China’s state-run Global Times newspaper mocked President Joe Biden on Friday, quoting his declaration, “America is back,” in a headline about his decision to bomb Syria on Thursday evening. Biden made the remark in a speech about foreign policy in early February, in which he vowed to limit American military engagement. “And they know when you speak, you speak for me,” Biden told diplomats at the State Department. “And so — so is the message I want the world to hear today: America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.” On Thursday, 36 days into his presidency, Biden took unilateral action in Syria, ordering what the Pentagon dubbed a “defensive precision strike” on members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a legal wing of the Iraqi armed forces. “At President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a statement. “Specifically, the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kait’ib Hezbollah (KH) and Kait’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (KSS).” The named groups are among the most influential members of the PMF, particularly KH, or the Hezbollah Brigades. The Global Times suggested Biden had undermined his promises to the American people in its coverage of the strikes, in an article it titled with Biden’s words, “America Is Back.” the Communist Party-approved experts quoted in the piece made the case that, under President Donald Trump, the White House preferred to use economic incentives and punishments like sanctions to confront national security threats by starving them of funding. Under Biden, military violence superseded the sanctions policy, they claimed. “During the Trump era, the US tended to use economic sanctions against Iran and did not ...
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Biden Likely to Continue ‘Endless Wars’ in Afghanistan
Former President Donald Trump’s goal of exiting endless wars may have left the White House with him, as President Joe Biden appears to be keeping American soldiers in Afghanistan past the May 1, 2021, deadline. During the presidential campaign, Biden espoused the idea of ending endless wars overseas upon the 20th year of American forces remaining in Iraq and Syria. But early signals suggest a return to the Bush and Obama era of forever wars. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) said he favors seeking an extension of the May 1 deadline for withdrawing troops that Trump and the Taliban negotiated last year, allowing time for diplomats to negotiate an agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban. “To pull out within several months now is a very challenging and destabilizing effort,” Jack said in a video conference organized by George Washington University. “I would expect some extension,” Reed said, even if that ultimately meant more time for the United States to withdraw the 2,500 troops in the country now. Reed also underscored Afghanistan is a national security priority due to its tendency to be a safe haven for such groups as Al-Qaeda and Daesh. The United States has gone a year without a combat-related casualty in Afghanistan, even as the Taliban warns of renewed attacks. https://t.co/f5GtjQXzLg — Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) February 10, 2021 “We’ve got to be able to assure the world and the American public that Afghanistan will not be a source of planning, plotting to project terrorist attacks around the globe,” he added, “that’s the minimum. I’m not sure we can do that without some presence there.” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) booked an interview on CNN to say, “I think Afghanistan can be very important. I hope that the Biden administration I can work with them on this and talk to Secretary Blinken and the national security adviser about leaving a residual force there to protect the homeland and not allow the Taliban to take over ...
Syria’s Children are Victims of Country’s Decade of War
As Syria approaches the 10-year mark in its civil war next month, the United Nations says the nation’s youngest generation is suffering most, as millions of children suffer malnourishment, stunted growth, and a lack of schooling. “More than half a million children under 5 in Syria suffer from stunting as a result of chronic malnutrition, according to our latest assessments,” U.N. Humanitarian Chief Mark Lowcock said Thursday in his monthly briefing to the Security Council on the situation. “We fear this number will increase,” he said. Lowcock said stunting is especially bad in the northwest and the northeast of the country, where data show that in some areas, up to one in three children suffers from impaired growth and development due to poor nutrition and recurrent illnesses. The effects of stunting are irreversible. Last week, Lowcock spoke with a group of Syrian doctors. At one pediatric hospital, the physicians said malnourished children occupy half of the facility’s 80 beds. In the past two months, five children have died from malnutrition. “Another pediatrician told me that she diagnoses malnutrition in up to 20 children a day,” Lowcock said. “But parents are bringing their children to her for completely different reasons, unaware that they are suffering from malnutrition. Malnutrition, she said, has become so normal that parents cannot spot the signs in their own children.” Neglect Drives Child Labor in Syria Millions of displaced Syrian children work difficult, dangerous jobs just to survive Robbed of childhoods In a decade of war, Syria’s youngest citizens have known nothing but conflict and suffering. They are among the millions of internally displaced and refugees; young girls have been married off in their teens, and boys have been recruited to fight. Children have been physically and psychologically wounded from the violence of war — both perpetrated on them and in front of them. Thousands have been killed. ...
Whitney Young Jr.: An unsung hero of the civil rights movement
close Video America Together - Black History Month - Family of Whitney M. Young Jr. Whitney Young Jr. may not be as well-known as some of the towering figures of the civil rights movement, but he had just as much impact, if not more. While the 1960s raged with unrest, riots and protests, Young, as head of the National Urban League, took the battle to corporate boardrooms and civic meetings. He was one of the era's unsung heroes: a bridge builder. "He preferred to diffuse situations using humor to find common ground," his daughter Dr. Marcia Cantarella said. BEN WATSON: BLACK HISTORY MONTH – FAMILY AND FAITH CONTINUE TO INSPIRE, SUSTAIN AFRICAN AMERICANS In an interview with Fox News as part of Black History Month, Cantarella talked about how her father worked with former President Lyndon B. Johnson crafting the War on Poverty bill. It was like two buddies getting together. "I'm absolutely sure that he sat with Lyndon Johnson, they told a couple of jokes. They had a shot of bourbon. And they did the work," she said. Young's legacy lives on in his daughter. Cantarella is a corporate executive who later became an associate dean at Princeton University. She considers herself fortunate being born into a family where the focus was always on excellence and high achievement. It's a philosophy Young worked to disperse throughout the entire Black community from the very beginning. SELMA'S 'BLOODY SUNDAY': WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE MARCH FOR CIVIL RIGHTS Cantarella, one of Young's two daughters, was born in Minneapolis where her father honed his skills as a powerbroker. Hubert Humphrey was then the mayor of Minneapolis and would later become vice president under Johnson. Young led the local Urban League in the city and as an example of how he preferred a quiet factual approach to change, he studied foot the traffic of African Americans in the major department store. He presented a cost-benefit ...
The $15 Minimum-Wage Debate Clarifies the Partisan Economic Divide
Republican “populists” are on the wrong side of this fight. Photo: J Scott Applewhite/AP/Shutterstock For many left-wing pundits, America’s partisan divide in 2021 is defined by its lack of a strong material basis . After all, a voter’s income level tells you less about her political allegiances today than it has for most of our nation’s modern history . In 2020, some of the wealthiest Zip Codes in the United States backed the party of organized labor by a landslide margin, while some of the poorest broke overwhelmingly for the party of libertarian billionaires. The ties that bind blue America’s tech entrepreneurs to its nonwhite gig workers — or red America’s oil barons to its white rural poor — are those of culture , not economics. Democrats stand for a multiethnic conception of American identity, secularism, cosmopolitanism, racial justice, and gender equality; Republicans, for a normatively white and Christian America, the patriarchal family, and zero-sum nationalism. In geographic terms, these divisions cleave the nation less by region than by density : All across the country, navy-blue urban cores fade into baby-blue inner-ring suburbs, red-violet exurbs and deep-red countryside. This “culture war trumps all” thesis elides many nuances. For one thing, the prominence of zero-sum nationalism in factory towns decimated by globalization surely cannot be attributed to culture alone. For another, a large segment of nonwhite Democrats espouse right-of-center views on immigration and gender, and thus, vote less on the basis of cultural attitudes than some combination of communal bonds, historical memory, and economic interest. Nevertheless, if liberals’ culturalist account of America’s political divide has its flaws, the “populist” right’s efforts to cast the conflict between red and blue in strictly materialist terms — with Republicans representing the interests of blue-collar workers in the heartland, and Democrats of cosseted professionals in ...
