‘Abolish these companies, get rid of them’: what would it take to break up big oil?

Communities bearing the brunt of harm caused by climate change say that for too long the fossil fuel industry has prioritized profits over the public good. Illustration: Chris Burnett/The Guardian

Communities on the frontline of the climate crisis say radical solutions must be on the table – before it’s too late

Supported by


Yessenia Funes

Wed 11 Aug 2021 


Ayisha Siddiqa doesn’t want fossil fuel companies to determine her future anymore. The industry has promoted climate denial for longer than the 22-year-old has been alive. Rather than watch companies pad their profits as the world burns, Siddiqa has a radical solution in mind.

“Abolish these oil companies, finish them, get rid of them, no more,” she said.


Facebook let fossil-fuel industry push climate misinformation, report finds

Siddiqa’s words echo a rallying cry for climate and environmental advocates who see limited options in finding justice for the low-income and communities of color whose lives the industry have ravaged – and will continue to as the climate crisis unfolds.

Siddiqa is the founder of Polluters Out, a youth-led coalition dedicated to removing the oil and gas industry’s influence from international climate negotiations. She created the group in response to the failed COP25 climate talks in 2019, which made little progress toward curbing carbon emissions. In her mind, the major petroleum giants don’t deserve to be involved in the clean energy revolution.

“The next stop cannot be for us to let the people who previously harmed us have a seat in the new world,” she said.

For many frontline communities, the industry’s climate crimes aren’t matters of the future. They’re here. The climate denial propaganda machine, funded by big oil and gas, has left humanity with the earth spiraling into chaos: homes crushed by wildfires, loved ones dying from heat and crops withering from drought.

In the past five years, extreme weather disasters have cost the US more than $525bn, with taxpayers footing the bill, not major carbon polluters. In 2020 alone, the global price tag tied to climate change adaptation towered at $150bn. Throughout all the damage, human lives were harmed, too. Now they’re asking: when will their voices matter?

The push to hold the industry accountable for the climate emergency by breaking up powerful companies follows a string of similar movements that have bubbled up in recent years. Ideas that were once considered fringe – like defunding police departments or busting big tech – are now filtering into mainstream discourse. And as the climate crisis increases in urgency, activists are taking aim at oil and gas companies.

Communities bearing the brunt of harm caused by climate change say that for too long the fossil fuel industry has prioritized profits over the public good. During the Texas winter storm in February, for example, gas and oil giants raked in billions by selling assets for exaggerated prices as the state struggled to provide consumers with power and heat. The state knew 10 years ago that cold temperatures could threaten the grid, but it left the decision on upgrading infrastructure up to private companies. As a result of the storm and subsequent power outages, some 700 people died, according to a BuzzFeed investigation.

As the climate crisis increases in urgency, activists are taking aim at oil and gas companies

Carla Skandier, manager of the climate and energy program at the Democracy Collaborative, says groups like hers are now researching ways to end the cycle of harm through nationalizing segments of the fossil fuel industry. In the simplest terms, the process would involve the federal government buying out entire oil and gas companies to take ownership of their infrastructure and assets.

“When we talk about abolishing the fossil fuel industry, we are really talking about the urgent need for an endgame to manage the industry’s fast decline,” Skandier said.

Pro-abolition groups say this process would entail putting elected officials – not corporate executives – in charge of fossil fuel assets. The US government would slowly stop drilling or buying leases as it prioritizes lowering emissions and investing in clean energy. Nationalized ownership would allow the US to leave oil and gas reserves in the ground while simultaneously shrinking the fossil fuel company’s grip on the nation.

Such public intervention would also prevent oil companies from simply shutting down operations, laying off their workers and leaving behind devastated towns and counties, as coal companies have done, Skandier said. “We need to consider that a lot of these communities are highly dependent on fossil fuel revenues, so we need to plan how we’re going to build community wealth and diversify their economies to make sure they’re not only economically stable but resilient to climate impacts in the future.”

The US could take the land or reserves currently owned by the fossil fuel industry via eminent domain, the legal right governments have to seize land or infrastructure for the public interest. The federal government has done this before to create national parks and even to convert a private energy company in Tennessee into the now publicly owned Tennessee Valley Authority during the Great Depression.

Any movement to break up big oil, however, will inevitably face enormous headwinds. The industry benefits from being deeply ingrained within American society, and it’s expected that oil and gas interests would push back hard in courts. Nationalizing profitable industries would also take an unprecedented amount of political will, which has yet to materialize.

Law expert Sean Hecht warns that breaking up energy companies may lead to unintended ripple effects. History suggests that simply erasing a company’s existence may make it easier for them to ignore their financial responsibilities when they’ve caused harm.

Hecht, the co-executive director of UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, saw this firsthand in Los Angeles, where he lives. When the Department of Justice shut down Exide Technologies in 2015 for illegally poisoning neighborhoods with lead for decades, the company filed for bankruptcy and left taxpayers to foot the cleanup bill.


ExxonMobil lobbyists filmed saying oil giant’s support for carbon tax a PR ploy

“An industry disappearing doesn’t mean that that industry is going to necessarily be accountable, and sometimes it’s the opposite of that,” Hecht said. “It creates a sense of justice but doesn’t materially help the conditions in communities.”

A company simply signing a check may not help either, said Kyle Whyte, a professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, who also serves on the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. That won’t eliminate the root cause of the issue: companies responsible for driving the climate crisis are also stripping communities of the social, cultural and political capital to decide what happens to their homes and bodies.

“Justice would mean a world where, for example, Native people and tribes are no longer in a dependency relationship with industries,” Whyte said. “There’s no dollar amount that could be spent in a community right now that would actually replace decades and generations of violations against self-determination.”

There’s no cookie-cutter approach to rectifying what communities have inherited from big oil. And even if calls to break up the fossil fuel industry sound improbable in the current political climate, activists hope the conversation will expand the realm of possibilities for leaders to take action on climate change. For Siddiqa, any solution must also incorporate international players as well.

“We vote for our world leaders,” Siddiqa said. “They represent us. If they are actively refusing to represent us, then their position is in question.”

Siddiqa wants to see a cultural shift – a moment of political reimagination. She knows business as usual won’t stop the climate crisis – perhaps neither will the end of oil and gas – but she says it’s a good start.

This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.

AFGHAN NEWS

The fall of Kabul: why didn’t the Americans leave ten years ago?

by ALI MIRAJ| @ALIMIRAJUK


Taliban advance (Str/Xinhua)


On 8 July President Joe Biden was questioned at a press conference about the assessment of his own intelligence experts that the Afghan government would most likely collapse. Biden denied it outright. Yet just a few weeks later the Taliban has taken 20 of the 34 provincial capitals including Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. On Friday it was thought that it could conquer Kabul in a couple of months. Now, on Sunday, the Taliban are on the outskirts of the capital. President Ashraf Ghani is reported to have fled Kabul, apparently for Tajikistan. After over $1 trillion spent by the US and the loss of more than 2,400 American and 450 British service personnel, many are questioning what this loss of blood and treasure was for.

The withdrawal of US troops was agreed in principle last year by the then US President, Donald Trump, after talks with the Taliban at Doha, in which assurances were given that it would no longer provide a safe haven for terrorists. That decision is now being implemented by his successor Joe Biden, much to the chagrin of his political supporters and opponents alike. Condemnation has come thick and fast. Tom Tugendhat and Tobias Ellwood, who chair the Foreign Affairs and Defence select committees respectively and are both former army officers, lament that the US has made an egregious strategic error by vacating the field. Ben Wallace, the Defence Secretary, has openly stated that that he does not agree with the US decision and that a redeployment of troops could be required to prevent the country becoming a breeding ground for terrorism, a proposition which has been firmly rejected by Downing Street. The reality of the UK ’ s military impotence without the umbrella of American military support is stark.

The fundamental question is, however, not whether the US was right to pull out its forces after 20 years, but why it did not do so a decade ago. The Bush administration ’ s initial rationale for the invasion of Afghanistan was clear, in marked contrast to the premise offered for the scandalous misadventure in Iraq. After 9/11, the worst atrocity committed on US territory since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, which resulted in almost 3,000 civilians being killed, the US was not simply going sit on its 

It demanded that Osama bin Laden, the head of al-Qaeda, who masterminded the attack on the Twin Towers and was being sheltered by the Taliban in Afghanistan, be handed over. The Taliban — who are ethnically Pashtun and adhere to a strict code of honour in which the hospitality and the protection of guests is sacrosanct and to be paid for with one’s life if necessary — refused to give him up. The US invaded, principally with the support of its key ally the UK, and toppled the Taliban government in short order. It was in May 2011, in an operation authorised by the then President Barack Obama, that bin Laden was found to be hiding in a house in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad and killed by US Special Forces. That would have been the optimal time to exit Afghanistan, with the core aim of the mission accomplished.

But hubris is seductive and the Americans succumbed to it. It is with good reason that Afghanistan, which has been the epicentre of great power struggles for centuries, is known as the “ graveyard of empires”. It was a source of tension between the Russian and British empires in the nineteenth century and of Soviet interference for a decade from 1979, during which period it became a frontier in a proxy war between the two superpowers. The Soviet occupation was resisted by the Mujahideen, including one Osama bin Laden, w ho were covertly funded and supported by the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, which in turn received funds from the CIA in line with the Reagan doctrine to subvert Russian influence. The USSR incursion failed and within a couple of years of their departure the puppet regime of Mohammad Najibullah was deposed.

F ar from heeding the lessons from the Soviet humiliation, the US under George Bush engaged in mission creep, with the goal expanded to democratise and reform Afghanistan. This certainly provided security to Afghans and increased education and work opportunities for young girls and women. But the domino-like fall of successive provincial capitals shows that the enterprise of establishing an alternative government was built on sand and has highlighted once again that state-building by outside powers is a fool ’ s errand. Change within a warlord-riven country like Afghanistan, where combat is ingrained, has to be organic. When Biden says that the Afghans must fight for the future of their own country, he is right.

Unfortunately they have not been well-served by the government of Ashraf Ghani, which is notoriously corrupt and has failed to pay swathes of police and army officers for months. Many of them are stationed away from their families in locations they have no affiliation to and faced with a fearsome Taliban have opted to throw in the towel. I met Ghani in 2005 over an elaborate dinner at a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the outskirts of Lisbon. The Columbia University-educated Professor of Anthropology and former World Banker was engaging and thoughtful. But while adept at charming international donors at Davos, he lacks credibility with his own people. His pronouncement on Saturday that remobilising the Afghan National Security forces was a “ top priority” was laughable. The view of the Afghan owner of my local pizza takeaway in East London, who fears for his family and friends on the ground in his erstwhile homeland, is that President Ghani will have already negotiated his own route to exile.

While the US and UK are hastily sending in forces to help evacuate their consular staff and other nationals, given the gravity of the situation, there remains no appetite on the part of American and British electorates for a prolonged presence in the country. Several Western commentators and politicians, including the former Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and the former International Development Secretary, Rory Stewart, fret about the message it sends potential allies about the West ’ s commitment to its purported interests. In an era of great power competition between the US and China in which the West will need regional supporters in Asia, there is consternation over the reliability of US support.

But this is irrelevant, as the US ’ lack of commitment to its foreign policy pursuits is already priced in. When Pakistan ’ s President General Pervez Musharraf, who himself assumed power in a coup, visited London after the US invasion in 2001, he told me directly that Pakistan was stuck between a rock and a hard place and had no choice but to support the US-led invasion. But he was also unequivocal that Pakistan would extract as much bounty from the Americans as possible before “ they ditch us again”, a reference to the hasty evaporation of support for Pakistan once the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989.

So the US decision is pragmatic and to many of those observing it the message will be a confirmation of what they already know. If you live in a dangerous neighbourhood, you had better pursue a realist foreign policy based on self-interest and a recognition that ultimately you are on your own. The real tragedy is that the people of Afghanistan, who have enjoyed relative peace for two decades, will now be displaced from their homes and have to once again live under a tyrannical and brutal regime that claims to be guided by Islamic theology. Interesting, then, that when the Taliban regime was previously in power, it obtained a significant chunk of its revenue from the taxation of opium, hardly a practice compatible with the religion they claim to follow.

The tragic future of Afghanistan may be that it once again becomes a centre for regional power struggles to be played out by those in relentless pursuit of their own interests including Russia, Iran, China and Pakistan. Provided the Taliban, which craves international recognition, does not provide a breeding ground for terrorists the West will consider its job done. It will be the people of Afghanistan that will have to fight for a more hopeful future. It will be a gruelling, bloody and unenviable task.

FALL OF SAIGON 2.0

Taliban fighters entering Kabul 'from all sides' as US begins embassy evacuation

The United States started evacuating its diplomats and was sending more troops to help secure Kabul airport and the embassy. Source: AFP

Biden Braces for a Brutal Loss

August 14, 2021 at 2:24 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 160 Comments

“The Biden administration is preparing for the fall of Kabul and a retreat from any U.S. diplomatic presence in Afghanistan — a stunning reversal of expectations,” Axios reports.

“It’s looking increasingly likely to high-ranking aides to President Biden that the U.S. will have no enduring diplomatic presence in Afghanistan beyond Aug. 31 — the date Biden has promised the full troop withdrawal will be complete.”

“It’s a major reversal from even a few weeks ago.”

“The working assumption in Biden’s inner circle had been that Kabul could hold for the short term, allowing the U.S. to stay diplomatically engaged and help Afghan women secure their rights beyond the U.S. withdrawal.”

Taliban fighters entering Kabul

With Afghanistan's second and third-largest cities having fallen to the Taliban, Kabul has effectively become the besieged, last stand for the government forces.

This article contains references to suicide.

Taliban insurgents entered the Afghanistan capital Kabul on Sunday, an interior ministry official said, as the United States evacuated diplomats from its embassy by helicopter.

The senior official told Reuters the Taliban were coming in "from all sides" but gave no further details.

A tweet from the Afghan Presidential palace account said firing had been heard at a number of points around Kabul but that security forces, in coordination with international partners, had control of the city



Australia is planning to expand its humanitarian intake for Afghan nationals

With the country's second and third-largest cities having fallen into Taliban hands, Kabul has effectively become the besieged, last stand for government forces who have offered little or no resistance elsewhere.

The United States started evacuating its diplomats and was sending more troops to help secure Kabul airport and the embassy after the Taliban's lightning advances brought the Islamist group to the door of the capital in a matter of days.

Heaving fighting was also reported around Mazar-i-Sharif, an isolated holdout in the north where warlord and former vice president Abdul Rashid Dostum had gathered his virulently anti-Taliban militia.

The only other cities of any significance not to be taken yet were Jalalabad, Gardez and Khost - Pashtun-dominated and unlikely to offer much resistance now.


As the Taliban's power grows, advocates for Australia's Afghan interpreters warn evacuations must happen now

President Joe Biden on Saturday doubled down on his decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan despite the Taliban's rapid advances, but pledged to send more troops to evacuate civilians and warned the insurgents not to threaten that mission.

After consultations with his national security team, Mr Biden said a total of "approximately 5,000" US soldiers - up from 3,000 - will now help organise evacuations and the end of the US mission after 20 years on the ground.

He warned the Taliban that any action "that puts US personnel or our mission at risk there, will be met with a swift and strong US military response".

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani pledged on Saturday not to let the "imposed war on people cause more deaths", and said consultations were taking place to try to help end the war, without offering details.

Earlier, US Central Command said more American military personnel had arrived in Kabul to ensure the safe evacuation of American embassy employees and Afghan civilians who worked for US forces.

The Pentagon estimates it will need to evacuate about 30,000 people before it completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan by 31 August, a deadline set by Mr Biden.

Mr Biden's decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan has come under increased scrutiny given the implosion of the country's armed forces, but he said he had no other choice - and laid some of the blame at the feet of Donald Trump.

"When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor... that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021, deadline on US forces," Mr Biden said.

"I faced a choice - follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies' forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country's civil conflict," he added.

"I was the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan - two Republicans, two Democrats. I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth," Mr Biden said.

A host of European countries - including Britain, Germany, Denmark and Spain - all announced the withdrawal of personnel from their respective embassies on Friday.



Afghan woman Yalba Siddiqui (left) marched in Adelaide on Saturday
SBS News/Peta Doherty

On Saturday in Adelaide, hundreds of members of South Australia’s Afghan community rallied to condemn the Taliban and call for international action to halt the insurgents.

“What is happening [in Afghanistan] is horrible at the moment,” marcher Yalba Siddiqui told SBS News.

Ms Siddiqui’s husband is still in Kabul and waiting for an Australian visa.

“Day and night I worry about his safety,” she said.

“I would like the Australian government to do something and hear our voice.

'Crying day and night'

For Kabul residents and the tens of thousands who have sought refuge there in recent weeks, the overwhelming mood was one of confusion and fear.

Muzhda, 35, a single woman who arrived in the capital with her two sisters after fleeing nearby Parwan, said she was terrified for the future.

"I am crying day and night," she told the AFP news agency.

"I have turned down marriage proposals in the past ... If the Taliban come and force me to marry, I will commit suicide."



Taliban seizes major Afghan cities as the US readies for evacuations from the capital

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "deeply disturbed" by accounts of poor treatment of women in areas seized by the Taliban, who imposed an ultra-austere brand of Islam on Afghanistan during their 1996-2001 rule.

"It is particularly horrifying and heartbreaking to see reports of the hard-won rights of Afghan girls and women being ripped away," Mr Guterres said.

The scale and speed of the Taliban advance have shocked Afghans and the US-led alliance that poured billions into the country after toppling the Taliban in the wake of the September 11 attacks nearly 20 years ago.

Days before a final US withdrawal ordered by Mr Biden, individual Afghan soldiers, units and even whole divisions have surrendered - handing the insurgents even more vehicles and military hardware to fuel their lightning advance.
'No imminent threat'

Despite the frantic evacuation efforts, the Biden administration continues to insist that a complete Taliban takeover is not inevitable.

"Kabul is not right now in an imminent threat environment," Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Friday, while acknowledging that Taliban fighters were "trying to isolate" the city.

The Taliban offensive has accelerated in recent days, with the capture of Herat in the north and, just hours later, the seizure of Kandahar - the group's spiritual heartland in the south.



The Taliban on Friday took control of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-biggest city.
AAP Image/EPA/AKHTER GULFAM


Kandahar resident Abdul Nafi told AFP the city was calm after government forces abandoned it for the sanctuary of military facilities outside, where they were negotiating terms of surrender.

"I came out this morning, I saw Taliban white flags in most squares of the city," he said.

Pro-Taliban social media accounts have boasted of the vast spoils of war captured by the insurgents - posting photos of armoured vehicles, heavy weapons, and even a drone seized from abandoned military bases.

With Peta Doherty.

Fall of Afghanistan: Taliban enter Kabul as residents flee
15 Aug, 2021

AP

An Afghan official says troops have surrendered Bagram Airbase to the Taliban. The base is home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates.

Taliban fighters entered the outskirts of Kabul on Sunday as panicked workers fled government offices and helicopters began landing at the US Embassy in the Afghan capital, further tightening the militants' grip on the country.

Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital.

The militants later pledged not to take Kabul "by force" as sporadic gunfire could be heard in the capital.

"No one's life, property and dignity will be harmed and the lives of the citizens of Kabul will not be at risk," the Taliban said.

A man sells Taliban flags in Herat province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

A Taliban spokesman said "we are awaiting a peaceful transfer of Kabul city", AP reported.

Taliban negotiators were heading to presidential palace to prepare for a "transfer" of power, AP reported.

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The insurgents issued the statement on Sunday as their fighters entered the outskirts of Kabul.

The militants themselves didn't acknowledge the advance, though they earlier took Jalalabad, near a major border crossing with Pakistan, the last major city other than Kabul not under their control.

In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban has defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swathes of the country, even with some air support by the US military.

The rapid shuttle-run flights of Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters near the embassy began a few hours later as diplomatic armoured SUVs could be seen leaving the area around the post.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to questions about the movements.

However, wisps of smoke could be seen near the embassy's roof as diplomats urgently destroyed sensitive documents, according to two American military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the situation.

Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, which typically carry armed troops, later landed near the embassy as well.

The Czech Republic also approved a plan to begin withdrawing their Afghan staff from their embassy after earlier taking their diplomats to Kabul International Airport.

A US Chinook helicopter flies over the city of in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo / AP

President Ashraf Ghani, who spoke to the nation Saturday for the first time since the offensive began, appears increasingly isolated as well.

Warlords he negotiated with just days earlier have surrendered to the Taliban or fled, leaving Ghani without a military option. Ongoing negotiations in Qatar, the site of a Taliban office, also have failed to stop the insurgents' advance.

Thousands of civilians now live in parks and open spaces in Kabul itself, fearing the future. Some ATMs stopped distributing cash as hundreds gathered in front of private banks, trying to withdraw their life savings.

Gunfire erupted at one point, though the Afghan presidency sought to downplayed the shooting.

"The defense and security forces along with the international forces working for the security of Kabul city and the situation is under control," the presidency said amid the chaos.

Militants posted photos online early Sunday showing them in the governor's office in Jalalabad, the capital of Nangarhar province.

Abrarullah Murad, a lawmaker from the province told The Associated Press that the insurgents seized Jalalabad after elders negotiated the fall of the government there.

Murad said there was no fighting as the city surrendered.

Members of the Taliban drive through the city of Herat, Afghanistan, west of Kabul. Photo / AP

Members of Joint Forces Headquarters get prepared to deploy to Afghanistan to assist in the draw down from the area in this handout photo taken on Friday. Photo / AP

The militants took also Maidan Shar, the capital of Maidan Wardak, on Sunday, only some 90km from Kabul, Afghan lawmaker Hamida Akbari and the Taliban said.


Another provincial capital in Khost fell later Sunday to the Taliban, said a provincial council member who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The fall on Saturday of Mazar-e-Sharif, the country's fourth largest city, which Afghan forces and two powerful former warlords had pledged to defend, handed the insurgents control over all of northern Afghanistan.

Atta Mohammad Noor and Abdul Rashid Dostum, two of the warlords Ghani tried to rally to his side days earlier, fled over the border into Uzbekistan on Saturday, said officials close to Dostum.

They spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorised to publicly speak about his movements.

Writing on Twitter, Noor alleged a "conspiracy" aided the fall of the north to the Taliban, without elaborating.

"Despite our firm resistance, sadly, all the government and the Afghan security forces equipment were handed over to the Taliban as a result of a big organised and cowardly plot," Noor wrote.


"They had orchestrated the plot to trap Marshal Dostum and myself too, but they didn't succeed."

A Taliban flag flies from the clocktower of the Herat provincial official office, in Herat. Photo / AP

In his speech on Saturday, Ghani vowed not to give up the "achievements" of the 20 years since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks.

The US has continued holding peace talks between the government and the Taliban in Qatar this week, and the international community has warned that a Taliban government brought about by force would be shunned.

But the insurgents appear to have little interest in making concessions as they rack up victories on the battlefield.

"We have started consultations, inside the government with elders and political leaders, representatives of different levels of the community as well as our international allies," Ghani said.

"Soon the results will be shared with you," he added, without elaborating further.


Many Afghans fear a return to the Taliban's oppressive rule. The group had previously governed Afghanistan under a harsh version of Islamic law in which women were forbidden to work or attend school, and could not leave their homes without a male relative accompanying them.

Plumes of smoke rise into the sky after fighting between the Taliban and Afghan security personnel in Kandahar, Afghanistan, southwest of Kabul on Thursday. Photo / AP

Salima Mazari, one of the few female district governors in the country, expressed fears about a Taliban takeover on Saturday in an interview from Mazar-e-Sharif, before it fell.

"There will be no place for women," said Mazari, who governs a district of 36,000 people near the northern city. "In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes."

In a statement late Saturday, however, the Taliban insisted their fighters wouldn't enter people's homes or interfere with businesses. They also said they'd offer an "amnesty" to those who worked with the Afghan government or foreign forces.

"The Islamic Emirate once again assures all its citizens that it will, as always, protect their life, property and honour and create a peaceful and secure environment for its beloved nation," the militants said.

Passengers trying to fly out of Kabul International Airport amid the Taliban offensive wait in line in Kabul, Afghanistan on Friday. Photo / AP

"In this regard, no one should worry about their life."

Despite the pledge, those who can afford a ticket have been flocking to Kabul International Airport, the only way out of the country as the Taliban took the last border crossing still held by the government Sunday at Torkham.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed told local broadcaster Geo TV that Pakistan halted cross-border traffic there after the militants seized it.

Taliban seize Bagram military prison 25 km north of Kabul, free inmates

The Taliban have taken control of Bagram Prison, located on Bagram air base, and set free the inmates, mostly Taliban fighters, who were imprisoned there.

Ashraf Wani New DelhiAugust 15, 2021



Taliban took control of a biggest US-controlled prison in Afghanistan. (Image: India Today)

The Taliban have taken control of Bagram Prison, located on Bagram air base, and set free the inmates, mostly Taliban fighters, who were imprisoned there.

The Bagram air base, which used to be the largest US military base in the country, is now under the Taliban's control.

The Bagram Prison was controlled by the US forces who were stationed in Afghanistan. Following the decision to withdraw American troops from the country, control of the prison was passed on to the Afghan Armed Forces on July 1.

Afghan forces at Bagram air base, home to a prison housing 5,000 inmates, surrendered to the Taliban, according to Bagram district chief Darwaish Raufi. The prison at the former US base held both Taliban and Islamic State group fighters, news agency AP reported.

In a nationwide offensive that has taken just over a week, the Taliban have defeated, co-opted or sent Afghan security forces fleeing from wide swaths of the country, even though they had some air support from the U.S. military.

On Sunday, they reached Kabul. Three Afghan officials told The Associated Press that the Taliban were in the districts of Kalakan, Qarabagh and Paghman in the capital and awaiting a “peaceful transfer” of the city after promising not to take it by force.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera English satellite news channel that the insurgents were in the process of negotiating with the government.

READ: Taliban, Afghan govt in talks for 'peaceful transition of power' | Top developments

But when pressed on what kind of agreement the Taliban wanted, Shaheen acknowledged that they were seeking an unconditional surrender by the central government.

Taliban negotiators headed to the presidential palace Sunday to discuss the transfer, said an Afghan official who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. It remained unclear when that transfer would take place.

(With inputs from AP)

VIDEOS show Taliban fighters lounging in luxurious ex-home of US-backed warlord as pundits blame grift for collapse of Afghan army

15 Aug, 2021 09:09

©  Twitter / Xubi_119

The Taliban has shown off a lavish home that belonged to Afghan army marshal and close US ally Abdul Rashid Dostum, prompting pundits to opine that the decadent abode illustrated why the country’s military had wilted so quickly.

In videos resembling an episode of MTV’s iconic house tour program ‘Cribs’, Taliban fighters can be seen lounging in the ostentatious interior of former vice president Dostum’s residence in Mazar-i-Sharif. The northern city was captured by the militants on Saturday, after government forces there allegedly surrendered shortly after fighting broke out. 

Dostum, a seasoned warlord who aligned himself with the US-backed Northern Alliance during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, had vowed to defend Mazar-i-Sharif from the Taliban onslaught. But he reportedly fled the city after government forces handed over their weapons and equipment to the Taliban as part of a “cowardly plot,” Atta Mohammad Noor, the former governor of Balkh province, told the media. Noor, who was commanding local militiamen when the city’s defenses collapsed, said both he and Dostum had escaped and were safe. 

However, what Dostum left behind has both amused and angered social media observers. Footage shows cross-legged militants relaxing in overstuffed armchairs as others admire the mansion’s glitzy decor. One clip shows them examining what appears to be a gold tea set. 

The videos represent a “searing propaganda victory” for the Taliban, one pundit argued, noting that Dostum was a “near-mythic” figure who had once controlled vast swathes of Afghanistan.

Others expressed dismay that the Taliban fighters had enjoyed a “tea party” in a “castle” allegedly built using US tax dollars. 

“Whilst General Dostum lived in opulence, many of his soldiers went unpaid. One of the reasons for the army’s collapse,” British politician and former soldier Henry Bolton complained. 

Political pundit and MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan said the footage served as a reminder that the “corrupt warlords we allied with in Afghanistan all these years have been pretty awful.”

During his years of cooperation with the United States, Dostum has faced repeated accusations of corruption and human rights abuses. He spent part of 2018 in exile, following accusations that he had ordered a political opponent to be sexually assaulted. 

The Taliban didn’t linger long in Dostum’s sumptuous lodgings, however, beginning an assault on Kabul on Sunday. 

Alberta nurses union plans meeting with little progress made in bargaining

Author of the article: Ashley Joannou, Kellen Taniguchi
Publishing date: Aug 13, 2021 •

Nurses demonstrate against government rollbacks and short staffing levels outside of the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, on Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021. PHOTO BY IAN KUCERAK /Postmedia
Article content

The head of the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA) says it’s “beyond insulting” that Alberta Health Services (AHS) is considering hiring contract nurses to fill staffing gaps, saying they’re being offered more money than current nurses facing pay cuts.

UNA president Heather Smith says some union members have been contacted by Greenstaff Medical Canada based in Toronto asking if they want to work on contract at AHS facilities

AHS says there have been preliminary discussions with the company but no deal has been signed.

Nurses and AHS have been in contract negotiations for more than a year. The government is asking nurses to take a three per cent pay cut arguing that the province needs to get its finances back on track.

The union says nurses recruited by Greenstaff have been offered $55 per hour for general acute care and up to $75 an hour for ICU and emergency, while current AHS nurses are paid between $36.86 and $48.37 per hour. They would also get shift differentials, weekend premiums, health-care benefits and a housing allowance, according to the union.

“It certainly brings into question the whole demand by the government to reduce nurses’ wages when Alberta Health Services seems to be willing to enter into contract to pay above, way above in some cases, the current wage rate,” Smith said Friday.

In a statement, AHS spokesman James Wood said Greenstaff Medical approached AHS.

“Our goal is to always cover shifts by using existing bargaining unit members, and to fill our vacancies in areas hard to recruit to by hiring qualified candidates rather than relying on agency nurses,” he said.

“While staffing agencies provide support in remote and rural locations at times, it is only as a last resort to prevent disruption of services due to vacancies or needs resulting from illness or vacation time.”

Wood did not confirm the wages contract nurses would be offered or say how many AHS would need.

Nurses, who held information pickets across the province this week, have maintained that they are exhausted and that hospitals are facing a staffing crunch.

Alberta has seen hospital bed closures across the province, but AHS says the vast majority of beds are open.

Smith said beds are remaining open because of “current staff working a herculean number of hours” and that’s not sustainable.

“Our members are exhausted and are calling out for resources, our government is saying you are worth less,” she said.

“And to hear that, in fact, our government and the employers are involved in negotiations to secure resources from other locations and pay them more than nurses are paid in Alberta — it’s beyond insulting.”

The UNA says it will hold a meeting later this month to discuss negotiation options.

EXCLUSIVE
INCELS The Radicalised Extremist Community of White Male Supremacists
Sian Norris
13 August 2021

Photo: emjhCreative / Stockimo/Alamy

As news reports suggest that the man behind the mass shooting in Plymouth identified as an “incel”, Sian Norris reveals the extremist misogynistic ideology that fuels the movement

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains violent misogynistic and racist language

The horrific shootings that took place in Plymouth have shocked the nation, as it was revealed that six people – including the killer and a very young girl – were shot dead on Thursday evening.

It is too early to say what the motivations were behind the worst mass shooting in the UK since 2010. However, videos created by the perpetrator, Jake Davison, on YouTube suggest that he appears to affiliate with the ‘incel’ community – a misogynistic online sub-culture of men who identify as ‘involuntary celibates’ because they feel sexually rejected by women.

Davison also apparently identified as ‘Black Pill’ – a common status among incels. Black Pill is a spin-off of the Red Pill men’s rights community that encourages men to become ‘alpha males’ via gaming women into sex and by getting fit. In contrast, Black Pills share a fatalistic outlook in which they believe that success with the opposite sex is determined by genetics.

In one shocking outburst, Davison said: “Why do you think sexual assaults and all these things keep rising? The reality is that women don’t need men no more and they certainly don’t want and don’t need average men and below average, you have to go abroad to fund [sic] a woman.”

If it is indeed the case that Davison identified with the incel sub-culture, the murders form part of a growing and terrifying pattern of attacks by men from this community who have killed an estimated 50 people in the US and Canada.

However, these killings are rarely categorised as terrorist incidents – despite evidence that members of this community are being radicalised and committing violent acts to advance their misogynistic, white supremacist ideology.

The Toxic Relationship Between White Supremacy and Misogyny
CJ Werleman

Who Are Incels?

The incel community initially blossomed on the Reddit website, before being banned and moving onto independent forums where men swap memes, discuss whether to have the Coronavirus vaccine, and share violent and hateful views about women and women’s sexuality.

The driving force behind the movement is a belief that men are entitled to women’s bodies – both as a sex object and a reproductive vessel.

Initially, men who identified as incels claimed to believe that they had been sexually rejected by women in favour of popular jocks known as ‘Chads’. In contrast, the incels saw themselves as good guys, who had been “friendzoned” by women – i.e. seen as a platonic friend not a potential sexual partner.

However, this is potentially a simplification of what is ultimately an extremist misogynistic space riddled with white, male supremacy, violent ideology and even paedophilic fantasies.

It is a sub-culture in which men are radicalised to hate women, and where far-right conspiracies such as the ‘Great Replacement’ are shared and promoted.

The language used by incels dehumanises women – commonly recognised as the first step towards violence and even mass killings or genocide. They talk about women and girls as ‘foids’ – short for ‘femoids’ – as well as referring to women as ‘toilets’. One post referred to “toilets riding the Chad c**k carousel”. Women are known as toilets because they are seen as receptacles of bodily fluids.

Other incels refer to putting vaginas ‘on leashes’; sending women to ‘the slaughterhouse’; and imagine putting grenades up women’s anuses. They refer to women as ‘rape fuel’ and ‘scum’, and fantasise about having a ‘prime white virgin harem’. One man, in a thread about expressing fantasies, wrote that “every man would be guaranteed a wife”; while another put it succinctly: “Women shouldn’t have rights anyway.”

Many discussions on the forums involve men fantasising about ‘jail bait’, i.e. sex with girls under the age of consent. Girls who are categorised in this way are considered desirable because ‘they are still innocent before they ruin themselves’.

One poster said that he wasn’t attracted to “jail bait until I became an incel”. Another wrote that he “slowly but surely found myself attracted to JB foids” after joining the incel community, suggesting men are being radicalised to accept abuse of girls as normal.

The incel sub-cultures, and wider men’s rights activism spaces, are also often a gateway to white supremacist movements. Journalist Aja Romano wrote in 2016 how, for these communities of angry young men “who ultimately feel threatened and rejected by women, the movement promotes a sense of male entitlement that is easily radicalised into white nationalism and white supremacy”.

Incels discussing ‘jail bait’ on a popular forum

Posters often use graphically racist and anti-Semitic language, and there is an obsessive focus on ‘foids’ having sex with black and ‘Arab’ men.

The racialised nature of much incel content fits into conspiracist narratives that the West or Global North is apparently in decline and degenerating as a result of women’s sexual and reproductive freedoms, along with migration from the Global South.

In this respect, incel culture is close to the baseless far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which posits that feminism is colluding with Western elites to repress the white birth rate and encourage immigration in order to create a ‘white genocide’.

For example, on a thread titled “women destroying cultures and countries”, one incel synthesises the Great Replacement, misogyny and racism by writing “the antifa and femoids support the invasion of africans and arabians [sic] in ALL Europe. In 50 years, thanks to the ‘diversity’… agenda, all Europe will turn into a third world s**t hole full of wars and Sharia law everywhere”.

Incels and Terrorism

The first mass shooting explicitly linked to the incel community occurred in 2014, when Elliot Rodger posted a misogynistic manifesto online railing against women before shooting dead six people, injuring 14 more.

Four years later in Canada, Alek Minassian killed 10 people by driving into a pavement. He said that he drew inspiration from the incel movement and posted on Facebook “all hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger” – the moniker given to the mass shooter and other men admired by the community, including Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

The incel movement has now killed an estimated 50 people in the US and Canada, including a mass shooting in a massage parlour in Georgia; a machete attack at a Toronto massage parlor; and a shooting at an Arizona mall which injured three people.

In June, US President Joe Biden laid out his formal strategy to combat domestic terrorism – including threats from emerging extremist movements such as incels and the followers of the QAnon movement. A Californian man who confessed to killing his children referred to the conspiracy, while a pattern of violence is linked to the theory.

Incels responded on a thread about “creepy Uncle Joe”, criticising Biden’s move as “incelophobia” and claiming that feminists “are using violence to spread their message” while “us incels are pretty tame”.

How Abortion Became aTool of White Supremacists
Sian Norris

“In a world full of w****s the virgin is frowned upon”, posted one individual.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service – the body that decides which criminal cases are prosecuted in England and Wales and conducts the prosecutions – for an offence to be classed as terrorism in the UK, it must be designed to “influence any international Government organisation or to intimidate the public”. It must also “be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”.

The latter point has often meant that misogynistic and incel-related violence is not classed as terrorism. But this is to miss the point that incels are driven by a white, male supremacist ideology that positions men as superior to women and promotes the belief that men have sexual and reproductive entitlement to women’s bodies. This is a belief linked to fascism.

Further, as is evidenced by the posts about ‘jail bait’ and the Great Replacement theory, incel websites are spaces of radicalisation to this male supremacist and ultimately violent ideology.

As one man put it: “I’ve learned to hate women, feminism and their sexual choices so much.”