Month: February 2022
Let’s talk about what happened in Ukraine last night….
Let’s talk about what students can learn from Spartacus….
Sanctions 2.0
| Sanctions 2.0 |
| Eight years ago, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the U.S. and its allies harshly condemned the invasion and imposed economic sanctions on Russia. |
| It barely seemed to matter. |
| Russia still controls Crimea. Russia’s economy, after going through a recession, soon started growing again. President Vladimir Putin remains firmly in control of his government — and has now begun another invasion, this time of eastern Ukraine. |
| In response, President Biden yesterday announced a new set of sanctions, imposed in tandem with Britain and the European Union. Putin’s aggression, Biden said, is “a flagrant violation of international law, and it demands a firm response from the international community.” Biden also signaled that more sanctions may follow. |
| The obvious question is whether these sanctions will be any more effective than the earlier ones. Today’s newsletter lays out the possibilities. |
 By The New York Times |
| Targeted and weak |
| The 2014 sanctions against Russia did have some effect — arguably more than many people have realized. They made it harder for Russian banks to obtain foreign loans and restricted Western companies from working with Russian oil companies, among other steps. |
| By the summer of 2014, Russia’s economy was shrinking, and it continued shrinking for two years. The value of the ruble plunged on global markets, increasing the price of many goods for companies and consumers. Russian businesses had a harder time raising money for new projects. |
| These economic problems seem to have softened Putin’s domestic support. His approval rating among Russians initially surged after the Crimea invasion — to around 80 percent — before falling. It has hovered between 60 percent and 65 percent for much of the past two years, according to the Levada Center. Last year, opposition groups held some of the largest protests of Putin’s nearly two decades in power. |
| The sanctions might even have been painful enough to have deterred Putin from invading eastern Ukraine in 2014, which he seemed to be planning, as Anders Aslund and Maria Snegovaya have argued in an Atlantic Council report. |
| Still, the sanctions clearly did not reorder Russian politics. Putin, after all, moved to claim eastern Ukraine this week. Experts say that the sanctions’ limited effect is not surprising, because they were less ambitious than the sanctions the U.S. has imposed on other countries that have flouted global rules, like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. |
 Russian howitzers outside Taganrog, Russia, yesterday.The New York Times |
| “In 2014, when Putin invaded Ukraine the first time and annexed Crimea, the West acted too slowly and timidly initially,” Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, told me yesterday. |
| One reason is that the 2014 sanctions were the product of negotiations with European countries that wanted to be more cautious than the U.S. The sanctions were also intentionally narrow, designed to hurt sectors of the economy with close ties to Putin’s regime while minimizing the effect on most Russians and on the global economy. |
| The reality is that for sanctions to have big political repercussions, they often need to be harsh. “‘Smart’ or ‘targeted’ sanctions won’t work,” Edward Fishman and Chris Miller, two international-relations experts, recently wrote in Politico. “To really impose pain on Russia, the U.S. and Europe will have to bear some burden, too — although, fortunately, there are ways to minimize the fallout for Western economies.” |
| Biden acknowledged as much in his remarks at the White House yesterday. “Defending freedom will have costs, for us as well and here at home,” he said. “We need to be honest about that.” He added that he would take steps intended to minimize the increase in gas prices. |
| This is the approach that the U.S. took toward Iran more than a decade ago. It imposed tough sanctions, despite their likely effect on world oil markets and the damage to Iranians’ living standards. Those sanctions helped push Iran’s regime to negotiate over its nuclear program. |
| In Russia’s case, a more aggressive set of sanctions would start with a refusal to buy its oil — by far Russia’s biggest revenue source — perhaps phased in to mitigate the price increases on global markets. It could also involve restricting exports to Russia, like automobile parts and computers, or forbidding other banks from working with Russian banks. |
| Russia would still have access to parts of the global economy, especially if China continued working with it. But the effect could nonetheless be substantial, because Russia’s economy is now quite integrated with the European and U.S. economies. |
 President Biden announcing sanctions against Russia.Al Drago for The New York Times |
| More to come? |
| Which path are Biden and the E.U. choosing? |
| For now, they have imposed sanctions that Biden said went beyond the 2014 sanctions while still falling well short of what the U.S. and Europe could impose. The measures include blocking Russia’s government from borrowing money in Western financial markets and cutting off two large Russian banks from the U.S. financial system. |
| (My colleague Edward Wong has more details here. And Peter Coy of Times Opinion has written that isolating banks can be an effective tool.) |
| In the short term, those sanctions will almost certainly not cause Putin to stop menacing Ukraine. “Russia right now is sitting on quite a pile of extra cash,” Melissa Eddy, a Times correspondent in Berlin, told my colleague Claire Moses. “They have a war chest.” |
| But there are two big uncertainties: whether the sanctions hurt Russia’s economy once that war chest is drawn down; and whether the U.S. and Europe will impose tougher sanctions if Putin continues his war. |
| “The U.S. and the E.U. have worked hard over eight weeks to pull together what would be a serious, painful, massive package of sanctions that is designed to hurt,” Steven Erlanger, The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, told us. They have not yet enacted all of those potential sanctions. But yesterday’s announcement, Steven added, “gives them room to hit Putin harder if he does more.” |
| Biden vowed yesterday to follow that strategy: “If Russia goes further with this invasion,” he said, “we stand prepared to go further.” |
I want to thank Nan for the information above. This is from the New York Times. I hope it displays correctly it was a beast to get into the page. I did notice something I want to emphasize in the map. The area under control of the separatists is not the same as the area that Putin declared independent. The separatists actually controlled far less territory than Putin annexed. But it is not really important as Putin is now attacking the capital city Kyiv. He is trying to scare the Ukrainian government into surrendering. If not he will do it the hard way. At this point he is not going to leave without getting what he wants. There has already been Ukrainian deaths, but there will be a lot more.
Liberal Redneck – Texas Targets Trans Kids
Black Transgender Woman FINALLY Gets Justice For Sham Arrest
“A federal jury ordered an Atlanta police officer to pay $1.5 million to Ju’Zema Goldring, who said she was profiled and falsely arrested for identifying as a Black, transgender woman. Goldring’s attorneys say she was walking with friends in October 2015 when two Atlanta Police Department officers stopped her for jaywalking, which Goldring denies she committed. Officers found a “stress ball” in her purse and tested it for cocaine. Goldring’s attorneys said officers charged Goldring with trafficking cocaine despite receiving a negative test result. Goldring spent nearly six months in jail. She was released when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation independently conducted a test, which attorneys said failed to detect cocaine. Attorneys also conducted tests in front of a jury at the trial.”
Fragile Nazis Throw Pathetic Temper Tantrum At Library
TX. Gov. Greg Abbott DEMONIZES Trans Children
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered state agencies to investigate reports of transgender kids receiving gender-affirming care as “child abuse,” but it’s unclear what immediate effect the directive will have on kids, teachers, doctors and parents. In a letter to the Department of Family and Protective Services sent Tuesday, Abbott said the agency “is responsible for protecting children from abuse.” He warned that educators, medical professionals and others who don’t report alleged abuse could face consequences. “Texas law imposes reporting requirements upon all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children who may be subject to such abuse, including doctors, nurses, and teachers, and provides criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse,” Abbott said.”
Texas governor compares healthcare for trans kids to ‘child abuse’ in chilling attack
In a letter sent Tuesday (22 February), Abbott reminded the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that it is “responsible for protecting children from abuse” so must shield trans youth from treatment.
The Republican demanded the agency “to conduct prompt and thorough investigations of any reported instances of Texas children being subjected to abusive gender-transitioning procedures”.
Doctors and nurses, he said in the directive, could face jail time for failing to report such care and said parents and guardians should also incur criminal penalties for pursuing treatment on behalf of their trans children.
Abbott’s intervention signalled Texas‘ clearance intent yet to erase trans youth, with treatments such as puberty blockers, that researchers say is “life-saving,” being dubbed “monstrous” by the attorney general Ken Paxton.
On Monday, Paxton issued a 13-page legal opinion under the category “child abuse” providing public officials with a justification to hammer down on trans healthcare.
While an attorney general’s opinion does not carry the force of law and is just advisory, state officials are expected to take them into account in their decision-making.
“Sex-change operations and puberty blockers prescribed by kids is ‘child abuse’ under Texas law,” Paxton tweeted.
“These procedures are monstrous and tragic,” he tweeted before quoting his statement: “I’ll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans.”
Paxton said that “it remains medically impossible to truly change the sex of an individual because this is determined biologically at conception”, a claim that Abbott said he agrees with.
Paxton issued his opinion, which is a written interpretation of current law, after Republican Fort Worth representative Matt Krause asked him to weigh in on the issue.
Neither Paxton’s opinion nor the governor’s directive has any legal effect, but both amount to domineering efforts to tear down the rights of trans people in Texas.
“The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has now confirmed in the enclosed opinion that a number of so-called ‘sex change’ procedures constitute child abuse under existing Texas law,” Abbott wrote in his letter.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
“Because the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) is responsible for protecting children from abuse, I hereby direct your agency to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures in the State of Texas.
“As OAG Opinion No. KP-0401 makes clear, it is already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilisation, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.”
A spokesperson for DFPS said in a statement to local news outlet KCAN that the agency “will follow Texas law as explained in attorney general opinion KP-0401”.
“At this time, there are no pending investigations of child abuse involving the procedures described in that opinion,” the spokesperson added. “If any such allegations are reported to us, they will be investigated under existing policies of Child Protective Investigations.”
Activists decry anti-trans Texas governor and attorney general: ‘This is an absolute nightmare’
Across the US, dozens of bills have appeared in statehouse dockets all with similar aims: To deeply restrict the lives of trans Americans, from the sports they play to the healthcare they can access.
As much as overwhelming evidence shows that providing gender-affirming healthcare to trans youth is more beneficial than hurtful, Republican legislators have increasingly sought to ban treatments altogether.
Withholding gender-affirming healthcare from trans youth can lead to higher rates of anxiety, depression and suicide, studies have found.
This culture clash more or less came out of nowhere, with a wave of more than 100 anti-trans laws being proposed in early 2021, according to legislative tracker Freedom for All Americans. And this trend has continued to rip into 2022, with dozens already introduced.
While similar proposals were pitched by Republicans in the past, efforts in 2021 and 2022 to chip away at trans rights are now often more organised and slick, with bill names that claim to be promoting “fairness” in single-sex sports or “protecting” children.
But as activists stress, this noble-sounding language is a front to single out trans folk and feed into transphobia. After all, the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association and American Academy of Pediatrics all support providing care for children experiencing gender dysphoria and have publicly opposed the push to restrict such healthcare options.
“This is an absolute nightmare,” tweeted Chase Strangio, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.
“What [Paxton and Abbott] are doing is terrifying,” they added. “They are scaring kids, their families and their doctors into believing they will be investigating if they affirm their trans children and patients.
“This will cause severe stress and anxiety, could limit medical care, will discourage parents from loving and supporting their kids and could lead to illegal investigations into families.”
I want to make clear because the article doesn’t that sex surgeries re not happening on minors for gender dysphoria. Sex surgeries have happened on minors if there is an accident or a problem with the genitals. No minor is having breast removed or penises changed. Also puberty blockers are not new and they are not dangerous. They have been proscribed for a lot of different medical issues. Plus they are completely reversible by simply not taking them. That is all that happens, a person goes through puberty later. No what they are important for is so a trans kid doesn’t develop the features of an adult of the wrong gender. No male wants female parts, no female wants to look like a guy. It is incredibly hard to change these features once they are set. Imagine being a young person watching your body changing daily into something horribly wrong for you. But for a political party that keeps touting parents’ rights in schools and in book banning’s from libraries, now they want to remove parents’ rights when it comes to medical decisions for the child.
SLATE: Texas’ Vigilante Scheme Forces Everyone to Report on Trans Kids—or Face Prosecution
Texas’ Vigilante Scheme Forces Everyone to Report on Trans Kids—or Face Prosecution
Trans kids are the target of the GOP’s brutal culture war.
Read in Slate: https://apple.news/A_UC3KazvQG-ESzlCnmM8UA
Shared from Apple News
Scottie's Playtime 