Hillary Rodham Clinton has had an odd career for a feminist icon.

Her main occupation has consisted of being the long-suffering wife of a powerful man, infamous for treating subordinate women as disposable conveniences, who abused her ruthlessly and humiliated her publicly. In exchange for standing by her man, she was given an orphaned Senate seat in New York, where she did not live, and two shots at the presidency, which she lost to an unknown back-bencher from Chicago in 2008 and to a reality-television host in 2016.

Margaret Thatcher she isnt.

She is back to her habitual form of paid work: making speeches that are so vague as to be nearly content-free, her famous face and bland, almost affectless mode of speech serving as a kind of blank screen onto which those gathered can project their fantasies about having been present for Something Very Important.

Whatever that might be.

This weeks speech was for the MAKERS conference, a project of AOL, which still exists. MAKERS is a collection of Web videos about famous women, featuring exactly the sort of women youd imagine appealing to midlevel executives of AOL, which still exists: Lena Dunham, Oprah Winfrey, Shonda Rhimes, Lilly Singh. The women of the world were, one assumes, simply crying out for well-lighted videos of humorless American (Miss Singh is Canadian, i.e., American Lite) multimillionaires repeating the most tedious banalities imaginable. And so they now have them, courtesy of AOL, which still exists.

Mrs. Clintons remarks were remarkable for one line:

The future is female.

That line caught the attention of Le Figaro, which breathlessly headlined a report: Hillary Clinton: Oui, lavenir est fminin! It is likely that the editors at Le Figaro are better-read than Mrs. Clinton is and recognized the sentiment from the contemporary French novelist Michel Houellebecq, who used the line in his dystopian novel The Elementary Particles. Houellebecq, an aging hedonistic intellectual who writes very sad novels about aging hedonistic intellectuals, imagined a future in which sexual rivalry and unhappiness between the sexes both have been abolished with a single master-stroke: the abolition of the human race and its replacement by an engineered successor species that reproduces asexually and is entirely female.

Perhaps that is not what Mrs. Clinton has in mind.

Houellebecq was probably having some fun with the declaration of the poet Louis Aragon that la femme est lavenir de lhomme, woman is the future of man. Aragons expression has made several other appearances: Jean Ferrat sang it, and Hong Sang-soo used it as a film title. Houellebecqs version was rendered The Future Is Feminine in the English translation rather than the splashier and much more commercial-sounding The Future Is Female (an error in judgment, I think; it is intended to be a commercial-sounding slogan), but the idea is the same. In a more recent novel, Submission, Houellebecq solves the same problem in a different way: a near-future France knuckles under to Islam, and aging hedonistic intellectuals, exploiting the fact that professors in France enjoy a much, much higher social status than they do in the United States, go in enthusiastically for polygamy and arranged marriage.

RELATED: No, the Future Is Not Female

In the English-speaking world, The Future Is Female has had a different sort of career, having been taken up as the motto of lesbian separatists in the 1970s and then reborn as a popular T-shirt in recent years which, Americans being Americans, has given rise to litigation about who owns that daft phrase.

My bet is that Mrs. Clinton took the line from the T-shirt, or rather that one of her minions did. (Speechwriter for Mrs. Clinton must currently be the saddest job in all politics.) A T-shirt is about as deep as she goes. Like Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton likes to talk about the importance of art (or the arts, as such people habitually put it) and culture and the like but does not seem to have read very many serious books in the past 40 years or so, or to have thought very seriously about anything she has read. Progressives enjoy the life of the mind a great deal...in theory. Michael Tracey of The Young Turks, one of those predictable lefty types who like to go on about how much they love science and how deeply they care about the environment, took to Twitter earlier this week to ask for help in identifying an exotic bird he encountered in Texas City. It was a pelican.

Darwin, yes; Audubon, not so much.

I suppose it is just barely possible that Mrs. Clinton used The Future Is Female in tribute to radical feminists in the Age of Nixon, when she was first getting her real start in politics, and goodness knows that all those years of enduring marriage to Bill Clinton must fill one with a certain aspirational longing vis--vis the whole touchy subject of lesbian separatism. That she has been thinking about the works of Michel Houellebecq and the funny professional problem of how one would go about marketing human extinction is even more unlikely. (Though if ever there was a really convincing ad campaign for human extinction, it was Mrs. Clintons 2016 presidential effort.)

There are great works of literature that have some bearing upon the public career of Hillary Rodham Clinton (you would not believe how many performances of Macbeth I have seen in recent years), but she isnt reading contemporary French novels in her spare time, even in translation. (Like President Trump and President Obama, but unlike the current Mrs. Trump and either of the Presidents Bush, Mrs. Clinton, purportedly the most intellectually accomplished woman of her generation, does not know a foreign language. Melania Trump speaks five languages.) Mrs. Clinton is in fact a familiar political type, whose intense and lifelong focus on the pursuit and maintenance of that pettiest and most ephemeral of things political power has left her intellectually stunted, which is obvious to anyone who ever has heard her speak. No doubt she already is planning her 2020 campaign, without anyone around who cares enough to explain to her why this is absurd. She is, in truth, a tragic figure.

Bereft of anything like an original thought, she tends to repeat dopey slogans like The Future Is Female, without giving much thought to what they mean.

Which, in this case, is nothing.

Kevin D. Williamson is National Reviews roving correspondent.

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Mrs. Clinton Is Not the Future - National Review

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressed support for abolishing the Electoral College during remarks at Stanford University Monday night.

Ginsburg gave the Rathbun Lecture on a Meaningful Life at Stanford Memorial Church withRev. Professor Jane Shaw, dean for religious life, where she was asked which constitutional provisions should evolve with the society.

Well, some things I would like to change, one is the electoral college, she said, to rapturous applause. But that would require a constitutional amendment. Amending our Constitution is powerfully hard to do, as I know from the struggle for the Equal Rights Amendment, which fell three state shy [of passage].

The justices forays into politics have troubled court-watchers in the past. Her blunt critiques of President Donald Trump during last years general election were roundly condemned, leading Ginsburg to apologize.

One intrepid student also broached the subject of Ginsburgs age. At 83, she is the oldest member of the Court. The state of Ginsburgs health, at the moment robust, has generated pronounced anxiety among liberals who fear her battle with the actuarial tables could give President Trump another appointment to the Supreme Court and hurl the balance of the bench further to the right. Ginsburg works with a yoga instructor several times per week to remain physically vital.

A lot of people have been expressing encouragement that you eat more kale so to speak so that you can continue doing the public service work that you are doing for as long as possible, the student said.I was wondering, who do you want to eat more kale in Washington?

Justice Kennedy, she replied. Rumors abound that Kennedy, 80, is considering retirement.

Ginsburg is on her way to Hawaii where she will participate in the jurist-in-residence program at the University of Hawaiis William S. Richardson School of Law. The Supreme Court will begin hearing cases again later in the month.

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Justice Ginsburg Backs Abolition Of The Electoral College - Daily Caller

Coun Ben Houchen

16:42 Tuesday 07 February 2017

The announcement by Coun Ben Houchen, the Conservative candidate for the role which covers Darlington, Teesside and Hartlepool, comes after the ruling of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal that Cleveland Police acted unlawfully in using Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to try to find the source of information leaked to a local newspaper.

The force has also been the subject of a number of legal cases in recent years.

"The last few years have been so turbulent for Cleveland Police that I have no philosophical objection to bringing the organisation to an end," said Coun Houchen.

"I have reached the decision that if elected as the Mayor for Darlington, Teesside and Hartlepool, I would establish a commission to make recommendations to ministers on finding or establishing a successor body that could adequately replace it.

"Our area needs a police structure that does justice to the hugely important work of our front line police officers, who keep our local communities safe. They need to be supported by an organisation with credibility, which enjoys the full confidence of the local community.

"This is not about the people that work for Cleveland Police, but the structure that employs them.

"The organisation was established to be co-terminous with boundaries of Cleveland County Council during a local government review in the early 1970s. The structure is more than 40 years old and local boundaries have changed since then.

"We need to find a structure that has the scale and resources needed to tackle the considerable policing challenges of an urban area covering numerous different towns.

"I dont expect the Government to take a view at the moment, but I would urge ministers not to make any long-term policy pledges that would bind them to the organisations future."

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Mayoral candidate calls for abolition of Cleveland Police - Hartlepool Mail

Convicts leased to harvest timber in Florida around 1915

The U.S. criminal justice system is riven by racial disparity.

The Obama administration pursued a plan to reform it. An entire news organization, The Marshall Project, was launched in late 2014 to cover it. Organizations like Black Lives Matter and The Sentencing Project are dedicated to unmaking a system that unjustly targets people of color.

But how did we get this system in the first place? Our ongoing historical research project investigates the relationship between the press and convict labor. While that story is still unfolding, we have learned what few Americans, especially white Americans, know: the dark history that produced our current criminal justice system.

If anything is to change if we are ever to end this racial nightmare, and achieve our country, as James Baldwin put it we must confront this system and the blighted history that created it.

During Reconstruction, the 12 years following the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, former slaves made meaningful political, social and economic gains. Black men voted and even held public office across the South. Biracial experiments in governance flowered. Black literacy surged, surpassing those of whites in some cities. Black schools, churches and social institutions thrived.

As the prominent historian Eric Foner writes in his masterwork on Reconstruction, Black participation in Southern public life after 1867 was the most radical development of the Reconstruction years, a massive experiment in interracial democracy without precedent in the history of this or any other country that abolished slavery in the nineteenth century.

But this moment was short-lived.

As W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, the slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.

History is made by human actors and the choices they make.

According to Douglas Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name, the choices made by Southern white supremacists after abolition, and the rest of the countrys accommodation, explain more about the current state of American life, black and white, than the antebellum slavery that preceded.

Designed to reverse black advances, Redemption was an organized effort by white merchants, planters, businessmen and politicians that followed Reconstruction. Redeemers employed vicious racial violence and state legislation as tools to prevent black citizenship and equality promised under the 14th and 15th amendments.

By the early 1900s, nearly every southern state had barred black citizens not only from voting but also from serving in public office, on juries and in the administration of the justice system.

The Souths new racial caste system was not merely political and social. It was thoroughly economic. Slavery had made the Souths agriculture-based economy the most powerful force in the global cotton market, but the Civil War devastated this economy.

How to build a new one?

Ironically, white leaders found a solution in the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery in the United States in 1865. By exploiting the provision allowing slavery and involuntary servitude to continue as a punishment for crime, they took advantage of a penal system predating the Civil War and used even during Reconstruction.

With the help of profiteering industrialists they found yet a new way to build wealth on the bound labor of black Americans: the convict lease system.

Heres how it worked. Black men and sometimes women and children were arrested and convicted for crimes enumerated in the Black Codes, state laws criminalizing petty offenses and aimed at keeping freed people tied to their former owners plantations and farms. The most sinister crime was vagrancy the crime of being unemployed which brought a large fine that few blacks could afford to pay.

Black convicts were leased to private companies, typically industries profiteering from the regions untapped natural resources. As many as 200,000 black Americans were forced into back-breaking labor in coal mines, turpentine factories and lumber camps. They lived in squalid conditions, chained, starved, beaten, flogged and sexually violated. They died by the thousands from injury, disease and torture.

For both the state and private corporations, the opportunities for profit were enormous. For the state, convict lease generated revenue and provided a powerful tool to subjugate African-Americans and intimidate them into behaving in accordance with the new social order. It also greatly reduced state expenses in housing and caring for convicts. For the corporations, convict lease provided droves of cheap, disposable laborers who could be worked to the extremes of human cruelty.

Every southern state leased convicts, and at least nine-tenths of all leased convicts were black. In reports of the period, the terms convicts and negroes are used interchangeably.

Of those black Americans caught in the convict lease system, a few were men like Henry Nisbet, who murdered nine other black men in Georgia. But the vast majority were like Green Cottenham, the central figure in Blackmons book, who was snatched into the system after being charged with vagrancy.

A principal difference between antebellum slavery and convict leasing was that, in the latter, the laborers were only the temporary property of their masters. On one hand, this meant that after their fines had been paid off, they would potentially be let free. On the other, it meant the companies leasing convicts often absolved themselves of concerns about workers longevity. Such convicts were viewed as disposable and frequently worked beyond human endurance.

The living conditions of leased convicts are documented in dozens of detailed, firsthand reports spanning decades and covering many states. In 1883, Blackmon writes, Alabama prison inspector Reginald Dawson described leased convicts in one mine being held on trivial charges, in desperate, miserable conditions, poorly fed, clothed, and unnecessarily chained and shackled. He described the appalling number of deaths and appalling numbers of maimed and disabled men held by various forced-labor entrepreneurs spanning the entire state.

Dawsons reports had no perceptible impact on Alabamas convict leasing system.

The exploitation of black convict labor by the penal system and industrialists was central to southern politics and economics of the era. It was a carefully crafted answer to black progress during Reconstruction highly visible and widely known. The system benefited the national economy, too. The federal government passed up one opportunity after another to intervene.

Convict lease ended at different times across the early 20th century, only to be replaced in many states by another racialized and brutal method of convict labor: the chain gang.

Convict labor, debt peonage, lynching and the white supremacist ideologies of Jim Crow that supported them all produced a bleak social landscape across the South for African-Americans.

Black Americans developed multiple resistance strategies and gained major victories through the civil rights movement, including Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Jim Crow fell, and America moved closer than ever to fulfilling its democratic promise of equality and opportunity for all.

But in the decades that followed, a tough on crime politics with racist undertones produced, among other things, harsh drug and mandatory minimum sentencing laws that were applied in racially disparate ways. The mass incarceration system exploded, with the rate of imprisonment quadrupling between the 1970s and today.

Michelle Alexander famously calls it The New Jim Crow in her book of the same name.

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with 2.2 million behind bars, even though crime has decreased significantly since the early 1990s. And while black Americans make up only 13 percent of the U.S. population, they make up 37 percent of the incarcerated population. Forty percent of police killings of unarmed people are black men, who make up merely 6 percent of the population, according to a 2015 Washington Post report.

It doesnt have to be this way. We can choose otherwise.

Bryan Bowman received funding as a recipient of the Alan L. and Carol S. LeBovidge Undergraduate Research Scholarship in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Kathy Roberts Forde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

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Exploiting black labor after the abolition of slavery - Baraboo News Republic

NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Sex workers in India have slammed a global conference on the abolition of prostitution, saying campaigners for the end of the sex trade failed to recognize some women were prostitutes out of choice and not due to coercion, trafficking or force.

Participants at the Delhi conference - including former sex workers from South Africa, Canada, India and the United States - have been sharing stories of sexual slavery and calling for an end to prostitution by punishing clients, pimps and traffickers.

But sex workers' groups in India said there was a difference between voluntary sex work and sexual exploitation, and that not all women in the trade are victims or trafficked sex slaves.

"We are against anyone who does not recognize us as human beings who can take our own decisions," said Kiran Deshmukh, a sex worker from Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad, a collective of sex workers from India's western state of Maharashtra.

"Making us victims with no agency is a violation of our human right to work in sex work. By 'abolishing' us they are not helping us - they are ignoring our need to work and earn a living with dignity."

Sex work is illegal in most countries across the world, yet it exists everywhere. There are an estimated 40 million sex workers globally, according to French charity Fondation Scelles.

Abolitionists say most have been lured, duped or forced into sexual slavery by pimps and traffickers, largely due to poverty, a lack of opportunities and having a traditionally marginalized status in society.

Once forced to work in brothels, on street corners, in massage parlors, strip clubs or private homes, it is difficult for sex workers to leave, activists say.

For many it is the threat of physical abuse from their pimp that keeps them in prostitution, but some stay of their own accord, ostracized by their families with nowhere to go.

"WE ARE NOT COMMODITIES"

Groups from the National Network of Sex Workers in India said abolitionists were being moralistic and judgmental. They said legalizing the trade would regulate the industry and ensure there was no exploitation of women and girls.

"The violence of a judgmental attitude has contributed untold misery on sex workers encouraging lumpen elements to justify the violence meted out to sex workers," said a statement from the group, signed by over 2,000 sex workers, sex workers' children and 20 groups representing their rights.

However, several speakers at the conference said the vast majority of sex workers were exploited.

"So what if there are women out there who are doing this out of their own free will?" said Rachel Moran, an Irish prostitution survivor and founder of the charity SPACE International.

"There are 40 million women and girls on this earth that are prostituted and if you have a tiny sprinkling of those who say they have chosen it fully and voluntarily, that doesn't negate the experience of the vast majority."

Hollywood actress Ashley Judd, attending the conference as a strong advocate for prostitution to be abolished, said women and girls were being bought and sold like commodities and that action had to be taken to end the global sex trade.

"We need to put on the onus and shame where it belongs - which is on the perpetrator, the aggressor and the person who thinks that women and girl's bodies are purchasable," Judd said.

"We are not commodities, we are human beings and we are entitled to bodily integrity, sexual dignity and the right to be free from all forms of body invasion."

The three-day World Congress on the Elimination of the Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls - which brings together 250 charities and activists, as well as academics, trade unions and lawyers from across 30 countries - ends on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Nita Bhalla @nitabhalla, Editing by Katie Nguyen. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org)

BEIJING, Feb 7 China is proposing a further tightening of controls over the internet with the possible establishment of a new commission to vet internet services and hardware, Beijing's internet regulator has said.

HONG KONG Citigroup Inc's China unit said on Tuesday that it had received the so-called "Type A" bond settlement agent license from China's central bank, allowing it to add to its offering of sales, trading and research in the fixed-income business.

HONG KONG, Feb 7 Citigroup Inc's China unit said on Tuesday that it had received the so-called "Type A" bond settlement agent licence from China's central bank, allowing it to add to its offering of sales, trading and research in the fixed-income business.

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Indian sex worker groups slam global conference on abolition of ... - Reuters

Myron Ebell, who led Trumps EPA transition team, has described the environmental movement as the greatest threat to freedom in the modern world. Photograph: Yves Herman/Reuters

Donald Trump will work towards the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency and any employees cleaving to the Obama era should be very worried by the prospect of Scott Pruitt taking over the agency, a key aide of the president has told the Guardian.

In an exclusive interview, Myron Ebell who headed up Trumps EPA transition team, said that agencys environmental research, reports and data would not be removed from its website, but climate education material might be changed or withdrawn.

Ebell also signalled that a review of fuel efficiency standards for cars, rushed through by the departing Obama administration, is likely to be reopened despite its contribution to the USs pledged emissions cuts in the Paris agreement.

A campaign stump pledge by Trump to scrap the EPA in its entirety was an aspirational goal that would be best achieved by incremental demolition rather than an executive order, according to Ebell.

To abolish an agency requires not only thought but time because you have to decide what to do with certain functions that Congress has assigned to that agency, he said.

President Trump said during the campaign that he would like to abolish the EPA or leave a little bit. It is a goal he has and sometimes it takes a long time to achieve goals. You cant abolish the EPA by waving a magic wand.

The EPA was created in 1970 to protect human health and the environment, but Trump favours devolving much of its work and responsibilities to US states.

Ebell has previously said that two-thirds of the agencys 15,000 engineers, scientists and researchers could be axed but not that Trumps campaign pledge of revoking the agency itself was still an objective.

Half of the EPAs $8.2bn (6.47bn) budget is currently passed on to the states and it was quite possible that Trump would initially propose a 10% cut in federal EPA funding, Ebell said.

While he does not speak for the president, his dismissals of climate science and environmental regulation have cut with the grain at the new incumbents of the White House.

A climate action plan Ebell prepared for the incoming president outlines a strategy for withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, and scrapping Obamas signature clean power plan.

Any attempts to abolish the EPA would likely be steered by Pruitt, Trumps nominee who has sued the agency 13 times, although Democrats boycotted his confirmation hearing on Wednesday, preventing a vote.

The former EPA chief administrator in the Bush White House, Catherine Todd Whitman, complained earlier this week that agency staff were feeling nervous about the arrival of Pruitt, a climate science denier who has reportedly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the fossil fuels industry.

If you want to defend the status quo then you should be very worried, Ebell said. I expect Scott Pruitt to be a serious reformer at the EPA.

Fears of a purge of EPA climate data, research, and reports have been fuelled by the removal of climate science material on a White House website and a temporary hold placed on new publications until they have been vetted by political appointees.

Ebell insisted that existing scientific webpages would be protected. I have no doubt that they will not disappear, he said. I dont think President Trump has the least interest in destroying or hiding information. But I do think that a great deal of what the EPA puts out in the way of so-called climate education some of the research that theyve not necessarily done but promoted does not meet the minimal standards legally required by the federal information quality act. It therefore needs to be changed or withdrawn.

Ebell is the director of the ultra-conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the number one enemy of climate change alarmism, according to his Twitter page.

He has gained notoriety for arguing that climate science is based on a tissue of improbabilities and his CEI has been ridiculed by Greenpeace for a video claiming that CO2 is not a pollutant.

As he arrived in Brussels to address a Blue-Green summit on Wednesday, he was jeered by scores of environmental protestors, one of whom was bundled out of the meeting after brandishing a placard saying Resist during his speech.

Ebell has described the environmental movement as the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.

Asked for his advice to Ebell, Greg Barker, a former climate minister under David Cameron issued a plea: Please stop trashing experts.

It is incredibly dangerous. We live in a very complex and integrated world and the idea that we should denigrate learning and expertise is very worrying, very dark and sinister, Lord Barker added.

Ebell responded from the podium by accusing Barker of having strong economic interests in this [environmental] crony capitalist regime.

The combative stance may not have persuaded EU officials in the audience, but it has won admirers on the US alt-right, the far-right movement in the US who share his hostility to environmental regulation.

In a key speech in North Dakota last May, Trump lashed out at what he said were totalitarian tactics by the EPA, as he promised to save the US coal industry, build the Keystone XL pipeline and cancel the Paris climate agreement.

Doing so would mean we will be ceding global leadership of climate policy to China, Ebell said after the meeting. [But] I want to get rid of global climate policy, so why do I care who is in charge of it? I dont care. They can take it as far as Im concerned, and good luck to them.

A green light given to the 54.5 miles a gallon fuel efficiency standard for new automobiles might also be heading for the kerb, after the Obama administration fast-tracked a measure approving the fuel and emissions-saving rule in its last days.

Ebell said: My view is that the mid-term review should be reopened by the Trump administration because I believe the conclusions by the Obama administration were cooked. I dont think the facts support the conclusion that everything is [proceeding] on target, so I think they will have to reopen that.

The rest is here:

Donald Trump 'taking steps to abolish Environmental Protection Agency' - The Guardian

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Finance Minister Mr. Arun Jaitley today announced the abolition of the Foreign Investment Promotion Board as he presented the Union Budget for 2017-18.

The Foreign Investment Promotion Board(FIPB)offers a single window clearance for applications on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India that are under the approval route. The sectors under automatic route do not require any prior approval from FIPB and are subject to only sectoral laws. This e-filing facility is an important initiative of the FIPB Secretariat to further enhance its efficiency and transparency of decision making.

Industry experts and investors gave thumbs up to this initiative and said that this will simplify the inflow of foreign funds into the country.

Abolition of FIPB would mean no need to seek approval for foreign investment in country. This would help in speeding the foreign investment as direct investment. However I believe that there would be some negative list for which approval will be needed. Overall abolition of FIPB would help in reducing lot of paper work and approvals for seeking foreign investments and will also reduce time, Anil Joshi of Unicorn India Ventures.

Good for startups

Arun Jaitley further added that they are trying to liberalize the norms under Foreign Direct Investment.

Startups, which had seen a dent in funding from investors last year, this move comes as a ray of hope as foreign investors will now find it easier to make investments in India.

I believe the abolition of FIPB and making foreign investments approvals less subjective will send the right signal to the multitude of investors looking at India as the next big growth story after China. This will certainly give impetus to investments in Indian fast growth startups, Anil Chhikara, Principal, Jaarvis Accelerator said.

Nithin Kamath, Founder & CEO, Zerodha said thatscrapping of 'Foreign Investment Promotion Board' further proves that the Central Government is pro business and investments.

The FIPB was reconstituted in 1996 with transfer of the FIPB to the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). It was again transferred to the Department of Economic Affairs, under the Ministry of Finance, in 2003.

I write on India's well- established entrepreneurs, VCs, business houses, covering a whole range of sectors, for the company's website and monthly magazine. I am an engineer turned journalist. Prior to this, I was working with Reute...

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Indian Govt's Abolition of FIPB Will Help Spur Up Foreign Investments - Entrepreneur

The use of migrant detention across Europe, whether for the purpose of stopping asylum seekers and other migrants entering a country or for removing them, has long been a serious human rights concern. I have repeatedly spoken out against the pan-European trend of criminalisation of asylum seekers and migrants, of which detention is a key part. Detention is a far-reaching interference with migrants right to liberty. Experts have confirmed its very harmful effects on the mental health of migrants, especially children, who often experience detention as shocking, and even traumatising.

For this reason, it is imperative that states work towards the abolition of migrant detention. This does not mean giving up on managing ones borders, including decisions over who enters a country and who can stay. It means investing in alternative measures to manage migration effectively, which are not as far-reaching and harmful as detention. Thanks to the important work of civil society organisations, national human rights structures, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, the UN and the Council of Europe, the past few years have seen an upsurge in discussions about alternatives to immigration detention.

However, states reactions to the increased arrival of migrants in Europe are threatening past progress. One of the first actions taken under the 2016 EU-Turkey statement was to close off several reception facilities (hotspots) on the Greek islands with fences, effectively making them detention centres a practice which has been partially reversed since then. This month, the Hungarian government said it would make preparations to urgently reinstate mandatory migration detention. In Italy, plans to open sixteen new detention centres were reported. While European states increasingly feel the need to control and to be seen to control their borders, this cannot mean falling back on detention as a knee-jerk reaction.

The legal and policy imperatives for alternatives to detention

The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly stated that states applying immigration detention should not only have a proper basis for this in domestic law, but that it must also be necessary in the particular circumstances of the case. Recently in Khlaifia and others v. Italy the Court stressed that detention is such a serious measure that it is only justified where other, less severe measures have been considered and found to be insufficient. In 2010, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly adopted a resolution calling on states to ensure that the detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants shall be exceptional and only used after first reviewing all other alternatives and finding that there is no effective alternative.

Importantly, governments have themselves acknowledged the need for alternatives. The Committee of Ministers Twenty Guidelines on Forced Return only allow detention if non-custodial measures such as supervision systems, the requirement to report regularly to the authorities, bail or other guarantee systems are found to be ineffective. The 2016 New York Declaration for Migrants and Refugees, adopted by heads of state and government, also commits states to pursuing alternatives. During my own visits to many states, such as Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, I have urged governments to include clear alternatives to detention in their legal and policy frameworks.

While there is a need to expand and improve alternatives for all persons involved in immigration proceedings, this is particularly the case for vulnerable persons, including children. For migrant children, detention is not only subject to the requirements mentioned above, but also to an assessment of the best interest of the child, as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has been my position, however, that there are no circumstances in which the detention of a child for immigration purposes, whether unaccompanied or with family, could be in the childs best interest. For this reason, the complete abolition of the detention of migrant children should be a priority for all states.

Alternatives are not only an essential tool in safeguarding the human rights of migrants. They are also helpful for states. If properly implemented, they can help build trust, communication and engagement between the migrant and the state in return procedures, which can actually increase their effectiveness. Also, detention is very costly. Alternatives can provide significant savings, especially now that some states are faced with increasing numbers of new arrivals. Money saved on expanding detention could be more usefully directed towards improving protection systems, reception conditions and, importantly, the long-term integration of those who are allowed to stay.

Making alternatives a reality

Even when states have set up alternatives, these are often ad hoc or open only under very stringent circumstances. It is important that states strive to make alternatives open to as broad a group of migrants as possible. Furthermore, having only one type of alternative, such as bail, is not sufficient. Each person has their own particular circumstances and needs, which have to be accommodated to some extent to ensure that detention is not necessary. A number of extensive reports on the various alternatives that are applied in member states, their effectiveness and their potential drawbacks have been published over the last couple of years, including by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, academics and civil society networks. This gives states plenty of information to develop a well-stocked toolbox of alternatives, varying also in degrees of restrictiveness, if any restrictions are necessary.

Coaching and case management should always be part of this toolbox. Sometimes, this can be sufficient to keep track of migrants and render detention unnecessary. But they should also be integral components of non-detention measures that impose restrictions, such as regular reporting requirements, financial guarantees or limitations on freedom of movement. In addition, states should ensure that applying an alternative does not simply mean letting migrants fend for themselves. States should ensure they can meet their basic needs. This ensures the protection of their human dignity and also encourages positive engagement with the authorities.

Care must also be taken so that states do not simply make a trade-off between detention conditions and alternatives to detention. Although there is a crucial need to improve the conditions in detention facilities in many European states, governments should not simply deflect calls for avoiding detention by referring to improvements made in detention conditions. This is particularly important when it comes to children. Both the Belgian and the Dutch governments, for example, have committed to setting up better, more child-friendly detention facilities. While this will possibly reduce some of the hardship faced by children in detention, this cannot be seen as a substitute for categorically prohibiting the detention of children.

Finally, states should ensure that alternatives are applied to all forms of detention. In France, for example, I found that adults deprived of their liberty in airport zones cannot access alternatives. Furthermore, across Europe, there is an increasing blurring of lines between reception and detention facilities. I already mentioned the hotspots in Greece. In the above-mentioned Khlaifia case against Italy, the Court made very clear that what is determinative of detention is whether people are deprived of their liberty, irrespective of the name of the facility where this happens.

The way forward

European states urgently need to step up their work on reducing migrant detention and developing effective alternatives.

A first and crucial step now is that all states ensure that the obligation to provide sufficient alternatives is set out clearly and effectively in domestic law and policy, and that the use of alternatives is always assessed prior to any decision to detain.

Secondly, this should be complemented by setting up comprehensive programmes of viable and accessible alternatives, catering to a range of different needs and circumstances; the well-stocked toolbox I mentioned. Individual case management and coaching should be an integral part of each of these alternatives, as well as assurances that basic needs can be met.

Thirdly, there is a need for a clear path to the abolition of child detention. So far few governments have been willing to follow this path. It is therefore of the utmost importance that all involved, in particular parliamentarians, national human rights structures and domestic civil society organisations, call upon their governments to present roadmaps, including a firm deadline, for the abolition of child detention.

Fourthly, European states should exchange good practices among themselves and with other actors much more systematically. There is no doubt that states often look for each others guidance in amending their migration policies. Member states should make full use of the opportunities that international fora, such as the Council of Europe, offer to bring together knowledge, to learn from each other as well as from civil society organizations, and to improve the protection of asylum seekers and migrants.

Last but not least, there is a distinct lack of data that needs to be addressed. A 2015 expert report illustrates the lack of consistent data gathering on detention practices. If we are to have honest discussions of what works, for migrants and states, sufficient data need to be available about people deprived of their liberty, the situations in which they are offered alternatives, and the outcomes of these processes. This would improve policy making and enhance necessary human rights monitoring.

Nils Muinieks

Link:

High time for states to invest in alternatives to migrant detention - ReliefWeb

By Annabelle Regan and Sophie McInnerny

Posted February 07, 2017 15:31:09

Transport groups have expressed frustration at being left out of a safety summit organised by the Transport Workers Union.

The national summit of truckies, academics and politicians looked at a safety report by Macquarie University which was critical of the abolition of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal.

It was abolished last year amid intense criticism from owner-operator businesses concerned it would send them broke by increasing pay rates.

The president of South Australian Road Transport Association, Steve Shearer, was annoyed that his and other transport organisations were not invited or not told about last week's summit.

They included the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, Australian Trucking Association and the National Road Transport Association.

Mr Shearer claimed they had been left out.

"The union only wants to work with people who agree precisely with what the union wants," he said.

"It looks very much like the unions had a summit with its friends and nobody else, now that's not a credible summit.

"It wouldn't deal properly with the issues."

The TWU said other transport groups were invited but could not attend the summit.

It had arranged later meetings to inform them of the summit's outcomes while acknowledging their importance toward a safer heavy transport industry.

The Macquarie University report said a tribunal was needed to eliminate tight scheduling, unpaid work and inadequate pay rates.

The report included a survey of truck drivers which found 80 per cent worked more than 50 hours per week with some working more than 80 hours.

It also found some owner-drivers were reluctant to refuse an unsafe load.

Current regulations meant a driver could log up to 72 driving-hours in a week while extra accreditation provided for a driver to log up to 84 hours in a seven-day period.

Mr Shearer said the weekly limits were created with help from fatigue researchers and had seen serious injury and fatality rates fall dramatically since their introduction.

Topics: unions, occupational-health-and-safety, road-transport, sa, australia

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Industry calls for better cooperation from TWU on safety for truckies - ABC Online

BOB FITRAKIS AND HARVEY WASSERMAN FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

(Photo: Rama)Donald Trump's relentless insistence that three million "aliens" voted for Hillary Clinton and cost him a popular majority in November's presidential election cuts far beyond what the corporate media is willing to report.When it comes to undermining democracy in the US, Trump is once again proving that the best defense is a total attack, even if it relies on "alternative facts."

Trump's Big Lie on voter fraud has been as widely scorned as his fantasies about the size of the turnout at his inauguration.Even the normally restrained New York Times has editorialized that "what once seemed like another harebrained claim by a president with little regard for the truth must now be recognized as a real threat to American democracy."

It seems to be dawning on The Times and others that by claiming so many non-citizens voted more than once, Trump re-loads America's Jim Crow lynch laws against Black people voting.Based on these assertions, we can expect more and more aggressive attacks by the administration against the rights of non-whites and non-millionaires to a fair and honest ballot.

Indeed, the corporate media has not yet faced the devastation of mass disenfranchisement in 2016.As reported by Greg Palast (www.gregpalast.com) and others, some thirty GOP Secretaries of State across the US used a computer program called Crosscheck to strip thousands of mostly black, Hispanic, Asian-American and Muslim voters from the registration rolls.These mass disenfranchisements could well have made the difference in key swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida that allowed Trump to win in the Electoral College while so thoroughly losing the popular vote.

Trump's carping about voter fraud has first and foremost has helped divert the public's attention from this defining reality.

But unfortunately, there is far more.

Let's start with the Electoral College.For the sixth time in US history, the candidate who lost among eligible voters has entered the White House.Last was 2000, when Al Gore beat George W. Bush nationwide by more than a half-million votes.Neither Gore nor the Democratic Party followed this stunning election theft (which had such dire consequences) by launching any kind of movement to abolish the Electoral College.Instead, many Democrats have spent 16 years screaming at Ralph Nader for daring to run for president. Had they instead recruited him to help organize the abolition of the Electoral College, Trump might not now be in the White House.

In 2016, the attack on Nader has morphed into a fixation on Russian hacking and anger at the FBI.So barring a miracle (or a Constitutional Amendment) in 2020 and the foreseeable future beyond, the curse of the Electoral College will still be there to serve the popular minority.

Trump has also fought hard against any meaningful recounts,And for good reason.As many as 28 states this election showed statistically significant variations between exit polls and official vote counts. In 25 of those states, the "Red Shift" went in Trump's direction. Among statisticians this is known as a "virtual statistical impossibility."

In Michigan, which officially went to Trump by about 10,000 votes, some 75,000 ballots came in without a presidential preference, mostly in heavily Democratic urban areas.The idea that 75,000 citizens would take the trouble to vote but not to make a preference among at least four presidential candidates has yet to be explained by the media or the Democrats.

Major problems with electronic voting machines, precinct access, ballot chain of custody and vote count issues also surfaced throughout the swing states.But when the Green Party's Jill Stein dared to attempt a recount, Trump launched an all-out attack.High-priced attorneys in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere did all they could to prevent any realistic examination of what actually happened in the states that gave him the presidency.

Meanwhile, rather than doing the work themselves, the corporate media heaped scorn on Stein for daring to examine exactly how Trump became president.The Democrats and the Clinton campaign offered no help beyond sending a few attorneys to "observe" the assault on greens uppity enough to challenge the system that had flipped the presidency, the Congress, the Supreme Court and innumerable state and local governments.

The bottom line here is that our entire electoral process is broken. Donald Trump became president because massive disenfranchisements kept thousands of citizen from voting, because electronic "black box" voting machines cannot be monitored or accounted for by the general public, and because the Electoral College remains in place, ready to swing the next loser into the White House.

Trump's screaming assertion of entirely the opposite is a brilliant strategy that can only work in a country where the media refuse to face the realities of a thoroughly broken system, and an "opposition" Democratic Party that won't fight for elections it actually wins.

Our survival demands an actual democracy.That means universal automatic voter registration, with voter rolls transparent and readily accessible for verification.It means a four-day national holiday for voting, universal hand-counted paper ballots, and automatic recounts at no cost to the candidates.It also demands an end to gerrymandering, a ban on corporate money in our campaigns and, of course, the abolition of the Electoral College.

Trump's rantings about voter fraud are a brilliant diversion away from all that.So is the media and Democrats' obsession with the Russians.

Our stripped and flipped elections are home-grown poison.Donald Trump is the ultimate outcome. Until we reject the current electoral system, we will all be living in a world of hurt.

---

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-authored six books on election protection, including The Strip & Flip Selection of 2016, atwww.freepress.org, where Bob's Fitrakis Files also reside.Harvey's Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is atwww.solartopia.org.

Link:

Trump's Big Lie About 3 Million "Alien Voters" Cuts Far Deeper Than You Think - Truth-Out

Every year, hundreds of badgers meet a horrific death in the name of 'sport' in the UK at the hands of terriermen. Many of those who have been caught digging into badger setts have used the excuse that they were after foxes - and many have escaped prosecution by so doing.

More than 10,000 are caught, tortured and killed in the UK each year by huntsmen with terriers - with almost a third of these illegal acts being carried out in Wales. Alarmingly, this figure is rising constantly. Terry Spamer, a former RSPCA inspector, believes that there are around 2,000 people involved in badger baiting currently. However, only around three people are caught and convicted of badger baiting each year, while the majority carry on breaking the law.

Badger Baiting was made illegal in 1835 and is currently an offence under the Protection of Animals Act 1911, but it has never died out. Sadly, it is the badger's tenacity, its apparent ability to absorb almost any punishment and still go on fighting, which has made it a target for people who get their kicks from inflicting cruelty upon animals, even today.

Small terriers, such as Lakelands, Patterdales, sometimes Jack Russells or a cross-breed are sent down into a badger sett to locate a badger and hold it at bay. The men then dig their way down to their quarry and drag the badger out of the sett. Many diggers attach a radio transmitter to the dog's collar before sending it below ground then all they have to do is use a radio receiver/locater to determine the exact location of the dog.

There are essentially two types of badger baiters. The first who do it just for the pleasure of killing the badger on the spot and no money is involved. If it's lucky the badger will be shot but usually the men will set their snarling terriers on the badger and watch it suffer a long and agonising death stabbing it with shovels for good measure. At times, the dogs and the badgers may die when the sett collapses and suffocates them. (Many badger groups have fortified their local setts with concrete to protect the badgers.)

The second type of badger baiting involves gambling where large sums of money can change hands. The badger is dug out of the sett in the manner described above and then it is put in a bag and taken away to be baited later on. The badger is taken somewhere quiet for example a barn, shed or cellar and placed into a makeshift arena, a ring or pit, from which it cannot escape. Dogs are then set upon it. Even if the badger is lucky enough to get the better of one dog, the owner may hit or otherwise injure the badger in order to 'protect his pet'. Ultimately, no matter how well it tries to defend itself, the badger's fate is sealed. The badger, through injury and exhaustion, will not be able fight any longer. The baiters will then kill the badger usually by clubbing or shooting it. Gambling is always involved and a winning dog's value will rise - along with the price of its puppies. An anonymous letter received by Badger Watch & Rescue Dyfed states that badgers are being caught and sold for about 500 for baiting.

Badgers are shy and peaceful animals and not normally aggressive, but will defend themselves if cornered or provoked. A badger has great strength and a blow from one of its vicious claws can do serious harm. Many dogs seriously injured during badger digging and baiting go untreated as their owners are more concerned vets will become suspicious of the owner's illegal activity.

Badger baiting with 7 dogs. Its back legs are held by a chain to prevent escape. The animals multilated head, minus nose and lower jaw, finished up mounted on a plaque.

It's not just 'rogue' terriermen who consider badger baiting a perfectly respectable pastime. For example, Bob Lawrence writing in Countrymans Weekly, 4 March 1994, comment:

"It is sad that a large proportion of the sporting community has taken to condemning badger digging. Perhaps this condemnation is a ploy to throw a smokescreen into the antis. At one time it was regarded as a true country sport and was reported in magazines like The Field. Indeed that illustrious publication was responsible for the publishing of an excellent little book entitled Working Terriers, Badgers and Badger Digging written by H H King. Anyone who has a chance to read it should do so as it gives an excellent insight into a real sporting pastime.

"Badger digging, when conducted in the proper manner by people who respected the quarry and the gallant little dogs used to dig them, was a perfectly respectable sport."

Read more here:

Campaign for the Abolition of Terrier Work - Badger Baiting

What was the Pro-Slavery or West India Lobby?

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the production of sugar in Britain's West Indian colonies saw money pouring into Britain. The sugar production came to be controlled by a small circle of wealthy planters and merchants.

By the 1670's, London had became the centre of colonial decision-making and the West Indian planters, living in England, formed an association with the London merchants and agents responsible for colonial legislation. By 1733, the West India Lobby had grown to included associations from all the principle trade cities (Bristol, Liverpool, Glasgow, and London). Together, theynurtured ties with members of both houses of Parliament and eventually a number became MPs.

Once the planters became part of the government, they had the opportunity to influence policies that affected the colonies. The rise ofthe sugar industryalso saw therise of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and, with it, attempts by individuals to create a similar influence on the governmental economic policy, in line with slave trader interests.

Those involved in the industry eventually controlled a considerable proportion of Britain's wealth. The money from the plantations also generated commerce and shaped the British economy, as new banks and financial institutions developed. The planters and merchants invested in industry and the profits they made allowed them to build stately homes in the countryside and have enough wealth to acquire immense political power.

Many absentee' plantation owners and merchants involved in the Slave Trade, rose to high office as mayors or served in Parliament.William Beckford, for example, the owner of a 22,000 acre estate in Jamaica, was twice Lord Mayor of London and, in the mid to late 1700's, over 50 MPs in parliament represented the slave plantations.

For 200 years, supporters of the Slave Trade were successful in opposing any opposition. The lobby won major concessions from the British government and proved tough opposition to the abolitionists.

What tactics did they use?

The West India Lobbyused very similar tactics to the anti-slavery lobby (see Campaign Section). They wrote pamphlets and other literature arguing that the Slave Trade was necessary and, in fact, beneficial to the Africans. They lobbied parliament and produced witnesses to testify to parliament. They had the power and wealth to buy votes and exert pressure on others.

They also used delaying tactics, for example, suggesting the need for further time or investigation, before consideration of the issue by the House, or supporting compromise solutions. On April 2nd 1792, when Wilberforce again brought a bill calling for abolition, Henry Dundas, as home secretary, proposed a compromise solution of gradual abolition' over a number of years. Although this was passed by 230to 85 votes, the compromise was seen as little more than a clever ploy by the pro-slavery lobby. Gradual, in their view, meant never.

Another response to attacks by the anti slavery lobby was to show themselves as reformers, by revising slave codes and offering improvements to conditions. In 1823, for example, pressure for total abolition saw the Government outline a reform programme, drawn up in close consultation with the committee of West Indian Planters and Merchants, known as the amelioration programme'. The committee was chaired by an influential absentee plantation owner, Charles Ellis.

The programme involved revising the laws which regulated the number of hoursenslaved peoplecould work and the food they were provided with. It gaveenslaved peoplebasic legal rights, including the right to own property, and also provided for religious instruction. The idea was for a legally-regulated abolition of slave status, over an unspecified time period. Although the programme led to some improvements in conditions, by the early 1830's, many had still not implemented these changes.

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See more here:

The Pro-Slavery Lobby: The Abolition of Slavery Project