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      Ukraine: US puts 8,500 troops on alert to deploy to bolster Nato – video

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      The US military has put up to 8,500 troops on alert to be ready to deploy to Europe, potentially at very short notice, should the Nato alliance activate a rapid response force. It’s the latest sign of US resolve in the face of a Russian military buildup near Ukraine. The Pentagon spokesman John Kirby stressed that no decision had been made on whether to deploy the troops, and that any such deployment would separate from intra-European movements of US troops to Nato’s eastern flank, to reassure nervous allies. The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told US citizens in Ukraine that ‘now is the time to leave’

      US puts 8,500 troops on heightened alert amid fears over Ukraine
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      The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy

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      The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy On Russia and Putin, the president said the quiet part loud. Re-engagement has been welcomed but the exit from Afghanistan was a disaster. Analysts see much to do to rebuild US credibilityJoe Biden marked his first anniversary in office with a gaffe over Ukraine that undid weeks of disciplined messaging and diplomatic preparation.Russian ships, tanks and troops on the move to Ukraine as peace talks stallRead moreThe president’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” by Russia might split Nato over how to respond sent the White House into frantic damage limitation mode.Officials insisted Biden had been referring to cyber attacks and paramilitary activities and not Russian troops crossing the border. That failed to entirely calm nerves in Kyiv and other European capitals, especially as Biden also raised eyebrows by predicting that Vladimir Putin would “move in” to Ukraine because “he has to do something” and would probably prevail.The analysis of Nato’s weaknesses and Putin’s intentions was no doubt widely shared but Biden had said the quiet part loud, contradicting what his own officials had been saying. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, had just been telling Foreign Policy that one of the great successes of the Biden administration was that “the 30 allies of Nato [were] speaking with one voice in the Russia-Ukraine crisis”.Aides who have shadowed Biden through his long career as senator and vice-president are used to his prolix ways, his tendency to draw on his deep foreign policy expense to over-explain, but the stakes are immeasurably greater as a president, trying to stare down Putin as Europe stands on the threshold of war.The stumble distracted from some of the foreign policy achievements of Biden’s first year – the mending of transatlantic ties, the bolstering of US support for the embattled government in Kyiv and the development of a consistent policy towards Moscow – which combined a openness to talks with a readiness to inflict punitive measures and a refusal to be divided from Nato allies.None of those gains were a given in US foreign policy after four years of Donald Trump, a president who frequently put domestic political and business advantage ahead of strategic national interests, particularly when it came to Russia. Mending alliances, returning to multilateralism and restoring predictability to US policy after the volatile Trump era is widely regarded as Biden’s greatest success so far in foreign policy.His claim on taking office that “America is back” was backed up by a quick deal to extend the New Start treaty in Russia and thereby salvage the only major arms control agreement to survive Trump. The US rejoined the Paris climate accord and the United Nations Human Rights Council, re-engaged with major powers in nuclear talks with Iran, and convened a virtual Summit for Democracy in December.All those steps were in line with a broad strategy which Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs, describes as a Biden doctrine.“I think it’s a strategic reorientation towards competition/conflict with China and, the other side of that coin, strengthening relationships with partners in Europe and in Asia, both bilaterally and multilaterally,” Tocci said. “And relying less on the military instrument in order to pursue US foreign policy goals.”The Ukraine stumble was not the first time that strategy has been impaired by its execution. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was intended to be a decisive break with the past, extricating the US from its longest war so it could focus on its most important geopolitical challenge, the rapid rise of China.The departure turned to chaos when the Afghan army, which the US had spent $83m and 20 years trying to build, collapsed in a few days in the face of a Taliban offensive. The scenes of desperate Afghans trying to cling to departing US planes, some dying in the attempt, are an inescapable part of Biden’s legacy.Biden has argued he was boxed in by the Doha agreement the Trump administration signed with the Taliban in February 2020, under which the US was due to leave by May 2021. Biden was able to stretch that deadline by four months but maintained that staying any longer would have led to renewed attacks on US troops.Nathan Sales, an acting under secretary of state in the Trump administration, argued that the Doha deal was no longer binding on Biden, and he could have left a force to maintain US leverage.“When one side of an agreement breaches it serially and flagrantly like the Taliban did, I think the Biden administration would have been well within its rights to say: ‘We’re not bound by it either,’” said Sales, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.Current US officials argue that whether the US declared the Taliban had been in violation or not, there would have been renewed attacks on US troops, forcing a decision to cut and run or send large-scale reinforcements. The status quo, they say, was not sustainable.Putin, a ‘rogue male’ on the rampage, threatens to start a war no one wants | Simon Tisdall Read moreEven considering the constraints imposed by the previous administration, the withdrawal was a fiasco. US planners failed to anticipate the speed of the collapse even though a government watchdog, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, had warned in 2021 that without US contractors to service planes and helicopters, the Afghan air force would no longer be able to function, depriving troops on the ground of a key advantage.For Afghans who worked with the US and its allies, and for the country’s women and girls, the departure seemed like a betrayal, raising a serious question mark over the administration’s claims to have restored human rights to the heart of US foreign policy.Its record in that regard was already mixed.On one hand, the administration had taken a firm stand against China’s mass persecution of Muslim Uyghurs, declaring it a genocide. Furthermore, the assembly of a coalition of some 130 countries to establish a global minimum tax was, according to Matt Duss, foreign affairs adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders, “a step toward addressing global economic inequality which is one of the drivers of conflict and authoritarianism”.“It’s an important first step and a courageous one,” Duss said. He also pointed to the sanctions against surveillance companies like the Israeli NSO group, whose software was used by authoritarian regimes to target dissidents.“​​That was a very consequential move, and there has been a massive pressure campaign trying to get them to roll it back, but they’ve stood firm,” he said.However, the steps taken against the Saudi monarchy for the heavy civilian toll from its air war in Yemen and the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi felt well short of what human rights campaigners and progressive Democrats had hoped for. The Biden administration continued to sell Riyadh substantial quantities of advanced weaponry.“We’ve basically returned to the traditional US approach of supporting human rights in countries that don’t buy our weapons,” Duss said. “I very much hope that changes.”‘A lot of bad blood’Another way in which the manner of the US exit from Afghanistan undermined the administration’s wider objectives was by alienating European allies, who felt left out of a decision they were obliged to follow.“The pull-out really caused a lot of bad blood unnecessarily,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said. “You can call it the root cause of unhappiness within the alliance.”The formation in September of Aukus, a partnership with the UK and Australia to help the latter acquire nuclear-powered submarines, was another sweeping move in the pivot towards Asia.Confusion over UK claim that Putin plans coup in UkraineRead moreBut the protagonists had omitted to inform France, who discovered on the same day that their contract to sell Australia diesel submarines had been cancelled. Biden was forced to acknowledge the “clumsy” way it had been handled, and the rift clouded bilateral relations for months.Putin’s threat to Ukraine has helped rally the transatlantic alliance but as Biden revealed in his own public reflections, there are still serious divisions below the surface, limiting his room for manoeuvre.The president’s freedom of action on other global issues, like making progress in climate action or finding a nuclear compromise with Iran, will be hindered still further if Republicans gain control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. In that case, the administration’s record until now, mixed as it is, may prove to be the high point of the Biden doctrine.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryUS politicsUkrainefeaturesReuse this content More

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      Recruitment of veterans by extremists may increase, top Democrat warns

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      Recruitment of veterans by extremists may increase, top Democrat warnsChair of House veterans affairs committee holding hearings on issue highlighted by veterans’ participation in US Capitol attack A top US lawmaker who heads a congressional committee investigating the targeting of veterans by extremist groups has warned that the problem is a serious one and could get bigger unless it is effectively combated.In an interview with the Guardian Mark Takano, a Democratic congressman from California, said he was concerned about the recruiting strategy being deployed by violent rightwing extremist groups, especially in America’s increasingly fraught political climate in the wake of the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.Leader of Oath Keepers militia group faces sedition charge over Capitol attackRead moreTakano is the chairman of the House veteran affairs committee, which has begun hearings into the rising threat to veterans. The first of three hearings occurred in October last year, but Takano has been concerned about the threat for years.“Targeting of veterans by violent extremist groups is a problem and it could become a bigger problem if we don’t understand what’s involved and the dimensions of it,” Takano said.Takano said the issue was bipartisan and the definition of extremism did not favor liberal or conservative. “We define extremism not by the content of the ideology of the group, but whether a group espouses, advocates, endorses or promotes violence as a way to achieve their ends,” said Takano.But he was clear the current threat of veteran recruitment comes more from the extremist right.“We are seeing that this violence is occurring to a far greater degree among rightwing groups, especially within the last six years,” said Takano. “As far as we can tell, rightwing extremist groups are the ones targeting veterans for recruitment. And there’s not really any evidence that we’re seeing that leftwing groups are targeting veterans,” said Takano.Data shows violent attacks from rightwing groups in the United States are significantly more prevalent than from leftwing or international or Islamist terrorist groups. An analysis by the Center for International Strategic Studies, a non-partisan thinktank, looked at 893 terrorist plots and attacks in the United States between January 1994 and May 2020.It found that “far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.”The report also found that “‘rightwing extremists perpetrated two-thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90% between January 1 and May 8, 2020.”The 738 defendants charged in the 6 January attack on the Capitol include 81 with ties to the military, while five were active-duty service members. Air force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot dead by police while attempting to break into the House chamber. Recently, three retired army generals wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post warning of the threat of a coup in the 2024 US election, saying it could succeed with the aid of rogue military elements.Takano’s committee conducted its first hearing in October. “We looked into how and why veterans were being recruited by violent, extreme groups: at the history and the track record of groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percent militia, Oath Keepers, Boogaloo Boys and others,” said Takano.Takano said extremist groups see an advantage in having veterans in their ranks. “In that sense they are a greater target for recruitment than non-veteran Americans,” said Takano.Takano described friction in addressing the problem among some Republican lawmakers on his committee. “At least two members … wouldn’t even engage the subject,” said Takano. “When it came for their turn, they didn’t ask the witnesses any questions, including the witness that was chosen by the Republican team.“The two members instead just used their five minutes to attack me for holding the hearing,” said Takano.Takano sees the issues that leave veterans vulnerable to extremism as being the same as for the general population. “The things that contribute to veterans being vulnerable are the same things that affect all Americans: social isolation, addictions, mental health issues and emotional trauma,” said Takano.“We need to recognise that there is a problem that we have politically motivated violent extremist groups that are targeting veterans. We need to look at ways that we can protect veterans,” he added.TopicsUS militaryThe far rightUS Capitol attackHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Invisible and unheard: how female veterans suffering trauma are let down by US healthcare

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      Invisible and unheard: how female veterans suffering trauma are let down by US healthcareWomen suffer PTSD at twice the rate of men yet their symptoms and stories are often overlooked For Felicia Merkel, the PTSD trigger is any loud sound – an overhead speaker, a slammed car door – transporting her back to the blistering heat of Afghanistan. For Liz Hensel, it is looking into her daughter’s chestnut brown eyes, their color reminding her of those of a young Afghan girl named Medina, who lost her mother and leg at the trauma hospital in Kandahar. For Jen Burch, the intrusive memory is of the man who assaulted her before she deployed.More than a decade has passed since these three women were deployed to Afghanistan. It’s now almost four months since the US military withdrew from Kabul on 30 August. Still, specific memories consume them. Three hundred thousand female veterans served in the 19-year war, and as media coverage dwindles and the nation slowly forgets, Felicia, Liz and Jen continue to remember.Their experiences in Afghanistan differed from those of the male soldiers with whom they served. Now, their stateside lives do too. Being a woman in war comes with its own set of distinct traumas. While congressional legislation that has recently been proposed is welcome, essential bills are still being blocked that would help repair the suffering these women have endured for years.Gender differences exist in trauma exposure. PTSD is twice as common in women than in men, according to a study conducted by Kathryn Magruder at the University of South Carolina.Yet they face additional obstacles when seeking support after their deployment.The Deborah Sampson Act passed in January of this year made gender-specific services available at veteran medical centers across the country.However, on 6 December, House and Senate armed service committee leaders tried to block the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act, which would enable veterans to report sexual assault to a neutral third party.Felicia’s husband says she is a lot jumpier now than she used to be. Talking about Afghanistan makes her sad, but as she has gotten older, sounds, not memories, trigger her PTSD. The anxiety hits. She breathes deeply. Then tries, with difficulty, to get her heart rate down.It was December 2010, the year of her first deployment. She was lying in bed at the base at Kandahar, watching American television, when she heard those crashing bumps. Seconds later, the sirens sounded. A rocket had hit. Felicia fell to the floor with a thud and ran for the nearby bunker.It was cold and dusty in there; a dirt track enveloped in a hollow concrete shell. Just feet away, medics worked on a man wounded in the chest; he had no pulse in his left leg. They called for clothing, anything that might be used to stop the bleeding. As the yells of the medics got louder, Felicia’s mind traveled further away.She couldn’t do anything to help. Eleven years later, she still feels that guilt and hears those sounds.She had arrived in Kandahar energetic and excited. She returned to Minnesota a year later, distant and dejected. The months after coming home were the worst. Gritting her teeth through weekly therapy sessions, she insisted that everything was fine. The therapist believed her, even telling her not to come back.On 4 January 2012, Felicia tried to kill herself. She began with a single antidepressant. Then she took five more. Then the bottle. None of her co-workers, family or friends knew about her clinical depression. She spent her 22nd birthday in intensive care.Post-military support at the time, she maintains, was significantly lacking.“Female service members have much more to deal with in the complexity of trauma,” confirmed Jennifer Pacanowski, founder of the non-profit Women’s Veterans Empowered and Thriving. “They also have less access to services, which are not as specialized to their needs as those available to male veterans.”The Deborah Samson Act, a bipartisan bill passed by the Senate in January 2021, will establish a policy to end gender-based sexual harassment and assault by training employees and providing legal services for veterans at risk. It will also staff Veteran Affairs facilities with a permanent female health provider.Felicia wishes she had access to these sorts of resources when she came home. Instead, during a 10-minute evaluation, it was determined she did not have PTSD, and that her grief stemmed only from her mother’s death.She was furious and felt unheard.Looking back, she believes that better healthcare policies for female veterans would have encouraged her to open up about her experiences and struggles sooner. Instead, she dealt with her feelings alone until she needed life-saving help.After deploying in August 2010, Liz began volunteering at Kandahar’s trauma hospital. She had already witnessed death. Just weeks earlier, an injured soldier died with his head resting on her stomach. She dealt with this like any Marine had to do in any high-intensity combat situation: turn off emotion and focus.She could not, however, turn off the memories of the trauma hospital. As the mother of two young daughters, it tugged at every maternal instinct she had.American male service members were not permitted to work at the hospitals. Only because she was female could she see what she now can’t forget.The waiting room that November day was bustling with uncles, fathers, cousins and brothers.No one waited for Medina. Whoever brought the three-year-old Afghani girl had left. Her infected foot could not be saved, and Liz cradled the child as she came out of the anesthesia after the amputation. Rather than waking in familiar arms, Medina’s first sight was this stranger wearing desert camouflage with a pistol at her side. The anguish Liz felt reminded her that she could feel again after months surrounded by death.Now, Medina revisits Liz’s thoughts back in Virginia. She appears in flashbacks when Liz looks at baby photographs of her youngest daughter. She comes to mind when Veterans Day is celebrated on national television.Was the girl still alive? Could Liz have done more to help her? Was she attending school amid the Taliban’s ever-increasing restrictions on women’s freedom?Liz had flown to Afghanistan fearless and determined in 2010 but returned to the US four months later, injured and traumatized.In the weeks after her deployment, Liz felt as if she were watching someone else’s life in a movie. Physically, she was home, but mentally, she was in Kandahar.She tried going through the motions expected of her as a mother and a wife. Doing menial tasks – cooking dinner, hugging her child – things she had been so capable of doing before she left. But it felt to her like a tug of war, the past pulling her back, her mind fighting to remain present.It didn’t help that she felt her pain was invisible to the world. When attending Veterans Affairs medical appointments, the administration staff would sometimes ask her husband, who came along for support, who he was there to see. He would have to correct them and say the appointment was for his wife.It was only when they took the time to listen to Liz’s story that people validated her trauma. Research shows that post-traumatic stress in veterans varies by gender. If hers had been recognized earlier, she wonders, would she still be struggling with it 11 years later?Jen, like Liz, was working in Afghani hospitals because she was a woman. She, too, was haunted by a girl who had lost a foot. But, more, she was haunted by the long-term impacts of sexism and abuse in the military.Jen was sexually assaulted by her supervisor at a US military base, months before she was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010.She was made to report it through her chain of command, but was quickly stopped in her tracks. Everyone loved the man she was accusing.“We’re so glad to have him back,” said the male officer who handled her complaint.Jen wanted to deploy abroad. She knew no one would believe her. So she stopped, fearing that as a victim, she would be isolated.But trauma builds on trauma. This experience made Jen more vulnerable to the horrors she witnessed during her service in Afghanistan. Statistically, a history of sexual assault puts a veteran at higher risk for developing PTSD.Serving at Buckley Space Force Base in Denver, Colorado, when she returned stateside from August 2011 to 2014, things got worse.Jen started to go through some of the lowest moments of her life.Her co-workers assumed that she was being emotional about things because she was a woman. Someone she served with in Afghanistan observed that the only PTSD she had was from eating the bad food. This went on for a year and a half.Jen was assaulted before she arrived in Afghanistan. She worked overtime in the trauma hospital doing mortuary affairs; developed breathing problems; had glass nodules in her lungs. Yet she was perpetually made fun of. It was a very negative culture surrounding her post-deployment.No one wanted to hear her story.Although women are the fastest-growing veteran demographic, she believes that some men still don’t think of women serving in roles of high stress or exposure.Currently, the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act is being blocked. If the act had been passed when Jen was on active service, she would have reported her sexual assault.This is the same for many other women in the military, she believes. And while there is a mountain of legislation being passed to assist female veterans, this is still not enough.“If it means sharing the darkest details of my story, then I’ll keep doing this,” Jen said, “until the gendered gap in veteran healthcare is finally closed”.TopicsPost-traumatic stress disorderWomenUS militaryMental healthUS politicsHealthfeaturesReuse this content More

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      VR experience offers journey into US president's nuclear bunker – video

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      Nuclear Biscuit, a simulated experience, allows US officials to wargame a missile attack and see the devastating consequences of their choices. 
      Players experience what the president would have to do in the event of a nuclear crisis: make a decision that would end many millions of lives – and quite possibly civilisation on the planet – with incomplete information and in less than 15 minutes. Here’s a snippet of the game as completed by Julian Borger, our world affairs editor

      ‘15 minutes to save the world’: a terrifying VR journey into the nuclear bunker More

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      Colin Powell, former US secretary of state, dies at 84 of Covid complications

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      Colin PowellColin Powell, former US secretary of state, dies at 84 of Covid complicationsPowell helped to build case for 2003 invasion of IraqJoe Biden hails ‘a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity’02:36Ed Pilkington in New York@edpilkingtonMon 18 Oct 2021 17.53 EDTFirst published on Mon 18 Oct 2021 08.17 EDTColin Powell, the former US secretary of state who played a pivotal role in attempting to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has died from complications from Covid-19 aged 84, it was announced on Monday.Washington mourns death of Colin Powell as first tributes come in – liveRead morePowell, a retired four-star general who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the early 1990s, had been treated for Covid at Walter Reed national medical center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he died. He was fully vaccinated against coronavirus but had a compromised immune system having been treated for blood cancer.Announcing his death, his family said they had lost a “remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American”.Powell was America’s first Black secretary of state, serving in that role under George W Bush from 2001 to 2005. He rose to the heights of military and diplomatic service from relatively disadvantaged beginnings, having been born in New York City to Jamaican parents and raised in the South Bronx where he was educated through public schools before he entered the army via a college officer training program.A statement from Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, said they were “deeply saddened by the passing of our dear friend and a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity” and referred to Powell having “repeatedly broken racial barriers [and] blazing a trail for others”.Biden further said of Powell: “Over our many years working together – even in disagreement – Colin was always someone who gave you his best and treated you with respect. Colin embodied the highest ideals of both warrior and diplomat … having fought in wars, he understood better than anyone that military might alone was not enough to maintain our peace and prosperity … Colin led with his personal commitment to the democratic values that make our country strong.”Kamala Harris, the first female and first Black and south Asian US vice-president, said Powell was “an incredible American” who “served with dignity and grace” and she praised Powell as a trailblazing inspiration in “what he did and how he did it”.He rose to occupy the top military position in the US government as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff between 1989 and 1993. In that role he presided over military crises including the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the first Gulf war in 1990-91.But it was in the buildup to the contentious invasion of Iraq in 2003 that Powell became a household name. He was the face of the Bush administration’s aggressive attempt to get the world community to back the invasion, based on false claims of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.In February 2003, as secretary of state, Powell appeared before the UN security council and made categoric claims that the then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and was developing nuclear weapons. He said his intelligence was based in part on accounts of unidentified Iraqi defectors.The invasion went ahead without UN authorisation. The following year the CIA’s own Iraq Study Group released a report that concluded that Hussein had destroyed the last of the country’s weapons of mass destruction a decade previously.Powell stepped down as secretary of state in November 2004, following Bush’s re-election. He later insisted to reporters that he had tried to warn Bush of the consequences of invading Iraq, but had supported the president when the decision to proceed was taken.In a statement on Monday, Bush called Powell “a great public servant. He was such a favorite of presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom – twice. He was highly respected at home and abroad.”Dick Cheney, Bush’s vice-president who was a leading hawk on Iraq, simply said that working with Powell during the first Gulf war had shown him “Powell’s dedication to the United States and his commitment to the brave and selfless men and women who serve our country in uniform. Colin was a trailblazer and role model for so many.”Tony Blair, who as British prime minister also backed the Iraq invasion, called Powell a “towering figure in American military and political leadership over many years. He inspired loyalty and respect … his life stands as a testament not only to dedicated public service but also a strong belief in willingness to work across partisan division in the interests of his country.”01:45After his time in government Powell remained a hugely influential commentator on US politics and public life. He grew increasingly disillusioned by the Republican party’s rightward drift.In 2008, despite party rivalries, he endorsed Barack Obama for president and later became one of Donald Trump’s leading critics.On Monday, Obama said Powell “never denied the role that race played in his own life and in our society more broadly. But he also refused to accept that race would limit his dreams,” adding that he was “deeply appreciative” that Powell had endorsed him.Trump pushed a lie that Obama had not been born in the US and, at a time when conspiracy theorists were suggesting Obama was a Muslim, Powell spoke out and said: “The correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is?’”Powell voted against Trump in 2016 and 2020 and was scathing about Republicans who remained silent or actively embraced Trump’s lies. In January he said he was so disgusted by the insurrection of Trump supporters at the US Capitol that he no longer considered himself a Republican.Powell, a prostate cancer survivor, was undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells, when he contracted Covid-19. He was scheduled to receive his Covid booster last week when he first got sick. “He couldn’t go to his appointment,” Peggy Cifrino, his longtime chief of staff, told the Washington Post. “He thought he was just not feeling quite right, and he went to the hospital.”The FDA authorized boosters of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the immune-compromised and others in September, but the regulatory agency has not yet officially authorized boosters from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. FDA advisors recommended Moderna boosters for vulnerable groups on Thursday and Johnson & Johnson boosters for those above the age of 18 on Friday.This blood cancer makes it hard to fight infections, putting patients at increased risk for coronavirus, and less likely to respond to vaccines. Dr Derry Segev, a transplant surgeon and professor of surgery and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, told the Guardian earlier this month that severely immune-compromised patients sometimes don’t respond to additional mRNA vaccines adequately.“About 50% of [transplant] patients have no detectable antibody after two doses, and the ones who do have very low levels of antibody. You add a third dose, you get another few percent ultimately back in – but still even after three doses, and we’ve published even after four doses, there are a lot of transplant patients who don’t have good antibody responses.”“There are extremely rare cases of deaths or hospitalizations among fully vaccinated individuals,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said in a press briefing on Monday. But she emphasized that “an unvaccinated person has a more than 10 times greater risk of dying from Covid-19 compared to a fully vaccinated person”.Peggy Cifrino, Powell’s chief of staff, told CNN he also had Parkinson’s disease.Freshman progressive Democratic New York congressman Jamaal Bowman tweeted that Powell was an inspiration to him “as a Black man just trying to figure out the world”.Melody Schreiber contributed reportingTopicsColin PowellUS militaryUS foreign policyUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Inside the CIA’s secret Kabul base, burned out and abandoned in haste

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      The ObserverAfghanistanInside the CIA’s secret Kabul base, burned out and abandoned in haste A Taliban commander invited the media to inspect the site where America plotted killing raids and tortured prisonersEmma Graham-Harrison in KabulSun 3 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTThe cars, minibuses and armoured vehicles that the CIA used to run its shadow war in Afghanistan had been lined up and incinerated beyond identification before the Americans left. Below their ashy grey remains, pools of molten metal had solidified into permanent shiny puddles as the blaze cooled.The faux Afghan village where they trained paramilitary forces linked to some of the worst human rights abuses of the war had been brought down on itself. Only a high concrete wall still loomed over the crumpled piles of mud and beams, once used to practise for the widely hated night raids on civilian homes.The vast ammunition dump had been blown up. Many ways to kill and maim human beings, from guns to grenades, mortars to heavy artillery, laid out in three long rows of double-height shipping containers, were reduced to shards of twisted metal. The blast from the huge detonation, which came soon after the bloody bomb at Kabul airport, shook and terrified the capital city.All formed part of the CIA compound that for 20 years was the dark, secret heart of America’s “war on terror”, a place were some of the worst abuses to sour the mission in Afghanistan would fester.The sprawling hillside compound, spread over two square miles north-east of the airport, became infamous early on in the conflict for torture and murder at its “Salt Pit” prison, codenamed Cobalt by the CIA. The men held there called it the “dark prison”, because there was no light in their cells, the only occasional illumination coming from the headlamps of their guards.It was here that Gul Rahman died of hypothermia in 2002 after he was chained to a wall half-naked and left overnight in freezing temperatures. His death prompted the first formal CIA guidelines on interrogation under a new regime of torture, eviscerated in a 2014 report that found that the abuse did not provide useful intelligence.The base has for two decades been a closely guarded secret, visible only in satellite photos, navigated by the testimony of survivors. Now the Taliban’s special forces have moved in and recently, briefly, opened up the secret compound to journalists.“We want to show how they wasted all these things that could have been used to build our country,” said Mullah Hassanain, a commander in the Taliban’s elite 313 unit, who led the tour of destroyed and burnt-out compounds, “burn pits” and incinerated cars, buses and armoured military vehicles.Taliban special forces include suicide attackers who recently marched through Kabul to celebrate seizing the capital. Vehicles now emblazoned with their official “suicide squadron” logo escorted journalists around the former CIA base.It was a grimly ironic juxtaposition of the most cruel and ruthless units on both sides of this war, a reminder of the suffering inflicted on civilians by all combatants in the name of higher goals, over several decades.“They are martyrdom seekers who were responsible for the attacks on important locations of invaders and the regime. They now have control of important locations,” said a Taliban official, when asked why suicide squads were escorting journalists, and if they would continue to operate. “It is a very big battalion. It is responsible for the security of important locations. They will be expanded and further organised. Whenever there is a need, they will respond. They are always ready for sacrifices for our country and the defence of our people.”They planned to use the CIA base for their own military training, Hassanain said, so this brief glimpse of the compound is likely to be both the first and last time the media is allowed in.The men guarding it had already changed into the tiger-stripe camouflage of the old Afghan National Directorate of Security, the spy agency once in charge of hunting them down. The paramilitary units that operated here, based in barracks just near the site of the former Salt Pit jail, included some that were among the most feared in the country, mired in allegations of abuse that included extrajudicial killings of children and other civilians. The barracks had been abandoned so fast that the men who lived there left food half-finished, and barracks floors were littered with possessions spilled out of emptied lockers, cleared in an apparent frenzy.Mostly they had taken or destroyed anything with names, or ranks, but there were 01 patches, and one book that was filled with handwritten notes from weeks of training.Nearby, the site of the Salt Pit jail had apparently been razed a few months earlier. A New York Times satellite investigation found that, since spring, a cluster of buildings inside this part of the CIA compound had been levelled.Taliban officials said they did not have any details about the Salt Pit, or what had happened to the former jail. Rahman’s family are still searching for his body, which has never been returned to them.Other torture techniques recorded at the site included “rectal feeding”, shackling prisoners to bars overhead, and depriving inmates of toilet “privileges”, leaving them naked or wearing adult diapers.Construction equipment was abandoned on the site, with concrete slabs half poured. Next door, a building that had once been fortified with high-tech doors and equipment had apparently been firebombed, its interior as totally destroyed and reduced to ash as the cars outside.Destroying sensitive equipment at the base would have been complex, and there was evidence of several burn pits where everything from medical kits and a manual on leadership was put to the flames, along with larger pieces of equipment.The Taliban officials were jumpy about letting journalists into areas that had not been officially cleared. They had found several booby trap bombs in the rubble of the camp, Hassanain said, and were worried that there might be more.For days, helicopters ferried hundreds of people from the base to inside the airport, where men from the 01 force – aware they were likely to be prominent targets for reprisals – helped secure the perimeter in return for evacuation in the final hours, under a deal struck with the US.Untouched nearby was a recreation hall with snooker, ping-pong, darts and table football gathering dust. A box in the corner held brain teaser puzzles. It was unclear what the Taliban, once so austere that they even banned chess, would do with the trappings of western military downtime.TopicsAfghanistanThe ObserverTalibanCIACIA torture reportSouth and Central AsiaTortureWar crimesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump-Taliban deal had 'psychological' effect on Afghan government says top US general – video

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      The collapse of the Afghan government and its security forces can be traced to a 2020 agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration that promised a complete US troop withdrawal, senior Pentagon officials have told Congress.
      Gen Frank McKenzie, the head of central command, told the House ‘the signing of the Doha agreement had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military’. He identified a troop reduction ordered by Joe Biden as the ‘second nail in the coffin’.

      Top US general says Afghan collapse can be traced to Trump-Taliban deal More