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Asking the Clergy: What is your favorite religious podcast? – Newsday

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

During the pandemic, podcasts have offered a spiritual lifeline to those unable to attend religious services. This weeks clergy discuss podcasts that engage them in current religious issues, assist them in scriptural studies or inspire their ministry.

The Rev. Marie A. Tatro

Vicar for Community Justice Ministry, Episcopal Diocese of Long Island

Ive recently spoken as a guest on two faith-based podcasts: Blessed Are the Feminists (blessedarethefeminists.com), which examines religious traditions and spiritual communities through a feminist lens, andFrankly: Faith and Culture in Brooklyn, which explores the intersection of faith and culture, and is hosted by the Rev. Canon John Denaro, rector of St. Ann & the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights. The latter was a half-hour conversation about my ministry in the Episcopal Diocese, generally, and how we were coping and serving others during the peak of the pandemic.

Last year I listened to a 10-part series titled Heavens Gate, which tells the story behind the doomsday cult near San Diego where in 1997, 39 people committed mass suicide. The host, Glynn Washington, tells this tale with great insight and suspense, and partway into the series, you find out why: He himself was raised in an extreme Christian community that he left behindand that he later realized was a cult. Washington currently hosts Snap Judgment (snapjudgment.org), which is not a religious podcast, per se, but covers areas of culture that inevitably include religion.

The Rev. Henrietta Scott Fullard

Presiding elder (retired), Long Island District, African Methodist Episcopal Churches

Podcasts help us to comprehend the written language and interpretation of the Word of God in the Bible, often from new perspectives and in new translations. I listen to podcasts that offer comprehensive Bible studies that probe the depths of the Word of God. The podcasts help me absorb the content of the Bible as heard from a multitude of believers.

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One that I return to regularly is the weekly Bible Study Podcast (thebiblestudypodcast.com) by Chris Christensen, who looks at Scripture from a Christian point of view. The podcast confirms my understanding of the application of the Word of God. For instance, in Episode 667, posted early this month, Christensen discusses the Death of Sarah in the Book of Genesis. He says that among the lessons to be drawn from this passage is that, in the middle of the pandemic, The people in our lives, as Sarah was in Abrahams life, are precious and irreplaceable.

Such podcasts help us to understand the presence of God in our lives. They enhance Bible study in a way that helps us live up to Gods expectations of us.

Rabbi Chaim Grossbaum

Director and spiritual leader, Village Chabad, Stony Brook

Happiness and tranquility are in reach when life is lived within the guidelines of the instruction book the Bible. Thus my favorite podcasts are Bible-based.

I especially like the podcasts by Rabbi Simon Jacobson of The Meaningful Life Center (meaningfullife.com),a spiritual health center in Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Jacobson, the author of a bestselling book, Toward a Meaningful Life: The Wisdom of The Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson (William Morrow, 1995), is posting Spiritual Antidotes on the centers website to counter the negative impact of the coronavirus. He begins one such podcast with the words, Every one of us is blessed with unique talents and skills, then goes on to talk about developing ones own uniqueness.

What I like about Meaningful Lifes podcasts is that they help reset our thinking, the way a chiropractor might adjust ones spine to its proper equilibrium. They help us to find the perfect balance that God has created in the world and our place within it. Listen in and begin your journey in finding your real self, creating your personal mission statement and guiding life to the place youd like it to be.

DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS youd like Newsday to ask the clergy? Email them to LILife@newsday.com.

Asking the Clergy: What is your favorite religious podcast? - Newsday

Book chronicles one woman’s pursuit of perfectionism and awakening in spite of her trials with addiction and depression – GlobeNewswire

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

GALVESTONE, Texas, July 22, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- I craved to be perfect, but life kept getting in the way. As events unfurled that challenged my faade of perfection, I broke apart. Then all the secrets I hid from myself and others spilled out across the floor. I was not good enough, smart enough, and successful enough to be a flawless person, Nancy Shelton reveals.

In Imperfectly Perfect: Life Stories about Awakening (published by Balboa Press), Shelton shares life stories that chronicles her pursuit of perfectionism and awakening in spite of her trials with addiction and depression. She falls down over and over and gets up again and again. She struggles with her brokenness while having mystical experiences. Her insights about self-acceptance and self-love provide a guide for living life on lifes terms and waking up to a higher consciousness.

Everyone suffers through life experiences and many, like myself, crave a connection to something bigger than myself, call it God, nature, Higher Power, or whatever spiritual that is a part of their culture, Shelton says. If you are dedicated to following spirituality as a guiding force no matter what life throws at you, the stories illuminate the struggle of one person who has followed her own path.

Imperfectly Perfect: Life Stories about Awakening shares stories from a perspective of compassion, forgiveness, and understanding, and with a dash of humor. When I shared my stories, it was necessary for me to be honest, and I was blessed with new ways of seeing my world. Culling out old ways of being and applying new perspectives to my life took a lot of practice. I found that life is a process of becoming my authentic self, Shelton adds. For more details about the book, please visit https://www.amazon.com/Imperfectly-Perfect-Stories-about-Awakening/dp/1982243600.

Imperfectly Perfect: Life Stories about Awakening

By Nancy Shelton

Softcover | 5.5 x 8.5in | 130 pages | ISBN 9781982243609

E-Book | 130 pages | ISBN 9781982243616

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Nancy Shelton has been certified as an alcoholism and drug counselor, life coach, high school English teacher, organizational trainer and consultant, rebirth facilitator, and reiki master. With a masters degree in crafting theater scripts, she brings creativity to her writing balancing candor, quirkiness and spiritual wisdom. She is a remarkable storyteller who will not disappoint.

Balboa Press, a division of Hay House, Inc. a leading provider in publishing products that specialize in self-help and the mind, body, and spirit genres. Through an alliance with the worldwide self-publishing leader Author Solutions, LLC, authors benefit from the leadership of Hay House Publishing and the speed-to-market advantages of the self-publishing model. For more information, visit balboapress.com. To start publishing your book with Balboa Press, call 877-407-4847 today.

‘What in the hell are we doing?’ Senate Republicans clash over coronavirus relief – NBC News

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

WASHINGTON Beset by internal divisions and clashes with the Trump administration, Senate Republicans downplayed the prospects Tuesday of enacting new coronavirus relief before key programs like boosted unemployment payments expire.

Republicans continue to negotiate among themselves but broadly oppose an extension beyond this week of the $600 weekly federal jobless benefit that millions of Americans are collecting. Complicating Republican talks is the White House, which is trying to cut funding for COVID-19 testing and demanding a payroll tax cut that many in the president's party oppose.

Talks with Democrats, who will be needed to pass the bill, haven't even begun.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

At a meeting of Republican lawmakers Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas cast doubt on the spending talks, asking, "What the hell are we doing?" according to a Republican source familiar with his remarks.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was more optimistic about negotiations, and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows were at the meeting.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said any bill must include enhanced liability protections, but he offered few other details of what he will propose.

"I'm going to introduce a bill in the next few days that is a starting place that enjoys fairly significant support among Republican senators, probably not everyone," he said after the meeting.

McConnell said Senate Republicans "overwhelmingly" oppose extending the $600-a-week unemployment supplement because they believe it's a deterrent to work, but he said there's "room for negotiation."

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said after a caucus meeting Tuesday, "There's a lot of disagreement amongst the members."

In May, the Democratic-led House passed a $3.4 trillion bill that would extend the emergency jobless benefits through January; approve additional aid for families, workers and businesses; and tack on other progressive provisions. Senate Republicans have roundly rejected the bill but are struggling to unite around an alternative that would satisfy competing priorities within their party.

"We haven't reached a conclusion on anything," said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.

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McConnell said that after he gets Republicans on board, his proposal will be used as a starting point for bipartisan discussion. He needs at least seven Democratic votes.

"Clearly, they have the ability to prevent us from passing anything, and that's been their mindset lately," he said. "And so I think it's pretty clear they're not irrelevant. We do have to talk to them."

Asked later whether he expects a bill to pass by end of next week, McConnell laughed and said "no," according to a pool report.

After the meeting, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said that Senate Republicans came to "some recognition that we need to do something more" with jobless benefits but that there was no agreement on what.

One of Trump's top priorities, the payroll tax cut, came up "only briefly" and without details, Cassidy said. Funding for state and local governments is "still a little bit of a work in progress," he said.

There were no discussions of how much money to put into the Paycheck Protection Program, the loan program for small businesses. Senators and administration officials didn't discuss the parameters of another round of stimulus payments.

"It was all very 60,000-foot," Cassidy said.

Divisions are widening between Senate Republicans, some of whom are pushing against new spending and others of whom eager to return home next month with assistance for their ailing states.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who faces a tough re-election battle, said there are "far higher priorities" than a payroll tax cut, which she called "extremely expensive" with limited impact.

"It would only benefit individuals who are working. It also would displace other spending that I think is far more important," Collins told reporters Tuesday.

McConnell also cast doubt on the idea.

"There are some differences of opinion on the question of the payroll tax cut and whether that's the best way to go. And so we're still in discussion with the administration on that," he said.

Even Pat Toomey, R-Pa., one of the most pro-business, anti-tax members of the Senate, is undecided on whether to support a payroll tax cut, he told NBC News on Tuesday.

McConnell said his one red line is that the bill must include liability protections for businesses, schools, hospitals and other entities as long as they're not "grossly negligent" upon reopening.

A headache for party leaders is that some are dead set against new federal spending.

"I just came out of a Republican caucus meeting that could be sort of the Bernie bros progressive caucus," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., comparing GOP senators to supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. "I'm alarmed that we're talking about spending another trillion dollars we don't have."

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he's "not supporting any new spending right now," and he suggested that Congress instead repurpose funds that have already been authorized.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said that McConnell wants to limit the cost of a new bill to $1 trillion and that some senators said that would constrain their policy options.

The Republican divisions are likely to strengthen the negotiating hand of Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., because failing to act while the number of coronavirus cases is rising could be politically disastrous for Trump and his party heading into the election.

Cassidy said top administration officials are holding preliminary talks with Democrats.

"Mnuchin and Meadows are meeting with Pelosi and Schumer, I think, this afternoon," he said. "They said we're not negotiating, we're just kind of establishing the framework by which to proceed."

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'What in the hell are we doing?' Senate Republicans clash over coronavirus relief - NBC News

Traveling to The Bahamas: What You Need to Know – Caribbean Journal

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

The Bahamas, which reopened for tourism at the beginning of July, is urging travelers to the destination that there are several protocols they need to follow.

Crucially, all travelers to The Bahamas must present proof of a COVID-19 RT-PCR (swab) test taken no more than 10 days before their date of travel (children under 10 do not need a test).

All travelers also need to fill out an electronic health visa application prior to departure (you can find it here), which includes uploading the test results and filling out contact information.

Those applications can take up to 72 hours to process meaning you should fill them with enough lead time.

Once approved for a health visa, travelers will get a green code and must present that upon check-in and arrival to The Bahamas.

All travelers to The Bahamas need to wear face masks in any situation where it is necessary to enforce physical distancing guidelines such as navigating air and sea terminals, collecting luggage, the full duration of taxi rides and while waiting to be seated at dining establishments, the countrys Ministry of Tourism said.

For more, visit Bahamas Tourism.

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Traveling to The Bahamas: What You Need to Know - Caribbean Journal

Time to stop this unjust destruction of Bahamas family life – Bahamas Tribune

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

EDITOR, The Tribune

SO God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. Genesis 1 v27 NIV translation.

The season of Independence gives us many reasons to think about the meaning of citizenship. I join others, in standing proud, when I think of the historic and progressive strides made by Bahamians. These progressive strides do not extend to the provisions of the Bahamas Constitution, that in the grant of citizenship, still discriminate against women. In so doing, The Bahamas is a bird flying with one wing one that cannot achieve full flight, nor its full potential.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Bahamian married women who do not live and work in The Bahamas, because their husbands cannot get a job or cannot become citizens of The Bahamas. Marriages have broken up because of the stress that this discrimination places on families. We all know of families where one child in a family is a Bahamian, because he was born in The Bahamas (lets call him Sam) and another child (lets call him John), in the same family, of the same parents, is not Bahamian, because he was born in the United States. Maybe John was born there when his married Bahamian mother (lets call her Sue) was studying or while Sue was receiving medical attention.

If Sues married Bahamian brother (lets call him Mike) has children abroad, Mikes children are entitled to be registered as Bahamian citizens. Why should Mikes children be treated differently from Sues children? Why should Sam and not John be Bahamian? Both have the same parents. This discrimination causes stress and hardship in families. These unjust discriminatory provisions destroy family life. If we support family life, how can we allow this injustice to continue?

The Bahamas has held two referenda to remove this discrimination from our Constitution. Both referenda were defeated by citizens. Bahamians voted to uphold these discriminatory provisions of our Constitution. Books can be written about why this happened.

So what can we do? Our national response to COVID-19 has demonstrated that, when necessary, we can act immediately and cause beneficial transformation.

I endorse the suggestions of others who have stated that the government should table in Parliament, the legislation, now in circulation, that would, by law, allow for the following persons to obtain Bahamian citizenship: a husband of a Bahamian woman; a child, born abroad, to a married Bahamian woman; and, a child of a single Bahamian man. Even though the law would not remove the discriminatory provisions of the Constitution, it would remove the hardships that too many families now suffer. To those who say that a new government might bring forth laws to revoke these provisions, I say that, in my view, withdrawing these empowering laws would be highly unlikely. Lets see all members of Parliament united in promoting strong family life by removing this injustice and discrimination.

If, as in 1973, we want the world to mark the manner of our 21st century bearing, justice dictates that Bahamian women and men should have equal entitlement to citizenship for their children and spouses. We need Bahamian women and men, both created in Gods image, at the table, as equals. All Bahamians have an interest in nation building and good governance as we march forward, upward and onward together.

Standing on the shoulders of the noble and courageous suffragettes, like my grandmother, Georgiana K Symonette, Eugenia Lockhart, Mary Ingraham, Dame Bertha Isaacs, Dame Doris Johnson and others of their generation, let us urge the government to table in Parliament the legislation mentioned above. It is time to stop institutionalised destruction of family life. The time is now, for the government to take the just, progressive and bold step of tabling and passing that legislation. I commit my support. Do you?

ALLYSON MAYNARD-GIBSON

Nassau,

July 14, 2020.

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Time to stop this unjust destruction of Bahamas family life - Bahamas Tribune

South Korea could partner with UAE in future space missions – The National

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

The president of South Koreas space agency said he would welcome the chance to collaborate with the UAE in missions to Mars and the Moon.

Cheolho Lim, from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (Kari), said his country would benefit from the Emirates growing experience in the sector.

This week, the UAEs Hope probe took off from Japan's Tanegashima Space Centre en route to Mars to carry out a detailed study of the planet.

Mr Cheolho congratulated the Emirates on the successful launch and said he would encourage a partnership in space exploration between the two nations.

"I believe Korea can greatly benefit from the UAEs experience and accumulated knowledge in Mars, he told the UAEs state news agency, Wam.

"I hope that we share the experience [of Hope] and [its] scientific data, so we can open up a new chapter of our co-operation in space exploration.

South Korea is planning to launch a lunar orbiter to survey the Moon in July 2022.

In the past decade, Kari and the Emirates worked together in the development of Earth observation satellites.

The UAE has become the fifth country in the world to launch a Mars probe, Mr Cheolho said.

This means the UAE is one step ahead of Korea in terms of space exploration [and] I extend my heartfelt congratulations on the achievement.

I sincerely wish Hope probes safe arrival on Mars orbit and a successful completion of the mission.

Updated: July 22, 2020 05:05 PM

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South Korea could partner with UAE in future space missions - The National

Buzz Aldrin: In the 51 years since Apollo 11, we have learned many lessons | Opinion – Florida Today

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Buzz Aldrin, Your turn Published 11:24 a.m. ET July 22, 2020

If you live long enough, you see things come back around. New minds wrestle old problems.

Fifty-one years ago, Neil Armstrong and I walked on the moon thefirst humans to do so.Today, America is again headed for the moon and on to Mars. Americas new resolve is gratifying.There is a feeling of destiny to this moment.Having left prints on the moon, several thoughts sweep me.

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin waves as he is introduced to the crowd on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing Saturday, July 20, 2019, at the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy Space Center(Photo: Craig Bailey/FLORIDA TODAY)

First, as Apollo 11 illustrated, Americans can achieve anything they put their minds to. We are an exceptional nation not one or two of us, but all of us. Our national past offers us courage, confidence, and a bearing for the future. We are right to have the moonand Mars again in our sights.

Second, while the past is an invaluable guide, history never repeats exactly. The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs were driven by intense competition with our onetime adversary, the Soviet Union. We won that competition. Later missions were characterized by lunar exploration, advancing science, and international cooperation.

Third, America remains the undisputed leader in human space exploration. In the intervening five decades since Neil and I walked on the moon, no other nation has landed a man or woman on the moon. That said, leadership involves constant rethinking, a re-balancing of possibilities, and how best to gain worthy objectives.

Fourth, our new bipartisan commitment to putting a man and woman on the moon and humans on Mars will involve sustained, creative, honest leadership. As a nation, we must embrace risk, as space is a risky place. We will need mid-course corrections and willingness to make them. No risk, no reward. No accountability, no reliability.

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Finally, Americas exceptionalism, courage borne of achievement, historic leadership in space, and embrace of risk have practical implications. As never before, we must integrate public and private sector strengths, entertain greater international cooperationas after Apollo, and honestly reexamine our space architecture plans as they unfold.

The first two implications greater public-private coordination and international cooperation on a major issue might be made real by following President Eisenhowers Atoms for Peace example.

In a 1953 speech, President Eisenhower advanced the idea that nuclear technology what it promised and threatened might be better managed with international cooperation. From that speech grew the International Atomic Energy Agency and Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation, making the world safer.

By comparison, this is the right time to configure a public-private international alliance tying together leading sovereign space agencies and top private sector space exploration companies.

Official photo of the Apollo 11 prime crew. From left to right are NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong, commander; Michael Collins, Command Module pilot; and Buzz Aldrin, Lunar Module pilot.(Photo: NASA, NASA)

The Administration has taken a first step by suggesting the Artemis Accords, a treaty for peacefully exploring and managing the moon, but more should be done to assure a peaceful human space exploration. By sharing information up front, and throughout future human space exploration missions, big problems can be averted.

The third implication, honestly reexamining our space architecture, is on us. Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex placing gain above national interest. Today, we must be wary of a military-industrial-space complex. We need to constantly reevaluate costs and benefits, balance corporate contributions, includingpublic and private thinking,and ask: Is this the best way to get to the moon and Mars?

In short, 51 years after Neil and I walked on the moon, with Mike Collins in the command module and 600 million watching us,we have a new chance to reach outward and do great things. As America looks forward, we should maximize lessons from half a century to inform and inspirefuture human space exploration.

There is a feeling of destiny to this moment. Onward!

On July 20, 1969,Buzz Aldrinbecame one of the first two humans to set foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. He's 90 years old and lives in Brevard County.

Read or Share this story: https://www.floridatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/07/22/buzz-aldrin-51-years-since-apollo-11-we-have-learned-many-lessons/5486227002/

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Buzz Aldrin: In the 51 years since Apollo 11, we have learned many lessons | Opinion - Florida Today

Presidential Message on Space Exploration Day, 2020 – Whitehouse.gov

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Presidential Message on Space Exploration Day, 2020 Whitehouse.gov
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Presidential Message on Space Exploration Day, 2020 - Whitehouse.gov

Space exploration can pave the way for sustainability on Earth – The National

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Millions of kilometres away from Earth is an amber-coloured planet called Mars, which has sparked the curiosity of multiple generations. To some it is a sphere of hope, while to others it is a new land that humans could colonise one day. Pictures of slopes and an ice slab suggest Mars may still have a vital life source water. This has prompted one to ask whether the "Red Planet" could be the manifestation of what Earth might become, if we do not take care of our home.

Back in 1972, the late Sheikh Zayed was given a piece of the Moon by then US president Richard Nixon. Looking back at those pictures, which date to before the Apollo 17 space mission, and now, only a few decades later, seeing Emirati engineers taking part in an UAE-driven mission to Mars, shows what a giant leap forward this relatively young nation has taken. This has proven to be an even prouder moment with the project of a young Emirati student, Alia Al Mansoori, being tested at the International Space Agency.

We are building on the legacy of our Founding Father and continuing to realise his vision through the UAE Space Agency.

The vast potential of the global space industry, which currently stands at $350 billion and is projected to generate more than $1 trillion in revenue by 2040, has understandably captured the attention and interest of innovators and entrepreneurs in the Middle East. In fact, one of the worlds largest space insurance underwriting agencies is based right here in the UAE.

But the question remains, why should we invest in space exploration when we need to save our own planet from the impact of climate change? The answer is multi-pronged.

Technologies used in space give us a better understanding of the world we live in, and contribute to our scientific knowledge. They also help to prevent illegal poaching and over-fishing, and monitor endangered species.

Among the many companies sending satellites into orbit to prevent illicit trade, UnseenLabs, a space start-up based in France, uses electromagnetic technology and real-time data to track ships attempting to go undercover by shutting their identification systems.

We are depleting our fisheries, causing 90 per cent of fish stocks to be considered fully or over-exploited. Indeed, illegal fishing is a major issue, causing long-term ramifications for our oceans.

The Hope probe was placed inside thispayload fairing last week and was transferred to building where the rocket is kept. Courtesy:Shoma Watanbe

The launch pad is ready to receive the H-IIA rocket, which will deliver the Hope probe to space. It will take 30 to 40-minutes for the rocket to be transported to the launch pad. Courtesy:Yoshiaki Sakita

The payload fairing, which is holding the spacecraft, has been mounted on top of the rocket. The structure is meant to protect the probe fromdynamic pressure and aerodynamic heating it experiences during its launch into an atmosphere. Courtesy:Shoma Watanbe

The probe was already fuelled with 800kgs of hydrogen for its seven-month-long journey to Mars. Courtesy: Emirates Mars Mission

The H-IIA rocket that will carry the Hope probe into space. Dubai Twitter account

All launch viewing events in Tanegashima have been suspended as part of the Covid-19 safety measures. Signs have been up in all of popular spots, asking the public to keep a 3km distance from the Tanegashima Space Centre on launch day. Courtesy:Yoshiaki Sakita

The most popular launch viewing site is the Rocket Hill. It is a five-minute drive from the main building of the Tangashima Space Centre and offers a clear view of the launch. It remains closed to the public. The National

The free bus tour and exhibition at the Tanegashima Space Centre has also been suspended in efforts to contain the Covid-19 spread. Signs were placed outside of the centre, alerting the public. Courtesy:Yoshiaki Sakita

Engineersat the launch site in Tanegashima island, Japan.Courtesy: Emirates Mars Mission

The completed Hope spacecraft. It will study the lower and upper atmosphere of Mars. Courtesy: Emirates Mars Mission

Satellites roam around our galaxy, providing essential services, particularly in the domain of telecoms and digital services. They are also providing us with pictures showing us how ecosystems are changing. This, in turn, is helping to monitor a wide spectrum of environmental indicators, from meteorological forecasting to investigating specific problems, such as "algae blooms" a rapid accumulation of algae in water systems that affect marine life, carbon emissions and even water levels.

Over the next decade, the number of satellites in our galaxy is projected to increase fourfold. Companies paving the way in this sector include Elon Musks SpaceX, which has launched more than 60 satellites to date and aims to launch 12,000 by 2027, and Planet Labs, which has 120 active satellites orbiting and taking photographs of our planet.

We live in a data-driven world that is going to become even more important, with the rise of big data, data analytics and artificial intelligence. It is through orbiting space technologies that we are able to receive critical information essentially billions of data points which gives us the foresight to better deal with natural disasters and manage resources. That we can access this information is driven by community spirit, whereby much of what is being created is open-source.

As we introduce new technologies and continue on our journey of space exploration, I am hopeful that the world will collaborate on charting these new territories. We only have to look at the International Space Station to realise how much stronger we are when nations work together.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected every nation in many profound ways. It has especially created an unprecedented global education emergency. A recent report published by the UK-based humanitarian organisation Save the Children highlighted an alarming statistic: almost 10 million children may never go back to school.

In an increasingly connected world, mega-constellations orbiting our planet have the ability to provide high-speed internet access, thereby offering a viable solution to the learning deficit. As societies adapt to the concept of e-learning and online classrooms become the norm, the combination of affordable internet services and access to technology could be the missing link in resolving this issue.

In a world with finite resources, we can learn about the efficiency of materials used by the space sector to weather harsh conditions and threats, such as ultraviolet rays and X-rays from the Sun, solar wind particle radiation, thermal cycling, space particles and atomic oxygen.

A study published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change has warned that the Middle East could become uninhabitable due to the effects of extreme temperature rises. By using materials normally utilised in space, we can build things to last and also learn to repair goods rather than dispose of them.

Products used in space have a myriad of purposes and, therefore, I believe we should focus on building a circular economy here on Earth. Researcher Mark Blenner, for instance, is studying how human waste can be used to create aircraft parts.

I am given to understand that futuristic water conservation technologies have been developed from space tech. The worlds first recirculating shower-head system, which conserves up to 90 per cent of water and 80 per cent of energy, is one example. This piece of technology could come in handy in water-scarce regions. With the right levels of investment, there is little reason to believe that it cannot be scaled-up.

Years ago, I met Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Advanced Sciences and the woman leading the charge for the UAEs Hope Mars probe. During our meeting, I had the opportunity to lift Martian sand with a glove. It was a fascinating experience.

At the time, she came across as an ambitious and inspirational figure, worthy of being looked up to by other women. Today I am proud to see many others like her making their presence felt in traditionally male-dominated fields. Its worth pointing out that three out of the five top aerospace companies are now headed by women.

True to its name, the UAE's Mars mission is already offering us hope for a more sustainable world. Just as importantly, it will encourage and empower future generations regardless of gender to explore the unknown. Let us all work together to protect our planet, because this home is all we have.

Sheikha Shamma bint Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan is chief executive officer of Alliances for Global Sustainability

Updated: July 16, 2020 08:15 PM

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Space exploration can pave the way for sustainability on Earth - The National

Miners on the Moon | airspacemag.com – Air & Space Magazine

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

The moon is barren, but its not dry. In 2018, NASA announced scientists had found evidence of surface ice in the shadows of craters in the polar regions.

Those dark, frozen places beckon future explorers. Ice can be melted into water; water can produce hydrogen and oxygen; hydrogen and oxygen can be made into fuel for spacecraft venturing to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Im fond of saying that water is the oil of space, just like oil and petroleum products on Earth, says George Sowers, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Colorado School of Mines, who has 30 years of experience in the field of space transportation. You have diesel, you have various grades of gasoline, you can use it for creating plastics and all this other kind of stuff. In space, water can be used for all different kinds of propulsion demands, from low thrust to high thrust. It makes great radiation shielding. Its essential for life. You name it. I think the economy in space is going to run off of water.

Sowers isnt alone. A growing chorus of researchers, engineers, and entrepreneurs say the surest path to the final frontier is paved with ice harvested from the moon. The consensus is that an ice house on the moon feeding a space-based fuel depot can be set up without exotic, sci-fi equipmentmuch of the technology can be adapted from terrestrial analogs or is already in industrial use.

To be sure, the moon isnt a hospitable place for mining. A lot of its ice is in dark, cold places. And the initial tasks of confirming the precise locations of the water and then launching the mining equipment up and out of Earths gravity well are daunting. But the payoff, in the form of a self-sustaining space economy, would be tremendous.

One reason that Sowers is optimistic about the prospects for lunar mining is that he has crunched the numbers. If you had a lunar propellant available, at the prices I think that it can be offered for, then the cost to go from Earth to the lunar surface would be reduced by a factor of three, he says. And thats just by refueling en route. The cost to go from Earth to the Lunar Gatewaya proposed small spacecraft that would orbit the moon and serve as living quarters and a transportation hubwould be reduced by a factor of two. Sowers saves the best for last. The cost to come back from the moon, he says, would be reduced by a factor of 70.

If a company were to set up a lunar mining operation, after 10 years of operation, Sowers estimates, it would see returns of between 10 percent and 30 percent, depending on whether government agencies kick in some of the funding.

Id love to see commercial [players] kind of take the lead, with support from NASA as a customer, says Sowers. But the very first thing that has to happen is that we have to prove that theres really ice there in the quantities that we think it is, that we need it to be. The most likely places to go ice prospecting are the permanently shadowed regions at the north and south poles that never receive direct sunlight.

Because the moon tilts very little on its spin axis (1.54 degrees, compared to the Earths 23.5 degrees), its polar regions are bathed in near-continuous sunlight, except for deep depressions, such as the bottoms of craters. Between two and three billion years ago, ice began accumulating in those cold dark pits. Some of it arrived from water-rich asteroids and comets crashing into the lunar surface. Another likely source was volcanic ventsduring the earliest years of the moons formationthat spewed gases, including water vapor. And some of it is created when hydrogen particles in the solar wind react with oxygen bound in lunar rocks, forming molecules of hydroxide and water.

Over the millennia, meteors and comets continued to bombard the moon, smashing the ice and churning up the soil, so that ice near the lunar surface now exists in the form of tiny grains mixed with regolith and sand.

At least, thats the theory. What little we know for certain about the location of lunar ice is based on just two surveys. In 2009, NASAs Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) launched an impactor that slammed into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus crater near the moons south pole, kicking up a plume of debris that contained some 26 gallons of frozen water. NASA says the missions data revealed that there is perhaps as much as hundreds of millions of tons of frozen water on the moon, enough to make it an effective oasis for future explorers. Then, in 2018, a team of researchers examined data gathered by a NASA instrument that flew aboard Indias Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft and found evidencebased, in part, on the distinct reflective properties of water and iceof frozen patches of water scattered across the surface of both polar regions.

Ice hunters will need follow-up missions to confirm how much water ice is on the moon and where its located. Unfortunately, satellite data wont do the trick, says Kevin Cannon, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Central Florida who has written a paper for non-academics titled Ice Prospecting: Your Guide to Getting Rich on the Moon. Instruments aboard a satellite that rely on ultraviolet, visible, or near-infrared light to identify ice deposits can sense to only microns or millimeters. You really dont know if its just a very thin frost or if it extends deeper, says Cannon. On the other hand, he adds, orbiting instruments that could potentially detect ice deposits beneath the lunar surfacesuch as radar and neutron spectroscopyhave much lower spatial resolutions, so you cant really constrain where exactly on the surface the ice is.

If scientists and entrepreneurs want to get serious about water prospecting, theyre going to need boots on the groundor, more precisely, wheels on the ground. After the LCROSS data revealed the presence of ice in 2009, NASA began planning a mission to send a rover therewith mining instruments. By 2014, the Resource Prospector mission had a budget for instruments and launch, and NASA invited Japan and Canada to contribute the landing vehicle and the rover. Over the next few years, support for the Resource Prospector waned as the agency focused on Mars, and Japan and Canada withdrew. With the Trump administrations push to return to the moon, in 2019 Resource Prospector became a new mission, VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover). NASA is building the rover and instruments; transportation and landing craft are to be supplied by one of the companies selected for the new Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, begun in 2018 to encourage private investment in moon exploration. VIPER is scheduled to land at the lunar south pole in late 2023. The golf-cart-size rover will survey and map ice deposits in the area, hopefully providing researchers with a larger pattern of ice distribution.

One of VIPERs instruments, originally developed for the Resource Prospector, is a one-meter drill called TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain). Building a drill capable of penetrating beneath the moons surface while operating in subzero temperatures has not been an easy task. Lunar regolith is dense and unforgiving. Over the few billion years it became extremely compacted through meteorite impacts, which create shock waves, explains Kris Zacny, the vice president of exploration technologies and principal investigator of VIPERs drill at Honeybee Robotics. And, if you add ice, it can be harder than concrete.

The biggest problem Apollo encountered during drilling was not actually drilling but pulling the drill out of the hole, Zacny says. Regolith is so compacted that it jammed the auger flutes. In fact, during the Apollo 15 mission, Commander David Scott sprained his shoulder while prying out the Apollo Lunar Surface Drill to obtain a core sample.

Machinistswhen drilling a hole in metalhave the same problem; thats why they developed so-called pecking, says Zacny. Peck drilling involves plunging the drill bit into metal some short distance and then retracting it to the surface to remove chips.

TRIDENT will do the same, drilling down 10 centimeters then retracting to bring back bites of regolith to the surface for study before drilling into the next 10 centimeters. Engineers say this approach has multiple advantages. For starters, since each sample comes from a known depth interval, the subsurface stratigraphy can be more easily preserved and studied. Also, the drill has time to cool off between bites, helping to ensure that the drill doesnt get so hot that it melts ice samples before they can be extracted.

On VIPER, the entire sampling system has been significantly simplified. We are no longer delivering samples to instruments (as is done on Curiosity, for example), but instead we are placing regolith on the surface, says Zacny. The drill has a spout through which the regolith gravity-flows onto the surface forming a cone. The side of the cone is viewed by the MSolo Mass Spectrometer and NIRVSS Infrared Spectrometer. These two instruments provide volatile and mineralogical data.

Since VIPER will spend a lot of time in permanently shadowed regions, it wont be able to rely on solar energy and will have enough power for only 100 days. Future options for prospecting missions might instead use the same technology that generates electricity for NASA deep-space probes that are too far from the sun to generate solar powerfor instance, a rover fitted with a rechargeable battery and a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, which provides electrical power by using heat from the natural radioactive decay of plutonium-238.

Cannon, though, doesnt think that drilling alone will provide the necessary information. Instead, he advocates digging a trench. The trouble with a drill is that, if you drill a hole, how representative are those results in three dimensions? he says. With a trench, youre getting that three-dimensional information that I think is really whats missing so far from our knowledge of the ice.

And, yes, NASA has been developing a rover capable of that kind of work. The Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR) is being designed to dig and haul soil. While most rovers are mobile science labs carrying sensitive instruments, NASA describes RASSOR as its blue-collar robot because it does the hard labor.

RASSOR will excavate regolith with two counter-rotating bucket drums fitted with toothy digging scoops, each capable of holding 60 kilograms of soil. The barrels help solve a conundrum for NASA engineers. When you push a shovel into dirt on Earth, you remain on the ground since your weight acts as a counterforce. But thats trickier to pull off when excavating in lower gravity, especially since NASA wants the robot to be small and light enough to fly on a rocket from Earth. The rotating bucket drums solve that problem in a couple of ways. First, instead of pushing into the ground, the robot excavates a shallow trench as it moves along the ground. Also, since the two bucket drums are simultaneously rotating in opposite directions, each cancels out the digging force of the other. The technical term for all of this is a near-zero horizontal and minimal vertical net reaction force, and the technique keeps the robot on the surface even in low gravity.

Each pass of the RASSOR would excavate the top five centimeters of surface regolith. And while it can help search for ice as deep as one meter by passing over the same trench repeatedly, mining operations wouldnt necessarily have to burrow very far down, at least at first.

Instead, Sowers says, it would be best to begin by harvesting the ice that is most accessibleon the lunar surface. That ice is the equivalent of gold nuggets in the streams of Colorado, Sowers says. The first people in the Gold Rush came out, and they could pick nuggets up out of the streams. After a while, theyd run out of nuggets and theyd look back upstream for where the nuggets came from, and then theyd start finding the veins. Likewise, the surface ice is the first thing you do because its cheap and you can get product out that you can sell without breaking the bank on capital investment. Then later, he says, as the mining operation expands, you can dig for deeper ice deposits.

The simplest methodwhat Sowers calls the brute force approachwould be to dig up the surface regolith and extract the water by heating it in an oven. None of thats exotic technology. You could do that in your backyard with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, he quips.

While that would be the simplest method, it would be costly since excavation equipment is on the bulky side. (While the RASSOR might be good for prospecting, it cant haul enough for full-scale mining.) If we can get the ice out without digging up the dirt, our numbers show we can save around 50 percent on the mass, says Sowers. Thats significant because mass is dollars, especially in space.

Instead of digging, Sowers has proposed a process called thermal mining and has a NASA grant to develop it. Why dig up the ice when sunlight is available? Its much more cost effective to use mirrors to redirect that sunlight onto the surface of the permanently shadowed regions. By placing a dome over the area that is being heated, you can trap the vapor then collect it for further processing. If we can make that work, then you actually have a significant amount of cost savings, and that definitely helps in making it affordable and closing the business case, says Sowers.

If a mining operation were to also use conductive rods placed in the lunar soil, the heat from the sun could melt ice as deep as 1.5 meters. Any effort to go down farther would require excavation equipment. But by that time, the miners would have built an outpost with all the necessary infrastructure, including landing and launch pads, a chemical-processing plant that turns the water into propellant, and a power source. Once youve depleted the surface ice, you come in with a few additional machines at pretty low marginal costs, and you are still leveraging that investment you made in all that other infrastructure, says Sowers.

Another possible approach to thermal mining is being developed by Joel Sercel, a 14-year veteran of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory and CEO of Trans Astronautica Corporation, which is dedicated to accelerating the process of human space exploration. Sercel and his partnersincluding Honeybee Robotics and Jeff Bezos Blue Originhave received phase two funding from NASAs Innovative Advanced Concepts program to develop plans for a lunar mining outpost that would include robotic rovers, called Beetles, which extract water through a patent-pending process called radiant gas dynamic (RGD) mining, which uses a combination of radio-frequency heaters, microwave, and infrared radiation to heat permafrost and other types of ice deposits.

According to Sercel, a fleet of Beetles would each traverse to a likely spot and lower a dome measuring five meters in diameter over an area of lunar regolith. Water ice would be extracted by means of radio-frequency heaterssimilar to those used on Earth to vaporize and remove chemicals from contaminated soil. Bombardment by microwaves would provide more focused heating while infrared radiation would heat the surface of the moon so that the water just doesnt re-condense there as the ice is melted, says Sercel.

The mining rovers would be part of a larger, self-sustaining Lunar Polar Mining Outpost in an ice-rich region of the lunar north pole that Sercel has dubbed New Mesopotamia, since he sees it as the moons equivalent of the Fertile Crescent on Earth. Power would be provided by towers a kilometer tall, called Sun Flowers, with their feet of solar arrays on the dark permafrost and their lightweight reflector heads in the sun. Since the nights there last only 100 hours per year, the towers would capture sunlight 97 percent of the year.

The Beetles would drop off the harvested water at the base, where some of it would be purified and set aside as drinking water for the astronauts managing the mining site, and some of it would be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to provide both air and propellant. The robotic rovers would run on water fuel cells, so they would, in effect, be mining their own power sources. Fuel cells could also be used to power the base during the periodic blackouts throughout the year.

Both Sercel and Sowers see the development of fuel depots on the moon as an essential first step to Mars or beyond. In fact, wherever we go in the solar system, experts agree that we will first need to make space exploration sustainable. And that will begin with a deceptively simple-sounding task: Just add water.

Companies mining lunar ice confront a dilemma: An ideal place to extract ice is at the bottom of deep craters shrouded in perpetual darkness. But that darkness also deprives them of easy access to sunlight for solar power. Trans Astronautica CEO Joel Sercels solution is an array of towerseach a kilometer tallcalled Sun Flowers to power the outposts facilities. Their feetwhich are solar arrays that sit on the dark permafrostare bathed in sunlight reflected from lightweight disk-shaped heads high above in the sun. Robotic mining rovers, called Beetles, would run on water fuel cells.

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Miners on the Moon | airspacemag.com - Air & Space Magazine

Moon May Be 85 Million Years Younger than Thought | Planetary Science, Space Exploration – Sci-News.com

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Earths only natural satellite formed 4.425 billion years ago around 85 million years later than previous estimates, according to a new modeling study by researchers from the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Technische Universitt Berlin and the Institut fr Planetologie at the University of Mnster.

When the Moon formed into a sphere approximately 1,700 km in radius 4.425 billion years ago, its interior heated up considerably due to the energy released when it accreted. The rock melted and an ocean of magma, possibly more than 1,000 km deep, formed. Later, light rocks crystallized, which rose to the surface and formed a first crust on the Moon. This crust insulated the Moon from space, and the magma ocean beneath it cooled down slowly. Around 200 million years would pass before the Moon completely solidified. Image credit: NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center.

According to the giant impact hypothesis, the Moon was created out of the debris left over from a catastrophic collision between the proto-Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet called Theia.

This collision produced a lunar magma ocean and initiated the last event of core segregation on Earth. However, the timing of these events remains uncertain.

The results of our latest modeling suggest that the young Earth was hit by a protoplanet some 140 million years after the birth of the Solar System 4.567 billion years ago, said lead author Dr. Maxime Maurice, a researcher at the DLR and the Technische Universitt Berlin.

According to our calculations, this happened 4.425 billion years ago with an uncertainty of 25 million years and the Moon was born.

The Moon was formed in a short time, probably in just a few thousand years, added co-author Dr. Doris Breuer, head of the Planetary Physics Department at the DLR Institute of Planetary Research.

The scientists determined when the Moon was formed using a new, indirect method.

Our calculations show that this most likely happened at the very end of Earths formation, said co-author Dr. Sabrina Schwinger, also from the DLR.

The lunar magma ocean quickly began to solidify and formed a crust of floating, lightweight crystals at the surface its interface with the cold space.

But under this insulating crust, which slowed down the further cooling and solidification of the magma ocean, the Moon remained molten for a long time.

Until now, scientists were unable to determine how long it took for the magma ocean to crystallize completely, which is why they could not conclude when the Moon originally formed.

To calculate the lifetime of the Moons magma ocean, the authors used a new computer model, which for the first time comprehensively considered the processes involved in the solidification of the magma.

The results from the model show that the Moons magma ocean was long-lived and took almost 200 million years to completely solidify into mantle rock, Dr. Maurice said.

The time scale is much longer than calculated in previous studies, said co-author Dr. Nicola Tosi, also from the DLR.

Older models gave a solidification period of only 35 million years.

To determine the age of the Moon, the team calculated how the composition of the magnesium- and iron-rich silicate minerals that formed during the solidification of the magma ocean changed over time.

The researchers discovered a drastic change in the composition of the remaining magma ocean as solidification progressed.

This finding is significant because it allowed them to link the formation of different types of rock on the Moon to a certain stage in the evolution of its magma ocean.

By comparing the measured composition of the Moons rocks with the predicted composition of the magma ocean from our model, we were able to trace the evolution of the ocean back to its starting point, the time at which the Moon was formed, Dr. Schwinger said.

The results show that the Moon was formed 4.425 billion years ago.

This age is in remarkable agreement with an age previously determined for the formation of Earths metallic core with the uranium-lead method, the point at which the formation of the Earth was completed.

This is the first time that the age of the Moon can be directly linked to an event that occurred at the very end of the Earths formation, namely the formation of the core, said senior author Dr. Thorsten Kleine, a researcher in the Institut fr Planetologie at the University of Mnster.

The results were published in the journal Science Advances.

_____

M. Maurice et al. 2020. A long-lived magma ocean on a young Moon. Science Advances 6 (28): eaba8949; doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba8949

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Moon May Be 85 Million Years Younger than Thought | Planetary Science, Space Exploration - Sci-News.com

Global Earth Observation Satellite Market Insights Report 2020 with COVID-19 Pandemic Analysis & Future Growth Analysis by 2026 OHB SE, Boeing…

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Earth Observation Satellite: Regional and Global Market Opportunities Key Competitors, COVID-19 Impact Analysis, Industry Segments, and Strategic Analysis, 2020-2026

The market study is primarily based on primary and secondary data collected through a systematic research approach. The research approach is defined by expert market analysts in line with business consultants and international research standards. Economic, political, and environmental regulations for the Earth Observation Satellite market are examined to draw the conclusion on the macroeconomic business environment. The market study also emphasizes on Industry progress in terms of technology, product distribution, product development, and raw material sourcing. The industry attractiveness analysis for different products and applications is explained with appropriate examples. Primary activities and support activities involved in the Earth Observation Satellite market are discussed to get a comprehensive outlook on the industry value chain. Major strategic decisions and future business plans of key industry participants are discussed in this market study to interpret Earth Observation Satellite industry competition in the coming years.This is the latest report covering the current impact of COVID-19 on the market.

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Key market players across the global Earth Observation Satellite market include OHB SE, Boeing Defense Space & Security, JSC Information Satellite Systems, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Space Systems/Loral, Thales Alenia Space, Space Exploration Technologies etc. The high profile companies in the Earth Observation Satellite market are dedicated to product improvement, value-added production, advanced manufacturing facilities and premium product offerings in order to appeal the business on an international level that exhibits the potentials customer base. The market also encompasses international brands functioning through a robust distribution network across diversified markets.

Segment & Regional Analysis

This market study fragments the global market for Earth Observation Satellite based on key product types, applications, and regions. The global market for Earth Observation Satellite has been divided based on product type as Altitudes below 500-600 kilometers, Altitudes above 600 kilometers. Based on the application/end-user, the Earth Observation Satellite market is categorized as Infrastructure, Environment Monitoring, Energy, Natural Resources Monitoring, Maritime, Disaster Management, Others. The Earth Observation Satellite market study examines the market based on key geographies such as Asia Pacific, North America, The Middle East and Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

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The present study also provides competitive analysis in terms of various parameters such as direct competition, indirect competition, strengths and weaknesses of major competitors, entry barriers, and opportunity windows. The market study by application includes the analysis of the availability of the total customer base and potential customers across untapped markets. For value chain investigation of the Earth Observation Satellite market covers upstream suppliers of raw materials, equipment, downstream marketing channels, client survey, and buyers segments. Market proposals and development trends, which more precisely contain valuable facts and statistics on Earth Observation Satellite key types and applications, key market regions and consumption level, key worldwide distributors, contact information for these upstream and downstream participants.

Competitive Analysis

It includes detailed summaries of leading market performers, unique business model analysis, and examination of their latest developments. The data is extracted over primary interviews with top business executives in addition to analysis of company published annual reports. The market study also delivers a wide-ranging analysis of key tactics employed by major Earth Observation Satellite companies and their financial investigation for different geographical regions.

Please Visit the Earth Observation Satellite Market Report at https://www.syndicatemarketresearch.com/market-analysis/earth-observation-satellite-market.html

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1. Market Value and Volume Size for Historical and Forecast Period2. Market Growth Trends for Forecast Period3. Y-O-Y (Year On Year) Growth Rate for Various Market Segments4. Market Entry Barriers, Opportunities, Possible Threats, and Alternatives5. Qualitative Market Analysis through various tools such as Porters Five Forces Model, SWOT Analysis, and PESTLE Analysis

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Global Earth Observation Satellite Market Insights Report 2020 with COVID-19 Pandemic Analysis & Future Growth Analysis by 2026 OHB SE, Boeing...

Indian firms must pay 18% GST to launch satellites on ISROs rockets, but foreign firms exempted, complain experts – Zee News

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Chennai: While the Centre is working towards allowing end-to-end private participation in the countrys space sector, experts point out that Indias legal and policy hurdles are a serious hindrance. An Indian satellite-maker must pay 18 per cent GST to launch satellites on ISROs rockets, whereas a foreign customer can do the same without paying any GST," a panellist said during an online discussion on Unlocking Indias Private Space Sector: Legal and Policy Challenges organized by the NALSAR University of Law.

"The launch services provided to them (foreign firms) qualify as export of service which are exempt from the levy of GST. So it is cheaper for an Indian-origin company to register their business in a foreign country and launch using ISRO rockets as a foreign customer, said the panellist.

In his keynote address, Dr AS Kiran Kumar, former Chairman, ISRO stated that Indias requirements from space technology are rapidly increasing, hence necessitating a proportional scale-up in capacity. While he agreed that ISRO had laid the foundation in space technology for the country, the future needs must also be catered to.

They include energy requirements, space-tourism, space-exploration/exploitation, most of which gained more prominence after space was recognized as the fourth frontier. Governments want to reduce their focus in business and focus more on governance and thats why private players are being invited. However, the government needs to convince itself on how industry participation can be made more open, less risk-prone and more profitable, said Dr Kiran Kumar.

Even when Indias private firms have certain manufacturing capacity, it won't be easy for any of them to reap benefits from the international market. A case in point is that there are hundreds of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) in India who supply components to ISRO.

In many cases, ISRO also happens to be the biggest customer of these firms. But these very same firms cannot sell their products in the global market, as they dont have the Intellectual Property rights for what they manufacture. They only provide manufacturing support. For selling in the global market, they need their own independent design and products, said Narayan Prasad, Co-founder and Chief Operations Officer at Satsearch. He added that there was ambiguity in the term industry, as it could refer to a two-individual company or a firm with 5000 employees.

On the ease-of-doing-business in Indias space sector, Prasad said, Even if satellites are made here in India it is too expensive to launch them on ISRO rockets as we are required to pay 18% GST. Alternatively, it is easier, cheaper to register the same company as a foreign entity for tax exemption(GST in this case) and launch using ISRO rockets via the export of service route.

Adding to the ease-of-doing-business woes are the complex formalities and lack of clarity in even seeking approvals for various space-related business activities. Legal consultants working in the field say that is a serious need for single-window clearance. This can be made possible only if and when the regulatory agencies work with private entities to understand their grievances.

A simple query on whether or not a frequency range is available for satellite operations requires us to look into multiple policies including the National Frequency Allocation Plan, 2018. Even after such detailed inquiry, we are only able to conclude what frequency range is not yet auctioned to the private sector, rather than finding a definitive answer. When policies are silent on what parameters will be considered while judging applications seeking licenses for space activities, it makes it difficult for private space companies to attract investors and ensure a sustainable business model, said Ashok GV, Partner, Factum Law. He emphasized on the need for freedom of commerce and business promotion.

Another crucial aspect of space law and policy involves liability, particularly about who/which entity undertakes the liability(financial) in case of a mishap. What can be defined as a mishap and which would be the agency looking into these issues? In several Western countries with an evolved private space industry, there is a cap on liability and the financial damages that need to be paid. In India, there is no cap on the financial liability and the law also mentions 1-3 years of imprisonment with payment of a fine. So how does this instil confidence in a private player who wants to enter the space industry in India? Poorvi Kantroo, Doctoral Candidate, Centre for AeroSpace & Defence Laws NALSAR University pointed out.

Indias Space Activities Bill, is a laudable initiative but has much ground to cover. Specific areas relevant to commerce such as licensing criterion for space activities are left open-ended for further rules, regulations and guidelines.

Furthermore, in the past, there have been instances where private companies(one American and another Indian) have launched satellites into space through foreign launch service providers when their satellites lacked domestic clearances. While the International Telecommunication Union(ITU) regulations require the responsible state, in which such private sector is domiciled, to notify all domestically cleared satellite missions to the ITU, the Indian bill does not impose upon launch service providers including ISRO to verify such notification at the ITU level before offering launch services to a foreign customer. Such simple omissions in the bill could possibly cause immense complications.

It has the potential to enable private enterprises to avoid complying with critical international regulations designed to mitigate space debris and improve space situational awareness. So from the point of view of both national interests and the interests of the industry, the Space Activities Bill must be revamped to ensure the needs of the present and future generation of space activities and entrepreneurs.

Thus, it becomes imperative for the relevant government agencies to henceforth work with stakeholders from the private sector while formulating laws & policies in the Space sector, which holds immense potential and significance for India and the world in the coming times.

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Indian firms must pay 18% GST to launch satellites on ISROs rockets, but foreign firms exempted, complain experts - Zee News

Polish LGBTI+ in the Frontline of the Fight Between Liberalism and Illiberalism – RUSI Analysis

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Throughout Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, the struggle for LGBTI+ equality has created a new political faultline for Europe. For the last five years, regional conservative leaders have spread bigotry concerning the rights and equal treatment of sexual and gender minorities.

Politicians linked to Polands ruling Law & Justice party (PiS) have a track record of scapegoating minorities during election campaigns. In 2014, it was the threat of Muslim migrants disrupting Polands homogeneous Catholic society which was portrayed as a big danger. And, since no Muslims migrated to Poland, PiS had to scapegoat another minority. With the LGBTI+ movement gaining visibility across the world, including Poland, those who identify as LGBTI+ could easily be portrayed as the biggest threat to the country.

From an electoral strategic point of view, attacking the movement made sense for Polish President Adrzej Duda, who has been in power since 2015, and has just narrowly won another five-year term in office. For, after Romania, Poland is still the most religious country in Europe; it has a big and conservative countryside pool of voters who evince little empathy for the LGBTI+ community.

The fight against those who identify as LGBTI+ was again highlighted by Duda as a main theme of the recent election campaign. In early June, he launched afamily charterpleading for a stop to LGBTI ideology, a concept which many human rights defenders inPoland and beyondrightly pointed out depicted the LGBTI+ community as an abstract concept, rather than real people.

As if the family charter was not enough, Duda also boosted his ultra-conservative discourse during his campaign meetings. Before he visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, for instance, he claimed that LGBT ideology was more harmful than communism.

And, as the campaign for the second round of Polands presidential elections took off, Duda broadened his scapegoating. He accused foreign news outlets of interfering in the elections, witha German journalistbeing singled out by the president. Meanwhile, ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski mixed an older hatred with a newer one by claiming during aTV interviewthat a win for the opposition would open the way for Jewish restitution claims and an LGBT offensive.

A week before the final electoral round, Duda stated that he wants to constitutionally anchor that children cannot be adopted by same-sex couples. In doing so, he acknowledges the ultra-conservative andfakediscourseof Russian-backed organisations,such as Ordo Iuris, that gay couples are pedophiles.

While the anti-LGBTI+ rhetoric during the recent election campaign made headlines internationally, the campaign against sexual and gender minorities by political elites in Poland has been going on for several years now. A third of the countrys counties have declared themselves LGBTI-free zones, a move which was criticised by theEuropean Commissionand theEuropean Parliament.

The declaration of a culture war against the LGBTI+ community is not limited to Poland.There are plenty of other conservative leaders benefiting from well-fundedinternational organisationsas diverse as theAmerican evangelical churchorRussianintelligence organisations.And the fight against LGBTI+ rights has been framed by these conservative elites in the broader fight against liberal democracy and the EU.

Annually, conservative leaders come together in the World Congress of Families (WCF); an international conference where they gather to set out their objectives and strategies. Polish policymakers and NGOs close to the government haveparticipatedseveral times. The same goes for Hungarian government officials. The Hungarian state-secretary for family and international affairs and vice-president of ruling party Fidesz,Katalin Novak, has taken up a global leadership role within the anti-LGBTI+ and anti-gender movement. And Hungary followed a similar trajectory to Poland concerning social and democratic issues, such as attacks onpress freedom, judiciaryand civil society. Hungary recentlybannedlegal gender changes, which takes away any legal recognition for transgender and intersex people.

But initiatives like the WCF dont just serve a religious and ideological purpose. They also play an important geopolitical role. It is through these organisations that Russia has developed connections with many European political elites.

Russian oligarchs linked to foreign intelligence operations have directly and indirectlyparticipatedin the WCF.While there is no hard evidence of any direct involvement with the WCF,Konstantin Malofeevis a Russian billionaire who promotes Orthodox Christian narratives, and his personal assistant,Alexey Komov, is the conferences Russian representative. Furthermore, former Russian Railways CEO Vladimir Yakunin hasreportedlyfinancially contributed to the organisation, and his wife,Natalia Yakunina, is said to participate in the conference annually.

It is through Komov that the former Italian deputy prime minister,Matteo Salvini, was connected to the Kremlin. Komov also played a vital role in the connection between Russia and Frances far-right movements. Komov invited Front NationalMEP Aymeric Chaupradeto the same anti-LGBTI+ conference in Moscow that Novak attended.

It is obvious that the participation of European policymakers in these international organisations is not only a threat to the LGBTI+ community, but also to European democracy and national security. The sole reason for Russia to invest in organisations like WCF is to undermine European values. The Kremlin wages an international war against democracy, and the cultural and soft power perspective is an important frontline for them.

The Polish presidential elections also showed that the appeal of liberal democracy is not gone in the region.

In distinction from Duda, the opposition candidate Rafal Trzaskowski was portrayed as liberal and progressive. As mayor of Warsaw, Traskowskiintroducedan LGBT equality declaration. The charter was intended to ensure that all agencies, from schools to the environmental service, had to ensure equality for LGBTI+ people. As mayor, he alsoparticipatedin the equality parade in 2019 (Parada Rownosci, the Polish name for Pride).

But despite his image, Trzaskowski remained remarkably silent on LGBTI+ rights during the election campaign. It is likely that he did so to appeal to the widest possible audience. If he wanted to win in the second round, he had to address the voters of the far-right candidate, Krzysztof Bosak, as well.

Still, his personal message is not always echoed by his party, the Civic Platform (PO), which has a moderate but complex discourse concerning social issues like LGBTI+ rights. The previous governments led by PO made no progress on such rights. And in Lublin, one of Polands largest cities, the mayor is himself a member of PO and has tried toban the equalityparade.

Nonetheless, barely a few months ago nobody would have imagined that the second round of the Polish presidential elections would be so close. The candidacy of Trzaskowski reaffirms the fact that the opposition and civil society in Poland is not dead. It also shows that the opposition is getting closer to defeating the PiS.

Poland might be one of the most religious countries in Europe. Yet, it has also been one of its most pro-European and socially engaged countries. Nobody is born with bigotry. And human rights defenders in Poland wont give up until everybody is equal.

Rmy Bonny(@RemyBonny) is a Belgian political scientist who lived in Poland and Hungary, and is currently setting up the European Coalition for LGBTI Security and Equality, a Brussels-based watchdog that will structurally monitor the anti-LGBTI+ movement in the EU and its links to foreign governments.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the authors, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

BANNER IMAGE:Equality march in Poland. Courtesy of Klarqa / Wikimedia Commons.

Roberts Is The New Swing Justice. That Doesnt Mean Hes Becoming More Liberal. – FiveThirtyEight

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

This Supreme Court term belonged to John Roberts. The chief justice was in the majority in nearly every case. And he quite literally had the last word, as he wrote the opinion for the last two cases released this term, which dealt with President Trumps much sought-after financial records. The rulings were largely interpreted as a rebuke to Trump, and considering Roberts unexpectedly joined the liberals in several other cases this term, some have speculated that the conservative chief might be moving to the center.

But is Roberts actually becoming more liberal?

New data from Supreme Court researchers indicates that Roberts is firmly at the center of the court. According to this years Martin-Quinn scores, a prominent measure of the justices ideology, there is an 82 percent chance that Roberts was the median justice in the term that just wrapped. However, as the chart below shows, there is some uncertainty about where he actually falls or how much daylight exists between Robertss ideological position this term and the positions of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.

But moving to the center of the court does not mean Roberts is becoming a liberal or even a centrist. Yes, he joined the liberals in several high-profile cases, and according to justice pairing data analyzed by Adam Feldman for SCOTUSBlog, he aligned with Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, more frequently than with fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. But many of the cases where Roberts sided with the liberals were limited in scope or temporary in effect. Roberts also helped push forward several long-held conservative goals including dramatically expanding the definition of religious liberty as the pivotal vote in many cases.

Roberts has long been perceived as a conservative, both ideologically and temperamentally a justice who would prefer to gradually chip away at liberal precedents rather than dispatching them with one swift blow. And on an increasingly conservative Supreme Court, its not hard to see how that incrementalist sentiment combined with a fear of what would happen if the court moved too quickly out of the mainstream might lead Roberts to some unexpected places and deliver some unwelcome losses to the conservative legal movement. But that doesnt mean hes changing in any fundamental way, or that he wont continue to quietly steer the court in a conservative direction. People seem to see Roberts moving to the center of the court and assume that hes becoming more liberal, said Melissa Murray, a law professor at New York University. I would read it a different way that the court is moving to the right.

The idea that Roberts is becoming more liberal didnt come out of nowhere. Over the past few years, his ideological position on the court as measured by the Martin-Quinn scores has inched toward the center. In 2005, when he joined the court, he was basically indistinguishable ideologically from Justice Samuel Alito, who was appointed around the same time. Now, however, Alito is probably the second most conservative justice on the court, while Roberts is the fifth most conservative.

The easiest way to interpret that trend is simply to conclude that Roberts is becoming more liberal. After all, he wouldnt be the first Republican-appointed justice to move left over time. In perhaps the most dramatic example in modern Supreme Court history, a Nixon appointee, Justice Harry Blackmun, started off conservative but was the courts most liberal member by the time he retired in 1994.

Other factors could explain Robertss shift, though, starting with a limitation of the Martin-Quinn scores themselves. The scores are estimates produced by a model based on how the justices vote they are not a direct window into what the justices actually believe or whats motivating their votes. The scores also can shift as the composition of the court changes, and the court is still adjusting after the previous longtime swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, retired and was replaced in 2018 by Kavanaugh, who has so far proven to be much more reliably conservative.

[Related: The Supreme Courts Big Rulings Were Surprisingly Mainstream This Year]

Think about it this way: One justice has to be in the middle of the court. So when Kennedy retired and was replaced by a more conservative judge, someone else had to take his place in the center. In this case, that somebody was Roberts. It could be the case that Roberts is actually drifting left, said Tom Clark, a political science professor at Emory University. But it could also be an artifact of the statistical model trying to sort out what happens to the space when you add a new person. At this point, we dont know which one it is.

The model also retroactively updates justices scores for past years at the end of each term. The changes can be substantial with new justices, since the model has little data about their positions when they first join the court. Case in point: In last years Martin-Quinn data, Kennedy was deemed to be the most likely median justice in 2017 and Kavanaugh took the role in 2018, not Roberts. But with the addition of 2019 data, Roberts is now estimated to have actually been the likely median in both years. Thats partly because we now have a better understanding of how Kavanaugh tends to rule; it also reflects the a fairly high probability that Roberts was already the median justice in the 2017 term, because Kennedy hardly swung at all in his final year on the court.

[Related: John Roberts Will Probably Be The Supreme Courts Next Swing Justice]

Meanwhile, its also possible that Roberts just appears to be moving to the left because the kinds of cases that make it to the court are shifting. This effect is especially difficult to measure and the Martin-Quinn scores can only account for it in a limited way. But Clark said if the types of cases being brought before the court are changing, that could matter a lot to how liberal or conservative each justices rulings really are. Because it could be that the Trump administration and conservative legal advocates, emboldened by the solid slate of conservatives on the court, are simply pushing Roberts to move to the right faster than hes willing to go.

Take one high-profile case from this term, where the justices considered a Louisiana abortion restriction that was functionally identical to a Texas law the court had struck down in 2016. In the previous case, Kennedy who over the course of his career was ideologically unpredictable on a handful of high-salience issues, including the abortion, affirmative action and the death penalty voted with the liberals against the Texas law. This year, though, Roberts broke the tie, saying that while he still disagreed with the 2016 ruling, he felt he had to adhere to the precedent. That doesnt mean Robertss fundamental stance toward abortion changed, though. Instead, the change in the courts composition put him in a situation where institutional considerations like not wanting to overturn a recent precedent on an extremely hot-button issue four months before a presidential election may have trumped his own ideological preferences.

[Related: The Supreme Court Struck Down A Louisiana Abortion Law. Heres Where The Fight Could Head Next.]

Thats significant because in the vast majority of cases, Roberts appears to be basically as conservative as hes ever been. According to The Supreme Court Database, a clearinghouse for data about the court, the share of opinions where he voted in a conservative direction hasnt actually changed much in the past few years when Kennedys departure and the addition of Trumps more solidly conservative appointees gave Roberts an increasingly pivotal vote compared to his opinions between the 2005 and the 2017 terms. (This data is not yet available for the term that just ended.)

Share of Robertss votes that were coded as conservative, before and after the 2016 Supreme Court term

Pre-Trump includes case data for the 2005-2016 terms, while post-Trump covers the 2017 and 2018 terms. The 2016 term is counted as pre-Trump because it started before Trump was elected, but it ended in 2017. Close cases are defined as those in which the majority was four or five and the minority was three or four.

Source: The Supreme Court Database

In other words, Roberts is still very conservative. (For the record, so was Kennedy.) But several experts told us its possible that in Kennedys absence, Roberts may be increasingly willing to rule narrowly with the liberals in certain high-stakes cases. Part of his motivation is likely that as chief justice, he feels a responsibility to ensure that the court maintains its reputation as an even-handed institution.

This year was a perfect storm for a chief justice trying to keep the Supreme Court from being dragged into the muck of partisan politics, too. The country is deeply polarized, were heading into a presidential election, theres a pandemic, an economic crisis, significant social unrest, said Marin Levy, a professor at Duke Law who studies chief justices. This is a moment where its critical to someone like Roberts that the public maintain its faith in the court. And in fact, even though this terms docket was full of hot-button issues, the courts rulings were largely in step with public opinion, thanks in part to Robertss willingness to join the liberals.

[Related: Justice Kennedy Wasnt A Moderate]

So if Kennedys forays to the left were motivated by a couple of issues on which his views were more liberal than the rest of the conservative bloc, like gay rights and sometimes abortion, Robertss recent swings appear to be be driven by more strategic and even political considerations. Hes concerned about maintaining his own power and the power of the court, said Leah Litman, a professor of law at the University of Michigan. It was perhaps a sign of Robertss success that some of the biggest conservative victories this term mostly flew under the radar, such as when the conservatives continued to expand the circumstances under which religious schools can qualify for public funding, building on a case from 2017. Litman and others said that Roberts could follow a similar blueprint for eroding something like abortion rights in the future. Rather than overturning precedents outright, he might prefer to whittle away at abortion access by allowing states to pass a patchwork of restrictions, until landmark precedents on abortion eventually become functionally hollow.

Right now, of course, Roberts is still the closest thing we have to a swing justice. But hes not really a wild card especially compared to Kennedy, who was genuinely unpredictable on a handful of issues, including abortion. Clark said a better description for Roberts might be the pivotal justice, or the person with the power to broker compromises between left and right, allowing him to determine the courts direction. That moniker is especially apt given that Roberts was so frequently in the majority this term. At SCOTUSBlog, Feldman suggested calling him the anchor justice for that reason. The fact that Roberts is chief justice gives him additional power when he votes with the majority, too: He gets to assign the opinion to a specific justice, and that can do a lot to shape the breadth and impact of the final ruling.

[Related: The Supreme Court Put DACAs Fate In The Hands Of Voters]

One thing does seem clear: Roberts is now by far the most powerful person on the Supreme Court. And he is not willing at least not yet to let his fellow conservatives veer sharply to the right. But his occasional votes with the liberals shouldnt obscure the fact that hes still a very conservative justice overall. As with Kennedy, the handful of times he swings to the left may come to define his career. And this term hes certainly proved that Trump and conservative legal advocates cant expect him to rubber-stamp any argument they lay at his feet. But when he does swing, it will likely be political and institutional factors, not a shift in his ideology, that guide his vote. And that means liberals really cant rely on him to rule their way in the future.

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Roberts Is The New Swing Justice. That Doesnt Mean Hes Becoming More Liberal. - FiveThirtyEight

How cancel culture has turned liberals against each other and is rocking newsrooms – ThePrint

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

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New Delhi: Liberals are at war with each other and this is due to growing polarisation, a push for ideological conformity and the cancel culture, said ThePrints Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta in episode 523 of Cut The Clutter.

Cancel culture is when someone is politically incorrect and is cancelled as a result. At this point, cancel culture goes beyond just unfollowing them and is threatening livelihoods with several people forced to resign for their diverging opinions.

Two letters have expressed concern over these trends.

The first is the strongly worded resignation letter of Bari Weiss, former editor and writer in the Opinion section of The New York Times.

Weiss accused the US newspaper of choosing stories to pander to a narrow audience due to its misjudgement about Hilary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Elections. Weiss said Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times but its become its ultimate editor that has eroded an environment for diverse opinion.

This comes just a month after the resignation of James Bennet, the former New York Times Opinion Editor, after the publishing of a controversial op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton. Senator Cotton had called for a wide-scale military crackdown on the Black Lives Matter protests in the US.

Also read: No, cancel culture isnt a threat to civilization

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The second is an open letter recently published by Harpers Magazine. It was jointly written by over 150 eminent and liberal voices including authors J.K. Rowling and Salman Rushdie, feminist critic Gloria Steinem, linguist Noam Chomsky and political scientist Fareed Zakaria.

They argued that an intolerance of public views is emerging in the US discourse, which is a threat to free speech. They also noted that cancel culture is a threat to liberalism that seeks to silence opinions and cost them their jobs.

For instance, the president and some board members of the National Book Critics Circle recently resigned amid claims of racism. This was after a colleague posted screenshots of an internal email correspondence, exposing the presidents controversial opinions on the Black Lives Matter protests.

Harvard Professor Steven Pinker, one of the signatories of the letter, called cancel culture Orwellian and said, Twitter is not an example of literate humanity.

On the other hand, critics like author Pankaj Mishra have argued that those attacking cancel culture are fighting more for their own freedom than the freedom of free speech of everybody else because they feel threatened.

However, Gupta noted, journalism and newsrooms in particular are supposed to be a large tent of diverse opinions. Expelling people from the ideological vertical for speaking out will turn journalism away from factivism and towards activism.

Global liberalism has clearly broken out into anarchy and is fighting itself, he added. This is liberal cannibalism and look whos smiling the ideological Right.

US political commentator David Rubin has described this as the liberal mob which used to attack the Right but has now turned on itself.

Watch the latest episode of CTC here:

Also read: You cant cancel Modi, RSS: Why US-style identity politics wont help Indian liberals fight

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How cancel culture has turned liberals against each other and is rocking newsrooms - ThePrint

WE woes mount for Trudeau and Liberals, but pandemic spending and border closure could ease the trouble – North Country Public Radio

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Jul 19, 2020

Pressures on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are increasing as a result of the WE scandal. Thats the ongoing controversy over a government decision made in late June to let the WE charity operate a $912-million student volunteering scheme on behalf of the government.

The Prime Minister, his wife Sophie Grgoire, and his mother Margaret have all been involved with WE, including making speaking appearances at its events. Sensing controversy, WE withdrew from the deal, and the government has been left with a lot of questions to answer.

Those are primarily being addressed by the Federal Ethics Commissioner. The House of Commons Ethics Committee has attempted to address the matter, but less successfully because Liberal Members of Parliament (MP) on the committee have filibustered its efforts during the past week.

Further issues of concern involving WE, the Trudeau family, and other members of the Liberal government have been revealed in recent days. Margaret Trudeau allegedly accepted $250,000 from WE to appear at its events. Alexandre Trudeau, the Prime Ministers brother, also allegedly accepted a lesser amount from the organization for similar reasons.

Minister of Finance Bill Morneau became part of the scandal recently when it was discovered that one of his daughters worked for WE on a contract basis, and another of his daughters had spoken at some of the organizations events.

Evidence has also surfaced that Minister of Natural Resources Seamus ORegan, who is a friend of the Prime Minister, had helped raise $400,000 for WE with Katie Telford, Trudeaus Chief of Staff.

On the surface, things dont look good politically in the Trudeau organization. However, opinion polls keep indicating that the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party would be returned to office with a strong majority in the House of Commons if an election were held now. The Liberals were reduced to a minority of seats in the October 2019 election.

There are two reasons the Liberals could be benefiting from increased popularity. The first is money. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, they have spent a ton of it on emergency benefit payments, wage subsidies, and other programs to help Canadians get through the difficult economic situation the pandemic has caused. Bill Morneaus recent fiscal update to Parliament revealed a budget deficit of more than $400 billion and a national debt of more than $1 trillion.

Both are dubious firsts for Canada, after years of marveling at the public debts and deficits racked up by the U.S. government. Record debt and deficit aside, the government spending has been really popular and has been the defining component of the federal response to the pandemic.

Most of the difficult details of health and safety have been left to provincial and local authorities to manage. Its difficult to criticize a government that sends you a check.

The second reason is the border. During the past week, the Prime Minister confirmed that crossing between Canada and the United States will be restricted to essential traffic only. Essential means business and humanitarian reasons, not visiting friends or stocking up at Price Chopper.

Canadians have seen the stories about COVID-19 out of control in Texas and Florida but many have concluded that the entire lower 48 states are wholly consumed with COVID and chaos due to the administration in Washington, if their online comments to border-related news stories are any indication. In fact, upstate New York is no worse off than southern Ontario when it comes to COVID-19, and the situation is unlikely as severe in northern Maine or in the northern plains states either.

However, we live in a mobile society and people can, and will travel. Again, if online comments are any indication, the extended border closure has had a way of stoking Canadian nationalism and support for what the governments decision to keep the border closed. That could end up being a political dividend for Trudeau at a time when he needs one.

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WE woes mount for Trudeau and Liberals, but pandemic spending and border closure could ease the trouble - North Country Public Radio

Tim Wilson helped IPA and solicited Liberal party endorsement while in human rights position – The Guardian

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Tim Wilson provided direct assistance to the Institute of Public Affairs and solicited endorsement for his looming 2016 Liberal preselection battle while in the office of human rights commissioner, previously secret correspondence shows.

A trove of internal emails, which Wilson fought to keep from being released, shows the now Liberal MP for Goldstein used his official human rights commission email account to help arrange an international speaker for a major IPA event, organise his own attendance at functions for IPA donors, and ask for a political endorsement from someone who approached him in his capacity as human rights commissioner.

Wilson told the Guardian the emails were utterly irrelevant and a non-story, saying his support of the IPA was publicly disclosed and well known throughout his term.

But the former human rights and disability discrimination commissioner Graeme Innes said the behaviour was clearly inappropriate and threatened the independence of the commission.

The correspondence ranges across Wilsons controversial tenure at the commission from 2014 to 2016, and was released through freedom of information laws to an anonymous applicant who requested exchanges between Wilsons work email account and addresses with the domains @ipa.org.au or @liberal.org.au.

In one email in 2014, Wilson used his commission email account to contact a mystery international speaker on behalf of the IPA, renewing a request that he attend a major IPA event.

The identity of the speaker is redacted in the documents, but, in earlier correspondence, Wilson praised his achievements, compared his record of success to that of Rupert Murdoch, and suggested he could top the News Corp chairmans speech to a 2013 IPA event.

You may recall, when I was previously at the Institute of Public Affairs and extended an invitation for you to come and speak in Australia, Wilson wrote on 26 October 2014.

Since then I have left the IPA. Our (now not so) new government appointed me Australias Human Rights Commissioner. Its an interesting role, especially because I now get to prosecute libertarian values within government. Needless to say the appointment attracted a lot of controversy.

Regardless, the IPA is still keen to have you speak in Australia if you are open to doing so? They asked if I could share your email. Would that be acceptable to you?

The speaker responded the next day, asking Wilson to make the appropriate email introductions.

Thanks for the update, and, yes, I would still be interested in speaking at IPA if we can coordinate things properly. Can you make the email intros?

The documents also show that in 2016, as Wilsons tenure reached its end, he used his official human rights commissioner email account to help prepare for his bid to become the Liberal member for Goldstein.

On 9 February, he received an email from an unidentified member of either the Liberal party or the IPA, who was trying to convince him to use provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act to target aboriginal activists who were being racist towards non-Aboriginal people.

In a reply six days later, Wilson did not engage with the racism claims and informed the individual that he had resigned from the Human Rights Commission.

He then asked for quotes and a picture to include in an endorsement brochure to help with his next adventure. Wilson was at the time preparing for the Goldstein preselection battle.

If you are prepared to help me in my next adventure Id appreciate a short and flattering quote for an endorsements brochure with an electronic pic sent to [redacted], Wilson wrote, using his Human Rights Commission email account. Up to you.

Wilsons request for an endorsement was sent on 15 February 2016, the day he announced his intention to resign from the commission. His resignation was not effective until 19 February.

A lengthy endorsement was then emailed back to Wilson in reply.

If you want me to condense them, let me know, or if you would like to edit them together, please feel free, the response said.

The Guardian has obtained Wilsons endorsement brochure, which contains quotes from more than 20 individuals. It is not clear who was involved in the February 2016 email exchange.

The documents also show Wilson, while commissioner and using his official email account, agreed to attend an IPA fundraising event on 4 June 2015 .

An unidentified IPA member sent him an email requesting his attendance.

Hi Tim, the email read. Were having a lunch for IPA donors and friendly journos in Sydney on Thursday it would be great if you are able to join us. Let me know. See invitation below.

Wilson replied: Hey mate, Ill be there.

In another exchange, an email is sent by a Liberal party official to Wilsons old IPA email account, requesting his attendance as a key note speaker at a lunchtime event for the Liberal party branch at Lorne in Victoria.

Your new position creates opportunities to raise issues onto a national level, the Liberal official said.

The email was forwarded from Wilsons IPA email account to his human rights commission account, where Wilson responded by suggesting the official contact the IPA for a speaker.

Thanks for your email. As Human Rights Commissioner I am unable to come and speak at fundraisers, Wilson wrote. You may want to contact [redacted] at the Institute of Public Affairs.

The documents show Wilson also used the account to arrange attendance at a dinner for IPA donors following the launch of Peter Reiths book in Melbourne in November 2015.

Well probably also do a small dinner for donors afterwards, depending on who attends, an IPA member wrote to Wilson. Wed love to have you for that too if youre available.

Wilson replied: Sure. Done.

Innes, who was Australias disability discrimination commissioner until 2014, said the conduct was inappropriate and hurt the independence of the commission.

Innes has been critical of Wilson in the past, and was not replaced when his term ended in 2014, several months after Wilsons appointment.

It is inappropriate to use the position as a statutory officer to advance your political career because you are an officer of the Commonwealth. It is the same reason he had to resign as a commissioner before seeking endorsement, Innes told the Guardian.

It is also inappropriate to advance the causes of political organisations such as the IPA whilst in that role as it is not a function of the role nor a government or commission function.

Speaking generally, the former race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane said it would not be appropriate for someone to use the office for political activities.

It would be seriously inappropriate, if not improper, for a member of the commission to have used their statutory office for partisan activity and political campaigning, he said.

Soutphommasane, who has a background with Labor, was at the commission at the same time as Wilson.

In response to Soutphommasanes comments, Wilson said it was good I didnt then.

He said he was proud of his support for human rights and groups like the IPA, which stood up for foundational freedoms. He said his support of the IPA was no secret.

My IPA membership was consistent throughout my entire time as Australias Human Rights Commissioner (including on my official bio) and as an MP so its kind of a non-story, Wilson said.

The commissions official biography states that Wilson was previously a policy director with the IPA.

Wilson also said he had done the honourable thing by resigning before seeking preselection to protect the non-partisan standing of the office. He said he would have been entitled to stay on as commissioner, take leave, and pursue partisan preselection without resigning, something he said had been confirmed by the former Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs.

So this is all pretty sad: what do you want me to do? Resign again? he said.

Wilson confirmed he had gone to the information commissioner to try to prevent the release of the documents.

But he said he had done so to toy with the applicant.

I absolutely exercised all my rights under the Act to make sure the applicant thought there was something salacious in these emails only to be disappointed that they were utterly irrelevant and theyd wasted their time, and sadly that of the hard-working people at the Australian Human Rights Commission, who had to compile and redact these documents.

The Human Rights Commission declined to comment when approached.

Continued here:

Tim Wilson helped IPA and solicited Liberal party endorsement while in human rights position - The Guardian

Liberal MPs to pay back allowance claimed in error after ABC investigation, but Premier denies deliberate wrongdoing – ABC News

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Three South Australian Liberal MPs, including two Cabinet ministers, will be forced to repay more than $70,000 of taxpayers' money claimed in accommodation allowances.

SA Premier Steven Marshall said the payments were claimed in error and denied there had been any deliberate wrongdoing.

It comes as it was announced on Tuesday that some SA Liberal MPs will be forced to repay money incorrectly claimed under a parliamentary allowance provided for country MPs to stay in the city on official business.

Mr Marshall said some MPs have come forward to him admitting "administrative errors" in claiming the allowance, which is worth more than $31,000 a year.

"There have been some administrative errors and I've made it clear to my team they need to make it clear what those administrative errors were and rectify them as quickly as possible, and all of that information will be provided to the Parliament this afternoon," Mr Marshall said.

"But I'm not of the opinion there's been any deliberate dishonesty."

The revelation came minutes before the Parliament released 10 years' worth of claims under the allowance, prompted by an ABC investigation into the eligibility of Legislative Council President Terry Stephens to claim.

A series of ABC stories demonstrated Mr Stephens spent significant time at his million-dollar-plus suburban Adelaide property while claiming tens of thousands of dollars in allowance.

Those questions have now been referred to the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Bruce Lander, while the Auditor-General, Taxation Commissioner and Electoral Commissioner have also been asked to examine the senior Liberal MP's living arrangements.

Infrastructure Minister Stephan Knoll will repay more than $29,000 for all Country Members Accommodation Allowance payments made since December 2018.

He has also committed to repay another night's allowance from April 2018, saying the payment was claimed by "administrative error".

Primary Industries Minister Tim Whetstone unreservedly apologised for claiming in error more than $20,000 for 90 nights from 2012 until now.

However, he will only have to repay $6,993 for nights claimed before he became a minister in 2018.

That's because since becoming a minister he has spent nights in Adelaide beyond the annual allowance cap of 135 nights and some of those additional nights have now been substituted for those he incorrectly claimed.

Liberal backbencher Fraser Ellis has also agreed to repay $42,130.

Emails from all three MPs were tabled in Parliament, amid a tranche of allowance claims made by regional MPs dating back a decade.

Mr Knoll and Mr Ellis's commitments to repay are based upon wording in a Remuneration Tribunal determination, which require members to incur "actual expenditure" in order to claim the allowance.

The ABC has previously revealed that Mr Ellis stayed rent free at the Norwood residence of fellow Liberal MP Terry Stephens while claiming the allowance.

Mr Whetstone said an audit by his staff identified "a number of administrative errors where claims had been made for nights which were not eligible as required by the guidelines".

He said he took "full responsibility".

"I apologise to the people of Chaffey and to South Australia for those errors," he said.

"But what I will say is that all of that information has now been provided to the Parliament and it is now publicly available."

Mr Knoll said he believes he "complied with all of the guidelines in relation to the claiming of this allowance".

"I do stay with my parents and I do incur expenses when I do so, but it is fair to say that since the November 2018 determination, there has been ambiguity around this allowance," he said.

"Until that ambiguity is resolved, I have sought to, out of an abundance of caution and to put this issue beyond doubt, I've repaid that money and I am not going to claim the allowance until that ambiguity is resolved."

A further two regional Liberal MPs, Adrian Pederick and Peter Treloar, have retrospectively amended their returns to change dates that they stayed in Adelaide, but have not sought to repay money.

Mr Marshall admitted greater transparency was needed, and said both the Speaker of the House of Assembly Vincent Tarzia and Legislative Council President Terry Stephens would push for records of the Country Members Accommodation Allowance to be published monthly.

Mr Marshall said the government had also written to the Auditor-General, seeking increased scrutiny, including random audits.

"We need to assure the people of SA that when their money is spent it's spent in accordance with the guidelines," Mr Marshall said.

He said the government would also write to the state's remuneration tribunal seeking "greater certainty and clarity" over when the allowance could be claimed.

"I think there has been ambiguity over a long period of time and it's now time to clean up this situation and provide much greater certainty going forward," the Premier said.

However, Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas said both Mr Knoll and Mr Whetstone should be dumped from Cabinet.

"This is unacceptable the Premier's got to show leadership," he said.

"I mean, we're talking about taxpayers' money here going into the direct pocket of members of Parliament and what Steven Marshall wants to do is have everyone look the other way."

Do you know more about this story? Email SA.tips@abc.net.au.

Opinion | Defund the Pentagon: The Liberal Case – POLITICO

Posted on July 22, 2020 by Danzig

Lets be clear: As coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are surging to record levels in states across America, and the lifeline of unemployment benefits keeping 30 million people afloat expires at the end of the month, the Republican Senate has decided to provide more funding for the Pentagon than the next 11 nations military budgets combined.

Under this legislation, over half of our discretionary budget would go to the Department of Defense at a time when tens of millions of Americans are food insecure and over a half-million Americans are sleeping out on the street. After adjusting for inflation, this bill would spend more money on the Pentagon than we did during the height of the Vietnam War even as up to 22 million Americans are in danger of being evicted from their homes and health workers are still forced to reuse masks, gloves and gowns.

Moreover, this extraordinary level of military spending comes at a time when the Department of Defense is the only agency of our federal government that has not been able to pass an independent audit, when defense contractors are making enormous profits while paying their CEOs outrageous compensation packages, and when the so-called War on Terror will cost some $6 trillion.

Let us never forget what Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former four-star general, said in 1953: Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

What Eisenhower said was true 67 years ago, and it is true today.

If the horrific pandemic we are now experiencing has taught us anything it is that national security means a lot more than building bombs, missiles, nuclear warheads and other weapons of mass destruction. National security also means doing everything we can to improve the lives of tens of millions of people living in desperation who have been abandoned by our government decade after decade.

That is why I have introduced an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that the Senate will be voting on during the week of July 20th, and the House will follow suit with a companion effort led by Representatives Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.). Our amendment would reduce the military budget by 10 percent and use that $74 billion in savings to invest in communities that have been ravaged by extreme poverty, mass incarceration, decades of neglect and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Under this amendment, distressed cities and towns in every state in the country would be able to use these funds to create jobs by building affordable housing, schools, childcare facilities, community health centers, public hospitals, libraries and clean drinking water facilities. These communities would also receive federal funding to hire more public school teachers, provide nutritious meals to children and parents and offer free tuition at public colleges, universities or trade schools.

This amendment gives my Senate colleagues a fundamental choice to make. They can vote to spend more money on endless wars in the Middle East while failing to provide economic security to millions of people in the United States. Or they can vote to spend less money on nuclear weapons and cost overruns, and more to rebuild struggling communities in their home states.

In Dr. Kings 1967 speech, he warned that a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

He was right. At a time when half of our people are struggling paycheck to paycheck, when over 40 million Americans are living in poverty, and when 87 million lack health insurance or are underinsured, we are approaching spiritual death.

At a time when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth, and when millions of Americans are in danger of going hungry, we are approaching spiritual death.

At a time when we have no national testing program, no adequate production of protective gear and no commitment to a free vaccine, while remaining the only major country where infections spiral out of control, we are approaching spiritual death.

At a time when over 60,000 Americans die each year because they cant afford to get to a doctor on time, and one out of five Americans cant afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe, we are approaching spiritual death.

Now, at this unprecedented moment in American history, it is time to rethink what we value as a society and to fundamentally transform our national priorities. Cutting the military budget by 10 percent and investing that money in human needs is a modest way to begin that process. Let's get it done.

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Opinion | Defund the Pentagon: The Liberal Case - POLITICO

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