“A Putin victory would mean the empowerment of a brutal regime committed to wiping out Ukraine’s culture and civil society. Inside a Russian-controlled Ukraine, millions would need to submerge their ethnolinguistic identity, which has been deepening its roots over the 30 years since Ukraine won its independence from the Soviet Union. For millions of Ukrainians, Russian rule would therefore create the stark choice of cleansing themselves of their ethnicity or being ethnically cleansed. A Russian victory would further mean that the initial exodus of six million Ukrainians would be followed into Europe and elsewhere by the flight of many additional millions for whom life is intolerable.
This puts into clear relief the stakes in Ukraine’s courageous struggle against Putin’s Russia. It is the reason why the West’s commitment to arming Ukraine must not flag. Failure to support Ukraine and pressure Russia would not only permit nascent genocidal practices, deepening a mass humanitarian and human rights horror; It would embolden an aggressive, increasingly repressive Russia to menace other neighboring states. We cannot allow this to pass.”
“Severe setbacks for the two-state solution have made US policy seem far-fetched at this point.
That reality came across in Biden’s remarks. “We’ll discuss my continued support — even though I know it’s not in the near term — a two-state solution,” he said upon his arrival this week. He conceded that such an outcome was elusive, while still clinging to it.
A number of factors have contributed to the declining prospects for an independent Palestinian state. Not enough US diplomatic muscle has been put into making the deal happen. The recently disbanded Israeli government didn’t even agree to it as policy (and the previous prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t really, either). Divisions between the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank and Gaza have detracted from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s authority and legitimacy as a negotiating partner. And wealthy Arab states, like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have prioritized normalizing relationships with Israel — which come with economic and tech cooperation, defense business, and weapons sales — at the expense of Palestinian rights.
But the largest by far is the rampant expansion of settlements in the West Bank that has precluded Palestinians from living there.”
“Israeli forces launched a preemptive strike against PIJ targets on August 5, Reuters reported, after one of the group’s leaders, Bassam al-Saadi, was arrested in the Occupied West Bank. Israel claims to have hit a number of PIJ targets. However, several civilians, including 17 children, were killed in the clashes, both by Israeli weapons and possibly by errant PIJ rockets intended for Israeli targets. A ceasefire brokered by Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, the US, the UN, and the Palestinian Authority between Israel and the PIJ last Sunday has thus far held; however, an attack on worshipers in Jerusalem’s Old City late on Sunday could portend more violence. At least eight people, including US citizens, were injured in the attack, which was allegedly carried out by a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem, according to Israeli authorities. They have not yet released his name, and there is no indication that he is affiliated with any larger group, according to Reuters.
Despite the ceasefire, the aftermath of even short-term hostilities in Gaza goes far beyond active bombardments and shelling; the combination of years of violence, a brutal blockade, and state repression has created an enduring crisis. What’s more, there’s little chance to recover before violence breaks out again.
According to initial UN reporting, 360 Palestinians have been injured in the fighting, and Gazans experienced a tightened Israeli blockade of goods and services that led to 20-plus-hour rolling blackouts each day. There were no Israeli deaths or serious injuries, the Associated Press reported”
…
“The Gaza strip is home to around 2 million Palestinians and has been governed by Hamas since 2007, when the group took control from the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank. The two groups have had no success in creating a unity government over the past 15 years, despite repeated attempts, weakening the Palestinian resistance and further disenfranchising ordinary Palestinians. Although Fatah and Hamas agreed to hold elections in 2021, which would be the first since 2006, those elections have been postponed indefinitely.”
“in May 2022, Biden agreed to send about 500 US troops to Somalia.
Those troops will return to Somalia soon to fight the extremist group al-Shabaab as the resurrected government of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud (HSM) deepens ties to Washington and seeks the support and legitimacy provided by the American military. But on a deeper level, this US deployment represents the continuity of the so-called war on terrorism in spite of Biden’s best efforts to end it.
Congress has not approved a new resolution for the use of military force abroad, and the Biden administration says it is sending troops to Somalia under the 2001 authorization that Congress passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks to target al-Qaeda — and that has been used in 85 countries as the basis for military activities.”
“While there are many things that could go wrong at Zaporizhzhia, “the likelihood of an intentional attack on the [plant] that leads to a major nuclear disaster is low,” Ivanka Barzashka, founder and co-director of the King’s Wargaming Network at King’s College London, told Vox via email. “Moscow would have a lot to lose and nothing to gain from such an outcome, given the reactor’s proximity to Russian forces and population.” Furthermore, the plant is built to withstand direct attacks, as it’s constructed with reinforced concrete.
The real risks to the facility would more likely be due to human error, accidental shelling, or a lack of electricity to cool the nuclear material, according to Matthew Bunn, the James R. Schlesinger professor of the practice of energy, national security, and foreign policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
“The biggest concern is [the] cooling of a nuclear power plant,” Bunn told Vox. “In general, to avoid an accident at a nuclear power plant, you need to keep the reactor core under water, and the spent fuel and the spent fuel pool under water so they’re continuously cooled.” That cooling process requires electricity, which now comes from Ukraine’s external power grid. The Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan, for example, occurred because of a tsunami which cut off-site electricity to the plant and destroyed the generators, making it impossible to cool the facility even though the reactor had undergone emergency shutdown.
However, as Bunn told Vox, a number of those lines have already been cut, increasing the possibility that Zaporizhzhia might have to rely on diesel-powered generators to support the cooling process. It’s unclear how much fuel those generators have, given that Russian forces have reportedly been siphoning off the fuel for their own purposes, Bunn said. “Diesel’s a highly sought commodity in any war zone,” he said. “There are supposed to be days of diesel at the site; we don’t know whether that’s still true or not.” The Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom said on Friday that Russian forces were seeking diesel to fuel the generators in case of power loss, according to Reuters.
In a worst-case scenario, the plant could lose power and the pumps circulating water to cool the reactor core and spent fuel pool would shut down. The heat that the reactor core and the spent material generate would then boil the surrounding water until it evaporates, exposing the reactor core “within hours,” Bunn said. “The fuel would then start to melt. Even if you shut the reactor down, some people refer to it as ‘the fire that doesn’t go out’ — the fuel still generates a lot of heat from the radioactive decay of the split atoms, what are called the fission products, in the fuel.”
However, a spent fuel fire — what Bunn referred to as the “very very worst case” — is unlikely given that there’s just not as much of it at Zaporizhzhia as there are at other sites; that’s because Zaporizhzhia used to send spent fuel to Russia for storage and reprocessing there. “That really only happens when you have fuel that’s pretty closely packed and really hot, having been released from the reactor fairly recently,” he said.
Even if the electricity supply holds, shelling could damage the facility, causing water to leak out of the plant and upsetting the cooling process. Alarmingly, the ongoing shelling has already done damage to the plant — including near a substation which prompted one of only two operating power lines to shut down on August 5.
As Bunn told Vox, the human element is critical in maintaining the plant’s safety. “The Ukrainian operators have been operating essentially at Russian gunpoint for months,” Bunn said. “[They are under] enormous psychological stress; many of them have sent their families away, they’re exhausted. Under those conditions, the possibility of human error in operating the plant is ever-present. They have been doing a heroic job, but people under stress make mistakes.”
Operators at the plant who have been able to speak to outside sources paint a harrowing picture. “What is happening is horrific and beyond common sense and morality,” plant staff wrote in a Telegram channel, according to the BBC. “The psychological situation is difficult,” a worker called Svitlana told the BBC. “Soldiers are walking everywhere with weapons and everyone is actually kept at gunpoint.””
Is the war in Ukraine the fault of the West? John M. Owen IV. 2022 3 21. UVA: Miller Center. https://millercenter.org/war-ukraine-fault-west How Russia’s Attack on Ukraine Threatens Democracy Everywhere McGregor McCance and John M. Owen. UVAToday. 2022 3 2. https://news.virginia.edu/content/how-russias-attack-ukraine-threatens-democracy-everywhere [New School]
“President Joe Biden’s announcement two weeks after taking office that he would end “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” was welcome. It was also inexcusably ambiguous, and when lawmakers sought clarity into the scope of the policy change, the administration mostly declined to give it. Biden’s announcement “includes the suspension of two previously notified air-to-ground munitions sales and an ongoing review of other systems,” wrote the State Department in a letter. But beyond that, the administration didn’t indicate what military support would continue to flow to the Saudi-led coalition intervening in Yemen’s grueling civil war.
An extensive new report from The Washington Post this week confirms that skepticism of the drawdown was warranted and the specification of “offensive operations” was deceptive. While rightfully decrying Russian aggression against civilian targets in Ukraine, the U.S. government continues to be implicated in the same kind of brutality against civilians in Yemen, the site of the world’s most acute humanitarian crisis. This Post report is fresh evidence that we need to know exactly how the U.S. government is backing the Saudi-led coalition and its war crimes in Yemen—and that this backing needs to stop.”