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    Trump's second impeachment trial: the key players

    The US Senate is set to formally begin its second impeachment trial of Donald Trump next week on charges that he helped incite a riot at the Capitol on 6 January. The formal article of impeachment is a charge of incitement of insurrection that the US House approved, with support from 10 Republicans, earlier this month.Trump is the first US president to face an impeachment trial after leaving office and the votes of 67 senators are needed for a guilty verdict and conviction. Trump abruptly hired a new legal team on Sunday, less than two weeks before his impeachment trial was set to begin. He parted ways with Butch Bowers, a well-known South Carolina lawyer who was set to lead his defense. There are reports the breakup was over strategy and legal fees. Trump’s new lawyers have filed a flimsy 14-page brief arguing Trump cannot be impeached because he has already left office and was not responsible for inciting violence at the Capitol. Trump told supporters they needed to “fight like hell” before the riot.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has tapped nine Democrats to be House impeachment managers and essentially serve as prosecutors against Trump. Here’s a look at some of the major players in the trial.Trump’s counselDavid Schoen The Georgia-based attorney is no stranger to controversy. He briefly represented Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime ally, during an appeal of Stone’s criminal conviction last year. He told the Atlanta Jewish Times that Stone, who was eventually, pardoned by Trump was “was very bright, full of personality and flair” and that the case against him was “very unfair and politicized”. During the same interview, he touted his work defending unsavory clients.“I represented all sorts of reputed mobster figures: alleged head of Russian mafia in this country, Israeli mafia and two Italian bosses, as well a guy the government claimed was the biggest mafioso in the world,” he said.In 2019, Schoen met with Jeffrey Epstein in jail after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. After Epstein died by suicide, he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he planned to get into the case to fight and win. In the interview with the Atlanta Jewish Times, he embraced a conspiracy theory, saying he believed Epstein was murdered.Schoen told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he considers himself primarily a civil rights lawyer.Bruce Castor A former prosecutor in Pennsylvania, Castor is best known for declining to bring sexual assault charges against Bill Cosby when Andrea Constand, a Temple University employee, accused him of drugging and raping her in 2005. Castor has said he did not believe he could win the case and secured an agreement from Cosby not to plead the fifth amendment in a civil case. Dozens of women would come forward to say Cosby sexually assaulted them and in 2018, Cosby was convicted on three counts of sexually assaulting Constand.Castor, who briefly became Pennsylvania’s acting attorney general during a 2016 scandal, has a flair for the spotlight, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 2015, when reporters came to his home amid scrutiny of the Cosby case, he threatened them. And in 2008, he made it known that he hung the certificate marking his position as Montgomery county commissioner above his toilet, according to the Inquirer, symbolizing his feelings about the local government.Castor’s cousin is Stephen Castor, who questioned witnesses on behalf of House Republicans during Trump’s first impeachment. Stephen Castor reportedly recommended his cousin for the job to Trump, according to the New York Times.Senate party leadersMitch McConnell The cunning House minority leader, McConnell won’t be making a case for or against Trump during the trial, but will remain one of the most powerful Republicans. In a significant move, McConnell has left the door open towards voting for impeaching Trump, which could encourage other Republicans following along. Even if they do get McConnell’s vote, Democrats would still need to get at least 16 other senators to vote for impeachment – a high bar.Chuck Schumer The newly elected Senate majority leader, Schumer will be responsible for keeping his caucus aligned and trying to win over Republican support, all while helping to maintain messaging during the trial. Schumer has been outspoken about the need to impeach Trump.House impeachment managersJamie Raskin The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, tapped Raskin, a Maryland congressman first elected in 2016, to be the lead House impeachment manager to make the case for convicting Trump. A longtime constitutional law professor at American University, Raskin has been unsparing in his criticism of the role Trump played in inciting the 6 January riot. He reportedly began drafting the article of impeachment against the president hours after the attack.Raskin is taking on the role at a time when his family is in mourning – his 25-year-old son Tommy died by suicide on New Year’s Eve. Raskin has pointed to his son as one of the reasons why he chose to take on leading the impeachment effort. “I’ve devoted my life to the constitution and to the republic. I’m a professor of constitutional law, but I did it really with my son in my heart, and helping lead the way. I feel him in my chest,” he told the Guardian.Diana DeGette DeGette has represented Denver and some of its suburbs since 1997. A former civil rights and employment law attorney, has called Trump “one of the greatest threats to the future of our Democracy”.David Cicilline A Democrat on the House judiciary committee, Cicilline has represented Rhode Island in Congress for the last decade, and before that served as the first openly gay mayor of Providence. A former public defender, Cicilline signed on to the article of impeachment days after the 6 January riot.Joaquín Castro The Texas congressman from San Antonio has been in Congress since 2013 and serves on the intelligence and foreign affairs committees. He is also the twin brother of Julián Castro, the former HUD secretary and presidential candidate. In an interview on ABC’s This Week earlier this month, Castro defended impeaching Trump after he left office, saying impeachment was in part about making sure Trump could never run for office again. If Trump is convicted, senators can take another vote on whether to bar him from holding public office again.Ted Lieu A four-term congressman representing the Los Angeles area, Lieu reportedly helped organize the impeachment effort while the Capitol was still under attack. Hiding in an office, Lieu sent text messages to every member on the House judiciary committee, saying it should immediately begin drafting articles of impeachment, with or without the blessing of House leadership, according to the Los Angeles Times. Lieu, an immigrant from Taiwan and an air force veteran who frequently needled Trump on Twitter, told the New York Times that on the day of the attack he was unbothered over whether or not top Democrats would support his effort. “I was just super pissed off,” he said.Stacey Plaskett A delegate representing the US Virgin Islands, Plaskett was picked by Pelosi to serve as an impeachment manager after passing her over for Trump’s first trial. A former prosecutor in the Bronx and litigator at the justice department, Plaskett said in 2019 being picked to be an impeachment manager would be symbolic to her constituents, who do not get to cast votes for president (as a delegate, Plaskett also does not get to vote on House legislation), according to BuzzFeed. Plaskett also told Pelosi in 2019 it would be symbolic to pick a Black woman to serve as an impeachment manager. “I understand the importance of being a House manager and know that there will be quite a few young ladies and women for that fact of color who will be looking to me as I take on the position of House manager,” she wrote to Pelosi, according to BuzzFeed.Eric Swalwell A former prosecutor and outspoken critic of Trump, Swalwell has represented his Bay Area California district for almost a decade. A member of the House judiciary committee, he worked on the first Trump impeachment and briefly ran for president but ended his campaign in July 2019.Madeleine Dean First elected in the 2018 Democratic wave, Dean represents a district that includes the Philadelphia suburbs and sits on the House judiciary committee. A lawyer, she reportedly requested to serve on the committee to apply her legal skills. “The first impeachment was serious and grievous and amounted to high crimes and misdemeanors against our country, but this one is so much worse,” she told the Philadelphia Inquirer.Joe Neguse A second-term congressman from Colorado, Neguse is the son of Eritrean refugees who ran for Congress in response to Trump’s immigration policies, according to the Washington Post. The 36-year-old will be the youngest lawmaker to ever serve as an impeachment manager, according to the Post. More

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    Extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene loses key posts but Republicans slow to censure

    In the end, just 11 Republicans voted to discipline Marjorie Taylor Greene, despite the Republican congresswoman having claimed space lasers had started wildfires, suggesting mass shootings didn’t really happen, and supporting the assassination of Democratic politicians.The vote, on whether to strip Greene of her committee assignments, neatly reflected the dilemma facing Republicans in 2021: does the GOP continue on the unhinged, conspiracy theory-laden path trodden by Greene and others, or return to the staid, conservative outlook of the relatively recent past – potentially alienating Donald Trump’s supporters along the way.Most Republicans members of Congress chose the former, but Greene was removed from her committee roles anyway, as 230 to 199 representatives voted to leave Greene with little to no power in the House.The vote came after the Republican House leader, Kevin McCarthy, decided against punishing Greene in an internal party meeting this week – a meeting where the congresswoman reportedly received a standing ovation from some colleagues after she apologized for her past remarks.Those remarks, uncovered by Media Matters, a progressive watchdog, include the claim by Greene in 2018 that a laser beam from space had started a devastating wildfire in California. According to Greene, an executive from “Rothschild Inc” was somehow involved – the Rothschild family have repeatedly been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories.In Facebook posts, Greene also implied that Hillary Clinton was involved in the 1999 plane crash that killed John F Kennedy Jr – Clinton was not – and suggested that Barack Obama deployed MS-13 gang members to kill a Democratic staffer – Obama did not.In another Islamophobic Facebook screed, uncovered by CNN, Greene that Muslims “want to conquer” the US and aim to mutilate American women’s genitalia.Greene, who has expressed support for the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy, which has been linked with several violent acts in the US, will now be removed from her positions on the House budget and education and labor committees, although will probably remain a vocal presence outside Congress.Reflecting the influence of the Trump wing of the Republican party, few GOP members have criticized Greene publicly. In a statement, McCarthy said he condemned Greene’s past remarks, but suggested the congresswoman would hold herself to a higher standard in the future.“This Republican party is a very big tent,” McCarthy said on Wednesday. “Everybody is invited in.”McCarthy and the GOP faced fierce criticism from Democrats for their stance, including from Nancy Pelosi, who attacked McCarthy for his “cowardly refusal” to discipline Greene. “McCarthy’s failure to lead his party effectively hands the keys over to Greene – an antisemite, QAnon adherent and 9/11 Truther,” the House speaker said.Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, has been one of the few to criticise Greene, attacking her “loony lies and conspiracy theories”, and calling her views a “cancer for the Republican party”.In a sign of the dangers non-conspiracy-minded Republicans face, however, Senator Ben Sasse is facing a censure resolution from his own party in Nebraska, for his criticism of Trump’s role in the US Capitol riot.Sasse, seen as a relative moderate, responded to the Nebraska Republican party in a video message on Thursday.“You are welcome to censure me again, but let’s be clear about why this is happening: it’s because I still believe – as you used to – that politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude,” Sasse said.As the vote on her committee assignments loomed on Thursday, Greene addressed some of her past comments, stating that “school shootings are absolutely real”, and that “9/11 absolutely happened”.By Friday morning, however, Greene seemed unrepentant, as she used a press conference to sum up the intertwining of the Republican party and Trump. “The party is his – it doesn’t belong to anyone else,” Greene told reporters. On Twitter, too, Greene seemed upbeat.“I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving someone like me free time,” Greene posted.“In this Democrat tyrannical government, Conservative Republicans have no say on committees anyway. Oh this is going to be fun!” More

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    When Auschwitz Loses Its Meaning

    Andy Warhol is credited for the bon mot that in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes. Robert Keith Packer would probably agree. A nobody from Virginia, Packer made international news for the sweatshirt he wore during the recent assault on the US Capitol. Sweatshirts bear all kinds of imprints, such as the name of a university. The imprint on Packer’s sweatshirt was a little bit different. It read “Auschwitz Camp.” Below there was the claim that “Work Brings Freedom.” The back identified the wearer as “Staff.”

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    It stands to reason that these days, wearing this kind of sweatshirt is not entirely politically correct. Unless, of course, you do it on purpose with the intent to send a strong message, to make a point. It doesn’t take an advanced degree in semiology, or history or cultural studies to interpret the meaning behind the message conveyed by Packer. Auschwitz has become the universal symbol of genocide in the service of safeguarding not only the purity and integrity of the race, but of its very survival. More on this later.

    Work Makes Free

    “Arbeit macht frei” — “Work makes free” — the slogan that graced the entrance of Nazi concentration and extermination camps, from Dachau to Mauthausen, from Auschwitz to Flossenbürg, was a cynical notion that had nothing to do with reality. More often than not, “work” was used by the Nazis as a way to send their victims to death. For popular consumption, however, the Nazi narrative suggested that for the first time in their lives, Jews would be forced to perform “useful” labor rather than taking advantage of the hard work of their “hosts.” In 1938, after the Nazis incorporated Austria into the Third Reich, Jews were forced to clean Vienna’s streets with toothbrushes.

    Embed from Getty Images

    I don’t know whether or not Packer was aware of this. The fact is that within the context of Donald Trump’s promotion of white supremacy and his campaign’s characterization of his opponent as a dangerous socialist, the imprints on Packer’s sweatshirt convey a clear message: The only way to assure the survival of white America is to eradicate all those who threaten its supremacy. At the same time, politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Democrats in general should finally be forced to do useful work rather than living off hard-working, tax-paying (white) Americans.

    I guess, many among the Confederate flag-waving mob, proudly displaying their allegiance to QAnon and other equally ludicrous conspiracy theories, fundamentally agreed with Packer’s message, even if they probably had no clue about what it entailed. As Thomas Edsall has recently put it in the pages of The New York Times, behind the conspiracy theory-inspired assault on the Capitol was the attempt “to engineer the installation in Washington of an ultraright, ethnonationalist crypto-fascist white supremacist political regime.”

    As a German, I know a little bit about this kind of regime. I grew up in a small town in southern Bavaria, which was severely damaged by American and British bombers in the last months of the war. Not far from the town, in the forests, there were the ruins of huge bunker installations where slave laborers were working on assembling fighter planes. The workers came from a satellite camp that was part of the Dachau concentration camp, many of them Jews. Many of them died of exhaustion and malnutrition. Once dead, they were dumped into mass graves. Immediately after the war, my father was among the young men forced to dig up the corpses and rebury them in a proper cemetery. He never talked about the experience. I learned about it from my mother.

    The Jewish Question

    I doubt that the likes of Roger Keith Packer have ever bothered to get a sense of what Nazism really entailed. It seems to me that for him and his comrades in spirit, Auschwitz has become an empty signifier devoid of real-life meaning and, therefore, perfect as a vehicle for resentment. The fact, however, is that Auschwitz stands for something — namely a bureaucratically efficient, quasi-industrial annihilation of hundreds of thousands of human lives for no other reason than that they happened to belong to a “race” the Nazis deemed equivalent to a highly noxious bacillus. This was the core of Nazi ideology on race, most prominently espoused by Heinrich Himmler, the undisputed head of the SS.

    Among the top echelons of German Nazis, Heinrich Himmler is among the most notorious. An unassuming agronomist with round spectacles, he was a far cry from the Aryan ideal official ideology espoused. And yet he was the most fervent promoter of the “Aryan race”: blond, blue-eyed, close to the soil, epitomized by the SS — a new order of quasi-medieval knights, ascetic, dedicated to their leader and prepared to give their lives for a greater cause. According to a contemporary urban legend, Himmler considered himself as an incarnation of Heinrich I, a medieval king who is credited with being the first to unite the disparate German “nations” under one flag.

    Today, of course, Heinrich Himmler is almost exclusively known for his eminent role in promoting the destruction and extermination of Europe’s Jewish population — a “task” he considered his ultimate mission in the service of the German people. At the end would stand, or so he envisioned, the “final solution to the Jewish question,” the complete eradication of anything that might remind future generations of the presence of Jewish life in Europe.

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    Heinrich Himmler was exceedingly proud of his ability to execute this “historical mission” of saving the German “race” from being destroyed from the inside by the Jewish “bacillus.” We know that because he himself said so, in his notorious speech to high-ranking members of the SS in Poznan, in occupied Poland, in October 1943. The speech is remarkable for its candor, a candor quite unusual for official references to the Holocaust.

    Himmler not only acknowledged the “extermination of the Jewish people,” he also charged that Germans had “the moral right,” the “duty” to the German people “to kill these people who wanted to kill us.” In fact, he noted, “we have carried out this most difficult task out of love for our own people.” This, he continued, was “a chapter of glory in our history which has never been written, and which never shall be written.”

    Anyone who reads or listens to Himmler’s speech understands that the physical liquidation of Jewish life in Europe was central to Nazism. Hitler himself had made that quite clear in a speech in 1939, commemorating his Machtergreifung, his seizure of power in 1933 — an event, he attributed to divine providence. It is in this vein that Hitler touted his prophetic clairvoyance, particularly with regard to what would happen to Europe’s Jews. If the “international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe,” he insisted, “should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” Three years later, high SS officials in occupied Serbia proudly proclaimed that it was the first country where the “Jewish question” had been successfully solved.

    “Chapter of Glory“

    There can be no doubt that leading Nazis considered the liquidation of Jewish life in Europe the most significant accomplishment of the Nazi regime. In fact, toward the end of the war, at a time when German troops were under increasing pressure on the eastern front, Nazi authorities continued to divert vital resources such as trains to assure that the death machinery could continue unimpeded. After all, as Himmler had put it, the annihilation of Jewish life in Europe was a “chapter of glory” that would indelibly be associated with the Nazi regime.

    Curiously enough, intellectual Nazi apologists such as David Irving and pedestrian neo-Nazis in Europe and the United States want nothing to do with the Holocaust. In fact, the most fervent champions of the National Socialist cause are adamant in their disavowal of what their heroes considered their greatest accomplishments. As Hitler put it in his last will, “I call upon the leadership of the nation … to fight mercilessly against the poisoners of all the peoples of the world, international Jewry.” Yet Hitler’s contemporary would-be acolytes don’t seem to be eager to embrace Hitler’s racist heritage — an instance of opportunism, hypocrisy, or both?

    These days, genocide is no longer considered a Kavarliersdelikt — a cavalier’s delict. As a result, Packer’s sweatshirt has stood out and, for good reason, gained widespread media attention. It suggests that the physical elimination of fellow human beings is okay, perhaps even an honorable feat, as long as it is done in the name of the greater good — in this case, the defense of white supremacy. It boggles the mind that the United States, which after all was instrumental in defeating Nazi Germany, has been fomenting a type of ideology derived from the worst of German racist thinking. But then, after all, Donald Trump has always been proud of his German heritage.

     *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    US economy adds 49,000 jobs as Biden aims for further Covid relief

    The US economy added back 49,000 jobs last month as coronavirus restrictions eased and fiscal stimulus from Washington goosed up the economy, the labor department announced on Friday.The unemployment rate dropped to 6.3%, down significantly from its pandemic high of 14.7% in April. While January’s figure marked a return to growth after job losses in December, the number was weak and big problems remain.On Thursday, the labor department said 779,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, down from the week before but still close to four times pre-pandemic levels. The latest figures showed some 17.8 million Americans are still claiming unemployment benefits.In December the US lost 140,000 jobs as the latest wave of Covid-19 infections led to more shutdowns across the country and a slowdown in economic activity. That figure was revised to a loss of 227,000 jobs on Friday.Professional and business services (up 97,000 jobs) and local government (up 49,000) saw the largest gains over the month. The US is still losing huge numbers of jobs in leisure and hospitality (down 61,000) and retail (down 38,000) and the stark gap in racial unemployment rates remains.The unemployment rate for white Americans was 6% while for Black Americans it was 9.2% and for Latinos it was 8.6%.The jobs figure come as the Biden administration is trying to push through a $1.9tn stimulus package which would send $1,400 cheques to many Americans and provide fresh aid for struggling businesses. It would also increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 – the first increase since 2009.The plan has widespread support from voters, with a Quinnipiac survey showing more than two-thirds of respondents in favor of the plan. But it has met with opposition from Republicans in Congress, who have balked at the size of the stimulus and proposed a far smaller package. Biden’s plan was approved in the Senate early Friday by a 51 to 50 vote, with the vice-president casting the tie-breaking vote, but still faces hurdles and is not expected to become law before mid March.The recovery in the jobs market may embolden opponents but some economists warned that the economic toll of the virus is far from over.Jason Reed, assistant chair of finance at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, said: “We shouldn’t forget that the economy is still down about 10m jobs since the start of the pandemic. We aren’t anywhere close to where we were this time last year.“The rollout of the vaccine will surely help Americans get back to work, but we shouldn’t expect a return to normal until late 2021 or early 2022.” More

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    Will the US and Russia Start Over?

    It’s winter in Russia, which is not a season for the faint-hearted. The pandemic is still hitting the country hard, with the number of new COVID cases hovering around 20,000 a day, which has cumulatively put the country in the global top five in terms of infections.

    Under these inauspicious conditions, if you are brave enough to face down the cold and COVID to protest openly against the government of President Vladimir Putin, your reward may well be a trip to jail. If you’re very good at your job of protesting, you might win the grand prize of an attempt on your life.

    Yet, for the last two weeks, Russians have poured into the streets in the tens of thousands. Even in the Russian Far East, protesters turned out in Yakutsk (45 below zero) and Krasnoyarsk (22 below). Putin has predictably responded with force, throwing more than 5,000 people into jail.

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    Media coverage of the Russian protests focus, not surprisingly, on Alexei Navalny. After recovering in Germany from an assassination attempt, the Russian opposition leader returned to Moscow on January 17. He was promptly arrested at the airport where his plane was rerouted. His close associates, who’d shown up at the original destination of his flight to welcome him home, were also detained. These arrests, and the government’s desire to lock Navalny away in prison for as long as possible, triggered the latest round of demonstrations throughout the country.

    Putin has ruled over Russia for more than two decades. Because of the constitutional changes he rammed through last year, he has effectively made himself leader for life. Will these latest protests make a dent in his carapace of power?

    Meanwhile, the US and Russian governments this week exhibited a modest form of engagement by extending the New START treaty on nuclear weapons for another five years. Despite this hopeful sign, no one expects anything close to a full reset of US–Russian relations during a Biden administration.

    But as Putin faces protests in the street and US President Joe Biden deals with recalcitrant Republicans in Congress, the US and Russia might at least avoid direct conflict with one another. More optimistically — and can you blame a boy for dreaming? — the two countries could perhaps find common cause against the global scourges of nuclear weapons, climate change and pandemics.

    Putin vs. Navalny

    Although they face each other across the Russian chessboard, Putin and Navalny share some basic attributes. They are both adept politicians who know the power of visuals, symbols and stories. They rely on the media to sustain their popularity, Putin using state-controlled media and Navalny exploiting social media.

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    And they have both been willing to adjust their messages to grow their appeal among everyday Russians by turning to nationalism. Putin started out as a rather conventional Soviet bureaucrat, with a commitment to all of the ethnic groups within the Soviet Union. Even when he became the leader of Russia in 1999, he thought of himself as the head of a multiethnic country. Particularly after 2014 and the conflict with Ukraine, however, Putin began to make appeals to russky (ethnic) Russians rather than rossisky (civic) Russians. He has made the defense of ethnic Russians in surrounding regions — Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics — a priority for his administration.

    Navalny, meanwhile, started out as a rather conventional Russian liberal who joined the reformist party Yabloko. Liberalism, however, has never really appealed to a majority of Russians, and parties like Yabloko attracted few voters. Navalny began to promote some rather ugly xenophobic and chauvinistic messages. As Alexey Sakhnin writes in Jacobin:

    “He participated in the far-right Russian Marches, waged war on “illegal immigration,” and even launched campaign “Stop Feeding the Caucasus” directed against government subsidies to poor, ethnic minority-populated autonomous regions in the south of the country. It was a time when right-wing sentiments were widespread, and urban youth sympathized with ultra-right groups almost en masse. It seemed to Navalny that this wind would fill his sails — and partly, it worked.”

    Navalny used nationalism to wipe away any memories of his unpopular liberalism, but it was difficult to compete with Putin on that score. So, increasingly, the oppositionist focused on the corruption of the Putin regime, publishing exposes of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s wealth and most recently a video tour of a huge palace on the Black Sea said to be the Russian president’s (which Putin denies).

    With these critiques of the ruling elite’s corruption, Navalny can bring tens of thousands of angry protesters, particularly young people, onto the streets. Unlike present-day Belarus or Ukraine 2014, the Russian protesters don’t represent the overwhelming majority of their fellow citizens. Putin remains a relatively popular figure in Russia. Although his approval ratings have dropped from the 80% range that was common five years ago, they still hover around 70%. US presidents would be thrilled with those numbers. Approval of the Russian government is considerably less — around 50% — which suggests that Putin has successfully portrayed himself as somehow above everyday politics.

    Putin Is Worried

    Still, the Russian leader is worried. In his latest speech at the World Economic Forum, Putin spoke in apocalyptic terms of a deteriorating international situation. “The pandemic has exacerbated the problems and disbalances that have been accumulating,” he said. “International institutions are weakening, regional conflicts are multiplying, and the global security is degrading.”

    His comments on the global situation reflect more parochial concerns. Because of COVID-19, the Russian economy contracted by 4% in 2020. Although the government implemented various measures to cushion the impact, many Russians are suffering as a result of rising unemployment and falling production. The Russian economy depends a great deal on sales of oil and natural gas. Any further reduction in global trade — either because of the pandemic or tariff wars — would complicate Russia’s economic recovery and consequently undermine Putin’s political position.

    The immediate challenge comes from the parliamentary elections later this year. Putin’s United Russia party currently holds a comfortable majority in the Duma. The other two top parties are led by nationalists who are equally if not more fanatical — Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party and Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democratic Party. But a political force coalescing around a figure like Navalny could disrupt Putin’s balance of power.

    That’s why Navalny returned to Moscow. And that’s why the Russian court decided this week to lock Navalny away for more than two years — for violations of parole that required him to report to the authorities that tried to kill him. Navalny has taken an enormous risk, while Putin is taking no chances. The Russian leader has long deployed a preemptive strategy against any potential rival. Those who dare to oppose him have been killed (Boris Nemtsov), poisoned (Vladimir Kara-Murza), jailed (Mikhail Khodorkovsky) or forced into exile (Garry Kasparov).

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    Civil society is also under siege in Russia, with activists vulnerable to charges of being, basically, spies and saboteurs under a “foreign agent law.” Yet the environmental movement, the women’s movement, the LGBT community and others continue to protest against the country’s authoritarian system. And these protests are not just taking place in relatively liberal enclaves in the western part of the country like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Large-scale demonstrations took place at the end of 2020 in Khabarovsk, in the Russian Far East, over the arrest of the region’s independent-minded governor. While Navalny gets the press, civil society activists have quietly built up networks around the country that can turn people out onto the streets when necessary.

    Like all authoritarians, Putin uses “law and order” arguments to his advantage. Russians have a horror of anarchy and civil strife. They have long favored an “iron fist” approach to domestic politics, which helps explain the persistent, posthumous fondness for Joseph Stalin, who had a 70% approval rating in 2019. According to polling conducted last year, three in four Russians believe that the Soviet era was the best period of time for Russia, and it certainly wasn’t the dissident movement of that period that made them nostalgic.

    The protesters thus have to tread carefully to avoid losing popular support among a population fond of an iron fist but also deeply disgusted by the corruption, economic mismanagement and social inequality of the Putin era. The Russian opposition also has to grapple with the distinct possibility that getting rid of Putin will usher in someone even worse.

    US-Russia Relations: A New START?

    The extension of New START, the last nuclear arms control treaty in effect between Russia and the United States, is a spot of good news in an otherwise dismal outlook for relations between the two countries. Joe Biden has prided himself on his knowledge of and commitment to arms control. So, if the two countries can agree on terms of selective engagement, the next four years could be profitably taken up by a series of negotiations on military weaponry.

    New START merely establishes ceilings on nuclear warheads for both sides and addresses only strategic, not tactical, nukes. So, as Stephen Pifer argues, a follow-on treaty could establish a ceiling on all nuclear warheads, for instance at 2,500, which would cover battlefield nuclear weapons and result in at least a 50% cut in the arsenals of the two sides. Another option for bilateral negotiations would be to focus on limitations to missile defense or, at the very least, cooperation to protect against third-party missile attacks. A third option would be to focus on conventional weaponry and constraints on weapons sales.

    The Biden administration could even move more quickly with an announcement of a no-first-use policy of nuclear weapons — something Biden has supported in the past — and agreeing with Moscow to de-alert intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) much as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev de-alerted another leg of the nuclear triad, strategic bombers, back in 1991.

    This arms control agenda is only part of a larger potential program of selective engagement. The US and Russia could return to their coordination around the Iran nuclear deal. They could explore ways to cooperate on global challenges like climate change and pandemics. They could even start addressing together the harmful effects of economic globalization, a topic Putin brought up in his recent Davos speech.

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    To do so, however, the two countries will have to manage the numerous points of friction in their relationship. For one thing, they’ve gone head-to-head in various proxy battles — in Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. Russia is legitimately furious that NATO expanded to its very doorstep, and the United States is legitimately concerned about Russian interventions in its “near abroad,” most recently in Ukraine. The US has lots of evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election — not to mention Russian involvement in a coup attempt in Montenegro that same year and its meddling in the presidential election in Madagascar two years later — and Russia is pissed off at US “democracy promotion” in the Color Revolutions and within Russia itself. Russia is eager to finish the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring natural gas to Germany, while the US is eager to sell its own gas to its European ally. Then there’s Russia’s penchant for assassinating Russians in other countries and repressing protestors at home.

    Any of these issues could scuttle cooperation between Moscow and Washington. One way of negotiating around this minefield is to delink the agendas of cooperation and conflict. Arms control advocates have a long history of doing just that by resisting calls to link other issues to arms control negotiations. Thus, the Iran nuclear deal focuses exclusively on the country’s nuclear program, not its missiles, not its relations with other countries in the region, not its human rights situation. The same lack of linkage has historically applied to all the arms control agreements between Washington and Moscow.

    This strategy of delinking doesn’t mean that these other issues are completely off the table. They are simply addressed at different tables.

    Those who desperately want a new cold war with Russia will not be happy with such a practical solution. They don’t want to talk with Putin about anything. As repugnant as I find the Russian leader, I have to acknowledge that he heads up an important global player and he has the support (for the time being at least) of much of his population. So, even as we challenge the Russian leadership’s conduct at home and abroad, we must also work with Moscow in the interests of global peace, prosperity and sustainability.

    Of course, there’s another word for all this: diplomacy.

    *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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    Kamala Harris uses casting vote to pass Covid relief budget resolution

    The US Senate has passed a budget resolution that allows for the passage of Joe Biden’s $1.9tn (£1.4tn) Covid-19 relief package in the coming weeks without Republican support.
    The vice-president, Kamala Harris, broke a 50/50 tie by casting a vote in favour of the Democratic measure, which sends it to the House of Representatives for final approval. It marked the first time Harris, in her role as president of the Senate, cast a tie-breaking vote after being sworn in as the first female vice-president on 20 January.
    The House passed its own budget measure on Wednesday. Congress can now work to write a bill that can be passed by a simple majority in both houses, which are controlled by Democrats. Mid-March has been suggested as a likely date by which the measure could be passed, a point at which enhanced unemployment benefits will expire if Congress does not act.
    The vote came at 5.30am on Friday at the end of a marathon Senate debate session, known among senators as a “vote-a-rama”, a procedure whereby they can theoretically offer unlimited amendments.
    US cases
    Biden is scheduled to meet with Democratic House leaders and committee chairs early on Friday morning to discuss the Covid economic stimulus, and is expected to make public remarks on the progress at an 11.45am EST (1645 GMT) briefing.
    There was dissent from Republicans in the Senate overnight, particularly over plans for a $15 federal minimum wage. Iowa’s Republican senator, Joni Ernst, raised an amendment to “prohibit the increase of the federal minimum wage during a global pandemic”, which was carried by a voice vote.
    The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said he still intended to support bringing the measure through: “We need to end the crisis of starvation wages in Iowa and around the United States.”
    He outlined plans to get a wage increase, phased in over five years, included in a budget reconciliation bill. The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, and has not been raised since 2009.
    In a tweet after the vote, Sanders said: “Today, with the passage of this budget resolution to provide relief to our working families, we have the opportunity not only to address the pandemic and the economic collapse – we have the opportunity to give hope to the American people and restore faith in our government.”
    During the debate Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said “This is not the time for trillions more dollars to make perpetual lockdowns and economic decline a little more palatable. Notwithstanding the actual needs, notwithstanding all the talk about bipartisan unity, Democrats in Congress are plowing ahead. They’re using this phony budget to set the table to ram through their $1.9 trillion rough draft.”
    The $1.9 trillion relief package proposed would be used to speed Covid-19 vaccines throughout the nation. Other funds would extend special unemployment benefits that will expire at the end of March and make direct payments to people to help them pay bills and stimulate the economy. Democrats also want to send money to state and local governments dealing with the worst health crisis in decades. More

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    Biden to welcome more refugees: Politics Weekly Extra

    This week Jonathan Freedland speaks to David Miliband. The former UK foreign secretary and current president of the International Rescue Committee explains why Joe Biden’s announcement on Thursday about resettling thousands of refugees in the US is important, following Donald Trump’s abandonment of the cause.

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

    President Joe Biden was quick to sign executive orders rescinding many of the anti-immigrant policies of his predecessor. On Thursday, in a speech outlining his foreign policy plans, Biden announced he intended to allow more refugees into the US this year, as part of a resettlement programme that Donald Trump all but stopped. David Miliband joins Jonathan Freedland to talk about the new president’s true bandwidth when it comes to rejecting Trump’s isolationist policies. Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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    Donald Trump's second impeachment: will the Senate convict him?

    Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial begins in the Senate next week. Lawrence Douglas explains the process and politics of the spectacle ahead

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

    The US Senate will be transformed into a courtroom next week when Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial begins. After hearing evidence against the former president, the Senate’s 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats will have to decide whether Trump was guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” when he incited supporters to storm the Capitol building and disrupt the election certification process. Lawrence Douglas, an Amherst College professor and Guardian opinion contributor, explains what kind of defence Trump is planning to mount, and whether any Senate Republicans are likely to vote to convict him. And the former Democratic senator Russ Feingold, who served during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in the 90s, tells Anushka Asthana how the process has become more partisan than ever. Archive: CNN, C-Span, Rev, Bloomberg, CBS-DFW, Fox News, CBS, 60 Minutes (CBS), YouTube More