News with Nuance: March 8, 2024

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Hi Readers,

Happy March + early Spring to all of our Northern Hemisphere readers (although it has already hit 90! (F) at my brother’s house in Dallas, I hear) … These past two weeks have been full of news, from the ongoing role of Christian Nationalism in American politics to war across the world, climate crisis, and the continuing implosion of traditional American media.

I have stories for you on all of that below, as well as some hopeful news and simply great pieces of writing. I’m attempting to finish this up before I head to the dentist’s office, and I’m hoping this regular News article from me serves a similar function to a regular dental cleaning: get in there, see what’s happening, polish up our knowledge and strengthen our empathy and community connections, and hopefully avoid the need to drill more cavities (and oil wells). Will drill down to get to the pertinent facts and stories, however. (UPDATE: I didn’t finish before the dentist, however, I did get a clean bill of health. Thank God).

Let’s get to the news … with nuance …

Artwork by Elisa Alcalde

The Headline: ‘They are among us’: Russia’s terrifyingly effective poisoning operation

It’s important to understand history and look to the past when contemplating the threat of an authoritarian American future, which is why so many are reminding us of historical examples of authoritarianism and Christian Nationalism and the hatred and death they wrought. I think the danger, though, is when we exclusively point to the past, without looking at contemporary examples from our modern world.

There’s a tendency to view warnings in black and white, fuzzy TV screens, analog in a digital world. But Americans have many clear examples of authoritarian states right in our midst in today’s world. This article takes us to Russia, and to places in the world where Russia’s danger is already made manifest through cloaked attempts at assassination by poisoning. These stories might sound like scenes from a spy movie, but they’re all-too real. And when it comes to modern-day authoritarian states, arguably the most successful of those states at infiltrating American politics and culture is Vladimir Putin’s nihilistic and deluded regime.

The Quote:

"The horrific details of Russian poisoning attacks have accumulated over decades: the hiding of a ricin pellet inside the tip of an umbrella said to have been used in 1978 to stab the Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in the leg, killing him in less than a week. The placing of a radioactive isotope, Polonium-210, in the green tea drunk by the former Russian security services agent and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The smearing of one novichok variant, a deadly nerve agent, on the British double agent Sergei Skripal’s door in 2018 and another on Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s underpants in a Siberian hotel room in 2020. Last week, three and a half years after his suspected poisoning attack, Navalny died suddenly in a maximum-security prison colony in the Arctic Circle, despite seeming to be in stable health days before.

The deaths of individuals like Navalny, Litvinenko and Markov have tended to overshadow less high-profile affairs, sometimes known as “soft poisonings”. On the day after Litvinenko’s death, Yegor Gaidar, the former Russian prime minister turned liberal opposition leader, became violently ill in a suspected poisoning, which some speculated was intended to distract from the Litvinenko affair. In recent months, observers have reasoned that the increasingly authoritarian atmosphere inside Russia has lowered the bar for who is deemed a target.

Arno’s experience in Prague came as word was spreading of a spate of other suspected poisonings. In October 2022, Elena Kostyuchenko, a Russian journalist working for the independent news outlet Meduza, became violently ill on her way back to Berlin from Munich. The same month, Irina Babloyan, a radio journalist with an independent station, got sick on the day she was meant to travel back from Tbilisi to Berlin via Armenia. Kostyuchenko and Babloyan experienced similar symptoms: sharp pain in the upper abdomen, palms that burnt or swelled, severe vertigo and fatigue.”

Story by Courtney Weaver, FT Edit

The Headline: Trump’s Justice: Justice Delayed Is Democracy Denied

As a non-lawyer who tends to focus more on the “spirit of the law” than the intricacies of legal proceedings (probably why I rightly went to seminary instead of law school) - keeping up with the various court cases around Donald Trump and the 2024 Election can feel really overwhelming. One way I try to keep tabs on these is by following

Joyce Vance

on here and subscribing to

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

.

This story from Tom Dispatch (one of my new favorite places to read global/national news and analysis) also does a really helpful job at tackling the cases with a wide-angle lens and putting into context sort of the nuance and context and meaning behind the rulings. I think one of the hallmarks of our current age is the way that corrupt people and organizations amass power. They rarely use brute force or direct means. They speak in generalities and play fast and loose with the truth. And often, they don’t ever have to face their misdeeds. They just use their money and influence to delay, delay, delay, delay. Ultimately, in a lot of cases, the statute of limitations passes and/or people move on. In these cases, delay might mean the end of democracy as we know it in America.