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Actions of IT giants pave the way for states to monopolize data Snowden – TASS

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/. Violations of user rights by IT giants who are now directly checking information and data contained in peoples personal gadgets entails a risk that governments will later monopolize this function, former US NSA staffer Edward Snowden said on Thursday.

"Its no longer a company question, its a government question. So, you have to ask yourself can Apple say no to the US government, the Russian government, the Chinese government, the German government, the French government, the British government? Of course, the answer is no. Not if they want to keep selling their products in these countries. Thats dangerous," he said.

He recalled that Apple earlier announced plans to look for illegal content on their phones even before this information is saved on their servers. "Instead of private companies scanning their files in the cloud on their system, now they are doing it on your phone. This has caused a lot of concern for people around the world even though they say that the system for now is only rolling out in the United States." Snowden noted. "The reasons for it are once Apple proves that it is possible for them to scan for some kind of forbidden content <> they cant decide in the future what kind of files would be searched for."

According to him, this function will give Apple opportunity to look through and search for any personal information stored on phones. "Now they are telling your device what to look for. And if they find something thats forbidden, thats against the law <> but tomorrow it can be something else, some new category. You dont know what they are scanning for," he said. "Once Apple breaks down this barrier between their servers and your phone and now they start scanning on your phone, they can scan for anything, they scan for political criticism, they can scan for financial records," he concluded.

In early August, Apple revealed that the company would start checking messages and iCloud content for child pornography. Apple said on Thursday that the necessary means to technically do that would be introduced in the new software for all its devices.

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Actions of IT giants pave the way for states to monopolize data Snowden - TASS

Microsoft’s Azure Government Top Secret Cloud: All you need to know – TechHQ

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Just last month, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was named the winner of a US$10 billion cloud computing contract, called WildandStormy, for the National Security Agency (NSA). But Microsoft was evidently not satisfied with the results, given the ongoing legal tussle between both companies on the Pentagons JEDI cloud computing contract. In an apparent counter move, Microsofts Azure made Government Top Secret its cloud service for governmental agencies that need to manage top-secret data generally available a couple of weeks ago.

As Microsoft Azure corporate VP Tom Keane put it in a blog posting, This announcement, together with new services and functionality in Azure Government Secret, provides further evidence of Microsofts relentless commitment to the mission of national security, enabling customers and partners to realize the vision of a multi-cloud strategy and achieve greater agility, interoperability, cost savings, and speed to innovation.

The company has long offered Government and Government Secret services, but now is after highly classified data workloads. Unlike its other offerings, Azure Government Top Secret supports Intelligence Community Directive 705 standards, a list of precise steps a compartmented information facility has to follow.

Azure Government Top Secret is now generally available for US national security agencies. Source: Microsoft

Developed in collaboration with the US government, Microsofts Azure cloud has data centers organized into regions, with its own personnel comprising only US citizens and its own network fiber that is separate from the Azure commercial offering. The data centers need to follow strict rules on construction, physical security features, and staffing checks. As part of the process, the Azure regions are air-gapped.

The new regions, whose locations are not detailed, are launching with more than 60 Azure services, with more to come. Built into a unified data strategy, these services help human analysts more rapidly extract intelligence, identify trends and anomalies, broaden perspectives, and find new insights, Keane said.

Keane also shared that the Azure Government product portfolio was developed to further Microsofts relentless commitment to the mission of national security. Microsoft also revealed that it has added new services to Azure Government Secret, including Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Functions, and Azure App Service. There are now 73 services available on the Government Secret cloud. In addition to those, Microsoft offers data analysis and AI services to government agencies through Azures Data Lake, Cosmos DB, HDInsight, and Cognitive Services.

Keanes blog post highlighted that in order to develop a unified cybersecurity approach to protect the nations data, mission owners can utilize products informed by this threat intelligence, including Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel to integrate multiple security point solutions and continually assess, visualize, and protect the security state of resources in Azure, on-premises, and in other clouds. B

Microsoft was approved as a supplier of cloud services to the US intelligence community in 2018, and two years later was chosen, along with AWS, Google, Oracle, and IBM, as part of the multibillion-dollar C2E cloud contract where the CIA will get each company to bid for specific task orders for itself and the 16 other agencies within the US intelligence community.

This month, however, Microsoft lost out on a US$10 billion cloud contract with the NSA. It is protesting the decision to award the deal to Amazon Web Services in court. The company is likely hoping to score the same victory as AWS did with JEDI, the Department of Defenses US$10 billion-valued cloud contract. It was awarded to Microsoft in October 2019, but that contract was scrapped after a lengthy legal battle.

It is also fair to note that AWS was the first company to launch top-secret regions that were deemed fit to host the governments exceedingly private data. So, this levels the playing field and provides the government with a choice because previously, it was just a one-horse race, Keane said.

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Microsoft's Azure Government Top Secret Cloud: All you need to know - TechHQ

The Scandalous History of the Last Rotor Cipher Machine – IEEE Spectrum

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Growing up in New York City, I always wanted to be a spy. But when I graduated from college in January 1968, the Cold War and Vietnam War were raging, and spying seemed like a risky career choice. So I became an electrical engineer, working on real-time spectrum analyzers for a U.S. defense contractor.

In 1976, during a visit to the Polish Army Museum in Warsaw, I saw an Enigma, the famous German World War II cipher machine. I was fascinated. Some years later, I had the good fortune of visiting the huge headquarters of the cipher machine company Crypto AG (CAG), in Steinhausen, Switzerland, and befriending a high-level cryptographer there. My friend gave me an internal history of the company written by its founder, Boris Hagelin. It mentioned a 1963 cipher machine, the HX-63.

Like the Enigma, the HX-63 was an electromechanical cipher system known as a rotor machine. It was the only electromechanical rotor machine ever built by CAG, and it was much more advanced and secure than even the famous Enigmas. In fact, it was arguably the most secure rotor machine ever built. I longed to get my hands on one, but I doubted I ever would.

Fast forward to 2010. I'm in a dingy third subbasement at a French military communications base. Accompanied by two-star generals and communications officers, I enter a secured room filled with ancient military radios and cipher machines. Voil! I am amazed to see a Crypto AG HX-63, unrecognized for decades and consigned to a dusty, dimly lit shelf.

I carefully extract the 16-kilogram (35-pound) machine. There's a hand crank on the right side, enabling the machine to operate away from mains power. As I cautiously turn it, while typing on the mechanical keyboard, the nine rotors advance, and embossed printing wheels feebly strike a paper tape. I decided on the spot to do everything in my power to find an HX-63 that I could restore to working order.

If you've never heard of the HX-63 until just now, don't feel bad. Most professional cryptographers have never heard of it. Yet it was so secure that its invention alarmed William Friedman, one of the greatest cryptanalysts ever and, in the early 1950s, the first chief cryptologist of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). After reading a 1957 Hagelin patent (more on that later), Friedman realized that the HX-63, then under development, was, if anything, more secure than the NSA's own KL-7, then considered unbreakable. During the Cold War, the NSA built thousands of KL-7s, which were used by every U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence agency from 1952 to 1968.

The reasons for Friedman's anxiety are easy enough to understand. The HX-63 had about 10600 possible key combinations; in modern terms, that's equivalent to a 2,000-bit binary key. For comparison, the Advanced Encryption Standard, which is used today to protect sensitive information in government, banking, and many other sectors, typically uses a 128- or a 256-bit key.

In the center of the cast-aluminum base of the HX-63 cipher machine is a precision Swiss-made direct-current gear motor. Also visible is the power supply [lower right] and the function switch [left], which is used to select the operating modefor example, encryption or decryption.Peter Adams

A total of 12 different rotors are available for the HX-63, of which nine are used at any one time. Current flows into one of 41 gold-plated contacts on the smaller-diameter side of the rotor, through a conductor inside the rotor, out through a gold-plated contact on the other side, and then into the next rotor. The incrementing of each rotor is programmed by setting pins, which are just visible in the horizontal rotor.Peter Adams

Just as worrisome was that CAG was a privately owned Swiss company, selling to any government, business, or individual. At the NSA, Friedman's job was to ensure that the U.S. government had access to the sensitive, encrypted communications of all governments and threats worldwide. But traffic encrypted by the HX-63 would be unbreakable.

Friedman and Hagelin were good friends. During World War II, Friedman had helped make Hagelin a very wealthy man by suggesting changes to one of Hagelin's cipher machines, which paved the way for the U.S. Army to license Hagelin's patents. The resulting machine, the M-209-B, became a workhorse during the war, with some 140,000 units fielded. During the 1950s, Friedman and Hagelin's close relationship led to a series of understandings collectively known as a gentleman's agreement" between U.S. intelligence and the Swiss company. Hagelin agreed not to sell his most secure machines to countries specified by U.S. intelligence, which also got secret access to Crypto's machines, plans, sales records, and other data.

But in 1963, CAG started to market the HX-63, and Friedman became even more alarmed. He convinced Hagelin not to manufacture the new device, even though the machine had taken more than a decade to design and only about 15 had been built, most of them for the French army. However, 1963 was an interesting year in cryptography. Machine encryption was approaching a crossroads; it was starting to become clear that the future belonged to electronic encipherment. Even a great rotor machine like the HX-63 would soon be obsolete.

That was a challenge for CAG, which had never built an electronic cipher machine. Perhaps partly because of this, in 1966, the relationship among CAG, the NSA, and the CIA went to the next level. That year, the NSA delivered to its Swiss partner an electronic enciphering system that became the basis of a CAG machine called the H-460. Introduced in 1970, the machine was a failure. However, there were bigger changes afoot at CAG: That same year, the CIA and the German Federal Intelligence Service secretly acquired CAG for US $5.75 million. (Also in 1970, Hagelin's son Bo, who was the company's sales manager for the Americas and who had opposed the transaction, died in a car crash near Washington, D.C.)

Although the H-460 was a failure, it was succeeded by a machine called the H-4605, of which thousands were sold. The H-4605 was designed with NSA assistance. To generate random numbers, it used multiple shift registers based on the then-emerging technology of CMOS electronics. These numbers were not true random numbers, which never repeat, but rather pseudorandom numbers, which are generated by a mathematical algorithm from an initial seed."

This mathematical algorithm was created by the NSA, which could therefore decrypt any messages enciphered by the machine. In common parlance, the machines were backdoored." This was the start of a new era for CAG. From then on, its electronic machines, such as the HC-500 series, were secretly designed by the NSA, sometimes with the help of corporate partners such as Motorola. This U.S.-Swiss operation was code-named Rubicon. The backdooring of all CAG machines continued until 2018, when the company was liquidated.

Parts of this story emerged in leaks by CAG employees before 2018 and, especially, in a subsequent investigation by the Washington Post and a pair of European broadcasters, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, in Germany, and Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, in Switzerland. The Post's article, published on 11 February 2020, touched off firestorms in the fields of cryptology, information security, and intelligence.

The revelations badly damaged the Swiss reputation for discretion and dependability. They triggered civil and criminal litigation and an investigation by the Swiss government and, just this past May, led to the resignation of the Swiss intelligence chief Jean-Philippe Gaudin, who had fallen out with the defense minister over how the revelations had been handled. In fact, there's an interesting parallel to our modern era, in which backdoors are increasingly common and the FBI and other U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies sporadically tussle with smartphone manufacturers over access to encrypted data on the phones.

Even before these revelations, I was deeply fascinated by the HX-63, the last of the great rotor machines. So I could scarcely believe my good fortune in 2020 when, after years of negotiations, I took possession of an HX-63 for my research for the Association des Rservistes du Chiffre et de la Scurit de l'Information, a Paris-based professional organization of cryptographers and information-security specialists. This particular unit, different from the one I had seen a decade before, had been untouched since 1963. I immediately began to plan the restoration of this historically resonant machine.

People have been using codes and ciphers to protect sensitive information for a couple of thousand years. The first ciphers were based on hand calculations and tables. In 1467, a mechanical device that became known as the Alberti cipher wheel was introduced. Then, just after World War I, an enormous breakthrough occurred, one of the greatest in cryptographic history: Edward Hebern in the United States, Hugo Koch in the Netherlands, and Arthur Scherbius in Germany, within months of one another, patented electromechanical machines that used rotors to encipher messages. Thus began the era of the rotor machine. Scherbius's machine became the basis for the famous Enigma used by the German military from the 1930s until the end of WW II.

To understand how a rotor machine works, first recall the basic goal of cryptography: substituting each of the letters in a message, called plaintext, with other letters in order to produce an unreadable message, called ciphertext. It's not enough to make the same substitution every timereplacing every F with a Q, for example, and every K with an H. Such a monoalphabetic cipher would be easily solved.

A rotor machine gets around that problem usingyou guessed itrotors. Start with a round disk that's roughly the diameter of a hockey puck, but thinner. On both sides of the disk, spaced evenly around the edge, are 26 metal contacts, each corresponding to a letter of the English alphabet. Inside the disk are wires connecting a contact on one side of the disk to a different one on the other side. The disk is connected electrically to a typewriter-like keyboard. When a user hits a key on the keyboard, say W, electric current flows to the W position on one side of the rotor. The current goes through a wire in the rotor and comes out at another position, say L. However, after that keystroke, the rotor rotates one or more positions. So the next time the user hits the W key, the letter will be encrypted not as L but rather as some other letter.

Though more challenging than simple substitution, such a basic, one-rotor machine would be child's play for a trained cryptanalyst to solve. So rotor machines used multiple rotors. Versions of the Enigma, for example, had either three rotors or four. In operation, each rotor moved at varying intervals with respect to the others: A keystroke could move one rotor or two, or all of them. Operators further complicated the encryption scheme by choosing from an assortment of rotors, each wired differently, to insert in their machine. Military Enigma machines also had a plugboard, which swapped specific pairs of letters both at the keyboard input and at the output lamps.

The rotor-machine era finally ended around 1970, with the advent of electronic and software encryption, although a Soviet rotor machine called Fialka was deployed well into the 1980s.

The HX-63 pushed the envelope of cryptography. For starters it has a bank of nine removable rotors. There's also a modificator," an array of 41 rotary switches, each with 41 positions, that, like the plugboard on the Enigma, add another layer, an unchanging scramble, to the encryption. The unit I acquired has a cast-aluminum base, a power supply, a motor drive, a mechanical keyboard, and a paper-tape printer designed to display both the input text and either the enciphered or deciphered text. A function-control switch on the base switches among four modes: off, clear" (test), encryption, and decryption.

In encryption mode, the operator types in the plaintext, and the encrypted message is printed out on the paper tape. Each plaintext letter typed into the keyboard is scrambled according to the many permutations of the rotor bank and modificator to yield the ciphertext letter. In decryption mode, the process is reversed. The user types in the encrypted message, and both the original and decrypted message are printed, character by character and side by side, on the paper tape.

While encrypting or decrypting a message, the HX-63 prints both the original and the encrypted message on paper tape. The blue wheels are made of an absorbent foam that soaks up ink and applies it to the embossed print wheels.Peter Adams

Beneath the nine rotors on the HX-63 are nine keys that unlock each rotor to set the initial rotor position before starting a message. That initial position is an important component of the cryptographic key.Peter Adams

To begin encrypting a message, you select nine rotors (out of 12) and set up the rotor pins that determine the stepping motion of the rotors relative to one another. Then you place the rotors in the machine in a specific order from right to left, and set each rotor in a specific starting position. Finally, you set each of the 41 modificator switches to a previously determined position. To decrypt the message, those same rotors and settings, along with those of the modificator, must be re-created in the receiver's identical machine. All of these positions, wirings, and settings of the rotors and of the modificator are collectively known as the key.

The HX-63 includes, in addition to the hand crank, a nickel-cadmium battery to run the rotor circuit and printer if no mains power is available. A 12-volt DC linear power supply runs the motor and printer and charges the battery. The precision 12-volt motor runs continuously, driving the rotors and the printer shaft through a reduction gear and a clutch. Pressing a key on the keyboard releases a mechanical stop, so the gear drive propels the machine through a single cycle, turning the shaft, which advances the rotors and prints a character.

The printer has two embossed alphabet wheels, which rotate on each keystroke and are stopped at the desired letter by four solenoids and ratchet mechanisms. Fed by output from the rotor bank and keyboard, mechanical shaft encoders sense the position of the alphabet printing wheels and stop the rotation at the required letter. Each alphabet wheel has its own encoder. One set prints the input on the left half of the paper tape; the other prints the output on the right side of the tape. After an alphabet wheel is stopped, a cam releases a print hammer, which strikes the paper tape against the embossed letter. At the last step the motor advances the paper tape, completing the cycle, and the machine is ready for the next letter.

As I began restoring the HX-63, I quickly realized the scope of the challenge. The plastic gears and rubber parts had deteriorated, to the point where the mechanical stress of motor-driven operation could easily destroy them. Replacement parts don't exist, so I had to build such parts myself.

After cleaning and lubricating the machine, I struck a few keys on the keyboard. I was delighted to see that all nine cipher rotors turned and the machine printed a few characters on the paper tape. But the printout was intermittently blank and distorted. I replaced the corroded nickel-cadmium battery and rewired the power transformer, then gradually applied AC power. To my amazement, the motor, rotors, and the printer worked for a few keystrokes. But suddenly there was a crash of gnashing gears, and broken plastic bits flew out of the machine. Printing stopped altogether, and my heartbeat nearly did too.

I decided to disassemble the HX-63 into modules: The rotor bank lifted off, then the printer. The base contains the keyboard, power supply, and controls. Deep inside the printer were four plastic snubbers," which cushion and position the levers that stop the ratchet wheels at the indicated letter. These snubbers had disintegrated. Also, the foam disks that ink the alphabet wheels were decomposing, and gooey bits were clogging the alphabet wheels.

I made some happy, serendipitous finds. To rebuild the broken printer parts, I needed a dense rubber tube. I discovered that a widely available neoprene vacuum hose worked perfectly. Using a drill press and a steel rod as a mandrel, I cut the hose into precise, 10-millimeter sections. But the space deep within the printer, where the plastic snubbers are supposed to be, was blocked by many shafts and levers, which seemed too risky to remove and replace. So I used right-angle long-nosed pliers and dental tools to maneuver the new snubbers under the mechanism. After hours of deft surgery, I managed to install the snubbers.

The ink wheels were made of an unusual porous foam. I tested many replacement materials, settling finally on a dense blue foam cylinder. Alas, it had a smooth, closed-cell surface that would not absorb ink, so I abraded the surface with rough sandpaper.

After a few more such fixes, I faced just one more snafu: a bad paper-tape jam. I had loaded a new roll of paper tape, but I did not realize that this roll had a slightly smaller core. The tape seized, tore, and jammed under the alphabet wheels, deeply buried and inaccessible. I was stymiedbut then made a wonderful discovery. The HX-63 came with thin stainless-steel strips with serrated edges designed specifically to extract jammed paper tape. I finally cleared the jam, and the restoration was complete.

One of the reasons why the HX-63 was so fiendishly secure was a technique called reinjection, which increased its security exponentially. Rotors typically have a position for each letter of the alphabet they're designed to encrypt. So a typical rotor for English would have 26 positions. But the HX-63's rotors have 41 positions. That's because reinjection (also called reentry) uses extra circuit paths beyond those for the letters of the alphabet. In the HX-63, there are 15 additional paths.

Here's how reinjection worked in the HX-63. In encryption mode, current travels in one direction through all the rotors, each introducing a unique permutation. After exiting the last rotor, the current loops back through that same rotor to travel back through all the rotors in the opposite direction. However, as the current travels back through the rotors, it follows a different route, through the 15 additional circuit paths set aside for this purpose. The exact path depends not only on the wiring of the rotors but also on the positions of the 41 modificators. So the total number of possible circuit configurations is 26! x 15!, which equals about 5.2 x 1038. And each of the nine rotors' internal connections can be rewired in 26! different ways. In addition, the incrementing of the rotors is controlled by a series of 41 mechanical pins. Put it all together and the total number of different key combinations is around 10600.

Such a complex cipher was not only unbreakable in the 1960s, it would be extremely difficult to crack even today. Reinjection was first used on the NSA's KL-7 rotor machine. The technique was invented during WW II by Albert W. Small, at the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service. It was the subject of a secret patent that Small filed in 1944 and that was finally granted in 1961 (No. 2,984,700).

Meanwhile, in 1953, Hagelin applied for a U.S. patent for the technique, which he intended to use in what became the HX-63. Perhaps surprisingly, given that the technique was already the subject of a patent application by Small, Hagelin was granted his patent in 1957 (No. 2,802,047). Friedman, for his part, had been alarmed all along by Hagelin's use of reinjection, because the technique had been used in a whole series of vitally important U.S. cipher machines, and because it was a great threat to the NSA's ability to listen to government and military message traffic at will.

The series of meetings between Friedman and Hagelin that resulted in the cancellation of the HX-63 was mentioned in a 1977 biography of Friedman, The Man Who Broke Purple, by Ronald Clark, and it was further detailed in 2014 through a disclosure by the NSA's William F. Friedman Collection.

After a career as an electrical engineer and inventor, author Jon D. Paul now researches, writes, and lectures on the history of digital technology, especially encryption. In the 1970s he began collecting vintage electronic instruments, such as the Tektronix oscilloscopes and Hewlett-Packard spectrum analyzers seen here. Peter Adams

The revelation of Crypto AG's secret deals with U.S. intelligence may have caused a bitter scandal, but viewed from another angle, Rubicon was also one of the most successful espionage operations in historyand a forerunner of modern backdoors. Nowadays, it's not just intelligence agencies that are exploiting backdoors and eavesdropping on secure" messages and transactions. Windows 10's telemetry" function continuously monitors a user's activity and data. Nor are Apple Macs safe. Malware that allowed attackers to take control of a Mac has circulated from time to time; a notable example was Backdoor.MAC.Eleanor, around 2016. And in late 2020, the cybersecurity company FireEye disclosed that malware had opened up a backdoor in the SolarWinds Orion platform, used in supply-chain and government servers. The malware, called SUNBURST, was the first of a series of malware attacks on Orion. The full extent of the damage is still unknown.

The HX-63 machine I restored now works about as well as it did in 1963. I have yet to tire of the teletype-like motor sound and the clack-clack of the keyboard. Although I never realized my adolescent dream of being a secret agent, I am delighted by this little glimmer of that long-ago, glamorous world.

And there's even a postscript. I recently discovered that my contact at Crypto AG, whom I'll call C," was also a security officer at the Swiss intelligence agencies. And so for decades, while working at the top levels of Crypto AG, C" was a back channel to the CIA and Swiss intelligence agencies, and even had a CIA code name. My wry old Swiss friend had known everything all along!

This article appears in the September 2021 print issue as The Last Rotor Machine."

The Crypto AG affair was described in a pair of Swedish books. One of them was Borisprojektet : rhundradets strsta spionkupp : NSA och ett svensk snille lurade en hel vrld [translation: The Boris Project: The Biggest Spy Coup of the Century: NSA and a Swedish genius cheated an entire world], 2016, Sixten Svensson, Vaktelfrlag, ISBN 978-91-982180-8-4.

Also, in 2020, Swiss editor and author Res Strehle published Verschlsselt: Der Fall Hans Bhler [translation: Encrypted: The Hans Bhler Case], and later Operation Crypto. Die Schweiz im Dienst von CIA und BND [Operation Crypto: Switzerland in the Service of the CIA and BND].

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The Scandalous History of the Last Rotor Cipher Machine - IEEE Spectrum

Spendthrift Democrats ignore looming bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare | TheHill – The Hill

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Are Democrats serious about confronting the impending collapse of Social Security and Medicare? It sure doesnt seem so.

Instead of focusing on the looming bankruptcy of these programs, Democrats are pushing to spend $4-$5 trillion on a progressive wish-list of expensive new federal giveaways. Perhaps they believe that promising voters free college, free child care, free elder care and so much more will distract them from realizing that our most important safety nets are falling into disrepair.

Moreover, President Biden and congressional Democrats want to significantly hike taxes to pay for shiny new entitlements. But taxpayers are already facing big hits just to maintain the ones we already have.

This week, the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare programs released their annual reports; the news is not good.

The bottom line: Both funds are running out of money, faster than expected. Both Medicare and Social Security will need to be propped up, the sooner the better. Specifically:

The date of projected insolvency for these entitlements moved closer over the past year; the proposed remedies from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) become more draconian as time goes on.

In other words, the longer we wait to shore up these programs, the stiffer the increases in taxes will have to be or the fewer the number of retirees who can count on receiving benefits.

To achieve long-term solvency for Social Security, the CRFB advises, would require a 27 percent hike in the payroll tax today; if legislators dont act until 2034, when the program will be broke, that payroll tax hike will be 34 percent.

That is, even if Congress acts today, the increase in the deduction from a workers wages will be more than three percentage points; if they wait, it will be over 4 percentage points. Thats a major hit to paychecks.

The other approach is to cut retiree benefits. The CRFB estimates that, Social Security solvency could be achieved with a 21 percent across-the-board benefit cut today, which would rise to 26 percent by 2034. Cuts to new beneficiaries would need to be 25 percent today, but eveneliminatingbenefits for new beneficiaries in 2034 would not be enough to avoid insolvency.

Is anyone listening?

The alarming reports were greeted with silence from the left, including from Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersBriahna Joy Gray pushes back on moderates faulting Sanders voters for Supreme Court makeup Manchin warns Democrats: Hit 'pause' on Biden's .5T plan Warren to campaign for Newsom ahead of California recall MORE (I-Vt.), head of the Budget Committee and author of the $3.5 trillion social infrastructure bill that Democrats hope to pass via reconciliation. Apparently, for Sanders and his progressive colleagues, new programs are better than the old ones, even though most Americans rely on Social Security and Medicare.

In fact, in July, Sanders and Sen. Chris Van HollenChristopher (Chris) Van HollenProgressive pollster: 65 percent of likely voters would back polluters tax Senate backlog of Biden nominees frustrates White House We need a national green bank to build the green economy MORE (D-Md.) introduced a bill that would exacerbate Social Securitys financial problems. According to the Maryland senators website, the proposed legislation would extend Social Security benefits to age 26 for students who are survivors, children of disabled workers, and eligible grandchildren of retired workers.

While it is true that benefits are paid to children or workers who have died young or who are disabled, Social Security was not intended to support young people through college, as is the purpose of Sanderss and Van Hollens bill. Given the current projections reported by the trustees, adding to the demands on the programs finances is reckless.

In the same vein, Sanders wants to lower the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 60 or 55 and to expand coverage to include dental and vision outlays. He proposes paying for these changes by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies.

Studies have shown that lowering the eligibility age to 60 would cost as much as $100 billion per year, while a 2019 plan to add vision and dental coverage was estimated to cost $350 over 10 years. Estimates of savings from Medicare negotiating drug prices totally some $500 trillion over 10 years do not come close to covering the added costs.

Earlier this year President Biden fired Andrew Saul, a business executive who was commissioner of the Social Security Administration. Saul worked under both Republican and Democratic presidents, initially as chair of the Federal Thrift Investment Board, where he modernized the organization that provides retirement savings plans for military and federal employees. The Republican got such high marks for his stewardship that the federal employees unions backed his reappointment by President ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaChanging Joe Biden's mind is no easy task What Trump understood and Biden gets right about America's new role in the world FEMA has funds to cover disasters for now MORE.

Biden fired Saul not because he was doing a bad job, but apparently because he was doing a good job cutting down on fraud and waste in an effort to make the Social Security Administration more efficient, even as he improved services to clients. Biden has not nominated a successor to Saul, despite Social Security being the largest single item in our federal budget. And that is how serious Democrats are.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. Follow her on Twitter @lizpeek.

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Spendthrift Democrats ignore looming bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare | TheHill - The Hill

Upstart company files for bankruptcy after trying to compete with The Villages – Villages-News

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

An upstart company that tried to take on The Villages has filed for bankruptcy after a crushing court defeat earlier this year.

KD Premier Realty LLC has filed a petition for relief under Title 11, Chapter 7 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida.

The company was founded by Christopher Day and Jason Kranz, two former top producers for Properties of The Villages. While each of the sales representatives was earning $500,000 annually, and Kranzs wife was also earning six figures selling homes for The Villages, the two men began to chafe under the strict rules imposed by the sales organizations.

Christopher Day and Jason Kranz launched KD Premier Realty after leaving Properties of The Villages.

They broke free in December 2019 and sent a bombshell email to all of their Properties of The Villages colleagues and Villages Vice President of Sales Jennifer Parr, announcing their immediate departure. Day and Kranz lured away some of their Properties of The Villages colleagues over to KD Premier Realty, including Angie Taylor, who has also filed for bankruptcy protection.

Earlier this year in a federal trial in Tampa, The Villages won a $603,700 judgment against Day, Kranz and his wife Angela, Taylor and former Properties of The Villages sales representative Nanette Elliott, who recalled at the trial being presented with a ring by the Gary Morse in recognition for her outstanding sales performance.

Properties of The Villages is seeking to garnish the assets of their former sales representatives in an attempt to collect the $603,700 judgment.

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Upstart company files for bankruptcy after trying to compete with The Villages - Villages-News

As mall owner Washington Prime Group exits bankruptcy, no one knows what it’s worth – Crain’s Cleveland Business

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

When Washington Prime Group went bust in June, the mall operator's bankruptcy judge was almost certain the case would culminate in a spreadsheet-ridden valuation brawl.

It was a surprise, then, when U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur signed off on the real estate investment trust's Chapter 11 exit plan on Friday, Sept. 3, without any creditors sniping over future cash flows, piecemeal asset sales or competing deals. His approval means investment firm SVPGlobal will swap its debt holdings for ownership of the company, and stockholders will even see a recovery, despite no one knowing quite what Washington Prime is worth.

Columbus-based Washington Prime has a portfolio of some 100 shopping centers across the U.S., sporting a mix of fully enclosed malls and open-air centers. The company's website indicates it has nine malls in Ohio, including Great Lakes Mall in Mentor and Southern Park Mall in Youngstown.

The varied bag of brick-and-mortar retail assets mixed with the uncertainty of a global pandemic created a difficult, if not impossible, task for valuation experts.

"Do you think anyone has confidence in the valuation?" Isgur asked an attorney for Washington Prime stockholders in court on Friday.

"I don't think anybody really knows, and the market will tell us soon enough," the attorney, Robert Stark of Brown Rudnick, said in response.

Rather than force Isgur to rule on what a reasonable valuation might be a process that would likely be lengthy, expensive and uncertain itself lawyers for Washington Prime and its stakeholders settled their differences prior to the hearing on Friday. A handful of remaining objections were resolved during the scheduled hearing time.

While ruling on Washington Prime's plan, Isgur noted that even though no one knows what the mall owner is truly worth, the deal leaves creditors better off than the alternative: liquidation. That's the only valuation test required by U.S. bankruptcy rules, he said.

A liquidation of the REIT may have yielded as much as $2.4 billion to distribute to creditors, according to an estimate provided in court papers. Washington Prime entered bankruptcy with a debt pile in excess of $3 billion.

"I suspect that no matter how many conversations you had, no one would ever know what the true value is," Isgur said in the hearing.

The case is Washington Prime Group Inc., 21-31948, U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (Houston).

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As mall owner Washington Prime Group exits bankruptcy, no one knows what it's worth - Crain's Cleveland Business

Ghost Ship Building Landlords to Pay $12M to Victims’ Families, and Declare Bankruptcy – SFist

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

One of the last bits of legal fallout from the 2016 Ghost Ship fire in Oakland appears to have reached a resolution, and families of some of the 36 victims are going to share a $12 million settlement from the owners of the property.

The Ng family, who own the Ghost Ship warehouse in the Fruitvale District and rented it to Derick Almena, will not be held criminally liable for the tragic fire the statute of limitations on that ran out in December 2019. But as KRON4 reports, the Ng family has struck a deal to settle a civil lawsuit with the families of 13 fire victims and 12 others who formerly lived in the warehouse.

Attorney Mary Alexander, who represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement that while her clients were disappointed that the landlords would not be held criminally responsible, they were glad that they would be held financially accountable.

"The owners of the building, the Ngs, went into voluntary bankruptcy," Alexander said, per KRON4. "Thats so that we will have not only their insurance policy but [they] will also sell the properties that they have in Oakland and those proceeds will go to the families."

ABC 7 reported that the Ngs had agreed to sell real estate to pay $6 million of the settlement, with their insurance covering the remainder.

Landlord Chor Ng and her children had been the subject of inquiries about the cause of the tragic fire, which broke out during an event at the warehouse managed by Almena on December 2, 2016. Early reports suggested that the Ngs turned a blind eye to the illegal buildout and shoddy electrical wiring that was done by Almena, which was likely primarily to blame for the blaze though an official source of the fire was never determined.

Following a 2019 criminal trial that ended in a hung jury on Almena's guilt, acquitting co-defendant Max Harris, Almena pleaded guilty to 36 counts of manslaughter in January 2021 as part of plea deal that got him out of jail with time served.

Alexander said that the families have already settled cases with PG&E and the City of Oakland.

"The families really wanted to see the Ngs charged criminally and be held responsible for letting this building be such a fire trap, for having people living there and for unpermitted events and so this civil suit, though the amount of money is not enough to compensate them fully, but at least its some sense of justice, Alexander said, per KRON4.

It has been almost five years and it is still very raw and still very upsetting to the families," Alexander said. "Were hoping this will give them some sense of justice, this compensation."

Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

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Ghost Ship Building Landlords to Pay $12M to Victims' Families, and Declare Bankruptcy - SFist

Circuit City bankruptcy headed for conclusion after nearly 13 years – RichmondBizSense

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Henrico-based electronics retailer Circuit City had around 700 stores at its peak. (BizSense file photos)

The plug is finally expected to be pulled on the unwinding of Circuit City Stores Inc.

The liquidation of the long-since collapsed Henrico-based electronics retailer appears to be coming to a close, nearly 13 years to the day from when it toppled into bankruptcy on Nov. 10, 2008.

Motions were filed earlier this summer for an entry of a final decree and the trusts final report, which typically indicates a bankruptcy estates work is done and theres nothing more to recover for creditors.

Circuit City had 17,000 creditors with debt claims of $1.2 billion when its liquidation began.

In the end, the trust paid out $778.65 million in claims, amounting to 55 cents on the dollar owed to unsecured creditors.

I am pleased with this distribution given the predicted 16 percent recovery at the time of confirmation, trustee Alfred Siegel said in court filings.

Siegel said he anticipates no further distributions.

Accordingly, in my business judgment, I have determined that it is appropriate to terminate the trust and seek a final decree and closure of these cases, he said.

Circuit Citys former headquarters were located in this building.

While Siegel is pleased with the result for creditors, the dozens of professionals who helped administer the case over the years also collected their share from the estate.

A total of $212.42 million was paid out over the 13 years to lawyers, accountants, financial advisors, real estate advisors and the like.

The biggest chunk of professional fees went Texas law firm Susman Godfrey, which earned $46 million representing the Circuit City trustee in ultimately lucrative class action disputes against electronics manufacturers related to price fixing.

Other top payouts to professionals included: $10.66 million to Siegels firm, California-based A. Siegel & Associates; $44 million to Pachulski, Stang, Ziehl & Jones, the law firm that has represented Siegel along the way; $10.69 million to law firm Brutzkus Gubner; and $12.91 million to Klee, Tuchin, Bogdanoff & Stern.

The top Richmond-based beneficiary was downtown law firm Tavenner & Beran, which earned $5.62 million over the course of the case.

Circuit Citys afterlife has lasted so long due to a number of factors, including the size and complexity of the company. At the time of its collapse it had hundreds of stores, tens of thousands of employees, various foreign affiliates, and a web of creditors.

The price fixing class action case, which helped win cash for the estate, also held up the process, as did the separate bankruptcy of Circuit Citys Canadian affiliate.

It also took a couple of years just to get the estate and creditors to agree to a formal plan of liquidation.

Across 13 years the case resulted in 14,000 docket entries, all with the same judge, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Huennekens at the federal courthouse in Richmond.

Circuit City employees at an alumni reunion.

The case has gone on long enough that former Circuit City employees had time to gather to recognize the 10thanniversary of the companys collapse.

The drawn out case also attracted claims traders, a somewhat obscure group in the financial world who gamble on how much money will be found in a bankruptcy case by buying debt claims on spec from original creditors.

At one point a few years ago the three largest claims holders in the case were claims traders, owed a combined $450 million.

Circuit Citys bankruptcy initially had outlasted that of former Henrico-based title insurance giant LandAmerica Financial Group, which went bankrupt a few weeks after Circuit City in 2008. LandAmericas case was closed out in seemingly successful fashion in late 2016, only to be reopened in 2019 after it was found trustee Bruce Matson looted the trusts $3 million wind-down fund.

Matson is now facing a potential federal prison sentence.

The last remaining piece before Siegel fully turns out the lights on the Circuit City estate is a high-level legal dispute over fees paid to the U.S. Trustees Office, a disagreement that could be taken up by the Supreme Court.

While the potential resolution of that dispute is not expected to result in additional money for creditors materially, the trust said it is holding the Circuit City estate open until it is decided whether the Supreme Court will hear the case. That decision is expected in November.

As Boy Scouts eye end to bankruptcy, tough work lies ahead in vetting, valuing sexual abuse claims – USA TODAY

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Which Boy Scout sexual abuse victims will receive settlement money and how much? Court records filed this summer offer the first glimpses of big decisions ahead.

The sizeof the case alone more than 90,000 claims were filed suggest the complicated path ahead, which will involve determining the value of a claim based on its severity, believability and location.

There is little precedent to rely on because, although the Scout bankruptcyis one in a chain of modern-day sexual abuses cases, its scope and legal challenges set it apart. The largest Catholic diocese bankruptcy cases involved a few hundred claims.

A USA TODAY analysis of court filings suggests that most could end up with a fraction of what their counterparts have been allotted in more than a dozen bankruptcy cases involving Catholic dioceses.

Read how these vexing decisions are made: In Boy Scouts bankruptcy, which sexual abuse victims will get a settlement?

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As Boy Scouts eye end to bankruptcy, tough work lies ahead in vetting, valuing sexual abuse claims - USA TODAY

FAQs: The actual difference between insolvency, bankruptcy, liquidation, and so on – Lexology

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

COVID-19 has made an undeniable and significant impact on many businesses around Australia. With each lockdown and implementation of harsh restrictions, business owners and directors are forced to scramble to keep their business afloat. No doubt liquidators will shortly be inundated with companies desperately trying to evaluate their options.

Insolvency, voluntary administration, bankruptcy and liquidation are terms that are consistently being thrown around. But what do they mean? Is there a difference?

Insolvency

Insolvency applies to companies. Your company is insolvent if it is unable to pay its debts when they become due and payable.

There is however more nuance to testing for insolvency including a cash flow test, which considers income sources that are available to the company and expenditure obligations it has to meet. This is in contrast with the balance sheet test, which focuses on the value of the companys assets and liabilities reflected in the companys books.

Whether or not a company is insolvent at a particular point in time is a question of fact to be ascertained from a consideration of the companys position taken as a whole. The courts task is to decide whether the company is suffering from an endemic shortage of working capital which means that, in a cash flow sense, it cannot pay its debts as and when they fall due.

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy occurs when a natural person (as opposed to a company) is unable to pay his or her debts.

The Official Trustee in Bankruptcy or a registered trustee is then authorised on behalf of the State to take possession of the property of the bankrupt. Consider a trustee as a person who is allowed to step into someone elses shoes to make decisions. If you become bankrupt, the trustee will in effect step into your shoes to manage your remaining assets to pay off your debts and manage related affairs. It generally lasts three years and involves, in most cases, the bankrupt making payments to their trustee from the income they earn during that period.

Liquidation / Winding Up

Liquidation is the process of winding up a company.

Usually, a creditor who has not been paid will ask the Court to make an Order declaring that the company be wound up. After a company is wound up, it still exists until it is deregistered.

An insolvent company does not have to go into liquidation. That insolvency may be temporary, or a plan could be devised (called a deed of company arrangement). Early intervention can be applied to a business to prevent it from being wound up in liquidation. The most common of the processes used is referred to as Voluntary Administration.

Voluntary Administration

When a company becomes insolvent (or its solvency is questionable), the directors, or a primary charge holder, can put the business into voluntary administration. Voluntary administration is a process in which an administrator is appointed to the company to investigate the companys affairs and financial difficulties and make recommendations to ultimately resolve the situation.

While the company is in administration, the administrator takes full control of the company. With full control of the company, the director or third party and voluntary administrator are allowed time to find a way to save the company where possible. This may involve arranging for debts to be paid at reduced amounts, selling a part of the company that is not profitable, reducing staff and similar actions.

Voluntary administration provides a breathing space to allow for an assessment of whether value can be preserved.

What is a Deed of Company Arrangement

An administrator may suggest implementing a deed of company arrangement. A deed of company arrangement (DOCA) is a binding agreement between a company and its creditors which governs how the companys affairs will be dealt with in order to pay all, or part, of its debts. Creditors will need to complete a proof of debt claim and attach any unpaid invoices in order to have a say.

For example, a company may have 5 main creditors, whom it owes $50,000 each. If the company goes into liquidation, the creditors will each receive $5,000 of the total amount owed to them. The administrator may negotiate with the creditors so that each creditor is paid $25,000 to settle the debt. The creditors will be in a position where they have more than if the company were wound up. The companys debt is reduced, and it may continue to trade and become stabilised.

Receivership

Similar to bankruptcy, receivership is the legal process in which a Receiver is appointed to a company to collect or sell enough of the secured property or assets to repay the debts.

A company in voluntary administration may also be in receivership. The difference between voluntary administration and receivership is that a Receiver is appointed by a secured creditor to recover their debts or by a Court to undertake specific functions.

Small Business Restructuring

Presently, when the insolvency process commences, an external administrator (e.g. liquidator or voluntary administrator) will take control of the business. From 1 January 2021, eligible companies can resolve to appoint a small business restructuring professional (SBRP) to help them restructure their business. The SBRP will assist the company to formulate a restructuring plan and will make a declaration to creditors about it.

Once the proposed restructuring plan is finalised:

Only companies with liabilities of less than $1 million can take advantage of the proposed changes, though it is said this threshold will cover 76 per cent of businesses subject to insolvencies today.

If the restructuring plan is approved by creditors, the business can continue trading subject to oversight by the SBRP as to the distribution of funds to creditors.

Conclusion

If you are a director and believe that your company is heading in the wrong direction, now is the time to confront reality and seek timely advice about a possible restructuring or winding up. Many options are available to a company that has a chance at recovery and renewal.

Insolvency does not mean the end of a business. Not all insolvent businesses need to end up in liquidation. The key to saving a business is to act early.

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FAQs: The actual difference between insolvency, bankruptcy, liquidation, and so on - Lexology

ROLI files for bankruptcy and will reboot as beginner-focused company Luminary – MusicTech

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

ROLI, best known for its MPE controllers such as the Seaboard and Blocks, has filed for bankruptcy. The company will be relaunching as a new entity, Luminary, that puts greater focus on its beginner-friendly LUMI keyboard.

The London-based music startup, which was backed by Pharrell and Grimes, was struggling financially: it reported pre-tax losses of 34.1 million from an income of 11.4 million in the 18 months leading to the end of June 2019.

Roland Lamb, ROLIs founder and CEO, told Business Insider that its financial woes were largely due to the company targeting a niche market as well as difficulties of operating during the pandemic.

Ultimately what happened was the pro-focused products we initially developed, although successful within their marketplace, the marketplace wasnt big enough given our venture trajectory, Lamb told Insider. We had our eyes set on hypergrowth and that proved to be difficult.

The new company, Luminary, will pivot away from innovative controllers for pros. Instead, it will focus on the LUMI keyboard and app, which teaches beginners to read and play music.

The LUMI keyboard is sold at $299, with an annual subscription fee of $79 for additional songs and lessons. In our review, we said it was probably as close as youll get to piano tuition without an in-person tutor.

Luminary will also not be producing the ROLI Seaboard just yet, but it plans to re-introduce the squishy controller in the future.

70 ROLI employees will shift to the new business, which has already raised 5 million in initial funding.

ROLI issued a statement to MusicTech that read: Were hugely excited to work with Hoxton Ventures to further the future of ROLI and LUMI instruments. This restructuring provides a unique opportunity for our team to continue on its mission to make piano learning fun with our LUMI keyboard and subscription, in addition to satisfying popular demand by bringing back the award-winning Seaboard in 2022 and continuing to develop our pro software ecosystem

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ROLI files for bankruptcy and will reboot as beginner-focused company Luminary - MusicTech

China’s oppression of Tibetans serves as warning to Taiwan: Exiled Tibetan official – Devdiscourse

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Representative of the Tibetan government-in-exile Kelsang Gyaltsen Bawa on Thursday lambasted Beijing for its atrocities on Tibetans and said that this "oppression should serve as a warning to the people of Taiwan." Kelsang is representing the exiled Tibet government in Taiwan.

During a book launch event in Taiwan, Kelsang also said that "Intellectuals from Tibet have either been forced into exile or they face brutal crackdowns in their homeland by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and their suffering continues to the present day," as reported by Taiwanese news agency Focus Taiwan. He also pointed to the 'Seventeen Point Agreement' that affirmed China's sovereignty over Tibet but promised Tibetans a high degree of autonomy. "The signing of a peace treaty between the Dalai Lama's government and CCP in Beijing in 1951 was "seven decades of blood and tears shed by Tibetans," he added.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese Legislator Freddy Lim also said that Taiwanese should cherish freedom of expression and fight for democracy, Focus Taiwan reported. Beijing claims full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades.

Taipei, on the other hand, has countered the Chinese aggression by increasing strategic ties with democracies including the US, which has been repeatedly opposed by Beijing. China has threatened that "Taiwan's independence" means war. On June 1, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to complete reunification with self-ruled Taiwan and vowed to smash any attempts at formal independence for the island.

Reacting to Xi's remarks, Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) accused the CCP of tightening its dictatorship in the name of national rejuvenation internally and attempting to alter the international order with its hegemonic ambitions externally, Focus Taiwan reported. (ANI)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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China's oppression of Tibetans serves as warning to Taiwan: Exiled Tibetan official - Devdiscourse

Republicans cornering the market on freedom and oppression | TheHill – The Hill

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Freedom is good policy and good politics,saidSen. Ted CruzRafael (Ted) Edward CruzPoll: Americans favor diplomatic engagement with Cuba Republicans cornering the market on freedom and oppression As Biden falters, a two-man race for the 2024 GOP nomination begins to take shape MORE (R-Texas) this week while addressing the supposed threat of mask mandates that might otherwise stem the spread of COVID.In recent decades, Republicans have been adept at latching onto issues that can be construed as both good policy and good politics.Because often the two are intertwined.If you can sell the public on a policy regardless of whether its inherently good then you have achieved both aims.

On style, the modern-day GOPs personal freedom movement can be traced back, in part, to the supposedly good policy / good politics family values movement, which reached its apex more than a generation ago, but which is still very much with us.

Both fight on puritanical grounds.

Family values is code for an imagined 1950s TV-style Christian morality when people didnt cheat on spouses, when no one was gay, and when certain people knew their place and knew better not to challenge canonical hierarchies.This crusade of rightness leaves no wiggle room for nuance or differing opinions. Absolutism is the key to absolution.

Similarly, todays personal freedom movement is code for Make America Great Again.Advocates seek to restore Americas revolutionary spirit.If you oppose freedom, you support tyranny.There is no wiggle room for nuance or differing opinions.American and God-given rights are intertwined and inalienable.

On substance, however, these two movements reside on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

Family values proponents seek societal control.Individual responsibility is irrelevant. Plenty of their members fall short of their moral standards.That doesnt matter.The government must do more to curb the scourge of rap music.Politicians must enact laws to discourage out-of-wedlock births.Guns on the street are sanctified, while fake guns in video games are satanic.The nation must capitulate to the most just among us, as defined by the most just within the movement.The political power they have wielded is as impressive as it is oppressive.

But personal freedom fighters in the COVID era believe individual opinions regardless of their truth matter more than those of experts, of politicians, or of the dying lying in hospital beds.All levels of government constitute the swamp.Dont tread on me has devolved into No more rules.It is the antithesis of the state control sought by family values.It is instead a battle against society against the essential frameworks on which civilizations are built.This is a point of anarchical pride for the personal freedom brigade, because it doesnt matter who gets hurt, as long as its not them.

Of course, many of the family values and personal freedom advocates are thesame people.

They just wear different hats on different days and for some, in different eras.

The family values contingent has splintered in recent years on a number of topics, such as drug legalization and gay marriage.Their embrace of one of the most ethically flawed presidents in generations diminished the movement further. This is not a joyous time for a group with declining membership and influence.

So it should be no surprise that from the gathering ashes of family values, a new cause has arisen.Not that personal freedom is new, but rarely has it been tested under such hostile conditions, as the worst global pandemic in a century ispoisedto become the worst in our countrys history.

Historically, America would rally to defend itself.Personal safety would be sacred.Loving thy neighbor would be second nature.

But for the family values crowd, theres no political benefit to that approach.Instead, a 180-degree ideological turn marked the easiest path for maintaining political relevance.Better to be on the wrong side with millions of people who adore you, than to be on the right side with millions of people who dont.

We are left with two diametrically opposed movements led by the same political party.

Family values surfaced to combat personal freedoms.Personal freedom surfaced to upend family values.They dont agree on much, and for a party seeking to win over a majority of the electorate, thats the point.

B.J. Rudell is a longtime political strategist, former associate director for Duke Universitys Center for Politics, and recent North Carolina Democratic Party operative. In a career encompassing stints on Capitol Hill, on presidential campaigns, in a newsroom, in classrooms, and for a consulting firm, he has authored three books and has shared political insights across all media platforms, including for CNN and Fox News.

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Republicans cornering the market on freedom and oppression | TheHill - The Hill

Oppressed Tibetans are warning to Taiwan: Tibetan representative – Focus Taiwan News Channel

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Taipei, Sept. 2 (CNA) The decades-long Chinese oppression of Tibetans should serve as a warning to Taiwanese, Kelsang Gyaltsen Bawa, representative of the Tibetan government-in-exile to Taiwan, said Thursday during a book launch event at the Legislative Yuan.

Over the years, intellectuals from Tibet have either been forced into exile or faced brutal crackdowns in their homeland by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and their suffering continues to the present day, the representative said.

What came after the signing of a peace treaty between the Dalai Lama's government and CCP in Beijing in 1951 was "seven decades of blood and tears shed by Tibetans," Kelsang said.

He was referring to the Seventeen Point Agreement that affirmed China's sovereignty over Tibet but promised Tibetans a high degree of autonomy. However, following an uprising by Tibetans in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, in 1959, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama escaped to India, where he formed a Tibetan government-in-exile.

Tibet's experience should serve as a warning to Taiwanese that the country's freedom and democracy is in their hands, he added.

The Tibetan representative assumed his post in January as the chairman of the Tibet Religious Foundation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the representative office of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Taiwan.

He was joined by several Taiwanese lawmakers Thursday at a launch event for a book about the peace treaty that was published under the sponsorship of his foundation.

While supporting Tibetans who have faced oppression, Taiwanese should cherish freedom of expression and fight for democracy, said independent Legislator Freddy Lim (), who also heads the Taiwan Parliament Group for Tibet.

Fan Yun (), a legislator from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said Taiwanese should be wary of the threat from China because Beijing has stepped up military exercises near Taiwan.

However, Fan went on to say, people in Taiwan should also keep faith in important values that the country shares with the international community, including freedom, democracy and human rights.

Another DPP Legislator Hung Sun-han () said China has shown what it would do after a peace treaty is signed.

What happened in Tibet should be a wake-up call for Taiwanese when they think about the future of the island, Hung added.

(By Fan Cheng-hsiang and Teng Pei-ju)

Enditem/AW

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Oppressed Tibetans are warning to Taiwan: Tibetan representative - Focus Taiwan News Channel

OPINION | LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Were delight to read | Sacrifices public good | Have to accept reality – Arkansas Online

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Were delight to read

I have been a reader of, and subscriber to, this paper and its predecessor publications for over (gasp) 60 years. In recent years I have submitted letters for the editors to consider publishing. This is the first, as I recall, in which I have opined about columnists.

Without discussing specifics, I was delighted to read in your Saturday issue the writings of Terry Mattingly, Marie Mainard O'Connell, and the editorial writer who gave the senator from Jonesboro a primer in constitutional law. When considered together, these pieces presented your readers a nearly perfect explanation of the various thoughts surrounding the divisive issue of vaccination against the covid virus.

SAM HIGHSMITH

Little Rock

Sacrifices public good

I would like to respectfully but strongly disagree with the recent guest piece by state Sen. Dan Sullivan that argued that it is a government "overreach" to mandate masks in schools or for employers to be allowed to mandate vaccinations for their employees.

I believe it is well-established and commonly accepted that a major role of the government is to protect the common good and to pass laws that protect public health and safety. Individual freedom ends where the practice of that freedom endangers others. Examples of this common-sense approach to living in society with each other include traffic laws, laws against criminal actions such as robbery and murder, and even laws which require certain health precautions are followed by children in schools. Examples of the latter include vaccinating against many illnesses that, if left unchecked, would harm many others. Being "mandated" to stop at a stop sign is not government oppression or overreach; it is best for that decision to not to be left up to the individual. Nobody would argue this.

Senator Sullivan might argue that it's not government's place to require us to protect ourselves, which holds true only if his behavior doesn't harm me or my children. As a family doctor, it causes me great distress to see how willing people can be to sacrifice the public good upon the altar of "freedom."

GIL FOSTER

Little Rock

Have to accept reality

For my own mental health, I have tried to stay out of all of the crazy debates and arguments going on for the last several years. But the other day, on the news, I saw an anti-vaxxer protest sign showing a hand-drawn medical syringe, and the slogan said, "My body, my choice."

This has also been used in reference to abortion, by pro-choice, in disagreement with restrictions. How does this work both ways?

Democracy means that sometimes we have to accept what we don't like, such as taxes, military drafts or vaccines to keep us all safe and our "great experiment" functioning. Freedom means that after accepting these requirements to live the way we do, we have the right to criticize and protest, and also have to accept election results or legislated deals with which we don't agree.

It is time to come to our senses. Reality is not an adversary.

KELLI WESTBROOK

Little Rock

Were anxious to serve

I just walked out of the living room, after watching a special TV broadcast of the arrival of the 13 young warriors who lost their lives to a suicide bomber in Kabul, Afghanistan. President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden and a host of other older dignitaries were there to greet the remains of these willing sacrifices as their caskets were rolled off the aircraft that brought them to Dover Air Force Base.

The broadcast was just another special news report until pictures of the 13 were shown on my TV screen. The oldest was only 31 years of age, with the lowest end of the range ending at 20. Understandably, the images showed no wrinkles, no gray hair, no outward signs of bountiful wisdom that oftentimes come with age. These weren't seasoned warriors who had been hardened like iron against iron. Even so, as the reporter shared some biographical information about them, there was a common theme that applied to all: They were anxious to serve their country.

Many will reflect on this atrocity and ask themselves why. I wish I could come up with an answer to that question other than that they answered the call to serve, but maybe that's answer enough. I still can't excise the feeling from my gut that this is the senselessness of war: We invest our most valuable resource somewhere over there, rather than in the future that's closer to home. The world is a complicated place. I realize that and my wonderings are limited in their ability to comprehend it all.

Thanks for your service, young ones.

HOSEA LONG

Little Rock

Mask-mandate ban

I noted my state Sen. Trent Garner's op-ed published this past Sunday regarding the issue which has consumed him--the bill he sponsored and which subsequently passed, prohibiting mask mandates in public schools. I would propose this for Senator Garner: If he's right, the worst thing that could happen is that children would have needlessly worn masks in public schools. If he's wrong, some children will end up on vents, or worse.

A thoughtful person would choose to err on the side of safety. But we have Trent Garner.

STEVE A. JONES

El Dorado

The Electoral College

John Brummett says, "The California recall system is somehow even less democratic than the Electoral College that devalues California's votes for president."

Doesn't California have 55 electoral votes compared to seven states which have only three each? Perhaps John will tell us how 55 electoral votes devalues California's votes for president.

STEVE IRBY

Hot Springs Village

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OPINION | LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Were delight to read | Sacrifices public good | Have to accept reality - Arkansas Online

Taliban Expected to Announce New Government in Afghanistan – International Christian Concern

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

09/03/2021 Afghanistan (International Christian Concern) The Taliban are expected to announce a new government in Afghanistan today following their capture of the countrys capital and the complete withdrawal of US troops. Some reports have indicated the Talibans co-founder, Mullah Baradar, will be tapped to lead the new government faced with ruling the war-torn country.

According to reports by the AFP, a government cabinet could be presented by the Taliban in the hours following morning prayers. Ahmadullah Muttaiq, a Taliban official, said on social media that a ceremony was being prepared at Kabuls presidential palace.

Prior to the invasion of US-led forces, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan through an unelected leadership council that brutally enforced the groups fundamentalist interpretation of Shariah. Many hope the Talibans new government will soften its stance on Shariah and form a more inclusive government.

We are not taking them at their word, were going to take them at their deeds, US Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland, told the Guardian. European Union leaders have said they will not recognize the Talibans new government unless they form an inclusive government that respects human rights and provides access to the country for aid workers.

Experts around the world are concern Afghanistan is facing a humanitarian catastrophe. With the economy in freefall and the countryside affected by a sever drought, many fear food insecurity will quickly become an issue for the thousands who have been displaced by the last 20 years of fighting.

For the countrys religious minorities, the official establishment of the Taliban government has them bracing for increased oppression and persecution. Afghan Christians in particular fear the Taliban governments likely enforcement of Shariah.

Afghanistans Christian community is almost exclusively comprised of converts from Islam. Some estimate the Christian population to be between 8,000 and 12,000, making it one of the countrys largest religious minority groups. However, due to extreme persecution, the Christian community remains largely closeted and hidden from the public eye.

Their status as converts makes Afghan Christians direct targets for persecution by both extremist groups and society in general. In Afghanistan, leaving Islam is considered extremely shameful and converts can face dire consequences if their conversion is discovered.

In many cases, known Christians must flee Afghanistan or risk being killed.

According to the Talibans ideology, Afghanistan is a Muslim country and non-Muslims must leave Afghanistan or accept second class status. For Christians, coming from convert backgrounds, the Taliban will consider them apostate and subject to Shariahs most brutal punishments.

For interviews, please contact Addison Parker: press@persecution.org.

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Taliban Expected to Announce New Government in Afghanistan - International Christian Concern

The Taliban get a Chinese friend – The Sunday Guardian Live – The Sunday Guardian

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Dealing with a global crisis like Afghanistan allows China to tell the world that it has the political ambition to work with the Taliban and also tame the Taliban to its terms.

Taliban has found a new friend in need. Only time will tell whether it is a friend indeed.

In a recent press conference, Taliban spokesperson, Zabihullah Mujahid, said, China is our most important partner. He further stated that the Taliban support Chinas One Belt, One Road initiative that seeks to link China with Africa, Asia and Europe through an enormous network of ports, railways, roads and industrial parks. Mujahid said, China is our most important partner and represents a fundamental and extraordinary opportunity for us because it is ready to invest and rebuild our country.

Interestingly, the Taliban spokesperson also elucidated that it is looking at China to rebuild Afghanistan and exploit its rich copper deposits. There are rich copper mines in the country, thanks to the Chinese, can be put into operation and modernized. In addition, China is our pass to markets all over the world.

Even as early as July, Taliban spokesperson Suhail Shaheen noted, We care about the oppression of Muslims, be it in Palestine, in Myanmar, or in China, and we care about the oppression of non-Muslims anywhere in the world. But what we are not going to do is interfere in Chinas internal affairs. During their first-ever press conference on 16 August after seizing power, the Taliban spokesperson said, We want to reassure that Afghanistan will not be used against anybody.

China too has been warming up to the Taliban, stating that China respects Afghanistans sovereignty and will not interfere and follow the friendship with entire Afghan people; Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that facts show that in realising economic development we need an open inclusive political structure, implementation of moderate foreign and domestic policies and clean break from terrorist groups in all forms.

On 16 August, one day after Kabul fell, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) spokesperson Hua Chunying was asked about potential recognition. She said, We hope the Afghan Taliban can form solidarity with all factions and ethnic groups in Afghanistan and build a broad-based and inclusive political structure.

On the same day, Chinese United Nations envoy Geng Shuang echoed the statement but also noted, Afghanistan must never again become a haven for terrorists. We hope that the Taliban in Afghanistan will earnestly deliver on their commitments and make a clean break with the terrorist organizations.

Two days later, on August 18, there came the strongest hint yet at official recognition of the Taliban by China. It is a customary international practice that the recognition of a government comes after its formation, MFA spokesperson Zhao Lijian said. Most recently, on 25 August, an MFA spokesperson, when asked about a reported meeting the previous day between the Taliban representatives and the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan, said Beijing stands ready to continue to develop good-neighbourliness, friendship, and cooperation with Afghanistan and play a constructive role in Afghanistans peace and reconstruction.

According to Centre of Foreign Relations in the article by CFR expert, Ian Johnson, it stated, The relationship with the Taliban will be twofold. First, it will be mercantilistic. China will seek to revive business ventures inside Afghanistan, which the Taliban is likely to support because investment will provide badly needed revenues. The Afghan economy is fragile and highly dependent on Western donors foreign aid, which will almost certainly be cut off. So any sort of investment, especially if it is not accompanied by lectures on human rights, will be welcome.

Second, the relationship will depend on each side not interfering in the others internal affairs. For Beijing, that means the Taliban cannot export extremism into Chinas troubled Xinjiang region, which shares a tiny border with Afghanistan, or condemn the Chinese governments abuses against Uyghur Muslims in that region. For the Taliban, it means China will not question the groups human rights abuses unless Chinese citizens are involved.

Derek Grossman, a senior defence analyst at the RAND Corporation in his article on China and the Taliban stated: This new transportation infrastructure, including planned thoroughfares through the narrow Wakhan Corridor that links the two countries, would significantly enhance Beijings ability to access Afghanistans natural resources. According to a 2014 report, Afghanistan may possess nearly $1 trillion worth of extractable rare-earth metals locked within its mountains.

Beijing further has its eye on projects that languished under the previous Afghan government due to a combination of obstacles including archaeological discoveries, security issues, and social impact. Under the Taliban, the future of these projects may be brighter. For example, in 2016, the Taliban offered protection for Chinese workers at the Mes Aynak Copper Mine near Kabul. If Afghanistans new masters are so inclined, Beijing may finally get long-sought-after benefits from a major oil project in northern Afghanistans Amu Darya basin.

Developments since the fall of Kabul strongly suggest China and the Taliban have started off on the right foot. This week, the Taliban spokesperson confirmed the two sides are actively discussing their bilateral relationship, including Chinese humanitarian assistance.

China, has positioned itself as a new great power in competition with the United States, and it will want to demonstrate its way of handling world crisis.

Perhaps most importantly, recognizing Taliban-run Afghanistan would contribute to the perception that it is Beijingand no longer Washingtonthat is now setting the agenda and shaping the future regional order according to Derek Grossman in his analysis on China and the Taliban relationship.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the pathetic manner in which the United States handled the Afghan crisis give China a point to rub into the US government, that when push comes to shove, the United States is unreliable and that it fails to walk the talk when it matters most.

China, recognizing the Taliban makes for strange optics: fighting Islamists at home but embracing them abroad. But it shows that China could be the ultimate politics playing nation.

As, Derek Grossman expressed, its still the early days under Taliban rule, so China is understandably cautious. Beijing is concerned the Taliban may reengage in illegal narcotics trafficking to fund their government and return to supporting terrorist attacks outside Afghanistan. Beijing worries the Talibans spectacular success might embolden alleged members of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, which Chinese authorities have controversially designated as a separatist and terrorist threat in the northwestern Xinjiang province. To date, China has predominantly relied on its ironclad brother Pakistan to do the heavy lifting to prevent fighters from entering Xinjiang or otherwise supporting the outlawed group.

China and the Taliban make strange bedfellows according to most defence analysts, but I do not see it as strange bedfellows. It is merely a relationship of bare necessities.

China wants to establish itself as a global power centre. Dealing with a global crisis like Afghanistan allows for China to tell the world that it has the political ambition to work with the Taliban and also tame the Taliban to its terms. China will play the friend of the Taliban till such time Taliban and its government benefits China. Having Pakistan on its one-side and Afghanistan on the other, with the Taliban gives it a strong and indisputable leverage not only in the region but the world but most all over India.

With the United States being an eagle with its wings clipped by the Taliban, the dragon will roar in Afghanistan while it will let the hyenas enjoy their prey.

Savio Rodrigues is the founder and editor-in-chief of Goa Chronicle.

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The Taliban get a Chinese friend - The Sunday Guardian Live - The Sunday Guardian

What the winner of this election must do about China, Meng and the two Michaels – Maclean’s

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

One thousand days.

Thats how much time has passed since Xi Jinpings Ministry of State Security kidnapped Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in a hostage-diplomacy bid to force Canadas release of the jet-setting Vancouver socialite, Huawei billionaire heiress and Chinese Communist Party princess Meng Wanzhou.

Sunday marks that 1,000-days milestone, and no matter who ends up the winner after the votes are counted in the Sept. 20 federal election, the capitulation Beijing is attempting to extract from Canada in their case will overshadow every other foreign-policy tangle the Prime Ministers Office faces.

Thats is because this isnt just about a kidnapping.

Its about untangling a catastrophe of cascading political misjudgments, sordid big-money relationships and an approach to the Chinese corporate state going back years that have ended up combining to isolate Justin Trudeau and an inner circle of old friends and advisers from Canadas allies; from the overwhelming opinion of the majority of Canadians; and even from much of Trudeaus own House of Commons caucus.

Meng was detained on a U.S. Justice Department extradition warrant while checking through Customs in Vancouver to pop into one of her Vancouver mansions during a Dec. 1, 2018 stopover on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Argentina, via Mexico. Meng is facing charges of bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy in what Justice Department lawyers in New York called a strategy of lies and deceit going back a decade, aimed at covering up Huaweis evasions of U.S. sanctions on business dealings in Iran.

Its worth remembering here that Meng is of that Liberal-friendly class of wealth-migration beneficiaries whose investments in Vancouver real estate have so distorted Vancouvers housing markets in a spiral of unaffordability that successive federal governments have ignored. Far from being the mere passing-through traveller the Chinese embassy would have you believe is being victimized on behalf of Canadas American overlords, Meng acquired permanent resident status in Canada 20 years ago, acquired a variety of properties, enrolled her children in Canadian universities, and generally enjoyed the high life here. Although she abandoned her permanent-resident status a decade ago, Meng has remained a fixture in Vancouvers super-rich Chinese expatriate social scene. And since her arrest, shes back full-time, with generous bail conditions allowing her to live in the luxury of a family-owned mansion in Vancouvers posh Shaughnessy district.

Ten days after her detention at Vancouver International Airport, Kovrig, a diplomat-on-leave working as a researcher with the International Crisis Group, was picked up in Beijing. Spavor, an entrepreneur who focused on cultural and business exchanges in North Korea, was detained in Dandong. It took five months before the pair were formally arrested. By the time they were brought up on charges of espionage more than a year after that, in June, 2020, theyd already endured 557 days of interrogation and privation in special prison blocks where the lights were kept on 24 hours a day.

Spavor was convicted on espionage charges last month on evidence that is reported to consist of images of military aircraft that show up in photographs hed taken at airports. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Kovrig was subjected to a similar day-long trial last March. The verdict in his case hasnt been handed down.

For all the governments brave talk about how the case of the Two Mikes has been its first and foremost foreign-policy priority ever since they were first abducted, the facts are unimpeachable: Its been 1,000 days, and nothing Canada has done has slowed the descent of the two Michaels down the throat of Beijings justice system, which boasts a conviction rate approaching 100 percent.

Within months from now, if not weeks, the Meng Wanzhou melodrama will be moving past its B.C. Supreme Court phase. When that happens, the federal cabinet will come to a politically opportune moment, provided by a 1999 amendment to the Extradition Act, to bail from its necessarily non-interventionist the courts must decide standpoint. Trudeaus circle is teeming with Beijing-friendly grandees who have been fiercely lobbying and making the rounds of the opinion-pages circuit to argue for Ottawa taking that opportunity to pay Beijings ransom, on the pretext that it might mean Kovrig and Spavor could get sprung from prison.

As cold as this must seem, Ottawa needs to hold to a standpoint that it adopted only reluctantly at the outset: the courts and the courts alone should decide Mengs fate. Once Justice Heather Holmes has rendered her verdict in Vancouver and Mengs legal options are exhausted, Ottawa should leave it to the courts, regardless of whether Meng is committed for extradition or not. And Canadas political leaders, including the Conservatives Erin OToole, should say this out loud, now.

Its none of Canadas business anyway. Its Beijing and Huawei and Meng that have put Canada in this bind, not the other way around. From the beginning, Meng has been free to leave and face an American judge any time she wants. If the courts end up declining the U.S. extradition request, then fine, let her go home to Shenzhen. But for Ottawa to step in and game the system in Mengs favour, Canada would be playing by Beijings rules. Instead, Canada should make it clear that this country will not sacrifice its sovereignty, or abandon its commitments to the principles established in international extradition law, or offer any ransom whatsoever, no matter how its framed or spun, to secure the Mikes release.

As for OTooles Conservatives, at least they have a policy on how to cope with China. Cleaning up the mess of Canada-China relations is a line of work that dominates the Conservatives foreign policy platform.

Canada would strengthen its ties with Taiwanthe liberal-democratic state Xi keeps threatening to invadeand take up the cause of the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, whose brutal oppression the Trudeau government has been loathe to even notice. Other China measures a Conservative government would adopt include: restraints on the operation of Chinese state-owned enterprises in Canadas economy; a law barring senior Canadian officials from the commonplace practice of kick-starting their careers by jumping over to lucrative Chinese sinecures; collaboration with countries like Australia, South Korea and Japan as mutual defence against Beijings trade bullying; a ban on Huaweis participation in Canadas 5G internet connectivity rollout; a crackdown on the Chinese Communist Partys infiltration of Canadian institutions and its persistent intimidation of Chinese-Canadians; a suspension of the Canada-China Legislative Association.

As for a specific response to the Mikes imprisonment, OToole says a Conservative government would draw up a sanctions list under Canadas Magnitsky law targeting the Xi Jinping himself, along with Chinese premier Li Keqiang, the chair of the Standing Committee of the Chinas National Party Congress and the President of the Supreme Peoples Court.

The Liberal platform is silent on China.

The Trudeau government first promised a new framework with cornerstones and principles governing new rules of engagement with China in December 2019. It never materialized. Theres no sign of it in the 82-page Liberal campaign platform Trudeau released this past Wednesday, either. The names Kovrig and Spavor appear nowhere in it. The word China occurs only once in the Liberal document, where the platform proposes that Canada should work to protect Canadians and work closely with our friends, allies, and partners to respond to illegal and unacceptable behaviour by authoritarian states, including China, Russia and Iran.

But thats something the Trudeau government can claim its already doneto no effect at all. Around the 800th day of the Mikes captivity, Ottawa won the backing of nearly 60 United Nations member states in a declaration that condemns hostage-taking as a tool of diplomacy. It was a kind of petition. The word China doesnt even appear in it.

Beyond paralysis, everything the Trudeau government has done on the China file suggests a policy of appeasement and issues-management. Its been as though Beijings outrage against international norms is just an unpleasantness we need to somehow put behind us so that the Liberals conventional enthusiasm for deeper intimacies with the Chinese regime can resume in the work of enriching the corporations affiliated with the Canada-China Business Council.

Meanwhile, Kovrig and Spavor remain behind bars in China, while Meng Wanzhou shows up cheerily every now and then at the B.C. Supreme Court, which her blue-chip team of lawyers has been bogging down with a slew of legal challenges that have thus far proved as unsuccessful as anything the Trudeau government has done to secure the release of the Two Michaels.

It cant go on like this. Canada needs to show the Xi regime that it can no longer expect to buy off Canadians, bully Canadians, and kidnap Canadians when it doesnt get its way. It is tragic and viciously unjust that this burden is being borne by Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. A thousand days is 999 days too long.

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What the winner of this election must do about China, Meng and the two Michaels - Maclean's

Does the US have any real leverage over the Taliban? – Yahoo News

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

The 360 shows you diverse perspectives on the days top stories and debates.

Whats happening

Since retaking control of Afghanistan, the Taliban have tried to assure the rest of the world that their new government will be different from the brutal, oppressive regime that ruled the country in the years before the American invasion. They have vowed to respect womens rights to some degree, forgive those who had allied with the U.S. military and prevent terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a staging ground for attacks. We want the world to trust us, a Taliban spokesperson said.

Unsurprisingly, the notion of a kinder, gentler Taliban has been met with deep skepticism. The Biden administration has, however, expressed confidence that the Taliban can be compelled to keep their promises not out of the goodness of their hearts, but out of sheer self-interest. The Taliban seeks international legitimacy and support, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday. Our message is, any legitimacy and any support will have to be earned.

After 20 years in exile, the Taliban now control a country devastated by war that finds itself in the midst of a deepening economic crisis. It is also home to extremist groups that oppose their rule. Perhaps sensing this precarious position, the Taliban have sought to create friendly diplomatic ties with the U.S. and other major world powers as they work to establish a new government.

Why theres debate

Story continues

Optimists say the U.S. has enormous leverage to hold the Taliban to their commitments. For years, the Afghan government has relied heavily on foreign aid in order to function. That inflow of funds has now dried up. The U.S. has frozen $9.4 billion in Afghan central bank assets, and European governments have suspended development aid. Unless America is satisfied with the Talibans leadership, some experts argue, the country could soon face a catastrophic economic collapse that may threaten the Talibans ability to retain control.

Beyond economic pressure, the U.S. can also use the threat of military reprisal to force the Taliban to keep their promise to root out terror groups, others say. The Taliban may also seek support in combating its own terror threat from groups like ISIS-K, which some experts believe will create another point of leverage for the U.S.

Others are skeptical about Americas ability to keep the Taliban in line. While the group aided the U.S. withdrawal from Kabul, there are already reports of killings and human rights violations in other parts of the country. Many have expressed concern that oppression and violence will once again become the norm once the eyes of the world shift away from Afghanistan.

The Taliban could also seek support from countries like China, Russia and Pakistan, which could limit their reliance on U.S. financial ties and add complexity to American diplomacy with Afghanistan. Others say the Taliban have limited room to moderate even if they want to, since they could risk losing the backing of hard-line factions in the country if theyre seen as being too friendly with perceived enemies like the U.S.

Whats next

The Taliban will reportedly name Sheikh Haibatullah Akhundzada, the groups top religious leader, as Afghanistans supreme ruler in the coming days. More details on the structure of the countrys new government including whether it will be inclusive, as promised by the Taliban are also expected to be announced soon.

Optimists

Afghanistans dire circumstances mean the Taliban will have no choice but to play along

However fierce in battle, the Taliban seem to understand that governing an impoverished, war-ravaged nation is a very different challenge for which it needs economic and diplomatic support, both of which it is already seeking from the United States. Max Fisher, New York Times

The U.S. has enormous power over Afghanistans economic viability

Any Afghan government especially return acts with an unflattering past will come to realize that the U.S. is key to financial and economic security. Daniel Moss, Bloomberg

Two decades in exile has made the Taliban much more pragmatic

The Taliban of 2021 are not those of a generation ago. Consistency marks their ideological position today as in the past. But that consistency goes along with a high degree of pragmatism. Now that they have won the war, they can afford to be realistic about how they govern. David J. Wasserstein, The Hill

The Taliban know that terror groups pose an existential threat to their rule

The most important issue, of course, is protection for international terrorists based in Afghanistan. ... The Taliban can probably be trusted on this for several reasons. ... A new terrorist attack on the United States would not lead to a new U.S. invasion, but it would certainly lead to bombardment by U.S. missiles and strong U.S. support for armed uprisings against Taliban rule. Anatol Lieven, Foreign Policy

The U.S. has leverage but must be realistic about its limits

The balance that must be struck now is extremely sensitive. If Afghans compromise too much in believing the Talibans excuses, or the United States and its allies make their expectations of the Taliban too idealistic, an emboldened Taliban would drive the country toward dark days. The price of a failing and isolated Afghanistan will be paid by common Afghans. Obaidullah Baheer, Washington Post

Pessimists

American leaders will ignore Taliban offenses as long as they stay out of the spotlight

The Americans are hoping that the Taliban will relieve them of the burden of the Afghan problem: as long as the Taliban is willing to manage the internal affairs of the country, as the Saudis do, the US is happy to focus on its own domestic affairs. Nelofer Pazira, Irish Times

The Taliban dont have the luxury of being too friendly with the U.S.

If the Taliban embraces a more pluralistic and inclusive political system with fundamental human rights, especially with respect to women, it may face opposition from its more radical factions and rank-and-file members, who have spent years fighting to restore its emirate. Niamatullah Ibrahimi and Safiullah Taye, Conversation

The Taliban are just as brutal as theyve always been

Those who wish to avoid being force-fed their own testicles should probably not read too much into the kinder, gentler Taliban initiatives currently being implemented in Kabul. The Taliban are cruel, but they are not fools, and magnanimity early in their rule does not mean that they will be any less vengeful than they were at the height of their power. Graeme Wood, Atlantic

The Biden administration is naive for thinking it can control the Taliban

U.S. officials have staked the success of their Afghanistan withdrawal strategy on the premise that they can convince the Taliban to live up to commitments they have made in public and private on letting people leave the country, human rights, and other thorny issues. The Biden administrations approach has long sounded credulous to just about anyone without a vested interest in spinning President Bidens chaotic withdrawal effort as a strategic triumph. Jimmy Quinn, National Review

Other world powers could undercut Americas leverage

The administrations repeated threats to turn Afghanistan into a pariah state if the Taliban commits human rights abuses could be undermined if Beijing and Moscow dont cooperate and if a Taliban-led government strengthens ties with Pakistan and Iran. Michael R. Gordon and James Marson, Wall Street Journal

Is there a topic youd like to see covered in The 360? Send your suggestions to the360@yahoonews.com.

Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Wakil Kohsar/AFP via Getty Images

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Does the US have any real leverage over the Taliban? - Yahoo News

What is Owed – The Nation

Posted on September 5, 2021 by Danzig

Freed slaves, 1863. (Bettmann / Getty images)

Reparations are having a moment. This march, Evanston, Ill., became the first government in the United States to attempt to address racial inequality by providing mortgage assistance and $25,000 homeownership and improvement grants to descendants of residents harmed by discriminatory housing policies in the city. Soon afterward, the US House of Representatives began hearings on HR 40, which would create a commission to study reparations for slavery and other forms of discrimination against Black people in the United States. President Biden expressed support for the study and reiterated that support at the commemoration of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Okla., in May. Meanwhile, California became the first state to initiate an official task force to study and develop a reparations plan for African Americans harmed by slavery and its legacies. Books in Review

Bolstered by the Black Lives Matter movement and last summers protests following the murder of George Floyd, support for reparations has also been aided by a growing awareness of the history of slavery and other forms of racial exploitation in the United States. In the past decade, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and other Black journalists have exposed a broad readership to the question of reparations as well as to the scholarship on slaverys importance in the development of capitalism and American democracy, the racial inequalities inherent to New Deal social policies, and the causes and effects of mass incarceration. By doing so, they helped shift the discussion about racial inequality from a question of marginalization and oppression to a focus on the central role that Black people have played in the economic and political history of the United States. Despite the increasing awareness of this history, however, nearly two-thirds of Americans still oppose federal payments to Black people whose ancestors were enslaved. Opposition is strongest among Republicans, who view reparations as overly divisive and unjustified, but barely half of all Democrats, and only a third of white Democrats, support them.

In From Here to Equality, William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen draw on both journalistic and scholarly sources to make a strong case for cash payments to Black descendants of slaves. To those who dismiss reparations as a recent claim for an ancient crime, they point out that African Americans have been demanding compensation since the end of slavery and that the debt has been redoubled by officially sanctioned violence and discrimination since abolition. Likewise, to the alarmingly large numbers of Americans, both white and black, who do not believe that racial inequality and discrimination continue to exist, Darity and Mullen provide a detailed analysis of the deep disparities in wealth, income, education, and other measures of well-being that have persisted since emancipation.

Yet despite their clear evidence of the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow, Darity and Mullen isolate African American reparations from claims for compensation by Native Americans, immigrants, and others. Not only does this risk alienating potential allies, it also narrows the scope of what the Black freedom movement has almost always pursued: A radical program for economic and racial justice for all Americans.

The core of From Here to Equality is a rich historical account of how the economic inequalities between Black and white Americans were created and perpetuated through centuries of slavery and the legally enforced systems of discrimination and political disfranchisement that followed. Drawing on the work of Anne Farrow, Craig Wilder, Joel Lang, and Jennifer Frank, Darity and Mullen explain that slavery was integral to the nationalnot just the Southerneconomy, and that its proceeds therefore helped establish some of the nations most prominent banks, insurance companies, and universities.

Emphasizing several periods when the United States might have taken a different path, they show how slavery became more durable and racialized in the colonial era and then expanded rapidly in the South after a brief period of ambivalence about it during the Revolution. They also explain how Abraham Lincoln and other Northern politicians sought to avoid conflict by appeasing Southern slave owners, and how their hands were forced by the recalcitrance of the Confederate states, rising opposition to the war among Northern whites, and the insistence of African Americans on turning the war into a fight against slavery.

In Darity and Mullens telling, the Civil War was a critical moment not just because it ended slavery but because it also raised the question of how the formerly enslaved would be compensated for centuries of unpaid labor. They cite the testimony of the formerly enslaved minister Garrison Frazier in 1865, who explained to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton that the freedom, as I understand itis taking us from under the yoke of bondage, and placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, take care of ourselves, and assist the Government in maintaining our freedom. Current Issue

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This testimony was the inspiration for Shermans famous Field Order No. 15, which would have distributed over 5 million acres of plantation land to formerly enslaved families along the Atlantic coast. A version of Shermans order was taken up by Congress, but in yet another missed opportunity to repair the damage done by slavery, Andrew Johnson vetoed it and returned the land to former slave owners.

But the Civil War was not the last missed opportunity, and a key component of Darity and Mullens case is that the plunder of Black America, as Ta-Nehisi Coates dubbed it, continued unabated throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. Drawing on the work of Coates and other journalists, sociologists, and historians who have charted this pillage over the past century and a half, Darity and Mullen offer a story of dispossession, exploitation, and disfranchisement whose devastating costs, they argue, also make the case for reparations.

Having explored the centuries of injustice that now demand compensation, Darity and Mullen turn to the most common objections that they have encountered in the 15 years that they have spent researching and developing their case.

Over that period, Darity and Mullen explain, increased awareness of racial inequality has led to a multiplicity of reactions, from challenging the legitimacy of reparations to asking questions about the logistics of a reparations plan. Most of these objections are answered in previous chapters, but they also examine the claims that past injustices were addressed by emancipation, 20th-century social welfare policies, and affirmative action, and they show why all of these are clearly unsatisfactory in the face of the history they have recounted. Indeed, they argue, many of those initiativesin particular welfare and affirmative action programsnot only failed to end racial inequalities but at times deepened them.Related Article

In the final chapters of the book, Darity and Mullen lay out a program for determining who is responsible for paying reparations, who would be eligible, how much would be paid, and how the funds would be distributed.

The detailed history Darity and Mullen present supports the moral and economic claims for reparations. Yet given the persistent opposition, it is puzzling that they describe the potential constituency for reparations in the narrowest possible terms. In written testimony submitted to a congressional hearing on HR 40, Darity suggested that the bill be amended to clarify that it would benefit only people who identify as black, Negro, or African American and have at least one ancestor who was enslaved in the United States. Acknowledging that this excludes post-slavery immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean, whose own ancestors are likely to have been subjected to enslavement and colonialism elsewhere, he suggested they could make their claims against the United Kingdom or France, but not the United States.

In addition to alienating potential allies, the exclusion of Black immigrants from reparations obscures not only the consequences of racism and segregation in the aftermath of emancipation but also the inherently international character of slavery and the inequalities it forged. The scholarship that Darity and Mullen draw on emphasizes the centrality of racial exploitation to the development of the United States, but it also demonstrates that the national story was, as W.E.B. Du Bois put it, but a local phase of a world problem.

The historian Ana Lucia Araujo, in her transnational and comparative history Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade, shows that the demand for compensation in the United States has always been related to reparations movements in the Caribbean, South America, and Africa. That tradition is carried on today by the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, which links demands on the US government with a transnational movement seeking reparations for people of African descent.

To limit the scope of what could be an international movement is a missed opportunity, but it also overlooks the influence of the United States and its role in international slavery and racial inequality. As Araujo explains, the US governments refusal to recognize Haiti weakened the Black-led republic at a time when it was attempting to establish economic independence from Europe and was revised only out of hope that African Americans could be resettled in the Caribbean after the Civil War. Since then, US political, military, and economic power has undermined the economic status of former slaves and their descendants in the Caribbean and Central America and led many of them to seek refuge and opportunity through migration to the United States. Certainly, the US government bears some responsibility for those affected by its imperial power.

And that responsibility does not end with people of African descent. Darity and Mullens account of slaverys centrality to the economic development of the United States includes frequent references to Negro, mulatto and Indian slaves, and as Tiya Miles and other historians have shown, African American history has long been deeply intertwined with that of Native Americans. Commenting on the anniversary of the Tulsa massacre, Robin D.G. Kelley noted, Any discussion of repair and reparations, of grieving and mourning the events of 1921 and its aftermath, must grapple with the colonial violence that made Tulsa or Oklahoma and its settler regime possible.

Darity and Mullen acknowledge that Native Americans could make a far more costly claim on the American government than black Americans, potentially including the entire territory of the United States. Yet rather than casting Indigenous people as potential allies in the demand for reparations, they insist that such claims are irrelevant to the specific urgency of the black reparations claim.

Black West Indians and Latin Americans are not the only immigrants with a potential interest in reparations. Emphasizing the whiteness, education, and wealth that some immigrants have brought with them to the United States, Darity and Mullen conclude that voluntary immigrants who arrived after the end of slavery have benefited from Americas Jim Crow regime and its established and ongoing racial hierarchy and therefore share responsibility for reparations. But what of the Chinese and other Asian immigrants who were deprived of legal protections, landownership, and citizenship by racist exclusion laws; refugees from US military interventions in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, and Central America; and Mexican guest workers and undocumented migrants who powered the internal colonialism that, according to the historian Mae Ngai, was also central to the economic development of the southwestern United States? As Erika Lees recent history of xenophobia shows, anti-immigrant sentiment has often been closely linked to anti-Black racism.

These histories may help explain why Asian and Latino Americans are far more supportive of reparations for slavery than white Americans, and why, rather than dismiss all immigrants as beneficiaries of racial inequality, we should ask which among them might find common cause in a movement to end it.

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In the context of an increasingly racially diverse United States, the need for allies is an issue of strategy as much as of justice. Acknowledging that not enough Americans support reparations, Darity and Mullen caution that their proposals will not be possible without a dramatic change in national leadership and an inspired national movement dedicated to the fulfillment of the goal of racial justice. With African Americans holding steady at roughly 12 percent of the population, it is difficult to see how they could build such a movement on their own. Darity and Mullen suggest that support could also come from whites descended from slave owners who are seeking atonement, but guilt seems a weak foundation for a political alliance. It seems more feasible to build a coalition of those with an interest in repairing the damage done by slavery and other forms of racial exploitation.

But if we are to build such a movement, its demands have to go beyond just one groups claims and one policy program alone. Darity and Mullen describe the goal of reparations as sharp and enduring reductions in racial disparities, particularly economic disparities like racial wealth inequality, and corresponding sharp and enduring improvements in black well-being. These are admirable objectives, but even with reparations and the reduction of these racial disparities in wealth, African Americans would still face other falling standards of well-being endured by Americans as a whole. For example, if Black families were equal to white ones, their median net worth would increase from $23,000 to $184,000, but most of their gains would go to a few wealthy households: 10% of Black families would control 76% of Black household wealth while just 1% would go to the poorest half of Black families. To use another metric, in an economically equal United States, African Americans would likely still be killed by police and be incarcerated at far higher levels than citizens of nearly every other nation in the world. Likewise, they would still likely fall victim to a health care system that prioritizes profit and a labor market that values productivity over humanity. Yet Darity and Mullen assert that once the reparations program is executed and racial inequality eliminated, African Americans would make no further claims for race-specific policies on their behalf from the American governmenton the assumption that no new race-specific injustices are inflicted upon them.

In his opening address at the 1963 March on Washington, A. Philip Randolph characterized the Black freedom movement as a massive moral revolution aimed not only at securing equal access to voting rights, government services, public accommodations, and jobs, but also at creating a society where the sanctity of private property takes second place to the sanctity of the human personality. Americans of all races had a stake in that transformation, he explained, but it falls to the Negro to reassert this proper priority of values, because our ancestors were transformed from human personalities into private property. Darity and Mullen draw a far more modest lesson from the African American struggle against slavery, Jim Crow, and other forms of racial exploitation. Their demand for repayment of the wealth and income taken since the nations founding is worthy in its own right and would help address the deep economic disparities between Black and white Americans. Yet as Randolph suggested, the legacy of these freedom struggles is far more ambitious and revolutionary than the simple calculus of compensation.

Any political movement powerful enough to secure policies sufficient to repair the damage inflicted by centuries of slavery and other forms of racial oppression in the United States will also have the power to secure a more radical and enduring transformation of our social and political order, and it should do so for practical and moral reasons. To win reparations will require allies who have a shared interest in addressing the countrys history of racial exploitation, but it will also need more expansive forms of solidarity and systemic change. As Randolph observed over 50 years ago, Black people are in the forefront of todays movement for social and racial justice, because we know we cannot expect the realization of our aspirations through the same old anti-democratic social institutions and philosophies that have all along frustrated our aspirations.

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What is Owed - The Nation

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