Their Own Rules
The U.S. Military Often Kills Civilians - and Rarely Offers Compensation (Pesha Maged, The Intercept, 25 min.)
The U.S.-led coalition has carried out 34,781 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria since 2014, and the U.K.-based monitoring group Airwars estimates that coalition actions led to the deaths of between 8,317 and 13,190 civilians, of whom 3,715 have been identified. An Intercept review of public records shows that only one person whose family members were killed by a coalition airstrike in Iraq or Syria has received official compensation.
In a 2006 incident, U.S. soldiers accidentally killed three children, ages 5, 16, and 18. As it was a noncombat scenario — soldiers accidentally fired mortars that killed the children — the U.S. provided $35,000 in compensation to a relative of the children. But without troops on the ground, most civilians do not know where to file a complaint. The Pentagon does have a website that provides email addresses to submit information on civilian casualties, but the website does not mention compensation — and, of course, someone needs web access to find the email addresses.
In 2020, despite Congress approving a $3 million fund for ex gratia payments, the Pentagon did not issue a single payment. The Department of Defense claims that U.S. military forces killed 23 civilians in 2020, most of them in Afghanistan. According to Airwars, the number of civilian casualties was much higher, with a minimum of 102 fatalities.
Over the past five years, while U.S. grounds troops were still in Afghanistan, the U.S. paid around $2 million in sympathy payments there. But in Iraq, where U.S. operations were primarily conducted by air, news reports suggest that only around 14 payments have been made since operations against ISIS began in 2014. In 2019, only six Iraqis received sympathy payments compared to the 605 payments issued in Afghanistan. In 2020, no sympathy payments were issued globally. Most ex gratia payments are small — usually between $2,500 and $5,000. One of the condolence payments issued in 2019 was only $131.
In most cases, civilians remain in the dark, struggling with the aftermath of the death and destruction, with no idea who was responsible — and no compensation.
Biden Could Owe as Much as $500k in Back Taxes, Government Report Indicates (New York Post, 10 min.)
Biden leads the push for a $3.5 trillion bill that would target tax avoidance and raise tax rates on higher incomes so the rich “pay their fair share.”
A new bipartisan report, provided to The Post, suggests Biden owes taxes under current rules and has exploited accounting tricks that the bill would end.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden routed more than $13 million through S corporations and counted less than $800,000 of it as salary eligible for the Medicare tax — exempting the rest from what would have been a 3.8 percent rate, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Covid Derangement Syndrome
The Extremely Weird Politics of Covid (Ross Douthat, The New York Times, 15 min.)
Although the right briefly favored restrictions when they seemed likely to fall mainly on foreigners, by the spring of 2020 it became commonplace for the right to critique them on the grounds of what until very recently seemed like a core left perspective - that stringent public health responses are inherently authoritarian and inevitably ratify various forms of inequality and social control.
Liberals have swung against any acknowledgment of this perspective yet briefly suspended its zeal for restrictions when the transgressors were left-wing protesters instead of anti-mask Republicans.
It’s not hard to imagine the pandemic in the U.S. unfolding another way, with the left arguing that lockdowns are instruments of class discrimination; that elites flout the rules while demanding compliance from the lower orders; that distancing imposed too much unhappiness and loneliness and misery, especially on the young; that the bare living preserved by public health restrictions wasn’t worth the cost.
I think this right-left flip, this sudden-seeming role reversal, offers some sort of key to the derangements of our time.
Maybe the key lies in the left’s increasing sense of itself as occupying the seat of power and the right’s sense of its marginalization — which naturally changes the way each side reacts to the use of authority in a crisis.
The Unbelievable Grimness of HermanCainAward, the Subreddit That Catalogs Anti-Vaxxer COVID Deaths (Lili Loofbourow, Slate, 15 min.)
Most of us have not heard what lungs sound like when they have that by-now-classic “ground glass appearance” in scans. We have not watched people panicking and yanking tubes out because they can’t breathe. We have not seen patients swollen and full of air, unrecognizable. Or proned. Or having their last conversation before they go on the ventilator.
How seamlessly anti-vax communities reconcile themselves to the deaths their convictions will perpetuate. The posts about individual liberty and self-sufficiency devolve into abjectly dependent appeals. Chilled though I’ve been by how this subreddit can rejoice at a death, I’m somehow no less chilled by how easily the bereaved normalize their losses. A 35-year-old man with three young children and a free vaccine available should not be dead! There is astonishingly little recognition of this.
No one could argue that a place where people gather to mock the dead is “moral,” or accuse it of hypocrisy, or of virtue signaling, or of coastal elitism. It is an anti-persuasive venue, a place that dispenses with rational appeals for people to behave better in favor of something much more primal and horrifying. And who knows? Maybe it’s persuading people specifically because it’s not trying to.
Identity Posturing
The ACLU’s RBG Tweet Shows Once Again That It Has Abandoned Free Speech (Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review, 6 min.)
Of course, Ginsberg didn’t say this. Instead, she said:
The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When the government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human responsible for her own choice.
This is not a semantic point. Ginsburg’s oft-stated view was that the legal right to abortion was necessary in order to give women equality with men, because men did not have to fear unwanted pregnancies. To remove the references to sex is to destroy this argument and to substitute in a completely new one.
Most of those who have criticized the ACLU for this behavior have noted that, once again, the organization has caved to the terminally woke. And, indeed, it has. But there is another point that needs making, and that is that what the ACLU has done here represents a flat-out repudiation of the core value for which the ACLU is supposed to stand: anti-censorship.
MSNBC Host Joy Reid Wonders Why The Media Doesn't Cover Stories She Also Never Covers (Shant Mesrobian, 8 min.)
MSNBC host Joy Reid took to the airwaves Monday evening to apply a racial lens to the story of missing 22-year-old Gabby Petito.
According to Reid, the media sensationalizes stories about the disappearances of white women while failing to cover stories about missing non-whites.
Reid hasn’t previously given any attention to stories of missing women of color that she herself now believes are sorely needed.
The racially charged angle provided an opportunity to spend her entire segment talking about something called “missing white woman syndrome.”
Russia, Russia, Russia
New Proof Emerges of the Biden Family Emails: a Definitive Account of the CIA/Media/BigTech Fraud (Glenn Greenwald, 15 min.)
On October 14 and then October 15, 2020, The New York Post published two news reports on Joe Biden's activities in Ukraine and China that raised serious questions about his integrity and ethics: specifically whether he and his family were trading on his name and influence to generate profit for themselves.
Former intelligence officials such as Obama's CIA Director John Brennan and his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper led a group of dozens of former spooks in issuing a public statement that it was "Russian disinformation.”
The intelligence officials admitted in this letter that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.”
Virtually every media outlet — CNN, NBC News, PBS, Huffington Post, The Intercept, and too many others to count — repeated the unfounded assertion.
Twitter prohibited any discussion of this reporting or posting of links to the New York Post’s stories both publicly and privately on their platform.
Facebook immediately announced through its communications executive Andy Stone — a life-long Democratic Party operative — that it would algorithmically suppress the stories pending review by "Facebook's third-party fact-check partners.”
Despite multiple requests, Facebook never published the results of this alleged fact-check and still refuses to say whether it ever conducted one.
A young reporter for Politico, Ben Schreckinger, spent months investigating the key documents published by The New York Post and published a new book in which he found definitive proof that these emails and related documents are indisputably authentic.
Jen Psaki Sticks to ‘Russian Disinformation’ Story After Hunter Biden’s Laptop Data Confirmed (Washington Times, 3 min.)
Despite new confirmation of the authenticity of the emails, and some of the Post’s reporting confirmed as true this week, the White House stuck to claims that it was part of a Kremlin operation.
With Clinton Lawyer Charged, the Russiagate Scam is Now Indicted (Aaron Maté, 20 min.)
Although Sussmann faces just one count on a false statement charge, the 27-page charging document offers an expansive window into how the Russiagate scam began, and how Democratic operatives, intelligence officials, and establishment media figures dishonestly fed it to the public.
Beyond Britney
Conservatorship Investigation Parts 1, 2, and 3 (Heidi Blake and Katie J.M. Baker, Buzzfeed News)
Abuse, Exploitation, and Death Inside America’s Guardianship Industry (60 min.)
They Both Fought to Break Free From Guardianship Only One Escaped. (75 min.)
Fighting a Family Conservatorship (45 min.)
A 31-year-old man was abused by staff and buried in concrete for months before his guardian realized he was missing. No charges were brought against her and she is still in charge of 130 people.
In many states, guardians can force wards to undergo invasive medical procedures including the implantation of contraceptive devices. In several cases, wards were permanently sterilized.
One major guardianship corporation was given control of hundreds of wards — including young people — despite having been repeatedly accused of domestic abuse and assault involving children.
Guardians have stolen tens of millions of dollars from hundreds of people, exploiting obscure trust fund laws to conceal their financial activity from courts.
Cool Stories
Fossil Footprints Show Humans in North America More Than 21,000 Years Ago (NBC News, 10 min.)
Japanese Sisters Certified as World’s Oldest Twins at 107 (Associated Press, 3 min.)
Growing up, they said they were bullied because of prejudice against children of multiple births in Japan.
They were separated after elementary school, busy with their own lives for decades, and rarely met until they turned 70.
About 86,510 people in Japan are centenarians — half of whom turned 100 this year.
Other Articles
Two Afghan Evacuees Charged With Crimes at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin (Washington Examiner, 3 min.)
White House Moving to Release Information on Trump to Congressional Investigators (CNN, 5 min.)
New Study: Large Minimum Wage Hikes Especially Disadvantage Younger, Less Educated Workers (Brian Doherty, Reason, 6 min.)
Why Aren’t Americans Protesting in the Streets? (Charles C. W. Cooke, National Review, 6 min.)
Brutal Treatment of Asylum-Seekers Is the Reality of Government (J.D. Tuccille, Reason, 8 min.)
After Altercation at Restaurant, Black Lives Matter Claims NYC Vaccine Mandate Is Being Weaponized (Caroline Downey, National Review, 8 min.)
Biden Administration ‘Strongly Opposes’ Honorable Discharge for Service Members Who Refuse COVID-19 Vaccine (Washington Examiner, 4 min.)
The Biden administration "strongly opposes" an amendment that would prevent the Pentagon from dishonorably discharging service members who refuse to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Spike in Gun Violence Continues, With 2021 on Pace to Be the Worst Year in Decades (CNN, 6 min.)
Mass shootings are also on the rise, Through September 15, there have been 498 mass shootings across the US, an average of about 1.92 per day. That's 15% higher than last year when there were a total of 611, a rate of 1.67 per day.
The rise in gun violence, however, might be slowing down. In the first quarter of 2021, the number of homicides was 23% higher than in 2020. In the second quarter that number went down to 10%.
‘Hotel Rwanda’ Hero Sentenced to 25 Years on Terror Charges (Associated Press, 6 min.)
Paul Rusesabagina, credited with sheltering ethnic Tutsis during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and a recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, boycotted the announcement of the verdict, calling the trial a “sham.”
Amnesty International criticized the proceedings, noting that Rusesabagina was initially denied the right to choose his own lawyer.
Rusesabagina testified at trial that he helped form the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change to help refugees. The armed group claimed responsibility for attacks in 2018 and 2019 in southern Rwanda in which nine Rwandans died.
Long Read
‘Iran Was Our Hogwarts’: My Childhood Between Tehran and Essex (Arianne Shahvisi, The Guardian, 30 min.)