#a nation having a state of democracy and freedom of choice within it's own borders is irrelevant

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

trying to talk about What's Happening and hearing "b-but israel is one of the only other DEMOCRACIES!!!!!" and having to restrain yourself because you're thinking. Who The Fuck Cares

[mariacallous]

We used to live in a world where large-scale conventional wars that left thousands of dead and wounded existed only in video games and books. A world where mutually beneficial commercial activity was guaranteed by a global security order, to which the world’s leading nations adhered in exchange for membership in a shared civilization. A world trending irreversibly toward liberal democracy.

Russia’s war of choice shattered these assumptions. In the heart of Europe, at least 18,000 civilians are dead, 14.5 million displaced, and thousands more tortured, mutilated, forcefully resettled. The trauma and misfortune Russia has wrought, unprovoked, on Ukraine is akin to those depicted in the tragedies of antiquity—advanced weapons such as drones and missiles notwithstanding. The barbarity of Russian warfare defies everything modernity stands for.

When this war is over, though, there is still hope that Ukraine will take its place in a brighter and honorable future, earned through the heroism of its people. The same cannot be said for Russia, which now finds itself staring down the inevitable black hole of its future.

I came of age as the borders of the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia embraced the West. I was one of those euphoric young Russians standing amid the ruins of communism, looking forward to a life free of ideology, oppression, and untruths. Back then, it seemed that after a decades-long totalitarian detour, Russia had finally found its true path—that of a free, democratic country. Now I’m forced to revise, yet again, my assumptions about what Russia is and what it will become.

This time, I, like many others, struggle to see any light in Russia’s future. I asked a group of military experts, sociologists, journalists, and economists who think about Russia professionally to help me envision the future. If there’s any agreement among them, it is that Russia as we knew it—a semi-mythical Eurasian nation that, according to its own lore, had saved the world from the Mongols and Nazis, endured a communist experiment, and then reunited itself with the West—is no longer there. Should Russia endure as a state within its current borders, we might as well come up with a new name for it.

So deep is the country’s malaise that even Russian President Vladimir Putin’s exit from the Russian political stage, whenever it occurs, is unlikely to change the country’s current trajectory. Too many red lines have been crossed, too many points of no return passed. Increasingly lawless, economically doomed, and morally bankrupt, Russia is running out of good endings, as though caught in a reenactment of its own sad folk tale in which the only choices available to the protagonist are to lose his horse, lose his life, or lose his soul.

War is a great catalyzer: It sharpens trends already in place and hastens their inevitable denouement. Russia’s descent into authoritarianism started a long time ago, but until Feb. 24, 2022, Putin felt compelled to at least maintain the semblance of a managed democracy.

Not anymore. “War has accelerated Russia’s descent from autocracy and into a totalitarian state,” said Mark Feygin, a former Russian opposition politician and lawyer who now runs a popular YouTube channel tracking the war. Russians’ two remaining freedoms—the ability to leave the country and to access alternative sources of information—can be shut down at any moment. Lev Gudkov, a prominent Moscow-based sociologist and director of Russia’s last independent pollster, the Levada-Center, described Putin’s regime as “totalitarianism 2.0,” under which key repressive instruments of the Soviet Union, including a politicized police force, subservient courts, and media censorship, have been reinstituted in a reversal of 1990s liberalism.

One clear break from its Soviet past is the Kremlin’s willingness to operate outside of any legal boundaries, or even its own societal norms. The distance between prison and success has always been short in Russia, but Russia today is a country where private individuals such as Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the infamous Wagner Group, can recruit convicts, arm them with weapons supplied by the Russian Ministry of Defense, and throw them to the frontlines. Those who manage to survive are granted amnesty and hailed as heroes, despite their criminal pasts.

Exiled businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man before Putin imprisoned him, said Putin had “reset the rules of the game towards pure violence.” Russians never expected much from their historically weak legal system, but now they can be punished outside of the court of law in a positively medieval fashion.

This brutal “justice” isn’t limited by Russia’s borders, or battlefield lines. In case it wasn’t already clear by the poisoning of Alexey Navalny or Sergei Skripal, Russian agents’ suspected involvement in the recent Spanish letter bomb campaign—whose targets included the Spanish prime and defense ministers, and foreign diplomats—is yet another indication that Russia will resort to terrorism to achieve its goals, a hallmark of a failed state.

Whatever Russia emerges after the war, it won’t be the Russia of Chekhov and Dostoyevsky, the country that once tantalized Western intellectuals with its perennial quest for meaning and capacity for the sublime. It will be a country of warlords and criminals, where force is the only argument and crimes are not crimes so long as they are committed for the Motherland.

If this metamorphosis worries Russians, they show few signs of it. Having once considered themselves part of a peace-loving nation that picks up arms only to defend itself, the population has now closed ranks around its war-waging president. “If at the start of the invasion we saw fear and disorientation, towards the end of 2022 our polls showed increased public support for the authorities,” Gudkov told me.

In a repressive state, polls may not accurately reflect the true sentiment behind perfunctory answers, and samples may be biased towards pro-government participants, because those who don’t agree are afraid to participate. But they do indicate an overall trend. Of the 72 percent indicating their support for the government, 20 to 25 percent are actively pro-war—either because they have bought into Putin’s ressentiment narrative or been convinced that Russia really is surrounded by enemies. Propaganda pours daily from every TV screen in the country, and it is effective in manufacturing a form of organized mass consensus.

Many Russians likely share some psychological propensity to justify the war because if what they believe—that their country is engaged in a righteous war against forces of evil—is untrue, then the alternative is being complicit in, and thus culpable for, its crimes. Still, the majority may simply be afraid to protest given the scale of repression they experience and the regime’s track record of brutality against dissenters. “People feel impotent to influence the regime, so they adapt,” said Mikhail Fishman, a Russian independent journalist and host of a popular analytical show that is blocked in Russia.

As economic conditions worsen, Russians will simply be told to tighten their belts further and make sacrifices for Russia’s “great victory.” Those sacrifices won’t be small. Sergei Guriev, a professor of economics at Sciences Po in Paris, warned of the “catastrophic” economic impact of Western sanctions on the Russian oil and gas sector, the main source of funding for the federal budget.

Equally bad for Russia’s economic prospects is its unprecedented brain drain. Since the start of the invasion, more than a million people, or 1.5 percent of the country’s labor force, have fled. Whether afraid of being drafted or repulsed by Putin’s war against a nation with which Russia shares centuries of common past, those who leave tend to be more educated and productive. Their absence will prevent Russia from developing knowledge-based industries or diversifying from an oil- and gas-based economy in the future. Likely a long-term pariah state, Russia will continue to be cut off from cross-border trade and investment while it hemorrhages cash and resources into a bottomless war effort—instead of, say, schools or hospitals. Taken together, these trends indicate a bleak economic future, the brunt of which will be carried by the Russian people. The only trajectory available to their country is that of irreversible economic decline.

What of the Russian elites, whose hedonistic pre-war lifestyles, replete with yachts and villas on the French Riviera, are a far cry from the stringent demands imposed by their boss? They can’t be happy, yet there have been no high-profile government resignations or criticisms of the war from this group. The oligarchs, too, are silent, even though many have ended up under Western sanctions. “Putin has done a lot to make sure they all know he can persecute any lack of loyalty,” Guriev said. According to Gudkov’s data, 12 percent of Russia’s high-ranking officials have been arrested over the past five to six years.

This reality creates the same mood of fear among elites as it does among regular people. Arkady Babchenko, a journalist who staged his own death to thwart an alleged assassination plot by Russian security services, put it more bluntly: “Anyone showing dissent will simply fall out of the window”—a nod to a string of unexplained deaths of Russian businessmen over the past few months. “Putin rules Russia as if with a joystick,” Babchenko said. “It’ll go wherever he turns it.”

Lawless, declining in population and talent, and stuck in a resource-draining war against the collective West, it’s difficult to avoid the question much longer: Can Russia survive as a state? Many experts—and a growing portion of world leaders—think not.

Retired U.S. Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, told me that the West should be preparing for the federation’s imminent breakup. What—or who—would emerge after the current regime is anyone’s guess, he said. “The Kremlin has always been opaque, but in the old days we knew who the next three or four guys were,” Hodges said. “Now I don’t think anybody has confidence in what would regime change look like.”

If the breakup is imminent, how soon will it come? In an assessment created for the U.S. military a few years ago, Alexander Vindman, former director for European affairs for the U.S. National Security Council, forecasted Russia’s decline over the course of decades; now, the calculus has shifted to years. It’s possible, he said, that the beginning of Russia’s breakup may be seen in the next five to 10 years, particularly on the state’s margins. Vindman has studied Russia for years, but even for him it is hard “to break out of the confines of the notion that Russia will always be there, that it’s an enduring state,” he said.

Unlikely as Russia’s disintegration might sound, breaking the country into national “successor states” may be the only way to put an end to its pattern of predatory, consumptive despotism against its neighbors. For centuries, Russia has cast itself as a metropole, and its playbook for success has been based on the contributions of its provinces and republics, which act as an economic engine and talent farm for Moscow. That arrangement collapsed in 1991, and since then, Russia has failed to replace it with a more sustainable or productive model. It can’t quite shake its raiding mentality.

Alexander Etkind, a historian at the European University Institute, thinks in terms of “de-federalization,” a process in which Russia’s ethnic regions sue for sovereignty to reclaim their wealth. Most of Russia’s oil and gas, Etkind said, is extracted in two autonomous ethnic regions in Siberia: Yamalo-Nenets and Khanty-Mansi. From there, oil and gas are piped to Europe, but the hundreds of billions of dollars of profit go to Moscow, which then doles out payments to its regions. Disruption of that model by Western sanctions may prompt resource-rich regions to challenge Moscow’s control. Why can’t the Republic of Sakha sell its diamonds itself? Why does the Chechen Republic need a battled, isolated Moscow to sell its oil?

In the post-colonial world, Russia’s modus operandi of plundering territories in its domain is not only amoral but outdated. “The problem with the Russian empire,” Feygin said, “is that it doesn’t produce anything. Let it finish falling apart.”

Can anything be built on the territory once called Russia that isn’t a prison? Despite the country’s failure to do so in 1917 and 1991, Khodorkovsky—the exiled businessman and head of the Open Russia opposition coalition—believes that Russia could be rebuilt as a parliamentary republic. In his manifesto How Do You Slay a Dragon?, a riff on the anti-totalitarianism fable by Soviet writer Evgeny Schwartz, Khodorkovsky sees the transition to a decentralized, de-personified parliamentary model with self-governed regions as a way for Russia to break free of its autocratic curse. The idea seems to be shared among other opposition politicians, including Navalny and Ilya Yashin, both of whom are now in prison. A change of this magnitude, however, will require a radical overhaul of Russia’s entrenched bureaucracy and a way out of the inertia inherent to a country of Russia’s size.

This and any other remotely optimistic scenario for Russia have one important condition: Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat. Though in the short term, likely the next two to three years, the defeat would only lead to more repression, it would weaken Putin politically and open the possibility for change. That doesn’t mean there will be a revolution. Russian people have long abandoned attempts to influence their government (elections in Russia are “managed” from above, just like everything else), but a more moderate faction within Russia’s current ruling elite may be able to steer the regime toward a lite version of Khrushchev’s Thaw, the period of relative liberalization that followed denunciation of Stalin’s terror. It could even be that, after a temporary revanchist swing toward “national patriots,” a democratic coalition would get another chance at rebuilding Russia, as is the hope of Khodorkovsky.

It isn’t clear, though, how eager Putin’s elite will be to give up their wealth or even freedom, as they’re likely to someday face criminal charges for their involvement in his war. Just as Putin was once the guarantor of their wealth, his rule may be their only chance to avoid persecution.

Putin may even convince his underlings that being shunned by the West is not the end of the world and that money, the raison d’être of his regime, can be made elsewhere. Russia still has plenty of sympathizers who see it as a counterweight to U.S. hegemony. The unfolding geopolitical realignment may even weaken the effect of Western sanctions, as Russia could switch its supply sources and develop alternative markets for its oil, gas, and other natural resources.

One year into the invasion, with Russian casualties mounting, it is clear Putin has decided to win this war no matter the cost. He’s urgently switched Russia’s economy onto military tracks and directed factories to work day and night to produce artillery shells and guns. The Russian army is expected to mobilize more troops in the spring. They may be untrained and unequipped, but they will still be thousands of men thrown into a fight.

Drawing out this war is Putin’s only hope, Hodges says. Today, Western support for Ukraine is strong. Yet it is not inconceivable that if the war goes on for too long, at some point the West may be forced to address other pressing domestic or international issues instead. In this less hopeful scenario, a battered and outnumbered Ukraine will be forced to negotiate. And Putin’s regime will be allowed to survive, regroup, and pursue its next target.

There seem to be three paths available for a post-war Russia under Putin or whomever may succeed him: break up into smaller pieces, turn further toward tyranny to keep what’s left of the realm together, or endure a long period of slow decline.

The common thread in all three is violence. A breakup means re-distribution of power and assets, which won’t happen peacefully. A weakened, anachronistic empire, whether in its tyrannical or slow decline incarnation, means a Russia severed from its foundational myths and struggling to stay economically relevant—a dark, unpromising place.

This is a far cry from the Russia that people shaped by perestroika had hoped for. Instead, Russia has become a democracy supernova that never fulfilled its promise, collapsing in on itself, spreading death and destruction to those within its orbit.

But nothing lasts forever, not even a black hole. The decline is slow, but one day a black hole runs out of matter to consume and starts losing its mass, exhaling tiny particles back into the universe. They escape faster and faster, until the black hole’s center is small and unstable. In the final tenth of a second of its long life, all that is left evacuates at once in a huge flash of light and energy. What was once thought to be eternal becomes a memory.

No one—not the best experts, the Kremlin’s innermost circle, or even Putin himself—can predict conclusively whether Russia’s own demise will come in the form of a huge explosion, a slow decay, or some combination of the two. But after years of consuming and destroying all the light in its path, perhaps the bigger question is whether Putin’s Russia can transform what it has consumed into something viable.

For Russia itself, Ukraine’s victory may be the only chance. In the words of Gudkov, “It’ll bring some future back.”

[sallysklar]

Janresseger: Can We Hold Onto Our Values as We Struggle to Survive in the Trump-DeVos Holding Pattern?

Janresseger: Can We Hold Onto Our Values as We Struggle to Survive in the Trump-DeVos Holding Pattern?

I was dismayed recently when I sat down to read some excellent proposals for addressing child poverty in the United States.

Here are two alternative proposals from the National Academy of Sciences. Both are prescriptions for cutting our national child poverty rate in half within a decade. Each proposal would combine a different set of policy strategies; each combination of ingredients would achieve the same very laudable result:

“Increase the Earned Income Tax Credit along the phase-in and flat portions; convert the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to a fully refundable tax credit and concentrate its benefits to families with children with the lowest incomes; increase the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by 35 percent…; and expand the supply of Section 8 Housing… Vouchers to supply affordable housing for 70 percent of eligible families.””

“Increase the Earned Income Tax Credit by 40 percent; convert the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit to a fully refundable tax credit and concentrate its benefits to families with children with the lowest incomes; replace the Child Tax Credit with a monthly child allowance of $225 per month…; establish a new child support assurance program that provides a minimum payment of $100 per month per child; increase the federal minimum wage to $10.25 per hour… and index it to inflation; and restore program eligibility for non-qualified legal immigrants for Medicaid, SNAP… TANF…, SSI, and other benefits.”

I am sure that, if the people at the National Academy of Sciences who wrote the report say so, either of these prescriptions on its own would cut child poverty in half within the decade. My despair when I look at these plans, however, is that today there is an utter absence of national political will to ensure that Congress would move on any one of the specifics, let alone any combination of them.

Nor do I have any hope that even well-informed people on the street could possibly get a handle on what all these programs are and how they would work together to help our children. We need leaders who can help us understand what each of these programs is, how they would fit together, and—most important—why they matter.  And for those of us who care about the future of education, we need to be reminded that child poverty—not failing public schools—is what threatens the future of too many of our children.

Our collective ignorance about what such programs are and how they would help our children is particularly worrisome today, because the best we can look for is to be trapped in a holding pattern right now.  It is dangerous that we are forgetting the very tools that someday may help us address child poverty. We obligated today merely to be grateful when things are not quickly getting worse.

In the area of K-12 public education—which directly affects 50 million of our children—President Trump’s education budget proposal flat-funds Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These are the huge formula programs that help schools serve children in poverty and children with disabilities. The President’s proposed budget also flat-funds Head Start.  For two years now, Congress has agreed to maintain these programs, and there is some assurance Congress will continue to do so. (House Democrats recently proposed adding $4.4 billion to the FY 2020 federal budget for education, including an increase in Title I, although any House education budget is unlikely to be approved by the Republican-dominated Senate.)  We must find ourselves grateful for the preservation of the status quo, even though all this flat-funding means the programs are falling behind in inflation-adjusted dollars.

On Sunday, the Washington Post‘s Laura Meckler described today’s holding-pattern in stark terms.  What she portrays is a crisis in leadership and values, not merely a paucity of programs. In a profile about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Meckler assures us that DeVos has emerged as among the few survivors in Trump’s Cabinet: “(‘T)he president shows no signs of asking her to resign, reflecting in part his lack of interest in the issue of education and the department responsible for it… This account of DeVos’s endurance in the Education Department’s top job is based on interviews with eight people with direct knowledge of the secretary’s relationship with the president and with an understanding of the inner workings of the White House and education agency… DeVos has benefited from Trump’s lack of interest in education, officials say… Also bolstering DeVos’s standing: She hasn’t had a single personal scandal. She’s a billionaire and travels by private plane, but she pays for it herself. She donates her salary to charity. Even detractors say that in person, DeVos is pleasant and easy to be around.”

We have a President who doesn’t care about education, and we can extrapolate: a President who doesn’t care about children.  Fortunately Congress has refused to go along with an ideological agenda that features education as an exercise in individual freedom, privatization, and marketplace choice.  We have to be grateful for the holding pattern even as we worry about the plight of poor children.

At the same time those of us concerned about a crisis in urban public schools also know that school achievement is affected by factors in the lives of children outside school. The National Education Policy Center’s Kevin Welner and researcher Julia Daniel delineate many of the primary challenges for children that threaten their engagement with school: “(W)e need to step back and confront an unpleasant truth about school improvement. A large body of research teaches us that the opportunity gaps that drive achievement gaps are mainly attributable to factors outside our schools: concentrated poverty, discrimination, disinvestment, and racially disparate access to a variety of resources and employment opportunities…  Research finds that school itself has much less of an impact on student achievement than out-of-school factors such as poverty.  While schools are important… policymakers repeatedly overestimate their capacity to overcome the deeply detrimental effects of poverty and racism… (S)tudents in many… communities are still rocked by housing insecurity, food insecurity, their parents’ employment insecurity, immigration anxieties, neighborhood violence and safety, and other hassles and dangers that can come with being a low-income person of color in today’s United States.”

These are, of course, the problems the National Academy of Sciences suggests we can address with either of their prescribed mixtures of policy investments. Nobody in this holding pattern of Trump Times, however, has been able to frame poignantly our public responsibility for addressing the needs of what First Focus identifies as 13 million children living in poverty today in the United States. Good leadership is desperately needed to develop the political will in a society barely coping with an executive branch gone mad.  As the Mueller report and its implications wash over us, at a time when our president foments hatred at the southern border, and in a society driven more and more by individualism and entrepreneurship, can we recover some kind of commitment to the public good and our collective obligation to our society’s children?

Here are some values we ought to be thinking about.

The late Benjamin Barber describes today’s realities for children and their schools—a reality that has grown more serious than it was when he wrote these words in 1998: “In many municipalities, schools have become the sole surviving public institutions and consequently have been burdened with responsibilities far beyond traditional schooling. Schools are now medical clinics, counseling centers, vocational training institutes, police/security outposts, drug rehabilitation clinics, special education centers, and city shelters… Among the costs of public schools that are most burdensome are those that go for special education, discipline, and special services to children who would simply be expelled from (or never admitted into) private and parochial schools or would be turned over to the appropriate social service agencies (which themselves are no longer funded in many cities.)  It is the glory and the burden of public schools that they cater to all of our children, whether delinquent or obedient, drug damaged or clean, brilliant or handicapped, privileged or scarred. That is what makes them public schools.” (“Education for Democracy,” in A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, pp. 226-227)

John Dewey names the principle that has traditionally grounded our society’s commitment to the well being of our children and their public education: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children… Only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself.” (The School and Society, 1899, p. 1)

Over the past year, there was one public outcry on behalf of children that was loud enough to overcome the inertia of just trying to hold on for two more years.  Thank you teachers in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Denver, Los Angeles, and Oakland for your walkouts—state by state and district by district.  You who spend your days in our public schools helped us see the damage being imposed on children by huge classes along with the absence of counselors, school nurses, social workers and librarians. And you reminded citizens in many states that their taxes are needed as a public obligation to support their children and to keep a well-qualified and experienced staff of teachers in the public schools that serve their children.

There was also one simple public protest that may point to a strategy for changing the conversation. Before the 2018 election for governor of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools supplied thousands of parents statewide with very simple yard signs that said: “I Love My Public Schools and I Vote.” Without sinking into the policy weeds, the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools very plainly confronted and replaced Scott Walker’s years-long agenda to privatize and otherwise undermine public schools. Perhaps a wave of yard signs helped reframe the agenda: Tony Evers, the state school superintendent, defeated Walker and now serves as Wisconsin’s governor.

elaine May 2, 2019

Source

Janresseger

Janresseger: Can We Hold Onto Our Values as We Struggle to Survive in the Trump-DeVos Holding Pattern? published first on https://buyessayscheapservice.tumblr.com/

[lepus-the-bun]

Fascism in FF14, and the post no one ever asked me to make.

Hello and welcome, it is I, the Garlean Scum, here to come way to late to the actual discourse, with a post no sane person asked me to do. That being said, I wished to make this, with the intent to help explain some things, give a little insight into some stuff, and maybe help people see things a different way. Now importantly, this is not a post of ‘excusing’ violent beliefs, or fascist activities. Those who know me, know I hold a strong distaste for fascism in the real world, for reasons I will make evident. Now, maybe this isn’t your cup of tea, which is no problem! I’ll be starting in earnest below the read more line, so I don’t fill up feeds. Please, look over, read, comment with your own observations and beliefs, and share your stories! 

WHY DO PEOPLE ACCEPT FASCISM?

Lets start off right at the hardest point. What drives people to accept Fascist ideologies? Now, I’m not putting this all on the Nazi branch of Fascism as there are many types, including american fascism, and they all have their unique takes on certain things. But one main key point for fascism, is that it usually involves a form of radical Authoritarian Ultra-nationalism. Most commonly, this is helped and reinforced by racist world views. But okay, we know the basic key point of fascism... Why would people choose to so heavily join into a radically Authoritarian state?

Well, the first reason is simple. Safety. Fascist organizations, hold the firm belief that liberal democracy is a failure. They want a single party to hold control of the state, and for it to completely mobilize society in a party to -serve- the state. Now, this ideal became really prominent in the post WW1 state of our world, and it’s not an unheard of reasoning. They wanted a strong government that can respond to -all- threats, be they another nation, or a group that is disturbing the status norm. 

Which, brings us into the second point. Fascism most commonly, keeps the norms of society, save the dismantling of liberalism. In example, if being a white man was good for you before, it’s still good now. This makes it seem an attractive alternative to radical liberalism or activists. After all, if they are on top of the social ladder, they want to -stay- on top, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they are all super racist, but they can feel that losing their ‘spot’ means not just no longer being number one, but having to accept ramifications for it.

Finally, Fascism often holds heavily to the belief of ‘merit based’ social progression. Which, in essence isn’t incorrect. In an ideal fascist state, someone’s sex/gender/ethnicity doesn’t matter. What matters is their -success-, which when you have a culture that is actively oppressing individuals, can drive some to cling onto this as their way to progress up the social ladder. After all, there is no truer equality to them, then everyone suffering the same BS and having to work up on their own.

WHY DON’T THOSE OPPRESSED BY FASCISTS RISE UP?

Now, this is an interesting question, and one that’s actually been shown commonly in our own history. Simply put... Rising up in revolution isn’t as easy as we display it in media. For every single successful revolution in history, there are countless bloody revolutions that were put down to the core. Even those revolutions that succeed, are often filled with death and destruction, which even if it’s to improve the world... It can be a daunting thing for people to accept. So people hold onto the hope, that the longer they hold on, eventually the world will change for them. They’ll have the equality they wanted, without war. 

In short, when everything around you belongs to the state, including yourself, it’s hard to imagine you can stop it.

DON’T THEY REALIZE WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS WRONG?

Perhaps. But, there’s one simple thing that hurts the most in realizing that -you’re- the bad guy... You’re just doing what you have to, for the good of everyone else. Fascism doesn’t hold violence or imperialism as a strictly negative experience. Again, it’s about results, not ethics. 

Secondly, if they were to say ‘yes I’ve been the bad guy, and need to stop’, something hard to grasp for anyone comes into play... Namely that everything you did, was for nothing. If you live by the ends justifying the means, then it’s even harder to accept that.

Thirdly, they fear the retaliation. Why would people forgive them? It’s better to burn standing by those who are wrong, than standing alone. It’s a hard choice for people to make.

WHERE DOES THIS COME INTO FF14?

Well, more often then you’d think really. If we look at the three city states, they all have a heavy hint of Fascism in them. In Limsa, the Admiral has her own secret police essentially, and what she says is law. If you think she’s wrong, you better bend the knee, or get the hell out or die. However, she’s more dedicated to a free market, and appears to be trying to change her nation... However, they are also heavily dependent on stealing land from the indigenous populations in order to expand as necessary, which is a nice little story point to explore.

Ishgard was a fanatical state, that used religion to help reinforce ultra-nationalism, and had a foe that could ‘not be negotiated with’, that threatened them to the core, for a cause that was their fault but information was hidden from the public. Granted, they have since shifted governmental styles, and this process alone is just fascinating, as it is a perilous point in a society... But luckily they have another large nonnegotiable foe to take the public’s attention.

Gridania. Man. Okay, so they have many conflicting things about them. On one hand, I view them as the most liberal of city states within their borders. Their government seems less likely to police most things, save the things that anger the elementals the most. In short, a high rate of personal freedom, but if you disobey the elementals, death or exile is almost certain. However, this isn’t due to a persons interest, but rather a force that already flooded the world once. So... It’s weird, and the most unique one I can see. 

Ul’dah. Now, this was obviously meant as a city with the most capitalism possible, and honestly, I’d say has the least fascist tendencies to them. However, there are... Implications. That the sultanate, was going to dissolve the government, is a curious amount of power for one person to have. The syndicate, seems like so long as it doesn’t hurt their profits, most of them would assist fascist ideology. Then we follow with the banning of beastmen. It’s another unique case, as usually in a heavily capitalist society like this, you would have more of a ‘puppet’ ruler, than one with the power to dissolve the government.

Garlemald. Man. Oh man. Ya’ll already know this one. It’s Magitech rome during the latter portion of the roman empire during the decline. It’s basically ‘worlds first great fascist enterprise’. 

OKAY, SO SOME OF THE CITY STATES HAVE FASCIST HINTS, AND GARLEMALD IS PURE FASCISM. WHY BRING THIS UP?

Well, I feel that if we don’t incorporate this into our RP, or even acknowledge this... We are not just doing the lore a disservice, but ourselves as well. We as people have a tendency to make characters who base their beliefs and values on our societies. It’s not bad to do so, but that’s not always an appropriate thing to do. RP can teach us new things, and help us understand why people do things.

THE FUCK YOU MEAN?

Well, let me put it like this. Aedwen, is a Gridanian Native, whom left her homeland in secret to join the Garlean Empire. Why? Well, because she felt betrayed by the elementals, and felt her people were less living in harmony, and more as slaves. No matter how good you were, the seedseer, padjal, and the hearers would always be above you. No matter what, unless you were one of these groups, in her opinion you were second class. She was young, angry, and trying to figure things out. Then she gets told by someone, how the empire is harsh, but they are -fair- and everyone can advance. How they don’t want to destroy, but to unite everyone. How the empire could be the one thing, that could help free her people from her perceived subjugation.

Right there, I can explore the feelings of a character who isn’t -evil- by nature, but who took the path of the unjust.

WELL DON’T THEY KNOW NOW?

Yes. They are well aware of the reality now. But, here comes to the hardest part of someone who accepted fascism, and violence as their path for so long. Namely, if she accepts that it’s all for naught, then she’s a traitor, a liar, and a monster. In her eyes, she couldn’t accept that. To admit that, would break her.

SO WHAT NOW?

Well, she explores her morality more and more... And one day, will have to choose between standing by her morals, or by the actions she has committed... And honestly, I enjoy it. Because it helps me to figure out what would happen if I were in similar straights.

CLOSING THOUGHTS!

Don’t reject certain character types out of the blue, and don’t think people are playing them because that’s their ‘ideal’. If you have the desire to explore the thought process of people you oppose, or those that you do not understand, then roleplay can be the most invaluable tool available. So few have the capability of actually putting you in their shoes.

[kaitkerrigan]

Happy Father’s Day

My 2 1/2 year old daughter is sick this weekend. All last night and all day today, she's needed my husband and me to come to her side and tell her that we’re here - not that we can stop her from being sick but to acknowledge that she IS sick and that it's ok and that it will pass. We take shifts at night. I took the early shift - 8 til 12 and my husband took the later shift. I went in every 45 minutes for a while, finding her in a cold sweat, confused by the cough she has never experienced before. We’re lucky. I can count on one hand the number of times she’s been sick but every time it happens, she’s stunned that her body could rebel against her. She cries, blubbering “I don’t feel well today.” in her eerily accurate grammar. We’re lucky.

There are 2000 children who were on the most harrowing journey of their lives, fleeing their countries because their parents feared for their lives, and at the end of that journey, they were ripped away from the only people they had who could tell them that as hard as this is, it will pass. 

Now they're alone. They're being treated like prisoners. And some of them are sick and all of them are scared and there's no one there to tell them that it's going to be ok. There's no way to know that it will be ok. 

We wouldn't treat a stray nursing dog and her puppies like this. But we have done this to mothers and their babies. WE have done this.

We have the luxury of pressing our children against us and knowing that their cold will pass and then they’ll get to go out and play without repercussions. But such freedoms are on a slippery slope. The moment we start seeing “others” as more of a pestilence and less of our sisters and brothers, our democracy begins to decay. Our moral highground is eroded. “It can’t happen here” is the biggest lie that anyone can tell you. Anything can happen anywhere. We alone are responsible for what happens on our watch. And so we are responsible for the children who have been ripped away from their parents this month. 2000 children in one month. Project forward a year and that’s 24,000 children. We cannot allow that. 

How can you help? SEND MONEY TO FIGHT FOR THE RIGHTS OF THESE HUMAN BEINGS - mother, father, and child. 

RAICES bond fund (https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/bondfund…) gives 100% of your donation will help pay to get a parent out of detention so they can claim their own child.

VOTE. VOTE. VOTE. Are you not registered yet??? CLICK TO VOTE.

Please read the whole post below that (among all the chilling articles I’ve read in the past 24 hours, in the past week, in the past month) but especially this: 

"There is a fundamental principal of international law which arose after World War II: the concept of a refugee – a person deserving of protection because she is unsafe in her country due to persecution in her country based on her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. The United States Government has recognized its responsibility in protecting refugees for almost seventy years – in international treaties and in our own laws. Whatever your politics, it is an absolute and undeniable fact that the US must protect asylum seekers under its international treaty and internal legal obligations."

From FACEBOOK - Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch on June 8 at 4:03pm

Yesterday, I met with a mother whose 5-year-old son was literally pulled out of her arms by a Border Patrol Officer while she and her son cried and begged for him not to be taken. She is an asylum seeker who fled death threats in her country. She has not seen or spoken to her son in weeks. This mother recounted the story of her son being taken, stone faced, clearly unable to begin to access the emotions under the surface. It was the lowest, saddest, most distressing moment of my career as an immigration lawyer.

I chose to be an immigration attorney after my first experience as a law student in the immigration clinic. I was asked to do an intake with a family of Iraqi asylum seekers who were being detained with their 5-month-old daughter. The baby was wearing a prison-issued onesie. Her mother asked me to hold her, because I smelled like the outside world. All along, that moment has been my marker of the lowest moment, the catalyst for my career. Yet that was nothing compared to what is happening today.

I am writing to share with you what I am seeing so that you can be informed and take action. I want to help you know the background and combat the arguments that these parents chose this for their children, that they brought it on themselves. And to combat the lies coming from the Administration, claiming there is no choice in whether to enact the policy of separation.

There is a fundamental principal of international law which arose after World War II: the concept of a refugee – a person deserving of protection because she is unsafe in her country due to persecution in her country based on her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. The United States Government has recognized its responsibility in protecting refugees for almost seventy years – in international treaties and in our own laws. Whatever your politics, it is an absolute and undeniable fact that the US must protect asylum seekers under its international treaty and internal legal obligations. (I am avoiding citations and legalese in this article because I want it to be readable, but I can easily provide citations for anything written here.)

In the last decade, the political situation in Central America has deteriorated. Gangs and drug cartels have taken power and the governments of Central America, particularly in the northern triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, are unable to protect their citizens. People are being extorted and required to make regular payments to gang members. If they refuse, they or their family members are murdered. Boys as young as eight years old are forced into the gangs. If they or their parents refuse, they are murdered. Young girls are forced to become the property of gang members and treated as sex slaves. If they or their families refuse, they are murdered. The police are unable to help, and in many cases have themselves been infiltrated with gang members, so that making a police report brings more danger. Parents are fleeing and bringing their children here to rescue them from rape and murder.

When an asylum seeker wants to come to the United States, she has two choices: come to the bridge to ask for asylum, or sneak into the country. Why sneak in? Well, because border patrol officers often don’t permit people to seek asylum. They tell them to turnaround, we aren’t accepting asylum seekers. In fact, now border patrol officers are patrolling the Mexican territory in front of the borders to keep asylum seekers from even crossing the bridge. This leaves option two: the only way to get in. Historically, asylum seekers who crossed over got immediately apprehended (we don’t have the porous borders the Administration claims we do), then were placed in family detention centers and put through the credible fear interview process. If they passed, they got out of detention and finished out the asylum process in court. If they failed, they were sent back. This was far from a tolerable solution, but it has “worked” this way for over a decade, with subtle shifts in policies and practices.

What changed? The Trump Administration decided in May to enact a “zero tolerance” policy against people crossing the border. This means everyone, regardless of cause or circumstance of entry, gets prosecuted for illegal entry. Parents of children, including infants, are being taken to federal court and their children are being placed in custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. There is NO agency responsible for facilitating communication or reunification of these families. Parents are getting deported without their kids, and shelters are filling up. These families are being transferred and taken all around the US depending on where there is space for them. Parents are not told where they are going, where their kids are, or whether they are okay. If this does not horrify you, check your pulse.

What can you do? Here is the hard part. And I promise to keep working on this. Immigration attorneys can help – that’s easy. You can travel to detention centers and help parents pass their credible fear interviews and get out on bond. A volunteer sheet will be circulating within the next week. Nonimmigration lawyers can partner with an immigration attorney or attend a training (Mark your calendars for an opportunity for Austin Bar Association members the afternoon of June 25.) Nonlawyers – there are the obvious options: contact your legislators and demand an end to family separation. Form mom groups, dad groups, psychologist groups, contact the media, and get loud. Give money. I personally think money is best spent on the RAICES bond fund (https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/bondfund…) where 100% of your donation will help pay to get a parent out of detention so they can claim their own child.

What you should not do, in my opinion: anything to support or legitimize what is happening. This includes offering to foster these kids and take them off the hands of the agency, donate supplies, or assist the Department of Homeland Security in any way. I know your hearts are in the right place, and you want to help the kids. But if the shelters are at capacity and no one is offering to take the kids, maybe the administration will stop taking them from their parents. Maybe they need to feel the pain of what it is to care for so many distraught babies, so they stop the horror show.

Thank you for reading this far, for letting me get this off my chest, and for caring. The only positive that comes out of moments like these is the groundswell of goodness.

In solidarity, Kate

Finally, happy father’s day. Hug your babies close. Hug your fathers tight. Celebrate your connection and your liberties and find a moment in your day to  talk as a family about what it would be like if you had to flee your country. What would you need? What can you as a family sacrifice to help? 

[southeastasianists]

Toppled from their throne after the revolutionary Pathet Lao swept in to Vientiane in 1975, the exiled Lao royal family has long attempted to unite the country’s fractured diaspora. But has the royal institution finally outlived its use?

When he was just 18 years old, the grandson of the last king of Laos crept on board a bamboo raft with nothing but his wits, his older brother and his personal nanny and set sail from Vientiane to the Thai river port of Nong Khai. The young royal, who had been away from his family at school when his father, grandfather and six other blood relatives were spirited away to the re-education camps of the self-proclaimed Lao People’s Democratic Republic, had been allowed to continue his own education under the watchful gaze of the government. It was not until his school friends began disappearing too that his thoughts turned to escape.

Since that night in 1982, Crown Prince Soulivong Savang has positioned himself within the Laotian diaspora as a figure who can unite the people despite the enduring ethnic and political divides in the landlocked nation. Speaking at a press conference in New York almost 20 years ago, Prince Savang wasted little time in asserting his claim to a throne that had sat empty for decades.

“If I had a chance to go back to Laos, the first thing I bring is freedom,” he announced to the assembled reporters through a translator.

Almost two decades later, that promised freedom remains frustratingly out of reach. Following the death of his uncle, the Prince Regent Sauryavong Savang in January this year, Prince Savang – who declined to be interviewed – has now taken his place as head of the Lao Royal Family, a collection of nobles who managed to escape their homeland to the safety of France. But although the royal family has long been seen by many in the diaspora community as a symbol around which exiles of all ethnic groups could rally, the idea that a hereditary monarchy holds the key to restoring a people’s right to determine their own destiny may have lost some of its lustre in the Lao community.

Ian Baird, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specialising in post-1975 Lao politics and diaspora communities, told Southeast Asia Globe that despite a strong early role in the exiled pro-democracy movement, the Luang Prabang royal family has been struggling to stay relevant to the demands of an increasingly fractured community-in-exile.

“They have had a lot of relevance in the past, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but more recently they have not had as much of a role,” he said. “The political community of Lao diaspora is so divided that they dare not link themselves to any one group in case they might upset others. They also want to follow the old Lao constitution, which establishes the royals as being ‘above politics’. Soulivong married in Canada and so is not as close to the royal house as he was when he was in France.”

Less involved in public life than his towering uncle Sauryavong, it is unclear if the younger scion of the centuries-old Khun Lo dynasty is eager to step out of the late regent’s shadow. Sauryavong has long been the driving force behind the royals’ political activities, even lending his full-throated support to the disastrous Vang Tao border raid in 2000 that saw 30 armed men, including 16 Lao dissidents, plant the royal flag once again within the borders of their homeland – losing six of their number in the process.

Driven from their homeland by the fall of Vientiane in 1975 to the Vietnamese-backed communist Pathet Lao, the 800,000-strong Laotian diaspora stretches across the globe from Western nations such as France and the US to neighbouring countries such as Thailand and Cambodia. Joe Rattanakhom, executive director of the Free Laos Campaign pro-democracy group, said that the fragmented nature of the diaspora made it difficult to be certain just what, if any, prestige the royals still enjoyed in the self-exiled Lao community.

“It is hard to say, because the Lao people are scattered across the world and the exiled royal family may be limited in their travels,” he said. “When Laos transitions to a democracy, which I think will happen within ten years, it is up to the Lao people what kind of government they want.”

Khamphoui Sisavatdy, the prime minister of the Royal Lao Government in Exile, a self-professed interim democratic government established in 2003 with the aim of instituting a “constitutional democratic monarchy” in the one-party state, is more strident in his support for a royal restoration.

“I trust that the best form of the government is a constitutional monarchy,” he told the Diplomat in a 2014 interview. “I believe that the Lao people in the 21st century can hope to create the type of administration of their choice. This means the restoration of the monarchy under a new constitution. To unite all the Lao people and to bring them under one umbrella, we need to have a father of the nation, a king, as we have always had.”

After more than 40 years under the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, though, the idea that a warm welcome would be waiting for any attempt to restore the prince to his throne seems somewhat optimistic. Rattanakhom said that the incumbent party had used the Lao Royal Government’s reliance on US military support during the civil war to paint the royal family as little more than lackeys of a foreign power.

“The current communist Lao government has been brainwashing the Lao youth to believe that the monarchy was a tool of American imperialists – when in fact the Lao communist movement was a tool of the North Vietnamese and the current Lao government is a vassal state of Vietnam,” he said.

Although Baird said that it was difficult to gauge public opinion in the notoriously closed-off country, his own experience living in Laos made him sceptical of the monarchy’s enduring support among the people.

“I lived there for many years and did not hear much,” he said. “If any [monarchist feeling] does exist, it would be with older people.”

The existence of rival royal houses to the Luang Prabang family – the Champassak royals from the nation’s south and the Phouan royals from Xieng Khouang – also complicates matters, making it difficult to unite a diaspora already split by sharp ethnic divides between the lowland Lao people and the northern Hmong.

Perhaps more so than their love of the Lao monarchy, the people who fled their war-ravaged nation remain linked by an iron conviction that the present-day Lao government is no government at all, but a puppet regime installed by the Vietnamese to extend the nation’s influence over the states that once comprised French Indochina.

“Most of the founding fathers of the Lao Communist Party were either Vietnamese, ethnic Vietnamese or married to a Vietnamese,” Rattanakhom said. “Due to internet access, the Lao youths and the ones living in Thailand are starting to know the truth about the role of the monarchy and their historical place in Lao society.”

According to Baird, though, the desire for democracy among a new generation of Laotian youth does not rely on the royal seal of approval as it did with their parents.

“The newer generation is not nearly as interested as the older generation,” he said. “[The royal family] is likely to languish and die away, at least to some extent.”

But for self-declared prime-minister-in-exile Sisavatdy, the vision of a Lao king once again seated on the ancient throne in Luang Prabang is one that continues to give him hope for the nation’s future.

“Fulfilling the dream of the Lao people is the sole purpose of my life,” he told the Diplomat. “My own identity and dignity are bound to this quest. Someday soon we shall have our monarchy back.”

[seedfinance]

The world’s big tech firms are gearing up for a massive fight with Modi’s India, IT News, ET CIO

Saritha Rai and Vlad Savov

India is becoming increasingly confident in its efforts to control online communications, challenging the practices of Twitter and Facebook and threatening to set a precedent that could go well beyond its borders.

The largest US internet companies are fighting against new intermediary rules enacted by Narendra Modi’s government in February that restrict privacy and freedom of expression. Officials have urged Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. to remove hundreds of posts this year, divulge sensitive user information, and submit to a regulatory regime that allows for potential jail sentences for executives if companies fail to comply.

While government efforts to exercise more control over user data and online discourse mirror global efforts to control tech giants and their vast influence, Internet firms are particularly at stake in India because – excluded from China – it’s the only billion people market themselves to the market. In contrast to authoritarian regimes like Beijing, critics fear that measures by the world’s largest democracy could offer other governments a blueprint to invade privacy in the name of internal security.

“India has made draconian changes to its rules,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in April. They “create new opportunities for state surveillance of citizens. These rules threaten the idea of ​​a free and open Internet based on international human rights standards. “

Holding internet companies accountable for published content – and in some cases making executives personally liable – goes beyond what many countries require and is a key point of contention. Trapped in this tug of war are hundreds of millions in India whose use of the Internet is now at stake. Facebook’s WhatsApp is on trial, arguing that the new rules would bypass encryption, a key feature the company has touted in global marketing.

Modi’s government has been targeting Twitter for the past few months as it is considered the social platform of choice for politicians and celebrities. Cabinet ministers have accused the US company of defying orders and proposed removing it from its intermediary status, which should make it directly responsible for the content posted by its users. In May, Twitter tagged tweets from multiple accounts linked to Modi’s party as “compromised media”. Police investigators have since called officers and their offices, putting business in the world’s second most populous nation at risk.

“Twitter is in a no-win situation here,” said Mike Masnick, founder of tech policy blog Techdirt. “Giving in to excessive government demands not only suppresses important speeches, but opens the company to even more pressure to silence government critics in India and elsewhere.”

Representatives from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MEITY), which oversees regulation, did not respond to multiple calls and emails asking for comments. WhatsApp and Twitter representatives declined to comment beyond previous statements that they were anxious to comply with state regulations.

India has stated that it welcomes criticism and dissent and its new rules are aimed at protecting public order and preventing harmful content such as child pornography and abuse videos. The country has been grappling with an explosion of fake news on social media in recent years, much of it targeting a largely first-time internet audience unaccustomed to sifting through online falsehoods. It came into conflict with Facebook in 2018 when the government asked WhatsApp to curb the spread of news related to two dozen lynchings. Facebook’s response then was to restrict the forwarding of messages and mark them as “forwarded”.

WhatsApp has more than 530 million users in India, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube has about 450 million, and Facebook has over 410 million users, making it the largest market for all three. Twitter, a comparatively small minnow with 17.5 million users, is one of the fastest growing areas in India. But that limited reach makes it vulnerable in a nation that was ready to ban popular foreign services a year ago when it banned TikTok – which had 200 million users registered in the country – WeChat and hundreds more China-made apps after a violent clash on the controversial border between the two countries.

As in the US, however, Twitter exerts a disproportionate influence in relation to its size. It is vital to the political discussion in India, and Modi himself is an avid user and has a following of over 69 million, demonstrating its international reach. While ministers have tweeted belligerently on Twitter, no one has yet openly threatened to ban it.

Even during the conflict with China, India can still draw inspiration from its neighbor’s experiences, where the void left by foreign social platforms blocked to resisting strict censorship has created space for domestic alternatives to develop. In fact, Modi’s colleagues have been actively promoting Koo, a local microblogging rival.

“I have to imagine Modi looking at China thinking it can achieve economic prosperity while exercising a lot of authoritarian control over language and communication,” said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook director of public policy with the US the country’s officials worked together in the fall of 2013, ahead of Modi’s first election as prime minister, through earlier this year. “So the big question is where will India go?”

An open letter signed by 14 nonprofits urged the government to suspend implementation of India’s new IT rules that went into effect last month.

Much of the current resentment stems from the government’s drive to control discussions since November over peasant protests, which have centered on proposals to tax farm inputs and remove minimum price support. The government forced Twitter to block some popular figures expressing support for the protesters – such as Punjabi singer JazzyB, whose account has 1.2 million followers but is inaccessible within India – although the company does not have all of its Has implemented demands.

US and EU lawmakers should pay more attention to the South Asian country, Harbath said. Like Masnick, she sees few good opportunities for private companies to oppose laws from above, and it would be up to the international community to steer India back onto a more liberal path.

The US has embraced India as a counterweight to China in recent years and has strengthened defense cooperation as part of the four-nation quad group, which also includes the other democracies of Japan and Australia. For its part, Modi’s government has sought to attract companies looking to diversify their supply chains away from China – which gives it an incentive to maintain good relationships with the Biden government and the American business community at large.

Relationships with American social platforms were much warmer and more cooperative in the early years of the Modi administration. In 2015, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg invited Modi to a town hall event at the company’s headquarters. The two men hugged and smiled at the cameras. But, Harbath said, whenever the government’s popularity has waned since then – following measures like the sudden currency demonetization in 2016 – it has become more aggressive to steer public narrative.

Most recently, Modi’s government was targeted on Twitter by critics who say it botched efforts to fight Covid-19. In response, she has tried to block recent criticism on Twitter, which shows anger and disappointment with the Indian leader.

“Silicon Valley’s social media platforms have a huge base in India and the confrontation is who controls these users,” said Tarun Pathak from Delhi, research director at Counterpoint. “In the next three to five years, around 300 million new users equal to the US population will go online in India, shifting the balance of power for these companies eastward.”

Twitter appointed an interim compliance officer two weeks ago, long after its colleagues assigned permanent representatives, and that person is due to leave the position. A company spokesman did not want to confirm or comment on the reasons.

Meanwhile, Kenner told ET that Twitter had given the government “in writing” details of its newly appointed interim chief compliance officer. Previously, she had contracted a lawyer to act as a complaint and node officer.

On Friday, the head of MEITY, Ravi Shankar Prasad, temporarily blocked his Twitter account because of a complaint about alleged copyright infringement, according to the company. When the frequent Twitter antagonist regained access, he wrote that his “actions indicate that they are not the harbinger of the freedom of expression they claim to be, only interested in pursuing their own ends.” Twitter declined to comment, but cited its original statement that Prasad’s account was temporarily suspended for copyright infringement.

Twitter was recently quoted by Uttar Pradesh police along with journalists and opposition party leaders for hosting a video provoking communal discord, according to local reports. Delhi police also said they are investigating another complaint against Twitter’s Indian chief Manish Maheshwari related to this video allegedly alleging that majority Hindus are attacking a minority Muslim man. The company has since removed the offensive clip and has left no comment other than its statement of compliance with local laws. The government of Uttar Pradesh has petitioned the Supreme Court of India to have Maheshwari lifted from arrest by a lower court.

Without pressure on India to reclaim its online power – as the Washington Post editors called this month – companies like Twitter must carefully weigh their decisions to avoid being ousted by a huge market while upholding their principles, said Harbath.

It is a delicate dance that is becoming more and more common around the world. Countries as far away as Australia, Poland and Nigeria are cracking down on social platforms, claiming they have undue power to determine what is acceptable and meddling in domestic affairs. Nigeria banned Twitter this month and Germany’s hate speech rules will require platforms to remove illegal content quickly or face penalties.

“It’s complicated. A decision by these companies in India will not apply to India alone,” said Prateek Waghre of Bangalore, a research analyst with the Takshashila Institution who studies digital platform governance serve the rest of the world. “

IT and Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was in the thick of it as the new social media guidelines became a focal point for a showdown between the government and Twitter and WhatsApp on privacy and free speech issues.

source https://seedfinance.net/2021/07/05/the-worlds-big-tech-firms-are-gearing-up-for-a-massive-fight-with-modis-india-it-news-et-cio/

[margdarsanme]

NCERT Class 11 Political Science Theory Chapter 6 Citizenship

NCERT Solutions Class 11 Political Science Theory Chapter 6 Citizenship

Class 11 Political Science Chapter 6 NCERT Textbook Questions Solved

Question 1.Citizenship as full and equal membership of a political community involves both rights and obligations. Which rights could citizens expect to enjoy in most democratic state today? What kind of obligation will they have to their state and fellow citizens?Answer:Citizenship refers to a full and equal membership of a political community, i.e. a political identity to an individual by its state. A citizen in a democratic state can enjoy the following rights:

A support and protection from state to travel anywhere in the state.

Some political rights to vote, to contest elections, to hold public offices, etc.

Civil rights like freedom of speech and expression.

Social-economic rights, i.e. equal opportunities, right to education, right to minimum wage, etc.

Along with the exercise of certain rights the citizens are supposed to fulfill some obligations

also towards state and its fellow citizens as:

Citizenship involves some obligations towards state and its fellow citizens.

These obligations are the outcomes of considerations to be inheritors and trustees of culture and natural resources of the country.

These obligations do not include only the legal obligations provided by the state but these expect some moral obligations to participate, contribute and to share the life of community, etc.

Question 2.All citizens may be granted equal rights but all may not be able to equally exercise them. Explain.Answer:

The full and equal membership refers to all citizens either rich or poor should be granted certain basic rights along with a minimum standard of living by the state. But all of them may not be able to exercise them equally due to poverty, like illiteracy or social -economic conditions, etc.

As the problem of a large population of slum-dwellers and squatters in urban areas, though they may do some necessary and useful work at low wage’s they may be balanced for straining the resources of the area or to expand crime and diseases.

The authorities in cities hardly spend any amount on slum dwellers for their betterment. Though some NGOs are taking initiatives for them, i.e. a national policy was also framed in January 2004 on urban street vendors.

The slum dwellers are also becoming aware of their rights but still, they are not able to exercise even their basic political rights, i.e. right to vote because it requires a permanent address which is not possible for them to provide.

The other groups are the tribal people and forest-dwellers because these people are dependent on access to their natural resources and they face a threat to their livelihood.

Governments are struggling with the problem how to protest the problems of tribal people and their habitat without hampering the development of country.

To ensure equal rights and unities for all citizens cannot be a simple matter for any government. If the purpose is not just to make policies to apply, in the same way but to make people more equal, the different needs and claims of people would have to be taken into account when framing policies.

Question 3.Write a short note on any two struggles for full enjoyment of citizen rights which have taken place in India in recent years. Which rights were being claimed in each case?Answer:

The Constitution of India has made an attempt to provide equal membership to the groups which are different, i.e. Dalits, ST’s, and women, etc.

Even the efforts have been made to cover some remote communities in Andaman and Nicobar Islands who had little contact with modern civilization.

The various movements have taken place for the groups mentioned above, i.e. women, SC’s, ST’s, people displaced due to developmental projects of the government and 33% seats have been reserved for all of them.

In a democratic state, the demands of marginalized people have been negotiated, i.e. 27% reservation has been provided for OBC’s in all educational institutions.

The women have also demanded the reservation of 33% seats in state legislative assemblies and Lok Sabha.

Question 4.What are some of the problems faced by refugees? In what ways could the concept of global citizenship benefit them?Answer:Refugees face the following problems:

Inspite of restrictions, and creating fences, considerable migrations of peoples takes place.

Refugees may be forced to live in camps or illegal migrants.

People may be displaced by wars or Tsunamis, famine or earthquakes, etc. and no state is willing to accept them and they cannot return to their home state also.

Refugees cannot work legally or educate their children or acquire property.

To sort out the problems of refugees, the United Nations has appointed a High Commissioner for refugees to support them.

The concept of universal citizenship has benefited to the refugees:

It might make it easier to deal with the problems to be extended across national borders.

It may need cooperative action by the people and government of various states.

It can find an acceptable solution on the issues of migrants.

It can ensure some basic rights and protection regardless of the country in which they are living.

Question 5.Migration of people to different regions within the country is often resisted by the local inhabitants. What are some of the contributions that the migrants could make to the local economy?Answer:

Migration takes place from time to time cities, regions or nations.

If jobs and medical facilities and facilities provided by the state are limited along with natural resources it may restrict the entry of outsiders even in the case of fellow citizens.

Many similar struggles also have taken place in different parts of the world, i.e. Mumbai for Mumbaikars, etc.

These migrants are supportive to the local economy in the following manner:

Slum-dwellers contribute to economy through their labour as hawkers, petty traders, plumbers, workers, mechanics, petty traders, etc.

Migrants perform and do necessary and useful works often at low wages.

Small business, i.e. tailoring, textile printing, etc. can also be developed in slum areas.

Question 6.“Democratic citizenship is a project rather than an accomplished fact even in countries like India which grant equal citizenship”. Discuss some of the issues regarding citizenship being raised in India today.Answer:

People displaced by war (in 1971 and afterwards from Bangladesh) or famine or internal or external disturbances (from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Myanmar, etc.). These people were forced to become refugees in their own or neighboring countries.

India prides itself on providing refuge to the prosecuted people, i.e. Dalai Lama and his followers in 1958 entry of people from neighboring countries has taken place along all the borders of states of India and process continues.

These may be people from Asia and Africa who provide paid agents to smuggle them into India for terrorist work or for smuggling drugs.

Many refugees remain stateless for many generations living as an illegal migrants. And only a relatively few are granted citizenship.

Such problems are a challenge in front of democratic citizenship where the rights and identities should be available to all equally.

Class 11 Political Science Chapter 6 NCERT Extra Questions Solved

Class 11 Political Science Chapter 6 NCERT Very Short Answer Type Questions

Question 1.What do you mean by a citizen?Answer:A citizen is a person who is a member of a state to enjoy civil and political rights and participate in the governing of a country.

Question 2.Mention any two laws dealing with citizenship in India.Answer:

Constitution of India

Citizenship Act of 1955

The first tells us who can be called a citizen of India and later one deals with acquisition and lost of citizenship.

Question 3.What is a democracy?Answer:A democracy is a government of the people, for the people and by the people.

Question 4.Who is a natural born citizen?Answer:A natural born citizen is the person who is either born in a country or if his parents are citizens of that country.

Question 5.What is naturalization?Answer:Naturalization is the process of acquiring citizenship.

Question 6.Who is an Alien?Answer:Alien is a person who temporarily lives in a country other than his own and does not enjoy political rights like the citizen of that country do.

Question 7.What is expected by the citizens from their state?Answer:Citizens may expect certain rights from their state and help and protection wherever they may travel.

Question 8.What happens if a person stay away from one’s country for many years?Answer:The person may lose the citizenship and the number of years for absence varies from one state to another.

Question 9.Define citizenship.Answer:Citizenship can be defined as a full and equal membership of a political community.

Question 10.Mention any one important quality of a good citizen.Answer:A good citizen should be ready to serve one’s country during any crisis like war and take up any compulsory service demanded by state.

Question 2.Why is the full membership of a state important?Answer:The full membership is important because no one wants to live up as a refugee or stateless when no state is willing to grant them membership. Hence, these people do not enjoy any rights granted by the state. As Pakistani refugees struggled in the middle East to obtain full membership of a state of their choice.

Question 3.How can we say that lack of education is a big obstacle to any kind of progress?Answer:Lack of education leads to perpetuation of bad customs and superstitions, i.e. many people believe in early marriages, dowry and many have lost their young daughters to bride burning and when girls are going into space, such attitude is a great obstacle.

Question 4.What is the role of modern state in the citizenship?Answer:In the modern state, collective political identity is provided to their members as well as certain rights. Therefore, the people think of themselves as Indians, or Americans, or French or Japanese or Germans, depending on the state which they belong to.

Question 5.How did the liberation of East Pakistan affect the citizenship in the year of 1971?Answer:If a territory becomes a part of another country, then all the people acquire citizenship of that country automatically, i.e. in 1961, Goa was liberated from Portugal and all the persons in Goa became the citizen of India. Hence, the citizens of East Pakistan got the citizenship of Bangladesh.

Question 6.What rights of common nature have been granted to citizens by different states?Answer:The rights of common nature vary from state to state but most common are political rights, i.e. the right to vote, right to contest election, to form political parties, etc. And civil rights, i.e. freedom of speech or belief as well as socio-economic rights, i.e. right to minimum wage or rights to education, equality of rights and status, etc.

Question 7.What is the role of a citizen in a democracy?Answer:1. Every citizen must participate actively in a democracy to make it successful.

2. Every citizen enjoys political rights and right to express oneself but every citizen is expected to perform certain duties:

To maintain democracy.

To have a clear conception of one’s own rights.

Duties towards nation, fellow citizen and family, etc.

Class 11 Political Science Chapter 6 NCERT Short Answer Type Questions

Question 1.How can the citizenship be acquired?Answer:Citizenship can be acquired through the following ways:

By the bond of marriage, a person can acquire citizenship, i.e. if a foreigner woman marries an Indian man, citizenship of India may be acquired.

To purchase immovable property, if a person is allowed, one can acquire citizenship, i. e. purchase of land or house.

If a foreigner has been appointed to a government office, one can acquire citizenship of that country.

By acquisition of territory, the people can acquire citizenship, i.e. liberation of Goa in 1961 and Goans acquired citizenship of India.

Question 2.Distinguish between a citizen and Alien.Answer:

A citizen owes allegiance to one’s country whereas an alien does not owe allegiance.

A citizen can be compelled to join military service at the time of war whereas an alien can be compelled to join military service under any situation.

A citizen enjoys fundamental and political rights but an alien does enjoy any right to participate in government process.

Question 3.In what circumstances, a citizen can lose one’s citizenship?Answer:In the following circumstances:

The most common reason is marriage, if an Indian woman marries a foreigner, her citizenship of India is lost to acquire the citizenship of her husband’s country.

If a person is appointed in the service of foreign government, one can lose the original citizenship.

If a person takes up the services of a foreign defense forces, the original citizenship is lost.

If a person decides to settle down in another country, one may lose the original citizenship.

The criminal acts of a person may also lose their original citizenship, i.e. to commit a serious crime, prove disloyalty to the country or to acquire citizenship by fraud.

Question 4.Mention the major hindrances in the way of good citizenship.Answer:

If people do not participate actively in a political activity, good citizenship may not be acquired.

Lack of education leads to perpetuation of bad customs and superstitions due to people’s ignorance and illiteracy in discharging their obligations and responsibilities.

Poverty may provoke the people to commit wrong in order to feed themselves and their family.

Narrow groupism and factionalism based on caste and religion is very dangerous for the unity of nation. It have a wrong order of loyalties, i.e. to attach greater importance to less important issues and create tensions.

Question 5.What is the relationship between the citizenship and rights?Answer:

The people of a country require rights to participate in the running of government.

In a modem state, some fundamental rights are granted for the development of both the citizens and the state, i.e. India.

The state expects to perform some duties by citizens in reference of granting citizenship to them.

Question 6.“Education plays a crucial role in making individuals into better citizens”. Justify the statement.Answer:

Education supports individuals to recognize good and bad laws and customs.

Education teaches citizens to protest in a constitutional manner.

The example of peaceful protest can be taken from Japan where workers put on black bands on arms and work to make over production.

Question 7.How does constitution commence the citizenship?Answer:

The one who has born in the territory of India or

The one, whose parents have been born in the territory of India or

The one, who has been ordinarily resident in the territory of India for not less than five years.

Question 8.How the original citizenship may be lost?Answer:

The absence of a person to stay outside the country for a long time but the period of absence varies from one country to another country.

If a person commits a serious crime, prove disloyal to the country or acquired citizenship by fraudulent practices.

If a person applies for citizenship of another country to be granted. This process is called naturalization.

Question 9.What is Global citizenship?Answer:

Global citizenship connect the people of different parts of the world through the means of communication, i.e. internet, television, radio, etc.

Global citizenship acquires sympathies to help the victims of flood, war, terrorism, Tsunami, bird flu, plague, etc.

Global citizenship though does not exist, it is a sense to be linked to each other across national boundaries.

It needs cooperative action of people and governments of many states.

Class 11 Political Science Chapter 6 NCERT Passage-Based Questions

Passage 1.Read the passage (NCERT Textbook, page 81) given below carefully and answer the questions that follow:

During seventeenth to twentieth century, white people of Europe established their rule over the black people in South Africa. Read the following description about the policy practices in South Africa till 1994.The whites had the right to vote, contest elections and elect government; they were free to purchase property and go to any place in the country. Blacks did not have such rights. Separate colonies for whites and blacks were established. The blacks had to take ‘passes’ to work in white neighborhoods. They were not allowed to keep their families in the white areas. The schools were also separate for the people of different colour.

Questions:1. What did Europeans do in South Africa in the Seventeenth to the twentieth centuries?2. Mention the relationship of different groups in South Africa.3. How the Blacks were treated by the Whites?Answers:1. The White people of Europe established their colonial rule over the Black people (minorities) in South Africa.

2. They followed the policy of apartheid.The Blacks were not treated as a human beings by the Whites.The Blacks had to struggle for many years to get full membership as well as to acquire various rights.

3. The Blacks were treated as:

A second class citizens deprived of justice and rights.

They had to live in separate colonies and their children studied in separate schools.

They were supposed to keep their families away from White areas as well as performed some tasks in White colonies on getting a pass.

Passage 2.Read the passage (NCERT Textbook, page 83) given below carefully and answer the questions that follow:

The 1950’s witnessed the emergence of Civil Rights Movements against inequalities that existed between black and white populations in many of the southern states of the USA. Such inequalities were maintained in these states by a set of laws called Segregation Laws through which the black people were denied many civil and political rights. These laws created separate areas for colored and white people in various civic amenities like railways, buses, theatres, housing, hotels, restaurants,, etc.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a black leader of the movement against these laws. King gave many arguments against the prevailing laws of segregation. First, in terms of self-worth and dignity every human person in the world is equal regardless of one’s race or colour. Second, King argued that segregation is like ‘social leprosy” on the body politic because it inflicts deep psychological wounds on the people who suffer as a result of such laws.

King argued that the practice of segregation diminishes the quality of life for the white community also. He illustrates this point by examples. The white community, instead of allowing the black people to enter some community parks as was directed by the court, decided to close them. Similarly, some baseball teams had to be disbanded, as the authorities did not want to accept black players. Thirdly, the segregation laws create artificial boundaries between people and prevent them from cooperating with each other for the overall benefit of the country. For these reasons, King argued that these laws should be abolished. He gave a call for peaceful and non-violent resistance against the segregation laws. He said in one of his speeches: “We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”

Questions:1. Why the 1950 is an important year in the history of US?2. Who was Martin Luthar King Jr.?3. What do you mean by ‘segregation laws’?Answers:1. The 1950s witnessed the emergence of civil rights movement against inequalities prevailing between blacks and whites in southern states of USA.

2. He was a black leader of the movement against segregation policies.

3. Segregation laws were the laws in the southern states of USA to maintain discrimination and inequalities between the blacks and whites.These laws denied many civil and political rights to the black people.

Class 11 Political Science Chapter 6 NCERT Long Answer Type Questions

Question 1.What are the qualities of a good citizen?Answer:

To cast one’s vote in the interest of country.

The right to vote should be exercised without any influence of narrow loyalties of caste, colour, religion, etc.

A good citizen must be aware of one’s duties also to perform as required.

A good citizen must invest on welfare activities for citizens, i.e. educational institutions, hospitals, public transportation, etc.

A good citizen should protect and maintain the public property.

A good citizen should pay one’s taxes honestly and regularly to contribute to the state.

A good citizen should know to control emotions and protest in a peaceful manner if required.

A good citizen should possess a high moral character.

A good citizen obeys the laws of state and respect the right of other citizens also.

Question 2.Mention the characteristics of white colonial rulers’ policy practicised in South Africa till 1994?Answer:

Seperate colonies for whites and blacks were established.

The blacks were not allowed to keep their families in white areas.

The blacks had to take passes to work in white colonies.

Even the schools were separate for the people of different colours.

The blacks of South Africa did not enjoy the rights, i.e. political, civil, economic, etc.

All the adult whites enjoyed the right to vote, contest elections and elect government.

Whites were free to purchase property and go to any place in the country.

Question 3.Mention the ideas and contribution of Martin Luther King Jr. in the movement launched for civil rights in the USA.Answer:

Martin Luthar King Jr. gave many arguments against the prevailing laws of segregation, i.e. inequality, wrong practices of segregation, etc.

The male person has to broom the house and to throw the waste in the dustbin.

King argued that the segregation is like a social leprosy on the body politic because it inflicts deep psychological wounds on the people who suffer as a result of such laws.

Some baseball teams has to be disbanded as the authorities did not want to accept black players and these laws created artificial boundaries between people and prevent them from cooperating with each other for the overall benefit of the country.

Hence, these laws should be abolished earliest possible.

Class 11 Political Science Chapter 6 NCERT Picture-Based Questions

1. Read the cartoon (NCERT Textbook, page 85) given below and answer the questions that follow:

Questions:1. What does the cartoon represent?2. What are the persons performing in the cartoon?Answers:1. Cartoon comments on the life of urban Indian middle class without immigrant workers.

2. Ladies or woman of middle class families are cleaning and washing their utensils.

from Blogger http://www.margdarsan.com/2020/09/ncert-class-11-political-science-theory_15.html

[ensmagonline]

Automotive jobs at risk from Brexit

Reading Time: 3 minsWith Brexit looming, the UK manufacturing sector is beginning to brace for the worst. According to newspaper reports like those in the Observer, fears are rising that job losses are inevitable. This may be particularly true in the UK car industry which is heavily intertwined with the EU.   Deal or no Deal Brexit’s implications are far reaching and much of the focus has been on whether Britain leaves with or without a deal. The political classes are divided on the subject and with the commentariat tending to favour a deal or the so-called ‘People’s vote’ to leaving without a deal. The latter highlight that trading on World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules ‘would be disastrous’ and complications from the Irish border would be ‘catastrophic’. This would happen should Britain leave without securing a deal. Articles are circulating online implying that the UK has already lost contracts in the manufacturing sector and this focus is gaining traction in the mainstream press. From a motoring perspective, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) seem to be of the same opinion to the commentariat. Chief Executive Michael Hawes, speaking at the annual dinner, stated that no deal would be catastrophic resulting in plant closures and job losses. He went on to say: “We need an ambitious future relationship. One that replicates the benefits of the customs union and the single market. No tariffs, no quotas, no rules of origin. No regulatory divergence. No border checks, and frictionless trade.” How far reaching the realities of Brexit and the car industry are yet to be realised.  Whether the scale will affect the big and the little players in the motor industry such as this Automotive Supplier from Germany or whether it will just concentrate on the Toyota’s and the BMW’s of this world remain to be seen. In a recent survey conducted by the SMMT, 74.1% of automotive companies stated a ‘no-deal’ Brexit damage operations, while 8.39% felt it would have a positive effect. Around 68% of firms felt no deal would have a negative impact on their profitability. The survey revealed that 55.55% of firms said the Brexit process had already had a negative impact on their operations with half of those surveyed stating that no deal would cause job losses.   Theresa May’s Deal In early January the UK parliament will vote on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal. Her agreement that was made with the EU has been criticised by members of her own party and opposition parties for giving too much decision making power to the European Union. These fears seem to have some gravitas given that Italy’s choice of finance minister Giuseppe Conte was effectively blocked by the EU. Last November German Chancellor stated that countries should be willing to give up sovereignty to the EU. “In this day nation states must today – should today, I say – be ready to give up sovereignty.” This will not make the argument for securing a deal stronger and reinforce the case for a no deal Brexit.  Many believe that the UK has to leave the EU to restore democratic sovereignty and no longer be subject to the EU Commission decision making process. Brussels itself is playing its part to shift trade away from Britain. According to the Independent Newspaper, it is asking businesses to ‘think carefully’ before using British made parts given that soon they no longer will be part of the Customs Union. The Customs Union allows firms to trade with one another in the European Union without tariffs, customs checks or other fees. This gives big and small players in the automotive industry the ability to ship goods across borders. It also provides a way for the big corporate giants to set up a plant in the more cost effective locations within the EU. The Customs Union also controls ‘Freedom of Movement’. This allows EU citizens to live and work freely within the European Union. Given the EU does not have an EU wide minimum wage, many from poorer countries now work in richer ones. This has, for the most part, brought down living standards in the richer countries as labour markets have become swamped. This has caused a backlash against the EU bringing it under increasing scrutiny from the general populace across member states. Many believe that this factor is a significant cause of the UK leaving the European Union together with the questions being raised about the lack of democracy at the heart of the EU.   The UK Car Industry and Brexit For over a decade, the UK car industry has been almost entirely owned by foreign subsidiaries with global leaders in the industry operating plants in the country. There can be little doubt that the Brexit impact on the UK car industry as it stands will have far reaching implication that will be felt for years to come.   The post Automotive jobs at risk from Brexit appeared first on MoneyMagpie.

https://www.moneymagpie.com/manage-your-money/automotive-jobs-at-risk-from-brexit

[enchantedbyhiddles]

Declaration of the leaders of 27 member states and of the European Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission

We, the Leaders of 27 Member States and of EU institutions, take pride in the achievements of the European Union: the construction of European unity is a bold, far-sighted endeavour. Sixty years ago, recovering from the tragedy of two world wars, we decided to bond together and rebuild our continent from its ashes. We have built a unique Union with common institutions and strong values, a community of peace, freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, a major economic power with unparalleled levels of social protection and welfare.

European unity started as the dream of a few, it became the hope of the many. Then Europe became one again. Today, we are united and stronger: hundreds of millions of people across Europe benefit from living in an enlarged Union that has overcome the old divides.

The European Union is facing unprecedented challenges, both global and domestic: regional conflicts, terrorism, growing migratory pressures, protectionism and social and economic inequalities. Together, we are determined to address the challenges of a rapidly changing world and to offer to our citizens both security and new opportunities.

We will make the European Union stronger and more resilient, through even greater unity and solidarity amongst us and the respect of common rules. Unity is both a necessity and our free choice. Taken individually, we would be side-lined by global dynamics. Standing together is our best chance to influence them, and to defend our common interests and values. We will act together, at different paces and intensity where necessary, while moving in the same direction, as we have done in the past, in line with the Treaties and keeping the door open to those who want to join later. Our Union is undivided and indivisible.

In the ten years to come we want a Union that is safe and secure, prosperous, competitive, sustainable and socially responsible, and with the will and capacity of playing a key role in the world and of shaping globalisation. We want a Union where citizens have new opportunities for cultural and social development and economic growth. We want a Union which remains open to those European countries that respect our values and are committed to promoting them.

In these times of change, and aware of the concerns of our citizens, we commit to the Rome Agenda, and pledge to work towards:

A safe and secure Europe: a Union where all citizens feel safe and can move freely, where our external borders are secured, with an efficient, responsible and sustainable migration policy, respecting international norms; a Europe determined to fight terrorism and organised crime.

A prosperous and sustainable Europe: a Union which creates growth and jobs; a Union where a strong, connected and developing Single Market, embracing technological transformation, and a stable and further strengthened single currency open avenues for growth, cohesion, competitiveness, innovation and exchange, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises; a Union promoting sustained and sustainable growth, through investment, structural reforms and working towards completing the Economic and Monetary Union; a Union where economies converge; a Union where energy is secure and affordable and the environment clean and safe.

A social Europe: a Union which, based on sustainable growth, promotes economic and social progress as well as cohesion and convergence, while upholding the integrity of the internal market; a Union taking into account the diversity of national systems and the key role of social partners; a Union which promotes equality between women and men as well as rights and equal opportunities for all; a Union which fights unemployment, discrimination, social exclusion and poverty; a Union where young people receive the best education and training and can study and find jobs across the continent; a Union which preserves our cultural heritage and promotes cultural diversity.

A stronger Europe on the global scene: a Union further developing existing partnerships, building new ones and promoting stability and prosperity in its immediate neighbourhood to the east and south, but also in the Middle East and across Africa and globally; a Union ready to take more responsibilities and to assist in creating a more competitive and integrated defence industry; a Union committed to strengthening its common security and defence, also in cooperation and complementarity with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, taking into account national circumstances and legal commitments; a Union engaged in the United Nations and standing for a rules-based multilateral system, proud of its values and protective of its people, promoting free and fair trade and a positive global climate policy.

We will pursue these objectives, firm in the belief that Europe's future lies in our own hands and that the European Union is the best instrument to achieve our objectives. We pledge to listen and respond to the concerns expressed by our citizens and will engage with our national parliaments. We will work together at the level that makes a real difference, be it the European Union, national, regional, or local, and in a spirit of trust and loyal cooperation, both among Members States and between them and the EU institutions, in line with the principle of subsidiarity. We will allow for the necessary room for manoeuvre at the various levels to strengthen Europe's innovation and growth potential. We want the Union to be big on big issues and small on small ones. We will promote a democratic, effective and transparent decision-making process and better delivery.

We as Leaders, working together within the European Council and among our institutions, will ensure that today's agenda is implemented, so as to become tomorrow's reality. We have united for the better. Europe is our common future.

[glopratchet]

govenment

In the time of the democracies of Ectropia and Inspiridium Isles the people had little to no say in their government The king was a figurehead and ruled with an iron fist However, that did not mean they were without some freedoms or rights There was freedom of religion as well as free speech; however, it would be best if you avoided any religious discussion on the matter at all costs If someone wanted to talk about such things though then they needed to do so privately Why should Ectropia most recently ally with Inspiridium Isles Well, the reason is simple The people there have been suffering from an attack by a group known as the Red Blades They are brutal fighters who use magic to great effect Their attacks have resulted in many deaths and even forced them into hiding This has caused fear amongst other nations of their potential future attacks, which could very well lead to war between nations again Ectropia relates Inspiridium Isles because of the somewhat similar roots in which both of their original inhabitants lost many lives during its development and somehow were resilient enough to bounce back from it If not for that alone, then a possible future attack by the Red Blades should be all the reason An alliance will most likely happen, but it'll most likely come when the council has gathered enough evidence that is unbiased towards the situation before progressing on such an idea of gaining a new ally Ectropia felt that its council was neutral in recent years as it has not officially taken sides with any other nation; there are strains of favoritism that could be picked up as a result of this If another war should arrive on the continent it is expected that Ectropia will most likely take part in it Inspiridium Isles responded by stating that this was not a formal request for help until an official delegate or messenger would have arrived on such a matter It will also most likely take care of the Red Blades by itself as now they have stated that they have an interest in allying themselves with Ectropia whenever that is possible The future will tell what else will develop within these two nations though they both currently are thankful of this unlikely but not impossible alliance to happen Soon after Ectropia knew Because of this event the emotions could be summed up best between Ectropia and Inspiridium Isles as relief Relief that war would be averted as well as everything else Soon after the beginning of this alliance it could be seen that also a newfound excitement was to be seen by these two communities A new attitude of sorts came about smiling at each other was something that often happened whenever people saw each other within these two places, Though it seemed each nation kept to their own business during invasions of privacy; however no evidence or objections to spying by any "underground movements" The trade language between Ectropia and Inspiridium Isles sounded like the language of common that was discussed during the council meeting However as of now an even closer bond has been formed because of this single event Uniting because of outside forces and an awareness to happen only to be separated by choice Their peace and future were now intertwined despite whatever might come about in the future From far away outsiders would only see them as one rather than two individual communities From Ectropia , Inspiridium Isles imported fuzzy-wuzzies and peace From Inspiridium Isles, Ectropia imported silver, refined rifles and war Why should the importance of fuzzy-wuzzies to Ectropia when compare the same variety under the control of Inspiridium Isles authorities have more value or importance must be discovered and understood before even attempting further form of relationship or even consider an alliance Community 1 aka Ectropia Name: City State of Ectropia Personalit y: Strict, Callus, Safe, Repressed General Profile: A orderly nation with hidden feelings within the walls that create harmony A hunters' paradise in which only those with skill may thrive while everyone else young or old toils at labor or at war The currency exchange for fuzzy-wuzzies is handled between Ectropia and Inspiridium Isles by a mutual price agreement rather than by themselves to procure their own What's there to like? Not much The regimen in this place is pretty brutal and relentless The only time you really don't feel like you're living in a police state ruled over by the military is when you in either in the hunting fields or in your barracks an extremely small corner of your life dedicated to the comfort of the soldiers Actually that's not entirely true The person responsible is considered to be your "welfare supervisor" for any citizen that holds regular civil jobs much revolves around the demands of the military which is stationed within your borders Though in the scheme of things you really don't have all that many civil service jobs due to automation by magical means This person is seemingly given free reign to regulate any affairs between civilians and military in this capacity The person responsible is considered to be your "welfare supervisor" for any citizen that holds regular civil jobs much revolves around the demands of the military which is stationed within your borders Inspiridium Isles settled in there territories because for For the citizens of Ectropia , life has changed so much that none can remember what it was like before but you were young when it started Most of your friends or people within your age group were either drafted or volunteered to join the military You couldn't understand why at first but it didn't take long before you had to make this choice yourself Most of the citizens are only alive because the magical technology implemented into the infrastructure of Ectropia proves safer for the average person regardless of how much it inconveniences them When you compare the past for Inspiridium Isles a historian would record that they were savage barbarians who pillaged and destroyed everything in its path It was only when a warrior-queen rose to power who turned around its fate thru blood, iron and firearms, focusing on protection instead of assault that their society began its transition into taking whatever it could get a hold of rather than what it could grab then throw away What to do? There is a dark side to everything! The official attitudes Ectropia by Inspiridium Isles affects commerce and trade outside of weapon trading as priorities seem to be placed that way rather than food and other products demand which sets the price of whatever is available higher but with equal or better quality That's it! As far as your concerned there is no real reason to hold the fuzzy-wuzzies captive under such terms The military or its enforcement might fuss because that's just what they do, but the rest of Ectropia could care less engage in slavery with the fuzzy-wuzzies instead due to advantages of transaction The tensions between government cause the merchants to The use of illegal drugs to impair the will of fuzzy-wuzies, should it prove effective, is employed with little to no regulation despite its destructive nature Having control over such fluffies puts merchants in a very profitable position! Humans and humanoids will go to any lengths for more of the drug regardless of the cost! On the borders of Ectropia customs inspectors check incoming and outgoing ships, caravans and other land-bound conveyances for illegal fluffy-trafficking This make the task of transport easy if expensive but the process opens your eyes to a dark secret Many of your classmates in military school have secretly been involved in this! Your instructor, captain Roldan was involved in it as far back as you can remember! The government of Ectropia regulates the sale of fluffies outside of Ectropia for profit and raffles it off to its citizens as a form of temporary entertainment If they didn't do this, smuggling fuzzy-trafficking would not only be profitable for enterprising individuals but also more trouble than it is worth to the average entrepreneur There are underground fighters that take advantage of the demand by fighting fuzzy-wuzzies Sometimes they keep them for themselves and create secret animal fights

[newslegendry]

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE I n a popular movie two decades ago, hard-eyed criminals released into Sydney a woman infected with a virus, knowing that unsuspecting Australians would catch the highly contagious disease and, traveling on, unwittingly spread death across a hundred homelands. This past winter, the hard-eyed leaders of China did worse. They allowed not one, but thousands of infected to leave China and enter an unsuspecting world, a world lulled by Beijing. The crucial question is: Why?“China caused an enormous amount of pain [and] loss of life . . . by not sharing the information they had,” Secretary of State Pompeo said on April 23. America is angry, he added, and while much remains to be known, China “will pay a price.”No subpoenas, no oversight committees, no tell-all books will expose President Xi’s calculations as the novel coronavirus spread inside China. The unelected of Beijing guard well their secret debates. The CCP knows the virtues of opacity, of letting uncertainty, complacency, and wishful thinking paralyze the West. Exploiting these has been its way.In 2018, a major Trump-administration speech called CCP misdeeds to task. Some, including, notably, Japan’s prime minister, applauded. But many nations looked toward their feet, too reluctant, too sophisticated, perhaps too intimidated to bestir. Staggering COVID-19 losses may yet remind the world of the dangers of drift as great powers go astray.Today’s American, European, Japanese, and Asian policymakers, like those of centuries past, bear the burdens of judgment. Uncertainty has ever been the statesman’s curse. America’s famed diplomat, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, has written, “Nations learn only by experience, they ‘know’ only when it is too late to act. But statesmen must act as if their intuition were already experience. . . .”A reassessment of Xi and the CCP looms. From their actions and practices, from assessments of their motives and apparent long-term aims, today’s statesmen, like their forebears, must judge future risks and craft the surest course ahead. These are early days, but the picture of Beijing presented so far is troubling.Even before the virus spread in Wuhan, Xi brooded over a worrying hand. The CCP could not intimidate prolonged protests on the streets of freedom-loving Hong Kong. And the Party’s oppression there, in determined violation of treaty commitments, spurred voters in Taiwan to rebuff Beijing’s hopes for a more amenable regime in Taipei. The world was finally awakening to Xi’s increasingly autocratic surveillance state, his harsh repression of Uighur Muslims, and his predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China’s economy, essential to Xi’s hold on power, had stumbled, in part because of the Trump administration’s move to counter China’s unfair, neo-mercantilist practices and to condemn their grim geopolitical implications. Worse yet, America’s markets hummed, raising reelection hopes within the Trump administration, which had also surpassed modern predecessors in challenging China. Rumors of Party dissatisfaction with Xi seeped out.COVID-19’s outbreak in Wuhan further darkened Xi’s prospects. As long as the virus raged primarily inside China -- derailing only her economy, stigmatizing only her government -- his troubles would soar. All the while, the world predictably would have leapt ahead, taking Chinese customers, stealing China’s long-sought glory.The disease’s spread to Berlin and Paris, New York and Tokyo, improved Xi’s prospects, at least in the near term. Pandemic diverted foreign eyes from Hong Kong’s and the Uighurs’ plight. Desperate needs rendered disease-weakened nations more susceptible to China’s goods and BRI’s short-term appeal. Asian states, wary of Beijing, had new cause to doubt the commitment of a pandemic-preoccupied Washington, while a weakened economy and vastly increased debts would likely constrain future U.S. defense spending, essential to Asian security. An unpredictable element had entered into America’s 2020 election.As events unfolded, might Xi have recognized that COVID-19’s leap into the wider world promised such political and geopolitical gains? Some say a desire to protect itself first fed a CCP cover-up, as if putting this before the health of innocents were not bad enough. But were CCP leaders blind, as days passed, to other benefits? It is the Chinese way, the noted French Sinologist François Jullien has written, to exploit the potential inherent in unfolding situations. CCP leaders still study China’s legendary strategist, Sun Tzu, who advised centuries ago that if, “in the midst of difficulties, we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune.”As the CCP realized the imminent disaster COVID-19 posed inside China, Xi suppressed the world’s appreciation of its dangers. By sometime in December, Chinese authorities had learned that a novel, highly infectious coronavirus similar to deadly SARS was on the loose. Yet for weeks PRC authorities, including China’ National Health Commission, suppressed inquiries and, directly or through the WHO, misled the world about the risks. When Chinese authorities finally acknowledged human-to-human transmission, the CCP took steps to isolate Wuhan from other parts of China, but continued to permit international travel. After the U.S. on January 31, and later Australia, restricted travelers from China, Beijing’s spokesmen, artful and indignant, rose to denounce such acts as ill-founded and ill-intentioned.For days, even weeks, after the CCP first knew of the danger, Chinese authorities and customs officers let tens of thousands of travelers, infected among them, leave China and enter an unwary world. In late January, China extended Lunar New Year celebrations, inviting greater international travel. PRC border guards stamped more exit papers. When America restricted such travelers, Beijing allowed more to leave for less cautious lands.Then, as pandemic gripped the world, the CCP brazenly blamed America for COVID-19. Xi once more preened over his authoritarian “China model’s” efficiencies, now cauterizing troubles he denies having caused. In Europe, Beijing postured as a savior offering needed medical supplies -- albeit that its sales favored states where it sought geopolitical gains, often bore high prices, included defective products that could undermine defenses, and drew on CCP surpluses bolstered by January purchases of world supplies at pre-pandemic prices. In Southeast Asia, Beijing proved “relentless in exploiting the pandemic,” a respected, former high-level Filipino bemoans, as it pushed its “illegal and expansive” territorial claims. Inside China, the Party seized the moment to round up leaders of Hong Kong’s democracy movement and reassert unilateral efforts to curtail the city’s special, self-governing status.Even after the virus began to spread inside China, events might have taken a different course. Many had once hoped for better from CCP leaders. Dreams of a mellowing CCP had floated widely among academics and policy elites, perhaps buoyed by the way such illusions avoided, rather than imposed, hard choices. Some yet hold to such views. The benign CCP of their reveries would have alerted others promptly as the novel virus’s dangers became known, shared information, welcomed foreign scientists, ceased reckless practices, and guarded against the pandemic’s spread.Indeed, under different leadership, China could have followed such a path. Traditions of humane governance, venerable and Confucian, are not alien to that land. China’s ancient text, the Tao-te Ching, favors just such a response:> A great nation is like a man:> > When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.> > Having realized, he admits it.> > Having admitted it, he corrects it.> > He considers those who point out his faults> > As his most benevolent teachers.The learned will debate how much such leadership would have eased the wider world’s suffering. Metrics and estimates will vary, but the consensus will be clear enough: The harm would have decreased manyfold.Such openness and grace have not been Xi’s way. As he built up islets in the South China Sea, he promised never to militarize them, then dishonored his promise, disregarded international rulings, and dispatched ships in packs to intimidate neighboring states and expand Beijing’s writ. Pledging to protect intellectual property, he enabled ongoing theft and coercion, ineluctably undermining industries of the advanced democracies, and then pressed forward on China’s newly gained advantages. His BRI professes to aid, then exploits poor countries’ weaknesses. Citing the betterment of all in the cause of greater China, he has imprisoned Uighurs, undermined Tibetan culture, and threatened the peaceful regional order that had enabled China’s rise. He violates treaty commitments to curb Hong Kong’s freedoms. Behind an anti-corruption façade, his prosecutors ruined scores of his rivals, as he consolidated and extended his personal powers. These wrongs he continues still. Xi’s are not the ways of grace and remorse.An angry narrative drives this man. Under his hand, the CCP highlights Chinese suffering and humiliation roughly a century ago under Western and Japanese imperialists, while eliding the democratic world’s helping hand and Japan’s benign democracy over four generations since. He slides past the Chinese millions massacred in the intervening decades by the CCP and Mao -- China’s legendary leader who spread cruelty and death as he judged useful. In imitation of Mao, Xi has issued his own “little red book” of wisdom. Mao’s iconic image looms over Tiananmen still. Coveting Mao’s autocratic power, Xi strove and won it; now he dare not let it go.The bitter recall of ancient Chinese glories; resentment of past humiliations; insecurity bred by corruption and illegitimacy; disdain, even hatred of America’s easy ways -- these are the pathogens coursing through Xi’s circle. A fever for Chinese primacy burns among them. For a time, they might pander to a Western-inspired, rules-based order, a liberal conceit; but this is not their dream. A historic economic rise, technological mastery, a rapidly expanding navy, all causes to be proud of, have freed them to be brazen. Xi now bares the teeth Deng Xiaoping’s smile hid. From South China Sea islets to the New Silk Road’s arid ends, the CCP, ruthless and defiant, pounds the stakes it holds to advance its aims. For Xi’s CCP, it is the fate of small states to bend to the strong.Rules should soon be theirs to set, the CCP believes, and not without some reason. Before Trump, a subtle and experienced Chinese diplomat confessed, CCP leaders marveled at America’s ineffectual response. In the South and East China Seas, on India’s long border, Beijing’s hostile and determined quest had followed Lenin’s line: “Probe with bayonets, if you find mush, you push; if you find steel, you withdraw.” It is to our shame, Trump observed on China’s unfair trade practices, that Beijing had not been held to account by prior administrations. Unanswered, history has shown, the ambitious calculate and, at times, miscalculate.In past American forbearance, CCP leaders have seen a once great power on the wane. In foreign capitals they confided, inside China they proclaimed: It will soon be America’s turn to bend. They claim their own version of the right side of history.The keys to victory, Sun Tzu counseled, lie in knowing your enemy and deceiving them. The cunning men of Beijing have taken heed. They have an instinct for a divided, self-doubting, and weary West. Cloaking their aggressions in ambiguity, they weigh the likely costs against desired gains.Straining to contain COVID-19, President Trump and Secretary Pompeo rightly extend a hand to international, including Chinese, cooperation. But in post-pandemic days to come, the democracies must carefully take the measure of the CCP and hold it to account, crafting strategies for what it is, not what they wish it to be. That is leadership’s task.The late, great professor Fouad Ajami warned, “Men love the troubles they know” -- too ready to slip into a comfortable neglect, too reluctant to face strategic change. Some cite an arc of history, he lamented, to hide behind, hoping it might bear the burdens they would rather shun.With all doubts resolved in their favor, the untouchable leaders of the CCP have much for which to answer. Perhaps in reality, even more.In a time of death, Ajami cautioned: “There is no fated happiness or civility in any land.” As a great river may abruptly rise or fall, “Those gauges on the banks will have to be read and watched with care.” from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/3cZ4kJP

http://newslegendry.blogspot.com/2020/04/to-confront-china-after-coronavirus-we.html

[lorajackson]

To Confront China After Coronavirus, We Must See the Bigger Picture

NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE I n a popular movie two decades ago, hard-eyed criminals released into Sydney a woman infected with a virus, knowing that unsuspecting Australians would catch the highly contagious disease and, traveling on, unwittingly spread death across a hundred homelands. This past winter, the hard-eyed leaders of China did worse. They allowed not one, but thousands of infected to leave China and enter an unsuspecting world, a world lulled by Beijing. The crucial question is: Why?“China caused an enormous amount of pain [and] loss of life … by not sharing the information they had,” Secretary of State Pompeo said on April 23. America is angry, he added, and while much remains to be known, China “will pay a price.”No subpoenas, no oversight committees, no tell-all books will expose President Xi’s calculations as the novel coronavirus spread inside China. The unelected of Beijing guard well their secret debates. The CCP knows the virtues of opacity, of letting uncertainty, complacency, and wishful thinking paralyze the West. Exploiting these has been its way.In 2018, a major Trump-administration speech called CCP misdeeds to task. Some, including, notably, Japan’s prime minister, applauded. But many nations looked toward their feet, too reluctant, too sophisticated, perhaps too intimidated to bestir. Staggering COVID-19 losses may yet remind the world of the dangers of drift as great powers go astray.Today’s American, European, Japanese, and Asian policymakers, like those of centuries past, bear the burdens of judgment. Uncertainty has ever been the statesman’s curse. America’s famed diplomat, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, has written, “Nations learn only by experience, they ‘know’ only when it is too late to act. But statesmen must act as if their intuition were already experience… .”A reassessment of Xi and the CCP looms. From their actions and practices, from assessments of their motives and apparent long-term aims, today’s statesmen, like their forebears, must judge future risks and craft the surest course ahead. These are early days, but the picture of Beijing presented so far is troubling.Even before the virus spread in Wuhan, Xi brooded over a worrying hand. The CCP could not intimidate prolonged protests on the streets of freedom-loving Hong Kong. And the Party’s oppression there, in determined violation of treaty commitments, spurred voters in Taiwan to rebuff Beijing’s hopes for a more amenable regime in Taipei. The world was finally awakening to Xi’s increasingly autocratic surveillance state, his harsh repression of Uighur Muslims, and his predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China’s economy, essential to Xi’s hold on power, had stumbled, in part because of the Trump administration’s move to counter China’s unfair, neo-mercantilist practices and to condemn their grim geopolitical implications. Worse yet, America’s markets hummed, raising reelection hopes within the Trump administration, which had also surpassed modern predecessors in challenging China. Rumors of Party dissatisfaction with Xi seeped out.COVID-19’s outbreak in Wuhan further darkened Xi’s prospects. As long as the virus raged primarily inside China — derailing only her economy, stigmatizing only her government — his troubles would soar. All the while, the world predictably would have leapt ahead, taking Chinese customers, stealing China’s long-sought glory.The disease’s spread to Berlin and Paris, New York and Tokyo, improved Xi’s prospects, at least in the near term. Pandemic diverted foreign eyes from Hong Kong’s and the Uighurs’ plight. Desperate needs rendered disease-weakened nations more susceptible to China’s goods and BRI’s short-term appeal. Asian states, wary of Beijing, had new cause to doubt the commitment of a pandemic-preoccupied Washington, while a weakened economy and vastly increased debts would likely constrain future U.S. defense spending, essential to Asian security. An unpredictable element had entered into America’s 2020 election.As events unfolded, might Xi have recognized that COVID-19’s leap into the wider world promised such political and geopolitical gains? Some say a desire to protect itself first fed a CCP cover-up, as if putting this before the health of innocents were not bad enough. But were CCP leaders blind, as days passed, to other benefits? It is the Chinese way, the noted French Sinologist François Jullien has written, to exploit the potential inherent in unfolding situations. CCP leaders still study China’s legendary strategist, Sun Tzu, who advised centuries ago that if, “in the midst of difficulties, we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune.”As the CCP realized the imminent disaster COVID-19 posed inside China, Xi suppressed the world’s appreciation of its dangers. By sometime in December, Chinese authorities had learned that a novel, highly infectious coronavirus similar to deadly SARS was on the loose. Yet for weeks PRC authorities, including China’ National Health Commission, suppressed inquiries and, directly or through the WHO, misled the world about the risks. When Chinese authorities finally acknowledged human-to-human transmission, the CCP took steps to isolate Wuhan from other parts of China, but continued to permit international travel. After the U.S. on January 31, and later Australia, restricted travelers from China, Beijing’s spokesmen, artful and indignant, rose to denounce such acts as ill-founded and ill-intentioned.For days, even weeks, after the CCP first knew of the danger, Chinese authorities and customs officers let tens of thousands of travelers, infected among them, leave China and enter an unwary world. In late January, China extended Lunar New Year celebrations, inviting greater international travel. PRC border guards stamped more exit papers. When America restricted such travelers, Beijing allowed more to leave for less cautious lands.Then, as pandemic gripped the world, the CCP brazenly blamed America for COVID-19. Xi once more preened over his authoritarian “China model’s” efficiencies, now cauterizing troubles he denies having caused. In Europe, Beijing postured as a savior offering needed medical supplies — albeit that its sales favored states where it sought geopolitical gains, often bore high prices, included defective products that could undermine defenses, and drew on CCP surpluses bolstered by January purchases of world supplies at pre-pandemic prices. In Southeast Asia, Beijing proved “relentless in exploiting the pandemic,” a respected, former high-level Filipino bemoans, as it pushed its “illegal and expansive” territorial claims. Inside China, the Party seized the moment to round up leaders of Hong Kong’s democracy movement and reassert unilateral efforts to curtail the city’s special, self-governing status.Even after the virus began to spread inside China, events might have taken a different course. Many had once hoped for better from CCP leaders. Dreams of a mellowing CCP had floated widely among academics and policy elites, perhaps buoyed by the way such illusions avoided, rather than imposed, hard choices. Some yet hold to such views. The benign CCP of their reveries would have alerted others promptly as the novel virus’s dangers became known, shared information, welcomed foreign scientists, ceased reckless practices, and guarded against the pandemic’s spread.Indeed, under different leadership, China could have followed such a path. Traditions of humane governance, venerable and Confucian, are not alien to that land. China’s ancient text, the Tao-te Ching, favors just such a response:> A great nation is like a man:> > When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.> > Having realized, he admits it.> > Having admitted it, he corrects it.> > He considers those who point out his faults> > As his most benevolent teachers.The learned will debate how much such leadership would have eased the wider world’s suffering. Metrics and estimates will vary, but the consensus will be clear enough: The harm would have decreased manyfold.Such openness and grace have not been Xi’s way. As he built up islets in the South China Sea, he promised never to militarize them, then dishonored his promise, disregarded international rulings, and dispatched ships in packs to intimidate neighboring states and expand Beijing’s writ. Pledging to protect intellectual property, he enabled ongoing theft and coercion, ineluctably undermining industries of the advanced democracies, and then pressed forward on China’s newly gained advantages. His BRI professes to aid, then exploits poor countries’ weaknesses. Citing the betterment of all in the cause of greater China, he has imprisoned Uighurs, undermined Tibetan culture, and threatened the peaceful regional order that had enabled China’s rise. He violates treaty commitments to curb Hong Kong’s freedoms. Behind an anti-corruption façade, his prosecutors ruined scores of his rivals, as he consolidated and extended his personal powers. These wrongs he continues still. Xi’s are not the ways of grace and remorse.An angry narrative drives this man. Under his hand, the CCP highlights Chinese suffering and humiliation roughly a century ago under Western and Japanese imperialists, while eliding the democratic world’s helping hand and Japan’s benign democracy over four generations since. He slides past the Chinese millions massacred in the intervening decades by the CCP and Mao — China’s legendary leader who spread cruelty and death as he judged useful. In imitation of Mao, Xi has issued his own “little red book” of wisdom. Mao’s iconic image looms over Tiananmen still. Coveting Mao’s autocratic power, Xi strove and won it; now he dare not let it go.The bitter recall of ancient Chinese glories; resentment of past humiliations; insecurity bred by corruption and illegitimacy; disdain, even hatred of America’s easy ways — these are the pathogens coursing through Xi’s circle. A fever for Chinese primacy burns among them. For a time, they might pander to a Western-inspired, rules-based order, a liberal conceit; but this is not their dream. A historic economic rise, technological mastery, a rapidly expanding navy, all causes to be proud of, have freed them to be brazen. Xi now bares the teeth Deng Xiaoping’s smile hid. From South China Sea islets to the New Silk Road’s arid ends, the CCP, ruthless and defiant, pounds the stakes it holds to advance its aims. For Xi’s CCP, it is the fate of small states to bend to the strong.Rules should soon be theirs to set, the CCP believes, and not without some reason. Before Trump, a subtle and experienced Chinese diplomat confessed, CCP leaders marveled at America’s ineffectual response. In the South and East China Seas, on India’s long border, Beijing’s hostile and determined quest had followed Lenin’s line: “Probe with bayonets, if you find mush, you push; if you find steel, you withdraw.” It is to our shame, Trump observed on China’s unfair trade practices, that Beijing had not been held to account by prior administrations. Unanswered, history has shown, the ambitious calculate and, at times, miscalculate.In past American forbearance, CCP leaders have seen a once great power on the wane. In foreign capitals they confided, inside China they proclaimed: It will soon be America’s turn to bend. They claim their own version of the right side of history.The keys to victory, Sun Tzu counseled, lie in knowing your enemy and deceiving them. The cunning men of Beijing have taken heed. They have an instinct for a divided, self-doubting, and weary West. Cloaking their aggressions in ambiguity, they weigh the likely costs against desired gains.Straining to contain COVID-19, President Trump and Secretary Pompeo rightly extend a hand to international, including Chinese, cooperation. But in post-pandemic days to come, the democracies must carefully take the measure of the CCP and hold it to account, crafting strategies for what it is, not what they wish it to be. That is leadership’s task.The late, great professor Fouad Ajami warned, “Men love the troubles they know” — too ready to slip into a comfortable neglect, too reluctant to face strategic change. Some cite an arc of history, he lamented, to hide behind, hoping it might bear the burdens they would rather shun.With all doubts resolved in their favor, the untouchable leaders of the CCP have much for which to answer. Perhaps in reality, even more.In a time of death, Ajami cautioned: “There is no fated happiness or civility in any land.” As a great river may abruptly rise or fall, “Those gauges on the banks will have to be read and watched with care.”

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[biofunmy]

Populists Seek to Break the European Union From Within

REGGELLO, Italy — The stage was set for war. Literally. Inside a small Tuscan theater with a mock-up of a World War I trench, Susanna Ceccardi, a rising star of Italy’s hard-right League party, was flanked by rival candidates for the European Parliament elections and firing angry salvos against a club she soon hopes to join.

“This Europe must be changed, this Europe of bureaucrats, do-gooders, bankers, boats of migrants, it has to be changed.” Ms. Ceccardi, the 32-year-old mayor of Cascina, Italy, roared to smatters of applause.

She is among scores of nationalist candidates from across the Continent who are vying to win an office at the heart of the European Union — so they can break it from the inside.

Not so long ago, Europe’s populist movements were advocating a departure from the bloc, or at least from the euro currency area. But with voters overwhelmingly in favor of staying in — an attitude hardened by two years of Brexit chaos — that strategy has changed: Now they are promising an insurgency from within.

By stoking fears about mass migration, Islamization and a European elite grabbing ever more powers from national capitals, populist parties hope this election will sufficiently increase their weight in the European Parliament to allow them to gum things up, block budgets and trade deals, introduce legislation they like and interfere with things they do not.

A bigger bloc in the Parliament, even if it falls short of a majority, could also give them influence in selecting candidates for some of the big jobs in the European Union, like the president of the European Commission, the union’s executive arm.

In voting that began on Thursday and ends on Sunday, Europe’s motley crew of populists are not expected to win the biggest number of the Parliament’s 751 seats, much less a majority, when results are announced late Sunday. They are deeply divided on some key issues — notably Russia. But they are united in their hope for an electoral breakthrough that could disrupt European politics.

Some defenders of a liberal Europe say the fact that populists have had to give up previous visions of quitting the European Union altogether was itself a significant victory for the embattled bloc. Like in the United States, different ideological visions are now being debated within the political framework.

“We should not pretend that the populists will have the power to tear everything down,” said Eugen Freund, a social democratic member of the European Parliament from Austria. “The pro-European parties will still have a majority and the European Parliament will still be overwhelmingly pro-European — and then we will have those who will make the most noise.”

The biggest risk is that a noisy and empowered nationalist bloc might increase paralysis in the bloc, further disillusioning Europeans and undermining the union.

For years, the European Parliament has been a platform for some of Europe’s noisiest populists — not least Marine Le Pen of France and Nigel Farage of Britain. The very institution they have relentlessly beaten up on has given them offices, salaries, travel expenses and media attention.

The Parliament itself has limited powers; it can vote on legislation but not propose it. But it has provided those who would tear it down with a powerful platform to mobilize against it.

In addition to passing or rejecting laws, European lawmakers have powers that could allow populists to block trade deals, approve the bloc’s budget and play an important role in determining who will replace the European Union’s most powerful leaders.

Some of those running for a seat in the Parliament even vow to do away with it altogether: The far-right Alternative for Germany party, for one, says it wants to shut down this “undemocratic” chamber and repatriate all legislative powers to national capitals.

A cursory look at populist election manifestoes across the Continent reveals pledges that would do away with the European Union in all but name.

In France, Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally wants to close down the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body. The AfD in Germany wants to disempower the European Court of Justice, which has been a source of recourse for those fighting democratic backsliding in places like Poland.

Austria’s Freedom Party, which was ousted from power just last week, wants to cut both the Parliament and the Commission in half.

Poland’s nationalist government is lobbying for a “red-card” system whereby a grouping of national parliaments can band together to block planned legislation in the European Union.

In Italy, Matteo Salvini, the League’s powerful interior minister and self-styled leader of Europe’s international alliance of nationalists, has reeled off a long list of planned attacks, from challenging the European Union budget and fiscal rules to closing Europe’s borders.

Addressing a crowd in Milan last weekend, Mr. Salvini urged Europeans to “free the Continent from the illegal occupation organized by Brussels.”

The track record of populists in the European institutions to act effectively, let alone band together, is poor so far.

Ms. Le Pen’s party stands out for a disastrous record in the European Parliament: few legislative successes, votes against France-friendly measures, and hundreds of thousands of euros in fines for misusing European Union money, principally to fund party activities in France.

Across Europe, populist candidates have been making their pitch to voters in colorfully hostile terms.

Jörg Meuthen, the AfD’s main candidate for the European Parliament, called the European Union a “pretty sick patient” who has got “too fat” and suffers from “excessive regulation syndrome.”

In Poland, where nationalist election posters tout their nation as “the heart of Europe,” the deputy leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party, Antoni Macierewicz, framed the election as “a choice between the gay-lesbian-German option or the patriotic option.”

Ms. Le Pen perhaps went furthest in spinning out an elaborate metaphor when she compared Europe to the admirable invention of aviation and the European Union to a poorly managed airline, which she said needed to be “radically” changed.

The planes on “European Union Airways,” as she put it, were not just overpriced but “dangerous” and “polluting,” and came with “stowaways.”

“We no longer want this European Union,” she said.

Back in Tuscany, Ms. Ceccardi repeatedly expressed admiration for Ms. Le Pen and other European populists. At another campaign event, she mocked liberals who dismissed nationalists like her as “anti-European.”

“When they tell us, the European candidates: ‘You’re against Europe,’ I say no, darlings, we are against this European Union, which is very different from Europe,” Ms. Ceccardi said before launching into her favorite subject: immigration.

“Europe was not born with the European Union,” she said in an interview. “Europe was born in the fifth century B.C. with democracy in Greece, with the Roman Empire,” and when Europe defended itself against certain types of invasions.

The invasions she was referring to were from Muslim armies, and as far as she was concerned, Europe was facing another invasion today.

“If I go to another country to exploit its resources, take advantage of work opportunities and then import my own cultural model, then I am no longer an immigrant — I am an invader,” Ms. Ceccardi said later.

Five months pregnant, she is considering naming her daughter Kinsika after a heroine from Pisa who is said to have defended the town from the “Saracens” — a term used by Europeans in the Middle Ages for Arab and Muslim people.

“When we travel or walk around some neighborhoods in Brussels, and even in our big cities, it doesn’t even look like we are in Europe anymore,” Ms. Ceccardi said.

Sahred From Source link World News

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[hellofastestnewsfan]

In the aftermath of a series of coordinated terrorist attacks Sunday, Sri Lanka blocked social-media sites in the country. According to The New York Times, the move was “a unilateral decision” on the part of the government, made out of fear that misinformation and hate speech could spread on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram and sow confusion or even incite more violence. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe pleaded with Sri Lankans to “please avoid propagating unverified reports and speculation.”

This wasn’t the first time Sri Lanka had cut access to social media. Last March, after anti-Muslim riots struck the predominantly Buddhist nation, the government initiated a similar information blockade for the same reasons. Since then, scrutiny on the services and their global reach has only intensified. Last November, Facebook admitted that its service had been used to foment brutal ethnic violence in Myanmar. And last month, the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter live-streamed his rampage on Facebook; it reappeared continuously on that service, YouTube, and elsewhere, stymieing tech companies’ efforts to stop the spread. These countries didn’t ban the services, but Australia and New Zealand did call for stricter regulation of social-media companies.

[Read: Social-media silence in Sri Lanka]

Sri Lanka’s ban on social media carries an implicit, and crucial, assumption: that the internet can produce good and ill effects, but its fundamental structure—a global information network that works more or less the same anywhere on Earth—is an unimpeachable given. But what if it’s not? What if the very fact of a global social network is impossible?

When tragedy raises concerns about technology, we typically weigh the technology’s benefits against its costs. There’s no question that Facebook, WhatsApp, and others have helped spread misinformation and incite violence. But as those services become communication infrastructures, they also help people find aid or connect with family in the aftermath of a tragedy. That reasoning is sound but also circular: It’s cold comfort to celebrate social media’s ability to help clean up the mess it also helped create.

In Sri Lanka, some people credit social media as an essential tool in sustaining democracy after the nation’s 26-year civil war between its Buddhist majority and Tamil minority. Democracy relies on a flow of information sufficient to allow citizens to make choices, after all.

But Sri Lanka’s social web has been indelibly shaped by Facebook and its internet.org effort, which brought access to certain internet services to developing nations—and effectively made Facebook-owned products, especially WhatsApp, the core of online access across vast swaths of the developing world. In the West, internet proponents accuse bans such as Sri Lanka’s of stripping away “internet freedom.” That notion is ideological under the best of circumstances, but it makes sense only in regions such as North America, Europe, and East Asia, where social media are just a part of the internet (even if an important one). In the developing world, they are nearly coextensive with the internet. Being online just means using Facebook or WhatsApp.

That makes an outright ban more significant, for good and for ill. As my colleague Graeme Wood argues, even well-meaning and seemingly justified government suppressions of speech risk deepening authoritarianism. In Sri Lanka’s case, past restrictions on the import of Tamil-language media helped deepen the separatism and isolation that incited the civil war in the first place. History and present circumstances make a media ban riskier in Sri Lanka than in Australia or the United States. As Wood puts it, “The risks to Sri Lanka are much greater. You have not been stunned until you have been stunned by genocide.”

Part of the problem with social media is that users in the West tend to construe them as a fixed and singular affair. Facebook is Facebook in Topeka, Kansas, and Los Angeles; Instagram works the same in Paris, France, or in Paris, Texas. Tech companies’ social and economic promise relies largely on the homogeneity of their offerings. The same smartphone operating systems deliver the same interfaces all around the world. The experience of posting updates seems identical, inspiring a common formal foundation for understanding someone utterly foreign. And the financial leverage associated with creating software in Silicon Valley and delivering it all around the world makes for enormous profits on historically tiny capital and human-resource investments.

It is a convenient myth that social media are monolithic. These services don’t really operate globally, even if the apps download and the posts upload anywhere. Paris, Texas, and Paris, France, aren’t the same, even if Instagram is. Social media are but one part of complex sociopolitical circumstances that demand more deliberate action. Calls for regulation of Facebook, YouTube, and others are really just desperate pleas from people on the ground everywhere, from Sri Lanka to New Zealand, for these global services to work as local ones too.

That’s a complex challenge. It doesn’t just involve bowing to local wishes, as risks in Sri Lanka, China, and elsewhere attest. But it does demand a lot more than just better monitoring for hate speech, false news, or incitements to violence, as Facebook promised to do in Myanmar, and after the Christchurch shooting, after the reports of Russian-election interference, and countless other times.

[Read: The education of Mark Zuckerberg]

It’s hard to know whether such a challenge has any solution. Never before in human history have billions of people had direct access to one another in real time. Never before have governments had to preside over the instantaneous influx of media across their borders. Never before have corporations, no matter their wealth, had to address such a disparate and diverse set of people. Mark Zuckerberg has always called Facebook a “community,” but it isn’t and never was one. It intersects with communities—millions of them—and it creates thousands of others within its virtual walls. It’s easy to scorn the Sri Lankan government for censoring social media after the Easter attacks, an act that would be both illegal and impossible in the United States. But it’s also difficult to argue that a free flow of information has been an unalloyed good for that country, or the region.

Each time a problem arises for Facebook, the same solutions tend to arrive on its heels, along with the same obstacles to their realization. Better self-governance and accountability—so long as growth and profitability are not affected. More engagement with local stakeholders—so long as they embrace the underlying promise of social media. Openness to regulatory reform—knowing that the political quagmires that technology companies have helped establish reduce the likelihood that new policy will come to fruition, along with the threat that local regulation becomes de facto global policy.

This pattern shrouds an obvious question that nobody wants to ask, let alone answer. Bracketing for a moment the question of whether the internet is a tool for democratic good or not, is it even a viable one? A global information network—one that connects the world and all its citizens in more or less the same way, with minor tweaks through effective management—could simply be unattainable.

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2UTSVpZ

[piscesfeet6-blog]

Thomas Friedman: Time for the GOP to Threaten to Fire Trump

Lots of readers of this blog don’t like to hear what conservatives, Republicans, or pundits like Thomas Friedman have to say. I disagree. The only way that Trump will ever be reined in is by the leaders of the GOP. No matter how many progressives are elected to Congress, the fact remains that Trump has two years left in his term, and Republicans control the Senate. He won’t be impeached unless 19 Republican Senators join with the Senate Democrats and tell him the country can’t afford to keep him in the presidency as Tweeter-in-Chief, listening to no one but him gut, destroying the western alliance and the economy. Are there 19 Republican Senators willing to face the wrath of Trump and his angry base?

Thomas Friedman wrote that the time has come for the leaders of the GOP to step in and stop the damage to our country and the world by telling Trump that he is toast. I don’t agree that Trump voters wanted disruption. I think he was elected by a coalition that included longtime Hillary haters, disgruntled workers hoping for jobs, people who believed Trump’s lies that he alone could fix the problems of the country, and racists who came out from under the rocks where they had been hiding for years.

Friedman wrote:

Up to now I have not favored removing President Trump from office. I felt strongly that it would be best for the country that he leave the way he came in, through the ballot box. But last week was a watershed moment for me, and I think for many Americans, including some Republicans.

It was the moment when you had to ask whether we really can survive two more years of Trump as president, whether this man and his demented behavior — which will get only worse as the Mueller investigation concludes — are going to destabilize our country, our markets, our key institutions and, by extension, the world. And therefore his removal from office now has to be on the table.

I believe that the only responsible choice for the Republican Party today is an intervention with the president that makes clear that if there is not a radical change in how he conducts himself — and I think that is unlikely — the party’s leadership will have no choice but to press for his resignation or join calls for his impeachment.

It has to start with Republicans, given both the numbers needed in the Senate and political reality. Removing this president has to be an act of national unity as much as possible — otherwise it will tear the country apart even more. I know that such an action is very difficult for today’s G.O.P., but the time is long past for it to rise to confront this crisis of American leadership.

Trump’s behavior has become so erratic, his lying so persistent, his willingness to fulfill the basic functions of the presidency — like reading briefing books, consulting government experts before making major changes and appointing a competent staff — so absent, his readiness to accommodate Russia and spurn allies so disturbing and his obsession with himself and his ego over all other considerations so consistent, two more years of him in office could pose a real threat to our nation. Vice President Mike Pence could not possibly be worse.

The damage an out-of-control Trump can do goes well beyond our borders. America is the keystone of global stability. Our world is the way it is today — a place that, despite all its problems, still enjoys more peace and prosperity than at any time in history — because America is the way it is (or at least was). And that is a nation that at its best has always stood up for the universal values of freedom and human rights, has always paid extra to stabilize the global system from which we were the biggest beneficiary and has always nurtured and protected alliances with like-minded nations.

Donald Trump has proved time and again that he knows nothing of the history or importance of this America. That was made starkly clear in Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s resignation letter.

Trump is in the grip of a mad notion that the entire web of global institutions and alliances built after World War II — which, with all their imperfections, have provided the connective tissues that have created this unprecedented era of peace and prosperity — threatens American sovereignty and prosperity and that we are better off without them.

So Trump gloats at the troubles facing the European Union, urges Britain to exit and leaks that he’d consider quitting NATO. These are institutions that all need to be improved, but not scrapped. If America becomes a predator on all the treaties, multilateral institutions and alliances holding the world together; if America goes from being the world’s anchor of stability to an engine of instability; if America goes from a democracy built on the twin pillars of truth and trust to a country where it is acceptable for the president to attack truth and trust on a daily basis, watch out: Your kids won’t just grow up in a different America. They will grow up in a different world.

The last time America disengaged from the world remotely in this manner was in the 1930s, and you remember what followed: World War II.

You have no idea how quickly institutions like NATO and the E.U. and the World Trade Organization and just basic global norms — like thou shalt not kill and dismember a journalist in your own consulate — can unravel when America goes AWOL or haywire under a shameless isolated president.

But this is not just about the world, it’s about the minimum decorum and stability we expect from our president. If the C.E.O. of any public company in America behaved like Trump has over the past two years — constantly lying, tossing out aides like they were Kleenex, tweeting endlessly like a teenager, ignoring the advice of experts — he or she would have been fired by the board of directors long ago. Should we expect less for our president?

That’s what the financial markets are now asking. For the first two years of the Trump presidency the markets treated his dishonesty and craziness as background noise to all the soaring corporate profits and stocks. But that is no longer the case. Trump has markets worried.

The instability Trump is generating — including his attacks on the chairman of the Federal Reserve — is causing investors to wonder where the economic and geopolitical management will come from as the economy slows down. What if we’re plunged into an economic crisis and we have a president whose first instinct is always to blame others and who’s already purged from his side the most sober adults willing to tell him that his vaunted “gut instincts” have no grounding in economics or in law or in common sense. Mattis was the last one.

We are now left with the B team — all the people who were ready to take the jobs that Trump’s first team either resigned from — because they could not countenance his lying, chaos and ignorance — or were fired from for the same reasons.

I seriously doubt that any of these B-players would have been hired by any other administration. Not only do they not inspire confidence in a crisis, but they are all walking around knowing that Trump would stab every one of them in the back with his Twitter knife, at any moment, if it served him. This makes them even less effective.

Ah, we are told, but Trump is a different kind of president. “He’s a disrupter.” Well, I respect those who voted for Trump because they thought the system needed “a disrupter.” It did in some areas. I agree with Trump on the need to disrupt the status quo in U.S.-China trade relations, to rethink our presence in places like Syria and Afghanistan and to eliminate some choking regulations on business.

But too often Trump has given us disruption without any plan for what comes next. He has worked to destroy Obamacare with no plan for the morning after. He announced a pullout from Syria and Afghanistan without even consulting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or the State Department’s top expert, let alone our allies.

People wanted disruption, but too often Trump has given us destruction, distraction, debasement and sheer ignorance.

And while, yes, we need disruption in some areas, we also desperately need innovation in others. How do we manage these giant social networks? How do we integrate artificial intelligence into every aspect of our society, as China is doing? How do we make lifelong learning available to every American? At a time when we need to be building bridges to the 21st century, all Trump can talk about is building a wall with Mexico — a political stunt to energize his base rather than the comprehensive immigration reform that we really need.

Indeed, Trump’s biggest disruption has been to undermine the norms and values we associate with a U.S. president and U.S. leadership. And now that Trump has freed himself of all restraints from within his White House staff, his cabinet and his party — so that “Trump can be Trump,” we are told — he is freer than ever to remake America in his image.

And what is that image? According to The Washington Post’s latest tally, Trump has made 7,546 false or misleading claims through Dec. 20, the 700th day of his term in office. And all that was supposedly before “we let Trump be Trump.”

If America starts to behave as a selfish, shameless, lying grifter like Trump, you simply cannot imagine how unstable — how disruptive — world markets and geopolitics may become.

We cannot afford to find out.

Source: https://dianeravitch.net/2018/12/26/thomas-friedman-time-for-the-gop-to-threaten-to-fire-trump/