August, 26 2021, 04:34pm EDT
$6 Billion Meant for Afghan Military Must Be Used to Save Afghan Lives
Win Without War Policy Director Kate Kizer released the following statement regarding the roughly $6 billion either previously appropriated or budgeted for fiscal year 2022 for the Afghan security forces:
"In a moment of immense need for the people of Afghanistan, some in Congress intend to divert billions of dollars originally intended for the now-defunct Afghan security forces to wage more endless war abroad. This is an outrage.
WASHINGTON
Win Without War Policy Director Kate Kizer released the following statement regarding the roughly $6 billion either previously appropriated or budgeted for fiscal year 2022 for the Afghan security forces:
"In a moment of immense need for the people of Afghanistan, some in Congress intend to divert billions of dollars originally intended for the now-defunct Afghan security forces to wage more endless war abroad. This is an outrage.
"We owe the people of Afghanistan an immeasurable debt. Every last dollar of the $6 billion must be used to help save Afghan lives, not to boost Pentagon contractor profits.
"Redirecting these $6 billion to finance evacuations, refugee resettlement, and much-needed humanitarian assistance, for example, could spell the difference between life and death for countless Afghans. After two decades of occupation, tens of thousands of lives lost, and millions more displaced, it would be an insult to the people of Afghanistan to turn around and use the funds freed up by their government's collapse to double down on weapons and war.
"The lesson of Afghanistan is that endless war does not work. Having spent $2 trillion on that lesson, now is our chance to prove we learned it by investing in saving lives, not waging more war."
Win Without War is a diverse network of activists and organizations working for a more peaceful, progressive U.S. foreign policy. We believe that by democratizing U.S. foreign policy and providing progressive alternatives, we can achieve more peaceful, just, and common sense policies that ensure that all people--regardless of race, nationality, gender, religion, or economic status--can find and take advantage of opportunity equally and feel secure.
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'Flawed and Dangerous': US Appeals Panel Upholds Potential TikTok Ban
"This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans' access to information, ideas, and media from abroad."
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First Amendment advocates on Friday criticized a U.S. appellate court for upholding a law that would ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company does not swiftly sell the social media platform used by an estimated 170 million Americans.
Signed by President Joe Biden in April, the law gives ByteDance until January 19 to divest from TikTok. Three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the parts of the law considered by the panel "do not contravene the First Amendment" nor other parts of the Constitution of the United States.
"The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States," Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in an opinion the company is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Responding to the decision on social media Friday, Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, said that "the D.C. Circuit's decision today to uphold the TikTok ban is enormously disappointing. If allowed to stand, it would give the government far too much power to restrict Americans' speech online."
Jameel Jaffer, who was on a friend-of-the-court brief as director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, issued a similar warning after the ruling was released.
"This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans' access to information, ideas, and media from abroad," he said. "I hope the D.C. Circuit's ruling won't be the last word—and I doubt it will be."
Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Free Expression Project, also looked ahead to the next court fight.
"The D.C. Circuit decision upholding the TikTok ban will immeasurably harm the free expression of hundreds of millions of TikTok users in the U.S. and globally who use the app to create, to share information, to get their news, and promote their businesses," she said in a statement. "We hope the next phase of review of this misguided and overbroad law will be a chance to right this wrong and prevent it from going into effect."
In addition to arguing the law is unconstitutional, attorneys for TikTok and ByteDance "have claimed it's impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically,"
The Associated Pressreported. "They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm—the platform's secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan—would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content."
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office one day after the law's divestment deadline, previously supported banning the platform, but during the latest campaign, he pledged to try to "save TikTok." According toThe Washington Post:
Trump is expected to try to halt the TikTok ban, people familiar with his views on the matter told The Washington Post in early November, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Alan Rozenshtein, a former national security adviser to the Justice Department, said Trump could take any of three actions to help TikTok fend off the ban: persuading Congress to repeal the law, directing his new attorney general not to enforce it, and declaring that ByteDance has satisfied the statute by performing a "qualified divestiture" of TikTok.
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The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside of a Manhattan hotel Wednesday has sparked a wave of dark humor and fresh fury at the for-profit U.S. healthcare system.
The barbs at UnitedHealthcare—the country's largest private insurer—included a mock denial of coverage letter posted to the subreddit r/nursing in a thread on Thompson’s murder.
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In the comment section of Common Dreams' coverage of the murder, one commenter wrote: "I guess if you steal people's labor and deny them healthcare in order to line your own pockets, you might occasionally expect retaliation." Another wrote: "For profit health care is unethical and immoral."
"Thoughts and deductibles to the family," read one comment below a video of the shooting posted by CNN, according to The New York Times. "Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network."
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