Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Déjà vu

[Brexiter]

We appear to be stuck, y’all.

So, we’ve had a global pandemic, the rise of fascism, and a Titanic disaster - why not throw in a Russian revolution to complete the early 20th century historical rerun?

— Diana Butler Bass (@dianabutlerbass) June 24, 2023

But wait, there’s MORE!

Death of a long-reigning queen, succeeded by an elderly son…

— Dr Una McCormack (@unamccormack) June 24, 2023

And one of our very own just HAD to pour it on!

Also a Presidential candidate running from Federal prison where he's been incarcerated under the Espionage Act?

— Betsy Cazden (@Betsy_Cazden) June 24, 2023

Look, I think that I’d better start posting some pundits before a world war or Prohibition or a Great Depression comes along any minute now, starting with that Russian “revolution”.

Ellen Nakashima and Shane Harris of The Washington Post report that U.S. intelligence assessed that Wagner Group founder and chief Yevgeny Prigozhin might attempt a takeover of Russia a couple of months ago.

The exact nature and timing of Prigozhin’s plans were not clear until shortly before his stunning takeover of a military command and tank run toward Moscow on Friday and Saturday, officials said. But “there were enough signals to be able to tell the leadership … that something was up,” said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. “So I think they were ready for it.”


Over the past two weeks there was “high concern” about what might transpire — whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would remain in power and what any instability might mean for control of Russia’s nuclear arsenal, the official said. “There were lots of questions along those lines,” this person said. [...]


A key trigger for Prigozhin, officials said, was a June 10 Russian Defense Ministry order that all volunteer detachments would have to sign contracts with the government. Though the order did not mention Wagner Group by name, the implication was clear: a takeover of Prigozhin’s mercenary troops, who have proved essential to Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and have helped secure some of its most notable tactical victories.

David Remnick of The New Yorker interviews Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar who notes the Russian President Vladimir Putin is now weaker because of Prigozhin’s rebellion.

Prigozhin, like Putin, was born and raised in Leningrad, which was renamed St. Petersburg as the Soviet Union was crumbling. As a young man, Prigozhin was a petty criminal and was eventually arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison for robbing apartments. He was released after nine years. The rest of his biography resembles that of so many around Putin. After making some money selling hot dogs at the local flea market, he got involved in the grocery business, then casinos, construction, catering, and restaurants. He formed a close relationship with Putin, a frequent diner at his establishments, and that put him in a position to increase his good fortune. Private planes, helicopters, and immense residences soon followed—as did the founding of troll farms in St. Petersburg and the Wagner Group, a military contractor that was heartily supported by Putin as a way to help assist Russian Army troops and also, according to Zygar, as a way to counterbalance the power of figures like Sergei Shoigu, the Defense Minister. [...]

When I asked Zygar what was the most striking aspect of the uprising, he said, “Putin is weaker. I have the feeling he is not really running the country. Certainly, not the way he once did. He is still President, but all the different clans”—the factions within the government, the military, and, most important, the security services—“now have the feeling that ‘Russia after Putin’ is getting closer. Putin is still alive. He is still there in his bunker. But there is the growing feeling that he is a lame duck, and they have to prepare for Russia after Putin.”

In ideological terms, Zygar said, “Prigozhin combines two ideas. The first is anti-corruption and anti-oligarch. Despite his own wealth, which is immense, he always portrayed himself as the oligarch-fighter. At the same time, he is super illiberal. He hates the West, and he claims to be the realprotector of traditional values. He probably has more supporters beyond the Wagner Group; there are people in the Army, the F.S.B., the Interior Ministry, who could be his ideological allies.”

In the meantime, somewhere in Ukraine

Ukrainian drone commander who fought Wagner forces in Bakhmut and Soledar appears to be thoroughly enjoying the insurrection unfolding across the border. pic.twitter.com/rSqGdrVlrT

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) June 24, 2023

I’ll concede that the video could have very well been staged. It’s still funny.

Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, Jon Huntsman, Jr., and William Browder write for Foreign Policy concurring with Z

Having a 25,000-strong force of armed mercenaries seize Russia’s operational command center for the Ukraine war and advance toward Moscow was the biggest existential threat Putin has faced in his more than 20-year rule. Alexander Vindman, the former director for European affairs in the U.S. National Security Council, pronounced this uprising as having “grown into a full-fledged coup.” “The biggest beneficiary of this distraction is Ukraine, with Russian losing its war in Ukraine and opening up a second front on its own territories,” Vindman said.

Of course, Prigozhin himself is hardly a sympathetic character. He should not be confused with such charismatic Putin critics as the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny or the assassinated politician Boris Nemtsov. Prigozhin is a murderous thug who has personally ordered the execution—via sledgehammer—of those he felt had betrayed him. A longtime Putin crony who started as the Russian leader’s personal chef and turned his friendship with Putin into a lucrative business empire, Prigozhin’s Wagner Group is Russia’s most infamous private mercenary organization and has some of Russia’s most battle-tested fighters. Prigozhin has also been under U.S. sanctions for years due in part to his financing of “troll farms” to interfere in U.S. elections.

Regardless of Prigozhin’s unsavory background, his revolt has already—even after just one day—accomplished what many political experts said could not be done: a major challenge to Putin’s rule from within Russia. Remarkably, according to Prigozhin and apparently verified by Putin, Prigozhin’s Wagner contingent seized control of the major city of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia, a crucial artery in Russia’s resupply lines into Ukraine, without any major resistance from Kremlin troops. For the first time since Putin took power, portions of Russian territory were substantively controlled by armed forces explicitly seeking to overthrow him.

I have to keep reminding myself that as tyrannical and ruthless as Vladimir Putin is, Russia could very well become even more repressive in a post-Putin era instead of democratizing.

For the time being, though, Prigozhin is in exile in Belarus thanks to the terms of the agreement worked out jointly with Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. If I were Prigozhin, I would stay away from tall buildings and employ taste testers even for a simple cup of tea.

Or not.

Karen Landman of Vox reports the existence of the first local transmissions of malaria in the United States in 20 years.

In late May, Sarasota County, Florida, health officials confirmed they had identified a case of locally transmitted malaria. In mid-June, they confirmed the second. On June 23, Texas joined in: its state health department announced it had confirmed a case of local malaria transmission in Cameron County.

This is all highly unusual. The US hasn’t documented a locally acquired malaria case in 20 years.

Although about 2,000 people infected with malaria turn up in the US health care system every year, those cases are all linked to travel outside the US. Neither those involved in the Florida cases nor the Texas case had traveled. That means in both states, the infection was acquired within US borders. [...]

The species that has been identified in both Florida and Texas is P. vivax. It’s not the worst of the malaria species: P. falciparum, the most severe form of malaria, is 10 times more deadly than vivax, according to a study of Americans diagnosed between 1985 and 2011. But vivax is no cakewalk. People with this infection can develop life-threatening brain swelling, lung congestion, and kidney failure.

Editor-In-Chief of Science magazine H. Holden Thorp says that under no circumstances should scientists debate “gaslighters.”

Last weekend, Twitter and later the mainstream media exploded with a controversy surrounding an invitation to prominent vaccine scientist Peter Hotez to debate anti-vax charlatan and spoiler presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr on the podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience. There was an immediate rally around Hotez by scientists and celebrities on Twitter and lots of discussion about why this invitation is a classic anti-science setup.

Hucksters like RFK Jr are skilled at flooding the zone with garbage. Kennedy recently told Rogan that Wi-Fi could open the blood-brain barrier and cause cancer. Absurd statements like this are a trap for scientists. A scientist wants to explain how conservation of energy works and why Kennedy’s assertion violates just about every principle there is in chemistry and physics. This approach sets up two huge problems. First, it gives RFK’s garbage equal footing with principles that have been established by centuries of science. The second is that to a lay listener, the scientist just comes off as fitting the stereotype of a nitpicking nerd and RFK looks like a powerful communicator. Hotez debating RFK about vaccines would produce the same result. [...]

When scientists refuse these “debates,” the other side gets the opportunity to say that they are turning them down for fear of being challenged. The opposition can claim to be “just asking questions,” even though they don’t care about the answers. But these reactions are preferable to giving them a platform.

If Number 45 wants to campaign for the presidency based on being the guy that ended Roe v. Wade in spite of the fact that 60-70% of Americans support abortion rights, be my guest.

Neil Vigdor/The New York Times

Appearing at a Faith & Freedom Coalition gala in Washington on Saturday night, he cited his appointment of three of the six justices who voted to strike down the law as a capstone of his presidency. And he cast himself as an unflinching crusader for the Christian right in a meandering speech that lasted nearly 90 minutes.

“No president has ever fought for Christians as hard as I have,” he said, adding, “I got it done, and nobody thought it was even a possibility.”

It was the eighth appearance by Mr. Trump in front of the group, whose support he is seeking to consolidate in a crowded G.O.P. competition for the 2024 nomination, though he is the front-runner in the field. He said that Republican voters were skeptical of claims by some of his rivals that they were stronger opponents of abortion, and suggested that the skepticism had arisen on the campaign trail.

Piper French of Bolt magazine reports that now that both houses of the North Carolina legislature have Republican supermajorities (thanks Tricia Cothan!), North Carolina Republicans will probably push forward legislation requiring sheriffs to comply with ICE.

Thanks to their new supermajorities, Republicans likely have the votes to push through legislation that would preempt the new sheriffs’ policies. Prior iterations of this bill, which ICE helped craft, were vetoed by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, but the GOP recently gained the ability to override his vetoes and quickly pushed through long-stalled priorities like abortion restrictions. Immigrants rights’ advocates tell Bolts they are bracing for ICE’s bill to be next.

House Bill 10, titled “Require Sheriffs to Cooperate with ICE,” would force sheriffs to proactively contact ICE to check the status of anyone booked into their jail for a felony or class A1 misdemeanor.

The bill would also mandate that sheriffs honor so-called immigration detainers—-administrative requests by ICE to keep someone in jail beyond their scheduled release, without a warrant, in order to give federal agents time to pick them up.

Jake Shafer of POLITICO tells us why some deaths receive more media coverage than others.

The disparity was easily discerned. You could barely turn on CNN after the submersible went AWOL without viewing an update or a segment while the migrant disaster came and vanished from the TV screen quickly. How could this be? The Titan disaster’s body count was a rounding error when measured against the toll of the Mediterranean sinking. Was the press — and social media — trying to tell us that a handful of people joyriding to the site of a famous shipwreck were more significant, more newsworthy than hundreds of desperate refugees seeking a better life?

To answer the question as coldly as possible, yes. It is true today and has been true for the past 50,000 yesterdays that news coverage is almost never proportional to the number of lives lost. That’s not a defense, but a fact verifiable by anybody who has the patience to pick through newspaper morgues and cemeteries to do the arithmetic. The reasons might sound heartless. Intuitively, two deaths are twice as shocking as one, so it stands to reason that two deaths would get twice as much coverage. But as we’ll see, all deaths are not created equal in the media.

Finally today, Felix Keßler, Steffen Küdke, Mohannad al-Najjer, and Lisa Versuchwele of Der Spiegel do some investigative reporting of the shipwreck off of the coast of Greece where at least 80 migrants died with hundreds remaining unaccounted for. The reporters also conducedt interviews with some of the survivors of the shipwreck and relatives whose loved ones are missing or deceased.

The June 14 shipwreck is the worst such accident that has taken place in Greece in several years. In the early hours of June 14, an old fishing boat sank around 80 kilometers southwest of the Peloponnese region. Photos show three overcrowded decks, people crammed in shoulder to shoulder. The International Organization for Migration estimates the number of passengers to have been between 400 and 750, most of whom appear to have come from Pakistan, Syria or Egypt. So far, only 104 people have been rescued. Just 82 bodies having been recovered, but most are still missing.

A picture of their final hours emerges from photos, ship data and videos – though it is fragmentary.

Once again, the disaster is raising agonizing questions for the European Union: Does it condone shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, delaying rescue operations until the last minute? Or does it perhaps even provoke them, because countries like Greece are desperate to keep refugees from landing on their shores?

Have the best possible day, everyone!