John Sopko on Afghanistan Reconstruction Efforts
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko talked about his latest report in which he argues…
Sunday, October 31, 2021
FASHIONISTA SINEMA: When A Closet of Colorful Clothes is All-Out There In A Political Agenda That's a Mixed-Bag of Messaging
Thanks to Angela Johnson, who wanted to start up (and succeeded) to establish an entire new woman-owned fashion industry here in Arizona from her company Fabric work-space in Tempe, it looked like all the right stuff was moving in the right direction... until Kyrsten Sinema and her eye-candy clothes grabbed all the eyes of national media attention.
The latest episode happened in Tempe - inside a public bathroom at ASU where the Democratic Arizona Senator was teaching a class in political fund-raising
Moment activists chase Sen. Sinema into BATHROOM at ASU and demand she back Biden's $3.5T social bill to address immigration issues
- A group of activists confronted Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in a restroom about her reluctancy to back President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan
- They threatened to vote her 'out of office' if she failed to fulfill her promises
- One activist, who identified herself as Blanca, shared her own immigration story with Sinema, asking her to help find a 'pathway to citizenship'
- Video of the incident was shared on social media, promoting response from Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz who tweeted: '#DeportBlanca'
- Sinema did not engage with the activists
A group of activists followed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema into a bathroom at Arizona State University on Friday to demand that the Democrat address immigration issues
'We knocked on doors for you to get you elected. Just how we got you elected, we can get you out of office if you don't support what you promised us,' one activist threatened.
The activists begged Sinema — who did not engage in discussion — to support President Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda that would provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants
In a statement released on Twitter, Sinema argued that delaying the vote was 'deeply disappointing' and a betrayal of the trust of the American people
'I have never, and would never, agree to any bargain that would hold one piece of legislation hostage to another.'
Sinema also argued that she worked to deliver the infrastructure bill while also engaging in 'good faith negotiations' on the reconciliation package.
The video of Sinema being confronted in the bathroom came on the same day that another group of activists confronted Sen. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia — the Democratic party's other key holdout on the legislation.
In a video capturing the exchange, Manchin, aboard his $700,000 yacht named Almost Heaven, assured the West Virginian kayakers that Democrats were working to pass a reasonable bill.
West Virginians are kayaking to Joe Manchin's yacht and demanding he explain why he's stopping the reconciliation bill from advancingpic.twitter.com/Q09OC1aEHo
— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) October 1, 2021
Sen. Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, spoke to protesters from aboard his $700,000 yacht
Protesters kayaked to the ship to ask why their senator would not support his own party's $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill
__________________________________________________________________
A DRESS IS A POLITICAL STRATEGY...
Another line of argument is what I see as the third-wave feminist response to our culture’s obsession with women’s bodies as their only worth, which is: We should never acknowledge what a woman looks like. I have heard people proclaim emphatically, for instance, “Never comment on a person’s body.” To the extent that Sinema’s clothes are worn on her body, the logic goes, we should never comment on her clothing.
This line of reasoning stems from a really decent impulse, for the most part, and that impulse is a response to a fact that research reveals: Women are judged unfairly in the workplace for their looks, their bodies and their clothing. . .
EQUAL TIME
WHEN ONE WOMAN TELLS ON THE WARDROBE OF THE WARDROBE OF ANOTHER WOMAN
Tressie McMillan Cottom
Why We Should Talk About What Kyrsten Sinema Is Wearing
Opinion Writer
"I spent the past week in Nashville, where I’ve been reporting a story and doing background for a book project. It was a wonderful trip. Great people, great music and a complicated new-urban Southern city. There weren’t enough masks for my liking but there was great culture.
As I was leaving, an important question pushed itself to the fore of the national conversation: What the heck is Kyrsten Sinema wearing?
You may have seen Sinema, Democratic senator from Arizona, wearing a distressed denim vest as she presided over the Senate. To someone who loves folk music and just left Nashville (me), the look was serving classic Aaron Neville vibes. I was not the only one to pick up on that similarity, as evidenced by this social media exchange where Aaron Neville himself claims (correctly) that he wore it better.
The politics around the two bills President Biden is trying to pass — a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a budget reconciliation bill — have centered on two senators: Joe Manchin and Sinema. Both have been analyzed and critiqued for their political performance as outsider centrist Democrats, but Sinema is particularly interesting, especially this past week.
Given the high legislative stakes, it is easy to treat Sinema’s aesthetics as unimportant. But those aesthetics are part of the way she courts, manipulates and plays with public attention as a political figure. Politicians are part of the cultural and economic elite. Their choices are always about public perception. In that context, a dress is never just a dress. It is always strategy.
QQ
Saturday, October 30, 2021
A Timely Family-Values Tribute To 14 Years of Google Street Maps
In these terrible times of BIG TECH and FANG getting trounced in head-turning scathing pummeling as well as insider staff revolts and delayed whistle-blowing, it's interesting to note the turns taken aimed to appeal to a certain audience by author Sirin Kale writing today in The Observer and reproduced in The Guardian.
Different episodes that are related are accompanied by cute illustrations like this one:
Memory lanes: Google’s map of our lives
Sat 30 Oct 2021 10.00 EDT
FIRST SOME LITERARY KEY FACTS
> When Street View was launched in May 2007, it was touted as an opportunity for users to “quickly and easily view and navigate high-resolution, 360-degree street-level images of various cities across the world”.
> Street View was initially conceived as a way to improve the accuracy of Google Maps and it is still used by Google as a way of keeping Maps up-to-date, for example by removing defunct business listings.
“Its primary focus,” says Google’s Paddy Flynn, “is to make the user experience in Google Maps more real.”
> Fourteen years later, Street View has been extended to 87 countries across the world, including Swaziland, American Samoa and even Antarctica.
> It has captured more than 10m miles of imagery and taken on a significance to many users that goes beyond its utility as a navigational tool.
During Covid, searches spiked 10-fold, as users roamed the world in search of open spaces beyond the confines of home, supermarket and park. “It was a way for people to feel more connected to the real world,” Flynn says, “see places and take virtual tours.”
> On Street View, we have a panoptical view of the world and all the mysteries, non-sequiturs and idiocies that are part of everyday life. Here is Sherlock Holmes hailing a cab in Cambridge; a car submerged in a Michigan lake containing the body of a long-missing person; Mary Poppins waiting on the sidewalk at an amusement park; a caravan being stolen by a thief.
> Maps have always been a vessel to try to contain the daunting abundance of the world by putting a cartographical stopper in it.
“Maps have been around since time immemorial,” says Flynn, “and technology… enables digital representation. It is one thing to digitise maps and make them widely available and accessible. But that reflection of the real world is something that people are also looking for.”
> Rather than offering a facsimile of the world we live in, Street View offers something more profound: the opportunity to spot loved ones on familiar streets, unaware that their errand or commute would be captured for posterity by the all-seeing eye of a camera-mounted Street View car.
> Street View reveals us for who we really are, rather than the versions we present to the world. The criminal mid-theft; the inquisitive grandmother at the window. Because most of the people captured are unaware they are being photographed, the images evoke a sense of intimacy and verisimilitude.
> When we see ourselves on Street View, we are reminded that we are peripheral players in a much greater narrative; passersby in another person’s story, rather than the centre of the photographic frame. When we catch a glimpse of our loved ones on Street View, we see their hidden, solitary life.
> But Street View does more than just capture our loved ones in candid moments. Because you can turn back the clock on earlier versions,
Street View allows us to move through digital space in a non-temporal, non-linear way and connect with the past on an emotional level.
[. . .] HERE'S AN EXCERPT FROM THE AUTHOR'S FOCUS AND WRITING STYLE
"“A sense of place is so important in memory,” says the photographer Nancy Forde, from Waterloo, Ontario. Her Addressing Loss project asks users to submit stories and images of loved ones they miss, and the comfort they’ve found remembering them via Street View images from when they were alive.
“We tend to remember addresses or places that were meaningful, and how things looked like when we were kids. And that’s what’s so special about Street View,” Forde goes on.
“Even if a home is renovated or changes, we can recognise something familiar in it. If something meaningful happened to us in that spot, it implants in our hippocampus.” The interface of Street View, Forde says, mirrors the ways in which humans remember. “You can zoom in and out,” Forde says, “and there’s this telescoping. It’s a little blurry at first, and then it rights itself. And I find that very evocative of how our memory works. We can try to remember something, and it sharpens as we’re talking about it or encountering it.”
To all those who use it, Street View evokes a sense of freedom, in a rules-based, time-bound world. “You can see bricks and mortar that aren’t there any more,” says Selby. “Shops you remember that aren’t there any more. I just wish it went all the way back to when I was born. But then I’d spend all my time on Street View, not in the real world. It’s almost like a game but based on reality. A driving game. You’re in the seat and you can go wherever you want to, to whatever year you want to.”
TAKE THE TIME-TO-READ MORE BETWEEN-THE-LINES if you like Nostalgia
Memory lanes: Google’s map of our lives
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER: Arizona''s Fighting 5th District Congressman Andy Biggs Idea
Another week "in the Swamp" and the usual interview on FOX News of course + who he's attacking this week. . .No mention of the Contempt of Congress action approved, but Biggs is on-the-air with Steve Brannon
Interview with War Room
Election integrity is a front-runner issue with Americans as 2022 looms in the forecast. After Arizona’s audit, we are still left without explanation concerning the participation of thousands of voters who registered after the voting deadline. Not to mention, the voting anomalies that tallied more than five times the gap in votes between presidential candidates. It’s imperative that we take steps to ensure election integrity and restore Americans’ trust in our voting systems. Check out my interview below to hear more:
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Rockwell - Somebody's Watching Me (Official Music Video
Rockwell - Somebody's Watching Me (Official Music Video)
Close....but no De-Classified SIGAR: Special Inspector General Afghan Report (Afghan Reconstruction)
John Sopko talked to Noel King the other day in a Morning Edition on National Public Radio. Congress asked him to look into what led to the collapse of the Afghan government in August. And his new report is out this morning
Inspector general report is issued on the collapse of the Afghan government
Here's the transcript
_____________________________________________________________________________
NOEL KING, HOST:
John Sopko is the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction. His job for the past 10 years has been to monitor how U.S. tax dollars are and were spent there. Congress asked him to look into what led to the collapse of the Afghan government in August. And his new report is out this morning. Some of it is very familiar - corruption, lack of oversight. But Sopko also told me the American public is not getting the full picture because critical details are still classified.
Are you getting the information you need from the U.S. government to figure out all of the answers that you need to these questions?
JOHN SOPKO: Well, yes and no. We're getting information. We've set up teams. And actually, we're getting a lot of information from former Afghan officials who we were - now out at various military bases and around the world talking to them. But your question was directly on U.S. government support. We still need to get some information from them.
And we really need to get information declassified. There is a lot of information that was classified or withheld from the American people over the years, particularly since 2015, to protect the Afghan government from embarrassment. And there is no Ghani government. There is no Afghan government anymore. So we think that information should be immediately released to SIGAR and to the American people and Congress in an unclassified format.
KING: What type of information are you talking about?
SOPKO: Well, Noel, this is the type of information that you and some of your reporters have been dying to see for years. It was, how good was the Afghan government fighting corruption? How good was the Afghan military able to stand on their own? - casualty rates for the Afghan military, efficiency rates, their ability to actually function as an independent military.
That was information that the Ghani government requested the U.S. government not share with the American people. There's no reason to protect it any more.
KING: Asking a question that our listeners I know will wonder, and I think you may have just answered it at the end there, but I want to be clear on this, why would that kind of information be classified? This was at the request of the Afghan government?
SOPKO: Well, we don't know. We thought there...
KING: Oh.
SOPKO: ...It should have been declassified. I mean, they basically said that the Afghan government did not want that information made available to the American people and to anybody - probably more to their own people. It would embarrass them. But you'll have to ask President Ghani, if you can find him, or some of our generals as to why they did it. But they followed the suggestion of the Afghan government. And they withheld all that information. Now, those who had clearances could see it. And we prepared classified annexes where we summarized it. So we're asking that those classified annexes be declassified, too. But there is tons of information that would give a clearer picture of what was going on in Afghanistan over the last two years.
KING: The United States spent $89 billion training and equipping Afghan forces. Was that wasted money?
SOPKO: I think the obvious answer is yes. (Laughter) I mean, you know, you build a military to fight the enemies. Well, when the military disappears or didn't even exist - I mean, that is the ironic thing, Noel. One of the things we report on is that we developed a special IT system for the Afghans to count the number of soldiers and police they had. And it was also supposed to be so we could catch these ghost soldiers and ghost policemen who didn't exist, and we were paying their salaries. But the week before the collapse, that system, which was run by the Afghans, said that 93% of the police force in Afghanistan was showing up for duty and should be paid. Well, no, (laughter) the week before, most of Afghanistan was under the control of the Taliban. So this shows how, you know, total farce and total fiction that system was.
And that goes back to one of the problems we identified before - the lack of oversight over how our U.S. taxpayer dollars were being spent.
KING: Do you have any updates on something that we talked about quite a bit when the U.S. first left Afghanistan, which is all of the tanks and guns and aircraft that we gave to Afghan forces and then left behind? Any idea who's using them now? I mean, you know, not to be flip, but...
SOPKO: Well, the problem is that we don't really have good information on the ground. We do have reporting from the U.S. military that there - material that our U.S. troops had at the airport or at the end was destroyed. But what I believe most people are focusing on, and that's something we are focusing on now is, what happened to all the equipment we gave the Afghans? Now, that material - it appears most of that is in the hands of the Taliban and usable.
KING: Does that strike you as a security threat to the United States?
SOPKO: Yes. There is some security threat there. It's not as if, you know, an M16 can, you know, somehow in Afghanistan's going to end up on the streets of New York. But what it means is that you have a really well-equipped Taliban with some good equipment. And we don't know what they're going to do with it - probably more weapons than they need. So I'm assuming that may be hitting the international gun market. So you don't know who's going to end up with some of this equipment.
Now, we believe most of the airplanes and helicopters that the Afghan military had at the end were even destroyed by the Afghan military before they left or flown out. We think about 25% of the aircraft and helicopters were actually flown out of the country by Afghan pilots. But we're trying to document that. And that's one of the things that Congress has asked us to look into.
KING: You've been doing this work for almost 10 years.
SOPKO: (Laughter).
KING: How worried are you that what you have found will be dismissed or forgotten or that the mistakes will be repeated? The United States has an unfortunate problem of memory, I think is one is one fair way to put it. Do you think what you've been doing will matter?
SOPKO: We hope it will. As I have said repeatedly, we will do something like this again sometime soon. And we are doing this in small ways. But they could grow in some countries in Africa right now. I hope people learn the lessons.
But, you know, you can only bring a horse to water. You can't make them drink.
KING: John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, or SIGAR - thank you so much for taking the time today. We really appreciate it.
SOPKO: It is a pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAMMAL HANDS' "THREE GOOD THINGS")
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