Daily Archives: December 7, 2021

The Supreme Court appears poised to put the country on a slope so slippery that it will make a white-iced roadway look safe to speed on, and even the triple-strong brakes of a Formula 1 race car would be unable to stop the countrys drive into yesteryear.

At Wednesdays Supreme Court hearing in Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health, Mississippis challenge to Roe v. Wade, Justice Brett Kavanaugh threw Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart a softball question. Kavanaugh asked Stewart to confirm that Mississippi is not arguing that . . . this Court has the authority to order the states to prohibit abortion. Stewart dutifully answered, Correct, Your Honor.

And so, Justice Kavanaugh queried, why should the Court not just be scrupulously neutral on the left-right battle over womens reproductive rights and the asserted right of a fetus to be born? Why not leave the decision on where to draw the line up to each state?

This seems like the tried-and-true approach of someone seemingly devoted to federalism, closely related to states rights. It was good enough for separate but equal segregation in many states up to the Courts 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and, at first glance, it appears good enough for decimating womens reproductive freedom in 2021.

Conservatives like Kavanagh love federalism until they dont. For now, it works for him, and apparently for at least four other conservative Justices. But once Roe has been consigned to the dustbin of history, the slope will soon get slippery in the extreme, and neither federalism nor states rights will stand in the way of the right wings even more aggressive, anti-abortion agenda.

There is real danger in a kind of post-Roe letdown, with women in blue states feeling secure in their rights while those living in red states are left to fend for themselves should they want to terminate a pregnancy.

Defenders of womens reproductive freedom can ill afford such a letdown or blue-state complacency. The real answer to Kavanaghs softball question about whether the Court was being asked to ban all abortions everywhere was Not yet, just wait.

The path toward such a possibility was signaled when Justice Amy Coney Barrett posited, via her questioning, that there was no grave intrusion on a womans right to choose because potential mothers use contraception to prevent pregnancy or elect adoption after. That appeared to many as insensitivity-on-prednisone.

Underlying it was the furthest thing from neutrality. It takes one of two circumstances to minimize the pain of a mother having no post-pregnancy choice but to give a born child up for adoptionone has never been in the situation or, more importantly, one believes unequivocally in the rights of the unborn.

Thats the heart of the matter. It is easy to foresee that in at least one Justices opinion if not the Courts, there will be reverential mention of those previously unrecognized rights and references, like those heard throughout the Courts oral argument, to the fetus as a person or a child.

And there will lie the iced roadway to not only the end of abortion rights in some states, but ultimately in all. For once that premise is laid in a reactionary Court, how long can it be before a reverse case is brought under the banner of what lawyers call substantive due process, asking the Court to hold that the taking of a fetal life is a constitutional violation of its 14th Amendment interest in life?

This after-Roe agenda that Kavanagh and Barrett previewed is no secret among movement conservatives. As Dan McLaughlin, a senior writer at National Review Online, ominously warned in that magazines recent issue devoted to abortion, Nobody ever said that protecting unborn life would be easy or that major cultural debates could be settled without strife . . . . Ending Roe would be, as Churchill once said, neither the end nor the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning.

Hadley Arkes, reflecting on the Dobbs oral arguments in First Things, a religious journalfoundedto confront the ideology of secularism, pointed the way to what is coming next on the post-Roe agenda when he asked, [I]f the law protects human life, why should it not also protect the small life in the womb that has never been anything less than human from its first moments?

To make sure that no one missed the point, he warned that a Court that sends things back to the stateswithout saying anything on the question of moral substance, is a Court that will leave us with no coherent sense of what this warring argument over 50 years has really been about.

McLaughlin and Arkes alert us to the fact that moving to stop all abortions is a central plank in the right wing platform to achieve post-liberal America.

And, should the Republican trifecta of 2016 recur control of the House, Senate, and White House how long can it be before there is a carve-out to the filibuster to pass a law declaring the fetus to be a person entitled to federal civil rights protection? With Republicans moving steadily to control the states apparatus for vote counting, that scenario is easy to imagine.

Now comes the ever coy, seemingly credulous Senator Susan Collins to propose the antidote: national legislation to codify Roe. She is apparently shocked! shocked! by the hearing in Dobbs.

Any objective observer could be pardoned if the phrase Too little, too late crosses her mind. Too late because Collins had her chance when she chose instead to accept at face value then-Judge Kavanaughs pablum, pre-confirmation hearing assurances that Roe was the law of the land and that he believed in stare decisis, without her insisting that he complete his pledge by saying that he would actually honor Roes precedent in abortion cases. Too little, because her new proposal would require at least a pro-reproductive choice carve-out of the filibuster, and that appears nowhere in sight.

The Supreme Court train is leaving the station. There is only one realistic rail-switch to return the law and our country to a side-track turnabout. That is to organize for the coming election.

Women and men offended by the coming decision to overturn Roe can protect womens rights by electing representatives who believe in those rights.

Those citizens should join with groups already mobilized to defend our freedom to vote and use it to protect the freedom of women to control their bodies and the autonomy and dignity of all citizens that is the hallmark of our Constitution.

Read the original post:

After Roe, The Coming Fight to End All Abortions Everywhere - Justia Verdict

As centralizing elites double down on war efforts to subjugate Tigray and reconfigure the federation, an all-inclusive dialogue appears to be the only way out.

At the root of the Tigray war is a contest over the very nature of the state.

This centuries-old struggle has most recently been played out through Prime Minister Abiy Ahmeds consolidation and centralization of power and the Tigray elitesand allies, such as pro multinational federalism forcesconsequent rejection of this.

One of the most salient facts about Ethiopias current predicament is that behind the veil of promoting nationalism, from the likes of Prime Minister Abiy, parties like Ezema, and media outlets like ESAT, lies a regressive vision and a nostalgic glorification of a violently unceremonious past.

This group of elites fulminate about and use the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) as a scapegoat. That outrage is used to mask the fact that they are undertaking another brutal war of subjugation on Tigray that would not have looked out of place during the imperial marches of the late 19th Century.

The government and people of Tigray have, however, refused to bend to Shewaas unitarist commentators like Tamerat Negerea Feyissa so dearly wish them to dobut are instead resisting the threat on the multinational order and are pushed to pursue full independence.

The overthrow of the imperial regime in 1974 and then the defeat of the Dergs dictatorship in 1991, which heralded the birth of a federal, democratic constitutional political order in 1995, should have closed the door forever to the assimilationist nation-building project.

While it is true that the protection and promotion of human and democratic rights were not as progressive as the transformative economic development registered under the EPRDF coalition, the defining feature of post-1991 Ethiopia has in fact been the recognition of diversity of culture, language, religion, and other values.

Ethiopia's ethnofederalism: fact and fiction

By Mistir Sew

This was a major progressive departure from the one culture, one language, and one religion monochromatic nation-building project of the past. But, the appointment of Abiy Ahmed as Prime Minister in 2018 opened up the space for unitarist elites to once again resume the nation-building project.

Former empires like Ethiopia, obsessed with national pride, revel in past glory but cannot envisage what lies ahead. This attachment to the imperial heyday and the violent nation-building project sowed the seeds of the ongoing war in the service of trying to maintain the national mythos.

By doing so, rather than building a diverse future, Ethiopianist elites are reinforcing the states formative defects, and will ultimately scupper the almost three-decade-old effort to transition from an empire into a republic.

Following four years of street protests, the former ruling coalition elected Abiy as its chair, and lawmakers subsequently nominated him as Prime Minister on 2 April 2018.

After admitting the EPRDFs shortcomings, Abiy pledged reform, preached unity, and pursued rapprochement with Eritrea.

This was portrayed by some as a sign of a new beginning for the multinational country. On the contrary, the last three years have resulted in a proliferation of violence. The economy has languished and the already constrained institutions have been further weakened to pave the way for de facto one-man rule, ushering the beginning of the end of the federation.

The EPRDF coalition that brought Abiy to power was the first victim of his power ambitions. Fittingly, the fundamental act of convening elections as per the constitution became the bone of contention in the Tigray-federal government dispute.

Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext, the electoral board postponed polls scheduled for 29 August 2020. As the constitution contained no provisions for such an eventuality, the House of Federation and its Council of Constitutional Inquirylargely filled with pro-federal government expertsoffered a veneer of legal authorization.

A swath of the political opposition, including veteran centrist Lidetu Ayalew, the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and the Government of Tigray, argued that the way forward should have been forged through debate between political parties because all political actors had a stake in a fragile transition.

They believed that Abiys unitarist vehicle, the Prosperity Party (PP), pushed to delay the polls, as it feared electoral loss.

Emboldened yet fearful, the Prosperity Party attempted to purge its opponents, first in Oromia and then in Tigray.

It subsequently held sham elections this year, with the participation of Ezema and other political entities that hold a similarly regressive take on Ethiopias journey away from a multinational federation to an empire, such as the National Movement of Amhara (NaMA). Some of their leaders now occupy cabinet positions, as Abiy embraces a narrow pluralism at the center while attempting to destroy the pluralistic multinational order.

In response to last years PP machinations, TPLF-led Tigray regional state exercised its interpretation of its constitutional rightsto hold elections as per the federal and Tigray constitutions. Abiys government declared the 9 September election to be null and void.

Conflict in Tigray is about TPLF, not ethnic federalism

By Teshome M Borago

After a series of escalatory measures, including delegitimization and redirecting the federal budget from Tigray, Abiy mobilized forces internally. He also plotted to subjugate Tigray with Eritreas unitarist autocrat, who hates both the TPLF leaders and power-sharing federalism.

More than one year into the war in Tigraya war conducted by the Ethiopian and Eritrean armies, Amhara militias and special forces, and other regional partnersthe people of Tigray are once more under a siege, and therefore still fighting for their right to survive.

Despite the narrative created around the establishment of an elected government, it does little to bolster Abiys legitimacy internally, while jittery external actors like the United States and European Union are focused more on the countrys overall stability and the brutal conduct of the war.

Now, living out its regressive vision, the same regime under the guise of a new government looks set to alter the constitution with the participation of like-minded elites.

They will do this after violating the existing constitution as the Amhara region violently occupied western Tigray, leading to atrocities and the mass expulsion of Tigrayans. Bahir Dar now claims to have altered the administrative boundaries of the Amhara region.

Yet, the constitution could not be clearer.

Under Article 48, it states that: all state border disputes shall be settled by agreement of the concerned States. Where the concerned States fail to reach an agreement, the House of Federation shall decide such disputes on the basis of settlement patterns and the wishes of the peoples concerned.

We must end the civil war to save Ethiopia

By Moges Zewdu Teshome

Amhara irredentists lay claim to an area that has been occupied predominantly by Tigrayans, so the real problem for them was that any fair and constitutionally mandated self-determination procedure would have inevitably reached a decision that would not be in their favor.

Constitutionally mandated rights concerning ethnic rights and self-determination such as Article 39 cannot be amended without the agreement of all regional states. But, disenfranchised and blockaded Tigray is not in a position to influence decisions made at the center pertaining to changes that would effectively dissolve the federation as we know it.

Foreign actors are largely paralyzed by geopolitical interests, but they are right to insist on an all-inclusive dialogue as the only mechanism to regulate the future of Ethiopia within the existing constitutional framework.

Cognizant that the political elites have consistently viewed a democratic order as an existential threat, there now appears to be a vanishingly slim prospect of Ethiopia transforming into a democratic republic that aptly entertains internal diversity, which is the minimum threshold for its survival.

Yet, a belated convening of that all-inclusive dialogue could at least mitigate the disorder and perhaps smooth the process of fragmentation.

Query or correction? Email us

Published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. Cite Ethiopia Insight and link to this page if republished.

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Irreconcilable aspirations: A regressive Ethiopian vision spells the end of the republic - Ethiopia Insight

Image by Seth Jaworski

Border closures should not become a political issue as the federal election nears in May, industry leaders have said at an aviation summit on Tuesday.

The ACTs Chief Minister for Tourism Andrew Barr said that Prime Minister Scott Morrison cannot win a fight with state premiers over border closures, as states scramble to deal with the Omicron variant.

His comments were made at the first in-person CAPA aviation summit since the pandemic with other industry leaders, in response to a question about whether the election would impact decisions on border closures.

Theres not a lot of political advantage in trying to heavily politicize the closures, he said. At this point, everyones largely announced a timeframe.

I think weve been through that debate; the more vaccinated the community is, the safer it will be [and] the less politics there is in border opening and closing.

Minister Barr said continuing a relentless approach on encouraging vaccinations would lead to border closures becoming a last resort.

While Prime Minister Scott Morrison pledged to end lockdowns and begin the process of borders being reopened by 80 per cent double vaccinations in late July, state premiers ultimately had the final say, which has remained a heavily debated topic.

Dave Sharma, a New South Wales MP said at the summit it is a constitutional reality that states have more control when it comes to borders.

I cant tell you how many people always come to me and say, but why dont you just override the state, or why cant you tell Queensland to open their borders? but the constitution is pretty clear on this.

He said premiers dont want to feel like theyre punishing their voters, as some states open up while others stay closed, but it is good competitive federalism.

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Thats how you want federalism to work; one state leads the way or starts to reform or starts to do differently, and other states seem to fall behind.

He said at a federal level he does not believe borders should be a big political issue.

The aviation industry has suffered greatly from border closures over the past two years, and nations across the globe have continued to disagree over whether they are an effective method to stop the spread.

The South African president Cyril Ramaphosa said the slammed borders on its nation as the Omicron variant emerged would ruin its economy and further damage its recovery from the pandemic.

But Mary-Louise Mclaws, an epidemiologist at the University of NSW and an adviser at the World Health Organisation said at the summit Australias approach to border closures is not wrong.

From a public health, pandemic perspective, closing borders works because while youre closing borders, you are then trying to get your community safe, she said.

She said that during the SARS virus, many argued the impacts of lockdowns and border closures on the economy was too significant, but she believes public health outweighs all other factors.

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Tourism minister says theres no advantage in politicising border closures - Australian Aviation