12 November 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
IF YOU NEVER DONATE — COME ON WITH IT, PLEASE! — In the category of people who can afford make a modest donation but never do lies the answer to all the funding problems this organization will ever have. If you can afford a modest donation, make it. That really fixes the donation problems quickly. With urgency.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News
Sure, I'll make a donation!
RSN: Marc Ash | Kherson Is Free
Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
Ash writes: "Though few in the United States know or care a glorious day is unfolding in the Ukrainian sea port of Kherson."
Though few in the United States know or care a glorious day is unfolding in the Ukrainian sea port of Kherson. People, good people, hard working, honest, creative people are flooding into the streets with tears streaming down their faces embracing their country men and women, the Ukrainian soldiers who have freed them from occupation and utter tyranny.
The fight has been long and bloody and the cost in lives has been immeasurable but today they truly understand the meaning and the price of freedom.
To look at a map of blue and red patches representing territories won or lost is to understand nothing of the life and death struggles playing out in real time on the ground. The people in the streets are not just celebrating for themselves but for those in the mass graves and filtration camps, those forcibly deported and handed out for adoption as trophies or spoils of war and those whose unspeakable traumas will be borne for the remainder of their lives.
Yes Ukraine fights for all of Europe and Europe and the West would do well not to lose sight of it. The Ukrainian people are dying for world peace. Many now call for some vague unspecified negotiation that would magically end the war that we can see. But what about the war we have been blind to for so long? Do they really want peace, a lasting peace or a return to willful ignorance?
Russia did not come to negotiate, Russia came to dominate and exploit and to demonstrate to the world what happens when they are opposed, when someone stands up to them. When you say negotiate what you are saying is, cede Ukrainian lands to Russian invaders and abandon all the men, women and children who live on those lands, leaving their fate at the hands of those perpetrating war crimes against them and engineering their genocide.
To the point, a prayer is in order for the estimated quarter million children kidnapped from Ukrainian families and taken illegally to Russia. Before the return of each and every child can be negotiated the West must have the courage to even address it, which thus far Western officials have only rarely done.
Peace itself is worth fighting for. If that sounds like a contradiction so be it. The human experience is one of perpetual contradiction. To abandon Ukraine now only risks and likely ensures more conflict in the near future. Peace comes with the Russians back in Russia and a new less oppressive more democratic Russian government in place. At that moment a platform for lasting peace can take shape.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
READ MORE
An apartment block in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv that was damaged overnight by Russian bombardment, killing at least seven people. (photo: Finbarr O'Reilly/NYT)
As Ukraine Makes Gains, Mykolaiv Bears Fierce Russian Attacks
Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times
Gettleman writes: "It was a grim ritual that has been repeated again and again across Ukraine, but especially here."
The Ukrainian city keeps getting bombed by the Russians just as nearby Kherson appears to be falling back into the hands of Ukraine.
It was a grim ritual that has been repeated again and again across Ukraine, but especially here.
A body was wrapped in black plastic and strapped to a stretcher. Rescue workers, heads down, pulled the stretcher through a crowd. Behind them stood a smoking apartment building with a gigantic hole punched through it. As the rescue workers approached, the onlookers parted and let the stretcher pass, in silence.
A journalist asked a military official: Is this revenge for what’s happening in Kherson? The military official shook his head. No, this was just another day in Mykolaiv.
Despite the Ukrainian battlefield successes on Friday, with Russian troops fleeing the strategic city of Kherson and Ukrainian forces moving in, the Russians are still heaping misery on many parts of Ukraine — and especially in Mykolaiv, a Black Sea port city that is only about 50 miles from Kherson.
On Friday, a day when countless Ukrainians were celebrating victory in Kherson, seven Ukrainians died from a Russian missile strike here in Mykolaiv.
Mykolaiv is resigned to more misery and random death. Though Russian forces have never taken the city, they have relentlessly bombed it since the first days of the conflict. Many residents seem so beleaguered, almost as if they could not imagine an end to the war.
Friday’s attack fit the pattern of so many others. In the middle of the night, a barrage of Russian missiles tore across the sky, heading straight toward a Ukrainian city as its people slept.
“The Russians will do what the Russians want,” said Viktoriia Bas, who has lived here all of her life.
A Ukrainian military spokesman made the same point, albeit more technically.
“The enemy has S-300 missiles that can fly 150 kilometers,” said Dmytro Pletenchuk, the spokesman. “Soon, they will have Iranian missiles that they can shoot from 500 kilometers away. They can fire from the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. What happens in Kherson won’t stop this.”
Nataliia Akimina, who was working a guard shift outside a large garage near Mykolaiv’s train station on Friday, said she had seen the missiles streak right above her head around 3 a.m.
“I heard the shriek, and all the dogs started barking. Actually, the dogs started barking right before I heard it,” she said.
One of the missiles slammed into a five-story residential apartment block on Prospekt Myru, or Peace Avenue. No known military targets were nearby. Since the war began in February, Mykolaiv has been bombed on all but 44 days, officials said. More than 150 people have been killed, and hundreds more wounded.
The dead on Friday included an electrician and his wife, whose birthday was today; several older residents who had refused to leave Mykolaiv; and one retired military man known as Uncle Hena.
Oleksandr Sviezhentsev, a crane operator who owns the apartment next door, talked to Uncle Hena all the time.
“We used to sit right there, on that bench,” he said as he stabbed his finger toward a green wooden bench, now surrounded by broken tables and ripped-apart walls. “He was good.”
It was Uncle Hena’s body that was the last to be removed, his wife watching with wet, gray eyes.
At the same time that rescue crews were combing through the rubble, thousands of people were lining up at places throughout the city, waiting for water. Mykolaiv, home to half a million people before the war and now maybe half that, has no drinkable tap water because in April the Russian army blew up all of the freshwater pipes supplying the city. That has left the people here dependent on handouts.
In one shopping-center parking lot, a huge crowd gathered after two truckloads of bottled water had arrived. The crowd was dressed in heavy coats. Their puffs of breath were visible in the thin, wintry air. They trudged forward as one.
“Don’t panic!” a soldier yelled from a megaphone, standing by the trucks. “There is enough for everyone. But don’t circle back in the line to take more.”
Ms. Bas waited with two children.
“It’s all misery. The schools are closed, and learning is online, but we have no internet at home,” she said. “My husband works at a carwash, but business is bad, so each day he brings home only 200 hryvnias,” or about $5.
The temperature is falling. And she wasn’t sure when she would get heat.
“It’s not like we were rich before the war,” she said. “But never did I have to ask for handouts.”
“I am trying to be strong” she said. “I am pretending to be strong.”
She turned to leave. Her 10-year-old daughter followed, walking briskly. In her hand, she clutched a pack of chocolate cookies that she had just been given. But in her eyes, she looked as if she were almost lost in the growing crowd.
READ MORE
Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona. (photo: Alberto Mariani/AP)
Congressional Republicans Panic as They Watch Their Lead Dwindle
Marianna Sotomayor, The Washington Post
Sotomayor writes: "With control of the House and Senate still undecided, angry Republicans mounted public challenges to their leaders in both chambers Friday as they confronted the possibility of falling short of the majority, eager to drag Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) down from their top posts as consequence."
ALSO SEE: Kelly Wins in Arizona,
Pushing Democrats Closer to Keeping Senate
Private consternation reached a public boiling point Friday as lawmakers in both chambers confronted the fallout from Tuesday’s elections
With control of the House and Senate still undecided, angry Republicans mounted public challenges to their leaders in both chambers Friday as they confronted the possibility of falling short of the majority, eager to drag Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) down from their top posts as consequence.
The narrowing path for Republican victory has stunned lawmakers from both parties, freezing plans for legislation and leadership maneuvers as they wait to see who takes control and learn the margins that will dictate which ideological factions wield power. Regardless of the outcome, the lack of a “red wave” marks a devastating outcome for Republicans, who believed they would cruise to a large governing majority in the House and possibly flip the Senate.
The GOP faces a small but real prospect that it may not reclaim the House majority despite high pre-election hopes based on the disapproval of President Biden, record inflation and traditional losses for the party that holds the White House. Late Friday, Democrats moved one Senate seat closer to retaining their majority in the chamber as Sen. Mark Kelly won reelection in Arizona. Winning either in Nevada — which was still counting votes — or in Georgia, where a runoff is set for Dec. 6, would allow them to stay in power.
House Democrats also were closely watching uncalled races in those states, as well races as Maine, Oregon, Washington and California, to determine whether they have a pathway to keep the majority. Even if they don’t, as many Democratic aides expect, there is a recognition from both parties that Democratic votes will be critical in a narrow House GOP majority.
“It’s an unworkable majority. Nothing meaningful will get passed,” a dejected aide to a senior House Republican said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss internal tensions.
‘Reality is going to be rough’
Outgoing Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) told The Washington Post he knew the evening of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol that the GOP would have a difficult time proving to voters they should be in the majority in two years.
“By midnight on January 6, it was obvious that if we continued to sleepwalk down the path of crazy we’d face a rude awakening,” he said. “Instead of facing those facts, the GOP spent the last two years heading in the same direction and actively avoiding any internal reckoning. After Tuesday, we have no choice but to heed voters when they say that ‘the grass is green, the sky is blue, and by the way, you just got your ass handed to you.’ But waking up to that reality is going to be rough.”
House Republicans need to net only five seats to win back the majority, a seemingly easy goal that has proved surprisingly difficult. The National Republican Congressional Committee, which initially had projected winning as many as 30 seats, now sees their majority between 220 and 224 seats, according to three people familiar with the organization’s internal data. That sliver of control would hand GOP leaders what many see as the impossible task of corralling far-right-wing demands while balancing them with the desires of more moderate members.
The first hurdles for a slim House GOP majority are leadership elections and agreeing on conference rules, a showdown that is expected next week. The staunchly conservative House Freedom Caucus is calling for a delay to those housekeeping efforts — especially if control of the House is not decided by then.
Members vying for leadership positions need to garner a plurality of votes behind closed doors Tuesday, a threshold McCarthy’s team and several GOP aides believe he will be able to cross to become speaker-in-waiting.
But his destiny is officially determined on Jan. 3, 2023, when he must garner 218 votes on the House floor to become speaker. Getting there has become much more perilous for McCarthy, as he has faced growing opposition from those on the far-right flank of the party.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) told reporters Thursday that McCarthy was not his first choice to lead the conference, echoing calls by Freedom Caucus members to bring forth a challenge to him. In a tweet Friday, Gaetz cited several perceived deficiencies with McCarthy, including his telling other GOP leaders that President Donald Trump should resign in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The Freedom Caucus has long had a list of demands to make of whoever leads the conference, but many members acknowledged earlier this year that their effort to push leaders for concessions would be determined by the margins of a majority. McCarthy had already heard them out on several requests, including returning more legislative power to committees, ending proxy voting, and considering adding a number of Freedom Caucus members to coveted committee assignments, including the influential Steering Committee.
There are other outstanding requests that may appease some, but not all, within the group. Those include putting more members in committee chair positions and having McCarthy publicly back Rep. Jim Banks (Ind.), a staunch Trump ally, as majority whip. But as the expected majority grows slimmer, such demands could irritate more-moderate members, who also hold sway.
McCarthy’s team is confident he will be able to maintain support, citing how he has worked to create relationships with many of his detractors, including members of the Freedom Caucus. McCarthy is seen as open to conversations with his detractors but there are demands he is unlikely to bargain away, including changing the rules to make it much easier to remove the speaker from his or her post.
McCarthy left the Capitol on Friday evening without addressing questions from reporters about his negotiations.
Even if McCarthy exhausts all his bargaining chips, some Republicans acknowledge that the most-fringe members may still vote against him on the floor in January.
Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.) has said “no one currently has 218” votes — the number needed to win the speakership in the full chamber. Moreover, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Rep. Ralph Norman (S.C.) have declined to say whether they would support McCarthy.
“There are people who swear upon firstborn children that they’ll never vote for McCarthy,” another aide to a senior Republican lawmaker said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to relay private conversations.
Jason Miller, a former Trump White House and campaign official, said Friday that if McCarthy “wants a chance of being speaker, he needs to be much more declarative of supporting President Trump.”
“It’s going to be a MAGA-centric caucus,” he said on Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “We need leadership to match.”
But without an alternative, McCarthy’s allies believe he may be able to hold on. The most credible potential alternatives, such as Minority Whip Steve Scalise (La.), Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Banks, remain supportive of McCarthy.
Moreover, past speakers have benefited from missed attendance and members voting “present” to lower the majority threshold of 218 to help them clinch the top spot.
A senior Republican Party official, who criticized McCarthy for overhyping election expectations, said that a House Republican majority was a win at the end of the day — no matter the margin of victory. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, added that the party doesn’t need McCarthy to govern an unruly House GOP conference majority or pass any legislation, but needs him to simply unite the conference as a firewall against the Biden administration’s agenda to be a successful speaker.
Senate Republicans want election delay
A group of Senate Republicans on Friday also called for a delay in GOP leadership elections after the party’s failure so far to claim the majority — a move that poses a direct challenge to McConnell.
Six senators — Marco Rubio (Fla.) Rick Scott (Fla.,) Josh Hawley (Mo.), Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Cynthia M. Lummis (Wyo.) — have called for delaying the vote, scheduled for Wednesday, in which McConnell was expected to be reelected in a secret ballot. Hawley suggested waiting until after the Dec. 6 Senate runoff in Georgia, a delay of weeks.
“Holding leadership elections without hearing from the candidates as to how they will perform their leadership duties and before we know whether we will be in the majority or even who all our members are violates the most basic principles of a democratic process,” Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Lee wrote in a letter they circulated to their GOP colleagues, according to Politico.
A Rubio adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the internal dynamics of the caucus, said Republicans are “frustrated” by their lackluster midterms performance, after they hoped to decisively win back the majority on Tuesday. Rubio, who won his race in Florida by a large margin, wants Senate Republicans to figure out “what in the world happened” before they elect their next leaders, the person said.
The Rubio adviser did not rule out that Rubio himself would seek a leadership spot, but said the senator’s focus was on getting Republicans to focus on their policy priorities before deciding who should lead them.
Rubio wrote on Twitter on Friday that the caucus needs someone “genuinely committed” to “fighting for the priorities & values of the working Americans (of every background) who gave us big wins in states like #Florida.”
Hawley quickly endorsed the idea, writing on Twitter, “I don’t know why Senate GOP would hold a leadership vote for the next Congress before this election is finished.” In addition to the Georgia runoff, ballots are still being counted in Arizona and Nevada.
Spokesmen for McConnell and Scott declined to comment. Email and telephone messages for Lee were not immediately returned.
The rebellion represents the most serious challenge to McConnell’s lengthy leadership tenure and comes after Republicans spent millions of dollars on losing Senate races in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, along with saving GOP candidates in Republican-leaning states like Ohio.
The Senate Leadership Fund PAC, closely associated with McConnell, spent more than $230 million this cycle backing Republicans in races across the country.
In the Senate, McConnell faced criticism from some Republicans in August when he played down the party’s chances of winning control, citing “candidate quality.”
Trump also has repeatedly mocked and criticized McConnell, while pressing Republicans to oust the GOP leader. McConnell recognized Biden’s win in December 2020, angering Trump, and then blamed the former president for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Leadership elections had been set for Wednesday and, so far, no Republican senator has formally announced they would run against McConnell. On Friday, Sen. John Barrasso (Wyo.), a close ally of McConnell, sent a message to senators directly saying elections are still on for Wednesday.
The Republican Senate leadership votes are done behind closed doors and by secret ballot. McConnell would need only a simple majority to win and he has said he has the votes he needs. If he does win, McConnell will surpass Mike Mansfield’s record for longest stint as party leader in the Senate.
In their letter, Scott and Lee also wrote, “We are all disappointed that a Red Wave failed to materialize, and there are multiple reasons it did not,” according to Politico. “We need to have serious discussions within our conference as to why and what we can do to improve our chances in 2024.”
In an interview published Friday, Hawley told RealClearPolitics, “I’m not going to support the current leadership in the party,” citing gun control and climate-change legislation. “We surrendered when we should’ve fought.”
READ MORE
Donald Trump. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT/Redux)
Trump Sues January 6 Committee Seeking to Block Subpoena for His Testimony and Documents
Katelyn Polantz, Sara Murray and Gabby Orr, CNN
Excerpt: "Former President Donald Trump has sued the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, as a way to challenge its subpoena for documents and his testimony, according to filings in a federal court in Florida."
Former President Donald Trump has sued the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, as a way to challenge its subpoena for documents and his testimony, according to filings in a federal court in Florida.
Trump is challenging both the legitimacy of the committee – which multiple courts have upheld – and is claiming he should be immune from testimony about the time he was president.
Trump’s lawyers say they’ve communicated with the House over the past week and a half as the subpoena deadlines neared, offering to consider answering written questions while expressing “concerns and objections” about the bulk of the document requests.
“The Subpoena’s request for testimony and documents from President Trump is an unwarranted intrusion upon the institution of the Presidency because there are other sources of the requested information, including the thousand-plus witnesses the Committee has contacted and one million documents that the Committee has collected,” his attorneys argue in the suit. “The Committee also may obtain abundant government records relevant to its inquiry. Because of this obvious availability to obtain testimony and documents from other readily available sources, the Subpoena is invalid.”
A spokesperson for the January 6 committee declined to comment.
Trump said the House’s demands, if he met them, would violate privilege protections around the executive branch, including revealing conversations he had with Justice Department officials and members of Congress about the 2020 election and “pending governmental business.”
He also argued to the court that he shouldn’t have to reveal inner workings about his 2020 presidential campaign, “including his political beliefs, strategy, and fundraising. President Trump did not check his constitutional rights at the Oval Office door. Because the Committee’s Subpoena to President Trump infringes upon his First Amendment rights it is invalid.”
Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, said in a statement in part that “long-held precedent and practice maintain that separation of powers prohibits Congress from compelling a President to testify before it.”
The lawsuit veers the Trump subpoena fight toward a likely dead-end for the House select committee.
Trump’s back-and-forth with the House followed by the lawsuit will make it much harder for the committee to enforce the subpoena – and the dispute essentially will be unresolvable before the current Congress expires in January.
The lawsuit also raises some protections around the presidency that have never fully been tested by appeals courts, and Trump brought the lawsuit in a court that, unlike DC, hasn’t weighed in on his standoffs with House Democrats over the past several years.
Trump provided to the court his team’s recent letters with the committee, which show that the House panel tried to zero in last week on obtaining records of his electronic communication on personal phones, via text or on other apps from January 6, 2021. The House also said it sought to identify every telephone and other communication device Trump used from Election Day until he left the presidency, according to the letters.
In one letter on November 4, the original date of the document-turnover deadline, the House committee accused Trump’s team of trying to delay.
“Given the timing and nature of your letter – without any acknowledgment that Mr. Trump will ultimately comply with the subpoena – your approach on his behalf appears to be a delay tactic,” wrote Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the committee.
Since Trump’s team replied on November 9 that he wouldn’t testify and found no records to turn over related to personal communications, the House hasn’t respond substantively, the court papers said.
But Trump’s legal team responded to the House this week that Trump “voluntarily directed a reasonable search for documents in his possession” that could fit those two categories. The search found nothing, his lawyers said.
READ MORE
Kurt Vonnegut at his home in the mid 1980s, New York, N.Y. (photo: Oliver Morris/Getty Images)
Kurt Vonnegut Would Have Turned 100 Today - His War Novels Are Relevant as Ever
Tom Vitale, NPR
Vitale writes: "Kurt Vonnegut was disappointed in America. 'I'm sorry that America isn't a greater success than it is,' he told me in 1991. 'Because we're so wealthy and we really could have done almost anything. And we've done so very little in comparison to what we might have done in creating an ideal society.'"
Kurt Vonnegut was disappointed in America. "I'm sorry that America isn't a greater success than it is," he told me in 1991. "Because we're so wealthy and we really could have done almost anything. And we've done so very little in comparison to what we might have done in creating an ideal society."
Vonnegut, who died in 2007 at the age of 84, would have turned 100 today. He was born in Indianapolis on Nov. 11, 1922, Armistice Day. The late author wrote satirical and darkly humorous novels that won him a cult-like following with the youth culture of the 1960s — but his work remains relevant today.
Vonnegut wrote novels about the irrationality of governments and the senseless destruction of war. His work was informed by his experience in World War II when he was a 22-year-old soldier captured by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge.
In 1987, he told me he was determined to write about war without romanticizing it. "My own feeling is that Civilization ended in World War I, and we're still trying to recover from that," he said. "Much of the blame is the malarkey that artists have created to glorify war — romantic pictures of battle, and of the dead and men in uniform and all that. And I did not want to have that story told again."
Four years later, shortly after the first Gulf War, Vonnegut was saddened by what he saw in America. "We have become such a pitiless people," he said. "And I think it's TV that's done it to us. When I went to war in World War II, we had two fears: One was we would be killed, the other was that we might have to kill somebody. And now killing is 'whoopee.' It does not seem much anymore. To my generation, it still seemed like an extraordinary thing to do, to kill."
How Vonnegut spoke to 'young people who care'
Vonnegut's writing questioned the motives of governments and institutions. And that has always resonated with young people, says Charles J. Shields, author of the 2011 biography, And So it Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life.
"When I look at faces of young people holding up signs, protesting a Supreme Court decision, or calling for reform, espousing a cause, I see Vonnegutians," Shields says. "What Vonnegut has to say to a young person now has not changed, but has the same effect as it did on young people who were facing the War in Vietnam. A government at the time that seemed indifferent to what the populace wanted. So as long as there are young people who care, Vonnegut will matter."
Shields believes Vonnegut is particularly relevant at this moment in history. "As I think we've come to understand, what's happening in Ukraine is very much like World War II," he explains. "It's the same abject desire for conquest. It's the same overrunning of boundaries and ignoring people's wants, needs and culture. War is fought at different times, but so often it involves the same issues, and so often has the same demeaning effect on humanity."
He was horrified by the senseless waste of war
Vonnegut's breakthrough to millions of readers came in 1963, with his fourth novel, Cat's Cradle — about a secret military experiment, called "Ice Nine," that leads to the destruction of civilization.
But his most striking anti-war statement came six years later and was quickly adapted by Hollywood. Slaughterhouse-Five depicts the firebombing of Dresden by Allied warplanes in 1945. The city was reduced to rubble. More than 20,000 civilians were killed.
Like the novel's hero, Vonnegut was an American POW, imprisoned in a Dresden Slaughterhouse during the air raid. Afterward, he was forced to remove decaying bodies from flooded basements around the city. Vonnegut said the experience left an indelible impression.
"The destruction of Dresden was my first experience with really fantastic waste," he recalled. "To burn down a habitable city — and a beautiful one at that. And so I was simply impressed by the wastefulness, the terrible wastefulness, the meaninglessness of war."
Vonnegut wrote 14 novels, along with a handful of story collections, plays and non-fiction works. His fiction has been reissued in a four-volume set by the Library of America. In 1991, he said he'd always have an audience because his books say: "Hey, you're not alone."
READ MORE
"The disappearances of all three detainees in this story fits a pattern of systematic repression that rights advocates and researchers say has been ongoing since 2017." (photo: MEE)
These Young Saudis Spoke Up on Social Media. Then They Disappeared
Dania Akkad, Middle East Eye
Akkad writes: "In spring 2021, Saudi authorities seized at least 14 people who had used anonymous accounts to dissent. Many are still unaccounted for. This is the story of three 'May detainees.'"
In spring 2021, Saudi authorities seized at least 14 people who had used anonymous accounts to dissent. Many are still unaccounted for. This is the story of three 'May detainees'
How would people talk about her if she disappeared suddenly? The thought bubbled around Lina Alsharif’s mind for days.
But there was often a lot on her mind. Working shifts as long as 30 hours at the Riyadh Armed Forces Hospital, the 33-year-old doctor, her airpods tucked in her ears, debated Saudi policies in chatrooms.
Rattling off facts and figures from memory as she did her rounds, she was gaining a reputation as someone who could quickly defuse - and often pointedly correct - pro-government gadflies.
“Someone might say, ‘Ok, let’s talk about the kind of achievement the Saudi government did recently with numbers,’” said Anoud*, who has known Lina for more than a decade.
“She would be multi-tasking and she would be like, ‘Oh no, this is not correct because the actual numbers are X, Y and Z’.”
Alsharif rolled along like this, expressing herself anonymously - or so she thought until one day last May, in a chatroom with 1,000 listeners, there was a discussion about the Saudi opposition and how to shut it down.
There is a doctor, a voice said, who claims she is abroad, but she is actually working at a hospital in Riyadh. “Her day is coming soon,” he said.
A friend of Lina’s heard the chat and warned her.
“They always say this,” she said, shrugging it off.
But over the next few days, she was threatened repeatedly online with the same warning: we are coming for you.
So Lina hired a legal representative. If something happens to me, she instructed him, tell my story and protect me. She signed a document officially appointing him.
A few hours later, she was gone.
Faith in anonymity
Alsharif is one of at least 14 Saudi Arabians in their 20s and 30s who were forcibly disappeared in May and June 2021 over their social activism online. They have become known as the "May detainees", but before they vanished, they were virtual nobodies.
They used pseudonyms and attracted few followers. Even people they talked with for months or even years - sometimes about their most private struggles - didn’t know their real identities.
“We have this convention and understanding between us activists on social media not to ask so many questions,” said Hessa*, who was in touch with one of the detainees. “You never know where these answers will go.”
In an era of unprecedented repression in their country, engaging online was cathartic. They could voice concerns about poverty, unemployment or domestic violence, some of which they had personally experienced.
A few were members of “The Bees”, an online initiative started by slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Arabian dissident Omar Abdulaziz to combat pro-government misinformation and messaging. But not all.
They knew what they were doing was risky. But there is an overriding sense that they were pursuing a higher mission - a bettering of their society through calling out its failings, supporting the most vulnerable and each other - and faith that, in pseudonymity, there was safety.
But they were not safe. One by one, across several weeks last spring, they were picked up by special forces that report directly to the Royal Court and taken away. First there was Abdullah Jelan and then Rina Abdulaziz and then Yasmin Algufaily and the list goes on.
At least, this is what happened to the 14 we know about. This is the story of three of them - Lina Alsharif, Asma Alsubaie and Abdullah Jelan - as told to Middle East Eye by their friends and legal representatives, who are all living outside the kingdom, and based on communications made by and filed with the UN.
It’s possible there are many more, some estimate in the hundreds. The Saudi government did not respond to MEE's request for comment for this story. But because they were using pseudonyms and because their friends and family may fear reprisal if they speak out, no one actually knows.
The genius
Lina Alsharif hadn’t set out to become a virtual debater or even political, but she had always questioned what she was told - which was why, as Anoud tells it, they became friends.
In 2011, the two were attending university. Lina studied medicine; Anoud studied law. “I was questioning the law and she was questioning science,” Anoud said.
These kinds of questions, particularly ones which challenged religious teachings, weren’t very welcome at home or publicly. So they voiced them with anonymous social media accounts.
“During the era of King Abdullah, people did have a little bit of freedom to express themselves,” she said. “People were whining and complaining and explaining.”
And it was through social media that the two first connected and soon learnt not only were they in the same town, but they were also at the same university.
“It was kind of an exciting thing to say, ‘Let’s meet up in a coffee shop’,” Anoud said of the friends like Lina whom she made online. “You don’t work with them, you don’t go to school with them. We just had pure interests. So no judgements, no masks.”
For the next 10 years, even as Anoud moved to the US, they remained friends and continued to serve as sounding boards for one another at different points in their lives.
After Jamal Khashoggi’s killing - which Anoud described as “the scandal on October 2, 2018” - she said something shifted inside her. “When I had a little bit of hope, I lost it and so did a lot of Saudis. It made me feel like our souls are so cheap,” she said.
In Riyadh, Lina was working at an emergency room where she was treating victims of police brutality and domestic violence. She told Anoud how authorities failed to investigate their cases or hold anyone accountable. Lina was horrified, yet she couldn’t talk about it openly.
“Things were becoming so disgusting. People were acting like robots. It was becoming a super gaslighting culture. She was so suffocated by it everywhere, at home, in the hospital.”
So in the middle of the Covid pandemic, Anoud and Lina became more active on social media, finding like-minded Saudi Arabians virtually that had evaded them in reality - and arguing freely over the direction of their country. “We were talking about civil rights and why things aren’t working,” Anoud said.
At this point in our discussion, Anoud grows really animated. Lina, she wants me to understand, was a standout debater. She could recall figures quickly. She was never emotional. Running out of examples, but still at pains to deliver this point, she blurts out: “She is a genius.”
And this is exactly why she thinks Lina is no longer free. In late May 2021, forces from the Presidency of the State Security (SSP) - a body established as Mohammed bin Salman ascended to his role as crown prince - raided her family’s home and took her away in handcuffs, saying only that she was wanted for investigation.
For four months, there was no public information about where she had gone. In September 2021, in response to a communication sent by the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, the Saudi government disclosed that she was being held in Al’Ha’ir Prison, a 19 million-square-foot maximum security facility run by the Saudi secret police which holds scores of political prisoners.
She was detained in accordance with two articles of the Combatting Terrorism and Financing of Terrorism Act, a controversial law also established with the crown prince’s rise to power. Since then, there has been no further information released about her.
Anoud believes the voices threatening Lina couldn’t take her ability to run circles around them. “They were very emotional and it was hard to compete with her,” she said.
“It’s all in order to protect this fragile ego. They use all kinds of security to protect someone’s insecurity.”
The defender of defenders
For months, Hajar* had been talking online about human rights with someone she knew only as User 1*.
When Hajar saw that the government stipend that was supposed to cover the rising costs of living was decreasing each month in her paycheck, she wanted to sound off, and doing it online was the only option.
Once she spoke out, she was surprised to see how users she’d never met stood up for her. Slowly, hearing the problems and issues they were facing, she felt compelled to speak up for them too. She met User 1 along the way.
“We talked about everything to do with human rights,” she recalled. “But the thing we talked about most, as women and feminists, was domestic violence.”
User 1 posted frequently in defence of women’s rights and in support of victims of domestic violence and detainees, calling for their trials to be held publicly and criticising sentences against them over comments they made online.
One day, Hajar told User 1 about a personal struggle she was having. She wouldn’t tell me what it was exactly. But when she told her online friend, User 1 responded: “I have the same problem.”
The two grew close and, in May 2021, she asked Hajar for a favour. “If I’m arrested, you talk about me. Don’t wait for my family. They won’t want to talk to human rights organisations,” User 1 told her.
User 1 had recently warned on social media that she had been betrayed by someone very close to her. She was making preparations. “One of my friends will come to you and they will give you my information if I disappear,” she said.
Hajar knew very quickly when her friend had been arrested. She had failed, uncharacteristically, to show up to an online chat that she normally helped run.
User 1 was gone. Who was next, Hajar worried. “It was a horrible day. I didn’t sleep,” she said. “I was thinking, when will the government arrest me? How will the government arrest me?”
As days passed and she remained free, a rumour spread that User 1 had been given up by the person she tweeted about which gave Hajar some solace. Perhaps she was safe.
But she was then left to wonder about the mystery friend who was going to give her User 1’s details. One week passed, and then another. Nothing. Where were they? After a month she noticed someone on social media writing emotionally about User 1. She sent a message.
Message by message, the Twitter user and Hajar sniffed each other out, testing as best they could whether the other was the genuine friend of User 1 that they claimed to be. Finally convinced of one another, they spoke.
On the end of the line was a woman who said she was in Syria and often without internet, which was why it had taken her a while to get in touch about User 1.
She had met User 1 while playing PUBG, an online combat game that dozens can play from all over the world at one time. User 1, she said, was in fact 22-year-old Asma Alsubaie.
Calls for help on rials
Alsubaie, Hajar would find out, was in her senior year at Princess Nourah University in Riyadh.
On 1 June, SSP raided her house, seized her electronic equipment and took her away. To where, Hajar and Asma’s supporters did not know.
But with photos and details shared from the Syrian woman, whom Asma had never met in person, they set to work contacting human rights organisations and sharing her story on social media.
They also wrote her name on 500 rial banknotes, knowing that the large bills were bound to circulate. Even if none of those holding the bills in their wallets saw her name, eventually a bank employee would have to see it when the currency was replaced.
“We were very keen on everyone knowing Asma,” said Hajar “She is not just a number.”
Asma, like Lina, is also being held in Al’Ha’ir Prison, the Saudi government disclosed this January in response to a joint letter sent by multiple UN working groups and special rapporteurs which raised concerns about her case.
In their letter, Saudi authorities highlight the UN’s concerns that Asma “was arrested in response to her posts on Twitter”, which they do not deny, but note that she was arrested in accordance with the kingdom’s Combatting Terrorism and Financing of Terrorism Act.
The letter says she has been charged, but does not say with what. It adds that she has appeared at least twice in court and is represented by a state-funded lawyer assigned to her. “She enjoys the right to regular visits and telephone calls,” it says. “She receives the necessary medical care and is in good health.”
Unlike Lina, the Saudi response to the UN is not the last bit of information that Asma’s friends have had about her. This June, she appeared for several seconds in an MBC news report about Al’Ha’ir.
She can be seen singing on a stage at a concert entertaining the visiting relatives of prisoners. "At first, I used to hear that prisons only are cells and a wasted life," a prisoner tells MBC's reporter. "We have things that people wouldn't imagine here. From activities to events, they are rehabilitating us to live our lives outside prison."
These types of reports from Saudi prisons which are presumably staged are not unique to the May detainees. Remember Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal giving journalists a tour of the Ritz during the crown prince’s purge? There is also footage of Saudi singer Rabea Hafiz, who was picked up in September 2017 during a different wave of arrests, performing from Dhahban Prison.
And Asma isn’t the only May detainee to disappear only to reappear on television. This April, Yasmin Algufaily also turned up in a report from Buraydah State Security Prison. The 27-year-old was a personal trainer before she was forcibly disappeared in May 2021.
She didn’t cover her head prior to her arrest, but appears in a niqab as she gives a reporter a tour. “We have a classroom, a childcare section and a gym which I look after,” she says.
“I had previous experience with training and encouraged other inmates to join me. They’re excited.”
Familiar pattern
The disappearances of all three May detainees in this story fits a pattern of systematic repression that rights advocates and researchers say has been ongoing since 2017.
It was that summer that Mohammed bin Salman replaced his cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, as crown prince - and when much of the power and responsibility of the state security was shifted from the Ministry of the Interior that the elder royal had run directly to the Royal Court.
Two new bodies - the Presidency of State Security (SSP) and the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) - were established by royal decrees, and followed several months later by a new counterterrorism law which, among other things, defines any act which disturbs public order as terrorism.
Armed with the new law, the SSP and the PPO, overseen by the Royal Court, have worked hand-in-hand with the Specialized Criminal Court to shut down hundreds of critics of the crown prince’s policies in waves of arrests and prosecutions.
Activists and rights advocates have identified a recognisable pattern: Someone speaks out. Agents of the Mabahith, the Saudi secret service which is under the SSP’s authority, turn up at a house, often plain-clothed, and arrest them without justification.
They are then taken to SSP-run prisons where they are held incommunicado for weeks or months or even years and tortured to extract confessions. The person then reappears, charged with security or terrorism-related crimes.
After a trial before the Specialised Criminal Court, frequently held in secret and routinely violating due process, they are given long sentences, often based only on their coerced confessions.
In May 2020, the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances raised alarm bells over the pattern, telling the UN General Assembly that Saudi Arabia’s legal framework had failed to protect its people from enforced disappearance which was being used as a tool of suppression.
“The unchecked and increased concentration of power with the royal authority which has undermined judicial independence has contributed to a culture of impunity, and investigative rules and practices have fostered the occurrence of enforced disappearances,” it wrote.
The UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundmental freedoms while countering terrorism had concluded, following a 2017 visit to Saudi Arabia, that the kingdom’s failure to provide minimum safeguards against torture as well as its judicial practice of using coerced confessions as evidence “strongly suggests that the practice of torture is officially endorsed”.
Extreme sentencing
These practices took an even darker turn this August when news emerged of the Specialised Criminal Court handing down a 34-year sentence and 34-year travel ban to Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds PhD candidate and mother of two, over her tweets.
It was the longest sentence ever given to a women’s rights defender. A week later, it came to light that a second Saudi woman - Noura al-Qahtani - had been given 45 years over her tweets.
Their extraordinarily lengthy sentences shocked even seasoned observers of Saudi Arabia and made international headlines and opinion pages.
Fionnuala Ni Aolain, UN special rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism, wrote that Shehab’s supposed crime “makes a mockery of any kind of serious discourse about counterterrorism”.
“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is systematically abusing counterterrorism laws to target human rights defenders, women who speak their mind, journalists and anyone who seems to step out of line no matter how minor the infraction might be,” Ni Aolain said.
Mary Lawlor, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, who has raised Asma’s case with Saudi authorities, told me she was concerned that the May detainees could face sentences like those handed to Shehab and Qahtani.
“Defenders in Saudi are at real risk of being sent to prison for very long terms. Many are serving sentences of over ten years,” she told me.
“While no one should ever be in jail for their peaceful human rights work, these long sentences are particularly cruel. We have seen what these long sentences do to the defender, to their families and communities, and the suffocating effect they have on others wanting to promote human rights.”
Friends of the May detainees said the sentencing of the women had made them extremely nervous.
The day after Salma al-Shehab’s sentence came to light, a friend of Abdullah Jelan’s told me he had heard that court proceedings for the 30-year-old he grew up with were about to begin. He is terrified.
The graduate who wanted more
Nasser* said he has known "Abdul", as he calls Jelan, for so long that he can’t remember exactly when they met.
Growing up, they shared a sense that there was a bigger world beyond Saudi Arabia. “We were always looking around about what was going on in the world, all that awful stuff like wars in Palestine and Yemen,” he said.
Nasser described his friend as a simple, uncomplicated guy, gentle with family and friends, and a practicing vegan who loves cats. “It wasn’t only human rights. He was also an animal rights activist,” he said.
Abdul’s dream, he said, was to become a health educator in the kingdom and he went to West Chester University in Pennsylvania on a Saudi scholarship to study public health. While there, he met his fiancee, who was also studying abroad.
Abdul was also tuned in to Mohammed bin Salman’s promises of reform. “He was young and he was talking about young people and how many opportunities he will provide and the change he is going to make,” said Nasser. “That kind of tricked a lot of people. Abdul was smart, but he thought, at the end of the day, there is nothing better than home.”
But when he returned to Saudi Arabia and applied to work for the Ministry of Health, he was told that his degree wasn’t recognised. For three years, he tried to sort out what he believed was a very simple bureaucratic error. He even went to court.
Meanwhile, he worked as an Uber driver while still planning to marry his fiancee. “It made him feel very bad and very down,” said Nasser. “He was like, ‘I want to go to social media and at least try to speak about it and just let it out.’” So he tweeted anonymously.
A face with a name
It’s still unclear how it is that Saudi authorities were able to connect Abdul to his account which had around 400 followers at the time of his arrest. Lawyers and supporters say this is true of all of the May detainees: no one can say exactly how they were identified when everything they did online was anonymous.
There are theories and suspicions, heightened by the conviction in August of a former Twitter employee who leaked the data of 6,000 users to Saudi authorities in 2015 in exchange for cash and expensive gifts.
Those leaks are believed to have resulted in the forced disappearances in March 2018 of Abdelrahman Alsadhan, a Red Crescent employee who was tweeting anonymously, and journalist Turki bin Abdulaziz al-Jasser. Alsadhan, whose family says he was tortured while in custody, has since been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Somehow, Saudi authorities had identified Abdul. On the evening of 12 May 2021, he was abducted from his mother’s house in Medina by 20 plainclothes SSP agents who arrived in a six-car convoy, according to MENA Rights Group.
They took all of the electronic devices in the house, including his mother’s mobile phone, while at least one of Jelan’s two younger brothers witnessed the chaos. He has been too scared to return home since that day.
After the arrest, Jelan’s fiancee sent text messages to Jelan’s mother, trying to find out what had happened to him. She received a message back saying Abdullah “was fine”, according to the MENA Rights Group which has documented his case.
But then, the messages warned the fiancee she would be reported and banned from entering Saudi Arabia as a result of her online activism.
MENA Rights Group says that they believe it was SPP officials, not Jelan’s mother, sending the texts.
Jelan’s family learned that he was being held in a Mabahith-run prison in Medina where he was subjected on two separate occasions to torture with a rod emitting around 360 volts of electricity while he was interrogated.
He was shackled and kept in solitary confinement, and later moved to another Mabahith-run prison in Dhabhan.
In response to a complaint filed with the UN working group, Saudi authorities said in July 2021 that Jelan was arrested under the 2017 Combatting Terrorism and Financing of Terrorism Act.
If Abdul’s arrest was meant to shut down dissent, it hasn’t worked on Nasser. “To be honest, before he was arrested, I was interested in human rights, but I was also busy with my life,” he said. “But after, I got really deeply involved.”
The miracle worker
Lina Alsharif’s friends who were inside the kingdom when she vanished have also experienced major repercussions in their lives.
Two of them told me they have both fled the kingdom over the past year fearing that they too would be picked up, either over their own social media activism or their advocacy for Lina.
One of these friends, Hessa*, said long before she had to escape quickly on a night flight, Lina had changed the course of her life.
After the two became acquainted online, Hessa confided in Lina about gender identity issues she was facing. “I felt support from her,” she said.
Lina taught her how to fight her corner in a debate. From prisoners of conscience to victims of domestic violence, she was always with the oppressed. It was inspiring, and Hessa became increasingly vocal online too.
“She encouraged me to be as courageous as I am today,” said Hessa. “She always encouraged me and told me that one day, I would be free.”
It must be difficult, I said to Hessa, that the person who freed you in so many ways is now not free. She was silent for a long while and then I heard muffled crying over the phone.
Hessa was distraught when she learned Lina had been taken away. As other supporters scribbled Lina’s name in university library books or on banknotes, Hajar lashed out on social media with abandon.
“It’s a miracle she made it out,” another friend of Lina’s listening to our conversation interjects.
Several months ago, Hessa said she received messages on Twitter warning her to stop talking about Lina Alsharif “or else”. Soon after, her true identity, address and school were leaked online, and she knew she had to run.
READ MORE
Pollution from a factory. (photo: Science Focus)
Oil and Gas Greenhouse Emissions 'Three Times Higher' Than Producers Claim
Fiona Harvey, Guardian UK
Harvey writes: "Greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas facilities around the world are about three times higher than their producers claim, new data has shown."
Climate Trace reports half of 50 largest sources of greenhouse gas are oil and gas operations and many underreport their emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas facilities around the world are about three times higher than their producers claim, new data has shown.
Climate Trace, a project to measure at source the true levels of carbon dioxide and other global heating gases, published a new report on Wednesday showing that half of the 50 largest sources of greenhouse gases in the world were oil and gas fields and production facilities.
Many are underreporting their emissions, and there are few means of calling them to account.
Oil and gas production can leak methane, and the gas is also frequently flared intentionally, ostensibly for safety reasons but sometimes for convenience. Atmospheric levels of methane, a greenhouse gas about 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, have been rising strongly in recent years, but countries’ reported emissions of the gas have been found to be much lower than the reality.
The “shocking” under-reporting of emissions is a big problem in trying to tackle the climate crisis, according to Al Gore, former vice-president of the US, a founding member of the Climate Trace coalition.
“We can only manage what we can measure,” Gore told the Guardian at Cop27 in Egypt. “Climate Trace is the neighbourhood watch for the globe.”
Under the UN system, countries are responsible for reporting their own greenhouse gas emissions. Gore said: “There are some inherent vulnerabilities in a self-reporting framework. If there is a bad actor, who doesn’t want to report, or if there is a brand name company that wants to sell its high emitting asset through a dark private equity group, it disappears from the self-reporting framework. But we still see it because we have empirical data. So we can help them protect against cheating.”
He gave the example of Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia has reported its oil and gas production emissions. We have measured them empirically and we find a huge gap, that the emissions are larger than those that have been reported,” he said. “When we look more carefully at the emissions we find from their refining centre, it turns out that the volume of emissions from their refining centre, that have not been reported, exactly match the [amount] by which their reported admissions are undercounted. Now, was that an oversight on their part? Was it a mistake? Maybe. Not for me to say.”
Climate Trace uses evidence from satellites, remote sensors and other sources to monitor emissions globally, using artificial intelligence to build a clear picture of emissions sources around the world. The group’s database provides emissions information from 2015 to 2021 for all countries that are party to the Paris agreement, which encompasses all world nations apart from a handful of failed states.
None of those nations have yet submitted to the UN a full account of their greenhouse gases for 2021, and 52 countries have not submitted any emissions inventories covering the last 10 years.
Oil and gas companies were the worst of all sectors for under-reporting emissions, said Gore. “For the oil and gas sector it is consistent with their public relations strategy and their lobbying strategy. All of their efforts are designed to buy themselves more time before they stop destroying the future of humanity.”
He pointed to ExxonMobil, which was discovered to have disguised what it knew about global heating. “They engaged in industrial scale lying to publics around the world, even though they had information of their own notifying them that they were being dishonest. I do think that they have committed the moral equivalent of war crimes,” he said.
READ MORE
Contribute to RSN
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
Update My Monthly Donation
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
