March « 2016 « Chemline, Inc.
Green homes yield major resale premiums in Washington, D.C.
High-performing homes (HPHs) with green features—both single- and multi-family—in the District sell for nearly 3.5 percent more than those without green features, according to a recently released report, "What Is Green Worth? Unveiling High-Performance Home Premiums in Washington, D.C.," by real estate appraiser and author Sandra K. Adomatis and the Institute for Market Transformation.
The market is taking notice. Building on the growing trend of green construction in the residential sector, a recent report from Dodge Data & Analytics, a leading provider of data and analytics serving the North American construction industry, found that among 249 builders, remodelers and multifamily firms surveyed, 51 percent expect that more than 60 percent of the homes that they build will be green by 2020.
The widely used definition of HPHs applied in the report cites six elements of green building that are found in most third-party certifying organizations' rating systems. These environmentally responsible and resource-efficient green building elements include site, water, energy, indoor air quality, materials and operations and maintenance.
As Kenneth Harney reported in his Washington Post article, the report calculated how much buyers were willing to pay for green features and found that they ranged from just over $10,000 to over $50,000, generating premiums as high as 7.7 percent. When renewable energy-generating technologies such as solar were incorporated into the home, that resale premium climbed even higher.
The study examined final sales prices for HPHs and non-HPHs with similar variables such as location, amenities, square footage and parking between February 2013 and June 2015. Of the HPHs examined, 75 percent were LEED-certified and marketed their unique green features in the real estate Multiple Listing Service (MLS). USGBC has been helping to drive MLSs to give homebuyers more information on green features and certifications, and this study is further proof of the value proposition for green certification and marketing those features.
Similar studies have found comparable market premiums for green, high-performing homes. For example, "The Value of Green Labels in the California Housing Market" found that green home labels added a 9 percent price premium in that state.
Green buildings perform better—they net higher rents, higher occupancy rates and higher prices when sold—and buyers know the long-term investment is well worth the premium.
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USGBC is currently engaged in Oregon's efforts to expand the availability of affordable housing—specifically, advocating for such housing to be green and energy-efficient. USGBC's commitment to green buildings for all in a generation is reflected in every aspect of the work they do. Currently, over 40 percent of the almost 200,000 LEED-certified homes in the United States are affordable housing units.
Housing affordability is not just about being able to pay the rent or mortgage. It is also about being able to afford the utilities as well. That is why emphasis on energy and water efficiencies, as well as third-party verification, gives affordable housing developers, community development agencies and the government an excellent tool for providing affordable homes to vulnerable families.
Oregon, like many areas of the United States, is facing a housing affordability crisis. In response to this crisis, the state government and leading local government in 2015 passed a series of appropriations to holistically address the problems of lack of affordable housing and homelessness. One of the programs the Oregon legislature and Governor Kate Brown have funded is $40 million in bonds to build affordable housing, focused on rural communities, communities of color and families with young children served by DHS (Oregon Department of Human Services).
During the 2016 short legislative session, the Oregon legislature and the governor's office are working to outline the program goals and priorities necessary to implement the $40 million bonding program.
Education for residents to promote environmental stewardship.
Testimony before the Housing Stability Council gave recommendations to improve the outcome of the LIFT program. The recommendations were well received and allowed USGBC to open a dialogue with the council, legislators and the governor's office about the need for green building standards as they move forward in addressing their housing affordability and homelessness crisis.
Having a positive impact on Oregon's program will be a long process, with ample opportunities for the green building community to engage on addressing this important issue.
The pace of green building in the hospitality sector is on the rise, and it doesn't require making any sacrifice in the luxury of your stay away from home!
It's no secret that with operations running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, hotels consume natural resources at a high rate. Representing more than 5 billion square feet of space in the United States alone, there is an enormous opportunity for the industry—and guests—to positively affect the built environment.
For years, USGBC has diligently made progress toward greening the hospitality sector. Among these efforts was the establishment of the LEED User Group for Hospitality and Venues, which engages in multifaceted dialogue and peer-to-peer collaboration to identify best practices, lessons learned and ongoing challenges for sustainability in the sector.
Across the world, demand for green hotels is rising. Today, LEED-certified hotels of all sizes are found in more than 40 U.S. states, 31 countries and five continents. It's a movement sparked in part by guest preferences. According to a recent TripAdvisor survey, nearly two-thirds of travelers reported plans to make more environmentally friendly choices over the next year. And while on vacation, 88 percent of travelers turned off lights when not in their hotel room, 78 percent participated in the hotel's linen and towel reuse program and 58 percent used recycling in the hotel.
Group and Hyatt Hotels include LEED mandates and policies in their design and construction specs. ITC Hotels in India requires not just LEED certification, but also top performance.
It's all about the data. Green buildings are being transformed into high-performance "smart buildings" equipped with new technologies, integrated systems, custom user apps and lots of data. Smart buildings take green to a whole new level.
Why is data important for buildings?
Data give us information on how buildings are actually being used, and it allows the building to perform based on the needs of the occupants. Having information on usage is critical to operating the building in the most efficient and sustainable manner. Not only can we obtain real-time occupancy information for the building, but we can tell exactly where those occupants are and how they are using the space.
This means that the building only conditions space that is actually being used, and it conditions the space based on the needs and preferences of the occupants. Lighting levels can be determined based on individual settings and can be adjusted based on different tasks, instead of being limited to "on" or "off." Elevators respond to real-time needs and can even "predict" need based on other operational information (i.e., that someone just parked on the third level of the parking garage).
Real estate has entered the digital age in the way buildings are operated—but more important, in the way they are experienced. By adding a high level of intelligence through operational data and analytics, coupled with the ability to give end users more control over their environment, smart buildings are enhancing the occupant experience and creating an overall better workplace. In addition to energy and sustainability benefits, employees are also benefiting from enhanced health, wellness and worker productivity.
Lexington Court, a 106-unit affordable housing project in downtown Orlando recently earned the Florida Green High-Rise Residential Building designation by the Florida Green Building Coalition (FGBC) after it successfully met the sustainability standards established in the FGBC Florida Green High-Rise Residential Building certification program.
The designation represents achievements in a number of categories, such as energy efficiency, water conservation, site preservation, indoor air quality, materials, and durability, including disaster mitigation.
FGBC-certified projects complete a technically rigorous building assessment and construction process to promote design and construction practices that reduce the negative environmental impacts of the building, improve occupant health and well-being, and reduce operating costs for the owner.
Centrally located in downtown Orlando, Lexington Court provides quick access to Interstate 4, public transportation, shopping, employers in the Orlando business district, and medical facilities. It offers safe and walkable access to many other basic services such as schools, banks, restaurants, pharmacies, and recreation.
Energy performance of Lexington Court Apartments is 38 percent better than required by the Florida Energy Code. Green approaches that helped achieve the improved energy performance included installation of Energy Star appliances, energy-efficient exterior lighting, and advanced testing of the HVAC system to ensure proper installation for optimal performance and leak-free ducts. A high-efficiency air filtration system using MERV-8 air filters improves indoor air quality.
For water conservation, low- and ultra-low plumbing fixtures such as faucets, showerheads, and toilets were installed. But the biggest impact was achieved by selection of drought tolerant landscaping, less than 10% of the landscaped area was sodded with turf, and drip irrigation was used to service the installed landscape.
To reduce noise pollution, increased sound-absorbing insulation was used between individual units, common areas, and the exterior walls. Another strategy used to improve the indoor environmental quality of the building and protect the health of occupants requires green cleaning practices from service providers.
On February 3, USGBC Georgia celebrated the work of Georgia schools that are creating healthy and efficient learning environments for our students. The Third Annual High Performance Healthy Schools Recognition Day at the Georgia Capitol hosted 200 guests representing 62 schools and districts, as well as 12 community partners who are making a difference in Georgia.
School activities ranged from one-day projects to long-term school engagement with national recognition through Green Ribbon Schools, the Princeton Review of Colleges and LEED certification. The 10 institutes of higher education and three K–12 schools that received LEED certification in 2015 joined the group of buildings that have committed to a higher standard. This group includes 161 LEED higher education buildings and 79 LEED K–12 buildings in Georgia alone.
Special guests included Rep. Rahn Mayo (84), Rep. Margaret Kaiser (59), Rep. Beth Beskin (54) and Sen. Nan Orrock (36). Sam Culbreath attended on behalf of Rep. Michael Smith (41). From USGBC, Judith Webb, Executive Vice President, and Cecilia Shutters, Policy and Data Communications Specialist, joined the festivities. A House resolution, sponsored by Rep. Mayo (who also volunteers his time with the High Performance Healthy Schools program), and longtime supporter Rep. Kaiser, was presented, along with a Senate resolution sponsored by Sen. Orrock recognizing February 3, 2016 as High Performance Healthy Schools Day. Additionally, a proclamation from the Governor's office was presented.
The guests were inspired by the accomplishments of the schools, both K–12 and higher education. One presentation that made a strong impact on the luncheon attendees was given by Leon Grant and his students from Marietta High School. The students designed a self-sustaining community center that will be constructed in Haiti from recycled shipping containers. The community center will include solar energy, composting toilets and rainwater harvesting systems. To ensure that all of the systems work as designed and to give the students hands-on experience, a smaller-scale project will be installed at Marietta High School.
The High Performance Healthy Schools program strives to ensure that better buildings are our legacy. We believe in better buildings. Structures must complement our environment and enhance our communities. Students deserve better, brighter, healthier spaces to live, learn, work and play. The program will continue to work with the schools throughout the year providing resources and mentors to schools to help them achieve their goals. We look forward to joining together next year to celebrate even greater accomplishments in Georgia's healthy, high-performing schools.
According to the National Association of Home Builders, single-family green residential construction has grown dramatically, from 2 percent in 2005 to 23 percent in 2013. Green home building—or retrofitting—is clearly a booming industry. But it may be intimidating to think about making your home green and what that involves.
Simply put, a green home uses less energy, water and natural resources compared to a standard home. It is more efficient, and so creates less waste. In addition, a green home can be a much healthier habitat for the people living inside.
Why make your home green?
Benefits to living in a green home include greater durability, lower energy costs and increased health for those dwelling inside the building.
Green homes use nontoxic building materials to help combat indoor air pollution. Unhealthy air inside a dwelling can pose serious health risks for residents.
The typical household spends about $2,150 a year on residential energy bills. LEED-certified homes can save 30-60 percent on those bills.
An increasing number of insurance companies offer discounts on policies covering green homes. Similarly, several mortgage companies offer discounted loan rates for homebuyers.
A green home often uses higher-quality building materials and construction processes than a standard home—and better materials mean fewer repairs.
The resale value of a green home is often higher than that of a comparable standard home, and the market demand continues to rise.
Residential cooling and heating alone make up 20 percent of annual energy use in the United States. When you add in lights, appliances and other electronics, homes use a huge amount of energy. Most of this comes from greenhouse gas producers such as oil and coal, in turn contributing to global climate change. Green homes use 40 percent less energy.
By deciding to make your home more green, you are also making a commitment to be part of a more sustainable world.
The widely used definition of HPHs applied in the report cites six elements of green building that are found in most third-party certifying organizations' rating systems, including LEED. These environmentally responsible and resource-efficient green building elements include site, water, energy, indoor air quality, materials and operations and maintenance.
Similar studies have found comparable market premiums for green, high-performing homes.
In May 2014, the Montgomery County Council adopted Bill 2-14, Environmental Sustainability—Buildings—Benchmarking, requiring the county and building owners to benchmark energy use in certain nonresidential buildings of 50,000 square feet or greater with the ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager tool.
The county elected to "lead by example" by being the first to report building energy use, with a deadline of June 1, 2015, and 23 Montgomery County-owned facilities are subject to the benchmarking requirements.
Under the legislation, many private, nonresidential buildings will be required to benchmark in phases over the next couple of years. Projects having a gross floor area of 250,000 square feet or more will be first, and are required to report their energy use data by December 1, 2016. Affected nonresidential structures with a minimum of 50,000 square feet of gross floor area and a maximum of 250,000 square feet will be required to report benchmarking results no later than December 1, 2017. Other facilities such as warehouses, industrial complexes and utility buildings are not subject to the legislation. The county has assembled a working group on the law's implementation for private-sector buildings.
The legislation also created a work group that includes representatives from the county, real estate sector, industry trade associations, nonprofit entities and utility companies. The group was charged with developing a report that provided recommendations on the implementation of building energy benchmarking in the county, including any proposed amendments to the legislation. In the report, sent to the County Council on June 10, 2015, the group advised the county that the intent behind the regulation should be made clear within the text itself so that affected building owners and managers could understand the value of benchmarking their facilities. Additionally, the group recommended the reporting deadline for private developments subject to the legislation be moved up to June 1 to coincide with public sector benchmarking reporting, as well as recommendations on guidelines for the law's verification requirement.
In an effort to spur voluntary benchmarking activity in the private sector, prior to mandatory reporting periods or for buildings not bound by the legislation, Montgomery County DEP developed the Early Bird Benchmarking Program to recognize and support building owners who began benchmarking before their respective reporting dates.
USGBC applauds Montgomery County and the rest of the jurisdictions across the country implementing building energy benchmarking policies.
USGBC National Capital Region (NCR) Emerging Professionals are working with Calvary Women's Services, an organization that provides housing, health, education and employment programs to homeless women in Washington, D.C., to make their facility and operations more sustainable, healthy and cost-effective.
The Emerging Professionals began this project over the summer, after selecting Calvary as the recipient of the services provided through the ADVANCE platform. Over two site visits, the EPs collected data, surveyed the grounds and interviewed staff about the operations of the facility. From there, they compiled a list of potential facility improvement measures and presented them to the USGBC National Capital Region Market Advisory Leadership Board for input and approval.


By Binoy Kampmark - posted Monday, 12 December 2011 Sign Up for free e-mail updates!
The protest pedigree of the Putin-generation Russian is a small one. With a police state mentality well and truly in position, taking to the streets is bound to land the individual a period of true, heartfelt police inhospitality.
It remains to be seen whether the latest protests over the parliamentary results in Russia will translate into anything broader. At this point, the anger that is bubbling against the victory of the United Russia party looks impressive. Protests are planned in 75 cities across the huge state, though other large protests that were planned have not materialised. Is there a hint, perhaps, of an 'Arab spring' in Russia to thaw the winter of discontent? Angered voices such as the Soviet Union's last leader Mikhail Gorbachev's lost their currency a long time ago, and calling for another election will not necessarily change the course. That said the message itself, packaged, re-run and strung through the country, with a good dose of anger, may itself stimulate something beyond the usual flash in the pan nature of Russian political promise.
The opposition is a fractious bunch who have, in the past, shown that they are more capable as noisy nuisances than effective power brokers. 'This is how parliamentary elections work in Russia,' suggests former political reporter Valery Panyushkin. 'Mr. Putin's party, United Russia, faces off against collaborating parties – which would never dare criticize him. Ad the real opposition parties are banned' (NYT, Dec 8). In this particular round, the Communists managed to gather a 20 percent sampling of the vote; the Just Russia Party hummed along with 13 percent and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats (liberal and democratic in all but name) managed to nab 12 percent.
Economies of plunder depend on a constant supply of booty. Oil and gas were happily available to keep the economy growing from 2000 to 2008, but the global financial crisis has hit the country hard, drying up the supply that the Putin-Medvedev alliance has consistently promised the Russian populace. The government has had to partake in large spending programs that have prevented the rot sinking deeper, though the apparatchiks in Moscow are not juju men capable of miraculous feats.
Nor are those political creatures in the Kremlin efficient. Petro-chemical autocracy stakes its existence on economic benefits distributed on a true materialist credo. Greed is good as long as it rewards. And everything else is theatre, and a postmodernist one at that, if one is to take the observation of the novelist Eduard Limonov at face value. Behind Putin's system lie such figures as Vladislav Surkov, a figure who has, it has been argued by such authors as Peter Pomerantsev in the London Review of Books, 'privatised the Russian political system'. Surkov is the sort of individual who reflects and makes the system he delves into – the magician who is very much the deception he wishes to abide by.
Such a scene comes at a high cost to governor and subject. Surkov's puppeteer antics will have a used-by date attached to them. The public relations machine might be ingenious, but Putin's formula of repression depends on consent. Given the voting patterns at the latest parliamentary elections, even taking into account the electoral fraud that is alleged to have taken place, this show is bound to change.


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Q: How to calculate complementary color correctly in Sass? I am trying to get the complementary color in Sass correctly. I am aware of the helper function provided here: https://sass-lang.com/documentation/modules/color#complement
I want to get the complmentary color for #95F195, and I tried to use the follow code:
@debug color.adjust(#95F195, $hue: 180deg);

It will log out #f195f1. But when I get the complementary color in a color wheel with Adobe Color Wheel and Paletton, I am getting FF9E9E instead of #f195f1. Why is that?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Home/Buzz - deleted
Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah NFL Draft Predictions
By Devon Platana
Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah NFL Draft predictions for 2021 NFL Draft. / Joe Robbins/Getty Images
The 2021 NFL Draft is right around the corner and there are several talented prospects at the defensive lineman position. One of those happens to be Notre Dame linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.
As it stands, it's looking like Owusu-Koramoah will be a first-round pick on April 29.
Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah Draft Projection
With that in mind, let's take a look at some expert predictions for Owusu-Koramoah's landing spot in the 2021 NFL Draft.
Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah Mock Draft
Mel Kiper's predictions are from his latest mock draft, Todd McShay's predictions are from his latest mock draft, SportingNews' predictions are from Vinnie Iyer's latest mock draft. CBS Sports' predictions are from Ryan Wilson's latest mock draft and Pete Prisco's latest mock draft.
Mel Kiper: Washington Football Team (No. 19)
Todd McShay: New York Giants (No. 15)
Sporting News: Las Vegas Raiders (No. 17)
CBS Sports: New Orleans Saints (No. 28) | Cleveland Browns (No. 26)
Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah Draft Stock
- Washington Football Team (No. 19) – 1
- New York Giants (No. 15) – 1
- Las Vegas Raiders (No. 17) – 1
- New Orleans Saints (No. 28) - 1
- Cleveland Browns (No. 26) - 1

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


And tips for the solo traveller!
Leave your valuables locked in the safe in your hotel room, and never carry all your money on your person.
Keep your bag close to your body, zipped closed if possible, and never leave it with somebody else. When you're in a restaurant put it on your knee rather than on the floor or hung on the back of the chair.
Don't flash your cash by wearing expensive jewellery and clothing. Rio's dress code is extremely relaxed, and most of the locals stick to flips-flops and swim shorts, so there's really no need to be out sightseeing in your glad-rags.
Avoid walking down unlit streets and dark alleys on a night, stick to the main streets, there's no reason to put yourself in unnecessary danger.
If you've got a camera with you, keep it secured around your neck or in a closed bag.
How safe is Rio for solo travellers?
Have the nuts and bolts of your holiday planned before you arrive, and leave itinerary details with your family, so they can call the hotel or tour operator if they are worried about you.
Book an airport transfer in advance, especially if you're arriving late or on a long-haul flight. It's reassuring knowing there's someone waiting to meet you and get you safely to your hotel.
As well as using the hotel safe, it's often a good idea to spread your money between pockets and purses. This way you've always got enough to get you back to the hotel.
Have local help numbers, such as the police and your hotel, saved in your phone, and don't hesitate to use them if you feel threatened.
Learn how to ask for help in Portuguese. Although you probably won't need to use these phrases, it's a confidence boost knowing you can shout for help if needed.
Don't tell everyone you're travelling alone. If someone is acting suspicious you can always tell them your partner is just using the restroom, or wave at a group of tourists to make it look like you're with other people.
Arriving in such a busy city can be daunting after a long flight. The airport is full of taxi drivers trying to get your business, and it can be quite confusing knowing where to go to get a licensed airport taxi. We recommend booking a private transfer in advance, so there is someone waiting to meet you no matter what time your flight lands, they can help you with your bags and take you safely to your hotel. If you prefer to get a taxi, there are help desks in the arrivals area, where you can order a car or be pointed in the right direction.
When travelling around at night, we recommend getting the hotel or restaurant to call you a cab, so you know you're using a reputable company. Even if you're not staying at the hotel/eating at the restaurant, most will be happy to help if you ask politely.
If you can, ask the hotel/restaurant how much they expect the journey will cost you and whether or not the taxi should have a meter. Have the rough amount ready so you're not rummaging around in your purse. We wouldn't recommend starting an argument with the driver over the fare, but speak up if you think you're being ripped off, as most will back down straight away.
Always carry your hotel's business card or address and phone number with you, so even if your driver doesn't speak any English, he/she'll know where you're going, and you can call the hotel if you need assistance.
The high-traffic, tourist areas along the coast, like Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon and Leme, are considered safe. The streets are always busy, and there is a high police presence, so you should never feel alone or threatened. The quieter, hillside neighbourhood of Santa Teresa is also safe for tourists wanting a more peaceful stay. You should be fine walking back to your hotel after dinner at night in these areas.
We wouldn't recommend booking a hotel in the central downtown area of Rio, as this is primarily where offices and businesses are located. It's fine to explore during the day, but the area becomes quite unsafe at night, when most of the buildings are closed and the streets are dark.
The neighbourhood of Lapa is a popular area for nightclubs and bars, which are safe for tourists to check out on an evening as long as you stick to the busier streets. We wouldn't usually recommend staying here, as the area looks and feels rundown during the day when everything is closed. If you do go on a night out in Rio don't take anything too valuable with you.
The artsy, bohemian neighbourhood of Santa Teresa offers another side of Rio.
Rio has a great public transport system, which includes a metro, buses and trams, all of which are safe, clean, and easy to use as a tourist. The official Rio Olympics 2016 website has a great map detailing the various transport options available.
Traffic in Rio is absolutely awful, so sometimes using public transport is the quickest way to get about. Always allow longer than you think you need to get to the airport in time for your flight, as stand-stills are common on the routes between the city and the terminals.
To put it simply, favelas are just unofficial districts, and some of them look no different to the "official" districts. We know it's tempting to get off the beaten track and explore the real Rio, but certain favelas have a bad reputation, and would be unsafe for tourists to wander around.
That said, it's interesting to see both sides of Rio, and doing so with a tour guide is a great way to explore some of the city's poorer neighbourhoods whilst ensuring your safety.
Many tourists spend most of their time in Rio relaxing on one of the city's beautiful beaches, which are generally safe and well policed during the day. However they can get extremely busy in the summer, which means you need to keep a close eye on your possessions whilst sunbathing and swimming in the sea. Our advice is to leave anything valuable in your hotel room, and just take a small amount of money to the beach with you.
After dark the beaches become no-go areas and are best avoided. Although some are still lit by streetlamps, it's not worth the risk of getting into trouble away from the streets where there are less passers-by to help you.
It's easy to see why Copacabana is one of the most famous beaches in the world!
When people ask 'how safe is Rio?' they are generally referring to personal safety, rather than the safety of their personal belongings. But, as is the case with most big cities, violent attacks on tourists are extremely rare, and pickpocketing is the most common crime to watch out for. The popular, busy areas such as Copacabana and Ipanema might be the safest in terms of violence, but the crowded streets mean you are still at risk of pickpockets.
Similarly, at the major tourist sites of Corcovado and Sugarloaf Mountain, the jostling crowds mean it's easy to lose your bag or get your phone stolen. So keep your bag closed and wear it in front of your body. The same applies for public transport, especially during rush hour.
Local tour guides will know Rio like the back of their hand, and will avoid unsafe areas, and keep an eye on you whilst you're sightseeing. This is reassuring for vulnerable or solo travellers, and you'll learn more from them than you could possibly read in a guide book. Plus, they're always there to take your photograph, and you'll get the insider tips on the best places to eat!
Although group and private tours are generally safer than exploring on your own, don't let your guard down. Your guide can't watch your personal belongings as well as you, so don't stray too far or leave anything unattended.
For more tips on safety in Rio, and general travel information for Brazil, check out our guide pages!


Earnings is the one time that companies provide detailed information to their shareholders and co-owners.
Should the U.S. move to a six-month financial reporting calendar from the current quarterly one as President Donald Trump mooted in an early Friday tweet?
Not really, according to many investors and analysts, who argue that shareholders need more disclosure from the companies they invest in and not less. And while many executives — Elon Musk, anyone? — argue that the burden of striving to meet quarterly estimates can lead to short-termism on the part of managers and shareholders, there's no guarantee that a different reporting schedule would change that.
"If the charge is that companies are managing for short-term expectations, what will be the difference between a three-month cycle and a six-month cycle? Nothing," said Leigh Drogen, founder and chief executive of Estimize, a platform that crowdsources earnings estimates and economic forecasts.
"A six-month cycle will also lead to increased volatility given less access to hard information regarding the performance of companies," Drogen said.
Trump said that the idea of changing reporting requirements came from outgoing PepsiCo Inc. (PEP) Chief Executive Indra Nooyi, a longtime critic of the current system who has argued that the pressure to meet short-term goals clouds longer-term targets. The president has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to review the issue.
"I have the results to show for long-term management and the scars to show for short-term management, "Nooyi told a panel at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos this year, as Business Insider reported.
The executive was harshly criticized by analysts during the period in which she worked to move PepsiCo away from sugary drinks and salty snacks toward healthier products with her "Profits with Purpose" strategy. After her first five years as CEO, there were calls for her ousting as sales slowed, profits missed targets and the stock languished.
Nooyi suggested her 12-year tenure as CEO would offer a good case study for her insistence on taking a longer view. PepsiCo has beaten profit estimates for the past 20 quarters, according to FactSet, as her strategy paid off and got the company back on a growth track.
SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said his agency has already implemented measures that aim to "encourage long-term capital formation while preserving, and in many instances, enhancing key investor protections."
The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance "continues to study public company reporting requirements, including the frequency of reporting," he said in a statement.
But if the idea is to get companies to focus on longer-term results over shorter-term performance, some feel that increasing the time between reports by three months won't make much of a difference.
"I think it's negligible," said Wayne Thorp, vice president and senior financial analyst at the American Association of Individual Investors. "It's a step in the right direction, but I don't think it would impact the individual investor that much. It's lip service."
To be sure, companies would prefer not to have the burden and expense of quarterly reporting, which includes the need to rehearse for conference calls with analysts. And companies have become expert over the years at gaming the system so that they beat consensus forecasts and enjoy the subsequent stock gains.
That expertise has meant that earnings have beaten forecasts at a faster rate over time, as Jill Carey Hall, equity and quant strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told MarketWatch in June.
"There is a tendency by corporations to set conservative numbers so that EPS beats come through," Hall said.
Booking Holdings Inc. (BKNG), the former Priceline, for example, regularly offers soft earnings guidance, only to then "beat" that guidance when it reports, as MarketWatch has previously reported.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett (BRK/A) and JP Morgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon have argued that companies should stop offering quarterly guidance and switch their focus to longer-term issues. The two executives support the release of quarterly earnings reports, but believe the practice of guiding for the next quarter creates short-termism that is damaging to the economy.
"In our experience, quarterly earnings guidance often leads to an unhealthy focus on short-term profits at the expense of long-term strategy, growth and sustainability," they wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary piece.
But John Kay, U.K.-based economist and author of "Other People's Money: The Real Business of Finance," says it's the practice of reporting every quarter that causes short-term thinking.
"What is changing in three-month intervals does not tell us anything about how a company is positioned to deal with long-term growth," Kay said in a recent interview with MarketWatch.
Kay was tasked with reviewing activity in U.K. equity markets and the impact on long-term performance and governance of listed companies and recommended eliminating quarterly reporting in favor of six-month's and phasing out guidance. His other recommendations included the adoption of a stewardship code, the establishment of a forum for collective engagement by investors, the clarification of fiduciary duties of trustees and their advisers, and the rebating to investors of all income from stock lending.
The U.K. in 2014 dropped its quarterly reporting requirement, although about 90% of U.K.- listed companies still report that way, many because they are also listed in the U.S., the deepest and biggest capital markets in the world.
The academic world has attempted to evaluate the merits of quarterly versus semi-annual reporting with mixed results. A paper by Chicago Booth Professor Haresh Sapra and colleagues from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Minnesota published in 2014 found there's a happy medium between too little disclosure and too much delivered too often.
"Since markets are forward looking, any actions that favor the short term at the expense of greater long-term value creation would be effectively punished by lower capital market prices," said the paper. Overreporting can be expensive and could make it more attractive for companies to do anything to produce quick profits. "Such pressures disappear when reporting frequency is decreased," the paper found.
But some industry analysts said reduced reporting could actually increase costs for companies, as lenders could require higher interest rates to compensate for the increased uncertainty from less information.
"I understand CEOs' frustration with short-term [reporting], but the solution is not to hide critical information from investors," said Mercer Bullard, Butler Snow lecturer and professor of law at the University of Mississippi. "[President Trump's] proposal would raise the cost of capital for public companies and weaken our markets' global competitiveness."
Karen Cavanaugh, senior market strategist at Voya Investment Management, said regular earnings reports are necessary and good for investors, because they provide a check point on how macro developments, such as tax cuts and tariffs, can affect companies and the economy.
"Earnings reports cut through all the noise, and that's what investors really need to see," Cavanaugh said. "It's easy to get distracted. We need those earnings to keep [investors] on track, to keep them from going off the rails."
Howard Berkenblit, partner and head of the capital markets group at the law firm Sullivan & Worcester, agreed that quarterly reporting serves a "useful function" for both companies and investors.
For companies, reporting twice a year instead of four times would save some money and resources, but they could find it challenging to "talk freely" to institutional investors and lenders about their business and outlook, unless that information has been fully disclosed to the public, as Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure) requires. And if companies are going to do the work to update investors, it wouldn't be that much more of a burden to disclose the information officially, Berkenbilt said.
For investors, it's hard to argue that less information is ever better than more information. And for small investors, who are already unable to keep up with high-speed and algorithmic trading machines that can scrape information from multiple sources in the blink of an eye would likely be even more disadvantaged if those programs were to become more aggressive.
"I see it as maybe a hard sell, since investors and analysts still want that information, and may not want to wait that long to know what's going on with a company," Berkenblit said. "Is the saving really worth it, for the benefit to the investment community that you give up?"
Drogen from Estimize said fans of long-term planning often use Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) as an example of a company that was able to thrive despite the many years in which it failed to show a profit.
"Investors love to point to Amazon and Jeff Bezos when it comes to long term thinking and investments, but they are sorely mistaken if they believe the market is willing to given that kind of benefit of the doubt to every managerial team," he said.
"In a time when technological disruption risk is increasing significantly, investors need more information at a more rapid clip in order to assess the health of businesses, not less," he said.
Amazon shares have gained 60% in 2018, while the S&P 500 (.SPX) has gained 6.3% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) has added 3.6%.


text:
Jakes Smokehouse brings a unique flavor to Adrian
Spencer Durham Daily Telegram Staff Writer @lenaweedurham
ADRIAN — " 'Cause we're idiots."
That's how Thursday's conversation with Tom "Jake" and Sue Jakubowski, owners of Jakes Smokehouse at 1557 W. Maumee St. in Adrian, began.
The question that prompted such a response from Tom?
As recent retirees, why did you decide to open a barbecue joint?
" 'Cause we're idiots," he said. "For the same reason we moved from Arizona to Michigan, we're idiots."
The real answer is a bit more positive and has some pretty good intentions.
Tom and Sue spent 24 years in Arizona before moving back to Michigan when their kids entered high school. During their time in the southwest, they experienced that region's barbecue only to find no such thing back north.
"Tom's always been brilliant with ideas," Sue said. "We were looking for something to keep us nimble and alive and engaged. And he came up with opening a restaurant."
The two sat next to each other inside the restaurant that was once Lester's Diner, prior to opening on Thursday. Inside, Jakes Smokehouse has a southwest-ish style color scheme, cigar boxes serve as containers for barbecue sauce bottles at each table, there's a chalkboard for a menu at the front counter and an old gas station pump from Tom's father's barn for a nice personal touch.
Outside is the smoker the gives the food its flavor. It was too big to fit inside the restaurant. On the plus side, Jakes Smokehouse has a fully mobile kitchen in case Tom and Sue ever want to take their show on the road.
Southwest barbecue is different than southern barbecue. Tom said whereas southern barbecue is saucy and sweet, southwest barbecue is smoked and the flavors come out in the cooking process.
"A really good barbecue that's smoked you actually don't need sauce on it at all," Sue said.
"It can stand on its own," Tom added.
You can get a full stack of ribs at Jakes Smokehouse, unlike other places that might only offer short ribs or St. Louis-style ribs.
Customers can also get a pulled pork sandwich or brisket. The pulled pork is cooked anywhere between 16 and 20 hours and the brisket upwards of 18.
"It's a long, slow cook on everything," Tom said.
For the more adventurous, there's tequila lime wings, which Sue has to special order, and tri-tip, a triangular cut of beef from the bottom of the sirloin that's seasoned, smoked and thinly sliced. Tom said it's uncommon in these parts and the only way he can order it is by the pallet, but in the southwest, tri-tip is as popular as sloppy joe sandwiches.
No matter what you order, "You don't leave here hungry," according to Tom.
Each order is to go. Being just the two of them, they don't have time to wait tables, though customers can dine in, sit outside on the patio or take their food to go.
Tom said, with a grin, that his background comes from trying to please his wife for the past 30 years.
"We found some barbecue we really liked and I said, 'I bet you could do this,' " Sue said, clearing the record. "He experimented around. It started in the backyard, and he's just got it."
Jakes Smokehouse is named after the Jakubowski family, though Tom also goes by Jake. The two had a soft opening on July 5 and received a warm reception.
"We're just sitting here in amazement it went (well)," Sue said. "That first day when we opened we went, 'What are we doing?' Then people came. ... Right now we're trying to get a feel for what our median is and if we can extend into lunches. One step at a time."
"We're just having fun," Tom added. "It's either this or hide out in the wood shed and pretend to make stuff."
There's also the community engagement aspect. Not only is Jakes Smokehouse something to do for the two retirees, it's also a way to get involved in the community.
"We traveled for so long, came back here and said we've never been involved in the community," Tom said. "This is a way to get to know people.
"You get some great people in here. Everybody has a barbecue story."
Jakes Smokehouse is open from 4 to 8 p.m. Monday-Friday and 2 to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.


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text:
Felipe Baeza with Zoë Hopkins
Dan Colen with Amanda Gluibizzi
Graham Nickson with Jack Flam and Phong H. Bui
Christina Quarles with Lee Ann Norman
Todd Bienvenu: JOMO (Joy of Missing Out)
By Madeleine Seidel
Flying Woman: The Paintings of Katherine Bradford
By KK Kozik
Tiona Nekkia McClodden: The Trace of An Implied Presence
By Anna Cahn
Sean Scully: A Wound in a Dance with Love
By Raphy Sarkissian
Reframed: The Woman in the Window
Hilma's Ghost
Monica Sjöö: The time is NOW and it is overdue!
By Brittany Rosemary Jones
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Exits Exist
By Barbarita Polster
Philip Guston Now
Warren Neidich: The Brain Without Organs: An Aporia of Care
By Anuradha Vikram
Rachel Lee Hovnanian: Angels Listening
Arlene Shechet: Couple of
pear ware: I love you, I think
By Everett Narciso
Takashi Murakami: Stepping on the Tail of a Rainbow
Rodin in the United States: Confronting the Modern
Katy Crowe: A Wrinkle in the Macula
By Mary Jones
Marta Pérez García: Restos-Traces
By S. David
Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars
By Marcus Civin
New York: 1962–1964
By Suzaan Boettger
Our Selves: Photographs by Women Artists from Helen Kornblum
Dr. Charles Smith
By Andrew Paul Woolbright
Zeshan Ahmed and Yasi Alipour: to bleach, to fold
By Amanda Millet-Sorsa
Eva Hesse: Expanded Expansion
By Cynthia Payne
Jeannette Ehlers: Archives in the Tongue: A Litany of Freedoms
By Alice Godwin
Quentin Curry: A Brand New Day
Jayson Musson: His History of Art
By Laurel V. McLaughlin
By James Welling
Penny Goring: Penny World
By Maximiliane Leuschner
Jean Conner: Collage
By Maymanah Farhat
Sayre Gomez: Renaissance Collection
By Jake Romm
By Charles Duncan
Assembly 1: Unstored
By Faye Fleming
Teresa Kutala Firmino: The Owners of the Earth (Vissaquelo)
Mirror Image: A Transformation of Chinese Identity
Lee Lozano: All Verbs
Sam Gilliam: Full Circle
On Flux
Guest Critic: Adriana Farmiga
In My Dream
By Nayland Blake
A Few Paper Clips and A Couple Million Years
By David Brooks
The Price of Chaufa
By William Cordova
Reverse Pangaea
By Christian Hincapié
Double Slit
By Fawn Krieger
Flux in 3 Parts
By Rindon Johnson
By Michael Joo
Al río / To the River
By Zoe Leonard
Siboney
By Joiri Minaya
Club of Joe Schmo
By Louis Osmosis
The Interconnectedness of Making Ice
By Elizabeth Shannon
Excerpt from Benjamin Patterson with Kathy Goncharov
By Sam Vernon
Stephanie LaCava with Adele Bertei
Daniel Clowes's The Complete Eightball 1-18
Jill Dearman with Gene Seymour
Michael J. Seidlinger & Dashiel Carrera
Ander Monson with J.C. Hallman
Charles Baxter's Wonderlands: Essays on the Life of Literature
For Salman Rushdie & The Satanic Verses
By Pierre Joris
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse's All Your Children, Scattered
Adam McOmber's Fantasy Kit
By Zach Schwab
Elissa Bassist's Hysterical
Judith Baumel with Catherine Parnell
Kathleen Rooney's Where Are the Snows
Deep Listening To Pauline Oliveros Across The Internet
By Vanessa Ague
WOMAD Festival
Diary of a Mad Composer
A New Sun Rises in Tiger Hands
By Candice Thompson
A Requiem Rocks the Fundament
Anita Rocha da Silveira's Medusa
By Laura Valenza
Khavn De La Cruz with Joshua Bogatin
By Joshua Bogatin
Gregory Markopoulos's Eniaios at the Temenos
By Del O'Brien
Andrew Semans's Resurrection
To Gina With Love
By Sam Kahn
In The Hearth's Happy Life, Kathy Ng Morphs Octopus Porn into Visions of Destruction—and Renewal
By Kally Patz
from The Deer
By Dashiel Carrera
By Amish Trivedi
Take it Down
By Barrett White
By Coleman Stevenson
By Greg Masters
By Julie Agoos
By Óscar Moisés Díaz
Diptych: Conflict
By Tracie Morris
Austin Osman Spare's Psychopathia Sexualis
Mary Heilmann's The All Night Movie
Spencer Longo's TIME
By Josh Schneiderman
Isolde Brielmaier's I Am Sparkling: N.V. Parekh and His Portrait Studio Clients
By Noa Wynn
Back to the Future: On Eric Adams's New York
By Andy Battle
Sandcastles: Afghanistan, One Year On
Judah Schept's Coal, Cages, Crisis
By Jarrod Shanahan and Abby Cunniff
16. 1977/1978, Somewhere in England
17. 1992, Select Magazine
18. 1988/2019 and various times in between, England
19. 1994, France
20. 2016, New Orleans
Data/Body: Corpus and the Cloud Empire of our Lives
SEPT 2022 Issue
A symbolic twenty years after 9/11, the Biden administration formally ended the United States' war in Afghanistan, withdrawing the last of its troops from the south-central Asian nation. Melancholy anniversaries serve as reminders of missed opportunities, and this one is no different. Here, however, blunders appear frivolous when compared to the extraordinary corruption and pitiless violence perpetrated by US-backed forces in the region. While much has been made of the shockingly haphazard exit, the ease with which the Taliban seized Kabul, and the grim prospects for women, for girls, and for Afghans who worked with coalition forces, the cardinal sin of the war was not how it ended, but how it began.
In retrospect, the September 11 attacks offered the United States a rare occasion to live up to its self-image as a democratic, upstanding nation by championing a diplomatic solution to the tragedy. Few would have objected; in fact, many nations rallied to support the US in its darkest hour. President George W. Bush instead sought brutal reprisals for anyone his administration deemed an "enemy of freedom."1 The commander-in-chief inaugurated his globe-trotting quest in Afghanistan, christening the enterprise, "Operation Enduring Freedom."
Despite Bush's insistence the war on terror would be "global" in nature, it quickly became clear that his administration's eye for "enemies" was remarkably discriminating, as only a handful of countries, Afghanistan and Iraq top among them, were targeted at the expense of other, more egregious offenders: e.g. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism; the United Arab Emirates, a haven for terrorists looking to launder their money; or Pakistan, whose Inter-Services Intelligence agency sustains numerous close links to terrorist organizations. After al-Qaeda was routed from Afghanistan, scrutiny moved to Saddam Hussein's Iraq, even as the Salafi jihadist network and its leader, Osama bin Laden, remained at large. This short attention span—or at least the appearance of one—didn't inspire confidence in Bush's war on terror. Indeed, as the occupation of Iraq took hold, many criticized his administration for forgetting about Afghanistan, which was then deteriorating into a hopeless quagmire. Nearly two decades later, Bush's war ranks as the US's longest, and one of its most expensive, ringing in at more than $2.313 trillion.2 In the meantime, Bush's larger war on terror has come to span at least eighty-five countries, each absorbed into the folds of US influence.3 "We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity," Bush crowed at a 2005 speech in Norfolk, Virginia, "and we will not tire, and we will not rest until the war on terror is won."4 For the Texan and his successors, the war on terror brought not victory, however, but decades of deceit.
For decades now, the United States has doled out its beloved brand of rough justice around the Greater Middle East. Afghanistan is only one of its theaters, but it is nonetheless an instructive one.
Everyone in charge of the war effort there, it seems—from four-star generals to ambassadors and senior White House officials—knew all along that their project was doomed from the start.5 Despite orchestrating pageantry for public consumption, behind closed doors few in the White House held any illusions about the prospect of victory, whatever that meant. "I tried to get someone to define for me what winning meant, even before I went over," Lt. Gen. Dan McNeill told federal interviewers, "and nobody could."
For starters, few high-ups could clearly determine who the real "bad guys" were. Vicious warlords, drug lords, and pedophiles made up the ranks of our enemies—and our allies. At a more logistical level, however, the war effort exhibited a decided lack of planning, coordination, and strategy from start to finish, as investigative reporter Craig Whitlock exhaustively demonstrates in his Afghanistan Papers exposé. McNeill, who served as the commander of American and coalition forces in Afghanistan, put it plainly: "there was no campaign plan." He wasn't alone in his assessment. British Gen. David Richards, leader of NATO forces from 2006 to 2007, Richard Boucher, a senior diplomat, Maj. Stephen Boesen, an officer in the Iowa National Guard, and many more harbored similar misgivings. But it was Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, White House "war czar" under Presidents Bush and Obama, who put it most elegantly. "We didn't have the foggiest notion of what we were undertaking," he said in an interview with the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, the oversight authority on all matters Afghanistan. Insisting he wasn't being hyperbolic, he added, "it's really much worse than you think."6
As in the earlier adventure in Vietnam, only careful choreography over the course of three consecutive US administrations—two Republican and one Democratic—managed to maintain a façade of orderly conduct, steady progress, and ultimate triumph, cast eternally "just around the corner."7
Until that collapsed. Cracks appeared as early as August 2009, when mistreatment of Afghan civilians by US forces was becoming too frequent and too obvious to ignore, and the number of dead US soldiers was becoming too large for Americans to stomach.8 But it was finally exhaustion, and not penance, that defined the growing disquiet among liberals and progressives who heaved sighs of relief at Biden's eventual withdrawal.9 It is important to note, however, that Biden, himself a hardened imperialist, did not withdraw from the country of his own accord. Instead, the "empire politician," as journalists at The Intercept dubbed him, merely kept the US end of Donald Trump's much-derided 2020 deal with the Taliban, which secured a US withdrawal by May 2021 in return for the Taliban putting a stop to attacks on coalition forces.10 Indeed, the largely bipartisan objection to American involvement in the region lay not with Afghanistan per se, but rather with America's "forever wars."11
As many Americans turned against a war they had originally supported, they learned the hard way that conflicts, while easy to ignite, prove quite difficult to resolve. To complicate matters further, the official goalposts kept shifting: first, the war's objective was to uproot al-Qaeda and, later, the Taliban, then it was to fortify women's rights in Afghanistan, and finally it was to extinguish terrorism globally, while at the same time building impoverished, war-shattered Afghanistan into a modern, fully functional democracy. Achieving any one of these alone was next to impossible, never mind all four. The real aim of the war, however, the one hidden behind layers of deceit, was three-pronged: to enrich actors in the military-industrial complex, to resuscitate the global capitalist system, and to pursue, out of revenge for 9/11, a nation-building agenda in Afghanistan that would produce a terror-busting, pro-Washington central government in Kabul.
The first of these was certainly achieved. According to Brown University's Costs of War project, Lockheed Martin received seventy-five billion dollars in Pentagon contracts in fiscal year 2020 alone.12 Four other corporations—Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman—took home comparable fortunes.
But what about the other two?
Take the second prong: resuscitating capitalism. By the late 1990s and the early 2000s, on the eve of the invasion of Afghanistan, the global capitalist system was floundering. The dot-com bubble had burst, a speculative attack on the Thai baht exploded into a financial crisis that tore across East and Southeast Asia from 1997 to 1999, and the September 9/11 attacks brought on a belated recession in the United States in 2001. Surplus capital was threatening to spill over into what Marxists call a "crisis of overaccumulation."13
But capital has the peculiar ability to "[accumulate] through crises," as sociologist William I. Robinson points out, and the wealthy and powerful know better than to let a good crisis go to waste.14 And so it was that after 9/11, with the global economy approaching stagnation, "the transnational capitalist class," as Robinson dubs them, turned to the strong arm of the State for help in securing and stabilizing profit. In fortifying the State's capacity for war-making and violence to secure capital accumulation, it becomes clear that "US interventionism" in places like Afghanistan and Iraq "is not a departure from capitalist globalization but a response to its crisis." By this, Robinson does not mean only that interventions can force market liberalization, but also that interventions "are themselves markets and investment opportunities," especially for the contractors who build the bases, staff the mess halls, procure the weaponry, and provide general support for the US military.15 Indeed, Afghanistan and Iraq were a boon for both capital and the American economy: in the late 1990s, national defense spending accounted for about 3 percent of the United States' gross domestic product; by 2022, that number may reach over 10 percent.16
As for the United States's nation-building agenda in Afghanistan, the pretext for the other two prongs, one need not look hard to find evidence of its abject failure. Almost immediately after the American withdrawal, Afghanistan's beleaguered central government, for years propped up by the US, crumbled. Afghanistan had for years been skating on dangerously thin ice. Its leaders in Kabul, long bereft of popular support, struggled to retain a semblance of legitimacy in the face of Taliban encroachment. During the tenures of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, Kabul entrenched a deeply unpopular kleptocracy with the full knowledge and support of US leaders who sacrificed any hope of honest governance for the sake of illusory "security."17 (Karzai had familial ties to the narcotics trade, as did many top officials in his governments, and Ghani, the country's final president, allegedly fled the capital with "four cars and a helicopter full of cash" as the city fell.)18
But the rot of corruption spread well beyond the government corridors of Kabul. Like the British before them, US leaders "adopted a policy of paying off and co-opting local warlords and drug traffickers" across the country, according to historian Ali A. Olomi, contracting out the dirty work of provincial control to crooks like Mohammed Qasim Fahim Khan, a reviled Tajik tyrant, and General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a notorious Uzbek warlord credibly accused of war crimes and attempted rape of a political opponent.19 As these unscrupulous characters infiltrated seats of power—Dostum and Fahim Khan, for instance, both served as vice president of Afghanistan—the White House's much-touted projects of social uplift stalled. This was always inevitable. No fledgling government with democratic hopes can survive unscathed or undamaged when poisoned by such extensive graft. Because typically American problems necessarily call for typically American solutions, Congress elected to throw hundreds of billions of dollars at the monster US officials created. To no avail. No amount of money could salvage the doomed ventures.
Neither could joint partnerships with European allies. Where coalition forces were concerned, attempts at reforming the Afghan justice system (helmed by Italy), police forces (by Germany), and narcotics industry (by the United Kingdom) flamed out in similarly spectacular fashion. As much as Rome and Washington tried, "none of [their reforms] could compete with Afghanistan's informal system of justice, which relied on political connections, tribal affiliations and rampant bribery," according to Craig Whitlock, an investigative journalist at The Washington Post.20 Formal law and order are, today, virtually nonexistent. Meanwhile, the German-trained Afghan police forces ended up tormenting the very people they swore oaths to protect. Extortion, bribery, and corruption ran rampant, as underpaid officers sought unconventional means to pad their pockets. It was a "mess," one police chief admitted in mid-2019.21 As for the efficacy of narcotics interdiction, the British mandate, the numbers speak for themselves. According to figures from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, poppy cultivation increased more than four-fold and opium production almost three-fold between 2002 and 2017.22
There is a lick of irony to this mess: in attempting to revamp Afghan society from the ground up, US and coalition forces grafted many of their country's own problems onto Afghanistan. Take the police, jointly trained by the Germans and the Americans. While reporters at The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, the New York Times, and New York Magazine reported on Taliban infiltration of Afghan security forces, they paid little attention to the possibility that German and US forces may not be equipped to fulfill their duties.23 Or worse, they may have contributed to the troubles. For instance, in 2018, Germany faced a national reckoning with extreme-right and neo-Nazi infiltration of the highest echelons of its military and police.24 Likewise the United States, whose police departments are plagued with corruption, ties to domestic terror groups, and involvement in narcotics trafficking.25 Is it surprising, then, that corrupt German and American police forces did not uproot corruption from Afghan police departments?
Perhaps the most curious choice of all, however, was the one that put the United Kingdom in charge of curbing Afghanistan's narcotics industry. After all, Britain "was built as a narco-empire," according to historian Peter Frankopan.26 Indeed, during its imperial century (1815–1914), as Britain worked to pry open lucrative Chinese markets to Western trade, the empire was equally bent on protecting the interests of its drug smugglers who cultivated opium poppy in colonial Bengal and trafficked it for sale in Chinese markets. Mandarins in the Qing dynasty, at the same time, were attempting to suppress the drug trade, as opium addiction ravaged the nation's social fabric. In response, Britain projected fearsome military might, running the Chinese blockade at Hong Kong's Pearl River estuary and sending warships to the delta, thus sparking the first of two Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860).
Foreign meddling during the war in Afghanistan, hypocritical as it was, is not the only culprit that explains the country's state today. Part of Afghanistan's woes can also be traced to its postwar monetary policy. In the flurry of reports flowing out of the country late in 2021, it was revealed that Afghanistan doesn't actually print its own currency. Instead, its central bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, contracts the work out to European institutions on whom the country is partially reliant for its money supply. Now, outsourcing money-printing doesn't entail catastrophe per se: Finland, Denmark, and two-thirds of African nations do it.27 But in a deeply credit-poor society like Afghanistan, where cash is king, any drop in bank notes flowing through the country necessarily spells disaster for ordinary people.28 The situation would be compounded if, say, shipments of afghanis were blocked in any way, given the already-tenuous control the country holds over its currency. Indeed, the United Nations warned in March 2022 that Afghanistan risked "'irreversible' ruin" if drastic fiscal interventions and direct talks with the Taliban government were not undertaken with all possible speed.29
Instead, Western nations turned again to their weapon of choice whenever war is off the table: debilitating sanctions. The United States spearheaded the movement, targeting Taliban and Haqqani Network assets and freezing seven billion dollars in government reserves held in the New York Federal Reserve Bank. (Given that the Taliban function as the de facto government in Afghanistan, it is unclear whether sanctions extend to the Afghan government, the nation, or only named individuals.) As a result, Afghans face dangerously low liquidity. With precious little inflows of money to replenish withdrawals, ATMs remain empty and wait times for those queuing up at banks can last for hours. To make matters worse, government efforts to head off a run on deposits—placing a crushingly low limit on withdrawals, sometimes capped at two hundred dollars a week—and the general wariness of foreign financial institutions to risk extending lines of credit to the Taliban-aligned central bank have pushed the country towards insolvency.31 In practical terms, this cash squeeze means that ordinary Afghans, no matter their political persuasion, cannot access their own funds from personal accounts. To add insult to injury, President Biden commandeered half of the frozen assets of the country's central bank as restitution for victims of 9/11, promising to somehow manage the remainder to eventually rebuild the nation.33 The legality of this move has been left unspecified. (As of this writing, the US has refused to release any money, citing concerns the money could be used to fund terrorism.34)
Sanctions also stymied the flow of foreign aid into the country, which before the Taliban takeover comprised a full 75 percent of the government's public spending.32 Public funds, like private savings, simply evaporated. Initially, the sanctions were so cruel they did not carve out exemptions for nonprofits and NGOs to deliver food and other vital assistance. Mercifully, this has since been corrected with a half-dozen general licenses, but many of these organizations remain fearful of penalties they may incur in accidentally violating the sanctions. In spite of claims they are "targeted" to only affect Taliban leadership, economic pressures are building in Afghanistan, threatening to push the already economically stressed region towards catastrophe.30 News agencies, government offices, writers, and novelists alike had warned about the inherent fragility of the Afghan economy since at least 2001—not to mention their exhaustive reporting on the cruelty, imprecision, and utter ineffectiveness of sanctions themselves—but their words have gone unheeded.35 The admixture of self-interested politicking and staggering arrogance that suffused the halls of 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue fed into a general indifference to Afghan lives. So American leaders implemented a punishing sanctions regime, despite knowing full well its dire effects.
Across the rugged Hindu Kush, horrific decisions have had to be made in order to make ends meet. Afghan families, many facing crushing poverty with their country's economy in free-fall, are sometimes left with few options besides selling their child daughters for measly dowry payouts in the hopes of avoiding starvation, a fate threatening 95 percent of the population.36 Many of the young girls not facing subjection as "slaves" in arranged marriages have been out of school since August 2021, when the Taliban announced a moratorium on girls attending school from grades seven through twelve.37 Afghans who manage to flee often fare no better. Refugees escaping to Iran, generally via Turkey, risk mistreatment at the hands of both the Iranian police and Iranian citizens as Sunnis in Shī'a-majority Iran.
Others turn to the black market for salvation. The Afghan drug trade, long an object of fruitless Western reform, has enjoyed booming successes in the two decades following the US invasion, notwithstanding recent Taliban attempts to curb it.38 After formally banning the poppy harvest in April 2022, the Taliban now faces an explosion in ephedra operations. Once "considered a practically worthless mountain shrub," the plant these days represents a kind of economic deliverance, providing as it does a source of methamphetamine's key stimulant ingredient and, consequently, a source of income for cash-strapped farmers.39 While the country still produces about 90 percent of the world's opium, reporters at Vice found Afghan meth cropping up in drug supplies from Iraq to South Africa to Indonesia, with some reaching as far as Australia, a marker of its international reach. Closer to home, meth dealers are "free to ply their trade" in the bazaars of western Afghanistan, as with opium before it.40 Digging into reporting on the shrub, its rise comes as no shock: it is easier to grow than labor-intensive poppy; it allows drug-lords to simplify the normally complex process of making meth; it produces the drug at a fraction of the price to traditional methods; and, finally, it may avoid competition with local poppy farmers, cutting down on turf wars. This semi-synthetic meth, in tandem with opium, only conspires to turbo-charge Afghanistan's collapse into narco-statehood.
Perhaps the Taliban's promise to ban opium, like their promise to keep girls in school, will amount to little more than lip service. Or perhaps, like the Taliban's largely successful ban on poppy from 2000 to 2001, we will witness a last ditch effort by the regime to rescue itself from pariah status on the global stage.
In spite of a formal end to armed conflict in the country, Commander General Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., speaking to the House Armed Services Committee Hearing on Afghanistan Withdrawal in late September 2021, declared that the US is "always going to reserve the right to go in and to go after ISIS and Al Qaeda targets as they present themselves."41 President Biden made good on this threat in next to no time.
In the early morning hours of July 31, 2022, the Central Intelligence Agency fired two Hellfire missiles on a lone house in downtown Kabul. The victim of the drone strike was the emir of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden's protégé, Ayman al-Zawahiri. He was living in the city, officially unbeknownst to Taliban leadership, waiting to be reunited with his family. His assassination made headlines and garnered a lot of press coverage. Yet beyond a superficial interest, remarkably few Americans paid much attention to the killing at all. There were no celebrations of the type that occurred when bin Laden was dispatched by Navy SEALs in 2011, no tense photo from the Situation Room, no pomp. Al-Zawahiri was not a figure of comparable status as bin Laden, of course: he did not inspire anything approaching the level of loathing his Saudi predecessor did. Though al-Zawahiri ranked as one of the world's most-wanted terrorists, there appears to have been other forces at play in the decision to kill him and publicize the effort.
For one, political expediency may have played a role, with Biden no doubt looking to boost his sagging approval ratings. Six days before the assassination, FiveThirtyEight found that an astonishing 57.1 percent of Americans did not approve of Biden's performance: a higher disapproval rating than any president since Harry Truman has had at the same point in their presidency.42 For another, there was likely a focus on this particular drone strike for a simpler, more fundamental reason: amid dozens of reports of military debacles, this one was an unequivocal success.
The assassination of al-Zawahiri was clean, almost surgical in its precision. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of many other US airstrikes in Afghanistan and the Greater Middle East, which are marked by a conspicuous absence of due care and attention. In a New York Times investigation into how the US has conducted itself in its overseas wars, reporter Azmat Khan uncovered a years-long pattern of gross malfeasance, undiluted contempt for foreign civilians, and a rock-ribbed refusal to admit wrongdoing in the way the military conducts its air wars.43 She found that "customers" (those tasked with selecting the targets of an airstrike, be they C.I.A., a ground force commander, or a classified Special Operations unit) often viewed the ordinary goings-on of Afghans—as well as Pakistanis and Syrians—through the most incriminating light possible. Their every move became suspicious, evidence of terrorist ties. "Evidence" quickly transformed into "proof," as those under surveillance were summarily placed in line for execution. Data were selectively chosen—or selectively ignored—to best confirm the "customer's" wishes and meet their demands. The presence of children in the vicinity of a strike, in some cases, did not stop the drone teams from pulling the proverbial trigger on a target. Neither did first responders rushing to tend to the wounded.44 They were killed, too—as the military determined this behavior to be typical of ISIS fighters and not of medics. This tendency to search for or interpret data in a way that confirms one's already-held beliefs is what scholars in the social sciences call "confirmation bias." It is the hallmark of sloppy, slapdash analysis. The habit, however, proved especially difficult to uproot in the high-stakes situations of US war-making, and no major shifts in procedure were implemented despite the growing chorus of concerns over civilian casualties.
This is of a piece with the military's general attitude, for a disregard of human life is baked into its culture. Institutional norms encourage reckless violence for the sake of careerism. In his reporting, journalist Andrew Cockburn found that the calculus was as clinical as it was blunt: if you want to climb the ranks, the more strikes the better. As one US officer explained to Cockburn, "if you call in an airstrike, not only do you get a combat ribbon and possibly an award for valor, but it also makes your report a combat report. When you have multiple combat reports and others do not, you're more competitive for promotion and assignment to prestigious billets."45 Matters of personal career advancement and job security, thus, overrode the stated goal of winning hearts and minds with alarming regularity.
Bad intel and problematic incentives invariably accelerate civilian death, despoliation of cities, and, in the end, the evisceration of societies.46 Iraq counts between 220,637 and 248,845 dead—civilians and opposition fighters alike–as a result of US intervention in the country.47 Commenting on these figures, scholars at Brown University write that "the US invasion," dubbed Operation Iraqi Freedom by Bush, "turned the country into a laboratory in which militant groups such as Islamic State have been able to hone their techniques of recruitment and violence." Syria, for its part, lies in almost total ruin. Likewise the bodies of many of its citizens: 30,000 are maimed each month as its brutal civil war drags on.48 Without a functional justice system, alleged war crimes go unpunished. In Raqqa alone, a city on the north bank of the Euphrates, the US-led coalition is implicated in the deaths of over 1,600 civilians.49 The toll in Afghanistan hovers around 184,400 people. On top of this staggering figure, experts believe that ten million landmines stud the country's landscape, periodically maiming innocents. In fact, Afghanistan holds the dubious distinction of being the third most mined country in the world.50
Impunity magnifies the worst aspects of the already gruesome enterprise of war. Its constitutive parts, say the United States's "kill chain," only serve to belabor the point. All wars rely on death-dealing bureaucracies tasked with deciding who lives and who dies in so many far-flung corners on Earth. For the United States, attention has for the last few decades been focused in particular on the Greater Middle East. Yet for all their power and influence, key players inside these shadowy bureaucracies seem to answer to no one. And they are steadfastly resistant to change, no matter how horrific their actions: sixty children killed in a 2008 US airstrike in Azizabad, Herat Province; the murder of at least eighty-six women and children in an airstrike in Granai Village to the northwest of Kandahar in 2009; the 2015 airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, killing forty-two civilians; forty partygoers killed at a wedding in Helmand Province in 2019; a family of ten, including seven children, all killed by a Reaper drone in Kabul in one of the Biden administration's last moves before the withdrawal.51 Accountability is everywhere conspicuously absent; business continues as usual.
Indeed, in many cases, the rules of war appear to exist not as protection for foreign civilians, but as armor against claims of US war crimes. The guidelines associated with America's air wars "seemed to function," as Khan discovered in her reporting, "almost by design to not only mask the true toll of American airstrikes but also legitimize their expanded use" in part by providing "psychological comfort to those who must make the decisions."52 Military officials and politicians alike consequently grow complacent with unconscionable civilian death, inured to the mounting casualty counts across the Greater Middle East. And all the while, nothing is said to be done.
Does the United States care about the victims of its air wars?
Zemari Ahmadi was killed by a US drone strike eleven months ago in Kabul.53 He was an aid worker, a long-time employee of a California-based nonprofit, Nutrition and Education International, and was, that August afternoon, on his way home from work. His car was loaded with plastic jerry cans that US intelligence misidentified as explosives acquired from an ISIS safe house. The containers, it turns out, were filled with water, and Ahmadi was carting them home to his family in Khwaja Burgha, a residential neighborhood then suffering a mean, protracted drought. (Afghanistan is one of the most water-stressed regions on Earth.) His family would have no water that day. They wouldn't need any. For a Reaper drone would kill them all.
Just over three months later, the New York Times reported that "No U.S. Troops Will Be Punished for Deadly Kabul Strike."54
The killing of al-Zawahiri suggests that, much as the government and the press may wish, the history of Afghanistan and of the United States's global air wars cannot simply be tipped into oblivion. Afghanistan today is facing what Mona Juul, Norway's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, designates "one of the world's most rapidly growing humanitarian crises."55 The country is indeed in dire straits. Its starving millions exemplify the struggles of many disposable populations in an increasingly ungovernable world-system. Afghans vacillate between identities as ethnic minorities, undocumented refugees, victims of kleptocracy, the poverty-stricken, the dispossessed. They are stuck in limbo as a once-unipolar world led exclusively by the United States, their occupier, dissolves into multi-polarity. It remains to be seen who will come out on top. What is clear, though, is the fact that Afghanistan represents only one gigantic failure in the US's ongoing attempt to maximize its dominion over global affairs. This latest failure reinforces claims that American power is dwindling. There are lessons to be learned here, but if the current political landscape in American is representative, it seems doubtful US leaders will put these lessons to work.
It would be hard, but they could start small—with a short lesson in etymology. Scholars in the 1800s liked to refer to Afghanistan by a nickname: "The Graveyard of Empires." Here, they told anyone who would listen, was where great powers were finally laid to rest, buried on the land of an indomitable people. The name stuck for good reason. No modern military power has managed to fully conquer the landlocked region: not the British Empire (1839–42; 1878–80; 1919), not the Soviet Union (1979–89), not the United States (2001–21). Though the nickname originates in the 19th and 20th centuries, more significance attaches to it with each passing decade. All three invaders, for example, knew about this name. It was shared in countless books, in lecture halls, on the radio, and on television. Yet each believed they could pull off a victory. In due time, the British, the Soviets, and the Americans all ended their wars with little to show for it, save for their own plot in Afghanistan's graveyard.
Matthew Byrne is a writer and translator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared, or will soon, in Guernica, Current Affairs magazine, Gulf Coast, West Branch, and others.
CNN. "Transcript of Bush Speech – Dec 14, 2005," December 14, 2005. http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/14/bush.transcript/.
Brown University. "Human and Budgetary Costs to Date of the U.S. War in Afghanistan, 2001–2022 | Figures | Costs of War." The Costs of War, August 2021. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2022 .
Landler, Mark. "20 Years On, the War on Terror Grinds Along, With No End in Sight." The New York Times, September 11, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/world/europe/war-on-terror-bush-biden-qaeda.html.
Bush, George W. "Remarks on the War on Terror in Norfolk, Virginia | The American Presidency Project." The American Presidency Project, October 28, 2005. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-war-terror-norfolk-virginia.
Whitlock, Craig. The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War. The Washington Post Books, 2021.
Ibid. 109, xv, 105, 110, 110.
Kudo, Timothy. "Opinion | I Was a Marine in Afghanistan. We Sacrificed Lives for a Lie." The New York Times, August 16, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/16/opinion/afghanistan-war-veteran.html.
Agiesta, Jennifer. "Behind the Numbers - On Afghanistan, a Negative Shift." The Washington Post, May 9, 2010. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2010/05/on_afghanistan_a_negative_shif.html. Phillips, Amber. "Analysis | When and How Americans Started Souring on the War in Afghanistan." Washington Post, August 19, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/18/when-how-americans-started-souring-war-afghanistan/. Steinhauser, Paul. "Poll: Support for Afghan War at All-Time Low - CNN.Com," September 15, 2009. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/15/afghan.war.poll/#cnnSTCText.
Intercepted. "The Long-Lasting Consequences of the War on Terror." The Intercept, September 1, 2021. https://theintercept.com/2021/09/01/intercepted-reign-of-terror-spencer-ackerman/.
Scahill, Jeremy. "Empire Politician: A Half-Century of Joe Biden's Stances on War, Militarism, and the CIA." The Intercept, April 27, 2021. https://theintercept.com/empire-politician/. Al Jazeera. "US General Says Afghanistan Collapse Rooted in Trump-Taliban Deal." Al Jazeera, September 30, 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/30/us-generals-say-afghanistan-collapse-rooted-in-trump-taliban-deal.
Epstein, Reid J., and Catie Edmondson. "On Afghanistan, G.O.P. Assails the Pullout It Had Supported Under Trump." The New York Times, September 1, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/us/politics/republicans-afghanistan-withdrawal-support.html.
Hartung, William D. "The Profits of War: Corporate Beneficiaries of the Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending Surge." The Costs of War Project, September 13, 2019. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar.
Overaccumulation is a situation when, generally speaking, surplus capital searches for but cannot find a profitable place to go. Take cash savings as an (admittedly oversimplified) example. In the early 2000s, central banks faced a problem of excess liquidity: the fortunes of billionaires and multi-millionaires often just sat in the Federal Reserve gathering dust, rather than being used productively to, say, purchase commodities, pay an employee's salary, invest in infrastructure projects, etc. This money ("money capital," for Marxists) might not return to circulation and simply stay in a central bank, where all surplus liquidity stays. This is a problem because institutions will often look for ways to quickly offload the money (short-term government securities, stock buybacks, or dividends to shareholders), but new money can still pour in faster than it can ever be spent.
Robinson, William I. Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity. New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2014,. 154. Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Picador, 2008.
Robinson, Global Capitalism, 123 (stagnation), 103 ("is not a departure…"), and 151–152 ("are themselves markets and investment opportunities). This is part of a larger pattern critical to understanding state-building in recent decades: even, perhaps especially, for those nominally opposed to "big government"—neocons, libertarians, and the like—actually make the state larger in the name of shrinking it. In fact, and regardless of party affiliation or rhetorical claims to the contrary, all politicians grow the parts of the state that they like (e.g. federal law enforcement agencies, the Armed Forces, the Department of Defense) and let the ones they don't like (e.g. federal regulatory agencies, public infrastructure, public education, public housing, Social Security, welfare, Medicare) wither. (For full treatment, see Gilmore, Ruth Wilson, and Craig Gilmore. "Beyond Bratton." In Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter, edited by Jordan T. Camp and Christina Heatherton. New York: Verso, 2016.)
O'Hanlon, Michael E. "Defense Budgets and American Power." Brookings (blog), December 3, 2010. https://www.brookings.edu/research/defense-budgets-and-american-power/. Cypher, James M. "The Political Economy of Systemic U.S. Militarism." Monthly Review (blog), April 1, 2022. https://monthlyreview.org/2022/04/01/the-political-economy-of-systemic-u-s-militarism-2/.
Michel, Casey. "Opinion | America Turned a Blind Eye to Afghan Corruption. It Backfired Spectacularly." NBC News, August 22, 2021. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/america-enabled-afghanistan-s-corruption-years-taliban-knew-it-ncna1277327.
Cockburn, Andrew. The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine. Verso Books, 2021. Ahmed, Azam. "Tasked With Combating Opium, Afghan Officials Profit From It." The New York Times, February 15, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/world/asia/afghanistan-opium-heroin-taliban-helmand.html. Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse. "Afghan President 'Fled with Cars and Helicopter Full of Cash.'" South China Morning Post, August 17, 2021. https://www.scmp.com/news/world/russia-central-asia/article/3145282/russia-says-afghan-leader-ashraf-ghani-fled-cars.
For Olomi: Olomi, Ali A. "Perspective | The U.S. Replicated Crucial Flaws from the Past in Afghanistan." Washington Post. Accessed August 14, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/08/17/us-replicated-crucial-flaws-past-afghanistan/. For Fahim Khan: Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers, passim. 115-127. For Dostum: Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers, 115–116, and Mashal, Mujib. "'No Shame': Afghan General's Victory Lap Stuns a Victim of Rape." The New York Times, August 7, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/world/asia/afghanistan-dostum-ishchi-ghani.html.
Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers, 260.
Shalizi, Hamid. "New Commander Takes on Corruption 'Mess' in Afghan Police." Reuters, June 4, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-police-idUSKCN1T51UC.
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "Afghanistan Opium Survey 2017: Cultivation and Production." Type. Place: United Nations, November 2017.
Danner, Chas. "Why Afghanistan's Security Forces Suddenly Collapsed." Intelligencer, August 17, 2021. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/why-afghanistans-security-forces-suddenly-collapsed.html. Ehsanullah, Amiri, and Jessica Donati. "Taliban Fighters Infiltrate Afghan Army Base, Kill More Than 100." WSJ, April 22, 2017. https://www.wsj.com/articles/taliban-fighters-infiltrate-afghan-army-post-killing-at-least-eight-people-1492794202. Nordland, Rod, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff. "Spies, Stealth and Threats: How Militants Infiltrated a Vital Army Base." The New York Times, May 15, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-bastion.html. Shalizi, Hamid. "Afghan Army Says Taliban Infiltration Very Sophisticated." Reuters, March 3, 2012. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-taliban-infiltration-idUSTRE82208H20120303.
Bennhold, Katrin, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Kaitlin Roberts, Larissa Anderson, and Mike Benoist. "Day X." Day X. Accessed August 14, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/podcasts/far-right-german-extremism.html.
Jones, Seth G., and Catrina Doxsee. "The Military, Police, and the Rise of Terrorism in the United States," April 12, 2021. https://www.csis.org/analysis/military-police-and-rise-terrorism-united-states. U.S. Department of Justice. "Law Enforcement: Information on Drug-Related Police Corruption | Office of Justice Programs." Office of Justice Programs - US Department of Justice, May 1998. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/law-enforcement-information-drug-related-police-corruption.
Frankopan, Peter. "A Tale of Two Addictions." The Spectator, August 2018. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-tale-of-two-addictions.
Lawal, Shola. "Why Africa Prints Money in Europe." Deutsche Welle. DW.com, March 24, 2022. https://www.dw.com/en/why-africa-prints-money-in-europe/a-61246672.
Boghani, Priyanka. "How Frozen Assets & Foreign Aid Is Impacting Afghanistan." FRONTLINE, October 12, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/taliban-takeover-how-frozen-assets-foreign-aid-impacts-afghanistan/.
United Nations. "To Avert 'Irreversible' Damage in Afghanistan, International Community Must Engage with Country's De Facto Authorities, Mission Head Tells Security Council | UN Press." UnitedNations.com, March 2, 2022. https://press.un.org/en/2022/sc14815.doc.htm.
Weisbrot, Matt. "US Sanctions on Afghanistan Could Be Deadlier than 20 Years of War." Center for Economic and Policy Research (blog), February 4, 2022. https://cepr.net/us-sanctions-on-afghanistan-could-be-deadlier-than-20-years-of-war/.
Stancati, Margherita Stancati. "The Cash Some Afghans Desperately Need Is Trapped in Their Bank Accounts." The Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2022. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cash-some-afghans-desperately-need-is-trapped-in-their-bank-accounts-11646578800.
Boghani. "How Frozen Assets & Foreign Aid Is Impacting Afghanistan." 2021.
McCarthy, Joe. "Biden to Use $3.5 Billion in Frozen Afghan Assets for Humanitarian Relief." Global Citizen, February 11, 2022. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/biden-executive-order-afghanistan-assets/. Ahlman, Austin. "Biden's Decision on Frozen Afghanistan Money Is Tantamount to Mass Murder." The Intercept, February 22, 2022. https://theintercept.com/2022/02/11/afghanistan-frozen-assets-economy/.
Baker, Peter. "U.S. Will Not Release $3.5 Billion in Frozen Afghan Funds for Now, Citing Terror Fears." The New York Times, August 15, 2022, sec. U.S. https://nyti.ms/3QtNabg.
For those who issued warnings, see Amis, Martin. "Fear and Loathing." The Guardian, September 18, 2001. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/18/september11.politicsphilosophyandsociety; Guardian Staff and Agencies. "Kabul at a Glance." The Guardian, November 13, 2001. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/13/afghanistan.terrorism16; Roy, Arundhati. "The Algebra of Infinite Justice." The Guardian, September 29, 2001. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/29/september11.afghanistan; and Department for International Development. "Country Programme Evaluation Afghanistan," May 2009. For scholarship and reporting on sanctions, see Mulder, Nicholas. The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War. New Haven ; London: Yale University Press, 2022; Pape, Robert A. "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work." International Security 22, no. 2 (1997): 90–136. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539368; and Henderson, David R. "Why Economic Sanctions Don't Work." Hoover Institution, October 30, 1998. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-economic-sanctions-dont-work.
The Associated Press. "Parents Selling Children Shows Desperation in Afghanistan." NPR, December 31, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2021/12/31/1069428211/parents-selling-children-shows-desperation-in-afghanistan. Au, Bonnie. "Severe Starvation in Afghanistan." South China Morning Post, September 24, 2021. https://www.scmp.com/video/asia/3150044/95-cent-afghans-face-starvation-due-ongoing-drought-and-poor-economy.
Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Afghans 'Marry off' Girls, 'Promise Babies' for Dowries as Starvation Looms." South China Morning Post, November 23, 2021. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3157110/afghans-marry-girls-promise-babies-dowries-starvation-looms. Barr, Heather. "Taliban Close Girls' Secondary Schools in Afghanistan, Again." Human Rights Watch (blog), March 23, 2022. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/03/23/taliban-close-girls-secondary-schools-afghanistan-again.
Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers, passim 129–141 and 253–262.
Vorobyov, Niko. "Plant-Based Meth From Afghanistan Is Turning Up All Over the World." Vice World News, June 16, 2021. https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kv4px/plant-based-meth-from-afghanistan-is-turning-up-all-over-the-world.
Tugnoli, Lorenzo. "The Drug Trade Now Flourishing in Afghanistan: Meth." Washington Post. Accessed August 14, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/afghanistan-meth-opium-drug-industry/.
"Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Afghanistan Withdrawal." Washington, D.C: C-SPAN, September 28, 2021.
Silver, Nate, Aaron Bycoffe, and Dhrumil Mehta. "How Popular Is Joe Biden?" FiveThirtyEight, August 14, 2022. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/.
Khan, Azmat. "The Civilian Casualty Files." The New York Times, 2022 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-civilian-casualty-files-pentagon-reports.
Levenson, Michael. "What to Know About the Civilian Casualty Files." The New York Times, December 18, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-civilian-casualty-files-pentagon.html. Mazzarino, Andrea. "War Is a Form of Terrorism." The Nation, June 2, 2022. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/american-war-terrorism-civilians/.
Cockburn. The Spoils of War,. 189–190.
Khan, Azmat. "Hidden Pentagon Records Reveal Patterns of Failure in Deadly Airstrikes." The New York Times, December 18, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes-pentagon-records-civilian-deaths.html. Khan, Azmat, and Anand Gopal. "The Uncounted – The New York Times." The New York Times, November 16, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/magazine/uncounted-civilian-casualties-iraq-airstrikes.html.
Brown University Costs of War Project. "Human Costs." The Costs of War Project, August 2021. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human.
Shahabi, Saeed, Dimitrios Skempes, et al. "Nine Years of War and Internal Conflicts in Syria: A Call for Physical Rehabilitation Services." Disability & Society 36, no. 3 (March 16, 2021): 508–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2021.1888283.
Amnesty International, and Airwars. 2019. "Unprecedented Investigation Reveals US-Led Coalition Killed More than 1,600 Civilians in Raqqa 'Death Trap.'" Amnesty International. April 25, 2019. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2019/04/syria-unprecedented-investigation-reveals-us-led-coalition-killed-more-than-1600-civilians-in-raqqa-death-trap/.
LandmineFree.org. "Facts about Landmines." Accessed August 14, 2022. https://www.landminefree.org/2017/index.php/support/facts-about-landmines.
For Azizabad: Human Rights Watch. "Afghanistan: US Investigation of Airstrike Deaths 'Deeply Flawed.'" Human Rights Watch (blog), January 15, 2009. https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/01/15/afghanistan-us-investigation-airstrike-deaths-deeply-flawed.For Granai: Filkins, Dexter. "U.S. Tightens Airstrike Policy in Afghanistan." The New York Times, June 22, 2009. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/world/asia/22airstrikes.html. For Kunduz: Médecins Sans Frontières. "On 3 October 2015, US Airstrikes Destroyed Our Trauma Hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, Killing 42 People." Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International, N/A. https://www.msf.org/kunduz-hospital-attack-depth. For Helmand: Stanekzai, Mohammed, and Abdul Qadir Sediqi. "At Least 40 Civilians at Wedding Party Killed during Nearby U.S.-Backed Afghan Army Raid." Reuters, September 23, 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-idUSKBN1W80MI. For Kabul: The New York Times. How a U.S. Drone Strike Killed the Wrong Person in Afghanistan. Visual Investigations. New York, NY, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtecNyXxb9A.
Khan, Azmat. "The Human Toll of America's Air Wars." The New York Times, December 20, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/19/magazine/victims-airstrikes-middle-east-civilians.html.
The New York Times. How a U.S. Drone Strike Killed the Wrong Person in Afghanistan.
Schmitt, Eric. "No U.S. Troops Will Be Punished for Deadly Kabul Strike, Pentagon Chief Decides." The New York Times, December 13, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/us/politics/afghanistan-drone-strike.html.
United Nations. "To Avert 'Irreversible' Damage in Afghanistan, …." March 2, 2022.
Matthew Byrne
is a writer and translator based in the San Francisco Bay Area.