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346,164 | newsbusters--2019-12-22--For the NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof, ‘Tis the Season for Redefining Christianity | 2019-12-22T00:00:00 | newsbusters | For the NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof, ‘Tis the Season for Redefining Christianity | New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof continued his peculiar tradition of devoting columns approaching religious holidays to asking various religious figures if one really had to believe in the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection to be considered a Christian. The latest entry came Sunday, three days before Christmas. He spoke to evangelist author Philip Yancey for “Was Mary a Virgin? Does it Matter?” The opening exchange: KRISTOF Merry Christmas! And let me start by asking about that first Christmas. Do you believe in the Virgin Birth? Doesn’t that seem like one of those tall tales that people tell to exaggerate an event’s significance? YANCEY I’m smiling at the question. A hundred years ago, the Virgin Birth was considered so important that it made the list of five “fundamentals of the Christian faith.” Nowadays, with in vitro fertilization, virgin births are old news. For me, the issue centers not on the mechanics of reproduction but rather the nature of Jesus. In the Incarnation, God’s own self came to earth as a human. I wouldn’t pretend to guess how divinity interacted with human DNA, but that’s the mystery the Virgin Birth hints at. That gentle pushback characterizes Yancey’s tone and content throughout the interview (some of Kristof’s questions to Yancey follow). So it’s no longer such a big deal? I can say that I doubt the Virgin Birth without whispering? One of the problems I have with the evangelical church is that it seems more dazzled by the miracles than the message. Particularly in the age of Trump, conservative pastors weaponize God to support a president who is trying to cut Medicaid and school lunches for the poor. Shouldn’t conservative Christians believe as much in the good Samaritan as in the Virgin Birth? Do you think religion results in better people? I’ve seen many people of faith risk their lives for others. But conversely it was conservative Christians who helped delay any effective response to AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s because it was gay men who were dying. That was just plain evil. Only one question challenged liberal conventional wisdom about conservative Christians: I’ve asked this last question of each of the previous people in these Q. and A.s: What is someone like myself who deeply admires Jesus’ teachings but is skeptical of the Virgin Birth, of the miracles and of a physical resurrection? Am I a Christian? The headlines below show how long Kristof has been pleading his strange theological case, with varying degrees of success, depending on the interlocutor. Christmas 2018: “Professor, Was Jesus Really Born to a Virgin?” | Clay Waters | https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/clay-waters/2019/12/22/ny-times-nicholas-kristof-tis-season-redefining-christianity | Sun, 22 Dec 2019 18:30:00 -0500 | 1,577,057,400 | 1,577,060,029 | religion and belief | religious event |
354,025 | newswars--2019-05-08--Texas AM event blames CHRISTIANITY for Anti-Semitism Islamophobia | 2019-05-08T00:00:00 | newswars | Texas A&M event blames CHRISTIANITY for Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia | A late April roundtable event at Texas A&M University cited the phrase “Where [sic] your Sunday best,” as well as Christian traditions, as causes of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in America. Called “Anti-Semitism and Other Forms of Prejudice and Discrimination,” the roundtable discussion occurred a few days after the California synagogue shooting. “We…felt the Pittsburgh massacre was not just about anti-Semitism, but it was also about immigration,” Texas A&M professor Ashley Passmore told The Battalion. “If we look at the kinds of issues the attacker was going after, they were also anti-Muslim and kind of Islamophobic. We decided we wanted to talk about anti-Semitism in the United States and its connections with other types of hate discourses [by] looking at it intersectionality between anti-Semitism and other struggles in this country.” Three Texas A&M professors from the philosophy, humanities, and international studies departments, as well as a political science undergraduate, presented at this event hosted by The Working Group in Jewish Studies. Texas A&M philosophy professor Claire Katz, who also researches feminist theory, referenced “exclusionary practices” in America that are to blame for anti-Semitism, according to a handout obtained by Campus Reform. In a section, titled “Where [sic] your Sunday best,” Katz lists “religious holidays and school,” “prayer and school — praying before events, e.g. athletics and band,” “dress codes and religion,” and even references Christmas concerts. Pennsylvania state Rep. Brian Sims, a democrat and LGBT activist, attempted to dox Christians praying outside of a planned parenthood abortion clinic and even posted a video of this interaction on social media. Alex breaks down the hypocrisy of the left that attempts to “shame” conservatives and Christians for their beliefs. “‘Wear your Sunday best,’” Katz told attendees. “This is what my kids are always told at school for some kind of event. ‘Wear your Sunday best’…this is in a public school and so the view is everybody goes to church, right? But that’s not true, whether you’re religious or not. Not everybody goes to church.” She claims that this statement is not “innocuous,” but instead encourages “a larger framework of ‘you may go to a public school but this is really a Christian school.” Regarding Christmas music programs in public schools, Katz complained that her children’s school terms a “winter concert” a “Christmas concert” in an “unabashed, unashamed way,” does not cater to any other religion, and creates “a kind of hegemony and [is] closing down and [is] really approprialism in the worst sense of that term.” The professor then uses a personal instance of her daughter quitting the marching band at a public school because “she got tired of the prayers that were said before the events.” Katz includes a statement from Lila Corwin, a history and Jewish studies professor at Temple University, in her handout. “I am noticing that many Jewish organizations in their well-intentioned statements of mourning about the synagogue shooting in San Diego are not using the words white supremacy or white Christian nationalism, only the word anti-Semitism,” Corwin said. Katz said during the roundtable that the word “Christian” inserted between “white” and “nationalism” “is often left out” in reporting and is “the part of the discussion that we often don’t have.” “When does white nationalism also appropriate certain tropes within Christianity?” the professor asked attendees. “It’s not only that it’s the targeting of non-white bodies, it’s also the targeting of two religions within the monotheistic or Abrahamic tradition that are now viewed as enemies of, or outside of, or not within the framework of whatever Christian values are.” Texas A&M lecturer David Brenner bolds a statement derived from an interview Adolf Hitler did with The New York Times in 1931 in a handout. Brenner’s quote claimed Hitler said, “It was America that taught us a nation should not open its doors equally to all nations.” However, the exact opposite was said by Hitler in the interview. The correct statement reads, “Moreover, it was America, in spite of its enormous territory, that was the first country to teach us—by its immigration law—that a nation should open its doors equally to all nations.” Katz and Brenner did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment in time for publication. | Campus Reform | https://www.newswars.com/texas-am-event-blames-christianity-for-anti-semitism-islamophobia/ | 2019-05-08 10:55:09+00:00 | 1,557,327,309 | 1,567,540,916 | religion and belief | religious event |
354,527 | newswars--2019-06-17--Google Recognizes Fathers Day With Gender Neutral Doodle | 2019-06-17T00:00:00 | newswars | Google Recognizes Father’s Day With ‘Gender Neutral’ Doodle | Google chose to recognize father’s day with a ‘gender neutral’ doodle and a link to an article which didn’t mentions father’s day once. The doodle cartoon for father’s day depicted a family which looked something like a cross between Teletubbies and ducks. The search giant also provided a link to an article entitled ‘parenting 101’ which didn’t mention father’s day at all. Another image depicted the father figure as a cactus rather than an actual man. “Because celebrating men in any way would exclude women, and we can’t have that in 2019, now can we?” commented one respondent. As I previously highlighted, in many regions of the world Google’s ‘doodle’ failed to recognize Easter for two years running, leading actor James Woods to remark, “they loathe Christians”. The Silicon Valley giant routinely devotes doodles to Islamic figures and Hindu holidays, but lied in claiming that “we don’t have Doodles for religious holidays,” when faced with criticism about its refusal to acknowledge Easter. Meanwhile, on the subject of father’s day, as the video below highlights, masculinity is in big trouble. There is a war on free speech. Without your support, my voice will be silenced. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. | Paul Joseph Watson | https://www.newswars.com/google-recognizes-fathers-day-with-gender-neutral-doodle/ | 2019-06-17 11:37:49+00:00 | 1,560,785,869 | 1,567,539,042 | religion and belief | religious event |
358,536 | newswars--2019-12-11--How the Soviets Replaced Christmas with a Socialist Winter Holiday | 2019-12-11T00:00:00 | newswars | How the Soviets Replaced Christmas with a Socialist Winter Holiday | Leftist revolutionaries have long been in the habit of reworking the calendar so as it make it easier to force the population into new habits and new ways of life better suited to the revolutionaries themselves. The French revolutionaries famously abolished the usual calendar, replacing it with a ten-day week system with three weeks in each month. The months were all renamed. Christian feast days and holidays were replaced with commemorations of plants like turnips and cauliflower. The Soviet communists attempted major reforms to the calendar themselves. Among these was the abolition of the traditional week with its Sundays off and predictable seven-day cycles. That experiment ultimately failed, but the Soviets did succeed in eradicating many Christian traditional holidays in a country that had been for centuries influenced by popular adherence to the Eastern Orthodox Christian religion. Once the communists took control of the Russian state, the usual calendar of religious holidays was naturally abolished. Easter was outlawed, and during the years when weekends were removed, Easter was especially difficult to celebrate, even privately. But perhaps the most difficult religious holiday to suppress was Christmas, and much of this is evidenced in the fact that Christmas wasn’t so much abolished as replaced by a secular version with similar rituals. Initially, the Soviets tried to replace Christmas with a more appropriate komsomol (youth communist league) related holiday, but, shockingly, this did not take. And by 1928 they had banned Christmas entirely, and Dec. 25 was a normal working day. Then, in 1935, Josef Stalin decided, between the great famine and the Great Terror, to return a celebratory tree to Soviet children. But Soviet leaders linked the tree not to religious Christmas celebrations, but to a secular new year, which, future-oriented as it was, matched up nicely with Soviet ideology. Ded Moroz [a Santa Claus-like figure] was brought back. He found a snow maid from folktales to provide his lovely assistant, Snegurochka. The blue, seven-pointed star that sat atop the imperial trees was replaced with a red, five-pointed star, like the one on Soviet insignia. It became a civic, celebratory holiday, one that was ritually emphasized by the ticking of the clock, champagne, the hymn of the Soviet Union, the exchange of gifts, and big parties. In the context of these celebrations, the word “Christmas” was replaced by “winter.” According to a Congressional report from 1965, The fight against the Christian religion, which is regarded as a remnant of the bourgeois past, is one of the main aspects of the struggle to mold the new “Communist man.” … the Christmas Tree has been officially abolished, Father Christmas has become Father Frost, the Christmas Tree has become the Winter Tree, the Christmas Holiday the Winter Holiday. Civil-naming ceremonies are substituted for christening and confirmation, so far without much success. It is perhaps significant that Stalin found the Santa Claus aspect of Christmas worth preserving, and Stalin apparently calculated that a father figure bearing gifts might be useful after all. According to a 1949 article in The Virginia Advocate, at children’s gatherings in the holiday season … grandfather frost lectures on good Communist behavior. He customarily ends his talk with the question “to whom do we owe all the good things in our socialist society?” To which, it is said, the children chorus the reply, ‘Stalin.’ Alex Jones, Rob Dew and Savanah Hernandez cover the Trump rally in Hershey, Penn., while also taking a ton of your calls. Also, get all you need to completely stuff Christmas stockings this year with our Christmas Mega Pack sold AT COST during the 12 Days of Christmas Sale! | Mises.org | https://www.newswars.com/how-the-soviets-replaced-christmas-with-a-socialist-winter-holiday/ | Wed, 11 Dec 2019 21:15:39 +0000 | 1,576,116,939 | 1,576,109,161 | religion and belief | religious event |
362,043 | newsweek--2019-02-06--Pope Offered 1 Million to Give to Charity of His Choice If He Goes Vegan Over Lent | 2019-02-06T00:00:00 | newsweek | Pope Offered $1 Million to Give to Charity of His Choice If He Goes Vegan Over Lent | A worldwide campaign has offered Pope Francis $1 million to give to the charity of his choice if he agrees to go vegan for Lent. The Million Dollar Vegan campaign is fronted by Genesis Butler, one of the youngest people to have ever given a TED Talk, and backed by celebrities such as Paul McCartney, Moby, Woody Harrelson and Joaquin Phoenix. The initiative seeks to fight climate change with diet, reducing the global consumption of meat and vegetables, a press release from the organization said. "Farming and slaughtering animals causes a lot of suffering and is also a leading cause of climate change, deforestation, and species loss," Butler, who convinced her family to switch to vegan at the age of six, wrote in an open letter to the pontiff. "When we feed animals crops that humans can eat, it is wasteful. And with a growing world population, we cannot afford to be wasteful," she added. Pope Francis, who ascended to the papacy in 2013, has been the most forthright Catholic leader ever on the issue of climate change. In his 2015 encyclical, a letter disseminated throughout the Catholic church, the Pope said climate change was a global issue that has serious consequences for every facet of society. Butler is also asking to meet with the Pope in a bid to bring greater attention to the impact of animal farming on the climate. The eye-catching $1 million being offered to Pope Francis has been donated by the Blue Horizon International Foundation. The charity arm of the food company Blue Horizon International seeks to "accelerate the removal of animals from the global food chain.” The charitable foundation’s website says it does this by investing in the world’s “most transformative people, initiatives and organizations.” "We are launching this deliberately bold, audacious campaign to jolt our world leaders from their complacency," Matthew Glover, the CEO of Million Dollar Vegan, said. "For too long they have failed to act on evidence of the damage caused to people and the planet by animal agriculture. Worse, many have defended and subsidized that very industry,” he added. Lent, a Christian religious festival, is the period between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday. During the time of religious observance Christians fast or forgo certain luxuries. In the modern era it has become a period of self-improvement, with individuals often improving their diet. The number of vegans has grown hugely in recent years. According to the research firm GlobalData, between 2014 and 2017 the number of Americans identifying as vegan grew from 1% to 6%. | null | https://www.newsweek.com/pope-offered-1-million-give-charity-his-choice-if-he-goes-vegan-over-lent-1320036?utm_source=Public&utm_medium=Feed&utm_campaign=Distribution | 2019-02-06 13:37:41+00:00 | 1,549,478,261 | 1,567,549,402 | religion and belief | religious event |
365,780 | newyorker--2019-08-26--The Message of Measles | 2019-08-26T00:00:00 | newyorker | The Message of Measles | One day in the early sixties, Saul Zucker, a pediatrician and anesthesiologist in the Bronx, was treating the child of a New York assemblyman named Alexander Chananau. Amid the stethoscoping and reflex-hammering of a routine checkup, the two men got to talking about polio, which was still a threat to the nation’s youth, in spite of the discovery, the previous decade, of a vaccine. At the time, some states had laws requiring the vaccination of schoolchildren, but New York was not one of them. In his office, on the Grand Concourse, Zucker urged Chananau to push such a law, and shortly afterward the assemblyman introduced a bill in the legislature. The proposal encountered resistance, especially from Christian Scientists, whose faith teaches that disease is a state of mind. (The city’s health commissioner opposed the bill as well, writing to Chananau, “We do not like to legislate the things which can be obtained without legislation.”) To mollify the dissenters, Chananau and others added a religious exemption; you could forgo vaccination if it violated the principles of your faith. In 1966, the bill passed, 150–2, making New York the first state to have a vaccination law with a religious exemption. By the beginning of this year, forty-six other states had a version of such a provision; it has proved to be an exploitable lever for people who, for reasons that typically have nothing to do with religion, are opposed to vaccination. They are widely, and disdainfully, known as anti-vaxxers. Saul Zucker died in June, five months short of his hundredth birthday. Less than two weeks later, the New York Legislature voted to remove the religious exemption, after a contentious debate during which anti-vaxxers harangued from the galleries. Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the bill that night. Following all this on a live stream was Howard Zucker, Saul’s son. Zucker is a doctor—a pediatrician and an anesthesiologist, like his father, and a cardiologist—as well as a lawyer. He is also New York State’s commissioner of health. For more than six months, he’d been at the forefront of an effort to beat back the anti-vaccination movement, as a result of a measles outbreak in the state. Its severity had goaded politicians to change the law, with his support. Because of the success of the anti-vaccination movement, measles cases have since turned up in twenty-nine other states, but New York has had by far the most cases: 1,046 as of last week, out of a national total of 1,203. This has threatened to wind back decades of success in the containment of the disease since the first measles vaccines were introduced, in 1963—an era when the United States saw between three million and four million cases a year. In 2000, the U.S. declared that measles had been eliminated in the country; if this outbreak isn’t contained by October, it could jeopardize the nation’s so-called measles-elimination status. This would be a dire step back for our public-health system, and a national embarrassment. (Britain, well acquainted with national embarrassment, lost its elimination status this year.) The outbreak began last October, in the Rockland County village of New Square, an enclave of roughly eighty-five hundred Hasidim founded in 1954, on an old dairy farm, by Grand Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky and his followers, who had moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Like the many other ultra-Orthodox hamlets that have sprouted up in the area, it is technically in the town of Ramapo.) Twersky’s sect originated in the Ukrainian town of Skvire; when the village in New York was incorporated, Skvire became “Square.” His son David Twersky, who has been the Grand Rabbi since 1968, lives in a house that abuts the New Square synagogue. On religious holidays, Skvire Hasidim come from all over the world—New Square has fifteen sister cities—to worship with him. Although you wouldn’t be wrong to say that New Square is a small, insular monoculture, in epidemiological terms it has the characteristics of an international city. One such traveller, a fourteen-year-old boy from Israel, became Patient Zero in the state’s largest measles outbreak since 1992. On October 1st, in observance of Simchat Torah, he attended services at the synagogue, for the fifth time in four days. The shul is more than twenty-two thousand square feet and holds seven thousand people, and the bleachers that ring the inside of the building from floor to ceiling were full, as was the gallery upstairs, where the women sit. Feeling ill, the boy left the synagogue and walked up the hill with his father to the Refuah Health Center, which has been delivering medical services to the community since 1993. Most of the clinicians there had never seen a measles case, but they had observed, for a decade, the growth, among their patients, of misgivings toward vaccines. The boy had the telltale rash. Refuah administrators, even before the blood work had come back, notified the county department of health, which advised them to isolate the patient and shut down the health center. It wasn’t hard to determine where the measles had come from. The boy had caught it in Israel. The theory was that he’d got it from another Israeli, who had travelled to the city of Uman, in Ukraine, for the Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage known as the Hasidic Burning Man. Because of a low vaccination rate, there have been more than fifty thousand cases of measles in Ukraine in the past year. Patient Zero had not been fully vaccinated, but not because of any objection on his parents’ part. In Israel, which is experiencing a measles outbreak of its own, vaccinations are administered in school, and, according to a patient advocate at Refuah, on the day the boy’s classmates had received their shots for measles, mumps, and rubella (known as M.M.R.) he was home sick. The boy’s twin brother, and the rest of his family, had been vaccinated. It was harder to figure out, in a necessarily timely manner, who’d been exposed. The state and county health departments sent a pair of epidemiologists to New Square—both of them male, out of deference to Hasidic customs of gender separation. The state’s man was Robert McDonald, a doctor and Epidemic Intelligence Service officer from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who had embedded with the state for two years and had, with Zucker and others in the health department, dealt with various recent crises, such as drug-resistant fungus and a hepatitis-C outbreak. McDonald began working on a so-called line list of anyone who might have shared airspace with the boy. He started at the synagogue, where he was greeted by Yitzchok Sternberg, a rabbi with the Khal Mishkan Yosef congregation, whose wife, Chanie Sternberg, is the C.E.O. of Refuah. McDonald drew a map of the interior of the synagogue and set about learning where the boy had been and when, and who else might have been there, too. Earlier this summer, I visited the New Square synagogue with Rabbi Sternberg, a wry and genial fifty-eight-year-old with a reddish beard. The interior of the shul features arched windows, chandeliers, and a linoleum floor. Rows of tables and plastic chairs face an ornate wooden pulpit, or bimah. (A new, much bigger temple is being built on an adjacent lot. “The day we drove in the last nail on this one, it was too small,” Sternberg said.) Morning prayers were winding down; Rabbi Twersky’s grandson had got married there the night before. “Bobby McDonald was able to ascertain exactly where we would need to suspect that potentially contagious people had gone and come from,” Sternberg told me. “ ‘O.K., he was standing over there? What was his path? He went from that door to that door? Who was standing here, who was standing there?’ ” The boy had been halfway up the bleachers just to the right of the bimah. Sternberg indicated the path the boy had taken to the door. McDonald and his counterpart from the county set out to reach everyone who might have been exposed. The task was complicated by the religious holiday; the congregants, and a lot of the other passengers on the boy’s flight from Israel, weren’t answering their phones. But, as soon as the holiday was over, the officials managed to inform those who were at risk and to establish, for the most part, who among them had been vaccinated. The vaccination records, especially among people from the era of paper files, were far from perfect. For every new case of measles, public-health workers have to engage in these painstaking forensics; it’s a little like working dozens of murders at once. “We had no idea what to expect,” Sternberg said, referring to the number of transmissions. “We were afraid it would be in the hundreds. The day it happened, no one knew anything.” Synagogue members, ignorant of how the virus works, had the whole building scrubbed. “They took the towels off the racks and changed the water in the ritual bath. Not a bad idea anyway, but all this had nothing to do with measles.” Measles, often called the most contagious disease on earth, is an airborne virus. If a person with measles walks into a room, the pathogens can linger there for two hours after the person has gone. In the New Square shul, this meant that as many as seven thousand people had shared airspace with the young man from Israel. It was fortunate that the room was so big and even, perhaps, that the women (and their small children) were in the balcony, away from the men and Patient Zero; pregnant women and small children are at the greatest risk. Still, McDonald told me, “people are very close. A cough or a sneeze by someone higher up in the bleachers would have the opportunity to dispense to a great number of people.” Almost everyone who contracts measles exhibits symptoms; this is not the case with, say, polio, a disease in which three out of four people don’t show any symptoms at all. “The measles vaccine really works, and the virus finds those who are unprotected, either because they haven’t been vaccinated or because they don’t have immunity from a prior measles infection,” Bruce Gellin, the president of global immunization at the Sabin Vaccine Institute, in Washington, D.C., told me. “So you can see it spreading. You can see where you’re vulnerable, on a mass scale.” It’s a little like sticking a punctured tire in a barrel of water. Measles finds the leak. The measles virus is a piece of RNA coated with a lipid. It’s fewer than ten genes long. (“Measle” is derived from an old German and Dutch word for a spot or pustule on the skin.) “Measles is unmatched, in terms of its effectiveness as a contagion,” Adam Ratner, the head of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at N.Y.U. Langone, said. A single person can infect more than a dozen others. The virus is infectious even before the appearance of the rash, during which the symptoms can be fever and the “three Cs”: cough, coryza (runny nose), and conjunctivitis. The vast majority of measles cases turn out O.K.—a fortnight of misery—but bad things can and do happen. It isn’t Ebola, but it isn’t chicken pox, either. (That said, it has killed more people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this year than Ebola has.) The rate of hospitalization is about one in five, mostly owing to pneumonia, and the mortality rate is about one in a thousand. (In developing countries, it is more like one in a hundred.) Measles may also have a suppressive effect on the immune system for two years—“the shadow of measles,” as I heard one doctor describe it. The disease can cause hearing loss and, in rare cases, five to ten years later, a usually fatal form of encephalitis. Its prevalence, before the development of the vaccine, made it a scourge. Pretty much everyone got it. Its virtual disappearance since has made it seem like an abstraction, one of those common experiences of yesteryear that old-timers think kids today are too coddled to abide, like schoolyard fistfights, helmetless cycling, and child labor. “Some people seem to think measles is some happy Norman Rockwell rite of passage for American youth,” Howard Zucker told me. A popular long-standing anti-vax meme depicts a clip of Marcia Brady, in a 1969 episode of “The Brady Bunch,” declaring, “If you have to get sick, sure can’t beat the measles!” Parents who might agree sometimes throw so-called measles parties, to get it over with for as many kids as possible, as soon as possible. What was once a folksy response to inevitable exposure now carries a hint of Munchausen by proxy. On October 9th, a second case turned up in New Square: a fifty-six-year-old man returning from a trip to Israel. On October 12th, another: a four-year-old who had travelled to Israel. That same day, there was a fourth, the first domestic transmission, a two-year-old linked to Patient Zero. During the next four days, there were six new cases that were linked to the first one from the New Square shul. (In all, there would be at least eleven cases connected to the boy.) Soon the authorities had identified five other cases involving unvaccinated people who’d travelled to Israel. Then measles started turning up elsewhere: New Jersey, Texas, California. In April, Zucker told me, city officials had been tracking the movements of a man who had gone from New York to Detroit, infecting thirty-nine people in Michigan. The global count of measles cases, which had been declining steeply during this century’s first fifteen years, is rising again; the first six months of 2019 saw more than any full year since 2006, according to a report by the World Health Organization. Since the recent outbreak, New York State has reported 392 cases—this does not include 654 cases in New York City—of which 296 were in Rockland County, almost all of them in Orthodox enclaves with low rates of vaccination. A 2017-18 survey indicated that the measles-vaccination rate for children in the state, before entering kindergarten, was more than ninety-seven per cent, but, in pockets of anti-vaccination sentiment, or of widespread vaccine hesitancy, as the more gray-shaded kind of reluctance is called, the numbers had fallen far enough to compromise what epidemiologists call herd immunity—that is, broad enough protection to cover even for the tiny minority who, for whatever reason, aren’t vaccinated. (Scientists typically say that a ninety-five-per-cent vaccination rate does the trick.) In some schools in neighborhoods where the outbreak had gained a toehold, the vaccination rate had dropped below fifty per cent. For public-health officials like Zucker, measles was a clear and present concern on its own, but, more significant, it was a leading indicator of a societal failure. Mark Mulligan, the director of the Vaccine Center at N.Y.U. Langone, said, “This outbreak is the eyes of the hippopotamus.” One need not relitigate the case for vaccines here. There have been more than a dozen large-scale, peer-reviewed studies—the most recent one in Denmark, involving more than six hundred and fifty thousand children—that have found no connection between the M.M.R. vaccine and autism. Are there side effects to vaccines? Sometimes. Are there bad doses or batches? If there weren’t, there would be no such thing as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Does Big Pharma benefit from the vaccine protocol? You bet. At the end of July, Merck, the only U.S. manufacturer of the M.M.R. vaccine, announced that it had earned six hundred and seventy-five million dollars in the previous quarter from the M.M.R. vaccine and the chicken-pox vaccine, a fifty-eight-per-cent increase from the same period last year. But vaccines work, both for individuals and for the general public. They are one of the great advances of modern times. And they do not cause autism. The science on this point is settled, to the extent that any science ever is, in the pursuit of proving a negative. Four years ago, after a measles outbreak at Disneyland, the California legislature got rid of religious and “personal belief” exemptions to the state’s vaccine law, leaving only medical ones. One precedent was the landmark Supreme Court ruling Jacobson v. Massachusetts, from 1905, concerning vaccinations for smallpox. It established the right of the state to enforce “restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good.” Jacobson has been the basis for a raft of court decisions through the years upholding mandatory vaccination. Of course, the Supreme Court also cited it in its 1927 decision to let stand a program of forced sterilization in Virginia. (“Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote.) In California, after the removal of the religious exemption, the rate of vaccination rose, from ninety per cent to ninety-six per cent. But so did the incidence of doctors selling bogus medical exemptions. Zucker recognizes a cautionary tale; the church-and-clinic scam is a bit of a revolving door. Sixteen years ago, Donald G. McNeil, Jr., a health correspondent for the Times, wrote about joining a church in New Jersey (the headline read “Worship Optional”) that had been founded by chiropractors to aid the flock in skipping out on shots. The measles outbreak has helped clarify for many public-health professionals that the virus they’re fighting isn’t so much measles as it is vaccine hesitancy and refusal. With the spread of mass shootings and conspiracy theories like QAnon, we are becoming more comfortable with the concept that ideas behave like viruses. This pandemic’s Patient Zero is harder to pinpoint. Suspicion of authority, rejection of expertise, a fracturing of factual consensus, the old question of individual liberty versus the common good, the checkered history of medical experimentation (see: Tuskegee, Henrietta Lacks, Mengele), the cynicism of the pharmaceutical industry, the periodic laxity of its regulators, the overriding power of parental love, the worry and suggestibility it engenders, and the media, both old and new, that feed on it—there are a host of factors and trends that have encouraged the spread of anti-vaccination sentiment. But, if we have to pick a Patient Zero, Andrew Wakefield will do. Wakefield is the British gastroenterologist who produced the notorious article, published in The Lancet in 1998, linking the M.M.R. vaccine to autism. The study, which featured just twelve subjects, was debunked, the article was pulled, and Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine—as well as his reputation, in scientific circles anyway. But, owing to his persistence in the years since, his discredited allegations have spread like mold. In the anti-vaxxer pantheon, he is martyr and saint. There are also the movement’s celebrities, such as Jenny McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., stubborn in the face of ridicule, and the lesser-known but perhaps no less pernicious YouTube evangelists, such as Toni Bark, a purveyor of homeopathic products, and the Long Island pediatrician Lawrence Palevsky. If your general practitioner is Dr. Google, you can find a universe of phony expertise. The movement seems to sniff out susceptibility. Not surprisingly, there is money there, though the financial incentives behind this strand of advocacy are less clear than, say, what has led the Koch brothers to champion fossil fuels. This spring, the Washington Post reported that the New York hedge-fund manager Bernard Selz and his wife, Lisa, have given more than three million dollars to anti-vaccination causes and helped finance “Vaxxed,” Wakefield’s 2016 documentary, which purports to reveal a C.D.C. conspiracy to cover up the connection between vaccines and autism. Needless to say, the anti-vaccination ethos is by no means exclusive to the New York tristate-area Orthodox community. It thrives in certain pockets—affluent boho-yoga moms, evangelical Christians, Area 51 insurgents. The vaccination rates are about the same in Monsey and in Malibu. Before New Square, the three most recent big outbreaks of measles occurred among Somali immigrants, in Minnesota; Amish farmers, in Ohio; and a hodgepodge of visitors to Disneyland. “It’s shocking how strong the anti-vax movement is,” Zucker said. “What surprises me is the really educated people who are passionately against vaccinations. I see this as part of a larger war against science-based reality. We need to study vaccine hesitancy as a disease.” He gave a TEDx talk recently about the crippling disconnect between the speed at which information, good or bad, spreads now and the slow, grinding pace of public-health work. He managed, by way of the general theory of relativity, to establish the equivalence of H1N1, Chewbacca Mask Lady, and Pizzagate: “How do we immunize and protect ourselves from the damaging effects of virality?” People often talk about the anti-vaccination movement as a social-media phenomenon, but in the ultra-Orthodox community, where women are discouraged from using computers and smartphones, it has apparently spread mostly among mothers by word of mouth, through phone trees, leaflets, and gatherings: still viral, but analog. “It’s more about social networks than social media,” Gellin, of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, said. A few years ago, a slick pamphlet called “The Vaccine Safety Handbook: An Informed Parent’s Guide” became ubiquitous in Hasidic enclaves of Brooklyn. It had been produced by an organization called PEACH, or Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health. (The identity of the parents behind it has been a well-guarded secret, although Wired recently published a story about “Chany”—her surname was withheld—a Hasidic mother in Borough Park who was its purported founder; she’d got her information from the Internet.) The pamphlet expressed alarm that, among other things, some vaccines might contain trace amounts of monkey kidneys, rabbit brains, pork products, and aborted fetuses. Definitely not kosher. Rabbis pointed out that this claim wouldn’t matter, since one does not eat a vaccine. But the M.M.R. vaccine doesn’t contain those things. Even the smidgen of each virus it contains is so slight as to be negligible. “We’re talking two hundred to three hundred antigens,” Mulligan, of N.Y.U. Langone, said. “That’s minuscule, compared to the microbiota we deal with on a daily basis.” (Roald Dahl, whose eldest daughter, Olivia, died from measles, once wrote, “I should think there would be more chance of your child choking to death on a chocolate bar than of becoming seriously ill from a measles immunisation.”) Elisa Sobo, a medical anthropologist at San Diego State University, has advanced the idea that saying no to vaccinations is as much an opting in as it is an opting out—“like getting a gang tattoo, slipping on a wedding ring, or binge-watching a popular streamed TV show,” she writes, in a recent paper, “Theorizing (Vaccine) Refusal.” “This kind of refusal is more about who one is and with whom one identifies than who one isn’t or whom one opposes.” You could say that many of the parents who send their children to Waldorf private schools and choose not to vaccinate them—for example, at Green Meadow, a Waldorf school whose immunization rate was so low that Rockland County officials banned unvaccinated students from attending—are declaring an allegiance to an ethos, or even bowing to peer pressure. They’re going with a different flow, even if it’s the one that says measles can be prevented by breast milk and bone broth. The Hollywood Reporter found that the rates of vaccination in some of the private schools in Santa Monica and Beverly Hills—Marianne Williamson country—are roughly the same as in Chad and South Sudan. Last year, at the Westside Waldorf School, in the Pacific Palisades, about four in ten kindergartners were fully vaccinated. At the Garden of Angels School, in Santa Monica, about half were. “We perceive each growing child as a precious cluster of unique treasure,” the school’s Web site reads. “Our Garden Ideology aspires to accurately mirror an environment where students are limited by nothing and liberated by everything.” Nothing says liberation like pertussis. In May, there was an ultra-Orthodox anti-vaccination “symposium” in a ballroom in Monsey—men and women separated by a makeshift wall, Wakefield present via Skype. A Satmar rabbi, Hillel Handler, stood and suggested that the measles outbreak was an anti-Hasidic conspiracy concocted by Mayor Bill de Blasio, as a cover for diseases imported by Central American immigrants. Others equated what they called “forced vaccination” with the Holocaust. A representative of the Church of Scientology offered logistical help. The state’s director of epidemiology, Debra Blog, sat quietly near the front of the women’s section, but after a while, dismayed by the rhetoric of what McDonald, of the C.D.C., had taken to calling “the pro-measles movement,” she left. “I knew it was going to be bad, but not this bad,” she told me. “The speakers were terrible. I realized that if I got up to say something I was going to get hauled out of there.” By then, the health departments of the state and the relevant counties were deep into what you might call a counter-insurgency campaign. There had been emergency declarations, and decrees prohibiting unvaccinated children from attending school, no matter their parents’ beliefs. The repeal of the religious exemption was progressing in the legislature. In the most affected counties outside the city, the number of new vaccinations was up seventy per cent compared with the year before. Zucker had recorded a public-service announcement in a playground. The city had launched a campaign called “Don’t Wait. Vaccinate.” Rabbis, almost unanimously, said that there was no religious reason not to vaccinate. In the health establishment, it is now standard practice to differentiate between diehard refuseniks and the vaccine-hesitant, and even to acknowledge that the former aren’t really persuadable. Chanie Sternberg, the Refuah C.E.O., said, “Those who don’t want to learn do not.” The latter are the softer target: the yes-but set, whose heads are aswirl with contradictory information, and who really want nothing more than for their children to be healthy and safe. Vaccination has been the victim of its own success. Eradication has afforded these parents the luxury of equivocation. People have forgotten how dangerous these diseases were and, in the absence of reminders, have become complacent, giving in to what one doctor called “immunological amnesia.” An outbreak is a fine bracer. Public-health officials have seized on this one as an occasion both to reach out to the hesitant and to reconsider their tactics of persuasion: the dreary work of winning hearts and minds. Patricia Ruppert, the Rockland County health commissioner, told me, of the vaccine-hesitant mothers she’d encountered, “They’re not as interested in the science as they are in the stories.” At Mount Sinai Hospital one day in June, during Zucker’s grand rounds there, Chanie Sternberg and Corinna Manini, the chief medical officer at Refuah, gave a presentation to an auditorium of physicians about the so-called motivational-interview technique, a less combative and less condescending way of fielding patients’ concerns and presenting the justifications for vaccines. Don’t overwhelm them with data. Address their stated concerns, one at a time. “I strongly recommend” rather than “You’d be stupid not to.” Have the recommendation gently reiterated by everyone along the way: receptionists, nurses, pharmacists, home-care workers. “Drop the pamphlets,” Sternberg said. Common sense helps. When a mother protests that her child has a cold and that the vaccine shot might just make things worse, Sternberg says, “The baby’s cranky anyway, so you might as well get it over with.” It was Sternberg who, early on, helped connect Zucker and his department to the rabbinical leaders in Rockland County, to smooth the exchange of information and promote the vaccination drive. Several times during the fall, Zucker met with the rabbis, in groups of thirty to forty. Obviously, though, they weren’t the ones taking the kids to the doctor. “My cousins lived up there for a while,” Zucker said. “I asked them, ‘What should we do?’ They said, ‘Talk to the moms.’ At the end of the day, the moms don’t want their kids to get sick.” The Refuah Health Center is just down the road from the Ateres Charna Wedding Hall, not far from the Palisades Parkway. The center was founded three decades ago, after Governor Mario Cuomo urged the local grandees to find a way to provide health services for the burgeoning Orthodox population. (New Square, it should be noted, votes almost entirely as a bloc; Hillary Clinton got more than ninety-five per cent of the vote there in her Senate races and in 2016. It should also be noted that, in 2001, Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of four New Square men who had been convicted of defrauding the government in a fake-yeshiva scheme.) “When I joined Refuah, it was just a concept, a pile of papers, an application for a license,” Chanie Sternberg said. When Refuah opened, in 1993, it expected fifteen thousand visits per year. The number, in year one, was twice that, and this year it will top three hundred thousand. It began as a primary-care facility, but it’s now four stories high and delivers a wide array of services, including optometry, dentistry, and gynecology. Refuah is a nonprofit operation, despite a rumor I heard, in Monsey, that it was pushing vaccines in order to make money. Of the twenty-seven thousand M.M.R. vaccines that have been administered in Rockland County since October 1st, six thousand have been delivered by Refuah. One of them was mine. I was born after the first measles vaccine was developed, in 1963, but before the two-shot protocol came along, in 1989. (Now children typically get the first shot around the age of one and the second around age four.) So it’s possible that I had been undervaccinated, all these years. While I was talking to Sternberg, a nurse came in and gave me a booster. Sternberg was born in 1964, in the wake of an infamous epidemic of rubella, or German measles. “My mother told me stories about it, about staying home for nine months while she was pregnant with me,” she said. “A lot of my classmates had hearing loss.” She grew up in Borough Park, Brooklyn (her father, from Czechoslovakia, had been a follower of the elder Twersky), and after she and Yitzchok were married, in 1984, they moved to Lakewood, New Jersey, and then to Monsey, in 1988. Before coming to Refuah, she’d worked at Nyack Hospital, in the medical-records department. Like most Orthodox wives, she wears a black wig and modest dark clothing, but something about her quick, quiet way of stating things put me in mind of Nora Charles. Nearly twenty per cent of the population of New Square is under the age of five, a cohort that is especially vulnerable to measles, owing to the spacing of the regimen of shots. Large families with lots of small children, and a culture prone to large social gatherings, are vulnerable during measles outbreaks. “That’s why we can’t afford to have even a slight delay in the vaccination schedule,” Sternberg said. In May, Zucker gave the commencement address at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, at City College. Powell was there, as was Zucker’s wife of three years, Elissa, who is forty and had given birth to their second child two months before, affording Zucker the rare experience of being the father of a newborn and the son of a ninety-nine-year-old. (It was short-lived; Saul Zucker died a few days later.) Zucker, sixty in September, is slight of build and rubbery in his movements and has a big toothy grin and a puckish air. In his cap and gown, he looked whatever the opposite of donnish is. From the dais, he started his speech by talking about his father, who had graduated from City College almost eight decades before, and he closed with some remarks about the polio vaccine. The graduates in the first few rows mostly chattered and showed one another things on their phones. Born in the Bronx, with the umbilical cord wrapped twice around his neck, and delivered (and resuscitated) by his father at the Fitch Sanitarium, Zucker did not speak a word until he was four years old. But he soon revealed himself as something of a dervish and an odd kind of prodigy. At age six, on his way home from a Chinese restaurant, he tripped on the sidewalk and broke his chopsticks and his fortune cookie, and wrote Mayor John Lindsay to complain. By age eight, he was peppering dozens of public figures (Nelson Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, a representative for the Communist Party) with earnest letters asking for keepsakes and information. He has kept their replies. (From Hoover: “I am unable to furnish you information regarding persons we are looking for since this is given mainly to police officers.”) With dreams of being an architect—medicine seemed untenable, because he passed out at the sight of blood—Zucker also solicited (and usually got) from builders and government agencies the plans for such structures as the World Trade Center, the Superdome, the Sears Tower, the George Washington Bridge, and the Holland Tunnel, and also drew up blueprints for his father’s new office, with a circular staircase and a giant fish tank. His innocent query to an architecture firm about a construction project in Fort Lee, New Jersey, eventually facilitated a federal investigation into the Mafia in Paramus, which made the national news. Zucker graduated from high school at the age of fifteen, from college at nineteen, and from medical school at twenty-two, at which time he was told by the dean that he was the country’s youngest doctor. Some years later, he came to suspect, on the basis of an interview he’d done as a resident at the Philadelphia Children’s Hospital, that he was the inspiration for the television program “Doogie Howser, M.D.,” about a teen-age physician. (A few years ago, after this became an Albany tale, Steven Bochco, the show’s co-creator, denied it.) Doogie Howser, anyway, is what he came to be called around the ward in Boston, once the show débuted. He is an odd combination of child and old man, the latent proportion of the one increasing to account for the preponderance of the actual other. Colleagues have attributed his knack for pediatrics to his seeing the world through a child’s eyes. As the head of pediatric critical care at Columbia Presbyterian, he led the building of a new I.C.U., starting with brightly colored train-track tiles on the ceiling, because he realized that it would be the first thing children see when they awaken after surgery. Zucker’s C.V. is forty-two pages long, single-spaced. Five degrees and a half-dozen board certifications, stints with the World Health Organization (as the assistant director general) and before that in the George W. Bush White House, ultimately as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Health under Tommy Thompson. Highlights of his time in Washington were his creation of the Medical Reserve Corps and some headway in efforts to advance women’s health care in Afghanistan. Lowlights were SARS, anthrax, and drawing the short straw to represent the Bush Administration at a conference in Argentina on health and the environment, at a time when the White House was impeding research into climate change: “I went there basically to get yelled at.” Yeshiva, Georgetown, Mass General, Harvard, Columbia, Penn, M.I.T., Yale, Johns Hopkins. Committees, lectures, fellowships, awards, articles, societies, appointments, panels, and boards. The C.V. does not mention that he has met all twelve men who have walked on the moon and that he can recite the entire touchdown exchange between Neil Armstrong and Mission Control. Zucker is more amazed than boastful. He speaks quickly, in what you might call an excitable mumble, ending many spiels in “you know what I mean?” “Taking care of sick kids really centers you, you know what I mean?” He often talks about children he has treated, the ones who narrowly avoided death, many of whom he has stayed in touch with—a wedding here, a bar mitzvah there. I got to know him through a friend of mine whose toddler nearly died of a congenital heart defect. Zucker saved the boy’s life. Eighteen years later, Zucker and the father remain friends. When I first met Zucker, he began to talk about all the things that a health commissioner does. In his speed-mumble, he ticked off threats that his department had faced: Ebola, Legionnaires’, Zika, Lyme, flu, Candida auris. Opioids. Water safety. He has a particular preoccupation with geriatrics and the aging-population problem. There are random responsibilities: last summer, Zucker had to cancel a rock concert in Watkins Glen, because of the threat of storms. “Someone came to me and said, ‘I think we need to cancel fish.’ ‘Why is that my problem?’ I said. ‘Why do I have to worry about fish? Shouldn’t that be the D.E.C.?’ ‘Not fish. P-H-I-S-H.’ I hadn’t heard of this Phish.” He has never tasted coffee, tobacco, or pot, although he oversees the state’s new medical-marijuana program, and his department, in conjunction with others, has issued a report in favor of the legalization of recreational marijuana. (When Zucker announced this, during New York’s gubernatorial campaign last year, a spokeswoman for Marc Molinaro, Andrew Cuomo’s Republican opponent, accused the Governor of having “his hand-picked ‘Doogie Howser’ rubber stamp another decision that has less to do with science and everything to do with politics.”) Zucker got similar flak when he concluded, five years ago, that fracking was a public-health threat, a finding that led Cuomo to ban it. “I don’t think most people realize the role that ‘public health’ plays in their lives,” Zucker said. “The public has such a negative feeling generally about government.” Early in the summer, Zucker and some of the medical staff of the state and county health departments spent a day checking in on a few summer camps in Sullivan County, a rural area on the southwest flank of the Catskills—the old Borscht Belt. The children come mostly from Brooklyn and counties closer to New York City. The Sullivan County health department had issued a rule requiring every child to have proof of immunity before being allowed on the grounds of a camp. Zucker and his team wanted to check in on the camps’ compliance and to field questions and concerns. Zucker drove up from Riverdale, where he lives in an apartment with his wife and two kids. (He also has an apartment in Albany, where he spends a good deal of the week.) He had a brand-new red Volvo wagon, which he, a longtime car nut, considered a regrettable concession to fatherhood. He’d brought scones for the ride. He feigned nonchalance as we christened the interior with crumbs. The state health department’s office in Sullivan County is in back of a small, rundown office park in the town of Monticello. The state had loaned the county some staff, as measles reinforcements, since Sullivan’s health budget was lean. Zucker was greeted in the parking lot by an associate commissioner, Celeste Johnson: “Welcome to paradise.” He was led into a small office for a briefing with a half-dozen staffers. Eleanor Adams, a state epidemiologist, said, “Howard and I go back to Ebola.” They were monitoring several possible new measles cases: young children, and a mother with a sick child who had been turned away from her job working at a summer camp, and whose whereabouts were now unknown. Health officials were afraid that she might be staying in a so-called bungalow colony, where families live in close proximity. The camps, being licensed, have to abide by state vaccination regulations. “You can make sure the camps, the schools, the hospitals, and the clinics are compliant, but what can you do to the bungalows if they aren’t?” Zucker said. A couple of county workers were headed out to camps that had a history of poorer record-keeping. They would also be looking in on some camps for children with cancer, where extra care had to be taken, because of the kids’ lowered immunity and likely intolerance of vaccines. We caravanned over to Camp Bnos, in the nearby town of Liberty. Almost a thousand girls were scheduled to arrive the next day; they’d all be checked for measles, though not until after the so-called pump speech—the welcome woo-hoo. At the entrance, just off the road and past a gap in the fencing, a guard had each visitor sign in, a new protocol instituted by the state, to keep track of comings and goings for the purpose of potential contact investigations. Someone said, “Can you imagine this on visiting day?” Apparently, authorities were deciding whether to insist that visitors be immunized, too. But how? This was almost nothing—just a hassle with a few clipboards while a couple of cars were backed up into the road—but it gave a hint of how even such minor impositions might begin to seem invasive, and how precarious the camps’ continued coöperation might be. “You don’t want to drive people underground,” Zucker said. We were met by the heads of the camp—men in either dark suits or rekel and a black hat; women in mostly black, with long sleeves and skirts—who led us into a dining hall, where a table, set for sixteen, offered a layout of kosher sushi, sculpted fruit, rugelach, Ritz crackers, and orange juice. An administrator said that, of hundreds of families, only two were part of the anti-vax movement; their children weren’t coming to the camp this year. “Once all the schools are compliant, it will make our lives easier,” Shimon Newmark, a camp director, said. “No more religious exemption should help, too. Our staff has basically turned into a medical office. It’s a lot of work.” A month before, the staff had started cancelling registrations of noncompliant families. “One person tried to claim a religious exemption, then, when that was no longer accepted, they tried an allergic exemption,” Newmark said. “Our M.D. found that allergies have no relation to vaccines. Eventually, that family cancelled and got a refund.” Zucker asked the group, “What can we do to help?” Shani Schmalz, the Bnos camp director, said, “It’s very, very important the inspectors be accommodating. If they’re not, word will get out quickly: ‘We’re under attack.’ And when they think they’re under attack people will defer to their fears. The anti-vaxxers will jump on it and sue and say anti-Semitism.” Outside, pods of workers hurried to ready the camp. The grounds smelled of fresh asphalt. There were already a few kids about, idling in the shade. A dozen mustard-colored bunkhouses ringed a patchy sloping lawn. “I actually went to an Orthodox summer camp around here, one exit away,” Zucker told his hosts. “Camp Hili.” (Zucker’s parents had a house on a nearby two-acre plot of land, which Zucker still owns.) Meir Frischman, the camp’s director emeritus, who’d started as a “pantry boy” at age thirteen, laughed and told him that Bnos had bought a pair of bunkhouses from Hili. He offered to help Zucker search for his old bunk. “You could be a camp counsellor here,” he said. “You got the spirit.” “I won the all-around-camper award,” Zucker said. “I got a trophy.” During a tour of the infirmary, which was little more than a trailer, Zucker said, “I got sent to the infirmary when I was at camp. I remember! I got run over by a roller skate.” After walking through Camp Agudah, the boys’ counterpart to Bnos, Zucker had a moment alone in the parking lot with Newmark and asked him, with some delicacy, about how the counsellors and the adults at the camp observe and ultimately pass along indicators of mental or emotional distress. It seemed to Zucker that here, away from parents and schoolmates and the routines and pressures of regular life, a boy who might be suffering from some difficulty, pain, or trauma might reveal things that he might not at home, and that it might be of some benefit, to the boys and even to society, to keep a benevolent, watchful eye. “Maybe you have an opportunity here, know what I mean?” Zucker said. This was a tricky line of inquiry, fraught on all sides, and yet for me, as a civilian who knows the damage that damaged men do in the world, an unexpectedly enlightened one. Another virus, but one yet without a vaccine. It made me think of Zucker’s father, in the ear of the assemblyman. Later, there was a visit to a secular coed camp down the road, Iroquois Springs. Tennis. Canoeing. Roller hockey. The girls’ bunks a riot of color, in contrast with the muted monochromes at Bnos. It was a summer of unicorns. Some teens lounged on a porch and eyed the delegation coolly. The camp’s director, Mark Newfield, from Long Island, met the delegation in a Victorian mansion, which served as camp headquarters; it had once, he said, been the summer residence of Governor Al Smith. “The best thing for us is that the outbreak has increased awareness,” Newfield said. “This summer, we had to disinvite a few non-vaccinated kids. They were longtime kids. The parents were crying and angry. One parent tried to change my beliefs, was sending me YouTube videos. Four kids opted not to come.” Zucker asked Newfield what his greatest challenges were. Newfield and the camp pediatrician gave each other a knowing look, and Newfield said, “The volume of prescribed medication.” He painted a familiar picture of a teen and preteen pharmacopoeia. “It’s mind-boggling and sad for us.” Zucker’s rounds ended in the town of South Fallsburg, where Refuah has a northern outpost, for the growing Orthodox community. Refuah had bought a derelict brick high school in 2008, only to discover that it was riddled with asbestos. So, for now, there was a temporary office not much bigger than a trailer, as well as a half-dozen mobile R.V. clinics, which, Chanie Sternberg said, have seen between ninety and a hundred and twenty patients a day. Out in front was a sign that read “Fever and rash? Please stop here.” Refuah had brokered a meeting for Zucker and his colleagues with twenty or so prominent rabbis. There was a tent with round tables, balloons, and a buffet of fried food. Sternberg said, “If, God forbid, there was a case coming in”—apparently, a cabdriver had brought in multiple cases several days before, one at a time—“I thought it would be better to do this outside.” Also present were a few of the backers of the Hatzalah volunteer ambulance service, based in Brooklyn, which had established an outpost in the area a few years ago to alleviate some of the pressure on the local volunteer firemen and E.M.T.s, who in the summer often have lucrative work to attend to. The Hatzalah people invited Zucker to look at an ambulance and inspect their dispatching station. “On Thursday, we had five or six calls up here,” one of them said. “On Friday, we had thirty-five calls. The people, they come from Brooklyn—they’re not used to the curvy roads. We had three rollovers on Friday on the same quarter mile of road.” Zucker was impressed. “So,” the Hatzalah volunteer said, “we bring the problem, and we bring the solution.” As the summer progressed, the line held. The camps, it turned out, produced no new cases, and the pace of infection slowed, at least in New York. In late July, Rockland County ended its state of emergency. There was one fatality: an El Al flight attendant who went into a coma and died this month after falling ill on a flight from New York. One in a thousand. Two weeks ago, five new cases sprouted up in a Mennonite community near Buffalo, but these were considered, by the C.D.C., to be a new chain, unrelated to the one that started with the travellers from Israel. The broader sturdiness of vaccination rates statewide, and a collaborative public-health effort that Zucker called “a tour de force,” seemed to have stalled the outbreak and to have at least made it possible to imagine the retention of elimination status, come October. “I do believe that if we hadn’t done it this way, by throwing everything we could at it, on an array of fronts, the numbers would have been much, much worse,” Zucker said, last week. This was, in some ways, a medical equivalent of the Powell Doctrine, and the next campaign would be the looming school year and a renewed effort to persuade the hesitant. But it was hard to celebrate, amid an atmosphere, nationwide, of mounting misinformation and mistrust—a summer of racist shootings, ice-cap meltdowns, federal-agency scientist purges, Epstein conspiracy theories, and Bill Hader deep fakes. From his office in Albany, Zucker now speed-mumbles about e-cigarettes, Ebola, the flu, and what he and not he alone considers to be an all-out war on science. We bring the problem, anyway. ♦ | Nick Paumgarten | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/02/the-message-of-measles | 2019-08-26 09:00:00+00:00 | 1,566,824,400 | 1,567,533,395 | religion and belief | religious event |
382,817 | noqreport--2019-12-24--Trump administration investigating Christmas decor ban | 2019-12-24T00:00:00 | noqreport | Trump administration investigating Christmas decor ban | INDEPENDENCE, MISSOURI — Trump Administration officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have opened an investigation into MACO Management Company’s ban of Christmas lights and yard displays at a 55 and older housing development in Missouri. Liberty Counsel recently sent a demand letter to the MACO Management Company on behalf of residents at Grandview Estates, a HUD-subsidized residential complex. MACO Management prohibited residents from decorating their duplexes with outside Christmas decorations, including lights and yard decorations. Nothing in the lease agreement or regulations supported such a ban and residents have previously displayed Christmas lights and yard decorations for many years. In its December 17, 2019 response to Liberty Counsel’s letter, the management company failed to cite any HUD or ‘Government Fair Housing Rule’ supporting the Christmas light and decoration ban. MACO Management instead claimed that its own lease agreements and ‘Rules and Regulations’ prohibit Christmas lights and decorations, but the actual language does not support the claimed ban, or MACO’s original claim. After Liberty Counsel sent a follow-up response requesting MACO rescind the decoration ban in order to avoid receiving a complaint with HUD for civil rights violations, MACO issued a memo to residents. The memo states that residents may decorate the interior of their homes and now ‘their front door and porch area with more overtly religious displays,’ yet continues to ban yard displays deemed ‘religious:’ ‘When decorating with yard scenes we must stay neutral within the community so no religion is offended or singled out…We as a management company look for a policy which appropriately balanced the beliefs of all while ensuring we are not perceived to favor one religion over another.’ This conflates the private speech of residents with the speech of the management company. The memo contradicted MACO’s own recent written interpretation of the Lease Agreement and Regulations, and MACO’s November 12th letter to residents stating they could ‘decorate inside your home,’ but ‘nothing’ outside, not even on the porch, stating ‘[t]his has to do with the Government’s Fair Housing rules. Everyone in the complex is funded in part by Government funds, so we are required to follow their rules.’ The yard decoration ban continues to violate the Fair Housing Act. MACO is forbidden by the Act from discriminating against residents at this facility on the basis of religion, or from requiring Christmas decorations deemed ‘religious’ to be less visible than those deemed ‘secular.’ Religious free exercise includes the display of Christmas and other holiday decorations. Christmas is a nationally recognized holiday, and banning individuals’ religious decorations or celebrations in a federally subsidized or managed residential facility violates the Fair Housing Act and other federal laws. Any federal law or funding requirement that would restrict or prohibit residents’ religious holiday decorations would violate the First Amendment rights of the residents. Liberty Counsel’s Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, ‘I appreciate HUD’s investigation of MACO Management’s discriminatory practices. MACO’s banning Grandview Estates residents from their longstanding traditions of displaying Christmas or other religious holiday decorations constitutes discrimination based on religion. Nothing in Federal regulations, the lease agreement or residential regulations supports such a ban. MACO Management Company must allow residents to decorate their duplexes, just like they have in the past,’ said Staver. Liberty Counsel is a nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics. Liberty Counsel provides broadcast quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost. | NOQ Staff | https://noqreport.com/2019/12/24/trump-administration-investigating-christmas-decor-ban/ | Tue, 24 Dec 2019 14:22:47 +0000 | 1,577,215,367 | 1,577,235,092 | religion and belief | religious event |
383,348 | npr--2019-01-20--Welcome To The Worlds Largest Gathering Of Humans | 2019-01-20T00:00:00 | npr | Welcome To The World's Largest Gathering Of Humans | Pilgrims bathe at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in northern India as part of Kumbh Mela, a spiritual festival. **Lauren Frayer/NPR** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Lauren Frayer/NPR Shivering and blue-lipped but smiling, Niraj Shukla emerged from the Ganges River this week, flanked by his parents and millions of other people, feeling renewed. "The water is very cold, but once you have a bath – it's sort of a miracle, you know?" said Shukla, a 32-year-old engineer who lives in India's capital New Delhi. The Shukla family were among the first of what's expected to be 150 million pilgrims all taking a dip in India's holy river through March 4 as part of the [Kumbh Mela](https://kumbh.gov.in/), a Hindu religious festival billed as the world's largest gathering of human beings at one event. It happens every 12 years, its dates fixed according to the alignment of the stars and planets. This year is a half-Kumbh – six years since the last one – but it's nevertheless expected to be the biggest so far. The government officials and religious authorities who organize the event estimate that 15 million people showed up on Tuesday, the opening day. For the 2019 event, some 200 miles of new roads were built to ferry pilgrims from all corners of India. They also come by train, or by boat down the Ganges, carrying their belongings in bundles balanced on their heads. Pilgrims sleep in a vast tent city at the river's edge, where temperatures slide toward freezing at night. Rich and poor, tourists and ascetic monks, all squat side by side, chanting mantras. They include naked dreadlocked holy men, Hindu priests draped in orange sarongs and garlands of marigolds, families with infants, foreign backpackers on spiritual journeys – and Shukla and his parents, who hail from the host city, Allahabad. Hindu holy men sample the sacred waters, which are believed to be restorative, with the power to cleanse sin. **Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images Hindu holy men sample the sacred waters, which are believed to be restorative, with the power to cleanse sin. Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images Shukla returns home whenever his hometown hosts the Kumbh. This is his third. The bathing spot is at the confluence of three rivers: the Ganges, the Yamuna – two of India's biggest rivers – and the Saraswati, a mythical river which the faithful believe flows underground. A dip in the waters is said to be restorative, with the power to cleanse sin. "You have work, you have tensions, you've committed some wrongdoings – you know these things deep down inside. Now you come over here, you take a dip, you feel that, 'I am in the company of some holy people – some saints,'" Shukla explains. "And then you step inside this holy water, and you feel inside that you have cleansed yourself." Some people even drink the water, believing it to be curative, though scientists caution them not to. The Ganges and Yamuna rivers are [already polluted](https://www.npr.org/2016/05/11/477415686/can-indias-sacred-but-dead- yamuna-river-be-saved) from industry and sewage. With 120 million people bathing in them over the course of seven weeks, [pollution levels spike](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-21175890) from all those human beings. It's as if the entire populations of California, Texas, Florida and New York all decided to go swimming in the same spot together. Pilgrims parade toward the banks of the Ganges River on the first day of the Kumbh Mela festival, billed as the largest gathering of humans in the world. The event lasts through March 4. **Furkan Latif Khan/NPR** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Furkan Latif Khan/NPR Pilgrims parade toward the banks of the Ganges River on the first day of the Kumbh Mela festival, billed as the largest gathering of humans in the world. The event lasts through March 4. Furkan Latif Khan/NPR There have been fires and [stampedes](https://www.ucanews.com/news/more- than-30-die-in-kumbh-mela-stampede/67383) in past years. But repeat visitors say this year's Kumbh appears orderly so far. Organizers say 30,000 police and security forces are on hand – plus 122,000 portable toilets and 20,000 trash cans. The budget of nearly $600 million – the most expensive Kumbh ever – is split between the state government of Uttar Pradesh and India's central government, both of which are currently governed by Hindu nationalists. Four Indian cities rotate in hosting the Kumbh. They are all said to be located where Hindu lore says the gods accidentally dribbled holy nectar, or elixir, down from the heavens. Kumbh means "pot," a reference to the vessel holding the elixir; Mela means "fair" or "festival." "There was a tussle between the devil and the gods. Some drops of elixir – amrit, we call it in Hindi – dropped at four places in India: Allahabad, Nashik, Ujjain and Haridwar," explains Gitanjali Verma, 28, another local who was attending her first Kumbh. "It was a magical experience," she said after watching the first batch of Hindu holy men dunk in the river at sunrise. "It's just the faith, and the total purity of the heart and mind, which bring people here." **** The crowd also includes foreign tourists. "I'm an atheist, but because of this it's changing my point of view a little bit," says Spaniard Santiago Merodio, 42, who tacked a trip to the Kumbh onto the end of his India vacation, after attending a yoga retreat. "I'm searching for something [spiritually]." This is the first year the city of Allahabad is hosting the Kumbh under its new name – Prayagraj. Hindu nationalists who govern Uttar Pradesh last year officially [renamed the city](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/india- bjp-muslim-allahabad-prayagraj-181016165504687.html) to refer to an area of land at the confluence of the rivers where Kumbh takes place. The new name carries more significance to India's majority Hindus than the name Allahabad, which had been coined by a Muslim king during the centuries when northern India was ruled by the Mughals. Hindu priests draped in orange sarongs and garlands of marigolds are among the pilgrims. **Lauren Frayer/NPR** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Lauren Frayer/NPR Hindu priests draped in orange sarongs and garlands of marigolds are among the pilgrims. Lauren Frayer/NPR Another new twist to this year's Kumbh: huge billboards of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who's running for re-election this spring. Many of these pilgrims are part of his Hindu nationalist voter base. "We have to give credit to the ruling party, [Modi's BJP]. The elections are coming. If that means they install more toilets and organize this Kumbh in a more orderly way, that's great," Shukla says. After their dip in the Ganges, he and his parents buy some grain and donate it to a Hindu monk who blesses them, chants a mantra and smears a fragrant paste called _tilak_ on their foreheads as part of a Hindu ritual. "I was shivering and trembling, but the moment I stepped into the water, I was just good," Shukla says. "Now I am going back to my home as a new person." | Lauren Frayer | https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/01/20/686482390/welcome-to-the-worlds-largest-gathering-of-humans?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | 2019-01-20 13:01:37+00:00 | 1,548,007,297 | 1,567,551,669 | religion and belief | religious event |
385,191 | npr--2019-04-23--India Is Changing Some Cities Names And Muslims Fear Their Heritage Is Being Erased | 2019-04-23T00:00:00 | npr | India Is Changing Some Cities' Names, And Muslims Fear Their Heritage Is Being Erased | The name of India's Mughalsarai railway station, near Varanasi, was changed last year to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, for a right-wing Hindu leader who died there in 1968. **Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images The name of India's Mughalsarai railway station, near Varanasi, was changed last year to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya, for a right-wing Hindu leader who died there in 1968. Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images Tens of millions of Hindus took a ritual dip in the Ganges River this winter as part of the largest religious festival in the world — [the Kumbh Mela](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/01/20/686482390/welcome- to-the-worlds-largest-gathering-of-humans). For centuries, the festival has been held in various cities in northern India, including Allahabad. But when pilgrims arrived this year for the Kumbh Mela, Allahabad had a different name. Last year, officials from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party changed the name of Allahabad to Prayagraj — a word that references the Hindu pilgrimage site there. The name Allahabad dated to the 16th century, a legacy of a Muslim ruler, the [Mughal Emperor Akbar](https://www.britannica.com/place/Allahabad). "Today, the BJP government has rectified the mistake made by Akbar," a [BJP official was quoted as saying when the name was altered](https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/from- now-on-allahabad-to-be-prayagraj-1369530-2018-10-17). Hindu holy men sing and parade toward the banks of the Ganges River in January at the Kumbh Mela festival. Last year, the city hosting the festival changed its name from Allahabad to Prayagraj. **Lauren Frayer/NPR** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Lauren Frayer/NPR Hindu holy men sing and parade toward the banks of the Ganges River in January at the Kumbh Mela festival. Last year, the city hosting the festival changed its name from Allahabad to Prayagraj. Lauren Frayer/NPR The name change has set off some bureaucratic confusion: The Allahabad High Court is keeping its name. So is the [University of Allahabad](http://www.allduniv.ac.in/). But the city's postmaster says he will soon change the signs outside the Allahabad Post Office to say Prayagraj Post Office — as well as all the rubber stamps inside. Allahabad's renaming has made headlines not for the hassles of changing signs, but for a growing trend of Hindu nationalism in Indian politics. Over the past five years of Modi's term as prime minister, Hindu nationalist politicians from the BJP have [renamed](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion /renaming-india-saffronisation-public-spaces-181012113039066.html) Indian towns, streets, airports and [one of the country's biggest train stations](https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/mughalsarai-junction-renamed- why-name-changed-after-156-years-1305650-2018-08-05), swapping names that reflect Muslim heritage for Hinducentric ones. In doing so, they are revising the map of India and trying to rewrite its history. Hindu devotees bathe in the Ganges River in January at the Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, formerly known as Allahabad. **Lauren Frayer/NPR** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Lauren Frayer/NPR Hindu devotees bathe in the Ganges River in January at the Kumbh Mela festival in Prayagraj, formerly known as Allahabad. Lauren Frayer/NPR **Erasing Muslim names** A generation ago, long before Modi was in power, right-wing Hindu nationalist leaders in Maharashtra state renamed Bombay as Mumbai — a nod to the city's patron goddess Mumbadevi. Other cities followed: Madras became Chennai; Calcutta, Kolkata; Bangalore, Bengaluru. All the changes were a rejection of Anglicized names that came into use during British colonial rule. In the most recent wave of name changes, it's not about erasing colonial monikers. It's about [erasing Muslim ones](https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/asia-pacific/india-s-hindu- nationalists-changing-muslim-town-names-1.3697944). The changes accelerated in 2018, ahead of this year's elections. About [1 in 6 Indians](https://www.census2011.co.in/religion.php) is Muslim. After Hindus, they are the country's biggest faith group. In Allahabad, [more than 20% ](https://www.census2011.co.in/census/city/138-allahabad.html)of the city's population is Muslim. Many Muslims trace their lineage back centuries. By changing the city's name, "It's basically our culture and heritage" that is eliminated, says Ashraf Ahmed, 30, a Muslim IT business owner who grew up in Allahabad. He still refers to his hometown by that name. "We've lived for hundreds of years together — Muslims, Christians, Hindus and others. Many religions belong to India," he says, speaking in the shadow of his local mosque. Then his voice drops to a whisper: "But Muslims are currently facing some problems from this government. It's a little bit tense." Ahmed worries that erasing his hometown's Muslim name is a step toward erasing his own family history, his identity — ultimately disenfranchising India's Muslim citizens. The renaming of Allahabad as Prayagraj, stripping the city of a name rooted in Islam, replaces it with a word that references a Hindu pilgrimage site in the city. But the University of Allahabad is keeping its original name. **Lauren Frayer/NPR** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Lauren Frayer/NPR The renaming of Allahabad as Prayagraj, stripping the city of a name rooted in Islam, replaces it with a word that references a Hindu pilgrimage site in the city. But the University of Allahabad is keeping its original name. Lauren Frayer/NPR **The priest-politician** The man behind Allahabad's name change and many others is Yogi Adityanath — [a firebrand Hindu priest](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/19/uttar- pradesh-yogi-adityanath-hindu-priest-chief-minister) and chief minister of India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh. (With more than 200 million residents, the state is bigger than many countries.) Adityanath is a prominent member of Modi's ruling party and the founder of a [Hindu youth militia](https://scroll.in/article/870112/is-adityanaths-hindu- yuva-vahini-being-dismantled-quietly-to-appease-the-rss). He has a [reputation for inciting hatred](https://www.npr.org/2017/03/21/520922496/hindu-priest- with-a-history-of-bigotry-selected-to-run-india-s-uttar-pradesh) against minorities, particularly Muslims. He has frequently railed against Muslims for allegedly committing what he calls "love jihad" — marrying Hindu women. Adityanath is one of India's most vocal Hindu nationalists, seeking to redefine what it means to be Indian. He says the country's majority Hindu faith should be at its center. "We cannot let Muslim invaders from centuries ago define us today!" Adityanath [told a rally](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOFqGVZw7VM) in 2014. Last year, he [told reporters](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics- and-nation/those-with-zero-knowledge-of-history-would-question-renaming-of- allahabad-yogi-adityanath/videoshow/66250060.cms) that anyone who questions his decisions about renaming Allahabad and other landmarks must not "know their history, know their traditions, nor have any idea of their rich culture." His state is one of many that have banned beef, because cows are sacred to Hindus. It also has the [highest number](https://lynch.factchecker.in/) of violent incidents committed by cow vigilantes, who attack Muslims and lower- caste Hindus who trade in beef on the black market. Across 12 Indian states, at least 44 people — 36 of them Muslim — were killed in cow vigilante violence between May 2015 and December 2018, [Human Rights Watch says](https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/02/18/violent-cow-protection-india /vigilante-groups-attack-minorities). Pilgrims parade toward the banks of the Ganges River in January for the Kumbh Mela. **Furkan Latif Khan/NPR** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Furkan Latif Khan/NPR Pilgrims parade toward the banks of the Ganges River in January for the Kumbh Mela. Furkan Latif Khan/NPR **Rewriting history and the "dumbing-down of higher education"** The name change from Allahabad to Prayagraj has split the history department at the University of Allahabad. "I was totally aghast!" says historian Heramb Chaturvedi. BJP politicians "are trying to polarize," he says. "It is very dangerous for national integrity and unity." Chaturvedi opposes the city's name change on two counts: First, he believes the 16th century Mughal Emperor Akbar deserves credit for founding the city of Allahabad. Second, he believes that India, as a pluralistic democracy, should preserve its rich, multifaith history — and that diversity is its strength. Look around this city, he says. "You will find typical Mughal architecture, absolutely intact. It's beautiful! We are recognized as the country of[ Ashoka,](https://www.ancient.eu/Ashoka_the_Great/) of the Buddha and of Gandhi," he says. "And [Hindu nationalists] have never subscribed to this type of inclusiveness." But Chaturvedi's supervisor at the university's Medieval and Modern History Department vehemently disagrees. Department head Yogeshwar Tewari calls the city's name change a "course correction." He says for generations, even centuries, the way Indians interpret their own history has been tainted by colonialism and foreign influence. Only now, nearly 72 years after casting off colonial rule, can Indians see their own history clearly, he says. "Yogi [Adityanath] decided to re-establish our lineage to the past — our heritage," Tewari says. "Until the 18th century, Muslim rule was here. It was their sway. It was their authority. They decided to impose what they felt was in accordance with their beliefs. But now it's time to celebrate our own." By reinterpreting history, Tewari says, India is belatedly celebrating its _Hindutva,_ or Hindu-ness. The push has been led by Modi's BJP. The celebrating can sometimes fly in the face of facts. In January, there was [an outcry at the Indian Science Congress](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/01/09/683298815 /speakers-at-indian-science-congress-say-newton-was-wrong-ancient-demon-had- airpl) after Hindu researchers presented work that dismissed Albert Einstein's theory of relativity as "a big blunder" and suggested that ancient Hindu gods invented airplanes and test-tube babies. In this Hinducentric spin on history, some critics see the careful work of Hindu nationalist groups like the [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh](http://rss.org/), where Modi spent his formative years. The BJP is its political arm. The all-male Hindu volunteer corps' stated aim is to promote Hinduism in public life, but it has also stirred hatred toward minorities. "Research bodies are being packed with RSS people who believe history is Hindu heritage studies, with a purpose to inculcate Hindu pride and warn against enemies of the nation," says Tanika Sarkar, a retired professor of history at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "Whether it's science or history, [they believe] we must talk about ancient Hindu values, Hindu inventions, Hindu science. There's been a general dumbing-down of higher education." **Shifting legacies** As Hindu nationalists reinterpret Indian history, even the country's most revered modern figures are coming under new scrutiny. The once-unassailable legacy of one of Allahabad's most famous native sons — Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister — is now a matter of contention. Nehru, originally from Kashmir, grew up in Allahabad. He wanted India to be a secular, multifaith country. He was a close ally of the freedom leader Mohandas Gandhi. Together they helped write India's Constitution. For decades, Nehru has been almost universally revered as one of India's founding fathers. His daughter and grandson became prime ministers and his great-grandchildren now lead the Indian National Congress, the main party in opposition to Modi's BJP. But his vision has fallen out of favor with those in power. Adityanath [recently blamed](https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/yogi-adityanath- holds-jawaharlal-nehru-responsible-for-troubles-in-kashmir/375634) Nehru for decades of unrest in Kashmir. Modi [said in 2013 that](https://www.deccanherald.com/content/365980/patel-not-nehru-should- have.html) another figure should have been India's first prime minister. Some believe even [Gandhi's legacy is at risk](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/26/world/asia/india-gandhi-legacy- modi.html). In 1948, Gandhi was murdered by a Hindu nationalist, Nathuram Godse, who had once belonged to the RSS. Mughal-influenced architecture is found throughout Prayagraj. **Lauren Frayer/NPR** ****hide caption**** ****toggle caption**** Lauren Frayer/NPR Mughal-influenced architecture is found throughout Prayagraj. Lauren Frayer/NPR "Under the current BJP rule, there have been statues put up to his assassin, Godse," Sarkar says. "India is still known as the land of Gandhi, and they can't jettison him entirely. Gandhi believed the country belongs to all Indians." **The next generation** On weekdays at the Allahabad Public Library — which has yet to change its name — there's a gaggle of patriotic 20-somethings studying to be civil servants. "We always knew this as Allahabad. But to keep our [Hindu] culture alive, they renamed this place," says 25-year-old Sarita Jaiswal. "I agree with this new effort to remap areas and rewrite history. I want to work in government to be part of this." If she passes her exams, she'll be part of a new class of civil servants, and they'll not just be renaming Indian cities and landmarks but reinterpreting Indian history through Hindu eyes. The changes they enact may be small. But over time, the consequences may be big. _NPR producer Furkan Latif Khan contributed to this report._ | Lauren Frayer | https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/714108344/india-is-changing-some-cities-names-and-muslims-fear-their-heritage-is-being-era?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=news | 2019-04-23 20:21:00+00:00 | 1,556,065,260 | 1,567,542,066 | religion and belief | religious event |
398,059 | occupydemocrats--2019-12-02--Twitter has a field day mocking Melania Trump’s weird White House Christmas decorations video | 2019-12-02T00:00:00 | occupydemocrats | Twitter has a field day mocking Melania Trump’s weird White House Christmas decorations video | America isn’t exactly in love with its First Lady. Sure, Republicans continue to fawn over Melania and her robotic and cold presence beside Donald but to many it’s clear that there is little love left between the two if indeed there was ever any to begin with. So when she decided to tweet a video of herself wandering around an apparently empty yet Christmas-bedecked White House yesterday, the responses were predictably brutal. The overwhelming criticism was that the clip was deeply creepy, more akin to something out of a horror movie than a touching holiday message. The fact that her family is nowhere to be seen despite the fact that Christmas represents for those who celebrate it a chance to gather with loved ones also didn’t go unnoticed. Some were also quick to reference last year’s Christmas debacle when the First Lady shared a video of herself in a White House draped in reds, more evocative of blood or hellfire than Santa Claus. At the time, it was widely slammed as incredibly unsettling. The year before that many interpreted her strange Christmas trees as skeletal and shadow-drenched. While this year’s decorations are perhaps not quite as disturbing as the previous two, this is quickly becoming a trend that the First Lady would be wise to buck. Cultivating a reputation as some macabre weirdo isn’t exactly going to do wonders for her already-embattled public persona. Add your name to tell Congress to investigate Pence for his role in Trump’s Ukraine corruption. The VP is complicit! Bizarrely, she captioned the video “The Spirit of America” and a “beautiful exhibit of patriotism for all to see.” Of course, many Americans are not Christian and don’t celebrate Christmas and the separation of Church and State in this country guarantees that religious holidays have nothing to do with “patriotism.” But for the Trumps, the only America that matters is the part that’s white and Christian. What do you think? | Natalie Dickinson | https://occupydemocrats.com/2019/12/02/twitter-has-a-field-day-mocking-melania-trumps-weird-white-house-christmas-decorations-video/ | Mon, 02 Dec 2019 23:21:32 +0000 | 1,575,346,892 | 1,575,332,064 | religion and belief | religious event |
455,884 | redstate--2019-04-18--The US Respects Religious Holidays Parts of the World Dont Reciprocate | 2019-04-18T00:00:00 | redstate | The US Respects Religious Holidays – Parts of the World Don’t Reciprocate | The United States goes out of its way – in as many ways as possible – to respect all the religions of the world. In ways large and small, our government hails, praises…and defers to…the planet’s many faiths. To be clear: Not only do I not have any problem at all with this – I find it to be quite nice. I love the fact our nation and its government were founded upon acknowledgement of – and appreciation for – the transcendent. Our government officials regularly noting many religious holidays and special occasions – is eminently in keeping with our traditions. And I find it to be really quite nice. We’ll just use the Donald Trump Administration’s very many examples – as our examples. But you can go back decades – and see similar things from many previous administrations. Readout of the Vice President’s Meeting with Interfaith Religious Leaders Remarks by President Trump at Diwali Ceremonial Lighting of the Diya Statement by the Press Secretary on the Anniversary of the Birth of Guru Nanak Devji Our celebrations also, of course, include Islam. We do this not just here – but all over the world. Wherever we go – we go out of our way to defer to the locals’ religion(s) and their holy days. With Islam: So far out of our way – we halt military operations in Afghanistan. U.S. to Honor Kabul’s Unilateral Ramadan Ceasefire with Taliban U.S. Stops Terrorist Trials for Ramadan, but the Terrorists Don’t Stop Killing We’re very deferential to the world’s religions. Parts of the world – rarely reciprocate. To wit: Sunday is Christian Easter. (Happy Easter, All.) Christian Lent is coming to an end. And parts of the world – aren’t reciprocating. To wit: Where we stop Islamist terrorist trials – Kuwait has scheduled for Easter Sunday a completely ridiculous prosecution date. The victim of this inanity – is Marsha Lazareva. The chief executive and vice-chairman of US private equity company KGL Investment: “KGL (has) made much of its money in Kuwait – and now wants to return much of it to the US. “The Kuwaiti and Dubai governments – have frozen KGLs coin for no reason whatsoever. Well, no legitimate reason. “Behold Agility Logistics. A Kuwaiti company – with close ties to the Kuwaiti government. Agility’s CEO, Essa Anwar Al-Saleh – is a former Chairman of Kuwait’s Gulf Bank. So he exercised significant power over Kuwaiti commerce and finance. “And it appears Al-Saleh still does. Agility is a KGL competitor – with the home court advantage. The Kuwaiti government appears to be freezing KGLs coin – to benefit Agility.” “Not satisfied with crucifying just the company – Kuwait is going after its executives…. “Lazareva(’s)…lawyers…say the charges brought against her were ‘demonstrably false’ and the case amounted to a ‘show trial.’… “Her lawyers say she was denied access to one of the hearings and on other occasions the defence team was not permitted to introduce its own witnesses and was refused access to critical documents…. “‘Ms. Lazareva is the subject and victim of a politically-motivated vendetta initiated by powerful persons and entities, as well as competitors and rivals in Kuwait, against KGLI, KGL, and TPF,’ the (lawyers’) notice says.” “In other words, it would seem Ms. Lazareva is a victim of the same crony garbage her company is. “Kuwait is attempting to smear as many KGLI people as possible – in an attempt to make their crony garbage case against KGLI look less like crony garbage.” And Kuwait’s next scheduled smear date – is Easter Sunday. Christianity and its holiday be…well, you know. The President and his Administration will quite rightly acknowledge Easter. The President and his Administration should also quite rightly acknowledge the absurdity of Kuwait’s Easter-ignoring persecutions. And weigh in to end them. | Seton Motley | https://www.redstate.com/setonmotley/2019/04/18/us-respects-religious-holidays-parts-world-don%e2%80%99t-reciprocate/ | 2019-04-18 14:47:31+00:00 | 1,555,613,251 | 1,567,542,600 | religion and belief | religious event |
431 | 21stcenturywire--2019-06-29--Nils Melzer Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange | 2019-06-29T00:00:00 | 21stcenturywire | Nils Melzer: Demasking the Torture of Julian Assange | The following Op Ed was written for the occasion of the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, 26 June 2019 I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That’s exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the public, I had been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign, which had been disseminated over the years. So it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention. But once I looked into the facts of this case, what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief. Surely, I thought, Assange must be a rapist! But what I found is that he has never been charged with a sexual offence. True, soon after the US had encouraged allies to find reasons to prosecute Assange, two women made the headlines in Sweden. One of them claimed he had ripped a condom, and the other that he had failed to wear one, in both cases during consensual intercourse — not exactly scenarios that have the ring of ‘rape’ in any language other than Swedish. Mind you, each woman even submitted a condom as evidence. The first one, supposedly worn and torn by Assange, revealed no DNA whatsoever — neither his, nor hers, nor anybody else’s. Go figure. The second one, used but intact, supposedly proved ‘unprotected’ intercourse. Go figure, again. The women even texted that they never intended to report a crime but were ‘railroaded’ into doing so by zealous Swedish police. Go figure, once more. Ever since, both Sweden and Britain have done everything to prevent Assange from confronting these allegations without simultaneously having to expose himself to US extradition and, thus, to a show-trial followed by life in jail. His last refuge had been the Ecuadorian Embassy. Alright, I thought, but surely Assange must be a hacker! But what I found is that all his disclosures had been freely leaked to him, and that no one accuses him of having hacked a single computer. In fact, the only arguable hacking-charge against him relates to his alleged unsuccessful attempt to help breaking a password which, had it been successful, might have helped his source to cover her tracks. In short: a rather isolated, speculative, and inconsequential chain of events; a bit like trying to prosecute a driver who unsuccessfully attempted to exceed the speed-limit, but failed because their car was too weak. Well then, I thought, at least we know for sure that Assange is a Russian spy, has interfered with US elections, and negligently caused people’s deaths! But all I found is that he consistently published true information of inherent public interest without any breach of trust, duty or allegiance. Yes, he exposed war crimes, corruption and abuse, but let’s not confuse national security with governmental impunity. Yes, the facts he disclosed empowered US voters to take more informed decisions, but isn’t that simply democracy? Yes, there are ethical discussions to be had regarding the legitimacy of unredacted disclosures. But if actual harm had really been caused, how come neither Assange nor Wikileaks ever faced related criminal charges or civil lawsuits for just compensation? But surely, I found myself pleading, Assange must be a selfish narcissist, skateboarding through the Ecuadorian Embassy and smearing feces on the walls? Well, all I heard from Embassy staff is that the inevitable inconveniences of his accommodation at their offices were handled with mutual respect and consideration. This changed only after the election of President Moreno, when they were suddenly instructed to find smears against Assange and, when they didn’t, they were soon replaced. The President even took it upon himself to bless the world with his gossip, and to personally strip Assange of his asylum and citizenship without any due process of law. In the end it finally dawned on me that I had been blinded by propaganda, and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. Once he had been dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide. And thus, a legal precedent is being set, through the backdoor of our own complacency, which in the future can and will be applied just as well to disclosures by The Guardian, the New York Times and ABC News. Very well, you may say, but what does slander have to do with torture? Well, this is a slippery slope. What may look like mere «mudslinging» in public debate, quickly becomes “mobbing” when used against the defenseless, and even “persecution” once the State is involved. Now just add purposefulness and severe suffering, and what you get is full-fledged psychological torture. Yes, living in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard may seem like a sweet deal when you believe the rest of the lies. But when no one remembers the reason for the hate you endure, when no one even wants to hear the truth, when neither the courts nor the media hold the powerful to account, then your refuge really is but a rubber boat in a shark-pool, and neither your cat nor your skateboard will save your life. Even so, you may say, why spend so much breath on Assange, when countless others are tortured worldwide? Because this is not only about protecting Assange, but about preventing a precedent likely to seal the fate of Western democracy. For once telling the truth has become a crime, while the powerful enjoy impunity, it will be too late to correct the course. We will have surrendered our voice to censorship and our fate to unrestrained tyranny. Author’s Note: This Op-Ed has been offered for publication to the Guardian, The Times, the Financial Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, the Canberra Times, the Telegraph, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Newsweek. None responded positively. *** Author Nils Melzer is a Swiss academic, author and practitioner in the field of international law. Since 1 November 2016, Melzer has served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This post has been republished with permission from the author. The original article can be seen here. | 21wire | https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/06/29/nils-melzer-demasking-the-torture-of-julian-assange/ | 2019-06-29 09:25:06+00:00 | 1,561,814,706 | 1,567,537,546 | politics | fundamental rights |
599 | 21stcenturywire--2019-09-14--Trust and Disclosure Are Civil Rights Being Sacrificed on the Altar of Brexit | 2019-09-14T00:00:00 | 21stcenturywire | Trust and Disclosure: Are Civil Rights Being Sacrificed on the Altar of Brexit? | On Monday evening MPs voted to force the UK government to publish all of its no-deal Brexit ‘Yellowhammer‘ documents. A majority vote of 311 to 302 was passed in favour of what is known as a “humble address” to force the government to publish all the Yellowhammer documents available to the cabinet or a cabinet committee since 23rd July, the date Boris Johnson was appointed as Prime Minister. The motion was brought by Tory MP and former cabinet attorney general, Dominic Grieve. In effect, this demanded that the government publish its assessment to show the ‘baseline scenario’ of what would happen if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. On Wednesday evening, the government published the Yellowhammer document described as ‘not a formal cabinet paper’. In addition to demanding the publication of Yellowhammer, Grieve’s humble address motion demanded the publication of all documents relating to the government’s decision to dissolve parliament, otherwise known as “prorogation,” from 10th September to 14th October. Historically speaking, prorogation is a relatively standard government procedure, but the dates for prorogation this year became the subject of a legal battle as MPs accused the government of plotting to shut down parliament in order to avoid scrutiny should it attempt to prepare for a ‘No Deal’ Brexit. The UK Supreme Court is expected to rule on the lawfulness of Johnson’s motive for prorogation next week. The Prorogation documents demanded in Grieve’s humble address include the following: “…all correspondence and other communications (whether formal or informal, in both written and electronic form, including but not limited to messaging services including WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Facebook messenger, private email accounts both encrypted and unencrypted, text messaging and iMessage and the use of both official and personal mobile phones) to, from or within the present administration, since 23 July 2019 relating to the prorogation of Parliament sent or received by one or more of the following individuals: Hugh Bennett, Simon Burton, Dominic Cummings, Nikki da Costa, Tom Irven, Sir Roy Stone, Christopher James, Lee Cain and Beatrice Timpson…” It was Grieve’s view that communications involving the named government advisors, might provide proof that Johnson’s decision to shut down Parliament was a tactic to stop debate in the House of Commons before the Brexit deadline of October 31. Such proof would allow him to demonstrate that Johnson had misled the Queen, who endorsed his decision, so it is believed, on the understanding that a shut down of parliament was in order to introduce a new domestic legislative agenda. The reaction from government Ministers was to reject the MPs’ demands for all documents and internal communications. Grieve’s humble address seems to suggest that the British government (Parliament in this case) maintains such an arbitrary approach to information disclosure. It would seem to be the case that when the status quo is challenged, whether it is through a mischievous leak such as the one around the British ambassador Kim Darroch, or the shattering leaks of truth tellers such as those published by Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks – the political class is poised to crush such publications. On the other hand, we see its eagerness to grab and disseminate at any sources that might bring down elements of its own that seem to have gone rogue. Similar issues about sensitive disclosures and internal government investigations arose the wake of the Huawei Leaks. The outrage over the Darroch leaks led to a parliamentary debate, an opportunistic Foreign Affairs select committee inquiry driving harsher punishments and the launching of an investigation by the Metropolitan Police with threats directed towards the press against publishing diplomatic leaks – under what seemed to be the expanding remit of the Official Secrets Act. Such was the outcry that the contents of a civil servant’s correspondence might be disclosed. The overwhelming principle presented to the public by politicians was that public and civil servants’ space to write what they think should be protected and defended, and this seemed to achieve wide-spread endorsement in parliament, including from Grieve. It should be pointed out that although Grieve’s list comprises names of political advisors, he had originally placed many high level civil servants on it, and had removed them only so that his effort did not look like a fishing expedition, as he explained on Monday. Darroch’s resignation following the leaks led to panic and outrage, which was then closely followed by condemnation of anyone not criticising Trump and defending the civil service, an accusation lobbed at Johnson. Politicians lined up to defend the private space of government servants, some of whom, such as the following, have now supported the move to force advisors to submit their personal and private social media messages for scrutiny: It should be noted that demanding employees hand over personal and private devices could be challenged in court, a point made by the Tory MP and current attorney general, Geoffrey Cox: “I have been listening with great care to my right hon. and learned Friend’s observations and part of his draft Humble Address troubles me. What legal right do the Government have to require their employees to give up private email accounts and personal mobile numbers? If there is no legal right—I imagine he would contend that there is not—how on earth would the Government enforce the Humble Address if they desired to do so? This Humble Address has no binding legal effect on individuals. It potentially has a binding effect on the Government, if they observe it, but not on individuals. There seems to be a risk that it will trespass upon the fundamental rights of individuals, as it is currently drafted” If this is the case, it can be viewed with some irony that this address was passed on the same night that Jeremy Corbyn also passed a humble address to force Johnson to say he would abide by the rule of law (amid suggestions he might try to get around new legislation mandating him to request a three-month delay to Brexit if there is no deal by 19 October). One question arising from this might be: how can lawmakers who claim to have such passion in the law that they pass a motion to force adherence to it, also vote for a motion that might not be legal, when this is pointed out to them? An attempt at justifying this was made during the debate by Labour MP Kevin Brannon: “Is it a point of order or a point of information to point out that the Prime Minister’s special adviser, Dominic Cummings, asked to examine the private text messages on the telephone of a Government employee?” As if the apparent unacceptable behaviour of one individual justifies the potential breaching of rights of the individual by parliament? It should be remembered that Grieve was the attorney general when Julian Assange was being hunted by the British and Swedish prosecuting services. Regarding the decision by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNGWAD) that Assange was being arbitrarily detained in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Grieve commented: “...the suggestion that he has been the subject of arbitrariness seemed to be very far fetched.” “What it effectively says in relation to the United Kingdom is that we ought no longer to be extraditing Mr Assange to Sweden because in 2014 we changed our own laws under the anti-social behaviour, crime and policing act to change some of rules on which extradition should take place, and you’ll appreciate … it doesn’t apply retrospectively.” What Grieve fails to mention is that the law was changed because European arrest warrants were being issued abusively. Assange’s legal challenge exposed British judges jumping through hoops to legitimise his abusive arrest warrant. Not making changes to the law retrospective – when Assange’s case was clearly covered by the changes – made no sense other than to ensure Assange could not walk out of the Ecuadorian embassy without being arrested. Here we can see Grieve’s own arbitrary approach to the issue, that potential infringements of rights is a small sacrifice if order is to be established: “If I may say so, picking up on the earlier point that he made, I was just a little bit surprised. Of course he may argue that the Government cannot get this information, but No. 10 Downing Street is saying is that it will not even seek or try to provide it. This again is absolutely illustrative of the slide we are experiencing towards a Government that will not respect the conventions, without which orderly government in this country cannot take place.” We should remember the type of justice Grieve defends; the one he offered Assange in 2016 – when he suggested that if he left the embassy he: “…would have the full protection of our English legal system …” Another ‘man of law’ backing the inspection of personal communication was Labour Shadow Brexit Minister Keir Starmer, former head of the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS). Freedom of information requests made by the Italian news outlet La Repubblica, have revealed that at the time Starmer was director, the CPS worked closely with the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) and that certain CPS emails were in fact deleted. The result was at the very least the partial erasure of the trail of evidence showing why Swedish prosecutors hung the arrest warrant over Assange for so many years but failed to interview him, a factor leading to the UNGWAD decision of arbitrary detention. “I am sad to say that it is the basic lack of trust that now exists between this House and the Executive.” Where the political class is concerned, trust, disclosure and transparency would appear to be heavily linked to usefulness. Neither of the legal big wigs appear concerned for the legalities around acquiring private data from personal devices; do they think we will be blinded by the drama of Brexit and scheming by right-wing individuals that we might waive civil rights and legal protections? What is to stop a repeat of their potentially precedent-setting move that could be imposed more widely next time, in the name of ‘order,’ or directed at a popular dissenting leader on the receiving end of allegations? How is it that political leaders, heads of the UK’s legal system, can appear to dismiss such concerns when their narratives are grounded in law and order? We have seen how the long road to Belmarsh prison is paved with the same rhetoric. The response from government to the Grieve address is here. *** Author Nina Cross is an independent writer and researcher, and contributor to 21WIRE. To see more of her work, visit Nina’s archive. | Nina Cross | https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/09/14/trust-and-disclosure-are-civil-rights-being-sacrificed-on-the-altar-of-brexit/ | 2019-09-14 12:41:28+00:00 | 1,568,479,288 | 1,569,330,301 | politics | fundamental rights |
3,654 | activistpost--2019-01-01--Mother Of Detained Journalist Julian Assange And WikiLeaks Call On Journalists And Supporters To Pro | 2019-01-01T00:00:00 | activistpost | Mother Of Detained Journalist Julian Assange And WikiLeaks Call On Journalists And Supporters To Protest In Times Square On New Year’s Eve | Recently, WikiLeaks highlighted that its founder and former editor Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained 8+ years without charge by the UK Govt (6+ years within the Ecuador Embassy in London where he was granted asylum from U.S. threats) and 2 years house arrest, despite two UN rulings stating he should be allowed to walk free. The mother of Julian Assange, Christine, and WikiLeaks are calling on supporters in New York City to flood the streets of Times Square tonight — #BootsOnTheGround4Julian — in protest for her son on New Year’s Eve to highlight Assange’s current situation in the Ecuadorian embassy and “celebrate press freedom” at a planned event in NYC for journalists when the ball drops at midnight. Tonight at midnight, Press Freedom Celebrations will be held on the main stage at Times Square where well-known journalists will be invited to take part in an event. Christine Assange, WikiLeaks, and Unity4J are calling for protests to bring light to Julian Assange’s current plight, including asking journalists who are attending the event to stand up for their imprisoned colleague Julian Assange by holding/wearing a sign in his support. It’s been suggested that signs may be removed by police so users on Twitter are recommending putting written messages on a pillowcase to still be able to display support for Julian Assange. In November of this year, Christine Assange used Unity4J to urge officials to allow access to medical attention for her son, and for the UK and Ecuador to end Assange’s illegal detainment that is heading into the 9th year (2 years of virtual house arrest, into 7th year confined inside the Ecuadorian embassy) without charge as determined by the UN. For the past 6 years in the embassy, the UK government has refused Assange’s request for access to basic health needs: fresh air, exercise, sunshine for vitamin D and access to proper medical and dental care according to Christine Assange and Julian Assange’s lawyer, Greg Barns. As a result, his health has seriously deteriorated; and his examining doctors warn these detention conditions are life-threatening. “The slow and cruel assassination is taking place before our very eyes in the embassy in London,” Christine expressed. Assange’s doctor, Sean Love, has previously stated in an opinion piece that depriving him of medical care is “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” Adding, “It is time for Australia to intervene.” Other doctors who examined Assange, Sondra Crosby, an associate professor at Boston University’s school of medicine and public health, and Brock Chisholm, a clinical psychologist in London have stated much the same. All three called on safe passage for Assange to a hospital in an article for the Guardian, they wrote: The above health concerns are coupled with surveillance technology that was a requirement for Assange to remain in the embassy, including signal jammers and all of the additional technology that is emitting various electromagnetic waves. Assange’s doctors recently examined him as the mainstream press is too busy pushing salacious and baseless lies pushed by the Guardian (likely linked to CIA intelligence) that conform to the “Russia hacked the election” narrative about Assange meeting with Paul Manafort. Many so-called journalists are too busy to care about their colleague, which now Democrats are using the lies printed by the Guardian to demand Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pressure Ecuador to hand over logs of all Assange’s personal, legal and other visitors to the embassy, as WikiLeaks noted. A lawyer for Assange stated he did not know the results of the medical tests, while further calling on Ecuador to produce documentation proving that the UK would not extradite him to any country where his life would be at risk. Most notably, an at-risk country would be the United States, which WikiLeaks noted just tortured a former CIA agent and suspected alleged WikiLeaks Vault 7 leaker Joshua Schulte by bolting him to the floor, video-monitoring and strip-searching him. Which, if we are being honest, if they got their hands on Assange, would probably do much of the same except 100x worse to the WikiLeaks founder for exposing numerous crimes by the U.S. government through various releases over the years. “We insist that they show us the letter from the United Kingdom,” Assange’s lawyer, Carlos Poveda said. Adding, “the protocol is meant to set the rules of his living situation, but it seems more like a penitentiary regime.” Allegations against Assange in Sweden have long been dropped, and he is facing only a minor infraction in the UK for failing to turn up to a court hearing, a police bail warrant. The warrant issued in question arose 12 days after Julian entered the Ecuador Embassy seeking asylum from U.S. threats against his life and liberty. So that warrant should never have been issued in the first place, as Asylum/international law overrides domestic (UK) law. Instead, the Bail warrant should have been dropped after Sweden dropped its preliminary investigation and Julian wasn’t charged as the warrant was attached to the European Arrest Warrant on that case. Assange’s health isn’t the only topic Christine touched on; she also detailed at a recent press release by WikiLeaks which noted that Ecuador’s former President, Rafael Correa (whose administration granted Assange political asylum), said that the current U.S. Trump administration is “trying to break him psychologically” and that a deal had been struck during Pence’s visit to Ecuador earlier this year. This news comes as Ecuador is being pressured to end Assange’s asylum and citizenship so he can be arrested by British police and extradited to the U.S. to presumably face charges under the Espionage Act — the federal law often used to punish whistleblowers. This is due to the fact that under the Ecuadorian constitution extradition is forbidden. Although, Lenín Moreno made comments on a radio interview stating that “Britain had provided sufficient guarantees that the WikiLeaks founder won’t be extradited to face the death penalty abroad in the U.S.,” Associated Press reported. Moreno further added that a deal had been reached between London and Quito to allow Assange to leave. “The way has been cleared for Assange to take the decision to leave in near-liberty,” Moreno said, failing to expand on what exactly “near-liberty” means in context. One can only speculate what that means for Assange … and it’s not good news. Assange has denied the agreement through his lawyer, Barry Pollack, who told The Telegraph that the “deal was not acceptable.” The facts are contrary to what Moreno stated; the real truth is that Ecuador is trying to sell out Assange in a “deal” with the U.S. for debt relief loans, as WikiLeaks tweeted. In October, lawyers for Julian Assange — specifically, Baltasar Garzón, a lawyer for WikiLeaks — also sued Ecuador, accusing the government of violating Assange’s “fundamental rights and freedoms.” WikiLeaks claims Assange’s access to the outside world has been “summarily cut off” and stated Ecuador has threatened to remove all protection given to his person that he has been granted when he was accepted into a political asylum if he doesn’t abide by Orwellian guidelines. Lawyers for Assange have said they will also challenge the legality of the Ecuador government’s “special protocols,” which make his political asylum contingent upon “censoring” his own freedom of opinion, speech, and association, as well as violate Assange’s property and his visitors without any just warrant. Britain is far from providing “sufficient guarantees.” In fact, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, dared Assange to walk out of the Ecuadorian embassy earlier this year. He further let comments slip alluding to an active investigation when he said that Assange was facing “serious charges.” That article was then deleted and absent from News.com.au’s website and others, Activist Post reported. In November, the U.S. accidentally revealed sealed charges it had against Assange, so it’s a far-fetched lie to state “Assange won’t be extradited to face the death penalty.” The truth is no one knows what the U.S. has planned for Assange if somehow they got their hands on him in a U.S. court. Who knows what the sentencing would be. What’s for certain is that they would surely try to make an example out of him. In June 2018, a letter to UK Home office Member of Parliament Zac Goldsmith revealed that the government would not confirm whether it has received an extradition request from the U.S. until Assange is arrested in relation to that request according to Assange Legal. As such, the Trump administration is threatening to step over a never-crossed line – applying the secret documents provision of the Espionage Act to journalistic practices, according to the EFF, which last year condemned the threats of prosecution against WikiLeaks and Assange. Assange’s situation is getting worse with each passing day between his health and the isolation without charge, which according to Human Rights Watch General Counsel Dinah PoKempner his conditions to stay at the embassy are looking more and more like solitary confinement. Which Assange has been barred from visitors and prevented internet access for almost a year, while he has never been allowed to exit the embassy for some sunshine. | Aaron | https://www.activistpost.com/2018/12/christine-assange-wikileaks-call-supporters-protest-times-square-on-news-years-eve-to-celebrate-press-freedom-and-freeassange.html | 2019-01-01 00:21:39+00:00 | 1,546,320,099 | 1,567,554,287 | politics | fundamental rights |
3,769 | activistpost--2019-01-16--Anonymous Pirates and Activists Challenge Articles 11 12a 13 With Stop ACTA 2 Protests January 19 | 2019-01-16T00:00:00 | activistpost | Anonymous, Pirates and Activists Challenge Articles 11, 12a, 13 With Stop ACTA 2 Protests January 19th Across Europe | The European Union is attempting to censor the Internet with several new initiatives called Article 11, 12a, and 13 while numerous other Articles are pending to be drafted that could affect your Internet freedom rights. These Articles will have legal implications that will break the Internet as we know it. Not only will they include an “upload filter” if passed to block copyrighted (or unwanted) content from being uploaded on the Internet, it will also be impossible to link to source material, including educational content and even memes. Yes, memes, the EU is coming for your memes, hide your meme stash! Pending Articles like 12a, for example, will make it illegal to upload any personal video from a sporting event because the copyright will be fully to those hosting or sponsoring the event. It is a shocking contention that it could be criminal to record your beloved sports team or showcase a short snippet of a video of your favorite play from a game. Meanwhile, Article 13 is designed to make website owners responsible for the content that users post on their websites, effectively forcing website owners to move behind an upload filter to protect themselves against huge claims by copyright owners and agencies that work on their behalf like the MPAA and RIAA. Article 11 is an even worse concept. That has been dubbed the “link tax” article; if passed, linking to any copyrighted material is taxed upon. Imagine wanting to link to a news article because you want to have a free discussion about it? Under the law, you the user may now need to pay to link the article of copyrighted material — absolute insanity! This is something that “will destroy our internet, And we cannot accept it. So we are fighting back. Activists, hacktivists and pirates are now uniting under the banner of StopACTA2,” Anonymous Bites Back writes. Anonymous Bites Back further expresses that the radio show hosted by Anons is in “full support of the (street) protests against these Orwellian moves to censor the internet. We have had several episodes about this subject already, and we plan to join the protesters on the street and broadcast live to our network.” There are no leaders in Anonymous like the feds think; everyone networks and works together for common like-minded causes, be it hunting pedophiles, animal abusers, domestic terrorists or uniting together to stop previous laws against the Internet like ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, CISPA and the cleverly named never forgotten CISPA 2.0, or numerous anti-war actions just to name a few of the collective’s operations over the years. There are no specific goals for the collective; there is, however, an overarching desire to combat censorship, promote freedom of speech, and counter government control within the collective. While anti-oppression and supporting whistleblowers seems to be something most can agree on. Years before 2011, Anonymous became known as the government’s and Internet’s final boss. (You just lost the game!) Anonymous actions have been taken against Sony, HB Gary, Aaron Barr, Operation Payback, and protests against organizations like Westboro Baptist, Church Of Scientology, and various governments worldwide including Iran, Egypt, Australia, and Ireland to name a few of those targeted in early Ops. Utilizing a number of techniques such as digital web sit-ins (DoS attacks) with LOIC (sending HTTP header requests to sites), “rudimentary exploits,”,d0xing and sometimes the more extreme hacking of a database and leaking of its tables and contents for the Lulz. Meanwhile, for those who support the idea of Anonymous decentralization, government transparency, and freedom for everyone, the march is seen as days to meet, trek, network and form ideas with like minds, leaving behind hacktivist deeds that individuals of the collective might (or might not) have taken part in. (You do not talk about fight club; rule 9001 of the Internet – everyone is a fed, don’t brag.) We urgently ask you to do everything in your power to support the StopACTA2 movement, that is coordinated by the Polish StopACTA2 crew and the crew of Anonymous Worldwide and many others including Pirate Parties International with its co-chair Bailey Lamon and board member Raymond Johansen. Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda notes that users will be responsible and liable for any copyright infringements they make on Internet platforms. “The negotiators have reached agreement on the core of Article 13, which will change the internet as we know it: They want to make internet platforms directly liable for any copyright infringements their users commit,” Reda notes. European Parliament is expected to finalize the final text of Article 13, which is part of the EU’s copyright reform law by Monday, Torrent Freak reported. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warns that the proposed policies will increase censorship and surveillance throughout Europe creating a stasi state. The digital rights organization specifically calls on people from Germany, Sweden, Poland, and Luxembourg, to speak out. “Your national government depends on your goodwill to win the votes to continue its mandate. This is a rare moment in European lawmaking when local connections from citizens matter more than well-funded, international corporations,” EFF writes. Supporters of the fight against ACTA 2 include wolnemedia, SoMee. Social, Bitchute, Presearch, blogmedia24, Anonym ous Bites Back, wykop, polskapartiapirat ow, Pirate Parties International, kontestacja, H ackread.com, inspro, Stowarzys zenie Libertarianskie, Anonymous Info Army Poland, and Anon Ops Poland according to the StopActa2.org website. Numerous other organizations and individuals are coming out and speaking about the negotiations of Articles 11, 12a and 13 and what’s fundamentally wrong with them. Already, 54 NGOs including the EFF and 40 academics have issued separate open letters to the EU Council stating these “texts risk creating severe impediments” or the Internet and its users. The NGOs declared that the implementation of article 11 is both unnecessary, as well as a risk to a majority of media and hinders the ability of users to share information. Similarly, they note that article 13’s requirement for “error-prone, intrusive and legally questionable” upload filters represent a threat to fundamental rights, leading to the blocking of legitimate content. Academics have expressed much of the same concerns when rumors began that the EU was discussing the potential copywrong policies in 2016. However, scholars note they are doubtful of “CJEU case law and its reference to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and whether Article 13 of the proposed copyright Directive is actually proportionate, even if Article 17(2) of the European Charter provides that intellectual property shall be protected, as Article 17(2) does not have the same beneficiary basis as Articles 7 and 11. Articles 7 and 11 of the European Charter are fundamental pillars of any democratic society. Copyright infringements should not be put too quickly in the same category as serious crimes such as child pornography.” Last month, a more than 4 million strong petition of Internet users and businesses was sent to the European Parliament calling for an end to the ACTA 2 proposals in the various Articles for “reforming digital copyright law.” EFF notes that the petition was created because the law will inevitably lead to the creation of algorithmic copyright filters that only US Big Tech companies can afford (making the field less competitive and thus harder for working artists to negotiate better deals in) and because these filters will censor enormous quantities of legitimate material, thanks to inevitable algorithmic errors and abuse. Creative Sectors are also calling for a suspension of negotiations on Article 13 with 14 organizations calling for its halt according to Creative Refresh another group supporting a “free and open Internet.” Creative Sectors Call for a suspension of negotiations on Article 13 #SaveYourInternet The first wave of street protests in at least 20 different cities in 15 countries are being planned and prepared for January 19, 2019 all across Europe. Share this article, organize together amongst one another and send a message, show the powers-that-be that the Internet belongs to the people and not the corporations or the power-hungry elites that seek to profit off of the free sharing of information. On social media, supporters are using the following hashtags for digital protests — #stopACTA2, #CopyrightDirective, #SaveYourInternet, #SaveTheInternet, #Article11, #Article13, #UploadFilters, #LinkTax, #Filternet, #ACTA2 #Anonymous. You can find out more information by visiting StopActa2.org a website being run to support operation Stop Acta 2. The website will be kept up to date with a full list of the existing protest locations. Are you an experienced organizer who wants to help organize in Europe for protesting against ACTA 2? Then contact [email protected] for any information, or if you want to start your own protest. As this article details, the cards are stacked against European MEPs; the more presence they see from we the people, the further they might listen instead of passing a dual draconian Orwellian law that threatens Internet freedoms. Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Minds, Steemit, SoMee, BitChute, Facebook and Twitter. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets. | Aaron | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/01/anonymous-pirates-and-activists-challenge-articles-11-12a-13-with-stop-acta-2-protests-january-19th-across-europe.html | 2019-01-16 02:15:03+00:00 | 1,547,622,903 | 1,567,552,135 | politics | fundamental rights |
4,108 | activistpost--2019-02-21--The Final Version of Europes Meme Ban is Here and Its Worse Than We Thought | 2019-02-21T00:00:00 | activistpost | The Final Version of Europe’s “Meme Ban” is Here and It’s Worse Than We Thought | A wide-ranging and draconian set of new rules in the European Union (EU) known as the Copyright Directive may end up destroying the Internet as we know it. If Brussels has its way, everything from memes to alternative news and a range of Internet past-times could be rendered a thing of the past. The EU has already agreed on the final wording of the new copyright rules, which will see online platforms held liable for any sort of copyright violation, doing away with elementary notions of what could constitute “Fair Use” and transforming the way in which Internet users share information online. While monopolist Internet companies like Google and Amazon surely wield far too much power, the Euro bureaucrats’ attempt to force the proposed rules onto platforms constitutes what Internet experts call “an unprecedented step towards the transformation of the Internet, from an open platform for sharing and innovation, into a tool for the automated surveillance and control of its users.” At the heart of the new directive, which is expected to be passed despite widespread public outcry, are two specific parts that have riled up critics and threaten to chill the sharing of music, memes and news articles. Article 11 of the rule, dubbed the “link tax,” would effectively force news aggregators including Google News, Bing, Yahoo and others to get a license from news publishers to link articles while also compensating publishers. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): “Article 11, which allows news sites to decide who can link to their stories and charge for permission to do so, has also been worsened. The final text clarifies that any link that contains more than ‘single words or very short extracts’ from a news story must be licensed, with no exceptions for noncommercial users, nonprofit projects, or even personal websites with ads or other income sources, no matter how small.” Article 13 has been described as the “meme ban” provision of the Copyright Directive, and would see major platforms screen all uploads to prevent any form of copyright infringement. According to the article, “online content sharing service providers and right holders shall cooperate in good faith in order to ensure that unauthorized protected works or other subject matter are not available on their services.” What this means, however, is that in order to protect their own assets, websites that are older than three years old that host user-generated content (like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, among others), regardless of size, would be forced to crack down on content lest they face legal liability for material seen as infringing on copyrights. As a number of privacy watchdogs and civil liberties advocacy groups said in a letter to EU policy-makers, Article 13 would force “obligations on internet companies that would be impossible to respect without the imposition of excessive restrictions on citizens’ fundamental rights.” | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/02/the-final-version-of-europes-meme-ban-is-here-and-its-worse-than-we-thought.html | 2019-02-21 18:00:31+00:00 | 1,550,790,031 | 1,567,547,732 | politics | fundamental rights |
4,265 | activistpost--2019-03-19--Activists Speak Out Against Iraqs Cybercrime Bill | 2019-03-19T00:00:00 | activistpost | Activists Speak Out Against Iraq’s Cybercrime Bill | Human rights groups and activists are urging the Iraqi parliament to withdraw a controversial cybercrime bill that would greatly restrict freedom of expression online, if adopted. The bill imposes long prison sentences for speech-related offences that are only vaguely defined in the text of the bill. Article 3 prescribes a lifetime prison sentence and steep fines for those convicted of using “computers and the internet” to “undermine the independence, the integrity and safety of the country, or its supreme economic, political, military, or security interests” or to “provoke sectarian strife, disturbing the security and public order, or harming the reputation of the country.” Articles 4 and 6 impose the same punishments for those convicted of promoting ”terrorist acts and ideas” (Art. 4) or “publish[ing] or broadcast[ing] false or misleading facts with the intention of weakening confidence in the electronic financial system” (Art. 6.) Earlier this year, the Gulf Centre for Human Rights warned: Internet-related rights are already on shaky ground in Iraq. Last summer, authorities responded to protests denouncing corruption and dire living conditions in Basra and other cities by shutting down the Internet. If adopted, the bill will only make it harder for Iraqis to exercise their rights to communicate, speak freely and access information online. Earlier this month, nine human rights groups including AccessNow, Amnesty International and the the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights published a statement urging the Iraqi parliament to withdraw the bill: …the law will result in Internet users becoming fearful of exercising their fundamental rights and freedoms online, and will empty the right to freedom of expression of its substance. The law would also have far-reaching effects on the enjoyment of the rights to freedom of information as well as the right to participation in public affairs in Iraq. The parliament was scheduled to debate the bill on March 14, but it was later removed from the day’s schedule. On Twitter, the official account for the Iraqi Council of Representatives thanked those who contacted it to “criticise some laws,” but did not specify which laws. Rights groups and activists welcomed this response, but they remain wary. It remains unclear if the parliament will introduce changes to the bill or when it will be scheduled for debate again. Afef Abrougui is Advox Editor for the Middle East and North Africa This article was sourced from GlobalVoices.org | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/03/activists-speak-out-against-iraqs-cybercrime-bill.html | 2019-03-19 15:35:53+00:00 | 1,553,024,153 | 1,567,545,587 | politics | fundamental rights |
4,641 | activistpost--2019-05-13--French Activists Successfully Block Saudi Ship From Loading Weapons | 2019-05-13T00:00:00 | activistpost | French Activists Successfully Block Saudi Ship From Loading Weapons | (CD) — A human rights organization called it a “victory for mobilized civil society” when a Saudi cargo ship left France on Friday without a planned batch of weapons. France, along with other Western countries including the U.S. and U.K., has been supplying arms to Saudi Arabia, which is leading the coalition bombing Yemen. In so doing, say human rights campaigners, they “risk complicity in committing grave violations of the laws of war.” Leaked classified French military documents published last month showed that French weapons are being widely used in the coalition’s bombing campaign “including in civilian zones.” The conflict has already killed thousands of civilians. Fearing that the new shipment of weapons could be used against the Yemeni civilian population, French rights group Christians for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT-France) filed a legal challenge Thursday to block a new batch of French weapons from being loaded onto the Saudi vessel the Bahri Yanbu at the French port city of Le Havre. The ship had been anchored 15 miles offshore since late Wednesday. The weapons, said ACAT, would violate one article of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty. “The article says that one country cannot authorize the transfer of weapons, if at the time of the authorization, the country knew that weapons could be used to commit war crimes,” said lawyer Joseph Brehem, speaking on behalf of ACAT. While ACAT didn’t win their case, the ship nonetheless did not dock to pick up the shipment, but instead moved on to Spain. A French judge threw out that legal challenge but the Bahri-Yanbu set course for Santander shortly after minus the weapons, officials said and ship-tracking data showed. The saga is an embarrassment for [French] President Emmanuel Macron, who on Thursday defended arms sales to Saudi Arabia. ACAT-France praised the development, saying that it happened not as a result from a judge but because of an activated citizenry who sounded alarm about the weapons. It’s clear, said Bernadette Forhan, president of the organization, “that French civil society can constitute a real opposition force to international interests that undermine the fundamental rights of millions of people.” Provide, Protect and Profit in unstable times! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/french-activists-successfully-block-saudi-ship-from-loading-weapons.html | 2019-05-13 12:55:17+00:00 | 1,557,766,517 | 1,567,540,773 | politics | fundamental rights |
5,330 | activistpost--2019-08-21--Facial Recognition 10 Reasons You Should Be Worried About The Technology | 2019-08-21T00:00:00 | activistpost | Facial Recognition: 10 Reasons You Should Be Worried About The Technology | Facial recognition technology is spreading fast. Already widespread in China, software that identifies people by comparing images of their faces against a database of records is now being adopted across much of the rest of the world. It’s common among police forces but has also been used at airports, railway stations and shopping centres. The rapid growth of this technology has triggered a much-needed debate. Activists, politicians, academics and even police forces are expressing serious concerns over the impact facial recognition could have on a political culture based on rights and democracy. As someone who researches the future of human rights, I share these concerns. Here are ten reasons why we should worry about the use of facial recognition technology in public spaces. 1) It puts us on a path towards automated blanket surveillance CCTV is already widespread around the world, but for governments to use footage against you they have to find specific clips of you doing something they can claim as evidence. Facial recognition technology brings monitoring to new levels. It enables the automated and indiscriminate live surveillance of people as they go about their daily business, giving authorities the chance to track your every move. 2) It operates without a clear legal or regulatory framework Most countries have no specific legislation that regulates the use of facial recognition technology, although some lawmakers are trying to change this. This legal limbo opens the door to abuse, such as obtaining our images without our knowledge or consent and using them in ways we would not approve of. 3) It violates the principles of necessity and proportionality A commonly stated human rights principle, recognised by organisations from the UN to the London Policing Ethics Panel, is that surveillance should be necessary and proportionate. This means surveillance should be restricted to the pursuit of serious crime instead of enabling the unjustified interference into our liberty and fundamental rights. Facial recognition technology is at odds with these principles. It is a technology of control that is symptomatic of the state’s mistrust of its citizens. 4) It violates our right to privacy The right to privacy matters, even in public spaces. It protects the expression of our identity without uncalled-for intrusion from the state or from private companies. Facial recognition technology’s indiscriminate and large-scale recording, storing and analysing of our images undermines this right because it means we can no longer do anything in public without the state knowing about it. 5) It has a chilling effect on our democratic political culture Blanket surveillance can deter individuals from attending public events. It can stifle participation in political protests and campaigns for change. And it can discourage nonconformist behaviour. This chilling effect is a serious infringement on the right to freedom of assembly, association, and expression. 6) It denies citizens the opportunity for consent There is a lack of detailed and specific information as to how facial recognition is actually used. This means that we are not given the opportunity to consent to the recording, analysing and storing of our images in databases. By denying us the opportunity to consent, we are denied choice and control over the use of our own images. 7) It is often inaccurate Facial recognition technology promises accurate identification. But numerous studies have highlighted how the algorithms trained on racially biased data sets misidentify people of colour, especially women of colour. Such algorithmic bias is particularly worrying if it results in unlawful arrests, or if it leads public agencies and private companies to discriminate against women and people from minority ethnic backgrounds. 8) It can lead to automation bias If the people using facial recognition software mistakenly believe that the technology is infallible, it can lead to bad decisions. This “automation bias” must be avoided. Machine-generated outcomes should not determine how state agencies or private corporations treat individuals. Trained human operators must exercise meaningful control and take decisions based in law. 9) It implies there are secret government watchlists | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/08/facial-recognition-10-reasons-you-should-be-worried-about-the-technology.html | 2019-08-21 14:12:52+00:00 | 1,566,411,172 | 1,567,533,793 | politics | fundamental rights |
5,749 | activistpost--2019-10-01--Whats the Big Problem With Facial Recognition | 2019-10-01T00:00:00 | activistpost | What’s the Big Problem With Facial Recognition? | The Oakland City Council recently gave final approval to an ordinance banning facial recognition in that city. This is part of a broader movement at the state and local level to ban outright or at least limit this invasive surveillance technology. So, what’s the big problem with facial recognition? In the first place, it’s just not very accurate, especially when reading African American and other minority facial features. It gets it wrong a lot of the time. This isn’t just theoretical musing. During a test run by the ACLU of Northern California, facial recognition misidentified 26 members of the California legislature as people in a database of arrest photos. But as ACLU attorney Matt Cagle said, this isn’t a problem that can be fixed by tweaking an algorithm. There are more fundamental issues with facial recognition. Government use of facial recognition technology for identifying and tracking people en masse flies in the face of both the Fourth Amendment and constitutional provisions protecting privacy in every state constitution. Berkeley, California, City Councilmember Kate Harrison is pushing for a facial recognition ban in her city. In her recommendation of the ordinance, she pointed out the inherent constitutional problem with facial recognition. It eliminates the human and judicial element behind the existing warrant system by which governments must prove that planned surveillance is both constitutional and sufficiently narrow to protect targets’ and bystanders’ fundamental rights to privacy while also simultaneously providing the government with the ability to exercise its duties. Facial recognition technology automates the search, seizure and analysis process that was heretofore pursued on a narrow basis through stringent constitutionally-established and human-centered oversight in the judiciary branch. Due to the inherent dragnet nature of facial recognition technology, governments cannot reasonably support by oath or affirmation the particular persons or things to be seized. The programmatic automation of surveillance fundamentally undermines the community’s liberty. Facial recognition puts every person who crosses its path into a perpetual lineup without any probable cause. It tramples restrictions on government power intended to protect our right to privacy. It feeds into the broader federal surveillance state. And at its core, it does indeed fundamentally undermine liberty. Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center, where this article first appeared. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com and like him on Facebook HERE Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Follow us on Minds, Twitter, Steemit, and SoMee. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month. Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/10/whats-the-big-problem-with-facial-recognition.html | 2019-10-01 16:24:00+00:00 | 1,569,961,440 | 1,570,221,805 | politics | fundamental rights |
5,885 | activistpost--2019-10-16--India Partially Lifts Communications Blackout in Kashmir, Internet Still Down | 2019-10-16T00:00:00 | activistpost | India Partially Lifts Communications Blackout in Kashmir, Internet Still Down | Indian authorities have partially lifted access to communication networks in Kashmir. Access to the internet, however, remains cut off. On August 5, Srinagar, the main city in Jammu and Kashmir, went under complete lockdown as the government of India revoked Article 370 of the Indian constitution that provided special autonomy status since 1950 to the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. Access to mobile, landline, and internet networks were suspended and roadblocks were put on the streets and restrictions on almost all movement were enforced. he authorities eased up the restrictions in phases. They first restored all 50,000 landlines in the region by the first week of September. On October 14, after 72 days from the lockdown, the authorities restored SMS and call services for postpaid mobile subscriptions. However, prepaid mobile connections and internet services are still suspended. According to the Telegraph India, there are about 400,000 post-paid phones connections and 260,000 prepaid connections in the region. The government did not provide an explanation as to why it restored access to call and SMS services for only postpaid subscriptions. However, this decision could be explained by the fact that users of prepaid subscriptions are harder to track and monitor since unlike users of postpaid subscriptions, they are not required to submit personal data that make it easier for the authorities to identify them such as bank details and mailing address. Satya Pal Malik, the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir has claimed that “the situation is normal as there had been no violence since two months”. The minister defended the blackout as a measure to protect the “safety of Kashmiris” and said that access to the internet “will soon be restored”, without specifying when. Despite the easing of restrictions, the authorities soon resorted to disrupting access to SMS services for postpaid subscriptions. During the night of October 15, text messaging services were disrupted in Jammu and Kashmir when a truck driver was killed by suspected armed rebels who then set the truck ablaze. The services were restored after a few hours. Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research commented that the restrictions on mobile communications were placed to limit the activities of militants, who usually coordinate attacks over phones. However, Kashmiris are paying the price as the tourism business which depends on the internet had literally stopped. The restrictions also hamper Kashmiris’ rights to express themselves and access to information online, and prevent them from connecting and sharing with the rest of the world what is happening on the ground. According to Internetshutdowns.in, 55 shutdowns were imposed in jammu and Kashmir in 2019. The longest shutdown was observed in Jammu and Kashmir was in 2016 when mobile internet services were suspended for 133 days. Indian Supreme Court lawyer Nitya Ramakrishnan, and Nandini Sundar, a professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economic visited Kashmir from October 5 to 9, 2019. They mentioned in a report after their visit that Kashmiris are resisting the actions imposed by the Indian Central Government “through satyagraha or non-violent civil disobedience”. They also added that since the entire leadership is in confinement – from mainstream political parties to separatist leaders – the disobedience is entirely voluntary. They both claimed that “almost every single person wanted azadi or freedom”. The Indian government claims that restrictions on freedom of movement have been lifted in most of Kashmir, barring a few areas and that restrictions on tourists visiting the region have been lifted. The spokesperson for state government Rohit Kansal also stated that internet facilities will be opened at “touristic spots”. In an interview with India Today, the Indian Home Minister Amit Shah said that the situation is “peaceful” and “returning to normal” in Jammu and Kashmir. However, On October 15, 2019, authorities arrested 13 women for holding an anti-India protest in a park in Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir. They were carrying placards reading “Respect Fundamental Rights” and “Why downgrade Jammu and Kashmir”. On October 3, journalists from the Kashmir Valley staged a silent demonstration in Srinagar to protest the ongoing communication blockade. Meanwhile, a few sporadic protests against the clampdown were held across India: | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/10/india-partially-lifts-communications-blackout-in-kashmir-internet-still-down.html | Wed, 16 Oct 2019 20:42:32 +0000 | 1,571,272,952 | 1,571,264,010 | politics | fundamental rights |
6,416 | activistpost--2019-12-30--Activists Worldwide Face Off Against Face Recognition: 2019 Year in Review | 2019-12-30T00:00:00 | activistpost | Activists Worldwide Face Off Against Face Recognition: 2019 Year in Review | We’ve all heard the expression, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” We might hope that what we do and where we go will only be known to those who were there in person. Yet maintaining such anonymity and privacy in public spaces is becoming ever more difficult. 2019 has marked the year where a growing digital rights network around the world is pushing back against governments and companies’ use of face recognition technologies in public spaces. This year, in an attempt to prevent people from having their movement and actions meticulously tracked, these activists took action against face recognition in countries all over the world. Ban on Mass Use of Face Recognition Digital rights activists have long argued that face recognition constitutes mass surveillance when used to track the movements of entire populations in public spaces by matching faces obtained from CCTV cameras, drones or other devices against existing databases. In October, more than 90 NGOs and hundreds of experts gathered in Albania at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners and called for a global moratorium on mass surveillance by face recognition. The Public Voice coalition urged countries to review all face recognition systems “to determine whether personal data was obtained lawfully and to destroy data that was obtained unlawfully.” In addition, the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union (FRA) has also published a paper recognizing that “given the novelty of the technology as well as the lack of experience and detailed studies on the impact of facial recognition technologies, multiple aspects are key to consider before deploying such a system in real-life applications”. It further said that “[f]orms of facial recognition that involve a very high degree of intrusion into fundamental rights, compromising the inviolable essential core of one or more fundamental rights, are unlawful.” And the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, David Kaye, called for an immediate moratorium on the sale, transfer, and use of surveillance technology, including face recognition, until legal frameworks are established that meet human rights standards. In Russia, Roskomsvoboda launched a campaign calling for a moratorium on government mass use of face recognition until the technology’s effects are studied and the government adopts legal safeguards that protect sensitive data. In the United Kingdom, 25 NGOs including Big Brother Watch, Article 19, Open Rights Group, and Privacy International called on U.K. police and private companies to immediately stop using live face recognition for public surveillance. In 2016 and 2018, face recognition trials in London erroneously identified individuals as potential criminals in 96 percent of scans, a pervasively high rate of false-positive matches. Also this year, Big Brother Watch launched a legal challenge against the London Metropolitan Police and the Home Secretary to demand an immediate end to the police’s use of live face recognition. In France, La Quadrature du Net (LQDN) called for a ban on the mass use of face recognition to identify protesters. In the last six years, the French government has adopted several decrees—without any public debate—that allow for automatic identification of protesters. And in the United States, local activists took up the fight against face recognition by successfully passing face recognition bans at the city level. Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Somerville, Massachusetts all passed bans on government use of face recognition technology. Earlier this year, California prohibited the use of face recognition on law enforcement body-worn cameras, causing San Diego to end its long-running mobile face recognition program. La Quadrature du Net and other French NGOs also filed an action to ban the use of face recognition in two high schools in Nice and Marseille. Those actions led CNIL, France’s data protection authority, to conclude that the use of face recognition at the entrance of the schools to target mostly minors is not “necessary or proportionate,” and that the goals of the program could “be achieved by much less intrusive means in terms of privacy and individual freedoms.” In a similar case in Sweden, the Swedish Data Protection Authority (DPA) imposed a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) fine of approximately 20,000 euros on a municipality after a school conducted a pilot using face recognition technology to track students’ attendance. The Swedish DPA rejected the municipality’s argument that the school had consent to process sensitive biometric information, as required under the GDPR, indicating that “consent was not a valid legal basis given the clear imbalance between the data subject and the controller.” Unfortunately, only a few months later, the same Swedish DPA issued another decision allowing police departments to use face recognition to compare face images from CCTV footage to criminal biometric databases. The decision clarified that police must set a retention period for biometric information collected from cameras. This year, Latin American NGOs have been fighting back against a deeply rooted culture of secrecy surrounding face recognition providers’ identity, data sources, data collection methods, applications, and customers. TEDIC, the main digital rights organization in Paraguay, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Ministry of the Interior resolution that denied TEDIC’s public records request for further details about the Ministry of Interior and the National Police’s use of face recognition technology. Face recognition has been used in Asunción’s downtown area, airport, and bus stations since 2018, and is now planned to be expanded throughout Asunción. In Argentina, Asociación por los Derechos Civiles (ADC) filed a lawsuit against the Government of the City of Buenos Aires challenging the constitutionality of Resolution 398/19, which introduced a face recognition system linked to the city’s security camera infrastructure and monitoring centers. ADC filed the lawsuit after receiving responses to two information requests about the face recognition system. Access Now, in collaboration with ADC and the Observatorio de Derecho Informático Argentino, sent an information request to the Argentine province of Córdoba related to the October 2019 announcement of a test of a biometric recognition system linked to video cameras that use artificial intelligence. In Peru later that month, Access Now and Hiperderecho sent similar information requests to La Victoria, San Martín de Porres, and Miraflores, municipal districts of Lima. Among the information requested are the technology provider’s identity, the system’s technical specifications, and the procedures for identification and apprehension of suspicious persons. Latin American NGOs also launched advocacy campaigns against face recognition. Derechos Digitales launched an advocacy campaign to shine a light on the different face and biometric recognition proposals being considered in Latin America. And in Brazil, inspired by the images Gu Da Cei received through an information request, the artist carried out human intervention campaigns at bus stations in Brasilia to expose photos taken by a bus face biometrics system and reinforce the right of public transport users to their own image. Role of Private Companies In The Use of Face Recognition for Surveillance This year, reports have also come to light about the role of private companies in the public use of face recognition. A New York Times report revealed how Chinese companies such as C.E.I.E.C. were successfully commercializing versions of China’s mass face recognition system by exporting them to developing countries, in particular, Ecuador, Bolivia, Angola, and Venezuela. The implementation of the system in Ecuador, ECU911, has simultaneously been popular among Ecuadorians worried about street crime and amplified fears about abuse of the system for political repression. Just before the end of the year, 78 facial recognition CCTVs linked to ECU911 were installed in the Historic Center of Quito, the site where hundreds of indigenous activists recently protested the Ecuadorian government. Derechos Digitales published a report finding that C.E.I.E.C. was also active in Bolivia’s security program and that the funding for the program came from a Chinese national bank. Internet Bolivia told Derechos Digitales that Bol-110, the ambitious project to acquire surveillance technologies in Bolivia, “will be in everything: in schools, taxis, hospitals.” And although Bol-110 was not approved by the Bolivian Congress, the face recognition system has already been purchased. In Serbia, SHARE Foundation submitted a request for information about a new video surveillance system with face recognition and license plate reader technology. Huawei, a Chinese company, was revealed to be the Serbian government’s main partner in the endeavor. Additionally, SHARE Foundation unearthed a case study published on Huawei’s website about new generation surveillance cameras that have already been installed in Belgrade. Huawei removed the case study from its website soon after SHARE Foundation’s revelation was made public. In November, SHARE called for the immediate suspension of Serbia’s face recognition program. In a recent report, SHARE, along with NGOs Partners Serbia and Belgrade Center for Security Policy, concluded that the Ministry of Interior’s privacy impact assessment of the surveillance cameras does not meet the standards required by the Serbian data protection law. Brazilian legislators, meanwhile, received an all-expenses-paid trip to China to learn about and view demonstrations of face surveillance technology that Chinese firms hoped Brazil would also choose to acquire. The Brazilian Institute of Consumer Defense (IDEC) sent a demand to Dataprev, a Brazilian public company responsible for the security of Brazilian social security information, requesting that it halt its bid for the acquisition of face recognition and fingerprint technology until cases of beneficiaries’ existing data leaks are resolved. IDEC explained that while the company aimed to integrate face recognition into an app to help people with disabilities access their banking and social security information remotely, the technology’s high risk of breach would compromise the personal information of approximately 35 million Brazilians. In the Netherlands, Bits of Freedom launched an activism campaign to demonstrate the insecurity of a Dutch Face Recognition pilot program in Amsterdam’s central square, Dam, where a webcam is live-streaming to YouTube and the website webcam.nl. Bits of Freedom downloaded images of its members at the Dam, and then ran the images through Amazon’s face recognition software, Rekognition. The software was able to identify the members. Bits of Freedom concluded that face recognition software, combined with mass surveillance in public spaces, threatens the privacy and security of vulnerable people, including victims of stalking and domestic violence. This year, governments around the world have moved quickly to adopt face recognition technologies for use in public spaces. But activists have been quick to respond, demanding transparency and winning moratoria and bans on the use of this powerful technology. As we look forward to 2020, the tensions between the government’s use of this technology for public safety and individuals’ right to privacy will continue to heighten. EFF will remain vigilant and continue the global fight against the government adoption of face recognition technology. This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2019. This article was sourced from EFF.org Katitza Rodriguez is EFF’s international rights director. She concentrates on comparative policy of international privacy issues, with special emphasis on law enforcement, government surveillance, and cross border data flows. Her work in EFF’s International Program also focuses on cybersecurity at the intersection of human rights. Katitza also manages EFF’s growing Latin American programs. She was an advisor to the UN Internet Governance Forum (2009-2010). In 2018, CNET named Katitza one of 20 most influential latinos in technology in the United States. In 2014, she was also named one of “The heroes in the fight to save the Internet“. Subscribe to Activist Post for truth, peace, and freedom news. Become an Activist Post Patron for as little as $1 per month at Patreon. Follow us on SoMee, Flote, Minds, Twitter, and Steemit. Provide, Protect and Profit from what’s coming! Get a free issue of Counter Markets today. | Activist Post | https://www.activistpost.com/2019/12/activists-worldwide-face-off-against-face-recognition-2019-year-in-review.html | Mon, 30 Dec 2019 16:57:50 +0000 | 1,577,743,070 | 1,577,750,775 | politics | fundamental rights |
6,935 | ageofautism--2019-02-22--Autism Action Network Alert US Take Action FDA head threatens state exemptions from vaccine mandat | 2019-02-22T00:00:00 | ageofautism | Autism Action Network Alert: US Take Action: FDA head threatens state exemptions from vaccine mandates - Time for Trump to appoint a new head of the FDA | In a report released by CNN on Wednesday, Scott Gottlieb, MD, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, threatened federal action to eliminate religious and secular exemptions from vaccine mandates to attend school in response to several hundred measles cases in a country of 330 million people. "Some states are engaging in such wide exemptions that they're creating the opportunity for outbreaks on a scale that is going to have national implications." Gottlieb is reported to have said. If, "certain states continue down the path that they're on I think they're going to force the hand of the federal health agencies." Several hundred cases of measles, a disease that was considered a routine childhood inconvenience a generation ago, can be manipulated as a pretext for draconian new federal powers, yet annual increases in autism of 50,000 to 100,000 new cases per year don't event merit comment. Please click on the Take Action to send a message to the White House asking the President to replace Gottlieb with someone who takes seriously fundamental rights and relevant information for policy making. And please call the White House at the number below and politely let the staffer know you would like to see a new head of the FDA. The vaccine industry is creating hysteria over a trivial measles outbreak to eliminate vaccination rights in the US. It's a program that worked successfully in California, France, Italy, Croatia and Romania, why not the rest of the United States? But the facts just don't support the hype. "Overall vaccination coverage among young children remained high and stable in the United States in 2017," according to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report of October 12, 2018. The vaccine industry's claim that measles vaccination rates are falling are not supported by the federal government's own statistics. According to the CDC's National Immunization Survey, there was no change in the percentage of children who received one or more MMR vaccines from 2013 through 2017, holding steady at around 91.5% with no statistically significant changes for the past 5 years. Children who are unvaccinated make up less than 1% of all children and pose no threat to achieving herd immunity. Please share this message with friends and family, and please share on social networks. If you support the work of the Autism Action Network please make a donation at http://www. autismactionnetwork.org | Age of Autism | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ageofautism/~3/ouANCDORDPQ/autism-action-network-alert-us-take-action-fda-head-threatens-state-exemptions-from-vaccine-mandates.html | 2019-02-22 09:11:32+00:00 | 1,550,844,692 | 1,567,547,678 | politics | fundamental rights |
8,087 | aljazeera--2019-01-13--The PTM in Pakistan Another Bangladesh in the making | 2019-01-13T00:00:00 | aljazeera | The PTM in Pakistan: Another Bangladesh in the making? | A year ago today, a young man named Naqeebullah Mehsud was killed in an alleged shoot-out in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi. The police initially claimed that Mehsud was a "hardened member of the Pakistani Taliban" and was killed during a raid on "a terrorist hideout". But his family, friends and some human rights organisations questioned this claim, saying Mehsud was just an innocent shopkeeper and aspiring model. The government ordered an investigation. The police committee probing the incident found no evidence of a shoot-out or terrorist activity and was determined that Mehsud was killed by the police in a "fake encounter" - a practice Pakistani security forces are often accused of being involved in. Officers accused of being involved in the killing were put on trial which is still ongoing. In the past, allegations of extrajudicial killings similar to this one were regularly ignored by the authorities, and security forces were allowed to operate with impunity. What set Mehsud's case apart, and forced the government to take swift action, was a little-known movement which started in his Waziristan hometown of Makin: the Pashtun Tahaffuz (Protection) Movement (or PTM). The PTM was launched by human rights activist Manzoor Pashteen to address the many grievances of Pashtuns, who are the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan and mostly live in the north-western part of the country, close to the Afghanistan border. The Pashtuns have been bearing the brunt of the so-called "war on terror" for nearly two decades. When the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, members of terror groups operating in that country passed the border with Pakistan and took refuge in the areas where Pashtuns reside. In response, the Pakistani military started carrying out operations to "clear the area from terrorists". However, rather than stopping terrorist activity, military operations in the area increasingly victimised innocent civilians. Pashtuns across Pakistan started to be stereotyped as terrorists even though they themselves were victims of terrorism. After the killing of Mehsud in Karachi, Manzoor Pashteen called for a march from Waziristan towards Islamabad. Thousands joined Pashteen on his way to the capital city demanding justice not just for the murdered man, but for all Pashtuns who have been facing discrimination in Pakistan. This march rapidly transformed into a nationwide rights movement and the PTM was born. In rallies held across the country, Pashteen and his supporters raised questions about the reasons behind the army's failure to drive out militancy from their region and asked whether Pakistani authorities really wanted to eradicate such groups. One slogan that they commonly used was "Yeh jo dehshatgardi hai, is ke peechay wardi hai" (behind this terrorism, is the [military] uniform), alleging a collusion between terrorists and the military. The PTM also called for all accusations of extrajudicial killing to be investigated independently and demanded the practice of enforced disappearances - a legal term coined to explain abductions allegedly carried out by the Pakistan Army - to come to an end. Moreover, Pashteen and his supporters started pressuring the Pakistani government to reform the draconian laws that govern the tribal belt that violate basic human rights, such as the law of collective responsibility which the Pakistani state routinely uses against locals from the tribal belt - punishing entire families, villages and tribes for the crimes of one person. Rather than addressing the genuine grievances expressed by this growing movement, the Pakistani government chose to embark on a crackdown. The Pakistani media stopped reporting on the movement's gatherings. Many of the members and leaders of the movement were repeatedly arrested by the police. The leaders were prevented from entering parts of Pakistan where they wanted to hold rallies. Recently some of PTM's members were also barred from leaving the country. In one public briefing, the military media spokesperson accused the PTM of working on "an anti-Pakistan agenda" with the help of foreign hostile governments - a tactic often used by the Pakistani military to discredit its critics. But the Pakistani state's efforts to silence and contain the movement have backfired. As a result of this state-led harassment campaign, the PTM gained more traction and its gatherings are becoming larger than ever. While the movement has always claimed to be non-violent, there are now fears that the continuous use of such heavy-handed tactics to suppress the movement may result in a confrontation that may go out of control, as seen before in Pakistan. In the past, a similar rights movement launched by East Pakistani residents eventually culminated into a movement for independence from Pakistan, and let to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. In the 1960s, the Bengali population living in East Pakistan, the largest ethnic group in the country at the time, felt neglected by the central government that was headed by General Ayub Khan. Instead of listening to the grievances of this group and addressing the injustices they say they have been facing, the military launched an operation against the aggrieved population. This caused the Bengalis to start an armed resistance which resulted in Pakistan's division. Almost 50 years later, it seems that Pakistan's ruling elites have not learned much from history and seem to be repeating the same mistakes that led to much pain, bloodshed and irreversible damage to the nation in the 1970s. Today as the PTM marks one year of its struggle, it is of utmost importance that the Pakistani civilian and military leadership address the legitimate concerns of the Pashtun population, meet their demands which are well within the scope of the Pakistani constitution and immediately stop persecuting those demanding their basic fundamental rights. If this does not happen, the PTM may become a catalyst for the break-up of an already divided nation and Pakistan may head towards another national disaster. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/ptm-pakistan-bangladesh-making-190111140428304.html | 2019-01-13 06:56:20+00:00 | 1,547,380,580 | 1,567,552,701 | politics | fundamental rights |
9,480 | aljazeera--2019-02-07--Spanish PM travels to Strasbourg to defend countrys judiciary | 2019-02-07T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Spanish PM travels to Strasbourg to 'defend' country's judiciary | Madrid, Spain - Spain's Pedro Sanchez is in Strasbourg to speak to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), making him the country's first serving leader to do so. Sanchez will visit both the ECHR and the Council of Europe on Thursday, where he is expected to "defend" the Spanish court system a week before 12 Catalan politicians go on trial. Spanish media said Sanchez will assure the ECHR that "individual rights, public liberties and the rights of minorities are guaranteed" and will stress on Spain's "respect of jurisprudence". The trial of the 12 Catalan leaders is due to begin in Spain's capital Madrid on February 12. The Catalan separatists have been charged with rebellion, disobedience and embezzlement of public funds during a failed independence bid in 2017 and face up to 25 years in jail. One of the legal teams representing the jailed Catalan leaders confirmed to Al Jazeera on Thursday that they plan to appeal to the ECHR if the Spanish Supreme Court delivers a guilty verdict. Critics say Spain's Supreme Court lacks independence and is politically biased against the Catalan leaders. Indictments against those facing trial say they ignored the "grave" risk of violence while holding the October 1 referendum, which met a police crackdown described by rights groups as "excessive". In March last year, Spanish newspaper El Diario wrote that Pablo Llarena, the judge charged with investigating the Catalan referendum case, distorted "the reality of what occurred in Catalonia to extremes difficult to believe". Josep Costa, the first vice president of the Catalonia parliament, told Al Jazeera in an interview that the court's "impartiality" regarding the trial must be taken into account. "It's a very conservative court," Costa, who is also a professor of political science at Barcelona's Universitat Pompeu Fabra, said. The judges "have political ties with the more conservative branch of the judiciary," he said. Spanish conservatives have taken a hardline approach towards Catalan nationalism. During the push for independence, the government headed by former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy from the conservative People's Party, refused to speak with Catalan leaders about self-determination, suspended the region's autonomy and called snap elections hoping to depose separatist leaders. Many Catalans believe the Supreme Court will adopt a similar strategy during the trial: "They will have the opportunity to show their [judicial] independence which will confirm their conservative approach," said Costa. There is no legal precedent of the trial of the Catalan leaders in Spain's democratic history. This makes the Supreme Court's jurisdiction over the case open to interpretation. But Ignacio Garcia Vitoria, assistant professor of constitutional law at Madrid's Complutense University, told Al Jazeera that "there is no basis for a general criticism of the independence of judges in Spain". "We are a country completely in agreement with European standards," he said. Among the many concerns critics have is the issue of which court being competent to try the accused. Apart from its Supreme Court, Spain also has an Audiencia Nacional, a special high court which has jurisdiction over the country as well as on cases of international crimes over which it has authority. Both courts have held sessions concerning their jurisdiction over the trial of the 12 Catalan leaders, though the proceedings were eventually sent to the Supreme Court. Lawyers for the Catalans say the Supreme Court trying the criminal case violates fundamental rights, since the court's decision cannot be appealed within Spain and must be taken up with the ECHR. "We will see how they are resolved and, where appropriate, the decision will be reviewed by the Constitutional Court and by the ECHR," Garcia said. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/spanish-pm-travels-strasbourg-defend-country-judiciary-190207115050261.html | 2019-02-07 15:34:33+00:00 | 1,549,571,673 | 1,567,549,344 | politics | fundamental rights |
9,524 | aljazeera--2019-02-08--Nigerias democracy is fading away | 2019-02-08T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Nigeria's democracy is fading away | On January 25, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari suspended the country's top judge, Walter Onnoghen, and replaced him with an acting chief justice merely weeks before a presidential election in which judiciary can play an important role. Onnoghen, as the head of Nigeria's independent judiciary, had helped resolve electoral disputes in past elections, some of which have been marred by violence and vote-rigging. He was similarly expected to preside over any dispute that may arise in the upcoming February 16 election. The judge's controversial suspension so close to the election date caused uproar across Nigeria, with the Nigerian Bar Association embarking on a two-day strike and the main opposition candidate, Atiku Abubakar, calling the president's decision "an act of dictatorship". The international community also expressed dismay over the usurpation of the judicial arm of the government by the executive branch, with the US and the EU suggesting the judge's removal could "cast a pall over the electoral process". Only four years ago, following the March 2015 presidential election, former President Goodluck Jonathan conceded his defeat to then-opposition candidate Buhari, becoming the first sitting president in Nigeria to do so. Jonathan's voluntary admission of electoral defeat, which was a rarity not only in Nigeria but across the African continent, encouraged Nigerian voters to place their trust in Buhari, an erstwhile dictator who famously labelled himself "a reformed democrat", to protect their rights and freedoms. Democratic governments function on the principle of separation of powers - the executive, the legislature and the judiciary - which aims to prevent a descent to autocracy by providing for checks and balances. This is why Buhari's decision to suspend Onnoghen, an apparent violation of judicial independence, was a cause for disappointment and alarm for many who believed the president would uphold democratic values. However, it needs to be noted that the suspension of the chief justice was hardly the first time the Buhari administration infringed the principle of separation of powers and put the future of Nigerian democracy at risk. Since Buhari took over the presidency, the federal government repeatedly used the fight against corruption - one of the cardinal promises of the current administration - as a tool to side-step the judiciary and illegally lock away, intimidate and silence its opponents and adversaries. For example, the federal government refused to release former National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki, who had been arrested on corruption charges in December 2015, even though he has been granted bail by several Nigerian high court judges and the ECOWAS court of justice. He remains behind bars to this day. Moreover, throughout his first term in power, President Buhari openly argued for putting national interests over the rule of law, preparing the ground for authoritarianism and lawless actions. At the 2018 General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, for example, the president said, "Rule of law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation's security and national interest," and maintained that the state should be allowed to waive fundamental rights of alleged offenders when national security and public interest were threatened. Ironically, the suspended Chief Justice Onnoghen was in attendance at the event, but failed to respond to the president's blatant attack on the rule of law and the integrity of the judiciary. The judiciary was not the only branch of the government that faced attacks during Buhari's presidency. The members of the legislative branch have also been targeted by state operatives for acting against the Buhari administration. In August 2018, armed and masked officers from the Department of State Services (DSS) staged a blockade of the National Assembly. That very same summer, prominent senators who have maintained opposition to the government also had their homes raided. The Senate president, Bukola Saraki, and one of his key allies in the Senate, Dino Melaye, are currently being investigated and harassed by the police over alleged criminal activities. The list can go on. When the institutions that are meant to provide checks and balances, such as the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, are subdued, independent media and civil society are supposed to take over the responsibility of holding corrupt executives to account. Unfortunately, neither the media nor the civil society fared any better in Buhari's Nigeria. Nigeria declined three places in RSF's World Press Freedom Index in the last three years, ranking 119th out of 180 countries in 2018. Under the Buhari administration, several journalists and activists have been imprisoned and tried on terrorism charges. A section of the Nigerian Cyberterrorism Act 2015, which was signed into law by former President Jonathan, has also been weaponized against dissenters, especially Nigerian citizens active on social media. Moreover, in 2016 the Nigerian Senate flirted with the Frivolous Petitions Bill, aka "the anti-social media law", which included over-reaching provisions for social media regulation. The bill, seen by many as a dangerous encroachment on free expression, was eventually pulled following public outcry. A similar bill that seeks to equate hate speech with terrorism, however, is currently being deliberated in the National Assembly. In the last four years, the Buhari administration erased all the gains we made in the 2015 election and created the perfect environment for autocracy by further weakening our democratic institutions, muzzling our civil society, silencing independent journalists and questioning the supremacy of the rule of law. As Nigerians head to vote in the upcoming polls, we must bear in mind that elections do not make a democracy. The current state of affairs in Nigeria should be a bigger concern for us all than any potential outcome of the upcoming election. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/nigeria-democracy-fading-190207144830804.html | 2019-02-08 11:16:06+00:00 | 1,549,642,566 | 1,567,549,217 | politics | fundamental rights |
11,346 | aljazeera--2019-03-29--Quebec introduces bill banning religious symbols | 2019-03-29T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Quebec introduces bill banning religious symbols | The Canadian province of Quebec has introduced legislation that will ban public sector employees from wearing religious symbols during work hours, a controversial move that critics say targets Muslim women who wear hijabs or other head coverings. It will also apply to crucifixes and yarmulkes. The proposed law, introduced on Thursday, sets the province's right-leaning Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) government on a collision course with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who promotes religious freedom, in a federal election year with Quebec a vital battleground. "It is unthinkable to me that in a free society we would legitimise discrimination against citizens based on their religion," Trudeau told reporters in Halifax on Thursday. The legislation, which is expected to pass, will cover public workers in positions of authority, including teachers, judges and police officers. It exempts current government employees and civil servants in the mainly French-speaking province. The bill asserts that secularity "should be affirmed in a manner that ensures a balance between the collective rights of the Quebec nation and human rights and freedoms". Governments in Quebec have been trying for years to restrict civil servants from wearing overt religious symbols like headscarves, turbans and Jewish skullcaps at work in an effort to cement a secular society. A ban on full-face coverings on anyone giving or receiving public services in Quebec passed in 2017, but was suspended by a Canadian judge last June and remains in legal limbo. The CAQ was elected late last year in part on pledges to restrict immigration and impose a secular charter. Quebec Premier Francois Legault told reporters on Thursday the bill "represents our values and it's important". But condemnation was quick, with Jewish advocacy group B'nai Brith calling the bill "an assault on the fundamental rights and freedoms of Quebecers", while the National Council of Canadian Muslims said it will make Muslims and other minorities "second-class citizens" and overwhelmingly affect Muslim women. Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante voiced "serious concern about the message that this bill sends to minorities about their fundamental rights". The important thing, she said, was that the process of making laws was secular, not that people divested themselves of religious attire and symbols. Teachers unions said they would not enforce the law, while pundits and the government's own lawyers, according to reports, anticipate a court challenge for contravening Canadians' Charter right to personal religious freedom. This is the fourth attempt by successive Quebec governments to try to get the bill turned into law. Like France, which passed a ban on veils, crosses and other religious symbols in schools in 2004, Quebec has struggled to reconcile its secular identity with a growing Muslim population, many of them North African emigrants. Eight other European countries enforce restrictions on religious attire. While the Quebec legislation does not single out any religion by name, Muslim headgear has long been a source of public debate in Quebec. Quebec's minister for the status of women drew condemnation from opposition politicians earlier this year after she said the hijab (a headscarf worn by many Muslim women who feel it is part of their religion) is a symbol of female oppression. And a Montreal-area municipal politician faced backlash this weekend after she wrote a Facebook post expressing her anger over being treated by a doctor wearing a hijab, calling the headscarf a symbol of the "Islamification of our country". To shield the new legislation from legal challenges, the Quebec government is invoking a rarely used clause that enables it to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom for up to five years. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/03/quebec-introduces-bill-banning-religious-symbols-190329075629378.html | 2019-03-29 08:58:52+00:00 | 1,553,864,332 | 1,567,544,791 | politics | fundamental rights |
11,540 | aljazeera--2019-04-03--Ashraf Ghanis grand plan for sustainable peace in Afghanistan | 2019-04-03T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Ashraf Ghani's grand plan for sustainable peace in Afghanistan | Peace, once seen as an impossible prospect, has now become part of the national discourse in Afghanistan. Last month, for example, around 3,500 women from all ethnic and linguistic groups in the country issued a joint communique calling for a peace in which Afghan women would not be subjected to the horrors of the Taliban era once again. The Afghan government is also committed to peace, but just like the women of Afghanistan, it is not ready to settle for any "peace deal". It wants a peace that would reinforce the values of the republic and the fundamental rights and liberties of the Afghan people, not one that would inevitably lead to the collapse of the state and reversal of the gains of the past 18 years. Today, as a result of increased US pressure on Pakistan and the Taliban, as well as the Afghan government's relentless efforts to solve the country's deep-rooted problems, there is renewed hope for a peaceful, sustainable settlement to Afghanistan's decades-old conflict. Undoubtedly, this moment has not come without a cost. Thousands of Afghans (and their international partners) sacrificed their lives and resources to get us here. But even these immense sacrifices have not been enough to bring sustainable peace to a country that has been torn apart by conflict for over four decades. Afghanistan now needs a well-rounded strategy and pragmatic leadership to tackle the last few hurdles on its long and treacherous path to peace. Thankfully, Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani devised a comprehensive and practical four-phase strategy to achieve sustainable peace in the country: First, the president insists, Pakistan should be convinced to end hostilities towards Afghanistan. The Taliban and their affiliates who engage in violence in Afghanistan have been doing so with the blessing and encouragement of Islamabad. A peace settlement can only be agreed on if and when Pakistan learns to respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan and gives up its ambition to forcefully bring its neighbour under its sphere of influence. Pakistan most recently made its opposition to a sovereign, united and fully independent Afghanistan apparent when Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan called the Kabul government a "hurdle to peace talks" and suggested setting up an interim government in the country. An interim government means going back to square one, scrapping the constitution and reversing the gains of the past 18 years. The people of Afghanistan, who fought long and hard for their independence, have no intention of agreeing to any peace process that would deprive the country of its sovereignty. Ghani is aware of this and believes the peace process can only move forward after consensus is reached between the neighbours. Second, Ghani asserts, Afghanistan should work towards gaining the trust of the international community and demonstrating that it is ready to tackle the challenges of the post-conflict era independently. The president believes sustainable peace can only be achieved by ending Afghanistan's reliance on foreign aid. Alongside his efforts to achieve economic self-sufficiency, Ghani is also embarking on diplomatic engagements to restore the international community's trust in the Afghan government. So far, his engagement with the US resulted in the Trump administration's Afghanistan-focused South Asia strategy and put increased pressure on Pakistan to end its support for the Taliban. Meanwhile, his engagement with Islamic nations resulted in the endorsement of his peace efforts by Saudi Arabia and the Indonesian Ulema Council. Moreover, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation officially described the Afghan war as a conflict "contrary to the principles and formal teachings of Islam". This statement stripped the war of its religious justifications, bringing Afghanistan one step closer to peace. Third, the president believes a successful peace process should involve all segments of Afghan society. Past experiences in 1992 and 2001 clearly demonstrate that peace efforts which focus on reconciliation with one group while undermining others result in renewed conflicts. President Ghani is aware of this, and he has already met and engaged in intensive discussions with thousands of citizens including women's rights activists, civil society representatives and a diverse selection of political leaders and religious scholars. He has given every stratum a stake at peacemaking. To make the process even more inclusive, the government is convening a Consultative Loya Jirga on April 28 where the representatives of all demographics will come together to define the government’s direction on peace. Ghani believes what Afghanistan needs is a people-centred peace, not an elite-led one, and he is working hard to deliver this. Fourth, Ghani believes the peace process should be owned and led by the people and government of Afghanistan. In 1989, the United Nations brokered a peace deal between the Pakistan-based Afghan mujahideen and the government of Mohammad Najibullah. However, this peace deal failed, leading to renewed conflict and more bloodshed. The failure of the deal was mainly caused by the exclusion of Afghans from the process and the lack of mechanisms for accountability. Today, Ghani insists on an Afghan-led peace process because he does not want to repeat past mistakes or agree to a process that could leave the country in the middle of yet another bloody conflict in the near future. As the peace process intensifies and some elements both within and outside Afghanistan advocate for an interim government, hundreds of civil society activists gathered in Kabul and issued a communique on the kind of peace they want. One of their main demands was for the Afghan constitution and the core values of the republic to be upheld. The Afghan Constitution assigns the power to declare war and peace to the president. In short, Ghani’s vision for sustainable peace is based on the elimination of hostile outside influences, long-term economic planning, diplomatic engagements and, most importantly, inclusivity. He is guarding our constitutional values to ensure succession of power continues through elections - one of the main tenets of Afghan constitution. He has a plan that will lead the country not to a "negative peace" in which merely violence is absent, but to a positive one, which would guarantee the presence of justice, equality and development in addition to absence of violence. Ghani's efforts played an important role in making peace in Afghanistan a real prospect. Now that we are at the point where direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban could begin any moment, the president's vision for peace and well-thought-out plans for the post-conflict era is guaranteed to lead Afghanistan to a prosperous future. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/ashraf-ghani-grand-plan-sustainable-peace-afghanistan-190402101100457.html | 2019-04-03 14:17:41+00:00 | 1,554,315,461 | 1,567,544,209 | politics | fundamental rights |
11,691 | aljazeera--2019-04-05--Wikileaks founder Assange to be expelled from Ecuador embassy | 2019-04-05T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Wikileaks founder Assange 'to be expelled' from Ecuador embassy | Ecuador is preparing to expel WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from its embassy in London within "hours to days", according to a Wikileaks Tweet. According to the tweet sent out on Thursday, the "#INAPapers offshore scandal" was being as a pretext to expel Assange. "A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within 'hours to days' using the INAPapers offshore scandal as a pretext - and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest," the tweet read. The INA papers are a collection of documents leaked to an Ecuadorian lawmaker and which have implicated President Lenin Moreno in a corruption scandal. The WikiLeaks statement comes two days after Moreno accused Assange of repeatedly violating the terms of his asylum and said the government was seeking an arrangement with Britain to allow Assange to leave the embassy. In an interview broadcast by several Ecuadoran radio stations, President Moreno said: "Assange has too often repeatedly violated the agreement we have with him and his legal team", without saying whether Ecuador would withdraw asylum. "It is not that he cannot speak freely, it is not that he cannot express himself freely, but he cannot lie, let alone hack into accounts or intercept private telephone calls" under the terms of his asylum agreement, said Moreno. Ecuador also suspects that WikiLeaks is responsible for sharing private photographs of Moreno on social media recently. Assange has been holed up in the embassy since 2012 to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden on allegations of rape. The Swedish judiciary has since dropped its investigation, but British authorities have said they will still arrest the Australian when he leaves the embassy because he violated his bail conditions by fleeing. Assange says he fears being extradited to the United States where he could face charges relating to the publication of hacked government documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In October, Assange sued Ecuador for violating his "fundamental rights" by limiting his access to the outside world after his internet and mobile phone access were blocked back in March. Quito accused him of breaking "a written commitment" not to interfere in Ecuador's foreign policies. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/wikileaks-founder-assange-expelled-ecuador-embassy-190405030521011.html | 2019-04-05 03:18:54+00:00 | 1,554,448,734 | 1,567,543,912 | politics | fundamental rights |
13,307 | aljazeera--2019-05-30--Turkeys Erdogan reveals new judicial reforms amid bid to join EU | 2019-05-30T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Turkey's Erdogan reveals new judicial reforms amid bid to join EU | Ankara, Turkey - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday unveiled a package of judicial reforms after years of criticism over a crackdown on dissidents and the jailing of thousands said to be linked to a 2016 coup attempt. Speaking from his palace in Ankara, the president took aim at the European Union, which a day earlier released a damning report on Turkey's bid to join the union. In its annual progress review, the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, accused Ankara of "serious backsliding in the areas of the rule of law and fundamental rights". Erdogan, who oversaw the start of accession talks in 2005, reaffirmed his commitment to EU membership while striking a note of reproach. "We implement the reforms not because the EU wants them but because our nation needs them," he said in the televised address. Since the failed coup, Turkey has jailed more than 77,000 people on suspicion of links to the group it says organised the attempt. About 150,000 civil servants, teachers, journalists, police officers, military personnel and others have been sacked or suspended from their jobs over alleged support for Fethullah Gulen, a US-based scholar, who Erdogan says orchestrated the putsch. Gulen denies any involvement in the coup attempt, which led to at least 250 deaths, while critics of the government say the crackdown has been used to stifle all forms of dissent. The judicial reform package, which was designed after consultation with legal experts and human rights groups, aimed to "strengthen our nation's sense of justice", Erdogan said. While going into some detail on issues such as the training of lawyers and prosecutors, he gave little insight into how Turkey - ranked 109th out of 126 countries in the World Justice Project's 2019 Rule of Law Index - would address criticism on issues such as the jailing of critical journalists, or the conviction of hundreds for insulting the president. Ozturk Turkdogan, chair of the Turkish Human Rights Association, one of the groups consulted over the reforms, reacted with caution to Erdogan's speech. While welcoming the "positive step" he added: "We have to wait for the relevant concrete draft laws to be tabled at the parliament in order to make a detailed evaluation and assessment of the strategy and roadmap." Turkdogan, who was himself arrested in 2017 while taking part in a protest, also called for a "new and democratic constitution based on the principle of separation of powers founded on the rule of law". Erdogan, who has been accused of concentrating power over the judiciary in his own hands, said the reforms had been drafted "within the framework of enhancing the independence and impartiality of justice" and to "effectively protect the right to a fair trial". Among those imprisoned or who lost their jobs have been more than 4,460 judges and prosecutors, according to the Turkey Purge website, which collates figures from government announcements. Selim Sazak, a researcher at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in the US, said the judiciary urgently needed an overhaul to face the heavy workload created by the rate of arrests, as well as increasing numbers of bankruptcy cases as Turkey's economic crisis takes hold. "In this current system, they have created political loyalty as not one of the main factors in judicial appointments, it's the only factor," he said. "Now, they need the system to work. They broke the system and don't know how to fix it so they're pushing every button." Sazak added while some practical measures were likely to be implemented in the short term, there was a "massive dissonance" between Erdogan's rhetoric on fundamental rights and the recent record on jailing opponents. Following the attempted coup, Turkey introduced emergency powers for two years that curbed many freedoms and, according to the rights groups, breached international obligations. Although the emergency regime was lifted last year, new decrees allowed for the dismissal of judges and other officials if they are suspected of ties to groups such as the Gulen movement, which is listed as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation (FETO) under Turkish law. In recent weeks, the cancellation of opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu's win in the Istanbul mayoral race has further highlighted concerns for justice after the Supreme Election Council sided with the complaints of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). A second poll is to be held on June 23 that will again see Imamoglu, who is standing for the Republican People's Party (CHP), pitted against the AK Party's Binali Yildirim, a former prime minister. According to polling company Konda, 72 percent of Turks see justice as a key issue for the country. "It's obvious that the ruling bloc has caused an erosion in the sense of justice and conscience on the issue of the cancellation of polls," Konda General Manager Bekir Agirdir said in an interview with the leftist BirGun newspaper. Few in Turkey doubt the justice system had been infiltrated by Gulenists, who were allied with the AK Party until a corruption case led by Gulenist prosecutors and police officers targeted Erdogan's close circle in late 2013. "The July 2016 failed coup attempt by FETO led to a massive purge of FETO-related judicial personnel but they were, this time, substituted by judges and prosecutors loyal to the government," said Serkan Demirtas, a columnist for the Hurriyet daily. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/05/turkey-erdogan-reveals-judicial-reforms-bid-join-eu-190530180130106.html | 2019-05-30 19:56:03+00:00 | 1,559,260,563 | 1,567,539,729 | politics | fundamental rights |
13,543 | aljazeera--2019-06-18--Mohamed Morsis death World reaction | 2019-06-18T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Mohamed Morsi's death: World reaction | The United Nations has called for an "independent inquiry" into the death of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who died aged 67 after collapsing in a Cairo court on Monday, according to state media. Morsi, who was buried on Tuesday, was a top figure in the Muslim Brotherhood and the first democratically elected president in Egypt's modern history. He had been in jail since he was toppled by the military in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. His death has been mourned by many people around the world, including in Turkey where mosques held special prayers on Tuesday, while leaders in Malaysia and Qatar offered tributes. However, the reaction has been largely muted in many capitals. Here are some of the statements on the sudden death of Morsi: The United Nations human rights office has called for a "prompt, impartial, thorough and transparent investigation" into Morsi's death. "Concerns have been raised regarding the conditions of Mr. Morsi's detention, including access to adequate medical care, as well as sufficient access to his lawyers and family, during his nearly six years in custody," Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Monday. The Tunisian Ennahda political party said it received the news with great sadness and shock and extended condolences to Morsi's family and the Egyptian people. The movement expressed hope that "the painful incident would be a reason to put an end to the suffering of thousands of political prisoners in Egypt" and for starting dialogue for a new democratic political life in Egypt. Jordan's Muslim Brotherhood held "the coup authorities in Egypt responsible for Morsi's death after his detention for seven years in solitary imprisonment". The group also held the international community responsible for "the crimes of the coup" in Egypt. Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani offered his condolences to Morsi's family and Egyptian people. "We received with great sorrow the news of the sudden death of former president Dr Mohamed Morsi. I offer my deepest condolences to his family and Egyptian people. We belong to God and to him we shall return," Sheikh Tamim said in a Twitter post. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, on Monday blamed Egypt's "tyrants" for the death of Morsi. "History will never forget those tyrants who led to his death by putting him in jail and threatening him with execution," Erdogan, a close ally of Morsi, said in a televised speech in Istanbul. The Turkish leader called the former Egyptian president a "martyr," Turkey had been among Morsi's biggest supporters. "May Allah rest our Morsi brother, our martyr's soul in peace," said Erdogan, who had forged close ties with the former president. Thousands in Istanbul joined in prayer on Tuesday for Morsi on Tuesday. The prayer was called by Turkey's religious authority Diyanet and took place in the city's Fatih mosque. Erdogan is expected to attend an absentee funeral for Morsi in Istanbul on Tuesday. Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa division, called Morsi's death "terrible but entirely predictable", given the government's failure to allow him adequate medical care. "What we have been documenting for the past several years is the fact that he has been in the worst conditions. Every time he appeared before the judge, he requested private medical care and medical treatment," Whitson told Al Jazeera. "He was been deprived of adequate food and medicine. The Egyptian government had known very clearly about his declining medical state. He had lost a great deal of weight and had also fainted in court a number of times. "He was kept in the solitary confinement with no access to television, email or any communication with friends and family," Whitson said, arguing that there would not be a credible independent investigation on Morsi's death "because their [Egyptian government] job and role is to absolve themselves of wrongdoing ever". In a Facebook post, Morsi's son, Ahmed, confirmed the death of his father. "In front of Allah, my father and we shall unite," he wrote. Mohammed Sudan, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood in London, described Morsi's death as "premeditated murder", saying that the former president was banned from receiving medicine or visits and there was little information about his health condition. "He has been placed behind [a] glass cage [during trials]. No one can hear him or know what is happening to him. He hasn't received any visits for months or nearly a year. He complained before that he doesn't get his medicine. This is premeditated murder. This is slow death." The Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice political party said in a statement that Egyptian authorities is responsible for Morsi's "deliberate slow death". "[The Egyptian authorities] put him in solitary confinement... they withheld medication and gave him disgusting food... they did not give him the most basic human rights," the political party said in a statement published on its website. The Brotherhood also called for crowds to gather outside Egyptian embassies around the world. In a joint statement, Amr Darrag, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a minister of planning and international cooperation under Morsi, and Yehia Hamed, a former Egyptian investment minister under Morsi, said an international independent investigation into the death of Morsi should be made public. "The Egyptian regime knew that the continued denial of access to medical treatment would lead to his premature death. To that effect, the death of President Morsi is tantamount to state sponsored murder," they said in the statement. "The first democratically elected President has died through a concerted and active campaign by the Egyptian regime. This is a gross violation of international law. It must not be allowed to stand." In a statement released after Morsi's death, Crispin Blunt, chairman of the UK's Independent Detention Review Panel, said his death in custody was representative of Egypt's inability to treat prisoners in accordance with both Egyptian and international law. "The Egyptian government has a duty to explain his unfortunate death and there must be proper accountability for his treatment in custody. We found culpability for torture rests not only with direct perpetrators but those who are responsible for or acquiesce in it," he said in a statement. "The only step now is a reputable independent international investigation." Last year, a report by three UK MPs, under the panel, warned that the lack of medical treatment could result in Morsi's "premature death". Amnesty International urged Egyptian authorities to investigate the death of Morsi. "We call on Egyptian authorities to conduct an impartial, thorough and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Mursi's death, including his solitary confinement and isolation from the outside world," the London-based rights group said in a twitter post. It also called for an investigation into the medical care Morsi was receiving, and for anyone found responsible for mistreatment to be held accountable. Hamas issued a statement paying tribute to Morsi, who had been a close ally of the Palestinian movement administering the besieged Gaza Strip. It praised Morsi's "long struggle spent in the service of Egypt and its people, and primarily the Palestinian cause". At the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, funeral prayers were performed by Palestinians on Monday night. Pakistan's religious-political group, Jamaat-e-Islami, said the "Muslim world has lost a true hero". "Morsi stood tall in the face of all pressures aimed at forcing him to withdraw his struggle for fundamental rights of the people of Egypt and his support to Palestine," the group's chief Senator Siraj-ul- Haq said in a statement on Twitter. He announced that the party on Tuesday would hold funeral prayers in absentia for Morsi across Pakistan. Malaysia's foreign ministry said it was "shocked and saddened by the sudden death" of Morsi. "During his tenure as president, Mr Morsi showed courage and moral fortitude in his attempt to lead Egypt away from decades of authoritarian rule and establish true democracy there," Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said in a statement. "I would like to extend my deepest condolences to the bereaved family of Mr Morsi and the people of Egypt." | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/mohamed-morsi-death-world-reaction-190617162635604.html | 2019-06-18 20:22:52+00:00 | 1,560,903,772 | 1,567,538,913 | politics | fundamental rights |
13,738 | aljazeera--2019-06-24--India rejects critical US religious freedom report | 2019-06-24T00:00:00 | aljazeera | India rejects critical US religious freedom report | A previous version of this story wrongly linked to a United States Commission on International Religious Freedom report. The story has been updated with the link to the US State Department report. India has hit out at a report by the United States saying religious intolerance was growing under its right-wing government, setting off a new spat ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. An annual report on international religious freedom released by Pompeo on Friday said Hindu groups had used "violence, intimidation, and harassment" against Muslims and low-caste Dalits in 2017 to force a religion-based national identity. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government insisted that no foreign country had the right to criticise its record. Pompeo is set to arrive in New Delhi on Tuesday for a trip intended to strengthen ties, but already complicated by spats over trade tariffs, data protection rules, US visas for Indians and buying arms from Russia. The US religious freedom report said groups claiming to protect cows - considered sacred by Hindus - have attacked Muslims and Dalits. Christians have also been targeted for proselytising since Modi came to power in 2014. "Despite Indian government statistics indicating that communal violence has increased sharply over the past two years, the Modi administration has not addressed the problem," the report said. The report, which examined attacks on religious minorities during 2018, said some senior officials from Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) made "inflammatory speeches" mainly against Muslims, who make up 14 percent of India's 1.3 billion people. "Mob attacks by violent extremist Hindu groups against minority communities, especially Muslims, continued throughout the year amid rumours that victims had traded or killed cows for beef," the report said. It also noted reports by non-governmental organisations that the government sometimes failed to act on mob attacks on religious minorities, marginalised communities, and critics of the government. The Indian foreign ministry rejected the report, saying there was no right "for a foreign entity/government to pronounce on the state of our citizens' constitutionally protected rights". "India is proud of its secular credentials, its status as the largest democracy and a pluralistic society with a long-standing commitment to tolerance and inclusion," spokesman Raveesh Kumar said in a statement. "The Indian Constitution guarantees fundamental rights to all its citizens, including its minority communities." The United States has sought to boost ties with India as a counterweight to China, and both US President Donald Trump and Modi have highlighted their good relationship. However, India last week imposed higher import tariffs on 28 US items in retaliation to Washington's recent withdrawal of trade privileges for New Delhi. Pompeo wants to use his New Delhi trip to lay the ground for a Trump-Modi meeting at the G20 Summit in Osaka this month. It will be their first since Modi's new landslide election win last month. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/india-rejects-critical-religious-freedom-report-190623065422842.html | 2019-06-24 14:06:18+00:00 | 1,561,399,578 | 1,567,538,323 | politics | fundamental rights |
14,290 | aljazeera--2019-07-05--Daughter of Islamic scholar al-Qaradawi remanded in Egypt again | 2019-07-05T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Daughter of Islamic scholar al-Qaradawi remanded in Egypt again | The daughter of prominent Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi has begun a hunger strike after Egyptian prosecutors hit her with new charges, according to her lawyer. Ola al-Qaradawi, who has been held for more than two years, was taken into custody on Thursday only a few hours after her release in a previous case. Her lawyer, Ahmed Magdi, told reporters she had been remanded by Egyptian prosecutors for 15 days pending further investigation into new charges of "joining a terrorist group". Qaradawi's fresh charges mean she could be held in pre-trial conditions for another two years, according to Egyptian law. Magdi said his client had begun a hunger strike to protest against the decision. Al-Qaradawi's daughter, Aayah, told Middle East Eye on Thursday her mother has "reached the point where she is not able to take it any more". "She's been in solitary confinement for the past two years; she's not even in contact with other prisoners," she said. Al-Qaradawi, a Qatari citizen of Egyptian origin, and her husband, Hosam Khalaf, an Egyptian national, were both arrested by Egyptian security forces in 2017. They were later accused of having links to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group outlawed in Egypt. Ola's father, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is revered by supporters as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and lives in exile in Qatar. Last year, Jared Gesner, the couple's US-based lawyer, told Al Jazeera that both al-Qaradawi and Khalaf "vigorously deny" belonging or supporting the Muslim Brotherhood; al-Qaradawi is not political, while Khalaf previously belonged to a rival Islamic party called Al Wasat, which is legally registered in Egypt. The couple has been never presented with the evidence against them or given a chance to stand trial, and the family has brought the case to the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention. Their arrests came shortly after Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain broke all ties with Qatar, accusing it of supporting "terrorism" - an accusation Doha vehemently rejected. The couple's supporters insist that the accusations are politicised and linked to the diplomatic impasse between Cairo and Doha - not to any actual criminal offence. Since her initial arrest, al-Qaradawi has been held in solitary confinement in the al-Qanater Women Prison in Qalyubia governorate, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Her cell is about 160 centimetres by 180 centimetres in size, and does not have a bed, toilet and sufficient ventilation and lighting. She is only allowed to use an external toilet for five minutes every morning. Khalaf is being held in similar conditions in a different prison, according to media reports. Al-Qaradawi's lawyer and relatives say she has been subjected to inhumane conditions and abuse by prison staff, and her health has deteriorated in detention. Various rights groups have condemned the couple's arrest, with HRW saying they are being denied their fundamental rights. Last year, Amnesty International and the UN human rights office said al-Qaradawi's prolonged solitary confinement could also amount to torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/daughter-islamic-scholar-al-qaradawi-remanded-egypt-190705075853657.html | 2019-07-05 08:47:29+00:00 | 1,562,330,849 | 1,567,536,792 | politics | fundamental rights |
14,613 | aljazeera--2019-07-25--Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi dies at 92 | 2019-07-25T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi dies at 92 | Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi, the North African country's first democratically elected leader, has died at the age of 92, according to the presidency. One of the world's oldest leaders, Essebsi died at the Tunis military hospital on Thursday morning, the presidency said in a statement. He was hospitalised with a severe illness in late June, but returned to intensive care on Thursday, his son said. Earlier, Hafedh Caid Essebsi told AFP news agency that "things are not going well". Drafted in as prime minister in 2011 after longtime ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was toppled, Essebsi was elected president three years later, becoming the country's first directly elected head of state after its Arab Spring uprising. As prime minister, he helped draft a new democratic constitution guaranteeing fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, and preparing Tunisia for free elections. He also cobrokered an historic power-sharing deal between his Nidaa Tounes movement and Islamist party Ennahda that helped to steady the country, as other parts of the region such as Syria, Yemen or Libya struggled with upheaval and violence. In recognition of their role, Tunisian civil society groups won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. Though Tunisia remained a democratic exception in a troubled region, critics accused Essebsi of attempting a dynastic handover to his son, rowing back on some post-revolution freedoms, and failing to support a truth commission seeking justice for the victims of authoritarian rule. Essebsi recently announced he would not run in an election scheduled for November, saying a younger person should lead the country. Concerns had been growing about a potential power vacuum in Tunisia ahead of the November elections after the president was hospitalised three times in recent weeks. Tunisia's constitution, adopted in 2014, provides two measures in such a case. The prime minister can take over the president's responsibilities for a period of no more than 60 days. If the vacancy is longer, the speaker of parliament is tasked with the role for up to 90 days. In both cases, the decision must be taken by a constitutional court after it validates the president's incapacity. But eight years after the Arab Spring, Tunisia has yet to set up a constitutional court. Youssef Cherif, deputy director at Columbia Global Centers, said the parliament speaker, Mohamed Ennaceur, who is 85 years old, was likely to take over the country. "The president has been unwell for almost a month now, so for the last few weeks there was a lot of discussion inside the corridors of the presidency, the parliament, the prime minister's office to find a way without having a constitutional court," Cherif said from Tunis. "Constitutional experts say the parliament speaker will be the interim president for about two months, and then either elections will happen after two months, or elections that were anyway scheduled to take place between October and December will take place." Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place on October 6, followed by a presidential election on November 17. They will be the third set of polls in which Tunisians have been able to vote freely following the 2011 revolution. Commenting on Essebsi's legacy, Sami Hamdi, editor-in-chief of the United Kingdom-based International Interest magazine said: "Tunisia is still faring far better than Libya, Syria and the like in the sense that it has avoided war. However, this is not to deny that Tunisia is going through a very bad economic crisis. There is still incredible class divides and poverty." Unemployment in Tunisia stands at about 15 percent, up from 12 percent in 2010, due to weak growth and low investment. Tunisia has been spared much of the violence seen elsewhere in the Middle East since 2011, although it has been the target of fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) over the years. "We have seen the return of lobby groups, business interests and foreign intervention," Hamdi said. "Nevertheless there is still a belief that in 2019 all hope is not lost, that there is still some sort of democratic process." Nobody can deny that Tunisia is suffering from despair, he added. "However in comparison to other countries, there is still hope that we can fix the path and go towards a more prosperous Tunisia," he said. "There is an admission that the people still have power." | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/tunisian-president-beji-caid-essebsi-dies-92-190725101946202.html | 2019-07-25 12:03:14+00:00 | 1,564,070,594 | 1,567,535,858 | politics | fundamental rights |
14,829 | aljazeera--2019-07-31--One year on What has changed for Zimbabwe post Mugabe | 2019-07-31T00:00:00 | aljazeera | One year on: What has changed for Zimbabwe post Mugabe? | Harare, Zimbabwe - A year ago, with Zimbabwe's longtime ruler Robert Mugabe out of the picture, the troubled African country seemed to have taken a turn for the better. Mugabe's successor and the incumbent, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was speaking a new language. Politically, he was breaking away from his predecessor's ruinous and often autocratic past and presenting himself as a new man, re-engaging with the international community after years of diplomatic ostracisation. Economically, the 76 year old was pursuing new policies such as opening up the country for business under the "open for business" mantra. He was also looking to abandon controversial policies such as indigenisation - a law that compelled foreign investors with businesses with a net asset value of $1 to cede 51 percent equity stakes to indigenous Zimbabweans to right historical wealth imbalances. Aided by various public relations gimmicks that won him admiration, Mnangagwa was set to succeed. On one occasion, he stopped his presidential motorcade at a popular fast food outlet for a chicken meal. He is said to have waited in the queue like everyone else. Fast forward a year, the hope for a new Zimbabwe has vanished. Mnangagwa has lost support and confirmed everyone's worst fear: there is someone who can run the country worse than Mugabe. Innocent Zhakata, a book vendor on Harare's streets, told Al Jazeera things have gotten tougher since Mnangagwa took over. "Life is getting tough. Prices are going up. There is no money in the economy. During Mugabe's time, life was better. People are now realising they made a mistake [supporting the military coup that catapulted Mnangagwa to power]," Zhakata told Al Jazeera. "In the few months we have been with these guys, things have gotten worse. Things were better. We could buy property, furniture and other things. Now, we can't even buy clothes." Munyaradzi Mufambi, a 22-year-old beverage merchandiser in the capital, said the last year had been disillusioning for him. "I am not sure about the future of our generation in light of the problems we face as a country. I wonder if I will ever be able to raise a family and provide for them adequately," said Mufambi. "In all fairness, I don't know if the president has plans to fix the problems. Maybe he just hasn't communicated these plans to the nation." Mufambi, like Zhakata, said the standards of living were much better under Mugabe. "Given a choice between Mugabe and Mnangagwa, I would choose Mugabe," said Mufambi. "School fees was $20 in my time. A quart of beer was $2. I have to forego beer now, save money and buy essential things. I now buy second-hand clothing." Ibbo Mandaza, a respected academic and director of a local think-tank Sapes Trust, said Mnangagwa's first year as president had been a total failure. "Ever since that coup in November 2017, things have actually been getting worse. It's been worse than we expected. We are now faced with a far worse political and economic crisis characterised by power shortages, rising prices, currency crisis and fuel shortages," Mandaza told Al Jazeera. "What is more worrying is that whilst we are in this crisis, there is virtual absence of government intervention. One can be forgiven for thinking there is now government. At this rate, I don't see this government getting to 2023. "Under Mugabe, things were getting bad. It's the same group of people essentially. It's them and it appears it ends with them. This can't go on forever. I am concerned with the apparent lack of an alternative political solution in this crisis to step in and help end the crisis." In the run-up to the elections last year, Mnangagwa promised millions of jobs, a better life, and a better Zimbabwe. A year later, none of the promises has been delivered. "He lied. We thought industries were going to open and new jobs created. He lied. None of the things he promised have been delivered," Zhakata, who was laid off from one of the country's largest bakery, Lobels, pointed out. Not many citizens will vent their anger in public. Some said Mnangagwa is far more brutal than Mugabe and an even worse dictator. In January, five months after being sworn in as the country's third president, more than 17 unarmed people were shot and killed by the military for protesting against high fuel prices. Scores were wounded or arrested. Mugabe had generally been seen as a dictator, but he had never unleashed soldiers on protesters. The US imposed sanctions as a result, saying they would only be removed if Harare showed commitment and political will to return to democracy through fostering the rule of law and holding credible elections, among other key reforms. Just this week, Defence and War Veterans deputy minister Victor Matemadanda told a Zimbabwe National Liberation War Collaborators conference in Gweru the army would crush any protests. "The law says police must use minimum force when dealing with riotous people during demonstrations," he said. "I do not know the level of the said minimum force. But if they fail to handle the demonstrations, the constitution says they must invite the military," Matemadanda added. Opposition MDC National Youth Assembly spokesperson Steven Chuma said Mnangagwa's short reign has been a disaster. "It's crystal clear that Mnangagwa has failed. Never in the history of Africa has any president failed in one year as he has failed." Mnangagwa's pledge to break with his predecessor's past autocratic policies and tactics, and introduce far-reaching reforms in the realms of business and safeguarding fundamental rights, has so far been a pipe dream for many Zimbabweans. Since the beginning of the year, there has been a clampdown on activists and opposition figures. In the past few months, the government has seemingly targeted civil society activists and workers. State security agents arrested seven activists between May 20 and 27 at Harare's Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport on their return from a workshop in the Maldives. Job Sikhala, deputy chair for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was arrested last month on charges of attempting to subvert Mnangagwa's government. The basis of Sikhala's arrest was a video that circulated on social media in which he appears to be telling supporters at a rally: "We are going to take the fight to the doorsteps of Emmerson Mnangagwa. We are going to overthrow him before 2023 - that is not a joke." Mnangagwa has also not instituted reforms to laws seen to be unconstitutional such as the repressive Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act and the Public Order and Security Act. The two laws were seen as an attack on fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and association. Analysts say apart from his heavy-handedness and autocratic tactics, his short rule is one fraught with numerous failures. The economy is on its knees. Inflation is ravaging. General hardships are the order of the day. Power shortages have hit industry hard. Currency confidence is at its lowest. A spokesman for the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), Simon Khaya Moyo, said Mnangagwa fared pretty fairly given the myriad of challenges he faced, such as the drought and the impact it was having on the economy. Moyo added that the government had instituted fiscal reforms that are bearing fruit as evidenced by the fiscal discipline within all government departments as well as the budget surplus. He added that the drought affected power generation in the country. "The water level at Kariba dam is at 24 percent of required capacity. This has affected power generation. That is not something we have control over. But we are working to resolve this issue," said Moyo. "It's been difficult for the people because of inflation. We want our people to have a good life as enunciated in our election manifesto. All the people of Zimbabwe should be well taken care of without bias and favour. It's every citizen's right. That is what we want for our people." | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/year-changed-zimbabwe-post-mugabe-190730135345100.html | 2019-07-31 14:01:26+00:00 | 1,564,596,086 | 1,567,535,253 | politics | fundamental rights |
15,570 | aljazeera--2019-09-03--Discontent swells in Zimbabwe amid crackdown economic woes | 2019-09-03T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Discontent swells in Zimbabwe amid crackdown, economic woes | Whereas Robert Mugabe, who ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years, would contravene the West diplomatically, President Mnangagwa wanted to engage. And contrary to Mugabe's strategy of barring investors, Mnangagwa said he was open for business. At home, when he was officially sworn into office last year following a coup to remove Mugabe, he was welcomed as the leader Zimbabwe needed, and on the diplomatic front, he was the darling of Western diplomats - a pragmatic and progressive reformer. But almost two years on from the removal of Mugabe, the landscape from both fronts is viewed differently amid an apparent crackdown on dissent and an economy that remains weak. On August 16 this year, anti-riot police crushed a demonstration, injuring several protesters. Earlier, in January, more than 16 people were killed when soldiers opened fire on protesters in the aftermath of a 150 percent fuel price increase. Several others were injured. Last year in August, soldiers shot and killed six other opposition-supporting protesters. With inflation at 200 percent in June, high living costs, stagnant salaries and 90 percent unemployment, discontent against Mnangagwa's government is rising. "I am very unhappy with the state of affairs in the country. Life is very hard now. We want the problems solved," said Priscah Katema, a Harare resident who does odd jobs to supplement her husband's income. Some observers have described Mnangagwa as being "worse" than his former mentor Mugabe, but Ibbo Mandaza, a political science academic and former government adviser, said this perspective was limited. "The argument that Mnangagwa is worse than Mugabe is purely academic," he told Al Jazeera. "This is because there should not be any distinction between the two. Mnangagwa was always at the centre of the security apparatus that enabled Mugabe to do all the things he did." After the recent anti-government protests, the European Union, which earlier threw its support behind Mnangagwa's reforms, sent a warning. In a joint statement, the heads of mission for France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, UK, Australia, Canada and the United States, said the "intimidation, harassment and physical attacks on human rights defenders, trade union and civil society representatives and opposition politicians - prior to, during and following the demonstration in Harare on August 16 - are cause for great concern." In defiance reminiscent of the Mugabe era, Nick Mangwana, information secretary and presidential spokesperson, said the EU statement undermined civilian authority and promoted anarchy. "The government is taken aback by the intrusive and judgmental tone of the statement. The statement fails to acknowledge that the Zimbabwean High Court spoke on the issue, which rendered any action taken contrary to that judgment illegal," he said in a statement. Meanwhile, rights groups including Amnesty International have called on Zimbabwe to protect its citizens, describing a "systematic and brutal crackdown". "What we have witnessed in Zimbabwe since President Emmerson Mnangagwa took power is a ruthless attack on human rights, with the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association increasingly restricted and criminalised," said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International's deputy director for Southern Africa. Stephen Chuma, spokesman of the Opposition MDC Alliance Youth Assembly National, said the government's actions make Zimbabwe look like a military state. "Blocking the people's constitutional right to demonstrate can only aid in further exposing this regime and also buttressing our position that Emmerson Mnangagwa has turned the country into a fully-fledged military state that does not respect people's fundamental rights," said Chuma. By the time of publishing, Mnangagwa had not responded to Al Jazeera's request for comment. Unperturbed by the diplomatic attacks, the 76-year-old president has accelerated a clampdown on opposition leaders and perceived enemies of the state. Opposition activists Blessing Kanotunga, MDC Youth chairperson, and Citizens Manifesto's Tatenda Mombeyarara were abducted and assaulted last month in advance of protests, before being dumped back on the streets of Harare. In the same period, MDC Youth Assembly National Vice Chairperson Cecilia Chimbiri was called in by the CID while Pride Mkono, a pro-democracy campaigner, was also detained and charged with attempting to subvert a constitutional government. MDC national organising secretary Amos Chibaya was detained for failing to comply with a ban on demonstrations, and Leopold Munhende, a journalist with an online publication, was recently arrested in Harare. Human rights lawyer Doug Coltart was also held and assaulted for filming the arrest of trade unionists, and spent a night in jail. Even comedians have not been spared. Armed and masked men forcefully entered the house of popular comic Samantha Kureya, known by her stage name "Gonyeti", and abducted her. She was reportedly driven to an unknown area and assaulted for her satirical jokes that poke fun at authorities. But despite the threats, the opposition has refused to stop protesting, Chuma said. "By closing the democratic space, the government is creating its own enemy," he said. Mnangagwa's term comes to an end in 2023. Mandaza, the political science academic, believes it is unlikely he will stand in power until then. "The killings of the August 1, 2018, the stolen elections, the January killings this year, assaults on protesters, and abductions are indicative of regimes that have become very vulnerable and fragile," he said. "They now rely on sheer force after they lost the social and political base." | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/discontent-swells-zimbabwe-crackdown-economic-woes-190902192154717.html | 2019-09-03 09:46:24+00:00 | 1,567,518,384 | 1,569,331,575 | politics | fundamental rights |
15,619 | aljazeera--2019-09-04--India revokes Kashmirs special status | 2019-09-04T00:00:00 | aljazeera | India revokes Kashmir's special status | Editor's note: This is an archived page. Click here for all the latest updates on India revoking Kashmir's special status. The Indian government revoked the special status accorded to Indian-administered Kashmir in its constitution, the most far-reaching political move on the disputed region in nearly 70 years. A presidential decree issued on August 5 revoked Article 370 of India's constitution that guaranteed special rights to the Muslim-majority state, including the right to its own constitution and autonomy to make laws on all matters except defence, communications and foreign affairs. In the lead-up to the move, India sent thousands of additional troops to the disputed region, imposed a crippling curfew, shut down telecommunications and internet, and arrested political leaders. The move has worsened the already-heightened tensions with neighbouring Pakistan, which said it would downgrade its diplomatic relations with India. India and Pakistan claim Kashmir in full but rule it in part. The nuclear-armed neighbours have fought two of their three wars over the disputed territory. A rebellion in Indian-administered Kashmir has been ongoing for three decades. India's two main ports said they had been warned by the coastguard and intelligence officials that Pakistan-trained commandos had entered Indian waters to carry out underwater attacks on port facilities. The Mundra Port, run by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, and the state-owned Kandla Port asked their employees and ship operators to be vigilant, port officials and the ports said, in advisories seen by Reuters news agency. Intelligence shared by government officials suggested that "Pakistan-trained commandos" had entered the Gulf of Kutch on the west coast to foment violence, the Kandla Port said in an advisory. As India extends its military lockdown in Kashmir, there are fears that the resistance movement may adopt a strategy of violence to fight against the punishing measures - which include mass arrests, a communications shutdown and alleged police brutality and harassment. Chants of "one solution, gun solution" have recently resounded at protests in the Muslim-majority Indian-administered region, which on August 5 was subjected to a complete military crackdown after the Hindu-nationalist ruling party revoked Article 370, which had granted Kashmir a degree of autonomy. Pakistan's military has successfully carried out a training launch of a surface-to-surface ballistic missile, at a time of heightened tension with neighbouring India over the disputed region of Kashmir, a spokesman said. "Pakistan successfully carried out night training launch of ... missile Ghaznavi capable of delivering multiple types of warheads," the spokesman for the armed forces, Major General Asif Ghafoor, said on Twitter. The missile can deliver a warhead to a distance of up to 290km. Satya Pal Malik, the New Delhi-appointed governor of Jammu and Kashmir, said the central government planned to hire tens of thousands of workers. Malik called it the largest recruitment drive in the region, with officials planning to fill "50,000 vacancies in various government departments in the next few months". At a news conference in the main city of Srinagar, Malik also announced that the government was willing to commit $700m to help apple farmers. Indian authorities believe the move will expand the region's economy, to which horticulture, particularly apple orchards, is critical. India's unilateral actions in Kashmir pose "grave" risks to regional peace and are aimed at altering the demography of the Muslim-majority region, Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan said in phone calls with the leaders of Jordan and France. French President Emmanuel Macron underlined the importance of "resolving all outstanding issues through peaceful means", according to a statement from Khan's office. Jordan's King Abdullah called for de-escalation and peaceful resolution of the dispute, Khan's office said. He also pledged to consult other countries over the situation. At least 500 incidents of protest have broken out in Indian-administered Kashmir since New Dehli stripped the region of its autonomy and imposed a military clampdown more than three weeks ago, a senior government official has told the AFP news agency. The official said at least 500 protests and incidents of stone-throwing have occurred since August 5, with more than half taking place in the main city of Srinagar. India's top court is taking up legal challenges to the government's decision to revoke Indian-administered Kashmir's special status and has asked the government to explain its stance to the court. The Supreme Court held a preliminary hearing on the petitions and said five judges will start a regular hearing in October. It ordered the federal government to file its replies to 14 petitions and inform the court about the media restrictions imposed in Kashmir. Rahul Gandhi, leader of India's main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, has said Kashmir is India's internal issue and Pakistan "instigates and supports" violence in the region. "I disagree with this Govt. on many issues. But, let me make this absolutely clear: Kashmir is India's internal issue & there is no room for Pakistan or any other foreign country to interfere in it," Gandhi tweeted. Pakistan's military has accused Indian troops of firing across the Line of Control (LoC) in the disputed Kashmir region, killing two civilians and wounding three others. It said in a statement that the dead included a 45-year-old man and a three-year-old girl, while the wounded were taken to hospital. The Indian fire also burned three homes in the village of Nekrun near the heavily militarised LoC, it added. The army did not say whether it returned fire and there was no immediate comment from India. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan is considering a complete closure of airspace to India and blocking Indian land trade to Afghanistan via Pakistan, according to the Pakistani minister for science and technology. "PM is considering a complete closure of Air Space to India, a complete ban on use of Pakistan Land routes for Indian trade to Afghanistan was also suggested in cabinet meeting, legal formalities for these decisions are under consideration ... #Modi has started we'll finish!," Fawad Chaudhry wrote on Twitter. The tweet gave no more details on why Pakistan would be considering the moves against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government now. Pakistan had reopened its airspace in mid-July after almost five months after closing it in the wake of a military standoff with India. The months of restrictions forced long detours that cost airlines millions of dollars. More than a thousand students rallied in the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir to denounce India's downgrading of the special status of the portion of the disputed region it controls. The demonstrators chanted "We want freedom" and denounced human rights violations in Indian-administered Kashmir. Tuesday's rally in Muzaffarabad came a day after Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan vowed to globally highlight the issue of Kashmir. He will address the UN General Assembly on September 27. Deepak Lal came to Kashmir's main city of Srinagar in May hoping to find work as a painter. The 23-year-old travelled several hundred miles from his home state of West Bengal in eastern India to the disputed Himalayan region expecting to work during the summer and autumn months. His plan was foiled when India's Hindu nationalist government imposed an unprecedented security lockdown in the territory earlier this month, followed by a contentious move to strip the region of its limited autonomy. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Sunday brushed away criticism of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after the gulf nation gave Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi its highest civilian honour amid the lockdown in Kashmir. He said India and the UAE have a "history of relations in connection with investment". Qureshi added that he will soon have a "meeting with the UAE foreign minister to inform him about the prevailing situation in India-held Kashmir". A Kashmiri truck driver in Indian-administered Kashmir was killed as fresh clashes between the security forces and residents broke out, police said, amid a security and communications blackout that is now in its fourth week. Noor Mohammed Dar, 42, was struck on the head as protesters hurled stones at security forces during a confrontation in the city of Srinagar. The governor of Jammu and Kashmir state, Satya Pal Malik, has said there is no shortage of medicines or other essential commodities in the disputed region which has been under lockdown for more than three weeks. "In fact, we delivered meat, vegetables and eggs to people's houses on Eid. Your opinion will change in 10-15 days," he told reporters in New Delhi as he defended the curfew. Kannan Gopinathan, a 33-year-old Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer hailing from the southern state of Kerala, quit his government job, saying he has his "own conscience to answer to" over the crippling lockdown and denial of fundamental rights in Indian-administered Kashmir, Indian media reported. "If you ask me what you were doing, when one of the world's largest democracies announced a ban on the entire state, and even violated the fundamental rights of the people, I should at least be able to reply that I quit my job," he told an Indian news portal. Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a prominent separatist leader in Indian-administered Kashmir, has called on residents of the region to peacefully resist Indian rule in the disputed territory. "It is our heartfelt appeal to the people of Jammu and Kashmir that we must continue to resist at this critical juncture ... We all can, and must, act according to our abilities; through action or word. People should organise peaceful protests and demonstrations in their areas of residence," the 89-year-old leader said in a statement. Geelani, who has been held at his home since India's decision to revoke Kashmir's special status, also urged Pakistan to act decisively. The statement was his first since India's move. Modi was awarded the Order of Zayed medal by the UAE's crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (known by his initials MBZ), during a visit to the capital Abu Dhabi. But the award has sparked outrage among rights activists over the Modi government's clampdown in the Muslim-majority Kashmir region administered by New Delhi. A delegation of India's main opposition politicians, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, has been sent back to the capital, New Delhi, after it reached Srinagar, news agency ANI reported. Gandhi and others had flown in to the disputed region to observe the situation on the ground. India's main opposition politicians, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, are expected to arrive in Srinagar, despite appeals by the government not to visit the tense region. The political parties forming the opposition's delegation are the Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Nationalist Congress Party, Trinamool Congress and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Indian media reports said. Pakistan has sent another letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), demanding intervention to end the "humanitarian crises" in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Minister of Foreign Affairs Shah Mehmood Qureshi has underscored the importance for the world community, including the UN, to call upon India to rescind its unilateral actions, lift the curfew and other draconian measures and restore fundamental rights of the Kashmiri people, the statement said. Authorities in Srinagar have tightened security ahead of Friday prayers after there were calls for a protest march to a UN office. Posters appeared overnight this week in Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir, calling for a march to the office of the UN Military Observer Group for India and Pakistan to protest against India's revocation of Jammu and Kashmir state's special autonomy. More than 150 people have suffered injuries from tear gas and pellets in disputed Kashmir since Indian security forces launched a major crackdown this month, data from the region's two main hospitals shows. At least 152 people reported to Srinagar's Shere Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) and Shri Maharaj Hari Singh hospital with injuries from pellet shots and tear gas fire between August 5 and August 21, according to data acquired by Reuters news agency. Major opposition parties in India have joined forces to protest against the government's clampdown in Indian-administered Kashmir , demanding the immediate release of political leaders and the restoration of communication services in the Himalayan region Opposition figures addressed the New Delhi protest, which was organised by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, a regional party from the southern state of Tamil Nadu. "The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological wing, RSS, are celebrating the abrogation of Article 370, while the majority of people don't even know what the Article is," Ghulam Nabi Azad, of the Indian National Congress, told the hundreds of people in the crowd. The music videos began appearing on social media within hours of the announcement by India's Hindu-led nationalist government that it was stripping statehood from the disputed region of Kashmir that had been in place for decades. The songs delivered a message to India's 250 million YouTube users about moving to the Muslim-majority region, buying land there and marrying Kashmiri women. It is the latest example of a growing genre in India known as "patriotism pop" - songs flooding social media about nationalism and the country's burgeoning right-wing ideology. "I arrived in Srinagar with my sister on August 1. Having grown up in Kashmir, I didn't think too much when I saw the shuttered tourist information desk at the airport and the military presence. Driving home, I noticed that the military presence was larger than normal in what is already one of the most militarised zones in the world. It was the peak of the tourist season, thousands of Amarnath Yatra pilgrims were visiting, and with Eid and the wedding season around the corner, the streets were busy. The following morning, I woke up early. My phone was buzzing with messages from friends and family asking if we were OK." Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has ruled out seeking dialogue with India over the Kashmir issue, saying "there is nothing more we can do". "There is no point in talking to them," Khan said in an interview with The New York Times. "I have done all the talking. Unfortunately, now when I look back, all the overtures that I was making for peace and dialogue, I think they took it for appeasement." Pakistan has demanded the United Nations remove Indian actress Priyanka Chopra as a UN goodwill ambassador over her "support for war" amid heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours. In a letter to the UNICEF chief Henrietta Fore, Pakistan's Minister of Human Rights Shireen Mazari accused the 37-year-old actress and former Miss World of publicly endorsing the position of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government in Indian-administered Kashmir. "Her jingoism and support for violations by the Modi government of international conventions and UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir, as well as support for war, including a nuclear war, undermines the credibility of the UN position to which she been elevated," Mazari said in the letter. Separatist leaders in Indian-administered Kashmir have urged people to defy a ban and join a mass march after Friday prayers this week. Hundreds of political leaders and activists, many of them separatists seeking Kashmir's secession from India, have been arrested and the appeal to the public came through posters that appeared overnight in the region's main city of Srinagar. "Every person, young and old, men and women, should march after Friday prayers," the Joint Resistance Leadership, which represents all major separatist groups, said on one poster. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken to his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, about violent demonstrations over Kashmir outside the Indian embassy in London, the foreign ministry said. Thousands of people, many waving Pakistani and Kashmiri flags, protested outside the embassy last week, on India's independence day, against Modi's withdrawal of Kashmir's special status. In a telephone call with Johnson, Modi "referred to the violence and vandalism perpetrated by a large mob against the High Commission of India in London", India's foreign ministry said in a statement. "Prime Minister Johnson regretted the incident and assured that all necessary steps would be taken to ensure safety and security of the High Commission, its personnel and visitors," the ministry said. US President Donald Trump has reasserted his offer to mediate what he called an "explosive" situation in Kashmir. Trump said he would raise the matter over the weekend with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G7 summit in France. "Kashmir is a very complicated place. You have Hindus and you have the Muslims and I wouldn't say they get along so great," Trump told reporters at the White House. "I will do the best I can to mediate," he added. Two people, including a police officer, were killed in a gun battle between armed rebels and security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said on Wednesday. The clash in the northern district of Baramulla was the first to be reported by the authorities since New Delhi revoked the autonomy of the part of Kashmir that it controls and imposed a curfew and communications lockdown earlier this month. After August 5, when India revoked Kashmir's special status and followed the move with a military lockdown, Uzma Javed did not leave her house for days. Every few hours, she looked out of the window from her family's two-storey house in Srinagar, the largest city in Indian-administered Kashmir. A 20-year-old student who usually lives in Kerala, Javed had returned home to spend Eid with her relatives. But instead of celebrating, she found herself caged in while outside, armed Indian paramilitary forces manned largely empty streets. French President Emmanuel Macron will discuss tensions in the divided region of Kashmir with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when the two meet in Paris this week, a French official said. Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also weighed in on Kashmir telling Modi in a phone call that the issue was one for India and Pakistan to resolve between themselves through dialogue. Macron and Modi are set to sit down for a working dinner at the Chateau de Chantilly outside Paris on Thursday ahead of a G7 summit in France this weekend, to which Modi has been invited. Pakistan said it would take the Kashmir dispute with India to the International Court of Justice after New Delhi revoked special status for its portion of the region earlier this month. "We have decided to take Kashmir case to the International Court of Justice," Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told ARY News TV. "The decision was taken after considering all legal aspects." As the tough political talk on Kashmir has a direct effect on the lives of millions of people on both sides of the Line of Control, Al Jazeera talks to three key figures on the Pakistani side and asks: Will Pakistan be able to neutralise the Indian move; can diplomacy defuse tensions; and will other powers like China get involved, and if so, what could this mean for Kashmiris? Security forces have detained 30 people overnight in Srinagar, local officials said, amid frequent demonstrations in the city despite a clampdown on phone and internet services, a ban on public gatherings and the detention of hundreds of political leaders and separatists. "These arrests have been made in the areas where there has been intensifying stone pelting in the last few days," a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A local government official confirmed the latest detentions, Reuters news agency reported. Government sources have told AFP news agency at least 4,000 people have been arrested in Indian-administered Kashmir since August 5, with some of them moved out of the disputed region as jails have run out of capacity. For more than a week, the young men of Soura, a densely populated enclave in Indian-administered Kashmir's main city of Srinagar, have been taking turns to maintain an around-the-clock vigil at the entry points to their neighbourhood. Soura, home to about 15,000 people, is becoming the epicentre of resistance to India's plans to remove the partial autonomy that was enjoyed by the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state. The enclave has effectively become a no-go zone for the Indian security forces. US President Donald Trump spoke with the prime ministers of India and Pakistan, urging them to reduce tensions over the disputed region of Kashmir. "Spoke to my two good friends, Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi of India, and Prime Minister [Imran] Khan of Pakistan, regarding Trade, Strategic Partnerships and, most importantly, for India and Pakistan to work towards reducing tensions in Kashmir," Trump tweeted. Main government offices and a few schools in Indian-administered Kashmir have reopened after two weeks of a clampdown in the disputed region. Nearly 200 primary schools were ordered by the authorities to reopen in certain areas. However, attendance in schools remained scant, as many parents decided against sending their children amid heightened tensions in the state. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan extended his military chief's term by another three years, an official statement released by his office said. The decision comes amid the ongoing crisis in Kashmir, which has seen tensions escalate between India and Pakistan. "General Qamar Javed Bajwa is appointed as Chief of Army staff for another term of three years from date of completion of current tenure," read the statement. "The decision has been taken in view of the regional security environment." He was first appointed as army chief in November 2016 by the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for a three-year term. Some 190 primary schools reopened in Indian-administered Kashmir's main city of Srinagar, but most classrooms were empty as parents kept their children home. Parents said their children would stay home until cellular phone networks were restored and they could be in contact with them. Pakistan said Indian troops have fired across the Line of Control (LoC) in the disputed Kashmir region, killing two civilians and wounding another. Pakistan's foreign ministry said in a statement that civilian casualties occurred on Sunday because of "unprovoked ceasefire violations" by India in the border villages of Hot Spring and Chirikot. The ministry said Pakistan summoned an Indian diplomat and lodged a protest over continued ceasefire violations, which "are a threat to regional peace". Indian authorities have reimposed restrictions on movement in major parts of Srinagar after violent overnight clashes between residents and police in which dozens were injured, officials and witnesses said. Two senior government officials told Reuters news agency that at least two dozen people were admitted to hospitals with pellet injuries. They also reversed a decision to allow internet and mobile phone use in parts of the Jammu region, according to one official, amid concerns about the spread of rumours online. A magistrate speaking to AFP news agency on condition of anonymity said at least 4,000 people were arrested in Indian-administered Kashmir and held under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a controversial law that allows authorities to imprison someone for up to two years without charge or trial. "Most of them were flown out of Kashmir because prisons here have run out of capacity," the magistrate said, adding that he had used a satellite phone allocated to him to collate the figures from colleagues across the Himalayan territory amid a communications blackout imposed by authorities. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has urged the international community to take steps to secure India's nuclear arsenal after New Delhi hinted a shift in its "no first use" policy. "The World must also seriously consider the safety & security of India's nuclear arsenal in the control of the fascist, racist Hindu Supremacist Modi Govt. This is an issue that impacts not just the region but the world," he said in a tweet. India's Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said while India had strictly adhered to the nuclear weapons doctrine of "no first use" policy, what would happen in the future will depend on circumstances. Indian authorities have carried out a major crackdown against political leaders in Indian-administered Kashmir and arrested high-profile figures that include three former chief ministers of the Muslim-majority state. The arrests coincided with the abrogation of the decades-old Article 370 of the Indian constitution that protected the demography of Jammu and Kashmir state and provided it with limited autonomy. Gunfire has been exchanged across the heavily-militarised Line of Control (LoC) between Indian-administered and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The incident took place in Nowshera town of the Rajouri district in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Indian defence spokesman Colonel Aman Anand said that one soldier was killed allegedly by Pakistan forces. Pakistan has yet to comment on this latest development. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said the country was establishing a Kashmir desk at the ministry and at its embassies in foreign capitals. He said this was decided to "lobby for Kashmiris and their right to self-determination" and "in order to carry out effective communication on the matter". Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan welcomed the UN Security Council meeting that was held in New York on Friday. He hailed the session as a "reaffirmation" of 11 previous UNSC resolutions on Kashmir, that gaurantees Kashmiris the right to self-determination. Local police in the Jammu and Kashmir state said on Saturday that 17 out of 100 telephone exchanges were restored in the Kashmir Valley. According to Al Jazeera correspondent Anchal Vohra, most of the landline telephone services in Jammu had been restored. Restrictions were tougher in Kashmir, where India's clampdown continues to be far more constraining. The famous red dot that marks the story of Indian-administered Kashmir on social media came much before India scrapped the Muslim-majority region of its special status. The decision to revoke Article 370 of India's constitution on August 5 was preceded by a heavy military build-up in the Himalayan valley, followed by a crippling lockdown now in its 12th day, and arrests of hundreds of political leaders and activists. A few days after Jammu and Kashmir's special status was eradicated, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that the now-abolished Article 370 of India's constitution - the provision that had guaranteed special rights to the Muslim-majority region - had also hampered its economic development. "There must be investment and job opportunities in Jammu and Kashmir," Modi told CNN-News 18. "No one goes there to invest." US President Donald Trump told Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan that it was important India and Pakistan reduce tensions in Jammu and Kashmir through "bilateral dialogue," the White House said in a statement. White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley said the two leaders in a telephone call also discussed building the growing relationship between the United States and Pakistan, citing momentum created during their recent meeting at the White House. India's ambassador to the United Nations criticised international interference over Kashmir, after the Security Council held its first formal meeting on the disputed region in decades. "We don't need international busybodies to try to tell us how to run our lives," Syed Akbaruddin told reporters in New York, adding that India's decision was an internal matter. "If there are issues, they will be discussed, they will be addressed by our courts," he said. Pakistan's ambassador to the UN said people in Indian-administered Kashmir "are not alone", adding that they "may be locked up ... but their voices were heard today". Maleeha Lodhi was speaking to reporters after the Security Council met behind closed doors to discuss the situation in Kashmir for the first time in decades. She said that the meeting was called 72 hours after Pakistan's Foreign Minister wrote a letter requesting it in the wake of India's move. "We are grateful to China in also joining us and calling this meeting," she said. "The voice of the Kashmiri people, the voice of the people of occupied Kashmir has been heard today in the highest diplomatic forum of the world. "They are not alone ... their plight, their hardship, their pain, their suffering, their occupation and the consequences of that occupation has been heard in the UNSC." Lodhi said that the very fact this meeting had taken place is "testimony to the fact that this is an internationally recognised dispute". The Chinese ambassador to the UN said the Security Council feared that the situation in Kashmir might worsen. Speaking to reporters after the council wrapped up the closed-door meeting in New York, Zhang Jun said the situation in Kashmir is "already very tense and very dangerous". He added that the members of the council generally feel India and Pakistan should both refrain from unilateral action over Kashmir. The UN Security Council met behind closed doors to discuss the situation in Kashmir for the first time in decades at the request of China and Pakistan. The UN's most powerful body was being briefed morning by Assistant Secretary-General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco and General Carlos Humberto Loitey, the UN military adviser. UN officials said the council session may be its first on Kashmir since the late 1990s, or possibly since the 1971 India-Pakistan war. Russia's deputy UN ambassador, Dmitry Polyansky, told reporters as he headed into the meeting that Moscow was concerned about the latest developments, but he said it was "a bilateral issue". Amnesty International Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo said in a statement that council members "need to remember that their mandate is to protect international peace and security - and they should seek to resolve the situation in a way that puts the human rights of the people in this troubled region at its centre." Prime Minister Khan, has held a telephone conversation with Trump in which the two leaders discussed the events in Kashmir. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Khan shared his concern with Trump that the situation in Kashmir posed a danger to the region. He said the conversation was part of the prime minister's outreach to world leaders about the developments in Kashmir. There was no information about Trump's comments. Scores of Pakistanis living in Turkey gathered outside the Pakistan Embassy in Ankara on Thursday evening for a candlelight vigil expressing their solidarity with the people of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. With candles and posters in their hands, they were joined by many Turks, who said they had come to express support for the Kashmiri population. India will begin restoring phone lines in Kashmir on Friday evening, a top official said, after a 12-day blackout following the stripping of the region's autonomy. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam did not make clear, however, whether mobile phones and internet connections would also be reinstated in the Muslim-majority northern region. "You will see a gradual restoration (of telephone lines) from tonight and tomorrow onwards. You will find a lot of Srinagar functioning tomorrow morning," Subrahmanyam said, referring to the main city in the restive Kashmir Valley. "Exchange by exchange they will be switching it on. Over the weekend you will have most of these lines functioning most probably," he told reporters. He said the easing would "(keep) in mind the constant threat posed by terrorist organisations in using mobile connectivity to organised terrorist actions." The first special UN Security Council session on Kashmir will take place today after 54 years. In Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, Al Jazeera's Osama Bin Javaid, said "expectations are really high" ahead of the session. "The people are calling on the UN and the UNSC members to listen to the plight of the Kashmiris," said Javaid. The UNSC move is being hailed as a diplomatic victory by Pakistan, but the government was wary of any "concrete steps to be taken to stop India or roll back whats its done in Kashmir". While the Kashmir region remains locked down, Kashmiri diaspora is using social media to organise protests and mobilise opinion. Amid the crisis, Stand With Kashmir, a grassroots advocacy group in the United States, posted a red dot on its Instagram account they had set up only months ago. "We decided to use it [the red dot] as a campaign [to] try to at least do some kind of an initial social media organising to make people aware." India will lift restrictions on people's movements and communication links in Kashmir in the next few days, the federal government told the Supreme Court on Friday. The court was hearing a petition by a newspaper editor seeking restoration of telephone and internet services snapped this month, just before the government withdrew Kashmir's special status, to prevent protests. The restrictions would be lifted in the "next few days", the government lawyer, Tushar Mehta, said. "The ground situation is being reviewed daily and the Supreme Court must trust the security agencies." Pakistan's army said Indian troops fired across the Line of Control in the disputed Kashmir region, killing another soldier and bringing the death toll to six in less than 24 hours. Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor in a tweet Friday said "another brave son of soil lost his life in the line of duty" in Buttal town. On Thursday, Pakistan's army said at least three of its soldiers and five Indian soldiers were killed after a cross-border exchange of fire, prompting a denial by New Delhi that there were fatalities among its forces. Indian troops detained a Kashmiri reporter working for a local newspaper in an overnight raid on his house in Southern Pulwama district, his family said. Irfan Ahmad Malik, 28, works for Greater Kashmir, the largest daily newspaper in the Kashmir valley. It was not immediately clear why he had been detained. More than 500 local leaders and activists have been detained in the past 12 days of the crackdown. Several thousand people protested outside the Indian embassy in London against the country's move to strip the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir of its autonomy. The protesters in the United Kingdom's capital held up signs reading "Kashmir is bleeding" and waved Kashmiri and Pakistani flags. Police separated them from a smaller pro-India counter-demonstration. An Indian army spokesperson has denied the Pakistani army's statement that five Indian soldiers were killed in a cross-border exchange of fire in the disputed region of Kashmir. "No casualties. This assertion is wrong," the spokesperson was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. In a statement quoted by news agencies, the Indian army said that at about 7am, Pakistan violated a ceasefire between the two nations in the heavily militarised LoC. At least three Pakistani soldiers and five Indian troops have been killed after an exchange of fire across the Line of Control in the disputed region of Kashmir, Pakistan's army has said. Major General Asif Ghafoor, the chief spokesman of the Pakistan Armed Forces, said in a Twitter post on Thursday that Indian forces had increased firing along the contested border. Pakistan is observing a 'Black Day' to coincide with India's independence day celebrations. Newspaper issues carried black borders and politicians, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, replaced their social media pictures with black squares. Flags on government buildings flew at half-mast. Nearly a 1,000 supporters of Hizbul Mujahideen rebel group marched through Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, holding black flags and shouting anti-India slogans. The UN Security Council (UNSC) is expected to discuss the Kashmir issue on Friday, Radio Pakistan reported, citing diplomatic sources. Pakistan's Geo News also reported the news quoting UNSC president Joanna Wronecka as saying: "The UNSC will discuss the Jammu and Kashmir situation behind closed doors most likely on August 16." Amnesty International has asked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lift the communications blackout and engage with the people of Jammu and Kashmir. "It is a paradox that as India celebrates its 73rd independence day today, the people of Jammu and Kashmir continue to be subjected to a lockdown for the past 10 days," the rights group said in a statement. Modi has defended his decision to revoke Kashmir's special status, saying the move is to ensure the idea of "one nation, one constitution", which he said will foster growth in the troubled region, at the 73rd-anniversary celebration of Indian independence in New Delhi. "We don't believe in delaying solving problems, we also don't let problems fester," Modi said, saying two-thirds of both houses of Indian parliament approved the plan. Millions in Indian-administered Kashmir are living under curfew after the government revoked the state's semi-autonomy. Thousands of troops were sent to the Muslim-majority region, while telephone lines and internet connections are blocked. Al Jazeera's The Stream looks at what lies in store for the people of Kashmir amid the ongoing lockdown. A group of Indian activists, economists, writers and members of leftist organisations presented their observations of the situation in Kashmir in the capital New Delhi on Wednesday after returning from a five-day trip to the disputed region. Kavita Krishnan, a left-wing activist, said the situation is "absolutely not normal," contrary to reports by several Indian news broadcasters. Pakistan's foreign ministry said it has summoned an Indian diplomat to protest the killing of a civilian by Indian fire in disputed Kashmir. The ministry said in a statement that a 38-year-old villager was killed on Tuesday by an "unprovoked cease-fire violation by Indian troops on the Pakistani side of Kashmir." Restrictions in the Jammu region of Indian-administered Kashmir have been "completely removed", Indian news agency PTI said, quoting a senior police official. "Restrictions imposed in Jammu have been completely removed and schools and other establishments there are functioning. Restrictions will continue in some places of Kashmir for some time," Additional Director General Munir Khan said, according to PTI. India's move of revoking Article 370 and imposing a lockdown in Kashmir is a strategic blunder by Indian PM Narendra Modi, his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan has said while addressing legislators in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Khan visited Muzaffarabad on Pakistan's independence day as he reaffirmed his support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination amid heightened tensions with neighbouring India. Shah Faesal, a former bureaucrat who launched a political party in Indian-administered Kashmir earlier this year, has been arrested at New Delhi airport and sent back to Srinagar, according to Indian media reports. On Tuesday, Faesal had tweeted that Kashmir "will need a long, sustained, non-violent" movement for the restoration of the Muslim-majority region's special status under the Indian constitution. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has visited Pakistan-administered Kashmir as he reiterated his support to the Kashmiri people living in the Indian-administered part of the divided region. Khan's visit to Muzzaffarad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, to mark the country's independence day came more than a week after New Delhi's decision to downgrade Kashmir's status. Pakistan is observing its 72nd independence day in solidarity with the people of Kashmir this year. While addressing a flag-hoisting ceremony in the capital, Islamabad, President Arif Alvi said that Pakistan has always stood by Kashmiris and would continue to do so, local media Dawn reported. Restrictions on freedom of movement in Indian-administered Kashmir will be eased after India's independence day on Thursday, the state governor said; phone lines and the internet will remain cut off. Satya Pal Malik told the Times of India that communications would remain blocked. "In a week or 10 days, everything will be all right and we will gradually open lines of communication," Malik told the newspaper in an interview. Amnesty International India condemned a decision by India's Supreme Court to allow New Delhi to continue a security crackdown and communications blackout in Indian-administered Kashmir. Amnesty also urged New Delhi to ease restrictions and expressed "deep concern" over people's right to freedom of movement, expression and opinion, as well as the detention of political leaders and activists, and "the impairment of the press to freely report on the current developments and act as a bridge for the voices from the region". The Pakistani government asked the UN Security Council to meet over India's decision revoking Indian-administered Kashmir's special status. "Pakistan will not provoke a conflict. But India should not mistake our restraint for weakness," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi wrote in a letter to the council seen by Reuters news agency. It was not immediately clear how the 15-member council would respond to the request. Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz told reporters at the UN that the council "will discuss that issue and take a proper decision". Poland holds the presidency of the council for August. The main city in Indian-administered Kashmir has turned into a vast maze of razor wire coils and steel barricades as drones and helicopters hover overhead. Although the four million residents of the Kashmir Valley - where an armed conflict has simmered for decades - are used to blockades, they say the current one is something they have never seen before. "The entire Srinagar city has been knitted in razor wire to seek our silence and obedience," resident Zameer Ahmed told The Associated Press news agency. India's Supreme Court, in reviewing a petition for the immediate withdrawal of severe government restrictions in Kashmir, said the security crackdown and communications blackout should continue because the government needed more time to tackle the "sensitive" situation. Attorney General KK Venugopal said: "We are reviewing the situation and lifting restrictions step by step," in the Supreme Court, according to legal reporting website Bar&Bench.; An unprecedented security lockdown has kept people in Indian-administered Kashmir indoors for a ninth day, with residents running short of essentials under a near-constant curfew and communications blackout. The lockdown is expected to last at least through Thursday, India's independence day. An open letter signed by 69 human rights activists and organisations, lawyers, journalists and academics, addressed to India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised concerns over the human rights violations in Indian-administered Kashmir. The letter called on Modi to revoke the curfew, reinstate communication, release all those arbitrarily detained over the last few days, and restore the status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of India's constitution, which granted the Muslim-majority state considerable autonomy. Hundreds of protesters defied a security lockdown in Indian-administered Kashmir on the first day of the Eid al-Adha holiday, as they marched on the streets of capital, Srinagar. The protests lasted for a few hours after Eid prayers, before demonstrators dispersed peacefully. "For Muslims, there are two days which are festive and sacred, and that's Eid ... but this is not our Eid. We are just mourning in Kashmir," a resident told Al Jazeera. US President Donald Trump's offer of mediation on the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan is "not on the table anymore," Indian media reports quoting India's ambassador to the United States said. "President Trump has made it very clear that his offer to mediate on Jammu and Kashmir is dependent on both India and Pakistan accepting it. Since India has not accepted the offer of mediation, he has made it clear that this is not on the table anymore," Harsh Vardhan Shringla told a US-based news channel. India calls the part of Kashmir it administers its "internal affair" and rejects any mediation, while Pakistan, which also claims the Himalayan region in full, wants world powers to resolve the issue. Indian actress Priyanka Chopra has been branded a hypocrite over a tweet she posted in February amid escalating tensions between neighbours India and Pakistan. The incident, which was widely shared online, took place during a cosmetics event on Saturday in the US city of Los Angeles when audience member Ayesha Malik accused Chopra of "encouraging nuclear war against Pakistan". People living in the disputed region of Kashmire have said they are afraid of escalating tension. The disputed region is one of the world's most dangerous flashpoints between nuclear-armed rivals, Pakistan and India. Al Jazeera's Osama Bin Javaid reports from the line of control in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. US-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has expressed concern over the continued lockdown and communications blackout in Indian-administered Kashmir. "There has to be a rights respecting-approach to handle the situation in Kashmir, where people are able to speak to their loved ones, have access to communication, essential supplies and hospitals, but we are seeing none of that," Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW's South Asia director, told Al Jazeera from Mumbai. "This is not a sustainable solution. If the Indian government has decided to impose restrictions ... they should ensure the Kashmiris are able to live their lives normally," she added. Almost 300 Kashmiris and activists gathered in India's capital, New Delhi, to mark the Eid al-Adha celebration as Indian-administered Kashmir remains under lockdown for a week. "I am here to express my solidarity with the people of Kashmir who have not been able to go home and are not able to talk to their parents because there is a total clampdown on communication," said activist Shabnam Hashmi. "We are not celebrating Eid today." The Pakistani government has called for the Eid al-Adha celebration to be observed in a "simple manner" this year, to express solidarity with Kashmiris living on the Indian side of the divided region. Pakistan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Shah Mahmood Qureshi travelled to Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, to offer Eid prayers at a mosque there. In the southern city of Karachi, prayers were dedicated to Kashmiris in India. "We are together with our Kashmiri brothers," said resident Mohammad Adnan. "We share their pain and grief. Today, special prayers were offered for them inside the mosque." On the lawn of the district commissioner's office in Srinagar, the main city of Indian-administered Kashmir, residents circle a table, hoping their turn will come soon. With phone and internet usage cut off during a week-long lockdown imposed by the Indian government, authorities are allowing locals to use a mobile phone to briefly speak to their loved ones outside the Muslim-majority state. Indian troops imposed tight restrictions on mosques across Kashmir for the Eid al-Adha celebration, fearing anti-government protests over the stripping of the Muslim-majority region's autonomy, according to residents. The Himalayan region's biggest mosque, the Jama Masjid, was ordered to be closed and people were only allowed to pray in smaller local mosques so that no big crowds could gather, witnesses said. All phone lines and the internet remained cut off for an eighth day on Monday. India has asked the International Tennis Federation to move their upcoming Davis Cup tie from Pakistan to a neutral venue due to escalating political tensions between the two nations. The Indian team is scheduled to be in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, for the Asia/Oceania zone Group I tie to be held on September 14 and 15. "We have asked ITF for a neutral venue because the situation is a bit unpredictable," All India Tennis Association (AITA) president Praveen Mahajan told AFP on Sunday. "I believe it is a reasonable request because of the current state of affairs." Mushaal Hussein Mullick, the wife of Yasin Malik, a leading Kashmiri rebel leader held by India, has appealed to the world to "wake up" and intervene as the situation in the disputed territory remains tense. Mullick told British broadcaster Sky News that "time is running short", and that her husband's "only hope is that the world will come forward". Yasin Malik used to head pro-independence group the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which was banned in March as part of India's crackdown on separatist groups. Malik was arrested a month later and is being held at Tihar prison in New Delhi. "He is so weak and doctors ... they've all said that he's going to die like this," his wife said. Pakistan's foreign minister has strongly criticised the Indian government for its revocation of Kashmir's autonomous status. In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera in Muzaffarabad, Qureshi said: "Pakistan is watching the situation carefully, and so is the world." "We are concerned about the genocide that we feel can take place, or perhaps is taking place right now, because we have no idea what's going on in the Indian-occupied Kashmir right now," he argued. "When they lifted the curfew for a few hours we saw thousands of people protesting in the streets, so it's an evolving situation." Watch the interview at the video below. Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has said India's decision to scrap the special status of Kashmir was inspired by the "Nazi ideology". "The curfew, crackdown and impending genocide of Kashmiris in IOK [India-Occupied Kashmir as Islamabad refers to Indian-administered Kashmir] is unfolding exactly [according] to RSS ideology inspired by Nazi ideology," Khan tweeted. Pakistan has downgraded its diplomatic relations and suspended bilateral trade over New Delhi's decision to revoke Article 370 of the Indian constitution and divide the Muslim-majority state into two "union territories". Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir said they have eased restrictions in most parts of the main city of Srinagar ahead of the Islamic celebration of Eid al-Adha. In a tweet, local magistrate Shahid Choudhary said more than 250 ATMs have been made functional and bank branches opened for people to withdraw money before the celebration. There was no immediate independent confirmation of reports by authorities that people were visiting shopping areas for Eid purchases as all communications and the internet remain cut off for a seventh day. The dream of Kashmiri Pandits' return to their homeland in the Kashmir Valley has surfaced once again with the Indian government's stealthy abrogation on August 5 of Article 370, the constitutional provision that has secured the autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir state since India's independence in 1947. With the associated revocation of Article 35 A, which had allowed the state to define permanent residency, the doors were effectively thrown open for all Indians to buy land in Kashmir. Across news coverage, after the decision was made, many Kashmiri Pandits - native Brahmin Hindus of the Kashmir Valley - who had left their homes in Kashmir in the 1990s, were seen celebrating. They were hopeful that they could now return "on their own terms". China has pledged its "full support" for Islamabad's plan to take up India's actions in Kashmir at the United Nations Security Council, according to Pakistan's foreign minister. "I have shared with China that the Pakistan government has decided to take this issue to UN Security Council. We will be needing China's help there," Shah Mahmood Qureshi told a news conference in Beijing. "China has assured full support to Pakistan," he added. Qureshi said he planned to approach Indonesia and Poland, both non-permanent members of the 15-strong Security Council, for their support. The chief of staff of Iran's armed forces cautioned Pakistan and India to avoid any "hasty decisions" in Kashmir, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. "The parties are expected to refrain from any hasty decision on the fate of the [Kashmir] region, without regards to the people's will," Major General Mohammad Baqeri was quoted by Fars. Baqeri made the remark during a telephone call with Pakistan's army chief. Big queues formed in Indian-administered Kashmir's main city on Saturday outside cash machines and food stores as authorities eased a crippling curfew to let the Muslim-majority region prepare for the Eid al-Adha celebration. But huge numbers of troops remained on the streets a day after security forces used tear gas to break up a demonstration by about 8,000 people against the government's move to revoke Kashmir's autonomy, they added. Pakistan said on Saturday it had cancelled a bus linking Lahore with India's capital New Delhi, the last remaining public transport link between the neighbours. Islamabad reacted with fury this week after India revoked the special status for the portion of Kashmir that it controls, calling the action illegal, a claim New Delhi denies. Pakistan has already cut two rail links, suspended bilateral trade and expelled India's ambassador, all part of what it called a diplomatic effort to protest against the decision. The service, known as the "friendship bus", has long been seen as a symbolic link between the two countries. Launched in 1999, it has run almost continuously since, including throughout the last crisis between the two countries in February. The National Conference (NC), one of the main pro-India political parties in Indian-administered Kashmir, has moved the Supreme Court over the government's decision to revoke the region's special status, Indian media reports said. A petition filed by two NC leaders has challenged the Hindu nationalist government abrogating Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which granted the Muslim-majority state its special status. Their plea has also challenged the decision to divide the state into two "union territories", the reports said, adding that the party considered the two moves "illegal". NC leader Omar Abdullah has been under arrest since the Kashmir clampdown began on Monday, along with rival Mehbooba Mufti and hundreds of other leaders and activists. Abdullah and Mufti are former chief ministers of the Jammu and Kashmir state. Kashmiri activist and sportswoman Fatima Anwar has called on Turkey and Muslim-majority countries to play an active role in resolving the current crisis in Indian-administered Kashmir. "The people of Kashmir want the Muslim world to come forward and play their role to get this core issue resolved," Anwar said in an open letter to various heads of states on Twitter. "We want to use our right of self-determination, and most importantly, we need our basic right to live," she wrote. "We will never allow India to make Jammu and Kashmir another Palestine." A politician from India's ruling party has welcomed the stripping of special rights from Kashmir, saying it clears the way for Indians from outside the territory to marry women from there, according to the ANI news agency. Manohar Lal Khattar, who is also the chief minister of Haryana state, was quoted as saying: "Our minister OP Dhankar [cabinet minister] used to say he will bring daughters in law from Bihar [state]. Nowadays people are saying that path to Kashmir has been cleared. Now we will bring girls from Kashmir." Under Kashmir's previous status, residents of Jammu and Kashmir had exclusive rights to property and state government jobs, among other privileges, though women marrying non-residents stood to lose those benefits. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Pakistani counterpart that Beijing was "seriously concerned about the turbulence and escalating tensions" in Kashmir, according to a statement. Wang, who met Shah Mahmood Qureshi for hastily arranged talks, said China "will continue to firmly support the Pakistan side in safeguarding its legitimate rights," the statement said. China, which also controls a section of Kashmir, said the issue should be resolved at the United Nations. Qureshi released a video statement after the meeting in which he added: "I am very pleased that China once again proved today that it is Pakistan's reliable friend". India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar is to visit Beijing from Sunday for talks with Wang. Security forces in Srinagar have fired tear gas and shot in the air to disperse thousands of people demonstrating against India's stripping of the region's autonomy, local sources have told Al Jazeera. The protests in the main city of Indian-administered Kashmir took place after Friday prayers, Al Jazeera's Priyanka Gupta said, reporting from the Indian capital, New Delhi. "Despite the unprecedented security lockdown, thousands of people demonstrated in Srinagar and were met with live fire, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets," she said, citing sources in the city. The protest was the "largest of its kind" since the Indian government's move on Monday. Read the detailed report here. The magistrate for Jammu district in Indian-administered Kashmir said all schools in the Hindu-majority area "may resume their functioning" from Saturday onwards. The statement by Sushma Chauhan also lifted a ban on gatherings of more than four people in the district. Local media posted videos and photos from Indian-administered Kashmir showing dozens of people walking on the streets of Srinagar for the first time this week to offer prayers at mosques guarded by police. The main Jama Masjid mosque in Srinagar's old quarter was closed, however, with policemen in riot gear posted every few metres around the building. One officer said he faced regular attacks from young people throwing stones. "Every time we have embraced India, they have cut our throats," read a handwritten poster at another mosque, which also urged Kashmiris not to sell land and to hold protests after Eid prayers on Monday. Witness reports emerged of Indian troops using excessive force on protesters in Indian-administered Kashmir, causing life-threatening injuries. "The government will deny these injuries as there is no proper reporting or documentation of these incidents. We won't be able to know about most of the casualties." Pakistan said it will halt the last train service running to India. "We have decided to shut down the Thar Express as well," Pakistan's Federal Minister for Railways Sheikh Rasheed told reporters. On Thursday, Pakistan suspended the Samjhauta Express, its main train service to India, and banned Indian films. Authorities in Pakistan and Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir are bracing for protests on Friday. Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, said two protests were scheduled in the Pakistani capital after Friday prayers. "Organisers of one protest have threatened to march to the Indian High Commission which is located in Islamabad's red zone," he said. Priyanka Gupta, reporting for Al Jazeera from New Delhi, said the government was monitoring the situation in Kashmir very closely. "The Friday prayers took place under heavy security. There have been sporadic clashes in the last four days but we're expecting more protests happening later on Friday," she said. Demonstrations against India's move in Kashmir have been taking place around the world. Thousands of villagers living along the heavily militarised Line of Control (LoC) dividing Pakistan- and Indian-administered Kashmir have migrated to safer places fearing artillery fire exchanges across the border. "There is fear in the area and residents are preparing to leave their homes if a cross-border exchange of fire takes place. The LoC is just three kilometres from where we are," Muhammad Mukhtar, a 38-year-old vet, told Al Jazeera. The strict curfew in Kashmir that has entered a fifth day was eased for Friday prayers, according to the police chief. "People will be allowed to go to the area-specific mosques for the prayers in most parts of the Srinagar city," the region's police chief, Dilbagh Singh, told The Associated Press. The relaxing of the curfew was temporary but a precise timeframe was not given. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi is visiting China as part of efforts to pressure India to reverse its decision to revoke the special status of the disputed region of Kashmir. Shah Mahmood Qureshi will meet with Chinese leaders on Friday. Before leaving for Beijing, Qureshi said he will apprise Islamabad's "trusted friend" about the situation. Pakistan says it is considering a proposal to approach the International Court of Justice over India's action. Silence cloaked the centre of Srinagar on Friday, its once-teeming streets blocked with spools of concertina wire. Every road was sealed off. The population forced to remain indoors while thousands of Indian soldiers in camouflage were on patrol, carrying guns at their waists. Friday marked the fourth day since the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir was under siege. Muslim worshippers were expected to attend Friday prayers at mosques across the region later on Friday. Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the UN, has appealed for "maximum restraint" as tensions escalate between India and Pakistan over New Delhi's move on Kashmir. Recalling the 1972 Simla Agreement, in which New Delhi and Islamabad committed to bilateral negotiations to resolve their dispute over Kashmir, Guterres called on "all parties to refrain from taking steps that could affect" the region's status. In his statement, Guterres also expressed concern over reports of "restrictions on the Indian-side of Kashmir", saying they could exacerbate the human rights situation in the region. India's ANI news agency said Indian-administered Kashmir's top civil servant has ordered government employees "who are working at divisional level, district level and those serving in civil secretariat, to report back to their duties with immediate effect". All schools in the southern district of Samba will also reopen on Friday, the agency said, citing an official statement. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged a "new era" of economic growth in Kashmir following his government's decision to strip the territory of its special rights. But in his first address to the nation since the move, Modi did not address the four-day-long security lockdown or communications blackout in the region. He described Article 370 as an "obstacle" to the region's development and said the decision to abolish the provision will free Kashmir from "terrorism and separatism". The move will also create new jobs and sports opportunities for Kashmir's youth, Modi said, also pledging to develop the region's film and herbal medicine industries. Shruti Kapila, lecturer in history at the Cambridge University in the UK, said there was "widespread popular support" in India for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) decision to scrap disputed Kashmir's special status. The move was a key campaign pledge of the BJP, which registered a landslide victory in the general election in April- May, she noted. "This mandate was sought on the back of national security after the Pulwama attack in mid-February," she said, referring to a suicide attack that killed at least 40 Indian soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir. "Both in the upper and lower houses of parliament, there was very little in the nature of resistance .. by and large, there has been cross-party consensus, even by smaller regional parties who may feel threatened by such a precedent which strengthens the hands of central powers in India," she said from New Delhi. "Secondly, I also think the trigger point is also the moving away of the United States from this region ... There is no real international multilateral body to which this can be addressed to," she added. Pakistan has said it would ban the screening of Indian films in the country's cinemas, as tensions b | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/india-revokes-kashmir-special-status-190904143838166.html | 2019-09-04 14:47:38+00:00 | 1,567,622,858 | 1,569,331,467 | politics | fundamental rights |
15,638 | aljazeera--2019-09-04--Transgender women face systemic discrimination in Lebanon HRW | 2019-09-04T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Transgender women face systemic discrimination in Lebanon: HRW | Transgender women face "systemic discrimination" in various aspects of life in Lebanon, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which called on parliament to pass anti-discrimination law. The New-York-based rights group said in its report, published on Tuesday, that transgender women face "systemic discrimination in education, employment, housing, and the provision of healthcare" in the country. The report is based on 50 interviews with Lebanese transwomen and transgender refugees and asylum seekers from other countries in the Middle East - all of whom reside in Lebanon. This discrimination is exacerbated by a lack of resources "tailored for trans people's needs" and by their "difficulty in obtaining identification documents that reflect their gender identity and expression," the report said. Many of these interviewed by the group reported difficulty in obtaining stable jobs in the country due to the lack of official identification documents that match their gender expression. Though this can be changed via a court ruling, those interviewed by HRW said procedural obstacles including "high fees, reluctance to engage in protracted court proceedings, and lack of legal assistance" has discouraged them from seeking to change their gender markers. "Legal gender recognition is an essential element of other fundamental rights including the right to privacy, the right to freedom of expression, rights related to employment, education, health, and the ability to move freely," HRW noted. Transwomen also often face routine violence, the threat of violence and arrest, and are denied police protection, according to the report. While Lebanese law does not explicitly criminalise being transgender, article 534 of the penal code punishes "any sexual intercourse contrary to the order of nature" with up to one year in prison. According to the findings of the report, this law has been used to enforce arrests on transgender women who are misidentified as "gay men." They are also targeted under laws of "violating public morality," "incitement to debauchery," and "secret prostitution". Conditions under which they are held include "being denied food and water, the right to make a phone call, being placed in overcrowded cells, and physically abused". Transwomen regularly face and are forced to escape domestic violence. HRW says 38 out of the 50 interviewed transwomen reported experiencing "extreme violence" by a male relative. Maria, 23, says she was "beaten, burned, and tied up in metal chains" by her father. "He beat me every day and kept saying, 'Be a man.' He wanted to beat the woman out of me," she was quoted by HRW as saying. Others report feeling unsafe in public spaces, fearing harassment and physical abuse. "Every time I get targeted on the street, I run for my life. Because first, it's just one person, then I find a gang of six or seven men around me and they want my blood," 24-year-old Bella said. These fears are often intensified in the case of transgender refugees, HRW says. Natalie, a 22-year-old Syrian national, said: "My uncle broke my nose, my teeth, and stabbed me in the eye. "When he found out that I'm in Lebanon, he said, 'I will slaughter you.'" There are more than one million Syrian refugees in Lebanon. While the country faces economic and political challenges, Lebanese leaders have repeatedly urged Syrian refugees to return to their country, which is now in its ninth year of civil war. HRW called on the Lebanese parliament to pass "comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation", and on security forces to halt the arrest of transgender women on the basis of their gender identity. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/transgender-women-face-systemic-discrimination-lebanon-hrw-190904103740252.html | 2019-09-04 11:25:39+00:00 | 1,567,610,739 | 1,569,331,466 | politics | fundamental rights |
15,764 | aljazeera--2019-09-08--Animal slaughter ruling in Belgium stirs religious freedom debate | 2019-09-08T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Animal slaughter ruling in Belgium stirs religious freedom debate | Brussels and Wallonia, Belgium - Inside his Brussels office, animal rights activist Michel Vandenbosch opens a large book he wrote about the Global Action in the Interest of Animals, or GAIA, Belgium's leading animal rights organisation. Vandenbosch, its president, points to photos of a 2014 rally in Belgium's capital, attended by thousands of people calling for a national ban on slaughtering animals such as cattle, sheep and goats without stunning them first. "When you cut an animal's throat, without stunning, it still feels pain," said Vandenbosch. GAIA produced a video showing animals contorting after a knife cuts the blood vessels in the neck. "If you take the scientific evidence really seriously, then these kinds of habits should change." On September 1, Vandenbosch and fellow supporters of the ban claimed a victory when the second such law went into effect in Brussels. It first went into effect in Flanders - the northern, mostly Dutch-speaking region - in January. Now, the law must be respected in the southern, mostly French-speaking region, called Wallonia. Flanders and Wallonia are Belgium's two largest regions. Back in 2017, Wallonia's parliament voted nearly unanimously in favour of the ban - just three members abstained. Only Brussels, Belgium's third region, has not imposed the ban. Belgium has three animal welfare ministers for each of its regions - Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia. Some claim the bans are discriminatory, but Vandenbosch rejects framing them as a target on Muslims or Jews. "It does not apply only to members of religious communities," he said. "It does apply to each and every single Belgian citizen period, whatever his religious beliefs may be." He explains his organisation took on the cause around 1995, when Belgium's far right began pushing for a religious slaughter ban. Activists like him feared that the far right had tinged the issue with Islamophobia. "This would have meant a taboo on the whole issue," he said, so GAIA focused it on animal wellbeing. But many Muslims and Jews in Belgium say they are outraged because, according to their religious laws, animals must be in perfect health before slaughter. To them, the options for stunning - making animals unconscious - mean harming an animal before slaughter, which is forbidden. They say cutting the throat causes the least amount of pain for animals. A number of Muslim and Jewish groups filed a petition with Belgium's Constitutional Court against the Flemish law. The ruling would also affect the new Wallonia law. Belgium's Constitutional Court has asked the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg a "question prejudicielle" - a prejudicial question, to help it make the decision whether the ban needs to change, whether it can be upheld or if it needs to be struck down. The European Court is expected to answer between this autumn and the early new year, and then the decision returns to the Belgian court to make. The Belgian Federation of Jewish Organizations is among the groups that filed the petition. Its president, Yohan Benizri, says when politicians make decisions on religious laws, they trample on the separation between church and state. The bans infringe on religious freedom, he adds, and are undemocratic. "The politicians are not there to define what is permitted and not permitted under religious law," Benizri said. "When minorities say this really affects us, I think people should listen." The European Union has made stunning obligatory since 1979, but member states may make religion-based exemptions. Other EU countries that have passed slaughter bans include Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Slovenia. Only Belgium's ban has led to a challenge all the way to an EU court. "This is one of the first cases of a conflict between what I would call modernity on the one hand and religious freedom on the other," said Caroline Sagesser of the Centre de Recherche et d'Information Socio-Politiques, or CRISP, in Brussels. "Now the European Union will have to take a stand and on an issue that the European Union does not like to decide upon," Sagesser added. "Generally speaking the Union has always let the member states decide for themselves on everything that covers relationship between church and state public funding and so on." In the meantime, shops like El Halal, located in Charleroi, a city in Wallonia, have had to comply as of September 1. They will likely provide imported meat from nearby EU countries, says employee Halim Aissani. "It's not about the Belgian label," Aissani said. "It's about quality and for sure other countries have quality meat." Instead, the problem, as he sees it, is how many Muslims now feel in their own country. "We think we are a part of Belgium people, we feel Belgian, and these kinds of things show us that we are not accepted by the Belgian community," Aissani said. Other halal meat consumers worry about a jump in prices. At El Halal, where Aissani works, restaurant owner Abdelhak Ouelbani waited for his order of salami and ground beef. A warm, red light glowed above, from a neon sign bearing the store's name. "It will get a lot more expensive for us," Ouelbani said. "It will be hard to come and buy meat that's halal. I don't understand why before it was allowed and now it's not. Years pass and things change, and then it's always the people who pay." Back in Brussels, Mustapha Chairi, a cofounder and president of Collective Against Islamophobia in Belgium, said generally, Muslims can find common ground with GAIA, but not on these bans, which he said "restrict the fundamental rights of citizens". Still, Chairi sees one silver lining: maybe the ban will lead Muslims to eat less meat, he added. "And with this kind of approach you influence the action on climate change," Chairi said, in reference to how meat production adds to global warming. Experts predict in the coming years, similar conflicts will arise. Sagesser, the researcher at CRISP, described conflicts "between religious norms and some principles which have become important in modern society. "I think circumcision, for instance, is another issue where you may see this conflict between principle of protecting the child on the one hand and respect for religious freedom on the other." | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/animal-slaughter-ruling-belgium-stirs-debate-halal-meat-190906101608102.html | 2019-09-08 08:27:03+00:00 | 1,567,945,623 | 1,569,330,810 | politics | fundamental rights |
17,098 | aljazeera--2019-11-08--Cambodia's Sam Rainsy faces hurdles as he attempts to return home | 2019-11-08T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Cambodia's Sam Rainsy faces hurdles as he attempts to return home | Phnom Penh, Cambodia It appears November 9 will come and go without Cambodia's opposition making its promised return after leader Sam Rainsy failed to board a flight from Paris to Thailand on Thursday. Rainsy, acting president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), said he had a ticket to Bangkok arriving on November 8, and from there would enter Cambodia by land the following day. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, however, ordered that Rainsy not be permitted to enter the country. "They say they have received very high-up instruction now to allow me to board," Rainsy told reporters at Charles de Gaulle airport, claiming he was barred from boarding his Thai Airways flight. An airline employee told the Associated Press news agency that Rainsy did not have a valid ticket. Earlier this week, Rainsy posted a photo on social media of his ticket, along with his booking reference. The booking, checked by Al Jazeera, appeared to show that Rainsy had reserved a flight leaving Paris November 9, not November 7. Ear Sophal, a Cambodian-American associate professor of World Affairs and Diplomacy at Occidental College, said a third party could have changed Rainsy's ticket after he tweeted it, or the airline may have considered his ticket invalid because he was barred from the country. "I have no reason to doubt his true and genuine desire to return to Cambodia and I see no evidence he showed up without a ticket," he said, adding that Rainsy and Sochua should simply "keep trying" to return. Multiple Cambodian social media users did question why Rainsy chose to fly with state-owned Thai Airways after Chan-ocha's statement. Meanwhile, CNRP vice president Mu Sochua was detained while entering Malaysia on Wednesday night, before eventually being released on Thursday evening. Prime Minister Hun Sen had earlier requested that all ASEAN countries arrest CNRP leaders and deport them to Cambodia. Sochua was previously detained in Thailand, before being deported to the US where she is also a citizen. The CNRP was dissolved in 2017 after making significant gains in that year's local commune elections, allowing Prime Minister Hun Sen to claim all 125 seats in Parliament in the 2018 national election. Rainsy and Sochua both pledged to return to Cambodia on November 9, despite facing charges widely seen as politically motivated, in order to lead a peaceful uprising against the government. In a message to Al Jazeera shortly after her release in Kuala Lumpur, Sochua said she is "stronger than before." Two other CNRP youth activists were detained in Kuala Lumpur earlier on Wednesday, and both were released alongside Sochua. "I found the two youths in detention and we succeeded to all get out," she said, adding that she still plans to return to Cambodia by land. In a statement to Al Jazeera, Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said her detention was "ludicrous and unacceptable". The ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights also condemned her detention and welcomed her release. "We hope that this will inspire Thailand to allow Sam Rainsy into the country and all other ASEAN countries to respect people's fundamental rights," said Philippine legislator Teddy Baguilat. While professing a desire to arrest Rainsy and other CNRP leaders, Hun Sen has gone to great lengths to ensure that they cannot enter the country. He has deployed thousands of troops to the Thai border, issued arrest warrants to countries in the region, and threatened any airline that carries Rainsy to Cambodia with legal punishment. Around 50 opposition supporters have also been arrested in Cambodia in recent months, for allegedly supporting a coup. "If he wants to arrest him then why not let him back into the country? It's very laughable," said Vanna Hay, the deputy secretary-general of CNRP Overseas. Speaking in Yangon on Thursday, Hay said he was disappointed that some ASEAN countries have interfered by attempting to block the CNRP's return, and thanked Myanmar for letting him come. "This is between me and Hun Sen. Not me and Myanmar government and Hun Sen. So I hope that Myanmar government will not arrest me tonight," he said. Hay flew to Bangkok later that day, where he planned to meet Rainsy. "If he does not go back by November 9 the people will lose hope," he said. But Sophal said the Cambodian people should not give up just because the "symbols" of resistance were prevented from returning. "There are millions of people in Cambodia who hold their future in their own hands," he said. Yi Yeth, a 38-year-old tuk-tuk driver in Phnom Penh, said he doesn't expect Rainsy to arrive on November 9 any more, but he does not blame him either. "He tried to come to Thailand, but Thai government not allowed him to enter their country. For me, even two or three months later I will still want him to come back," he said. Yeth said the current "one-party" government "doesn't care about the people" and Cambodia needs a return to multi-party democracy to ensure that the government has an incentive to work for the people. Yon Sineat reported from Phnom Penh, while Andrew Nachem reported from Bangkok. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/cambodia-sam-rainsy-faces-hurdles-attempts-return-home-191108034858453.html | Fri, 08 Nov 2019 04:36:59 GMT | 1,573,205,819 | 1,573,219,330 | politics | fundamental rights |
17,511 | aljazeera--2019-11-19--Chile opposition files 'constitutional accusation' against Pinera | 2019-11-19T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Chile opposition files 'constitutional accusation' against Pinera | Antofagasta, Chile - Opposition legislators in Chile formally presented a motion Tuesday to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Sebastian Pinera. The "constitutional accusation" is rooted in human rights violations allegedly committed during the ongoing month-long crisis. Nationwide protests against inequality and injustice continue, as do police crackdowns. • Chile agrees to hold referendum on constitution: 5 things to know The accusation is "due to the grave, repeated, generalised and systematic violations of the fundamental rights of people carried out by agents of the state in the past month," opposition legislator Carmen Hertz said Tuesday in a public statement announcing the motion presented by representatives from several left-wing parties. Constitutional accusations need between 10 and 20 backers to proceed. Tuesday's had 11, but a previous attempt by a different political force failed to gather the minimum 10 signatures. The motion is unlikely, however, to gain majority support among legislators to move forward. The human rights situation has compromised the honour of the nation, said Hertz, referring to one of the constitutional bases for impeachment. Should the accusation proceed from a commission of randomly selected legislators and eventually be passed by both levels of the bicameral congress, Pinera would be removed from office. "It is not possible that this country continue with political impunity, moral impunity and social impunity, which has been a very important component in triggering social protests," said Hertz. In a statement Sunday night, Pinera acknowledged there were cases of abuses by security forces and instances when human rights were not respected. "In some cases, protocols were not respected. There was excessive use of force. Abuses or crimes were committed," he said, adding that the government is committed to investigating and prosecuting those cases. Secondary student protests last month against a Santiago subway fare rise sparked nationwide mass protests that hit the month mark on Monday. Pinera deployed the military during a nine-day state of emergency in October, and police have been cracking down on protests throughout the crisis. Calls for Pinera's resignation were scrawled in graffiti on walls in cities around the country. Some protesters, social movements and opposition politicians have also been calling for the resignation of Police chief Mario Rozas. Over the past month, human rights groups have repeatedly claimed that human rights violations have been systemic, not isolated incidents. Ruling and opposition politicians announced a "peace agreement" on Friday and a plan for a new constitution, but the police crackdown on demonstrators has continued. At least 24 people have been killed amid the crisis, including five by military and police forces. The National Human Rights Institute has filed 384 legal actions against state entities, including 273 for alleged torture and other cruel treatment. The institute has documented 2,391 people hospitalised for injuries, including 222 with severe eye injuries, roughly 75 percent of which were caused by projectiles fired by security forces. The institute has also visited 6,362 people detained in custody, including 759 minors. "There's a policy of terror," said Juan Hun, 50, a consultant in Antofagasta, a city 1,400km (860 miles) north of the capital. "The government is criminalising social movements, students, and residents," he told Al Jazeera. Thousands of Chileans rallied on Monday to mark one month since protests began. In Antofagasta, police used tear gas and a water cannon on a march, but protesters regrouped. Police filled a downtown plaza with tear gas to disperse the crowd, and scattered protests, barricades, skirmishes and tear gas continued well into the night. "This is going to continue," Hun said of the ongoing protests. "There is a lot of outrage. There is a lot of inequality in this country." | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/chile-opposition-files-constitutional-accusation-pinera-191119182459827.html | Tue, 19 Nov 2019 18:59:46 GMT | 1,574,207,986 | 1,574,209,409 | politics | fundamental rights |
18,289 | aljazeera--2019-12-10--No Friday prayers in over 4 months in Kashmir's largest mosque | 2019-12-10T00:00:00 | aljazeera | No Friday prayers in over 4 months in Kashmir's largest mosque | Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir - "Don't click any pictures. Run away. If they find out that you are journalists, they will beat you up." These were the words of a local policeman posted at one of the pickets at Jama Masjid, the largest mosque in Indian-administered Kashmir's main city of Srinagar. The "they" he referred to was a battery of paramilitary troopers deployed around the square leading to the 600-year-old mosque. • Anger over India's diplomat calling for 'Israel model' in Kashmir • Out of Sight in Kashmir • Will India's lockdown in Kashmir ever end? Since August 5, when the disputed Himalayan region was stripped of its partial autonomy and put under a crippling lockdown, padlocks have been hanging from the doors of the famous mosque. Later in October, the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir was formally divided into two federally-controlled "union territories". The lockdown also included restrictions on religious gatherings in India's only Muslim-majority region, with the authorities banning the entry of people into Kashmir's important mosques, where devotees offered their prayers five times a day. On Fridays, the Jama Masjid in Srinagar used to be thronged by thousands of Muslims from all over the valley. But December 6 marked the 17th straight Friday when prayers could not take place at the mosque. Khalid Bashir Gura, 26, who lives in Nowhatta, a neighbourhood close to the mosque, said the authorities considered congregation of Kashmiris "a threat". "Each time the situation worsens, the largest mosque in a Muslim-majority place is placed under curbs for months together," Gura told Al Jazeera. "The right to practise our religion is guaranteed by the constitution. But it is being violated in Kashmir again and again." Syed Ahmad Syed Naqashbandi had been leading the prayers at the Jama Masjid since 1963. Known as "Imam-e-Hai" in the region, Naqashbandi said the blockade has been a "direct interference in our religion". Since August 5, the 80-year-old imam is forced to offer his prayers at a mosque five kilometres (three miles) away from the Jama Masjid. "The bliss in praying at the Jama Masjid is hard to feel anywhere else. I miss being there," he said. He said the continuous presence of policemen and paramilitary forces around the grand mosque was "a threat to the people". "It is always because of their presence around the mosque that the problems erupt," he said. Syed Rahman Shams, a key member of the committee which administers the mosque, said it was not the first time the prayers were stopped there. "In 2016, the mosque was locked for 16 straight Fridays. That record was broken this year," he said. Similar restrictions were imposed at the Bait-ul-Mukaram mosque in Anantnag district in southern Kashmir. "Because of the curfew imposed after August 5, you weren't even allowed to move out of your houses. So how could we possibly reach the mosque?" asked Imtiyaz, 21, who did not want to share his last name over fears of reprisal Earlier this month, the Indian authorities placed unprecedented restrictions on congregations at Dargah Hazratbal, the most venerated shrine in Kashmir. Located on the western shore of the iconic Dal Lake in Srinagar, the shrine houses what many believe is a strand of Prophet Muhammad's hair. The hair strand is displayed to more than 50,000 visitors every year on the 12th day of the month of Rabi-ul-Awwal, the day in Islam's lunar calendar that marks the prophet's birthday. On November 10, when the prophet's birthday was celebrated this year, authorities barricaded the shrine's entry points and allowed only the local residents to enter, sending back those who had come from far off places. "Each year, I pay my visit to the 'dargah' on this day to have a glimpse of the holy relic. This year I was told to go back by the policemen who had blocked the road close to the shrine," said Ghulam Ahmad Dar, a man in his 60s, who travelled more than 35km (22 miles) from central Kashmir's Budgam district. Local resident Nawaz Ahmad, 32, said since his childhood, he used to witness large gatherings at the shrine on the day. But this year, he said only a few hundred people were allowed to congregate at the shrine. "Only the locals of the area were allowed to offer prayers and have a glimpse of the Moi-e-Muqqadas [the holy hair strand]," said Nawaz. Sayeed Ahmad Farooqui, who leads the prayers at the shrine, was hesitant to speak about the restrictions. "He does not want to get involved in this. His job is to go, lead the prayers and come back home," said one of his family members. On November 1, restrictions were tightened ahead of Khoje Digar, a special prayer offered each year at the mosque situated in the premises of Khwaja Naqashband Sahab shrine in Srinagar. "Ever since I was a 20, I have offered prayers at Khoje Digar at Naqashband Sahab. So did my father when he was alive. This is for the first time I was forced to miss it," said Altaf Ahmad Reshi, 38, a resident of Saida Kadal in Srinagar, about a kilometre (0.6 miles) away from the shrine. Nearly a week before that, on October 26, curbs on religious gatherings were witnessed at Charar-i-Sharief, the famous Sufi shrine of Sheikh Noorudin Noorani in central Kashmir's Budgam district. Abid Nabi Baba, 32, a resident of Charar-e-Sharief, said police installed barricades and set up multiple checkpoints "5km [three miles] away" from the shrine. "I was allowed to proceed only after they ascertained I was heading home," said Abid. "My father tells me he had not seen such restrictions even in the 90s when militancy was at its peak." When questioned about the restrictions around the famous mosques and shrines in Kashmir, Srinagar's Police Chief Haseeb Mughal said they were imposed since "the situation demanded so". "We were not in a position to afford huge gatherings. That could have led to violent protests and maybe even loss of life and property," he told Al Jazeera. Farooqui's hesitation was not unfounded. Scores of Muslim religious leaders are among more than 5,000 people arrested by the government of India since August 5. More than 600 of them, as per official figures, continue to remain behind bars, with many among them slapped with the stringent Public Safety Act, which allows authorities to arrest anyone on mere suspicion. Allama Agha Syed Aijaz Rizvi, a 52-year-old Shia scholar, was picked up by the police on August 27 from his home in Nabidipora area of Hawal in Srinagar. A close family member of his, who did not want to be identified, said Rizvi was accused of making "anti-national" statements during his sermon at Baba Mazar mosque in Zadibal, the Shia bastion in the city. "They [the police] said they had a video recording of it. We never saw any video," said the family member. The family said security forces raided Rizvi's home in the middle of the night "as if he was a criminal" and kept in the local police station for a few days before PSA was slapped and he was shifted to Srinagar's Central Jail, where he remains until now. Kashmir-based human rights activist Khurram Parvaiz told Al Jazeera that there was "nothing new" in what Kashmiris have witnessed since August 5. He said the right to practise one's faith, one of the fundamental rights in the Indian constitution, was being repeatedly violated in Kashmir "since 1990 and even before that". "The United Nations and other international organisations have condemned the government of India regarding the violation of religious freedom in Kashmir, but that hasn't made any difference," he said. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/friday-prayers-months-kashmir-largest-mosque-191129100152994.html | Tue, 10 Dec 2019 08:11:47 GMT | 1,575,983,507 | 1,575,980,630 | politics | fundamental rights |
18,399 | aljazeera--2019-12-12--Transcript: Aung San Suu Kyi's speech at the ICJ in full | 2019-12-12T00:00:00 | aljazeera | Transcript: Aung San Suu Kyi's speech at the ICJ in full | Aung San Suu Kyi has defended Myanmar's military against genocide allegations at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), amid accusations of mass killings, rape and expulsion of the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority. In her opening statement in front of judges in The Hague on Wednesday, the former human rights icon rejected the case at the United Nations' highest court - which was filed by the Gambia with the support of the 57-member Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) - alleging Myanmar violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The hearing concludes on Thursday, but a final judgement could take several years. • Timeline: How the crackdown on Myanmar's Rohingya unfolded Here is her speech in full: "Thank you, Mr President and members of the court. It is an honour to appear as Agent of the Union of the Republic of Myanmar in these proceedings, in my capacity as Union Minister of Foreign Affairs. "For materially less resourceful countries like Myanmar, the World Court is a vital refuge of international justice. We look to the Court to establish conditions conducive to respect for obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law, one of the fundamental objectives of the United Nations Charter. "In the present case, Mr President, the Court has been asked to apply the 1948 Genocide Convention, one of the most fundamental multilateral treaties of our time. Invoking the 1948 Genocide Convention is a matter of utmost gravity. This is the treaty that we made following the systematic killing of more than six million European Jews, and that my country wholeheartedly signed as early as December 30, 1949, and ratified on March 14, 1956. Genocide is the crime that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda applied in response to the mass-killing of perhaps 70 percent of the Tutsis in Rwanda. It is the crime that was not applied by the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to the displacement of approximately one million residents of Kosovo in 1999. Neither was it applied by that Tribunal nor by this Court when deciding upon the exodus of the Serb population from Croatia in 1995. "In both situations, international justice resisted the temptation to use this strongest of legal classifications because the requisite specific intent to physically destroy the targeted group in whole or in part was not present. "Regrettably, The Gambia has placed before the Court an incomplete and misleading factual picture of the situation in Rakhine State in Myanmar. Yet, it is of the utmost importance that the Court assess the situation obtaining on the ground in Rakhine dispassionately and accurately. The situation in Rakhine is complex and not easy to fathom. "But one thing surely touches all of us equally: the sufferings of the many innocent people whose lives were torn apart as a consequence of the armed conflicts of 2016 and 2017, in particular, those who have had to flee their homes and are now living in camps in Cox's Bazar. "Mr President and members of the court, the troubles of Rakhine State and its population, whatever their background, go back into past centuries and have been particularly severe over the last few years. Currently, an internal armed conflict is going on there – between the Arakan Army, an organised Buddhist armed group with more than 5,000 fighters, and the regular Myanmar Defence Services. None of the speakers yesterday made any reference to this. "The Arakan Army seeks autonomy or independence for Rakhine - or Arakan as it was called - finding inspiration in the memory of the historic Kingdom of Arakan. This conflict has led to the displacement of thousands of civilians in Rakhine. Standard security restrictions - such as curfew and checkpoints - are in place at present in the conflict zone and affect the situation of civilians there, regardless of their background. "Mr President, on October 9, 2016, approximately 400 fighters of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army - known as ARSA – launched simultaneous attacks on three police posts in Maungdaw and Rathedaung townships in northern Rakhine, near the border with Bangladesh. ARSA claimed responsibility for these attacks, which led to the death of nine police officers, more than 100 dead or missing civilians, and the theft of 68 guns and more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition. "This was the start of an internal armed conflict between ARSA and Myanmar's Defence Services which lasted until late 2017. The selective factual propositions contained in The Gambia's Application actually concern this conflict. "In the months following the October 9, 2016 attacks, ARSA grew in strength in the Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships in northern Rakhine. It resorted to threats and intimidation against local villagers in order to gain support and allegiance, executing suspected informers. According to, among others, the International Crisis Group, ARSA received weapons - and explosives - training from Afghan and Pakistani militants. "In the early morning of August 25, 2017, several thousand ARSA fighters launched coordinated attacks on more than 30 police posts and villages, and an army base in northern Rakhine. Most of the attacks took place on the narrow Maungdaw plain, which is framed by densely forested hills to the east, and the border with Bangladesh to the west. Indications are that ARSA's objective was to seize Maungdaw township. "It may aid the Court to briefly consider the historical significance of Maungdaw. When Britain made Burma a colonial entity separate from British India in 1937, the border between Burma and India was drawn along the river Naf, where we find today's border between Bangladesh and Myanmar. The historical Kingdom of Arakan had extended much further to the north than the river Naf, including most of what is today Chittagong District in Bangladesh. "Members of some Rakhine communities, therefore, felt that the border drawn by the British was too far south; others, that it was too far north. Myanmar has never challenged this border since independence in 1948. "Britain did not lose control over what is today Maungdaw township during World War II. From September 1942, a number of local Muslim families offered fighters to the British irregular V-Force set up to collect intelligence and to initially absorb any Japanese advance. Many Muslims gave their lives in combat against the Japanese in Rakhine. "The sacrifices made by Muslim fighters motivated a call for the creation of an autonomous Muslim space in northern Rakhine, centred on Maungdaw. Whether or not this was encouraged by British officers, Britain rejected this call as soon as it had reoccupied Burma, before independence in 1948. The Muslim-Buddhist intercommunal violence of 1942 recurred in 1948 and several times after that. This cycle of violence has negatively affected life in northern Rakhine, making it the second poorest state in Myanmar. "Mr President and members of the court, may I go back to the situation in Rakhine on the morning of August 25, 2017. More than thirty police stations and villages, and one military base, had been attacked before sunrise in a highly coordinated fashion, by an organised armed group operating along a densely forested hill-range that provides ample opportunity to hide. Many of the ARSA fighters had been recruited from local villages in the weeks and months preceding the attack. "Myanmar's Defence Services responded to the attacks of ARSA fighters by the use of ground forces. There were armed incidents in more than 60 locations. The main clashes occurred in 12 places: In Min Gyi (Tola Toli) village, Chut Pyin village, Maung Nu village, Gutar Pyin village, Alai Than Kyaw village, Myin Lut village, Inn Din village, Chein Kharli (Koetan Kauk) village, Myo Thugyi ward, Kyauk Pandu village, wards of Maungdaw Town, and southern Maungdaw. "Mr President, allow me to clarify the use of the term 'clearance operation' - 'nae myay shin lin yeh' in Myanmar [language]. Its meaning has been distorted. As early as the 1950s, this term has been used during military operations against the Burma Communist Party in Bago Range. Since then, the military has used this expression in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations after attacks by insurgents or terrorists. In the Myanmar language, 'nae myay shin lin yeh' – literally 'clearing of locality' – simply means to clear an area of insurgents or terrorists. "It is still not easy to establish clear patterns of events in these 12 locations. Many ARSA fighters died. There may have been several hundred casualties in some of the 12 locations. There was some inter-communal violence. Buddhist and Hindu minority communities also feared for their security after the original ARSA attacks and many fled from their homes. "It may be worth noting that the use of air power in military operations was avoided as far as possible to minimise the risk of collateral damage. However, in one incident, in order to be able to extract a unit surrounded by hundreds of ARSA fighters, the use of a helicopter was required. There was shooting from the helicopter which resulted in fatalities, which may have included noncombatants. "Mr President, it cannot be ruled out that disproportionate force was used by members of the Defence Services in some cases in disregard of international humanitarian law, or that they did not distinguish clearly enough between ARSA fighters and civilians. There may also have been failures to prevent civilians from looting or destroying property after fighting or in abandoned villages. But these are determinations to be made in the due course of the criminal justice process, not by any individual in the Myanmar Government. "Please bear in mind this complex situation and the challenge to sovereignty and security in our country when you are assessing the intent of those who attempted to deal with the rebellion. Surely, under the circumstances, genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis. "Under its 2008 Constitution, Myanmar has a military justice system. Criminal cases against soldiers or officers for possible war crimes committed in Rakhine must be investigated and prosecuted by that system. On November 25, 2019, the Office of the Judge Advocate General announced the start of a court-martial for allegations linked to the Gutar Pyin village incident, one of the 12 main incidents referred to earlier. The Office also let it be known that there will be additional courts-martial if further incriminating evidence is brought by the Independent Commission of Enquiry. The ICOE is an independent special investigation procedure established for Rakhine allegations by the President of Myanmar, chaired by a former Deputy Foreign Minister from the Philippines, with three other members, including a former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations from Japan. "On November 26, 2019, this Commission announced that it had taken about 1500 witness statements from all affected groups in Rakhine and that it has interviewed 29 military personnel who were deployed to the affected townships in northern Rakhine during the military operations from August 25, 2017, to September 5, 2017, as well as 20 police personnel who were stationed at the police posts that were attacked on August 25, 2017. There is currently no other fact-finding body in the world that has garnered relevant first-hand information on what occurred in Rakhine in 2017 to the same extent as the Independent Commission of Enquiry and the Office of the Judge Advocate General in Myanmar. "This fact reinforces my sense that I should refrain from any action or statement that could undermine the integrity of these ongoing criminal justice processes in Myanmar. They must be allowed to run their course. It is never easy for armed forces to recognise self-interest in accountability for their members, and to implement a will to accountability through actual investigations and prosecutions. I respectfully invite the members of the court to consider for a moment the record of other countries. This is a common challenge, even in resource-rich countries. "Recent cases in the news headlines illustrate that even when military justice works, there can be reversals. This can also happen in Myanmar. As part of the overall efforts of the Myanmar Government to provide justice, a court-martial found that 10 Muslim men had been summarily executed in Inn Din village, one of the 12 locations of serious incidents referred to earlier. It sentenced four officers and three soldiers each to ten years in prison with hard labour. After serving a part of their sentences, they were given a military pardon. Many of us in Myanmar were unhappy with this pardon. "Other cases are undertaken without controversy. In the Mansi case, for example, a court-martial sat close to the location in Kachin State where three internally displaced civilians were killed. It sentenced six soldiers, each to 10 years in prison, in January 2018. Relatives of the victims and local civil society representatives were invited to the sentencing. "The Office of the Judge Advocate General in Myanmar is by our standards well-resourced, with more than 90 staff and a presence in all regional commands throughout the country. I am encouraged by the Gutar Pyin court-martial, and I expect the Office to continue its investigations and prosecutions based on reliable evidence collected in Rakhine and from persons who witnessed what happened there. "Can there be genocidal intent on the part of a state that actively investigates, prosecutes and punishes soldiers and officers who are accused of wrongdoing? Although the focus here is on members of the military, I can assure you that appropriate action will also be taken against civilian offenders, in line with due process. There will be no tolerance of human rights violations in the Rakhine, or elsewhere in Myanmar. "Mr President, there are those who wish to externalise accountability for alleged war crimes committed in Rakhine, almost automatically, without proper reflection. Some of the United Nations human rights mandates relied upon in the Application presented by The Gambia have even suggested that there cannot be accountability through Myanmar's military justice system. This not only contradicts Article 20(b) of the Constitution of Myanmar, it undercuts painstaking domestic efforts relevant to the establishing of cooperation between the military and the civilian government in Myanmar, in the context of a Constitution that needs to be amended to complete the process of democratisation. That process is now underway at the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, the Union Parliament. "The emerging system of international criminal justice rests on the principle of complementarity. Accountability through domestic criminal justice is the norm. Only if domestic accountability fails, may international justice come into play. It would be inconsistent with complementarity to require that domestic criminal justice should proceed much faster than international criminal justice. A rush to externalise accountability may undermine professionals in domestic criminal justice agencies. What does the appearance of competition between domestic and international accountability do to the public's trust in the intentions of impatient international actors? "No stone should be left unturned to make domestic accountability work. It would not be helpful for the international legal order if the impression takes hold that only resource-rich countries can conduct adequate domestic investigations and prosecutions, and that the domestic justice of countries still striving to cope with the burden of unhappy legacies and present challenges is not good enough. The Gambia will also understand this challenge with which they too are confronted. "Mr President and members of the court, these reflections are relevant to the present hearing because the Applicant has brought a case based on the Genocide Convention. We are, however, dealing with an internal armed conflict, started by coordinated and comprehensive attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, to which Myanmar's Defence Services responded. Tragically, this armed conflict led to the exodus of several hundred thousand Muslims from the three northernmost townships of Rakhine into Bangladesh – just as the armed conflict in Croatia with which the Court had to deal led to the massive exodus of, first, ethnic Croats and later, ethnic Serbs. "As I have already stated, if war crimes have been committed by members of Myanmar's Defence Services, they will be prosecuted through our military justice system, in accordance with Myanmar's Constitution. It is a matter for the competent criminal justice authorities to assess whether, for example, there has been inadequate distinction between civilians and ARSA fighters, disproportionate use of force, violations of human rights, failure to prevent plundering or property destruction, or acts of forcible displacement of civilians. Such conduct, if proven, could be relevant under international humanitarian law or human rights conventions, but not under the 1948 Genocide Convention for reasons Professor William Schabas will elaborate in a moment. "Mr President, allow me to share one further reflection in this Great Hall of Justice. International law may well be our only global value system, and international justice a practice that affirms our common values. Leaders of States and relevant inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations should also be cognisant of their responsibility to express and affirm fundamental values. Feeding the flames of an extreme polarisation in the context of Rakhine, for example, can harm the values of peace and harmony in Myanmar. Aggravating the wounds of conflict can undermine unity in Rakhine. Hate narratives are not simply confined to hate speech - language that contributes to extreme polarisation also amounts to hate narratives. "Several international actors face a challenge here. But Myanmar could also have done more since the 1980s to emphasise the shared heritage and deeper layers of unity among the diverse peoples of our country. Cycles of inter-communal violence in Rakhine going back to the 1940s should be countered not just by practical measures aimed at sustainable development and rule of law, but also by nourishing a spiritual mindset of unity. It is a moral responsibility of leaders to guard the aspirations of people for harmony and peace. "U Thant, the third United Nations Secretary-General, had understood this. He wrote in his memoirs View From the UN published in 1974: 'I even believe that the mark of the truly educated and imaginative person facing the twenty-first century is that he feels himself to be a planetary citizen' (p. 454). Encouraging this added layer of identity - a sense of planetary citizenship - is of fundamental importance for peaceful relations between nations as well as ethnic and religious groups. "A commitment to broadening the mindset must go hand in hand with practical steps to improve lives. Even before the events of 2016-2017, Muslim, Buddhist and other communities in Rakhine faced what the Kofi Annan Advisory Commission described as complex challenges of low development and poverty rooted in enduring social conflict between the communities. The Myanmar government is committed to addressing these challenges. Together with our partners, we are now striving to ensure that all communities enjoy the same fundamental rights. To expedite citizenship verification and application, a mobile team is already in operation. "All children born in Rakhine, regardless of religious background, are issued with birth certificates. Arrangements have been made to enable more Muslim youth to attend classes at universities across Myanmar. With the support of international and local partners, scholarships will also be made available to students from all communities living in Rakhine. The government has started a social cohesion model project in Maungdaw township, to promote social harmony among all communities. Inter-faith fora have been encouraged. "These are some of the steps taken to improve livelihoods, security, access to education and health, citizenship, and social cohesion for all communities in Rakhine. Three IDP camps have already been closed, and an IDP-camp closure strategy has been adopted. Myanmar is also committed to voluntary, safe and dignified repatriation of displaced persons from Rakhine under the framework agreement reached between Bangladesh and Myanmar. "Mr President, how can there be an ongoing genocide or genocidal intent when these concrete steps are being taken in Rakhine? "To conclude, Mr President and members of the court, Rakhine today suffers an internal armed conflict between the Buddhist Arakan Army and Myanmar's Defence Services. Muslims are not a party to this conflict, but may, like other civilians in the conflict area, be affected by security measures that are in place. We pray the Court to refrain from taking any action that might aggravate the ongoing armed conflict and peace and security in Rakhine. Right now, in northern Rakhine, an army base near Paletwa is under attack by a group of more than 400 Arakan Army fighters, and some 200 insurgents have surrounded a military column near Ann City in Rakhine. "Since Myanmar gained independence in 1948, our people have not known the security of sustainable development that is the fruit of peace and prosperity. Our greatest challenge is to address the roots of distrust and fear, prejudice and hate, that undermine the foundations of our Union. We shall adhere steadfastly to our commitment to non-violence, human rights, national reconciliation and rule of law, as we go forward to build the Democratic Federal Union to which our people have aspired for generations past. "We look to justice as a champion of the reconciliation and harmony that will assure the security and rights of all peoples. "Mr President and members of the court, I thank you for your kind attention and ask that you now call upon Professor William Schabas to continue the Myanmar submissions." | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/transcript-aung-san-suu-kyi-speech-icj-full-191212085257384.html | Thu, 12 Dec 2019 09:32:12 GMT | 1,576,161,132 | 1,576,153,340 | politics | fundamental rights |
18,607 | aljazeera--2019-12-17--READ: In letter, Trump accuses Democrats of 'attempted coup' | 2019-12-17T00:00:00 | aljazeera | READ: In letter, Trump accuses Democrats of 'attempted coup' | On the eve of his expected impeachment in the US House of Representatives, President Donald Trump accused Democrats of pursuing an "illegal, partisan attempted coup" and declaring "open war" on American democracy as they seek to remove him from office for pressing Ukraine to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden. Trump's remarks came in a signed, six-page letter addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, released as House politicians met to set the rules for debate before Wednesday's planned vote on two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House of Representatives Washington, D.C. 20515 Dear Madam Speaker: I write to express my strongest and most powerful protest against the partisan impeachment crusade being pursued by the Democrats in the House of Representatives. This impeachment represents an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power by Democrat Lawmakers, unequaled in nearly two and a half centuries of American legislative history. The Articles of Impeachment introduced by the House Judiciary Committee are not recognizable under any standard of Constitutional theory, interpretation, or jurisprudence. They include no crimes, no misdemeanors, and no offenses whatsoever. You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment! By proceeding with your invalid impeachment, you are violating your oaths of office, you are breaking your allegiance to the Constitution, and you are declaring open war on American Democracy. You dare to invoke the Founding Fathers in pursuit of this election-nullification scheme - yet your spiteful actions display unfettered contempt for America's founding and your egregious conduct threatens to destroy that which our Founders pledged their very lives to build. Even worse than offending the Founding Fathers, you are offending Americans of faith by continually saying "I pray for the President," when you know this statement is not true, unless it is meant in a negative sense. It is a terrible thing you are doing, but you will have to live with it, not I! Your first claim, "Abuse of Power," is a completely disingenuous, meritless, and baseless invention of your imagination. You know that I had a totally innocent conversation with the President of Ukraine. I then had a second conversation that has been misquoted, mischaracterized, and fraudulently misrepresented. Fortunately, there was a transcript of the conversation taken, and you know from the transcript (which was immediately made available) that the paragraph in question was perfect. I said to President Zelensky: "I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it." I said do us a favor, not me, and our country, not a campaign. I then mentioned the Attorney General of the United States. Every time I talk with a foreign leader, I put America's interests first, just as I did with President Zelensky. You are turning a policy disagreement between two branches of government into an impeachable offense - it is no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power. You know full well that Vice President Biden used his office and $1 billion dollars of U.S. aid money to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his son millions of dollars. You know this because Biden bragged about it on video. Biden openly stated: "I said, "I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars'...I looked at them and said: "I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.' Well, son of a bitch. He got fired." Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with NPR that it "looked bad." Now you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what Joe Biden has admitted he actually did. President Zelensky has repeatedly declared that I did nothing wrong, and that there was No Pressure. He further emphasized that it was a "good phone call," that "I don't feel pressure," and explicitly stressed that "nobody pushed me." The Ukrainian Foreign Minister stated very clearly: "I have never seen a direct link between investigations and security assistance." He also said there was "No Pressure." Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a supporter of Ukraine who met privately with President Zelensky, has said: "At no time during this meeting...was there any mention by Zelensky or any Ukrainian that they were feeling pressure to do anything in return for the military aid." Many meetings have been held between representatives of Ukraine and our country. Never once did Ukraine complain about pressure being applied - not once! Ambassador Sondland testified that I told him: "No quid pro quo. I want nothing. I want nothing. I want President Zelensky to do the right thing, do what he ran on." The second claim, so-called "Obstruction of Congress," is preposterous and dangerous. House Democrats are trying to impeach the duly elected President of the United States for asserting Constitutionally based privileges that have been asserted on a bipartisan basis by administrations of both political parties throughout our Nation's history. Under that standard, every American president would have been impeached many times over. As liberal law professor Jonathan Turley warned when addressing Congressional Democrats: "I can't emphasize this enough…if you impeach a president, if you make a high crime and misdemeanor out of going to the courts, it is an abuse of power. It's your abuse of power. You're doing precisely what you're criticizing the President for doing." Everyone, you included, knows what is really happening. Your chosen candidate lost the election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227), and you and your party have never recovered from this defeat. You have developed a full-fledged case of what many in the media call Trump Derangement Syndrome and sadly, you will never get over it! You are unwilling and unable to accept the verdict issued at the ballot box during the great Election of 2016. So you have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes. You view democracy as your enemy! Speaker Pelosi, you admitted just last week at a public forum that your party's impeachment effort has been going on for two and a half years," long before you ever heard about a phone call with Ukraine. Nineteen minutes after I took the oath of office, the Washington Post published a story headlined, "The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun." Less than three months after my inauguration, Representative Maxine Waters stated, "I'm going to fight every day until he's impeached." House Democrats introduced the first impeachment resolution against me within months of my inauguration, for what will be regarded as one of our country's best decisions, the firing of James Comey (see Inspector General Reports) - who the world now knows is one of the dirtiest cops our Nation has ever seen. A ranting and raving Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib, declared just hours after she was sworn into office, "We're gonna go in there and we're gonna impeach the motherf****r." Representative Al Green said in May, "I'm concerned that if we don't impeach this president, he will get re-elected." Again, you and your allies said, and did, all of these things long before you ever heard of President Zelensky or anything related to Ukraine. As you know very well, this impeachment drive has nothing to do with Ukraine, or the totally appropriate conversation I had with its new president. It only has to do with your attempt to undo the election of 2016 and steal the election of 2020! Congressman Adam Schiff cheated and lied all the way up to the present day, even going so far as to fraudulently make up, out of thin air, my conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine and read this fantasy language to Congress as though it were said by me. His shameless lies and deceptions, dating all the way back to the Russia Hoax, is one of the main reasons we are here today. You and your party are desperate to distract from America's extraordinary economy, incredible jobs boom, record stock market, soaring confidence, and flourishing citizens. Your party simply cannot compete with our record: 7 million new jobs; the lowest-ever unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans; a rebuilt military; a completely reformed VA with Choice and Accountability for our great veterans; more than 170 new federal judges and two Supreme Court Justices; historic tax and regulation cuts; the elimination of the individual mandate; the first decline in prescription drug prices in half a century; the first new branch of the United States Military since 1947, the Space Force; strong protection of the Second Amendment; criminal justice reform; a defeated ISIS caliphate and the killing of the world's number one terrorist leader, al-Baghdadi; the replacement of the disastrous NAFTA trade deal with the wonderful USMCA (Mexico and Canada); a breakthrough Phase One trade deal with China; massive new trade deals with Japan and South Korea; withdrawal from the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal; cancellation of the unfair and costly Paris Climate Accord; becoming the world's top energy producer; recognition of Israel's capital, opening the American Embassy in Jerusalem, and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; a colossal reduction in illegal border crossings, the ending of Catch-and-Release, and the building of the Southern Border Wall - and that is just the beginning, there is so much more. You cannot defend your extreme policies - open borders, mass migration, high crime, crippling taxes, socialized healthcare, destruction of American energy, late-term taxpayer-funded abortion, elimination of the Second Amendment, radical far-left theories of law and justice, and constant partisan obstruction of both common sense and common good. There is nothing I would rather do than stop referring to your party as the Do-Nothing Democrats. Unfortunately, I don't know that you will ever give me a chance to do so. After three years of unfair and unwarranted investigations, 45 million dollars spent, 18 angry Democrat prosecutors, the entire force of the FBI, headed by leadership now proven to be totally incompetent and corrupt, you have found NOTHING! Few people in high position could have endured or passed this test. You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family. You conducted a fake investigation upon the democratically elected President of the United States, and you are doing it yet again. There are not many people who could have taken the punishment inflicted during this period of time, and yet done so much for the success of America and its citizens. But instead of putting our country first, you have decided to disgrace our country still further. You completely failed with the Mueller report because there was nothing to find, so you decided to take the next hoax that came along, the phone call with Ukraine - even though it was a perfect call. And by the way, when I speak to foreign countries, there are many people, with permission, listening to the call on both sides of the conversation. You are the ones interfering in America's elections. You are the ones subverting America's Democracy. You are the ones Obstructing Justice. You are the ones bringing pain and suffering to our Republic for your own selfish personal, political, and partisan gain. Before the Impeachment Hoax, it was the Russian Witch Hunt. Against all evidence, and regardless of the truth, you and your deputies claimed that my campaign colluded with the Russians - a grave, malicious, and slanderous lie, a falsehood like no other. You forced our Nation through turmoil and torment over a wholly fabricated story, illegally purchased from a foreign spy by Hillary Clinton and the DNC in order to assault our democracy. Yet, when the monstrous lie was debunked and this Democrat conspiracy dissolved into dust, you did not apologize. You did not recant. You did not ask to be forgiven. You showed no remorse, no capacity for self-reflection. Instead, you pursued your next libelous and vicious crusade-you engineered an attempt to frame and defame an innocent person. All of this was motivated by personal political calculation. Your Speakership and your party are held hostage by your most deranged and radical representatives of the far left. Each one of your members lives in fear of a socialist primary challenger - this is what is driving impeachment. Look at Congressman Nadler's challenger. Look at yourself and others. Do not take our country down with your party. If you truly cared about freedom and liberty for our Nation, then you would be devoting your vast investigative resources to exposing the full truth concerning the FBI's horrifying abuses of power before, during, and after the 2016 election - including the use of spies against my campaign, the submission of false evidence to a FISA court, and the concealment of exculpatory evidence in order to frame the innocent. The FBI has great and honorable people, but the leadership was inept and corrupt. I would think that you would personally be appalled by these revelations, because in your press conference the day you announced impeachment, you tied the impeachment effort directly to the completely discredited Russia Hoax, declaring twice that "all roads lead to Putin," when you know that is an abject lie. I have been far tougher on Russia than President Obama ever even thought to be. Any member of Congress who votes in support of impeachment - against every shred of truth, fact, evidence, and legal principle - is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America's Constitutional order. Our Founders feared the tribalization of partisan politics, and you are bringing their worst fears to life. Worse still, I have been deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process from the beginning of this impeachment scam right up until the present. I have been denied the most fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence, to have my own counsel present, to confront accusers, and to call and cross-examine witnesses, like the so-called whistleblower who started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made. Once I presented the transcribed call, which surprised and shocked the fraudsters (they never thought that such evidence would be presented), the so-called whistleblower, and the second whistleblower, disappeared because they got caught, their report was a fraud, and they were no longer going to be made available to us. In other words, once the phone call was made public, your whole plot blew up, but that didn't stop you from continuing. More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials. You and others on your committees have long said impeachment must be bipartisan - it is not. You said it was very divisive - it certainly is, even far more than you ever thought possible - and it will only get worse! This is nothing more than an illegal, partisan attempted coup that will, based on recent sentiment, badly fail at the voting booth. You are not just after me, as President, you are after the entire Republican Party. But because of this colossal injustice, our party is more united than it has ever been before. History will judge you harshly as you proceed with this impeachment charade. Your legacy will be that of turning the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution. Perhaps most insulting of all is your false display of solemnity. You apparently have so little respect for the American People that you expect them to believe that you are approaching this impeachment somberly, reservedly, and reluctantly. No intelligent person believes what you are saying. Since the moment I won the election, the Democrat Party has been possessed by Impeachment Fever. There is no reticence. This is not a somber affair. You are making a mockery of impeachment and you are scarcely concealing your hatred of me, of the Republican Party, and tens of millions of patriotic Americans. The voters are wise, and they are seeing straight through this empty, hollow, and dangerous game you are playing. I have no doubt the American people will hold you and the Democrats fully responsible in the upcoming 2020 election. They will not soon forgive your perversion of justice and abuse of power. There is far too much that needs to be done to improve the lives of our citizens. It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record. One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again. Donald J. Trump President of the United States of A rica See the original document here. | null | https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/12/read-letter-trump-accuses-democrats-attempted-coup-191217221855011.html | Tue, 17 Dec 2019 23:02:41 GMT | 1,576,641,761 | 1,576,628,489 | politics | fundamental rights |
24,754 | bbc--2019-03-24--How Pope Francis could shape the future of robotics | 2019-03-24T00:00:00 | bbc | How Pope Francis could shape the future of robotics | It might not be the first place you imagine when you think about robots. But in the Renaissance splendour of the Vatican, thousands of miles from Silicon Valley, scientists, ethicists and theologians gather to discuss the future of robotics. The ideas go to the heart of what it means to be human and could define future generations on the planet. The workshop, Roboethics: Humans, Machines and Health was hosted by The Pontifical Academy for Life. The Academy was created 25 years ago by Pope John Paul II in response to rapid changes in biomedicine. These techniques were controversially claimed to have been used by Chinese scientist He Jiankui, to alter the genes of twin girls so they could not get HIV. For the opening of the meeting, Pope Francis presented a letter to the Human Community, where he outlines the paradox of "progress" and cautions against developing technologies without first thinking of the possible costs to society. In the letter, the Pope emphasises the need to study new technologies: communication technologies, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies and robotics. "There is a pressing need, then, to understand these epochal changes and new frontiers in order to determine how to place them at the service of the human person, while respecting and promoting the intrinsic dignity of all," Pope Francis writes. In stark contrast to this message came a hypothesis from Japanese Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, who says we will no longer be recognized as flesh and blood humans, in 10,000 years time. Famous for creating extremely human-like robots at his lab in Osaka University, including one of himself, Prof Ishiguro spoke about the need to evolve our bodies away from their current materials to something more enduring. "Our ultimate aim of human evolution is immortality by replacing the flesh and bones with inorganic material," he said. "The question is what happens if something happens in the planet, or something happens on the Sun, so we cannot live in the planet, we need to live in space." "In this case, which is better? Organic materials or inorganic materials?" For Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, there is a clear answer. "This dream is a terrible dream," adding that it was "impossible" to divide the body and soul. "The flesh is the body with the soul and the soul is a spirit with flesh," he asserted. "The body is very important for human beings, through the body we love, through the body we embrace and communicate with one another," he said. "We are aware on one side this is unbelievable progress, but on the other side, we felt that are risks that this development can give the world. "The risk is we forget we are creatures, not creators." Listen to Why is the Pope worried about robots?, on the Beyond Today podcast on BBC Sounds. Creating robots that can do tasks humans can do, even intimate tasks like caring for elderly people or having a relationship, is a fundamental aspect of Prof Ishiguro's work. "We have a serious problem, the Japanese population is going down to half the number of the current population within 50 years." Instead of relying on human immigrants or a baby boom to solve the decline, Prof Ishiguro points to the possibility of utilising robots instead. "We don't have enough annual immigrations, Japan is an isolated country, it's an island, our culture is quite different from other countries," "It is not so easy for the foreigners to survive in Japan in some sense,' Prof Ishiguro said. "That is the main reason why we are so crazy for creating robots." The European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) released a report last year emphasising the "urgent and complex moral questions" raised by advances in AI and robotics. It emphasized a need to for a collective and collaborative way of working to establish a set of values around which to organise society and the role these new technologies play. "It was on the request of the European Commission to have ethical thoughts about the future of our societies and the future of work in times of robotics and artificial intelligence," said Professor Christiane Woopen, chair of the EGE and Professor of ethics and theory of medicine at Cologne University, who was at the Vatican. The focus of the group's work is on how human rights relate to robots, rather than the idea of giving rights to new forms of autonomous technology. "We are not of the opinion that AI or robots should have rights on their own," Prof Woopen said. "Rights pertain to people and refer to fundamental rights, like human dignity, the right to autonomy." "Those rights refer to people, to human beings, and they refer to the EU Charter on fundamental rights," she explained. But Prof Ishiguro thinks the closer we get to having robots in our house and in our friendship circles, the more rights we will naturally want to give them. "Once a robot is going to be a partner, or a companion for us, a friend for us, we will want to protect the robot of course," he said. "As we give a kind of right to the animals, I think we will give a kind of right to the robots as well." For Prof Woopen, blurring the lines between humans and robots and entering into relationships with them raises complex ethical issues. "If you imagine that someday there will be a robot that completely behaves like a human being, moves like a human being, has facial expressions like a human being, how will you then decide whether this entity has a soul or not?" "We use them for our purposes, because we are the beings who can set their goals, who can choose the means, who can do good and evil, but we are free human beings," she says. "And I think that we shouldn't grant technical artefacts the freedom we have." The Vatican recently partnered with Microsoft to offer an international prize on ethics and artificial intelligence, after a private meeting between Pope Francis and Microsoft President Brad Smith. The prize is for the best doctoral dissertation of 2019 on the subject of "artificial intelligence in the service of human life". Next year, the agenda for the Academy's meeting focuses on artificial intelligence. "We have underlined the importance of technical research, this is a really good gift that God gave to us," Archbishop Paglia says. "But when we become similar to computers, we immediately see conflicts, dangers, inequalities and sometimes a terrible slavery with the other." he says. Prof Woopen emphasised the need for governments to address these emerging ethical issues. 'We have to be faster in Europe," she said. "But I think governments have already learned that these are crucial aspects to regulate and deal with because this will just shape our societies without taking account of what governments say, if they don't." | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47668476 | 2019-03-24 00:26:36+00:00 | 1,553,401,596 | 1,567,545,010 | politics | fundamental rights |
29,346 | bbc--2019-07-31--Burger King beard ban scrapped in Catalonia | 2019-07-31T00:00:00 | bbc | Burger King beard ban scrapped in Catalonia | Burger King workers in Catalonia will now be able to grow beards after local officials decided the company's ban on facial hair violated the constitutional rights of staff. Authorities also ruled that ordering men and women to wear different clothes amounted to sexual discrimination. Officials were asked to step in after the fast food giant refused to back down over the issue. Inspectors said the rules infringed on "the right to one's own image". The Workers' Commissions union raised the issue, arguing that Burger King's rules on banning beards, moustaches and stubble "undermined the dignity of its workers". "As a result of the inspection, it has been established that certain company practices laid out in the internal rules infringe the constitutional rights of workers, namely, the right to one's own image and the right to equal treatment and against sexual discrimination," the inspectors concluded. The inspectors pointed out that other measures such as beard nets could be used in order to prevent the violation of fundamental rights. They also found that company policy ordering men to wear ties and female workers ribbons amounted to sexual discrimination. "We want this to be applied to all Burger King workers; not just those in Barcelona, where we have union representation," Carles Català of the Catalan branch of the Workers' Commissions told The Guardian. Burger King employs more than 1,260 people in 46 restaurants in the province of Barcelona. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49182814 | 2019-07-31 15:06:53+00:00 | 1,564,600,013 | 1,567,535,234 | politics | fundamental rights |
29,521 | bbc--2019-08-05--Article 370 What happened with Kashmir and why it matters | 2019-08-05T00:00:00 | bbc | Article 370: What happened with Kashmir and why it matters | India's BJP-led government is hailing its decision to strip the state of Jammu and Kashmir of autonomy after seven decades, characterising it as the correction of a "historical blunder". The BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi explains why this has happened and why it's important. Kashmir is a Himalayan region that both India and Pakistan say is fully theirs. The area was once a princely state called Jammu and Kashmir, but it joined India in 1947 when the sub-continent was divided up at the end of British rule. India and Pakistan subsequently went to war over it and each came to control different parts of the territory with a ceasefire line agreed. There has been violence in the Indian-administered side - the state of Jammu and Kashmir - for 30 years due to a separatist insurgency against Indian rule. In the first few days of August, there were signs of something afoot in Kashmir. Tens of thousands of additional Indian troops were deployed, a major Hindu pilgrimage was cancelled, schools and colleges were shut, tourists were ordered to leave, telephone and internet services were suspended and regional political leaders were placed under house arrest. But most of the speculation was that Article 35A of the Indian constitution, which gave some special privileges to the people of the state, would be scrapped. The government then stunned everyone by saying it was revoking nearly all of Article 370, which 35A is part of and which has been the basis of Kashmir's complex relationship with India for some 70 years. The article allowed the state a certain amount of autonomy - its own constitution, a separate flag and freedom to make laws. Foreign affairs, defence and communications remained the preserve of the central government. As a result, Jammu and Kashmir could make its own rules relating to permanent residency, ownership of property and fundamental rights. It could also bar Indians from outside the state from purchasing property or settling there. The constitutional provision has underpinned India's often fraught relationship with Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority region to join India at partition. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party had long opposed Article 370 and revoking it was in the party's 2019 election manifesto. They argued it needed to be scrapped to integrate Kashmir and put it on the same footing as the rest of India. After returning to power with a massive mandate in the April-May general elections, the government lost no time in acting on its pledge. Critics of Monday's move are linking it to the economic slowdown that India is currently facing - they say it provides a much-needed diversion for the government. Many Kashmiris believe that the BJP ultimately wants to change the demographic character of the Muslim-majority region by allowing non-Kashmiris to buy land there. Although Home Minister Amit Shah's announcement in parliament on Monday came as a surprise to most Indians, it would have taken the government some preparation to arrive at the decision. The move also fits in with Mr Modi's desire to show that the BJP is tough on Kashmir, and Pakistan. Kashmir will no longer have a separate constitution but will have to abide by the Indian constitution much like any other state. All Indian laws will be automatically applicable to Kashmiris, and people from outside the state will be able to buy property there. The government says this will bring development to the region. "I want to tell the people of Jammu and Kashmir what damage Articles 370 and 35A did to the state," Mr Shah told parliament. "It's because of these sections that democracy was never fully implemented, corruption increased in the state, that no development could take place." The government is also moving to break up the state into two smaller, federally administered territories. One region will combine Muslim-majority Kashmir and Hindu-majority Jammu. The other is Buddhist-majority Ladakh, which is culturally and historically close to Tibet. P Chidambaram, a senior leader in the opposition Congress Party described the decision as a "catastrophic step" and warned in parliament that it could have serious consequences. "You may think you have scored a victory, but you are wrong and history will prove you to be wrong. Future generations will realise what a grave mistake this house is making today," he said. According to the constitution, Article 370 could only be modified with the agreement of the "state government". But there hasn't been much of a state government in Jammu and Kashmir for over a year now. In June last year, India imposed federal rule after the government of the then chief minister, Mehbooba Mufti, was reduced to a minority. This meant the federal government only had to seek the consent of the governor who imposes its rule. The government says it is well within its rights to bring in the changes and that similar decisions have been taken by federal governments in the past. But expert opinion is sharply divided. One constitutional expert, Subhash Kashyap, told news agency ANI that the order was "constitutionally sound" and that "no legal and constitutional fault can be found in it". However another constitutional expert, AG Noorani, told BBC Hindi it was "an illegal decision, akin to committing fraud" that could be challenged in the Supreme Court. Opposition political parties could launch a legal challenge but Kashmir is an emotive issue with many Indians, and most parties would be wary of opposing the move lest they be branded anti-India. That could leave any challenge up to individuals or activists. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-49234708 | 2019-08-05 23:13:59+00:00 | 1,565,061,239 | 1,567,534,819 | politics | fundamental rights |
31,900 | bbc--2019-10-17--Catalan protests: Region's president urges immediate halt to violence | 2019-10-17T00:00:00 | bbc | Catalan protests: Region's president urges immediate halt to violence | The president of Spain's Catalonia region has called for an immediate halt to violence, as protests continued into a fourth day. "We condemn violence... This has to stop right now," said Quim Torra. He later said he would push for a new referendum on Catalan independence. Protesters clashed with riot police, days after nine separatist leaders were jailed for their role in a failed push for independence. Demonstrators were detained in Barcelona, Lleida, Tarragona and Girona on Wednesday night as the protests spread across Spain's north-east region. Protesters have reportedly been using an app known as Tsunami Democràtic, which directs them to protest sites in Catalan cities. The Spanish authorities say they are investigating who is co-ordinating the disruption. Mr Torra blamed "infiltrators" but government spokeswoman Isabel Celaá described those instigating the violence as "co-ordinated young Catalans" whose actions were not improvised. Barricades were set alight and petrol bombs thrown as riots gripped the centre of Barcelona. Police released footage of a firework fired at one the helicopters flying over demonstrators in Barcelona. Thousands of people have joined a series of "marches for freedom", which are set to converge in the Catalan capital on Friday. What did the Catalan president say? In a televised statement, Mr Torra said: "We will not permit incidents like those we are seeing in the streets. "This has to stop right now. There is no reason nor justification for burning cars, nor any other vandalism." Mr Torra, who advocates independence for Catalonia, was speaking after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had made a direct appeal to him to condemn the violence. Speaking in the Catalan parliament on Thursday, Mr Torra condemned the long jail sentences handed down to leading separatist figures on Monday as a "direct attack on fundamental rights". He appealed to the prime minister to "face up to the conflict as democracies do - by speaking to and giving voice to the citizens". The protests began after nine pro-independence leaders were jailed for between nine and 13 years by Spain's Supreme Court. The separatists were convicted of sedition over their role in an independence referendum in 2017. Another three were found guilty of disobedience and fined but not jailed. All 12 defendants denied the charges. On Monday, thousands of protesters blocked roads to Barcelona's El Prat airport - a major transport hub. More than 100 flights were cancelled as demonstrators fought running battles with riot police at the terminal buildings. What is behind the Catalonia unrest? Catalan nationalists have long complained that their region, which has a distinct history dating back almost 1,000 years, sends too much money to poorer parts of Spain, through taxes which are controlled by Madrid. The wealthy region is home to about 7.5 million people, with their own language, parliament, flag and anthem. In September, a march in Barcelona in support of Catalonia's independence from Spain drew crowds of about 600,000 people - one of the lowest turnouts in the eight-year history of the annual rally. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50077595 | Thu, 17 Oct 2019 10:51:42 GMT | 1,571,323,902 | 1,571,314,455 | politics | fundamental rights |
33,835 | bbc--2019-12-12--Citizenship Amendment Bill: India calls in army to Assam and Tripura states | 2019-12-12T00:00:00 | bbc | Citizenship Amendment Bill: India calls in army to Assam and Tripura states | The army has been called into north-eastern India, after thousands of people defied curfews to protest against a new citizenship bill. The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) offers amnesty to non-Muslim illegal immigrants from three countries. Critics say the bill discriminates against Muslims - but in the north-east, protesters claim they will be "overrun" by Hindus from Bangladesh. Officials said 20-30 people were injured in the demonstrations, and air and railway services have been severely impacted. The bill - which applies to people from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan - was passed in the upper house of parliament on Wednesday night. It is yet to be ratified by the president, but that is merely a formality. The ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party says the CAB will give sanctuary to people fleeing religious persecution. Illegal migration from Bangladesh has long been a concern in the north-east. How bad are the protests? Violent protests intensified on Thursday, and have been particularly bad in the states of Assam and Tripura, which border Bangladesh. The army has deployed thousands of personnel, as protesters defy curfew orders and spill into the streets. The protesters blocked roads and set vehicles on fire. There are reports that at least two railway stations have been burned down. Railway services are suspended and some airlines have started offering rescheduling or cancellation fee waivers. The AFP news agency reported that police fired blanks into the air in a bid to disperse crowds. They have also used tear gas shells. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to reassure people in Assam, telling them they had "nothing to worry" about. Read more about the Citizenship Amendment Bill: "The central government and I are totally committed to constitutionally safeguard the political, linguistic, cultural and land rights of the Assamese people," he tweeted. However, with internet and mobile services shut down, it is unlikely residents would have been able to read the message. The chief minister of Assam was stranded at the airport for several hours on Wednesday because roads were blocked by protests. What do protesters want? They want the bill to be repealed, as they say their ethnic and cultural identity is under threat from illegal migration. Essentially, they do not want any migrants - regardless of religion - to be allowed into the state. What is further fuelling passions in Assam, is the fact that two million residents - deemed to be illegal immigrants- were left off a citizens' register last August. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a list of people who can prove they came to the state by 24 March 1971, a day before neighbouring Bangladesh became an independent country. In the run-up to its publication, the BJP had supported the NRC, but changed tack days before the final list was published, saying it was error-ridden. The reason for that was a lot of Bengali Hindus - a strong voter base for the BJP - were left off the list, and would possibly become illegal immigrants. The CAB is seen as being linked to the register, although it is not the same thing. It will help protect non-Muslims who are excluded from the register and face the threat of deportation or internment. Has the bill been challenged? The Indian Union Muslim League, a political party, has petitioned the country's top court to declare the bill illegal. In their petition to the Supreme Court, the Indian Union Muslim League argued that the bill violated articles of equality, fundamental rights and the right to life. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-50754065 | Thu, 12 Dec 2019 09:48:37 GMT | 1,576,162,117 | 1,576,152,490 | politics | fundamental rights |
34,104 | bbc--2019-12-17--Trump impeachment: President pens irate letter to Pelosi on eve of vote | 2019-12-17T00:00:00 | bbc | Trump impeachment: President pens irate letter to Pelosi on eve of vote | President Donald Trump has lashed out over his impending impeachment in an irate letter to top Democrat Nancy Pelosi, accusing her of declaring "open war on American democracy". "You have cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!" he wrote in the letter, sent on Tuesday. Mr Trump faces an impeachment vote on Wednesday over allegations he pressured Ukraine for personal political gain. He is expected to be impeached, setting up a trial in the Senate. With little hope of changing the outcome of Wednesday's vote in the House, Mr Trump used his six-page letter to angrily rail against the process and denounce Ms Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House. It was a remarkable intervention by the president, who has fought to stymie the impeachment process by preventing key aides from testifying before the House of Representatives. Mr Trump claimed in his letter he had been "deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process from the beginning of this impeachment scam" and "denied the most fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence". "More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials," he wrote. The president was in fact publicly invited by the Democratic chair of the House Judiciary Committee to give evidence in the impeachment process, which would have also allowed his legal team to question witnesses, but he declined. Mr Trump is facing two impeachment charges: obstruction of Congress, by refusing to co-operate with the impeachment probe, barring staff from testifying, and holding back documentary evidence; and attempting to use his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate his Democratic political rival Joe Biden. If the House votes as expected on Wednesday along party lines, Mr Trump will become the third president in US history to be impeached. He will then go on trial in the Senate, where Senators from both parties are obliged to act as independent jurors. The Senate is controlled by the president's Republican Party. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell outraged Democrats last week when he said Republican senators would act in "total co-ordination" with the president's team during the trial and vote against the process. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Minority Senate Leader, said: "If articles of impeachment are sent to the Senate, every single senator will take an oath to render 'impartial justice'. Making sure the Senate conducts a fair and honest trial that allows all the facts to come out is paramount." Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared to confirm that he worked to remove the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to clear the way for investigations that could be politically useful to Mr Trump. Mr Giuliani told the New York Times he passed along to Mr Trump "a couple of times" information about how Ms Yovanovitch had got in the way of potential investigations. "I needed Yovanovitch out of the way," Mr Giuliani told the New Yorker magazine. | null | https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-50830736 | Tue, 17 Dec 2019 21:45:30 GMT | 1,576,637,130 | 1,576,627,655 | politics | fundamental rights |
47,594 | bearingarms--2019-07-03--Lawsuit Filed Over Californias Ban On Gun Sales To People Under 21 | 2019-07-03T00:00:00 | bearingarms | Lawsuit Filed Over California’s Ban On Gun Sales To People Under 21 | California is one of a handful of states that decided to make it illegal for an 18-year-old to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms in the wake of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The thinking, if you can call it that, is that by banning people under 21 from buying a gun, we will be able to prevent some percentage of mass shootings. Of course, since most mass shootings committed by people under 21 are carried out with stolen guns anyway, don’t expect such laws to make the least little difference. Anyway, California passed the law. So did some other states, most notably Florida. Now, a lawsuit has been filed challenging the law. Second Amendment right groups sued the state of California Monday over the new law banning the sale of firearms to people under the age of 21. The groups, the Calguns Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition, argued in a lawsuit filed in San Diego on behalf of individual gun owners that those 18 and over are adults and have a right to purchase a firearm. “Once individuals turn eighteen, they are adults in the eyes of the law,” said John W. Dillon, the Carlsbad attorney representing the groups, the Los Angeles Times reported. “Law-abiding adults are entitled to fully exercise all of their fundamental rights, including their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for all lawful purposes, not just hunting or sport.” But the lawsuit argues that any adult who isn’t a convicted felon or mentally ill should be allowed to use the Second Amendment. “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right and adults over the age of eighteen but under twenty-one are not second-class people,” said Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, according to the Times. If we’re going to trust 18-year-olds with the ability to sign contracts, enlist in the military, and vote, they should damn well be allowed to purchase a firearm. I’m still upset that we have 21 as the age requirement on handguns, for crying out loud. If they’re adults, treat them as such. And I say this as someone who will have an 18-year-old son in about a week. This isn’t because there is some concern that people under 21 are more dangerous or more likely to commit a mass shooting. It’s an excuse. Parkland just gave them an excuse to limit who could purchase a rifle. That’s it. If most of the lawmakers supporting this legislation had their way, no one would ever be able to buy a firearm of any type. The shooting gave them an excuse to infringe on the rights of a group of Americans — nothing more, nothing less. In a few years, you’ll look at states that passed these laws and guess what kind of change you’ll see in their crime rates? If you said “none,” give yourself a cookie. But these states won’t repeal these laws either. With luck, though, this is a moot discussion. Hopefully, the courts will kill this one and all other similar laws across the nation. It’ll be a while, though, because I’d be very surprised to see the Ninth Circuit overturn a law like this. Still, a guy can dream. | Tom Knighton | https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/07/03/lawsuit-filed-californias-ban-gun-sales-people-21/ | 2019-07-03 18:00:22+00:00 | 1,562,191,222 | 1,567,537,109 | politics | fundamental rights |
47,829 | bearingarms--2019-08-21--Op-Ed Argues SCOTUS Radical For Not Wanting To Destroy Second Amendment | 2019-08-21T00:00:00 | bearingarms | Op-Ed Argues SCOTUS ‘Radical’ For Not Wanting To Destroy Second Amendment | The term “radical” gets thrown around a lot in politics these days. It’s a warning sign to voters. “Beware this position for it is radical!” Now, sometimes, it’s accurate. Sometimes, it’s not. One such time it’s not is when an op-ed tries to argue that the likelihood of the Supreme Court protecting the Constitution of the United States is somehow “radical.” I know, I know, no one’s that dumb, right? Well, you’d think that. You’d also be wrong. All that changed in 2008 with the court’s 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v Heller. In striking down a Washington DC ban on handguns in the home, the court’s conservative majority held for the first time that the second amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia”. Relying on an “originalist” reading of the constitution, Justice Antonin Scalia insisted the supreme court had essentially misread the second amendment for 200 years. Originalists claim that reading the constitution as understood at the time of its adoption makes a judge a more faithful interpreter of constitutional text, although in reality this approach guarantees no such thing. To the contrary, it permits judges to cherry-pick history to reach virtually any outcome, or, as in this case, to radically overturn decades of received wisdom in the name of constitutional “fidelity”. Not all constitutional rights are created equal. The fifth amendment, for example, guarantees a right to grand jury indictment in federal criminal trials, but the supreme court long ago concluded that because the right was not fundamental, it did not bind state courts. Freedom of speech, by contrast, is a fundamental constitutional right, and so both state and federal governments are limited in their power to regulate speech. In the wake of Heller, the court left open the question – is the individual right of gun ownership more like the right to a grand jury indictment, or more like the fundamental right to free speech? In McDonald v Chicago (2010), a similarly divided court gave its fateful answer. “It is clear,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “that the Framers and ratifiers … counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty”. In elevating gun ownership into a fundamental individual right, the court has erected a formidable constitutional barrier to shaping a sensible political solution to a horrific national problem. There are so many problems with this argument it’s not even funny. The Fifth Amendment, for example, says no person can be held for a “capital, or otherwise infamous crime,” which arguably doesn’t apply to charges in state courts. No less troubling is an opinion that Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote during his tenure as a judge on DC’s federal appellate court. Applying the court’s reasoning in Heller, Kavanaugh argued that any ban on semiautomatic rifles should be struck down as unconstitutional. That bears repeating: A ban on semiautomatic weapons would be unconstitutional. Using “text, history, and tradition” as his guides, Kavanaugh concluded that semiautomatic rifles “have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens for self-defense in the home, hunting, and other lawful uses”. Why does the fact that we’ve permitted such weapons in the past mean that we are constitutionally tethered to them now? The logic again follows straight from the disastrous Heller ruling. That would be because Heller gave us a test for what weapons can be banned and which can’t. Kavanaugh applied that test to semi-automatic weapons and guess what? He found they couldn’t be banned since they met the criteria. Honestly, the whole thing is bat-guano stupid, and this is a law professor, for crying out loud. What it does show, however, is that despite our Founding Fathers best intentions, they didn’t create a system that was fool proof against individuals selectively reading whatever they want into the plain text of the document they built as a foundation for our country. That happened for years, but now we’re seeing the sour grapes of those who found their preferred “interpretation” shut out by Heller. Doing as the Founding Fathers intended isn’t radical. It’s just right. | Tom Knighton | https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/08/21/op-ed-argues-scotus-radical-not-wanting-destroy-second-amendment/ | 2019-08-21 20:00:56+00:00 | 1,566,432,056 | 1,567,533,888 | politics | fundamental rights |
48,042 | bearingarms--2019-09-23--California Gun Shop Plaintiff In Lawsuit Against CAs Gun Age Limit | 2019-09-23T00:00:00 | bearingarms | California Gun Shop Plaintiff In Lawsuit Against CA’s Gun Age Limit | California is one of a handful of states that restricts all gun sales to people aged 21 or over. This is a curtailment of their civil liberties, of course, and needs to be struck down. That means lawsuits. Of course, lawsuits are a pain, especially for people under the age of 21. Yet there’s another group impacted by these laws and that’s gun stores. Now, one of them is joining a lawsuit seeking to overturn California’s laws. A Fallbrook gun shop is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit challenging California’s gun law banning the sale of firearms to those under 21. The lawsuit recently filed in San Diego argues that adults over age 18 who are not convicted felons or mentally ill should have access to the full scope of the Second Amendment. Thomas Furrh of Vista and Matthew Jones of Santee, both under 21, are listed as plaintiffs, along with four gun advocate groups and three retail gun shops in San Diego County. The four gun advocate groups include the Calguns Foundation, Firearms Policy Coalition, Firearms Policy Foundation and Second Amendment Foundation. The three retail gun shops include Poway Weapons and Gear, North County Shooting Center in San Marcos and Beebe Family Arms and Munitions in Fallbrook. The lawsuit was filed by John Dillon, associate attorney with the Carlsbad-based law firm of Gatzke Dillon and Ballance LLP. “Once individuals turn 18, they are considered as adults in the eyes of the law,” Dillon said. “Therefore, law-abiding adults are entitled to fully exercise all of their fundamental rights, including their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for all lawful purposes, not just hunting or sport. “We’re asking the court to rule the state’s law as an unconstitutional infringement so that law-abiding adults over the age of 18 but under the age of 21 can exercise their fundamental Second Amendment right to purchase and possess firearms. The state’s actions and policies to deny Californians their fundamental rights are unconstitutional and wrong,” he said. It’s interesting because one would be hardpressed to successfully argue that gun stores lack standing for such a lawsuit. It’s not hard to demonstrate they’re impacted negatively by such laws. After all, how many sales per year are they losing out on because of such unconstitutional measures? While it’s impossible to guess the actual number, even one represents lost income and provides sufficient standing to be party to such a lawsuit. Frankly, I’d like to see more gun stores join in these lawsuits as it becomes much more difficult to argue a lack of standing, which is the default first tactic for all governments being sued over their insane gun control laws. Gun stores invariably have standing because even if a particular individual didn’t try to buy a gun, someone else did and those gun stores can’t sell them. I like it, especially with regard to age limits. Those laws need to die horribly because it’s idiotic to tell an adult they aren’t old enough to enjoy all of their constitutional rights. With luck, the courts will strike these laws down so hard that there’s no need for the Supreme Court to get involved, but if that can’t be, then at least let the Supreme Court smack them down permanently. | Tom Knighton | https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2019/09/23/california-gun-shop-plaintiff-lawsuit-cas-gun-age-limit/ | 2019-09-23 20:00:25+00:00 | 1,569,283,225 | 1,570,222,436 | politics | fundamental rights |
48,241 | bearingarms--2019-10-18--What Anti-Gun Attorneys Get Wrong About The Second Amendment | 2019-10-18T00:00:00 | bearingarms | What Anti-Gun Attorneys Get Wrong About The Second Amendment | Law professors Vikram D. Amar and Alan E. Brownstein have a column in the Los Angeles Times today entitled What The Gun Lobby Gets Wrong About The Second Amendment. A title like that is clickbait candy to me, so of course I took a look at their arguments. What I found was this: Yes, the Second Amendment may be an individual right, they say, but we should still be able to pass almost any gun control law we want. Of course, a constitutional right does carry with it a strong presumption against government interference with that particular activity, even though the exercise of the right involves a societal cost. We protect freedom of religion, for example, even though we know that some religious practices — like pulling children out of school after the eighth grade — might be considered problematic or harmful. But there is a critical difference between assigning a high value to a constitutional right when balancing it against social concerns, and arguing that the right necessarily overrides the public’s ability to regulate that activity in ways that may be needed to protect the community. The problem with that argument is that under the standard articulated by Amar and Brownstein, any anti-gun politicians can simply claim that any gun control measure they adopt is simply regulating the right to keep and bear arms in ways that “may be needed to protect the community”, and that’s all the evidence needed to uphold the gun control law in question. It’s one reason why Second Amendment supporters are eager to see the Supreme Court take up the NYSPRA v. NYC case in early December, because it will allow the Court to actually speak on the standard of review for Second Amendment cases. Despite what the anti-gun attorneys claim, Second Amendment supporters aren’t asking for some special status for the right to keep and bear arms. They’re simply arguing that the courts should consider gun control laws under the highest level of judicial review, known as strict scrutiny. That means the government has to demonstrate that the law in question is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest (in this case, public safety). At the moment, many courts around the country are looking at gun control laws using “intermediate scrutiny”, a vague and fuzzy middle ground that allows judges to uphold many gun control laws. While Amar and Brownstein don’t come right out and say it, that’s clearly the legal standard they prefer, and in doing so, they consign the Second Amendment to the status of a second class right. The national debate now has focused on proposed regulations such as background checks and assault weapons bans. Whether specific measures would be permissible under the Constitution depends on their particulars, but the big point is that particulars matter. In evaluating gun control regulations, it’s legitimate to take into account the social harms and risks arising from individuals keeping, bearing and using firearms. Constitutional analysis of the Second Amendment, as with other fundamental rights, requires some kind of balancing of interests, which includes considering the state’s need to promote public safety. And what if you believe the state promotes public safety by securing and strengthening the right of the people to keep and bear arms, which shall not be infringed? Again, simply stating that a gun control law was put on the books for public safety reasons doesn’t mean the public is any safer. You can have good intentions and still make bad law. For a non-Second Amendment example, consider the recent legislation approved in California that was meant to help freelance writers but is going to screw them over instead. If a freelance journalist writes for a magazine, newspaper or other entity whose central mission is to disseminate the news, the law says, that journalist is capped at writing 35 “submissions” per year per “putative employer.” At a time when paid freelance stories can be written for a low end of $25 and high end of $1 per word, some meet that cap in a month just to make end’s meet. Amy Lamare, who writes for money site Celebritynetworth.com and YourTango.com, adds, “Everyone’s freaking out, like my anxiety is going through the damn roof.” I don’t know why Lamare is freaking out. Sure, her livelihood may be at stake, but the bill’s sponsor says she’s only trying to help. Can’t these writers show a little gratitude? The overall goal of AB 5, Gonzalez says, is “to protect and preserve good jobs. We’re trying to create new good jobs and a livable, sustainable wage job.” Indeed, freelancers typically do not enjoy employee benefits like paid leave, sick days, health care and retirement benefits, nor are they covered by workplace civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination, and they have less recourse if laws are broken or fees aren’t paid on time (the latter a frequent complaint of freelance journalists). Gonzalez, who previously worked as a labor organizer and says she spoke to “dozens” of freelance journalists while writing the bill and moving it through the lawmaking process, adds that freelancers can be used to break newsroom unions like the ones formed last year at The Los Angeles Times and this year at The Ringer. As for how lawmakers settled on the 35-submission figure, Gonzalez says that she and her team decided that a weekly columnist sounded like a part-time worker and so halved that worker’s yearly submissions. After protest from some freelancers, the number was bumped up to 35. “Was it a little arbitrary? Yeah. Writing bills with numbers like that are a little bit arbitrary,” she says. Gun owners know all about lawmakers writing bills with arbitrary numbers in them, just like we know all about lawmakers claiming that they’re putting gun laws in place to protect the public, only to see crime rates increase afterwards. It’s why real judicial scrutiny is needed when it comes to the constitutionality of gun control laws, instead of what happens all too often these days; judges simply rubber-stamping every anti-gun law that ends up in front of them. The best of intentions can still lead to the worst results when government gets involved. | Cam Edwards | https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2019/10/18/anti-gun-attorneys-get-wrong-second-amendment/ | Fri, 18 Oct 2019 19:34:29 +0000 | 1,571,441,669 | 1,571,441,795 | politics | fundamental rights |
48,410 | bearingarms--2019-11-18--If Gun Control Works, Then Please Explain This Case From North Ireland | 2019-11-18T00:00:00 | bearingarms | If Gun Control Works, Then Please Explain This Case From North Ireland | North Ireland has been in varying degrees of disarray for more than a century. While it’s filled with good people, much like anywhere else, it also has its rowdy component as well. Their dangerous crowd is known for doing things like blowing up cars and things of that sort. However, the entire island, both North Ireland and Ireland itself, are nations under strict gun control. Further, they’re on an island cut off from everywhere else except via ferry from the UK or by plane. With the UK also having strict gun control, they aren’t just coming across in the ferry. Yet a recent bust shows just how useless those gun control laws actually are. Guns including an AR-15 assault rifle have been intercepted on their way to Northern Ireland. A joint operation involving the National Crime Agency and the PSNI swung into action after Border Force officers stopped the weapons haul at a parcel hub in England. And in a follow-up raid, in Newtownards, Co Down , more weapons were found. In total, the NCA says, 24 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition have been seized. They say the “huge firearms and ammunition haul” was uncovered after an “investigation commenced following the interception of an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and two handguns by Border Force officers at an international parcel hub in the Midlands earlier this month”. Now, let’s keep in mind that the AR-15 is an American design. I don’t know any European makers for the weapon off the top of my head and, even if there are some, the flow of such weapons are tightly controlled. Yet if gun control worked as advertised, this simply couldn’t happen, now could it? Of course, gun control doesn’t work. It merely limits the law-abiding and their access to firearms. It doesn’t actually stop those with no respect for the law. They’ll keep doing whatever they want with no regard for the rules the rest of us have to follow. Someone, somewhere, sent an AR-15 into North Ireland, something that should be virtually impossible to do and actually is legally. For the criminals, though, it’s just an inconvenience. Meanwhile, good people in Northern Ireland may find themselves facing armed attackers with absolutely no ability to defend themselves because their betters have so decreed that the plebes can’t be trusted with guns. The criminals will continue to scoff at the law. Time and time again, we watch this play out. We see criminals arm themselves while the law-abiding are left defenseless. This continues to be a problem and will until the powers that be wake up and understand that gun control is not the answer. Gun rights are human rights, and the European leaders need to be reminded of that fact as well. Especially since so many people throughout the world reject that basic human right. Then again, we live in a world where even Americans are trying to reject fundamental rights like free speech and freedom of religion, so why should we be shocked when gun rights are also rejected? The thing is, I can show you mountains of evidence that gun control doesn’t really work. Will any of them ever listen? | null | https://bearingarms.com/tomk/2019/11/18/gun-control-works-please-explain-case-north-ireland/ | Mon, 18 Nov 2019 21:00:50 Z | 1,574,128,850 | 1,574,166,066 | politics | fundamental rights |
48,757 | bigleaguepolitics--2019-12-16--HUGE for 2020: House Freedom Fund Endorses America First Candidate Marjorie Greene | 2019-12-16T00:00:00 | bigleaguepolitics | HUGE for 2020: House Freedom Fund Endorses America First Candidate Marjorie Greene | Georgia Congressional candidate Marjorie Greene received an endorsement from the House Freedom Fund on Monday, December 16, 2019. Greene is running for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District running on a platform that will protect the Second Amendment and the rights of the unborn. The House Freedom Fund was formed by members of the House Freedom Caucus (including rock stars like Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows) to bring in more conservatives who will fight for limited government, slashing wasteful spending and fundamental rights such as life, freedom of speech and self-defense. Trending: Meet the Female Georgia Republican Who Plans to Dismantle Planned Parenthood According to its website, the House Freedom Fund “only supports candidates for Congress who are dedicated to open, accountable, and limited government – candidates who will fight to defend the Constitution and advance policies that promote liberty, safety, and prosperity for all Americans.” take our poll - story continues below The Greene campaign published this press release highlighting the endorsement. In response to the endorsement from the House Freedom Fund, Marjorie said: I’m honored to receive the House Freedom Fund endorsement. I look forward to their strong conservative support across the 14th Congressional District as we head into the May 19th Republican Primary. As a Christian conservative wife, mother of three, businesswoman and job creator, I’m proud to say I’m 100% Pro-America, Pro-Trump, Pro-Life, and Pro-Second Amendment. I’m a political outsider and problem solver. I’m not a career politician and never want to be. With a Congress that is continually failing the people, my sole purpose for running is to represent the people of the 14th CD, not the career politicians and bureaucrats. I encourage all conservative Republicans in the 14th, and those who love our country and want to Keep America Great, to get behind my campaign and help me take the fight for the people of NW Georgia to Washington, DC. I would also be honored to become the first female elected Representative from the 14th and NW Georgia in Congress. Solid conservative congressmen like Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows lead the fundraising for the House Freedom Fund. Jim Jordan: “The House Freedom Fund helps grassroots candidates get the financial support they need to compete with establishment candidates.” Mark Meadows: “Change in Washington means changing the people we send there and HFF is making that happen by sending principled, conservative outsiders to D.C.” Greene is the only option for conservatives who believe in the principles of the Second Amendment and the right to life in Georgia’s 14th congressional district. A 2020 victory by Greene would represent a major step forward for American First patriots. | Jose Nino | https://bigleaguepolitics.com/huge-for-2020-house-freedom-fund-endorses-america-first-candidate-marjorie-greene/ | Mon, 16 Dec 2019 23:53:27 +0000 | 1,576,558,407 | 1,576,543,877 | politics | fundamental rights |
66,784 | birminghammail--2019-10-03--This is 2019 not 150 BC - fallout as doctor refuses to call a transgender woman she | 2019-10-03T00:00:00 | birminghammail | 'This is 2019, not 150 BC' - fallout as doctor refuses to call a transgender woman 'she' | The case of Christian doctor who refused to call a transgender woman "she" because of his religion has sparked fierce debate in his home region. David Mackereth claimed he was sacked after saying he would not "call any 6ft tall bearded man madam" during an "abstract discussion" with his manager. The 56-year-old, from Dudley, West Midlands, alleged the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) discriminated against his religious beliefs, costing him his job as a disability claim assessor - but lost his employment tribunal unanimously. That news sparked fierce debate on the Black Country Live Facebook page with some arguing the doctor should be allowed to continue while others said people's personal choices must be honoured. David Dale said: "He's not much of a Christian, is he? Would his mate Jesus act like that? No, as usual, the Old Testament is dragged out and used as a defence. Well, it's not. This is 2019, not 150BC. "If someone identifies as a woman, man, or a Cauliflower, it has no effect on him, me, or anyone reading this. Relax and remember it's not your issue. Leave them alone and concentrate on yourself." Luke O'Sullivan added: "If you're employed in a job that requires you to employ certain behaviours or use certain language because that's what your employer wants, abide by it or do one - that's how the private sector works." Kerrie Ann Blakemore said: "I think they made the right decision. Glad they sacked him." However, Ross Oakley said the world "has gone mad". Donna Brittle added: "What an absolute joke, you won't be able to say anything soon without it being offensive. It states he was a bearded man so if he wants to be called Madam, have a shave and a few operations that will warrent the request to be called madam." Sam Harding said: "A qualified doctor to lose his job because he hurt someone's feelings? We need all the doctors we can get. This story has been blown totally out of proportion." The tribunal concluded the "lack of belief in transgenderism and conscientious objection to transgenderism in our judgment are incompatible with human dignity and conflict with the fundamental rights of others, specifically here, transgender individuals". Publishing its conclusions, the tribunal panel said: "In our unanimous judgment there was no contravention of part 5 of the Equality Act 2010 and the claimant was not subjected to discrimination. Those complaints are dismissed." Dr Mackereth has said he will appeal. In his witness statement to tribunal hearings in July, Dr Mackereth said that transgender individuals "may find my views to be offensive". The 56-year-old doctor, who was trained to assess eligibility for Employment Support Allowance or the capability element of Universal Credit, also said there was no deliberate desire on his part to offend people. But the tribunal "found that his beliefs were likely to cause offence and have the effect of violating a transgender person's dignity or creating a proscribed environment, or subjecting a transgender person to less favourable treatment". As well as claiming religious discrimination, Dr Mackereth said no effort was made to accommodate his beliefs, such as referring transgender clients at Birmingham's Five Ways assessment centre to another doctor. | [email protected] (Charlotte Regen) | https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/this-2019-not-150-bc-17027053 | 2019-10-03 15:33:37+00:00 | 1,570,131,217 | 1,570,221,696 | politics | fundamental rights |
70,204 | bonginoreport--2019-12-25--VA is Laying the Groundwork to Begin Jailing Gun Owners | 2019-12-25T00:00:00 | bonginoreport | VA is Laying the Groundwork to Begin Jailing Gun Owners | As if Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s wholesale attack on law-abiding gun owners wasn’t enough, the disgraced public official and his Michael Bloomberg-bought allies in the General Assembly now want the state’s hard-working taxpayers to foot the bill for their unconstitutional schemes. The budget bill (HB30) includes an appropriation of a quarter million dollars to carry out a host of gun control measures that Northam and his anti-gun allies hope to enact. The $250,000 is appropriated to the Corrections Special Reserve Fund in order to provide for the “increase in the operating cost of adult correctional facilities resulting from the enactment” of Northam’s gun control measures. Among the enumerated laws that this allocation is meant to fund is a ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, the criminalization of private firearms transfers, and gun confiscation orders issued without due process. Aside from the insult of forcing law-abiding Virginia taxpayers to pay for the diminution of their rights, the gun control allocation is a severe waste of resources. Northam’s Bloomberg-backed gun control measures will not make Virginia safer. In additional to being unconstitutional, a ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms will not reduce violent crime. Long guns of any description are rarely used in violent crime. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data breaks down homicides by weapon type. In 2018, the FBI reported that there were five times as many individuals listed as killed with “knives or cutting instruments,” than with rifles of any kind. The data also showed that rifles were listed as being used in less homicides than “blunt objects (clubs, hammers, etc.)” or “personal weapons (hands, fists, feet, etc.).” A 1997 Department of Justice-funded study of the 1994 federal “assault weapons” ban determined that “At best, the assault weapons ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders, because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders.” A 2004 follow-up Department of Justice-funded study came to a similar conclusion. The study determined that “AWs [assault weapons] and LCMs [large capacity magazines] were used in only a minority of gun crimes prior to the 1994 federal ban,” “relatively few attacks involve more than 10 shots fired,” and “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” So-called “universal” background checks do not stop criminals from obtaining firearms. Background checks don’t stop criminals from stealing firearms, getting them on the black market, or getting them from straw purchasers. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 75 percent of criminals in state and federal state prison who had possessed a firearm during their offense acquired the firearm through theft, “Off the street/underground market,” or “from a family member or friend, or as a gift.” Less than one percent got firearms from dealers or non-dealers at gun shows. ATF has reported, “[t]he most frequent type of trafficking channel identified in ATF investigations is straw purchasing from federally licensed firearms dealers.” This year, researchers at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and the UC Davis School of Medicine found that comprehensive background checks and prohibitions based on violent misdemeanors “were not associated with changes in firearm suicide or homicide.” Aside from enabling the unacceptable deprivation of constitutional rights without due process, an Extreme Risk Protection Order (Red Flag) law is unnecessary in Virginia because the state already has strong and effective civil commitment laws. Under Virginia law, a law enforcement officer may take an individual into emergency custody for a mental health evaluation without prior court approval. A person detained in this manner is then evaluated to determine whether they meet the criteria for a temporary detention. A person that was subject to a temporary detention order and subsequently agreed to voluntary admission to a mental health facility is prohibited from possessing firearms until their rights are restored by a court. Tax-paying Virginians should not have to foot the bill for Northam and Bloomberg’s radical attack on their fundamental rights. Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Click here to follow NRA-ILA on Facebook. | Matt Palumbo | https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/24/virginia-governor-northam-increases-corrections-budget-in-anticipation-of-jailing-gun-owners/ | Wed, 25 Dec 2019 01:23:29 +0000 | 1,577,255,009 | 1,577,278,350 | politics | fundamental rights |
70,479 | breaking911--2019-10-08--White House Tells House Democrats It Will Not Participate In Trump Impeachment Inquiry | 2019-10-08T00:00:00 | breaking911 | White House Tells House Democrats It Will Not Participate In Trump Impeachment Inquiry | The White House on Tuesday informed Democrats in the House that it will not be participating or cooperating with the impeachment inquiry against President Trump. The President has done nothing wrong, and the Democrats know it. For purely political reasons, the Democrats have decided their desire to overturn the outcome of the 2016 election allows them to conduct a so-called impeachment inquiry that ignores the fundamental rights guaranteed to every American. These partisan proceedings are an affront to the Constitution—as they are being held behind closed doors and deny the President the right to call witnesses, to cross-examine witnesses, to have access to evidence, and many other basic rights. Today, on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, Pat Cipollone, Counsel to the President, sent a letter to Speaker Pelosi and Chairmen Engel, Schiff, and Cummings. The letter demonstrates that the Democrats’ inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, and even the most elementary due process protections. Democrats are pursuing purely partisan goals, including influencing the upcoming 2020 election. In the process, they are violating civil liberties and the separation of powers, threatening Executive Branch officials with punishment simply for exercising their constitutional rights and prerogatives. All of this violates the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent. For these reasons, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to, and will not participate in, this exercise of partisan political theater. President Trump and his entire Administration will, however, keep fighting for the American people, growing the economy, building prosperity, and protecting America’s interests at home and abroad. | ---- | https://breaking911.com/breaking-white-house-tells-house-democrats-it-will-not-participate-in-trump-impeachment-inquiry/ | Tue, 08 Oct 2019 21:10:36 +0000 | 1,570,583,436 | 1,570,572,014 | politics | fundamental rights |
73,527 | breitbart--2019-09-24--Brazils Bolsonaro Accuses UN of Aiding Slave Labor at General Assembly | 2019-09-24T00:00:00 | breitbart | Brazil's Bolsonaro Accuses U.N. of Aiding ‘Slave Labor’ at General Assembly | Bolsonaro made the accusation in relation to Cuba’s slave doctor system, in which the communist regime forces doctors to work without pay abroad, taking almost the entirety of their salaries and investing them in the luxury lifestyles of the regime’s leaders. The doctors are expected to live off of a “stipend” that many say often fails to cover basic food needs. Cuba makes an estimated $11 billion off of the slave doctor trade in deals with African, Latin American, and Pacific Island states. One of Bolsonaro’s first acts after taking office in January was to end the Brazilian Cuban slave doctor program, known as Mais Médicos (“More Doctors”). Bolsonaro demanded that Cuba give a reasonable salary to its doctors from the payments that Brasilia makes Havana, prompting the regime to end the program entirely. In New York, Bolsonaro noted that U.N. bodies like the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) openly aid and benefit from the Cuban slave doctor trade. “In 2013, an agreement between the former[ly ruling] Workers’ Party [PT] and the Cuban dictatorship brought to Brazil 10,000 doctors,” Bolsonaro explained. The agreement “prevented [the doctors] from bringing their spouses or children and 75 percent of their wages were confiscated by the Cuban regime.” “They were further prevented from enjoying fundamental rights like, for example, coming and going [from Brazil,” Bolsonaro noted. “It is truly tantamount to slave labor.” Bolsonaro made clear that this slave labor was “supported by human rights organizations in Brazil and United Nations organizations.” The PAHO was a signatory to the deal between Brazil and Cuba that created Mais Médicos. Inviting PAHO to participate in the deal would allow the then-socialist government of Brazil not to have to put the plan to import thousands of Cuban slave doctors before Congress, where it would have failed. An agreement between only Brazil and Cuba would legally be a treaty and thus require legislative approval. An agreement with the aid of an international organization like PAHO made the terms of the agreement secret and out of reach of the voters or lawmakers. PAHO took a payment from the Brazilian government to be involved in the deal. The Brazilian president also made the case that his country had direct experience with the evils of Cuba’s communist regime, when mass murderer Ernesto “Che” Guevara attempted to foment revolution in South America. “In the 1960s, Cuban agents were sent out to several countries to collaborate towards implementing dictatorships in the region. A few decades ago, they tried to change the Brazilian regime … they were defeated,” Bolsonaro said, making a vague reference to the right-wing Brazilian military regime that took over in response to communist agitation. Bolsonaro ended his remarks warning the world that socialism and communism have “left a path of death, ignorance, and stark poverty wherever [they go].” | Frances Martel | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/wqGl8DlC7PE/ | 2019-09-24 15:37:31+00:00 | 1,569,353,851 | 1,570,222,310 | politics | fundamental rights |
75,971 | breitbart--2019-11-19--China: Only Communist Courts Can Interpret Hong Kong Law | 2019-11-19T00:00:00 | breitbart | China: Only Communist Courts Can Interpret Hong Kong Law | Chinese authorities berated the High Court of Hong Kong on Monday for ruling that banning face coverings in public is “unconstitutional,” claiming that only Beijing’s communist lawmakers have the right to rule on such matters. In their ruling on Monday, two high court judges ruled that the emergency legislation imposing a ban on face masks in public areas that came into effect last month was incompatible with Hong Kong’s Basic Law. They also ruled that the law had violated people’s fundamental rights and freedoms. “The need for an urgent response is no justification for departing from or impugning the constitutional scheme,” the judges wrote in their ruling “We believe [the ordinance] is not compatible with the constitutional order laid down by the Basic Law.” The Basic Law is essentially the city’s constitution. Under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy, Hong Kong is not a sovereign entity, but China cannot impose its laws there. In response, local authorities confirmed that they would impose a temporary ban on the masks after prosecutors sought adjournment “to consider the situation.” The ruling sparked a furious reaction from Beijing. Jian Tiewei, a spokesperson for the Chinese legislative affairs commission, declared that the National People’s Congress had the sole authority to rule on constitutional matters in the region. The National People’s Congress is the chief lawmaking body of China. “Whether the laws of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region comply with the Basic Law of Hong Kong can only be judged and decided by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress,” said Jian. “No other authority has the right to make judgments and decisions.” Jian added that the ruling “severely weakened the governance” of Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam, who was appointed by China on the basis that she would bow to Beijing’s demands. He did not explain how giving the Chinese legislature sole power to write and interpret Hong Kong law fits into the “One Country, Two Systems” policy. According to the Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times, the verdict will “further disrupt the value of right from wrong in Hong Kong society and make some people show more sympathy to rioters, instead of stepping up their criticism of violence.” “Opposition in the city has always accused the police of ‘abuse of force,’ but never condemned those rioters who sabotage the city and attack the police lethally,” the Times argued. “The court’s verdict will let the opposition believe that this is their victory.” Hong Kong has experienced widespread civil unrest since early June when pro-democracy activists took to the streets to oppose an extradition bill that would have permitted criminal suspects to be sent to China for trial. The protesters have since added four demands, including the direct election of lawmakers to ensure control over what laws get written, to their list. “The growing violence has almost destroyed the rule of law in and the modernity of Hong Kong. The city is at its last gasp as an international financial center. And the current ruling has closed its door to the emergency room,” the Times continued. “It is a pity that some judges in Hong Kong have not fully fulfilled their responsibility to jointly fight violence.” Although Carrie Lam has since scrapped the proposal, the demonstrations have continued for the four other demands. Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at [email protected] | Ben Kew | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/Pde8Fynzc54/ | Tue, 19 Nov 2019 17:55:57 +0000 | 1,574,204,157 | 1,574,251,678 | politics | fundamental rights |
76,258 | breitbart--2019-11-22--PA Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf: Women ‘Must Be Able’ to Abort Babies with Down Syndrome | 2019-11-22T00:00:00 | breitbart | PA Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf: Women ‘Must Be Able’ to Abort Babies with Down Syndrome | Pennsylvania Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed legislation Thursday that would have prohibited abortions based on a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. “There is no evidence that this bill is needed in Pennsylvania,” Wolf said in his veto message, and added: This legislation is a restriction on women and medical professionals and interferes with women’s health care and the crucial decision-making between patients and their physicians. Physicians and their patients must be able to make choices about medical procedures based on best practices and standards of care. The prohibitions under this bill are not consistent with the fundamental rights vested by the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Wolf continued he was not aware of disability rights groups that support the bill, though elected representatives in both chambers of the state legislature passed it. In an earlier message in which he indicated he would be vetoing the bill, Wolf criticized the pro-life community stating, “This bill masks yet another attempt to ban abortions and put politicians between a woman and her doctor.” “[T]his is a particularly cynical way to impugn women seeking constitutionally protected health care options,” the governor added. In December 2017, Wolf also vetoed a measure that would have banned dismemberment abortion — also known as dilation and evacuation abortion (D&E) — which is generally performed during the second trimester of pregnancy. During this procedure, the unborn baby’s limbs are torn off its body prior to removing him or her from the mother’s uterus. Wolf said the ban was “extreme” and “restrictive” for women. Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion business —announced in June 2018 it would be spending $1.5 million to ensure Wolf was re-elected last November. | Dr. Susan Berry | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/Cvi86PNQsxo/ | Fri, 22 Nov 2019 16:25:05 +0000 | 1,574,457,905 | 1,574,467,670 | politics | fundamental rights |
77,932 | breitbart--2019-12-23--Establishment Media Runs Away from J.K. Rowling's Transgender Debate | 2019-12-23T00:00:00 | breitbart | Establishment Media Runs Away from J.K. Rowling's Transgender Debate | The U.S. establishment media is running away from a lucrative click-bait debate on sex and science, which is sponsored by the wealthy and famous author of the Harry Potter franchise, J.K. Rowling. The December 19 offer came when Rowling championed the free speech rights of one woman — Maya Forestator — while simultaneously supporting sexual freedom, science, and the public’s right to recognize the different, equal, and complementary biological sexes of women and men. Rowling’s tweeted support for sexual freedom, and free speech was ignored by pro-transgender groups, who spent their time jeering and chanting repetitive slogans. The slogans were amplified by establishment media outlets, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, which avoided the fundamental sex, science, and speech issues raised by Rowling. The only establishment journalist who engaged the debate turned out to be Andrew Sullivan, a British-born, sometimes-conservative gay author. The first half of his December 20 column in New York magazine was a passionate criticism of President Donald Trump, while the second half championed Rowling: It’s vital to note that Forstater is prepared to treat any trans woman as a woman in real life, defends trans people’s rights to define themselves as they wish, has not been charged with any kind of harassment or in-person abuse, is happy to accept anyone’s adoption of any of a thousand possible genders, but simply refuses to say what she doesn’t believe: that sex can be chosen or assigned, rather than simply observed as a matter of biology. “I accept everybody’s gender identity; I just do not believe it overrides their sex,” she told the court. “I refuse to believe human beings can change their sex.” This view — almost universally held for millennia until five minutes ago, and rooted in the plain facts of science — is now, the court ruled, subject to legal sanction. Such a view is “incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others“ and “not worthy of respect in a democratic society.” So anyone expressing an opinion like Forstater’s can be fired with no recourse. This is how J.K. Rowling tweeted her support of Forstater’s freedom of speech: “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?” This completely liberal viewpoint defending a distinction between sex and gender was immediately trashed by the Twitter mob with the vitriol usually reserved for, well, Martina Navratilova, who also defended women’s sports as defined by sex, not gender, and was subject to mass obloquy. Note that the judgment against Forstater rests not on the idea that she is wrong but that her argument is fundamentally illegitimate and shouldn’t even be entertained, let alone accorded respect. It rests on the banishment of a valid viewpoint from all public debate on a highly controversial matter. When you study the actual judgment, though, you find a lengthy discussion of chromosomes, hormones, gender, and sex in a complex arena. It’s clear that this is a real debate, that we have only just begun to think it through, that there are some fascinating philosophical questions involved, and that more research and debate is needed. But the ruling determines that one side in that debate can participate only under the threat of punitive sanctions. In contrast, the progressive staff at the Washington Post demoted the dispute to its “Internet culture” columnists, who focused almost entirely on those pro-transgender complaints. “J.K. Rowling tried to make her work more inclusive. Then she tweeted support for an anti-trans researcher,” said their headline. The Post also printed a December 21 emotional op-ed response by a pro-transgender lobbyist: In the magical world of Harry Potter, the justice-minded and rebellious adolescent characters drink something called “Polyjuice Potion” to temporarily take on the general appearance of other people, even those of entirely different anatomies and gender expressions. As a teenager, I remember reading this and thinking, “Oh God, I wish it were that easy.” Waking up Thursday morning to Rowling’s unequivocal defense of Forstater was searing. I felt foolish and betrayed. I felt guilty for not affirming my siblings in the trans and non-binary community who had the courage to speak out against her history with conviction. The New York Times‘ article followed the same pro-transgender format, with its headline saying “J.K. Rowling Criticized After Tweeting Support for Anti-Transgender Researcher.” The article quoted three critics but offered no quotes from supporters of Rowling or Forstator. The New York Times blocked reader comments. The Washington Post allowed comments on its news article, and the comments — were overwhelming in favor of Rowling and against the article’s authors. Many other outlets were even worse. Vox.com posted two pro-transgender articles, with the headlines “J.K. Rowling’s latest tweet seems like transphobic BS. Her fans are heartbroken,” and “J.K. Rowling’s transphobia is a product of British culture.” Most media outlets just sketched the fight without describing the feminist case against the aggressive demands of the transgender ideology. Even the Associated Press spotlighted the transgender complaints while downplaying the arguments for Rowling’s sex-beats-gender experience. Unexpectedly, CNN’s article looked past the pro-transgender complaints, but its London-based business reporter posted that article. She reported: But aside from the outpouring of criticism, the author also received plenty of praise for what her defenders believe is a strong feminist statement. The clash that ensued illustrates an ongoing debate that’s been happening in Britain around trans rights and feminism. Writer and campaigner Helen Saxby was one of those who voiced her support for Forstater and Rowling. “If we are forced to say ‘transwomen are women,’ women’s rights disappear overnight, and we are left with people’s rights,” she said on Twitter, adding: “People’s rights favour men because men are the default people. That’s why we fought for women’s rights in the first place.” But the establishment media cannot block the debate, partly because it is continuing in Breitbart, and online, despite Twitter’s skewed pro-transgender rules. For example, Twitter bars reference to the sex of transgender people, while allowing pro-transgender activists to stereotype their critics as ‘TERFs.” The Women’s Liberation Front group spotlighted the growing left-wing opposition to the transgender push. The pro-transgender groups responded with slogans, abuse, and emotional blackmail. Breitbart has extensively covered the pro-transgender groups that say the government should force Americans to accept the chaotic claims of diverse sexual identities by people who claim to have a “gender” that somehow does not match their body and brain. Breitbart has also covered the flip-side — the conservative and feminist Americans who want the government to support their evolved civic rules and laws which were developed to help women and men prosper equally and freely, and which recognize that the two sexes have different and complementary needs because they are biologically different and complementary. | Neil Munro | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/breitbart/~3/wPycmeIzflM/ | Mon, 23 Dec 2019 00:08:13 +0000 | 1,577,077,693 | 1,577,102,850 | politics | fundamental rights |
80,094 | buzzfeed--2019-07-23--Opinion Working People Need A New Bill Of Rights As President Ill Make One | 2019-07-23T00:00:00 | buzzfeed | Opinion: Working People Need A New Bill Of Rights. As President, I'll Make One. | Let’s cut to the chase: Working people are having their fundamental rights stripped away, and we’re running out of time to get them back. For decades now, big corporations and the wealthiest Americans have counted on both parties to ram through an agenda that prevents the middle class from sharing in the fruits of their work. They’ve benefited from Reaganomics and the Trump Tax Giveaway, the bailout for the big banks, and Wall Street “reform” that let too many off easily. While the 1 percent thrive, working people are going backward. A single full-time job used to be enough to support a family; now two parents both working multiple part-time jobs can struggle to put food on the table. They can lose their job if they get ill or their car needs repairs, trapping them permanently in the cycle of poverty. These people power the economy, but the rewards have gone to those who often don’t know the meaning of hard work. After all, there’s plenty of money in this country – it’s just in the wrong hands. We’ll need bold reforms to change that: a 21st Century Working People’s Bill of Rights. That’s what I’m introducing today, a comprehensive set of pro-worker policies that will ensure we restore the rights of working Americans. You can look at the full set of proposals on my website, but I wanted to share several with you today. We’re beginning with the Right to Due Process at Work, which will end at-will employment, and guarantee that no employee can be fired without just cause. It’s shameful that employees can be fired at any time and for almost any reason — even if their boss is just in bad mood. With this new right, employees couldn’t be fired unless they’ve failed to do their job, and they’d have due process protections afterward to ensure that’s the case. Every working American will also have the Right to Paid Time Off, thanks to the farthest-reaching paid leave policy of any 2020 candidate. It mandates paid family and medical leave, as well as paid sick days for all. It’s also the only proposal in the field to mandate two weeks of paid vacation time for every worker, a fundamental right enjoyed by every other developed country on earth. Americans work hard; they deserve to take a break. One more right I’m particularly proud of: the Right to a Fair Job in the Gig Economy. Too often, companies like Uber care more about their profits than the people who do the work. It’s time to ensure the people who create the wealth for these apps share in it, by providing minimum pay and benefits standards for freelance workers. These companies need to treat their workers like employees when they are — not independent contractors for whom they can cut corners on pay and benefits. We’re also creating universal, transferable benefits systems for gig workers. They should be able to earn health and retirement benefits like anyone else, and they shouldn’t have to be tied to a single app to do so. These are just some of the steps I’ll take as president to put power back in the hands of those who deserve it. Every Democratic candidate claims they’re for working people. But too few have spelled out concrete steps they’d take to help them, and fewer still have shown the leadership and know-how to make it happen. As the mayor of our nation’s largest city, I've established many of these rights already, and they’re making a difference in the lives of 8.6 million Americans. We’ve led the way in the fight for a $15 minimum wage and enacted paid sick leave so that New Yorkers don’t have to worry about losing their livelihoods if they go to the hospital. We’ve already had fair scheduling on the books for two years. Ensuring these rights for workers has helped make New York City the fairest big city in America. We’re putting money back in the right hands. It’s time for our country — and our party — to do the same. | Bill de Blasio | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/billdeblasio/bill-de-blasio-working-peoples-bill-of-rights | 2019-07-23 20:04:19+00:00 | 1,563,926,659 | 1,567,536,101 | politics | fundamental rights |
94,064 | chicagosuntimes--2019-11-20--Aldermen propose paid city holiday to commemorate Juneteenth | 2019-11-20T00:00:00 | chicagosuntimes | Aldermen propose paid city holiday to commemorate Juneteenth | The cash-strapped city of Chicago has been roundly criticized over the years for granting city employees far more paid holidays than their counterparts in private industry. If Aldermen Maria Hadden (49th) and David Moore (17th) have their way, the city would add yet another: June 19th. At Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Hadden and Moore introduced an ordinance requiring City Hall and other local government buildings to be closed on the date known as “Juneteenth” to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. “It is not enough for the city of Chicago to just have parades, barbecues and events celebrating Juneteenth. Chicago must recognize Juneteenth as an official city holiday, which will help support the campaign to recognize ‘Juneteenth National Freedom Day’ as a national holiday,” the preamble to the ordinance states. The ordinance notes “millions of African-Americans fled to” Chicago “in two migration waves” and “shaped the face” of the city “through blood, sweat and tears.” “Despite segregation and denial of fundamental rights, Chicago politics, entertainment, sports and civic life have all been impacted by the strength and heart of these descendants of enslaved people,” the ordinance states. “A city founded by Jean Point du Sable, an African descendant, the home of Barack Obama, the first African-American President, and now led by its first African-American lesbian mayor can serve as a symbol and vessel that pushes this [national holiday] campaign forward.” Already, city employees get 12 paid holidays: New Year’s Day; the birthdays of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln and George Washington; Casimir Pulaski Day; Memorial Day; July 4th; Labor Day; Columbus Day; Veteran’s Day; Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. The cost of one more city holiday was not immediately known. The ordinance was co-signed by 18 aldermen, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s City Council floor leader. It comes as Black Caucus members also are pushing to at least begin a politically volatile debate about granting some form of reparations to Chicago descendants of slaves. | Fran Spielman | https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2019/11/20/20974962/aldermen-paid-holiday-juneteenth | 2019-11-20T16:43:11-06:00 | 1,574,286,191 | 1,574,295,770 | politics | fundamental rights |
99,595 | cnbc--2019-08-05--Heres how websites like 8chan get taken down | 2019-08-05T00:00:00 | cnbc | Here's how websites like 8chan get 'taken down' | Here are some of the players, where they stand and how they work. As a result, the products that provide hosting or security services to these controversial sites have themselves become part of the story. In particular, these forums rely on the products that keep them safe from large-scale web attacks, especially those known as "distributed denial of service" or DDoS attacks, which deliver an overload of information to servers, shutting the sites down. The sites are under constant threat of these attacks because of the controversial rhetoric hosted on them. But 8chan and other similarly controversial sites have a very difficult time operating without the hosting infrastructure in place to support them. Online forum 8chan is controversial because several people used it to espouse white supremacist views before allegedly committing mass shootings in El Paso, Texas; Poway, Calif. and Christchurch, New Zealand. Cloudflare is one of the largest companies that provides DDoS protection services, and is reportedly preparing for an IPO later this year. The company has a full range of products, but the DDoS service is most relevant to 8chan's plight. Cloudflare announced over the weekend it would no longer work with 8chan as a customer, meaning it would effectively end offering its protective capabilities against DDoS attacks. The 8chan site went down shortly after Cloudflare pulled its support, and said it expected "24-48 hours" of downtime in a tweet late Sunday. "Cloudflare's mission is to help build a better Internet. At some level firing 8chan as a customer is easy. They are uniquely lawless and that lawlessness has contributed to multiple horrific tragedies. Enough is enough," CEO Matthew Prince said in a blog post on the company's website. Prince also went on to say that creating these policies can be difficult, because tech companies have not yet worked out how to apply them consistently and fairly to all purveyors of inflammatory or inciteful speech. "What's hard is defining the policy that we can enforce transparently and consistently going forward. We, and other technology companies like us that enable the great parts of the Internet, have an obligation to help propose solutions to deal with the parts we're not proud of. That's our obligation and we're committed to it," he said. In its place, 8chan reportedly sought the services of a smaller DDoS mitigation service called BitMitigate, owned by web hosting company Epik, based in Sammamish, Wash. Epik is known for working with websites connected white supremacy, like the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, after they were dropped from Cloudflare's service. The company said that, despite reports, Epik has not "made a definitive decision about whether to provide DDoS mitigation or Content Delivery services for [8Chan]," according to an Epik spokesperson, via email. For a while, it appeared 8Chan was getting back online intermittently on Monday. Then, another tech company called Voxility, which rents hardware to Epik, discoutinued its service to Epik. This made it impossible for BitMitigate to reach 8chan, and effectively shut down 8chan again. Voxility wrote in response that "We are all in the same team here! Thank you for the support and for the notes. The 3rd party hoster is blocked completely." According to the Epik spokesperson, the question of whether to provide services to these websites is related to freedom of speech. The spokesperson also said the company's stance was that 8Chan was complying with legal requirements. "Freedom of speech and expression are fundamental rights in a free society. We enter into a slippery slope when we start to limit speech that makes us uncomfortable. The censorship we've seen across major social media platforms as of late has created a vacuum. Our services fill the ever growing need for a neutral service provider that will not arbitrarily terminate accounts based on social or political pressure." | null | https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/05/how-websites-like-8chan-get-taken-down.html | 2019-08-05 20:30:00+00:00 | 1,565,051,400 | 1,567,534,835 | politics | fundamental rights |
103,392 | cnn--2019-03-21--US sending diplomats to speak at migration summit | 2019-03-21T00:00:00 | cnn | US sending diplomats to speak at migration summit -- in hardline Hungary | The US State Department is sending two high-level officials to a migration summit this weekend in Hungary -- a country whose controversial far-right ruling party has maintained a hardline anti-migration stance, with one of the strictest policies against immigrants in Europe, and has cracked down on civic organizations, the media and academic institutions. It is notable that none of the US's key European allies -- Germany, France, or the United Kingdom -- are sending any representatives from their foreign ministries. And the decision by the US to take part comes amid concerns over the spreading influence of far-right ultra nationalist parties on the continent. Poland is the only other country besides the US and Hungary with a government official scheduled to speak; they're sending a minister for humanitarian aid programs. Hungary has built a border fence, sent the bill for it to the EU, and made it a crime for citizens to offer help to undocumented immigrants. The State Department officials will speak at the summit just days after Hungary's ruling party was suspended from its EU Parliamentary coalition after refusing to moderate its views. "We cannot compromise on democracy, rule of law, freedom of press, academic freedom or minorities rights. And anti-EU rhetoric is unacceptable. The divergences between EPP and Fidesz must cease," Joseph Daul, the president of that coalition (the European People's Party) said Wednesday. Meanwhile, Balazs Orban, the deputy minister and parliamentary state secretary for the Prime Minister's Office, is touting this Budapest migration summit, which is organized by a Hungarian university, as a way to further their agenda, a place to "gather serious intellectual ammunition." "The migration policy of the Hungarian government, including determined, consistent, forward-looking strategic considerations, makes the country exciting for professionals who are concerned about massive illegal migration worldwide," Balazs Orban told a Hungarian news outlet. A State Department spokesperson said the officials who will attend and speak at the summit -- Andrew Veprek, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, and Pete Marocco, deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations -- "are attending the conference to discuss the U.S. government's policies and approaches to international migration issues, stabilization, and conflict mitigation." The summit will feature speakers from a variety of think tanks, educational institutions and religious organizations, according to its website . Numerous officials from the Hungarian government are also listed as speakers. Among those taking part are several from organizations who say their missions center on the preservation of western values and Christianity. For example one of the partner groups, the Center for Fundamental Rights, which is based in Hungary, notes that it "considers preserving national identity, sovereignty and Christian social traditions as its mission." "It is a well-known aim of the Center to form a counter against today's overgrown human rights-fundamentalism and political correctness that have been affecting numerous aspects of our everyday life," the group's website says. Two speakers are coming from Harvard-- Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of Islam, and George Borjas, an economist who supports restricting immigration. Veprek, one of the State Department officials attending, has previously provoked controversy. As CNN reported exclusively in June 2018, Veprek disputed the idea that leaders have a "duty" to condemn hate speech and incitement, and repeatedly rejected use of the words nationalism, populism, and xenophobia. He sought to strike that language from standard UN documents, saying, "There are millions of Americans who likely would describe themselves as adhering to these concepts. (Maybe even the President.). So are we looking to here condemn our fellow-citizens, those who pay our salaries?". In September 2018 , House Democrats issued a scathing letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, expressing concern about the "Trump Administration's policy of remaining silent in international fora about racism and xenophobia and declining to condemn hate speech and incitement." The letter, signed by the ranking member of the House Foreign Relations Committee and the chairs of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, referenced that June report. Pompeo, who traveled to Budapest in February, defended the US' engagement with Hungary despite concerns about their respect for the rule of law, saying the US would "certainly make the case about the things that we see that we wish were different here." "I think they are welcoming United States engagement," he said at the time. "I'm confident they'll listen." | Michelle Kosinski | http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/PFEujkvQGW4/index.html | 2019-03-21 23:00:22+00:00 | 1,553,223,622 | 1,567,545,400 | politics | fundamental rights |
104,913 | cnn--2019-05-28--Supreme Court agrees to hear cross-border shooting case | 2019-05-28T00:00:00 | cnn | Supreme Court agrees to hear cross-border shooting case | The teenager, 15-year-old Sergio Hernandez, was shot to death by the agent in 2010 as he cowered behind a pillar in Mexico. Hernandez's family says the agent violated his constitutional rights. The case comes as lower courts have split on the issue of whether agents can be held liable for the deaths of migrants at the border, and as the Trump administration is considering more measures to reduce migration. Solicitor General Noel Francisco has maintained that the family of the teen cannot come to court to sue for damages. In court briefs, Francisco argued that "imposing a damages remedy on aliens injured abroad by US government officials would implicate foreign-policy considerations that are committed to the political branches" and would inject the courts into sensitive matters of international diplomacy that would "risk undermining the government's ability to speak with one voice in international affairs." Francisco urged the justices to take up the case next term and affirm a lower court opinion that blocked the family's lawsuit from going forward. Francisco said the Supreme Court should hear the case because lower courts have split on the issue. The decision by the appeals court in the Hernandez case, for example, conflicts with a ruling in the case of another cross-border shooting, which occurred along the Arizona-Mexico border in 2012. In 2010, Hernandez was with friends on a cement culvert that separates El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The international border runs down the middle of the culvert. Hernandez's parents say their son and the others were playing a game: crossing the border, touching a fence and then running back to Mexico soil. They accused Jesus Mesa Jr., the Border Patrol agent, of arriving on the scene and fatally shooting their son. US Border Patrol shooting of Mexican national goes to Supreme Court According to the government, Mesa resorted to force only after Hernandez refused to follow commands to stop throwing rocks. The Justice Department declined to bring a criminal charge against Mesa in 2012. Lawyers for Mexico filed a friend of the court brief with the justices urging them to take up the case, arguing that in "recent years" officers of the US border agencies have killed "dozens of individuals at or near the U.S. Mexico border." "When agents of the United States government violate fundamental rights of Mexican nationals and others within Mexico's jurisdiction, it is a priority to Mexico to see that the United States has provided adequate means to hold the agents accountable and to compensate the victims," they wrote, adding that the US would expect "no less" if the situation were reversed. | Ariane de Vogue | http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/f8KXK2yPipQ/index.html | 2019-05-28 15:15:44+00:00 | 1,559,070,944 | 1,567,540,029 | politics | fundamental rights |
105,046 | cnn--2019-06-01--Illinois Nevada approve legislation expanding access to abortion removing long-standing criminal p | 2019-06-01T00:00:00 | cnn | Illinois, Nevada approve legislation expanding access to abortion, removing long-standing criminal penalties | The Illinois Legislature has sent Senate Bill 25, also called the Reproductive Health Act, to the governor's desk that would protect the "fundamental rights of individuals to make autonomous decisions about one's own reproductive health." The measure passed the Illinois Democratic-led Senate late Friday with a 34-20 vote. Only one Democrat voted against the bill, and Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker has said he will sign the legislation. Under the bill, pregnant women have the "fundamental right" to have an abortion and a "fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights." It repeals the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975, which penalized doctors for performing the procedure, and the state's ban on partial-birth abortions. The bill also provides insurance requirements to cover abortion procedures. Bush said there's a "real possibility" that in the coming years the Supreme Court could overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Her bill, she said, "guarantees that women in Illinois have the right to make decisions about their bodies, regardless of what happens at the federal level." The bill will immediately take effect once the governor signs it into law. "Today was a major step forward for every woman in this state and I look forward continuing my work as an ally by signing the Reproductive Healthcare Act into law," Pritzker wrote in tweet on Tuesday. In Nevada on Friday, Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak signed the "Trust Nevada Women Act," Senate Bill 179, which removes long-standing criminal penalties for abortion and requirements for medical providers. "Nevada has a long history of trusting the women of our state to make their own reproductive health care decisions and protecting the right to reproductive freedom," Sisolak said at the bill signing ceremony. The new law decriminalizes certain actions related to performing abortions, abortion drugs and abortion prosecution. It rewrites existing state abortion laws that require physicians to notify a pregnant woman about the "emotional implications" of an abortion, instead requiring doctors "describe the nature and consequences of the procedure." Physicians in the state would also no longer have to certify in writing a pregnant woman's marital status and age before performing an abortion as previous laws required. "In light of increasing attacks at the federal level and in other states such as Georgia, Alabama, Missouri, and Louisiana, SB179 reaffirms Nevada's commitment to protecting reproductive freedom and access to reproductive health care," Sisolak said Friday. He continued, "I have been disappointed by the recent uptick in efforts in other states to restrict women's right to choose, and I am especially proud today to be a Nevadan, where we protect a woman's right to make her own decisions about her own body." Sisolak also signed Senate Bill 94, which allocates $6 million in funding for statewide family planning grants. | Veronica Stracqualursi | http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/89IWhYTTAjY/index.html | 2019-06-01 16:34:06+00:00 | 1,559,421,246 | 1,567,539,471 | politics | fundamental rights |
108,535 | cnn--2019-12-18--Fact check: Trump's wild letter to Pelosi is filled with false and misleading claims | 2019-12-18T00:00:00 | cnn | Fact check: Trump's wild letter to Pelosi is filled with false and misleading claims | And it was just as dishonest. On Tuesday afternoon, Trump released a six-page letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which -- employing his distinctive vocabulary and punctuation -- he blasted Democrats' push to impeach him, defended his dealings with Ukraine and touted his accomplishments in office. Like much of his previous rhetoric about Ukraine and impeachment, much of the letter was false or misleading. Trump repeated multiple false claims that have been debunked on numerous occasions. He also delivered some new claims that were false, misleading or lacking in context. We're not finished going through all of Trump's claims in his letter, but here are some early fact checks. Trump decried "the so-called whistleblower who started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made." Trump claimed the whistleblower "disappeared" because "they got caught, their report was a fraud." Facts First: There is no evidence the whistleblower has disappeared, let alone that they have vanished because they were shown to be inaccurate. Whistleblowers do not have an obligation to speak publicly after filing their anonymous complaints. Trump wrote, "Ambassador Sondland testified that I told him: 'No quid pro quo. I want nothing. I want nothing. I want President Zelensky to do the right thing, do what he ran on.'" Trump wrote that the rough transcript of his call with Zelensky "was immediately made available." Facts First: The call occurred in July. Trump released the rough transcript in September, after the public learned of the existence of the whistleblower complaint about the call. Trump wrote, "President Zelensky has repeatedly declared that I did nothing wrong, and that there was No Pressure. He further emphasized that it was a 'good phone call,' that 'I don't feel pressure,' and explicitly stressed that 'nobody pushed me.'" Trump wrote, "I said to President Zelensky: 'I would like you to do us a favor, though, because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.' I said do a favor, not , and , not a campaign. I then mentioned the Attorney General of the United States." Trump wrote that Biden "used his office and $1 billion dollars of U.S. aid money to coerce Ukraine into firing the prosecutor who was digging into the company paying his son millions of dollars." Trump wrote, "Biden openly stated: 'I said, "I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars"... I looked at them and said: "I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money." Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.'" Even Joe Biden admitted just days ago in an interview with NPR that it 'looked bad.'" Trump wrote, "Now you are trying to impeach me by falsely accusing me of doing what Joe Biden has admitted he actually did." Trump wrote, "I have been denied the most fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution, including the right to present evidence, to have my own counsel present, to confront accusers, and to call and cross-examine witnesses." Trump wrote, "More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials." Trump wrote of Hillary Clinton: "Your chosen candidate lost the election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227)." Trump said Pelosi has a policy of "open borders." Trump again claimed the cost of the Mueller investigation was "45 million dollars." Trump said that the world now knows that former FBI Director James Comey is "one of the dirtiest cops our Nation has ever seen." Trump boasted of the US "becoming the world's top energy producer." Trump claimed "a completely reformed VA with Choice and Accountability for our great veterans." Trump touted "the building of the Southern Border Wall." Facts First: As of December 6, the date of the latest official update from Customs and Border Protection, no miles of border wall had been constructed where barriers did not previously exist. (Construction had started on some new barriers, the government said.) Trump has argued that the replacement of old barriers with newer barriers should count as the building of his wall; as of December 6, 90 miles of replacement barriers had been erected. | null | http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/5-4wKasQzsQ/index.html | Wed, 18 Dec 2019 01:16:16 GMT | 1,576,649,776 | 1,576,670,935 | politics | fundamental rights |
110,224 | cnsnews--2019-02-13--Rep Omar Promotes Tweet That Israel Is Like the South Before 1963 | 2019-02-13T00:00:00 | cnsnews | Rep. Omar Promotes Tweet That 'Israel Is Like the South Before 1963' | (CNSNews.com) -- House Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who was chastised on Monday by her own Democratic Party leaders for releasing anti-Semitic tweets, in late January promoted a tweet that compared Israel to the segregated U.S. South in 1963 -- before the Civil rights Act of 1964 -- and claimed that "Israel is not a real democracy." "Many of them truly know this, but don't want to accept it," said Omar in endorsing the Jan. 31 tweet from left-wing activist @maxberger. In his initial tweet at 10:22PM on Jan. 31, @maxberger "No More Billionaires 2020" wrote, @IlhanMN is right: Israel is not a real democracy. Israel is like the south before 1963: millions of people under Israeli control are denied the right to vote, speak freely or assemble because of their ethnicity." "It's a democracy for Jews only," said @maxberger. "That's not a real democracy." Congressowoman Omar promoted that tweet to her 558,000 followers on Twitter 16 minutes later, at 10:38 PM on Jan. 31. Above the piece she wrote, "Many of them truly know this, but don't want to accept it. In the same way many Americans knew separate yet equal was immoral but remained silent until brave few were silent no more." "They can attack, spin my words and vilify me," wrote Omar, "but they will not succeed in silencing me!" According to the U.S. State Department, "Israel is a multiparty parliamentary democracy. Although it has no constitution, the parliament, the unicameral 120-member Knesset, has enacted a series of 'Basic Laws' that enumerate fundamental rights. Certain fundamental laws, orders, and regulations legally depend on the existence of a 'state of emergency,' which has been in effect since 1948. "Under the Basic Laws, the Knesset has the power to dissolve the government and mandate elections. The nationwide Knesset elections in 2015, which were considered free and fair, resulted in a coalition government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu." "The law provides citizens the ability to choose their government in free and fair periodic elections held by secret ballot and based on universal and equal suffrage," said the U.S. State Department. "The Basic Laws prohibit the candidacy of any party or individual that denies the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people or the democratic character of the state or that incites racism. Otherwise, political parties operated without restriction or interference." | Michael W. Chapman | https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/rep-omar-promotes-tweet-israel-south-1963 | 2019-02-13 19:43:47+00:00 | 1,550,105,027 | 1,567,548,633 | politics | fundamental rights |
113,082 | cnsnews--2019-06-17--VTs GOP Gov Signs Law Making Abortion a Fundamental Human Right Abortion Up To Birth | 2019-06-17T00:00:00 | cnsnews | VT’s GOP Gov. Signs Law Making Abortion a ‘Fundamental Human Right,’ Abortion Up To Birth | (CNSNews.com) -- Last week, Vermont Governor Phil Scott signed H. 57, a bill affirming abortion as a “fundamental human right,” and which would allow abortion up to the moment of birth. The bill states, “The State of Vermont recognizes the fundamental right of every individual who becomes pregnant to choose to carry a pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to have an abortion.” It also states, “A fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus shall not have independent rights under Vermont law.” Another section of the bill prohibits any “interference with reproductive choice,” stating, “A public entity…shall not, in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information, deny or interfere with an individual’s fundamental rights to choose or refuse contraception or sterilization or to choose to carry a pregnancy to term, to give birth to a child, or to obtain an abortion.” Finally, the bill states that any individual denied an abortion will have the right to sue the person who denied it. “An individual injured as a result of a violation of this chapter shall have a private right of action in Superior Court against a public entity for injunctive relief arising from the violation.” The bill gives no specifications or restrictions on abortion in relation to the pregnancy stage or fetal development. The bill passed the legislature in May and was signed into law on June 10. “We need a Vermont where every Vermonter should feel free to make their personal decisions about their sexual and reproductive health care,” said House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D). “They should be guaranteed unrestricted access to the doctors and the procedures that encompass the full range of that care, including abortion care.” Governor Phil Scott sent out the following press release regarding the bill: “Like many Vermonters, I have consistently supported a woman’s right to choose, which is why today I signed H.57 into law. This legislation affirms what is already allowable in Vermont – protecting reproductive rights and ensuring those decisions remain between a woman and her health care provider.” “This means a healthy, viable baby could be killed at 8 months, thirty days gestation. It means the abortion could be delayed or done in a manner to permit organ harvesting,” Wesley Smith, an opponent of the bill wrote for Life Site News, “It means that a fetus whose brain was sufficiently developed to experience pain could be torn slowly apart in the womb in the most agonizing manner. It would also allow sex-selection abortion and, if it were ever possible to determine, termination to prevent a gay baby from being born.” | Mark Jennings | https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/mark-jennings/vts-gop-gov-signs-law-making-abortion-fundamental-human-right-abortion | 2019-06-17 15:59:35+00:00 | 1,560,801,575 | 1,567,538,995 | politics | fundamental rights |
113,315 | cnsnews--2019-06-26--Pompeo Visits India Amid Spat Over Religious Freedom Violations | 2019-06-26T00:00:00 | cnsnews | Pompeo Visits India Amid Spat Over Religious Freedom Violations | (CNSNews.com) – Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is visiting India Wednesday, just days after his department, in a major annual report, highlighted serious incidents of religious persecution there, including “an increase in attacks against religious minorities and the perceived diminishing space for religious freedom.” In an assessment that raised the ire of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, the State Department report released by Pompeo on Friday pointed to instances of Hindu mob violence against religious minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, in 2018. It cited non-governmental organization (NGO) reports charging that “the government sometimes failed to act on mob attacks on religious minorities, marginalized communities, and critics of the government.” Moreover, “some senior officials” in the BJP “made inflammatory speeches against minority communities,” it said. The report identified as major triggers for mob violence accusations that non-Hindus are killing cows, which Hindus consider sacred, and accusations that Christians and others are converting Hindus, using inducements or coercion to do so. “Mob attacks by violent extremist Hindu groups against minority communities, especially Muslims, continued throughout the year amid rumors that victims had traded or killed cows for beef,” it said. “According to some NGOs, authorities often protected perpetrators from prosecution.” Nine of India’s 29 states have laws that restrict or criminalize religious conversion, and Christians accused of “forced conversions” faced criminal charges in several states. Religious freedom is not the only potential irritant in the relationship between the world’s two biggest democracies, but it is a particularly sensitive issue. “We see no locus standi [legal standing] for a foreign entity/government to pronounce on the state of our citizens’ constitutionally protected rights,” foreign minister spokesman Raveesh Kumar said in response to the report. “India is proud of its secular credentials, its status as the largest democracy and a pluralistic society with a longstanding commitment to tolerance and inclusion,” Kumar said. “The Indian constitution guarantees fundamental rights to all its citizens, including its minority communities. It is widely acknowledged that India is a vibrant democracy where the constitution provides protection of religious freedom, and where democratic governance and rule of law further promote and protect the fundamental rights.” The national spokesperson of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP, Anil Baluni, said the U.S. report “shows clear bias against the Modi government and the BJP.” “The basic presumption in this report that there is some grand design behind anti-minority violence is simply false,” he said. “On the contrary, in most of such cases, these instances are carried out as a result of local disputes and by criminal mindsets.” India has slowly been edging up the Open Doors USA annual watch list of “countries where it is most dangerous to follow Jesus.” In 2012, it was in 32nd place, but by 2016 – two years after Modi’s BJP came to power – it had climbed to number 17. Last year it was in 11th place, and this year India is at number ten. The BJP is closely affiliated to radical Hindu nationalist groups accused of violence against converts from Hinduism to other faiths. Modi’s own record is controversial too. He was chief minister of Gujarat state during the worst episode of interreligious violence in modern Indian history, when more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in 2002. After Muslims attacked a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, Hindus carried out retaliatory attacks against Muslims across the state. Modi was accused of doing nothing to stop the carnage. The State Department subsequently charged that there was “a comprehensive failure on the part of the state government to control the persistent violation of rights of life, liberty, equality, and dignity of the people of the state.” Modi was consequently denied a visa to enter the U.S., a restriction only lifted when he became prime minister in 2014. Other difficult issues in the bilateral relationship include trade tariffs, U.S. visas for Indian nationals, and Indian arms sales from Russia, a longstanding ally. Still, the partnership is an important one, the State Department stressed in a statement on Tuesday. “As vibrant democracies rooted in shared values, with fast-growing economies, cultures of entrepreneurship, and leadership positions on the global stage, the United States and India are natural strategic partners,” it said. “President Trump and Prime Minister Modi are firmly committed to accelerating the upward trajectory of this partnership.” The statement also focused on economic ties, noting that the U.S. is India’s most important trading partner and number one overseas market, while India is the fastest growing major market for U.S. goods. “Two-way bilateral goods and services trade with India totaled $142 billion in 2018, up 12.6 percent, or almost $16 billion, over the prior year,” it said. “The United States exported nearly 50 million barrels of crude to India in 2018, compared to less than 10 million barrels in 2017, and is on pace to export even greater volumes in 2019.” | Patrick Goodenough | https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/pompeo-visits-india-amid-spat-over-religious-freedom-violations | 2019-06-26 08:48:43+00:00 | 1,561,553,323 | 1,567,537,987 | politics | fundamental rights |
113,586 | cnsnews--2019-07-03--The Fourth of July and Reflecting on the Meaning of American Citizenship | 2019-07-03T00:00:00 | cnsnews | The Fourth of July and Reflecting on the Meaning of American Citizenship | The celebration of the Fourth of July invites us to reflect on what it means to be an American citizen. Today, such reflection is especially necessary, because the meaning of American citizenship has been distorted by ideology. As I observe in a new “First Principles” paper for The Heritage Foundation, these distortions can be cured by referring to the thoughts of the American Founders. We live in an age that demands rights and equality. We are accordingly conditioned to think about citizenship in terms of the equal possession of individual rights. There’s truth in that view, but it’s not the whole truth. America was founded upon the teaching of the Declaration of Independence that all human beings equally possess certain fundamental rights—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These natural rights, however, are not the rights of the citizen, which depend instead upon the creation of particular political communities. Nor is the meaning of citizenship to be found in its fullness in sharing in the individual rights protected by the Constitution. For the most part, these rights—to protections in criminal procedure and to freedom of speech and religion, for example—extend even to those who are not citizens of the United States, but who live under its authority. In truth, citizenship is not so much a sharing in individual rights as it is a sharing in communal responsibility. Citizens vote, hold public office, and serve on juries. They, therefore, take a part in governing the community, in exercising power for the sake of the common good. For that reason, we just as appropriately speak of citizenship not only as a right, but a privilege and a responsibility. Thus, in the Federalist 84, Alexander Hamilton referred to “the political privileges of the citizens in the structure and administration of the government.” That’s why a certain jealousy about the privileges of citizenship is warranted, and why some jurisdictions in the United States withhold some privileges of citizenship—such as voting—from those who are too young to exercise them responsibly or who have demonstrated contempt for the good of the community by breaking the law. We also live in an age that venerates diversity and inclusivity. We are often reminded that America’s fundamental principles permit anyone, of any nation or background, to become an American citizen. Here again, that’s true—but not the entire truth. America is founded on the rights doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, which applies to all human beings. Since Americans’ identity as a people rests on respect for these rights, and not on any ancient sharing in “blood and soil,” any person of any background can become an American citizen. To that extent, American citizenship can manifest a kind of diversity that isn’t characteristic of other nations whose identity is based on ethnicity. Nevertheless, the Founders also emphasized the unity that citizenship demands: A unity is respect for, and capacity to uphold, the principles of our political way of life. That’s why Founders as different as Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson both insisted that America should bestow citizenship carefully, looking to the new arrivals’ respect for a rights-based, self-governing way of life and their ability to live out the “temperate love of liberty so essential to real republicanism.” Finally, we often think of citizenship only as participation in America’s political regime. As such, it has been said many times that “America is not just a country, it’s an idea.” There’s truth in that, but we might with equal truth say that “America is not just an idea, it’s a country.” That is, besides being a political regime based on respect for natural rights, and for the political structures and liberties embodied in the Constitution, America is a nation like any other, with concrete interests that it needs to protect and promote. The Founders were mindful of this fact, too, when they wrote the Constitution. The Constitution withholds some of the rights of citizenship for a certain period, to ensure that new citizens are firmly attached only to the interests of the United States—and not to those of any other nation. Thus, the Constitution requires that one must be a citizen for seven years to be elected to the House of Representatives, be a citizen for nine years to be elected to the Senate, and be a natural-born citizen to be president of the United States. These limits on inclusivity were included on the realistic view that America, despite being based on universally applicable political principles, is still a particular nation with concrete interests that differ from the interests of other nations. Therefore, it’s the duty of a good citizen not only to preserve and protect America’s regime, but also to safeguard the nation’s more ordinary interests as well. We learn from the Founders, then, that the meaning of American citizenship is more complex than we today often realize. To be an American citizen is to share in a regime based on equality of natural rights, but it is also an exercise of political authority and therefore a responsibility and a privilege. American citizenship is open to certain kinds of diversity, but it also depends on a certain kind of unity. A good American will be committed to the universal principles on which our republic is based, but will also safeguard and cherish the particular interests and identity of our country. Understanding these complexities is a necessary prerequisite to living out the full meaning of American citizenship and to preserving and passing on to the next generation the nation we have been blessed to inherit. Carson Holloway is a visiting scholar in the B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics of the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation. He is also a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska–Omaha and is the author of "Hamilton versus Jefferson in the Washington Administration." : This piece was originally published by The Daily Signal. | Carson Holloway | https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/carson-holloway/fourth-july-and-reflecting-meaning-american-citizenship | 2019-07-03 20:26:19+00:00 | 1,562,199,979 | 1,567,537,015 | politics | fundamental rights |
132,590 | dailymail--2019-05-23--Michael Avenatti admits that he flew too close to the sun after epic fall from grace | 2019-05-23T00:00:00 | dailymail | Michael Avenatti admits that he 'flew too close to the sun' after epic fall from grace | Michael Avenatti has revealed the details surrounding his New York City arrest two months ago and admits that he 'flew too close to the sun' while representing his former client Stormy Daniels. Avenatti gained notoriety when he represented the ex adult film star from February 2018 to February 2019 in her legal battles with Donald Trump over hush money she received for an alleged affair with the president in 2006. His fall from grace began when he was arrested in November in Los Angeles for domestic violence, though he did not face felony charges. The vocal Trump critic was then arrested in New York's Hudson Yards in March for allegedly attempting to extort millions of dollars from Nike. In a new interview with Vanity Fair, Avenatti explained that he 'never imagined' that the Daniels case 'would take on the magnitude that it did'. 'I have said many, many times over the last year, this is either going to end really, really well, or really, really badly. I am most fearful of the fact that the rate of descent is greater than the rate of ascent. 'Some would argue at this point that I flew too close to the sun. As I sit here today, yes, absolutely, I know I did. No question. Icarus,' he added. Avenatti was arrested in March after federal prosecutors said he threatened to expose that Nike improperly paid high school basketball players unless the company paid him up to $25million. At the time, he was arrested on March 25 while walking in the newly opened Hudson Yards shopping mall. He told Vanity Fair that four FBI agents surrounded him. 'Michael Avenatti?' one agent asked. 'Yes,' he responded. 'FBI. You're under arrest,' they said. The agents then pulled him aside and took his belongings. Avenatti said they even placed a large trench coat around his shoulders so they could handcuff him discreetly. 'I told them I appreciated the fact that I wasn't treated like Roger Stone,' Avenatti told Vanity Fair, 'and that CNN was not outside waiting for me'. Stone was arrested by FBI agents in tactical gear as they raided his Florida home with guns drawn. Stone was charged with lying to Congress and witness tampering. But in Avenatti's case, the FBI agents managed to get him out of the busy mall without being noticed and let him wait in a hidden area while one agent pulled a patrol car around. Once he was booked at the police station, Avenatti told Vanity Fair that he used his one phone call to dial-up his mother. But she already knew what had happened after she tuned into the news and saw US attorney Geoffrey Berman, holding a press conference detailing Nike's allegations against Avenatti. 'You never want to call your mother and tell her that you're in custody,' he told the magazine. 'And you especially don't want to call and tell her you're in custody when she's already seen it all over the news because they've had a f**king press conference.' 'But live by the sword, die by the sword,' Avenatti added. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors charged Avenatti with ripping off Daniels. Avenatti, who helped set the political stage for Daniels' high-profile crusade against Trump, is accused of misappropriating funds belonging to the ex adult film star amounting to nearly $300,000, prosecutors announced. The 48-year-old is accused of forging Daniels' signature which meant two payments of $148,750 were sent to a bank account under his control, which he then used for personal expenditure while lying to his client about the whereabouts of the money. The indictment states that Daniels was owed four large installments in return for her tell-all book deal, which was negotiated and secured by Avenatti on her behalf. Before the literary agent wired the second of four installments as part of the advance, Avenatti allegedly sent a forged letter instructing them to send all future payments to a client trust account, which was in Daniels' name but controlled by him. The literary agent then wired $148,750 to the account, which Avenatti allegedly began spending for his own purposes including on airfare, hotels, car services, restaurants and meal delivery and online shopping - as well as on the payroll for his law firm and another business he owned, the damning charging document states. When Daniels began to question why she had yet received her second installment, Avenatti allegedly claimed to be in the process of obtaining the payment from the publishers. One month later, he allegedly used funds recently received from another source to pay Daniels back in a bid to cover his tracks. The following week, the third installment of of $148,750 allegedly reached his account, which he then began spending on lease payments on his luxury car, airfare, hotels, restaurants and even payments to someone he had a close relationship with. Avenatti then claimed that the book publisher was refusing to make the payment, despite Daniels' desperate demands for her missing funds. He is charged with one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory prison term of two years. On Wednesday, Avenatti told ABC News: 'No monies relating to Daniels were ever misappropriated or mishandled. 'She received millions of dollars worth of legal services and we expended huge sums in expenses. She directly paid only $100.00 for all that she received,' he said. He has denied those allegations. In April, Avenatti was accused of 36 counts of embezzlement, financial and bank fraud and bankruptcy fraud in Los Angeles. He has also denied those allegations. He wrote: 'I expect an indictment to issue from SDNY in the next 48 hrs charging me in connection with my arrest in March,' the Tweet said. 'I intend on fighting these bogus/legally baseless allegations, and will plead not guilty to ALL CHARGES. I look forward to the trial where I can begin to clear my name.' One of the alleged victims is Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, a mentally ill paraplegic who won a $4million settlement from Los Angeles County in 2015 stemming from his jailhouse suicide attempts. Prosecutors said Avenatti hid the settlement from him for years and spent the money himself on his coffee business, Global Baristas US, and a race car team. A grand jury indictment claimed that in 2017, Avenatti received $2.75million in a separate case but hid that from his client too. The next day, he allegedly spent $2.5million of the money on a private plane. In one case, he allegedly lied about already wiring a client $4million, saying he had done it when he had not. Avenatti is also accused of failing to file personal tax returns since 2010 and depositing millions of dollars into his personal bank accounts. He also failed to file returns, it is claimed, for his law firms, Eagan Avenatti and Avenatti & Associates. Not only did not not file his own returns but he allegedly stole $2.4million in taxes from the paychecks of employees of his coffee business. He withheld it from them, claiming they were going to the IRS, but never sent the money, it is claimed. The lawyer, who is free on $300,000 bond, has denied the charges, saying he had made powerful enemies and would plead not guilty and fight the case. 'The right to a presumption of innocence and the right to a jury trial are two fundamental rights that our founding fathers demanded when this country was formed over 200 years ago,' he said in a statement before the April hearing. | null | https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7060961/Michael-Avenatti-admits-flew-close-sun-epic-fall-grace.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=1490 | 2019-05-23 21:36:50+00:00 | 1,558,661,810 | 1,567,540,206 | politics | fundamental rights |
136,735 | dailysignal--2019-12-17--‘Founded on a Creed’: Understanding America’s Unique Beginning | 2019-12-17T00:00:00 | dailysignal | ‘Founded on a Creed’: Understanding America’s Unique Beginning | This is adapted from a talk Mike Gonzalez gave at The Heritage Foundation’s December event, “The Problem of Nationalism.” One of the best enunciations of the theme of the creed that we have is from 1921. Having embarked on his first visit to the United States, G.K. Chesterton, an English writer, wrote that “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.” Other nations don’t have a need for a unifying doctrine because, as he put it, “England is English, France is French, and Ireland is Irish.” Nobody questioned that. He goes on to write that an Englishman never questions that fact that he’s English. What many have rightly remarked on the importance of this statement–it’s quoted all the time–nobody really talks about the timing of it. Actually, 1921, when he wrote this, is an important year for Chesterton to make this observation. Just three years earlier, at the end of World War I, three large cosmopolitan empires that had a large landmass in Europe–I’m talking about the Ottoman Empire, the Hapsburg Empire, and the Russian Empire–break up and out of this collapse emerge a gaggle of nation-states that were more or less expected to be territorial expressions of the leading ethnic group. They were not all one ethnic state, but they each had one main ethnic group. For example, Latvia was supposed to be the nation of the Latvians, Poland the nation of the Poles. In 1921, also, we see finally the end of a very grueling three year War of Irish Independence and for the first time in centuries of English rule, you had the emergence of the Irish Free State. So lots of things are happening in Europe and they’re all understood to be ethnic based. America was different, as Chesterton wrote. It wasn’t just that America was already very ethnically diverse at its founding–not culturally diverse, but ethnically diverse. It was the provenance of the authority of government that mattered, not where the people came from. America was, from the start, the only nation that drew its authority from natural right, as Kim Holmes said, and remains so to this day, arguably. It derives its legitimacy from the idea that people are born with rights, not many. It’s not a whole panoply of rights, but a very fundamental rights. These rights are negative in the sense that you possess them until somebody comes along and takes them again, a king or a dictator or a mob. It could be an electoral mob, as well. These are the rights of free expression, the freedom of conscience, the right to life, the right to property, the right of assembly, not many more than that. As Kim said, they’re universal. Humans, as a result of being human, have these rights. What is unique is that we are based on that, and the Founders discussed this ad infinitum, and they were very proud of the fact that they were unique in this. I think Hamilton puts it best when he wrote, “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country to decide whether societies of man are really capable of establishing good government from reflection and choice and whether therefore are destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” So America was created not by accident or force, but by reflection and choice. Immigrants who came in in the tens of millions in the intervening 240 years … between 1850 and today, we have a hundred million immigrants. They’re expected to develop an emotional attachment to these principles and actually to the parchments in which the principles are codified. This, too, is uniquely American. We have an echo of this in the Mayflower Compact that the Pilgrims signed with the non-dissenters who were on the ship, whom they called the Strangers, and they agreed to a civil bodied politic. This habit of writing principles into documents and then abiding by them stood in stark contrast, for example, to England which does not have a written constitution and definitely to the ethnic birth of nationalism in Europe. But again, as Kim said, it couldn’t be just a creed. It couldn’t just be based on mere practicality. Man is not made that way. A deeper loyalty was commanded, and Madison wrote that the documents required something more instinctive and primitive. They deserved veneration. There’s a need for a culture to emerge that instills this veneration in the creed, and it’s precisely because of the exceptional nature of this culture and this creed that something I write about often, the attacks on America’s culture and creed over the last thirty or forty years is such a threat to our ability to sustain republican government. We can go later on, if you want, in the Q&A on the nature of this attack, whether it’s happenstance and benign or whether it’s part of a purposeful plan by ideologues to replace the tradition of small government that we have with the continental notion that puts man at the behest of a centralized large state. I’ll just close out by saying one of the problems with nationalism is that it can contribute to a large state, as my colleagues Jim Carafano and Jack Spencer will explain, but we don’t want to be misunderstood. I believe that the nation state, although it shouldn’t, as Kim said, it shouldn’t be worshiped per se, but it is a rational way to safeguard our individual rights better than the clan or the empire. It is far better than transnationalism. But that is our understanding, that the government serves the people and not the other way around. Thanks. >>> Read the first article in this series, “The Problem of Nationalism,” by Dr. Kim Holmes. | Mike Gonzalez | https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/12/17/founded-on-a-creed-understanding-americas-unique-beginning/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=founded-on-a-creed-understanding-americas-unique-beginning | Tue, 17 Dec 2019 21:44:23 +0000 | 1,576,637,063 | 1,576,628,360 | politics | fundamental rights |
141,956 | drudgereport--2019-01-17--Investors pressure Bezos to stop selling facial recognition | 2019-01-17T00:00:00 | drudgereport | Investors pressure Bezos to stop selling facial recognition... | Amazon shareholders are upping the pressure on CEO Jeff Bezos to stop selling the company's facial recognition technology to government agencies — unless it can provide assurances it does not pose a human rights risk. A group of five investors, with $1.32 billion of Amazon shares under management, have filed a resolution calling for Amazon to take a step back from sales of its Rekognition software. The resolution is spearheaded by Long Island-based Catholic women's order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, with the support of Open Mic, an organization that helps shareholders campaign to improve governance at some of America's biggest companies. It is the first time an investor proposal has been put forward on Rekognition, and Open Mic thinks it might be the first protest of its kind against facial recognition software at any US company. The activist investors want Amazon's board to investigate the technology and conclude it "does not cause or contribute to actual or potential violations of civil and human rights" before selling it government bodies, including law enforcement. They recommend consulting with civil liberties experts and human rights advocates. Amazon has described Rekognition as a facial recognition tool that can be used for such purposes as "preventing human trafficking" and "inhibiting child exploitation." But the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed in May last year that Amazon had sold Rekognition to government and police agencies for the purpose of public surveillance and to identify "people of interest." The ACLU also found last year that Rekognition incorrectly identified 28 members of Congress as people who had previously been arrested. Read more: Amazon employees are reportedly gearing up to confront CEO Jeff Bezos at an all-staff meeting this week about selling facial recognition software to law enforcement Civil liberties organizations, academics, and Amazon employees have all protested against the technology, with the latest intervention coming just this week when 85 activist groups, such as the ACLU, sent letters to Microsoft, Amazon, and Google demanding they stop selling facial recognition software. Amazon investors have also voiced their concerns previously. In June last year, 19 shareholder groups wrote to Bezos with similar demands to those made on Thursday. One of the co-filers of today's proposal, the Maryknoll Sisters, signed that letter to Bezos in 2018, which can be read in full here. "Sales of Rekognition to government represent considerable risk for the company and investors. That's why it's imperative those sales be halted immediately," said Michael Connor, executive director of Open Mic. He and the five co-filers want investors to vote on the resolution at Amazon's annual shareholder meeting over the summer. Amazon can engage in a dialogue, ask the investors to withdraw the proposal, argue with the SEC that it should not go to a vote, or do nothing. If Amazon submits to the SEC that the vote should not go ahead, investors will fight that claim. As well as the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, the co-filers are: The Sisters of St. Francis Charitable Trust (Dubuque), Sisters Of St Francis Of Philadelphia, Maryknoll Sisters, and Azzad Asset Management. Amazon is yet to respond to Business Insider's request for comment. Whereas, shareholders are concerned Amazon's facial recognition technology ("Rekognition") poses risk to civil and human rights and shareholder value. Civil liberties organizations, academics, and shareholders have demanded Amazon halt sales of Rekognition to government, concerned that our Company is enabling a surveillance system "readily available to violate rights and target communities of color." Four hundred fifty Amazon employees echoed this demand, posing a talent and retention risk. Brian Brackeen, former Chief Executive Officer of facial recognition company Kairos, said, "Any company in this space that willingly hands [facial recognition] software over to a government, be it America or another nation's, is willfully endangering people's lives." In Florida and Oregon, police have piloted Rekognition. Amazon Web Services already provides cloud computing services to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and is reportedly marketing Rekognition to ICE, despite concerns Rekognition could facilitate immigrant surveillance and racial profiling. Rekognition contradicts Amazon's opposition to facilitating surveillance. In 2016, Amazon supported a lawsuit against government "gag orders," stating: "the fear of secret surveillance could limit the adoption and use of cloud services … Users should not be put to a choice between reaping the benefits of technological innovation and maintaining the privacy rights guaranteed by the Constitution." Shareholders have little evidence our Company is effectively restricting the use of Rekognition to protect privacy and civil rights. In July 2018, a reporter asked Amazon executive Teresa Carlson whether Amazon has "drawn any red lines, any standards, guidelines, on what you will and you will not do in terms of defense work." Carlson responded: "We have not drawn any lines there...We are unwaveringly in support of our law enforcement, defense, and intelligence community." In July 2018, lawmakers asked the Government Accountability Office to study whether "commercial entities selling facial recognition adequately audit use of their technology to ensure that use is not unlawful, inconsistent with terms of service, or otherwise raise privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties concerns." Microsoft has called for government regulation of facial recognition technology, saying, "if we move too fast, we may find that people's fundamental rights are being broken." Resolved, shareholders request that the Board of Directors prohibit sales of facial recognition technology to government agencies unless the Board concludes, after an evaluation using independent evidence, that the technology does not cause or contribute to actual or potential violations of civil and human rights. Supporting Statement: Proponents recommend the Board consult with technology and civil liberties experts and civil and human rights advocates to assess: | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/WXK_dBu48N0/amazon-shareholders-submit-resolution-on-halting-rekognition-sales-2019-1 | 2019-01-17 22:25:37+00:00 | 1,547,781,937 | 1,567,552,110 | politics | fundamental rights |
144,690 | drudgereport--2019-03-12--Facial recognitions dirty little secret Millions of online photos scraped without consent | 2019-03-12T00:00:00 | drudgereport | Facial recognition's 'dirty little secret': Millions of online photos scraped without consent... | Facial recognition can log you into your iPhone, track criminals through crowds and identify loyal customers in stores. The technology — which is imperfect but improving rapidly — is based on algorithms that learn how to recognize human faces and the hundreds of ways in which each one is unique. To do this well, the algorithms must be fed hundreds of thousands of images of a diverse array of faces. Increasingly, those photos are coming from the internet, where they’re swept up by the millions without the knowledge of the people who posted them, categorized by age, gender, skin tone and dozens of other metrics, and shared with researchers at universities and companies. As the algorithms get more advanced — meaning they are better able to identify women and people of color, a task they have historically struggled with — legal experts and civil rights advocates are sounding the alarm on researchers’ use of photos of ordinary people. These people’s faces are being used without their consent, in order to power technology that could eventually be used to surveil them. That’s a particular concern for minorities who could be profiled and targeted, the experts and advocates say. “This is the dirty little secret of AI training sets. Researchers often just grab whatever images are available in the wild,” said NYU School of Law professor Jason Schultz. The latest company to enter this territory was IBM, which in January released a collection of nearly a million photos that were scraped from the photo hosting site Flickr and coded to describe the subjects’ appearance. IBM promoted the collection to researchers as a progressive step toward reducing bias in facial recognition. But some of the photographers whose images were included in IBM’s dataset were surprised and disconcerted when NBC News told them that their photographs had been annotated with details including facial geometry and skin tone and may be used to develop facial recognition algorithms. (NBC News obtained IBM’s dataset from a source after the company declined to share it, saying it could be used only by academic or corporate research groups.) “None of the people I photographed had any idea their images were being used in this way,” said Greg Peverill-Conti, a Boston-based public relations executive who has more than 700 photos in IBM’s collection, known as a “training dataset.” “It seems a little sketchy that IBM can use these pictures without saying anything to anybody,” he said. John Smith, who oversees AI research at IBM, said that the company was committed to “protecting the privacy of individuals” and “will work with anyone who requests a URL to be removed from the dataset.” Despite IBM’s assurances that Flickr users can opt out of the database, NBC News discovered that it’s almost impossible to get photos removed. IBM requires photographers to email links to photos they want removed, but the company has not publicly shared the list of Flickr users and photos included in the dataset, so there is no easy way of finding out whose photos are included. IBM did not respond to questions about this process. To see if your Flickr photos are part of the dataset, enter your username in a tool NBC News created based on the IBM dataset: IBM says that its dataset is designed to help academic researchers make facial recognition technology fairer. The company is not alone in using publicly available photos on the internet in this way. Dozens of other research organizations have collected photos for training facial recognition systems, and many of the larger, more recent collections have been scraped from the web. Some experts and activists argue that this is not just an infringement on the privacy of the millions of people whose images have been swept up — it also raises broader concerns about the improvement of facial recognition technology, and the fear that it will be used by law enforcement agencies to disproportionately target minorities. “People gave their consent to sharing their photos in a different internet ecosystem,” said Meredith Whittaker, co-director of the AI Now Institute, which studies the social implications of artificial intelligence. “Now they are being unwillingly or unknowingly cast in the training of systems that could potentially be used in oppressive ways against their communities.” In the early days of building facial recognition tools, researchers paid people to come to their labs, sign consent forms and have their photo taken in different poses and lighting conditions. Because this was expensive and time consuming, early datasets were limited to a few hundred subjects. With the rise of the web during the 2000s, researchers suddenly had access to millions of photos of people. “They would go into a search engine, type in the name of a famous person and download all of the images,” said P. Jonathon Phillips, who collects datasets for measuring the performance of face recognition algorithms for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “At the start these tended to be famous people, celebrities, actors and sports people.” As social media and user-generated content took over, photos of regular people were increasingly available. Researchers treated this as a free-for-all, scraping faces from YouTube videos, Facebook, Google Images, Wikipedia and mugshot databases. Academics often appeal to the noncommercial nature of their work to bypass questions of copyright. Flickr became an appealing resource for facial recognition researchers because many users published their images under “Creative Commons” licenses, which means that others can reuse their pictures without paying license fees. Some of these licenses allow commercial use. To build its Diversity in Faces dataset, IBM says it drew upon a collection of 100 million images published with Creative Commons licenses that Flickr’s owner, Yahoo, released as a batch for researchers to download in 2014. IBM narrowed that dataset down to about 1 million photos of faces that have each been annotated, using automated coding and human estimates, with almost 200 values for details such as measurements of facial features, pose, skin tone and estimated age and gender, according to the dataset obtained by NBC News. It’s a single case study in a sea of datasets scraped from the web. According to Google Scholar, hundreds of academic papers have been written on the back of these huge collections of photos — which have names like MegaFace, CelebFaces and Faces in the Wild — contributing to major leaps in the accuracy of facial recognition and analysis tools. It was difficult to find academics who would speak on the record about the origins of their training datasets; many have advanced their research using collections of images scraped from the web without explicit licensing or informed consent. The researchers who built those datasets did not respond to requests for comment. IBM released its collection of annotated images to other researchers so that it can be used to develop “fairer” facial recognition systems. That means systems can more accurately identify people of all races, ages and genders. “For the facial recognition systems to perform as desired, and the outcomes to become increasingly accurate, training data must be diverse and offer a breadth of coverage,” said IBM’s John Smith, in a blog post announcing the release of the data. The dataset does not link the photos of people’s faces to their names, which means any system trained to use the photos would not be able to identify named individuals. But civil liberty advocates and tech ethics researchers have still questioned the motives of IBM, which has a history of selling surveillance tools that have been criticized for infringing on civil liberties. For example, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the company sold technology to the New York City police department that allowed it to search CCTV feeds for people with particular skin tones or hair color. IBM has also released an “intelligent video analytics” product that uses body camera surveillance to detect people by “ethnicity” tags, such as Asian, black or white. IBM said in an email that the systems are “not inherently discriminatory,” but added: “We believe that both the developers of these systems and the organizations deploying them have a responsibility to work actively to mitigate bias. It’s the only way to ensure that AI systems will earn the trust of their users and the public. IBM fully accepts this responsibility and would not participate in work involving racial profiling.” Today, the company sells a system called IBM Watson Visual Recognition, which IBM says can estimate the age and gender of people depicted in images and, with the right training data, can be used by clients to identify specific people from photos or videos. NBC News asked IBM what training data IBM Watson used for its commercial facial recognition abilities, pointing to a company blog post that stated that Watson is “transparent about who trains our AI systems, what data was used to train those systems.” The company responded that it uses data “acquired from various sources” to train its AI models but does not disclose this data publicly to “protect our insights and intellectual property.” IBM said both in public statements and directly to NBC News that the Diversity in Faces dataset is purely for academic research and won’t be used to improve the company’s commercial facial recognition tools. This seems to conflict with the company’s assertion in January in promotional materials that the release of the dataset is a direct response to research by MIT’s Joy Buolamwini that showed that IBM’s commercial facial recognition technology was much worse at accurately identifying darker-skinned women than lighter-skinned men. When asked about this conflict, and particularly about how the Diversity in Faces dataset might have a real-world impact on reducing bias if IBM is not using it in commercial facial recognition products, Smith said in an email that the “scientific learnings on facial diversity will advance our understanding and allow us to create more fair and accurate systems in practice.” “We recognize that societal bias is not necessarily something we can fully tackle with science, but our aim is to address mathematical and algorithmic bias,” Smith said. Experts note that the distinction between the research wings and commercial operations of corporations such as IBM and Facebook is a blurry one. Ultimately, IBM owns any intellectual property developed by its research unit. Even when algorithms are developed by academic researchers using noncommercial datasets, those algorithms are often later used by businesses, said Brian Brackeen, CEO of the facial recognition company Kairos. As an analogy, he said, “think of it as the money laundering of facial recognition. You are laundering the IP and privacy rights out of the faces.” IBM said it would not use the Diversity in Faces dataset in this way. An Austrian photographer and entrepreneur, Georg Holzer, uploaded his photos to Flickr to remember great moments with his family and friends, and he used Creative Commons licenses to allow nonprofits and artists to use his photos for free. He did not expect more than 700 of his images to be swept up to study facial recognition technology. “I know about the harm such a technology can cause,” he said over Skype, after NBC News told him his photos were in IBM’s dataset. “Of course, you can never forget about the good uses of image recognition such as finding family pictures faster, but it can also be used to restrict fundamental rights and privacy. I can never approve or accept the widespread use of such a technology.” Holzer was concerned that a company like IBM — even its research division — had used photos he published under a noncommercial license. “Since I assume that IBM is not a charitable organization and at the end of the day wants to make money with this technology, this is clearly a commercial use,” he said. Dolan Halbrook, who is based in Portland, Oregon, and has 452 photos in the dataset, agreed that IBM should have asked his permission. “I'm annoyed at them being used without prior notification and a chance to review which ones would be included,” Halbrook said. “I'm ambivalent about improving the technology itself.” Other photographers were glad to hear that their images may be used to advance the field of facial recognition. “Facial recognition is one of those things we can’t uninvent, so having a reliable system is better than one that generates errors and false identifications,” said Neil Moralee, a food consultant and photographer based in the U.K. who specializes in portraits. Guillaume Boppe from Switzerland agreed. “If the pictures of faces I shot are helping AI to improve, reducing false detection and ultimately improving global safety, I’m fine with it,” he said. Sebastian Gambolati, from Argentina, was happy to contribute to more accurate technology for finding missing people or tracking criminals, but he said it would have been “nice if they asked.” “In my Flickr account there are a lot of photos I took from people in events that aren’t close to me,” he said, “and I don't know what they think about the company using their photos without their consent.” IBM does offer an opt-out model of sorts: People can contact IBM with individual links to photographs they want removed from the dataset — either ones they have taken or ones they are featured in — and IBM says it will remove them, according to its privacy notice.“ However, there’s no easy way to know if you are featured in the dataset, and even if you find out that you are, IBM said it will not remove photos on the basis of your Flickr user ID unless you also have links to each of the photographs. When NBC News alerted one photographer, who asked not to be named for privacy reasons, that more than 1,000 of his photos were included in IBM’s dataset, he tried to opt out by sending IBM his Flickr user ID. IBM told him that none of his photos were in the dataset, according to an email viewed by NBC News. When NBC News shared specific links to some of his photos in IBM’s dataset, the company blamed an “indexing bug” for its initial inability to confirm that his images were included.After more than a week, IBM confirmed it had removed the four photos he had provided links to. According to NBC News’ analysis, he still has 1,001 photos in the dataset. Smith, of IBM, said in a statement that all URL removal requests had been completed. Even once an image is removed from the IBM dataset, it won’t be removed from the versions of the dataset already shared with research partners (about 250 organizations have requested access so far), IBM said. Nor will it be removed from the underlying Flickr dataset. For those caught up in IBM’s dataset or others like it, this makes the notion of opting out seem hopeless. There may, however, be legal recourse in some jurisdictions thanks to the rise of privacy laws acknowledging the unique value of photos of people’s faces. Under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, photos are considered “sensitive personal information” if they are used to confirm an individual’s identity. Residents of Europe who don’t want their data included can ask IBM to delete it. If IBM doesn’t comply, they can complain to their country’s data protection authority, which, if the particular photos fall under the definition of “sensitive personal information,” can levy fines against companies that violate the law. In the U.S., some states have laws that could be relevant. Under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, for example, it can be a violation to capture, store and share biometric information without a person’s written consent. According to the act, biometric information includes fingerprints, iris scans and face geometry. "This is the type of mass collection and use of biometric data that can be easily abused, and appears to be taking place without the knowledge of those in the photos,” said Jay Edelson, a Chicago-based class-action lawyer currently suing Facebook for its use of facial recognition tools. So far neither of these laws has been rigorously tested. IBM declined to comment on the laws. Aside from the privacy issues, a bigger question remains: Are more accurate facial recognition systems actually “fairer”? And is it possible for facial recognition to be fair at all? “You’ve really got a rock-and-a-hard-place situation happening here,” said Woody Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University. “Facial recognition can be incredibly harmful when it’s inaccurate and incredibly oppressive the more accurate it gets.” While there are benign uses for facial recognition, it can also be used to surveil and target people of color and other vulnerable and minority communities. Facial recognition databases of mugshots are more likely to include African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants, since those groups are targeted by biased policing practices, civil rights groups say. This means that those people are far more “findable” by facial recognition technology, even if they were wrongly arrested when their mugshot was taken. The use of facial recognition surveillance systems by law enforcement is so controversial that a coalition of more than 85 racial justice and civil rights groups have called for tech companies to refuse to sell the technology to governments. These groups argue that the technology exacerbates “historical and existing bias” that harms communities that are already “over-policed and over-surveilled.” “These systems are being deployed in oppressive contexts, often by law enforcement,” said Whittaker, of the AI Now Institute, “and the goal of making them better able to surveil anyone is one we should look at very skeptically.” | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/eG0yi4jbeMM/facial-recognition-s-dirty-little-secret-millions-online-photos-scraped-n981921 | 2019-03-12 14:46:39+00:00 | 1,552,416,399 | 1,567,546,648 | politics | fundamental rights |
146,588 | drudgereport--2019-04-11--HOW ECUADOR LOST PATIENCE | 2019-04-11T00:00:00 | drudgereport | HOW ECUADOR LOST PATIENCE... | When Julian Assange, disguised as a motorcycle courier, first walked up the steps of Ecuador’s small embassy behind Harrods in central London and asked for asylum, few people – including, surely, Assange himself – could have imagined it would be almost seven years before he next exited the front door. It was mid-June 2012, and as Britain expectantly awaited the opening of the Olympics just over a month later, the WikiLeaks publisher had exhausted every legal avenue in his attempts to avoid extradition to Sweden, where two women had made allegations of rape and sexual assault during a visit by Assange to Stockholm in 2010. Assange, who had been briefly imprisoned and then on bail for more than a year, argued that Swedish prosecutors should interview him in London. But as well as resisting extradition to Sweden, he also feared being handed over to the US for potential prosecution over the so-called Cablegate documents (published in the Guardian and elsewhere) and other releases. The WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning was already in custody on espionage charges (she would be sentenced to 35 years in prison, later commuted by President Obama. Manning was reimprisoned last month). Ecuador offered Assange almost his last option to avoid extradition, his last appeal having failed at the supreme court. The country’s then president, the leftwinger Rafael Correa, was sympathetic and Assange was granted asylum two months later. It was never a very comfortable arrangement at the poky embassy, however. An office was repurposed as a bedroom and workspace, but he was forced, initially at least, to sleep on a mattress on the floor, sharing a bathroom and with access only to a tiny basic kitchen. With the Swedes determined to extradite him, however, and a US grand jury hearing into WikiLeaks already under way, the Australian resolved to stay put. High-profile visitors came and went – Vivienne Westwood, Lady Gaga and the footballer Eric Cantona among them – and a small group of supporters maintained a periodic vigil outside. But still Assange remained. Much has happened in the time he has been inside the embassy. WikiLeaks has continued to publish, exposing details of US tactics in trade negotiations, of the country’s surveillance of other governments, and of CIA hacking methods, among other revelations. A WikiLeaks staff member accompanied the whistleblower Edward Snowden to Moscow after he leaked classified NSA documents about US surveillance programmes to newspapers including the Guardian. Assange has been the subject of a biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch, which flopped, and a documentary, which premiered at Cannes. He even acquired a cat. More significantly for the Australian’s legal position, after years of torturous wrangling, his Swedish problem appeared to go away, thanks simply to the passage of time. An investigation into one of the Swedish women’s accusations, of sexual assault, was discontinued in 2015 after the statute of limitations expired, and in 2017, Sweden’s chief prosecutor said she was dropping her investigation into the outstanding allegation of rape after concluding there was no practical way of continuing. She gave herself the option of reopening the case if he later “made himself available”. But even the apparent resolution of that seven-year legal standoff did not persuade Assange to leave the embassy, despite reports that the Obama administration had concluded it would not be able to prosecute him without pursuing the newspapers that had published WikiLeaks releases, including the New York Times and potentially the Guardian. And, now that he has been removed from the embassy, the outstanding allegation of rape could be raised again if prosecutors decide to reopen the case. Elisabeth Massi Fritz, who represents his unnamed accuser, on Thursday told the Associated Press that “we are going to do everything” to have the case reopened “so Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape”. Assange’s Ecuadorian stay may have spanned two UK general elections (and two major referendums), but successive British governments have remained resolute, insisting that he would be subject to arrest if he left for alleged breaches of his bail conditions when he first sought asylum. A finding by a UN panel in 2016 that Assange’s continued confinement in the embassy amounted to “arbitrary detention” was dismissed by the UK Foreign Office, which maintained that his presence there was voluntary. Two significant things changed, however – both of them presidential elections. Donald Trump was initially a great fan of Assange, praising WikiLeaks repeatedly during the 2016 presidential campaign after emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and his rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign were published by the website. But other US Republicans have remained hostile, and following Trump’s election to the presidency, his administration has vowed to attempt to prosecute Assange. In February 2017 the then attorney general Jeff Sessions said arresting Assange was a priority, while a mistake in a document filed last November suggested criminal charges had been secretly filed against him. Trump and Sessions’s successor, William Barr, now have the yet-to-be-published report by special counsel Robert Mueller into Trump’s links to Russia, including allegations that the DNC releases published by WikiLeaks were obtained by Russian hackers. But aside from events in the US, Assange has also had an increasing Ecuadorian problem. WikiLeaks’s DNC publications in 2016 prompted Ecuador’s discomfort at its sometimes troublesome houseguest to flare into irritation, and it temporarily cut off the Australian’s internet access saying he was using it to interfere in the US election. The relationship between Assange and his hosts deteriorated further after Lenín Moreno was elected to the Ecuadorian presidency in 2017. Moreno had described Assange as a “stone in the shoe”, but said before his election that he could remain in the embassy if he agreed to abide by certain conditions. In January 2018 it emerged that the country had made Assange an Ecuadorian citizen in a bid to resolve the impasse (its request to have him recognised as a diplomat was dismissed by the UK). But the Ecuador-Assange relationship remained strained, and last year the country cut off his internet access again, saying he had breached an agreement not to interfere with other states. Assange had tweeted in support of the Catalan independence movement, causing a rift between Quito and Madrid, and challenged the UK’s accusation that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of a Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Moreno later ordered the removal of an additional multimillion-pound security operation set up by his predecessor to protect Assange. In July last year the president said that Assange would ultimately have to leave the embassy, and by October the Australian was suing his hosts, saying their conditions for his stay violated his “fundamental rights and freedoms”. On Wednesday, WikiLeaks held a press conference to say it had uncovered a surveillance operation against him in the embassy, leading to private legal and medical information being offered for sale in what it said was an extortion attempt. On Thursday morning, finally, Ecuador’s patience had “reached its limit”, Moreno said in a statement justifying his decision to revoke Assange’s asylum status. He is now, once again, in British custody. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/pbdlnlwLA2Q/how-ecuador-lost-patience-with-houseguest-julian-assange | 2019-04-11 22:49:36+00:00 | 1,555,037,376 | 1,567,543,238 | politics | fundamental rights |
147,302 | drudgereport--2019-04-24--Candidates confront letting notorious felons vote | 2019-04-24T00:00:00 | drudgereport | Candidates confront letting notorious felons vote... | FILE - In this April 15, 2019 photo, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., takes part in a Fox News town-hall style event in Bethlehem, Pa. Democratic presidential contenders are facing a new debate over whether criminals in prison -- even notorious ones like the Boston Marathon bomber -- should be able to win back their right to vote. Sanders says they should, calling voting “inherent to our democracy _ yes, even for terrible people.” Many of his 2020 Democratic presidential rivals aren’t so sure, and at least one opposes it outright. Sanders himself acknowledged that he was essentially writing an attack ad for Republicans to use against him through his support for the issue. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) Democratic presidential contenders are facing a new debate over whether criminals in prison, even notorious ones like the Boston Marathon bomber, should be able to win back their right to vote. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says that they should and that voting is “inherent to our democracy — yes, even for terrible people.” Many of his rivals for the 2020 nomination aren’t as sure, and at least one opposes the idea outright. Sanders himself acknowledged that he was essentially writing an attack ad for Republicans to use against him through his support for the issue. The question illustrates how Sanders continues to stand to the left of the other candidates as he endorses giving all prisoners, including those convicted of heinous crimes, the right to vote. Prodded by criminal justice activists, Democrats have largely embraced the politically safer cause of winning back access to the ballot box for felons who have served their time. “Sen. Sanders is taking it one step farther than most campaigns have,” said Mark Mauer of The Sentencing Project, a group that advocates letting prisoners vote. “Even if you’re sitting in a maximum-security prison, you retain most of the fundamental rights of a U.S. citizen.” Only two states now allow prisoners to vote — Maine and Vermont, Sanders’ home state. But debate over the issues has begun percolating in a handful of other states, backed by advocates who see it as a civil rights issue. Asked Monday during a CNN town hall whether he supported allowing sex offenders or terrorists such as marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to vote, Sanders did not hesitate. “The right to vote is inherent to our democracy — yes, even for terrible people,” Sanders said. “Once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Oh, that person did that, not going to let that person vote.’ You’re running down a slippery slope.” Sanders reiterated his support for the voting rights of prisoners on Wednesday, tweeting: “More than 30 countries around the world today such as Canada, South Africa and Finland allow prisoners to vote. This is not a radical idea.” At Monday’s town hall, California Sen. Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, stressed that she backed restoring voting rights to released convicts. Of those in prison, she said, “I think we should have that conversation.” Harris hedged further on Tuesday. “There has to be serious consequences for the most extreme types of crimes,” she told reporters at a campaign stop. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she supports a constitutional right to vote but is “not there yet” on prisoners voting. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, opposes giving prisoners access to the ballot box. “Part of the punishment when you’re convicted of a crime and you’re incarcerated is you lose certain rights,” he said during the town hall. On Wednesday, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro both said they backed letting nonviolent felons cast ballots behind bars, but they drew the line at violent prisoners. “For violent criminals, it’s much harder for me to reach that conclusion,” O’Rourke told reporters. “I feel like, at that point, you have broken a bond and a compact with your fellow Americans. There has to be a consequence in civil life for that as well.” Republicans were quick to criticize Democrats for even contemplating the idea. The Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, tweeted that Democrats were trying to “out-Bernie” each other. “Now they’re refusing to rule out letting terrorists to vote from prison,” she said. The movement to restore voting rights to convicted felons has had some success in recent years. Activists won their biggest victory in November when Florida voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure reversing the state’s lifetime voting ban for most convicted felons who have completed their sentences. Advocates of a criminal justice overhaul have been able to chip away at restrictions through state legislatures in conservative states such as Kentucky and Alabama. Chiraag Bains, a Justice Department official in the Obama administration who now works at the liberal think tank Demos, said restoring prisoners’ right to vote is the logical next step in a movement that is trying to reverse laws enacted shortly after slaves won the right to vote. Within 15 years of the end of the Civil War, nearly one-third of the states passed laws barring felons and prisoners from voting, and some were explicit about trying to limit the new political power of African Americans, Bains said. Restoring the right to vote “is long overdue,” Bains said, noting the bipartisan support for measures loosening restrictions on released felons voting across the South. “I think the public is a lot smarter about criminal justice reform and voting rights” than they’re given credit for. But beyond Maine and Vermont, no state has gone so far as to loosen restrictions on those serving time behind bars. The Sentencing Project estimates about 1.3 million citizens cannot vote because they are in prison or jail. Even liberal states such as California bar felons on parole or in prison from voting. Last year, the activist group Initiate Justice tried to gather signatures for a ballot measure in California allowing all felons to vote, but it didn’t have enough money to fund a campaign. Now it’s trying to persuade the state’s Democratic-controlled Legislature to put a measure on the 2020 ballot — but it would restore voting rights only to parolees, not those in prison. The group’s founder, Taina Vargas-Edmond, isn’t sure the slimmed-down version will get through the California Legislature. “It has been something of a struggle,” she said. “It’s part of this whole tough-on-crime justice system that we’re all wedded to.” Vargas-Edmond said it may be an easier political sale to win rights back for parolees, but she believes there’s no need to bar those serving time, either. “I doubt there’s a single person who ever said, ‘Well, let me not commit this crime because I’ll lose my right to vote,’” she said. The issue has begun bubbling up in Democratic-run legislatures with increasing frequency, a sign that prisoner voting rights are becoming a legitimate issue, activists say. “We’re in a democratizing moment,” Bains said. But that doesn’t mean Democrats are united on the issue. Even in solidly Democratic Hawaii, a measure to let prisoners vote didn’t make it out of the Legislature this year. In New Mexico, a bill to restore some felons’ voting rights made incremental progress but only after a provision to let prisoners vote was removed. The amended bill still died in the Democratic-controlled Legislature. Although he’s a strong advocate of voting rights for those released from prison, state Sen. Bill O’Neill of New Mexico only signed on as a sponsor after the prison-voting clause was removed. “That’s too far for me,” O’Neill said. “Practically, I’m just having a really hard time seeing that being implemented, and as a Democrat, I’m already concerned with the attack ads being printed up.” Associated Press writers Hunter Woodall in Keene, N.H., and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/MqtD6f2AuIo/66cc1a8de27e460096b8147aec0a2dcb | 2019-04-24 20:52:37+00:00 | 1,556,153,557 | 1,567,541,958 | politics | fundamental rights |
151,830 | drudgereport--2019-10-04--SHOWDOWN Supreme Court takes up major Louisiana abortion case | 2019-10-04T00:00:00 | drudgereport | SHOWDOWN: Supreme Court takes up major Louisiana abortion case... | The case will test the willingness of the court to uphold Republican-backed abortion restrictions being pursued in numerous conservative states WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to take up a major abortion case that could lead to new curbs on access to the procedure as it considers the legality of a Republican-backed Louisiana law that imposes restrictions on abortion doctors. The justices will hear an appeal by abortion provider Hope Medical Group for Women, which sued to try to block the law, of a lower court ruling upholding the measure. The Shreveport-based Hope Medical Group said implementation of the law would prompt the closure of two of the state's three abortion clinics. The court will also hear a separate appeal by the state arguing that the abortion clinic lacks the legal standing to sue. The law includes a requirement that doctors who perform abortions have a difficult-to-obtain arrangement called "admitting privileges" at a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the abortion clinic. The court begins its new nine-month term on Monday. A ruling in the case is due by the end of June. The Louisiana law was passed in 2014 but courts have prevented it from taking effect. The Supreme Court struck down a similar Texas requirement in 2016 when conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy joined the four liberal justices to defend abortion rights, but Kennedy retired in 2018 and Republican President Donald Trump replaced him with conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, as the court has moved further to the right. The case will test the willingness of the court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority that includes two Trump appointees, to uphold Republican-backed abortion restrictions being pursued in numerous conservative states. Anti-abortion activists are hoping the court will scale back or even overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. Trump vowed during the 2016 presidential campaign to appoint justices who would overturn that landmark ruling. "I'm hoping the Supreme Court will see this law for exactly what it is: an unconstitutional burden on our fundamental rights," said Kathaleen Pittman, who runs the Hope clinic. "We are counting on the court to follow its precedent, otherwise clinics will needlessly close and there will be just one doctor left in the entire state to provide abortion care," added Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the clinics. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican, said in a statement the law is needed because of what he called poor medical standards at abortion clinics. "Incompetent and unsafe providers should not be allowed to challenge health and safety standards designed to protect women from those very providers," Landry added. 'THE BEST INTEREST OF WOMEN' "Abortion activists are more than willing to lower the bar on women's health in order to expand abortion, but stricter clinic regulations are in the best interest of women," said Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, which opposes abortion. Abortion rights advocates have argued that restrictions such as requiring admitting privileges for doctors are meant to limit access to abortion, not protect women's health. The Supreme Court will review a September 2018 ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the Louisiana law. The court in February on a 5-4 vote prevented the law from going into effect while litigation over its legality continued. The justices on Friday took no action on another abortion-related case concerning the state of Indiana's effort to revive an abortion-related law requiring women to have an ultrasound 18 hours before having an abortion. Abortion rights advocates have argued that such an ultrasound is medically unnecessary and intended to dissuade a women from having an abortion. Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court's four liberals in the majority when it blocked the law from going into effect. A federal district judge struck down Louisiana's law in January 2016, saying it created an impermissible undue burden on a woman's constitutional right to an abortion under existing Supreme Court precedent. The appeals court revived the law, saying there was no evidence any clinics in Louisiana would close as a result of the "admitting privileges" requirement. The high court legalized abortion nationwide in 1973 and reaffirmed it in 1992 in a ruling that disallowed abortion laws that placed an "undue burden" on a woman's ability to obtain an abortion. "An undue burden exists, and therefore a provision of law is invalid, if its purpose or effect is to place substantial obstacles in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability," the court wrote in the 1992 ruling. Since Kavanaugh joined the court last October, it has sent mixed signals on abortion. The court in June declined to hear a bid by Alabama to revive a Republican-enacted law that would have effectively banned abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In May, it refused to consider reinstating Indiana's ban on abortions performed because of fetal disability or the sex or race of the fetus while upholding the state's requirement that fetal remains be buried or cremated after an abortion. Various conservative states in 2019 have enacted new laws that ban abortion at an early stage of pregnancy. None of those laws has taken effect. [For a graphic on state abortion laws, see https://tmsnrt.rs/2WZuiVP ] | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/YLVNp5RmIwc/20191004130957-rxkag | 2019-10-04 21:19:37+00:00 | 1,570,238,377 | 1,570,633,687 | politics | fundamental rights |
154,313 | drudgereport--2019-11-19--BEIJING BEGINS HONG KONG ROUNDUP | 2019-11-19T00:00:00 | drudgereport | BEIJING BEGINS HONG KONG ROUNDUP | An injured youth sits under a space blanket at a casualty evacuation point near Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2019. About 100 anti-government protesters remained holed up at a Hong Kong university Tuesday as a police siege of the campus entered its third day. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) An injured youth sits under a space blanket at a casualty evacuation point near Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2019. About 100 anti-government protesters remained holed up at a Hong Kong university Tuesday as a police siege of the campus entered its third day. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) HONG KONG (AP) — About 100 anti-government protesters remained holed up at a Hong Kong university Tuesday, unsure what to do next as food supplies dwindled and a police siege of the campus entered its third day. Police played a waiting game after 10 days of some of the most intense protests the city has seen in more than five months of often violent unrest. The government has stood firm, rejecting most of the protesters’ demands, even as they shut down major roads and trains during rush hour every day last week, turned several university campuses into fortresses and blocked a major road tunnel, which remained shut Tuesday. In Beijing, the National People’s Congress criticized the high court in Hong Kong for striking down a ban on wearing face masks at the protests. China has taken a tough line on the protests and said that restoring order is the city’s highest priority. Protesters have left all the universities except Hong Kong Polytechnic, where several hundred barricaded themselves in and fought back police barrages of tear gas and water cannons with gasoline bombs, some launched from rooftop by catapult, and bows and arrows. Those still at Polytechnic are the last holdouts. Surrounded, they now face arrest. Several groups have tried to escape, including one that slid down hoses from an overpass to waiting motorcycles, but it didn’t appear that many evaded arrest. About 600 had left by Tuesday morning, city leader Carrie Lam said, leaving an estimated 100 still inside. They milled about in small groups. They still had boxes of homemade gasoline bombs, but the mood was grim in the trash-strewn plazas, in contrast to the excitement as they prepared to take on police just a few days earlier. One protester said he had no plan and was waiting for someone to come to help. Another said he wants to leave safely but without being charged. They would not give their full names out of fear of arrest. “We will use whatever means to continue to persuade and arrange for these remaining protesters to leave the campus as soon as possible so that this whole operation could end in a peaceful manner,” Lam told reporters after a weekly meeting with advisers. Even as the latest bout of violence winds down, a fundamental divide suggests the protests are far from over. City leaders say the violence must stop before meaningful dialogue can begin. The protesters say they need to keep escalating the violence to get the government to accept their demands. The protests took off in June over a proposed extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial. Activists saw the legislation as part of a continuing erosion of rights and freedoms that Hong Kong was promised when Britain returned its former colony to China in 1997. Lam withdrew the bill after a few months, but protesters now want an independent investigation into police suppression of the demonstrations and fully democratic elections, among other demands. About 200 of the 600 people who have left Polytechnic were under 18 years old. The city agreed not to arrest them immediately, but Lam said they could face charges later. Family members and teachers arrived sporadically Tuesday to pick up a few remaining protesters under 18, hugging their children before walking back to a police checkpoint, where officers recorded names and other information before letting them go. An ambulance team was allowed in to treat injured protesters, wrapping them in emergency blankets to keep them warm. Some left with the team, but others stayed, saying they didn’t want to be arrested. Other parents, holding a news conference, said their children dare not surrender because the government has labelled them as rioters even though some had just gotten trapped by the police siege. They wore masks and refused to give their names, a sign of the fear that has developed in what has become a highly polarized city. China hinted it might overrule the Hong Kons high court ruling that struck down a ban on face masks that was aimed at preventing protesters from hiding their identity and evading arrest. A statement from the National People’s Congress’ Legislative Affairs Commission said the decision doesn’t conform with territory’s constitution, known as the Basic Law, or decisions by the Congress. “We are currently studying opinions and suggestions raised by some NPC deputies,” the statement said. Monday’s ruling said the ban infringes on fundamental rights more than is reasonably necessary. The ban has been widely disregarded. The Japanese government said one of its citizens had been arrested near the Polytechnic campus. Japanese media identified him as Hikaru Ida, a student at Tokyo University of Agriculture. Officials did not say why he was arrested. Hong Kong also got a new police chief, Chris Tang, who said his priorities would include rebutting accusations against police that he called “fake news” and reassuring the public about the force’s mission. “We have to maintain the law and order in Hong Kong and there is a massive scale of breaking of law in Hong Kong and there is a certain sector of the community that also condones those illegal activities,” he told journalists. Tang replaces a retiring chief and was approved by Beijing after being nominated by Lam’s government. Lam, asked whether she would seek help from Chinese troops based in Hong Kong, said her government remains confident it is able to cope with the situation. Associated Press journalists Alice Fung and Dake Kang contributed to this report. | null | http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DrudgeReportFeed/~3/58urY3RaWIs/a709b8e3599d4696aaa53f3d2023dcb6 | Tue, 19 Nov 2019 12:16:37 GMT | 1,574,183,797 | 1,574,165,910 | politics | fundamental rights |
172,787 | eveningstandard--2019-04-23--Change UK candidates for European Elections 2019 Who is standing for pro-remain party | 2019-04-23T00:00:00 | eveningstandard | Change UK candidates for European Elections 2019: Who is standing for pro-remain party? | Change UK, the pro-Remain party set up by The Independent Group of MPs, has revealed its candidates for the European elections at a launch in Bristol. Among them are journalists, barristers and former Labour and Conservative MPs. These are some of the most prominent candidates who will run for a seat in the European Parliament in May: The award-winning journalist and TV presenter was the BBC’s former chief correspondent for North America, BBC Newsnight presenter and has written five novels and two non-fiction books. After a career spanning more than 40 years in journalism, Mr Elser, 66, will stand for the London region, saying at the Change UK candidate launch: “I have never been a member of a political party but I am now.” The Scottish journalist has been outspoken about a public vote for any deal between the UK and the European Union. After he was revealed as a candidate, Mr Elser said: “Our political system is a joke. They are laughing at us, not with us.” The sister of prominent Brexiteer Boris Johnson also announced that she will run as a candidate for the pro-Remain party. The campaigning journalist and writer told the Evening Standard she will stand in the South West region for Change UK, saying she did not want to see Brexit “rubbing out my children’s prospects and changes of living and travelling and working in Europe”. The 53-year-old was set to be the big surprise when Change UK unveiled their nationwide list of candidates at the launch in Bristol. Ms Johnson has previously supported the Liberal Democrats and her candidacy for Change UK will be a blow to the party. She previously campaigned in elections for her siblings, former foreign secretary Boris, Tory MP Jo and her father Stanley, a former MEP. A leading EU and human rights barrister at Matrix Chambers, Jessica Simor will also stand as a Change UK candidate in May. Ms Simor was one of the lawyers who secured a parliamentary vote on Article 50, challenging Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to use the Royal Prerogative to notify the EU of the UK’s intended withdrawal from the EU. She has represented clients like Google, the Post Office, National Express as well as NGOs and government departments. Ms Simor has previously written for the Guardian about “the fundamental rights and freedoms that the EU treaty guarantees us” and sent a Freedom of Information request to the prime minister to disclose legal advice on Brexit to the British public. The 67-year-old served as the Tory health minister in John Major’s government and has been announced as the West Midlands candidate. He was first elected to parliament in 1979 as MP for Loughborough and promoted to government eight years later as an assistant whip by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Mr Dorrell stood down as an MP in 2014 after taking a job with consultancy KMPG, and has since campaigned hard against Brexit. He is a committee member of the Tories Against Brexit campaign and became chair of the European Movement UK in 2016 in order to lead its campaign to stop Brexit. Former Labour MP for Wimbledon, Roger Casale joined The Independent Group this year and will run as a Change UK candidate for East of England. Elected to parliament as one of the surprise results during the Labour landslide of the 1997 general election, the 58-year-old then lost his seat in 2005 to the Conservatives. He resigned from Labour in 2017 in order to contest the Vauxhall constituency held by pro-Brexit MP Kate Hoey. A Tory MP for Stroud from 2010 to 2017, Niel Carmichael is now president of the Conservatives for a People’s Vote campaign. The 58-year-old is an avid supporter of a second referendum on the UK's membership of the EU with the option to remain. Mr Carmichael announced in April that he was leaving the Conservative Party to join The Independent Group and will run as another candidate in the East of England. During his time in office, he was one of the most active participants in parliamentary debates, publicly opposed grammar schools and successfully piloted his bill through Parliament for the UK to fulfil its international environmental obligations in the Antarctic. | Rebecca Speare-Cole | https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/change-uk-candidates-for-european-elections-2019-who-is-standing-for-proremain-party-a4124081.html | 2019-04-23 13:16:41+00:00 | 1,556,039,801 | 1,567,542,004 | politics | fundamental rights |
195,855 | foreignpolicy--2019-02-21--India Has a Lesson for Trump National Emergencies Are a Disaster for Democracy | 2019-02-21T00:00:00 | foreignpolicy | India Has a Lesson for Trump: National Emergencies Are a Disaster for Democracy | India Has a Lesson for Trump: National Emergencies Are a Disaster for Democracy After declaring a national emergency on Feb. 15, U.S. President Donald Trump said: “I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.” He was referring to the speed with which he could now initiate special powers to access the funds needed to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Clearly, expediency shaped the president’s decision—and will shape the legal challenges to it, too. Despite Trump’s self-serving reasons for declaring a national emergency, such executive actions are hardly unusual in the United States. Since 1976, when the National Emergencies Act was passed, this legal instrument has been used on numerous occasions to block properties owned by those contributing to conflicts in Libya and Somalia, support the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, prevent financial deals between U.S. entities and Iran, and take action when democracy was deemed to be undermined in Belarus and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The main difference, of course, between the past and the present is the brazenness with which Trump has circumvented congressional authority on just about every legislative turn since he came into office in 2016. A national emergency can be a dangerous tool—as India discovered during the Emergency period, from 1975 to 1977. India’s Emergency was far more unprecedented than Trump’s—and far more threatening to democracy. But it shows how much damage such powers can do in the wrong hands. India has declared a state of emergency only three times. The other two were both military crises, but the Emergency itself was a result of what the government, then led by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, considered a threat to its security because of “internal disturbances.” A combination of factors led to the declaration, including rising food prices and economic distress, street protests organized by leaders of a fast-growing opposition who accused Gandhi and her supporters of widespread corruption, the government’s forceful treatment of 400,000 striking railway workers, and an impending court ruling on the 1971 elections. In declaring an emergency under Article 352 of the Indian Constitution, Gandhi blamed the “hidden hand” of the CIA in stoking internal unrest. But whatever she said in public, one of her main purposes was to avoid a court order—which accused her of electoral malpractice in the 1971 elections—so that she could remain in power. The use of such powers to get around a legal threat hasn’t yet happened in the United States, but with Trump facing multiple possible accusations and regularly attacking his own intelligence agencies, it doesn’t seem out of the range of possibilities. There are, of course, stark differences between India in the 1970s and the recent declaration in the United States. The Indian Emergency Proclamation Order immediately suspended fundamental rights, censored the press, and allowed the state to make mass arrests under the cover of a legal order that was passed to maintain internal security in 1971, months before a war between India and Pakistan broke out. More than 900 such arrests were made in the first 24 hours of the Emergency. Twenty-six political organizations were banned. According to Amnesty International, by the end of the Emergency period, more than 100,000 Indians had been incarcerated. None of this is the case in the United States, where, despite Trump’s repeated threats against the media, the press remains unmuzzled. With these caveats in mind, India’s 21-month Emergency comes with some possible lessons for Americans. First, the Emergency called into question the foundation of the social contract between the citizen and the state, as well as that between the government and the opposition. Simply put, the awesome powers held and used by the state once and for all snapped the legitimacy accrued by it in the ballot box. Union workers, thousands of whom were put behind bars, rapidly appreciated the need to link themselves to political parties with the hope of deriving protection in times of crisis. In the post-Emergency period, barefaced attempts by successive governments to silence the press were justified (at least to themselves) by using the Emergency as an example or a threshold below which state-inspired coercion became acceptable. “It’s not as bad as the Emergency” became the rationale to justify the heavy hand of the state—even when used for nakedly political purposes. But the Emergency also led to the awakening of a political consciousness in India that coalesced in the formation of an opposition to the Indian National Congress. This grouping of disparate actors with varying political associations finally defeated Gandhi in the 1977 elections, soon after her Emergency powers were rescinded. Many of these actors were released from prison only a few weeks before the elections, and their experiences made clear the need for an alternative in India. Some 2,400 candidates fought the election campaign in 1977. Out of 542 seats, 292 were won by the new Janata party. This was the first non-Congress government in independent India. Its eventual collapse in 1980, as a result of sharp ideological and personal differences notwithstanding, made it clear that India could be governed by a party or a group of parties apart from the Congress. As a result of the Congress’s attempts to mute difference and opposition during the Emergency, a center-right verve in Indian politics quickly electrified a constituency that proved to be decisive in the late 1990s. This is when the Bharatiya Janata Party, also in power currently, led an alliance and formed the government. In short, the Emergency served to catalyze the political right—and to end the dominance of the old order. That emergencies have a life of their own became clear within the first few months after Gandhi chose to shut down democracy. Congress leaders, both at the center in New Delhi and in the states, used the time to consolidate their political base, with little or no requirement to adhere to the rule of law. Gandhi’s son, Sanjay Gandhi, experimented with a brutal population control scheme, carrying out forced sterilization campaigns in parts of northern India with opaque judicial and legal mandates. Attempts to consolidate power and run ad hoc public health campaigns were led, as archival documents underline, without the full authority of the prime minister. Gandhi’s “cabal,” as the British Foreign Office argued, “grew out of the need for secrecy.” Soon after, its members began to keep secrets from Gandhi. In sum, while absolutism was engineered by Gandhi, the leader of the nation, it allowed her and several others within her coterie to exercise a form of despotism that temporarily turned parts of India into an Orwellian state. The Indian Emergency bears little direct parallels to the situation in the United States as yet. But it underlines why, in democratic systems of government, emergency powers, once unleashed, can and potentially will acquire a life of their own. Relying on emergency powers, if done often enough, not only potentially corrodes institutions but can consolidate power in the other end of the political spectrum. The shape such opposition could take in the United States is unclear, but its effects ought not to be disregarded. As India’s Emergency shows, periods of absolutism aren’t blips in democratic history but have long-lasting effects that are not always immediately obvious. | Rudra Chaudhuri | https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/21/india-has-a-lesson-for-trump-national-emergencies-are-a-disaster-for-democracy/ | 2019-02-21 19:00:24+00:00 | 1,550,793,624 | 1,567,547,821 | politics | fundamental rights |
211,322 | foxnews--2019-06-01--Abortion seekers welcome in California governor says as pro-life measures gain elsewhere in US | 2019-06-01T00:00:00 | foxnews | Abortion seekers welcome in California, governor says, as pro-life measures gain elsewhere in US | Gov. Gavin Newsom has a message for women who want an abortion but live in states that have enacted strict pro-life measures: Come to California. Newsom released a proclamation Friday touting his state’s easy access to abortion, including the use of state funds for ending pregnancies under subsidized health insurance plans for disadvantaged people while U.S. law bans states from using federal money for the same purpose. RUSH LIMBAUGH UNLOADS ON DISNEY, SAYS IT'S HYPOCRITICAL ABOUT GEORGIA ABORTION LAW “California will continue to uphold women’s equality and liberty by protecting their reproductive freedom, educating Californians about their rights to reproductive freedom, welcoming women to California to fully exercise their reproductive rights, and acting as a model for other states that want to ensure full reproductive freedom for women,” Newsom said, according to the Fresno Bee. The move came after a number of states -- including Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Mississippi and Georgia -- passed pro-life measures that either severely restrict or ban abortion after six weeks. The Alabama abortion law particularly prompted an outcry from pro-choice activists because it bans the procedure in nearly all cases, even in the event of rape. Newsom also joined his fellow Democratic governors in Oregon and Washington and sent a letter urging other states to ramp up abortion protections and access to contraceptives and sex education. MISSOURI'S LAST ABORTION CLINIC ALLOWED TO STAY OPEN, FOR NOW, IS RIFE WITH 'TROUBLING' VIOLATIONS, STATE SAYS “We’ve been battling an escalating attack on the freedom of women and families to determine their futures,” the governors write, according to the newspaper. “Newly enacted and clearly unconstitutional laws in a handful of states compel our states to act now to reaffirm longstanding commitments to safeguard the fundamental rights of women.” The California governor has jumped on the issue as a part of his political campaign for reelection in 2022. According to the Fresno Bee, Newsom slammed the states with new abortion laws in a video paid for by his re-election campaign and in another announcement urged movie production companies to move to California. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Multiple film production companies and movie stars have since announced they won’t film in states that have passed pro-life measures. | Lukas Mikelionis | http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/politics/~3/70gf0o0CkB4/california-newsom-encourages-women-abortion | 2019-06-01 10:09:22+00:00 | 1,559,398,162 | 1,567,539,477 | politics | fundamental rights |
211,875 | foxnews--2019-07-02--Gun rights groups sue California over firearms sales ban to those under 21 | 2019-07-02T00:00:00 | foxnews | Gun rights groups sue California over firearms sales ban to those under 21 | Second Amendment right groups sued the state of California Monday over the new law banning the sale of firearms to people under the age of 21. The groups, the Calguns Foundation and Firearms Policy Coalition, argued in a lawsuit filed in San Diego on behalf of individual gun owners that those 18 and over are adults and have a right to purchase a firearm. “Once individuals turn eighteen, they are adults in the eyes of the law,” said John W. Dillon, the Carlsbad attorney representing the groups, the Los Angeles Times reported. “Law-abiding adults are entitled to fully exercise all of their fundamental rights, including their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for all lawful purposes, not just hunting or sport.” The lawsuit stems from a new law that was introduced by State Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-LA., last year following the Parkland high school shooting where the 19-year-old gunman took the lives of 17 people. But the lawsuit argues that any adult who isn’t a convicted felon or mentally ill should be allowed to use the Second Amendment. “The Second Amendment is not a second-class right and adults over the age of eighteen but under twenty-one are not second-class people,” said Brandon Combs, president of the Firearms Policy Coalition, according to the Times. CALIFORNIA SEES SURGE IN AMMO SALES AHEAD OF NEW GUN REGULATIONS The legal challenge was also filed the same day another divisive gun law came into effect which mandates background checks for everyone buying ammunition in the state to ensure the person isn’t convicted felon. The gun rights groups say the state is unprepared to roll out such law and told the newspaper that the system has problems “worse than even we anticipated.” “The process takes about a half hour per customer instead of the promised 2 minutes,” said Chuck Michel, whose office filed a legal challenge this year in a bid to overturn the law. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP “We are collecting and will be presenting these facts, and the related constitutional issues, to the court and asking for an injunction to block this useless infringement of law abiding gun owners’ rights,” said Michel. | Lukas Mikelionis | http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/politics/~3/AZRDp6xPvcg/gun-rights-sue-california-firearms-sales-ban-under-21 | 2019-07-02 08:21:41+00:00 | 1,562,070,101 | 1,567,537,261 | politics | fundamental rights |
214,369 | france24--2019-02-06--US vowed to withdraw half its troops from Afghanistan says Taliban | 2019-02-06T00:00:00 | france24 | US ‘vowed’ to withdraw half its troops from Afghanistan, says Taliban | Yuri Kadobnov, AFP | Taliban spokesman Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai attends the opening of the two-day talks of the Taliban and Afghan opposition representatives in Moscow on February 5, 2019. A senior Taliban official told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday that the US had vowed to withdraw half of its troops from Afghanistan by April. The US however has issued no details of a potential troop pull-out from the war-ravaged country Speaking to reporters in the Russian capital a week after the Taliban held separate talks with US officials in Qatar, the Taliban’s deputy chief negotiator Abdul Salam Hanafi said the US had agreed to withdraw half their troops from Afghanistan by the end of April. "The Americans agreed to withdraw half of their troops immediately. The withdrawal will start from February 1 and continue until end of April," Hanafi told reporters in Moscow. But the US special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who led the US side at the talks in Doha, Qatar, has repeatedly stressed that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. 'Everything' must include an intra-Afghan dialogue and comprehensive ceasefire". The US has issued no details on any potential withdrawal plan. The Afghan government was not represented at both the talks in Doha and Moscow, sparking fears among many Afghans that a hasty pullout of US troops would once again plunge the war-ravaged country into a brutal civil war. The absence of Afghan government representatives at the talks have underscored the Taliban's hostility toward Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s increasingly marginalised administration in Kabul. The Taliban has instead sat down at the table in Moscow with Ghani’s main rivals, including Afghan politicians and warlords-turned-politicians who were once sworn enemies of the hardline Sunni Islamist group. The second day of peace talks in Moscow began hours after US President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address to stress the importance of accelerated talks with the Taliban to end the longest of America's "endless wars". Trump offered no specifics about when he would bring home the 14,000 US troops in Afghanistan but said progress in negotiations with the Taliban would enable a troop reduction and a "focus on counter-terrorism". Asked about Trump's speech, a Taliban official in Moscow told Reuters that all foreign troops in Afghanistan must leave. "At the first step, we want all the foreign forces to leave and end the military presence in our country," said Sohail Shahin, a spokesman for a Taliban office in Qatar. "But after ending their military presence, their non-military teams can come and we need them too, they can come and take part in the reconstruction and development process," he added. Taliban slams ‘indecency’ in ‘the name of women’s rights’ Taliban officials have used the extraordinary exposure at the Moscow talks to detail their vision of Afghanistan after a US troop withdrawal. Lead Taliban negotiator Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai told reporters that the movement did not want to rule alone but as part of "an intra Afghan Islamic system of governance ... in consultation with all Afghans". He also reiterated the Taliban's opposition to Afghanistan's constitution, calling it "illegitimate" and maintaining that it should be based on "Islamic principles, national interests, historic pride and social justice". Stanikzai further demanded the removal of Western sanctions and travel bans on Taliban members, prisoner releases, an end to "propaganda" against the Taliban and clearance to open an official office. On the critical issue of women's rights, Stanikzai said the Taliban were committed to all rights of women "that have been given to them by the sacred religion of Islam". In a statement released Tuesday, the Taliban stated that, "Islam has given women all fundamental rights, such as business and ownership, inheritance, education, work, choosing one's husband, security and the right to good life." But the lengthy statement also warned that, “Under the name of women [sic] rights, there has been work for immorality, indecency and circulation of non-Islamic cultures. Dissemination of western and non-Afghan and non-Islamic drama serials, paving way for immoral crimes, and encouraging women for violating Afghan customs are other instances that have been imposed on Afghan society under the name of women rights.” In a bid to assuage fears of a US cave-in to the Taliban, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with Ghani in Kabul late Tuesday. Ghani's call to Pompeo seemed an attempt to re-assert his government's role in negotiations he has sharply criticised as one-sided. Robert Palladino, deputy spokesman at the State Department, said Pompeo reaffirmed the US commitment to achieving a lasting peace. Pompeo also emphasised the importance of an intra-Afghan dialogue and the inclusion of the Afghan government in peace talks with the Taliban, according to Palladino. Ghani tweeted that Pompeo "stressed that our military partnership is unwavering and will remain until a lasting and inclusive peace is achieved". Ghani said that Pompeo also "underscored the central importance of ensuring the centrality of the Afghan government in the peace process" and signaled support for holding Afghan presidential elections in July. "We both agreed that words, rumors, and speculations cannot replace actions and that our partnership and resolve will remain strong in the pursuit of peace," Ghani tweeted. | Leela JACINTO | https://www.france24.com/en/20190206-afghanistan-taliban-moscow-talks-us-troop-withdrawal | 2019-02-06 13:38:57+00:00 | 1,549,478,337 | 1,567,549,493 | politics | fundamental rights |
214,468 | france24--2019-02-13--Cameroons opposition leader Kamto charged with rebellion | 2019-02-13T00:00:00 | france24 | Cameroon's opposition leader Kamto charged with 'rebellion' | MARCO LONGARI / AFP | Maurice Kamto, leader of the Cameroonian opposition party Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) is greeted as he arrives on stage in Yaounde to address a campaign rally for the Presidential elections, on September 30, 2018. Cameroon's main opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, has been charged by a military court with rebellion, insurrection and "hostility to the homeland," one of his lawyers said Wednesday. Kamto, who says he was cheated out of the presidency in last October's elections, could theoretically face the death penalty. He was arrested in the economic capital Douala on January 28 after his party, the Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC), staged protests in several cities against the election result. The former government minister was charged at a late-night session of a military court in the capital Yaounde and then transferred to a local prison, according to attorney Emmanuel Simh. Simh, who is also MRC vice president, said the court charged 28 Kamto supporters with the same offences. Under Cameroon's legal code, all could face the death penalty although the country has not carried out an execution in more than 30 years. President Paul Biya, in power for more than three decades, secured a seventh consecutive term last October after winning 71 percent of the vote, according to official results. But the poll was marred by low turnout and violence, particularly in the country's troubled English-speaking regions, and the opposition says the result was rigged. Kamto came a distant second with 14 percent of the vote, according to the official outcome. He maintains he was the rightful winner and the official figures were an "electoral holdup." About 100 other MRC supporters are to appear on Wednesday before the military court, which will decide whether to charge them. The anti-Biya marches, held in several towns and cities on January 26, were suppressed by the police. At least six protesters were injured. The European Union this month accused Cameroon of "disproportionate use of force" in dispersing the demonstrators. "Finding a solution to the challenges faced by the country can only be achieved through dialogue in a calm and inclusive atmosphere where fundamental rights and the rule of law are respected," it said. The MRC cancelled other planned protests after Kamto's arrest in a bid to restore calm. Kamto's lawyers have branded his custody illegal. They say he and other detainees at a special police detention unit in Yaounde were prevented from receiving visitors or getting help from their attorneys. The MRC says around 200 people arrested during the protests are still being held in the capital. The authorities have said 147 people are in pre-trial detention. Some of them, including MRC treasurer Alain Fogue, have gone on hunger strike, according to the party. Kamto's ex-campaign director Paul-Eric Kingue and rapper Valsero are also detained with him. Biya has ruled Cameroon since 1982 with support from the army, state administration and the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (RDPC) that he created in 1985. Kamto, a 64-year-old lawyer by training, is considered the main opposition to Biya, who turned 86 on Wednesday. "It's been a long time since Cameroon had an opponent of this stature," analyst Hans de Marie Heungoup at the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank told AFP. "At the start of his career, some called him spineless, but now he really is a relentless political leader." French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said the government was "worried" by the charges against Kamto. The Cameroonian opposition "must be able to express itself freely as long as it respects the law," she said in an online news conference. Human rights groups last month condemned Kamto's arrest and called for his immediate release. Amnesty International said the wave of detentions "signals an escalating crackdown on opposition leaders, human rights defenders and activists." "Instead of taking steps towards improving the country's human rights record, we are witnessing the authorities becoming less and less tolerant of criticism. This must stop," said Samira Daoud, its director for West and Central Africa. | NEWS WIRES | https://www.france24.com/en/20190213-cameroon-opposition-leader-kamto-rebellion-biya | 2019-02-13 14:26:19+00:00 | 1,550,085,979 | 1,567,548,710 | politics | fundamental rights |
216,933 | france24--2019-09-16--Tens of thousands of General Motors workers strike across US | 2019-09-16T00:00:00 | france24 | Tens of thousands of General Motors workers strike across US | The United Auto Workers (UAW) union began a nationwide strike against General Motors on Monday, with some 46,000 members walking off the job after contract talks hit an impasse. The move to strike, which the Wall Street Journal described as the first major stoppage at GM in more than a decade, came after the manufacturer's four-year contract with workers expired without an agreement on a replacement. Local union leaders met in Detroit "and opted to strike at midnight on Sunday," the UAW said on its Twitter account. "This is our last resort," Terry Dittes, the union's lead negotiator with GM, told a news conference after the meeting. "We are standing up for the fundamental rights of working people in this country." UAW officials said the two sides remained far apart in the contract negotiations, with disagreements on wages, health care benefits, the status of temporary workers and job security. "Our members have spoken; we have taken action; and this is a decision we did not make lightly," Ted Krumm, chair of the UAW's national bargaining committee, said in a statement. "We are standing up for what is right," Krumm said. Hours before the strike began, US President Donald Trump tweeted: "Here we go again with General Motors and the United Auto Workers. Get together and make a deal!" GM's last major strike, according to the Journal, was in 2007 when 73,000 workers at more than 89 facilities walked off the job for two days. In a statement, GM said it was "disappointing" that the UAW's leadership had decided to call the strike, saying it had presented a "strong offer" in contract negotiations. "We have negotiated in good faith and with a sense of urgency. Our goal remains to build a strong future for our employees and our business," it said. UAW's leadership had previously won overwhelming approval from its rank-and-file for a strike if it became necessary. Workers at Ford and Fiat Chrysler agreed to extend their contracts, but GM management was informed Saturday that the union would not extend its contract. Earlier on Sunday, contract maintenance workers walked off the job at GM plants in Michigan and Ohio in a parallel dispute with contractor Aramark. GM has enjoyed several years of strong sales, posting $11.8 billion in operating profits last year, prompting union officials to argue it is time to share the wealth with workers who have borne the brunt of downturns. But the outlook for GM is less clear, with concerns growing that a recession may be in the offing amid protracted trade tensions. GM announced last November it was effectively shuttering five plants in North America, including facilities in Michigan and Ohio that were "unallocated" for production. Protecting jobs and saving those plants have been key issues in the negotiations. In its response to the strike, GM's management revealed that its offer included a promise of $7 billion in investments that would save or protect 5,400 union jobs and address the issue of the two "unallocated" plants. It also promised that a new all-electric truck would be built in a US plant. Adding to the friction is a federal corruption probe of the union leadership, which resulted in an FBI search last month of the home of UAW President Gary Jones. A member of the UAW's executive board, Vance Pearson, was arrested on Thursday on charges of conspiracy to use union dues for lavish personal expenses. Pearson, a UAW director in St. Louis, Missouri, was accused of using union conferences as a cover to justify long-term stays at luxury resorts in California. | NEWS WIRES | https://www.france24.com/en/20190916-tens-thousands-general-motors-workers-strike-uaw | 2019-09-16 05:26:28+00:00 | 1,568,625,988 | 1,569,330,249 | politics | fundamental rights |
219,287 | freedombunker--2019-01-24--The Covington Debacle Shows the Founders Were Right to Distrust Democracy | 2019-01-24T00:00:00 | freedombunker | The Covington Debacle Shows the Founders Were Right to Distrust Democracy | In the shallow world of modernity, we throw around a word like “democracy” as a stand-in for “things that I like.” Many in popular culture and elite institutions promote democracy as a cure for all that ails us—an unquestioned and unqualified blessing. Still others turn on a dime and hope for its demise as soon as it produces outcomes they don’t like. While democracy often plays a good and necessary role in a self-governing society, we have lost the healthy skepticism of its worst excesses that the Founding Fathers understood when they established the governing institutions of the United States. These excesses were on full display over the weekend. The frenzied hate mob unleashed on Catholic, “Make America Great Again” hat-wearing teens—falsely accused of harassing a Native American at the March for Life over the weekend—is a shameful reminder of how fake news can destroy lives and perpetuate evil. Particularly disturbing is how so many people—celebrities, politicians, and even some respected leaders who should have been warier of grabbing their pitchforks before the facts had been unveiled—fell in with the scramble to condemn the students as hateful racists. Many of these voices called for violence and other heinous actions against the children from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky. There could be no quarter, no forgiveness, no mercy. The mob needed its pound of flesh. Celebrities and so-called thought leaders spun out articles and social media posts comparing the Covington Catholic students to segregationists and Ku Klux Klansman, condemning the Catholic Church for a “shameful history of Native American abuses,” and even angrily claiming that smirks and smiles are actually racist. Even the students’ local diocese quickly rushed into the fray to condemn the students, in effect giving cover to the media outlets seeking to ruin the students’ lives and reputations. The story was just too good to fact check, too easy to force into a cherished narrative: that white, male Christians are unleashing violence, bigotry, and harassment on minorities all over America. The problem is, the entire narrative was based on a wild distortion of what occurred. The vicious and often unhinged diatribes we saw launched against the Covington Catholic students laid bare an irrational rage burning beneath the rule of law. The truth is, fake news was every bit as much a problem in the late 1700s, when our country was formed, as it is today. It is no stretch to think that left unchecked, the mob—especially the rage-fueled left—would have unjustly stripped these students of their basic freedoms and abandoned the notion of a presumption of innocence in a rush to judgment. This is the same pattern we saw transpire in the confirmation battle over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. So, is the problem our reckless and agenda-driven media? Yes, in part. Media coverage of this incident was dreadful and shameful—a confirmation for many that even America’s most established and influential media institutions have become hopelessly biased and reckless in the age of Trump. But the problem goes deeper than that. The truth is, fake news was every bit as much a problem in the late 1700s, when our country was formed, as it is today. The use of the printing press allowed knowledge to travel like wildfire but also gave hucksters and falsehood peddlers a new tool for spreading their wares more effectively. True, our news today travels much faster, and social media can spread hysteria like a virus. But there’s also an upside. Public intellectuals and members of the media continually decry the decentralized nature of the internet and its ability to generate “fake news” and misleading stories. They long for the day when America had just a few big outlets acting as responsible news arbiters. Some even suggest that the answer is to create government agencies to sort through this information and tell us what the truth is, such as what Europe is experimenting with. This is a terrible way to address the issue. Their own journalistic malpractice is the heart of the problem. It was legacy media outlets in the first place—like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN—that perpetuated the deceptive reporting we witnessed over the weekend and failed to follow basic journalistic practices, such as inquiring about both sides of a heated dispute. News outlets point to foreign agents and anonymous Twitter accounts that promoted a slanted view of the controversy, but they are just using them as scapegoats. Their own journalistic malpractice is the heart of the problem. This wouldn’t be the first time these outlets got a story massively wrong and deceived the American people, but now we at least have greater means to debunk falsehoods when they arise. It was the skeptics who took the time to study the story from all angles, like Robby Soave at Reason, who blew the story up. Soave reviewed footage from the hours of amateur video taken of the incident. While legacy media outlets were still peddling the initial, deceptive narrative, it was collapsing with a simple review of easily obtainable evidence that refuted it. As my colleague, Kelsey Harkness, noted on “Fox & Friends”: “Just imagine if there were no hourlong, or two-hourlong videos that could exonerate these high school boys. Their lives could be ruined.” If anything, we need to learn a valuable lesson from this incident. We should today heed the wisdom of John Adams, who wrote to his friend John Taylor about the excesses of democracy. This lesson is especially important now as it’s clear that many—especially on the left—have deep and unrelenting contempt for their fellow citizens who disagree with them. He explained that while democracy is no worse than “monarchy or aristocracy,” it is often bloodier than either and “wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.” Pure democracies devour themselves, Adams wrote, as citizens turn against citizens. “It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.” The failures of democracy are the result of the fallen nature of man—a condition that cannot be cured and cannot be changed. This is why the framers of the Constitution formed our federal republic with a complex web of checks on power. The framers designed our system to slow down decision-making. Democracy had its place—most specifically in the frequent elections of the House of Representatives—but it was removed from decisions dealing with fundamental rights, such as free speech and the right to bear arms enshrined in the First and Second Amendments. This is the balance the Founders sought to preserve our freedom, and in many cases, save us from ourselves. The framers designed our system to slow down decision-making—especially at the highest, federal level—to frustrate the ambition of the leaders who represent us, to throw water on the temporary, to excite passions of the people, which may lead the country to folly or tyranny. These concepts may be lost on progressives and those on the left who believe in the evolution or perfectibility of man (which seems untenable given that they see a potential fascist in everyone who disagrees with them). But the Founders likely wouldn’t have been surprised by the noxious media frenzy that set out to destroy a few high school students in the name of social justice. The Founders well understood the threat of fake news. They wisely assessed that despite the threat, the government could not be a trusted arbiter of what is real and fake—so they created the First Amendment. Then, knowing that this judgment of truth and falsehood could be left only to the people in a free society, they put guardrails on the people themselves so that they could not use this power to tyrannize their fellow citizens on a whim. This is the genius of America. This is why we have the world’s oldest republic. The Founders may not have known us, but they knew history, and they themselves. They knew that unrestrained democracy would lead to a destruction of all freedom, the annihilation of God-given individual rights that governments of all types had trampled throughout human history. In an age in which contempt for fellow citizens is reaching pathological levels, we can be thankful that these institutions exist to protect us. Yet given the retreat of constitutional government over the past century, we have less cause for certainty that they will continue to save us from ourselves. This article was reprinted from The Daily Signal. | Sean McBride | http://freedombunker.com/2019/01/24/the-covington-debacle-shows-the-founders-were-right-to-distrust-democracy/ | 2019-01-24 18:05:48+00:00 | 1,548,371,148 | 1,567,550,972 | politics | fundamental rights |
219,537 | freedombunker--2019-02-05--San Francisco Facial Recognition Ban Proposed | 2019-02-05T00:00:00 | freedombunker | San Francisco Facial Recognition Ban Proposed | Aaron Peskin, a member of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, has proposed a new ordinance that could severely limit city agencies' use of enhanced surveillance of the city, including a ban on facial recognition technology. "I have yet to be persuaded that there is any beneficial use of this technology that outweighs the potential for government actors to use it for coercive and oppressive ends," Peskin said. Peskin is not alone in worrying about how government agents can abuse the technology. Woodrow Hartzog, a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, and his colleague, Rochester Institute of Technology philosopher Evan Selinger, make a strongly persuasive case that "facial recognition is the perfect tool for oppression." As a consequence of the technology being "such a grave threat to privacy and civil liberties," they argue that "measured regulation should be abandoned in favor of an outright ban." Their list of the harms to privacy and civil liberties entailed by the widespread use of this technology by government agencies is chilling. They point out that people who think that they are being watched behave differently. In addition, they cite a host of other abuses and corrosive activities entailed by the technology: Disproportionate impact on people of color and other minority and vulnerable populations. Due process harms, which might include shifting the ideal from "presumed innocent" to "people who have not been found guilty of a crime, yet." Denial of fundamental rights and opportunities, such as protection against "arbitrary government tracking of one's movements, habits, relationships, interests, and thoughts." The suffocating restraint of the relentless, perfect enforcement of law. The normalized elimination of practical obscurity. Why ban rather than regulate this surveillance technology and not others such as geolocation data and social media searches? Hartzog and Selinger argue that systems using face prints differ in important ways that justify banning them. Given the spread of CCTVs and police body cameras, faces are hard to hide and can be inexpensively and secretly captured and stored. All-seeing cameras and never forgetful digital databases will put an end to obscurity zones that secure the possibility of privacy for us all. In addition, existing databases, such as those for driver's licenses, make facial recognition tech easy to plug in and play. In fact, it's already been done by the FBI. In their 2016 report, The Perpetual Line-Up, Georgetown University researchers found that 16 states had let the FBI use facial recognition technology to compare the faces of suspected criminals to the states' driver's license and ID photos, creating a virtual line-up of each state's residents. "If you build it, they will surveil," assert Hartzog and Selinger. China's social credit system is already taking advantage of facial recognition technology. According to Fortune, the Chinese government is deploying facial recognition tied to millions of public cameras to not only "identify any of its 1.4 billion citizens within a matter of seconds but also having the ability to record an individual's behavior to predict who might become a threat—a real-world version of the 'precrime' in Philip K. Dick's Minority Report." "The future of human flourishing depends upon facial recognition technology being banned before the systems become too entrenched in our lives," conclude Hartzog and Selinger. "Otherwise, people won't know what it's like to be in public without being automatically identified, profiled, and potentially exploited. In such a world, critics of facial recognition technology will be disempowered, silenced, or cease to exist." Perhaps that's too ominous. Widespread use of facial recognition technology can certainly make our lives easier to navigate. But it doesn't take a cynic to worry that governments will demand the right to plunder private face print databases. It's not too soon to consider if the tradeoffs between convenience and not-implausible government abuses of the technology are worth it. The proposed ordinance in San Francisco requires agencies to gain the Board of Supervisors' approval before buying new surveillance technology and puts the burden on city agencies to publicly explain why they want the tools as well as to evaluate their potential harms. That's at least a step in the right direction. For more on how we are already constructing a pervasive surveillance state, see my January feature article, "Can Algorithms Run Things Better Than Humans?" The answer depends on what you mean by "better." | Ed Krayewski | http://freedombunker.com/2019/02/05/san-francisco-facial-recognition-ban-proposed/ | 2019-02-05 20:45:00+00:00 | 1,549,417,500 | 1,567,549,516 | politics | fundamental rights |
219,924 | freedombunker--2019-02-23--Do Animals Have Rights | 2019-02-23T00:00:00 | freedombunker | Do Animals Have Rights? | Since Peter Singer published Animal Liberation in 1975, animal rights activists have proposed the idea that animals should be granted the same rights as human beings. Various movements have emerged, and throughout the past decade, endeavors have turned out to be increasingly successful. Referring to scientific studies with animals exhibiting attributes similar to human beings, activists argue that animals are akin to human beings and should thus be protected with the same body of rights. So why is it that animals do not have the same legal status as human beings? The line of reasoning in favor of granting animals equal rights to human beings emphasizes the fact that scientists have found traits in animals we normally associate with human beings. As an example, a group of scientists showed that monkeys demonstrate self-consciousness at the same level as human beings. This has usually served as a justification for human rights, so why don’t we—as a minimum—grant equal rights to the most developed animal species? After all, the principle of habeas corpus—derived from the Magna Carta with the intention to prevent unlawful detentions—would protect those species from encroachment and arbitrary violations of rights, thus avoiding painful and degrading treatment. Despite convincing scientific evidence, this argument does not provide any philosophical justification of animal rights. The fact that some animals exhibit traits similar to human beings certainly provides a strong argument for granting at least some animals rights. But despite convincing scientific evidence, this argument does not provide any philosophical justification of animal rights. An adequate argument for animal rights would require further philosophical inquiry and not only descriptive conclusions. Of course, we can feel reverence and pity for animals being treated badly, but this does not lead to the conclusion that animals should enjoy the same legal status as persons. There is a strong reason for maintaining that rights only apply to human beings. While fundamental rights surely are valuable in their nature, they would be worthless without any mechanism to uphold them. That is why we expect other people to respect our rights. The mechanism that upholds our rights is the fact that other people are constrained by duties in their behavior towards us. In our everyday lives, we experience numerous situations in which fraudulent or violent persons could profit from violating our rights. Nonetheless, we see—of course, with some exceptions—that individuals cooperate and respect other people’s rights. Rights and duties are two sides of the same coin, and one cannot claim to have certain rights without having to comply with corresponding duties. Rights would merely be well-intended declarations if it were not for our moral duties toward other people. Thus, rights would merely be well-intended declarations if it were not for our moral duties toward other people. If it is my claim to live freely on my property without intrusion, my neighbor’s duty impedes him from violating my right to property and life. Suppose, however, he trespasses on my plot and engages in vandalism on my property. He will then be held accountable through judicial reprisals, for he has violated my property rights and failed his duty to respect my rights. This is completely reasonable, but we will certainly face obstacles if my property was violated by, say, an elephant or a chimpanzee. If we assume that animals are granted the same legal status as human beings, justice requires that we now drag the culprit to court. For, remember, if our animal has rights, it will logically also have duties. In other words, it is responsible for its own actions. Therefore, it is now subject to the same legal procedures as human beings. This raises embarrassing practical questions, for who will defend the animal in court? And will the animal be able to comprehend what is going on? History provides us with a great variety of absurd trials involving animals. It is inconceivable that those animals would comprehend the slightest fraction of the legal code, of moral questions and the procedures in court. Faced with criminal charges, animals suffered capital punishment for various crimes in early Europe. There are numerous instances of animals that were tortured and hanged for their vicious crimes. Yet some animals were in fact acquitted for their charges during this paradigm of animal trials. For instance, a donkey was acquitted in 1750 after facing charges of bestiality. But although torture and brutal hangings surely have inflicted pain upon supposedly guilty animals, an important question remains: Did those animals understand human law and morality? I stand to question that. It is inconceivable that those animals would comprehend the slightest fraction of the legal code, of moral questions and the procedures in court. And that is exactly the reason why animals do not have rights. Dragging animals to court surely seems absurd. Nevertheless, granting rights to animals entails exactly this consequence. Because rights and duties are cognate, animals cannot only enjoy being protected by rights. They will also be subject to corresponding duties. But being unable to comprehend those duties and moral foundations, animals cannot have rights. As Roger Scruton writes, the Constitution was written under the assumption that people are familiar with their duties. We know it’s wrong to steal, kill, and cheat other people. But animals don’t. We can have obligations from special commitments, but that is not the same as saying that animals have particular claims towards us. Though I strongly oppose the idea of granting animals the same rights as human beings, this does not conflict with the proposition that animals should be treated properly. I’m sure most readers here find animal cruelty repugnant, but this, however, is not equal to granting animals rights. As Carl Cohen noted, we can have obligations from special commitments, but that is not the same as saying that animals have particular claims towards us. Animals are simply unable to discern right actions from wrong ones by applying moral judgments, which is the reason why it is futile to talk about animal rights. I will now leave it up to the reader to imagine a chimpanzee in the dock indicted with, say, charges for vandalism on my property as hypothesized earlier. Wouldn’t it be absurd? | Sean McBride | http://freedombunker.com/2019/02/23/do-animals-have-rights/ | 2019-02-23 14:00:12+00:00 | 1,550,948,412 | 1,567,547,539 | politics | fundamental rights |
221,541 | freedombunker--2019-06-19--Mass Peaceful Demonstrations Protect Hong Kongs Autonomy from Chinafor Now | 2019-06-19T00:00:00 | freedombunker | Mass Peaceful Demonstrations Protect Hong Kong’s Autonomy from China—for Now | Protesters in Hong Kong have achieved a major victory in their fight to protect their legal system from Chinese interference. On June 15, in response to massive popular resistance, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced she would suspend a vote on a proposed new law that would allow China to extradite suspects accused of certain crimes and prosecute them in Chinese courts. Protesters are now demanding that the bill be withdrawn, not just suspended. If the law comes up for vote, it will likely pass. For over a week, some 1.3 million people had gathered daily outside Hong Kong’s legislature to protest the legislation, which protesters say China will abuse to extradite political dissidents. They managed to postpone a June 12 vote by blocking entry to the legislative building. Days later, consideration of the law was indefinitely postponed. That temporarily protects Hong Kong’s judicial system, one of the island territory’s few remaining areas of government autonomy from China. Protesters are now demanding that the bill be withdrawn, not just suspended. If the law comes up for vote at a later date, it will likely pass in Hong Kong’s legislative council, where pro-China forces dominate. Chinese rule over Hong Kong, an island territory off the coast of Shenzhen, has long been disputed. The British colonized Hong Kong in the 1800s following the Opium Wars. But China never accepted this territorial claim, and insisted throughout the 20th century that Hong Kong belonged to China. In 1997, after a decade of negotiations between the United Kingdom and China, Hong Kong returned to China—with some strings attached. Knowing that Hong Kong had developed under a Western system of government, then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made Hong Kong a “Special Autonomous Region” and agreed to give the island a 50-year transition period to come fully under Chinese rule. For two decades, the “one country, two systems” arrangement seemed to give Hong Kong relative autonomy from Chinese interference. Under this system, Hong Kong would retain its judicial system and legislative council, affording the island relative independence in its day-to-day operations. But Hong Kong would belong to China. The arrangement became known as “one country, two systems.” Controversially, full suffrage and free elections were not part of the 1997 deal. For two decades, though, the “one country, two systems” arrangement seemed to give Hong Kong relative autonomy from Chinese interference. Then, in 2014, China announced that people would be allowed to vote in Hong Kong’s 2017 chief executive election only from a short list of preapproved candidates. Thousands took to the streets to demand universal suffrage. To protect themselves from police spraying tear gas at the front lines, they used umbrellas, giving rise to the name the “Umbrella Movement.” In the years since the uprising, I have interviewed numerous democracy activists in Hong Kong as part of my academic research into the evolution of social movements. Emboldened by international support, Hong Kong’s young activists have continued their efforts to protect their independence from China. Many participants told me that they believed the 2014 Umbrella Movement had ended peacefully because China didn’t want another Tiananmen Square on its hands. In 1989, Chinese soldiers opened fire on student protesters in Beijing, killing hundreds and raising global uproar. Emboldened by international support for the Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong’s young activists have continued their efforts to protect their independence from China. Nine Umbrella Movement leaders ran for local office in Hong Kong in the territory’s 2015 elections. In 2016 elections, two pro-independence politicians even won seats in the legislative council. However, they were quickly expelled for “failing” to properly recite their loyalty oaths at a swearing-in ceremony. In 2017 Carrie Lam, a candidate loyal to Beijing and the driving force behind the extradition law, was elected Chief Executive—Hong Kong’s highest public official. Under Lam’s leadership, traditionally pro-democracy politicians were removed from office. Some were even arrested and jailed as dissidents. Increasing Chinese influence on the island territory also threatens Hong Kong’s clout as a major economic hub. For decades, Hong Kong’s relative autonomy has made the island territory an appealing place to do business in Asia. Human rights organization Hong Kong Watch believes that “Spiriting people away over the border would undermine business confidence.”But under stronger Chinese rule, financial markets and regulatory systems in Hong Kong may become less reliable as they begin to reflect the national interests of China—not those of the free market. The American Chamber of Commerce and several prominent Hong Kong business leaders have publicly spoken out against the extradition law. “Spiriting people away over the border would undermine business confidence,” one hedge fund manager told the nonprofit human rights organization Hong Kong Watch. Hong Kong’s legal system is now the only surviving pillar of “one country, two systems,” which was created to give Hong Kong autonomy over its legal, economic and financial affairs. If the postponed extradition law passes, there will be no meaningful remaining barriers between democratic-leaning Hong Kong and authoritarian China. For many in Hong Kong, that’s an intolerable future. China is a known violator of human rights. The government has jailed hundreds of human rights lawyers since 2015.An assessment by the World Justice Project, a nonprofit organization that works to advance the rule of law worldwide, ranks Hong Kong 16th and China 82nd worldwide based on their constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice. China is a known violator of human rights. It systematically surveils and represses ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs, a Muslim population in China’s northwest region, and restricts internet access. The government has jailed hundreds of human rights lawyers since 2015. Political dissidence is not tolerated in China. The late Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in Chinese prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” He died in prison in 2017 after being denied travel abroad for cancer treatment. Hong Kong, on the other hand, has a rich history of mass demonstrations. In Hong Kong’s 1966 Star Ferry riots, people protested the British colonial government’s decision to increase transit fares. And every July 1 since 2003—the anniversary of the 1997 transition from British to Chinese rule—people have taken to the streets pleading for universal suffrage. “One country, two systems” has allowed Hong Kong residents to openly disagree with policymakers in a way mainland Chinese cannot. The extradition law’s threat of trial and punishment in China would have a chilling effect on future democracy demonstrations there.As required by Hong Kong’s legal system, democracy protesters arrested for their political activism are given legal representation, trials, and serve time in Hong Kong’s well-regulated prisons. The extradition law’s threat of trial and punishment in China would have a chilling effect on future democracy demonstrations there. If “One country, two systems” falls, what remains of Hong Kong’s democracy will go down with it. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. | Sean McBride | http://freedombunker.com/2019/06/19/mass-peaceful-demonstrations-protect-hong-kongs-autonomy-from-china-for-now/ | 2019-06-19 15:00:19+00:00 | 1,560,970,819 | 1,567,538,667 | politics | fundamental rights |
221,781 | freedombunker--2019-06-29--Promising the Impossible While Sacrificing Liberty | 2019-06-29T00:00:00 | freedombunker | Promising the Impossible While Sacrificing Liberty | In a June 13 speech, Bernie Sanders offered the clarion call for his presidential run—that solving the problems facing America requires we Unfortunately, in echoing both the Soviet and EU constitutions, Sanders is also promising mutually contradictory rights, which logic demonstrates cannot possibly be delivered. The Constitution of the Soviet Union assured citizens of multiple rights, including to education, housing, health protection, work, “maintenance in old age,” and even “rest and leisure.” But the exercise of such rights was always subject to the condition that they were not “to the detriment of the interests of society or the state.” In other words, individual rights only actually existed where and when the state decided it didn’t get in the way of what it wanted to do. More briefly, it meant citizens’ individual rights didn’t exist except on paper. Along the same lines, the EU Constitution parallels ours in asserting individual rights, such as freedom of religion and expression. However, the Charter of Fundamental Rights also guarantees rights to education, housing assistance, job placement services, preventative health care, social services, social security benefits, paid maternity leave, and more. Unfortunately, the expansive combination of rights promised in each of these cases is inconsistent with the fundamental right to be free, including the right to exercise decisions over the use of our own property. That is because “positive” rights to housing, education, health care, etc., provided or mandated by government, require that someone else must be forced to pay for them. But that inherent obligation necessarily violates others’ liberty by taking their income and property without their consent. Consequently, the liberty “guaranteed” as a fundamental right does not exist in practice. When government creates new positive rights, taking the resources to pay for them necessarily takes away others’ inalienable rights and liberty. The key is that the positive rights to certain things require the violation of others’ negative rights against having their property taken by the government. In contrast, negative rights are prohibitions laid out against others’ abuses, particularly by the government, exemplified by the strictly limited, enumerated powers the US Constitution granted our central government and what the Bill of Rights put off-limits to political trespass. But negative rights are eaten away by every expansion of what government promises. Americans’ constitutional rights reflect the Declaration of Independence’s central assertion that all have inalienable rights, including liberty, and that government’s purpose is to defend those rights. But the only rights that can be inalienable for all must be consistent with the equal rights of others. Every citizen can enjoy negative rights against government abuse without infringing on anyone else's equal rights because they impose on others only the obligation to not interfere. But when the government creates new positive rights, extracting the resources to pay for them necessarily takes away others’ inalienable rights and liberty. Liberty means people rule themselves, and voluntary arrangements are the means of resolving conflict. But when government assigns positive rights to others, it means someone else rules over the choices and resources taken from those forced to pay. However, since no one has the right to rob others, if government is to remain within the narrow range consistent with equal rights, no one can delegate that power to government. America was founded on the idea that we have inalienable negative rights that do not originate with the government, which the government, therefore, cannot take away.The more seriously such entitlements are taken, the less liberty will remain. But as people have learned to get public support by dressing up more things they wish others to pay for in the language of rights, our government has increasingly turned to violating the rights it was instituted to defend. However noble-sounding promises of more for you at others’ expense can be made to sound by way of sins of omission, they violate America’s core values represented in our founding documents. Most seriously, it would completely undermine any assurance that Americans’ right to liberty, and the property that sustains it, would be secure. And the more seriously such entitlements are taken, the less liberty will remain. | Sean McBride | http://freedombunker.com/2019/06/29/promising-the-impossible-while-sacrificing-liberty/ | 2019-06-29 15:00:31+00:00 | 1,561,834,831 | 1,567,537,546 | politics | fundamental rights |
222,260 | freedombunker--2019-08-03--Everyone Has a Right to Call Politicians Idiots | 2019-08-03T00:00:00 | freedombunker | Everyone Has a Right to Call Politicians “Idiots” … | No, calling politicians idiots or "Four Horsemen [of the Apocalypse]" isn't "inciting violence" or "encouraging gun violence." It is urging people to dislike the politicians—a basic right of every American. That's so when people criticize President Trump or the Republican Congressional leadership or the left wing of the Democratic party or anyone else. It's so regardless of what groups those politicians belong to. It's true that some tiny percentage of listeners may react to such criticism by deciding to violently attack its targets, whether the targets are on the Left or on the Right. But one basic premise of free speech isn't that we don't treat speech as "inciting violence" (a label for constitutionally unprotected speech, see Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)), and suppress its communication to the 99.9999% of people who don't act violently because of it, just because of a risk that 0.0001% would act violently. And that's so even for much harsher speech, such as calling people traitors or fascists or other such labels that some might see as morally justifying attacks. It is even more clearly true of simply calling them idiots or "Four Horsemen" (for a famous earlier Four Horsemen reference, see here). That's true, I think, not just a matter of law but also of political ethics: There's no basis for morally condemning such speech as supposedly "inciting violence." (One might mildly condemn it as being nonsubstantive, but that condemnation would of course apply to a vast range of common criticism, and of common praise, of political figures from both sides.) It most certainly does not "NEED[] TO COME DOWN." Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley have set themselves up as leaders of the left wing of the Democratic Party. They have achieved national prominence, not just individually but as a group. In my view, their policies and views merit criticism; but even if you agree with them, surely others have a right to disagree. People have a right to criticize them as a group and not just individually. People have a right to continue to criticize them even when the politicians had gotten threats from third parties (as Omar, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez, and Pressley reportedly have, and as I'm sure many other politicians have as well). People have a right to criticize them disrespectfully and not just respectfully. They have a right to criticize them with slogans and not just substantively, again just as they do with President Trump or Republican Congressional leaders or anyone else. And of course they have a right to call them "idiots." UPDATE: I revised the post slightly to make clear that my analysis applies just as much to calling people "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" as "idiots." UPDATE: Some people seem to think that this speech becomes incitement of violence because it's a gun store that puts it up, presumably because somehow viewers of gun store advertising are particularly likely to buy a gun and shoot a politician because she was called an "idiot" (and, obviously hyperbolically, an idiotic Horseman of the Apocalypse). No: Calling a politician an idiot, whether it's on a gun store billboard or anywhere else, isn't incitement of violence, whether as a legal or as a moral matter. It's criticism, and one of the fundamental rights of free citizens. Note also the implications of that sort of argument: If this sort of criticism becomes illegal or immoral when a gun store says it, surely the same must be even more so as to gun rights advocacy groups (which tend to have much more public stature than ordinary gun stores). Presumably it would be as to prominent gun rights advocates, too. And if something like "idiot" is "inciting violence" in that context, then of course most other criticisms would qualify. (Indeed, criticizing a politician as advocating bad policies would be slightly more likely to encourage violence than criticizing them for being "idiots," not that either likelihood is substantial enough to warrant condemning the criticism.) What a convenient way for politicians and advocates to try to suppress criticism that comes from their political adversaries. | Ed Krayewski | http://freedombunker.com/2019/08/03/everyone-has-a-right-to-call-politicians-idiots/ | 2019-08-03 13:57:32+00:00 | 1,564,855,052 | 1,567,534,922 | politics | fundamental rights |
222,311 | freedombunker--2019-08-07--Red flag laws drive a stake in the heart of our nations fundamental principles | 2019-08-07T00:00:00 | freedombunker | ‘Red flag’ laws drive a stake in the heart of our nation’s fundamental principles | The Firearms Policy Coalition, a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting and defending the Constitution and the fundamental rights of Americans, has issued a policy statement regarding the proposed “red flag” confiscation laws that are being bandied about by the political class. It explains how red flag laws “drive a stake into the heart of our nation’s fundamental principles,” and why everyone who loves liberty must oppose them and oppose politicians who advocate for them. It’s been more than 150 years since our liberties have been as strongly under assault as they are now. Here’s the FPC’s policy statement: August 5, 2019 – Firearms Policy Coalition issued the following statement regarding demands for new gun control, including so-called “red flag” confiscation laws: This morning, President Trump stated that “Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks,” called for “real bipartisan solutions” that will “truly make America safer and better for all,” including ‘Minority Report’-style “tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike,” and so-called “red flag” legislation. It is also being reported that Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has cut a deal with Sen. Blumenthal (D-CT) on legislation that President Trump “seems very supportive” of. Firearms Policy Coalition and our members are not. FPC has been and remains strongly opposed to so-called “red flag” laws, also known as “Gun Violence Restraining Order” (GVRO) or “Extreme Risk Protection Order” (ERPO) statutes. FPC also remains strongly opposed to expanding federal criminal statutes, including but not limited to those mandating “universal background checks”. These proposed laws do not increase access to mental healthcare or improve public safety. They rely on expanding federal powers through further abuse of the Commerce Clause and are unconstitutional, as well as dangerous. Red flag laws stand for the proposition that gun owners can have their rights and property taken from them – by force – on the basis of allegations without the government having even reasonable suspicion, let alone probable cause or constitutionally sufficient adjudication. If the government does not have probable cause for an arrest or search warrant, a material basis upon which to subject a person to a mental health evaluation, or even “reasonable suspicion” to support the detention of an individual, then the government surely has not met its burden for taking away a person’s fundamental, individual rights and lawfully-acquired property. So-called “red flag” laws require a respondent to hire expensive attorneys and spend thousands of dollars to defend against a petition, petition for or litigate appeals, and restore rights and recover seized or surrendered property, shifting the burden of the “red flag” scheme to the individual. Most “red flag” respondents are unlikely to have the resources to engage specialized legal counsel, and thus “red flag” laws will disproportionately impact the poor. And even if they could afford to hire legal counsel, and even if they ultimately prevail, their attorney’s fees and costs are almost certainly nonrecoverable. Firearms and ammunition are valuable personal property. But the interest at stake here is far more substantial than the deprivation of mere possession of such property: “[T]he right to keep and bear arms” is “among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.” (McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S. Ct. 3020, 3042 (2010).) By establishing statutory and regulatory schemes that prohibit an individual’s possession of firearms, and in some cases even require the seizure of firearms and ammunition,“red flag” laws strike at the core of the Second Amendment: the right to keep and bear arms in the home for self-defense. (District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 630 635 (2008).) “Red flag” orders and their underlying statutes also drive a stake into the heart of our Nation’s fundamental principles. The Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause guarantees that “[n]o person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” (U.S. Constitution, amendment V.) Indeed, “red flag” statutes often contain no notice requirement at all, and even where “red flag” laws provide that notice may be given, most do not require that the respondent be actually served with notice. For example, in California, “red flag” orders may be issued against someone who is completely unaware of the existence of a petition, let alone a hearing or an order. And even if a “red flag” order is issued, they are not required to be personally served on the subject unless “the restrained person can reasonably be located.” Worse, some “red flag” laws even provide for secret ex parte proceedings. That means a petitioning law enforcement officer or person may present their arguments to a court without the subject of the petition being present—or perhaps altogether unaware of the petition and hearing on the future of their rights and property. And under some “red flag” laws, a court can even “consider any other evidence of an increased risk for violence” including (but not limited to) “[e]vidence of recent acquisition of firearms, ammunition, or other deadly weapons.” In other words, if a person recently exercised their fundamental, individual Second Amendment rights, that in and of itself could be construed as “evidence” that they are an “increased risk for violence” and thus should have a “red flag” order and property seizure warrant issue against them. If a person is an actual threat to themselves or others, or engaging in criminal activity, then there are thousands of existing federal, state, and local laws by which families, friends, or law enforcement can more appropriately and effectively respond to those facts and circumstances. Moreover, “red flag” laws do not improve access to mental health care or address the important issues of untreated or under-treated mental illness. And “red flag” laws may even discourage or serve as a deterrent to those who might otherwise seek mental health treatment or counseling. Red flag firearm prohibition and confiscation laws are unconstitutional, unsound, and dangerous policies. They should and must be opposed – not rewarded with millions of taxpayer dollars. FPC will grade all votes on federal “red flag” legislation, publish legislative history, and distribute this information to our members, supporters, activists, and the public. FPC encourages gun owners and liberty advocates to immediately take action by doing the following: Firearms Policy Coalition (www.firearmspolicy.org) is a 501(c)4 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPC’s mission is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially the fundamental, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, advance individual liberty, and restore freedom. Gun owners and Second Amendment supporters can join the FPC Grassroots Army at JoinFPC.org. The post ‘Red flag’ laws drive a stake in the heart of our nation’s fundamental principles appeared first on Personal Liberty®. | Bob Livingston | http://freedombunker.com/2019/08/07/red-flag-laws-drive-a-stake-in-the-heart-of-our-nations-fundamental-principles/ | 2019-08-07 14:33:51+00:00 | 1,565,202,831 | 1,567,534,630 | politics | fundamental rights |
224,380 | freedomoutpost--2019-03-19--Democrats Use Nazi Policy To Get Registration Then Confiscation Of Your Guns | 2019-03-19T00:00:00 | freedomoutpost | Democrats Use Nazi Policy To Get Registration, Then Confiscation, Of Your Guns | Happiness is a warm gun, sang the Beatles , but Democrats are singing registration, then confiscation, of your guns. A “Firearm Registration” bill was introduced in the Pennsylvania Legislature on March 8, 2019. Safety is the mantra of anti-gun activists, but their claim of control is a means to their goal of a gun-free society. This progressive policy can be implemented only by compliant citizens. But political opponents, the “deniers,” must be eliminated by social shaming or civil and criminal penalties. There are historical lessons of totalitarian governments, which rule because citizens have been deprived of weapons. In Nazi Firearms Law and the Disarming of the German Jews, page 537, Stephen P. Halbrook observed: take our poll - story continues below Should Joe Biden drop out of the Presidential race because of his inappropriate touching of women? Should Joe Biden drop out of the Presidential race because of his inappropriate touching of women? Should Joe Biden drop out of the Presidential race because of his inappropriate touching of women? Yes, his actions were completely inappropriate. No, we should forgive and forget. I don't care. Let the left eat their own. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. Completing this poll grants you access to Freedom Outpost updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to this site's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. “The record establishes that a well-meaning liberal republic would enact a gun control act that would later be highly useful to a dictatorship. That dictatorship could then consolidate its power by massive search and seizure operations against political opponents, under the hysterical ruse that such persons were ‘Communist’ firearm owners.” “It could enact its own new firearms law, disarming anyone the police deemed ‘dangerous’ and exempting members of the party that controlled the state. It could exploit a tragic shooting of a government official to launch a [sic] pogrom, under the guise that Jewish firearm owners were dangerous and must be disarmed.” “This dictatorship could, generally, disarm the people of the nation it governed and then disarm those of every nation it conquered.” “In the 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that the ‘Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.’” Reported by the Legal Information Institute of the Cornell Law School. “The above experiences influenced perceptions of fundamental rights in both the United States and Germany,” Halbrook explained: “Before entering the war, America reacted to the events in Europe in a characteristic manner. Seeing the Nazi threat and its policies, Congress passed the Property Requisition Act of 1941 authorizing the President to requisition certain property for defense, but prohibiting any construction of the act to ‘require the registration of any firearms possessed by any individual for his personal protection or sport’ or ‘to impair or infringe in any manner the right of any individual to keep and bear arms.’” Nazi Firearms Law , pp. 536-37. “Remember that registration of firearms is only the first step,” stated the Requisition Act’s sponsor, Rep. Paul Kilday (D-TX). “It will be followed by other infringements of the right to keep and bear arms until finally the right is gone.” Nazi Firearms Law , p. 537, fn. 289. A secret Nazi Gestapo Order (1941) is compared to Pennsylvania’s Firearm Registration bill (2019) in this side-by-side chart. Pennsylvania’s bill has more requirements than the Nazi’s order. In Pennsylvania, if the bill becomes law, a gun owner will be required to provide more information than a person who registers to vote. For the right of self-defense, a person would be required annually to self-report ownership of each gun and describe it in detail. A certificate or renewal is not guaranteed because the State Police could deny the application. Partisan bureaucrats may not appreciate an applicant’s conservative politics: Allegiance to the Bill of Rights and limited government. Far-fetched? Just ask Tea Party organizations who were delayed or denied non-profit status by Obama’s IRS. The State Police’s database could be released for official or nefarious purposes: The Pennsylvania Legislature under the guise of oversight. Freedom of Information requests by liberal media and advocacy groups. Anti-gun zealots could dox persons who own guns. New York’s concealed weapon permit holders were posted via a map on the internet. There was proposed a multi-state map. Liberal news agencies and the social media mob have harassed law-abiding, private citizens. Identification of gun owners is not likely to deter criminals, who may have a shopping list for gun collections. An enemy could learn that you own a gun. A related “red flag” law may be used for a fraudulent claim against you. The police will confiscate your gun pending a court hearing. Meanwhile, an enemy has an opportunity to cause injury or murder of you. Law-abiding citizens’ registration of guns will not prevent criminals from obtaining unregistered guns. No lives will be saved. Note the bill’s absence of “whereas” clauses of findings of facts to support unidentified benefits. Also, the absence of redeeming press releases of the bill being introduced by Democrats: Angel Cruz, Mary Jo Daley, and Mary Louise Isaacson; and Democrat co-sponsors: Joseph C. Hohenstein, Joanna E. McClinton, and Benjamin V. Sanchez. The bill failed in 2009-10, 2011-12, 2013-14, 2015-16, and 2017-18. This proposed law could be enforced only if the government is aware that you own a gun. Will the police conduct a search for guns, literally door to door? If you are forced to use a gun for self-defense, but fail to comply with registration, could your defense effectively be an infringement of the Fifth Amendment? Fail to register a gun, then risk a criminal penalty of 90 days in jail. The government likely will confiscate your gun; You likely will not be eligible to possess another gun; and you likely will be limited to lesser forms of self-defense. Gun registries will lead to gun confiscation, as illustrated by Australia, Canada, and Germany; as well as the United States: California, Illinois, and the heart of liberalism: New York City. Admit it, liberals, you really do want a total ban on firearms. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, suggested that a Democrat President could declare gun violence as a national emergency. Have we not learned the lesson of the Nazi policy to disarm, and then control, its citizens? Nazi gun laws facilitated the murder of political enemies, specifically the Holocaust of more than six million Jews. What part of the Second Amendment’s independent status, “shall not be infringed,” did these legislators, some attorneys, not understand? The U.S. Constitution trumps a state statute. A first-year law student learns this principle. Liberals ignore constitutional law in favor of an agenda of a gun-free society. Liberals use safety as subterfuge for registration leading to confiscation of guns. I appreciate our Founding Fathers’ wisdom that the Second Amendment is a guard against tyranny, whether the enemy is foreign or domestic. Since self-defense is a God-given right, I believe in the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates : Should gun registration become law by an act of either a state or federal government, I will not comply. Such a law would classify this patriot as a criminal. Gerald Lostutter is a Florida licensed attorney, college professor, journalist, and patriot life member (endowment level) of the National Rifle Association. This article does not create an attorney-client relationship. You should consult a licensed attorney for advice. | Gerald Lostutter | https://freedomoutpost.com/democrats-use-nazi-policy-to-get-registration-then-confiscation-of-your-guns/ | 2019-03-19 12:22:59+00:00 | 1,553,012,579 | 1,567,545,638 | politics | fundamental rights |
227,298 | globalresearch--2019-01-08--Israel Seeks 250 Billion Compensation Related to Stealing Historic Palestine | 2019-01-08T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Israel Seeks $250 Billion Compensation Related to Stealing Historic Palestine | The Jewish state gives chutzpah new meaning. It seeks $250 billion from seven Arab states and Iran in connection to its theft of historic Palestine – one of history’s great crimes. It took 78% in 1948, the Palestinian Nakba, the remainder in June 1967, including the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem, the UN-declared international city, illegally occupied by Israel, illegally declared its exclusive capital. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, set the tone during the Nakba for what followed, saying “(e)very attack has to end with occupation, destruction and expulsion” – forcefully eliminating resistance, assuring Israeli control over historic Palestine. According to Israeli Hadashot TV news, Israel demands Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria Tunisia and Yemen correct what it calls a “historic injustice” – a colossal perversion of truth. It’s reinventing history, blaming countries it attacked and other regional ones for its illegal 1948 and 1967 land grabs – demanding they compensate Jews for the loss of property, assets and other possessions they left behind in Arab countries because of war the Jewish state waged against neighboring ones. What Ilan Pappe described as “the ethnic cleaning of Palestine in 1948,” Edward Said called its “holocaust,” saying: Occupied Palestinians “are as powerless as Jews were” under Hitler, devastated by “power used for evil purposes” subjugating them, denying their fundamental rights – compensation due to THEM from the Jewish state, NOT the other way around, NOT from countries harmed by Israeli high crimes, ongoing endlessly with full support and encouragement from the US and West. Israel’s claim for $250 billion in compensation from other countries would be laughable if the high crimes leading to its creation and throughout its existence weren’t so serious – as pure evil as what Nazis did to Jews. The Nakba was one of history’s great crimes, state terror on a massive scale against an entire population. Israel’s 1948 war without mercy depopulated Palestinian cities, towns and villages, massacring innocent victims, raping their women, committing other atrocities – notably burning, bulldozing, blowing up, or stealing homes, property and other possessions, dispossessing around 800,000 Palestinians, preventing them from returning home. Israel’s 1967 six-day war was planned “16 years in advance,” according to IDF general Mordechai Hod, saying “(w)e lived with the plan. We slept on the plan. We ate the plan. Constantly we perfected it.” It was all about stealing the remaining 22% of historic Palestine not taken in 1948, including East Jerusalem. It had nothing to do with self-defense to avoid annihilation, the falsified claim at the time – later debunked by PM Menachem Begin and IDF generals, admitting Israel faced no threats from Arab states. The world community did nothing to intervene against Israeli aggression, nor at any time throughout the Jewish state’s existence. Militarism, institutionalized racism, and apartheid rule define the state of Israel, its young (male and female) children indoctrinated to be warriors. Militarized education begins in kindergarten, at home, and in all other aspects of society – the line between military and civil society blurred. Children are taught to believe Palestinians must be subjugated, violence against them is OK, along with destroying their property and killing them – notions ingrained in developing minds before they’re able to understand how they’re manipulated. They’re taught to believe Arabs are inferior and Palestinians are enemies, military service essential, wars and other forms of violence natural, peace unattainable. The history of the Jewish state isn’t pretty. Over half a century of illegal occupation continues. Israel aims to steal all valued parts of Judea and Samaria. Its plan calls for confining Palestinians in isolated cantons on worthless scrubland, militarized rule controlling virtually all aspects of their lives, endless war against them continuing without declaring it. The world community remains dismissive about what’s been going on for decades. The lives, rights and welfare of millions of Palestinians don’t matter. Israeli law demands any no-peace/peace deal with Palestinians must compensate the Jewish exodus from Arab countries as explained above. Palestinians are the aggrieved, not Jews. They warrant major compensation for Israel’s theft of their homeland, private property, and other possessions – along with damages for loss of their fundamental rights, illegal occupation, and brutalized treatment. For over half a century, Palestinians have endured institutionalized Israeli persecution with no power over their daily lives, along with virtually every imaginable form of indignity. Living under brutalizing occupation, they face daily state terror, economic strangulation, collective punishment, denial of their fundamental rights affirmed under international law, arrest and imprisonment without just cause, torture, assassinations, bulldozing of their home, crops and orchards, along with daily assaults on their dignity for being Arabs in a Jewish state. With no power to resist, they’re denied redress in international tribunals dismissive of their rights. Endless misery defines their daily lives. THEY deserve compensation for over half a century of conflict, illegal occupation, dispossession, and forever immiseration, no end of it in sight – no justice unless and until their suffering ends, their fundamental rights restored. The history of Occupied Palestine is the triumph of wrong over right, a festering injustice, an entire people harmed, no end to their suffering in sight, no interest in their rights and welfare by the world community. Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” Featured image: Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli troops during a protest to show solidarity with Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, Nabi Saleh, West Bank, April 21, 2017. (Flash90) | Stephen Lendman | https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-seeks-compensation-related-to-stealing-historic-palestine/5664977 | 2019-01-08 17:28:26+00:00 | 1,546,986,506 | 1,567,553,405 | politics | fundamental rights |
227,500 | globalresearch--2019-01-21--Distinguished IranianAmerican Journalist Marzieh Hashemi arrested by FBI | 2019-01-21T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Distinguished Iranian/American Journalist Marzieh Hashemi arrested by FBI | Distinguished Press TV journalist/anchor’s unlawful arrest, detention and mistreatment by the FBI, on the pretext of being a material witness regarding a case her family knows nothing about, gave the US another international black eye. What happened captured world headlines, hopefully enough to help hasten Marzieh’s release. Press TV, the Tehran Times, and other Iranian media continue giving the case extensive coverage. International print and electronic media have had feature stories on what happened – including RT, Sputnik News, the NYT, Washington Post, AP News, Reuters, CBS, NBC, and ABC News, CNN, Fox News, Al Jazeera, the BBC, London Guardian, Haaretz, and numerous other outlets. They’ve elevated Marzieh’s status as a distinguished international journalist to an even higher level than before what happened – by highlighting her unacceptable arrest, detention, and mistreatment uncharged. They explained what the NYT wrote as follows, saying “no reason (was) given for her arrest…(H)er Islamic head scarf (was) forcibly removed…(S)he was chained hand and foot, and…denied access to halal food and had eaten only crackers.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said the following: Tehran Times editor Muhammad Qaderi said her mistreatment shows the real face of the US to the world community. The Iranian High Council for Human Rights called “her violent and humiliating treatment” a brazen example of arbitrary arrest and detention, accusing the US of “illegal, unjustifiable and anti-human rights measures” – a flagrant violation of her fundamental rights, how Washington operates domestically and abroad. Program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Alexandra Ellerbeck expressed concern about Marzieh’s arrest and detention. She “call(ed) on the US Department of Justice to immediately disclose the basis for her detention…” Her colleague and friend Nader Talevzadeh called her arrest a “concocted (US) plan,” part of its hostility toward the Islamic Republic. “This is intimidation and a provocation against Iran,” he stressed. Marzieh is unlawfully held by the FBI at an undisclosed Washington location with minimal family contact and no legal representation for days. Reportedly a lawyer has now been appointed on her behalf. Most so-called public defenders woefully ill-serve clients with little time available to present a proper defense everyone deserves in judicial proceedings. According to federal authorities, Marzieh appeared twice before a US district judge on Friday, an appointed lawyer representing her. A partially unsealed order for her arrest and detention provided no information about what happened and why, other than she’s held as a material witness to an unspecified criminal case her family knows nothing about. She’s detained to give grand jury testimony. Witnesses before these proceedings are only present during their testimony to a prosecutor and grand jurors, no judge or legal representation present. Conducted to determine if a crime was committed, proceedings are secret, a majority of jurors required for an indictment to be issued. Witnesses are required to answer questions by a prosecutor and jurors, criminal suspect(s) usually not present during proceedings. Prosecutors try to establish probable cause to indict. They manipulate grand juries, gaming the system to get judgments they seek, justice denied time and again. Proceedings often amount to a sword for injustice, not a shield against it. Witnesses accused of nothing can be indicted if prosecutors claim they gave false or misleading testimonies. They’re not told of the risk, making them vulnerable if this was the prosecutorial intent for demanding their testimony. Clever ones can manipulate witnesses to unwittingly mislead. Anything said under oath or otherwise can be used against them. Given extreme US hostility toward Iran, Marzieh is vulnerable to a gross miscarriage of justice – besides what she’s endured so far. A US citizen working in Iran for the past decade, dividing her time between both countries, she explained her conversion to Islam as follows, saying she “was born in a religious Christian family, and since 26 or 27 years ago I have become Muslim,” adding: “For me, embracing Islam is directly in relation to Islamic revolution of Iran and the characteristic of Imam Khomeini.” “When I was a student in America, I witnessed that the Iranian students are so active and I was so interested in political activities then, I used to ask them about their activities and purposes, why you protest?” “And they used to talk about the cruelty of the overset king and Imam Khomeini to me, and this was the first step for me becoming Muslim.” “I was looking for the truth and I wasn’t satisfied with my own religion, and I had no solution for the problem that the God has three parts of the Father, and the Son, and the holy Sprit, But still where one?” “I wasn’t convinced with answers when I asked from different people, when this issue happened to be in university, I started to study not only about Islam but about different religions, and simultaneously comparing them in theory and ideology, from Max Weber up to now, and thank God after I became Muslim.” Explaining her career in journalism, she said Marzieh’s son Hossein fears she’ll be detained for an indefinite period, hopeful things will turn out otherwise, saying “(i)t doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. (W)e’re waiting to hear more.” In March 2011, Obama’s Executive Order 13567 authorized indefinite detentions and military commission trials – violating America’s Fifth Amendment, stating: In December 2011, America’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) legitimized unconstitutional and international law prohibited indefinite detentions – everyone potentially vulnerable, including US citizens without just cause. No proof is needed, no habeas, due process or equal protection afforded anyone targeted. The 1215 Magna Carta states the following: “Due process of law” later substituted for “the law of the land.” It’s inviolable, breaching it flagrantly unconstitutional. The Fifth Amendment’s due process guarantee applies to US federal, state and local governance, no exceptions permitted. Yet targeted individuals are extrajudicially arrested and detained at home and abroad, held indefinitely uncharged and untried, based on suspicions, hearsay, secret evidence, or any other pretext. Constitutional law and Supreme Court rulings, affirming the inviolability of due process and equal protection rights, are breached by the US time and again. Friday district court proceedings provided no information about Marziah’s detention, other than explaining she’s not accused of a crime – not so far. What the Trump regime has in mind is unknown until things unfold ahead. Marziah is being used, a victim of US contempt for the fundamental rights of everyone, doing whatever it pleases unaccountably. Reuters cited an unnamed US federal source, saying Press TV is being investigated as an Iranian “propaganda outlet.” It’s a preeminent truth-telling news service, featuring distinguished guests, providing in-depth information on major world issues, explaining what everyone needs to know. It’s polar opposite managed news misinformation and disinformation featured by US and other Western media, suppressing what should be featured. It’s unclear what’s ahead for Marzieh. It’s very clear that her arrest, detention and mistreatment constitute flagrant constitutional and international law violations. What happened to her and countless others in America can happen to anyone. Their struggle for justice is ours! Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” | Stephen Lendman | https://www.globalresearch.ca/distinguished-iranianamerican-journalist-marzieh-hashemi-arrested-by-fbi/5665907 | 2019-01-21 02:44:19+00:00 | 1,548,056,659 | 1,567,551,477 | politics | fundamental rights |
227,527 | globalresearch--2019-01-22--Indefinite Detention Uncharged and Untried a Crime Against Humanity | 2019-01-22T00:00:00 | globalresearch | Indefinite Detention Uncharged and Untried a Crime Against Humanity | These are troubled times. Rule of law protections don’t help. The US does whatever it pleases, operating by its own rules, inflicting harm on nations, groups and individuals, including its own citizens. The UN, world community nations, and international courts are complicit by failing to denounce and challenge flagrant US breaches of laws, norms, and standards. Its authorities have a free hand to operate unrestrained, taking full advantage, at the expense of world peace, equity and justice – things worsening, not improving over time. On January 13, Press TV Iranian/American journalist/anchor Marzhieh Hashemi was arrested and detained by the FBI without just cause. She’s held at an undisclosed location in Washington uncharged and untried, given minimal contact with family members in America, afforded no legal counsel for days before assigned public defender representation for a Friday court appearance. As of now, she’s scheduled to appear before a grand jury on Wednesday. True or false, the FBI claims she’s a material witness in a criminal case her family members know nothing about. Perhaps neither does she. Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights affirms “the right to liberty and security of person,” adding “(n)o one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention.” Anyone arrested “shall be informed at the time of arrest of the reasons” for this action “promptly…” America’s Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures…” Marzieh was illegally seized without just caused. The Fifth Amendment affirms the right of “due process of law” in any proceeding that denies a citizen “life, liberty or property.” America’s Eighth Amendment prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments” – what Marzieh has been subjected to daily. The nation’s 14th Amendment states “(a)ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof…” “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of (US) citizens..nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…” Supreme Court rulings affirmed Bill of Rights protections. Retired Justice Anthony Kennedy sided with a majority 2008 ruling, saying: “Until such time as it can be definitively proven that citizens no longer require the protections provided by the Bill of Rights, it shall remain the principal legal guidance for the United States of America.” High Court constitutional protections are supposed to be inviolable. Yet the rule of law in America is being systematically eroded, Republicans and undemocratic Dems operating the same way. Marzieh’s arrest, detention, and mistreatment on what may be spurious grounds violates her international and constitutionally guaranteed rights. What’s going on is likely connected to US hostility toward Iran, its abhorrence of truth-telling media like Press TV, Marzieh held hostage despite authorities admitting she’s not charged with a crime. It permits America’s military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone uncharged and untried at home and abroad, including US citizens – holding them on suspicions, hearsay, secret evidence, or none at all. It denies due process, equal protection under law, habeas rights, and virtually all others. US authorities may order anyone arrested and imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial. Abuse of power replaced rule of law protections, a giant step toward full-blown tyranny in America. Inviolable rights no longer apply. Opposition to imperial lawlessness, social injustice, corporate crime, government corruption, or authorities serving privileged interests exclusively can be criminalized. So can speech, media, and academic freedoms, assembly, religion, or anything challenging America’s right to kill, destroy, pillage, and do virtually anything else it wishes with impunity. Indefinite detention uncharged and untried is the hallmark of police state rule. The NDAA authorized military tribunals over civil courts at the discretion of authorities. Supreme Court rulings are mixed on this issue. In Jennings v. Rodriguez (February 2018), it reversed an appellate court decision, stating that US immigration statutes do not authorize indefinitely detaining undocumented aliens. The case was sent back to the lower court to consider statutory limits of detention. Center for Gender and Refugee Studies director Karen Musalo responded to the ruling, saying “the Court failed to recognize the statutory rights of immigrants in detention, including the many thousands of asylum seekers fleeing persecution and torture.” The ruling potentially affects everyone arrested and detained in America. Holding anyone for any reasons uncharged and untried is a crime against humanity, violating statutes explained above. Indefinite detention in America is longstanding. During WW II, loyal Japanese Americans were lawlessly detained without just cause. Today, social justice protesters and others wanting responsible change can be arrested and detained charged or uncharged, tried or untried. America’s framers sought to prohibit what’s going on with Bill of Rights protections – what US ruling authorities ignore at their discretion. The Supreme Court ruled that tribunals other than civil ones are illegal (Rasul v. Bush, June 2004). It granted Guantanamo detainees habeas rights – the ruling reversed by the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (June 2006), the Supreme Court held that federal courts retain jurisdiction over habeas cases, affirming constitutionally guaranteed rights. In Boumediene v. Bush, the High Court again ruled that Guantanamo detainees (and everyone else held by US authorities) retain habeas rights. Actions denying what’s affirmed under constitutional and international laws are flagrantly illegal, no allowed exceptions. US citizens and numerous others have been detained, denied due process, habeas, and equal protection under law without just cause – dehumanized, tortured, and otherwise mistreated. Post-9/11, legal protections in America greatly eroded on the phony pretext of national security concerns and global war on terrorism US authorities use to advance the nation’s imperium. Like countless others in America and abroad, Marzieh’s fundamental rights were denied. It’s unclear how long she’ll be held or how the disposition of her detention will turn out. Middle East commentator Rannie Amiri cited “the muted response” of high-profile human rights groups “whose primary purpose is to stand for” fundamental rights, denouncing abuses when occur. The ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders, and other high-profile groups ignored Marzieh’s unlawful arrest and detention so far. Responses of other human rights organizations were largely inadequate, failing to denounce the flagrant violation of her fundamental rights. The ACLU ignored its own commentary on indefinite detention headlined: “No Charges? No Trials? No Justice.” Former right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once said That’s precisely how Marzieh and countless others have been and continue to be mistreated by US authorities – police state injustice, pretending otherwise. US statutes and actions violating international and constitutional law are flagrantly illegal. On Saturday, the Inminds Human Rights Group and Islamic Human Rights Commission projected Marzieh’s image on the BBC’s wall in London with the tag line “FREE MARZIEH HASHEMI.” The groups accused the state owned, controlled and run broadcaster of failing to explain her illegal arrest, detention and mistreatment, the same true for most other Western media. They called her a “Journalist Abducted for Exposing US Crimes Against the Oppressed,” adding: Western media and major international human rights groups failed to denounce her mistreatment. Everyone criticizing unlawful US actions is vulnerable to similar retaliatory abuse. America’s self-styled exceptionalism conceals its dark side, threatening everyone everywhere. That’s the deplorable state of things in the so-called “land of the free and home of the brave.” Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc. Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” | Stephen Lendman | https://www.globalresearch.ca/indefinite-detention-uncharged-and-untried-a-crime-against-humanity/5666078 | 2019-01-22 10:40:35+00:00 | 1,548,171,635 | 1,567,551,324 | politics | fundamental rights |
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