Category Archives: Liberal

People take part in a pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong on Sept. 29. Adryel Talamantes/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Its become fashionable to wonder whether the liberal international order can survive the malign forces that have been lining up against it during the 2010swhat the Wall Street Journal called the Decade of Disruption.But based on recent trends, its a fair bet that democracy, globalism, and open trade will endure handily into the third decade of the 21st century.

Start with the state of democracy. Nothing has been more alarming to internationalists than the one-two punch of U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who have taken power in two of the worlds oldest and most important democracies by awakening the old demons of nationalism. With Trump focusing his ire on NATO and the World Trade Organization, and Johnson stalking out of the European Union, the two leaders have transformed the once-hallowed special relationship from a bulwark of global stability (sullied though it was by the Iraq War) into what looks more like a wrecking ball. Elsewhere, illiberalism has overtaken young democracies, such as Hungary and Poland, and even threatened mature ones with the rapid rise of nationalist parties such as the Alternative for Germany and Norbert Hofers anti-immigrant Freedom Party of Austria. In the worlds largest democracy, India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party appear to be sending the same message. And there are considerable doubts about whether the democratic body politic possesses an immune system strong enough to fight off a plague of cyber-generated misinformation and disinformation, and systemic hacking by such autocrats as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But democracy just wont give up, and in 2019which could justly be called the year of global protestit kept reinventing itself at the grassroots. This has been happening in the most unlikely of places around the globe, in countries such as Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Chile, and above all in Hong Kong, where thousands of determined protesters have braved bullets and tear gas, embarrassing Chinese President Xi Jinping even as he brutally consolidates his autocratic rule on the mainland. Perhaps the U.S. and British democracies are becoming decadentand 2020 will tell us a lot about that question come Novemberbut the idea of democracy remains a powerful, ever-replenishing urge that, as sociologists and political scientists have long told us, only gets stronger the more that income and educational levels increase around the world.

The international economy is also undergoing some severe stress testsand surviving remarkably intact. The year 2019 began with deep-seated fears that Trumps trade wars would help trigger a global recessionand among the most concerned was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who midway through the year suggested he and other central bank chiefs simply didnt know how bad things could get. The thing is, Powell said, there isnt a lot of experience in responding to global trade tensions. Growth and investment are still slowing due in large part to the uncertainty Trump has created, but fears of a recession have receded. It turns out the U.S. president cannot single-handedly return the United States to the days of Smoot-Hawleyeven his fellow neonationalist Boris Johnson believes in free tradeand the domino effect of retaliatory tariffs that followed in the 1930s, setting the stage for world war. (In June 1930, under the Smoot-Hawley Act, the United States raised tariffs to an average of 59 percent on more than 25,000 imports; just about every other nation reacted in tit-for-tat protectionist fashion, severely depressing the global economy.)

Today, the complexities of a deeply integrated global economy and its supply chains may prove too much to undoeven for the most powerful person on the planet.

And what of the institutions of the international system? The United States has always had an uneasy relationship with its post-World War II progeny, principally the United Nations, the WTO, and NATOdespite helping create themand Trump only gave expression to an American id that was long seething under the surface. True, Trump is demeaning these institutions to an unprecedented degree and demanding far more of them. But hes only saying more stridently what was said by, say, President Barack Obama, who also criticized the NATO allies for being free-riders, and former President George W. Bush, whose administration privately mocked the alliance and sneered at the U.N. (Another little-remembered precursor to Trump was President Bill Clintons feisty first-term trade representative, Mickey Kantor, who once said he wasnt interested in free-trade theology and preferred that Americans behave like mercantilists.)

Trump is making a serious run at denuding the WTO by taking down its appellate court, but even that institution is likely to outlast a 73-year-old president who, at most, has only four more years in office to wreak havoc on the global system. This is especially likely because he is now mostly alone in his anti-globalist passion with the departure of his deeply ideological national security advisor, the militant John Bolton.

Lets not forget either that the advent of Trump and Johnson represents a legitimate backlash to major policy errors made by the elites who have dominated the international system. George W. Bush led the Republican Party badly astray with his strategically disastrous Iraq War and fecklessness over the deregulation of Wall Street, which set the stage for the biggest financial crash since 1929 and the Great Recession. That turned voters off to traditional Republican thinking and opened the door to Trumps unlikely takeover of the party. Something similar happened in Britain, when Bushs partner in these neoliberal economic delusions and his ally in an unnecessary war, the once-popular Labour leader Tony Blair, set the stage for Labours eventual handoff to the socialist Jeremy Corbyn. (A shift that was, in turn, analogous to the ascent of Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and the left inside the U.S. Democratic Party in response to the rise of Trumps 2016 presidential rival Hillary Clinton, who was seen as pro-war and too friendly to Wall Street.)

But the larger point is that Trump and Johnson are only the latest stresses to a system that, since the end of the Cold War, has suffered some pretty major ones and yet endured. In the quarter-century since then, financial markets collapsed several times, and the global economy has remained intact. Islamist terrorists have struck at major capitals around the world, and a clash of civilizations hasnt ensued. The worlds two largest economies, the United States and China, incessantly bicker, but theyre still doing business. Ivory tower realists continue to be dead wrong in their predictions that the international system will fall back into anarchy, even when politicians like Trump are doing their best to make that happen. On the realist view, the so-called West and its institutions should have disintegrated after the Cold War with the disappearance of the Soviet Union; as Owen Harries wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1993, The political West is not a natural construct but a highly artificial one. It took the presence of a life-threatening, overtly hostile East to bring it into existence and to maintain its unity. It is extremely doubtful whether it can now survive the disappearance of that enemy.

Instead, these international constructs only expandedso rapidly and intensively that they generated a backlash. And that expansion is plainly still outpacing the efforts to block or destroy it, especially as we see other nations forging free trade deals behind Trumps back. Above all, while plainly Americas stature as stabilizer of the international system has been seriously set backfirst by Bush, most recently by Trumpthere is some positive news even in the impeachment drama now underway. Although Trump is all but certain to be acquitted in the Senate, the impeachment vote in the House, following weeks of testimony by career U.S. diplomats, was a dramatic reaffirmation of traditional American values for fair dealing not just with Ukraine, but with all nations.

Perhaps, for now, that will be enough to keep things intact.

Continued here:

Why the Liberal International OrderFree Trade, Democracy, and GlobalismWill Survive the 2020s and Donald Trump - Foreign Policy

President Trumps lawyer Rudy Giuliani earlier this week upheld what has become a conservative tradition: attacking billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Don't tell me I'm anti-Semitic if I oppose him, Giuliani, a Roman Catholic, said inan interview with New York magazinethat quickly went viral. Soros is hardly a Jew. I'm more of a Jew than Soros is. I probably know more about he doesn't go to church, he doesn't go to religion synagogue.

Among those who did tell Giuliani he was, at the least, spreading anti-Semitic propaganda, was Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

One of the leading funders of liberal causes around the globe, Soros, 89, has given away more than $32 billion of a personal fortune amassed through investing. His net worth currently is around $8 billion.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, to Jewish parents, he survived the Nazi occupation and emigrated to England in 1947. He studied at the London School of Economics, before emigrating to the U.S. in 1956 and starting a wildly successful hedge fund. In 1979, he founded Open Society Foundations to strengthen democracy around the world.

According to theCapital Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, Soros personally sets the budget for Open Society, which has funded liberal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Center for American Progress, Human Rights Campaign, Media Matters for America, MoveOn.org, Planned Parenthood and many others.

My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people,Soros wrote. This allows me to take a stand on controversial issues: In fact, it obliges me to do so because others cannot.

Along the way, Soross name has become synonymous with global liberal activism. As a result, many conservatives have anointed him a kind of shadow villain, one who inspires a litany of conspiracy theories.

Among other accusations Giuliani leveled in his interview with writer Olivia Nuzzi, he claimed that Soros controlled former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch who was removed by Trump and testified in the House impeachment hearings and that he was employing FBI agents, presumably the ones who investigated Trumps campaign for alleged connections to Russia.

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Trump himself echoed a baseless claim made on social media when he told a reporter in October 2018 that he wouldnt be surprised if Soros was funding a Central American migrant caravan seeking asylum in the U.S.

Weeks earlier, the president asserted without evidence that protesters seeking to block Brett Kavanaughs Senate confirmation to the Supreme Court were being funded by Soros.

While other billionaires, from Bill Gates to Michael Bloomberg, also spend their fortunes on a variety of causes, some of them politically sensitive, Soros occupies unique standing among conspiracy theorists, who have even spread the absurd accusation that he wasan officer of the Nazi SS in 1944, when he was 13.

The influence Soros wields, which was evident in the hundreds of millions of dollars he poured into Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain, is the reason he has usurped the Rothschild family in the imagination of anti-Semites as the symbol of the imagined Jewish cabal that rules the world.

After the editor of Christianity Today published a call for Trump to be removed from office, some Trump supportersspread a rumor that the evangelical publication was funded by Soros.

Hes elected eight anarchist district attorneys in the United States, Giuliani told New York magazine without naming them. Hes a horrible human being.

Jonathan Greenblatt, of the Anti-Defamation League, harshly criticized Giulianis comments.

For decades, George Soross philanthropy has been used as fodder for outsized antisemitic conspiracy theories insisting there exists Jewish control and manipulation of countries and global events, Greenblatt said in a statement to theDaily Beast. Mr. Giuliani should apologize and retract his comments immediately, unless he seeks to dog whistle to hardcore antisemites and white supremacists who believe this garbage.

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Giuliani's attack on Soros shows the liberal Jewish billionaire remains a top conservative target - Yahoo News

President Trumps campaign developed a website to help supporters combat their liberal relatives when political spats inevitably arise during the holidays.

The website, snowflakevictory.com, includes 12 categories of fast facts on issues such as the economy and the trade war in an attempt to bolster Trumps case when holiday feuds break out.

The campaign even included a category that highlights former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Bidens dealings in Ukraine, writing, Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid from Ukraine unless they fired the prosecutor looking into the company where his son worked.

It added, That has NOT been debunked.

Each category includes Trump-friendly facts and a video with a campaign member laying out each argument that a supporter may need to take on his or her left-leaning loved ones.

In a statement about the website, campaign press secretary Kayleigh McEnany urged Trump supporters to embrace their holiday spats, saying, Were not helping snowflakes avoid arguments were helping Trump supporters win them! As 2019 draws to a close and 2020 approaches, President Trump and Americans are going to be winning, winning, and winning, and then winning some more!

This is not the first time the Trump campaign has used a website to mock liberals. The error page for Trumps website includes a picture of Hillary Clinton as president with the caption, Oops. This is awkward. Youre looking for something that doesnt exist.

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Trump campaign releases cheat sheet to help supporters debate liberal relatives over the holidays - Washington Examiner

As we all know, white evangelicals are convinced that their religious liberties are under attack from liberals and atheists. But are they really? Political scientists Ryan Burge and Paul Djupe looked at survey data to find out:

[Among] white evangelical Protestants, we found that 60 percent believed that atheists would not allow them First Amendment rights and liberties. More specifically, we asked whether they believed atheists would prevent them from being able to hold rallies, teach, speak freely, and run for public office. Similarly, 58 percent believed Democrats in Congress would not allow them to exercise these liberties if they were in power.

Is this true? The authors go to a second survey to find out, but it has different questions and different groups of respondents and doesnt really address the question. Nonetheless they try to tease out an answer, and unsurprisingly the answer is no. Most atheists and Democrats are pretty tolerant of basic religious liberties even if they really, really hate evangelicals. Conversely, evangelicals who hate atheists are pretty intolerant of their religious liberties:

Conservative Christians believe their rights are in peril partly because thats what theyre hearing, quite explicitly, from conservative media, religious elites, partisan commentators and some politicians, including the president. The survey evidence suggests another reason, too. Their fear comes from an inverted golden rule: Expect from others what you would do unto them. White evangelical Protestants express low levels of tolerance for atheists, which leads them to expect intolerance from atheists in return. That perception surely bolsters their support for Trump. They believe their freedom depends on keeping Trump and his party in power.

Id add to this that its all unfolding against a background in which the biggest real-world fights are over abortion and contraceptives and cake decorators. Conservative Christians believe that their freedom to refuse these services is also a basic religious liberty, and theres no question that liberals are pretty determined to take those particular liberties away. Given that, its a short step to believe that liberals might someday decide to remove their rights to hold rallies, teach, speak freely, and run for public office.

In any case, this is something Ive written about occasionally: its impossible to understand evangelicals and their support for Donald Trump without first understanding just how frightened they are of the steady liberal march toward secular hegemony. They consider the aughts and teens to have been a nearly complete disaster, capped by the 2015 Supreme Court ruling forcing states to recognize gay marriage. Many prominent evangelical leaders literally gave up after that, and the ones that didnt had little hope for the future.

Then, suddenly, Donald Trump showed up and promised them everything they wanted. In short order he became their Joan of Arc, rallying them back to a fight he assured them they could win as long as he was on their side. And rhetorically, at least, he delivered. The fight was back on.

Its not clear to me that theres much we can do about this. We cant do anything about the inverted golden rule, and were certainly not going to stop fighting for gay rights or reproductive rights. That leaves only a more concerted effort to assure evangelicals that they have nothing to fear regarding things like teaching, speaking, and holding rallies. And even thats a tough nut when evangelicals can look to other countries and see that, in fact, those rights have occasionally been circumscribed to some degree. This may seem like a pretty small and distant issue, but I assure you that Fox News and talk radio report on every single example no matter how small, and they keep it front and center forever and ever.

Understanding your opponents is usually useful because it provides some guidance about how best to respond. In this case Im not sure it does, but its still good to know on the off chance that it might be helpful. Evangelicals are not generally engaged in faux outrage. They are truly scared silly that liberals will steadily and unrelentingly dismantle their rights if they ever get in power again. Just look what happened the last time.

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White Evangelicals Are Terrified That Liberals Want to Extinguish Their Rights - Mother Jones

The Ontario governments effort to eliminate its projected $9-billion deficit is a grim struggle that involves unpopular service changes, wage restraint and general penny-pinching. Imagine if there was one change that would cut that deficit nearly in half without raising taxes or taking away any services.

As it turns out, there is. Have you heard about the Ontario Electricity Rebate? Thats the one where the government subsidizes everyones power bills, so that we can all pretend that the cost of power is lower. The bill for this act of self-deception is expected to be $4 billion this year. Thats a heck of a way to spend money the government doesnt have.

The PC government did not invent what was called the Fair Hydro Plan, but it has taken what is probably the worst policy of the former Liberal government and given it a brand new name. Same stupid content, though.

The Liberals, after years of merrily committing to high-priced power deals, finally realized that the cost of electricity had gotten to a number far, far higher than the public was prepared to accept. The government reacted like it was holding a live wire. At first, if offered to eliminate the eight per cent sales tax on power bills. Then it cut 25 per cent from the cost of the bill.

In an attempt to keep all of this borrowing from appearing on the governments own books, it created a separate entity to stack up the debt. The Liberals had by that time developed advanced expertise in making billions of dollars disappear. The idea was that the debt would build up, but future power users would have to pay it all back with interest, later on. That boomerang effect would have made future power bills wildly unaffordable, but that would be a problem for another government.

When the PCs took over in 2018, they found themselves in a difficult spot. The Liberals fake power prices had become the new normal. Restoring sanity to power bills would have made the PCs the villains who drove power bills through the roof. If that wasnt problem enough, the PCs had railed against high power costs in opposition, campaigned on affordability and promised to cut power bills by an additional 12 per cent. Thats a promise the government has not yet kept and, one can only hope, never will.

So, the government now finds itself in the same position as a person standing on a land mine. As long as it doesnt make a move, everything will be fine.

The government has made a few modest improvements to the ridiculous power situation. Cancelling unneeded wind and solar contracts will help lower future costs a bit. As well, starting Nov. 1, power bills were amended to make the cost of electricity clearer.

The PCs have also scrapped the Liberals hocus-pocus accounting and moved the cost of the power subsidy onto the provinces books, a move recommended by the auditor-general. That makes the cost transparent and prevents the boomerang effect on future power users, but its not all good news. The electricity subsidy is now paid by taxpayers, instead. While there is obviously an enormous overlap between power users and taxpayers, this changes power bills from a consumption base to an income base. Higher income earners now pay for their own power and part of someone elses. Those in lower tax brackets can turn on the lights knowing that part of the cost will be subsidized by the person up the street.

Now, one could argue that there is value in turning power bills into a social program that protects lower-income people from high power rates. It would be an argument of modest merit, were it not for the fact that there already is such a scheme in place. The Ontario Electricity Support Program reduces bills by up to $75 a month for users with household income of less than $28,000. Some help is still available to households earning as much as $52,000. The support program, another brainstorm from the Kathleen Wynne era, costs $172 million a year.

The PCs didnt create this mess, but they own it now. The Doug Ford government could continue to spend billions of dollars to subsidize people who can easily afford to pay their power bills, or they could ask Ontarians if theyd rather see the money spent on preserving services. Thats an easy question to answer, but someone needs to ask it, soon.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa political commentator and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com

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Randall Denley: The Liberals screwed up hydro in Ontario and now Doug Ford has to clean up the mess - National Post

GUWAHATI: A press note of Assams directorate of information and public relations issued on July 27, 1965 on then Congress chief minister Bimala Prasad Chalihas clarification of his position on infiltration and deportation of Pakistanis (of East Pakistan and now Bangladesh) quotes him saying that 1,80,000 victims of religious persecution had infiltrated into Assam as refugees between 1964 and 1965. In the press note of more than half a century old of the three-time chief minister (from 1957 to 1970) show that Indias policy to shelter oppressed minorities of Bangladesh has been in existence since Partition. Chaliha states that even after Partition there was no restriction on the movement of the citizens from one country to the other but Assams premier then Gopinath Bordoloi, who became the states first chief minister after Independence, wanted to impose restrictions on this free cross-border movement but the then central government (of Jawarharlal Nehru) believed that such step would put the minorities in East Pakistan in disadvantage. It was only in October 1952 that the system of passport and visa was introduced. Even then, instructions were issued to take a very liberal attitude in the matter of issuing passports and visas. Late Gopinath Bordoloi, who was the premier of Assam at the time of partition of the country felt the necessity of imposing restrictions on the movement of the people from one country to the other. The Government of India, however, felt that as these restrictions were intended to be reciprocal measures, the minorities in East Pakistan were likely to be put to a disadvantage by this measure of restriction. It is on this consideration that the Government of India preferred to follow a liberal policy, Chaliha had stated. Chaliha in his statement also had lashed out at Pakistan for seeking to play a paternal role over minorities in India. It is highly regrettable that the Government of Pakistan has never appreciated our genuine feelings and efforts for safeguarding the interest of the minorities in this country. The paternal role which they seek to assume over the minorities in India is not only presumptuous but is also extremely ridiculous, Chaliha stated. He then went on to tell Pakistan how it was oppressing its minorities. On the contrary, what consideration has been weighing with Pakistan in squeezing out the minorities from their country? Apart from the large numbers of refugees who migrated to India from Pakistan earlier, the influx of nearly 1,80,000 refugees belonging to the different religious groups from East Pakistan to Assam during the period from January 1964 to January 1965 is a clear evidence of the oppressive treatment meted out to the minority communities in Pakistan, he stated. So far as the minorities in the State of Assam are concerned, I can boldly say that they are quite happy and secure. If the Government of Pakistan continues to indulge in mischievous propaganda with a view to undermining the secular policy of the Government of India while deliberately concealing their lapses in providing securities to the minorities, they will be only harming both the countries. I wish the Government of Pakistan could see reasons and refrain from such malicious propaganda, he added.

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'India liberal with non-Muslim infiltrators from Bangladesh since Independence' - Times of India

Legislating the removal of salmon aquaculture from Canadas oceans represents an excessive approach to resolving environmental issues that are already being managed through robust, science-based federal and provincial regulations. Liberal Govt. 2016

CommentaryBy Fabian Dawson

Justin Trudeau has been accused of being two-faced.

But we already knew that, since he donned a brown face to a party some years ago.

Its his about-face on sustainable salmon farming in Canada that needs to be of concern now.

Four years ago, the Trudeau-led Liberal party armed with a huge majority in Parliament, decreed there is no reason to shut down open-net salmon farming in Canada.

Legislating the removal of salmon aquaculture from Canadas oceans represents an excessive approach to resolving environmental issues that are already being managed through robust, science-based federal and provincial regulations, it said.

In British Columbia, the only province under federal regulation where reporting has been taking place for the past five years, evidence is available that demonstrates that the degree of impact does not warrant the removal of an entire industry from the marine environment, particularly when the socio-economic implications of such a removal are considered.

Removing salmon aquaculture from the marine environment would threaten thousands of jobs, most of them located in rural, remote and coastal areas hard-hit by downturns in other resource industries.

This was in response to a petition by the anti-ocean salmon farming lobby which was presented in Parliament by Nova Scotia MP, Bernadette Jordan, who is now Canadas new Minister of Fisheries.

Four years later, the same Trudeau-led Liberal party, this time desperate for votes to shore up its falling popularity in B.C.s urban areas, reversed its decree and made an election campaign pledge to phase out ocean net pen salmon farming in British Columbia by 2025.

Feeling threatened by a well-funded anti-salmon farming group, that targeted its MP candidates, the Liberal party abandoned its vows to over 7,000 livelihoods in BCs salmon farming communities.

The collective data used by the Liberals for their 2016 decision remains true until today there is no credible scientific evidence to link declines in Pacific salmon stocks at a population level to salmon farming on B.C.s coasts and the consensus tells us that done responsibly, salmon farming does not have a negative impact on wild salmon populations.

Jordan, the new Fisheries Minister, has yet to say anything publicly about her new mandate.

But her predecessor, Jonathan Wilkinson managed this the campaign promise reflects a precautionary approach to a divisive issue in B.C

Translated, science be damned because the naysayers are promising more votes.

It is obvious that the Liberal-switch on aquaculture is a victory for the public relations and activist fear-mongering campaigns and not for the sustainable harvest of our oceans for a planet in need.

Money that flowed from serial entrepreneurs seeking new ways to make more profits with government handouts, was used to create and perpetuate a climate of public skepticism and opposition to salmon farming in B.C. oceans.

Digital assets, like twitter-bot accounts with Arabic sounding names repeating discredited anti-aquaculture tropes, were built to push the precautionary principle in the political realm.

The Trudeau-led Liberals fell for this sham.

You should not.

As we enter a new decade, read the below and you will see why the about-face by the Trudeau-led Liberals is all about votes first, not about science first.

RESPONSE TO PETITION NO.: 421-00589DATE: SEPTEMBER 22, 2016Serge Cormier Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard

The Government of Canada agrees that aquaculture must be conducted in a sustainable manner, reducing environmental impacts, mitigating the impacts that do occur, and minimizing interactions with wild populations and their habitat as much as possible.

However, the Government of Canada is not prepared to legislate the removal of caged salmon from our oceans at this time.

The Canadian aquaculture industry operates under some of the strictest regulations in the world, implemented federally and provincially, to minimize risk to the environment. All aquaculture operations are subject to frequent monitoring to ensure high standards of environmental performance.

Canadas regulatory regime in the aquaculture sector, much like that of terrestrial farming, is underpinned by the best scientific research and analysis available to provide assurance that the environmental effects of aquaculture can be well managed and the industry conducted in a sustainable manner.

In addition to regulation, the Canadian aquaculture sector is required to report to federal and provincial governments regarding its activities. Under the federal Aquaculture Activities Regulations (AAR), for example, industry has numerous reporting requirements, including notifying Fisheries and Oceans Canada prior to any drug or pesticide treatments as well as any mortality events that might have occurred in wild populations following these treatments, and annual reporting on reasons for and use of these therapeutants. Aquaculture operators are also required to conduct benthic monitoring to assess impact on the environment, and report on mitigation measures they have undertaken to reduce serious harm to wild populations and their habitats.

All aquaculture operators must implement high standards for escape prevention and report any escapes that have occurred.

In British Columbia, the only province under federal regulation where reporting has been taking place for the past five years, evidence is available that demonstrates that the degree of impact does not warrant the removal of an entire industry from the marine environment, particularly when the socio-economic implications of such a removal are considered.

Removing salmon aquaculture from the marine environment would threaten thousands of jobs, most of them located in rural, remote and coastal areas hard-hit by downturns in other resource industries.

More than 50 First Nations are involved in aquaculture, providing stable, full-time employment for Indigenous youth which enables them to stay in their communities.

Moreover, numerous studies conducted in Canada and elsewhere have shown that land-based recirculating systems have very limited and uncertain operational and financial viability. Higher costs associated with infrastructure, energy and labour costs greatly compromise any benefits and threaten the long-term viability of land-based operations when faced with external shocks, such as depressed salmon values or increased costs for energy and feed.

The marginal economic nature of land-based aquaculture production systems would render operators unable to compete with the lower production costs of salmon reared in net pens in Norway, Chile, Scotland and elsewhere.

The objective of the Government of Canada is to establish a rigorous regulatory regime that supports aquaculture development and protects the aquatic ecosystem. When it comes to how salmon are produced, the Government of Canada establishes environmental standards that must be met by all technologies and will not prescribe the best technological approach as that would stifle innovation.

The Government of Canadas technology-neutral stance fosters the evolution of a broad spectrum of innovative technologies and approaches to fulfil the strict standards set out in robust, science-based regulations.

This approach is critical in maintaining our competitiveness on international markets, preserving and expanding employment in Canada, and further enhancing the sustainable development of an important food-producing sector for the benefit of all Canadians.

Legislating the removal of salmon aquaculture from Canadas oceans represents an excessive approach to resolving environmental issues that are already being managed through robust, science-based federal and provincial regulations.

Photo illustration by SeaWestNews

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The salmon farming flip-flop by the Liberals in four years - SeaWestNews

MARX famously wrote that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But sometimes, even an encore leaves many people dumbstruck.

Most commentators who fill up the opinion pages of the national media of record are touting the failure of the British Labour Party in the recent elections as a portent of the disaster that would await the Democrats should they nominate Bernie Sanders or Sanders-lite to run against President Donald Trump. That, they believe, would be the farce that Jeremy Corbyns loss portends.

But there are a few thoughtful heads, wiser thinkers, in the media who better understand historys often more subtle messages.

For Gerald Seib, the executive Washington editor of the Wall Street Journal and his colleague Stephen Fidler, a British veteran of the Financial Times and Reuters, the victory of Boris Johnson recalls another parallel: the electoral victory of Trump.

And they find many signs that the parallels are overflowing with meaning and that they count as more than just interesting coincidences.

Seib and Fidlers article, UK Vote Shows Remake of Conservatism, argues that we have entered a new era, engaging new constituencies, realignments, philosophiesand policies: Boris Johnsons big election victory this week drove another nail into the coffin of the brand of conservative politics Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher first rode to power four decades ago [The] movement in the West now has become markedly more populist and nationalist, and appeals to a distinctly more working-class constituency. Fiscal restraint, once a cardinal tenet of conservatism, matters less; rewriting the rules that have governed the global economy matters more.

The article portrays a right-anchored movement in the process of shifting towards a narrow, more insular, protectionist nationalism, spurning globalism, unrestrained by fiscal austerity and market dogma and courting the working class with promises of change and contempt for liberal elites.

Both [Tump and Johnson] capitalised on blue-collar and middle-class resentment of the financial and political elites

Like Thatcher and Reagan in the past, Trump and Johnson are now prominent figureheads of this new conservatism but rising stars are in, or share, power in Hungary, Italy and Poland.

Even outside Europe, Indias Narendra Modi, Japans Shinzo Abe, Brazils Jair Bolsonaro and Chiles Sebastian Pinera embrace many features of the new conservatism.

Seib and Fidler are perceptive in seeing Trump and Johnson as more than an aberration, a fleeting mutation of corporate Republicanism and market-crazed conservatism.

They point to their opportunistic playing to a base of petty-bourgeois and working-class voters who have been bled by the ruling classs global restructuring and crushed by its finale, the collapse of 2007-9: Both capitalised on blue-collar and middle-class resentment of the financial and political elites, who, in such voters views, were oblivious to the way global economic trends were cutting against workers in the heartland.

Brexit was the symbol of those grievances in Britain; in the US, trade relations with China and Mexico were the symbols Mr Trump used.

Seib and Fidler note that Trump and Johnson juiced their policy offers with promises of freer public spending to address middle- and working-class voters anger over the sacrifices they had been forced to make since the financial crash

Johnson, they contend, was stealing the traditional clothes of the left-wing Labour Party, promising spending on the nations public health services, schools, policing and infrastructure.

Trump, defying a pillar of 20th-century conservatism, has overseen a rise of the US federal budget deficit to roughly a trillion dollars annually, but can do so because low interest rates make such borrowing less painful. Mr Johnson has relaxed the purse strings with a similar advantage.

The Seib-Fidler thesis is that, since the collapse of 2007-9, some on the right have drawn lessons and constructed a new political approach, turning away from internationalism, globalism, austerity and unfettered markets.

They are shrewdly and opportunistically marketing this turn as relief for a damaged, dissatisfied and angry working class and petty bourgeoisie.

Of course, there remain conservatives still wedded to the market-fundamentalist, globalist approach of Reagan/Thatcher what many have called, for better or worse, globalisation and neoliberalism but the new conservatism is clearly on the rise.

Liberals will cry that Seib and Fidler have downplayed the role of xenophobia in the appeal of the new conservatives and the Johnson vote.

No doubt racism and anti-immigrant sentiment play a role. But the Ipsos Mori polls show that while around 40 per cent of voters thought that immigration was the most important issue facing voters during the 2016 Brexit referendum, that number was down to around 10 per cent before the recent election.

Ironically, while the Reagan/Thatcher consensus swept over the political world in the last 30 or more years, it has now nested firmly in social democracy and political liberalism; the victory over Keynesian fiscal interventionism by the third-way converts and the New Democrats makes them, now, the most committed defenders of free markets, international institutions, balanced budgets, austerity, and unprotected, de-centred labour markets.

Where the new conservatives revamped their views in the wake of the 2007-9 crisis, most liberals and social democrats stood pat

Because the centre-left parties of the advanced capitalist countries so readily accepted and embraced the market-fetishist ideology of the late 20th century, they are now boxed into a corner rigidly defending the very philosophy that brought great harm to working people, a philosophy now increasingly in the rear-view mirror of the new conservatives.

Where the new conservatives revamped their views in the wake of the 2007-9 crisis, most liberals and social democrats stood pat, keeping the same cards they were dealt by the Reagan/Thatcher revolution.

As voters turn against the old consensus that brought economic chaos unseen since the Great Depression, they seek change wherever they can find it.

In the US, they thought they could find it by electing Barack Obama. That choice proved to be ill-founded, further entrenching elite rule and austerity (sequestration). Consequently, Trump got a chance.

Establishment Democrats (corporate Democrats) believe that Trump, too, will fail. Of course they are right there are only empty promises and fake solutions in the new conservatism.

But the Democratic Party leaders are foolish if they think that Trumps failure will bring an exodus back to a Democratic Party serving up Reagan/Thatcher-lite, a party chained to corporate-first, trickle-down economics, to fiscal austerity, to a desiccated welfare state, to making the market the final arbiter of all economic decisions.

Clearly, the Democratic Party leadership prefers to attack Trump for his lack of fidelity to presidential mythology or through contrived fables like RussiaGate, while avoiding real policy changes that would win over an electorate thirsting for change.

The results will likely be disastrous for those in need of urgent solutions. But party bosses would rather see Trump win than surrender their staunch defence of capital uber alles.

Similarly, the legacy of Thatcher, conveyed through the past leadership of Tony Blair, is so firmly rooted in the Labour Party that many of its leading figures would rather have seen insurgent Corbyn lose than surrender that legacy.

Progressives should seriously weigh whether centre-left parties, even rebranded social-democratic parties, offer or will convincingly press a programme that addresses the carnage inflicted by an increasingly dysfunctional capitalism and that could draw working people from the false hope offered by the new conservatism.

When the old politics is thoroughly discredited, a new politics is in order. The new politics should be constructed around the path to socialism, the only road that takes working people away from betrayal and demagoguery.

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Conservatives have adapted to new realities that liberals don't understand - but the left must try to - Morning Star Online

Robert Bridge

Increasingly open to astrology, magic and sorcery while happy to virtue signal on behalf of any PC-saturated issue, the entire millenial generation seems wholly unequipped to face the daunting challenges of adulthood.

They may not know how to change a flat tire, cook a simple meal or stop living in their parents' basement, but Millennials the tech-savvy demographic typically born between the years 1981 to the early 2000s seem increasingly preoccupied with subjects of a less practical nature ever since graduating from college.

Whether it is symptomatic of Trump Derangement Syndrome, some kind of New Age mysticism or perhaps spending four long years studying impractical liberal arts courses, its hard to say. But many people are looking to empower themselves with alternative techniques once ridiculed as sheer quackery.

This week, for example, NBC published a lengthy essay that celebrated the rise of interest in astrology in an insecure world.

In the midst of this physical, political and emotional turmoil, astrology offers us a sense of purpose, wrote Tanya Ghahremani. It provides reasons for why the world is spinning as well as hope that it will be less nauseating tomorrow.

I was always under the impression that the world is spinning due to the so-called cosmic Big Bang theory, mixed up with a generous amount of gravitational pull and so on. But never mind. Ghahremani, discussing the feminist roots of astrology, postulates that the stargazing pseudoscience empowers women to take more control over their future; it encourages us to learn more about ourselves and go confidently in the direction that makes the most sense for our well-being.

Other similar stories of an esoteric, occultist nature have enjoyed a heavy press of late. In October, just in time for Halloween, the media was hyping a revived interest in witchcraft. The technology website Wired, for example, in a radical departure from its usual computer-oriented ware, reported on a coven of witches who collectively tried toplace Donald J. Trump in a magical straitjacket. Amid the prerequisite burning of candles and other voodoo rituals, the members recited an incantation that ended with the collective scream, Youre fired! Probably not the best material for a Stephen King novel, but it certainly puts a new twist on the term witch hunt.

Even the New York Times could not resist hopping on its broomstick for a joyride.

Real witches are roaming among us, and theyre seemingly everywhere, gushed the paper of historical record.

It went on to quote Helen Berger, a sociologist at Brandeis University: Were in a period of great transitionand for many of these young people, this spirituality is speaking to them.

Publishers Weekly summed up this rekindled interest in spirituality, not to be confused in any way with religion, as the season of the witch.

Personally speaking, I understand this interest in the more mystical side of life. There is a great allure to those unseen forces we do not comprehend yet seem within the realm of plausibility. After all, the Salem Witch Trials occurred precisely due to this feeling among many people that maybe there really is something behind all this mystical talk.

There is an unsettling, underlying theme, however, that weaves itself through the above-mentioned articles, and perhaps the reader has already noticed it. That theme involves the current political battle raging in the United States. For all of the breathless talk about witch covens, magical spells and incantations, this purported rise among Millennials in mysticism and spiritualism seems to be, partially at least, a cheap political statement against Donald Trump because the Liberals do not like the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

This speaks volumes about the mindset of the Millennial generation, which has been raised on an unhealthy diet of liberal radicalism and political correctness gone stark-raving mad. Because a president was elected that they didn't like, they now believe that the summoning ofmystical forces will change things. This is an act of desperation, and attests to the type of education many of these young adults are receiving at some detached, tree-lined college where queer and gender studies, for example, oftentimes substitutes for the time-honored classics of Western philosophy and history. Meanwhile, the study of science only seems to have merit when it confirms their exceedingly warped worldview. For example, that there are some 13 gender types to choose from, or that the planet and all of its life forms are about to succumb to man-made climate change.

None of this bodes well for the future of mankind. How will these coddled individuals, who grew up - but never quite matured - inside a protective bubble of ignorance inherit a world overloaded with problems, and topped off with nuclear weapons? I suppose they will just continue to adjust to a world they were not prepared for by reciting magical spells and consulting astrological charts.

Well, we saw how well that worked with the so-called Robert Mueller III Prayer Candles, designed to light the way to finding proof of collusion between Trump and the Russians. Then there was the disastrous prediction that Kamala Harris was destined for the White House because she was born on the exact full moon in Aries. Maybe someday Harris will enjoy better political success, but as for now her political star has magnificently crashed.

Perhaps the best takeaway for the more liberal-minded Millennials is to remember that what you learn in a classroom and what you experience in the real world are two completely different things. The higher institutes of learning would do well to remind their students of that difference, while allowing for a climate of frank and open discussion on all subjects. Even if the subjects bring discomfort, which is the way the real world works. No amount of magical spells or charms will change that.

@Robert_Bridge

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Millennials are turning to magic & astrology for empowerment because liberal ideology failed them - RT

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On New Years Day 2000, Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan challenged his classic Liberal colleagues to save the soul of liberalism. People need something they aspire to and fight for, he wrote. If the liberal ideal is not there, there will be a void and other ideas will supplant it.

Twenty years later, Buchanans fears seem premonitory. The contempt for liberalism grows at both ends of the ideological spectrum the nationalist right and the progressive left. Non-liberal ideas and attitudes have infiltrated the mainstream, rejecting not only market liberalism, but even more fundamental principles, such as respect for the autonomy and dignity of the individual. At one extreme, we see the resurgence of white nationalism; on the other, the renunciation of the principles of the first amendment.

Now is the time for all Liberals to take up Buchanans challenge: to save the soul of liberalism by taking over the Liberal ideal.

The first step is to name it. The liberal ideal is good society: a pluralistic and tolerant society in which intellectual and economic progress is the norm, and where individuals and communities thrive in a context of openness, peaceful and voluntary cooperation and respect mutual.

It is this liberal ideal that animated the American foundation, without doubt the first great liberal experience. This is why in his book The Conservative Sensibility, George Will writes that American conservatives are the guardians of this tradition. They seek, recalls Will, to preserve the founding principles, the obvious truth that all men are created equal and that the role of government is to guarantee the rights which flow from this truth. Wills conservatism, in other words, is a liberal conservatism that invites openness and the whirlwind and fluidity of modern life people, ideas and capital flowing here and there.

The second step is to remind ourselves and others that liberalism is the greatest achievement in the modern world. As Deirdre McCloskey argues in his trilogy Bourgeois virtues and his recent Why liberalism works, since 1776, liberalism has produced more and more free people, wave after wave, including, slaves, lower-class voters, mavericks, women, Catholics, Jews, Irish, unionists, colonialists, African Americans, immigrants, socialists, pacifists, women again, gays, people with disabilities, and especially the poor, most of whom were coming down

Liberalism, says McCloskey, is the mother of great enrichment the 3000% increase in material abundance over the past 250 years. Much more than pragmatic materialism, the Great Enrichment is a story about the highest values of liberalism. The dignity and respect of the ordinary person the person who offered his products to other ordinary people at a reasonable price was the catalyst that harnessed the creativity, ingenuity and productive capacity of humanity .

Combined with other liberal principles such as the rule of law, private property rights and the broad enjoyment of civil liberties, the liberal sensitivity of equality and dignity has left considerably improved conditions, a lifespan longer and more space for economic, scientific and cultural experimentation in its wake.

But to recover the liberal ideal, we must also take its detractors seriously. Contemporary critics of the left and the right will point out that Liberalisms stated commitment to equality before the law tends to favor those who already have power. Material abundance, they say, creates new forms of oppression. Patrick Deneen, for example, argues that far from liberating women, the global market has subjected us to much more inclusive slavery, leaving a degraded culture in its path.

Social scientists and liberal commentators are undoubtedly forming their counter arguments in their heads. No, we admit, we havent reached the liberal ideal yet, but with every step forward the abolition of slavery, civil rights, womens rights and gay rights movements the liberal ideal guided our steps. And while the market presents challenges, it also creates viable exit options for those looking to escape the grip of traditional expectations.

But if we Liberals leave this mental conversation, we will not succeed in meeting Buchanans challenge. Critics of liberalism throw a vision a vision of a society that is stable, controlled, just and certain. What is our response?

Liberals whether we identify ourselves as center-left, classic liberals or conservatives must rediscover the spirit of liberalism. We can do this, in part, by practice: by valuing the discourse on the snark of the echo chamber, the search for the truth on tribalism, the scholarship on partisanship. Along the way, we also need to draw attention to the wonders of liberalism the human fulfillment that is made possible whenever liberal principles have taken root wherever they have taken hold.

Most importantly, we must recognize that the Liberal project is incomplete. Working towards the liberal ideal towards a world that embraces openness and individual freedom and rejects nativism and authoritarianism from strong men is the most important work we can do. To paraphrase another Nobel laureate, F.A. Hayek, we must once again make building a liberal society an intellectual adventure; an act of courage.

Emily Chamlee-Wright is President of the Institute for Humane Studies.

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Name and recover the liberal ideal - Orange County Register - Daily Gaming Worlld