#afghanistan inquiry

[thoughtlessarse]

The UK Minister of State for Veterans’ Affairs Johnny Mercer is seeking to challenge a legal decision compelling him to hand over the names of those who told him about alleged war crimes by UK special forces in Afghanistan. The “Independent Inquiry relating to Afghanistan”, which opened last October at the Royal Courts of Justice in London—and at which he appeared last month—has been hearing evidence of scores of unlawful killings carried out by British special forces in Afghanistan, as well as the deletion of electronic confirmation of these war crimes and whitewashing through internal inquiries. Mercer told the inquiry that he believed members of the Special Air Service (SAS) had engaged in dozens of unlawful killings of Afghan civilians during night raids between 2010 and 2013. He repeatedly refused to hand over names of the “multiple officers” who he claimed had told him about allegations of the killings by UK forces and their cover-up. Among the claims made by Mercer was that he received a direct account from a serving member of the Special Boat Service (SBS) of being asked to carry a “drop weapon”, which Mercer explained were non-NATO weapons carried by UK Special Forces units that could be planted on the body of those killed during a mission. This is used to justify the killing on the grounds that the unarmed victim had posed a threat to military personnel. Former soldier Mercer also told the inquiry he had gradually become aware of the SAS allegations on his last tour of Afghanistan in 2010 and then been given two specific warning by former colleagues—one a senior officer—in 2017 after he had become an MP. In refusing to disclose the names of his sources, Mercer told the inquiry: “The one thing you can hold on to is your integrity and I will be doing that with these individuals,” adding “The simple reality at this stage is, I’m not prepared to burn them—not when, in my judgement, you are already speaking to people who have far greater knowledge of what was going on.”

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Lock him up!

[immaculatasknight]

The plight of Canadian veterans

[treblrebl]

Cam - The Unsung

Booth should add Cam's name to his list of saints. That woman has one HELL of a thankless job as the administrator of the Medico-Legal lab. The irony of her position is that the better she does her job, the less it looks like her position is needed. And being the calm, steady one in a team full of highly individualistic, radical personalities means that her own specialized intelligence often gets ignored. When you have 'works-on-a different-plane-of-thought' Brennan, affable-yet-utterly-mad scientist Hodgins, and queen-of-lateral-thinking Angela on your team, your astute leadership skills and pathological expertise are not given their due importance.

Which is a bloody travesty. The Medico-Legal lab's job is not only to determine the truth, but also to make certain that the analysis can be utilized and presented successfully in court. Before Cam, the team was essentially a group of genius scientists working on individual remains on an as-is basis. Booth was correct in Season 2 when he told Brennan that Cam's objective is to ensure a successful prosecution. And in order to safeguard the findings of the team from being thrown out on a legal technicality, she is bound by the rules of the Justice Dept, the FBI and the Jeffersonian board. It sucks that time and again her team chastise her for doing so.

I mean the poor woman was treated like a traitor by her team for not lying to the authorities when Brennan was framed by Pelant. I mean, sure Angela, Cam should just lie about the evidence implicating Brennan. It's not like evidence in murder cases has a long chain of custody, and any fudging would be soon discovered. It's not as though Cam wouldn't immediately nuke her career and possibly her freedom by actively sabotaging a Federal murder inquiry.

And look - I love Hodgins but I'm surprised how fans of the show either ignore or simply brush over the times he blatantly uses his financial privilege without considering the ramifications to other people. I mean seriously, do we really think he would be so free to full off half his shenanigans if he wasn't the last scion of the Cantilever group, and thus enjoyed donor privilege? He regularly swipes items from other departments and exhibits, often without approval. He brews alcohol in Jeffersonian owned instruments and sets off minor explosions. His intentions are never ever malicious, and he is genuinely an adult version of the boy who loved to take everything apart to see how things worked. But let's face it - ANY other person would have faced severe consequences for these actions. Remember the Founder's Day party? It would have been Cam's job to take the heat for the decimated Mexican succulents and unauthorized drinking in the workplace. I wonder just how much she's shielded her team from - and whether she's ever been acknowledged.

Gods even in the episode where Wendell comes back after his chemo and lets Cam know that he takes medical marijuana to deal with the pain - did she have ANY recourse but to let him go? She stuck her neck out for Finn but Caroline bulldozed her, and with justifiable reason. She was stuck between the same rock and hard place with Wendell. And wow, the way Angela and Hodgins immediately painted her as a moustache twirling villain laughing at Wendell's pain infuriated me. They should realize how hypocritical their stance is - after all when Brennan left for Maluku and Booth for Afghanistan they had a proper cause and mission. Hodgins and Angela left simply because they could, and because they didn't want to put in the effort of breaking in a new team, however temporarily. Cam was left in the dust.

So here's to Camille Saroyan - woman of infinite patience, empathy and the ability to handle rambunctious adults. May she one day get the recognition she deserves.

[collapsedsquid]

Former members of the SAS, the army's elite special forces regiment, have now told Panorama that they believe the veto outlined in the SOP document represents a clear conflict of interest for UK Special Forces. The veto gave special forces decision-making power over applications at a time when a public inquiry in the UK was investigating allegations that SAS soldiers had committed war crimes on operations in Afghanistan where the Triples units were present.

Can't allow any immigrants in (they might know about the death squads)

[dragoneyes618]

"[W]hen the US attacked a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan in 2015, killing 42 civilians, the mistake led to an inconsequential inquiry. When Israel takes over a Gaza hospital that it thinks is a terror hub, it must fear a disastrous loss of legitimacy for not instantly exposing Hamas activity at the site. A mere truckful of RPGs in the hospital car park won't do; the media demand a Hamas command center, or else Israel is a war criminal."

- Gedalis Guttentag, Mishpacha Magazine, Issue 987, page 64, November 21

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Matt Johnson

Summary

Christopher Hitchens was for many years considered one of the fiercest and most eloquent left-wing polemicists in the world. But on much of today’s left, he’s remembered as a defector, a warmonger, and a sellout-a supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who traded his left-wing principles for neo-conservatism after the September 11 attacks. In How Hitchens Can Save the Left, Matt Johnson argues that this easy narrative gets Hitchens exactly wrong. Hitchens was a lifelong champion of free inquiry, humanism, and universal liberal values. He was an internationalist who believed all people should have the liberty to speak and write openly, to be free of authoritarian domination, and to escape the arbitrary constraints of tribe, faith, and nation. He was a figure of the Enlightenment and a man of the left until the very end, and his example has never been more important. Over the past several years, the liberal foundations of democratic societies have been showing signs of structural decay. On the right, nationalism and authoritarianism have been revived on both sides of the Atlantic. On the left, many activists and intellectuals have become obsessed with a reductive and censorious brand of identity politics, as well as the conviction that their own liberal democratic societies are institutionally racist, exploitative, and imperialistic. Across the democratic world, free speech, individual rights, and other basic liberal values are losing their power to inspire. Hitchens’s case for universal Enlightenment principles won’t just help genuine liberals mount a resistance to the emerging illiberal orthodoxies on the left and the right. It will also remind us how to think and speak fearlessly in defense of those principles.

--

Introduction

First Principles

In the introduction to his 1993 collection of essays For the Sake of Argument, Christopher Hitchens affirmed his commitment to the left: “Everyone has to descend or degenerate from some species of tradition,” he wrote, “and this is mine.” Hitchens’s political trajectory is often presented as a story of left-wing degeneration. His career was “something unique in natural history,” as former Labour MP George Galloway put it: “The first ever metamorphosis from a butterfly back into a slug.” After Hitchens abandoned socialism and all other formal political allegiances, his critics say he became a fulminating reactionary, a neocon warmonger, and a dreary cliché: the defector, the sellout, the predictable left-wing apostate.

The standard left-wing narrative about Hitchens is that he exchanged his socialism for some species of neoconservatism. After many years as a left-wing dissident in Washington, DC, he took the side of the U.S. government when it launched the most maligned war since Vietnam. Sure, he said a few sensible things about the excesses and contradictions of capitalism in his days as a Marxist, established himself as the most lacerating critic of U.S. foreign policy in the American media, and did more to put an asterisk next to Henry Kissinger’s reputation than just about any other writer. But this long radical resume is now just a footnote in what many on the left view as a chronicle of moral and political derangement—the once-great left-wing polemicist becoming an apologist for the American empire. On this view, if the left has anything to learn from Hitchens, it’s strictly cautionary.

From socialist to neocon. It was an irresistible headline because it’s a story that has been told over and over again—according to many authorities on the left, butterflies have been morphing back into slugs since the dawn of natural history. The novelist Julian Barnes called this phenomenon the “ritual shuffle to the right.” Richard Seymour, who wrote a book-length attack on Hitchens, says his subject belongs to a “recognisable type: a left-wing defector with a soft spot for empire.” Irving Kristol’s famous description of a neoconservative is a liberal who has been “mugged by reality,” which implies a reluctant and grudging transition from idealism to safe and boring pragmatism. By presenting Hitchens as a tedious archetype, hobbling away from radicalism and toward some inevitable reactionary terminus, his opponents didn’t have to contend with his arguments or confront the potentially destabilizing fact that some of his principles called their own into question.

Hitchens didn’t make it easy on the apostate hunters. To many, he was a “coarser version of Norman Podhoretz” when he talked about Iraq and a radical humanist truth-teller when he went on Fox News to lambaste the Christian right: “If you gave Falwell an enema,” he told Sean Hannity the day after Jerry Falwell’s death, “he could be buried in a matchbox.” Then he gave Islam the same treatment, and he was suddenly a drooling neocon again. He called for the removal of Saddam Hussein and the arrest of Kissinger at the same time. He endorsed the War on Terror but condemned waterboarding9 and signed his name to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA) for warrantless wiretapping. He defied easy categorization: a socialist who spurned ideology, an internationalist who became a patriot, a man of the left who was reviled by the left.

The left isn’t a single amorphous entity—it’s a vast constellation of (often conflicting) ideas and principles. Hitchens’s style of left-wing radicalism is now out of fashion, but it has a long and venerable history: George Orwell’s unwavering opposition to totalitarianism and censorship, Bayard Rustin’s advocacy for universal civil rights without appealing to tribalism and identity politics, the post-communist anti-totalitarianism that emerged on the European left in the second half of the twentieth century. Hitchens described himself as a “First Amendment absolutist,” an echo of historic left-wing struggles for free expression—from Eugene V. Debs’s assertion of his right to dissent during World War I to the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Hitchens argued that unfettered free speech and inquiry would always make civil society stronger. When he wrote the introduction to For the Sake of Argument in 1993, he had a specific left-wing tradition in mind: the left of Orwell and Victor Serge and C.L.R. James, which simultaneously opposed Stalinism, fascism, and imperialism in the twentieth century, and which stood for “individual and collective emancipation, self-determination and internationalism.”

Hitchens believed “politics is division by definition,” but his most fundamental political and moral conviction was universalism. He loathed nationalism and argued that the international system should be built around a “common standard for justice and ethics”—a standard that should apply to Kissinger just as it should apply to Slobodan Milošević and Saddam Hussein. He believed in the concept of global citizenship, which is why he firmly supported international institutions like the European Union. He didn’t just despise religion because he regarded it as a form of totalitarianism—he also recognized that it’s an infinitely replenishable wellspring of tribal hatred. He opposed identity politics because he didn’t think our social and civic lives should be reduced to rigid categories based on melanin, X chromosomes, and sexuality. He recognized that the Enlightenment values of individual rights, freedom of expression and conscience, humanism, pluralism, and democracy are universal—they provide the most stable, just, and rational foundation for any civil society, whether they’re observed in America or Europe or Iraq. And yes, he argued that these values are for export.

Hitchens believed in universal human rights. This is why, at a time when his comrades were still manning the barricades against the “imperial” West after the Cold War, he argued that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should intervene to stop a genocidal assault on Bosnia. It’s why he argued that American power could be used to defend human rights and promote democracy. As many on the Western left built their politics around incessant condemnations of their own societies as racist, exploitative, oligarchic, and imperialistic, Hitchens recognized the difference between self-criticism and self-flagellation.

One of the reasons Orwell accumulated many left-wing enemies was the fact that his criticisms of his own “side” were grounded in authentic left-wing principles. When he argued that many socialists had no connection to or understanding of the actual working class in Britain, the observation stung because it was true. Orwell’s arguments continue to sting today. In his 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” Orwell criticized the left-wing intellectuals who enjoy “seeing their own country humiliated” and “follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong.” Among some of these intellectuals, Orwell wrote: “One finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries.”

Hitchens observed that many on today’s left are motivated by the same principle: “Nothing will make us fight against an evil if that fight forces us to go to the same corner as our own government.” This is a predictable manifestation of what the American political theorist Michael Walzer calls the “default position” of the left: a purportedly “anti-imperialist and anti-militarist” position inclined toward the view that “everything that goes wrong in the world is America’s fault.” As we’ll see throughout this book, the tendency to ignore and rationalize even the most egregious violence and authoritarianism abroad in favor of an obsessive emphasis on the crimes and blunders of Western governments has become a reflex on the left.

Much of the left has been captured by a strange mix of sectarian and authoritarian impulses: a myopic emphasis on identitarianism and group rights over the individual; an orientation toward subjectivity and tribalism over objectivity and universalism; and demands for political orthodoxy enforced by repressive tactics like the suppression of speech. These left-wing pathologies are particularly corrosive today because they give right-wing nationalists and populists on both sides of the Atlantic—whose rise over the past several years has been characterized by hostility to democratic norms and institutions, rampant xenophobia, and other forms of illiberalism—an opportunity to claim that those who oppose them are the true authoritarians.

Hitchens was prescient about the ascendance of right-wing populism in the West, from the emergence of demagogues who exploit cultural grievances and racial resentments to the bitter parochialism of “America First” nationalism. And he understood that the left could only defeat these noxious political forces by rediscovering its best traditions: support for free expression, pluralism, and universalism—the values of the Enlightenment.

The final two decades of Hitchens’s career are regarded as a gross aberration by many of his former political allies—a perception he did little to correct as he became increasingly averse to the direction of the left. He no longer cared what his left-wing contemporaries thought of him or what superficial labels they used to describe his politics. Hitchens closes Why Orwell Matters with the following observation: “What he [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that ‘views’ do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think; and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.” This is a book about how Hitchens thought—and what today’s left can learn from him.

==

It's still worth saving.

[itookyoudown]

Are you still doing DVD commentary? Cause if so I would like to request the Entirety of blood work please? I tried to see if you'd done it or been asked about it but couldn't find....

“Where’d you serve?” Tim smiles, tight-lipped. “And where’d you die?”

Colt grins back. “A field in Helmand.”

Both the shady tree line and the pair of shades on his face protect him. Wards off the sun’s judgmental glare. And hides his eye color, red as the poppies where he fell.

“Who’s your maker?”

Colt chuckles and shows off his fangs. “You looking for one?”

“Not quite.” 

The cowboy werewolf returns, interrupting their little chit-chat. Tim smiles at the alpha with dull teeth. Obeys the alpha’s call to leave with moon-struck eyes. They’re pack. 

Raylan Givens’ sidekick? More like his bitch.

Of course! This ask game has been a lot of fun, I'll answer whatever anyone sends my way.

I'm so happy you brought this one up. I haven't gotten to really speak about this fic. March Madness drabble event my beloved! I'm still so thankful to @sublightsleeper to hosting it for us.

I love love LOVE paranormal/supernatural/urban (or rural) fantasy AUs and the setting/themes of Justified lend so well to the genre so I instantly knew I wanted to do something with vampires or werewolves.

I went with a Colt POV because I decided to experiment with a character I'd never written before and thought a drabble would be a great way to test out his headspace.

“Where’d you serve?” Tim smiles, tight-lipped. “And where’d you die?” Colt grins back. “A field in Helmand.” Both the shady tree line and the pair of shades on his face protect him. Wards off the sun’s judgmental glare. And hides his eye color, red as the poppies where he fell.

The opening of this was really tricky to write. I ended up re-writing the dialogue a few times because it was important to me that Colt and Tim actually have a conversation. I thought Tim's inquiry about where Colt served in canon would be a great way to jump into it without having to lay down any scene setting.

Every word counted for this challenge so I had to treat each one as a precious commodity lol.

Tim being tight-lipped and not showing his teeth was a leftover idea I had about Tim being a vampire too. I ended up discarding that idea, but I left this detail in as I enjoyed it as an early hint that Tim is hiding something AKA the implication that he and Raylan are sleeping together.

Helmand, of course, is the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. I debated between Colt dying in Helmand VS Korangal for quite a while. I went with Helmand in the end as I really liked the potential symbolism options better (red for poppies/opium/drugs/addiction, red for vampires, red for blood, red for war). Also yes, the implication here is supposed to be that Colt's military service is different from what we got in canon he probably wasn't a cage kicker.

And of course I just liked the idea that as a vampire in this verse, Colt's use of the sunglasses helps him hide from the sun.

“Who’s your maker?” Colt chuckles and shows off his fangs. “You looking for one?” “Not quite.”  The cowboy werewolf returns, interrupting their little chit-chat. Tim smiles at the alpha with dull teeth. Obeys the alpha’s call to leave with moon-struck eyes. They’re pack.  Raylan Givens’ sidekick? More like his bitch.

I don't really technically ship Colt/Tim because, well, I am a petty and Colt's hair is TOO LONG SORRY. I like the idea of them in theory, but in practice, I just can't go through with it myself. But I'm still fascinated by the dynamic he and Tim had in the show and love to see that explored further in fic.

They are the sidekick/henchman version of Raylan & Boyd! It kills me how alike they are, they're two side of the same coin. Colt could have been Tim and Tim could have been Colt! And I wanted to throw the rarepair of Colt/Tim a bone because it is rough out there I know how that is. Colt having an attraction/interest in Tim, even if it's one-sided, is why Colt turns from friendly/flirty to aggressive and disapproving on a dime. Also hinting at potential vampire clan VS werewolf pack drama.

The final line is just a perfect call back to Colt calling Tim Raylan's sidekick in canon so I had to bring it back around and tie it into the supernatural setting. And Colt's cut down of calling Tim a bitch is just meant to highlight his jealousy that Tim has potentially been mated by werewolf Raylan.

(author commentary ask game)

[alexandriaisburning]

+003: Desert Strike EP

Addendums, Archives and Appendecies is extra, off topic writing in addition to the regular CANON FIRE entries. You can support more writing like this on Patreon.

Based on Electronic Arts’ game of the same name, Fatima Al-Qadiri’s Desert Strike EP is a “soundtrack to a virtual war”, based on her experience playing the game in her childhood home in Kuwait. But while she and her sister retreated to the virtual war, the effects of a very real war were being felt right outside her door. The Gulf War had concluded just a year earlier, and the effects of the occupation still reverberated through the country.

Based on the conflict in the Gulf, Desert Strike saw you piloting a helicopter taking down various targets under the control of a caricature of Saddam Hussein. Operation Desert Shield began shortly after development of Desert Strike began, with its development concluding shortly after the end of Gulf War. Its proximity to real war brought it a morbid sense of reality. 

For Al-Qadiri, playing Desert Strike with her sister was a way to wrestle back control of a situation that a child couldn't comprehend. A way to apply rules and order to a daily life whose routine was dissolved. 

That distant, unreal atmosphere pervades her EP. The synth backed melodies sound far away, hard to focus on through the violence of the percussion. Kick drums reverberate as if through a deserted theater, while snares mix amongst sounds of gunshots, exchanged magazines and clattering bullet casings. Mournful choirs gently fill the space, speaking for the ghosts left behind. 

Desert Strike conjures images of sub-bassments, rumbling with the sonic debris, digitally crushed gunshots mixed with real ones. It's a march through sunlight that no longer seems to brighten the day. The sound of a ticking clock that no longer tells time, not because it's malfunctioned, but because time has lost meaning to all its observers. 

At some point during the album, I always find myself drifting off, the melodies fading to the background, tracks bleeding into each other. The percussion becomes indistinguishable from the gunfire. Was that a snare drum, or a gunshot? Each cracks through my mind the same way. 

---

In an interview with The New Inquiry, Al-Qadiri mentioned she can no longer play videogames. “Every time I attempt it, I am overcome with depression. Immediate depression. Whenever I try, my skin starts to crawl, I just put it down immediately.”

It made me think about my own relationship with games. I was born at the end of the Gulf War, in Saudi Arabia, and shortly after moved to Chicago, where I'd spend most of my life. I grew up watching the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq from a distance, and hearing about the Egyptian revolution through phone calls from my father's family. I grew up experiencing war through a screen. 

The Gulf War is said to be “the first war fought through television”, with channels like CNN making their money and reputation through its coverage. It only became more true for future conflicts, as I watched the media write and rewrite events in the Middle East, twisting them into propaganda. I watched videogames tell bigger lies in higher fidelity. I spent my teenage years pointing a digital gun at people who looked like me. 

I never played Desert Strike. But I did play one of its sequels, Jungle Strike. I have vivid memories of its first level, a siege on a Washington DC that's been overrun by terrorists. Another terrifying image that was fed into the imaginations of Americans in the coming decade.

Maybe that's why Al-Qadiri's second album, Brute, resonated so much stronger with me. It's of a piece with Desert Strike--urban chaos, gunshots and distant, rumbling synths--but made of snapshots of police violence and protests. Images familiar to me here in Chicago. The heart of the "enhanced interrogation" techniques exported worldwide. A city I've seen trap protestors by raising the bridges to cut them off, shutting down train lines and raising walls of armored cops to close ranks on them. I've seen the rhetoric that justified US wars return to assure us this is the only way to keep us safe.

That distance--the gap of a few years that kept me from experiencing the Gulf War firsthand, those miles that kept me out of a Middle East toyed with by US intervention--it feels a lot smaller these days.

I keep playing war. I keep picking up the gun. But sometimes the toy looks too much like the weapon, and I find myself hesitating. 

Desert Strike EP and Brute can be listened to and purchased on Bandcamp:

[submalevolentgrace]

"After more than a decade of secrecy and silence surrounding the conduct of Australian forces in Afghanistan, in November 2020 the Brereton report shone a damning spotlight on allegations of horrific war crimes. Credible evidence pointed to Australian forces unlawfully killing 39 Afghan non-combatants, including innocent civilians. In exhaustive and sometimes redacted detail, the inquiry chronicled incident after incident of unthinkable wrongdoing – including one described as “possibly the most disgraceful episode in Australia’s military history”.

It took more than a decade for these alleged war crimes to come to light due to a pervasive culture of silence and cover-ups, including falsified reports and the planting of weapons on dead bodies. Operational reporting was “routinely embellished, and sometimes outright fabricated”, Brereton found.

In this context of secrecy and lies, whistleblowers played a critical role in uncovering the truth about what transpired in Afghanistan. Brereton thanked them in his report. Too often, he warned, “the careers of whistleblowers have been adversely effected”. Instead, the task of cultural change within the defence force required that “their careers be seen to prosper”.

Yet today, David McBride goes on trial in Canberra. No one involved in these serious allegations of war crimes identified by Brereton is yet to face prosecution. Instead, the person who is on trial – McBride – is among those who blew the whistle, highlighting deep cultural problems in the defence force years before the Brereton report."

[juancarlosphotog]

#InternationalWomensDay - #DiaInternacionalDeLaMujer Afghan women and girls are excluded from public life, they have been ordered to stop using parks, gyms, public bath houses, and banned from most areas of the workforce, together with other restrictions on their freedom of movement, in line with the authorities’ interpretation of Sharia law. / Las mujeres y niñas afganas están excluidas de la vida pública, se les ha ordenado que dejen de usar parques, gimnasios, baños públicos y se les ha prohibido la mayoría de las áreas de trabajo, junto con otras restricciones a su libertad de movimiento, de acuerdo con las autoridades. interpretación de la ley Sharia. #EverydayAfghanistan #AfghanWomenRights #IslamicEmirate #afghanistan #TalibanRule #CentralAsia #HansLucas #WomenRights #Photojournalism #JuanCarlos #2023Copyright For image licensing visit my image library www.juancarlosarchive.com or send inquiries to licensing@juancarlosphotos.com Represented by Hans Lucas @studiohanslucas (France) For image licensing visit my image library www.juancarlosarchive.com or send inquiries to licensing@juancarlosphotos.com © Juan Carlos - All Rights Reserved / Todos los Derechos Reservados (at Afghanistan) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cphrm_LuwC7/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[whatisonthemoon]

The CIA Engineers "Islamic Terrorism" in the Philippines, Forming Abu Sayyaf

Background on Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan

Abu Sayyaf is an Islamist militant group based in the Philippines. Established in the early 1990s, the group is known for its terrorist acts, including kidnappings, bombings, and beheadings. 

Today Abu Sayyaf likely has around 20 members. Maute or the Islamic State of Lanao, another Jihadist organization targeted by the Philippine government, has less than 50 members. That said, in 2017, the Philippine government led a 5-month long bombing campaign of Marawi City targeting these groups, with support from the U.S. military, including weaponry/equipment as well as advising and offering strategic guidance, and support from the UK, Australia, China, Russia, Israel, and Singapore. 95% of the structures within the 4 square kilometers of the battle were heavily damaged, with 3,152 buildings completely destroyed. This so-called "battle" left over 200,000 civilians homeless to this day. 

Though these groups had a presence in Marawi City, they were never a popular movement or recognized as integrated among the masses, and lacked the numbers to effectively wage political struggle in Marawi City, let alone in Mindanao.

Abu Sayyaf also has its own organizational origins in the CIA-funded/organized mujahideen in Afghanistan. By 1978, when the "People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan" took power through a military coup with Soviet support, establishing a "Marxist-Leninist" Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Maoists had effectively organized popular support throughout Afghanistan. The new government sought to crush these organizations and murdered thousands of Maoists during its existence.

A year after the establishment of the "revisionist" government of Afghanistan, the muhajideen were forming as scattered armed Islamist organizations.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan following Nur Muhammad Taraki, the pro-Soviet leader, being deposed and assasinated. By the end of 1979, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Though some Maoists and Communists joined the mujahideen over time, most did not and instead waged struggle against both Soviets and mujahideen. Hundreds of prominent Maoist leaders were murdered from 1978 through the 1980s, leaving the revolutionary movement often without leaders.

Through the 1980s, the United States, through the CIA, provided support to the mujahideen in Afghanistan. This assistance included funding, training, and weaponry. Many from all over the Arab Middle East, including Osama bin Laden, joined the mujahideen to combat the invading Soviet forces. 

Abu Sayyaf's origins can be traced back to some members of the mujahideen who returned to their home countries, including the Philippines, after the Soviet-Afghan war. 

While the U.S. government and its allies/lackeys have made it difficult to establish direct links between the CIA and Abu Sayyaf, figures like Senator Aquilino Pimentel have fought tooth and nail for the truth around Abu Sayyaf’s origins in the CIA. In 2001, Pimentel led an inquiry into the links between the CIA and Abu Sayyaf which shed light on the group's origins, funding, and training. While the inquiry did not conclusively establish direct CIA involvement, it highlighted the complexities of the situation and the need for further investigation. 

Jihadists prey on the oppressed people of the world, convincing devastated and desperate people that it is through their dead-end, metaphysical ideology that the evils of U.S. imperialism can be destroyed, instead of the tools of revolutionary ideology and organization, which can genuinely, materially liberate and emancipate the people. 

For generations, revolutionary women have been organizing in Afghanistan, running schools, advocating for those abused, trafficked, enslaved, etc., even taking up the gun to defend their people from the U.S. and/or Taliban, and yet women in Afghanistan continue to endure horrendous violence and human rights abuses from the patriarchal political system.  In fact, there have been generations of revolutionaries from all over Afghanistan, initiating and advancing peoples’ struggles and joining the armed struggle, taking the place of martyrs who came before them, because they believe that it is worth seeking an Afghanistan free from fascism and imperialism, even if it costs them their lives and even if it is not their generation who sees it.

And yet, the U.S. has continued to repress the Afghanistan at all costs, ensuring that women remain powerless in Afghan society, ensuring that progressive movements are terrorized and destroyed, believing it can somehow stamp out the people’s resilient and undying struggle for justice and liberation, through supporting of the mujahideen to their occupation and horrendous war crimes in Afghanistan.

It makes sense why people both in Afghanistan and the Philippines link up with these struggles, as their people have endured mass violence and even genocides under U.S. rule. As pointed out in another WIOTM post, “A recent study shows that, apart from the million direct casualties of the War(s) on Terror, over 3,000,000 people died from the conditions created by those wars.”

Jihadism has never led to the people being liberated, but has only led to further oppression and the post-Cold War bloating of the US and its allies’ Military Industrial Complex. In a very big way, Jihadism has been engineered by the U.S. government and the CIA.

Below are three articles that reveal the CIA origins of Abu Sayyaf. These articles come from varying sources, though they include information that can be easily verified and researched. One article is from the bourgeois, reactionary PhilStar, one from the progressive, pro-people Bulatlat, and one from the US-based The Socialist Worker, a newspaper of the International Socialist Organization’s, a now disbanded Trotskyist organization known for a number of abuse scandals.

These articles establish real connections, figures, and history that validate the long-held beliefs of the Filipino people in struggle, who have known of Abu Sayyaf’s imperialistic origins since near its inception. 

The Philippines "terrorists" created by CIA - Eduardo Capulong -  January 4, 2002 - The Socialist Worker

The 26 U.S. military advisers who were sent to the Philippines last year to "fight terrorism" will be targeting a group that the U.S. government helped to create.

According to various sources, Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic fundamentalist organization notorious for kidnapping tourists in southern Philippines and Malaysia, was formed and trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Philippine military.

Philippine Senator Aquilino Pimentel called for an inquiry into the link between the CIA and Abu Sayyaf--which he called a "CIA monster"--as early as May of last year. "There are now emerging bits of information that Abu Sayyaf was indeed the creation of probably the CIA in connivance with or with the support of some select military officers," he said at the time.

Meanwhile, the links between Abu Sayyaf and military and police authorities are well documented. In the recent book Under the Crescent Moon: Rebellion in Mindanao, journalists Marites Dañguilan Vitug and Glenda Gloria document the bloody collaboration--which is also corroborated by former hostages.

Last September, a number of former hostages charged that Abu Sayyaf was a front--a "creation of the military's 'dirty tricks' department." They testified that army checkpoints would allow their captors to pass unmolested repeatedly.

This is the real story behind the talk of the "fight against terrorism" in the Philippines.

Pimentel: CIA may be behind creation of Sayyaf - May 9, 2000 - PhilStar

Is the Abu Sayyaf a creation of the Central Intelligence Agency?

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel yesterday sought a Senate inquiry to answer the question.

Pimentel, who is from Mindanao, told a press conference that "bits of information" have been reaching his office indicating that the American spy agency had a hand in forming the Abu Sayyaf -- ironically, in cahoots with covert units in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

He said he had been cautious in discussing the possibility, not wanting to indiscriminately implicate the CIA in the country's political upheavals.

"Piecing bits of information together makes out a case, at least pro tanto, that the Abu Sayyaf might indeed be a creation of the CIA and had been covertly supported by select military officers during the administration of President (Fidel) Ramos," Pimentel said.

In the early 1990s, the CIA recruited members for the Abu Sayyaf, Pimentel claimed, who were then trained in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi by an elite Philippine military unit.

The Abu Sayyaf was later sent as mujahideen (holy warriors) to fight in America's proxy war against the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan. Weapons for the Abu Sayyaf came from Saudi financier Osama bin Laden, now wanted in the US for allegedly funding terrorism.

An elite Philippine military unit now operating outside the AFP's chain of command is a conduit between the CIA and the Abu Sayyaf.

For some unknown reason, CIA funding for the Abu Sayyaf was later cut off, prompting the rebels to resort to banditry, kidnapping and other crimes.

One of these criminal acts, Pimentel said, was the April 1995 Abu Sayyaf raid on the town of Ipil, Zamboanga del Sur.

If the Senate does conduct an investigation, Pimentel said they will ask former President Ramos and top military officials to testify. Although he believed that the Abu Sayyaf had already lost contact with their CIA benefactors, Pimentel said the truth must be ferreted out.

"Parenthetically, there is a new book, Browback by Chaimers Johnson, that may justify a deeper study into the affairs of the CIA in our country that have a direct relevance to the problems that the Abu Sayyaf is causing us today," Pimentel said.

Abu Sayyaf: The CIA’s Monster Gone Berserk - EDMUNDO SANTUARIO III - Bulatlat

The Philippines is under watch by America’s “anti-terrorism” network. This is so not only because of the presence of active Moro and Marxist guerrillas but also because of its special concern on the Abu Sayyaf. In the ‘80s, just as it was waging its last surrogate wars against the Soviet Union, the U.S. was also engaged in new forms of covert operations -- the training of Islamic militants to fight the Russians in Afghanistan and elsewhere. A product of this war – the Abu Sayyaf – was once hailed by American presidents as a group of “freedom fighters.” It was an exaltation that would haunt them for years.

To those who have been following the Abu Sayyaf’s exploits, the offer of military assistance by the United States government in tracking down the extremists in Mindanao (southern Philippines) has sent a chilling effect particularly among the patriotic sectors.

Related to this, similar concerns have been raised as to why despite government’s “total war” policy on the small group of bandits – whose hostage-taking spree is a purely police matter - not one of its active ringleaders has been caught. Previous suspicions that the Abu Sayyaf enjoys the protection of some top Armed Forces officials have surfaced again.

In a surprise operation last May 27, Abu Sayyaf gunmen kidnapped three Americans and 17 Filipinos from the world-class Dos Palmas resort just off Arracellis in Palawan. It was not immediately known where the new hostages were taken but the gunmen reportedly operate from the southernmost islands of Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi.

Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Sabaya on Saturday said they also took 10 fishermen hostage on their way to Basilan. The kidnapping was pulled off just barely two months after their last hostage – American Jeffrey Schilling – was freed after nine months of captivity.

In declaring a “no ransom, no negotiations” policy to the Abu Sayyaf, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered military assaults on the group’s suspected lairs and offered a P100 million (US$2 million) reward on the ring leaders’ capture, dead or alive.

Meeting Arroyo in Malacañang on May 30, U.S. Rep. Robert Underwood offered military assistance to the Philippine government’s pursuit operations against the Abu Sayyaf. Underwood, who was accompanied in his visit by U.S. Charge D’Affaires Michael Malinowski, is a member of the powerful House Armed Services Committee and was in the country to explore how military relations between the two countries can be enhanced. Malinowski had earlier pledged continued American military support to the Arroyo administration.

On the same day, U.S. State Department spokesman Phil Reeker demanded the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages, particularly Americans Guillermo Sobrero and missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham. Among the 17 Filipino hostages is construction magnate Reghis Romero, said to be the front man of former Estrada crony Mark Jimenez in the purchase of The Manila Times. The latter, who has just been elected Manila congressman, is himself wanted by U.S. authorities.

Warplanes

Since the Dos Palmas abduction, at least 12 American warplanes had been seen hovering over Puerto Princesa City in Palawan. Then on March 31, two U.S. destroyers – the USS Curts and the USS Wadsworth -- and the landing ship USS Rushmore arrived in the country with 1,200 American troops. Philippine armed forces officials squelched speculations of U.S. intervention in the hostage crisis, claiming that the American troops’ presence was in connection with ongoing war games in Palawan and Cavite.

Efforts to downplay reports that U.S. military assistance has indeed come into play in the latest hostage crisis were of no effect, however, when Press Secretary Rigoberto Tiglao himself revealed that military contacts between the two governments are ongoing. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – whose agents have been in and out of the country in connection with “terrorist” cases – was also placed on alert. Former Philippine Ambassador to Washington Ernesto Maceda also revealed that in last year’s Sipadan hostage crisis where 20 tourists were held hostage by the Abu Sayyaf, the Americans backed military and police operations through the use of high-powered satellite surveillance equipment.

‘CIA monster’

U.S. military efforts to intervene in the Abu Sayyaf hostage crisis appears to be a turnaround from their reported links to the Mindanao extremists several years ago.  In May last year, Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. described the Abu Sayyaf (“Bearer [or Father] of the Sword” in Arabic) as a “CIA monster.”

Abu Sayyaf members, Pimentel said, were initially recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency as mujahideens to fight the U.S. proxy war in Afghanistan in the ‘80s. Before their deployment, they were trained by AFP officers in Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Basilan and other remote areas in Mindanao. But the arms and funds came from U.S. covert operations connected with the CIA, Pimentel said.

The mujahideens returned to Mindanao after the Afghan war to constitute the core of the Abu Sayyaf, the Senate president added.

In his revelations, Pimentel cited the book, Blowback by Chalmers Johnson. But it was American writer John K. Cooley in his book, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, American and International Terrorism, who made “the most direct statement regarding the training and funding of the (Abu Sayyaf) by the CIA,” he said. Cooley was the Middle East correspondent for the reputable Christian Science Monitor and ABC News.

In his “Ghosts of the Past” report for ABC News in August last year, Cooley said the Abu Sayyaf, like many “international terrorists,” has its origins in the 1979-89 jihad or “holy war” to expel the Soviets from Afghanistan. Wanting to tie down the Soviets to their own little Vietnam war, the CIA recruited and trained thousands of Islamic militants to support the Afghan resistance against the Soviet invasion forces. The American quarterly Foreign Affairs reported that some 35,000 Muslim militants from 40 countries -- including the Philippines -- took part in the Afghan jihad. Related historical accounts said among the recruits was Osama bin Laden, now the U.S.’s No. 1 “terrorist enemy.”

‘Freedom Fighters’

“The CIA orchestrated massive arms shipments via Pakistan, including state-of-the-art Stinger surface-to-air missiles,” Cooley said. Three American presidents – Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush -- hailed the mujahideens as “freedom fighters,” he said.

The Abu Sayyaf, Cooley said, was the last of the seven Afghan guerrilla groups to be organized late in the war – in 1986 or three years before the Soviets withdrew. It was founded by an Afghan professor named Abdul Rasul Abu Sayyaf. And like Osama bin Laden, the group was financed by Saudi Arabia’s wealthy elite and influenced by Wahabism, an ultra-conservative form of Islam that dates back to the mid-18th century and is espoused by the Saudi royal family.

“Some of the original veterans of the Afghan jihad, and their sons and grandsons and those trained by them, have been operating with destructive effect since the 1980s from Egypt and the Philippines to Algeria and New York,” Cooley wrote.

With the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, the CIA’s powerful Pakistani partner, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), lost control of the Afghan fighting groups. The Abu Sayyaf had established a training camp north of Peshawar, Pakistan, “to train terrorists in the methods taught by the CIA and ISI,” Cooley reported. Some 20,000 volunteers were trained in the “Peshawar university” to “look for other wars to fight” including in the Middle East, North Africa, New York and the Philippines.

The Abu Sayyaf moved its operations to the Philippines ostensibly to support the war for a separate Islamic state. Emerging from these operations were two leaders – the brothers Abdurajak Janjalani, who was an Afghan war veteran, and Khaddafi Janjalani.

Early Operations

In a privilege speech in July last year, Pimentel named former Interior Secretary Rafael Alunan and then Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Guillermo Ruiz as knowing about the group’s early operations in Mindanao. He also asked the Senate to summon former President Fidel V. Ramos and ex-Defense Secretary Renato de Villa to shed light on the matter.

Pimentel also cited revelations by a police asset, Edwin Angeles, who has since died mysteriously, that the military equipped the Abu Sayyaf with vehicles, mortars and assorted firearms for its raid of Ipil in April 1995. In the raid – the group’s first large-scale action – 70 people died while 50 teachers and schoolchildren were kidnapped.

Following its “split” with the MNLF in 1991, the Abu Sayyaf resorted to illegal logging, kidnapping, bombing, looting, burning, killing and other criminal activities for its logistics and operations. So far, they have kidnapped at least 32 foreigners, including five Americans, Europeans and Asians. This does not included hundreds of other Filipino hostages, a number of whom were Catholic and Protestant priests and nuns. Some of them, including priests, were killed.

The metamorphosis of the Abu Sayyaf from “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan to sheer bandits in the Philippines is a new dark spot in the U.S.’s covert dirty tricks operations throughout the world. The CIA has created not just one Frankenstein’s monster in the mold of the Abu Sayyaf but hundreds of others who are now wreaking havoc in other parts of the world – including right in the belly of the United States itself.

But in war and in modern “counter-terrorism warfare” – which the U.S. now is eager to wage in the Philippines – there is at least one advantage that can be drawn. The anti-Soviet Afghan “resistance movement” promoted the U.S. arms industry. The U.S. may as well be doing the same thing as it embarks on a new crusade to destroy one of the “monsters” it created.

More related notes and links below about U.S. imperialist counterinsurgency in the Philippines and Afghanistan, as well as the role of the Unification Church’s network

The occupation of Afghanistan: terror without end - Dem Volke Dienen

Contrary to the regular invocations that the Afghan puppet government should be able to cope without foreign soldiers in the future, the German Armed Forces are investing another 50 million in their local infrastructure.

Minister of defence Kramp-Karrenbauer and foreign minister Maas are simultaneously criticizing Yankee imperialism for ordering its troops out of the country too quickly. The so called parlamentary opposition is again in complete agreement with the governement. "A headless, uncoordinated withdrawal of the troops would cause severe political and military damage," says FDP's Bijan Djir-Sarai. While the government is still attempting to further conceal the crushing defeat of imperialism in Afghanistan, it has recently admitted quite openly in state television. In this worthwhile report, an ARD reporter travels to Taliban areas and, to his surprise, shows girls' schools and Taliban who are not out to kill him.

The fact that the face of this occupation is not girls' schools and well-drilling has been illustrated in the twenty years of its existence by ongoing war crimes. Most recently, the Australian army had to admit that one of its special units murdered at least 39 prisoners and civilians. In this unit, the murder of a prisoner was a rite of passage for new members. According to australian officials the families of the victims are to be compensated in cooperation with the "Afghan government". However, since this government only rules over a small part of the country and corruption is commonplace, it is extremely doubtful that this money will reach victim families in Taliban areas.

Afghanistan Maoists Unite in a Single Party - a history of the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan

The new communist movement of Afghanistan initially was inspired by the formation of RIM in 1984. The Committee for MLM Propaganda and Agitation (at that time understood as Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought, MLMTT) was formed in 1985 and started publishing Shola. Another group of comrades split from SAMA and obtained, read and discussed the RIM Declaration. They went on to call themselves the Revolutionary Nucleus and adopted the RIM line. These developments were a slap in the face to SAMA's leadership, who accused the newly organising Maoist forces of being a "KGB front". RIM used these forces to make some initial efforts to deepen its understanding of the situation in Afghanistan and begin to bring together the genuine Maoist forces.

The anti-terrorism act in the Philippines in relation to the CPP and the revolutionary movement -  a 2020 piece from Jose Maria Sison

In the course of political rivalry for global hegemony, the imperialist powers themselves accuse each other of terrorism and expose each other’s acts of terrorism. States are presumed to be responsible for respecting human rights in their own countries. Thus, quite a number of them have in fact been the proper target of criticisms and appeals by UN human rights agencies regarding people’s complaints of systematic human rights violations by state or state-sponsored forces, which amount to state terrorism. The only instances when the UN comes out strongly against “state terrorism” is when the US and its allies in the UN Security Council succeed in making resolutions against states denounced as “rogue states” chiefly by the US, such as Iraq under Saddam Hussein or Libya under Muamar Qaddafi. Otherwise the US and its imperialist allies and client-states wish to limit the label of terrorism to revolutionary movements that they oppose. They make it a point to conceal US culpability for creating terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, Salafi, Al Nusra and the Islamic state in the Middle East and the Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines and other Southeast-Asia-based groups like Jemaah Islamiyah that also operate in the Philippines.

Denounce arrest of Moro women “potential suicide bombers”  - 2020 statement from Marco Valbuena, Chief Information Officer of the CPP

The claim by the military that bombs and bomb-making material were discovered in the homes of the arrested women flies in the face of military and police standard operating procedure of planting evidence against supposed terror suspects. Observers are incredulous that the women would keep explosive materials in their homes with their children.

The attacks were clearly carried out with Islamophobic prejudice where people are stereotyped by the military as “suicide bombers” or in this case “potential.” The women were targeted for arrest and suppression by the AFP on the mere basis that they are wives, sisters or daughters of leaders of the Abu Sayaff.

Two excerpts from 'Drugs and death squads: The CIA connection' from the Freeedom Socialist Power / Robert Crisman - published June 1989

The ideological tie binding all these high-level arms smugglers and dope dealers together, of course, is anti-communism.

John Singlaub is head of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), the world’s premier neo-fascist lobby. WACL’s membership ranges from U.S. reactionaries, Taiwanese drug magnates, and Latin American death squad leaders to Afghani mujahideen and unreconstructed old-line Nazis scattered in exile throughout Europe and the Americas.

WACL is the most sophisticated political expression to date of fascism’s global agenda and methods, and is the mask under which the face of U.S. ambition increasingly shows itself. WACL’s history vividly reveals the fascist essence of empire-and pinpoints the source of the Empire’s addiction to drugrunning.

Founded in Taiwan in 1967 by CIA and Taiwanese intelligence personnel, WACL has roots in the old China Lobby, which urged the unleashing of Chiang Kai-shek against revolutionary China in the ’50s. The Lobby’s leading lights — E. Howard Hunt and William Pawley to name two — were instrumental in stitching together the CIA’s Cuban exile and Kuomintang networks.

China Lobby/WACL bigwigs and their associates — Hunt, Pawley, Secord, Singlaub, Shackley, et al. — lodged themselves tightly in the postwar U.S. intelligence, military, government, and business establishments. They were the drumbeaters and spear-carriers for stepped-up anti-Castro warfare and the Vietnam war. They were responsible for coups, counterrevolutions, and the formation of death squads from Mexico to Brazil; CIA/DEA “anti-drug” torture and counterinsurgency; the Chilean slaughter; support for the Shah and rightwing Afghani “freedom fighters”; and the contra war.

The WACL and CAUSA’s Role in the Ruthless Violence of US-Philippines Counterinsurgency

Covert Operations and the CIA’s Hidden History in the Philippines

Cardinal Sin, the Catholic Church, & the Unification Church: Partners in Organized Anti-Communist Violence

Death Squads in the Philippines by Doug Cunningham

How has the Moon network played a role in the post-9/11 U.S. Imperialist strategy?

Kishi Nobusuke’s Bandung of the right

The US is complicit in war crimes in the Philippines

Grapple with Imperialism. Come to Terms with Yourself

Those Spared in Duterte’s “War on Drugs” May Go to Moonie Rehabilitation

Ideology without Leadership: The Rise and Decline of Maoism in Afghanistan - Afghanistan Analysts Network

Some words on the Moonies’/Hak Ja Han’s Relationship to the “Revisionist” Maoists of Nepal

The Complex, Dynamic, and Opportunistic Relationship of Moon and the DPRK’s Kim Family

UPF Played Major Role in Republic of Korea-Nepal Relations

Stop US and Chinese aggression in the Philippines! Turn imperialist wars into wars against imperialism!

Neil Salonen on the Freedom Leadership Foundation’s influence on society (1971)

Suggested books: Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War by Kyle Burke, Philippine Society & Revolution by Amado Guerrero (Jose Maria Sison), Soldiering through Empire: Race and the Making of the Decolonizing Pacific by Simeon Man, Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire by Jonathan M. Katz, The Bullet and the Ballot Box: The Story of Nepal's Maoist Revolution by Aditya Adhikari

[mariacallous]

Joe Biden needs to lawyer up. He’s about to see an onslaught of investigations into him, his appointees and their conduct that will now be launched by Republican-controlled congressional committees. It’s not impossible that a Republican-controlled congress could even try to push for his impeachment.

The Republicans squeaked out a bare majority in the House of Representatives this week, with a final tally of 218 Republican seats to 211 Democratic ones. The Republicans performance was abysmal compared to the predictions, with anger over abortion bans and Republican antipathy toward democracy driving voters into the Democratic tent. But the huge structural advantages of being the opposition party in a midterm election, along with some help from gerrymandered redistricting plans blessed by the Republican-majority US supreme court, pushed the Republicans over the top. Now, they are poised to use their new investigatory power in Congress to launch a slew of inquiries into the Biden administration, over matters ranging from the grave to the absurdly trivial.

Biden and his administration won’t need to commit any grave misconduct to attract this kind of official scrutiny over the coming two years. Just being Democrats will be enough; combined with the paranoia and tendency for dark conspiracies that now pervade the American right, the House Republicans are likely to assume that they’ll find something amiss in the Biden world.

Through the House Oversight and Reform Committee, the Republicans are likely to launch a slew of investigations: into the origins of Covid-19 and the lab leak theory; into immigration through the US-Mexico border and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan; and into their favorite topic of conversation, the president’s perennially slimy ne’er-do-well son, Hunter Biden. These inquiries will bloom and multiply, persisting even if they find no real evidence of wrongdoing – like old world witch hunts, or voter fraud investigations after a Democratic electoral victory.

In some sense, this is typical: oversight investigations always ramp up when Congress and the White House are controlled by different parties. But this will not be a divided government like we’ve seen in decades past, with mere gridlock and ineffectualness. This will be messier, more base; it will be degraded, and nationally embarrassing.

The conspiracy-peddling Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a rising star in the Republican party, is reportedly vying for a seat on the committee, giving some sense of the tenor that Republican investigations will take. The Republicans will now embark on a two year public attack on the Biden administration, equipped with subpoena power and the ability to command national attention.

With Speaker Kevin McCarthy desperate to control every member of his boisterous but narrow caucus, it’s likely that the Republican leadership will find themselves obliged to cater to the fringe grievances of even their most extreme members. This means that they will use their House majority to gin up controversies out of minor or imaginary misconduct, to cast aspersions on the honesty and character of Biden and his sympathizers, to suggest malfeasance where there is none, and above all, to create clips that look good on TV – the kind of 10-second snippet that can make a Republican voter angry, and which provide the quick rhythms of a 2024 attack ad.

Biden administration officials are downplaying all this. Some of them told Politico off the record that they think the investigations might even be a good thing for the Democrats. “There is a growing confidence in the White House that the House Republicans clamoring for a hodgepodge of investigations will overreach – and that their attempts will backfire politically, with key voters recoiling at blatant partisan rancor.” “It might make the base feel good,” said one White House ally, “and it’s going to give Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene something awesome to say on their live stream, but it’s not going to be what convinces suburban women in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.”

Maybe the source is right: maybe the Republicans will overreach with their oversight power, the way they overreached with election denial and abortion bans, and voters will be repulsed. But to me, this sounds like wishful thinking – or like the kind of blustering optimism that a politician would project to a reporter in order to keep the public from seeing how screwed he is.

The fact is that the Republicans have long been much more successful than the Democrats at dictating the terms of the national conversation – a disparity in skills that this past midterm cycle has only made more clear. They are bolder and more aggressive; they are almost preternaturally talented at putting the Democratic party on the defensive. The hearings that arise out of these investigations are not likely to be very substantive; they are not likely to be edifying for voters or healthy for the republic. But they’re certain to be good TV.

There are a lot of tasks that Republicans will take up as they assume their majority. They’ll obstruct the Biden agenda; they’ll stymie his foreign policy priorities; they seem determined to hold the national debt hostage in order to force drastic cuts to Social Security and Medicare, the two programs that provide support to America’s elderly. But no one should underestimate their appetite for investigations, no matter how trivial or pretextual the investigations might seem.

When Republicans assume control over the House of Representatives in January, they will form a majority coalition that is even more rancorous and punitive than they were when they last held the chamber in 2018. The Republican party has changed since Trump was forced from office. Some, like Florida governor and 2024 hopeful Ron DeSantis, seem to think that the party is ready to move beyond the cult of personality that it became in the Trump years, ready to pursue Trumpism as an ideology separate from Trump the man.

But the revolution that Trump led within the Republican party is complete. Dissenters have been purged: It’s a fully Trumpist party now, both in the sense of its extremist, anger-driven politics, and in the sense of its shameless bombast and tactical hyperbole. The Republican Congress that will now take power is one that is much less committed to democracy, and much more beholden to baseless conspiracy theories.

Above all, it is a party laser-focused on partisan grievance, in thrall to a base whose identity as Republicans, and whose hatred for Democrats, seems to compose greater and greater proportions of their psychic life. The Republicans – and their core voters – are obsessed with punishment and revenge against Democrats, an obsession that seems likely to persist even after the chastening midterms. We should expect they will use every new power this election has given them to pursue it.

[sellfurnitureonline]

Getting Results With Classifieds

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[isocertificationinfrance]

Achieving Excellence with ISO 29990 Certification for Learning Services

In today's quickly changing educational environment, the quality of learning services is critical. Organizations that provide education and training must ensure that their programmes are effective, reliable, and suit the needs of their students.ISO 29990 Certification in Afghanistan  an international standard for learning services in non-formal education and training, acts as a measure of quality and excellence in this discipline. This article discusses the importance of ISO 29990 certification, its benefits, and the steps required in acquiring it.

What are the advantages of ISO 29990 certification?

Improved Learning Services: ISO 29990 Implementation in Australia defines worldwide standards for curriculum design, delivery, and evaluation, increasing effectiveness and efficiency while ensuring consistent, high-quality educational services.

International Recognition: Obtaining ISO 29990 certification allows learning service providers to expand into new markets and opportunities while also improving their credibility and reputation on a global scale.

Increased Customer Satisfaction: Following ISO 29990 standards results in a learner-centric approach, increased satisfaction rates, repeat business, and positive referrals.

Systematic Management of Learning Services: The standard encourages a methodical approach to managing educational services, which can lead to increased efficiency, fewer errors, and opportunities for continued development.

Competitive Advantage: Compliance with ISO 29990 distinguishes suppliers in a crowded education market by ensuring clients receive high-quality educational services. This represents a key competitive edge.

What does "ISO 29990 Certification Audit" mean?

Compliance Evaluation: The audit's purpose is to verify whether the learning service provider's procedures and practices comply with all of the ISO 29990 criteria. To ensure that the provider's operations meet global quality standards, it examines numerous areas, including programme development, delivery, and evaluation.

Evaluation of Documentation and Records: ISO 29990 Audit in China Examining the organization's paperwork and records is an important part of the audit. Auditors ensure that all essential documentation, including goals, methods, policies, and verification of results, is up to date and in compliance with standards.

Observation and Interviews: Auditors also conduct on-the-job interviews and observations with personnel and management. They learn how the management system supports high-quality learning services and how the ISO 29990 standards are used in day-to-day operations as a result of this practical approach.

Finding Improvement Areas: In addition to determining compliance, the auditor's goal is to identify areas where the organization may improve. This comprises identifying discrepancies or gaps in the current management system and offering corrective recommendations to bring it in compliance with ISO 29990 standards.

How much does ISO 29990 cost?

ISO 29990 Cost in France varies depending on a number of criteria, including the nature of the service supplied, the size of the organization, the complexity of its processes, and the certifying body used. Aside from price driven by industry norms, the overall cost of gaining certification in Quality Management for Learning Services is influenced by the specific certifying body chosen and the scope of services it provides.

Where to Obtain the ISO 29990 Certification Services?

Working with a reputable consulting firm with a global reach, such as B2BECRT, is recommended when seeking ISO 29990 Registration in Bangalore. B2BECRT, a well-known auditing, consulting, and validation organization, will effectively guide you through the ISO 29990 certification process and associated standards. To contact the experts for guidance or inquiries about ISO 29990 certification, send an email to contact@b2bcert.com