Dear Progressive Reader,

Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has died at age forty-seven in a prison in an arctic region of Russia. Navalny was considered the most viable political opponent of Vladimir Putin, who has served as either president or prime minister of the Russian Federation for most of the past quarter century (previously until 1991, Putin had worked for the KGB intelligence service of the former Soviet Union). Navalny was imprisoned under questionable charges when he returned to Russia on January 17, 2021, following a poisoning attempt that nearly killed him. In a 2022 documentary film, Navalny, which was shot in Germany while Navalny was recuperating from the attack, Putin is shown repeatedly being unable to even utter Navalny’s name—referring to him rather as “that citizen” or “the person you mentioned” in response to reporters’ questions.

The film appears eerily prescient when, in its opening scene, the offscreen interviewer asks Navalny what message he might have for supporters should he be killed. Navalny initially declines to answer, saying he does not want this film to be shown only after his death. On hearing of Navalny’s reported death on Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden said, “make no mistake, Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.” This is clearly true, whether on not he directly intervened on this particular Friday, Putin’s continued assault on Navalny—up to and including placing him in a frigid, remote penal colony—led to the dissident leader’s demise. In the final scene of the film, Navalny does answer the interviewer’s question, in his native Russian, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.” It is his final message to the people whose aspirations he continues to represent, even in death.

This week on our website, two photo essays depict a darker side of the conversion to electric vehicles—the impacts of mining lithium for batteries. Amelia Rayno documents the scene in rural Argentina where local residents are seeing their lives and their water impacted. And, more than 6,000 miles away, in Portugal, Giacomo Sini and Dario Antonelli bring to light a similar story playing out in a small rural farming village.

In our continued reporting on the war in Gaza, Sam Stein chronicles the police repression of a rare protest march in the West Bank; Arvind Diliwar looks at the move by Cornell students to get their university to divest from companies arming Israel for the war; Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies consider the road not taken as “the United States chooses genocide over diplomacy in the Middle East.” Plus, Jeff Abbott reports from Guatemala on scandal involving a now-disbanded U.S.-trained border security unit in an extortion scheme.

In media this week, Annie Laurie Gaylor previews the new film God & Country about Christian nationalism which opened yesterday; Ed Rampell reviews the new documentary Beyond Bars, about progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin who lost in a rightwing-funded recall election in San Francisco; and cartoonist Mark Fiore illustrates the way Facebook has decided to replace news in its feed with “pictures of cats.” Plus, Mike Ervin tell us why he’d like to win the “Moms for Liberty Offensive Book Award,” and Shauna Taradash writes about giving students the tools to counter hate, noting, “When politicians remove historical and cultural context from education, we need to help students build resilience.”

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

 
Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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