Quotes of the Day:
"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."
- John Steinbeck
"Patience strengthens the spirit, sweetens the temper, stifles anger, extinguishes envy, subdues pride, bridles the tongue."
- George Horne
The best order and briefback to the commander ever (we need to be able to emulate this brilliant clarity and brevity):
In a letter to MG William T. Sherman, dated 4 April 1864, LTG Ulysses S. Grant outlined his 1864 campaign plan. LTG Grant described MG Sherman’s role:
“It is my design, if the enemy keep quiet and allow me to take the initiative in the Spring Campaign to work all parts of the Army together, and, somewhat, toward a common center. . . . You I propose to move against Johnston’s Army, to break it up and to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can against their War resources. I do not propose to lay down for you a plan of Campaign, but simply to lay down the work it is desirable to have done and leave you free to execute in your own way. Submit to me however as early as you can your plan of operation.”
MG Sherman responded to LTG Grant immediately in a letter dated 10 April 1864. He sent Grant, as requested, his specific plan of operations, demonstrating that he understood Grant’s intent:
“ . . . Your two letters of April 4th are now before me . . . That we are now all to act in a Common plan, Converging on a Common Center, looks like Enlightened War. . . . I will not let side issues draw me off from your main plan in which I am to Knock Joe [Confederate GEN Joseph E.] Johnston, and do as much damage to the resources of the Enemy as possible. . . . I would ever bear in mind that Johnston is at all times to be kept so busy that he cannot in any event send any part of his command against you or [Union MG Nathaniel P.] Banks.”
The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, Volume 10: January 1–May 31, 1864, by Ulysses S. Grant, edited by John Y. Simon. Ulysses S. Grant Foundation. ©1982. Excerpt from pages 251 through 254, used by permission.
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 9 (Putin's War)
2. It’s time to open a new front against Putin inside Russia
3. Why Russia is in no hurry to replace Putin
4. China used 'debt trap diplomacy' to gain control over Sri Lanka: Think tank
5. Zelensky sacks Ukraine's envoy to Germany, other ambassadors
6. Ukrainian forces will make the Russians fight for every inch in the east
7. Trench warfare, precision missiles and armed motorcycle units: Why the war in Ukraine looks increasingly anachronistic
8. Three-star general who mocked Jill Biden is suspended
9. With Rising Book Bans, Librarians Have Come Under Attack
10. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Says It Has ‘Passed Test’ on New U.S. Guided Rockets, Needs More
11. Putin's Problem: What Happened to Russia's Spetsnaz Special Forces in Ukraine?
12. Opinion | Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia
13. PH, US renew cooperation in various areas under Marcos administration
14. The Other Special Relationship (US and Israel)
15. Russia in "quiet mobilization" as 22k vacancies show army losses: Ukraine
16. ‘We need heavy weaponry’: A top Ukrainian official tells Grid what Kyiv needs to defeat Russia as fierce fighting shifts east
17. Norwegian air chief wants ‘Nordic Air Operations Center’ if Sweden, Finland join NATO
18. America’s Epidemic of Hate
19. US air defense system delivery hopes to save Kiev
20. US Sending ‘Billions’ to Fund Ukraine Government Operations
21. Disinformation Has Become Another Untouchable Problem in Washington
1. RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 9 (Putin's War)
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, JULY 9
Kateryna Stepanenko, Grace Mappes, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan
July 9, 6:15 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian-backed occupation authorities in Kharkiv Oblast stated that Kharkiv Oblast is an “inalienable part of Russian land,” indicating that the Kremlin likely intends to annex part or all of Kharkiv Oblast.[1] The Russian occupation government in Kharkiv Oblast unveiled a new flag for the occupation regime in Kharkiv Oblast containing the Russian imperial double-headed eagle and symbols from the 18th century Kharkiv coat of arms.[2] The Russian occupation government stated that the imagery in the flag is a “symbol of the historical roots of Kharkiv Oblast as an inalienable part of Russian land,” indicating that the Kremlin seeks to annex portions of Kharkiv Oblast to Russia and likely seeks to capture all of Kharkiv Oblast if it can.[3] The Kharkiv Oblast occupation government’s speed in establishing a civilian administration on July 6 and introducing martial law in occupied Kharkiv Oblast on July 8 further indicates that the Kremlin is aggressively pursuing the legitimization and consolidation of the Kharkiv Oblast occupation administration’s power to support this broader territorial aim.[4] The Kharkiv Oblast occupation government’s explicit use of Imperial Russian imagery and rhetoric pointing clearly at annexation, rather than using imagery and rhetoric supporting the establishment of a “people’s republic,” reinforces ISW’s prior assessment that the Kremlin has broader territorial aims than capturing Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts or even holding southern Ukraine.[5]
The Kremlin has likely used a leaked letter from mothers demanding the ban of journalist activity on the frontlines to promote self-censorship among pro-Russian milbloggers and war correspondents. Russian opposition outlet Meduza released a letter from mothers of an Astrakhan-based platoon that blamed Kremlin-sponsored Izvestia war correspondent Valentin Trushnin for reporting the details of Russian positions in a way that led to the deaths of their sons.[6] Meduza removed the letter from its website on July 8. First Deputy of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Information Minister and milblogger Daniil Bezsonov reported noticing suggestions from unspecified “faceless experts” to censor his posts regarding Russian war efforts.[7] Bezsonov noted that Russian war correspondents received necessary accreditations from the Kremlin and follow protocol when reporting from the frontline to refrain from exposing Russian positions. Bezsonov also argued that Russian war correspondents took the initiative to keep Russians updated on the situation on the front line from the first days of the war, while Russian “big bosses” failed to launch an information campaign to counter claimed Ukrainian information warfare. Several Russian milbloggers shared Bezsonov’s remarks, with proxy serviceman Maksim Fomin stating that Russian Defense Ministry briefings are not sufficient to replace combat footage.[8]
The Kremlin faces challenges directly censoring pro-Russian milbloggers and war correspondents but will likely continue to look for opportunities to promote self-censorship. Moscow has not demonstrated the ability to compel Telegram to delete or control the content of channels, and so would likely have to threaten individual milbloggers with legal or extra-legal action to stop them from publishing on that platform. Russia could prevent war correspondents publishing in regular media outlets from writing stories or deprive them of access to the front lines. But both the milbloggers and the war correspondents are explicitly pro-war and patriotic, often ultra-nationalist, with large followings likely concentrated among Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key supporters. Threatening or suppressing them directly could backfire if Putin’s motivation in doing so is to stop them from undermining support for the war or questioning authority. Actions such as the use of this leaked and possibly faked letter to stoke self-censorship or induce pressure from the readers of these blogs and articles toward self-censorship may be an effort to achieve the Kremlin’s desired effects without the risk of having them backfire.
Key Takeaways
- Russian forces continued to launch unsuccessful assaults northwest of Slovyansk and conducted offensive operations east of Siversk from the Lysychansk area.
- Russian forces continued localized attacks northwest of Kharkiv City, likely in an effort to defend Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) in the area.
- Russian forces continue to face personnel and equipment shortages, relying on old armored personnel carriers and launching new recruitment campaigns.
- Russian forces continued to set conditions for the annexation of Donbas, Kharkiv Oblast, and southern Ukraine.
We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because those activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and population and specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.
- Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine (comprised of one subordinate and three supporting efforts)
- Subordinate Main Effort—Encirclement of Ukrainian Troops in the Cauldron between Izyum and Donetsk Oblast
- Supporting Effort 1—Kharkiv City
- Supporting Effort 2—Southern Axis
- Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
- Activities in Russian-occupied Areas
Main Effort—Eastern Ukraine
Subordinate Main Effort—Southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk Oblasts (Russian objective: Encircle Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine and capture the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)
Russian forces continued unsuccessful offensive operations northwest of Slovyansk on July 9. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian assaults in the directions of Dovhenke-Krasnopillya-Pasika-Dolyna, all situated in the vicinity of the E40 Izyum-Slovyansk highway.[9] Russian forces are likely setting conditions to resume offensive operations toward Slovyansk by launching airstrikes on Bohorodychne and shelling Dibrovne, Adamivka, and Slovyansk.[10] Kharkiv Oblast Administration Head Oleg Synegubov stated that Russian forces shelled fields in the Izyum area, and NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) remotely sensed data showed fires on fields northwest of Slovyansk.[11] Russian forces reportedly remotely mined a section of a highway in Velyka Komyshuvakha and shelled Karnaukhivka, likely in an effort to suppress Ukrainian counterattacks southwest of Izyum.[12]
[Source: NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System over Slovyansk, July 9]
Russian forces continued to attack settlements west of Lysychansk in an effort to advance toward Siversk on July 9. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to advance to Verknokamyanske, approximately 8 km east of Siversk.[13] The Ukrainian General Staff also added that Russian forces launched an assault on Hryhorivka (approximately 11 km northeast of Siversk), where fighting is ongoing. Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Deputy Interior Minister Vitaly Kiselev claimed that Russian forces captured Hryhorivka on July 9, but ISW cannot independently confirm this claim.[14] Russian forces reportedly conducted an airstrike on Spirne, approximately 14 km southeast of Siversk.[15]
Russian forces continued launching ground assaults south of Bakhmut but did not make confirmed territorial gains. The Ukrainian General Staff noted that Ukrainian forces stopped a Russian assault on the Vuhlehirska Power Plant.[16] Russian forces continued shelling Zaitseve, Berestove, and Klynove—southeast and northeast of Bakhmut.[17] Kyrylenko also reported that Russian forces shelled a railway station in Chasiv Yar (approximately 13 km west of Bakhmut) and launched missile strikes at Druzhkivka along the Ukrainian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) west of Bakhmut.[18] Ukrainian forces continued to strike Russian ammunition depots in Irmino and Kadiivka, approximately 50 km west of Luhansk City, reportedly with US-provided high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS).[19]
Russian forces unsuccessfully attempted to improve their tactical positions around Avdiivka and launched a failed assault on Marinka on July 9.[20]
Supporting Effort #1—Kharkiv City (Russian objective: Defend ground lines of communication (GLOCs) to Izyum and prevent Ukrainian forces from reaching the Russian border)
Russian forces made no confirmed territorial gains near Kharkiv City on July 9 but continued attempting likely spoiling attacks to disrupt Ukrainian counterattacks. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces repelled a Russian assault in the direction of Kochubeivka and Dementiivka, which ISW assessed is intended disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counterattacks from Prudyanka north toward Russian positions in Tsupivka.[21] The Derhachi Regional Administration reported that fighting is ongoing in Kozacha Lopan, Tsupivka, Dementiivka, and Velyki Prokhody, all situated around the Ukrainian salient approaching the Russian GLOC on the E105 highway.[22] Russian forces are likely trying to prevent Ukrainian forces from disrupting Russian use of the E105 GLOC and advancing closer to the Kharkiv Oblast-Russia border. Kharkiv Oblast Administration Head Oleg Synegubov reported that Russian forces prioritized shelling agricultural fields, poultry complexes, landfills, and other open areas in Kharkiv Oblast during the day on July 9, presumably to damage Ukrainian agricultural activity.[23]
Supporting Effort #2—Southern Axis (Russian objective: Defend Kherson and Zaporizhia Oblasts against Ukrainian counterattacks)
Russian forces conducted unsuccessful reconnaissance-in-force attempts in northwest Kherson Oblast on the Kherson-Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border on July 9. The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command reported that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian reconnaissance efforts in Knyzivka and Olhyne.[24] The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Russian forces are focusing on defending occupied positions and restraining Ukrainian advances with “available fire means,” likely implying that Russian forces are facing worsening logistics problems in the region.[25] Russian and Ukrainian sources published footage of Ukrainian forces reportedly striking a Russian ammunition depot at the Kherson City International Airport in Chornobaivka on July 9.[26] Mykolaiv Oblast Administration Head Vitaliy Kim reported that Russian forces launched six missile strikes on Mykolaiv City using S-300 air defense systems.[27] The Ukrainian Southern Operational Command stated that Russian forces are continuing to modify their S-300 air defense systems to strike ground targets, which if true, could also suggest that Russian forces on the Southern Axis are facing missile shortages.[28]
Ukrainian officials are also increasingly reporting that Russian forces are targeting Ukrainian fields during the harvest season in southern Ukraine and Donbas, but ISW cannot independently verify whether the field fires resulted from deliberate attacks.[29] The Russian Defense Ministry denied setting Ukrainian fields on fire by amplifying a claim that footage of Russians burning grain is an old video from Stavropol Krai, Russia.[30]
Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)
Russia’s use of stored and obsolescent MT-LB armored personnel carriers suggests that Russia’s materiel and force generation problems continue. The UK Ministry of Defense asserted that many current Russian reinforcements are “ad hoc groupings, deploying with obsolete or inappropriate equipment” as compared to better-equipped Russian first echelon units from the beginning of the war. The UK Ministry of Defense reported that an unspecified “large proportion” of the new Russian infantry units are probably deploying with MT-LB armored vehicles (which were designed in the 1950s) taken from long-term storage as their primary transport.[31] The UK Ministry of Defense asserted that most Russian first echelon assault units at the beginning of the Russian invasion were equipped with better BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles (introduced in the 1980s). Combat footage posted between July 5 and July 9 shows several instances of Ukrainian forces destroying Russian MT-LBs near front lines.[32] The pattern of Russian forces using antiquated equipment pulled from storage is consistent with confirmed reports that Russian forces deployed a large number of old T-62 tanks to the Southern Axis in late May.[33]
Chechen Leader Ramzan Kadyrov is likely attempting to recruit more Chechen fighters for the war in Ukraine. Kadyrov promoted the ongoing construction of a new residential facility for fighters of the four Chechen battalions he claims to be forming and advertised the facility’s many quality amenities.[34] Kadyrov likely seeks to increase the attractiveness of military service benefits for fighters who join these forming battalions. Kadyrov first announced that he would form these four new battalions on June 26.[35]
Activity in Russian-occupied Areas (Russian objective: consolidate administrative control of occupied areas; set conditions for potential annexation into the Russian Federation or some other future political arrangement of Moscow’s choosing)
Russian occupation authorities continued consolidating control over occupied territories and setting conditions for the potential annexation of additional Ukrainian territory on July 9. The Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR) Health Ministry announced the launch of a tracking system that allows civilians to find patients in LNR-controlled hospitals.[36] LNR and Russian officials will likely use this tracking system to compel civilians to cooperate with LNR authorities. Zaporizhia Oblast Military Administration Head Oleksandr Starukh reported that Russian officials are increasing attempts to force Zaporizhia Oblast government officials, medical staff, educators, and farmers to cooperate with occupational authorities, likely to prevent further Ukrainian partisan attacks on Russian rail infrastructure in and around Melitopol, Zaporizhia Oblast.[37] Russian Telegram channel Rybar reported that Russian forces established an occupation administration in Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast, that will focus on supplying and distributing water throughout the city.[38] The LNR Internal Affairs Ministry announced the appointment of former Deputy Governor of Sevastopol Ivan Kusov as the LNR education minister on July 8, continuing the observed pattern of Russian forces appointing Russian officials to positions in occupied Ukraine.[39]
2. It’s time to open a new front against Putin inside Russia
The intent is good. My recommendation is to let the influence professionals do their job. "Let slip the (information) dogs of war."
Conclusion:
To open this new front against Putin inside Russia, President Biden should revive in modern form the advocacy functions once carried out by the USIA. Production can be assigned to whichever department has the most talent in creative communications, but it’s critical the project have the personal interest and enthusiastic support of the president. He could appoint a Director of Freedom Advocacy who would report directly to the National Security Council without bureaucracy in between.
The Russian people are not our enemy, as President Biden said. In fact, they can be our most effective allies against Putin. We need to reach out to them now because our fundamental values and our national security require it.
It’s time to open a new front against Putin inside Russia
BY JOE LIEBERMAN AND GORDON HUMPHREY, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS - 07/09/22 6:00 PM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
The Hill · by Caroline Vakil · July 9, 2022
During May, President Biden spoke to the Russian people about the war in Ukraine. “You are not our enemy,” he told them. This is a powerful truth which should be followed by an aggressive program to separate the Russian people from their corrupt, despotic, reckless overlord.
It’s time the U.S. reached out directly to the citizens of Russia. For two decades, Vladimir Putin has waged an information war of lies and deceit among his own people and against liberal democracy everywhere. We must launch a counter-offensive, based on truth, fact, and democratic values.
As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden was one of the strongest supporters of the Voice of America. He guarded its budget and prevented it from being taken over by the State Department. In 2002, he reminded the Senate, that “No matter how powerful our military, we will not be able to achieve all our foreign policy objectives if we lose the war of ideas… we must use our most powerful tools: Truth, creditability, and openness [and] reach out to people in their own language…”
Messaging of Soviet citizens by the U.S. Information Agency played an important part in the West’s victory in the Cold War. But in 1999, Congress disestablished the Agency, and since then the U.S. has been without an effective voice in advocating for freedom and the rule of law in countries ruled by despotic governments, including Russia.
Ironically, three months after the demise of the USIA, Vladimir Putin became president of Russia. From his early proclamation that the collapse of Soviet Communism was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” to his venomously anti-U.S. speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, to his seizure of part of Georgia in 2008, all of Crimea in 2014 and his invasion of Ukraine this year. Putin has pursued the re-creation of the Soviet empire by covert and overt aggression.
The brutal invasion of Ukraine has finally awakened the West. We now understand that our security and values are on the line in Ukraine and we have two objectives there: (1) to save Ukraine’s independence and freedom and (2) to defeat Putin. This requires more than more military and economic assistance to Ukraine. It requires an information counter-offensive against Putin inside Russia that includes the policy missing since 1999, advocacy.
News delivered by the Voice of America is vitally important, but news is not advocacy. Advocacy marshals truth and fact to influence thinking and behavior. Advocacy in Russia to its people would describe Putin’s crimes, his corruption, and his mismanagement. Advocacy will persuade the Russian people they deserve peace, not war; they deserve grandchildren, not sons coming home in coffins; they deserve honest government, not kleptocracy; they deserve to live as well as Westerners, not as increasingly impoverished subjects of Putin. And advocacy will inspire the Russian people to fight for all that they deserve.
We can reach the Russian people directly using the multitude of popular social media sites and messaging services already there. More than 35 million Russians now use the encrypted app, Telegram. Younger Russians especially, are using the internet for news and information from outside of Russia, and this is the demographic we need to reach.
Our messages to the Russian people reflect and defend their interests and encourage them once again to have the confidence to demand freedom and a better life. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent video message to Russians is an example of creative advocacy based in truth and fact. It went viral all over Russia. Content and variety of messaging is limited only by our creativity. But the medium must be advocacy and the message must be that freedom is good and Putin is bad.
To open this new front against Putin inside Russia, President Biden should revive in modern form the advocacy functions once carried out by the USIA. Production can be assigned to whichever department has the most talent in creative communications, but it’s critical the project have the personal interest and enthusiastic support of the president. He could appoint a Director of Freedom Advocacy who would report directly to the National Security Council without bureaucracy in between.
The Russian people are not our enemy, as President Biden said. In fact, they can be our most effective allies against Putin. We need to reach out to them now because our fundamental values and our national security require it.
Joe Lieberman represented Connecticut in the U.S. Senate, 1989-2013, and is founding co-chair of No Labels. Gordon Humphrey represented New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate from 1979-1990
The Hill · by Caroline Vakil · July 9, 2022
3. Why Russia is in no hurry to replace Putin
A view from Moscow.
Letters | Why Russia is in no hurry to replace Putin
- Readers discuss the long careers of some leaders, such as the current president of Russia, Julian Assange’s extradition order, and the EU’s move to ban heated flavoured tobacco products
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Published: 2:30pm, 10 Jul, 2022
Bing Chiu (“It’s hard to talk about dreams now”, June 26) will undoubtedly agree that the largest democracy in the world is India. But this is how the Indian writer Khushwant Singh describes in his book The Sunset Club an election in his country: “One party of corrupt politicians loses, another party of corrupt politicians wins”.
Russian voters avoid that Sisyphean task, but our corrupt officials are not safe, with a top Kremlin economist Alexey Ulyukaev being detained in 2016 for bribery and his colleague Vladimir Mau last month for fraud.
Here those above them are ousted, like Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, only when our shops are empty. As now they are full we see no reason to replace Vladimir Putin and his team, and it must be the same in China.
We have a saying: horses grazing on oats don’t flee from the oats, people when prosperous don’t seek prosperity. Hong Kong after being governed by the UK must have adopted quite an opposite attitude best expressed in John Milton’s 1637 poem Lycidas: Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new.
Mergen Mongush, Moscow
4. China used 'debt trap diplomacy' to gain control over Sri Lanka: Think tank
"Red Lantern Analytica." Cool think tank name.
Excerpt:
"In response to Sri Lanka's financial crisis, China employed its devious 'Debt Trap Diplomacy' to gain a strategic edge over the nation and hold its economy hostage. The port cities of Hambantota and Colombo have been leased to China for 100 years. China is now the second largest lender to Sri Lanka, holding more than 10 per cent of Sri Lanka's outstanding foreign debt in 2019," Red Lantern Analytica said in a statement.
China used 'debt trap diplomacy' to gain control over Sri Lanka: Think tank
An independent foreign policy think tank said this Saturday after Sri Lankan PM Ranil Wickremesinghe resigned making way for an all-party cabinet to assume control of the country
Last Updated at July 10, 2022 08:47 IST
China employed its devious 'Debt Trap Diplomacy' to gain a strategic edge over Sri Lanka, an independent foreign policy think tank said on Saturday after Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe resigned making way for an all-party cabinet to assume control of the country.
"In response to Sri Lanka's financial crisis, China employed its devious 'Debt Trap Diplomacy' to gain a strategic edge over the nation and hold its economy hostage. The port cities of Hambantota and Colombo have been leased to China for 100 years. China is now the second largest lender to Sri Lanka, holding more than 10 per cent of Sri Lanka's outstanding foreign debt in 2019," Red Lantern Analytica said in a statement.
It added that Sri Lanka has fallen apart as a country because of the economic disaster caused by the poor governance, lack of transparency, the Chinese debt trap, and corruption.
Sri Lanka's GDP-to-Debt ratio has been continuously increasing since 2010, when the island nation's financial downward spiral began, the statement said, adding that an increase in the current account deficit and a steep decline in exports precipitated a full-blown economic crisis in 2019.
However, when China took advantage of the situation to increase Sri Lanka's debt burden, India gave a helping hand by offering financial packages consisting of a $500 million credit facility for gasoline imports and a $1 billion credit facility for imports of critical products from India, the think tank asserted.
Additionally, India has sent $2.4 billion through currency swaps, loan deferrals, and other credit lines. However, it was unable to save Sri Lanka, which was entirely enslaved by Chinese debt and ultimately succumbed to it, added the statement.
The think tank also said that China's economic help to Sri Lanka was mostly a plan to get political and security leverage against India, and move forward with its expansionist goals along the Indian Ocean Rim.
"The nations of the world must learn from the fall of Colombo and avoid falling into China's debt trap. In addition, other major powers must devise development plans and infrastructure projects for underdeveloped nations to halt the expansion of China's BRI," the statement noted.
--IANS
avr/shs
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
5. Zelensky sacks Ukraine's envoy to Germany, other ambassadors
Zelensky sacks Ukraine's envoy to Germany, other ambassadors
Kyiv's relations with Germany, which is heavily reliant on Russian energy supplies and also Europe's biggest economy, have been a particular sensitive matter.
By REUTERS Published: JULY 9, 2022 19:02
Updated: JULY 10, 2022 04:52
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that he had dismissed several of Kyiv's senior envoys abroad, including the country's outspoken ambassador to Germany.
Zelensky announced the sacking of Ukraine's ambassadors to Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Norway and Hungary and said new candidates were being readied for the positions.
"This rotation is a normal part of diplomatic practice," he said in a statement.
It was not clear if the envoys would be assigned new positions.
Zelensky has urged his diplomats to drum up international support and military aid for Ukraine as it tries to fend off Russia's Feb. 24 invasion.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses Ukrainian people with Orthodox Easter message, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, at the Saint Sophia cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine April 23, 2022. (credit: Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS)
Ukraine-Germany relations
Kyiv's relations with Germany, which is heavily reliant on Russian energy supplies and also Europe's biggest economy, are particularly sensitive.
Andriy Melnyk, who was appointed by Zelensky's predecessor as ambassador to Germany in late 2014, is well known among politicians and diplomats in Berlin.
The 46-year-old regularly engages in outspoken social media exchanges and has branded politicians and intellectuals who oppose arming Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion as appeasers.
He once accused German Chancellor Olaf Scholz of behaving like an "offended liver sausage" when Scholz did not immediately accept an invitation by Zelensky to visit Kyiv.
Kyiv and Berlin are currently at odds over a German-made turbine undergoing maintenance in Canada.
Germany wants Ottawa to return the turbine to Russian natural gas giant Gazprom to pump gas to Europe, but Kyiv had urged Canada to keep the turbine, saying a return would violate sanctions on Moscow.
Canada said on Saturday it would return the turbine.
6. Ukrainian forces will make the Russians fight for every inch in the east
I hope we are using all our technical intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities combined with Ukraine HUMINT to find Russian artillery ammunition depots for targeting.
Excerpts:
Russia's rear-echelon artillery dumps are also being targeted by Ukraine's new US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars), which arrived on the battlefield in late June. More Western artillery kit is on the way, meaning Ukraine may get stronger as Russia gets weaker.
And as the Kremlin learned the hard way during its botched siege of Kyiv, the more ground is occupied, the more there is to defend from Ukrainian infantry attacks. To that end, Ukraine's defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in May that the country was now training a standing army of one million people.
...
Much as Ukraine's deaths have caused anguish, its population still seems behind the war. There have been no protests, and few influential voices calling for concessions to end the bloodshed.
Nor, admittedly, has there been in Russia. But in a country that no longer tolerates dissent, it is hard to be certain just how much discontent is welling up. For every Russian soldier that has not come home, others return home injured or disillusioned. Combined with sanctions hitting living standards, there is no telling when a smoulder of discontent might become a blaze.
"The next few months will be a turning point," said Olvera, currently back in the US. "I expect Ukraine will become stronger, while Russia will become weaker, with the economy in shambles, sanctions undermining their military capabilities, and morale and discipline issues becoming even more severe."
How much more of the Donbas will be in Russian hands by then remains to be seen. But in one vote of confidence in Ukraine's capabilities, Olvera plans to return to help defend it. "The Ukrainians have done far better than I expected," he said. "Tough as it's been so far, it's encouraged me to go back."
Ukrainian forces will make the Russians fight for every inch in the east
Daily Telegraph UK
By Colin Freeman
Judging by what is left of the children's playground at the cultural centre in Druzhkivka, the Russian army still has plenty of artillery left for its campaign to seize Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.
The town was rudely awoken by four thunderous explosions on Saturday morning, as four rockets landed just two kilometres from The Telegraph's hotel.
One rocket demolished the local supermarket, while another tore a 3 metre-deep crater in the cultural centre's playground, decapitating a statue of a Soviet worker.
"This cultural centre is being used for humanitarian deliveries," fumed one local aid worker, as he salvaged crates of shrapnel-punctured food aid. "Thank God this didn't happen yesterday, when there were children in the playground and families queuing for food parcels."
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A Ukrainian resident sits outside her home, damaged by a Russian missile strike, in Druzhkivka, Ukraine. Photo / AP
Quite why Russian commanders deemed the two buildings worthy of expensive precision missiles was unclear. Druzhkivka, a town of 60,000 in normal times, is not even on the frontline yet. That dubious privilege belongs to Slovyansk, 20 minutes drive further north, where the Russian army is now just 16 kilometres away.
Yet the bombardment was a preview of what every Donbas town taken by the Kremlin so far has faced – relentless shelling from afar, designed to bludgeon both Ukraine's civilians and military into submission. It has already won the Kremlin the city of Severodonetsk, its biggest prize in the Donbas so far. And according to Vladimir Putin, it will win them the rest of eastern Ukraine and perhaps even Kyiv too.
"Everyone should know that we haven't started anything yet in earnest," he boasted last week. Meanwhile, his close ally Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Russian Security Council, said Russia was still planning the "De-Nazification" of Ukraine, suggesting regime change was still on the cards.
So can Russia succeed in taking the rest of the Donbas? And at what price to both itself and Ukraine?
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned this month 'we haven't started anything yet in earnest'. Photo / AP
Certainly, if Putin's generals are telling him what they think he wants to hear – which seems likely – it would not be hard to paint a picture of recent success. For in terms of crude military might, Russia is slowly prevailing, by the simple act of hurling far more artillery at the Ukrainians than they can throw back.
"They are focusing on the Donbas with a big artillery sledgehammer, then mounting short attacks with their surviving ground forces," said Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "That creates a dilemma for Ukraine, because to repel the Russian ground force attacks, they have to concentrate their own troops rather than disperse them, which again makes them more vulnerable to artillery."
However, like the Soviet system that produced it, the current Russian war machine is a triumph of quantity over quality. The battle to take Severodonetsk alone has required an estimated 30,000 troops, using 20,000 artillery shells per day and costing an estimated 7,000 Russian lives.
Far from being routed, Ukraine has staged a steady tactical withdrawal, forcing the Russians into gruelling urban combat where their own forces – a third of the size – held the advantages.
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Among those who fought in Severodonetsk was Issac Olvera, a former US Marine now serving as a volunteer with Ukraine's International Brigade.
"It was incredibly intensive fighting – the Ukrainians paid a heavy price there, but so too did the Russians," he told The Telegraph. "It is completely acceptable to withdraw tactically, while tying the enemy up to erode morale. Meanwhile, Ukraine is buying critical time to allow some of the bigger Western artillery pieces to reach the battlefield."
The gutted remains of cars sit along a road in Severodonetsk, Ukraine. Photo / AP
The Kremlin's territorial gains are also limited. Phillip O'Brien, professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews, points out that even if the Russians now also take Slovyansk, the total area captured will only be the size of Greater London.
And far from gaining momentum, the Kremlin is having to fight for every inch. If Putin wants to reach Kyiv, it may be not so much a sprint to the finish, as a marathon where each step is agony.
Already, for example, there are questions over how long the Russians can continue throwing 20,000 shells a day at their problems.
"That's a huge amount – about half the British army's entire current holdings of heavy artillery," said Barry. "It remains to be seen how much more the Russian defence industry can manufacture."
Russia's rear-echelon artillery dumps are also being targeted by Ukraine's new US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars), which arrived on the battlefield in late June. More Western artillery kit is on the way, meaning Ukraine may get stronger as Russia gets weaker.
And as the Kremlin learned the hard way during its botched siege of Kyiv, the more ground is occupied, the more there is to defend from Ukrainian infantry attacks. To that end, Ukraine's defence minister Oleksiy Reznikov said in May that the country was now training a standing army of one million people.
Meanwhile, Russia has much to still accomplish just in the Donbas. Illia Ponomarenko, respected defence correspondent at the Kyiv Independent Newspaper, points out that so far, none of Ukraine's "large military groups" in the region have been destroyed or even surrounded.
Other targets necessary for control of the Donbas – including Slovyansk, nearby Bakhmut, and a line of towns stretching 100 miles south to Mariinka, near the separatist-held city of Donetsk – are now "fortresses" that will not fall easily.
Finally, there is the cost in human lives. Ukraine's casualties are estimated at around 20,000, with Russia's up to twice that. More important than the numbers, though, is each nation's ability to absorb the pain politically.
Much as Ukraine's deaths have caused anguish, its population still seems behind the war. There have been no protests, and few influential voices calling for concessions to end the bloodshed.
Nor, admittedly, has there been in Russia. But in a country that no longer tolerates dissent, it is hard to be certain just how much discontent is welling up. For every Russian soldier that has not come home, others return home injured or disillusioned. Combined with sanctions hitting living standards, there is no telling when a smoulder of discontent might become a blaze.
"The next few months will be a turning point," said Olvera, currently back in the US. "I expect Ukraine will become stronger, while Russia will become weaker, with the economy in shambles, sanctions undermining their military capabilities, and morale and discipline issues becoming even more severe."
How much more of the Donbas will be in Russian hands by then remains to be seen. But in one vote of confidence in Ukraine's capabilities, Olvera plans to return to help defend it. "The Ukrainians have done far better than I expected," he said. "Tough as it's been so far, it's encouraged me to go back."
7. Trench warfare, precision missiles and armed motorcycle units: Why the war in Ukraine looks increasingly anachronistic
When your survival is at stake you will employ all necessary capabilities that work. Old and new and combined old and new capabilities employed in creative ways are making a difference.
Excerpts:
These high-tech additions come even as the war in Ukraine has featured much more low-tech, jerry-rigged weapons and systems. With limited resources, Ukraine’s fighters are adapting and improvising weapons platforms and mobile units. The result is several antiquated tactics and vintage equipment sharing space with modern precision targeting and brand new weapons. The War Zone reported on Ukraine fielding 1980s-era motorcycles, with soldiers firing anti-tank weapons from side cars. Old pick-up trucks have been modified into technicals, whose speed allows Ukraine to make up for Russia’s numerical advantage in tanks.
Trench warfare, precision missiles and armed motorcycle units: Why the war in Ukraine looks increasingly anachronistic
Brand new HIMARS are sharing the field with World War I-style trenches and repurposed old motorcycles.
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This week the Pentagon announced it was sending even more advanced munitions to Ukraine’s military. The $400 million package strengthens its artillery capabilities, even as the war in Ukraine is increasingly looking like a conflict from the past. Despite the advanced missile systems pouring into the country, the two armies are fielding old tanks, beaten up cars mounted with new cannons and deploying tactics from the early 20th century, not the 21st. That weaponry and armor have become more important than ever since the initial Russian push failed and the war has turned into artillery slugfests and trench warfare.
Ukraine has received a steady stream of ever-more-advanced weaponry from NATO member states. Those started with Javelin and Stinger anti-air and anti-tank missiles, to large 155mm howitzer cannons, to most recently the high mobility artillery rocket systems, or HIMARS. These have drastically increased Ukraine’s ability to meet the larger Russian army in battle.
This past week the United States announced it was sending four more HIMARS, a 50 percent boost from eight to 12. The U.S. has stressed that the HIMARS aren’t being used to strike inside of Russia, just at Russian forces in Ukraine’s territory. The weapons were already a game changer – as the name suggests, they can fire multiple rockets in one salvo, but the platforms are also highly maneuverable allowing them to relocate and attack quickly. Ukraine quickly put them in the field once they arrived late last month.
The U.S. announcement comes with a leveling up of the country’s artillery capabilities. The Pentagon is sending 1,000 155mm rounds to Ukraine. The precision munitions will likely make for more accurate attacks on Russian formations. But depsite all of the advanced and “smart” weapons now being used, the war is increasingly “dumb.”
These high-tech additions come even as the war in Ukraine has featured much more low-tech, jerry-rigged weapons and systems. With limited resources, Ukraine’s fighters are adapting and improvising weapons platforms and mobile units. The result is several antiquated tactics and vintage equipment sharing space with modern precision targeting and brand new weapons. The War Zone reported on Ukraine fielding 1980s-era motorcycles, with soldiers firing anti-tank weapons from side cars. Old pick-up trucks have been modified into technicals, whose speed allows Ukraine to make up for Russia’s numerical advantage in tanks.
As for Russia, it has turned to mobilizing Soviet-era T-80 tanks to make up for losses. And the war itself has moved from modern fast moving small-unit battles to large, artillery driven fights of attrition in the eastern Donbas and Luhansk regions. Heavy shelling from both sides have torn up the countryside and heavily damaged cities such as Severodonetsk. World War I-style trenches have been a fixture in the country’s east since fighting with Russian-backed separatists started in 2014.
The U.S. didn’t say if it will send additional precision munitions or more HIMARS to Ukraine. However, given the escalation in Western artillery technology, even as the war becomes more Mad Max-ian, it seems highly plausible.
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8. Three-star general who mocked Jill Biden is suspended
Don't jump to any conclusions. It is a RETIRED three-star general.
Words (tweets) have consequences, even in retirement (if you are still working for the military/government)
Three-star general who mocked Jill Biden is suspended
The U.S. Army has suspended retired Lt. Gen. Gary Volesky, its former head of communications, from his mentorship role and placed him under investigation after he posted a tweet that appeared to mock first lady Jill Biden’s tweet about the Supreme Court’s recent decision on abortion.
The tweet was in response to Biden’s June 24 tweet about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, in which the first lady lamented the decision’s impact on women.
“Glad to see you finally know what a woman is,” Volesky responded in a tweet that has since been deleted, according to USA Today, which reported the news earlier Saturday.
For nearly 50 years, women have had the right to make our own decisions about our bodies.
Today, that right was stolen from us.
And while we may be devastated by this injustice, we will not be silent. We will not sit back as the progress we have already won slips away.
— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) June 24, 2022
Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith told The Washington Post in a statement that Lt. Gen. Theodore Martin, commanding general of the Combined Arms Center, suspended Volesky from his contract as a senior mentor “pending the outcome of the commander’s inquiry.” In the role, Volesky was among the retired military officials or senior retired civilian officials who offer mentorship and training to Army officers, staffers and students.
Volesky did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday afternoon. The White House declined to comment.
Volesky, 60, is a decorated officer with a long military career. Before he retired from the Army and was hired as a mentor, Volesky commanded I Corps, a major military formation, and led Joint Base Lewis-McChord from 2017 to 2020. From 2014 to 2017, he commanded the 101st Airborne Division, renowned for its role on D-Day during World War II. From 2012 to 2014, he was the chief of the Army’s public affairs division.
Volesky served in the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the War in Afghanistan. He was awarded a Silver Star, the third-highest military combat honor, for his involvement in military efforts in northeastern Baghdad. He is an advisory board member for Unified Business Technologies, an information technology company headquartered in Michigan.
Volesky’s reply to Biden’s tweet bears echoes of an interaction between Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings this year. Blackburn, who has criticized a bill to strengthen LGBTQ protections, pressed Jackson to define the word “woman” in reference to transgender rights.
Transgender issues have come into a new focus in the aftermath of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, particularly around the use of the word “women” to describe people affected by abortion restrictions. Critics of transgender women — sometimes called trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) — have decried what they say is the inability to call themselves “women” as gender-inclusive language becomes more commonly used. On Monday, entertainers Bette Midler and Macy Gray were criticized for their recent comments about transgender issues.
Volesky has posted other political tweets, including a July 2021 reply to a tweet from Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in which she announced that she would serve on the select committee to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. She wrote, “Our oath to the Constitution must be above partisan politics.”
Volesky tweeted in response: “This is all about partisan politics.”
Political messages from retired military members are not new.
In 2016, retired Marine Gen. John Allen endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, while retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn called for Clinton to be locked up, and he later served as Trump’s national security adviser before he was fired for lying to federal investigators. In 2019, retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal called Trump “immoral” and said he did not believe that the then-president was truthful. Retired Navy Adm. William McRaven wrote a Washington Post opinion article in 2020 criticizing Trump for undermining “every major U.S. institution.”
9. With Rising Book Bans, Librarians Have Come Under Attack
This saddens me. The best work study job I had in college was working the humanities section of the library
But for those who support book bans I would ask you to ask yourself why are you a supporter of authoritarian government? Why do you want to suppress the free expression of ideas? Why do you think a culture war is good for America?
With Rising Book Bans, Librarians Have Come Under Attack
Martha Hickson, a librarian, said that when book ban attempts turned into personal attacks she became so stressed she couldn’t sleep and lost 12 pounds in a week.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
Caustic fights over which books belong on the shelves have put librarians at the center of a bitter and widening culture war.
Martha Hickson, a librarian, said that when book ban attempts turned into personal attacks she became so stressed she couldn’t sleep and lost 12 pounds in a week.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
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The reporters, who cover books and publishing for The Times, spoke to two dozen librarians and library associations across the country for this article.
- Published July 6, 2022Updated July 8, 2022
Martha Hickson, a high school librarian in Annandale, N.J., heard last fall that some parents were going to call for her library to ban certain books. So at 7 p.m., when she and her husband would usually watch “Jeopardy!” she got comfortable in her recliner and turned on a livestream of the local school board meeting.
A parent stood up and denounced two books, “Lawn Boy” and “Gender Queer,” calling them pornographic. Both books, award winners with L.G.B.T.Q. characters and frank depictions of sex, have been challenged around the country and were available at the North Hunterdon High School library. Then the woman called out Ms. Hickson, who is the librarian there, by name, for allowing her 16-year-old son to check out the books.
“This amounts to an effort to groom our kids to make them more willing to participate in the heinous acts described in these books,” said the parent, Gina DeLusant, according to a video recording of the meeting. “It grooms them to accept the inappropriate advances of an adult.”
Ms. Hickson said the accusation left her sick to her stomach, with a tightness in her chest. “I was stunned,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.”
As highly visible and politicized book bans have exploded across the country, librarians — accustomed to being seen as dedicated public servants in their communities — have found themselves on the front lines of an acrimonious culture war, with their careers and their personal reputations at risk.
They have been labeled pedophiles on social media, called out by local politicians and reported to law enforcement officials. Some librarians have quit after being harassed online. Others have been fired for refusing to remove books from circulation.
In many communities, putting books on the shelves has become a polarizing act and has “turned librarians into this political pawn,” said Ami Uselman, the director of library and media services for Round Rock Independent School District, in Texas.
“You can imagine our librarians feel scared,” she said, “like their character was in question.”
Librarians are taught to curate well-rounded collections that represent a range of viewpoints, especially on contentious topics, according to the American Library Association; they use award lists, reviews and other publications to inform their choices.
Addressing book challenges has always been part of the job, but efforts to ban books have spiked in recent months, reflecting a clash over whether and how to teach children about issues like L.G.B.T.Q. rights and racial inequality. The library association tracked 1,597 books that were challenged in 2021, the highest number since the organization began tracking bans 20 years ago.
Traditionally, concerned community members might approach the library staff to discuss a title. Parents could often prevent their children from checking out specific books, or if they thought a title should be removed from circulation, they could fill out a form to start a reconsideration process, where the book’s suitability would be reviewed by a committee.
These challenges would come from both the left and the right — there might be objections to L.G.B.T.Q. characters, or racial slurs in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Books whose suitability is being questioned at the North Hunterdon Regional High School library, in Annandale, N.J.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times
Those quieter confrontations continue today, librarians said, but conflicts around books have drastically escalated. Now, the Proud Boys, an extremist group, might show up at a school board meeting because books are on the agenda, as they did last fall in Downers Grove, Ill. Last month, members of the Proud Boys disrupted a drag queen-hosted story hour for families in San Lorenzo, Calif., and an L.G.B.T.Q.-themed story time in Wilmington, N.C.
In Cabot, Ark., the local police department investigated a woman who said that if she had “any mental issues,” staff at a local school library would be “plowed down” with a gun, according to a police report. The police determined that the incident, which was reported earlier in the Arkansas Times and took place at a meeting of Moms For Liberty — a group that has pushed for book bans around the country — was not made in context of a threat and there was no need to file charges.
The Push to Ban Books Across America
Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers are increasingly contesting children’s access to books.
Frequently, these battles are portrayed as liberal librarians defending left-wing books, but Carolyn Foote, a retired librarian and a founder of the group Freadom Fighters, which organizes to defend librarians, said the idea that everyone in the profession is liberal isn’t true, especially in a place like Texas, where she lives. For most librarians, she said, the issue is not one of politics but of professional ethics.
“It’s crushing,” she said of efforts to restrict access to certain books. “You know what your job is, you know what the best practices and standards are for your profession, and you’re being made to do things that you know violate all of that.”
Increasingly, the personal and professional integrity of librarians is also being called into question.
In May, a Republican state representative in Virginia Beach, Tim Anderson, filed a Freedom of Information Act Request to learn the identities of librarians at schools that had copies of books some parents complained included sexually explicit material.
“The question is, how are pervasively vulgar books getting into the schools?” he said in an interview. “Is it the librarians that are doing this?”
Some of the conflicts have gotten so heated that community members have tried to seek criminal charges against librarians. In Ms. Hickson’s district in New Jersey, a complaint was made to the Clinton Township Police Department about obscene materials in a library book. The Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s Office said none of the information it received indicated criminal conduct. In Granbury, Tex., a county constable opened an investigation about books available in a high school library after receiving a complaint.
Many librarians have quit — or lost their jobs — after clashes over books.
Suzette Baker was fired from her job at the head of Kingsland Library branch in Llano County, Tex., after she repeatedly refused to remove books as county officials had demanded, according to a lawsuit. The suit was filed this spring by residents against county officials, saying they violated the First Amendment by censoring books.
Among the titles officials wanted removed were “How to Be an Antiracist,” by Ibram X. Kendi, and “Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Llano County officials and the county attorney did not respond to a request for comment.
Debbie Chavez, who worked as a librarian for 18 years, decided to leave the profession after a parent who met with her to discuss his objections to “Lawn Boy” recorded their conversation without her knowledge. Excerpts were posted on Facebook, and commenters called for Ms. Chavez to be fired and said she was “grooming children.” She received vicious messages on her school email, she said, and ultimately left her job as a high school librarian in Round Rock in March.
“It was so horrific to see that my words were being used as a rallying cry for the book censors, and to see that my conversation had been misrepresented,” she said. “And I was supposed to still get dressed and go to school and do my job.”
Tonya Ryals said that after seeing library staff suffer personal attacks, she asked herself, “do I want to live here?”Credit...Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times
Tonya Ryals quit her job as the assistant director of the Jonesboro Public Library, in Craighead County, Ark., in February after her library board introduced a slate of new policies, including requiring board approval for every new book acquired for the children’s collection. The policies were voted down, but the vitriol she encountered online became too much, she said.
“There were comments about library staff, calling us groomers and pedophiles and saying we needed to be fired, we need to be jailed, we needed to be locked up, that all the books needed to be burned,” she said. “It got to a certain point where I thought, do I want to live here? Is this something I can subject myself to?”
Sometimes the books in question disappear from the shelves, even though library policies generally dictate that books should remain available until the challenge process is complete. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of the office of intellectual freedom at the library association, said her office has received reports that some groups are checking out books they deem objectionable.
Libraries also face increasing pressure from legislators, who are crafting new laws and procedures intended to make it easier to remove books that are challenged. At least five states, including Arizona, Georgia and Kentucky, have passed laws that change the way libraries handle complaints about material, or the way library board members are appointed, according to EveryLibrary, a political action committee for libraries.
Many states have laws that shield teachers, researchers and librarians from prosecution so they can use educational materials that some might consider objectionable. Those laws are also being challenged.
Oklahoma recently passed a law that will remove exemptions for teachers and librarians “from prosecution for willful violations of state law prohibiting indecent exposure to obscene material or child pornography.”
To some librarians, the moment has been especially jarring because when pandemic restrictions were in place, they were hailed as heroes for delivering books and laptops to students at home. Now, said Audrey Wilson-Youngblood, a library services coordinator in Texas, librarians are seen by some as villains.
“It felt like a knife in my heart,” she said of allegations that library staff were doing harm to students. “That grief is what led me to make really difficult decisions, to make changes for myself and my family.”
Ms. Wilson-Youngblood resigned last month from her position at the Keller Independent School District because of the toll the stress was taking on her family. She had worked there for 19 years.
Sheelagh McNeill and Alain Delaqueriere contributed research.
10. Ukraine’s Defense Minister Says It Has ‘Passed Test’ on New U.S. Guided Rockets, Needs More
I think they have more than passed the test. They have passed with flying colors and we would be grateful that they are proving the efficacy of our systems and our doctrine and concepts of employment and they may be providing us with additions to our doctrine.
Ukraine’s Defense Minister Says It Has ‘Passed Test’ on New U.S. Guided Rockets, Needs More
Himars launchers that can reach far behind enemy lines are a game-changer, says Oleksii Reznikov
Updated July 10, 2022 8:29 am ET
“We need to refresh our platoons and change them and make replacements also because we also have a lot of losses,” he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We are waiting for more armor, more weaponry from our partners. We need to rebuild some directions and to refresh our fortifications and plan a new operational strategy.”
Rescue workers atop rubble in Chasiv Yar, in a photo released by Ukraine’s State Emergency Service on Sunday.
Photo: state emergency service of ukraine/Shutterstock
He said the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, the long-range launchers known as Himars, have been a “game-changer,” enabling Ukraine to target Russian forces in the northeastern town of Izyum, but added: “The war is grim... We need more. We need it quickly.”
After some early hesitation over concerns the systems could be used by Ukrainian forces against Russian territory, reluctantly drawing the U.S. into the fight, Washington said it would initially send four Himars to Ukraine, and train Ukrainian forces to use them. These advanced systems are mobile launchers capable of striking targets from a maximum distance ranging from about 60 kilometers to nearly 500 kilometers depending on the type of ammunition used.
Russian officials have sharply criticized the U.S. decision to supply Himars, saying Washington is pouring fuel on the fire and threatening to respond if the systems are used to target Russian territory.
An injured woman received medical care on Saturday in Konstantinovka following a military strike.
Photo: Emanuele Satolli for The Wall Street Journal
Ukrainian and U.S. officials said Ukraine had also used U.S.-supplied Harpoon missiles to take out a Russian supply ship on the Black Sea—key to their ability to recapture the strategic Snake Island.
“We needed to persuade them, to show them proof,” said Mr. Reznikov. “In the Izyum case, we were precise [in targeting] a Russian command center for aerial operations. It was really precise. Our partners saw it and said, ‘You passed the test.’”
Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region have been outgunned and outmanned by Russian forces, which have made incremental progress capturing territory in recent weeks. Ukraine has been pressing its allies to provide even longer-range missiles that can be used with Himars, known as the Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, which have a range of up to 300 kilometers. Washington so far hasn’t agreed.
“The Russians are using their MLRS’s, which can go 120 kilometers,” said Mr. Reznikov, referring to Russian-made multiple-launch rocket systems. “So we need to have something a little bit longer: 150 [kilometers]. We’ll get there.”
Besides long-range weapons, topping Mr. Reznikov’s wishlist are more armed vehicles, including tanks, as well as more unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, particularly as Ukraine ramps up naval operations to fight Russian ships positioned in the Black Sea, which are currently responsible for a blockade preventing Ukraine’s crucial grain supplies from reaching the global market.
He said drones, including those sent by the U.S. and other partners, are consistently being jammed by Russia and don’t have the counter-jamming software needed to gain the upper hand.
This month, the Pentagon announced $820 million in new Ukraine military aid that includes advanced mid- to long-range air-defense systems and counter-artillery radars to respond to Russia’s heavy use of long-range strikes in the war. Mr. Reznikov described the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems the U.S. is sending, which can hit targets at a distance of 160 kilometers, as Ukraine’s “next Easter cake.”
However, since Nasams batteries can only cover one city or an object, Mr. Renizkov said it would be important to combine them with alternative modern air-defense systems pledged by other Western partners.
A school building, seen through a window, was damaged in a Russian military strike Sunday in Kharkiv.
Photo: STRINGER/REUTERS
A woman stood outside a house on Saturday in Konstantinovka, moments after cluster munitions hit.
Photo: Emanuele Satolli for The Wall Street Journal
He said shorter-range missiles that at one time had been crucial to the fight—such as the U.S.-made FGM-148 Javelin missile system, British-made NLAW or the MILAN-2 antitank systems from France and Italy—are still needed, but “not the priority anymore” given the changing nature of the conflict to long-distance artillery warfare.
Mr. Reznikov said that Russia appears to be taking an “operational pause” in its offensive in Donbas, which is made up of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, to regroup and resupply. He said that this doesn’t necessarily present an opportunity for Ukrainian forces, which need rest and need to swap out fighting units and resupply.
On Saturday night, Russian forces destroyed an apartment building in Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region, a strike that left 15 dead and five wounded, according to Ukraine’s emergency service. The Russian Ministry of Defense said in its evening update on Saturday that its forces hit a weapons depot in the town.
Elsewhere, Russian missiles hit temporary housing used by the Ukrainian military near the village of Konstantinovka, collapsing part of one five-story brick building where rescuers spent the day digging for survivors. Local officials said at least 15 people were confirmed dead and another 24 were yet to be reached under the rubble.
Luhansk regional governor Serhiy Haidai said this week that the recently captured cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk are still reeling, with thousands of civilians now living under Russian occupation. He said more than 300,000 people have left the Luhansk region alone.
In the northeastern Kharkiv region on Sunday, Russian forces fired rockets on the districts of Osnovyansk and Slobodsky, destroying a school and hitting several residential buildings. Shelling also continued in Izyum, Bogodukhov, Chuguev and the city of Kharkiv, the region’s governor, Oleh Synyehubov, said on his official Telegram channel.
Mr. Synyehubov appealed to residents to be vigilant, noting that Kharkiv’s “neighbor,” Russia, fires on the region indiscriminately.
Mr. Reznikov described the battle in Kharkiv as a problem for Ukraine, saying its location along the border has enabled Russian forces to fire long-range systems on the region from Russian soil, often at the expense of civilian and residential areas.
“It’s a problem,” he said. “Our antimissile systems can fight with their ballistic and cruise missiles—it’s not 100% but we can get them. But we cannot close the sky against their MLRS’s.”
—Yuliya Chernova and Alan Cullison contributed to this article.
11. Putin's Problem: What Happened to Russia's Spetsnaz Special Forces in Ukraine?
I would be worried if we do not know where they are or what they are doing. A perfect time for operations is when we are complacent. And we should also consider they are likely to be positioning them for employment for long term operations for major strategic effects far in the future.
Putin's Problem: What Happened to Russia's Spetsnaz Special Forces in Ukraine?
Russia’s Spetsnaz Special Forces in Ukraine: An Update – As an increasingly taxing and resource-intensive undertaking, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine likely involves almost every element of Russia’s family of special forces agencies. These agencies were supposed to play a pivotal role in the opening hours and days of what was intended to be a quick operation, which did not come to pass in the slightest. However, these special forces elements of Russia’s armed forces and security organs continue to play an important role in Russia’s ongoing invasion, albeit not as centrally as they were initially intended to be.
What Special Forces does Russia Have Available to Use in Ukraine?
Russia has a dizzying variety of units in its armed forces and security organs which can be labeled as special forces, or “Spetsnaz” as they are known in popular culture and in the Russian language. Spetsnaz itself is a portmanteau of the Russian words vojska spetsialnogo naznachenie, which translates to “special purpose forces.”
The core elements of Russia’s Spetsnaz which can trace their roots to Soviet times are those which are controlled by the armed forces’ Main Intelligence Directorate and the civilian Federal Security Service (known by their Russian acronyms GRU and FSB respectively). Within the FSB, the Alpha Group and Vympel Group are particularly well known, as are the FSB’s preeminent Spetsnaz units. The GRU’s Spetsnaz units are the oldest of those in Russian service today, and were initially formed in 1949. In addition to taking part of the GRU’s wider military intelligence mission, GRU Spetsnaz also specialize in targeted operations, including assassinations.
In addition to these older special forces organizations, the Russian National Guard (also known by its Russian name Rosgvardia) is the newest addition to the Russian spetsnaz ecosystem and also one of the most politicized. Formed in 2016 by amalgamating the Interior Ministry’s Internal Troops, SOBR rapid response special forces units, and OMON special police, the Rosgvardia serves as both a pseudo-military branch and an internal security organization. While other units such as the Foreign Intelligence Service’s (SVR) Zaslon or the Federal Penitentiary Service’s special forces units fall under the Spetsnaz umbrella, they are more often than not overshadowed by their larger GRU, FSB, and Rosgvardia cousins.
Early Employment of Special Forces in the Invasion of Ukraine
In the first hours of the war, a variety of Spetsnaz units immediately entered Ukraine and began to assist in what was expected to be a quick regime-change operation. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian Spetsnaz troops were operating in civilian clothes in Kyiv on the hunt for Ukrainian government officials and leaders such as Zelensky himself in the first days of the invasion. This employment of Spetsnaz is characteristic of the “political warfare” skillset Russian Spetsnaz units are often designed for, which sets them apart from their American and Western counterparts. However, despite the reportedly wide range of activity taken on by Russian Spetsnaz units in Ukraine in the opening days of the war, they were unable to bring about a quick end to the campaign, and the Ukrainian government remained in power and functional.
What We Know: Current Uses of Special Forces in Ukraine
Now that the war in Ukraine has taken on the character of a war of attrition between two opposing armies rather than a scrambled combination of covert and overt actions as the first days were, Russia’s Spetsnaz have lost their central role in Moscow’s strategy. Although visual evidence exists which suggests that Russian Spetsnaz troops are still fighting in Ukraine, their exact role in the invasion today remains a bit foggier.
While they might not all be assigned to units classified as Spetsnaz, Rosgvardia’s presence in Ukraine remains well-documented. Supposedly included within the structure of the Rosgvardia, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s Kadyrovtsy troops have taken an active role in some of the war’s most well-known flashpoints, such as the battles for Mariupol and locales near Kyiv. However, they have gained a reputation of being a made-for-tik-tok unit rather than a potent fighting force, which limits the actual influence of the Kadyrovtsy in practice, despite their effectively autonomous nature. The wider Rosgvardia appears to be having troubles of its own, as numerous cases have been opened against Rosgvardia troopers who had refused to take part in combat operations in Ukraine.
Even if Russia’s Spetsnaz were unable to decisively bring Moscow’s “special military operation” to a close in a timely fashion, their fortunes won’t necessarily be harmed or boosted by their performance. Since the Russian national security and political system is built around intra-elite conflicts, the fortunes of different Spetsnaz outfits will likely be a function of the political savvy of their leadership, rather than their performance in Ukraine.
Wesley Culp is a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. He regularly writes on Russian and Eurasian leadership and national security topics and has been published in The Hill as well as in the Diplomatic Courier. He can be found on Twitter @WesleyJCulp.
12. Opinion | Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia
Opinion | Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia
Joe Biden is president of the United States.
Next week, I’ll travel to the Middle East to start a new and more promising chapter of America’s engagement there. This trip comes at a vital time for the region, and it will advance important American interests.
A more secure and integrated Middle East benefits Americans in many ways. Its waterways are essential to global trade and the supply chains we rely on. Its energy resources are vital for mitigating the impact on global supplies of Russia’s war in Ukraine. And a region that’s coming together through diplomacy and cooperation — rather than coming apart through conflict — is less likely to give rise to violent extremism that threatens our homeland or new wars that could place new burdens on U.S. military forces and their families.
Avoiding that scenario is of paramount importance to me. I’ll pursue diplomacy intensely — including through face-to-face meetings — to achieve our goals.
The Middle East I’ll be visiting is more stable and secure than the one my administration inherited 18 months ago.
One month before my inauguration, our embassy in Baghdad faced the largest rocket attack in a decade. Attacks against our troops and diplomats had increased fourfold over the preceding year. My predecessor repeatedly ordered B-52 bombers to fly from the United States to the region and back again to deter these attacks. But it didn’t work, and the attacks continued.
The war in Yemen was escalating, creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with no political process in sight to end the fighting.
After my predecessor reneged on a nuclear deal that was working, Iran had passed a law mandating the rapid acceleration of its nuclear program. Then, when the last administration sought to condemn Iran for this action in the U.N. Security Council, the United States found itself isolated and alone.
In my first weeks as president, our intelligence and military experts warned that the region was dangerously pressurized. It needed urgent and intensive diplomacy. To restore deterrence, I ordered airstrikes in response to the attacks against our troops and began serious diplomatic outreach to bring about a more stable region.
In Iraq, we ended the U.S. combat mission and transitioned our military presence to focus on training Iraqis, while sustaining the global coalition against the Islamic State we forged when I was vice president, now dedicated to preventing ISIS from resurging. We’ve also responded to threats against Americans. The frequency of Iranian-sponsored attacks compared with two years ago has dropped precipitously. And this past February, in Syria, we took out ISIS leader Haji Abdullah, demonstrating America’s capability to eliminate terrorist threats no matter where they try to hide.
In Yemen, I named an envoy and engaged with leaders across the region, including with the king of Saudi Arabia, to lay the foundation for a truce. After a year of our persistent diplomacy, that truce is now in place, and lifesaving humanitarian assistance is reaching cities and towns that had been under siege. As a result, the past few months in Yemen have been the most peaceful in seven years.
With respect to Iran, we reunited with allies and partners in Europe and around the world to reverse our isolation; now it is Iran that is isolated until it returns to the nuclear deal my predecessor abandoned with no plan for what might replace it. Last month, more than 30 countries joined us to condemn Iran’s lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency on its past nuclear activities. My administration will continue to increase diplomatic and economic pressure until Iran is ready to return to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, as I remain prepared to do.
In Israel, we helped end a war in Gaza — which could easily have lasted months — in just 11 days. We’ve worked with Israel, Egypt, Qatar and Jordan to maintain the peace without permitting terrorists to rearm. We also rebuilt U.S. ties with the Palestinians. Working with Congress, my administration restored approximately $500 million in support for Palestinians, while also passing the largest support package for Israel — over $4 billion — in history. And this week, an Israeli prime minister spoke with the president of the Palestinian Authority for the first time in five years.
In Saudi Arabia, we reversed the blank-check policy we inherited. I released the intelligence community’s report on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, issued new sanctions, including on the Saudi Arabia’s Rapid Intervention Force involved in his killing, and issued 76 visa bans under a new rule barring entry into the United States for anyone found to be involved in harassing dissidents abroad. My administration has made clear that the United States will not tolerate extraterritorial threats and harassment against dissidents and activists by any government. We also advocated for American citizens who had been wrongfully detained in Saudi Arabia long before I took office. They have since been released, and I will continue to push for restrictions on their travel to be lifted.
From the start, my aim was to reorient — but not rupture — relations with a country that’s been a strategic partner for 80 years. Today, Saudi Arabia has helped to restore unity among the six countries of Gulf Cooperation Council, has fully supported the truce in Yemen and is now working with my experts to help stabilize oil markets with other OPEC producers.
I know that there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia. My views on human rights are clear and long-standing, and fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad, as they will be during this trip, just as they will be in Israel and the West Bank.
As president, it is my job to keep our country strong and secure. We have to counter Russia’s aggression, put ourselves in the best possible position to outcompete China, and work for greater stability in a consequential region of the world. To do these things, we have to engage directly with countries that can impact those outcomes. Saudi Arabia is one of them, and when I meet with Saudi leaders on Friday, my aim will be to strengthen a strategic partnership going forward that’s based on mutual interests and responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American values.
On Friday, I will also be the first president to fly from Israel to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. That travel will also be a small symbol of the budding relations and steps toward normalization between Israel and the Arab world, which my administration is working to deepen and expand. In Jiddah, leaders from across the region will gather, pointing to the possibility of a more stable and integrated Middle East, with the United States playing a vital leadership role.
Of course, the region remains full of challenges: Iran’s nuclear program and support for proxy groups, the Syrian civil war, food security crises exacerbated by Russia’s war against Ukraine, terrorist groups still operating in a number of countries, political gridlock in Iraq, Libya and Lebanon, and human rights standards that remain behind much of the world. We must address all these issues. When I meet with leaders from across the region, I will make clear how important it is to make progress in these areas.
Still, compared to 18 months ago, the region is less pressurized and more integrated. Former rivals have reestablished relations. Joint infrastructure projects are forging new partnerships. Iraq, which had long been a source of proxy conflicts and regional rivalries, now serves as a platform for diplomacy, including between Saudi Arabia and Iran. My friend King Abdullah of Jordan recently referred to the “new vibe” in the region, with countries asking, “how can we connect with each other and work with each other.”
These are promising trends, which the United States can strengthen in a way no other country can. My travel next week will serve that purpose.
Throughout my journey, I’ll have in mind the millions of Americans who served in the region, including my son Beau, and the 7,054 who died in conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001.
Next week, I will be the first president to visit the Middle East since 9/11 without U.S. troops engaged in a combat mission there. It’s my aim to keep it that way.
13. PH, US renew cooperation in various areas under Marcos administration
A lot of work to manage this alliance in the coming years under the Marcos regime.
PH, US renew cooperation in various areas under Marcos administration
Published Jul 10, 2022 3:16:05 PM
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 10) — The Philippines and the United States have renewed their commitment to working together in achieving common targets in various areas under the Marcos administration.
In a tweet, Foreign Affairs Secretary Enrique Manalo said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed in their recent call Washington’s commitment to the Philippines “as equal and sovereign partner in promoting peace, prosperity and international law-based order in the region.”
Spoke w/ @SecBlinken. Appreciate US commitment to alliance and to PH as equal and sovereign partner in promoting peace, prosperity & international law-based order in the region.
— Enrique A. Manalo (@SecManalo) July 10, 2022
Manalo also said the Philippines and US agreed to continue working together in building resilient supply chains, addressing climate crisis and transitioning to clean energy.
Meanwhile, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in another statement that Blinken highlighted the “increasing significance of the US-Philippine bilateral alliance to security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.” Blinken also noted the importance of respect for human rights and the rule of law.
Last week, Manalo met with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and discussed maintaining and building on the positive trend of relations between the two countries, with Wang saying Beijing commits to work with Manila to further deepen bilateral ties.
14. The Other Special Relationship (US and Israel)
Excerpts:
aght, which now dominates the "pro-Israel" issue. Before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in fact, enthusiasm for Israel was more characteristic of the American left, which saw the Jewish state not only as the haven of an embattled minority but also a model of democratic socialism. This perception of Israel was somewhat mythological—as is the image of a Jewish Sparta that has largely replaced it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't sincerely believed by many ordinary Americans—or the politicians who took their opinions seriously.
But Mead's riposte to Vulcan theory isn't limited to Middle East policy. This large, somewhat ungainly book exceeds the boundaries of its nominal subject in mounting a case against any attempt to reduce American foreign policy to the mechanistic calculation of quantifiable interests. This kind of Vulcanism—more like Spock than Le Verrier—simply fails to understand the influence of ideas, culture, and history on America's intensely moralistic politics. Although it's unlikely to change any readers' views about U.S. relations with Israel, The Arc of a Covenant sheds welcome light on why they have been—and remain—so distinctively, often frustratingly, special.
The Other Special Relationship - Washington Free Beacon
REVIEW: 'The Arc of a Covenant' by Walter Russell Mead
This week, President Joe Biden will visit Israel as part of a longer tour of the Middle East. The visit was stimulated by an invitation in April from former prime minister Naftali Bennett. Just three months later, Biden will face a caretaker government heading for elections and an agenda dominated by high oil prices and hopes of containing Russian influence. Relations with the Palestinian Authority have also been roiled by an inconclusive State Department report about the death of the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Despite these unsettled conditions, we can expect Biden to echo John F. Kennedy in proclaiming a "special relationship" between the United States and the State of Israel.
But why should that special relationship exist? There is an obvious difference in scale between America's 330 million inhabitants and continental territories and the state of Israel, which comprises around 10 million people in a territory the size of New Jersey. There are also ideological differences. At least since World War II, many Americans have embraced a creedal nationalism open to everyone who consents to the Constitution and its underlying principles. According to a law passed in 2018, by contrast, Israel is the "nation state of the Jewish People," which offers legal citizenship but not full inclusion to ethnic and religious minorities. While its relative power is waning, the United States remains the world's only superpower and sustains military, political, and economic connections throughout the world. Israel's interests have grown far-flung compared with the state's early days. But they remain focused on its immediate neighborhood.
Walter Russell Mead's The Arc of a Covenant is the most recent attempt to resolve this question. The book ranges widely through periods and sources. At bottom, though, Mead argues that American culture has a deep affinity for the idea of a Jewish state in the biblical promised land.
Although it does not require personal faith, Mead argues that affinity has religious origins. It was born from the British Reformation, which emphasized widespread reading of the Bible, including portions of what Christians consider the "Old Testament" focused on the political history of the Israelites. English-speaking Protestants also developed theologies of covenant, according to which God establishes legal arrangements with human peoples, conditional on their fulfillment of divine purposes. Above all, many Protestants concluded that God was not yet done with the Jews. While proclaiming Scotland, England, or Britain's American colonies to be a kind of "new Israel," they also insisted that the Lord was still working on and through the original chosen people.
These ideas were particularly influential among the Puritan settlers of New England, whose identification with the biblical narrative is reflected in towns called Salem or Sharon and multitudinous sons named Joseph, Samuel, and Josiah. But they were nationalized and, to some extent, secularized in the late 18th century, when the liberation of the biblical Israel from slavery became one of the favored metaphors of the revolutionary period. As the independent United States expanded, Americans also found inspiration in the narrative of a covenantal people struggling through the wilderness. This version of manifest destiny would later be refracted through popular narratives of Western settlement. Encouraged by Hollywood, Americans still perceive Israelis as heroic bearers of civilization defending themselves against savage resistance.
Unlike more apologetic accounts, Mead is careful to acknowledge that philo-Hebraic religion and popular culture did not necessarily involve friendly attitudes toward living Jews. American Christians were mostly horrified by the kind of murderous Jew-hatred that became increasingly evident in Europe as the 19th century wore on. As persecution and violence drove more Jews to the United States, though, Jews were often included—and sometimes emphasized—in arguments that undesirable immigration threatened liberty, prosperity, and virtue. Mead points out that sympathy for the nascent Zionist movement offered a kind of escape valve for old-stock Americans who were squeamish about the increasing Jewish population but also allergic to outright anti-Semitism. The Jews were a nation, with the same dignity and rights as all the others, the logic went. Therefore, they should inhabit their own land and practice their own customs rather than subverting, intentionally or otherwise, the American way of life.
The implication that Jews deserve a home of their own, but at a safe distance, helps explain the historical resistance of most American Jews to the Zionist movement. Among the paradoxes of the "special relationship" is that it often seems to connect American Christians with Israeli Jews, leaving their American cousins out of the picture. Before the Second World War, the American Jewish establishment distanced itself from Zionism, insisting that the United States was the modern promised land. It was only after the exposure of Nazi horrors and the recognition that the United States would not accept large numbers of Jewish refugees that many American Jews embraced Zionism—usually at the level of abstract principle rather than as a personal goal. Some of the old resistance has even returned in recent years. Inclined to religious and political liberalism, the American Jewish community has drifted away from an increasingly Orthodox and hawkish Israeli society.
Mead is not naïve about the geopolitical incentives that drew the United States closer to Israel around the middle of the 20th century. The book's most original chapters explain how American strategists came to regard Israel as an ally in the Cold War. This process was slower and more tentative than conventional accounts suggest. When Kennedy offered his dramatic assurance to Meir, Mead notes, France and West Germany were still Israel's major suppliers of weapons. And Kennedy's goal was not to unleash Israeli power, but provide security assurances that might dissuade Israel from pursuing nuclear weapons.
Still, Mead mounts a compelling critique of what he calls "Vulcan theory"—a reference not to Star Trek but to the 19th-century theory that irregularities in the orbit of Mercury were caused by a hitherto unknown planet (dubbed "Vulcan" by the French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier). Mead adopts the term to describe a different way of accounting for the apparently disproportionate role of Israel in American foreign policy. In this view, cultural affinities and overlapping priorities are not sufficient explanations of the close, though not codified, alliance. There must be some sinister explanation, often linked to the dual loyalties of Jews or eschatological hopes of evangelical Christians.
But there's no need to make such dubious assumptions. American support for the state of Israel since 1948 is sufficiently explained by mainstream public opinion, including a predilection for the perceived underdog. Nor are these views limited to the right, which now dominates the "pro-Israel" issue. Before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, in fact, enthusiasm for Israel was more characteristic of the American left, which saw the Jewish state not only as the haven of an embattled minority but also a model of democratic socialism. This perception of Israel was somewhat mythological—as is the image of a Jewish Sparta that has largely replaced it. But that doesn't mean it wasn't sincerely believed by many ordinary Americans—or the politicians who took their opinions seriously.
But Mead's riposte to Vulcan theory isn't limited to Middle East policy. This large, somewhat ungainly book exceeds the boundaries of its nominal subject in mounting a case against any attempt to reduce American foreign policy to the mechanistic calculation of quantifiable interests. This kind of Vulcanism—more like Spock than Le Verrier—simply fails to understand the influence of ideas, culture, and history on America's intensely moralistic politics. Although it's unlikely to change any readers' views about U.S. relations with Israel, The Arc of a Covenant sheds welcome light on why they have been—and remain—so distinctively, often frustratingly, special.
The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People
by Walter Russell Mead
Knopf, 672 pp., $35
Samuel Goldman, an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, is the author of After Nationalism and God's Country: Christian Zionism in America.
15. Russia in "quiet mobilization" as 22k vacancies show army losses: Ukraine
Excerpts:
Multiple job adverts throughout Russia referencing "mobilization training" were posted on the HeadHunter website, with one advert for the Department of Internal Affairs in the north-western district of Moscow, stating that applicants would be required to carry out a range of tasks, including developing and adjusting "mobilization planning documents," and implementing "special decisions of federal executive bodies in terms of mobilization readiness and mobilization training."
Another job posting for a "security department employee" for a Moscow federal tax service said that the applicant will be responsible for "mobilization preparation" related to wartime activities and in martial law and a state of emergency.
The Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation cited British intelligence as suggesting that a lack of resources forced Russian troops to take a break shortly after Moscow claimed a major victory in seizing the Luhansk region in Ukraine's east.
Putin, during a meeting with Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu on July 4, said all units involved in the offensive in Luhansk should rest to "build up strength" and "increase their combat capabilities."
Ukraine's armed forces say about 37,300 Russian troops have been killed since the war began, although Russia has not confirmed those figures. On March 25, a Russian general told state media that 1,351 soldiers had been killed and 3,825 were wounded.
Russia in "quiet mobilization" as 22k vacancies show army losses: Ukraine
Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · July 10, 2022
Russia is carrying out a "quiet mobilization" through its regional employment centers, according to a report from Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council.
According to the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation under the country's National Security and Defense Council, Russian authorities are continuing to recruit contract workers en masse without announcing war mobilization.
Russian President Vladimir Putin launched what he called a "special military operation" against Ukraine on February 24, but the leader has not announced mobilization. Declaring all-out war on Ukraine would allow Putin under Russian law to draft conscripts and mobilize reserve forces.
In a post on the Telegram messaging app, the center said it found job vacancies for more than 20,000 Russian contract workers.
"More than 22,200 vacancies for contract servicemen have appeared in regional employment centers of the Russian Federation," it said.
At least seven units that fought in Ukraine posted vacancies for the recruitment of snipers, gunners, drivers, sanitary instructors and other specialists, the report added.
In this picture taken on April 13, 2022, a Russian soldier stands guard at the Luhansk power plant in the town of Shchastya. Russia is carrying out a “quiet mobilization” through its employment centers, according to a report from Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images
Some of these units are the 64th Motor Rifle Brigade from the Khabarovsk region (military unit number 51460) and the 104th Guards Air Assault Regiment (military unit number 32515), which Ukraine alleges were involved in the killings and torture of civilians in the city of Bucha, near Kyiv, in April, the report states.
The center also found that the 37th Motor Rifle Brigade (military unit number 69647) from Buryatia, which reportedly has the second-highest number of casualties, is looking to recruit the highest number of Russian contact servicemen.
The Center for Countering Disinformation suggested that these thousands of vacancies indicate the losses of the Russian army, and "the general problem with the recruitment of military personnel."
Previously, a search by Newsweek on a local recruiting website in May found more than a dozen job adverts hiring recruits in mobilization training and work in wartime.
Multiple job adverts throughout Russia referencing "mobilization training" were posted on the HeadHunter website, with one advert for the Department of Internal Affairs in the north-western district of Moscow, stating that applicants would be required to carry out a range of tasks, including developing and adjusting "mobilization planning documents," and implementing "special decisions of federal executive bodies in terms of mobilization readiness and mobilization training."
Another job posting for a "security department employee" for a Moscow federal tax service said that the applicant will be responsible for "mobilization preparation" related to wartime activities and in martial law and a state of emergency.
The Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation cited British intelligence as suggesting that a lack of resources forced Russian troops to take a break shortly after Moscow claimed a major victory in seizing the Luhansk region in Ukraine's east.
Putin, during a meeting with Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu on July 4, said all units involved in the offensive in Luhansk should rest to "build up strength" and "increase their combat capabilities."
Ukraine's armed forces say about 37,300 Russian troops have been killed since the war began, although Russia has not confirmed those figures. On March 25, a Russian general told state media that 1,351 soldiers had been killed and 3,825 were wounded.
Newsweek has contacted Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.
Newsweek · by Isabel van Brugen · July 10, 2022
16. ‘We need heavy weaponry’: A top Ukrainian official tells Grid what Kyiv needs to defeat Russia as fierce fighting shifts east
‘We need heavy weaponry’: A top Ukrainian official tells Grid what Kyiv needs to defeat Russia as fierce fighting shifts east
How Ukrainian forces hope to hold the line in eastern Ukraine.
The war in Ukraine has increasingly become the war in eastern Ukraine, as Russia focuses its attention on capturing territory there. It claimed a significant victory there just days ago, with Russian President Vladimir Putin declaring victory in the province of Luhansk, and reports from the front line now point to growing Russian aggression across the neighboring province of Donetsk.
The Kremlin’s focus there is evident in the way it has boosted its military resources in the region, including its capabilities from the air — and that has made the Ukrainian need for international arms supplies increasingly urgent, according to Oleksandr Zvitnevich, the head of the Ukrainian Parliament’s national security, defense and intelligence committee.
“We need heavy weaponry — air defense systems, given what Russia has done to expand its ability to fight from the sky. We need missile systems, more of those systems, that can be deployed easily along the front line and can be moved,” Zvitnevich — a key member of the country’s defense and security establishment — told Grid.
During an interview in his office located inside the heavily fortified government quarter of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, Zvitnevich said he was confident that ultimately Ukraine would prevail — but only if it continued to receive military support from its international partners, including the United States.
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“We have been using the American HIMARS systems — [High Mobility] Artillery Rocket Systems, a mobile rocket launcher — which have been deployed along the front line. It is a very effective, accurate and powerful weapon,” he told Grid. But he added: “We are always calling for more weaponry, given Russia’s refusal to pull back its troops. … The need for strong air defense systems in particular is growing all the time. We have Soviet-era systems, but they are not enough to cover our entire territory.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Grid: Let’s begin with the recent news out of the east — Russia only days ago said it had full control over the eastern Luhansk region. Can you bring us up to speed on where the conflict stands in eastern Ukraine?
Oleksandr Zvitnevich: When it comes to the current situation in the east, it’s important not to measure success or failure on the front only by square meters on any given day. We are waging war with all available means to resist the invasion. It is brutal, and it is intense. The focus for our forces is to fight back against Russia and also to keep our troops safe. It is imperative that we do keep our soldiers safe as much as is possible.
And so, what I can say about the situation in the east is that it is evolving, and it is evolving in the sense that the fighting is continuing and that the decisions are being taken from a military perspective. If we pull back in any place, it is because it fits with our military goals, particularly when you consider that we are still waiting for a lot of weaponry from our international partners. So we have to be strategic.
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In certain areas along the front line, Russia has an advantage because of its weapons system. Sometimes, it is a big advantage.
In Luhansk, our troops ran the risk of being encircled by Russian forces. So we had to move to prevent such a situation. We always have the bigger goal of resisting invasion in front of us when we make such decisions.
G: You say that you are still waiting on weaponry from your partners. Now, we’ve seen, over the past several months, pledges, and indeed deliveries, to support Ukraine’s war effort — from the U.S., European countries, others. Could you elaborate on what specifically you’re waiting on — any specific weapons systems or battlefield supplies that you need urgently?
OZ: From the first days of the war, what we have been calling for are mobile artillery systems. That is a general need. And we have been receiving support. We have been using the American HIMARS systems — [High Mobility] Artillery Rocket Systems, a mobile rocket launcher — which have been deployed along the front line. It is a very effective, accurate and powerful weapon.
Without going into specifics, because the supply of arms is a sensitive matter, we are always calling for more weaponry, given Russia’s refusal to pull back its troops. The Russian tactic is to fire very heavy rockets from the air and the ground. We have to do everything we can to respond and defend ourselves.
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We have been very open and transparent with our partners about our needs, and they have responded. The main thing here, with our partners, is trust. When we call for more weapons, we are doing it because we are fighting to defend our country and also to defend the idea of democracy.
G: Let’s discuss weapons a little further — and in particular, the issue of training. You’re receiving weapons from various countries. The U.S., but also European nations, and in many cases, your military is trained to use Soviet-era systems. Could you tell us how the transition is going in terms of training — the switch first from Soviet-style systems to NATO weapons, and then in the latter category, the variety of different systems from sources?
OZ: The transition is going well. What is important to note is that this is an inevitable transition for Ukraine, and we were already on this path even before the war. We’ve been working to implement NATO standards. The war has of course brought an urgency to this.
Since 2014, we have had several interactions with the NATO alliance; our soldiers and officers have learned a lot, and that is proving helpful now on the front line.
The training they get now, meanwhile, is done in coordination with our partners. You’re right that we have received many different systems. But we have also received help with using these systems in terms of guidance and ways to train our forces.
But the main point is the one I made before. This transition has been made more urgent by the war, but it was already happening, and it was happening for an important reason. When it comes to the Soviet-era weapons, many are technically obsolete. Some of them can be modernized, and we have worked on that and continue to do so. But there is a big difference between the Soviet-era systems and the ones from NATO and the U.S. It’s evident on the battlefield.
G: What about — beyond the use of these new systems — their maintenance? Have you had any assistance to train your forces to maintain, say, the U.S.-supplied systems? Is that ongoing, and could you say anything about how and where it is taking place?
OZ: We are in talks with our international partners to open service centers on our territory, at least for the larger weapons systems that we are using now. We have already tried to adapt by calling on the resources we have here right now to help with maintenance. But this effort continues as we focus on expanding our ability to service the new systems locally.
G: What are your chief concerns right now, in terms of resources and weapons? What are you missing?
OZ: We need heavy weaponry — air defense systems, given what Russia has done to expand its ability to fight from the sky. We need missile systems, more of those systems, that can be deployed easily along the front line and can be moved.
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The need for strong air defense systems in particular is growing all the time. We have Soviet-era systems, but they are not enough to cover our entire territory. Moreover, we have never produced our own systems, here in Ukraine, when it comes to air defense. It is a complicate and sophisticated area, and we do need assistance there, more assistance.
Two other things to add on our needs and our concerns right now: We’ve talked about the need for arms, but the other main concern is logistics. The war has complicated the movement of resources. Before the invasion, we had air, sea routes, as well as railroads that were functioning. They are critical for moving important military resources. Russia has been attacking that infrastructure. That is another big area of focus, and one we have raised with our partners and with the international politicians who have visited us in Ukraine. We show them what Russia has done in our country. There is the human devastation that is there for the world to see. There is also a general devastation of the country that is also important to highlight.
Finally, we also need more of another kind of weapon — sanctions on Russia. We should not forget this, and we should not step back from this. That has been our message to our partners, and that remains our message. It is important to keep up the pressure on Russia, on the front line and also through international sanctions.
G: Now that we are into month five of the conflict, how do you see this ending? We’ve seen many of the Ukrainians who fled initially return to their country, and as we have discussed, we have seen the conflict become ever more concentrated in the east. Do you have any thoughts on how this will ultimately end?
OZ: If we are talking about the active phase of the war, where we are still actively engaging Russia on our territory, it is hard for me to say.
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To go back to what we have been talking about, it all depends on the resources we can get together from our partners. The faster we can get more weaponry, the faster we can push back Russia and the better we can defend ourselves. My best guess is that the active phase will be another two or three months, but we need to hold firm on the front line in the east. This is why I keep saying that we need more weapons.
This is a very difficult situation for all of us in Ukraine, and especially for the Ukrainian army as it tries to make sure that Russia doesn’t expand its footprint. Everyone — ordinary civilians in Ukraine, our international partners — needs to do what they can to support our army to bring victory closer.
Thanks to Lillian Barkley for copy editing this article.
17. Norwegian air chief wants ‘Nordic Air Operations Center’ if Sweden, Finland join NATO
Seems logical to me.
Norwegian air chief wants ‘Nordic Air Operations Center’ if Sweden, Finland join NATO - Breaking Defense
“I think [a Nordic air operations center] would be a benefit for us, and it can be a benefit for NATO,” said Maj. Gen. Rolf Folland, chief of the Royal Norwegian Air Force.
Norway’s F-35s flew in the Arctic Challenge Exercise for the first time in 2021. (Norwegian Armed Forces/Matias Charman)
WASHINGTON: Norway’s top air force officer wants NATO to consider greenlighting a new “Nordic air operations center” to control air missions in the region, should Sweden and Finland ultimately be approved as new members of the transatlantic alliance.
Maj. Gen. Rolf Folland, chief of the Royal Norwegian Air Force, told Breaking Defense that he has already begun thinking about opportunities for better integration with Sweden and Finland’s air forces, with the air operations center the one he plans to “explore with my foreign colleagues the most.”
Adding Sweden and Finland air force’s to NATO more than doubles the number of fourth- and fifth-generation fighters currently planned to be fielded by the Nordic members of NATO. Last year, Finland announced plans to buy 64 F-35s to replace its aging Hornet fleet, and Sweden is in the process of a buying at least 60 Gripen E/Fs.
Meanwhile, of the Nordic countries currently with NATO membership, Norway plans to field a fighter force of 52 F-35s by 2025, and Denmark is replacing its F-16s with 27 F-35s. (Iceland, which does not have an air force, receives air policing support from NATO members.)
“If we can plan to use this force in a holistic, joint, combined manner” under Headquarters Allied Air Command based at Ramstein Air Base in Germany “I think this would be a benefit for us, and it can be a benefit for NATO,” Follard said.
While Follard didn’t go into details on how a Nordic air operations center would fit into NATO’s existing command and control structure, NATO’s Headquarters Allied Air Command at Ramstein already oversees a number of subordinate units elsewhere in Europe. That list currently includes the two Combined Air Operations Centres at Uedem, Germany and Torrejón, Spain, as well as the Deployable Air Command and Control Centre at Poggio Renatico, Italy.
On July 5, ambassadors for the current NATO countries signed off on “accession protocols” indicating their support of Sweden and Finland’s membership in the alliance. Those protocols must now be ratified by every member’s legislature for the process to move forward. As of July 7, eight of the 30 NATO nations — Canada, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Estonia, UK, Albania, Poland — had already approved the new members:
If Sweden and Finland are permitted to join NATO, alliance members will control the entire Scandinavian Peninsula — a unique landmass is connected to the rest of Europe by Russia, with the thinly populated countries of Norway, Sweden and Finland stretching north to south.
Currently, Norway, Sweden and Finland’s air forces all exercise together regularly through events such as the biennial Arctic Challenge, as well as share cross-border training agreements that allow the nations to bypass the need for lengthy diplomatic clearances for training events, Follard said.
“The only problem is that we could not integrate fully,” he said. “We could not plan together because we knew we didn’t have any guarantee that we actually would fight together. They could stay neutral [in a conflict involving the alliance].”
NATO membership for Finland and Sweden could erase those barriers, allowing the three nations’ air forces to share radar and sensor data gathered by military planes that cannot currently be exchanged among the countries, he said. Another big opportunity is the ability to conduct battle planning together.
“We might find out that we need to have different roles — Finland being close to the Russian [border], [and] we’d be fronting the Atlantic sea lines of obligations,” he said.
Follard’s comments echo those of Gen. Eirik Kristoffersen, Norway’s chief of defense, who told Breaking Defense in May that Norway should consider alternate ways of basing its forces once Finland and Sweden are approved to join NATO.
Historically, Norway has built its bases to accommodate NATO forces that would flow to the nation’s military installations in case of a war. However, if Sweden and Finland are integrated in NATO, the alliance will be able to conduct military planning for the defense of that region differently, Kristoffersen said.
“During the Cold War, we built up all these reception area staging, areas for allies,” he said. “Now you can include Finland and Sweden, which gives us even more terrain, more places and more airfields and more harbors.”
Follard agreed, saying that a NATO-allied Sweden and Finland could offer additional installations to which NATO can distribute forces during a crisis and could provide additional opportunity for staging critical maintenance and repair supplies so that aircraft can be fixed quickly during combat.
“With the long range precision missiles and missile technology that Russia is developing, it’s kind of naïve to think that [relying on Norway’s airbases] will be enough,” he said.
18. America’s Epidemic of Hate
But not through authoritarian control of the internet in my opinion.
I would say it is hard to define oneself as a patriot if one hates the political opponents within the nation's political system. Argue, disagree, campaign against, etc. But respect your political opposition and recognize they are just as patriotic despite having policy differences.
Excerpts:
Policymakers looking to prevent violent extremism and mass shootings should also expand their educational efforts in other ways. They need revamped public civic education that can strengthen commitments to inclusive democracy. They must work in collaboration with health and human services, the arts community, local parenting groups, and other organizations to cut back on public displays of hate. Communities need support to better recognize early warning signs and red flags of possible radicalization or violent mobilization, but they also need to know where to go to get more help or treatment options when they do see red flags—just as they would know how to do for any other problem, from eating disorders to sexual assault or addiction.
Governments, businesses, and communities should also, of course, look for ways to prohibit the spread of hateful online content itself. Social media companies have a particular responsibility to block radicalizing information. But Americans are fooling themselves if they think the country can ban or arrest its way out of violence. It is impossible to filter out all of the world’s harmful online content, and intelligence authorities and first responders can’t thwart every violent attack. It is time, then, for communities to systematically equip people with the tools they need to recognize and reject propaganda and disinformation, be it through attitudinal inoculation or work with parents, teachers, mental health counselors, coaches, and anyone else in a leadership position. Otherwise, domestic violent extremism will continue to fester and metastasize, putting more lives at risk.
America’s Epidemic of Hate
Stopping Mass Shootings Requires Combatting Online Extremism
July 8, 2022
The murder of seven parade attendees on July 4 in Highland Park, Illinois, was horrifying—and all too predictable. Over the past decade, there have been scores of mass killings across the United States. In 2012, a shooter murdered seven Sikh worshipers in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. In 2015, an assailant massacred nine Black people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. An attacker killed 23 Walmart shoppers in 2019 in El Paso, Texas. And on May 24 of this year, a shooter killed 21 people in Uvalde, Texas.
These episodes have no single formula, but recent assailants typically share a similar set of toxic traits: a history of murderous fantasies, violent nihilism, self-harm, or suicidal ideation; withdrawal from friends and family; and streaks of cruelty expressed through the torture or killing of animals, the stalking or harassing of women, or threats of rape and other physical harm. Investigators are still learning about the Highland Park assailant and his motive, but they know that the 21-year-old alleged shooter had threatened to kill his family and commit suicide. Similarly, the man charged with murdering ten Black Americans in June 2022 at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, had threatened to commit a murder-suicide and had written about stabbing and beheading a cat.
Many attackers, including the one in Buffalo, are domestic terrorists who specifically aim to kill minorities. But whether the assailants are ideological or not, they share another common feature: exposure to violent online content. The alleged Highland Park shooter spent time in toxic digital forums that glorified massacres, and he repeatedly posted violent imagery and videos online, including content suggesting he had “a plan and a desire to commit carnage.” The alleged Buffalo assailant was radicalized by white supremacist content he discovered on the Internet during the pandemic while he was, as he put it, “bored.” He was especially taken by material that promoted a conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement,” which falsely describes an orchestrated effort by Jews or Muslims to replace white, Christian civilization through immigration and demographic changes. Other recent acts of terrorism against Jews, Muslims, Latinos, and now Black people have also been motivated by this conspiracy theory. These attacks are then celebrated in online white supremacist communities as heroic acts of martyrdom, fueling more violence. My research lab has listed talk of the great replacement theory as the first warning sign for parents and caregivers that their children are being radicalized.
At this point, government officials, bystanders, and private companies have worked to find potential assailants based on the threatening online content they post and consume. But better reporting and response tools are Band-Aid solutions aimed at intervening in cases already egregious enough to warrant assessment. To truly prevent domestic terrorism and mass attacks, U.S. policymakers must focus not just on stopping dangerous individuals but on counteracting the online worlds they inhabit. Instead of concentrating its response at the end point of radicalization—the time right before an attack—the government should work to stop individuals from engaging with online hate and harm to begin with.
HATE HAS A HOME
In the digital world, hate is commonplace. People see violent material and disinformation not just on sketchy Web forums but on popular platforms such as TikTok, Roblox, Steam, Twitch, DLive, and Discord. (The latter four platforms are widely used by online gamers.) These places also serve as conduits for harassment. Users of Discord, for instance, are known to engage in “raiding,” in which members of marginalized groups are spammed with hostile content. Such harassment further compounds hatred. Research shows that people who engage in harmful online behavior such as trolling, harassment, or doxxing are more likely to be persuaded by white supremacist views. They may then join the ranks of the millions of white, overwhelmingly male Americans who lurk on supremacist platforms: websites that degrade marginalized groups and promote violence. Some of these sites refer to successful terrorist actors as “saints” and potential emulators as “disciples.” They can feature memes with scoreboard-style “kill counts.”
Although it is tempting to view these forums as—almost exclusively—places where the already extreme mingle, plot, and grow more radicalized, people who do not espouse violence also sometimes find themselves on platforms that traffic in dehumanizing content. They, too, can then become desensitized to the material. Some will follow hyperlink after hyperlink into an ever-deeper rabbit hole of us-versus-them thinking that calls for violence.
Some white supremacist sites refer to successful terrorist actors as “saints.”
At their most extreme, these sites feature posters who vie to upload increasingly violent and offensive imagery—including child pornography and images of torture or mass harm—to prove their resolve. But dangerous content doesn’t need to be explicit. The Internet is awash in material that glorifies violence by embedding it in coded speech, memes, or cartoons that use satire and irony to maintain plausible deniability, allowing peddlers to brush off critics as “snowflakes” who can’t take a joke.
Young people are especially vulnerable to this kind of programming. American teenagers spend more than half their waking hours online—averaging nine hours per day of screen time—and 64 percent of them report encountering hateful content on social media. Adults, who spend less time online, often fail to recognize just how widespread and normalized online toxicity is. Young people, meanwhile, often regard it as normal. Before he killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, the alleged assailant regularly threatened teen girls online with kidnapping, rape, and murder. He spent time in toxic online subcultures where he posted images of dead cats, and he threatened to shoot his grandmother and children at school. Although plenty of youth observed the alleged shooter’s digital rage, many dismissed it as simply a product of, as one teenager put it, “what online is.” One teen did report the alleged assailant to the social media app Yubo, but he said that the app failed to respond.
Unfortunately, the United States doesn’t do much better at monitoring and catching dangerous offline behavior. The alleged Buffalo shooter was referred for a psychiatric evaluation after telling his high school classmates he wanted to carry out mass violence, but he was released. When he graduated from high school two weeks later, investigators stopped paying attention to his case. Within a year, he had targeted and murdered Black Americans.
EXTREMIST IMMUNITY
U.S. policymakers are aware that existing approaches have not succeeded in stopping domestic extremism, and they are working to catch up. In June 2021, the Biden administration issued the country’s first-ever national strategy for countering domestic terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security reorganized its terrorism prevention efforts, including by launching regional offices across the country. And within a week of the Buffalo shooting, New York Governor Kathy Hochul ordered a comprehensive review of the state’s procedures for addressing violent extremism and laid out a pathway for reform. (Many policymakers have also proposed stricter gun laws, which have almost eliminated mass shootings in Australia and the United Kingdom, but these effective measures have virtually no chance of being enacted in the United States.)
The scramble to better respond to domestic extremism has resulted in useful new initiatives and tools. The U.S. government and its state and local counterparts have better reporting systems than they did just a few years ago. They also have new law enforcement training on how to recognize warning signs, as well as bystander intervention and crisis training that can reduce the lethality of violent attacks. Hochul has established a state-level unit dedicated to stopping domestic terrorism. Yet these measures, although all important, are incomplete. To truly curb terrorism and other episodes of mass violence, policymakers need to tackle hateful digital content itself.
This might seem like a tall order, given the United States’ strong free speech protections. But limiting the reach of extremist content doesn’t require censorship. Decades of public health research shows that people can develop resistance to even subtle attempts at persuasion through what is called “attitudinal inoculation,” which helps people build mental resistance to dangerous messaging by showing them a small amount of harmful content along with an explanation of how it seeks to influence their views. Attitudinal inoculation works because people don’t like to find out they are being manipulated. As a result, when individuals learn that someone is trying to sway them, they typically reject that person’s advances.
Over the past two years, my research lab has found that this approach can be successfully applied to online disinformation. In partnership with Jigsaw, a unit of Google focused on improving Internet safety, our team showed participants online videos that prebunked various conspiracy theories and propaganda. In our study, the participants who watched an inoculation video about white supremacist propaganda were significantly less likely to support the messaging than were the noninoculated participants. Watchers also found the source of the propaganda less credible, and they were less willing to offer financial, ideological, or logistical support to violent extremists. Similarly, people who watched inoculation videos about anti-vaccine propaganda were less likely to support sharing vaccine misinformation and disinformation than were the control groups. They were also more willing to get a COVID-19 shot. This process may seem time consuming, but it isn’t. Our studies show that inoculation videos as short as 30 seconds—the length of a commercial advertisement—are effective at countering online propaganda.
TEACHING TOLERANCE
Yet as useful as it is, attitudinal inoculation cannot by itself stop radicalization. It is still not clear, for example, how long the resistance it confers lasts or whether inoculation against one form of propaganda might confer some resistance against another. Inoculation, then, is just one part of what needs to be a comprehensive effort to address online harms. States must also work to stop violent racism and misogyny from being normalized by teaching about it and other forms of exclusion and inequality so that people know to challenge dehumanizing content or jokes before they encounter them. When children with questions about race and gender do not have trusted sources of information, they are more vulnerable to false explanations offered by conspiracy theories and online propaganda.
To teach about issues surrounding race and gender, schools will need to actively educate students about the roots of hatred and discrimination whenever they can. This won’t be easy, given that teaching about racism has become deeply politicized. But there are ways to teach about hate and discrimination that can get around very troubling government efforts to banish race from classroom discussions. A group of college students in my lab, for example, recently won a Department of Homeland Security college competition aimed at stopping attacks by making an animated video about misinformation, paired with lesson plans for elementary school students. The video takes place in an elementary school full of anthropomorphized animals, and it shares the story of a new student, a duck named Daniel, who is excluded by the other animals because they encountered online misinformation about ducks being dumb. By not using humans, it teaches children to empathize with those who are different from them while not reinforcing harmful stereotypes.
Policymakers looking to prevent violent extremism and mass shootings should also expand their educational efforts in other ways. They need revamped public civic education that can strengthen commitments to inclusive democracy. They must work in collaboration with health and human services, the arts community, local parenting groups, and other organizations to cut back on public displays of hate. Communities need support to better recognize early warning signs and red flags of possible radicalization or violent mobilization, but they also need to know where to go to get more help or treatment options when they do see red flags—just as they would know how to do for any other problem, from eating disorders to sexual assault or addiction.
Governments, businesses, and communities should also, of course, look for ways to prohibit the spread of hateful online content itself. Social media companies have a particular responsibility to block radicalizing information. But Americans are fooling themselves if they think the country can ban or arrest its way out of violence. It is impossible to filter out all of the world’s harmful online content, and intelligence authorities and first responders can’t thwart every violent attack. It is time, then, for communities to systematically equip people with the tools they need to recognize and reject propaganda and disinformation, be it through attitudinal inoculation or work with parents, teachers, mental health counselors, coaches, and anyone else in a leadership position. Otherwise, domestic violent extremism will continue to fester and metastasize, putting more lives at risk.
19. US air defense system delivery hopes to save Kiev
It would seem like a good thing to test the system under the harshest combat conditions. But we also must be observant for how the enemy adjusts his TTPs to try to defeat it. Hopefully we will identify weaknesses and correct them and thereby be better able to defend US targets in the future.
US air defense system delivery hopes to save Kiev
NASAMS is same system that protects the White House’s air space but significantly has never been proven in battle
NASAMS is same system that protects the White House’s air space but significantly has never been proven in battle
There is no word yet from Ukraine where NASAMS will be deployed once it arrives. NASAMS might be deployed to protect the Mariinski Palace, the official residence of Ukraine’s president, or the “secret” area where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is holed up in a bunker.
The main concern is that Russia might attack Ukraine’s capital and renew its effort to topple the Ukrainian government. Supplying the NASAMS system to Ukraine indicates Washington’s assessment that it cannot defend against cruise missiles and Kiev may be in danger.
The most important threat is Russia’s 3M54 Kalibr cruise missile, which can be launched from ships, submarines and aircraft. Russia also has a gaggle of different multiple launch rocket systems (Grad, Uragan, Smerch, Tornado) and tactical ballistic missiles (Iskander, Tochka and Tochka-U) as well as self-propelled and towed artillery.
NASAMS has been tested against simulated cruise missiles but it has never been used in battle. It isn’t clear how soon Ukraine will actually get NASAMS but Washington has promised two units. The system is made by Raytheon in the United States and by Kongsberg in Norway. It is unclear if the system can be supported without contractor help.
NASAMS can be classed as a system that uses adapted air-to-air missiles for land-based air defense. In the US, air-to-air missiles including the Sidewinder AIM-9 and Sparrow AIM-7 have been adapted for land-based air defense. Israel has adapted its Python and Derby missiles in a land-based system made by Rafael called Spyder.
Similarly, man-portable (MANPADS) ground-to-air missiles including Stinger FIM-92 can be mounted on vehicles and fired from launchers. The Russians have done the same thing with their Dzhigit, a support launch system for the Russian IGLA-S MANPADS.
NASAMS can fire different types of missiles – the AIM-120 AMRAAM medium-range air-to-air missile, the FIM-92 Stinger, AIM-9 Sidewinder and the German IRIS-T air-to-air missile.
NASAMS has now added an extended range version which is a mash-up of an AIM-120 seeker head and the rocket and guidance package of the US Navy’s Evolved Sea Sparrow (RIM-162), originally based on the Sparrow air-to-air missile. It is not known if Washington will supply the ER version to Ukraine.
AIM-120 is a radar-guided missile. Stinger, Sidewinder, IRIS-T are infra-red homing missiles (looking for heat signatures of threats). Stinger combines infrared and ultraviolet sensors.
Missile threats often approach their targets well after their engines have burned out and there is little or no heat signature, making radar sensing all-important, whereas cruise missiles stay powered all the way to the target. In the case of some versions of the Russian Kalibr cruise missile, there also is an auxiliary rocket that speeds up the missile during the terminal phase of its trajectory.
US and NATO take a risk
Because Ukraine is an active war zone involving Russian forces, Washington is taking a security risk by providing NASAMS to Ukraine. Parts or all of NASMS could be captured by Russian forces.
NASAMS are used by NATO countries including Norway, Lithuania, Netherlands, Spain and Hungary. Future NATO member Finland also uses NASAMS. Any compromise of the NASAMS in Ukraine will weaken core NATO air defenses in the future.
NASAMS in action. Photo: Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace
Beyond the NATO threat, sensitive and classified information about the NASAMS seeker head and radar could be used to harden Russian weapons against NASAMS or for targeting sensitive installations or for undermining Washington’s air defenses.
On September 11, 2001, the US Capitol was targeted by al-Qaeda terrorists commandeering hijacked commercial aircraft. The Pentagon, now protected by the NASAMS system but not in 2001, was seriously damaged when American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, crashed into the western side of the building, near its helipad.
Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure at Kurais and Abquaiq was hit by Iranian drones and cruise missiles on September 14, 2019. The Iranian cruise missile was a Soumar type, based on the Russian KH-55 cruise missile.
These locations were protected by French and Swiss short-range air defenses (Crotale and Oerlikon) and longer-range US Patriot air defense installations. None of them reacted or responded in any significant way to the Iranian attack, even though Iran launched at least 25 cruise missiles and drones against Abquaiq and Kurais.
NASAMS is a fairly sophisticated air defense system that has only been tested on a mock cruise missile and has not seen active combat.
How it works
Early missile radars built into the nose of the missile stayed on after launch until impact. This made it easy to detect the missiles and to apply countermeasures and jamming.
The NASAM interceptor has a range of 30 to 50 kilometers (18.6 to 31 miles), although in practice the range is probably less. How well the NASAMS will do against Russia’s Kalibr cruise missiles isn’t known.
Kalibr is said to be capable of evading active air defenses and electronic countermeasures. In addition, the Russians are good at jamming and will likely go after the NASAMS telemetry radio link.
According to reports coming out of Ukraine, the Russians have been slowly degrading Ukraine’s air defense systems, including through the destruction of several S-300s and other air defense systems such as the BUK.
While hard data is lacking, the fact that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a deal with Slovakia to provide one S-300 system to Ukraine indicates that Ukraine’s air defenses need reinforcement. Germany also said in June that it would deliver its IRIS-T short-range air defense system to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia has consolidated its position in Luhansk and is now preparing a new offensive in Donetsk. Defense expert Jouni Laari has summed it up this way:
“Russia has concentrated a total of 60 battalion tactical groups (BTGs) in the Izium-Lyman-Bilohorivka-Bakhmut area” –20 BTGs each in the directions of Izium, Lyman and Belohorska-Bakhmut. “The Ukrainians defending the corresponding area have altogether 20 battalions.”
While Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a tactical pause, it is likely the Russians will continue to try to grind down and even trap Ukraine’s remaining forces.
US Marines conduct a fire mission with a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System during an Expeditionary Advance Base Operation exercise at the Northern Training Area in Okinawa, Japan, on June 18, 2020. Photo: US Marine Corps / Corporal Donovan Massieperez
Russia has also announced that it has knocked out two HIMARS rocket systems in a depot at Kramatorsk and destroyed the radars of an S-300 in the Limany area in the Mykolaiv region. Ukraine has denied these reports.
The main, unspoken fear in Washington and London is that Russia’s real objective is regime change. At the start of the Ukraine war, Russia tried to use special operators to decapitate Ukraine’s leadership in Kiev. Failing in this and tactically outmaneuvered around Ukraine’s capital, Russian forces pulled back.
But there is now a renewed danger of a Russian military breakthrough and attacks on Kiev that could include air attacks and the use of tactical and cruise missiles.
Putin is warning that Russia is “just getting started” in Ukraine. That helps explain why the NASAMS could play an important defensive role in protecting Ukraine’s government, provided they get there in time.
But it needs to be kept in mind that Russia has many different offensive systems it can use against Kiev, if it decides to do so. Moreover, it is uncertain how effective the deployment of NASAMS will be in Ukraine or whether it can save the Ukrainian government.
20. US Sending ‘Billions’ to Fund Ukraine Government Operations
News you can get from VOA executing its mission to explain US policy to foreign audiences.
US Sending ‘Billions’ to Fund Ukraine Government Operations
July 09, 2022 7:03 PM
Washington —
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started in February, talks of support for Kyiv have largely centered around weapons and ammunition. But Washington is also sending large amounts of money to fund Ukrainian government operations, U.S. officials said this week, as U.S. and European officials affirmed support for Ukraine’s reconstruction, following the conclusion of the recent Lugano Conference.
The United States is “proud to be the largest single country donor to Ukraine” and will be delivering “billions more of assistance” in the coming months, announced Karen Donfried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, at an event in Washington on Thursday. Those sums include “billions in needed direct budget assistance,” she said.
Washington has provided $2.3 billion in direct budget support to the government of Ukraine since Moscow launched its attack, a State Department representative told VOA, adding that the support is channeled through World Bank mechanisms. Kyiv received “two tranches of $500 million each on April 29 and May 20, and $1.3 billion on June 29,” the representative said.
The government of Ukraine is using the money to pay government salaries, meet pension obligations, maintain hospitals and schools, and protect critical infrastructure, the State Department representative said.
The Biden administration intends to work with Congress to provide Kyiv with an additional $6.2 billion in direct budget support over the next five months, drawing from funds set aside in the second supplemental bill signed by President Joe Biden on May 21, the representative told VOA.
In addition, the administration is devoting about $1 billion from the first and second Ukraine supplemental appropriations to support the Ukrainian government’s continuity of operations at the national, regional and local levels, support for the health sector, agricultural production, civil society, programs to hold Russia and its forces accountable for their actions in Ukraine.
Karen Donfried, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, spoke at the Ukraine House on July 7, 2022 in Washington.
Thursday’s event where Donfried spoke was co-hosted by the Swiss and Ukrainian Embassies in Washington, marking the conclusion of the Lugano Conference, co-hosted by Switzerland and Ukraine July 4-5 in the southern Swiss town. The conference focused on the rebuilding of Ukraine and drew nearly 60 official delegations, along with representatives from the private sector and civil society.
Jacques Pitteloud, Swiss ambassador to the United States, shared with the audience gathered at the Ukraine House on Thursday that the state of ongoing war had prompted some to question whether now is the time to talk about reconstruction.
“At the conference in Lugano, there was some debate about whether it makes sense to even speak about recovery and reconstruction while the war is still raging; ‘Is it not premature to make plans for recovery before the guns fall silent?’”
The Swiss government’s answer to that question, Pitteloud said, is “an emphatic no,” and he gave the reasons.
“First, recovery is a complex and very long-term endeavor, which demands proactive, farsighted planning and a solid framework for the long haul, launching this process now is the responsible thing to do,” Pitteloud said.
“Secondly, thanks to the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian defenders, the aggressor has actually retreated from large parts of Ukraine; but these areas have been ravaged and everything needs to be rebuilt.”
The prospect of “the aggression against Ukraine” dragging on also beckons Ukraine’s allies and partners to dig in and strengthen the country’s overall and enduring resilience, Pitteloud added.
Switzerland’s firm support for “reconstruction now” echoes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for immediate support from the international community for his country’s rebuilding. To wait until after the war ends is a mistake, Zelenskyy has said. The Ukrainian leader also cast the rebuilding of Ukraine as a process in tandem with his country’s quest to become a full-fledged member of the European Union.
On July 1, Zelenskyy attended a ceremony that saw the EU flag hoisted in the Ukrainian parliament alongside the Ukrainian flag, as a reminder of both the nation’s aspirations and the tasks at hand to fulfill those aspirations, he said, urging Ukrainian officials at all levels to work nonstop toward the goal of joining the EU.
The United States is fully supportive of Ukraine’s EU aspirations, Donfried said at Thursday’s event in Washington. While the challenges are great, “we have an opportunity to help lead the country toward the European future that the Ukrainians want and deserved and are working so hard to achieve,” she said.
The EU’s top diplomat in Washington, Stavros Lambrinidis, who attended Thursday’s event along with top diplomats from EU member states, said the EU “has a direct, immediate responsibility and interest” in Ukraine’s reconstruction because of the country’s candidate member-state status.
The path to a strong Ukraine and the path to Ukrainian integration into the EU family is “one and the same thing,” he said.
Although Switzerland so far has opted out of membership in the EU, Pitteloud, the Swiss ambassador, said his country is ready to help Ukraine achieve the goal of EU membership, in an interview with VOA on the sidelines of the event.
Spain, a member of the EU, doesn’t have “billions” to spare, but will “do what we can” to support Ukraine, Santiago Cabanas, the top diplomat from Madrid in Washington, told VOA. “Because, as the EU ambassador to the U.S. said, we see Ukraine as a member of the European family.”
Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, said her countrymen have “inspired the world with how we fight.” Next, she said, “we want to inspire the world with how we build [our country].”
21. Disinformation Has Become Another Untouchable Problem in Washington
Disinformation Has Become Another Untouchable Problem in Washington
Numerous federal agencies agree that widely promoted falsehoods threaten the nation’s security. Doing something about them is another matter.
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Nina Jankowicz became a target of disinformation while leading a new Department of Homeland Security advisory board on the issue.Credit...Jared Soares for The New York Times
July 6, 2022
WASHINGTON — The memo that reached the top of the Department of Homeland Security in September could not have been clearer about its plan to create a board to monitor national security threats caused by the spread of dangerous disinformation.
The department, it said, “should not attempt to be an all-purpose arbiter of truth in the public arena.”
Yet when Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas announced the disinformation board in April, Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators denounced it as exactly that, calling it an Orwellian attempt to stifle dissenting views. So did some critics from the left, who questioned the powers that such an office might wield in the hands of future Republican administrations.
Within weeks, the new board was dismantled — put on “pause,” officially — undone in part by forces it was meant to combat, including distortions of the board’s intent and powers.
There is wide agreement across the federal government that coordinated disinformation campaigns threaten to exacerbate public health emergencies, stoke ethnic and racial divisions and even undermine democracy itself. The board’s fate, however, has underscored how deeply partisan the issue has become in Washington, making it nearly impossible to consider addressing the threat.
The failure to act, according to experts, has left openings for new waves of disinformation ahead of November’s midterm elections — and even for violence like the racist massacre at a Buffalo supermarket in May, which was motivated by a baseless conspiracy theory that global forces aimed to “replace” white Americans with immigrants.
“I think we’re in a really bleak situation here in this country,” said Nina Jankowicz, who briefly served as the board’s director before resigning when the controversy boiled over.
Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas has put the disinformation board on pause, pending a review.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
A prominent author and researcher in the field of disinformation, who once advised Ukraine’s government, Ms. Jankowicz became a focus of the furor, targeted online by false or misleading information about her role in what critics denounced as a Ministry of Truth.
“It’s hard to imagine how we get back from this,” she said in an interview, “when this is how our elected representatives are behaving — when we can’t agree on, you know, what is the truth.”
The threats from disinformation today involve issues that not long ago might have transcended partisan politics. Instead, disinformation has become mired in the country’s deepening partisan and geographical divides over issues like abortion, guns and climate change.
Even during the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security recognized the threat. The agency, along with the director of national intelligence, commissioned a 2019 study that concluded that disinformation could, among other things, “aggravate existing societal fissures” and “cause panic that reverberates through financial markets.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department and the Pentagon warned repeatedly of threats from foreign sources of disinformation. The Federal Election Commission held a symposium before the 2020 elections to address the issue as well.
By then, however, a partisan divide over the issue had already begun to take shape.
Its roots began in Russia’s interference in the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump, which he and his allies repeatedly denounced as fake despite evidence compiled by federal investigators about Russian complicity.
Disinformation that continues to swirl around Covid-19 and the 2020 election of President Biden — which Mr. Trump continues to insist, against all evidence, was a fraud — has made many Republicans view the very fight against disinformation as a partisan assault.
“You can’t even use the word ‘disinformation’ today without it having a political connotation,” said John Cohen, a former top intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security, who participated in discussions about addressing national security threats fueled by the internet-enabled rapid spread of false information.
By all accounts, the department failed to anticipate the furor that the creation of the advisory panel would cause — as well as the ease with which critics would tar it with the very kind of campaigns it was meant to monitor.
A Republican rally in Greensburg, Pa., before the Pennsylvania primary in May.Credit...Kristian Thacker for The New York Times
Mr. Mayorkas announced the board, offhand, at a budget hearing in April, followed by a Twitter post from Ms. Jankowicz. By then, the board had already been operating for two months, though it had not yet met formally.
In addition to its new director, its staff included four officials detailed from other parts of the department. It did not yet have a dedicated budget or enforcement authority. Even so, conservative commentators, including Jack Posobiec, pounced, joined by conservative media and Republican officials.
The board quickly became a new foil in an old Republican campaign narrative that overbearing Democrats want to intrude deeper and deeper into people’s personal beliefs — “canceling” conservative values. Ms. Jankowicz’s prominence in the discussion of Russia’s actions made her a particular target for the Republicans.
“The right recognizes it is a way to whip up people in a furor,” Ms. Jankowicz said. “The problem is there are very real national security issues here, and not being able to talk about this in a mature way is a real disservice to the country.”
Opposition came not only from the right, however.
Three rights organizations — Protect Democracy, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Electronic Frontier Foundation — welcomed the department’s recognition of the scale of the problem but cited the department’s “history of flouting the Constitution in flagrant ways” as reason enough to be wary.
“In the wrong hands, such a board would be a potent tool for government censorship and retaliation,” they wrote in a letter to Mr. Mayorkas, calling for the department to reconsider the board.
The damage was done, forcing Mr. Mayorkas to reverse course. He put the board’s work on hold, pending a review from the department’s advisory council that is expected to be completed by Aug. 1.
He asked a bipartisan pair of former officials to review the issue of fighting disinformation: Michael Chertoff, the department’s secretary under President George W. Bush, and Jamie S. Gorelick, deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton. Few expect the board to be reconstituted in anything like its intended form.
The rising polarization of disinformation — like so many other issues — has hamstrung the search for solutions by Congress and the Biden administration.
Legislation like the Honest Ads Act, which would regulate political advertising online the way it is on television or radio, has been stalled for years. The United States has failed to act on privacy or other matters to rein in the power of social media giants even as Europe, for example, has moved to force them to disclose how their services amplify divisive content and stop targeting online ads according to a person’s ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
In Washington, there is not even agreement on the threats, with Republicans seizing on the fight against disinformation as an effort to silence conservative voices.
According to internal Homeland Security Department documents that established the board, they include crises ripped from today’s headlines: Misinformation that undercuts public health emergencies. Human traffickers who sow falsehoods to steer immigrants on dangerous journeys across the southern border. Conspiracy theories that beget violence against state and local election workers.
The documents were made public by two Republican senators who vocally attacked the board, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Josh Hawley of Missouri. They cited them as evidence not of the need to combat disinformation but rather of the board’s nefarious aims, even though the memorandums all emphasized the principal need to protect free speech. Among the documents, though, were talking points that Mr. Mayorkas had received for a meeting with officials from Twitter to address disinformation, which the senators characterized as an effort “to suppress disfavored content.”
Senators Marsha Blackburn and Josh Hawley have criticized the Department of Homeland Security and its board.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times
Mr. Grassley did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hawley, Abigail Marone, said President Biden was “intent on leading the most anti-First Amendment administration in American history.”
“His idea of ‘disinformation’ is parents speaking out about their kids being taught critical race theory or concerned Americans asking legitimate questions about Covid vaccines,” she added. “Biden’s aim is to use the power of the federal government to shut speech down.”
The Department of Homeland Security added the threat of false information to its periodic national terrorism advisory bulletins for the first time in February. “The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories,” the warning said.
Foreign and domestic actors, the bulletin added, “seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest, which could potentially inspire acts of violence.” At that time, Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, declared that the department was “policing the speech, thoughts and opinions of American citizens.”
“We’re basically at this point unable to have a calm discussion about this problem,” said Paul Barrett, the deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University. “And there’s a weird, circular, looping-around effect. The problem itself is helping make us unable to talk about the problem.”
De Oppresso Liber,
David Maxwell
Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation
Senior Advisor, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy
Editor, Small Wars Journal
Twitter: @davidmaxwell161
Phone: 202-573-8647
