September 20, 2021

By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) – N. Korea warned on Monday that the United States risked a dangerous nuclear arms race by providing submarine technology to Australia, criticising its “double standards” and vowing counter-measures.

Last week, the United States clinched a new trilateral security partnership involving Britain to provide technological aid to Australia to build at least eight nuclear-powered submarines.

N. Korea joined China in decrying the U.S. decision as an “irresponsible one” that destroys regional peace and stability and global non-proliferation efforts.

“These are extremely undesirable and dangerous acts which will upset the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific region and trigger off a chain of nuclear arms race,” the North’s foreign ministry said in a comment carried by the official KCNA news agency.

The North criticized Washington’s “double-dealing attitude,” singling out White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki’s remarks https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-australia-france-idAFKBN2GC1Y5 that it does not seek conflict with China but the decision was to shore up regional security.

Her comment “amounts to a stand that any country can spread nuclear technology if it is in its interests, and this shows that the U.S. is the chief culprit toppling the international nuclear non-proliferation system,” the ministry said.

“We are closely looking into the background of the U.S. decision and will certainly take a corresponding counter-action in case it has even a little adverse impact on the security of our country.”

N. Korea leader Kim Jong Un agreed to work toward de-nuclearization of the Korean peninsula and establish new relations at a summit with then U.S. President Donald Trump, but negotiations have stalled since 2019.

Pyongyang has slammed Washington for supporting its own and allies’ weapons development while condemning the North’s programmes as threats to regional peace and security.

The North’s state media said on Friday that Washington’s double standards and hostile policy hampered a reopening of de-nuclearization talks.

(Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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But the answer is not to cut Texas loose from the rest of the country, or to leave the state.

For many, it is not easy being a Texan right now. But that does not make us, or our state, disposable. To suggest otherwise ignores not only who we are and how the current political realities in the state came about, but also how the new legislation on abortion affects real people with real lives, who need all the solidarity we can muster. I came to live in Texas in 2009 for work and while I am privileged enough to be able to leave if I wanted, I’d much prefer to stay here and work to make this state one that I’m proud of.

The fact is that, more and more, the Republicans who have carefully engineered their vise-like grip on the levers of power, do not necessarily reflect the will of a growing number of everyday people in this changing state. Polling by The University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Tribune in March was quite revealing, for example, on the question of state abortion laws, with 31% of respondents saying those laws should be stricter, 18% saying the laws should be left as is and 37% saying they should be less strict.

And while some Texans certainly think abortion is the most important problem in the state, many — as polling shows — see immigration, voting rights, gun control, health care and education as more urgent priorities.

This nuance and diversity of political views is not always visible, because since 2002, when Republicans gained control of both the state legislature and the governor’s office, Texas has been a deeply gerrymandered state. Redistricting, including in 2003, which immediately gained the GOP six seats, was supported more recently when the US Supreme Court last year turned away claims that Republican state lawmakers had not been intent on diluting influence of minority voters when they again redrew the voting district map in 2011.

Texas is also among the hardest states in the nation in which to vote, even before SB 1 — which bans drive-through voting, creates new rules for voter assistance, further restricts mail-in voting, and established monthly citizenship checks — went into effect. The state still does not have automatic voter registration, for example, but does have tight voter identification laws, restricts vote-by-mail to the disabled and elderly, and has drastically reduced the number of polling places in some parts of the state.

These laws create what Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, has called a “generations-long pattern of discrimination,” especially affecting voters of color. (After Abbott signed the new law restricting voting, incidentally, a coalition of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit challenging it.)

But whether on voting or abortions, the new wave of legislation from this Republican government, should be seen not as representative of all Texans, but rather as an attempt to assert dominance from the right onto a reality that is very much in flux. People of color drove 95% of Texas’ population growth in 2020, (as a result of the 2020 US Census, Texas gained two congressional seats this year — the only state in the country to do so. And while newcomers to Texas have long voted across the political spectrum, the diverse new influx may well make the political landscape more fluid than it has been in nearly two decades.

Changing demographics and the growth of cities mean that the population is increasingly leaning away from traditional red-state politics. In a new UT/Texas Politics Poll, 52% of participants said the state was moving in the wrong direction, the lowest impression since the project started in 2008, and Abbott scored the lowest approval rating of his tenure.

Recent elections also help tell the story: In 2012, Mitt Romney won Texas with a 16-point lead over Barack Obama. By 2016, Trump won Texas by only nine points. In 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz hung on to his seat by less than 3% — a marked difference from 2012, when he won by 16%. And in 2020, Biden lost Texas by less than six points. Like everything else about Texas, local politics are more complex than meets the eye. Do they hide a rising sea-change in attitudes?

So, while I appreciate the intentions and the attempt at humor behind the offer to rescue me from my own local government, I do not find these comments supportive or funny. Instead, I find them dismissive: of the diversity and complexity of Texas, of the changes wrought over the last two decades, and of women’s right to exist in the places they have chosen to call home, regardless of which party is in power.

Offering to airlift all women out, to me, feels a lot like admitting defeat.

Defeatism, however, is not democracy; representation is. After 2020, Texas Democrats identified voter turnout as the main reason for their failure to flip the state. Instead of airlifting women out, why not help boost that turn-out by coming to Texas instead? We have a fast-growing economy, diverse and energetic populations, wonderful cities, world-class universities, good food and the live music capital of the world. We even play some football.

If you want to help, come take advantage of all Texas has to offer. Come live here, learn to know this brash and complicated state, invest in state level races, organize for causes you believe in and, at the very least, make this state a place you care about all year round, and not only when we make the news.

That is how lasting change is made. That is how you mess with Texas.

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This is not a new problem, obviously. The debate was explored in a 1967 essay by literary critic Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in which Barthes argued the two should be regarded separately. But today’s technology, with the insatiable maw of 24/7 social media and online content, has created a cycle of acclaim and reprisal that feels too fast to make such measured calculations. All along the pop culture spectrum, the time elapsed between a star or show’s moment in the sun and a subsequent reckoning (and, sometimes, comeback) seems to be decreasing exponentially.

Take Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights,” which was supposed to be the movie of the summer, and a triumph for a major film populated entirely with Latinx actors. By the time it had its theatrical release, media was abuzz with accusations that Miranda, who produced the adaptation of his Broadway show, had whitewashed his Washington Heights neighborhood’s demographic. “In trying to paint a mosaic of this community, we fell short,” Miranda posted to social media. “I’m truly sorry.”

Less scathing, but still deflating, is the gathering backlash against “Ted Lasso,” now in its second season. No one involved with the show has been outed as a jerk — on the contrary, charming stories about co-creator Jason Sudeikis seem to confirm he’s got a Lasso-like soul — but the pile-on to kick the show for being too nice feels particularly harsh in an era when it’s damn hard to be a fan of anything.

I find myself watching everything with newly critical eyes, which is a necessary part of evolving and learning and changing. What I don’t want to do is calcify into defending outdated stuff because it’s inconvenient to do the heavy lifting of rethinking bad behavior.

Two comedians seem to have figured out how to handle this cycle in innovative ways. Bo Burnham — another comedian I’ve probably spent too much time praising — includes in his new Netflix special a song called “Problematic,” in which he runs down all the ways in which he knows he should be taken to task: “I started doing comedy when I was just a sheltered kid/I wrote offensive s–t, and I said it … And I’m really f–king sorry.” And Aziz Ansari worked with Spike Jonze to create a comedy special that addressed his #MeToo moment, being accused of sexual assault by a woman he’d been on a date with (which he denied), in a way that seemed like he’d actually taken time to think about it and why his behavior angered so many women.

Two (male) comics, two reasonable approaches to looking at past behavior, trying to use their art form of choice to publicly own up to it.

Earlier this year, long-simmering anger about the “casually cruel” alleged misogyny of director Joss Whedon came to a boil when Charisma Carpenter, one of his “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” stars, outed him as having been vindictive to her on the set of that show and its spinoff, “Angel.” This one, as the saying goes, hurt. Whedon has reportedly not responded to the claims.

It’s not that I have been unaware of Whedon’s hypocrisy — I’ve noted a disconnect between his professed feminist ideals and his sometimes-shoddy treatment of women characters in his work over the years, and I’ve called it out in print, especially his treatment of Scarlett Johansson and Linda Cardellini’s characters in the 2015 film “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”

But “Buffy” was a formative show — its irreverent humor, gleeful girl power and inventive language are a potent mix that inspired me as both a critic and consumer of pop culture. Tossing “Buffy” out initially seemed the only logical recourse, though, after so many cast and crew members weighed in to agree with or offer support to Carpenter.

Then I did the exact opposite instead — I embarked on a re-watch of the show. Here’s the catch. I watched it this second time without the baggage of being an unquestioning fan of Whedon’s oeuvre — and by keeping his alleged behavior in mind.

Going back into “Buffy” with eyes wide open about Whedon’s shoddy treatment of women did change how I see it. I was more aware of the snarky asides by male characters, especially Nicholas Brendan’s sidekick Xander, that read as avatars for Whedon himself.

But I also, for the most part, still love “Buffy,” flaws and all. And I’ve decided I’m keeping it.

Here’s why: It’s a groundbreaking show that a lot of people besides that guy — many of them women, like later-seasons showrunner Marti Noxon and writer/producer Jane Espenson — worked hard to make great. I choose to side with them and their work. I’ve recognized a similar mode of resistance in the Harry Potter fans choosing to reclaim their love of the series and its characters in the wake of their own profound disappointment in J.K. Rowling’s recent and repeated transphobia.

For me, comedians are the toughest to rationalize with the detach-from-fandom approach. In standup, there’s not an extended team, for the most part, just one person with a microphone. Likewise, there are some fandoms that simply can’t be divorced from the work — an auteur like Woody Allen, who puts so much of himself into his films, often literally, is a good example. So bye, Woody, no matter how much I loved “Love and Death.”

The bottom line is, most of us find our lives are enriched by finding pop culture that speaks to us, that we’re passionate about. Being deeply engaged by stories and characters is a primal human behavior. So if you’re feeling the pressure to cut fandom out of your life, think of it more as trying to Marie Kondo your entertainment. What sparks joy, and isn’t totally overshadowed by the misdeeds of its creator? Find ways to indulge your comfort-food nostalgia, albeit with a slightly more critical eye. It’ll still hit the spot.

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US President Joe Biden has argued that the threat from al Qaeda has metastasized to places like Africa and Yemen. “There’s a greater danger from ISIS and al Qaeda and all these affiliates in other countries by far than there is from Afghanistan,” he said last week.

Senior military officers seem less convinced. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, acknowledged in a recent briefing, according to a US Senate aide, that groups like al Qaeda could reconstitute in Afghanistan in less than the two years previously estimated by the defense officials.

Al Qaeda’s leadership and ideological core remains in the mountains along the Afghan/Pakistan border. The US Defense Department said last year that al Qaeda’s affiliate in the region, al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), “maintains close ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan, likely for protection and training.”

That analysis was supported by the UN Monitoring Team on Afghanistan, who reported in June that “large numbers of Al-Qaida fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan,” estimating that the terror group has a presence in 15 of the country’s 34 provinces.

The report added that “Al-Qaida maintains contact with the Taliban but has minimized overt communications with Taliban leadership in an effort to ‘lay low.'”

Even so, Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, says, “The idea that the Taliban would simply jettison such supporters after a glorious victory handed to them by God seems to miss a pretty fundamental point about the organization.”

The same applies to the Haqqani Network, which has several high-profile positions among the Taliban leadership. The UN report said that “contacts between al-Qaida and the Haqqani Network—including the Taliban’s deputy leader, Sirajuddin Haqqani—remain particularly close. They share long-standing personal relationships, intermarriage, a shared history of struggle and sympathetic ideologies.”

It is difficult to see these being shredded now that the Haqqanis are so influential in Kabul.

Prominent among them is Khalil al-Rahman Haqqani, seen last weekend meeting elders from across Afghanistan. Based at the Interior Ministry, he has been involved in negotiations with the Taliban’s opponents in the Panjshir Valley and has become an important powerbroker in Kabul.

The US Rewards for Justice program has a $5 million reward for his apprehension, saying he “has also acted on behalf of al-Qaida and has been linked to al-Qaida terrorist operations.”

Asked by Pakistani journalist Azaz Syed this week whether the Taliban could offer reassurances to neighboring countries about militant groups on Afghan soil, Haqqani would only say: “We want peace among all the Muslim countries, my advice is peace.”

‘Over-the-horizon capability’

One question is to what extent US intelligence gathering in Afghanistan will be impaired now that it has no presence on the ground.

President Biden has downplayed the risk, saying on August 16: “We’ve developed counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on the direct threats to the United States in the region.”

But there’s no substitute for eyes and ears on the ground , whatever satellite and surveillance technology offers.

US Defense Department spokesman Admiral John Kirby said last week the US did not think the number of al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan was exorbitantly high but cautioned that “our intelligence-gathering ability in Afghanistan isn’t what it used to be because we aren’t there in the same numbers that we used to be.”

CIA Director William Burns had testified before Congress earlier this year that neither ISIS nor al Qaeda in Afghanistan had the capability to launch attacks inside the United States but said “when the time comes for the US military to withdraw, the US government’s ability to collect and act on threats will diminish. That’s simply a fact.”

Even if the Taliban were prepared to rein in al Qaeda and other groups, their ability to do so is far from certain. Last month Ken McCallum, director of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, spoke of the risk of “ungoverned spaces” emerging in Afghanistan.

An effective insurgency doesn’t necessarily translate into an effective government in a country of mountains, poor roads and many competing constituencies.

ISIS and the Taliban: Mutual loathing

While the Taliban’s connections with al Qaeda endure, both groups loathe ISIS, which has tried to establish a foothold in Afghanistan. The ISIS branch known as IS Khorasan (IS-K) has a presence in eastern provinces such as Nangahar and Kunar, but it has been diminished by Taliban attacks.

However, Abdul Syed, a researcher and author on militant movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan, says that through devastating attacks in Kabul and Jalalabad, IS-K “has transformed to a new shape for a long battle in Afghanistan.” He told CNN that it enjoys support from radical Salafists in several provinces.

Some captured IS-K fighters were being held at a prison outside Kabul, which the Taliban overran as their offensive on Kabul accelerated. There are unconfirmed reports — denied by the Taliban –that their fighters killed at least one senior IS-K detainee, Abu Umar Khurasani.

According to one regional counter-terrorism source, upwards of 100 and perhaps many more ISIS prisoners escaped two jails near Kabul that in the chaotic days leading up to the fall of Kabul and have avoided re-arrest.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that the threat of ISIS in Afghanistan is “acute” and “persistent.” It was the risk of suicide attacks by IS-K that led the US to establish alternative routes to Kabul airport and stick to the August 31 deadline to end the evacuation.

Intelligence estimates put the number of IS-K operatives in the low hundreds, but a war of attrition waged by the Taliban has failed to extinguish the threat.

ISIS has scoffed at the Taliban victory, describing it as delusional and saying in its weekly online publication al Naba that “The victory of Islam will not come via hotels in Qatar nor the embassies in Iran and China.”

IS-K leader Shahab al-Muhajir may hope to attract disenchanted jihadis from other groups if the Taliban is seen to “deal” with the West.

There are other groups that see Afghanistan as a haven and pose a more regional threat.

Parts of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), which have carried out dozens of attacks in their home country, have deep connections with their brethren in Kabul. Abdul Syed, who has studied the Pakistani Taliban in depth, notes that the fall of Kabul resulted in around 800 TTP prisoners being freed, including the group’s deputy emir. The TTP renewed their oath of allegiance to the Taliban and exhorted their members to follow in the footsteps of their Afghan counterparts.

“The ascendance of Afghan Islamists next door will only embolden radicals at home,” Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington, wrote in Foreign Affairs.

“Efforts [by Pakistan] to force the Taliban’s hand might result in violent blowback, with Pakistani Taliban attacking targets inside Pakistan.”

China is anxious about Uighur jihadis using eastern Afghanistan as a launching pad for attacks inside the restive Muslim province of Xinjiang.

In recent months, according to intelligence sources and former Afghan officials, Uighurs belonging to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) have been in evidence in the province of Badakhshan, which shares a mountainous border with China.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar last month that ETIM was an “international terrorist organization,” and said the Taliban should “completely sever all ties” with the group.

Pantucci says that China’s pre-eminent concern is that Afghanistan will become a base for such groups. So far, he says, the Taliban have largely provided “rhetorical assurances” about Uighurs who might try to use Afghan territory to plot against Beijing.

Morale booster

At the very least, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban has boosted morale among al Qaeda sympathizers. One message widely distributed on jihadi forums hailed August 15 as a monumental day that had shown “what was taken by force can only be recovered by force.”

Likewise, al Qaeda’s most influential affiliate — al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — celebrated the Taliban’s victory as the beginning of the Muslim nation’s advance towards “sovereignty, breaking the shackles of dependence and slavery, getting rid of tyrants and expelling the invaders from Muslim lands.”

And the local al Qaeda affiliate — al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent — was similarly effusive, praying that the “Islamic Emirate” in Afghanistan would become a “shield” for Muslims everywhere.

The UN Monitoring Team’s report in June concluded that al Qaeda “stands to benefit from renewed credibility on the back of Taliban gains.”

And it said it was “impossible to assess with confidence that the Taliban will live up to its commitment to suppress any future international threat emanating from Al-Qaida in Afghanistan.”

Even if current al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri is sick — as many analysts believe — and out of touch, al Qaeda may not have to look far for his successor. The Western intelligence community sees Egyptian al Qaeda veteran Saif al-`Adl as the likely choice to succeed the ailing Zawahiri.

He currently lives next door in Iran.

Pantucci believes the Taliban “will do what is required to be politic and try to establish their state, but fundamentally they believe the victory was given to them by Allah. Why should they turn on their allies who fought with them?”

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August 19, 2021

Press Agency in Battle Creek MI | Apadana Media

KABUL (Reuters) -The Taliban on Thursday urged crowds of Afghans waiting outside Kabul airport in the hope of fleeing the country to go home, saying they did not want to hurt anyone, a day after Taliban fighters fired at protesters, killing three, witnesses said.

The United States and other Western powers pressed on with the evacuation of their nationals and some of their Afghan staff from the airport on Afghanistan’s Independence Day, which could trigger more protests against the Islamists.

While Kabul has been generally calm since Taliban forces entered on Sunday after a week of stunning advances across the country, the airport has been in chaos as people rushed for a way out of Afghan capital.

Twelve people have been killed in and around the airport since Sunday, a NATO and a Taliban official said. The deaths were caused either by gun shots or by stampedes, the Taliban official said.

He urged people who do not have the legal right to travel to go home. “We don’t want to hurt anyone at the airport,” said the Taliban official, who declined to be identified.

(For a graphic on the airport chaos, click on: https://tmsnrt.rs/3stVpcj)

About 8,000 people have been flown out since Sunday, a Western security official said. The U.S. military is in charge of the airport while Taliban fighters patrol outside its walled and fenced perimeter.

On Wednesday, witnesses said Taliban gunmen prevented people from getting into the airport compound.

“It’s a complete disaster. The Taliban were firing into the air, pushing people, beating them with AK-47s,” said one person trying to get out on Wednesday.

A Taliban official said commanders and soldiers had fired into the air to disperse the crowd. The situation was more calm on Thursday, witnesses said.

Under a pact negotiated last year by former President Donald Trump’s administration, the United States agreed to withdraw its forces in exchange for a Taliban guarantee they would not let Afghanistan be used to launch terrorist attacks.

The Taliban also agreed not to attack foreign forces as they left.

President Joe Biden said U.S. forces would remain until the evacuation of Americans was finished, even if that meant staying past a Aug. 31 U.S. deadline for withdrawal.

The Taliban have been putting on a moderate face, saying they have changed since their 1996-2001 rule when they severely restricted women, staged public executions and blew up ancient Buddhist statues.

They now say they want peace https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-show-conciliatory-face-first-kabul-news-conference-2021-08-17, will not take revenge against old enemies and would respect the rights of women https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/times-have-changed-some-afghan-women-defiant-taliban-return-2021-08-17 within the framework of Islamic law.

But there are serious doubts about their assurances.

‘MY FLAG’

Demonstrations in the eastern city of Jalalabad on Wednesday marked the first major display of collective defiance of the Taliban takeover.

In normal times, the country would celebrate Afghanistan’s 1919 independence from British control on Aug. 19, but scenes in Jalalabad raised the prospect that people could use the patriotic occasion to protest.

Two witnesses and a former police official told Reuters Taliban fighters opened fire when protesters in Jalalabad tried to raise the national flag, killing three and wounding more than a dozen.

Video footage posted online and aired by media showed hundreds of people in Jalalabad with the black, red and green tricolour flying from rooftops and carried by some protesters. Media reported they had torn down the white Taliban flag.

“I will sacrifice my life for this flag. This is my flag. My government will soon be back, God willing,” said one protester wrapped in the tricolour in a report from Sky News.

The centre of opposition to the Taliban is the Panjshir Valley, an ethnic-Tajik stronghold to the northeast of Kabul.

In an op-ed https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/18/mujahideen-resistance-taliban-ahmad-massoud for the Washington Post, Amad Massoud, the Panjshiri leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan called for Western support to fight the Taliban.

“I write from the Panjshir Valley today, ready to follow in my father’s footsteps, with mujahideen fighters who are prepared to once again take on the Taliban,” wrote Massoud, the son of Amhad Shah Massoud, a veteran guerrilla leader assassinated by suspected al Qaeda militants on behalf of the Taliban in 2001.

Other former Afghan leaders including ex-president Hamid Karzai, have been holding talks with the Taliban as they put together a new government.

The Taliban government may take the form of a ruling council with supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada in overall charge, said Waheedullah Hashimi, a senior member of the group.

Afghanistan would not be a democracy. “It is sharia law and that is it,” he told Reuters.

(Reporting by Kabul and Washington newsrooms; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

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