American media and other politicians, and the people they pay to say things, are locked up tight with the demise in Afghanistan.  How could anyone let this happen?  Who’s to blame for these precipitous – they claim — events?  What awful chaos at the airport!  The answers are as vacuous as the questions. Two decades of American sacrifice was too few years for them. More

The insanity of our current economic reality is well illustrated by a new, self-serving ideological movement among the super-rich. Their emotional investment in their right to remain immensely wealthy is naturally much stronger than the investment of the rest of us in their staying rich. Which is one reason billionaires are capable of coping with much greater levels of cognitive dissonance when justifying the continuation of the current economic order. More

Getting to really know and love a piece of land is a sensual experience and can be a hard one. In a place being overwhelmed by progress, it is dangerous but essential to love the land. As I roam across this great valley, every day brings new pain as places I have known for decades as open space, trees I have watched grown tall, even old homes and barns I appreciate, are torn away to become raw material for builders and banks and realtors to sell to people fleeing urban life and bringing it with them. More

As Afghans see it, President Donald Trump began a series of one-sided deals favouring the Taliban in 2020, an approach confirmed by President Joe Biden in his speech on 14 April this year. He declared that the final American pull-out would be completed by the 20th anniversary of 9/11, come what may. More