Category Archives: Government Oppression

Shane Simpson, Minister of Social Development and Poverty Reduction, at a community consultation session for new accessibility legislation in Vancouver on Nov. 2, 2019.Gerry Kahrmann / Postmedia News Files

As the B.C. government develops accessibility legislation, a left-wing think-tank is calling on policy-makers to consider how historical injustices and continuing discrimination have led to a society that still excludes deaf and disabled people.

From Sept. 16 to Nov. 29 of this year, the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction collected public feedback to help develop the new legislation it says will guide government, persons with disabilities and the broader community to work together to identify, remove and prevent barriers.

A framework shows how the legislation could work by including standards for service delivery, employment, information, communication and transportation. Minister Shane Simpson said he wants the legislation tabled in the fall of 2020.

The Broadbent Institute commissioned consultant Gabrielle Peters for its submission, which she said is focused on justice and rectifying decades of oppression and discrimination.

I wrote this because were doing it wrong, said Peters, a disabled Vancouver writer.

We have to change how we think about accessibility. We have to change who we think about in terms of accessibility, in order to start doing it right.

The Broadbent submission first discusses the historical impacts of colonialism, eugenics, institutionalization and sterilization on deaf and disabled Canadians.

It then looks at how those experiences have led to deaf and disabled people being disproportionately represented among the poor, homeless and as victims of violence. They are excluded from education, employment and public and community life, and face barriers in the health care system, the submission says.

Nearly half of all Human Rights complaints (49 per cent) in Canada are disability related, Peters wrote. Discrimination against disabled people is rampant while simultaneously being almost entirely invisible in the public discourse about discrimination.

Broadbent makes 16 recommendations it says will help repair that damage, the first being the legislation should consider the phrase nothing about us without us by including deaf and disabled British Columbians in its name.

Decisions about what was best for disabled people made by the provinces respected leaders resulted in the worst outcomes and a shameful period in this provinces history, Peters wrote. This new legislation must spell out whom it is for and what it is intended to begin to rectify and prevent.

The second recommendation urges government to write legislation that goes beyond making B.C. barrier-free, and works to fight oppression. It recommends that government name ableism as the source of systemic oppression of disabled people and the cause of inaccessibility.

The third recommendation calls for the legislation to be intersectional. This would mean recognizing that class, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other aspects of a persons identity and life experience are linked to various other systems of oppression that marginalize disabled people and make parts of B.C. society inaccessible to them.

The full submission can be read at broadbent.ca. Peters said she hopes it shows to readers that accessibility isnt a gift to be handed to deaf and disabled people, but a human right that theyve been denied.

The submission also features contributions from harm reduction policy specialist Karen Ward and from urban planner Amina Yasin, who write about racism, ableism and the built environment.

Maria Dobrinskaya, B.C. director for Broadbent, said the submissions justice-based approach could guide other ministries in their approaches to housing policy, municipal bylaws, transit and other issues.

Government may choose not to implement all 16 recommendations, Dobrinskaya said. But she is pleased the submission will reach the desks of Minister Simpson and other policy-makers, adding that its important that its on the record.

I think it is very broad in its scope, she said. Im hopeful though, that the comprehensive nature of the approach that we took helps to inform more specific focus on policy that the ministry will be looking at.

The federal government passed Canadas first national accessibility legislation in May, meant to identify, remove and prevent accessibility barriers in areas that fall under federal jurisdiction. Those include built environments, federally run programs and services, banking, telecommunications and transportation that crosses provincial lines.

That legislation, however, doesnt address barriers within provincial jurisdiction.Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia have passed accessibility laws, and Newfoundland and Labrador are developing their own, too.

But B.C. where more than 926,000 people older than 15 have some form of disability has lagged behind.

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Broadbent pushes B.C. government for justice-based accessibility law - Vancouver Sun

This past year, revelations about the plight of Muslim Uighurs in China have come to light, with massive-scale detentions and human rights violations of this ethnic minority of the Chinese population. Last month, additional classified Chinese government cables revealed that this policy of oppression was powered by artificial intelligence (AI): that algorithms fueled by massive data collection of the Chinese population were used to make decisions regarding detention and treatment of individuals. China failing to uphold the fundamental and inalienable human rights of its population is not new, and indeed, tyranny is as old as history. But the Chinese government is harnessing new technology to do wrong more efficiently.

Concerns about how governments can leverage AI also extend to the waging of war. Two major concerns about the application of AI to warfare are ethics (is it the right thing to do?) and safety (will civilians or friendly forces be harmed, or will the use of AI lead to accidental escalation leading to conflict?). With the United States, Russia, and China all signaling that AI is a transformative technology central to their national security strategy, with their militaries planning to move ahead with military applications of AI quickly, should this development raise the same kinds of concerns as Chinas use of AI against its own population? In an era where Russia targets hospitals in Syria with airstrikes in blatant violation of international law, and indeed of basic humanity, could AI be used unethically to conduct war crimes more efficiently? Will AI in war endanger innocent civilians as well as protected entities such as hospitals?

To be clear, any technology can be misused in war. A soldier could use a rock to commit a war crime. A simple, low-tech land or sea mine can be used indiscriminately and endanger civilians if it is used in the wrong way. A transformative technology like AI can be used responsibly and safely, or it could fuel a much faster race to the bottom.

The United States has declared it will take the high road with military applications of AI. For example, the Department of Defense AI strategy has AI ethics and safety as one of the its fundamental lines of effort. And this is not an empty promise: The Defense Innovation Board just released its principles for ethical military use of AI, marking a year-long, deliberate initiative drawing in AI experts, ethicists, and the general public. By this laudable effort, the United States has shown leadership in the responsible and principled use of this technology in war.

But there is something missing: The AI strategy commitment was to ethics and safety. To date, the Department of Defense has not shown a similar, concerted focus on AI safety. Despite commitments made to the international community and in its own AI strategy, the Pentagon has done little to act on promises to address safety risks unique to the technology of AI or to use AI to enhance safety in conflict. My recent research has shown that this inaction creates risks to those on the battlefield, for civilians and combatants alike, and increases the likelihood of accidental escalation and conflict. In an era where the technology of AI can so easily be exploited by governments to violate the principles of humanity, the United States can demonstrate the high road is possible, but to do so it needs to keep its promises: to address safety risks intrinsic to AI and to search for ways to use AI for good.

Promise 1: Addressing Safety Risks Unique to AI

In its AI strategy, the Department of Defense made a promise to address the safety risks unique to AI technology. This is reflective of Americas long record of commitments to safety and adherence to international laws for armed conflict. For example, all military systems are subject to test and evaluation activities to ensure that they are reliable and safe, as well as legal reviews to ensure they are consistent with international humanitarian law (e.g., the Geneva Conventions). It is not surprising, therefore, that safety is prominent in the defense AI strategy.

Though a commendable intention, the strategy has not yet resulted in significant institutional steps to promote safety with regard to AI. The U.S. military has been busy supporting the Defense Innovation Boards development of AI ethics, with the Joint AI Center also emphasizing the critical role ethics plays in AI applications, yet the pursuit of safety for example, avoiding civilian casualties, friendly fire, and inadvertent escalation has not received the same sort of attention.

I acknowledge a few steps are being taken towards promoting AI safety. For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has a program working to develop explainable AI, to help address challenges with the use of machine learning as a black box technology. Explainability will enhance AI safety: for example, by being able to explain why an AI application does something amiss in testing or operations and to take corrective actions. But such steps, while important, do not make up a comprehensive approach to identify and then systematically address AI safety risks. To that end, our most recent report draws on a risk management approach to AI safety: identifying risks, analyzing them, and then suggesting concrete actions to begin addressing them.

From this we see two types of safety risks: those associated with the technology of AI in general (e.g., fairness and bias, unpredictability and unexplainability, cyber security and tampering), and those associated with specific military applications of AI (e.g., lethal autonomous systems, decision aids). The first type of safety risk will require the U.S. government, industry, and academia to work together in order to address existing challenges. The second type of risk, being associated with specific military missions, is a military problem with a military solution obtained through military experimentation, research, and concept development to find ways to promote effectiveness along with safety.

Promise 2: AI for Good

A second promise made by the U.S. government was to use AI to better protect civilians and friendly forces, as was first expressed in international discussions. The United Nations Convention for Certain Conventional Weapons, a forum that considers restrictions on the design and use of weapons in light of requirements of international humanitarian law, has held discussions regarding lethal autonomous weapon systems since 2014. Over time, the topic of those discussions has informally broadened from purely autonomous systems to also including the use of AI in weapon systems in general. As the State Departments senior advisor on civilian protection, I was a member of the Conventions delegation in the discussions on lethal autonomous weapon systems. The U.S. position paper in 2017 emphasized how, in contrast to the concerns of some over the legality of autonomous weapons, such weapons carried promise for upholding the law and better protecting civilians in war. This was a sincere position: Several of us on the delegation were also involved in the drafting of U.S. executive order on civilian casualties, which contained a policy commitment to make serious efforts to reduce civilian casualties in U.S. military operations. The thoughtful use of AI and autonomy represented one way to meet that commitment.

The 2018 Department of Defense AI strategy also contained a similar promise of using AI for better protecting civilians in war. As described in the unclassified summary of the strategy, one of its main commitments was to lead internationally in military ethics and AI safety. This included development of specific applications that would reduce the risk of civilian casualties.

That last commitment, made in both the strategy and in U.S. government position papers, is probably the one that draws the most skepticism. When Hollywood portrays AI and autonomous systems and the use of force, it is often to show machines running amok and killing innocents, such as seen in the Terminator series of movies. But using AI for good in war is not a fanciful notion: At CNA, our analysis of real-world incidents shows specific areas where AI can be used for this purpose. We have worked with the U.S. military and others to better understand the reasons that civilian casualties occur and what measures can be taken to avoid them. Based on analysis of underlying causes of over 1,000 incidents, AI technologies could be used to better avoid civilian harm in ways including:

These are just some examples of concrete applications of AI to promote civilian protection in conflict. The Department of Defense could be a leader in this area, and it is easy to imagine other countries following a U.S. lead. For example, many countries lament the frequency of military attacks on hospitals in recent operations, with a UN Security Council Resolution passed unanimously to promote protection of medical care in conflict in 2016. If the United States were to announce it was leading an effort to use AI to better protect hospitals, it is likely there would be interest from other countries in cooperating with such an effort.

Safety Is Strategically Smart

Why is it a problem if the United States does not rise to establish concrete steps to emphasize AI safety? After all, current and former U.S. government leaders have spoken about how neither Russia nor China will be slowing down their AI efforts in order to address ethical or safety issues. Does it matter?

A focus on safety and care in the conduct of operations has served the United States well. During the second offset, Washington developed precision capabilities to help counter the Soviet Unions advantages in troop numbers. These developments then enabled the United States to take additional steps to promote safety in the form of reduced civilian casualties: developing and fielding new types of munitions for precision engagements with reduced collateral effects, developing intelligence capabilities for more accurately identifying and locating military targets, and creating predictive tools to help estimate and avoid collateral damage. These steps had strategic as well as practical benefits, enhancing freedom of action and boosting legitimacy of U.S. actions while enabling steps to reduce the civilian toll of recent operations. If AI is leveraged to help promote safety on the battlefield, it can yield similar strategic and practical benefits for the United States.

AI safety also has relevance to U.S. allies. Unlike its peer competitors, Russia and China, the United States almost always operates as part of a coalition effort. This is a significant advantage for the United States politically, numerically, and in terms of additional capabilities that can be brought to bear. But ally cooperation, and the interoperability of partners within a coalition, will depend on what capabilities our allies are willing to adopt or to operate in the same battlespace with. It is important that the United States be able to convince would-be allies of both the effectiveness and the safety of its military AI.

AI and Americas Future

The revelation that China used AI to violate human rights contrasts strongly to U.S. promises to take the high road with regard to its military applications of AI. Eric Schmidt and Bob Work have declared that the United States could easily lose its leadership in AI if it does not act urgently. The leadership the United States has shown in AI ethics is commendable, but to fully be the leader it needs to be for our national security and for our prosperity, America must lead the way on safety too. The opportunity to develop AI of unrivaled precision is historic. If it can build AI that is lethal, ethical, and safe, the United States would have an edge in both future warfare and the larger climate of competition that surrounds it. Developing safer AI would once again show the world that there is no better friend and no worse enemy than the United States.

Dr. Larry Lewisis a principal research scientist at CNA, the project lead and primary author for many of DODs Joint Lessons Learned studies, and the lead analyst and coauthor (with Dr. Sarah Sewall at Harvard University) for the Joint Civilian Casualty Study (JCCS). General Petraeus described JCCS as the first comprehensive assessment of the problem of civilian protection. The opinions expressed are Dr. Lewis alone, not necessarily those of CNA or its sponsors.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

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AI Safety: Charting out the High Road - War on the Rocks

The power crisis has thrown several things into sharp relief. For once South Africans have not been totally pre-occupied and held back by feelings about the past, about apartheid, a historical sense of guilt and grievance and everything else since Jan van Riebeeck. Theres nothing like Stage 6 power cuts to focus you on the here and now and the extremely sharp question of who is responsible for this situation. Public opinion among all races is in no mood to be indulgent: it wants answers and it wants action.

The ANC and the government are extremely uncomfortable with any suggestion that twenty-five years in power means that they must be responsible for what has happened. Indeed, the situation highlights two very typical ANC traits. Throughout their period in opposition the ANC took the view that the whites, apartheid, racism, oppression etc were responsible for everything.

Even when the party took violent action it often justified it in a see what youve made me do now fashion. This evasion of responsibility also fed through into a general lack of consequences. When something went wrong it was never a mistake which was someones fault. It was, rather, a problem which must be addressed or simply a challenge which people must be encouraged to rise to. So nobody did anything.

Secondly, whenever problems arose or new events occurred, the ANC would caucus and then come out with a new line about that subject. Once such a decision or line had been reached, the party would then feel that that matter had been dealt with. One passed a resolution, required adherence to it and that was that.

It has been the same again now. Only a fortnight ago we were solemnly promised that there would be no power cuts before Christmas. When the power cuts happened all the same no one in government had anything to say. Even when Senzo Mchunu was asked whether cabinet ministers like himself also suffered power cuts, he was unwilling to answer. (The truthful answer is, of course, that great care is taken to exempt the President and his ministers from such cuts.)

As public indignation mounted Pravin Gordhan, the minister for public enterprises, tried to console the public that everything would get sorted out in a year or two. Given that the power cuts started in 2007 and that the government has already had twelve years to sort them out, this verged on effrontery. Gordhans stock is rapidly fading, the times they are a-changing.

The buck was quickly passed to Ramaphosa and, not for the first time, he had to be yanked back from his foreign travels in order to give the impression that someone was in charge. An announcement was then made that the ANC had ordered all its deployees in the power generation sector to ensure that load-shedding should stop right away, once and for all. The resolution has thus been passed, the order has been given and that deals with that. We were also told that the ANC, in its haste to pass the buck, was very angry with the Eskom board.

Ramaphosa equally swiftly tried to pass the buck by alleging that the load-shedding had been caused by sabotage, thus causing the loss of 2,000 megawatts. There were two problems with this. First, Stage 6 cuts had been caused by a loss of 6,000 megawatts so even if the President was right, this only accounted for one third of the problem.

Secondly, the President was not right. It turned out that the sabotage he had described was technically impossible and thus hadnt happened. Chess players, of course, will recognize the classic move known as the Alec Erwin Paranoid Pawn. An announcement was then made that on December 11 there would be no power cuts at all. This was a purely political pronouncement: power cuts followed immediately.

The President also announced that all leave for Eskom managers and executives was cancelled, tut-tutted that they hadnt done enough maintenance and promised the country that at least there wouldnt be any power cuts during the Christmas season. The problem with this is that in the past (for example during the World Cup) it was the government itself which forbade the carrying out of maintenance. The reason was exactly the same short term political imperative that is driving Ramaphosa now.

Meanwhile the Western Cape premier, Alan Winde, and the DA leader, John Steenhuisen, had indignantly brought up the fact that no less than seventeen applications to use independently provided (renewable) power had been sitting for some time on Gwede Mantashes desk and that he, the minister for energy, was refusing to make a decision. Mantashe immediately disclaimed all responsibility.

Of course, this is feckless behaviour. After perhaps ten years of skimping on maintenance it is ridiculous to imagine that short terms solutions can be found simply by ordering them or by taking cosmetic measures to cancel leave (as if Eskom wasnt overmanned in the first place). And there is really no point in treating cabinet ministers like Mantashe as serious people. Not long ago, after all, he was trying to bully the banks to open accounts for the Guptas. Then he went to Australia to boast about our precious reserves of an entirely fictitious mineral. He followed that up by boasting of having bribed two journalists. When this created waves he hurriedly backtracked and denied his earlier statement. Which is to say, either his first or his second statement must have been a lie.

Quite a few other ministers are no better than Mantashe. Why is this so? The reason seems to lie in the complete failure of the ANC elite to renew itself. After all, what do Mandela, Mbeki, Zuma and Ramaphosa have in common? The answer is that they were all politically prominent well before 1990. Zimbabwe, similarly, even after thirty-nine years of independence, has not got beyond the liberation generation of Mugabe and Mnangagwa. The problem seems generic to African nationalism.

It is all rather reminiscent of the frozen gerontocracy of the Soviet Union. Stalin, after all, was in at the start with Lenin. Khruschev was in Stalins government and Brezhnev was in Khruschevs government. These three men took one all the way to 1982, sixty-five years after the revolution. When at last a real new man took over (Gorbachev) the system came crashing down. Until then it was commonly asked Why are there so many octogenarians in the Politburo? To which the answer was, Because the nonagenarians keep dying off.

This failure of the ANC to renew itself is, of course, manifest too in the person of Ramaphosa. Zuma and Magashule would like to have him thrown out but they have no candidate to put up against him. After twenty-five years in power not a single leading figure has come up through the ANC, a classic sign of morbidity. True, Lindiwe Sisulu has presidential ambitions but, rather like Uhuru Kenyatta in Kenya, these depend entirely on her dynastic connection to another great of the liberation generation.

The current crisis of Eskom is only part of a more general crisis of the centralized state. Almost everything under the charge of that state is collapsing. The airline has pretty much gone, the railways are under administration, water, electricity, the road accident fund, PetroSA, the state information technology agency and Statistics SA are all on their knees. The list is actually much longer but, like an iceberg, is mainly hidden from view.

When discussion gets this far there is often talk of a taxpayers strike. This is, though, harder than it sounds. To be sure, if a hundred thousand taxpayers all announced together that they wouldnt pay tax, the state would be powerless. But in practice most people make such decisions individually. This is called tax evasion and it is individually punished.

The crisis of the central state is different precisely because those in charge of it are manifestly incapable of running it and the results are increasingly obvious to everybody. Interestingly, Africans are far less abashed than whites in saying that things were better under white rule. This is important for the state lacks almost all credibility and trust, so that its legitimacy is now very fragile.

In such a situation can it really be long before the Western Cape or some other province or one of the metropoles simply announces that it is making its own arrangements to buy power from independent power producers, with or without government permission? Of course, this would be excused by pointing to Mantashes studied indecision and to the fact that such a move would benefit other parts of the country by lessening the demand on Eskom, but it would still be an unmistakeable challenge to central power. Yet would either Mantashe or Ramaphosa really dare to say no?

How could they possibly defend doing so if province X or metropole Y is going to the wall through lack of electricity? There is no doubt, after all, that such a move would be hugely popular among all races in whichever city or province took the initiative. Protracted power failures produce a tidal wave of popular demand for alternative sources of energy, which no politician will wish to resist.

It hardly matters which city or province makes the first move because there would be ineluctable pressure for all the others to follow. And once that bridge had been crossed similar pressure would build for cities and provinces to fend for themselves in other spheres too. The result would be a sort of uncontrollable slide towards federalism, with the crucial difference that a lot of the decentralised power would flow to the cities rather than the provinces.

It is worth noting that it would probably not be difficult for e.g. Cape Town or the Western Cape (or others) to get World Bank money for a transition to renewable power with its huge savings on carbon emissions. This is, indeed, another fatal weakness of the governments management. Just as the government spent a fortune extending phone lines into rural areas when it would have been far cheaper simply to give cell phones to rural people, so the option for monstrous new coal-fired power stations now looks like a complete anachronism.

If this slide towards federalism were to happen and perhaps even if it didnt - Eskom would find itself increasingly deserted by its customers. Indeed, this process is already well under way as more and more individuals and businesses move to renewable power. The central state would then be left with responsibility for an ultimately bankrupt Eskom and, probably, quite a few more bankrupt SOEs as well.

This story ends inevitably in a bankrupt central state with the big question being what happens to its bad debts. Doubtless, city and provincial electorates would bitterly resist the idea of picking up the tab for what they would see as the fruits of government corruption and incompetence. Whichever way that argument went the larger irony would be that the ANC, having furiously resisted a stronger form of federalism, would find that its own failings had resulted in exactly that.

RW Johnson

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Stage 6 and the crisis of the central state - OPINION - Politicsweb

This summer was my third without a holiday, spent instead in legal communications with the government. In the summer of 2016, I was doing the same over Theresa Mays decision to trigger Article 50 without consulting parliament. In the summer of 2017, it was regarding what then first minister of Wales Carwyn Jones referred to as her 1 billion bung to the DUP. And this summer it was over Boris Johnsons attempt to prorogue parliament that is shut it down for five weeks and deny elected members of parliament their legal voice over Brexit.

My communication with the prime minister started on 11 July, as a warning shot, to say if rumours of his plans to close down parliament were true, this, in my view, was illegal and I would not hesitate to seek clarification from the courts. All through the summer, I received letters from the government, in which they went to great lengths to assure me they would abide by the law. So much so that there was something fishy about it. My legal team and I continued preparing the case.

The final letter from the governments legal department arrived on 27 August at 5pm, promising that I need not go to court because prime minister Johnson would not be proroguing parliament. The next morning the decision to prorogue was announced: we filed the case at 4.30pm that afternoon. Presumably they had hoped their assurances would lull us into a false sense of security and we wouldnt have time to pull a case together. Whistleblowers said the government had been given advice that our case would fail, that it was not justiciable that it would never get to the supreme court as they would be too afraid to touch it.

Others were telling me there had been discussions about the possibility of the five-week closure of parliament being extended, had I not got permission to have the case heard, or if we had lost the case. That would have allowed Johnson to push through No Deal.

We had three weeks to prepare a supreme court case, with my legal team in different countries, different time zones. To add to the drama, a normal supreme court term starts in October, and we needed the judges back in September to stand a chance of stopping Johnsons action; but most were also travelling around the globe with various commitments. As required for a verdict, we needed an odd number of judges, and thought the efficient supreme court team would manage five. At no time did we envisage as eventually happened all 11 back in time to hear our case.

When the day of judgment came and Lady Hale started to read the decision, she stated that it was unanimous; the team looked at each other in dread, thinking we had lost. It wasnt until she had neared the end of her summary that it slowly dawned on us that we had won. A unanimous judgment was extraordinary: my legal team were extraordinary. Interestingly, in the aftermath of the case, Lady Hale and I were the only ones who received a torrent of abuse. Everyone seemed to have forgotten there were 10 other judges. It was amusing that Lady Hale became famous for her spider brooch when I had been referred to as the Black Widow Spider in the past. Yet at the same time, here you had the first female president of a UK supreme court and, rather than talk about her expertise, reputation and grace, all the media could fixate on was her brooch.

It was also notable that Lady Hale was portrayed as the face of the case. I have spoken to political advisers and commentators who referred to this and asked why they thought it happened. You cant have a woman of colour beating Boris, was the general reply. There was also a fear of a backlash calling for Johnson to stand down, hence the need to underplay the significance of the case and dismiss the roles of the judges and me. Even the fuss over the brooch smacked of attempts to distract from the implications of the ruling.

The UKs top court confirmed its official live stream attracted more than 29m views over the course of the hearing, beating its previous record of roughly 520,000 views, which was from my first case. More importantly, something seemed to have shifted in the global response. Against a backdrop of courts in many different modern democracies being challenged by autocratic, rightwing politicians, legal professionals around the globe were looking to the UK to set an example in defence of democracy. We have had messages from judges around the world saying the case has steeled their resolve and given them confidence; it demonstrated that the rule of law cannot be bullied or diminished by the rise of dictatorial power-grabbing regimes.

As I tried to get into my security car, themen reached the car doors yelling: Cut her filthy tongue out

On a personal level, the abuse was much worse this time. Most notably the men standing outside the supreme court with a noose, with posters calling me a traitor, who were present throughout the entire case. I had to enter and leave each day through the throng shouting hang her, send her back home. As I quickly tried to get into my security car one day, they broke ranks, reaching the car doors and yelling: Cut her filthy tongue out. The police should never have allowed them to be there. They said it was freedom of speech, but inciting violence or making threats against me exercising my civil, lawful rights should not have been allowed. You cant hide behind freedom of speech when violence is being advocated and inciting violence is a criminal offence.

I do understand my friends and family who say, Enough, Gina. But for too long, too many politicians from across the spectrum have got away with weaponising language, with adversarial soundbites that have turned interviews and articles into propaganda rather than fact-based arguments or policy scrutiny. And I cannot stand by while that happens.

The path to a more hopeful future will be one step at a time and we need to persuade individuals, corporations and politicians to do their part. Successful societies and cultures evolve against the backdrop of their contemporary issues and I am afraid what that means for politicians is having to speak truth to power. Were not ever going to go back to the way it was before. Whatever happens, there have to be new conversations, with a new regard for honesty and what we are as a country. What are our faults, our strengths, our opportunities, our sense of identity? Our identity tends to be too closely linked to a past viewed through rose-tinted glasses, rather than the truth of who we are now; and who were likely to be in the future.

And that leads me back to the deeper, thornier issues at the heart of Brexit. Its hard to complain about the world we live in when we dont take an active part in shaping it. We all have a responsibility. That doesnt have to mean thinking in big thoughts or gestures. Its as simple as stopping to give your neighbour five minutes if theyre isolated and cant go out shopping. Speaking to someone from a different part of your community. Its a lack of empathy towards other ethnic groups and social classes that makes oppression and inequality possible.

Gina Millers Rise: Life Lessons in Speaking Out, Standing Tall & Leading the Way is published in paperback by Canongate. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com.

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Gina Miller: how I won against the government and what you can do next - The Guardian

Turkey generally feels alone regarding the situation in Jerusalem and Palestine, but will not stop defending the cause, President Recep Tayyip Erdoan vowed Monday.

"The situation in Palestine and Jerusalem is deteriorating and some Arab countries are encouraging Israeli violations. I feel like Turkey is alone on this, but we will continue to stand with the oppressed," Erdoan told a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul.

Recalling that the Jerusalem case laid the foundation of the OIC, Erdogan said that the situation in Jerusalem and Palestine is getting worse every day.

He noted that Israel's attitude, which does not recognize rights, law, justice and humanity, constantly deepens the crisis in the region against Muslims.

"We are aware that one of the reasons behind the terrorist attacks and economic sabotages we have been subjected to in recent years is our principled stance," he said, adding that Turkey will continue to stand in solidarity with the oppressed and never stop defending the rights of the Palestinians.

Israel occupied east Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. In 1980, in a move never recognized by the international community, Israel annexed the entire city, claiming it as the self-proclaimed Jewish state's "eternal and undivided" capital.

Erdoan also underlined that the imperialist approach of divide, disintegrate and rule continues in Islamic countries saying: "Muslims, who make up about one-fourth of the world's population today, do not have, unfortunately, the political influence or the economic, social or cultural prowess.

"The better we protect children, women, elderly and disabled against western threats, the more we protect our family structure," he said.

The Turkish president added that "isolated" Islamic countries are wasting their opportunities and energies.

Erdoan stressed that it was impossible to get somewhere by simply complaining or talking, arguing for the pressing need to think carefully, analyze and produce solutions to the causes of oppression felt by Muslims today.

"It is our responsibility, as Muslims, to take Islamic civilization to its rightful place," he said.

He noted that in 2018, Turkey was added to the "very high" development category for the first time, posting 0.806 value points on the human development index (HDI).

Turkey ranked 59th out of 189 countries and territories, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said in a report released Monday.

The HDI is a summary measure for assessing long-term progress in three basic dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, access to knowledge and a decent standard of living.

Erdoan later spoke at the Eighth Ministerial Conference of Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process at Dolmabahe Palace under the theme of "peace, partnership, prosperity."

In his speech, Erdoan called on the international community to boost the investments made for Afghanistan in the last 18 years as the country has been going through a sensitive period.

His speech focused on "regional cooperation" to tackle problems the South Asia region has been facing.

"I believe that the Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process is also very useful and effective in providing regional support for peace," he said.

Erdoan said while the international community was committed to its pledges to Afghanistan, it was important that the Afghan government fulfills its obligations.

"We welcome the positive steps taken by the Afghan government in the implementation of the Mutual Accountability Framework adopted in Geneva last year," Erdoan said.

He added that Turkey would do its best to eradicate the Daesh terrorist group's presence in Afghanistan.

The Heart of the Asia-Istanbul Process a regional initiative of Afghanistan and Turkey launched in 2011 has two chairs, with Afghanistan as the permanent chair, as well as a co-chair from among member states shifting each year.

"The process aims to promote regional security, economic and political cooperation centered on Afghanistan through dialogue and confidence-building measures," according to the organization's website.

Read more from the original source:

Turkey alone on Palestine but will keep supporting oppressed, Erdoan says - Daily Sabah

New Delhi: The passage of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in Parliament will mark the definitive victory of Mohammed Ali Jinnah's thinking over that of Mahatma Gandhi's, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said on Sunday, asserting that the exercise of granting citizenship on the basis of religion will reduce India to a "Hindutva version of Pakistan".

The former Union minister also alleged that the BJP government wants to single out "one community" and refuses to grant its members asylum from oppression on the same conditions as other communities.

In an interview to PTI, Tharoor said even if the bill is passed by both the Houses of Parliament, he is confident that no bench of the Supreme Court will allow such a "blatant violation" of the fundamental tenets of India's Constitution to go unchecked.

"It is a shameless performance by a government which as recently as last year, refused to entertain any discussion on developing a National Asylum policy, which I had proposed in a Private Members Bill and shared personally with the then home minister, his MoSes and his home secretary," Tharoor said.

Suddenly, they are going the extra mile in granting citizenship to refugees, whereas in reality, they don't even want to take the basic steps as required under international law to improve the determination of refugee status or ensure decent treatment of refugees, he alleged.

"All of this makes it abundantly clear that this is merely a cynical political exercise to further single out and disenfranchise an entire community in India and in doing so, a betrayal of all that was good and noble about our civilization. It will reduce us to a Hindutva version of Pakistan," Tharoor asserted.

Asked about the Congress' stand on the Bill, he said, "Though I am not an official spokesperson for the party, I do believe that all of us in the Congress are clear that the Citizenship Amendment Bill is not just an affront to the basic tenets of equality and religious non-discrimination that have been enshrined in Article 14 and 15 of our Constitution, but an all-out assault on the very idea of India."

India's freedom movement split on the issue of whether religion should be the determinant of nationhood and those who believed in that principle were the ones who advocated the idea of Pakistan, he said.

"Mahatma Gandhi, (Jawaharlal) Nehru, Maulana (Abul Kalam) Azad, Dr Ambedkar believed the opposite, that religion had nothing to do with nationhood. Theirs was the idea of India and they created a free country for all people of all religions, regions, castes and languages," Tharoor said.

The Constitution reflects this basic idea of India which the BJP now seeks to betray, he alleged.

Asked about the contention that religion cannot be the basis of citizenship, he said the BJP has paved the way for Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah's idea of a nationwhere religion would be intrinsic to nationhoodto take root in India and in doing so, dismember the idea of India that Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Azad, Ambedkar and their contemporaries fought for.

"The passage of this Bill will mark the definitive victory of Jinnah's thinking over Mahatma Gandhi's. How ironic that it should be the stridently chauvinistic BJP that ensures the final vindication of Mohammad Ali Jinnah," the 63-year-old MP from Thiruvananthapuram said.

He said the Bill also goes against the historic legacy that Hindus were proud to lay claim to.

"Swami Vivekananda had famously told the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 that he was proud to speak for a land that has always offered refuge to the persecuted of all nations and faiths," he said.

"We lived up to Vivekananda's values in giving shelter to Tibetan refugees, the Bahai community, Sri Lankan Tamils, and 10 million Bangladeshis the largest refugee exodus in human history without ever asking about their religion," he said.

Referring to the Muslims, he said the BJP government wants to single out one community and refuses to grant it asylum from oppression on the same conditions as other communities.

They are also ensuring that members of the same community within India will be subject to a climate of fear and oppression that will get worse in the wake of this exercise, he claimed.

The contentious Citizenship (Amendment) Bill that seeks to grant citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan if they faced religious persecution there is likely to be introduced in Lok Sabha on December 9

On the prospects of the Bill in Parliament, Tharoor said despite the majority that the ruling party currently enjoys, he is confident that the Opposition, including some parties that may have normally been sympathetic to the BJP but disagree with the proposed Bill, will come together and offer the strongest possible resistance in both Houses.

"The BJP may be able to bulldoze the legislation through the Lok Sabha but in the Rajya Sabha they are likely to face a sterner test since they don't enjoy the same absolute majority there," he said.

This Bill would not just alienate an entire community based on faith, it would completely ignore all other forms of persecution -- on the basis of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political opinion, he claimed.

It would create a climate of hatred and discrimination against one community, Tharoor said.

The Congress is in favour of India offering shelter and even citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries, but not to specifying of their religious affiliations, he said, claiming that the Bill is an "assault on the very soul of India".

Asked about a National Register of Citizens (NRC) nationwide as proposed by the BJP, he claimed there is tremendous opposition to the idea because in practice it will cause enormous social upheaval.

"I have already personally received hundreds of messages and emails from many, even Bengali Hindus who have been in Assam for generations, who are worried that they could soon be the target of hate crimes should the bill be cleared," he said.

The Congress had first proposed an NRC in Assam to fulfil the terms of the Assam Accord, but now both the Congress and the BJP have found it a deeply flawed exercise, he said.

"Can you imagine the same flaws replicated on a national scale? If the government carries out an all India NRC, millions of people born and raised here, who know no other home, will get excluded as many won't be able to 'prove' their citizenship," Tharoor said.

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.

Originally posted here:

Passage of CAB will mark victory of Jinnah's thinking over Gandhi's: Tharoor - Livemint

Jacobs Ladder: The Unauthorised Biography of Jacob Rees-Moggby michael ashcroft biteback, 352 pages, 20

On February 2, 2018, seven members of a group called Bristol Antifascists assembled outside a lecture hall at the University of the West of England in Bristol. They donned balaclavas or dark glasses, according to taste, and entered through the double doors at the back of the hall. No platform for homophobes! they shouted. No platform for sexists! While the audience looked embarrassed or got out their phones, the target of these insults strode up the steps of the lecture hall to greet the intruders. Jacob Rees-Mogg looked, as he often does, like a man trying to be reasonable in the middle of a maelstrom. As the protesters jabbed their fingers at him and continued to shout, the Member of Parliament for North East Somerset listened politely, his six-foot-two frame leaning gently toward them, and made his own suggestionssadly inaudible on the video of the event. After a brief exchange, most of the Antifascists gave up and retreated through the double doors. But one carried on yelling, until another audience member approached and threw an unsuccessful punch. Whereupon Rees-Mogg jumped between them and, for once, raised his voice. Ladies and gentlemen! he cried out to the room, which by now was on its feet. Please calm down!

Asked by a reporter afterward whether he had felt in danger, Rees-Mogg smiled and shook his head. Theyre British, he explained. They disapprove of everything I stand for, but theyre good, honest British citizens. They werent going to hit me. It was a typical statement, almost ludicrous in its politeness. But Rees-Mogg has always seemed immune to ridicule: With his period-drama vowels, his old-fashioned spectacles and haircut, and what one interviewer called his faultless ancien rgime courtesy, he represents a species of upper-class Englishman previously rumored to be extinct. He also happens to be the best-known Catholic in British public life, and his career exemplifies the successes and failures of Christian witness in contemporary British politics.

Since becoming a Member of Parliament in 2010, Rees-Mogg has emerged, as Michael Ashcroft puts it in his well-researched biography, as one of the best-known public figures, not just one of the highest-profile politicians, in Britain. That is thanks, in part, to the all-consuming Brexit debate: Since 2016, Rees-Mogg has emerged as a semi-official leader for those Conservative MPs who want the sharpest possible break with the E.U. But his popularity, the phenomenon known as Moggmania, owes less to Rees-Moggs politics than to his character: his eccentricities, his obvious love of the English language, his adherence to his principles, and his faith in human decency. Even when his opponents are yelling in his face, Rees-Mogg just wants to have a chat with them.

The trouble with having faith in human decency is that there are some indecent characters out there. In 2012, Rees-Mogg told parliament that the free market helps to protect workers: Companies that treat their employees well, he explained, tend to be more profitable and successful. Rees-Mogg pointed to Hon Hai, the gigantic manufacturing firm that supplies companies such as Apple and Amazon. Hon Hai, Rees-Mogg enthused, provides an almost governmental style of welfare for its workers, because it is in its own interests to do so.

Anyone hearing this panegyric and rushing to find out how tenderly Hon Hai treats its employees would have discovered that in 2010, thirteen workers at its Chinese factories had committed suicide. That prompted an inquiry wherein twenty universities interviewed 1,800 employees. The resulting report described Hon Hai as a labor camp that regularly broke safety and overtime laws; 13 percent of interviewees said they had fainted on the assembly line. Two years later, one hundred fifty workers stood on a ledge threatening mass suicide unless Hon Hais management did something about working conditions. An audit and various reforms followed; nevertheless, last year a nine-month probe by China Labor Watch concluded that huge profits were being made from workers who labor in appalling working conditions and have no choice but to work excessive overtime hours to sustain a livelihood.

To Rees-Moggs critics, he is a privileged man who defends the strong against the weak. And there is no denying that he was born to the Establishment: The son of the editor of the London Times, Rees-Mogg was educated at Eton and Oxford. He was playing the stock market from an early age and, as Ashcroft shows, with an unnerving single-mindedness. Thanks to his investment career and his wifes inherited fortune, the Rees-Moggs combined wealth is conservatively estimated at 70 million.

Yet to caricature Rees-Mogg as a callous apologist for the rich and powerful would be to ignore at least one glaring fact. While the most vulnerable people in Britain, more than five hundred and fifty of them every day, are being destroyed by pills, forceps, and vacuum machines, almost the entire political class keeps silent. Rees-Mogg does not. Im completely opposed to abortion, he told an interviewer in 2017 on a much-watched breakfast TV program. In all circumstances? Yes I am. Even in cases of rape? Im afraid so. Life is sacrosanct and begins at the point of conception and I think it is wrong. It was Rees-Moggs finest hour. In the same interview he opposed same-sex marriage, explaining that for him, The teaching of the Church in matters of faith and morals is authoritative. At the risk of his political advancement, Rees-Mogg said without ambiguity that he believes what the Church asks him to believe.

The interview is, however, unrepresentative of Rees-Moggs political career. The defenses of marriage and the family, of the unborn child, and of the freedom to hold Catholic beliefs have been his occasional hobbies rather than his frequent themes. This is not for lack of opportunity. Since the Conservatives took office in 2010, they have introduced same-sex marriage; reformed the welfare system to take away incentives for marriage, and to penalize poorer couples who have more than two children; smoothed the path to divorce; and used money and power abroad to support gay marriage and abortion. This year, the party has expanded the reach of sex education: When parents at one school protested against teaching seven-year-olds about transgender identity, government ministers expressed sympathy with the school, not with the parents. The Conservatives latest project has been to force abortion and same-sex marriage on Northern Ireland. How can Rees-Mogg survive in such a party? Simply put, because none of these matters affect his chief political mission. He is, almost supremely among modern British politicians, a champion of the deregulated marketplace.

Rees-Mogg is, for instance, wary of anti-lobbying rules, which he thinks should be as minimalist as possible. He is skeptical about regulating tobacco packaging, which would involve taking away a freedom from the British people. He declares himself against energy subsidies, preferring a proper free market. Nor should the government bail out bankrupt companies to whom it has outsourced public services, as the market will sort it out. In 2013 it was proposed, as a partial solution to Britains housing crisis, that landlords should be registered and required to make written agreements with tenants. Rees-Mogg declared himself fundamentally opposed to the billnot just on practical grounds, but because it was an attack on the rights of property and on the free market. In any case, competition is a much better curer of ills than state regulation. In his suspicion of the state, Rees-Mogg is an heir of the prime minister he refers to as the great, almost divine Margaret Thatcher. Decades ago, one of his teachers wrote in a school report: Even though Im a great Thatcherite, Rees-Mogg seems to be a particularly dogmatic one. The child is father of the man.

At heart, Rees-Mogg is an individualist. The great virtue of Toryism, he has said, is focusing on the individual. His father William, whom Rees-Mogg calls his greatest professional influence, once co-wrote a tract titled The Sovereign Individual. It predicts that the brightest, most successful and ambitious individuals will one day have their abilities unleashed, freed from . . . the oppression of government. The younger Rees-Mogg does not go that far; nevertheless, he suggests that Conservatives . . . basically believe that people should make decisions over their own lives, that they should be as free as possible to do that.

It is interesting to compare Rees-Mogg with the Conservative MP Christopher Hollis (19021977), like Rees-Mogg a product of Eton and Oxford and an old-fashioned, cricket-loving, deeply patriotic Somerset man. For Hollis, the natural role of the Tory party was to battle against wealthy vested interestsnor indeed was there any dispute about that, he once wrote, until in this century the Conservative party was invaded by the battalions of big business. Hollis represented a strain of anti-capitalist English Catholicism which peaked in the first half of the twentieth century. Thus, G. K. Chesterton argued that what destroyed the Family in the modern world was Capitalism, while Christopher Dawson described it as the Churchs most dangerous enemy.

For these writers, free-market capitalism had brought about the mistreatment of the poor; the increased power of the elite to reshape family life; the chaos of competition that disturbed the ordinary workings of a healthy society; and the exclusion of Christian moral principles from the marketplace, which rapidly led to their exclusion everywhere else. One tragedy of English history was that the nations institutions had done so much to develop capitalism at home and abroad. The gentlemen of England, Hollis wrote, were in the heyday of their power the trickiest and most rapacious class ever known among men. Such a view came especially easily to Catholics, who could blame the rise of capitalism on the individualism fostered by the Reformation.

For Rees-Mogg, by contrast, English history is one long success story. You might expect a Catholic to deplore Henry VIIIs 1533 Act in Restraint of Appeals, a decisive moment in the severing of the English Church from Rome. Yet for Rees-Mogg, it was a splendid example of national independence: We had the confidence to be a nation standing on our own two feet.

Similarly, Rees-Mogg has described the nineteenth century as one of the finest ages in British history, when most employers were benevolent, kindly, good and not out of a Dickens novel. Such a statement is impossible to prove or disprove. It tells us less about the nineteenth century than about the mind of Jacob Rees-Mogg and its impermeable belief that the world is a decent place where people are essentially nice to each other. No doubt this kindly view stems partly from Rees-Moggs own evident niceness. I have never met Rees-Mogg, but the London Catholic world is small enough that you hear stories, and I can say this: If the test of kindness is doing good to those who cant possibly repay you, then he is an unusually kind man. In public life, too, he is a serial turner of the other cheek. Told by a protester at the Tory party conference to F*** off and die, Rees-Mogg replied: And if I do, will you please pray for my immortal soul?

But just as he is reluctant to think ill of his fellow man, so Rees-Mogg has trouble seeing any problems with the global economic system. In 2017, it was reported that the investment firm he co-founded, Somerset Capital Management, had a 5 million stake in an Indonesian firm that makes ulcer pills. These pills have an abortifacient effect, in a country where there are around two million illegal abortions a year. Rees-Mogg explained that he didnt make investment decisions, that he profited from this stake only in a roundabout way, and that the world is not always what you want it to be. Might there not be a fundamental sickness in a system that deals death at one end and tasty profits at the other, and in which nothing seems to be anybodys direct responsibility? The question seemed not to have crossed his mind.

In May, Rees-Mogg published his first book, a collection of biographical essays titled The Victorians. The reviews were, as the author sportingly acknowledged, terrible. Even those critics who had no political animus against Rees-Mogg were dismayed by the books ungainly prose and its complacent tone. Rees-Mogg commends the Victorians for their British virtues of fair play, etiquette and gentlemanly behaviour. Unlike our tiresomely censorious age, he says, the Victorians celebrated business success and championed free trade. They also built an empire, which Rees-Mogg praised in terms most reviewers found repellent.

But the critics overlooked the books internal tensions. Some of the figures Rees-Mogg admires are clearly not Rees-Moggians. There are Disraeli and the older Peel, who used the power of the state to regulate the market in labor and housing. There is General Napier, a critic of capitalist modernity (Rees-Moggs phrase) who described the British presence in India as a bloodthirsty campaign with no motive other than greed. And there is the architect Pugin, who yearned for a Catholic social order in which the poor would be supported in body and soul rather than crammed into the nightmarish cities of nineteenth-century industrial Britain. Rees-Mogg hints that all these figures were in some way impractical dreamers, but he writes of them with a note of sympathy. It almost makes you wonder whether we could one day see the emergence of Jacob Rees-Mogg the radical. Stranger things have happened in the lives of men of prayer.

Dan Hitchens is deputy editor at the Catholic Herald.

Photo by Chris McAndrew via Creative Commons.

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The Individualist by Dan Hitchens | Articles - First Things

As the Democratic primary elections get closer, the party leadership has begun to fret in public about universal health care and other ambitious proposals. Even former President Barack Obama tried to assuage donors fears in November when he said that the average American doesnt think we need to tear down the system and remake it. His comment captured the essence of tensions that have roiled the party for months. Party elites believe focusing squarely on President Trumps record will end his presidency, while others counter that the Democrats also have to champion bold policies.

The surprising resilience of the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont vindicates the latter approach. Mr. Sanderss improbable rise to Democratic front-runner began in 2015 when he organized his campaign for president around a redistributive agenda of universal health care and free college, along with a number of other progressive reforms. Party insiders dismissed this as fanciful and out of touch, but Mr. Sanders aggressively challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination while picking up 13 million votes.

Mr. Sanders has not diluted his message since then, but has instead recommitted to his promises of big government socialist reforms all the while pulling other candidates to his side. Although Mr. Sanders grows in popularity, neither the Democratic Party establishment nor the mainstream media really understand his campaign. Thats because it disregards conventional wisdom in politics today tax cuts for the elite and corporations and public-private partnerships to finance health care, education, housing and other public services.

After months of predictions of its premature end, Bernie Sanderss improbable run continues its forward movement. In October, pundits and other election experts suggested that perhaps Mr. Sanders should leave the race and throw his support to Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, in the wake of her rising poll numbers and his heart attack. But doubts quickly gave way to excitement when Mr. Sanders captured the coveted endorsement of Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. She was soon joined by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

The spirited endorsements of three-quarters of the so-called squad illustrates how Mr. Sanderss campaign has grown from 2016 when it was criticized for being too white, too male and for underestimating the salience of race and gender oppression. Some of that criticism was overstated. Indeed Mr. Sanders won 52 percent of the black millennial vote in 2016 and was supported by Black Lives Matter activists like Erica Garner, who passed away in 2017. But Mr. Sanders took the criticisms seriously anyway.

Much of the media, though, has been stuck in 2016 and has missed the ways that the Sanders campaign has transformed into a tribune of the oppressed and marginalized. We can also measure this change in the endorsement of Philip Agnew, the former head of the Florida-based Dream Defenders and a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement who has become a campaign surrogate. As well as the endorsement of the Center for Popular Democracy Action on Tuesday, a powerful coalition of more than 40 progressive community groups which will now rally their 600,000 members across the country to organize voters in support of Mr. Sanders. These developments defy the caricature of his campaign as impossibly sexist and implicitly racist.

Instead, Mr. Sanders has reached the typically invisible, downwardly mobile working class with his language of class warfare. He has tapped into the anger and bitterness coursing through the lives of regular people who have found it increasingly impossible to make ends meet in this grossly unequal society. Without cynicism or the typical racist explanations that blame African-Americans and Latino immigrants for their own financial hardship, Mr. Sanders blames capitalism. His demands for a redistribution of wealth from the top to the rest of society and universal, government-backed programs have resonated with the forgotten residents of the country.

Since Mr. Trumps election, class, when its discussed at all, has been invoked for its hazy power to chart Mr. Trumps rise and potential fall. Recall the endless analyses of poor and working-class white voters shortly after his election and the few examinations of poor and working-class people of color. But the Sanders campaign has become a powerful platform to amplify the experiences of this multiracial contingent.

Under normal circumstances, the multiracial working class is invisible. This has meant its support for Mr. Sanderss candidacy has been hard to register in the mainstream coverage of the Democratic race. But these voters are crucial to understanding the resilience of the Sanders campaign, which has been fueled by small dollar donations from more than one million people, a feat none of his opponents has matched. Remarkably, he also has at least 130,000 recurring donors, some of whom make monthly contributions.

Adding to that, Mr. Sanders is the top recipient for donations by teachers, farmers, servers, social workers, retail workers, construction workers, truckers, nurses and drivers as of September. He claims that his donors most common employers are Starbucks, Amazon and Walmart, and the most common profession is teaching. Mr. Sanders is also the leading recipient of donations from Latinos as well as the most popular Democrat among registered Latinos who plan to vote in the Nevada and California primaries. According to Essence magazine, Mr. Sanders is the favorite candidate among black women aged 18 to 34. Only 49 percent of his supporters are white, compared with 71 percent of Warren supporters. Perhaps most surprising, more women under 45 support him than men under 45.

Mr. Sanderss popularity among these voters may be what alienates him within the political establishment and mainstream media. The leadership of the Democratic Party regularly preaches that moderation and pragmatism can appeal to centrist Democrats as well as Republicans skeptical of Mr. Trump. It is remarkable that this strategy still has legs after its spectacular failure for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Mrs. Clintons rejoinder to Mr. Trump that America never stopped being great was tone deaf to millions of ordinary Americans struggling with debt, police brutality and pervasive inequality. Simply focusing on the boorishness of Mr. Trump or offering watered-down versions of what has made Mr. Sanders a household name will not motivate those who do not typically vote or angry voters who recoil at the cynicism of calculating politicians.

In many respects, Bernie Sanderss standing in the Democratic Party field is shocking. After all, the United States government spent more than half of the 20th century locked in a Cold War against Soviet Communism. That an open and proud socialist is tied with Ms. Warren for second place in the race speaks to the mounting failures of free market capitalism to produce a decent life for a growing number of people. There was a time in America when being called a socialist could end a political career, but Bernie Sanders may ride that label all the way to the White House.

This essay has been updated to reflect news developments.

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Dont Think Sanders Can Win? You Dont Understand His Campaign - The New York Times

Editors Note: This article was selected by the McGill International Review as the winner of the Secondary Schools United Nations Symposium annual essay competition.

Since 2002, the number of democratic countries has outgrown the number of autocratic nations. While this is a marked improvement from the early 1900s when there were only a handful of democracies there is still much room for progress. Even in countries that are currently democratic, long histories of totalitarianism and oppression stain the opportunities available to citizens. The economic and social inequality that still afflicts many democratic nations must be eliminated for those nations to truly be free and fair for all their citizens. Solving these disparities makes economic sense and will benefit both society and individuals.

First, consider economic inequality and how it works with a free-market approach to managing the economy. The Chicago School of Economics, which was most prominent between the 1950s and 1980s, is widely credited with advancing neoliberal policies near the end of the 20th century. Neoliberalism places its full faith in the free market, stating a belief in sustained economic growth as the means to achieve human progress. While it may appear that free markets function in the best interest of society, that is not always the case, especially when one considers its effects on poor or unskilled workers.

The nation of Chile is perhaps one of the best case studies on the effects that free markets have on income inequality. From the late 1930s to the early 1970s, Chile made a variety of inequality-reducing economic reforms spearheaded by democratically-elected socialists like Salvador Allende and others. In 1973 Allende was overthrown by the brutal dictator General Pinochet, who implemented some of the economic ideas encouraged by the Chicago School, meant to bring Chile closer to a free market system. As a result, income inequality in Chile reached a forty-year peak. This sizable income gap remains even today, with Chile boasting the 23rd largest income gap in the world. This is problematic and reduces the fairness of the free market. Though countries with a vast degree of income inequality have many more poor workers than rich ones, the less wealthy workers still do not have the buying power to sway a free market in their favour. As a result, the wealthiest people are free to accumulate more wealth while the rest remain stuck in a cycle of poverty.

At first glance, income inequality may not seem to impose tangible limits on a citizens freedom. With further consideration, though, it becomes clear that economic struggles do limit free choices. A government might not directly coerce a poor university student into working long hours on top of their studies. But the United States government, for example, is still effectively forcing students to do that by threatening to eliminate their food stamp benefits unless they also work 20 hours a week. Students whose wealthier parents have the funds to send them money may not need to work at all, allowing those students more time to focus on their studies. This is inherently biased against the poor and upholds the cycle of wealth inequality: students who have more time to study can be more successful in school, get better jobs after graduation, then be better able to support their children financially.

Rates of economic inequality are also heavily affected by discrimination and prejudice. In the United States, the average black family has only 10 percent of the wealth of the average white family. This racial gap has persisted despite significant strides in civil rights, as there simply are not enough ways to escape the trap of poverty that slavery and discrimination forced many black families into. In fact, areas where slavery was most prevalent and hence, where upward economic mobility would be most helpful for the ancestors of emancipated slaves have the lowest rates of upward mobility today. People of colour and other marginalized groups have more than just financial concerns, however. In 2017, over 8,000 Americans were victims of hate crimes, with the most significant motivations being race, religion, and sexual orientation. If you arent free to live your life without harassment because of your appearance or identity, you arent truly free. Additionally, Hispanic and black people are also disproportionately likely to be the victims of forced searches by law enforcement officers another obvious infringement of personal freedom. Black Americans, for example, are five times as likely as white Americans to have their car searched following a traffic stop, even though contraband is found in their cars at the lowest rate of any racial group. This is unacceptable. Besides the gross injustice of these practices, its a waste of law enforcement time, money, and effort to focus on scrutinizing those that do the least wrong.

Reducing income and social inequality comes with legitimate economic benefits. Nations with higher rates of income inequality experience rates of economic growth that are significantly lower. Besides, if the free market is really going to accurately represent the wants of consumers, more money should be dispersed through the hands of more people. That way, the general populace would have greaterbuying power, leading the economy to allocate its priorities in a way that benefits more people. As for social inequality, there are economic benefits, as well. Reducing the racial wealth gap and eliminating residential segregation whether that segregation is due to race or income increases economic mobility. In order to reap these economic rewards, governments must take a more substantial role in assisting their less privileged citizens through tax reforms, more substantial governmental housing support for poorer families, and improvements to the education system. The efficient allocation of resources can be achieved at a level that is more socially optimal when economic and social inequality is reduced.

It is evident that reducing inequality can lead to many social and economic benefits. The many inequalities that plague our world today must therefore be reduced in order to ensure a fairer world and economy for everyone. Even when a nation achieves democracy, the fight for freedom is not over. Each countrys history shapes its present, and each familys history and heritage shapes its current economic status. As such, it is critical that nations consider the injustices of the past when forming economic policies in the present.

Featured photo courtesy of Tom ParsonsonUnsplash.

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The Role of Governments in Reducing Inequality - The McGill International Review

Fearful of the potential for unlimited, arbitrary or tyrannical exercise of power by an unprincipled president, the Constitutions authors allowed Congress to remove a president before the completion of his term if a sufficient number of lawmakers concluded that the president had committed Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

This was intended to address a dilemma at the core of American national security. The founders were concerned that an insufficiently powerful executive would be unable to vigorously defend the nation. But they also feared that an unchecked executive could undermine national security and civil liberties alike if he decided to place his own interests above those of the nation. The Constitutions framers therefore sought to find a safety feature for cases of extreme abuse of power that, nevertheless, did not unduly impede, paralyze or disable the nations security. Impeachment was their solution.

One of the most significant yet underappreciated lessons of the history of impeachment is that it was intended as a tool to strengthen the nations securityspecifically to chart a middle path between an unlimited and unaccountable presidency and one that was insufficiently powerful to protect the nation.

***

Impeachment originated in England as a method to hold royal officials to account for their public actionsalthough at that time it was restricted to officials and not to the king. Intended to curtail monarchical absolutism and replace it with parliamentary oversight, impeachment subjected royal officials to trial for public offenses. This included certain high treasons and offenses and misprisions, a phrase that appeared as early as 1386, although the precise term high crimes and misdemeanors did not appear until 1642. Moreover, according to the British model, officials convicted of impeachment were subject to a range of punishments including fines, imprisonment and the possibility of execution. The practice traveled across the Atlantic in the 17th century and found use in the American colonies as early as 1635. Because the English framework excluded the king from accountability, Americas founders determined that they needed to modify the English practice so as to prevent both the abuses of royal tyranny and the chaos engendered by weak central government.

To the early Americans who had fought a war against monarchy, the accumulation and arbitrary use of power were dangerous. As the historian Jeffrey Engel has written, the central question of their entire era was what form of government could therefore be entrusted with the power it required, without simultaneously employing that power to undermine liberty? More specifically, in whose hands could such power possibly be trusted? The answer they came up with was a mixed government consisting of executive, legislative and judicial branches, where the executive would exercise power but would also be dependent on, and constrained by, the other branches. Impeachment became one of the necessary toolsperhaps the central toolto constrain the president. In this reading, impeachment became central not only to the U.S. Constitution but to the American idea of libertyand was intended as a safeguard against the despotic accumulation and use of power by a president.

This argument was subsequently expanded by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers. In several essays discussing the powers of, and constraints on, the president, Hamilton argued in favor of a powerful and energetic executive, positing that it was not the same thing as absolute monarchy because there were multiple restraints on a presidents power, including institutionalized checks and balances between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government; regular elections; and, as a last line of defense, impeachment. In many ways, the ability to empower while simultaneously constrain was the central dilemma the Constitutions drafters faced. Nowhere could this be seen as clearly as in the debates surrounding the presidency and Congresss powers of impeachment.

The Constitution gave sole powers of impeachmentthe right to lay down a formal accusation or chargeto the House of Representatives and stipulated that, while the chief justice would preside at the trial, it was the Senate that would sit as both judge and jury, trying the accused. Presidents and other civil officials including federal judges could be impeached, and impeachable offenses were enumerated and limited to Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. While the Constitution remains silent on the legal standards for the process by which a president should be tried, or the standard of proof required for removal from office, it explicitly states that conviction and removal requires a two-thirds vote, and the only punishments available are removal and disqualification from holding office ever again. Other punishments were possible, but only after the charged party had been removed from office.

Examining the debates surrounding these clauses is especially revealing, as it explains not only what ended up in the Constitution but also the logic and intent behind those words as well as the ideas that were rejected.

The first question taken up at the Constitutional Convention was whether impeachment was even necessary. Werent regular elections enough of a check on a presidents behavior? Rufus King of Massachusetts pointed out that elections meant that the president would periodically be tried for his behaviour by his electors. Moreover, wouldnt placing the presidents fate in the hands of the legislature place the president in a subservient position to the legislative branch?

Both of these opinions were decisively rejected. Fears that impeachment would render a president impotent or subservient to Congress were mitigated by setting a high standard for what constituted an impeachable offense and by making conviction require a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Such a combination meant that impeachment would be exceedingly rare.

The framers also found elections a necessary but ultimately insufficient safeguard for preventing the country from succumbing to an authoritarian leader. What was the practice before this in cases where the chief Magistrate rendered himself obnoxious? Benjamin Franklin asked before answering his own question: Why recourse was had to assassination. That was an outcome they clearly wanted to avoid. So, too, according to Edmund Randolph, were tumults & insurrections. Instead, they settled on making the president accountable and giving the legislative branch the legal mechanism to remove him from office. These debates reveal fears that republican government was vulnerable to a president with authoritarian instincts. They also underscore concerns that, without a mechanism for the safe and lawful removal of the president, the nations stability was likely to suffer.

No point is of more importance that the right of impeachment, George Mason argued, asking his fellow delegates, Shall any man be above Justice? James Madison agreed that it was indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the Community [against] the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate. The limitation of the period of his service, was not a sufficient safeguard. That was especially true as the president might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers.

Here was the rationale for providing an extra check on presidential wrongdoing and an enumeration of what types of actionsincapacity, negligence, treason, corruption or oppressionshould lead to impeachment. But this list was deemed too ambiguous, especially when the ill-defined maladministration was added to the mix. This had to be narrowed, and Gouverneur Morris argued that any charges of impeachment ought to be enumerated and defined.

The framers settled on Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. The first two were clear enough from a definitional perspective, but the Constitutions framers found them not sufficiently broad to serve as a sufficient safeguard. For them, criminality was neither necessary nor sufficient, even if it made the case clearer and more comfortable. The Constitutional debates reveal that the addition of high Crimes and Misdemeanors was key as it signified the framers belief that an impeachable offense need not be a crime at all. Borrowing this phrase from previous British legal practice, the Constitutions authors reasoned that there were many great and dangerous offenses that would not necessarily meet the precise definitions of either treason or bribery but that nevertheless would constitute an egregious abuse of power, an imperiling of national security or a betrayal of national trust.

Even if precise definitions remain elusive for high Crimes and Misdemeanors, British legal history, the deliberations at the Constitutional Convention and the subsequent ratification debates imply that such offenses were understood by the Constitutions writers as profound political crimes committed against the state with grievous implications for the proper functioning of the countrys democratic processes. Presidents ought to be removable, not for general and vague reasons, but rather for specific abuses of the public trust. While the process would likely prove highly destabilizing and leave lasting scars on the country, it was also deemed necessary.

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History suggests several conclusions about the intended use of impeachment, the parameters that have been drawn around its employment and the elasticity it was intentionally given.

First, the Constitution was designed as a delicate, deliberate balancing act. It was meant to balance the powers of the various branches of government, federal and state authorities, and, at a more abstract level, the occasionally conflicting demands of liberty and order. Striking the right balance was the challenge that the Constitutions framers faced, and nowhere was it more acute than in the office of the presidency. Rendering the executive too powerful would give it the capabilities to suppress individual liberties and subvert democratic government. But leaving it too weak, or too dependent on Congress, would rob it of the necessary vigor to enforce the laws, keep good order and stave off chaos. Perhaps the central question of the Constitutional Convention was how to strike the right balance between too enfeebled and too powerful a president.

The men who gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 did so with the intention of restoring that balance. Americans had rejected monarchy in their war for independence but experienced disunity and disorder in the period after independence. Their lived experience had convinced many of the countrys leading political figures that the federal government required strengthening. In practice, this would mean endowing the executive branch with enhanced capabilities and broadened powers.

That, however, was not the same thing as a blank check. Hamilton, generally regarded as one of the most forceful advocates for a vigorous government, argued for empowering the executive branch. But he consistently tempered those calls with analysis of why the American presidency differed from the British monarchy. The main points of differentiation were oversight and punishment.

Second, the American Revolution had been justified as a fight against unlimited, arbitrary and unaccountable abuse of power by a remote king. Without sufficient safeguards, any exercise of power was likely to lead to a similar end. The first man put at the helm will be a good one, Franklin commented at the Constitutional Convention. That was not the issue, because all present in Philadelphia suspected, rightly, that George Washington would become the first president. The question was what would happen in the future as, Franklin observed, No body knows what sort may come afterwards. In the worst case, the Constitutions authors fretted that men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister design, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means obtain high office and betray the public trust.

To safeguard against an excessively ambitious individual putting his personal or political interests above those of the nation, they deliberately sought institutional mechanisms to constrain an individual with authoritarian, treasonous or corrupt impulses. Divided government where the various branches competed with, and intruded into each others spheres, was the first line of defense against such a power grab. Regular elections were another. But the Constitutional Convention debates reveal that neither of these was deemed sufficiently robust in the case of an individual bent on subverting democratic processes or undermining the nations security. Impeachment was the constitutionally prescribed response for how best to protect the nation when neither checks and balances nor regular elections proved sufficient.

A look at the constitutional debates also reveals that impeachment was not intended as a punishment but, rather, as a vital protection intended to remove a president whose continuance in office would likely result in further damage to the country. Whereas the British had allowed for the punishment of officials, the American practice did not make any stipulations beyond removal from officeand leaving open the potential for future prosecution. Impeachment was intended as a rare but necessary safeguard to the security and proper functioning of the nations democratic processes. Its intent was defensive, which required expeditious removal of the president from office, lest he repeat actions deemed gravely harmful to the proper functioning of the state. Charles Black, the constitutional law scholar and author of the authoritative 1974 essay on impeachment, observed that we could punish a traitorous or corrupt president after his term expired; we remove him principally because we fear he will do it again, or because a traitor or taker of a bribe is not thinkable as a national leader. In the absence of a constitutionally prescribed remedy, efforts to remove such individuals from power were likely to be highly violentas Americas recent history of revolution against England underscored.

Moreover, just because the Constitution prescribed a legal mechanism from removing a president from office did not mean that impeachment would be stabilizing. As Hamilton foresaw more than two centuries ago, impeachment will agitate the passions of the whole community and connect to pre-existing factions, and the outcome will be determined less by real demonstrations of innocence or guilt and more by the competitive strength of the parties. It is precisely because of the contested nature and depth of the alleged harm done that impeachment has always been a ferociously partisan and highly divisive affair.

Yet, despite knowing that impeachment would likely prove destabilizing, the Constitutions framers nonetheless incorporated impeachment into the U.S. Constitution as a necessary defense of the nations institutions and values against an unprincipled and unrestrained individual. Impeachment was intended not just as a remedy of last resort but also one that should be considered only in rare cases where presidential actions were deemed harmful to American society. James Iredell, later a Supreme Court justice, argued at the North Carolina ratification debates that the occasion for its exercise will arise from acts of great injury to the whole community. This was very much in keeping with the definition of high Crimes, as understood by the founding generation. William Blackstone, the leading British legal scholar of the late 18th century, wrote in 1792 that such wrongs were a breach and violation of the public rights and duties and strike at the very being of society. Such offenses were understood by the Constitutions writers as assaults on civil order and governance itself.

Because impeachment levels such a grave charge, it was intended to be both political and public. This was intentional. Neither the Constitution, nor the proper functioning of the countrys democratic process, nor the nations sovereignty could survive sustained assaults in the absence of vocal and vigorous defenders.

Ultimately, the Constitution left it to the judgment of the House and the Senate to determine when, in the words of Hamilton, the abuse or violation of some public trust amounted to injuries done immediately to the society itself and required removing the president from office, lest his continued occupation of the presidency do further damage.

Excerpt from:

Impeachment as National Security: The Framers' Intentions - Lawfare