26 February 22
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25 February 22
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“Vladimir Putin should make no mistake,” the G.O.P. statement read. “We Republicans will do everything in our power to preserve democracy in Ukraine, and to keep it over there.”
Drawing a line in the sand, the Republicans argued that democracy “must be allowed to thrive within the territorial borders of Ukraine and should not be permitted to leak out into Florida, Texas, or Georgia.”
Calling Russian aggression “a slippery slope,” the G.O.P. declared, “If Vladimir Putin is allowed to undermine democratic norms in Ukraine, he will be emboldened to attack our proud American traditions of gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, and voter suppression.”
Anti-war protesters in the centre of Moscow on Thursday night. (photo: Shutterstock)
ALSO SEE: Ukrainian Peace Activist: My Country Has Become
a Battlefield for Major Powers.
End the War Now
Vladimir Putin has launched his invasion of Ukraine, seemingly expecting that his forces can subdue Ukrainian resistance. But the attack could severely destabilize his regime — with Russians already showing a notable lack of enthusiasm for war.
Vladimir Putin has made clear the military objective of the operation: the complete surrender of the Ukrainian army. The political plan remains unclear — but perhaps most likely means the establishment of a pro-Russian government in Kiev. The Russian leadership assumes that resistance will quickly be broken and that most ordinary Ukrainians will dutifully accept the new regime. The social consequences for Russia itself will obviously be severe — already in the morning, even before Western sanctions were announced, Russian stock exchanges collapsed and the fall in the ruble broke all records.
Putin’s speech last night, in which he announced the outbreak of war, represented the unconcealed language of imperialism and colonialism. In this sense, his is the only government that so openly speaks like an imperialist power from the early twentieth century. The Kremlin is no longer able to hide behind other grievances — including even NATO enlargement — its hatred of Ukraine and desire to teach it a punitive “lesson.” These actions are beyond rationally understood “interests” and lie somewhere in the realm of “historical mission,” as Putin understands it.
Since Alexei Navalny’s arrest in January 2021, police and the security services have essentially crushed the organized opposition in Russia. Navalny’s organization was deemed “extremist” and dismantled, demonstrations in his defense resulted in some fifteen thousand arrests, and almost all independent media were either closed down or branded “foreign agents,” severely limiting their operation. Mass demonstrations against the war are unlikely — there is no political force capable of coordinating them and participation in any street protest, including even a single-person picket, is swiftly and severely punished. Activist and intellectual milieus in Russia are shocked and demoralized by the events.
One reassuring sign is that no clear support for war is discernible in Russian society. According to the Levada Center, the last independent polling agency (itself branded a “foreign agent” by the Russian government), 40 percent of Russians do not support the official recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” by the Russian authorities, while 45 percent of Russians do. While some signs of “rallying around the flag” are inevitable, it is remarkable that despite complete control over major media sources and a dramatic outpouring of propagandistic demagoguery on TV, the Kremlin is unable to foment enthusiasm for war.
Nothing like the patriotic mobilization that followed the annexation of Crimea in 2014 is happening today. In that sense, the invasion of Ukraine disproves the popular theory that the Kremlin’s outward aggression is always aimed at propping up domestic legitimacy. On the contrary, if anything, this war will destabilize the regime and even threaten its survival to some extent, as the “2024 problem” — the need to put up a convincing show of Putin’s reelection, when Russians next vote for president — is still on the table.
The Left around the world needs to unite around a simple message: no to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is no justification for Russia’s actions; they will result in suffering and death. In these days of tragedy, we call for international solidarity with Ukraine.
Texas governor Greg Abbott has issued a directive classifying gender-affirming procedures as child abuse. (photo: Getty)
The Texas governor has directed state agencies to crack down on those providing — or even those who are aware of — gender-affirming care for trans youth
Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are teaming up for what appears to be an effort to force families with trans youth to move out of the state. Abbott in a letter on Tuesday directed state agencies to investigate the use of gender-affirming care for trans children, citing an opinion Paxton issued days earlier holding that such care “can legally constitute child abuse under several provisions” of Texas law.
Abbott’s letter, addressed to the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services, calls for a “prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures,” referring to gender-affirming care, which includes procedures as well as the use of hormones like estrogen or testosterone. Abbott notes that any doctors, nurses, and teachers who fail to report the use of such care are subject to criminal penalties, as are parents of trans children who receive care.
“There are similar reporting requirements and criminal penalties for members of the general public,” Abbott added.
Advocates have been quick to bash Abbott’s directive. “Loving and supporting trans youth is NOT abuse!” the National Center for Transgender Equality tweeted on Wednesday. “This is an attack on our dignity. This is an attack on all trans people.”
“This is horrific,” added Human Right Campaign President Joni Matison. “Gender-affirming care can be lifesaving for transgender youth. This discriminatory, dangerous … divisive action will have real-life consequences for trans kids … their families in Texas.”
“Governor Abbott’s directive is not legally binding, nor does it change the constitutional rights of trans youth and families,” Shelby Chestnut, Director of Policy and Programs at the Transgender Law Center, told Rolling Stone in an email. “The situation is unfolding, and we will know more soon on how this will or will not be enforced. However, this is a political move and an extreme fear mongering tactic that will have real consequences on the lives of trans youth, their families, and supportive professionals in Texas. Parents and guardians who are rightfully afraid and unsure of what to do should know that loving their children and allowing them to live authentically is not child endangerment — it is a love, understanding, and trust that youth know what they need.”
Abbott’s letter on Tuesday is part of a strengthening wave of anti-trans action from conservative lawmakers across the country. The Alabama House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill mandating that K-12 public school students use the bathroom that corresponds to the sex on their birth certificate. “All you are doing is demonizing an already vulnerable population,” Democratic Rep. Neil Rafferty said during debate on the bill, which passed overwhelmingly. “It’s all under the guise of protecting children just to win cheap political points. That’s all it is.”
The bill now moves to the Senate, which is also controlled by Republicans, and then, potentially to the desk of Republican Gov. Kay Ivey, who last year signed a bill blocking trans girls from playing on female sports teams. Abbott signed a similar bill into law last October, making Texas the 10th state to enact a law or executive order against trans girls playing on female sports teams. South Dakota became the 11th in February. South Dakota is also one of multiple states to introduce “bathroom bills” this year.
Bills limiting trans people’s ability to use public restrooms and trans girls from playing female sports have been have been popular among conservative legislatures for years, but Abbott’s move to criminalize gender-affirming care is the latest signal of the Republican Party’s drive to take their persecution up a notch. Texas isn’t alone, either. Arkansas last year passed multiple anti-trans bills, including one that banned gender-affirming care for trans youth. Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson signed legislation preventing trans girls from competing in female sports, and another allowing medical providers to refuse to treat trans patients if they believe it violates their religious beliefs.
Hutchinson did, however, veto the bill banning gender-affirming care for trans youth. “I am hopeful … that my action will cause conservative Republican legislators to think through the issue again and hopefully come up with a more restrained approach that allows a thoughtful study of the science and ethics surrounding the issue before acting,” Hutchinson said of the veto.
The state legislature voted to override Hutchinson’s veto the next day.
House Bill 2319 would make it illegal for members of the public to be within 8 feet of an officer without their consent to record. (photo: Getty)
If Arizona GOP representatives have their way, this form of accountability will soon be invalid. According to Newsweek, House Bill 2319 would make it illegal for members of the public to be within 8 feet of an officer without their consent to record. It would also result in a misdemeanor charge with repeated violations.
Representative and Port Authority of New York police officer John Kavanagh, sponsored the bill because “the increased presence of cameras is creating dangerous situations for police.” Kavanaugh also mentioned “cameras may cause police to look over their shoulder, giving a suspect the opportunity to assault the officer or destroy evidence.”
Senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Arizona, Jared Keenan pushed back on the bill in a tweet:
“When we should be holding police accountable, the AZ House of Representatives just passed a bill to make that even more difficult,” Jared Keenan, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Arizona, said in a tweet following the bill’s passage. “#HB2319 criminalizes filming police in public in some instances-chilling the use of the public’s most effective tool against police misconduct.”
The bill passed the Arizona House in a 31-28 vote Wednesday. Kavanagh noted to Newsweek the bill was altered to bring it in line with court precedence. The Supreme Court upheld the right for citizens to record police interactions under the first amendment.
House Bill 2319 originally called for a 15-foot buffer–it has been reduced to 8 feet. People would still be able to record police during their own encounter with law enforcement as long as they’re not being frisked or handcuffed. Exceptions are made for enclosed structures and private property, in addition to allowing people in a vehicle to film a police interaction with the driver.
“These are reasonable concessions that balance the right of people to videotape the police with the safety of police officers who could be subjected to an attack by somebody coming up too close to them in an enforcement encounter or be distracted by such a person, which would allow suspects to attack the officer or destroy or discard evidence,” Kavanagh said.
“So people can stay back, not to distract or threaten the cop by their presence, but still film which with today’s cameras and zoom features on the phone is really easy to do,” he said.
Kenan followed up with Newsweek stating “the ability to record police interactions has become “an important tool to ensure police accountability and transparency that’s been upheld by federal courts.”
Department of Homeland Security horse patrol confronting migrants in Texas. (photo: Getty)
The American Bar Association (ABA), the largest national organization of lawyers, has called for an investigation by the U.S. government into the influence of racism and xenophobia on the enforcement of immigration laws. This is a stunning development by a mainstream group of lawyers; the ABA’s actions warrant our full attention.
The ABA House of Delegates passed Resolution 610, which: “Urges the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health and Human Services, to identify and eradicate actual and perceived racial bias, discrimination, and xenophobia in the enforcement of the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
Many noncitizens within and seeking to come to the United States are people of color from the developing world who are directly affected by the comprehensive federal immigration law. That law employs the terms “alien” to legitimize harsh treatment. Those deemed as aliens are subject to discrimination that never could be lawful with respect to U.S. citizens, including detention and removal from the country. A report submitted by the ABA Commission on Immigration in support of the resolution offers many examples of how immigrants of color have been injured by racial bias in enforcement.
The need to address racism in this area should not be especially surprising. Historically, racism has deeply influenced immigration and immigration enforcement.
The first comprehensive federal immigration law was forged by virulent racism against Chinese immigrants. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited the immigration of most Chinese people to the United States.
From 1792 to 1952, being white was a prerequisite for the naturalization of immigrants.
Passed by Congress in 1924, the discriminatory national origins quotas system, which remained in place until 1965, favored immigration from Northern Europe and greatly restricted the migration of people of color to the United States.
In 1954, the U.S. government removed hundreds of thousands of persons of Mexican ancestry from the country in an initiative officially known as “Operation Wetback.”
That racism, unfortunately, is not simply just a part of history. Donald Trump kicked off his successful 2016 presidential campaign by referring to Mexican immigrants as “criminals” and “rapists.” As president, he crudely said the United States should not allow noncitizens from “shithole” countries such as Haiti and El Salvador to remain in the United States, issued three versions of the Muslim ban, put in place a policy of separating Central American parents and children and much more.
Although President Trump’s racial vitriol was unlike that of any other modern president, others pursued policies similar to his. More than 90 percent of the record 400,000-plus noncitizens removed from the country during the Obama years were from Latin America. It was under President Biden’s watch that Haitian migrants on the U.S./Mexico border were chased on horseback by Border Patrol officers and immediately returned to Haiti. And Biden has continued Title 42 mass expulsions of migrants from the Trump era, a decision that led former Yale Law Dean Harold Koh to resign from a post in the State Department.
Moreover, the ordinary operation of the U.S. immigration removal system reflects no less than systemic racism. The Supreme Court has held that “Mexican appearance” may be considered by Border Patrol officers in making immigration stops, a move that has contributed to racial profiling in ordinary immigration enforcement. Moreover, police reliance on racial profiling of Blacks and Latinos in routine criminal law enforcement leads to disparate arrests of Black and Latino immigrants. Racial profiling in turn feeds noncitizens of color directly into the immigration removal system. It, therefore, should be no surprise that year in and year out Latinos and Blacks are severely overrepresented in the noncitizens removed from the United States.
Resolution 610 was one of several ABA resolutions approved relating to immigration. Resolution 609 urged that the U.S. asylum system be reformed to afford persons seeking protection from persecution or torture more transparency, due process of law, access to counsel and full and fair adjudication of any claims to relief. It also calls for the end of the use of Title 42 to block and expel asylum-seekers at the U.S. border. Resolution 608 advocates for steps to facilitate the provision of speedy relief to Afghan refugees.
The three resolutions aim to bring a semblance of racial justice to U.S. immigration law and its enforcement. Recognition of systemic racism in the immigration system by lawyers as a group — not just immigration lawyers — is a tremendous step forward.
As part of the overall agenda to eliminate systemic racism from U.S. social life, we as a nation must strive to do the same in immigration enforcement.
Bulldozers demolish a Palestinian house in the West Bank city of Hebron on Dec. 28, 2021. (photo: Mamoun Wazwaz/Getty)
While the U.S. president refuses to condition military aid, Israel has toppled more than twice as many Palestinian structures in the West Bank than they had by this point in Trump’s term.
In the 13 months since Biden took office, over 1,300 Palestinians, a majority of whom are children, have been displaced by the demolitions tallied by the U.N., which counts each permanent closure or destruction of a residential or commercial property or key piece of infrastructure. At a similar point in President Donald Trump’s tenure, under former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli officials had carried out the demolition of 379 structures that displaced nearly 600 Palestinians — less than half the toll overseen by Biden and Bennett so far.
According to Diana Buttu, a Palestinian Canadian lawyer and scholar at the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Bennett is ramping up these demolitions as a display of strength in hopes of stamping out any remaining hope that Palestinians might one day achieve self-determination. “Bennett’s making it clear that this is where the future [of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship] lies,” she told The Intercept. “The future lies in the Palestinians being cordoned off into these tiny little ghettos. And all the land surrounding these ghettos will slowly be taken — be stolen — for Israeli settlements.”
Experts say the accelerating pace of Israel’s demolitions is a direct result of Biden’s refusal to pressure Bennett over Palestinian rights. The United States has considerable leverage over Israel, they point out, and Biden could wield it to end Israel’s aggressive expansionism — potentially within the course of a single conversation.
“I don’t think it takes more than for him to pick up the phone and actually threaten [Bennett],” Buttu said. But the well-being of Palestinians has clearly been “put on the back burner” in favor of Biden’s desire to secure a new Iran nuclear deal and to project the sense that tensions in the region have calmed since the violence of last summer, when Israeli attacks killed nearly 200 Palestinian civilians. Buttu and other Palestinian rights activists say Biden’s reluctance to push Bennett undermines his purported support for a two-state solution and amounts to tacit acceptance of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
In the 2021 calendar year, Israeli-enforced demolitions of Palestinian-owned structures surged to 907 — the second-highest level on record, surpassed only by the 1,094 demolitions that were carried out under President Barack Obama in 2016 while Americans were distracted by an acrimonious presidential election. Over 145 demolitions have already occurred in 2022, putting Biden and Bennett on track for another record. And experts say these figures are likely an undercount, given that some events take time to be reported or are never reported at all.
The increase joins the resurgence of brazen assassinations in marking a rapid escalation in Israeli expansionism and ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank, and they both add texture to the ongoing backlash to decisions by leading international human rights organizations to explicitly label Israel’s ongoing subjugation of Palestinians as apartheid. While proponents of Palestinian rights have been using the term to describe Israeli oppression for decades, its adoption last year by two influential international organizations — Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — has renewed attention on the atrocities committed by the regime.
Israeli authorities often use discriminatory local permitting rules to justify the demolitions of Palestinian structures. Among other inequities, these rules foreclose thousands of buildings erected by Palestinians who were unable to acquire a permit from ever securing proper licensing, with few exceptions. Meanwhile, Israeli structures regularly receive retroactive permits. The disparate application of permit laws has long been a key tool of the Israeli government in the enforcement of its multi-tiered system of political rights, as Amnesty International’s recent report recounts at length.
While the Biden administration made public calls for the demolitions to cease in the last year, activists say the president’s refusal to apply meaningful pressure to the Israeli regime undermines his public opposition to its actions. During the 2020 presidential primary, Biden distanced himself from competitors like Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., by pointedly refusing to support conditioning military aid to Israel as a means to apply pressure on Palestinian rights.
Beth Miller, senior government affairs manager for Jewish Voice for Peace Action, said that Biden’s decision to forsake the use of this potential source of leverage amounts to de facto acceptance of ongoing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. In a statement provided to The Intercept, IfNotNow national spokesperson Morriah Kaplan echoed that sentiment, saying “it is time for Biden to do what five Presidents from both parties have done — leverage US aid and weapons sales to pressure the Israeli government.” Presidents Eisenhower, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush Sr. each threatened to modify or withhold economic or military aid to Israel at some point during their tenure.
The administration’s inaction puts it increasingly at odds with the Democratic base, as well as Americans as a whole. Polling from May 2021 by Data for Progress shows a clear majority of Americans and an overwhelming majority of Democrats support policies that would stop Israel’s use of U.S. aid to fund the seizure and destruction of Palestinian properties and to continue their annexation of Palestinian territory. Americans’ growing reluctance to pay for Israeli apartheid likely explains why pro-Israel groups like Democratic Majority for Israel and American Israel Public Affairs Committee have ramped up their involvement in electoral politics, especially in Democratic primaries. (Neither organization responded to a request from The Intercept to comment on this story.)
Buttu, who spoke with The Intercept from Palestine, is not shocked by Biden’s refusal to push Bennett to halt demolitions and settlement expansion. But she expressed a feeling of ongoing disbelief at the refusal of most Democratic politicians, including some progressives, to stand up for the Palestinian people.
“When it comes to demolitions, this is the part that I have never understood,” she told The Intercept. “I have worked with many of these families who have lived with the fear of demolition over their head. This is their life. These are their homes. This inflicts real trauma on kids. The fact that Israel’s never confronted about this policy is really sick. Instead, we have candidates that come forward and just behave as though this is normal.”
A Soviet-era radar system, seen behind a radioactivity sign in Chernobyl. (photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP)
"Fighting around these sites risks generating extreme toxic pollution."
On Twitter, the United Nations Environment Programme pleaded for a ceasefire “to ensure the safety of all people and the environment that sustains life on the planet.” Others worried about the potential fallout from intense fighting around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, or raised concerns that artillery could hit one of Ukraine’s four operating nuclear power plants, releasing radioactive contamination that could spread throughout the region and last thousands of years.
In Ukraine’s east, where Russian forces have been supporting two breakaway regions in an eight-year war, researchers warned that Ukraine’s industrial infrastructure, electric grid or chemical plants could become a target.
“Eastern Ukraine is full of industrial sites like metallurgical plants, chemical factories, power stations and run-down mines,” Richard Pearshouse, the head of Crisis and the Environment at Amnesty International, told Grist in an email. “Fighting around these sites risks generating extreme toxic pollution, with severe health impacts worsening the already horrific humanitarian crisis for local people.”
Fighting in dense urban areas, in particular, poses a high risk because of the chance that artillery will accidentally hit a vulnerable site. But intentionally targeting this kind of civilian infrastructure, Pearshouse told Grist, would be illegal under the laws of war. He urged military commanders to “take all feasible precautions to minimize harm to civilians and civilian objects.”
The ongoing conflict also has reverberations far beyond Ukraine, as the country — known as the “breadbasket of Europe” — is a major supplier of crops for nations around the world. Ukraine ships more than 40 percent of its wheat and corn exports to the Middle East and Africa, regions that already struggle with food shortages and could face further instability as a result of any disruptions. A large portion of these exports come from the country’s threatened eastern regions, and fighting that extends beyond separatist-controlled areas could increase food insecurity, the United Nations warned.
“Interruption to the flow of grain out of the Black Sea region will increase prices and add further fuel to food inflation at a time when its affordability is a concern across the globe following the economic damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic,” David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, said in a statement.
Fears of environmental catastrophe in Ukraine are not new, and have been keenly felt in the parts of the country most exposed to the conflict that began in 2014 and has already killed over 13,000 people. Eastern Ukraine, an area known as the Donbas, is heavily industrialized and even before the war was known as one of the country’s most polluted regions. It struggled to deal with toxic waste from a history of coal mining, metallurgy and chemical manufacturing; after the war began, many of its operating factories had to shut down, raising the risks that they would pollute the environment as they languished.
Years of war have already degraded the region’s water infrastructure and polluted local rivers. Water supplies have been cut off at multiple points throughout the fighting, making essential tasks like cooking, drinking and hand-washing a “daily challenge,” according to UNICEF, the United Nations’ child welfare agency. The organization has recorded more than 450 cases of military damage to water infrastructure in the region since 2016, Politico reported; last week, dozens of towns lost access to water after a pipeline was damaged by shelling.
In the regions controlled by separatists, the degradation of wastewater infrastructure has sent untreated sewage into the Donetsk River, posing health risks to the people who rely on it for their water supplies. Dozens of mines containing radioactive material and heavy metals like mercury, lead, and arsenic, which naturally fill with water that needs to be pumped out, were abandoned, allowing them to flood and potentially contaminate the groundwater. Unexploded ordnance left over after fighting, while posing a direct threat to civilians, has also polluted waterways in the area, releasing toxic chemicals through the surrounding soil, according to a 2020 paper in the Small Wars Journal.
Frequent shelling and landmines, compounded by the drying effects of climate change, have also made the region more susceptible to wildfires. In 2018, the United Nations reported that conflict in the Donbas had destroyed at least 530,000 hectares of land, including 18 nature reserves. Much of this was burned in more than 12,000 forest fires blazing near the combat zone, some of which were believed to have been sparked by artillery strikes.
“Donbas is on the precipice of an ecological catastrophe fueled by air, soil and water pollution from the combustion of large amounts of ammunition in the fighting and flooding at industrial plants,” Leila Urekenova, an analyst for the UN Environment Programme, said at the time. “There is an urgent need for ecological monitoring to assess and minimize the environmental risks arising from the armed conflict.”
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