“Well I think what he did with this new policy is he in effect is partnering with the Taliban against, in many ways, the Afghan government.” McMaster said.
“So I think that it’s an unwise policy, and I think what we require in Afghanistan is a sustained commitment to help the Afghan government and help the Afghan security forces to continue to bear the brunt of this fight,” he added.
I guess H.R. thinks we don’t know that he helped lose the war in Afghanistan a decade ago as disgraced Gen. David Petraeus’s “anti-corruption czar.”
Firing was too good for him. Trump should have dropped McMaster on those pesky Nangarhar Province ISIS-K fighters back in 2017 and been done with it.
I wrote about the case (in which news outlets, the defendants, and I are opposing pseudonymity) a few weeks ago here. Yesterday, WKRC (James Pilcher) wrote about the latest hearing, in which Judge Megan Shanahan has ruled that the case can continue to proceed pseudonymously:
Shanahan said the officer faces danger in the current climate for the reason in keeping his name out of the court record. She listed off several examples of other attacks on police nationally.
“Must we wait until this officer’s wife is stabbed in the eye with an ice pick on her doorstep before we find real-world evidence [of malice or threat], which just happened a few states away?” Shanahan said as she issued her ruling….
(Me: Uh, what? Oh. Heh. Still, I don’t think that changes anything.)
Under the “officer faces danger in the current climate” theory, essentially any lawsuit against or by police officers — or other controversial public officials — would be pseudonymous.
Wouldn’t that be hilarious if her decision stands and now all government employees get to go by fake names to preserve their anonymity while they go about their daily oppressions? I was sick of my security force pretending to not be my enemy anyway honestly. Let’s go ahead and give them all Stormtrooper helmets so we know who’s on whose side here.
Kevin Gosztola is back for an update on Julian Assange’s extradition hearing. He describes the great line-up of witnesses being summoned by Assange’s defense team and how easily, for the most part, they’ve been able to dismantle the arguments from the prosecution. It’s unclear, however, how effective any kind of reasoned argument about the facts will be, given that we know this whole hearing has been conducted on political grounds from the beginning. The case the U.S. government wants to bring against Assange is based on the conspiracy theory that he deliberately directed Chelsea Manning to steal classified information, and the attempt to brand Wikileaks not as a journalistic organization, but as a hostile intelligence agency. Gosztola reminds us what kind of a precedent this could set: if the grounds for Assange’s extradition are that he, an Australian citizen living in Britain, revealed U.S. government secrets, then could any country extradite anyone for publishing something their government didn’t like? This, Gosztola and Scott agree, is a truly terrifying prospect.
Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure.” Follow him on Twitter @kgosztola.
Although marijuana arrests have declined by more than half, African Americans still account for just under 90 percent of those arrested on all pot-related charges, according to a Washington Post analysis, even as they make up 45 percent of the city’s population.
And while studies show that marijuana use is equally prevalent among Blacks and Whites, 84 percent of more than 900 people arrested for public consumption in the nation’s capital were African American in the four years after legalization.
Men accounted for 89 percent of all marijuana arrests during the eight-year period. Of those males, 90 percent were Black. Nearly 65 percent of those arrested were between ages 18 and 30.
Scott and Gareth Porter continue their ongoing conversation about President Trump’s foreign policy so far. Porter focuses first on Iran, which has become the ultimate excuse for just about every foreign policy decision over the last decade. In reality, of course, Iran is basically irrelevant to the security of the United States, and isn’t, says Porter, even much of a threat to America’s allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia. But in the perception of the neocon establishment, Iran is the greatest enemy since Nazi Germany, and must be opposed at every turn no matter how destructive and quixotic the endeavor. Porter and Scott then discuss Trump’s attitude toward China, where, unlike in the Middle East, he really does appear to have bought into all the hawkish propaganda. This hostility toward China has resulted, among other things, in the failure of the peace talks with North Korea, a process that Porter and Scott agree every sane person should have viewed as a good thing.
Arthur Bloom talks about a recent piece from The American Conservative, which exposes the case of a prolific and well-known anti-Iran opinion columnist who turned out not to be a real person. “Amir Basiri,” who wrote dozens of pieces for mostly right-leaning publications advocating for war with Iran, turns out to have been nothing more than a pseudonymous figurehead for the Mujahideen-eKhalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident exile group. The MEK has been described as a communist terrorism cult, but in recent years has found favor with the likes of Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton because of their utility in advancing an anti-Iran narrative in America.
Discussed on the show:
“Another Opinion Columnist Pushing War With Iran Who Doesn’t Actually Exist” (The American Conservative)
“Is Heshmat Alavi, Writer on Iran, a Fake Run By MEK Opposition?” (The Intercept)
Arthur Bloom is managing editor of The American Conservative. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Guardian, and many other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @j_arthur_bloom.
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In Compton they call themselves 
