Afghanistan Minorities Form "Private Armies" to Defend Against the Taliban after the U.S. Troop Withdrawl,NYC's Homelessness/Tourism Tension, Former MLB Owner Defeats Facebook? (The Five for 06/22/21)
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[one]
Former DNC Primary Candidate/current NYC Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang caused quite the stir when he addressed mental illness, homelessness and tourism in the Big Apple.
In the final hours of the New York City mayoral campaign, candidate Andrew Yang doubled down on his comments on the mentally ill and homeless.
Phoning into a radio show with billionaire John Catsimatidis on Monday, Yang complained that mentally ill people affect the city's tourism.
Yang was responding to Catsimatidis's statement that too many mentally ill people live on the streets instead of in hospitals. He agreed with Catsimatidis that money is better spent on building facilities to treat people.
"We need to get them the care that they need, but that will also supercharge our economic recovery because we all see these mentally ill people on our streets and subways, and you know who else sees them? Tourists. And then they don't come back, and they tell their friends, 'Don't go to New York City,'" Yang said.
"We're never going to get our jobs back and our economy back if we don't get the mentally ill people who are on our streets in a better environment," Yang added.
The comments Yang made on Monday were similar to those he made at the NYC mayoral debate last Wednesday, for which he received backlash on social media.
"Yes, mentally ill people have rights, but you know who else have rights? We do! The people and families of the city," Yang said last week during the debate."We have the right to walk the street and not fear for our safety because a mentally ill person is going to lash out at us."
According to a New York Times report, Yang said at an event later on Monday with fellow candidate Kathryn Garcia that he stood by the comments he made to Catsimatidis. Yang also emphasized the need for "public safety."
"There will not be an economic recovery until people feel safe walking our streets and walking our subways," said Yang to the New York Times.
This is somewhat anecdotal…but I remember my grandfather talking about working in a mental hospital, which was later closed by the state of Illinois due to funding issues (apparently IL has a pattern of overspending, who woulda thunk it).
My grandpa talked about some of those patients winding up homeless. Some of them just didn’t have family, or didn’t have family who could manage their care.
I’m no expert here, but from what I’ve witnessed, people suffering from schizophrenia are often unable to manage their own care and medication. Many wind up running from the perceived threat (they often believe they’re being chased by the FBI, the Mafia, etc) resulting in homelessness.
I’m 100% with Yang on this one, which is the opposite view of the “California cure” found in cities like San Francisco, where Methadone is handed out for free to keep the homeless more calm/non-violent. Giving people drugs and letting them sleep outside with no other work towards long term care or treatment for the underlying mental illness is not compassion, and it’s not healthcare.
[two]
A former MLB team owner and real estate mogul fears that social media could destroy modern democracy, and he’s pouring millions of his own dollars into reversing the ever growing power expansion of social media on American life and commerce.
Frank McCourt, the billionaire real estate mogul and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is pouring $100 million into an attempt to rebuild the foundations of social media. The effort, which he has loftily named Project Liberty, centers on the construction of a publicly accessible database of people’s social connections, allowing users to move records of their relationships between social media services instead of being locked into a few dominant apps.
The undercurrent to Project Liberty is a fear of the power that a few huge companies — and specifically Facebook Inc. — have amassed over the last decade. “I never thought I would be questioning the security of our underlying systems, namely democracy and capitalism,” McCourt said. “We live under constant surveillance, and what’s happening with this massive accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a few, that’s incredibly destabilizing. It threatens capitalism because capitalism needs to have some form of fairness in it in order to survive.”
McCourt is hardly the only one to feel this way. Others are trying to reform social media by passing new laws or regulations, waiting for the next generation of startups to disrupt the current incumbents, or pressuring Facebook to look inward and revise its business model. McCourt, along with others like Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, say the solution may be blockchain, the technology underpinning bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Project Liberty would use blockchain to construct a new internet infrastructure called the Decentralized Social Networking Protocol. With cryptocurrencies, blockchain stores information about the tokens in everyone’s digital wallets; the DSNP would do the same for social connections. Facebook owns the data about the social connections between its users, giving it an enormous advantage over competitors. If all social media companies drew from a common social graph, the theory goes, they’d have to compete by offering better services, and the chance of any single company becoming so dominant would plummet.
This story may not grab the front page of most websites, but it’s a vitally important one that could affect the way our very society functions moving forward.
I think McCourt is on the right track here…rather than trying to legislate the internet (which advances much more quickly than the government can pass laws), building a better version of social media has the best shot at keeping big tech from building a dystopia where everything is known about you.
[three]
If you’re looking to pick up some extra cash and also [checks notes] go to outer space in a military uniform…that may be a possibility in the near future.
The Pentagon is nearing a decision on whether it should create a Space ForceNational Guard to supplement the newest military branch.
During a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, top leadership from the Air Force and Space Force said they have completed a report required by the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act detailing whether and how to best organize Guard and Reserve components within the Space Force. The report was originally due to Congress in March.
"We've been operating with the Guard for 25 years. It provides critical capability, both people-wise and equipment-wise," Raymond said. "We can't do our job without them today, and we can't do our job in the future without them."
Nearly 2,000 personnel across 14 National Guard units with space-related missions reside in California, Alaska, Hawaii, Florida, Colorado, Ohio, New York and Guam. Arkansas also has one unit with a space-focused targeting mission.
Key leaders, including Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau, have advocated to Congress on the need for a part-time volunteer force within the Space Force.
According to its posture statement, the National Guard provides 60% of the Space Force's offensive electronic warfare capability. Roughly 11% of the Defense Department's space personnel are Guardsmen, Hokanson told lawmakers last month.
[four]
Hazakara mililtia. Photo by the New York Times.
Afghanistan is on the verge of an all out Civil War, with private armies forming in self defense of the projected coming conflict.
As U.S. and NATO forces withdraw from Afghanistan, and talks falter between the Taliban and the American-backed government, ethnic groups across the country have formed militias or say they plan to arm themselves. The rush to raise fighters and weapons evokes the mujahedeen wars of the early 1990s, when rival militias killed thousands of civilians and left sections of Kabul in ruins.
A concerted and determined militia movement, even if nominally aligned with Afghan security forces, could fracture the unsteady government of President Ashraf Ghani and once again divide the country into fiefs ruled by warlords. Yet these makeshift armies may eventually serve as the last line of defense as security force bases and outposts steadily collapse in the face of a fierce onslaught of attacks by the Taliban.
Since the U.S. troop withdrawal was announced in April, regional strongmen have posted videos on social media showing armed men hoisting assault rifles and vowing to fight the Taliban. Some militia leaders fear the flagging peace talks in Doha, Qatar, will collapse after foreign troops depart and the Taliban will intensify an all-out assault to capture provincial capitals and lay siege to Kabul.
“For the first time in 20 years, power brokers are speaking publicly about mobilizing armed men,” the Afghanistan Analysts Network, a research group in Kabul, wrote in a June 4 report.
Rather than an attempt to rule the country or push a leader to national power, these “private armies” are often forming simply to protect their families and communities from mass slaughter. In particular, the Hazara ethnic minority is arming themselves out of fear that past persecution will return:
“If we don’t stand up and defend ourselves, history will repeat itself and we will be massacred like during the time of Abdul Rahman Khan,” Mr. Alipur said, referring to the Pashtun “Iron Emir” who ruled in the late 19th century, massacring and enslaving Hazaras. Afghan folklore says he displayed towers built from severed Hazara heads.
“They forced us to pick up guns,” Mr. Alipur said of the government, which has failed to protect Hazaras. “We must carry guns to protect ourselves.”
Over the past two decades, Hazaras have built thriving communities in west Kabul and in Hazarajat, their mountainous homeland in central Afghanistan. But with no militias of their own, they have been vulnerable to attack.
Hazara demands for an army escalated after up to 69 schoolgirls were killed in a bombing in Kabul on May 8. Less than a month later, three public transport minivans were bombed in Kabul’s Hazara neighborhoods, killing 18 civilians, most of them Hazara. Among them was a journalist and her mother, the police said. Since 2016, at least 766 Hazara have been killed in the capital alone in 23 attacks, according to New York Times data.
There’s been a lot of talk about pulling out of Afghanistan to get out of “endless wars.”
It’s worth noting that the war in Afghanistan is still in the “endless phase,” just without the U.S. or NATO to provide some stability.
Whether that’s the right or wrong move will likely take a decade to see clearly. The only thing we know for sure on June 22nd, 2021 is that it’s a very bad year to be a random Afghani civilian.
[five]
Finally, tragedy hits a vulnerable community in Alabama.
When eight girls from the Tallapoosa County Girls Ranch were killed in a crash in Alabama Saturday, they were taken from the sense of family and community many of them had long been searching for.
The ranch provides a home for neglected or abused school-aged children, according to the Alabama Sheriffs Youth Ranches, the nonprofit that manages the Tallapoosa County Girls Ranch and others across the state.
"We lost eight young people that can make a difference in our world, we lost eight young people that didn't have a chance to have their own children, we lost eight young people that can't break the cycle of where they've been and change it for their children," Youth Ranches CEO Michael Smith told CNN. "That's a sad day."
The children, ranging in age from 4 to 17, were on their way back from a beach vacation with the director of ranch life when their van became enmeshed in a pileup that involved at least 17 vehicles, some of which caught fire. The accident happened on I-65 northbound as then-Tropical Storm Claudette dumped heavy rain across the Southeast.
Stories like this are the reason The Five exists. This should be a bigger story, full stop. It’s just not very click-bait-y, so it’s being ignored, but it’s a terrible tragedy. The work of this community, and their loss, should receive national attention and support.
[epilogue]
In March, 1943 Owen Baggett bailed out of his B-24 bomber just before it exploded in a dogfight with Japanese forces. Owen had witnessed the Japanese doubling back to shoot bomber pilots and crew as they parachuted out, so Owen drew his pistol jumped and went limp, faking his own death.
When a Japanese pilot flew close to Owen, the enemy fighter pilot slowed and opened the plane’s canopy to get a better look and make sure Owen was dead. Owen raised his pistol and shot the enemy pilot in the head.
The plane went into a tailspin and the pilot was thrown from the plane before it crashed. Later, the enemy pilot’s body was recovered with a single .45 ACP round in his head.
Owen Baggett remains the only person in history to shoot down a plane with a pistol.
Until the next one,
-sth