Daily Archives: March 4, 2022

In July of 1936, a failed military coup plunged Spain into civil war. The conflict pitted the leftist Republican government against fascist-backed Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco. With Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini already in power in Germany and Italy, anti-fascists around the world feared that Spain would be the next to fall, threatening the future of European democracy.

When world powers like the United States and the United Kingdom refused to intervene in the Spanish Civil War, more than 35,000 anti-fascist volunteers poured into Spain from 52 countries to take up arms against the Nationalists. They included Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, idealist intellectuals like a young George Orwelland communists committed to crushing an ideological enemy.

The Spanish Civil War looked like it could be the moment when fascism was finally thrown back, says Richard Baxell, an historian and author of Unlikely Warriors: The Extraordinary Story of the Britons Who Fought in the Spanish Civil War. There was this feeling that perhaps people could go out armed with just a gun and political conviction and do their bit alongside the Spanish people to defeat fascism at last.

The foreign volunteers who fought in the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War hoped to stop the march of fascism in Europe to avoid a much larger war. It didnt work out that way.

Making of a flag for the International Communist Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, 1936.

Apic/Getty Images

The Spanish Civil War broke out less than 20 years after the end of World War I, and most world leaders desperately wanted to avoid being drawn into another global conflict potentially costing millions of lives.

In the United States, President Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to convince Congress to support the Spanish Republic. Instead, lawmakers passed a series of Neutrality Acts that cemented Americas isolationist stance in the 1930s.

In Europe, leaders from the U.K. and France called for all European nations to sign a non-intervention pact vowing to stay out of the civil war in Spain. All told, 27 countries signed the neutrality agreement, including Germany, Italy and the USSR. Hitler and Mussolini quickly violated the pact by sending arms and soldiers to assist Franco, and the Soviets eventually sent supplies and military advisors to aid the Republic.

A coach load of volunteers leaving Madrid to fight for the government against the rebels to the north of the capital, 1936.

Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images

As Francos Nationalists marched toward the Spanish capital Madrid in August of 1936, it was clear that no allies were coming to the defense of the Spanish Republic. Thats when the first foreign volunteers began to arrive in significant numbers, to fight alongside the Republicans under attack in Madrid.

Volunteers came from Poland, France, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Latin America, Canada and dozens of other countries, organizing themselves into ad-hoc columns that spoke the same language. Women came, too, mainly volunteering as nurses in military hospitals. Baxell says that roughly 70 percent of the volunteers were communists, since the communist party at the time was the loudest and biggest organization that was battling fascism.

By the fall of 1936, the Communist International or Cominterna Soviet-led association of international communist partiesactively recruited foreign fighters who were organized into International Brigades like the Garibaldi Brigade (Italy), the Commune de Paris (France) and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (USA).

The International Brigades fought bravely to help repelthe Nationalists from Madrid, including Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, who often led the charge as shock troops."

They were astonishingly brave, says Baxell. They went to where the fight was hottest and did everything they could to hold their ground. Many had experienced what was going on in Germany and knew they couldnt go home. Better to die in Spain than in Germany.

Volunteers from the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.

Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

More than 2,800 Americans, many who were members of the American Communist Party, crossed the Atlantic to volunteer as part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Around a third of the volunteers were Jewish, spurred by a desire to combat the spread of anti-semitic fascist regimes in Europe.

One of them was Milton Wolff, a young communist from New York City who went on to serve as a commander of the Lincoln Brigade. When asked by a Congressional committee in 1939 why he joined the Spanish Civil War, Wolff testified, I am Jewish, and knowing that as a Jew we are the first to suffer when fascism does come, I went to Spain to fight against it.

At least 90 members of the Lincoln Brigade were Black Americans who saw fascist oppression in Europe as an extension of racial oppression experienced at home in the United States. Many of the Black volunteers were also communists drawn to the American Communist Partys vow to stand up for workers of all races. Black Americans bristled at Mussolinis invasion of Ethiopia and knew that Hitlers twisted aryan ideology had no room for people of color.

Vaughn Love, a Black volunteer, later said that "we didn't know too much about the Spaniards, but we knew that they were fighting against fascism, and that fascism was the enemy of all Black aspirations."

Of the roughly 35,000 foreign volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, an estimated5,000 to 6,000 were killed and thousands more were recorded as missing.They paid the ultimate sacrifice for their ideals, but in the end it wasnt enough. Franco and the Nationalists, with help from Hitler and Mussolini, overpowered the Republicans, took Madrid and won the war.

While some historians view the International Brigades as naive idealists or expendable pawns for the communist regime in the USSR, Baxell sees the volunteers in a more positive light.

At the time, they showed the Spanish Republic and people around the world that Spain was not fighting fascism alone, says Baxell. Given what was going on in the world, that was a powerful message.

In her farewell address to what remained of the beleaguered International Brigades in 1938, the Spanish Republican leader Dolores Ibarruri, known as La Pasionaria, praised the foreign volunteers:

Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Republicansmen of different colors, differing ideology, antagonistic religions, yet all profoundly loving liberty and justice, they came and offered themselves to us unconditionally You are history. You are legend. You are the heroic example of democracy's solidarity and universality.

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Why So Many Foreigners Volunteered to Fight in the Spanish Civil War - History

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has split the hacking community, sending some of the most recognizable and powerful groups scrambling to pick a side to declare which has their allegiance.

In a tweet, hacking group Anonymous declared "a cyberwar against the Russian government" and has claimed to be responsible for attacks that brought down Russia Today, a state-backed news outlet, and several government websites. It also said it hacked other Russian state-TV channels.

Conti, a ransomware group with possible ties to Russian intelligence that attacked more than 290 American targets last year, declared its "full support of Russian government" and said it would use "all possible resources to strike back" at any adversaries. Cyberthreat intelligence company Orpheus Cyber reported another group united with Russia obtained stolen data from more than 45 Ukrainian government websites, and some of it is up for sale.

Motives that push hacking groups to pick a side range widely. Members of Anonymous have stated that their guiding principle is "anti-oppression," while Russian-aligned attacks may be state-sponsored. Pro-Russia attacks can also come from groups who feel pressured to operate on their behalf by the Kremlin.

"It's not entirely clear what the connection is between the ransomware gangs and the Russian government," said Brett Callow, a threat analyst at Emsisoft. "At best, they are working within a permissive environment. At worst, they are working for certain wings of the Russian government."

"Some of the actions of Russia's government just prior to the war shutting down the REvil gang or arresting them and shutting down a number of dark web forums and shops these cybercriminals are afraid that if they don't support the regime, they're going to be next," said Alex Holden, the founder of Hold Security.

Hacking groups may become targets for moving away from their usual financial motives for attacks. After Conti declared support for Russia, an apparent insider who objected to the group's support for Russia leaked a trove of internal chat messages and other files that Holden says "mortally wounded" the gang.

"When we see things like this, we are learning how in 2021, 2022, cybercriminal enterprises operate, so we have [the] ability to detect and deter organizations like this in the future," Holden said.

Moving forward, experts say that any further cyber escalation could spell trouble for those outside the conflict zone, including Americans. Groups like Conti could come back to hit the U.S. as well.

"They are a highly effective ransomware group, albeit one that has terrible operational security," Callow said. "They likely do still have access to certain U.S. networks that they have yet to encrypt, and they could potentially do that any time."

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Hackers are being forced to pick sides in the Russia-Ukraine war - KBZK News

March 1, 2022 | Austin, Texas | Proclamation

First by the pen and then by the sword, brave Texans fought for their independence from a tyrannical government in Mexico that denied its citizens basic freedoms. In the fall of 1835 at Gonzales, Texans of all backgrounds banded together to fight for the cause of liberty and defend what was rightfully theirs. Months later, on March 2, 1836, while delegates gathered at Washington-on-the-Brazos to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence, brave defenders continued fighting for their freedom.

Many heroic Texans were lost throughout the revolution, most notably all of the defenders of the Alamo and those at Presidio La Baha in Goliad. Yet, their sacrifices were not made in vain and would serve as a rallying cry for the Texan forces under General Sam Houston. He raised an army and soundly defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, declaring victory and securing freedom for the new Republic of Texas.

As those delegates declared nearly 200 years ago, when a government ceases to protect the lives, liberty, and property of the people from whom its power is derived, that government becomes an instrument of oppression which must be abolished. In rebellion against the actions of the Mexican government, fearless Texans gave rise to a free and sovereign republic.

The vision of freedom set down by our founders in the Texas Declaration of Independence lives on in the indomitable Texas spirit today. As we continue to build a 21st-century Texas, we must always remember how the sacrifices of past generations helped create a future for the next. At this time, I encourage all Texans to learn more about, reflect on, and take pride in our states unique origins and rich history.

Therefore, I, Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, do hereby proclaim March 2, 2022, to be Texas Independence Day in Texas and urge the appropriate recognition whereof.

In official recognition whereof, I hereby affix my signature this the 24th day of February, 2022.

Governor Greg Abbott

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Governor Abbott Issues Proclamation For Texas Independence Day In 2022 - Office of the Texas Governor

Sue Atkins, Southampton East Socialist Party, Chair Southampton trades Union council

I have had plenty of bad experiences. I was spiked last week in a pub, which I had considered to be a safe place. Ive also had to witness some of my friends leave in ambulances, when they just came out to have some fun and a dance. These are the words of a young woman in Southampton, describing her experiences in the city.

Southampton has the second highest number of sexual offences reported in England, and has seen a 240% increase in recorded sexual offences over the past five years. This figure has been worked out following a 91% increase in referrals to a local victim support charity since the Covid pandemic began. These shocking statistics are not isolated, and will be familiar throughout the country.

A Safe Night Out

That is why the Socialist Party in Southampton is campaigning for a Safe Night Out, together with the trades union council and Socialist Students, on International Womens Day, 8 March.

Domestic violence and rape are on the increase too. In Southampton in 2021, there were 1,945 rape investigations and only 85 resulted in a charge or court summons. Nationwide, the Crown Prosecution Service prosecuted and convicted fewer people for rape in 2020 than in any year for which data exists.

For the victims, this lack of support and acknowledgement can be devastating. Indeed, of the people who told someone about being assaulted but did not report it to the police (five out of six women, and four out of five men), 40% said they were too embarrassed, 38% thought the police couldnt help, 34% thought it would be too humiliating, and 25% also thought the police wouldnt believe them.

While women are disproportionately affected by these issues, they affect all genders and we need a united campaign to address them. The local elections in May can play an important part in the struggle for the services and resources that we need.

Many services that used to be run by local councils have been cut to the bone, disbanded, or handed over to charities or the private sector.

For example, local authorities now have a statutory responsibility to fund domestic violence services. However, this comes with no promise of sufficient funding from central government. Local authorities have to fund these services on already stretched budgets.

The womens refuge in Southampton is run by Womens Aid, a charity that can offer support for only six months. While that is an important and welcome resource, what happens after that? With sky-high rents and a lack of affordable homes, it is important for local councils to build new council houses to enable women and children to move on safely and securely, without the prospect of a possible return to the circumstances that they have escaped from.

There is much that Southampton City Council, and other local councils, could do, but it needs councillors with the political will to make it a reality. Labour, Liberal and Tory have all taken turns at running the council in Southampton, and all have been found wanting.

We hear time and again from frustrated workers: They are all the same it makes no difference who you vote for. The consequence is that around 60% of the electorate dont vote, seeing no option on the ballot paper that will act in their interests. Labour were in control for nine years until 2021. In that time they cut 1,000 jobs and 160 million from the budget which devastated local services and resulted in the Tories regaining control last year.

The struggle for womens rights benefits us all and should not be seen in isolation. If no-one else is standing up for women and our local communities, then we will. We need socialist councillors who will fight for:

Socialist Party members will be proud to stand in the local elections as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. All the main political parties have failed us, and Labour under the leadership of Keir Starmer has made it clear it offers no challenge to the status quo.

It is time for a new mass party of the working class to be built as part of the fight for a socialist alternative to the sexism, inequality and crisis of capitalism, and we will play our part.

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International Women's Day: Build a working-class political alternative to inequality, oppression and austerity - Socialist Party

Those trying to convince Americans that vocal frustration with and protests against local school boards are a conservative political ploy will have a harder time after San Franciscos recent school board recall election. Three members of the citys Board of Education, including its president, were recalled, each by more than 70 percent of the vote.

Amid the pandemic, San Francisco schools stayed remote long after neighboring districts had returned to the classroom. Meanwhile, the board focused heavily on renaming schools in whose namesakes it perceived any potential ties to oppression rather than addressing academic setbacks. For the citys sizable Asian community, altering the merit-based admission criteria to an elite high school program to shift the racial balance to enrolling more Black and Hispanic students was the final straw.

The specific complaints against the San Francisco Board of Education sound more like those coming from a rural-conservative-meets-new-development-progressive suburb like Loudoun County, Va., than from the bluest part of California. But declining faith in local school boards is a bipartisan phenomenon, and it seems that even the most politically lopsided areas are not immune.

This lack of trust will eventually push people into action to reconfigure or abandon the institutions that no longer serve them. The San Francisco recall is a good example of how that can play out, even without the backing of a major political party or a professional campaigning organization: The recall effort was led by two ordinary parents who just wanted to be able to trust that the public schools would be there for their children.

Their story frustrated parents becoming successful recall leaders may seem extraordinary, but it tracks closely with underlying attitudes about change and the American system of government. SPNs State Voices poll also found that three-quarters of voters believe that the most meaningful change happens at the local level, and more than four in five feel local participation is what keeps the American system of government alive. Specific to education, 88 percent agree that there needs to be more transparency in the system.

Long-term frustration, the power of local engagement, and a growing list of local political upsets are sending the message that traditionally sleepy municipal boards should get back into the practice of first and foremost being responsive to the people they serve. As more Americans lose trust in formal institutions, they will continue to push back from the ground up.

Erin Norman is the Lee Family Fellow and senior messaging strategist at the State Policy Network.

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Americans Declining Trust in the Politicians Who Run Their Schools - Governing

By Cathy HuntTroup County School Board Chair

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free. In one of several Black History Month presentations that I watched or listened to in February, I was reminded of this observation by Frederick Douglass. Then I recalled the interesting story, as shared in his autobiography, of how he learned to read, and I pulled a book off a shelf to re-read that chapter.

Born to an enslaved mother on a Maryland plantation around 1818, he was sent at the age of eight to serve a Baltimore family, the Aulds.

Early on, Mrs. Auld (described by Douglass as kind and tender-hearted, and by nature not fit to embrace the career of slaveholding mistress) enjoyed teaching him the alphabet and sight words alongside her own little boy.

However, when Mr. Auld became aware of this enterprise, he put an abrupt stop to it, recognizing that education and slavery are incompatible with each other.

Going forward, the boy was never allowed to even touch another book in the home.

But a fire had ignited in young Fredericks heart.

He continued reading lessons with white playmates in the street, some of whom would give him ten minutes for the price of fresh-baked bread which he smuggled from the house, others who would do so because they liked the teaching itself.

By age 13, Douglass was reading fluently and had amassed a secret collection of small books and pamphlets.

The more knowledge he gained, the more discontented he became with his lot in life, reinforcing Mr. Aulds opinion that slavery and education are indeed incompatible.

During his teenage years, Douglass was hired out by the Aulds to work on various plantations.

At one, a pious master offered to his slaves Sunday School lessons with an emphasis on reading the New Testament.

These sessions were well attended for a few months until other plantation owners, again recognizing the dangers of too much knowledge, demanded an end to them.

At age 21, Douglass escaped slavery and in very short order became a highly sought lecturer in the Northeast and wrote the first version of his eloquent autobiography. When it was published, he decided he would be safer going to live in England for a couple of years.

It was still an antebellum America in the 1840s. He returned to the United States when friends raised money to buy his freedom.

He went on to establish a newspaper, advise President Lincoln, work for civil rights and womens suffrage, and hold many government offices.

Douglasss story reminds us that literacy is fundamental to enlightenment and success.

In days gone by, it was about the only way to broaden your horizons and fill up idle hours.

Nowadays there are so many other media screaming for our attention that too many people put too little emphasis on the privilege and importance of reading.

If you are reading this, you recognize the value of the printed word. Think about how you can share your values with young, impressionable minds in your family and your community.

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HUNT COLUMN: The incompatibility of education and oppression - LaGrange Daily News | LaGrange Daily News - LaGrange Daily News

Karl Marx once said of the past that it weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. Vladimir Putin has made clear that he, for one, is haunted by the legacy of Vladimir Lenin and the workers revolution of 1917 that tore down the tsarist Russian Empire.

Speaking just days before ordering his onslaught on Ukraine, Putin said that modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, or to be more precise, Bolshevik, communist Russia. Lenin was Ukraines creator and architect, he saidan act which Putin blames for dividing up the indivisible Russian state. Putin is right to be haunted by Lenin. The revolutionary politics of the Bolshevik Party, which he led, remain a lodestar for all genuine fighters for freedom and democracy for the working class today.

The Russian revolution of 1917 was a high-water mark for international working-class struggle that saw the creation of the worlds first workers state under the control of democratic workplace-based councilsthe soviets. While it only retained this character for a few short years before international isolation saw the undermining of workers democracy by bureaucratic tyranny under Joseph Stalin, the democratic achievements of that time echo even one hundred years later.

One of these long-lasting achievements was the establishment of independent states all through the territory of the old Russian Empirecreated in the storm and stress of the revolution and resultant civil war. These included not just Ukraine, but the states of central Asia like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, in the Caucasus and all across Eastern Europe with the establishment of Poland, Finland and the Baltic states.

The establishment of these states was not a result of Lenin alone, as Putins great man version of history has it. Rather it reflected the democratic struggle of nationalities that the Russian Empire had long oppressed and forcibly integrated into the Russian state. Prior to 1917, this oppression ranged from apartheid-like laws directed against the millions of Jewish people who lived within Russian territory, to a horrifically violent form of settler colonialism against the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks, to the forced imposition of the Russian language in schools and in government in territories like Ukraine (so-called russification).

Lenin and the Bolsheviks related to this democratic struggle by arguing that only a workers revolution could smash the oppressive Empire which kept workers in economic and political slavery, and that socialists should seek to unify the struggles of all of the oppressed under the workers banner. To achieve such unification Russian workers needed to fight, as Lenin put it, against every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects, and be able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation. This meant supporting oppressed nationalities in the Russian Empire in their fight for self-determination.

After the working-class insurrection of October 1917 in central Russia, one of the first declarations of the new soviet government was on the status of oppressed nations like Ukraine. The soviets proclaimed, the abolition of any and all national and national-religious privileges and disabilities and the right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, even to the point of separation and the formation of an independent state.

Conservativesin line with their understanding of the mass, participatory, and democratic Russian revolution as an authoritarian conspiracyhave frequently accused the Bolsheviks of pure cynicism regarding such declarations. In an article reporting on Putins recent comments about Lenin and Ukraine, for example, Mark Katz in The National Interest argued that Lenin and Putins views on the question amounted to the same thing: wanting to to restore control over lost parts of the Russian Empire. Lenin, in Katzs view, was simply more realistic than Putinhe knew a more accommodative approach toward Ukrainian nationalism would better serve Russias long-term interests.

Serious studies, such as that undertaken by Jeremy Smith in 1996, have given proper credit to the consistency of the revolutionary democratic aspirations of the Bolsheviks, and their achievements after 1917. Far from cynically wielding calls for self-determination as a fig leaf for a renewed Russian imperialism, the soviet government actively championed the rights of the nationalities previously oppressed by Russia in order to win them over to the liberatory potential of a society run by and for workers.

This involved efforts to promote autonomy for oppressed groups to make soviet power genuinely a peoples power. The new soviet government recognised such autonomy not only when petitioned, but proactively. Between 1918 and 1923, thirteen autonomous republics were establishedrepublics which continue to exist to this day in the territory of modern Russia.

This commitment to self-determination was most significantly expressed in the promotion of indigenization rather than the imperial russification policy that existed up to 1917. This meant the promotion of, and education in, languages like Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh and Azeri in their respective states. The promotion of native languages cannot be separated from the massive educational effort which the soviet government undertook after the revolution which saw literacy more than double in ten years.

Putins attack on the democratic achievements of the October Revolution is not just the demented ravings of a mad dictator. Rather it reflects a calculated desire to strengthen the reach and power of the modern Russian state, which Putin sees as heir to the Empire of the Tsars. Just as under the Tsars, a society of such immense inequality, injustice and exploitation as Russia today can only be maintained by systematic oppression. This means imperialism abroad and repression at home.

For this reason Russia in 2018 passed a new law banning the autonomous republics from instructing children in their native language for more than two hours a week, while also making such instruction optional. This was followed up in 2020 by a referendum constitutionally recognising Russian as the language of the state-forming nationality, and at the same time banning marriage equality and strengthening the powers of the presidency which Putin holds.

In these actions and in Putins invasion of Ukraine we see clearly that the interests of the exploitative oligarchsthe capitaliststhat rule Russia today are a mirror of the interests of the Tsar and the feudal aristocrats that stood behind him. And like the revolt against the Tsar during World War I, we see today that many Russians have risen up to oppose imperialism. The challenge for this anti-war movement is to take seriously the lessons of history which Putin is distorting.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks understood firstly that the working class was the social force which in modern capitalist society had the social power to overthrow capitalism and an interest in bringing about a society of genuine democracy for all the oppressed and exploited. In order to do so back then, the Bolsheviks had to make common cause with all the other groups oppressed by the Russian statepeasants, religious minorities as well as nationally oppressed groupsto unite all these struggles into one unconquerable torrent to wash away the tyrants.

If the anti-war movement in Russia today and the brave Ukrainian resistance movement can forge a common front against imperialism based on their shared class interests against the Russian state, then Putin will no longer have nightmares about a Bolshevik past, but a Bolshevik present, too.

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Lenin is Putin's worst nightmare - Red Flag

When Putin set out to invade Ukraine, the world wasnt sure what he intended. But while threats were being exchanged, a variable that wasnt considered in the war effort was something Russia was battling to legislate on: Crypto.

Since the war started, Ukraine has continued to receive donations in crypto. Sanctions have also forced the hands of Russians to turn to crypto. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc have been put in the spotlight. Over a week, more than $50 million of cryptocurrency have been donated since it opened up bitcoin and Ethereum wallets and announced the addresses on Twitter last week.

But many questions have continued to rage on: should Russians still have access to crypto as a way to circumvent sanctions? Should crypto exchanges ban Russians? Is Crypto truly decentralized if Russians can be abruptly cut off the blockchain?

Since the war began, cryptocurrency trading has increased dramatically in Russia. The increase is due in part to the Ukrainian central banks tight capital controls and SWIFT sanctions, which include limits on ATM withdrawals, a suspension of the FOREX market, and restrictions on official electronic transaction networks.

As Russian President Vladimir Putins army invade Ukraine, two economies that have been in the forefront of adopting the new form of digital currency are now turning to it to gain a competitive advantage in the geopolitical conflict. The first big conflict of the crypto era also means that, for the first time ever, both parties have access to a mechanism that can easily move billions of dollars across borders.

Related article | EU Monitor Crypto Exchanges To Ensure Russian Sanctions Implementation

The Ukrainian government appealed on Twitter for cryptocurrency donations following its invasion by Russia. Ukraines Vice-Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted the wallet addresses for donations.

The Biden administration and European officials say they are increasing blockchain surveillance in order to capture any activity linked to the Kremlin. Ukrainian officials have requested that all Russian accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges be frozen. Crypto exchanges agreed to put a blacklist in place. However, they refuse to prohibit all Russian accounts, claiming that doing so would jeopardize the cryptocurrency communitys libertarian culture. That doesnt imply the Kremlin will have it easy.

The US Treasury Department announced on March 1st that sanctions on Russia will include checks on digital currency. Large crypto exchanges were also instructed by the White House to avoid doing business with sanctioned companies.

In an executive order, the government says it will take action against anyone who violates Russias sanctions, including through the usage of digital currencies.

During the Russian-Ukrainian war, many politicians, influential people, and government agencies like as the US Department of the Treasury have focused on spreading a narrative that paints crypto in a negative light, however several of their reasons have been proved to be false.

Having financial freedom for anyone is one of the primary objectives of cryptocurrency. Crypto is intended to be an unbiased instrument, free of the ties that bind governments and banks, and a weapon against oppression and dictatorship.

Is your money truly yours if it can be taken away from you by regimes and governments? This is why many people now believe bitcoin is the only true currency.

The basic notion of cryptocurrency is that it is money, but it is uncontrolled. The original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, was established by honest libertarians who cherished their privacy and wanted to keep their money out of the hands of the government.

Its true that cryptocurrencies have been used in the past to circumvent international sanctions. North Korea used ransomware operations to amass significant sums of bitcoin; the regime has converted an unknown quantity of money into usable currency, most likely in the tens of millions of dollars.

Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder at the crypto analytics firm Elliptic said:

Because there is no central controller who can impose their morals on its user, crypto can be used to crowdfund for the Ukrainian army or help Russia evade sanctions.

No one can really prevent it from being used in either way he added.

A spokesperson for the worlds largest crypto exchange, Binance, told CNBC that crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe and a blanket ban would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists.

Krakens CEO, Jesse Powell, tweeted that the company cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so.

Because this libertarian principle of crypto, many have criticized crypto exchanges for continuing to facilitate crypto transactions for Russians. Hilary Clinton noted in a recent interview that she was disappointed in so-called crypto exchanges. She said:

I would hope somebody at the Treasury Department is trying to figure out how to rein in the leaky valves in the crypto market that might allow Russia to escape the full weight of the sanctions.

Some philosophy of libertarianism or whatever, she sneered.

Maybe what this demonstrates is that the inability to control crypto is a problem for a world order? Financial freedom and the unbiased nature of crypto are inherently problems for order and a world where a few can decide whose money to blanket ban. It establishes a sort of utilitarian society where the ownership or value of your money doesnt depend on the misdeeds of your national government.

However, it remains to be seen how much of an impact it will have on the conflict. While symbolic, bitcoin donations of a few hundred thousand dollars may not signify much to a Ukrainian army that got $650 million in weaponry from the US last year and is still significantly outmanned.

Last Monday, Vice President Joe Biden announced the delivery of $350 million in military aid to Ukraine. The EU responded with a $500 million commitment of military aid, an unprecedented gesture. In addition, the White House is requesting an additional $10 billion from Congress. Cryptocurrency transactions are a drop in the bucket.

And the hefty transaction fees of cryptocurrency are eating into what Ukraine receives. In the last week, the cost of a Bitcoin transaction has tripled. Gas fees on Ethereum, which trades a variety of coins, have been more consistent, although users have often grumbled about how pricey they are.

Related article | Iranian, Venezuelan OpenSea Users Blocked From NFT Platform Over Russias Attack On Ukraine

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The Russia-Ukraine War Is Becoming A War On Crypto | Bitcoinist.com - Bitcoinist

As I was writing this article yesterday, I watched the UK government announce in Parliament yet another change of policy towards Ukrainians fleeing their country.

The Mdecins du Monde network, of which Doctors of the World is a member, has operated in eastern Ukraine since 2015, just after the conflict started in 2014. When the current hostility broke out, we had to ensure the safety of our doctors, support staff, and vital medical supplies, as well as reassess how we can continue to support the country as it descends further into war. This will include supporting refugees who are fleeing to the neighbouring nations that will provide safe refuge for the majority.

This latest change in the UKs policy came after the government had previously suggested, among other things, that people fleeing for their lives should apply for seasonal work visas, such as to pick fruit in the UK, or that to qualify for sanctuary in the UK, they had to meet a very restrictive definition of joining family members.

While the latest changes, which were announced on 1 March, are certainly welcomed, they do not match either the rhetoric or the effort put in place by Ukraines EU neighbours to welcome refugees fleeing the conflict.

The UK government is asking people who have fled their homes in Ukraine for fear of their lives to go through a lengthy bureaucratic process to apply for a visa to join family members in the UK, when what would be needed instead is to prepare the machinery of government to welcome every Ukrainian refugee who wants to come here in search of safety.

These latest policy decisions come with the backdrop of the Nationality and Borders Bill, which is still going through Parliament. As Lord Kerr rightly said in a debate on the bill in the House of Lords, which saw the government repeatedly defeated, the bill, if already in place now, would disqualify the large majority if not all the Ukrainians seeking sanctuary in this country. It would do so by using a very twisted view of the first safe country and regular or irregular means of entry in the country. Both of which are not part of the Refugee Convention, signed shortly after World War II.

As my colleagues and I have previously argued in The BMJ, the bill would massively increase the governments use of institutional accommodation and temporary refugee status.1 Both of which, our experience shows, lead to worse health and wellbeing outcomes for people seeking sanctuary in the country.

More broadly, and even more importantly, the governments approach to Ukrainian refugees represents a dangerous view of the refugee system. One that Priti Patel, the home secretary, states will in the intention of the government be bespoke to the situation at hand.2

As colleagues from Refugee Action have rightly said, the refugee system that was built after the Second World War and the Holocaust wasnt built with the ability for nations to decide which specific group of refugees a nation should welcome, and which one it was allowed to reject.3 The Refugee Convention was built on the key principle of universality, of being available to everyone fleeing violence or persecution.

The latest conflict in Ukraine proves that a bespoke system such as the one that the government wants to build, will never be able to adapt to a world in which conflicts, violence, or oppression are sadly still too diverse to be predictable. Such a system would undermine one significant step of progress that emerged following the shame and horror of the Holocaust and would represent a step backwards at a time of greater uncertainty on the world stage.

This proposed bespoke approach is a direct result of allowing the hostile environment to penetrate and influence the Governments asylum policies and principles over the past decade. This has had deleterious impact on the efficacy and speed in which asylum seekers applications are processed. The hostile environment broke, or at least makes significantly worse, the asylum system and the latest statistics published in the last week prove this key point once again.4

Compounding all of this has been a continuous reference and narrative around genuine vs non genuine refugees or refugees vs economic migrants. This narrative seeks to sow divisions and suspicions in our communities and implies doubt regarding the person living next door or the patient entering our surgeries and our hospitals.

That is a narrative that, as we see every day at Doctors of the World, undermines peoples health and wellbeing and pushes them to the margins of society. A narrative that, as the pandemic has shown, does not represent good public health or basic humanity.

We need to continue lobbying our elected politicians to stop this bill in its tracks, but also continue to evidence how with this bill the government is failing at its own test while further undermining the health and wellbeing of people seeking sanctuary in the UK.

Competing interests: none declared

Provenance and peer review: commissioned, not peer reviewed

Excerpt from:

We need to reject the UK government's bespoke approach to refugees - The BMJ

Young transgender individuals in rural areas have been shown to experience higher levels of discrimination and harassment as well as the negative effects that come with them and can even be discriminated by laws at a national level also.

The rhetoric and public discussion around transgender lives and laws can have lasting, traumatic effects on trans youth, making them feel out of place, unwelcome and less likely to reach out for help.

At an increased risk of death, transgender suicide and abuse is still rampant in many countries even in those which are seemingly more liberal with their gender views.

Understanding how trans youths keep their resilience and resistance is important in advocating and protecting for at-risk populations, and avoiding the common negative outcomes seen among trans youths.

The new study by the University of Kansas found that trans youths not only have strategies for surviving, but they often turned from resilience to resistance a path which can lead the way forward for defending their rights.

The study authors, who had been researching youths in rural areas and throughout the Midwest for several years, were only originally meant to determine the role of families and communities on the youths perceived well-being.

Instead, they found out more about transgender youths and resisting discrimination.

Published in thejournalYouth, the study found the youths resilience and resistance strategies fell into three primary categories: Intrapersonal, interpersonal and community/macro.

Intrapersonal responses or those on an individual, personal level the youths resistance came through as self-affirmation, where they would maintain authenticity by resisting oppressive narratives and finding hope in themselves.

Interpersonal strategies, or those in which the youths resisted oppression in their relationships with others, fit in themes of avoiding hostility, educating others, and standing up for themselves and others.

Community and macro resistance strategies involved the youths taking action and engaging in activism and enhancing visibility and representation.

The strategies were ways to oppose messages meant to disbelieve, harm, or oppress them.

Meg Paceley, associate professor of social welfare at KU, said: We saw youth talking about not necessarily cutting someone off, but saying, I dont deserve to be treated this way, so Im not going to be. Or advocating for others who maybe didnt have as good of an experience as them, so they decided they would stand up for them.

With qualitative research, sometimes we find things we werent originally looking for. In this case, that was resilience and just surviving in difficult or hostile situations. The more we analysed the data within a resilience frame, we realized there was more there, including resisting oppression.

One youth who was interviewed stated: Sometimes I just allow myself to feel sad, and I just say, I know these people are saying these things about me. And I know they dont think that I can be this, even though this is what I amit doesnt matter what they think. Im still valid..

Several respondents to the interviews suggested joining organisations and advocating publicly for transgender rights, as well as being active on campuses often stating that other people did not speaking up about discrimination and their rights, so they were more inclined to take action themselves. Transgender resilience is just the beginning though.

Paceley further explained: Resilience is important for several factors such as health outcomes, how individuals cope or respond to things that shouldnt be happening to them.

But we also need to realize that resilience is often passive while resistance is active. We should also identify how to reduce the harms that come to TGD (transgender and gender diverse) youth in the first place, so they dont have to demonstrate resilience to oppression.

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The social realities behind transgender resilience - Open Access Government