Nothing in the Constitution’s text supports a state secrets privilege—in fact, it runs counter to upholding a government by the consent of the governed.
— Read on www.thenation.com/article/world/supreme-court-state-secrets/
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FRIDAY 18 MARCH 2022
The Russians are bombing Lviv this morning. The message is that nothing, nowhere is safe. And, we sit for another day and wring our hands.
CNN
- Russians accused of kidnapping another mayor.
- New attacks on civilian targets
- US not making it easy for Ukrainians with family in the US to come to the country.
- Six missiles fired by airplanes struck Lviv. (Note: this contradicts all those claiming that damage is due to on the ground forces, i.e., there is no use in a no-fly zone. Again, Ukrainians know better than the US what they need.)
- American killed in Ukraine waiting in a bread line. He was in Ukraine to help his partner.
EUROMAIDAN PRESS
- Ukrainians killed Russian Col. Sergei Sukharev, commander of a regiment that fought against Ukraine in 2014, in Chechen war and Russian Georgian war in 2008.
- This morning, a Russian strike demolished a residential neighborhood in Kyiv.
- UK revokes RT’s broadcast license.
- Russia is recruiting 1000 volunteers with urban warfare experience from the army of Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah. The recruited militants are said to see this as an opportunity to get to the EU and don’t plan to take part in hostilities.
UKRAINE WORLD
- Mariupol has been under blockade for 16 days. More than 350,000 residents continue to hide in shelters and basements.
- NATO is powerless to stop Putin, Ukraine wants to establish new alliance to put an end to the war.
KYIV INDEPENDENT
- Russia’s military-industrial sector is working around the clock to replenish its stock.
- Europe needs to reduce its energy dependence on Russian gas to zero.
- Australia adds more sanctions against Russian banks, oligarchs.
- UK intelligence said that Russia is unable to establish air superiority over Ukraine.
- Russia has attacked medical institutions 43 times since the start of the all-out war.
- Ukraine again requests Red Cross urge Russia to collect dead bodies of its fallen soldiers.
- Russian Ministry and FSB receive order to check all Ukrainian citizens living iin Moscow…searched their apartments and demanded they unlock their phones….some charged with petty hooliganism and others offered accelerated Russian citizenship.
- Italy has offered to rebuild Mariupol theatre destroyed by Russians.
- Chezh Republic is no longer able to accept refugees from Ukraine.
TWITTER
- 50 to 100 bombs a day are being dropped on Mariupol. Around 80% of the city’s housing is destroyed. Some 30% cannot be restored. Parliament of Ukraine.
- Roman Seremeta: “…no water, no gas, no ambulances. People with torn limbs bleed in their yards and no one can help them….the dead are simply being covered by soil where they lay.” In a bomb shelter three days ago a woman was hit in the hip. “She laid all night on the first floor….asking for someone to give her poison so that she would not feel the pain.”
BBC: Ukraine conflict 3/17/22
- Thursday Putin called Erdogan and told him what the demands were.
- Acceptance by Ukraine that it should be neutral and should not apply to join NATO. Ukraine would have to undergo a disarmament process to ensure it wasn’t a threat to Russia. There would have to be protection for the Russian language in Ukraine. And, “de-Nazification. (Note: This means eliminating activists). Face-to-face negotiations between Putin and Zelensy before an agreement could be reached. There were other issues such as the status of Donbas and Crimea (these were less detailed).
- Any of these demands, if agreed to, could form the pretext for Russia to invade again.
BBC
- Russian missiles have struck an aircraft maintenance plant close to Lviv.
- Fresh aerial attacks of Kharkiv.
- Poland says that more than two million refugees have crossed the border.
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WEDNESDAY 16 MARCH 2022
MSNBC
- Biden is to respond to Zelensky’s speech to the congress this morning.
- (Note: Marjorie Taylor Greene stood up with everybody else to applaud Zelensky, but got her phone and started texting. She did not applaud.)
- Richard Engel: Russian forces have taken over a hospital in Mariupol, and they are not allowing anybody to leave. They are firing from the hospital outward. They have rounded up some 400 people from outside to use as shields.
- Peace talks. There is a suggestion of movement. The Ukrainians have agreed to talk about neutrality, say the Russians, they’ve given up on NATO. This has not been confirmed.
- Putin gave an address on Russian television at almost the same time as Zelensky was speaking to the U.S. Congress. “It was angry. “ Said Richard Engel of the speech, “It suggested no compromise.” Putin was repeating allegations that Ukraine is developing weapons of mass destruction. He also accused the U.S. of helping the Ukrainians develop bio labs. Putin said that within Russian, the Russian people are seeing who the patriots are and who the traitors are. The traitors, Putin said, should leave the country. Russians should “spit them out like flies that flew into the mouth.” (Note: This doesn’t sound like compromise.)
TWITTER
- Zelensky: “Today the Ukrainian people are defending not only Ukraine. We are fighting for the values of Europe and the world sacrificing our lives in the name of the future.”
- Ministers of Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia arrived in Kyiv yesterday.
- Don Winslow: “We are living in a world absent of consequences for real crimes.” @donwinslow
UKRAINE WORLD
KYIV INDEPENDENT
- Putin is claiming that the Russian military is doing everything possible to avoid civilian casualties.
- Zelensky showed a video of what is happening on the ground in Ukraine to the U.S. congress
- Zelensky: ‘I see no sense in life if it cannot stop the death.”
- Zelensky asked AGAIN for a no-fly zone.
EUROMAIDEN PRESS
JACOBIN MAGAZINE: “It’s time….” By Heidi Chow
- Ukraine owes billions of dollars in foreign debt. If Western governments are serious about helping Ukraine they would push for those dets to be canceled.
- More than half of this debt is to private lenders like banks and hedge funds.
- The rest is owed to multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the European Investment Bank.
- The fall in the value of the Ukrainian Hryvnia against the dollar will make that debt harder to pay since the debts are payable in dollars.
- The response to the invasion has been that the multilateral institutions have given more loans, piling up on top of the ones already owed.
- These loans did not come without strings. The IMF loans, “…pushed Ukraine to accept punishing conditions involving public spending cuts, privatization, and market liberalization.”
- This is a “prescription of failed policies.”
- Civil society groups are demanding a cancellation of these debts.\
- “Calling for debt cancellation in response to invasion, disaster, or crisis should not be controversial…”
- The UK government should use its influence to push the IMF and World Bank to cancel Ukraine’s debt.”
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As the people of Ukraine fight for their survival as a country, cancelling debt is a crucial act of solidarity — and one that can and should be done immediately.
— Read on jacobinmag.com/2022/03/ukraine-foreign-debt-cancellation-imf-global-finance -
The next 10 days are decisive. It is a race and I’m not seeing enough urgency. We need to push the gas pedal to the floor now, immediately.
Lieut. General (Ret.) Ben Hodges is Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, DC.
— Read on cepa.org/the-next-10-days-will-decide-this-war/ -
TUESDAY 15 MARCY 2022
It’s another day in which Americans sit in front of their televisions and watch Ukraine destroyed. As much as I know, as cynical as I am, I felt somewhere deep inside me that America would stand up and defend people in this situation. I suppose it’s because I am part of (the last of) that WWII generation that grew up with the knowledge that our fathers and mothers participated in a grand epic struggle against authoritarianism and fascism. That struggle is in our DNA, in our consciousness, in our souls.
I suppose we believed that all the rot we have seen take hold in the past fifty years was superficial, that underneath it all, we were a decent people. We are not. We must face what we have become – a population that has no grasp of logical thinking, evidence, decency, community. We have become everything the Soviet Union taught its citizens we were – greedy, mercenary, superficial, selfish. This refusal help Ukraine with meaningful sanctions before the invasion because it would upset big money interests, and a unilateral taking off the table of putting forces into Ukraine after the invasion is the final demonstration of the rot that has taken over the population.
We are dealing with Putin just like we are dealing with Trump, his cronies and the Republican party – we make concessions, try to appease, try to make friends, ignore the devastating damage they have caused, allow them to escape free of any accountability. We must face it, we are afraid to hold power accountable. That is who we have become. Afraid.
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Since long before Russia’s invasion, Donald Trump has not only oft praised Vladimir Putin and shared his loathing of Ukraine, but has repeatedly supported the delegitimization of the now besieged country.
— Read on nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/how-trump-and-putin-have-been-allies-against-ukraine.html -
KIEV, UKRAINE – OCTOBER 01: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks to the media on October 1, 2019 in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraine has been at the core of a political storm in U.S. politics since the release of a whistleblower’s complaint suggesting U.S. President Donald Trump, at the expense of U.S. foreign policy, pressured Ukraine to investigate Trump’s rival, Joe Biden, and Biden’s son, Hunter. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) MONDAY 14 MARCH 2022
Another day of destruction in Ukraine. The Pentagon, through Kirby, is saying over and over again that we will not put soldiers into Ukraine or establish a no fly zone. So, another day, we sit and watch Ukraine being destroyed.
As a number of people have pointed out, this is a war of autocracy against democracy and we are sitting on the sidelines.
BNO News
- The Ukrainian city of Mariupol says at least 2,200 people have been killed since the war began.
- In Saudi Arabia, 81 prisoners have been executed.
KYIV INDEPENDENT
- Russians deny humanitarian convoy entry into Mariupol.
SUNDAY, 13 MARCH 2022
WALL STREET JOURNAL (3/13/22)
• Prosecutors in Russia are warning that they may arrest corporate leaders who stay in Russia and criticize the government. They are also warning that they may seize assets of companies that withdraw from the country.
EUROMAIDAN PRESS
• Following previous reports that mercenaries from Russian private military companies are deployed in Ukraine, are reports that the Russians are recruiting Middle Eastern mercenaries.
• Russian soldiers are being treated in Belarus. There are not enough blood supplies for surgery. Reserves of blood accumulated for the citizens are being used. There is a campaign to collect blood from the citizens.
• In a video of a Russian deserter, he claims that the Russians haVe established “shooting squads” to shoot deserters. He also related that 600 Russian marines refused to land from their ship near Odesa.
• A similar story is reported from Kherson Oblast, where 80 Russian marines refused to participate in the war.
• There are reports of Russian commanders being appointed over Belarusian soldiers who are resistant to go to war against Ukrainians.
• Putin has publicly welcomed the recruitment of 16,000 mostly Middle Eastern volunteers.
• Defense Intelligence of Ukraine is reporting that the Russian army has legalized looting. Troops have been instructed to “move to ‘self-sufficiency” if they are out of supplies. “…to take away everything necessary from the local population and to rob warehouses, shops, drugstores.”
• According to the local Zaporizhzhia Miitary Administration, Russian troops looted a humanitarian convoy headed to Mariupol on March 12. “As each checkpoint, the invaders were forcibly seizing food, clothing, hygiene products.”
• The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, has been kidnapped and is reportedly being tortured. The occupiers have evidently found a replacement for him, a local MP from a pro-Russian Opposition Party for Life. This woman had posted a video urging people to “adjust to the new reality” and “not destabilize the situation and not participate in extremist activities.”
• On March 13, occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Dniprorudnyi, Yevhen Matveyev. A journalist, Oleh Baturin is also feared kidnapped in Kherson.
• March 11, during an evacuation from Peremoha (Kyiv Oblast) Russian forces fired on a column of women and children (Defense Intelligence of Ukraine).
• Russia’s Foreign Ministry Second European Department Director Sergei Belyayev has said that Finland and Sweden’s possible accession to NATO would have serious military consequences.
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List of presidents of Ukraine – Wikipedia
— Read on en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_Ukraine -
McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, P&G and IBM among those warned that leaders could be arrested, trademarks seized.
— Read on www.wsj.com/articles/russian-prosecutors-warn-western-companies-of-arrests-asset-seizures-11647206193 -
Sunday 13 March 2022: 8:00 PM
WALL STREET JOURNAL (3/13/22)
- Prosecutors in Russia are warning that they may arrest corporate leaders who stay in Russia and criticize the government. They are also warning that they may seize assets of companies that withdraw from the country.
EUROMAIDAN PRESS
- Following previous reports that mercenaries from Russian private military companies are deployed in Ukraine, are reports that the Russians are recruiting Middle Eastern mercenaries.
- Russian soldiers are being treated in Belarus. There are not enough blood supplies for surgery. Reserves of blood accumulated for the citizens are being used. There is a campaign to collect blood from the citizens.
- In a video of a Russian deserter, he claims that the Russians hae established “shooting squads” to shoot deserters. He also related that 600 Russian marines refused to land from their ship near Odesa.
- A similar story is reported from Kherson Oblast, where 80 Russian marines refused to participate in the war.
- There are reports of Russian commanders being appointed over Belarusian soldiers who are resistant to go to war against Ukrainians.
- Putin has publicly welcomed the recruitment of 16,000 mostly Middle Eastern volunteers.
- Defense Intelligence of Ukraine is reporting that the Russian army has legalized looting. Troops have been instructed to “move to ‘self-sufficienty” if they are out of supplies. “…to take away everyting necessary from the local population and to rob warehouses, shops, drugstores.”
- According to the local Zaporizhzhia Miitary Administration, Rusian troops looted a humanitarian convoy headed to Mariupol on March 12. “As each checkpoint, the invaders were forcibly seizing food, clothing, hygiene products.”
- The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, has been kidnapped and is reportedly being tortured. The occupiers have evidently found a replacement for him, a local MP from a pro-Russian Opposition Party for Life. This woman had posted a video urging people to “adjust to the new reality” and “not destabilize the situation and not participate in extremist activities.”
- On March 13, occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Dniprorudnyi, Yevhen Matveyev. A journalist, Oleh Baturin is also feared kidnapped in Kherson.
- March 11, during an evacuation from Peremoha (Kyiv Oblast) Russian forces fired on a column of women and children (Defense Intelligence of Ukraine).
- Russia’s Foreign Ministry Second European Department Director Sergei Belyayev has said that Finland and Sweden’s possible accession to NATO would have serious military consequences.
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SUNDAY 13 MARCH 2022 (7:30 PM)
MSNBC
- MSNBC is reporting that the police chief reported that a burning chemical was dropped in the village of Popasna.
- There will be negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in about nine hours.
- Interview with Melinda Haring, Deputy Director for Foreign Policy Research Institute, Eurasia Center. “The White House is playing my favorite game of cover your butt.” “This is really easy.” “We should have sent MIGS last week.” “We need to be strong.” “The White House is afraid of the Russian bear and they need to grow up.” “Engaging in some kind of outward pretense that we’re going to move MIGS and then pulling them back, that’s not going to scare Putin.” “All of the justifications” given by the White House and Pentagon are “false.”
BNO NEWS
- Russia has asked China for military equipment and aid in the invasion.
KYIV INDEPENDENT
- The U.K. Ministry of Defense stated that the Russian fleet established a blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
- Rob Portman, Republican visiting Ukraine, calls for a no-fly zone.
- Instagram users in Russia are told that the service will cease at midnight.
TWITTER
- Pundits on Russian state TV are advocating public hangings in Ukraine once Russian dominance is established. (@JuliaDavisNews)
- Occupy Democrats reports that NBC is reporting that Goldman Sachs in “making a killing” off Putin’s invasion by exploiting a loophole in Biden’s sanctions in order to sell Russian debt to hedge funds “on the cheap.”
Law, Power, and Justice 