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Link: https://time.com/4149557/saudi-arabia-elections-women-vote
Title: Women Haven't Really Won in Saudi Arabia
Brief Summary: The article talks about how women cant vote in Saudi Arabia unless they have their husband or father of higher power with them. Just like in the women rights movement in 1848, women in Saudi Arabia are fighting for their rights.

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Women Haven't Really Won in Saudi Arabia-Yet

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Saturday's election was a symbolic victory, but it could offer hope to the next generation

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An article posted on Junn 11th, 2020 argues the political, economical, and social implications of systemic racism left over from the abolishment of slavery is still present and important within American culture today by supplying multiple different examples of events from the past year since the murder of George Floyd.

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America’s Long Overdue Awakening to Systemic Racism

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For many who have spent their lives fighting for racial equity, this moment of reckoning has been a long time coming

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https://www.newsweek.com/america-headed-market-crash-washington-deserves-blame-opinion-1624170
Since the start of the pandemic housing prices have been on the rise. As well as unemployment. Creating an economic bubble that is just waiting to pop. This can related to the Panic of 1837 in which land prices were on the rise and left millions unemployed.

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Predicting economic booms and busts is often an exercise in futility. Back in the fall of 2019, when the U.S. economy was flying high, who could have foreseen the economic crisis, government lockdowns and fear caused by the COVID-19 pandemic?

There are, however, several key indicators that have reliably warned us when the economy is about to experience a large crisis-and one of the most important just flashed red for the first time in decades.

According to data from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the median sales price for houses sold in the United States in the second quarter of 2021 was $374,900, the highest figure ever recorded and a 4.51 percent increase compared to the final quarter of 2020.

At the end of the second quarter of 2020, just one year ago, the median sales price was $322,600. That means the median sales price increased by a whopping $52,300 in only 12 months, a 16 percent increase.

According to HUD data, the last time housing prices increased by 16 percent or more in a single year was in 1987, 34 years ago.

Of course, higher housing prices can often be a positive indicator, reflecting strong economic growth. But when housing prices are increasing as rapidly as they are now, it's typically a sign of severe distortions in the financial system, stock market and/or wider economy.

This doesn't always mean a full-blown recession is right around the corner, but it does typically indicate that, at the very least, a correction is necessary.

Consider the three other times in recent history when housing prices increased at rates similar to today's.

The most important historical example is the 1973-74 crash. That period was marked by high inflation that touched almost every part of the U.S. economy, a problem America is once again facing.

In 1973, median housing prices increased by more than 16 percent over a 12-month period. From the start of 1973 to the end of 1974, the stock market plummeted by 46 percent. Unemployment soared, reaching 8.5 percent in May 1975.

A decade later, in late 1987, the median sales price for houses sold had increased by more than 17 percent from the previous year. During that same period, the stock market experienced one of its largest crashes in history, dropping 22 percent in one day. Housing sales soon went into a steep decline that didn't fully recover until the 1990s.

From the end of 2001 to the first quarter of 2007, housing prices rocketed upward, fueled in large part by loose Federal Reserve monetary policies, regulatory changes and risky lending practices by financial institutions-all of which are concerns again today.

From 2001 to the first quarter of 2007, the median housing sales price increased by $86,300, a 50 percent gain. Housing prices then began to drop at an alarming rate, triggering one of the worst financial crises and stock market crashes since the Great Depression.

One might be tempted to think that today's rapidly rising housing prices are simply bouncing back from the coronavirus and the lockdown-fueled economic crash that occurred in 2020. The data indicate otherwise.

Spurred by huge amounts of money-printing and stimulus programs from the federal government, housing prices increased throughout 2020. They never experienced a large drop that could explain why we're seeing prices shoot up in 2021.

The primary cause of rising housing prices is not a mystery. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Reserve and federal government have kept interest rates at rock-bottom levels, created trillions of new dollars and encouraged financial institutions to make riskier loans as a way to keep the economy afloat. The Fed and national government have never before created this much money in such a short period.

These policies have resulted in rampant economic distortions across a variety of important industries. These distortions have made homes and everyday goods and services more expensive than ever.

No other explanation can account for the unprecedented housing price increases, stock market gains and large profits for multinational corporations-all of which occurred in the midst of government-enforced lockdowns while millions of people lost employment.

The Federal Reserve, Congress and the Trump and Biden administrations created a large economic bubble, one that history tells us must pop, although no one knows exactly how or when.

And the worst part is, rather than return to fiscal sanity, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats are doing everything in their power to spend trillions of dollars more on new government programs, infrastructure projects, stimulus packages and tax breaks.

The U.S. economy is treading on extremely dangerous ground. It's time for American families to prepare for the worst.
Justin Haskins is the director of the Stopping Socialism Project at The Heartland Institute, where he also serves as a research fellow and editorial director. The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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America is headed for a market crash. Washington deserves the blame | Opinion

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Predicting economic booms and busts is often an exercise in futility. Back in the fall of 2019, when the U.S. economy was flying high, who could have foreseen the economic crisis, government lockdowns and fear caused by the COVID-19 pandemic?

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https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/us-kurdish-independence/543540/

As the Kurdistanian regions in the middle east want independence from other countries, Middle Eastern countries and Kurdistanian leaders are preventing this from occurring, even though the US is promoting the independence of the Kurdistan region. We can correlate this event to the American revolution, as the Americans wanted independence for trade, lower taxes, and liberties influenced from the Enlightenment, but the British royalty, parliament, and certain leaders of the US push back on this in order for the British to mainly gain more power in competition overseas against countries such as France.

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The Kurds are one of Washington's closest and most reliable allies in the Middle East.

After World War I, the Kurds came tantalizingly close to getting an independent state. Nearly a century later, they are no closer to an independent homeland.

There are many reasons for this: regional instability; suppression of the Kurds, most dramatically in Turkey and Saddam Hussein's Iraq; vehement opposition to a Kurdish state; infighting among Kurds; and, despite some prominent Western supporters, no viable advocate for Kurdish statehood. These reasons were on display this week as Iraqi forces took control of Kirkuk, the disputed oil-rich city that Kurds see as their Jerusalem. Kurdish fighters had controlled the city since 2014, when Iraqi forces fled the area in the face of an ISIS onslaught. What made the situation even more precarious was last month's referendum, in which an overwhelming number of Kurds voted for an independent homeland in what is now Iraqi Kurdistan. The referendum was also conducted in three areas with significant Kurdish populations, including Kirkuk, that are deemed disputed areas by the 2005 Iraqi constitution. That document was approved in most of Iraq by wide margins, but in Iraqi Kurdistan more than 98 percent of voters endorsed it.

The aftermath of this vote and the seizure of Kirkuk is playing out in a predictable fashion-finger-pointing among the Kurds, an attempt at neutrality by the United States, decisive action by Iran, and a flexing of muscles by the Iraqi state-but it also raises two questions: Why wasn't the U.S. able to persuade one of its most reliable allies in the region to postpone the referendum? And why doesn't Washington support Kurdish independence outright?

"There is no ambiguity on what the U.S. position was on this issue. The United States has been telling the Kurds and telling [Kurdish President] Masoud [Barzani], and telling Masrour [Barzani, his heir apparent] since last spring not to proceed with this because this would be not good for Kurdistan, not good for Iraq, and would play into the hands of the hardliners and the hands of the Iranians," said Stuart Jones, the former ambassador to Iraq, now at the Cohen Group. "And I think that's what we're seeing."

Barzani's call for a referendum has been called a miscalculation, but the Kurdish leader has long maintained that as long as Iraqi Kurds are part of the state of Iraq, they will not get a square deal. Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the KRG's representative in Washington, told me that the best U.S. offer to postpone the referendum came far too late for the vote to be delayed. "We didn't have confidence that Baghdad would have stood by it anyway," she said. Abdul Rahman said Kurds are consistently told it's not a good time for independence. "From our perspective, it's always a bad time," she said. "If you're looking for a moment when Iraq is stable and you have somebody reasonable to negotiate with, that's never been the case in Iraq."

She said the Kurds knew there would be opposition to the referendum, pointing to the fact that the U.S. and its Western allies have traditionally been against independence movements. She cited the example of the Baltic states and Croatia, noting that "those countries would still be part of the" eastern bloc "if American policies of the day had carried through."

"So, we expected opposition. We thought that would be the pattern," she said. "Where we were surprised is the hostility to the referendum, the disrespect, the attempt to belittle the referendum."

There are two main overlapping theories for why Iraq and its allies, including the U.S., reacted the way they did: the referendum itself was problematic and the inclusion of Kirkuk and the disputed areas was provocative. As Fareed Yasseen, the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, told me: "The referendum would still be unconstitutional, but with Kirkuk it's even more blatantly anti-constitutional."

"It's a federal entity trying to assert its federal authority," he said. "If you pitch it in an American context it becomes very clear: The situation we've had is, for example, if Texas would prohibit agents from TSA to be present at Houston airport. It doesn't work that way. ... It can't work that way."

Peter Galbraith, a former U.S. diplomat who has been a vocal advocate for Kurdish independence, says "it's baffling" why the U.S. doesn't recognize a Kurdish state. Galbraith, who was in the KRG for the recent referendum as an unpaid adviser to the Kurds, pointed out that the area has long been a bastion of stability in Iraq. "Could a place of 5 million people be a viable place?" he asked. "I would think so. It's larger and more viable than half the states in the United Nations."

Indeed, the KRG is slightly bigger than the U.S. state of Maryland and about the size of Switzerland. But what it does have in area and population it lacks in the factors that make a stable state. Jones, who was U.S. ambassador from 2014 to 2016, argued those reasons are why the U.S. doesn't support an independent Kurdish state at the moment.

"A: The KRG is not economically viable. B: The political conditions were simply not prepared. We're seeing that," he said. "There's a very sharp reaction from Iran. There's a sharp reaction from Turkey. A sharp reaction from Baghdad. So the neighbors weren't prepared for this. They weren't willing to go along. There were a lot of issues that were not resolved."

Regional reaction may, in part, be the reason why the Iraqi government acted in the manner it did. As I wrote earlier this week, now that ISIS is all but defeated, the region's dormant conflicts are resurfacing. Iran, Syria, and Turkey have significant Kurdish minorities and Tehran and Ankara, especially, fear that an independent Kurdish state would embolden Kurdish separatist forces in their own countries. Turkey, which traditionally has been close to the Barzani family, and Iran, which enjoys influence with the rival Talabani family (the two families have dominated Kurdish politics for decades), stepped in. Turkey called the referendum a "big mistake" and threatened to stop buying oil from the Kurds. Iran was more direct. Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was in Iraqi Kurdistan last weekend, meeting with the Talabani-allied Patriotic Union of Kurdistan to mediate a resolution to the standoff. It appears to have worked. PUK fighters withdrew from Kirkuk this week, handing the city over to Iraqi government forces.

If there is one thing that is clear from the crisis in Iraq it is that 14 years after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam, Iran maintains a significant influence in the country-not only with the central government in Baghdad, which is dominated by its fellow Shia Muslims, but with the Kurds. This will especially be a factor as the U.S. continues to attempt to counter Iran, first by the Trump administration's decision to send the nuclear deal back to Congress and then by imposing terrorism-related sanctions on the IRGC, the same group in which Soleimani is a senior commander.

"We certainly can counter Iran's influence, but we can't negate it," Jones told me. "Iran had influences in these places before and will continue to have influence. It has an 800-kilometer border with Iraq, including with the PUK-controlled portion of the KRG in northern Iraq. Conditions in Iraq are vital to Iranian national security. There's no way that Iran is not going to be a player."

Ryan Crocker, who was U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2007 to 2009, said the U.S. has weakened its position by appearing to take Baghdad's side in the dispute with the Kurds. "I do not think we should have taken a position one way or the other on a Kurdish state in northern Iraq: It's for the Kurds and Iraqis to work out," he said. "But by injecting ourselves on one side of this ... [the] concern is that we will no longer be seen as an honest broker as we move ahead."

Any negotiations involving Iraqi Kurdistan's future will involve not only Iraq and the Kurds, but also Iraq's neighbors. Another significant issue: the extent of the fissures between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the PUK. The two parties, whose controlling families have been at odds for decades, have come together at crucial moments in Kurdish history to seize a political opportunity. This week was not one of those occasions.

Abdul Rahim, the KRG's representative in Washington, lamented the "naive, greedy people who sold out Kirkuk." She added: "Disunity is definitely our Achilles heel. Kurdish disunity is our worst enemy. Whatever we think of our opponents and detractors, our disunity is our worst enemy."

But Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who has written about corruption in the KRG, the lack of political transparency, and the dynastic nature of Kurdish politics, said Iraq and the Kurds will likely find a way forward. "The issue in the long term, I suspect," he said, "will be less the Baghdad-Erbil dynamic than whether and how Kurds will address their own leaderships' failings."

These dynamics notwithstanding, Kurdish leaders have in the past articulated why declaring outright independence would be challenging. Jalal Talabani, the late Kurdish leader who at the time was Iraq's president, told The New Yorker in 2007:

Let us imagine that Iraqi Kurdistan declared independence, and Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq didn't fight it but just closed their borders. How could we live? Let us say, we've got our oil-how could we export it? And you can be sure that if Kurdistan declares independence Iran will attack, Turkey will attack, Syria will attack-and Iraq will not accept it. We cannot resist all these countries.

A decade later, those concerns appear all the more real, even though they now involve countries that are often at odds and sometimes at each other's throats.

"On this issue, the U.S., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iraq all have aligned interests," Yasseen, the Iraqi ambassador, told me. "They want stability in Iraq-and the referendum went against that stability."

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Why Doesn't the U.S. Support Kurdish Independence?

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The Kurds are one of Washington's closest and most reliable allies in the Middle East. After World War I, the Kurds came tantalizingly close to getting an independent state. Nearly a century later, they are no closer to an independent homeland.

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https://www.downtoearth.org.in/interviews/environment/covid-19-to-black-lives-matter-how-the-columbian-exchange-still-shapes-lives-73262

An author of two books about the columbian exchange is interviewed. He goes into detail how the columbian exchange led to pandemics like Covid-19. All pandemics come from another country and travel from place to place. Overall people weren't the only thing being exchanged. He also talks about how "because disease dramatically reduced population, the European landowners were short of labour. Their solution was to import huge numbers of Africans as slaves. Then the colonial cities in the Americas were built by unfree workers. Slavery was foundational to the Americas. Overall, the concept of race — which didn’t exist at the time of Columbus — was invented partly to justify slavery".

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Down To Earth talks with American journalist and author Charles C Mann about the relevance of the Columbian Exchange in today's pandemic-stricken world

Christopher Columbus' journey to the Americas in October 1492, set in motion a chain of events that are today known as the Columbian Exchange - the transfer of humans, plants, animals, diseases and ideas - between the 'Old' and 'New' Worlds. The legacy of that event continues to this day.

From potatoes and chillies becoming a staple of India's cuisine despite being grown in the Americas to New World countries becoming the largest producers of Old World crops such as sugar, coffee and bananas to the devastation of indigenous Americans by Old World diseases and the subsequent trade in enslaved Africans and the legacy of slavery and racism, the world is still experiencing the effects of the Columbian Exchange.

What relevance does this historical event hold in today's world of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter? Down To Earth spoke to Charles C Mann, an American journalist who has authored 1493: Uncovering the world that Columbus created (2011). Edited excerpts:
Rajat Ghai: As the author of two books on the Columbian Exchange, how do you view the present COVID-19 pandemic, with its themes of disease and globalisation, which the Exchange had spawned?
Charles C Mann: In most ways, the current pandemic is entirely unsurprising.

When Spain came to the Americas in 1492 and then to Asia (the Philippines) in 1571, every habitable part of the world was, for the first time in history, in regular contact. It was the beginning of today's globalisation.

People usually describe globalisation in economic terms. But the trade ships that linked Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas carried not only people but a host of other species. Huge numbers of species from the Eastern Hemisphere came to the Western Hemisphere, and vice versa. The historian Alfred Crosby called this massive shuffling of animals, plants and microorganisms the "Columbian Exchange."

Some of the first and most important types of life that moved were diseases - viral diseases like smallpox, bacterial diseases like cholera, parasitic diseases like malaria. For the first two centuries after Columbus, the great majority of these diseases went from Europe, Asia, and Africa to the Americas, which had had very few infectious diseases.

That changed in the 19 th century. As the Americas acquired all the diseases of Europe, Asia, and Africa and as the amount of trade increased, new disease outbreaks were able to spread all over the world. The very first truly global pandemic began in 1829, with a cholera outbreak in the Ganges delta. From India, British ships carried the cholera bacterium unknowingly around the world. Within three years it had reached the United States. Probably half a million people died altogether, but nobody knows for sure.

That pandemic put the world on notice that now a single episode could affect the entire planet. No government did anything about it. As a result, there were five more global cholera pandemics in the 19 th century. The final epidemic lasted 20 years and overlapped with the global flu pandemic of 1918, which killed about 50 million people. We then had regular global flu pandemics in the 20 th century, mixed with a global encephalitis pandemic (1.5 million dead) and the global AIDS pandemic (32 million dead).

The diseases are different, but every single pandemic has occurred when humans in one part of the world carry the disease to another part of the world - the same way that the first smallpox epidemic was spread from Spain to Mexico in 1520, the same way that COVID-19 was spread from China to the rest of the world in 2020. And to this day, governments around the world have done very little about it.
RG: Your 2011 book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus created talked about 'homogenocene'. Do you see shades of it in the COVID crisis?
CCM: A little bit. The "Homogenocene" is a name for the current ecological period, in which - thanks to the Columbian Exchange - the different parts of the world are becoming, in ecological terms, more and more alike. Before Columbus, horses and chickens didn't exist in the Americas, potatoes and peppers didn't exist in Asia, and tomatoes and maize didn't exist in Europe. Now all parts of the world share the same pool of species. The result is a more uniform biological world - and that extends to disease, too, as humanity in every part of the world faces the same spectrum of disease.

RG: This year has also seen Black Lives Matter protests taking centrestage in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder, highlighting America's legacy of slavery and racism, which were again byproducts of the Exchange. Your thoughts.

CCM: Historically speaking, slavery has been most common when there is a lot of land and little labour. Normally, this would lead to labourers being able to charge high wages. Landowners typically haven't liked paying those wages and so slavery has come in.

This situation occurred in the Americas when Europeans moved in. Because disease dramatically reduced population, the European landowners were short of labour. Their solution was to import huge numbers of Africans as slaves.

The scale of the trade was staggering. Between 1492, when Columbus landed, and the early 1800s, more than two out of every three people who came to the Americas were enslaved Africans. At the time, this human wing of the Columbian Exchange was the biggest migration in history. And those people had huge impacts. All of the colonial cities in the Americas were built by unfree workers. Slavery was foundational to the Americas.

The concept of race - which didn't exist at the time of Columbus - was invented partly to justify slavery. The Black Lives Movement is, in part, an attempt to force Americans to confront these historical truths.
RG: Latest studies say more people will move to cities in the years to come from rural areas. How do you see this development, given that the Exchange first set in motion urbanisation?
CCM: Actually, cities existed before the Columbian Exchange - India is full of these ancient places. What you can say is that colonialism, which was aided significantly by the Columbian Exchange, changed the power relations around the world.

Before 1500 CE, almost all of the world's big, powerful cities were in a cluster around the equator. By 1900, almost all of them were in the global north-there'd been a huge shift.

Globalisation via the Columbian Exchange has certainly given a push to urbanisation. But increasing urbanisation can only be successful if it is matched by increasing attention to public health - to the very real possibilities of future epidemics. In this way, the Columbian Exchange could also put a stop to the increased urbanisation it has encouraged.
RG: The Exchange also led to the rapid growth of human populations, especially in the Old World. But latest studies say human populations have now plateaued and are declining. Are we beginning to see the end of at least one legacy of the Exchange, then?
CCM: Very possibly. Let's hope the decline is slow and due primarily to people wishing to have fewer children, rather than being caused by disease or catastrophe.
RG: What should future researchers of the Exchange focus on?
CCM: The Columbian Exchange is still continuing to this day. One contingent of future researchers will look at our refusal to plan for the inevitable arrival of diseases and pests from elsewhere and shake their heads. Another contingent will look at the way we have failed to systematically examine the world's biota for potential uses and shake their heads for different reasons.

We are a voice to you; you have been a support to us. Together we build journalism that is independent, credible and fearless. You can further help us by making a donation. This will mean a lot for our ability to bring you news, perspectives and analysis from the ground so that we can make change together.

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COVID-19 to Black Lives Matter: How the Columbian Exchange still shapes lives

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Down To Earth talks with American journalist and author Charles C Mann about the relevance of the Columbian Exchange in today's pandemic-stricken world Christopher Columbus' journey to the Americas in October 1492, set in motion a chain of events that are today known as the Columbian Exchange - the transfer of humans, plants, animals, diseases and ideas - between the 'Old' and 'New' Worlds.

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Link: https://www.vox.com/2020/7/28/21333345/uighurs-china-internment-camps-forced-labor-xinjiang

Title:  Concentration camps and forced labor: China’s repression of the Uighurs, explained

Summary: Talks about how Muslim families are wrongfully being detained and sentenced to extended prison sentences. They slowly cut all of his connections with his family. This has happened to millions of people and they are forced to produce clothes for free and they are abused, waterboarded, and beaten as well.

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Jewher Ilham said she had not heard from her father since 2017.

Her dad, Ilham Tohti, is an economics professor and prominent Uighur intellectual in Xinjiang, China. He ran a website, UighurOnline,thatfocusedon issues pertaining to the Muslim ethnic minority group.

Chinese authorities repeatedly shut down the website. Jewher says the family received death threats. Chinese authorities also disappeared her father multiple times before detaining him in 2014 and quickly finding him guilty on separatism charges. He was sentenced to life in prison.

At first, Jewher told me, because her father was a political prisoner, the family could visit him every few months. But then the Chinese government cut off access entirely.

Jewher is in the United States; she still has extended family in Xinjiang, the northwestern region in China where most Uighurs live. She does not talk with them, either. "If they talk to me or if they receive a phone call from me, I don't think anything good will happen to them," she told me over the phone in July.

Jewher's father was targeted by the Chinese government for his advocacy of Uighur rights. But in recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has arbitrarily detained between 1 million and 3 million other Uighurs in so-called "reeducation centers" and forced them to undergo psychological indoctrination programs, such as studying communist propaganda and giving thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping. Chinese officials have also reportedly used waterboarding and other forms of torture,including sexual abuse, as part of the indoctrination process.

Researchers from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, using satellite imagery and other evidence, have documented more than 380 re-education camp detention centers and prisons in Xinjiang, with at least 61 having been expanded or updated within the last year.

It is the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II.

The concentration camps are the most extreme example of China's inhumane policies against the Uighurs, but the entire population is subject to repressive policies. China has used mass surveillance to turn Xinjiang into a high-tech police state.

Uighurs inside and outside the camps are exploited for cheap labor, forced to manufacture clothing and other products for sale both at home and abroad. The New York Times revealed in July that some Chinese-made face masks being sold in the United States and other countries were produced in factories that relied on Uighur labor.

Another recent investigation found evidence that Chinese authorities subjected Uighur women to mass sterilization, forcing them to take birth control or have abortions and putting them in camps if they resist. Some have argued this attempt to control the Uighur population meets the United Nations' definition of genocide.

The Chinese government, however, claims that the camps are merely vocational and training centers, and that they're teaching people job skills. It has justified the oppression in Xinjiang as an attempt to clamp down on terrorism and extremism emanating from theUighur separatist movement.

There have been incidents of violent unrest over the years, including a few deadly terrorist attacks, and at least one Uighur extremist group in the region, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, has ties to al-Qaeda and the global jihadist movement. But most experts say Beijing's repression and subjugation of millions of Uighurs is vastly disproportionate to the comparatively minor terror threat in the region.

As more and more reports of the atrocities happening in Xinjiang are revealed, the international community is grappling with how to punish China for its abuses. The United States recently imposed sanctions on Chinese officials involved in persecuting the Uighurs and punished companies believed to be reliant on Uighur forced labor.

Advocates and bipartisan groups of lawmakers are calling for more forceful action, and earlier this week the House of Representatives passed overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation that requires companies to prove products from the Xinjiang region are not made with coerced Uighur labor.

Yet the persecution of the Uighurs continues and in full view of the world.

Jewher is now herself an activist for Uighur rights. She says knowing what is happening to Uighurs makes her more determined to preserve her culture, her history, and her language. "I don't think there's any other words to put for this action," she said. "I think it is genocide. It's genocide, period."

Why China is targeting the Uighur Muslim community in Xinjiang

Xinjiang, where about 11 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities live, is an autonomous region in China's northwest that borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia. It has been under Chinese control since 1949, when the People's Republic of China was established.

Uighurs speak their own language - an Asian Turkic language similar to Uzbek - and most practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam. Some activists, including those who seek independence from China, refer to the region as East Turkestan.

Once situated along the ancient Silk Road trading route, Xinjiang is oil- and resource-rich. As it developed along with the rest of China, the region attracted more Han Chinese, a migration encouraged by the Chinese government.

That demographic shift inflamed ethnic tensions, especially within some of the larger cities. In 2009, for example, riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, after Uighurs protested their treatment by the government and the Han majority. About 200 people were killed and hundreds injured during the unrest.

The Chinese government blamed the protests on violent separatist groups, a tactic it would continue to use against the Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities across China.

The Chinese government justifies its clampdown on the Uighurs and Muslim minorities by saying it's trying to eradicate extremism and separatist groups. Attacks, some violent, by Uighur separatists have occurred in recent years, and some Uighurs have become foreign fighters, joining groups like ISIS. But there's little evidence of any cohesive separatist movement - with jihadist roots or otherwise - that could challenge the Chinese government, some experts tell me.

Xinjiang is also a major logistics hub of Beijing's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar infrastructure project along the old Silk Road meant to boost China's economic and political influence around the world. Xinjiang's increasing importance to China's global aspirations is a major reason Beijing is exerting its control in the region.

"This region is critical to China's future development and the Belt and Road initiative," Dru C. Gladney, a professor of anthropology at Pomona College in Claremont, California, who studies the region, told me. "All those roads go through Xinjiang."

China's "de-extremification" policies against the Uighurs

China's crackdown on the Uighurs was initially part of a policy of "de-extremification." Under this policy, Beijing imposed draconian restrictions in Xinjiang intended to erase the Uighurs' Islamic religious and cultural identity, including imprisoning hundreds of thousands in so-called "reeducation" camps.

China has a dark history with reeducation camps, combining hard labor with indoctrination to the party line. According to research by Adrian Zenz, a leading scholar on China's policies toward the Uighurs and Senior Research Fellow in China Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Chinese officials began using dedicated camps in Xinjiang around 2014, around the same time that China blamed a series of terrorist attacks on radical Uighur separatists.

In 2016, Xinjiang also got a new leader: a powerful Communist Party boss named Chen Quanguo, whose previous job was restoring order and control to the restive region of Tibet. Chen has a reputation as a strongman and is something of a specialist in ethnic crackdowns. The United States placed human rights sanctions on Chen and other Chinese officials in Xinjiang earlier this month.

Chen "is responsible for the system that used technology to round up Uighurs at such a rapid pace - not only in Xinjiang, but also similar models of convenience-style police stations were sort of tested in the Tibet region prior to being deployed in the Xinjiang context," said Olivia Enos, a senior policy analyst at the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation.

Increased and aggressive mass surveillance and police presence accompanied his move to Xinjiang, including his "grid management" policing system. As the Economist reported, "authorities divide each city into squares, with about 500 people. Every square has a police station that keeps tabs on the inhabitants. So, in rural areas, does every village."

Security checkpoints where residents must scan identification cards were set up at train stations and on roads into and out of towns. Authorities have reportedly used facial recognition technology to track residents' movements. Chinese officials also reportedly took blood and DNA samples, framed as mandatory check-ups.

Police confiscate phones to download the information contained on them to scan through later or track Uighurs through their cellphones. Police have also confiscated passports to prevent Uighurs from traveling abroad. Uighurs abroad say their families are targeted by Chinese officials, part of a pressure campaign to keep the diaspora from speaking out.

Some of the targeted "de-extremification" restrictions gained coverage in the West, including a ban on certain Muslim names for babies and another on long beards and veils. The government reportedly tried to promote drinking and smoking because people who didn'tdrink or smoke - like devout Muslims - were deemed suspicious.

In October 2019, Radio Free Asia, a news agency backed by the US government, also reported that Han Chinese men were being sent to check in on and sometimes sleep with Uighur women, including those whose husbands were detained in the camps. The "Pair Up and Become Family" program, as it is called, is designed to "promote ethnic unity," one local official explained.

Chinese officials have justified these policies as necessary to counter religious radicalization and extremism, but critics say they are explicitly meant to curtail Islamic traditions and practices.

The Chinese government is "trying to expunge ethnonational characteristics from the people," James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University, told me in 2018. "They're not trying to drive them out of the country; they're trying to hold them in."

"The ultimate goal, the ultimate issue that the Chinese state is targeting, [is] the cultural practices and beliefs of Muslim groups," he added.

What we know, and don't know, about the concentration camps

"Reeducation camps" - or training camps, as they are also called in China- are perhaps the most sinister pillar of this de-extremification policy. Experts estimate as many as 3 million people have disappeared into these camps at some point, with about 1 million currently being held.

At first, the Chinese government denied these camps even existed. China's state-run media at one time dismissed the reports of detention camps as Western media "baselessly criticizing China's human rights."

But China has since stopped pretending that the camps aren't real. Instead, the government is trying to cast them as both lawful and innocuous. In October 2018, Chinese officials effectively legalized the "education camps" for the stated goal of eradicating extremism. Later that month, a government official in Xinjiang - who was himself an ethnic Uighur - compared the detention centers to "boarding schools" and its detainees to "students."

"Many trainees have said they were previously affected by extremist thought and had never participated in such kinds of arts and sports activities. Now they realize how colorful life can be," Xinjiang Governor Shorat Zakir reportedly told Xinhua, China's state-run news agency.

What's really going on in the camps is difficult to know because of China's disinformation campaign and tight clampdown on information. But leaked official documents and chilling firsthand accounts from people detained in the camps have helped outside experts and researchers put together a disturbing portrait of the abuses that take place there.

These camps are much more like prisons than so-called boarding schools. A 2018 report by Agence France-Presse described camps in which thousands of guards carry spiked clubs, tear gas, and stun guns to surveil detainees, who are held in buildings surrounded by razor wire and infrared cameras. AFP journalists also reviewed public documents showing that government agencies overseeing the camps purchased 2,768 police batons, 550 electric cattle prods, 1,367 pairs of handcuffs, and 2,792 cans of pepper spray.

An investigation by Reuters in 2018 also found that, according to satellite imagery, 39 suspected camps almost tripled in size between April 2017 and August 2018. "Collectively, the built-up parts in these 39 facilities now cover an area roughly the size of 140 soccer fields," the report said.

In 2019, another set of leaked documents revealed how tightly controlled the camps are. According to the BBC,detainees were "never" allowed to escape, and their "behavioral violations" would face discipline and punishment. The documents ordered surveillance of dorm rooms and classrooms. Leaked drone footage, believed to be recorded last August, appears to show hundreds of Uighur prisoners, blindfolded and handcuffed, being transferred by train.

And there is evidence that China is continuing to expand the detention of the Uighurs, even beyond the re-education camps. China has claimed since last year that detainees had graduated and been released, rejoining society because their indoctrination program worked. In August, Buzzfeed News used satellite imagery to document 2017 detention facilities built since 2017, one in every county in Xinjiang. According to Buzzfeed, as China sought to detain people, they repurposed government buildings, but, over time, these sites have become fortified, and more and more prison-like.

A report released this month by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) also found China's network of detention centers continues to grow. ASPI documented 380 centers that had been built or expanded since 2017, and at least 60 new facilities have been built or expanded between July 2019 and July 2020 alone; about half are more heavily securitized facilities - maximum security prisons, basically. ASPI also found evidence that some of the earlier re-education camps had been decommissioned. It's a sign this is just arbitrary detention, without even the pretense China had used before.

The Chinese government continues to target Uighurs outside the camps. In February 2020, a leaked 137-page spreadsheet from Karakax County in Xinjiang showed exactly how Uighur families were tracked by authorities. The spreadsheet contained 300 names of Uighur families, including the identities of people committed to concentration camps, and those whom officials were monitoring. Some of those being tracked were as young as 16.

Among the things that caught the attention of authorities were obtaining a passport (whether or not they traveled), praying regularly, or even wearing a beard, according to the New York Times. Family members were monitored for participating in religious ceremonies like funerals or weddings. Uighurs were also sent to camps if they violated China's birth restrictions.

Additional research by Zenz and the Associated Press in June 2020 bolstered this finding, showing that Chinese officials were systematically trying to stop Uighur women from having children under the threat of internment if they violated the rules. According to the report:

The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.

The research backs up anecdotal reports from women detained in the camps, who say they were forced to undergo examinations and abortions.

In December 2017, Gulzira Mogdyn, a 38-year-old ethnic Kazakh and Chinese citizen, was detained in Xinjiang and put under house arrest. She told the Washington Post in October 2019 that during her detention, she'd been forced to undergo a physical examination. She was 10 weeks pregnant; a month later, doctors terminated her pregnancy against her will. "Two humans were lost in this tragedy - my baby and me," Mogdyn told the Post.

Inside these camps, detainees are reportedly subjected to bizarre exercises aimed at "brainwashing" them, as well as physical torture, rape, and sleep deprivation. Millward, the Georgetown professor, said the Chinese authorities see the camps as "a kind of conversion therapy, and they talk about it that way."

A source also told Radio Free Asia in 2018 that a Chinese official had referred to the "reeducation" process as similar to "spraying chemicals on the crops. That is why it is general reeducation, not limited to a few people."

The Washington Post published an account from Kayrat Samarkand, who was detained in one of the camps for three months:

The 30-year-old stayed in a dormitory with 14 other men. After the room was searched every morning, he said, the day began with two hours of study on subjects including "the spirit of the 19th Party Congress," where Xi expounded his political dogma in a three-hour speech, and China's policies on minorities and religion. Inmates would sing communist songs, chant "Long live Xi Jinping" and do military-style training in the afternoon before writing accounts of their day, he said.

"Those who disobeyed the rules, refused to be on duty, engaged in fights or were late for studies were placed in handcuffs and ankle cuffs for up to 12 hours," Samarkand told the Post.

At a July 2018 hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China - a special bipartisan committee set up by Congress to monitor human rights in China - Jessica Batke, a former research analyst at the State Department, testified that "in at least some of these facilities, detainees are subject to waterboarding, being kept in isolation without food and water, and being prevented from sleeping."

"They are interrogated about their religious practices and about having made trips abroad," Batke continued. "They are forced to apologize for the clothes they wore or for praying in the wrong place at the wrong time."

The increasing use of forced Uighur labor

Beyond the detention camps, there is now growing evidence that Uighurs are being forced to work in Chinese factories. Given the ubiquity of Chinese manufacturing, that almost certainly means that the exploitation of Uighurs is embedded within global supply chains.

"It is becoming increasingly hard to ignore the fact that goods manufactured in East Turkestan have a high likelihood of being produced with forced labor," Nury Turkel, chair of the board of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told Congress in October 2019, using "East Turkestan" to refer to Xinjiang.

The forced labor is happening both within Xinjiang and in other parts of China, according to recent reports. A March 2020 report from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China also found Uighur forced labor taking place within internment camps.

According to a report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), at least 80,000 Uighurs were taken from Xinjiang and transferred to various factories around China between 2017 and 2019, though it's likely that's a lowball estimate. Some Uighurs were taken directly from concentration camps to the factories, though the conditions mirrored those they faced in detention, according to that same study. Uighurs were under constant surveillance, forced to undergo Mandarin language instruction and other political teachings in their free time. Most critically, they cannot leave.

In July 2019, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported a story of a Uighur woman, 38-year-old Dilnur, who was sent to an internment camp along with her husband. In May, Dilnur had contacted her sister in Australia to tell her she'd be taken from the camps and sent to work in a technology factory in Urumqi. "660 people are brought in shackled and handcuffed and it is big," she wrote.

Again, it's hard to get full information out of China's tightly controlled system, but leaked documents and testimony from some workers who've been forced into factories offer compelling evidence. The revelations raise serious questions for the global supply chain and anyone who buys goods that at one point passed through China.

The ASPI found that at least 27 suspected factories are using laborers from Xinjiang, which potentially have connections to 83 major global brands. The Xinjiang region, specifically, is a major cotton hub for China, meaning Xinjiang cotton might end up in the final products of many clothing lines.

The Washington Post and ASPI found that the South Korean-owned Qingdao Taekwang Shoes Co. in Laixi, China, a Nike supplier for decades, employs about 700 Uighur workers. Though they could not confirm that the Uighurs were forced to work, eyewitnesses told the Post that the workers weren't allowed to leave freely.

Nike has since said it's in contact with suppliers to "assess potential risks" related to the employment of Uighurs. Other companies, like Apple, have said they found no evidence of forced labor but are monitoring their sources.

Another recent investigation in the New York Times found that forced Uighur labor is being used to make personal protective equipment, specifically those disposable surgical face masks that are ubiquitous in the time of Covid-19.

In July, more than 72 Uighur rights group and 100 civil society groups worldwide launched a campaign to end forced Uighur labor, demanding companies stop sourcing cotton, yarn, textiles, and finished products from Xinjiang, and for companies to cut ties with suppliers implicated in forced labor schemes.

The world is paying more attention to the Uighurs. It's still not enough.

Zubayra Shamseden, the Chinese outreach coordinator with the Uyghur Human Rights Project, told me in July that Uighurs have faced discrimination for years in education and employment. "It just didn't get the attention of the world," she said.

The recent headlines, including those about birth control and forced sterilization, have helped change that. But, she said, anyone who really tried to see what was happening in Xinjiang could see if they looked. "It's clear it's there. It's just crystal clear," she said, adding that China is still denying all of it.

That the world is finally starting to pay attention is important, but it's not nearly enough. Activists say governments and international institutions need to do more to pressure China.

Uighurs in the diaspora are pushing for the International Criminal Court to investigate China for genocide and other atrocities. Naomi Kikoler, director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, said in March that "there are reasonable grounds to believe that China is responsible for crimes against humanity." However, because China doesn't recognize the ICC's jurisdiction, that method might have its limits.

Some US lawmakers have been pushing for the US to get tougher on China on the Uighur issue, and the State Department has advocated for the Uighurs as part of its religious freedom initiatives. And the Trump administration is finally beginning to take more forceful steps to punish China for its human rights abuses.

President Donald Trump himself had been pretty quiet on the topic until recently, and it seems his desire to negotiate a trade deal with China was a big reason why. "Well, we were in the middle of a major trade deal," Trump said in June, when asked why he hadn't yet imposed US Treasury sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the repression of the Uighurs.

Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton also alleged that Trump personally gave Xi Jinping the green light to keep building the camps, telling Xi at a meeting in June 2019 that it was "exactly the right thing to do." (The meeting was attended by only the two leaders and their interpreters, so Bolton is relying on what the interpreter told him after the meeting. Other US officials have denied Bolton's account.)

In June, however, Trump signed into law the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which imposes sanctions on foreign individuals and entities involved in abuses in Xinjiang and requires the president to periodically "send Congress a list identifying foreign individuals and entities responsible for such human rights abuses."

Since then, the US has sanctioned officials, including Chen Quanguo, who's in charge of Xinjiang and the mastermind behind its surveillance policies. The US also placed sanctions on the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau and its director, Wang Mingshan, under the Global Magnitsky Act, which targets human rights abusers around the world.

The US sanctions angered China, and Beijing retaliated by sanctioning US officials, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who have been some of the most prominent voices in Congress in condemning China's abuse of the Uighurs.

The US also blacklisted 11 Chinese companies in July because of their ties to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which means those companies can't easily access US technology or products. At least nine of the companies had ties to forced Uighur labor, including some named in the ASPI report that were connected to major clothing brands. Two others were added to the list because of their use of " genetic analyses " targeting Muslim minority groups.

Earlier in September, the Trump administration also put new restrictions on clothing, technology, and hair products from certain companies linked to forced Uighur labor. It's already legal for Americans to import any goods made with forced labor, but the knottiness of supply chains has made this harder to detect. The administration is also considering a more sweeping ban on all cotton imports from Xinjiang.

But the Trump administration's tougher approach toward China on the Uighur issue also comes as the administration has sought to put increasing pressure on China over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Tensions between Washington and Beijing are escalating, and the tit for tat is sinking the relationship between the two superpowers.

"I am concerned that once again the Uighurs are not being taken seriously, in and of themselves, rather than being used as kind of a pawn in a larger geopolitical strategy," Gladney, of Pomona College, said.

Pressure on China for its human rights abuses - both in Xinjiang and in Hong Kong - should be a priority for any US administration. "I definitely think that there's an effort to squeeze China in any way that it can possibly be done," Enos said of the United States. "But I think there's also this broader recognition that what's going on in Xinjiang is definitely among some of the worst human rights atrocities taking place, certainly in this decade, maybe even in our generation."

New details about atrocities inside the camps have added even more of a sense of urgency - though there's still more to be done. Though Trump confronted China (virtually) at the United Nations this week for various misdeeds, he did not explicitly condemn China for its activities in Xinjiang.

Bipartisan lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act this week, which would require that companies prove any products sourced from Xinjiang did not involve forced labor and would compile of list of Chinese companies that relied on forced labor. (It still needs to go through the Senate.)

Senators have also urged the Trump administration to make a formal declaration that atrocity crimes are happening in Xinjiang. Some advocates are also calling on consumers to boycott products that might have been made with Uighur labor.

Economic pressure - especially if it forces major corporations to break ties with some Chinese suppliers - may be one of the most effective tools, though that is also increasingly challenging in a world that's consumed by the coronavirus pandemic and an economic catastrophe.

But the pandemic itself, Shamseden of the Uyghur Human Rights Project told me, is yet another reason for urgency. She saw it as another potential reason for China's government to escalate its crackdown, under the guise of quarantine for Covid-19. "It's going to be another good excuse to just detain people arbitrarily," she said.

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Concentration camps and forced labor: China's repression of the Uighurs, explained

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There is more and more evidence of China's human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

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https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-elections-voting-rights-misinformation-democracy-dab61d6637fb858d84daa33a4f97ec48
Biden attended a global summit, advocating for stronger belief in democracy, proving that it "can still work".

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Can democracy still deliver? Biden convening global summit | AP News

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is convening global leaders Thursday to pledge strong new commitments to democracy, even as the U.S. itself is facing some of the gravest threats in years to its democratic traditions and institutions at home.

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The horrid treatment of Natives continues to this day

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There are 574 ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse federally recognized Indian Tribes in the United States. These Tribes are distinct...

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In their article, "America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared," Lee Drutman describes the state of our current two-party political system that the "Framers" of our country once feared. Drutman references to the visionaries of historical figures such as Washington and Adams, who believed that a two-party system would be a destructive "political evil." They also mention the federalist separation of powers, which led to different political incentives and avoided the occurrence of a two-party system. However, post-civil rights realignment, the four party system that occurred in the mid-1900's collapsed into two. The current stature of American political parties shows no overlap, and is a drastic difference from the multi-layered parties that coexisted before the major civil rights movements.

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George Washington's farewell address is often remembered for its warning against hyper-partisanship: "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism." John Adams, Washington's successor, similarly worried that "a division of the republic into two great parties ... is to be dreaded as the great political evil."

America has now become that dreaded divided republic. The existential menace is as foretold, and it is breaking the system of government the Founders put in place with the Constitution.

Though America's two-party system goes back centuries, the threat today is new and different because the two parties are now truly distinct, a development that I date to the 2010 midterms. Until then, the two parties contained enough overlapping multitudes within them that the sort of bargaining and coalition-building natural to multiparty democracy could work inside the two-party system. No more. America now has just two parties, and that's it.

The theory that guided Washington and Adams was simple, and widespread at the time. If a consistent partisan majority ever united to take control of the government, it would use its power to oppress the minority. The fragile consent of the governed would break down, and violence and authoritarianism would follow. This was how previous republics had fallen into civil wars, and the Framers were intent on learning from history, not repeating its mistakes.

James Madison, the preeminent theorist of the bunch and rightly called the father of the Constitution, supported the idea of an "extended republic" (a strong national government, as opposed to 13 loosely confederated states) for precisely this reason. In a small republic, he reasoned, factions could more easily unite into consistent governing majorities. But in a large republic, with more factions and more distance, a permanent majority with a permanent minority was less likely.

The Framers thought they were using the most advanced political theory of the time to prevent parties from forming. By separating powers across competing institutions, they thought a majority party would never form. Combine the two insights-a large, diverse republic with a separation of powers-and the hyper-partisanship that felled earlier republics would be averted. Or so they believed.

However, political parties formed almost immediately because modern mass democracy requires them, and partisanship became a strong identity, jumping across institutions and eventually collapsing the republic's diversity into just two camps.

Yet separation of powers and federalism did work sort of as intended for a long while. Presidents, senators, and House members all had different electoral incentives, complicating partisan unity, and state and local parties were stronger than national parties, also complicating unity.

For much of American political history, thus, the critique of the two-party system was not that the parties were too far apart. It was that they were too similar, and that they stood for too little. The parties operated as loose, big-tent coalitions of state and local parties, which made it hard to agree on much at a national level.

From the mid-1960s through the mid-'90s, American politics had something more like a four-party system, with liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans alongside liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Conservative Mississippi Democrats and liberal New York Democrats might have disagreed more than they agreed in Congress, but they could still get elected on local brands. You could have once said the same thing about liberal Vermont Republicans and conservative Kansas Republicans. Depending on the issue, different coalitions were possible, which allowed for the kind of fluid bargaining the constitutional system requires.

But that was before American politics became fully nationalized, a phenomenon that happened over several decades, powered in large part by a slow-moving post-civil-rights realignment of the two parties. National politics transformed from a compromise-oriented squabble over government spending into a zero-sum moral conflict over national culture and identity. As the conflict sharpened, the parties changed what they stood for. And as the parties changed, the conflict sharpened further. Liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats went extinct. The four-party system collapsed into just two parties.

The Democrats, the party of diversity and cosmopolitan values, came to dominate in cities but disappeared from the exurbs. And the Republicans, the party of traditional values and white, Christian identity, fled the cities and flourished in the exurbs. Partisan social bubbles began to grow, and congressional districts became more distinctly one party or the other. As a result, primaries, not general elections, determine the victor in many districts.

Over the past three decades, both parties have had roughly equal electoral strength nationally, making control of Washington constantly up for grabs. Since 1992, the country has cycled through two swings of the pendulum, from united Democratic government to divided government to united Republican government and back again, with both sides seeking that elusive permanent majority, and attempting to sharpen the distinctions between the parties in order to win it. This also intensified partisanship.

These triple developments-the nationalization of politics, the geographical-cultural partisan split, and consistently close elections-have reinforced one another, pushing both parties into top-down leadership, enforcing party discipline, and destroying cross-partisan deal making. Voters now vote the party, not the candidate. Candidates depend on the party brand. Everything is team loyalty. The stakes are too high for it to be otherwise.

The consequence is that today, America has a genuine two-party system with no overlap, the development the Framers feared most. And it shows no signs of resolving. The two parties are fully sorted by geography and cultural values, and absent a major realignment, neither side has a chance of becoming the dominant party in the near future. But the elusive permanent majority promises so much power, neither side is willing to give up on it.
Read: How American politics went insane
This fundamentally breaks the system of separation of powers and checks and balances that the Framers created. Under unified government, congressional co-partisans have no incentive to check the president; their electoral success is tied to his success and popularity. Under divided government, congressional opposition partisans have no incentive to work with the president; their electoral success is tied to his failure and un popularity. This is not a system of bargaining and compromise, but one of capitulation and stonewalling.

Congressional stonewalling, in turn, leads presidents to do more by executive authority, further strengthening the power of the presidency. A stronger presidency creates higher-stakes presidential elections, which exacerbates hyper-partisanship, which drives even more gridlock.

Meanwhile, as hyper-partisanship has intensified legislative gridlock, more and more important decisions are left to the judiciary to resolve. This makes the stakes of Supreme Court appointments even higher (especially with lifetime tenure), leading to nastier confirmation battles, and thus higher-stakes elections.

See how this all reinforces itself? That's what makes it so tricky to resolve, at least in a two-party system with winner-take-all elections.

Political science has come a long way since 1787. Had the Framers been able to draw on the accumulated wisdom of today, they would have accepted that it is impossible to have a modern mass democracy without political parties, much as they might have wanted it. Parties make democracy work by structuring politics, limiting policy and voting choices to a manageable number. They represent and engage diffuse citizens, bringing them together for a common purpose. Without political parties, politics turns chaotic and despotic.

The Founders also would have known that plurality elections (whoever gets the most votes wins) tend to generate just two parties, while proportional elections (vote shares in multi-winner districts translate into seat shares) tend to generate multiple parties, with the district size and threshold percentages shaping the number.

But at the time, the Framers believed they could have a democracy without parties, and the only electoral system in operation was the 1430 innovation of plurality voting, which they imported from Britain without debate. It wouldn't be until the 19th century that reformers came up with new voting rules, and until the 20th century that most advanced democracies moved to proportional representation, supporting multiparty democracies.

Had the Framers accepted the inevitability of political parties, and understood the relationship between electoral rules and the number of parties, I believe they would have attempted to institutionalize multiparty democracy. Certainly, Madison would have. "Federalist No. 10," with its praise of fluid and flexible coalitions, is a vision of multiparty democracy.
Read: America is not a democracy
The good news is that nothing in the Constitution requires a two-party system, and nothing requires the country to hold simple plurality elections. The elections clause of the Constitution leaves states to decide their own rules, and reserves to Congress the power to intervene, a power that Congress has used over the years to enforce the very plurality-winner single-member districts that keep the two-party system in place and ensure that most elections are uncompetitive.

If the country wanted to, it could move to a system of proportional representation for the very next congressional election. All it would take is an act of Congress. States could also act on their own.

Multiparty democracy is not perfect. But it is far superior in supporting the diversity, bargaining, and compromise that the Framers, and especially Madison, designed America's institutions around, and which they saw as essential to the fragile experiment of self-government.

America has gone through several waves of political reform throughout its history. Today's high levels of discontent and frustration suggest it may be on the verge of another. But the course of reform is always uncertain, and the key is understanding the problem that needs to be solved. In this case, the future of American democracy depends on heeding the warning of the past. The country must break the binary hyper-partisanship so at odds with its governing institutions, and so dangerous for self-governance. It must become a multiparty democracy.

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America Is Now the Divided Republic the Framers Feared

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George Washington's farewell address is often remembered for its warning against hyper-partisanship: "The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism."

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A current event that connects to something  we have learned is the Russian and Ukrainian War. The Russian and Ukrainian War connects to the Mexican American War. These wars connect because they are almost the same. In both wars a large border country invaded their smaller neighbor. Both wars also occurred because people that lived in the smaller country wanted the bigger country to invade. The larger countries in the wars, America and Russia, used the fact that the people wanted them there, in order to justify their invasion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Ukrainian_War

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The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing international conflict between Russia, alongside Russian-backed separatists, and Ukraine, which began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas war. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare, and heightened political tensions. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country.

In early 2014, the Euromaidan protests led to the Revolution of Dignity and the ousting of Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. Shortly after, pro-Russian unrest erupted in eastern and southern Ukraine. Simultaneously, unmarked Russian troops moved into Ukraine's Crimea and took over government buildings, strategic sites and infrastructure. Russia soon annexed Crimea after a highly-disputed referendum. In April 2014, armed pro-Russian separatists seized government buildings in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) as independent states, starting the Donbas war. The separatists received considerable but covert support from Russia, and Ukrainian attempts to fully retake separatist-held areas failed. Although Russia denied involvement, Russian troops took part in the fighting. In February 2015, Russia and Ukraine signed the Minsk II agreements to end the conflict, but they were never fully implemented in the years that followed. The Donbas war settled into a violent but static conflict between Ukraine and the Russian and separatist forces, with many brief ceasefires but no lasting peace and few changes in territorial control.

Beginning in 2021, Russia built up a large military presence near its border with Ukraine, including within neighbouring Belarus. Russian officials repeatedly denied plans to attack Ukraine. Russian president Vladimir Putin criticized the enlargement of NATO and demanded that Ukraine be barred from ever joining the military alliance. He also expressed irredentist views and questioned Ukraine's right to exist. Russia recognized the DPR and LPR as independent states in February 2022. Putin announced a " special military operation" to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, claiming Russia had no plans to occupy the country. Russian forces invaded Ukraine. The invasion was internationally condemned; many countries imposed sanctions against Russia and increased existing sanctions. Russia abandoned an attempt to take Kyiv in early April 2022 amid fierce resistance. From August, Ukrainian forces began recapturing territories in the north-east and south. In late September, Russia declared the annexation of four partially-occupied regions of Ukraine, which was internationally condemned. Russia spent the winter conducting inconclusive offensives in the Donbas, and in spring 2023 dug into positions ahead of another Ukrainian counteroffensive. The war has resulted in a refugee crisis and tens of thousands of deaths.

Background

Independent Ukraine and the Orange Revolution

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991, Ukraine and Russia maintained close ties. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear-weapon state. Former Soviet nuclear weapons in Ukraine were removed and dismantled. In return, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to uphold the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine through the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. In 1999, Russia was one of the signatories of the Charter for European Security, which "reaffirmed the inherent right of each and every participating State to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance, as they evolve." In the years after the dissolution of the USSR, several former Eastern Bloc countries joined NATO, partly in response to regional security threats involving Russia such as the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, the War in Abkhazia (1992-1993) and the First Chechen War (1994-1996). Putin claimed Western powers broke promises not to let any Eastern European countries join.

The 2004 Ukrainian presidential election was controversial. During the election campaign, opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned by TCDD dioxin; he later accused Russia of involvement. In November, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was declared the winner, despite allegations of vote-rigging by election observers. During a two-month period which became known as the Orange Revolution, large peaceful protests successfully challenged the outcome. After the Supreme Court of Ukraine annulled the initial result due to widespread electoral fraud, a second round re-run was held, bringing to power Yushchenko as president and Yulia Tymoshenko as prime minister, and leaving Yanukovych in opposition. The Orange Revolution is often grouped together with other early-21st century protest movements, particularly within the former USSR, known as colour revolutions. According to Anthony Cordesman, Russian military officers viewed such colour revolutions as attempts by the US and European states to destabilise neighbouring countries and undermine Russia's national security. Russian President Vladimir Putin accused organisers of the 2011-2013 Russian protests of being former advisors to Yushchenko, and described the protests as an attempt to transfer the Orange Revolution to Russia. Rallies in favour of Putin during this period were called " anti-Orange protests".

At the 2008 Bucharest summit, Ukraine and Georgia sought to join NATO. The response among NATO members was divided; Western European countries opposed offering Membership Action Plans (MAP) in order to avoid antagonising Russia, while US President George W. Bush pushed for their admission. NATO ultimately refused to offer Ukraine and Georgia MAPs, but also issued a statement agreeing that "these countries will become members of NATO" at some point. Putin voiced strong opposition to Georgia and Ukraine's NATO membership bids. By January 2022, the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO remained remote.

In 2009, Yanukovych announced his intent to again run for president in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election, which he subsequently won. In November 2013, a wave of large, pro- European Union (EU) protests erupted in response to Yanukovych's sudden decision not to sign the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. On 22 February 2013 the Ukrainian parliament had overwhelmingly approved of finalizing the agreement with the EU, subsequent to which Russia had put pressure on Ukraine to reject it using the threat of sanctions, with Kremlin adviser Sergei Glazyev pronouncing that if the agreement was signed Russia could not guarantee Ukraine's status as a state.

Euromaidan, Revolution of Dignity, and pro-Russian unrest

Following months of protests as part of the Euromaidan movement, on 21 February 2014 Yanukovych and the leaders of the parliamentary opposition signed a settlement agreement that called for early elections. The following day, Yanukovych fled from the capital ahead of an impeachment vote that stripped him of his powers as president. On 23 February, the Rada adopted a bill to repeal the 2012 law which gave the Russian language an official status. The bill was not enacted; however, the proposal provoked negative reactions in the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine, intensified by Russian media saying that the ethnic Russian population was in imminent danger.

On 27 February, an interim government was established and early presidential elections were scheduled. The following day, Yanukovych resurfaced in Russia and in a press conference declared that he remained the acting president of Ukraine, just as Russia was beginning its overt military campaign in Crimea. Leaders of Russian-speaking eastern regions of Ukraine declared continuing loyalty to Yanukovych, causing the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine.

Russian military bases in Crimea

At the onset of the conflict, Russia had roughly 12,000 military personnel in the Black Sea Fleet, in several locations in the Crimean peninsula like Sevastopol, Kacha, Hvardiiske, Simferopol Raion, Sarych, and others. In 2005 a dispute broke out over control of the Sarych cape lighthouse near Yalta, and a number of other beacons. Russian presence was allowed by the basing and transit agreement with Ukraine. Under the agreements the Russian military in Crimea was constrained to a maximum of 25,000 troops; they were required to: respect the sovereignty of Ukraine, honor its legislation, not interfere in the internal affairs of the country, and show their "military identification cards" when crossing the international border. Early in the conflict, the agreement's sizeable troop limit allowed Russia to significantly reinforce its military presence under the plausible guise of security concerns, deploy special forces and other required capabilities to conduct the operation in Crimea.

According to the original treaty on the division of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet signed in 1997, Russia was allowed to have its military bases in Crimea until 2017, after which it would evacuate all military units including its portion of the Black Sea Fleet out of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol. On 21 April 2010, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych signed a new deal known as the Kharkiv Pact, to resolve the 2009 Russia-Ukraine gas dispute; it extended the stay to 2042 with an option to renew.

Legality and declaration of war

No formal declaration of war has been issued in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. When Putin announced the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he claimed to commence a " special military operation", side-stepping a formal declaration of war. The statement was, however, regarded as a declaration of war by the Ukrainian government and reported as such by many international news sources. While the Ukrainian parliament refers to Russia as a "terrorist state" in regard to its military actions in Ukraine, it has not issued a formal declaration of war on its behalf.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine violated international law (including the Charter of the United Nations). The invasion has also been called a crime of aggression under international criminal law and under some countries' domestic criminal codes - including those of Ukraine and Russia - although procedural obstacles exist to prosecutions under these laws.

Russian annexation of Crimea (2014)

On 20 February 2014, Russia began an annexation of Crimea. On 22 and 23 February, under the relative power vacuum immediately after the ousting of Yanukovych, Russian troops and special forces began moving into Crimea through Novorossiysk. On 27 February, Russian forces without insignias began their advance into the Crimean Peninsula. They took strategic positions and captured the Crimean Parliament, raising a Russian flag. Security checkpoints isolated the Crimean Peninsula from the rest of Ukraine and restricted movement within the territory.

In the following days, Russian soldiers secured key airports and a communications center. Russian cyberattacks shut down websites associated with the Ukrainian government, news media, and social media. Cyberattacks also enabled Russian access to the mobile phones of Ukrainian officials and members of parliament, further disrupting communications.

On 1 March, the Russian legislature approved the use of armed forces, leading to an influx of Russian troops and military hardware into the peninsula. In the following days, all remaining Ukrainian military bases and installations were surrounded and besieged, including the Southern Naval Base. After Russia formally annexed the peninsula on 18 March, Ukrainian military bases and ships were stormed by Russian forces. On 24 March, Ukraine ordered troops to withdraw; by 30 March, all Ukrainian forces had left the peninsula.

On 15 April, the Ukrainian parliament declared Crimea a territory temporarily occupied by Russia. After the annexation, the Russian government increased its military presence in the region and made nuclear threats. Putin said that a Russian military task force would be established in Crimea. In November, NATO stated that it believed Russia was deploying nuclear-capable weapons to Crimea. Since the annexation of Crimea, certain NATO members have been providing training for the Ukrainian army.

War in the Donbas (2014-2015)

Pro-Russia unrest

Beginning in late February 2014, demonstrations by pro-Russian and anti-government groups took place in major cities across the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. The first protests across southern and eastern Ukraine were largely native expressions of discontent with the new Ukrainian government. Russian involvement at this stage was limited to voicing support for the demonstrations. Russia exploited this, however, launching a coordinated political and military campaign against Ukraine. Putin gave legitimacy to the separatists when he described the Donbas as part of " New Russia" ( Novorossiya), and expressed bewilderment as to how the region had ever become part of Ukraine.

In late March, Russia continued to gather forces near the Ukrainian eastern border, reaching 30-40,000 troops by April. The deployment was used to threaten escalation and disrupt Ukraine's response. This threat forced Ukraine to divert forces to its borders instead of the conflict zone.

Ukrainian authorities cracked down on the pro-Russian protests and arrested local separatist leaders in early March. Those leaders were replaced by people with ties to the Russian security services and interests in Russian businesses. By April 2014, Russian citizens had taken control of the separatist movement, supported by volunteers and materiel from Russia, including Chechen and Cossack fighters. According to Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) commander Igor Girkin, without this support in April, the movement would have dissipated, as it had in Kharkiv and Odesa. The separatist groups held disputed referendums in May which were not recognised by Ukraine or any other UN member state.

Armed conflict

In April, armed conflict began in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatist forces and Ukraine. The separatists declared the People's Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. From 6 April, militants occupied government buildings in many cities and took control of border crossings to Russia, transport hubs, a broadcasting center, and other strategic infrastructure. On 12 April several armed groups took cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and then Horlivka, Druzhkivka in subsequent days. They were led by people like retired Russian colonel Igor Girkin and lieutenant colonel Igor Bezler. Faced with continued expansion of separatist territorial control, on 15 April the interim Ukrainian government launched an " Anti-Terrorist Operation" (ATO); however, Ukrainian forces were poorly prepared and ill-positioned and the operation quickly stalled.

By the end of April, Ukraine announced it had lost control of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. It claimed to be on "full combat alert" against a possible Russian invasion and reinstated conscription to its armed forces. Through May, the Ukrainian campaign focused on containing the separatists by securing key positions around the ATO zone to position the military for a decisive offensive once Ukraine's national mobilization had completed.

As conflict between the separatists and the Ukrainian government escalated in May, Russia began to employ a " hybrid approach", combining disinformation tactics, irregular fighters, regular Russian troops, and conventional military support. The First Battle of Donetsk Airport followed the Ukrainian presidential elections. It marked a turning point in conflict; it was the first battle between the separatists and the Ukrainian government that involved large numbers of Russian "volunteers". According to Ukraine, at the height of the conflict in the summer of 2014, Russian paramilitaries made up between 15% and 80% of the combatants. From June Russia trickled in arms, armor, and munitions.

On 17 July 2014, Russian-controlled forces shot down a passenger aircraft, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, as it was flying over eastern Ukraine. Investigations and the recovery of bodies began in the conflict zone as fighting continued.

By the end of July, Ukrainian forces were pushing into cities, to cut off supply routes between the two, isolating Donetsk and attempting to restore control of the Russo-Ukrainian border. By 28 July, the strategic heights of Savur-Mohyla were under Ukrainian control, along with the town of Debaltseve, an important railroad hub. These operational successes of Ukrainian forces threatened the existence of the DPR and LPR statelets, prompting Russian cross-border shelling targeted against Ukrainian troops on their own soil, from mid-July onwards.

August 2014 Russian invasion

After a series of military defeats and setbacks for the separatists, who united under the banner of " Novorossiya", Russia dispatched what it called a "humanitarian convoy" of trucks across the border in mid-August 2014. Ukraine called the move a "direct invasion". Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council reported that convoys were arriving almost daily in November (up to 9 convoys on 30 November) and that their contents were mainly arms and ammunition. Strelkov claimed that in early August, Russian servicemen, supposedly on "vacation" from the army, began to arrive in Donbas.

By August 2014, the Ukrainian "Anti-Terrorist Operation" shrank the territory under pro-Russian control, and approached the border. Igor Girkin urged Russian military intervention, and said that the combat inexperience of his irregular forces, along with recruitment difficulties amongst the local population, had caused the setbacks. He stated, "Losing this war on the territory that President Vladimir Putin personally named New Russia would threaten the Kremlin's power and, personally, the power of the president".

In response to the deteriorating situation, Russia abandoned its hybrid approach, and began a conventional invasion on 25 August 2014. On the following day, the Russian Defence Ministry said these soldiers had crossed the border "by accident". According to Nikolai Mitrokhin's estimates, by mid-August 2014 during the Battle of Ilovaisk, between 20,000 and 25,000 troops were fighting in the Donbas on the separatist side, and only 40-45% were "locals".

On 24 August 2014, Amvrosiivka was occupied by Russian paratroopers, supported by 250 armoured vehicles and artillery pieces. The same day, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko referred to the operation as Ukraine's "Patriotic War of 2014" and a war against external aggression. On 25 August, a column of Russian military vehicles was reported to have crossed into Ukraine near Novoazovsk on the Azov sea coast. It appeared headed towards Ukrainian-held Mariupol, in an area that had not seen pro-Russian presence for weeks. Russian forces captured Novoazovsk. and Russian soldiers began deporting Ukrainians who did not have an address registered within the town. Pro-Ukrainian anti-war protests took place in Mariupol. The UN Security Council called an emergency meeting.

The Pskov-based 76th Guards Air Assault Division allegedly entered Ukrainian territory in August and engaged in a skirmish near Luhansk, suffering 80 dead. The Ukrainian Defence Ministry said that they had seized two of the unit's armoured vehicles near Luhansk, and reported destroying another three tanks and two armoured vehicles in other regions. The Russian government denied the skirmish took place, but on 18 August, the 76th was awarded the Order of Suvorov, one of Russia's highest awards, by Russian minister of defence Sergey Shoigu for the "successful completion of military missions" and "courage and heroism".

The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament and Russian state television channels acknowledged that Russian soldiers entered Ukraine, but referred to them as "volunteers". A reporter for Novaya Gazeta, an opposition newspaper in Russia, stated that the Russian military leadership paid soldiers to resign their commissions and fight in Ukraine in the early summer of 2014, and then began ordering soldiers into Ukraine. Russian opposition MP Lev Shlosberg made similar statements, although he said combatants from his country are "regular Russian troops", disguised as units of the DPR and LPR.

In early September 2014, Russian state-owned television channels reported on the funerals of Russian soldiers who had died in Ukraine, but described them as "volunteers" fighting for the " Russian world". Valentina Matviyenko, a top United Russia politician, also praised "volunteers" fighting in "our fraternal nation". Russian state television for the first time showed the funeral of a soldier killed fighting in Ukraine.

Mariupol offensive and first Minsk ceasefire

On 3 September, Poroshenko said he and Putin had reached a "permanent ceasefire" agreement. Russia denied this, denying that it was a party to the conflict, adding that "they only discussed how to settle the conflict". Poroshenko then recanted. On 5 September Russia's Permanent OSCE Representative Andrey Kelin, said that it was natural that pro-Russian separatists "are going to liberate" Mariupol. Ukrainian forces stated that Russian intelligence groups had been spotted in the area. Kelin said 'there might be volunteers over there.' On 4 September 2014, a NATO officer said that several thousand regular Russian forces operating in Ukraine.

On 5 September 2014, the Minsk Protocol ceasefire agreement drew a line of demarcation between Ukraine and separatist-controlled portions of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts.

End of 2014 and Minsk II agreement

On 7 and 12 November, NATO officials reconfirmed the Russian presence, citing 32 tanks, 16 howitzer cannons and 30 trucks of troops entering the country. US general Philip M. Breedlove said "Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defence systems and Russian combat troops" had been sighted. NATO said it had seen an increase in Russian tanks, artillery pieces and other heavy military equipment in Ukraine and renewed its call for Moscow to withdraw its forces. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs stated that Russian separatists enjoyed technical advantages over the Ukrainian army since the large inflow of advanced military systems in mid-2014: effective anti-aircraft weapons (" Buk", MANPADS) suppressed Ukrainian air strikes, Russian drones provided intelligence, and Russian secure communications system disrupted Ukrainian communications intelligence. The Russian side employed electronic warfare systems that Ukraine lacked. Similar conclusions about the technical advantage of the Russian separatists were voiced by the Conflict Studies Research Centre. In the 12 November United Nations Security Council meeting, the United Kingdom's representative accused Russia of intentionally constraining OSCE observation missions' capabilities, pointing out that the observers were allowed to monitor only two kilometers of border, and drones deployed to extend their capabilities were jammed or shot down.[non-primary source needed ]

Pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk in May 2015. Ukraine declared the Russian-backed separatist republics from eastern Ukraine to be terrorist organizations.[148]

In January 2015, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Mariupol represented the three battle fronts. Poroshenko described a dangerous escalation on 21 January amid reports of more than 2,000 additional Russian troops, 200 tanks and armed personnel carriers crossing the border. He abbreviated his visit to the World Economic Forum because of his concerns.

A new package of measures to end the conflict, known as Minsk II, was agreed on 15 February 2015. On 18 February, Ukrainian forces withdrew from Debatlseve, in the last high-intensity battle of the Donbas war until 2022. In September 2015 the United Nations Human Rights Office estimated that 8000 casualties had resulted from the conflict.

Line of conflict stabilizes (2015-2021)

After the Minsk agreements, the war settled into static trench warfare around the agreed line of contact, with few changes in territorial control. The conflict was marked by artillery duels, special forces operations, and trench warfare. Hostilities never ceased for a substantial period of time, but continued at a low level despite repeated attempts at ceasefire. In the months after the fall of Debaltseve, minor skirmishes continued along the line of contact, but no territorial changes occurred. Both sides began fortifying their position by building networks of trenches, bunkers and tunnels, turning the conflict into static trench warfare. The relatively static conflict was labelled a " frozen" by some, but Russia never achieved this as the fighting never stopped. Between 2014 and 2022 there were 29 ceasefires, each agreed to remain in force indefinitely. However, none of them lasted more than two weeks.

US and international officials continued to report the active presence of Russian military in eastern Ukraine, including in the Debaltseve area. In 2015, Russian separatist forces were estimated to number around 36,000 troops (compared to 34,000 Ukrainian), of whom 8,500-10,000 were Russian soldiers. Additionally, around 1,000 GRU troops were operating in the area. Another 2015 estimate held that Ukrainian forces outnumbered Russian forces 40,000 to 20,000. In 2017, on average one Ukrainian soldier died in combat every three days, with an estimated 6,000 Russian and 40,000 separatist troops in the region.

Cases of killed and wounded Russian soldiers were discussed in local Russian media. Recruiting for Donbas was performed openly via veteran and paramilitary organisations. Vladimir Yefimov, leader of one such organisation, explained how the process worked in the Ural area. The organisation recruited mostly army veterans, but also policemen, firefighters etc. with military experience. The cost of equipping one volunteer was estimated at 350,000 rubles (around $6500) plus salary of 60,000 to 240,000 rubles per month. The recruits received weapons only after arriving in the conflict zone. Often, Russian troops traveled disguised as Red Cross personnel. Igor Trunov, head of the Russian Red Cross in Moscow, condemned these convoys, saying they complicated humanitarian aid delivery. Russia refused to allow OSCE to expand its mission beyond two border crossings.

The volunteers were issued a document claiming that their participation was limited to "offering humanitarian help" to avoid Russian mercenary laws. Russia's anti-mercenary legislation defined a mercenary as someone who "takes part [in fighting] with aims counter to the interests of the Russian Federation".

In August 2016, the Ukrainian intelligence service, the SBU, published telephone intercepts from 2014 of Sergey Glazyev (Russian presidential adviser), Konstantin Zatulin, and other people in which they discussed covert funding of pro-Russian activists in Eastern Ukraine, the occupation of administration buildings and other actions that triggered the conflict. As early as February 2014, Glazyev gave direct instructions to various pro-Russian parties on how to take over local administration offices, what to do afterwards, how to formulate demands, and promised support from Russia, including "sending our guys".

2018 Kerch Strait incident

Russia gained de facto control of the Kerch Strait in 2014. In 2017, Ukraine appealed to a court of arbitration over the use of the strait. By 2018 Russia had built a bridge over the strait, limiting the size of ships that could pass through, imposed new regulations, and repeatedly detained Ukrainian vessels. On 25 November 2018, three Ukrainian boats traveling from Odesa to Mariupol were seized by Russian warships; 24 Ukrainian sailors were detained. A day later on 26 November 2018, the Ukrainian parliament overwhelmingly backed the imposition of martial law along Ukraine's coastal regions and those bordering Russia.

From left, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris, France, December 2019

More than 110 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the conflict in 2019. In May 2019, newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took office promising to end the war in Donbas. In December 2019, Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists began swapping prisoners of war. Around 200 prisoners were exchanged on 29 December 2019. According to Ukrainian authorities, 50 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in 2020. Since 2019, Russia has issued over 650,000 internal Russian passports to Ukrainians.

Russian military buildup around Ukraine (2021-2022)

From March to April 2021, Russia commenced a major military build-up near the border, followed by a second build-up between October 2021 to February 2022 in Russia and Belarus. Throughout, the Russian government repeatedly denied it had plans to attack Ukraine.

In early December 2021, following Russian denials, the US released intelligence of Russian invasion plans, including satellite photographs showing Russian troops and equipment near the border. The intelligence reported a Russian list of key sites and individuals to be killed or neutralized. The US released multiple reports that accurately predicted the invasion plans.

Russian accusations and demands

In the months preceding the invasion, Russian officials accused Ukraine of inciting tensions, Russophobia, and repressing Russian speakers. They made multiple security demands of Ukraine, NATO, and other EU countries. On 9 December 2021 Putin said that "Russophobia is a first step towards genocide". Putin's claims were dismissed by the international community, and Russian claims of genocide were rejected as baseless. In a 21 February speech, Putin questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state, repeating an inaccurate claim that "Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood". He incorrectly stated that Vladimir Lenin had created Ukraine, by carving a separate Soviet Republic out of what Putin said was Russian land, and that Nikita Khrushchev "took Crimea away from Russia for some reason and gave it to Ukraine" in 1954.

Putin falsely claimed that Ukrainian society and government were dominated by neo-Nazism, invoking the history of collaboration in German-occupied Ukraine during World War II, and echoing an antisemitic conspiracy theory that cast Russian Christians, rather than Jews, as the true victims of Nazi Germany. Ukraine does have a far-right fringe, including the neo-Nazi linked Azov Battalion and Right Sector. Analysts described Putin's rhetoric as greatly exaggerated. Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, stated that his grandfather served in the Soviet army fighting against the Nazis; three of his family members were killed in the Holocaust.

A U.S. intelligence assessment map and imagery on Russian military movement nearby the Ukrainian border, as on 3 December 2021. It assessed that Russia had deployed about 70,000 military personnel mostly about 100-200 kilometres (62-124 mi) from the Ukrainian border, with an assessment this could be increased to 175,000 personnel. Published by The Washington Post.[209]

During the second build-up, Russia demanded a treaty that would forbid Ukraine from ever joining NATO, and end all NATO activity in its Eastern European member states. These demands were rejected. A treaty to prevent Ukraine joining NATO would go against the alliance's " open door" policy and the principle of self-determination, although NATO made no efforts to comply with Ukraine's requests to join. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg replied that "Russia has no say" on whether Ukraine joins, and that "Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence to try to control their neighbors". NATO offered to improve communications with Russia and discuss missile placements and military exercises, as long as Russia withdrew troops from Ukraine's borders, but Russia did not withdraw.

Prelude to full invasion

Fighting in Donbas escalated significantly from 17 February 2022 onwards. The Ukrainians and the pro-Russian separatists each accused the other of attacks. There was a sharp increase in artillery shelling by the Russian-led militants in Donbas, which was considered by Ukraine and its supporters to be an attempt to provoke the Ukrainian army or create a pretext for invasion. On 18 February, the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics ordered mandatory emergency evacuations of civilians from their respective capital cities, although observers noted that full evacuations would take months. The Russian government intensified its disinformation campaign, with Russian state media promoting fabricated videos ( false flags) on a nearly hourly basis purporting to show Ukrainian forces attacking Russia. Many of the disinformation videos were amateurish, and evidence showed that the claimed attacks, explosions, and evacuations in Donbas were staged by Russia.

Putin's address to the nation on 21 February (English subtitles available)

On 21 February at 22:35 (UTC+3), Putin announced that the Russian government would diplomatically recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics. The same evening, Putin directed that Russian troops deploy into Donbas, in what Russia referred to as a " peacekeeping mission". On 22 February, the Federation Council unanimously authorised Putin to use military force outside Russia. In response, Zelenskyy ordered the conscription of army reservists; The following day, Ukraine's parliament proclaimed a 30-day nationwide state of emergency and ordered the mobilisation of all reservists. Russia began to evacuate its embassy in Kyiv.

On the night of 23 February, Zelenskyy gave a speech in Russian in which he appealed to the citizens of Russia to prevent war. He rejected Russia's claims about neo-Nazis and stated that he had no intention of attacking the Donbas. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on 23 February that the separatist leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk had sent a letter to Putin stating that Ukrainian shelling had caused civilian deaths and appealing for military support.

Full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022-present)

The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on the morning of 24 February 2022, when Putin announced a "special military operation" to " demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine. Minutes later, missiles and airstrikes hit across Ukraine, including Kyiv, shortly followed by a large ground invasion along multiple fronts. Zelenskyy declared martial law and a general mobilisation of all male Ukrainian citizens between 18 and 60, who were banned from leaving the country.

Russian attacks were initially launched on a northern front from Belarus towards Kyiv, a north-eastern front towards Kharkiv, a southern front from Crimea, and a south-eastern front from Luhansk and Donetsk. In the northern front, amidst heavy losses and strong Ukrainian resistance surrounding Kyiv, Russia's advance stalled in March, and by April its troops retreated. On 8 April, Russia placed its forces in southern and eastern Ukraine under the command of General Aleksandr Dvornikov, and some units withdrawn from the north were redeployed to the Donbas. On 19 April, Russia launched a renewed attack across a 500 kilometres (300 mi) long front extending from Kharkiv to Donetsk and Luhansk. By 13 May, a Ukraine counter-offensive had driven back Russian forces near Kharkiv. By 20 May, Mariupol fell to Russian troops following a prolonged siege of the Azovstal steel works. Russian forces continued to bomb both military and civilian targets far from the frontline. The war caused the largest refugee and humanitarian crisis within Europe since the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s; the UN described it as the fastest-growing such crisis since World War II. In the first week of the invasion, the UN reported over a million refugees had fled Ukraine; this subsequently rose to over 7,405,590 by 24 September, a reduction from over eight million due to some refugees' return.

Ukrainian forces launched counteroffensives in the south in August, and in the northeast in September. On 30 September, Russia annexed four oblasts of Ukraine which it had partially conquered during the invasion. This annexation was generally unrecognized and condemned by the countries of the world. After Putin announced that he would begin conscription drawn from the 300,000 citizens with military training and potentially the pool of about 25 million Russians who could be eligible for conscription, one-way tickets out of the country nearly or completely sold out. The Ukrainian offensive in the northeast successfully recaptured the majority of Kharkiv Oblast in September. In the course of the southern counteroffensive, Ukraine retook the city of Kherson in November and Russian forces withdrew to the east bank of the Dnieper River.[citation needed ]

The invasion was internationally condemned as a war of aggression. A United Nations General Assembly resolution demanded a full withdrawal of Russian forces, the International Court of Justice ordered Russia to suspend military operations and the Council of Europe expelled Russia. Many countries imposed new sanctions, which affected the economies of Russia and the world, and provided humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine. In September 2022, Putin signed a law that would punish anyone who resists conscription with a 10-year prison sentence resulting in an international push to allow asylum for Russians fleeing conscription.

According to an estimate published by The New York Times, as of February 2023, the "number of Russian troops killed and wounded in Ukraine is approaching 200,000."

Human rights violations

Violations of human rights and atrocity crimes have both occurred during the war. From 2014 to 2021, there were more than 3,000 civilian casualties, with most occurring in 2014 and 2015. The right of movement was impeded for the inhabitants of the conflict zone. Arbitrary detention was practiced by both sides in the first years of the conflict. It decreased after 2016 in government-held areas, while in the separatist-held ones it continued. Investigations into the abuses committed by both sides made little progress.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian authorities and armed forces have committed multiple war crimes in the form of deliberate attacks against civilian targets, massacres of civilians, torture and rape of women and children, and indiscriminate attacks in densely populated areas. After the Russian withdrawal from areas north of Kyiv, overwhelming evidence of war crimes by Russian forces was discovered. In particular, in the town of Bucha, evidence emerged of a massacre of civilians perpetrated by Russian troops, including torture, mutilation, rape, looting and deliberate killings of civilians. the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (OHCHR) has documented the murder of at least 73 civilians - mostly men, but also women and children - in Bucha. More than 1,200 bodies of civilians were found in the Kyiv region after Russian forces withdrew, some of them summarily executed. There were reports of forced deportations of thousands of civilians, including children, to Russia, mainly from Russian-occupied Mariupol, as well as sexual violence, including cases of rape, sexual assault and gang rape, and deliberate killing of Ukrainian civilians by Russian forces.

Ukrainian forces have also been accused of committing various war crimes, including mistreatment of detainees, though on a much smaller scale than Russian forces.

Related issues

Gas disputes

Until 2014 Ukraine was the main transit route for Russian natural gas sold to Europe, which earned Ukraine about US$3 billion a year in transit fees, making it the country's most lucrative export service. Following Russia's launch of the Nord Stream pipeline, which bypasses Ukraine, gas transit volumes steadily decreased. Following the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War in February 2014, severe tensions extended to the gas sector. The subsequent outbreak of war in the Donbas region forced the suspension of a project to develop Ukraine's own shale gas reserves at the Yuzivska gas field, which had been planned as a way to reduce Ukrainian dependence on Russian gas imports. Eventually, the EU commissioner for energy Günther Oettinger was called in to broker a deal securing supplies to Ukraine and transit to the EU.

An explosion damaged a Ukrainian portion of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhhorod pipeline in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast in May 2014. Ukrainian officials blamed Russian terrorists. Another section of the pipeline exploded in the Poltava Oblast on 17 June 2014, one day after Russia limited the supply of gas to Ukrainian customers due to non-payment. Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said the following day that the explosion had been caused by a bomb.

In 2015, Russian state media reported that Russia planned to completely abandon gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine after 2018. Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom had already substantially reduced the volumes of gas transited across Ukraine, and expressed its intention to reduce the level further by means of transit-diversification pipelines (Turkish Stream, Nord Stream, etc.). Gazprom and Ukraine agreed to a five-year deal on Russian gas transit to Europe at the end of 2019.

In 2020, the TurkStream natural gas pipeline running from Russia to Turkey changed the regional gas flows in South-East Europe by diverting the transit through Ukraine and the Trans Balkan Pipeline system.

In May 2021, the Biden administration waived Trump's CAATSA sanctions on the company behind Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said he was "surprised" and "disappointed" by Joe Biden's decision. In July 2021, the U.S. urged Ukraine not to criticise a forthcoming agreement with Germany over the pipeline.

In July 2021, Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel concluded a deal that the U.S. might trigger sanctions if Russia used Nord Stream as a "political weapon". The deal aimed to prevent Poland and Ukraine from being cut off from Russian gas supplies. Ukraine will get a $50 million loan for green technology until 2024 and Germany will set up a billion dollar fund to promote Ukraine's transition to green energy to compensate for the loss of the gas-transit fees. The contract for transiting Russian gas through Ukraine will be prolonged until 2034, if the Russian government agrees.

In August 2021, Zelenskyy warned that the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany was "a dangerous weapon, not only for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe." In September 2021, Ukraine's Naftogaz CEO Yuriy Vitrenko accused Russia of using natural gas as a "geopolitical weapon". Vitrenko stated that "A joint statement from the United States and Germany said that if the Kremlin used gas as a weapon, there would be an appropriate response. We are now waiting for the imposition of sanctions on a 100% subsidiary of Gazprom, the operator of Nord Stream 2."

Hybrid warfare

The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has also included elements of hybrid warfare using non-traditional means. Cyberwarfare has been used by Russia in operations including successful attacks on the Ukrainian power grid in December 2015 and in December 2016, which was the first successful cyber attack on a power grid, and the Mass hacker supply-chain attack in June 2017, which the US claimed was the largest known cyber attack. In retaliation, Ukrainian operations have included the Surkov Leaks in October 2016 which released 2,337 e-mails in relation to Russian plans for seizing Crimea from Ukraine and fomenting separatist unrest in Donbas. The Russian information war against Ukraine has been another front of hybrid warfare waged by Russia.

A Russian fifth column in Ukraine has also been claimed to exist among the Party of Regions, the Communist Party, the Progressive Socialist Party and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns

Pro-Kremlin TV and radio host Vladimir Solovyov voiced support for his country's invasion of Ukraine.[325]

False stories have been used to provoke public outrage during the war. In April 2014, Russian news channels Russia-1 and NTV showed a man saying he was attacked by a fascist Ukrainian gang on one channel and on the other channel saying he was funding the training of right-wing anti-Russia radicals. A third segment portrayed the man as a neo-Nazi surgeon. In May 2014, Russia-1 aired a story about Ukrainian atrocities using footage of a 2012 Russian operation in North Caucasus. In the same month, the Russian news network Life presented a 2013 photograph of a wounded child in Syria as a victim of Ukrainian troops who had just retaken Donetsk International Airport.

In June 2014, several Russian state news outlets reported that Ukraine was using white phosphorus using 2004 footage of white phosphorus being used by the United States in Iraq. In July 2014, Channel One Russia broadcast an interview with a woman who said that a 3-year-old boy who spoke Russian was crucified by Ukrainian nationalists in a fictitious square in Sloviansk that turned out to be false.

In 2022, Russian state media told stories of genocide and mass graves full of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. One set of graves outside Luhansk was dug when intense fighting in 2014 cut off the electricity in the local morgue. Amnesty International investigated 2014 Russian claims of mass graves filled with hundreds of bodies and instead found isolated incidents of extrajudicial executions by both sides. The Russian censorship apparatusRoskomnadzor ordered the country's media to employ information only from Russian state sources or face fines and blocks, and ordered media and schools to describe the war as a "special military operation". On 4 March 2022, Putin signed into law a bill introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for those who publish "fake news" about the Russian military and its operations, leading to some media outlets to stop reporting on Ukraine. Russia's opposition politician Alexei Navalny said the "monstrosity of lies" in the Russian state media "is unimaginable. And, unfortunately, so is its persuasiveness for those who have no access to alternative information." He tweeted that "warmongers" among Russian state media personalities "should be treated as war criminals. From the editors-in-chief to the talk show hosts to the news editors, [they] should be sanctioned now and tried someday."

Putin and Russian media have described the government of Ukraine as being led by neo-Nazis persecuting ethnic Russians who are in need of protection by Russia, despite Ukraine's President Zelenskyy being Jewish. According to journalist Natalia Antonova, "Russia's present-day war of aggression is refashioned by propaganda into a direct continuation of the legacy of the millions of Russian soldiers who died to stop" Nazi Germany in World War II. Ukraine's rejection of the adoption of Russia-initiated General Assembly resolutions on combating the glorification of Nazism, the latest iteration of which is General Assembly Resolution A/C.3/76/L.57/Rev.1 on Combating Glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and other Practices that Contribute to Fueling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, serve to present Ukraine as a pro-Nazi state, and indeed likely forms the basis for Russia's claims, with the only other state rejecting the adoption of the resolution being the US. The Deputy US Representative for ECOSOC describes such resolutions as "thinly veiled attempts to legitimize Russian disinformation campaigns denigrating neighboring nations and promoting the distorted Soviet narrative of much of contemporary European history, using the cynical guise of halting Nazi glorification".

NAFO ('North Atlantic Fellas Organization'), a loose cadre of online ' shitposters' vowing to fight Russian disinformation generally identified by cartoon Shiba Inu dogs in social media, gained notoriety after June 2022, in the wake of a Twitter quarrel with Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov.

Russia-NATO relations

In his speech justifying the invasion of Ukraine, Putin falsely claimed that NATO military infrastructure was being built up inside Ukraine and was a threat to Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov characterized the conflict as a proxy war started by NATO. He said: "We don't think we're at war with NATO ... Unfortunately, NATO believes it is at war with Russia". NATO says it is not at war with Russia; its official policy is that it does not seek confrontation, but rather its members support Ukraine in "its right to self-defense, as enshrined in the UN Charter". NATO and Russia had co-operated until Russia annexed Crimea. Former CIA director Leon Panetta told the ABC that the U.S. is 'without question' involved in a proxy war with Russia.

Russian military aircraft flying over the Baltic and Black Seas often do not indicate their position or communicate with air traffic controllers, thus posing a potential risk to civilian airliners. NATO aircraft scrambled many times to track and intercept these aircraft near alliance airspace. The Russian aircraft intercepted never entered NATO airspace, and the interceptions were conducted in a safe and routine manner.

Reactions to the Russian annexation of Crimea

Ukrainian response

Following Russia's annexation of Crimea, Ukraine blocked the North Crimean Canal, which provided 85% of Crimea's drinking and irrigation water.[355]

Interim Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov accused Russia of "provoking a conflict" by backing the seizure of the Crimean parliament building and other government offices on the Crimean peninsula. He compared Russia's military actions to the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, when Russian troops occupied parts of the Republic of Georgia and the breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were established under the control of Russian-backed administrations. He called on Putin to withdraw Russian troops from Crimea and stated that Ukraine will "preserve its territory" and "defend its independence". On 1 March, he warned, "Military intervention would be the beginning of war and the end of any relations between Ukraine and Russia." On 1 March, Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov placed the Armed Forces of Ukraine on full alert and combat readiness.

The Ministry of Temporarily Occupied Territories and IDPs was established by Ukrainian government on 20 April 2016 to manage occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea regions affected by Russian military intervention of 2014.

NATO and United States military response

A U.S. Army convoy in Vilseck, Germany during Operation Atlantic Resolve, NATO's efforts to reassert its military presence in central and eastern Europe that began in April 2014.

On 4 March 2014, the United States pledged $1 billion in aid to Ukraine. Russia's actions increased tensions in nearby countries historically within its sphere of influence, particularly the Baltic and Moldova. All have large Russian-speaking populations, and Russian troops are stationed in the breakaway Moldovan territory of Transnistria. Some devoted resources to increasing defensive capabilities, and many requested increased support from the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which they had joined in recent years. The conflict "reinvigorated" NATO, which had been created to face the Soviet Union, but had devoted more resources to "expeditionary missions" in recent years.

In addition to diplomatic support in its conflict with Russia, the U.S. provided Ukraine with US$1.5 billion in military aid during the 2010s. In 2018 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a provision blocking any training of Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian National Guard by American forces. In previous years, between 2014 and 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed amendments banning support of Azov, but due to pressure from the Pentagon, the amendments were quietly lifted.

Financial markets

Euro/RUB exchange rate

Inverted yield curves to tame inflation during their wars (Russo-Georgian War, Russo-Ukrainian War, 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine)

The initial reaction to the escalation of tensions in Crimea caused the Russian and European stock market to tumble. The intervention caused the Swiss franc to climb to a 2-year high against the dollar and 1-year high against the Euro. The Euro and the US dollar both rose, as did the Australian dollar. The Russian stock market declined by more than 10 percent, while the Russian ruble hit all-time lows against the US dollar and the Euro. The Russian central bank hiked interest rates and intervened in the foreign exchange markets to the tune of $12 billion[clarification needed ] to try to stabilize its currency. Prices for wheat and grain rose, with Ukraine being a major exporter of both crops.

Later in March 2014, the reaction of the financial markets to the Crimea annexation was surprisingly mellow, with global financial markets rising immediately after the referendum held in Crimea, one explanation being that the sanctions were already priced in following the earlier Russian incursion. Other observers considered that the positive reaction of the global financial markets on Monday 17 March 2014, after the announcement of sanctions against Russia by the EU and the US, revealed that these sanctions were too weak to hurt Russia. In early August 2014, the German DAX was down by 6 percent for the year, and 11 percent since June, over concerns Russia, Germany's 13th biggest trade partner, would retaliate against sanctions.

Reactions to the war in Donbas

Ukrainian public opinion

A poll of the Ukrainian public, excluding Russian-annexed Crimea, was taken by the International Republican Institute from 12 to 25 September 2014. 89% of those polled opposed 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine. As broken down by region, 78% of those polled from Eastern Ukraine (including Dnipropetrovsk Oblast) opposed said intervention, along with 89% in Southern Ukraine, 93% in Central Ukraine, and 99% in Western Ukraine. As broken down by native language, 79% of Russian speakers and 95% of Ukrainian speakers opposed the intervention. 80% of those polled said the country should remain a unitary country.

A poll of the Crimean public in Russian-annexed Crimea was taken by the Ukrainian branch of Germany's biggest market research organization, GfK, on 16-22 January 2015. According to its results: "Eighty-two percent of those polled said they fully supported Crimea's inclusion in Russia, and another 11 percent expressed partial support. Only 4 percent spoke out against it."

A joint poll conducted by Levada and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology from September to October 2020 found that in the breakaway regions controlled by the DPR/ LPR, just over half of the respondents wanted to join Russia (either with or without some autonomous status) while less than one-tenth wanted independence and 12% wanted reintegration into Ukraine. It contrasted with respondents in Kyiv-controlled Donbas, where a vast majority felt the separatist regions should be returned to Ukraine. According to results from Levada in January 2022, roughly 70% of those in the breakaway regions said their territories should become part of the Russian Federation.

Russian public opinion

An August 2014 survey by the Levada Centre reported that only 13% of those Russians polled would support the Russian government in an open war with Ukraine. Street protests against the war in Ukraine arose in Russia. Notable protests first occurred in March and large protests occurred in September when "tens of thousands" protested the war in Ukraine with a peace march in downtown Moscow on Sunday, 21 September 2014, "under heavy police supervision".

Reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine

Ukrainian public opinion

In March 2022, a week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 98% of Ukrainians - including 82% of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine - said they did not believe that any part of Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia, according to Lord Ashcroft's polls which did not include Crimea and the separatist-controlled part of Donbas. 97% of Ukrainians said they had an unfavourable view of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with a further 94% saying they had an unfavourable view of the Russian Armed Forces.

At the end of 2021, 75% of Ukrainians said they had a positive attitude toward ordinary Russians, while in May 2022, 82% of Ukrainians said they had a negative attitude toward ordinary Russians.

Russian public opinion

Russia
Countries on Russia's "Unfriendly Countries List". The list includes countries that have imposed sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.[389]

An April 2022 survey by the Levada Centre reported that approximately 74% of the Russians polled supported the "special military operation" in Ukraine, suggesting that Russian public opinion has shifted considerably since 2014. According to some sources, a reason many Russians supported the "special military operation" has to do with the propaganda and disinformation. In addition, it has been suggested that some respondents did not want to answer pollsters' questions for fear of negative consequences. At the end of March, a poll conducted in Russia by the Levada Center concluded the following: When asked why they think the military operation is taking place, respondents said it was to protect and defend civilians, ethnic Russians or Russian speakers in Ukraine (43%), to prevent an attack on Russia (25%), to get rid of nationalists and "denazify" Ukraine (21%), and to incorporate Ukraine or the Donbas region into Russia (3%)." According to polls, the Russian President's rating rose from 71% on the eve of the invasion to 82% in March 2023.

United States

On 28 April 2022, US President Joe Biden asked Congress for an additional $33 billion to assist Ukraine, including $20 billion to provide weapons to Ukraine. On 5 May, Ukraine's Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal announced that Ukraine had received more than $12 billion worth of weapons and financial aid from Western countries since the start of Russia's invasion on 24 February. On 21 May 2022, the United States passed legislation providing $40 billion in new military and humanitarian foreign aid to Ukraine, marking a historically large commitment of funds. In August 2022, U.S. defense spending to counter the Russian war effort exceeded the first 5 years of war costs in Afghanistan. The Washington Post reported that new U.S. weapons delivered to the Ukrainian war front suggest a closer combat scenario with more casualties. The United States looks to build "enduring strength in Ukraine" with increased arms shipments and a record-breaking $3 billion military aid package.

Russian military suppliers

After expending large amounts of heavy weapons and munitions over months, the Russian Federation received combat drones, loitering munitions, and large amounts of artillery and from Iran, deliveries of tanks and other armoured vehicles from Belarus, and reportedly planned to trade for artillery ammunition from North Korea and ballistic missiles from Iran.

The U.S. has accused China of providing Russia with technology it needs for high-tech weapons, allegations which China has denied. The U.S. sanctioned a Chinese firm for providing satellite imagery to Russian mercenary forces fighting in Ukraine.

In March 2023, Western nations had pressed the United Arab Emirates to halt re-exports of goods to Russia which had military uses, amidst allegations that the Gulf country exported 158 drones to Russia in 2022. In May 2023, the U.S. accused South Africa of supplying arms to Russia in a covert naval operation, allegations which have been denied by South African president Cyril Ramaphosa.

References

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The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing international conflict between Russia, alongside Russian-backed separatists, and Ukraine, which began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas war. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare, and heightened political tensions.

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Link: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/facebook-bad-news-and-business-ethics-consider-the-consequences-of-every-decision/
Title: Facebook, bad news and business ethics: Consider the consequences of every decision.
Brief Summary: Talks about how large companies such as Facebook make unethical decisions to make money.

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Facebook, bad news and business ethics: Consider the consequences of every decision

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Facebook’s recent challenges should serve as a lesson to all leaders to identify and mitigate ethical concerns before they escalate.

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Ethiopia is currently having its own Civil War, like America, Ethiopia is having it's own issues within it's own government structure and policies within it, the conflicts are causing worldwide issues and a bunch of issues for the civilians inside of it, relating to America's own civil conflict.

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Sixteen months after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed began a military campaign in the Tigray region, fighting has slowed but Ethiopians are bitterly divided and their country is wracked by suffering.

Flags representing the Tigray region of Ethiopia lined a wall in the city of Mekelle, the regional capital. Credit... Eduardo Soteras/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Here's what you need to know:

A year of conflict in Ethiopia, Africa's second most populous country and a linchpin of regional security, has left thousands dead, forced more than two million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine-like conditions.

Forces under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed - the Ethiopian military, ethnic militias and troops from neighboring Eritrea - are fighting to oust the Tigray People's Liberation Front, or T.P.L.F., from its stronghold in the northern region of Tigray.

But weeks later Mr. Abiy pulled off a stunning military reversal, halting the rebel march less than 100 miles from the capital, then forcing them to retreat hundreds of miles to their mountainous stronghold in Tigray.

Winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Abiy mobilized ordinary citizens to take up arms to block the Tigrayan advance. "Nothing will stop us. The enemy will be destroyed," he told a group of soldiers at the battlefront while dressed in fatigues.

But the key to his battlefield success was a fleet of armed drones, recently imported from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran, that pummeled the Tigrayan forces.

As fighting was reduced in January, Mr. Abiy released some political prisoners in a gesture that prompted a phone call with President Biden. But African Union-backed peace efforts have stalled as hunger spreads in Tigray, where a government-imposed blockade has reduced the flow of aid to a trickle. The prospect of a cease-fire seems distant.

Here's a look at how the conflict in Tigray has upended Ethiopia, a once-firm American ally, and threatens to further destabilize the volatile Horn of Africa region.

Even before the war, Mr. Abiy appeared bent on breaking the power of the T.P.L.F., a one-time rebel movement which had dominated Ethiopian politics for nearly three decades.

A former intelligence officer, Mr. Abiy was once a minister in the T.P.L.F.-dominated government. But after he took office in 2018, he set about draining the party of its power and influence in a manner that infuriated the Tigrayan leadership, which retreated to its stronghold of Tigray. Tensions grew.

The feud reached a boiling point in September 2020 when the Tigrayans held regional parliamentary elections in defiance of Mr. Abiy, who had postponed the vote across Ethiopia. Two months later, it turned violent.

In November 2020, T.P.L.F. forces attacked a federal military base in Tigray in what they called a pre-emptive strike against federal forces preparing to attack them from a neighboring region.

Hours later, Mr. Abiy ordered a military operation against the Tigrayan leadership. But his promises of a swift and bloodless victory quickly crumbled.

The T.P.L.F. and its armed supporters fled to rural and mountainous areas, where they waged a guerrilla war. The Ethiopian military suffered a humiliating defeat in June when it was forced to withdraw from Tigray, and several thousand government troops were captured.

By early November, the rebels were advancing on the capital, Addis Ababa. But then Mr. Abiy, backed by armed drones, forced the Tigrayans back to their northern homeland. Fighting has since died down, although clashes continue in the Afar and Amhara regions that border Tigray.

Through it all, civilians have suffered most. Since the war started, witnesses have reported numerous human rights violations, many confirmed by a U.N.-led investigation, of massacres, ethnic cleansing and widespread sexual violence.

On March 2, the United Nations appointed a team of investigators led by Fatou Bensouda, a former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to collect evidence of abuses for potential use in future criminal prosecutions.

The T.P.L.F. was born in the mid-1970s as a small militia fighting Ethiopia's Marxist military dictatorship.

Once home to an ancient kingdom that ruled Ethiopia and the wider region, Tigray was marginalized by the central government through the 20th century. Tigrayans make up about 7 percent of Ethiopia's population compared with the two largest ethnic groups, the Oromo and the Amhara, which make up over 60 percent. Yet the T.P.L.F. emerged as the dominant force in a rebel alliance that toppled the Marxist government in 1991.

Tigrayans dominated Ethiopia for the following 27 years, through a ruling coalition led by the T.P.L.F.

Under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia emerged as a stable country in a turbulent region. It enjoyed significant economic growth and allied with the United States, sending troops into Somalia to fight Islamist militants in 2006.

But at home, the T.P.L.F.-dominated government systematically repressed political opponents and curtailed free speech. Torture was commonplace in government detention centers.

After Mr. Zenawi died in 2012, the T.P.L.F's grip on power began to weaken, leading to an eruption of antigovernment protests in 2016 that eventually paved the way for Mr. Abiy to become prime minister in 2018.

Mr. Abiy, a onetime T.P.L.F. ally, moved quickly to purge the old guard. He removed Tigrayan officials from the security services, charged some with corruption or human rights abuses and in 2019 created a new political party. The Tigrayans refused to join.

At the same time, he strengthened his ties to President Isaias Afwerki, the authoritarian leader of Eritrea, who nursed a bitter, longstanding grudge against the Tigrayans.

The outside world lavished praised on Mr. Abiy and Mr. Isaias for the landmark peace deal they signed in 2018, ending two decades of hostilities between their countries and paving the way for Mr. Abiy's Nobel Peace Prize win a year later.

International efforts to broker peace in Ethiopia, led by the former president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, have come to little. Yet the humanitarian crisis is deepening.

At least 9.4 million people across northern Ethiopia need urgent help, according to the United Nations. But the government-imposed blockade of Tigray means that less than 10 percent of required relief aid has reached the region, aid groups said.

More flights have been allowed to land in Tigray since December. But road access is still blocked, putting tens of thousands of vulnerable children at immediate risk of death.

The suffering in northern Ethiopia is part of a broader storm of conflict, climate change and soaring food prices, exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, that has fueled a crisis affecting 20 million people in the broader Horn of Africa region.

And human rights abuses continue unabated. Tens of thousands of Tigrayans have been driven from their homes by ethnic Amhara militias, as part of what the United States has called an ethnic cleansing campaign.

In December, Human Rights Watch accused Tigrayan rebels of executing dozens of civilians in captured areas, adding to the war's dismal toll of atrocities. The conflict has placed Ethiopia's once-close ties to the United States under great strain. Mr. Biden has cut off trade privileges for Ethiopia and threatened its leaders with sanctions. Neighboring African countries worry openly that Ethiopia, long the anchor of a volatile region, could become a source of instability.

Mr. Abiy is also contending with unrest in Oromia, the most populous region, where a local insurgent group, the Oromo Liberation Army, has entered into an alliance with the T.P.L.F. aimed at toppling Mr. Abiy.

At 45, Mr. Abiy is among the youngest leaders in Africa, and in the first years of his rule he excited great hopes for transformational change in Ethiopia.

He abolished controls on the news media, initiated sweeping economic reforms, and struck a peace deal with the authoritarian leader of Eritrea, Mr. Isaias, that led to his Nobel Peace Prize win in 2019.

But even before the war erupted in Tigray, Mr. Abiy had resorted to old tactics of repression - shutting down the internet in some areas, arresting journalists and detaining protesters and critics. Now his reputation as a peacemaker lies in tatters.

As the war with the T.P.L.F. expanded in 2021, Ethiopia's security forces detained thousands of ethnic Tigrayans, citing security needs. In speeches Mr. Abiy resorted to inflammatory language, denouncing his foes as "cancer" and "weeds" that he vowed to bury in "a deep pit."

In January, the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize, issued a rare admonition of an honoree, saying he had "a special responsibility to end the conflict and contribute to peace."

Reporting was contributed by Simon Marks, Marc Santora, Eric Nagourney and Richard Pérez-Peña.

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Sixteen months after Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed began a military campaign in the Tigray region, fighting has slowed but Ethiopians are bitterly divided and their country is wracked by suffering.

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/30/politics/trump-election-justice/index.html

The 2020 election and Trump's claims to it being corrupt. A bunch of info, most of which debunking Trump's claim. While this is an example of a case of corruption in an election to allegedly be fake, it is still an instance of a big controversy about corruption during an election.

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trump to doj: 'just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me' - cnnpolitics

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Trump to DOJ: 'Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me'

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Trump pressured top Justice Dept. officials to falsely declare the election "illegal" and "corrupt" despite finding no evidence of widespread voter fraud

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https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/09/us/black-and-missing-iyw-trnd/index.html
How two Maryland women work to raise awareness about missing black people. The connection I drew with this was the recent things on slavery we've talked about, like Solomon Northup. People were disappearing and no one really cared, and apparently that stuff's happening now. According to the people in article, there's "missing white woman syndrome," which is a syndrome they formed as they don't see black missing people on the news. Over time they found more missing persons and funded and provided tools to find missing persons of color. So for people to want more coverage over the people who've disappeared, specifically people of color, connects to the time when black people were being kidnapped in the North and being brought to the South, not really being looked for.