the simple fact that almost 1.5 million veterans live in poverty in the United States is reprehensible. The veteran poverty rate for vets between 18 and 34 years old is higher than all other age groups. This group, of course, means that the veterans of the Gulf War and Afghanistan have higher poverty rates than other veterans.Veterans are also using food stamps in larger numbers than ever before. https://nvf.org/veteran-poverty-united-states/ Terwijl in de Verenigde Staten jaarlijks rond de 50.000 veteranen dakloos worden, tussen 2008 en 2017 jaarlijks ruim 6000 veteranen zelfmoord pleegden en na 2018 het gemiddelde aantal zelfmoorden onder veteranen dagelijks tot meer dan 17 was opgelopen, vroeg NRC’s columniste Caroline de Gruyter haar publiek met betrekking tot een NAVO-oorlog met Rusland: ‘Betekent artikel 5 nog iets? Wat als we geen diplomaten meer kunnen uitzetten? We zullen dit gesprek een keer moeten voeren. Voor er echte ongelukken gebeuren.’ Dit artikel in het NAVO-verdrag stelt dat ‘elke lidstaat verplicht wordt om een aanval op één lidstaat te beschouwen als een aanval op alle lidstaten.’ En omdat De Gruyter op grond van twee onbewezen incidenten van oordeel is dat Rusland het Westen aanvalt is het, volgens haar, nu de hoogste tijd om massaal geweld te ontketenen tegen deze nucleaire grootmacht. Gezien het feit dat Washington is uitgespeeld in het Midden Oosten en de machtige Amerikaanse oorlogsindustrie toch torenhoge winsten moet kunnen blijven maken, is het van ultiem belang dat een nieuwe desastreuze oorlog wordt voorbereid. Zo werkt nu eenmaal het neoliberale kapitalisme, en als opiniemaakster van een krant die steun aan het Atlantisch Bondgenootschap als beginsel heeft, weet De Gruyter, echtgenote van een diplomaat en moeder van drie kinderen, welk belang Washington en Wall Street aan oorlog hechten. Oorlog is hun raison d’être, want feit is, zoals maart 2017 bekend werd, dat ‘America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – 222 Out of 239 Years – Since 1776, i.e. the U.S. has only been at peace for less than 20 years total since its birth.’
https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/50473
Om Caroline de Gruyter’s dwaasheid in een bredere context te analyseren, is belangrijk te weten dat al in 2013 de federale regering ’46 cent van elke dollar’ moest lenen om haar begroting te financieren, en dat vandaag de dag ’62 cent van elke dollar naar het militaire apparaat’ gaat. Met als gevolg dat slechts 31 cent overblijft ‘for all the rest: education, job training, community economic development, housing, safe drinking water and clean air, health and science research, and the prevention of war through diplomacy and humanitarian aid.
The budget also cuts billions from non-discretionary anti-poverty programs outside of this $1trillion. Medicaid and food stamps would be cut and disfigured beyond recognition.
At every turn, the… budget finds vast billions for militarization, while it cuts much smaller poverty and other programs, claiming the goal is to save money.’
Daar komt bij dat 'On 22 July 2021 the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a budget $25 billion greater than the President's defense budget request for FY2022.' Donderdag 8 oktober 2020 berichtte Associated Press:
New, eye-popping federal budget figures released Thursday show an enormous $3.1 trillion deficit in the just-completed fiscal year, a record swelled by coronavirus relief spending that pushed the tally of red ink to three times that of last year.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO. svh) released the unofficial 2020 figures Thursday, saying the deficit equaled 15% of the U.S. economy, a huge gap that was the largest since the government undertook massive borrowing to finance the final year of World War II.
The government spent $6.6 trillion last year and borrowed 48 cents of every dollar it spent, CBO said. The numbers amount to a 47% increase in spending, led by $578 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program for smaller businesses, and a $443 billion increase in unemployment benefits over the past six months alone.
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-business-economy-2bcc6fc65429d957b7f8275b2203f76d
In The Guardian van woensdag 27 maart 2019 schreven drie Amerikaanse burgers dat:
The United States has been addicted to excessive military spending at the expense of true security at home for decades… In our view, this budget’s values show not only a deep disregard for human life, but for God.
And not to mention for the majority of Americans, who consistently support military cuts and oppose cuts to programs that serve human needs.
That’s why the Poor People’s Campaign is launching our vision for a moral America: a moral and constitutional budget that reminds Americans what decency and democracy really look like.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/27/trump-budget-military-immoral
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/defense-contractors-generals_n_2160771
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address_(press_copy)
Onder de kop ‘How elite US institutions created Afghanistan’s neoliberal President Ashraf Ghani, who stole $169 million from his country’ verwees de bekende kritische Amerikaanse journalist Ben Norton op de website The Grayzone naar de ‘Scholar Ashok Swain, a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University and UNESCO chair on international water cooperation,’ die:
noted that, during the 20 years of US-NATO military occupation, ‘The number of Afghans living in poverty has doubled, and the areas under poppy cultivation have tripled. More than one-third of Afghans have no food, half no drinking water, two-third no electricity.’
The free market medicine that President Ghani had shoved down Afghanistan’s throat was just as successful as the neoliberal shock therapy he and his World Bank colleagues had imposed on post-Soviet Russia.
But Ghani’s economic snake oil found an eager audience in the so-called international community. And by 2006, his global profile had reached such heights that he was considered a possible replacement for Secretary General Kofi Annan at the United Nations.
Meanwhile, Ghani was being given large sums of money by NATO states and billionaire-backed foundations to set up a think tank whose name will forever be tinged with irony.
Dit is uitkomst van ‘What the US did with its $2.3 Trillion in Afghanistan in 20 years.’
Dit is het resultaat van de ‘agressieoorlog’ die de NAVO, onder aanvoering van de Verenigde Staten twee decennialang tegen Afghanistan voerde, en waarbij:
The free market medicine that President Ghani (Ashraf Ghani, van 2014 tot 15 augustus 2021 het neoliberale staatshoofd) had shoved down Afghanistan’s throat was just as successful as the neoliberal shock therapy he and his World Bank colleagues had imposed on post-Soviet Russia.
But Ghani’s economic snake oil found an eager audience in the so-called international community. And by 2006, his global profile had reached such heights that he was considered a possible replacement for Secretary General Kofi Annan at the United Nations.
Meanwhile, Ghani was being given large sums of money by NATO states and billionaire-backed foundations to set up a think tank whose name will forever be tinged with irony.
In 2006, Ghani leveraged his experience implementing ‘pro-business’ policies from post-Soviet Russia to his own homeland to co-found a think tank called the Institute for State Effectiveness (ISE).
ISE markets itself in language that could have been lifted from an IMF brochure: ‘The roots of ISE’s work are in a World Bank program in the late 1990s which aimed to improve country strategies and program implementation. It focused on building coalitions for reform, implementing large-scale policies, and training the next generation of development professionals.’
The think tank’s slogan reads today as a parody of technocratic boilerplate: ‘Citizen-Centered Approaches to State and Market.’
In addition to its role in pushing neoliberal reforms on Afghanistan, the ISE has run similar programs in 21 countries, including East Timor, Haiti, Kenya, Kosovo, Nepal, Sudan, and Uganda. In these states, the think tank said it created a ‘framework for understanding state functions and the balance between governments, markets, and people.’
Legally based in Washington, the Institute for State Effectiveness is funded by a Who’s Who of think tank financiers: Western governments (Britain, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, and Denmark); elite international financial institutions (the World Bank and OECD); and Western intelligence-linked, billionaire-backed corporate foundations (the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Open Society Foundations [Soros. svh], Paul Singer Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York).
Ghani’s co-founder was free market enthusiast Clare Lockhart, a former investment banker and fellow World Bank veteran who went on to serve as a UN advisor for the NATO-created Afghan government and a member of the board of trustees of the CIA-backed Asia Foundation.
Ghani and Lockhart’s market-obsessed outlook was encapsulated in a partnership they formed in 2008 between their ISE and the fellow neoliberal think tank the Aspen Institute. Under the agreement, Ghani and Lockhart led Aspen’s ‘Market Building Initiative,’ which they said ‘creates dialogue, frameworks, and active engagement to support countries in building legitimate market economies,’ and ‘aims to put in place the value chains and underpinning credible institutions and infrastructure to allow citizens to participate in the benefits of a globalizing world.’
Any novelist seeking to satirize DC think tanks might have been criticized for being too on the nose (te bot. svh) if they wrote about such an Institute for State Effectiveness.
The cherry on top of the absurdity came in 2008, when Ghani and Lockhart detailed their technocratic worldview in a book entitled ‘Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World.’
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/09/02/afghanistan-ashraf-ghani-corrupt/
Maar het zijn juist deze ideologische ‘con men,’ die door de neoliberale propagandisten in de politiek en de commerciële media worden bewonderd en gesteund, en hun land uiteindelijk in totale chaos storten. De wrange ironie is dat:
Ashraf Ghani fled with $169 MILLION in his cash-stuffed helicopter and has been given asylum in Dubai on 'humanitarian grounds,’
zoals de media onmiddellijk wisten te melden. Over Ghani’s boek ‘Fixing Failed States’ schreef de onderzoeksjournalist Ben Norton:
The first text that appears inside the front cover is a blurb from Ghani’s ideological guide, Francis Fukuyama, the pundit who infamously declared that, with the overthrow of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Bloc, the world had reached the ‘End of History,' and human society was perfected under the Washington-led capitalist liberal democratic order.
Following Fukuyama’s praise is a glowing endorsement from right-wing Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, author of the tract ‘The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else’ (de Soto insists it is not imperialism). This Chicago Boy crafted the neoliberal shock therapy policies of Peru’s dictatorial Alberto Fujimori regime.
The third blurb in Ghani’s book was composed by the vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, Robert Hormats, who insisted that the tome ‘provides a brilliantly crafted and extraordinarily valuable analysis.’
‘Fixing Failed States’ makes for maddeningly boring reading, and essentially amounts to a 265-page-long reiteration of Ghani’s thesis: the solution to practically all of the world’s problems is capitalist markets, and the state exists to manage and protect those markets.
In a typically long-winded bromide (een banaal verhaal om de lezer tevreden te stellen. svh), Ghani and Lockhart wrote, ‘The establishment of functioning markets has led to the victory of capitalism over its competitors as a model of economic organization by harnessing the creative and entrepreneurial energies of large numbers of people as stakeholders in the market economy.’
Readers of the neoliberal snoozer (slaapverwekkend betoog. svh) would have learned just as much by flipping through any World Bank pamphlet…
Highlighting their ideological zealotry, Ghani and Lockhart even went so far as to assert an ‘incompatibility between capitalism and corruption.’ Of course, Ghani would go on to prove just how absurd this statement was by selling off his country to US companies in which his family members had invested, furnishing them with exclusive access to Afghanistan’s mineral reserves, and then bolting to a Gulf monarchy with $169 million in stolen state funds.
But among the Beltway’s class of insular elites, the risible book was celebrated as a masterpiece. In 2010, ‘Fixing Failed States’ earned Ghani and Lockhart a coveted 50th place in Foreign Policy’s list of the Top 100 Global Thinkers. The esteemed magazine described their Institute for State Effectiveness as ‘the world’s most influential state-building think tank.’
Silicon Valley was smitten as well. Google invited the two to its New York office to outline the book’s conclusions.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/09/02/afghanistan-ashraf-ghani-corrupt/
Nine Afghan children killed or maimed daily in world’s most lethal warzone. Parties must protect children, end targeting of schools and clinics.
‘Even by Afghanistan’s grim standards, 2019 has been particularly deadly for children,’ said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. ‘Children, their families and communities suffer the horrific consequences of conflict each and every day. Those same children are desperate to grow up, go to school, learn skills, and build a future for themselves. We can, and must, do so much more to reinforce their extraordinary courage and resilience.’
Between 2009 and 2018, nearly 6,500 children were killed and almost 15,000 others injured, helping make Afghanistan the world’s most lethal warzone in 2018, the report says.
Besides the direct impact of violence, children’s lives are also being blighted by the combined effects of natural disasters, poverty, and under-development, according to UNICEF.
Mede door het neoliberale beleid, dat onder druk van het Westen werd afgedwongen, waren de ‘Additional facts from the report’ over Afghanistan:
3.8 million children need humanitarian assistance…
3.7 million school-aged children… are out of school;
600,000 children under the age of five are severely malnourished;
30 per cent of children are engaged in child labour;
400,000 young Afghans enter the labour market each year but many lack the vocational skills necessary to find jobs and livelihoods.
‘Young Afghans need to know that their career prospects extend beyond joining an armed group, or escaping the country to try their luck abroad,’ said UNICEF Afghanistan Representative Aboubacar Kampo. ‘With the right support, they can begin to break free of the cycle of violence and underdevelopment and create a better future for themselves and Afghanistan.’ […]
Working through partners, UNICEF is also providing treatment to 277,000 severely malnourished children. But the program needs to be substantially scaled up if another 300,000 children in need are to be reached.
UNICEF is increasingly using sustainable gravity-fed and solar-powered water systems to help some of the 2.8 million Afghans affected by a severe drought last year. Even so, only 64 per cent of the population have access to improved drinking water that is protected from outside contamination.
Ondertussen kreeg de ‘con man’ Ghani ‘large sums of money by NATO states and billionaire-backed foundations to set up a think tank,’ om het neoliberale geloof zo breed mogelijk te kunnen verspreiden, en vooral ook in de praktijk te brengen. Vermoedelijk juist vanwege dit alles deed De Gruyter het in de NRC van 20 augustus 2021 voorkomen alsof de ‘Europese schande’ het gebrek aan bereidwilligheid betrof om Afghanen ogenblikkelijk naar het Westen over te vliegen, zonder dat serieus was gecheckt of zij hiervoor in aanmerking kwamen, en geen gevaar voor de westerse bevolking zouden opleveren, zoals anders het gangbare argument is. Dit overvliegen betrof natuurlijk niet de straatarme gedupeerden van het geweld, maar alleen de Afghanen die van de ‘agressieoorlog’ hadden geprofiteerd door met de NAVO-militairen samen te werken. Op deze manier probeerde De Gruyter de ware ‘Europese schande’ te maskeren, zoals de onrechtmatigheid van de ‘agressieoorlog’ tegen Afghanistan, de voortdurende bloedbaden, de stijgende armoede, de toenemende opiumproductie, grondstof voor de illegale heroïnehandel, de verrijking van het Amerikaans militair-industrieel complex, de Nederlandse medewerking aan de ‘martelingen en illegale detenties’ door verdachte Afghanen over te leveren aan de martelaars op de Amerikaanse militaire basis Bagram. ‘Sommigen overleefden de martelingen niet. Het Rode Kruis en zelfs de Afghaanse regering kregen geen toegang tot de plek.’
Eveneens besteedde De Gruyter geen woord aan de de feiten die onder andere de Wereldbank in 2012 rapporteerde:
Poverty concentration is highest in more urbanized and densely populated provinces… the three largest provinces in terms of size of poor population also have Afghanistan’s three largest urban centers. Kabul province, despite its relatively low poverty rate (24 percent) and high standard of living, accounts for the most poor people (1.03 million), followed by Nangarhar (663 thousand) and Herat (660 thousand). Together with Takhar and Badakhshan – whose poverty rate is above 60 percent -, these first five provinces account for approximately 40 percent of the poor in Afghanistan.
Poverty in Afghanistan correlates to deprivation in other dimensions of wellbeing. Despite a strong geographical dimension, location is not the sole determinant of poverty in Afghanistan. As in many other developing countries, poverty in Afghanistan is associated with lack of education, weak labor market opportunities, and limited access to services. As shown in Table 6, in 2011-12 children below the age of 15 represented more than half of the poor. Moreover, 75.6 percent of the poor above the age of 15 were illiterate (compared to 63.4 percent of the non-poor), and only 7 percent have completed primary education. The human capital disadvantage of the poor corresponds to higher risk of unemployment, underemployment, employment vulnerability, or employment in agriculture. Lastly, the poor are more likely to lack access to basic services such as electricity, safe drinking water and sanitation.
INEQUALITY, GROWTH AND CONTRAINTS TO POVERTY REDUCTION
Economic growth has not reduced poverty in Afghanistan because of increasing inequality. International evidence indicates that economic growth is important for poverty reduction. In the case of Afghanistan, the fact that poverty remained stable at 36 percent over a period of fast economic growth does not mean that growth is not necessary to lift Afghan’s out of poverty. The problem is in the distribution of the gains. A closer look at growth, poverty, and inequality trends in Afghanistan shows that — had inequality not increased — the same levels of economic growth would have decreased poverty by approximately 12 percent, from 35.8 to 31.4 percent…
Between 2007-08 and 2011-12, welfare inequality rose considerably in the country. The Gini index increased from 29.7 in 2007-08 to 31.6 percent in 2011-12. Increasing inequality is particularly evident looking at the top and bottom ends of the distribution in per capita expenditure. As shown in Table 7, the quantile ratio of per capita consumption between the top 90th and bottom 10th percentile increased from 3.6 to 4, meaning that consumption of the 90th richest percentile is four times larger than the poorest 10th percentile. Across quintiles, the richest 20 percent of the population commands over 40 percent of total expenditure in Afghanistan, twice as much as the bottom 40 percent of the population.
Economic growth was not ‘pro-poor’ and contributed to widening the gap between the poorest and the richest Afghans. Average per capita consumption grew at an annual rate of 1.2 percent between 2007-08 and 2011-12, but growth in consumption was not uniform along the welfare distribution, thus increasing inequality… growth in per capita consumption clearly skews towards higher expenditure groups; per capita consumption of the poor actually decreased by -0.17% during the period. While the poorest 20 percent of the population saw a 2 percent decline in real per capita expenditure, and the bottom 40 percent did not improve their per capita expenditure, the richest 20 percent experienced a nine percent increase.
De feiten spreken voor zich: door het afgedwongen neoliberalisme werden ook in Afghanistan de rijken rijker, en de armen armer, terwijl de allerrijksten een greep kregen op de miljarden aan westerse ‘hulp,’ terwijl tegelijkertijd ‘één op de drie Afghanen in 2021 niet in hun basisbehoeften [kon] voorzien.’ In 2020, negentien jaar na het begin van de NAVO-inval, was de armoede nog meer toegenomen, en had de verpaupering van het land dramatische vormen aangenomen. De cijfers van de Asian Development Bank:
In Afghanistan, 47.3% of the population lives below the national poverty line in 2020.
In Afghanistan, the proportion of employed population below $1.90 purchasing power parity a day is 34.3% in 2019.
For every 1,000 babies born in Afghanistan in 2019, 60 die before their 5th birthday.
https://www.adb.org/countries/afghanistan/poverty#accordion-0-0
Bovendien moest 45,1 procent van de werkende Afghaanse vrouwen met minder dan 1,90 dollar per dag zien te overleven, een absoluut biologisch minimum, hetgeen een opmerkelijk feit is gezien de niet aflatende westerse propaganda over de zogenaamde verbeterde positie van vrouwen in Afghanistan. De werkelijkheid was precies omgekeerd. De verarming bleef toenemen. ‘Growth widened the gap between the rich and the poor, as the poor saw a decline in household consumption and continued to lack access to jobs and basic services.’ Ondanks die werkelijkheid beweerde Caroline de Gruyter in haar 2 minuten durende NRC-column op 20 augustus 2021, met het oog op de toen nog op handen zijnde vlucht van de NAVO-strijdkrachten uit Kaboel, ‘Twintig jaar later dondert alles in elkaar, en in plaats van grondig na te denken over de toekomst van het westerse bondgenootschap en artikel 5…’
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/08/20/de-europese-schande-a4055477
Verzwijgend dat in de twee decennia durende oorlog Afghanistan niet werkelijk was opgebouwd, maar juist ineen was gestort, beweerde de NRC-opiniemaakster dat met het vertrek van de NAVO ‘alles in elkaar [donderde],' en dat daarom van ultiem belang is om ‘grondig na te denken over de toekomst van het westerse bondgenootschap en artikel 5,’ nu Rusland en China hun eigen weg gaan, en de 1,4 miljard Chinezen een grote economische en militaire bedreiging vormen voor de toekomst van de neoliberale westerse hegemonie.
Om wekelijks een intelligent betoog van rond de 600 woorden te schrijven dient men op zijn minst zelf intelligent te zijn, en ter zake kundig. Maar omdat opiniemakers in een kort tijdsbestek over zoveel mogelijk actualiteit een mening willen of moeten ventileren, zijn de meeste columns van de polderpers beschamend simplistisch. De modale mainstream-columnist komt niet verder dan een twee minuten durende zwart-wit voorstelling van de gecompliceerde realiteit. Dat maakt hem en haar ook zo gevaarlijk. Dat regelmatig hameren op artikel 5 van het NAVO-verdrag om zodoende almaar nieuwe oorlogen te rechtvaardigen, maakt van Caroline de Gruyter een ongeleid projectiel. Misschien wel het allerergste is dat de meeste columnisten niets leren van de geschiedenis, en telkens dezelfde stupiditeiten herhalen. Er zijn uitzonderingen, zoals mijn oude vriend en neoliberale collega Ian Buruma -- die in The Guardian van 16 juli 2002, tijdens de aanloop naar de illegale inval in Irak, uiteenzette dat ‘we must share America's dirty work’ -- nu, negentien jaar later, onder de kop ‘The Colonial Trap,’ toegeeft dat:
Whatever the justification for foreign intervention, the results are the same. Local elites, such as the Afghans who governed Kabul and other cities, might do well. But dependency — not just on another state, but on NGOs and other well-meaning institutions that do what governments should be doing — fuels corruption. Money flows too easily into ever deeper pockets. And the very presence of foreign military force and political tutors, who may have little understanding of how things work in the countries they occupy, makes it ever harder for the local people to rule themselves.
The colonial elites, bloated with free money, have no legitimacy in the eyes of their compatriots. Rebels and revolutionaries may have more, but only know how to rule by force. The imperial power is trapped. Leaving is almost always bad. Staying is worse.
Het is moeilijk vol te houden dat de NAVO vanwege humanitaire redenen in Afghanistan moet blijven, gezien het feit dat ‘In Afghanistan, 47.3% of the population lives below the national poverty line in 2020,’ terwijl na bijna twee decennia westerse hulp ‘In Afghanistan, the proportion of employed population below $1.90 purchasing power parity a day is 34.3% in 2019.’ De betrokkenheid achteraf van Caroline de Gruyter en de meeste andere opiniemakers met gestrande Afghaanse vluchtelingen uit Kaboel is dan ook een vals engagement van een oorlogshitser die lak heeft aan de slachtoffers van de westerse terreur. Terecht schreef de Amerikaanse oud-correspondent van The New York Times Chris Hedges eind augustus 2021:
The faux (geveinsde. svh) pity for the Afghan people, which has defined the coverage of the desperate collaborators with the U.S. and coalition occupying forces and educated elites fleeing to the Kabul airport, begins and ends with the plight of the evacuees. There were few tears shed for the families routinely terrorized by coalition forces or the some 70,000 civilians who were obliterated by U.S. air strikes, drone attacks, missiles, and artillery, or gunned down by nervous occupying forces who saw every Afghan, with some justification, as the enemy during the war. And there will be few tears for the humanitarian catastrophe the empire is orchestrating on the 38 million Afghans, who live in one of the poorest and most aid-dependent countries in the world.
Since the 2001 invasion the United States deployed about 775,000 military personnel to subdue Afghanistan and poured $143 billion into the country, with 60 percent of the money going to prop up the corrupt Afghan military and the rest devoted to funding economic development projects, aid programs and anti-drug initiatives, with the bulk of those funds being siphoned off by foreign aid groups, private contractors, and outside consultants…
Things are already dire. There are some 14 million Afghans, one in three, who lack sufficient food. There are two million Afghan children who are malnourished. There are 3.5 million people in Afghanistan who have been displaced from their homes. The war has wrecked infrastructure. A drought destroyed 40 percent of the nation's crops last year. The assault on the Afghan economy is already seeing food prices skyrocket. The sanctions and severance of aid will force civil servants to go without salaries and the health service, already chronically short of medicine and equipment, will collapse. The suffering orchestrated by the empire will be of Biblical proportions. And this is what the empire wants.
https://scheerpost.com/2021/08/30/hedges-the-empire-does-not-forgive/
Gap between rich and poor widens in Afghanistan / Some buy watches for $4,000, others heat homes with dung.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2013/jun/28/afghanistan-new-rich-in-pictures
Ondanks de gruwelijke realiteit van het twee decennia durende NAVO-geweld in Afghanistan stelde de propagandiste Caroline de Gruyter in de NRC van 30 juli 2021 dat:
Deze week de Chinese minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Wang Yi een stroef gesprek [had] met de Amerikaanse onderminister van Buitenlandse Zaken Wendy Sherman, om een dag later geanimeerd overleg te voeren met een Taliban-vertegenwoordiger. Om morele redenen vinden Europese landen zakendoen met de Taliban lastig.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/07/30/europa-wees-een-spin-a4053043
Dit is weer zo’n verkapt racistische opmerking over de ‘Chinese’ autoriteiten, want sinds wanneer ‘vinden Europese landen zaken doen met de Taliban lastig,’ terwijl de Europese Unie, met Nederland voorop, het geenszins ‘lastig’ vindt om met de Saudische koppensnellers en oorlogsmisdadigers ‘zaken’ te ‘doen’? Of met de olierijke absolute monarchie Qatar. Van beide landen is bekend dat zij terroristische soennitische groeperingen financieren. Maar ook daarover zwijgt De Gruyter als het graf, terwijl ze wel degelijk weet dat Saoedi-Arabië ‘concurreert met iedereen en overal [stookt],’ en dat met ‘zoveel regionale machten die rond stampen en de bestaande orde ontwrichten,’ Europa desalniettemin maar al te graag met die ‘regionale machten’ in zee gaat. Bovendien ‘vinden Europese landen’ het vanwege ‘morele redenen’ volstrekt niet ‘lastig’ om ‘zaken te doen’ met bijvoorbeeld Israel. Sterker nog: de EU is de belangrijkste handelspartner van de zelfbenoemde ‘Joodse staat,’ waardoor de Israelische strijdkrachten en illegale kolonisten op Palestijns land ongestoord door kunnen gaan met hun massale terreur tegen de Palestijnse burgerbevolking. Dat weet De Gruyter maar al te goed, want zelf schreef zij in de NRC van 14 mei 2021:
En de Palestijnen? Om hen bekommeren weinigen zich meer. Wat we nu zien, is een van die periodieke erupties die helaas voor niemand meer prioriteit heeft. Uiteindelijk blijft er, precies zoals Edward Saïd 23 jaar geleden even loepzuiver als treurig schreef, ‘een enorme wolk van onrecht en verwarring boven het heilige land hangen.’
Getraumatiseerde Palestijnse kinderen tijdens Israelische militaire aanval.
Wat zijn toch die ‘morele redenen’ waarom ‘Europese landen zakendoen met de Taliban lastig’ vinden? En waarom spelen die ‘morele redenen’ niet in het geval van de langdurige immorele politiek van Israel? Mevrouw De Gruyter zwijgt erover, want zij weet maar al te goed hoe de kaarten geschud zijn, en dat zij zich geen fundamentele kritiek kan veroorloven op ‘Amerika,’ en zijn joodse pro-Israel lobby, die onderdeel is van wat president Carter de schatrijke Amerikaanse ‘oligarchie’ betitelt. Duidelijk is in elk geval de leugenachtigheid van de westerse opiniemakers die inherent blijft aan hun activiteiten. Daarover de volgende keer meer.
More than 70 children have been killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict. These are their names and faces
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