02 January 23
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
Robin Wright | What the Wars and Crises of This Year Foreshadow for 2023
Robin Wright, The New Yorker
Wright writes: "Tyrants and thugocrats have tightened their hold amid challenges to democracies, but they face problems, too."
Tyrants and thugocrats have tightened their hold amid challenges to democracies, but they face problems, too.
In the late twentieth century, the American psychic Jeane Dixon, nicknamed the Seeress of Washington, won a huge following after predicting, in a 1956 magazine article, that a man resembling John F. Kennedy would be elected President four years later—and then die in office. But she also said that the Third World War would begin in 1958 and that the Soviet Union would land the first man on the moon. Soothsaying is not science.
Yet some of the trend lines for the world in 2023 are already visible; the wars and crises of 2022 will shape the challenges of the New Year. Among them, ruthless autocrats are exerting their might in ways that strain the diplomatic bandwidth, financial resources, and arms stockpiles of democracies. None of the world’s most troubling crises—Vladimir Putin’s gruesome invasion of Ukraine, Xi Jinping’s unprecedented military drills around Taiwan, Iran’s nuclear advances and arms sales to Russia, Kim Jong Un’s record missile provocations, the Taliban’s increasingly draconian rule in Afghanistan, the takeover of Haiti by hundreds of gangs, and the spread of ISIS franchises across Africa—seem likely to abate anytime soon.
Three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union marked the so-called end of history, 2022 marked the “return of history,” Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, noted this month. It’s a sobering reflection of the trajectory of humanity. The globalizing interdependence of the early twenty-first century has not prevented a resurgence of aggression that has already killed tens of thousands. Global organizations—most notably the United Nations, formed after the previous century’s two devastating World Wars—have appeared largely powerless to stop the bloodshed. As 2022 ended, roughly half of the world’s democracies were in decline, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, in Sweden. Polarized societies didn’t trust elections. Corruption had become intractable. Civil liberties and press freedoms were threatened.
This year’s failures set an ominous precedent for the year ahead. “As the divide between the world’s democracies and autocracies hardens, the world is entering a renewed period of competition and confrontation,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former Danish Prime Minister and a NATO Secretary-General, told Foreign Policy, in September. But the long-term agendas of thugocrats face obstacles at home and abroad despite the autocratic ways of leaders even in Moscow and Beijing and Tehran.
In Russia, Putin publicly fashioned himself in June as a twenty-first-century Peter the Great, with irredentist visions of conquering neighbors to restore the Russian Empire. The war in Ukraine looks like it could slog on—killing thousands more on both sides—well into 2023, and even beyond. “It is too late for Putin to give up on the biggest undertaking of his career,” Eugene Rumer, a former U.S. intelligence specialist on Russia now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote this month. “He might as well keep the war going hoping to prevail somehow and then write the final chapter of his career as a winner. He would rather die trying or try until he dies.” The widespread assumption is that diplomacy, at best, is more likely to freeze the conflict than end Putin’s aggression, Sir Robin Niblett, the former director of Chatham House, the international think tank in London, told me.
For the first time in a half century, the U.S. is also seriously concerned about Moscow’s use of a nuclear weapon, especially if Putin begins to fear losing either the war or his own power. Nuclear weapons remained a central tenet of Russian strategic doctrine throughout and after the Cold War. This fall, Putin’s generals reportedly discussed how and when to potentially use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. “When the leader of a modern nuclear power, as Mr. Putin is, talks as recklessly and irresponsibly, as he has been doing, about the potential use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, you’ve got to take it seriously,” John Kirby, of the National Security Council, told reporters.
Yet Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has also backfired. His invasion exposed the weakness of his military, the hapless strategies of his generals, and his own recklessness. Russia has suffered at least a hundred thousand casualties, the Pentagon said last month. Putin has faced internal defiance, too. Military conscripts have complained about being dispatched to the front lines with scant training and antiquated weaponry. Russian commentators have publicly questioned how Moscow has conducted the war. Western sanctions have imperilled his economy. Russia, for now, seems a superpower no more.
The invasion has also strengthened and revitalized NATO, the opposite of what Putin intended. Before the war in Ukraine, it appeared sapped following President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to leave the organization and Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. The alliance of thirty nations instead got a new mission—and more momentum than at any point since the Cold War ended. Sweden and Finland, which had resisted becoming members for more than seven decades, scrambled to join.
In China, Xi engineered a historic third term as the President of the world’s most populous nation at the Communist Party Congress in October. He has more power—and, some experts claim, more ambitious military, economic, and regional goals—than any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. He has threatened to use “all measures necessary” to reunify Taiwan with the mainland. At a summit in Bali, in November, Xi told President Biden that intervening on Taiwan’s behalf is the “first red line” that the U.S. better not cross.
Washington and Beijing, however, are not yet in a new Cold War, Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, told me. “It’s not just Biden saying that. Xi has no interest in it. And there’s far too much interdependence,” despite the intense competition over technology and Taiwan, he noted. For all of Xi’s new political muscle, he needs Western trade to reverse his flagging economy. U.S. allies don’t want to be forced to choose between the two economic and military powerhouses either, Bremmer said. Like Putin, Xi’s seeming omnipotence was challenged recently when protests in multiple cities demanded an end to his sweeping “zero COVID” policy. A government that spent years tightening control over communications—particularly the Internet—struggled to prevent videos of demonstrations and police brutality from going viral. Xi ended up ceding ground by easing restrictions.
In a bid to shore up their positions at home and counter the West, Putin and Xi expanded their alliance in 2022. On the eve of the Olympic Games in February, the two leaders—wearing matching mauve ties—boasted that their partnership with “no limits” would create a “new era.” Putin backed China’s claim to Taiwan, while Xi agreed that NATO expansion in Europe threatened Russia. The breadth of their growing military coöperation was visible in September, when China deployed more than two thousand troops, twenty-one warplanes, and three warships for a joint exercise in Russia. A few months later, Russia and China flew joint patrols—including bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons—over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea.
In the short term, the two major powers in Europe and Asia are more cohesive and less vulnerable to U.S. pressure, Niblett said. In 2023, the divide between the West and the Russia-China alliance is likely to deepen. But the U.S. is strengthening its position by linking its allies in the Atlantic and the Pacific: it has done this by drawing Japan, South Korea and Australia closer to NATO and the G7. At the same time, it is encouraging the Europeans to turn their rhetorical commitments to Indo-Pacific security into practical steps, Niblett told me.
In Iran, President Ebrahim Raisi consolidated hard-line control over the executive, legislative, judicial, and military branches of government. The regime rigidly enforced social codes and further restricted personal freedoms. After more than a year of diplomacy about reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, Tehran also balked at terms agreed to by the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China—and accelerated its nuclear program. It would now need less than a week to have enough enriched uranium to fuel a bomb. (Other steps are required to build it.) Iran also provided hundreds of drones to Moscow that Russian forces used to destroy infrastructure and kill civilians in Ukraine. Revolutionary Guards were dispatched to Crimea to train their Russian counterparts, according to U.S. and British intelligence officials.
Yet, in the fall, a new generation, led by teen-age girls and other young women, mobilized months of protests across the country after the death of a twenty-two-year-old woman who had been detained for not covering enough of her hair. It was the boldest challenge to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution—at a time when the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is aged and ailing. “For 2023, I predict the biggest story will be Iran and the interplay of protests, possible succession at the top, and the nuclear issue,” Haass, the Council on Foreign Relations president, told me.
“It was not all bad though,” Haass said of 2022. America’s main rivals faced internal troubles at the same time that many of the worst democracy deniers were defeated in the U.S. midterm elections. The West demonstrated resilience and a reinvigorated unity, he noted. So did protesters across continents. “From Mariupol to Managua, from Kabul to Kigali, from Taipei to Tehran, we have witnessed innumerable acts of bravery and defiance on behalf of freedom and against authoritarian aggression,” Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that monitors democracy worldwide, said last week. For all the extraordinary crises that the U.S. and other democracies will have to navigate in 2023, the thugocrats are likely to face their own challenges, too.
READ MORE
This file photo taken on October 1, 2020 shows the Syrian flag flying at Damascus International Airport outside Syria’s capital. (photo: Louai Beshara/AFP)
Israeli Missile Strikes Put Damascus Airport Out of Service
Albert Aji and Bassem Mroue, Associated Press
Excerpt: "Israel’s military fired missiles toward the international airport of Syria's capital early Monday, putting it out of service and killing two soldiers and wounding two others, the Syrian army said."
Israel’s military fired missiles toward the international airport of Syria's capital early Monday, putting it out of service and killing two soldiers and wounding two others, the Syrian army said.
The attack, which occurred shortly after midnight Sunday, was the second in seven months to put the Damascus International Airport out of service. It caused material damage in a nearby area, the army said, without giving further details.
Syria's Ministry of Transport said work to repair the damage began immediately and later Monday, some flights resumed while work in other parts of the airport continued.
Israel has targeted airports and ports in government-held parts of Syria in an apparent attempt to prevent arms shipments from Iran to militant groups backed by Tehran, including Lebanon's Hezbollah.
An opposition war monitor reported the Israeli strikes hit the airport as well as an arms depot close to the facility south of Damascus. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four people were killed in the strike.
The conflicting reports could not immediately be reconciled.
The Observatory said the runway used for civilian flights was fixed while another, used for cargo transport, remains out of service. That runway is also used by Iran-backed backed groups, the Observatory added.
There was no comment from Israel.
Syrian state TV reported that the private Cham Wings resumed flights while the flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed a flight by Iraq's private Fly Baghdad coming from the Iraqi city of Najaf was about to land shortly around 9 a.m. in Damascus.
On June 10, Israeli airstrikes that struck Damascus International Airport caused significant damage to infrastructure and runways. It reopened two weeks later after repairs.
In September, Israeli airstrikes hit the international airport of the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest and once commercial center, also putting it out of service for days.
In late 2021, Israeli warplanes fired missiles that struck the port of Latakia hitting containers and igniting a huge fire.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.
Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Thousands of Iran-backed fighters have joined Syria's 11-year civil war and helped tip the balance of power in Assad’s favor.
Israel says an Iranian presence on its northern frontier is a red line that justifies its strikes on facilities and weapons inside Syria.
READ MORE
Yuriy Kryvenko visiting the grave of his father, Oleksandr Kryvenko, who was killed by a Russian soldier in March in Bucha, a suburb of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. (photo: David Guttenfelder/NYT)
In Bucha, a Final Rampage Served as a Coda to a Month of Atrocities
Carlotta Gall and Oleksandr Chubko, The New York Times
Excerpt: "On one of the last nights of the Russian occupation of Bucha, a lone Russian soldier, drunk or high, went out looking for wine. He forced a 75-year-old resident at gunpoint along the street and made him bang on the doors of private homes."
Hours before Russian troops began withdrawing from the suburban town, a Russian soldier left a trail of blood and devastated lives in a last paroxysm of violence.
On one of the last nights of the Russian occupation of Bucha, a lone Russian soldier, drunk or high, went out looking for wine. He forced a 75-year-old resident at gunpoint along the street and made him bang on the doors of private homes.
What unfolded thereafter was a night of horror for two families that stands as a coda to a month of senseless killings by Russian troops in Bucha, a suburb of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. The Russian soldier left a trail of blood and devastated lives in a last paroxysm of violence only hours before Russian troops began withdrawing. His own unit fetched him in the morning, disposed of the bodies, and within hours, it was gone.
Nine months after those events, the dead have mostly been recovered and laid to rest, and people have picked up their lives and returned to work. But the grief of family members remains raw, and the pain inflicted on this small section of one neighborhood by this Russian soldier and his comrades still ripples through the Bucha community.
The soldier’s rampage was not an isolated event. Nine soldiers from a unit based in the same wooded neighborhood have been charged in one of the first war crimes cases to reach court in Ukraine. The case centers on their cruel treatment of a civilian, an electrical engineer who was repeatedly detained and beaten in the last days of March.
The engineer, Serhiy Kybka, is losing his sight from injuries suffered in another severe beating he received later, by a Russian soldier who encountered him on the street after his release.
More than 450 people died in Bucha in one month, which was roughly 10 percent of the remaining population, a level that war crimes investigators say could amount to the crime of genocide.
Fifteen of those people died in an area of only a few blocks around Antoniya Mykhailovskoho Street, where the intoxicated soldier went on his rampage. They included six members of a seniors’ home who died from cold and lack of medicines, and an 81-year-old woman found hanging in her garden.
Like their neighbors, the two men — who, according to the mayor of Bucha, neighbors and family members, died at the hands of the lone soldier — were victims of an undisciplined and brutal occupying army.
It was evening, not long before the 8 o’clock curfew on March 27, when the Russian soldier encountered Oleksandr Kryvenko and ordered him at gunpoint along the street to a large house set behind high walls. Bucha was in the dark, without electricity or internet.
Mr. Kryvenko was a teacher, who was living alone after helping his wife and her disabled daughter evacuate from Bucha. Trained as a pilot, he had spent his life working as an adjuster at Bucha’s glass processing factory, acclaimed for his multiple mechanical inventions. Since then, he had run an educational center, sharing with generations of children his love of building model ships and aircraft.
His family said he would have sought to make peace with the Russian soldier. “We never had fights,” said his wife, Svitlana Tkachuk, 55. “He was very even-tempered, always trying to come to an agreement.”
When he and the soldier reached the house, Mr. Kryvenko banged on the gate and called out to the guard, a Ukrainian named Serhiy, whom he knew.
Serhiy opened the gate and the soldier, pointing his assault rifle, shouted, “I want wine, Boyar!” using an old-fashioned form of address for a Russian nobleman.
Serhiy explained he was just a guard. Russian soldiers had already seized all of the alcohol there was in the house, he told him.
“Then he put the gun to my temple, and asked, ‘Do you have any wine?’” Serhiy recounted in an interview, providing only his first name. “I said: ‘No.’ I thought: ‘This is the end.’”
Serhiy braced for a bullet, but the Russian suddenly jerked his rifle upward and fired over his head, he said. The soldier ordered the two Ukrainians inside the house to look for alcohol. When he found there was none, he threatened to throw a grenade, but was so intoxicated that he could not manage to pull it from a pocket on the side of his combat pants.
Eventually, the soldier, who Serhiy said was ethnic Russian and looked about 35 years old, went off, taking Mr. Kryvenko with him.
Twenty minutes later, Serhiy said, the soldier’s commander came by with a posse of three soldiers looking for the soldier. The commander said the soldier, whom he called Aleksei, was a troubled man, a veteran on his fourth war, and dangerous.
“Go and hide and don’t stick your nose out for anything,” the commander told him. “He’s not in his right mind. He can shoot or throw a grenade.”
For all of his dire warnings, the commander did not catch up with Aleksei or his hostage that night.
The two ended up not far away at the large property of a retired Ukrainian politician, Oleksandr Rzhavsky.
A former banker and member of Parliament, Mr. Rzhavsky, 63, was the leader of a small political party, and had run twice as a presidential candidate.
If anyone could handle a belligerent Russian soldier, it was probably Mr. Rzhavsky, who was Russian-speaking and carried himself with a natural authority. His “friends and his opponents agree on one thing — he was always sincere,” his family wrote in a death announcement in April. “The explanation for this is very simple — his goal has always been peace and tranquillity on Ukrainian land.”
Mr. Rzhavsky was perceived by many Ukrainians as pro-Russian, and in his writings before the war, he supported greater political and diplomatic efforts to reach agreement with Russia.
But he expressed great shock at President Vladimir V. Putin’s full-scale invasion that began on Feb. 24. “Why now and through open war?” Mr. Rzhavsky asked in a Facebook post on March 2. “The brain frantically searches for various options, but does not find any that would not lead to even greater disaster.”
Mr. Rzhavsky apparently let the Russian and his hostage into his house. They sat at the dining table in the main open-plan living area, and Mr. Rzhavsky gave them wine, according to neighbors familiar with events.
Mr. Rzhavsky’s family declined to be interviewed for this article, asking for privacy during difficult times. But the two women in the house at the time, Mr. Rzhavsky’s wife and his sister, were able to hide and escaped injury, according to Bucha’s mayor, Anatoliy Fedoruk.
Something snapped that evening, and the soldier, Aleksei, opened fire on the two men at the table. Mr. Kryvenko was killed in his chair with three bullets to the chest, said his son, Yuriy Kryvenko. Mr. Rzhavsky was shot in the head. The soldier subsequently threw a grenade and injured his own leg in the explosion.
“There followed a night like an American horror movie,” said a neighbor, Olga Galunenko. “This dark house, two bodies lying there and this crazy man with a rifle.”
She said Mr. Rzhavsky’s sister, Zoya, crawled out and hid in a cloakroom. “The wife was hiding in another place,” Ms. Galunenko said.
Only in the morning did the soldier’s unit come to find him. They took him away in an armored vehicle. They apologized for his actions to the women and even dug a grave and buried Mr. Rzhavsky in the garden. In a final act of cruelty, they dumped Mr. Kryvenko’s body in a small copse across the street.
The Kyiv regional prosecutor has opened separate investigations into their deaths, for “violation of the laws and customs of war, combined with premeditated murder,” according to the prosecutor’s information office. There is an additional charge in the case of Mr. Kryvenko for violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
The Rzhavsky family blamed the soldier for the killing of Mr. Rzhavsky in a joint Facebook post in April, saying that he was “drunk with his own impunity.” They made no mention of Mr. Kryvenko. When his son came by looking for him at the beginning of April, they confirmed Mr. Kryvenko had been shot but said they did not know what had happened to his body.
“They thought he was some kind of bum, or alcoholic,” Yuriy Kryvenko said bitterly, recounting in an interview how he pieced together details of his father’s death. He spent the next week and a half searching for his father, desperately hoping that he had somehow survived.
At one point, the family became so desperate that it consulted a clairvoyant, who said that Mr. Kryvenko’s body lay only two houses away from his home, but in the forest. As the snow began to melt, with the help of a friend, Mr. Kryvenko’s son began to search the copse opposite Mr. Rzhavsky’s home. They found a pair of shoes and uncovered his father’s body. He was lying on a curtain from the Rzhavsky house.
Mr. Kryvenko was buried beside his mother in his home village outside Bucha.
“For 18 days, he lay on the ground, covered with leaves,” Mr. Kryvenko’s son said, recounting the pain of confirming his death. “At first, I didn’t think it was him. When a person is missing, it is somehow easier.”
READ MORE
Supporters of President Lula cheered during his inauguration. (photo: Dado Galdieri/NYT)
Lula Becomes Brazil’s President, With Bolsonaro in Florida
Jack Nicas and André Spigariol, The New York Times
Excerpt: "President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took the reins of the Brazilian government on Sunday in an elaborate inauguration, complete with a motorcade, music festival and hundreds of thousands of supporters filling the central esplanade of Brasília, the nation’s capital."
Brazil inaugurates its new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on Sunday. Facing investigations, former President Jair Bolsonaro has taken refuge in Orlando.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took the reins of the Brazilian government on Sunday in an elaborate inauguration, complete with a motorcade, music festival and hundreds of thousands of supporters filling the central esplanade of Brasília, the nation’s capital.
But one key person was missing: the departing far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Mr. Bolsonaro was supposed to pass Mr. Lula the presidential sash on Sunday, an important symbol of the peaceful transition of power in a nation where many people still recall the 21-year military dictatorship that ended in 1985.
Instead, Mr. Bolsonaro woke up Sunday thousands of miles away, in a rented house owned by a professional mixed-martial-arts fighter a few miles from Disney World. Facing various investigations from his time in his office, Mr. Bolsonaro flew to Orlando on Friday night and plans to stay in Florida for at least a month.
Mr. Bolsonaro had questioned the reliability of Brazil’s election systems for months, without evidence, and when he lost in October, he refused to concede unequivocally. In a sort of farewell address on Friday, breaking weeks of near silence, he said that he tried to block Mr. Lula from taking office but failed.
“Within the laws, respecting the Constitution, I searched for a way out of this,” he said. He then appeared to encourage his supporters to move on. “We live in a democracy or we don’t,” he said. “No one wants an adventure.”
On Sunday, Mr. Lula ascended the ramp to the presidential offices with a diverse group of Brazilians, including a Black woman, a disabled man, a 10-year-old boy, an Indigenous man and a factory worker. A voice then announced that Mr. Lula would accept the green-and-yellow sash from “the Brazilian people,” and Aline Sousa, a 33-year-old garbage collector, played the role of Mr. Bolsonaro and placed the sash on the new president.
In an address to Congress on Sunday, Mr. Lula said that he would fight hunger and deforestation, lift the economy and try to unite the country. But he also took aim at his predecessor, saying that Mr. Bolsonaro had threatened Brazil’s democracy.
“Under the winds of redemocratization, we used to say, ‘Dictatorship never again,’” he said. “Today, after the terrible challenge we’ve overcome, we must say, ‘Democracy forever.’”
Mr. Lula’s ascension to the presidency caps a stunning political comeback. He was once Brazil’s most popular president, leaving office with an approval rating above 80 percent. He then served 580 days in prison, from 2018 to 2019, on corruption charges that he accepted a condo and renovations from construction companies bidding on government contracts.
After those convictions were thrown out because Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that the judge in Mr. Lula’s case was biased, he ran for the presidency again — and won.
Mr. Lula, 77, and his supporters maintain that he was the victim of political persecution. Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters say that Brazil now has a criminal as president.
In Brasília, hundreds of thousands of people streamed into the sprawling, planned capital, founded in 1960 to house the Brazilian government, with many dressed in the bright red of Mr. Lula’s leftist Workers’ Party.
Over the weekend, passengers on arriving planes broke into rally songs about Mr. Lula, revelers danced to samba at New Year’s Eve parties and, across the city, spontaneous cries rang out from balconies and street corners, heralding Mr. Lula’s arrival and Mr. Bolsonaro’s exit.
“Lula’s inauguration is mainly about hope,” said Isabela Nascimento, 30, a software developer walking to the festivities on Sunday. “I hope to see him representing not only a political party, but an entire population — a whole group of people who just want to be happier.”
Yet elsewhere in the city, thousands of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters remained camped outside the army headquarters, as they have been since the election, many saying they were convinced that at the final moment on Sunday, the military would prevent Mr. Lula from taking office.
“The army has patriotism and love for the country, and in the past, the army did the same thing,” Magno Rodrigues, 60, a former mechanic and janitor who gives daily speeches at the protests, said on Saturday, referring to the 1964 military coup that ushered in the dictatorship.
Mr. Rodrigues has spent the past nine weeks sleeping in a tent on a narrow pad with his wife. He provided a tour of the encampment, which had become a small village since Mr. Bolsonaro lost the election. It has showers, a laundry service, cellphone-charging stations, a hospital and 28 food stalls.
The protests have been overwhelmingly nonviolent — with more praying than rioting — but a small group of people have set fire to vehicles. Mr. Lula’s transitional government had suggested that the encampments would not be tolerated for much longer.
How long was Mr. Rodrigues prepared to stay? “As long as it takes to liberate my country,” he said. “For the rest of my life if I have to.”
The absence of Mr. Bolsonaro and the presence of thousands of protesters who believe the election was stolen illustrate the deep divide and tall challenges that Mr. Lula faces in his third term as president of Latin America’s biggest country and one of the world’s largest democracies.
He oversaw a boom in Brazil from 2003 to 2011, but the country was not nearly as polarized then, and the economic tailwinds were far stronger. Mr. Lula’s election caps a leftist wave in Latin America, with six of the region’s seven largest countries electing leftist leaders since 2018, fueled by an anti-incumbent backlash.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s decision to spend at least the first weeks of Mr. Lula’s presidency in Florida shows his unease about his future in Brazil. Mr. Bolsonaro, 67, is linked to five separate inquiries, including one into his release of documents related to a classified investigation, another on his attacks on Brazil’s voting machines and another into his potential connections to “digital militias” that spread misinformation on his behalf.
As a regular citizen, Mr. Bolsonaro will now lose the prosecutorial immunity he had as president. Some cases against him will probably be moved to local courts from the Supreme Court.
Some top federal prosecutors who have worked on the cases believe there is enough evidence to convict Mr. Bolsonaro, particularly in the case related to the release of classified material, according to a top federal prosecutor who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential investigations.
On Sunday, Mr. Lula told Congress that Mr. Bolsonaro could face consequences. “We have no intention of revenge against those who tried to subjugate the nation to their personal and ideological plans, but we will guarantee the rule of law,” he said. “Those who have done wrong will answer for their mistakes.”
It is unlikely that Mr. Bolsonaro’s presence in the United States could protect him from prosecution in Brazil. Still, Florida has become a sort of refuge for conservative Brazilians in recent years.
Prominent pundits on some of Brazil’s most popular talk shows are based in Florida. A far-right provocateur who faces arrest in Brazil for threatening judges has lived in Florida as he awaits a response to his political asylum request in the United States. And Carla Zambelli, one of Mr. Bolsonaro’s top allies in Brazil’s Congress, fled to Florida for nearly three weeks after she was filmed pursuing a man at gunpoint on the eve of the election.
Mr. Bolsonaro plans to stay in Florida for one to three months, giving him some distance to observe whether Mr. Lula’s administration will push any of the investigations against him, according to a close friend of the Bolsonaro family who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private plans. The Brazilian government has also authorized four aides to spend a month in Florida with Mr. Bolsonaro, according to an official notice.
On Saturday, Mr. Bolsonaro greeted his new neighbors in the driveway of his rented Orlando house, many of them Brazilian immigrants who took selfies with the departing president. He then went to a KFC to eat.
It is not uncommon for former heads of state to live in the United States for posts in academia or similar ventures. But it is unusual for a head of state to seek safe haven in the United States from possible prosecution at home, particularly when the home country is a democratic U.S. ally.
Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies argue that he is a political target of Brazil’s left and particularly Brazil’s Supreme Court. They have largely dropped claims that the election was rigged because of voter fraud but instead now claim that it was unfair because Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who runs Brazil’s election agency, tipped the scales for Mr. Lula.
Mr. Moraes was an active player in the election, suspending the social-media accounts of many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters and granting Mr. Lula more television time because of misleading statements in Mr. Bolsonaro’s political ads. Mr. Moraes has said he needed to act to counter the antidemocratic stances of Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters. Some legal experts worry that he abused his power, often acting unilaterally in ways that go far beyond that of a typical Supreme Court judge.
Still, Mr. Bolsonaro has faced widespread criticism, on both the right and the left, for his response to his election loss. After suggesting for months he would dispute any loss — firing up his supporters and worrying his critics — he instead went silent, refusing to acknowledge Mr. Lula’s victory publicly. His administration carried out the transition as he receded from the spotlight and many of his official duties.
On Saturday night, in his departing speech to the nation, even his vice president, Hamilton Mourão, a former general, made clear his views on Mr. Bolsonaro’s final moments as president.
“Leaders that should reassure and unite the nation around a project for the country have let their silence or inopportune and harmful protagonism create a climate of chaos and social disintegration,” Mr. Mourão said.
READ MORE
Ed Byrne, Homeland Security investigations agent, left, and Lt. Ken Impellizeri of the San Diego Police leave the scene of a fatal fentanyl overdose by a 39-year-old woman in San Diego, Calif., on Nov. 10. (photo: Salwan Georges/WP/Getty Images)
2022 Was a Deadly (but Hopeful) Year in America's Opioid Crisis
Brian Mann, NPR
Mann writes: "When the history of America's long, devastating opioid crisis is finally written, 2022 may be remembered as both a low point and a turning point."
When the history of America's long, devastating opioid crisis is finally written, 2022 may be remembered as both a low point and a turning point.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests the avalanche of overdose deaths — driven largely by the spread of illicit fentanyl --may have crested in March.
Researchers found a staggering 110,236 people died in a single 12-month period, a stunning new record.
But there are signs help may finally be on the way.
The avalanche of drug deaths spurred a series of major reforms in 2022 to the way drug addiction is treated in the U.S., changes designed to reduce stigma and improve access to care.
2022 was also a year of corporate accountability.
Major drug companies, distributors and pharmacy chains reached settlements of opioid lawsuits filed by state and local governments totaling more than $50 billion.
Experts say that money, paid out over the next two decades, will fund treatment programs and other services that are desperately needed, especially in poor rural towns and urban neighborhoods.
Here are the major developments in 2022 that made it a pivotal year for the overdose epidemic.
Fentanyl got worse in 2022. Probably a lot worse.
Let's start with the grim news.
Street drugs in America got even more toxic in 2022 with the spread of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Many of those dying are young, under the age of 40.
"They're zombifying people," said Marche Osborne who lives on the streets in Tacoma, Wash.
She's been addicted to opioids for 18 years and prefers heroin, but says fentanyl is now the only drug street dealers are offering.
"Anybody will do anything for a pill, it's ridiculous. They're dehumanizing people. It's not a good thing. It's not going to go anywhere good if [the spread of fentanyl] continues," Osborne told NPR.
Using data from 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in late 2022 that life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest point in two decades, in part because of street drugs.
"Overdose deaths are increasing," said Kenneth Kochanek, a statistician with the CDC. "The majority of those deaths are to younger people, deaths to younger people affect the overall life-expectancy more than deaths to elderly."
The Drug Enforcement Administration said in December it seized far greater quantities of illicit fentanyl than ever before in 2022.
But drug policy experts say Mexican cartels are still able to smuggle the deadly synthetic opioid into the U.S. with relative impunity.
Republicans made fentanyl a major part of their midterm election message, attempting to link drug smuggling to undocumented immigration.
But NPR found the overwhelming majority of opioids being smuggled across the border came through legal points of entry.
What to look for in 2023: Because drug death data is gathered slowly in the U.S., it won't be known for many months exactly how many people died from fatal overdoses in 2022, but the toll is expected to be grim.
Look for fentanyl to continue to be a hot-button political issue. Republicans have promised to focus attention on Southern border security and smuggling. The question is whether the GOP can come up with policy solutions that will have a real impact on the Mexican cartels.
2022 brought major reforms to addiction treatment
For decades, recovery treatment has been shaped by drug war-era policies that tend to be punitive, bureaucratic and so confusing many doctors simply refuse to treat people with opioid use disorder.
As a result, studies show roughly 90 percent of people with addiction get no healthcare at all.
Driven in part by the carnage of fentanyl deaths, 2022 was the year that changed that.
Congress and the Biden administration pushed through major reforms to the way people with addiction get healthcare.
The Biden administration announced new rules that will make it easier for many patients to access methadone and buprenorphine, medications proven to help patients avoid opioid relapses.
Congress also eliminated a bureaucratic hurdle known as the "x-waiver" that prevented many physicians from prescribing buprenorphine.
Lawmakers and federal officials also worked successfully to help at least one drug manufacturer prepare to sell the opioid-overdose reversal drug naloxone over the counter in pharmacies, without the need for a prescription.
"We begin to normalize and understand addiction as a disease," said Dr. Rahul Gupta, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "And we start to treat people suffering from addiction as human beings and then prescribe them treatments."
Drug policy experts say this mainstreaming of addiction care, including modern medical treatments for opioid use disorder, could save tens of thousands of lives.
What to look for in 2023: Will the mainstream healthcare industry buy in and begin treating more patients with addiction now that red tape is being eliminated? Studies show deep stigma among care providers toward patients suffering from substance use disorder. It's not clear how many doctors will begin prescribing opioid-treatment medications.
"It is actually the most painful part for me as a physician that this stigma exists in the healthcare community," Dr. Gupta said. "If it remains easier for people to get illicit drugs than to get treatment, we're not going to be able to bend the curve."
In 2022 corporations agreed to pay for the opioid crisis
Drug policy experts agree Big Pharma ignited this public health crisis by aggressively marketing and selling opioids.
2022 was the year some of America's biggest companies, including AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, CVS, Johnson & Johnson and Walmart, came to the table to cut deals.
While admitting no wrongdoing, corporate America agreed to pay more than $50 billion dollars in settlements.
"It is important – and long overdue – that we hold opioid companies accountable," said Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.).
While experts believe these payouts represent a tiny fraction of the public cost of the opioid crisis, the settlement money could be a game-changer.
Most of the opioid money is lock-boxed by court agreements in a way that ensures it will go to fund addiction treatment and healthcare over the next two decades.
"No amount of money will ever make up for the lives lost and families destroyed," Hassan told NPR. "The funding supports opioid prevention, treatment, and recovery services."
Along with big increases in state and federal funding for addiction care over the last year, corporate cash could make addiction treatment far more accessible and affordable — especially for people in poor rural areas and urban neighborhoods.
What to look for in 2023: While most corporations involved in the opioid business have reached settlements with state and local governments, they still face scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The DOJ has already sued two of America's top-10 biggest corporations over opioids, AmerisourceBergen and Walmart, and more civil complaints against other companies are expected to follow. Here again, the corporations insist they did nothing wrong. Billions of dollars in fines and penalties hang in the balance.
What about the Sacklers in 2022?
In recent years, members of the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma, have emerged as the public face of the opioid crisis.
While they admit no personal wrongdoing, their company has pleaded guilty twice to federal crimes related to opioid marketing, in 2007 and again in 2020.
Their flagship product, Oxycontin, became one of the most widely abused pain pills.
In March 2022, the Sacklers reached a $6 billion dollar settlement with state attorneys general, a deal that's still under review by the federal courts.
Key members of the Sackler family were also confronted for the first time by victims of their company's wrongdoing during an emotional court proceeding that was held via videoconference.
In a process agreed to as part of the settlement, survivors of addiction and those who lost family members to opioid overdoses spoke directly to the Sacklers, describing the agony caused after Oxycontin flooded communities.
"You created so much loss for so many people," said Kay Scarpone, whose son Joe Scarpone, a retired Marine, died of an opioid overdose.
"I'm not sure how you live every day. I hope you ask for God's forgiveness for your actions. May God have mercy on your souls."
The Sacklers didn't speak during the proceeding and offered no apology. (During a congressional hearing in 2020, David Sackler told lawmakers the "family and the board acted legally and ethically.")
Members of the family faced another high-profile public reckoning in 2022 in the form of an award-winning documentary about the life of Nan Goldin.
The celebrated photographer lost years of her life to Oxycontin addiction.
"All The Beauty And the Bloodshed," which won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, follows Goldin as she campaigned to force museums and galleries around the world to break ties with the Sacklers.
"All the museums and institutions need to stop taking money from these corrupt evil bastards," Goldin says in the documentary, as she helps organize one of the opioid protests that rocked the art world.
It worked. Major arts, education and medical institutions around the world have removed the Sackler name from buildings and programs.
READ MORE
Ohio Elections Chief Frank LaRose, right, talks about his desire for a new, 10-year map of the state's legislative districts at a meeting of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, Aug. 31, 2021, in Columbus, Ohio, as Rep. Emilia Sykes, of Akron, listens. (photo: Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP)
What's Ahead For Ohio's Unsettled Political Maps?
Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press
Excerpt: "The election contests of 2022 may have been held and decided, but Ohio’s political maps remain far from settled."
The election contests of 2022 may have been held and decided, but Ohio’s political maps remain far from settled.
It was supposed to be a once-per-decade process for redrawing the state's U.S. House and Statehouse districts, in order to reflect updated population figures from the 2020 Census. Now it promises to extend into 2023, and probably longer.
While most U.S. states managed to eventually settle their map disputes, Ohio's protracted ordeal has trapped it in a uniquely confounding legal stalemate.
Here's a look at how Ohio got here, and what may (or may not) come next:
___
HOW DID THE NEW MAPMAKING PROCESS WORK?
This was the first time Ohio tried out new ways of drawing congressional and legislative maps.
In 2015, Ohio voters were looking to avoid partisan gerrymandering, and voted overwhelmingly to empower a new, bipartisan Ohio Redistricting Commission to draw Statehouse maps. Those are the districts of the state senators and representatives whom voters send to Columbus.
Under the new rules, if both political parties said yes to the new boundaries, the maps would be in place for a full decade. Single-party support would result in a four-year map.
In 2018, another successful constitutional amendment was also wildly popular with voters. It set up a new system for drawing the state's U.S. House districts — that is, the districts of the representatives that voters send to Washington.
The state Legislature would get the first crack at drawing the lines. If they failed, the commission would be next. If it failed, then the Legislature could try a final time. A three-fifths majority of the minority party — in this case, Democrats — would need to agree to the new map for it to be in place for 10 years. Barring that, again, it would last only four years.
As it turned out, the seeming incentives for bipartisan compromise failed and Democrats didn't cast a single vote for any of the final maps, which were all Republican-drawn.
___
WHAT POWER DID THE NEW SYSTEM GIVE THE STATE’S HIGH COURT?
Voters gave the Ohio Supreme Court “exclusive, original jurisdiction” to decide legal challenges, which included three lawsuits against the legislative maps and two lawsuits against the congressional map.
In a series of 4-3 votes, the court struck down every map they were sent. The court said the maps unduly benefited one party: Republicans. Those maps included two separate congressional maps — one approved by lawmakers in November 2021 and a second that cleared the redistricting commission in March 2022 — and five sets of Statehouse maps.
___
YET OHIO’S ELECTIONS HAPPENED ANYWAY?
That’s right. Amid the legal clashes of the past year, courts allowed Ohio to go forward with May and August primaries under unconstitutional maps.
This fall, Republicans won 10 of Ohio’s 15 congressional seats under the disputed U.S. House map (although Democrats netted several notable wins ). The disputed Statehouse maps yielded even larger Republican supermajorities.
But the maps aren’t valid beyond this election cycle. They will need to be redrawn.
OK, SO THE MAPS DIDN’T FLY. WERE THERE CONSEQUENCES?
That's the conundrum. Even as they missed deadlines and flouted court instructions, Republicans argued that they were doing all they could to understand and interpret a fledgling process. The court's orders were unreasonable and conflicting, they said.
The voting-rights and Democratic groups that won seven consecutive rounds in court argued for lawmakers or commissioners to be held in contempt of court.
Ultimately, the justices balked. Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor told The Associated Press in a year-end interview that she feared taking such action would create a constitutional crisis.
Importantly, the Ohio Supreme Court had no other enforcement options available to it. The new system neither allowed the court to impose a particular map — say, one favored by the suing parties or developed by experts — nor to draw their own.
___
WHERE DO THOSE CASES STAND NOW?
Ohio's congressional map dispute is now awaiting action in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Republican legislative leaders have appealed for a review of their loss in state court.
The case could be considered in conjunction with the closely watched Moore v. Harper case, whose oral arguments were held in December. That case seeks to resolve whether the U.S. Constitution’s provision giving state legislatures the power to make the rules about the “times, places and manner” of congressional elections means state courts can be cut out of the process.
If Ohio's appeal is denied, Republican Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp has said lawmakers will then have 30 days to pass a new congressional map. But the high court’s decision isn’t expected for months.
Meanwhile, Ohio's legislative maps expired with the November 2022 election — on orders of a federal court. The Ohio Redistricting Commission will have to come back together and make new, constitutionally compliant maps in time for 2024 elections. The state constitution says that process can't begin before July 1 of this year. Lawsuits challenging Statehouse maps, which ended in a draw this summer, remain open.
___
HAVE OHIO'S POLITICAL DYNAMICS CHANGED?
Yes and no. The Ohio Redistricting Commission — made up of the governor, secretary of state, auditor and four lawmakers — remained 5-2 in Republicans' favor after the November elections.
Cupp, a key player in the redistricting saga, is retiring, but his successor will also be Republican.
But the Ohio Supreme Court's political leaning may have changed.
O'Connor, a Republican who was a key swing vote on the court, retired Saturday because of age limits. The ascension of her successor, GOP Justice Sharon Kennedy, left a court vacancy to which Republican Gov. Mike DeWine has appointed Republican Joe Deters, the longtime Hamilton County prosecutor.
Time will tell whether Deters sides with the 7-member court’s other three Republican justices — unlike O’Connor — altering earlier case outcomes.
For her part, O'Connor has announced plans to pursue redistricting reforms in the Ohio Constitution, likely the type of independent commission she wrote about in one of her decisions. Many others are collaborating on similar efforts. The timing of any ballot campaign hasn't been determined.
READ MORE
The abandoned boat on Sunday was still flipped over and sinking on the North Branch of the Chicago River, behind the 2800 block of West Giddings Street. (photo: Mack Liederman/Block Club Chicago)
In Lakes and Rivers, Abandoned Fiberglass Boats Present Environmental Hazards
Sandy Hausman, NPR
Excerpt: "In the 1960s, fiberglass was a boon to the boating industry. It was cheap and durable. But fiberglass has a limited lifespan and is expensive to dispose of properly."
In the 1960s, fiberglass was a boon to the boating industry. It was cheap and durable. But fiberglass has a limited lifespan and is expensive to dispose of properly. That's led many boat owners across the country to abandon their aging vessels. From member station WVTF, Sandy Hausman reports on one man who's trying to pick up all that litter.
SANDY HAUSMAN, BYLINE: Mike Provost has always loved the water. He joined the Navy after high school and served for 21 years. These days, you'll find him cruising the Lynnhaven, a river near his home in Virginia Beach. He motors past a state park, where he likes to swim with his kids. That's where, just over a year ago, he spotted an abandoned boat. On board, he found fuel, quarts of oil and other toxic chemicals.
MIKE PROVOST: So I called 30 different offices. No one had the funding or approval to do anything about it. And I was explicitly told that if I personally didn't take care of it, no one would.
HAUSMAN: So he started a nonprofit to deconstruct derelict vessels and take them to landfills.
(SOUNDBITE OF CREAKING)
HAUSMAN: His largest job was here in Norfolk Harbor - a twin-masted sailboat stuck in the mud. Provost needed a crew of six, a barge and crane to dismantle it. The bill, paid by donors, was $28,000. It is illegal for people to dump their boats in state waters, but the law is rarely enforced. And back on his boat, Provost says some people escape responsibility by selling their old boat for a song or giving it away.
PROVOST: If I can sell my 1985 40-foot boat for $100, that's going to save me thousands of dollars in having to dispose of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF CICADAS SINGING)
HAUSMAN: Cicadas sing at a pristine marsh on Virginia's coast, where Jim Deppe complains that abandoned boats pollute the water and the views. He's been tracking the problem for a local environmental group, Lynnhaven River Now, for more than a decade and has watched as boats piled up.
JIM DEPPE: In southern Virginia Beach on the North Landing River, there's a derelict boat graveyard where people have just rubbed off all the identification marks off the boat and pulled them up into the marsh and sunk them.
HAUSMAN: As boats degrade, tiny bits of plastic get into the water, into fish and into people or animals that consume the fish. Officials in Virginia know of at least 230 derelict vessels. But with a quarter of a million registered boats in the state, they fear many more could be out there. Abandoned boats are found in every coastal state and in lakes and rivers. Nancy Wallace with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says there's no market for recycled fiberglass.
NANCY WALLACE: There are some really great pilot studies that are going on right now looking at recycling of fiberglass in the manufacturing of concrete, which is very promising and shown to be successful. But it is logistically challenging and expensive.
HAUSMAN: The U.S. Coast Guard sometimes moves boats that pose a navigational hazard, and some states have programs to remove them before they become a pricey and dangerous mess. In Florida, for example, NOAA's Nancy Wallace says hundreds of agents inspect boats and issue warnings and citations.
WALLACE: If they start to notice that a vessel may become abandoned, they'll try to work with the owners to get that vessel out before it becomes a problem.
HAUSMAN: Other states help owners to dispose of old boats for free or charge recreational boaters a fee to help fund removal. That money will likely be needed in the years to come, since boat sales soared during the pandemic.
For NPR News, I'm Sandy Hausman in Virginia Beach.
READ MORE
Contribute to RSN
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
Update My Monthly Donation
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
