10 Best IoT Development Tools and Technologies in 2020 – IoT For All

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As per diverse research, IoT linked devices will cross 75 billion by 2025. The scope and development of IoT are going to evolve in the coming years ultimately influencing people and companies to seek the top IoT product solutions. IoT development tools are created for tailing IoT applications across various networks and managing diverse updates to test how app changes can affect hardware responses.

If youre looking for the top IoT development platforms or want to work with some of the top IoT development companies below is a list of some of the most popular IoT development tools and technologies.

Microsoft Azure created a team by coordinating with Adafruit for building six IoT kits that come Azure Certified for the need of IoT developers having single-board PCs, actuators, and sensors. Generally, developers can make use of the WiFi boards, SD cards, sensors, and colored LEDs inside the kits. Some of the IoT kits from Azure are intended for the need of top IoT product developmentby experts. Those who are beginners or have intermediate knowledge can try the Adafruit Raspberry Pi Kit, Adafruit Feather M0 Kit, and SparkFun Thing Dev Kit.

Adruino is a top IT company based in Italy famous for building microcontroller boards, and interactive kits and objects that are reputed as the most preferred IDEs among other IoT development tools. Arduino crafted a full-blown, optimized, and mature platform for interconnecting diverse hardware systems. Arduino provides a full IoT package that is enriched with many top examples and libraries that supports the industry-grade IoT app development projects.

Arduino offers IoT packages enriched with library support for top industry-grade IoT app development projects. Arduino is easy-to-use to implement strategies that any beginner can adopt and start with it.

Raspbian IoT IDE was built for the Raspberry Pi board offered by IoT tech specialists. With more than 35,000 packages and various examples of rapid installation that come with the use of pre-compiled software make it an important IoT development tool. Maybe Raspbians greatest quality is that its under constant development and has widened reach for computing so users receive maximum benefits.

DeviceHive is an open-source machine to machine communication framework that was launched in 2012. DeviceHive is considered as one of the most preferred IoT application development platforms because it has a cloud-based API that anybody can control remotely and independently of network configuration.

The same applies to its management portal, protocols, and libraries. DeviceHive works best with applications that address security, sensors, automation, and smart home technology. As a bonus, DeviceHives website includes support and references from its community and online blog resources.

OpenSCADA is a tool thats part of the SCADA project represented by Eclipse IoT industry groups. It is well-known for its security and flexibility having a modern design. OpenSCADA supports editing and debugging and comes with front-end apps, back-end applications, libraries, interface apps, and configuration tools. The set of diverse tools can be combined with the development of advanced IoT apps. Just like the other IDEs, OpenSCADA supports diverse programming languages and consists of sub-projects including Utgard, Atlantis, Orilla, and others.

Home Assistant is aimed at home automation and functions on the Python-based coding system. Its an open-source tool whose IoT system is controlled with desktop browsers and mobile. Home Assistant is known for its frictionless operations, privacy standards, and security. The software can support any systems that are running on Python 3. However, it lacks cloud computing and its ability to secure data is a significant disadvantage.

DeviceHub is an integrated solution that offers a combination of business intelligence and cloud integration for delivering hardware and web technologies. Usually, the kit is offered as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) that allows software developers to use its power for the cause of IoT app development. Its especially beneficial for enterprise bodies who want to rebrand and install software for the need of deploying enterprise apps using Virtual Private Cloud. DeviceHub has achieved success in the fast going building of fleet management systems, smart vending machines, and wearable software.

Tessel 2 is a hardware provider used for creating basic IoT solutions and prototypes. It always gives a helping hand using its several modules and sensors. Tessel has plug and play module ecosystems including 10-pin modules, USB modules, community-created modules, and high-level hardware APIs. This is a kind of board that can hold up a large number of modules that cover the camera, RFID, accelerator, and GPS.

Java developers who are well aware of the use of Node.JS can make the use of Tessel and can program it with the use of Node.JS. In this manner, Tessel can be used for churning out a host of servers and also the hardware firmware IoT solutions.

Undoubtedly, Flutter is the best choice to make if youre looking for IoT product development. Flutter understands your needs and decreases unnecessary and repetitive electronic tasks. It refers to a programmable processor center that is dependent on Arduino. It is a remote transmitter with the proper inclination for achieving over a half-mile. Shudder sheets have the right to provide permission for coordinating with the correspondence with one another and apply where there is no need for any switch.

Kinoma allows two types of IoT projects that are both serious and fun. To fulfill its purpose, it required only two products: Create and Element boards. Kinoma Create is a scriptable hardware kit that utilizes JavaScript for connecting with the sensors and building the structure of IoT-enabled devices. The kit has complete supporting essential like a BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), Integrated WiFi, Speaker, touchscreen and a microphone.

We are living in a technology-based era where everything is available at our fingertips. IoT has the capability to connect diverse devices that will make human life much easier and full of comfort. Because of these benefits, IoT is seeing exponential growth in its demand and there is no doubt in saying that IoT is the future of the technology-based world.

If youre aiming to create the best IoT app, take into consideration the tools and technologies outlined in this article. This way, you will be able to create a feature-loaded and user-friendly IoT app that will fulfill all the requirements of your targeted user-base.

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10 Best IoT Development Tools and Technologies in 2020 - IoT For All

Why George Orwell’s Quote on ‘Self-Censorship’ Is More Relevant Than Ever | Brad Polumbo – Foundation for Economic Education

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Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and youll be hung out to dry.

The above is a quotation from George Orwells preface to Animal Farm, titled "The Freedom of the Press," where he discussed the chilling effect the Soviet Unions influence had on global publishing and debate far beyond the reach of its official censorship laws.

Wait, no it isnt. The quote is actually an excerpt from the resignation letter of New York Times opinion editor and writer Bari Weiss, penned this week, where she blows the whistle on the hostility toward intellectual diversity that now reigns supreme at the countrys most prominent newspaper.

A contrarian moderate but hardly right-wing in her politics, the journalist describes the outright harassment and cruelty she faced at the hands of her colleagues, to the point where she could no longer continue her work:

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how Im writing about the Jews again. Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly inclusive one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

Weisss letter reminds us of the crucial warning Orwell made in his time: To preserve a free and open society, legal protections from government censorship, while crucial, are not nearly enough.

To see why, simply consider the fate that has met Weiss and so many others in recent memory who dared cross the modern thought police. Here are just a few of the countless examples of cancel culture in action:

These are just a few examples of many. One important commonality to note is that none of these examples involve actual government censorship. Yet they still represent chilling crackdowns on free speech. As David French put it writing for The Dispatch, Cruelty bullies employers into firing employees. Cruelty bullies employees into leaving even when theyre not fired. Cruelty raises the cost of speaking the truth as best you see ituntil you find yourself choosing silence, mainly as a pain-avoidance mechanism.

These recent observations echo what Orwell warned of decades ago:

Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship... but the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the [government] or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

Similarly, the British philosopher Bertrand Russell noted in a 1922 speech It is clear that thought is not free if the professional of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.

Some might wonder why its really so important to protect speech and thought beyond the law. After all, if no ones going to jail over it, how serious can the consequences really be?

While understandable as an impulse, this logic misses the point. Free and open speech is the only way a society can, through trial and error, get closer to the truth over time. It was abolitionist Frederick Douglas who described free speech as the great moral renovator of society and government. What he meant was that only the free flow of open speech can challenge existing orthodoxies and evolve society. From womens suffrage to the civil rights movement, we never would have made so much progress on sexism and racism without the right to speak freely.

Silence enshrines the status quo. As John Stuart Mill put it:

If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

This great discovery process through free-flowing speech first and foremost requires a hands-off approach from the government, but it still cannot occur in a culture hostile to dissenting opinion and debate. When airing a differing view can get you mobbed or put your job in jeopardy, only societys most powerful or those whose views align with the current orthodoxy will be able to speak openly without fear.

Orwell and Russell were right then, even if were only fully realizing it now. Self-censorship driven by culture, not government, erodes our collective discovery of truth all the same.

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Why George Orwell's Quote on 'Self-Censorship' Is More Relevant Than Ever | Brad Polumbo - Foundation for Economic Education

Who The Democratic And Republican Party Censors Are, For The ‘News’ You See & Hear – Scoop.co.nz

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Thursday, 23 July 2020, 11:06 amArticle: Eric Zuesse

Eric Zuesse,originally posted at StrategicCulture

Back in July of 2016, I did a two-partarticle, American Samizdat Publication Forbidden in U.S., which went down therabbit-hole of news-suppression (censorship) in the UnitedStates but left, for the future, a more detailed descriptionof the money-track back to the individuals who control thatcensorship in serving the economic interests of the samebillionaires who control both the Democratic NationalCommittee and the Republican National Committee both ofAmericas two national political Parties (and they thusdetermined, forexample, in the Democratic Party, that Bernie Sanders wouldnever get that Partys Presidential nomination, though hehad the highest approval-rating of any politician in thecountry, and far higher than Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump,and Joe Biden ever had yet the billionaires fooledthe majority of Democratic Party primary voters to thinkthat he was too radical to be able to beat Trump, eventhough, in all polled hypothetical matchups against Trump,Sanders beat Trump by far higher margins thanClinton did, and basicallyequal to whatBiden did, so the electability issue wasfabricated by the billionaires press, in order to get acandidate who was acceptable to the billionaires tobe running against Trump).

A dictatorship functions bynews-suppression and other forms of censorship, even morethan it does by its own lying. It functions by deceit, butthe main way it deceives is by prohibiting the truth to bepublished on any of the billionaires (or other rulinggroups) media including all of the media that havelarge audiences.

News-suppression used to becontrolled by the CIAs OperationMockingbird, in which the owners andtop executives of the major news-media took theCIAs orders and trusted it to represent in the mostreliable way the collective interests of Americaswealthiest persons, so as to weaken those individualsforeign economic competitors. However, gradually, after the1976 Frank-Church-led U.S. Senate hearings into the CIAsdeceptions of the American public, Americas wealthiest the same people whom Wall Street firms also represent relied increasingly upon the nonprofits (foundationsetc.) that they controlled, in order to transfer some ofthis censorship-function over to those nonprofits privatize the censorship function. It was done so that thesame people who controlled the U.S. Government would be ableto continue controlling it and would allow into thebillionaire class new members (mainly technocrats) of thenations aristocracy. This would enhance the U.S.aristocracys collective control over the U.S. Government.There is less need, than before, for the CIA to do thecensoring. (So: the group collectively also constitutesits own gatekeepers. They dont rely onlyupon market-forces in order to determine who is us,and who is them, but any misbehaving member willincreasingly become treated as being one ofthem, and this will be reflected in the groupsnews-media. Its an oligarchy here, and not only anaristocracy. It is an exclusionary aristocracy.)

HughWilfords 2008 THEMIGHTY WURLITZER: How the CIA Played Americadescribed how, starting in the late 1960s, Americassuper-rich began transferring (privatizing) some of theircensorship-functions away from the Government, and intotheir own controlled news-media andnonprofits.

As the former Washington Postreporter Carl Bernstein headlined on 20 October 1977, THECIA AND THE MEDIA, in the wake of the ChurchCommittees report, and described that Senate reportscontext:

During the 1976 investigation of the CIAby the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by SenatorFrank Church, the dimensions of the Agencys involvementwith the press became apparent to several members of thepanel, as well as to two or three investigators on thestaff. But top officials of the CIA, including formerdirectors William Colby and George Bush, persuaded thecommittee to restrict its inquiry into the matter and todeliberately misrepresent the actual scope of the activitiesin its final report. The multivolume report contains ninepages in which the use of journalists is discussed indeliberately vague and sometimes misleading terms. It makesno mention of the actual number of journalists who undertookcovert tasks for the CIA. Nor does it adequately describethe role played by newspaper and broadcast executives incooperating with the Agency.

Ever since that time,the CIAs direct control over U.S. media has eroded andbecome privatized largely into the billionairesnonprofits, even while the CIAscontrol over the media in U.S.-allied foreignaristocracies has continued unabated, so as to extendyet further the American empire.

At the top in Americaare the billionaires who donate the most to politicians, andwhose tax-exempt foundations collectively carry out whatused to be the CIAs Operation Mockingbird thecensorship-function.

Two organizations especiallyshould be cited here as leaders of todays Americanbillionaire-class and privatized censorship operations, andany reader here should keep in mind that the largest fundersof these two organizations are themselves only hints at thebillionaires who control each one of them, and, furthermore,since these are only two such organizations, there might beother similar organizations that, perhaps in other ways, areequally important as these two determiners of the news thatthe vast majority of the U.S. public are, and will be,blocked from seeing and hearing (such as this).

Firstis a crucial operation that serves the Democratic NationalCommittee, the DNC (for links to sources, click onto theURL):

https://www.prwatch.org/cmd/index.html

WhatWe Do

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD)is a nationally recognized watchdog that leads in-depth,award-winning investigations into the corruption thatundermines our democracy, environment, and economicprosperity.

The Koch brothers and their networkof billionaires are operating with a reach and resourcesthat exceed those of political parties and they are usingthat power to erode the integrity of our elections and saptaxpayer dollars away from investments in publicinfrastructure, education, and healthcare to benefit narrowspecial interests and globalcorporations.

CMDs investigations, publicinformation requests, and lawsuits have ignited nationalconversations on money in politics and the distortion ofU.S. law and democracy at every level of government andin every region of the country. We believe in the publicsright to know how government operates and how corporationsinfluence our democracy and the true motivations fortheir actions. When necessary, CMD litigates to defend thatright and ensure those in power follow thelaw.

Since CMD first exposed ALEC in 2011, morethan 100 corporations have dropped ALEC, including Verizon,Ford, Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart, General Electric, and Google. Asa result of that ongoing investigation and other reporting,CMD is often contacted by whistleblowers wanting to make adifference. CMD has also researched the array of groups thatare part of ALEC, including numerous Koch-funded entitiesand national and state think tanks that are affiliatedwith the State Policy Network.

CMD files morethan 1,000 public information requests each year. Thisinvestigative watchdog work has broken through in thenational debate. For example, CMD exposed EPA AdministratorScott Pruitt's deep ties to the fossil fuel industry andrevealed lobbyist efforts to hide Chamber of Commercemembers overwhelming support for raising the minimum wageand providing paid sick leave, among other groundbreakinginvestigations.

CMDs work has been featuredin the New York Times, Washington Post, POLITICO, theGuardian, Bloomberg, WIRED, Vice, The Atlantic and Buzzfeedas well as on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, The DailyShow, and Last Week with John Oliver. We also partner withinvestigative writers at The Intercept and ProPublica topublish new reports and findings.

The fightto keep our democracy from becoming a plutocracy doesn'thave a scrappier warrior than the Center for Media andDemocracy. Bill Moyers

CMD's scrappycrew tracks the Koch Machine every day, shines a light oncorruption in our democracy, and takes politicians to courtwhen they try to hide their special-interest ties from thepublic. Robert Reich

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[CMD's] requests are of federalimportance. -- Sens. Carper, Whitehouse, Merkley, Booker,Markey and Duckworth

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CMD puts a spotlight on hidden andunreported activities, forcing those trying to maneuveraround the edges of laws and ethics out of the shadows. Ouroriginal research digs deeper than the 24-hour news cycle toanswer and understand why and how special interests and darkmoney are reshaping American politics and elections. Ourteam focuses on documenting the facts and revealing theeffects on communities and people in areas ranging fromclimate change and education to workplace standards andfreedom of speech.

CMDs groundbreakingexposs are featured on ExposedbyCMD.org.The watchdog also publishes SourceWatch, an encyclopedia ofcorporations, corporate special interest groups and theirleaders; specialized investigative websites, includingALECExposed.org;and its founding website, PRWatch.org.

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CMDs investigations have beenrecognized for their excellence and impact. Our recentawards for investigative journalisminclude:

The Sidney Award from the SidneyHillman Foundation in 2018 for the expos Two Faces ofJanus.

The Izzy I.F. Stone Awardfor outstanding achievement in independent media (sharedwith Democracy Now! correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous)from the Park Center for Independent Media.

The Sidney Award (shared jointly with The Nation) from theSidney Hillman Foundation.

The annualProfessional Freedom and Responsibility Award from theAssociation for Education in Journalism and MassCommunication, Culture and Critical Studies Division, whosepast recipients include Izzy Stone, Bill Moyers, and MollyIvins.

The Benny from the BusinessEthics Network.

CMD has been honored by theMilwaukee Press Club for one of its investigations intoshadowy front groups influencing elections.

CMDs research was featured in Ava DuVernay's film The13th, which was nominated for a 2017 Academy Award forBest Documentary.

Ground-breaking books bywriters from the Center for Media and Democracyinclude:

Deadly Spin: An Insurance CompanyInsider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing HealthCare and Deceiving Americans

Toxic SludgeIs Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public RelationsIndustry

Trust Us, We're Experts: HowIndustry Manipulates Science and Gambles With YourFuture

Mad Cow USA

Weaponsof Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War onIraq

Banana Republicans: How the Right Wingis Turning America Into a One-party State

The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess inIraq

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CMD was founded in1993 by John Stauber in Madison, Wisconsin. In March 2018,Arn Pearson became CMDs Executive Director, succeedingLisa Graves, who served as executive director from 2009-2018and currently serves as board President. CMDs teamincludes researchers, data experts, FOIA experts, lawyers,and fact-checkers. CMD is a 501(c)(3) tax-exemptnon-profit.

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The followingfoundations have provided at least one grant of $5,000 ormore to support the work of CMD since its inception in 1993.Those listed in bold are recent funders.

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Contributions from individuals andnon-profit organizations are accepted. We accept no grantsfrom government agencies or for-profit corporations, exceptfor CREDO, which makes donations to nonprofits based onvotes by its activists and customers.

CMD doesnot accept funding from for-profit corporations or grantsfrom government agencies. Learn how you can help support andexpand CMD's groundbreaking investigationshere.

Second is a crucial operationthat serves the Republican National Committee, the RNC (forlinks to sources, click onto the URL):

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Who The Democratic And Republican Party Censors Are, For The 'News' You See & Hear - Scoop.co.nz

Will Trump ban TikTok in the USA? – Vox.com

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TikTok was never supposed to be political. When it launched in the US in 2018, the video app was marketed as a fun place to discover goofy content and experiment with its sophisticated editing software and vast music library. Yet nearly two years and 165 million nationwide downloads later, TikTok has been a platform for teachers strikes, QAnon conspiracy theories, Black Lives Matter protests, and a teen-led campaign to sabotage a Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The TikTok algorithm is perfectly suited to spread political content faster and to a wider audience than any social media app in history, whether the company wants to admit it or not.

Now TikTok is proving itself to be political in a much broader way, one that challenges the very existence of the app. White House officials are talking seriously about attempting to ban it (how the government would choose to do so is less clear) in the wake of rising tensions with China, where TikToks parent company ByteDance is based.

There are two major factors at play when we talk about the risks TikToks ownership could potentially pose: data privacy and censorship. While the former is potentially easier to understand (the Equifax hack, where members of the Chinese military were charged with stealing the personal information of 145 million Americans, is perhaps the most famous example), the latter, which includes how TikTok instructs its moderators and changes its algorithm, could have more existential and more difficult-to-predict consequences for the US at large.

Will a ban actually happen? President Trumps chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said in July that a decision could come in weeks, not months. But the conversation is a lot more complicated than Is China stealing our data? although thats likely how the Trump White House would prefer to frame it. TikTok has become a straw man for fears over a serious competitor to Silicon Valley: If a generation of kids is synonymous with an app owned by China, what does that mean for Americas role in global technology?

Experts in cybersecurity and Chinese tech make it clear that the issue is not black and white, and that serious concerns about national security are likely rooted not in xenophobia but in the fact that the Communist Party of China (CCP) under President Xi Jinping has a track record of surveillance, censorship, and data theft. There are also those who warn that the US banning TikTok and other Chinese-owned apps could set a dangerous precedent for a less free and open internet ironically, the sort of internet modeled after that of China.

The governments interest in TikToks ties to China and its communist leadership stems from last fall, when Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Tom Cotton (R-AR) called for an investigation into the company. Their statements came after reports from the Guardian and the Washington Post revealed that TikTok had at one point instructed its moderators to censor videos considered sensitive by the Chinese government.

By November, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which investigates the potential national security implications of foreign acquisitions of US companies, announced that it would be reviewing ByteDances acquisition of Musical.ly, the app that would become TikTok. Meanwhile, TikTok has been steadfast in its claim that it does not send US user data to China and does not remove content sensitive to its government and would not if it were asked. Two Chinese intelligence laws from 2014 and 2017, however, require companies to assist with any government investigation and hand over all relevant data without refusal.

In a statement to Vox, a TikTok spokesperson wrote:

Protecting the privacy of our users data is of the utmost importance to TikTok. Theres a lot of misinformation about TikTok right now. The reality is that the TikTok app isnt even available in China. TikTok is led by an American CEO, with hundreds of employees and key leaders across safety, security, product, and public policy in the U.S. TikTok stores U.S. user data in Virginia, with backup in Singapore, and we work to minimize access across regions. We welcome conversations with lawmakers who want to understand our company. Were building a team here in Washington, D.C. so lawmakers and experts can come to us with questions or concerns. We know that actions speak louder than words, which is why were opening Transparency Centers in LA and DC so that lawmakers and invited experts can see for themselves how we moderate content and keep our users data secure.

In early July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the US was considering a TikTok ban after months of rising tensions with China and a ban of more than 50 Chinese apps including TikTok in India the week prior. Since then, TikTok users have been panicking over the potential loss of the internets greatest time waster; the Senate just advanced a bill to ban TikTok from all government devices. Facebook, too, is closing in: The company announced it will launch its copycat product, Instagram Reels, in the US in August.

Banning TikTok isnt as straightforward as it may sound in a country built upon the First Amendment, but there are several ways it could take place. The first is that CFIUS could force ByteDance to sell off TikTok to a US-owned company by determining it a national security risk (thats what happened to Grindr after it was sold to a Chinese company). Another is that it could put TikTok on whats called the entity list so that US companies like Apple and Google would be forced to remove it from their app stores. Adi Robertson at The Verge has a thorough examination of all these possibilities, but lets get to the real issue at play.

The case for banning TikTok, for many cybersecurity professionals, is relatively simple: The risk is simply too great, no matter how wonderful the content on the app may be. Kiersten Todt, managing director of the Cyber Readiness Institute, says that despite what TikTok claims, If the Chinese government wanted that data, they would be able to get that data.

While that may not scare the apps large user base of teenagers who are pretty sure the Chinese government doesnt care about their scrolling habits, Todt says its possible China could be building dossiers on high-profile individuals, including information like passwords, bank accounts, internet addresses, or geolocation, all of which could then be cross-referenced with even more personal data on other apps.

Ive been in the national security space for a couple of decades, and there is decades worth of evidence and data around Chinese interest, intent, and capability to hack the US, whether thats through intellectual property or through data theft, Todt says. The Chinese government hacked the broadest database of personnel in the US government. Theyre the only ones who have done that.

Todts other concern relates to Chinas role in the global tech wars at large. Artificial intelligence is only as good as the data that goes into it, and so if China continues to collect all of this data from populations around the world, its artificial intelligence has a lot more data input into it. How might it aggregate that data for the purposes of innovation, research and development and science? she asks. That can sound xenophobic, but it is a national security statement, just as we are cautious about Russia and Iran and North Korea for different reasons.

There are other arguments for banning TikTok, ones that relate to moderation and censorship. I find the data privacy issue to be a bit of a red herring, says Jordan Schneider, host of the ChinaTalk podcast and newsletter. The Chinese government has many likely more impactful ways of getting blackmail or corporate secrets or just general information about individual US nationals.

Instead, Schneider argues that the problem is the Chinese Communist Partys potential ability to influence conversation about politics on the app. People today are very concerned about the amount of power [Facebooks] Mark Zuckerberg has to value one type of speech over another or impacting elections by tweaking the algorithms and end up changing peoples opinions on certain things. So imagine if someone with the equivalent of Mark Zuckerbergs level of power over the US has no choice but to do what the CCP wants it to do? My sense is that is the case with ByteDance. He uses recent examples of Chinese disinformation campaigns on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube around topics like the Hong Kong protests and Taiwanese independence.

I think theyve probably learned the lesson of 2016, which is that Russia can interfere in elections and basically get away with it, he says. What might that look like? For the average TikTok user, it wont really look like anything. You can just push certain videos more than others, and theres no open API to double-check these things, Schneider says. At the end of the day, the Chinese government clearly has the leverage to push ByteDance to do this sort of thing, and would honestly be dumb not to, because the prize is enormous, which is the ability to influence who the next president of the United States is.

It would be easy to leave it there, but Samm Sacks, a senior cybersecurity policy fellow at Yale Law Schools Paul Tsai China Center and New America who has testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, warns against conflating Chinese tech companies with the CCP. There is much more of a push and pull in that relationship there, particularly around the security services access to private data, she says.

Plus, she argues that the incentive to censor content and steal user data is worth less than owning one of the worlds most important global tech companies. TikTok was intended to thrive and fly on its own overseas, and so its not necessarily in the Chinese government or ByteDances interest to set up the company to be secretly beholden to Beijing. Theres a commercial incentive at play that I think we have to take into account.

TikTok has, for many people in American politics and tech, become an existential threat that no amount of distancing itself from China building headquarters in the US and London, hiring a former Disney executive as its CEO will undermine. TikToks terms of use and black box algorithm are virtually identical to Facebooks policies, but its success has foreshadowed a potential end to Silicon Valleys dominance. Unspoken in many tech executives dismissal of TikTok is protectionism and, arguably, xenophobia.

Should the US government ban TikTok, Sacks says, it would be an important step toward the US government controlling the way that Americans use the internet, which is ironically a step toward Beijings own cyber-sovereignty, the very thing weve been railing against for years.

It also would likely be against the USs commercial interests. It offers a blueprint for others around the world to think, Maybe we dont trust the way that Silicon Valley companies are handling our data, so lets just ban them, too, she says. Were already starting to see the rise of digital sovereignty in Europe and in India in these really important markets, and when we think about the so-called tech competition with China, particularly with artificial intelligence and machine learning, what is it thats going to give US companies an edge? Its access to large international data sets. If we are increasingly closed out of markets around the world and access to that data because weve helped create a blueprint for how to do it with China, I could see those same tools turned around on us.

Instead, Sacks has called for a comprehensive federal data privacy law that would be applied to all platforms, not just Chinese-owned ones, that would create standards for better data security, algorithmic transparency, and better management of online content. All of the things that I think were using is China as a foil and saying, That company is a threat, lets stamp them out, [could be dealt with by] developing our own vision for how we want to govern the internet in a more democratic, secure way, she says.

China aside, a TikTok ban would have serious effects on American youth culture, where hundreds of teenagers have now built massive followings and spread important political messaging on an app that allowed them to reach huge audiences. Its changed not only the experience of being online but the experience of being a young person.

TikTok has serious flaws conspiracy theories in particular, some related to QAnon, Pizzagate, and the coronavirus, have thrived unchecked on the app but theres still no evidence that the Chinese government has anything to do with any of those. Would setting a precedent against any one Chinese-owned tech company solve the immediate issues that affect American social media users, namely misinformation, content moderation, and transparency? Or would it allow Silicon Valley companies like Facebook to continue to mimic competitors software and grow ever larger and more powerful? Its now in the hands of the government to decide.

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We need to take back control of the internet – Spiked

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Theresa Mays online harms agenda made a comeback this week. A new select-committee report tries to capitalise on widespread fear of the coronavirus in order to advance this censorious programme, which was not expected to be implemented until 2023. A barely noticed Ofcom report released last week is even more concerning. It lays out how parts of this controversial online-harms project are to be snuck into UK law indefinitely via an EU directive in just a few weeks time.

How we got here is important. And it demonstrates exactly why we were right to vote to leave the anti-democratic EU and why our illiberal elite was so in favour of it the EU allows politicians to implement their often unpopular agendas without public scrutiny.

The Online Harms Bill was unveiled by Therea May’s Conservative government in April last year in a panicked flurry after 14-year-old Molly Russell tragically killed herself after viewing online images of self-harm. The rushed proposals included a duty of care on tech firms and a regulator with the power to issue heavy fines to platforms which do not censor sufficiently. Initially, these harms included trolling and disinformation. The definition of harm was kept deliberately vague and expansive so that it could include new threats as they emerge. The dangers of these proposals for internet freedom have been pointed out before on spiked. And there is still a very real danger of mass censorship and the end of an open internet.

Julian Knight MP, chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Select Committee, which is behind the recent demands, insisted on Tuesday that the government get on with the world-leading legislation on social media that weve long been promised. His latest report discusses much more than self-harm videos. It calls for censorious action on anti-5G and anti-vaccination conspiracy theories, bigoted attacks on Asians linked to the virus, and, of course, Russian bots.

The report was, conveniently, released on the same day the Intelligence and Security Committee published its long-awaited report into Russian interference in British democracy. The calls for mass censorship were placed in a context of alleged attacks by the Kremlin. According to Knight, the proliferation of dangerous claims about Covid-19 has been unstoppable and without due weight of the law, social-media companies have no incentive to silence people.

Mays government published the initial Online Harms White Paper the month before I broke the news that it was to delay the unenforceable Internet Age Verification System (or Porn Block Law, as we called it at the tabloids). The age-verification policy was officially abandoned a few months later. Perhaps mistakenly, some of us had hoped this would lead Boris Johnson to take a more liberal approach than his authoritarian predecessor and that he would drop the online-harms agenda outright. But then, in October, culture secretary Nicky Morgan told parliament that online-harms legislation would, in fact, be pursued because of the failure of the porn-block law.

Meanwhile, Damian Collins, one of the agendas loudest proponents, was ousted as chairman of the DCMS Committee in favour of Julian Knight, shortly after Boriss re-election.

Now that Collins will no longer play a role in overseeing any official arbiter of truth online as some have framed the online-harms agenda he has recently set up an unofficial arbiter of truth. He is the founder of an independent, expert fact-checking service for coronavirus called Infotagion. Lord Puttnam, the chair of the Lords Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee, who made similar calls to rush through the online-harms agenda in June, is another founder. Infotagion answers questions like, Is the Illuminati behind the coronavirus? and Is the Covid-19 lockdown intended to create a police state? with answers such as, FALSE: DO NOT SHARE Lockdown measures are to reduce social contact to slow the spread of Covid-19. Collins and Co clearly do not have much faith in the intelligence of the electorate.

So who do they want to put in charge of regulating social media? The DCMS committee has given some hint in a previous report on fake news. It called on the government to use Ofcoms broadcast-regulation powers, including rules relating to accuracy and impartiality as a basis for setting standards for online content. In other words, they want our tweets, posts and YouTube videos to be controlled and mediated in a similar way to Sky News and the BBC.

And it looks like they are going to get their way. Ofcom revealed last week that it is pushing ahead with plans to regulate all UK-based video-sharing platforms. It will introduce interim measures, based on the Online Harms White Paper, to ensure the UK complies with the little-known EU-wide Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Ofcom put out a Call For Evidence on 16 July to help it finalise guidance, in which it described how it will enforce appropriate measures to protect young people from potentially harmful content and all users from illegal content and incitement to hatred and violence.

In other words, a form of the online-harms agenda pertaining to video at least has been foisted on the UK via the EU. Despite Brexit. And it will be enforced in autumn by Ofcom, just as censorious hardliners like Collins and the DCMS committee have demanded. Ofcom was chosen to do this because, according to last weeks report, the government concluded that the Online Harms White Paper process would not be completed in time before the EUs transposition deadline of autumn 2020 and before the UK fully leaves the Brexit transition period.

Outrageously, the directive will be made law in the UK in just a few weeks, with no serious parliamentary or public debate. And it will remain law after the transition period ends a few months later because all EU regulations will automatically be brought into domestic law. Ofcom adds that it will continue to work with EU bodies, which the UK will have no influence over, to enforce it and protect children from hate and content which could impair their moral development whatever that means.

Ofcom is completely unsuitable for this job. Social media is more like a town-hall meeting than a television broadcast. Normal people speaking online and in videos should not be regulated like broadcasters (which are already overregulated). And they should certainly not have to apologise or face punishment when they are wrong or one-sided.

One journalist covering the report suggested that the recent Darren Grimes interview with David Starkey, which contained a racist remark, would be the type of content which could be reported and even censored by Ofcom. However, that particular exchange was shown on YouTube and because YouTube is owned by Google and headquartered in Ireland, the video would, in fact, be regulated by an Irish body. Bizarrely, content made in Britain for a British audience could be censored by another EU state according to this interpretation of EU law. The platforms likely to come under UK jurisdiction are Twitch, TikTok, LiveLeak, Imgur, Vimeo and Snapchat, according to Ofcom.

Its hard to know what to make of this complex web of control and restriction. But self-harm videos are already dealt with by existing laws. And contrary to claims made by Knight and the DCMS committee, there is already too much censorship of online commentary about the Covid virus of everyone from journalists to scientists. Rather than a regulated internet, a free and open internet is needed more than ever. Rebel voices are essential in science. They are even more valuable in this era of mass conformism and should not be silenced because they go against the grain of establishment orthodoxy.

Unfortunately, the censors are winning. Social media and video platforms abandoned the principles of free speech some time ago, when they started deleting speech they considered hateful. Now, during the pandemic, they appear to have fully abandoned the principles of open inquiry and scientific method, too. They now routinely delete things they label misleading, removing the right to be wrong and presupposing that moderators know more than scientists who happen to be in a minority. The European Commission has unsurprisingly been pushing this agenda, meeting with the tech firms behind closed doors and forcing them to sign a new code of conduct and a pledge to remove fake news.

After Brexit, it should be, finally, time for our parliament and our people to have a say about what legislation and rules should govern our internet. Boris Johnson should repeal the EU version of the online-harms agenda and abandon the plan to implement the May governments proposals. After an initial backlash to those last year, the government insisted it would not force the blocking or deletion of legal content. It also gave some vague assurances to protect free speech. We must keep the pressure on and make sure this latest coup doesnt go unopposed.

Liam Deacon is the Brexit Partys former head of press.

Picture by: Getty.

To enquire about republishing spikeds content, a right to reply or to request a correction, please contact the managing editor, Viv Regan.

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We need to take back control of the internet - Spiked

Donald Trump says ‘just ask Prince Andrew’ when probed about Epsteins ‘paedophile island’ – Express

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The US President described the infamous Caribbean island as a cesspool and told reporters to ask the Duke of York, claiming hell tell you about it.It came as the outspoken billionaire linked the Epstein scandal to his political rival Bill Clinton before he entered the 2016 US presidential race. Andrew acknowledges he visited Epstein on his privately-owned Little Saint James island but says he never witnessed anything untoward and never suspected Epstein of any crimes.

Trump - who also socialised with Epstein in the years before the late financier was disgraced and jailed for child sex crimes - spoke at a CPAC conservative gathering.

In a Q&A session with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump was asked for his view on Bill Clinton and said: Nice guy, got a lot of problems coming up in my opinion with the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein.

Later, Trump was asked to expand on this in an interview with Bloomberg and brought up Prince Andrew.

He said: That island was really a cesspool, there's no question about it.

Just ask Prince Andrew, he'll tell you about it. The island was an absolute cesspool.

Asked whether the issue would impact Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, Trump said it could be a political problem.

At the time, Epstein was already a known paedophile because of his 2008 conviction in Florida and was embroiled in a lawsuit with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who alleges she had sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions.

Andrew has denied any wrongdoing and said he does not recall ever meeting Ms Roberts.

READ MORE:Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell's secret meeting at Palace

Buckingham Palace issued a statement that read: It is emphatically denied that the Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts.

Any claim to the contrary is false and without foundation.

Before Epstein's conviction, he had a vast network of wealthy and powerful friends including Andrew, Trump and the Clintons.

DON'T MISSRoyal rebel: Why Prince Andrew thought he was above rules[INSIGHT]Ghislaine Maxwell not only friend Andrew let sit on Queens throne[ANALYSIS]Prince Andrew was 'cocky and rude' in meeting with US Ambassador[COMMENT]

Epstein bought Little St James island - a spot in the US Virgin Islands - for $7.95million (6.3million) in 1998. It was later dubbed paedophile island.

The Virgin Islands sued Epstein's estate earlier this year, claiming the late sex offender raped and trafficked dozens of women and young girls there.

The complaint alleges that Epstein's abuse spanned from 2001 to 2018 and targeted girls who appeared to be as young as 11 or 12.

The lawsuit seeks civil penalties plus some assets from Epstein's estimated $577.7million (459.7million) estate, including the forfeiture of his two private islands, Little St James and Great St James.

Epstein pleaded guilty in 2008 to a Florida state prostitution charge, and completed a 13-month jail sentence.

The scandal resurfaced in 2019 when the financier was arrested on new child sex charges in New York and then killed himself in jail.

Earlier this month, Epstein's partner Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested and charged with procuring underage girls for him to abuse.

Maxwell denies wrongdoing, but is due to stay in custody until a trial next year after she was denied bail by a federal judge.

Andrew, who is being treated as a witness by US prosecutors, is said to be bewildered by claims from the FBI that he is not cooperating.

His legal team claim they have reached out at least three times.

Andrew's BBC Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis last November was widely seen as a disaster and led to his resignation from public life just days later.

In a subsequent statement he said he regretted my ill-judged association with Jeffrey Epstein and deeply sympathised with everyone who has been affected.

He added: Of course, I am willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations, if required.

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Donald Trump says 'just ask Prince Andrew' when probed about Epsteins 'paedophile island' - Express

Maldives has reopened, but a vacay won’t be cheap – IOL

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By Joanna Ossinger Jul 17, 2020

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Here's some good news for those frustrated by the lack of travel options in the Covid-19 era: The Maldives opened to international visitors on July 15.

And, yes, that includes US citizens. South Africans, on the other hand, won't be able to holiday in this idyllic destination as international borders are currently closed due to South African government regulation.

The picturesque chain of almost 1 200 islands in the Indian Ocean has a remote location that lends itself naturally to social distancing, with luxury accommodations focused on private overwater bungalows and much of the activity outdoors as well, all fortunate factors for the economy of the 400 000-person country that's heavily dependent on tourism.

International visitors will be allowed only on resort islands and live aboard boats as of July 15. On August 1, guest houses and hotels on inhabited islands will be allowed to reopen. Of course, that comes with the big caveat that you still have to get there and then get back.

Visiting is no small affair. Nor is it cheap. Because almost every resort in the Maldives is its own private island. Many luxury hotels charge upwards of $1 500 (R24 992) a night. And that's before seaplane or speed boat transfers, which can be expensive.

Still, the Maldives is trying to make it relatively easy, at least on its end.

According to an announcement from the Maldives Marketing & PR Corp, tourists are not required to pay an additional fee, produce a certificate or test result indicative of negative status for Covid-19 prior to entry into Maldives. For tourists without symptoms, there is no requirement for quarantine either, it revealed.

Any tourist who does show Covid-19 symptoms will have to pay for a test, the statement cautioned, adding that people with visible symptoms or those with a history of contact with a confirmed Covid-19 case "are advised not to travel to the Maldives."

The Maldives has been working toward the reopening for weeks.

Those who do venture to the archipelago will have some choice. By the end of the month, more than 40 resorts out of a total of about 150 properties are expected to be operational, according to the Maldives' Ministry of Tourism. The Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Landaa Giraavaru and Soneva Fushi is already open, and the One & Only Reethi Rah will open on July 24, and Milaidhoo Island is slated for an August 1 opening, a list from the ministry showed.

Many resorts are waiting a bit longer, though and peak season is from around December to March, anyway. That's when skies are clearest and tropical temperatures fall to more moderate levels. Almost 50 of the resorts on the country's list are planning to open around October 1. Como Maalifushi said it will get going again in mid-November.

The islands' resorts and accommodations are taking all recommended precautions, a Maldives spokesperson said. Properties have implemented new cleanliness and hygiene protocols to ensure that guests will be safe.

Some of those protocols fall on the more basic side. The Four Seasons Resort Maldives at Landaa Giraavaru says it has an arrival procedure that involves a temperature screening and questions about recent travel history.

At the Angsana Velavaru Maldives resort, all public areas and back-of-house areas are sanitized on an hourly basis, and rooms are deep-cleaned and disinfected with virus-specific protocols, the website says. Temperature checks are mandatory at the spa.

Soneva is taking a stricter approach at its two Maldives resorts, Soneva Jani and Soneva Fushi. Sanitizing luggage before passengers even arrive, requiring a real-time PCR Covid-19 test upon arrival (it has invested in a Roche Diagnostics testing machine), and taking temperatures every day are all part of the process now, according to the company's website. There's another Covid-19 test on the fifth day of the stay. Soneva says its "hosts," or staff, are tested every five days, and all materials and produce that are coming onto the islands will undergo cleaning and sanitation procedures first.

"Although this could be considered as being slightly excessive or overcautious, both Soneva Fushi and Soneva Jani are 'One Island, One Resort'; it is our goal to make our private island homes Covid-19 free environments so that all of our guests can truly relax and engage with our Hosts and fellow travellers and not feel any concern about a risk of infection," the site declares.

If you come up positive, the resorts will still take care of you, with attention from a medical team as you isolate in your villa, and Soneva waiving the daily room rate for the next 14 days. The value of that stay, in one of Soneva Jani's currently-discounted entry-level rooms: $37 723.

If any guest needs to be hospitalised, the Maldives has built up sufficient hospital and medical capacity to treat Covid-19 effectively, the website revealed, noting that the hospital on a neighbouring island, only 10 minutes away by speedboat, has a new ICU unit with 20 beds.

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Maldives has reopened, but a vacay won't be cheap - IOL

50 million to boost islands’ economy – GOV.UK – GOV.UK

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The Prime Minister is to announce today [23 July] the UK Government is committing 50 million to Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles, unlocking the islands economic potential.

Mr Johnson will be marking one year as Prime Minister with a visit to Scotland. He will reaffirm his commitment to supporting all parts of the UK through the coronavirus pandemic.

The multimillion pound Islands Growth Deal will provide investment for local projects across the Scottish islands, driving sustainable economic growth and creating jobs. It will also help to attract further private and public sector investment.

Projects set to be supported by the Islands Growth Deal could include some which are developing space technology while others are researching new renewable energy systems. The deal will also support projects that will boost tourism and housing.

The announcement, made ahead of the Prime Ministers visit to Orkney, means that every part of Scotland is now covered by the innovative growth deals and takes UK Governments investment in deals across Scotland to more than 1.5 billion.

To date, this funding has supported innovative and exciting projects across Scotland including: a new concert hall in Edinburgh reaffirming the city as a global cultural leader, a feasibility study of the Borders Railway looking at improving transport links between England and Scotland, and the world-leading Oil & Gas Technology Centre in Aberdeen.

Scottish Secretary, Alister Jack, who will accompany Mr Johnson on his visit today, said:

The City Region and Growth Deals will be crucial to our economic recovery from coronavirus. Todays announcement means that every corner of Scotland will benefit from these and takes the UK Governments investment in growth deals across Scotland to more than 1.5 billion.

These deals are just part of the unprecedented support that the UK Government is providing to people and businesses in Scotland during this time. We have supported 900,000 jobs in Scotland with our furlough and self-employed schemes, including 11,600 across the islands.

We look forward to working with our partners across the islands and the devolved administration in Scotland to develop innovative and effective proposals.

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50 million to boost islands' economy - GOV.UK - GOV.UK

Why Science and Atheism Don’t Mix – Discovery Institute

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Photo: Clouds of Jupiter, by Gerald Eichstdt and Sean Doran (CC BY-NC-SA)/NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS.

Editors note: This article is an excerpt from John Lennoxs new book, 2084: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity. Dr. Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

Science proceeds on the basis of the assumption that the universe is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to the human mind. No science can be done without the scientist believing this, so it is important to ask for grounds for this belief. Atheism gives us none, since it posits a mindless, unguided origin of the universes life and consciousness.

Charles Darwin saw the problem. He wrote: With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of mans mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

Similarly, physicist John Polkinghorne says that the reduction of mental events to physics and chemistry destroys meaning:

Thought is replaced by electrochemical neural events. Two such events cannot confront each other in rational discourse. They are neither right nor wrong. They simply happen . . . The world of rational discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses. Quite frankly that cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so.

Polkinghorne is a Christian, but some well-known atheists also acknowledge the difficulty here.

In his book Mind and Cosmos, leading atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel says:

If the mental is not itself merely physical, it cannot be fully explained by physical science . . . Evolutionary naturalism implies that we should not take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism depends.

That is, naturalism, and therefore atheism, undermines the foundations of the very rationality that is needed to construct or understand or believe in any kind of argument whatsoever, let alone a scientific one. In short, it leads to the abolition of reason a kind of abolition of man, since reason is an essential part of what it means to be human.

Not surprisingly, I reject atheism because I believe Christianity to be true. But that is not my only reason. I also reject it because I am a mathematician interested in science and rational thought. How could I espouse a worldview that arguably abolishes the very rationality I need to do mathematics? By contrast, the biblical worldview that traces the origin of human rationality to the fact that we are created in the image of a rational God makes real sense as an explanation of why we can do science.

Science and God mix very well. It is science and atheism that do not mix.

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Why Science and Atheism Don't Mix - Discovery Institute

Portland Black Cop Describes the Racism of BLM and ANTIFA in Fascinating Interview – The Jewish Voice

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Portland police officer Jakhary Jackson was interviewed by KGW8 TV in Oregon.. The subject was the perspective of being a black officer policing the violent Portland protests .

We will let his words speak for themselves, its quite enlightening.

Jackson said that white protesters routinely behave in a condescending manner and scream at cops, telling them to quit the force.Having people tell you what to do with your life, that you need to quit your job. Saying youre hurting your community but theyre not even part of the community. And you as a privileged white person telling a person of color what to do with their life and you dont even know what Ive dealt with or what these white officers that youre screaming at you dont know them. You dont know anything about them,he said.

It says something when youre at a Black Lives Matter protest and you have more minorities on the police side than you have in a violent crowd,Jackson explained.You have white people screaming at black officers, you have the biggest nose Ive ever seen! You hear these things and you go, are they gonna say something to this person? No.

This is a key 2 minutes from the interview

Here is the unedited interview with Officer Jackson

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Portland Black Cop Describes the Racism of BLM and ANTIFA in Fascinating Interview - The Jewish Voice

Lawsuit against US government filed over move to bring feds to Chicago – The Courier-Express

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CHICAGO Black Lives Matter Chicago and other groups filed a lawsuit Thursday against the federal government, alleging the detailing of federal agents to the city is being done in an attempt to suppress free speech, while separately claiming in court that Chicago police are trampling on protesters rights.

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that Chicago and other cities will see an influx of federal agents this week, in what he said is an effort to address rising violence. Additional Department of Homeland Security officers were already been deployed to Portland, Oregon, where reports of unidentified federal agents patrolling streets wearing camouflage uniforms have been denounced by local leaders and become a focus of national debate.

At a news conference Thursday in Federal Plaza announcing the lawsuit, activists pointed to ongoing unrest in Portland as evidence of what could come this weekend when federal agents are deployed to Chicago. But leaders say they will not be intimidated by these actions, calling on the community to continue to show up to protest.

We want to be clear that what is happening nationally is an attempt to stifle righteous rage and anger at the continued killing of Black people by police, said Aislinn Pulley, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Chicago. We have been fighting back consistently for two months and we will not stop.

The Chicago Abolitionist Network, Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, Good Kids/ Mad City, #Let Us Breathe Collective, and South Siders Organized for Unity and Liberation were also listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Thursday.

The suit alleges Trump is sending agents to the city in an effort to intimidate and falsely arrest civilians who are exercising their constitutional right to speak and to assemble.

Also on Thursday, lawyers for a coalition of activist groups sent City Hall a letter threatening separate legal action under a consent decree, a court order that required broad changes to the way Chicago police treat people. The letter calls on the city to stop what the activists lawyers described as the Chicago Police Departments brutal, violent, and unconstitutional tactics that are clearly intended to silence protesters.

The letter, also filed in federal court, cited a litany of alleged physical abuses during protests that have erupted sporadically since late May, just after the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.

The lawyers from groups including Black Lives Matter Chicago and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois accused officers of abuses including knocking out the teeth of 18-year-old activist Miracle Boyd during a protest around a statue of Christopher Columbus in Grant Park.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot denounced the deployment of federal agents earlier in the week, but changed her tone after speaking with U.S. Attorney John Lausch, who told her additional law enforcement would work collaboratively with Chicago cops against violent crime.

Federal officials have argued a recent increase in shootings points to a need for more law enforcement, but at Thursdays news conference, activists from the South and West sides decried this claim, arguing investments in the community, not more policing, will bring an end to the violence.

With protests planned for this weekend, including a demonstration at the Homan Square police facility, Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression said everyone needs to be out in the streets.

Theres more of us than them, Chapman said. Weve got to put people in the streets. Weve got to keep this rebellion going.

Continued here:

Lawsuit against US government filed over move to bring feds to Chicago - The Courier-Express

Racism in Public Benefit Programs: Where Do We Go from Here? – The Center for Law and Social Policy

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ByMadison Allen

Public benefit programs are racist. They are also essential.

For decades, programs like Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) have provided essential support for families with low incomes. At the same time, these programs have reinforced structures of oppression. It is critical that we understand the history of the safety-net in the United States because, without recognition of past and present harm, we run the serious risk of complicity in upholding systems of white supremacy.

Many scholars have written at length about racism and the history of public benefit programs and welfare reform in America. From "mothers pensions" in the 1900s used to exclude Black women to Reagans "Welfare Queen" narrative in the 1980s to Clintons 1996 racialized welfare reform and workfare programs, false racist narratives have long been applied to people experiencing poverty. As Johnnie Tillmon noted in 1972, "we've been trained to believe that the only reason people are on welfare is because there's something wrong with their character." For decades, these narratives have served as dog whistles that are employed to garner support to cut funding and to restrict the eligibility for these programs with direct harms to both people of color and white people with low incomes.

Many of the white supremacist structures historically embedded in public benefit programs remain in place today. Disguised under terminology like "work requirements," "family caps," "drug testing," and "resource limits" these polices are fundamentally rooted in oppression, paternalism, and control of Black and Brown lives. The policies themselves reinforce misconceptions about beneficiaries, suggesting that individuals with low incomes must be coerced to work and avoid drug use. Although whites are the largest group of beneficiaries when it comes to government safety-net programs, policies which frame benefits access in terms of deserving versus undeserving rely upon and perpetuate false narratives about benefit recipients.

While many of these policies appear race neutral, in practice they discriminate by failing to acknowledge the skewed racial realities of the U.S. criminal justice system and labor market. For example, when racial discrimination in hiring prevails, work requirements necessarily place a disproportionate burden on people of color. When states agencies direct staff to consider an applicants criminal history as a basis for reasonable suspicion in drug testing, people of color suffer the consequences of disparate policing of drug use in their communities. And when agencies impose resource limits with exclusions for home ownership, again people of color experience compounded barriers due to historic and systemic racism that excluded Black people from home-buying opportunities.

With Black and Latinx people dying from COVID-19 at significantly higher rates than white people, public health data is manifesting generations of racial inequities. These disquieting statistics challenge the advocacy community to propose solutions which address the systemic and historic discrimination that have long driven policymaking and implementation of public benefit programs. Looking forward, we must ask ourselves: How do we not only reduce inequities but eliminate them?

At a time when systemic discrimination and a widening racial wealth gap make it increasingly difficult for families to thrive, now is the time for us to evaluate the ways in which our past efforts have failed, to think beyond incremental reform, and to actively dismantle racism in the safety-net. I hope that the advocacy community will consider all possibilities and continue these conversations in close partnership with people directly impacted by the outcomes. We must follow the direction of people with lived experience and affirmatively address the ways in which public benefit programs have been complicit in enabling suppression of Black people, Immigrants, and other communities of color. I look forward to the work ahead and to reimagining what is possible for the future of public benefit programs in our country.

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Racism in Public Benefit Programs: Where Do We Go from Here? - The Center for Law and Social Policy

‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ these words set America on path to progress – USA TODAY

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Tod Lindberg, Opinion contributor Published 5:00 a.m. ET July 24, 2020

Before the Declaration, ideas were brewing along the lines of the 'unalienable rights' of all human beings, but the political world was the sport of kings and barons, chieftains and the strong.

Reports by government commissions arent generally known for their insight into basic questions about the human condition, nor can they typically be read for pleasure. The report of the State Departments Commission on Unalienable Rights, in circulation as of last week, is perhaps the exception that proves the rule: a lively and serious inquiry into the basic ideas that animated the founding of the United States and provided impetus to the global pursuit of human rights.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo chartered his commission well before the tough six months America has just been going through, from pandemic to lockdown to protests, some of them violent. Yet current conditions make its message all the more timely.

Demonstrators demand justice and rail against past and present injustice. And whether they are aware of it historically or not, they mostly rely on claims introduced into the political world in the American Declaration of Independence. George Floyd had a right not to be slain by a police officer. Government is supposed to protect peoples lives and liberty. They should govern themselves as equals and be free to pursue happiness as they see it, without fear of capricious force under color of law.

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, that is: Before the Declaration, ideas were brewing along the lines of the unalienable rights of all human beings, but the political world was the sport of kings and barons, chieftains and the strong. To most of them, the idea that government should be of the people, by the people and for the people, as Lincoln described it 87 years later, had never occurred. Yet the idea of these rights was so powerful and so liberating that it became not only a global beacon against oppression, but also the means by which Americans began to free themselves from the constraints of the times in which it arose.

Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1776 painted by J. Trumbull and engraved by W.L. Ormsby, N.Y.(Photo: Library of Congress)

Thats because in saying all men are created equal, Jefferson and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence both meant it and did not mean it. Clearly, they didnt mean all men and women are created equal, a formulation that would come to the fore with the Declaration of Sentiments drafted by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Nor did it apply to men, women and children who were slaves, including of some of the very signers. Nor did they mean it with regard to Native Americans being driven from their ancestral lands.

Nor did the all the abolitionists and early womens rights advocates themselves necessarily believe in universal human equality. Nevertheless, those five words formed the basis of 244 years worth and counting of demands for equality in the United States and beyond our own national borders.

The Founders did not finish the job of political equality with the Declaration and the Constitution, nor did Lincoln with the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation, nor did Susan B. Anthony when she illegally cast a ballot in the 1872 presidential election, nor the Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education by reversing its previous holding and declaring that the separate but equal justification for segregation was not equality.

July Fourth: Frederick Douglass found hope in our Declaration of Independence. So can we.

But the Founders did start the project of political equality by risking their necks on independence in the name of those five words. And the others mentioned here, and many more, continued the project against resistance, by relying on a history tracing back continuously and directly to all men are created equal as they demanded justice.

This is a story the Commission on Unalienable Rights tells with clarity and erudition. Likewise compelling is its account of the resonance of the principles of the American founding in the United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the little-remembered context in which other countries drew on their own national traditions in pursuit of the universal rights they delineated in UDHR.

My ancestors founded Brown University: Its connection to slavery isn't what you've heard.

The American story is woefully incomplete without an account of the injustice perpetrated here and the suffering it has caused. But it is also woefully incomplete in the absence of an account of how ideas about unalienable rights articulated at the time of the founding became an engine driving the pursuit of justice here and throughout the world.

Tod Lindberg is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and author most recently of "The Heroic Heart: Greatness Ancient and Modern." Follow him on Twitter: @todlindberg

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'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' these words set America on path to progress - USA TODAY

Governments stimulus package falls short of the big thinking Ireland needs – The Irish Times

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The stimulus package, announced on Thursday, is constructive in that it recognises the necessity of getting people into jobs or helping them stay there.

Other governments have also scrambled to introduce stimulus packages to reduce unemployment rates. Yet, whatever the short-term response is, governments everywhere will have to plan for certain sectors not to recover quickly, and some not to recover at all.

Hospitality and leisure depend on people congregating in groups and sufficient traffic to stay afloat. Only a vaccine will protect these sectors and, by the time it arrives, many individual businesses will have failed. The IMFs prediction that the Swedish economy will decline by more than its Nordic neighbours, despite its laissez-faire approach to the lockdown, only demonstrates how much anxiety about the virus influences current consumer behaviour.

In the context of global recession and this public anxiety about the future, the Irish Governments stimulus response is also underwhelming. It is less ambitious and visionary than policy proposals in other countries facing a worse economic and public health crisis.

For example, the Biden campaign in the US and a campaign in the UK driven by hundreds of civil society organisations and academics (as well as Trcaire here in Ireland) have adopted the slogan Build Back Better from the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The slogan refers to developing greater resilience after a crisis through new policy initiatives. Public investment should correspondingly go beyond temporary fixes to envisioning how improvements in infrastructure, human capital and collaboration at a community level can prepare a society for future shocks.

The pandemic has affected the US and the UK more than Ireland, and the Government here should be lauded for acting quickly. Those countries are also confronting the divisiveness of political polarisation and the repercussions of decades, if not centuries, of racism and oppression. Those two trends are fuelling confrontation between political leaders and on the street.

But these differences do not mean that policymakers in Ireland can avoid thinking about social and political divisions here, and the longer-term policy vision needed to overcome entrenched structural problems, such as low pay and precarity. Like the US, the UK and elsewhere, the fault lines in Irish society have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and recession and will not go away without new policy ideas.

In fact, there are two lessons the Irish Government should take from the US and the UK. The first is that a slogan such as Build Back Better evokes a brighter future, and implicitly tells young people to aspire and to trust that leaders are looking after their interests. The second, based on the friction caused by the cancel culture debate or perceived hardening of ideas amongst progressives, is that the Government has to connect open public debate to transformative economic and social policy. The victory in the Apple tax case represents in some ways the first foray into this debate. We should debate whether the status quo really represents effective economic policy for a small, open economy in a volatile world or, instead, if we should be engaging in more far-reaching and forward-thinking discussion about the economy we need for the future.

The stimulus package and the recent rejection of the Private Members Bill on protecting low-wage, precarious workers that the Social Democrats put forward suggest that the Government is pursuing the former strategy to create jobs first and consider their quality later. Yet, considering the combination of external pressures and internal problems policymakers must confront over the next few years, a bolder, more visionary alternative would also be more pragmatic. Waiting for the emergency to pass as this stimulus package seems to be predicated on may only make the long-term challenges more daunting.

This first economic litmus test for this new Government fails to impress because it does not give the sense that the new FF-FG-Green alliance is prepared to think big enough to move beyond Covid-19 to a new normal that is predicated on equality, and more profoundly hope for the future.

Instead of generating jobs for the sake of employment numbers, the stimulus package could have hinged on linking job creation to wellbeing, climate change and economic democracy.

Policy planning for the future should therefore not just aim to return people very often women to low-paid, precarious positions, but rather to better jobs that reflect recognition of the collective benefit of a more stable, more optimistic workforce. Critically, younger generations would feel like they have a stake in such an economy, where they can perceive a trajectory for themselves instead of a narrow, and sometimes depressing, set of choices.

The Government has a strong basis and mandate following the last election and the impact of Covid-19 for moving in this direction. During the pandemic, politicians asked us all to engage in a collective effort to care for each other. Improving the quality of work in sectors such as care, or renewable energy or any other sector that suggests responsible future planning, shows that the State recognises that to build a better Ireland, investing in economic recovery has to be good for society as well. This stimulus package aims to fulfil half this brief but the other half remains just as important.

Shana Cohen is director of TASC, the think tank for action on social change

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Governments stimulus package falls short of the big thinking Ireland needs - The Irish Times

When Returning to Normal Doesn’t Work for Half the World’s Population: How to Build Back Better – World – ReliefWeb

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The time immediately following a crisis, whether it be a peace process, rebuilding after a natural disaster or seeing a new government come into power, creates a window of opportunity to reimagine what the next phase of life can look like. When the status quo has been upended, there is a feeling that normal can be redesigned. With COVID-19, this opportunity seems more pressing than ever before as the pandemic has highlighted the inequalities that have made the old normal not work for so many, particularly women. In every country, women face gender discrimination and often times, this intersects with other forms of inequity stemming from disability, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, creating additional barriers for accessing services, education, and employment. The surging Black Lives Matter movement around the globe has thrown into stark relief just how critically important it is, especially for women, and particularly women of color, that we do not just get back to normal, but that we actively build back better.

For women and girls living in humanitarian contexts, building back betterand taking into account multiple factors of oppression and discriminationis critical. Through the International Rescue Committees (IRC) nearly 90 years of humanitarian work, we know that women and girls continue to be disadvantaged in terms of access to education, employment, healthcare, safety, and more. COVID-19 has brought increased rhetoric around the different ways women and girls experience a crisis, yet we are still seeing old patterns being repeated, particularly in the absence of gender analysis, disaggregated data, and dedicated funding to support the most vulnerable, despite highlevel calls to action. As countries begin to reopen, we cannot sacrifice the necessary changes for the comfort of the familiar. The time is far past to have difficult conversations, to employ feminist approaches, and to use COVID-19, as terrible as it continues to be, as an opportunity to truly change the status quo for all women and girls.

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When Returning to Normal Doesn't Work for Half the World's Population: How to Build Back Better - World - ReliefWeb

Prompt Payment Bill a ray of hope to victims of compulsory acquisition – Daily Nation

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By Rose BirgenBy Eva Okoth

Laws are not always just. Ironically, the law can be used as a tool for creating social order and, at the same time, as an avenue for oppression. In many countries around the world, the law has been used to protect political and monetary interests at the expense of the most vulnerable in society.

In Kenya, this is demonstrated by the governments enactment of draconian and backward legislation, such as the Land Value (Amendment) Act, which is, to a great extent, oppressive to the ordinary citizen.

The Land Value (Amendment) Act came into force in 2019. Its objective is to provide guidance on the process of compulsory acquisition of private or community lands for a public purpose. It also describes the method of calculating the value of land acquired in order to estimate the amount of compensation.

The Act introduced amendments which are not only potentially unconstitutional but also likely to infringe the property rights of communities where compulsory acquisition takes place. It allows the government to compulsorily acquire land and pay individuals or affected communities as late as one year later.

The positive changes made to the law through this amendment Act are insignificant. Instead, it has legalised the governments usual tendency to acquire land illegally without compensating affected persons promptly.

To date, communities from Lamu County, including farmers in Kililana, Kwasasi, Sinambio, the Awer of Bargon and villagers from Bobo and Roka whose lands were acquired for the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopian Transport (Lapsset) corridor have not been compensated, even though the legal regime at the time of acquisition the government to compensate affected persons before possessing their land. Persons affected by the Standard Gauge Railway project, which the Court of Appeal recently declared illegal, are facing a similar predicament.

Failing to compensate these communities promptly has increased their vulnerability to human rights violations. This is particularly inevitable where communities are evicted from their ancestral lands, rendering them homeless and internally displaced years after the completion of these projects.

Perhaps the critical question to ask ourselves at this point is whose interests this law serves.

THE PROMPT PAYMENT BILL

To answer that question, let us draw our attention to the Prompt Payment Bill, introduced into Parliament on February 28, 2020 - just around the period when countries were going into lockdown due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The purpose of this Bill is to provide for the prompt payment for supply of goods, works and services procured by government entities at the national and county levels. This Bill, unlike the Land Value (Amendment) Act, places a mandatory obligation on the government to pay for goods, services or works provided within the date prescribed in a contract or, where no date is prescribed, within 90 days or less as prescribed by the Cabinet Secretary by way of delegated legislation. Failure to make a prompt payment attracts a criminal penalty and interest on the principal amount.

Arguably, just like any other commercial arrangement, compulsory land acquisition is a form of procurement. However, the difference in treatment between ordinary procurement transactions and compulsory land acquisition is glaring.

For instance, prompt payment in the context of the Act differs from the meaning it is given under the Bill. Similarly, the failure to pay for services in time attracts a criminal penalty under the Bill but not under the Act. Yet, in both instances, the government benefits in some way from the goods, services or rights acquired.

EQUAL TREATMENT

Community land is a valuable commodity for communities that depend on it for their livelihood. Its acquisition by the government must therefore be treated in the same way as other government procurement processes, specifically in terms of ensuring that:

This is the only way to ensure that as a nation we protect the integrity of our laws.

Legislators must, therefore, remember that Kenyas democracy can only succeed when the interests of the people, especially the most vulnerable persons, are placed at the centre of decision-making processes. This requires equal treatment of all people under the law.

Rose Birgen is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a senior programme officer with Natural Justice.

Eva Maria Okoth is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and a programme officer with Natural Justice.

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Prompt Payment Bill a ray of hope to victims of compulsory acquisition - Daily Nation

High Court orders Najib to pay RM1.69b in additional taxes to government – The Edge Markets MY

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KUALA LUMPUR (July 22): The High Court here today ordered former prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to pay the government, through the Inland Revenue Board (IRB), RM1.69 billion in additional taxes and penalties.

High Court Judge Justice Datuk Ahmad Bache read out his summary judgment today, ordering Najib to pay the amount to the IRB. The IRB was also awarded RM15,000 in cost.

The court holds that a summary judgment is entered against the defendant (Najib) for the amount claimed by the plaintiff (IRB) as in the plaintiffs statement of claims, that is RM1,692,872,924.83 with cost. Hence, an order in terms is granted to Enclosure (1), Order Accordingly, Ahmad read.

Bache stated that under the Income Tax Act, the court has no powers pertaining to pleas from individuals who are disputing tax assessments against them.

Such is the law because of the principle of revenue law that when there is a debt due to the government, the court shall not entertain any plea whatsoever, he said.

The yearly assessments, not inclusive of penalties, amounted to RM1,465,690,844, became due and payable to the IRB after they sent assessment notices to Najib dated March 20, 2019, the judge noted, adding Najibs camp has also admitted to receiving the notices at his address.

Furthermore, the fact that the defendant has filed an appeal to the Special Commissioners of Income Tax (SCIT) in relation to those notices, further reinforced the fact that said notices are properly served, Ahmad read, stating this was in accordance with the provision of the Income Tax Act 1967 in relation to the serving of notices.

Since the notices were properly served to Najib, the tax therefore becomes due and payable to the IRB, he said.

The court also held that the penalty of 10% for each year of assessment for failing to pay the outstanding sum is permissible by virtue of Section 103 (5) of the Income Tax Act 1967, which states that any sum not paid within 30 days of the receipt of the notice be subject to the penalty.

With the 10% penalty added to the total outstanding sum, the payable sum due becomes RM1.61 billion. Subsequently, Najib failed to settle the renewed sum within 60 days under the same act, which resulted in a compounded 5% hike of RM80.61 million. Which brings the total to RM1.69 billion.

Ahmad also said the imposition of the penalty is fair and permissible. Because if all other tax-payers are to be imposed with such penalties upon late payment of taxes due, it is only fair that the defendant, who is a former finance minister and former prime minister, be subjected to the same provision of penalty as everyone stands equal before the law, he said.

Ahmad also maintained that the court, in a civil proceeding brought by the government, has no power to entertain any plea on the amount, whether it is excessive, incorrectly assessed and under appeal as Najibs lawyers had claimed.

He said that this has to be taken up with the Special Commissioners of Income Tax (SCIT), who are judges of fact. This court holds that the merit of assessment which involve questions, should be heard by the SCIT, as the court is not the appropriate quorum to decide on issues of assessment. The SCIT are judges of facts, he said.

Najibs lawyer Farhan Shafee argued last month that the unpaid tax the IRB is seeking were from donations given to Najib, which he claimed were not taxable.

We have the RM2.6 billion Arab donation that went into Najibs account but after he used the money for elections, around US$620 million was returned to the Arabs. This has come out in Najibs other court cases and there is money trail proof in black and white of these transactions. So how can the IRB tax the amount that was returned to the Arab royalty? Farhan had questioned.

The judge further said today that all is not lost for Najib, as he can dispute the amount of assessment with the SCIT by filing an appeal, which has already been done.

In an immediate response to the summary judgment, Najib took to his Facebook account to express his dissatisfaction.

He claimed the issue was an act of oppression espoused by the Pakatan Harapan government against him. He also claimed that this was an abuse of power by the former government. Actually, I am not ordered by the judge to pay the tax but the judge gave a summary judgment to the IRB to go ahead with their claim against me, he added.

The government filed the suit against Najib on June 25 last year to recover the unpaid taxes.

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High Court orders Najib to pay RM1.69b in additional taxes to government - The Edge Markets MY

Letter to the editor: Palestine in the media – The Independent Florida Alligator

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Graphic by Ferna Simbulan

Editor's note: All letters to the editor will be considered, but not every one will be published. Please allow 24 hours for a response regarding your submission.

We are a pro-Palestine organization, and we renounce the claims the Israeli government has on the land of my people, including the annexation of villages in the West Bank.

We are writing to address several things that were mentioned in a Letter to the Editor from a Zionist student regarding the protest we organized last week.

Palestinians are so rarely the focus in media pieces. Our voices are often ignored and disproportionately underrepresented. So we want to start by saying that the Alligator did its duty in upholding the core of journalistic practice, and that is the dedication to reporting the truth. The reporter was sent to cover a planned statewide protest for Palestine with more than 100 attendees, not a spontaneous group of about 10 pro-Israel students waving a flag across the street. The lack of Israeli perspective in the piece was not biased or malicious, it was true to the story that was unfolding. Its fine that just this once, ours were the voices that were centered. On that day, we felt heard. We felt seen.

Perhaps if a larger Israeli demonstration was coordinated, it couldve gotten more coverage.

The definition of Zionism provided in the Letter to the Editor was incomplete. No matter how you look at it, Israel was established by the literal expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. So to even say that Zionism does not equate to anti-Palestine, is not just wrong, it is the gaslighting of an entire nation.

Palestine mourns May 15, 1948, also known as Al-Nakba, or the Catastrophe, while Israel celebrates it as its independence day. On this day alone, Zionist forces conducted 33 massacres, destroyed 531 villages, and forced over 750,000 Palestinians out of the country as refugees.

One of our organizers families was one of the many forced to flee. Tantura, the small coastal village on the Mediterranean they called home, was wiped off the map.

Anti-Zionism rejects the colonial racism of Israels founding and the subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians within the occupied territories. It is the rejection of oppression and apartheid. It is NOT prejudice and discrimination toward Jewish people as individuals or as a group. That would be anti-Semitism.

In the letter, the writer claimed that nationally renowned, anti-racist author and professor, Paul Ortiz, was anti-Semitic when he compared the plight of Native Americans in the U.S. to that of Palestinians under Israeli colonization. For one, as we established above, criticizing Israeli colonialism does not equate to being bigoted towards Jewish people. European colonizers felt entitled to Native American lands and took them by force. The same can be said for Israel.

Within the letter, it was implied that equating Zionism and white supremacy was groundless.

So should we ignore that Richard Spencer called himself a white Zionist?

Or that both Zionism in Israel and white supremacy in the U.S. maintain their grips of power through the exploitation, subjugation and displacement of indigenous groups?

Because there is certainly a white ruling class in Israel and a population of Black Ethiopian Jews who disproportionately experience levels of brutality and discrimination that parallel the plight of Black Americans.

In addition, Palestinians are denied the freedom of movement in their own countries through military checkpoints, much like how apartheid South Africa upheld pass laws that forced Black South Africans to carry permits to enter white cities.

Time and time again so many Palestinians and allies have had to explain ourselves and what we advocate for. The student who wrote the Letter to the Editor, as well as so many other Zionist students weve met, insisted that resolution can only be reached if both sides truly listen to one another. But conversation cant happen if every Palestinian activist and ally is labeled anti-Semitic for actions that simply arent so.

So we want to say something we feel has not been expressed enough in these conversations, and we want to be very clear: to be effectively pro-Palestine, one must also stand unwaveringly against anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic bigotry has created generational trauma for Jewish people, just as all forms of oppressive ideology has done for so many other marginalized groups.

It was not hate that allowed Zionism to take residence in a land that already had people.

It was fear.

It was fear that drove an oppressed people to oppress others.

The reason why we stand so ardently against these accusations of anti-Semitism is because it has no place in this movement.

So when we say free Palestine, it means more than liberating Gaza, more than bringing back the generations of Palestinians scattered across the globe to their usurped homes, more than ending apartheid within the occupied lands. Freeing Palestine means ending the trauma of colonization for all oppressed people across the world.

It is why images of George Floyd, a black man mercilessly killed by U.S. police, are painted all over the occupied West Bank right beside murals of Razan al-Najjar, a Palestinian nurse murdered by the Israeli military.

Its why we protested on the corner of University Avenue a week ago. It's why we will continue to stand against oppression tomorrow. Its why we are here today.

We cannot be free until we are all free. And we know, within our lifetimes, we will be.

SJP is an independent organization that creates opportunities to learn about and participate in global movements for the freedom, justice, and equality of Palestinians and others.

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Letter to the editor: Palestine in the media - The Independent Florida Alligator

‘Discriminatory practice’ of birth alerts to end in Ontario, and that’s good for Indigenous families says ONWA – CBC.ca

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The provincial directive to end the "discriminatory practice" of birth alerts is a big step forward to keeping Indigenous and racialized families together, according to advocates in Ontario.

The directive, issued on July 14 by Ontario Associate Minister of Children and Women's Issues Jill Dunlop, ordered children's aid societies to stop issuing birth alerts by mid-October.

"For our community ... for Indigenous women across the province of Ontario ... this is a real sign of recognition of our rights as mothers, our rights as women but also, more importantly, this is going to improve the outcomes for Indigenous children and Indigenous babies across the province," said Dawn Lavell Harvard, president of the Ontario Native Women's Association (ONWA).

She added, "I'm absolutely over-the-moon happy with the current government for taking this all-important step to recognize the autonomy of Indigenous mothers, to recognize their right to mother their own children something that was taken away with residential schools, were taken away with the Sixties Scoop and has been taken away generation after generation by racist governments."

The practice of birth alerts where a children's aid society notifies hospitals when they believe a newborn may be in need of protection has long been reported to disproportionately affect Indigenous families in Ontario.

Its elimination was also a recommendation made bythe National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Lavell Harvard said the systemic discrimination seen in the practice of birth alerts is reflected more broadly in the child welfare system.

"We know that there are currently more children in the care of the child welfare system than were in the residential schools at the height of the residential school system. And this is a result of poverty, is a result of racism, discrimination and systemic racism within the child welfare system ... where Indigenous mothers and Indigenous families are unfairly targeted."

"We recognize that in most cases, birth alerts do not support our goal of protecting children while supporting families to stay together. Every new mother and father need to be treated with respect, not negatively impacted because of an alert that might result in judgment with discriminatory measures," said Thelma Morris, executive director of Tikinagan Child & Family Services, a "community-based" child welfare agency that serves30 First Nations in northern Ontario.

The executive director for the Children's Aid Society of Thunder Bay, Brad Bain, said he sees the directive as a "positive step" made by the provincial government.

Bain acknowledged "the role that the Thunder Bay agency has played certainly, as well as our sector, in contributing to systemic racism and oppression."

He estimated that in recent years, the agency has issued five birth alerts per year, although noted that no birth alerts have been issued in 2020.

"As an organization, we are committed to the elimination of systemic racism and have an internal, anti-oppressive practices committee and we work in concert with our local stakeholders to inform our practices and our policies," Bain added.

Lavell Harvard said there is a lot more work to be done to keep families together.

"Indigenous-run child welfare organizations are discriminated against in terms ... they're expected to do more to hold families together with significantly less resources and then they are blamed when they have poor outcomes."

She added more "upstream" investment is needed to ensure Indigenous families are supported.

"If one wants to talk bottom line in terms of investments ... we need to be investing in that prevention, investing in providing Indigenous moms and their families with the tools they need to survive and provide for our families."

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'Discriminatory practice' of birth alerts to end in Ontario, and that's good for Indigenous families says ONWA - CBC.ca

Local Governments Say "The Timing Is Right For Reparations Discussions" – balleralert.com

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Since the murder of George Floyd, racism, police brutality, and the long history of inequality in our country, have been under a microscope like never before. People can no longer ignore what 400 years of oppression has done to the black community, and cities say its time for reparations. USA Today reports that local officials in cities like Providence, RI, and Asheville, NC are now proposing different measures to address these injustices, ranging from resolutions to support studying reparations and proposals funneling more funds into programs for Black communities.

Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza, says that recent nationwide unrest finally brought the conversation to the forefront. Its always the right time to do the right thing. There is an appetite and an urgency to make the most of this moment and make sure there is real structural change that comes out of it.

Although the idea of reparations does have support like never before, there will always be opposition, and much of the debate is over what the reparations would actually look like. There has been talk about allocating funds to programs that would uplift Black communities and even some discussion about cash payments, though thats where most of the opposition lies. Some Senate Republicans argue that Americans alive today shouldnt have to pay the price for their ancestors choices, even though black Americans are still feeling the effects of the generational trauma inflicted on theirs. Its also important to note that no country has ever given monetary compensation to African descendants of the transatlantic slave trade. GOP members sayit would be too costly and point out that determining eligibility would pose a large problem.

Despite what the government says at a federal level, local officials like Providence Councilwoman, Nirva LaFortune, and other community leaders are promising residentstruth, reconciliation and municipal reparations. Asheville officials have also promised reparations to its Black residents. Last week the city council voted in favor of investing inmarginalized Black communities.City Councilwoman Sheneika Smith said the city is discussing how to tackle things like increasing minority homeownership and access to other affordable housing; increasing minority business ownership and career opportunities; closing the gap in healthcare, education, employment, and pay; and reforming the criminal justice system. They hope to create paths to generational wealth for Black people and will map out how to fund these efforts over the next year. California and North Carolina are also working on following suit.

Elorza notes that cities cant bear the entire burden of paying reparations to its residents and called for all levels of government to step up to the plate. William Darity, an expert and professor at Duke University,told USA Today that he believes slavery is the Federal governments doingso it should be up to them to right their wrongs. The federal government is the culpable party, and as a matter of principle, should foot the bill for reparations, but the federal government also is the only entity that can meet the bill,he said. Darity suggests using reparations as a way to eliminate the racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites. He estimates this would cost anywhere from $10 to $12 trillion.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said he doesnt think reparations is a good idea, additionally, Donald Trump has said he doesnt see it happening. Newsweek reported Thursday that during a virtual town hall with the NAACP, Joe Biden said hes in favor of reparations if studies show that cash payments are, in fact, a viable option. Regardless of what happens in November, though, newly elected President of the U. S. Conference of Mayors, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, says, The timing is right for reparations discussions.

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Local Governments Say "The Timing Is Right For Reparations Discussions" - balleralert.com