soleimani in the city of Kerman, Iran.

January 7 – A 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Puerto Rico, island's largest in a century, kill 1 person and destroy 800 homes.

January 8 – Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 is shot down by Iran's armed forces shortly after takeoff from Tehran Imam Khomeini Airport, killing all 176 people on board.

January 8 – Duke and Duchess of Sussex announce they are stepping back as "senior" royals, will work towards becoming financially independent.

January 16 – The impeachment trial of the President of the United States, Donald Trump, begins in the US Senate.

January 26 – Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter Gianna Bryant dies in a helicopter crash.

January 30 – The World Health Organization (WHO) declares the outbreak of the disease as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

January 31 – The United Kingdom and Gibraltar formally withdraw from the European Union at 11PM (GMT), beginning an 11-month transition period.

January 2020 was the hottest January in recorded history according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

February

February 3 – Cruise ship Diamond Princess with 3711 passengers quarantined in Yokohama port, Japan after cases of coronavirus found on board.

February 5 – The US Senate acquits US president Donald Trump on articles of impeachment.

February 8 – 20 people dies in a mall shooting in Thailand.

February 9 – Deaths from the Coronavirus overtake those of Sars (2003) with 813 deaths worldwide.

February 10 – More than 30 bushfires put out by heaviest rainfall for 30 years in New South Wales, Australia, helping end one of the worst bushfire seasons ever, 46 million acres burnt, over 1 billion animals killed, 34 people dead.

February 11 – Snow falls in Baghdad, Iraq, for only the second time in a century.

February 23 – First major coronavirus outbreak in Europe in Italy with 152 cases and three deaths, prompting emergency measures, locking down 10 towns in Lombardy.

February 23 – China's Supreme Leader Xi Jinping describes the country's coronavirus outbreak as the China's largest health emergency since 1949.

February 24 – Former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein found guilty of rape and a criminal sexual act.

February 29 – Luxembourg becomes the first country in the world to make all public transport in the country (buses, trams, and trains) free to use.

February 29 – A conditional peace agreement is signed between the United States and the Taliban in Doha, Qatar. The U.S. begins gradually withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

March

March 8 – Italy places 16 million people in quarantine, more than a quarter of its population, in a bid to stop the spread of COVID-19. A day later, the quarantine is expanded to cover the entire country, becoming the first country to apply this measure nationwide.

March 9 – International share prices fall sharply in response to a Russo-Saudi oil price war and the impact of COVID-19. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) plunges more than 2,000 points, the largest fall in its history up to that point. Oil prices also plunge by as much as 30% in early trading, the biggest fall since 1991.

March 11 – The World Health Organization declares the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic with 121,564 cases worldwide and 4,373 deaths.

March 11 – Harvey Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years in prison for a criminal sex act and rape in New York.

March 12 – Global stock markets crash. The Dow Jones Industrial Average goes into free fall, closing at over −2,300 points, the worst losses for the index since 1987.

March 13 – The government of Nepal announces that Mount Everest will be closed to climbers and the public for the rest of the season due to concerns from the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia.

March 14 – Spain goes into lockdown after COVID-19 cases in the country surge.

March 16 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 2,997, the single largest point drop in history and the second-largest percentage drop ever at 12.93 percent, an even greater crash than Black Monday (1929).

March 17 – European leaders close the EU's external and Schengen borders for at least 30 days in an effort to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.

March 17 – The island of Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines, is placed under the enhanced community quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic in the country.

March 18 – The European Broadcasting Union announces that the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 will be cancelled due to COVID-19 in Europe, the first cancellation in the contest's 64-year history.

March 20 – The worldwide death toll from COVID-19 surpasses 10,000 as the total number of cases reaches a quarter of a million.

March 20 – Smoke from Australian bushfires killed more people than the fires - 417 vs 33 according to new study published in "Medical Journal of Australia."

March 22 – A prison riot in Colombia, which was sparked by coronavirus fears, left 23 inmates dead and another 83 injured.

March 24 – Indian PM Narendra Modi orders a 21 day lockdown for world's second most populous country of 1.3 billion people.

March 26 – Global COVID-19 cases reach 500,000, with nearly 23,000 deaths confirmed. American cases exceed all other countries, with 81,578 cases and 1,180 deaths.

March 28 – North Korea launched an unidentified projectile off the coast of Japan. This is the sixth launch in the last month.

March 30 – The price of Brent Crude Oil falls 9% to $23 per barrel, the lowest level since November 2002.

March 30 – The International Olympic Committee and Japan suspend the 2020 Summer Olympics and are rescheduled for July 23 to August 8, 2021.

April

April 2 – The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 1 million worldwide.

April 5 – British Prime Minister Boris Johnson admitted to hospital suffering from coronavirus COVID-19.

April 7 – Japan declares a state of emergency in response to COVID-19, and finalises a stimulus package worth 108 trillion yen (US$990 billion), equal to 20% of the country's GDP.

April 10 – The death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 100,000 globally.

April 14 – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it expects the world economy to shrink 3%, the worst contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

April 14 – US President Donald Trump freezes funding for the World Health Organization pending a review, for mistakes in handling the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and for being "China-centric", prompting international criticism.

April 15 – The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 2 million worldwide.

April 16 – 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment in 4 weeks (5.2 million in the last week), wiping out 9 1/2 years of job gains.

April 20 – Oil prices reach a record low.

April 25 – The global death toll from COVID-19 exceeds 200,000.

April 27 – The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 3 million worldwide.

April 28 – US Department of Defense releases three declassified videos of possible UFOs from 2004 and 2015.

April 30 – British Captain Tom Moore, who raised more £30 million for the National Health Service walking in his garden, turns 100 and made an honorary colonel by the Queen.

May

May 5 – The UK death toll from COVID-19 becomes the highest in Europe.

May 6 – Irish organisation repays a 170 year old favor, raising over $2 million (to date) for US Navajo Nation and Hopi Reservation badly affected by coronavirus. In 1840s Choctaw Nation sent $170 to aid Irish potato famine.

May 6 – Hungary has become the first EU member state to lose their democractic status according to the NGO Freedom House.

May 10 – The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 4 million worldwide.

May 12 – Gunmen storm a maternity hospital and kill 24 people, including two newborn babies, in Dashte Barchi, a majority-Shia neighborhood of Kabul, Afghanistan.

May 13 – Every African country now has cases of coronavirus COVID-19.

May 14 – The UN warns of a global mental health crisis caused by isolation, fear, uncertainty and economic turmoil.

May 16 – 118-year old American department store JC Penney files for bankruptcy.

May 19 – Greenhouse gas emissions dropped 17% worldwide in April 2020 when world was in lockdown, in study published in "Nature Climate Change."

May 19 – Two dams on Tittabawassee River in central Michigan breached by floodwaters, forcing evacuation of thousands of residents.

May 21 – Cyclone Amphan makes landfall in eastern India and Bangladesh, killing over 100 people and forcing the evacuation of more than 4 million others. It causes over US$13 billion in damage, making it the costliest cyclone ever recorded in the North Indian Ocean.

May 26 – George Floyd, an African-American man dies after he was handcuffed and lying face down on a city street during an arrest, Derek Chauvin, a white Minneapolis police officer kept his knee on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds despite he was pleading for breath.

May 26 – Costa Rica becomes the first Central American country to legalise same-sex marriage.

May 26 – Twitter adds warning labels to warn about inaccuracies in US President Donald Trump's tweets for the first time.

May 26 – After a recording by a bystander about the arrest of George Floyd went viral the four officers who were present were fired. The same day a demonstrations and protests took place in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area.

May 27 – The Chinese National People's Congress votes in favour of national security legislation that prevents subversion, terrorism, separatism and foreign interference in Hong Kong.

May 27 – Spain begins 10 days of mourning for victims of COVID-19.

May 28 – The United States Department of Justice released a joint statement with the FBI, saying they had made the investigation into George Floyd's death "a top priority".

May 29 – Derek Chauvin was arrested and charged him with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, becoming the first white officer in Minnesota to be charged for the death of a black civilian.

May 30 – The first crewed flight of the Dragon 2 is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the first manned spacecraft to take off from U.S. soil since 2011. The next day the spacecraft successfully reached the International Space Station (ISS).

May 31 – Since May 26 over a 100 city in all 50 states in the US was held supporting those seeking justice for George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, and speaking out against police brutality.

May 31 – The hacktivist group Anonymous released a video after remaining silent for 3 years demanding justice for George Floyd.

May 31 – The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 6 million worldwide.

[route22ny]

By CALVIN WOODWARD, ELLEN KNICKMEYER and DAVID RISING

September 10, 2021 GMT

In the ghastly rubble of ground zero’s fallen towers 20 years ago, Hour Zero arrived, a chance to start anew.

World affairs reordered abruptly on that morning of blue skies, black ash, fire and death.

In Iran, chants of “death to America” quickly gave way to candlelight vigils to mourn the American dead. Vladimir Putin weighed in with substantive help as the U.S. prepared to go to war in Russia’s region of influence.

Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, a murderous dictator with a poetic streak, spoke of the “human duty” to be with Americans after “these horrifying and awesome events, which are bound to awaken human conscience.”

From the first terrible moments, America’s longstanding allies were joined by longtime enemies in that singularly galvanizing instant. No nation with global standing was cheering the stateless terrorists vowing to conquer capitalism and democracy. How rare is that?

Too rare to last, it turned out.

___

Civilizations have their allegories for rebirth in times of devastation. A global favorite is that of the phoenix, a magical and magnificent bird, rising from ashes. In the hellscape of Germany at the end of World War II, it was the concept of Hour Zero, or Stunde Null, that offered the opportunity to start anew.

For the U.S., the zero hour of Sept. 11, 2001, meant a chance to reshape its place in the post-Cold War world from a high perch of influence and goodwill as it entered the new millennium. This was only a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union left America with both the moral authority and the financial and military muscle to be unquestionably the lone superpower.

Those advantages were soon squandered. Instead of a new order, 9/11 fueled 20 years of war abroad. In the U.S., it gave rise to the angry, aggrieved, self-proclaimed patriot, and heightened surveillance and suspicion in the name of common defense.

It opened an era of deference to the armed forces as lawmakers pulled back on oversight and let presidents give primacy to the military over law enforcement in the fight against terrorism. And it sparked anti-immigrant sentiment, primarily directed at Muslim countries, that lingers today.

A war of necessity — in the eyes of most of the world — in Afghanistan was followed two years later by a war of choice as the U.S. invaded Iraq on false claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction. President George W. Bush labeled Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil.”

Thus opened the deep, deadly mineshaft of “forever wars.” There were convulsions throughout the Middle East, and U.S. foreign policy — for half a century a force for ballast — instead gave way to a head-snapping change in approaches in foreign policy from Bush to Obama to Trump. With that came waning trust in America’s leadership and reliability.

Other parts of the world were not immune. Far-right populist movements coursed through Europe. Britain voted to break away from the European Union. And China steadily ascended in the global pecking order.

President Joe Biden is trying to restore trust in the belief of a steady hand from the U.S. but there is no easy path. He is ending war, but what comes next?

In Afghanistan in August, the Taliban seized control with menacing swiftness as the Afghan government and security forces that the United States and its allies had spent two decades trying to build collapsed. No steady hand was evident from the U.S. in the harried, disorganized evacuation of Afghans desperately trying to flee the country in the first weeks of the Taliban’s re-established rule.

Allies whose troops had fought and died in the U.S-led war in Afghanistan expressed dismay at Biden’s management of the U.S. withdrawal, under a deal President Donald Trump had struck with the Taliban.

THE ‘HOMELAND’

In the United States, the Sept. 11 attacks set loose a torrent of rage.

In shock from the assault, a swath of American society embraced the us vs. them binary outlook articulated by Bush — “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” — and has never let go of it.

You could hear it in the country songs and talk radio, and during presidential campaigns, offering the balm of a bloodlust cry for revenge. “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way,” Toby Keith promised America’s enemies in one of the most popular of those songs in 2002.

Americans stuck flags in yards and on the back of trucks. Factionalism hardened inside America, in school board fights, on Facebook posts, and in national politics, so that opposing views were treated as propaganda from mortal enemies. The concept of enemy also evolved, from not simply the terrorist but also to the immigrant, or the conflation of the terrorist as immigrant trying to cross the border.

The patriot under threat became a personal and political identity in the United States. Fifteen years later, Trump harnessed it to help him win the presidency.

THE OTHERING

In the week after the attacks, Bush demanded of Americans that they know “Islam is peace” and that the attacks were a perversion of that religion. He told the country that American Muslims are us, not them, even as mosques came under surveillance and Arabs coming to the U.S. to take their kids to Disneyland or go to school risked being detained for questioning.

For Trump, in contrast, everything was always about them, the outsiders.

In the birther lie Trump promoted before his presidency, Barack Obama was an outsider. In Trump’s campaigns and administration, Muslims and immigrants were outsiders. The “China virus” was a foreign interloper, too.

Overseas, deadly attacks by Islamic extremists, like the 2004 bombing of Madrid trains that killed nearly 200 people and the 2005 attack on London’s transportation system that killed more than 50, hardened attitudes in Europe as well.

By 2015, as the Islamic State group captured wide areas of Iraq and pushed deep into Syria, the number of refugees increased dramatically, with more than 1 million migrants, primarily from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, entering Europe that year alone.

The year was bracketed by attacks in France on the Charlie Hebdo magazine staff in January after it published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and on the Bataclan theater and other Paris locations in November, reinforcing the angst then gripping the continent.

Already growing in support, far-right parties were able to capitalize on the fears to establish themselves as part of the European mainstream. They remain represented in many European parliaments, even as the flow of immigrants has slowed dramatically and most concerns have proved unfounded.

THE UNRAVELING

Dozens of countries joined or endorsed the NATO coalition fighting in Afghanistan. Russia acquiesced to NATO troops in Central Asia for the first time and provided logistical support. Never before had NATO invoked Article 5 of its charter that an attack against one member was an attack against all.

But in 2003, the U.S. and Britain were practically alone in prosecuting the Iraq war. This time, millions worldwide marched in protest in the run-up to the invasion. World opinion of the United States turned sharply negative.

In June 2003, after the invasion had swiftly ousted Saddam and dismantled the Iraqi army and security forces, a Pew Research poll found a widening rift between Americans and Western Europeans and reported that “the bottom has fallen out of support for America in most of the Muslim world.” Most South Koreans, half of Brazilians and plenty more people outside the Islamic world agreed.

And this was when the war was going well, before the world saw cruel images from Abu Ghraib prison, learned all that it knows now about CIA black op sites, waterboarding, years of Guantanamo Bay detention without charges or trials — and before the rise of the brutal Islamic State.

By 2007, when the U.S. set up the Africa Command to counter terrorism and the rising influence of China and Russia on the continent, African countries did not want to host it. It operates from Stuttgart, Germany.

THE SUCCESSES

Over the two decades, a succession of U.S. presidents scored important achievements in shoring up security, and so far U.S. territory has remained safe from more international terrorism anywhere on the scale of 9/11.

Globally, U.S.-led forces weakened al-Qaida, which has failed to launch a major attack on the West since 2005. The Iraq invasion rid that country and region of a murderous dictator in Saddam.

Yet strategically, eliminating him did just what Arab leaders warned Bush it would do: It strengthened Saddam’s main rival, Iran, threatening U.S. objectives and partners.

Deadly chaos soon followed in Iraq. The Bush administration, in its nation-building haste, failed to plan for keeping order, leaving Islamist extremists and rival militias to fight for dominance in the security vacuum.

The overthrow of Saddam served both to inspire and limit public support for Arab Spring uprisings a few years later. For if the U.S. showed people in the Middle East that strongmen can be toppled, the insurgency demonstrated that what comes next may not be a season of renewal.

Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East pointed to the post-Saddam era as an argument for their own survival.

The U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq killed more than 7,000 American military men and women, more than 1,000 from the allied forces, many tens of thousands of members of Afghan and Iraqi security forces, and many hundreds of thousands of civilians, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project. Costs, including tending the wars’ unusually high number of disabled vets, are expected to top $6 trillion.

For the U.S., the presidencies since Bush’s wars have been marked by an effort — not always consistent, not always successful — to pull back the military from the conflicts of the Middle East and Central Asia.

The perception of a U.S. retreat has allowed Russia and China to gain influence in the regions, and left U.S. allies struggling to understand Washington’s place in the world. The notion that 9/11 would create an enduring unity of interest to combat terrorism collided with rising nationalism and a U.S. president, Trump, who spoke disdainfully of the NATO allies that in 2001 had rallied to America’s cause.

Even before Trump, Obama surprised allies and enemies alike when he stepped back abruptly from the U.S. role of world cop. Obama geared up for, then called off, a strike on Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons against his people.

“Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong,” Obama said on Sept. 11, 2013.

THE NEWISH ORDER

The legacies of 9/11 ripple both in obvious and unusual ways.

Most directly, millions of people in the U.S. and Europe go about their public business under the constant gaze of security cameras while other surveillance tools scoop up private communications. The government layered post-9/11 bureaucracies on to law enforcement to support the expansive security apparatus.

Militarization is more evident now, from large cities to small towns that now own military vehicles and weapons that seem well out of proportion to any terrorist threat. Government offices have become fortifications and airports a security maze.

But as profound an event as 9/11 was, its immediate effect on how the world has been ordered was temporary and largely undone by domestic political forces, a global economic downturn and now a lethal pandemic.

The awakening of human conscience predicted by Gadhafi didn’t last. Gadhafi didn’t last.

Osama bin Laden has been dead for a decade. Saddam was hanged in 2006. The forever wars — the Afghanistan one being the longest in U.S. history — now are over or ending. The days of Russia tactically enabling the U.S., and China not standing in the way, petered out. Only the phoenix lasts.

___

Rising reported from Bangkok; Knickmeyer and Woodward from Washington. AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

https://apnews.com/article/911-20-years-world-affairs-cc497f11743fcbd48b0b3e0c3ed2da5f

[arcticdementor]

Imagine that the US was competing in a space race with some third world country, say Zambia, for whatever reason. Americans of course would have orders of magnitude more money to throw at the problem, and the most respected aerospace engineers in the world, with degrees from the best universities and publications in the top journals. Zambia would have none of this. What should our reaction be if, after a decade, Zambia had made more progress?

Obviously, it would call into question the entire field of aerospace engineering. What good were all those Google Scholar pages filled with thousands of citations, all the knowledge gained from our labs and universities, if Western science gets outcompeted by the third world?

For all that has been said about Afghanistan, no one has noticed that this is precisely what just happened to political science. The American-led coalition had countless experts with backgrounds pertaining to every part of the mission on their side: people who had done their dissertations on topics like state building, terrorism, military-civilian relations, and gender in the military. General David Petraeus, who helped sell Obama on the troop surge that made everything in Afghanistan worse, earned a PhD from Princeton and was supposedly an expert in “counterinsurgency theory.” Ashraf Ghani, the just deposed president of the country, has a PhD in anthropology from Columbia and is the co-author of a book literally called Fixing Failed States. This was his territory. It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.

…

Phil Tetlock’s work on experts is one of those things that gets a lot of attention, but still manages to be underrated. In his 2005 Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, he found that the forecasting abilities of subject-matter experts were no better than educated laymen when it came to predicting geopolitical events and economic outcomes. As Bryan Caplan points out, we shouldn’t exaggerate the results here and provide too much fodder for populists; the questions asked were chosen for their difficulty, and the experts were being compared to laymen who nonetheless had met some threshold of education and competence.

At the same time, we shouldn’t put too little emphasis on the results either. They show that “expertise” as we understand it is largely fake. Should you listen to epidemiologists or economists when it comes to COVID-19? Conventional wisdom says “trust the experts.” The lesson of Tetlock (and the Afghanistan War), is that while you certainly shouldn’t be getting all your information from your uncle’s Facebook Wall, there is no reason to start with a strong prior that people with medical degrees know more than any intelligent person who honestly looks at the available data.

…

I think one of the most interesting articles of the COVID era was a piece called “Beware of Facts Man” by Annie Lowrey, published in The Atlantic.

…

The reaction to this piece was something along the lines of “ha ha, look at this liberal who hates facts.” But there’s a serious argument under the snark, and it’s that you should trust credentials over Facts Man and his amateurish takes. In recent days, a 2019 paper on “Epistemic Trespassing” has been making the rounds on Twitter. The theory that specialization is important is not on its face absurd, and probably strikes most people as natural. In the hard sciences and other places where social desirability bias and partisanship have less of a role to play, it’s probably a safe assumption. In fact, academia is in many ways premised on the idea, as we have experts in “labor economics,” “state capacity,” “epidemiology,” etc. instead of just having a world where we select the smartest people and tell them to work on the most important questions.

But what Tetlock did was test this hypothesis directly in the social sciences, and he found that subject-matter experts and Facts Man basically tied.

…

Interestingly, one of the best defenses of “Facts Man” during the COVID era was written by Annie Lowrey’s husband, Ezra Klein. His April 2021 piece in The New York Times showed how economist Alex Tabarrok had consistently disagreed with the medical establishment throughout the pandemic, and was always right. You have the “Credentials vs. Facts Man” debate within one elite media couple. If this was a movie they would’ve switched the genders, but since this is real life, stereotypes are confirmed and the husband and wife take the positions you would expect.

…

In the end, I don’t think my dissertation contributed much to human knowledge, making it no different than the vast majority of dissertations that have been written throughout history. The main reason is that most of the time public opinion doesn’t really matter in foreign policy. People generally aren’t paying attention, and the vast majority of decisions are made out of public sight. How many Americans know or care that North Macedonia and Montenegro joined NATO in the last few years? Most of the time, elites do what they want, influenced by their own ideological commitments and powerful lobby groups. In times of crisis, when people do pay attention, they can be manipulated pretty easily by the media or other partisan sources.

If public opinion doesn’t matter in foreign policy, why is there so much study of public opinion and foreign policy? There’s a saying in academia that “instead of measuring what we value, we value what we can measure.” It’s easy to do public opinion polls and survey experiments, as you can derive a hypothesis, get an answer, and make it look sciency in charts and graphs. To show that your results have relevance to the real world, you cite some papers that supposedly find that public opinion matters, maybe including one based on a regression showing that under very specific conditions foreign policy determined the results of an election, and maybe it’s well done and maybe not, but again, as long as you put the words together and the citations in the right format nobody has time to check any of this. The people conducting peer review on your work will be those who have already decided to study the topic, so you couldn’t find a more biased referee if you tried.

Thus, to be an IR scholar, the two main options are you can either use statistical methods that don’t work, or actually find answers to questions, but those questions are so narrow that they have no real world impact or relevance. A smaller portion of academics in the field just produce postmodern-generator style garbage, hence “feminist theories of IR.” You can also build game theoretic models that, like the statistical work in the field, are based on a thousand assumptions that are probably false and no one will ever check. The older tradition of Kennan and Mearsheimer is better and more accessible than what has come lately, but the field is moving away from that and, like a lot of things, towards scientism and identity politics.

…

At some point, I decided that if I wanted to study and understand important questions, and do so in a way that was accessible to others, I’d have a better chance outside of the academy. Sometimes people thinking about an academic career reach out to me, and ask for advice. For people who want to go into the social sciences, I always tell them not to do it. If you have something to say, take it to Substack, or CSPI, or whatever. If it’s actually important and interesting enough to get anyone’s attention, you’ll be able to find funding.

If you think your topic of interest is too esoteric to find an audience, know that my friend Razib Khan, who writes about the Mongol empire, Y-chromosomes and haplotypes and such, makes a living doing this. If you want to be an experimental physicist, this advice probably doesn’t apply, and you need lab mates, major funding sources, etc. If you just want to collect and analyze data in a way that can be done without institutional support, run away from the university system.

The main problem with academia is not just the political bias, although that’s another reason to do something else with your life. It’s the entire concept of specialization, which holds that you need some secret tools or methods to understand what we call “political science” or “sociology,” and that these fields have boundaries between them that should be respected in the first place. Quantitative methods are helpful and can be applied widely, but in learning stats there are steep diminishing returns.

…

Outside of political science, are there other fields that have their own equivalents of “African witch doctor beats von Braun to the moon” or “the Taliban beats the State Department and the Pentagon” facts to explain? Yes, and here are just a few examples.

Consider criminology. More people are studying how to keep us safe from other humans than at any other point in history. But here’s the US murder rate between 1960 and 2018, not including the large uptick since then.

So basically, after a rough couple of decades, we’re back to where we were in 1960. But we’re actually much worse, because improvements in medical technology are keeping a lot of people that would’ve died 60 years ago alive. One paper from 2002 says that the murder rate would be 5 times higher if not for medical developments since 1960. I don’t know how much to trust this, but it’s surely true that we’ve made some medical progress since that time, and doctors have been getting a lot of experience from all the shooting victims they have treated over the decades. Moreover, we’re much richer than we were in 1960, and I’m sure spending on public safety has increased. With all that, we are now about tied with where we were almost three-quarters of a century ago, a massive failure.

What about psychology? As of 2016, there were 106,000 licensed psychologists in the US. I wish I could find data to compare to previous eras, but I don’t think anyone will argue against the idea that we have more mental health professionals and research psychologists than ever before. Are we getting mentally healthier? Here’s suicides in the US from 1981 to 2016

…

What about education? I’ll just defer to Freddie deBoer’s recent post on the topic, and Scott Alexander on how absurd the whole thing is.

Maybe there have been larger cultural and economic forces that it would be unfair to blame criminology, psychology, and education for. Despite no evidence we’re getting better at fighting crime, curing mental problems, or educating children, maybe other things have happened that have outweighed our gains in knowledge. Perhaps the experts are holding up the world on their shoulders, and if we hadn’t produced so many specialists over the years, thrown so much money at them, and gotten them to produce so many peer reviews papers, we’d see Middle Ages-levels of violence all across the country and no longer even be able to teach children to read. Like an Ayn Rand novel, if you just replaced the business tycoons with those whose work has withstood peer review.

Or you can just assume that expertise in these fields is fake. Even if there are some people doing good work, either they are outnumbered by those adding nothing or even subtracting from what we know, or our newly gained understanding is not being translated into better policies. Considering the extent to which government relies on experts, if the experts with power are doing things that are not defensible given the consensus in their fields, the larger community should make this known and shun those who are getting the policy questions so wrong. As in the case of the Afghanistan War, this has not happened, and those who fail in the policy world are still well regarded in their larger intellectual community.

…

Those opposed to cancel culture have taken up the mantle of “intellectual diversity” as a heuristic, but there’s nothing valuable about the concept itself. When I look at the people I’ve come to trust, they are diverse on some measures, but extremely homogenous on others. IQ and sensitivity to cost-benefit considerations seem to me to be unambiguous goods in figuring out what is true or what should be done in a policy area. You don’t add much to your understanding of the world by finding those with low IQs who can’t do cost-benefit analysis and adding them to the conversation.

One of the clearest examples of bias in academia and how intellectual diversity can make the conversation better is the work of Lee Jussim on stereotypes. Basically, a bunch of liberal academics went around saying “Conservatives believe in differences between groups, isn’t that terrible!” Lee Jussim, as someone who is relatively moderate, came along and said “Hey, let’s check to see whether they’re true!” This story is now used to make the case for intellectual diversity in the social sciences.

Yet it seems to me that isn’t the real lesson here. Imagine if, instead of Jussim coming forward and asking whether stereotypes are accurate, Osama bin Laden had decided to become a psychologist. He’d say “The problem with your research on stereotypes is that you do not praise Allah the all merciful at the beginning of all your papers.” If you added more feminist voices, they’d say something like “This research is problematic because it’s all done by men.” Neither of these perspectives contributes all that much. You’ve made the conversation more diverse, but dumber. The problem with psychology was a very specific one, in that liberals are particularly bad at recognizing obvious facts about race and sex. So yes, in that case the field could use more conservatives, not “more intellectual diversity,” which could just as easily make the field worse as make it better. And just because political psychology could use more conservative representation when discussing stereotypes doesn’t mean those on the right always add to the discussion rather than subtract from it. As many religious Republicans oppose the idea of evolution, we don’t need the “conservative” position to come and help add a new perspective to biology.

The upshot is intellectual diversity is a red herring, usually a thinly-veiled plea for more conservatives. Nobody is arguing for more Islamists, Nazis, or flat earthers in academia, and for good reason. People should just be honest about the ways in which liberals are wrong and leave it at that.

…

The failure in Afghanistan was mind-boggling. Perhaps never in the history of warfare had there been such a resource disparity between two sides, and the US-backed government couldn’t even last through the end of the American withdrawal. One can choose to understand this failure through a broad or narrow lens. Does it only tell us something about one particular war or is it a larger indictment of American foreign policy?

The main argument of this essay is we’re not thinking big enough. The American loss should be seen as a complete discrediting of the academic understanding of “expertise,” with its reliance on narrowly focused peer reviewed publications and subject matter knowledge as the way to understand the world. Although I don’t develop the argument here, I think I could make the case that expertise isn’t just fake, it actually makes you worse off because it gives you a higher level of certainty in your own wishful thinking. The Taliban probably did better by focusing their intellectual energies on interpreting the Holy Quran and taking a pragmatic approach to how they fought the war rather than proceeding with a prepackaged theory of how to engage in nation building, which for the West conveniently involved importing its own institutions.

A discussion of the practical implications of all this, or how we move from a world of specialization to one with better elites, is also for another day. For now, I’ll just emphasize that for those thinking of choosing an academic career to make universities or the peer review system function better, my advice is don’t. The conversation is much more interesting, meaningful, and oriented towards finding truth here on the outside.

[theotherjourney7]

“Biden addressing the nation (on 31 August 2021) from the White House

Pays tribute to all those US service personnel involved in the airlift, especially those 13 who lost their lives: "We owe them and their families a debt of gratitude we can never repay, but we should never, ever, ever forget."

Biden says US has leverage to ensure Taliban keeps their commitments

Reiterates that 31st August was not "an arbitrary deadline"

Blames the Trump administration for the worst bits of the deal, including the release of 5000 prisoners

"By the time I came to office the Taliban were in the strongest position since 2001"

Emphasises that once the ceasefire was over if they'd stayed more troops were necessary

"That was the real choice- between leaving and escalating."

Two things true at once

1) What Biden describes was a fundamental dilemma too many haven't reasoned with.

2) That doesn't mean the withdrawal had to be executed this way, as Biden is trying to say. Wasn't completely binary.

"There are those who say why didn't we just keep going with what we were doing...? Everything had changed."

Biden keeps making the point about Trump's deal and the choice he faced re pullout vs escalation.

Biden making many of the same points he's made in previous speeches- including the example about Bin Laden launching an attack from Yemen.

Biden's criticism isn't confined to Trump. He's implicitly criticising the Obama decision to surge (against which he argued at the time as VP).

Again, Biden making clear in the speech he believes there are few US moral obligations arising to the Afghans as a result of the intervention.

To ISIS-K Biden says "we are not done with you yet."

Biden: "As we turn the page on the foreign policy which has guided the last two decades, we have to learn the lessons. We must set missions with clear achievable goals, not ones we'll never reach. And second we must stay clearly focussed on the US national security interest."

Biden making clear the era of liberal interventionism is over

"This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It's about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries."

Biden: "I've been clear that human rights will be at the centre of our foreign policy."

But he's just said US security interests must be paramount. What happens- a la Afghanistan- when those two things cash?

Biden: "After 20 years of war in Afghanistan I refused to send another generation of America's sons and daughters to fight a war that should have ended long ago."

Biden: "We've been a nation too long at war. If you're 20 years old today you've never known an America at peace. So when I hear we should have continued the so called 'low cost' effort in Afghanistan...I don't think enough people understand we've asked of the 1% in uniform."

Most forceful we've seen Biden yet.

Repeated many of the arguments we've heard before.

Strongest argument remains that the status quo wasn't an option.

Weakest that this was the only way of withdrawing.

Didn't reconcile two central tensions...

1) Can we be truly confident the counter terrorism mission is over given Taliban are back?

2) How does the clear realism of his view of int politics reconcile with his claim that "America is back", "diplomacy is back" and that human rights are at the centre of his foreign policy?

And the fact that Biden once again made clear he doesn't seem to think there are almost any moral obligations to the country of Afghanistan arising from a 20 year intervention.”-Lewis Goodall

[rametarin]

The complicated issue of the ‘war on science’ in the United States.

We are all painfully aware that there are individuals and communities in the United States of America that believe garbage like, “The earth is between 2021 and 6000 years old.” That’s not where the story begins or ends.

Yes, individuals like this exist. Small communities of people like this exist. I’m not denying that. They’re well documented and will out themselves in the right section of the country. They do tend to be right wing voters, but not exactly for the reasons you’d think. And it is an anti-science position to say the earth is only that old. This is not in dispute.

Typically the conversation then goes to a smug look at the 4th wall, some smug assed, “LOL LOOK AT THE AMERICAN MILITARY BUDGET VS. ITS PUBLIC EDUCATION BUDGET. :^)” And the implication for this thinking is that North America is so full of religious zealots, systematic conservative theocratic control and by extension nativist white supremacism based on bellowing blowhards that it does not value science, “as a society or a culture.”

This is pure and simply masturbatory fantasy on behalf of people that tend to see all religious culture under this light. Or at least, Christianity. Since they often don’t have the balls to apply these “harshly judging medieval superstitious culture” standards to immigrants from Islamic countries or cultures or communities.

The actual numbers of flat earthers, young earth creationists, etc. are extreme outliers with very little actual power. However, those people are good caricatures to shame and embarrass and stigmatize and stratify religious people. They don’t have to DIRECTLY mock the religious, they just have to mock those extremes, get the actual religious to also join in and be part of the cool kids for mocking the more extreme and nonsensical beliefs. That creates a mental, psychological and social division. It’s a Mean Girl tactic and technique to make a person socially divorce themselves and shun and ostracize someone else in order to be spared being made fun or, or similarly be shown that derision or hostility.

The people doing it the loudest and most subvserively tend to do it because they aren’t JUST atheist or agnostics, like normal scientifically minded individuals, but zealous atheists and secularists that have a big mind about what “society” is and means and what they want it to mean. And they abhor that religious culture that is so contrary to science and reality exists. Especially when they’d much rather those people stop existing in their own bubbles, (”Atomization”) and get on board with THEIR brand of culture, society and, dare I say, revolution.

So they publicize and shame the religious by showing every potentially inbred, belligerent, anti-science yokel from a small community where a religious culture is the norm of the territory by embarrassing them, they put it in the news to create this image of a basis and normalty. “Look at how stupid and anti-intellectual the seedy underbelly of the US of A’s culture is!”

When in reality, that’s the sign of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism does not mean, “a bunch of different cultures that also fit your neat ideas of reality.” Some cultures, despite what your cultural relativism says to you, really are that stupid. And guess what? Many of them would make their new home a lot like the failed or inadequate idea of home, if they could.

Multiculturalism is not, “we’re all different but we all believe the same things!” Multiculturalism doesn’t even necessarily mean all cultures will cease being based on imaginary shit and only pull from objective, measurable reality. When you shame an outlying religious community for their asinine beliefs and then try to use the broad strokes to negatively portray the land they live in as dangerously unhinged psychopaths purely based on what the outliers believe, you lose any and all credibility when you defend corrupt religious nations like Pakistan or Taliban era Afghanistan.

The, “War on Science” is a lot like the War on Christmas. In that, neither are quite happening in quite the same way the people crying about them are saying.

If you asked a person that voted more left-wing or liberal, they might say the US was full of religious kooks that vote contrary to reason or science. That they think with their egos, not their rational brains, and that the only thing that has stopped them from destroying everything is exploitative greed and/or sadism.  They imagine people that disagree with them as effectively screaming, shit throwing chimpanees wearing papal gowns and beating people with scaramental candle holders.

If you asked a person that voted more right-wing or conservative that also happened to believe the hooey about the US being a “blessed Christian nation,” they might say that “liberals’ (an umbrella term used by these types) are waging a war on North America’s religious Christian traditions and culture. Firstly by trying to disentangle Christian participation in public schools, such as getting rid of Christmas decorations, holiday songs, even cutting snowflakes and stuff. Not in any display of multiculturalism, but simply to eliminate “respecting establishment of religion” in a secular public school environment.

By trying to stigmatize “Merry Christmas” as unwanted and uncalled for, the product of assuming if you’re wished one, they assume the recipient is inherently Christian, and that’s either annoying or offensive depending on the religion of the recipient. Borderline hate speech, if the recipient is a member of a religious faith or culture that sees such well wishing to be heretical.

Both of these examples are of people with a vested interest in painting your perceptions of the issue from a position of bias. Both of these examples have elements where they are correct in all the wrong ways and incorrect in all the right ones.

The truth is that the US also has a problem with smarmy assed people that rue the power of the religious communities and would give anything if only they could find some legal avenue to make them go away, short of going out and firebombing churches in high profile. Some way to disincentivize going to church, to get observation of religious culture and beliefs to have the communal aspect removed from them in order to be acceptable, since they view the entire concept of culture and society to be the sole domain of secularism, and religious community is seen as a stumbling block, opponent or even a danger to their preferred majority society.

We seldom get to hear about these ones outside the context of an angry religious idiot harping on about, “them godless li-bur-awls.” That doesn’t mean these people that are just jealous they bow at the altar of a different god aren’t the secular, dogmatic yuppies and shit. It just means the reason they’d specify as to why they have a problem with them gets stuck in their own personal bias and perspective. From their view, erroneous as it is, the United States was a country created by the will of God and ordained for a purpose (it wasn’t) and to divorce God and Christianity from dominance in the United States is to deliberately be spitting in the face of god and trying to destroy the world.

Outwardly, that sounds crazy and stupid. And it is. But just because that guy is crazy, egotistical and stupid does not make the objectives, reasons and goals of the person doing it noble, reasonable or even beneficent. Not even by comparison.

Socialists and communists style themselves as The Scientists, The Thinkers, The Creatives. Which is why so many of them wind up burnt out, addicted to drugs and miserable, while going nowhere. They share many of the same ideological trappings as creationist Americans. They do not share much of the same peace of mind as the simple minded religious folk that everything happens in some grand plan or because some beneficient deity willed it.

American socialists/communists desire a more unified and singular society and culture that does not bow its thought processes to religion. Which isn’t to say that it bows to science, just that it doesn’t bow to other religions and disagree. For you see, the major failing of socialist/communist culture is that it sees itself as THE way fashioned and formed by objective science. At the same time and in the same breath they fashion their own proposed solutions to problems based on the ideals and “theories” (opinions, editorials) of social science. Which ultimately are just arbitrary crap from people produced with degree granted institutionally provided papers of authority they believe gives them more credibility and justification to run their mouths, because they’re “valid to society.”

They do not see the inherent contradiction of hating religious and theocratic institutions for doing the same bogus shit, just under the pretense of a creationist shared myth. In fact, they view the shared myth and everybody believing the same shit with veneration and ideals. They just don’t want people believing rival or opposing things to their Grand Society.

God and the different religious communities, to them, aren’t a bunch of different cultures we all need to make room for and tolerate and appreciate and let live. They’re rival oppositional sources of competition for society’s attention. The only use this particular brand of secular dogmatist has for religious multiculturalism is to break up the homogenuity of a small community without dirtying their reputations or even having to lie about their intentions when they try to derail the inertia of celebrating things like religious holidays in those small, homogenuous communities defined by their populations and people.

They’d rather drive to get a number of similarly devout religious people, toss them into the same population, and not only make the established population fight for dominance, but deal with the incoming sects trying to use secular, neutral civic government as a bat to disentangle things like Town Christmas Parties from being acceptable, community gathering things.

The people conspiring and trying their hardest to inflate and magnify the expanse and reach and power of the religious right, the supposed anti-intellectualism they see as so base and prevalent in the United States, are simply covetous of the useful idiots in the Christian pews, when they could be useful idiots in yoga class, or gazing into crystals and inhaling incense fumes and doing irresponsible amounts of shrooms. Anything but being part of a coherent and established mainstream religion or religious culture and anything but a cloistered off community that differentiates itself with space and partitions itself with ideas.

And given the predatory, condescending, often “ends justify the means, by any means necessary”, culturally predatory way these types conduct themselves, using psychology, social psychology, institutions of state and interpersonal relationships to peel away the onions of misc. groups identities, try to force them down specific lines of social thought using the bridge of modernity as the means to reach them, I simply cannot mention the US’s supposed “War on Science” without also explaining that these people have been deliberate agitators in the debate between the place of religion, faith and society and secularism in the US since at LEAST the rise of communism across the US, if not the rise of anarchism in Europe.

The argument of the war on science is not, “polite and civilized society desperately trying to calm down a schizophrenic and make them take their anti-psychotics.” The war on science is more like a corrupt psychiatrist that detests the local church and would rather not just own the property the church is built on, but disestablish the entire religious community, chemically treat and psycho-condition the flock to feel (not think) the same way the psych does, and have them operate in the way he (or she) sees as “normal and good.” Whatever that is at any given moment, based on whatever doctrine they feel serves them.

It’s not about science. It’s about control. The fact they make the environment contested about secularism in the state and creationism in the mind and civilized society in the heart and soul of a given population or community is just good human resources and public relations nonsense. They honestly don’t give a fuck about anything but being right. The minute they don’t have competition for thoughts, out comes the Lysenkoism. The minute they don’t have to worry about shit like armed insurrection or forceful resistance, out comes the jackboots and the open shirking of legitimate channels of government. Out comes more blatant and blazen corruption.

So if you are not a fan of either extreme, you realize the status quo is simply a rapidly diminishing peaceful, middle ground. A middle ground that has been the inertia and the status quo of secular mainstream society, put in place literal centuries before you were born, maintained with temperance and discipline not by innocent cavemen that could not possibly understand the things you’ve seen and understood because they lack a modern perspective, but reasoned and civilized individuals that had more intimate schooling and treasured it all the more when they had it to spare. That they didn’t “finish off” their competition, be it religious docmatic or “li-bur-awl” anarchist/socialist, because they staunchly fought for the ability to respectfully disagree and would shut down, by force if necessary, any extreme that tried to assert itself over these values of tolerant religious secularism in government and society.

You realize that the religious people seldom can make more than even minor headwinds in even the most bumpkin and backwater of places without the next generations moving away and leaving them decaying husks, unable to properly establish themselves for long. And that while the disgusting megachurch evangelical pews of the 80s were monolithic and ridiculous, they also all but curled up and died by the turn of the century as secularism and reason and simple CHOICE allowed young parents the luxury of not forcing religion on their kids. And so, attendance dropped.

And you realize a lot of the supposed “war on science” is in fact a smear campaign levlied against a weakened religious institiution and its credibility and justification for existing in a modern society. Designed like putting the poor, simple fool in stocks in the middle of town while some falsely compassionate jackass of a jester disingenuously asks it, “harmless questions,” only to get back vitriolic declarations of fire and brimstone and just generally behave like an irrational, angry poked bear. So the faux-intentioned performer can shrug helplessly and go, “Eh, religious nuts, what can ya do?” before mourning how anti-intellectual and misplaced our values are, pumping so much money into national defense and so little into secular, federated, public education.

And as much as you may despise the preacher being socially and mentally flogged and made to look like an idiot, a loose and unhinged cannon, a danger to themselves, others and every impressionable child they are allowed to bark mythical nonsense at, the people behind the camera, the people directing where the camera looks, the people arranging this “interview” to show and bring out the worst in the targeted, vetted mark, are just as insidious and disgusting as the Holy Rollers extorting millions from dying old people that want to buy their way into heaven.

And you realize the enemy that they want you to shake your head at in sadness and pity is just one enemy on that stage. One easily spotted wolf in sheep’s clothing that lures the gullible, the mentally troubled, the simple, the emotionally unwell and looking for purpose, structure and community belonging to function.

And the other is so slick and sneaky, you don’t even notice they exist. Their campaign to embarrass the predatory they see as their competition so organic and well orchastrated and asymmetrical, they don’t even get their name dropped. The nature of the relationship is not mentioned. Their presence, obfuscated unless you know what to look for or suspect conflict of interest behind it.

And this predator vying for the pews and the flocks from the religious authority? Here’s the biggest kicker of all.

They wage their own war on science, too. By labeling their religion as ‘social science,’ and demanding when hard, empirical, objective, physical or biological science butt heads, it is social science that gets to dominate, get priority and interpret other science based around the social science. Based on what? Abstracts and constructs in law and philosophy that say to not do so would be a violation of civil rights and protections. To NOT give them ideological right of way is oppression of other people.

The American war on science is not limited to fire and brimstone spewing megachurch preachers. It’s in the heart and on the face of every horn rimmed glasses wearing, “quirky hair dyed and dyke short cut”, “nonbinary and politically ‘kweer’“, hammer and sickle flag waving asshole, as well.

Both want to destroy culture and philosophy which are not their own. Both want to dominate how government works and why it functions and how. Both want to dictate what is right and wrong based on ideology. Only one observes an organized creationist myth, though the other may harbor some arbitrary individual “spiritualism” if they’re particularly narcissistic or crazy.

But explaining this takes a lot of time, space and breath, and, well... saying it is one thing, proving it is another.

Thems my thoughts. I hope they help in some small way.

[understanding-of-hl]

"Kabul, Gaza and Geneva."

- In today’s modern time, there are still ongoing conflicts around the world, in which many innocent people’s lives have perished on those conflicts that occurred in some states around the world. These conflicts leave concern on the victims of war, especially to vulnerable children, women, and the civilian population in general. These sectors that have been mentioned must be protected at all times and must not be involved in hostilities in conflicts, whether if it is an international or non-international armed conflict. Given this kind of situation, the armed conflicts in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Gaza, Palestine have similar dilemma’s on civilians being casualties in armed conflicts. The IHL condemns this kind of activity in which the civilian population is a non-combatant and must not be part of the hostilities as stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention and Additional 2 Protocols of 1977, which acknowledge the protection of civilian persons in armed conflict. In this situation, we will explore how the Four Geneva Convention applies in Kabul and Gaza as they face ongoing conflicts.

- The Geneva Conventions are a very significant part of the IHL process. These conventions are significant in protecting persons who are no longer part of the hostilities, it includes members of the armed forces and civilian populations. The Geneva Conventions also apply to prisoners of war and the methods of warfare to be used. In the case of Gaza, the Geneva conventions are applicable in their conflict, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group continuously recruiting child soldiers. According to the report of the Jerusalem Post, (2021) young Palestinians are crawling during a military-like exercise at Hamas Summer Camp in Rafah, southern Gaza strip. The terrorist group asserts that they utilized youth to make “sacrifices”, it is a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention which protects civilian persons in war, and the Optional Protocol on the involvement of children in armed conflict. Many countries including the international community condemn the unlawful activity done by Hamas against innocent children. In Kabul, the same thing applies when children suffered violence at the hands of the Taliban. In 2020 alone, over 2,600 children were reported as killed. In terms of methods of warfare to be used, the IHL and Geneva Conventions restricts the methods of warfare to be used, such as the ban of the use of landmines and the elements of military necessity in warfare, it means there must be no greater than needed to achieve the military objective. In the case of Kabul, the Third Geneva Convention is applied to the prisoners of war, especially to the Taliban rebels.

- In terms of protecting the people caught in the conflict, the Geneva Conventions under the Third Geneva Convention and the Additional 2 protocols in 1977 protects those civilian populations against hostilities between armed forces vs rebels. Aside from civilian persons it also extends to medics (especially medics from the ICRC). The concept of “respect” provides the underpinnings of the conventions: respect for the caught up in conflict and respect and respect for his or her life and dignity. The convention also confirms and strengthens the role of the medical mission. For combatants, the First, Second, and Third Geneva Conventions are applicable to them. Those who are no longer part of the hostilities sick and wounded soldiers must be aided and cared for without discrimination, including prisoners of war. The role of the global community in this context is to abide by the rules of IHL. The international community must observe that all UN members adhere to the principles of IHL and IHRL.

[xtruss]

In Their Last Meeting Merkel Asks Putin for Help in Getting Her Out of Afghan Mess

Merkel supported the war on Iraq and presided over a German surge into Afghanistan to support Obama. Now she's asking Russia to help pressure Taliban on evacuations

— Deutsche Welle | August 21, 2021

While in the same breath telling him to free Navalyn and still maintaining the 2014 sanctions vs Germans who want to do business with Russians

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for support in rescuing local Afghan forces after the Taliban takeover.

The remarks came during Merkel’s trip to Moscow — likely the last in her capacity as chancellor as she is due to step down from politics following Germany’s general election in September.

But it also came at a time of immense global strife, just days after the Taliban’ seized control of Afghanistan, rising tensions in Ukraine, and with Russian dissidents sitting in jail

What Did They Say About Afghanistan?

The two leaders have had different ideas about the Taliban’s capture of Kabul. Merkel has described the situation as “bitter, dramatic and terrifying.”

Moscow, meanwhile, is seeking to open channels of communication with the Islamist group and appears to be looking to foster some sort of relationship with the Taliban.

Merkel called on Russia to communicate with the Taliban that there was willingness to work with the militant group on humanitarian grounds if they allow the safe evacuation of Western-allied Afghans.

“I have given information that we in Germany consider it most important to evacuate people who have worked for over 20 years for us. Those citizens of Afghanistan should receive a place to stay in Germany,” Merkel said.

Putin called on the international community to prevent the “collapse” of Afghanistan.

“The Taliban movement control almost the entire territory of the country,” he said. “These are the realities and it is from these realities that we must proceed, preventing the collapse of the Afghan state.”

Merkel also alluded, in less direct terms, to the Taliban having established facts on the ground in recent days.

What About Navalny?

“I demanded from the Russian leader that he free Navalny,” Merkel said. “And I made clear that we will keep doing that,” she said, calling the situation around Navalny “distressing.” Merkel also noted how the prior conviction had been deemed “unproportionate” by a European human rights court.

Putin has long denied ordering the poison attack and refuses to say Navalny’s name in public. He referred to his challenger as “the defendant” who was behind bars “for criminal offenses.”

“I would ask that the judicial decisions of the Russian Federation be treated with respect,” he said.

And Ukraine?

Putin asked Merkel to work toward a peaceful solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine, stressing that there was no alternative to the Minsk peace agreement.

Merkel — who is due to hold talks with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday — said there was a stalemate, and people continued to die.She added that she hoped for some progress to be made in the next few weeks.

Besides the armed conflict, Ukraine also opposes the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, fearing that it would affect its status as a gas transit country.

Putin said Russia was ready to send gas via Ukraine even after the end of their current deal, in 2024, but said Moscow needed to evaluate the scale of demand for its fossil fuel first.

“And for this, we need to get an answer from our European partners on how much they are ready to buy,” he said. “We cannot sign a transit contract if we don’t have supply contracts with our consumers in Europe.”

The End of an Era?

Despite their strong political differences, the two have managed to keep lines of communication open over the years.

Some would argue that over 16 years of Merkel’s leadership, it would have been difficult not to have fostered some type of working relationship.

The two are able to speak one another’s languages fluently and their exchanges over the years have become talking points.

— Source: Deutsche Welle

[thesun]

[24/6 7:25 ಪೂರ್ವಾಹ್ನ] Babu Anjanappa: ╭───────────────────╮

🌄 *S̴h̴u̴b̴o̴u̴d̴h̴a̴y̴ : 24 Jun/जेस्ट मासा (Thursday) ग्रीष्म ऋतू*🙏🏻

╰───────────────────╯

*Today's top News* ➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣

1. J&K leaders arrive in Delhi to attend PM’s all-party meeting. 14 leaders, including 4 ex-chief ministers of J&K, invited for an all-party meeting with PM Modi on the Union Territory on June 24.

2. Congress president Sonia Gandhi will decide on the Punjab Govt & party revitalisation by July 8-10, AICC general secretary in-charge of the state Harish Rawat said.

3. Assets worth Rs 9,371 crore belonging to fugitive businessmen Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi have been transferred to state-run banks, who suffered losses, on account of the fraud committed against them. Total assets worth Rs 18,170.02 crore has been seized by the Enforcement Directorate so far, 80% of which is the the total bank loss.

4. Union Cabinet on 23 June approved allocation of additional foodgrain under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, Phase IV for another period of five months from July to Nov 2021. Under it, 5 Kg foodgrains per person per month free of cost will be given to the beneficiaries covered under National Food Security Act .

5. National COVID-19 vaccination coverage crosses 29.46 crore mark; Recovery rate reaches 96.56%

6. Around 40 cases of the Delta Plus variant, classified as a variant of concern (VOC), have been detected sporadically in Maharashtra, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh, the Union Health Ministry said.

7. In Bihar RJD Leader of Opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav asked LJP leader & Jamui MP Chirag Paswan to join him, reminding him how Lalu Prasad had helped Ram Vilas Paswan get nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 2010 when LJP had no MP or MLAs.

8. Delhi Dy CM Manish Sisodia said that the Central govt in a letter said it has “rejected” a “proposal” for doorstep delivery of ration in the city and attacked PM Modi for it.

9. The weather forecast for today says, the National Capital Delhi is likely to have strong surface winds during daytime. The temperature will hover between 28 & 40 degrees Celsius.

10. The Karnataka govt on 23 June set in motion the process to conduct the Secondary School Leaving Certificate Examination or the 10th standard examination in third week of July by releasing the standard operating procedure (SOP) for teachers.

11. Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College & General Hospital, popularly known as Sion Hospital has thanked Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan for providing critical infrastructure worth almost Rs 1.75 crore, including class 1 ventilators

12. An unidentified terrorist gunned down in encounter between terrorists and security forces at Shirmal area of Shopian in J&K

13. Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is set to back in action.

Defence sources said that new missile, a variant of Agni-I, will be flight tested from a defence facility off Odisha coast between June 28 - 29. Initially christened as 'Agni Prime', the missile will have a strike range of 1000 km to 1500 km.

14. Four theatre commands likely to be raised by year-end. The four commands planned are air defence command, maritime theatre command, integrated eastern theatre command and integrated western theatre command. Chief of Defence Staff Gen Bipin Rawat held extensive deliberations with the Vice Chiefs of the three services and senior officials of the defence ministry to iron out differences on setting up of theatre commands.

15. It was expected that PM Modi would make an announcement on the creation of the commands, which would be the biggest reorganisation of the Indian armed forces since Independence, and the commands were likely to be raised by year-end.

*✈INTERNATIONAL NEWS*

1. The Indian Navy will get three MH-60 Romeo helicopters in July this year, out of 24 MH-60 “Romeo” multi-mission heavy-duty helicopters, these are equipped with multi-mode radars & night-vision devices as well as armed with Hellfire missiles, MK-54 torpedoes and precision-kill rockets, it was the Rs 15,157 crore

contract inked with the United States.

2. Indian Navy and Indian Air Force (IAF) are participating in a Passage Exercise with US Navy’s Carrier Strike Group (CSG) Ronald Reagan which is transiting through Indian Ocean Region (IOR) from June 23-24, 2021.

3. India is pushing for a comprehensive ceasefire in Afghanistan amid a massive spike in violence in that country and reports of its contact with the Taliban for the first time in the backdrop of a renewed push for the Afghan peace process.

4. Russia is offering the Indian Army a comprehensive upgrade of the Dragunov sniper rifle in service with almost all frontline battalions, with a demonstration planned next month.

5. Last week, the Border Security Force arrested a Chinese national identified as Hun Junwei close to the Bangladesh border in Malda.Investigations so far have revealed that he was involved in cyber fraud and alleged acts threatening national security. He also said that several agencies of China are trying to hack various websites of the Indian govt including those under the Ministry of Defence. He was possessing an Indian identity card and Aadhaar card with him.

6. Pakistan continues to “provide pensions to dreaded and listed terrorists” and host them in its territory, India said at the United Nations. The remarks were made by Pawankumar Badhe, first Secretary, Indian Permanent Mission in Geneva at the 47th Session of the United Nations Human Right Council (UNHRC).

7. Air France to commence Paris-Chennai weekly flight from June 26 under air bubble pact.

8. India reaffirmed its commitment towards eliminating educational inequalities at G20 Education Ministers meeting held in Italy virtually. Addressing the meeting, Minister of State in the Education Ministry Sanjay Dhotre reiterated the country’s commitment towards reducing and eventually eliminating educational poverty, inequalities and early school leaving.

*🌎WORLD NEWS🌍*

1. The Communist Party of China will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding this July. The Communist Party of China was founded in 1921 by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao, with the help of the Far Eastern Bureau of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), who seized power in Russia after the 1917 October Revolution, and the Far Eastern Secretariat of the Communist International.

2. A Russian military ship fired warning shots at a British Royal Navy destroyer after it entered Russian waters in the Black Sea. The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender briefly sailed through territorial waters off the coast of the disputed territory of Crimea.

3. A sudden Bomb Blast took place Outside the Wanted Mumbai blasts master mindTerrorist Hafiz Saeed's House In Lahore; 3 killed and 20 Injured.

4. The US military could slow down its withdrawal from Afghanistan due to the gains made by the Taliban insurgents.The situation in Afghanistan changes as the Taliban continue to conduct these attacks and to raid district centres as well as the violence.

5. Face masks to no longer be compulsory in Italy from 28 June: Health Minister Roberto Speranza said. By June 28, experts predict all of Italy will be classified a "white" zone.

6. Bangladesh railway has suspended all trains operating to and from Dhaka in view of the current COVID situation in the country.

*🚣🚴🏇🏁🏊Sports:*

1. WTC Final: New Zealand beat India by 8 wickets to win inaugural World Test Championship.

IND vs NZ Cricket

Final test, The Rose Bowl, Southampton,

INDIA. 1ST INN

217/10. (92.1) RR 2.35

2ND INN. 170 /10

(73.0) 2.33

NEW ZEALAND

1ST INN

249/10. (99.2) RR 2.51

2ND INN. 140 /2

2. Indian Golfer Anirban Lahiri qualifies for Tokyo Olympics. Lahiri, a former Asia No. 1 and two-time winner on the European Tour, will be representing the country in Olympics for the second time.

3. The Indian Davis Cupper,

Ramkumar, who slipped out of the top-200 for lack of good results, is just win away from his maiden Grand Slam appearance after progressing to the final round of the Wimbledon qualifying tournament with a straight-set victory over Argentina’s Tomas Martin Etcheverry, in London, on 23 June (won 6-3, 6-4.). India's Prajnesh Gunneswaran and Ankita Raina exited from qualifier earlier.

4. England Beats Sri Lanka By 8 Wickets To Open Twenty20 Series in Cardiff. England reached its target of 130 with 17 balls to spare. Sri Lanka was limited to 129/7.

5. Men’s tennis player, Denis Shapovalov of Canada, has pulled out of Tokyo Games citing “safety reasons” due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

*USD 74.15 💷GBP 103.64*

_In Puducherry_

*🥇Gold ₹50,495©10 gm 24 (Krt)*

🥈 *Silver ₹75,700©Kg*

⛽ *Petrol ₹ 95.28*

⛽ *Diesel ₹ 91.83*

*LPG : ₹ 822/14.2 Kg*

*BSE Sensex* 52,306.08

*NIFTY* : 15,686.95

Ⓝⓐⓥⓔⓔⓝ Ⓚⓤⓜⓐⓡ

*🇮🇳Facts about India🇮🇳*

Ashoka the Great, was an Indian emperor of the Maurya Dynasty, who ruled almost all of the Indian subcontinent from c. 268 to 232 BCE. The grandson of the founder of the Maurya Dynasty, Chandragupta Maurya, and the son of Bindusara.

Ashoka waged a destructive war against the state of Kalinga (modern Odisha), which he conquered in about 260 BCE. He converted to Buddhism after witnessing the mass deaths of the Kalinga War.

The national emblem is an adaptation of the Lion Capital, originally found atop the Ashoka Column at Sarnath, established in 250 BC. ... The capital was adopted as the national emblem on January 26, 1950. It was chosen as a symbol of contemporary India's reaffirmation of its ancient commitment to world peace and goodwill

*😀Thought of the day*

Challenges make you more responsible. Always remember that life without struggle is a life without success. Don't give up and lear not to quit.

*Joke of the day*

*टीचर* - बताओ रोज बादाम खाने से क्या होगा।:

*स्टुडैंट* - बादाम खतम हो जाएंगे ।🤪🤣😂

*😳Why❓❓❓*

*Why Do We Have Eyebrows* ?

Eyebrows keeps moisture out of our eyes and for making communication.

Ever notice how your eyebrow hairs grow outward, toward the sides of your face? That helps direct any moisture away from your eyes toward the side of your head. Eyebrows can also reduce the amount of light that gets into your eyes and keep dirt away from them, too. They help us express emotions and recognize each other. Eyebrows are an important part of human expression and communication. They allow us to show our emotions. One raised eyebrow expresses skepticism or interest. Two raised eyebrows can express surprise.

Beyond looks and emotions, eyebrows are also more generally important for facial recognition. In one older 2003 study scientists asked a group of people to identify the faces of fifty famous people, such as former U.S. president Richard Nixon and actress Winona Ryder. The scientists manipulated the photos so that they’d either have no eyes or no eyebrows. Subjects could still identify the famous faces 60 % of the time when they lacked eyes.

But when the faces lacked eyebrows, subjects could identify them just 46 % of the time. Scientists said this indicates that eyebrows are just as important as — or maybe more important than — eyes in allowing us to recognize faces.

*LEARN Sanskrit*🙏🏻

*स्पंदन* : प्रतिक्रिया Recation

🤔 *How it works* ⁉

*How does snow form?*

Snow forms when tiny ice crystals in clouds stick together to become snowflakes. If enough crystals stick together, they'll become heavy enough to fall to the ground. Snowflakes that descend through moist air that is slightly warmer than 0 °C will melt around the edges and stick together to produce big flakes. Snow is defined as *solid precipitation* Precipitation falls as snow when the air temperature is below 2 °C. It is a myth that it needs to be below zero to snow. In fact, in this country, the heaviest snowfalls tend to occur when the air temperature is between zero and 2 °C.

💁🏻‍♂️ *GK TODAY*

*GOOGLE* : Global Organization of Oriented Group Language of Earth.

🐣 *BORN TODAY* : Kannadasan pronunciation (24 June 1927 – 17 October 1981) was an Indian philosopher, poet, film song lyricist, producer, actor, script-writer, editor, philanthropist, and is heralded as one of the greatest and most important lyricists in India. Frequently called Kaviarasu or Kavirajar (King of Poets), Kannadasan was most familiar for his song lyrics in Tamil films and contributed around 5000 film lyrics apart from 6000 poems and 232 books.

*Omkarnath Thakur* (24 June 1897 – 29 December 1967), was an Indian music teacher, musicologist and Hindustani classical singer.

A disciple of classical singer Vishnu Digambar Paluskar of Gwalior gharana, he became the principal of Gandharva Mahavidyalaya, Lahore, and later went on become the first dean of the music faculty at Banaras Hindu University.

🛕 *VEDIK GNAN*

🧘🏻‍♂️🧘🏻‍♀️

According to Indian philosophy, the chakras are considered the centres of spiritual power and energy within our bodies.

The word chakra literally means "wheel" in Sanskrit and symbolises the flow of energy in our body. The 7 chakras present in your body are actually energy centres and are known to regulate emotions.

Fundamentally, any spiritual path can be described as a journey from the base chakra, called the "Mooladhara," which is located at the base of the spine, to the "Sahasrar," which located at the top of the head. This journey of movement from the Mooladhara to Sahasrar is from one dimension to another. It may happen in many different ways, and various yogic practices can effect this movement.

*Muladhara* Chakra - Root Centre

*Svadhishthana* Chakra - Lower Abdominal Centre

*Manipura* Chakra - Navel Centre

*Anahata* Chakra - Heart Centre

*Vishuddhi* Chakra - Throat Centre

*Agya* Chakra - Eyebrow Centre

*Sahasrara* Chakra - Crown Centre

The vibration and energy flow of the Chakras influence our consciousness and also our physical health. Incorrect food, bad company and negative thoughts reduce or block the energy of the Chakras, which may lead to disorders of consciousness and illness of the body.

#@#@#@#@#@#@#@

We can remember name of these chakras by words (Not in order)

*MAV MASS*

Its spells just like Nav mass(9 months); it is only a trick to remember all chakras. Accordingly we can use other tricks..

🧬 *HEALTH CARE:© HOME REMEDIES*🩺

( *Note* : These home tips followed in villages/ancient traditions, it is up to you to use it or not🙏🏻)

Eucalyptus leaves/oil are a great source of antioxidants, particularly flavonoids, which protect your body from oxidative stress and free radical damage. Eucalyptus contains a compound called eucalyptol, which has been found to decrease nasal congestion, cough frequency, and cold-related headaches. It may also improve asthma symptoms, although more research is needed.

Chewing eucalyptus leafs decrease plaque buildup on teeth and signs of gum disease.

*Regards*

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*🙏PLZ FOLLOW GOVT. NORMS, MAINT SOCIAL DISTANCE, KEEP YOURSELF ©YOUR FAMILY SAFE🌼*

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[25/6 7:23 ಪೂರ್ವಾಹ್ನ] Babu Anjanappa: ╭───────────────────╮

🌄 *S̴h̴u̴b̴o̴u̴d̴h̴a̴y̴ : 25 Jun/जेस्ट मासा (Friday) ग्रीष्म ऋतू*🙏🏻

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*Today's top News* ➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣➣

1. PM Modi chaired a high-level meeting today with leaders of various political parties of Jammu and Kashmir. Detailed discussions were done on strengthening democracy in Jammu & Kashmir.

2. The former Rajya Sabha MP Ghulam Nabi Azad said that the Congress has placed five demands before the Centre. Azad, who was aided by his Congress companions Ghulam Ahmed Mir and Tara Chand, said that the meeting took place in a conducive environment and that there was no hostility. Azad also revealed that there were no restrictions in the meeting & representatives were allowed to bring up any issue speak freely without any time constraint.

3. Ghulam Nabi Azad said that

(a) Restoration of statehood is first & foremost.

(b) Conduct elections to the legislative assembly as the environment is now conducive, considering the ceasefire at LoC and the smooth conduct of DDC polls.

(c) The third demand, he said, was to restore domicile laws held by citizens of JK.

(d) Fourth is that the Centre should assist the return of Kashmiri Pandits to the valley, who have been in exile for over 30 years now.

(e) The fifth Congress demand is that political prisoners detained in the aftermath of abrogation of Article 370 should be released.

4. PM Modi said he wanted to end 'Dilli ki duri' as well as 'Dil ki duri' with J&K which has been witnessing prolonged spell of militancy and unrest.

5. Karnataka High Court granted interim relief to Twitter India's Managing Director Manish Maheshwari, directed Ghaziabad Police not to take any coercive steps against him till June 29. Twitter India's Head Manish Maheshwari, who was summoned by the Ghaziabad Police in connection with a probe related to the assault of an elderly Muslim man there recently, did not appear before them as the Karnataka high court restrained police from initiating coercive action against him.

6. The Ghaziabad Police on June 15 booked, Twitter Communications India, news website The Wire, journalists Mohammed Zubair and Rana Ayyub, besides Congress leaders Salman Nizami, Maskoor Usmani, Shama Mohamed and writer Saba Naqvi. They were booked over the circulation of a fake video in which the elderly man, Abdul Shamad Saifi, claims he was allegedly thrashed by some young men who also asked him to chant 'Jai Shri Ram' on June 5. The police said the video was shared to cause communal unrest and to create disturbance.

7. The Govt of India, Govt of Mizoram & the World Bank have signed a USD 32 million Mizoram Health Systems Strengthening Project to improve management capacity and quality of health services in Mizoram. The project will strengthen the governance & the management structure of the Department of Health + Family Welfare and its subsidiaries.

8. Pratham Pooja of Shri Amarnathji Shrine was performed on 24 June by Shri Nitishwar Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, he said that since the Yatra this year has been cancelled due to the current COVID-19 pandemic situation, the Shrine Board however is committed to carry out all religious rituals as per past practice.

9. The weather forecast says, the National Capital Delhi is likely to have thunderstorms with rain. The temperature will hover between 29 and 37 degree Celsius.

10. *What Is The Delta Plus Variant?* The Delta variant of COVID-19 or the B1.617.2 highly transmissible variant of concern (VOC). Later, the highly transmissible variant of Sars-CoV-2 mutated further into Delta Plus of AY.1 lineage. The new strain Delta Plus contains a K417N mutation in its spike protein, which has been formally designated B.1.617.2.1

11. Andhra Pradesh Inter, SSC exams 2021 cancelled, results to be based on internal assessment. The decision will impact nearly 15 lakh students who registered for AP Board Exams.

12. The Delhi Police has arrested 4 college students from Kargil in connection with a low-intensity blast that took place near the Israel embassy on January 29 no injuries were reported.

13. Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank will be virtually interacting with students at 4 pm on Friday on evaluation of CBSE board examinations.

. Now readers can use below links to get daily news directly.