Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Ramifications

Patricia Cohen of The New York Times writes that a core principle of “liberal capitalism” is being severely tested by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Millions of times a day, far-flung exchanges of money and goods crisscross land borders and oceans, creating enormous wealth, however unequally distributed. But those connections have also exposed economies to financial upheaval and crippling shortages when the flows are interrupted.

The snarled supply lines and shortfalls caused by the pandemic created a wide awareness of these vulnerabilities. Now, the invasion has delivered a bracing new spur to governments in Europe and elsewhere to reassess how to balance the desire for efficiency and growth with the need for self-sufficiency and national security.

And it is calling into question a tenet of liberal capitalism — that shared economic interests help prevent military conflicts.

It is an idea that stretches back over the centuries and has been endorsed by romantic idealists and steely realists. The philosophers John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant wrote about it in treatises. The British politicians Richard Cobden and John Bright invoked it in the 19th century to repeal the protectionist Corn Laws, the tariffs and restrictions imposed on imported grains that shielded landowners from competition and stifled free trade.

Stanislav Markus writes for The Conversation about the probable inability of Russia’s oligarch class to shape Kremlin policy with regard to the invasion of Ukraine.

Oligarchs, in the Russian context, are the ultrawealthy business elites with disproportionate political power. They emerged in two distinct waves.

The first group emerged out of the privatization of the 1990s, particularly the all-cash sales of the largest state-owned enterprises after 1995. This process was marred by significant corruption, culminating in the infamous “loans for shares” scheme, which transferred stakes in 12 large natural resource companies from the government to select tycoons in exchange for loans intended to shore up the federal budget.

The government intentionally defaulted on its loans, allowing its creditors – the oligarchs-to-be – to auction off the stakes in giant companies such as Yukos, Lukoil and Norilsk Nickel, typically to themselves. In essence, then-President Boris Yeltsin’s administration appeared to enrich a small group of tycoons by selling off the most valuable parts of the Soviet economy at a hefty discount.

After Putin came to power in 2000, he facilitated the second wave of oligarchs via state contracts. Private suppliers in many sectors such as infrastructure, defense and health care would overcharge the government at prices many times the market rate, offering kickbacks to the state officials involved. Thus, Putin enriched a new legion of oligarchs who owed their enormous fortunes to him.

J. Lester Feder writes for Vanity Fair about the especial dangers that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses for Ukraine’s LGBTQ community.

When Russia invaded Crimea in Ukraine’s south in 2014 and Russian-backed separatists launched a war against the Kyiv government in Ukraine’s east, Insight and other LGBTQ organizations opened shelters for people fleeing conflict. The years since have not been easy for LGBTQ rights supporters. There has been some progress: The government barred employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and rules were reformed to make it easier for transgender people to change their legal status. But hate crimes are sadly common, and LGBTQ events and community centers have frequently been attacked. A women’s march Shevchenko helped organize was targeted by far-right thugs in 2018, and the police responded by arresting her.

Which is why it was significant that Volodymyr Zelenskyy shouted down an anti-LGBTQ heckler several months into his presidency in 2019—something that would have been hard to imagine for a president years earlier. His government proposed hate crime legislation that covered LGBTQ people in 2020.

The perseverance of Ukraine’s LGBTQ movement was an important signal that Russia’s culture war was failing in one of the places where it began. Activists in neighboring countries have battled attacks from anti-LGBTQ politicians, often pushed by forces aligned with the Kremlin. Opposition to LGBTQ rights helped forge an alliance with Russians close to Putin around the world, including in the United States—this is part of what drove much of the social-conservative movement in the United States to embrace Putin.

This is the first of two essays by Mr. Leder in today’s APR.

Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon talks to MSNBC’s Yasmin Vossoughian about the arrest of WNBA star Brittney Griner in Russia.

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Kevin Rothrock, English-Edition Managing Editor of the Russian independent news outlet Meduza, noticed a “glimmer of honesty” in Friday’s Russian parliamentary debate criminalizing war “disinformation.”

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Lyudmila Narusova is the widow of the former mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, Vladimir Putin’s former boss, who died of a heart attack a little over 22 years ago.

Robin Givhan of The Washington Post writes about Volodymyr Zelensky, Everyman.

Zelensky seemed to understand that in 2022, when wartime diplomacy is practiced through video calls and social media posts, eloquence lies somewhere between controlled formality and uncontrolled emotion. And so, in only a few days, he has defined himself as singularly responsible for the fate of his country but also as a proud Everyman struggling to defend it. In his public statements, the president is just another citizen trying desperately to do the right thing, to uphold the principles of democracy, to survive. His image is that of a profoundly human contradiction.

When Zelensky addresses his countrymen and the world, his words are straightforward. He’s noticeably plain-spoken. It’s the rhythm of his remarks that’s striking. His rhetoric doesn’t soar, but his sentences have the beats of poetry.

“We know for sure that we don’t need the war,” Zelensky said. “Not a Cold War, not a hot war, not a hybrid one.” He shifts on his feet. He sniffles. These are grace notes of imperfection.

In an ever-expanding series of video missives and addresses in Ukrainian, Zelensky speaks in triptychs, in trios of short, declarative sentences or invigorating fragments. He pounds on a single word to make his point. His phrasing keeps time like a snare drum. Over the days, the tie vanishes. The suit is stripped away. The glow of a rested, well-fed man dulls. The personal trappings of hierarchical authority have been cast aside.

A big part of the reason that I like Ms. Givhan’s essay is that unlike so many other essays about President Zelensky’s use of rhetoric and social media, she does not compare Zelensky to Winston Churchill at all.

Heiner Hoffman and Asha Jaffar of Der Spiegel report that Russia’s war in Ukraine is driving up grain prices for African countries that depend heavily on Russian and Ukrainian grain imports.

Even in the weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, food prices in many African countries had already been exploding. The price of wheat flour has risen by 15 percent over last year’s prices, and it is a third higher for cooking oil. But the war in Ukraine promises to make the situation even worse. “Already, 276 million people in 81 countries are facing acute hunger. The world simply cannot afford an additional conflict,” says Martin Frick, director of the World Food Program (WFP) in Germany.

He says that more than half of the foodstuffs that WFP distributes in crisis regions around the world comes from Ukraine. “Putin’s war isn’t just bringing immeasurable suffering to Ukraine,” Frick says. “The effects will be felt far beyond the region.”

Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, with over 100 million residents, imports the majority of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine, as does Tunisia. In both countries, poor people in particular are heavily dependent on bread. Experts in Tunisia are warning that prices could quickly begin rising as a result of the war. Many other countries in the region face similar problems.

Stephanie Liechtenstein of POLITICO Europe writes that Western sanctions against Russia are having a huge impact on the negotiations for a renewed Iran nuclear accord.

At the Iran talks, Russia is demanding guarantees from the U.S. that the sanctions targeting the Kremlin over its invasion of Ukraine would not hinder its trade with Iran.

This fresh demand, which one Western senior official called a potential “trap,” could up-end negotiations aimed at securing a return to a 2015 accord on Iran’s atomic work. It has created yet another twist in a long-running saga that has seen the nuclear talks nearly fall apart over and over.

Russia would play an important role in implementing a renewed Iran agreement, which negotiators say they are close to achieving after 11 months of talks. The plan would be for Moscow to ship excess enriched uranium out of Iran to Russia and support the conversion of Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant into a research facility, among other things.

But with the international community moving to economically sever ties with Russia following its assault on Ukraine, Moscow says it wants assurances that it will still be able to benefit from a revived Iran accord. “We have asked for a written guarantee … that the current process triggered by the United States does not in any way damage our right to free and full trade, economic and investment cooperation and military-technical cooperation with the Islamic Republic,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Saturday.

Sergio Olmos of the Guardian says that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the American far right wing’s love of Putin and all that Putin represents.

It would be easy to dismiss the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) in Orlando, Florida, as a radical fringe. But speeches by two Republican members of Congress – one in person, the other via video – guaranteed national attention and controversy.

The backlash showed how the war in Ukraine has exposed the American far right’s affinity with Putin. That affinity is complicated by the tortured relationship between Russia and former president Donald Trump, whose rise Moscow supported with a covert operation to undermine US democracy.[…]

Researchers who monitor far-right groups agree that the moment of Putin enthusiasm in the US has intellectual underpinnings with deeper roots. Burghart said: “For almost a decade the work of Russian fascist Alexander Dugin has found a home in American white nationalist circles.”

Dugin’s ideology is steeped in Russian Christian nationalism and has chimed with Putin’s world view. At the same time, it echoes much of the Christian nationalist activism in the US, where liberal values, gay rights and a desire to keep religion out of the state, are seen as decadent and responsible for American decline.

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel of The Washington Post writes that a number of states have begun efforts for tuition-free community colleges and even some four-year degree programs.

At least seven tuition-free initiatives have publicly launched since November, according to the College Promise campaign, which advocates making the first two or more years of college free. The governors of Pennsylvania and Maine are pushing for new programs, while the University of Texas System Board of Regents recently approved a $300 million endowment to cover tuition for more students at its public institutions.

College Promise programs, as tuition-free initiatives are commonly known, enjoy widespread support across the political spectrum. Forty-seven states and D.C. have at least one such program at the college, city or state level. There are 33 statewide programs that cover tuition at community colleges or universities and higher education, and experts say the number is likely to grow.

Critics of universal public college say the price tag is unsustainable. Opponents of tuition-free community college say too many of the schools have poor outcomes, with fewer than 40 percent of students earning a degree within six years. Advocates argue that could be remedied by providing more institutional dollars and financial aid to keep students on track.

A handful of bills have been introduced this Congress to provide tuition-free access to community college or public universities, but none have advanced.

Venessa Wong of Buzzfeed does some investigative reporting on the dangers to basement apartments that are posed by climate change.

As an increasing number of intense storms batters the country, more Americans face the risk of basement flooding as the housing affordability crisis pushes renters across the income spectrum below ground. As prices hit new highs, officials around the country are looking to convert more basements into housing. New York City estimates it already has 150,000 people living in at least 50,000 basement units. Last year, Chicago’s Affordable Dwelling Units Ordinance went into effect, legalizing the creation of basement and attic apartments for the first time in 65 years. Boston has also included basement conversions as part of efforts to address affordability. So have lawmakers in Utah, Arlington, Virginia, and Denver. Bills have been introduced in Atlanta and Washington state.

But the consequences of extreme weather events are becoming dire for renters of basement apartments, including illegal units that aren’t designed for people to escape hazards like flooding and fire. Year after year, floods displace basement tenants around the country — from Seattle to Minnesota, Missouri to Utah, West Virginia to Cleveland — and the risk is rising as heavy rain events become more common. FEMA estimates 13 million Americans live in a 100-year flood zone, while other estimates go as high as 41 million people.

Over the last three decades, an average of 85 people have died in floods each year, making it the second-most deadly weather hazard after heat. In 2021, 145 people died in floods — around half had been driving, and one-quarter were at home. Survivors receive little help from landlords or government recovery programs, and those in illegal units sometimes can’t access public relief funds because their landlords refuse to apply in order to avoid calling attention to the violation.

Finally today, I have to say that I hate that I missed J. Lester Feder’s February 2, 2022 essay in The Washington Post Magazine about the decimation of the ballroom dance community in my hometown, Detroit, Michigan.

Ballroom is more than just a dance style; it’s a living link to Detroit’s past, a pastime that has built bridges between generations. The style, which has its roots in the swing era of the 1930s, has hung on in Detroit even as the city has transformed around it. Ballroom first thrived in Paradise Valley, a historic African American neighborhood on the near east side that was destroyed in the 1950s in the name of “urban renewal.” The dance found new homes during the Motown era, rebooted for a generation of young dancers. Then it started fading away until Andrews and a cohort of enthusiasts, then mostly in their 30s and 40s, helped save it from extinction by offering lessons for the first time and opening new venues for the style.

Now those revivalists are over 60, and the ones they learned from are in their 90s. This was exactly the demographic hardest hit by covid’s first wave: older African Americans. And they were living in Detroit, one of the first hot spots in the country. Longtime members of the scene estimate the dead easily numbered in the dozens, maybe more than 100.

“It just came one week and just wiped out everything,” Andrews says.

But this dance, and the community that nurtured it, had already survived so much. Could this really be the end?

Paradise Valley was the business district of Detroit’s Black Bottom, my own ancestral home within the city of Detroit; an ancestral home of which I have my own memories.

Mr. Feder’s essay is rather personal for me. And I thank him for it. That piece, along with the Ukraine LGBTQ essay, earned him a Twitter follow.

Everyone have a great day!

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