Broken out. Updating coverage: As the Taliban sweep across Afghanistan, the AP reports, they’ve freed thousands of prisoners—and the police simply melted away.
■ The Intercept: “Biden claimed ‘zero’ parallels between U.S. withdrawals from Afghanistan and Vietnam. As the Taliban take Kabul, he’s proved wrong.”
■ Award-winning photojournalist Andrew Quilty, based in Kabul since 2013: “Desperate Afghans are trapped in an American-made fiasco.”
■ CNN’s Brian Stelter ponders Afghanistan’s new dark age—documented digitally.
■ U.S. Congressman Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts: “The tragedy that unfolds before us … was set in motion by Secretary Pompeo and President Trump, who negotiated in secret with the Taliban terrorists last year … to meet a campaign promise.”
■ Political analyst Lauren Martinchek: “We invaded their countries. We bombed their weddings. We destroyed their towns. We killed their children. … But sure, they hate us for our freedoms.”
‘Broken inside.’ A former senator in Haiti tells The New York Times he’s been using his personal plane to transport people wounded in the massive earthquake there: “The hospitals are broken inside.”
■ Updating coverage: With at least 5,700 injured and Tropical Depression Grace pointed Haiti’s way, the situation looks headed from bad to worse.
Broken through. Channel 7’s fully vaccinated Windy City Live host Ryan Chiaverini nevertheless says he caught COVID-19.
■ Sun-Times columnist Maudlyne Ihejirika recounts her terror when she learned that the medical tech “touching me, leaning in inches from my face, engaging in animated conversation” wasn’t vaccinated.
■ An emergency medicine doc at UW Health in Madison: If the unvaxxed keep spreading the disease among one another, “they’re going to create the next variant that might be resistant to our vaccines, and then all of us who are vaccinated go back to the drawing board.” (Cartoon: Keith J. Taylor.)
■ Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik: Vaccine hesitancy is a symptom of people’s broken relationship with government.
■ The U.S. Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, is pushing for a federal crackdown on fake vax IDs.
Broken hearts. A 7-year-old girl was killed and her 6-year-old sister was hurt in a Sunday afternoon shooting on Chicago’s far West Side Sunday afternoon.
■ The girls’ grandmother: “I’m lost, I’m lost. … They were my life, my everything.”
■ Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s estranged daughter-in-law has been charged with murder.
Broken ground. Over the objections of environmental and neighborhood activists, construction work was set to commence today for the Obama Presidential Center …
■ … beginning with Jackson Park roadwork …
■ … after a federal appeals court Friday blocked a motion for further delay.
Broken landscapes. After Block Club Chicago sounded the alarm about Amazon installing unsightly delivery lockers on city park sidewalks, the company has removed some.
■ Illinois and Chicago agencies report a dramatic uptick in graffiti complaints.
■ Journalist Bob Chiarito’s take on “The Art of Banksy,” now belatedly open in Chicago: “A huge letdown.”
Broken system. A University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor of educational history takes a skeptical look at the history of school choice, which he says “was grounded in racism from the start.”
■ The Sun-Times reports “Italian Unity Day” in Arrigo Park on the Near South Side last month was filled with members of the racist Proud Boys.
■ Last Week Tonight host John Oliver slammed North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn, who’s been ranting about mask mandates while bragging about his pioneering ancestor—who, it turns out, was a slaveholder: “Next time you’re trying to prove a point about how parents should decide what’s better for their kids, maybe don’t use a guy who decided the best thing for other people’s kids was for him to own them” …
■ … and Oliver’s not wild about the new Jeopardy! host.
Thanks. Maybe. In a shameless play for publicity, Chicago Reader columnist Ben Joravsky and producer Dennis Schetter** had fun on their podcast Friday (a long bit that begins around 49:07 here) (link corrected) at Chicago Public Square’s expense …
■ … riffing on a line from Wednesday’s edition.
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* Hat tip to Bob Dylan for today’s sad inspiration.
** Who were nice enough to Square about a year ago.