Big Picture American Politics

[Psy-Fi]

U.S. Is Lying About Venezuelan Election Results Again!

[Psy-Fi]

Veterans outraged at US cash benefiting the Taliban via the UN: 'This has to stop now'

[Psy-Fi]

RFK Jr. can sue Biden admin for allegedly censoring anti-vax posts from charity social accounts, court rules

[Psy-Fi]

Zuckerberg regrets bowing to Biden 'pressure' over Covid

[Psy-Fi]

Who Is Sending More U.S. Troops To The Middle East?

[Psy-Fi]

Black Unemployment SURGES

[Psy-Fi]

Judge Napolitano: A History of Government's DISDAIN For Free Speech

[Psy-Fi]

John Kerry Calls 1ST Amendment "Major Block" To Control Free Speech!

[Lisnaholic]

Veterans outraged at US cash benefiting the Taliban via the UN: 'This has to stop now'

What's this story about ? Not quite as simple as that eye-catching billboard ! From Psy-Fi's link:

"The humanitarian assistance facilitated by the shipments provide indirect benefits to the Taliban by stabilizing and legitimizing them, because the funds allow the Taliban to focus on their priorities and policies instead of providing essential services to the Afghan people,"

The article does a pretty balanced job, I think: not just talking about the outraged Vets, but also the off-the-scale poverty of the country ("9 out of 10 Afghanis living in poverty"). Should G7 countries send humanitarian aid to countries that have regimes the G7 don't approve of ? I don't have a quick answer to that question, which is bound up with various moral issues, not least of which is the way G7 countries often have a secret stranglehold on the economies of developing nations.

I don't know much about the specific case of Afghanistan on Biden's watch, but here are a couple of images that I found:-



Unfortunately, all the aid graphs I saw stop at about 2020 and I couldn't be bothered to dig deeper, but, from the comfort of my armchair, I have read a couple of books about Afghanistan, which is bigger, wilder and more primitive than I imagined. Do the actual Afghans like the Taliban? Only the people who benefit from their oppressive control of the country is the gist of what I read. And the rest? One guy in one book more-or-less said this: "Blaming the Afghan people for the Taliban is like blaming the Jews for Hitler."

There are some big cities, of course, but also remote areas which are like another country. The extremes of geography make the city-dwellers and the mountain dwellers view each other with mutual suspicion, plus there complex racial conflicts running through the country:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Afghanistan 
 

[Lisnaholic]

Finally, as this is supposed to be a "big picture" thread, here's the big picture of US foreign aid to Afghanistan in two graphs:-

[Psy-Fi]

Julian Assange's 1st public statement after he was released from prison

[Psy-Fi]

Teamsters President Sean O'Brien | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #536

I'll be honest with you, I'm a Democrat, but they have fucked us over for the last 40 years.

And I'm getting attacked from the left and we've given — since I've been in office, two and a half years, we've given the Democratic machine $15.7 million. We've given Republicans about $340,000, truth be told. So it's like, you know, people say the Democratic Party is the party of the working people. They're bought and paid for by Big Tech.

[QuantumSync]

[Psy-Fi]

Young men's economic prospects are shifting, along with their politics

Young men, once seen as a solidly Democratic group less than two decades ago, have been shifting further to the right politically as their economic outlook has been on a downward trajectory.