19 March 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
The criminal Russian invasion has devastated cities around Ukraine and forced millions to flee the country. Achieving a cease-fire is top priority — but the war has already brought changes that will echo for decades to come.
At the same time, new divisions have emerged on the Left. Although supporters of the Russian invasion are a small minority, some in Eastern Europe and elsewhere have faulted leftists in the West for underestimating Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions — a threat that has now become all too real for the people of Kharkiv, Mariupol, and other parts of Ukraine under Russian assault.
The repercussions of the war are bound to be felt in both countries — and around the world — for years to come. What will the war mean for the future of Ukraine? How will it impact the Left? To get answers to these and other questions, Jerko Bakotin of the Croatian weekly Novosti spoke with Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko. The article was translated into English by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
JB: Russia’s attack on Ukraine surprised analysts, many of whom had argued that it would not happen given how greatly it would harm Russia’s interests. What’s your take on this?
VI: There were numerous reasons for skepticism concerning the possibility of an attack, primarily due to the enormous military, economic, political, and geopolitical risks of the move. There was a real possibility that Moscow underestimated the Ukrainian army and that there were mistakes in planning the military operation — some soldiers believed they were going to exercises in Belarus and received orders just before the attack began.
Furthermore, although France and Germany pursued a slightly different policy than the United States before the invasion, the European Union is now imposing tougher sanctions than the United States. The invasion will greatly affect Russia’s position in the world and the domestic political situation. Vladimir Putin has risked everything, so a defeat in Ukraine would probably cost him his ruling position, most likely ending in a coup within the existing elite, and perhaps even his life. A revolution cannot be ruled out either, although the chances for it are lower.
Due to all these risks, many social scientists and international relations analysts believed that Putin wanted to intimidate Ukraine and NATO, but that there would be no attack.
JB: There are several theories about Putin’s motivation: questions about his mental health, imperialist messianism, the threat posed by NATO, or the theory that a democratic Ukraine threatens autocracy in Russia itself. What do you think?
VI: I still haven’t seen a convincing interpretation. The thesis that Putin went crazy does not stand, because, in my eyes, he does not exhibit symptoms of madness. As far as the explanation that he turned into an ideological fanatic with a messianic mission of rebuilding the Russian Empire is concerned, one must say that leaders with sincere ideological beliefs are very, very atypical in post-Soviet politics. All post-Soviet leaders were cynical pragmatists who built kleptocratic regimes bereft of ideological vision. Even if it is true that Putin has become an ideological fanatic, it remains a mystery how this came about, and further explanations are needed.
JB: But Putin set out clear imperialist and chauvinistic reasons in his essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” last year, and even more so in his speech announcing the war, where he spoke of “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. He denied Ukraine’s right to independent statehood, and last week mentioned the possibility of its disappearance. The ideological motives seem to be very clear, don’t you think?
VI: The question is whether this is just rhetoric to legitimize moves driven by other reasons. Today many interpret his essay in the way you mentioned. However, that text does not deny Ukrainian independence but rather a specific form of Ukrainian identity, which is not the only possible one. Putin argues against Ukraine based on anti-Russian identity. In his vision, Ukraine and Russia could be two states for “one and the same people.”
Here Putin returns to the interpretation from the time of the Russian Empire, when Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians were seen as three branches of the same people. This concept was suppressed during the Soviet Union, when the official position was that these were three different peoples and languages, even though they were fraternal peoples of common origin.
Many Ukrainians view such interpretations as a negation of their existence because they have built their identity in opposition to Russia, which for them is a “big Other.” For many others, especially those socialized in the USSR, Ukrainians are not necessarily defined as opposed to Russians. Even after Euromaidan and the outbreak of the war in the Donbas region, most Ukrainians thought they were fraternal peoples, and, for 15 to 20 percent of the population, it was normal to feel both Ukrainian and Russian. That said, the current war may erase such ambiguous identities.
JB: In an article published at LeftEast, you argued that the notion that Ukrainians would fiercely resist the Russian invasion were exaggerated. But isn’t that precisely what is happening now?
VI: I was talking about a situation in which Russia destroyed the Ukrainian army and occupied a large part of the territory, which hasn’t happened yet. The resistance is perhaps stronger than Russia expected, but it would probably be different if Kiev had been occupied within ninety-six hours, as the Pentagon predicted. Many Ukrainians are joining the Territorial Defense and the military, but about 2 million people have already fled, and there could be up to 10 million refugees according to some estimates.
At the same time, in the occupied cities such as Kherson or Melitopol, the scenario I have described is happening — there are significant pro-Ukrainian protests, but there is no strong armed resistance. If Russia occupies a large swathe of Ukrainian territory, the majority of the population will likely be initially passive. The armed resistance will not be strong enough to overthrow the occupation, but it will be significant if Moscow tries to establish a very repressive regime in the occupied territories. The result would be a stronger unarmed resistance that would be a source of permanent instability not only in Ukraine but also in Russia.
JB: The West reacted decisively with a strategy based on harsh sanctions against Moscow and the delivery of weapons to Kiev. The destruction of the Russian economy and the strengthening of the Ukrainian resistance have the same goal: to force Moscow to stop the attack. How do you view the response, and what do you make of calls for NATO to establish a no-fly zone?
VI: I fear that if sanctions and arms deliveries remain the dominant response, it means that the West is actually interested in this war. Putin cannot afford to lose, so he will wage war for as long as possible. That will mean a huge number of dead and the complete destruction of Ukrainian cities. Just as it destroyed Grozny in Chechnya, the Russian army could destroy Kiev and Kharkiv. If left without other options, Putin could threaten using nuclear weapons.
I think NATO elites understand that the no-fly zone over Ukraine would mean a war between NATO and Russia. I don’t think we can afford to take our chances when it comes to risking a nuclear apocalypse.
Stopping the war is the absolute priority. This might be possible by immediately giving Ukraine a clear perspective on joining the EU, at least a concrete membership plan. At the same time, an agreement on military neutrality could be reached. This is easier now, because president Volodymyr Zelensky and the rest of the political elite are disappointed that NATO will not help Ukraine or establish a no-fly zone.
Zelensky will be forced to accept painful compromises over Crimea and Donbas. But thanks to EU membership, Zelensky could present the agreement with Russia as a victory and claim that the Ukrainians won what they have been fighting for since the revolution on Maidan Square. At the same time, Putin could also claim that he was not defeated, that the invasion met its goals. The EU and the United States should negotiate something like this if they want to prevent the loss of Ukrainian lives and the destruction of the economy.
JB: What do you mean by the West being interested in this war?
VI: Some commentators enthusiastically say that the long-lasting resistance in Ukraine will exhaust Russia the way the war in Afghanistan contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union. That war did a lot of damage to the USSR, but it meant disaster for the Afghan people. Afghanistan was devastated for decades and became a failed state, where eventually an extremist movement took over.
If the West is satisfied with such a future for Ukraine, it means that they needed this war. The current attitude of the West will be justified only if Russia is really so fragile that it collapses in the very near future. However, if the invasion continues for months or even years, the West will be complicit in prolonging the war.
JB: Ukraine is thus not only a victim of Russia but also of Western geopolitical games?
VI: US and British intelligence had been announcing the invasion for months. If London and Washington were so sure of the invasion, why didn’t they prevent it, why didn’t they negotiate with Putin more actively? Certainly, Putin is most responsible for the war. But the West knew about the invasion and didn’t do enough to prevent it.
JB: The West nurtured Ukraine’s hopes for NATO membership, although it was clear that it wouldn’t defend Ukraine. In that sense, were Ukrainians deceived?
VI: Ukraine has never received a Membership Action Plan, only the theoretical possibility of joining sometime in the future. Despite promises regarding membership, NATO never had any desire to fight for Ukraine. Now Ukrainians are dying. At the very least, such promises toward Ukraine were extremely irresponsible.
JB: Under Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president from 2014 to 2019, NATO membership was included as a goal in the 2019 constitution. How did NATO become such an important issue in Ukrainian politics?
VI: Politicians have never been interested in what Ukrainians really think about NATO. The membership application was submitted by President Viktor Yushchenko after the so-called Orange Revolution in 2004. This was supported by George W. Bush, and, in 2008, it was decided at the Bucharest Summit that Georgia and Ukraine would join the alliance.
At the time, about 20 percent of Ukrainians supported joining NATO. After Euromaidan, Russia annexed Crimea and war broke out in Donbas, leading part of the population to see NATO as a protection against Russia. At the same time, polls were no longer being conducted in Crimea and Donbas, the most pro-Russian parts of the country. Last year, thanks to the fear of Russian troops massing along the border, support for NATO membership exceeded 50 percent. The current invasion has changed attitudes even in the pro-Russian southern and eastern parts of the country. However, disappointment with NATO is growing at the same time.
JB: Possible outcomes of the war include partitioning the country (i.e., imposing a repressive pro-Russian regime in the East while the West becomes a nationalist NATO external base), Russian occupation of all of Ukraine, or Russia’s complete defeat. Could a multinational, multiethnic Ukraine survive?
VI: You have described a likely scenario in the event of a division of the country, but it all depends on the course of the war. Putin’s defeat would probably mean destabilization and the collapse of the ruling Russian regime, which Ukraine could take advantage of and regain even Donbass and Crimea.
As a result of the attack and destruction, there is great hatred toward Russians. I am afraid that the Russian language will be even more suppressed in the public sphere than was the case after the laws passed by Poroshenko. The multicultural country I was born in is probably lost forever.
It is possible that one day reconciliation will take place. After all, Poland and France work closely with Germany within the EU, even though Germany caused enormous suffering to the whole of Europe in World War II. But that would require very serious political changes in Russia itself.
JB: Even before the invasion, you wrote that it could destabilize Russia itself. What will be the consequences of the war and sanctions for Putin’s regime?
VI: If the regime wants to adapt to military, economic, and political challenges, radical changes in the social and political order will be needed. The Russian state currently operates on the principle of kleptocratic patronage capitalism, in which a small elite enriches itself. However, it will not be possible to maintain the pro-Russian regime in parts of Ukraine only through repression, and the resistance of Ukrainians could encourage opposition in Belarus and Russia — especially if Russian soldiers continue to die — and even in Kazakhstan and the entire Russian sphere of interest.
Because instability will not be mitigated by orthodox neoliberal policies, economic historian Adam Tooze has speculated whether the regime will try to pursue some kind of neo-Keynesian policy to improve the lives of citizens and thus buy their support. After both world wars, we saw a significant expansion of workers’ rights to prevent uprisings by the masses who suffered great sacrifices in the war.
Russia’s reorientation toward non-Western countries will also be a problem. Moscow is less isolated than it appears in the West, but other than depending on a more developed China, such a reorientation will not be easy to reconcile with the European identities of Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. Russia will also need a much more coherent ideological project to explain to the population the purpose of all this suffering. The fact that a large part of Russian society does not understand Putin’s invasion is a symptom of the absence of such a project, a project that none of the post-Soviet elites have had.
JB: The invasion also confused the intellectual left, accustomed to blaming the West for almost all the world’s problems. Ukrainian leftists Taras Bilous and Volodymyr Artiukh have criticized what they call the Western left’s “anti-imperialism for idiots” in open letters. What do you think would be the correct left-wing perspective?
VI: I personally have written against simplistic interpretations of Euromaidan, which part of the Western left mistakenly saw as a coup supported by the West, just as the separatist republics in Donbas were seen as proto-socialist states, while in reality they are puppets of a very nonsocialist Russian regime. But discussing the guilt of Western leftists as Putin’s useful idiots in this moment is very damaging to the Left. The debate over underestimating Russian imperialism is important, but it should not be conducted in moments of high emotions and using moral blackmail.
The invasion is going to facilitate a strong right-wing wave, which will greatly narrow the space for the Left in both Eastern and Western Europe. We shouldn’t disarm ourselves and open ourselves up to right-wing attacks. The vast majority of the European left condemns Russian imperialism and understands that the invasion is leading to disaster, just like the American invasion of Iraq.
The Left needs offensive arguments. We must not agree to a ban on discussions about the complicity of NATO and the post-Maidan regime in Ukraine, about the reasons for not implementing the Minsk agreements, or on NATO-Russia relations. That would mean capitulation — especially in Eastern Europe, where, in the coming era of neo-McCarthyism, it might no longer be possible to put forward even basic left-wing arguments without being accused of being a Russian spy.
Refugees from Mariupol. (photo: Wojciech Grzedzinski/WP)
They arrived in a near-constant convoy at the city of Zaporizhzhia, 140 miles to the northwest, their vehicles marked with white flags and signs reading “children” in the hope that it would ease their way.
Some families drove cars with their windshields smashed out or shattered from the force of explosions near their homes. One car, struck in a rocket attack, looked as if it had defied the odds by being able to move at all, one side completely punched in by the impact.
But with vehicles the only way out, anything that could move was put to use. Some were crammed eight or nine people to a car.
Their accounts provide a glimpse of the situation on the ground in a city that has been cut off from communications for more than two weeks.
Those fleeing spoke of weeks spent trapped in their basements with little to eat and no electricity or water. They painted a picture of a city that is no longer fully controlled by Ukrainian forces, with Russian tanks spotted in the streets.
Mariupol, where besieged Ukrainian forces have held out for weeks, is considered an important strategic prize for Russia, a land link from annexed Crimea to areas of eastern Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists. And residents fear that Putin will throw all the fire power he has at it.
“It’s like a horror movie. There’s nothing,” said Oksana, who left with her three sons, her sister, brother-in-law and two nieces. “Everything is bombed, all the roads are bombed. We couldn’t even normally drive out. We drove a lot in circles before we found a route.”
Oksana had fled her home on the city’s periphery for a friend’s home closer in on Feb. 24, the first day of the war, to escape the bombing on the outskirts.
The 37-year-old, who spoke on the condition her last name be withheld to protect relatives left behind, said Russian tanks parked next to the house in which they were sheltering on Wednesday.
“We asked them to take them away,” she said. “We’d written on our houses there are kids here, people here. But they did not do it.”
The tanks fired all night, she said. The force of the shelling shuddered through the house.
Russian soldiers entered the house to check documents, according to family members, and told them to mark their cars with white flags if they left to show they were civilians. When they drove out of the city, they said, they did not see any Ukrainian forces.
They followed the direct road, rather than the agreed-upon corridor through the city of Berdyansk to the city’s west, because they couldn’t navigate to that route. They said soldiers at most of the Russian checkpoints were friendly, with some on the way out of the city giving away cookies and other sweets.
At one checkpoint, though, Russian soldiers took issue with a message on her brother-in-law’s phone describing destruction in a village outside of Mariupol. They said soldiers forced him out of the vehicle with a gun to his head.
“They took him off, and then we just heard a gunshot,” Oksana said. “We thought that was it. When we saw him we started crying from happiness.”
They counted themselves among the lucky ones: The house they were sheltering in was near a well, so they had some water supply. And they did not run out of their stockpiled food, though they cut back from three meals, to two and then one.
Oksana’s sister, Olya, 41, said she shook and cried with relief when she finally saw Ukrainian forces as she approached Zaporizhzhia.
Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the Mariupol mayor’s office, confirmed Russian tanks were in the city. “It’s difficult to say who is controlling what,” he said. “Mariupol is a battlefield. But we are still defending the city, and we aren’t giving up.”
He said one front line was now downtown, near a theater that had been sheltering hundreds of civilians when it was bombed by Russian forces Wednesday.
Around 100 people have emerged alive from the theater bombing, Andryushchenko said. One elderly woman was badly injured and transported to a hospital. Andryushchenko said roughly 800 to 1,000 people were believed to have been in the building at the time of the attack. Some accounts put the number in the theater still missing as high as 1,300.
The fighting is hampering rescue efforts, Andryushchenko said.
“How many people are beneath the rubble, we don’t know,” he said.
Maryna Selkova, 41, said the house in which she was sheltering, near the theater and university in the city center, was already on the front line on Wednesday evening. She could see members of the Azov Battalion, a far-right militia force which has made up a large contingent of Ukrainian front-line forces of the city.
“Our house was shaking,” she said, her 11-year-old son clinging to her neck.
They tried to leave several times, she said, but the fighting was too fierce. “It was so scary to come out, everything was exploding. We got back into the basement and tried again later.”
They finally escaped on Thursday morning. “The theater was already bombed when we left,” she said. “We understood then we couldn’t hide anywhere.”
Many had spent a night in the village of Tokmak, now controlled by the Russians, where residents have opened their doors and cooked them meals. Some arrived injured from explosions.
Denys, 37, had been drinking tea and eating pancakes cooked on a woodfire outside when a blast hit his yard Thursday. “It was like between my ears, something exploded," he said. The side of his ear is sliced and swollen from flying glass.
His family had already fled on the first day of the war, when it was still possible, but the explosion spurred him to leave.
Some say they want to leave the country, but few had solid plans. They were relieved just to have made it out alive.
“I never thought in the 21st century I’d live though something like this,” said Selkova, an accountant. “Now we will have to start all over again.”
With vehicles the only means of escape, families are loading in as many people as possible. Nine members of Aleksei Vlasov and Alesya Vlasova’s extended family packed themselves into a single aging Ford Mondeo to escape. They packed the cat and their 21-year-old son’s two guitars, one acoustic and one electric, among the bundles on the roof.
They wanted to pick up Alesya’s 83-year-old grandmother, but drove to her home and couldn’t find her. There was no time to hunt.
Families said Russian soldiers at the checkpoints told them to delete any photographs of destruction in Mariupol. Many did, but Aleksei and Aleysa decided to risk keeping theirs, and showed pictures of the smashed windows at their family home and their meals in the dark.
Aleksei, 35, would brave driving around the city each day in search for food. Some families said they turned to looting and bartering to survive.
Their cousin Anastasiya, 25, has served with the Ukrainian military for the past five years. She gasped as she pulled out her phone to a video message showing the flag of Russian-backed separatists being hoisted on an administrative building on the city’s Left Bank, which has been subject to some of the heaviest bombardment.
“That’s not the periphery, that’s the city,” she said. “Even if they lose the city, we’ll get it back.”
A firing squad execution chamber. (photo: AP)
The state Corrections Department said Friday that renovations have been completed on the death chamber in Columbia and that the agency had notified Attorney General Alan Wilson that it was able to carry out a firing-squad execution.
Lawmakers set about tweaking state law to get around the lethal injection drug situation. Legislation that went into effect in May made the electric chair the state’s primary means of execution while giving inmates the option of choosing death by firing squad or lethal injection, if those methods are available.
During South Carolina’s lengthy debate, Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian — a prosecutor-turned-criminal-defense lawyer — introduced the firing squad option. He argued that it presented “the least painful” execution method available.
“The death penalty is going to stay the law here for a while,” Harpootlian said. “If we’re going to have it, it ought to be humane.”
According to officials, the death chamber now also includes a metal chair, with restraints, in the corner of the room in which inmates will sit if they choose execution by firing squad. That chair faces a wall with a rectangular opening, 15 feet away, through which the three shooters will fire their weapons.
State officials also have created protocols for carrying out the executions. The three shooters, all volunteers who are employees of the Corrections Department, will have rifles loaded with live ammunition, with their weapons trained on the inmate’s heart.
A hood will be placed over the head of the inmate, who will be given the opportunity to make a last statement.
According to officials, Corrections spent $53,600 on the renovations.
South Carolina is one of eight states to still use the electric chair and one of four to allow a firing squad, according to the Washington-based nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
In June, the South Carolina Supreme Court blocked the planned executions of two inmates by electrocution, saying they cannot be put to death until they truly have the choice of a firing squad option set out in the state’s newly revised law.
The high court halted the scheduled executions of Brad Sigmon and Freddie Owens, writing that officials needed to put together a firing squad so that inmates could really choose between that or the electric chair. The state’s plans, the court wrote in an unanimous order, were on hold “due to the statutory right of inmates to elect the manner of their execution.”
Now that a firing squad has been formed, the court will need to issue a new order for any execution to be carried out.
People who've been taken into custody related to cases of illegal entry into the United States sit in one of the cages at a detention facility. (photo: AP)
The recommendation to remove all detainees was met with a blistering response from ICE officials who called into question the integrity of the report.
In the report, the inspector general’s office wrote that the immigrants held at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico should be removed due to unsanitary living conditions and security lapses. Inspectors reported that they found clogged toilets and faulty sinks and that mold was present throughout the facility. ICE officials, along with the company that operates the facility, Core Civic, disagreed with the findings and are calling the integrity of the report into question.
"We recommend that the Acting Director of ICE immediately relocate all detainees from Torrance County Detention Facility and place no detainees there unless and until the facility ensures adequate staffing and appropriate living conditions," the report states.
The report comes months after Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that under the Biden administration immigrants would not be held in substandard conditions. The findings also prompted outrage among immigration advocates who have long claimed that the detention system needs reform.
“Following this new report on the Torrance County Detention Facility in NM, I call on @ICEgov to immediately terminate the contract & close the center,” Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California wrote on Twitter Friday. “I'm alarmed conditions became this unsafe, unsanitary, & unfit for humans. This cannot be overlooked.”
The report Friday claimed that detainees were, in some instances, getting water from a sink intended for filling up mop buckets and that there wasn’t enough staff on-site. There are less than 60 immigrants held at the facility, according to ICE statistics.
“During our inspection, we found such egregious conditions in the facility that we are issuing this management alert to notify ICE,” the report states. “We have determined that ICE must take immediate steps to address the critical facility staffing shortages and unsanitary living conditions that have led to health and safety risks for detainees at Torrance.”
ICE officials, in a pointed letter sent earlier this month to the inspector general’s office, said the inspectors were not only wrong, but acted unprofessionally. ICE’s acting chief of staff also wrote in the letter that he had serious concerns about the integrity and accuracy of the report.
ICE claims the photo of a detainee getting water from the mop sink was staged, inspectors appeared to have falsified or mischaracterized evidence, and that the inspector had predetermined his findings almost immediately after arriving at the facility.
Core Civic wrote to ICE earlier in the month saying that the “statements contained in the report, and the actions they represent, are so egregious and defamatory that they require your immediate attention to ensure that those responsible for making them are held accountable.”
CoreCivic said that according to video and staff reports “when one detainee used the utility sink in the housing unit to clean his cup, an OIG auditor asked him to step back to the sink, get more water, and drink from it so that the auditor could get a picture on his phone.” The company also said the detainee later discarded the water and walked away.
The caption on the draft version of the report said the detainee was “drinking water” from the sink while the final version clarified it was a “demonstration” of getting water from the sink. Elsewhere, CoreCivic said that pictures of a clogged toilet and moldy sink were taken in vacant housing areas.
“This deliberate effort to falsely portray our company and this facility in a negative light is even more disturbing because it was done under the guise of legitimate oversight. We’re asking for an immediate review of the conduct of the inspectors,” the company said in a statement to BuzzFeed News on Friday.
Both ICE and CoreCivic also pushed back on claims that the facility was poorly staffed.
For its part, the inspector general’s office stood by its findings.
“We take these concerns seriously but fully disagree. Our inspection team provided professional, independent oversight and has documented support for all reported findings. Our employees’ impartiality, independence, and integrity are essential to our oversight work and will remain so moving forward,” the office wrote. The inspectors walking through the facility, they said, quickly determined that the conditions in the facility “necessitated prompt facility action” and said so.
The photo that sparked ICE and CoreCivic criticism was explained by the inspector’s office as occurring after the investigators saw the detainee filling a cup of water from a faucet meant for mop buckets. “Therefore, OIG inspectors asked him to demonstrate how he filled the cup to allow for a photo to document the issue. The photo was not staged, but rather a recreation of what the team had observed just moments prior,” the report states.
The Biden administration has signaled it would seek to scale down the use of private prisons to hold immigrants, especially asylum-seekers. Earlier this year, Politico reported that President Joe Biden was considering an executive order to ban ICE from using private prisons to house immigrants, but no such order has come.
During a roundtable with reporters on Thursday, Mayorkas pointed out that the agency closed two facilities, including one operated by a private company.
“And I articulated the foundational principle in the memorandum I transmitted directing the closure of those two facilities that we will not tolerate the mistreatment of individuals who are in detention, nor will we tolerate substandard conditions that did not adhere to our standards,” he said.
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers remarks with U.S. president Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during an event in the Cross Hall of the White House in Washington, D.C. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Hawley’s going to a place that decent people have the good sense not to go.
Hawley’s broad allegation is false. His most substantive claim against Jackson is that as a judge she frequently did not follow the federal sentencing guidelines when sentencing child pornography offenders. But, as Ohio State law professor and sentencing policy expert Douglas Berman writes, “the federal sentencing guidelines for” child pornography offenders “are widely recognized as dysfunctional and unduly severe.”
It’s also a stunningly inflammatory charge, reminiscent of conspiracy theories such as QAnon or Pizzagate, which posit that prominent liberals are part of a vast ring of pedophiles. Similarly incendiary claims have inspired violence in the past, such as when a man with an assault rifle opened fire in a DC pizza restaurant in 2016. The man was apparently motivated by his unfounded belief that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign chair John Podesta ran a child sexual abuse ring in the basement of this pizzeria.
Hawley sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold a confirmation hearing on Jackson’s nomination next week. If his public statements this week are any indication, it’s likely that Hawley will spend his portion of this hearing berating Jackson with allegations that she is somehow an ally of sex offenders. It is most likely inevitable, in other words, that Hawley’s attacks on Jackson will reach a wide audience.
Jackson, it is worth noting, is one of the most scrutinized individuals in the entire legal profession. Even before President Joe Biden nominated her to the Supreme Court, she faced three Senate confirmation hearings — once when she was named to the US Sentencing Commission, a second time after she was nominated to a trial judgeship, and a third time when she was nominated to her current job as a federal appellate judge. Her Supreme Court nomination was endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police and by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Hawley, in other words, appears to believe that Jackson’s record was probed by the Senate on three separate occasions, by the nation’s largest police union, and by an organization representing over 30,000 police leaders. And yet, somehow, none of them noticed that she’s been an open advocate for child pornographers for more than a quarter-century.
I would hope that no one would take seriously such an implausible allegation, especially when it comes from a man who is best known for raising his fist in solidarity with protesters shortly before many of them attacked the United States Capitol. But, because Hawley’s presence on the Judiciary Committee ensures that he can loudly broadcast these allegations next week, it’s worth a detailed rebuttal.
Hawley’s attack on Jackson has three parts — none of them are honest
The senator’s misleading accusations can be broken down into three parts. First, he claims that a scholarly article that Jackson wrote while she was still a law student “questioned making convicts register as sex offenders.” In reality, the article examines a constitutional question that was unresolved in 1996, when Jackson published it: under what circumstances are laws that apply retroactively to convicted sex offenders permissible under the Constitution.
As a law student, Jackson concluded that certain constitutional protections, such as the rule that criminal sanctions may not be applied retroactively, do not apply to some laws regulating sex offenders, but do apply to others. It was a nuanced constitutional argument and several judges cited her piece favorably in the years after it was published.
Seven years after Jackson published her piece, the Supreme Court laid out a framework in Smith v. Doe (2003) which guides when restrictions on sex offenders, such as a requirement that they register with local authorities, can be applied retroactively.
Student law review articles (known as “notes” in legal academic parlance) are often a great opportunity for law students to gain experience producing legal scholarship, but they are typically ignored by lawyers and judges. Jackson’s note was an exception. In the interregnum between when the piece was published, and when the Supreme Court handed down Smith, four different judicial opinions cited Jackson’s note, including a unanimous opinion by the Supreme Court of Wyoming.
Presumably, the highest court in one of the nation’s reddest states did not rely on Jackson’s note because Wyoming’s justices believed that she was advocating for child pornographers.
The second prong of Hawley’s attack on Jackson is less of a factual allegation and more of an expression of incredulity. He criticized Jackson because, as a member of the Sentencing Commission, she once probed whether some child pornography offenses should be considered “less-serious” than others.
Of course, the very purpose of sentencing law and policy is to help judges distinguish among individuals who, on paper, have committed similar crimes, but who may be more or less deserving of severe punishment. Most people would agree that a person who shoplifts for the thrill of it has committed a more serious offense than someone who steals bread to feed their starving child. A person who kills for pleasure is more deserving of society’s harshest punishments than someone who, after a night of heavy drinking, gets in a fight and kills their opponent.
But, just in case it is not obvious that yes, some sex offenses are more severe than others, let’s examine two cases heard by Judge Jackson which drive this point home.
The facts of United States v. Sears are extremely disturbing. According to prosecutors, Jeremy Sears offered to send nude pictures of his 10-year-old daughter to an undercover FBI agent. He also shared more than 100 child pornographic videos with this agent, many of which depicted children being vaginally or anally raped by adults. A psychological examination of Sears determined that he “displayed a strong pedophilic interest” and was in a “high-risk category” for recidivism.
Judge Jackson sentenced Sears to nearly six years in prison, plus an additional 120 months of supervised release.
The facts of United States v. Hawkins involve a much younger offender. Wesley Hawkins was 18 years old and still in high school when he shared about two dozen child sexual abuse images and videos with an undercover detective. When law enforcement arrived at his home with a search warrant, he admitted to viewing child pornography and, according to prosecutors, “timely notified the authorities of his intention to enter a guilty plea.”
A psychological evaluation of Hawkins determined that “there is no indication that he is sexually interested in prepubescent children,” and that “his interest in watching teens engaged in homosexual activity was a way for him to explore his curiosity about homosexual activity and connect with his emotional peers.” Jackson sentenced Hawkins to 3 months in prison plus an additional 73 months of supervised release.
No one should minimize Mr. Hawkins’s crime. There is no such thing as a victimless child pornography crime, because anyone who views or shares such pornography helps create a market for content involving children being sexually assaulted. But I would think it obvious that someone who offers to create and distribute pornographic images of his prepubescent daughter is a more serious offender than Hawkins.
The third prong of Hawley’s attack on Jackson appears to be literally true, but only because Hawley uses very precise wording — he claims that Jackson “deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders” in seven cases where she sentenced child pornographic offenders.
While Jackson did, indeed, sentence these seven offenders to less time in prison than these sentencing guidelines recommend, Hawley’s allegation leaves out some important context. The guidelines’ approach to most child pornography offenders is widely viewed as too draconian by a bipartisan array of judges, policymakers, and even some prosecutors.
According to a 2021 report by the US Sentencing Commission, “the majority (59.0%) of nonproduction child pornography offenders received a variance below the guideline range” when they were sentenced (“nonproduction” refers to offenders who view or distribute child pornography, but do not produce new images or videos). And, when judges do depart downward from the guidelines, they typically impose sentences that are more than 50 months lower than the minimum sentence recommended by the guidelines.
Indeed, guidelines sentences are so harsh that even many prosecutors advise judges not to follow them. As Berman, the sentencing law professor, notes in his own examination of nine child pornography cases heard by Judge Jackson, “in a majority of these cases (5 of 9) the prosecution advocated for a below-guideline sentence and in three others the prosecution advocated for only the guideline minimum.”
How sentencing actually works in federal child pornography cases
The federal sentencing guidelines can be found in a lengthy manual that’s drafted by the Sentencing Commission and reviewed by Congress. The heart of these guidelines is a grid that recommends a sentencing range to judges based on the severity of the defendant’s offense, and the defendant’s past criminal history.
To determine the appropriate guidelines sentence, a judge must first determine what the “base offense level” is for the crime a defendant was convicted of committing — for child pornography offenses, the base level is either 18 or 22. This number will then increase or decrease if the offender meets certain criteria — if a child pornography offender possessed more than 600 images, for example, the offense level is increased by 5.
Calculating the proper guidelines sentence, however, is rarely the end of the sentencing process. In United States v. Booker (2005), the Supreme Court held that the guidelines are merely “advisory,” so judges now have fairly broad discretion to hand down sentences outside of the range recommended by the guidelines.
In a 2012 report, moreover, the Sentencing Commission warned that “most stakeholders in the federal criminal justice system consider the nonproduction child pornography sentencing scheme to be seriously outmoded.” This report, which was released while Jackson was still a member of the commission, was unanimous. It was joined by all of the commission’s Democratic and Republican members — including Dabney Friedrich, whom former President Donald Trump later appointed to the federal bench.
As the 2012 report noted, judges typically did not rely on the guidelines when sentencing child pornography offenders. In 2011, they handed down sentences below the range recommended by the guidelines nearly two-thirds (62.8 percent) of the time.
The report also offered several reasons why most judges believed that the guidelines governing child pornography offenses are too harsh. When the guidelines were drafted, for example, offenses involving the use of a computer were considered particularly severe, and the guidelines call for a 2 level enhancement with such offenses. By 2010, however, over 96 percent of child pornography offenders used a computer — so the guidelines effectively increased the recommended sentence for virtually all offenders.
Additionally, the report noted that “recent social science research — by both the Commission and outside researchers — has provided new insights about child pornography offenders and offense characteristics that are relevant to sentencing policy.” This research made it easier to identify which offenders were likely to reoffend, and which offenders may benefit from “psycho-sexual treatment of offenders’ clinical sexual disorders.”
Judges, in other words, now have enough information to hand down harsher sentences to offenders who are more likely to recidivate, and lighter sentences coupled with mandatory treatment for offenders who could benefit from that treatment.
There’s another reason why judges frequently depart from the sentencing range recommended by the guidelines: The guidelines can be a blunt instrument, applying similar sentencing ranges to vastly different offenders.
Consider, once again, the Sears and Hawkins cases. Although Sears’s offense was far more severe than Hawkins’s, under the guidelines, both men committed a crime with an offense level of 30. Had they been sentenced under the guidelines, both would have received a sentence of 97 to 121 months.
But not even the Justice Department thought that such a result would be just. In the Sears case, prosecutors recommended a sentence of 97 months (he received 71). In the Hawkins case, prosecutors recommended a sentence of just 24 months (he received 3).
So, while Hawley is technically telling the truth when he says that Jackson “deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines” when sentencing child pornography offenders, so do most federal judges. The consensus view within the judiciary and among sentencing policymakers is that the guidelines sentences for most child pornography offenders are too high, and judges routinely hand down lighter sentences for these offenders than the guidelines recommend.
An honest look at Jackson’s record reveals that, as a law student, she wrote a nuanced analysis of a difficult constitutional question that vexed many judges — and that several judges relied upon in their own opinions. It reveals that, like any sentencing policymaker, Jackson had to draw distinctions among offenders who had all committed grave crimes. And it reveals that, as a judge, her sentencing practices were in line with those of other judges.
But Hawley’s attack on Jackson is not honest.
At least 26 family members of U.S.-based persons were held in detention in 2020 in Egypt, according to the Freedom Initiative. (photo: APA)
Members of US Congress issue concerns over Saudi Arabia and Egypt's campaign of transnational repression in US
In a letter which was shared with Middle East Eye, the lawmakers demand that the Government Accountability Office conduct a review of whether any countries are in violation of a US law that prohibits Washington from selling arms to nations that show a "consistent pattern of acts of intimidation or harassment directed against individuals in the United States".
"We write you amid a growing trend of the extraterritorial persecution, intimidation, and censorship of US citizens, legal permanent residents, and others residing in the US face at the hands of US partners around the world," read the letter, led by Congressman Tom Malinowski, who co-chairs the House's Egypt Human Rights Caucus.
"Multiple countries who benefit from Foreign Military Sales, Foreign Military Financing, and other arms purchases from the United States, including the Arab Republic of Egypt, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, are engaged in a pattern of intimidation and harassment," it said, adding that other countries such as Turkey and Rwanda are engaging in similar campaigns.
The letter comes amid a diplomatic ebb between Washington and Riyadh, where Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman reportedly declined a call with US President Biden earlier this month when oil prices were surging to record highs.
It also comes as the US administration is looking to go forward with a sale of F-15 fighter jets to Egypt, which America's top general for forces in the Middle East appeared to confirm on Tuesday.
Transnational repression
Numerous reports over the past several years have highlighted how both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have conducted campaigns to target dissidents living in the US.
A study published by The Freedom Initiative last year found that Cairo was detaining the family members of critics living in the US as a means of reprisal for their vocal criticism of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's government.
At least 26 family members of US-based persons were held in detention in 2020 in Egypt, according to the prisoner rights organisation.
Egypt's transnational repression campaign also physically extended to US soil on multiple occasions.
Last July during a visit to Washington, Egypt's spy chief Abbas Kamel claimed that Washington had agreed to jail prominent Egyptian-American activist Mohamed Soltan after he was released from prison in Egypt and sent to the US.
Then in January, a man was arrested in New York for allegedly working as a foreign agent of the Egyptian government. According to the Justice Department, he was accused of having "tracked and obtained information regarding political opponents of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi".
Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, was named by the US-based watchdog Freedom House as one of the leading countries practising transnational repression, most notably with the 2018 murder of MEE and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Since coming to power in 2015, MBS has attempted to reform the image of the ultra-conservative kingdom to the western world, but at the same time, he has intensified a crackdown on human rights activists and political dissidents.
The congressional letter noted that throughout 2020 and 2021, there have been at least 18 American citizens or their family members "wrongfully detained or forcibly disappeared" in Saudi Arabia".
One report published last October found that at least 89 United States citizens, legal permanent residents, visa holders and their relatives were detained by authorities in Saudi Arabia or banned from leaving the country in 2021.
A burning home in Lake Conjola, in New South Wales, Australia. (photo: Matthew Abbott/NYT)
New research warns that wildfire emissions could unravel progress made under the Montreal Protocol to shrink atmospheric ozone holes.
Close study of Australia’s intense Black Summer fires in late 2019 and early 2020 suggests the smoke they emitted was a “tremendous kick” to the atmosphere, depleting the ozone layer by 1 percent, said MIT scientist Susan Solomon.
“The ozone layer protects all life on the planet from ultraviolet radiation,” said Solomon, who was one of the pioneers in explaining how pollution depletes ozone while she was a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “You know that, if you’ve ever been sunburned, it increases the risk of skin cancer and eye damage.”
“Of course if it does those things to you, you can only imagine what it does to plants and animals,” she added. With numerous studies showing how UV radiation can damage certain crops and other plants, there is “good reason to be worried about safeguarding the ozone layer in a healthy state.”
The impacts of declining atmospheric ozone are not isolated to the poles.
“What worries me is, it’s not just Antarctica,” she said. “If you talk about Australia, where these fires were, we see something like a 5 to 10 percent decrease in ozone over mid-latitude locations, and every 1 percent loss gives you a 2 percent increase in skin cancer.”
Scientists have recognized threats to the ozone layer from reactive chemicals used in commercial and industrial processes since at least since the 1970s, and have spent a lot of time trying to make sure society understands the chemistry, she said. “This isn’t a new thing to those of us who have been studying it,” she said. “This is not our first rodeo.”
One of the key advances came when scientists started looking at how atmospheric chemistry can be changed by external contaminants like industrial pollution and wildfire smoke, rather than just through internal atmospheric processes.
Solomon said scientists already knew that various pollutants can change atmospheric chemistry at lower altitudes, but were surprised to find reactive particles in the stratosphere.
“We didn’t realize at first how important that could be in the very dry stratosphere,” she said. “The discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole is what woke us up to that fact.”
The Black Summer fires’ depletion of 1 percent of atmospheric ozone, as documented by Solomon and other scientists in a Feb. 28 study in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, may seem like a small number, she said, but “it’s significant to me because it’s comparable to the 1 percent per decade progress that world has achieved with the Montreal Protocol.”
She said that, while the wildfire smoke’s impacts in the stratosphere don’t last anywhere as long as those from industrial chemical pollutants, the concerns remain because extreme wildfire activity is expected to increase by 30 percent by 2050 and 50 percent by the end of this century.
In some regions of the U.S., wildfires since 2000 have already increased up to four times in size and three times in frequency during the previous two decades, and there are more frequent simultaneous large fires in different regions, according to new research published in Science Advances.
Australia’s Black Summer fires were followed by similarly intense wildfires in Western North America, that also triggered towering pyrocumulonimbus clouds that transported smoke miles up into the stratosphere, where it could degrade the ozone layer. A 2005 study looked at a fire in Canada’s Northwest Territories that sent a smoke plume into the stratosphere,
More recently, ship-based Arctic researchers reported that smoke from Siberian wildfires in the summer of 2019 persisted in the high atmosphere for much of the winter, and may have contributed to record-setting Arctic ozone depletion during the 2019-2020 winter.
In the past decade, extreme fires have burned somewhere on the planet nearly every year, most recently in South America, where fires in late December and January were measured as some of the most intense on record on that continent by Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring agency.
New Satellite Data Help Pinpoint Impacts
Another new study on wildfire smoke and ozone published today in Science suggests that the 1 percent loss shown in Solomon’s research may be the far lower limit of what could be expected in ozone depletion from wildfire smoke in the stratosphere, Solomon said.
That research, led by Peter Bernath of Waterloo University, analyzed data from super-sensitive optical instruments from a Canadian satellite that peers at the upper edge of the planet’s atmosphere against a sunlit backdrop to measure chemical reactions involving smoke particles and atmospheric gases. By studying 44 types of particles, the researchers may be able to at least partly determine the future impact of wildfire smoke on ozone.
“In a nutshell,” Bernath said, “the chlorine chemistry in particular is altered. The smoke converts various chlorine-based molecules into more active compounds that end up destroying ozone. These megafires are unique in that they punch right into the stratosphere and deliver organic compounds, putting the smoke particles right where they can catalyze these harmful changes.”
The study also focused on the Black Summer fires and showed that smoke produced “unexpected and extreme perturbations in stratospheric gases beyond any seen in the previous 15 years of measurements,” the researchers said. The observations suggest that, as severe wildfires become more frequent, their effects will become an increasingly important factor in the global ozone budget of the future.
“Nobody ever saw these changes before, nobody suspected the smoke would cause these kinds of changes,” he said, adding that the effect was widespread over the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere, as prevailing winds carried the smoke around the globe.
As global warming leads to stronger, more frequent wildfires, the smoke could have a serious, lasting impact on ozone, Solomon said.
“Wildfire smoke is a toxic brew of organic compounds that are complex beasts,” she said. “And I’m afraid ozone is getting pummeled by a whole series of reactions that we are now furiously working to unravel.”
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.