Figuring Out Free Speech At Harvard – WBUR

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wbur

With guest host Anthony Brooks.

Harvard revokes acceptances from 10 students who shared offensive messages on Facebook. Are they curbing hate, or censoring free speech? A little of both?

Joan Vennochi, columnist at the Boston Globe. (@Joan_Vennochi)

Stuart Taylor, writer and co-author of "The Campus Rape Frenzy: The Attack on Due Process at Americas Universities." (@staylor5448)

Harvard Crimson:Harvard Rescinds Acceptances for At Least Ten Students for Obscene Memes "In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child 'piata time.'"

Boston Globe:Harvard draws the line on free speech -- "Many will agree these students crossed a line and forfeited the right to engage in unfettered debate, at least at Harvard. But whats the next line of unacceptability? What if a private Facebook chat involved a screed against Elizabeth Warren, expressed support for a Muslim travel ban, or labeled as fascist Harvards effort to ban social clubs? Private schools write their own discipline codes. But with this action, Harvard is sending a message with a classic free-speech chill: You can say anything but not here."

WBUR:At Harvard, Memes Good And Bad Spark An Uproar "As a matter of university policy, the decision to revoke offers of admission is final. But this decision leaves behind questions of where to draw the line in a campus environment that students like Morris describe as sometimes stifling in its policing of speech."

This segment aired on June 6, 2017.

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Figuring Out Free Speech At Harvard - WBUR

Free speech becoming more of a mystical unicorn – Times Record News

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John Ingle , Times Record News 2:27 p.m. CT June 6, 2017

From left, San Francisco 49ers Eli Harold (58), quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) and Eric Reid (35) kneel during the national anthem before their NFL game against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, Oct. 2, 2016 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.(Photo: Nhat V. Meyer, TNS)

The more I think about, the more I begin to believe there really is no such thing as free speech anymore.

(Cue the eye-rolling emoji. For the older generation that might not be as tech savvy; emojis are the equivalent of hand-drawn smiley faces back in the day, only these are digital types that express some sort of emotion.)

I hear people quite frequently even some who read this column say others have the right to their opinion, but not necessarily enough to make that opinion outwardly known. It's baffling at times. Some of is petty and insignificant, but some of it can be down right nasty.

Take the riots at the free-speech capitol of the country the University of California, Berkeley. Hundreds of disgruntled people took to the streets to protest speeches by two far right-wing personalities. I don't agree with what the two individuals have to say, for the most part, but they certainly have the right to do so. Right?

Some people who want to make a statement about business for one reason or another typically choose to do so by not purchasing their wares or shopping at their store. They don't force the business to shut down, they simply boycott it.

Then there is the Colin Kaepernick situation.

I defended Kaep when he decided that he would no longer stand for the national anthem, something that is well within his right. He was protesting to make a point, and he did. Right or wrong, he is protected by the First Amendment.

But there are consequences for that, too. It appears he is having difficulty finding a suitor willing to take on his reputation and employ his services, even as a back-up quarterback. Purely from a football perspective, Kaepernick's play, for one reason or another, certainly has fallen off after an incredible beginning to his young career. But, I don't think it has to the extent that all backups in the league are better than him.

So, you have to wonder: If it's not his play that is keeping him from the field, what is it? It has to be the stance he took and the attention it drew then and continues to draw now. His right to free speech is now costing him.

I also understand that football is a business, and they have internal rules for the betterment of the organization. Most businesses do. We have certain rules at the newspaper the prevents us from doing certain things, and we had them when I was active duty and civil service in the Air Force.

Nowadays, the only free speech that's really allowed is the free speech that is accepted by others. If the viewpoint is different, others will try to shut you down. The idea of true free speech is more like the mystical unicorn beautiful in theory but elusive.

As I close this out, I'm reminded that young men from allied countries stormed the beaches of Normandy 73 years ago on June 6, 1944. Fighting claimed more than 10,000, including more than 4,400 killed. They gave their lives for the ideologies of democracy and freedom, even a freedom that includes speech you don't necessarily agree with.

I think we can all agree that there is no place for hate speech or speech meant to incite the mob.

But, let's not lose sight of what the First Amendment was created to do.

Keep it real, Wichita Falls.

Business/metro editor John Ingle can be reached at john.ingle@timesrecordnews.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at @inglejohn1973.

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14 arrested as protesters clash at ‘Free Speech’ rally in Portland – FOX31 Denver

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Hundreds of supporters of US President Donald Trump converged on Terry D. Schrunk Plaza for an event billed as a Trump Free Speech rally. They were slightly outnumbered by a mixed assemblage of counterprotesters across the street who viewed the free speech rally as an implicit endorsement of racism given its close timing to the racially charged stabbing.

(Photo: CNN)

The groups were separated by a wall of officers, heavily armed and wearing protective body armor, from local and federal police agencies.

Police dispersing crowd of anti-Alt Right demonstrators today in Portland. (Photo: CNN)

What began as a tense exchange of name-calling and profane insults took a turn when counterdemonstrators began throwing glass bottles, bricks and balloons of foul-smelling liquid at officers, Portland police said. Officers used pepper spray to push back the counterdemonstrators and closed the park where they had gathered, threatening to arrest anyone who remained.

Portland police did not indicate which side those arrested belonged to. CNN crews on the scene observed that most of the arrests were concentrated in the area of counterdemonstrators.

Three of the 14 arrested were given citations by federal officers and released, according to a statement from the Portland police department.

Of the other 11, most face charges of disorderly conduct, police said. Other charges against various protesters included carrying a concealed weapon, interfering with a peace officer and harassment, the police statement said.

Arraignments are scheduled for Friday in Multnomah County Court.

The rallies came in the wake of the stabbing deaths on May 26 of Ricky Best, 53, and Taliesin Namkai-Meche, 23, as they tried to defend two Muslim women from what police described as a barrage of hate speech.

Suspect Jeremy Joseph Christian raised the free speech issue in his arraignment last week.

Get out if you dont like free speech! he shouted as he entered the courtroom on Tuesday. You call it terrorism; I call it patriotism. Die.

Concerns raised early on

Tensions continued to build in Portland as the incident turned the city into the latest battleground over free speech and race relations in the Trump era.

We hope and pray that both sides try to keep in mind that in the big picture it might be easy to forget with all the emotions running high that we all have the same basic needs, Portland resident Margie Fletcher told CNN before Sundays rallies.

Her son, Micah, was wounded during the train attack as he and the others tried to intervene in what Portland police called hate speech toward a variety of ethnicities and religions directed at two women on the commuter rain.

Christian faces charges including two counts of aggravated murder, attempted murder, two counts of second-degree intimidation and being a felon in possession of a restricted weapon, police say.

Signs of animosity among the groups holding rallies began to emerge last week in online forums. The tensions put police on high alert and prompted the mayor to call on the federal government to revoke the event organized by a group called Patriot Prayer. Terry D. Schrunk Plaza is federal property where guns are barred.

Im a strong supporter of the First Amendment no matter what the views are that are being expressed, Mayor Ted Wheeler told HLN on Friday, but given the timing of this rally, I believed we had a case to make about the threats to public safety.

Federal officials declined the request, saying there was no legal basis to revoke the permit.

Protester: A vote for Trump not hate speech

Wheeler also called on protest organizer Joey Gibson to postpone the event. Gibson told CNN the event was planned before the stabbings and that Patriot Prayer had nothing to with Christian, the defendant. It was, he said, about taking a stand for President Trump and free speech in a liberal part of the country.

He said his group is not racist or alt-right and it should not be held responsible for the actions of counterdemonstrators, many of whom identified as anti-fascists.

Anti-facists have become a recurring presence at events testing the limits of free speech. They were blamed for riots that led to the cancellation of conservative firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos scheduled talk at The University of California, Berkeley, and have shown up at events featuring Ann Coulter.

They tend to equate such events with fascism and Nazis, messaging that was evident in signs declaring No more Nazis.

On each side Sunday, protesters carried signs reflecting a variety of causes. Counterdemonstrators chanted expletive-ridden slogans denouncing Trump. They carried signs proclaiming Supporters of Trump are traitors to America and Freedom ends where harm begins.

Across the street, Trump supporters waved Make America Great Again signs and wore the corresponding red hats.

In addition to the arrests, a large pickup truck flying two large American flags cruised past hundreds of anti-fascist protesters and honked its horn. Several people in the group ran up to the truck and ripped out the flags, bringing them into the crowd as others applauded. Others threw multiple large water bottles, sticks and other projectiles at the truck, which then sped away.

One Trump supporter said she was marching in support of free speech after the mayors attempt to silence the Patriot Prayer event. Another wearing a Police Lives Matter T-shirt said she wanted to reverse the lies surrounding Trump supporters.

Just because we voted for Trump doesnt equal hate speech, Debbie Sluder said.

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14 arrested as protesters clash at 'Free Speech' rally in Portland - FOX31 Denver

Hate speech vs. free speech: Where is the line on college campuses? – Los Angeles Times

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Free speech has once again become a highly charged issue on college campuses, where protests frequently have interrupted, and in some cases halted, appearances by polarizing speakers.

At a lively panel last week during the Education Writers Assn.s annual conference in the nations capital, free speech advocates and a UC Berkeley student leader debated who was at fault and what could be done.

Alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos tour of colleges across the country drew protesters off and on campus, and sparked violent clashes, including one in which a man was shot in Seattle. At Berkeley birthplace of the Free Speech Movement 50 years ago university officials canceled his scheduled appearance in February and later pulled the plug on a scheduled April visit by conservative commentator Ann Coulter, citing safety concerns.

In March, a protest at Middlebury College left both the speaker, controversial social scientist Charles Murray, and a professor who wasnt his supporter injured.

The way the altercations on campus were characterized by the media and in a growing national public debate frustrated many students.

This whole issue of free speech is a lot more nuanced than what it appears to be in a single headline or what it appears to be on the surface, Pranav Jandhyala, who co-founded the nonpartisan campus group BridgeUSA at Berkeley, said during Thursdays panel discussion. Its not just about the people who invited the speaker and the people who are trying to silence her.

BridgeUSA, Jandhyala explained, was formed earlier this year after university leaders at the last minute canceled Yiannopoulos talk an appearance the university had been defending, citing its commitment to tolerance. The decision was made after protests escalated by what appeared to be a group of outside protesters who were not students on the day Yiannopoulos was scheduled to appear caused about $100,000 in damage.

Violence replaced conversation that day, Jandhyala said, and his student group set out to create more events where students could debate and challenge different views without fear of violence. They asked liberal student groups to pick a speaker to come to campus and debate with students from all sides. They did the same for the Republican students, who picked Ann Coulter.

We wanted to invite her because if you viewed her as hateful and you viewed her as inflammatory and nothing of value, then why don't you go ahead and actually challenge her? he said. We were creating this larger Q&A with her that would essentially be liberal Berkeley students challenging Ann Coulter on the issue of illegal immigration.

Jandhyala and fellow panelists, moderated by Scott Jaschik, editor of Inside Higher Ed, discussed a recent Gallup survey that found that when they were asked if they believed in free speech, a majority of students across all political, racial and ethnic groups said yes. But when asked if they favored college policies that banned hate speech, an overwhelming majority of students also said yes, without seeing a contradiction in the two answers.

Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which promotes free speech and due process rights at universities, said the narrative so often gets oversimplified to the cliche PC run amok. Lukianoff said not all free speech issues are political.

Last year, the case I was the most upset about was the case at Northern Michigan University, where students who took advantage of the counseling services there were then sent scary letters saying, 'Listen, if you talk to any of your friends about thoughts of self harm, you will be punished, he said. This is telling people who are either depressed or anxious that they're a burden on their friends and that they should isolate themselves. But somehow, that does not get the same coverage."

Judith Shapiro, the former president of Barnard College who now heads the Teagle Foundation, which works to strengthen liberal arts education, said the heart of the debate really may be less an absence of freedom of speech and more an absence of quality of speech.

The institution has the right to say: OK, is it worth it?... Who should we be listening to and engaging with? Who, even if you disagree, could you actually learn something from? she said, which led to a lighthearted discussion about the relative cultural value of a campus hosting Snooki from the reality show Jersey Shore or Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison.

As soon as you actually start trying to evaluate people on the basis of the quality of the discourse that theyre bringing to campus, thats when a lot of peoples biases really present themselves, Lukianoff said.

This national fight over where to draw the line, however complicated, needs to focus more on emphasizing the power of engagement than on protecting free speech for free speech's sake, Jandhyala said.

Its about creating an environment where you're willing to listen to all different perspectives, form your own from listening ... and also be willing to challenge and debate with others and engage in discussion with the people that you disagree with, he said. That is the driving purpose of free speech.

rosanna.xia@latimes.com

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Hate speech vs. free speech: Where is the line on college campuses? - Los Angeles Times

Harvard draws the line on free speech – The Boston Globe

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FREEDOM OF SPEECH is not just freedom from censorship, Harvards president, Drew Gilpin Faust, just told the Class of 2017. It is freedom to actively join the debate as a full participant.

So much for that lofty theory. When it comes to practice, Harvard University just rescinded acceptances for at least 10 prospective students, the Harvard Crimson reports, after they traded sexually explicit memes and messages targeting minority groups, in a private Facebook chat. According to the Crimson story, by Hannah Natanson, the admitted students formed a messaging group entitled, Harvard memes for horny bourgeois teens, and sent messages and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust and the deaths of children. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child piata time.

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Thats ugly language, allegedly coming from young people entitled and dumb enough to post it without worrying about the consequences. But theres also something creepy about Harvards policing of it especially since Faust dedicated her 2017 commencement address to a passionate defense of free speech and the battle raging over it on campuses across the country, from trigger warnings to the rights of conservative speakers to address college audiences.

Silencing ideas or basking in intellectual orthodoxy independent of facts and evidence impedes our access to new and better ideas and it inhibits a full and considered rejection of bad ones, Faust told graduates on May 25 (in a speech that also referenced the next act, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg). We must work to ensure that universities do not become bubbles isolated from the concerns and discourse of the society that surrounds them. According to the text of her speech, posted on the Harvard website, she also noted, We must support and empower the voices of all the members of our community and nurture the courage and humility that our commitment to unfettered debate demands from all of us.

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Many will agree these students crossed a line and forfeited the right to engage in unfettered debate, at least at Harvard. But whats the next line of unacceptability? What if a private Facebook chat involved a screed against Elizabeth Warren, expressed support for a Muslim travel ban, or labeled as fascist Harvards effort to ban social clubs? Private schools write their own discipline codes. But with this action, Harvard is sending a message with a classic free-speech chill: You can say anything but not here.

The students exchanged explicit images and memes in a private Facebook group chat, according to a report.

The issue of revoking admission has come up before at Harvard, most recently involving the case of Owen Labrie, the St. Pauls graduate who was accused of sexual assault. While never formally confirming that Labrie was barred from attending Harvard, a spokesman at the time told the Crimson, An offer of admission can be rescinded if a student engages in behavior that brings into question his or her honesty, maturity, or moral character.

If youre convicted of a crime, the decision to withdraw an admission offer makes sense. If you post something offensive on a private Facebook page, thats a very different standard of judgment. After this, why would any prospective student take the risk of posting anything remotely edgy? And could enrolled students, not just newly admitted ones, be expelled for posting similar thoughts?

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According to the Crimson, admitted students found and contacted each other using the official Harvard College Class of 2021 Facebook group. The admissions office, which maintains the official page, warns students that it takes no responsibility for unofficial spin-off groups, which is what this group formed. Students are also told their admissions offer can be rescinded under specific conditions behavior that calls into question honesty, maturity, or moral character.

Harvard just drew one line to define what that means. Where will the next one be drawn? That would be a good topic for next years commencement speech.

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Harvard draws the line on free speech - The Boston Globe

In Portland, the haters are entitled to free speech, but not to our silence in the face of their views – Washington Post

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Nazi salutes high in the air, white supremacists rallying on the town green, colorful banners telling homosexuals they are going to hell this is what democracy looks like.

I know, awful.

But the right to say and do those things no matter how offensive many Americans will find them is that First Amendment freedom-of-speech thing that demonstrators in Portland, Ore., rallied for over the weekend.

Which is odd.

Because as far as we know, the folks taking part in the Trump Freedom of Speech rally werent jailed by their government for anything they said.

They may have been ridiculed, harassed, marginalized, ostracized, asked to leave businesses, refused service, lost their jobs or positions of influence because of the things they said.

But they havent been jailed.

And thats the freedom the First Amendment guarantees. The right to speak out without being jailed although not the right to speak out without being criticized.

So its easy to see that we wield the greatest power punishing peer pressure to stop the growing tide of hatred in America. We have to speak out.

[Our ugly racisms newest artifact: The noose left at the African American Museum]

Heres an extreme example the white supremacist in the gym.

Richard Spencer, the Hail Trump alt-right movement leader who champions an American apartheid, complete with a whites-only state, was quietly working out in his Alexandria, Va., gym when he was confronted by another gym member.

I just want to say to you, Im sick of your crap, Georgetown University professor C. Christine Fair said to Spencer, as he was lifting weights.

As a woman, I find your statements to be particularly odious; moreover, I find your presence in this gym to be unacceptable, your presence in this town to be unacceptable, she went on.

Spencer wasnt wearing a swastika shirt or handing out white power fliers at the gym. He was just doing reps. It was the professor who went after him. And she was relentless, calling him a Nazi, then a cowardly Nazi after he refused to identify himself.

It got so uncomfortable, another gym member yelled at the professor for making a scene.

Guess who lost their gym membership?

Spencer did.

And his world howled that this was a violation of his freedom of speech.

No, sorry, folks.

Most states ban most businesses from discriminating against clients based on the clients race, religion, sex or national origin, law professor Eugene Volokh wrote in The Washington Post last fall, right after the election, about a case where a New Mexico company said it would stop doing business with Trump supporters.

The Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from that kind of discrimination, while some states and cities also ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, marital status and other attributes.

But political affiliation is rarely on the list, Volokh wrote. A few cities or counties do ban such discrimination. D.C. bans discrimination based on the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party.

Spencers freedom of speech wasnt violated. He can say whatever he wants without being jailed.

The Constitution doesnt protect his right to belong to a private gym that finds his political and social views dangerous and odious.

But what if a coffee place didnt want to serve a Muslim, a hotel wouldnt rent a room to black family, a baker didnt want to bake a cake for a gay couple or a restaurant didnt want someone with a wheelchair eating in their dining room?

Too bad for the businesses in those cases. State and federal laws prohibit businesses from discriminating against protected classes.

Neo-Nazi is not a protected class at least not yet.

The ACLU is used to these sticky debates, and their attorneys have consistently stood their ground in protecting everyones right to say what they want, no matter how disgusting. It probably wasnt easy to defend the Ku Klux Klans right to march through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, a town filled with survivors of the Holocaust.

Im not defending hate speech, Im defending free speech, said Claire Guthrie Gastaaga, head of the ACLU of Virginia, which has been hearing plenty about Spencer, who lives in Alexandria.

As soon as you accept that its okay to suppress speech, you say its okay to suppress your speech.

But what about the rallies that seem so hateful?

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D) had the wrong idea when he tried to stop that freedom-of-speech rally over the weekend. It was scheduled before two men were killed and another wounded on the light-rail train trying to protect two girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab .

Jeremy Christian, 35, was arrested and charged in connection with the slaying of Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, and the stabbing of another man, Micah Fletcher. When he was brought into a Portland courtroom last week, Christian yelled: Get out if you dont like free speech.

Dude, your free speech was protected at all those rallies where you threw the Heil Hitler salute. Killing two men and stabbing a third, as Christian is alleged to have done, is not speech.

The protesters in Portland had the right to spew all their hateful views. The feds recognized that and rejected the mayors request to shut down the event because it could incite violence.

It was the counterprotesters who behaved violently.

Until they started throwing stuff, damaging property and messing with the police who were there to do their jobs, the counterprotesters had the right idea.

The right response to speech you dont like is more speech, Gastaaga said. The real harm is the nice people who say nothing.

So do it. Speak, yell, shout.

Dont shut the other guys out.

Just be louder than them.

Twitter: @petulad

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In Portland, the haters are entitled to free speech, but not to our silence in the face of their views - Washington Post

Jackal – Summer In Your Arms – EDM Sauce

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Following up on the release of his lead single Feel Itin early April, Jackal returns with a summer smash hit entitled Summer In Your Arms, the second single from his forthcoming Endorphins EP.

Born as Mikey Pennington, is no stranger to the spotlight. From chart-topping releases to touring and performing at numerous nightclubs in the world, there isnt much that he hasnt accomplished already. An artist with roots in hip-hop and trap, Pennington's recent string of releases show a maturation and transformation that is representative of an artist undergoing a conscious evolution in style. Summer In Your Armsis more on the melodic side of the spectrum, focusing more on emotion.

Endorphins isn't just a collection of songs. It's my first-ever real cohesive project, he says in regards to his EP.

He set out with a goal to produce a mini-album that tells a story, and his newest single is the latest step in the tackling yet another landmark in his impressively developing journey as an artist. To celebrate his EP release, Jackal is also announcing a trio of EP release parties in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and last but not least, New York City. For tickets + more info, click HERE.

Stream Summer In Your Arms on Spotify

Follow Jackal: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram|SoundCloud

Meagen Surowiecki, also known as Tookie as my close friends call me. I am 27 years old and a recent graduate from Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL. I have a passion for the music industry, I love EDM, I came to the realization that I have always loved "EDM" it just wasn't called EDM when I was a teenager. My range of EDM artists range from Adam Beyer, Nicole Moudaber, Chris Liebing, Carl Cox, Saeed Younan, Green Velvet, Claude VonStroke, Justin Martin, Pretty Lights, Oliver Heldens, Tommy Trash, Arty, Diplo, Tritonal, Vicetone, Tchami, Danny Howard, Sam Feldt, Kill the Noise, Bassnectar, Fedde Le Grand, Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk, Above and Beyond, Dash Berlin, Sander Van Doorn, Simon Patterson, Bryan Kearney, Deorro, Showtek, Firebeatz, Dada Life, Eric Prydz/ Pryda/ Cirez D, Audien, Markus Schulz, Ferry Corsten, Tiesto, Avicii, and so much more.

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Jackal - Summer In Your Arms - EDM Sauce

Controversial trial to test transhumanist theories – BioEdge

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Killing off death will require research and clinical trials. But these may be difficult to do ethically, as a controversial attempt to reanimate brain-dead patients suggests.

Philadelphia-based biotech firmBioquark told STAT that it plans to begin a trial somewhere in Latin America within months. The idea is to inject the patients own stem cells into the spinal cord to stimulate the growth of neurons. Other therapies could accompany this -- an injected blend of peptides, electrical nerve stimulation, and laser therapy for the brain.

As STAT points out, a description of the trial begs many questions. Who decides whether the patient is actually brain dead? How can a dead person participate in a trial? What happens if they do recover and are significantly impaired? Are the researches toying the hopes of families? Even in Latin America, will they get ethical approval?

Scientists and bioethicists are sceptical. Last year bioethicist Art Caplan and neuroscientist Ariane Lewis wrote a blunt editorial denouncing the Bioquark trial as quackery.

Dead means dead. Proposing that DNC may not be final openly challenges the medical-legal definition of death, creates room for the exploitation of grieving family and friends and falsely suggests science where none exists.

Dr Charles Cox, a pediatric surgeon in Houston who works with stem cells, was even more sceptical. I think [someone reviving] would technically be a miracle, he said. I think the pope would technically call that a miracle.

However, Bioquarks CEO, Ira Pastor, responded that the idea was daring, but possible. He points out that there are dozens of cases of patients, mostly young one, who recovered after being brain-dead. Such cases highlight that things are not always black or white in our understanding of the severe disorders of consciousness.

The experiment is part of Pastors Reanima project, which he describes in transhumanist terms on various websites.

It is now time to take the necessary steps to provide new possibilities of hope, in order to counter the pain, sorrow, and grief that is all too pervasive in the world when we experience a loved ones unexpected or untimely death, due to lesions which might be potentially reversible with the application of promising neuro-regeneration and neuro-reanimation technologies and therapies.

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Controversial trial to test transhumanist theories - BioEdge

Human Genetic Engineering on the Doorstep – hgalert.org

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Human Genetic Engineering on the Doorstep - hgalert.org

Technosplit: The bifurcation of humanity – Salon

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This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

The chasm between rich and poor in the world has become so extreme it is frequently difficult to grasp. The eight richest men in the world now own as much as the entire bottom half of the worlds population. The wealthy OECD countries, representing less than 20% of the global population, consume 86% of the worlds goods and services, while the poorest 20% consume only 1.3%. These numbers translate into the shameful reality that a billion people go hungry every day and another billion remain chronically malnourished.

Nevertheless, you wont hear much talk about these numbers in techno-optimist circles that breathlessly discuss the tantalizing possibilities of human enhancement. When futurists blithely envision the possibilities for human enhancement, they ignore the fact that billions of people are barely surviving. and will have no realistic chance of gaining access to these advances. In fact, spend enough time on these topics and youre liable to forget that the majority of human beings are struggling to make ends meet and barely able to think about the next month, never mind decades ahead.

In certain affluent echelons of the developed world, the technological promise of an enhanced human lifestyle exerts a powerful attraction. Leading Silicon Valley companies are funding startups intent on discovering how to disrupt the aging process and allow people to achieve something close to immortality. Breakthroughs in neural implant technology raise the possibility of people being able to communicate with their computer and each other by thought alone in the near future.

Meanwhile, advances in genetic engineering offer the possibility that, within a few decades, the gulf between rich and poor might extend beyond economics and technology to become part of our biological makeup. Scientists are working on identifying sets of genes that correlate with better intelligence, physical fitness, health, and longevity. Once they do so, affluent parents will not forego the advantages that genetic engineering could offer their offspring. At first, new generations will appear much like the older ones, only somewhat more intelligent, healthier, and longer lived. Before too long, however, we will see a new default perception of what constitutes a human being in the affluent world.

Gregory Stock, an advocate of human genetic engineering, predicts we will soon see humans as divergent as poodles and Great Danes. Hes not alone in this view. Physicist Freeman Dyson has warned that engineering the human germline could cause a splitting of humanity into hereditary castes, while biologist Lee Silver sees what he calls GenRich and naturals ultimately splitting into entirely separate species, with no ability to cross-breed, and with as much romantic interest in each other as a current human would have for a chimpanzee.

Eventually, the affluent and the dispossessed will become effectively, if not literally two separate species. One species, genetically and technologically enhanced, exploring entirely new ways of being human; the other species, genetically akin to us, left behind to struggle in a world reeling from resource exploitation and environmental degradation. Its a future scenario I refer to as Technosplit.

Cameron and Jude, circa 2050

Based on the current rate of converging technical advances, its reasonable to expect, by 2050, a young affluent urban couple lets call them Cameron and Jude to be planning their genetically optimized offspring while communicating their thoughts and feelings to each other in an enhanced form using neural implants.

Cameron and Jude will be increasingly segregated from the fate of billions of others suffering the effects of climate change and resource scarcity. They are fortunate to be living in London, one of the affluent cities that by then, will have spent many billions of dollars to protect itself against the massive tidal surges that will be part of the new normal. As they enjoy their virtual reality tours of the few carefully engineered eco-zones still maintained as wilderness parks, what kind of world will the majority of humanity be experiencing on the other side of the Technosplit divide?

In future decades, as the affluent minority enjoy their neurally interconnected, genetically enhanced lives, cities in much of Africa and Southeast Asia, beleaguered by political instability, massive poverty and inadequate infrastructure, are likely to be reeling from the ravages of climate change. Reduction in river flows and falling groundwater tables will lead to widespread shortages of potable water. Flooding and landslides will disrupt electricity, sanitation and transportation systems, leading to rampant infectious disease.

Meanwhile, even as these cities strain to the breaking point, millions more refugees will be streaming in from the rural hinterland where the effects of climate change will be even more devastating. Wealthier residents will flee these urban disaster zones for safer abodes, either in the developed world or newly planned, segregated cities insulating them from the suffering of their compatriots, leaving the largest urban population centers without the capital reserves to fortify their structures against the threatening onslaught of even more severe climate disruption.

Along with the human catastrophe of failed states and the misery of billions in overwhelmed coastal megacities, the nonhuman world is heading inexorably to its own form of collapse. At current rates of destruction, natural ecosystems are likely to be reduced to islands of conservation habitats surrounded by vast agribusiness plantations and urban sprawl. Tropical rainforests will only survive as degraded, shrinking remnants in national parks.

Cameron and Jude might not, however, consider this situation as gravely as we do, given their reduced expectation of the natural world and their ability to experience vastly enhanced virtual reality immersions in wildlife reservations, enabling them to feel closer to nature in some ways than many of todays urban residents. Meanwhile, the affluent world will be doing its utmost to maintain an iron grip on access to vital global resources through its stranglehold on the worlds economic and military systems.

A betrayal of human values

At the current rate of increase in global economic disparity and technological innovation, this is what we must expect for humanitys future. But is it what people desire, even in the affluent world? Many techno-optimists, who argue that humanitys defining feature is the ability to reach beyond the limitations of our biology, believe so and celebrate the possibility of humanitys ultimate triumph: the unfettered progress of technologys conquest of nature.

But theres another view of humanity that permeates the modern world, one based on the recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family. These words, from the U.N.s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, represent a different kind of historical progressthe progress of humanitys moral scope, which has expanded beyond tribal groupings to encompass the entire human race. In this view, spelled out by the Declaration in 1948, all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. According to this view, everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

From this viewpoint, the Technosplit scenario would be a fundamental betrayal of human values. It would be equivalent to the rich minority building a luxury lifeboat and deserting a rapidly sinking ship thats taking down those who cant afford the entry ticket.

Avoiding Technosplit

On the other hand, might Cameron and Jude be more profoundly disturbed by the convulsions of their world than an equivalent couple in todays society? Could their enhanced connection with whats left of the natural world cause them to treasure it more keenly? Might the impending devastation from climate change drive them and their peers to demand a radical redirection in the worlds trajectory? Could their potentially enhanced neural ability to connect with the suffering of the impoverished billions cause them to press for a different world economic order that honors the intrinsic rights of each human being?

The attitude Cameron and Jude and millions of their peers take to their world will fundamentally affect the future trajectory the human race. And this attitude will depend ultimately on their core values, which will emerge to a large extent from ideas developed by our generation.

A scenario where humanity remains resilient requires something deeper than even the most compelling economic and technological solutions to our current crises, such as a global price on carbon and massive investment in green energy. These are undoubtedly necessary to avert disaster, but even if theyre fully effective, they wouldnt be sufficient to avoid the Technosplit scenario. That would require a more fundamental shift in the underlying values that drive our daily decisions, along with structural changes to the global economic system that is causing the inequalities wrenching humanity apart and leading us step-by-step towards Technosplit.

When a system is stretched to breaking point, something has to give. In the Technosplit scenario, our economic model remains resilient, but our shared humanity is transformed beyond recognition. In a scenario where our shared humanity remains intact, the economic system driving our current trajectory would need to be transformed, along with its underlying values: the pursuit of never-ending material growth and the glorification of humanitys conquest of nature. In its place, we need to nurture a new set of values, ones that emphasize growing the quality of life rather than material possessions, a profound sense of our shared humanity, and a commitment to the flourishing of the natural world.

As we progress further into this century, with its combination of glorious possibilities and existential threats, it is becoming clear that our generation, along with the next, is engaged in nothing less than a struggle over the future of what it means to be human.

This article was adapted from the final chapter of The Patterning Instinct: Trajectories to Our Future.Jeremy Lent is author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanitys Search for Meaning (Prometheus Books) available May 23, 2017.

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Technosplit: The bifurcation of humanity - Salon

Two hot Jupiters around two similar stars orbiting at similar distances look similar, right? WRONG – The Register

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WASP-67 b and HAT-P-38 b are two far-flung exoplanets orbiting near-identical stars at similar distances. Their size and temperatures are also pretty close. So, naturally, astronomers thought that their atmospheres wouldn't be too far apart. They were wrong.

"We don't see what we're expecting," said Giovanni Bruno, a postdoctoral researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, in a statement.

WASP-67 b and HAT-P-38 b are a special breed of exoplanet called "hot Jupiters" because, like their closer-to-home namesake, they were born on the outskirts of their star systems, but decided to pack up and move to warmers climes over 538C (1,000F) right up against their star. Scientists analyse their atmospheres because it might give clues to how they were born and grew up.

Astroboffins used the Hubble Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the planets' chemical compositions. By analysing the signature of water in each, they discovered that even though WASP-67 b is really similar to HAT-P-38 b, it's much cloudier.

HAT-P-38 b and WASP-67 b. One's cloudy, the other... not so much. Illustration: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levy (STScI)

But these clouds are probably quite different to the ones on boring old terra firma, which are full of lightweight water vapour and ice crystals. On these warm exoplanets, they are likely formed of heavy molecules such as sodium sulfide and potassium chloride.

The researchers presented their work at the 230th American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, on 5 June.

However, Nikolay Nikolov, an astronomer at the University of Exeter in the UK who studies the atmospheres of exoplanets but was not involved in the research, was unfazed. "It doesn't seem very surprising to me," he said, adding that it's only confirmation of the huge diversity of all the kinds of exoplanets out there.

Further experiments with Hubble and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope are needed to find out what exactly happened to exoplanets such as WASP-67 b and HAT-P-38. "We need to understand why we find this difference," Bruno said.

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Two hot Jupiters around two similar stars orbiting at similar distances look similar, right? WRONG - The Register

Montenegro Joins NATO, First New Member in a Decade – NBCNews.com

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Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, center, shakes hands with U.S. Under Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, right, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, during an accession ceremony at the State Department in Washington on Monday June 5, 2017. Shawn Thew / EPA

NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged that member nations were not always on the same page.

We are an alliance of democracies and we have at time different political perspectives, but together we rise above those differences and unite around a common purpose, Stoltenberg said. To stand with each other, to protect each other, and if necessary to fight to defend each other.

The mood at the ceremony was celebratory as the small former Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, once considered a Russian stronghold, was formally inducted as the newest member of the security alliance.

"Montenegro should be commended in particular for asserting its sovereign right to choose its alliances even of the face of concerted foreign pressure," said Shannon. "America respects the right of all nations to chart their own path."

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"[This] is a historic event for a country and a nation which endured enormous sacrifices in the 19th and 20th centuries in order to defend their right to a free life, the right to decide on our own future, the right to be recognized by the world under our own name, and with our national symbols," said Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic. "This is also confirmation of something that has never been questioned that Americans remain committed to the stability and security of the Western Balkans and Europe."

Still, it is unclear what the alliance's recent victory will do to sooth the concerns of U.S. European allies after the President's recent performance in Brussels.

President Trump is the only U.S. President since the alliance was formed almost seven decades to not explicitly state the U.S. commitment to "Article five" the core tenet of NATO's charter: "an attack against one ally is considered as an attack against all."

"The times in which we could rely fully on others, they are somewhat over," German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared earlier this month following President Trump's remarks in Brussels. We have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans.

Anxiety over the administration's position on international agreements was only compounded by the recent decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, a landmark global agreement meant to curb emissions that cause climate change.

"I condemn this brutal act against #ParisAccord @realDonaldTrump Leadership means fighting climate change together. Not forsaking commitment," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel tweeted following the announcement.

Secretary of State Tillerson unable to attend today's ceremony in Washington, was asked during a press conference in Sydney with his Australian allies to explain the administration's seeming move towards isolationism.

"I hope the fact that we are here demonstrates that that is certainly not this administrations view or intention to somehow put at arms length those important allies and partners in the world," said the Secretary of State.

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Montenegro Joins NATO, First New Member in a Decade - NBCNews.com

Trump National Security Team Blindsided by NATO Speech …

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When President Donald Trump addressed NATO leaders during his debut overseas trip little more than a week ago, he surprised and disappointed European allies who hopedand expectedhe would use his speech to explicitly reaffirm Americas commitment to mutual defense of the alliances members, a one-for-all, all-for-one provision that looks increasingly urgent as Eastern European members worry about the threat from a resurgent Russia on their borders.

Story Continued Below

That part of the Trump visit is known.

Whats not is that the president also disappointedand surprisedhis own top national security officials by failing to include the language reaffirming the so-called Article 5 provision in his speech. National security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson all supported Trump doing so and had worked in the weeks leading up to the trip to make sure it was included in the speech, according to five sources familiar with the episode. They thought it was, and a White House aide even told The New York Times the day before the line was definitely included.

It was not until the next day, Thursday, May 25, when Trump started talking at an opening ceremony for NATOs new Brussels headquarters, that the presidents national security team realized their boss had made a decision with major consequenceswithout consulting or even informing them in advance of the change.

They had the right speech and it was cleared through McMaster, said a source briefed by National Security Council officials in the immediate aftermath of the NATO meeting. As late as that same morning, it was the right one.

Added a senior White House official, There was a fully coordinated other speech everybody else had worked onand it wasnt the one Trump gave. They didnt know it had been removed, said a third source of the Trump national security officials on hand for the ceremony. It was only upon delivery.

The president appears to have deleted it himself, according to one version making the rounds inside the government, reflecting his personal skepticism about NATO and insistence on lecturing NATO allies about spending more on defense rather than offering reassurances of any sort; another version relayed to others by several White House aides is that Trumps nationalist chief strategist Steve Bannon and policy aide Stephen Miller played a role in the deletion. (According to NSC spokesman Michael Anton, who did not dispute this account, The president attended the summit to show his support for the NATO alliance, including Article 5. His continued effort to secure greater defense commitments from other nations is making our alliance stronger.)

Either way, the episode suggests that what has been portrayedcorrectlyas a major rift within the 70-year-old Atlantic alliance is also a significant moment of rupture inside the Trump administration, with the president withholding crucial information from his top national security officialsand then embarrassing them by forcing them to go out in public with awkward, unconvincing, after-the-fact claims that the speech really did amount to a commitment they knew it did not make.

The frantic, last-minute maneuvering over the speech, Im told, included MM&T, as some now refer to the trio of Mattis, McMaster and Tillerson, lobbying in the days leading up to it to get a copy of the presidents planned remarks and then pushing hard once they obtained the draft to get the Article 5 language in it, only to see it removed again. All of which further confirms a level of White House dysfunction that veterans of both parties Ive talked with in recent months say is beyond anything they can recall.

Susan B. Glassers new weekly podcast takes you backstage in a world disrupted.

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And it suggests Trumps impulsive instincts on foreign policy are not necessarily going to be contained by the team of experienced leaders hes hired for Defense, the NSC and State. Were all seeing the fallout from itand all the fallout was anticipated, the White House official told me.

They may be the adults in the room, as the saying going around Washington these past few months had it. But Trumpand the NATO case shows this all too clearlyisnt in the room with them.

***

No one would find this episode more disturbing than Strobe Talbott, the Washington wise man who as much as anyone could be considered an architect of the modern NATO. As Bill Clintons deputy secretary of state, Talbott oversaw the successful push to redefine the alliance for the post-Cold War, expanding to the same countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltics now so urgently looking for American reaffirmation of the commitment Clinton and Talbott gave them in the 1990s.

I spoke with Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution and a Russia watcher going back to the 1960s when he translated Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchevs memoirs as a Rhodes Scholar classmate of Clintons, for this weeks Global Politico podcast, and he warned at length about the consequences of Trumps seeming disregard for NATO at the same time hes touted his affinity with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Trumps rebuff of Americas European allies on his recent tripcombined with his decision last week to withdraw from the Paris climate-change agreementis not merely some rhetorical lapse, Talbott argued, but one with real consequences.

The failure to say something has had a very dangerous and damaging effect on the most successful military alliance in history, Talbott told me. Given that all of Trumps top officials like McMaster and Mattis had spent months promising that the president didnt really mean it when he called NATO obsolete and insisting the Article 5 commitment from the U.S. was unshakable, Talbott noted, all we needed was for the commander in chief to say it, and he didnt say itan omission that from that day forward [means] the Atlantic community was less safe, and less together.

Compared with his volatile management style and struggles on domestic policy, some have argued in recent months that Trumps foreign policy is a relative outpost of competence, with strong hands like McMaster and Mattis on board to avoid major failures. But Talbott and others with whom Ive spoken since Trumps trip believe the NATO incident really overturns that assumption. Its destroyed the credibility of Trumps advisers when they offer reassurances for allies to discount the presidents inflammatory rhetoricand cast into doubt the kind of certainties necessary for an uncertain world to function.

I had a very high-placed Asian official from a major ally in Asia not long ago, where youre sitting, who shook his head with sorrow, and said, Washington, D.C. is now the epicenter of instability in the world, Talbott recounted. What it means is something that our friends and allies around the world have taken for granted for 70 years is no longer something that they can take for granted.

And in fact, were already seeing the ripple effects from the Trump NATO speech-that-wasntand what several of the sources told me was an even worse rift with the allies during the private dinner that followed. In the days immediately after, European leaders like Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron went public with unusually frank criticisms. Meantime, Trumps rebuffed national security leaders have been left in increasingly awkward positions. Are these people going to steer Trump, one former senior U.S. official asked, or are they simply going to be made enablers?

McMaster, a widely respected three-star general before he took the job, had been presumed by the Trump-wary foreign policy establishment to be a smart pick because of his track record of being unafraid to speak truth to power (and a book on Vietnam in which he specifically argued that LBJs generals had failed by not doing so). But hes now being pilloried by some early supporters for his very public efforts to spin Trumps trip as a successand claim the president supported the Article 5 clause he never explicitly mentioned.

Mattis, meanwhile, has taken a different route.

Not only has the defense secretary, a former top general at NATO, not joined in the administrations spinning, he set Twitter abuzz over the weekend with an appearance at an Asian security forum in Singapore. In his speech, he praised the international institutions and alliances sustained by American leadership, seeking to reassure allies once again that the U.S. was not really pulling back from the world despite Trumps America First rhetoric.

But when asked about Trump moves like withdrawing from the Paris accord and whether they meant America was abandoning the very global order that Mattis was busy touting, the secretary responded with an allusion to Winston Churchills famous quote about the dysfunctions of democracy.

To quote a British observer of us from some years back, bear with us, Mattis told the questioner. Once we have exhausted all possible alternatives, the Americans will do the right thing.

So, he added: we will still be there, and we will be there with you.

The audience chuckled, one attendee told me, because it was an elegant way out of an awkward question.

But the awkward question remains: Should we believe James Mattis, or Donald Trump?

Susan B. Glasser is POLITICOs chief international affairs columnist. Her new podcast, The Global Politico, comes out Mondays. Subscribe here. Follow her on Twitter @sbg1.

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Trump National Security Team Blindsided by NATO Speech ...

Pence: US commitment to NATO "is unwavering" – CBS News

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Vice President Mike Pence expressed U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Monday at an Atlantic Council awards ceremony honoring NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

"Make no mistake, our commitment is unwavering," Pence said. "We will meet our obligations to our people to provide for the collective defense of all of our allies....An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us."

The clause has only been triggered once, following the attacks on 9/11.

"A strong NATO is vitally important, especially in these trying times," Pence said.

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Associated Press reporter Ken Thomas breaks down President Trump's message to world leaders at the NATO summit in Brussels.

Pence's remarks came weeks after President Trump, in his own recent speech before NATO leaders, did not explicitly mention Article 5 and instead called on NATO's European members to spend more on defense.

While he was a presidential candidate, Mr. Trump often talked about reforming NATO.

"NATO was set up at a different time," then-candidate Trump said. "NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We're not a rich country anymore. We're borrowing, we're borrowing all of this money...NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we're protecting Europe with NATO but we're spending a lot of money. Number one, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed. I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved."

However, on Sunday, Stoltenbergappeared on CBS News' "Face the Nation" and suggested Mr. Trump's criticism had been helpful, in sending a "clear message about the need for increased defense spending across Canada and Europe."

"And a good thing is that the European Allies now understand that we have to invest more in defense, not only to please the United States, but because it is in the interest of Europe to invest more in security because we live in a more dangerous world," Stoltenberg said.

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Pence: US commitment to NATO "is unwavering" - CBS News

NATO and the Transatlantic Relationship – The Epoch Times

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When 12 democratic governments seeking to check Soviet expansion formed NATO by treaty in 1949, it seems unlikely that any of their political leaders thought they would today number 28 and become the most successful defensive military alliance in history.

Post-1952 American President Dwight D. Eisenhower noted at the time, We are engaged in a war of great ideologies. This is not just a casual argument between slightly different philosophies. This is light against dark, freedom against slavery.

The initiative represented a major turning point for the United States. Unprecedented in peacetime, Washington was entering a permanent alliance linking it to Western Europe in both a military and political sense. From shaky beginnings, NATO survived and flourished to its current membership with new or restored democracies in central and eastern Europe.

The alliance successfully deterred the Soviet Union from blackmailing West European countries, reconciled the WW2 Allies with Germany, and kept the United States firmly in Europe as a peacekeeper. In the 1990s, it underwent major reorganization and cooperated fully with former Warsaw Pact members.

(L-R) Belgiums King Philip, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg attend the unveiling ceremony of the new NATO headquarters in Brussels, on May 25, 2017. (CHRISTOPHE LICOPPE/AFP/Getty Images)

During the decades after 1949, a billion-people emerged from poverty. The new single market in the EU improved many lives in southern Europe, parts of eastern Europe, and in the UK and Ireland. Democracies in Asia, including Japan, India, South Korea, and Taiwan, also benefitted from rules-based trading supported by their respective national leaders from across political spectrums and presidents from both political parties in Washington.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, NATOs European members understandably thought the Russian threat had disappeared permanently and reduced their defence spending to record lows. With the rise of President Vladimir Putin and his seizure of Crimea, invasion of eastern Ukraine and other aggressions and threats, the challenge returned. American defence spending of US$ 664 billion in 2016 comprised approximately three-quarters of all NATO spending last year.

Britains Prime Minister Theresa May (2-R) and Britains Foreign Minister Boris Johnson (3-R) speak next to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) during a working dinner meeting at the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) headquarters in Brussels on May 25, 2017. (MATT DUNHAM/AFP/Getty Images)

Differing spending levels remain an ongoing source of tensions between Washington and other NATO members. The United States is one of only a few member states today spending more than two per cent of its GDP on defense. Last year, only the U.K., Greece, Estonia, and Poland in Europe spent two per cent on defence, although all European members have pledged to reach this benchmark by 2024. Canada was close to the bottom of the 28 in terms of the two per cent benchmark, mustering only 1.02 percent in 2016.

NATO has since its formation successfully maintained the security and democratic governance of all its member countries in large part because would-be aggressors concluded that Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, rendering an attack on any member aggression on all, would be applied as it was for the first time after the 9/11 attack on New York City.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attends the unveiling ceremony of the new NATO headquarters in Brussels, on May 25, 2017. (CHRISTOPHE LICOPPE/AFP/Getty Images)

At the recent NATO heads of government meeting in Brussels, Article 5 was again a major concern for nations located near Russia. During the American presidential election campaign, Donald Trump had cast doubt on this key principle. He compounded the error by declining to reiterate American support for it in Brussels. There was only one sentence in his speech about the Russian military threat to Europe.

Prime Minister Trudeaus response to Trumps implied criticism of Canada was that hed announce a new defence policy on June 7. He has since admitted that more spending on defence is needed. The prime minister played down his governments decision to withdraw a surveillance aircraft from Iraq, adding that there are 200 special forces in Iraq from Canada. He mentioned Canadas CF-18 fighter jets as part of a NATO reconnaissance force in Ireland and Canadas role in a 1200-member NATO mission in Latvia. The newly elected Official Opposition party leader, Andrew Scheer, said that he would as prime minister re-commit Canadas Air Force to fighting the Islamic State (ISIS).

Following President Trumps comments at the NATO meeting in Brussels and G7 in Sicily, lashing out at NATO allies while earlier praising despotic leaders in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Philippines, Angela Merkel, who is increasingly the new leader of the free world, told party members in Munich, We must know that we alone have to fight for our own future, as Europeans, for our destiny. Like many others in NATO, the E.U. and elsewhere, she clearly foresees a major fracturing in the trans-Atlantic alliance.

David Kilgour, a lawyer by profession, served in Canadas House of Commons for almost 27 years. In Jean Chretiens Cabinet, he was secretary of state (Africa and Latin America) and secretary of state (Asia-Pacific). He is the author of several books and co-author with David Matas of Bloody Harvest: The Killing of Falun Gong for Their Organs.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Epoch Times.

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NATO and the Transatlantic Relationship - The Epoch Times

On NATO, Trump Gets It Right – The Daily Caller

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On May 25th, President Trump, during his visit to the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, Belgium, sharply criticized our European allies for, in effect, freeloading off the military dominance, and the military spending, of the United States. This is an accurate analysis, since only 4 of the 26 European countries in NATO currently spend the minimum level of GDP, 2%, judged by the organization itself to be sufficient to meet their obligations. (The U.S., by contrast, spends 3.5% of GDP on defense, and its defense budget roughly triples the spending of all other NATO countries combined.)

Moreover, the U.S. faces most of its military challenges in the Middle East, and European countries consistently lack either the will or the capability to contribute meaningfully to those missions. Ergo, Europe continues to rely on the United States to provide for its collective defense, but it fails to spend adequately to supplement and support U.S. forces, and it fails also to support U.S. operations elsewhere in the world, even when those missions are clearly relevant to European security (e.g. the struggle against ISIS). In a nutshell, the U.S. pays to defend Europe, and gets little or nothing in return.

Those who favor a continuation of this ruinous policy do so largely because they are stuck in a Cold War mentality, and, indeed, during the Cold War NATO made excellent sense to all of its member states, including the U.S. NATOs core mission was and is collective defense, achieved by Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, penned in 1948-49 at the start of the Cold War. Article 5 states that, if a single NATO country is attacked, all NATO countries will respond as if they were themselves attacked, and consequently rush to the rescue. During the Cold War, this meant that, if the Soviet Union attacked any country in Western Europe, all of Western Europe, plus the United States and Canada, would go to war with the Soviet Union. Whether this pledge was genuine or merely a bluff, it succeeded in preventing Soviet aggression. And, in the tense atmosphere of the Cold War, although the United States bore the primary burden of defending Europe against Soviet assault, most NATO members took their defense obligations seriously and maintained militaries that could credibly have assisted U.S. forces. They also sometimes contributed substantially to anti-communist military operations around the world during the Korean War, for example. In short, during the Cold War, NATO imposed great burdens and risks on its members, but those burdens and risks were shared, and no one disputed the seriousness of the challenge posed by communist aggression.

Today, though, the Soviet Union no longer exists. For those panicked by the latest upsurge of Russophobia (or, for the John McCains of this world, for whom Russophobia has always been a way of life), this may seem like a hollow declaration, since Russia still possesses powerful military forces, and has proved willing to use them against several of its neighbors. The fact, though, is that no country on earth, including Russia, poses a threat to Europe in any way analagous to that of the Soviet Union. European countries have the human, technological, industrial, and economic resources to defend themselves, with ease, from any credible enemy and yet, unsurprisingly, they choose not to do so, because the United States continues to provide Europe with a blank check in the form of a security guarantee.

Europes position is understandable, as is American resentment of European freeloading, but what is different about the Trump administrations position is that, 1) President Trump is pointedly insisting that European countries boost their defense spending, and 2) Trump has not explicitly endorsed Article 5 and the concept of collective defense. In other words, he is being cagey about whether, if a European country was attacked, the U.S. would uphold its treaty obligations and use armed force to assist it. He has not disavowed the North Atlantic Treaty, but he seems to regard its obligations as reciprocal and therefore contingent on European nations paying their fair share. (They seem to be minimally receptive to this demand.) One can naturally criticize the message this policy sends to potential aggressors, since it calls into question NATOs reliability, but the only alternative is for the U.S. to fund Europes defense indefinitely and without conditions. Surely, this is unacceptable. Something has to give.

For diplomatic reasons, President Trump has backed off the claim he made during the campaign that NATO is obsolete, but in many ways he was right. NATO was founded based on two presuppositions: that Europes freedom was in imminent jeopardy, and that Europeans were incapable of defending that freedom by themselves. Neither of these assumptions holds water today. Thus, we should applaud President Trump for pushing NATO members to rethink their roles and obligations. His message may not have been a popular one, but it is ultimately in the best interests of Americans and Europeans to heed it.

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On NATO, Trump Gets It Right - The Daily Caller

Trump goes rogue: NATO speech, London tweets suggest he won’t listen to anyone – Salon

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The last few days have revealed that President Donald Trump has now gone beyond just playing the different factions within his administration off one another. Hehas apparently rejected them all. What happens when the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth refuses to listen to anyone?

Over last weekend Trump took to Twitter and demonstrated that he has no intention of listening to anyone or following even the most basic legal advice.I mentioned on Mondaythat he had rudely insulted the mayor of London in the wake of Saturday nights terrorist attack. He also taunted gun safety advocates and referenced a need to get smart on terrorism, which in the past hehas defined as using torture and killing family members of those associated with terrorist groups. His Twitter tantrum was widely noted in the press but it doesnt seem to have made him think twice. On Monday morning he really woke up on the wrong side of the bed and started angrily tweeting once again. Even his staunchest supporters are becoming alarmed.

The starkest example would be a tweet by George Conway, husband to presidential counselorKellyanne Conway and himself aformer elfwho helped create the Paula Jones scandal back in the day. He wrote this:

One might have thought his wife could bring this up in a meeting, but apparently the Conways felt this was a better way to communicate. One can only speculate, but its reasonable to suspect that this means Trump isnt listening to his senior adviser Kellyanne anymore.

The George Conway tweet,as well as a number of other statements of concern from GOP lawyers, came in response to a startling series of tweets by the president on Monday morning which The New York Times described this way:

Saying he preferred the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version he had issued in March, Mr. Trump attacked both the Justice Department and the federal courts. He also contradicted his own aides, who have suggested he was causing a pause in travel, by calling the order what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN! He said it would be imposed on certain DANGEROUS countries and suggested that anything short of a ban wont help us protect our people!

Then he added,The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down Travel Ban before the Supreme Court & seek much tougher version! In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!

To say that this is not helpful to his cause is an understatement. Neal Katyal, who represented the challengers in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wryly responded:

When Trump wrote, I am calling it what we need and what it is, a TRAVEL BAN! it didnt just help the plaintiffs suing his administration but alsomade liars of his staff,who have sworn, undoubtedly at the instruction of legal counsel, that there was no ban. He admits in his statement that he knows he shouldnt say it and apparently just doesnt give a damn.

It was also bizarre for Trumpto accuse his own Justice Department of being politically correct when it adapted the original order to reflect the findings of the court. Its run by the staunchly loyal Jeff Sessions who doesnt have a politically correct bone in his body. Indeed, hes best known for his obnoxious political incorrectness. Butaccording to The New York Times, the president is unhappy enough with Sessions that he would consider firing him if he hadnt already fired former FBI Director James Comey. The reason? Because he recused himself from the Russia investigation.

The Times reported that Trump felt he wasblindsided by that decision and he hasnt stopped fuming about it since:

In fact, much of the past two months of discomfort and self-inflicted pain for Mr. Trump can be tied in some way back to that recusal. Mr. Trump felt blindsided by Mr. Sessionss decision and unleashed his fury at aides in the Oval Office the next day, according to four people familiar with the event. The next day was his fateful tweet about President Barack Obama conducting a wiretap of Trump Tower during the campaign, an allegation that was widely debunked.

Its hard to understand why he would be so angry about this unless he believed that Sessions was going to somehow cover for him. Whatever the reason for his pique, Trump is clearly no longer taking legal advice from his attorney general or any of his lawyers, who have no doubt begged him to stop making any public statements about pending court cases. This is very reckless.

Its not nearly as reckless as what apparently happened at Trumps notorious NATO speech. Politicos Susan B. Glasser hasreportedthat the omission of an affirmation of Article 5, the all for one and one for all commitment among NATO countries, was the presidents spontaneous decision. The speech he was supposed to give included the standard reference. Indeed, national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were reportedly stunned when he didnt say it.

Once again Trump made his staff and appointees appear like fools by making them go out totry to smooth things over after the fact. As I noted last week, their credibility took a major hit at that summit. This week hes blowing off his lawyers and dissing his most loyal Cabinet member, too.

No one has ever been able to control Donald Trump. But now it appears that hes becoming so angry and frustrated that hes decided to do the opposite of whatever his advisers recommend, which is foolhardy and dangerous for the entire world. The president of the United States has gone rogue. And nobody knows what to do about it.

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Trump goes rogue: NATO speech, London tweets suggest he won't listen to anyone - Salon

Make a move: Key steps to a new NATO air power game plan [Commentary] – DefenseNews.com

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Although barely discussed at the May mini-summit in Brussels, Russia remains a growing threat to NATO. To deal effectively with this threat and others, the alliance is designing a new air power strategy. To take full advantage of NATOs overwhelming potential to deliver precise combat power from the air, this new strategy should focus on three long-term tasks.

For its first task, NATO air forces must improve readiness and sustainability to maximize its deterrent posture.

After the 2016 Warsaw Summit, NATO forward deployed a battle group to each of the Baltic states and Poland to demonstrate the alliances resolve and intent to meet its Article 5 defense obligations. Given the modest size of these NATO forces, they could be overwhelmed by a well-planned, determined short-notice Russian attack.

Some defense analysts fear Russia might be tempted to attack on the bet that the alliance could not achieve a timely consensus on the follow-on course of action.During a pause after the initial attack, Russia might seek to control the situation by threatening nuclear escalation or petitioning for a diplomatic solution, thus creating further political paralysis.

Several steps would go a long way to prevent or negate the dangerous pause that could put NATO and Russia at odds. European fighter aircraft need to be kept at high readiness, ready to fight tonight. Munition stockpiles must be robust and combat operations sustainable with precision-guided munitions. Aircrews and ground crews need to be available, combat ready and well trained. NATO airfields must accommodate high-tempo combat operations that support sortie generation to high levels.

For its second task, NATO air power must assure air superiority in anti-access area-denial (A2/AD) environments created by potential adversaries.Russian A2/AD deploymentsin the Kola Peninsula by the Barents Sea, Kaliningrad by the Baltic Sea, Crimea by the Black Sea and Syria by the Eastern Mediterranean will challenge NATO operations in those areas.The complete air superiority enjoyed by NATO during combat operations against terrorists may not be easily achieved in the future.Air superiority is not optional. If the Russians perceive that they can deny NATO flight operations, deterrence will be severely degraded and could invite conflict.

To signal a strong intent to maintain air superiority in peacetime or in conflict, NATO should transition from air policing to a more robust and enduring air defense posture under the command and control (C2) of a fully manned, fully integrated and validated air operations center (AOC) under the leadership of standing joint force air component (JFAC) commander and staff. To protect its own assets, NATOs Integrated Air and Missile Defense system also needs to be strengthened.

European air forces have very capable fourth generation fighter aircraft, but procuring fifth generation aircraft will provide the independent capabilities necessary to neutralize A2/AD environments. These overall improvements will require Europe to set a long-term goal of a capacity to manage at least one major combat operation on its own.

NATO allies should meet their obligation to the Defense Investment Pledge (2 percent of GDP for defense) and use enough of the increased defense spending to invest strategically in NATO air capabilities. Maximizing NATOs framework nation concept (in which a lead nation is supported by a smaller nation) will reduce duplication, enhance coordination and insure that the increase in defense spending is invested wisely to enhance deterrence and increase collective defense capacity. An air power framework nation consortium should be considered.

The three tasks discussed here plus the means to implement them should be central to NATOs new air power strategy.

Gen. Frank Gorenc served as the commander of NATOs Allied Air Command; commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe; and commander of U.S. Air Forces Africa. Hans Binnendijk served as the U.S. National Security Council senior director for defense policy, as well as the director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies. Both participated in a recent NATO Joint Air Power Competence Centre study on air power strategy.

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Make a move: Key steps to a new NATO air power game plan [Commentary] - DefenseNews.com

‘Time for a face-off’: Russian crews throw down gauntlet to NATO in tank challenge (VIDEO) – RT

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Published time: 6 Jun, 2017 16:09

Russian forces are challenging NATO to take part in their annual tank platoon competition, in the hope that the transatlantic bloc will finally turn up this year and test itself in what could be the closest thing to a Russia-NATO tank battle.

The Tank Biathlon competition is held every August, with Russia welcoming visiting platoons from over a dozen of nations for a friendly demonstration of crew skills and engineering perfection.

NATO nations hold their own tank competition, with the latest one involving six teams.

The victorious Russian team hopes this year the alliance will break its tradition of shunning the Russian games, and will finally come to test its worth against the defending champion.

"It's time for a face-off with you, guys. Instead of pointing guns at each other, let's compete with each other on training grounds," the Russian tank troops said.

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'Time for a face-off': Russian crews throw down gauntlet to NATO in tank challenge (VIDEO) - RT

Article 5 reaffirmation appeared in Trump’s NATO speech before being edited out: report – MarketWatch

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This to me is the most worrisome [signal] that I have seen from this administration. Richard Haass, Council on Foreign Relations

Thats Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, reacting early Monday on MSNBC to a Politico report that a reaffirmation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizations founding document the collective-defense commitment appeared in an earlier draft of the remarks President Trump was to make late last month at the alliances new headquarters in Brussels but then was left out when Trump actually spoke.

See: President Trump doesnt affirm mutual-defense pact in speech to NATO leaders

To Haass, widely believed to have been considered by Trump as a prospective secretary of state before that post went to Rex Tillerson, that suggested a danger that the so-called Steve Bannon wing had drowned out more moderating influences and reawakened a perception that the last adviser in the room with Trump is likely to have outsized influence on an ultimate decision. Haass, on Twitter, called it a recipe for disaster.

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Article 5 reaffirmation appeared in Trump's NATO speech before being edited out: report - MarketWatch