All posts by Creative Commons

AI, Apps, News, Observation, Politics, Social Media, Streaming, Tech

How Joe Rogan became podcasting’s Goliath

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic

Comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan is caught in a spiral of controversies.

It began when “The Joe Rogan Experience” hosted COVID-19 vaccine skeptic Robert Malone and a number of musicians pulled their music off of Spotify in protest. It has continued with Rogan apologizing for using racial slurs in past years, which prompted the streaming service to remove scores of his old episodes from the streaming platform.

Given the thousands of hours of content that Rogan has produced, the scrutiny is unlikely to stop there. As we argue in our forthcoming book, Rogan’s podcast has long promoted right-wing comedy and libertarian political voices, including some who trade quite gleefully in racism and misogyny.

However, what makes Rogan’s rise particularly important is that it goes beyond the standard partisan political battling that Americans have grown accustomed to in social and broadcast media.

Rogan is not just a purveyor of right-wing ideologies. He is also someone who has built an empire by introducing these ideas – and a wide range of others – to listeners from across the political spectrum. His truly unique skill is drawing in from that spectrum a massive, young, largely male audience that advertisers highly covet.

Ideological whiplash

When the Federal Communications Commission introduced the Fairness Doctrine in 1949, radio and television broadcasters were required to present controversial ideas in a manner that reflected multiple perspectives. However, the combination of cable television, niche consumer targeting and President Ronald Reagan’s deregulatory FCC succeeded in toppling the mandate.

By 1987, conservative talk radio figures such as Rush Limbaugh embraced fully partisan approaches to content creation and audience accumulation. Ignoring their political opponents as potential listeners, they veered further and further to the right, garnering an increasingly homogeneous audience whom advertisers could easily target.

Later, as Fox News’ popularity and reach grew, it took a similar tack, promoting conservative media personalities like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfeld to preach to the right-wing choir.

Today, some conservative voices such as Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder take this logic a technological step further, embracing the silo-ing effects of social media algorithms to connect with those users most likely to engage with and disseminate their content. Although such figures certainly offend those who disagree with them, their place in the mediasphere is well-established and mostly ignored by opponents.

Rogan, by contrast, is prone to ideological whiplash.

Initially, he supported Bernie Sanders for president in 2020. Then he flipped to Donald Trump. He interviews and asks open-ended questions to figures ranging from staunchly left-leaning voices such as Cornel West and Michael Pollan to right-wing charlatans including Stefan Molyneux and Alex Jones.

There is no political commonality among these people. But there is a demographic connection. For one, they are all men, as are the vast majority of guests on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

They are also provocative guests that appeal to young people and particularly young men, a group that is notoriously difficult to aggregate, often has disposable income and has a tendency to believe that mainstream political ideas don’t reflect their own.

While Fox News sells politics to TV watchers, Rogan sells a sense of edgy authenticity to podcast listeners. His blend of comedy and controversy certainly has political implications, but from his perspective, it isn’t politics. It’s demographics.

Spotify’s main attraction

Rogan’s economic model of accumulating young male listeners, who make up a good chunk of his 11 million listeners per episode, is particularly powerful in today’s fractured media environment.

Rogan is, for worse and for better, a true outlier in the world of contemporary talk media. Most political and many comedy podcasts employ the business model of finding an ideological space, connecting via cross-promotion and guest selection with similar shows, and allowing the algorithms of social media to drive traffic their way.

“The Joe Rogan Experience” takes this idea and pulls it in multiple, contradictory directions. Media figures left and right have – until now, at least – coveted opportunities to appear on the show. Once a comedian or podcaster has saturated their own political space, Rogan offers a chance to win over new converts and, in principle, have a discussion that breaks free of partisan constraints. For many Rogan fans, this breadth of discussion and freedom from norms is the heart of the show.

Rogan, however, is far from a neutral host of a new public sphere. His feigned naiveté is all too often a cover to promote edgy, offensive and irresponsible theories that appeal to his audience’s self-styled suspicion of authority.

He pushes the boundaries of political discourse by “just asking questions,” but then hides behind his background as just a comedian to distance himself from any undesirable repercussions.

Spotify, like other streaming services, is primarily built on a wide range of content creators, each of whom attracts a small, dedicated audience, but none of whom are, on their own, particularly powerful.

Rogan is the closest thing to a mass cultural product to be found in the podcast world. He is also one of the only names in podcasting big enough to garner headlines, good or bad. For a company like Spotify trying to boost subscriptions, Rogan’s cross-partisan, youthful, mass appeal is very hard to resist.

Rogan’s recent apologies, however, prove that he is not impervious to pressure. We suspect Spotify will try to thread the needle: covering up Rogan’s penchant for misinformation and offensive provocation just enough to meet the minimum standard of acceptable corporate citizenship without tarnishing the comedian’s brand and demographic appeal.

[Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter.]

Matt Sienkiewicz, Associate Professor of Communication and International Studies, Boston College and Nick Marx, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Colorado State University

This article is republished from The Conversation by Matt Sienkiewicz, Boston College and Nick Marx, Colorado State University under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

Mass Anti-War Protests Held Across Europe as Russia’s Assault Continues

In addition to protests in Berlin and London, people also took to the streets in occupied Ukrainian cities and in Moscow, despite the threat of arrest.

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to join anti-war demonstrations across Europe on Sunday as Russia continued its deadly assault on Ukraine, bombarding major cities and intensifying a humanitarian crisis that is having reverberating effects worldwide.

In addition to protests in Berlin, London, Warsaw, and Madrid—where participants carried signs and banners that read “Stop the War” and “Peace and Solidarity for the People in Ukraine”—demonstrations also sprang up on a smaller scale in occupied Ukrainian cities and in Moscow, despite the threat of arrest and police brutality.

Thousands of Russian anti-war protesters have been detained and abused by law enforcement since the invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, according to human rights organizations.

The demonstrations Sunday came amid some signs of diplomatic progress in talks between Russia and Ukraine, which have been negotiating on the border of Belarus since the early days of the invasion.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Sunday that Russia is “beginning to talk constructively” and predicted that “we will achieve some results literally in a matter of days.”

Leonid Slutsky, a Russian delegate to the negotiations with Ukraine, echoed his counterpart’s assessment.

“According to my personal expectations, this progress may grow in the coming days into a joint position of both delegations, into documents for signing,” Slutsky told reporters Sunday, without offering specifics on what an agreement would entail.

Seemingly positive developments in diplomatic talks came as Russia showed no sign of easing its attack, which has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee Ukraine and internally displaced millions more.

Zelenskyy said Saturday that around 125,000 people have been able to escape through humanitarian corridors established in besieged cities, but hundreds of thousands remain trapped in Mariupol and other areas facing heavy shelling from Russian forces.

Early Sunday morning, Russia bombed a Ukrainian military facility located just 22 miles from the border of Poland, a NATO member. The airstrike, believed to be Russia’s westernmost attack on Ukraine thus far, killed dozens of people and wounded more than 130 others.

The Associated Press reported that “continued fighting on multiple fronts heaped further misery on the country Sunday and provoked renewed international outrage.”

Brent Renaud, an American journalist who had previously contributed to the New York Times, was killed by Russian forces in the town of Irpin, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday. A second journalist who was traveling with Renaud was reportedly injured.

“We are shocked and saddened to learn of the death of U.S. journalist Brent Renaud in Ukraine,” Carlos Martinez de la Serna of the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement. “This kind of attack is totally unacceptable, and is a violation of international law. Russian forces in Ukraine must stop all violence against journalists and other civilians at once, and whoever killed Renaud should be held to account.”

According to the United Nations, at least 549 civilians have been killed and nearly 1,000 have been wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine—estimates that are believed to be significant undercounts.

Local Ukrainian officials said Sunday that 2,187 civilians have been killed in Mariupol alone since the start of Russia’s attack.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Business, Economics, News, Observation, Politics

700 US Billionaires Got $1.7 Trillion Richer During Two Years of Pandemic

A new analysis finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more wealth than the bottom half of Americans—roughly 165 million people.

During the first two years of the coronavirus pandemic, the collective wealth of billionaires in the United States grew by a staggering $1.7 trillion as Covid-19 killed millions of people across the globe and threw entire nations into turmoil, worsening extreme poverty, hunger, and other preexisting crises.

“We can’t accept an economy and tax code that allows billionaires to hoard trillions while working families struggle.”

Released Friday to coincide with the second anniversary of the World Health Organization’s official pandemic declaration for Covid-19, the latest billionaire fortune analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) finds that the 704 billionaires in the U.S. now own more combined wealth than the 165 million people in the bottom half of the country’s wealth distribution.

“For billionaires, it’s been two years of raking in the riches, while for most families it’s been two years of fear, frustration, and financial worry,” ATF executive director Frank Clemente said in a statement.

The new analysis stresses that billionaires’ pandemic windfall “may never be taxed” because it consists of unrealized capital gains, which are not subject to taxation under current U.S. law. As one possible solution, ATF voices support for Sen. Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) proposed Billionaires Income Tax, legislation that would impose an annual levy on ultra-wealthy Americans’ unrealized gains from tradable assets such as stocks.

“The rising asset values billionaires have enjoyed over the past two years are not taxable unless the assets are sold,” ATF explains. “But billionaires don’t need to sell assets to benefit from their increased value: they can live off money borrowed at cheap rates secured against their rising fortunes. And when all those wealth gains are passed along to the next generation, they entirely disappear for tax purposes.”

While Democrats in Congress considered a tax on billionaires as part of their Build Back Better package, that legislation was tanked by a handful of corporate Democrats—including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—and a unified Republican caucus.

“Why should our economic system allow billionaires to hoard wealth unchecked, letting almost all of it go tax-free?”

Earlier this month, Manchin floated a further watered-down version of the Build Back Better proposal that calls for tax reforms targeting the wealthy and corporations, but it’s unclear whether the West Virginia Democrat would accept a tax on billionaires.

“Working families pay what they owe in taxes each paycheck. Billionaires generally pay little or nothing in taxes on these extraordinary gains in wealth,” Clemente said Friday. “Congress should enact a Billionaires Income Tax to directly tax these wealth gains as income each year, so that billionaires begin to pay their fair share of taxes. Such a reform is not yet part of President Biden’s investment and tax legislation now being revised by Congress, but it should be.”

According to ATF’s new analysis, the biggest billionaire winners during the coronavirus pandemic’s first two years were:

  • Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who saw his net worth skyrocket by $209 billion;
  • Google co-founder Larry Page, whose fortune grew by $63 billion; and
  • Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose wealth increased by $60 billion.

“Not one of the 15 richest U.S. billionaires gained less than $10 billion,” ATF noted on Twitter, pointing out that during the same two-year period 80 million Americans were infected by Covid-19 and nearly a million were killed by the virus.

“We can’t accept an economy and tax code that allows billionaires to hoard trillions while working families struggle to afford healthcare, childcare, education, and housing,” the group added. “It’s wrong, and we can do better.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Related Articles:

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Earth and Ecology, Lifestyle, News, Observation, Politics

Petition Calls on Biden to Go Beyond Reversing Trump Policies to ‘Save Life on Earth’

Above: Photo/ Pexels

“Extinction is not inevitable—it is a political choice,” says a new petition calling for bold changes to the Endangered Species Act.

The Center for Biological Diversity on Tuesday laid out a comprehensive case for the Biden administration to go far beyond simply mending the damage done by President Donald Trump to the Endangered Species Act, calling on officials to strengthen the law “to save life on Earth from the extinction crisis.”

In a legal petition, the organization made the case that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service must not only fully implement the Endangered Species Act (ESA) but also add new provisions to the law to counter “years of overt political and industry pressure designed to weaken the Act.”

The petition argues erosion of the landmark legislation has left implementation of the Act “no longer primarily driven by the best science or conservation principles” but instead “by avoiding political controversy.”

“Combating the extinction crisis and restoring our natural heritage are monumental challenges that will require the services to be more visionary than any other administration in history,” said Stephanie Kurose, senior policy specialist at CBD. “We challenge Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and the Biden administration to change the status quo and do whatever it takes to protect our planet for future generations.”

Under the Trump administration, CBD said in the 50-page legal filing, officials “caused unprecedented damage to the Act” by gutting a rule which provided threatened species and endangered species with the same level of protection and issuing guidance which said the USFWS need not tell landowners that they need a permit if their activities will harm species, among other rollbacks.

“The United States can prevent future extinctions, but it must take swift action that matches the extent and scale of the problem.”

The Biden administration has taken “sluggish” steps to restore the protections stripped by former President Donald Trump, said CBD, including rescinding two regulations which limited habitat protections for endangered species.

However, wrote the group, “the extensive damage done during Trump’s four years in office must be put in the context of a law that was already not being fully enforced.”

“We need a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that holds the line, not one that compromises in the face of political pressure,” tweeted Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director for CBD.

Federal agencies must strengthen enforcement of the ESA, ensure accountability for extractive industries that harm habitats, and “holistically address the threat of climate change,” said the group.

Specifically, the petition calls for:

  • Empowering career scientists to make science-based decisions without fear of political reprisal;
  • Guaranteeing that federal agencies can no longer ignore the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from their actions on climate change and climate-imperiled species;
  • Strengthening protections for critical habitat to protect key areas where species can live;
  • Creating a scientifically defensible definition of recovery;
  • Defining “significant portion of its range” to fulfill Congress’ intent that species be protected before they are threatened with worldwide extinction;
  • Requiring all federal agencies to have proactive conservation programs in place for listed species harmed by their actions;
  • Requiring habitat conservation plans to confer a net benefit whenever development activities harm endangered species;
  • Strengthening protections for foreign listed species;
  • Strengthening the regulations governing the reintroduction of experimental populations; and
  • Revamping the enhancement permitting program to address dubious trophy hunting practices overseas that do not actually enhance the survival or propagation of species.

“Extinction is not inevitable—it is a political choice,” wrote CBD. “The United States can prevent future extinctions, but it must take swift action that matches the extent and scale of the problem.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News or Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Breaking News, Politics

Dems Introduce Windfall Tax on Big Oil So Companies ‘Pay a Price When They Price Gouge’

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

“This is a bill to reduce gas prices and hold Big Oil accountable,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, who led the measure in the U.S. House.

Congressional Democrats on Thursday introduced the bicameral Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax to target price gouging by profit-gorging fossil fuel companies amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump—that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge.”

“This is a bill to reduce gas prices and hold Big Oil accountable,” declared Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who’s leading the measure in the U.S. House.

“As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends gas prices soaring,” said Khanna, “fossil fuel companies are raking in record profits. These companies have made billions and used the profits to enrich their own shareholders while average Americans are hurting at the pump.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced the legislation in the upper chamber along with co-sponsors including Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The proposal followed President Joe Biden’s announcement earlier this week of a ban on U.S. imports of Russian fuels and amid swelling accusations that Big Oil has been taking advantage of the crisis in Ukraine to “pad their bottom line with war-fueled profits.”

The Democrats’ proposal aims to get some relief for Americans, who are facing average gas prices of $4.31 a gallon.

Big oil companies, specifically those that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day, are targeted under the measure. They would face a per-barrel tax—whether the oil is domestically produced or imported—equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019.

The measure exempts smaller companies, which, according to a statement from the lawmakers, account for roughly 70% of the domestic production. This approach is meant to deter the larger multinational producers from simply raising prices.

The tax imposed on the energy firms would be quarterly. Consumers would receive quarterly rebates, with the relief phasing out for single filers earning more than $75,000 annually and joint filers earning more than $150,000 annually. The lawmakers project the tax to raise $45 billion per year at $120 per barrel of oil, delivering to single filers $240 annually and joint filers $360 annually.

“While Putin’s war is causing gas prices to go up, Big Oil companies are raking in record profits,” Warren said in a statement. “We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump—that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge, and using the revenue to help American families,” she said.

A number of social justice and climate groups heaped praise on the legislative proposal.

According to Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, “The oil and gas industry got the world into this mess by lobbying and lying to keep us hooked on fossil fuels. Now they’re using the war in Ukraine to distract us from the fact that they are ripping off hard working Americans with high gas prices as they reap record earnings.”

“It’s time we stop allowing Big Oil to use its record profits, earned on the backs of hard-working American families, to reward wealthy shareholders and CEOs, and instead make them pay a fair share to lower the cost for consumers,” he added.

Collin Rees, U.S. program director at Oil Change International, welcomed the proposal as precisely the opposite of what the fossil fuel lobby has called for to counter Putin’s power, namely expanded domestic fossil fuel production.

“The so-called ‘solutions’ to the energy crisis being put forward by Big Oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute would do nothing but further line their own pockets and lock in a climate-wrecking, fossil-fueled future,” he said. “What’s needed now is immediate relief for American consumers, which is what this commonsense windfall profits tax bill would provide.”

The bill also drew plaudits from Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth, which released an analysis Thursday along with BailoutWatch finding that Big Oil CEOs have “absolutely” used the spiked in fuel prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to “price-gouge and profiteer.”

In a statement responding to the new legislation, Ross said: “All-American oil oligarchs are profiteering off the war in Ukraine while sacrificing our communities and climate. The windfall profits tax will require Big Oil to pay their fair share while putting billions of dollars back into the pockets of taxpayers.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

Groups Urge Biden to Invoke Defense Production Act to Counter Putin, Accelerate Green Transition

“A renewable energy future,” the groups wrote, “is a peaceful and ultimately more prosperous one.”

Above: Photo / Adobe Stock

A coalition of over 200 groups on Wednesday called on President Joe Biden to leverage his authority under the Defense Production Act to simultaneously “produce alternatives to fossil fuels, fight the climate emergency, combat Putin’s stranglehold on the world’s energy economy, and support the transition to a renewable and just economy.”

“With one fell swoop, you would reduce energy costs and move the world away from fossil fuel markets that are all too easily manipulated by bad actors.”

The demand was delivered in a letter to Biden—signed by groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, Global Witness, and Stand.earth—and follows the administration’s move Tuesday to ban U.S. imports of Russian fossil fuels in response to Russia’s ongoing military attack on Ukraine.

The groups thank Biden for that immediate ban and say it must be followed not by “short-sighted policies” like ramping up domestic drilling, as the U.S. fossil fuel lobby and industry supporters like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have called for, because that would worsen the climate emergency and “deepen our dependence on fuels that lead to global instability.”

“Oil and gas constitute 40% of Russia’s national revenue, meaning Russian exports of oil and gas are literally funding this invasion,” the letter states.

Ramping up fossil fuel extraction and use would also worsen the climate crisis, the groups note, referencing the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report releasedlast week showing that “natural and human systems” are being driven “beyond their ability to adapt.”

What is needed instead, the letter states, is a massive surge in the deployment of renewable energy.

Biden can lead that effort by utilizing the Defense Production Act (DPA), with specific actions on three fronts, all of which should center communities most impacted by the current fossil fueled-based system. The letter calls on the president to:

  • Rapidly scale up production, manufacturing, and deployment of renewable energy technologies, heat pumps, storage, and weatherization technologies here and abroad. These green technologies can be exported to Ukraine, the rest of Europe, and the Global South to help wean them off of their dependence on Russian fossil fuels. And they should be simultaneously deployed across the United States to jumpstart the renewable energy revolution and prioritize construction in climate-vulnerable communities. With one fell swoop, you would reduce energy costs and move the world away from fossil fuel markets that are all too easily manipulated by bad actors.
  • Create millions of long-term, high-paying domestic jobs and position the U.S. to be a global leader in showcasing the economic benefits of the just and renewable energy transition. Investments by the federal government can create high-quality, family-supporting jobs; and build worker power by including high-road labor standards.
  • Accelerate the transition to zero-emission public transportation, alternatives to car based transportation and related infrastructure domestically, and deploy it nationwide, prioritizing communities who are most vulnerable to the climate emergency. These steps will reduce the burden of higher gas prices at the pump for U.S. residents.

“A renewable energy future,” the groups wrote, “is a peaceful and ultimately more prosperous one.”

Climate advocates have previously linked Russia’s military attack on Ukraine with reliance on fossil fuels.

American author and climate activist Bill McKibben, for example, wrote last month in his newsletter The Crucial Years that “it is a war underwritten by oil and gas” and urged Biden to invoke the DPA to produce “electric heat pumps in quantity, so we can ship them to Europe where they can be installed in time to dramatically lessen Putin’s power. “

Fridays for Future youth activists also took to the streets of cities across the globe last week to #StandWithUkraine and heed a call from the Ukrainian arm of the global climate movement.

In a series of tweets last Thursday, the day of the demonstrations, the global group called this “an eye-opening moment for humanity to see that the world is aflame with new and old wars caused by fossil fuels.”

“We want to call out the era of fossil fuel, capitalism, and imperialism that allows these systemic oppressions,” they said. “We demand a world where leaders prioritize #PeopleNotProfit.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Health, Lifestyle, News, Observation

Is ‘headline stress disorder’ real? Yes, but those who thrive on the news often lose sight of it

Above: Photo Collage / Adobe Stock

It began with a basic “news you can use” feature from National Public Radio. Titled “5 ways to cope with the stressful news cycle,” producer Andee Tagle’s piece, published in late February, offered tips on how to cope with anxiety caused by news consumption in tense times.

Among Tagle’s tips: “Do something that feels good for your body and helps you get out of your head.” Also: “The kitchen is a safe space for a lot of us. Maybe this is the weekend that you finally re-create Grandpa’s famous lasagna … or maybe just lose yourself in some kitchen organization.”

Tagle’s simple self-help counsel quickly ignited social media scorn, seemingly touching a nerve among numerous commentators.

National Review’s Dan McLaughlin tweeted that the piece indicated that NPR employees “really do not envision their audience as grown adults.”

“I’m all for mental health awareness and therapeutic care,” tweeted Daily Beast editor Anthony Fisher, before ultimately dismissing Tagle’s article as “a lifestyle guide for narcissists.”

The piece and its condemnation raise issues involving research about the mental and psychological toll of everyday news consumption that’s gone largely unnoticed by the public over the last few years. Recent surveys and research on the subject have only occasionally been publicized in the general press. The COVID-19 global pandemic – and the doomsday news reports it sparked – attracted a bit more attention to this research.

Yet the mental and psychological toll of news consumption remains largely unknown to the general news consumer. Even if the research isn’t widely known, the emotions felt by what one Northwestern University Medical School article called “headline stress disorder” probably exist for an certain unknown proportion of news consumers. After all, if these feelings didn’t exist for at least some of their listening audience, NPR would never have published that piece. Nor would Fox News have published a similar article to help its viewers cope.

News threatens mental stability

The idea that more news, delivered faster through new and addicting technologies, can cause psychological and medical harm has a long history in the United States.

Media scholars like Daniel Czitrom and Jeffrey Sconce have noted how contemporaneous research linked the emergence and prevalence of neurasthenia to the rapid proliferation of telegraphic news in the late 19th century. Neurasthenia is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a condition that is characterized especially by physical and mental exhaustion usually with accompanying symptoms (such as headache and irritability).” Early 19th-century scientific exploration in neurology and psychiatry suggested that too much news consumption might lead to “nervous exhaustion” and other maladies.

In my own research into social psychology and radio listening, I noticed the same medical descriptions recurring in the 1920s, once radio became widespread. News reports chronicled how radio listening and radio news consumption seemed to threaten some people’s mental stability.

One front-page New York Times article in 1923 noted that a woman in Minnesota was divorcing her husband on the then-novel grounds that he suffered from “radio mania.” The wife felt her husband “paid more attention to his radio apparatus than to her or their home,” which had apparently “alienated his affection” from her.

Similar reports of addiction, mania and psychological entanglement spawned by new media emerged again as television proliferated in the American home in the 1950s, and again with the proliferation of the internet.

The public discussion of psychological addiction and mental harm caused by new technologies, and the ensuing moral panics they spawn, appears periodically as new communication technologies emerge. But, historically, adjustment and integration of new media occurs over time, and disorders such as neurasthenia and “radio mania” are largely forgotten.

Anxious about frightening news

“Headline stress disorder” might sound ridiculous to some, but research does show that reading the news can make certain subsets of news consumers develop measurable emotional effects.

There are numerous studies looking into this phenomenon. In general, they find some people, under certain conditions, can be vulnerable to potentially harmful and diagnosable levels of anxiety if exposed to certain types of news reports.

The problem for researchers is isolating the exact subset of news consumers this happens to, and describing precisely the effect that occurs in response to specific identified news subjects and methods of news consumption.

It is not only probable, but even likely, that many people are made more anxious by the widespread distribution of frightening news. And if a news consumer has a diagnosed anxiety disorder, depression, or other identified mental health challenge, the likelihood that obviously distressing news reports would amplify and inflame such underlying issues seems almost certain.

Just because popular culture manages to pathologize much of everyday behavior doesn’t mean identified problems aren’t real, as those skewering the NPR story implied.

We all eat; but some of us eat far too much. When that occurs, everyday behavior is transformed into actions that can threaten health and survival. Likewise, most of us strive to stay informed, but it’s likely that in certain situations, for certain people, staying informed when the news is particularly frightening can threaten their mental health.

Therefore, the question is not whether the problem is real, but how research might quantify and describe its true prevalence, and how to address the problem.

And that’s precisely why the NPR article caused such a stir. Many people who consume news without problem couldn’t fathom why others might benefit from learning how to cope with “headline stress disorder.”

In reality, the criticism aimed at NPR says nothing about those who find our current run of bad news particularly anxiety provoking. It does say a lot about the lack of empathy from those who would scoff at the idea.

Michael J. Socolow, Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of Maine

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Lifestyle, News, Observation, Politics

‘Signed. Sealed. Delivered.’ Senate Sends USPS Reform Bill to Biden’s Desk

Above: Photo credit Pexels

“This long-overdue legislation will strengthen the Postal Service so it can better serve the American people.”

Postal reform advocates on Tuesday welcomed the U.S. Senate’s passage of House-approved bipartisan legislation that was held up last month by GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida.

A day after overcoming a filibuster, the Postal Service Reform Act passed the evenly split Senate in a 79-19 vote, with several Republicans joining Democrats to send the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.

“Every day tens of millions of Americans rely on the post office for their daily essentials—seniors and veterans, small business owners, small-town rural Americans, people waiting for wedding invitations, birthday cards, letters—so we know that the Postal Service is really beloved,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a press conference after the vote.

The U.S. Postal Service is “an important institution in American life” and was long in need of a revamp, he added, calling the bill’s passage a win for bipartisanship, postal workers, and the public.

“Every day the Postal Service faithfully delivers for the American people and today the Senate is finally delivering for the post office,” declared Schumer, flanked by Democratic and Republican colleagues.

National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) president Fredric Rolando said in a statement that “this is a monumental victory for letter carriers and all Americans who depend on the Postal Service for affordable and high-quality universal service.”

“I want to congratulate and thank all the NALC members who lobbied their members of Congress to win passage in the Senate and the House,” he added. “Thanks to your support, dedication, and action, bipartisan postal reform, that was 12 years in the making, has finally passed in both chambers.”

The $107 billion compromise package, which the House advanced with a 342-92 vote in February, will make future Postal Service retirees enroll in Medicare—ending a costly mandate forcing the USPS to prefund health benefits—and require the creation of a new online mail tracking system.

“This long-overdue legislation will strengthen the Postal Service so it can better serve the American people,” tweetedSen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

The bill was even supported by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, an appointee of former President Donald Trump who has faced multiple scandals.

The Senate vote comes as DeJoy is under fire for a USPS plan to buy gas-powered delivery trucks in spite of President Joe Biden’s proposed transition to zero-emission government vehicles.

“DeJoy’s environmental review is rickety, founded on suspect calculations, and fails to meet the standards of the law,” said Earthjustice senior attorney Adrian Martinez last month. “We’re not done fighting this reckless decision.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Business, News, Observation, Politics, Tech

House Panel Calls for DOJ Probe of Amazon Over Alleged Obstruction of Congress

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

“Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland. “For this, it must be held accountable.”

A U.S. House committee on Wednesday asked the Department of Justice to investigate Amazon and some of its executives for possible criminal obstruction of Congress, accusing the e-commerce giant of lying under oath and refusing to provide certain information requested by lawmakers during an antitrust probe.

That’s according to The Wall Street Journal, which first obtained a letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland by Democratic and Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. Signatories said they are alerting the DOJ to “potentially criminal conduct” by Amazon and some of its executives, though the letter doesn’t name specific individuals.

As the Journal reported:

The letter accuses the Seattle-based tech giant of refusing to provide information that lawmakers sought as part of an investigation by the body’s Antitrust Subcommittee into Amazon’s competitive practices. The letter alleges that the refusal was an attempt to cover up what it calls a lie that the company told lawmakers about its treatment of outside sellers on its platform.

The alleged lie came, according to the Washington Post, during “sworn testimony to the committee in 2019 about whether it uses data that it collects from third-party sellers to compete with them.”

The newspaper, which is owned by Amazon founder and ex-CEO Jeff Bezos, continued:

“[C]redible investigative reporting” and the committee’s investigation showed the company was engaging in the practice despite its denial, the letter said.

Subsequently, as the investigation continued, Amazon tried to “cover up its lie by offering ever-shifting explanations” of its policies, the letter said.

Furthermore, “after Amazon was caught in a lie and repeated misrepresentations, it stonewalled the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth,” according to the letter.

Throughout the investigation, “Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” states the panel’s letter. “For this, it must be held accountable.”

The Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), conducted a 16-month antitrust investigation into Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook. The probe resulted in an October 2020 report that criticized all four tech giants and stimulated legislative proposals designed to limit their power.

However, the Journal noted that “lawmakers’ interaction with Amazon has been particularly contentious, according to people involved, and the new letter makes it the only one of the four companies that Judiciary Committee members have accused of illegal obstruction.”

Reuters reported that Wednesday’s “referral to the DOJ follows a previous warning from members of the U.S. committee in October in which they accused Amazon’s top executives, including founder Jeff Bezos, of either misleading Congress or possibly lying to it about Amazon’s business practices.”

According to the Journal, committee members at the time “sent a letter to Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy urging the company to provide ‘exculpatory evidence’ surrounding its private-label business practices. Lawyers representing Amazon met with legal counsel for the committee following the letter but didn’t produce the requested evidence, saying the investigation Amazon had conducted was privileged information between attorney and client, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Wednesday’s letter, the newspaper reported, says that Amazon “has refused to turn over business documents or communications that would either corroborate its claims or correct the record.”

“It appears to have done so to conceal the truth about its use of third-party sellers’ data to advantage its private-label business and its preferencing of private-label products in search results—subjects of the committee’s investigation,” the letter continues.

“As a result, we have no choice but to refer this matter to the Department of Justice to investigate whether Amazon and its executives obstructed Congress in violation of applicable federal law,” adds the letter.

It was signed by Nadler; Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), chair of the panel’s subcommittee on antitrust, commercial, and administrative law; and subcommittee members Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), Pramilia Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

As France and Germany Seize Yachts, UK Accused of Coddling Russian Oligarchs

Video

“We hope that the government will support our amendments which seek to strengthen our ability to hit Russian oligarchs as quickly and effectively as possible,” said one Labour Party lawmaker.

After authorities in France and Germany seized a pair of yachts owned by super-wealthy Russians on Wednesday, pressure is mounting on United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson to follow suit by confiscating the assets of oligarchs linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 “It shouldn’t have taken a war to force the British government to act on what had become an international money racket.”

French authorities reportedly seized a superyacht belonging to Igor Sechin—former deputy prime minister of Russia who has been CEO of the state-owned oil company Rosneft since 2012—in the shipyards of La Ciotat.

According to French officials, the 280-foot “Amore Velo” had arrived at the Mediterranean port on January 3 and was slated to remain there until April 1 while undergoing repairs. However, customs officers seized the yacht after they noticed it was “taking steps to sail off urgently” in violation of the European Union’s new sanctions on Russian oligarchs.

In a separate incident on Wednesday, German authorities reportedly seized “Dilbar,” a superyacht owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov. The 512-foot vessel, valued at roughly $600 million, was taken in Hamburg’s shipyards, where it was being worked on.

Sechin and Usmanov were both included in a list, published Monday, of 26 Russian oligarchs who would be subject to E.U. sanctions imposed in response to Moscow’s deadly assault on Ukraine. The document refers to Sechin as one of Putin’s “most trusted and closest advisors, as well as his personal friend,” while Usmanov is described as a “pro-Kremlin oligarch with particularly close ties” to Putin.

The confiscation by France and Germany of some of Sechin and Usmanov’s most prized assets has led critics to demand more far-reaching action from the U.K., which left the E.U. in 2020.

Last week, Johnson, a right-wing Tory, announced that the U.K. would implement “the largest and most severe package of economic sanctions that Russia has ever seen.”

“Oligarchs in London,” said Johnson, “will have nowhere to hide.”

Britain has hit nine wealthy Russians with sanctions since Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine last week, but “Johnson has been accused by opposition politicians and some of his own lawmakers of failing to take more speedy action,” Reuters reported Thursday.

When Damian Hinds, a Tory serving as the U.K.’s national security minister, was asked Thursday if the Cabinet was too “scared” to target Russian elites due to the “legal implications,” Hinds said, “No.”

An unnamed government source told the PA news agency, however, that it could take “weeks and months” to build legally sound cases against some Russian oligarchs. 

According to The Independent, “Johnson is coming under pressure to tighten the net on illicit Russian finance in ‘weeks, not years,’ as officials confirmed that they are aware of wealthy oligarchs moving cash out of the U.K. in advance of expected sanctions.”

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, a member of the Labour Party, urged the government last week to seize assets owned by Putin’s allies, who use London as a “safe harbor… to park their cash.”

Since then, more elected officials, including conservatives, have echoed Khan’s call.

Tom Tugendhat, the Tory chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, said Thursday that “we should be looking immediately to seize those assets linked to those who are profiting from Putin’s war machine, holding it in trust, and returning it to the Russian people as soon as possible.”

In a Washington Post opinion piece published Tuesday, British journalist Hannah Fearn wrote that “it shouldn’t have taken a war to force the British government to act on what had become an international money racket.”

According to the Post, “Russian money is so ubiquitous, so notorious in Britain’s capital city that the global financial hub was long ago nicknamed “‘Londongrad.'”

While mega-rich tax dodgers from around the globe have dumped billions into London’s real estate market—inflating property values and exacerbating an affordable housing crisis—anti-corruption researchers have called the city a “laundromat” for Russia’s dirty money, in particular.

As The Independent reported:

Labour has tabled amendments to the government’s Economic Crimes Bill to require the true ownership of properties to be registered within 28 days rather than 18 months.

Sir Keir Starmer—who has offered Labour’s help to rush the long-awaited legislation through the Commons in a single day on Monday—told the prime minister that the proposed delay would give cronies of Vladimir Putin plenty of time to “quietly launder their money… into another safe haven.”

In a recent letter to Kwasi Kwarteng, a Tory serving as the U.K.’s business secretary, Labour Party parliamentarian Jonathan Reynolds wrote: “In the spirit of ending malign influence in our economy we hope that the government will support our amendments which seek to strengthen our ability to hit Russian oligarchs as quickly and effectively as possible.”

“Much more must be done to stop the movement to oligarchy not just in Russia, but all over the world.”

According to the prime minister’s official spokesperson, “We are not being held back from introducing sanctions.” But, he said, “we do have laws that we need to abide by” when it comes to implementing economic restrictions.

“When it comes to individuals it is the case that we need to do the preparatory work, the requisite work, to make sure it is legally sound before introduction,” said the spokesperson, who added that “if there are ways to further speed it up then we will.”

Meanwhile, in the U.S., members of Congress cheered Tuesday night when President Joe Biden said during his State of the Union address that “we’re joining with European allies to find and seize [Russian oligarchs’] yachts, their luxury apartments, their private jets. We’re coming for your ill-begotten gains.”

Several Russian elites have reportedly moved their yachts to the Maldives, which lacks an extradition treaty with the U.S., in anticipation of a possible crackdown.

Some progressives have called for confiscating all luxury vessels owned by billionaires, not just those close to Putin, while others have demanded urgent action to combat worsening inequality all over the globe.

“None of these oligarchs should be allowed to park their yachts, fly their jets, sleep in their mansions, or stash their cash offshore during the war in Ukraine,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Tuesday. “But much more must be done to stop the movement to oligarchy not just in Russia, but all over the world.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

NATO Rejects Ukraine No-Fly Zone That Could Spark ‘Full-Fledged War in Europe’

Video

Above: PhotoCollage Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

“We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that the 30-country alliance will not impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, warning that such a step would draw NATO forces into direct conflict with Russia and potentially spark “a full-fledged war in Europe.”

“We are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine because that would be even more devastating and more dangerous, with even more human suffering,” Stoltenberg said during a press conference following a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

Stoltenberg told reporters that while the Ukrainian leadership’s call for a no-fly zone was mentioned during Friday’s meeting, NATO members ultimately agreed that the alliance shouldn’t have “planes operating over Ukrainian airspace or NATO troops on Ukrainian territory.”

“NATO is not seeking a war with Russia,” said Stoltenberg, who condemned Russia’s assault on Ukraine as an unlawful act of aggression and demanded that Russian President Vladimir Putin order the immediate withdrawal of all troops.

Watch Stoltenberg’s press conference:

NATO’s rejection of a no-fly zone came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his push for a no-fly zone over the besieged country.

“I hope the sky will be shut down,” Zelenskyy said during a press conference on Thursday.

But many world leaders, progressive lawmakers, and anti-war campaigners have warned that because a no-fly zone must be enforced militarily, the imposition of such an airspace ban would dramatically increase the risk of broadening the deadly conflict in Ukraine.

Last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said U.S. President Joe Biden has no intention of supporting a no-fly zone, warning that it could bring the United States into “a war with Russia, which is something we are not planning to be a part of.”

The prime minister of Lithuania, a NATO member, similarly rejected calls for a no-fly zone during a news conference on Friday.

“I believe that all encouragements for NATO to get involved in the military conflict now are irresponsible,” said Ingrida Simonyte.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

Economic sanctions may deal fatal blow to Russia’s already-weakdomestic opposition

The West has responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by imposing harsh economic sanctions.

Above: Photo Collage

Most consequentially, key Russian banks have been cut out of the SWIFT payments messaging system, making financial transactions much more difficult. The United States, European Union and others also moved to freeze Russian Central Bank reserves. And U.S. President Joe Biden is weighing a total ban on Russian oil imports.

These sanctions are aimed at generating opposition from both Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and everyday Russians. As a scholar who studies regime change, I believe the risk is that they will actually drive the Kremlin’s weak opposition further into obscurity.

A ‘punishment logic’

Economic sanctions follow a “punishment logic”: Those feeling economic pain are expected to rise up against their political leaders and demand a change in policies.

Everyday Russians have already felt the pain from the newest sanctions. The ruble plummeted in value, and Russia’s stock market dipped. The effects of Western sanctions were seen in the long lines at ATMs as Russians tried to pull out their cash before it was lost.

But the odds of an uprising are not great. Empirical research suggests that sanctions rarely generate the sorts of damage that compel their targets to back down. Their greatest chance of success is when they are used against democratic states, where opposition elites can mobilize the public against them.

In authoritarian regimes like Putin’s, where average citizens are the most likely to suffer, sanctions usually do more to hurt the opposition than help it.

How Putin has quelled dissent

Putin has used a variety of tools to try to quell domestic opposition over the past two decades.

Some of these were subtle, such as tweaking the electoral system in ways that benefit his party. Others were less so, including instituting constitutional changes that allow him to serve as president for years to come.

But Putin has not stopped at legislative measures. He has long been accused of murdering rivals, both at home and abroad. Most recently, Putin has criminalized organizations tied to the opposition and has imprisoned their leader, Alexei Navalny, who was the target of two assassination attempts.

Despite a clampdown on activism, Russians have repeatedly proved willing to take to the streets to make their voices heard. Thousands demonstrated in the summer and fall of 2020 to support a governor in the Far East who had beaten Putin’s pick for the position only to be arrested, ostensibly for a murder a decade and a half earlier. Thousands more came out last spring to protest against Navalny’s detention.

Putin has even begun facing challenges from traditionally subservient political parties, such as the Communist Party and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party.

Flickers of opposition

Importantly, Putin has occasionally shown a willingness to back down and change his policies under pressure. In other words, as much as Putin has limited democracy in Russia, opposition has continued to bubble up.

The result is a president who feels compelled to win over at least a portion of his domestic audience. This was clear in the impassioned address Putin made to the nation setting the stage for war. The fiery hourlong speech falsely accused Ukrainians of genocide against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. “How long can this tragedy continue? How much longer can we put up with this?” Putin asked his nation.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, Russians have continued to show their willingness to stand up to Putin. Thousands have gathered to protest the war in Ukraine, despite risking large fines and jail time.

They have been aided by a network of “hacktivists” outside Russia using a variety of tactics to overcome the Kremlin’s mighty propaganda machine. These groups have blocked Russian government agencies and state news outlets from spreading false narratives.

Controlling the narrative

Despite these public showings, the liberal opposition to Putin is undoubtedly weak. In part, this is because Putin controls state television, which nearly two-thirds of Russians watch for their daily news. Going into this war, half of Russians blamed the U.S. and NATO for the increase in tensions, with only 4% holding Russia responsible.

This narrative could be challenged by the large number of Russians – 40% – who get their information from social media. But the Kremlin has a long track record of operating in this space, intimidating tech companies and spreading false stories that back the government line. Just on Friday state authorities said they would block access to Facebook, which around 9% of Russians use.

Putin has already shown he can use his information machine to convert past Western sanctions into advantage. After the West sanctioned Russia for its 2014 takeover of Crimea, Putin deflected blame for Russians’ economic pain from himself to foreign powers. The result may have fallen short of the classic “rally around the flag” phenomenon, but on balance Putin gained politically from his first grab on Ukraine. More forceful economic sanctions this time around may unleash a broader wave of nationalism.

More importantly, sanctions have a long track record of weakening political freedoms in the target state. As the situation in Russia continues to deteriorate, Putin will likely crack down further to stamp out any signs of dissent.

And former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev reacted to the country’s expulsion from the Council of Europe by suggesting Russia might go back on its human rights promises.

Another casualty of the war

This has already begun.

In the first week of the war, Russian authorities arrested more than 7,000 protesters. They ramped up censorship and closed down a longtime icon of liberal media, the Ekho Moskvy radio station. The editor of Russia’s last independent TV station, TV Dozhd, also announced he was fleeing the country.

Russia already ranked near the bottom – 150 out of 180 – in the latest Reporters Without Borders assessment of media freedom. And a new law, passed on March 4, 2022, punishes the spread of “false information” about Russia’s armed forces with up to 15 years in jail.

Ironically, then, the very sanctions that encourage Russians to attack the regime also narrow their available opportunities to do so.

Ultimately, the opposition seen on the streets in Russia today and perhaps in the coming weeks may be the greatest show of strength that can be expected in the near future.

The West may have better luck using targeted sanctions against those in Putin’s inner circle, including Russia’s infamous oligarchs. But with their assets hidden in various pots around the world, severely hurting these actors may prove difficult.

Even in the best of circumstances, economic sanctions can take years to have their desired effect. For Ukrainians, fighting a brutal and one-sided war, the sanctions are unlikely to help beyond bolstering morale.

The danger is that these sanctions may also make average Russians another casualty in Putin’s war.

[The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories. Sign up for Politics Weekly.]

This article is republished from The Conversation BY Brian Grodsky, University of Maryland, Baltimore County under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Russia and Putin and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

HRW Confirms Russia Dropped Cluster Bombs on Kharkiv

Video

Above: Photo Collage Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

“Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” said the human rights group.

Russian forces used cluster bombs during attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv in what may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

“Using cluster munitions in populated areas shows a brazen and callous disregard for people’s lives,” said Steve Goose, arms director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.

The new assessment of Monday strikes on Kharkiv, an eastern city home to over 1.4 million people, is based on photos and video evidence verified by the human rights group and was presented as Russia faces increasing global condemnation over its ongoing invasion, which has stoked fears of nuclear disaster and has already forced over one million people to flee Ukraine.

HRW already confirmed last week use of cluster munitions by Russian forces in a February 24 strike just outside a hospital in the Ukrainian city of Vuhledar. The new assessment focuses on munitions that hit the Moskovskyi, Shevchenkivskyi, and Industrialnyi districts of Kharkiv on February 28.

The rights group—which noted the “inherently indiscriminate nature of cluster munitions and their foreseeable effects on civilians”—based its new assessment on interviews with two witnesses and an analysis of 40 videos and photographs, which revealed information on explosion signatures and remnants of the rockets.

The munitions used in the Kharkiv strikes, said HRW, were delivered by Russian-made 9M55K Smerch cluster munition rockets.

Over 120 nations have signed on to an international treatybanning the use, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions, which can pose deadly harm far beyond initial explosions, as unexploded submitions becoming akin to landmines. The Cluster Munition Caolition describes the weapons as being able to “saturate an area up to the size of several football fields.”

Neither Russia, Ukraine, nor the U.S., however, is state party to the treaty.

“We are seeing mounting evidence of indiscriminate attacks on Kharkiv and the price civilians are paying for these serious violations,” said HRW’s Goose.

“If these deadly acts were carried out either intentionally or recklessly,” he added, “they would be war crimes.”

The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also said Friday that Russian forces have used cluster bombs in its attacks on Ukraine.

“We have seen the use of cluster bombs and we have seen reports of use of other types of weapons which would be in violation of international law,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters.

Amnesty International has also previously confirmed Russian forces’ use of cluster bombs on Ukraine, and open source investigative outlet Bellingcat has also been tracking Russia’s use of the weapons during the invasion.

In a Wednesday statement, the U.K. presidency of the Convention on Cluster Munitions expressed “grave” concern about reports of Russia using the weapons in strikes on Ukraine, noting that cluster bombs “have had a devastating impact on civilians in many conflict areas.”

The Cluster Munition Coalition, in a Wednesday tweet, said, “We welcome the growing number of states speaking out on—and urge all states to condemn—the unacceptable use of cluster munitions by Russian forces in Ukraine.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

House Committee Issues Subpoena to Top Trump Fundraiser Kimberly Guilfoyle

Video

Above: Photo /Collage – Lynxotic / Pro Publica

The U.S. House of Representatives select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol issued a subpoena on Thursday to Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top fundraiser for former President Donald Trump and the fiancee of his son, Donald Trump Jr.

The subpoena cites a text message Guilfoyle sent to former Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson, in which Guilfoyle claims to have raised millions of dollars for the rally that preceded the Capitol riot. The text exchange was first reported in November by ProPublica.

In the text, Guilfoyle wrote that she “raised so much money for this. Literally one of my donors Julie at 3 million.” She was referring to Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a Publix supermarket heir and the biggest known funder for the Jan. 6 rally. Fancelli previously did not respond to ProPublica requests for comment on the matter.

The subpoena, which seeks to force Guilfoyle to hand over documents and appear for a deposition, also stated that she “communicated with others” about the speaking lineup for the Jan. 6 rally and met with Trump and members of his family in the Oval Office that morning.

Guilfoyle is the first member of the Trump family circle to be subpoenaed by the select committee. Guilfoyle and Trump Jr. announced their engagement in January. She was appointed national chair of the Trump Victory finance committee in January 2020 and was put at the helm of the former president’s super PAC last fall.

The subpoena is another indication that the committee is becoming increasingly aggressive in its investigation into the Capitol attack. In documents filed in a civil case in a California district court on Wednesday, the committee said for the first time that it had evidence that could potentially lead to criminal charges against the former president for his actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The committee would refer any potential criminal charge to the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

The step comes almost a week after Guilfoyle walked out of a meeting with the committee after initially agreeing to answer questions about the events of Jan. 6. According to a statement from her lawyer last week, Guilfoyle left the meeting because she was concerned members of the committee would leak information from the interview to the press.

In September, citing ProPublica reporting, the committee sent subpoenas to Pierson and Caroline Wren, a Republican fundraiser who served as Guilfoyle’s deputy during the 2020 campaign. The committee subsequently issued subpoenas to threecloseadvisers to Trump Jr. and Guilfoyle.

In a statement, Joe Tacopina, Guilfoyle’s attorney, said the subpoena was a politically motivated abuse of power and that Guilfoyle will answer questions truthfully. “She has done nothing wrong,” he said. In November, Tacopina said the texts to Pierson were not about the Jan. 6 rally and threatened to “aggressively pursue all legal remedies available” against ProPublica. At the time, Pierson declined to comment and Trump Jr. did not respond to emailed questions.

ProPublica previously reported that Wren told another rally organizer that she raised $3 million for the Jan. 6 rally and “parked” the funds in several dark money organizations.

Wren previously sent a statement to ProPublica from her attorney that did not address how much money was raised for the rally or how it was spent, but stated that to her “knowledge, Kimberly Guilfoyle had no involvement in raising funds for any events on January 6th.”

Guilfoyle developed a professional relationship with Fancelli during the 2020 campaign, according to documents obtained by ProPublica, and Fancelli donated $250,000 to Trump Victory shortly after receiving a call from Guilfoyle.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.Series: The Insurrection The Effort to Overturn the Election

Originally published on ProPublica by Joaquin Sapien and Joshua Kaplan and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Politics

Trump Just Endorsed an Oath Keeper’s Plan to Seize Control of the Republican Party

Video

The “precinct strategy” widely promoted by Steve Bannon has already inspired thousands of Trump supporters to fill local GOP positions, intent on preventing a “stolen election.”

Former President Donald Trump has officially endorsed a plan, created by a man who has self-identified with the Oath Keeper militia, that aims to have Trump supporters consolidate control of the Republican Party.

The plan, known as the “precinct strategy,” has been repeatedly promoted on Steve Bannon’s popular podcast. As ProPublica detailed last year, it has already inspired thousands of people to fill positions at the lowest rung of the party ladder. Though these positions are low-profile and often vacant, they hold critical powers: They help elect higher-ranking party officers, influence which candidates appear on the ballot, turn out voters on Election Day and even staff the polling precincts where people vote and the election boards that certify the results.

“Just heard about an incredible effort underway that will strengthen the Republican Party,” Trump said Sunday in a statement emailed to his supporters. “If members of our Great movement start getting involved (that means YOU becoming a precinct committeeman for your voting precinct), we can take back our great Country from the ground up.”

Trump’s email named Dan Schultz, an Arizona lawyer and local party official who first developed the precinct strategy more than a decade ago. Schultz spent years trying to promote his plan and recruit precinct officers. In 2014, he posted a callout to an internal forum for the Oath Keepers militia group, according to hacked records obtained by ProPublica.

“Why don’t you all join me and the other Oath Keepers who are ‘inside’ the Party already,” Schultz wrote under a screen name. “If we conservatives were to do that, we’d OWN the Party.”

Federal prosecutors in January charged the leader of the Oath Keepers and 10 of its other members with seditious conspiracy in last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol. One of them pleaded guilty, as have several members of the group in related cases who are cooperating with the investigation. The group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, pleaded not guilty.

There is no indication that Schultz had any involvement in the Capitol riot.

Schultz told ProPublica he never became a formal member of the Oath Keepers organization. “I have taken oaths to support and defend the Constitution as a West Point cadet, as a commissioned U.S. Army officer and as a practicing attorney,” Schultz said in a text message. “Those oaths do not have expiration dates, by my way of thinking, and I have kept my oaths. In that sense, I am an ‘oath keeper.’”

According to experts on extremist groups, the Oath Keepers recruit military and law enforcement veterans using the idea that their oath to defend the Constitution never expired. The group then urges people to resist what they say are impending orders to take away Americans’ guns or create concentration camps.

“I don’t ever want to be pulling the trigger on an AR-15 in my neighborhood,” Schultz said in a 2015 conference call with fellow organizers, referring to the semi-automatic rifle. “Oath Keepers, I love them for instilling the oath. But what they need to do also, I think, is spread the message that hey, we can do stuff politically so we never get to the cartridge box.”

In more recent interviews on right-wing podcasts and internet talk shows, Schultz has repeatedly described his precinct strategy as a last alternative to violence.

“It’s not going to be peaceful the next go-round, perhaps,” Schultz said in a June interview with the pro-Trump personality David Clements. “But it ought to be, and the way to ensure that it will be is we’ve got to get enough of these good decent Americans to take over one of the two major political parties.”

It was not clear whether Trump or his aides were aware that Schultz has self-identified with the Oath Keepers. Trump’s spokesperson, Liz Harrington, did not respond to requests for comment.

Schultz has spent months trying to get his idea in front of Trump. Steve Stern, a fellow movement organizer, told ProPublica that he met a former Trump administration official for lunch at Mar-a-Lago, the ex-president’s private club in Palm Beach, in December. While there, Stern said, he got a chance to briefly mention the project to Trump.

Then, last month, Schultz and Stern landed an interview on a talk show hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who promotes conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Lindell said he would discuss the plan with Trump personally. Schultz and Stern followed up with a conference call with Harrington and Bannon, according to Stern. Harrington previously worked at Bannon’s “War Room” website.

“I know the president’s very jacked up about it,” Bannon said on his podcast, speaking with Schultz after Trump released the endorsement. “Help MAGA, help the America First movement, right? Help the deplorables, help President Trump, help yourself, your country, community, your kids, grandkids, all of it. Put your shoulder to the wheel.”

Bannon, who led Trump’s 2016 campaign, originally lifted the precinct strategy to prominence in a podcast interview with Schultz last year. After the episode aired, thousands of people answered Bannon’s call to become precinct officers in pivotal swing states, according to data compiled by ProPublica from county records and interviews with local party officials.

As of last August, GOP leaders in 41 counties reported an unusual increase in sign-ups since Bannon’s first interview with Schultz, adding a total of more than 8,500 new precinct officers. The trend appears to have continued since then. New precinct officers started using their powers to remove or censure Republican leaders who contradicted Trump’s election lies and to recruit people who believe the election was stolen into positions as poll watchers and poll workers.

Bannon received a last-minute pardon from Trump after the former adviser was charged with financial fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Bannon’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

In addition to Bannon and Lindell, the precinct strategy has won support from pro-Trump figures such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to impose martial law, and lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who led some of the lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results. Right-wing groups such as Turning Point Action, which organized buses to transport rallygoers on Jan. 6, also joined the effort to recruit precinct officers.

While Stern said he’s thrilled about Trump’s written statement endorsing the precinct strategy, he said he hopes to hear it from Trump’s own lips at an upcoming rally. Stern said he plans to be there with tables to sign more people up.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Originally published on ProPublica by Isaac Arnsdorf and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

UN Says 1 Million Have Fled Ukraine Since Start of ‘Senseless War’

Video

Above: PhotoCollage sources- Reuters / Lynxotic

“Peace is the only way to halt this tragedy,” said the U.N. high commissioner for refugees.

The United Nations Refugee Agency said late Wednesday that Russia’s deadly assault on Ukraine has forced more than a million people to flee the country in just a week, a humanitarian crisis that the organization warned will get exponentially worse if the war continues.

“Unless there is an immediate end to the conflict, millions more are likely to be forced to flee Ukraine.”

“In just seven days, one million people have fled Ukraine, uprooted by this senseless war,” Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, said in a statement. “I have worked in refugee emergencies for almost 40 years, and rarely have I seen an exodus as rapid as this one. Hour by hour, minute by minute, more people are fleeing the terrifying reality of violence. Countless have been displaced inside the country.”

“And unless there is an immediate end to the conflict, millions more are likely to be forced to flee Ukraine,” added Grandi. “International solidarity has been heartwarming. But nothing—nothing—can replace the need for the guns to be silenced; for dialogue and diplomacy to succeed. Peace is the only way to halt this tragedy.”

The agency’s stark assessment of the crisis in Ukraine came as Russia ramped up its attack on the country, seizing control of a major port city, hammering densely populated areas with shelling and airstrikes, and continuing its advance on the capital Kyiv. Russian bombs and artillery fire have reportedly damaged and destroyed Ukrainian schools, residential and administrative buildings, and hospitals.

The U.N. human rights office said Wednesday that through March 1, at least 227 civilians were killed and more than 500 were injured in Russia’s invasion, which shows no signs of abating despite the West’s intensifying financial sanctions targeting aspects of Russia’s economy as well as the country’s political leaders and oligarchs.

“In the cities and streets of Ukraine today, innocent civilians are bearing witness to our Age of Impunity,” David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said Wednesday. “The fact that 1 million refugees have already been forced to flee is a grim testament to barbaric military tactics taking aim at homes and hospitals. The IRC is calling on the Russian government  to immediately cease all violations of the laws of war to spare additional harm to civilians and avoid further displacement.”

“As war rages across Ukraine and the world bears witness to a displacement crisis at a scale rarely seen in history,” Miliband continued, “it is urgent that Europe not just offer protection to Ukrainian nationals who have visa-free access to the E.U., but to also grant non-discriminatory pathways to safety to people of all citizenship and nationalities facing grave dangers inside Ukraine.”

Human Rights Watch echoed that sentiment in a statementearlier this week, declaring that it is “vitally important for all countries neighboring Ukraine to allow everyone to enter with a minimum of bureaucratic procedures.” The group also pointed with alarm to reports that Africans and other foreign nationals have faced racist abuse and discrimination from authorities as they’ve attempted to escape violence in Ukraine.

“This is a landmark moment for Europe, and an opportunity for the European Union to remedy the wrongs of the past and rise to the occasion with genuine compassion and solidarity,” said Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “That requires a truly collective commitment to keeping the door and our hearts open to everyone fleeing Ukraine.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) argued in an interview that the United States should join European countries in welcoming Ukrainian refugees.

“The world is watching, and many immigrants and refugees are watching,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “How the world treats Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees should be how we are treating all refugees in the United States.”

“We really need to make sure that, when we talk about accepting refugees, that we are meaning it, for everybody, no matter where you come from,” the New York Democrat added.

During a press briefing last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the Biden administration is “working in close lockstep with our European counterparts about what the needs are and how to help, from our end, meet those needs.”

“Our assessment is that the majority of refugees will want to go to neighboring countries in Europe, many of which have already conveyed publicly that they will accept any refugee who needs a home, whether it’s Poland or Germany, and there are probably others who have made those comments,” Psaki added. “That certainly means an openness to accepting refugees from Ukraine but also making sure that all of these neighboring countries who are willing to welcome these refugees, you know, have our support in that effort.”

Psaki declined to provide an “anticipated number” of Ukrainian refugees that the Biden administration would be ready to accept.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

House January 6 Panel Accuses Trump of ‘Criminal Conspiracy to Defraud’ US

Video

Above: PhotoCollage Lynxotic / Adobe /

The committee alleges that Trump and his allies engaged in a “corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of Electoral College ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.”

The House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol said in a federal court filingWednesday that former President Donald Trump and his campaign allies committed crimes as they attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

While it is not conducting a criminal investigation and does not have the power to bring charges on its own, the House panel told the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California that lawmakers have “a good-faith basis for concluding that the president and members of his campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.”

The Justice Department is currently investigating the January 6 attack and has charged more than 225 people for taking part, but it “has not given any indication that it is considering seeking charges against Trump,” the Associated Press notes.

The House committee’s filing was submitted in response to a lawsuit by former Trump lawyer John Eastman, who is fighting the panel’s request for thousands of emails related to efforts to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally scrap electoral votes from states President Joe Biden won.

Eastman has cited attorney-client privilege to justify withholding the emails from the select committee, but the panel’s filing argues that the documents Eastman is shielding are not privileged.

“Communications in which a ‘client consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud or crime’ are not privileged from disclosure,” the filing states. “The evidence supports an inference that President Trump, [Eastman], and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort.”

The filing points specifically to an email it obtained showing that Eastman urged Pence’s lawyer to violate the law in an attempt to block congressional certification of Trump’s electoral loss.

“I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the Electoral Count Act] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here,” Eastman wrote to Pence attorney Greg Jacob on the night of January 6, 2021.

In a statement late Wednesday, select committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said the panel’s filing “refutes on numerous grounds the privilege claims Dr. Eastman has made to try to keep hidden records critical to our investigation.”

“Dr. Eastman’s privilege claims raise the question whether the crime-fraud exception to the attorney-client privilege applies in this situation,” the lawmakers wrote. “We believe evidence in our possession justifies review of these documents under this exception in camera. The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of Electoral College ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power.”

Trump and his former aides have sought to impede the select committee’s investigation at every turn, obstructing the panel’s efforts to obtain White House documents—which the former president was notorious for destroying—and testimony from key witnesses.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court formally ended Trump’s attempt to prevent the committee from examining more than 700 pages of White House records related to the January 6 attack.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Related Articles:

!function(d,i){if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(“script”);j.id=i;j.src=”https://widgets.getpocket.com/v1/j/btn.js?v=1″;var w=d.getElementById(i);d.body.appendChild(j);}}(document,”pocket-btn-js”);

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Enjoy Lynxotic at Google News and Apple News on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Find books on Music, Movies & Entertainment and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

News, Observation, Politics

Let’s Recall What Exactly Paul Manafort and Rudy Giuliani Were Doing in Ukraine

Above: Photo Collage Lynxotic / ProPublica

Though Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is just days old, Russia has been working for years to influence and undermine the independence of its smaller neighbor. As it happens, some Americans have played a role in that effort.

One was former President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Another was Trump’s then-lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

It’s all detailed in a wide array of public documents, particularly a bipartisan 2020 Senate report on Trump and Russia. I was one of the journalists who dug into all the connections, as part of the Trump, Inc. podcast with ProPublica and WNYC. (I was in Kyiv, retracing Manafort’s steps, when Trump’s infamous call with Ukraine’s president was revealed in September 2019.)

Given recent events, I thought it’d be helpful to put all the tidbits together, showing what happened step by step.

Americans Making Money Abroad. What’s the Problem?

Paul Manafort was a longtime Republican consultant and lobbyist who’d developed a speciality working with unsavory, undemocratic clients. In 2004, he was hired by oligarchs supporting a pro-Russian party in Ukraine. It was a tough assignment: The Party of Regions needed an image makeover. A recent election had been marred by allegations that fraud had been committed in favor of the party’s candidate, prompting a popular revolt that became known as the Orange Revolution.

In a memo for Ukraine’s reportedly richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, Manafort summed up the polling: Many respondents said they associated the Party of Regions with corruption and considered it the “party of oligarchs.”

Manafort set to work rebranding the party with poll-tested messaging and improved stagecraft. Before long, the Party of Regions was in power in Kyiv. One of his key aides in Ukraine was, allegedly, a Russian spy. The Senate Intelligence Committee report on Trump and Russia said Konstantin Kilimnik was both “a Russian intelligence officer” and “an integral part of Manafort’s operations in Ukraine and Russia.”

Kilimnik has denied he is a Russian spy. He was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for obstruction of justice for allegedly trying to get witnesses to lie in testimony to prosecutors in the Manafort case. Kilimnik, who reportedly lives in Moscow, has not been arrested. In an email to The Washington Post, Kilimnik distanced himself from Manafort’s legal woes and wrote, “I am still confused as to why I was pulled into this mess.”

Manafort did quite well during his time in Ukraine. He was paid tens of millions of dollars by pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and other clients, stashing much of the money in undeclared bank accounts in Cyprus and the Caribbean. He used the hidden income to enjoy some of the finer things in life, such as a $15,000 ostrich jacket. Manafort was convicted in 2018 of wide-ranging financial crimes.

“We Are Going to Have So Much Fun, and Change the World in the Process”

In 2014, Manafort’s plum assignment in Ukraine came to an abrupt end. In February of that year, Yanukovych was deposed in Ukraine’s second uprising in a decade, known as the Maidan Revolution, in which more than a hundred protesters were killed in Kyiv. He fled to Russia, leaving behind a vast, opulent estate (now a museum) with gold-plated bathroom fixtures, a galleon on a lake and a 100-car garage.

With big bills and no more big checks coming in, Manafort soon found himself deep in debt, including to a Russian oligarch. He eventually pitched himself for a new gig in American politics as a convention manager, wrangling delegates for an iconoclastic reality-TV star and real estate developer.

“I am not looking for a paid job,” he wrote to the Trump campaign in early 2016. Manafort was hired that spring, working for free.

According to the Senate report, in mid-May 2016 he emailed top Trump fundraiser Tom Barrack, “We are going to have so much fun, and change the world in the process.” (Barrack was charged last year with failing to register as a foreign agent, involving his work for the United Arab Emirates. He has pleaded not guilty. The case has not yet gone to trial.)

A few months later, the Trump campaign put the kibosh on proposed language in the Republican Party platform that expressed support for arming Ukraine with defensive weapons.

One Trump campaign aide told Mueller that Trump’s view was that “the Europeans should take primary responsibility for any assistance to Ukraine, that there should be improved U.S.-Russia relations, and that he did not want to start World War III over that region.”

According to the Senate report, Manafort met Kilimnik twice in person while working on the Trump campaign, messaged with him electronically and shared “sensitive campaign polling data” with him.

Senate investigators wrote in their report that they suspected Kilimnik served as “a channel for coordination” on the Russian military intelligence operation to hack into Democratic emails and leak them.

The Senate intel report notes that in about a dozen interviews with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Manafort “lied consistently” about “one issue in particular: his interactions with Kilimnik.”

Manafort’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Manafort didn’t make it to Election Day on the Trump campaign. In August 2016, The New York Times revealed that handwritten ledgers recovered from Yanukovych’s estate showed nearly $13 million in previously undisclosed payments to Manafort from Yanukovych and his pro-Russian party. Manafort was pushed out of his job as Trump’s campaign chairman less than a week later.

After Trump won the election, the Senate report says, Manafort and Kilimnik worked together on a proposed “plan” for Ukraine that would create an Autonomous Republic of Donbas in separatist-run southeast Ukraine, on the Russian border. Manafort went so far as to work with a pollster on a survey on public attitudes to Yanukovych, the deposed president. The plan only would need a “wink” from the new U.S. president, Kilimnik wrote to Manafort in an email.

Manafort continued to work on the “plan” even after he had been indicted on charges of bank fraud and conspiracy, according to the Senate report. It’s not clear what became of the effort, if anything.

“Do Us a Favor”

With Manafort’s conviction in 2018, Rudy Giuliani came to the fore as the most Ukraine-connected person close to President Trump. Giuliani had long jetted around Eastern Europe. He’d hung out in Kyiv, supporting former professional boxer Vitali Klitschko’s run for mayor. One of Giuliani’s clients for his law firm happened to be Russia’s state oil producer, Rosneft.

By 2018, Giuliani had joined Trump’s legal team, leading the public effort to discredit Robert Mueller’s investigation. Giuliani saw that Ukraine could be a key to that effort.

Giuliani ended up working with a pair of émigré business partners, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, to make contacts in Ukraine with corrupt and questionable prosecutors, in an effort to turn up “dirt” on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Giuliani also worked to sow doubt about the ledger that had revealed the secret payments to Manafort, meeting with his buddies in a literally smoke-filled room.

Parnas and Fruman told the president at a donor dinner in 2018 that the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv was a liability to his administration.

Trump recalled Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who had been a vocal opponent of corruption in Ukraine, from Kyiv in May 2019.

Two months later, Trump had his infamous call with Ukraine’s new President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Zelenskyy asked Trump for anti-tank Javelin missiles. You know what happened next. Trump said he needed Zelenskyy to first “do us a favor” and initiate investigations that would be damaging to Joe Biden. He also pressed Zelenskyy to meet with Giuliani, according to the official readout of the call:

These events became publicly known in September 2019, when a whistleblower complaint was leaked.

“In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” the whistleblower wrote.

In December 2019, as an impeachment inquiry was at full tilt, Giuliani flew to Ukraine and met with a member of Ukraine’s parliament, Andrii Derkach, in an apparent effort to discredit the investigation of Trump’s actions. Derkach, a former member of the Party of Regions, went on to release a trove of dubious audio “recordings” that seemed to be aimed at showing Biden’s actions in Ukraine, when he was vice president, in a negative light.

Within months, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach, describing him as “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who tried to undermine U.S. elections. Derkach has called that idea “nonsense.”

In a statement, Giuliani said, “there is nothing I saw that said he was a Russian agent. There is nothing he gave me that seemed to come from Russia at all.” Giuliani has consistently maintained that his actions in Ukraine were proper and lawful. His lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Where They Are Now…

Many of Trump’s allies have been charged or investigated for their work in and around Ukraine:

Paul Manafort:convicted of financial fraud — then pardoned by Trump

Rick Gates: a Manafort aide who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI

Sam Patten: another Manafort associate convicted for acting as a straw donor to the Trump inaugural committee on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch

Rudy Giuliani:reportedly under criminal investigation over his dealings in Ukraine; his lawyer called an FBI search of his home and seizure of electronic devices “legal thuggery”

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman:convicted for funneling foreign money into U.S. elections; Parnas’ attorney said he would appeal

Key Documents

Originally published on ProPublica by Ilya Marritz and republished under Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Politics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Breaking News, News, Observation, Politics

Russia Warns Kyiv Residents to Leave Homes Ahead of Bombing Blitz

Video

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced plans for a bombing campaign in the Ukrainian capital.

Above: Photo Collage / Reuters / Time / Lynxotic

This is a developing news story… Check back for possible updates…

The Russian Defense Ministry on Tuesday warned Kyiv residents to leave their homes immediately as Russia’s forces advanced on the Ukrainian capital and announced plans to bomb targets in the city.

In a statement, Russia’s Defense Ministry said the military intends to strike the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the 72nd Center for Information and Psychological Operations (PSO) in Kyiv.

“In order to thwart informational attacks against Russia, [Russian forces] will strike technological objects of the SBU and the 72nd Main PSO Center in Kyiv,” the ministry said. “We urge Ukrainian citizens involved by Ukrainian nationalists in provocations against Russia, as well as Kyiv residents living near relay stations, to leave their homes.”

Shortly following the Russian Defense Ministry’s warning, one Ukrainian media outlet reported that an explosion was heard in Kyiv, where Ukrainian forces have thus far beaten back Russia’s incursion attempts.

Video footage from Kyiv showed residents scrambling to flee on Tuesday as Russia’s 40-mile-long convoy of tanks and armored vehicles approached the city.

Footage also showed that a Russian airstrike hit a TV tower in Kyiv. Reporters Without Borders, an international advocacy group, condemned the attack as an “attempt to close access to information.”

With Russia’s assault on major Ukrainian cities intensifying, media outlets in Ukraine reported that the second round of diplomatic talks is set to take place on Wednesday.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Politics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Breaking News, News, Observation, Politics

A historian corrects misunderstandings about Ukrainian and Russian history

image / reuters

by Ronald Suny, University of Michigan

The first casualty of war, says historian Ronald Suny, is not just the truth. Often, he says, “it is what is left out.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin began a full-scale attack on Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022 and many in the world are now getting a crash course in the complex and intertwined history of those two nations and their peoples. Much of what the public is hearing, though, is jarring to historian Suny’s ears. That’s because some of it is incomplete, some of it is wrong, and some of it is obscured or refracted by the self-interest or the limited perspective of who is telling it. We asked Suny, a professor at the University of Michigan, to respond to a number of popular historical assertions he’s heard recently.

Putin’s view of Russo-Ukrainian history has been widely criticized in the West. What do you think motivates his version of the history?

Putin believes that Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are one people, bound by shared history and culture. But he also is aware that they have become separate states recognized in international law and by Russian governments as well. At the same time, he questions the historical formation of the modern Ukrainian state, which he says was the tragic product of decisions by former Russian leaders Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. He also questions the sovereignty and distinctive nation-ness of Ukraine. While he promotes national identity in Russia, he denigrates the growing sense of nation-ness in Ukraine.

Putin indicates that Ukraine by its very nature ought to be friendly, not hostile, to Russia. But he sees its current government as illegitimate, aggressively nationalist and even fascist. The condition for peaceful relations between states, he repeatedly says, is that they do not threaten the security of other states. Yet, as is clear from the invasion, he presents the greatest threat to Ukraine.

Putin sees Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia, believing that if it enters NATO, offensive weaponry will be placed closer to the Russian border, as already is being done in Romania and Poland.

It’s possible to interpret Putin’s statements about the historical genesis of the Ukrainian state as self-serving history and a way of saying, “We created them, we can take them back.” But I believe he may instead have been making a forceful appeal to Ukraine and the West to recognize the security interests of Russia and provide guarantees that there will be no further moves by NATO toward Russia and into Ukraine. Ironically, his recent actions have driven Ukrainians more tightly into the arms of the West.

The Western position is that the breakaway regions Putin recognized, Donetsk and Luhansk, are integral parts of Ukraine. Russia claims that the Donbass region, which includes these two provinces, is historically and rightfully part of Russia. What does history tell us?

During the Soviet period, these two provinces were officially part of Ukraine. When the USSR disintegrated, the former Soviet republic boundaries became, under international law, the legal boundaries of the post-Soviet states. Russia repeatedly recognized those borders, though reluctantly in the case of Crimea.

But when one raises the fraught question of what lands belong to what people, a whole can of worms is opened. The Donbass has historically been inhabited by Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and others. In Soviet and post-Soviet times, the cities were largely Russian ethnically and linguistically, while the villages were Ukrainian. When in 2014 the Maidan revolution in Kyiv moved the country toward the West and Ukrainian nationalists threatened to limit the use of the Russian language in parts of Ukraine, rebels in the Donbas violently resisted the central government of Ukraine.

After months of fighting between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebel forces in the Donbas in 2014, regular Russian forces moved in from Russia, and a war began that has lasted for the last eight years, with thousands killed and wounded.

Historical claims to land are always contested – think of Israelis and Palestinians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis – and they are countered by claims that the majority living on the land in the present takes precedence over historical claims from the past. Russia can claim Donbass with its own arguments based on ethnicity, but so can Ukrainians with arguments based on historical possession. Such arguments go nowhere and often lead, as can be seen today, to bloody conflict.

Why was Russia’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent such a pivotal event in the conflict?

When Putin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states, he seriously escalated the conflict, which turned out to be the prelude to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. That invasion is a hard, harsh signal to the West that Russia will not back down and accept the further arming of and placing of weaponry in Ukraine, Poland and Romania. The Russian president has now led his country into a dangerous preventive war – a war based on the anxiety that sometime in the future his country will be attacked – the outcome of which is unpredictable.

A New York Times story on Putin’s histories of Ukraine says “The newly created Soviet government under Lenin that drew so much of Mr. Putin’s scorn on Monday would eventually crush the nascent independent Ukrainian state. During the Soviet era, the Ukrainian language was banished from schools and its culture was permitted to exist only as a cartoonish caricature of dancing Cossacks in puffy pants.” Is this history of Soviet repression accurate?

Lenin’s government won the 1918-1921 civil war in Ukraine and drove out foreign interventionists, thus consolidating and recognizing the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. But Putin is essentially correct that it was Lenin’s policies that promoted Ukrainian statehood within the USSR, within a Soviet empire, officially granting it and other Soviet republics the constitutional right to secede from the Union without conditions. This right, Putin angrily asserts, was a landmine that eventually blew up the Soviet Union.

The Ukrainian language was never banned in the USSR and was taught in schools. In the 1920s, Ukrainian culture was actively promoted by the Leninist nationality policy.

But under Stalin, Ukrainian language and culture began to be powerfully undermined. This started in the early 1930s, when Ukrainian nationalists were repressed, the horrific “Death Famine” killed millions of Ukrainian peasants, and Russification, which is the process of promoting Russian language and culture, accelerated in the republic.

Within the strict bounds of the Soviet system, Ukraine, like many other nationalities in the USSR, became a modern nation, conscious of its history, literate in its language, and even in puffy pants permitted to celebrate its ethnic culture. But the contradictory policies of the Soviets in Ukraine both promoted a Ukrainian cultural nation while restricting its freedoms, sovereignty and expressions of nationalism.

History is both a contested and a subversive social science. It is used and misused by governments and pundits and propagandists. But for historians it is also a way to find out what happened in the past and why. As a search for truth, it becomes subversive of convenient and comfortable but inaccurate views of where we came from and where we might be going.

This article has been updated to reflect the correct ethnic and linguistic character of the villages in the Donbas during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. They were Ukrainian.

This article is republished from The Conversation by Ronald Suny, University of Michigan under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Politics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Breaking News, News, Observation, Politics

Ukraine’s UN Ambassador Says Putin Should Off Himself Like Hitler

Video

Above: Photo collage UN / Lynxotic

Sergiy Kyslytsya also denounced the Russian president’s decision to put nuclear forces on special alert as “madness.”

Amid rapidly escalating fears of global nuclear war, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations on Monday suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin should follow in the footsteps of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

Echoing the condemnation of anti-war activists worldwide, the Ukrainian ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya, called Putin’s Sunday decision to put Russian nuclear forces on special alert “madness.”

“If he wants to kill himself, he doesn’t need to use [a] nuclear arsenal. He has to do what… the guy in Berlin did, in a bunker,” the ambassador said.

During his U.N. speech, Kyslytsya did not name the notorious German leader, who consumed cyanide and shot himself in the head on April 30, 1945, just days before Germany surrendered to Allied forces.

Kyslytsya also gained global attention last week for his remarks during a U.N. Security Council meeting chaired by his Russian counterpart, Vasily Nebenzya.

“There is no purgatory for war criminals; they go straight to hell, ambassador,” the Ukrainian told Nebenzya. 

In response, the Russian ambassador claimed that “we are not carrying out aggression against the Ukrainian people—this is against that junta, that seized power in Kyiv.”

Following several war crime allegations against Russia over the past week, Karim A.A. Khan, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, announced Monday that he has “decided to proceed with opening an investigation into the situation in Ukraine, as rapidly as possible.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by COMMON DREAMS STAFF and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Politics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page

Breaking News, News, Observation, Politics

Over 2,100 Anti-War Protesters Arrested in Russia

Video

More than 5,500 peace advocates have been detained across the country since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his war on Ukraine, according to a human rights group.

Above: Photo collage – Times / Lynxotic

Russian police arrested 2,114 people at anti-war protests in 48 cities across the country on Sunday, the fourth consecutive day that demonstrators have risked their personal safety to hit the streets in opposition to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

That’s according to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights group that has long documented crackdowns on civil liberties in the country. A total of 5,500 anti-war protesters have now been detained since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale military assault on Ukraine, said the independent monitor.

As Al Jazeera reported:

Many held posters that read “No to war,” “Russians go home,” and “Peace to Ukraine.”

“It is a shame that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of us and not millions,” said 35-year-old engineer Vladimir Vilokhonov, who took part in the protest.

Another protester, Alyona Stepanova, 25, came to the protest with a packed bag in case “we get taken away.”

“We believe it is our duty to come here,” she said.

More than 350 civilians, including 14 children, have been killed in Ukraine since the start of Putin’s attack, according to the country’s health ministry. In addition, it said that 1,684 people, including 116 children, have been wounded. According to the World Health Organization, Ukraine’s hospitals are quickly running out of oxygen supplies.

United Nations officials have said that more than 368,000 people have fled Ukraine to neighboring countries, and they estimate the war could produce four million refugees. European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic, meanwhile, has said that the number of people displaced from Ukraine could reach seven million.

While Kyiv has agreed to attend talks with Moscow at the Ukraine-Belarus border—negotiations are reportedly set to begin Monday morning—Russia’s former deputy foreign minister Andrei Fedorov told Al Jazeera on Sunday that Putin is seeking a complete victory by Wednesday.

“Everything will depend frankly speaking on the coming two days because, according to my knowledge, Putin orders for complete military operation with a victory by March 2,” said Fedorov, who added that the Kremlin has been surprised by the strength of Ukrainian resistance and by European governments’ unified decision to impose far-reaching sanctions despite their reliance on Russian gas.

Western sanctions have “caused a lot of problems over here now,” said Federov. Some commentators argued Sunday that an economic collapse in Russia could make Putin more likely to escalate his threat to use nuclear weapons.

In a rare move, the U.N. Security Council voted for the 193-member General Assembly to hold an emergency session Monday on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

As the BBC explained, “the resolution, called ‘Uniting for Peace,’ allows members of the Security Council to call a special session with the General Assembly if the five permanent members (Russia, U.S., U.K., France, and China) cannot agree how to act together to maintain peace.”

Sunday’s vote to authorize an emergency meeting was supported by 11 of the Security Council’s 15 members. Russia opposed the measure while China, India, and the United Arab Emirates abstained. Even though Russia, China, and other permanent members can typically exercise veto power, is was a procedural vote and therefore only required nine votes in favor.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that an emergency session had been called for the first time in decades because “this is no ordinary moment.”

“We need to take extraordinary action to meet this threat to our international system,” said Thomas-Greenfield. “So let us do everything we can to help the people of Ukraine.”

The Security Council is holding another meeting on Monday at 3:00 p.m. ET to discuss Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis. On Tuesday, France and Mexico are expected to submit a Security Council resolution that calls for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, the protection of civilians, and a guarantee that aid can be delivered.

Russia, which on Friday blocked a Security Council resolution condemning Moscow’s “premeditated aggression” in Ukraine, is expected to prevent the passage of France and Mexico’s planned resolution.

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Check out Lynxotic on YouTube

Find books on Politics and many other topics at our sister site: Cherrybooks on Bookshop.org

Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page