Aaron Nielson has a fascinating post at the Notice and Comment blog on Arizona v. City and County of San Francisco, California, a case the Supreme Court heard argument in earlier this week. Professor Nielson describes two arguments made by the Deputy Solicitor General, arguing on behalf of the United States. I want to call attention to the first one, which is a rejection of national/nationwide/universal injunctions, on grounds of both equity principles and Article III, and even in APA cases. It is excellent that the Department of Justice is continuing to hold this line (which can be traced back, I think, through every administration to that of President George W. Bush). You can read this on page 49 of the transcript.
Workers At Starbucks Cafe In Mesa Vote To Unionize In Latest Threat To Corporate Profits
A growing number of Starbucks’ corporate-owned stores are launching unionization efforts, emboldened by a handful of stores in upstate New York.
The latest effort comes from Mesa, Arizona, where workers at a company-owned cafe located on Power Road and Baseline Road voted 25 to three in favor of unionizing under Workers United, a branch of the Service Employees International Union. A second store in Mesa has already filed for a union election. Ballots from the NLRB were sent out Friday afternoon and will have to be received by March 18.
The store is the first Starbucks cafe outside of the Buffalo, New York area to unionize, and the third overall.
To date, more than 100 Starbucks locations have filed for union elections, all within the last six months and doubling their count in the last month alone after the first victories in Buffalo. These cafes represent a small fraction of Starbucks’ footprint in the US – the company presently counts almost 9K company-owned restaurants across the US.
The NLRB’s regional director will now have to certify the ballots from the Mesa vote, a process that could take up to a week. After hte count is confirmed, the union will face its next challenge: negotiating a contract with Starbucks. US labor laws do not require that the union and Starbucks reach a collective bargaining agreement. Workers who lose faith in the union can always petition to decertify after one year.
Starbucks has insisted it will bargain with unions in “good faith”.
“We are excited and hopeful to start the bargaining process with Starbucks, but we also know that Starbucks is fighting us tooth and nail,” Liz Alanna, a shift supervisor at the Mesa store, said in a statement. “We’re calling on Starbucks to stop their war against the labor movement and work with us, not against us.”
Jefferies analyst Andy Barish wrote in a Thursday note to clients that unionizing doesn’t appear to be a major financial risk to Starbucks in terms of large hourly wage increases or benefit demands. However, the chain could suffer damage to its reputation if handled improperly, he said.
“It is hard to imagine this issue turning into a maelstrom of negative PR for SBUX, but it does surely present near-term ‘headline risk’ for the stock, which has been weak of late,” Barish wrote.
It certainly doesn’t bode well for the company’s operating profit margin, which came in at 18% during Q1 FY2022. Expensive orders with lots of modifications and add-ons inspired by social media platforms like TikTok have helped bolster margins over the past couple of years, but they have also made workers complain about being treated like “coffee-making robots” and fueled the push for unionization.
In Oct. 2016, Wikileaks released a little-noticed email exchange involving Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri and Democratic strategist Joel Johnson. The exchange, which was dated Feb. 26, 2016, revealed the existence of a Clinton campaign Swift Boat project—a political term used for smear campaigns—aimed at then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. At the time, the email was largely ignored but it has recently gained new relevance through disclosures in court filings by special counsel John Durham.
It appears that the Clinton campaign’s plans revolved around two primary prongs directed at Trump. The first and better known element of that project involved Fusion GPS and Trump-dossier author and former MI6 spy Christopher Steele. The other element involves the efforts of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and his use of data exploited by technology executive Rodney Joffe and a team of IT operatives. Last year, Sussmann came to prominence when he was indicted by Durham for lying to the FBI in connection with his role in passing Joffe’s data to the FBI.
The two-pronged strategy began to take shape in the Spring of 2016, and those parallel plans would ultimately merge together at the end of July 2016, just two days before the FBI opened its investigation into the Trump campaign.
Trump Swift Boat Project
On Feb. 26, 2016, Palmieri was asked in an email by former Bill Clinton adviser Joel Johnson, “Who was in charge of the Trump swift boat project?” Palmieri sarcastically replied: “Gee. Thanks, Joel. We thought we could half-ass it. Let’s discuss.”
It is not known what steps were taken by the Clinton campaign in the two months that followed the email exchange. At the time, Trump had not yet won the Republican nomination. However, by mid-April 2016, it had become increasingly clear that Trump would be Clinton’s opponent in the general election.
On April 19, 2016, Trump hired Paul Manafort as his convention manager. Manafort, who was known to be a former adviser to Ukraine’s deposed president Viktor Yanukovich, would become Trump’s campaign manager two months later.
Trump’s primary wins and the hiring of Manafort coincided with a decision in late April by the Clinton campaign to hire Fusion GPS, a firm of political operatives run by former Wall Street Journal staffer Glenn Simpson.
Around this same time, on April 28, 2016, Amy Dacey, CEO of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), alerted Sussmann, who is also a cyber-security specialist, to the possible hack of the DNC’s computer network. In turn, Sussmann contacted Shawn Henry of Crowdstrike, an IT firm specializing in cybersecurity. It is not known why Dacey’s first point of contact was Sussmann and not an IT firm.
On May 3, 2016, Trump won the Indiana primary and became the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party.
That same day, Ukrainian-American Democratic operative Alexandra Chalupa emailed the DNC and claimed that she intended to share sensitive info about Paul Manafort “offline” including “a big Trump component…that will hit in [sic] next few weeks.” Manafort would leave the Trump campaign a few months later after The New York Times claimed that Manafort’s name had appeared on a handwritten ledger in Ukraine in connection with secret cash payments. The ledger was later said to have been fabricated.
Plan Set in Motion Right After Trump Became Presumptive Nominee
According to court filings from Durham, on May 4, 2016, the day after Trump became the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, a cyber group working through Sussmann and Joffe began compiling and curating data that would later be used to create the false appearance of a link between the Trump Organization and the Russian Alfa Bank. That alleged link would later be used by the Clinton campaign to push the narrative that Trump had ties to the Kremlin. Notably, the data compilation was completed on July 29, 2016, the same day that Clinton operatives from both prongs of her planned attack on Trump met in Washington.
In mid-May 2016, shortly after Sussmann’s cyber group started mining data on Trump, Fusion GPS hired Steele to write the Steele dossier. As Simpson later recounted in his book “Crime in Progress,” he “told Steele that Fusion had been investigating Trump for about eight months on behalf of an unnamed client. That work had ended, but a new client had come along that had deep pockets.” That client was the Clinton campaign.
Steele tasked his primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, to compile derogatory stories about Trump that could be used in the dossier. Danchenko was dispatched to Moscow in mid-June where he spent time gossiping with old friends over drinks. Those friends were then made into unwitting sources for the dossier. These same individuals have since come forward as part of Alfa Bank’s ongoing defamation lawsuit against Simpson and Fusion GPS to testify under oath that they did not have any information on Trump and never spoke to Danchenko about Trump.
As Durham has disclosed in court filings, the true source for several of the dossier’s stories, including a story about Manafort, was Clinton operative Charles Dolan. Danchenko concealed this fact from the FBI, according to Durham. In Nov. 2021, Durham indicted Danchenko for lying to the FBI about his sources.
While Dolan, according to Durham, gave Danchenko stories that appeared in the dossier and helped Danchenko obtain a visa (presumably to remain in the United States), not much is known about his wider role in Clinton’s Swift Boat project. Dolan and the Clintons go back many decades, with Dolan having served on Bill Clinton’s presidential exploratory committee, as well as Clinton’s Virginia state chairman in his 1992 and 1996 campaigns. Dolan also served as an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s first presidential run in 2008. Notably, Dolan was a senior consultant for the Russian government from 2006 to 2014.
Steele’s first dossier report—which not only contained the notorious pee tape allegation, but also seeded the collusion narrative—was issued on June 20, 2016.
After Steele had compiled his initial reports he began to reach out to the FBI through Michael Gaeta, an FBI agent and assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Gaeta, who was Steele’s FBI handler, had known Steele since 2010. At Steele’s request, the two men met in London on July 5, 2016. In order to make this trip, Gaeta sought permission from Victoria Nuland, then-Assistant Secretary of State. At some point in early July, either Steele or Gaeta passed Steele’s early dossier reports to Nuland. Nuland later said these documents were passed on to both the leadership of the FBI and then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Gaeta, who would receive additional reports from Steele in mid-July and August 2016, emailed an FBI supervisor on July 28, 2016, noting that Steele had personally informed him that Steele’s reports may already be circulating at a ‘high level’ in Washington, D.C.”
The Clinton Campaign Invokes Russian Interference
On July 24, 2016, Clinton campaign manager Robbie Mook publicly suggested for the first time that Russia was somehow helping Trump. Mook claimed in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that the Russian government was behind the release of a trove of DNC emails. Those emails showed, in part, that senior DNC officials had been undermining Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Mook refused to address the Sanders allegations, instead telling Tapper that “experts are now saying the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump.” Mook claimed that “this isn’t my assertion. There are a number of experts that are asserting this. … That is what experts are telling us.” But Mook failed to address who these so-called “experts” might be. Nor did he explain the source of his supposed information.
Two days after Mook had invoked Russia, on July 26, 2016, Clinton won the Democratic presidential nomination. According to documents released by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Oct. 6, 2020, on the same day as her nomination win, Clinton allegedly approved a proposal from “one of her foreign policy advisors” to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security forces”—the Trump–Russia collusion smear. That foreign policy adviser is rumored to be the current national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, who at the time held the title of senior foreign policy adviser for the Clinton campaign.
Immediately following the alleged approval from Clinton, Steele hastily produced his undated memo 95—written on or about July 27, 2016—which alleged “a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump associates and the Kremlin. Steele’s memo, which echoed the basis of the Clinton campaign’s plan, also claimed that an unknown Trump associate had admitted that the Kremlin was behind the release of the DNC emails.
On July 28, 2016, CIA director John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama on Clinton’s July 26th plan—including her campaign’s intention to tie Trump to Russian election interference “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” FBI Director James Comey may also have been at this meeting as Brennan’s now declassified hand-written notes state that “JC” was at this meeting.
The Two Prongs Converge
The day after Brennan briefed Obama, the twin prongs of the Clinton campaign’s smear campaign—Sussmann’s work with Joffe and Fusion’s work with Steele—merged. In a meeting that took place in Perkins Coie offices on July 29, 2016, Sussmann and fellow Perkins attorney Marc Elias met with Fusion GPS principals, including owner Glenn Simpson and Steele, according to the Durham indictment.
According to Durham’s indictment of Sussmann, the timing of this meeting at Perkins coincides perfectly with the completion of Sussmann’s and Joffe’s data compilation on July 29, 2016.
Steele had previously told a British court that Sussmann informed him at this meeting of the Alfa Bank allegations, stating, “I’m very clear is [sic] that the first person that ever mentioned the Trump server issue, Alfa server issue, was Mr. Sussman [sic].” Steele also testified that he was instructed by Fusion GPS co-founder Simpson to include this information in one of his own dossier reports. Steele, who repeatedly wrote tailor-made reports for Fusion GPS, mentioned Alfa Bank in a report on Sept. 14, 2016.
Following the meeting at Perkins Coie’s offices, Steele prepared a new memo the next day for his dossier, which falsely alleged an eight-year Russian effort to cultivate Trump.
The close timing of these events, particularly Brennan’s briefing to Obama, are significant because they came only days before the FBI officially opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
That FBI investigation was allegedly opened on July 31, 2016, after the Australian ambassador in London, Alexander Downer, gave the U.S. embassy a tip about Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos.
According to Downer, he and Papadopolous had met in May 2016 when Papadopoulos supposedly made a suggestion of a suggestion that Russia might have derogatory information on Hillary Clinton that might help Trump. That rumor was already known at the time and had been shared by Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News on May 9, 2016, the day before Downer met Papadopoulos.
Downer later confirmed in a 2019 interview on Australian TV that Papadopoulos said nothing out of the ordinary. But despite the flimsiness of Papadopoulos’s statements, the FBI used Downer’s info as a pretext to open a formal investigation into the Trump campaign.
In the weeks that followed the FBI’s opening of their Crossfire Hurricane investigation, CIA Director Brennan would take a number of actions that appear to have been intended to actively reinforce the basic premise behind Clinton’s plan—that Russia was interfering in the election to help Trump.
Brennan Pushes Trump–Russia Collusion Despite Knowledge of Clinton’s Plans to Smear Trump
The twin prongs of the attack against Trump had now been merged by the heads of the intelligence community into a single, unified spear that incorporated government agencies and government action.
One of the first actions from Brennan took place on Aug. 4, 2016, when Brennan suddenly warned Russia’s FSB head Alexander Bortnikov not to engage in U.S. election interference. Bortnikov reportedly strongly denied any Russian involvement but “said he would take Brennan’s concern to Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Brennan later claimed that he “was the first U.S. official to brace Russia on this issue.”
According to Brennan’s May 23, 2017, congressional testimony, he then began a series of briefings to the Congressional Gang of Eight—the majority and minority leaders of each chamber of Congress as well as the chairmen and ranking minority members of the Intelligence Committees. Brennan testified that, “in consultation with the White House, I personally briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election to congressional leadership.” Brennan said these briefings, which were done individually, rather than in a group setting, took place between Aug. 11 and Sept. 6, 2016.
The message that Brennan delivered to these members of Congress was remarkably similar to the details outlined in the Clinton campaign’s alleged plan to smear Trump. According to Brennan’s testimony, he told each member of the Gang of Eight that “Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. Democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency. And to help President Trump’s election chances.”
At no point during Brennan’s testimony did he raise the Clinton campaign’s plan to denigrate candidate Trump and no evidence has been presented to indicate that he informed Gang of Eight members of the alleged plan.
A Convergence of Russia-Collusion Claims
After receiving his briefing from Brennan, then-Democratic leader Harry Reid sent a letter on Aug. 27, 2016, to FBI Director James Comey claiming that “the evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s campaign continues to mount,” calling for a public investigation into the matter and asking that the investigation be completed before the November presidential election.
Three days later, on Aug. 30, House Democrats wrote to Comey asking him to investigate Trump-Russia collusion in the context of the purported DNC hacking. Their letter asked Comey to investigate if “connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these attacks in order to interfere with the U.S. presidential election.”
As Democrats moved forward with the publicization of Brennan’s claims, Hillary Clinton publicly accused Russia of interfering in the U.S. election on Sept. 5, 2016, implying that Putin “viewed a victory by Donald J. Trump as a destabilizing event that would weaken the United States and buttress Russian interests.”
On Sept. 7, 2016, two days after Clinton’s public claims of Russian interference, Brennan’s CIA sent a memo regarding the Clinton campaign’s plan to vilify Trump to FBI Director Comey and the deputy assistant director of the counterintelligence division, Peter Strzok. At the time the CIA memo was sent the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane was well underway. Rather than open an investigation into the Clinton campaign, the FBI continued undeterred with their investigation of the Trump campaign.
Brennan’s briefing to Obama and his memo tipping the FBI off to Clinton’s plans appear to be the only times that Brennan raised the issue of Clinton’s plan. As noted earlier, Brennan’s handwritten notes also demonstrate the possibility that Comey was present during Brennan’s July 28 briefing to Obama, but this is not known with certainty.
Sussmann’s Alfa Bank Allegations
One week after Brennan’s memo to the FBI, Steele prepared a sequence of three memos all dated Sept. 14, 2016. One of the three memos referenced the Russian Alfa Bank, misspelled as “Alpha” in his memo. On this same day, according to Durham’s indictment, Sussmann met personally with Joffe in the offices of Perkins Coie.
The following day, Marc Elias exchanged emails with three Clinton advisers—communications director Palmieri, campaign manager Mook, and foreign policy adviser Sullivan—regarding the Alfa Bank allegations. According to Durham’s indictment of Sussmann, this same information had also been recently shared by Sussmann with The New York Times.
Four days later, on Sept. 19, 2016, Sussmann held a private meeting with James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel. Sussmann provided Baker with a large amount of data, including a white paper and several USB sticks, telling Baker that he had been approached by “multiple cyber experts” concerning the Alfa Bank allegations.
The FBI dismissed the data within a few days. According to emails among Sussmann’s group that were cited by Durham, Joffe was fully aware that anyone with the requisite technical knowledge would dismiss the data as meaningless. One of the tech staffers in Sussmann’s group privately called the secret communications channel allegation “a red herring.” Another participant added that “the only thing that drive[s] us at this point is that we just do not like [Trump].”
While it is not known why Sussmann and Joffe proceeded with handing over such flimsy data to the FBI, their objective may not have been to start a comprehensive FBI investigation. Instead, they may have simply wanted to give the media a hook by being able to claim that the data was being looked at by the FBI. This would align with the fact that by August 2016, Sussmann and Joffe were liaising with Fusion GPS, which appears to have been the operational means for coordinating the media strategy for the Clinton campaign’s two-pronged attack.
Sussmann is charged with having lied to the FBI about who his client actually was. He claimed to not represent any client when, in fact, Sussmann was working for the Clinton campaign, a point that Durham was able to prove through billing records.
Brennan’s ICA Becomes Cornerstone of Media’s Russia Collusion Narrative
At the same time that Sussmann was meeting with the FBI, Steele was being directed by Fusion GPS to meet with the media—including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Yahoo News, who were all verbally briefed by Steele on his dossier.
It was during this period, at Brennan’s urging, that the Intelligence Community began its efforts to build a narrative that Russia was interfering in the 2016 election. On Oct. 7, 2016, the intelligence community issued a joint statement that claimed the Intelligence Community was confident Russia “directed the recent compromises of emails … including from US political organizations.”
Brennan’s actions to firmly establish a narrative of Russian interference would become even more significant as Brennan was about to embark on his creation of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).
The ICA would become the cornerstone of the false allegation that Trump colluded with Russia.
The assessment, which was officially commissioned by Obama after the 2016 election—but appears to have begun earlier—was completed by early January 2017. Crucially, a two-page summary of the Steele dossier was attached to the final version of the ICA.
As soon as the ICA was published, the entire focus of the media’s attention centered on the Steele dossier, which was published by Buzzfeed on the very same day that the media started reporting about the ICA, Jan. 10, 2017.
The fact that the dossier was included in Brennan’s ICA effectively gave the dossier the credibility it needed for the media to publish stories based on it, including the infamous pee tape story.
The media had been in possession of the dossier or its stories since at least September 2016 when Steele began briefing reporters. However, aside from a few notable exceptions, the media did not report on Steele’s dossier because they weren’t able to corroborate any of his stories.
By legitimizing the dossier, the intelligence community effectively ensured that Trump would be saddled with claims of Russia collusion throughout his presidency.
Within 14 days of the ICA’s publication, on Jan. 24, 2017, Danchenko was interviewed by the FBI and disavowed many of the dossier’s stories. It was at this point that the intelligence community factually knew that the dossier had been made up by Steele and his associates. They already knew that Sussmann’s Alfa Bank claims were false. Yet, they kept this information to themselves. It is through Durham, as well as the efforts of online researchers, that the truth about the Clinton campaign’s two-pronged Swift Boat project is finally emerging.
LA Is Spending Up To $837,000 Per Unit To House The Homeless
Are you wondering why so many people are defecting from places like California in favor of tax havens like Florida? Look no further for your answer, which likely lies in how states are spending their tax money.
Take Los Angeles, for example. It was reported last week that the city is paying up to $837,000 per housing unit to try and house the homeless.
It comes as part of a broader $1.2 billion effort to house the homeless, which KTLA reports is “is moving too slowly while costs are spiking”.
So far, about 1,200 units have been built since the spending was approved in 2016. An audit issued by city Controller Ron Galperin, however, calls this number “wholly inadequate” in the context of the homeless crisis, KTLA reported.
Galperin said that the effort “is still unable to meet the demands of the homelessness crisis.” In the meantime, homeless camps have spread into “virtually ever neighborhood” in LA, the report notes.
His audit revealed that prices for the building have, in some cases, soared to “staggering heights.”
“While future plans have not been finalized, building tens of thousands of additional units using the same model will likely cost billions of dollars and will take far too long to match the urgency of the ongoing homeless emergency,” the audit said.
But Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti has defended the program, stating that it is “producing more units than promised, at a lower cost than expected.” He commented that “There are already 1,200 units online providing critical housing and services. And HHH will deliver over 10,300 units of supportive and affordable housing by 2026.”
As if the $800,000 price tag wasn’t enough, one observer pointed out how the price has mysteriously risen over the last couple years. Must just be inflation…
Only Los Angeles could spend $500,000… I mean $600,000… I mean $700,000… I mean $800,000 to build a single shelter unit while simultaneously growing the homeless population exponentially. pic.twitter.com/Atka6WQVWW
On Friday, the White House asked Congress for $6.4 billion for military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine and to help US allies in Europe to bolster their security in response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
According to Bloomberg, $2.9 billion will go towards security and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, and other regional countries. The remaining $3.5 billion will go to the Pentagon “to respond to the crisis.”
“In a recent conversation with lawmakers, the administration identified the need for additional US humanitarian, security, and economic assistance to Ukraine and Central European partners due to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified invasion,” a White House Office of Management and Budget official said, according to Reuters.
The total amount could change as the White House and Congress work it out. Some members of Congress think more money needs to be spent. Sen. Chris Coon (D-DE) said the US might need to spend around $10 billion to respond to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Over the past year, the US has given Ukraine over $650 million in military aid and $52 million in humanitarian assistance. The Pentagon said Friday it wants to send more weapons to Ukraine and is working out ways to do so.
Ukraine’s defense minister is asking for Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
“We’re continuing to look for ways to support Ukraine to defend themselves,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. “And we’re very actively engaged in those efforts to help them better defend themselves through both lethal and non-lethal assistance.”
So much for the rhetorical cudgel that nobody in Washington is even considering let alone advocating the deployment of the US military to Ukraine. Here’s one of the media’s 3 or 4 most popular members of Congress advocating that in the most explicit and dangerous way possible: https://t.co/Z0ziFvLnCt
US military aid to Ukraine used to arrive by plane, but the country’s airspace is no longer safe. “The airspace over Ukraine is contested, the Russians don’t have superiority of it, it’s contested,” Kirby said.
Many people have e-mailed me to ask whether I still have family in Ukraine, so I thought I’d post briefly to say that, fortunately, no-one we’re close to is still there. I was born in Kiev, as was my mother, and my father’s family moved there when he was young. But we left in 1975 (when I was seven), and haven’t really stayed connected.
I also don’t have any real sentimental link there. To the extent I have a cultural link, it’s to Russia, because Russian is my native language; indeed, I don’t speak Ukrainian, and I don’t recall even ever hearing Ukrainian spoken—Kiev was a highly Russified city at the time. I grew up with considerable connections to Russian culture, because of my parents’ deep connection that culture, but none at all to the Ukrainians.
Ethnically, I’m Jewish (Jewish was an ethnicity in the old country), so if I were to have any felt connections to an ethnic group, it wouldn’t be to Ukrainians. But in any event, my “mystic chords of memory” link me to my non-forefathers in America, not to anyone over there. (You might have noticed that I call the city of my birth the Russian-derived Kiev, not the Ukrainian-derived Kyiv, partly because that’s how I grew up thinking about it, and partly because that’s the traditional English-language term; we, which is to say we Americans, say Russia, Moscow, and Ukraine, not Rossiya, Moskva, and Ookraina—likewise with Kiev.)
I therefore approach this as an American, not a Ukrainian-American or a Russian-American or even a Jewish American. But as an American, my heart goes out to the Ukrainians, the victims of what appears to be a senseless, unjustified attack by a dictator on a flawed but basically free and democratic country. In the annals of human history, this will not go down as one of the great atrocities; the Putin-Hitler rhetoric strikes me as ridiculously overstated (though, who knows, it’s early days yet). Nor is Putin a Stalin or a Lenin, and, thankfully, the Russia of today is not the USSR of 1938 or even 1970 or 1980. And the reality is that powerful countries invading their feeble neighbors, for no better reason that to grab territory or enforce obedience, is pretty much the norm of human history; the attempt (however imperfectly successful) to reject that norm over the last several decades has been the marked exception.
But even putting things into perspective, Putin’s actions strike me as inexcusable, and I very much hope that they will backfire. And while I would not have faulted the Ukrainians for accepting the inevitable and surrendering (just to use one indicator of what they’re facing, the Russian active military is five times the size of the Ukrainian), I am deeply moved by the gallantry of the resistance we’ve seen so far.
In any event, I appreciate that all this is pretty banal, which is why my first inclination wasn’t to write about it. My views on the subject are probably no different, and certainly no better informed, than those of millions of others. But some people had, as I said, written to me to express their sympathies, and I thought I’d write this in response.
Many people have e-mailed me to ask whether I still have family in Ukraine, so I thought I’d post briefly to say that, fortunately, no-one we’re close to is still there. I was born in Kiev, as was my mother, and my father’s family moved there when he was young. But we left in 1975 (when I was seven), and haven’t really stayed connected.
I also don’t have any real sentimental link there. To the extent I have a cultural link, it’s to Russia, because Russian is my native language; indeed, I don’t speak Ukrainian, and I don’t recall even ever hearing Ukrainian spoken—Kiev was a highly Russified city at the time. I grew up with considerable connections to Russian culture, because of my parents’ deep connection that culture, but none at all to the Ukrainians.
Ethnically, I’m Jewish (Jewish was an ethnicity in the old country), so if I were to have any felt connections to an ethnic group, it wouldn’t be to Ukrainians. But in any event, my “mystic chords of memory” link me to my non-forefathers in America, not to anyone over there. (You might have noticed that I call the city of my birth the Russian-derived Kiev, not the Ukrainian-derived Kyiv, partly because that’s how I grew up thinking about it, and partly because that’s the traditional English-language term; we, which is to say we Americans, say Russia, Moscow, and Ukraine, not Rossiya, Moskva, and Ookraina—likewise with Kiev.)
I therefore approach this as an American, not a Ukrainian-American or a Russian-American or even a Jewish American. But as an American, my heart goes out to the Ukrainians, the victims of what appears to be a senseless, unjustified attack by a dictator on a flawed but basically free and democratic country. In the annals of human history, this will not go down as one of the great atrocities; the Putin-Hitler rhetoric strikes me as ridiculously overstated (though, who knows, it’s early days yet). Nor is Putin a Stalin or a Lenin, and, thankfully, the Russia of today is not the USSR of 1938 or even 1970 or 1980. And the reality is that powerful countries invading their feeble neighbors, for no better reason that to grab territory or enforce obedience, is pretty much the norm of human history; the attempt (however imperfectly successful) to reject that norm over the last several decades has been the marked exception.
But even putting things into perspective, Putin’s actions strike me as inexcusable, and I very much hope that they will backfire. And while I would not have faulted the Ukrainians for accepting the inevitable and surrendering (just to use one indicator of what they’re facing, the Russian active military is five times the size of the Ukrainian), I am deeply moved by the gallantry of the resistance we’ve seen so far.
In any event, I appreciate that all this is pretty banal, which is why my first inclination wasn’t to write about it. My views on the subject are probably no different, and certainly no better informed, than those of millions of others. But some people had, as I said, written to me to express their sympathies, and I thought I’d write this in response.
We wonder if this will get him an invitation to The White House.
* * *
Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, asked SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk for Starlink stations and access to satellite internet as Russia continues its third day of incursions.
“@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand,” Fedorov tweeted on Saturday.
@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars — Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations and to address sane Russians to stand.
The request for next-generation satellite internet comes as Ukraine’s primary internet provider, GigaTrans, reported a widespread outrage on Friday, according to internet blockage observatory NetBlocks.
“We currently observe national connectivity at 87% of ordinary levels, a figure that reflects service disruptions as well as population flight and the shuttering of homes and businesses since the morning of the 24th.
“While there is no nation-scale blackout, little is being heard from the worst affected regions, and for others there’s an ever-present fear that connectivity could worsen at any moment, cutting off friends and family,” Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, told Reuters
⚠️ Update: Some connectivity has returned to #Ukraine internet backbone provider GigaTrans but service remains intermittent at present. The incident comes amid fighting around capital city #Kyiv. It is unclear if connectivity will be sustained.
What’s remarkable is to see a top Ukrainian official asking the world’s richest man for internet access on Twitter. Musk has yet to respond to the tweet but could be willing to help as he recently sent a team of SpaceX engineers to the tiny Pacific island nation of Tonga to restore internet connectivity after a nearby eruption of a massive volcano severed undersea communications cables.
Twitter users called on the billionaire to support Ukraine and help restore the country’s internet. However, it remains to be seen if Musk would get directly involved in picking sides.
MPs grilled Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino on Feb. 25 at a House committee hearing to examine the public order emergency declared by the government, with some focusing on whether the threshold had been met to call a national emergency, and others looking to find out why the Ottawa occupation lasted so long.
Addressing whether the threshold was met to invoke the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, Conservative MP and public safety critic Raquel Dancho asked Mendicino if “our safety was in jeopardy with the protests in Ottawa?”
“Well certainly the size, scope, and scale of the illegal blockades at a number of borders and ports of entry, as well as the illegal occupation in Ottawa, met the threshold under the Emergencies Act,” replied Mendicino as he testified before the House of Commons public safety committee.
Large-scale protests in Ottawa, dubbed the “Freedom Convoy,” along with Canada-U.S. border blockades had occurred across the country in recent weeks to demand the lifting of COVID-19 mandates and restrictions. Most of the blockades were cleared before the government invoked the act, and the one in Emerson, Manitoba, dispersed on its own on Feb. 16, so Dancho focused on the Ottawa protest.
“I walked to West Block for two weeks past these protests. If there was such a threat to public safety, how could you have allowed members of Parliament to walk by that protest every day?,” asked Dancho.
Families join the Freedom Convoy protest in downtown Ottawa after police distributed arrest notices to truckers and their supporters occupying Wellington St. and the Parliament Hill area on Feb. 16, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
‘Insinuations’
Dancho also said Mendicino had previously “insinuated” there were links between the protest organizers in Ottawa and several protesters arrested at the Coutts, Alberta, border who have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
“So again, do you believe that there was a threat to public safety in Ottawa?” asked Dancho.
Without directly addressing his own allegation about the links, Mendicino responded that “those aren’t just my insinuations. Hundreds of charges and arrests have been carried out by law enforcement throughout the course of the illegal blockades—not only in Ottawa, but as well as in Alberta and British Columbia.”
Pressed again about the evidence of links, Mendicino said those comments related to “a number of public reports.”
Mendicino said organizers and leaders of the movement have publicly made statements calling for the overthrow of the government with violence and “through the use of bullets.”
The minister was likely referring to Pat King, who in a video posted online and supposedly dated Dec. 16, 2021, said “the only way this is going to be solved is with bullets.” It’s unclear what “this” refers to in the video.
The main organizers of the Freedom Convoy had distanced themselves from King and said their movement is peaceful.
King, who was active in the Ottawa protest, was arrested on Feb. 18 and charged with mischief, counselling to commit mischief, counselling to commit the offence of disobeying a court order, and counselling to obstruct police. He was denied bail on Feb. 25.
“I just don’t understand how you could be saying, on one hand, there’s all these strong ties and this is a national emergency for public safety, and I walked every day by these protests. It just doesn’t really add up at all,” repeated Dancho.
While King has expressed extreme views, the Ottawa protest was peaceful throughout, with multiple dance parties and a children’s area with bouncy castles. But Ottawa residents have also complained about noise due to constant honking and also of harassment.
Crowds of protesters demonstrate against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions in downtown Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Jonathan Ren/The Epoch Times)
Existing Powers, Additional Powers
Liberal MP Taleeb Noormohamed asked Mendicino why it took so long for the federal government to intervene, and Mendicino defended his government’s efforts by saying it had sent three batches of RMCP reinforcements.
Noormohamed also asked RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki why her organization did not “go in there and clear everything out on the first day in Ottawa.”
Lucki responded that the Ottawa Police Service is responsible for the jurisdiction and that if it needs assistance, then under Ontario’s Police Services Act the first request should go to the Ontario Provincial Police.
NDP MP Alistair MacGregor pressed Mendicino on whether Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson or Ontario Premier Doug Ford had expressly requested that the federal government invoke the Emergencies Act, with both leaders having themselves declared emergencies a few days apart in their respective jurisdictions.
As Mendicino continued to avoid answering directly, MacGregor told him, “With respect, Minister, I just need a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ please.”
Mendicino never provided an answer in the end, only saying that Ottawa and Ontario had expressed challenges dealing with the existing authorities on the issue.
Police confront demonstrators protesting against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions in downtown Ottawa on Feb. 18, 2022. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
Dancho also questioned department officials on whether the existing powers would have been sufficient to handle the issue without resorting to declaration of a public order emergency.
Samantha Maislin Dickson, assistant deputy minister at Justice Canada, said the question is not whether existing laws are available but whether they are effective.
“And so the determination as I understand that was made, was that the effectiveness of any statute that may have been on the books to potentially deal with it was not available at the time the declaration was issued,” said Dickson.
Talal Dakalbab, assistant deputy minister at Public Safety Canada, said “law enforcement was very satisfied with the additional powers” granted by the act.
These included making it illegal for people to participate in a designated assembly, being able to compel the provision of services (in this case this power was used to force reluctant towing companies to remove the trucks), as well as imposing financial measures, which were used to freeze bank accounts without a court order.
The next steps in reviewing the use of the Emergencies Act will include forming a dedicated parliamentary committee and launching an inquiry into the act’s declaration and the events leading up to its use.
150,000 Refugees Flee Across Europe As Ukrainian Fighting Intensifies
The United Nations estimates 150,000 Ukrainian refugees have crossed into neighboring countries, half of them to Poland, and many to Hungary, Moldova, Romania due to the Russian invasion, and that number could easily be in the millions if the situation worsens.
“More than 150,000 Ukrainian refugees have now crossed into neighboring countries, half of them to Poland, and many to Hungary, Moldova, Romania, and beyond,” UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi tweeted on Saturday.
More than 150,000 Ukrainian refugees have now crossed into neighbouring countries, half of them to Poland, and many to Hungary, Moldova, Romania and beyond.
Displacement in Ukraine is also growing but the military situation makes it difficult to estimate numbers and provide aid.
Shabia Mantoo, the spokeswoman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, told AP News the number of Ukrainian refugees is “changing by the hour” and remains “a very fluid” situation.
On Thursday, Russian forces began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine to “demilitarize” the country. A barrage of missiles, artillery, and airstrikes across the country, triggered one of the worst security crises in Europe in more than half a century, as a wave of refugees into Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania is underway.
United Nations agencies forecast as many as four million could flee the country into neighboring countries if the invasion worsens.
On Thursday, hours after Russia’s invasion began, we noted that people fled the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, resulting in massive gridlock on the country’s highways. Days later, people are still trying to flee the capital as Russian forces near.
“There is a significant movement of the population, but it is also hard to say whether people are moving permanently or for the short-term,” said Irina Saghoyan, the eastern Europe director for Save the Children, which has been on the ground in Ukraine since 2014.
For now, central Europe is welcoming Ukrainian refugees with open arms, and Poland is expected to accommodate up to a million new ones.
