Author: Barbara

It would appear that the second half of 2012 was considerably better for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin than the first. Demonstrations against him and his autocratic regime have not come to a screeching halt – but they have become less frequent in number and less threatening in nature. Moreover in the biggest oil industry deal in a decade, Russia’s massive, largely state-owned oil company, Rosneft, has positioned itself to become an energy power on a massive global scale.

Additionally, Putin’s shift to the right is finding resonance among large numbers of Russians who, since the collapse of communism, have been on the hunt for an ideology with national resonance. St. Petersburg, for example, long regarded as a bastion of Russian liberalism, has recently been described as a testing ground for a “wave of conservative, Orthodox churchgoing, pro-Kremlin patriotism that has gripped much of Russian officialdom.” (Financial Times, 10/24/12.) Similarly, just recently, Putin called on Russians to look to their nation’s past for guidance to the future, to Russia’s historic, national, and traditional values – as opposed to the materialist West, with its false promises and decadent habits. Nor has Russia become any more conciliatory on the international stage. To the contrary, on the issue of Syria for example, Putin’s intransigence, his refusal to in any way collaborate with the West in accelerating the departure of President Bashar al-Assad, signals that Putin is determined now as before to steer his own course in foreign affairs – to avoid any suggestion he’s anything other than his own man.

Still, there is every indication that he knows full well that the political culture of Russia has changed with the changing times. Not only is he carefully controlling his own troops, curtailing their excesses and warning them that from here on in their spending will be carefully monitored. (Putin has been embarrassed by corruption cases against several high ranking officials.) He is also more than mindful of how relatively fragile is his position – at least in comparison with that of his Soviet predecessors. Leading oppositionist Aleksei Navalny is himself aware that the time has come and now gone for massive protests against the incumbent government. But this has not precluded Navalny from finding other ways to remain relevant, and to continue to consider the current government highly sensitive to a deep vein of public anger – both over policy failures and egregious seizures of personal power.

For months I have raised in this space the question of why I was virtually alone in pointing to Hillary Clinton as culpable in the miserable matter of the attack in Benghazi.

As of last night I’m in good company. The role in the debacle of the Department of State – which Clinton led for the past four years – has finally been made blindingly clear. Here are the lead sentences in today’s New York Times lead story: “An independent inquiry into the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Libya that killed four Americans on Sept. 11 sharply criticized the Sate Department for a lack of seasoned security personnel and for relying on untested local militias to safeguard the compound…. Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels … [were] inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attacks that took place.”

The Secretary of State had been slated to testify on Benghazi before Congress this week. But, a few days ago, it was reported that Clinton could not do so because she had suffered a concussion as the result of a fall – an injury that purportedly precluded her testimony.

However in one month’s time Hillary Clinton will no longer be State’s leader. So if she is to avoid being haunted by Benghazi long after she leaves office, she has no choice but finally to come clean. Before – not after – she leaves her post she should own the errors of her ways. She should publicly acknowledge her responsibility in the personal, professional, and political failure that was in Libya.

Every now and then there is an event so significant, and so traumatic, that near everyone is permanently and profoundly affected. The Catastrophe in Connecticut appears at this moment to be such a happening.

How is this calamity different from other, similar, ones that have preceded it – say the massacre at the high school in Colorado, or at the shopping mall in Oregon? Several differences come immediately to mind. First, of the 28 total dead (including the shooter), 20 were children of either six and seven. Second, the slaughter took place at an apparently idyllic elementary school in an apparently idyllic New England town. Third, it occurred right smack in the middle of the holiday season, when supposedly we’re making merry. Fourth, the killer got his weapons from a gun enthusiast – who happened in this case to be his own mother. Fifth, the event included, also, matricide.

But if in the wake of this particular calamity there is policy change – for example, an executive order or new legislation on gun control, or video violence – it will be the result not of the specifics of Newtown, but of critical mass. The extent of the collective carnage, and the number of those shot dead, have simply reached unacceptable levels – unacceptable to a clear and increasingly angry and articulate majority. Since the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in the spring of 1968, some one million Americans have been killed by guns. So, finally, from the president on down, from the people on up, we are disgusted and disgraced – which is why something, as opposed to nothing, might this time be done.

It happens that the massacre of 20 children and 6 adults took place at a school not far from where I live. Take it from me – the closer such a calamity the more intense the shock and subsequent grief.

My intention was to write about how gun violence, rather like, say, climate change, is one of those policy problems on which most Americans know full well change is required – but on which they have been unable so far to act. Gun control has been the obvious answer, at least some legislation that would bring the U. S. more closely in line with the most other countries in the so-called developed world. Moreover in his heartfelt statement of yesterday, President Barack Obama, who on this particular issue has been somewhere between sluggish and inert, seemed to imply he would now take the lead.

But a day later we’re a lot smarter – or, at least, we know more. What we know now is that the two semiautomatic pistols and the one semiautomatic rifle that were used in the Connecticut killings were all owned by the shooter’s mother.

Before the slaughter at the school there was matricide in the home. So it’s possible we’ll never know exactly why this particular woman kept these particular weapons in her handsome house, which was occupied also by her seriously sick son. But what we might be able to conclude even now is that notwithstanding the personal, psychological, and policy dissections that will in the coming days take place, sometimes what happens is beyond our comprehension. Sometimes it’s a matter rather of the human heart – which history tells us is sometimes black.

There’s nothing much good to be said about what happened yesterday in Michigan. Governor Rick Snyder signed a so-called “right to work” law, which curtails the capacity of unions to require that workers pay them fees as a condition of their employment. Supporters of the law – many of whom claim themselves to be pro-union – argued the legislation was necessary in order for American companies successfully to compete in the global marketplace.

But if there’s nothing much good to be said about what happened in Lansing, there’s some good to be said. The fight was furious. It was ugly: thousands took to the streets to protest, some screaming and yelling in addition to chanting, “shame, shame;” union leaders swore loudly that they had only begun to fight; tears were shed, fists flew; property was trashed; and a couple of people were arrested. Moreover the story was a big one. Many of those who at first paid zero attention were struck by this particular union defeat – right in the heart of what still is one of the most pro-union states in the country.

So what’s good? It’s the absence of apathy. It’s a sign that whatever the legislation that yesterday was passed is not the end of American labor – but rather another chapter in a continuing saga.

It seemed a small story. It was covered in a small way by the New York Times and in even a more modest way by the Wall Street Journal. But it’s a major signifier. It’s a reminder that virtually all people in positions of authority are vulnerable to the slings and arrows of those who are not – including people in positions of religious authority.

Hard on the heels of the recent U.N. vote in which the General Assembly decided by an overwhelming margin to grant Palestine non-member state status – the vote was 138 for and 9 against (including the U. S.), with 41 abstentions – the rabbis of a large Manhattan synagogue sent an e-mail to all their congregants that strongly and enthusiastically supported the U. N. vote. “The vote at the U. N. yesterday is a great moment for us as citizens of the world,” wrote the rabbis. “This is an opportunity to celebrate the process that allows a nation to come forward and ask for recognition.”

The blowback was immediate. While some members of the congregation applauded the rabbi’s sentiments, others were appalled and a number were even outraged. One congregant, Alan Ripp, put it this way: “We are just sort of in a state of shock,” he said. “It’s not as if we don’t support a two-state solution, but to say with such warm embrace – it is like a high-five to the P. L. O. and that has left us numb.”

Whatever the merits of the arguments on both sides, the point is that followers (such as Ripp) forced their leaders to retreat. In no time flat the rabbis of Congregation B’nai Jeshrun sent a second, subsequent message that was, in effect, an apology. First, they corrected the record, saying their first letter should not have included as signatories the names of lay leaders such as that of the board president (!). Second, they wrote they had intended to “honor the diversity” of viewpoints in their community, and expressed regret at “the feeling of alienation that resulted from [their] letter.”

It likely will be a while before the congregants of B’nai Jeshrun get past this tempest. It likely will be a while longer before the rabbis of B’nai Jeshrun send another e-mail to their collective congregants without very, very deliberate forethought.

Egypt’s president Mohammed Morsi just nicked his wrist and blood flowed. By making a concession – by rescinding the extraordinary personal powers he claimed only days earlier – he was hoping to stem the furious followers who had marshaled against him.

Don’t hold your breath, Mr. President. History shows that any concession made at a moment such as this one is the rough equivalent of spilling blood in shark-infested waters. Put directly, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that this will quiet the opposition. Quite the contrary: Morsi’s concession will have exactly the opposite effect. It will embolden his opponents.

The referendum on the draft constitution, which was rammed through the parliament by Morsi and his allies, is still slated to take place on December 15. However it now seems unlikely that this can happen without military intervention – without the imposition of martial law to preclude widespread violence. How far Egypt’s furious followers are prepared ultimately to go, and how willing the military will be to force them into submission, remains obviously to be determined. All we know now is that Morsi’s shot at good governance grievously and even tragically misfired.

Egyptians and Syrians have little in common – except their recent history. Both have been scarred and ultimately traumatized by dictatorial leaders who crushed their followers for some thirty years. And both have been seized in the last year or two by followers finally fed up – by followers willing in many cases to fight to the death to overthrow the tyrannies to which they had been subjected for so long.

I do not wish or intend to exaggerate the parallels. What has happened in Egypt even in the recent past is in many of the most important ways different from what has happened in Syria. Similarly, there are obvious differences among the key leaders, Hosni Mubarak, Bashar al-Assad, and now Mohammed Morsi.

Still, on this 7th day of December in the year 2012, this can be said. Events in both Syria and Egypt continue to be driven from the bottom up. All the evidence suggests that Assad’s time in office is nearly up, and that Morsi gravely miscalculated when he assumed Egyptians more passive and pliable now than they were just a couple of years ago. In the first case too much blood has been spilled, and in the second too much change has been created, for a reversion to past practice. Unless and until power is shared, in both countries, the past will continue to bedevil the present and the dispossessed will not rest.

Some 18 months ago I wrote about how Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner was finding it difficult if not impossible to get his putative followers – rank and file House Republicans – to follow.* Tea Partiers in particular were proving recalcitrant, refusing to allow Boehner to do what was he was disposed, which was to take relatively a centrist position vis-à-vis the Democratic opposition.

At the time, Boehner tried every which way to get House Republicans in line. He campaigned for Tea Partiers, moved millions from his own campaign chest to theirs, adopted some of their rhetoric, and gave them a seat at the leadership table. He also shifted his own political positions to accommodate theirs, and tried at every turn to minimize the differences between mainstream Republicans like himself and Tea Partiers to his right.

Things change. In this case not the followers – it’s not that conservative Republicans think differently or that the Tea Party itself has changed its stripes. Rather it’s the context that’s different. First, in the wake of the November elections the president’s hand has been strengthened and the Republicans’ weakened; and second, the American people are so manifestly disgusted with dysfunction in Washington that a number of House Republicans, including key players such as Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, have shifted their positions – not ideologically, but politically. They are more pliable than they were even six months ago, more willing because of the mood of the moment to follow their leader’s lead.

Hence yesterday’s announcement that for now, steering clear of the fiscal cliff will be up to only two men: Barack Obama and John Boehner. The suggestion the two meet alone was Boehner’s – one he never in a million years would have made had he not been near certain his troops were finally ready to fall into line.

It’s nice to know that sometimes the previously powerless figure out a way to become, well, less so. This is not, necessarily, about sympathy for the cause. Rather it’s about cheering on those who in the past were entirely silent – but who in the present are making themselves heard.

Generally these are small stories, not to be seen on the front page or home page of any of the leading papers, buried instead somewhere inside, on the literal or virtual equivalent of, say, page 12.

Still, here are two examples. Both came to light in recent days and both testify to how even the most marginalized among us can, under certain circumstances, stake their claim to their share.

The first is the United We Dream Network. Never heard of it? Well, you will, if not directly then indirectly, for this largest organization of young, illegal immigrants is determined to push Washington to clear a path for citizenship for them and their families. After the November elections, both Republicans and Democrats agreed, each for their own reasons, that immigration reform was one of the nation’s top priorities. But we know all too well that even the best of political intentions are sometimes sidelined, pushed aside by other events that seem in the moment to be more pressing. It matters then that on this issue young people (who stand most obviously to benefit) have organized, vowing at their recent three-day meeting in Kansas City (some 600 were in attendance), to hang together and fight together until the deed is done – until new immigration legislation is passed.

The second is the emergence of an even more marginal group: Vietnam veterans who were given something other than an honorable discharge, but who now argue that whatever the errors of their ways, they were the result of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). I will not here delve into the legitimacy of their claim, nor into the questions it raises, such as can PTSD be diagnosed retroactively? The point I make is that the issue has come apparently out of nowhere to morph into a major class action lawsuit against the U.S. military. (The Secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force were named as defendants.) The cause is being carried forward by the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School – which together with the vets themselves gives additional evidence of the law as possible recourse, and of the ways in which those in the distance can sometimes be heard, even in spite of the din.