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Embrace The Freedom Of Honoring Your Word Impeccably – Inc.

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Earlier this week, I was at a business event filled with many incredible people. One of those people was Michael Fishman, who is an advisor to leading health experts and the founder of Consumer Health Summit. Michael is a friend of mine and a business colleague, and also a mentor in many ways.

There's a quote: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." That's what happened to me this week, with Michael being my wise teacher.

In the midst of the event, and surrounded by many people, I told Michael I'd meet him for breakfast the next day.

Although I had good intentions, I also threw out that commitment frivolously. I was lackadaisicalin my word.

Plans slightly changed over the 24 hours, but I didn't communicate that clearly to Michael. In the end, I no-showed him twice and without clearly or respectfully communicating why.

Today, I had the opportunity to discuss with him what had happened, and he told me that my word is of universal importance.

Small things become big things.

If I'm serious about the goals I'm setting, I need to have complete integrity with the small stuff.

How I show up in the small stuff trains people in what to expect from me in general.

I knew Michael was right. Part of me wanted to resist or justify, at least to myself, why I was willing to lack integrityin that particular situation.But then I thought about the quote from Strategic Coach founder, Dan Sullivan, "All progress starts by telling the truth."

If you're serious about making a change, you have to face the fact that you've been wrong. There's no room for justification. Only a pure admittance that you've been wrong about this thing.

Until you can admit, especially to yourself, that you've been wrong, then you haven't really learned the lesson.

Lessons are repeated until they are learned.

In the words of American author, Florence Shinn, "Your word is your wand." Use it wisely.

It was humbling having this conversation with Micheal. A person I love and respect. It made me think about the book Choice Theory: A Psychology Of Personal Freedom, which explains that, in our relationships, we tend to treat those who are closest to us the worst, and those most stranger with the most respect.

Think about it: who do we offer moreautonomy and choice? Strangers or our family? We don't force strangers to do what we want. But we often bark orders at those we callfamily.

Personally, I admitted to Michael that I often find it harder to say "No" to people I care most about. I'm more likely to say "Yes," even if I don't want to, to someone I'm close to. Moreover, given that I'm close to that person, I figure I can be a little lax about the relationship.

At least not when you're in healthy relationships with self-respecting people. With low-energy people, such behavior is the norm and expected. When you evolve as a person, you stop allowing that level of integrity and energy in your atmosphere.

Sometimes, you need to be called out by someone who cares about you.

Sometimes, you can't accurately see it until someone points it out, with grace and kindness, but firmness and self-respect.

I was grateful to be called out in a loving and safe environment by a friend and mentor.

I was further reminded of the quote from trauma expert, Dr. Peter Levine, who said, "Trauma isn't what happens to you, but what you hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness."

An empathetic witness is someone who gives you the space to see the truth; to process it in a safe environment and absorb it. That empathetic witness also encourages you to love yourself more, and to have higher sights for yourself,not get stuck in old ways,or imprisoned in the pain of the past.

Some hard and humbling truths.

This is why, if you want to go far in life, you need to be surrounded byamazing people. You need people to respect themselves enough to call you out when you're disrespecting them.

I'm grateful for Michael Fishman, my friend, colleague, and mentor, who helped me today.

His words to me, "Embrace the freedom of honoring your word impeccably" was the lesson I needed today.

How is your level of integrity?

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

Continued here:

Embrace The Freedom Of Honoring Your Word Impeccably - Inc.

Hayek, Republican Freedom, and the Universal Basic Income – Niskanen Center

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Note:This is part of the Promise of Republicanism series, which can be foundherein its entirety.

The idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is getting a lot of attention these days, thanks largely to the fact that Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has made it the centerpiece of his campaign. Yang calls his version of the UBI the Freedom Dividend, a proposal under which every American over the age of eighteen would receive $1,000 a month from the Federal government, no strings attached.

The name Freedom Dividend is, of course, a nice bit of political rhetoric for an electorate largely inclined to view any large-scale scheme of income redistribution as a form of socialism. But beneath the rhetoric lies a legitimate, substantive point. Yang is right: Theres a good case to be made for a UBI based on the importance of individual freedom. Indeed, the foundations of that case have already been laid by none other than the renowned champion of economic and personal liberty, Friedrich Hayek.

Hayeks devotion to the ideals of free markets and limited government is well-known. His most famous book, The Road to Serfdom, argued that economic and political liberties are tightly connected, and that liberal democracies cannot safely curtail the former without also endangering the latter. His later works, especially The Constitution of Liberty, set forth a positive vision of a free society centered on the idea that individuals should be left largely free to act on the basis of their own values and beliefs, rather than those of government regulators or planners, in both the personal and economic dimensions of their lives.

While everybody knows that Hayek saw himself as a champion of individual freedom, few understand the precise nature of the freedom that Hayek sought to defend. Unlike many libertarians, who understand freedom primarily in terms of non-interference or respect for property rights, Hayek subscribed to a republican theory in which freedom consists of being able to live ones life according to [ones] own decisions and plans, in contrast to one who was irrevocably subject to the will of another.

Understanding Hayek as a commercial republican helps to make sense of many different aspects of his political theory. It explains why, unlike many libertarians, Hayek was never seriously tempted by the idea of anarcho-capitalism. Hayek did not believe that government was necessarily inimical to freedom. Indeed, he believed that government, or at least governance, in the sense of a set of institutions that subject human conduct to general and impartial rules, is a necessary precondition for freedom. For example, traffic laws limit the actions we can perform, but they do so in a way that makes us more free rather than less. They do so by allowing us to form reliable expectations about the behavior of others, which enables us to carry out our own plans more effectively than we could without them. However, a tyrant who can order us to perform or refrain from specific behaviors at a whim deprives us of the ability to effectively set and pursue our plans with any confidence even if the tyrant happens not to interfere at any given time. The fact that it is always in her power to intervene in any way she likes strips us of control over our lives, and thus renders us unfree.

Considerations such as these explain why Hayek continually emphasized the distinction between general rules on the one hand and commands on the other (or between law and legislation) in his writings. To be subject to the commands of a tyrant is to be dependent on the arbitrary will of another person. The actions of those subject to commands are based not on the beliefs and values of the actor, but on the beliefs and values of the tyrant. In contrast, general and impersonal rules do not subject individuals to the will of anyone else. They are, in Hayeks words, like laws of nature stable facts of social existence around which individuals can learn to navigate and plan their lives. They do not place some citizens in a position of subordination, nor do they elevate others to a position of dominance.

Hayeks republican political theory provides one of the main theoretical foundations for his strong support of free markets. Although many contemporary republican theorists have been either overtly hostile or at best lukewarm toward the market economy, Hayek saw correctly that market competition can serve as one of the most effective guarantors of republican freedom.

The essence of market competition is the existence of alternatives, and the right to say no to offers that fail to serve ones interests at least as well as one of those alternatives. In a competitive labor market, an employer who tries to force an employee to do something she doesnt want to do is constrained by that employees ability to quit and find a job elsewhere. A used car dealer who would like to take advantage of a buyer by charging an unfairly high price is similarly constrained by the presence of a competing dealer next door. In general, the more competitive a market is, the more prices and other terms of agreements will be regulated by the impersonal forces of supply and demand, and the less any particular market agent will be able to impose her particular will on her partner in exchange. All market actors are constrained by the general, impersonal rules of the market. But those same rules generally work to prevent any market actors from achieving a position of dominance over others.

Similarly, it is largely because Hayek views competition as such an effective check on coercion that he views government power with suspicion. After all, government is the only institution within society to claim and generally possess an effective monopoly on the use of force. And this monopoly on force is often used to establish and maintain other monopolies: on roads, on the delivery of regular mail, on the creation and enforcement of criminal law, and so on. Because individuals who value these services have nowhere else to go, they are often left with no practical alternative to compliance with the governments demands.

Moreover, as legal rules become more numerous and complex, as ordinary individuals become unable to know in advance what actions are permitted and which are prohibited, as law enforcement becomes practically unable to enforce all the rules that they could, in theory, enforce, the extent of individual discretion within government increases, and so too does the possibility of arbitrary coercion. In that case, individuals are no longer required to comply with the law, but with the edicts of a bureaucrat behind a desk, or an officer behind a badge. When the agents of the state are granted a practically unchecked power to apply the law (or not) in whatever way he sees fit, individuals are no longer fully free.

But while Hayeks republicanism provides strong support for the ideals of free markets and limited government, it also provides a criterion for determining when those institutions are not enough. Market competition generally protects the consumer against predation by unscrupulous sellers, but this protection can be undermined by collusion and natural monopolies. Similarly, competition in the labor market might protect workers from exploitation when those workers have an adequate range of alternatives available to them, but fall short when those alternatives are limited either by features of the local economy (a lack of jobs) or by characteristics of the employee (e.g. limited skills or lack of mobility).

In order to protect individual freedom in these circumstances, Hayek believed that some governmental action was both necessary and appropriate. Indeed, Hayek took great pains even in his most partisan work, The Road to Serfdom, to distance himself from a dogmatic opposition to government action, writing that nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rough rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire. Hayek believed that government had a legitimate (though delicate) role to fill in preventing and/or regulating monopolies. He believed that government had important work to do in the areas of sanitation, health services, and public works. And, most strikingly of all, he believed that it was not only permissible but necessary for government to redistribute income in order to provide a social safety net that would ensure a certain minimum income for everyone, or a certain floor below which nobody need fall even when he is unable to provide for himself.

Hayek himself did not have much to say about why he thought such a policy might be justified. But Hayeks commitment to republican freedom provides a starting point from which an argument can easily be constructed. Poverty, while not itself coercive, renders people vulnerable to coercion by others. A wife who is dependent on her husbands paycheck may have to put up with abusive behavior simply in order to keep a roof over her head. And as Hayek himself noted, an employee in a slack labor market must do what his boss tells him or else risk destitution. In these cases and many more, people are unable to escape serious and pervasive interference by others because they lack the financial resources to stand on their own. Providing people with money gives them options, and thus the ability to live their lives in accordance with their own will, rather than in subjugation to the will of another.

Moreover, there are strong Hayekian reasons for providing assistance in the form of cash, rather than in-kind benefits. One of the most powerful and consistent themes in all of Hayeks work is the idea that government planners often lack knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place that would be necessary to carry out their plans effectively. For Hayek, that limitation was an important part of the case for decentralized (i.e., free market) economic planning. But these same considerations provide a powerful argument for redistribution taking the form of cash grants, as opposed to in-kind transfers. Cash gives individuals the freedom to decide for themselves what they need, whether that is paying rent, buying groceries, or saving for future consumption. A system of in-kind transfers, in contrast, puts those decisions in the hands of government, where they are at least as likely to be determined by powerful special interests as they are by genuine and accurate considerations of recipients basic needs.

Hayeks support of a minimum income is compatible with his famous rejection of social justice. There is a difference, Hayek argued, between a society that accepts the duty of preventing destitution and of providing a minimum level of welfare and one which seeks to determine the just position of everybody and allocates to each what it thinks he deserves. The latter task requires a level of knowledge on the part of government that Hayek believed was impossible to obtain, and a level of discriminatory power that he believed was incompatible with a free society. The former, in contrast, could be administered by precisely the sort of general, impartial rules that Hayek believed were essential to a genuinely liberal order.

Still, despite all this, it would be misleading to claim that Hayek supported a Universal Basic Income. One of the defining features of a UBI is the idea of unconditionality, meaning that eligibility is not limited to those who are working, or who are willing to work. And this is an idea that Hayek explicitly and repeatedly rejected.

I do not question any individuals right voluntarily to withdraw from civilisation. But what entitlements do such persons have? Are we to subsidise their hermitages? There cannot be any entitlement to be exempted from the rules on which civilisation rests. We may be able to assist the weak and disabled, the very young and old, but only if the sane and adult submit to the impersonal discipline which gives us means to do so.

Still, just because Hayek rejected a UBI does not mean that Hayekians must do so. Indeed, as I argue in more detail elsewhere, Hayeks own fundamental principles provide one of the best arguments for rejecting the kind of work requirement that Hayek himself endorses. In particular, Hayeks own insights into the radically dispersed nature of knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place pose a serious obstacle to conditional schemes such as those he favored.

The problem is this: Hayeks support of a work requirement appears to be based on a kind of reciprocity principle according to which those who seek to benefit from the productive activities of society have a moral obligation to make some reciprocal contribution to society. But it would clearly be a mistake to assume that paid labor is the only way to make such a contribution. Artists, parents, and caregivers, for instance, all make (or are capable of making) an important contribution to society, even if none of them are engaged in the sort of work that would qualify them for benefits under something like the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Furthermore, even if the reciprocity principle is true, presumably some accommodation will have to be made for those who are genuinely incapable of making a reciprocal contribution. Those who are physically or mentally unable to work, for instance, presumably should not be excluded from receiving benefits even if one thinks that those who are able but unwilling to work should not be eligible.

So, in order to correctly apply Hayeks principle, governments would have to know both (a) what sorts of activity count as a legitimate reciprocal contribution and which do not, and (b) which particular individuals are genuinely incapable (as opposed to just unwilling) to make such a contribution. But how could we expect governments to accurately arrive at this information? What standard should they apply to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate contributions to social welfare? What sort of intrusive powers will they require to distinguish between a genuine inability to find work and mere shiftlessness? The Hayekian case for an unconditional benefit is that it economizes on governments scarce knowledge, and that it errs on the side of protecting individuals who truly are in danger of subjugation due to their economic vulnerability, even if that means erring on the side of supporting some individuals who do not truly need it.

Hayeks republicanism provides an attractive way for reconciling a commitment to free markets and limited government with support for a social safety net. Moreover, Hayeks particular emphasis on the significance of dispersed knowledge push in favor of that safety net taking the form of a UBI.

This principled case for a UBI leaves many concerns of a more practical nature unanswered. Wouldnt the UBI cost too much? Wouldnt it discourage work? Wouldnt it turn the United States into a welfare magnet or, on the flip side, lead voters to push for even tighter restrictions on immigration?

But these concerns are not really objections to a UBI as such. Rather, they are objections to particular ways in which a UBI might or might not be set up. It is probably best to think of the UBI not as a single policy but as a family of policies, all of which involve cash transfers, but which vary according to the size of those transfers, whether or not they are means-tested, what sort of citizenship and residency requirement are attached to them, and so on.

My own inclination is to favor a UBI in the form of a Negative Income Tax (as Niskanens Samuel Hammond has argued, UBI is really just a NIT with a leaky bucket), and to address concerns about excessive costs and unemployment effects by altering the size and phase-out rate of the transfer. But as Miranda Fleischer and Daniel Hemel have pointed out, there are a variety of different ways of structuring the Architecture of a Basic Income, each with its own costs and benefits.

The important point is that pragmatic concerns about the UBI can largely if not entirely be addressed at the level of policy design. If the Hayekian argument I have presented here is correct, and there really is a good case to be made for a UBI on grounds of a republican conception of individual freedom, then we should not let such concerns stand in the way of making progress toward a basic income for all.

Originally posted here:

Hayek, Republican Freedom, and the Universal Basic Income - Niskanen Center

Lula’s Free, and He’s Promising to Fight – The Nation

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva waves the Brazilian flag after being released from prison, in Sao Bernardo do Campo, November 9. (Amanda Perobelli / Reuters)

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Curitiba, BrazilLulas freedom was never a foregone conclusioneven after Brazils Supreme Court decided last Thursday that it was unconstitutional to jail defendants before they had exhausted their appeals. This included former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and roughly another 5,000 people in detention around the country. Legally, they should have been freed, but justice, particularly in Brazil, doesnt just happen.Ad Policy

After the Supreme Court decision, leaders of the Landless Workers Movement and Lulas Workers Party called for supporters to descend on the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba. People poured into the Santa Candida residential neighborhood surrounding the prison and joined a community of Lula supporters who had been protesting there for 19 months.

In front of the jail, rows of cameras on tripods were pointed at the entrance, waiting. Lulas lawyers visited him in the morning, and announced that they had asked a local Curitiba court to release him immediately.

Spontaneous cheers and Free Lula chants erupted every few minutes from a crowd that would grow to more than 20,000 people, according to organizers. People in red shirts walked in half-euphoria, half-daze, still disbelieving that Lula might really be free within a few hours.

We could not be happier, Pauliana Silva Gonalves told me, her fist raised before the prison walls. She wore a black shirt with a white image of Lulas face. She wiped away tears under thick sunglasses. Our voices are filled with the freedom of our companion Lula da Silva. Weve been here for 580 days, resisting.

Lula had been incarcerated since April 7, 2018. The charge was corruption: accepting a beachside apartment from a company seeking government contracts. But the evidence was weak. Lula maintained his innocence, and so did his supporters.

Gonalves arrived the day after he was imprisoned with others from the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo, more than 800 miles away. She had been here ever since. The night the helicopter arrived carrying Lula to his cell, his supporters launched an around-the-clock vigil just outside the federal police prison. Hundreds arrived and pitched their tents on the sides of the streets of the middle-class neighborhood. Gonalves was one of them.Current Issue

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We will only leave Curitiba when Lula is freed, said Lindbergh Farias, then a Workers Party senator, on April 8. They kept their promise. The vigil would become ground zero for left organizing around the country.

On May 1, 2018, Brazilian unions held the countrys first united Workers Day rally in decades in Curitiba. Thousands came. They returned for major actions every few months: New Years, the anniversary of Lulas imprisonment, Lulas 500th day in jail.

Those at the vigilsometimes dozens, sometimes hundredscontinued to demand Lulas freedom, day after day. They rallied. They sang. They held workshops, trainings, and endless other activities. They were physically attacked. They were threatened with eviction. In the early days, many camped. Others found places to stay. They created lives there, met spouses. One couple had a little girl. And still they cheered good morning, afternoon, and evening to Lula, every day. The former president said he could hear them from his cell. He said it gave him strength.

The fight to free Lula became the key mobilizing issue of the Brazilian left. Free Lula committees sprung up across the country. They held their own local rallies and events. On Lulas birthday, October 27, his supporters celebrated with events and all-day concerts in more than 80 cities. Leading international figures visited him in jail, including Noam Chomsky, who called Lula the worlds most prominent political prisoner.

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Lula was no average leader in Brazil. He was the countrys charismatic working-class hero, who for many has near mythic status. As a metalworker in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he led massive union strikes that would mark the beginning of the end of the military dictatorship. He founded the Workers Party, and was finally elected president in 2002. During his two terms, he lifted millions of out poverty, and left office at the end of 2010 with an approval rate nearing 90 percent.

Neither he, nor his Workers Party, were perfect. They were criticized for losing touch with their base, embracing big agricultural companies, and pushing development at the cost of local communities. There were scandals; there was a recession; and there was corruption, though it was across the political spectrum. The media and the political opposition blamed it on the Workers Party. And they impeached Lulas successor, Dilma Rousseff, in 2016, under politically motivated charges of manipulating the budget, the cover for the congressional coup.

The incoming government of Michel Temer rolled back social programs, sold off state infrastructure, froze public spending for 20 years, and embroiled itself in an even bigger web of scandalkick-backs, graft, and extortion.

Lula was seen as the answer. The man who could set the country back on track. Even from behind bars, he led all of polls heading into the 2018 elections. But then he was blocked from competing.

Now, he was free. At just after 5:30 pm on Friday, Lula stepped from the building in a gray shirt and a black suit coat, flanked by his top Workers Party allies.

The crowd exploded. Shouts. Tears. Rolling chants of Lula! or Free Lula! echoed off the surrounding buildings.

He walked out the gates and into a sea of people. They squeezed and rushed. Lula pushed forward, half walking, half carried by an ocean of supporters, arms raised above their heads, cell phones filming the momentous occasion.

This would mark an end and a beginning, potentially shifting the countrys political dynamics.

Lulas freedom is certainly a boost for the Brazilian left, which has been facing an ongoing attack from the government of Jair Bolsonaro. Lula has the ability to speak like no one else to Brazils poor and working class.

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Bolsonaro has the most to lose from Lulas release, and he called an emergency meeting to discuss it with military officials the following day. Meanwhile, publicly Brazils Trump-like president remained uncharacteristically silent about Lula for almost two days. When Bolsonaro finally did comment, healso uncharacteristicallycalled for restraint.

Some analysts, however, believe Lulas freedom could also be a blessing in disguise for the far-right president, helping to unite the government camp by giving them a vocal and prominent enemy.

Bolsonaros government has been plagued by infighting among the disparate groups in its coalition: the military, the evangelicals, the devotees of Bolsonaros far-right philosophical guru Olavo de Carvalho. According to reports, Bolsonaros relationship with the military, which holds dozens of top posts, is at its most strained since he came to power. And infighting in Bolsonaros own Social Liberal Party reached a crescendo last month, when Bolsonaro expressed disgust over numerous impasses over control of the party and its finances. Today Bolsonaro announced he would quit his party and form a new one.Related Article

Despite the Supreme Court ruling permitting his release, Lula still has numerous charges and accusations against him. His lawyers are now working to clear his name, based, in part, on revelations by The Intercept Brasil, which show clear bias against Lula and the left by former judge Sergio Moronow Bolsonaros justice ministerand the countrys anti-corruption task force, which schemed in private WhatsApp messages about how to keep the Workers Party from returning to power.

Overturning Moros conviction looks far more plausible now than earlier in the year, before the release of the Intercept Brasil leaks. Already, the Supreme Court has annulled a number of Moros decisions, in a major blow to the highly politicized Car Wash operation.

For Bolsonaros far-right supporters, this is a sign of the Supreme Courts complicity in impunity and its willingness to turn the country back to the dark days of lawlessness. They have often called for the court to be impeached or removed. They railed against the courts 6-5 decision, which allowed for Lulas release, as an unconscionable act of impunity. The hashtag #STFVergoniaNacional (#SupremeCourtNationalShame) was trending on Twitter. At a right-wing rally in Curitiba, the day after Lulas release, protesters threw tomatoes at blown up pictures of the six Supreme Court justices who voted for the decision that would release Lula.

For Bolsonaros base, Lula is the head of a cabal, the epitome of Brazils corrupt and criminal political system, which has run Brazil into the ground. For his supporters, he is a hero who has once again returned to bring them hope and lift them out of despair.

Now, Lula says, Im back.

The day after his release, he led a huge rally outside the ABC Metalworkers union, where he got his start, in Sao Bernardo do Campo, So Paulo. Speaking to a sea of red-clad supporters, Lula told the crowd, Biologically speaking, Im 74 years old, but I have the energy of a 30-year-old.

He attacked Bolsonaro for pushing privatization, cutting pensions and social programs, and for his alleged ties to the paramilitaries accused of killing the black LGBT Rio de Janeiro city council member Marielle Franco, last year. He announced that the left would take back the presidency in 2022 and confirmed that he would be touring the country.

I want to build this country with the same happiness that we built it when we governed this country, Lula told supporters. The only thing Im certain of is that I have more courage to fight than before I left.

Five things to know about Freedom Never Dies, by the Sojourners – Vancouver Sun

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Freedom Never Dies

The Sojourners | thesojourners.ca

All opinions on the film and accompanying album aside, there is no denying that Kanye Wests Jesus is King has given gospel music more attention than it usually gets. The Donald Trump-adoring rappers take on the whole Jesus thing appears to be more about his personal relationship to the Lord being better than everyone elses, and trying to sell merchandise. But true gospel music as a genre has its heart in community, caring and civil rights.

The Vancouver-based trio the Sojourners all grew up within the American gospel church tradition. The award-winning groups fourth recording, Freedom Never Dies, begins with a song about famed Florida NAACP activist Harry Moore, and ends with a pledge to Rise Up.

Marcus Mosely (Rails, Tex.), Will Sanders (Alexandria, La.) and Khari Wendell McClelland (Detroit) came together after blues artist Jim Byrnes contacted Mosely to see if he could bring together some singers to perform backup vocals for Byrnes coming album. Everything gelled so well that a new groups career was launched.

From festival stages to church concerts, the Sojourners imbues its music with spirit and passion, and no ego. Here are five things to know about Freedom Never Dies:

1: Freedom Never Dies. No bomb can kill the dreams I hold, for freedom never dies. So declares the opening title track that tells the story of Harry T. Moore and Harriette V.S. Moore, pioneering Florida civil rights leaders and activists who were killed after a bomb was placed under their bedroom floor on Christmas night 1951 exploded. It was the first assassination of any activist to occur during the nascent civil rights movement, but it certainly wouldnt be the last. The song may recount events from 67 years ago, but it could be from a headline today. Either way, the rallying cry of the song keeps being echoed by new generations of fighters.

2: When humming is enough. Great gospel singing is as much about emotional expression as targeted lyrics. The way that Oh Freedom (the classic post-Civil War African-American freedom ballad) opens with nothing more than the group harmonizing with some hmmm-mmm-mmm vocalizing instantly connects to some inner-emotion generator. Its a pure sound, one that the group said that fans wanted to hear more of on the first new recording from the group in five years. We want to hear your voices more! heralds the news release. And did they ever deliver on that request with this EP.

3: Rise Up. The shortest song on the album closes it out with a singalong set to a single bass drum, hand claps and a tambourine as the singers bob-and-weave through a beautifully metered lyric about the gates of the city opening wide and bearing the name of the 12 tribes of Israel. For those looking for the answer to that obvious trivia question, it is: Reuben, Simeon, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Ephraim and Manasseh. The 12 tribes descended all sons or grandsons from Jacob to whom God gave the name Israel. The 12 tribes are described in the Bible and the Quran.

4: Naturalistic production. Every release from the Sojourners has been characterized by great production, but Freedom Never Dies is the best by far. The way that the natural resonance of voices singing in unison is captured on the recording isnt only like being in the room with the trio, its also a perfect introduction to each members unique range. No song delivers this better than Lift Every Voice.

5: Future concerts. To truly appreciate the Sojourners, one has to see them perform. On their own, or with Byrnes, the trio is easily one of the best of its kind on the circuit today. Keep an eye on thesojourners.ca calendar for upcoming performances.

Also out this week:

The Dreadnoughts

Into the North | Stomp Records

This enduring East Vancouver crew has a proven track record for selling suds from coast-to-coast-to-coast and well beyond. Without doubt, the chant-alongs such as Fire Marengo or joyous jigs such as Harpers Frolic Bonny Kate are the sort of thing to get any crowd in a right fine mood. While the band has held its own in punk rock dives and folk festivals alike, Into the North certainly favours the acoustic folky side of things and the addition of some Quebeois tunes such as Pique La Baleine and Joli Rouge is a nice touch. Anyone covering Stan Rogers timeless Northwest Passage or anything else by the late folky is risky. They do the song justice. Plus, the guys have their own custom cider for this album.

Dec. 14, Astoria Hotel. Tickets and info: $20 at eventbrite.ca

Kaeli

Secret | kaelimcarter.com

A self-described indie singer-songwriter living near the edge of the ocean, Kaeli crafts immediately familiar electropop that sounds as radio ready as can be. The title track rides along on a shimmering keyboard passage, dropping into echoing chants and layer-upon-layer of orchestration. La La Land chimes in with a bell passage that bounces around your head if youve got headphones on and then gets into a solid skittering dance groove. There are big, hooky choruses in Haunt Me and Round 2, and the chorus in Freedom (feat. Alex Helton) is downright funky. From the incredibly inventive promo kit that the artist provided with her album to sharp earlier videos, Kaeli is very aware of what shes after and Secret shows it.

Moon Duo

Stars are the Light | Sacred Bones

Portland psyche crew Moon Duo moves beyond its obvious Suicide and Spaceman 3 pulsations on its latest album. Instead, Wooden Ships guitarist Ripley Johnson and sonic cohort Sanae Yamada expands its approach to incorporate much mellower terrain. Where all the bands previous work was imbued with more than a dash of eye-of-newt occult weirdness, new songs such as Lost Heads owe as much to 80s electro-disco as any acid vibes. Fall (In Your Love) is almost like a dub mix of something the Pop Group might have done in the 80s and the guitar riffs on Eternal Shore are like some missing avant-garde surf music from the Bay Area noise rock scene of the 90s. All together, it amounts to the most interesting and genuinely psychedelic album from the band to date.

Nov. 27, 9 p.m. Fox Cabaret, 2321 Main St. Tickets and info: $26.63 at ticketweb.ca

Swans

Leaving Meaning | Young God Records

On its 15th studio album, Michael Gira brings in members of Angels of Light, Anna and Maria von Hausswolff, Ben Frost, the Necks, Baby Dee, a Hawk and a Hacksaw and more to craft a dozen new sonic explorations into the recesses of his mind. Easily one of the nicest sounding records the band has released to date, it still manages to deliver the kind of disturbing, compulsive grooves that made earlier records often get described as terrifying. Just check out the droning, hypnotic The Hanging Man or The Nub, with its almost avant-garde jazz tinges. Always loaded with layered percussions, the resulting music made is akin to the chamber pop of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds married to the parts of the Bowery you can never scrape off of your boots once youve stepped in it. Since 1982, Swans and Giras various offshoot groups have all held fast to his dark, claustrophobic lyricism and arranging. And they just keep getting better.

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Five things to know about Freedom Never Dies, by the Sojourners - Vancouver Sun

The wages of freedom – The Boston Globe

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

At first, it seemed the communists had things under control. The government back then organized an annual official march to commemorate the death of a communist resistance fighter who opposed the Nazi occupation during World War II. Students marched obediently through the streets chanting communist slogans and bearing communist-approved signs. Then things went awry. As the march was about to end, the students suddenly veered off and headed for Wenceslas Square and the heart of the city. Police scrambled to cut them off. They formed a cordon at one end of the long avenue blocking the march then set up a line of police behind the march, and along every side street. The protesters were trapped. Minutes passed, then hours. The students began singing. Few of us journalists spoke Czech so we couldnt understand the words. But the melody was clear. In Czech, the students were singing, We Shall Overcome.

Suddenly the police charged the students with truncheons. Secret police in civilian clothes and with expressionless faces followed behind, methodically punching and pummeling everyone in their path. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune was driven back into a store doorway, beaten until her head split, blood pouring everywhere. A policeman raised a truncheon in front of me. I covered the top of my head with my hands. My wedding ring still carries the dent.

The students scattered. But the next night they returned, and the night after that. The crowds grew larger; the singing louder. Within days the communist government had fallen. Vaclav Havel, the imprisoned dissident playwright, was named president. The anti-communist revolutions swept onward, eventually engulfing the Soviet Union which collapsed and dissolved two years later, in 1991.

Thirty years on, its clear that the tumultuous revolutions of 1989 havent fully lived up to their promise. The end of communism allowed many of the old ethnic hatreds of Eastern Europe to resurface. The economic shock that followed the collapse of the iron curtain led to mass unemployment. Conservative populist governments now rule Poland, Hungary, and even Prague. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of a seemingly implacable foe left Europe and the United States without a common enemy, leading to fractures in the European Union and, now, in NATO and among Americas longtime alliances.

But if Europe is unsettled today, it is far better than it was in 1989, when the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain divided the continent, the United States and the Soviet Union aimed nuclear missiles at each other, and millions of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, East Germans, and Romanians lived under communist repression, watched by the secret police, forbidden to travel, forced to stand in line for meat and toys and new shoes.

In the tumult of 1989, the young Eastern Europeans protesting in the streets kept saying that they just wanted to live in a normal country where they could live freely, vote in elections, argue about politics, make their own choices. We may not agree with all those choices, just as many Eastern Europeans today surely cringe at some of Americas political choices. But with their hard-won freedom, they have undoubtedly built something better than what came before.

The street where I watched police beat up demonstrators has now been renamed in honor of that night and is packed with cafes and shops. The Berlin Wall that once symbolized the division of Europe has been reduced to an unobtrusive path underfoot, like Bostons Freedom Trail, that busy Berliners stride over as they hurry to work.

The students who courageously marched down the streets of Prague remind us that history often surprises, and that change can come quickly and unexpectedly.

They also gave us something important: hope.

In our polarized times, it is easy to question whether democracy can continue to advance or even survive. But 30 years ago, tens of millions of people living under communist totalitarianism, who hadnt experienced democracy since before World War II, stunned the world by rising up and peacefully overthrowing their leaders.

They sang a song made popular by the American civil rights movement decades earlier and thousands of miles away.

They reminded us, as Martin Luther King once preached, that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Jonathan Kaufman, director of the Northeastern School of Journalism, covered the revolutions of 1989 for the Globe. He is the author of The Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China to be published by Viking in June.

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The wages of freedom - The Boston Globe

In our opinion: Because of those who sacrifice for freedom, the importance of Veterans Day will never cease – Deseret News

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

This year, Veterans Day comes only two days after the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thats a happy coincidence.

The world-changing events of that day highlighted the value of freedom and liberty, but it also brought to focus the great sacrifices of selfless veterans who have carried out battles in the name of freedom throughout the history of the United States.

Few things are as stirring as watching World War II veterans being brought to Washington as part of the Honor Flight program. Wherever they go, people part the way and begin to applaud. Parents tell their children they are watching history. Eyes fill with tears of appreciation.

Without the efforts of these veterans, the Berlin Wall never would have been built because all of Germany, and much of the rest of the world, would have been in subjugation, held in check by an invisible wall of tyranny.

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates only 389,292 WWII veterans were still alive as of September, and they are dying at a rate of about 348 per day. The department also estimates the last veteran of that war will pass away in 2044.

For the sake of context, 16,112,566 members of the armed forces served during that war. For many, it was the most important event of their lives. Given their heroism and the wars outcome, the same can be said for the free world.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about members of that generation is their reluctance to talk about their experiences in the war. The New York Times recently published a story about this phenomenon, and about how many children of these heroes, too scared to ask for details while their fathers were alive, are now contacting the National World War II Museum in New Orleans or the National Archives to fill in the blanks.

Of the reluctance to talk, the Times said, Many of the Americans who fought to crush the Axis in World War II came home feeling the same way so many, in fact, that those lauded as the Greatest Generation might just as easily be called the Quietest.

Most likely, many of them experienced things too gruesome to relate. Reassimilating into the mundane routines of everyday life in a civilized, peace-time United States must have been an enormous challenge, at a time when few men sought mental health treatment or therapy.

But as the lives of these heroes come to an end, its important to compile and tell their stories. Freedom is indeed not free, and the price of our freedom should be known.

Veterans Day was born at the end of a previous conflict, WWI, which ended when Germany signed an armistice on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. That was supposed to be the war to end all wars, but the string of despots, dictators and terrorists seems to be never ending.

The last veteran of that first world war, a man who served in the British Navy, died in 2012 at the age of 110. The last American soldier in that war died a year earlier, also at the age of 110.

Thank goodness Veterans Day did not die with them. And thank goodness the string of men and women willing to sacrifice all for the freedom of others is never-ending, as well.

CSG and Freedom expand partnership to provide business and IT services – MobileSyrup

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

CSG announced that it is extending its partnership with Freedom Mobile to provide more business and IT operations managed services.

The partnership aims to continue to provide services that will lead to better customer experiences for wireless subscribers.

CSG provides business support systems (BSS) software and services to the telecommunications industry. It supports Freedom by addressing customer inquiries relating to billing and payment management, error processing and service disruptions.

It also provides proactive monitoring of business operations and IT support for the telecommunications company.

Our partnership with CSG helps us streamline our operations so that we can continue to give excellent customer service to our subscribers while providing enhanced BSS and real-time rating systems availability and reliability, said Brian OShaughnessy, senior vice-president of wireless and 5G technology at Freedom, in a press release.

The two companies hope to continue to work together by leveraging their services and capabilities while reducing annual costs related to IT operations.

Source: Shaw Communications

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CSG and Freedom expand partnership to provide business and IT services - MobileSyrup

Mormon quest for peace and freedom in Mexico shattered by violence and adversity – CNN

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

But that nearly 140-year quest for peace and freedom across the border has been marred by bloodshed and adversity.

"In many ways, this community has sought to live among the cracks -- not American, but not fully Mexican, either; Mormon, but not 'that' Mormon; desires a peaceful refuge, but faces constant violence," said Benjamin Park, a historian at Sam Houston State University.

The sheer brutality this week shocked even longtime observers of the migration of fundamentalist Mormons to northern Mexico.

History has been hard. They escaped what they saw as oppression at home to settle in a little-known country before many were driven away by the lawlessness of the Mexican Revolution. Periods of violence, extortion and threats from drug cartels and other criminal groups delivered them to this moment.

"They have a very vivid sense of their own history of persecution, which is not imaginary," said Laurie Maffly-Kipp, a professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. "Now it's the cartels. And all they've wanted to do is live independently and according to their values."

Here's how thousands of Mormon families came to settle in the rural valleys of northern Mexico in the late 19th century.

Mormon families migrate south

But the church disavowed plural marriage in 1890 under pressure from the US government, which had imprisoned polygamists and seized their assets. By 1910, members who continued the practice were excommunicated.

Mormons who accepted polygamy as part of their faith began moving to Mexico and Canada to keep their families together, according to experts.

Thousands set out by rail or horse and wagon on a sometimes perilous journey to the states of Chihuahua and Sinaloa.

"Distances were great and physical obstacles imposed by the terrain were immense," the 1969 article said. "Contact with non-Mormons along the way was strained and threatening."

A relationship of convenience with Mexico

Mexican political leaders agreed to look the other way if the Mormon settlers remained quiet about their marriage practices and helped develop the local economy, said Barbara Jones Brown, executive director of the Mormon History Association. Polygamy is illegal in the US and Mexico.

"Up until the early 20th century, the polygamist Latter-day Saints had a great relationship with the Mexican government because they were bringing in industry and farming and helping to develop the desert area," she said. "They were contributing to the economy."

More than 4,000 Mormons settled in eight communities in Chihuahua and Sonora, according to the 1969 article.

One migrant, John R. Young, who settled in Mexico with his three wives and their families, described the journey of more than 1,000 miles as "long, tedious and expensive, but we were happy, for we have escaped imprisonment," the article said.

Mormons targeted during the Mexican Revolution

When the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, many Mormons were again forced to flee, as they had done in previous generations.

Nationalist and anti-American sentiment ran high. Mormon settlements were sacked or destroyed by rebels. Migrants were attacked.

Many Mormon families never returned, including Romney's father, who was then a boy of 5.

"Those polygamous families in Mexico who went back into the United States during the Mexican Revolution faced prosecution not only from their monogamous nation, but also ostracism from their own church members," Jones Brown said.

"For those two reasons, some of these families kept going back into Revolutionary Mexico in spite of the violence, robbery, and kidnappings they faced there during wartime -- so they could keep their polygamous families intact and try to live their religious beliefs without ostracism and prosecution."

The Chihuahua and Sonora settlers

The convoy of three vehicles that was ambushed this week set out Monday from the La Mora settlement in Sonora, founded decades ago by fundamentalists associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The victims lived there. Many were natives of Mexico, with dual US-Mexican citizenship.

Some La Mora families practiced polygamy, but most considered themselves independent Mormons, according to Cristina Rosetti, a scholar of Mormon fundamentalism.

Family members describe themselves as part of a religiously diverse Mormon community of about 3,000 members, living in their own agricultural enclave.

"The people in La Mora are what is called ... an independent Mormon family," Rosetti said. "They might practice polygamy but they're not part of a church. They're not part of a splinter group. They're not part of the sect. They don't have a leader. They're just a family that is Mormon."

Though some victims in Monday's ambush were named LeBaron, Rosetti said they were not part of a group known by the same name that settled in the nearby state of Chihuahua decades ago. The group is also known as the Church of the Firstborn.

"Calling them a group or a sect or a church is not only offensive but it's historically incorrect," she said of the La Mora families.

Members of the LeBaron group from Chihuahua have had a history of conflict with Mexican drug cartels.

Months later, Benjamin LeBaron and his brother-in-law Luis Widmar were beaten and shot to death after armed men stormed their home in Chihuahua. Authorities later arrested the alleged ringleader of a drug trafficking family that ran a smuggling operation on Mexico's border with Texas.

But the La Mora families had largely been spared the violence that afflicted their neighbors.

"To my knowledge, the La Mora group has lived in relative peace for 60 years," Rosetti said. "They have not had conflicts with cartels.

A close-knit community

Fundamentalist Mormons trace their origins to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"You have some who are fully committed to the LDS Church, including many who have given up the doctrine of polygamy and are members of the institution in Salt Lake City," said Park, the historian at Sam Houston State University.

"You also, on the other end of the spectrum, have those who are part of the Church of the Firstborn or the LeBarons, who are firmly committed to polygamy, who are formal members of those break-off churches and see themselves as representatives of the true church. And then you have many, many in between those lines."

A spokesman from the LDS Church said the victims were not members.

"We are heartbroken to hear of the tragedy that has touched these families in Mexico. Though it is our understanding that they are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, our love, prayers and sympathies are with them as they mourn and remember their loved ones."

"They all know each other," Park said. "If they're not related to each other, their families go back generations as friends and associates and colleagues. This is very close-knit community."

Mormon quest for peace and freedom in Mexico shattered by violence and adversity - CNN

Geingob congratulates Angola on 44 years of freedom – New Era Live

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

8 hours ago

Staff Reporter

WINDHOEK - President Hage Geingob yesterday conveyed a message of congratulations to the people of Angola and President Joo Loureno on the countrys 44th independence anniversary.Presidential spokesperson Alfredo Hengari in a statement said Geingob extended warm felicitations to his Angolan counterpart.

Angola gained independence from Portugal on 11 November 1975.I wish to extend to Your Excellency, the Government and the fraternal people of the Republic of Angola our warmest felicitations and best wishes on the occasion of the 44th anniversary of your independence, Hengari quoted Geingob as saying.

We join our brothers and sisters in Angola, with whom we share an eternal kinship, in celebrating this momentous occasion. As we propel our countries towards prosperity, I look forward to continue to work with Your Excellency in deepening our historic relations, characterized by enhanced cooperation in areas such as trade, investment and people to people exchanges.Geingob also wished President Loureno well in his endeavours of taking Angola to greater heights.

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Geingob congratulates Angola on 44 years of freedom - New Era Live

The bar has always been high for Freedom footballs Jenkins; thats where he likes it – lehighvalleylive.com

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

It was 2017 and Jared Jenkins stood on the field at J. Birney Crum Stadium after leading Freedom High Schools football team to victory over Allentown Central Catholic in his first varsity start.

Jenkins, a sophomore at the time, wasnt surprised. And Patriots coach Jason Roeder wasnt either.

We knew what we were getting with Jared before he even walked in the door here, Roeder said. He's been in our program for all these years. His dad (Earl) has been on the staff.

Its true. Roeder had high expectations for Jenkins from Day 1.

Now, after Jenkins has claimed every major passing record in program history, its probably safe to conclude those hopes have been fulfilled nicely.

But theres still work to be done.

Second-seeded Freedom (10-1) hosts third-seeded Parkland (9-2) 7 p.m. Friday during the District 11 Class 6A semifinals at Bethlehem Area School District Stadium.

Jenkins will have the same high standards for himself in the upcoming blockbuster playoff contest as he had in Allentown dozens of starts ago.

I always want to do the best I can for my teammates, the senior said. I feel like, with the coaches I have and the team around me, I can play a great game because they're always going to put me in spots to do that.

The seniors name is all over the Patriots record book. He holds the marks for career passing attempts (775), completions (450), yards (7,129) and touchdowns (69); season passing attempts (313), completions (160), yards (2,651) and touchdowns (29); and single-game completions (25), yards (426) and touchdowns (5).

Hes 136-for-196 with 2,207 yards and 23 touchdowns (5 INTs) this fall.

Even with all of those numbers and there are a boatload Roeders attention is on the effect that the QB has on his teammates and the leadership he displays.

To maintain that focus, of trying to get better every game, has been such a great example for the rest of our guys, Roeder said. He never got complacent; he never got caught up in reading his own headlines. He's been the consummate team player. He remained humble and coachable through all his successes. I think that just sets a great tone for the way we operate here.

Jenkins indicated that his decision-making has improved as a senior. But, his concern is also about the intangibles, rather than the statistical or mechanical.

You either have it or you don't, Jenkins said about the will to lead. I learned a little from the guys above me, but I had it in me All summer, I was there at every workout, always trying to push everyone. On the field, I'm keeping everyone composed and ready for the next play.

The quarterbacks cool head has been invaluable for Freedom, which has played in several nail-biters during Jenkins career.

He's such a smart football player, Roeder said. He understands what we're trying to accomplish on offense. He's quick to diagnose how a defense is trying to attack us. His composure, during a lot of high-pressure games over the years, really stands out.

Jenkins, whos also been a solid contributor for the Patriots wrestling team, has won 29 games over three seasons. A 30th victory would give Freedom a chance to claim its second consecutive District 11 title.

The Patriots, however, are confronted with a Parkland team thats won seven straight games and is stronger/healthier than the squad that Freedom beat 21-18 on Sept. 6.

It definitely is a different challenge, Jenkins said. Beating a team twice, in the EPC South, in one year is a hard task. We have to put a whole new game plan together to try to beat them in different ways.

It's a long time ago, but neither team is completely different, Roeder said. Obviously, you take a peek at that and factor it in, but you also look hard at what they've been doing well lately. I think you gear your game plan to what they've done more recently.

Its the fourth year in a row Freedom has met the Trojans in the regular season and playoffs.

They're physical on both sides of the ball. They do things well in all three aspects of the game. They come off the ball; they're balanced on offense; and they always play fantastic defense, Roeder said. It's going to be a typical Freedom-Parkland game.

Roeder consistently preaches growth. Parklands gains have been fairly evident. How much Freedom has progressed should be revealed on Friday night.

When you start playing teams a second time, you get some clear benchmarks to how you've improved, Roeder said. I think our team, like theirs, has evolved.

We've gotten better every week, Jenkins said. That Week 10 win (against Liberty) was huge for us for momentum going into the playoffs. Then, another big win over Emmaus last week (in the D-11 quarterfinals) I think we're going to be ready to go on Friday.

Jenkins, who said hes being patient with his college recruitment and waiting to see if his final tape will generate some offers, has been playing with most of his fellow seniors since they were dominant together in the Bethlehem Township Bulldogs youth program.

Its been awesome, the QB said. Ive made so many great relationships with players, coaches and families. Im just so blessed to be able to be here today with the games we have left. I just want to make the most of what we have left together.

RELATED: High school football predictions for Week 12

Kyle Craig may be reached at kcraig@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KyleCraigSports. Find Lehigh Valley high school sports on Facebook.

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The bar has always been high for Freedom footballs Jenkins; thats where he likes it - lehighvalleylive.com

Democracy doesnt matter to the defenders of economic freedom – The Guardian

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Two of the freest economies in the world are on fire. According to indexes of economic freedom published annually separately by two conservative thinktanks the Heritage Foundation and the Fraser Institute Hong Kong has been number one in the rankings for more than 20 years. Chile is ranked first in Latin America by both indexes, which also place it above Germany and Sweden in the global league table.

Violent protest in Hong Kong has entered its eighth month. The target is Beijing, but the lack of universal suffrage that is catalysing popular anger has long been part of Hong Kongs economic model. In Chile, where student-led protests against a rise in subway fares turned into a nationwide anti-government movement, the death toll is at least 18.

The rage may be better explained by other rankings: Chile places in the top 25 for economic freedom and also for income inequality. If Hong Kong were a country, it would be in the worlds top 10 most unequal. Observers often use the word neoliberalism to describe the policies behind this inequality. The term can seem vague, but the ideas behind the economic freedom index help to bring it into focus.

All rankings hold visions of utopia within them. The ideal world described by these indexes is one where property rights and security of contract are the highest values, inflation is the chief enemy of liberty, capital flight is a human right and democratic elections may work actively against the maintenance of economic freedom.

These rankings are not merely academic. Heritage rankings are used to allocate US foreign aid through the Millennium Challenge Corporation. They set goals for policy-makers: in 2011, the Institute of Economic Affairs lamented that a rise in social spending was leading to a fall in Britains ranking. Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith even cited the Heritage index in support of a hard Brexit. Launching the 2018 index at the Heritage Foundation, Trumps commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, expressed hope that environmental deregulation and corporate tax cuts would reverse Americas decline in the ranking. Where did this way of framing the world come from?

The idea for the economic freedom index was born in 1984, after a discussion of Orwells 1984 at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society an exclusive debating club of academics, policymakers, thinktankers and business leaders formed by Friedrich Hayek in 1947 to oppose the rise of communism in the east and social democracy in the west. The historian Paul Johnson argued that Orwells predictions had not come true; Michael Walker of the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute countered that perhaps they had. High taxes, obligatory social security numbers and public transparency about political contributions suggested we might be closer to Orwellian dystopia than we thought.

Walker saw this debate as the unfinished business of Milton Friedmans 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, which had suggested that political liberty relied on market freedom but had not proved it scientifically. Friedman was at the meeting, and, with his wife and co-author, Rose, agreed to help host a series of workshops on the challenge of measuring economic freedom.

The Friedmans gathered a crowd of luminaries, including Nobel prize winner Douglass North and The Bell Curve co-author Charles Murray, to figure out whether something as nebulous as freedom could be quantified and ranked. They ended up with a series of indicators, measuring the stability of currency; the right of citizens to own bank accounts in foreign countries and foreign currencies; the level of government spending and government-owned enterprise; and, crucially, the rate of individual and corporate taxation.

When Walkers Fraser Institute published its first index in 1996 with a foreword from Friedman, there were some surprises. According to its historical overview, the second freest economy in the world in 1975 was Honduras, a military dictatorship. For the next year, another dictatorship, Guatemala, was in the top five. These were no anomalies. They expressed a basic truth about the indexes. The definition of freedom they used meant that democracy was a moot point, monetary stability was paramount and any expansion of social services would lead to a fall in the rankings. Taxation was theft, pure and simple, and austerity was the only path to the top.

The right to food, clothing, medical services, housing or a minimal income level, the authors wrote, was nothing less than forced labor requirements [imposed] on others. The director of the index translated the vision into policy advice a few years later, writing in a public memo to the Canadian prime minister that poverty could be eliminated through a simple solution: End welfare. Reinstitute poorhouses and homes for unwed mothers.

Not content with mere economics, the Fraser Institute joined up with the Cato Institute in 2015 to publish the first global index of human freedom. They included all of the earlier economic indicators and supplemented them with measurements of civil liberty, rights to association and free expression, alongside dozens of others but left out multiparty elections and universal suffrage. The authors noted specifically that they excluded political freedom and democracy from the index and Hong Kong topped the list again.

What was going on? One answer is that the project of measuring economic freedom had made some of its authors question their prior assumptions about the natural relationship between capitalism and democracy. By the 1990s, Friedman, who had previously seen the two as mutually reinforcing, was singing a different tune. As he said in an interview in 1988: I believe a relatively free economy is a necessary condition for freedom. But there is evidence that a democratic society, once established, destroys a free economy. An enfranchised people tended to use their votes to pressure politicians into more social spending, clogging the arteries of free exchange.

In the workshops devoted to creating the indexes, Friedman cited the example of Hong Kong as evidence for the truth of this proposition, saying: There is almost no doubt that if you had political freedom in Hong Kong you would have much less economic and civil freedom than you do as a result of an authoritarian government.

Hong Kongs former chief executive, CY Leung, agreed. During the umbrella revolution protests of 2014 he was asked why suffrage could not be expanded. His matter-of-fact response was that this would increase the power of the poor and lead to the kind of politics that favour the expansion of the welfare state instead of business-friendly policies. For him, the tradeoff between economic and political freedom was not buried in an index. It was as clear as day.

Economic freedom rankings exist inside nations, too. Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer, two of Trumps economic advisers, created comparable league tables for American states which have proved drastically unhelpful in predicting economic success. The system has been rolled out by the Cato Institute in India, too, encouraging a deregulatory race to the bottom within national borders as well as across them. One of the authors of the report, Bibek Debroy, now chairs the Economic Advisory Council to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi.

Pinochet, Thatcher and Reagan may be dead. But economic freedom indexes carry the neoliberal banner by deeming the goals of social justice forever illegitimate and pushing states to regard themselves solely as guardians of economic power. Stephen Moore, who was a favourite earlier this year for Trumps appointment to the Federal Reserve Board, put the matter simply. Capitalism is a lot more important than democracy, he said in an interview. Im not even a big believer in democracy. Hong Kongs financial secretary made much the same argument two weeks ago in London, when he cited the citys top economic freedom ranking and reassured his audience that alongside the protests, the business of business rolls on, unabated.

By colour-coding nations, celebrating victors on glossy paper stock and giving high-ranking countries a reason to celebrate at banquets and balls, the indexes help perpetuate the idea that economics must be protected from the excesses of politics to the point that an authoritarian government that protects free markets is preferable to a democratic one that redesigns them. At a time when the casting of ballots may lead to changes that threaten the freedom that capital has long enjoyed, the disposability of democracy in the vision of the index is what haunts us, from Santiago to the South China Sea to Washington DC.

Quinn Slobodian is a historian and author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism

Religious-Freedom Voters Will Vote Trump – National Review

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Sister Loraine McGuire with Little Sisters of the Poor after the Supreme Court heard Zubik v. Burwell, an appeal demanding exemption from providing insurance covering contraception, in Washington, D.C., March 23, 2016. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

The late Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy wrote, Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion all have a double aspect freedom of thought and freedom of action. To which one should be able to add, freedom of inaction meaning that absent a compelling state interest, people should not be forced to violate their own religious beliefs through compelled behavior.

Dont tell that to the secular left. Giving a fig about the constitutional guarantee of the free expression of religion, leftwing attorneys general have sued to thwart a Trump administration rule that seeks to protect medical professionals, who refuse to participate in what they consider to be immoral procedures, from being punished by employers that receive federal funding. This includes protecting doctors and nurses from forced participation in abortion or the surgical mutilation of minors (from a certain perspective) deemed medical treatments for gender dysphoria.

Yesterday, a federal judge prohibited the conscience rule from taking effect. From the NBC News story:

A federal judge in New York on Wednesday struck down a new Trump administration rule that would have allowed health care clinicians to refuse to provide abortions for moral or religious reasons.

U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York rejected the federal rule after womens groups, health organizations and multiple states sued the Department of Health and Human Services, arguing the exemptions were unconstitutional.

Engelmayer ruled that the so-called conscience rule was too coercive, allowing HHS to withhold billions in federal funding unless health care providers complied.

Alexandra is right that this ruling and others like it could eventually drive orthodox religious believers out of health care. Actually, I think that is the plan. For example, Dignity Health, a Catholic hospital, is being sued in California with the blessing of the state Court of Appeals for refusing to perform a hysterectomy on a biological woman/transgender man despite its clear violation of Catholic moral doctrine that prevents sterilization in the absence of a medical pathology.

And lets not forget that the Little Sisters of the Poor are still in court fighting an Obama era rule that requires they an order of Catholic nuns provide free contraception health insurance coverage. We also have the baker case and the florist cases, to further illustrate the point.

Back to Trump. Orthodox (small-o) Christians and other faithful people know that Trump seeks to protect their right to act or refrain from acting in the public square based on their faith. And, they know that many of his political opponents seek to coerce action and thereby shrivel their right to the free expression of religion into a mere freedom of worship that evaporates once outside of the home and church/synagogue/temple/mosque.

And that is one major reason why many voters of faith will vote for Trump next year despite his past peccadillos and obnoxious personality.

One last point: Voting Trump for this reason is not to shrink in fear instead of standing boldly in faith, as some have charged. Rather, it is acting in the public square e.g., rendering onto Caesar what is Caesars to protect a fundamental constitutional right that is under direct assault.

One can agree or disagree with that decision, but that is an honorable choice that has no bearing on the fortitude of ones religious beliefs.

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Religious-Freedom Voters Will Vote Trump - National Review

Donald Trump plans to make foreign aid conditional on religious freedom – The Guardian

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

White House officials are reportedly drafting plans to make US foreign aid conditional on how countries treat their religious minorities, in an effort that is seen as a sop to Christian evangelicals in Donald Trumps base.

The move, which threatens to impose further constraints on a US foreign aid policy already heavily restricted under the Trump administration, was first reported by Politico after briefings from White House aides.

The aides suggested the US Commission on International Religious Freedom listings could be used for identifying which countries should have their aid withheld.

According to the report, the proposal could also be extended to include US military assistance with a potential impact on countries from Iraq to Vietnam and India. The commissions Tier 1 designated countries regarded as the most serious offenders include US partners such as Saudi Arabia as well as adversaries like Iran.

Critics point out that a number of key regional partners of the US, including Iraq and India, have been accused of restricting religious minority rights leading to the suspicion that any new restrictions are likely to be used selectively.

Two White House officials told Politico that the idea was in its infancy while an executive order was being drafted, adding that imposing sanctions was being considered as a method of achieving the same aims.

The move follows commitments by Trump on religious freedom. During his UN general assembly speech in September, Trump signalled that his administration would continue prioritising the issue.

Hard to believe, but 80% of the worlds population lives in countries where religious liberty is in significant danger or even completely outlawed, Trump said. Americans will never tire in our effort to defend and promote freedom of worship and religion.

Oh man, theres so many ways that could go wrong, Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior aid official in the Obama administration, told Politico.

He said that, depending on how strictly the administration interprets the idea of religious freedom, it is likely to hit national security concerns about protecting certain allies. Egypt and India, for example, arguably have religious freedom issues, he noted, but both receive US aid.

Since Trumps election, his administration has long sought to cut some US foreign aid programmes either for political reasons like the US defunding of its donations to UNRWA, the main agency for Palestinian refugees or because it argues that agencies are wasteful or inefficient.

Trump has also suggested at times that foreign aid should be contingent on countries backing US interests.

The White House backed away from its latest effort to cut billions of dollars in foreign aid in the summer, after an outcry in Congress over what was seen as an attempt to sidestep lawmakers authority over government spending.

The latest moves follow reports by Propublica that the office of the vice-president, Mike Pence, had put pressure on the US Agency for International Development to direct its Middle East funding to preferred Christian groups in Iraq, citing internal emails and interviews with dozens of current and former US officials and aid professionals.

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Donald Trump plans to make foreign aid conditional on religious freedom - The Guardian

Reauthorizing the USA Freedom Act of 2015 FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Joint Statement for the Record

Chairman Graham, Ranking Member Feinstein, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today about four important provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that will expire at the end of this year unless reauthorized by Congress. As indicated in the Director of National Intelligences letter to this committee, the administration strongly supports permanent reauthorization of these provisions.

Three of the authoritiesthe roving wiretap, business records, and lone wolf provisionshave been part of FISA for well over a decade and have been renewed by Congress multiple times, most recently in the USA FREEDOM Act of 2015 (FREEDOM Act). Before that, these same authorities were reauthorized multiple times between 2005 and 2011, each time following extensive congressional review and deliberation. Each renewal gained bipartisan support.

Two of the authorities, the roving wiretap and business records provisions, have been part of FISA since 2001. These provisions are important in national security investigations and are comparable to provisions available in ordinary criminal investigations. The roving wiretap authority enables the government to continue surveilling a court-approved national security target when the target takes steps to thwart the surveillance. The business records authority allows the government to collect records, papers, and other documents that are relevant to a national security investigation. The government has used these important national security authorities judiciously, with the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and in the interest of national security.

The lone wolf provision was added to FISA in 2004 to close a gap in the governments ability to surveil a foreign person who is engaged in international terrorism or international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, but who lacks traditional connections to a terrorist group or other foreign power. Without the authority, the government could not rely on FISA to respond to those kinds of threats. Although the government has not used the lone wolf provision to date, it is critical this authority remain in the governments toolkit for the future, as international terrorist groups increasingly seek to inspire individuals to carry out attacks, without necessarily providing the kind of coordination or support that would authorize traditional FISA surveillance.

The fourth authoritythe Call Detail Records (CDR) provisionpermits the targeted collection of telephony metadata but not the content of any communications. Congress added this authority to FISA four years ago in the FREEDOM Act as one of several significant FISA reforms designed to enhance privacy and civil liberties. It replaced the National Security Agencys (NSA's) bulk telephony metadata collection program with a new legal authority whereby the bulk metadata would remain with the telecommunications service providers. The CDR authority provides a narrowly-tailored mechanism for the targeted collection of telephone metadata for possible connections between foreign powers or agents of foreign powers and others as part of an authorized investigation to protect against international terrorism. H. Rep. 114-109, at 17 (2015). The FREEDOM Act also permanently banned bulk collection under FISAs business records and pen-trap provisions and under the National Security Letter statutes. As this committee is aware, the NSA recently discontinued the CDR program for technical and operational reasons. But the CDR program retains the potential to be a source of valuable foreign intelligence information. The CDR program may be needed again in the future, should circumstances change. NSAs careful approach to the program, and the legal obligations imposed by the FREEDOM Act in the form of judicial oversight, legislative oversight, and transparency, support the reauthorization of the CDR program.

We urge the committee to consider permanently reauthorizing these authorities based not only on the governments demonstrated record and the importance of the authorities to national security, but also on the significant reforms contained in the FREEDOM Act. These include authorizing the FISC to appoint amici curiae to address privacy and civil liberties concerns and enhancing public transparency and reporting requirements under FISA. Four years ago, the FREEDOM Act was passed after extensive oversight and comprehensive hearings, and received strong bipartisan support in the Senate. In the wake of repeated reviews and bipartisan authorizations over nearly two decades, the administrations view is that the time has come for Congress to extend these authorities permanently.

Roving Wiretap

First, Congress should permanently reauthorize the roving wiretap provision. The authority outlined in this provision is similar to the roving wiretap authority that has been available since 1986 in criminal investigations, under the Wiretap Act, and which has repeatedly been upheld in the courts.

The roving wiretap provision provides the government an effective tool to use in response to adversaries attempting to thwart detection. To understand the importance of this authority, the committee must consider how FISA functions in ordinary, non-roving cases, and how roving authority is necessary for targets who try to avoid surveillance. Under both regular and roving FISA authority, the governments application for a court order must identify the target of the surveillance with particularity and must establish probable cause that the target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. If the court approves the application, it issues one order to the government and a secondary order to a third-partysuch as a telephone companydirecting it to assist the government in conducting the wiretap. See 50 U.S.C. 1805(c)(1-2). The secondary order is necessary because, in most cases, the government needs the assistance of a company to implement the surveillance. In an ordinary case, if the target switches to a new communications service provider, the government must submit a new application and obtain a new set of FISA orders. However, where the government can demonstrate in advance to the FISA court that the targets actions may have the effect of thwarting surveillance, such as by rapidly and repeatedly changing providers, FISAs roving wiretap provision allows the FISC to issue a generic secondary order that the government can serve on the new provider to commence surveillance without first going back to the court. See 50 U.S.C. 1805(c)(2)(B). The governments probable cause showing that the target is an agent of a foreign power remains the same, and the government must also demonstrate to the FISC, normally within 10 days of initiating surveillance of the new facility, probable cause that the specific target is using, or is about to use, the new facility. See 50 U.S.C. 1805(c)(3).

The roving wiretap authority has proven to be an important intelligence-gathering tool. The government has used the authority in a relatively small number of cases each year. Those cases tend to involve highly-trained foreign intelligence officers operating within the United States, or other important investigative targets, including terrorism-related targets, who have shown a propensity to engage in activities deliberately designed to thwart surveillance. Similar authority designed to prevent suspects from thwarting surveillance has been a permanent part of our criminal law for over 30 years, and this provision has been renewed as part of FISA repeatedly since 2001 without controversy or evidence of abuse. It remains an important tool, and we strongly support permanent reauthorization.

Business Records

Second, we also support permanent reauthorization of the so-called business records provision, which was enacted as section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001. This provision authorizes the government to apply to the FISC for an order directing the production of business records or other tangible things that are relevant to an authorized national security investigation. It allows the government to obtain in a national security investigation many of the same types of records and other tangible things that the government can obtain through a grand jury subpoena in an ordinary criminal investigation. The government has used the business records provision to obtain, for example, drivers license records, hotel records, car rental records, apartment leasing records, and the like.

Importantly, the business records provision contains several statutory safeguards. To obtain a FISC order approving a business records application, the government must make a showing to the FISC that (1) it is seeking information in an authorized national security investigation conducted pursuant to guidelines approved by the attorney general; (2) where the investigative target is a U.S. person, the government has demonstrated that the investigation is not based solely on activities protected by the First Amendment; and (3) the government must demonstrate that the information sought is relevant to the authorized investigation. See 50 U.S.C. 1861(a)(1-2). The government must also adhere to attorney general guidelines and minimization procedures that limit the retention and dissemination of any information collected concerning U.S. persons. Id. 1861(a)(2)(A) & (g). Recipients of an order seeking business records also have the opportunity to challenge the legality of the order in court, although, to date, no recipient has done so.

Some criticize the business records provisions as running afoul of the Fourth Amendment because business records orders are not issued under a probable cause standard. But an order issued under the business records provision does not authorize the government to enter premises, or to search for or seize records or other tangible things. Thus, the Fourth Amendments probable cause standard generally does not apply. Rather, the records the government is authorized to obtainpursuant to a FISC orderare similar to those that the government could obtain in ordinary criminal or civil investigationswithout any court order in most instancespursuant to a grand jury subpoena in an ordinary criminal case, or pursuant to an administrative subpoena in a civil case. Like a grand jury subpoena or an administrative subpoena, a business records order merely requires the recipient to identify and produce responsive records or other tangible things.

Critics have also questioned the need for the business records provision in view of the governments ability to seek similar records pursuant to a grand jury subpoena. But not every national security investigation involves criminal activity; thus, a grand jury subpoena is not always available to the government. Additionally, business records orders issued by the FISC are often supported by classified information that cannot be disclosed to the grand jury and cannot be declassified without compromising important national security interests. Thus, reauthorization of this provision remains critically important.

To be sure, this authority has generated substantial controversy because it was employed, with FISC approval, to support NSAs bulk telephony metadata collection program. However, that program has been terminated and replaced by the more targeted collection of telephony metadata authorized under the CDR provisions of the FREEDOM Act, as discussed below. The FREEDOM Act permanently banned bulk collection altogether under the business records authority and required the use of a specific selection term to justify an application for a business records order. The law defines specific selection term as a term that specifically identifies a person, account, address, or personal device, or any other specific identifier [that] is used to limit, to the greatest extent reasonably practicable, the scope of tangible things sought, consistent with the purpose for seeking the tangible things. 50 U.S.C. 1861(k)(4)(A)(i). It does not include terms, or a combination of terms, that are not so limited. See id. 1861(k)(4)(A)(ii). Moreover, the FREEDOM Act provided that the FISC may evaluate the adequacy of minimization procedures issued under the business records provisions, and may require additional, particularized minimization procedures beyond those otherwise required, with regard to the production, retention, or dissemination of certain business records, including requiring the destruction of such records within a reasonable period of time. See id. 1861(g)(3).

The government has used the business records authority judiciously. On average, between 2015 and 2018, the government sought and obtained records under this provision less than 76 times per year. The number of business records applications approved has decreased every year since 2012. Many of these investigations involve scenarios that are outside the scope of the National Security Letter statutes, and often a business records order is sought because national security interests preclude the use of less secure criminal authorities, or because there may be no criminal investigation underway. Given the importance of the authority, the absence of any evidence of abuse, and the additional safeguards Congress imposed in 2015, we urge the committee to support permanent reauthorization of this provision.

Lone Wolf

The third expiring provision is the so-called lone wolf provision of FISA. It allows the FISC to authorize surveillance of non-United States persons engaged in international terrorism or the international proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, without the need to show that the target is acting on behalf of a particular terrorist group or other foreign power.

The lone wolf provision is contained within the definition of an agent of a foreign power in FISA. Electronic surveillance under FISA can only be directed at a foreign power or agent of a foreign power, as defined in the statute. See 50 U.S.C. 1804(a)(3)(A). A foreign power under FISA is defined for counterterrorism purposes to include a group engaged in international terrorism. Accordingly, without the lone wolf provision, the government would need to establish that a terrorism-related surveillance target was an agent of an international terrorist group. The lone wolf provision specifies that a foreign individual is also considered an agent of a foreign power under FISA if the individual is engaged in international terrorismeven if the individual is not directly connected to a foreign terrorist group.

There are two key points to understand about this provision. First, it applies only to non-U.S. persons (not to American citizens or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence), see 50 U.S.C. 1801(b)(1)(C), and second, only when they engage or prepare to engage in international terrorism, see id. 1801(c). In practice, to establish the probable cause necessary to secure a FISC order under the lone wolf provision, the government must know a great deal about the target, including the targets purpose and plans for terrorist activity, to satisfy the definition of international terrorism.

Although the government has not used the lone wolf authority to date, it fills an important gap in the governments collection capabilities. The provision allows for the surveillance of a foreign terrorist who might be inspired by a foreign group, but who is not technically an agent of that group. For example, the provision would allow for surveillance of a foreign person who has self-radicalized through internet propaganda of a foreign terrorist organization, or a known international terrorist who severs his connection with a terrorist group. The governments decision not to employ this authority to date does not mean that it should be abandoned. To the contrary, it shows that the government will use this provision only where necessary and legally available. Terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaida actively seek to encourage lone wolf attacks. The continued availability of the lone wolf provision ensures the government retains the authority to surveil isolated foreign terrorist actors who are inspired, but not directed by, foreign terrorist groups.

Call Detail Records

Finally, as we have explained, in addition to reauthorizing these longstanding provisions of FISA in 2015, the FREEDOM Act banned bulk collection and established a new, narrowly-tailored mechanism for the targeted collection of CDRs from U.S. telecommunications service providers. The new provisions were enacted after comprehensive oversight, including hearings addressing recommendations of a presidentially appointed group of outside experts and the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which weighed in on the privacy and civil liberties effects of the authorities and their importance to national security.

The CDR provision represents a carefully tailored balance between the interest in individual privacy and the need to protect against the activities of international terrorist groups. In support of an authorized counterterrorism investigation, the CDR authority provides a way for government investigators, pursuant to a FISC order, to identify contacts of suspected terrorists who may be within the United States. It permits the government to seek an order from the FISC compelling the production on an ongoing basis of CDR information based on a specific selection term, such as a telephone number. The government must demonstrate to the FISC that (1) there are reasonable grounds to believe that the data sought is relevant to an authorized counterterrorism investigation; and (2) there is a reasonable, articulable suspicion that the specific selection term is associated with a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power engaged in international terrorism or activities in preparation of international terrorism. See 50 U.S.C. 1861(b)(2)(C). Critically, the provision authorizes the collection of certain metadata associated with telephone calls, such as the originating or terminating telephone number and date and time of a call, but does not authorize collecting the content of any communication, the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer, or cell site location or global positioning system information. See id. 1861(k)(3). With FISC approval, the government may require the production of CDRs two hops from the seed termi.e., the CDRs associated with the initial specific selection term and those associated with the CDRs identified in the initial hop. See id. 1861(c)(2)(F).

The government has used this authority responsibly. In 2018, the NSA identified certain technical irregularities in data it received from telecommunications service providers under the CDR provision. Because it was not feasible for NSA to resolve the issue technologically, in May of 2018, NSA began the process of deleting all CDR data that it had received since 2015. Then, after balancing the programs intelligence value, associated costs, and compliance and data integrity concerns caused by the unique complexities of using these company-generated business records for intelligence purposes, NSA suspended the CDR program.

NSAs decision to suspend the CDR program does not mean that Congress should allow the CDR authority to expire. Rather, that decision shows that the Executive Branch is a responsible steward of the authority Congress afforded it, and that the numerous constraints on the government imposed by the FREEDOM Act, including oversight by the FISC, are demanding and effective. As technology changes, our adversaries tradecraft and communications habits continue to evolve and adapt. In light of this dynamic environment, the administration supports reauthorization of the CDR provision so that the Government will retain this potentially valuable tool should it prove useful in the future.

The administration looks forward to working with this committee and the rest of the Congress to reauthorize on a permanent basis these important national security provisions.

Reauthorizing the USA Freedom Act of 2015 FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Chinese Government Cannot Be Allowed to Undermine Academic Freedom – The Nation

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Chinese students speak to representatives from the Illinois Institute of Technology and other American colleges at the "Study in USA" section of the 2015 China Education Expo (CEE) in Shanghai. (Reuters File)

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A few years ago, I met a student from rural China who had come to a university in Washington, DC, and fallen in love with political science. But he was too afraid of being reported to the Chinese embassy to pursue the subject. While Americans take freedom at universities for granted, for some students from China the feeling is very different. This isnt a free space, he concluded.Ad Policy

There are now approximately 350,000 students from China at American universities. While many have great experiences, some have to deal with the surveillance and censorship that follows them to campus. Over the past several years, Human Rights Watch has documented the unique threats these students face. Our research has revealed Chinese government and Communist Party intimidation ranging from harassment of family members in China over what someone had said in a closed seminar to censorship by US academic institutions that did not want to irk potential Chinese government partners. One scholar said a senior administrator had asked him as a personal favor to decline media requests during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, fearing that any criticism could have negative consequences for the universitys profile in China.

Even when campus debates take an ugly turnsuch as when students from the mainland tried to shout down speakers at a March 2019 event at University of California, Berkeley, addressing the human rights crisis in Xinjiang, or in September when unidentified individuals threatened Hong Kong democracy activist Nathan Law as he arrived for graduate studies at Yaleschools appear reluctant to publicly respond to these threats against free speech. In mid-October, students at the University of California, Davis, tore down other students materials supporting Hong Kong protesters, yet in the ensuing days searching the schools website for Hong Kong yields only information about summer internshipsnot unequivocal support for peaceful expression.

Few schools leverage their broader relationships with Chinese institutions to help faculty members who are denied visas by China when they try to advance research on topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government; equally few institutions make provisions for students from China who want to study sensitive topics to do so without it being known to Chinese authorities. We are unaware of any university that systematically tracks the impact of Chinese government interference in academic freedoma step that could serve as a deterrent to such encroachments.

At a recent meeting I attended, some of the worlds foremost experts on vectors of Chinese government and Communist Party influence detailed for American university officials precisely the ways Chinese students and scholars in the United States are the focus of control and manipulation, including through on-campus surveillance of classroom speech and activities, which is then reported back to embassies or consulates. Yet those university officials appeared skeptical about the urgency or consequences for students or scholars, and the discussion quickly reverted to focusing on the technicalities of schools compliance with various regulations or their interactions with agencies like the FBI.Related Article

In private, some university officials will admit their discomfort in dealing with the issue of Chinese government influence on their campuses, and say theyre afraid that they may be labeled xenophobes. That fear needs urgently to be overcome to protect a community that is demonstrably vulnerable. A recent effort to do just that was initiated students themselves: In September, the student union at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, stripped the campus chapter of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association of its accreditation, on the grounds that the groups reporting of a talk on Xinjiang to the local Chinese consulate violated school rules.

But there are also crass reasons for their reticence. Many academic institutions around the world now have opaque academic or financial relationships with Chinese government entities or government-linked companies. Some are increasingly dependent on international students for tuition revenue, and fear alienating students from China. Others, including MIT, find themselves in the awkward position of accepting money for research partnerships with Chinese companies like iFlytek, which has now been placed on a list of companies sanctioned by the US Department of Commerce for their involvement in human rights abuses in China.Current Issue

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Our research formed the basis of a 12-step code of conduct that is designed to help schools combat Chinese government efforts to undermine academic freedom around the world. Those steps start with acknowledging the problem, and include publicizing policies that classroom discussions are meant to stay on campusnot reported to foreign missions. Schools could also appoint an ombudsperson to whom threats could be reported and thus tracked, join forces to share experiences and take common positions, and commit to disclosing all links to the Chinese governmentsteps that could deter Chinese government overreach.

The code has been sent to about 150 schools in Australia, Canada, and the United States, and about a dozen have replied. So far none have signed on, convinced that their existing rules are sufficient to mitigate any threat, but we have seen no evidence that those rules and procedures have succeeded.

In April the Association of American Universities published an update of actions taken by universities to address growing concerns aboutundue foreign influence on campusbut most of this document deals with issues like protection of data and export control compliance. A half-dozen universitiesincluding UC Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and Yale Universitypublished statements last spring expressing solidarity with international students and scholars on their campuses, and more than 60 colleges and universities have signed on to the University of Chicagos well-known principles on free expression.

But if schools are going to fulfill their solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it, as the University of Chicago principles insist, they are going to have to tackle these threats head-on. That means providing the most precious asset a university should ensure that all of its students enjoy equally: freedom of thought.

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The Chinese Government Cannot Be Allowed to Undermine Academic Freedom - The Nation

‘A story about freedom’: artist set to re-enact largest slave revolt in US history – The Guardian

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

In the middle of a grassy traffic island, adjacent to a nondescript strip mall in southern Louisiana, stands the only physical memorial to an event that rocked the racist foundations of the United States.

A brown plaque, erected to commemorate a plantation home, has one short, embossed aside: Major 1811 slave uprising organized here.

It is an understatement that Dread Scott, the noted New York artist, finds infuriating. The 1811 slave rebellion, involving around 400 enslaved people rising up on their white captors and marching towards New Orleans, was the largest slave insurrection in American history. But this minimization is also an inspiration, and partly explains why he committed six years of his life to a mass re-enactment piece that starts on Friday and ends in New Orleans on Saturday evening.

Im glad that there is a sign that marks it, he said in an interview with the Guardian. But I also think that its pathetic. To mark this most magnificent event with a sign by the side of a highway? Thats crazy.

Scott, 54, who has spent much of his career producing provocative work examining race and oppression in contemporary America, has taken on one of his most ambitious pieces.

It will involve hundreds of re-enactors dressed in costume, some on horseback, others carrying replica muskets and machetes, singing in Creole, and marching to drumbeat in formation as they partially reconstruct the uprising that took place here over two centuries ago.

The 1811 revolt, often referred to as the German Coast Uprising, has been largely overlooked by historians.

Its leader, Charles Deslondes, a slave driver who organized hundreds of enslaved people from different plantations along a stretch of the Mississippi River now known as the River Parishes, remains a relatively anonymous figure compared to other rebel leaders like Nat Turner in Virginia and Denmark Vesey in South Carolina.

But recent revisionist accounts have sought to recapture some of its significance. The 1811 revolt was distinguished by a degree of military sophistication and political intent, that saw its participants burn down a number of plantation homes, kill a handful of owners and march towards New Orleans when the citys defences were weak.

It was a revolt that was planned for a year or more. And that planning, vision, boldness and courage of trying not just to strike back, but to actually get free, is something that is significant. People should really view these leaders as heroes and learn from this history, said Scott.

The re-enactment, which will involve mostly African American performers, will see some of this brutal history reimagined.

The 1811 rebellion was violently suppressed by a militia of plantation owners before it made it to the city. Deslondes was captured during a skirmish, and brutally tortured before being burned alive. Other rebels were convicted in show trials, executed and had their heads impaled on spikes along the Mississippi River in a show of white supremacist power.

Scotts re-enactment will not involve this bloodshed, and will instead end in a public celebration at Congo Square in New Orleans, the historic park where, in the days of slavery, black people both slaves and free people of colour were allowed to congregate.

This city, and indeed the region as a whole, is still grappling with depictions of its racist past. In 2017 New Orleans removed four Confederate monuments from public spaces, the same year that riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the removal of similar artefacts, led to the murder of an anti-fascist campaigner, Heather Heyer.

Many plantation museums in the American South continue to sanitize the brutal reality of slavery.

Scott is also keenly aware that the 26-mile performance route will weave between sites that were once plantations and are now petrochemical plants in a region known colloquially as Cancer Alley due to its air quality issues and high cancer risk rates in predominantly black communities.

These petrochemical plants were put down literally on top of the graves of enslaved people who had died in that region, he said.

The artist insists that even though the piece will portray a slave rebellion, ultimately it is not about slavery but a continued struggle for freedom.

This is a story about rebellion, about freedom and emancipation. This is not a project about slavery, he said.

Whether it is the struggle for reparations, or police murder or mass incarceration, which have origins and roots in enslavement, the people fighting to change those things today are actually walking in the tradition of enslaved people who were fighting for freedom and emancipation.

Dread Scotts Slave Rebellion Re-enactment begins on 8 November. The Guardian will cover it in print and multimedia.

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'A story about freedom': artist set to re-enact largest slave revolt in US history - The Guardian

Caribbean excavation offers intimate look at the lives of enslaved Africans – Science Magazine

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

This pewter spoon was found beneath the ruins of the home of enslaved Africans at Estate Little Princess on St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

By Lizzie WadeNov. 7, 2019 , 2:00 PM

ESTATE LITTLE PRINCESS ON ST. CROIX, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDSJustin Dunnavant crouches in the earth beside the crumbling stone wall, carefully scraping at a shallow, 2-meter-long rectangular pit with his trowel. The sides of the pit need to be perfectly straight before the arrival of his excavation crew: nineteen middle and high school students from the Caribbean Center for Boys & Girls of the Virgin Islands in Christiansted. When the pit meets Dunnavant's standards, he sweeps the loose dirt into a plastic bucket and gently sifts it through a rectangle of wire mesh to separate any artifacts. Then he stands back, ready for the teenagers to take over the exacting work of excavating what was once a small house.

To many people, the artifacts that have emerged from the excavation wouldn't look like much: fish and pig bones from centuries-old meals, buttons that fell off of clothing, bits of coarse local pottery along with shards of smooth, painted porcelain. But to Dunnavant, an archaeologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, they are treasures that offer an intimate look into some of the most enigmatic lives in modern history: those of the enslaved Africans who once lived here.

Enslaved Africans lived and worked on Estate Little Princess starting from the plantation's founding in 1749 until slavery was abolished on St. Croix in 1848. At the plantation's peak in 1772, documents record 141 enslaved people living there. They were forced to carry out the punishing labor of planting and harvesting sugarcane and crushing and boiling it to make sugar and rum. Their grueling work generated vast fortunes for the estate's white planters and their home country of Denmark, which ruled the island from 1672 to 1917.

The written histories of this plantation and more than 1000 others like it throughout the Caribbean note facts such as the number of enslaved people who lived there, their genders and ages, and their places of origin. But the records reveal almost nothing about their daily lives. Here, enslaved Africans married, had children, made friends, and built families under the threat of being killed or sold away. They grew their own food, collected water, shaped and fired new styles of pottery out of local clay, raised livestock, and likely fished and trapped wild game. Enslaved Africans sold their surplus crops and crafts at markets they organized, using their earnings to buy items for themselves and their homes.

To glimpse those lives, archaeology is required. "One of the very few ways to get at the experiences of enslaved Africans is to look at [what] they left behind," Dunnavant says. That's why he and archaeologist Ayana Omilade Flewellen of the University of California (UC), Berkeley, spent 4 weeks directing excavations here this summer, the third of five planned dig seasons. The team is part of a wave of archaeologists around the Caribbean focused on studying not only the institution of slavery, but also the daily lives of enslaved Africans in all the intimacy and texture left out of history. Seen through Dunnavant's and Flewellen's eyes, the lost buttons, cooked bones, and shards of pots and porcelain are vital clues to how enslaved Africans maintained their individuality and humanity within a system designed to strip them of both. And by studying the vegetation, water systems, and other environmental features of plantations, these archaeologists are also documenting how slavery literally reshaped the islandsand the world.

Archaeologist Justin Dunnavant co-leads excavations on St. Croixs Estate Little Princess.

"These stories are not going to be lost," says Alicia Odewale, an African diaspora archaeologist at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma who works on Estate Little Princess with Dunnavant and Flewellen. "They are going to be remembered."

Estate Little Princessand its island, St. Croix, were once at the center of the world economy. For more than 300 years, thousands of European ships sailed to the Caribbean carrying enslaved Africans and sailed away full of the sugar, coffee, and other cash crops their labor produced. "Slavery drove the world economy, and it permeated all corners of the globe. And the weight of it was solidly in the Caribbean," says Jillian Galle, director of the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) at the Monticello plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"Almost every ship operating during the slavery era was in one way or another involved in the slave trade," Dunnavant says.

Between 1500 and 1875, about 4.8 million enslaved Africans were brought to the Caribbean, compared with about 389,000 brought to the United States. Perhaps another million people died on the way to those destinations.

Dunnavant and Flewellen plan to eventually document every step in the lives of the enslaved Africans who lived here, beginning with the ships that brought them to the port of Christiansted. Archaeologists from the U.S. National Park Service have already identified artifacts from shipwrecks near a small island off of the coast, which could be from documented wrecks of ships carrying enslaved Africans.

For centuries, ships carried enslaved people from Africa to the Caribbean, where many were forced to work on coffee and sugar plantations. Their labor transformed the islands' ecology as well as the world economy, creating vast wealth for European colonial planters.

(GRAPHIC) N. DESAI AND X. LIU/SCIENCE; (DATA) SLAVEVOYAGES.ORG

Once on St. Croix, enslaved Africans were sold to estates around the island, including Estate Little Princess, which is on the coast 3 kilometers northwest of Christiansted and is now a preserve owned by the Nature Conservancy. A census documented 38 houses in the estate's village, but many have been demolished. The team found the ruins of only five in the form of still-standing walls made of stone and chunks of coral harvested from the island's many reefs. To find out how far the village once extended, archaeologists worked with the conservancy staff this season to cut trails through the tangle of vegetation around the ruins. They dug test pits every 10 meters, searching for clusters of artifacts that could indicate that people once lived nearby.

Then, the team zeroed in on one of the best preserved houses. The roof is long vanished, but the walls are high enough to show the outlines of some of its doors and windows. Because of the cramped, 6-by-3-meter quarters, the residents likely cooked outside. That's why the excavation pit Dunnavant cleaned up for the middle and high schoolers is outside the house, right up against its highest standing wall. They dig and sift for artifacts with guidance from archaeologist Alexandra Jones, founder of the educational nonprofit Archaeology in the Community in Washington, D.C.

Just on the other side of the same wall, undergraduate students from historically black colleges and universities dig a 1-square-meter pit inside the house. This field school is the first experience with archaeology for most, but they quickly become an efficient team. As two students scrape thin layers of earth into buckets, others sift it through the wire screens and keep a sharp eye out for artifacts. Because the plantation is much too recent for radiocarbon dating, the archaeologists will create a timeline by tracing the changing styles of artifacts, including ceramics and buttons. Missing even one tiny object could mean losing a world of priceless information.

It's a lot of trust to place in students, but Dunnavant and Flewellen, co-founders of the Society of Black Archaeologists, have made those twin training programs a priority. Less than 1% of U.S. archaeologists identify as black, something Dunnavant and Flewellen want to change. "Since the late 1970s, archaeologists have been asking questions about black culture and identity formation in the African diaspora," largely through research on plantations, Flewellen says. But, "There hasn't been a rise in actually training people of African descent to ask those questions themselves."

To sort their finds, the students sit at folding tables in front of buildings that were once the planters' mansions, emptying bags of artifacts onto plastic trays. "No one has touched these artifacts for 200 years, so it's really important what happens to them next," Odewale says. She helps the students sort objects by type: glass, bone, metal, ceramic, and the local pottery made from coarse clay and fired in pits covered with brush, called Afro-Crucian ware.

Archaeologist Ayana Omilade Flewellen (center) helps college students sift for artifacts from Estate Little Princess.

All those artifacts will eventually be entered into DAACS, the digital archive of artifacts from sites of slavery, which includes material from 53 U.S. sites and 24 across six Caribbean islands. The Estate Little Princess finds will be a valuable addition because the archaeologists here have already turned up a stunningly diverse collection of artifacts, says Khadene Harris, an archaeologist at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and a former postdoc at DAACS. "They've got almost everything" you could imagine on a Caribbean plantation: glass bottles for storing water or medicine, locally made pottery, animal bones, buttons and hook-and-eye fasteners for clothes, nails, fragments of pipe stems, and even expensive imports such as porcelainand, as of this summer, a single pewter spoon, likely from Europe. "St. Croix is a really well-connected island," Harris says.

The planters didn't buy those items, contrary to a once-common assumption. When researchers first began to excavate on plantations in the 1970s, they thought all the objects in enslaved laborers' houses were provided to them by the planter class, says Theresa Singleton, an archaeologist at Syracuse University in New York. But further research in archives and the field revealed that enslaved Africans in both the Caribbean and the southeastern United States bought their possessions. On St. Croix and other Caribbean islands, enslaved Africansalongside free people of color, traveling traders, and poor and middleclass white residentsshopped at markets often run by free and enslaved black women. There, enslaved people sold surplus crops or crafts and bought items, including porcelain and tobacco pipes.

Enslaved Africans' level of economic access varied by island and historical period and could be severely restricted. On a 19th century plantation in Cuba where Singleton has excavated, enslaved workers had few possessions. Their village was surrounded by a wall, a stark symbol of how planters controlled their movements. Singleton thinks that tight control was a reaction to an 1825 rebellion and ongoing raids by those who had escaped.

Even on St. Croix, where enslaved Africans had some purchasing power, excavated objects are often small and unassumingbut they have tales to tell. For example, Flewellen studies the buttons, beads, and other items of personal adornment found here. The team found several finished bone buttons, but no larger flat pieces of bone from which the buttons would have been carved. That means the enslaved people on the estate were likely buying or trading for buttons, not making them. Each one, therefore, is a relic of an economic and stylistic choice an enslaved person made about how to spend their money and express their identity within the constraints of a brutal system.

"When we ask questions about the human experience of enslavement, how people moved their bodies around this landscape, how they dressed their bodies we're trying to figure out, what were their interior lives?" Flewellen says.

Back at the sorting table, one student holds up an unusual artifact, wondering which pile to put it in. It's a small, perfectly round ball, about the size of a chickpea. Odewale rushes over to examine it. The ball is heavy in her palm and looks to have a dark hue beneath the dusting of dirt on its surface. She gasps. "That's a musket ball!"

But then she gently scrubs its surface with a toothbrush. As the dirt falls away, what emerges isn't the black surface of a lead bullet, but rather the tan of local clay. The ball is a solid clay marble, perhaps evidence of children playing or adults gambling. But it may also have been functional. Odewale knows from oral histories that enslaved Africans dropped spare clay marbles into opaque ceramic water vessels. When the marbles started to clink against the sides of the pot, it was a signal that the water level was getting low.

"Innovation!" she cries. "I'm telling you, geniuses were out here at work. All we have to do is try and listen."

The experiencesof enslaved Africans aren't preserved only in the objects they once owned; they are also visible in the landscape of Estate Little Princess itself. Sugarcane required an exceptional amount of hard labor to cultivate and process, and planters chased sky-high profits in a newly globalized market by keeping expenses as low as possible. "Sugar and enslaved labor go hand in hand," says Douglas Armstrong, a Syracuse University archaeologist who studies plantations on Barbados.

On many islands, enslaved Africans were forced to clearcut extensive forests to make way for cane fields. Sugarcane is a notoriously thirsty crop, so the enslaved dug irrigation ditches and changed the course of rivers to feed the new fields. They cut more trees to fire the boilers used to cook the cane, which burned day and night. "There is something especially perverse about coercing enslaved laborers into destroying the environment that they rely on," Harris says.

Dunnavant calls that work terraforming, and on St. Croix, "It created a whole new environment"the deforested island of today. He's trying to understand the details of that environment, including where Estate Little Princess got its freshwater and what crops enslaved Africans cultivated. St. Croix and other colonial islands required plantations to have provision groundsgardens where enslaved Africans grew their own food, another place where they managed to exercise some personal agency.

Estate Little Princess is now a nature preserve, where the crumbling walls of what may have been an overseers house still stand.

On a plantation called Morne Patate on Dominica, Mark Hauser, an archaeologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, discovered a provision ground buried under a field that is still cultivated. There, he and archaeologist Sarah Oas of Arizona State University in Tempe found seeds and other plant remains from all over the world: maize from the Americas, guava from the Caribbean, barley from Europe, and millet and sorghum, which were staples in Africa. That experimentation with diverse crops led to the creation of a new Caribbean cuisine, guided by the decisions and tastes of enslaved Africans. The researchers even found traces of coffee, a cash crop grown on the plantation, in enslaved laborers' homesperhaps a sign they were growing surpluses and selling them in local markets.

Dunnavant hopes to survey the whole of Estate Little Princess next year, including around the ruins of a mill and a rum factory. That's an important next step, says Kenneth Kelly, an archaeologist at the University of South Carolina in Columbia who studies plantations on Guadeloupe and Martinique. "Enslaved people were using a lot of the landscape," he says, sometimes in ways they tried to keep hidden. On the Trents plantation on Barbados, for example, Armstrong slid down a steep gully and found a cave full of animal bones, charred wood from fires, and pieces of iron, including blades. Perhaps enslaved Africans were planning an escape or rebellion, or perhaps it was a shrine where they could practice rituals brought from West Africa, where iron had religious significance. "No matter how you look at it, it's a form of resistance," Armstrong says.

Even after slavery was abolished on St. Croix in 1848 and the island became a U.S. territory in 1917, this estate produced sugaruntil the 1960s. Documents record that many of the newly freed stayed on the estate and continued to work as paid laborers, as they did on plantations all over the island. Although some houses in the village were demolished in the 20th century to drive out squatters, the homes that still stand were inhabited until the 1960s or even later; the archaeologists unearthed batteries and fragments of a boom box.

"For us in the 21st century, we would think that we would want to leave right away [after emancipation]. But the question is, to where?" says William White, an archaeologist at UC Berkeley who works here. "Starting over is a huge risk," especially because slavery wasn't abolished in the Caribbean until Cuba became the last island to outlaw it in 1886.

Archaeologist William White helps excavate a house where enslaved Africans once lived.

Still, the newly freed were eager to escape the constant surveillance of the planter class, Harris says. When slavery was abolished on Dominica in 1834, many laborers stayed on a plantation Harris studies called Bois Cotlette. But they moved out of the old village and built new houses in the middle of the fields where they worked, farther from the planters' houses. She has found the remains of raised platforms made of stone and earth, on top of which the newly freed built homes. Such homes could be quickly disassembled and rebuilt elsewhere when occupants wanted to move or were evicted. "I interpret that as free people wanting more autonomy and more space," Harris says.

Back on Estate Little Princess, the students finish excavating for the day, sieving the last buckets of dirt for the unassuming treasures they contain. The cleaned and sorted artifacts are put into carefully labeled plastic bags; they'll be stored at Odewale's lab in Oklahoma until a secure facility can be built on St. Croix. Safe storage here is a challenge, as hurricanes Irma and Maria showed in 2017. Those storms hit St. Croix hard, leaving still-visible scars and damaged buildings. The hurricane winds felled the once-abundant mango trees, and papaya trees have sprung up in their place, changing the estate's ecology once again.

One way to tell St. Croix's story is tragedy after tragedy. But the archaeologists see it differently: an island and its people equally defined by resilienceand survival.

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Caribbean excavation offers intimate look at the lives of enslaved Africans - Science Magazine

UN spotlights ‘explosive’ obesity rates, hunger in Latin America and Caribbean – UN News

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

ThePanorama of Food and Nutritional Security 2019,jointly published by a group of UN health agencies,urgedcountries totake swiftaction to address the malnutritionissueacrossthe region.

"The explosive increase in obesity,which affects 24 percent of the regional population, about 105 million people -almost double the global level of 13.2 percent- not only has huge economic costs, but also threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands", said JulioBerdegu, Regional Representative for the UNs Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO).

Spotlighting the importance of promoting healthier food environments, the report suggested using taxation and otherincentives that favor healthy food, social protection systems, school feedingprogrammesand the regulation of food advertising and marketing.

Improving food labeling, ensuring safety and quality of food sold on the street and reformulating ingredients of certain products to ensure nutritional value can also aid the growing problem.

The fastest growing trendin the regions food sector is that ofultra-processed food products,increasing thepopulation's exposure to excessive amounts of sugar, sodium and fat,according to the report.

Every year, 600,000 people in the region diefromdiet-related diseases, such a diabetes,hypertension and cardiovascular illnesses, while inadequate diets are threatening future generations, as the rates of both childhood and adolescent obesity tripled between 1990 and 2016.

As food processing industries dominate the regions food environment, ultra-processed products are more readily available in expanding supermarket chains, andaffordability is outweighingmorenutritious options, with thepoorthe hardest hit.

At least 13 countries in the region have taken measures that seek to favor adequate food, and eight have improved advertisingregulations, and four have implemented food labeling laws.

"We must act now to reverse this trend and prevent children from suffering the consequences of poor diets on their health and their future quality of life," said Carissa Etienne, Director of the Pan American Health Organization(PAHO), which is also WHOs Regional Office.

She added that "we need the commitment of the whole society and public policies that regulate unhealthy food products, create environments conducive to physical activity and promote healthy eating at school and at the family table."

Tuesdays report stresses that need for social protection programs among other measures that promote food safety and quality essential to improve nutrition.

Today, social protectionprogrammes supply more than 200 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean, roughly a third of the regional population, with breakfast, snacks and lunch,including 85 million schoolchildren.

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UN spotlights 'explosive' obesity rates, hunger in Latin America and Caribbean - UN News

Joanna Lumley To Uncover The Hidden Caribbean In Her Latest Adventure For ITV – Deadline

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

Joanna Lumley, the Paddington 2 actress and BAFTA Film Awards host, is to embark on her latest adventure for ITV this time seeking to get under the skin of the Caribbean.

ITV has commissioned Burning Bright Productions to make two-part Joanna Lumleys Hidden Caribbean: Havana To Haiti, in which she will aim to showcase the history and secrets of different Caribbean islands on a 1,500-mile trip.

The miniseries will air in spring next year and follows similar documentaries Lumley has made for ITV with Burning Bright, including Joanna Lumleys India and her Trans-Siberian Adventure.

Clive Tulloh is the executive producer, while ITV factual controller Jo Clinton-Davis commissioned the series. Ewen Thomson is the director.

Joannas enthusiasm for and curiosity about the countries and cultures she explores always adds a layer of interest and excitement for viewers, Clinton-Davis said.

Joanna Lumley To Uncover The Hidden Caribbean In Her Latest Adventure For ITV - Deadline

Weaving systems for impact investing in Central America and the Caribbean – ImpactAlpha

Posted on November 13, 2019 by Danzig

ImpactAlpha, Nov. 12 Agents of Impact from around Central America and the world arrive in Antigua, Guatemala this week for the fifth Foro Latinoamericano de Inversin de Impacto Centroamrica y El Caribe.

Thespinoff of the annual FLII in Mrida, Mexico, aimsto advance solutions on issues from gender equality and economic inequality to migration and climate change

Pomona Impact, for example, is raising a $35 million second fund to deploy into high-growth enterprises in Central America, in agriculture, as well as basic services including health, education, water and renewable energy.

Weaving systems, the conference theme, puts an emphasis on collaborating across sectors. Its also a nod to the regions competitive agriculture and creative economies.

With debt as well as equity, Pomona is demonstrating impact investing in Central America (video)

As urgency around such issues has risen, so too has interest in businesses and projects that seek to address them, says Daniel Buchbinder, founder of Alterna, the conference host. Global trends and current events, he says, are driving a greater interest in impact investing.

In the four years since the first FLII Central America and the Caribbean, Buchbinder told ImpactAlpha, the logic and the investment impact and value proposal have grown. The range of impact investing instruments, he says, is growing to meet the social environmental challenges of the region.

Representatives of more than 60 fund managers, angel investors, corporate investors, NGOs and regional and international banks are expected among the 600 participants.

Bamboo Capital picked to manage $17 million renewable energy fund in Haiti

The more than 250 early-stage companies include recycling monetization firm Ecoins in Costa Rica, El Salvadors MASSHI, which trains and employs deaf women to produce handicrafts, and Guatemalan firms Ethikos Global and Mai. The turnout is an indication of how the Caribbean and Central American market has evolved in these years, said Buchbinder.

>>Follow ImpactAlphas Latin America coverage.

On the agenda: the future of agriculture and cooperatives, reproductive rights, impact tech, the creative economy and climate change. In a mainstage fireside chat, Ral Pomares of Sonen Capital and Richard Aitkenhead of IDC Group Advisor will discuss Central Americas unique inflection point (see Pomaress SOCAP interview with Rodrigo Villar of Mexico City-based New Ventures).

Agent of Impact (and author of the book Leapfrog) Nathalie Molina Nio of BRAVA Investments,Leticia Gasca of Skill Agility Lab, and Toniics Emilie Cortes will deliver keynotes.

Jeff Furman, one of Ben & Jerrys first employees and an emeritus board member, will dish on the success of one of the worlds most iconic social enterprises, and its acquisition by Unilever.

Buchinder had attended the Latin American Impact Investment Forum in Mexico since it was created and has a good relationship with New Ventures, the Mexico-based organizer. He was convinced of the need for such a fresh, diverse and inclusive connection place in the center of the American continent.

Central America and the Caribbean needed to connect with the rest of the world, and with each other, he says. Now, investors from around the world attend the FLII Central America and the Caribbean.

Incofin helps launch climate resilience insurance for Nicaraguas farmers

All social issues, human rights, migration, extreme climate events all these challenges are also incredible opportunities to invest and reverse thanks to impact investment, says Buchinder.

The Central America region is an ideal place to pilot schemes and understand if a financial instrument works or not, in the fastest way possible.

More news and deals from Central America and the Caribbean:

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Weaving systems for impact investing in Central America and the Caribbean - ImpactAlpha

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