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POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; March 12 Conventions; League City officials talk growth, resident satisfaction at State of the City breakfast; HISD kids still not getting the Internet access they lost; Mayor Whitmire and Judge Lina Hidalgo still haven’t officially met; Voters in new Alabama congressional district given incorrect poll information; Hard Lessons Make for Hard Choices 2 Years Into the War in Ukraine; Warren Buffett’s son Howard has given $500M to Ukraine — he warns the US is making a historic mistake by pulling its support; NATO navies can exploit a Russian fear and keep Putin from invading more neighbors; Israel may have just torched its relationship with Russia, promising to supply Ukraine with ‘early-warning systems’; CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’; More

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host, assistant producer and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:

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Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

1. 1. March 5, 2024 Primary Elections are done. Now we just need to find out which races have runoffs and when that election will take place. TBD.
      1. ANDREW: The Texas Green and Libertarian parties have precinct nominating conventions. For Harris County, these will take place on Tuesday March 12 at 7pm, and you can only participate if you didn’t vote in the March 5th primaries. For more information, check org/calendar or lpharris.org/calendar.
   2. League City officials talk growth, resident satisfaction at State of the City breakfast; By Rachel Leland | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 4:50 PM Mar 1, 2024 CST / Updated 4:50 PM Mar 1, 2024 CST
      29. A growing population and how to best support it—while keeping taxes low—was a key point of discussion between League City Mayor Nick Long and City Manager John Baumgartner at the State of the City event Feb. 29.
      30. Along with that topic, the pair discussed ongoing city initiatives and future projects. …
      31. At the event, Long and Baumgartner pointed out that the areas residents are most concerned about are directly correlated with the city’s growing population, which is currently 121,595, according to a presentation at the event.
      32. Community Impact previously reported that 40% of League City’s land is undeveloped and that the city is expected to double within the next 10 to 15 years.
      33. Baumgartner reiterated that the city’s steady growth both burdens and empowers every aspect of the city’s efforts to serve League City, whether it be public works, parks or transportation.
      34. “Growth is always a challenge,” Baumgartner said. “It affects drainage, traffic and water supply. We have to continue to invest in our community responsibly and try to make sure that growth pays its way through the use of impact fees or other fees.”
      35. While a growing population does put stress on the city’s infrastructure and resources, Long said he was proud of how the city had managed its growth strategy while still preserving a no new revenue tax rate year after year. …
      36. Baumgartner and Long also outlined a number of projects and initiatives the city will focus on in the upcoming year, including: [the] Southeast Transmission Line, the new water line that will run from Houston to League City; Adding additional wells throughout League City; Attracting commercial development to collect more sales tax revenue; [and] Transportation projects, including the expansion of FM 646 and intersection improvements at Walker Street and SH 96.
      37. MIKE: I’ve been puzzling over the “no new revenues” policy. It seems to apply specifically to property taxes, but I’m not clear if that’s a tax policy that keeps year-over-year revenue flat for individual properties, or if that means that the city is keeping its overall property tax revenue flat. The former is not unusual, since it protects property owners — especially homeowners — from being taxed out of their homes and businesses in a time of rapidly escalating property values.
      38. MIKE: But the latter would seem more problematic, if that’s the case, since it would mean keeping total property tax revenues flat at a time of city growth and infrastructure expansion, while depending on expanding fee revenues to pay for that.
      39. MIKE: I would like to point out, though, that this is another consequence of living in a “flat tax” state like Texas. Because no property taxes, fees, or sales tax revenues are progressive, the poor are always paying a larger percentage of their income in taxes than the well-off. This is what makes flat taxes oppressive on the working class.
   3. HISD kids still not getting the Internet access they lost; by Charles Kuffner | OFFTHEKUFF.COM | Posted on March 4, 2024. Just another thing by the wayside. TAGS: Board of Managers, Digital Promise, HISD, Houston, Internet, Mike Miles, New Education System, schools, T-Mobile, The Lege, Verizon.
      1. MIKE: Kuff excerpted the following story from Houston Landing:
      2. Houston ISD has not provided at-home internet service to the vast majority of students who relied on a free Verizon program that the district canceled three months ago, leaving some of Houston’s most vulnerable children disconnected.
      3. About 50 of the 1,000 students who were relying on the program for at-home internet have received T-Mobile hotspots that the district offered as a replacement to needy students, according to email records and a district spokesperson.
      4. HISD officials said the hotspots remain available to students. But district leaders and staff have not successfully coordinated to outfit children with the new service since November.
      5. “If school staff identify a student who needs home internet access, staff should contact the campus technologist so that HISD can provide a hotspot for that student,” HISD Chief Communications Officer Leila Walsh wrote in an email.
      6. HISD promised the T-Mobile hotspots after district leaders opted to end the Verizon program, citing an unacceptable amount of training required for school officials carrying out the effort. Roughly 56,500 students and 2,500 teachers across 36 HISD campuses received iPads or laptops equipped with data plans since the initiative launched in 2020, Verizon officials said.
      7. Most students at participating schools connected their computers at home to wireless internet installed by their families. However, HISD officials determined about 1,000 students regularly used internet service built into the devices for web access, indicating their families may not have wireless internet at home. …
      8. In the weeks after students lost internet access, HISD officials acknowledged they had fallen short on communicating with families about the hotspot opportunity. HISD Chief Technology Officer Scott Gilhousen told the Houston Landing in early December that it “will be for us to communicate more with our campuses to inform them that there are opportunities.”
      9. But emails obtained by the Landing through a public records request also show few campus leaders requested hotspots for their students.
      10. […]
      11. The T-Mobile hotspots HISD promoted as a replacement to the Verizon services cost the district $15 per student per month, the Houston Chronicle reported.
      12. HISD officials said they are looking into more permanent solutions for addressing internet access disparities.
      13. [Kuff provides two links] here (third story) and here for the background. All but one of those 50 students cited who were able to get new hotspots did so because one teacher (Brad Wray, who is also on the District Advisory Committee) took it upon himself to go through the process from start to finish, which included him driving to HISD’s central office to pick up the hotspots and distribute them to the kids. Not exactly a stretch to say there’s gotta be a better way to do it than that. But first HISD needs to get its act together and decide that this is a thing they want to do. Less talk, more do.
      14. MIKE: I don’t think I can add much to what Kuff said except that high speed internet access is no longer an optional household luxury. Especially for kids in school, high speed internet is essential for anything approaching equity in education. It’s simply not enough to expect a kid to go to a library to do research for papers and exams.
      15. MIKE: Especially after Covid, schools expect more remote access to curricula and study materials than ever before. This makes it essential that this access is not income-dependent.
      16. MIKE: We live in a country where the affluent have plenty of advantages, but access to knowledge and information should not be among them.
   4. Mayor Whitmire and Judge Lina Hidalgo still haven’t officially met; Two of the highest-ranked officials in Harris County and the city of Houston haven’t sat down for a meeting despite “several attempts” from one of the offices. By Kennedy Sessions | CHRON.COM | March 1, 2024
      1. Two months into the new year, the city of Houston’s Mayor John Whitmire and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo have yet to convene for an official meeting despite “several attempts” from Hidalgo’s office, according to confirmation from their spokespersons this week.
      2. The fact that the two highest-ranked officials in Houston and Harris County have not officially sat down with each other is unusual in a city that is used to seeing the two top officials side-by-side at important events. In comparison, Hidalgo was often seen by former Mayor Sylvester Turner’s side at large public events and emergency press meetings.
      3. Hidalgo’s spokesperson, Angelica Luna Kaufman, said their office has made “several attempts” for the two local officials to meet but has been unsuccessful thus far. Kaufman said she hopes the highest-ranked county and city leaders can meet soon. …
      4. When asked if Whitmire and Hidalgo had met up and if a plan for the two officials was in the works, Whitmire’s spokesperson, Mary Benton, declined to comment but said Whitmire and senior staff members from the city of Houston have met with a majority of Harris County Commissioners and several county workers. …
      5. Typically, the two sides work jointly to fund municipal projects and collaborate during crises and extreme weather emergencies. A few weeks into the new year, Texans endured blistering cold weather across the southern region. The 20-degree temperatures led to bitterly cold days in the Houston area. The region’s top officials would normally hold joint press conferences to address the public. 
      6. However, Hidalgo and Whitmire held separate briefings last month on the impending freeze hitting Houston, despite Hidalgo’s office claiming they made an effort to do it together. According to Kaufman, while Harris County workers were preparing for the freeze, the county judge’s office reached out to the city of Houston, and Hidalgo personally “reached out to the mayor directly” to schedule a joint press conference, “but unfortunately, he did not respond and wasn’t available” Kaufman said. …
      7. While Hidalgo’s office contends it’s still in the early stages of Whitmire’s administration, “you start to wonder after several attempts what the situation is,” Kaufman said. …
      8. Notably, Hidalgo and Whitmire reportedly had an interesting interaction at the annual Houston marathon the same weekend of the bitter freeze. In a New York Times report on Hidalgo’s mental health journey published on Feb. 6, Hidalgo said she attempted to greet Whitmire with a hug but was met with the mayor denying the embrace instead of sticking his arm out to keep her away and then casually walking away. 
      9. Whitmire’s spokesperson, Benton, told NYT he “prefers a friendly handshake” to a hug when working, did not walk away, and was there to celebrate all the runners. 
      10. During the Houston mayoral campaign, Hidalgo endorsed U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston), Whitmire’s opponent in the mayoral election. In 2022, Hidalgo also accused Whitmire of “pandering” amid the launch of his mayoral bid after he asserted Harris County was spending less on law enforcement. Considering all those incidents, it’s still unclear how Whitmire and Hidalgo feel about the other. …
      11. MIKE: There is more to this story if you are interested, The link is in the blog post.
      12. MIKE: Politicians are people too, and may Whitmire’s feelings were hurt when Hidalgo endorsed Jackson Lee, but if Whitmire is nursing a grudge that is interfering with the professional necessity of coordinating with the head of the Harris County government, that is simply unacceptable. And worse, it would be childish.
      13. MIKE: I made special note of the story comment that, “Whitmire and senior staff members from the city of Houston have met with a majority of Harris County Commissioners and several county workers.” The phrase “majority of commissioners” is interesting. Which commissioners were excluded and why? Is there a single County commissioner who doesn’t have part of their precinct within the City of Houston? (SPOILER ALERT: The answer is “No”.) And as head of the County Court, shouldn’t meeting with the County Judge have priority in the interests of getting things done for City residents who are also County residents?
      14. MIKE: IF — and I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt — If Whitmire is avoiding Hidalgo because his feelings were hurt during the campaign, I would think that it’s not too much to ask that an experienced politician like John Whitmire should suck it up and get over it. If that’s not the reason, then I think that, if only for appearances sake, he should set up a meeting with Judge Hidalgo very soon.
   5. With State and National news being consumed by election stories, I think that anyone interested in election results is best advised to go to their county clerk’s site. You can click on the links I’ve provided in the blog post here: Austin County Elections; Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information; Chambers County (TX) Elections; Colorado County (TX) Elections; Fort Bend County takes you to the proper link; org (Galveston County, TX); Harris County (HarrisVotes.com); LibertyElections (Liberty County, TX); Montgomery County (TX) Elections; Walker County Elections; Waller County (TX) Elections; Wharton County Elections
   6. , Voters in new Alabama congressional district given incorrect poll information; The district was created to strengthen Black representation after the supreme court ruled state had diluted power of Black voters. Associated Press | theguardian.com | Tue 5 Mar 2024 21.09 EST, Last modified on Tue 5 Mar 2024 @ 22.44 EST. TAGS: Alabama, US elections 2024, Race, US politics,
      1. More than 6,000 voters in a newly formed congressional district drawn to boost Black voting power in Alabama received postcards with incorrect voting information ahead of [this] Tuesday’s primary, alarming advocates concerned about the potential impact on a race seen as crucial to boosting Black representation and Democrats’ hopes to flip the US House in November.
      2. James Snipes, chair of the Montgomery county board of registrars, said 6,593 county voters received postcards listing the incorrect congressional district after the county’s election software misidentified some people living in Alabama’s second congressional district as living in the seventh.
      3. Snipes said voters arriving at the polls were still able to vote for the correct candidates. The county had sent about 2,000 notices to affected voters as of Tuesday evening and will send out an additional 4,000 on Wednesday, he said.
      4. “Everyone who came to their precinct was able to vote for the correct candidates,” Snipes said, attributing the incorrect information to a “software glitch” made when adjusting to the recent shift in state congressional districts. “This was a good-faith effort.”
      5. Montgomery county, home to about 159,000 registered voters, now falls in Alabama’s second congressional district after a federal court drew new congressional lines in November. That was in response to a US supreme court ruling that the state had diluted the voting power of Black residents, violating the Voting Rights Act. …
      6. The redrawn map could lead to the election of two Black congressional representatives from the state for the first time. After the districts were redrawn, Black residents will comprise nearly 49% of the second district’s voting-age population, up from less than one-third. …
      7. Election officials caught an error in the cards sent to voters in January and attempted to update their systems so voters would be listed in the correct congressional district, said Snipes, of the county elections board.
      8. “We thought we had it all fixed,” he said, adding that officials didn’t realize that more voters had been affected. “We can’t figure out how the software did that to us.” …
      9. It was one of the few issues reported on Super Tuesday, the biggest day of the primary calendar. Only sporadic voting problems surfaced, most of which were resolved quickly. In Texas’s Travis county, which includes Austin, some voters had problems checking in when they tried to cast their ballots. …
      10. MIKE: I really want to believe Mr. Snipes when he says that that this was an honest software error that occurred even after a glitch had been spotted and attempts made to fix it. After all, this is Alabama we’re talking about.
      11. MIKE: But the good news is that there apparently no voters were confronted with erroneous ballots, so all went well.
      12. MIKE: Hopefully, Mr. Snipes will have squashed any remaining software bugs by the time the general election rolls around.
   7. Now, jumping to international news: Hard Lessons Make for Hard Choices 2 Years Into the War in Ukraine; Western sanctions haven’t worked. Weapons from allies are running low. Pressure may build on Kyiv to seek a settlement, even from a weakened position. By Steven Erlanger and David E. Sanger, Reporting from Munich and Berlin | NYTIMES.COM | Feb. 24, 2024 / Updated 8:24 a.m. ET
      1. Two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United States has the capacity to keep Kyiv supplied with the weapons, technology and intelligence to fend off a takeover by Moscow. But Washington is now perceived around Europe to have lost its will.
      2. The Europeans, in contrast, have the will — they just committed another $54 billion to reconstruct the country — but when it comes to repelling Russia’s revived offensive, they do not have the capacity.
      3. That is the essence of the conundrum facing Ukraine and the NATO allies on the dismal second anniversary of the war. It is a stunning reversal. Only a year ago, many here predicted that Ukraine’s counteroffensive, bolstered by European tanks and missiles and American artillery and air defenses, could push the Russians back to where they were on Feb. 24, 2022.
      4. Now, some harsh lessons have emerged. The sanctions that were supposed to bring Russia’s economy to its knees — “the ruble almost is immediately reduced to rubble,” President Biden declared in Warsaw in March 2022 — have lost their sting. The International Monetary Fund’s prediction that the Russian economy would shrink considerably was only briefly true; with the huge stimulus of military spending, it is growing faster than Germany’s. Income from oil exports is greater than it was before the invasion.
      5. With the setbacks, and the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, hope has just about collapsed that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will conclude anytime soon that he can make no further gains and should enter a serious negotiation to end the war.
      6. American and European intelligence officials now assess that Mr. Putin is determined to hold on, even at the cost of huge casualties, in the hope that a failure in Congress to fund Ukraine’s effort sufficiently or a victory by former President Donald J. Trump in November will make up for the Russian leader’s many early mistakes.
      7. Biden administration officials still insist that Mr. Putin has already suffered a “strategic defeat.” His military is humiliated by its early failures and huge casualties, which Britain estimated on Saturday at 350,000 killed and wounded, and Russia can count on only China, Iran and North Korea as reliable suppliers.
      8. At the same time, NATO has enlarged. Sweden is set to become the 32nd member state within a few days, after the addition of Finland last year, and two-thirds of its members will each spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense this year, a significant increase. …
      9. [R]ecent intelligence reports in Europe indicate that NATO nations might be Mr. Putin’s target in the next three to five years, the question remains: Without a durable American commitment, can Ukraine and Europe defend against a new Russian threat? …
      10. As isolationism rises in a Republican-controlled Congress beholden to Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden has shifted from promising to give Ukraine “whatever it needs, for as long as it takes” to last December’s less ambitious “as long as we can.”
      11. At the Munich Security Conference last weekend, Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, struck an even more sober note: Ukraine would have to learn how to fight on a tight budget. …
      12. Vance went on to make a second point: [America’s] limited resources should be saved for competing with China and defending Taiwan. …
      13. Vance’s assessment was met with a stony silence. Shortly afterward, a senior American military official who declined to speak on the record said that the Republican debate in Washington and the mood among Ukraine’s ground forces were reinforcing each other, “and not in a positive way.” …
      14. Zelensky faces a stark choice, he said: whether to keep every inch of sovereign Ukrainian territory, or find a way to secure an economically viable state, with a democratic future, Western security guarantees and eventual membership in the European Union and in NATO.
      15. In private, some senior Biden administration officials say they have been trying to nudge [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky in that direction. But Mr. Biden has instructed his staff not to deviate from the slogan it used at the beginning of the war: “Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” …
      16. Even in Europe, where support for Ukraine has been strongest, public opinion is shifting, too. In a recent opinion poll conducted in January for the European Council on Foreign Relations in 12 countries, only 10 percent of Europeans said they believed Ukraine would win the war, though what would constitute a win was not clearly defined. Twenty percent said they believed that Russia would win, and a plurality, 37 percent, thought the war would end in some kind of settlement.
      17. But if the United States withdraws support from Ukraine and presses Kyiv for a deal, 41 percent of Europeans polled said their governments should either increase support to try to replace Washington or continue support at the current level. Roughly a third said that European countries should follow Washington and pressure Kyiv to settle. …
      18. For years, American officials have urged Europe to spend more on its defense. Now, Europeans are beginning to confront the cost of complacency.
      19. No matter who Americans elect as their next president in November, the United States may no longer be willing to take its traditional lead in deterring Russia or defending the West. That will inevitably place more of the burden on a Europe that is not yet fully prepared.
      20. Germany’s military is better equipped, but it is not of the size or skill level needed to face the challenges ahead, its defense secretary, Boris Pistorius, has warned. Finland adds considerable technological capability to NATO, but Sweden’s military, American officials say, will need to be rebuilt.
      21. Meanwhile, Europe is piecing together packages of help for Ukraine that were first meant to supplement, but now may be intended to replace, aid from the United States.
      22. This month, European Union leaders pledged another 50 billion euros, about $54 billion, in new aid to Ukraine over the next four years. In aggregate, European countries have outpaced the United States in aid provided to Ukraine.
      23. To date, said Victoria Nuland, the under secretary of state for political affairs, the United States has provided $75 billion in security, economic, and humanitarian assistance. But, she said, “Europe and our global partners have provided even more, $107 billion, in addition to hosting 4.5 million Ukrainian refugees in countries across Europe.”
      24. Yet to fully replace American military assistance this year, according to an assessment by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Europe would still have “to double its current level and pace of arms assistance.” …
      25. Still, European arms production has been increasing, with senior European officials saying that the continent should be able to produce a million shells a year by the end of this year, compared with about 350,000 shells 18 months ago.
      26. While Europeans point proudly to the changes they have made, it remains far from certain that those changes are happening as fast as the world demands, especially when it comes to Ukraine.
      27. “Strategically the goal should be to change Putin’s calculations,” said Mr. Kupchan, the former Obama administration official. “Disrupt the field. I know it’s not easy, but it is better to admit mistakes and chart a new path forward rather than to engage in empty self-congratulation.”
      28. ANDREW: I have consistently said that I think the total military defeat of Russia is not practical, and that a negotiated settlement is the most likely conclusion to this war. I still stand by that.
      29. ANDREW: On principle, I think the people of Donetsk and Luhansk deserve a chance to determine whether they want to be part of Ukraine, or states of their own (not part of Russia). I think Ukraine regaining control of Crimea would not be bad, but I think it has to be considered an optional stretch goal. If Ukraine can accept the independence of those territories and a lack of recognition for the Russian annexation of Crimea but also a commitment not to try and take it back for a number of years, I think Russia may still be willing to withdraw to their borders from before the invasion started. But Ukraine’s negotiating position is not as strong as it once was, and every second they wait to put that offer forward, their position gets weaker and weaker.
      30. ANDREW: Now, the main driver for that is absolutely the reluctance of Congress to authorize more military aid. I’m not generally in favor of increased spending on war, but given this is a defensive war, I’d rather see that money go to Ukraine than to provoking war with China. If Congress can provide more support to Ukraine, their negotiating position gets stronger, and maybe Zelenskyy can strike (or talk, rather) while the iron is hot. Because the longer the West demands military victory, the more Ukraine’s coffers will dwindle, and the more likely the (in my opinion) inevitable negotiation is to go bad for Kyiv.
      31. MIKE: To say that Congress is reluctant to give Ukraine more aid is not entirely accurate. It’s some Republicans in the House that are against it, and Speaker Mike Johnson who refuses to even bring it up for a vote. (SPOILER ALERT: It would pass.)
      32. MIKE: The oft misquoted saying that, “Countries don’t have friends, only interests” could easily apply here even if you are not a friend of Ukraine. If no other considerations are made, supporting Ukraine in its defensive war with Russia in in US and NATO interests.
      33. MIKE: If we were only to make a cold-blooded, self-interested calculation, it’s important to remember that Russia is a major potential near-peer adversary. On that basis, Ukraine is essentially defending NATO territory against future Russian aggression by thwarting Russian imperial territorial ambitions. Also, Ukraine is seriously degrading Russian military capability to a degree that will probably take the Russians a generation, at least, to recover from. The sanctions that are hobbling the Russian economy will weaken Russia’s potential for further military adventurism.
      34. MIKE: The Ukraine war has also given the US and it’s allies the opportunity to test the effectiveness of their military technologies and equipment against a near-peer adversary in a real conflict, and to see how effective Russian military doctrine and weaponry against NATO and allied equipment. And the results have been eye-opening on so many levels.
      35. MIKE: All of this and more for the price of several hundred billion dollars, with no cost in American or allied blood. No “Boots on the ground.”
      36. MIKE: So again, from a strictly cold-blooded and self-interested perspective, supporting Ukraine in this war is very much in US and allied interests.
      37. MIKE: And all of this is added to the fact that we are clearly on the right side of the conflict and on the right side of history.
   8. Warren Buffett’s son Howard has given $500M to Ukraine — he warns the US is making a historic mistake by pulling its support; By Rebecca Rommen | BUSINESSINSIDER.COM | Feb 24, 2024, 1:04 PM CST
      1. Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the embattled nation needs its friends more than ever.
      2. Russia celebrated a landmark victory when it captured the eastern town of Avdiivka last week, and it is running low on artillery ammunition. Meanwhile, a $60 billion military aid package is snarled up in Congress due to opposition from some Republican Party lawmakers.
      3. But Howard Buffett, the elder son of Warren, the billionaire investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO, has no intention of forsaking Ukraine or its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. …
      4. Buffett told Business Insider, “There are very few people in the world that could step up” and do what Zelenskyy’s done. “I think he’s a pretty amazing guy,” he said.
      5. As a result, Buffett’s Howard G. Buffett Foundation has emerged as a stalwart ally to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion, injecting $521,779,225 into humanitarian assistance for Ukraine as of January 2024.
      6. “The guy’s got to be worn out,” Buffett said of Zelenskyy. “I don’t know when he sleeps. He just is constantly going. He’s been through two years of war, which is a living hell, and he’s dealing with it every single day.” …
      7. While Buffett worries about Zelenskyy’s exhausting schedule and sleepless nights, he is also concerned about “Ukraine fatigue” affecting its most important ally, the United States.
      8. He warned against it last year and continues stressing the importance of supporting the war effort. …
      9. “The most frustrating part is to watch the narrative in the US because you have congressmen and senators whose constituencies or districts are benefiting from this war,” he said.
      10. Putting his money where his mouth is, Buffett said another $300 million is budgeted for Ukraine this year, and for the last two years, the foundation exceeded the budgeted number. …
      11. Buffett calls the war the “largest humanitarian crisis” that he’s witnessed in his lifetime. …
      12. His foundation focuses on conflict mitigation and food security, issues that converge in Ukraine.
      13. By the end of 2024, the foundation will give Ukraine at least $800 million in humanitarian aid.
      14. The massive contribution will total more than most countries’ humanitarian aid to Ukraine as of yet. The UK has contributed $620 million and the Netherlands has provided $780 million, per the Kiel Institute’s Ukraine Support tracker. The foundation’s contributions already trounce Canada’s — the NATO country, which has a significant Ukrainian diaspora, has given $292 million in humanitarian aid. …
      15. Buffett attributes the US’ dwindling support for Ukraine to politics. It was standing in the way of supporting a country “that is fighting for its freedom, its democracy, its sovereignty,” he said.
      16. To Buffett, the only choice America has is to ramp up support: “Either we stand with NATO and fight, which is what I think the only option is, or if we say we’re not going to support NATO, we are going to be in a world of hurt down the road.” …
      17. MIKE: I deeply respect and appreciate Howard Buffet’s aid to Ukraine. Not only the money, but also the encouragement he gives to allies who might be wearying of donating aid and military support to Ukraine.
      18. MIKE: Given the staggering amount of money he’s given, I’m, amazed that this is the first I’ve heard of his assistance.
   9. NATO navies can exploit a Russian fear and keep Putin from invading more neighbors; By Michael Peck | BUSINESSINSIDER.COM | Mar 3, 2024, 4:00 AM CST
      1. The age-old rivalry between continental and maritime nations has always been an exercise in frustration. For example, Napoleon and Hitler fumed at the English Channel and Royal Navy that kept their mighty armies from conquering Britain. Conversely, the British needed a continental power with a big army — usually Russia — to fight the French and Germans on land.
      2. Today, NATO’s naval power is far superior to Russia’s. The problem is Russia has always been a continental power whose strength rested on its army. NATO may dominate the oceans, but that may not be much help if Russian tanks invade the Baltic States or Poland.
      3. So, how can NATO exploit its naval advantage? Two British experts have an idea: use NATO’s navies to wage psychological warfare against Russia. Or more specifically, use naval power to scare Moscow into allocating its scarce resources to defending its huge coastlines rather than invading neighbors.
      4. “By forcing Russia to commit to its own defenses in the maritime domain, it would divert critical Russian resources to tasks that the [NATO] Alliance deems less threatening,” wrote Sidharth Kaushal and Rene Balletta in an essay for Britain’s Royal United Services Institute think tank.
      5. For America and Britain, the sea has been a friend: a buffer against invasion, a highway to overseas empire, and a way to ensure that wars are fought on foreign soil. But for Russia, with nearly 24,000 miles of coastline across Europe and Asia, the sea has historically been a source of vulnerability. Though the Russian Navy is one of the world’s largest, it mainly exists to protect the motherland, to support the army, and to provide strategic firepower such as from nuclear missile subs. Many of the cruise missiles that have pummeled Ukrainian cities for the past two years have been launched by the Black Sea Fleet.
      6. But control of the seas, in the way that the famous 19th Century American naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan defined it, is not the Russian Navy’s mission. “Rather than naval combat per se, the purpose of Russian sea power is to ensure that the Russian state can compete and engage in conflict safely and effectively,” the essay said.
      7. In the Crimean War of 1854, Russia was defeated by a British and French amphibious assault that captured Sevastopol. In 2024, the fear is that NATO ships could launch long-range guided missiles at the Russian heartland.
      8. There are several ways that NATO can exploit this fear, according to Kaushal and Balletta. Western nations can conduct exercises, forward deploy nuclear submarines closer to Russia, invest in drones and hypersonic missiles, and even convert shipboard anti-aircraft missiles … into land attack weapons.
      9. As Russia rebuilds its military to replace the enormous losses of the Ukraine war, the Kremlin may feel compelled to divert resources to naval rather than ground forces. “To the extent that the Alliance can expand the area over which Russia must achieve sea denial in order to protect itself against long-range strikes, it can shape the contours of Russian force regeneration,” the essay argued. “It can achieve this primarily in two ways: by expanding its long-range land attack capability, and by operating on new vectors that Russia has not historically had to defend.”
      10. The Kremlin will not find it easy to beef up its maritime defenses. “While Russia can achieve sea denial and a degree of sea control in its coastal seas, contesting freedom of action out to 1,000 kilometers and beyond will be difficult and costly for a country that must also rebuild its forces on land,” said the essay. In particular, while Russia has a large arsenal of anti-ship missiles based on sea and land, it lacks the ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities to detect distant naval targets and guide missiles toward them.
      11. Ships — especially those intended for blue-water rather than coastal operations — are also expensive to build, maintain, and to [crew] at a time when the Russian Army and Aerospace Forces are in desperate need of skilled personnel. Russian shipyards are already overburdened, and new vessels may need imported components that are blocked by Western sanctions.
      12. However, the West also suffers from constraints. As the authors acknowledge, some NATO members on Russia’s border — such as Finland and Norway — may become nervous about making Russia nervous. And, of course, there is the fact that Russia has historically feared attack by the West – and it possesses the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal. Stoking the Kremlin’s fear of waves of cruise missiles streaking in from the sea carries a risk of nuclear escalation.
      13. Nonetheless, this approach does leverage NATO’s maritime advantage. Given a choice, the Kremlin would probably prefer to spend resources on buying tanks to fight in Ukraine rather than warships to guard the Baltic. NATO can make that choice even harder.
      14. MIKE: I thought this was an interesting strategic opinion piece. It’s very forward-looking in terms of how NATO can impact Russia’s long-term military rebuilding programs and how navies can affect an adversary’s strategic planning for ground defense.
      15. MIKE: On last week’s show, I pointed out how adding Finland and Sweden to NATO made the Baltic Sea into what is now essentially a NATO lake. That circumstance is not mentioned in this story, and I think the reasons are as follows.
      16. MIKE: First, that NATO now surrounds the Baltic Sea is not so much a strategic benefit in that NATO can use the Baltic Sea for its own naval purposes as it can deny Russia the use of the Baltic Sea in much the same ways that Ukraine has almost denied Russia its use of the western Black Sea without what has become high risk to its ships.
      17. MIKE: Second, by surrounding the Baltic, NATO could deny Russia an outlet to the North Sea and ultimately the Atlantic, diminishing the value of port facilities in and around St. Petersburg as well as in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (in what used to be east Prussia before WW2).
      18. MIKE: In terms of utility, that would leave the Barents Sea fleet above the Arctic Circle and the Pacific fleet based in and around Vladivostok.
      19. MIKE: Of course, ideally, we can hope that at some point in the not-to-distant future, Russia will experience a regime change that will make it a less aggressive threat to its neighbors, but it’s often best to live by the old adage, “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
   10. Israel may have just torched its relationship with Russia, promising to supply Ukraine with ‘early-warning systems’; By Cameron Manley | BUSINESSINSIDER.COM | Mar 2, 2024, 5:42 AM CST
       1. Israel’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said the Middle Eastern country was “working to provide Ukraine with early warning systems” in a speech on Wednesday.
       2. Such systems would help “save civilian lives from Russia’s indiscriminate missile and drone attacks,” Erdan said.
       3. A spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry told Business Insider that the system was “not Iron Dome,” Israel’s most advanced air defense system.
       4. Rather, it would be an “alarm system” that would help “get people into shelters.” It would likely be very similar to Israel’s Tzeva Adom radar system, the spokesperson told BI.
       5. Israel’s ‘Code Red’ — Tzeva Adom, meaning “Code Red” in Hebrew, is an early-warning radar system.
       6. Originally installed by Israel Defense Forces in the towns surrounding the Gaza Strip in the late 1990s, the system now covers the whole of Israel.
       7. Upon detecting a rocket launch signature, the public broadcast warning system in nearby Israeli communities and military bases is automatically triggered.
       8. A prerecorded female voice announces “Tzeva Adom” four times.
       9. This broadcast cycle continues until no further launches are detected.
       10. The alerts have also been available via an app on iOS and Android devices since 2014.
       11. Israel is one of the world leaders in early-warning detection systems.
       12. Using the system in Ukraine will likely mean that Israel will need to send specialist soldiers to help Ukrainians integrate it. The Israeli spokesperson was unable to confirm when this would take place but said the system, and those like it, should give Ukrainians more time to move to secure facilities, such as civilian bunkers, which have already become commonplace in Ukraine.
       13. For the past two years, Israel has walked a diplomatic tight-rope in the Russia-Ukraine war.
       14. During the initial invasion, Israel offered “more than 100 metric tons of humanitarian equipment,” as Erdan said in his UN speech.
       15. A field hospital within Ukraine’s border “treated over 7000 injured,” and “hundreds of Ukrainian patients received the best possible care” in hospitals and rehabilitation centers across Israel.
       16. But Israel has consistently stopped short of sending military aid or joining Western sanctions in part because it didn’t want to provoke Russia.
       17. Russia has long been a backer of Iran, Hezbollah, and President Bashir al-Assad in Syria. Meanwhile, Tehran has also been providing Russia with Iranian-made Shahed drones that ahve been used to bombard cities in Ukraine.
       18. While the move by Israel is unlikely to shift the tide of war for Ukraine dramatically, it nonetheless signals a major about-turn in Israeli foreign policy.
       19. Erdan referred to Ukraine as Israel’s “allies” and “friends in need.”
       20. Both countries are “fighting a battle for our survival,” he said, adding that “the state of Israel has always and will continue to remain committed to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” …
       21. The announcement came as Russia hosts an intra-Palestinian meeting in Moscow this weekend. Representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will be welcomed in the Russian capital to help the various Palestinian forces agree to unite politically, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, told state-run news agency TASS.
       22. [Amir Weitmann, the head of the libertarian caucus in Israel’s ruling Likud Party, told Business Insider that there] is no doubt that “Russia is heavily involved in what is happening in Israel,” … referring to the continuing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas that has killed tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians. However, it is not clear “at what level,” he said.
       23. Currently, Israel has “no capacity” to provide weapons systems to other countries, especially if it were to enter a war with Hezbollah, which boasts a stockpile of up to 150,000 missiles and rockets.
       24. Nonetheless, this was “just the beginning” of Israel’s commitment to Ukraine, the politician said.
       25. MIKE: Up to this point, Israel has been very circumspect in its aid to Ukraine. They have not participated in boycotts, embargoes, or lethal military aid related to the war in Ukraine, so this change in policy is not minor for Israel.
       26. MIKE: Israel is a small country. It has a number of important business, technical, scientific, and military agreements with Russia that could be endangered going down this path.
       27. MIKE: Israel has no commercial oil fields, so Russia is Israel’s major supplier of oil. Israel is a major Russian tourist destination, bringing in important economic benefits. Russia and Israel have a mutual visa-free tourist agreement. (I’ve added ready references at the end of this story on my blog so you can learn more details of this relationship if you wish.)
       28. MIKE: It’s worth remembering that this early warning system is still not in the category of “lethal assistance”. As the story points out, it’s not as if Israel is supplying its Iron Dome defense and radar systems. It’s still providing strictly defensive technology.
       29. MIKE: If this move does constitute any meaningful policy shift, it may be related to the Russian hosting of an “… intra-Palestinian meeting in Moscow … to help the various Palestinian forces agree to unite politically…”
       30. MIKE: This is clearly an outcome that would increase danger to Israel, and is therefore not helpful to Israel under the current circumstances. Political cooperation among factions that are otherwise not working together very much might also lead to enhanced military coordination.
       31. MIKE: On a totally different note, since I don’t get to discuss Israel and its war with Hamas very much, I’d like to make some points that are often understated or ignored in news coverage of the conflict.
       32. MIKE: First, while there’s certainly no question that there is a great deal of death and suffering in Gaza right now, it’s important to remember that casualty numbers are entirely generated by Hama’s political arm.
       33. MIKE: Second, Hamas never separates civilian casualties from fighter casualties. They are all lumped together. So while civilians are certainly suffering terribly, the casualty figures also must contain thousands of their fighters who are legitimate targets.
       34. MIKE: And third, Hamas started this war by committing the worst slaughter of Jews in a single incident since World War 2. Hamas wanted this war. They knew that it would cause significant loss of Gazans’ lives and significant suffering. Now they use the casualty figures for propaganda purposes.
       35. MIKE: I might also add an observation about the tenor of news coverage of this war.
       36. MIKE: During World War 2 — a war which many nations considered a battle for their very survival — civilians were targeted by both sides for both strategic and terroristic purposes. Civilians in combatant countries suffered terribly. Yet none of the Allied news media called for “humanitarian pauses”, or demanded humanitarian aid for starving and injured German or Japanese civilians during the war. Rather, each side was expected to care for their own as best they could. Or would.
       37. MIKE: What makes this war different? The Allies in WW2 fought for and demanded unconditional surrender of the Axis powers, and they effectively won that. Why are the Israelis — in what they consider a fight for their very survival as a nation and as a people — expected to stop fighting when their enemy is on the back foot? Why is Israel’s demand for what is the equivalent of unconditional surrender wrong when it was right for the Allies?
       38. MIKE: I read lots of news, and I don’t see these points raised or these questions asked. Maybe it’s time they were.
       39. REFERENCE: Israel–Russia relations — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
       40. REFERENCE: Why are ties between Russia and Israel ‘at lowest point since fall of the Soviet Union’? — THEGUARDIAN.COM, Sat 30 Dec 2023 @ 03.00 EST
       41. REFERENCE: Natural gas in Israel — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
       42. REFERENCE: Meged oil field — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   11. CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’; Insiders say pressure from the top results in credulous reporting of Israeli claims and silencing of Palestinian perspectives. BY Chris McGreal | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Sun 4 Feb 2024 07.00 EST, Last modified on Mon 5 Feb 2024 00.14 EST. TAGS: CNN, Israel-Gaza war, Israel, Gaza, Palestinian territories, Middle East and north Africa
       1. CNN is facing a backlash from its own staff over editorial policies they say have led to a regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza.
       2. Journalists in CNN newsrooms in the US and overseas say broadcasts have been skewed by management edicts and a story-approval process that has resulted in highly partial coverage of the Hamas massacre on 7 October and Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza.
       3. “The majority of news since the war began, regardless of how accurate the initial reporting, has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” said one CNN staffer. “Ultimately, CNN’s coverage of the Israel-Gaza war amounts to journalistic malpractice.”
       4. According to accounts from six CNN staffers in multiple newsrooms, and more than a dozen internal memos and emails obtained by the Guardian, daily news decisions are shaped by a flow of directives from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta that have set strict guidelines on coverage.
       5. They include tight restrictions on quoting Hamas and reporting other Palestinian perspectives while Israel government statements are taken at face value. In addition, every story on the conflict must be cleared by the Jerusalem bureau before broadcast or publication.
       6. CNN journalists say the tone of coverage is set at the top by its new editor-in-chief and CEO, Mark Thompson, who took up his post two days after the 7 October Hamas attack. Some staff are concerned about Thompson’s willingness to withstand external attempts to influence coverage given that in a former role as the BBC’s director general he was accused of bowing to Israeli government pressure on a number of occasions, including a demand to remove one of the corporation’s most prominent correspondents from her post in Jerusalem in 2005.
       7. CNN insiders say that has resulted, particularly in the early weeks of the war, in a greater focus on Israeli suffering and the Israeli narrative of the war as a hunt for Hamas and its tunnels, and an insufficient focus on the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths and destruction in Gaza. …
       8. At Thompson’s first editorial meeting, two days after the 7 October Hamas attack, the new network chief described CNN’s coverage of the rapidly moving story as “basically great”.
       9. Thompson then said he wanted viewers to understand what Hamas is, what it stands for and what it was trying to achieve with the attack. Some of those listening thought that a laudable journalistic goal. But they said that in time it became clear he had more specific expectations for how journalists should cover the group.
       10. In late October, as the Palestinian death toll rose sharply from Israeli bombing with more than 2,700 children killed according to the Gaza health ministry, and as Israel prepared for its ground invasion, a set of guidelines landed in CNN staff inboxes.
       11. A note at the top of the two-page memo pointed to an instruction “from Mark” to pay attention to a particular paragraph under “coverage guidance”. The paragraph said that, while CNN would report the human consequences of the Israeli assault and the historical context of the story, “we must continue always to remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of civilians”. (Italics in the original.)
       12. CNN staff members said the memo solidified a framework for stories in which the Hamas massacre was used to implicitly justify Israeli actions, and that other context or history was often unwelcome or marginalised. …
       13. The same memo said that any reference to casualty figures from the Gaza health ministry must say it is “Hamas-controlled”, implying that reports of the deaths of thousands of children were unreliable even though the World Health Organization and other international bodies have said they are largely accurate. CNN staff said that edict was laid down by Thompson at an earlier editorial meeting.
       14. Broader oversight of coverage from the CNN headquarters in Atlanta is directed by “the Triad” of three CNN departments: news standards and practices, legal and fact-checking.
       15. David Lindsay, the senior director of news standards and practices, issued a directive in early November effectively barring the reporting of most Hamas statements, characterising them as “inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda”. …
       16. Lindsay said that if a statement was deemed editorially relevant “we can use it if it’s accompanied by greater context, preferably a package or digital write. Let’s avoid running it as a standalone soundbite or quote.”
       17. In contrast, one CNN staffer noted that the network repeatedly aired inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda from Israeli officials and American supporters, often without challenge in interviews.
       18. They noted that other channels have carried interviews with Hamas leaders while CNN has not, including one in which the group’s spokesman, Ghazi Hamad, cut short questions from the BBC when he was challenged about the murder of Israeli civilians. One staffer said there is a view among correspondents that it is “agony to get a Hamas interview past the Triad”. …
       19. … CNN has a longstanding policy that all copy on the Israel-Palestine situation must be approved for broadcast or publication by the Jerusalem bureau. In July, the network created a process it called “SecondEyes” to speed up those approvals.
       20. The Jerusalem bureau chief, Richard Greene, told staff in a memo announcing SecondEyes – first reported by the Intercept – that, because coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is subject to close scrutiny by partisans on both sides, the measure was created as a “safety net so we don’t use imprecise language or words that may sound impartial but can have coded meanings here”.
       21. CNN staffers said there is nothing inherently wrong with the requirement given the huge sensitivity of covering Israel and Palestine, and the aggressive nature of Israeli authorities and well-organised pro-Israel groups in seeking to influence coverage. But some feel that a measure that was originally intended to maintain standards has become a tool of self-censorship to avoid controversy.
       22. One result of SecondEyes is that Israeli official statements are often quickly cleared and make it on air on the principle that that they are to be trusted at face value, seemingly rubber-stamped for broadcast, while statements and claims from Palestinians, and not just Hamas, are delayed or never reported.
       23. One CNN staffer said edits by SecondEyes often seemed aimed at avoiding criticism from pro-Israel groups. They gave the example of Greene’s intervention to change a headline, “Israel is nowhere near destroying Hamas” – a perspective widely reflected in the foreign and Israeli press. It was replaced with a headline that shifted the focus from whether Israel could achieve its stated justification for killing thousands of Palestinian civilians: “Three months on, Israel is entering a new phase of the war. Is it still trying to ‘destroy’ Hamas?”
       24. Some CNN staff fear that the result is a network acting as a surrogate censor on behalf of the Israeli government. …
       25. MIKE: What I’ve excerpted here is barely a quarter of a much longer story. It’s worth reading, and you can find it by going to the blog post for this show and clicking on the story link. I’ve also provided a link to the first story about this meeting from The Intercept.
       26. MIKE: There are aspects to both sides of this story that are troubling. An obvious aspect is that CNN may be faster to clear official Israeli reports and pronouncements than they are to publish on-site reporters’ stories. But another is the resistance of reporters to editorial discretion as triaged by “the Triad” of three CNN departments: news standards and practices, legal, and fact-checking. Of the three, I can imagine some reporters chafing under the thought of “legal” possibly determining what gets published, but I think it should be concerning that there are reporters who are possibly opposed to oversight by “news standards and practices” and “fact-checking”.
       27. MIKE: Let’s be clear. There is no reporter who likes having their stories edited, trimmed, or outright killed. These folks wouldn’t be doing their jobs at great personal risk if they were otherwise, so any anger or frustration at the so-called “Triad” is understandable from their point of view. But to object to having work impacted by standards and fact checking seems problematic, too.
       28. MIKE: Let’s also consider resistance to a requirement that , “[CNN] must continue always to remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of civilians”.
       29. MIKE: I fail to understand why this is seen as a problem by some reporters. This current conflict was initiated by Hamas’s brutal killing of over 1100 Israeli men, women and children, and the taking of over 200 hostages.
       30. MIKE: According to an AP story of a UN report issued this week, “Pramila Patten, … visited Israel and the West Bank from Jan. 29 to Feb. 14 with a nine-member technical team.” [The reports says that] “there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe Hamas committed rape, ‘sexualized torture,’ and other cruel and inhumane treatment of women during its surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. …[S]he said the team ‘found clear and convincing information” that some women and children during their captivity were subjected to the same conflict-related sexual violence including rape and ‘sexualized torture.’”
       31. MIKE: Is this part of the context that some CNN reporters are having problems with?
       32. MIKE: Hamas started this war. First with rockets; then with slaughter, rape and torture. Hamas knew what this would bring onto the people of Gaza. Now that they have wrought this catastrophe on their own people, they demand the world’s compassion.
       33. MIKE: I want to be clear on some things. I support the existence of the State of Israel. If Israel had existed in the 1930s, European Jews would have had a place to escape to that would have accepted them without question. Millions of European Jews who were murdered might have lived, including some of my family members who died in the camps.
       34. MIKE: This is the reason for Israel’s existence, and this is what Israel fights for. Support for Israel does not constitute support for Benjamin Netanyahu or his government or its policies.
       35. MIKE: Commanders and soldiers of Israel should not be excused of potential war crimes, but in the same vein, why does Hamas seem to be getting a pass most of the time from most of the world?
       36. REFERENCE: In Internal Meeting, Christiane Amanpour Confronts CNN Brass About “Double Standards” on Israel Coverage; Amanpour expressed “real distress” over Israel stories being changed, while other staffers described a climate that is hostile to Arab journalists. Daniel Boguslaw, Prem Thakker | THEINTERCEPT.COM | March 1 2024, 12:47 p.m.
       37. REFERENCE: A UN envoy says there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to believe Hamas committed sexual violence on Oct. 7 — By EDITH M. LEDERER | APNEWS.COM | Updated 10:10 PM CST, March 4, 2024

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