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Putin has declared that history is destiny, and that Ukraine will never get away from Russia.
Fifty-four years ago, the Soviet dissident Larisa Bogoraz wrote, “It becomes impossible to live and to breathe.” When she wrote the note, in 1968, she was about to take part in a desperate protest: eight people went to Red Square with banners that denounced the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. I have always understood Bogoraz’s note to be an expression of shame—the helpless, silent shame of a citizen who can do nothing to stop her country’s aggression. But on Monday I understood those words as expressing something more, something that my friends in Russia were feeling in addition to shame: the tragedy that is the death of hope.
For some Soviet intellectuals, Czechoslovakia in 1968 represented the possibility of a different future. That spring, events appeared to prove that Czechoslovakia was part of the larger world, despite being in the Soviet bloc. The leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia was instituting reforms. It seemed that, after the great terrors of both Hitler and Stalin, there could be freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, a free exchange of ideas in the media, and possibly even actual elections in Eastern and Central Europe, and that all of these changes could be achieved peacefully. The Czechoslovaks called it “socialism with a human face.”
In August, 1968, Soviet tanks rolled in, crushing the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and hope everywhere in the Soviet bloc. Nothing different was going to happen here. It became impossible to live and to breathe. This was when eight Moscow acquaintances, with minimal discussion and coördination, went to Red Square and unfurled posters that read “For Your Liberty and Ours” and “Hands Off Czechoslovakia,” among others. All were arrested, and seven were given jail time, held in psychiatric detention, or sent into internal exile.
Ukraine has long represented hope for a small minority of Russians. Ukraine shares Russia’s history of tyranny and terror. It lost more than four million people to a man-made famine in 1931-34 and still uncounted others to other kinds of Stalinist terror. Between five and seven million Ukrainians died during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation in 1941-44; this included one and a half million Jews killed in what is often known as the Holocaust by Bullets. Just as in Russia, no family survived untouched by the twin horrors of Stalinism and Nazism.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, both Russian and Ukrainian societies struggled to forge new identities. Both contended with poverty, corruption, and growing inequality. Both had leaders who tried to stay in office by falsifying the vote. But in 2004 Ukrainians revolted against a rigged election, camping out in Kyiv’s Independence Square for weeks. The country’s highest court ordered a revote. Nine years later, when the President sold the country out to Russia—agreeing to scrap an association agreement with the European Union in exchange for fifteen billion in Russian loans—Ukrainians of vastly different political persuasions came to Independence Square again. They stayed there, day and night, through the dead of winter. They stayed when the government opened fire on them. More than a hundred people died before the corrupt President fled to Russia. A willingness to die for freedom is now a part of not only Ukrainians’ mythology but their lived history.
Many Russians—both the majority who accept and support Putin and the minority who oppose him—watched the Ukrainian revolutions as though looking in a mirror that could predict Russia’s own future. The Kremlin became even more terrified of protests and cracked down on its opponents even harder. Some in the opposition believed that if Ukrainians won their freedom, Russians would follow. There was more than a hint of an unexamined imperialist instinct in this attitude, but there was something else in it, too: hope. It felt something like this: our history doesn’t have to be our destiny. We may yet be brave enough and determined enough to win our freedom.
On Monday, Putin took aim at this sense of hope in his rambling, near-hour-long speech. Playing amateur historian, as he has done several times in recent years, Putin said that the Russian state is indivisible, and that the principles on the basis of which former Soviet republics won independence in 1991 were illegitimate. He effectively declared that the post-Cold War world order is over, that history is destiny and Ukraine will never get away from Russia.
Hannah Arendt observed that totalitarian regimes function by declaring imagined laws of history and then acting to enforce them. On Tuesday, Putin asked his puppet parliament for authorization to use force abroad. His aim is clear: in his speech, he branded the Ukrainian government as a group of “radicals” who carry out the will of their American puppet masters. As the self-appointed enforcer of the laws of history, Putin was laying down the groundwork for removing the Ukrainian government and installing one that he imagines will do the Kremlin’s bidding.
Putin expects to succeed because he can overwhelm Ukraine with military force, and because he has known the threat of force to be effective against unarmed opposition. Putin’s main opponent, Alexey Navalny, is in prison; the leaders of his movement are all either behind bars or in exile. The number of independent journalists in Russia has dwindled to a handful, and many of them, too, are working from exile, addressing tiny audiences, because the state blocks access to many of their Web sites and has branded others “foreign agents.” Putin’s sabre-rattling against Ukraine has drawn little protest—less even than the annexation of Crimea did eight years ago. On Sunday, six people were detained for staging a protest in Pushkin Square, in central Moscow. One of them held a poster that said “Hands Off Ukraine.” Another was an eighty-year-old former Soviet dissident.
What Putin does not imagine is the kind and scale of resistance that he would actually encounter in Ukraine. These are the people who stood to the death in Independence Square. In 2014, they took up arms to defend Ukraine against a Russian incursion. Underequipped and underprepared, these volunteers joined the war effort from all walks of life. Others organized in monumental numbers to collect equipment and supplies to support the fighters and those suffering from the occupation of the east, in an effort that lasted for several years. When Putin encounters Ukrainian resistance, he will respond the only way he knows: with devastating force. The loss of life will be staggering. Watching it will make it impossible to live and to breathe.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken (left), and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, meet in Geneva, Switzerland. (photo: Alex Brandon/Reuters)
We are mothers, daughters, grandmothers, and we are sisters, one to another.
Today we stand with our sisters in Ukraine, East and West, whose families and country have been torn apart, have already suffered more than 14,000 deaths.
We stand together and we call for peace and diplomacy, with respect for all.
We are united in the belief that diplomacy, dialogue, engagement and exchange are urgently needed to end the current crisis and avert a catastrophic military conflict that could spiral out of control — even push the world to the precipice of nuclear war.
For the U.S. and Russia, the only sane and humane course of action now is a principled commitment to clear, creative and persistent diplomacy— not military action.
At this perilous juncture, rather than allocate blame, we should be seeking 21st century alternatives to senseless military conflicts and wasteful spending on war. It is a time to redefine security so that women, families, and our children, can live in peace.
At a time when we find ourselves in perhaps the most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we call on the media in both our countries to stop fueling the flames of war. We call on the media to fulfill their ethical responsibility as journalists to remind us of the price of war, the bloodshed and loss of human lives, to demand evidence when claims are made that can escalate tensions, and to have the courage to sound the alarm on the risk of escalation to a nuclear war that would mean the end of life as we know it.
At a time when poverty is increasing in the U.S., Ukraine and Russia, when the world collectively faces the existential threat of climate change, a pandemic that has taken 5.8 million lives and caused rising “deaths of despair,” declining life expectancy and extreme inequality, isn’t it time to think anew?
How might we seize the day and lay out a 21st century vision — that not only advances peace and security, but can unite the world — essentially a new realism? What could creative, humane diplomacy look like? If done thoughtfully, it could do more than resolve the standoff in Ukraine — it could pave the way for broader cooperation between the U.S., Russia, and Europe and beyond on climate, disarmament and more. It could lay the seeds for a new, demilitarized and shared security architecture.
We independent women, seekers of peace and security, understand the vital importance of engaging minds and hearts. We call on you to share this call for peace and urge our governments to keep talking, to pursue clear, creative and persistent diplomacy.
These are times of fear but also of hope and possibility. The world is in motion, the future is not written. As Americans and Russians, we have a compelling stake in deescalating tensions between our countries. The approach we suggest surely is more realistic, more wise, than preparing for a military conflict that could lead to unthinkable nuclear war.
We stand together and we call for peace. Stand with us. #WomenCall4PeaceUkraine
#WOMENPEACEBUILDERS
#MINDFUL CHERNOBYL
#WOMENSAYNOTOWAR
#WHEREISOURPEACEDIVIDEND
#MONEYFORSCHOOLSNOTMISSILES
#SISTERSAGAINSTWAR
#PEACEWINS
#KEEPTALKINGUKRAINE
#TALKANDLISTEN
Signed,
Jackie Abramian, Writer
Dr. Susan H. Allen, Director, Center for Peacemaking Practice at George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution
Nadezhda Azhgikhina, Journalist, Feminist, Director, Moscow PEN, Board Member, Article 19
Natalia Bitten, Journalist and Feminist
Sandra Cline, Trustee Emerita for Biosphere Foundation, Founder and Editor of Dance of the Spirit, Writer and Novelist
Dr. Ann Frisch, Prof. Emerita University of Wisconsin Oshkosh US; Chair Rotary Action Group for Peace Nuclear Weapons Education, Rotary Peace Champion 2017
Paula Garb, PhD, Fellow, Center for Peacemaking Practice at George Mason University
Dulcie Kugelman, Center for Citizen Peacebuilding
Cynthia Lazaroff, Founder, Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy and
NuclearWakeUpCall.Earth, Board Member, American Committee for US-Russia Accord
Sarah Lindemann-Komarova, Writer, Researcher and Activist
Olga Malutina, Artist
Eva Merkacheva, Investigative Journalist, Member of Human Rights Council of Russia
Galina Michaleva, Chairwoman of the Gender Faction, Yabloko Party, Russia
Larisa Mikhaylova, PhD, Senior Researcher at Journalism Department, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian Society of American Culture Studies Academic Secretary
Galya Morrell, “Cold Artist," Polar Explorer and Visual Artist, Co-Founder, Citizen Diplomacy Initiative, “Arctic Without Borders”
Marina Pislakova-Parker, Ph.D Sociology, Founder and Chair of the Board, ANNA - Center for the Prevention of Violence, Author, Researcher
Joan Porter, Community Activist
Lubov Shtyleva, Long-term President, Women’s Congress of Kola Peninsula and Board Member, Vyi i Myi Magazine
Karen Sperling, Author and Publisher
Svetlana Svistunova, Journalist and Filmmaker
Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation magazine, Board Member, American Committee for US-Russia Accord
Elizaveta Vedina, Artist, Illustrator
Ann Wright, Colonel, US Army and Former US Diplomat, Veterans For Peace Advisory Board Member
Natalia Zhurina, Research and Education Officer, Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean
This letter was written by American and Russian women participating in a dialogue and peacebuilding initiative founded in 2021 by Women Transforming Our Nuclear Legacy and the American Committee for US-Russia Accord
'The occupation of Ottawa bore striking similarities to what I saw in Charlottesville in 2017-with a few key differences.' (photo: Andrej Ivanov/Getty)
The occupation of my hometown bore striking similarities to what I saw in Charlottesville in 2017—with a few key differences.
My son, crestfallen, wondered aloud why the only instrument on his dashboard was a horn. “I wish there were a sorry button. Why is there a horn but not a sorry button?” he asked.
I was thinking about the nonexistent sorry button when I traveled to Ottawa last week, the city of my birth, and the place my family has lived for three generations, to try to understand what the “Freedom Convoy”—a protest-slash-occupation that lasted for more than three weeks—was really all about.
By the time I arrived, several thousand trucks had blocked major city streets and managed to close down the entire center of Canada’s capital city, shuttering businesses already hobbled by the pandemic and frightening residents in Ottawa’s downtown core.
I confess that I was less interested in probing whether this protest was “grassroots” or deep-pocketed; less interested in whether the protesters were actual truckers or fringe anti-vaxxers; and less interested in whether this was fundamentally an American import or a uniquely Canadian varietal, than I was in comprehending how something like this—a three-week occupation of a G-7 country—had happened in one of the sturdiest, conventional, and least dramatic cities I knew.
I lived in Charlottesville when the Unite the Right rally happened in 2017, and some elements felt deeply familiar: the advance security warnings that were missed or downplayed; a collapse of the structures of city and law enforcement, which further eroded trust in those institutions from all sides; a sense that one’s own hometown was no longer recognizable; and a feeling that after all the TV cameras rolled out, nobody would fully comprehend what had just occurred.
But the occupation of Ottawa was different because it wasn’t in a Southern city in the United States, grappling with the enshrined symbolism of its brutal past. This all happened in Canada, where less than 20 percent of the population is unvaccinated and where a majority of citizens are in favor of imposing more restrictions on those who have not been vaccinated.
Yes, there is deep and justifiable economic anxiety in Canada as there is elsewhere. And it’s a safe bet that the bulk of the protesters were fed up and pissed off and were delighted to find community and solidarity after two years of uncertainty and solitude. Community after two years of isolation is very nice.
But of course this community was built in great delight atop another community that didn’t welcome the noise, the economic harms, or the personal attacks. And many of those in Ottawa shouldn’t have been protesting in Ottawa—for the occupation seemed to be there to defy lockdown orders—most of which were mandated by the U.S. government or provincial and municipal authorities, not the Canadian government.
This made no sense of course, but then neither did the occupiers’ calls for an ouster of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or a toppling of his government. To make matters even less coherent, some of the organizers’ original “Memorandum of Understanding” was rescinded after it called for the “People of Canada” to usurp the sitting government and replace it with random convoy leaders, some senators, and the queen’s purely ceremonial representative in Canada, the governor general. Some organizers have connections to anti-Islam movements, to Canadian separatist and right-wing groups, but trust me, it’s hard to determine precisely who was an organizer—and which purported organizer claimed to have repudiated which beliefs.
In essence, the occupation of Ottawa was a giant wall of sound. There were no sorry buttons in Charlottesville in 2017, none after Jan. 6, 2021, and none in Ottawa, either. The blaring horns were precisely the point.
Now that the worst of it is over, debates about Trudeau’s invocation of the federal Emergencies Act last week and whether the emptying of the streets was overreach will have a long political tail. But those seeking to paint a picture of a brutal police crackdown didn’t watch the near-surgical law enforcement response that played out all weekend, with almost no incidents reported. Credit where it’s due: It took three weeks to get there, but that three-day action that has now resulted in 196 arrests—it took place without a shot fired.
Maybe none of that matters anyhow. By and large, the lessons of both Charlottesville and Jan. 6 hold true: Polling shows that the protest was hugely unpopular and also that the catastrophic failures of government and policing have decreased trust in democratic institutions.
To the extent that this destabilizing of government was the point, score that a win for the “Freedom Convoy.”
And the residents of downtown Ottawa were successfully terrorized. I found it close to impossible to get anyone to speak on the record this past week. A few people told me that a benign Instagram or Facebook post had resulted in threats from people who weren’t even Canadian. Honking horns, pumping music, the threatening of local businesses—with protesters often singling out Asians, women, and other visible minorities for targeted abuse around the wearing of masks—the threats, gas fumes, public intoxication and urination drove many residents into their apartments.
As I walked through the nearly empty streets of the recently cleared out downtown on Sunday evening, locals were shoveling snow, restocking groceries, and trying not to make eye contact. That exact fear—of making eye contact—is an old symptom I recognize from the days after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Symbols that used to be benign, including maple leaf flags that elsewhere waved proudly in the stands at the Olympics, suddenly seemed menacing. A friend told me his daughters had wrapped their masked faces in scarves on the downtown streets in recent weeks to avoid the ire of unmasked protesters.
Stories of vandalism, of a fire set in a nearby apartment building as doors were taped shut, are still circulating. Residents and local business owners are expressing relief, yes, but some said they no longer felt they could count on anyone to keep them really safe. A local business owner told me he had never felt more despondent—throughout COVID—than he did being trapped in his own town by people who had kept his store closed for three weeks.
One of the most chilling sights, as police arrests continued over the weekend, was the split-screen reality that polarized media has become. As television reporters covered the scene on the streets, protesters livestreamed themselves in broadcasts that went out to the like-minded. Those protesters who refused police warnings and remained to “hold the line” believed magical conspiracy-fueled things right to the bitter end—that the police were on their side and would march with them in solidarity (certainly the early police response gave them reason to believe that) or that the Trudeau government was poised to fall. They seemed to get all this news from one another, rejecting any and all journalism that didn’t align with what they wanted to hear.
But the most striking aspects of the protests to me were the tone-deaf constructs of belonging—the at-homeness that was created and inhabited by angry strangers in an occupied city. Even Occupy Wall Street, with its homegrown newspapers and food tents, seemed less committed to the principle that even if you had traveled from Calgary or Vancouver, downtown Manhattan was now your “home,” and that if the locals failed to appreciate you, they were simply misguided.
For those willing to concede that the policing of indigenous and minority protests has been vastly different than the policing of the mostly white “Freedom Convoy,” there is something exquisitely painful about a protest in which barbecues and hot tubs and saunas and pig roasts are signifiers of the fact that wherever you go, so long as you are white, you are at home.
For the protesters who likened the event to a camping trip, there seemed to be no recognition of the fact that the campground here was someone else’s front yard. The vibe throughout the protest was that if you weren’t having fun being occupied, you were doing it wrong.
And so I keep returning to the horns, in part because those who were blaring them continued to insist that they were simply cheerful, festive, and joyous, even as they persisted all night long until enjoined by a court order. They continued even after that.
Even as stories emerged of locals who were unable to work, unable to sleep, of children traumatized by the noise, the protesters continued to insist that they should be welcomed as liberators, that the “freedoms” they were there to demand—the repeal of COVID restrictions—would benefit everyone in Canada, simply because the word freedom was affixed to their cause.
Ultimately, it seems to me that the height of privilege lies in the belief that the thing you are demanding is what’s best for everyone, simply because you want it. It’s hard for me to recall another protest at which the protesters have clung so steadfastly to their belief that if they are unwelcomed by those they have disrupted, the remedy is to honk louder, turn up the music, and attack yet more mask wearers, all in the absolute conviction that they will come around to the belief that this is all a street festival, that it’s “fun” because you say so.
To be sure, some of this is simply the privilege of being white, and some of it is the privilege that allows you to move through the world without fear, and the privilege that comes with being forever unconcerned about those you choose not to see. Some of it comes with the certainty—ubiquitous at the Freedom Convoy—that God himself demands the end of COVID restrictions and the attendant belief that you know what’s best for everyone because your religion is just best of all. Some of this is also an echo of what I heard in Charlottesville in 2017, when white supremacists who had flown into Virginia from California and Oregon insisted that the streets they walked belonged to them by virtue of some unified theory of aggrievement.
Many observers have noted that weaponizing trucks as machines of occupation was what was radically new about the Freedom Convoy, and that is partly true. Trucks are not just a signifier of economic realities, but also mobile units in which one can live and move, almost wholly oblivious to the world around you, if you so choose. You can build your own ecosystem, communicate solely with like-minded souls, broadcast your own reality, and emerge only to demand unmasked service in local restaurants and shops.
The enduring lesson of the Ottawa occupation was that such arrangements not only shelter individuals from the genuine suffering that happens all around but can also lead them to a information deficit that confirms any belief. The real concern here, then, isn’t just that a small minority of protesters brought a quiet seat of democratic government to a standstill.
It’s that they came and left, still wholly unaffected by and unaware of the harm they left behind.
As the trucks rolled out of Ottawa this weekend, the horns were still blaring, as horns are meant to do. There’s no room for a sorry button in this culture. Just horns, enduring symbols that your noise matters above all things, and that you are physically guaranteed to hear nothing but yourself.
Victim's identity and country of origin has not been released yet but he was likely an undocumented migrant, authorities say. (photo: Getty)
Victim’s identity and country of origin has not been released yet but he was likely an undocumented migrant, authorities say
An autopsy conducted by the Pima county medical examiner’s office confirmed the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds. The victim’s identity and country of origin has not been released yet, but he was likely an undocumented migrant, according to local authorities.
The local Mexican consulate said it had been informed of the shooting, which was of “great concern”.
In a phone call with the Guardian, a representative from the Mexican consulate in the border town of Douglas said: “We are following closely this specific matter, which is of great concern to us.”
The shooting took place on East Geronimo Trail on “difficult terrain”. The agent responsible for the shooting had additional personnel on duty with him.
“Early indications are that one male subject, presumed to be an illegal immigrant, was fatally wounded by a Border Patrol agent who was on duty with additional personnel,” a statement from the local sheriff’s office said.
Other people traveling on foot with the killed man were taken in for interviews.
US Customs and Border Patrol is working with the Cochise county sheriff’s office on an investigation.
Gun rights activists celebrate the news from the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26, 2008 that ended a ban on owning handguns in Washington, D.C (photo: Tim Sloan/Getty)
Published in JAMA Network Open, the study finds the enactment of stand your ground laws led to an overall increase in homicide and firearm homicide across the US. While impacts vary from state to state, no state saw reductions in homicide following the introduction of SYG law, and southern states, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana, saw particularly large increases,
According to the researchers, led by a team from Oxford, the University of Pennsylvania and collaborators at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the accumulation of evidence suggests the expansion of self-defence laws in public places may escalate violence and result in unnecessary loss of life.
Advocates claim SYG laws enhance public safety by deterring predatory crime...Critics…argue that the laws are unnecessary, and may threaten public safety by emboldening the use of deadly violence
According to the paper, ‘Advocates claim that SYG laws enhance public safety by deterring predatory crime through an increased threat of retaliatory violence. Critics…argue that the laws are unnecessary, and may threaten public safety by emboldening the use of deadly violence…There are also concerns that the laws exacerbate social inequalities in violent victimisation since implicit and explicit biases of threat perception discriminate against and cause disproportionate harms among minority groups.’
Some of these concerns have been realised as the laws lie at the heart of a number of high-profile cases in the US, including that of the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2021, and, the killing of Armaud Arbery in 2020, and the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse in 2021.
The laws are leading to unnecessary and avoidable loss of life
Dr Michelle Degli Esposti
Supporters argue that introducing these laws will improve public safety by deterring criminals, but this research finds the opposite
Senior study author Dr David Humphreys, from Oxford’s Department of Social Policy and Intervention, says, ‘Stand your ground laws have been enacted in the majority of states, and more states are currently debating their introduction. There has even been a recent bill proposing a nationwide adoption of the law (‘The Stand Your Ground Act of 2021’).
Supporters argue...these laws will improve public safety by deterring criminals, but this research finds the opposite, showing that rates of violence increase (sometimes dramatically) following the adoption of these laws
Dr David Humphreys
The research team examined the impacts of SYG laws in 23 states between 2000 and 2016. According to the research, they were associated with 8% to 11% national increases in homicide and firearm homicide rates. Florida saw the highest increase with a 28% monthly rise in homicides. Although the biggest increases were in the southern states, no states showed reductions in homicides or firearm homicides following the introduction of the laws. The laws affect all individuals, irrespective of race, sex, or age.
Lead author Dr Michelle Degli Esposti, also from Oxford, says, ‘It is critical that policy and law-makers consider the scientific evidence on the risks associated with stand your ground laws before passing more lenient laws on the use of lethal force in self-defence. More research is needed to understand why these laws have serious negative impacts, but research consistently shows that, in most contexts, the laws are leading to unnecessary and avoidable loss of life.'
Israeli occupation forces yesterday shot and killed a 14-year-old boy in Al-Khader town, near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem. (photo: Mohammed Shehadeh/YZaatreh/Twitter)
Mohammed Shehadeh's father tells Middle East Eye that Israeli soldiers stopped him seeing his son in the moments before he died of a gun shot to the chest
Teenager Mohammed Shehadeh, whom the Israeli military accused of throwing a Molotov cocktail at passing cars, was shot by soldiers in the occupied West Bank town of al-Khader, near Bethlehem.
Mohammed's father, Rizk Shehadeh, 48, said his son had been with friends when the shooting began. Mohammed was shot in the chest, Shehadeh said.
When he arrived at the scene of his son's shooting, he was confronted by Israeli soldiers. "I told them, 'This is my son and I want to see him.' The soldier told me, 'If you don't go, I will shoot you.' Then I learned that my son was dead," Shehadeh told MEE.
'The shooting was intended to kill'
Ahmed Salah, a local activist in al-Khader, said Mohammed, who was his cousin, had been ambushed by the army and that the soldier who fired at him had “shot him directly - the shooting was intended to kill”.
The Israeli army said its forces "identified three suspects who arrived at a location where Molotov cocktails were repeatedly thrown at Israeli vehicles recently", referring to motorists on Route 60.
"The troops fired at one of the suspects while he threw a Molotov cocktail, and hit him,” the Israeli army said in a statement.
Israel's separation barrier runs through al-Khader, segregating it from Route 60. Salah, former town mayor Adnan Sbeih and a number of others said that 14-year-old Mohammed was shot on the al-Khader side of the wall.
"The distance between the wall and the place where Mohammed was killed is 300 metres," Salah told MEE. "This means that Mohammed did not pose any significant danger to the army or the settlers, even if we assume that Mohammed wants to throw stones from that distance. No harm can happen, because the distance is far," he said.
"Mohammed did not pose a danger to anyone," Salah added. "I don’t know how a 14-year-old child would be dangerous to a heavily armed soldier. The army seeks to kill anyone present in that area."
Israel's military said soldiers gave Mohammed medical aid at the scene, where he was later pronounced dead. However, Salah and Palestinian news outlets said that a medical crew from the Red Crescent was prevented from reaching him.
The Palestinian news outlet Wafa reported that confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians in al-Khader continued late on Tuesday.
The killing of Mohammed Shehadeh comes a week after Israeli forces shot and killed several Palestinians.
Nihad al-Barghouti, 20, died of bullet wounds around the pelvis after being shot by Israeli soldiers on 15 February at the entrance to the village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah.
Several days earlier, Mohammad Akram Abu Salah, 17, was shot in the head by Israeli troops as they stormed Silat al-Harithiya village late on Sunday to demolish the home of a man accused of killing an Israeli settler.
The rights group Defence for Children International - Palestine (DCI) said earlier on Tuesday that Israel is continuing to withhold the bodies of nine Palestinian children its forces have killed. All nine were under 18 at the time of their deaths, which occurred between 2016 and December 2021, with the youngest being two 15-year-olds: Yousef Mohammad Odeh from Jenin, and Mohammad Nidal Musa from Nablus.
DCI said in December that 2021 was the deadliest year for Palestinian children since 2014, as Israeli forces killed 76 Palestinians under 18, 15 of them in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and 61 in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Longview Power Plant, a coal-fired plant in Maidsville, West Virginia, on August 21, 2018. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty)
Nothing is at stake in West Virginia v. EPA — yet somehow everything is at stake.
Yet West Virginia could also be the most consequential environmental case to reach the Supreme Court in a very long time. The plaintiffs in this case, and in three other consolidated cases, seek an opinion from the Supreme Court that would do considerable violence to the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to, well, protect the environment. And if the Court indulges them, the fallout from this decision could wreak havoc throughout the federal government.
The cases involve the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era effort to fight climate change. When this plan was announced in 2015, it was widely touted as President Barack Obama’s most ambitious climate policy initiative. Obama’s EPA predicted that, by 2030, the Clean Power Plan would lower carbon emissions from power plants by about a third below where they stood in 2005.
When the Clean Power Plan was announced, the coal industry and many red states treated it like the apocalypse, warning that the plan would cause “tens of millions of tons of lost coal production, thousands of lost jobs in the mining industry, and rippling unemployment effects for those dependent on the coal industry.” Four days before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death temporarily deprived Republicans of a majority on the Supreme Court, the Court voted along party lines to suspend the plan.
Less than a decade later, however, things look — well, different. Although the Clean Power Plan was blocked too fast for it to accomplish anything, the energy sector achieved its 2030 goals for emissions reductions by 2019. As the EPA explained in 2019, many power companies retired older, dirtier coal-fired plants because they were more expensive to operate than technologies such as natural gas or renewable energy. (Coal executives also complained that unrelated Obama-era rules restricting mercury emissions also led them to shut down coal plants.)
As it turns out, the plan’s original goals were too unambitious to matter. Market forces and other regulations achieved those goals, and they did so much faster than anticipated.
Nevertheless, a small army of litigants are now in the Supreme Court asking the justices to strike down the Clean Power Plan — which, again, is not in effect right now, which never really took effect, and which President Joe Biden’s administration does not plan to reinstate.
But while it’s not at all clear that the Supreme Court has any business hearing this case — federal courts do not have jurisdiction to hear lawsuits where there is no live dispute between the two parties — the stakes in this case are still quite high. The plaintiffs challenging the nonexistent Clean Power Plan rely on arguments that, if taken seriously by the Supreme Court, could permanently strip federal agencies like the EPA of much of their authority to regulate.
And so we wait, to see whether the Court will use a case about nothing to ensure that the Biden administration never does anything meaningful to fight climate change.
The Supreme Court is not supposed to hear cases about nothing
As a general rule, a plaintiff who wishes to challenge a federal policy must show that they were injured in some way by that policy, or federal courts are not allowed to hear their case. This limit is supposed to bind all levels of the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court. If, the day before the Supreme Court hands down a major decision, the policy that animated that suit ceases to exist, then the Court typically must dismiss the case (with a few complicated caveats).
In Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (1992), the Supreme Court laid out several hurdles that all plaintiffs must overcome if they wish to bring their case before a federal court. Among other things, a plaintiff must not only show that they are injured in some way by the defendant’s actions, this injury must be “actual or imminent” and not “conjectural” or “hypothetical.“
The West Virginia plaintiffs’ best argument that they clear the bars established by Lujan flows from an opinion a federal appeals court handed down the day before President Joe Biden took office, in January 2021. That lawsuit, American Lung Association v. EPA, challenged a Trump-era rule, euphemistically named the “Affordable Clean Energy” (ACE) rule, which replaced Obama’s Clean Power Plan with weaker standards.
In American Lung Association, the appeals court determined that Trump’s EPA relied on a “mistaken reading of the Clean Air Act” when it repealed the Clean Power Plan and replaced it with a different policy. This decision didn’t simply strike down the ACE rule, moreover, it also arguably struck down the Trump administration’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan. Thus, for a brief moment, the American Lung Association decision appeared to breathe life into the Obama administration’s zombie plan.
But if Clean Power Plan stans hoped to see this policy implemented, their hopes were swiftly dashed. Shortly after American Lung Association was handed down, Biden’s EPA announced that it did not read that decision to reinstate the plan. “As a practical matter, the reinstatement of the CPP would not make sense,” the EPA explained in a very brief memo, in large part because, as already mentioned, its goals were already accomplished.
Then, to cement this understanding, the EPA asked the appeals court to stay the parts of its decision that arguably reinstated the Clean Power Plan while the EPA writes an entirely new rule — and the appeals court granted this request in a February 22, 2021, order.
The result is that there is currently no rule in effect governing the power plants that would have been regulated by the Clean Power Plan. Trump’s rule is dead, and the only court order that could be read to reinstate the Obama-era rule has now been stayed.
In theory, the appeals court could lift its stay — although the EPA has given no sign that it will ask the court to do so. And it is still possible that whatever new rule the EPA comes up with will injure the West Virginia plaintiffs in some way.
But recall that Lujan does not permit plaintiffs to bring a federal lawsuit if their injury is merely “conjectural” or “hypothetical.” All that the West Virginia plaintiffs have right now is conjecture that, at some point in the future, either the EPA or an appeals court might take some hypothetical action that might injure them in some way.
That’s not a valid basis to sustain a federal lawsuit.
If the Court doesn’t dismiss the West Virginia case, it could fundamentally alter the balance of power between the elected branches and a GOP-controlled judiciary
The West Virginia plaintiffs ask the Court to answer a few closely related questions: Does the federal Clean Air Act permit the EPA to implement the Clean Power Plan (assuming, of course, that the EPA actually wanted to do so)? And does the Constitution permit Congress to delegate such authority to a federal agency?
The Clean Air Act requires certain power plants to use the “best system of emission reduction” that can be achieved with currently available technology, while also accounting for factors such as cost. But the question of what the “best system” is to reduce emissions at any given moment is a moving target — the technology that exists today is a great deal more sophisticated than the emissions-reduction technology that existed in the 1970s.
So Congress tasked the EPA with monitoring technological advancements, and imposing stricter emissions standards on power plants when new developments make it possible for those plants to achieve more ambitious emissions reduction goals.
The Clean Power Plan was supposed to be the Obama-era EPA’s best effort to comply with this obligation, but the coal industry and red states argued it had overstepped the Clean Air Act’s bounds.
Now the West Virginia plaintiffs raise several different legal arguments against the nonexistent Clean Power Plan, several of which could permanently hobble the federal government’s power to regulate if adopted by the Court.
A brief filed by several senior red-state officials, for example, rests heavily on the “major questions” doctrine, a legal doctrine that is currently fashionable among Republican judges but that was also invented entirely by judges and has no basis in any statute or provision of the Constitution.
The major questions doctrine claims that there are fairly strict limits on federal agencies’ power to hand down particularly impactful regulations. As the Court most recently stated in NFIB v. OSHA (2022), “we expect Congress to speak clearly when authorizing an agency to exercise powers of vast economic and political significance.” And several of the plaintiffs in West Virginia argue that the Clean Air Act isn’t sufficiently clear to justify a regulation like the Clean Power Plan.
One problem with this major questions doctrine is that it is vague. The Court has never explained what constitutes a matter of “vast economic and political significance,” or just how “clearly” Congress must “speak” to permit an agency to issue significant regulations. So, in practice, the major questions doctrine largely just functions as a veto power, allowing judges to justify blocking nearly any regulation they do not like. If a judge doesn’t like a particular regulation, they can just claim that it is too big.
The unusual history of the Clean Power Plan, however, should give the justices some pause about their ability to determine which regulations have vast significance. Seven years ago, the argument that the Clean Power Plan would require much of the energy industry to remake itself in order to comply with a new government mandate seemed plausible. Now the Clean Power Plan looks like a dud.
If the army of policy experts, industry analysts, advocates, and coal executives who all evaluated the likely impact of the Clean Power Plan in 2015 were so wrong, why should we trust nine lawyers in black robes to get this answer right?
Other briefs in the West Virginia case suggest that the Clean Power Plan violates the “nondelegation doctrine,” another judge-created doctrine that limits Congress’s power to delegate the power to issue binding regulations to federal agencies. This doctrine is even more vague than the major questions doctrine, and even more capable of being applied selectively to strike down regulations that a particular panel of judges do not like.
As Justice Neil Gorsuch described nondelegation in 2019, a federal law authorizing an agency to regulate must be “‘sufficiently definite and precise to enable Congress, the courts, and the public to ascertain whether Congress’s guidance has been followed.” How “precise” must the law be? That’s up to judges to decide.
Notably because this doctrine outright forbids Congress from delegating certain powers to an agency, a Supreme Court decision that struck down the Clean Power Plan on nondelegation grounds could permanently strip Congress of its power to authorize the EPA to issue major regulations in the future. Indeed, depending on how broadly the Supreme Court worded such a decision, it could impose drastic new limits on every single federal agency.
In any event, the issues at stake in West Virginia can be summarized fairly concisely. It is a case about a regulation that does not exist, that never took effect, and that would have imposed obligations on the energy industry that it would have met anyway. It also involves two legal doctrines that are mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, and that have no basis in any federal statute.
And yet, West Virginia could wind up permanently hobbling the government’s ability to fight climate change.
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