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L’ ‘ammutinamento’ della compagnia militare privata Wagner non ha provocato lo sfacelo della Russia, annunciato e auspicato dal mainstream politico-mediatico dell’Occidente. Il Presidente Putin ha dichiarato che “la stragrande maggioranza dei combattenti e dei comandanti del gruppo Wagner sono patrioti …

The post La Russia Resiste L’Europa in Sfacelo | Grandangolo – Pangea appeared first on Global Research.

President Biden said he won’t expand the Supreme Court because doing so would “politicize” the court in an unhealthy way. But it’s a political institution by its nature — and a disturbingly undemocratic one.

President Joe Biden announces new actions to protect borrowers after the Supreme Court struck down his student loan forgiveness plan in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on June 30, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

After Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action, President Biden told reporters that this isn’t a “normal court.” Asked what he meant that night on MSNBC, he said that this court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.”

Fair enough. But when the most powerful officeholder in the United States says something like that, it’s reasonable to ask what he plans to do about it. And in this case the answer seems to be . . . nothing.

The cost of doing nothing is high. Whatever you make of the relationship between the version of affirmative action the court just struck down and the broader goal of achieving a more equal society, this was yet another sign of the aggressiveness of the court’s right-wing majority. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled against Biden’s student debt relief plan.

During the MSNBC interview, Nicole Wallace asked Biden if he’d be willing to consider appointing additional justices to shift the court’s balance back in a more “normal” direction. He immediately ruled that out. “If we start the process of trying to expand the court,” Biden said, “we’re going to politicize it maybe forever in a way that is not healthy, that you can’t get back.”

The problem with this answer is that the Supreme Court has always been political. By its very nature, it’s a political institution — and a disturbingly undemocratic one.

The Supreme Court Versus Basic Rights

Attention-grabbing cases like the ones ruling against affirmative action, canceling student debt relief, and last year’s landmark overturning of Roe v. Wade are only the tip of the iceberg. Recent rulings whittling away at workers’ right to strike and weakening laws against corruption fly under the radar of casual news consumers but speak volumes about the ideological orientation of the court.

In some of these cases, the court is upholding laws. In others, they’re overturning them. But in all cases, the court is a powerful political actor. Two-thirds of the public, for example, told pollsters that they wanted Roe to stay in place. But the justices are free to disregard that supermajority.

Many people think that independence from public opinion is an unambiguously good thing. The official myth of the institution is that the justices are trying their level best to interpret the majestic ambiguities of the US Constitution in an ideologically neutral way. Anyone who believes that must think it’s an amazing coincidence that all six conservative justices signed onto Thursday’s ruling and thus effectively voted to enact a conservative policy preference (abolishing affirmative action) while all three liberals dissented. Even a casual glance at past rulings will uncover many, many such coincidences.

Why Not Pack the Court?

The obvious reality is that a constitutional lawyer who doesn’t know how to make a case for or against any of these rulings isn’t much of a constitutional lawyer. I’d note that, even in cases without the kind of strict partisan breakdown we saw in the affirmative action ruling, whichever justice or justices do dissent always come up with something to say.

Once we acknowledge that Santa and the Easter Bunny don’t exist and that justices of the US Supreme Court are political actors much like their counterparts in the other branches, the real question is why everyone should lie down and accept whatever rulings they make.

Nothing in the Constitution specifies a maximum number of justices. Congress could just decide tomorrow that twelve or fifteen is a better number than nine. President Franklin D. Roosevelt unsuccessfully proposed doing exactly that in 1937 — and while he couldn’t convince Congress to do it, his attempt may have rattled the court enough to change an important ruling. Owen Roberts had previously sided with the conservatives on the court in blocking New Deal legislation, but in the famous “switch in time that saved nine” he sided with the court’s liberals to uphold the constitutionality of minimum wage laws. Whether this switch was motivated by fear of court expansion is a historically controversial issue, but it’s at least plausible that the threat helped to nudge him in the right direction.

Biden’s stated reason for not following in FDR’s footsteps is that once the Supreme Court is “politicized” there’s no going back. If he isn’t seriously trying to suggest that the justices are ideologically neutral right now — that they’re all just earnestly trying to channel the spirits of the framers of the Constitution — then presumably it means that it’s a bad idea to openly acknowledge that the justices are political actors and unabashedly act to counteract their influence. But why not? Because Republicans will do the same? Fine. If both sides going forward are willing to throw their weight around to counteract overly aggressive court majorities, then the voters will have the ultimate say — which is how democracies are supposed to work. And if we never go back to a situation where we allow nine unelected lawyers trained at ruling-class universities like Harvard and Yale to act as a super-legislature that feels free to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, that’s a good thing.

Joe Biden is comfortable with the status quo because, even if he’d prefer a more liberal ruling here and there, he’s a centrist who values the stability of the system more than any of the policy outcomes impacted by these rulings. Anyone who wants a substantially more just society than the one we’ve already got will have other priorities.

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, written by Matthew Desmond almost a decade ago, is widely regarded as a shape-shifting force in the field of urban sociology: a must-read for academics and activists alike. In Evicted, Desmond sheds light on complex dynamics between renters and landlords, exposing the business models of landlords who […]

In the late 1920s, Washington formulated a top secret plan to invade Canada, entitled “Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan — Red”. The plan was approved by the US War Department under the presidency of Herbert Hoover in 1930.

The post Canada Day 2023: America’s Insidious Plan to Invade Canada and Bomb Montreal, Vancouver, Halifax and Quebec City (1930-39) appeared first on Global Research.

The “mutiny” of the private military company Wagner did not cause the collapse of Russia, as it was announced and hoped for by the Western political media mainstream. President Putin said that “the overwhelming majority of fighters and commanders of …

The post Russia Resists, Europe Crumbles. Manlio Dinucci appeared first on Global Research.

openDemocracy’s coverage of the war is unlike anybody else’s. That’s thanks to a small team – and they need your help

Police in North Miami Beach were called to an apartment on June 11 just before 9 p.m. after receiving multiple 911 calls. Upon arriving, they found the husband of 64-year-old Connie Cuesta distraught, claiming his wife was dead and cold to the touch. A neighbor reported loud banging and yelling earlier in the day.

At the crime scene, officers spoke with the victim’s son, Sean Cuesta, who had visible scratches on his arms and a laceration on his forehead. He was taken to the police station for an interview and admitted to having been with his mother all day, leaving between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. to buy food. He was then allowed to leave and went to an aunt’s house in Hialeah, where his strange behavior prompted his family to call authorities. Sean Cuesta was under mental health supervision through Florida’s Baker Act and was released on June 16.

After Sean Cuesta was released, he allegedly told his Aunt, “Meme, I killed my mother.” After further investigation, detectives claimed to have discovered that Sean Cuesta had gotten into a fight with his mother and hit her with multiple blunt objects, including two empty wine bottles found near the body. He also allegedly stabbed her four times in the head with a knife in his backpack. He then attempted to clean the excessive bleeding scene before showering, changing his clothes, and fleeing. He is currently in a jail cell, awaiting trial.

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Gabriel Trujillo, a 31-year-old doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, was gunned down on June 19, during a field trip to Mexico for his plant research project. Roxanne Cruz de Hoyos, Trujillo’s fiancée, reported him missing on June 17 after he crossed the Arizona border into the Sonora region for plant collection. Days after her reporting, authorities located Trujillo’s body with multiple bullet wounds in his SUV.

Anthony Trujillo, Gabriel’s father, flew from Michigan to Mexico to join Cruz de Hoyos and search for his son. The duo continues to seek assistance from the US and Mexican governments for further information on Gabriel’s untimely demise.

While the Sonora state prosecutor’s office investigates the facts and underlying causes of his death, UC Berkeley announced word of Trujillo’s death to its campus community last June 23.

Trujillo, a Michigan native was on track to graduate with a doctorate in 2025 when he was researching the common buttonbush plant. His mission was to gain new knowledge on why the plant thrived in places like the US, Canada, and Mexico and potentially apply his research results to wildlife conservation and restoration efforts.

Cruz de Hoyos created a GoFundMe page for Gabriel’s family and friends to share their fond memories of him. Cruz de Hoyos wrote on the fundraiser’s page, “Gabriel was…unfailingly kind and loving to everyone.” The couple had bought a house and looked forward to a wedding led by an Indigenous elder by the end of the year. She plans to hold a Danza Azteca ceremony, an Indigenous spiritual tradition, in the San Francisco Bay Area to honor Gabriel’s memory.

Trujillo’s family had urged him to avoid the drug-plagued area, yet he believed his trip was essential for his research. UC Berkeley’s Department of Integrative Biology wrote in an email to its campus community, “We all face a world that is less bright for this loss.” Tragically, Trujillo will never get to fulfill his ambitions of habitat conservation and garden creation. His death reminds us that we must consider the dangers of traveling to certain areas and respect Indigenous culture.

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