A Roundup: Navalny, Munich Security Conference, Israel-Gaza, Voting Rights, and "gendering" in Austria
Alexej Navalny is dead
Most of the world presumably believes he was killed on orders of Vladimir Putin. The evidence for it is circumstantial but for most people it's probably an open-and-shut assumption. "Navalny's fate is part of a long series of political murders. Anyone who messes with Vladimir Putin risks their life. This is the cruel message that the Kremlin wants to send, and it is paralyzing resistance in Russian society," writes Christian Ultsch.1
Vadim Nikitin writes about Navalny in The Nation:
Though they are separated by decades and railed against two very different regimes, [nuclear physicist and Soviet dissident Andrei] Sakharov and Navalny had much in common. Both possessed extraordinary charisma, courage, doggedness, and moral purpose. And despite being feted in the West in quasi-messianic terms, neither quite managed to articulate a coherent political program or reach a mass domestic audience outside the tight-knit circles of the Soviet intelligentsia or the urban middle classes, respectively.
In the end, Sakharov’s inspiring but vague vision of a democracy built on pluralism and human rights could not survive contact with the mobster capitalism of the 1990s. Navalny’s dream of a “beautiful Russia of the future” based on individual liberty and rule of law crumbled in the face of violent irredentism abroad and heightened repression at home.
From Washington to Moscow, Navalny’s death was immediately exploited by the usual suspects for their own ends. Russophobes like Anne Applebaum took the opportunity to blame both Russia’s leadership and its people, as well as taking a veiled swipe at Trump supporters: “Putin killed him—because of his political success, because of his ability to reach people with the truth, and because of his talent forbreaking through the fog of propaganda that now blinds his countrymen, and some of ours as well,” Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic.
Bill Browder, a former Kremlin cheerleader turned anti-Putin crusader, used the tragedy to boast about his own prescience: “Three years ago I said President Putin was carrying out a slow motion assassination of Russia’s leading dissident Alexei Navalny,” he wrote in the Daily Mail on February 16. “Today, my worst fears were realised.”2 [my emphasis]
Fun fact about investment banker Bill Browder, one of the most high-profile Western critics of Putin’s government: he is the grandson of Earl Browder, who was General Secretary of the US Communist Party from 1930 to 1945.3
Annual Munich Security Conference (MSC)
News of Navalny's untimely passing came during the annual Munich Security Conference, to which Putin was not invited this year. This may not have been entirely coincidental.
Vice President Kamala Harris was there, delivering standard platitudes with her trademark brand of “I’m-from-the-corporate-personnel-department” charisma.4 (To be fair, her presentation style is more appealing than that of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But it’s always recommended to have a cup of coffee, or two, before listening to a Harris presentation.
“Harris seemed dedicated to keeping to the administration’s recent script, which is warning against heralding in a new era of ‘isolationism,’ reports Marc Martorell Junyent.5
Not everyone is suffering from the Israel-Gaza War
Netanyahu’s war on the Gaza Palestinians, which now features US military attacks on several different countries in support of Netanyahu’s war does have beneficiaries. Netanyahu himself can’t be prosecuted on pending corruption charges as long as he is Prime Minister. Oh, there’s also Israel’s military-industrial complex, which profits nicely along with the American one6:
Republicans really, really don’t want Democratic constituencies to vote
We badly need an effective new Voting Rights Act in the US. Because the Republicans just aren’t on their own going to stop trying to suppress voting by groups they think may lean Democratic. And the equal right to vote is not something they want Americans to have:
The Brennan Center just published a report, Intimidation of State and Local Officeholders: The Threat to Democracy.7
With an companion video8:
Austria’s conservative Chancellor can’t get his head around this whole gender thing
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer of the conservative/Christian Democratic Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) tries to appeal to the voters who don’t have their own lobbyists by promising things like: I’ll protect the Wiener Schnitzel! (This has something to do with the idea that environmentalists are all vegan hippies who want to ban meat, or something.) I’ll defend gasoline motors! (What, the Greens think that cars can run on batteries?!)
He’s also bothered by this whole newfangled thing of gender-inclusive language. By gum, if my great-great-grandpappy called it a “cell phone,” then that’s good enough for me! He wants to do away with “gendering,” by which he means gender-inclusive words. Although isn’t using non-inclusive words more “gendering”? (No, it’s not some quirk of the German word meanings; it sounds just as dumb in German.)
The Austrian news weekly Profil did a fact-check on Nehammer’s claim, “From a biological point of view, there are only two genders.”
Their conclusion? Sorry, Herr Chancellor: “From a biological point of view, there are more than two genders. Intersexuality is a reality, according to clear medical evidence. The statement of Nehammer’s is therefore false.”9
Ultsch, Christian (2024): Die Botschaft, die nach Nawalnys Tod weiterlebt. Die Presse am Sonntag 17.02.2024 <https://www.diepresse.com/18168301/die-botschaft-die-nach-nawalnys-tod-weiterlebt> (Accessed: 2024-20-02). My translation from German.
Nikitin, Vadim (2024): Russian Opposition Leader Navalny Was Brave, Authentic, Funny, Larger Than Life. Will His Movement Survive Him? The Nation 02/20/2024. < https://www.thenation.com/article/world/russia-navalny-death-putin-liberalism/> (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
Earl Browder. Wikipedia 02/20/2024. <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Earl_Browder&oldid=1209093213> (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
Kamala Harris Promotes U.S. Leadership In The World At Munich Security Conference. Forbes Breaking News YouTube channel 02/16/2024. > (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
Junyent, Marc Martorell (2024): Dispatch from Munich: VP Harris warns against 'isolationism'. Responsible Statecraft 02/16/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/munich-security-conference-kamala/> (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
How is Israel's arms industry profiting from the war on Gaza? The Stream. Al Jazeera YouTube channel 02/20/2024. (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
Ramachandran, Gowri, et. al. (2024): Intimidation of State and Local Officeholders: The Threat to Democracy <https://www.brennancenter.org/media/12120/download> (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
Introductory article: Intimidation of State and Local Officeholders 01/25/2024. <https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/intimidation-state-and-local-officeholders> (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
Intimidation of State and Local Officeholders: A Threat to Democracy. Brennan Center for Justice YouTube channel 01/30/2024. (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
Dzugan, Franziska (2024): Das Kanzler-Märchen von Mann und Frau. Profil 19.02.2024. <https://www.profil.at/faktiv/das-kanzler-maerchen-von-mann-und-frau/402784435?fbclid=IwAR07-_4LsXHUBi-BURHEAGTaX33nUPYXHM3Pto-1tR4bvhpinFVq3M8fnhw> (Accessed: 2024-20-02).
Browder's family background has also been a source of amusement to me. But it's clear, whether Naval'ny's ideological position was coherent or not, attempts were made in Russian territory to assassinate him by poison in 2017, 2019 and 2020, and he has now died while imprisoned in a system that's as reminiscent of the imperial katorga as of the Soviet gulag, on bogus charges. It's not a crime to have a less than coherent ideology. There isn't yet any evidence circumstantial or otherwise to explain how he died, of "sudden death syndrome"; his body has been whisked away from the view of his family and of outside medical examiners. It's kind of suspicious, especially in the context of the history of unexplained killings from Anna Politovskaya and Aleksandr Litvinenko through Zelimkhan Khangoshvili and Kirill Stremousov. As Lady Bracknell said, you know, "To lose one may be regarded as a misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness." It's dozens.