Saturday, February 24, 2024

Aleksei Navalny, and Ukraine

Today is the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.  It has also been eight days since the death of Russian opposition figure Aleksei Navalny.

Today, too, Mr. Navalny's spokeswoman announced, in an online statement, that Mr. Navalny's body had--finally--been released to the custody of his mother.

Yesterday, President Biden announced some 500 sanctions against Russia, as a result of Mr. Navalny's death, and Russia's continuing war against Ukraine.  Those sanctioned, The Washington Post noted,  included Russian individuals, companies, "and firms in other countries that supply Russia's military and industrial production, according to a Treasury Department spokeswoman."  

Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said there will also be sanctions concerning Russia's human rights abuses, within the country, and without. One hopes the sanctions will have an effect.

And yet:  in the United States, the Republican-led House continues to delay--recklessly--sending crucial aid to Ukraine.

Gamesmanship is not leadership. Fealty to Donald Trump--who is besotted with Putin--is not leadership. The stakes, concerning Ukraine, are incalculably high, worldwide, and many in the House GOP don't seem to care.

The world--teetering on its axis, while House Republicans are dormant.  

Putin is strengthened by this; America's moral leadership is deeply diminished.

And, to speak of Mr. Navalny:  he was an immensely brave man. 

The day before his February 16th death, he made a court appearance, video from which has aired on television, and can be seen online.

In the courtroom--or, in the enclosure within the courtroom--he was smiling, laughing, making jokes to the judge.

The judge had imposed "a stream of fines" against Mr. Navalny, an online Russia-oriented independent news site noted (a site blocked in Russia; the publication is now based outside of the country). Mr. Navalny said the following, at the court hearing (I am using the translation not from the above publication, but from the CBS News video, below):

"Your honor, I am waiting.  I will send you my personal account number, so that you can use your huge federal judge's salary to fuel my personal account."  He added: "Because I am running out of money, and thanks to your decisions, it will run out even faster. So send it over." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUwOYeei5MU

Mr. Navalny's cheerful-appearing demeanor, the day before he died, was, on its own, evidence of his tremendous fortitude, and his heroism.

He had not, his manner proclaimed, been defeated--either from the terrible (and freezing) conditions of the Russian Arctic penal colony to which he had been sent in December, or from the punishing circumstances at the prison where he had been previously held since 2021.  During his imprisonment, he spent hundreds of days in solitary confinement.

Mr. Navalny's death--whether due to the harsh conditions of his incarceration (conditions imposed, certainly, by Vladimir Putin), or because of a Putin-ordered assassination--is a tragedy of great magnitude: for the citizens of Russia, for his many supporters, and, of course, for Mr. Navalny's courageous family. It is also a considerable tragedy for those seeking freedom across the world.

On February 16th, the day his death was reported, Anne Applebaum wrote the following in The Atlantic, online:

The enormous contrast between Navalny’s civic courage and the corruption of Putin’s regime will remain. Putin is fighting a bloody, lawless, unnecessary war, in which hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians have been killed or wounded, for no reason other than to serve his own egotistical vision. He is running a cowardly, micromanaged reelection campaign, one in which all real opponents are eliminated and the only candidate who gets airtime is himself. Instead of facing real questions or challenges, he meets tame propagandists such as Tucker Carlson, to whom he offers nothing more than lengthy, circular, and completely false versions of history.

Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin, because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country. For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/navalny-death-russia-prison/677485/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9QllmzHT97CTYmgyJxhyNuNZ0fM&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

On February 20th, Nadya Tolokonnikova--one of the founders of the Russian music/protest/performance art group Pussy Riot, and who was a friend of Mr. Navalny's--published an op-ed essay in The New York Times.  She wrote the following:

People say Mr. Putin feared Aleksei. But I think the reason he wanted to get rid of Aleksei was another emotion — a darker, more sinister one. It was envy. People loved Aleksei. With his jokes, irony, superhero-like fearlessness and love for life, he led with charisma. People followed Aleksei because he was the kind of person you wanted to be friends with. People follow Mr. Putin because they fear him, but people followed Aleksei because they loved him. Mr. Putin clearly envied this appeal. No amount of money in the world can buy love; no amount of missiles and tanks can conquer people’s hearts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/20/opinion/navalny-death-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.YE0.37GO.CriK-ATjG56m&smid=url-share

Monday, February 5, 2024

Trump, and the 2024 election

It is not only profoundly alarming, the possibility that Trump could be returned to office, in November.

It is also alarming, in the extreme, to think of what he might do--to think of what lengths he might go to--if he loses again.

Friday, January 5, 2024

An extraordinary role in D-Day

On Tuesday, The New York Times published an obituary of Maureen Flavin Sweeney, who died on December 17th at a nursing home in Belmullet, Ireland.  She was 100 years old.

I had not known of Ms. Sweeney, or of the remarkable role she played during World War Two.

In 1942, as the Times reported, she took a job at the post office of Blacksod Point, an Irish coastal village.  Her name, at the time--she was not yet married--was Maureen Flavin.

The Times wrote that the "remote post office also served as a weather station.  Her duties included recording and transmitting weather data.  She did that work diligently, though she did not even know where her weather reports were going.

"In fact," Times reporter Alex Traub noted, "they were part of the Allied war effort."

Then, in June of 1944, days before the D-Day invasion--originally planned for June 5th--her weather data altered history. "On her 21st birthday, June 3, she had a late-night shift: 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. Checking her barometer, she saw that it registered a rapid drop in pressure, indicating a likelihood of approaching rain or stormy weather."

The Times story continued: 

The report went from Dublin to Dunstable, the town that housed England’s meteorological headquarters.

Ms. Flavin then received an unusual series of calls about her work. A woman with an English accent asked her: “Please check. Please repeat!”

Ms. Flavin asked the postmistress’s son and Blacksod’s lighthouse keeper, Ted Sweeney [whom she would marry in 1946], if she was making a mistake.

“We checked and rechecked, and the figures were the same both times, so we were happy enough,” she later told Ireland’s Eye magazine.

The Times wrote:

That same day, [General] Eisenhower and his advisers were meeting at their base in England. James Stagg, a British military meteorologist, reported that, based on Ms. Flavin’s readings, bad weather was expected. He advised Eisenhower to postpone the invasion by a day.

The general agreed. June 5 saw rough seas, high winds and thick cloud cover. 

D-Day took place on June 6th. "Some commentators," Times reporter Traub wrote, "...have argued that the invasion could well have failed if it had occurred [on June 5th].

The obituary notes that Ms. Sweeney only learned of the importance of her weather reporting years later, in 1956.

Here is the link to the June 2nd story about her, from the Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/world/europe/maureen-sweeney-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K00.0hPk.RIrpOUcYte3D&smid=url-share

Sunday, December 3, 2023

Sandra Day O'Connor

While having not (admittedly) been a great fan of Ronald Reagan and his presidency, I think Mr. Reagan deserves much credit for having nominated Sandra Day O'Connor--who died on Friday, at 93--to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The legacy of Justice O'Connor--the first woman to serve on the Court--is an honorable and admirable one.

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Rosalynn Carter

Tuesday's memorial service for Rosalynn Carter--carried on television--was very moving.

Mrs. Carter was an extraordinary American--and an exceptional citizen of the world. She led a life of great service, and great purpose.

Monday, November 13, 2023

From "The Atlantic"

The following link is to an excellent piece from the website of The Atlantic, by staff writer Tom Nichols, titled "The Juvenile Viciousness of Campus Anti-Semitism." Its subtitle is: "Some of America's students are embracing an ancient evil."

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/11/campus-anti-semitism-hamas-war/675991/

Mr. Nichols writes, for example, that at George Washington University,

activists projected pro-Hamas slogans on the sides of buildings, including “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a call for the eradication of Israel. Spare me the sophistry—most recently plumped by Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—that “From the river to the sea” is merely an anodyne call for freedom and equal rights, or that it somehow can be detached from Hamas’s genocidal meaning...

Mr. Nichols writes:

Good for Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, for denouncing this slogan (despite immediate campus backlash for doing so); better late than never. Some protesters insist—and many with undeniable honesty—that they are objecting only to Israeli policy. But even the sincerest among them often resort to the backbreaking mental gymnastics required to dismiss the obvious anti-Semitism that is woven into so many of these protests.

Thursday, October 12, 2023

Hamas, on Osama bin Laden

Over the past days, contemplating Hamas's murderous, sadistic, gruesome attacks in Israel, I have thought of the group's reaction, in May of 2011, to the death of the mass murderer Osama bin Laden.

News reports at the time cited Ismail Haniyeh, who today is head of the Hamas Political Bureau; he has held this position since 2017.

One 2011 report said this: 

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, told reporters that the group regards bin Laden's death "as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood."

Though he noted doctrinal differences between bin Laden's al Qaeda and Hamas, Haniyeh said: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs." 

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4063407,00.html