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61,986 | Yesterday, less than 24 hours before leaving office Mike Pompeo declared that China was commiting genocide against its Uighur population. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has declared that China is committing “ongoing” genocide against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province, less than 24 hours before leaving office. Leaving aside the details of the matter at hand, is it usual for significant geo-political statements like this to be made during the lame duck period, or more generally at the last possible moment before leaving office? | It isn't usual, but it happens, especially when the leaving administration doesn't see eye to eye with the following administration. The last time this occurred was only just 4 years ago when President Obama fired a parting shot at Netanyahu (and Trump) by abstaining from blocking a U.N. resolution that condemned Israeli settlement plans, allowing it to pass. Whether this was more or less a symbolic act than the recent China-example remains to be seen, but it nevertheless was widely interpreted as a final middle-finger to Netanyahu, with whom Obama had had a rather... troubled relationship. | {
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62,001 | Just before leaving office, President Trump rescinded his 2017 executive order which limited lobbying by former government officials : In the final hours of his term, President Donald J. Trump rescinded
early Wednesday an executive order he had issued years earlier to bar
former White House employees from lobbying the government after they
leave their jobs. ... The original order issued in 2017 was one of the few concrete steps
that Mr. Trump took in his pledge to “drain the swamp.” It expanded on rules adopted during the Obama administration and
included a five-year ban for former officials lobbying the agencies
they once worked for. Since "draining the swamp" was one of his core promises, and this EO was one of the few broadly popular parts of his legacy, is there any explanation for why he did this as what is, essentially, his last action in office? Was there any official explanation? | There was no official explanation given by the Trump administration in the new executive order that he signed to revoke the ethics executive order (13770), as noted by Politico . However, the Clinton administration had issued an executive order (13184) close to the end of his term revoking a similar ethics executive order (12834). There also did not appear to be official reasons given for that action. Nevertheless, the Washington Post reported then : A number of current and recently departed Clinton appointees had privately pressed top presidential aides to take the action the White House did yesterday, in part because many of them face bleak job prospects after Bush's inauguration, said sources knowledgeable about the discussions. [ ... ] White House officials reject those claims. They echo the view of many Washington lobbyists as well as government employment experts who say the five-year ban was excessive and needed to be removed. NPR also noted at the time when Trump signed the ethics executive order that "what Trump is doing is derivative of what his two immediate Democratic predecessors did". The article also compared the similarities between those executive orders. Clinton ended up revoking his order in his final weeks in office, allowing his appointees to go straight into lobbying after all. And the Obama administration granted some waivers to its ethics order. It remains to be seen, of course, if Trump sticks hard and fast to his ban. | {
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62,010 | I will use India as an example. India seems to have only two real enemies: China and Pakistan. The longest range missiles India would need to launch an attack on China should be roughly around 5000 km (4788.76 km, to be specific). However, India is developing a missile named Agni-III with a maximum range of 8000 km. I have two questions: How does Indian justify its missile program having a range of 8000km to the international community? According to the current rules-based international order, could Pakistan field a missile of a range of 8000 km and point toward the Indian program as a justification? N.B. I am not talking about China or Russia, as they have their self-described enemies, the West, to justify their missile programs. | Longer range missiles could conceivably be sea-launched, as an SLBM, from a standoff position. Having a more capable platform would give that option. (India does have SLBMs but not necessarily of same family) as others have pointed out, a longer range allows India to site its missiles in safer areas, rather than on their borders. Current geo-politics can change. Today's friend may be tomorrow's rival. That's especially true of countries that have world, rather just regional, ambitions. Nor is it wise to forego plausible deniability by having single-target weapons. "India is a peaceful nation ready to defend itself against all enemies if attacked and does not wish war with anyone unprovoked" sounds a lot better than "You're next, China", which sounds like something Kim Jong Un in North Korea would say. If indeed India and China went to a hot war, potentially with a network of alliances, India could under certain conditions prefer to fire a warning shot at remote Chinese military forces rather than escalating to the jugular by a strike on Chinese territory. The way ICBMs work, by suborbital flight, do not necessarily mean that achieving 8000km range is much harder than 5000km. Last but not least, the "threat perception" and "political dislike" of ICBMs is unclear with regards to distance. Some see really short range missiles as more dangerous as they perceive them as weapons more likely to be used earlier in a conflict, as part of a "limited nuclear war". This was partially the reason for Pershing deployment resistance in 1980s Europe (another, bigger, part is that they made Europe more of a target). On the other hand, 40000km range ICBMs, as mentioned in comments, would, in my opinion, generate significant international pushback as they could fairly easily be kept in orbit. 3000-15000 km is just "standard ICBM" and probably matters little either way, once the "main opponent countries" consider themselves within range. (You can bet that the US did very much care when Seattle came within North Korea's range and will so again if Washington follows). | {
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62,020 | This photo shows President Biden at his desk in the Oval Office. He is holding a pen and signing an executive order. On his right is a pile of further executive orders. In front is a box with approximately 12 pens, apparently one for each order. Source: BBC News Why does the President need so many pens? It gives a slightly comical impression. | It's a tradition and the pens are given out later as souvenirs . From this TIME article : The rationale is fairly simple. The pen used to sign historic legislation itself becomes a historical artifact. The more pens a President uses, the more thank-you gifts he can offer to those who helped create that piece of history. The White House often engraves the pens, which are then given as keepsakes to key proponents or supporters of the newly signed legislation. During President Trump's first signing ceremony, he used multiple pens too , later given to the Members of Congress who had attended. (The pens are placed on Trump's right.) Source: https://us.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/01/20/donald-trump-first-law-pens-orig-mg.cnn/video/playlists/atv-road-to-the-white-house-automated/ President Obama famously used 22 pens to sign Obamacare into law. The White House released a video then explaining the tradition. Obama used 22 pens to sign health care reform legislation into law in March of 2010. He used a different pen for each letter or half letter of his name. "This is gonna take a little while," Obama said. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/obama-legacy/obamacare.html Recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi also used multiple pens when signing the articles of impeachment during Trump's first impeachment. Source: AP Photo This tradition dates back at least to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. | {
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62,024 | I'm aware of photos like these: (Source: BBC --more photos therein. That event had been criticized by Fauci as a "superspreader".) But it's also been said in a comment to another q that mask-wearing rules did cover most White House employees otherwise. So, what did the Trump White House have as rules (if that's the right word) in writing regarding mask wearing on WH premises? | It's a tradition and the pens are given out later as souvenirs . From this TIME article : The rationale is fairly simple. The pen used to sign historic legislation itself becomes a historical artifact. The more pens a President uses, the more thank-you gifts he can offer to those who helped create that piece of history. The White House often engraves the pens, which are then given as keepsakes to key proponents or supporters of the newly signed legislation. During President Trump's first signing ceremony, he used multiple pens too , later given to the Members of Congress who had attended. (The pens are placed on Trump's right.) Source: https://us.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/01/20/donald-trump-first-law-pens-orig-mg.cnn/video/playlists/atv-road-to-the-white-house-automated/ President Obama famously used 22 pens to sign Obamacare into law. The White House released a video then explaining the tradition. Obama used 22 pens to sign health care reform legislation into law in March of 2010. He used a different pen for each letter or half letter of his name. "This is gonna take a little while," Obama said. Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/obama-legacy/obamacare.html Recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi also used multiple pens when signing the articles of impeachment during Trump's first impeachment. Source: AP Photo This tradition dates back at least to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. | {
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62,028 | China urged to tap RCEP trade deal for future digital payments system as US sanctions loom China should consider using digital technology to develop an alternative to the SWIFT financial payments system as a way of insulating itself from being cut off from the US-dominated financial messaging service, according to Liu Xiaochun, deputy dean of the Shanghai New Finance Research Institute. So, my question is: why hasn't either Russia or China done that already? already is the keyword here as Russia is dealing with US sanctions for years now. And, China is dealing with US hostility from the start of Trump's presidency which signals that China is no longer safe from possible large scale US sanctions. | You can't bypass the dollar without having a comparably sized economy that is not dependent on the dollar. There are two big main factors that make replacing the dollar difficult. The practical one is you need a market that has the same volume as the dollar, moving billions of dollars is trivial (for moving billions). Secondly you need a market independent of the dollar, because the U.S. will fight a challenge to the dollar as it being the standard of international trade is massively beneficial. China may have the economic size to compete, but they are far too dependent on U.S. trade to actually take on such a fight. They also have trust issues since they have shown in the past a willingness to manipulate currency to their advantage which encourages other countries to avoid holding any such currency for prolonged periods. Russia lacks the economy to truly challenge the U.S. | {
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62,088 | The current debate right now is whether or not the US Senate can hold an impeachment trial and potentially convict an ex-president who is now technically considered a private citizen. To be clear, the impeachment occurred during the presidency, but the trial will be held after his presidency. The speculated purpose is to prevent the ex-president from running for office ever again. I'll take it a step beyond: Could the house/senate impeach and convict any private citizen? I wasn't sure if there's specific language in the US constitution that describes that impeachment is reserved specifically for a sitting president, or if it's another case of "this is how it's historically been done but it's debatable." | Can the US House/Congress impeach/convict a private citizen that hasn't held office? No. Only those individuals identified as shown below. A person who has never held such office cannot be impeached, Article II, Section 4 : Offices Eligible for Impeachment The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. | {
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62,114 | There is a consistent majority for liberal (progressive) parties in the UK, but they regularly cannibalise each other in the first-past-the-post voting system (see Wikipedia for details). The last four UK elections were won by the Conservatives yet in three of them the three principal liberal parties (Labour, Lib Dems, Greens) had more votes than the three principal conservative parties (Conservatives, UKIP, Brexit). So it would seem that proportional representation (PR) would lead to a higher probability of Labour-led (coalition) governments. Yet while there is a campaign group in the party, PR does not seem to be a commonly accepted position. Why is that? Does Labour prefer to win less elections but then govern without a coalition, or does Labour hope to eventually absorb the (older) Liberal Democrats and the Greens? | Because Labour gets more seats with regional representation. Even the famed Tony Blair landslide majorities were never actually a popular majority. In 2005, Labour won 55% of the seats with 35% of the vote. In 2001, Labour won 63% of the seats with 41% of the vote. In 1997, Labour won 63% of the seats with 43% of the vote. And even when Labour doesn't get the majority, it still benefits. When the Conservative coalition wrestled back the majority in 2010, Labour still won 40% of the seats with 29% of the vote. Labour Party or otherwise, there's a simple calculus: Majority parties benefit from regional representation. And majority parties control the laws. As in so many cases in politics, it's fashionable for the losing side to propose changing the rules when they can't change them, but the tune quickly changes when they become the winners and can change things. Change is possible, but it's unlikely to come from party leadership (and even less likely to be sustained by it when they come back into power). | {
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62,118 | The US Senate currently has a 50/50 split of Democratic (D) and Republican (R) caucus members. According to news reports, this has lead to "power sharing agreements" needing to be made between the Ds and Rs. Why is this necessary? Since the vice president (VP) has tie breaking authority in the senate and supports Ds, why doesn't the VP simply break ties in favor of Ds so that the Ds have full power---making the power sharing agreement moot? | According to news reports, this has led to "power sharing agreements" needing to be made between the Ds and Rs. Why is this necessary? First, it's important to note that the VP is not a Senator and hence cannot vote unless the Senate is tied . A 50 seats + VP "majority" is not the same as an unequivocal 51 seats majority. This is an important distinction in practice if everything is passed strictly along party lines. For instance, a 51 seats Democratic majority can accommodate for the absence of one Democratic Senator, as the Senate will still be in favour of Democrats 50D–49R. This will not be the case for a 50 seats + VP Democratic "majority" as there will be a Republican majority of 49D–50R if any one Democratic Senator is absent. Often, it may be difficult to ensure the presence of every single Senator for every single vote. Even if every single Senator is present, a 50–50 Senate majority can still be difficult to govern if no power-sharing agreement is struck, especially since daily proceedings can be slowed down drastically. For instance, if the Senate perpetually votes along party lines, everything would require the Vice President to break a tie, thus necessitating the VP to always be present in the Senate, which is often not the case . Then, there's the idea of fairness. A 50–50 Senate is, after all, evenly split, thus bringing us to the idea of negotiating a power-sharing agreement . The last time the Senate was split 50-50, in 2001, lawmakers agreed on an organizing resolution that allowed both parties to share power. Under that deal, the parties agreed to split committee memberships and staff equally and changed the rules, making it so that if a tie vote prevented a measure from moving out of committee, either the majority or the minority leader could bring the bill to the Senate floor. Reuters has an informative article regarding this: DEMOCRATS CAN COUNT ON HARRIS’ VOTE. DO THEY REALLY HAVE TO STRIKE A POWER-SHARING AGREEMENT WITH REPUBLICANS? No, but such a deal might help them get something like a normally functioning Senate, said Michael Thorning of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “If Democrats really want to play hardball on Jan. 20, they don’t have to enter into a power-sharing agreement like this. They could leverage their 50 votes plus the vice president to try to run the Senate the way they see fit,” he said. “They may find that under the current rules, that that is a very slow, very arduous way to run the Senate. You’d essentially be having a little skirmish over everything you wanted to do if Republicans really also wanted to play hardball,” Thorning said. Former Senator Tom Daschle, who led the Democrats in 2001 in negotiating the power-sharing agreement with Lott, recommended that Schumer negotiate some kind of similar deal with McConnell. “There’s only so much you can do with 51 votes, and you can’t expect the vice president to be sitting there, day after day, on every single issue, breaking the tie,” Daschle said. “At the end of the day you’ve got to figure out a way to collaborate with the minority, because for all intents and purposes, there is no minority; you’re an equal. You’re equally represented in the Senate and that requires some equal voice, with regard to what the agenda is going to be.” ... why doesn't the VP simply break ties in favor of Ds so that the Ds have full power---making the power sharing agreement moot? In short, the organizing resolution (power-sharing agreement) can be filibustered. Hence, in practice, 60 votes are needed to pass it, meaning it requires at least 10 Republican Senators to vote for it. More information on this at Is there a contingency if a power sharing agreement cannot be made? | {
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62,170 | Background Admission to the Union in the United States seems to be a vaguely laid out procedure as described in Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. I could not find details on what the minimum vote threshold is needed in both houses to successfully send an Admission Resolution to the President's desk to sign. I have found an article on California's admission , but the votes tabulated there seem way beyond any minimum threshold. Question What is the vote threshold in both houses of congress to send an Admission to the Union resolution to the President? | Admitting a new state to the Union requires only a normal joint act of Congress which is passed the same as any other bill. The threshold is therefore a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate (unless it is filibustered, in which case 60 votes are required), plus the signature of the President: In effect, they made it surprisingly easy to add new states. Creating a new state is arguably the only irreversible process in the entire Constitution. Yet, it requires no more than federal law to achieve it. ... Statehood bills in Congress are considered as any other legislation https://www.legislativeprocedure.com/blog/2020/10/23/the-procedures-for-adding-states-to-the-union | {
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62,173 | Just five GOP senators vote Trump impeachment trial is constitutional As I understand the US supreme court, they rule on the constitutionality of issues. Therefore it seems like the question of whether Trump's 2nd impeachment is constitutional is something they should be deciding. Why is the US Senate voting on it instead? | Because the US Supreme Court does not have the authority to rule on whether an impeachment is constitutional. That power lies solely with the US Senate, as part Article I, Section 3 of the US Constitution: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. It is worth remembering that the President is not the only position that is subject to impeachment. Congress has, in the past, impeached and convicted members of the judiciary for various reasons. If the courts had the ability to rule on whether the impeachment of one of their members was constitutional, that would undermine one of the checks and balances in the constitution. | {
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62,190 | There have been many independence movements in history. The Wikipedia category of independence movements alone lists 145 articles about mostly distinct independence / seperationist / liberation movements. It seems that all of these movements have one thing in common: They involve some group of people who want to split off from another group, for religious, economic, etc. reasons, with the other group denying the split. Has there ever been a case where the reverse scenario happened? Was there a group of people who wanted some other group of people to split off, and the other group refused? Perhaps a country with a couple wealthy states who want to get rid of some poor, underperforming state? | An example I could think of is Singapore. The country became independent from Malaysia after the Malaysian Parliament voted to expel Singapore, due to a combination of racial, economic and political tensions (Wikipedia has a relatively informative article regarding this). This came two years after a union was formed between Malaysia and Singapore (both Singapore and Malaysia were British colonies before). From the country's Library Board : On 9 August 1965, Singapore separated from Malaysia to become an independent and sovereign state. 3 The separation was the result of deep political and economic differences between the ruling parties of Singapore and Malaysia, 3 which created communal tensions that resulted in racial riots in July and September 1964. 3 [ ... ] Although all signs were pointing to trouble, very few were prepared for the dramatic end to Singapore’s union with Malaysia. From the BBC : In 1965, Singapore was forced to leave the Malaysian Federation. Manjit remembers seeing the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, cry during an interview. "We'd go to our neighbours' house and watch TV and we saw him crying and we didn't know why." It was a traumatic beginning to independence. Many believed Singapore could not survive on its own. But with huge hopes for the future, Singapore began to build the infrastructure that would transform the city. At that time, Singapore was one of the "poorest countries in the world" and its transformation to its current success has sometimes been dubbed the "Singapore miracle". From The Huffington Post : When Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965 and thrust into an unwanted independence, it was a typical Third World country. Its per capita income of $500 was the same as Ghana’s then . It was not desperately poor, but it had malnutrition. | {
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62,276 | Plenty of interesting questions have arisen related to the unprecedented riot at the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021. In a recent report printed in the New Yorker, Keith Stern, a sergeant-at-arms staffer on the floor of the House of Representatives, relayed how everyone in the Chamber safely escaped as protestors stormed into the building, and he included this fascinating tidbit: Someone said, “Where are the boxes? Do we still have them?” One of the parliamentarians came over to me and said, “The ballot boxes are safe.” If they’d been stolen or destroyed, to be honest, I don’t know what happens. Stern is referring to the boxes which contain the electoral certificates of each state. In a ceremonial process at the end of a presidential election (cf. Amendment XII), the president of the Senate--in this case, Vice President Pence--must unseal, initiate an official count, and then declare a winner. So, does anyone here know the answer to this: What is the procedure if the collected electoral ballots are stolen or destroyed before they are officially counted in a joint session of Congress? Is there any kind of provision for states to send new ballots? Can the House proceed without them? | Stealing those papers (from Congress' session) would not change the legality of their recording with the Archivist according to the Electoral Count Act ( 3 U.S. Code § 6 )... which by the way says that states must send six duplicate-originals of the same certificate under the seal of the State I doubt all 6 copies were stored in the same location in Congress. The ECA partly details where some of the copies are to be kept: the certificate or certificates so received by the Archivist of the United States shall be preserved by him for one year and shall be a part of the public records of his office and shall be open to public inspection; and the Archivist of the United States at the first meeting of Congress thereafter shall transmit to the two Houses of Congress copies in full of each and every such certificate so received at the National Archives and Records Administration. I'm guessing that the ad-hoc Congress procedure would have simply involved soliciting new copies from the Archivist . Thanks to Steve Melnikoff for pointing this out: the actual procedure that was followed in 2020 (and probably was the rule for while) is a bit more involved than simply captured in the law. As a NARA publication details the number of copies & duplicates is actually greater and their distribution is more "spread out", but it seems that only six of these actually have the vote counts: The Certificates of Ascertainment list the names of the electors
appointed and the number of votes cast for each person. The States prepares no less than SEVEN originals, which are
authenticated by the Governor’s signature and the State seal,
and TWO certified copies. Alternatively, NINE originals may be
prepared. One original along with two certified copies (or three originals,
if nine were prepared) must be sent to the Archivist, David S.
Ferriero, c/o Office of the Federal Register (F). The Governors must submit the Certificates of Ascertainment
“as soon as practicable” after their States certify election results. The remaining SIX original Certificates of Ascertainment will
be attached to the Certificates of Vote at the State meetings. The electors record their votes on SIX “Certificates of Vote,” which are then paired with the SIX remaining original
Certificates of Ascertainment. After signing the Certificates of Vote, the electors seal
and certify the electoral votes in packages containing a
paired original Certificate of Ascertainment and original
Certificate of Vote. They immediately distribute the
paired certificates as follows: One pair of original certificates is sent to the President
of the Senate (Michael R. Pence) Two pairs of original certificates are sent to the Archivist, David S. Ferriero, c/o Office of the Federal Register
(F) The Archivist holds one pair subject to the order of the
President of the United States Senate in case the electoral votes fail to reach the Senate. The other pair is held
by the Office of the Federal Register for public inspection
for one year. Two pairs of certificates are sent by registered mail to the Secretary of State of each State, who holds one pair
subject to the order of the President of the United States
Senate in case the electoral votes fail to reach the Senate. One pair of original certificates is sent to the Chief
Judge of the Federal District Court located where the
electors meet. It is held subject to the order of the President of the United States Senate or the Archivist of the
United States in case the electoral votes fail to reach the
Senate or the Archivist. The President of the Senate and the Archivist should
have the electoral votes in hand by December 23, 2020.
If votes are lost or delayed, the Archivist may take extraordinary measures to retrieve duplicate originals. As the new Congress assembles, the Archivist transmits
sets of Certificates to Congress, as requested. This generally happens when the Senate does not receive its set of
Certificates on time. The transfer occurs in late December or early January when OFR’s Legal staff meets with
representatives of the Secretary of the Senate and the
Clerk of the House. As you can see, duplicates are held "at the order of" the President of the Senate (the VP) both by the Archivist and also by the States, so either set could presumably be sent on their order/request (the latter would have probably taken longer to fetch though). Further, there's a duplicate simply held for anyone to see at the OFR . The Senate sending some "mission" there to inspect and copy them would have probably been the last resort. | {
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62,348 | Background Fascism does not have an easy clear cut definition. However, several figures throughout history are identified as unambiguously fascist, with Mussolini belonging to the original fascist group. By the same token leaders such as Vladimir Putin are not considered fascist despite the following (in combination): Forcing businesses to explicitly support the administration reminiscent of corporatism : Between 2000 and 2004, Putin set about the reconstruction of the
impoverished condition of the country, apparently winning a
power-struggle with the Russian oligarchs, reaching a 'grand bargain'
with them. This bargain allowed the oligarchs to maintain most of
their powers, in exchange for their explicit support for—and alignment
with—Putin's government. Jailing political opponents such as Alexei Navalny , who have a real fear of assassination. Persecuting gay people Annexing foreign land . A blatantly manipulated Judicial System Abysmal freedom of press Espousing a public image of machismo ...and many other aspects could lead someone to conclude that Putin is a Fascist...yet he is not known as such. It is this grey area and the example of Putin that lead me to ask Question What specific policies or aspects of a leader when, taken as an aggregate, classify the leader as a Fascist? | First let me say that I disagree with the notion that there is no clear definition of the term 'fascism'. Fascism is ethnocultural-nationalism , in Orwell's sense of the term 'nationalism' ; that may take some unpacking, but it isn't particularly vague. The problem with reaching agreement on a proper definition of 'fascism' is two-fold: The term 'fascism' is inextricably linked with a particular horrifying moment in world history, and has become associated in common language with unconscionable evil. The term is loaded, and loaded for bear; it is difficult to use it in objective, analytical discourse because it inevitably triggers strong emotional responses. In Orwell's understanding of nationalism, nationalists will typically warp or discard historical fact and objective reality in favor of a romanticized depiction of the nationalist group. The question for such nationalist groups isn't whether they (objectively) conform to fascist principles, but whether the term 'fascist' serves to increase or diminish the prestige of the group. A nationalist group might adopt or reject the label 'fascist', and may do it on one context and not in another, all depending on whether they think the term advances their cause or whether it doesn't. The defining characteristics of fascism are as follows (each is necessary but not sufficient; all three must be present to indicate fascism): Ethnocultural superiority . The group must hold a conviction that they share some quasi- or pseudo-biological 'sameness' that distinguishes them from other groups, and is the source of their group's particular qualities and virtues. Moreover, those qualities and virtues produce the intrinsic superiority of the group. Other forms of nationalism might organize around abstract identities like countries, religions or ideologies; fascists organize around bloodline, ethnic heritage, genetic 'purity', and similar biological ideation. Historical myth of puissance . All forms of nationalism construct or adopt a mythology in which their group thrives and is master of its own fate. Fascists specifically adopt a historical mythos in which their bloodline was (long ago) unsullied and dominated the territory they identify as theirs. Think Mussolini's desire to rebuild the Roman Empire, or Hitler's reference to the Aryan race that supposedly once ruled in the German lands. A narrative of loss and victimization . Not all nationalists think in terms of victimization, but fascists necessarily do. They see the world through the lens that their 'superior' group had its 'rightful' land and power (as defined by their mythos) stolen, taken by the corruption and malfeasance of impure bloodlines. Fascism, thus, focuses on the need to reclaim ancestral lands and put them back under the control of the identity group, subduing or driving out 'impure' bloodlines, in order to reclaim that (entirely mythological) history of glory. Fascism is not illiberal — in fact, most fascists over the last century spilled disproportionate amounts of ink demanding the rights, liberties, and privileges due to them as members of the identity group — but it is non-universal liberalism, restricting or excluding outsiders from the enjoyment of these rights, liberties, and privileges. Note that most of the other things people list off about fascism — the sexism, homophobia, expansionism, and control of public spaces like courts and news media — are derivatives of these three main principles. Fascists are generally sexist and homophobic, for instance, because of that emphasis on bloodlines: women are consigned to reproduction of the race, and gays are a threat to the perception of virility; they control public spaces out of a need to present the romanticized ideal of their mythos as an inescapable truth. Authoritarianism is a broader category, one that fascism overlaps with but isn't completely contained by. Authoritarianism merely means a system of governance with a strong hierarchical ordering and intense social divisions and controls; none of the specific features of nationalism are necessary. Russia is a good example of an authoritarian regime that isn't specifically nationalist or fascist, but is simply statist : putting the interests of the state and its rulers above all other interests. Fascist organizations and regimes are often authority-based, but they generally have a tribal pattern of authority, where delegation of power is more fluid than defined, and individuals seek advancement by 'proving' themselves through expressions of loyalty to the cause or the leader. | {
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62,362 | Yesterday, the office of Canada's Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness designated 13 groups as "Terrorist Groups". According to CBC , the result is that it is not necessarily a crime to be a member of a listed group. But banks and financial institutions can now freeze the group's assets, and police can charge anyone who financially or materially supports the group. Members seeking entry into Canada may be denied if they are found to be associated with a listed entity and the group's online content can be removed more easily. I won't even state the groups' names here because my question is about a more general principle; what defense would an organization or an individual have against the state upon being designated as an affiliate to a terrorist organization? Regardless of what you may think of this specific instance, I think it is quite bizarre to have the state be able punish you with all that was stated above through essentially what is executive action (no legislation, or opportunity of defending oneself in a court). Any references to Common Law precedent as well as parallels in the USA would be appreciated. | The appeals process is set out in part 4 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (2001) , which amended the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) Act and implemented the list. In simple terms, the process is that a listed group can apply to the Solicitor General for their removal. Their decision can then be challenged by the group in the form of a judicial review. After this process is complete, the group may not apply again unless there is a "material change in circumstances", or a review of the whole list has been completed by the Solicitor General, something which occurs every two years. In full: On application in writing by a listed entity, the Solicitor General shall decide whether there are reasonable grounds to recommend to the Governor in Council that the applicant no longer be a listed entity. If the Solicitor General does not make a decision on the application referred to in subsection (2) within 60 days after receipt of the application, the Solicitor General is deemed to have decided to recommend that the applicant remain a listed entity. The Solicitor General must give notice without delay to the applicant of any decision taken or deemed to have been taken respecting the application referred to in subsection (2). Within 60 days after the receipt of the notice of the decision referred to in subsection (4), the applicant may apply to a judge for judicial review of the decision. When an application is made under subsection (5), the judge shall, without delay (a) examine, in private, any security or criminal intelligence reports considered in listing the applicant and hear any other evidence or information that may be presented by or on behalf of the Solicitor General and may, at the request of the Solicitor General, hear all or part of that evidence or information in the absence of the applicant and any counsel representing the applicant, if the judge is of the opinion that the disclosure of the information would injure national security or endanger the safety of any person; (b) provide the applicant with a statement summarizing the information available to the judge so as to enable the applicant to be reasonably informed of the reasons for the decision, without disclosing any information the disclosure of which would, in the judge’s opinion, injure national security or endanger the safety of any person; (c) provide the applicant with a reasonable opportunity to be heard; and (d) determine whether the decision is reasonable on the basis of the information available to the judge and, if found not to be reasonable, order that the applicant no longer be a listed entity.
The judge may receive into evidence anything that, in the opinion of the judge, is reliable and appropriate, even if it would not otherwise be admissible under Canadian law, and may base his or her decision on that evidence. The Solicitor General shall cause to be published, without delay, in the Canada Gazette notice of a final order of a court that the applicant no longer be a listed entity. A listed entity may not make another application under subsection (2), except if there has been a material change in its circumstances since the time when the entity made its last application or if the Solicitor General has completed the review under subsection (9). Two years after the establishment of the list referred to in subsection (1), and every two years after that, the Solicitor General shall review the list to determine whether there are still reasonable grounds, as set out in subsection (1), for an entity to be a listed entity and make a recommendation to the Governor in Council as to whether the entity should remain a listed entity. The review does not affect the validity of the list. The Solicitor General shall complete the review as soon as possible and in any event, no later than 120 days after its commencement. After completing the review, the Solicitor General shall cause to be published, without delay, in the Canada Gazette notice that the review has been completed. In this section, “judge” means the Chief Justice of the Federal Court or a judge of the Trial Division of that Court designated by the Chief Justice. | {
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62,370 | In recent years, the US has seen a rise in a priori rejection or "cancelling" of illiberal ideas on the left. In essence, these ideas are being rejected from mainstream liberal society without good faith argument because they espouse or present ideas that are fundamentally harmful to the securing of personal rights of certain subsets of society. (For instance, Chick-fil-A's president coming under fire for speaking against gay marriage , A NYT editor resigning after publishing an op-ed promoting the use of force to quell largely peaceful protest , and somewhat abstractly, removing statues of people that espoused inequality of human rights ). My question is, does pure liberalism extend personal freedoms of speech to the expression of ideals that are opposed to or harmful to liberalism? Or rather, is it in keeping with the spirit of liberalism to (somewhat counter-intuitively and illiberally) banish such ideas that actively harm the ideals of liberalism? This is my first question on SE Politics so please kindly advise if I could reframe this question to be more clear. | This is The Paradox of Tolerance , as mentioned in the comments , and it is a debated grey area. Let's use your three examples, and let's observe that these all happened in the US. This constrains their utility as examples of liberalism, but the concrete examples are useful. Free Speech and Tolerance means you will not be punished for your ideas within limits , and that your presence is tolerated . It does not mean we have to like you. It does not mean we need to publish your book or print your opinion piece. It does not mean you are given a megaphone. It does not mean anyone has to listen to you. It does not mean your words do not have consequences. It does not mean you get to yell whatever you like whenever you like at whomever you like. Those limits generally are around when two person's rights collide and they must be weighed against each other. For example, the "clear and present danger" and later "imminent lawless action" US legal doctrines. Talking about what it would be like to yell "fire" in a crowded theater is protected speech and tolerated. Actually falsely yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is not protected, it puts people's lives in danger. Extending that a bit, a mob boss ordering someone to be killed is not protected. The concept of Hate Speech is founded on a broadening of this idea when speech is intended to incite violence against a group. Much arguing has been around trying to define this grey area. Free Speech is never a justification for your words. When your only justification for what you said is "free speech" you are admitting what you said is indefensible. Free Speech is a defense against censorship, not a defense against being a dumb-ass. Chick-fil-A's president being fired for speaking against gay marriage I can't find this particular instance, but there's plenty of cases of executives being fired for discriminatory public statements. This is a corporate board firing one of their executives because they feel they're bad for the business, and that includes their employees who need to have faith that their leadership is looking out for them. Why would they be bad for business and shake confidence in their leadership? Chick-fil-A is a good example to dig into. As The Good Place put it, " There's this chicken sandwich that if you eat it, it means you hate gay people — and it's delicious! ". Chick-fil-A is a multi-billion dollar fast food company who choose to donate to anti-LGBTQ causes and whose executives choose to speak very publicly against LGBTQ people . Emphasis on choose : nobody says a chicken company has to make political donations, nor that their executives have to go on talk shows and espouse their views. In the US, corporations have an outsized role in their employees' lives. If you're an LGBTQ Chick-fil-A employee, watching the company president and the company itself publicly and actively campaign against your existence would raise questions about whether you will be treated fairly... at a chicken restaurant. These people have the power over your livelihood and your health care. It's an absurd situation, but here we are. That is not a good workplace environment. The US has some odd quirks stemming from the 2010 Citizens United ruling which can be summed up as "money is speech" and "corporations are people". Therefore political donations are speech, and corporations are have the right to free speech, so corporate donations to political campaigns could not be limited. This allowed corporations to get deeply involved in the US political process . The US also has some odd quirks around its ideas of Freedom of Religion. Burwell v Hobby Lobby in 2014 held that "closely held for-profit corporations" could just ignore regulations their owners had religious objections to. For example, the requirement to provide adequate health insurance to their employees, or the requirements against discrimination. They don't mean just mom and pop shops who don't want to bake cakes for gay people , the ruling was about a multi-billion dollar corporation whose decisions impact 43,000 employees and everyone who shops at their 1,000 stores. This leaves US citizens with an ethical dilemma. Doing business with a corporation tacitly funds their political donations. Burwell v Hobby Lobby means this can be even more direct as the owners put their religious stamp on their employees. If you don't agree with their political funding, is it moral to purchase their products? Some deride this as "Cancel Culture", but it's an unfortunate consequence of the ethical dilemma Citizens United exacerbated. If money is speech, people will "vote with their dollars". This is the " chicken sandwich that if you eat it, it means you hate gay people ". It's absurd, but a couple of questionable court rulings and here we are. The ethical necessity of "voting with your dollars" means if companies decide to donate to political causes which their customers and employees find abhorrent, their customers can refuse to pay into this. This is not censorship - the company can continue to donate as it likes - this is the consequence of the company's choices. Chick-fil-A put their customers in this position, nobody forced them to. Tolerance, if it applies to a corporation at all, requires we allow Chick-fil-A to donate to whomever they want. Tolerance does not require that their customers turn a blind eye to this and indirectly donate to causes they disagree with. Similarly, if the company executives decide to make their political positions known far and wide (nobody's forcing them to go on talk shows), people don't have to give them money, and their employees are right to be concerned about how the political positions of their leadership will affect them. The Free Market says if Chick-fil-A's customers aren't happy, the company will fail. Their board is there to ensure the company succeeds. If their president endangers that, the board is entirely within their rights (and arguably responsibilities) to fire that person. A NYT editor resigning after publishing an op-ed promoting the use of force to quell largely peaceful protest The New York Times announced on Sunday that its editorial page editor had resigned after backlash from the public and the company’s own employees over a Republican senator’s op-ed that called for using military force against recent rioters. As with Chick-fil-A, the New York Times is a business. James Bennet was their Editorial Page editor. He was the guy in charge of handing out megaphones. He chose to give a megaphone to Senator Tom Cotton and approved his piece "Send In The Troops" in which a US Senator opined the military should be used against peaceful black protesters. Publishing this upset many of their readers, journalists, and employees, particularly black employees. They questioned James Bennet's wisdom in choosing to broadcast this piece. It came out that Bennet did not read the op-ed , a basic part of his job . This is not a free speech case. Tom Cotton was not censored. Nobody, not even a newspaper, has to give anyone a megaphone. In particular a US Senator has plenty of ways of making their opinion known. As for tolerance, a newspaper's customers can express their disappointment in who their newspaper is giving megaphones to by not paying for that newspaper. Intolerance would be to call for the Times to be shut down over who they give megaphones to. The Times trusted James Bennet to decide who got to use the Times's megaphones, they trusted him with their integrity, and he was negligent. He angered their customers, caused issues with his fellow employees, and endangered the Times's journalistic integrity. As such, he failed to perform the duties required by his employment, and that is the reason he was asked to resign. Removing statues of people that espoused inequality of human rights Statues are not people, they are not granted free speech and tolerance. Statues are not speech. Statues are not history, but statues have a history. Statues espouse a historic viewpoint that these people are heroes. Statues are propaganda. Public statues are government megaphones. They commemorate and celebrate people and events which we, as a society, decide reflect our values. Our values evolve over time, and so does how we choose to use that megaphone. Confederate statues in the US perpetuate the idea that these are military heroes of the United States to be celebrated fighting a "lost cause" . These statues ignore that they were anti-democratic insurrectionists who fought a war because they didn't like who got elected president and so they could keep people enslaved. They white-wash US history. You don't learn history from a statue, you are reminded of it. A heroic Confederate statue reminds us that the US is OK with intolerance, racists, and people who believe other people are property. We are moving away from that. We are changing what we want to say with our megaphones. If one wants to preserve these statues and their history, put them in a museum in their proper context. Explain how we came to make statues of people who tried to tear the country apart. Use them to talk about the Jim Crow era , the Civil Rights movement, and how they were used as symbols of oppression. How they were used to white-wash US history. That would be free speech and tolerance. | {
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62,411 | The Principality of Andorra is de jure “a parliamentary co-principality with the president of France and the Catholic bishop of Urgell (Catalonia, Spain) as co-princes.” (From Wikipedia ) A visiting tourist however would likely have at least some credible reasons to doubt the sovereignty in fact. For example, the postal services are entirely supplied by Spain and France . Also, it may be that “As co-princes of Andorra, the president of France and the bishop of Urgell maintain supreme authority in approval of all international treaties with France and Spain, as well as all those that deal with internal security, defense, Andorran territory, diplomatic representation, and judicial or penal cooperation. ”
(Although I have not found official confirmation) Which certainly suggests the sovereignty of Andorra is at best shared, and reliant on, French and Spanish sovereignty. Since the actual situation seems better described by some other arrangement such as de facto protectorate, client state, etc., then the implication would be Andorra is only de jure sovereign. If that is the case then the general principle seems to be that countries can possibly exist in a situation that is only de jure sovereign. | In a way you are doing word games. International law has developed as customary law . There is no nature-given or God-given definition of sovereignty, it is merely a verbal shortcut to describe a whole raft of concepts which were historically related. France officially accepts that Andorra is not part of France. Spain officially accepts that Andorra is not part of Spain. There is a government authority in Andorra, so it is not terra nullius . Andorra is issuing passports which are accepted by other countries. That means Andorra is, to a meaningful degree, sovereign. Any country, even the largest, has to accept that there are practical restrictions on their actions. No country is fully sovereign in the way some armchair international lawyers would use the term. | {
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62,420 | The Paradox of Tolerance expresses the idea that a society that is unlimited in its tolerance of intolerant philosophies is unlikely to survive, and therefore that an otherwise tolerant society should be able to meet intolerant views with intolerance. But we should claim the right to suppress [intolerant philosophies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal. - The Open Society and Its Enemies, Edition 7, Volume 1 As noted in other questions ( here and here for instance), the Paradox of Intolerance is debated and not universally accepted. What would be a counter-theory that would not advocate the suppression of intolerant views by an otherwise tolerant society? | The counter-theory is the free market of ideas. Basically, despicable beliefs will struggle to gain popularity when forced to compete for attention fairly against moderate beliefs. By suppressing people for their beliefs, you don't disprove them, you just show that you fear them. It is easy for proponents of those beliefs to say that you fear them because they are true and a threat to your power. Further, banning certain kinds of speech doesn't prevent the thought behind it. The speech will continue, it just won't be where you can police it. When Twitter and Youtube banned Alex Jones, he didn't just disappear. He went to alternate sites and also started hosting his own videos. Now he and his audience are in an echo chamber and are free to get as crazy as they want. I don't know any examples of this, but it wouldn't surprise me if it happened to a prominent leftist as well. Basically, heavy-handed moderation only allows people to radicalize further. Even if you ban it in the real world, there are encrypted chat programs and ultimately people can resort to private, in-person meetings if they have to. Banning your political opponents doesn't make them think you're right, it makes them hate you. Darryl Davis didn't de-radicalize +200 KKK members by shunning them, he did it by befriending them. Then you have the related questions of figuring out where you draw the line and who judges it. I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to find a few police union reps who would like to call every ACAB sign a call to violence, nor would it be too hard to find a few social justice activists who would call every thin blue line flag a message of support of fascism. Drawing the line and picking judges seems like the kind of issue that could spark a war, given the current polarization. | {
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62,426 | Looking at American politics, it seems like there is a tremendous animosity between people with different political leanings. Was it always this polarized? If not, when did this trend begin and why? *Edit: As per a comment by @jamesk, I am editing this question. These hard feelings are true all across the world. Was the world always so polarized? When or how did this begin? | Polarisation is not entirely new, but it’s not a constant either. Looking just at US national politics, there have been other periods of very strong polarisation (e.g. the late 19th century, following the Civil War), and other periods of comparative consensus (e.g. the mid–late 20th century, during the Cold War). Fivethirtyeight.com has run quite a few articles on this topic, looking at various quantitative measures of polarisation through recent US history. A good recent run-down is Geoffrey Skelly’s Why a Biden blowout didn’t happen… , and more can be found under their polarization tag . Broadly, their analyses support the claim that on a historical scale, the current polarisation is not unique or extreme; but it is the most polarised that US politics has been since WWII, so within living memory for most Americans, it is new. (Other answers give further good points which I won’t repeat, especially comparisons in a broader international and historical context.) | {
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62,480 | I always thought it was a three-step procedure: First, the Congress investigates. Second, the House of Representatives must pass, by a simple majority of those present and voting, articles of impeachment, which constitute the formal allegation or allegations. Third, the Senate tries the accused. But yesterday the Senate voted on whether Trump was subject to the Senate’s impeachment jurisdiction. If the House voted to impeach, what was the Senate vote for? What was the purpose of the House vote had the Senate voted that the second impeachment trial was unconstitutional ? Considering that the first impeachment trial was weaker, why didn't the Senate vote to not have the trial? As I see it, the House vote is inconsequential, since there can be another vote that will override the House vote. It didn't happen here, but it could've happened. Even this question says that a trial needs to take place: Is the Senate obligated to hold a trial? The Constitution clearly envisions that if the House impeaches a federal official, the next step is for the Senate to hold a trial. | Most of the Republican portion of the Senate are objecting to the second Impeachment trial as unconstitutional because it is taking place after Trump has left office. They contend that because Trump is no longer the President he cannot be tried for impeachment by the Senate. The Senate appears to have actually voted twice on this issue. Initially on Jan 26th , with a 55-45 vote. Where the Republicans forced a floor vote on starting the trial. A Trump supporter, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, forced the vote on whether to proceed with the trial, calling it an “unconstitutional sham.” Paul contended that the Senate cannot hold a trial of a private citizen, which Trump now is after his term ended last Wednesday and Democrat Joe Biden was inaugurated as the country’s 46th president. And again on 9th Feb which went 56-44 By a vote of 56 to 44, the Senate voted that it has the jurisdiction to try a president once he has left office. The vote came after four hours allotted for debate on the issue and was largely along party lines; six Republicans voted with all Democratic senators that the trial is permissible, foreshadowing a likely acquittal at the trial’s end. The justification used by Senate Republicans in 2021 was not available at the first impeachment because Trump was still the President. It is not about the facts of the case against Donald Trump. | {
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62,504 | In 2018, opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally assassinated by Saudi Arabian agents. Were there any sanctions for that act? | As you can read on the wikipedia article on the topic , the direct reactions from most governments was mostly symbolic in form of official statements condemning the assassination, calls for investigations and statements of intend regarding future dealings with Saudi Arabia. Some countries, especially but not only in the Arab world, did actually take the side of SA in this matter or downplayed the incident. However, there were actually a couple tangible reactions: Germany and Norway stated that they are no longer going to export arms to Saudi Arabia (although they also justified that with SAs handling of the Jemeni crisis ). As of writing this answer, the German parliament has kept that promise and did not approve any weapon exports to SA in 2019 or 2020 . I couldn't find any information on Norwegian arms exports which is that up-to-date. The Schengen zone and the United States imposed travel bans on individual people believed to be involved in the assassination Various private companies and organizations reduced or stopped their cooperation with Saudi-Arabia. | {
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62,521 | According to reporting by Omroep West , a postal voting trial in The Hague failed with over half of the ballots ruled invalid. The trial is an experiment for the upcoming general election in the Netherlands in which over 70s are allowed to cast their ballot by mail. Of the mock ballots cast in the trial, over half were invalid. Reasons named in the article are: lacking a signature or being submitted in the wrong envelope. Extrapolating to the expected number of mail-in ballots in the real election, the trial leader warns up to 650.000 people may cast an invalid postal vote. This seems very odd to me, especially considering other elections abroad where postal voting has been used successfully. As such, I'm wondering what the failure rates are with postal voting in other countries. Are postal votes generally ruled invalid at a higher rate compared to in-person voting in the same election? | In the U.S. , the rate at which mail in ballots were invalidated in 2020 was about 1.0% and it was about 1.4% in 2016 and 2018. This is a somewhat tricky comparison, however, because the U.S. involves 51 different sets of laws governing when mail in ballots are valid, and there is wide variation from state to state (as shown at the link above) in invalidity rates for mail in ballots under the laws of different states, ranging from 0% to 6.42% in 2016 and from 0.34% to 7.56% in 2018 (only incomplete state by state data is available for 2020). Some small percentage of ballots are also invalidated in in person voting, for a variety of reasons, such as selecting more than one candidate when only one vote for a post is authorized by law, or for writing in a candidate not certified as a write in candidate. In contrast, in a Dutch election there would be only one applicable statute. One pertinent distinction is that the Dutch election process would apply only to voters over the age of 70 years of age, while the U.S. figures, under U.S. election laws, apply to voters of all ages, or even when age or disability is a condition to absentee ballot access, to a much broader age range than is allowed in the Dutch election. It is not unreasonable to guess that people over the age of 70 in the Netherlands who elect to vote by mail rather than to vote in person, as is customary there, are disproportionately suffering from serious physical or minor cognitive disabilities (even within the subset of potential voters age 70 or above) and that this highly biased set of mail-in voters contributes greatly to the invalid ballot rate. It is also likely that since mail in ballot is not the historical norm in the Netherlands, that officials have not used particularly clear instructions and forms to communicate to mail in voters what they must do, something that could be addressed with the better mail in ballot process and ballot design found in jurisdictions where mail in ballots are more common. | {
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62,565 | The US Senate has voted 3 times, once in 1876 and twice in 2021 , that impeachment and trial of an official who has left office is acceptable. Despite this, Mitch McConnell voted to acquit Trump in 2021, apparently on the basis of this being unconstitutional. Mr McConnell reportedly did not believe the Senate was right to pursue a trial, with CNN reporting sources close to the Senate minority leader saying he believed a Senate impeachment trial could not be held for someone who had left office. Why is the constitutionality of the issue not settled by these votes? And if these votes are insufficient to settle the issue, how can it be resolved and why hasn't this avenue been pursued? | Why is the constitutionality of the issue not settled by these votes? Because Senate votes don't determine constitutionality and how the Senate conducts impeachment trials and why it does so in that manner is its own business. And if these votes are insufficient to settle the issue, how can it be resolved and why hasn't this avenue been pursued? It can't be resolved, because it's politicians stating opinions as to why they voted the way they did, it's not actually a binding determination of anything. | {
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62,611 | A recent article by the Texas Tribune explains why Texas has its own electrical grid: The Texas Interconnected System — which for a long time was actually operated by two discrete entities, one for northern Texas and one for southern Texas — had another priority: staying out of the reach of federal regulators. In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules. "Freedom from federal regulation was a cherished goal — more so because Texas had no regulation until the 1970s," writes Richard D. Cudahy in a 1995 article, "The Second Battle of the Alamo: The Midnight Connection." But what exactly does it gain from staying independent? Is it purely a political statement or is there a rational reason behind having a completely separate grid? | Citing Economist.com coverage The state’s deregulated power market is also fiercely competitive. ERCOT oversees the grid, while power generators produce electricity for the wholesale market. Some 300 retail electricity providers buy that fuel and then compete for consumers. For years the benefits of Texas’s deregulated market structure were clear. At 8.6 cents per kilowatt hour, the state’s average retail price for electricity is around one-fifth lower than the national average and about half the cost of California’s. On the flip side of things Because such cold weather is rare, energy companies do not invest in “winterising” their equipment, as this would raise their prices for consumers. Perhaps most important, the state does not have a “capacity market” to ensure that there was extra power available for surging demand. Such systems elsewhere act as a sort of insurance policy so the lights will not go out, but it also means customers pay higher bills. On the practical side, it would thus seem that, due to competition there are a lot of, small, providers who compete on price. Thus there are real advantages. Citing ERCOT itself Cmmission Chairman Donna Nelson says
the federal Power Act was a key moment
Congress passed the law in 1935 to
regulate the interstate activities of
electric power the utilities in Texas
were smart and they got together and
they made an agreement that nobody was
going to send power outside of Texas the Public Utility Commission and that
independence has been jealously guarded
I think both by policymakers and by the
industry in our cot the next major
change came in 1965 after the worst
power outage in US history the blackout
did not impact Texas Add up what seems to be an end in itself, "avoiding those horrible Federal busybodies" and lower costs and you have the positive sides. From ARS This deep-seated aversion to regulation recently prompted former US Energy secretary and Texas Governor Rick Perry to quip, "Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Unlike the lofty claims made in another answer, keep in mind that California, on the other end of the regulation scale, ends up with higher prices, unreliable electricity and a near-monopoly provider whose rather relaxed maintenance procedures directly triggered wildfires that killed 85 people at one sitting . In fact, if you think of a government monopoly as the ultimate form of regulation, it is rather infrequent that consumers benefit from low costs under those circumstances (leaving out oddities like governments bribing their voters via subsidies like Venezuelan gas prices). On the negative side, while overregulation and government overreach can be a problem, reasonable regulations do exist for a reason . An airbag in a car is a total waste of money, until it blows up and saves a life. Forcing utilities to make their systems more redundant and cope with extreme ranges in their operating circumstances, if done well , can make them more resilient. With so many providers competing on price in a highly deregulated environment, one can assume the Texas utilities did as little as possible to design in safety margins and in fact the ongoing debrief of where things broke down shows things broke down pretty much everywhere, from wind turbines to gas to nuclear. The picture of what went wrong in Texas is incomplete. But while some wind generators did go offline as turbines iced over, the state's largest grid, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said the shortage was driven by a failure not of renewable sources but of traditional "thermal" sources: coal, nuclear and especially natural gas. Energy experts said that gas lines supplying gas-fired plants may have frozen or that supplies to the plants may have been limited as gas was prioritized for homes that rely on gas for their heat. Citing ARS again Power plants obviously operate much farther north than Texas, in areas where the conditions Texas is facing now are normal for weeks or months at a time. There are ways to cold-proof various systems; wind turbines, for example, can have heaters embedded in the blades to shed ice when needed, intake pipes can be heated by exhaust from power plants, etc. But all of these measures cost additional money, which may be difficult to justify if the conditions they're needed for are extremely rare. It turns out that these conditions are rare in Texas, but not extremely so; Texas faced something similar a decade earlier, in 2011, when its grid suffered similar failures. Reuters, has another, largely uncomplimentary writeup that gives a bit more detail about that absent capacity market and ERCOT's mishandling of this event. Last, but not least, in the context of switching to wind and solar renewables, on which Texas is unexpectedly active, you want to interconnect as much as possible to avoid regional intermittency. Texas electricity is sowewhat cheaper than the national average. How much of that is due to avoiding Federal regulation is unclear, as Texas in any case enjoys advantages of scale, resources and geography. But it is also clear lacking interconnects and an overly light touch on actual resiliency engineering - as opposed to NIMBY-type regulations as in California - has developed not necessarily to Texas's advantage. | {
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62,651 | As far as I understand, the USA's Middle East policy more or less revolves around Israel and its security. The countries which had antagonistic policies toward Israel were either taken out by Israel or the USA one after another. To my understanding, the only outliers are Iran and Pakistan . I concede that both of them have huge and powerful militaries; that is one of the reasons they are still on the world map. However, while Iran has faced repeated sanctions, Pakistan has been spared time and time again. For example: Pakistan was allowed to continue its research on nuclear weapons In 1998, Pakistan was put under sanction for testing nuclear weapons, and the sanction was lifted in a short time Pakistan never faced any sanction when Osama bin Laden was found in Abbottabad In 2011, Pakistan stopped the NATO supply routes and there was no repercussion from the US side Pakistan possess a missile named Shaheen-III which has an effective firing range of 2500-3000km Why has Pakistan never faced the wrath of the USA similar to other countries in the region, especially Iran? | The US relationship with Pakistan is complicated, but for decades it was viewed as an ally. In the 1970's and 80's, India was somewhat friendly towards the Soviet Union (while remaining nonaligned). That encouraged a relationship between Pakistan and the US. After India developed a nuclear weapon, the US (as I understand it) looked the other way while Pakistan developed theirs. The enmity between the US and Iran really goes back to the 1953 coup in which the CIA imposed the Shah on Iran. After he was overthrown, and ever since, the new government has been extremely hostile to the US, and that hostility has been reciprocated. This question basically amounts to asking "Why is the US nicer to its friends than its enemies?" To be sure, Pakistan has recently often been something of a frenemy, but has not been overtly hostile in the way that Iran has. | {
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62,700 | Background ISIS has nearly every State and most non-political entities opposed to it, even other Salafist terrorist groups like Ahrar al-Sham , and the Al-Nusra front oppose ISIS. The support for ISIS does exist , but it is either alleged at best or through groups that used to express support for Al-Quaeda (even though Al-Quaeda themselves opposes ISIS). It is this near universal opposition to ISIS that has lead me to ask. Question What actions have led ISIS to earn the enmity of every country and even most terrorist groups? | What makes ISIS different from other similar groups and movements is that ISIS had the express goal of establishing an independent Islamic nation-state by conquering and annexing territory from a number of extant middle-Eastern states. I believe the original conception drew on a prior pan-Syrian movement that wanted to reestablish the territories and peoples of the ancient Assyrian empire as a modern state: at least that ideation was fairly prominent in the years leading up to the Arab Spring and the beginning of Syrian civil war. The idea of a large, militant Islamic state in the Eastern mid-East (effectively a religious empire bent on spreading its territory), was bound to unnerve everyone: from the people likely to be subjugated by it, to political groups that risked being designated apostates, to other nation states that might lose territory or influence in the region. Had ISIS achieved its goal, it would have been the most destabilizing event in the middle-East since the establishment of Israel, and for much the same reasons. No one (except ISIS) wanted that. | {
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62,710 | Members of the House of Lords are unelected, hold their position for life, and citizens cannot remove them in any way. Leaving aside the financial aspect in maintaining this institution, the unelected members exercising supervisory powers seem to be anti-democratic in the first look. Why is this institution continuing as a component of a democracy? | Why is this institution continuing as a component of a democracy? Sixteen Reasons The House of Lords has been defanged (with several rounds of reduced powers), denying it a true veto of legislation supported by the House of Commons. It isn't doing much active harm and its economic cost has been trimmed. The proportion of the Lords who are life lords or hold lordships ex officio as a result of some clerical or legal office, has grown, and those are less problematic. In some ways they are more akin to the U.S. federal judiciary or the formal role that the government of France provides to ex-Presidents in its system. The House of Lords historically was dominated by the Tories and continues to have a plurality of them, so a major political party finds it in their partisan interest not to abolish it. Also, any attempt to abolish the House of Lords brought by another major party can be tainted as appearing to be a partisan power grab. The Prime Minister can appoint new life lords to rebalance the House of Lords and it is less extremely biased on a partisan basis than it once was, but the norms regarding the acceptable partisan mix of the House of Lords as a result of life lord appointments are unsettled and in flux. "Packing" the House of Lords in one session is disfavored, but "rebalancing" it is considered acceptable to some extent. The abolition of the House of Lords would be a major step towards the disestablishment of the Anglican Church which many conservatives disfavor. Functionally, as a "house of revision" the House of Lords catches inadvertent errors in legislation that the hastier U.S. style legislative process with long bills finally adopted in the dark of the night with little notice does not allow. On some rare occasions, the House of Lords has called out politicians in the House of Commons for enacting legislation that impairs human rights, sometimes securing changes as a result. While the House of Lords collectively, may add only modest value in the decision-making and voting aspect of legislation, the legislative process also benefits from having diverse voices present in the deliberative process that leads to the adoption of legislation, and the House of Lords provides dozens of avenues other than through partisan elected politicians for new voices to be added to that discussion. Even if only 1-5% of House of Lords members at any given time are making meaningful and useful contributions to the deliberative process that are being provided from no other source, those powerful ideas could be beneficial in some critical respect at some point. Prior to the creation of the U.K. Supreme Court, the House of Lords was the pinnacle of the U.K. judicial system (and that of many former Commonwealth colonies in the form of the Privy Council) and that function created value. This is a recent event and the U.K. may want to have a fallback solution to return to if this major constitutional experiment fails to work as planned. It provides a way to assuage the egos of the residual aristocracy of the U.K. at a minor fiscal and policy cost since it is only a house of delay. Abolishing the aristocracy entirely could have led to an anti-democratic revolution and postponed democracy in the U.K. considerably. Preserving it allowed the U.K. to get democracy sooner and with less resistance at the outside, while allowing the power of the lords to be gradually reduced over time. More generally, legitimacy is path dependent. Generally speaking, if something has always been so, and you learned that this was the way that the system worked as a child and came to accept it, and if there is not a break in succession from one political system or regime or set of leaders to another, it will be accepted as legitimate going forward. The House of Lords has met that test without doing great harm. One can also see the House of Lords as a set of "training wheels" for the democratic government in the House of Commons, because its continuous sessions means that there are legislative institutions (as well as the monarchy) in place during interim periods when a new parliament has been elected but not yet organized a government. While this is probably unnecessary now, and while it isn't obvious what the House of Lords would actually do if the House of Commons failed to reorganize properly following an election, the appearance that there are institutions that aren't disrupted by the election projects an image of stability following elections, as opposed to allowing opportunists to see a momentary power vacuum as the window of opportunity for radical or extralegal change. In this regard, the House of Lords serves of role similar to the largely symbolic legitimacy and continuity affirming process of having Congress count the electoral votes in a U.S. Presidential election. British political and constitutional history is marked and distinguished by avoiding all or nothing approaches. For example, it retained a constitutional monarchy rather than becoming a Republic (after a brief attempt at that left a bad taste in the British collective consciousness in the 17th century, and then in the 18th century with the American Revolution). Rather than granting full independence to its territories and dependencies, the U.K. has reached individual deals with incomplete autonomy for them. Some have their own domestic laws but remain British for foreign affairs and military purposes (the British demonstrated they were willing to go to great length to honor their obligations in the Falklands War), in some like New Zealand, Australia and for the first century, Canada, it retained final judicial review over its courts, and all have kept a Governor-General's position as a representative of the monarchy. It has different arrangements with Scotland, with Northern Ireland, and with Wales. The House of Lords reflects again the British political culture's tolerance for a situation that is neither an absolute republic, nor an absolute oligarchy or monarchy. France abolished the aristocracy with revolutionary consequences. The British have merely whittled away at it, reducing its privileges, rather than absolutely adopting the principle that all persons are created equal and should be equal under the law for all purposes. As the Daily Express newspaper noted in a January 22, 2020 article : Desire to do away with the House of Lords has long existed in British
political consciousness and was once accomplished nearly 400 years
ago. When Oliver Cromwell came to rule England after the Civil War of the
1640s, he dramatically reduced the House of Lords’ power, and
ultimately abolished the upper chamber in 1649. Parliament branded the Lords “useless and dangerous to the people of
England” as they abolished it, but it eventually returned with a
resurrected monarchy in 1657. Afterwards, the Lords briefly enjoyed an increase in their power, able
to vote down legislation until the Parliament Act 1911 removed this
right. ("Briefly" in this case, meant 254 years, reflecting the British sense of history.) The preservation of the House of Lords is tied into the norm that British legislators protect the country's constitutional traditions that are only entrenched in ordinary legislation, such as the requirement to hold elections at least every five years and a constitutional tradition of protecting civil and human and property rights. While the institution of the House of Lords adds little value in and of itself, the norm of protecting constitutional traditions that protected it has great value and indeed, is really indispensable to, the U.K.'s democracy since it relies on such norms more than almost any other modern democracy. Abolishing the House of Lords could weaken more important aspects of the U.K.'s constitutional order that lack formalistic protections of the kind found in the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of most other modern democracies and instead rely on this political norm. Since aristocratic positions are legally a form of inheritable property, abolishing the aristocracy, or at least seeming to do so by abolishing its most visible vestige in the House of Lords, could also be perceived as an attack on the inheritable property rights that share of common legal heritage with aristocratic hereditary titles and the perception that one is undermining property rights by doing so could also be politically problematic since protecting property rights is another important quasi-constitutional political norm in British politics. Closely related is that almost any argument for abolishing the House of Lords is simultaneously an argument for abolishing the monarchy, and the monarchy is seen as a valuable institution in the U.K. system as a symbol of the state that is not tied up in partisanship, and as a safeguard in the event of an event that might threaten the existence or legitimacy of the nation such as a dispute over succession to the Prime Ministership or a disaster or military event that disrupts the ordinary operations of government. Constitutional monarchies, in general, have done better at surviving crises than pure Republics. Abolishing the monarchy without broad support could precipitate a constitutional crisis and crisis of legitimacy in the U.K., and abolishing the House of Lords could threaten to hasten such a crisis. In the current statutory arrangement, the House of Lords is the primary institutional barrier stopping the House of Commons from legislating to cancel the next election and just ruling in perpetuity with no elections. This is because there is an exception to the Parliament Act allowing the Lords to permanently veto any law that could postpone a general election. Arguably, the institutional barrier could be overcome by legislation, just as the House of Commons, in general, has broad authority to reconfigure the House of Lords in general, in a manner reminiscent of the use of the "nuclear option" in the U.S. Senate to abolish the filibuster with only the support of a bare majority of Senators, rather than the two-thirds majority normally needed to change the rules of an institution with continuity of members from one two year "Congress" to the next. But it is a significant speed bump that any effort to do so would have to overcome that could lead to bipartisan opposition that would prevent such a bill from passing in the House of Commons. What Does A Leader In The House of Lords Say? The Lord Speaker of the House of Lords (who was a member of Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet for 11 years, pointing out another role of the body as a way to pension off and retain the collective wisdom of former political leaders) defended the institution, albeit with some reforms, in a June 3, 2019 op-ed column in the Guardian newspaper : Given the Guardian’s reports on the House of Lords, you might expect
me, in my role as Lord Speaker, to come forward with some blanket
defence. I do not. As this paper reported at the beginning of the
year, I am opposed to what I called “passengers” in the Lords who make
no or very little contribution. They are a minority, but they undo
much of the good work done by the vast majority. In the past 12 months the House of Lords has made almost 2,300 changes
to improve legislation; apart from daily oral questions, peers have
tabled more than 8,000 written questions and taken part in more than
160 debates; while well over 300 peers have been active members of
select committees which have published more than 150 reports on
subjects ranging from tuition fees to intergenerational fairness. Those who argue for the abolition of the second chamber, as Owen Jones
did last week, need to say how this work would be done. It is not
enough just to propose more powers for the Commons in a unicameral
system – this would do little to improve levels of scrutiny when a
government is returned with a big majority. In those circumstances,
having a second chamber to ensure legislation does not slip through
without proper debate and analysis is absolutely essential. Proponents
of abolition or complete reform also need to explain how the
legislation necessary to radically change the Lords will get through
parliament at a time when Brexit dominates the legislative agenda. It
is politically naive to believe that any government, in present
circumstances, would embark on such a course. The Lords itself – not the government – has agreed to take action to
reduce numbers following the report of the committee I set up under
the chairmanship of Terry Burns. We want to see the total size of the
House capped at 600 and fixed terms for new members. Since the Burns
report was published there have been almost 70 departures from the
House but there is clearly more to do. As we await the result of the
Conservative leadership election and the new prime minister we want to
see the policy of Theresa May, exercising restraint in appointing new
members to the Lords, continued by her successors. Responding to the
Burns report, she said: “I intend to continue with the restraint which
I have exercised to date and, when making appointments, to allocate
them fairly, bearing in mind the results of the last general election
and the leadership shown by each party in terms of retirements.” That is the first time a prime minister has made such a commitment. It
is in stark contrast to the policy of Tony Blair who appointed 374 new
peers and David Cameron who appointed a further 245. To date, May has
appointed 42 new life peers but the resignation honours list beckons.
It is at this point that prime ministers are tempted to reward rather
than ask what contribution a person under consideration can make. I
very much hope that May will continue to follow her excellent policy
of moderation. There has been concern over the work of sitting Lords. Both
Conservative and Labour governments have confirmed that members should
be allowed to take up part-time jobs, it would be extraordinary in a
non-salaried House for it to be otherwise. The rules clearly prohibit
peers acting as paid lobbyists and also require public disclosure of
sources of income. We have now set up a new conduct committee under
the chairmanship of Lord Mance, a former deputy president of the
supreme court. They keep the code of conduct under review and can
propose any changes which are necessary. The Guardian survey of participation underlines one further step that
we should now consider. Many life peers come to the Lords without much
idea of the contribution they are expected to make. I remember one
peer who had just been sworn in coming to me to say they had made a
mistake and had not realised the work that was involved. We could set
up a system, as is already the case for those who apply to be a
crossbench peer, where the House of Lords appointments commission
questions each new candidate on the contribution that he or she would
make if their appointment was confirmed. My belief is that a policy of reducing numbers and checking new
candidates are prepared to make the contribution that most peers
already make would go a very long way to eliminating the passengers. I
should also add it is already the case that every member must make a
declaration that they have undertaken parliamentary work when they
claim the daily allowance. If there is any question, the independent
commissioner for standards can investigate. Of course, I recognise the policy I have set out will not satisfy
those who want, for example, to elect the second chamber, but perhaps
they might understand such a move is currently politically
impractical. However, progress to make the Lords smaller with all
members making a sensible contribution is within our grasp. An op-ed in favor of abolishing it from 2020 can be found here . The Week offered a short December 18, 2020 pros and cons article also outlining the status quo. It argues, in favor of retaining it, that: The Daily Telegraph’s Peter Oborne argued that the House of Lords
continues to work remarkably well, throwing out what he calls
“populist measures introduced by governments determined to bolster
their right-wing credentials”. An elected House of Lords would never have the will or the courage to
stand up against public opinion, he argues, and would deprive the
public of the judgement of “very valuable” peers, such as retired
generals, trade union leaders, academics and judges. Commentary Are these good reasons? Is this the choice I would make if I were king? Maybe, maybe not. But the point is to recognize that there are some reasons for the status quo and to properly weigh them when deciding to deviate from them. | {
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62,774 | Here is mentioned that: In the Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations,
dated 1 January 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic
recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The US reiterated the Shanghai
Communiqué's acknowledgment of the Chinese position that there is only
one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; Given that in 1979 the West was concerned about the spread of Communism,how come president Carter recognized PRC while supporting ROC could help contain one of the biggest supporters of Communism? | The enemy of my enemy is my friend. In 1979, the USSR had yet to engage in their Afghanistan venture (which was to bleed it dry and expose military weaknesses) and was a very serious military threat to the West. The CIA was consistently overestimating Soviet economic output , which they kept on doing until the Soviet collapse 10 years later in 1989. On the other hand, China and the USSR had engaged in a brief border war in 1969 and China was an impoverished regional power, with a relatively limited capacity to project global mischief on its own. Keeping it out of the USSR's influence was a crowning achievement of the Nixon administration. Deng Xiaoping , an entirely more benign leader than Mao or the current Xi Jinping, had just taken over, had rolled back some of the previous excesses , and was about to embark on his economic reforms. Recognizing mainland China, with some calculated ambiguity wrt Taiwan, was a good move to keep China away from USSR and furthered the containment of Communism. | {
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62,794 | Given that Donald Trump lost the recent Presidential election, why is it that congressmen continue to visit Mar-A-Lago ? In what way is Donald Trump a power broker? What is it that congressmen seek from Donald Trump? I realize that this is a forum for politics and that in itself is charged by its very nature. That being said, the superior answer will posit a plausible hypothesis with references for support. Questions that seek to clarify the subject matter are appreciated. | It's worth pointing out that Trump is not a 'leader' in the normal, political sense of the term, and his power doesn't lie in typical sociopolitical authority. Trump is (to borrow someone else's analogy) the Golden Idol that a certain segment of American society bows down to. They carry him before them as an icon and cry out that he is their leader, but Trump doesn't do the things we expect of a leader: set paths and agendas, create rules and order, provide structure, clarity, and direction. Trump effectively does nothing except rally his followers: stir them up and incite them to act out on their own (often problematic) impulses. Trump didn't start the movement, or organize it, or define it; he merely 'licensed his brand' to it, giving a diffuse and disorganized movement a banner to rally around. He seemingly has no interest in what they rally for so long as they rally around him, so he leaves it up to people in the movement to define what the movement is in his name. All things considered, Trump isn't much different from Q, except that there is a flesh-and-blood person somewhere behind the iconography of Trump (a person we don't know much about, because he consistently hides himself behind media and legal facades), while there is no such specific person behind the iconography of Q (who as far as anyone can tell is simply made-up ). But both icons serve the same purpose of being a rallying point around which groups can organize themselves. It doesn't really make sense to ask what power Trump has over the GOP, any more than it makes sense to ask what power any charismatic leader holds. The concept of a 'charismatic leader' is ultimately empty and oxymoronic. A charismatic leader is like a man on horseback who drops the reins and uses the spurs; the horse thinks it's being guided by the rider, the rider enjoys the thrill of charging pell-mell onward, but the rider isn't in control and the horse would behave the same for anyone who dropped the reins and used the spurs. It's a symbiotic, almost parasitic relationship. The power Trump has (to follow this analogy) is merely the power to trample : to point his followers at someone and dig in the spurs, and let the sheer weight of all that unconstrained animal energy crush the target. It creates an odd and unhealthy dynamic: Some of the GOP leadership want to avoid being trampled, so they play cautiously around Trump out of fear; they try to anticipate what things might tick Trump off and tiptoe around them Others in the GOP leadership want to direct that animal energy at targets of their own. Unlike Trump, these leaders have real political motivations and machinations — they want to use that energy productively; not in the 'raw' way Trump does — and so they actively put themselves in the position of interpreting the word of Trump for followers This is why people like McCarthy and Graham spend so much time visiting and talking to Trump, while others avoid him and speak about him in hushed tones. The former want to establish themselves as intimates of Trump — in other words, as people who can present themselves as though they speak in Trump's voice — while the latter merely want to make it through to their next term without pain and complications. As to the Trumpist base...I know I've been using a lot of religious ideation here (which shouldn't surprise people who look at the events of the last four years, but probably does), so apologies, but the base grants Trump this 'power to trample' because it wants salvation . The Right has been evolving into a 'grievance culture' since (at least) the '80s. It has developed a persistently angry sense of victimization — particularly among white Christian males — because it suffered a string of legal and political setbacks, with an associated implication of guilt and shame. Feminism pointed out the abuses that men have historically leveled against women; the civil rights movement highlighted the abuses whites have visited on blacks; the native American genocide, the failure of Christian theology to stand up against evolution, the comparative economic failure of rural blue-collar workers compared to urban and suburban white-collars, the destruction of the environment by selfish and gluttonous consumption... All this burden of shame was pushed onto the shoulders of a certain conservative segment of American society, but rather than face up to it they sought to negate it: to find someone who could save them from that pressure of guilt and shame. That's what Trump provided. He told them they were good people; he told them that the bad people were the ones making them feel such guilt; he told them they had nothing to feel shame over, because it was all lies by nasty people and a lying media, but he knew the truth and only he could save them (make them great again). They bought into it because they wanted to buy into it, because not buying into it meant they would have to accept the changing face of the US and the load of shame that accompanied it. But they would have bought it from anyone who offered it; Trump just cornered the market first. But like any other faith, once one has bought into the soteriology it is extremely difficult to leave, because the salvation of one's entire identity rides on it. | {
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62,805 | What's the difference between declaring sovereignty and declaring independence? Aren't those the same thing? Please help me make sense of the following sentence (but keep in mind that my question is general, it's not about Belarus per se ): Amid the crisis of central authority in the U.S.S.R. in the early 1990s, the Belorussian S.S.R. declared sovereignty (July 27, 1990) and independence (August 25, 1991). (from here ) | Sovereignty Sovereignty is a slippery term that has evolved over the centuries . The modern meaning traces back to the end of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia known as Westphalian sovereignty , although even this is disputed. The supreme, absolute, and uncontrollable power by which an independent state is governed and from which all specific political powers are derived; the intentional independence of a state, combined with the right and power of regulating its internal affairs without foreign interference. Basically it says the sovereign is the " supreme authority within a territory ". Nobody else can come in and meddle in your sovereign affairs. Without a recognition of sovereignty it's unclear who is in charge of what and where. Without territorial sovereignty the ruler of Hereistan might decide they can tell the people in neighboring Theresburg what to do; Theresburg probably won't like that and might have to go to war to stop them. If Hereistan recognizes the sovereignty of neighboring Theresburg they agree not to do that; that would be a violation of Theresburgian sovereignty. Hereistan has to get permission from Theresburg to act within Theresburg. Of course this still happens all the time, but it's recognized to be wrong. Independence "Independence" is even more slippery. It usually means internal and external sovereignty; the sovereign has sole control over all affairs within its territory, there is no higher authority. The status of a fully independent state should be contrasted with that of dependent or vassal states, where a superior state has the legal authority to impose its will over the subject, or inferior, state. One can have sovereignty over only certain things. Sovereignty can be very roughly split into internal and external sovereignty. Internal sovereignty means authority over your own internal affairs, but not your relationship with other sovereign states. For example, US states have sovereignty over most things which lie wholly within their borders; other US states cannot interfere, nor can the Federal government (very over-simplified). External sovereignty is authority over your relationship with other sovereign states. US states do not have external sovereignty; they are not allowed to make treaties with foreign countries. That power is reserved by a superior; the US Federal government. The US is independent, no other state has legal authority to tell it what to do. US states are not, the US Federal government has legal authority in certain affairs. Note that voluntarily entering into a treaty with another sovereign state does not violate sovereignty. The sovereign state gives the treaty authority within its borders. Note that things we call "treaties" negotiated by force such as unequal treaties or those imposed upon a defeated nation do violate sovereignty and independence. Belarus The Declaration of State Sovereignty was made on July 27th, 1990, but it did not yet carry the full force of constitutional law until August 1991. I don't see any particular reason to call one "sovereignty" and the other "independence", it all seems to be about independence. Let's go through the four major relevant events in Belarus's sovereignty/independence, then you can decide. Declaration of independence by the Belarus Supreme Soviet. Elevation of the declaration by the Belarus Supreme Court to Constitutional law. Official recognition of independence by the Soviet Union (by dissolving). Adoption of a new constitution. July 27th, 1990 - Declaration The Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Belarus SSR is adopted by the Supreme Soviet of Belarus SSR and renames their nation to the Republic of Belarus. This was a full declaration of sovereignty and independence. ...hereby solemnly proclaims the full state sovereignty of the Republic of Belarus as the supremacy, the independence, and the absolute state power of the Republic within its territory, the competence of its laws, the independence of the Republic in foreign relations, and declares its determination to establish a state, based on law. Article 7 (1) Within the territory of the Republic of Belarus, the Constitution and the laws shall have supremacy. Article 9 (1) The Republic of Belarus shall be independent in deciding on the questions of culture and spiritual development of the Belarusian nation, other national communities of the Republic, and in organizing its own system of information, education, and upbringing. Article 11 (1) The Republic of Belarus shall independently exercise the right to enter into voluntary unions with other states and to withdraw freely from these unions. However, this is still all happening within the framework of the 1978 constitution (which I don't have an English copy of, so my knowledge here will be spotty). The declaration cannot yet override the existing constitution. 25 August, 1991 - Elevation Following a coup attempt by Soviet hard liners in Moscow , the Supreme Court of the Republic of Belarus gives the Declaration the constitutional law status necessary for it to be acted upon. The Soviet Union does not react. Belarus now has de-facto independence. 8 December, 1991 - Recognition The Belovezha Accords are signed, the Soviet Union ceases to exist and is replaced with the Commonwealth of Independent States . Belarus's independence from the Soviet Union is now de-jure . 15 March, 1994 - New Constitution As required by Article 12 of the Declaration... The provisions of the present Declaration shall be implemented by the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus through the adoption of a new Constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Republic of Belarus, and laws of the Republic of Belarus. ...Belarus enacts a new constitution to replace its existing one from 1978. Article 3 On the day on which the Constitution enters into force, the articles of the 1978 Constitution, together with any subsequent amendments and addenda thereto, shall cease to apply, unless otherwise specified in this Law, as shall the articles of the Law on granting the status of a constitutional law to the Declaration of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus on the State Sovereignty of the Republic of Belarus of 25 Aug 1991. | {
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62,818 | Recently the UK supreme court ruled against IS bride Shamina Begum's attempt to return to the UK to fight her citizenship being revoked . As I understand it, what happened here was that the UK wanted to disown Shamina Begum after she joined the Islamic State. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights held that she cannot made stateless, but Shamina Begum held dual nationality, making it possible for the UK to revoke her citizenship and make her another country's responsibility (in this case Bangladesh). This seems rather silly to me, because it makes it an arms race to see who can revoke her citizenship faster. On the other hand, why can't the UK just revoke Shamina Begum's citizenship even if she held no other citizenship, since she evidently identified as an Islamic State citizen? Could the UK have done so without violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Only thing I can see is that doing so would constitute de facto recognition of IS as a sovereign country, but even then I don't see why it would be a problem, given that there are other states the UK does not recognize that control territory, e.g. Taiwan. | Because recognizing another entity as a country entails admitting it's legally entitled to hold some territory. So the next question would have been: what territory is ISIS legally entitled to hold/control? No country wanted to admit ISIS was legally entitled to any territory. For example this was the US position, no doubt reflected by many/most other Western countries: On the eve of the 13th anniversary of 9/11, Obama finally issued a
statement which purported to define ‘ISIL’. Yet both the timing and the content,
with a brief reference to location, only reinforced the abstraction: ISIL is certainly not a state. It was formerly al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq, and has taken advantage of sectarian strife and Syria’s civil war to gain territory on both sides of the Iraq–
Syrian border. It is recognized by no government, nor by the people it subjugates. ISIL is a terrorist organization, pure and simple. [...] At this moment, the greatest threats come from the Middle East and North Africa,
where radical groups exploit grievances for their own gain. And one of those groups is
ISIL—which calls itself the ‘Islamic State’. | {
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62,868 | I know when the Senate itself is split, the Vice President will cast the deciding vote. But in committee hearings where they're voting to approve Cabinet positions (Such as a Department of Security nomination) for a confirmation vote, what happens if this vote is split evenly? | While Azor Ahai's answer is correct in general, that ties are usually resolved in the negative, the Senate power-sharing agreements negotiated for the 107th and 117th (current) Congresses, which were both tied 50-50, contained the following provision: Sec. 1 the Chairman of a full committee may discharge a subcommittee of any Legislative or Executive Calendar item which has not been reported
because of a tie vote and place it on the full committee's agenda Sec. 3. Pursuant to the provisions and exceptions described in sections 1 and 2, the following additional Standing Orders of the
Senate shall be in effect for the 117th Congress: If a committee has not reported out a measure or matter because of a tie vote, then— (A) the Chairman of the committee shall transmit a notice of a tie
vote to the Secretary of the Senate and such notice shall be printed
in the Record; and (B) after such notice of a tie vote has been transmitted, the
Majority Leader or the Minority Leader may, only after consultation
with the Chairman and Ranking Member of the committee, make a motion
to discharge such measure or matter, and time for debate on such
motion shall be limited to 4 hours, to be equally divided between the
two Leaders or their designees, with no other motions, points of
order, or amendments in order: Provided, That following the use or
yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the motion to discharge,
without any intervening action, motion, or debate, and if agreed to,
the measure or matter be placed immediately on the appropriate
Calendar. S.Res.27 - 117th Congress This means that in practice if a committee vote to confirm a nominee is tied, the nomination can proceed to a vote on the Senate floor. An example of this came on March 3rd 2021, when the Senate Finance Committee produced a tied vote, 14-14, on President Biden's nominee for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra. According to Reuters : The 14-14 party-line vote sent Becerra’s nomination to Senate Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for
further action. Under new rules to deal with the 50-50 Senate split
between the two parties, either can file a motion to bypass a tied
committee and bring matters straight to the Senate floor with a
separate procedural vote. | {
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62,873 | If on January 6, 2021 Senators or Congress people from within the Capitol building had been communicating with the mob outside, what could be the consequences for these actions? To make matters even worse, if they had actually been co-coordinating i.e. revealing the exact locations of particular offices ...wouldn't that constitute some form of violation of their oath of office? | While Azor Ahai's answer is correct in general, that ties are usually resolved in the negative, the Senate power-sharing agreements negotiated for the 107th and 117th (current) Congresses, which were both tied 50-50, contained the following provision: Sec. 1 the Chairman of a full committee may discharge a subcommittee of any Legislative or Executive Calendar item which has not been reported
because of a tie vote and place it on the full committee's agenda Sec. 3. Pursuant to the provisions and exceptions described in sections 1 and 2, the following additional Standing Orders of the
Senate shall be in effect for the 117th Congress: If a committee has not reported out a measure or matter because of a tie vote, then— (A) the Chairman of the committee shall transmit a notice of a tie
vote to the Secretary of the Senate and such notice shall be printed
in the Record; and (B) after such notice of a tie vote has been transmitted, the
Majority Leader or the Minority Leader may, only after consultation
with the Chairman and Ranking Member of the committee, make a motion
to discharge such measure or matter, and time for debate on such
motion shall be limited to 4 hours, to be equally divided between the
two Leaders or their designees, with no other motions, points of
order, or amendments in order: Provided, That following the use or
yielding back of time, the Senate vote on the motion to discharge,
without any intervening action, motion, or debate, and if agreed to,
the measure or matter be placed immediately on the appropriate
Calendar. S.Res.27 - 117th Congress This means that in practice if a committee vote to confirm a nominee is tied, the nomination can proceed to a vote on the Senate floor. An example of this came on March 3rd 2021, when the Senate Finance Committee produced a tied vote, 14-14, on President Biden's nominee for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra. According to Reuters : The 14-14 party-line vote sent Becerra’s nomination to Senate Majority
Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for
further action. Under new rules to deal with the 50-50 Senate split
between the two parties, either can file a motion to bypass a tied
committee and bring matters straight to the Senate floor with a
separate procedural vote. | {
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62,919 | I have tried to find whether any European country has recently (in the past 30 years or so) scrapped a national free day or similar. The closest I could get is the idea of replacing/moving a bank holiday , so no actual reduction. I am aware that reducing the number of bank holidays is most likely unpopular, but this does not exclude the possibility of it actually happening. Question: Has any European country recently scrapped a bank/public holiday? | I'm aware of a few examples, in France, Portugal & Austria. In 2004, in France, Pentecost Monday was removed as a public holiday and replaced from 2005 with 'La journée de solidarité' - 'Solidarity Day', where workers attend work as usual, but work for free. Their wages go instead to a fund to be spent on the elderly and disabled. This decision was taken in response to the 2003 heatwave, which killed almost 15,000 elderly people in France. In 2008, the reference to Pentecost Monday was removed from the law , and Solidarity Day can now be taken on any public holiday throughout the year, although many employees still observe it on that day. In 2012, Portugal's coalition government between PSD and CDS-PP, led by Pedro Passos Coelho, scrapped four public holidays . These were two religious; All Saints' Day (Nov 1st) and Corpus Christi (variable), and two civil; Republic Day (Oct 5th) and Restoration of Independence Day (Dec 1st). This was fairly unpopular, and came as part of a package of measures designed to increase productivity in the context of the Portuguese financial crisis. The holidays were planned to be suspended for five years, but were restored in January 2016 under the leadership of António Costa. Finally, in 2019, the European Court of Justice ruled that Austria's practice of granting only members of certain churches a public holiday on Good Friday was discriminatory. As a result, Good Friday was scrapped as a federal public holiday altogether, and replaced with the ability for all employees to unilaterally choose a date to take one of their personal holiday days at any point during the year - as opposed to having to obtain their employers' permission ( §7a. Arbeitsruhegesetz ). | {
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62,959 | Watching the C-SPAN feed in regards to the American Rescue Plan, Rep. Tom Rice insists that we are "borrowing ~$5,500 for every man, woman, and child in [the US]." I remind the people back home that the scale of this plan that she's talking about is $5,500 borrowed for every man, woman, and child in this country. And your children will pay that money back. They'll pay it back in higher taxes. They'll pay it back in lost opportunity. They'll pay it back in weaker economic growth. https://www.c-span.org/video/?509630-1/house-debates-senate-passed-covid-19-relief-bill&vod&start=14559# When Congress spends money, is that money borrowed for the citizenry as he claims? I guess the bigger picture question I have is that if the government spends $2 trillion, is the citizenry expected to (eventually) pick up the tab? If not, is it essentially just a number recorded somewhere with some math tied to it for interest because that's how fiat currency works? A lot of the time it seems like Congress has the power to wave a magic wand and money appears. | It is true that the money has to be repaid, but this perhaps misses some important points: The money borrowed is real, the debt has to be repaid (or else the US defaults or devalues the dollar, both of which have significantly worse consequences than repayment) But the repayment is not borne evenly by the citizenry. The way that taxes work means that those with more money (in the future) will shoulder a higher proportion of the costs. Moreover, the alternative might be for individuals and companies to borrow an average of $5500 per person. This would fall most heavily on the poorest now, and the interest rates that would be charged against individual debt are much higher than those that the US must pay. The "magic wand" is that interest rates for the USA are very low. Far lower than you pay on a car loan or a mortgage. This is what allows the US to borrow huge amounts of cash Moreover the effects on growth are complex and non-linear. It is not obvious that borrowing less would lead to more growth in the future. Generally increased government spending at times of economic hardship can protect the economy, and provide for higher growth in the future (which then allows for lower tax rates , even while maintaining higher tax revenues ). Similarly it is not clear what Tom Rice means by "lost opportunity" in this context. So it is correct that sovereign debt is real money and not just a calculation tool. But it is rhetoric to take a debt, divide by the population, and calculate an amount that each person will have to pay. | {
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62,962 | Once a president has already decided that they are going to sign legislation, why not do it immediately? For example, on Wednesday, March 10, the House of Representatives voted to pass the American Rescue Plan; which already passed in the Senate. This sends the bill to President Biden to sign into law. The White House has said that Biden plans to sign the bill into law on Friday (March 12). Is there any reason that Biden does not sign the bill into law immediately; within hours after it passed in the House? Especially given that Biden's messaging around the stimulus / Covid relief has always been that there is no time to waste; and that it is urgent people people need the relief right now. So why delay the signing for 2 days? If Biden has already announced that he is going to sign it; why not just do it? Even if there are logistics issues with wanting the press and/or other VIPs to be present at the signing; could that not be arranged in less than a day? I am using the American Rescue Plan as an example; but I mean to ask about legislation in general. Once a president has already decided that they are going to sign legislation, why not do it immediately? | The buck stops with the President. Once the President signs a law is becomes law and he can't take that back. Major legislation runs hundreds of pages and it is commonplace for there to be myriad change at the last minute in Congressional negotiations to secure the joint approval of a Senate amended version of a House bill, or visa versa. It would hardly be unprecedented for Congressional negotiators at the last minute and with little fanfare to slip in some change to a bill that could make it toxic to the President's political goals, and without the awareness of many people who voted in favor of the bill, that could become politically costly once known. For example, the Affordable Care Act (i.e. Obamacare) had several very serious drafting errors (whether someone intended this, or it was unintended will never be known for sure) that have resulted in federal court litigation over the law and produced some results that were almost surely not intended by the drafters. Also, politicians deeply need public recognition to aid in their re-election campaigns, and one of the common ways that a President can address that need of members of Congress and other political players in legislative struggles, is to invite the people who made it happen to a signing ceremony, which is a mini-celebration of the completion of an important project achieving a shared goal. Both the review of legislation for unexpected flaws or poison pills that might prompt an unanticipated veto, and organizing a signing ceremony, takes a few days. Reviewing a long bill with a fine tooth comb and a fresh set of highly skilled eyes takes time. Getting dozens of very powerful people coordinated for any scheduled event isn't trivial. This brief delay also gives agencies charged with implementing a new law that is expected to be signed a little time to prepare any actions that will be necessary to do so immediately when it is signed, such as drafting temporary orders from department heads and bureau chiefs about how the civil servants underneath them are impacted by the law and what they are obligated to do differently now until more formal permanent regulations and systems can be put into place. So, bills are rarely signed immediately, unless it is a dire emergency. Signing a bill two days after it is enacted is actually sooner than usual. | {
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62,994 | Is there a link between democracy and economic prosperity? Generally, democracy correlates with a good economic performance but not always. For example, why does Ghana have a high level of political and civil freedoms, according to Freedom House, but is so poor, while Singapore is not a free country but outstandingly prosperous? Why don't Ghanaians vote out politicians that fail and vote in politicians that deliver, as democracy is supposed to work? | The premise of the question that Ghana does not do well despite being a democracy appears to be flawed. Ghana became a multi-party democratic republic in 1993. Since then: The GDP increased by a factor of 6 The per-capita GDP increased by a factor of 4 There has been a stable economic growth every year Over 50% of the GDP is created in the service industry They became the first African country to manufacture their own consumer electronic products like notebooks and smartphones They are even manufacturing cars, both combustion and electric Yes, the quality of life in Ghana is still far behind that of Europe or North-America. There is still a high income inequality. Over 50% of the population are still employed in the agricultural sector (which only represents 20% of the GDP). But economic changes don't happen over night. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ghana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Ghana https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/ghana/#economy | {
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63,032 | This expression has getting popular these days. Googling it led to the explanation from Wikipedia that says: Cancel culture (or call-out culture) is a modern form of ostracism in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – whether it be online, on social media, or in person. Those who are subject to this ostracism are said to have been "cancelled". While I have the vague idea on what it is about, I am confused on its implication in the social and political arena. | A new*, deliberately pejorative, term to describe an old phenomenon, that of pressuring individuals or companies through the media when you disagree with their views, often in the ethnic/sexual orientation/religious/political spheres. Admittedly, it is associated, on the right, with the increasingly strident voices that are on the left, like the great beans boycott . But it has older antecedents, including on the right, like a proposed boycott of Disney in 97 because it "promoted homosexuality". Basically, it is justified activism when you agree with the action, cancel culture when you don't. However, cancel culture is more a right-side slogan and the left has yet to come with an equivalently pejorative catchy term for the just-as-agitated right activists. For now, it remains, thankfully, a largely USA-centric term. Edit: I am not at all interested in debating the finer points of who is right or wrong or how justified the term is. Only in pointing out its elegant slogan power. It's brilliant, very "turn your enemy's strength against them". The left's best bet, IMHO, is just to own it and use it to criticize whatever right-side boycott campaigns they see. Unlike say tax and spend , it has no builtin ideological connotation. And, if say both sides refrained from frivolous name-calling to avoid being tarred by this label... one can only dream. * Google ngram doesn't find it, as it stops in 2019 (replace cancel with world and you can see ngram works fine with a different term). But... (thanks, J...), Google Trends does and show an April 2019 rampup. And, credit to Fizz, this seems to have been the first mainstream negative use of it : The writer Shanita Hubbard used the phrase in a tweet about the controversy surrounding Gabby Douglas in November 2017. The Olympic gymnast was ostensibly canceled after she appeared to blame survivors of sexual assault; in response to her teammate Aly Raisman's tweet about sexual assault, Douglas said that "it is our responsibility as women to dress modestly and be classy." Responding to the backlash against Douglas, Hubbard tweeted: "Let's talk 'cancel culture.' Personally, I am willing to give a lot of grace to young Black girls simply because the world doesn't." The tweet got more than 6,000 likes. —Shanita Hubbard (@msshanitarenee) November 18, 2017 The phrase continued to gain popularity on Twitter in late 2017, with several people writing "cancel culture" in quotation marks to describe the trend. Insider found that most of those tweets referred to cancel culture negatively. | {
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63,050 | Is there anywhere else in the world where people can (legally) cross an international border without any immigration check, like in the Schengen area? (Assuming pre-Covid-19 pandemic situation) If not, is there any serious project to have an Schengen-like area anywhere else in the world ? Notice: I am not looking for custom unions, including micro-states delegating their custom to their neighbour. | Central America-4 Border Control Agreement is probably an example of what you are searching for. Is a treaty between 4 Central American countries that allows the free movement across borders. They also have a common-design passport: El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua Further details on Wikipedia page - it even mentions the similarity to the Schengen Agreement. | {
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63,070 | In America, the police have a reputation for being politically conservative. One rarely sees clashes between conservative demonstrators and police. In Europe, though, there seem to be lots of clashes between anti-lockdown (presumably conservative) and (in France) yellow vests movement protestors and police? Is this because police in Western Europe skew left? | Speaking for Germany, officially they are bound to be neutral. Practically, they lean (heavily) right. Looking at the anti-lockdown protests (which are indeed right to far-right), the police has been very hands-off compared to left-wing demonstrations. In recent years, many cases of far-right extremist networks inside the police have been discovered (but as of yet no far-left networks). The largest police union ( GdP ) is center-right, though even they see that many police officers are sympathetic to right-wing nationalism. The second-largest police union ( DPolG ) is hard right . There isn't any left-wing union. Scientific analyses have shown that right-wing ideology is not an issue of a individual cases, but a structural problem in the police. Racial profiling is prevalent and right-wing extremism is under-estimated and institutional racism is negatively affecting police work (see e.g. NSU ). | {
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63,155 | It has been hypothesized that the harms of mass shootings in the US could be mitigated or prevented by encouraging gun ownership and reducing legal obstacles to gun carrying. With approximately 400,000,000 (that's 400 million) guns in the hands of American citizens , and on average, more than 1 gun owned per person (including children), what percentage of mass shootings in the USA have actually been stopped by ordinary citizens? The USA uses various definitions of mass shootings, but for this question, we can use the common definition of mass murder (4 or more people killed) or the broader Stanford Mass Shootings of America (MSA) definition (3 or more people injured) . I'm interested in data from any time period during the last century spanning at least 1 year. | From the details in the The Violence Project database. The following can be seen. In six incidents, armed civilians were present at the location. (Armed
Police were present in 19 Incidents) out of 175 recorded incidents. The average number of people who were killed and injured in these 175
incidents are 7.18 dead and 11.6 injured. For shootings with an armed civilian on site, the average are 6.9 dead and 8.3 injured. These numbers are influenced by one extreme example with 15 dead. If we remove that, then the average is 5.2 dead and 3.8 injured. Statistics based on the available sample say that the ordinary gun-bearing citizen's presence in the location has an insignificant effect on the outcome. The same has been highlighted by many. This data is based on incidents which resulted in 4+ deaths . The statistics of incidents which did not result in death might show a completely different result. I could not find any such data so far. However, from the available data the effectiveness of an armed civilian in preventing mass shooting can be inferred to be insignificant. Update FBI Article Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2012 provides the details of "active shooter" Incidents which by definition is slightly different from what is considered above. The summary on how these incidents ended is worth considering for the analysis. The point to highlight is that in 3 cases the shooter was shot dead by the Armed Citizen and in 14 cases he was overpowered. The data provides scope for interpretation. The sample size is fortunately low and we wish that it stays low. The overall answer is that the hard statistics available in the public domain are inconclusive. However based on available data it can be said 3 to 4 percent of incidents have been concluded by armed ordinary American. | {
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63,194 | I recently read that China's constitution refers to it as "a socialist state under the people's democratic dictatorship led by the working class and based on the alliance of workers and peasants." It seems to me that a democracy and a dictatorship are polar opposites, the very first paragraph on Wikipedia's article on dictatorships explicitly says 'dictatorships are "not democracies"'. Given that dictatorship is practically defined as not being a democracy how can a country be a democratic dictatorship? What does such a phrase mean and how does it work in practice? | The term 'democratic' literally means 'rule by the people'. In the West we normally associate that with a particular set of institutions — capitalist property rights, free and fair elections, open press, etc — but those are not the only form of rule that can be attributed to the people. Nations that derive from socialist principles are often predicated on the idea that state has taken control of productive forces as a proxy for the working class, uprooting the class-based oligarchy of entrenched capitalist systems. So long as power is ultimately vested in the citizenry as a whole, this is a valid claim, so a dictatorship of the proletariate could ideally be considered properly democratic. Of course, it's easy to find examples of socialist states that do not live up to this democratic ideal (just as it's easy to find examples of capitalist republics that fail to live up to the ideal: Hussein's Iraq, Assad's Syria, Putin's Russia, etc). Finding valid institutions by which the citizenry can properly control the political apparatus is extremely difficult. But in the abstract philosophical sense, there's no real problem here. | {
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63,260 | Lets define some examples to clarify what I'm talking about. United States: has a legislature in the form of the US Congress New York: has a state legislature New York City: can issue its own legislation Manhattan: has no legislative or executive authority on its own So the borough of Manhattan (pop. 1.6m) does not have its own separate authority with legislative powers. Are there even bigger fully dependent political entities like this? “Bigger/larger” refers to the total population in the district/borough/region “Legislative power” refers to a set of rules that can be passed by the political entity completely independently and subsequently enforced by government authorities. So if the Manhattan borough council issues non-binding declarations, it doesn't count as "legislative power". Political entities that have sub entities with legislative power do not count. For example England does not have its own separate Parliament but it does have numerous cities with their own legislative powers. “Political entity": The Five Boroughs are the municipal corporations of New York City. While they overlap with their Counties, and are subordinate to New York City, they are legally distinct. They each have a president, council, and a district attorney. For example Manhattan Borough President . It could have a legislature, like Suffolk County does , but it does not. As a rule of thumb, if Wiki calls this entity "borough", "county", "district", etc, then it can be considered a "political entity". | So the borough of Manhattan (pop. 1.6m) does not have its own separate authority with legislative powers. Are there even bigger fully dependent political entities like this? There are at least two political entities that are more populous than Manhattan and certainly meet your criteria, because they are also boroughs of the city of New York: Brooklyn and Queens. | {
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63,285 | From S.B. 202 (emphasis added): No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector , nor shall any person solicit signatures for any petition, nor shall any person, other than election officials discharging their duties, establish or set up any tables or booths on any day in which ballots are being cast: (1) Within 150 feet of the outer edge of any building within which a polling place is1818established; (2) Within any polling place; or (3) Within 25 feet of any voter standing in line to vote at any polling place. These restrictions shall not apply to conduct occurring in private offices or areas which cannot be seen or heard by such electors." This has been discussed at length in the news: CNN: "It's now illegal in Georgia to give food and water to voters in line" The Hill: "Georgia law makes it a crime to give food, water to people waiting to vote" Reuters: "Georgia bans giving water to voters in line under sweeping restrictions" At best, this seems unnecessary. Is there evidence of political operatives seeking to sway elections by handing out water? At worst, it's cruel: Georgia is hot , and long lines at polls are well documented . What is the rationale behind this restriction? I am interested in public statements from officials in Georgia -- I understand many opposed to this bill believe the intent is to suppress the minority vote, but the GOP must have some reason that doesn't sound evil. | The rationalization stems from similar proclamations across multiple states against voter intimidation or vote-buying. Nobody should have the fact that they're stuck in a line be taken advantage-of by people trying to change who you're going to vote for. Georgia is already not allowed to have campaign posters, imagery, or even campaign t-shirts within 150 feet of a polling place, has made it illegal to offer someone (within 150 feet of a polling place) a bribe to vote the way you want them to, and to threaten to harm or actually harm someone to influence their vote. In addition, two other provisions in the new law help set up a situation of long lines to vote in urban counties. The first provision (lines 430-435) says that counties cannot solicit third-party funds to be able to afford to increase access, and if they ever do allow such funding, it will be distributed equally amongst counties. This means that urban counties (which skew both poorer and higher population-density) are going to have fewer resources with which to open new polling places or expand hours of existing ones. The second provision (lines 1488-1518) expands early voting for some rural counties (which rarely need the extra capacity) but restricts early voting for urban counties (because they're already running at/over capacity) by restricting early voting to a smaller period and only during the 9-5 workday. Now, someone who is standing in line for more than three hours to vote is going to reeeeeally want food and water, and is thus much more vulnerable to someone trading food or drink for votes. So rather than just prohibit campaign literature on food or water given to a person (which already exists), they decided to ban the practice entirely. Now, it isn't a huge stretch of the imagination to see what they want to happen because of this: people in urban counties (which skew left) will have to wait so long in line to vote that (assuming they didn't bring food and drink with them) they'll have to step out of line in order to eat/drink/go to the bathroom and thus will eliminate themselves from the voting pool. | {
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63,344 | Sort of a follow-up question to one of my previous questions . The idea is that the UK does not recognize the Islamic State as a country, therefore they cannot just revoke Shamina Begum's citizenship by saying she's a citizen of IS. From the UK's perspective, IS isn't a country, it isn't legally allowed to any territory, any legal documents it issues are worthless, and IS "citizens" have no right to travel to the UK. If this is the case, then presumably what applies to IS ought to also apply to Taiwan. Since the UK does not recognize Taiwan, how is it still possible for Taiwanese people to travel to the UK? The same question goes for any of several non-recognized countries in the world, such as Kosovo. There is some detail on this question on the Wikipedia page on Taiwan passport and Kosovan passport , but it doesn't answer the question. For example it says it is possible to travel to e.g. China on a Kosovan passport even though China does not recognize Kosovo, but it doesn't explain how that is possible. How come these travelers aren't stopped at the border? | It is up to any sovereign state to decide who it allows to admit and with what documentation (*). So it is free to accept Taiwanese travel documents but not IS documents. It is free to grant free movement over the Irish border without any form of documentation but require that Indian citizens have a visa, even for air-side transit. There is no requirement for the government to be logical, reasonable or consistent. Indeed, individual border staff have wide remit to deny entry or cancel a visa (though they are expected to be reasonable, there is very little that you can do if they deny entry). The admission of an individual does not imply recognition of the entity that issued the travel documents. It just means that that the UK (represented by border staff) believe that the person entering will comply with the conditions of entry. So, how is it possible for people from Taiwan to travel to the UK? They use RoC issued passports which the UK government chooses to accept In the case of Ms Begum, the UK government is claiming that she has Bangladeshi citizenship, and it is on these grounds that they have removed her UK citizenship. This is disputed. (*) Of course I'm writing about the admission of foreign nationals. International law (ie multilateral agreements between countries) has a couple of requirements: that countries admit (and don't deport) their own citizens, and that people are not returned to danger, even if they entered without permission (ie refugees). The UK government doesn't want Begum to return, which is why they have claimed to have stripped her of UK citizenship. The "legality" of this is disputed, it is argued that the UK is in breach of various human rights treaties in depriving Begum of her UK citizenship. But this case is not simple, and I don't make any specific comment on the legality, as I'm not an international lawyer. | {
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63,360 | In designing a system of public funding for political parties, I want part of this funding to reward electoral performance. In order to avoid fairly reward each party, the amount of funding is based not on the number of elected officials, but on the number of votes (to avoid losing votes for parties whose candidates are not elected). However, I still need to find a way to fairly split the funding going to a multi-party list of candidates . Let's consider a little scenario. For the upcoming election, small but growing centrist Party A teams up with large but slightly declining center-right Party B; the two political parties will present a single list (AB) of candidates. Following the election, parties A and B have received votes and, therefore, a number of representatives. Ahead of the next financial year, public funding is to be allocated based on the number of votes received. How do we know how many received by the list AB were actually for Party A or Party B? Here are a few options and comments: Votes are split 50-50 between parties A and B. This feels fair at first, but is likely to lead large parties to refrain from alliances with noticeably smaller parties, since they would lose out quite a bit on post-electoral funding. Votes are allocated to each party based on their number of elected representatives. Here we assume that each candidate is affiliated to one of the parties. This leads to problems where few candidates are elected: it does not give a solution if no candidates are elected, and would jump straight to a 100%-0% distribution if a single candidate is elected. Votes are allocated to each party based on their number of candidates on the list. This is likely to lead both parties to force as many candidates on the list just to pump up their numbers. This is probably just part of the coalition deal; but it normally does not have major consequences when the extra candidates are not in eligible positions. This would seriously increase the stakes. Votes are allocated based on parties' own agreement on a percentage. This allows parties to use objective references they trust (this or that poll) to assess their relative strength and makes funding a consequence of the coalition deal-making. However, it opens the door to arbitrary decisions, and probably shady deals and quid pro quos. That's about it for my reflection so far. Any ideas? Thanks in advance! PS: I have left out, on purpose, scenarios where these questions would be internalised in the electoral system, for instance by asking voters which party they support within the list (by choice, ranking, or any other method). For complex reasons, this is not an option. | It is up to any sovereign state to decide who it allows to admit and with what documentation (*). So it is free to accept Taiwanese travel documents but not IS documents. It is free to grant free movement over the Irish border without any form of documentation but require that Indian citizens have a visa, even for air-side transit. There is no requirement for the government to be logical, reasonable or consistent. Indeed, individual border staff have wide remit to deny entry or cancel a visa (though they are expected to be reasonable, there is very little that you can do if they deny entry). The admission of an individual does not imply recognition of the entity that issued the travel documents. It just means that that the UK (represented by border staff) believe that the person entering will comply with the conditions of entry. So, how is it possible for people from Taiwan to travel to the UK? They use RoC issued passports which the UK government chooses to accept In the case of Ms Begum, the UK government is claiming that she has Bangladeshi citizenship, and it is on these grounds that they have removed her UK citizenship. This is disputed. (*) Of course I'm writing about the admission of foreign nationals. International law (ie multilateral agreements between countries) has a couple of requirements: that countries admit (and don't deport) their own citizens, and that people are not returned to danger, even if they entered without permission (ie refugees). The UK government doesn't want Begum to return, which is why they have claimed to have stripped her of UK citizenship. The "legality" of this is disputed, it is argued that the UK is in breach of various human rights treaties in depriving Begum of her UK citizenship. But this case is not simple, and I don't make any specific comment on the legality, as I'm not an international lawyer. | {
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63,371 | Democrats hold 48 seats in the Senate, Republicans 50, with the two remaining seats belonging to Independents. I understand that Kamala Harris is a Democrat and can cast a tie-breaking vote, but her power is limited to just that. Thus, don't Republicans still hold more seats than Democrats (50 > 48), making Schumer the minority leader and McConnell the majority leader? | Glossary Term | Floor Leaders floor leaders - The majority leader and minority leader are elected by their respective party conferences to serve as the chief Senate spokesmen for their parties and to manage and schedule the legislative and executive business of the Senate. By custom, the presiding officer gives the floor leaders priority in obtaining recognition to speak on the floor of the Senate. When the Senate meets at the beginning of each Congress (January 3rd of odd-numbered years), the Senators join one of two conferences. Each conference selects a floor leader. The conference with the largest number of Senators is the majority conference, the other is the minority conference. When the membership changes during the Congress, the roles of the majority and minority may reverse. With each new Congress and any reversal of roles, a vote for president pro tem is held. The president pro tem is the presiding officer for day-to-day meetings of the Senate. In the case of an even number of Senators in each conference, the vote for president pro tem determines the majority conference. The vice president, using a tie-breaking vote, selects the nomination of their same party conference to become president pro tem. (There is rarely an actual vote.) Why is Chuck Schumer considered the Majority Leader if the Democrats don't have a majority? On January 20, 2021, neither conference held a majority, a resolution S.Res.6 was brought to the floor, and adopted by unanimous consent, making Patrick Leahy (D-VT) the president pro tem of the Senate. When Leahy became president pro tem, Schumer (D-NY) became majority leader. | {
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63,408 | I have noticed over the last couple of years, that countries that are ranked high on one list that ranks by a property that is favorable, also rank high on other similar lists. For example on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Country_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://www.edsys.in/best-education-system-in-the-world/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality Finland and Denmark are pretty highly ranked, somewhere around place 10 there is often somewhere Germany. I remember John Oliver saying "Finland is on all the good lists.", so it seems at least I am not the only one with that impression. Now, my questions: Is my observation somewhat justified or am I falling victim to my own confirmation bias when I see those lists (and ignore those lists that are not fitting into my worldview)? If that observation is justified: Has it been researched, what the causes are for this phenomenon? I am not sure if that is the right site to ask this question. If not, please point me to the right one if you can. | It just happens that scoring high in the indexes you listed - progressive policies, social mobility, education and income equality - all require the same two things: A productive economy which generates a lot of GDP The political will to tap into that GDP through taxation and spend those funds on social politics So any country which has these two things will have the ability to rank high on all these lists. Further, there is some causal relation between the metrics measured in those lists mentioned here. A good public education system enables social mobility, and social mobility increases income equality. But there might still be some confirmation bias in what you consider a "nice list". For example, a neoconservative might consider other "nice lists" like per-capita GDP , countries with low tax rate or military prowess to rate which country they consider "better". | {
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63,424 | In the United States, because of the two party system, it is infeasible for somebody who isn’t an incumbent president to win an election without being part of either the Democratic or Republican Party. A political independent might choose to try and run as a member of that party using their platform to gain attention and increase chances of winning the election, while not having any of the same principles as the party itself. Is there anything the political party could do to prevent this? | Primaries. Each party (usually - exact election mechanics vary depending on election locality and office; the rest of this answer assumes Presidential election) has its own primary "election" in the lead-up to the actual election where they decide which candidate they will endorse in the upcoming election. Typically, they choose to back someone who is a known and established member of their party. Generally (although not always), once the party has held a primary and chosen a single candidate to support, all other candidates affiliated with that party will withdraw from the race and publicly voice support for that candidate. (Note that this sort of makes American elections look like sports tournaments, where you must win in the first round(s) to proceed to the championship game, even though winning, or even participating in, a party's primary is not required for election to any office) There are currently only a couple very large and influential parties in the US. Winning support from one of them in this fashion is a highly effective way to increase your chances of getting elected. For this reason, candidates who are not members of a party will sometimes do exactly what you have proposed, with varying degrees of success. For example, in 2016, there were two high-profile examples of this. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders attempted to run on the platform of one of the major parties and campaigned in their primary, although they ended up backing a different candidate. Businessman Donald Trump did the same with another major party, and actually got their backing. In both these cases, the rest of the candidates largely cooperated and supported their parties' preferred candidates. As far as running in an election without official support from the party, a candidate usually just needs to register as a member of the party and promote themselves as such. Likely they would try to win any primary that may happen. If they lost such a primary but chose to continue campaigning for office rather than backing down, the only thing the party can really do is enthusiastically support their preferred candidate, and make it clear who it is they actually endorse. | {
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63,445 | If the President (and their administration) considered the Supreme Court to be politically "illegitimate", would they be able to ignore its rulings? Is there any precedent for this? | There are no grounds for the President to declare the Supreme Court 'politically illegitimate' given that the Supreme Court is an institution that is directly established by the Constitution. Such a declaration would be grounds for the impeachment of the President, in my opinion. However, the online Constitutional Rights Foundation points out: President Andrew Jackson was elected in 1828 and he declared that the only hope for the South eastern tribes survival would be for them to give up their land move and move west of the Missisippi river. This is why he backed the Indian Removal bill in Congress. However, members of Congress such as Davy Crockett argued that Jackson was violating the Constitution by refusing to enforce treaties that guaranteed Indian land rights. Nevertheless, Congress passed the bill in 1830. Although removal was supposed to be voluntary, Jackson cut off payments to the tribes for previous land deals until they moved. He also agreed with Georgia and other Southern states that state law controlled tribal land. For example, Georgia had passed laws that abolished the Cherokee government. In 1830, the US Supreme Court ruled in Worcester vs Georgia that Jackson was wrong. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in a majority opinion that the Constitution gave Congress, not the states, the power to make laws that applied to the Indian tribes. Despite this clear court victory for the Cherokees Jackson openly refused to enforce it, and the Southern states ignored it. This lead directly to the Trail of Tears and to a policy that Wikipedia and Noam Chomsky called "the Indian genocide" and also what the political theorist, Alexis de Toqueville described as "a policy of extermination" and who watched a group of Choctows cross the frozen Mississippi river, writing: The Indians had their families with them, and they brought in their train the wounded and the sick, with children newly born and old men on the verge of death ... Never will that solemn spectacle fade from my remembrance . No cry, no sob was heard amongst the assembled crowd: all were silent. President Jackson, by refusing to enforce the Supreme Court decision would have been in breach of the Constitution - the supreme law of the United States - and hence would have committed what the Constitution calls a 'high crime' being grounds for impeachment - that is removal from the office of President by Congress. That this did not occur shows the strength of the southern states at the time. | {
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63,516 | Some examples: Philippines' Duterte would send navy ships in South China Sea to assert claim over resources Putin's Answer to U.S. Sanctions Is More Economic Isolation Boris Johnson poised to raise bar on UK's climate goals Why do news articles often refer to the leader as opposed to the country ? After all unless the leader is a dictator, he/she doesn't do everything; they still need approval from parliament. Therefore unless the leader is speaking personally, they represent their country, their decisions are their country's decisions. To say for example that Duterte would send navy ships into the South China Sea shines the limelight on him. If it turns out well he gets all the accolades even though the members of his cabinet could deserve as much (or even more) credit; the same goes if it goes badly. The news articles could (but don't) say instead: The Philippines decides to send navy ships into the South China Sea to assert claim over resources Russia's answer to U.S. sanctions is more economic isolation UK poised to raise bar on climate goals | Generally speaking, it's more precise. "The Philippines" (to use your first example) isn't an entity that makes decisions - it's a nation full of people of diverse backgrounds and opinions. In and of itself, it has no consciousness nor agency. The actions being taken are rightly attributed to the person(s) who have agency to make those choices (and/or power to enforce them); in this case, that's Duterte. It is frequently more accurate as a result, but that depends on the specifics of a given case and is beyond the scope of the question. When you assign the choices of a leader to the whole of a nation, you lose sight of the fact that the human experience is very messy. Historically, this has not ever done anyone any good. In journalism there is a professional ethic towards precision and accuracy, and so if you know the name of the person who made the call, you should name the decision as theirs. Especially in print media, authors cannot assume that their audience shares whatever cultural, professional, or intellectual context that they are writing from. In common conversation, you might say "The Philippines" and mean "The government thereof," or "the people thereof" or, "this specific set of islands in the west Pacific," but since that term can readily stand into so many places it creates ambiguity. Referring to the human actor who is making the choice, however, eliminates the ambiguity - save for (possibly) someone assuming that this was some kind of rogue action. That case, however, is covered by the fact that having your choices evaluated against the mandate of your office is part and parcel of being a political leader. | {
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63,529 | I have noticed that ever since Joe Biden took office, he has tweeted from @POTUS . However Donald Trump, for example, tweeted primarily from his personal account, which is suspended. When @JoeBiden tweets, it is solely retweets, mostly of @POTUS content. Kamala Harris seems to have made a similar move as well. Is there any official or plausible reasoning for Joe Biden not tweeting directly from his personal account? | @POTUS, according to Twitter ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-says-it-is-permanently-suspending-account-of-president-trump-11610148903 ), is the 'official' account for the Office of the President of the United States. It is a de facto arm of the executive branch in the same way that any other public-communications aspect of the office would be. (Theoretically) When it is used, it carries the weight and authority of the Office - it is, essentially, official communication. @JoeBiden is the account of Joseph R. Biden, a private citizen. Communication therefrom does not carry the official nature in the same way, and so to use it is ethically incorrect, if not actually illegal in any way. The word 'republic' derives from Latin (res publica) to mean "The People's stuff." Meaning the President is acting as a trustee, responsible to the People and charged with taking care of their stuff. If the person of President and the Office of President were the same, it would be the President's stuff, not the People's stuff. It's super abstract to be sure, but it's a quintessential feature of what it means to have a republic. This was a choice made by the framers in reaction to a system where everything was understood to be owned by the monarch, divvied up among people delegated to work that land since the King couldn't do the job himself. No firewall between trustee and beneficiary/grantor is needed under a monarchy, because they're all the same person. In a republic, however, the public are the grantor and beneficiary, and the official is the trustee - but they are also a beneficiary and grantor in part. This introduces an unavoidable conflict of interest - one that is worked around by keeping a procedural firewall between the acts of the trustee as President, and their acts as a private citizen. Donald Trump's style as President featured a broad disregard for norms of conduct, for which he was both broadly criticized and hailed. It was entirely within his style to use his personal brand and communication channels, because he viewed himself as 'The President' instead of simply the person who was occupying the Office of the President. This is also why he got into fights with members of the White House Counsel, often claiming that they should be acting differently: He wanted them to behave as if he were their client, when in normative actuality it's the Office of the President that is their client. (There's also a string of West Wing episodes about this nuance.) A big part of Biden's platform and entire political character revolves around re-upping political norms and restoring the traditional relationships of political institutions. To that end, using his own, private Twitter handle to broadcast official messages would be in contravention of his demonstrated beliefs and values. In fact, using it much at all while he occupies the Office could create the appearance thereof, thus why he's mostly only using it for retweets. | {
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63,532 | How do states with no state income tax like Florida or Texas generate tax revenue? Do they have higher property tax or sales tax? I compared their property and sales taxes with other states with income tax (such as Ohio or Virginia) and they are relatively the same. | You can find revenue breakdowns online, as this is generally all public information. It mainly only gets confusing depending on how the breakdown is done and the names given to them (e.g. sales tax, excise tax, ad valorem tax; are they all grouped together, or what?) Texas Here's some breakdowns of the 2004 state revenues . Approximately a third of their income comes directly from the Federal government (note that all states receive Federal funds; prosperous states, like Texas, pay more in taxes than they receive; though when I say this I do not account for direct payments to residents, such as Medicare and Social Security, only grants to the State itself). Of the non-Federal income, the biggest contributor is the sales tax, at about 40% of non-Federal income. Taxes on vehicles and fuel another 14%, and revenue from licenses, fees, permits, fines, and penalties is about another 14%. Texas also taxes the production of the oil industry, and has a corporate income tax (the "Franchise tax" you see in the link). Nevada Nevada, better known as that place where Las Vegas is found, has an economy heavily dependent upon tourism, casino income in particular. A breakdown of their 2019-2020 revenue can be found here . Sales taxes and gaming revenues account for nearly 46% of non-Federal state revenue. Nevada's yearly budgets are currently in the rough neighborhood of $30 billion, about $10 billion of which comes from the Federal fund. Florida Florida is another tourism heavy economy, and they get in the neighborhood of an astonishing 80% of their non-Federal revenue from sales taxes; about a third of the state budget comes from the Federal fund . All property taxes in Florida are, per the state constitution, reserved entirely for local governments. | {
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63,547 | This comment says that One of the de facto laws of compensation in a bureaucracy is that nobody can get paid more than the guys at the top Why is that? Is it because of tradition, or is there some concrete reason for it? | This is not true, in a universal sense. In general it's true that, in government as in other fields, the higher up you rise, the higher your salary is, but what's much more important is the field you're in, and it's relative value (to the state/country) and competitiveness. If you look at US States , for example, you'll see that the Governor is almost never among the highest paid public employees. In Alaska, the Governor makes $145,000/yr , less than half of the top 3 highest paid public employees : The Executive director of the Department of Revenue ($371k), a forensic psychiatrist for the Department of Corrections ($367k) and an investment officer for the Department of Revenue ($350k). In California, the Governor makes $220,000/yr , less than the $342,974/yr that the Mayor of San Francisco makes. The Mayor, in turn, makes less than 9 other city employees such as chief investment officer for the San Francisco Employees' Retirement System ($527k). All these salaries, though, are dwarfed by the salaries of even assistant coaches for the UC football teams : Chip Kelly, the head coach, makes $3.5 million per year, the offensive coordinator makes $700k per season, the assistant head coach makes $500k, while the tight end coach makes $450k. In Delaware, the highest paid public employee is the Thoroughbred Racing Commission doctor of veterinary medicine, at $477k, compared to $171k for the Governor. I won't go through every state, but the common top earners are sports coaches, university presidents, employees at state/city pension and investment funds, and leaders of state university medical schools. The general theme is that they have specific skills that would grant them high salaries in the private sector. Another exception is overtime eligible employees, like police officers, who can use large amounts of overtime to earn much higher salaries than their bosses. In Seattle, for example, the police chief makes $285k per year. Thanks to overtime, however, that doesn't even make it into the top-10 highest salaries in the department . In 2019, the top paid SPD employee was a Patrol Officer (not even a Sergeant or Lieutenant), who made $414,543 | {
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63,570 | I heard on the news about a group called "America First" that supposedly wants to protect "Anglo-Saxon values". Other American and European nativists have also used that phrase. Why the Anglo-Saxon part? Why not, say, "European values"? Is it because they want to exclude people like the Irish and others? | The notion of 'Anglo-Saxon values' goes back to the days of British colonialism. One of the more common justifications of colonialism was that the British (Anglo-Saxon) culture was the pinnacle of societal achievement, something that had to be imposed on more 'primitive' races because they weren't sufficiently sophisticated to develop or appreciate it on their own. In that sense, pushing into an undeveloped region, establishing colonies, extracting resources, and coercing native populations into labor forces under British administration was morally acceptable because the British were exporting their superior social and cultural values to the benighted dark-skinned peoples of the world. The idea persisted in US slave culture — to wit, the occasionally-still-heard argument that US blacks should be happy about slavery because it brought them out of Africa into the more enlightened US — and has established itself as a tenet of US Right-wing ethnonationalist ideology. Whenever you hear a reference of this sort to 'Anglo-Saxon values', understand that the speaker intends to convey an idealized (and almost certainly mythologized) image of 18th/19th century British colonialism, where dark-skinned peoples could not be trusted to rule themselves or participate in their own governance, but must be controlled, administered, educated, and uplifted by the 'perfected' Liberal culture of the British Isles. It isn't xenophobic as much as deeply (absurdly) arrogant and paternalistic. | {
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63,579 | In Iran, there is a supreme leader and a guardian council on top of the parliament. Any candidate for parliament must be approved by the supreme leader and the guardian council. Therefore, this is not the same as the Western form of democracy. Is Iran considered a democracy by the Western world? Note: I am not talking about Political Scientific theories, I am talking about real politics. | It's difficult to answer this in a comprehensive fashion, but generally I think the answer is (a qualified) 'no'. E.g. Freedom House : The Islamic Republic of Iran holds elections regularly, but they fall short of democratic standards due in part to the influence of the hard-line Guardian Council, an unelected body that disqualifies all candidates it deems insufficiently loyal to the clerical establishment. Ultimate power rests in the hands of the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the unelected institutions under his control. [...] Iran is rated Not Free in Freedom in the World 2021. Likewise the Democracy-Dictatorship Index (albeit not updated in over a decade, but for Iran it probably doesn't matter) lists Iran as a civilian dictatorship (this scheme doesn't have a coding for a theocratic dictatorship though--only military/civil/royal kinds.) Some other analyses describe it as a "hybrid regime": Being a ‘hybrid’ regime, the Islamic Republic combines theocracy with a certain level of representative participation, allowing it to adapt to changing political and social dynamics over time. On Polity IV, which uses a -10 (full dictatorship) to 10 (for full democracy) scale, Iran was ranked as -7 and labelled an autocracy as of last update, which happened in 2014. To be a labelled a "semi-democracy" on this scale, the score would have to be in between -5 and 5, according to its creators. Iran was ranked in that range from the late 1990s to 2005 though. As of 2020, V-dem labels Iran an "Electoral Autocracy", on a classification that recognizes four main classes: Liberal Democracy, Electoral Democracy, Electoral Autocracy, and Closed Autocracy. (The scale also entertains "+" and "-" tags/modifiers, but none are given to Iran.) | {
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63,622 | Recently, Biden - despite a 'warning' by Erdogan - has acknowledged the Armenian genocide, which was immediately followed by sharp critique by Erdogan. AFAIK, he's the first American president to do so, and among only a small group of NATO countries doing so. It made me wonder why calling something a genocide is such a big deal, not necessarily only in the context of Turkey but more generally (the first thing coming to mind is China and the Uyghurs)? Clearly this is not up for debate or 'opinion', since there's hard evidence that the genocide happened and who perpetrated it. I've read this article, and all I could find was that there was essentially "No one wants to piss off Erdogan because Turkey is a strategically important country/partner". I think I am aware that politics is a nuanced affair and cultures are different, but not acknowledging a genocide for the sake of not offending a political partner seems really... reprehensible to me. Is there something I'm missing? Edit: I've just learned from here that Erdogan is afraid the Armenian genocide might "undermine the legitimacy of the modern state." How is that? Germany acknowledges the Holocaust and to my knowledge, no one questions the legitimacy of the German state. | Acknowledging genocide is a big deal, precisely because genocide is a big deal. It is considered to be the highest, worst, most inhumane, most heinous, most vicious crime of all crimes. It is the original and first crime to be called a crime against humanity , in fact, it is the crime for which this term was invented. These crimes are so bad that they are considered not just to be committed against their immediate victims, but all of humanity itself . Acknowledging genocide is essentially the State-level equivalent to taking out an advertisement at prime time in every TV channel in the entire world, proclaiming that you are a child rapist. How would you feel about that? Especially if you think that you are innocent? Because that is another reason it is a big deal: Turkey does not acknowledge the genocide. So, this acknowledgment is not just accusing them of the worst possible crime (a crime which they feel they are not guilty of), but also effectively calling them a liar. Additionally, it is a big deal because many countries have laws that give their courts universal jurisdiction over some particularly heinous crimes, often including genocide. It is a big deal, because it might make it possible for Armenian-Americans to sue the State of Turkey for damages in a US court . And lastly, it is a big deal because it is at least somewhat hypocritical: the US has yet to acknowledge the first genocide of the modern era: the genocide of the American indigenous people. (Although note that some States, e.g. California, have.) | {
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63,655 | Why do populists and dictators sometimes lie so ridiculously that it's entirely obvious it's untrue? What purpose do such blatant lies serve if no one takes them seriously? Examples of extremely improbable lies: The Democrat position on abortion is now so extreme that they don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth. ( Donald Trump in 2019) When [the head of the security] called me with tears in his eyes around midnight he said, ‘Aleksandr Grigoryevych, we can’t do it amicably, they took out knives, took out blades… First, they say, we slit our wrists, cut off our heads, and slaughter all of you, splatter everything with blood here’. Well, excuse me, this kind of threat is too much… So we’ll show the people that tape, and not only that one. ( Aleksandr Lukashenko after the riot police violently drove out legislators who went on hunger strike in the parliament to protest against his 1995 referendum; no tape was ever released, witnesses described the events completely differently) | This is what is called the ' Big Lie ' strategy in politics, coined by Adolf Hitler himself. It is defined as: 'A gross distortion or misrepresentation of the facts, especially when used as a propaganda device by a politician or official body'. The way it is used by dictators/totalitarians/cultists is fairly straightforward: instead of stringing their followers along with half-truths (and thus lose some followers each time as they reach their breaking point), they front-load their campaign with a gigantic, epic lie that if true, would perfectly explain why the current situation is bad and give a clear scapegoat that must be defeated. They make it clear that in order to follow them, their followers have to believe this obvious lie, and it acts as a combination of a secret handshake and a sunk-cost fallacy wrapped into one. Followers of the dictator/totalitarian/cultist know who other followers are because the Big Lie is so fundamental that it changes a person's entire worldview. Sunk-cost fallacy because by making the Big Lie the cost of entry, you make it increasingly difficult to leave the group. By believing something so fundamentally wrong, you isolate yourself from your friends and loved ones who still believe their own senses, and any tiny lie after that point is just small potatoes compared to the Big Lie you've already internalized. This is closely related to gaslighting , as both require the perpetrator to craft an internally-consistent narrative that makes people believe the perpetrator over their own senses. The difference is that gaslighting can be used by abusers of all sorts with a wide variety of end goals, while the Big Lie specifically refers to a political figure creating a fictional reality for the purpose of gaining power. | {
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63,674 | In the United States it is very hard to get rid of student loans. They cannot be discharged in bankruptcy except for under extenuating circumstances. I find that bizarre given how people are encouraged to go to school but this law discourages lower income individuals from making it to schools. I've heard that this was a part of a bankruptcy law signed in the early 2000s, but I don't remember what it was called. What is the motivation behind this decision? | I don't think there's a clear and definitive reason. The Nondischargeability of Student Loans in Personal Bankruptcy Proceedings: The Search for a Theory by John A. E. Pottow of the University of Michigan Law School explores the very question you ask here. It provides 6 six reasons for making student loans nondischargeable. I'll try to summarize those reasons a bit by quoting some introductory paragraphs for all six reasons. Section three of the linked paper focuses on your question: III. POSSIBLE THEORIES FOR NONDISCHARGEABILITY U.S. bankruptcy law treats student loans as nondischargeable
debts. Why is that so? There are several plausible theories under
which educational debt should be treated as nondischargeable. The six reasons provided by the article are as follows (note that the article itself provides more details than the limited quotes here): Fraud One long-standing reason for holding bankruptcy debts nondischargeable is fraud. Accordingly, one theory for subjecting
student loans to a nondischargeability rule is an assumption that
they are presumptively fraudulent. Elaborating on what fraud means in this case: To say that a loan is fraudulent is to say, or postulate as a
rule of thumb, that students intend to take out huge sums of money
with no intention whatsoever, from the ex ante perspective, of ever
paying them back. While it may be a dramatic assumption, it is one
that would provide a sound theoretical basis for a nondischargeability rule. Soft fraud A more likely fraud-animated foundation for nondischargeability
of student debt is what might be called "soft fraud", although that is
an imperfect label. "Opportunism" also captures the concern, but
that too is problematic because "opportunism" is a notoriously
amorphous concept in bankruptcy. To elaborate what soft fraud means in this case, the article provides the following example: In any event, the opportunism concern of "soft" fraud is as
follows: Perhaps without the malice aforethought of traditional
fraud, Student takes out a six-figure loan to finance her undergraduate
and graduate education. [...] Her first year out into the real world, however, hardens her. She realizes she faces the prospect of amortizing a multidecade loan, when she has few personal assets to her name other
than well-highlighted law books. She has no appreciable savings (as
a rational life cycle consumer, she had no inclination to accrue them
yet), no home, and perhaps a beat-up car at best. But she has lots of
difficult-to-monetize, let alone liquidate, human capital in the form
of her J.D. degree.36 Recognizing that the price exchanged for the
bankruptcy discharge is giving up all her non-exempt assets, she
happily trades in the car for unfettered access to that high future
income stream. There is a perverse temporal arbitrage of sorts. She
gets to pick her debt relief at the point in time when her realizable
assets and present income are at their lowest and her debt and future
income are at their highest. Her impecunity is transient and arguably
artificial. Internalization This theory builds on the notion that the recipient
of a private benefit (here, education) should have to bear its cost
(here, the debt for tuition). As the article explains through the example of future lawyers and who pays for them: If tuition debt is publicly subsidized and then discharged, the benefit is realized privately but the cost is shifted back
to the public. Indeed, some enthusiasts of "constructing"'" education as a private benefit go even further. Here, it is not even higher
earning, but the chance for higher earning, that is the private benefit of education. The unsuccessful lawyer must bear that cost just as
much as the successful one, lest the taxpayer fall into the role of
guarantor of financial success (of lawyers!). Shaming The article mentions that this is probably not the main reason, but that it is a "logically coherent rationale" nonetheless. The argument is that students fall into a class
of morally deficient debtors whom society wants to stigmatize and
punish for non-economic reasons. Indeed, as mentioned, a paradigmatic nondischargeable debt is the intentional tortfeasor's. Public Fisc A wholly different justification for treating student loans as
nondischargeable in bankruptcy proceedings is couched in terms of "protecting" the solvency of the public student loan programme,
which is perceived to be in a crisis. As the article goes on to explain: If bankruptcy law treats student loans leniently, then more
students at the margin will be inclined to "take bankruptcy" and discharge their loans. And if more students discharge their federally
insured loans in bankruptcy, then more federal dollars will be
devoted to bailing out failed loans (and reimbursing guaranteed
lenders) than might otherwise be devoted to making initial loans to
new students. Here, bankruptcy policy becomes an indirect lever for
education policy. If bankruptcy policy can be altered to make it
harder to default on student loans (e.g., changing otherwise dischargeable debts to become nondischargeable), then incentives will
change. Cost of Private Capital If an otherwise
dischargeable unsecured debt is rendered nondischargeable by the
law, then the bankruptcy-state scenario regarding that debt becomes
worse for the debtor (it does not go away) and better for the lender
(it does not go away). In a world of competitive, zero-profit lending
markets, this increased payoff for the lender must be translated
ex ante into an improved cost of capital for the borrower. Without
addressing the empirical likelihood of this competition, it suffices
to observe that making bankruptcy harsher for the debtor, at least
from the standpoint of economic theory, makes borrowing more
affordable for that debtor in particular and all borrowers generally
(especially in a world where it is difficult or expensive to distinguish good from bad borrowers up front). In other words, because the risk associated with these dischargeable loans is lower from the lender's perspective, the free market should lower the cost of borrowing for all debtors. Also adding the recommended citation for the source of the quotes: Pottow, John A. E. "The Nondischargeability of Student Loans in Personal Bankruptcy Proceedings: The Search for a Theory." Canadian Bus. L. J. 44, no. 2 (2007): 245-78. While this answer doesn't specify which reasons actually came up when the law was debated, it does provide a number of arguments that defenders of nondischargeable student loans would give. | {
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63,725 | I have been looking at college towns. I took a picture of their average precinct in the 2020 presidential election. University of Michigan average precinct: These college towns are recording performances for Democrats that are literally Washington DC level. Ithaca in Upstate New York had an even bigger performance for Democrats. This is interesting. Why are college towns so Democratic-leaning, far more than average people of college age? | Biden did particularly well in two demographics : Voters under 30 (62% for Biden vs. 35% for Trump) College educated voters (55% for Biden vs. 42% for Trump) So the reason why Biden did so particularly well in university districts could be that college students are the intersection of those two demographics. Another reason could be (but that's just my conjecture) that Biden made a couple election promises which would be of great benefit to college students in particular if they were implemented: "Make public colleges and universities tuition-free for all families with incomes below $125,000." "Forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt for debt-holders earning up to $125,000." "Double the maximum value of Pell grants and significantly increase the number of middle-class Americans who can participate in the program. " "Make historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities, and under-resourced minority serving institutions more affordable for their students" (although as a 65% white university , students at the University of Michigan would not benefit from that directly) | {
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63,764 | I read ( mirror ): [January 5, 2021] India has one of the largest vaccine manufacturing capacities in the world (including the largest vaccine producer - Serum Institute of India) and has secured authorisation to mass-produce the AstraZeneca, Novavax and Gamaleya Research Institute vaccines. Given that in April and May 2021, India is setting new pandemic records with more than 400,000 daily new cases, why doesn't India mass-produce COVID-19 vaccines, since the above-mentioned quote indicates that India has the authorisation and the capacity to mass-produce COVID-19 vaccines? There is no need for conversion since the factories are already designed to produce vaccines. Some Indian politicians accused patent protection laws to be the issue in April and May 2021. E.g., see videos 1 , 2 , 3 from The Hill , India’s Covid-19 Crisis Raises Pressure to Waive Vaccine Patents from The Wall Street Journal or India, South Africa to make fresh push for waiver of vaccine patents at WTO from Hindustan Times . Quote from India’s Covid-19 Crisis Raises Pressure to Waive Vaccine Patents from The Wall Street Journal published on May 1, 2021: Some 60 developing countries, led by India and South Africa, are drafting a new proposal to waive the World Trade Organization’s intellectual-property rules— something they say would allow a significant increase in vaccine production worldwide . | Whether true or just politically convenient they have blamed the slow ramping of Covid vaccine production on the US banning exports of some necessary equipment and materials: The two main vaccine manufacturers, SII (which makes the local version of AstraZeneca's vaccine called Covishield) and Bharat Biotech (which makes Covaxin), [theoretically] can together produce around 90 million doses a month. They have been promised $400m and $210m each from the Indian government to boost production. [...] Earlier this year, President Biden invoked the US Defense Production Act (DPA), giving US vaccine makers priority access to specialised equipment, such as pumps and filtration units. India's biggest vaccine maker, the Serum Institute of India, which produces Covishield, complained of shortages of specialised materials from the US. The firm said it had faced difficulties importing cell culture media, single-use tubing and specialised chemicals from the US. [...] The Serum Institute of India (SII) said in January it was planning to ramp up production of Covishield and the US-developed Novavax (not yet licensed for use in India) to 100 million doses a month by March. But the plans have been pushed back to June. [...] The SII was expected to deliver the first 100 million doses between February and May - but Indian government data shows that it has so far delivered only 30 million (this includes 10 million set aside for India itself under Covax). As with all politically tied blame games, it's probably going to be little difficult to untangle this... AZ itself has had difficulties with production scaling in the EU etc. AZ subcontractor (CordenPharma) company officials in the EU also mentioned "a need to send some ingredients to foreign plants—including in the U.S.—for purification", so there may be some truth to it... how much of that accounts for the delays it's hard to say. Regarding patents for Covid-19 therapeutics, this is a somewhat older dispute (that has been reiterated recently though). Basically South Africa, India, and some other low-income countries proposed sometime in October (at the WTO/TRIPS) for IP on Covid-19 therapeutics, including vaccines to be waved. However, the high-income countries (US, UK, and the EU) rejected this proposal. The WHO also mostly sided with the high-income countries on this: John-Arne Røttingen, who chairs the WHO Solidarity Trial of COVID-19 treatments, agrees that technology transfer is crucial, but says that voluntary mechanisms are a better way to achieve this. The patent waiver, he says, is the “wrong approach” to the problem because COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines are complex biological products in which the main barriers are production facilities, infrastructure, and know-how. “IP is the least of the barriers”, he says. It's somewhat harder to say what might have happened in the counterfactual scenario, but India also did not even approve the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines until April 13, 2021: Pfizer was among the first companies to apply for an emergency use authorisation in India, back in December. At the time, Serum Institute of India’s Covishield, which is essentially the AstraZeneca vaccine, and India’s homegrown Covaxin had also applied for approvals. A big hurdle in granting Pfizer an approval was the fact that its vaccine needs to be stored at ultracold temperatures, needing a specific cold storage mechanism that had limited availability in India. At the time, the government had insisted on Pfizer’s bridging study in India, and the pharmaceutical company wanted India to first commit to buying the shots. Eventually, Pfizer withdrew its application in February. Similarly, India’s subject expert committee had deliberated for several months before granting Sputnik V, an emergency approval, even though the Russian vaccine maker had tied up with India’s Dr Reddy’s Laboratories for local trials. Unlike Covaxin, whose phase III data are yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, both Pfizer and Sputnik V have established efficacy of over 90%. [...] Just days before allowing foreign-made vaccines to be imported, the government had a strong stance against it. In a letter to prime minister Narendra Modi on April 9, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had appealed that approvals be granted to all other viable vaccine candidates and that the drive be opened up for younger age groups. At the time, Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s minister for law & justice, and communications and information technology, hit out at Gandhi for being a “lobbyist” for pharmaceutical companies. In four days, though, the government made a complete U-turn and said that it was going to make sure all priority groups receive the vaccine. India has set itself a target of vaccinating 300 million people, including healthcare and frontline workers, by August. Some in India are indeed still arguing that the price would come down if the mRNA vaccines were produced in India, but I haven't seen concrete figures and even supporters of this idea admit that lead would have been 8-9 months before local production could have started: “Price of the mRNA vaccine will become quite reasonable (in India) if Moderna comes on board with us and allows our pharma companies to produce the vaccine here. The technology is very simple and we will take 8-9 months to start manufacturing,” the CSIR told ThePrint. Despite the Indian claim that it's all very simple, some other experts quoted by Nature disagreed with that assessment: Could other companies pitch in to manufacture more? Making mRNA vaccines has a simplicity about it, but scaling up is tricky, says Zoltán Kis, a chemical engineer at the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Hub at Imperial College London. Because it is a new process, there’s a shortage of trained personnel. “It’s very hard to find these people who are trained and also good at it,” he says. But the key bottleneck in mRNA-vaccine manufacture is a worldwide shortage of essential components, especially nucleotides, enzymes and lipids. This is because relatively few companies make these products, and not in sufficient numbers for global supply. Moreover, these companies are proving slow to license their manufacturing so that others could do this. For example, every RNA strand requires a ‘cap’ that prevents the human body from rejecting it as foreign material. It’s the most expensive component, says Kis, and the intellectual-property rights for a popular cap design are held by one company — TriLink Biotechnologies, based in San Diego, California. Similarly, a small number of companies hold the intellectual-property rights for one of the four lipid nanoparticles that form a ‛cage’ around the RNA, Kis adds. That said, manufacturers of component parts are now expanding their production. TriLink, for example, has built new facilities in California. And Merck, based in Darmstadt, Germany, is expanding its supply of lipids to BioNTech, Pfizer’s collaborator. [...] “Last February [2020], Pfizer and Moderna were already thinking about how to make more. They started buying GMP [good manufacturing practice] companies,” Weissman says, referring to firms that already fulfil the numerous rigorous requirements for producing safe food, drugs or medical equipment. “They [also] started leasing other companies, but they had no control on the raw materials. Maybe governments could have used their authority to make chemical companies produce more raw materials, but that’s a lot to ask for when the drug hasn’t even been approved,” he adds. Basically, it's not terribly clear if that if India had started production on mRNA vaccines already they would be that much far ahead in overall Covid-19 vaccines production. From the looks of it, they would have had to build a whole supply chain for these. A bit lesser known is the fact that there is one "independent" effort to make mRNA vaccine (which reminds a bit of the Oxford-AZ collaboration): the University of Pennsylvania, which owns sufficient intellectual-property rights relating to mRNA vaccines to strike out on its own, is helping Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok to develop a vaccine-making facility. “If you look at vaccine roll-out right now, it’s going to be two years before Thailand and other lower-income countries get vaccine,” says Weissman, who is collaborating on the project. The country’s government wasn’t willing to wait, he says. “They were willing to put up the money … so that they’ll be ready to treat their people by the end of this year.” And even in India there's one such vaccine being developed: An mRNA-based vaccine HGCO 19 developed by Gennova Biopharmaceuticals Ltd., of Pune, India, and HDT Bio Corp., of Seattle, was cleared in December to initiate phase I/II trials. Now on this angle, Canada perhaps has more a leg to stand on and complain as one of their companies (Biolyse) says they made an offer to J&J to license their Ad26-based vaccine (in view of producing 20 million doses per year), but they were turned down, so now they are asking the Canadian government to compulsorily license to them the J&J-related patents. Something similar was heard from a company in Bangladesh, but regarding a protein-based and even parts of the mRNA vaccine manufacturing process. Bangladesh’s Incepta Pharmaceuticals Ltd., for example, says it has a production line that could make 350 million doses a year of protein sub-unit vaccines, such as that developed by Novavax Inc. Among the vaccines Incepta, which has 10,000 employees, already makes are shots against cholera and hepatitis B. The company also says it has a “fill-and-finish” facility that could transfer another 500 million doses from bulk containers to final-use vials, saying that it could easily do this for mRNA vaccines. “We have a tremendous facility here lying idle. It is very frustrating,” said the company’s chairman, Abdul Muktadir, who dismissed safety concerns as “pure nonsense.” Mr. Muktadir said he was ready to pay to use the intellectual property rights, but that his offer of a licensing deal received no response from U.S. manufacturers. [...] Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna haven’t licensed their Covid-19 vaccines to any producers in the developing world so far. BioNTech’s Mr. Sahin said this week that his company was contemplating potential production in South America and Africa, but offered no details. A spokesman for Moderna said that actively sharing the know-how with manufacturers in the developing world would have pulled resources away from its own efforts to produce hundreds of millions of doses during the pandemic. He declined to say whether Moderna opposed the Trips waiver proposal. From the same source (WSJ): More than 100 members of Congress support a waiver. A recent letter to Mr. Biden from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and nine Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren, said that “delaying vaccine deployment in the developing world to lock in profit-boosting patent protections threatens the safety of the American public that financed the vaccines in the first place.” So there seems to be some political buy-in in the US at the moment at least on the left-most side of the political spectrum. Whether it will or would have actually helped had this been done already... I'm not going to try and speculate. But interestingly enough though, even some left-wing sources like Jacobin magazine point out that merely forcing the licensing of patents probably wouldn't have helped much; the article in fact accused Moderna of a publicity stunt when Moderna announced they would not be enforcing their patents on Covid-19... During a media call held in May 2020, the director of the pharmaceutical industry’s global trade association, Thomas Cueni, was asked about the possibility that developing countries might issue compulsory licenses to break patents on COVID-19 vaccines. He shrugged off the question by saying out loud what Moderna’s executives intentionally left unsaid. “The focus on IP in vaccines shows a lack of understanding, because with vaccines, it’s all about know-how,” said Cueni. “In the history of IP, there’s never been a compulsory license for vaccines. Not for nothing. It really doesn’t solve the problem.” [...] The vaccines at the center of today’s IP debate illustrate the difference. Unlike HIV/AIDS antiretrovirals [some of which were forced-licensed]— classic “small molecule” drugs easily reverse-engineered and manufactured using existing technology — bio-based medicines and new-generation vaccines are more complex, with the needed technologies and manufacturing specs padlocked by trade secrets, along with biological materials like cell lines. Acquiring this information requires the active and willing participation of the patent owner to share its secrets to show exactly how they work, an aspect of licensing deals known as tech-transfer. Even for mRNA vaccines which conceptually are simpler to manufacture (no cells or viruses to grow), the trickiest manufacturing step appears to be getting the mRNA into the LNP. And apparently not much has been published about that; there don't seem to be any commercially available machinery that does it, for instance. It's all in-house processes for now. A peer-reviewed publication however estimated that raw mRNA production itself is actually
the main limiting factor. This study suggests that using self-amplifying RNA (saRNA) vaccines
would have thus be the way to overcome it. Basically, if you can't get academics who are second-guessing what the industry is doing to agree where the manufacturing bottlenecks lie... it's probably fair to say that the RNA-vaccines industry is keeping their trade secrets close enough to their chest... In today's [May 2021] news , a more rounded assessment from the same Serum Institute CEO: In a statement on Monday, Poonawalla added: “Vaccine manufacturing is a specialised process. It is therefore not possible to ramp up production overnight. We also need to understand that the population of India is huge and to produce enough doses for all adults is not an easy task.” [...] Over the past 15 days, the daily rate of vaccinations fell from an average of 3.2m a day to 2.3m a day. If India wants to vaccinate everyone over the age of 18 this year, 7.5m doses will be needed to be administered every day. Of course, if you ask the opposition in India, it's the government's fault... (from news a couple of weeks ago): "The Modi government has mismanaged the situation, exported vaccines and allowed a shortage to be created in India," opposition Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi said during a special meeting over the weekend to address the COVID-19 crisis. [...] Experts say the government failed to anticipate a higher demand for vaccinations when it opened up its first drive. Officials also did not take into account the vaccines that the country had shipped out through its ambitious "Vaccine Maitri," or "vaccine friendship," initiative with other countries. [...] "The tangible costs of the nonavailability of vaccines at home far outweigh the non-tangible benefits of vaccine diplomacy. We should have ensured better use domestically," the international relations expert Happymon Jacob told DW. India has shipped more than 60 million doses to 76 nations, delivered either under the World Health Organization-backed COVAX mechanism or as part of commercial deals. Of the countries that received India-made vaccines, at least 37 got them for free — 17 of them through COVAX, under the aegis of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI). Both major vaccine producers in India still have commercial obligations and huge pending orders. At one point (in mid-March) India had outdone China in terms of the percentage of production exported (65% vs 60%) (although not in raw numbers). China appears to be implementing a slow domestic rollout of vaccines while sending 60 percent of its production of Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines as aid to fifty-three countries and exports to twenty-seven, according to government reports. India, facing logistical problems that have slowed its vaccination effort, has sent 65 percent of its production of Covaxin and Covishield (produced in India under license from Oxford-AstraZeneca) vaccines to other countries, mainly in South Asia. To counter China’s vaccine diplomacy, the leaders of the United States, India, Japan, and Australia announced during their first virtual Quad Summit that they would supply one billion doses of vaccine to Indo-Pacific countries by 2022—by scaling up production in India in an effort financed by the other three members of the bloc. At the end of March, India has paused exports for (at least) two months. | {
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63,792 | Bourgeoisie is defined by, the middle class, typically with reference to its perceived materialistic values or conventional attitudes As refer to Google define , Here, I see it actually means the middle-class people instead of upper class . However, when I watch debates between capitalists and communists/socialists, I find the problem of Capitalism is often referred as the clash/difference between social classes (Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat). It is often assumed that the classes are upper rich class vs. lower working class. But, today I saw the definition somehow excluded the upper class (!). Why is the discussions then always between middle-class vs. lower class instead of upper class vs. lower class ? What am I missing here? Why did Karl Marx use a term representing middle class instead of upper rich class? Any background? | The Wikipedia page for Bourgeoisie is informative, and worth the read. Strictly speaking, there was no equivalent of middle, upper, or lower classes (in the modern usage of the terms) prior to perhaps the 17th century. The bourgeoisie were the wealthiest segment of commoners under feudal aristocracies, all the way back to the 11th century: tradesmen, merchants, manufacturers, and the like, who developed a certain amount of social and economic power under the guild system. In that era, there were: Feudal (titled) aristocrats, who owned land and earned money through rent and taxation Agricultural peasants, who had no political status and owed fealty to the feudal lord who owned the land that they tilled The bourgeoisie, who had a certain freedom as citizens within urban areas The beginnings of the proletariat, who had a similar relationship to the bourgeoise that peasants had to the landed aristocracy In the Marxist view, the industrial revolution wasn't merely a technological revolution; it was a political and social revolution as well. The shift from a primarily agricultural society (in which the landed aristocracy owned the means of agricultural production) to a primarily industrial society (in which the bourgeoisie owned the means of industrial production) shifted the bourgeoise into a position of power equivalent to the old aristocracy, while the rural peasantry left the farms and transformed itself into the urban proletariat. That urban proletariat then conceptually divided itself into lower, middle, and upper classes, representing different statuses of employment by the bourgeoise. The bourgeoisie themselves were never lower, middle, or upper class; they became the owning (capitalist) class, set off from and above the lower, middle, and upper classes of workers. The capitalist class has done a wonderful job obscuring its own existence, trying to make it appear as though it is merely the nose-bleed section of the upper middle class, and that anyone can work their way up to be part of that modernized bourgeoise. But it still carries that protectionist 'guild' mentality, where the interests and welfare of the class come first and foremost. Thinking of the bourgeoisie as middle or upper class is at best mistaken, and at worst disinformation. | {
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63,807 | An article talks about how Japan recently declared a third state of emergency due to the pandemic, most people in Japan don't want the 2020 Olympics to take place, and how their health care system is overloaded. The Japanese Prime Minister suggested that Japan does not have the power to cancel the Olympics - only the IOC has that power: Suga said Japan has no choice but to follow the IOC decision to hold the games. “The IOC has the authority to decide and the IOC has already decided to hold the Tokyo Olympics,” Suga said. Is that true? | The City of Tokyo, and the President of the Japanese Olympic Committee have signed the Host City Contract , section 33 (c) of which states: The final dates for the holding of the Games, including the number of
days of competition and the scheduling of the Opening and Closing
Ceremonies, shall be decided by the IOC in consultation with the OCOG
(the Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) Furthermore, section 66: Termination of Contract only entitles the IOC to terminate the contract and withdraw the Games from the Host City, not the Host City itself. Section 71: Unforseen or Undue Hardship allows the Japanese OCOG to request that the IOC consider reasonable changes, provided that they do not adversely affect the Games or the IOC, but it makes clear that the IOC is not obligated to either consider or agree to any such changes. The IOC is also the final arbiter of any dispute between the OCOG and the Olympic Family according to section 74. If we look to Addendum 4 to the Host City Contract , which postponed the Games to 2021, the preambulatory statements note that: the Prime Minister of Japan Mr. Abe Shinzo has declared and guaranteed
to the IOC the full support and commitment of the Japanese Government
towards the successful staging of the Games in the year 2021 This addendum was only implemented with the agreement of the IOC, and it makes clear that any further alterations to the schedule are subject to the agreement of that same body. The contract is governed by Swiss law, and Tokyo, the Japanese Olympic Committee, and the OCOG have all waived their ability to claim immunity against any legal action initiated by the IOC in section 87. This all being said, the Japanese government is of course sovereign - this power being delegated to them by the Japanese people, and it's impossible for the IOC to force the Games to take place. The IOC would of course take a dim view of a Japanese attempt to unilaterally postpone the games, especially given the assurances from then Prime Minister Abe, and legal proceedings would probably be brought in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. | {
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63,850 | According to the Wikipedia article on the proposed Istanbul Canal , it is said that the Bosporus has nearly 3 times the amount of ship traffic as the Suez Canal. Presumably this ship traffic comes primarily from Russia and Ukraine. Why does Russia choose to be so dependent on a water passage that it does not control? Why hasn't Russia (and historically, the USSR) tried to orient their economy to use the Baltic Sea instead? Are there economic and political obstacles to minimizing this dependence? | Because the Baltic Sea ices over every winter. In theory, you could continue year-round operations with icebreakers and cargo ships with a sufficient ice class but that's expensive and there are only so many ice rated cargo ships out there. Alternatively, you could use the St. Petersburg port heavily during the summer months and the Black Sea heavily during the winter but then you'd need all of the infrastructure at both ports which, again, gets expensive. Plus, in order to get to the ocean, Russian traffic would still need to go through a relatively narrow straight owned by foreign powers (Norway, Sweden, and Denmark in this case). There is common wisdom from Western academics and politicians that the drive to own warm water ports has been a key driver of much of modern Russian history precisely because sea traffic into and out of the country is subject to such external bottlenecks. Not everyone agrees with this thesis but it is pretty common thinking in political science circles (and there are plenty of memes available if you do a search). | {
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63,885 | In recent years, I have observed a rapid increase in news articles* about courses in US schools and US enterprises that are allegedly "based on" Critical Race Theory, and these articles usually only contain very brief and sometimes contradictory explanations of what Critical Race Theory is. The term also seems to be used in an academic context in the US, but I don't know if the meaning is the same as in those articles. In the context of such articles, what does Critical Race Theory actually mean, and is that meaning identical with the meaning of Critical Race Theory in an academic context? *I intentionally don't give examples, because I don't want this to be about a specific article, and there are so many of these articles that people who are knowledgeable enough to answer will likely have encountered at least dozens of these articles themselves. If I misjudged and it is indeed unclear what I'm referring to, please ask for clarification in a comment. | First, some background on where the academic/sociological concept of Critical Race Theory comes from, then I'll address CRT's current invocations directly. Critical Theory and it's descendants (in this case Critical Theory->Critical Legal Studies->Critical Race Theory) is a sort of methodological approach to talking about sociological, economic, political, and cultural phenomena. At its core, Critical Theory is about not taking the status quo as a given. Frequently in economics, sociology, psychology, political science, et cetera , a speaker will evaluate propositions based on how much they deviate from a baseline - usually the circumstances going on. E.g. "How much will it cost to forgive $10,000 of student loans per borrower in the United States?" Critical Theory backs up a step and would approach this same question thusly: "Why is student debt even a thing?" Or perhaps, "What is the cost of allowing students to be burdened with debt?" In part because of its roots in Marxist thought, but also because it's a useful cognitive tool, Critical Theory's objective is to demand an examination of the status quo - and because human systems are never perfect - this exercise always yields a laundry list of things that are wrong with that status quo and descriptions of the systems that contribute to those flaws. This leads to the dominant common theme in the bodies of work done in Critical Theory, Critical Legal Studies, and Critical Race Theory: The status quo benefits someone, and that person has a vested interest in maintaining it. (It should be fairly apparent why this framework was the best available foundation for Marx's philosophy.) Critical Race Theory examines the structure of society and focuses on the flaws that contribute to consistent, systematic differences in the socioeconomic and political outcomes for citizens that correlate with race. It gathers evidence of the systems and structures that produce those differences in outcomes and classifies them as "White Supremacism." In popular language, the shorthand to describe Critical Race Theory is to say that it is the school of thought that begins with: White Supremacy exists, benefits someone, and that person has a vested interest in maintaining it. In scholarly reality, there's huge tracts of nuance in there - some structures of White Supremacy are intentional and deliberate (slavery, segregation), some are merely deliberate (SAT scoring - yes, really. I worked for a time as an SAT Prep instructor for The Princeton Review, it's a widely understood phenomena in the industry), and some are vestigial or otherwise unintended side effects of something else. But in common conversation and media where every word has a cost to it, that nuance is universally elided. White Supremacy, in common media, is Nazis, Skinheads, the KKK, etc. Well intentioned people can try to describe racial disparities in systemic outcomes as "racist systems" - a term which is not inaccurate, but as a term is open to be misunderstood by a listener or reader. What tends to follow is the Fallacy of Division where the listener assumes that if a given societal structure or system is racist, everyone who participates in it must therefore also be equally, and concomitantly racist - and therefore they are being called racist. And since racism is held as a moral failing in a person, they disengage from the conversation's merits and respond defensively to a perceived insult . That's an agonizingly complex enough situation. Now enter the ill-intentioned. I won't name names, but it is an empirical fact that Neonazis, the KKK, and other militantly white supremacist organizations and ideologies exist. Moreover, they exist on a spectrum ranging from the prototypical synagogue shooter , through political opportunists who see value in courting people through appeals to their sense of having been cast as morally defective ("racist"), to people chanting slogans with no understanding of the context or history of what things like "you will not replace us" actually mean. Trolling has evolved from a malevolent internet hobby to a toolkit of deliberate, rhetorical tactics employed even at the institutional level by whole media entities for the purpose of interfering with discourse that might lead to political, social, or behavioral shifts away from a status quo that they desire to support. (Similar to how tobacco companies and oil companies produced bodies of bogus research to ward off science's discovery that their products had powerfully negative impacts on people.) To answer the question "What does 'Critical Race Theory' mean?" in a given context, therefore, we would need to know the exact context, exact speaker, and if possible their rhetorical intentions. But it exists somewhere on the spectrum from an academic talking about systemic disparities that attach to race, through someone tossing in a buzzword while they decry police brutality, all the way to an actual trolling attempt in order to discredit the term 'Critical Race Theory' so as to eliminate it as a possible avenue to discuss those systemic disparities mentioned in the first case. | {
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63,906 | This question is not related to any ongoing event, but, rather, is a hypothetical scenario. Suppose country X invades country Y. While country X possess much advantage in power and dominance over country Y, country Y knows that its under a threat of permanent destruction and might cease to exist. Thus, country Y resorts to performing war crimes against country X on country Y's territory for the purpose of survival (such as use of internationally banned weapons , executions, psychological terror,...) in such a hypothetical scenario would the international community hold country Y accountable for war crimes and for breaking the Geneva protocol or is there some UN resolution that justifies country Y's action as self defense? | The use of force by the military (to include properly organized insurgents) is measured by military necessity, distinction, and proportionality. An attack is illegal if there is no military benefit to be gained, civilians are targeted directly , or civilian casualties are disproportionate to the military benefit. That means not every attack which kills civilians is a war crime. It is legal to shell a barracks building, even if the technology of the time means there will be a few short or long shots hitting civilian housing. It is not a crime to mistake a refugee camp for an army base. It is a crime to target a refugee camp, knowing it is a refugee camp. The standards in this regard have shifted. It was accepted during WWII that strategic aerial bombardment was imprecise. Bombers were hard-pressed to survive in daylight and hard-pressed to find their target at night. Today it is possible to use precision-guided munitions, and the indiscriminate bombardment of a city would no longer be acceptable. If an attack is considered a war crime, even after taking the necessity and proportionality standards into account , then it is a war crime no matter what the strategic situation. For instance, any misuse the red cross is a war crime, no matter how bad your military situation. | {
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63,917 | 'Ayyash 250' rockets 1,000 rockets fired towards Israel It must be almost impossible to obtain raw materials for building 1000 rockets given the situation Hamas lives in. I mean, continuous surveillance and blockades. Where and how does Hamas obtain the technology and raw material for rockets? | Quassam is an older missile design (or rather a family of missile and a generic term for Hamas homebrew rockets). The key point is (my emphasis): Design
The utility of the Qassam rocket design is assumed to be ease and speed of manufacture, using common tools and components. To this end, the rockets are propelled by a solid mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate, a common fertilizer. The warhead is filled with smuggled or scavenged TNT and urea nitrate, another common fertilizer . The warhead's explosive material is similar to the civilian explosive ammonite.[14] The rocket consists of a steel cylinder, containing a rectangular block of the propellant . A steel plate which forms and supports the nozzles is then spot-welded to the base of the cylinder. The warhead consists of a simple metal shell surrounding the explosives, and is triggered by a fuse constructed using a simple firearm cartridge, a spring and a nail.[14] So it seems expressly designed to be built from agricultural type materials. Given years to stockpile, Hamas is going to have some on hand. This Washington Post article [behind a paywall] goes on to say: Although it has become increasingly difficult to obtain fully assembled weapons from abroad, Hamas leaders bragged on an Al Jazeera program in September that they had managed to sneak Fajr missiles and Russian Kornet antitank shells into Gaza via land and sea, al-Monitor reported. Now, the group produces the bulk of its weapons at facilities in Gaza using homemade and smuggled materials and know-how transmitted from Iran and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. More details: Tunnels and land smuggling - Iran seems to be the agreed-upon original source - are getting interdicted more efficiently, so sea-based smuggling is taking over (in Hebrew) , using drug-smuggling techniques like leaving waterproof containers adrift. Note the bit about limiting fishing access - like with agricultural inputs to explosives, there is a tension between allowing activities and goods necessary to feed Gaza's 2M people and blockading bomb inputs. a senior naval officer believes that increasing the fishing allowable range for Gaza residents to 15 miles from the coast (as only recently decided) reflects the maximum possible border in terms of security. According to him, the range should not be further expanded, as long as it depends solely on security considerations. Weapons smuggling under the auspices of many hundreds of fishing boats departing for the Mediterranean every day. Hamas recovers unexploded Israeli ordnance and fires it back. They are also using recovered irrigation pipes. And finally, most intriguingly, they are salvaging shells of a Royal Navy WW1 shore bombardment ship, the M15 . Citing the above Memo article again: Former Israeli General and National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror conceded that the Palestinians have succeeded in building their [military] capabilities. "Today, they have ability to build weapon systems, mainly long-distance rockets. They have something very notable and have improved their domestic production. They learn all the time and improve their abilities. We exert many efforts to know about these abilities in order to neutralise then whenever we can." See also Al Monitor article which goes on about the importance of sea-smuggled components, as commented on by rs13. So it would seem it is a combination of shared know-how, local manufacture and smuggled components. BTW, if confirmed, smuggling of anti-tank missiles makes it seem like Hamas is aiming for a repeat of the losses that were inflicted on Israeli tanks during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war . | {
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63,922 | Yesterday, House Republicans voted to remove Liz Cheney of Wyoming from the #3 position in their leadership: In a remarkable display of loyalty to Donald J. Trump, Republicans moved quickly to purge Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from House leadership on Wednesday, voting to oust their No. 3 for repudiating the former president’s election lies and holding him responsible for the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. (Source: New York Times ) While I know it has to do in part with her vote to Impeach former President Trump, and her opposition to his claims about election fraud, it seems like there must be something else there. Cheney successfully fought off a similar leadership challenge just a few months ago, and the kinds of criticism she directed at Trump were quite common among Republicans (including many of the ones who voted against her) back in January. So what's changed? Why is she being purged now? | I rather liked Byron York's piece, in the Washington examiner, on it Cheney's current problems intensified after the first vote on her leadership, when she intensified her campaign against Trump. Cheney's efforts were undoubtedly media-friendly — she was portrayed as a profile in courage by some media outlets — but many Republicans came to believe, with some reason, that she had become a distraction from the GOP's mission to oppose the Biden agenda and win back the House in 2022. Instead, Cheney seemed determined to re-fight the battles of November 2020 to January 2021. And later For her part, Cheney is now making clear that she has become something of a single-issue politician and that her single issue is Trump. Recently, the Washington Post, citing interviews with a dozen people, reported that Cheney's "determination to name, shame and banish Trump ... had become fundamental to her political purpose." Now, CNN reports that Cheney is "planning to wage a protracted political war — through public statements and in the media — against the former president." And it will not just be a war against Trump. Axios recently reported that part of Cheney's strategy involves "baiting" fellow Republicans over their support of the ex-president. The simple fact is that Cheney took her momentum from the prior battle to stay as leader and started an open campaign against Trump. Last week, Cheney wrote a rather scathing op-ed about the party as a whole . I found another article that has a small excerpt "Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work - confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law. No other American president has ever done this," Cheney said in the column. It's hard to get a sense of where the GOP is. This quote from York's piece epitomizes a lot of GOP sentiment I've seen "I don't think the party has surrendered to Trump," the second lawmaker said, addressing a common media talking point. "But we are beholden to those who supported most of the policies that we voted for and agreed with. I'm not beholden to Donald Trump, but a lot of his policies were awfully good for the country, and a lot of people support that." The GOP is caught between a rock and a hard place at present. On the one hand, Trump was quite popular with the GOP base ( Trump had an 82% approval among GOP voters on Jan 4 ). On the other, there was the capitol riot , which came on the heels of the "stolen election" narrative (wherein Trump went to war with his own party, going so far as to vow to campaign against GOP incumbents in Georgia ). The bulk of the problem with Cheney seems to be that she kept stirring the Trump pot (even as Trump is gradually losing support ). | {
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63,944 | Has the Israeli supreme court ever come to a decision that can be seen as pro-Palestine or pro-Arab/anti-Israel/-Jew? I have heard proponents of the Palestine/Arab side claim the Israeli supreme court is racist and always favour Jews/Israelis, but my impression from, shallowly, following news etc is that "Israeli nationalists" regularly get upset on the supreme court because it gives verdicts that they consider wrong. I am no expert on this and the result of a verdict might be up to interpretation. Hence my question. Edit: another perspective might be cases where one party has been pro-Israeli/-Jewish and the other party pro-Palestine, both private citizens as well as "associations" or organizations. | Very much so. 1. Last year, the supreme court struck down a 2017 law having to do with legalization of illegal housing built in previously Palestinian areas ( New York Times source ). Here is a quote from that article: In its 8-to-1 ruling, the high court declared that the 2017 law was
lopsidedly unfair, saying it sought to make legal “unlawful acts
perpetrated by one specific population” — Jewish settlers — “while
harming the rights of another,” the Palestinians. It called the law an “arrangement which knowingly and unequally hurts
only the ownership rights” of the Palestinians... Now, this law was so incredibly incendiary that it was hit by an injunction shortly after it was passed. As mentioned in the article, it would have been hard to imagine the judiciary not ruling against it, but it remains an example. 2. Another example would be the overturn of a ban which would have made it impossible for Arab parties to partake in Feb. 2009 parliamentary elections ( New York Times source ). It is noteworthy that this overruled the Central Election Committee's decision and that the vote in the court was unanimous. 3. The restrictions placed on jewish access to the temple mount can also be seen as pro-arab/anti-jew. I believe these restrictions are linked to the 1967 Protection of Holy Places Law. This law actually is an afirmative one, stating that: The Holy Places shall be protected ... from anything likely to violate
the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to
the places sacred to them... However, the Supreme Court ruled in The Temple Mount Faithful v. Tzahi Hanegbi that this right was not absolute and ruled in favor of access restrictions, even those which explicitly differentiate jewish from arab people entering the site ( Jewish Center for Public Affairs ) This ruling has survived recent attempts at reversing it, such as one in 2019 to overrule an access restriction on Jews to the temple mount during Jerusalem Day JTA . The court ruled that it was the prerogative of the police to determine access. | {
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63,981 | I have heard on the news many times that Republicans are promoting themselves as pro-Israel, while painting Democrats as weak on Israel. I wonder, why Republicans, who generally lack Jewish support, have more supporting statements for Israel in Congress. Here is an example : Andrew Yang shows support for Israel, and received support from Republicans on that position. There are many cases like this. I understand that this is bipartisan. I have noticed that Democrats are more likely to talk about Israel from a humanitarian standpoint. The article I linked shows multiple Republican elected officials applauding Yang's stance on this issue. It also explains that people primarily on the left have oppposed this stance. Note: I understand this is a controversial question. I do not want opinion based answers, PLEASE. | Because it is a very important issue to one of their key voting blocs. As I explain in this answer , white evangelical voters voted overwhelmingly for Trump both in 2020 and 2016 (somewhere around 81% voting for Trump for both elections) As explained here , evangelicals link the existence and their support of Israel with their theological religious beliefs. They see the creation and continued existence of Israel as proof of and demanded by their religious beliefs: this graph also shows that most evangelicals identify as conservative: | {
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63,988 | I have been hearing on the news that Gaza is under attack. I understand that this is a hot topic. I want to know why Gaza is being attacked now (May 2021), who is attacking, and what they want. | Since you emphasize the word now in your question, I'll try to answer with an emphasis on the current escalation. For the more general question asking why there is a conflict at all, I'll simply refer to the Wikipedia article because it's such a complex issue that I cannot explain well. So the questions I'll try to address are as follows: I want to know why Gaza is being attacked now, who is attacking, and what they want. Which parties are fighting? The parties in conflict are the state of Israel and Hamas. The state of Israel has an advanced military, the IDF , that it uses to defend itself. Hamas is classified as a terrorist organisation by a number of countries (including the US, the EU and Israel), but it also controls the Gaza Strip. What are the parties fighting for? Hamas' aims are, according to Wikipedia : Hamas, as its name (Islamic Resistance Movement) implies, aims to liberate Palestine from the Israeli occupation, and transform the country into an Islamic state. Which of these two objectives is the primary goal is disputed. Israel is a state and its current military operations in the conflict are described as self defense . For example, in an interview with Face the Nation , Israeli PM Netanyahu said: And I think any country has to defend itself. It has a natural right of self-defense. We'll do whatever it takes to restore order and quiet and the security of our people and deterrence. We're trying to degrade Hamas's terrorist abilities and to degrade their will to do this again. I am not aware of any concrete demands that motivate the fighting in this current episode of violence. Why now? This is the more interesting emphasis of your question. The previous answers are more general and could apply to previous escalations alike. One of the reasons the fighting has escalated as far as it has or has gone on for this long ( Wikipedia's timeline for the current escalation starts on May 6th, though it considers heightened tensions in the weeks leading up to that) is political. Specifically, on both sides of the conflict there are people in power who can use the escalation as a distraction from their own internal politics. As such, I'd argue that it's not just the events in the timeline that explain the lead up to the current level of violence. On both sides, the leadership has taken steps that are escalatory in nature, not aimed de-escalating the situation. Escalatory moves Continued war rhetoric from Israeli PM Netanyahu Note that he isn't phrasing the military response as self-defense, instead he uses language of revenge ( "levy a heavy price" ) and strength ( "full force" ). According to the Hindustan Times : In a televised address, Netanyahu said Sunday evening the attacks were continuing at “full-force” and will “take time.“ Israel “wants to levy a heavy price” from Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers, he said, flanked by his defense minister and political rival, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, in a show of unity. That rhetoric may seem insignificant but it's adding more oil to the fire. That directly benefits Hamas because it needs the perception of Israeli aggression to justify its actions and to remain popular with Palestinians . Hamas setting an ultimatum that promises violence if not met That's not a diplomatic request. Basically, it's setting up a justification for escalating further. According to nationalpost.com : In Gaza, a Hamas spokesman said the leadership of a joint command of armed movements in the Palestinian enclave had given Israel “an ultimatum until 6 p.m. (1500 GMT)” to withdraw its security forces from the al Aqsa mosque compound and Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Escalating won't resolve the conflict We see that there's some escalating on both sides, but couldn't that serve some genuine purpose (as seen from their own perspective in the broader conflict)? If indeed it is in the best interest of the state of Israel or the Palestinian people (rather than just their respective leaderships) then it makes sense to escalate. I think the answer is no , there's nothing to be gained by escalating further. The Israelis will not defeat all of Hamas, so escalating means there will be more violence in the future. Hamas will use any Israeli attacks to gain popularity and boost its recruitment. As anecdotally illustrated by one young recruit who was quoted by Haaretz : Hatem, one of the teens who attended Hamas camp, is just 14, but he has already lived through three wars with Israel. Now, he’s proud of being ready for the next war. “The Israelis killed my niece last summer. Now I want to kill them,” he told the AFP news agency after finishing the camp. From the view of the Palestinian people, it doesn't make rational sense to escalate either. Their weapons are much less advanced, so any attack will be returned multifold. This is clear from comparing Israeli vs Palestinian casualties (both in terms of deaths and wounded), for example here . In the end, the current episode of violence is not a conflict that can be won (by either side). The best explanation, I think, is that it's politically convenient to escalate now for both sides. The political considerations on both sides are as follows: Israeli politics On the one hand, there is the fragile domestic position of Israeli PM Netanyahu. According to the Washington Post on May 12th : For Netanyahu, the escalation of fighting brought a last-minute reprieve from what could have been the end of his record run at the top of Israeli politics. Earlier this week, a group of rival political parties were reportedly within days — even hours — of forming Israel’s first government not to include Netanyahu in 12 years. Just before tensions exploded Monday, a disparate collection of Israeli right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties, united only in their goal of ousting Netanyahu, indicated they were nearly ready to announce they had the support of a majority of parliament members, clearing the way to form a governing coalition. By the end of the day, the political process had come to a halt. For now, amid the unrest, the prospect of a non-Netanyahu government is frozen and, political observers said, may be out of reach entirely. “They were just about to call the president and say we have reached a deal, we have a coalition,” said Gayil Talshir, professor of political science at Hebrew University. “The riot came just in time to prevent the change of government in Israel.” The same conclusions were reached in Israeli media. According to a compilation in the Guardian, dated May 13th : Lapid [Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader] said there had been a “complete loss of control” and accused Netanyahu of “leading us to anarchy”. He added: “Jewish and Arab rioters have declared war on Israel, and there’s no response, no government, no police, no leadership.” Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s biggest-circulation newspaper, the commentator Nadav Eyal said: “We are seeing dissolution; we are seeing the fracturing of our social compact.” Louis Fishman, an associate professor at Brooklyn College, wrote in Haaretz that Netanyahu’s “greatest magic trick” had been to blind Israeli Jews to their state’s oppression of the Palestinians. “But even the most carefully constructed house of cards eventually starts tumbling down, and that exactly is what is happening now … Impregnable Netanyahuism, the work of a master illusionist, is shattering.” Lapid said the events of the past week were “no excuse” for keeping Netanyahu in place. “Quite the opposite. They are exactly the reason why he should be replaced as soon as possible.” Palestinian politics On the other hand, Hamas faces a similar situation in its internal politics. According to a Washington Post column dated May 13th : For Hamas, its entry into the fray comes amid a tangled intra-Palestinian squabble. It’s at odds with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction holds nominal sway over the West Bank. (In an earlier era, Israel allowed the emergence of Islamist outfits like Hamas in a tacit bid to undermine the strength of more-secular Palestinian resistance groups like Fatah.) Abbas decided to scrap long-anticipated Palestinian elections this month, further delaying any prospect of reconciliation among the bitterly divided Palestinian leadership and intensifying public frustration with the increasingly unpopular PA. To illustrate how Hamas can benefit from the current violence, the following paragraphs of the same WP column further illustrate how Hamas benefits politically: One Ramallah-based pollster and former Palestinian Authority official said: “From preliminary indicators, many people in the West Bank are admiring what Hamas is doing. We don’t know their motivations, but it was effective of Hamas to confront Israel on the basis of their support for the Palestinian people of Jerusalem.” “Hamas does not actually want something from Israel,” wrote Michael Koplow of the Israel Policy Forum. “It is seizing upon the current moment as an excuse to capitalize on a unique opportunity within Palestinian politics, and the rockets that Israelis are sheltering from are Hamas’s effort to get a leg up on Fatah.” | {
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64,027 | A question on this site stated that the average amount of money being sent to Palestine by the USA is around $500M/year in aid. My question is why is the USA sending Palestine any foreign aid money at all? Considering that the US is allied with Israel, why would it send money to a state that ally is in conflict with? | Probably several things: Money brings influence. Without influence on the Palestinians, the US has even less leverage to shape Palestinian policy in a way that is acceptable to Israel. Palestine is a humanitarian disaster . Much as Israel claims it's not responsible for the area , it is largely perceived to be a primary cause of the problem (along with corruption by Hamas and Fatah) and responsible for its management, as the occupiers, by the rest of the world. The Palestinian economy relies heavily on external assistance. It receives more than $300 for each of the 3.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – a level unprecedented in any other conflict since the Second World War. This level of aid has been maintained for over four years, exceeding the lifespan of other high-profile emergencies – such as Kosovo and Afghanistan – where aid peaked and waned. Aid is meeting the humanitarian needs of Palestinians in a conflict where the responsibility for these people, under international humanitarian law, lies with Israel as the Occupying Power. So one interest the US has is to make sure that it doesn't get much worse and reflect more badly on Israel. It might even let Israeli politicians off the hook domestically to have a friendly power provide help that they would have to do so otherwise. From the horse's mouth, the State Department : U.S. foreign assistance for the Palestinian people serves important U.S. interests and values. It provides critical relief to those in great need, fosters economic development, and supports Israeli-Palestinian understanding, security coordination and stability. It also aligns with the values and interests of our allies and partners. The United States is committed to advancing prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians in tangible ways in the immediate term, which is important in its own right, but also as a means to advance towards a negotiated two-state solution. On a less cynical note, the US also has long had the tradition of providing aid to nations and people needing it, often even when they are in disagreement with them. Some remarks on the question: first, 500M/year isn't necessarily just from the US , though the question does not make that clear. Second, there is a difference in US funding for Gaza/Hamas-governed areas vs West Bank/PA-governed area, again glossed over. | {
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64,029 | The BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement is a campaign started by the Palestinian BDS National Committee. Its primary stated goal is to put economic pressure on Israel to oblige it to respect the human rights of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs by targeting Israeli companies, but it has also been characterized as hostile to Israel or even anti-Semitic by its opponents. Most news stories, along with their own interviews, seem to indicate that they only want sanctions against Israel. That said, the United States has supported Israel economically to a significant extent. In 2017, for instance, Israel received the third-most money in foreign aid from the USA, behind only Iraq and Afghanistan, in which the US was fighting ongoing wars. Further, it seems at least plausible that the BDS movement would view some US military actions in the Middle East, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, drone campaigns that have involved many civilian casualities, or the strike against the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, as being similar to Israel's actions in Palestine. Have any major organizations associated with the BDS movement, particularly the original Palestinian committee, called for similar actions against the United States? Have they provided a justification for why or why not? | Does the BDS movement support sanctions against the United States? Have any major organizations associated with the BDS movement, particularly the original Palestinian committee, called for similar actions against the United States? Have they provided a justification for why or why not? Only Israel is the object of BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions), see emboldened paragraph below for the why. From the BDS FAQs , Doesn’t BDS single out Israel? Why not boycott North Korea or the US? BDS is a strategy of popular resistance and the most effective strategy of international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for rights. It is not an ideology or a dogma that can be helpful in all circumstances of injustice. BDS is a Palestinian-led movement. It is only logical that Palestinians and those who stand in solidarity with their struggle orient their struggle towards Israel, the party that denies Palestinians their freedom, and not towards North Korea, for example. The South African liberation movement also targeted the regime of oppression that they lived under, naturally, not the one in Cambodia or Honduras at the time. Palestinians are choosing to use and calling for the tactic of BDS to hold Israel to account because it is necessary, morally consistent and effective. The BDS movement challenges the way in which Israel is singled out for unprecedented support from the international community. Western governments in particular shield Israel from being held to account for its war crimes against Palestinians, allowing it to continue its colonial project without facing consequences. The BDS movement is working to end this exceptionalism and calls for Israel to be held to account according to the standards of international law. As the South African anti-apartheid leader Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu once said, the west places Israel “on a pedestal,” above international law and above criticism. BDS aims to take Israel off that pedestal to be held accountable for its violations of international law. | {
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64,037 | The US is blocking * what seems to be a simple statement asking both parties to stop violence: The United States has today blocked - for the third time in a week - the adoption of a joint UN Security Council statement calling for a halt to Israeli-Palestinian violence and the protection of civilians, diplomats said. According to the same article the US position is this: At a news conference in Copenhagen today, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Israel and Palestinians to "protect civilians, especially children" - and defended Washington's move to block a UN Security Council statement calling for an end to the hostilities.
"We're not standing in the way of diplomacy," Mr Blinken stressed. The article adds: The US refusal to endorse a joint Security Council statement has been met with disbelief by its allies.
"We are just asking the US to support a statement by the Security Council that would pretty much say similar things which are being saying bilaterally from Washington," one diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity. While this kind of statement is mostly symbolic, it's hard to imagine any downside to doing it.
How would calling for an end to violence cause a problem to any diplomatic
attempt? * [Edit two days later] The content of the linked article from RTE (including the title) appears to have been heavily modified since this question was posted. Some of the quotes mentioned in the question cannot be found anymore. | Why does the US block a UN statement calling for violence to stop in the Palestine-Israel conflict? — because the statement was not only for calling the violence to stop, but about condemning Israel's military response for missile attacks. Here's how Al-Jazeera puts it : The meeting on Sunday came after the US reportedly twice blocked over the last week resolutions that would have condemned Israel’s military response and called for a ceasefire. The Biden administration has stated its support for Israel's self-defense: President Biden said that he had spoken with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel “for a while” on Wednesday amid escalating fighting between Israelis and Palestinians, and asserted his “unwavering support” for Israel’s “right to defend itself.” While it is not known whether the US would support another resolution that would have, indeed, called for a ceasefire, protecting the civilians, and/or a diplomatic solution, but apparently it would not support a resolution that condemns Israel. | {
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64,096 | How do schools in Palestine (at least those controlled by the Palestinian government) teach about the events of the Holocaust? What do their official textbooks say on the subject? Mirror question: How does Israel teach the displacement of the Arab population in 1948 (Nakba)? | From what I can tell, it is not part of the education in government-run schools in Gaza or the West Bank (which is not surprising, considering that the Hamas is an antisemitic, terrorist organization ) that denies the Holocaust and the PA swings between outright Holocaust denial and downplaying the Holocaust). Wikipedia eg states : The Holocaust is not taught in U.N.-run schools for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, nor is it taught in Palestinian government schools in the West Bank or Gaza. When the UNRWA was accused of trying to include Holocaust education in schools it runs in Gaza in 2009, Hamas vehemently opposed the idea, calling the Holocaust a "lie made up by the Zionists". Hamas confirmed its position in 2011 when the issue came up again, calling it a "contemptible plot" by "Zionists" with the goal "of creating a reality and telling stories". Jihad Zakarneh, the Education minister in the West Bank, similarly rejected the idea of teaching Palestinian children about the Holocaust. A study on The Holocaust in Palestinian Textbooks states that "no mention of the Holocaust was found in Palestinian Authority textbooks". As an aside, I think the mirror question to the linked question about arab displacement would be a question about the Jewish exodus from the arab world , not a question about the Holocaust | {
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64,098 | Looking at the countries with the lowest tax rate we can see many countries that derive their riches from oil supplies and thus can afford to have a low income tax rate and a low VAT rate. But there is one exception - Switzerland. A very advanced country with no oil reserves and a very rugged terrain. How is it possible for them to have such a low tax rate? I am aware of their (in)famous banking system that bring in a lot of money but is that the only reason? | Comparing taxation across nations is not trivial, because different nations use different means of taxation; just because the VAT is low doesn't mean that the overall tax burden is. Since you asked about taxes in general, let's look at the OECD statistics for "Total Tax Revenue as % of GDP". Their summary report about Switzerland writes: Switzerland ranked 30th out of 37 OECD countries in terms of the tax-to-GDP ratio in 2019. In 2019, Switzerland had a tax-to-GDP ratio of 28.5% compared with the OECD average of 33.8%. However, Switzerland has a somewhat unusual tax structure. Here are the various tax categories ( OECD Stats : tax revenue as % of GDP, 2018): Category Switzerland OECD Average Total Tax Revenue 28.05 33.88 1000 Taxes on income, profits and capital gains 13.37 11.52 1100 ... of individuals 8.60 8.14 1200 ... of corporates 3.2 3.14 1300 ... unallocable between 1100 and 1200 1.57 0.24 2000 Social security contributions (SSC) 6.63 9.00 3000 Taxes on payroll and workforce 0 0.42 4000 Taxes on property 2.05 1.86 5000 Taxes on goods and services 5.84 10.94 6000 Taxes other than 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 0.15 0.15 As you can see, taxes on income, profits and capital gains are significantly above the OECD average, but most of that difference is the "unallocable taxes" category (specifically, the Withholding Tax and the Property Gains Tax , which the Wikipedia table does not take into account). However, social security contributions are a lot lower than average. This is caused by the Swiss hybrid pension scheme, which consists of 3 pillars . The first pillar is mandatory, executed by the state, and therefore considered a tax. The second pillar is also mandatory, but executed by independent fund managers. Since the money is paid to private entities rather than the state, this is not considered a tax by OECD. This second pillar amounts to about 6% GDP. If it were counted, social security contributions would be about 13%, well above the OECD average of 9%. The 3rd pillar is voluntary, and thus not considered a tax either. However, since it replaces the 2nd pillar for the self employed (who can't use the 2nd pillar), one might argue that it should be counted, too. Something similar happens with health insurance: In Switzerland, health insurance is mandatory, but everyone chooses their insurance company. Since the health insurance premiums are paid to a private company rather than the state, the OECD does not consider them a tax. In contrast, in some European countries health insurance is fully tax funded. (and yes, health insurance premiums matter; in Switzerland they amount to 7.8% of GDP). That is, mandatory social security payments worth 14% of GDP are not considered taxes by OECD because Switzerland chose to have part of their social security systems executed by private entities regulated and supervised by the state, rather than executed by the state directly. If these mandatory social security contributions were counted, Switzerland's total tax revenue would be about 42% GDP - well above the OECD average of 34%, and comparable to Scandinavian countries such as Norway (39.9%), or Sweden (42.9%) known for their good (and fully state funded) social security institutions. This shows why comparing taxes in isolation is meaningless. Taxes measure how much money flows to the state. They do not measure what that money does, or how much money flows back. Does it really make a difference whether health insurance premiums are paid to the state, or to a private company? I have to pay either way. In summary, the Swiss do pay low VAT. They also pay above average income taxes. And they pay hefty mandatory pension fund and health insurance premiums on top. The Swiss tax wonder is a myth. PS: Banking contributes only 5% of the Swiss GDP . So much for the infamous reputation ;-) | {
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64,115 | Iowa District 2 votes were recounted multiple times and in the end, Republican Candidate Marianette Miller-Meeks won by a close election by 6 votes. Democrat Candidate Rita Hart claims that 22 votes weren't counted and if they were, she would've won. How does Rita Hart know that 22 votes weren't counted? If these 22 votes that she claimed weren't counted, why doesn't the Iowa government go and ask those 22 people (whose votes may or may not have been counted) and ask them specifically who they voted for, instead of taking this to the House of Representatives? Shouldn't these Iowans know if their vote specifically wasn't counted? | According to the notice of contest filed by Rita Hart, the evidence for the 22 ballots comes from a combination of poll workers, county recount board records, county auditor records, and affirmations by the affected voters. As for asking the 22 people who they voted for - that has taken place - voters have waived their right to a secret ballot, and the affirmations under oath are included in the notice of contest. Under the heading "Wrongfully Excluded Ballots", there is a helpful breakdown of each of the votes being contested, with a summary of the evidence supporting Hart's contest. These consist of: Scott County Curbside Ballots (2) This relates to two ballots that voters attempted to cast from their vehicles. The evidence for these votes comes in the form of notes made by poll workers at the time, as well as a later determination by the Scott County recount board that the votes were "mistakenly excluded from the initial canvass". Marion County Absentee Ballots (9) This relates to nine ballots that were erroneously uncounted in the initial canvass, and as a result were not counted in the subsequent recount. Specifically, the notice mentions a memorialized joint statement made by the Marion County Recount Board acknowledging that a box of votes labelled as holding 457 votes actually held 466 votes, and that as a result, 9 votes went uncounted which were lawfully cast. The Recount Board decided that it lacked the authority to determine that the ballots were lawfully cast, and so did not include the 9 extra ballots in its recount. The notice of contest, however, makes the point that the ballots had been removed from their secrecy envelopes, which can only take place after a ballot has been determined to have been lawfully cast. Johnson County Cured Provisional Ballot (1) This relates to a single provisional ballot cast in Johnson County, which the notice of contest says went uncounted because of election worker error. The evidence it presents to support this claim is an apology letter to the affected voter from the Johnson County auditor which explains as much, in particular the quote "We are very sorry this happened, especially since you did everything you needed to do and should have had your vote counted". Johnson County Signed Absentee Ballot (1) This relates to an absentee ballot which was signed by the voter outside of the correct box. The notice of contest suggests that it is entirely reasonable for a voter to sign their name in such a way, and that as Iowa law does not entitle election officials to disenfranchise a voter based on the location of their signature, only its absence, the vote should be counted. The evidence presented for this is an affirmation by the affected voter that by signing as he did, he was affirming that he was legally entitled to cast said vote as required by Iowa statute. Johnson County Voters With Pre-Sealed Ballot Envelopes (2) This relates to two voters who received a sealed envelope with which post their absentee ballot back, as opposed to an unsealed envelope. As the voters unsealed the envelope to post their ballot, their votes were not counted as they looked as if they had been tampered with. The notice of contest makes the argument that as the voters were acting in good faith, their votes should be counted. For evidence of this good faith, they refer to various measures the two voters took at the time to try to ensure that they voted within the law, as well as affirmations from the affected voters. Johnson and Scott County Voters Who Affirm They Sealed Their Ballots (5) This relates to five ballots that were not counted due to not being securely sealed. The evidence for contesting this is in the form of affirmations from the affected voters attesting to the fact that they did seal them to the best of their ability. Absentee Ballots Timely Returned to Auditor's Office (2) This relates to two absentee ballots that were marked as received by election day - evidence for this is presented in the form of a scan of the ballot envelope - but were rejected as untimely because the Linn County auditor did not deliver the ballots to the correct county officials for counting before election day. | {
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64,124 | What does Hamas realistically think it can achieve by continuing to use violence against Israel? It seems to me that if the Palestinians engaged in peaceful deliberations they would have achieved their own state long ago and that by continuing their terrorist activity they have undermined the cause. | The question does not ask about what Hamas's goals are, but rather why they reject arbitration (or other non-violent strategies) as a means of achieving them. That is what this answer will primarily address. Original rejection of arbitration To understand their reasoning, we should go back to Hamas's original Covenant (quotes from the translation , original here ) to understand why they rejected peaceful deliberations and other non-violent or less-violent methods (or at least their public reasoning). Hamas talks extensively about their reasoning. First, they frame the conflict as a religious struggle. As such, they argue that peaceful methods are contary to their principles. Although Hamas uses religious reasoning extensively throughout its Covenant, it bears mentioning that this is based on Hamas's interpretation of Islam, which is decidedly conservative and militaristic, but that this interpretation is not characteristic of Islam as a whole. Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international
conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic
Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed
against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance
Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that.
For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they
fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know." Hamas Covenant , Article 13 Further, Hamas argued that the parties that would arbitrate deliberations would not be sufficiently competent or interested in doing justice. They also seemingly imply that it, given that they consider Israel and Palestine to be rightfully Muslim territory, 1 non-Muslims should not judge matters in the land: Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international
conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question.
Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with
one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and
participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference,
their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic
Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of
realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the
oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in
the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do
justice to the believers? Hamas Covenant , Article 13 They argued that direct fighting represented the only means of success. Other methods, to their minds, were doomed to failure. There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through
Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a
waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better
than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with. Hamas Covenant , Article 13 In short, Hamas would simply disagree with the notion that they are undermining their cause through their use of violence. In fact, if they still adhere to the beliefs in their charter, they believe that the use of arbitration would undermine their cause. Potential practical difficulties Although Hamas does not necessarily mention this explicitly in the Covenant, I think we can reason a bit further. Some of their goals would be difficult to achieve through non-violent means, and they are undoubtedly aware of that. The Covenant more or less implies that Hamas views the entirety of Israel as occupied territory in need of liberation, not just East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank (i.e. Palestine). This goal, clearly, would be quite difficult to settle amicably as long as a significant non-Palestinian population lives in the region. However , subsequent statements have been more open to a peace process, and the group has said at various times that it would potentially accept an agreement in which Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders. Further, Hamas wants an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but they want more than that. They want a religious Muslim government. Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. Past and present history are the best witness to that.
It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing
the sovereignty of Islam in this region. Hamas Covenant , Article 31 In fact, their primary disagreement with the Palestinian Liberation Organization
was that the latter was too secular: Because of the situations surrounding the formation of the
Organization, of the ideological confusion prevailing in the Arab
world as a result of the ideological invasion under whose influence
the Arab world has fallen since the defeat of the Crusaders and which
was, and still is, intensified through orientalists, missionaries and
imperialists, the Organization adopted the idea of the secular state.
And that it how we view it. Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes,
conduct and decisions stem from ideologies. That is why, with all our appreciation for The Palestinian Liberation
Organization - and what it can develop into - and without belittling
its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are unable to exchange the
present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic
nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his
religion lightly is a loser. Hamas Covenant , Article 27 Given that in the region as a whole (Israel plus Palestine), there are more Jews than Muslims, as well as a significant and likely growing number of non-religious Palestinians and a handful of Christians, Hamas is likely aware that this sort of government would be difficult to achieve through non-violent means. That said, it is worth noting that they generally state that Islamic law should be established through democratic means : Hamas officials say they have no plans to impose Islamic law. “What
you are seeing are incidents, not policy,” said Younis al-Astal, a
Hamas legislator. “We want Islamic law to be the standard, but we
believe in persuasion.” However, while this may work for Palestine, I suspect that Hamas must be aware of the challenges it would present in Israel. A further factor, which likely does not apply to all members of Hamas, is anti-Semitism. Although the original charter contains many statements that could be seen as anti-Semitic, in recent years Hamas has stated, at least publicly, that they do not have any dispute with Jews for the sake of being Jews. However, several high-ranking members have made statements suggesting that they would like to see violence visited upon Jews (or sometimes, just Israelis) for its own sake, not simply as a means to ending the occupation. For instance : For example, in a column in the weekly Al Risalah, Sheik Yunus
al-Astal, a Hamas legislator and imam, discussed a Koranic verse
suggesting that “suffering by fire is the Jews’ destiny in this world
and the next.” “The reason for the punishment of burning is that it is fitting
retribution for what they have done,” Mr. Astal wrote on March 13.
“But the urgent question is, is it possible that they will have the
punishment of burning in this world, before the great punishment” of
hell? Many religious leaders believe so, he said, adding, “Therefore
we are sure that the holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.” While such statements undoubtedly do not represent the public policy of Hamas and may not even represent the majority opinion, it seems likely that there are a significant number of members who do dislike Jews or Israelis and would like to harm them for non-utilitarian reasons. Even when not framed in those terms, it is likely that many more members would like retribution against the Israeli government . 1: By right of conquest. Article 11: "This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement." | {
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64,182 | Can the government have a food mandate, which decides what we can or cannot eat to "keep us healthy"? Considering that 2/3 of Americans are either obese or overweight, a food mandate sounds like a great idea to keep people healthy. I can foresee people saying "how are they going to do that?", let's just assume there was a way to do it. Would the government be allowed to do it? And where does their mandate power stop? I don't know if there's going to be different answers for state and federal governments, but if there was, both answers would be appreciated. | Theoretically, the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government is limited in its power to mandate products. In practice... it depends. Your hypothetical about whether the government can mandate healthy eating was actually a major talking point during the debate over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate (in a brilliant PR move, opponents asked specifically if the government could force you to buy broccoli ... yuck!). Supporters of the bill varied in their response, with many arguing that there was something distinct about health insurance that separated it from other products. But there were a few prominent liberal law scholars who essentially answered that yes, the government can mandate that you buy certain products. At a recent hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, for example,
Senator Durbin asked Professor Fried the following, “[I]f the
government can require me to buy health insurance, can it require me
to have a membership in a gym, or eat vegetables?” Fried replied,
“[T]hat would be a violation of the [Due Process Clauses] to force you
to eat something. But to force you to pay for something, I don’t see
why not. It may not be a good idea, but I don’t see why it’s
unconstitutional.” Dean Chemerinsky likewise told Reason TV that while
“what people choose to eat well might be regarded as a personal
liberty” nonetheless “Congress could use its commerce power to require
people to buy cars.” But it's worth noting even these scholars argued that Congress didn't have the power to force you to actually use the products. So to partly answer your question, there is wide bipartisan consensus that Congress cannot make you eat vegetables. Ultimately, the individual mandate was upheld by the court. But what's interesting was the the majority of justices actually agreed that it was a breach of the Commerce Clause for Congress to mandate that the population buy health insurance. From the Chief Justice's opinion: The Affordable Care Act is constitutional in part and unconstitutional
in part. The individual mandate cannot be upheld as an exercise of
Congress's power under the Commerce Clause. That Clause authorizes
Congress to regulate interstate commerce, not to order individuals to
engage in it. But the individual mandate was upheld because Chief Justice John Roberts held that it was an appropriate use of the taxing power. In this case, however, it is reasonable to construe what Congress has
done as increasing taxes on those who have a certain amount of income,
but choose to go without health insurance. Such legislation is within
Congress's power to tax. So Congress does not have the ability to force you to buy a product. They do have the power to tax you for not owning that product. Some would call that a distinction in want of a difference (including quite a few angry Republican lawmakers) but that is that state of the law. It's worth noting though that because of the politically charged nature of the case and the change of the composition of the court since then, it's not entirely clear that if a similar mandate came before the court today that it would be upheld on similar grounds (in fact, it was reported Roberts was poised to strike down the mandate, and switched sides at some point fearing the backlash to the court). It's probably unlikely that a broccoli mandate would survive judicial challenge today, and that the Court would set some limiting principle. But it's theoretically an open question. | {
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64,297 | SEOUL — South Korea can now develop ballistic missiles capable of
reaching targets far beyond the Korean Peninsula, following the United
States’ approval to lift a 42-year-old restriction on its ally’s
missile development program. South Korean and U.S. leaders announced the termination of missile
guidelines imposed on Seoul in 1979. At the time, South Korea wanted
to acquire American technology to develop its own missiles, and in
return, the Asian nation agreed to limit the range of its missiles to
180 kilometers with a maximum payload of 500 kilograms. The sanctions came when it was discovered that South Korea wanted to develop nukes. So if the U.S. is willing to punish one of its biggest allies, why is the U.S. turning a blind eye on Israel's covert and unofficial nuclear program? | There are several points that invalidate the comparison of South Korean situation to Israeli one. First, "ballistic missile" does not equate "nuke" - there are plenty ballistic tactical missiles with conventional payloads, and South Korea has no nuclear weapons (as far as we know). Thus, "sanctions", as you called them, were not a result of Korea starting a nuclear program. Second, missile restrictions were not "sanctions" - they were a result of bilateral accords between ROK and USA, and they were a condition USA placed on missile-related technology transfers Korea wanted. Israel never asked USA for any tech in their ballisic missile program, save for 1975, when they asked to be given Pershing IIs as a part of military assistance program following their withdrawal from Sinai (USA refused that point, and Israel developed Jericho II missile with similar capabilities); so there is no leverage for USA there. Thus, drawing parallels between these two situations is not viable - they are too different. | {
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64,343 | According to international law, when is first-use nuclear strike justified? https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/24/china/us-china-taiwan-1958-nuclear-intl-hnk/index.html Hong Kong (CNN) — Military planners in Washington pushed for the White
House to prepare plans to use nuclear weapons against mainland China
during the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958, newly leaked documents appear
to confirm. The documents, first reported on by the New York Times Saturday,
reveal the extent of Washington's discussions about using nuclear
weapons to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, including the
acceptance by some US military leaders of possible retaliatory nuclear
strikes on US bases. The U.S. was willing to use nuclear weapons against China to deter and not in response to an invasion, but this strikes me as weird because you would think there are international laws that would prevent such a rash action. Am I wrong? Do we have new laws that would deter such an action? | Frame challenge, mostly motivated by: The U.S. was willing to use nuclear weapon against China to deter and not in response to an invasion, but this strikes me as weird because you would think there are international laws that would prevent such a rash action. You are perhaps giving too much weight to "international law". Yes, there are legal agreements that nations agree to abide by, but in the last analysis, nations are fully sovereign until they are coerced by force of arms or by sanctions to change their behavior. If this was not the case, little peccadilloes like the 2003 Iraq invasion (US), ongoing occupation of Palestine (Israel), Uyghur persecution (China), occupation of Diego Garcia (UK), annexation of Crimea (Russia) would never have happened. Oh, but these are powerful nations, you say? I give you the Rohingya (Myanmar). In the case of US, China, France, UK, Russia, international law, via the UN, is even less of a bother as these 5 have veto powers. On to the actual circumstances. After WW2, while it had a nuclear monopoly, the US was not averse to waving a nuclear bully stick to get others to stay in line. I am posting this 16 Nuclear Crises of the Cold War , because it seems to sum up a good deal of them, but it is quite possible the information is biased against the US (think Chomsky). Still, something to chew on. The fact that the Soviet and Mao Communist system were evil and needed to be resisted? Very relevant, but that nuclear coercion still took place nevertheless. Now, in 1958, the USA had just gotten out of the Korean War, a war of aggression freely started by North Korea in 1950. NK's efforts quickly collapsed and the war then was equally freely chosen to be continued by PRC on North Korean territory. This war was savage, often involved maltreatment of prisoners (by both sides, but largely a Communist activity). It was cease-fired for reasons of mutual exhaustion by both principals (i.e. USA and PRC) in 1953. The US learned that China had endless sources of soldiers and was not at all averse to wasting their lives ( Chang and Halliday claim Mao used the war to conveniently get rid of undesirables). This is the context you are looking at. At that point, the US still, as it would show during the Cuban crisis of 1962, very much in nuclear coercion mode whenever it felt it could get away with it. Over time, nuclear war has become less and less acceptable, both for risk limitation reasons (i.e. not blowing up the whole planet), for reasons of military effectiveness (some studies made during the Vietnam War doubted the US could win it by nuking) and, hopefully ethics (or the desire not to look bad). What "international law" had to say in 1958 probably was very secondary to the second and third consideration, military advantages and not looking too bad. In 2021? "International law" would still probably be very secondary to the general revulsion first use would draw on the country doing it, unless, maybe, if they were at threat of annihilation. Still, first use is a useful bit of ambiguity to leave in play, especially if you want to avoid nuclear wars happening. Take two nations, A and B, both being nuclear, but B has the edge in conventional forces. If A is coy about not renouncing first use, B has to factor in that attacking A may very well result in nuclear strikes. This can dissuade B from trying to defeat A conventionally and then ultimately causing A to launch. So both remain quiet. For A and B, read NATO vs USSR during the Cold War in Western Europe. Or Pakistan and India nowadays. Best to stay away from "let's try a good old conventional war because first use is against international law". Of course, given a long enough period of time, low-probability events will eventually happen and that's why nuclear weapons, even if they've so far managed to stop a conventional WW3 from happening, are a long term risk for mankind. Finally, note that just because some in the US military presented the president with an option, the president didn't in fact take that choice , so your question does not, quite, have the moral significance you seem to imply. (As far as what international law actually has to say, I'd be surprised if it didn't condemn first use under most conceivable scenarios and I defer to @meriton 's answer). | {
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64,365 | Why didn't Japan call for the ICJ to settle the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands ? I am asking this question, because Japan took it's ongoing dispute with South Korea over the Dokdo islands to the ICJ, so I am wondering why Japan didn't do it in this particular case. Wouldn't a call for arbitration put China on the defensive in the same way it has put Korea over the Dokdo island matter? | China is unlikely to listen to an ICJ ruling, so it carries risk for Japan if China wins and no gain if Japan wins. From the Spratleys , where the Phillipines brought the case, to the ICJ (aka Hague Tribunal) in 2016, and won against China: Beijing has criticised an international court’s stinging rejection of its territorial claims in the South China Sea, with Communist party-controlled newspapers warning of a military escalation in response to what they denounced as a US ploy to thwart China’s rise. Regarding the details of this case, see Philippines v. China @ wikipedia . Just look at the situation in the Spratleys 5 years later. China has doubled down instead. On the other hand, South Korea is more likely to act in good faith. Note that this is not something Japan would cite as a reason, as it shows weakness. Edit: please see comments by xngtng below, who raises some valid points re. this answer. | {
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64,383 | How does the Israel Constitution work in relation to the forming of a government? According to the Washington Post and the Times of Israel , Yair Lapid is supposedly creating a new government, and removing Netanyahu. Does Israel have an election to take a vote? How can rivals just kick out an existing prime minister? I don't understand the Israel legislative process - it seems a lot different from e.g. the United States or Japan. | The situation in early 2021 The change in leadership, in this case, is coming about after an election. Legislative elections were held in March 2021 , but no party reached the 61-seat threshold needed to obtain a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. This is not a surprise - no party has ever reached this threshold. The Prime Minister is then appointed, in accordance with the Basic Law: The Government (2001) . In the meantime, the Prime Minister in office before the elections, Benjamin Netanyahu, remains in his post. In order to decide on the Prime Minister, the various political parties consult with the President, who chooses the Knesset member most likely in their view to be able to form a government (§7). This candidate then has 28 days to do so (extendable by up to 14 days at the discretion of the President) - by appointing Ministers and winning a vote of confidence in the Knesset (§8). In this case, Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister, had the support of 52 members - 30 from his own party, 9 from the Shas party, 7 from UTJ, and 6 from the Religious Zionist party. He was selected by the President, but was unable to form a government that had the support of the Knesset by the deadline of May 4th. Subsequently, under §9a of the Basic Law, the President passed the role on May 5th to Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid party, now supported by 56 members. Lapid had until midnight June 2nd to form a government that can pass a vote of confidence in the Knesset. He did so just hours before the deadline and said vote is yet to be held. If the Knesset votes to support the new government, then Lapid - or whoever is assigned the post in the government as part of any rotational agreement - will become Prime Minister. More generally Unrelated to the current situation, but in a more general sense, the Prime Minister can change without an election if the Knesset passes a motion of no confidence in the current government (§28). This takes the form of a motion asking the President to charge a named member of the Knesset with forming a government. If such a motion is passed, and the named member is able to form a government, said member takes over as Prime Minister without an election, if not, new elections are held. If the current Prime Minister resigns, he remains in post as interim Prime Minister (§30c) until a new government is formed under the process above. If the current Prime Minister dies (§20a), is removed from their post as the result of committing an offence (§18a), or ceases to be a member of the Knesset (§21a), the government is deemed to have resigned, and a new government is formed as above, with the President appointing a member of the Knesset as the interim Prime Minister. On the 101st day of the current Prime Minister being incapacitated, and the Acting Prime Minister serving in their place, the government is deemed to have resigned as above (§20b). In all cases, Knesset members have to opportunity to attempt to form a new government that can command the confidence of the Knesset before new elections are held. | {
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64,387 | according to the following link: Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs The Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, headed by Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Dean Thompson, deals with U.S. foreign policy and U.S. relations with the countries of Afghanistan , Bangladesh , Bhutan , India , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan , Maldives , Nepal , Pakistan , Sri Lanka , Tajikistan , Turkmenistan , and Uzbekistan . Through diplomacy, advocacy, assistance, and learning from the past we advance the interests of the American people, their safety, and economic prosperity. We execute our mission by cultivating a diverse, inclusive, and fair working environment that supports and empowers “our people,” from all backgrounds, identities, and thought. On the other hand, according to the following link: Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs SCA Front Office – The office of the Assistant Secretary and other principals in the bureau Office of India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Maldives Affairs – Informs policy and coordinates with U.S. Missions in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and the Maldives Office of Pakistan Affairs – Oversees Pakistan–United States relations, and liaises with the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan Office of Central Asian Affairs – Informs policy and coordinates with U.S. Missions in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan Office of Security and Transnational Affairs Office of Press and Public Diplomacy – Coordinates public outreach and digital engagement, and prepares press guidance for the
Department Spokesperson in the Bureau of Public Affairs Office of Afghanistan Affairs – Oversees Afghanistan–United States relations, and liaises with the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan I have an impression that the same office looks after India and 5 other countries, and that office considers India as the leader of those 5 countries. I have this impression because: (1) the same office looks after 6 countries, (2) India is way bigger both in population, economy, and military, (3) India has a long history of intervening in domestic affairs of those countries, and we never saw any negative statement from the USA in those cases. Is my impression correct? If that is so, has the USA left India free in case of what India does to those 5 countries? In other words, does the US policy towards those 5 smaller countries in South Asia depend on the final say of India? Note: Be kind enough to supply appropriate citations and references to support your argument. | The situation in early 2021 The change in leadership, in this case, is coming about after an election. Legislative elections were held in March 2021 , but no party reached the 61-seat threshold needed to obtain a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. This is not a surprise - no party has ever reached this threshold. The Prime Minister is then appointed, in accordance with the Basic Law: The Government (2001) . In the meantime, the Prime Minister in office before the elections, Benjamin Netanyahu, remains in his post. In order to decide on the Prime Minister, the various political parties consult with the President, who chooses the Knesset member most likely in their view to be able to form a government (§7). This candidate then has 28 days to do so (extendable by up to 14 days at the discretion of the President) - by appointing Ministers and winning a vote of confidence in the Knesset (§8). In this case, Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister, had the support of 52 members - 30 from his own party, 9 from the Shas party, 7 from UTJ, and 6 from the Religious Zionist party. He was selected by the President, but was unable to form a government that had the support of the Knesset by the deadline of May 4th. Subsequently, under §9a of the Basic Law, the President passed the role on May 5th to Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid party, now supported by 56 members. Lapid had until midnight June 2nd to form a government that can pass a vote of confidence in the Knesset. He did so just hours before the deadline and said vote is yet to be held. If the Knesset votes to support the new government, then Lapid - or whoever is assigned the post in the government as part of any rotational agreement - will become Prime Minister. More generally Unrelated to the current situation, but in a more general sense, the Prime Minister can change without an election if the Knesset passes a motion of no confidence in the current government (§28). This takes the form of a motion asking the President to charge a named member of the Knesset with forming a government. If such a motion is passed, and the named member is able to form a government, said member takes over as Prime Minister without an election, if not, new elections are held. If the current Prime Minister resigns, he remains in post as interim Prime Minister (§30c) until a new government is formed under the process above. If the current Prime Minister dies (§20a), is removed from their post as the result of committing an offence (§18a), or ceases to be a member of the Knesset (§21a), the government is deemed to have resigned, and a new government is formed as above, with the President appointing a member of the Knesset as the interim Prime Minister. On the 101st day of the current Prime Minister being incapacitated, and the Acting Prime Minister serving in their place, the government is deemed to have resigned as above (§20b). In all cases, Knesset members have to opportunity to attempt to form a new government that can command the confidence of the Knesset before new elections are held. | {
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64,399 | Recently, I've read about the NSA (the US National Security Agency ) spying on European leaders - Angela Merkel in particular. But this is highly unusual for me. I can understand the US spying on its opponents. But European countries are the US's closest allies. Why does the NSA need this? | Everyone realistically spies on everyone else. The US spies on Germany, Germany spies on the US, every marginally powerful country spies on every other marginally powerful country. The fact that two countries are allies merely indicates that most of the time their interests align. But that doesn't mean that their interests always align. To take one current example, the United States strongly opposes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would deliver Russian natural gas to Germany. Germany supports the pipeline. If a spy could gather inside information about what Merkel is really thinking, which concerns were most politically important for her, and what she might be willing to accept in trade, that would be very valuable information for the United States to have in ongoing talks. Just as in any negotiation, if you can get inside information about your opponent's position, you can generally strike a more favorable deal. | {
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64,426 | Republicans are generally against government meddling in business. Yet many Republicans are threatening to break up Facebook after the decision to ban Trump as seen here , here , here , or here . If the government shouldn't meddle in business then shouldn't Facebook be allowed to do as they please? I understand if they criticize Facebook or use some other platforms . But why would they want to use government power to attack a private company? How can "not meddling in private business" and "breaking up a private business" go together? | Republicans cannot just "use other platforms" because of the network effect . Everyone is already on Facebook, Twitter, et. al. So say die-hard Republicans all go to Parler. Now they're in a bubble. Who are they convincing in the long-term debate that is public discourse? Everyone on Parler already agrees with them. The whole point behind the public square is that there is only one. If there's more than one, it doesn't work. And even if they do all go to some other platform, that platform just gets attacked/destroyed by allies of Facebook/Twitter/Youtube. Payment processors drop them, DNS providers cut their service, Web hosts take them down for allowing dangerous content. Meanwhile nobody drops Facebook et. al. even though similar content is posted regularly . So saying that conservatives should just use other sites is tantamount to saying conservatives should just build an entire parallel tech ecosystem. In Gab's case they're actually doing this; they own their own webhosting equipment, I believe they do their own payment processing, they distribute their app and browser on their own site. But then the mainstream media steps in and declares that Gab is populated almost solely by neo-nazis. That might be true, but it seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me; are you, someone who is not a nazi, going to try out a social media site you have heard is full of nazis? Seems doubtful. So once again the network effect shows up. So what other recourse do they have? Ending Section 230 entirely seems like a poor idea to me, but some reforms seem possible. Maybe make sites above a certain size utilities? Let them keep their monopoly but require some public oversight in exchange? Threatening to end Section 230 could be the "big ask" in a negotiation strategy actually aimed at this or similar reform. | {
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65,488 | I don't really understand what is the point fighting over about the lab leak theory. Certainly other virology labs should care, they want to be sure they don't make the same mistake. And certainly covering up any leak would be important to that lab and its immediate allies, but why would so much of the media and so many politicians be so dead-set on it being just a conspiracy theory? I don't think it can be about protecting China in general; China did so many things that made Covid worse I don't think one more really makes much difference. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that Trump believed it, and the media and politicians in question had to be diametrically opposed to him, but maybe I'm missing something. So why should any average people care whether Covid escaped the lab in Wuhan or not? | The question about why would random, unidentified people make the difference seems to be off-topic here. AFAICT, civil defense protocols make no difference depending on the origin of bio hazard. However, if you re-frame your question about businesses and governments it becomes much easier to answer. Millions of businesses in virtually every country in the world suffered huge losses measured in $ billions or even trillions (however I'm not aware about any precise calculations as the pandemic is not over yet). If it gets revealed that a certain lab is somehow involved — and moreover, if the government of a country where the lab is located helped hide traces of the event, there will be a huge pressure for material compensation. Most likely, the biggest, or close to the biggest in human history. The political ramifications of such pressure would also be pretty much significant. Follow the money. | {
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65,525 | From this answer on this question (Emphasis mine): The change in leadership, in this case, is coming about after an election. Legislative elections were held in March 2021, but no party reached the 61-seat threshold needed to obtain a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. This is not a surprise - no party has ever reached this threshold . Further, the answers this question suggest that Israel has a highly fractured polity with frequent premature elections. This is highly surprising to me. Other countries with similar parliamentary democracy systems (such as the UK, Japan and India) frequently have full term/ majority. Further, given the context in which Israel was formed, it would (intuitively) make sense for most people to agree on political issues. Given the above, why does Israel always have such divided legislatures ? | Israel's elections are based on nation-wide proportional representation. Specifically, that means there are no local districts in which candidates run. Your assertion that many parliamentary democracies often have a single party which commands a majority actually has more to do with single-ballot plurality-rule elections to which Duverger's law applies : The simple-majority single-ballot system favours the two-party system. Indeed, the UK, Japan * and India ** all have a form of first past the post in national elections . And indeed, many other countries that have a form of proportional representation do have many parties in their legislature(s). For example: The Netherlands is a parliamentary democracy system with proportional representation that has 19 parties represented in its States General . Spain is a parliamentary democracy system with proportional representation
that has 18 parties represented in its Congress of Deputies . Brazil is a parliamentary democracy system with proportional representation that has 15 parties represented in its Chamber of Deputies . Given the above, why does Israel always have such divided legislatures? Because Israel does not have an election system that favors a two-party system, there is no tendency for the political landscape to develop into a two-party system. And because there are many more parties which have the ability to get some seats, it's much more difficult if not impossible for any one party to get an overall majority. * Japan is slightly different from the other FPTP countries because they also have seats according to proportional representation . ** India is a bit of a counter example to Duverger's law because there are many parties, but they are often allied in a larger coalitions. | {
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65,616 | Can an American state ban a political party? I am mostly envisioning this as "Democrats and Republicans agree to ban a minor party with really evil views," although the discussion of what would happen if one major party tried to ban the other would be interesting. I get that there are various degrees to this, so that ban might include things like: Party X is not allowed to fundraise in the state. Party X's members are not allowed to hold office in the state. Party X's members are not allowed to be employed by the state. | A state cannot ban a political party for being a political party, no. This would run headlong into the 1st Amendment so hard it would go viral on TikTok. There are a number of ways that a majority party (or coalition of parties) could de facto ban a rival political party, however. Establish thresholds for appearing on the ballot. This happens in Presidential races already, and is part of why Kanye West did not appear as a presidential candidate in all states. There are rules regarding what constitutes a legitimate candidacy, and requiring that a political party demonstrate some modicum of public support before being allowed to register as a political party. This is backwards to how it is usually done, because the obvious end-run around this method is to simply not register, but continue to organize anyway. This is why the Federal Elections Commission, instead, requires you to register as a political party once you've raised or spent a certain amount of money for federal elections. Declare the party organization/organizers to be criminals. Since political parties can still organize and rally support even if they're not officially on the books or ballot, a more effective strategy is to attack the person(s) doing the organizing directly. Classifying a political party as a 'terrorist organization' is a commonly used example, but the more real-world-common case is simply to arrest opposition leadership. As long as the people you're arresting have actually committed the crimes you're charging them with, and the prosecutions - however convenient - are thus in good faith, this isn't even morally wrong. Not all political parties are seeking power for good reasons, and historical groups like the Nazi Party's "Brown Shirts" did go around committing crimes (usually extortion and assault) in order to advance party goals - arresting these people would hardly be an abuse of power. Going after the leadership of the Black Panther Party, or even Sinn Féin (the political arm of the IRA) is a much less clear cut move. Suppress their voters. Since #1 and #2 rely on you being able to tell a judge - while maintaining a straight face - that you're not doing either of those things for the purpose of preventing a group of people from gathering/organizing to address the government regarding their grievances , you may find yourself in the position of wanting to de facto ban a political party without going after the organization at all. If there are common traits that likely voters for that political party have, you can simply pass laws that make those traits obstacles to voting. Commonly this is done by requiring government ID to be presented at the polling place (minority populations, in particular, tend to not have access to such ID), literacy tests (which were found to be unconstitutional precisely because they were used for exactly this purpose), poll taxes (ditto), make it illegal to provide relief to those standing in line to vote , whatever you can justify in the name of something else. Gerrymandering. Finally, if you're in power, and can draw political districts, then you're in a position to simply make the possibility of a rival political party gaining power go away. What all of these methods have in common, under current U.S. Jurisprudence, is that in order to be considered legitimate, you can't be doing them for the express and sole purpose of eliminating political opposition. It is allowable for that to be a consequence of something else you're trying to do. This standard was upheld by the Supreme Court in October of 2018 in Department of Commerce v. New York : The reasoned explanation requirement of administrative law, after all, is meant to ensure that agencies offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public. Accepting contrived reasons would defeat the purpose of the enterprise. If judicial review is to
be more than an empty ritual, it must demand something better than the explanation offered for the action taken in
this case. The "Citizenship Question" was kicked off the U.S. Census for failing this exact standard, but the standard is generally very, very deferential to the government's claims. | {
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65,617 | In 2016, Georgia and Arizona had 2 Republican senators. This year, in 2021, they both have 2 Democratic senators each. There are rumors that the GOP is trying to stop groups of people who are more supportive of Democratic candidates from voting as easily in strategic locations (ie swing states). Additionally, they also seem to want to curtail mail-in voting as it favored the Democrats recently. Those states were the targets of what were presumably failed attempts to stop Democrats from voting. Map of proposed legislation: I want to focus on Texas, Arizona, and Georgia. In Arizona, there was an audit that some view as fake. Texas has the most shown on this map by far, and Arizona and Georgia are not far behind. It is important to note such bills that are in blue states with Democratic legislatures like New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts that receive these are basically dead on arrival. Those are 3 states that Democrats have been fighting for since 2016, when they narrowed up significantly at the presidential level while the rest of the country shifted towards the GOP. Relative to the nation, these states have shifted 10, 8, and 7 points respectively towards Democrats from 2012 president to the 2020 presidential election. Is there objective proof that this wave of restrictions is being pushed to hurt the Democratic party, particularly in presidential and Senate elections? Note: the first part (did they want to do so for this reason) is proving intent, and the second is statistical evidence. And Chamber of Commerce v New York says that this type of voter targeting is not legally permitted. | The whole foundation of the strategy that gives rise to these voter suppression laws is to avoid exactly that direct, causal link. The recent Supreme Court case Chamber of Commerce v. New York reaffirmed that it's not legitimate to simply target voters that don't agree with you. So you're essentially asking to be shown the ways in which people executing this strategy have failed to maintain the necessary cover. This requires that we acknowledge that such a standard runs counter to the legal standard which includes, from that same case: ...we are “not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free.”
United States v. Stanchich, 550 F. 2d 1294, 1300 (CA2 1977) (Friendly, J.) For the purposes of the law, it is enough that we take their word for their own motives, most damningly from the former RNC Redistricting Chair, Thomas Hofeller - essentially one of their top strategists regarding structuring voting rules: A switch to the use of citizen voting age population as the redistricting population base for redistricting would be advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites. This was also the justification for the "citizenship" question on the 2020 Census, and Hofeller's own admission in those files was key evidence for the North Carolina redistricting plan to be thrown out by courts. The studies that inform these strategies are not published widely, and so for them to be available to you first requires a breach of GOP security (in this case, Hofeller's daughter came into possession of the data after Hofeller's death, where a more secure system would have been to destroy the data or not have it held by a human person). Other Republican Lawmakers have slipped up, being caught complaining about how certain demographics vote, such as NH House Speaker William O'Brien , bemoaning that college students using same-day registration were: ...kids voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience. Which, when combined with surges in college student voting , cast Republican efforts to eliminate the ability for college students to register to vote at the campus where they live in a particular light. Links like this are entirely circumstantial, however, as is most evidence of motive absent explicit admissions such as the Hofeller files. Everything else that remains is merely empirical data that the fruit of these laws does directly, and disproportionately impact Democrat voters - because it directly, and disproportionately impacts non-white, hispanic, and low SES voters. Making voting require special documents means requiring that voters have the time and resources to obtain those documents. Closing polling locations in minority neighborhoods raises the average amount of time that the act of voting takes - raising the opportunity cost of voting: the wages one might have earned at work instead. The list goes on. So to review: No, it is highly unlikely you will find data directly linking voter suppression strategies to their impacts. But there is ample data that voter ID laws, the closure of polling places, and other efforts do have these impacts, are championed chiefly by Republicans, opposed chiefly by Democrats, and that Republican strategists do this research for the purposes of informing similar efforts. That is enough for a reasonable person to conclude that the likelihood of there being a premediated motive in play is sufficiently high. | {
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65,630 | For all the talk on how its important for everyone to get vaccinated , not a single country has so far made the COVID vaccine mandatory for adults. Some states are making it mandatory for college students but none are planning to enforce it for other groups of adults. Even China isn't making them mandatory despite them having little respect for human rights otherwise and no courts to limit the power of the government. So where does this reluctance come from? At least in the US such a law would be constitutional so the decision not to go ahead with such a mandate is purely political. Update from August: good news, look like the mandates are coming after all, though mostly for public employees | Forced medical treatment is a very sensitive topic and is widely considered a grave violation of medical ethics, and is only applied in extreme cases of mental illness, etc. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_treatment https://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ps.201600066 | {
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65,718 | When voters are asked "do you support gay marriage", about 60% say yes. In addition it said only 50% of Black adults/reg voters support it, while 60% of white and Hispanic voters do. This runs squarely in the face of partisan identification. About 90 per cent of Black voters normally support Democratic candidates, while only about 40 per cent of White voters do nationwide. Why is this gap here? It seems to have to do with religion but I want clarification. | African Americans vote Democratic mainly because of civil rights issues, on which many believe the modern GOP has (shall we say) a somewhat poor track record. But setting that aside, African Americans are significantly more religious than whites (83% to 61% absolute certainty in the existence of God, heavily concentrated in the Southern Protestant Christian denominations), with a consequent resistance to socially liberal policies like gay marriage. See Pew Research's Religious Landscape Study , and in particular Pew's Views About Same-Sex Marriage .
. | {
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65,733 | There was a new PM of Israel sworn in recently, and one of the most internationally important issues regarding Israel is them & Palestine. Has Bennett said his stance on Palestine? | Quoting the sub-heading from a Jerusalem Post article: Bennett throughout his political career has been clear that he believes that all of Area C, where all the Israeli settlements are located should be part of sovereign Israel. This is even "stronger" than Bennett being against granting the Palestinians a state in the future as it is taking away some of what they do have right now, some semblance of autonomy in the West Bank. So, what Jacob3 said - he is against a 2 state solution - but even more so and, in essence, partial annexation. Now, for a bit of Israel-specific context: you have to separate Bennett's views, as the leader of a political party , from what the actions and intentions of the newly-elected government might be. To keep in power, an Israeli government usually has to navigate between competing priorities and wishes of Knesset members, something Netanyahu was a master at. It does not always align exactly with the positions of its Prime Minister. Most notably, the coalition to oust Netanyahu included a party representing Israeli Arabs (who normally sit out coalitions, I believe). With 4 members, they could easily derail the new government. This is more a coalition to boot Netanyahu than anything else and inferring how it will engage with the Palestinians is probably above most people's pay grade, especially during the early days, when Netanyahu will be their biggest problem. In fact, the coalition apparently decided to momentarily put aside the Palestinian question , doing so was explicitly part of how it was put together: It is expected to focus mostly on economic and social issues rather than risk exposing internal rifts by trying to address major diplomatic matters such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. | {
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65,765 | Background Cults of Personality are a long standing phenomenon going back to at least the Roman Emperor Commodus . However the term really only entered popular lexicon after Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech . That speech heralded the beginning of the dismantling of Stalin's cult of personality and the assassination of Commodus put an end to his cult of personality (if you don't count Septimus Severus' deification of Commodus). Likewise, Hitler's cultic hold and sustainment of Nazism "burst like a bubble" after his suicide according to historian John Toland . On the other hand, American presidents with a soft Cult of Personality following like Ronald Reagan still receive mentions in major political events like the 2016 Republican Primary Debates decades after his death. And my late grandmother always talked about presidents Harry Truman and JFK in awe. Another extreme example is that in North Korea, even though Kim Il Sung has been dead over 25 years, he still "rules" the country and every North Korean citizen worships him, whether that worship be voluntary or genuine. Question I was curious if there has been any political science research done into specifically how Cults of Personalities end , since not even death guarantees the end of a cult. Hence my question: "what conditions must arise to end a Cult of Personality? | (This answer is predicated on the existence of a pathological idolization of a specific, coercive, leader, achieved through systematic, conscious state-level propaganda. Not on mere popular biases, justified or not, about a leader). In most other contexts than the de-Nazification process* in post-WW2 Germany, history books and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions would be a good start. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, where the historical circumstances of the leader's actions are examined and the victim impacts fully brought to light. Personality cults work by propaganda, meaning they are based on lies. Bringing the truth out immediately weakens their appeal. Trials. Crimes not covered by Truth and Reconciliation should be tried in court, with open media access to the evidence. Underlings have a way of blaming their superiors for bad orders and this does a great job of bringing bad leaders to light. History books. If a nation really has a problematic leader with an ugly history, then the best long term way to neutralize their appeal and the appeal of their ideology is to teach what happened to people as part of the public school system. Might be a bit more about what Jefferson Davis stood for. Or, speaking as someone French but brought up in the Dutch school system, perhaps the French would be surprised how many other European countries view Napoleon if they knew how the Napoleonic wars affected their neighbors. Given a better history of the Gulags, the NKVD and his repeat military blunders in the early days of Barbarossa, it is quite possible Stalin would be quite a lot less appealing to modern Russians. Truthful and thorough media coverage of the issues, with protection for journalists and historians. After all, if the leader's cult was really pathological in nature, there will be plenty of skeletons to look at. If on the other hand, there wasn't really all that much going on (Reagan's case for example), then this will also be evident in media coverage. Bring forward members of the wrongly-treated population to give momentum to this takedown, which is why Reagan or Kennedy might be polarizing but wont get a concerted push to get them off their pedestals (nor should they). Religion. Religious authorities have often been coopted to support authority figures. Franco in Spain (or Modi in India) comes to particular attention. However, while religion can be used to support coercion, most mainstream religions are not based on coercion, or at least claim not to be. Bring in some opposing religious scholars to show that Dear Leader had it all wrong. Real intent by local politicians to take down the object of that cult. Stalin is being rehabilitated in Russia because it suits Putin to project the narrative of going back to a strong Russia with Putin as their savior. External forces can't de-cult a figure, unless they are very much in charge. Last, there needs to a be strong kernel of popular rejection against the ex ruler so that this de-culting is seen as legitimate, rather than just political jockeying. This task needs empathy and understanding of the context. The reason de-Baathification went off the rails in Iraq is because the Americans decided to fire anyone in charge of anything who was a Baathist party member. Failing to recognize that, in many cases, far from being a political choice, party membership was obligatory to hold any kind of management position. Likewise, if Maduro ever gets booted, people will have their hands full rooting out Chavismo, but will also need to recognize that Chavismo got started due to the deep inequalities so often found in South America. * De-Nazification really needs to be seen as a special case. After 1945, Germans could quickly see for themselves what an absolute mess Hitler had made of Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust. The Allied powers had just about ground Germany into dust, killing many, many civilians and soldiers in the process. Extreme coercion from the occupying powers was - justifiably so - totally on the table should Germans have insisted on following Hitler and there wasn't a darn thing Germany could do about it. Germans came around and sincerely regret their ways and German history books are a huge part of the reason. These types of circumstances will not be repeated too often. Mis-applying de-Nazification in other contexts, like the US did in 2003-04 with de-Baathification in Iraq, can hugely misfire . You can easily go wrong mixing hearts and minds with coercion. | {
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65,818 | What are some examples of unintentionally confusing ballot designs used in relatively recent elections (say, 1980 onwards)? Examples from non-american countries are fine if accompanied by an English translation. Note: I'm not looking for stuff like historically used literacy tests - the key word is unintentional. | The Butterfly Ballot 2000 Presidential Election in Palm Beach, Florida In the 2000 election, Palm Beach County was using a hole-punch voting machine with a single column of holes. Hole-punch ballots are inherently error-prone in multiple ways , but this was compounded by a layout design error. Most offices had 2-5 candidates; the names could all fit on one side of the punch with lots of space between holes. However, the Presidential election requires listing both the candidate & their Vice President running-mate, and furthermore 10 parties qualified for the ballot. The local Board of Elections handled this by alternating entries on either side of the hole punch , with a design compared to butterfly wings .
The first six parties were staggered down the left side using the odd-numbered holes. The right side of the ballot held the remaining tickets (and a write-in space) and aligned with the even-numbered holes. Bush (1st ticket on the left) Buchanan (1st on the right) Gore (2nd on the left) etc. Compared to other parts of Florida, a highly disproportionate number of Palm Beach ballots were either cast for Buchanan, or disqualified for over-voting both Buchanan & Gore. Academic studies suggest that about 2000 Gore supporters miscast their vote for Buchanan, and even more over-voted . How important was this mistake? Well, Bush's final margin of victory in Florida was only 537 votes. An additional 2000+ votes in Gore's favor would have easily tipped Florida, and due to USA's unusual " Electoral College " system, would also tip the nationwide result. BTW, the same disproportionate error had occurred in the 1996 election, costing a similar number of votes for Bob Dole, but that election wasn't close so it went mostly ignored until after 2000. | {
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65,842 | In some democracies, citizens may be asked if they accept a law or the modification of a law in a "yes or no" referendum. Most of the time, legal texts are complicated and specialized, so why does the government ask citizens to be absolutely sure in their vote of yes/no? What difference would there be in a voting system where citizens were asked to give a proposal a numerical score between 0 and 100, where 0 would mean "no" and 100 would mean "yes"? Has this kind of 'quantum voting' been used before, and if so, was it useful? | Because the system highly incentivises strategic voting. The voting system you describe is more commonly known as score voting , although it has plenty of other names. It's been used before in the USA - the example given by Wikipedia is the election of officers in the Utah Green Party rather than on a referendum or legislative proposal - this used a ballot as shown below. Image: Independent Political Report However, in his paper entitled Strategic Evaluation in Majority Judgement , Professor Jack Nagel explains how the voting system is highly susceptible to strategic voting. For example, using the ballot above, a voter might believe that Guymon is worth a score of 8, Twitchell a score of 6, and Styles a score of 3. To increase the chance of Guymon winning, the voter might instead score Guymon a 9, and to decrease the chance of Styles winning, score him a 0.
This is an example of "pairwise polarisation" - the least-favoured candidate being scored 0, and the most-favoured candidate being given the maximum score. In "complete polarisation", all candidates are given either the maximum score or the minimum score - which, Nagel argues, degenerates the voting system to simple binary approval. It's not hard to see how this logic would apply to a referendum-style vote - even if a voter would sincerely give a proposal 80/100, this implies that they would rather the proposal pass than not, and they are incentivised to score the proposal 100/100 in order to maximise its chances. The end result is that the ballot degenerates to a simple "yes/no" vote. | {
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65,851 | Peru's presidential election was hotly contested between left-wing Pedro Castillo and right-wing Keiko Fujimori. There was something surprising that I read on twitter: Castillo vs Fujimori in some major US cities (according to external vote results ) New York (7,930 votes): 73% Keiko, 27% Castillo Los Angeles (8,010 votes): 83% Keiko, 17% Castillo Chicago (1,685 votes): 80% Keiko, 20% Castillo Houston (2,329 votes): 85% Keiko, 15% Castillo @PopulismUpdates on Twitter Cities that overwhelmingly vote for Democrats in the US like NYC and LA had residents who voted in roughly equally lopsided numbers for a far right candidate over a far left candidate. What makes this notable is that in Peru the vote was effectively tied, with Castillo winning narrowly. Why did the right wing candidate win overwhelmingly in generally left wing areas like NYC? | This question, and both answers so far, are endearingly naive and US-centered, if you pardon this opinion. What they reflect is comparing a US system where (Trump's extreme aside), the actual policy differences between Democrats and Republican are fairly small. So, "Democratic in the US => left leaning in Peru and let's talk about stats". The Peru situation Peru is extremely different in terms of wealth if you are Indigenous * (the people who voted for Castillo) and not Indigenous (the people who voted for Fujimori). You are talking the difference between obsessively swept streets and no-running-water districts, in the capital. Out of the big cities? Worse. Mostly split on ethnicity . To illustrate the degree of separation between the different people: Indigenous people, not infrequently, don't speak Spanish. It has repeat problems of corruption at all levels of government. From politicians skipping the line to "experiment" the covid vaccine to getting involved in the Odebrecht Brazilian corruption from 3-4 years back. The politicians in question? Not-Indigenous, mostly. It was caught up in a big civil war/insurgency problem in the 80s from the Shining Path . 75k dead, a terrorism-based war mostly sustained by Indigenous people seduced by a lunatic European Philosophy prof Marxist . Who didn't really hesitate at massacring them when it suited him. Fujimori's dad presided over death squads during the war. But hers is not the choice of backing someone who has a recognizable Hitler-type ideology, it is backing someone who will oppose wealth transfer to Indigenous people. Possibly violently so, but I am still sure that a number of people were glad her father won the war, it had really not been a pretty one, even if the Indigenous populations suffered most. Likewise, Castillo's party, if not necessarily Castillo (a political newcomer), is definitely not US-Democrats in flavor.
Quoting the Economist, June 10 (my emphasis and linking): Assuming his victory is confirmed, Mr Castillo faces an almost impossible balancing act of trying to govern pragmatically for the majority while keeping his radical base happy. This week he showed his first clear sign of moderation. “We will be a government respectful of democracy, the current constitution…[and of] financial and economic stability,” he told jubilant supporters. If so, that may bring an early clash with his own party, Perú Libre . An avowedly Marxist-Leninist outfit, its founder and leader, Vladimir Cerrón, is a doctor who is an admirer of Cuban communism and Venezuela’s dictatorship. So, in short you have the choice between a known-bad, continuity party, represented by Fujimori. And Castillo's possible real "radical left", which is in any case going to pursue more equity for the Indigenous peoples (if he gets that past congress). At the level of existing inequality, that can't help needing to transfer wealth and services from the non-Indigenous population to the Indigenous population. In massive proportions. (A remark about Castillo - he was a member of the self-defense peasant squads opposing Shining Path) Now, don't get me wrong. The system as it is is both unjust and likely to cause further troubles down the line if steps are not taken to correct it. But it is easy to see why Peruvians living abroad, who are likely not Indigenous, aren't going to back someone who, at best, will infringe on the privileges of non-Indigenous people in a big way. And, at worst, might end up running a new Venezuela. That is what makes this question about Dem vs Rep US voting patterns so parochial in nature. The differences in choices are just much wider than what you see in Western elections and projecting US Dem => Castillo is pointless. I hope Castillo surprises everyone and does a good job. Peru does need to address the gap between Indigenous and not-Indigenous. I fear it may not go well. | {
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65,878 | The black budget is a secret budget for covert operation. How can the U.S. government ensure that the money is spent appropriately and people don't spend it for personal reasons or other reasons not related to national security or protects the national interests of the country. | Such a budget will, inevitably, fall under an executive department, headed by either a Cabinet Secretary, or the President himself. The budget for that department is scrutinised by Congressional Committees. Both the relevant Cabinet Secretary, and the senior members of the relevant Congressional Committees, are allowed to know about relevant classified information (including details of such operations), and to scrutinise in a way they see fit. They just have to keep this secret. | {
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65,882 | Wealth Inequality By Country 2021 Here are the 10 countries with the highest wealth inequality: Netherlands (0.902) Russia (0.879) Sweden (0.867) United States(0.852) Brazil (0.849) Thailand (0.846) Denmark (0.838) Philippines (0.837) Saudi Arabia (0.834) Indonesia (0.833) Why are the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark among the countries with the largest wealth gaps in the world. This is puzzling especially since they rank much lower in income inequality. | There's an interesting, if long, paper on that topic. The paper specifically focuses on the Netherlands, but a lot of the arguments are applicable to other modern welfare countries. The authors conclude that: The Netherlands has seen few, if any crisis events that would cause wealth redistribution on a major scale (wars, massive financial crashes) since World War II. The few that did happen seemed to deepen the income inequality even further - the authors bring up the 2008 financial crisis which did little to hurt the valuation of the rich, but caused the lower and middle class to lose a major amount of wealth as their houses - constituting a large chunk of it - sharply dropped in value. The Netherlands has an ultimately regressive tax structure, with income and consumption taxes (which usually affect lower classes, and prevent them from building wealth) being more prominent than wealth taxation, and the wealthy having ample opportunities to hide their wealth offshore. Finally, the argument that probably does most to differentiate those top countries from others is that in countries with a strong social safety net such as the Netherlands, there's both more difficulty and little incentive to accumulate wealth in the first place. Those income and consumption taxes which make it difficult to build savings go into pension funds and free healthcare, which replace the need for individual wealth. | {
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65,897 | In regions without free press, or where press are under constant threat of arrest, why don't media organisations move their organisation outside the country on which they report? For example, if Hong Kong's Apple Daily moved to any of a number of other countries, they would not be easily raided . Is this a 'legacy' effect, where long-standing newspapers and media organisations have too-strong regional ties, or perhaps simply that the technology required didn't previously exist (and if it is just these factors, have newer, more modern media organisations started to offshore their work to protect themselves) or is there more to it? | A news company is mostly its employees. Who also have a personal life. Or who might be subject to travel restrictions. When you move your operation to a different country, then you will have to leave most of the employees behind and hire new ones. That means losing all your expertise, all your operational routine and all the personal contacts between reporters and sources. Don't underestimate the importance of proximity. Even in the 21st century. When your market niche is to report about what happens in Hong Kong, then you need people in Hong Kong. How else would you perform investigative journalism? Sure, you could have a hand full of personnel who are on-site while most of the editorial work happens in your back-office somewhere else. But one of the first things oppressive governments do when things start to get tense is to kick out or black out foreign journalists. And without a local office serving as a "safe house" for them to retreat to, they are even more vulnerable. The regime itself might not let you. Having a couple of "free" media outlets around looks good for your international democracy score. So if you leave, they will likely replace you with a new media outlet. One which won't have any of your journalistic integrity which annoyed the regime so much and none of the few freedoms you fought so hard for. Being the target of government suppression can actually be good for business. Each time the Apple Daily was raided by the Chinese police, their number of readers soared upwards. This is called the Streisand Effect . When people hear that "they" want to suppress some knowledge, then people get even more interested in that knowledge. | {
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