Day: April 19, 2022

SCOTUS–2022

I want to change the dialog a bit from a war that no one will win.

I thought I would take a look at the SCOTUS term as it is drawing to a close and we have a new judge for the media to fixated on…..

These are the 3 cases that we should watch closely……..

The Supreme Court this month will hear its last oral arguments in a term that has been overshadowed by disputes over abortion and the Second Amendment and the confirmation of the nation’s first Black female justice.

As the country awaits decisions in those potentially landmark cases, three cases stand out as highlights among the remaining disputes to be argued before the justices. 

They involve a Trump-era immigration policy, a dispute over a high school football coach’s religious practice on school grounds and the Miranda warning that suspects are given by law enforcement. 

It’s the last set of arguments that will include Justice Stephen Breyer, who will retire this summer. He will be replaced by the newly confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Three cases to watch as Supreme Court readies for final oral arguments of term

Speaking of Brown, the new justice, the media had a field day reporting on her confirmation….the first black woman and on and on…..

But now that we have a new judge what will change of SCOTUS?

The truth of the matter is…..NOTHING will change!

When soon-to-be Justice Jackson takes her seat this summer (retiring Justice Stephen Breyer plans to stay on until “the Court rises for the summer recess this year”), the Supreme Court will be more diverse than it has ever been. Not only will a Black woman serve as a justice for the first time in American history, but the Court will, for the first time, have four women. It will also have three people of color for the first time in its history.

It’s a historic moment. As Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) said at the beginning of Jackson’s confirmation hearing, her confirmation shatters a glass ceiling: “It’s a sign that we as a country are continuing to rise to our collective, cherished, [and] highest ideals.”

The current Court, with its Republican supermajority, is more hostile toward voting rights — and specifically to the proposition that states may not write election laws that discriminate on the basis of race — than any Court since the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965. Indeed, the current Court may be more hostile to efforts to achieve racial equality than any Court since Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Jackson’s confirmation means that she will have a seat at the literal table where the justices meet to cast their initial votes in argued cases. But her voice is likely to do little to sway her six Republican colleagues in the most closely watched and most important cases.

https://www.vox.com/23010014/supreme-court-ketanji-brown-jackson-racism-voting-rights-dissents

Having the first black women on the Supreme Court will do NOTHING to change the direction of the court….NOTHING.

Please do not hold your breath for some sanity on a conservative court….you would mostly likely turn blue and die.

Enough said.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Advertisement

Moskva Gone But Not Forgotten

The big news last week in our media was that Ukraine had sunk the Russian Black Sea flagship, the Moskva,…..of course the Russians have a different story for the loss of this ship…..

Russia’s flagship Black Sea missile cruiser, the Moskva, has sunk after being “seriously damaged”.

That is as far as the warring sides may agree on – not what caused the sinking.

The Russian defence ministry said ammunition onboard exploded in an unexplained fire and the ship tipped over while being towed back to port.

Ukraine claims it struck the vessel with its Neptune missiles. Unnamed US officials have told US media they believe the Ukrainian version.

The 510-crew warship had led Russia’s naval assault on Ukraine, which made it an important symbolic and military target.

Earlier in the conflict the Moskva gained notoriety after calling on Ukrainian border troops defending Snake Island in the Black Sea to surrender – to which they memorably radioed a message of refusal which loosely translates as “go to hell”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61103927

Since the truth that it has sunk….there are questions upon questions about the incident….

About the only thing certain about the Russian war ship Moskva is that it is now at the bottom of the sea. But days after it sank, key questions remain, including how it got there and how many members of its 500-plus crew were injured or worse. Ukraine says it sank the ship with missiles—and the Pentagon believes it—but Russia denies that and says the ship sank in stormy seas while being towed after an onboard fire broke out. On Monday, photos and video appearing to show the damaged ship before it went down emerged on the messaging app Telegram, reports the Moscow Times. The images, which show the ship listing and parts of it engulfed in smoke, have not been verified as authentic.

“I believe the video is real,” journalist Yoruk Isik, an expert on Russian ships, tells the Guardian. “It is the Moskva.” Even if so, the images won’t do much to settle the mystery of what caused the ship to go down. However, the Guardian points out that the ships’ lifeboats are gone, suggesting that the crew was able to escape. Over the weekend, Russia’s defense ministry posted new footage of what it described as a gathering of Moskva sailors, but the Moscow Times notes that only about 100 sailors were present. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Moskva’s sinking has led to a lively public debate in Russia.

“Just explain to me how you managed to lose it,” said Vladimir Solovyev on his prime-time talk show, one that usually sticks to Kremlin talking points. He also openly speculated that Ukraine might indeed have sunk the ship, at odds with Russia’s official line. Also of note: director Vladimir Bortko, a former member of Russia’s parliament, publicly blamed Ukraine for the sinking and said Russia must retaliate, per the Times. “The special military operation has ended, it ended last night when our motherland was attacked,” he said, using the term that Moscow has stipulated in place of “war.” He added that “the attack on our territory is casus belli, an absolute cause for war for real.”

 

Ukraine–Descent Into Darkness

“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”  Ambrose Bierce

Three months ago not many Americans could locate Ukraine on a blank map and now they all have a ‘learned’ opinion.

So many have just accepted the war raging in Ukraine…..few bother or even care that there was some sanity in the madness….

About here I need to add a disclaimer to avoid any confusion accusations.

I am by NO means trying to justify the brutality and barbarity of the invasion of Ukraine….just that there is always more to a story than is known or covered by the media in its rush to break news.

Another lingering question is ‘why Ukraine’? There have been other horrific events in the period since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, including Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Palestine yet no comparable clamor for criminal justice and punitive action. Certainly, a part of the explanation is that the Ukrainian victims of abuse are white and European, and global media was mobilized effectively by the West and by the related international prominence accorded to Zelensky, the embattled Ukrainian leader given unprecedented access to the most influential venues on the global stages of world opinion. It is not that the empathy for Ukraine or support for Zelensky’s national resistance is misplaced, but that it has the appearance of being orchestrated in ways that other desperate national situations were not, and thus give rise to suspicions about other, darker motives.

This is a concern because these magnified concerns have acted as a principal way that the NATO West has gone out of its way to make the Ukrainian War about more than Ukraine. The wider war is best understood as occurring on two levels: a traditional war between the invading forces of Russia and the resisting forces of Ukraine coupled with a geopolitical war between the U.S. and Russia. It is the prosecution of this latter war that presents the more profound danger to world peace, a danger that has been largely obscured or assessed as a mere dimension of the Russia/Ukraine confrontation. Biden has consistently struck a militarist and confrontational note in the geopolitical war, demonizing Putin while neglecting diplomacy as a way to stop the killing, and atrocities, in effect, allowing the war on the ground to continue because of the higher stakes of grand strategy. If this two-level perception is correct in appreciation of the different actors with different priorities, then it becomes crucial to understand that in the geopolitical war the U.S. is the aggressor as much as in the traditional war Russia is the aggressor.

Why Ukraine?

Is NATO the culprit?

George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the cold war, perceptively warned in a May 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of Nato’s first round of expansion would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”

He was right, but US and Nato leaders proceeded with new rounds of expansion, including the provocative step of adding the three Baltic republics. Those countries not only had been part of the Soviet Union, but they had also been part of Russia’s empire during the Czarist era. That wave of expansion now had Nato perched on the border of the Russian Federation.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine

Further reading…..

I was there: NATO and the origins of the Ukraine crisis

https://www.vox.com/22900113/nato-ukraine-russia-crisis-clinton-expansion

Be Smart…..Learn Stuff….

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”