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13 March 22
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President Putin has effectively banned foreign correspondents reporting on Russia during his war in Ukraine. This is what he doesn’t want you to know.
Three weeks into the war, Russia’s financial constipation is unmistakable. The West first sanctioned the country’s banking sector. The global financial system then took command and gridlocked practically every money thoroughfare between Russia and the rest of the world. Visa and Mastercard evaporated. Google and Apple shut off their digital payment systems. Insurance policies vanished. The Big Mac is no more.
And now, in St. Petersburg, Sveta—whose name has been changed for her safety like everyone in this story—is seeking blossoms imported from the Netherlands.
“No Dutch flowers?” the 30-year-old woman asks Olga, the florist in the lobby of the Gostinyi Dvor Metro station, site of many of the anti-war demonstrations and where at least 1,000 protesters so far have been arrested. “How are you going to stay open without Dutch flowers?”
“Fuck them,” replies the seventy-something flower-seller. “I’ll head back to my village and grow the fucking flowers in the garden.”
Sveta, a lawyer who owns a business consultancy, laments that Putin’s ham-fisted control of Russian media has twisted a majority of the country’s 145 million people into generations of Olgas. “The number of young people who support Putin’s madness is terrifying,” she explains. “We’re all upset about the related bans, like Netflix and Spotify, which only reinforce the suppression of freedom of speech. With no information, Putin’s zombification of Russia will accelerate.”
Yet tapping into Russia’s fondness for dark humor, Sveta adds, “we cannot force McDonald’s to stay, and we may even emerge healthier for it.”
Nearby, outside the Cherneshevskaya Metro Station, a Molotov cocktail’s throw from Putin’s childhood neighborhood, two middle-aged women are having a conversation.
“If Putin didn’t go to the Ukraine they would be on our doorstep this year,” says the first woman. “America were going to send thousands of Nazis into Russia.”
“True,” her friend agrees. “Someone from the Ukraine was writing to me, terrorizing me on my phone. I erased all the messages. That’s how the Ukrainian secret police tracks us.”
“What’s the difference for us,” says the first. “We had kasha, potatoes and herring, and we will still have kasha, potatoes and herring. I don’t need parmesan cheese.”
“We live fine,” is the second woman’s verdict. “Let everyone in Russia live like us.”
Back in Moscow, there’s an argument going on between two old friends in an apartment. They’re reading an article on Russian military actions in Ukraine as described in the popular ultra-nationalist newspaper Zavtra, which is owned by the 84-year-old novelist and Putin pal Alexander Prokhanov.
The headline blares: Going Forward, the Town of Izyum is Liberated. Nazis are Killing the Un-Loyal. We Liquidate Military Criminals.
“Putin’s propaganda has turned us into bastards, monsters,” says Boris, a 65-year-old translator.
“The President is protecting us from a Nazi invasion,” fires back his life-long friend Nikolai, a doctor and frequent visitor to Miami. “Why do you not support him? On every particular point, Putin’s position is concrete.”
Boris scoffs: “There’s no way to measure that under a totalitarian regime where all the polls are rigged.”
Across Moscow, at the hipster Dada Cafe, Volodya slides the right side of his palm across his throat, an old Russian sekir baska or “axe-head” gesture that signals: “I’m fed up with this” to his companion. Volodya lowers his voice to barely a whisper. “This scum, Putin, should be crushed,” he adds. Volodya then raises his voice for others in the café to hear. “I officially support the operation conducted by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin.”
A woman at the adjoining table stiffly nods her head. “NATO is making dirty bombs in the Ukraine,” she says. “They’re all Nazis.”
“What’s most horrifying,” Boris wrote in his last message from Moscow, “is the efficiency of Putin’s propaganda. We are caught in a shitload of fish.”
Russian culture is rich in off-color expressions and double entendres, this one makes it plain that the average Russian has been ensnared in Putin’s shit and there’s nothing anyone can do to escape.
Many of the expressions favored in these parts reflect the great gulf between dreams of what might be and the reality of what is.
Perhaps the illustration that best describes what Putin has created is a line taken from the film version of Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical novella The Heart of a Dog, the story of a professor who transplants the testicles of a freshly dead, drunken apparatchik into a spotted puppy named Sharik.
The result is Sharikov, an uncontrollable fascist whose lying and thievery makes everyday life in Russia unbearable. “What have I done?” the professor moans. “I’ve turned a perfectly nice little dog into a son of a bitch.”
The professor ultimately manages to neuter Sharikov, much in the same manner the West is using sanctions to spay Putin's totalitarian regime. For the moment, however, the economic surgery is in large part limited to removing imported Italian cheese from the pasta and Starbucks beans from the iced lattes. That will change soon enough.
Members of the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces examine new armament, including NLAW anti-tank systems and other portable anti-tank grenade launchers, in Kyiv on March 9, 2022, amid ongoing Russia's invasion of Ukraine. (photo: Genya Savilov/AFP/Getty Images)
New indications suggest Russia is getting ready to relaunch a massive offensive in the region, the war’s main goal.
Despite a very complicated situation with many of its main axes of attack throughout Ukraine, Russia keeps throwing more military power west and east of Kyiv, in a bid to possibly surround and penetrate the city.
Satellite images issued by U.S. company Maxar reveal Russia’s very recent activity close to the Hostomel Airfield, including armored units and towed artillery.
“Russia is likely seeking to reset and re-posture its forces for renewed offensive activity in the coming days,” as the British Defense Ministry said in its March 11 intelligence update.
“This will probably include operations against the capital, Kyiv.”
As the expert community believes, Kyiv should brace itself for a hard defense within short notice, potentially for Russian attempts to impose a full blockade and trigger a humanitarian disaster to force the Ukrainian leadership into a deal.
Nonetheless, as the situation suggests, Russian prospects look increasingly grim as well.
With Russia’s failed attempts to seize Kyiv in a blitz attack, along with steady defense efforts, the capital city has all chances to grind over and bleed dry invading forces in fierce urban combat, effectively precipitating a strategic victory over Russia.
Russia’s scarce progress
As in any of the key areas, such as Mykolaiv, or Kharkiv, or Chernihiv, Russia has demonstrated very little progress in the battle for Kyiv over the last few days.
A series of fierce attacks before March 8-9 ended up with Russia gaining a foothold northwest of Kyiv, in the satellite cities of Irpin, Bucha, and Hostomel, a key junction on the E373 road, more commonly known as the Warsaw Highway.
Along with the P02 road to the north, this has become the Russian military’s vital throughway between the Kyiv metropolitan area and Belarus via the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.
At huge costs, Russia has formally secured this passage for supplies and fresh troops.
However, as multiple evidence suggests, the narrow corridor is still prone to extreme logistics issues, which end up causing fuel and food shortages among Russian forces advancing towards Kyiv.
Very illustrative was the situation regarding the ill-fated Russian military convoy stretching 64 kilometers along the highway northwest of Kyiv.
For many days, numerous satellite pictures showed the convoy, basically, a giant traffic jam, standing still, very likely due to fuel shortage and poor technical condition of vehicles that effectively stalled the movement.
But according to the latest observations, the giant convoy has largely dispersed, likely redistributed among multiple Russian units in the area.
After gaining a foothold in parts of Hostomel, Bucha, and Irpin, Russia also demonstrated very limited success trying to advance further south to the defunct E40 road connecting Kyiv and Zhytomyr.
According to Ukraine’s General Staff, this group of Russian forces is most probably poised to partially surround Kyiv from the west and cut the capital city off from supplies.
On March 8, the Institute For the Study of War (ISW), a Washington D.C.-based think tank, said Russian forces were concentrating on a possible assault against the capital in the coming 24 to 96 hours.
Nonetheless, amid extremely slow progress due to logistical issues and a strong Ukrainian defense, Russia has probably decided to take a breathing spell in operations and agreed on civilian evacuation from Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel, and Borodyanka, the cities that have been largely ruined.
As the Ukrainian military suggests, Russian forces in many ways used this lull to try and re-array west of Kyiv and possibly get its logistics issues resolved for an effective onslaught.
The last few days in the area have been relatively calm, although the warring parties have had sporadic clashes.
Russia is also investing a lot of effort into trying to gain a foothold east of Kyiv, particularly the Brovary area. But this axis has proved even less successful.
Similarly to the Dnipro west bank, Russia is also confined to a few key highways leading northeast to Russia and Belarus, particularly the E-95, M-02, and H-07 roads.
And the problem for Russia is that it has so far failed to seize or effectively block two key cities on its way to Kyiv, namely Chernihiv and Sumy, both of which continue offering fierce resistance since day one of the invasion and inflicting severe enemy casualties.
Without the stiff control of either of the two cities, along with ensuring safe communications along the highways, gaining ground east of Kyiv is also extremely problematic.
As a result, Russia has no effective control over the vast territories between Kyiv and Chernihiv or Sumy, where Ukrainian regular military and territorial defense forces are practicing hit-and-run tactics.
“Sending large military forces to Kyiv from the north means long convoys moving along roads in the forest,” says Andriy Zagorodnyuk, former Ukraine’s defense minister and the chairman of the Kyiv-based Center for Defense Strategies.
“Convoys are very vulnerable in such a terrain. One needs to just target the convoy head, and the whole convoy effectively stops. And then it gets decimated. And this is what we see on a constant basis. The local geography is not on the invader’s side.”
Day after day, the Ukrainian military and local social media users indicate multiple pieces of evidence of Russia’s massive loss of manpower and hardware in combat, especially in Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kyiv regions.
As one of the latest developments, a Russian battalion tactical group, part of the 90th Armored Division’s 6th Regiment, sustained severe losses close to Brovary on March 10.
According to Ukrainian statements, most of the regiment’s personnel, along with the commanding officer Colonel Andrey Zakharov, were killed in action. The division’s advancing groups had to retreat and stay on the defensive.
The Ukrainian victory likely further disrupted Russian efforts to set conditions for offensive operations east of Kyiv, as the Institute For the Study of War commented on the engagement.
“The episodic, limited, and largely unsuccessful Russian offensive operations around Kyiv increasingly support the Ukrainian General Staff’s repeated assessments that Russia lacks the combat power near the capital to launch successful offensive operations on a large scale,” the think tank said on March 10.
Besides, the ISW added, Ukrainian air force and air defense operations continue to hinder Russian maneuvers on the ground by likely limiting Russian close air support and also exposing Russian mechanized forces to Ukrainian air and artillery attacks.
This suggestion was clearly illustrated by the March 10 engagement at Brovary, where the advancing Russian armored convoy moving concentrated on a highway was spotted and then decimated by intense and dense Ukrainian artillery and tank strikes.
Moreover, according to the ISW conclusions, the likelihood is increasing that Ukrainian forces could fight the Russian forces advancing to take Kyiv to a standstill, eventually.
Logistics and organization issues, as well as poor morale and inadequate planning, have already cost it the swift victory it had evidently hoped for on Feb. 24.
“There are as yet no indications that the Russian military is reorganizing, reforming, learning lessons, or taking other measures that would lead to a sudden change in the pace or success of its operations,” the ISW also said on March 10.
“Although the numerical disparities between Russia and Ukraine leave open the possibility that Moscow will be able to restore rapid mobility or effective urban warfare to the battlefield.”
Russia’s success unlikely
The expert community has a consensus that Russia’s chances of seizing Kyiv are at least questionable, given the general performance to date.
The blitzkrieg plan that would see the Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv being captured and forced into a deal within days has ultimately failed. The war gets increasingly protracted for Russia, which has already employed close to 95% of its military power deployed against Ukraine, according to Ukrainian and Western intelligence, with no key goals reached so far.
Upon that, multiple pieces of evidence suggest Russian forces are getting exhausted and running out of reserves due to systemic organizational issues and high casualty rates.
As of March 11, the Ukrainian military reported a total of over 12,000 Russian fatalities since Feb. 24, along with 353 tanks, 1,165 light armored vehicles, 125 artillery pieces, 58 multiple launch rocket systems, 57 airplanes, and 83 helicopters.
Speaking late on March 11, Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Brigadier General Kyrylo Budanov said Russia since Feb. 24 had 18 battalion tactical groups (BTGs) rendered combat-ineffective in clashes with the Ukrainian military. Thirteen more BTGs have been completely destroyed in action, according to the official.
Budanov called this “horrific losses Russia has never had.”
In general, according to Ukrainian and Western intelligence, Russia was believed to have concentrated a total of 120-125 BTGs for its full-scale military action against Ukraine.
Zagorodnyuk of the Center for Defense Strategies believes that, although not very accurate, Ukraine’s official figures on the Russian death toll might be close to reality.
Upon the think tank estimates, up to a total of 45,000 Russian military personnel could have been forced out of action as killed, wounded, taken prisoner, or demoralized, after two weeks of fierce fighting.
This might correspond to up to one-third of Russia’s total military contingent deployed against Ukraine, the expert suggests.
Nonetheless, all sources suggest a concentration of Russian forces near Kyiv, despite seemingly unfavorable terms on the ground.
“The Kyiv axis is among their top priorities,” says Ruslan Leviev of the Conflict Intelligence Team, an online investigation group checking Russia’s military activity.
“As we believe, Russians may acknowledge the fact that at some point they will have to seek talks and offer a deal. So they need the strongest leverage they can get for the talks, which is the siege of Kyiv and a humanitarian disaster in the city.”
According to the group’s estimates, Russia may be trying to concentrate a total of nearly 21-22 battalion tactical groups against Kyiv, including nearly 15 coming from the northwest.
The Russian force from the east could have been much stronger, the CIT said, but the Ukrainian resistance in the northern regions, particularly Chernihiv, has diverted a significant portion of the enemy force from the capital city.
The Russian perspective of encircling Kyiv does not seem promising, given the mission’s complexity, the group believes. But even in case of an uneven success, Russia will unlikely resolve to try and break through the city defenses.
“Although they have made numerous mistakes in terms of military strategy and leadership, I think they understand that with their force available, assaulting Kyiv makes no sense, Leviev says.
“It will not be successful,” he said.
It is much more likely that Russians will try and establish a blockade amid relentless shelling and airstrikes. Such tactics of forcing cities into surrendering via total terror have so far barely worked against Mariupol, Sumy, and especially Kharkiv, which carry on with their fierce resistance despite massive destruction and loss of life.
Kyiv, being a very large and well-fortified city, is an incomparably more difficult target for a Russian blockade, let alone an all-out assault, as experts believe.
“Assaulting Kyiv in this situation would a stupid thing to do,” says Zagorodnyuk.
“But we have already seen them doing stupid things — so we should not rule this out.”
Beto O'Rourke spoke with Evan Smith at SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. (photo: Chris Saucedo/Getty Images/SXSW)
The Democratic gubernatorial candidate compared his Republican opponent to the Russian president Vladimir Putin
As governor, Abbott has presided over draconian laws on issues including abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and voting rights. In February 2021, on his watch, a failure of the state energy grid during cold weather contributed to hundreds of deaths.
O’Rourke is a former congressman and candidate for both US Senate and the Democratic presidential nomination. On Saturday, he spoke at the SXSW festival in Austin, the state capital.
Speaking to Evan Smith, a co-founder of the Texas Tribune newspaper, O’Rourke said, “I just had a chance to meet with the ambassador from the [European Union]. We talked about the fact that you’re seeing the continued rise of authoritarians and thugs across the world. And we have our own, right here, in the state of Texas.”
Smith asked: “Greg Abbott is a thug in your mind?”
O’Rourke said: “He’s a thug, he’s an authoritarian. Let me make the case.
“Not only could this guy, through his own incompetence, not keep the lights on in the energy capital of the planet last February, but when people like Kelcy Warren and other energy company CEOs made … $11bn in profit over five days – selling gas for 200 times the going rate – not only did [Abbott] not claw back those illegal profits, not only was there no justice for more than 700 people who were killed – who literally froze to death in their homes, outside, in their cars, people who are paying now tens of billions of dollars cumulatively to pay for the property damage that the flooding that ensued caused in their homes – but he’s taking millions of dollars in payoffs from these same people.
“I mean, he’s got his own oligarch here in the state of Texas.”
Russian oligarchs, billionaire businessmen who control fortunes often based on natural resources and work closely with Putin, have been subject to severe sanctions in the west since their president ordered the invasion of Ukraine last month.
As the Texas Tribune reported, the state of Texas says 246 people died in the power grid failure in 2021 but other analysis has placed the figure as high as 702.
The paper also pointed out that Warren, a co-founder of Energy Transfer, an oil pipeline company, recently sued O’Rourke for defamation. Warren did not immediately comment on Saturday. O’Rourke has called the lawsuit “frivolous”.
According to testimony from a Texas power grid manager, energy prices were kept high in the aftermath of the failure as a way to incentivise private companies to avoid more blackouts.
In a statement, Abbott’s campaign said: “It’s unfortunate Beto O’Rourke continues to run a campaign based on fear-mongering and tearing down Texas.”
O’Rourke also linked Abbott to Putin when discussing a new elections law which critics say seeks to reduce participation among those likely to vote Democratic.
“You think this stuff only exists in Russia or in other parts of the world?” said O’Rourke. “It’s happening right here. You think they rig elections in other parts of the planet? It is the toughest state in the nation in which to vote, right here.”
Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994 but progressives see hope in demographic change. O’Rourke showed strongly in his US Senate race in 2018, losing narrowly to the Republican Ted Cruz. But his run for the presidency went nowhere.
The Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey’s decision not to run for governor cleared O’Rourke’s path but Realclearpolitics.com on Saturday put Abbott up by 8.8% in its polling average. Fivethirtyeight.com showed Abbott up by between 5% and 11%.
On Saturday, O’Rourke said he would seek to work with Republicans on gun control reform, strong remarks on the subject having proved unpopular with Texans in 2020. He also discussed immigration and Joe Biden – who he said was “not a drag on anyone”.
Mark Miner, Abbott’s communications director, said: “It appears if you want Beto to tell the truth, you need to put him in front of out-of-state liberal elitists, not the people of Texas.”
All of these letters from Black Americans to the people who once controlled their lives show a desire for freedom and a desperate longing to be reunited with their families. (image: Arielle Ray/WP/Library of Congress/Onondaga Historical Association/Samuel J. Miller/Art Institute of Chicago/Wikimedia Commons/David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library/Duke University)
All of these letters from Black Americans to the people who once controlled their lives show a desire for freedom and a desperate longing to be reunited with their families.
Three of these five letters were written by formerly enslaved people directly to their onetime enslavers. One was addressed to President Abraham Lincoln, who had the power to emancipate its author and had so far withheld it. One was written by a still-enslaved woman desperately searching for her daughter.
Spelling has been standardized and paragraph breaks added for readability.
“Send us our wages”: Jourdon Anderson, 1865
Jourdon Anderson and his family were freed by Union troops during the Civil War and left Tennessee for Ohio. A few months after the war ended, Anderson’s former enslaver wrote to him, asking him to return to the plantation, where the harvest was about to come in, and promising a wage and freedom. Anderson dictated his reply to his abolitionist employer, who was so impressed with its wit he had it published in the newspaper.
Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865
To my old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir:
I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.
Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what “the good chance” is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane, and Grundy, go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master.
Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.
I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio.
If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die, if it come to that, than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters.
You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson
P.S.— Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
Anderson’s former enslaver was forced to sell his plantation and died a few years later at 44. Anderson lived a long life, had 11 children with his wife and became a sexton in his church.
“It is my Desire to be free”: Annie Davis (to Abraham Lincoln), 1864
Lincoln was never a slaveholder, but as president during the Civil War, he held the fate and freedom of millions of Black Americans in his hands. As such, he received hundreds of letters from Black Americans, both free and enslaved, many of which are collected in a new book. When Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, he did not free enslaved people in slave states that remained in the Union, like Maryland, where Annie Davis was held.
Belair, Aug. 25th, 1864
Mr. President,
It is my Desire to be free. To go to see my people on the Eastern Shore. My mistress won’t let me.
You will please let me know if we are free and what I can do. I write to you for advice. Please send me word this week, or as soon as possible, and obliged.
Annie Davis
Belair, Harford County, MD.
There is no evidence Lincoln responded. However, the state of Maryland ended slavery months later, a move the president had urged.
“I took nothing but what belonged to me”: Frederick Douglass, 1848
Ten years after escaping slavery, famed abolitionist orator and activist Frederick Douglass published an open letter to his former enslaver, Thomas Auld, in the abolitionist newspaper Douglass founded, the North Star. This is an excerpt of the full 3,400-word letter.
I have often thought I should like to explain to you the grounds upon which I have justified myself in running away from you. I am almost ashamed to do so now, for by this time you may have discovered them yourself. I will, however, glance at them.
When yet but a child about six years old, I imbibed the determination to run away. The very first mental effort that I now remember on my part, was an attempt to solve the mystery — why am I a slave? and with this question my youthful mind was troubled for many days, pressing upon me more heavily at times than others. When I saw the slave-driver whip a slave-woman, cut the blood out of her neck, and heard her piteous cries, I went away into the corner of the fence, wept and pondered over the mystery.
I had, through some medium, I know not what, got some idea of God, the Creator of all mankind, the black and the white, and that he had made the blacks to serve the whites as slaves. How he could do this and be good, I could not tell. I was not satisfied with this theory, which made God responsible for slavery, for it pained me greatly, and I have wept over it long and often.
At one time, your first wife, Mrs. Lucretia, heard me sighing and saw me shedding tears, and asked of me the matter, but I was afraid to tell her. I was puzzled with this question, till one night while sitting in the kitchen, I heard some of the old slaves talking of their parents having been stolen from Africa by white men and were sold here as slaves. The whole mystery was solved at once.
Very soon after this, my Aunt Jinny and Uncle Noah ran away, and the great noise made about it by your father-in-law made me, for the first time, acquainted with the fact that there were free states as well as slave states. From that time, I resolved that I would someday run away.
The morality of the act I dispose of as follows: I am myself; you are yourself; we are two distinct persons, equal persons. What you are, I am. You are a man, and so am I. God created both, and made us separate beings. I am not by nature bond to you, or you to me. Nature does not make your existence depend upon me, or mine to depend upon yours. I cannot walk upon your legs, or you upon mine. I cannot breathe for you, or you for me; I must breathe for myself, and you for yourself. We are distinct persons, and are each equally provided with faculties necessary to our individual existence.
In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for obtaining an honest living. Your faculties remained yours, and mine became useful to their rightful owner. I therefore see no wrong in any part of the transaction. It is true, I went off secretly; but that was more your fault than mine. Had I let you into the secret, you would have defeated the enterprise entirely; but for this, I should have been really glad to have made you acquainted with my intentions to leave.
You may perhaps want to know how I like my present condition. I am free to say, I greatly prefer it to that which I occupied in Maryland. I am, however, by no means prejudiced against the state as such. Its geography, climate, fertility, and products are such as to make it a very desirable abode for any man; and but for the existence of slavery there, it is not impossible that I might again take up my abode in that state. It is not that I love Maryland less, but freedom more.
Since I left you, I have had a rich experience. I have occupied stations which I never dreamed of when a slave. Three out of the ten years since I left you, I spent as a common laborer on the wharves of New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was there I earned my first free dollar. It was mine. I could spend it as I pleased. I could buy hams or herring with it, without asking any odds of anybody. That was a precious dollar to me. You remember when I used to make seven, or eight, or even nine dollars a week in Baltimore, you would take every cent of it from me every Saturday night, saying that I belonged to you, and my earnings also. I never liked this conduct on your part — to say the best, I thought it a little mean. I would not have served you so. But let that pass.
I have an industrious and neat companion, and four dear children — the oldest a girl of nine years, and three fine boys, the oldest eight, the next six, and the youngest four years old. The three oldest are now going regularly to school; two can read and write, and the other can spell, with tolerable correctness, words of two syllables. Dear fellows! they are all in comfortable beds, and are sound asleep, perfectly secure under my own roof. There are no slaveholders here to rend my heart by snatching them from my arms, or blast a mother’s dearest hopes by tearing them from her bosom. These dear children are ours — not to work up into rice, sugar, and tobacco, but to watch over, regard, and protect, and to rear them up in the nurture and admonition of the gospel — to train them up in the paths of wisdom and virtue, and, as far as we can, to make them useful to the world and to themselves.
Oh! sir, a slaveholder never appears to me so completely an agent of hell, as when I think of and look upon my dear children. It is then that my feelings rise above my control. I meant to have said more with respect to my own prosperity and happiness, but thoughts and feelings which this recital has quickened, unfits me to proceed further in that direction. The grim horrors of slavery rise in all their ghastly terror before me; the wails of millions pierce my heart and chill my blood.
I remember the chain, the gag, the bloody whip; the death-like gloom overshadowing the broken spirit of the fettered bondman; the appalling liability of his being torn away from wife and children, and sold like a beast in the market. Say not that this is a picture of fancy. You well know that I wear stripes on my back, inflicted by your direction; and that you, while we were brothers in the same church, caused this right hand, with which I am now penning this letter, to be closely tied to my left, and my person dragged, at the pistol’s mouth, fifteen miles, from the Bay Side to Easton, to be sold like a beast in the market, for the alleged crime of intending to escape from your possession. All this, and more, you remember, and know to be perfectly true, not only of yourself, but of nearly all of the slaveholders around you.
At this moment, you are probably the guilty holder of at least three of my own dear sisters, and my only brother, in bondage. These you regard as your property. They are recorded on your ledger, or perhaps have been sold to human flesh-mongers, with a view to filling your own ever-hungry purse. Sir, I desire to know how and where these dear sisters are. Have you sold them? or are they still in your possession? What has become of them? are they living or dead? And my dear old grandmother, whom you turned out like an old horse to die in the woods — is she still alive? Write and let me know all about them.
If my grandmother be still alive, she is of no service to you, for by this time she must be nearly eighty years old — too old to be cared for by one to whom she has ceased to be of service; send her to me at Rochester, or bring her to Philadelphia, and it shall be the crowning happiness of my life to take care of her in her old age. Oh! she was to me a mother and a father, so far as hard toil for my comfort could make her such. Send me my grandmother! that I may watch over and take care of her in her old age. And my sisters — let me know all about them. I would write to them, and learn all I want to know of them, without disturbing you in any way, but that, through your unrighteous conduct, they have been entirely deprived of the power to read and write. You have kept them in utter ignorance, and have therefore robbed them of the sweet enjoyments of writing or receiving letters from absent friends and relatives.
Your wickedness and cruelty, committed in this respect on your fellow creatures, are greater than all the stripes you have laid upon my back or theirs. It is an outrage upon the soul, a war upon the immortal spirit, and one for which you must give account at the bar of our common Father and Creator. The responsibility which you have assumed in this regard is truly awful, and how you could stagger under it these many years is marvelous. Your mind must have become darkened, your heart hardened, your conscience seared and petrified, or you would have long since thrown off the accursed load, and sought relief at the hands of a sin-forgiving God.
I will now bring this letter to a close; you shall hear from me again unless you let me hear from you. I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery — as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening the horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. I shall make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy — and as a means of bringing this guilty nation, with yourself, to repentance. In doing this, I entertain no malice toward you personally. There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.
I am your fellow man, but not your slave.
Douglass met with Auld in 1877. They mostly spoke warmly about family members — Auld’s wife and Douglass’s beloved grandmother — and Auld told Douglass he was right to have escaped bondage.
“What has Ever become of my Precious little girl?”: Vilet Lester, 1857
Nothing is known of Vilet Lester and the fate of her daughter other than what appears in this letter, which she likely dictated to her enslaver and addressed to Patsey Patterson, who may have been the adult daughter of Lester’s former enslaver. It was found in the papers of Patterson’s relatives and is housed at Duke University.
Georgia, Bullock Co., August 29th, 1857
My Loving Miss Patsey,
I have long been wishing to embrace this present and pleasant opportunity of unfolding my [word unclear] and feelings, since I was constrained to leave my Long Loved home and friends, which I cannot never give myself the Least promise of returning to. I am well and Enjoying good health and ha[ve] ever Since I Left Randolph.
When'd I left Randolph, I went to Rockingham and Stayed there five weeks, and then I left there and went to Richmond, Virginia, to be Sold. And I Stayed there three days and was bought by a man by the name of Groover and brought to Georgia, and he kept me about Nine months. And he, being a trader, Sold me to a man by the name of Rimes. And he Sold me to a man by the name of Lester, and he has owned me four years and Says that he will keep me until death Separates us, [unless] Some of my old North Carolina friends wants to buy me again.
My Dear Mistress, I cannot tell my feelings, nor how bad I wish to See you, and old Boss and Miss Rahol and Mother. I do not know which I want to See the worst, Miss Rahol or mother. I have thought that I wanted to See mother, but never before did I know what it was to want to See a parent and could not.
I wish you to give my love to old Boss, Miss Rahol and Bailum, and give my manifold love to mother, brothers and sister, and please to tell them to Write to me, So I may hear from them, if I cannot See them.
And also, I wish you to write to me and write me all the news. I do want to know whether old Boss is Still Living or not, and all the rest of them, and I want to know whether Bailum is married or not. I wish to know what has Ever become of my Precious little girl. I left her in Goldsborough with Mr. Walker, and I have not heard from her Since. And Walker Said that he was going to Carry her to Rockingham and give her to his Sister, and I want to know whether he did or not, as I do wish to See her very much.
And Boss Says he wishes to know whether he [Walker] will Sell her or not, and the least that can buy her. And that he wishes an answer as Soon as he can get one, as I wish him to buy her, and my Boss, being a man of Reason and feeling, wishes to grant my troubled breast that much gratification and wishes to know whether he will Sell her now.
So I must come to a close by Escribing myself your long-loved and well-wishing play mate, as a Servant until death,
Vilet Lester of Georgia to Miss Patsey Patterson of North Carolina
My Boss’s Name is James B. Lester, and if you Should think enough of me to write me, which I do beg the favor of you as a Servant, direct your letter to Millray, Bullock County, Georgia. Please do write me, So fare you well, in love.
“Wretched Woman!”: Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen, 1860
Rev. Jermain Wesley Loguen was born “Jarm Logue” in Tennessee in 1813. His enslaver, Mannasseth Logue, was also his biological father. Twenty-six years after his Christmas escape, Loguen was a renowned minister in Syracuse, N.Y., his home a hub on the Underground Railroad. In February 1860, Logue’s wife wrote to him, giving him a brief update on his family and blaming him for her financial problems. She insisted he return or send her $1,000, or else she would sell him to someone who, because of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, could come to Syracuse and legally kidnap him. This is his reply to her.
Syracuse, N.Y., March 28, 1860
MRS. SARAH LOGUE:—
Yours of the 20th of February is duly received, and I thank you for it. It is a long time since I heard from my poor old mother, and I am glad to know she is yet alive, and, as you say, “as well as common.” What that means I don’t know. I wish you had said more about her.
You are a woman; but had you a woman’s heart you could never have insulted a brother by telling him you sold his only remaining brother and sister, because he put himself beyond your power to convert him into money.
You sold my brother and sister, ABE and ANN, and 12 acres of land, you say, because I ran away. Now you have the unutterable meanness to ask me to return and be your miserable chattel, or in lieu thereof send you $1000 to enable you to redeem the land, but not to redeem my poor brother and sister! If I were to send you money it would be to get my brother and sister, and not that you should get land.
You say you are a cripple, and doubtless you say it to stir my pity, for you know I was susceptible in that direction. I do pity you from the bottom of my heart. Nevertheless I am indignant beyond the power of words to express, that you should be so sunken and cruel as to tear the hearts I love so much all in pieces; that you should be willing to impale and crucify us out of all compassion for your poor foot or leg.
Wretched woman! Be it known to you that I value my freedom, to say nothing of my mother, brothers and sisters, more than your whole body; more, indeed, than my own life; more than all the lives of all the slaveholders and tyrants under Heaven.
You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, “you know we raised you as we did our own children.” Woman, did you raise your own children for the market? Did you raise them for the whipping-post? Did you raise them to be driven off in a coffle in chains? Where are my poor bleeding brothers and sisters? Can you tell? Who was it that sent them off into sugar and cotton fields, to be kicked, and cuffed, and whipped, and to groan and die; and where no kin can hear their groans, or attend and sympathize at their dying bed, or follow in their funeral?
Wretched woman! Do you say you did not do it? Then I reply, your husband did, and you approved the deed — and the very letter you sent me shows that your heart approves it all. Shame on you.
But, by the way, where is your husband? You don’t speak of him. I infer, therefore, that he is dead; that he has gone to his great account, with all his sins against my poor family upon his head. Poor man! gone to meet the spirits of my poor, outraged and murdered people, in a world where Liberty and Justice are MASTERS.
But you say I am a thief, because I took the old mare along with me. Have you got to learn that I had a better right to the old mare, as you call her, than MANNASSETH LOGUE had to me? Is it a greater sin for me to steal his horse, than it was for him to rob my mother’s cradle and steal me? If he and you infer that I forfeit all my rights to you, shall not I infer that you forfeit all your rights to me? Have you got to learn that human rights are mutual and reciprocal, and if you take my liberty and life, you forfeit your own liberty and life? Before God and High Heaven, is there a law for one man which is not a law for every other man?
If you or any other speculator on my body and rights, wish to know how I regard my rights, they need but come here and lay their hands on me to enslave me. Did you think to terrify me by presenting the alternative to give my money to you, or give my body to Slavery? Then let me say to you, that I meet the proposition with unutterable scorn and contempt. The proposition is an outrage and an insult. I will not budge one hair’s breadth. I will not breathe a shorter breath, even to save me from your persecutions. I stand among a free people, who, I thank God, sympathize with my rights, and the rights of mankind; and if your emissaries and venders come here to re-enslave me, and escape the unshrinking vigor of my own right arm, I trust my strong and brave friends, in this City and State, will be my rescuers and avengers.
Yours, &c., J.W. Loguen
Filmmaker Brent Renaud. (photo: Mike Coppola/Getty Images North America/AFP)
Kyiv regional police say Russian troops opened fire on the car of Brent Renaud and another journalist near the capital.
Russian troops opened fire on the car of Brent Renaud and another journalist in Irpin, about 10km (6 miles) northwest of the capital, the Kyiv police force said in a statement on Sunday. It said the injured journalist was taken to a hospital in Kyiv.
The adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, Anton Herashchenko, confirmed the incident on a Telegram channel.
There was no immediate comment from the Russian authorities.
The journalist being treated at the hospital said he and a colleague were shot after they were stopped at a checkpoint just after a bridge in Irpin.
Juan Arredondo told Italian journalist Annalisa Camilli in an interview from the hospital before being taken for surgery that the colleague who was with him was hit in the neck and remained on the ground earlier on Sunday.
Camilli told The Associated Press news agency that she was at the hospital when Arredondo arrived and that Arredondo himself had been wounded, hit in the lower back when stopped at a Russian checkpoint.
He told Camilli that he and Renaud were filming refugees fleeing the area when they were shot at while in a car approaching a checkpoint. The driver turned around but the firing at them continued, Arredondo added.
Arredondo said an ambulance took him to the hospital and that Renaud was “left behind”.
The New York Times, responding to reports that Renaud was a reporter for the paper, said he had previously worked for it but had not been on assignment for the Times in Ukraine.
“We are deeply saddened to hear of Brent Renaud’s death,” a spokesperson for the paper said on Twitter, naming the journalist thought to have been killed.
“Brent was a talented filmmaker who had contributed to The New York Times over the years.”
“Early reports that he worked for Times circulated because he was wearing a Times press badge that had been issued for an assignment many years ago.”
Asked about the reports, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CBS News that the United States government would be consulting with the Ukrainians to determine how this happened and would then “execute appropriate consequences”.
“This is part and parcel of what has been a brazen aggression on the part of the Russians, where they have targeted civilians, they have targeted hospitals, they have targeted places of worship, and they have targeted journalists,” Sullivan said.
Ammon Bundy. (photo: Sarah A. Miller/Ammon Bundy)
The incident came two days before Bundy is scheduled to stand trial on three charges from a previous trespassing case at the Idaho Capitol.
In the latest incident, Bundy was arrested around 1:15 a.m. Saturday morning, said Kelsey Johnston, spokesperson for the police department.
“He was asked to leave the property and did not,” Johnston told the Idaho Statesman.
Bundy’s gubernatorial campaign manager, Wendy Kay Whitaker, was also arrested, on suspicion of trespassing at the hospital, and two people were arrested earlier Friday in a related incident on suspicion of resisting or obstructing police.
On Friday, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare referred a child welfare case to the Meridian Police, Johnston said.
Police were informed that a 10-month-old child who had been taken to a hospital March 1 was determined by medical staff to be “suffering from severe malnourishment,” according to a news release from the Meridian Police Department. On March 4, the child was discharged from the hospital under the care of his parents.
During a follow-up appointment the following week, “it was determined the child had again lost a significant amount of weight and when the parents canceled the next follow-up appointment and could not be located, the Meridian Police were contacted and advised this child’s condition could lead to severe injury or even death if not treated,” the release said.
Health and Welfare eventually contacted the child’s father, who said he would bring the child in for an appointment, but did not, the release added.
Police officers also attempted to check on the child at a Meridian residence, but “the occupants were uncooperative and refused to let officers check on the child’s welfare,” the release said. After receiving a warrant to enter the home, police discovered the child and his parents weren’t there.
According to a Saturday blog post linked to by Bundy’s campaign, the child involved in the welfare incident is the grandson of Diego Rodriguez, a Boise pastor, People’s Rights activist and figure in Bundy’s bid for governor. Rodriguez is listed as the author of the post.
After the baby’s release from the hospital on March 4, he was in the care of a pediatrician, the post said. On Friday, the boy’s mother canceled an appointment with the pediatrician because she “woke up not feeling well.”
Later on Friday, police went to the family’s address, but the child and parents were not there, the post said. On Friday night, the family was at a friend’s house for dinner. After departing, police stopped the parents at a Garden City gas station and took the child, the post said.
The Garden City traffic stop was conducted by Garden City Police with the assistance of Boise Police and the Meridian Police Department. Meridian Police took the child into custody near the 3700 block of Chinden Boulevard in Garden City. The boy’s mother was arrested on suspicion of resisting or obstructing police during a traffic stop, the police news release said.
‘He’s my baby. I’m not gonna leave him’
The child’s mother livestreamed on Facebook from the back of the ambulance while police told her what was happening and took the baby. The video runs nearly 6 minutes and mostly features the back and forth between the mother and a police officer.
“He’s my baby. I’m not gonna leave him,” the mother said. “… I understand you want to get him better. Why can’t I be with him while you’re doing the medical work? How am I a danger to him if I’m just watching and I’m with him?”
The police officer informed the mother that the detective on the case had declared the boy in “imminent danger.”
“I really don’t want to make this worse on you,” the officer said. “I’d like to get him the help that he needs right now. … He goes with us in the ambulance and you leave. If that doesn’t happen, then we arrest you.”
Eventually, the officer told the mother she can hand over the baby and “go on your merry way” or “I remove him from you and you go to jail.”
After the mother refused one more time, no people are seen in the video but voices can he heard.
“Please let him go so he does not get hurt,” the officer said.
“I promise,” a female voice tells the mother, “I will take good care of him.”
During the traffic stop, Bundy directed followers of his to come to the site and record the incident, Johnston said.
When the child was taken to St. Luke’s Meridian, Bundy also directed followers of his to go there, Johnston said.
Early Saturday morning, a text alert was sent out to followers of the People’s Rights, an activist citizens group organized by Bundy, to go to the hospital in order to have “boots on the ground … to demand that the baby have family present,” according to copies of the messages reviewed by the Statesman.
In a Saturday post on Twitter, Bundy wrote that “last night my very good friend Diego’s grandson was medically kidnapped because a medical practitioner called (child protective services) for a missed doctor appointment. If this happened to them, it could happen to you.”
In an earlier statement from his campaign, Bundy said that the incident was “an ambush arrest with no legal grounds.”
Bundy and the mother are not being held at the Ada County Jail, according to jail records. Both Bundy and the mother attended a protest Saturday afternoon at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center, which has a children’s hospital.
In a Saturday interview with the Statesman at the protest, Bundy said he thinks the child is being treated at the pediatric hospital in Boise. He paid $325 in bail and was released from jail at around 4 a.m.
“We have just become such a pro-police state,” Bundy said, calling the state’s conduct “disparaging.”
“That child does not belong to the state,” he added. “That child belongs to their parents.”
Bundy’s history with law enforcement
Bundy has a substantial arrest record.
The Emmett resident is set to go on trial Monday for two charges of misdemeanor trespassing and one charge of resisting or obstructing officers after he was arrested twice in one day at the Idaho Capitol in April 2021. At the time he was subject to a one-year ban from the Statehouse.
The reason for his ban was a previous trespassing incident, when Bundy refused to leave an auditorium at the Idaho Statehouse in August 2020 during a protest of the Idaho Legislature’s special session and was rolled out of the building by police in a chair. In July 2021, he was found guilty in that case of misdemeanor trespassing and misdemeanor resisting or obstructing officers.
Bundy received a three-day jail sentence, with credit for time served, and did not receive additional jail time. He was also sentenced to 48 hours of community service, and in December argued that his time spent campaigning for governor counted as community service.
Bundy is well-known for participating in armed standoffs with law enforcement, notably at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, and on federal land near his family’s ranch in Nevada in 2014.
The Malheur takeover of federal land left one man dead.
Bundy was charged in the Oregon and Nevada incidents. He was acquitted in Oregon, and the Nevada charges were dismissed after a mistrial.
On Saturday, Bundy called the Ada County Magistrate Court, where his trial will take place, a “kangaroo court.”
“It’s just such a joke,” he said. “Every time I’ve been arrested, I’ve been in the defense of somebody’s rights.”
A burn pit at Balad airbase in Balad, Iraq, in March 2008. (photo: Us Air Force/Reuters)
Joe Biden, whose son Beau’s cancer may have been connected to exposure, has advocated for a better response
Instead the US president was speaking about an issue with personal resonance: burn pits. That is the catch-all term used to describe how American soldiers in foreign wars were exposed to toxic chemicals from incinerated military waste that years later causes debilitating disease and death to thousands of veterans.
One of those victims, Biden believes, could be his son Beau. In his recent State of the Union address, Biden talked about burn pits – excavations filled with any and all waste from a deployment and set aflame with jet fuel or diesel – saying exposure could have led to the death of Beau, who served a year-long tour of duty in Iraq and later died of brain cancer.
“When they came home, many of the world’s fittest and best-trained warriors in the world were never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin. I know,” Biden said.
In Texas, Biden met with veterans, including one who was stationed near a pit and later had six weeks of treatment and chemotherapy, and said that access to healthcare and benefits for affected veterans should be expanded. “They shouldn’t have to ask for a damn thing,” Biden said. “It should be, ‘I’ve got a problem’ and we should say, How can I help?’”
The Department of Defense estimates that roughly 3.5 million service members could have been exposed to burn pits during America’s wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan. A legislative battle is now under way to require the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand its recognition of the health consequences of burn pit exposure. Biden said he’d sign it, and it is nearing Senate approval after passing the House two weeks ago.
But the experience of veterans has been much like those American soldiers returning from Vietnam after being exposed to the toxic defoliant Agent Orange and began reporting symptoms, including various types of cancer. They face disbelief and skepticism.
It took more than two decades for Congress to pass the 1991 Agent Orange Act and another 30 years to pass the Veterans Agent Orange Exposure Equity Act, which shifted the burden from veterans having to prove exposure to the presumption of exposure to the herbicide.
“Many Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who were exposed to burn pits are now starting to develop illnesses that they believe are linked to these types of exposure,” said Aleks Morosky, deputy director with the Wounded Warrior project. “What we know is that many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who were exposed are now getting sick and dying.”
Morosky, who served two tours in Iraq, says that soldiers on active combat duty were primarily concerned with enemy fire and roadside bombs. “The fumes from a burn pit may be a nuisance but it’s not the most dangerous thing, front of mind, when you’re over there. It’s only years later that we’ve come to realize how damaging this stuff might have been.”
During the Gulf war of 1990-91 returning soldiers reported symptoms including fatigue, headaches, joint pain, indigestion, insomnia, dizziness and respiratory disorders that became known collectively as Gulf war syndrome. Among the possible causes was chemical warfare agents, particularly nerve gas, or pyridostigmine bromide, which was given as a preventive measure against exposure to chemical weapons.
But Gulf war syndrome, like the symptoms of Agent Orange exposure and burn pit exposure, can produce multifaceted conditions that lack uniformity and are not easily linked in medical terms to a set of symptoms.
Under the Agent Orange Act, says Morosky, “there was a scientific framework in place that triggers determinations by the VA and a list of conditions that are presumed to be connected to service in an area of known exposure. We feel we need an Agent Orange Act for the 21st century.”
But today it remains difficult for individual veterans to prove the exposure to burn pits caused their health problems, and in most cases, the VA doesn’t consider exposure a service-related condition. The Department of Veterans Affairs has denied about 75% of veterans’ burn pit claims.
Last year the VA established a presumption of service connection for asthma, sinusitis and rhinitis based on exposure to fine particulate matter for veterans who served any time after August 1990 in the south-west Asia theater of operations, as well as Afghanistan, Syria, Djibouti or Uzbekistan on or after 19 September 2001. As of this month 30,000 had filed claims, with 73% of 18,105 processed claims being granted so far.
In a statement to the Guardian, a VA spokesperson said: “While there are differences between herbicide agents, such as Agent Orange, used during the Vietnam war, and airborne hazards in the Gulf war region, VA takes seriously any claim for disability due to military environmental exposure.” It continued: “The VA will continue to study the long-term health effects from airborne hazards in the Gulf war region.”
Support for veterans has come from Biden, who announced that the VA will take new steps to care for veterans diagnosed with nine cancers related to chemical exposure, and from TV political satirist Jon Stewart, who appeared on Capitol Hill last week to promote the Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2021.
Stewart warned lawmakers not to stall the bill. “Fuck that,” he said.
Last year he told NBC: “I would challenge any congressperson who says, ‘Well, we’re going to wait for the science to be settled,’ to dig a 100-yard pit in the middle of a town where your constituents live, and burn everything in that town with jet fuel. And then come and tell me that, ‘Yeah, they’re cool with it, because there’s a lot of confusion about whether or not the science is settled that this is harmful to your health.’”
Biden’s son Beau was a major in a Delaware army national guard unit that deployed to Iraq in 2008. He was later named Delaware attorney general before being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2013. He died two years later at age 46.
“We don’t know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer, or the diseases of so many of our troops,” Biden said in Texas. “But I’m committed to finding out everything we can.”
In a response, the VA said: “Any veteran who believes he or she has a disability related to military service would be encouraged to file a claim.”
One soldier who fell sick after serving in Iraq is 54-year-old army veteran Andrew Myatt, who completed several tours in the Middle East. During a routine physical three years ago, he was referred to an oncologist who diagnosed an aggressive form of adult leukemia. After three years of chemotherapy treatments the cancer is in remission.
But the VA has denied Myatt’s eligibility. “I served with honor so it was frustrating to be told, in effect, you’re old and broken and we don’t need you,” he said. “You have to prove you were exposed and that exposure caused what you have.”
Myatt points out that the burn pit exposure is not necessarily a war zone issue. The military uses burn pits to dispose of material on foreign training exercises as well. According to a 2019 report from the defense department, there were nine active military burn pits in the Middle East as of 2018.
A 2015 report from a Pentagon inspector general said it was “indefensible” that military personnel were “put at further risk from the potentially harmful emissions” from the use of burn pits.
Myatt reasons that all military engagements come with lessons of what could have been done better. For his generation, it’s the burn pits or other toxic exposure-related illnesses.
“We’d like to see the legislation go through,” he said. “There are a lot of things service members are coming down with – leukemia, skin cancer, lung cancer, brain tumors – that haven’t been seen as cause-and-effect of our exposure while serving our government in a wartime fashion.”
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