Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
Airbnb will offer 20,000 Afghan refugees free, temporary housing around the world as they seek to reestablish new lives after the militant, theocratic Taliban reasserted control over their Central Asian country, reported TechCrunch.
Unfortunately, however, the platform can’t offer a sustainable solution to the refugee crisis that has erupted in the wake of the Taliban takeover. Already, leaders from Ankara to Europe and from Beijing to New Delhi have signaled their unwillingness to take thousands of desperate Afghans seeking to flee.
Pakistan and Iran have already accepted by far the most Afghan refugees who have left their war-torn nation in the past 20 years, wrote Tazreena Sajjad, a lecturer at American University’s School of International Service, in the Conversation. Together, they have given asylum to more than 2.2. million Afghans. Both say they can’t take many more. In the meantime, argued Sajjad, efforts to accommodate the latest wave of refugees have been chaotic at best.
Meanwhile, “Afghan Refugees Find a Harsh and Unfriendly Border in Turkey,” was the New York Times headline recently. After traveling 1,400 miles through Iran, Afghan refugees encounter Turkish border guards who push them back. After Turkey, they aim to continue onto Europe in a movement that came to a peak in 2015 as the Syrian Civil War raged.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan doesn’t want to accept more refugees because his country is already hosting 3.6 million Syrians and more than 300,000 Afghans. The refugees became “a burning political issue” as the Turkish economy declined during the coronavirus pandemic.
Europe has proposed that Turkey become a hub for processing the anticipated migrant exodus from Afghanistan but Erdogan has rejected the idea, added Voice of America. Meanwhile, Greece has built a wall on the Turkish border to keep refugees out, said CNN.
European leaders also face significant turmoil from voters who have shown increasing support for xenophobic politics. They still don’t have a unified policy for the continent despite the 2015 crisis, Politico explained. Most leaders are explicitly saying Afghan refugees should not come to Europe. “It must be our goal to keep the majority of the people in the region,” said Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer, according to the Associated Press.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has flatly said no to relocating Afghans to neighboring Central Asian countries that are former Soviet republics like Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Reuters reported, saying he wouldn’t want to allow terrorists posing as refugees enter these countries.
China, which borders Afghanistan, is wary of a refugee influx, Bloomberg wrote. Chinese strategists also claim that the Taliban have supported separatist forces in Xinjiang, where China has perpetuated a crackdown against the local Muslim ethnic Uyghur community that has been described as genocide, the Washington Post noted.
About 25 countries have been more welcoming including Uganda, Columbia and Costa Rica, NBC News reported. And North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania –Balkan countries whose populations have experienced violence themselves – said they would take in refugees,
“We are rescuing a peaceful population who have cherished democracy for 20 years and who were a help and support to our military on their missions over there,” North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said.
These tiny countries might not have as much space or resources to offer as their wealthier Western European EU counterparts but they are willing to share it.
For many years Elena and I have have struggled with monthly electricity bills ranging from $399-$600=. After the solar power system was turned on, we got our first monthly electric bill-$29.89. How sweet it is!!!!
I had a most
informative phone conversation with a woman employee of Pacific Gas and
Electric yesterday morning. I asked her to explain the current electricity
billing plan that we have had since solar power was brought online. I got a
most pleasant surprise.
From twelve midnight until 3:00 PM
(15:00) we can charge electric cars, run the dishwasher, wash clothes, etc. We
are charged 19 cents US per kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed.
I focused on the recent charging of our
Tesla Model X that consumed roughly 100-kilowatt hours of electricity. We were
able to charge the battery all the way up and give the vehicle a range of 355
miles for a cost of $19.00 US. I pointed out to Elena that if we had a large
piston engine, the cost to fill the tank with gasoline (petrol) would have been
over $50.00. We are saving $31.00 with each full charge to the Tesla batteries.
Elena has a rare talent for asking
brilliant questions and finding holes in arguments. She argued that this
electric vehicle was much more expensive than a similar gas-powered vehicle.
She asked how long it would take to make up the cost difference.
I accepted her argument at first. I
thought about it long and hard. The Tesla Model X started life with a price tag
of $160,000 in the US. By the time we bought this car last December, the price
had dropped to $75,000 US stripped. The model we bought came in at $100,000 US.
I am quite
familiar with the high-end SUVs sold by Cadillac. They are the same size,
passenger capacity, and cargo hauling capacity as the Model X. Their prices
range from $87,000 US to $100,000 US. There is a piston engine car that is the
analog of the Model X. It is far more expensive than the Model X to operate.
Electric cars make sense. Please watch the passage of the bipartisan
infrastructure bill. I am hearing serious talk of a $12,000 US tax credit when
one buys a new electric vehicle.
Iceland has long punched above its weight in tourism, scientific prowess, the arts and other realms – you could call this small country of 368,000 an overachiever.
The pandemic has been no exception.
Nature noted last year “How Iceland hammered Covid with science,” with local officials and researchers tracking the health of every person who tested positive for Covid-19, sequencing the genetic material of each case and screening more than half of the island’s residents for the virus.
In late 2020, Icelanders moved quickly to administer vaccines. As a result, the country has one of the world’s leading rates of vaccinations, with 83 percent of the population older than 12 having received the full dosage, or 71 percent of the total population, according to the government. A whopping 96 percent of females over the age of 16 are vaccinated.
The country was doing so well that, in June, the government did away with all Covid-19 restrictions and opened its borders to foreign tourists. One month later, the masking, social distancing and capacity requirements are back, and the US, the EU and others are warning their nationals away from the island as Iceland struggles to contain the worst surge of cases it has seen during the entire pandemic.
As the Delta variant batters the country, rates have peaked at 433 infections per 100,000 in early July from 1.6 per 100,000 in June. One day in late June, the country recorded 87 cases. About 82 percent of those people were vaccinated, according to the government.
Anti-vaxxers are jumping on this opportunity to point to Iceland as an example of how vaccinations don’t work, as Reuters showed in some posts compiled from social media. But officials and scientists say Iceland’s experience shows the success of the vaccination program and offers a glimpse into the future for the rest of the world, especially highly vaccinated countries.
One big lesson is obvious. Of the 1,300 people currently infected, just 2 percent are in the hospital, the Washington Post reported. Only one person has died in all of 2021, in May. Meanwhile, of all the infected patients admitted to the hospital during this wave, 40 percent are unvaccinated — more than four times the overall share of unvaccinated Icelanders, Pall Matthiasson, chief executive of the country’s largest hospital, told the newspaper, adding that the data is clear: “Being vaccinated reduces the likelihood of admission manyfold. [Without vaccines, the outbreak] would be catastrophic.”
At the same time, Iceland’s experience shows that 60 percent of those vaccinated are protected against any kind of infection by the delta variant and 90 percent against illnesses, while 97 percent of those infected have mild or no symptoms, the Post reported.
Meanwhile, TrialSite, an outlet that focuses on promoting awareness of clinical research, noted how herd immunity hasn’t developed in spite of the high vaccination rate – all but busting that theory – and that those who are vaccinated easily get infected and easily spread the virus, just as is occurring in the US and elsewhere with high vaccination rates.
Meanwhile, life moves on. Iceland is planning to open schools for in-person learning at the end of August, the Iceland Review reported. Borders are open and tourists are welcome. Teachers and many others on the island who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be getting booster shots. And Icelanders will continue to track and trace.
Being an overachiever has its benefits.
Coalition partners fear data-enabled persecution as the Taliban reclaims Afghanistan
Concerns about future civil liberties and human rights violations mirror those from China's Uighur population
Washington D.C., August 20, 2021 - As the world observes the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, the subsequent collapse of the Afghan government and the resurgence of the Taliban, it will also likely witness the targeting and persecution of thousands of Afghans, aided by U.S.-collected biometrics. In a report from The Intercept, a current U.S. military official and former U.S. military personnel confirmed that Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE) devices were seized by the Taliban in its offensive against Afghan government forces. Reporters Ken Klippenstein and Sara Sirota note, “HIIDE devices contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information, and are used to access large centralized databases,” possibly providing the Taliban with the means to pursue members of the Afghan government or those who had cooperated with U.S. and coalition forces.
This revelation gives further reason for concern about the fate of Afghan citizens who might be targeted by the Taliban for working with the previous government or western forces. At the time of writing, it is unclear how many devices have been claimed by the Taliban, or to what extent the U.S. military’s biometric database on the Afghan population has been compromised. The deployment of such biometric collection methods by governments elsewhere (such as their use on the Uighur population of China) is creating increasingly urgent civil liberties and human rights concerns.
According to Department of Defense Directive 8521.01E (Document 1), biometrics is a “general term used alternatively to describe a characteristic or a process” (p. 14), identified as both a measurable biological and/or behavioral characteristic that can be used for automated recognition (such as a fingerprint or iris scan), as well as the automated processes employed to identify an individual based on these characteristics. Over the course of a two-decade campaign, U.S. forces in Afghanistan had collected biometrics from friends and foes alike for identification verification, security, and intelligence purposes. Investigative reporter Annie Jacobson asserts that the Pentagon’s original goal was to collect biometric data on 80% of the Afghan population, although it is unknown if this was achieved.
The biometrics collection regime in Afghanistan, which began in earnest in 2006, was largely packaged as a way to more efficiently identify and detain current insurgents, and dissuade aspiring insurgents. In a 2014 article for the Joint Force Quarterly, “Biometric-enabled Intelligence in Regional Command-East” (Document 2), David Pendall and Cal Sieg note that “the overarching purpose of using BEI [biometric-enabled intelligence] and biometrics-based toolsets [was] to deny anonymity and increase the effectiveness of security and police operations” (p.70). Once biometric data was collected, individuals were enrolled in an extensive data repository, which could be accessed by coalition and Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) across the country. Such enrollment was achieved through volunteerism from local villages, or involuntarily from those detained as witnesses or possible perpetrators in security incidents. “Following enrollment and upload of the biometric data to the data repositories, the anonymity previously counted on by the insurgent [was] removed,” increasing the likelihood that insurgents would be connected to prior incidents, such as improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, through fingerprints or other datapoints. Enrollment also made future participation in insurgent activity riskier, thus acting as a deterrent for would-be insurgents. As a result of this collection program, Pendall and Sieg assert, “biometric intelligence-driven operations have achieved major impacts on the insurgent ability to maintain leadership and lower-level cell structures as both coalition and Afghan forces regularly employ[ed] biometrically developed insurgent watch lists and ‘be on the lookout’ (BOLO) messages and as they execute[d] deliberate detention operations.” (p.69).
However, the biometrics enrollment program was also utilized to provide identity verification for Afghans cooperating and collaborating with U.S. and coalition forces. In a 2011 GAO report entitled, “Defense Biometrics: DOD Can Better Conform to Standards and Share Biometric Information with Federal Agencies” (Document 3), the report writers note the variety of locales and applications for which the Department of Defense utilizes biometrics, including “from persons seeking access to U.S. installations in Iraq and Afghanistan” (p.5). “DOD considers the variety of mission-needs for collecting biometric information” that take place in a combat environment, including “business operations, such as base access control to verify Common Access Card credentials” (p.6).
Source: Government Accountability Office, “Defense Biometrics: DOD Can Better Conform to Standards and Share Biometric Information with Federal Agencies,” March 2011, Figure 1.
With the Taliban’s swift reclamation of Afghanistan, those individuals identified by the U.S.-led biometrics program and labeled as “friendlies” are now at greatest risk. In The Intercept report, an Army Special Operations veteran expressed concern that, although the Taliban may require additional tools to access HIIDE data and pursue Afghans who assisted U.S. and coalition forces, their allies in the region are likely willing to offer their expertise. According to this former Special Forces official, “the Taliban doesn’t have the gear to use the data but the ISI do,” referring to Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, which is widely reported to be the Taliban’s primary international benefactor.
The three documents below shed light on DOD’s strategies for biometric data collection, processing, and sharing among partner agencies. They also provide insight into how biometric-enabled intelligence was employed in Afghanistan, and how such technologies might have been embraced in the country’s new U.S.-cultivated legal and justice system. However, the documents are silent as to the fate of those Afghans who partnered with coalition forces in the hope that they would be free of Taliban rule, and whose biometric data labels them as such.
Document 1
Department of Defense, https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/
54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodd/852101E.pdf
This DOD Directive, issued in January 2016 and incorporating changes to be effective October 15, 2018, establishes policy and assigns responsibilities for DOD biometrics. It also “designates the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (USD(AT&L)) as the Biometrics Principal Staff Assistant (PSA) responsible for oversight of DoD biometric activities and policy,” as well as “the Secretary of the Army as the DoD Executive Agent (EA) for Biometrics.”
Document 2
Joint Forces Quarterly 72, 1st Quarter 2014, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Publications/Article/577484/biometric-enabled-intelligence-in-regional-command-east/
This article, printed in Joint Force Quarterly, a publication of the National Defense University, argues that biometric-enabled intelligence (BEI) is a key component in counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan, and also highlights some insights derived from the biometric collection regime deployed by coalition forces.
Document 3
Government Accountability Office, https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-11-276
This GAO report analyzes the data sharing practices of the DOD’s biometric data program, and makes a series of recommendations to “improve DOD's ability to collect and help ensure that federal agencies are sharing biometric information on individuals who pose a threat to national security to the fullest extent possible.”
The unprecedented Australian bushfires of 2019-2020 burned more than 18 million hectares of land and killed an estimated one billion animals, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
They also had a bigger impact on last year’s climate, even surpassing the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, the Hill reported.
A new study found that fires cooled down the Earth’s Southern Hemisphere so much that they ended up lowering average surface temperatures across the globe.
Lead author Richard Fasullo and his team wrote that sulfates and other smoke particles from the wildfires interacted with clouds to make their droplets smaller. This in turn reflected more incoming solar radiation back to space, which subsequently caused the planet to cool down by about 0.06 degrees Celsius within six months.
On the other hand, the lockdowns resulted in slightly higher temperatures because reduced emissions led to clearer skies over many cities. Fasullo’s team also suggested that about 0.05 degrees Celsius of warming may have resulted globally from last year’s shutdowns and will continue until the end of 2022, according to the Washington Post.
Researchers explained that the fires’ disruptive impact stems from a large amount of sulfates and other particles injected into the atmosphere: This can cause various phenomena, such as tropical storms to move northward from the equator.
“What this research shows is that the impact of regional wildfire on global climate can be substantial,” Fasullo said in a statement. “There are large-scale fingerprints from the fires in both the atmosphere and ocean.”
Palestinian families facing eviction rejected a proposal by Israel’s Supreme Court to delay their ejection from a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the latest development in a saga that recently sparked deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, the Washington Post reported Monday.
The court offered a compromise in which the four Palestinian families living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood would recognize the Jewish settlers seeking their eviction as their legal landlords. In return, the families would receive a special status that would shield them from eviction for an uncertain number of years.
The case has been a main point of contention between Palestinians and Jewish settlers in the strategically critical neighborhood that connects East Jerusalem with the Old City in a dispute that has dragged on for decades.
Jewish settlers called the case a real estate issue while Palestinian residents see the issue as another attempt to “Judaize” Jerusalem and carry out ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.
In May, clashes erupted between Palestinians and Israeli police in Sheikh Jarrah – which Jewish settlers refer to as Nahalat Shimon – over the planned evictions. The violence escalated to an 11-day conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas, killing 12 people in Israel and at least 250 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Aviv Tatarsky of the left-leaning Israeli nonprofit Ir Amim said the current eviction case is one of the latest examples of a wave of evictions against Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which intensified during the administrations of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He noted that the settler groups still feel they have the “green light” to pursue evictions despite a change of government in the US and Israel.
