Lavrov’s anti-Semitic outburst exposes absurdity of Russia’s ‘Nazi Ukraine’ claims

Lavrov’s anti-Semitic outburst exposes absurdity of Russia’s ‘Nazi Ukraine’ claims

Peter Dickinson writes: The Russian Foreign Minister’s very public descent into the squalid depths of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories highlights the mounting difficulties facing the Putin regime as it attempts to justify the war in Ukraine. Officially, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that the aim of his “special military operation” in Ukraine is to “de-Nazify” the country. However, neither Putin nor any of his colleagues have been able explain exactly why they regard Ukraine as “Nazified.” Instead, they have relied…

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Russia is losing on the electronic battlefield

Russia is losing on the electronic battlefield

David Ignatius writes: Among Russia’s most costly mistakes when it invaded Ukraine was the expectation that it would dominate the electronic warfare part of the battle. Instead, Russia has stumbled and lost its way in the little-known realm of intercepting and jamming communications, an increasingly essential element of military success. Russia’s unexpected failure on the electronic battlefield offers a case study in what has gone wrong for Moscow since the invasion began Feb. 24. The Russians overestimated their own capabilities,…

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The Constitution makes no reference to women. That’s a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor

The Constitution makes no reference to women. That’s a problem to remedy, not a precedent to honor

Jill Lepore writes: Within a matter of months, women in about half of the United States may be breaking the law if they decide to end a pregnancy. This will be, in large part, because Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is surprised that there is so little written about abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787. As it happens, there is also nothing at all in that document, which sets out fundamental law, about pregnancy, uteruses,…

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How Justice Alito is like Donald Trump

How Justice Alito is like Donald Trump

Norman Eisen and Colby Galliher write: For all the seeming chaos of his administration, Donald Trump actually had a philosophy of governance, one grounded in assaulting the rule of law, ethics, and truth itself: Trumpery. In a new book, we warn that with Trump out of office, the greatest danger posed by Trumpery is that others will adopt it. Now that has apparently happened at the Supreme Court, as reflected in Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade….

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It was time for someone to puncture the Supreme Court’s veil of secrecy

It was time for someone to puncture the Supreme Court’s veil of secrecy

Jack Shafer writes: Although the justices are political appointees, the court pretends to rise above politics. It conducts its work under a veil and depends on the press to fetishize the mysteries of the temple. It derives its authority not from the people but from the cosmos, the court’s deifiers would have you believe. Hence the robes that rival Batman’s cape, the court’s ban on cameras and the grand edifice from which it hands down its rulings. But this exalted…

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Indian court rules nature has legal status on par with humans. We are required to protect it

Indian court rules nature has legal status on par with humans. We are required to protect it

Inside Climate News reports: The highest court in one of India’s 28 states ruled last month that “Mother Nature” has the same legal status as a human being, which includes “all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person.” The decision from Madras High Court, located in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, also said that the natural environment is part of the human right to life, and that humans have an environmental duty to future generations. “The past…

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This is the work of an emboldened, radically conservative majority

This is the work of an emboldened, radically conservative majority

Mary Ziegler writes: Something fundamental about the Supreme Court has changed in recent months. It is not simply that the Court has a conservative supermajority, although that is true enough. What is really striking is just how emboldened that conservative supermajority is—how willing to take on a number of deeply divisive culture-war issues; how blasé about making major decisions via the Court’s shadow docket; how open to making rapid, profound changes to long-standing precedent. Last night, when Politico released a…

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The Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already lost

The Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already lost

Dahlia Lithwick writes: If the Supreme Court indeed strikes down Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey this June, as the draft opinion leaked to and published by Politico tonight suggests it will, years of conventional wisdom about the court and its concerns for its own legitimacy will be proved wrong. Every single court watcher who spoke in terms of baby steps, incrementalism, or “chipping away” at one of the most vitally important precedents in modern history will have…

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Europe is in danger, as always

Europe is in danger, as always

Caroline de Gruyter writes: In July 2020, along with European officials and experts, I was asked to take part in a policy game. Convened by a German think tank, we were asked to play out what would happen if either Matteo Salvini or Marine Le Pen, the far-right leaders in Italy and France, came to power. We spent a few hours frenziedly debating how the European Union would respond to each occurrence. Of one thing we were sure: It would…

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The climate movement in its own way

The climate movement in its own way

Charles Komanoff writes: After decades of critically documenting nuclear power’s outsize costs, I finally admitted to myself that the carbon-reduction benefits from continuing to run US nuclear plants are substantial, and in some respects irreplaceable. I made the case for keeping them open in an April article on TheNation.com. Closing New York’s Indian Point reactors last year was a climate blunder, I wrote. Not just because fracked gas is now filling the breach, but because the need to replace the…

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‘We are living in hell’: Pakistan and India suffer extreme spring heatwaves

‘We are living in hell’: Pakistan and India suffer extreme spring heatwaves

The Guardian reports: For the past few weeks, Nazeer Ahmed has been living in one of the hottest places on Earth. As a brutal heatwave has swept across India and Pakistan, his home in Turbat, in Pakistan’s Balochistan region, has been suffering through weeks of temperatures that have repeatedly hit almost 50C (122F), unprecedented for this time of year. Locals have been driven into their homes, unable to work except during the cooler night hours, and are facing critical shortages…

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The bustling neighbourhoods at the heart of cities throughout the ages

The bustling neighbourhoods at the heart of cities throughout the ages

Michael E Smith writes: All cities have neighbourhoods. This may not sound like much of an observation, but it is in fact a powerful claim for archaeologists of early cities. We now know that neighbourhoods are the only true urban universal – a feature found in every city that has ever existed, past and present. Other seemingly ‘urban’ traits, from streets and big buildings to markets and specialists, are absent from many cities and urban traditions. But neighbourhoods are playing…

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The universe could stop expanding ‘remarkably soon’, study suggests

The universe could stop expanding ‘remarkably soon’, study suggests

Live Science reports: After nearly 13.8 billion years of nonstop expansion, the universe could soon grind to a standstill, then slowly start to contract, new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests. In the new paper, three scientists attempt to model the nature of dark energy — a mysterious force that seems to be causing the universe to expand ever faster — based on past observations of cosmic expansion. In the team’s model, dark…

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Russia’s longstanding disdain for Ukrainian nationhood

Russia’s longstanding disdain for Ukrainian nationhood

Yaroslav Trofimov writes: As a young poet in the Soviet Union, Joseph Brodsky was persecuted by the authorities before escaping to the U.S. in 1972 and going on to win the Nobel Prize in literature. In Soviet-era Kyiv, Ukrainian intellectuals used to trade coveted samizdat reprints of Brodsky’s poems, reciting them at clandestine gatherings. But the affection wasn’t mutual. At a reading in 1992, less than a year into Ukraine’s existence as an independent nation, Brodsky offered a new poem…

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