* From the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia:
A former Bosnian Serb leader was found guilty of genocide and other charges on Thursday for his role in deadly campaigns during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, including the massacres of thousands in Srebrenica, as an international tribunal announced a long-awaited reckoning in Europe’s bloodiest chapter since World War II.
Radovan Karadzic was found guilty of 10 charges that touched on many of the atrocities and ethnic-cleansing policies that stunned the world as Bosnia became a crucible for the rivalries and fears that tore apart Yugoslavia.
Among the findings against Karadzic involved the worst systematic slaughter of the war: the slayings of 8,000 Muslim men and boys outside the Srebrenica enclave near the close of the three-year Bosnian conflict.
* In order to understand the ISIS attack in Brussels, it might be important to understand what is happening to them in Syria and Iraq.
As European governments scramble to contain the expanding terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State, on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria the group is a rapidly diminishing force.
In the latest setbacks for the militants on Thursday, Syrian government troops entered the outskirts of the historic town of Palmyra after a weeks-old offensive aided by Russian airstrikes, and U.S. airstrikes helped Iraqi forces overrun a string of Islamic State villages in northern Iraq that had been threatening a U.S. base nearby.
These are just two of the many fronts in both countries where the militants are being squeezed, stretched and pushed back. Nowhere are they on the attack. They have not embarked on a successful offensive in nearly nine months. Their leaders are dying in U.S. strikes at the rate of one every three days, inhibiting their ability to launch attacks, according to U.S. military officials.
Front-line commanders no longer speak of a scarily formidable foe but of defenses that crumble within days and fighters who flee at the first sign they are under attack.
* You might remember that initially the strategy of Majority Leader McConnell to deal with President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee was to issue three no’s: no meetings, no hearings, no vote. The “no meetings” has been crumbling sporadically. But now there are some major cracks in the wall McConnell tried to build against “no hearings:”
A third Republican senator broke with party leadership this week to say that Supreme Court nominee Merrick B. Garland ought to be granted hearings, according to a news report.
The Garden City Telegram reported that Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) told a small group gathered in a Cimarron, Kan., courthouse on Monday that GOP senators “should interview Garland and have a hearing on his nomination,” in the paper’s words…
Moran joins Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) in favoring hearings. Kirk has also called for an up-or-down vote on Garland.
It’s worth noting that all three of those Senators are up for re-election in November.
* Gov. Nathan Dean of Georgia is learning what it means to walk in the shoes of Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana. The GA legislators passed their own version of a religious liberties act and the business community (starting with the movie industry) is threatening to boycott the state if the Governor signs the bill. Dean has until May 3rd to decide. But as Ed Kilgore points out – the stakes just got raised.
The National Football League on Friday joined hundreds of businesses in weighing in on a bill Georgia lawmakers passed this week that would grant religious organizations the right to deny employment based on an individual’s religious beliefs or practices or deny use of facilities for events the organization finds objectionable. Opponents, including gay rights supporters and many large corporations, have described the bill as discriminatory.
Should Gov. Nathan Deal sign the bill into law, it could affect Atlanta’s chances at hosting the Super Bowl, the league suggested in a statement.
Yowza! As Kilgore says, “Hollywood is influential in Georgia. But football is holy.”
* While I don’t necessarily agree entirely with how this author characterizes Trump and Sanders, I think she makes some excellent points in Talking About Revolutions.
The path to revolution assumes that you can impose on a nation radical change. This radical change assumes that you have a majority of the people with you and that somehow the other side will not resist. The other side will succumb to your will because your will is the right one for your nation. Sure, revolutions have passion, fervor and zeal. But, they are short lived and divisive. When the other side resists, and it will, how will you deal with them and sustain the vision of the revolution? Revolutions are not sustainable, democracies are…
You cannot eviscerate the others in your society and impose your world view. The fight is against passivity and avoidance of the daily struggle that is democracy. I never chose revolution because I do not believe you can eviscerate the other side through democracy, only violence, repression and suppresion. And I would never choose that path.
So, if we are talking about revolutions, count me out.
* Finally, that last one is a good reminder that the young fella with the long hair back in 1968 knew a thing or two about this world.
