Elder Robert D. Hales honored as pioneer of progress – Deseret News

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Sarah Jane Weaver

After being honored with one of the 2017 Pioneers of Progress Awards, Elder Robert D. Hales offers remarks on July 13, 2017.

After being honored with the 2017 Pioneers of Progress Presidents Award, Elder Robert D. Hales walked with determined effort to the pulpit and said the greatest challenge in life is enduring to the end.

I think that enduring to the end is the greatest accomplishment, to be able to give everything you have got, said Elder Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in a video featured during the program. It is like the coaches say, When you give everything on the playing field, you cant ask for more.

The Pioneers of Progress Awards sponsored by the Days of 47, Inc. were instituted in 1995 to recognize service and achievement in modern-day pioneering. Six Utahns were honored during this years event, held in the dowtown Salt Lake City Marriott Hotel.

KUTV reporter Daniel Woodruff introduced Elder Hales, noting the Presidents Award is not given every year and goes to someone who is eminently deserving. (Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Most Reverend John C. Wester received the award in 2011.)

Woodruff said he asked an event organizer why Elder Hales was selected. In response the organizer lauded Elder Hales as friendly, warm, approachable, accepting, a pure gentleman and finally someone with a tremendously positive attitude who has had to face tremendous challenges.

Elder Hales, who will turn 85 in August, first became a General Authority in 1975, serving both as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. He was Presiding Bishop from 1985 until his call to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in April of 1994.

In recent years, Elder Hales has dealt with serious health challenges which a 2011 statement from the Church said have affected his mobility and endurance.

Of his health challenges and his need to be assisted to the microphone, Elder Hales quipped, It takes a village to get me here.

During his remarks Elder Hales praised the other award recipients for their gifts and talents which strengthen the community.

Elder Hales then spoke of the pioneers who planted crops along the trail west for those who came after them to harvest.

For me that is the ultimate pioneer, said Elder Hales. To be able to help one another, to lift one another, to strengthen one another, is the greatest attribute, I think, of being a pioneer.

In addition to Elder Hales, the following were recognized with 2017 Pioneers of Progress Awards: Michelle Baker, a professor in the Department of Biology and an associate of the Ecology Center at Utah State University science and technology; Dell Loy Hansen, founder and chief executive officer of The Wasatch Group and owner and chairman of Real Salt Lake business and enterprise; Susan Memmott Allred, a pioneering costume designer for Pioneer Memorial Theater and other organizations historic and creative arts; Kathleen Spencer-Christy, an educator assistant superintendent of the Salt Lake City School District education, health and humanitarian assistance; and Donald Evan Moss, the late owner of Chuck-A-Rama Restaurants Legacy Award (posthumous).

The LDS Church News is an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The publication's content supports the doctrines, principles and practices of the Church.

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House briefed on anti-ISIS campaign progress – The Hill

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House lawmakers emerged from a briefing on the administrations anti-Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) strategy generally confident in the military aspect of the plan, but some worried the plan still lacks an endgame for the Syrian civil war.

Defense Secretary James Mattis, meanwhile, expressed confidence in ISIS's defeat and in Congresss support for the strategy.

Were winning; theyre losing, Mattis told reporters after the briefing. I have no doubt we have the support of Congress. That was loud and clear.

Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson briefed House lawmakers hours after President Trump visited the Pentagon and a day after the trio briefed the Senate on the same topic.

Mattis declined to discuss his meeting with Trump or get into specifics of the House briefing, saying he owes a degree of confidentiality to the closed discussions.

Lawmakers who spoke with reporters likewise declined to discuss specifics, citing its classified nature.

Rep. Trent FranksTrent FranksHouse briefed on anti-ISIS campaign progress Republicans rally around Sessions after Trump criticism Rep: Charlie Gard granted permanent residence status MORE (R-Ariz.), who sits on the House Armed Service Committee, called the briefing substantive and very comprehensive.

This was one of the best briefings that Ive seen, and I see a lot of them, he told reporters upon leaving. "From my perspective, weve had more progress in the battle against ISIS in the last eight months than weve had in the last eight years. Its just been stark, the difference."

Democrats, though, emerged from the briefing saying they did not hear much difference in strategy from the Obama administration.

What I was struck by more than anything else was how very similar all this strategy is to prior administration, said Rep. Adam SchiffAdam SchiffHouse briefed on anti-ISIS campaign progress The Hill's 12:30 Report Schiff: Trump's undisclosed talk with Putin 'deeply troubling' MORE (D-Calif.), ranking memberof the House Intelligence Committee. There are certainly differences in how much delegation of authority has gone to the military, and the military battle has progressed as it would have under the leadership of the prior administration, but there are far more similarities than dissimilarities.

While progress has been made on the battlefield against ISIS, Schiff said, political progress in Iraq has been slow, and Syria is horribly complicated.

I think its still very difficult to see the endgame in Syria, he said. I dont think its for lack of effort on the part of the administration. I think its a difficult problem to solve. But I do think there are still pieces of the puzzle that need to be filled in terms of overall strategy politically more than militarily.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, though, said he thinks the administration has abandoned the goal of removing Syrian President Bashar Assad from power.

He cited reports that Trump has ended a CIA program to train and equip rebels fighting Assad. Sherman said he asked about the issue during the briefing, and while he would not confirm the reports, he said he was not disputing them.

ISIS will be driven out of its stronghold of Raqqa asit was fromits Iraqi stronghold of Mosul, he said, but the issue is governance afterward.

It seems pretty clear that Syria will be run by Assad, his allies in Iran and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, Sherman said, and we have accepted this.

- Ellen Mitchell contributed.

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Twitter says it’s making progress battling abusive behavior – CNET

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Hateful behavior has been a black mark on social media for years. Twitter says it's making progress pushing back.

Better late than never.

After years of struggling to manage abusive tweets, Twitter says it's made some short-term progress tackling the problem.

The social network said Thursday it's been clamping down on 10 times as many abusive tweeters as it did a year ago, though it declined to say how many accounts it's disciplined. The efforts do appear to be making the community more hospitable: Twitter said it's seeing fewer repeat offenders and fewer users tapping features to shut off abusive tweeters, such as blocking their accounts.

These updates are part of Twitter's ongoing attempts to curb abusive behavior and convince people it's succeeding in that task. Since January, it's given its 328 million monthly active usersmore optionsto combat harassment, either bymutingabusive tweeters orreporting them to Twitter.

This push began latelast yearafter Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, solicitedsuggestions from its usersfor improving the site. Some people asked for relatively benign features, like the ability to edit a tweet. But Dorsey was also barraged with requests to cut down on harassment, after years of the problem running rampant on the service. Last year was when some particularly ugly episodes happened,including a hate mob attacking Leslie Jones, a star of last summer's "Ghostbusters" movie.

Click to see CNET's series about abuse on the web.

Twitter's renewed focus on harassment is a "completely different mindset" from several years ago, saidDanielle Citron, a University of Maryland law professor who studies hate on the internet. Back then, unchecked mobs led to hate campaigns, such as in the 2014attacks against video game critics that came to be known as #GamerGate. Now Citron is part of Twitter'sTrust and Safety Council, a group of more than 60 organizations and experts working to prevent abuse andhateful rhetoric.

Last month, the group convened for a two-day summit at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters, where it went through examples of what tweets are considered intimidating, abusive and just flat-out hate speech. The participants discussed what to do about them while also protecting users' freedom of expression, said Citron, who has worked with Twitter in various capacities over the years.

"We are having some tough and meaningful discussions, but it's also showing that Twitter is making some progress and responding much faster to abuse," she said. "I find it hopeful."

Part of Twitter's seeming improvements come from how it's approaching troublesome users. For example, the company has begun using a feature that limits an account, meaning those users can send tweets only to their followers and not anyone else on Twitter, typically for 12 hours. Twitter said the limits on those accounts led to 25 percent fewer reports of abuse. Additionally, it said, about 65 percent of those limited accounts do not become repeat offenders.

Here's a tweet of what getting a limited-account warning looks like:

Another problem Twitter struggles with: Hate mobs attacking other users they otherwise aren't connected with. Initially, the only way to stop this behavior was to report these users to Twitter or blocking their accounts. Twitter has since begun offering new features to mute people with new accounts or those who follow behaviors of accounts designed to torment others.

These efforts appear to be working. Twitter said the number of strangers who block other people's accounts has dropped 40 percent in the last four months.

"While there is still much work to be done, people are experiencing significantly less abuse on Twitter today than they were six months ago," Ed Ho, Twitter's vice president of engineering, wrote in a blog post.

Intolerance on the Internet: Online abuse is as old as the internet and it's only getting worse. It exacts a very real toll.

CNET Magazine: Check out a sample of the stories in CNET's newsstand edition.

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Twitter says it's making progress battling abusive behavior - CNET

Sci-Fi Is The Genre Of Progress – Valley News

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Last weekend, fans learned that Jodie Whittaker will be the new Doctor in the long-running series Doctor Who, the first woman to play the protagonist who has regenerated a dozen times before, always as a white man.

While many people celebrated this historic casting choice, others responded in outrage with assertions that nobody wants a TARDIS full of bras and vows to stop watching the show. Is the BBC trying to brainwash us with its dangerous PC agenda? Dont they know women cant be Ghostbusters or superheroes or Time Lords? Surely the fabric of society will rip in half if a female plays a beloved science fiction character!

Such arguments not only rely on tired gender stereotypes, but they also ignore what science fiction is all about and what it stands for.

Science fiction explores what it means to be human. By contrasting humans with aliens, robots and other creatures, the genre gives us insights good, bad and frighteningly ugly into ourselves. The human population is nearly 50 percent female, which means to understand people as individuals, societies and civilizations, particularly across different time periods, we have to think and write about the female experience. Not as victims, bystanders or even as companions, but as protagonists. Will having a female Doctor affect the stories? Of course it will. How, exactly, remains to be seen, but each Doctors character shapes the narrative, because thats how storytelling works.

Science fiction has always been about progress. Such a broad concept might involve traveling to other solar systems, colonizing space, merging into the Brahman, conquering or coexisting with other civilizations, uploading our brains into computers, living forever, becoming genderless or hermaphroditic, teleporting and/or making robots that look, act and feel like humans. Even when science and technology drastically alter or destroy the human race in sci-fi, characters and readers learn what it means to be alive, which transcends humanity itself.

Science fiction thinks big, in eons and galaxies, beyond the next election cycle, beyond the star of a TV show. In doing something it hasnt done in its 53 years, Doctor Who demonstrates its understanding of the genre by acknowledging that times have changed and will keep changing, and that we have, in fact, learned something.

Upon learning that the role of Starbuck, which he played in the original 1978 series Battlestar Galactica, was to be played by a woman in the 2003 show remake, actor Dirk Benedict penned a tirade called Starbuck: Lost in Castration. Some of his complaints echo those lodged over the past couple of days: Starbuck was meant to be a loveable rogue, Benedict says, adding loveable rogue to the list of things a woman cannot be.

Starbuck also was supposed to appeal to the female audience, which female actors and characters also cant do because females dont enjoy watching other females do awesome stuff?

Benedicts railing against the bleakness of the remade BSG series ultimately justifies the showrunners decision to cast a female Starbuck: The show reflects, in microcosm, the complete change in the politics and mores of todays world as opposed to the world of yesterday. Exactly. Thats what art does. Thats part of why Doctor Who is the longest-running show of all time. If it looked like it did in the 1950s, few would watch it now.

Sci-fi has always reflected its times. It has explored the implications of atomic weapons, reflected on the Red Scare and McCarthyism, pondered the consequences of colonizing other worlds, and imagined scenarios brought on by climate change and earthbound asteroids. Why would science fiction storytellers stop reflecting humanitys hopes and fears now?

Science fiction pushes boundaries, from Star Trek broadcasting a historic interracial kiss to the alien-human love story on Babylon 5. Doctor Who has embraced galactic weirdness and diversity. Considering that theres an entire religion based on the idea that vestiges of evil aliens dwell in all of us, if the least believable aspect about the show is a woman as its lead, Im not sure why people watch in the first place.

Despite being a genre that revels in possibilities and imagination, science fiction has historically fallen short when it comes to representing the female population. The vast majority of sci-fi writers are male, and of the 33 Grand Masters of science fiction, only five are women. That imbalance is slowly changing three of the past six inductees are women with more female writers and increased awareness of the need for more compelling female protagonists in science fiction. The selection of the new Doctor demonstrates the shows ability to reflect changing times, embodying human progress while satisfying one thing that hasnt changed: viewers desire for a compelling story. A genre predicated on pushing boundaries is doing just that. Its about time.

Joelle Renstrom teaches at Boston University and writes about robots, space and sci-fi for theDaily Beast, Slate, and her blog, Could This Happen.

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Sci-Fi Is The Genre Of Progress - Valley News

Arcade Fire – ‘Everything Now’ Album Review – NME – NME.com

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The Canadian art-rockers are bigger, bolder and more fearful of the future than ever on their colossal fifth album

Arcade Fire have spent a career making a virtue of their own pomposity. Since 2004 debut Funeral, theyve been unafraid to wrestle with big ideas that most bands wouldnt touch with a barge pole. If it sometimes appears as though they believe societys ills can be solved, or at least diagnosed, through the medium of grandiose art-rock records, you nonetheless have to admire their conviction that music ought to represent something more than mere content. Thankfully, after the ambitious-but-uneven Reflektor (2013), Everything Now marks an emphatic return to those lofty standards.

Every song that Ive ever heard is playing at the same time, its absurd, declares starry-eyed frontman Win Butler on the albums title-track, which is certainly one way to describe its mash-up of Dancing Queen and Talking Heads Road to Nowhere. Uplifting, incisive and sublime would be another.

On the flipside, the empty hedonism of Signs of Life and the self-loathing, suicidal youths of Creature Comfort one of whom, Butler notes, Came so close/ Filled up the bathtub and put on our first record, serve as a reminder of the cruel irony that in this age of total connectivity, weve somehow contrived to make ourselves more isolated and alone than ever. Everything Now might occasionally marvel at how far weve come, but its tempered by notes of dread at where were going.

Aptly enough for a record about information overload, its also had the veritable kitchen sink thrown at it, employing myriad styles, multiple big-name producers and the sort of ingenious, overblown marketing campaign thats become the norm for this band. On the two-hander of Infinite Content and Infinite_Content, the same song is presented in contrasting styles one as a knowing postmodern thrash, the other as a languid acoustic ramble but ultimately its the albums sense of humanity, not its innate clever-cleverness, that elevates it to something special. If you cant see the forest for the trees, just burn it all down,urges Butler as the mournful synth-pop of closing track We Dont Deserve Love builds to its climax, no longer sermonising from his pulpit, but howling in empathy from the ether.

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Release Date: July 28, 2017

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Fiction review: Living the Dream – The Sydney Morning Herald

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Living The Dream, by Lauren Berry.Photo: supplied

Living the Dream

Lauren Berry

Virago, $29.99

This witty debut from Lauren Berry focuses on two young women in London whose dreams seem out of reach. Emma Derringer works at an ad agency; she blogs on the sly and privately keeps her hopes of being a novelist alive, in the face of a soul-crushing job she hates. Clementine Twist has returned from New York empty-handed, finding casual bar work and living with her mum as she desperately tries to advance a career as a screenwriter. The gal pals bond over random hedonism and cynical banter, while resenting other characters who seem to have their lives more together. Berry writes clever, overheard-sounding dialogue and her satire of two woman-children in their late 20s does have sardonic bite. The main trouble, though, is the novel's resolution a belated coming-of-age that skirts around rather than delves into problems the characters face, and feels surprisingly shallow and unearned.

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Pankaj Mishra’s eloquent anger – The Islamic Monthly

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Much has been made about how the rise of right-wing demagoguery today has roots in the sociopolitical aberrations of 20th-century fascism, a tragic detour in Western modernitys supposedly gradual road of infinite progress. This is much too truncated an analogy for Pankaj Mishra, a London-based Indian writer whose new book, Age of Anger: A History of the Present (to come out later this month), reaches back even further in the history of Western thought to argue that contemporary rage the kind thats being generated and exploited by opportunistic politicians around the world is actually a logical byproduct of liberal rationalism, the bedrock of our modern reality and philosophical backdrop to the now fraying fabric of globalization.

Mishra uses what the 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called ressentiment an existential resentment of other peoples being, caused by an intense mix of envy and sense of humiliation and powerlessness to describe the origins of todays mass expressions of nativist rage, validated by President-elect Donald Trump and his equally insurgent cognates across the world. This ressentiment is caused ultimately by the inherent unevenness of modern politics and economics, which is constructed on the assumption that human nature can be perfected through rationalized self-interest. Those who directly or indirectly sense the illusory nature of this pervasive assumption find themselves in rigged systems that only pretend to an equal and fair playing field, be it money-making, political representation or even interpersonal relationships.

After all, not everyone can be a recipient of modernitys material promises. Not every family in, say, China and Indian can be the proud owner of multiple SUVs, swimming pools and spacious garages, regardless of what the flagbearers of liberal globalization proclaim. Any attempt to do so would collapse an already frail planet before its even halfway realized. Those whore beginning to feel this gap between modern realities and modern promises in places like Asia and elsewhere turning to the same sort of nativist inwardness thats currently being exploited by strongmen like Indias Narendra Modi and the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte.

The GOP having majority sway over all three branches of the US government is scary enough, but its the global metastasis of this angry pattern thats truly frightening, as Asia and Africa long heralded as the rising tigers of liberal globalism produce their own versions of ressentiment demagoguery. Mishra reminds us that these waves of humiliated masses who feel like modernity has let them down are not unique to history. Theyre a type whove long existed in the Wests own history of modernization, a process thathasnt come to terms with the imperfections and limits of human nature, the darker aspects of our tainted souls thatgive rise to resentment and angry humiliation.

When the young man of promise fails to be admitted into the club of modern aspiration, he responds with bitterness at those whove been more successful, or those who he thinks have prevented him from attaining his rightful piece of the pie: Muslims, immigrants, gays, etc. This is where the response to getting left behind eventually morphs into a nativist and often fanatical defense of ones own sociocultural sect.

It takes a less-than-optimistic voice like Mishras to remind and prove to the public that, far from being the results of social or historical aberration, ressentiment is the inevitable byproduct of the continuous application of the conclusions of Enlightenment rationalism. This is when humankind replaced God with the Self, thus positing just as their societies entered an industrial age that the direction of civilization can be controlled by mans own rationalized self-interest.

Mishra quotes 20th-century Austrian writer Robert Musil in a recent introductory essay to Age of Anger: Its not that we have too much intellect and too little soul, but that we have too little intellect in matters of the soul. It seems like a simplistic reduction of what looks to most of us like a whole universe of various problems, but Mishra is convincing in his demonstration of how modern problems arent the products of modernity-gone-wrong, but of modernity itself. This sounds awfully similar to the social critiques presented by a host of traditionalist and Muslim intellectuals, from Hamza Yusuf to Seyyed Hossein Nasr and, though Mishra may not agree, it seems that Age of Anger is pointing toward broader solutions (insofar as they exist and its not clear that Mishra thinks they do) that would have to make use of organized religion.

It turns out that as the global order frays, religion itself isnt going anywhere. The global experience of Muslim terrorism, for example, is also an aspect of todays ressentiment. It points out that, among other things, religions have retained their power despite secular modernitys insistence that faith itself belongs ultimately to the myopic and backward stupidities/superstitions of simple people. Todays proponents of radical modernism now morphing precipitously into a mean laicism thanks to the rise of ISIS and the ongoing war on terror would be hard pressed to come up with a workable solution to our global crisis, since the problem is to be found at the heart of their own derivative worldview.

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France accords highest honor to abortion champion and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil – Crux: Covering all things Catholic

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French feminist icon and Auschwitz survivor Simone Veil has been granted Frances highest honor: Burial in the Paris Pantheon.

The Pantheon houses the mortal remains of some of Frances greatest intellectual figures, such as Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and scientists Marie Curie and Louis Braille. Veil will become only the fifth woman laid to rest in the mausoleum, alongside 76 men.

Veil, who died just two weeks before her 90th birthday on June 30, 2017, championed a 1975 law that legalized abortion while she was serving as health minister of France. The Loi Veil still bears her name today, and she has called it her proudest accomplishment.

After leaving that post, Veil went on to become the first woman president of the European Parliament in 1979 and served in this role until 1982. The body of her husband, politician Antoine Veil, who died in 2013, will be moved to join hers in the Pantheon crypt. The Guardian newspaper hailed Veil as the conscience of France.

Veil was given a funeral ceremony with military honors at Les Invalides, the site of Napoleons tomb, and in a show of national esteem, French flags were adorned with black ribbons and European flags flew at half-mast. There, President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to her invincible spirit and afterward tweeted May her example inspire our compatriots.

In a statement, Macron said Veils life was an exemplary inspiration, underscoring her care for the most vulnerable members of society.

Her uncompromising humanism, wrought by the horror of the camps, made her the constant ally of the weakest, and the resolute enemy of any political compromise with the extreme right, the statement read.

Upon her passing, the French episcopal conference sent out a tweet saying: We salute your greatness as a woman of state, your will, to fight for a fraternal Europe, your conviction that abortion is a drama, a comment that elicited some perplexity from observers who thought the bishops should have made some mention to the lives lost because of Veils abortion advocacy.

In 1944, the 16-year-old Simone Jacob was deported together with her eldest sibling, Madeleine, and her mother to the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, while her father and brother were sent to a camp in a Baltic country and never heard from again. While Veil and her sister managed to survive the camp and were sent back to France after the war, their mother died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen camp.

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who served as archbishop of Paris from 1981 to 2005, enjoyed a many-year friendship with Simone Veil, and reportedly never reproached her for her laws on abortion and contraception. Lustiger, himself a convert from Judaism to Catholicism, had also lost his mother to the Auschwitz death camp, leading him to a particular tenderness toward the Holocaust survivor who had been left as an orphan of the camps.

Some have credited President Giscard dEstaing with a master stroke in sending Veil to the battle front for the legalization of abortion in France, since she was virtually untouchable as an Auschwitz survivor as well as a person known for her moderation and sobriety. He pulled her out of relative obscurity in 1974, appointing her personally as health minister.

Whoever would oppose her would appear odious, if not inhuman, one commentator noted, because she had been transformed by the media into an untouchable icon.

At the time the abortion legislation was passed, Veil asserted her conviction that abortion should always be a last resort.

Abortion should stay an exception, the last resort for desperate situations, she said. How, you may ask, can we tolerate it without its losing the character of an exception without it seeming as though society encourages it?

The original Veil Law included a series of restrictions never found in U.S. abortion law after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. For one, abortion could only be performed up until the tenth week of pregnancy, a far cry from U.S. abortion on demand for all nine months of pregnancy. Moreover, doctors were required by the law to inform women considering an abortion of the risks to their health and their future pregnancies, and to provide them with the names and addresses of adoption agencies along with information about the services they offer.

The Veil Law required that women show they were in a situation of distress in order to obtain an abortion, a condition that wasnt lifted until 2014.

Despite Veils stated intentions of keeping abortion rare and exceptional, at present more than 200,000 abortions are performed each year in France. In 2016, there were fewer than 800,000 live births in the country, suggesting that more than 20 percent of all pregnancies in France end in abortion. The French birth rate in 2016 hit its lowest level in 40 years, well below replacement levels.

One Frenchman noted the irony that with 100 million killed barbarously in 100 years at the hands of the great tyrants of the 20th century Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot people were still able to celebrate the 7 million children killed before birth in France since the passage of the Veil Law.

When Veil was inducted into the prestigious Acadmie Franaise in 2010 (an event the French describe as enthronement), she manifested her perplexity at her nomination, since the ancient Acadmie had always been the temple of the French language while in her case the honor clearly had little or nothing to do with her literary talents, but seemed due rather to the symbol that she had necessarily become.

Veils reflection at the time has bearing on current affairs as well.

The well-coordinated petitions requesting Veils enshrinement in the Pantheon, which began circulating in France immediately upon her death, certainly bear witness to her popularity and the esteem in which she was held by the people of France.

Indeed, in 2010 a poll conducted by the Journal du Dimanche declared her to be the most popular woman in all of France, especially among women.

The figure of Simone Veil in France is reminiscent of Emma Bonino in Italy, a woman at the forefront of the battle to legalize abortion during the 1970s who was subsequently elevated to the role of Foreign Minister and later became a commissioner at the European level.

In February 2016 Pope Francis praised Bonino as one of Italys forgotten greats, comparing her to important historical figures such as Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman. Coincidentally, one newspaper ran a headline suggesting that Bonino had been inducted into the popes Pantheon.

Knowing Bonino to be a controversial figure, the pope said that she offered the best advice to Italy on learning about Africa, and admitted that she thinks differently from Catholics. True, but never mind, he said. We have to look at people, at what they do.

The Pantheon in which Veil is being interred was originally designed as a Catholic church, but the emblematic Parisian edifice had the ill fortune of being completed at the outset of the French revolution with its fierce anti-clerical leanings, and was converted a year later in 1791 into a mausoleum for the burial of great Frenchmen by a decree from the National Constituent Assembly.

Embodying a certain tension between church and state that still endures in France, the Pantheon aptly represents the ambiguous and conflicted relationship between the French and abortion as well as their feelings toward its advocates.

Thomas D. Williams is a Rome-based Catholic moral theologian, author and professor of Ethics. The Rome Bureau Chief for Breitbart News, Williams fifteen books include The World as It Could Be: Catholic Social Thought for a New Generation (Crossroad) and Who Is My Neighbor? Personalism and the Foundations of Human Rights (CUA Press).

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China’s Top Cyber Watchdog Is Making More Demands on Tech Firms – Fortune

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China's top cyber authority ordered the country's top tech firms to carry out "immediate cleaning and rectification" of their platforms to remove content deemed offensive to the Communist Party and the country's national image, it said on Wednesday.

The watchdog held a meeting with representatives from firms including Tencent Holdings ( tcehy ) , Baidu ( bidu ) and Sohu.com , on Tuesday where it gave them a list of specific errors, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement on social media.

The violations include distorting Chinese history, spreading fake news, misinterpreting policy directives and failing to block content that subverts public stability.

"[The sites] must adhere to the correct political line and moral norms," the statement said.

Chinese authorities have recently cracked down on platforms that allow users to share media from outlets that are not sanctioned under state-issued licenses, amid a wider censorship campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping.

On June 1 the CAC ushered in new regulations requiring all offline and online media outlets to be managed by Party-approved editorial staff. Workers in the approved outlets must receive training from local propaganda bureaus.

Related: Chinas WeChat Is a Censorship Juggernaut

In the wake of the new regulations several sites have been targeted with fines and closures under the watchdog's orders.

In specific examples, the CAC criticized one platform that failed to censor articles that "seriously deviated from socialist values" by saying China benefited from U.S. assistance during conflicts with Japan during World War II.

Other examples included a story detailing alleged affairs by party officials, an opinion piece that decried China's death penalty and an article that urged readers to invest in speculative real estate projects.

The CAC said the firms were required to immediately close offending accounts and strengthen "imperfect" auditing systems to avoid future punishment.

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China's Top Cyber Watchdog Is Making More Demands on Tech Firms - Fortune

[Podcasts] Test Pattern Episode 35: Censorship in Horror The Hays Code, the Demise of Horror Comics, and Video … – Bloody Disgusting

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Jacob and Tab examine the history of censorship in horror by focusing on the Motion Picture Production Code (aka the Hays Code), the demise of horror comics through the forming of the Comics Code Authority, and the moral panic of the video nasties era in Britain. Join them as they explore the battle between monster kids and three super villains hell bent on squashing horror at every turn Joseph Breen, Dr. Frederic Wertham, and Mary Whitehouse!

Subscribe and Listen to Past Episodes: iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | Web Player

Test Pattern is made in the spirit of the old hosted monster movie shows of our youth a little bit spooky, a little bit silly, but always informative! Jacob and Tab have a new topic each week, with a focus on old school macabre films, favorite creature features, and B-movies.

You can interact with Tab and Jacob on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Test Pattern can also be heard on 103.5 FM in Wisconsin

The Bloody Disgusting Podcast Network consists of The Horror Show, Women in Caskets, Forever Midnight, Test Pattern, and Virtual Pros. All of these shows can be found on our iTunes Provider Page as well as the Bloody Disgusting App on all iOS and Android devices.

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WhatsApp is being targeted by China’s censors, experts say – CNNMoney

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Unlike most Western media platforms, including its parent company Facebook (FB, Tech30), the popular encrypted messaging app had managed to escape the attention of Chinese officials. Now it's firmly on their radar.

Multiple WhatsApp users contacted by CNNMoney reported they were unable to send images or videos on Tuesday. Cyber experts said they had seen further disruption on WhatsApp servers in China on Wednesday.

The servers were not completely blocked but are "largely unavailable," said Charlie Smith of GreatFire.org, a group that monitors internet censorship in the country.

"I have also conducted speed tests from China and these sites are not reachable," he told CNNMoney.

Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Paris-based startup Symbolic Software, said his team logged into the app via a Chinese server on Tuesday and were unable to send anything other than basic text messages.

"We realized that the servers that Whatsapp uses to exchange videos, photos and files were being blocked in the same way they would block Facebook, the BBC etc." Kobeissi said.

A WhatsApp spokesperson declined to comment when reached by CNNMoney. The Chinese government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has tightened internet censorship across the board in the run-up to the Communist Party's 19th Congress this fall, where a major senior leadership reshuffle is expected. A new cybersecurity law that took effect in June is expected to make it harder for foreign firms to operate in China.

"The combination of the new cybersecurity law, and the upcoming Party congress, in addition to restrictions on unregistered VPNs, all point to this being a concerted government effort to crack down on freedom of expression," said Peter Micek, general counsel at digital rights organization Access Now and a teacher of internet policy and governance at Columbia University.

A wave of politically sensitive news appears to have prompted an increase in Chinese censorship in recent weeks.

Related: Even in death, the Chinese government still censors activist Liu Xiaobo

In the wake of the death of Liu Xiaobo -- a prominent Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist -- last week, censors blocked people from posting the image of an empty chair to pay tribute. The Nobel committee put Liu's medal on an empty chair in the 2010 award ceremony because he was still in prison.

CNN's broadcast was blacked out in China every time Liu's images or story appeared.

Smith, of GreatFire, believes the WhatsApp crackdown is primarily linked to the activist's death.

"Censors are working overtime, trying to eliminate all information about him. They must have determined that Chinese were using WhatsApp to share pictures and videos of him and decided to crackdown," he said.

Last week, images of Winnie the Pooh were also reportedly censored on Chinese social media because internet users were comparing the cartoon bear to President Xi Jinping.

Related: Chinese internet censors crack down on ... Winnie the Pooh

On Weibo (WB), China's equivalent of Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), no results appear on searches for "Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping."

Related: Google's man-versus-machine showdown blocked in China

China has 731 million internet users, and 95% of them access the web on mobile devices, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Center.

Western media and tech companies have been trying to crack the market for decades but have largely failed.

Facebook (FB, Tech30), Google (GOOGL, Tech30), Instagram, Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Snapchat (SNAP) and YouTube are among the Western services blocked in China.

The crackdown has given domestic companies such as Baidu (BIDU, Tech30), Youku, Sina (SINA) and Tencent (TCEHY) a huge advantage.

Experts say WhatsApp's appearance in the government's crosshairs may also be aimed at helping a local competitor -- Tencent's WeChat. Unlike WhatsApp, WeChat is unencrypted and thus far easier to monitor.

"The point of these attacks is to coerce the Chinese audience into using more open systems such as WeChat," Kobeissi said.

This week's disruption suggests the risk of a full-fledged ban is rising.

"A complete block is just a natural progression," said Smith. "Then gradually people will shift to WeChat."

-- Steven Jiang contributed to this article.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published July 20, 2017: 12:01 AM ET

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WhatsApp is being targeted by China's censors, experts say - CNNMoney

Net Censorship Undermines Opportunities of ‘Thailand 4.0’ – Khaosod English

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With the threat of a single gateway still looming over the heads of netizens, the recent dust-up over limiting access to Facebook content deemed inappropriate by the government, a future internet chock-full of stringent government controls still seems an inevitable reality.

While the government has asserted in the past that its motivation for any restrictions to the kingdoms internet access is cybersecurity, it would also seem that term covers blocking content it feels is not in its best interest which was recently the case when it requested the Thai Internet Service Provider Association, or TISPA, to engage Facebook in an attempt to get specific content blocked.

To be clear, its common practice for companies such as Facebook and Google to block content from specific countries such as Thailand if presented with a valid court order. From a social media platform perspective, its better to stay in business in a country by blocking some content than to be blocked altogether as has happened in China or North Korea.

What is not common practice though is for companies to take down content all together. That means, even when blocked, it remains accessible to people outside of the blocked country.

The issues related to a single gateway span far beyond the goal of preventing cybercrime or far more draconian attempts to limit access to information it can have a direct impact on the economy.

Given the economic policies being spearheaded under the Thailand 4.0 initiative and growth of tech startups in the past decade, shifting to a single gateway or regularly blocking social media content could undermine much of the intended progress.

With Thailand focused on moving toward a digital economy with the Thailand 4.0 initiative, its going to have to balance its concerns over digital content it deems illegal with the impact on platforms that many firms will leverage to do business.

Sure, finding ways to block content and take legal action against social media platforms might give the government more control over what it deems inappropriate or just doesnt want to see but also threatens to slow down content delivery to local users, making their experience less enjoyable. And if you are trying to grow a digital economy, creating an unpleasant online experience as the norm is not a positive feature.

User experience is a vital part of any digital business, and at a time when the digital economy is being pushed to the forefront of economic policies, it seems shortsighted to enact mechanisms that will ultimately hamper the proliferation of businesses that travel down this path.

If economic growth in all digital sectors is a target for Thailand, then policies such as content blocking and the single gateway will surely hinder not help that effort.

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Net Censorship Undermines Opportunities of 'Thailand 4.0' - Khaosod English

DeVos urges state legislators to take on foes of campus free speech – Washington Times

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DENVER | Education Secretary Betsy DeVos offered a reminder Thursday to state legislators frustrated by protests shutting down free speech at public universities: You control the purse strings.

Ms. DeVos, who delivered her remarks at the American Legislative Exchange Council annual meeting, said that we all have a role to play in reversing the trend toward campus intolerance, which has been manifested in recent years with the muzzling of conservative speakers and viewpoints.

For state legislators, you have the power of the purse, she said. And I wouldnt hope to suggest how you might approach that, but I think that really bringing some of the most egregious examples to the forefront we all have the opportunity to use our bully pulpits to talk about these things and bring light to places of darkness where speech is not being allowed to be free and open and heard.

Her comments came with state lawmakers increasingly exasperated by campus melees, including last semesters University of California, Berkeley rioting and the student takeover at Evergreen State College, driven by students unwilling to brook dissenting opinions.

Let me say I think this is a really, really important issue, one that has become even more important in the last couple of years, said Ms. DeVos. We have seen in far too many cases an intolerance toward listening to and at least hearing from others that have different perspectives than ours.

State lawmakers have begun to react. In Washington, a pair of Republican legislators introduced bills in June to defund Evergreen State and transform it into a private college.

For those who might find such a solution extreme, ALEC unveiled last month the Forming Open and Robust University Minds Act (FORUM), a piece of model legislation aimed at reopening debate on increasingly close-minded campuses.

The model policy eliminates campus free-speech zones, reaffirms First Amendment rights, allows those whose free speech rights may have been violated to bring causes of action and requires free speech education for students as well as administrators and campus police.

The measure also empowers legislators to hold universities accountable by requiring each institution to report on free speech issues prior to the legislatures appropriations process.

Shelby Emmett, director of ALECs Center to Protect Free Speech, said the proposed policy differs from others that require free speech education only for incoming freshmen.

Obviously, theres a problem with free speech on campus well before freshmen arrive if you have administrators or campus police officers who think you can detain or arrest or suspend a student because they passed out a Constitution, said Ms. Emmett. I think its easy to go after the students, but this is a cultural problem.

The focus today lies with progressive students suppressing conservatives, but this is not at all a political issue, said Ms. Emmett.

This happens on both sides, she said. It goes back and forth. Free speech is one of those things where people say they love it until they dont love it.

Universities have seen their reputations take a hit as a result of their apparent opposition to conservative views.

A survey released last week by the Pew Research Center found 58 percent of Republicans believe higher education has a negative effect on the nation, compared with just 36 percent who say the effect is positive.

The reverse was true two years ago, when 54 percent of Republicans found higher education positive and 37 percent said it was negative.

In between those two surveys, there have been massive student demonstrations, notably the campus shutdown in 2015 at the University of Missouri, as well as incidents at private institutions such as Yale University and Claremont McKenna College.

Ms. DeVos can speak from personal experience: In May students booed and interrupted her graduation address at Bethune-Cookman University in Orlando, Florida.

The education secretary typically draws a protest crowd driven by teachers unions wherever she speaks, but there were no demonstrators Thursday outside the Hyatt Regency Denver for her ALEC address.

The day before she arrived, however, several hundred foes of her school choice agenda held a rally at the state capitol and then marched to the Hyatt Regency, chanting resist and holding signs with messages like ALEC Leave Our Kids Alone!

The marchers were greeted by ALEC staffers who passed out water bottles in the nearly 100-degree heat. The message on the water bottles: Quenching your thirst for free speech.

Thats perfect, said Ms. DeVos.

Free speech is a very important issue, and one which I plan to continue to talk and speak out about, and I hope all of you who have opportunities to do that in your states will do the same, she said. Because the value of hearing and learning from others is an invaluable, invaluable thing.

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DeVos urges state legislators to take on foes of campus free speech - Washington Times

Thanks to blocked lecture, Ben Shapiro has a message about free speech for Berkeley defender Dianne Feinstein – Washington Examiner

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The University of California, Berkeley's decision to block another conservative lecture, this time featuring popular author Ben Shapiro, rightfully sparked a fresh round of disgust among free speech advocates on Wednesday.

The school is under heavy fire from conservatives for a series of First Amendment controversies that unfolded over the course of the last school year, even facing a lawsuit from Young America's Foundation and the Berkeley College Republicans over Ann Coulter's canceled lecture in April. Between the riots that blocked Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking and the university's decision to cancel Coulter's lecture, Berkeley has become a high-profile battleground of the contemporary campus speech movement.

During a Senate hearing last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, criticized the school in his remarks decrying the state of free speech in higher education. In response, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., ardently defended her state's flagship university.

"I know of no effort at Berkeley, at the University of California, to stifle student efforts to speech," she said at the time, continuing, "And if there is a specific effort, I would certainly appreciate it if people brought that to my attention."

Ben Shapiro is happy to help.

"If there is no effort to stifle free speech at Berkeley," Shapiro responded in an email to the Washington Examiner, "why has Berkeley failed to protect Milo Yiannopoulos' event, cancelled Ann Coulter's event, and now makes excuses about lack of availability for a speech already cleared by the College Republicans?"

"If Feinstein is so unconcerned about this, she should push her fellow Democrats in California to sponsor legislation requiring the suspension or expulsion of students who utilize violence to prevent others' free speech," he concluded.

Easy enough. But will the senator agree?

In a statement to Young America's Foundation (my previous employer), the organization set to sponsor his lecture, Shapiro indicated he won't accept the university's excuses. "Using ridiculous pretexts to keep conservatives from speaking is unsurprising but disappointing. We'll find a way to get this event done, and UC Berkeley has a moral and legal obligation to ensure we do so," he declared.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

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Thanks to blocked lecture, Ben Shapiro has a message about free speech for Berkeley defender Dianne Feinstein - Washington Examiner

Minnesota city eliminates free speech zone at veterans park, blocking satanic monument – Washington Times

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The city of Belle Plaine, Minnesota, ended months of debate Monday by eliminating a free speech zone at Veterans Memorial Park, blocking a proposed satanic monument and forcing other religious displays to be removed.

The original intent of providing the public space was to recognize those who have bravely contributed to defending our nation through their military service, city leaders said in a statement. In recent weeks and months, though, that intent has been overshadowed by freedom of speech concerns expressed by both religious and nonreligious communities.

The controversy started in January when the city ordered a Christian-themed statue of a praying soldier to be removed from the city-owned park, fearing a lawsuit by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The order was met with local backlash, and the Belle Plaine City Council passed a resolution in February designating a free speech zone at the park. That opened the door, however, to all speech, and an application from the Satanic Temple of Salem Massachusetts to erect a satanic monument at the park renewed tensions.

Mondays vote by the City Council rescinds the free speech resolution and blocks the satanic display from ever going up, a local NBC affiliate reported.

The debate between those communities has drawn significant regional and national attention to our city, and has promoted divisiveness among our own residents, the citys statement said. While this debate has a place in public dialogue, it has detracted from our citys original intent of designating a space solely for the purpose of honoring and memorializing military veterans, and has also portrayed our city in a negative light.

Owners of all privately owned displays in Veterans Park were given 10 days to remove them from the property.

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Minnesota city eliminates free speech zone at veterans park, blocking satanic monument - Washington Times

Euthanasia Reveals Atheism’s Moral Confusion – Discovery Institute

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Jerry Coyne has responded to our criticisms (here, here, here and here) of his endorsement of euthanasia for handicapped children. Coyne seems a bit perplexed at the strong criticism he has received for his advocacy for killing babies with birth defects because they would suffer if allowed to live.

For example, he is surprised at the outrage that atheist ethicist Peter Singer has received for advocacy of infant euthanasia:

For these views Singer has been demonized by disability rights advocates, who have called for his firing and disrupted his talks (see my post about thathere). All for just raising a reasonable ethical question that should be considered and discussed!

Coynes message: Dont get all worked up about killing handicapped babies, even if youre one of the class of people he proposes to kill. Cant we discuss this dispassionately, like adults?

But Coynes equanimity has limits.

In 2013, Ball State University professor Eric Hedin taught a course on astronomy that included suggested readings on the possibility that the cosmos manifests evidence ofdesign. Coyne was fit to be tied. He threatened the president of Ball State with legal action:

Its religion taught as science in a public university, and its not only wrong but illegal. I have tried approaching the University administration, and have been rebuffed. This will now go to the lawyers.

Coyne enlisted the Freedom from Religion Foundation to issue a cease-and-desist letter to Ball State.

Coyne:

Hedins classes are not only unconstitutional, but an embarrassment to your university. Even if you disagree with the freedom-from-religion argument, Hedins courses are a discredit to BSU and he should be removed from them or forced to eliminate the religious indoctrination.

Note to others: it appears to be settled law that academic freedom cannot, in a public university, be an excuse to teach any damn thing you want.

As I mentioned earlier, I wrote to the chairman of Hedins department expressing some of the sentiments above, but he blew me off, arguing that his courses had been deemed satisfactory by University officials. Well see if they start singing a different tune now!

Coyne is enflamed not onlyby courses in public universities, but by signs in museums. Heobjected to a plaque in the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History given by a donor that credited creation to God. Coyne wrote a threatening letter to the museum director:

A friend of mine who recently visited the new Nature Lab at your Museum forwarded me the attached sign, which ascribes the existence of animals to God.

As an evolutionary biologist, I object to the invocation of God the invocation of God in a public museum could be seen as be a violation of the First Amendment.

Regardless of what the donor wanted, I think it abrogates our scientific principles to celebrate all of Gods creatures when that statement is, by scientific lights, palpably wrong. Would you have taken the money from someone who insisted that the gift celebrates all of Wotans creatures, or all the creatures created by space aliens? Those signs are just as scientifically supportable as what appears on the sign now I neednt remind you that science is done by ignoring God, and has never given the slightest bit of evidence for the intercession of God in the origin, evolution, and diversification of life.

Consider the irony. When Peter Singer endorsed killing handicapped babies in the crib, at a public lecture in front of the very people he advocated killing, Coyne defended his academic freedom and pleaded: Cant we all just get along?

When a professor raisesthe question of design in an astronomy class, or a museum puts up a donors plaque crediting God for nature, Coyne erupts in rage and calls in the lawyers.

For Coyne, killing babies is a topic for reasoned discussion. Invoking God, or considering scientificevidence of design, is an outrage.

William Fleming had it right: Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it is an error of the understanding.

Photo: Peter Singer, by Mal Vickers via Flickr.

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Euthanasia Reveals Atheism's Moral Confusion - Discovery Institute

SpaceX may scrap plans to land Dragon spacecrafts on Mars by end of 2020s – SYFY WIRE (blog)

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With NASA still trying to figure out how itll pay for plans to land humans on Mars, it seemed SpaceX could be our best option to get people up there in the next decade. Well, that may not be the case anymore at least not on that accelerated timeline.

While speaking at the ISS R&D Conference, Musk revealed SpaceX will likely scrap plans to use propulsive landing gear (the little engines that blast out from the lower sides of the capsule) to put Dragon capsules on Mars for supply drops and eventual manned missions.

He said the company now believes theres a better way to land there, and the companys next round of rockets and spacecraft would reflect that. Musk, umm, didnt actually give any details of what this figure might look like, though. Despite that, Musk later clarified they still want to use propulsive landing tech just on much bigger ships. You know, when Musk claims Mars as the sovereign nation of Tesla, and all that. Sadly, no timeline on anything yet.

There was a time when I thought that the Dragon approach to landing on Mars... would be the right way to land on Mars. But now I'm pretty confident that is not the right way. There's a far better approach. That's what the next generation of SpaceX rockets and spacecraft is going to do.

Though SpaceX has been working on propulsive landing tech for a while (and its a key part of the emergency escape system for Dragon 2, designed to thrust the capsule away from a potential explosion), Dragon capsules have mostly been using parachutes to land back on Earth anyway. So that wont change. The company had run into some safety concerns with adding landing legs to the Dragon 2, and its not clear if that also played a role in scrapping the tech for wider use on these craft, but it stands to reason it was a factor.

So what is SpaceX cooking up? Something big-ish, surely. Musk wouldnt have dropped this news or made this decision without having a new plan in the works, and he at least seems to think this next generation system is a much better option. Theres also buzz Musk could update his Mars colonization plan later this year, and this could certainly be a part of that. Heres hoping, because we really dont want to wait another 20+ years to reach Mars.

(Via The Verge)

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SpaceX may scrap plans to land Dragon spacecrafts on Mars by end of 2020s - SYFY WIRE (blog)

NATO alliance helping dictators – Washington Times

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

President Trump found NATO wanting. Then true to form, he acted like a CEO, not a president, serving notice that things had to change, or else. The or else he left undefined, creating angst among politicians and policy elites who, sensing their own failures, chose to focus on his manners not his message. Mr. Trumps poor political decorum notwithstanding, his policy judgment is right. NATO has to change.

NATO is at risk, not from without, but from within. Vladimir Putins geopolitical maneuvering is cause for concern to be sure, but the real danger comes from the erosion of NATOs core values, and the rise of a dictator within its ranks. They pose a far greater risk than Russias current meddling.

The North Atlantic Treaty commits every NATO member to the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law, but a growing number of NATO autocrats ignore these core values. Political expression in particular has taken a beating. Every European country but two is less tolerant of opposing viewpoints today than it was in 2013.

Autocrats shut down public debate, and bureaucrats harass anyone who disagrees. Its happened in Romania, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and the U.S., where the IRS subjected conservative NGOs to questionable tactics. Political and media ideologues use identity politics and political correctness to facilitate the crackdowns by condemning as hateful any views with which they disagree.

Weve forgotten the Helsinki Accords, and their making respect for individual liberty a requirement for international legitimacy. Dictators still arrest, and imprison, and torture, to be sure, but today they must have a whiff of freedom about them to avoid the worlds condemnation. Helsinkis effect helped defeat the Soviet Union. It is why the world condemns ISIS. And it is why Ankara is pushing back against reports of Turkeys gulag.

Every members protection under Article V should depend on its commitment to NATOs core values, but the alliance is giving everyone a pass, honoring its reason to exist more in the breach. If the trend continues, then NATO will become a mutual defense pact for dictators posing as democrats.

No NATO member has spurned its values and security interests more flagrantly than Turkey. President Erdogan used Vladimir Putins playbook to establish himself as an equally dominant and despotic ruler in Turkey. Democracy is staggering under government oppression, oligarchs rule the economy, and Erdogan sycophants maintain a cult of personality around him. Turkish media calls him the Great Master,and he lives sultan-like in a 1,100 room White Palace he built for himself as president.

Turkeys drift from freedom accelerated after the failed military coup in July 2016. Mr. Erdogan launched a continuing purge that has so far snared about 118,000 Turks, at least 50,000 jailed, and the rest suppressed with various state sanctions. The stories coming out of Turkey are horrific; people disappearing, children and spouses arrested to punish political opponents, mass arrest of journalists, criminal charges based on spurious allegations that remind one of the Soviet Unions darkest days. While Mr. Erdogan Putinized his countrys democracy, NATO remained silent.

Turkey ignores NATOs security interests as well. For years, aid, weapons, and volunteers flowed across Turkeys southern border to ISIS, and ISIS oil flowed out. A train of Hezbollah-bound, Iranian-supplied rockets derailed in southeast Turkey in 2007. Police stopped Turkish intelligence service trucks carrying mortars, artillery shells, and ammunition to al Qaeda near the Syrian border in 2014. Mr. Erdogans response? Arrest the police and claim it was humanitarian aid. When newspaper editors published photos disproving his claim, they were also arrested.

The Turkey that protected NATOs flank for 50 years is gone, replaced by a replica of Vladimir Putins Russia. Mr. Erdogans silent supervision of peaceful protesters beaten on Washingtons streets by his armed security thugs speaks volumes about his respect for NATOs values. The alliance should not accept the risk of war for an ally with such values, nor should the U.S. sell Turkey sophisticated F35A fighter aircraft for him to use against our Kurdish allies.

Bruce M. Lawlor, a retired U.S. Army major general, is a former member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security.

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NATO alliance helping dictators - Washington Times

US general says allies worry Russian war game may be ‘Trojan horse’ – Reuters

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BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. allies in eastern Europe and Ukraine are worried that Russia's planned war games in September could be a "Trojan horse" aimed at leaving behind military equipment brought into Belarus, the U.S. Army's top general in Europe said on Thursday.

Russia has sought to reassure NATO that the military exercises will respect international limits on size, but NATO and U.S. official remain wary about their scale and scope.

U.S. Army Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who heads U.S. Army forces in Europe, told Reuters in an interview that allied officials would keep a close eye on military equipment brought in to Belarus for the Zapad 2017 exercise, and whether it was removed later.

"People are worried, this is a Trojan horse. They say, 'We're just doing an exercise,' and then all of a sudden they've moved all these people and capabilities somewhere," he said.

Hodges said he had no indications that Russia had any such plans, but said greater openness by Moscow about the extent of its war games would help reassure countries in eastern Europe.

NATO allies are nervous because previous large-scale Russian exercises employed special forces training, longer-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Such tactics were later used in Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine and in its intervention in Syria, NATO diplomats say.

Hodges said the United States and its allies had been very open about a number of military exercises taking place across eastern Europe this summer involving up to 40,000 troops, but it remained unclear if Moscow would adhere to a Cold War-era treaty known as the Vienna document, which requires observers for large-scale exercises involving more than 13,000 troops.

Some NATO allies believe the Russian exercise could number more than 100,000 troops and involve nuclear weapons training, the biggest such exercise since 2013.

Russia has said it would invite observers if the exercise exceeded 13,000 forces.

Hodges said NATO would maintain normal rotations during the Russian war game, while carrying out previously scheduled exercises in Sweden, Poland and Ukraine.

The only additional action planned during that period was a six-week deployment of three companies of 120 paratroopers each to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for "low-level" exercises, Hodges said.

"We want to avoid anything that looks like a provocation. This is not going to be the 'Sharks' and the 'Jets' out on the streets," Hodges said in a reference to the gang fights shown in the 1961 film "West Side Story" set in New York City.

Reporting by Andrea Shalal

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US general says allies worry Russian war game may be 'Trojan horse' - Reuters

NATO Is Fighting Russia’s Fake News Schemes by Training Danish Troops How to Spot Propaganda – Newsweek

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Political elections are not the only target of Russia's hacking and "fake news" campaigns. Fighting forces can be targeted, as well.As such, Denmark will reportedly train troops against propaganda that it plans to send NATO next year in Estonia as the build-up of forces in Eastern Europe continues, according to Reuters.

Though Russia was not specifically mentioned, President Vladimir Putins government has been directly accused of meddling in the United Stateselection by disseminating false news reports and conducting cyberattacks as well as similar efforts in France, Austria, the Ukraine, Germany and the Netherlands, to name a few.

"It is a whole new world. The Danish soldiers need to be extremely aware of that. Therefore I have arranged with the armed forces that the soldiers being sent out in January are informed and educated in how to protect themselves,"Danish defense minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said Monday.

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"It is easy to imagine they will become exposed to intimidation and fake rumors," Frederiksen added.

The 200 Danish troops are scheduled to reach Estonia in January.

Denmarks plan comes in response to an incident in February when German NATO troops stationed in Lithuania were falsely accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in emails sent to high-ranking members of Lithuanias government and its media outlets, DW reported.

Prosecutors later opened a criminal investigation because of the false story, and NATO blamed Russia.

Putin, who met with President Donald Trump for more than two hours earlier this month at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, claimed he firmly denied accusations of election meddling when Trump brought it up. Russia also has denied knowledge ofother alleged hacks.

In Europe, Russias efforts also involve attempts to thwart the increasing number of troops in Eastern Europe as NATO and Russia posture for military prominence.

Most recently, leaders from NATO members congregated in Poland to discuss defense efforts. The new movements will mark the first time multinational forces will rotate in Eastern Europe since the Cold War, according to PBS.

The U.S., alone, had deployed roughly 4,000 troops to Polandand to make rotations in Europeas of January, with other equipment like tanks also making its way to Latvia, Romania and Lithuania.

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NATO Is Fighting Russia's Fake News Schemes by Training Danish Troops How to Spot Propaganda - Newsweek