Tag Archives: afghanistan news

Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

New Analysis Details ‘Master Class in War Profiteering’ by US Oil Giants

“Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street,” said Lukas Ross at Friends of the Earth.

An analysis released Tuesday by a trio of groups highlights how Big Oil has cashed in on various crises over the past year—including the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s war on Ukraine, and the global climate emergency—while enriching wealthy shareholders.

“Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

The new report from BailoutWatch, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen explains that there are two main tactics that fossil fuel giants use to benefit investors: “First, they repurchase shares of their own stock and retire them, reducing the number of shares outstanding and driving up the value of each share remaining in investors’ hands.”

“Second, they increase dividends, the quarterly payments investors receive for owning shares,” the report continues. “Oil and gas dividends, historically bigger than other sectors’, have spiked in recent months, outstripping every other industry group.”

“Amid high gas prices and war in recent months, oil and gas companies have kicked both tactics into overdrive,” the groups found, based on reviewing public statements and securities filings from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered fossil fuel corporations.

During the first two months of 2022, “seven companies’ boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock—a 15% increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021,” the report states. “Six of those decisions came in February 2022, after Russian warmongering lifted stock prices. The total since the start of 2021 is $45.6 billion.”

The analysis also reveals that in January and February, 11 companies raised their dividends—”often extravagantly”—and notes that “nine were increases of more than 15% and four were increases of more than 40%.”

“Six companies have begun paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new variable dividends based on company earnings—a way of directing windfall profits immediately into private hands without any possibility of investment, employee benefits, or other uses,” the document points out.

“So far in 2022, these companies have started paying out an initial $3 billion in special windfall dividends,” the report adds. “Four of these companies—Pioneer, Chesapeake, Conoco, and Coterra—announced variable dividends beginning August 2021, as prices began to rise.”

Chris Kuveke of BailoutWatch said in a statement that “Big Oil is living the second half of their unspoken mantra ‘socialize losses, privatize gains.'”

“Two years after winning multi-billion dollar bailouts from the Trump administration, these newly flush companies are pocketing billions from an international crisis, and they don’t care how it affects regular Americans,” Kuveke added.

As Public Citizen researcher Alan Zibel put it: “Big Oil executives are reaping windfall profits while accelerating the climate crisis and sticking consumers with the bill.”

Zibel also acknowledged efforts to blame President Joe Biden for rising prices, rather than industry profiteering.

“The oil industry and their allies on Capitol Hill falsely claim that the Biden administration’s acceptance of mainstream climate science is stifling investment in the domestic oil industry,” he said. “But the industry’s actions show that they are intently focused on funneling cash to their shareholders rather than lowering prices for consumers.”

According to Lukas Ross, climate and energy program manager at Friends of the Earth: “This is a master class in war profiteering. Oil and gas companies are feeding off humanitarian disaster and consumer suffering in order to reward Wall Street.”

“Oil companies drove us into a climate crisis and are now price gouging us to extinction,” he warned. “Congress and President Biden must take action by passing a windfall profits tax to rein in Big Oil’s cash grab.”

The new analysis follows the introduction of multiple bills targeting Big Oil’s windfall profits, including a proposal spearheaded by Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) designed to crack down on such behavior in all sectors, not just the fossil fuel industry.

Sanders on Tuesday morning held a hearing to call out how corporate greed and profiteering are fueling inflation. During his opening remarks, the chair took aim at Big Oil specifically while listing some examples.

“Yesterday, at a time when gasoline in America is now at a near-record high at $4.17 a gallon, guess what?” Sanders said. “ExxonMobil reported that its profit from pumping oil and gas alone in the first quarter will likely hit a record high of $9.3 billion.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “Big Oil CEOs are on track to spend $88 billion this year not to decrease supply constraints, not to address the climate crisis, but to buy back their own stock and hand out dividends to enrich their wealthy shareholders.”

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations plans to hold a hearing Wednesday titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.” Top executives from BP America, Chevron, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, Pioneer Natural Resources, and Shell USA are set to appear before the panel.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Related Articles:

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

‘Love to Afghanistan’ Vigils to Demand Return of $7 Billion Stolen by US

Above: Photo by Johannes Müller

“This money belongs to the people of Afghanistan, not to the United States,” said an Afghan protest organizer in Kabul over the weekend.

With the people of Afghanistan facing one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the world, U.S.-based peace activists—who largely blame the policies of their own government for inflicting pain on millions of innocent Afghans—are using Valentine’s Day on Monday to demand the Biden administration return billions of dollars of seized assets to the war-torn country before more lasting harm and “cruelty” is done.

Under the banner of “Love to Afghanistan,” nationwide actions were scheduled for the weekend and localized vigils organized set for Monday (Feb. 14) by Peace Action, World Beyond War, and other humanitarian groups who argue that $7 billion frozen by the U.S. government and subsequently seized by an executive order issued Friday by President Joe Biden rightfully belongs to the Afghan people, who without it face an economy on the brink of collapse and a healthcare system and federal infrastructure without adequate support amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a worsening food crisis.

Thus far vigils for Valentine’s Day are taking place in Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, New York, and other states.

According to a call to action by organizers:

After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, Peace Action welcomed the withdrawal of troops from the country and an end to the war.

Yet when the United States military pulled out of Afghanistan, the Biden administration also responded by choking off assets to Afghan banks and the economy by freezing the reserves of the Afghan Central Bank held in the U.S. They also imposed sanctions on those doing business with Afghanistan and cut aid. Jobs and income disappeared, people cannot afford to buy food and mass starvation is now occurring.

The Afghan people are suffering now more than ever. Hunger could kill more now than in two decades of war. This humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is in the words of the International Red Cross a “human-made catastrophe.” “Human-made” largely by coercive U.S. economic policies.

In Decemebr, 46 members of Congress wrote a letter demanding the U.S. unfreeze assets that had been locked following the U.S. military withdrawal earlier in 2021. But instead of heeding that call, Biden on Friday took the step of more permanently seizing the funds that otherwise would be under control of Afghanistan’s central bank, the Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB), which now operates under the authority of the Taliban government.

Biden’s executive order includes setting aside half of the funds, $3.5 billion, for possible settlement claims by families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks of 2001, but critics have said the Afghan people—who had nothing to do with the crimes of that day twenty years ago—should not be punished for the acts of Al Qaeda jihadists, most them Saudis and Egyptians.

Promoting the “Love to Afghanistan” events in an op-ed for Common Dreamslast week, peace activist Jean Athey, coordinator of the Montgomery County Peace Action group in Maryland, said the economic war against the Afghan has the potential to be just as deadly as the 20 years of war and occupation they have just endured. Explaining the current situation and the “liquidity crisis” gripping the country, she wrote:

The government has almost no money and cannot pay workers, who cannot buy food for their families. Most have received no payment for months. In addition, Afghans have limited access to their own funds in banks. International commerce has halted. 

Given U.S. sanctions and the liquidity crisis, even international humanitarian relief organizations have great difficulty operating in Afghanistan, despite U.S. government assurances. Relief efforts designed to stave off starvation—although critically important right now—cannot endure for long since no one is willing to provide assistance indefinitely to a country of almost 40 million people. The country needs a functioning government and economy, and needs access to the international financial system.

“Political backbone” is now required of the Biden administration, argued Athey, who said the president should not be scared of predictable GOP attacks or media hit pieces about somehow appeasing the Taliban by giving the everyday people back money the money that rightfully belongs to them. “The lives of one million children are more important than a negative headline in a tabloid. The U.S. should unfreeze Afghan government assets and lift sanctions hindering the recovery of the Afghan economy and humanitarian relief efforts. We must end the U.S. economic war on Afghanistan.”

On Saturday, the DAB demanded the funds ostensibly stolen by the U.S. government be returned and called the move by Biden an “injustice against the people of Afghanistan.”

Also in Saturday, protests in Kabul decried the theft of the money.

“This money belongs to the people of Afghanistan, not to the United States. This is the right of Afghans,” Abdul Rahman, a civil society activist and the demonstration’s organizer, told the Dawn newsaper.

A spokesperson for the Taliban government, Mohammad Naeem, also decriedthe move in a post on social media Saturday.

“The theft and seizure of money held by the United States of the Afghan people represent the lowest level of human and moral decay of a country and a nation,” Naeem tweeted, added that while victory and defeat are evident throughout history, “the greatest and most shameful defeat is when moral defeat combines with military defeat.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JON QUEALLY and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

These Afghans Won the Visa Lottery Two Years Ago — Now They’re Stuck in Kabul and Out of Luck

Above: Photo Credit / Amber Clay / Pixabay

President Donald Trump’s ban on the visa lottery was ruled to be illegal, but the government says it can’t help hundreds of Afghans who won it for at least another year.

Fakhruddin Akbari is allowing his full name to be published because he is certain he is going to die. Akbari, his wife and his 3-year-old daughter fled their home in Kabul, Afghanistan, two weeks ago. They’ve been hiding with friends in the city, living on bread and water.

He should be among the lucky ones.

Instead, Akbari fears the very thing he was hoping would be his salvation will now make him a target.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Two years ago, Akbari won a rare spot in the United States’ “visa lottery.” He was chosen at random from a pool of 23 million to get the chance to apply for one of 55,000 visas to immigrate to the U.S. The U.S. was supposed to have finished his case by last fall. The instructions when he registered promised as much. Either he would be safely en route to the U.S., or he would lose his chance and move on.

But with the final U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan just days away — and as Thursday’s bombings have added even more chaos at Kabul’s airport — Akbari has almost certainly lost his chance to get out.

He has already burned the letters of commendation his relatives received for their work with American contractors or allied militaries. The Taliban already know, he says, that he’s part of a pro-American family. His neighbors have told him they’ve been visited by strangers asking about him.

A March 2020 ban signed by President Donald Trump, citing a need to protect the American economy, prevented Akbari and visa lottery winners from entering the U.S. In response to a lawsuit by immigration lawyers, a federal judge ruled earlier this month that the government has to move ahead on processing thousands of last year’s lottery winners. But the U.S. has told the judge it can’t even start until fall 2022 at the earliest.

Several hundred Afghans are in the group. They may be the unluckiest winners in the visa lottery’s 30-year history.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

The lottery isn’t open to everyone. Winners must come from a country that hasn’t had much recent immigration to the U.S. Applicants for the visas must also submit biometric information, pass an interview and medical screening, and complete several security checks.

Nouman, an Afghan lottery winner who asked that his full name not be used over fear of the Taliban, spent months tracking down police documents from the Chinese town where he’d worked for a few years, to prove he had a clean record.

Those requirements are still far less restrictive than other ways to legally immigrate to the U.S., which generally require being closely related to a citizen or green-card holder or having a job offer from an American company. In Afghanistan, interest in the lottery is so great that Nouman said it took him two days to successfully log onto the swamped website where lottery results were posted.

But unlike other visas, diversity visas — the type lottery winners become eligible to receive — are on a tight and unvarying schedule.

Lottery winners are notified in the early summer. After submitting their full application, they can only be interviewed at the nearest U.S. consulate once the federal fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. Then the whole process has to be completed within a year. Eligibility for the visa doesn’t roll over.

Usually, most of the annual 55,000 visas have been handed out by that time. But last year, two things happened. First, in mid-March, consulates around the world shut down because of the pandemic. Two weeks later, Trump declared that letting in immigrants would hamper the recovery of the economy, and he signed the order barring most types of immigrants — including diversity visa holders.

When U.S. embassies and consulates began to reopen last summer, a State Department cable disclosed as part of the lawsuit shows they were instructed to handle diversity visas last, even if they met the narrow exemptions to the ban.

Giving someone a visa is legally distinct from letting them enter the U.S., and critics of Trump’s actions — including a group of lawyers who filed lawsuits over the bans — argued that even if the ban were legal, consulates could still prepare visas so that recipients could come after the ban was rescinded, which President Joe Biden did this February.

In early September last year, Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with the argument and ordered the government to make up for lost time, prioritizing diversity visa applicants ahead of everyone else for the last 26 days of the fiscal year.

The State Department’s bureaucracy took a few days to get into gear. Then it began a process that turned out to be far from efficient.

Officials compiled a spreadsheet of applicants who had joined the now-consolidated suit and were supposed to be prioritized, but it was riddled with misspelled names and incorrect case numbers. In a court declaration, a State Department official from a different office said the spreadsheet took “many queries” from his team to fix.

Once consulates and embassies got the correct names, they rushed appointments, often giving applicants little notice. The Kabul embassy wasn’t participating at all, so any Afghan appointments were set up in different countries — or continents.

At least three Afghan immigrants, including Nouman, were scheduled for interviews in Cameroon. All three were given one day’s notice to get there. (Nouman, at least, was able to get a later appointment in Islamabad, Pakistan.)

Many more weren’t given interviews at all. According to court filings, some State Department employees told applicants who called the office handling the cases that if they hadn’t officially joined the lawsuit, “you lost your chance” — which wasn’t true. When a COVID-19 outbreak hit the office and workers went remote, the help line shut down entirely.

When the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30, 2020, more than 40,000 of the 55,000 diversity visas were still unused — and several hundred Afghans were still waiting. Less than 20% of the Afghan lottery winners had gotten visas by the deadline.

That day, Mehta had ordered the State Department to reserve 9,505 slots, based on his estimate of how many diversity visas could have been processed if COVID-19 had existed but the ban didn’t. When the case finally concluded this month, he declared that the government would indeed have to process those visas.

That opinion came down on Aug. 17, two days after Kabul fell.

In a response filed to Mehta on Thursday, the government offered to start processing last year’s visas in October 2022. One reason given for the proposed delay was that processing older visas is “an unprecedented computing demand that will require the Department to implement wide-ranging hardware and software modifications.” Another was that processing diversity visas would take resources away from dealing with the crisis in Afghanistan.

It went unmentioned that some people are affected by both.

Lawyers for the affected immigrants made an emergency filing this week, with testimony from several Afghans worried that they would be targeted by the Taliban precisely because they had sought to immigrate to the U.S. They’re hoping the court will order expedited consideration for Afghan lottery winners.

The lawyers are moving to appeal for the court to order that Afghans get priority in the visa process. The plaintiffs’ lawyers had asked the government to consent to their filing the request. The government’s response — after several days of silence, delaying the filing — was to call it an “unnecessary distraction.”

In a meeting by phone on Monday, according to two people on the call, another government attorney complained that he’d been getting emails from applicants “all over the world” and blamed their lawyers for posting his address online. One of those emails was a desperate cry for help from Akbari. “We are totally hopeless and every knock of the door seems like a call to death for us,” Akbari wrote. “Please help us.”

In the time since sending that email, Akbari and his family have made two attempts to get to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. The first time, he says, they were beaten back by the Taliban. The second time he was stopped by the United States. The Marines guarding the airport said they couldn’t enter. The reason? They did not have visas.

Originally published on ProPublica by Dara Lind via Creative Commons

Related Articles:

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Hot-Lynx

Last U.S. forces out of Afghanistan after almost 20 years

Above: Photo: Unsplash

Long tragic war leads to final air-lift

Reuters reported today that the Withdrawal from Afghanistan has been completed, according to U.S. officials.

The final chaotic airlift was taking place nearly 20 years after the U.S. invaded the country after Sept. 11, 2001, in response to the attack on the World Trade Center.

More than 122,000 were airlifted out of Kabul in the last 16 days, an action that started just one day before the Taliban regained control.

Read at

Reuters
Hot-Lynx

Breaking: U.S. strikes Islamic State in Afghanistan after deadly Kabul attack

Above: Image by David Mark from Pixabay 

Reuters reported tonight that a drone strike has been confirmed in retaliation for the suicide bombings yesterday that killed 13 American service personal. The military confirmed that a strike was carried out against an “Islamic State attack planner in eastern Afghanistan”.

The strike follows the vow from President Joe Biden that was made on Thursday that the United States would hunt down those responsible for the attack, and that the Pentagon had been tasked to come up with plans to strike back at the perpetrators of the deadly bombings.

The location of the drone strike was Nangahar province, east of Kabul, but no connection was, as of yet, confirmed regarding any direct involvement of the targeted in the airport attack.

“Initial indications are that we killed the target. We know of no civilian casualties,” a U.S. military statement said.

Read at:

Reuters

Related posts:

Hot-Lynx, Politics

The Day Music Dies could be Looming in Afghanistan, under the Taliban

Above: Photo ISIS / Courtesy of Twitter

Young students, teacher and faculty are staying home and currently are closing its doors of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) located in Kabul. 

The school has accomplished great successes in the realm of culture and arts in Afhanistan, including the all-female Zohra orchestra. Founder and Director of ANIM Ahmad Sarmast said “armed people entered school property” and have attempted to steal cars and have destroyed musical instruments.

Making music can have deadly consequences

According to the NPR report, under the Taliban rule in the 1990’s performing, selling or listening to music was strictly forbidden and could get you in serious trouble if caught. 

Yet the art of making music has always been a risky one in Afghanistan.  In the past there have been numerous musicians that have been threatened, kidnapped or even killed.

With recent explosions it is unclear whether Taliban will allow for such organizations like the institute of music to continue to exist. 

Read at:

NPR

Find books on Politics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and subscribe to our newsletter.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Hot-Lynx

Developing story: Explosions at Kabul with at least 4 Marines Reported among casualties

Above: Photo / Mohammad Rahmani / UnSplash

Thousands crowded near the only way out of Afghanistan ahead of U.S. August 31 deadline

It has been reported that at least two explosions and gunfire occurred just outside Kabul airport. The blast happened around one of the entry gates of the Hamid Karzai International Airport on Thursday August 26, 2021.

Based on an AMN report and Pentagon statements, the blast may have been the result of a suicide attack. There have been casualties and injuries, including U.S. service members among Afghan citizens, however no additional details have been confirmed.

This is an emerging, breaking story and various outlets, including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and others have reported multiple, sometimes conflicting totals regarding the dead and wounded.

Fox News reported 10 Marines were killed, up from four, according to U.S. officials

“We can confirm that the explosion at the Abbey Gate was the result of a complex attack that resulted in a number of US & civilian casualties. We can also confirm at least one other explosion at or near the Baron Hotel, a short distance from Abbey Gate. We will continue to update,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby tweeted.

The following bullet points were published in the Fox News article cited above:

  • A suicide bombing outside the Abbey Gate at Kabul’s airport in Afghanistan Thursday has killed at least 10 U.S. Marines and soldiers, U.S. officials tell Fox News.
  • A U.S. official indicated that the attack set off a firefight at Abbey Gate, where last night, there were 5,000 Afghans and potentially some Americans seeking access to the airport.
  • A second explosion happened outside the Baron Hotel, sources say.

Read at:

American Military News

Find books on Politics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and subscribe to our newsletter.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Hot-Lynx

AP Reports: Taliban allows ‘safe passage’ from Kabul in U.S. airlift

Photo by Vishu on Unsplash

Evacuations resume with green light from Afghanistan’s new rulers

Although no concrete timetable for the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies has been solidified with Taliban, according to AP, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan reports that the Taliban has agreed to allow U.S. directed “safe passage” from Afghanistan.

Despite some civilians encountering resistance and even violence as they attempted to reach Kabul international airport, “very large numbers” were reaching destinations. After interruptions (due to Afghans rushing onto tarmac) , per Pentagon officials, the airlift is back on track and schedule being accelerated.

“I cautioned them against interference in our evacuation, and made it clear to them that any attack would be met with overwhelming force in the defense of our forces”

-Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command 

A total of more than 6,000 U.S. troops are expected to be involved in securing the airport. The White House reports 13 flights on Tuesday airlifted 1,100 U.S. citizens. President Biden wants the evaluation to be completed by the end of the month, August 31, 2021.

Read at:

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Find books on Politics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Enjoy Lynxotic at Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac and subscribe to our newsletter.

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page