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Biden Administration officials contend that Russia's aggression and abandonment of international norms preempt the need to give Russia's concerns serious consideration. In fact US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday canceled a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov planned for Thursday citing a Russian "invasion" of Ukraine as prohibitive.
US officials contend that appeasing Putin will not work and will only embolden him. However a structured negotiation need not lead to appeasement. Approaches such as incremental stages of compliance and independent verification are traditional, proven methods of giving negotiation weight and enhanced effectiveness. Techniques US officials are well aware of.
While Russia’s warlike conduct is alarming to international observers, a cold shoulder to Russia's concerns seems to preclude progress through negotiation. Further it raises concerns about US’s commitment to exhausting all avenues to a potential peaceful accord. That raises the additional question, if the US is not fully committed to diplomacy in an effort to avoid all-out war in Europe, then what are its own motives and objectives?
Independent, international observers warn of the potential for an ever widening human rights catastrophe if tensions between Russia and Ukraine spiral our of control. For the US to continue to refuse diplomatic contact undermines its credibility and intensifies the risk of a wider and more unpredictable conflict. — MA/RSN
Contentious security guarantees Moscow is seeking include a ban on Ukraine from entering Nato
The demands include a ban on Ukraine entering Nato and a limit to the deployment of troops and weapons to Nato’s eastern flank, in effect returning Nato forces to where they were stationed in 1997, before an eastward expansion.
The eight-point draft treaty was released by Russia’s foreign ministry as its forces massed within striking distance of Ukraine’s borders. Moscow said ignoring its interests would lead to a “military response” similar to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
Vladimir Putin has demanded that the west provide Russia “legal guarantees” of its security. But the Kremlin’s aggressive proposals are likely to be rejected in western capitals as an attempt to formalise a new Russian sphere of influence over eastern Europe.
The demands, spelled out by Moscow in full for the first time, were handed over to the US this week. They include a demand that Nato remove any troops or weapons deployed to countries that entered the alliance after 1997, which would include much of eastern Europe, including Poland, the former Soviet countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Balkan countries.
Russia has also demanded that Nato rule out further expansion, including the accession of Ukraine into the alliance, and that it does not hold drills without previous agreement from Russia in Ukraine, eastern Europe, in Caucasus countries such as Georgia or in Central Asia.
Those proposals are likely to be viewed extremely negatively by Nato countries, in particular Poland and the Baltic states. They have warned that Russia is attempting to re-establish a sphere of influence in the region and view the document as proof Moscow is seeking to limit their sovereignty.
A senior US official said on Friday that the Kremlin knows that some parts of its proposals were “unacceptable”.
The Nato head, Jens Stoltenberg, has already ruled out any agreements denying Ukraine the right to enter the military alliance, saying it is up to Ukraine and the 30 Nato countries. There are already major obstacles to Ukraine entering the alliance, including its territorial dispute with Russia over annexed Crimea.
The Russia document also calls for the two countries to pull back any short- or medium-range missile systems out of reach, replacing the previous intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty that the US left in 2018.
The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the US had seen proposals from Russia to start talks and was speaking with its European allies and partners, Reuters reported.
“There will be no talks on European security without our European allies and partners,” Psaki told reporters.
The Russian deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said on Friday that there was no deadline for talks but that Russia wants to begin negotiations “without delays and without stalling”.
“We can go any place and any time, even tomorrow,” he said in animated remarks.
Asked whether he thought the requests were unreasonable, he said no. “This is not about us giving some kind of ultimatum, there is none. The thing is that the seriousness of our warning should not be underestimated,” he said.
Dmitri Trenin, the head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote that Russia’s public release of its proposed agreements “may suggest that Moscow [rightly] considers their acceptance by west unlikely”.
“This logically means that [Russia] will have to assure its security single-handedly, most probably by mil-tech [military technical] means,” he wrote.
Western countries have warned that Russia may be preparing an invasion of Ukraine in January as Russian tanks, artillery and missiles have massed near borders. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has called on the west for additional aid in case Russia decides to launch a broader offensive.
On Friday, Ukraine said one of its soldiers was killed during fighting with Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country. He was reportedly killed in an attack using grenade launchers and mortars.
The latest death brings Ukraine’s toll in the simmering conflict to 65 since the start of the year, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, compared with 50 in 2020. The conflict in eastern Ukraine has so far left more than 13,000 people dead.
Russia has massed about 100,000 troops on its side of the border. Joe Biden has warned Putin of “sanctions like he’s never seen” should his troops attack Ukraine. On Thursday, European Union leaders urged Moscow to halt its military buildup and return to talks led by France and Germany.
President Donald Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin arrive for a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018. (photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
ALSO SEE: Ukraine to Declare 30-Day State of Emergency
As the world watches in terror, the former president is cheering on the autocrat’s “peace force” of “army tanks”
Trump thinks he’s doing great.
“I said, ‘This is genius,'” Trump said on a right-wing podcast. “Putin declared a big portion of … Ukraine … as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful. … I said, ‘How smart is that?’ And he’s going to go in and be a peacekeeper. That’s strongest peace force. … We could use that on our southern border. That’s the strongest peace force I’ve ever seen. There were more army tanks than I’ve ever seen. They’re going to keep the peace all right. Here’s a guy who’s very savvy … I know him very well. Very, very well.”
Trump eventually seemed to remember that most people think Putin invading an independent democratic nation is a bad thing, so he quickly pivoted from giddy praise to noting that “this would have never happened” if he were still in office. “This would have never happened,” he said, adding that “it’s very sad” that Biden gave “no response.”
Trump threw another jab at Biden in a statement released Wednesday morning. “Our country has totally lost its self-confidence!” he wrote.
Putin may or may not have moved on Ukraine while Trump was still in office, but there’s no question that Trump spent four solid years undermining if not outright trashing NATO. The alliance of Western nations is Europe’s primary military counterbalance against Putin’s appetite for military aggression, and Trump often threatened to break the alliance over various squabbles with America’s overseas allies.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Trump’s comments later on Tuesday. “We try not to take advice from anyone who praises President Putin and his military strategy,” she told reporters. When asked if the White House is worried that Trump’s comments could turn support for Ukraine into a partisan issue, Psaki said “it’s up to members of the Republican Party to make that determination.”
Trump’s deference to Putin has been well-documented, of course. He wondered way back in 2013 whether they might become “best friends” if the authoritarian were to attend the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. He praised him breathlessly while he was in office, and has continued to do so since leaving the White House. But lauding Putin right as he prepares to launch a hot war guaranteed to result in thousands of lives lost is a different kind of abhorrent, and the latest in a countless string of reminders that whenever it seems like Trump has bottomed out, he always finds a new depth of depravity to plumb, a new angle of evil to embrace.
Michigan secretary of state Jocelyn Benson is just one of many election administration officials who face a potentially tough reelection battle in 2022. (photo: Kent Nishimura/LA Times/Getty Images)
Secretaries of state and state attorneys general have always been influential within their own states, but the attempted abuse of these offices to try to overturn the results of the 2020 election has finally awakened the rest of the country to their importance. As a result, campaigns for these offices that flew under the radar in 2014 (when Paxton was first elected) and 2018 (when Raffensperger was) have been thrust into the national spotlight here in 2022.
This year, 27 secretaries of state and 30 attorneys general will be elected nationwide (other states either elect them in other years or don’t elect them at all). And since the secretaries of state and attorneys general who are elected in 2022 will wield power in 2024, this year’s elections could plunge our democracy into further danger if would-be election subverters win them.
Secretary of state
As the ones who oversee the administration of elections and the certification of results in most states, secretaries of state play a fundamental role in our democracy. And given their discretion to interpret and implement election laws in ways that either make it easier or harder to vote, they’ve already drawn a lot of attention for 2022: Candidates for the office are raising record sums of money, Trump has personally pushed to install loyalists in three key states, and incumbents who otherwise might have sailed to an uncontroversial reelection are now facing rabid primary challenges.
The list of secretary of state elections to watch starts with Georgia, where Raffensperger first faces a tough primary from Rep. Jody Hice. While Raffensperger has made it clear there was no election fraud in Georgia and that Biden won the state, his challenger Hice voted against the certification of the 2020 election in the House. He also continued to baselessly claim that hundreds of thousands of potentially fraudulent votes were cast and that Trump, in fact, carried Georgia. (He didn’t.) Hice isn’t the only election denier in the race, though: Former Alpharetta Mayor David Belle Isle has claimed there were “irregularities” in the 2020 election, too.
It’s still early, but Hice looks like the primary front-runner. Through the end of January, he has raised $1.6 million to Raffensperger’s $597,000 and Belle Isle’s $376,000, and he has the golden ticket in any GOP nomination fight: Trump’s endorsement. But his path to the secretary of state’s office is not clear in this newly minted swing state. Whichever Republican emerges from the primary will then face a tough general election against the well-funded ($1.1 million raised so far) Democratic state Rep. Bee Nguyen in November.
Trump and his allies aren’t just targeting their fellow Republicans, though. Democratic secretaries of state who spent the 2020 election cycle expanding voting access are in the crosshairs, too. The most vulnerable Democrat is likely Jocelyn Benson of Michigan. And unlike in most states, her Republican challenger will be chosen at a party convention, not a primary, which could lead to a more radical nominee who appeals to party diehards. That’s good news for college professor Kristina Karamo, who has Trump’s endorsement.
Karamo became a right-wing celebrity when she claimed she witnessed fraud as a poll watcher in the 2020 election, and she has espoused conspiracy theories such as that Trump actually won Michigan and that the Jan. 6 rioters were actually members of antifa. Other Republicans in the race have more conventional resumes for the state’s chief election official: state Rep. Beau LaFave, Chesterfield Township Clerk Cindy Berry and Plainfield Township Clerk Cathleen Postmus.
Republicans are also hoping to flip control of the Arizona secretary of state’s office, but there, Democratic incumbent Katie Hobbs isn’t running for reelection, leaving a crowded field of hopefuls to replace her. Former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes (who used to oversee elections in Arizona’s most populous county) and state House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding are the two Democratic candidates and the only two candidates in the race who have acknowledged Biden’s victory as legitimate.
Of the four Republicans in the race, meanwhile, two have tried to overturn the 2020 election results. State Rep. Shawnna Bolick, for instance, signed onto a resolution that urged Congress to award Arizona’s Electoral College votes to Trump, and she also introduced a bill that would have allowed the legislature to revoke the certification of presidential elections in the state,1 although she has argued that she wasn’t part of the “Stop the Steal” movement. Meanwhile, state Rep. Mark Finchem signed onto the same resolution as Bolick and attended the Jan. 6 insurrection. Finchem, who has Trump’s endorsement, also has ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory and has identified as a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right anti-government militia.
The two other GOP candidates, advertising executive Beau Lane and state Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, have declined to say whether the 2020 election was illegitimate, but Ugenti-Rita has voted like she thinks it was. She sponsored multiple voting restrictions that passed the legislature last year, and she initially supported an unfounded partisan audit into the 2020 election results in Maricopa County (although she later turned against it, complaining it had been “botched”). Ugenti-Rita has other baggage as well: A lobbyist has accused her of making unwanted sexual advances.
Nevada’s secretary of state post is also open following the retirement of Republican Barbara Cegavske, who was censured by the state GOP for her insistence that the 2020 election was not fraudulent. Trump himself has not yet weighed in on the GOP primary here, but if he does, he’ll probably back former state Assemblyman Jim Marchant, who wants to conduct an Arizona-style “audit” into Nevada’s results and attended an election-fraud conference put on by businessman and Trump ally Mike Lindell. Another well-funded Republican candidate, former state Sen. Jesse Haw, says on his campaign website that Nevada’s liberal voting laws “have made it easier to cheat.” However, there is one pro-democracy Republican running: Sparks City Councilman Kristopher Dahir. Dahir has said he does not believe the 2020 election was stolen and has praised Cegavske’s leadership. There’s also a competitive primary on the Democratic side between Cisco Aguilar, a staffer for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and former state Assemblywoman Ellen Spiegel.
These are four of the biggest secretary of state races in which democracy is on the line in 2022. But there are a couple of dark-red states where the Republican primary (as the de facto general election) could have huge consequences for democracy as well. The incumbent secretaries of state of both Idaho and Alabama are retiring, and the primaries to replace them have become referenda on the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
For instance, in Idaho, there are three candidates vying to replace outgoing Secretary of State Lawerence Denney. Phil McGrane, who runs elections in Idaho’s biggest county, has said that Idaho’s elections are generally secure. But state Sen. Mary Souza has pointed to “weaknesses” in Idaho’s election laws, while state Rep. Dorothy Moon last year signed a letter calling for an “audit” into the election results in all 50 states along with the decertification of the 2020 election if necessary.
Likewise, the candidates to succeed Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill include one experienced election administrator and multiple pro-Trump election deniers. Ed Packard, who worked in the secretary of state’s elections division for more than 24 years, maintains that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud, whereas state Rep. Wes Allen supported Texas’s lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election and Alabama Auditor Jim Zeigler has said there is “preliminary information” to suggest there were “strange voting returns” in some counties.
Attorney general
They may not be responsible for the administration of elections, but as their states’ “top lawyers,” state attorneys general provide legal advice and representation for government agencies and officials, investigate crimes and otherwise work to ensure that the state’s laws are being enforced. In the past year, this has meant a lot of wading through — and in some cases initiating — claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
In total, we’ve identified five attorney general elections in which claims of election fraud have been a significant issue, ranging from Texas, whose attorney general led the charge to overturn election results, to Wisconsin, where neither Republican candidate has explicitly claimed that Trump won in 2020 but have nonetheless made election fraud a significant part of their platforms.
The most controversial state attorney general right now is likely Texas’s Ken Paxton, who is mired in election-related disputes as well as two different criminal investigations. As we said at the outset, Texas was at the forefront of attempts to overturn the 2020 election result, in large part thanks to Paxton’s baseless lawsuit to block the results in four states Biden had won. Trump endorsed Paxton last July, but he’s also praised Rep. Louie Gohmert, who filed his own lawsuit to overturn the 2020 election and is now challenging Paxton for attorney general. There are two other Republican candidates in this race: George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and son of 2016 candidate (and frequent Trump critic) Jeb Bush, and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman. Bush is the only candidate to have rebuffed claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump; Guzman hasn’t said anything publicly about it but has said she would welcome Trump’s support.
But despite the scandals Paxton finds himself in — he faces felony charges from a 2015 securities fraud case when he was a member of the Texas Legislature and is also the subject of a separate FBI investigation over allegations that he engaged in bribery and other crimes while attorney general — the most recent polling of the race shows Paxton leading the pack, with 47 percent of the vote.
In Kansas, meanwhile, the attorney general election is wide open after incumbent Derek Schmidt decided to run for governor, creating an opening for one of the GOP’s most vocal proponents of election fraud: former Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Notorious for a controversial law he championed as secretary of state that required residents prove their citizenship before registering to vote, Kobach is now mounting his third bid for statewide office despite two previous unsuccessful attempts — he first lost to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly in the 2018 gubernatorial race and then lost to then-Rep. Roger Marshall in the 2020 Senate GOP primary.
It’s likely Kobach’s failure to win these recent elections that has attracted competition in this primary, despite his Trump bona fides. (He hasn’t claimed the 2020 election was fraudulent, but he did write an op-ed in the conservative media outlet Breitbart in support of Paxton’s lawsuit.) Meanwhile, both state Sen. Kellie Warren, who launched her campaign with a thinly veiled dig at Kobach, and former prosecutor Tony Mattivi are running against him. Neither Mattivi nor Warren have spoken publicly about whether they dispute the results of the 2020 election, instead focusing more on challenging the Biden administration on issues like vaccine mandates.
In Idaho, it’s a question of whether Republican incumbent Lawrence Wasden, who has defended the 2020 election result, will survive a primary challenge. Lawrence broke with over a dozen Republican attorneys general when he announced in December 2020 that he wouldn’t be joining Texas’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election result. That, in turn, precipitated a primary challenge from attorney Art Macomber, who said he was inspired to run when Wasden didn’t join the suit; Dennis Boyles, another attorney in the state; and former Rep. Raúl Labrador, Wasden’s only challenger with any political experience. But all of these challengers likely face a steep climb to the nomination — Wasden is the longest-serving attorney general in Idaho’s history, having served for nearly 20 years. And with the exception of his first primary in 2002, he’s handily defeated all subsequent opponents by double-digit margins. That said, both Labrador and Macomber have outraised Wasden, which is a favorable sign for their campaigns.
Meanwhile, in Michigan, it’s another case of a pro-democracy Republican pitted against proponents of the Big Lie in the GOP primary. At this point, however, polling shows incumbent Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel with a small lead over her two main Republican challengers, former Michigan Speaker of the House Tom Leonard and attorney Matt DePerno.
As is true in Michigan’s secretary of state election, GOP convention-goers will ultimately decide who the nominee is, not primary voters. And if Leonard wins the nomination, the 2022 election will be a rematch of 2018, which Nessel won by just 3 percentage points. He is also the only Republican running who has said there isn’t any evidence that the election results were invalid. DePerno is polling worse against Nessel than Leonard, but it’s close, and his endorsement from Trump may sway some delegates. DePerno has also been a vocal proponent of the claim that Trump’s election loss was fraudulent, even filing a lawsuit in Antrim County alleging that the voting machines used in the election were compromised (the suit was ultimately dismissed). Finally, state Rep. Ryan Berman is also running as a Republican who backs the Big Lie — he signed onto a letter in late 2020 that raised allegations of election fraud and asked for an independent audit.
Another state that Democrats are defending is Wisconsin, where incumbent Democrat Josh Kaul faces two Republican challengers, who haven’t backed the Big Lie but who have still made “election security” a big part of their platforms: Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney and former state Assemblymember Adam Jarchow. Toney, for instance, has tried to build a name for himself as the district attorney who has prosecuted the most cases of election fraud in the state. (Toney has prosecuted seven of 10 cases, the most of any Wisconsin district attorney.) Meanwhile, Jarchow has attacked Kaul for insufficiently investigating allegations of election fraud, although he hasn’t gone as far as to question the 2020 presidential result. It’s early yet, but at this point both Jarchow and Toney are behind Kaul’s fundraising; Kaul had over $1 million ready to spend in his campaign account at the end of December, while Jarchow and Toney have each raised between $80,000 and $100,000.
But of course, these are only some of the highest-profile offices on the ballot in 2022 that could impact the 2024 election. Since it’s still early in the campaign, races for secretary of state and attorney general in other states could become hotly contested over the next few months. And a lot of the nuts and bolts of administering a free and fair election are hammered out on the county level, where there are countless more election officials getting elected this year. So while it’s frighteningly difficult to know how likely it is that the 2024 election will actually get overturned, it’s definitely possible that, after 2022, the pieces will be in place to do so.
Police respond to a fatal shooting in the area of Normandale Park in Northeast Portland on Saturday evening, Feb. 19, 2022. (photo: Mark Graves/The Oregonian/AP)
The description by Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Mariel Mota of the Saturday night shooting was the first detailed official account of the bloodshed. It came as Oregon's biggest city is experiencing a sharp rise in gun violence and after Portland was an epicenter in Black Lives Matter protests.
Benjamin Smith “approached the demonstration and confronted several of its participants, yelling at them and demanding they leave the area,” Mota said in an affidavit, citing videos shot at the scene. After several protesters told him to leave them alone and go home, Smith said they should “make” him leave and approached a person aggressively, who pushed Smith back.
Moments, later Smith drew his gun, Mota said.
Brandy “June” Knightly, 60, was shot in the head at close range and died on the scene, Mota said. Smith stopped shooting only when someone fired back, striking him in the hip area, Mota said.
Smith is in critical condition in a hospital under police guard. Smith was charged Tuesday by District Attorney Mike Schmidt with murder in the second degree with a firearm, four counts of attempted murder in the first degree with a firearm and assault.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Smith had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Knightly was remembered Tuesday as a woman who stood up for others.
“As a community this is deeply wounding and distressing," Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said "June was part of a group of unarmed women peacekeepers who supported racial justice demonstrations and engaged in compassionate work with the homeless.”
One of the wounded was shot in the neck and is paralyzed from the neck down, Mota said. Two people were shot multiple times, including one of them in the abdomen, and the fourth wounded person was shot in the arm.
Smith's roommate, Kristine Christenson, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Smith often criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, the COVID-19 mask requirement, crime in the neighborhood and homeless people living near the park by their apartment.
Knightly's friend Kathleen Saadat told the The Oregonian/OregonLive that Knightly was dedicated to acting on her values of justice and fairness.
“She was a warm, giving and kind person who spent time trying to think of things she could do to make the world better and to make herself better in the world,” Saadat said.
Knightly’s wife, Katherine Knapp, said Knightly first got involved in racial justice protests after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in May 2020.
Social media flyers show that at the same time as the shooting, a march was planned for Amir Locke, a Black man who was fatally shot by police in Minneapolis.
Portland saw months of nightly protests in 2020 that often spiraled into violence following the murder by police of Floyd in Minneapolis. Portland became the center of the movement to defund the police, but the sustained protests in the city have largely faded away.
The city is now dealing with a plague of gun violence.
Last year was marked by record-high gun violence in Portland. Police and city officials say the increase in violence, which disproportionally affected Portland’s Black community, was fueled by gang-related arguments, drug deals gone wrong and disputes among homeless people. The situation was exacerbated by the pandemic, economic hardships and mental health crises.
Portland recorded 90 homicides in 2021, shattering the city’s previous high of 66, set more than three decades ago.
The District of Columbia government and the US Capitol Police are requesting the National Guard assistance. (photo: Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images)
US protest to follow Canadian truckers’ demonstration against pandemic restrictions
The District of Columbia government and the US Capitol police are requesting the national guard assistance. The troops would be used largely to help control traffic and are expected to come from the district’s national guard and three states, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss aid not yet formally approved.
Modeled after recent trucker protests in Canada, separate truck convoys have been planned through online forums with names like the People’s Convoy and the American Truckers Freedom Fund – all with different starting points, departure dates and routes. Some are scheduled to arrive in time for Joe Biden’s State of the Union address next Tuesday, 1 March, though others may arrive afterward.
John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said the DC government and Capitol police had requested national guard personnel “to provide support at traffic control points in and around the district” and stand ready in case of “possible disruptions at key traffic arteries”. He too said no formal decision on the requests had been made.
The convoys follow the recent Canadian truckers’ protest that shut down the busiest US Canadian border crossing and besieged the streets of the capital, Ottawa, for weeks to protest government pandemic restrictions. The multiple blockades were broken up by police last week, with more than 100 arrests.
It remains to be seen if any of the US convoys would seek to actively shut down Washington’s streets, the way their Canadian counterparts did in Ottawa. Some convoy organizers have spoken of plans to briefly roll through the city, then focus on shutting down the Beltway, which encircles the capital.
A statement from the People’s Convoy specifically says the trucks “will NOT be going into DC proper”. That convoy is planning to embark on Wednesday from southern California and arrive in DC around 5 March.
The US convoys seek an immediate lifting of what they say are heavy-handed government pandemic restrictions such as mask mandates and vaccine requirements. The American Truckers Freedom Fund website says the group is protesting “the unscientific, unconstitutional overreach of the federal government”.
Vaccines have proven highly effective at preventing Covid-19 infections, especially serious illness and death, and high-quality masks offer strong protection against spreading or contracting the disease. Public sentiment, especially among conservatives, has been shifting against government mandates as the pandemic heads into its third year.
The websites organizing the American trucker convoys directly reference the inspiration of the Canadian movement. A statement on the People’s Convoy website pays homage to “our brave and courageous neighbors to the north – our Canadian brothers and sisters who led the charge.”
Robert Contee, chief of the Metropolitan police in DC, said on Friday that his department was closely monitoring the shifting information and would be devoting additional police hours in a rolling state of heightened alert over the next few weeks.
Contee and Mayor Muriel Bowser memorably predicted unrest several days before the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol building. They warned residents to stay indoors and called for additional resources, but the Capitol police and national guard were still caught unprepared when crowds of Trump supporters overran the building, resulting in several deaths and numerous injuries.
Lingering memories of that debacle have fueled a heightened sense of anxiety and speculation over the coming convoys. But Bowser said she wasn’t yet warning residents to avoid the Capitol area or the National Mall.
“We’re not at a point to give specific instructions to residents just yet. We will,” Bowser said.
Migrants tried to get through barriers surrounding the immigration centre. (photo: Reuters)
More than 20 people have been injured in clashes between migrants and police in the town of Tapachula, on Mexico's southern border, officials say.
The INM said the migrants were trying to jump the queue for permits to allow them to continue their journey north.
Every year, hundreds of thousands of people cross Mexico headed to the US.
Migrants threw stones and sticks at members of the National Guard and scuffles broke out between the two sides.
Rights activist Irineo Mujica told Reuters news agency that the migrants were "desperate" after waiting for months to be given an appointment with Mexico's immigration authorities.
Most have been sleeping rough by the roadside and are relying on handouts to feed themselves.
While many want to reach the United States and are waiting for papers that will allow them to cross the country without being detained, others are applying for refugee or asylum status to be able to stay in Mexico.
Official data suggests that the number of people requesting refuge or asylum in Mexico almost doubled between 2019 and 2021, overwhelming the authorities.
The immigration centre in Tapachula - the biggest in Mexico - has become one of the main bottlenecks on migrants' journeys and the United Nations refugee agency has urged the authorities to do more to clear the backlog.
Last week, a group of migrants in the town sewed their mouths shut in protest at the slow pace at which their requests are being processed.
Banana, teak and cacao plantation in Yanonge, near Kisangani. (photo: Axel Fassio/CIFOR/Mongabay)
These unbroken forest landscapes are some of the most biodiversity-rich areas on the planet. The burnt area in 2021 was about three times the average for the preceding 10 years.
Satellite data from the University of Maryland show the damage is concentrated around Kisangani, a city of more than 1.2 million people sitting amid dense woodland. The Yangambi Biosphere Reserve, 100 km (60 miles) to the west, was not spared either.
Disruptions
Thousands of people were displaced by armed conflict in the border provinces of North and South Kivu in 2019 and 2020, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF). The frontier region, on the DRC’s eastern border with Rwanda and Uganda, has witnessed persistent ethnic conflict since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. More than 100 armed groups are active in the region, and the security situation has deteriorated in recent years.
There are no official data on the number of internally displaced people, but news reports show an increase in violence in North and South Kivu that coincides with an influx of migrants west into Tshopo.
Researchers at the University of Kisangani say this influx of people is fueling greater demand for food crops as well as an increase in cash crop production, especially cacao. (While the terms cacao and cocoa are often used interchangeable, the latter typically refers to the powder made from the roasted cacao seeds.)
“There is definitely an increase in the practice of cocoa plantations in the Tshopo in the last five years,” said Janvier Lisingo, an ecologist at the University of Kisangani. “All around the city, people have bought concessions to plant cocoa, coffee and also some palm. It’s really a frenzy.”
More than 80% of Tshopo’s population is engaged in subsistence farming. It’s not in their culture to grow perennial crops, according to Germain Batsi, an agroforestry expert at the University of Kisangani. But many of the new arrivals come from communities that are more accustomed to cultivating commercial crops like cacao, researchers say.
“Tshopo deforestation is caused by the spread of cocoa brought forth by people fleeing the war from the eastern part of DRC, especially the Nande tribes,” said Neville Assani Mapenzi, a researcher who works in the Yangambi reserve. He cautioned that in the absence of a rigorous study, it remains unclear to what extent this explained the spike in burnt area in 2021.
North and South Kivu have a history of cacao and coffee planting, with an estimated 250,000 coffee and 65,000 cacao growers in the two provinces.
People from the Nande ethnic group, originally from North Kivu, have settled in neighboring Tshopo and Ituri provinces over several decades. However, in recent years the ethnic violence has spread to Ituri province as well.
An ‘indirect land grab’
Tshopo offers more than just greater security: land is easier to acquire here.
Some of the newcomers are financially well-off and able to purchase land from local chiefs to establish plantations. According to agroforestry expert Batsi, local chiefs tend to hand over forest land that isn’t currently being cultivated by the host communities, so these plantations are replacing forested areas.
This has sparked tensions within local communities. Land is considered communal property in many parts of Tshopo, and disputes arise when such transfers change the nature of ownership.
“What is being observed is a form of indirect land grab,” Batsi said. “Once the land has been given to migrants, and perennial cultures have been installed, in the end, it becomes their property. Based on documents obtained from the chiefs, the new owners obtain property titles from the state.
“Some communities are dispossessed of their customary land,” he said.
Nene Morisho Mwana Biningo, who specializes in conflict studies at the Pole Institute in Goma, the North Kivu capital, has documented a similar dynamic of dispossession in Ituri province. Biningo and his colleagues linked the process with the arrival of the Nande, who have been settling in Ituri since the 1970s, and also more recent Hutu migrants.
“For the autochthonous people in Ituri, land is collective property, whereas for the new arrivals, land, especially that acquired by purchase and development, is private property,” Biningo and his colleagues wrote in a report published in 2020.
And in North Kivu, land is expensive and in short supply. So the migrants aren’t just moving to escape conflict, but also to seek out economic opportunities, Biningo told Mongabay.
The price of cocoa
Cacao production is a well-documented driver of deforestation in West Africa. Around 70% of the world’s supply of cacao beans is produced in West Africa, with Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon the biggest producers. Introduced to the DRC during Belgian colonial rule, the evergreen cacao tree (Theobroma cacao) has found a suitable terrain and climate here.
The global market for cocoa was valued at $106.19 billion in 2017 and is expected to expand to almost $190 billion by 2026. However, according to one estimate, cacao farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana earn less than 10% of chocolate’s retail price. Efforts are now being made to remedy this glaring inequality, with Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, the two countries that supply 60% of the global cocoa market, adding a Living Income Differential (LID) of $400 per ton to their farm-gate prices for the 2020-21 season.
This is aimed at improving cultivators’ incomes to tackle child labor and allow them to invest in their plots rather than clear forests for more farmland. “Market forces might drive manufacturers to gradually shift to other, cheaper producing countries, maybe only partially for expansion of their bulk chocolate production,” a research paper produced for the European Commission noted.
Most demand for cocoa comes from Europe, a hub for the processing and manufacturing of chocolate. Europeans also eat more chocolate per capita than anyone else in the world: Germans consume 11 kilograms (24 pounds) a year, and a study published in 2021 found that German demand for cocoa posed a huge risk to forests in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.
As plantations expand in other parts of the continent, the political instability and informal and unorganized nature of the sector makes drawing such connections difficult.
The potential for damage is immense. The DRC is home to the largest swath of the Congo Basin rainforest, at 155 million hectares (383 million acres), or an area more than half the size of India. Primary forest cover shrank by 5% between 2002 and 2020. Clearing small parcels to grow crops is a major cause of forest disturbance in the Congo Basin rainforest. These smallholdings are used for staples like rice, maize and cassava, and commercial plants like coffee and cacao.
A 2014 report found that cocoa expansion could become a new and significant driver for forest loss in the DRC. Up to 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres) of forest were found to be at risk in the decade following the report’s publication. The authors identified the province of Orientale — since broken up into four new provinces, including Tshopo — as facing the greatest threat from cacao-driven deforestation.
A free-for-all?
It’s unclear who the end consumers of Tshopo-grown cocoa are because most of the cacao enters the global market through Uganda. Nande communities are found in both countries, and those in the DRC can leverage community ties to move the commodity across the border, Biningo said.
“Vast amounts of Congolese cocoa and coffee are smuggled into neighboring countries each season,” a 2021 report from Adam Smith International (ASI), a London-based advisory group, and UK Aid noted, blaming porous borders and poor enforcement. UK Aid, a British government entity, is funding a program implemented by ASI called ÉLAN RDC to promote the DRC as an investment destination and a reliable supplier of cocoa and coffee.
“Right now, the farmers and the planters are free to do whatever they want. They can go and cut large areas of forest to install their plantations,” Batsi said. “You are aware of what has happened in West Africa, in countries like Ivory Coast and Ghana. I am afraid such scenarios will be reproduced here, something we would regret afterwards.”
This article was originally published on Mongabay.
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