Managers at centre of B.C. nursing college probe 'caused or contributed to' young woman's death, mother alleges

Bethany Lindsay CBC
JUNE 10,2021
. 

© Supplied by Margaret Lavery Katrina Lavery, shown here at left with her mother Margaret, died in hospital at the age of 21 after living in housing operated by Victoria's Garth Homer Society.

Katrina Lavery had a thirst for life.

She loved people and animals and rarely argued with her mother — even during her teenage years.

"[She was] the happiest camper every morning of every day that she woke up … pretty much a very joyful person that was taken way too soon," mom Margaret Lavery recalls.

Katrina died at the age of 21, succumbing to a bowel obstruction on New Year's Day 2018 in a hospital room in Victoria.

Katrina had Angelman syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes intellectual disability. She was non-verbal and required full-time nursing. At the time of her death, she was living in a home operated by the Garth Homer Society (GHS), a local non-profit that provides services for people with developmental disabilities.

Her mother filed a lawsuit in 2019 alleging that senior managers at GHS ignored symptoms of Katrina's condition for months, rebuffing support staff who urged them to seek medical attention and severely restricting Lavery's access to her daughter when she spoke out about her concerns.

"I feel like Katrina's death just didn't need to happen," Lavery said. "I feel like I've gone through a kidnapping."

This is the first time Lavery has spoken publicly about what happened. She agreed to an interview with CBC News after learning that the College of Nurses and Midwives of B.C. had suspended the nursing licences of Victoria Weber and Euphemia (Phemie) Guttin, both senior managers at GHS, after identifying "serious concerns" about the care they were providing.

The disciplinary action is a direct result of what happened to Katrina in GHS's care, along with complaints from two other families and a former employee.

Community Living B.C. (CLBC), the Crown agency that provides support for adults with developmental disabilities, also launched an investigation in the aftermath of Katrina's death. In May 2018, it cancelled its housing contract with GHS, withdrew funding for five residences and removed the society from a list of pre-qualified vendors for residential services, according to a civil claim filed by GHS earlier this spring.

Through all of this, Weber and Guttin have kept their jobs in high-level positions at GHS — Guttin as the executive director for service operations and Weber as the senior manager for health services and education. GHS has said they are "integral members" of the team.

In a written statement this week, the society's CEO Mitchell Temkin described Katrina Lavery as "a much-valued member of the Garth Homer Society community" and said everyone there was saddened by her death.

"Because of privacy legislation and because these matters are before the courts, we are unable to share details of her care when she was with the Garth Homer Society. However, we are confident that the care provided by GHS did not contribute to her unfortunate passing," Temkin said.

He said Katrina died two months after leaving the society's care — referring to the period of time she spent in hospital.

'Her skin was stretched so badly'

The allegations in Lavery's lawsuit have yet to be tested in court, but a trial date has been set for October 2022.

In a civil claim filed in B.C. Supreme Court in March 2019, Lavery alleges that GHS "caused or contributed to" Katrina's death through its negligence, naming as co-defendants Weber, Guttin, GHS's residential supervisor Rana Weihs and CLBC.

Lavery's claim alleges that beginning in May 2017, Katrina's belly became increasingly distended, and she started having more frequent seizures and high temperatures.

In photos taken of Katrina during that time period and shared with CBC News, her abdomen appears hard and rounded, prominently jutting out from the rest of her body.

"Her skin was stretched so badly that she looked like she was nine months pregnant," Lavery alleged.

"Staff were told that they couldn't call an ambulance."

Lavery's claim alleges that when she began reaching out to GHS and CLBC with her concerns, they told her she was inappropriately interfering with their business and "severely restricted" her access to her daughter, while threatening staff with discipline if they spoke to her.

Katrina was admitted to hospital on Oct. 27, 2017, where she was diagnosed with a bowel obstruction "that had been left untreated for many months," the claim alleges.

Despite multiple surgeries, doctors were unable to save Katrina's life. She died on Jan. 1, 2018.

GHS denies causing or contributing to Katrina's death, according to a response to Lavery's claim filed on behalf of the society, Weber, Guttin and Weihs.

The document disputes the allegation that Katrina's symptoms became progressively worse in GHS's care, claiming that Katrina's bowel obstruction "occurred spontaneously and acutely" rather than developing over months.

GHS also denies restricting Lavery's access to her daughter, but says there were mutually agreed-upon "terms of engagement."

Guttin, Weber and Weihs did not respond to requests for comment.

CLBC has also denied all allegations of wrongdoing in Katrina's death in its response to Lavery's claim.

'Dismissive of front-line staff's concerns'

There are parallels between the allegations contained in Lavery's legal claim and the issues investigated by the nursing college.

In a May 27 disposition letter to Lavery, the college's professional conduct review consultant Tansey Ramanzin confirms that Guttin and Weber breached professional standards.

"Ms. Guttin and Ms. Weber ... failed to take steps to properly assess Katrina and escalate care when symptomatology was present, ongoing, and/or worsening. They were dismissive of front-line staff's concerns," Ramanzin wrote in the letter, which Lavery shared with CBC News.

Ramanzin said Guttin and Weber asked staff to forward cellphone photos of Katrina rather than doing in-person assessments of her condition.

The disposition letter also says Guttin and Weber were "combative" in their communication, alienating and obstructing Lavery when she tried to advocate for Katrina.

"They negatively characterized and labelled you as difficult and/or dangerous, downplayed your concerns about Katrina's health, and told people you may be acting contrary to Katrina's best interests," Ramanzin wrote.

"Staff were told not to communicate with you upon threat of termination."

Lavery said she is planning to ask for a review of the college's consent agreement with Guttin and Weber, explaining that she wants their licences to be revoked permanently.

"I don't think they've done enough, and I don't understand," Lavery said.

In a response to Lavery's concerns, the college offered a written statement describing the disciplinary measures as "severe and proportional" to Guttin and Weber's conduct.

The statement notes that both of their licences will be suspended for more than three years altogether, and they will have to undergo remedial education and work under "extensive oversight" if they choose to return to nursing.

CLBC contract was wrongfully terminated: GHS

Meanwhile, the Garth Homer Society began its own legal battle earlier this spring against Community Living B.C., alleging the Crown agency wrongfully terminated its contract in 2018.

The society's notice of claim also accuses several CLBC staff members of defamation for telling GHS clients and their families the contract was cancelled because of "allegedly unsafe, mismanaged and inadequate" services.

CLBC has yet to file a response and none of the allegations have been proven in court.

Spokesperson Randy Schmidt confirmed in an email that CLBC no longer contracts with GHS for residential services, but said he couldn't comment further on that issue or Katrina's death because of the legal actions.

"CLBC believes it has followed its responsibilities and monitoring guidelines and we will be responding via the appropriate legal process and will continue to do so," Schmidt wrote.

Hurricane Ida shows the increasing impact of climate change since Katrina & SANDY

September 2, 2021 

Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina. (Hilary Scheinuk/AP Pool)

Sixteen years to the day that Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Hurricane Ida struck at Port Fourchon, La., on Aug. 29, as a Category 4 hurricane with 240 kilometres per hour winds. Given the date and location of the area affected, Katrina and Ida comparisons are being made.

While no two disasters are the same, looking at differences between past and present disasters can help us to better understand what is needed to prepare for future disasters. As a professor of emergency management, I was on the ground in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, making observations to study aspects of the hurricane’s impact and hurricane evacuations.

Given the scope of the emerging impacts of Hurricane Ida, we see that while this is not a repeat of a Katrina disaster, questions are being raised about the effect of climate change and the resiliency of lifeline infrastructure like electricity.

Remembering Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in 2005, its associated storm surges were among its most significant impacts. The levees that separated New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain failed. Katrina’s toll was 1,833 killed with US$163 billion in economic losses, making it the costliest weather disaster in the past 50 years.

In looking back at Katrina, forces of nature were not the only causative factors for the disaster. Human-caused circumstances, such as a history of economic and engineering decisions that over time replaced natural coastal wetland buffers against storm surges with a 120-kilometre long industrial canal, were in part to blame for the disaster.

In addition, numerous disaster response debacles complicated the immediate aftermath of Katrina. The disaster exposed racial- and class-based segregation that resulted in disproportionate disaster impacts being felt by racialized populations. What started as a natural disaster played out more like a complex humanitarian emergency.

As the aftermath of Hurricane Ida continues to play out, it remains to be seen if the disaster recovery and the economic losses will approach those of Katrina.

The damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward in April 2006. (Jack Rozdilsky), Author provided

Differences in hurricane behaviour

A hurricane’s behaviours related to disaster damage include the combination of the effects of high-speed damaging winds, intense periods of rainfall and storm surge flooding in low lying coastal areas.

Katrina’s behaviour is remembered for its devastating water-related hazards with storm surges inundating New Orleans neighbourhoods such as the Lower Ninth Ward.

For Ida, the entire breadth of the storm’s wind field stood out as significant. The storm’s behaviour will be remembered for its wind-related hazards. Ida had a slow path of inland movement with highly destructive sustained winds of 200 kilometres per hour for eight hours over a 120-kilometre long path through portions of Jefferson and LaFourche parishes.

In 2005, Katrina crossed a cooler water column in the Gulf of Mexico as it neared the shore, weakening it from a Category 5 to a Category 3 storm at landfall. In 2021, Ida did not encounter any cooler waters, resulting in its rapid intensification. Rising water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico are related to climate change.

New preparedness challenges

While the situation remains tenuous in hurricane-stricken locales, at least Ida’s casualty count appears to be nowhere near that of Katrina. As of Sept. 1, Ida’s death toll was at six and counting. It is too early to estimate Ida’s economic losses.

Unlike the situation in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina, the levees and drainage systems protecting New Orleans held up under the stress of Ida’s storm surge. Since Katrina, the U.S. federal government has spent $14.5 billion on levees, pumps, seawalls, floodgates and drainage. Apparently, in the case of Hurricane Ida, that investment in hazard mitigation paid off.

However, while preparations to protect against Katrina-like storm surge flooding appeared to be successful, other aspects of preparation did not fare as well. The region’s electrical grid did not remain functional under the hours of sustained hurricane force winds. Local utilities serving Louisiana said it would take days to assess the damage to their equipment and weeks to fully restore service across the state as problems with the electrical grid continue. All the eight main transmission lines bringing electricity from power plants into New Orleans were knocked out, and more than one million people remain without power three days after landfall.

Without power, the situation is becoming increasingly desperate. As one example of the collateral damages related to a lack of electricity, the gasoline distribution system imploded. As conditions degrade due to a prolonged electrical outage, people who did not evacuate during the storm may be forced to, and those who evacuated will be prevented from returning.

Looking at the aftermath of Hurricane Ida illustrates how climate change is making hurricanes more devastating. While studies continue to assess the climate change contribution to hurricane intensity, there is little doubt that the increased frequency and intensity of hurricanes impacting the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is being influenced by global warming.

Sixteen years of additional climate change since Hurricane Katrina adds to preparation needs. Even if we are doing better with challenges like protecting against storm surge flooding, the impacts of future hurricanes call for additional measures. These include increasing the resiliency of our infrastructure to better meet the risks of a changing climate.

Author

Jack L. Rozdilsky
Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, Canada
Disclosure statement
Jack L. Rozdilsky is a Professor at York University who receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research as a co-investigator on a project supported under operating grant Canadian 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Rapid Research Funding.

Children of climate change come of age in ‘Katrina Babies’
BY DREW COSTLEY

yesterday

1 of 7

Edward Buckles, Jr., a New Orleans native who was 13 when Hurricane Katrina hit and directed the documentary "Katrina Babies," poses underneath the Claiborne Avenue overpass for a photo in the city on Friday, Aug. 19, 2022. The film looks at how a generation of New Orleans residents coming of age after Hurricane Katrina, are reconciling with the catastrophic storm that transformed their lives. (AP Photo/Chansey Augustine)


Edward Buckles, Jr. was 13 when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and completely upended his life. Buckles and his family moved from New Orleans to Lafayette, Louisiana for several months while their hometown began to recover from the catastrophic storm.

He told The Associated Press he doesn’t remember much from those months living in Lafayette, grasping for a sense of normalcy in the aftermath of one of the most destructive hurricanes in American history.

His community was experiencing so much destruction. Now as an adult, he views that blank spot in his memory as a response to the trauma of what he witnessed.

Buckles’ parents asked him at the time if he was okay, but he wasn’t quite able to figure that out for himself in the moment. Later the trauma resurfaced. With kids, he said, “what’s responsible and what’s important is that you set them up to deal with that trauma once it surfaces.”

But the filmmaker said in his new documentary “Katrina Babies” that not all the children who were traumatized by living through the hurricane and its aftermath had adults checking in on them. So that’s what he set out to do, capturing several New Orleans residents as they reconcile with a childhood marred by Hurricane Katrina.

The documentary, which has garnered critical praise, will be available for streaming on HBO Max on August 24 and debuts on HBO the same day at 9 pm ET, 17 years and a day after the hurricane formed in the Atlantic Ocean.

It shows how New Orleans and its people were changed by the storm. It depicts the childhood trauma it caused for a generation coming of age after one of the United States’ first major climate-related disasters. New Orleanians featured in the documentary share stories of seeing dead people and pets, of leaving home and returning to communities destroyed, while they were still children.

The film looks at climate past and present and, the filmmakers hope, sounds alarm bells for the climate future.

“I hope this is a local and American story that will motivate people to want to do better and care about human beings, and about how intrinsically linked we are with nature and that the future is clear: There is going to be more of this,” said Audrey Rosenberg, lead producer of the film.

Buckles said that while Hurricane Katrina might has been a formative experience for him and the youth of New Orleans at the time, more waters have come through since. Though he isn’t a climate scientist, he knows firsthand the repeated damage wrought on his hometown by hurricanes and tropical storms made more intense by climate change.

“My grandmother lost her home due to flooding from Hurricane Katrina,” he said. “She has been flooded seven more times just from tropical storms.”

Cierra Chenier, 26, was featured in the documentary and also knows people who have had to rebuild multiple times since Hurricane Katrina due to subsequent hurricanes and storms.

She said the loss of culture and history in New Orleans due to repeated climate-related disasters like Hurricane Katrina shaped her decision to become a local historian and writer.

“I got into wanting to preserve our history because of how quickly I felt my childhood became history,” she said. Even though the storm was 17 years ago, she said, it continues to shape the present.

“In preserving our stories, writing about those stories and narrating those stories, it’s always connected to the present and we can form better solutions for the future,” she said.

Chenier, Buckles and the other youth affected by Hurricane Katrina have a lot to say about the future, having experienced years of government inaction to limit climate change or prepare and recover from climate disasters. Year after year, New Orleanians and the state and federal government know that hurricane season is going to come and be potentially catastrophic because of climate change, Buckles said.

And still, he said, Hurricane Ida, which hit New Orleans 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, affected people in his community in eerily similar ways to the 2005 storm. The relief measures, he said, were nearly as slow.

As a result, people in his community have become more resilient. But he said he wonders whether government agencies are relying on those harmed by climate-related disasters to help themselves when what they really need is public planning and preparation.

“The youth are tired of dealing with this, myself included,” he said. “And we cannot forget to hold accountable those who need to be held accountable.”


Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Katrina: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

See my other blog postings on Katrina:

A Paradox called Katrina

Katrina: It's a Dog-gone Crime

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina blasted the hell out of the Gulf Coast of the US what can we say about this. Well there was the good, the bad and the ugly.

THE GOOD: The thousands of people, ordinary citizens who helped each other and volunteered to bring food and supplies to the Gulf Coast without the help of the state or so called civil society; NGO's and humanitarian bueraucrats. I will even give credit here to a San Diegeo Oil magnate and a movie star who both filled private airplanes with supplies and without media fanfare delivered the goods to those in need. To the thousands of people who are currently rescuing animals that the state forced to be left behind in their hasty post Katrina evacuation. The expressions of genuine mutual aid and self organiziation that is the hallmark of Anarchy.

New Orleans has been governed throughout this entire debacle. Don't blame anarchy for government's failures. If anything, this helps illustrate the case for self-government.
Enjoy Every Sandwich

Yep it was Anarchy in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, chaos was created mnot by the storm but by the disorganization of the agents of law and order, but real anarchy arose in the actions of citizens. Self government was created in the disaster areas, to deal with the disaster.

Dhalgren in New Orleans
What an old science-fiction novel can tell us about the Big Easy
Bidisha Banerjee

Like Kid, who leaves the city after losing Lanya and other friends in the fire and confusion resulting from a race riot, those who choose to stay in New Orleans will, in all likelihood, come to harm. But, I hope, not before glimpsing more than the city's nightmares. About two dozen people in New Orleans refused to accept the cancellation of the Southern Decadence gay pride parade scheduled for last weekend. They donned wigs and beads, and celebrated in the streets. A restaurant started giving away $20,000 worth of free food, and two bars in the (mostly dry) French Quarter remained open through the hurricane. In the absence of any controlling legal authority, residents even formed ad hoc defense committees. You wouldn't know it from the blathering of countless columnists, but while Katrina was busy disproving some non-existent policy of "small government," private citizens from Wal-Mart to New Orleans hoteliers proved their ability to keep functioning in an unreal city. It's a start—not only for the city's will to rebuild itself, but also for the inhabitants who hope to stick it out until then. There are many stories about the bodies still afloat in New Orleans, but this one, with its detail about a corpse with one shoe on and one shoe off (an image that haunts Samuel Delany's work, Dhalgren) stands apart.


THE BAD: The State, NGO's and humanitarian agencies that percipitated this disaster by not evacuating everyone or having a plan of evacuating everyone, or a plan period. Reacting too late to a crisis which had they evacuated on Friday before Katrina hit would have had lots of time to get everyone out of New Orleans at least. The Greyhound bus company that removed its buses from New Orleans on Saturday before the hurricane.

The STATE at all levels failed, the limited government created by the neo-cons created a STATE which cannot govern in times when it is needed most, during disasters. The reduction in taxes, in the rational governing of resources, and the increasing authoritarian Securtiy State of the Bush Administration met their Waterloo in Katrina.

And all this could have been avoided if the STATE had listened to the government, in this case the Hurricane Emergency Adisory agency in Louisiana which do its duty, understaffed and underpaid, warned all STATE agencies, local, state and federal, of the pending disaster. But nobody listened.

Fed Response to Katrina Gets Thumbs Down
September 4, 2005--Just 28% of Americans give say that the federal government has done a good or an excellent job responding to Hurricane Katrina. Another 25% say the government has done a fair job while 45% say poor.

Poll: Respondents dissatisfied with Katrina response
Tuesday, September 13, 2005 Posted: 1546 GMT (2346 HKT)
(CNN) -- A majority of Americans surveyed in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday said they disapproved of President Bush's handling of the response to Hurricane Katrina

THE UGLY: Gretna, Louisiana across the bridge from New Oreleans, armed racist police refused access to survivors from NO. The police guarding the bridge between Gretna and NO generously refered to the evacuee's as 'looters'.

This should be no surprize, except to those 70% of white Americans polled who said that race was not a factor in the failure to evacuate or rescue victims of Katrina.

Poll shows wide racial divide on views of Katrina
Six in 10 African-Americans say the fact that most hurricane victims were poor and black was one reason the federal government failed to come to the rescue more quickly. Whites reject that idea; nearly 9 in 10 say those weren't factors. In New Orleans, Bush on Monday said race played no role.

The New York Times Leads the Pack in Scapegoating Black Americans
Race, Katrina and the Media By ISHMAEL REED

Of course there was no racism, this is the gentile land of Southern Gentlemen and Southern Belles after all.

A Guide to Southern Hospitality The Deep South has always taken great pride in its reputation for “Southern Hospitality”. Yet Jefferson Parish, a suburban bedroom community of New Orleans, Louisiana, harbors a dark and shameful culture of racism. Throughout its history, from the prolific lynchings in the 1890's to the senseless diatribes of its extremist politicians in the 1980's, Jefferson Parish is gifted with the ignoble distinction of “America’s Johannesburg.”

Nope no racism in the Deep South.

When Hate Came to Town: New Orleans' Jews and George Lincoln Rockwell,

Gretna is the stomping grounds of white supremascist/neo-nazi and former Klansman, David Duke.

David Duke a Biography

David Duke on Stormfront-Neo Nazi Site.

There's an old sheriff in town: The legacy of racism in the parish that blocked N.O. from fleeing Hell
"If there are some young blacks driving a car late at night in a predominantly white area, they will be stopped. If you live in a predominantly white neighborhood and two blacks are in a car behind you, there's a pretty good chance they're up to no good. It's obvious two young blacks driving a rinky-dink car in a predominately white neighborhood - I'm not talking about on the main thoroughfare, but if they're on one of the side streets and they're cruising around - they'll be stopped."

-- Jefferson Parish, La., Sheriff Harry Lee in 1986.

In 2005, Harry Lee is still the sheriff of Jefferson Parish -- a county that also once sent David Duke to the statehouse and tried to erect physical barriers from a mostly black New Orleans community. And last week, his deputies took part in what may become the most notorious racial incident of our young new millennium.

After Blocking the Bridge, Gretna Circles the Wagons

City of Gretna Louisiana-The most evil, racist city in America.

Police Trapped Thousands in New Orleans

Three New Orleans suburbs to reopen Wednesday

13 Sep 2005 23:56:54 GMT

Source: Reuters
GRETNA, Louisiana, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Three suburbs of New Orleans announced they will reopen on Wednesday, saying residents have safe water, electricity and sewer service 15 days after Katrina struck. The cities of Gretna, Westwego and Lafitte, Louisiana, said residents could come back starting at 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning but cautioned that they would face a strict curfew "The city now is open for business," Westwego mayor Robert Billiot told WWL radio. "We are going to rebuild Westwego. We look forward to you coming home." The three cities are all in Jefferson Parish, a county of suburbs that borders New Orleans on both sides of the Mississippi River. They are on the south side of the river, the so-called West Bank, and did not suffer the widespread, continued flooding that other areas hav

After Katrina

George W. Bush failed to be on site in New York immediately after 9/11. He failed again when Katrina devastated New Orleans.

On September 14, 2001 he cruised over WTC site in a helicopter, shades of flying over New Orleans, and does his famous photo-op with the Firemen at Ground Zero.

==Around mid-afternoon on Friday, Bush finally appears in New York City with a large Congressional delegation and takes a quick helicopter tour of the devastated area with Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki as warplanes fly overhead. Afterwards, Bush visits Ground Zero, where he engages in a rare impromptu exchange with a crowd. As rescue personnel chant “U.S.A! U.S.A.!,” Bush climbs atop a small pile of rubble and uses a bullhorn to thank them for their efforts. When some workers call out that they can’t hear, Bush responds "I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" The crowd reacts with cheers and more chants of “U.S.A.!” Workers at Ground Zero are clearly encouraged by Bush’s visit, but there is also annoyance over the two hour shutdown of rescue work caused by the extremely tight security measures. [nyt.Sep.14.2001 / cnn.Sep.14.2001 / dmn.Sep.15.2001]

After talking to state officials and emergency teams in New York, the president flew to Camp David for what a senior US official called a "decision-making meeting" later on Saturday with top advisors.

September 14: President Bush declares a national emergency. The Senate adopts a resolution authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces against those responsible for the attacks. President Bush visits the World Trade Center site. Federal officials release names of the 19 hijackers. Bush declares a "national day of prayer and remembrance." Many Americans attend religious services. Congress unanimously approves $40 billion for emergency aid, including $20 billion for New York. President Bush activates 50,000 national guard and reserve members to help with recovery and security.

After Katrina he failed to visit New Orleans until the anniversary of 9/11. Weeks after the hurricane hit. And then it was for another photo op like 9/11.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) Sunday, September 11, 2005;

-- President Bush arrived in Louisiana Sunday as the official death toll from Hurricane Katrina climbed past 400 and the search for bodies continued nearly two weeks after the storm hit the Gulf Coast.

The visit is Bush's third to the region but his first chance to get a first-hand look at the streets of New Orleans, which were flooded after levees protecting the low-lying city broke.

Two days after the storm hit, Bush surveyed Katrina's destruction from Air Force One on his way back to Washington from Crawford, Texas, where he'd spent a month's vacation. He visited other parts of the region in two subsequent visits.

He was on vacation prior to Katrina as he was prior to 9/11.

“News coverage has pointedly stressed that W.'s month-long stay at his ranch in Crawford is the longest presidential vacation in 32 years. Washington Post supercomputers calculated that if you add up all his weekends at Camp David, layovers at Kennebunkport and assorted to-ing and fro-ing, W. will have spent 42 percent of his presidency ‘at vacation spots or en route.’” Charles Krauthammer, “A Vacation Bush Deserves,” The Washington Post, August 10, 2001.

Yesterday he commemorated his regimes failure to support the people of New Orleans then and now. And as usual there was no mea culpa.

President Bush and other officials observed the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, honoring the dead and touring still ruined neighborhoods.

However the real scandal is not that he arrived late after Hurricane Katrina, but that after two years the City has not been rebuilt, funds have been squandered.

A recent report from the RFK Center for Human Rights and the Institute for Southern Studies estimated that the Bush administration was overstating federal funding for the Gulf Coast rebuilding campaign by as much as 300%, with about $35 billion of an estimated $114 billion actually spent.

With America's largest black city and thousands of blacks stranded in the immediate aftermath of the storm the failure to rescue them smacked of racism.

That the federal government has utterly failed in these lethal days is universally obvious.

Is it because so many of these people are black and poor? Is it because Bush has successfully stolen a second term and just doesn't care? Is it because this gouged and battered organization that was once our government has been so thoroughly exhausted by war and corruption that it cannot or will not manage so basic a task as bringing the necessities of life to its needlessly dying citizens?

But to hear of dead bodies being stacked outside a professional football stadium to avoid further stench where ten thousand Americans can't get water, food or sanitary facilities.To see dazed elders who've just lost their homes or hospital rooms being laid on sidewalks to die. To watch crying children stretched out on the ground, separated from their parents, dehydrated, overheated, starving....this is too much to bear.

How utterly can our nation have failed? How totally bankrupt can we be?

And the guy in charge of all this who should have been fired; Homeland Security boss Chertoff, wasn't.

Congressional investigators lambasted the U.S. government for its response to Hurricane Katrina, saying a lack of a clear chain of command hindered relief efforts and that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff or another top official should have been the point person on relief efforts.

The Government Accountability Office also found that the government still lacks sufficient plans and training programs to prepare for catastrophic disasters like the Aug. 29 storm that devastated much of the Gulf Coast area. But it also singled out Chertoff in several shortcomings.

Until now, Chertoff has largely escaped widespread criticism of the government's sluggish response to Katrina. By contrast, then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, the principal federal official at the disaster site, quit his job after becoming the public face of the failures.

The report said that neither Chertoff nor any of his deputies in the disaster area acted as President George W. Bush's overall storm coordinator, "which serves to underscore the immaturity of and weaknesses relating to the current national response framework."

After all Katrina was not a surprise to the administration since they had anticipated it.

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all."

Some critics are suggesting President Bush was as least partly responsible for the flooding in New Orleans. In a widely quoted opinion piece, former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal says that "the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature," and cites years of reduced funding for federal flood-control projects around New Orleans.

Our fact-checking confirms that Bush indeed cut funding for projects specifically designed to strengthen levees. Indeed, local officials had been complaining about that for years.

And with a lame duck President and an administration running on the spot nothing has changed. The failures that led to the destruction of New Orleans plague the White House still.

When investigating the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, a House of Representatives select committee cited a “failure of initiative” at all levels of government. The storm killed 1,836 people, caused an estimated $81 billion in damage, and displaced some two million people. The population of New Orleans is currently about 66 percent of its pre-Katrina level, and the city’s uneven recovery is examined in depth in this New York Times interactive feature. The Department of Homeland Security has since quadrupled its stockpiles of emergency supplies and sought to improve emergency planning at the community level. The 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act signed by President Bush in August promises to provide increased funding for emergency communications and first responders. Yet some experts believe the lessons of the disaster appear to have gone unlearned. In his recent book, The Edge of Disaster, CFR’s Stephen Flynn says the levees that failed to protect New Orleans two years ago are being rebuilt to the same standard as before, capable only of enduring a Category 3 hurricane.

Now compare Bush's slow response to President Johnson's visit to hurricane ravaged New Orleans after Hurricane Betsy. And a visit to the same lower ninth ward that Bush visited yesterday.

Lyndon Johnson received high marks for visiting the Lower Ninth Ward and victims in shelters a day after Hurricane Betsy ravaged New Orleans. ("I put aside all the problems on my desk to come to Louisiana as soon as I could," Johnson said.)

President Lyndon Baines Johnson flew into New Orleans the day after Hurricane Betsy in September 1965 and announced at the airport, "I am here because I want to see with my own eyes what the unhappy alliance of wind and water have done to this land and people."

The day after. Not a week later.

LBJ believed in the 'Great Society'. Bush believes in 'compassionate conservatism'. The latter is an ideological reaction to the former. And it has proven to be more of a failure than the Great Society ever was.


SEE:

Our Living Earth

Surge Blackout

What He Didn't Say

Soul of a City

Remember Katrina and Rita?

Katrina Mission Accomplished

Katrina: It's a Dog-Gone Crime

This is What Global Warming Looks Like

A Paradox called Katrina

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Katrina, New Orleans, FEMA, Bush, fraud, rebuilding, Hurricane, Gulf Coast, USA, disaster, 9/11, relief,
Rita, hurricanes, USA, weather, climate-change, environment,
FEMA, Bush, America, Empire, reconstruction, New, Orleans, Louisiana, delta, Gulf-Coast,
Corruption, Halliburton, Bechtel,
Politics, SOTU, State of the union, President Bush,

Katrina Mission Accomplished

A year after Katrina,just like Iraq, it is Mission Accomplished for the Bush team and their disaster/war profiteer pals....while they blame the victims for fraud.....
A review of congressional testimony and other documents by Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch found a total of at least $136.7 million in corporate fraud in Katrina-related contracts. In addition, government investigators have highlighted contracts cumulatively valued at $428.7 million that they found troubling because of lack of agency oversight or misappropriation.Profiting from Disaster: Greed Has Stallled Gulf Coast Recovery ...


Taxpayers around the nation who urged the federal government to pay for relief and reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina probably didn’t expect their money to be spent on $279 meals and $2,500 tarps. But according to a newly released report, corporations hired by the federal government have not only inflated costs but committed labor abuses and delayed the reconstruction process, making millions while local companies and workers have been left behind. Katrina Recovery Funds Wasted by Contractors, Govt.

Ever wonder what happened to all the foreign donations given to the United States in the aftermath of Katrina? It's not good news. It turns out that, like so much of the federal response to the crisis, the largest influx of foreign assistance to the US in memory was met with foot-dragging and clumsy bureaucracy. None of the donated funds has actually made its way to evacuees. What happened to the foreign cash for Katrina victims?

More Than Half of Congress' Katrina Money Unspent

Katrina Victims See Scant Evidence of Bush Funds in New Orleans


See Internationl Relief scams and scandals plaque the US just as they did the victims of the Tusanami in Indonesia and the earthquake in Pakistan. The difference is that under state capitalist regimes in Asia it is government inefficiency in the U.S. it is just the opposite.

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Katrina, NewOrleans, FEMA, Bush, fraud, rebuilding, Hurricane, GulfCoast, USA, disaster, releif,

Two Solitudes-In Amerika

In Canada we often speak of Two Solitudes, in reference to Quebec and the Rest of Canada (ROC).

In Amerika there are still two solitudes 140 years after Slavery ended. There are Two Americas, one Black and one White. And Afro-America is still poor, illiterate, and subject to the whims of capitalist exploitation as these two stories show. Idol Winner Fanatasia reveals the reality of being working class African American, making a sham of the so called American Dream. Sure she is America's Idol, if being illiterate and being raped is anyting to idolize. Yet it is the harsh reality of everyday life for working class women of colour in racist America. And typical of the American culture of 'you can make it if you work hard enough', she blames herself.

And the announcement of the layoffs of New Orelans city workers reveals the same false American Dream for working class Afro Americans. I guess they can blame themselves to for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or for not being one of George II's Texas pals, who get all the plumb jobs.

Say what was that promise George II made about rebuilding New Orleans? Oh did he forget to mention it will be by the private sector to benefit the private sector, with taxpayer money. With the layoffs of municipal workers in New Orleans, FEMA will be known as Firing Employees of Muncipalities in America.....The American Dream is only available for a few, they are White and Rich.

Idol winner Fantasia reveals she's illiterate

Fantasia Barrino performs on ABC's 'Good Morning America' in July, 2005. (AP Photo/Jeff Christensen, File)

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- "American Idol" winner Fantasia Barrino reveals in her memoirs that she is functionally illiterate and had to fake her way through some scripted portions on the televised talent show, which she won in 2004.

"You're illiterate to just about everything. You don't want to misspell," Fantasia told ABC's "20/20." "So that, for me, kept me in a box and I didn't, wouldn't come out."

The 21-year-old R&B singer says she's signed record deals and contracts that she didn't read and couldn't understand. But the hardest part, she said, is not being able to read to Zion, her 4-year-old daughter.

"That hurts really bad," she said, adding that she is now learning to read with tutors.

In her memoir, "Life is Not a Fairy Tale," which she dictated to a freelance writer, Fantasia also said she was raped in the ninth grade by a classmate. She says the boy was disciplined, but she blamed herself for the attack.

She dropped out of high school that year and became an unwed mother at 17.

US housing official: rebuilt New Orleans will have fewer poor blacks

President Bush’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development acknowledged the administration’s real vision for New Orleans when he told reporters last week that the city would have far fewer poor black residents once reconstruction is completed.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson predicted New Orleans would slowly bring back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 to 40 percent of the population would be black. Prior to Hurricane Katrina the city had nearly 500,000 residents, more than two-thirds of whom were African-American.

“Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time,” Jackson said. “New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.”

New Orleans lays off 3,000 city workers

Associated Press

October 4, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday the city is laying off as many as 3,000 employees -- or about half its workforce -- because of the financial damage inflicted on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina.

Nagin announced with "great sadness" that he had been unable to find the money to keep the workers on the payroll.

He said only non-essential workers will be laid off and that no firefighters or police will be among those let go.

[So sewer workers, truckers, paramedics, and other support staff aren't essential?! New Orleans is Not a City, it's a Police State! EP]

"I wish I didn't have to do this. I wish we had the money, the resources to keep these people," Nagin said. "The problem we have is we have no revenue streams."

Nagin described the layoffs as "pretty permanent" and said that the city will work with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency to notify municipal employees who fled the city in the aftermath of Katrina, which struck about a month ago.

The mayor said the move will save about $5 million US to $8 million US of the city's monthly payroll of $20 million US. The layoffs will take place over the next two weeks.

Eased Out of the Big Easy
by Jesse Jackson

After his administration's incompetence and indifference had lethal consequences in Katrina's wake, President Bush has been scrambling to regain his footing. He's called for an "unprecedented response to an unprecedented crisis." In religious services at the National Cathedral, he called on America to "erase this legacy of racism" exposed by those abandoned in Katrina's wake. He's called on Congress to appropriate more than $60 billion in emergency relief and outlined a recovery program likely to cost up to $200 billion, or nearly as much as the Iraq War.

All this has led the press to compare his plans to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Don't fall for it. A close look at the Bush plan reveals that this is a bad deal from a deck stacked against the poor who suffered the most in Katrina's wake.

The first clue came from Bush's first act. He issued orders erasing the prevailing wage for work on rebuilding the Gulf, and his administration gave Halliburton a lucrative no-bid contract to begin the work. Then he designated Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana an enterprise zone, and, using emergency authority, waived all worker protections in the region -- protections for equal employment, for minority contractors, for health and safety, for environmental protection.

We're learning that when Bush promised to remove the legacy of racism in New Orleans, he meant he'd remove the poor who were victims of that racism. Bush's secretary for Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson, revealed that to the Houston Chronicle.

"Whether we like it or not, New Orleans is not going to be 500,000 people for a long time," the HUD secretary said. "New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again." Jackson predicted New Orleans will slowly draw back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 percent to 40 percent of the post-Katrina population would be black. (Before Katrina, New Orleans was two-thirds black.) "I'm telling you, as HUD secretary and having been a developer and a planner, that's how it's going to be." Jackson revealed that he advised Mayor Ray Nagin not to rebuild the overwhelmingly black 9th Ward.

The people of the 9th Ward are the maids and waiters who serve New Orleans tourists. They are the musicians who give the city its blues. They are the cops and government clerks who are struggling to bring the city back. Half of the houses there are owned, not rentals. Many of these workers are dispersed -- dispatched to over 40 states. Many still are in shelters.

No one could figure out why the Bush administration wouldn't give the evacuees housing vouchers to rent housing in and around New Orleans. Instead, FEMA has ordered tens of thousands of trailers and is struggling to build trailer parks -- Bushvilles -- to shelve Katrina's victims.

Now we know. Bush's isn't planning urban renewal, he's planning urban removal. The administration has given the victims of Katrina a one-way ticket out with no plan for their return. Instead, the planners will turn New Orleans into a gentrified theme park. They'll rebuild the white communities -- even those like middle-class Gentilly and wealthy Lakeview that are as prone to severe flooding as the 9th Ward.

Congress should insist that Katrina's victims have a right to return -- and FEMA should develop a plan to make their return possible. They should have preference for the jobs that will be created in rebuilding the city. They should be provided vouchers to use for nearby housing. If necessary, local military bases should be opened, with public transportation to get them to and from work. They should be paid the prevailing wage, with decent health-care benefits. The people of the 9th Ward should decide the fate of their homes, not urban planners intent on building a New Orleans without its black people. If their neighborhoods are not rebuilt, then affordable and public housing should be built in other parts of New Orleans.

That's not what Alphonso Jackson and the administration are planning, so it will take street heat and congressional action to make them see the light. Katrina destroyed its victims' homes; we shouldn't let the administration make them exiles from their own city.

© 2005 Chicago Sun Times

Growing Gulf Between Rich and Rest of US
by Holly Sklar


Guess which country the CIA World Factbook describes when it says, "Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20 percent of households."

If you guessed the United States, you're right.

The United States has rising levels of poverty and inequality not found in other rich democracies. It also has less mobility out of poverty.

Since 2000, America's billionaire club has gained 76 more members while the typical household has lost income and the poverty count has grown by more than 5 million people.

Poverty and inequality take a daily toll seldom seen on television. "The infant mortality rate in the United States compares with that in Malaysia -- a country with a quarter the income." says the 2005 Human Development Report. "Infant death rates are higher for [black] children in Washington, D.C., than for children in Kerala, India."

Income and wealth in America are increasingly concentrated at the very top -- the realm of the Forbes 400.

You could have banked $1 million a day every day for the last two years and still have far to go to make the new Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans.

It took a minimum of $900 million to get on the Forbes 400 this year. That's up $150 million from 2004.

"Surging real estate and oil prices drove up several fortunes and helped pave the way for 33 new members," Forbes notes.

Middle-class households, meanwhile, are a medical crisis or outsourced job away from bankruptcy.

With 374 billionaires, the Forbes 400 will soon be billionaires only.

Bill Gates remains No. 1 on the Forbes 400 with $51 billion. Low-paid Wal-Mart workers can find Walton family heirs in five of the top 10 spots; another Wal-Mart heir ranks No. 116.

Former Bechtel president Stephen Bechtel Jr. and his son, CEO Riley Bechtel, tie for No. 109 on the Forbes 400 with $2.4 billion apiece. The politically powerful Bechtel has gotten a no-bid contract for hurricane reconstruction despite a pattern of cost overruns and shoddy work from Iraq to Boston's leaky "Big Dig" tunnel/highway project.

The Forbes 400 is a group so small they could have watched this year's Sugar Bowl from the private boxes of the Superdome.

Yet combined Forbes 400 wealth totals more than $1.1 trillion -- an amount greater than the gross domestic product of Spain or Canada, the world's eighth- and ninth-largest economies.

The number of Americans in poverty is a group so large it would take the combined populations of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, plus Arkansas to match it. That's according to the Census Bureau's latest count of 37 million people below the poverty line.

Millions more Americans can't afford adequate health care, housing, child care, food, transportation and other basic expenses above the official poverty thresholds, which are set too low. The poverty threshold for a single person under age 65 was just $9,827 in 2004. For a two-adult, two-child family, it was just $19,157.

By contrast, the Economic Policy Institute's Basic Family Budget Calculator says the national median basic needs budget (including taxes and tax credits) for a two-parent, two-child family was $39,984 in 2004. It was $38,136 in New Orleans and $33,636 in Biloxi, Mississippi.

America is becoming a downwardly mobile society instead of an upwardly mobile society. Median household income fell for the fifth year in a row to $44,389 in 2004 -- down from $46,129 in 1999, adjusting for inflation. vThe Bush administration is using hurricane "recovery" to camouflage policies that will deepen inequality and poverty. They are bringing windfall profits to companies like Bechtel while suspending regulations that shore up wages for workers.

More tax cuts are in the pipeline for wealthy Americans who can afford the $17,000 watch, $160,000 coat and $10 million helicopter on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index.

More budget cuts are in the pipeline for Medicaid, Food Stamps and other safety nets for Americans whose wages don't even cover the cost of necessities.

Without a change in course, the gulf between the rich and the rest of America will continue to widen, weakening our economy and our democracy. The American Dream will be history instead of poverty.

Holly Sklar is co-author of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us" (www.raisethefloor.org). She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com.

© 2005 Holly Sklar

Prisoner Swap With Russia “Offers A Possible Pathway” To Peace In Ukraine

By Katrina vanden Heuvel

August 3, 2024
Source: Democracy Now!



We speak with The Nation‘s Katrina vanden Heuvel about the prisoner swap between Russia, the United States and several other countries on Thursday that saw the release of 24 people, with 16 prisoners in Russia traded for eight Russian nationals held in the U.S., Germany and elsewhere. It was the biggest exchange of prisoners between Russia and the West since the Cold War era. Among those released are Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. marine Paul Whelan and Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. Vadim Krasikov, a convicted Russian assassin who was in German custody after the 2019 killing of a Chechen dissident in Berlin, was also released and sent back to Moscow. Vanden Heuvel says it was “an extraordinary swap” that could pave the way for more diplomacy to wind down the war in Ukraine. “Negotiations and diplomacy are not about capitulation. They’re about improving the conditions of a world which is too militarized and at war.”
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman.

We’re spending the rest of the hour looking at the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since the Cold War. Included in the swap are Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, former marine Paul Whelan and Russian American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who landed in the United States late Thursday night after being freed from Russian custody. It was just about midnight when President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris greeted them at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland as their family members rushed to embrace them. Biden spoke earlier in the day surrounded by the released prisoners’ relatives.


PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Today we’re bringing home Paul, Evan, Alsu, Vladimir — three American citizens, one American green card holder. All four have been imprisoned unjustly in Russia. … Russian authorities arrested them, convicted them in show trials and sentenced them to long prison terms with absolutely no legitimate reason whatsoever. … And now their brutal ordeal is over. …


This deal would not have been made possible without our allies — Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Turkey. They all stepped up, and they stood with us. They stood with us. And they made bold and brave decisions for these prisoners being held in their countries, who were justifiably being held, and provided logistical support to get the Americans home. So, for anyone who questions whether allies matter, they do. They matter.

AMY GOODMAN: Russian British dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has a U.S. green card, was also released in the swap but was not on the U.S. flight with Gershovich, Whelan and Kurmasheva.

This comes just weeks after a Russian court convicted Evan Gershkovich of espionage, sentencing him to 16 years in prison, a move denounced by press freedom groups. Paul Whelan was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 on spying charges, which he denied.

In total, 16 political prisoners — Russian human rights activists, journalists and others — were freed by Russia in the exchange. Five were German nationals, seven Russian, including human rights defender Oleg Orlov, who served as a leading member of Memorial, one of the oldest human rights organizations in Russia. Memorial, which has been outlawed by Putin, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. Some of the freed activists had links with Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, among them Ksenia Fadeyeva, who was the head of Navalny’s office in Tomsk, a university town in Siberia.

In return, eight Russians were released from prisons in the U.S., Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Poland, including Vadim Krasikov, a convicted Russian assassin who was in German custody after the 2019 killing of a Chechen dissident in Berlin in broad daylight. Thursday’s massive exchange came after about two years of complicated negotiations with the U.S., Russia and other European countries, including Belarus and Germany, which ultimately agreed to Moscow’s key demand — to free Krasikov.

The U.S. had pushed to include Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the swap, before his death in an Arctic prison in February. National security adviser Jake Sullivan addressed this in a press briefing yesterday.


JAKE SULLIVAN: We had been working with our partners on a deal that would have included Alexei Navalny. And unfortunately, he died. In fact, on the very day that he died, I saw Evan’s parents, and I told them that the president was determined to get this done even in light of that tragic news, and that we were going to work day and night to get to this day. And so, that work continued over the course of the past few months and culminated in today.

AMY GOODMAN: Alexei Navalny’s closest ally, Leonid Volkov, said on social media, “Today we’re reveling in the release of political prisoners, Putin’s hostages who were suffering in Putin’s gulag. But it still will be joy with tears in our eyes. The Navalny swap has taken place, but without Navalny. It hurts a lot,” he said.

For more, we’re joined here in New York by Katrina vanden Heuvel, Russia expert, publisher of The Nation magazine.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Katrina. If you can talk about the significance of this swap and who was released on both sides?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: It’s an extraordinary swap, as you know, Amy, the complexity of it. It reminds of the Cold War, but it is more complex in many ways. I think what was so stunning, of course, the human drama, the human pain that is relieved, but the fact that there have been masterful negotiations behind the scenes, the back-channel diplomacy that had to occur to make this day happen. And we so often hear of working with allies to pass on weapons or to fight wars, but in this case it was to start a dialogue to bring out the political prisoners, the others. And I think that is hopeful, that we’re going to see maybe more of a pathway to dialogue toward ending the war.

But I also think that what’s interesting is the politics of it. Kamala Harris, the vice president, clearly played a role in an important moment, bilateral talks with the German leader, Olaf Scholz, to release Krasikov. And Krasikov, as you mentioned, Amy, was the pivot for Putin. And he has been called an assassin. And he did it — it’s Vladimir Putin’s loyalty to such people in order to continue recruiting for extrajudicial actions. But Krasikov is convicted of killing a Chechen, Chechen terrorist, Chechen war fighter. And for Putin, the Chechen War remains this stain, that he continues to try to exercise, we saw, with Tajikistan and the terrorist acts just a few months ago.

But I come away primarily listening to a Jake Sullivan who broke down, from maybe the stress of the last two years. To keep this quiet has always been key for back-channel diplomacy. When I was in Moscow in 1986, Amy, there was the picking up of Nick Daniloff of U.S. News & World Report. He was in prison for only 15 days, and he was exchanged. So, we’ve seen these kinds of exchanges going way back, but the complexity of this one and what it may mean is very important.

AMY GOODMAN: And if you can talk about — I mean, Evan Gershkovich, now everyone has heard his name, The Wall Street Journal reporter. And apparently, when he had to sign documents at the end when he was being released, he wrote that he wanted to interview Russian President Putin.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: I’m not allowed to say a bad word, but I would say he’s a bad—. He’s a — you know, that, it takes real courage and temerity. But, you know, he’s from a Russian émigré family, and he grew up in New Jersey. But his mother, who he lifted off the tarmac, was so fearful, because she remembered what Lefortovo — that is, the prison Evan Gershkovich was in for too long — what that meant in the Stalin years. People didn’t come out. But, fortunately, Evan Gershkovich is here. May he get the interview with Putin.

And may I point out that Mr. Trump has all along been belligerently aggressive about how only would Putin give the hostages to him, Trump; he could do it in a day. Well, it turns out — and this is commentary inside Moscow — that maybe the Putin administration regime prefers Harris’s more steadfast policies. They’re kind of sick of this Trump lack of discipline, to be kind. So, I found that, I think, and Russian observers have found that interesting.

I will say that there are others. Vladimir Kara-Murza, whose father was a major television personality inside the Soviet Union, he is, as you know, Amy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post, a fierce oppositionist figure. And I think it demands quite a bit. Of course he should be released. He should never have been in prison. But to release him to the West is, of course, to empower him in his oppositionist activities and continuing to write as he has against the Putin regime.

The sadness of Navalny, I have to say, there was a similar case, Amy. Your listeners may remember Khodorkovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch who was imprisoned for too long. He was released around the time he took up a hunger strike, I believe. Kremlin wanted him to leave. And I think with Navalny, Navalny who received almost 30% in his run for Moscow’s mayor in 2013, he returned to his home country. But I’m not sure that the commentary, which quickly impugns Putin for killing him — now, bringing him to that Arctic prison is part of a death sentence, perhaps — but there was real action — and I heard this from independent Russians close to the scene — to release Navalny. And we now hear how that was in play.

AMY GOODMAN: And it’s very interesting that the U.S. negotiated, with other Western countries, the release of Russian human rights activists, not Russian Americans.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk about the significance of that, like the head of Memorial?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Well, Mr. Orlov, who’s 71, had left the country and then came back. And I think there’s an understanding of the dissidents and the role dissidents play and the need to save and protect them. I will say Mr. Orlov — and there were several people who were involved with Navalny’s organization, the anti-corruption unit. So I think that was a sign of — it’s not the Navalny swap, but it has elements of it.

I will say that there are still political prisoners in Russia. And Boris Kagarlitsky, who has been on your program, Amy, is someone who has been arrested and convicted for six-and-a-half years for simple opposition to the war in Ukraine. Lula and other international leaders have signed a letter of protest in solidarity. And if you go to TheNation.com and put in “Boris Kagarlitsky,” you can see what you can do to assist in release not just of Boris, but there are others who are part of his institute for labor and social movements.

AMY GOODMAN: Christian Mihr, the deputy general secretary of Amnesty International in Germany, said the prisoner exchange left a “bitter taste.” In a statement, the group warned Russian President Putin, quote, “is clearly instrumentalizing the law in order to use political prisoners as pawns,” and said that on one side there were, quote, “a murderer and other criminals who have been convicted in a fair trial,” and on the other, “people who have just exercised their right to free speech. The prisoner exchange is therefore a step towards broadening impunity,” Mihr said. If you can respond to that and also talk about the other Russians who were released to Russia, in addition to this assassin of the Chechen in broad daylight in Berlin?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Well, let me just begin with that, if I might, Amy. There was a couple who I believe lived in South America. And their children were traveling with them to Moscow. They didn’t speak — the children didn’t speak Russian and didn’t know their parents were Russians. This is sort of like The Americans. But, I mean, you have low-level spies. You have low-level hucksters, scammers. The most serious criminal is Krasikov, assassination. So, the others were more kind of plain, ordinary.

But I do think this issue of hostage — of impugning those who undertake hostage negotiations, Amy, there’s a history — you know, Jesse Jackson taking soldiers out of Syria; Bill Richardson, the back channel around the Cuban Five. I think that better than to war, war, war is to have these negotiations, masterful diplomacy, as President Biden and others have said, that do not bring about moral equivalency but do bring about release of those loved ones. And no one exchanged money. There’s no transaction. And I think we’re sturdy enough and steady enough and resilient enough as a country to understand that hostage release is not transactional, and also that negotiations and diplomacy are not about capitulation. They’re about improving the conditions of a world which is too militarized and at war. So, I do think in the mix of people — and there have been — I think there are 16 on the U.S. side. And think about the negotiations that had to occur with the other countries. That is a measure of collaboration that I think does merit the word allies doing the right thing.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s exactly the point that Biden made yesterday, clearly making a reference to Trump, saying this took allies, especially the German chancellor agreeing to release the assassin. That took allies and not alienating allies. But I wanted to go, as you talk about war, to the issue of the Ukraine war. Do you think that this prisoner swap, the agreement at the highest levels of the United States, Germany, Russia, with Vladimir Putin, is — could lead to some kind of negotiation to the end of the war in Ukraine?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: I do, Amy. As I referred at the top, I do think it offers a possible pathway. And the timing is such that Ukraine — the polling, independent Ukrainian polling, is showing that more and more Ukrainians can contemplate a negotiated end to this war. Of course, there are questions about ceding land and other things, but Ukraine is war weary, as is Russia. And the men being mobilized, the draft age is now 60. In both countries, they’re conscripting prisoners. I think Zelensky, in an interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer about a week ago, spoke of the possibility of negotiations. I think the security for Ukraine can be negotiated apart from NATO, the issue which has so roiled the situation. But I think the time has come. Ukraine is a third of its size. It has very few men remaining, very little materiel. And the money — the World Bank estimates reconstruction of Ukraine at this moment could be about a trillion dollars. I think only diplomacy, a word that is often overused but is real, is the resolution to this cruel, horrific, World War I kind of war with 21st century weapons.

AMY GOODMAN: Katrina, what about the significance of the timing of this swap? They’ve been working on it apparently for several years, as you said. This is right before the Democratic convention. You have the release of Americans. The whole issue of —

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: It’s something that Reagan —

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: The Republicans often — remember Reagan and the hostage? How can we forget the Iranian hostage crisis? And we’ve learned more about how that was ginned up to support Reagan’s record. But I do think the timing — and this has been commented on in Moscow, Amy, that the timing suggests that they’re fed up with Trump, and I think that there’s more interest in a more stable foreign policy, though there’s also hope that Kamala Harris and her chief national security adviser, Philip Gordon, is less hawkish than a Victoria Nuland or those who have been too involved in the Ukraine situation. So, I do think there’s a timing element, and I do think Mr. Trump has been upended in this sense. And I do think the Russiagate stuff about how Putin put Trump in the White House is increasingly discredited. But that is the commentary inside Moscow.

AMY GOODMAN: And when it comes to the Ukraine war, Ukraine has received its first collection of F-16 combat jets, after a very long wait.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: But, Amy, they’re training them. The men are still being — I believe mostly men, though women are in the army, but they’re being trained. And it’s a long process, and that soon will come another muddy, horrific winter, made worse by Russia’s bombing of the grid. And Russia should not be let off. I mean, there has to be some measure of even — I wouldn’t use the word, but reparations in rebuilding Ukraine. But again, the war weariness is deep in both countries. Though Russia is better equipped to handle a long war, people are not. Many people are so war weary.

AMY GOODMAN: So, are you saying you think that Putin thinks he might work better with Katrina — he might work better with Kamala Harris than with Donald Trump?

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: I do. I think Russia does not like unhinged, unstable, undisciplined. And, you know, Mr. Trump has brought in people like John Bolton, who are eternal Cold Warriors. There’s a new generation — I’m not sure Putin’s part of it, but there is a new generation that, for many, the Cold War is ancient history. And there needs to be a dialogue. And, in fact, the defense secretary [inaudible] —

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: So, there needs to be an ongoing dialogue for security reasons, nuclear reasons. So this could be setting a pathway. For two years, there was dialogue. You’re not going to just cut it off at the pass. Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Russia expert and publisher of The Nation magazine. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

Where Is The Biden Plan To End The War In Ukraine?

Perhaps the administration can't admit it doesn't have one.

By Anatol Lieven

August 3, 2024

Source: Responsible Statecraft


President Joe Biden delivers a joint statement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Monday, February 20, 2023, at the Mariyinskyy Palace in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo: Adam Schultz)

Almost 100 days have now passed since the Congress passed $61 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine, a measure that included a condition that required the Biden Administration to present to the legislative body a detailed strategy for continued U.S. support.

When the funding bill was passed with much fanfare on April 23, Section 504, page 32 included the following mandate:

“Not later than 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the heads of other relevant Federal agencies, as appropriate, shall submit to 18 the Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committees on 20 Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives a strategy regarding United States support for Ukraine against aggression by the Russian Federation: Provided, That such strategy shall be multi-year, establish specific and achievable objectives, define and prioritize United States national security interests…”

It is now August and There is still no sign on the part of the Biden Administration of any intention to submit such a strategy to Congress. This inevitably leads to the suspicion that no such strategy in fact exists. It also suggests that without a massive change of mindset within the administration, it is not even possible to hold — let alone make public —serious and honest internal discussions on the subject, as these would reveal the flawed and empty assumptions on which much of present policy is based.

This relates first of all to the requirement “to define and prioritize United States national security interests.” No U.S. official has ever seriously addressed the issue of why a Russian military presence in eastern Ukraine that was of no importance whatsoever to the U.S. 40 years ago (when Soviet tank armies stood in the center of Germany, 1,200 miles to the West) should now be such a threat that combating it necessitates $61 billion of U.S. military aid per year, a significant risk of conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia, and a colossal distraction from vital U.S. interests elsewhere.

Instead, the administration, and its European allies, have relied on two arguments. The first is that if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, it will go on to attack NATO and that this will mean American soldiers going to fight and die in Europe. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever of any such Russian intention. Russian threats of escalation and (possibly) minor acts of sabotage have been outgrowths of the war in Ukraine, and intended to deter NATO from intervening directly in that conflict — not actions intended to lay the basis for an invasion of NATO.

Western commentators like to state Russian public ambitions beyond Ukraine as a given fact, but when asked to provide actual statements to this effect, they are unable to do so. Nor, at least judging by Putin’s latest statement, does he intend (or believe it possible) to “wipe Ukraine off the map.” The top official Russian goals include limited territorial gains, Ukrainian neutrality, and Russian language rights in Ukraine — all questions that can legitimately be explored in negotiations.

Moreover, given the acute difficulties that the Russian military has faced in Ukraine, and the Russian weaknesses revealed by that conflict, the idea of them planning to attack NATO seems utterly counter-intuitive. For Russia has been “stopped” in Ukraine. The heroic resistance of the Ukrainian army, backed with Western weapons and money, stopped the Russian army far short of President Putin’s goals when he launched the war. They have severely damaged Russian military prestige, inflicted enormous losses on the Russian military, and as of today, hold more than 80% of their country’s territory.

The Biden administration has issued partly contradictory statements about the purpose of U.S. aid to Ukraine: that it is intended to help Ukraine “win”, and that it is intended to help “strengthen Ukraine at the negotiating table.” They have not however fulfilled their legal obligation to define to Congress what “winning” means, nor why if the war will end in negotiations, these negotiations should not begin now — especially since there is very strong evidence that the Ukrainian military position, and therefore Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table, are getting worse, not better.

As Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro have written in response to the latest US despatch of weapons to Ukraine:

“[A]daptation and adjustment do not constitute strategy, and reactive escalation absent a strategy is not sound policy. Escalating U.S. involvement in this conflict—or any conflict—should be guided by an idea about how to bring the war to an end.”

As with U.S. campaigns in Vietnam and elsewhere, the administration and its allies have tried to play the “credibility” card: the argument that it is necessary to defeat Russia in Ukraine because otherwise, China, Iran and other countries will be emboldened to attack the United States or its allies. But like the line about Russian ambitions beyond Ukraine, this is simply an assumption. There is no actual evidence for it at all.

It can, with equal or greater validity, be assumed that the governments of these countries will make up their minds according to calculations of their own interests and the military balance in their own regions.

The final administration line of argument is a moral one: that “Russian aggression must not be rewarded” and that “Ukrainian territorial integrity must be restored.” Since, however, any realistic negotiations towards a peace settlement will have to involve de facto recognition of Russian territorial gains (not de jure recognition, which the Russians do not expect and even the Chinese will not grant), this statement would seem to rule out even the idea of talks. On the face of it therefore, the Biden administration would appear to be asking the American people to spend indefinitely tens of billions of dollars a year on an endless war for an unachievable goal.

If this is a mistaken picture of the administration’s position, then once again, it has a formal obligation under the bill passed by Congress in April to tell the American people and their elected representatives what their goals in Ukraine in fact are. Then everyone will be able to reach an informed judgment on whether they are attainable, and worth $61 billion a year in American money.

Unfortunately, it seems that the administration’s actual position is to kick this issue down the road until after the presidential election. Thereafter, either a Harris administration will have to draw up new plans, or a Trump administration will do so. But given the length of time it takes a new administration to settle in and develop new policies, this means that we could not expect a strategy on Ukraine to emerge for eight months at best.

If the Ukrainians can hold roughly their present lines, then this approach could be justifiable in U.S. domestic political terms (though not to the families of the Ukrainian soldiers who will die in the meantime). There is however a significant risk that given the military balance on the ground, and even with continued aid, Ukraine during this time will suffer a major defeat. Washington would then have to choose between a truly humiliating failure or direct intervention, which would expose the American people to truly hideous risks.

There is an alternative. Since President Biden will in any case step down next January, he could take a risk and try to bequeath to his successor not war, but peace. In terms of domestic politics, to open negotiations with Russia now would deprive Donald Trump and JD Vance of a campaigning position, and would spare a future Democrat administration (if elected) from a very difficult and internally divisive decision.

The first step in this direction is for the Biden administration clearly to formulate its goals in Ukraine, and — as required by law — to submit these goals to the American people.