Feds sprayed chemicals into the eyes of a retired ER nurse and veteran – Street Roots News

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An interview with Mike Hastie, a member of Veterans for Peace who federal officers assaulted with pepper spray at close range Saturday night, unprovoked

Michael Hastie was a Vietnam War medic with the U.S. Armyin the early 1970s. Now, at 75, he's on the front lines documenting the Black Lives Matter and now anti-federal troops demonstrations in Portland.

This week hes making national news as the Vietnam veteran in Portland who federal officerssprayed directly in the face at close range with OC chemicals.

Hastie likens himself as a peace photographer, a role he has held for more than 40 years. Hes taken his two Nikon cameras to places such as Palestine, Japan, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Vietnam.

He sees the demonstrations as a flashpoint for revolutionary change in Portland.

Hes also a member of Veterans for Peace. This is an excerpt from an email sent to the groups supporters shortly after the incident, describing the mood Saturday evening about three hours before he was assaulted:

The energy and Justifiable Cause was absolutely electrifying. Once I got into the middle of it, I turned to someone I didn't know and said, God I love this city. The solidarity hairs rose on my back and arms. There were two African-American men leading cheers and chants that hypnotically motivated what would eventually be three thousand Portlanders. At one point, all those people took their cell phones out and turned their flashlights on. What a beautiful scene of togetherness.

He emphasizes that throughout his decades protesting, sometimes change happens one conversation at a time.

When Hastieapproached federal agents just before midnight on Saturdayin front of the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, he was attempting to tell them about his experience as a medic in Vietnam.

I was giving a lecture to the police, he told Street Roots. My job as a Vietnam vet is to tell people why I am protesting to let people know theUnited States government committed atrocities every day inVietnam.

Thats when a militarized federal law enforcement officer wearing a gas mask approaching from his left, abruptly sprayed him with pepper spray the nozzle mere inches from his eyes as the chemicals were sprayed directly onto his face.

Since then, he's been fielding interviews, including with CNN and other national news outlets. The viral video of his assault has been viewed more than 5.6 million times.

The attack came on the heels of another instance of brutality against a veteran in Portland at the hands of federal troops. Navy veteran Christopher David suffered a broken hand after police pepper sprayed him and assaulted him with batons last week.

People are interested in this because they wonder why are two military vets getting pepper sprayed for standing up for our free speech rights what we as former military swore an oath to protect, Hastie said.

Hastie said his eyes recovered around 90% of their normal functioning by Monday afternoon. Hes been contacted by a couple of attorneys to see if I want to pursue suing. He said he is not opposed to litigation.

Neither I or the navy veteran were a threatto anyone. And they just wailed on Christopher David. Two fractures in his hands, he said.

In his childhood, Hasties family moved around a lot, living on both the East and West coasts of the U.S., and in Germany and Japan. His father was a career military man. Hastie enlisted at age 24, and ended up in a medic program at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, Colo.

I spent a year there, undergoing advanced medical training, he told Street Roots.

He turned 25 in Vietnam.

It was toward the end of the war. We got war casualties from time to time. But everything was falling apart, chaos, he said. We saw homicides, suicides, heroin overdoses, addiction.

Hastie may have gone into the Army gung-ho due to the influence from his career military father who had fought in World War Two but he returned to the U.S. a wreck.

I knew I was the enemy, he said. We had no right to bomb Vietnam. It would be as if the U.S. military went into Mississippi and bombed it. Every day we committed atrocities there.

He mentioned, several times, the horror around My Lai, the infamous murder of more than 500 unarmed men, women and children by a group of U.S. Army soldiers in Charlie Company led by Lt. William Calley.

Hastie has sincebeen all over the United States and to numerous foreign countriesto demonstrate against war and U.S. aggression overseas.

He infers a call of duty beyond military allusions: To photograph events and to bear witness and thereby teach people how the U.S. is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.

In 1967 Martin Luther King gave his Beyond Vietnam oration at New Yorks Riverside Church, and it moved Hastie.

King denounced the U.S. as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, and saw the war was a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit. Later that spring, he asserted that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together. We could not get rid of one without getting rid of the others (and) the whole structure of American life must be changed.

These words deeply influenced him and the fact that, said Hastie, my own government was spending all this money on war, but not on the poor people, the homeless.

Hastie quoted King again: A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

With protests following the police killing of George Floyd and the wave of social justice demonstrations aligning with Black Lives Matter, Hastie has stationed himself on new front lines.

Hastie was discharged from the military at Fort Hood, and after which he decided to become a nurse. He went to Eugene to go to Lane Community College. Then, he ended up in Portland, finishing his nursing program at Good Samaritan. Hes been in Portland ever since.

For 20 years he worked in emergency rooms as a nurse.

By 1980, Hastie was facing both divorce and the impacts of post traumatic stress disorder.

He was hospitalized for several days with suicidal ideation. That bout was followed by several others once following a visit to Vietnam wherehe spoke withsurvivors of the My Lai massacre.

We were talking to people who had survived it and to family members who did not, right at the very spot at the very ditch where so many murdered Vietnamese were piled up, he said.

He also struggled with alcoholism, but stopped drinking in 1976. A decision that he said saved my life.

He said he realized the myth of American exceptionalism believes the countrys good guy reputation began to tarnish in Vietnam.

The biggest positive thing that came out of the Vietnam War was that I saw myself as a global citizen, Hastie said.

When the blinders come off, he said there can be a disquieting and disorienting reverberation.

Your core belief systems are dismantled. It was like an emotional white out for me, he said. I was a stranger in a strange land when I came home.

Hastie developed a new belief system based on the war experience, his awakening and the Black soldiers in Vietnam who showed him what solidarity means.

He cites Victor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, as another influence that helped him frame feelings he had about atrocities hooked to his own memory of the Vietnam War. Much of the trauma comes from enlightenment, Hastie said from knowing about the continuing atrocities this country has perpetrated.

Frankl once said: An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. He was referring to the psychological makeup and behavior patterns of prisoners in concentration camps during World War II.

Hastie concluded his email to Veterans for Peace supporters early in morning Sunday, July 26:

Everyone at these demonstrations are committed to standing up for monumental change, at any price. While this government preaches Democracy, that is the very thing the U.S. Government steals from other countries when the U.S. Military invades them. Domestically, the militarized police in America are doing the same thing. Being in Viet Nam woke this white boy up, and so much of that awareness came from Black soldiers who educated me on racism. The Viet Nam War was a racist war, and those who resisted U.S. Power were called, Gooks. Power To The People!

Hastie emphasized that during the Portland protests of late, his role as a freelance photographer is often superseded by his role as sandwich maker.

I show up three times a week to various spots in Portland with my homemade sandwiches, he said.

Too many people know whats going on but dont put their feet on the streets, Hastie said of the ongoing demonstrations in Portland. I dont know if the empire can be stopped with a peace sign, but we are doing what we can. Unfortunately, and Ive said this often, but this country needs to go through more suffering before real change will happen.

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Feds sprayed chemicals into the eyes of a retired ER nurse and veteran - Street Roots News

The American Founding vindicated against its foes on the Right and Left – MercatorNet

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We have arrived at an ominous moment, when the very legitimacy of the American political order has come under systematic assault. America is on trial in ways that few of us could have imagined even several months ago, when Robert Reillys fine new book saw the light of day.

In his compelling defence of the intellectual and moral foundations of the American regime, Reilly principally takes aim at a group of Catholic scholars and intellectuals, Michael Hanby and Patrick Deneen chief among them, who reject the American proposition in toto, dismissing it as metaphysically corrupt (Hanby) or as a poison pill or ticking time bomb bound to unleash all the corrupting acids of modernity, to recall Walter Lippmans memorable phrase from 1929.

But in our present moment of nihilistic discontent, as statues topple and angry mobs set the tone of public and private life, the assault comes almost exclusively from the Left, now best defined as those who reject every aspect of our civic and civilizational patrimony.

No matter: Reilly has provided a learned, serious, and passionate defence of the tradition bequeathed to us by our Fathers, political, religious, and philosophical. He has provided vital arguments for responding to the assaults on the American proposition from both the secular Left and the traditionalist Right. I welcome and applaud his achievement even if I cannot assent to every step in his argument.

Let us begin closer to home with Reillys account of the moral foundations of the American republic. Reilly is particularly helpful at showing that the most significant and thoughtful among the Founders (an eclectic lot, to be sure) were not partisans of moral relativism, or atomistic individualism, or a reductive and dehumanizing scientific materialism. For the most part, Thomas Hobbes appalled them, for reasons a young Alexander Hamilton eloquently recounted in his essay from 1775 entitled The Farmer Refuted. Hamilton wrote on that occasion:

Moral obligation, according to [Hobbes], is derived from the introduction of civil society; and there is no virtue but what is purely artificial, the mere contrivance of politicians, for the maintenance of social discourse. But the reason he ran into this absurd and impious doctrine was that he disbelieved the existence of an intelligent superintending principle, who is the governor and will be the judge of the universe.

Firmly rejecting political atheism in all its forms, Hamilton goes on to affirm that natural rights must always find their sturdy foundation in the law of nature rooted in the eternal and immutable law of God. Rejecting both despotism and moral antinomianism, the Founders uniformly defended liberty under God and the law.

Even Jefferson, the most modern and Epicurean of the Founders, a deist of a shaky sort, and not a classical theist, was appalled by Hobbes conventionalist view that morality had no grounding in the nature of things, except the minimalist (and amoral) imperative that human beings preserve themselves. There is a thin reed for rights in Hobbes, but no rational foundation for moral and civic obligation.

Reilly is undoubtedly right that the Founders belonged to a different, and infinitely saner and more elevated, spiritual universe than the one inhabited by Thomas Hobbes. Statesmen more than theorists, they still drew on classical wisdom (Aristotle and Cicero) even as they adopted the idiom of modern philosophy and political philosophy. This is a point that needed to be stressed to a greater extent by Reilly as he addresses these matters.

In a founder such as John Adams the Bibles ethical monotheism shines forth, even if Adams ultimately leaned toward Arminianism and even a morally robust deism. Hamilton founded the Society for Christian Constitutionalism in 1796, fearful that Jacobin atheism and proto-totalitarianism was making steady progress on American shores. A deeply thoughtful founder such as James Wilson admired John Locke but feared that his thought could be misconstrued and thus give powerful support to sceptical and morally subversive intellectual and political currents.

All of this is true, and none of it supports Hanbys and Deenens portraits of an American Founding as a vehicle of radical individualism, moral relativism, and a budding philosophy of radical autonomy culminating in the unencumbered self.

Still, the Founders bought into what the great southern Catholic novelist Walker Percy called a mishmash anthropology. No moral relativists, they nonetheless adopted the idiom of the state of nature which was intended by its great proponents to be a substitute account of human origins from the old one, so strikingly provided in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis. Such an account is remarkably conventionalist, in that it takes its bearings from solitary or semi-solitary individuals in the state of nature who are in no way political animals by nature.

And Locke, a most canny writer, presented arguments in his Second Treatise of Government for human beings being both the product of Divine workmanship and beings who own themselves. Human beings have duties in the state of nature (contra Hobbes) but only when these are not at odds with the overwhelming imperative of self-preservation. For Locke, God and nature are not particularly provident, 9/10, nay 999/1000, Locke says, of what human beings have is the product of human industriousness. In numerous and subtle ways, Locke undermines the multiple reasons why human beings ought to be grateful to a loving and Provident God and a beneficent natural order.

Now, I agree with Bob Reilly that the American Founders were not particularly alert to the subversive or truly radical underpinnings of Lockes thought.

James Wilson, in his famous law lectures at the University of Pennsylvania, saw that Locke had been appropriated by the French encyclopedists and some of the French revolutionaries, too. But he saw this as a wilful and perverse misappropriation of the more traditional affirmations of Locke. But as John Courtney Murray points out in the concluding pages of We Hold These Truths (1960), Locke self-consciously subverts traditional metaphysics, relativizes the moral law, and places self-preservation above moral or civic duty. To be sure, he pays lip service to the judicious Hooker (a great and noble Christian Aristoteliana critic of both Puritan fanaticism and Machiavellian modernity) while not so subtly distancing himself from the premises underlying Hookers (and St. Thomas) thought.

As the example of Father Murray shows, the American proposition is a worthy of defence, even if the Founders were somewhat taken in by Lockes deceptive mlange of practical sobriety and theoretical radicalism. Murray saw that that radicalism came to its fullest fruition in the French Revolution, and not in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, or the American Revolution of a century later.

If we treat the great political men whose courage and determination gave birth to the American republic as statesmen first, and as theorists only intermittently and secondarily, we can begin to judge their achievement on its own terms.

They despised what we have come to call moral relativism even as many of them rooted moral judgment in that psychological faculty that the 18th century called moral sense. The common-sense philosophers Thomas Reid and Francis Hutcheson were their points of reference, more than Thomas Aquinas and Richard Hooker. Most were theists, some deists, but all were opponents of the political atheism that confused human beings with gods.

In honouring the thought that inspired and undergird the Declaration of Independence of 1776, Jefferson and Adams could rightly appeal, and eclectically so, to the Bible, Aristotle, Cicero, Sydney, and Locke, and other great books of public and natural right. That was enough for their statesmanlike purposes. We, on the other hand, are obliged to do more, to think through the presuppositions of a free and virtuous republic in a more intellectually, and philosophically, consistent way.

This is where the first and largest part of Reillys book can make a signal contribution. As philosophically inclined statesman, the founders presupposed much that they did not feel obliged to theorize or articulate in a considered or systematic way. They were profoundly shaped by ethical monotheism, and by a tradition of liberal education that drew freely, and somewhat haphazardly, on biblical and classical wisdom, the Christian marriage of Jerusalem and Athens, and the best and most prudent political wisdom of the enlightenment (especially Montesquieu, to some extent Locke and David Hume).

They also shared their ages confidence in the promise of scientific and (in a qualified way) political progress, while remaining sober about the limits inherent in human nature. They were, in the illuminating words of Martin Diamond, sober revolutionaries who did not commit themselves to impossible dreams that necessarily culminate in totalitarian tyranny.

All of Bob Reillys works remind us (following his informal teacher Father James V. Schall SJ) that reason, not will, guides human beings, and all spiritual beings, in the created order. Islams rejection of that elementary truth has given rise to spiritual and political despotism, and has made it difficult for millions of decent Muslims to oppose the extremists in their midst. Our Creator God is not an oriental potentate in the sky: His reason and goodness take ontological priority over His will.

A few of the American Founders such as the perspicacious James Wilson, arrived at these conclusions, at once theological and political, in his articulation of a jurisprudence fitting a free and decent people. About one vital thing Reilly is right, and crucially so: the American proposition is on the side of liberty under God and the law no matter how inadequately these busy statesmen theorized that foundational truth.

That becomes eminently clear in chapter 10 of his book (The Antipodes: The American Revolution versus the French Revolution) where Reilly established beyond all doubt that American ordered liberty had nothing to do with Jacobin fanaticism, atheism, and tyranny. The American revolutionaries respected limits and constitutional norms: the French revolutionaries monstrously identified republican virtue with revolutionary terror.

They were Bolsheviks avant la lettre. Even Jefferson came to regret his early uncritical support for the French Revolution, as his correspondence with John Adams makes abundantly clear. For Hamilton, Adams, and Washington, America stood for liberty. The French Revolution in contrast stood for a violent rapaciousness rooted in lawlessness and contempt for the rights of God.

Our present-day American Jacobins, who are doing their best to destroy once and for all the rich intellectual, political, spiritual, and cultural patrimony that Bob Reilly so richly displays in this book, are true heirs of the Jacobin terror, and not the gentlemen-revolutionaries of 1776 and 1787. They are moved by a spirit of demonic ingratitude.

One more truth flows abundantly from the pages of America on Trial: there can be no meaningful defence of Western civilization, of order in history, without a thoughtful and manly defence of the great achievement that is the American republic. To attack it in the name of a pure Catholic polity that has never existed, is to leave American Catholics without a country, and without hope for our common life.

Let us rather follow John Courtney Murray and Robert Reilly in clarifying the moral and intellectual presuppositions that our noble Founders could sometimes take for granted. And let us not blame them for the moral rot that owes everything to a transvaluation of values, where a triumphant Will repudiates the Sovereignty of Reason and Goodness with all the deleterious consequences that have come to light in recent years. Bob Reillys excellent book is the work of a scholar and a man of faith who has every reason to love his country despite its present travails. May he be an example to others.

This review has been republished from Catholic World Report with permission.

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The American Founding vindicated against its foes on the Right and Left - MercatorNet

When is Muppets Now released on Disney Plus and whos in the cast? – The Sun

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THE secret to the six-decade-long success of the Muppet franchise is its ability to update and adapt to each new generation, while still feeling timeless.

The felt friends have done it again with family sketch show Muppets Now, which is coming to Disney Plus very soon.

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Muppets Now will be available on Disney Plus on Friday, July 31, 2020.

The show will consist of six 30-minute long episodes.

The show is billed as totally unscripted and is an improvised sit-com.

It will feature all the favourite characters including Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy.

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Muppets Now is Generation Z's answer to The Muppet Show.

The plot will follow Scooter as he frantically rounds up all the Muppets and gets them ready to upload their first streaming show.

The official press release for the show stated: "The Muppets will engage in the kind of startling silliness and heartfelt fun that first made them famous."

Miss Piggy has a beauty and wellness segment, Beaker and Professor Honeydew have a science experiment show, while Kermit attempts a Mup Close and Personal interview series.

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The show will mimic YouTube-style sketches to appeal to younger audiences.

Muppets Now swaps the variety show for a series of skits and improvised demonstrations.

The Muppets' previous 2015 TV show - simply titled The Muppets - mimicked Ricky Gervais's The Office-style mockumentary, with awkward conversation and side looks to the camera.

The ABC and Sky show wasn't received well by fans and was dropped by the networks fairly swiftly.

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Some of our favourite fuzzy faces will be making a return, with their original puppeteers.

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The Muppets are known for having big stars make appearances on their shows, often parodying themselves.

Some famous faces making appearances in Muppets Now include:

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When is Muppets Now released on Disney Plus and whos in the cast? - The Sun

Bitcoin Surpasses $12,000 Then Tumbles in Wild Weekend Action – Bloomberg

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Bitcoin is reminding investors of both its promise and peril in trading.

The worlds largest cryptocurrency surged to $12,112 in trading just after midnight New York time Sunday, its first foray above $12,000 since August 2019, according to pricing compiled by Bloomberg. But it plunged shortly thereafter -- 30 minutes after the high, it had dropped to $10,638. It was up 1.2% to $11,224 as of 8:41 a.m. Monday.

There are two factors that make this market particularly volatile. One is the low level of liquidity, which is one of Bitcoins hallmark traits due to digital scarcity. The second is an increasing amount of crypto exchanges who offer extreme leverage, said Mati Greenspan, founder of Quantum Economics. When traders get a bit over excited, they tend to pile on the margin, giving way to extra large liquidations and frequent shakeouts.

Bitcoin has rallied strongly in recent days after rising above $10,000. It had fallen as low as $4,904 in mid-March around the height of coronavirus-fueled market uncertainty, but by mid-May was back around $9,000.

Clearing resistance at $10,000-$10,500, which coincided with the downtrend line from the late 2017 highs and first-quarter 2020 highs, established a higher high for Bitcoin confirming a new tactical uptrend, according to Rob Sluymer, technical strategist at Fundstrat Global Advisors LLC.

In the short-term Bitcoins daily momentum indicators are overbought (as they are for gold), but beyond some very near-term choppy trading, Bitcoin is likely to continue to trend to its next resistance level at $13,800.

While cryptocurrencies volatility continues to attract skeptics, JPMorgan Chase & Co. in June noted that Bitcoins rally back from the March depths suggests it has staying power.

The cryptocurrencys notable moves both last weekend and this one recall a similar phenomenon in 2019, when outsized gains took place numerous times during Saturday and Sunday trading as the price rose from a few thousand dollars into five-digit range.

Other cryptocurrencies rallied as well. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index gained about 8% to 542. Ether rose 4.4% to $389, capping a torrid rally that has seen it advance in 13 of the last 14 sessions in data compiled by Bloomberg.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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Bitcoin Surpasses $12,000 Then Tumbles in Wild Weekend Action - Bloomberg

Bitcoin price today: Why does it keep going up? – Fast Company

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Bitcoin is on a surge . . . and no one knows why. The digital currency is up over 17% since July 20, the same period during which the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 2% and reported cases of COVID-19 topped 4.3 million in the United States. As of this afternoon, the price was nearly $11,000.

The spike comes on the heels of a decision by the Office of the Comptroller of Currency last week allowing banks to hold cryptocurrencies. Up to now, banks and funds had avoided bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies due to regulatory concernsthough banks likely have not yet had time to react, and bitcoins current upswing started before that decision.

The rally could be related to the overwhelming uncertainty of the stock market, leaving people looking for a safe-haven alternative to cash and stocks. Gold prices have also been on the rise, and some suggest that perhaps bitcoin is the gold of the tech age. But pandemic uncertainty has ruled over the stock market for months now, and cryptocurrencies are often more volatile than other markets and prone to unpredictable rallies.

Two prominent Wall Street veterans are predicting that this is just the beginning of an even bigger rise that will see bitcoin more than double. Stay tuned.

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Bitcoin price today: Why does it keep going up? - Fast Company

There are no exceptions to the First Amendment, even in a pandemic – Independent Women’s Forum

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A few weeks ago, theTexas Supreme Courtmade headlines by warning state officials that there was not, in fact, a pandemic exception to the United States Constitution. This past week, however, the U.S. Supreme Court seemed to create one. In an orderthat surprised even theliberals atVox, the Supreme Court blessed a Nevada law that preferences casinos over churches. The decision has no basis in First Amendment law and establishes a worrisome precedent for government overreach in times of crisis.

Located in Dayton, Nevada, Calvary Chapel is a small, rural church that wishes to host worship services for about 90 congregants, which is 50% of its fire-code capacity. Calvary Chapels reopening plans are more than compliant with state and CDC requirements. A limited, 45-minute service (half the normal length), one-way entrance and exit footpaths, six-feet of separation between families, a prohibition on passing items, and sanitization between services are just some of the measures proposed by Calvary Chapel.

Yet Nevada forbade Calvary Chapel from opening its doors. In a breathtaking assertion of governmental power premised on COVID-19, Gov. Steve Sisolak (a Democrat) issued a directive that severely constrains church attendance. No church, synagogue, mosque, or other place of worship may admit more than 50 persons no matter the building capacity or safety measures employed.

The fact that these restrictions do not apply to casinos, gyms, bowling alleys, restaurants, or bars should have made Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolakan easy case. It isblackletter lawthat strict scrutiny applies to government restrictions on religious exercise that are not neutral and of general applicability. If the Free Exercise Clause means anything, it means government may not single out the religious for disfavored treatment. Yet, that is precisely what Nevada has done. While limiting church attendance to 50 people, Nevada allows the casino down the street to admitthousandsof people, up to 50% of their maximum capacity.

Further, casinos are not the only venues that are treated more favorably than churches. Other commercial interests, such as bars, gyms, and restaurants, may also operate at 50% capacity. In fact, tournament bowling alleys in Las Vegas seat hundreds of spectators, and like casinos, can admit up to 50% of capacity. State guidelines provide that groups of up to 50 people may sit together in bowling alley grandstands. Meanwhile, the synagogue down the street is limited to 50 total worshippers.

On Friday, in a one-sentence orderthat contains not a word of explanation, a sharply divided 5-4 Supreme Court denied Calvary Chapels application for an injunction restraining the state of Nevada from enforcing its 50-person limit on religious services.

Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsucheach authored a dissentarguing that Nevadas reopening plan discriminated against religious services in violation of the First Amendment.

As Alito explained, a public health emergency does not give public officials carte blanche to disregard the Constitution for as long as the medical problem persists. Rather, officials are required to craft policies that account for constitutional rights.

This principle is hardly new. In 1866, at the height of the Civil War, the Supreme Court heldthat the Constitution may not be modified in times of crisis. Rather, our founding charter applies at all times and under all circumstances. Indeed, the court could not think of any other doctrine involving more pernicious consequencesthan that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.

If only the current Supreme Court would return to this view. As Gorsuch explained, the world we inhabit today, with a pandemic upon us, poses unusual challenges. But there is no world in which the Constitution permits Nevada to favor Caesars Palace over Calvary Chapel.

All is not lost, however. Although Calvary Chapel will not receive its injunction, the courts still have a chance to consider the case on the merits and to ensure that the First Amendments protections apply at all times and in all circumstances.

Erin Hawley is a senior legal fellow at Independent Womens Law Center and a former clerk to Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court of the United States.

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There are no exceptions to the First Amendment, even in a pandemic - Independent Women's Forum

Princeton professor pushes back on cancel culture on campuses: ‘First Amendment is for all of us’ – FOX 32 Chicago

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The right to free speech in America needs to be protected, Princeton University jurisprudence professor Robert George stated Friday.

George's comments during an interview on "Fox News @ Night" came following a Michigan bed and breakfast's decision to remove their Norwegian flag after dozens wrongly accused the owners of flying a Confederate flag.

According to reporting from WLIX, when Greg and Kjersten Offbecker created the St. Johns inn -- named The Nordic Pineapple -- they installed the flag, hanging an American flag alongside it.

The pair then began to receive cruel emails and phone calls. Some were even convinced that the "B&B" was built by Confederate leaders when, in fact, union workers constructed the Civil War-era building for the daughter of the Saint Johns founder.

Kjersten Offbecker said the flag was hung as a way for her to represent her Scandinavian heritage. However, with the confusion, she took it down because she said it was not worth the frustration.

The Norwegian flag has the same colors as the Confederate flag, but the patterns and symbols are different. The Confederate flag is red with a blue X containing white stars.

"It's a combination of a very bad attitude and a great deal of ignorance," George remarked. "You would think that Americans would be able to tell what is and isn't a Confederate flag -- even if it's a flag that, in some ways, resembles a Confederate flag.

"But, look at how quickly people just turn to outrage and tried to shut these people down because they thought they had broken the rule against wrongthink..." he told host Shannon Bream. "So, the combination of malice and ignorance is really toxic."

George highlighted the importance of speaking up in defense of the free speech rights of those you strongly may disagree with.

"Temple University was under pressure to discipline [Professor] Marc Lamont Hill for some statements that I very strongly disagreed with. But I, nevertheless, threatened to myself lead a protest...in defense of the free speech rights of the very progressive Marc Lamont Hill," he explained. "Because he has every bit of [a right to] free speech as I have or as anybody else has.

"The First Amendment is for all of us," George pointed out.

"It's not the property of the left. It's not the property of the right. It's not the conservatives'; it's not the liberals' [property]. It's everybody's right..." he said.

"And so, we need to protect the free speech rights and stand up for the free speech rights of those we oppose," George urged.

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Princeton professor pushes back on cancel culture on campuses: 'First Amendment is for all of us' - FOX 32 Chicago

Assembly to look at limiting First Amendment rights of therapists and clients – Must Read Alaska

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ANCHORAGE COULD BAN SOME FORMS OF THERAPY FOR GAY CLIENTS

On Tuesday, the Anchorage Assembly will take up an ordinance that would prohibit counselors and therapists from helping young clients who are struggling with unwanted homosexual thoughts, gender dysphoria, or other gender identity or sexual variations.

Offered by three gay members of the Anchorage Assembly, the ordinance would mandate that if a minor wants counseling for unwanted sexual urges or expressions, therapists would have to end the counseling session and show their client the door. Families could, of course, travel to Palmer or Wasilla for such counseling, but it would not be available in Anchorage.

Opponents of the measure say the ordinance would infringe on the First Amendment rights of both patients and therapists, and put a chill on therapists who believe a young person is experiencing a temporary identity problem and want to explore what may be going on in that young persons life.

The ordinance leans on the authority of a three-part story by the Anchorage Press that says persons who are homosexual are discriminated against. In the third part of the series, the Anchorage Press calls gender therapy Conversion, The real hell, focusing on two minors who had therapy forced on them by their parents.

The ordinance would not prevent pro-gay counseling and hormone therapies to assist a young person in presenting as the opposite sex or following romantic attractions with the same sex, but would prevent a counselor or therapist from any communication that would discourage that road for their patients.

In an Alaska Family Council workshop for pastors and others concerned that their religious freedoms or patient-therapist relationships are being infringed upon, Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council warned that sexuality among minors can change as children grow in or out of experimentation phases.

He said that the ban on counseling is a form of viewpoint discrimination by a governing body, and that is a constitutional infringement on many levels.

Going to counseling is deeply personal experience that involves viewpoints, perceptions, and emotions, and if therapists think they are going to be sued because they ask questions of their patients, it will make therapists suppress their own viewpoints.

Sprigg added that parents are in charge of the health care and development of their children, something that has been upheld numerous times at the U.S. Supreme Court, and that there are minors who do want to undergo counseling for homosexual urges.

He also faulted the ordinance because it refers to licensed counselors, but doesnt say who the licensing authority is. In some cases, churches sanction or license counseling services through ordination.

[The entire ordinance in its current form is at this link.]

The meeting starts at 5 pm, but the public is not allowed to attend, per an order by Mayor Ethan Berkowitz. You can find the full agenda and watch the proceedings at this link.

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Assembly to look at limiting First Amendment rights of therapists and clients - Must Read Alaska

Federal Authorities’ Conduct Against Protesters and Reporters in Portland Gross Violations of the First Amendment – PEN America

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PEN America says federal agents are not above the rule of law in repressing and attacking protesters and reporters

(New York, NY) Reports have emerged that federal authorities have required detained protesters in Portland to commit to not attending further protests as a condition for release, and that federal officers have shot at and maced reporters and legal observers covering protests. PEN Americas director of U.S. free expression programs Nora Benavidez released the following statement in response:

Forcing First Amendment-abiding protesters to sign away their right to demonstrate to be released. Law enforcement using live ammunition against reporters and legal observers. These are gross violations of the First Amendment. Federal agents are not above the rule of law, and certainly not above the Constitution. The actions unfolding in Portland are aimed not only at silencing dissent, but also silencing the reporters and journalists working to reveal whats happening on the ground. This has to stop. Freedom predicated on silence isnt freedom at all.

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Federal Authorities' Conduct Against Protesters and Reporters in Portland Gross Violations of the First Amendment - PEN America

People do not have the right to riot – New York Post

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Protesters in Gotham and other cities around the nation are so used to getting their way, theyve been spoiled. Their illegal occupation of our streets and parks has become so routine that the protesting class throws tantrums when it faces consequences, however rarely that happens.

Last weeks arrest of Nikki Stone, wanted for alleged serial vandalism of police cameras, was a case in point. The 18-year-old homeless woman was marching in a peaceful, though non-permitted, march down Second Avenue when plainclothes NYPD officers arrested her and put her in an unmarked van.

Stonehad been filmed on multiple occasions painting over NYPD security cameras around City Hall Park during the last months occupation. Her alleged actions suggest a flagrant lawlessness and enmity against the public good.

Yet Stone became a cause celebre, with supporters claiming she had been disappeared, as if by a right-wing regime in Latin America circa 1982. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: There is no excuse for snatching women off the street and throwing them into unmarked vans. Cable host Chris Hayescalled it kidnapping.

The City Councils Progressive Caucus claimed that this arrest was a tactic meant to intimidate protesters and discourage civil disobedience. Lawmakers accused Mayor Bill de Blasio of failing to hold the NYPD accountable for the brutality unleashed on those exercising fundamental rights.

Back in the real world, plainclothes officers with unmarked cars arrest wanted suspects like Stoneevery day, because it is the most effective way to approach them without tipping them off and letting them escape. It is only kidnapping if one believes that law enforcement, operating with judicial warrants, has no authority to bring criminals to court.

Moreover, the progressive councilmembers radically confuse civil disobedience and First Amendment rights.

The First Amendment protects the right peaceably to assemble, but that doesnt mean you can block traffic any time you want to. Ask Chris Hayes if you can sit in his MSNBC office or studio for a week in the name of your favorite cause.

Civil disobedience means intentionally breaking the law to draw attention to the (alleged) unfairness of the law. But de Blasio has been so spinelessly indulgent of anti-cop protests, allowing wildcat marches to take place every day, all over the city, that the protesters have come to believe that they have the right to break the law. When confronted, they exhibit the outrage of a pampered toddler denied a toy at nap-time.

Similarly petulant, VOCAL-NY, a government-funded nonprofit, is stamping its feet because the city is no longer planning to pay for the construction of its new headquarters. VOCAL-NY was the prime mover behind the Defund the Police encampment, marches and protests that dominated downtown in the run-up to the city budget deal. The groups chief organizer, Jawanza James Williams, proudly declared: We will occupy. We will not leave here until the mayor listens to us!!!

VOCAL-NY receives about $500,000 from the city each year, mostly for drug-abuse-prevention and other health programs.Taxpayers didnt allocatemoney to the group so it could establish an illegal campsite, stage marches across the Brooklyn Bridge,harass and attack law enforcers, destroy public property or demand abolition of the police. Members of the group went to the homes of local politicians, and even the home of Speaker Corey Johnsons boyfriend, screaming at them.

When Johnson removed several million dollars in capital spending that had been earmarked for VOCAL-NY to build a new headquarters, the group shrieked that he was being spiteful and violating their constitutional rights: There can be no place in New York Citys politics for this kind of attack on our First Amendment rights. Yeah, cry more.

VOCAL-NY, like many other ostensible charities, is used to taking millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for explicitly political activity. Theyve gotten used to it because no one in charge says no.

Johnson insists that the money was removed as a fiscal measure and had nothing to do with the way that VOCAL-NY portrayed him as a cop-loving bootlicker during the budget process, embarrassing him ahead of a possible mayoral run, or that they threw paint at his boyfriends front door. But VOCAL-NY, and the protesters who want to dictate the time and manner of their arrests and the clothing of their arresting agents, need to relearn a key lesson of toddlerhood: Actions have consequences.

Seth Barron is associate editor of City Journal.

Twitter: @SethBarronNYC

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People do not have the right to riot - New York Post

Opinion: Heres a monument all Americans can rally around: Lets celebrate the Bill of Rights – Pocono Record

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Amid the turmoil over taking down Confederate monuments and others ranging from Christopher Columbus to Theodore Roosevelt, heres an idea that that almost everyone can get behind: How about erecting monuments that celebrate the Bill of Rights?

Yes, the Bill of Rights: 10 amendments to the Constitution, ratified in 1791, that spelled out the individual freedoms Americans have enjoyed ever since including the freedom to protest against things like monuments (thanks to the First Amendment.)

A campaign to place Bill of Rights monuments in state capitols in all 50 states is already underway, albeit moving slowly. Arizonas Bill of Rights monument was built in Phoenix in 2012, and plans for an OkIahoma monument in Oklahoma City are progressing. A smaller scale monument can be found in Montezuma, Iowa.

Its the brainchild of Chris Bliss, a comic by trade who has made the Bill of Rights his side project. Comics, after all, benefit greatly from the First Amendment. His campaign began nearly two decades ago, when there was controversy over monuments that celebrated the Ten Commandments, also often placed in state capitols.

Bliss envisioned erecting Bill of Rights monuments as a way to "comparison shop" with the Ten Commandments, he says whimsically. He also wants the monuments built near state capitols because "every kid goes to state capitols" on school field trips. He estimates that 40,000 students a year have visited the Arizona monument.

As he delved into the project, Bliss found that the Bill of Rights was something of a forgotten document, rarely taught in schools. People knew about a patients bill of rights or a bill of rights for airline passengers. But it was hard for people to grasp the abstract principles of the constitutional Bill of Rights, Bliss says, and therefore hard to turn those principles into marble or limestone.

Donations and support for Bliss Bill of Rights project have been sporadic over the years, with comedians like Lewis Black and the late Dick Gregory helping out. The Bill of Rights has "no preexisting constituency," Bliss says, unlike other organized groups that can lobby successfully for building monuments.

But in the aftermath of the recent protests nationwide that involve monuments and civil liberties, he hopes to jump-start his project and hasten the building of Bill of Rights monuments nationwide. "This is a very positive moment," Bliss says.

Amendments a safeguard for citizens

The relevance of the Bill of Rights to todays divisions is clear and deserves recognition. The Bill of Rights fosters freedom of expression, religion, due process, fair trials, protection against unreasonable government intrusion or excessive fines, among other important rights.

The 10 amendments are not without controversy. Interpreting the religion clauses of the First Amendment, the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment, and the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment has been a contentious task for centuries.

And there are parts of the Bill of Rights that are quirky, to say the least. The Third Amendment, for example, prohibits soldiers from being quartered in homes without the consent of owners. It was a big issue at the time of the founding, but not now.

Opportunity to celebrate liberty

Bliss says there is no better remedy for monument controversies than to commemorate the Bill of Rights, which he calls "the most powerful and successful assertion of individual rights and liberties ever written."

He adds, "The ideas were radical at the time, but now, people say, Of course. There is not an exclusionary phrase in the entire document. It is time for us to rediscover our own Bill of Rights and to elevate it to the position of public prominence it richly deserves."

Tony Mauro, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, covered the Supreme Court for USA TODAY from 1982 to 2000.

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Opinion: Heres a monument all Americans can rally around: Lets celebrate the Bill of Rights - Pocono Record

The PACT Act Is Not The Solution To The Problem Of Harmful Online Content – EFF

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The Senate Commerce Committees Tuesday hearing on the PACT Act and Section 230 was a refreshingly substantive bipartisan discussion about the thorny issues related to how online platforms moderate user content, and to what extent these companies should be held liable for harmful user content.

The hearing brought into focus several real and significant problems that Congress should continue to consider. It also showed that, whatever its good intentions, the PACT Act in its current form does not address those problems, much less deal with how to lessen the power of the handful of major online services we all rely on to connect with each other.

As we recently wrote, the Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency (PACT) Act, introduced last month by Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI) and John Thune (R-SD), is a serious effort to tackle a serious problem: that a handful of large online platforms dominate users ability to speak online. The bill builds on good ideas, such as requiring greater transparency around platforms decisions to moderate their users contentsomething EFF has championed as a voluntary effort as part of the Santa Clara Principles.

However, we are ultimately opposed to the bill, because weakening Section 230 (47 U.S.C. 230) would lead to more illegitimate censorship of user content. The bill would also threaten small platforms and would-be competitors to the current dominant players, and the bill has First Amendment problems.

One important issue that came up during the hearing is to what extent online platforms should be required to take down user content that a court has determined is illegal. The PACT Act provides that platforms would lose Section 230 immunity for user content if the companies failed to remove material after receiving notice that a court has declared that material illegal. Its not unreasonable to question whether Section 230 should protect platforms for hosting content after a court has found the material to be illegal or unprotected by the First Amendment.

However, we remain concerned about whether any legislative proposal, including the PACT Act, can provide sufficient guardrails to prevent abuse and to ensure that user content is not unnecessarily censored. Courts often issue non-final judgments, opining on the legality of content in a motion to dismiss opinion, for example, before getting to the merits stage of a case. Some court decisions are default judgments because the defendant does not show up to defend herself for whatever reason, making any determination about the illegality of the content the defendant posted suspect because the question was not subject to a robust adversarial process. And even when there is a final order from a trial court, that decision is often appealed and sometimes reversed by a higher court.

Additionally, some lawsuits against user content are harassing suits that might be dismissed under anti-SLAPP laws, but not all states have them and there isnt one that consistently applies in federal court. Finally, some documents that appear to be final court judgments may be falsified, which would lead to the illegitimate censorship of user speech, if platforms dont spend considerable resources investigating each takedown request.

We were pleased to see that many of these concerns were discussed at the hearing, even if a consensus wasnt reached. Its refreshing to see elected leaders trying to balance competing interests, including how to protect Internet users who are victims of illegal activity while avoiding the creation of broad legal tools that can censor speech that others do not like. But as weve said previously, the PACT Act, as currently written, doesnt attempt to balance these or other concerns. Rather, by requiring the removal of any material that someone claims a court has declared illegal, it tips the balance toward broad censorship.

Another thorny but important issue is the question of competition among online platforms. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) expressed his preference for finding market solutions to the problems associated with the dominant platforms and how they moderate user content. EFF has urged the government to consider a more robust use of antitrust law in the Internet space. One thing is certain, though: weakening Section 230 protections will only entrench the major players, as small companies dont have the financial resources and personnel to shoulder increased liability for user content.

Unfortunately, the PACT Acts requirements that platforms put in place content moderation and response services will only further cement the dominance of services such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which already employ vast numbers of employees to moderate users content. Small competitors, on the other hand, lack the resources to comply with the PACT Act.

The hearing also touched upon understandably concerning content categories including political and other misinformation, hate speech, terrorism content, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). However, by and large, these categories of content (except for CSAM) are protected by the First Amendment, meaning that the government cant mandate that such content be taken down.

To be clear, Congress can and should be talking about harmful online content and ways to address it, particularly when harassment and threats drive Internet users offline. But if the conversation focuses on Section 230, rather than grappling with the First Amendment issues at play, then it is missing the forest for the trees.

Moreover, any legislative effort aimed at removing harmful, but not illegal, content online has to recognize that platforms that host user-generated content have their own First Amendment rights to manage that content. The PACT Act intrudes on these services editorial discretion by requiring that they take certain steps in response to complaints about content.

Amidst a series of bad-faith attacks on Internet users speech and efforts to weaken Section 230 protections, it was refreshing to see Senators hold a substantive public discussion about what changes should be made to U.S. law governing Internet users online speech. We hope that it can serve as the beginning of a good-faith effort to grapple with real problems and to identify workable solutions that balance the many competing interests while ensuring that Internet users continue to enjoy the diverse forums for speech and community online.

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The PACT Act Is Not The Solution To The Problem Of Harmful Online Content - EFF

US Homeland Security Created Files on Journalists – Voice of America

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Friday that it has ordered agents to stop compiling and circulating intelligence reports on journalists.

The move came a day after The Washington Post reported that a DHS office had created three reports on two journalists covering demonstrations in Portland, Oregon, that were distributed to federal law enforcement agencies.

The reports, compiled by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, noted that the journalists had published leaked, unclassified documents about the deployment of federal agents to protests in Portland. The office is tasked with integrating DHS intelligence and distributing information to state and local authorities, as well as private partners.

In a statement, the Intelligence Office said that Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf had suspended the collection of information on journalists and ordered an investigation.

In no way does the acting secretary condone this practice, said DHS spokesperson Alexei Woltornist. The acting secretary is committed to ensuring that all DHS personnel uphold the principles of professionalism, impartiality and respect for civil rights and civil liberties, particularly as it relates to the exercise of First Amendment rights.

Details of the intelligence reports came amid unrest in Portlandand New York City, where plainclothes law enforcement officers have been spotted pulling protesters into unmarked vans. Portland police have livestreamed protests, which the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon alleges violates state law blocking police from collecting information on law-abiding citizens.

The Post reported that the intelligence reports contained images and descriptions of tweets by Mike Baker, a journalist at The New York Times and Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, a blog that focuses on national security and policy. The reports included the number of likes and retweets the social media posts received.

Baker had co-reported on two internal DHS memos related to protests and unrest in Portland: a July 18 article detailing a memo that warned federal agents in the city do not specifically have training in riot control or mass demonstrations. and a Tuesday article on a memo in which the department acknowledged it lacked insight into the motives for the most recent attacks in Portland. The Times published both memos in full.

Wittes, also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, tweeted images of internal Intelligence Office memos about leaks to Lawfare and Washington Post reporter Shane Harris, who later broke the news of the DHS reports. Wittes had reported that the DHS in mid-July authorized its personnel to monitor social media posts and collect information on people suspected of damaging public monuments.

In a Twitter thread about the intelligence reports, Wittes said that he was considering his legal options.

What is troubling about this story is that [the Office of Intelligence and Analysis] shared my tweets as intelligence reporting, wrote Wittes. I am not sure how my reporting of unclassified material constitutes any kind of homeland security threat that justifies the dissemination of intelligence reporting on a U.S. person, particularly not one exercising core First Amendment rights.

Analysts warned that the move appeared to threaten the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech in the U.S.

Even if individual reporters are not quivering in their boots, potentially, I think it does set a very troubling and potentially unconstitutional tone, said Nora Benavides, director of U.S. Free Expression Programs at Pen America, a nonprofit advocating for free expression and press freedom. Other reporters may think twice before engaging in these types of investigative and journalistic practices."

Benavides described the intelligence reports as a very serious threat to the First Amendment.

We should not be in a position, and journalists should not be in the position to question whether they should do their job at the risk of being added, potentially, to an intelligence report and being investigated as if they are committing some criminal act, Benavides told VOA. Journalism and a free press, those are not inherently criminal. Those are the types of tactics we see in undemocratic governments.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press condemned the intelligence gathering and called on the DHS to make public the findings of its investigation.

Federal law prohibits the creation of dossiers on journalists precisely because doing so can morph into investigations of journalists for news coverage that embarrasses the government, but that the public has a right to know, Gabe Rottman, director of the technology and press freedom project at the Reporters Committee, said in a statement.

The DHS reports on journalists are not an isolated incident, said Benavides. Multiple U.S. federal agencies collaborated last year to create a secret database of journalists, activists and attorneys covering a large migrant caravan.

NBC7 in San Diego, California, reported that the database listed 10 journalists and 48 others whom officials recommended be targeted for screening at the U.S.-Mexico border. Each entry contained a photo, data of birth, country of commencement, alleged tie to the caravan, and any alerts placed on a subjects passport.

Benavides said the reports on journalists appear to harken back to the types of chilling practices in which a federal agency is using its ability to investigate individuals, especially reporters, to try to chill them or prevent them from investigating.

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US Homeland Security Created Files on Journalists - Voice of America

Controversial verdict may force legalization of assisted suicide in Italy – Grandin Media

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The acquittal of two right-to-die activists who aided in the suicide of a person suffering from multiple sclerosis may force the Italian government to legalize assisted suicide in the country.

A court in the Tuscan province of Massa-Carrara ruled July 27 to acquit Mina Welby and Marco Cappato for helping Davide Trentini commit suicide in April 2017 at Dignitas, a physician-assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland.

The court judged that no crime was committed by Welby and Cappato because they did not instigate Trentinis suicide.

The day after helping Trentini commit suicide, Welby and Cappato turned themselves over to Italian authorities in a strategic move that seeks to challenge Italys penal code which prohibits euthanasia, or physician-assisted suicide.

According to Article 580 of the Italian penal code, assisting or convincing someone to commit suicide is punishable with a sentence between five and 12 years if the suicide occurs, or between one to five years if it does not occur but results in serious or very serious personal injury.

In December, the Italian Constitutional Court delayed a decision that would determine the constitutionality of Article 580. Euthanasia advocates believe that the recent acquittal will help push the court to legalize physician-assisted suicide in the country.

The acquittal mirrors a similar ruling in 2019 involving Cappato after he was acquitted in the assisted suicide of an Italian DJ at the same facility in Switzerland.

In that case, the judge ruled that assisted suicide cannot be punished if the patient requesting to die is kept alive by life support, suffering from an irreversible pathology that causes physical and mental suffering, is receiving palliative care and is still able to make a free and informed decision.

Both Cappato and Welby are members of the Luca Coscioni Association, an organization that advocates the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Italy.

According to Italian news agency ANSA, the Coscioni Association helped an estimated 268 people commit suicide and has accompanied three people to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has denounced euthanasia, including at a meeting with doctors and dental surgeons in September.

The pope urged medical professionals to reject the temptation also induced by legislative changes to use medicine to support a possible willingness to die of the patient, providing assistance to suicide or directly causing death by euthanasia.

These are hasty ways of dealing with choices that are not, as they might seem, an expression of the persons freedom, when they include discarding of the patient as a possibility, or a false compassion in the face of a request to be helped to cause death, he said.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, euthanasia constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his creator.

The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded, the catechism states.

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Controversial verdict may force legalization of assisted suicide in Italy - Grandin Media

COVID-19: Activists warn of sharp rise in human trafficking in near future – The New Indian Express

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By PTI

NEW DELHI: Tarannum (name changed) has many cut marks on her wrist, scars that constantly remind her of the several years she spent in a brothel where she was sexually exploited countless times.

"Three years of hell," she recalls.

Daughter of a fisherman from a cyclone prone area of the Sundarbans, 13-year-old Tarannum was trafficked by a local shopkeeper in 2012.

He tricked her into believing that he would get her a job asa domestic worker with a good salary.

Once in Delhi, he sold her to a woman at a brothel.

After three years, she was rescued by a local NGO with the help of police.

But even after she returned home, the trauma of the past haunted her and she turned suicidal, trying to slit her wrist multiple times.

Slowly recuperating now, Tarannum hopes no one ever goes through what she did.

Another trafficking survivor Reema (name changed) does not remember her parents.

She only faintly recalls her father.

At a very young age, a brothel owner had trafficked her and forced her into prostitution.

She was finally rescued from a brothel in Sonagachi, West Bengal, in 2013 at the age of 21 after enduring many years of sexual abuse in different cities across the country.

Both Tarannum and Reema are among thousands of children and women who get trafficked in different parts of the country every year.

This year with the outbreak of the coronavirus, activists and researchers are worried that an exponential increase in human trafficking cases will take place in the coming times.

Roop Sen, anti-trafficking researcher and gender rights activist, said it's "undeniable" that those on the margins of society are vulnerable to trafficking.

"The reasons are manifold like debt trap, closing down of factories, restaurants and retail shops, probable rise in demand of young girls and women in red light areas," he said.

According to Sen, among the steps the government can take to combat human trafficking are cash transfer support to more vulnerable families and communities, cash transfer to children and adolescents attending schools and creating safe migration services.

He further suggested that anti-human trafficking units can gather intelligence on trafficking in hotspots.

Sambhu Nanda, an activist from West Bengal who coordinates an NGO-network called Partners for Anti-Trafficking claimed that multiple reports of missing and trafficking of girls have been received in the past two months.

"Even when parents reported the cases to local police stations, the officers pleaded helpless since all their energies were focussed on COVID prevention," he said.

Pompi Banerjee, a member of NGO Sanjog, said the vulnerabilities due to the lockdown and the pandemic are essentially the susceptibilities that have existed for a long time, but at a scale where they were not highly visible issues.

"The pandemic, the lockdown, and in parts of our country devastating natural calamities (floods and cyclones) are now accentuating these vulnerabilities and have brought them out in the open, visible enoughthat they can no longer be ignored by the law enforcement and politicians," Banerjee said.

N Rammohan, anti-trafficking activist from Andhra Pradesh who runs NGO HELP, claimed that many sex workers, who are the earning members for their families especially for their children, have been driven to take loans under exorbitant interests during the lockdown period.

"The local loan sharks who are not registered under the Money Lenders' Act, especially operating in red light areas, are poaching women with adolescent girls and encouraging them to take loans under high interest. When they would be unable to repay their loans, the sex workers would be forced to prostitute their daughters," he said.

Priti Mahara, Director, Policy Research and Advocacy at CRY - Child Rights and You said separated and orphaned children are also particularly vulnerable to trafficking and other exploitation like forced begging and child labour.

"The state needs to be prepared to provide enough child care homes/facilities, improve the quality and safety standard of childcare homes, child sponsorship and foster care. There are increased chances of many children getting separated from families, becoming orphans or falling out of the safety net," she said.

She further said the government and civil society need to activate local self-governance units like panchayats to keep the records of families and children entering and exiting villages and slums to help keep track of children and expedite follow ups.

Prabhat Kumar, deputy director of child protection for NGO Save the Children said whenever there is a disaster, there is rise in trafficking cases due to the crisis that follows as it becomes easier to recruit people and send them for trafficking, forced labour or sexual exploitation.

The economic crisis, lack of enforcement mechanisms and migrant crisis might lead to rise in trafficking in the coming times, he warned.

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COVID-19: Activists warn of sharp rise in human trafficking in near future - The New Indian Express

Black Windsorites say Emancipation Day is more significant this year – CBC.ca

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While celebrations for Emancipation Day may look different this year due to COVID-19, four Black Windsorites say the day is more significant in light of recent events most notably the death of George Floyd, which sparked worldwide Black Lives Matter protests.

Emancipation Day, celebrated each year on Aug. 1, commemorates the abolition of slavery across the British Empire.

The Slavery Abolition Act received royal assent on Aug. 28, 1833, but the legislation wouldn't come into force across the Empire and its colonies until Aug. 1, 1834.

Since then, communities across Canada, including in Windsor-Essex, hold events in honour of the abolition of slavery.

Fourth yearpsychology student at the University of WindsorFardovza Kusow,executive director of the Sandwich Teen Action Group John Elliott,law student Kendra Wilson at the University of Windsor and musician Abdullah Abubakre, also known as Ayola, told CBC News how this year's Emancipation Day takes on a whole new meaning and discussed their hopes for the future.

Kusow: Emancipation Day not only is an acknowledgement and a reminder of what we've accomplished so far, but also a reminder of what's left to be done. As a third generation Black Canadian, I grew up still experiencing anti-Black racism and racism in and of itself, but whenever I would face it head on, I would immediately be invalidated because this is Canada. We're not as bad as you know insert other country but it's important to acknowledge that there's still issues deep-rooted in Canada. And as much as we have a wonderful day, such as Emancipation Day, liberation cannot be fully accomplished without the acknowledgement and the accountability that need to be taken for issues that are still happening.

Elliott: When I was about 10 years old and I lived downtown at that time with my family, McDougall Avenue, which was in proximity to Jackson Park, where Emancipation was held, that was a highlight as a kid. That was a highlight event for the year. It was always summer vacation but 'can't wait until Emancipation Day came around.' At the time, I think this celebration ran for about a week and a half. So, it was an extended celebration, just great memories.

Wilson: I was born in Jamaica, and so this is something we have been celebrating since I was a little girl through cultural dances and poetry from icons such as Louis Bennett. As a child, the dark significance of that day did not register to me, but as I grew older, my mother taught me about Black history through books and films, and for the longest time, I felt a great sense of anger and disappointment for the way Black people had been treated. So as it stands, Emancipation Day is a sad reminder of the horrendous period in Canadian history and countries around the world about the lived reality that Black people faced in the past and presently face. I am grateful that we are no longer bounded in chains as Black people, but Emancipation Day is just a constant reminder for me that we have a long way to go. Emancipation is not just a physical act, it's also a state of mind, and with that being said, mental slavery is still a problem. Emancipation is still a problem because Black people are still restricted, targeted and treated unjustly.

Ayola: It's huge, right, because that's about the day we were set free Black slavery and all. ... but the same time, it's hurtful because seeing that we had to be set free for some things that shouldn't even [have existed]in the first place. ... It's freedom in a painful way.

Wilson: The last couple of months show that Emancipation means that we are free from the shackles, but we still have huge issues of supremacy affecting Black livelihood and wellbeing. It's a small view of the battles we have been fighting for the longest time. Windsor is one of the cities of significance that remind me of the realities we have been facing. Just a few steps away, we have the Sandwich First BaptistChurch, a significant stop along the Underground Railroad, where enslaved Black people aimed to escape from slavery. As I said, it's great that it's not still an active reality, but the last couple of months show us that the fight against inequality, discrimination and anti-Black racism is something Black people in Canada, and around the world, continue to face. We are not free until we are liberated from these restrictions among others.

Kusow: I've been pretty involved in educating myself on Black history and social justice since high school, but when you talk to others or even my own friends, some people still don't know when Canadian Emancipation Day is or when we talk about a holiday happening this weekend. People usually don't really know which holiday that is. Due to the current political environment and considering that we are in the largest civil rights movement in history, it allows people to take a step back and ask themselves, 'okay, what's going on where I live and how can I further educate myself on my own history, my own country's history and what's left to be done?'

Ayola: Yeah, it does because the George Floyd incident isn't the first of its kind. It's been happening for years and years, but I guess the attention that was paid to this one just made one realize that I think we are moving in the right direction. Normally, I just think 'oh it's just another [political movement]' and we forget about it and everything andgo back to normal over time. With the way things are playing out now, I just feel like it's a step in the right direction. ... People are becoming more passionate about it.

Elliott: All we can do is love each other. You know, foster good friendships. There is racial tension and that sort of thing going on, but we still have to live together. We have to work together. We have to try and get along. I'm thankful we live in Canada because in the backdrop of the U.S. where their problems seem to be rather enormous compared to Windsor's .. and in Canada itself. Although there is systemic racism problems in Canada too, we realize that, but I mean, at the end of the day, that's something that we're going to have to just continue to live with and do our best to try and eliminate it. My thing is just learn to get along.

Ayola: I definitely see racism becoming a thing of the past in my lifetime. Yeah, that's what I hope to happen. And I do feel like it's getting better because there's more integration now than there ever was. So people are coming from different parts of the world you know. Slavery aside, racism is sometimes also a fact of us stillgetting to know each other and not being able to integrate, but now that everyone is everywhere ... it breeds more integration. And more integration leads to more understanding. So, I definitely feel that in my lifetime, racism would be minimal.

Wilson: The list is endless to be honest. We have made a lot of progress, but we still have a lotof work ahead of us, huge emphasis on a lot. On a large scale, I seek a future society where access to justice issues facing Blacks do not start with large scale protest, but instead, where timely justice for Black victims is no issue at all. A society where Black women do not fear having children as a result of the risk of them dying at a young age or being killed at the hands of cops or people's general racist actions. A society where Black men, there are more of them in fortune 500 companies than in the prison system. Ultimately, a society where we don't have to fight for equality and equity, where justice for Black victims comes easy and the #BlackLivesMatter is not something we constantly have to scream at the top of our lungs just to be heard. This future starts with me and you actively working toward this. Starting now, championing the work of greats like Viola Desmond, Martin Luther King Jr, Rosemary Brown among other important individuals advocating for the human rights of Black people.

Kusow: I feel like I grew up in a generation of youth that is taking a stand and launching initiatives, taking on that leadership role to not only fix but approach the issue head on and work to build a better future for future generations after us because this has been going on for a little too long and it's clear that people are fed up and wish to see a change.

Kusow also urges people to educate themselves.

"Don't be ashamed to ask questions," she said. "There are always resources that you can turn to, people that you can turn to who will be grateful to educate you on what you're asking and it'll lead to a better mindset. And later on, you can tell someone else the same things that you learned."

CBC News learned via email that Richmond Hill Liberal MP Majid Jowhari'shas been working with Nova Scotia senator Wanda Thomas Bernardto introduce a motion to Parliament to nationally recognize Aug.1as Emancipation Day.

Themotion wasset to be presented to the house earlier this year, but was delayed due to COVID-19. Jowhari'soffices continue to advocate for the motion, according to the email, and will be presenting it again.

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Black Windsorites say Emancipation Day is more significant this year - CBC.ca

The Singularity of the Human Hive Mind | Issue 139 – Philosophy Now

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The internet has become so all-pervading that even the word seems a little old-fashioned now. No-one really uses it much anymore. We ask each other for wifi, or talk of going online, or complain about a lack of data, but rarely do we talk of the internet as an entity; it has become too ubiquitous, too intrinsic to our lives, for that to be a very useful term. This prompts me to wonder: what are we becoming? Could the internet lead us to become more than individuals and disparate communities?

I believe were entering an era when the words individual and community take on new definitions or meanings as we increasingly become interconnected in what I think of as a hive mind. I also believe that a hive-minded process could itself be a transition towards a singularity in consciousness across the Earth. Is that desirable, or even possible? Are we in the process of creating it? Is it inevitable? Can it be controlled? What does it even mean?

Before addressing these questions, however, well need definitions of the words Hive and Mind and the phrase Hive Mind. What is a hive mind, exactly?

Mind: An awareness of existence with experiential content, referring both to what is outside itself and to its own existence.

Hive: Multiple entities sharing an element of awareness not unique to any individual but present to each, and experienced by all as some awareness of their collective existence.

Hive Mind: An awareness formed from the communication of individual minds but different from each of its individual minds, and so not defined by the separateness of the individual minds which compose it.

Lets consider the possibility of hive-mindedness through the framework of free will, under the assumption that a loss of individual free will is undesirable.

Basic human survival has always depended on some kinds of cooperation. By extending their abilities through cooperation in pursuit of common goals, individuals secure for themselves and each other a basic or minimum state of well-being. To a degree this could be said to result in a shared will, although we usually refer to it as group psychology. In this basic sense, humanity certainly depends on hive-mindedness. Were clearly not as hive-minded as the birds, bees or ants but nevertheless, cooperation in a sense extends the consciousness of the individual. This is evident in our historical evolution, all the way up to the information technology (IT) we have recently developed.

The internet encourages and makes possible more types of collaboration involving larger groups and faster, more intimate sharing of ideas, and this takes us ever further in the direction of a hive mind, in an accelerating process not subject to any central plan. Is a hive-minded type of thought inevitable? At any rate it seems safe to assume that, so long as no catastrophe deprives us of electricity, we will increasingly lose our sense of individuality.

If we think about the internet as a brain-to-brain connection interface, we might easily see that isolated thinking becomes increasingly difficult to sustain due to the quickening rate at which were socially encouraged to share our thoughts. Somewhere along the way, an individual brain starts to act more like a neuron to the synapses of the internet brain than a self-contained unit. This is starting to become evident as we generally begin to mimic much more information than we create, especially with sharing, reposting and retweeting. Across a range of industries and activities highly complex content is now being created by online groups rather than individuals, because it is quicker to achieve richer content that way. In addition, its easy and fast to capture our experiences through photos and videos, and pass them through filters which generically impress a sense of quality but in actuality only reduce diversity and therefore individuality.

If we consider the speed at which were evolving our connections in the virtual world, it seems safe to assume that hive-mindedness is starting to happen. Our brains no longer seem to differentiate between dealing with information from the real world, and dealing with information from an artificial world. Emotionally and intellectually, we respond to social situations online as if were part of a physical community.

Neuroscientists and psychologists keep revealing that the human mind is less centralized than we thought.The philosopher David Hume argued as far back as the eighteenth century that the unity of consciousness is an illusion, and each mind consists of a bundle of perceptions and experiences. It seems to me that for any awareness made up of multiple entities, its a matter of perspective that a singularity of identity is felt to exist at all. Technology being researched now will soon be sophisticated enough to connect our minds to a degree beyond anything we can currently imagine. For example, a non-invasive brain-to-internet network demonstrated in 2019 allowed three widely separated individuals to play a collaborative Tetris-like game using only their thoughts. A singular consciousness emerging from this technological revolution must be considered possible because singular consciousnesses arisen from multiple processes already exist namely us. But if the internet began to consider itself aware and integrated, in the same sort of way that we do, I wonder if we could ever detect that? Will we know if the net becomes conscious or perhaps more plausibly to many, coordinates a singular human mind-set?

We are undeniably in a process of increasing interconnectivity. Are we just improving our social and professional lives as individuals, or are we beginning to create one mind? Comparing our online selves to the neurons in a brain, can our individual minds be rightly called one mind, or is it more like a hive of mini-minds? Perhaps we will fracture into several hive-minds before any singular global consciousness can be formed, and even eventually revert back into individualism.

We must also ask whether this process could be controlled or limited in some way. For instance, could a hive mind like the internet in the future be compartmentalized enough to preserve a sense of individuality for its users? We cannot know the answer to this now, but I believe that in order to remain individuals and exercise individual freedom we would eventually need to reject the cyberconnection altogether. This seems very unlikely to happen. This leads to a sharp question: how much control do we have even now?

Control over the hive would require there to be a widely shared desire for individual control. But if individual control is dependent on the desire of the collective, this is tantamount to saying that we have no control as individuals. The question is, will the hive relinquish some of its power and tolerate dissent among the units that compose it? Maybe not. We already see this drama being played out with massive mobbing on platforms such as Twitter of individuals felt to have transgressed against the values of the online community. It seems as if the connectedness of the mob erodes the awareness of individual voices even being necessary, therefore eliminating the basis for a desire for individuality to begin with. In short, if any rebellion against the hive mind were possible, we probably would not even know it. This could take us all the way up to the point where individual thinking would be completely consumed by a new singular awareness, surpassing the idea of a hive mind, and instead simply becoming a mind. In this situation, control becomes a matter of self-control: that is, control by the Self.

As for the morality of such a singular mind, we can only reflect that a single mind, even if composed of what used to be individuals, would be utterly alone. It might be morally pure and absolute, therefore divine, if you wish; or perhaps it would mean morality would no longer exist or be applicable. Until then were left with the same old difficult questions about the risks to individuality and its freedoms: At what point does societal organization become tyrannical? What is freedom anyway? How free should we be? How can we be moral? and so on. These questions are always over us while we simultaneously try to establish what a human really is right up until we are no longer simply human, and have become the I of the collective individual.

James Sirois 2020

James Sirois is a writer, film maker and traveler from Montral, Canada.

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The Singularity of the Human Hive Mind | Issue 139 - Philosophy Now

Elon Musk claims AI will overtake humans ‘in less than five years’ – The Independent

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Elon Musk has warned that humans risk being overtaken by artificial intelligence within the next five years.

The prediction marks a significant revision of previous estimations of the so-called technological singularity, when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence and accelerates at an incomprehensible rate.

Noted futurist Ray Kurzweil previously pegged this superintelligence tipping point at around 2045, citing exponential advances in technologies like robotics, computers and AI.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Mr Musk, whose ventures include electric car maker Tesla and space firm SpaceX, said in an interview with The New York Times that current trends suggest AI could overtake humans by 2025.

The billionaire engineer, who also helped found the artificial intelligence research lab OpenAI in 2015, has consistently warned of the existential threat posed by advanced artificial intelligence in recent years. Despite this, he said he still feels that the issue is not properly understood.

My assessment about why AI is overlooked by very smart people is that very smart people do not think a computer can ever be as smart as they are. And this is hubris and obviously false, he said.

"Were headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans and I think that time frame is less than five years from now. But that doesnt mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird."

In 2016, Mr Musk said that humans risk being treated like house pets by artificial intelligence unless technology is developed that can connect brains to computers.

Shortly after making the remarks, Mr Musk announced a new brain-computer interface startup that is attempting to implant a brain chip using a "sewing machine-like device".

Neuralink will allow humans to compete with AI, according to Mr Musk, as well as help cure brain diseases, control mood and even let people "listen to music directly from our chips."

A robot designed by Neuralink would insert the 'threads' into the brain using a needle

Neuralink

A fully implantable neural interface connects to the brain through tiny threads

Neuralink

Trials of Neuralink's fully implantable neural interface system will begin in 2021

Neuralink

Neuralink says learning to use the device is 'like learning to touch type or play the piano'

Neuralink

A robot designed by Neuralink would insert the 'threads' into the brain using a needle

Neuralink

A fully implantable neural interface connects to the brain through tiny threads

Neuralink

Trials of Neuralink's fully implantable neural interface system will begin in 2021

Neuralink

Neuralink says learning to use the device is 'like learning to touch type or play the piano'

Neuralink

Both Mr Musk and Mr Kurzweil were among prominent artificial intelligence researchers to pledge support for stringent guidelines for the development of advanced AI.

An open letter published by the Future of Life Institute (FLI) in 2017 outlined a set of principles deemed necessary to avoid an out-of-control AI, as well as doomsday scenario involving lethal autonomous weapons.

"We hope that these principles will provide material for vigorous discussion and also aspirational goals for how the power of AI can be used to improve everyone's lives in coming years," the institute said at the time.

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Elon Musk claims AI will overtake humans 'in less than five years' - The Independent

Clean Up This Mess: The Chinese Thinkers Behind Xis Hard Line – The New York Times

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HONG KONG When Tian Feilong first arrived in Hong Kong as demands for free elections were on the rise, he said he felt sympathetic toward a society that seemed to reflect the liberal political ideas he had studied as a graduate student in Beijing.

Then, as the calls escalated into protests across Hong Kong in 2014, he increasingly embraced Chinese warnings that freedom could go too far, threatening national unity. He became an ardent critic of the demonstrations, and six years later he is a staunch defender of the sweeping national security law that China has imposed on the former British colony.

Mr. Tian has joined a tide of Chinese scholars who have turned against Western-inspired ideas that once flowed in Chinas universities, instead promoting the proudly authoritarian worldview ascendant under Xi Jinping, the Communist Party leader. This cadre of Chinese intellectuals serve as champions, even official advisers, defending and honing the partys hardening policies, including the rollout of the security law in Hong Kong.

Back when I was weak, I had to totally play by your rules. Now Im strong and have confidence, so why cant I lay down my own rules and values and ideas? Mr. Tian, 37, said in an interview, explaining the prevailing outlook in China. Witnessing the tumult as a visiting scholar in Hong Kong in 2014, Mr. Tian said, he rethought the relationship between individual freedom and state authority.

Hong Kong is, after all, Chinas Hong Kong, he said. Its up to the Communist Party to clean up this mess.

While Chinas Communist Party has long nurtured legions of academics to defend its agenda, these authoritarian thinkers stand out for their unabashed, often flashily erudite advocacy of one-party rule and assertive sovereignty, and their turn against the liberal ideas that many of them once embraced.

They portray themselves as fortifying China for an era of deepening ideological rivalry. They describe the United States as a dangerous, overreaching shambles, even more so in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. They oppose constitutional fetters on Communist Party control, arguing that Western-inspired ideas of the rule of law are a dangerous mirage that could hobble the party.

They argue that China must reclaim its status as a world power, even as a new kind of benign empire displacing the United States. They extol Mr. Xi as a historic leader, guiding China through a momentous transformation.

A number of these scholars, sometimes called statists, have worked on policy toward Hong Kong, the sole territory under Chinese rule that has been a stubborn enclave for pro-democracy defiance of Beijing. Their proposals have fed into Chinas increasingly uncompromising line, including the security law, which has swiftly curbed protests and political debate.

We ignore these voices at our own risk, said Timothy Cheek, a historian at the University of British Columbia who helps run Reading the China Dream, a website that translates works by Chinese thinkers. They give voice to a stream of Chinese political thought that is probably more influential than liberal thought.

As well as earnestly citing Mr. Xis speeches, these academics draw on ancient Chinese thinkers who counseled stern rulership, along with Western critics of liberal political traditions. Traditional Marxism is rarely cited; they are proponents of order, not revolution.

Many of them make respectful nods in their papers to Carl Schmitt, the German legal theorist who supplied rightist leaders in the 1930s and the emerging Nazi regime with arguments for extreme executive power in times of crisis, Ryan Mitchell, an assistant professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, documented in a recent paper.

Theyve provided the reasoning and justification, Fu Hualing, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said of Chinas new authoritarian scholars. In a way, its the Carl Schmitt moment here.

Chinas ideological landscape was more varied a decade ago, when Mr. Tian was a graduate student at Peking University, a traditionally more liberal campus. Censorship was lighter, and universities tolerated guarded discussion of liberal ideas in classrooms.

Many scholars, including Mr. Tians dissertation adviser, Zhang Qianfan, argued that Hong Kong, with its robust judicial independence, could inspire similar steps in mainland China. I had also been nurtured by liberal scholars. Mr. Tian said.

Such ideas have gone into sharp retreat since Mr. Xi took power in 2012. He began a drive to discredit ideas like universal human rights, separation of powers and other liberal concepts.

Dissenting academics are maligned in the party-run news media and risk professional ruin. Xu Zhangrun, a law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, was detained in July and dismissed from his job after writing a stream of essays condemning the partys direction under Mr. Xi.

The education authorities generously fund pro-party scholars for topics such as how to introduce security laws in Hong Kong. Chinese and foreign foundations that once supported less orthodox Chinese scholars have retrenched because of tightening official restrictions.

More than fear and career rewards have driven this resurgence of authoritarian ideas in China. The global financial crisis of 2007, and the United States floundering response to the coronavirus pandemic, have reinforced Chinese views that liberal democracies are decaying, while China has prospered, defying predictions of the collapse of one-party rule.

China is actually also following a path that the United States took, seizing opportunities, developing outward, creating a new world, Mr. Tian said. There is even a fervent hope that well overtake the West in another 30 years.

Chinas authoritarian academics have proposed policies to assimilate ethnic minorities thoroughly. They have defended Mr. Xis abolition of a term limit on the presidency, opening the way for him to stay in power indefinitely. They have argued that Chinese-style rule by law is inseparable from rule by the Communist Party. And more recently they have served as intellectual warriors in Beijings efforts to subdue protest in Hong Kong.

For them, law becomes a weapon, but its law thats subordinated to politics, said Sebastian Veg, a professor at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris who has studied the rise of Chinas statist thinkers. Weve seen that at work in China, and now it seems to me were seeing it come to Hong Kong.

For Hong Kong, these scholars have supplied arguments advancing Beijings drive for greater central control.

Under the legal framework that defined Hong Kongs semi-autonomy after its return to China in 1997, many in the territory assumed that it would mostly manage its own affairs for decades. Many believed that Hong Kong lawmakers and leaders would be left to develop national security legislation, which was required by that framework.

But Mr. Xis government has pushed back, demanding greater influence. The authoritarian scholars, familiar with both Mr. Xis agenda and Hong Kong law, have distilled those demands into elaborate legal arguments.

Several Beijing law professors earlier served as advisers to the Chinese governments office in Hong Kong, including Jiang Shigong and Chen Duanhong, both of Peking University. They declined to be interviewed.

I dont think theyre necessarily setting the party line, but theyre helping to shape it, finding clever ways to put into words and laws what the party is trying to do, said Mr. Mitchell, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. This is all happening through legislation, so their ideas matter.

A Chinese government paper in 2014, which Professor Jiang is widely credited with helping write, asserted that Beijing had comprehensive jurisdiction over Hong Kong, dismissing the idea that China should stay hands off. The framework that defined Hong Kongs status was written in the 1980s, when China was still weak and under the sway of foreign liberal ideas, he later said.

They treat Hong Kong as if it were part of the West, and they treat the West as if it were the entire world. Professor Jiang recently said of Hong Kongs protesters. Chinas rise has not, as some imagined, drawn Hong Kong society to trust the central authorities.

After protesters occupied Hong Kong streets in 2014, he and other scholars pressed the case that China had the power to impose national security legislation there, rejecting the idea that such legislation should be left in the hands of the reluctant Hong Kong authorities.

The survival of the state comes first, and constitutional law must serve this fundamental objective, Professor Chen, the Peking University academic, wrote in 2018, citing Mr. Schmitt, the authoritarian German jurist, to make the case for a security law in Hong Kong.

When the state is in dire peril, Professor Chen wrote, leaders could set aside the usual constitutional norms, in particular provisions for civic rights, and take all necessary measures.

Professor Chen submitted an internal study to the partys policymakers on introducing security legislation for Hong Kong, according to a Peking University report in 2018, over a year before the party publicly announced plans for such a law.

Since Chinas legislature passed the security law in late June, he, Mr. Tian and allied Chinese scholars have energetically defended it in dozens of articles, interviews and news conferences. Chinese intellectuals, Mr. Tian suggested, will next confront worsening relations with the United States.

We have to choose what side were on, including us scholars, right? he said. Sorry, the goal now is not Westernization; its the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

Amber Wang contributed research from Beijing.

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Clean Up This Mess: The Chinese Thinkers Behind Xis Hard Line - The New York Times

Stony Brook Professor Among Scientists Who Designed Critical Instrument On NASAs Mars Rover Perseverance – CBS New York

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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) NASA launched a new mission Thursday to determine if life ever existed on Mars.

A local professor is among the scientists who helped make it happen, CBS2s Aundrea Cline-Thomas reported.

The Perseverance rover blasted off from Kennedy Space Center, starting its seven-month journey to Mars.

I woke up at 7 oclock in the morning with my wife and my two kids, said Joel Hurowitz, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Stony Brook University. we ran downstairs and it almost had a Christmas morning kind of feel to it.

Hurowitz said he was glued to NASAs YouTube channel.

Hes one of the scientists who developed an instrument mounted on the end of the rovers arm that will survey rocks on the Red Planet to determine what theyre made of.

Weve always wondered are we alone in the universe? Is the Earth a singularity in terms of life ever having started on this planet? said Hurowitz.

If successful, the mission will determine if life ever existed on Mars and, if so, what stopped its evolution.

The rover is as big as a car. Mounted cameras will help study the planets climate. A first of its kind Mars helicopter will capture aerial views of the planets surface. A drill can help collect samples of martian rocks for further study.

The feeling of, waking up everyday and just getting these beautiful pictures and going, Whats new on Mars today, what did we find? Its super cool, said Hurowitz.

Preparations for Perseverance were years in the making. Most of the work was done before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

As most of you know, if you miss this window, you gotta wait a couple years. And so, it was critically important for us to hit this, said Matt Wallace, the deputy project manager at NASA.

The Perseverance rover is expected to land on Mars in February 2021. Its designed to be able to roam the planet and collect information for years.

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Stony Brook Professor Among Scientists Who Designed Critical Instrument On NASAs Mars Rover Perseverance - CBS New York