RSN: FOCUS: Luke Mogelson and James Nachtwey | Collecting Bodies in Bucha

 

 

07 April 22

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FOCUS: Luke Mogelson and James Nachtwey | Collecting Bodies in Bucha
Luke Mogelson and James Nachtwey, The New Yorker
Excerpt: "Everyone I spoke with noted that, as soon as the Russians had arrived in Bucha, they had ransacked homes and supermarkets for alcohol. At almost every location where someone had been killed, I saw numerous empty bottles of vodka, whiskey, wine, or beer."

A team of Ukrainian volunteers say that, since the Russian retreat, they have picked up three hundred corpses.

Iryna Havryliuk was one of thousands of Ukrainians who fled Bucha in early March, after Russian forces occupied a northern suburb of Kyiv. Her husband, Sergey, a forty-seven-year-old private security guard, decided to stay. The couple owned two dogs and six cats, which Sergey refused to abandon. Joining throngs of displaced civilians, Havryliuk crossed the icy currents of the Irpin River on a treacherous walkway composed of pallets and scrap lumber—which had been constructed beneath a bridge destroyed by an air strike. She eventually made it to Zakarpattia, in western Ukraine. After the Russians sabotaged Bucha’s power plant and began confiscating people’s phones, she lost contact with Sergey. For a month, as battles raged north of Kyiv, Havryliuk hoped and waited. On Sunday, Russian forces retreated from the area, and Havryliuk received news that Sergey was dead. On Monday, she went home.

She found her husband supine in their back yard, beside a wood pile. I’d arrived there a few minutes earlier, with a photographer. Sergey wore a sheepskin-and-leather jacket; a T-shirt was draped over his face. Havryliuk’s brother, Roman, lay a few feet away. So did a third man, whom she didn’t know. All three had been shot in the head. When Havryliuk lifted the T-shirt over Sergey’s face, she found that a bullet had pierced his right eye, leaving a gaping hole. She said nothing, but quickly put back the T-shirt. Leaving the yard, she said matter-of-factly, to a friend who’d accompanied her, “My hands are trembling.”

One of several corpses reported to have been brought by Russians on a tank, dumped, and set on fire.

One of the couple’s two dogs, a pit bull named Valik, had also been shot dead; his body lay in a wheelbarrow beside the front door. Artillery had damaged the house, and Havryliuk would later discover their second dog crushed beneath a heap of rubble. The cats were gone. When Havryliuk went inside to salvage what she could of her and Sergey’s things, she discovered that Russian soldiers had stolen her jewelry and perfume, and some of her bras and underwear. While Havryliuk was sifting through her looted living room, a woman with dyed purple hair and a tattered down vest arrived and embraced her. Her name was Nadejda Cherednichenko, and she lived a block away. She said that her son, a twenty-seven-year-old electrician named Volodymyr, had been detained by Russian soldiers in early March. When Cherednichenko went to their commander to petition for his release, the commander told her that Volodymyr was no longer in Bucha. After three weeks, Cherednichenko approached two soldiers outside her house. “I said to them, ‘I’m asking you as a mother,’ ” she told Havryliuk. “ ‘Is my son alive?’ ” One of the soldiers responded, “You don’t have a son anymore.”

A grieving Iryna Havryliuk receives an embrace.

On the thirty-first of March, a neighbor brought Cherednichenko to a basement where Volodymyr had been found dead. He’d been shot through the ear and was difficult to recognize. All five fingers on his left hand had been wrenched backward.

Havryliuk listened in silence as Cherednichenko recounted all this, occasionally nodding. Although she had no words for her friend, her own loss seemed to have made her someone in whom Cherednichenko could confide.

Cherednichenko later showed me where on her property she had buried Volodymyr. It is traditional for Ukrainians to place some of the deceased’s preferred food on a grave, but during the occupation the residents of Bucha barely had enough sustenance to survive. Volodymyr had loved caffeine, and Cherednichenko had found a small packet of instant coffee to leave on the otherwise unmarked mound of dirt.

Corpses lie in a mass grave.

A few houses down from Havryliuk’s place, two brothers had also been executed. Yuri and Victor had been in their sixties, and had lived in adjacent houses. Everyone in the neighborhood had referred to them as Uncle Yuri and Uncle Victor. While the Russians had been in Bucha, Yuri had worn a white cloth around his sleeve, to signal his neutrality, and had baked bread to help feed residents who’d stayed behind. No one knew why he and Victor had been murdered. Their bodies had been dumped in a nearby culvert, and were tangled together and half buried under debris that had washed down during recent rains. While I was talking to people who had known the brothers, a Ukrainian soldier approached us to say that he’d found something in the basement of a yellow house facing the culvert. It turned out to be the crumpled body of a rail-thin teen-ager. He, too, had been shot in the head. So had an overweight, middle-aged man in civilian clothes, a hundred feet or so up the road. Near his temple, dark blood pooled on the ground.

On the far side of a stretch of railroad tracks, two elderly women had been killed in their house. One lay in the doorway, another in the kitchen. Both were bundled in heavy winter coats. Neighbors said that they had been sisters, both in their seventies. Their small house was filled with hardcover books, and they did not own a television; it was impossible not to imagine their quiet, literary life together before it was annihilated. In the only bedroom, two narrow mattresses were pushed together and covered by a single blanket.

At the end of Havryliuk’s street, a number of corpses had been severely burned beside a garbage pile.

At the end of Havryliuk’s street, a number of corpses had been severely burned beside a garbage pile. It was hard to say how many there were—charred legs and torsos were severed and scattered—but one victim appeared to be a woman, another a child or an adolescent. Orphaned cats and dogs sniffed around the parts. Several people reported that Russians had brought the bodies on a tank, dumped them, and lit them on fire.

Everyone I spoke with noted that, as soon as the Russians had arrived in Bucha, they had ransacked homes and supermarkets for alcohol. At almost every location where someone had been killed, I saw numerous empty bottles of vodka, whiskey, wine, or beer.

When I returned to the garbage pile the next day, police had cordoned off the mutilated corpses with tape, placing small yellow markers with numbers amid the carnage. The markers indicated that there were six bodies. A white van was parked outside Havryliuk’s house. On the dusty rear doors, someone had traced “200”—a military code for fatalities. I encountered a team of four volunteers who, throughout the occupation, had been collecting the remains of locals killed by Russian soldiers. At first, the team had delivered the bodies to the local morgue, but soon there was no room. On March 10th, the Russians had allowed Bucha residents to dig a mass grave behind a Ukrainian Orthodox church. When that filled up as well—with sixty-seven people, according to the priest—a second pit was excavated, and then another. The third pit remained open and heaped with corpses.

“A lot of them had been tortured,” one of the volunteers, Sergey Matiuk, said. He wore a colorful windbreaker and a pin emblazoned with the Bucha town crest above the words “I love my city,” in Ukrainian. In a sheath on his hip was an antique-looking knife with a jewel-embedded handle; he’d taken it from a former Russian Army position. “A trophy,” he said, withdrawing the curved blade. The relentless fighting in Bucha had hindered Matiuk and his team from conducting their work, and he told me that, since the Russian retreat, they had picked up about three hundred corpses. He estimated that at least a hundred had had their hands tied behind their back. When I asked him where in town he’d encountered such cases, he replied, “Everywhere.”

Havryliuk had returned to her house. While Matiuk and his colleagues lifted her husband, brother, and the third man into bags and zipped them closed, she looked down at her palms and muttered, “Everything is dirty.”

The van was already half full with other bodies, and Matiuk had to climb into the back in order to haul Sergey and Roman onto the top of the pile. Then the team continued up the street, to the yellow house, and carried out the teen-ager from the basement. It was getting late. They needed to bring the victims to a local cemetery, where they would add them to a stack of dozens of bodies awaiting transport to Kyiv; medical professionals there would try to identify the victims, using DNA samples. Though the volunteers were all large, sturdy men—Matiuk had been a professional soccer player in Ukraine—they were out of breath, sweaty, and visibly exhausted. After some discussion, they decided to come back another day for Yuri, Victor, and the middle-aged man lying in the road.

Before getting into the van and driving away, one of the volunteers raised his fist to the few assembled neighbors and shouted, “Slava Ukraini!”

“Slava Ukraini!” the neighbors echoed. They yelled it with all the force they had. Still, they sounded more benumbed than victorious.

The corpse of a man in civilian clothes lies in a road.

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: The Covid questions we still can’t answer

View in browser   BY JOANNE KENEN Presented by Human Rights Watch People line up for a Covid-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic in San Rafael, Calif. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images MEASURING STICK — Right now, most Covid prevention measures have been dropped, and the Omicron offshoot known as BA.2 is spreading. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the latest Washington boldface name to reveal she’s caught it. So far, BA.2 isn’t creating a surge of serious disease or filling up hospitals. But the D.C. cases are a stark reminder that virologists, epidemiologists and infectious disease experts still struggle, two years in, to put a solid number on a host of questions about Covid-mitigation tactics over the past two years. Among them: — How many lives were saved by mask mandates? By all the public health preventive steps combined? — How many people didn’t get sick because bars were closed — or might not have gotten sick if more bars were closed? — What were the precise benefits of the social distancing measures that were introduced in March 2020? — Perhaps most controversially, what was the net benefit of closing schools? Working out how to measure the effectiveness of these types of preventive tools — called nonpharmacological interventions or NPIs — is important because a skeptical population could be called upon to follow them again when the next crisis hits — whether that’s sooner, because of a curveball from BA.2 or another coronavirus variant, or later, from an altogether different threat. But coming up with those numbers is devilishly hard. “You are never going to be able to measure that precisely,” said David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Scientists have studied masks, but they can’t do a gold-standard, traditional study like a double-blind, random-controlled trial of mask wearing. For starters, people know whether they are wearing a mask! There have been other trials and studies, comparing mask wearers and non-mask wearers, but there are all sorts of variables that are hard to sort out with clarity — not everyone would be wearing the masks in the same settings, for the same time, and people who wear masks take other protective steps as well. That final point applies to studying other nonpharmaceutical interventions. It’s difficult to study one NPI all by its lonesome, because people practice several prevention metrics — masking and avoiding crowds and working remotely and distancing and handwashing etc. — at once. And they are unlikely to do them consistently in ways that are easy to quantify and track. We can certainly see which states have had a higher death rate from the coronavirus, but it’s hard to pull out precisely which nonpharmaceutical factors contributed — and vaccines of course are the single most powerful preventive tool. Public health officials know that the NPIs are imperfect — that’s why they urge people to practice a bunch of them, because they work better together than one at a time. But imperfect doesn’t mean worthless. But to emphasize that worth, scientists are still figuring out how to measure it. A lot of the ongoing study on NPI effectiveness is being done by modeling, more specifically something called “counterfactual” modeling. “We use computational models to simulate hypothetical outbreaks, and we can turn up or turn down different levels of mitigation, “ emailed Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory. Those models aren’t whipped up in the ether. They are fed data from other studies and surveys — what Spencer Fox, the assistant director of the University of Texas Covid-19 Modeling Consortium, called “ground truth.” But because people don’t follow Covid-prevention measures with consistency, and more than one measure can be introduced at a time, it’s hard to disentangle it all, Dean said. The pandemic also showed the holes in U.S. data collection for public health. Many of our decisions were based on studies from the U.K. and Israel, which have health data collection systems far better than our own; improving our data is really high on the to-do list, Fox said. Complicating matters is that while scientists draw conclusions based on a large body of data, some people cherry-pick studies for tendentious reasons. For instance, they may pluck out one small one — Sen. Rand Paul and other conservatives have pointed to one from Denmark — that found masks don’t work, while ignoring a massive amount of other scientific literature that shows they are pretty darn useful. Dowdy likened that to pointing to a smoker who lived to be 100 and touting it as proof that cigarettes don’t cause lung cancer. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author on Twitter at @JoanneKenen.   A message from Human Rights Watch: There is food in the market, but families have no cash to buy it. Health workers are ready to save lives, but there are no salaries or supplies. Learn More.   But what it all comes back to is that it’s not easy to answer those fundamental questions, like “How many lives did NPIs save over the course of the pandemic?” or “How did a specific intervention hold up?” And it’s been complicated by the politics and the assaults on public health. “A concerted and deliberate operation has been mounted to discredit public health advice, and it has been getting noisier recently,” Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, emailed Nightly. People choose whatever data they want to focus on, for whatever reason they want. He calls the phenomenon “choose your own pandemic.” Because the coronavirus turns out to be very complicated — it isn’t a super-flu, it isn’t just a respiratory disease — and because it is really and truly “novel,” there have been missteps and changes as the science evolved. At the beginning, before the disease and the virus’s transmission was better understood, epidemiologists drew on a lot of century-old lessons from the 1918 flu pandemic, particularly regarding school closing and isolation protocols. Philadelphia was the poster city for not doing enough (other than urging people to try not to sneeze and cough so much in public) and having a huge wave of deaths; St. Louis took more precautions and had a far lower death rate. But the analogies were of course imperfect. There’s also the perfectly natural human tendency to use hindsight to second-guess decisions. “The retroscope — as I call it — is a powerful tool,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. WHAT'D I MISS? President Joe Biden holds hands with Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as they watch the Senate vote on her confirmation from the Roosevelt Room of the White House. | Susan Walsh/AP Photo — Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed as first Black woman on Supreme Court: The Senate confirmed Jackson to the Supreme Court this afternoon, marking a historic moment for the high court. Jackson was approved, 53-47, with the support of three Republicans. The vote makes Jackson the first Black female justice and delivers Democrats their first high-court seat in 12 years. — Congress passes bills banning Russian oil, revoking normal trade relations: The Senate and House cleared bills today to revoke normal trade relations with Russia and ban oil imports from the country, a one-two punch that caps three weeks of negotiations over legislation to further isolate Moscow. It’s the first time since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine that Congress has sent sanctions measures to President Joe Biden’s desk. — U.N. votes to suspend Russia from human rights council: The U.N. General Assembly voted today to suspend Russia from its human rights council over allegations of war crimes committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.   INTRODUCING DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED:  Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today.     — Senate punts $10 billion in Covid aid until after Easter amid stalemate over border policy: Multiple senators confirmed they are delaying voting on a bill to pour $10 billion more into pandemic programs until after their two-week spring break , a decision top administration health officials have said further threatens the country’s ability to fight the virus and prepare for potential surges and variants. The move came days after Senate Republicans stopped the legislation from advancing because they weren’t guaranteed an amendment vote on reinstating Title 42, the Trump-era policy that allows for the expulsion of migrants at the border during the pandemic. — Trump says Secret Service blocked him from joining Jan. 6 march to the Capitol: In a wide-ranging interview at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida with Washington Post reporter Josh Dawsey, Trump spoke about the Jan. 6 insurrection, repeated claims of a stolen election and weighed in on the possibility of a 2024 presidential campaign. On at least a dozen occasions throughout their conversation, Dawsey wrote, Trump blamed the events of Jan. 6 on Pelosi. — Alabama lawmakers vote to make providing gender-affirming care to trans youth a felony: The Alabama House approved legislation today making it a Class C felony — punishable by up to 10 years in prison — to provide transition-related medical care, including puberty-blocking medications and hormone therapy, to minors. The bill passed the state Senate in February. Republican Gov. Kay Ivey hasn’t taken a public stance on the bill, and her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether she plans to sign it into law.   A message from Human Rights Watch:     NIGHTLY NUMBER 3 The number of Russian airlines the U.S. took enforcement action against today, aimed at preventing them from continuing to operate, both internationally and within Russia itself. The new moves are the first enforcement actions taken by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security under the stringent export controls imposed by the United States in response to Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine.   DON'T MISS ANYTHING FROM THE 2022 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO is excited to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage and insights from the 25th annual Global Conference. This year's event, May 1-4, brings together more than 3,000 of the world’s most influential leaders, including 700+ speakers representing more than 80 countries. "Celebrating the Power of Connection" is this year's theme, setting the stage to connect influencers with the resources to change the world with leading experts and thinkers whose insight and creativity can implement that change. Whether you're attending in person or following along from somewhere else in the world, keep up with this year's conference with POLITICO’s special edition “Global Insider” so you don't miss a beat. Subscribe today.     PARTING WORDS A fox walks near Upper Senate Park on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images FOX NEWS — Our colleague, agriculture reporter Ximena Bustillo , was unfortunately one of the people who had too close of an encounter with the fox that went viral for all the wrong reasons on Capitol Hill this week, getting bit on Tuesday. She thankfully is doing fine after multiple trips to the hospital for rabies shots. And today, she told a bit of her story. The full version is available at Congress Minutes, but here is a snippet: I’d come up to watch a House Agriculture Committee hearing and meet with some sources. I saw a scooter as I was heading out and thought I’d spare myself a walk in heels, but turns out I wouldn’t even make it a block — instead of walking home, I’d be Ubering to the hospital. Suddenly, I felt an aggressive pinch and scratch on my left ankle as I was walking alongside the large fountains found north of the Capitol. I screamed quite loudly, thinking I’d either been bitten by a squirrel (one stared me down on the way in) or a rat (there’s so many!). As I whipped around, the orange fox darted in front of me. I thought it was going to jump at my face, so I swung my backpack at it and yelled at it to try and spook it away. It didn’t immediately work, so I looked to a few nearby families and staffers for help. “It’s a fox,” I yelled, pointing at it and swinging my bag, afraid everyone thought I was crazy for randomly screaming. Some of them ran over yelling at it — scaring the fox into the bushes. A kind staffer was already on the phone with Capitol Police and stayed with me throughout the whole ordeal.   A message from Human Rights Watch: This is Afghanistan today. The Taliban are carrying out extrajudicial killings and abductions, repressing media, and imposing draconian restrictions that violate the rights of women and girls. On March 23, they reneged on promises to allow girls to go back to secondary school. At the same time, the US government has cut off Afghanistan's economy from the rest of the world and suspended support for salaries for teachers and health workers. The country is on the brink of economic collapse. Millions are at risk of starvation - especially women and girls, who face greater obstacles to getting food. Without a functioning economy, most families have lost their ability to feed themselves. Their most basic rights - to food, health, and life itself - are under assault. Learn More.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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rsn: FOCUS | Making a Killing: Big Oil Reaps Record Profits Using Ukraine War as Pretext to Hike Gas Prices

 

 

07 April 22

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FOCUS | Making a Killing: Big Oil Reaps Record Profits Using Ukraine War as Pretext to Hike Gas Prices
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Look, it's almost sickening to sit and watch Exxon executives talk like that. You don't need much imagination or much memory to recall that Darren Woods' predecessor, Rex Tillerson, was such a friend of Vladimir Putin's that Putin literally pinned a medal on him."

House Democrats grilled CEOs of Big Oil companies, like ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell, Wednesday about rising gas prices and profiteering from the Ukraine war. We get response from environmentalist Bill McKibben and speak with Ukrainian environmental lawyer ​​Svitlana Romanko about how the war in Ukraine is impacting energy markets around the world. “These are predatory companies that have used every excuse — and this is one of the grossest — to try and increase their profit margins,” says McKibben. “Dismantling and ending Putin’s horrific war against Ukraine will dismantle the system that enables this fossil fuel industry to overprofit,” adds Romanko.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: On Capitol Hill, House lawmakers grilled executives from some of the largest oil and gas companies Wednesday, accusing them of price gouging consumers even as they rake in record profits. Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee accused fossil fuel executives of exploiting the pandemic and the war in Ukraine to pad their bottom lines. This is Committee Chair California [sic] Democrat Diana DeGette — Colorado Democrat Diana DeGette.

REP. DIANA DeGETTE: If the price of gas is driven by the global market, why is the price of oil coming down, but the price at the pump is still near record highs? If it’s an issue of supply and demand, wouldn’t that be reflected in the global price of oil, as well? Something just doesn’t add up.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Colorado Democrat DeGette. Meanwhile, Republicans used Wednesday’s hearing on high gas prices to support the Big Oil companies. This is Republican Ohio Congressmember Bill Johnson.

REP. BILL JOHNSON: For heaven’s sakes, they’re blaming you for high gas prices, for inflation, for bad weather and all the world’s problems that their failed policies are actually causing. Your industry has a lot to be proud of.

AMY GOODMAN: Executives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, BPAmerica, Shell USA and other companies testified virtually during the hearing, even though they were invited to appear in person. ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods claimed the solution to higher prices at the pump is to increase oil and gas production.

DARREN WOODS: Today Russia provides roughly 10% of the oil needed to meet global demand and about 30% of Europe’s natural gas demand. A loss of this volume will be much more significant than the impact of the oil — Arab oil embargo and would represent the largest supply disruption in the history of our industry. Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix. But in the near term, the answer is straightforward: If we want to reduce prices, we need to increase supply.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as a new report by Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen and BailoutWatch looked at the financial records of ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and others and found they’ve increased stock buybacks and dividends since Russia invaded Ukraine, enriching investors instead of reducing oil and gas prices for consumers. BailoutWatch data analyst Christopher Kuveke said, quote, “The actions of these oil executives make it clear that no matter how much they groan about the Biden Administration’s environmental policies and blame Putin for high prices, their focus remains entirely on lining their own pockets,” he said.

For more, we’re joined by two guests: Bill McKibben, author, educator, environmentalist, founder of Third Act, which organizes people over 60 for progressive change, also co-founded 350.org, and, in Ukraine, we’re joined by Svitlana Romanko, the Ukrainian climate activist and longtime environmental lawyer, who wrote a Los Angeles [Times] op-ed with McKibben last month headlined “The Ukraine war is a decision point — banks should stop funding the fossil fuel industry forever.”

We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! Bill McKibben, let’s begin with you and the Big Oil hearing. What was your takeaway?

BILL McKIBBEN: Look, it’s almost sickening to sit and watch Exxon executives talk like that. You don’t need much imagination or much memory to recall that Darren Woods’ predecessor, Rex Tillerson, was such a friend of Vladimir Putin’s that Putin literally pinned a medal on him, the Order of Friendship, at Putin’s dacha outside Moscow, because Exxon was perfectly willing, knowing just what kind of regime Putin was running, to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in trying to get at Arctic oil, that they could only get at because they had already melted the Arctic. That’s the kind of — and it, of course, goes on and on and on. The Koch brothers, our biggest oil and gas barons, who are still doing business in Russia right now, I mean, they got their start — the family fortune was founded building refineries for Stalin. So their protestations ring completely hollow, especially because they know what the alternative is. The alternative is the rapid deployment of renewable energy, just as the IPCC report called for earlier this week.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, I think most people, if asked, “Why are the gas prices going through the roof?” Bill, they would say, “Oh, it’s because of the war in Ukraine.” But the fact that the oil companies are using this crisis to record unprecedented profits, they’re in fact lifting these prices not because of the war in Ukraine; they’re just using it as a cover.

BILL McKIBBEN: Does that surprise you, Amy, given what you know about the role of the oil industry in our history? I mean, these are predatory companies that have used every excuse — and this is one of the grossest — to try and increase their profit margins. And right now the fact that they’re padding their profits on the back — I mean, this is the definition of a windfall profit. It’s not like they did something new this year that should get them, you know, higher profit. The only new thing that happened was that Vladimir Putin, who they’ve been encouraging and building up for decades, launched a brutal war in Ukraine, and now they’re the ones that are making literally a killing, while people like Svitlana, you know, sit there and absorb the bombs as they come in one after another.

AMY GOODMAN: And, very quickly, how about Whitehouse’s proposal — not the White House, but Senator Whitehouse’s proposal — to institute the — to try to get passed the Windfall Tax Act, that would make these CEOs pay a price?

BILL McKIBBEN: Yes, I was reading Jamie Henn’s analysis just today, and it looks like that would send back about $250 to every American to help them deal with that. And just as importantly, it would take some of that excess money out of the hands of the fossil fuel industry, because what do they use it for? They use it to buy Congress. Remember, Joe Manchin, who’s single-handedly held up any work on climate change throughout the Biden administration, is the biggest recipient of those fossil fuel dollars, which are dirty, top to bottom.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Svitlana Romanko into this conversation, joining us from western Ukraine, longtime climate activist and environmental lawyer. Svitlana, when you hear — I doubt you had a chance, being in Ukraine, to watch the hearing in the U.S. Congress yesterday, but the U.S. CEOs admitting they are making record profits right now. Your response as they use the war in Ukraine partially as an excuse?

SVITLANA ROMANKO: Oh, yes. But I believe, I am truly sure, that we are approaching the stage and approaching the era when social license for these fossil fuel companies and industries will be quickly dismantled. And I believe that we are at the very tipping point for that, because record profits that they’ve made over the past years are not accepted with the civil society and even some governments anymore, so they will need to stop. At the very same moment I am talking with you here, the European Parliament deputies, the major deputies — major number of those deputies have just voted for a full embargo on Russian oil and gas immediately, demanding that from the EU country states. So the progress is ongoing. And I believe, along with the dismantling and ending Putin’s horrific war against Ukraine, we will dismantle the system that enables this fossil fuel industry to overprofit on human lives and infrastructure destruction.

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RSN: Robin Wright | Will Mercenaries and Foreign Fighters Change the Course of Ukraine's War?

 

 

07 April 22

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Robin Wright | Will Mercenaries and Foreign Fighters Change the Course of Ukraine's War?
Robin Wright, The New Yorker
Wright writes: "For the past four years, the U.S. has tried to nab Yevgeny Prigozhin, a dour and balding Russian oligarch often photographed somewhere close to Vladimir Putin. He's been dubbed Putin's chef."

At a critical strategic juncture, non-state actors threaten to complicate the conflict.

For the past four years, the U.S. has tried to nab Yevgeny Prigozhin, a dour and balding Russian oligarch often photographed somewhere close to Vladimir Putin. He’s been dubbed Putin’s chef. His companies cater Kremlin events and allegedly finance the Russian leader’s political and military escapades. In 2018, a U.S. federal court issued an arrest warrant for Prigozhin for, among other things, “conspiracy to defraud the United States.” It charged that the restaurateur turned billionaire, through his funding of the Internet Research Agency, “oversaw and approved” widespread meddling in the U.S. political system, including in the 2016 Presidential election. Last year, the F.B.I. put Prigozhin on its most-wanted list and offered a quarter of a million dollars for tips leading to his arrest. The U.S. Treasury has also sanctioned Prigozhin for running disinformation campaigns through a network of front companies in other elections in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Last month, the U.S. imposed additional sanctions on Prigozhin (along with his wife and two children). “We continue to impose very severe economic sanctions on Putin and all those folks around him,” President Biden said at the announcement.

Prigozhin is in the spotlight again this month as Putin, facing humiliating military setbacks in Ukraine, looks for ways to regroup on the battlefield. U.S. and British officials say that Russia is now scrambling to mobilize mercenaries from the notoriously opaque Wagner Group, which is reportedly financed by Prigozhin. NATO recently estimated that up to fifteen thousand Russians have been killed in just the first four weeks of the war—about the same as the Soviet Union lost during its decade-long invasion of Afghanistan. Russia is expected to redirect more than a thousand mercenaries in the Wagner Group, including senior leaders, from wars on other continents to Ukraine, the British Ministry of Defense said, last week. Because of the “largely stalled invasion,” it added, “Russia has highly likely been forced to reprioritise Wagner personnel for Ukraine at the expense of operations in Africa and Syria.”

Since Putin launched his attack, both Ukraine and Russia have boasted of staggering numbers of foreign volunteers and mercenaries willing to join the biggest conflict in Europe since the Second World War. On March 6th, Ukraine announced that some twenty thousand people from fifty-two countries had applied to fight in the newly formed International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine. They reportedly include Americans, Canadians, and several European nationalities. “The whole world today is on Ukraine’s side, not only in words but in deeds,” the Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told Ukrainian television.

Days later, the Russian Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, claimed that some sixteen thousand men from the Middle East had applied to fight for Russia. “As for the mercenaries from all over the world being sent to Ukraine, we see that they do not conceal it, the Western sponsors of Ukraine, the Ukrainian regime, do not hide it,” Putin said, in a meeting with his top security advisers. “That’s why if you see that there are people who are willing to come as volunteers, especially not for money, and help people residing in Donbas, well, we need to meet them halfway and assist them in moving to the combat zone.”

The infusion of outsiders and “irregular forces” could further complicate an already messy conflict, according to a report released on Monday by the Soufan Center, a nonprofit, global-security research group. “The battlefield in Ukraine is incredibly complex, with a range of violent non-state actors—private military contractors, foreign fighters, volunteers, mercenaries, extremists, and terrorist groups—all in the mix,” it concluded. In the lexicon of war, volunteers who join a rebel force or militia are typically called “foreign fighters,” while mercenaries are generally employed by a state and fight for profit or personal gain. The U.S. and the U.N. deemed the tens of thousands who joined ISIS in Syria and Iraq foreign terrorist fighters, not mercenaries. But such definitions are tricky—and easily contested. The Russian Defense Ministry has referred to any foreigners caught in Ukraine’s International Legion as mercenaries—who will not be eligible for protections as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. “At best, they can expect to be prosecuted as criminals,” the Defense Ministry announced. To drive home the point, on March 13th, Russia launched missiles at a base near Ukraine’s border with Poland that it described as a “training facility for Western mercenaries.”

The looming question at this strategic juncture of the war is how—or whether—foreign fighters and mercenaries will alter the conflict’s course. Experts believe that the estimates by both Ukraine and Russia are high, more a wish list than reality. By mid-March, hundreds of foreigners showed up to fight for Ukraine, not thousands. Over time, foreign fighters have the potential to be “force multipliers,” Colin P. Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center who co-wrote the report, told me. “But that’s in the rare case that you have somebody that’s highly trained and motivated,” such as former member of U.S. or British special forces. “These are people that actually know irregular warfare, that can really have an impact on strategy,” he said.

Others who come often serve as “cannon fodder,” and cause “more harm than they’re worth because of the lack of experience, because they’re essentially war tourists that are going there for a selfie and a story,” Clarke told me. Some have complained about weapons shortages, and the language gap has hindered integration with Ukrainian forces on the front lines. The Ukrainians, Clarke added, have tried to discourage volunteers without military experience, partly because they risk being captured and exploited by Russian propaganda. The State Department has warned Americans not to travel to Ukraine—for any reason—since they face “the very real risk” of capture, criminal prosecution, or death. (Some foreign fighters—“jarred by the horrors and brutalities of war”—have already opted out of Ukraine, the Soufan Center reported.)

Under the Russian constitution, the use of private military companies is technically illegal. The Kremlin denies that the Wagner Group even exists. Prigozhin has also denied ties to the organization, although in 2021 the European Union formally claimed that he financed it. Putin has reportedly made mercenaries part of Moscow’s military strategy since it first intervened in Ukraine, in 2014, to seize Crimea, and to support the pro-Russia separatists in Donbas. The Wagner Group was created to aid, stand in for, and provide plausible deniability to Russian forces. Moscow eventually recruited more than thirteen thousand fighters from several countries to fight in Donbas, according to the Soufan Center.

Putin’s reliance on Prigozhin, the Wagner Group, and other private military contractors has since “exploded,” with “suspected or proven” military operations in thirty countries on four continents, from Venezuela to Libya and Afghanistan, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Wagner Group has recruited, trained, and deployed operatives worldwide to project power, undermine the U.S., and increase Moscow’s influence using lower-profile contractors. In 2021, the Council of the European Union alleged that the Wagner Group has also been used “to fuel violence, loot natural resources and intimidate civilians in violation of international law.”

Within the first ten days of Russia’s invasion, it deployed an estimated thousand mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a U.S. official told me. But they quickly suffered losses, too. By early March, about two hundred mercenaries, some of whom belonged to the group, had already died on the battlefield, the official said. Russia is also recruiting in Syria, where its forces have propped up President Bashar al-Assad since 2015. Syria’s eleven-year civil war has produced informal local militias as well as battle-hardened soldiers who earn as little as fifteen to thirty-five dollars monthly; Russia is reportedly promising a thousand dollars or more a month to fight in Ukraine. The Syrians alone, however, may not make a strategic difference, experts say. They don’t speak the language or know the terrain in Ukraine. The Assad regime needed its own foreign fighters, from militias in Lebanon and Iraq, as well as strategists from Iran and Russia.

The Russian military seems to be gambling on outside help. As of mid-March, “nearly 90% of the Wagner Group’s manpower and resources have been moved from other theaters into Ukraine,” the Soufan Center reported. Yet Moscow’s recruitment of foreigners reflects desperation, Clarke told me. “They actually need those bodies to take the place of the conscripts that are dying in large numbers.” On Monday, the Pentagon said the Wagner Group’s contract soldiers were focussed on the Donbas as Russia shifts its attention from capturing Kyiv, the capital, to widening its hold in the resource-rich east and along the southern coastline. A different phase of the war has begun, with a growing array of players.

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A view of devastation in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol under the control of Russian military and pro-Russian separatists, on April 4, 2022. (photo: Getty)

Russia Accused of 'Hiding' War Crimes in Mariupol With Mobile Crematoriums
Barbie Latza Nadeau and Allison Quinn, The Daily Beast
Excerpt: "As the Kremlin continues to insist Russian troops are not targeting civilians, overwhelming evidence to the contrary just keeps growing."

As the Kremlin continues to insist Russian troops are not targeting civilians, overwhelming evidence to the contrary just keeps growing.

Russian authorities have begun using mobile crematoriums in the besieged city of Mariupol in order to hide evidence of murdered civilians, the city’s mayor alleges.

In a lengthy post to Telegram on Wednesday, Vadym Boichenko said Russian military officials had reacted swiftly to “hide their tracks” after images of dead civilians littering the street in Bucha sparked international outrage over the weekend.

“After widespread international coverage of the genocide in Bucha, the top Russian leadership issued an order to destroy any evidence of the crimes of their army in Mariupol,” Boichenko said.

“The Russians left all the dirty work for collaborators. Eyewitnesses report that the [Russians] recruited local and 'DNR' terrorists to special brigades to clean up. They are collecting and burning the bodies of the residents of Mariupol who were killed as a result of the Russian invasion,” he said.

“The world has not seen a tragedy on the scale of Mariupol since the Nazi concentration camps. The Rashists have turned our entire city into a death camp,” he said, using a derogatory term for “Russians” that is a play on “fascists.”

“This is no longer Chechnya or Aleppo. This is the new Auschwitz and Majdanek. The world should help punish Putin's bigots,” he wrote.

Just hours before his alarming announcement, two civilians were killed by Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on Wednesday as they were collecting humanitarian aid, according to local authorities.

“The place of distribution of humanitarian aid was shot up by Russian fascists with rocket artillery in Vuhledar,” Pavel Kirilenko, the head of the regional military administration, announced on Telegram.

Photos from the scene showed medics tending to several wounded people who lay on the ground amid the wreckage. At least two people were killed, and another five wounded, Kirilenko said.

The attack came as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in comments to Russian media, insisted with a straight face that Russian troops are not targeting civilians, despite growing evidence to the contrary.

His comments came after Ukraine’s Security Service released audio of what it said was an intercepted call between a Russian soldier and his commander. In the recording, the commander can be heard angrily ordering the soldier to shoot “everyone,” regardless of whether they are civilians or not.

“Yes, cut them all fucking down!” he said.

In the recently liberated town of Hostomel, in the Kyiv region, authorities said hundreds of civilians are still missing and feared dead after Russian forces decimated the area while they had control for 35 days.

Taras Dumenko, the head of the local administration, told Hromadske Radio on Wednesday that “more than 400 civilians have disappeared without a trace.”

“In Hostomel, there were not so many bodies found, further out in the villages of our community there were bodies found of those executed, and residents who were killed,” he said.

He went on to say authorities were informed of several killings of civilians, incidents that were confirmed with photo or video evidence, but that their bodies had yet to be found.

“But one must understand that the invaders also covered up the traces of their crimes,” he said.

Russian troops appeared to be more brazen in the town of Bucha, outside of Kyiv, where scenes of streets literally littered with slain civilians shocked the world this week. Bucha Mayor Anatoly Fedoruk detailed the horrors that unfolded there in comments to BBC on Wednesday, saying he had personally witnessed several killings.

“Three civilian vehicles were trying to evacuate towards Kyiv and were brutally fired upon. There was a pregnant woman whose husband screamed and begged [for them] not to shoot her, but she was just brutally shot,” Fedoruk said.

About 320 residents in total were killed, he said.

The harrowing new details come shortly after a Russian missile strike at a pediatric hospital in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv, with chilling images showing children’s toys near the scene of the attack.

In the parking lot, CCTV footage caught the moment the Russian missile struck an ambulance donated by the U.K. to the facility. Witness accounts by those who were there say at least one child and one man died and at least 60 others were injured. International condemnation—by now a daily chorus—has done little to deter the carnage.

Doctors Without Borders staff, who were there helping administer medical aid at the compound, which also includes a cancer center, say the windows of their vehicles were blown out in the bombings. “Several explosions took place in close proximity to our staff over the course of about 10 minutes,” Doctors Without Borders Ukraine chief Michel-Olivier Lacharité told Reuters. “As they were leaving the area, the MSF team saw injured people and at least one dead body.”

Ukrainian officials say at least 167 children have been killed since Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion on Feb. 24. A further 279 have been gravely wounded, and thousands more undoubtedly traumatized for life by what they have seen. At least 927 schools and other educational facilities have been damaged in the war so far, according to the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office.

Near the capital of Kyiv, another suburb has been abandoned by Russian troops and another trail of suspected war crimes lies in their wake. Like the scenes in Bucha that horrified an already shocked world earlier in the week, images out of Borodianka revealed another nightmare.

A woman interviewed by CNN showed a corpse in her garden. The dead man’s pants were pulled down; he had a bag over his head and his hands were tied behind his back. “He was executed, gunshot to the head,” a Ukrainian police officer told CNN. Buildings in the shelled city have almost all been defaced with the letter V or Z, symbols of Putin’s “special military operation,” or codeword for war.

European leaders will meet on Wednesday to decide on new sanctions against Russia, which now look to be gradual rather than immediate as Europe’s dependency on Russian gas becomes increasingly clear with energy bill increases expected to top 400 percent in the coming months.

In the U.S., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley warned of a geopolitical disaster in the making. “The Russian invasion of Ukraine is threatening to undermine not only European peace and stability but global peace and stability that my parents and a generation of Americans fought so hard to defend,” he said. “We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable and the potential for significant international conflict is increasing, not decreasing.”

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Apple has resumed allowing Russians to download an app run by supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. (photo: iStock)

Apple Restores Opposition App to Its App Store in Russia
Joseph Menn and Greg Miller, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Apple has resumed allowing Russians to download an app run by supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny after criticism that it was acceding to unreasonable government demands for censorship."

The company had made it inaccessible in Russia last year after threats from the Russian government

Apple has resumed allowing Russians to download an app run by supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny after criticism that it was acceding to unreasonable government demands for censorship.

As reported by The Washington Post last month, law enforcement agents had repeatedly threatened the top Apple and Google officials in Russia with arrest in September unless they removed Navalny’s “Smart Voting” app, which included more than a thousand endorsements of candidates for seats in Russia’s legislature.

Those demands came as voting was about to begin, and both companies complied. Google later reinstated the app for Android phones soon after the election, while Apple did not.

That changed this week, according to independent researchers and Navalny’s chief of staff, Leonid Volkov.

Apple spokesmen declined to comment on the decision.

The reversal comes amid escalating tensions between Russia and outside companies, many of which have withdrawn from the market or curtailed activities there since Russia invaded Ukraine. But civil liberties groups and American officials are pushing the other way, arguing that Apple and other tech companies provide ordinary Russians with the means to find independent news sources and to connect to activists and nonprofit organizations opposed to the war in Ukraine.

Apps are an especially critical form of communication in Russia now because the country’s censorship apparatus has not been able to block or modify content flowing from installed apps to users’ phones.

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Smoke billows from a fire in an area of the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia State, Brazil, September 2019. (photo: Getty)

Peter Kalmus | Climate Scientists Are Desperate: We're Crying, Begging and Getting Arrested
Peter Kalmus, Guardian UK
Kalmus writes: "I'm a climate scientist and a desperate father. How can I plead any harder? What will it take? What can my colleagues and I do to stop this catastrophe unfolding now all around us with such excruciating clarity?"

On Wednesday, I risked arrest by locking myself onto an entrance to the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown LA. I can’t stand by – and nor should you

“Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals, but the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”

– United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres

I’m a climate scientist and a desperate father. How can I plead any harder? What will it take? What can my colleagues and I do to stop this catastrophe unfolding now all around us with such excruciating clarity?

On Wednesday, I risked arrest by locking myself to an entrance to the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown Los Angeles with colleagues and supporters. Our action in LA is part of an international campaign organized by a loosely knit group of concerned scientists called Scientist Rebellion, involving more than 1,200 scientists in 26 countries and supported by local climate groups. Our day of action follows the IPCC Working Group 3 report released Monday, which details the harrowing gap between where society is heading and where we need to go. Our movement is growing fast.

We chose JP Morgan Chase because out of all the investment banks in the world, JP Morgan Chase funds the most new fossil fuel projects. As the new IPCC report explains, emissions from current and planned fossil energy infrastructure are already more than twice the amount that would push the planet over 1.5°C of global heating, a level of heating that will bring much more intense heat, fire, storms, flooding, and drought than the present 1.2°C.

Even limiting heating to below 2°C, a level of heating that in my opinion could threaten civilization as we know it, would require emissions to peak before 2025. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in the press conference on Monday: “Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is moral and economic madness.” And yet, this is precisely what President Biden, most other world leaders, and major banks are doing. It’s no exaggeration to say that Chase and other banks are contributing to murder and neocide through their fossil fuel finance.

Earth breakdown is much worse than most people realize. The science indicates that as fossil fuels continue to heat our planet, everything we love is at risk. For me, one of the most horrific aspects of all this is the juxtaposition of present-day and near-future climate disasters with the “business as usual” occurring all around me. It’s so surreal that I often find myself reviewing the science to make sure it’s really happening, a sort of scientific nightmare arm-pinch. Yes, it’s really happening.

If everyone could see what I see coming, society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years.

I hate being the Cassandra. I’d rather just be with my family and do science. But I feel morally compelled to sound the alarm. By the time I switched from astrophysics into Earth science in 2012, I’d realized that facts alone were not persuading world leaders to take action. So I explored other ways to create social change, all the while becoming increasingly concerned. I joined Citizens’ Climate Lobby. I reduced my own emissions by 90% and wrote a book about how this turned out to be satisfying, fun, and connecting. I gave up flying, started a website to help encourage others, and organized colleagues to pressure the American Geophysical Union to reduce academic flying. I helped organize FridaysForFuture in the US. I co-founded a popular climate app and started the first ad agency for the Earth. I spoke at climate rallies, city council meetings, and local libraries and churches. I wrote article after article, open letter after open letter. I gave hundreds of interviews, always with authenticity, solid facts, and an openness to showing vulnerability. I’ve encouraged and supported countless climate activists and young people behind the scenes. And this was all on my personal time and at no small risk to my scientific career.

Nothing has worked. It’s now the eleventh hour and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity. I feel deep grief over the loss of forests and corals and diminishing biodiversity. But I’ll keep fighting as hard as I can for this Earth, no matter how bad it gets, because it can always get worse. And it will continue to get worse until we end the fossil fuel industry and the exponential quest for ever more profit at the expense of everything else. There is no way to fool physics.

Martin Luther King Jr said, “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.” Out of necessity, and after exhaustive efforts, I’ve joined the ranks of those who selflessly risk their freedom and put their bodies on the line for the Earth, despite ridicule from the ignorant and punishment from a colonizing legal system designed to protect the planet-killing interests of the rich. It’s time we all join them. The feeling of solidarity is a wonderful balm.

As for the climate scientists? We’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.

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Senator Bernie Sanders joined a rally last month of Kellogg workers, who have been on strike since early October. (photo: Jim West/Zuma Press)

Sanders Pushes for 95 Percent Tax on Corporate 'Windfall' Profits
Aris Folley, The Hill
Folley writes: "Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday made a push for a bill that seeks to levy a 95 percent tax on windfall profits of companies that bring in more than $500 million in revenue annually."

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Tuesday made a push for a bill that seeks to levy a 95 percent tax on windfall profits of companies that bring in more than $500 million in revenue annually.

Sanders highlighted reports detailing higher profits made by companies like Exxon Mobil and Tyson Foods during the pandemic.

“Is it appropriate that during this pandemic, during the war in Ukraine, during all of this instability, that this be a moment in which large corporations continue to enjoy huge profits?” Sanders said in opening remarks during a Budget Committee hearing on inflation.

The legislation introduced by Sanders would apply to companies’ profits that are in excess of their average profit level seen in the five years leading up to the pandemic, according to a a summary provided by his office.

Ahead of the midterm elections, a number of Democrats have pinned blame on corporate greed for rising costs, as inflation rates have hit heights not seen in four decades.

Sen. Lindsay Graham (S.C.), the ranking Republican on the committee, called the idea of a windfalls profit tax “a disaster” and blamed inflation on Biden administration policies such as the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that passed Congress last year without GOP support.

“We’re trying to get our economy back on its feet after dealing with COVID throughout the world, and what I would say is that the best cause for inflation lives in the policy choices of this administration, more than any single thing,” he said.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also accused Democrats of “misdiagnosing the cause of inflation,” arguing “the current focus on so-called corporate greed risks taking us down the failed road of the 1970s-style price controls and windfall profits tax.”

Robert Reich, a former Labor secretary and leading figure on the left, pointed to oil companies in arguing that a windfall profits tax “is exactly what is needed right now.”

“When oil companies, for example, are showing, as they are, historical profits, they are making huge amounts of money. They are raising prices at the pump at the same time. They don’t need to raise those prices,” Reich testified.

“A large portion of that money is going to executives and major investors, so you want a windfall profits tax that stops them from doing that and actually rebates that money to consumers,” he added.

The hearing arrives as inflation has emerged as a key campaign issue ahead of the coming midterm elections, with Republicans and Democrats taking opposing positions on how to address rising prices.

At the close of the hearing on Tuesday afternoon, Sanders reiterated focus “on inflation taking place at the same time as we’re seeing record breaking profits.”

“We’re seeing record-breaking levels of stock buybacks. We’re seeing high dividends. We are seeing and living through a moment in American history where the people on top are doing phenomenally well, while working people are struggling,” Sanders said.

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Starbucks Workers United, a Buffalo-area group of Starbucks employees, holds a news conference outside the store at Sheridan and Bailey to announce that three more stores have petitioned for a union election, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2021. (photo: Sharon Cantillon)

Starbucks Is Desperate to Stop Unionization, So It's Firing Worker Leaders
Laila Dalton, Jacobin
Dalton writes: "Starbucks is firing worker activists as it seeks to blunt the momentum of the union drive sweeping the company."

Starbucks is firing worker activists as it seeks to blunt the momentum of the union drive sweeping the company. Jacobin spoke to worker Laila Dalton, who was fired just weeks after the NLRB issued a complaint against Starbucks for retaliating against her.

Starbucks is waging a war on its workers. The coffee chain has brought back founder Howard Schultz to lead the effort to defeat a union drive that is still spreading across the country, and that workers allege is flagrantly violating federal law as it seeks to slow their momentum. Currently, 176 Starbucks locations have filed for National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections since the first union campaign at a corporate-owned store in the United States went public in Buffalo, New York last year.

Starbucks is favoring a particular method: firing union leaders. Workers at several stores say they have been terminated in retaliation for legally protected union activities. Early allegations came in Memphis, Tennessee in February, when Starbucks fired seven workers after they announced their union drive. The company has said that the workers were fired on the pretext of workplace conduct violations, and while Starbucks Workers United has filed unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against the company alleging retaliation, the understaffed NLRB has yet to make a judgment, and the workers remain without their jobs.

In recent days, with Schultz back at the helm — and, bizarrely, attempting to assuage worker unrest by announcing that the company is “going to be in the NFT business” — the firings appear to have accelerated. Several union leaders in Buffalo have been fired or forced out. Three workers have been fired in Overland Park, Kansas, where the remaining workers are now on strike. And on Monday, Laila Dalton, the nineteen-year-old Starbucks barista in Phoenix, Arizona whose prior claims of retaliation were substantiated by the NLRB mere weeks ago, lost her job.

As in the case of the other recent terminations, Starbucks says that Dalton was fired for violating company policies, telling the Independent that she was “written up numerous times for behavior that is not reflective of the company’s mission and values.” The company has pointed specifically to her recording interactions with management “without their consent, which is against the law in Arizona.” This despite Arizona being a one-party consent state. [According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, recording a conversation without a person’s knowledge is permitted in Arizona as long as there is consent from “at least one party to the conversation.”]

But Dalton and her coworkers say her termination was retaliation. In the days leading up to her firing, Dalton had been voicing her fears about such an outcome on social media and had mentioned increasing harassment and surveillance at her store during a conversation with Jacobin just weeks ago. It is rare for a company to violate the law in such a high-profile case — evidence that Starbucks is desperate to blunt workers’ momentum.

In a conversation with Jacobin’s Alex N. Press, Dalton explains how she was fired, what has happened since, and what she expects going forward. After all, her store is now voting on unionization, with ballots due back to the NLRB by April 19. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

ANP: What happened on Monday?

LD: About an hour after Howard Schultz had begun his town hall, I was fired. My shift started at 12:30 PM, and at 1:20 PM, I saw the district manager and another district manager. Now, on Saturday, I’d gotten harassed by two district managers as well. That day, they asked me if I have ever recorded [a phone call or video] without anyone’s consent — even though Arizona is a one-party consent state. At that time, they’d told me I was under another investigation. Almost every time we meet, there’s a new investigation, and never any follow-up on the prior ones.

Every time my district manager asks to talk with me, I always say, “Am I going to get fired today?” And she always says, “You’re not going to get fired today.” But when I said it on Monday, she didn’t say that. She said, “Let’s just have a conversation.” So, I had the feeling that they were going to fire me.

I started recording, as I always do, and the first thing she did was give me a final written warning. That warning was about an alleged violation of a COVID procedure in January, on a day when I wasn’t working but had come into the store to pick up a friend. Weirdly, this final written warning said that it was created on March 18, but it wasn’t given to me until April 4.

Right after they gave me that final written warning, they gave me the next sheet of paper, which was a notice of separation, and it was for totally different reasons. It was because I recorded without anyone’s permission. The write-up says, “Your conduct not only violates Starbucks policy. It also raises concerns under Arizona state law and interferes with the operations of our store. This conduct would constitute grounds for separation in and of itself, even without considering your history of corrective action. This serves as Leila Dalton’s notice of separation of employment.”

Meanwhile, I’ve been so public in the media. I’ve told them that I’m always recording, not that I’d need their permission under Arizona law. They clearly don’t know the law and it was clearly retaliation: it was the day before our ballots went out and it was an hour after Howard got in.

ANP: You’ve filed another ULP charge with the NLRB over your termination, and it’s incredibly bold for a company to terminate a person who was so recently the face of a prior sustained complaint. Plus, some of the things Starbucks was investigating you for are just totally strange — I saw the video you recorded in which an ethics and compliance officer seems to ask if you’re too quick to call coworkers racist, even though you’re the only black employee at your store. What do you expect to happen next?

LD: I’m ready to be reinstated, even though I know that might take two to three months. But Starbucks’s reputation will be totally ruined. My union rep has always said that the more public you are, the safer you are, and I have always been very public. But even though I was in those videos from More Perfect Union, they kept harassing me and writing me up. It’s not smart. I did not expect it and I would have thought that if they were to fire me, it would have been after the election. Starbucks doing it the day before our ballots come out might end up with them having to forfeit the election if we lose because it’s clear intimidation. It affects workers when they fire the most outspoken person.

ANP: Ballots are out now, and you and your coworkers just held a rally to demand your reinstatement. How was that, and how do your coworkers feel?

LD: My coworkers were in shock, and really upset and outraged. No one saw this coming, not even me, and it’s just making them want to unionize more. Of course, Starbucks is going to go with intimidation tactics, but today, we came out to our rally and had a great turnout. We raised so much attention that, according to my coworker, the two managers at the store were hiding by the bathroom, making calls.

Then, my district manager showed up along with someone who we don’t know but who looks like they’re from corporate. So, we were bringing a lot of attention. Now they’re starting to pull workers one by one, asking them about the election. I’m not sure of the questions yet, but I’ve been told that my district manager is pulling everyone aside to try to talk to them about the election and about why I was separated.

ANP: You said this retaliation might backfire, with workers wanting a union now more than ever, and that reminds me of the Amazon union campaign in Staten Island. Amazon called the cops on Chris Smalls, the president of the Amazon Labor Union, and organizers say that backfired, leading more workers to vote for the union. What do you think about that victory?

LD: I was in shock when I heard the news. Because I’m going through it, I can feel for the Amazon people. I’m realizing how corrupt these big companies are. Those workers have been going through it, and they got their victory. Seeing how Amazon spent more than $4 million trying to union-bust last year, I can only imagine how much Starbucks is spending on us and the lengths they’re going to in an effort to stop this union.

But everything they’re doing is winning more people to the union. I think with people in my generation going through this and posting about it on social media, people are realizing that their best friends are getting treated horribly. A lot of my friends never knew Starbucks was like this. They just expect the whole food industry to be a struggle. Once I tell them how much Starbucks can give us, they realize that we shouldn’t be allowing them to treat us like this.

They can afford to pay us more, to give us more benefits, and to treat us better, but they don’t because they’re greedy. That shows that they don’t care about us, that they see us as just bodies and a source of investment. So, this definitely encourages people to want to have a voice and figure out ways to have a voice, which is by unionizing.

This is the start of a new era. Definitely. I see unions being a big thing for our generation, and I’m so excited that people want to stand up for themselves and are ready to be treated more fairly.

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A Shell station in Hercules, Calif., on March 29. (photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)

Big Oil Companies Are Using Wartime Profits to Enrich Investors, Report Says
Maxine Joselow, The Washington Post
Joselow writes: "The nation's biggest oil and gas companies have significantly increased stock buybacks and dividends since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, raising questions about whether the firms are using wartime profits to enrich investors instead of curbing Americans' pain at the pump."

Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Our friends at the Capital Weather Gang reported that climate change may be increasing the frequency of “false springs," and we can certainly relate here in D.C., where the cherry blossoms have given way to cold again. 🤷‍♀️ But first:

Exclusive: Big oil companies are using wartime profits to enrich investors, report says

The nation’s biggest oil and gas companies have significantly increased stock buybacks and dividends since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, raising questions about whether the firms are using wartime profits to enrich investors instead of curbing Americans’ pain at the pump, three liberal advocacy groups write in a new report shared exclusively with The Climate 202.

The report released today by Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen and BailoutWatch turns up the heat on the fossil fuel industry ahead of two high-profile congressional hearings this week, when Democrats plan to scrutinize the industry's windfall profits amid rising crude prices sparked by the war in Ukraine.

The three groups looked at Securities and Exchange Commission filings and public statements from the 20 largest U.S.-headquartered oil and gas companies, including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Devon Energy, EOG Resources and ExxonMobil.

The groups' analysis focused on buybacks, which often raise a company's stock price, rewarding its shareholders. Critics say that buybacks inflate executive compensation while doing nothing to improve a company's products and services. The groups also examined dividends, the quarterly payments that investors receive for owning shares.

The main findings:

• In January and February, seven companies' boards authorized their corporate treasuries to buy back and retire $24.35 billion in stock — a 15 percent increase over all of the buybacks authorized in 2021. Six of those decisions came in February, after fears of Russian aggression against Ukraine lifted stock prices. In total, the 20 companies announced $45.6 billion in stock buybacks since the start of 2021.


• More than half of the companies boosted their dividends in January and February. Of the 11 companies raising their dividends, nine were increases of more than 15 percent and four were increases of more than 40 percent.


• Six companies have started paying additional dividends on top of their routine quarterly payments, including by implementing new “variable dividends” based on company earnings.

“This is a master class in war profiteering. Humanitarian disaster and consumer pain are being turned into Wall Street profits in real time,” Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth and co-author of the report, told The Climate 202.

One could argue that boosting payouts to investors could be a net positive for the climate, should those investors choose to reinvest their money in renewable energy companies rather than fossil fuel firms. But Alan Zibel, research director at Public Citizen and another co-author of the report, questioned whether that scenario was realistic.

“I wouldn't necessarily count on investors who collect oil dividends to foster the green energy transition,” Zibel said.

Spokespeople for the oil companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Oil executives in the hot seat on the Hill

The analysis comes after top Democrats on the House Oversight Committee yesterday sent a letter to executives at ExxonMobil, BP America, Chevron and Shell urging them to use their surging profits to help lower gas prices and invest in clean energy.

“Big Oil must immediately stop profiteering off the crisis in Ukraine,” says the letter from House Oversight Chair Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Oversight Subcommittee on Environment Chair Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).

Meanwhile, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. Eastern today titled “Ensuring Transparency in Petroleum Markets.”

• The Commerce committee originally invited the executives of ExxonMobil, BP and Pioneer Natural Resources to testify at the hearing, but all three companies declined to appear in person. A committee aide told The Climate 202 that the panel still hopes to host the executives at a later date.


• In the meantime, the committee today will hear from Robert McCullough of McCullough Research, an energy consulting firm. He was one of the first people to voice concerns about Enron, the Texas energy company that declared bankruptcy in 2001 after revelations of accounting fraud and inflated profits.


• Republicans invited as their witness Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, a trade group that advocates for oil and gas production in the West.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee also still plans to hold a hearing Wednesday featuring the executives of six fossil fuel firms and titled “Gouged at the Gas Station: Big Oil and America’s Pain at the Pump.”

International climate

The world is running out of options to reach climate goals, U.N. report shows

After decades of inaction on climate change, the world is on track to speed past a crucial target of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2030, 278 of the world's top scientists said Monday in the latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, The Washington Post's Sarah Kaplan and Brady Dennis report.

Despite the planet already being pushed into unprecedented territory, with ravaged ecosystems and rising sea levels, the scientists said it’s still possible for nations to have a shot at limiting global warming — but humans must halve greenhouse gas emissions in the next eight years.

The report's authors cautioned, however, that this goal “cannot be achieved through incremental change.” Instead, securing a less catastrophic future requires an almost immediate “societal transformation,” they wrote.

The nearly 3,000-page document marks the IPCC’s first assessment of Earth's remaining strategies for climate action since the 2015 Paris agreement. It details how coordinated efforts to deploy more renewable energy, overhaul transportation systems, restructure cities, and pull carbon from the air could put the planet on a more sustainable path while improving living standards around the globe.

On the Hill

Sens. Manchin, Cramer oppose SEC climate risk rule, saying it targets fossil fuel companies

In separate letters, Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) wrote to the Securities and Exchange Commission opposing its proposed climate disclosure rule, which was announced last month and would require all publicly traded companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and the risks they face from climate change in a standardized way for the first time.

Manchin, a key Democratic vote on climate policy, wrote to the SEC on Monday that the proposed rule is beyond the agency's authority, and that such policies will add “undue burdens on companies,” specifically those in the fossil fuel industry, Pippa Stevens reports for CNBC.

Meanwhile, Cramer led Republican members of the Senate Banking and Environment and Public Works committees in a letter this morning calling on SEC Chair Gary Gensler to withdraw the rule.

“After failed attempts to enact radical climate policy via legislation, this rule is yet another example of the Biden Administration’s efforts to have unelected bureaucrats implement its preferred agenda through regulation,” the senators wrote in the letter.

The SEC's proposed rule is in a 60-day public comment period.

Agency alert

Administration unveils plan for improving school infrastructure

Vice President Harris on Monday announced an action plan to invest in the nation's public school infrastructure, including by helping schools make energy efficiency retrofits and switch to electric buses.

The plan, which leverages investments from the bipartisan infrastructure law, spans several federal agencies:

• The Energy Department released a request for information for a $500 million grant program to make schools more energy efficient, thereby lowering their energy costs and improving air quality for students and teachers.


• The Environmental Protection Agency launched online resources to help school districts prepare for a $5 billion clean school bus program created by the infrastructure law. The program aims to avoid diesel exhaust from bus tailpipes, which produces pollutants that can aggravate asthma in children.

Pressure points

Climate change could cost the federal government $2 trillion a year by 2100, White House says

Extreme weather events fueled by climate change could cost up to $2 trillion each year from the nation’s federal budget by the end of the century, according to a first-ever assessment released Sunday from the White House Office of Management and Budget, Timothy Gardner reports for Reuters.

"Climate change threatens communities and sectors across the country, including through floods, drought, extreme heat, wildfires, and hurricanes (affecting) the U.S. economy and the lives of everyday Americans," Candace Vahlsing, an OMB climate and science official, and its chief economist Danny Yagan, said in a blog post. "Future damages could dwarf current damages if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated."

The assessment, which came hours before the new U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, found that the federal government could spend an additional $25 billion to $128 billion a year on climate-related expenditures such as coastal disaster relief; flood and crop insurance; and wildfire suppression.

Extreme events

Cold snap in Europe breaks records and stuns spring crops

A record-setting April cold snap has hit Europe for the second year in a row, with temperatures falling 20 to 30 degrees below normal, triggering harsh frosts and shocking early blooming plants in multiple countries, The Post's Jason Samenow and Kasha Patel report.

The bout of cold weather comes after warmer-than-normal temperatures in recent weeks that prompted a rapid greening of vegetation in the region. Climate scientists say that frequent warming in the late winter months could be increasing the rate of “false springs,” which make crops more vulnerable to the threat of frigid temperatures after blooming.

Some research also shows that climate change may exacerbate cold spells in certain times and places because of more erratic jet stream behavior even if winters are globally warmer, although the notion is under debate in the scientific community.

Viral

And now here's some good zebra-related news after all of that dark climate news:

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Special Coverage: Ukraine, A Historic Resistance
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