U.S. Navy to Name Ship After Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

U.S. Navy to Name Ship After Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

The ship, a replenishment oiler, is designed to carry fuel to the Navy’s operating carrier strike groups.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court Justice who fought for women’s rights for more than a half century before her death in 2020, will have a U.S. Navy ship named after her, military officials said on Thursday.

The U.S.N.S. Ruth Bader Ginsburg (T-AO 212), which has not yet been constructed, will be a John Lewis-class replenishment oiler ship designed to carry fuel to the Navy’s operating carrier strike groups, the Navy said in a news release.

The class and lead ship, T-AO 205, is named in honor of Representative John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, who died in July 2020. Mr. Lewis was a stalwart of the civil rights movement and the last surviving speaker from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.

All of the ships in this class follow a naming convention honoring leaders who have fought for civil and human rights. Other ships in the class are named after Harvey Milk Robert F. Kennedy, the abolitionists Lucy Stone and Sojourner Truth, and two other former members of the Supreme Court: Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall.

The oiler ships measure 742 feet long and have the ability to carry up to 162,000 barrels of oil with expansive dry cargo capacity, aviation capability and a speed of 20 knots, the Navy said.

“She is a historic figure who vigorously advocated for women’s rights and gender equality,” Carlos Del Toro, the secretary of the Navy, said in a statement about Justice Ginsburg. “It is my aim to ensure equality and eliminate gender discrimination across the Department of the Navy. She is instrumental to why we now have women of all backgrounds, experiences and talents serving within our ranks, side by side with their male Sailor and Marine counterparts.”

This will be the first U.S. Navy ship to bear Justice Ginsburg’s name and is sponsored by her daughter, Jane Ginsburg. (A sponsor typically attends key events for and maintains close ties with the ship, a spokesman for Navy said.)

Justice Ginsburg died from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer in September 2020 at age 87. She was the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

She developed a rock-star following in her later years and became an unlikely cultural icon to a much younger generation. A law student, Shana Knizhnik, anointed her the Notorious R.B.G, a play on the name of the Notorious B.I.G., the famous rapper who was Brooklyn-born, like the justice. Soon the name, and Justice Ginsburg’s image — complete with a frilly lace collar — became a cultural fixture.

It was announced this week that her famous “dissent” collar, along with other items related to her tenure on the court, including a judicial robe, are being donated to the Smithsonian’s national Museum of American History.  The donation by her family coincides with the museum’s decision to award Justice Ginsburg its signature honor, the Great Americans Medal.

Before taking her seat on the Supreme Court in 1993, she had argued six cases before the court from 1973 to 1978, winning five.

Although Justice Ginsburg delivered numerous noteworthy opinions in her career on the court, one of her more notable came in 1996 when she wrote for the majority in United States v. Virginia, a case that opened doors for women to enter Virginia Military Institute.

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Rwandese court sentences Kagame’s opponent to 25 years in prison

The Rwandan prosecutors’ appeal of the verdict in Hotel Rwanda humanitarian Paul Rusesabagina’s Sham Trial concluded today in Kigali. The Court of Appeal chose to maintain the original 25 year sentence for the 67 year old Rusesabagina, which means that he will still die in prison.

While it is positive that the politicized trial process is finally over, the fact that this appeal by the prosecutors even happened adds insult to injury for a man who is only in jail because of his humanitarian work and criticism of the human rights record of the Rwandan government.

Why did the Rwandan prosecutors even go forward with an appeal to what was already effectively a life sentence? Only President Kagame and his prosecutors can tell us for sure.

International observers made it clear that Rusesabagina’s show trial had nothing to do with the law. Rather this was really all about silencing his dissent and sending a chilling message to other critics. The appeal is just more of the same.

The world needs to remember – trials of critics and perceived political opponents in Rwanda have very little to do with the law, and everything to do with politics and sending a message to others who might dissent.

It should be noted that since Paul Rusesabagina’s arrest, dozens more human rights activists, journalists and dissenters have disappeared, died or been detained for speaking out about the Kagame government transgressions.

A recent Opinion by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, combined with the report released earlier today by the Clooney Foundation’s TrialWatch group, make it clear that Rusesabagina’s human rights and trial rights have been denied by the Rwandan government at every opportunity.

Today’s result is meaningless, because Paul Rusesabagina’s health is rapidly deteriorating with every day that passes and he will die in prison without international support.

The United Nations, European Union, members of the US Congress and UK Parliament and many others have all called for his immediate release on compassionate grounds. It is critical that this happens soon.

 

In 2005, Paul Rusesabagina was a receipient of a Medal of Freedom from president George W. Bush and was hailed globally as a hero. But in August 2020 he was apparently kidnapped from the United Arab Emirates to Rwanda.

Paul Rusesabagina thought he was heading to Burundi when he boarded an airplane in the United Arab Emirates on the night of Aug. 27, 2020. But the 66-year-old former hotelier, who inspired the acclaimed 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda,” landed behind bars in Rwanda’s capital.

Rusesabagina’s whereabouts were unknown for several days until Rwandan authorities paraded him in handcuffs during a press conference in Kigali on Aug. 31. Rusesabagina’s adopted daughters, Anaise and Carine Kanimba, were together in Washington, D.C., when they got a telephone call from their brother, telling them about their father’s arrest.

DNT News, Kigali

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The French election is just two weeks away: Russia’s invasion is overshadowing the vote

With the first round of voting in France’s presidential election less than two weeks away, the political debate is heavily influenced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Far-right political leaders have suffered a setback in opinion polls for their links to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin while incumbent Emmanuel Macron has been criticized for being absent from the political campaign as he tries to deal with the geopolitical crisis on the continent. And, above all, the war in Ukraine has pushed up energy and food prices across Europe — fueling concerns also in France about the cost of living.

“This campaign is strange but special in a way,” Clement Beaune, France’s minister for European affairs and supporter of Macron told Charlotte Reed.

He added that when Macron was elected for the first time in 2017, people did not know him or his platform. “Now the French people know him. People know what his DNA is about,” he said, explaining why the president has not been campaigning as much as five years ago.

At the same time, he added, “people would not expect him or like him to be absent, to be absorbed by rallies, campaigning himself so basically he needs to be president.”

Macron is the European leader that speaks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin the most and has tried to act as a bridge between Moscow and Kyiv and attempts to reach a ceasefire.

Opinion polls predict that Macron will receive 28% of the public’s support in the first round of voting, due to take place on April 10. This is followed by anti-immigrant party leader Marine Le Pen at 19% and by the far-left political veteran Jean-Luc Mélenchon at 14%, according to Poll of Polls.

The same polls suggested prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 that Macron was going to win the first round with 25% and Le Pen would come second with 17% of the votes. The European security crisis that ensued pushed public support for Macron to 30% before coming down to the current 28%.

“Emmanuel Macron maintains a clear lead over his challengers. However, the initial boost in support for him after Putin started his invasion of Ukraine has largely worn off,” Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Barenberg, said in a note Monday.

Nonetheless, the expectation for now is that Macron will be re-elected after a second round of voting on April 24.

“Although the pandemic has slowed down his reform momentum temporarily and contributed to a significant shift away from fiscal consolidation, we maintain our long-held call that France is heading for a golden decade of faster trend growth,” Schmieding also said, based on the economic reforms that Macron has put forward both as economy minister and then as president of France.

For the far-right, the tables have turned in the wake of the invasion. Eric Zemmour, a new face in French political scene, dropped 4 percentage points in opinion polls and is now seen to be outside of the top three candidates in the first round.

Zemmour has said that Ukrainian refugees with links to France should receive visas, but defended different rules for asylum seekers based on their religion. Prior to becoming a candidate, Zemmour also said that he would like a “French Putin” to lead the nation.

Marine Le Pen, running for a third time in France’s presidential vote, has regained some political support for her comments on the cost of living and her more moderate comments on the European Union, but she also faced an initial embarrassment in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Her anti-immigrant party not only received funds from Russian banks, back in 2014, but she also printed a number of campaign flyers with a photo of herself and President Putin — which have now reportedly been binned.

“The (European) skepticism is not the same as it was five years ago,” Beaune said; in comparison with the 2017 election.

The deep reality is that people want Europe to survive, especially now against a backdrop war, he added.

Macron is once again campaigning on a pro-European platform and has used the war in Ukraine to get backing from other European leaders for some of his long-term policy aims, notably a more independent security policy for the bloc.

88% of French voters said they are worried about the situation in Ukraine in a poll shared by Ifop Monday. However, only 40% of respondents said that this would likely influence their vote in the first round of the French election.

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