Daily Archives: May 30, 2017

Automation and its impact on American jobs – Yahoo News

Posted: May 30, 2017 at 2:22 pm

By Alexandra Zaslow

Man versus machine: Its a story thats as old as time.

Throughout the past two centuries, automation has made manufacturing cheaper and easier.

The Industrial Revolution ushered in an era of unprecedented progress, but just as factories replaced manual labor, technology is now taking the place of factory workers.

In fact, since 2000, nearly 5 million factory jobs have disappeared. An Oxford University study suggests that 20 years from now, almost half of all U.S. jobs will have been replaced by machines.

But dont panic: Heres what you need to know about automation nation.

First, its nothing new. Even back in 1960, John F. Kennedy wondered what the future would hold.

What happens to man when machines take their place? Kennedy said during a 1960 presidential debate.

Weve seen this movie before: Horse and buggies replaced by cars. Elevator operators replaced by buttons. Many bank tellers replaced by ATMs.

Technology, more specifically the Internet, has displaced everyone from travel agents to retail workers to librarians.

Even President Obama brought it up in his farewell speech, saying, The next wave of economic dislocations wont come from overseas. It will come from the relentless pace of automation that makes a lot of good middle class jobs obsolete.

But the current administration doesnt think the situation is quite as dire.

In terms of artificial intelligence taking over American jobs, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said during an interview. I think we are so far away from that [Its] not even on my radar screen.

Regardless, it is on a lot of peoples radar screens, and the whole country is figuring out what to do about it.

Its not all bad news, though. Forrester Research found that automation will actually create about 15 million U.S. jobs during the next decade. But thats going to require skill sets that fit those new job requirements.

According to a new Pew study, almost 9 in 10 American workers think theyll need training to stay competitive in the 21st century job market and theyre right.

But now, the U.S. government spends less than 1 percent of the GDP on worker training and retraining. Denmark spends 18 times as much, France, 12 times as much; and Germany, seven times.

Meanwhile, former President Obama proposed investing $4 billion in computer science training for grade schools, but congress didnt approve that money.

People are paying attention, though. Degrees in math and science are on the rise. Between 2009 and 2013, they increased by nearly 20 percent double that of other subjects.

But the bottom line is this: If you want to be employable, you need the skills that will equip you for the future.

Lets start working with machines, rather than against them.

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Four men jailed for trafficking Polish workers to Britain – Thomson Reuters Foundation

Posted: at 2:22 pm

In 2015 the UK passed tough anti-slavery legislation introducing life sentences for traffickers

By Lin Taylor

LONDON, May 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A British court jailed four men on Tuesday for their involvement in trafficking Polish workers into the UK, tricking them into low-paid jobs and taking their wages, prosecutors said.

The four men, Sabastian Mandzik, 40, Robert Majewski, 45, Pawel Majewski, 27, and Seweryn Szymt, 20, were convicted at Newcastle Crown Court for transporting people for exploitation, conspiring to force people into labour and conspiring to conceal criminal property.

The sentences ranged from five to 12 years imprisonment.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the men were part of a people trafficking ring that preyed on vulnerable Poles -- often jobless and in need of money -- and falsely promised them well-paid jobs in northeast England.

Victims were kept in cramped conditions, with the salary from their minimum wage jobs paid into bank accounts controlled by the criminal group, CPS said.

"The treatment of the victims in this case and the conditions in which they were made to live were truly appalling," Senior Crown Prosecutor Jim Hope said in a statement.

"The CPS will continue to work alongside our criminal justice partners to robustly tackle all cases of modern slavery and, hopefully, to prevent others from falling into the same trap."

There are an estimated 13,000 victims of forced labour, sexual exploitation and domestic servitude in Britain.

In 2015 the UK passed tough anti-slavery legislation introducing life sentences for traffickers and forcing companies to disclose what they are doing to make sure their supply chains are free from slavery.

Two Polish brothers in January were jailed under Britain's modern slavery laws for stealing wages of around 18 other Poles they tricked with promises of work in the UK.

(Reporting by Lin Taylor @linnytayls, Editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters that covers humanitarian issues, conflicts, global land and property rights, modern slavery and human trafficking, women's rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

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Children at risk: failing our most vulnerable – Irish Times

Posted: at 2:21 pm

The State has a primary duty to provide care for children where their parents are unable to do so. Young people who need to be removed from their families under emergency legislation for their own safety are the most vulnerable of all. Yet, a comprehensive audit into Garda use of these emergency powers exposes a series of serious failings which are placing some of these children at further risk.

An analysis of more than 5,400 cases over eight years on the Gardas computer systems shows a dearth of child-protection training, poor communications with social services and limited co-operation. Out-of-hours social work service is inadequate, with significant gaps and limited availability in some parts of the State, it finds. Most troubling is evidence that vulnerable children are being removed from their family circumstances by garda only to be returned within a short period by social workers without risk assessments being conducted.

These findings point to systemic failings on the front lines of our child-protection services and pose troubling questions over social work practice, the resources available for risk assessment and the slow pace of the authorities in tackling recurring failures.

These are not new problems. The establishment of Tusla as a single agency three years ago with responsibility for child protection was supposed to change this. The promise from government ministers at the time was that it would deliver a seamless integration of policy and service delivery and that it would be a ferocious corporate parent. The reality is that some of our child protection and welfare services are creaking. Many social work teams are consumed with emergency cases and do not have sufficient time for the painstaking and resource-heavy work of determining the level of risk facing individual children.

For all its failures, calls in some quarters for the abolition of the agency are misplaced. Tusla has hastened some welcome reforms. There has been a greater emphasis on standardising responses and it is developing novel ways of working with the wider community. However, it has been starved of resources and political will.

As a result, it has been left to limp along with enough capacity to function but nowhere near what is required to shift the agencys focus from firefighting towards early intervention. The benefits of a single child protection agency remain unfulfilled.

It is time for proper investment in supports and services to deliver the kind of decisive, system-wide changes that are so badly needed. Failure to do so as a State and a society will mean we cannot feign surprise if vulnerable children continue to fall through the cracks of a dysfunctional system. It is a matter of political priorities.

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How to build your own country – CNN

Posted: at 2:21 pm

By 2020, Blue Frontiers, our for-profit spinoff from The Seasteading Institute, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, plans to provide fresh jurisdictions on floating sustainable islands designed to adapt organically to sea level change. These will be privately financed and built by local maritime construction firms employing the latest in sustainable blue tech.

Of course, the need for seasteads could not be greater. Americans are fed up with their government -- in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans reported that they trust neither the Democratic or Republican establishment to represent them.

A modular wavebreaker shelters Artisanopolis, a model seastead, in shallow coastal waters. Greenhouse domes will provide locally grown food. Courtesy of Gabriel Scheare, Chile.

Fast-forward over two hundred years, and most land has been claimed by governments established in previous centuries -- leaving the high seas to serve as the latest frontier for innovation.

That same year, two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman, co-founded The Seasteading Institute to bring a startup sensibility to the problem of government monopolies that are too big to succeed.

The first permanent businesses on the high seas could be sovereign floating hospitals that provide cutting-edge care to patients who choose them. Design concept by Edward McIntosh, 2014, Ecuador.

So where will the Wozniaks of governance go?

Gather your kindred spirits, forge a business plan to sell a unique service to the world and entice people to choose your floating island. If immigrants arrive and create a thriving community, your floating town could expand and grow into a city. If your floating island goes bankrupt, it will be disassembled and sold off to competing seasteads.

Seasteads 3D-printed on the ocean will not resemble skyscrapers rooted in bedrock. The City of Meriens follows the form and function of a manta ray. Jacques Rougerie Architecte, France.

There's no shortage of innovators who believe they can create better societies, and no shortage of funders who want to invest in the New Blue World. Since people will be able to select and reject seasteads voluntarily, an evolutionary market process that will discover better ways of living together will naturally emerge.

Residents will have more direct influence over their floating society of a few hundred than they would have over an old nation of hundreds of millions. Also, unlike present governments, floating islands are no threat to other nations.

Small floating cities already proliferate on our oceans. Oil rig workers typically work two weeks out of every four in floating accommodations that meet hotel standards, where they enjoy saunas, gyms, maid and laundry services and satellite TV. Their platforms, each the size of one or two football fields, are frequently stable enough to play ping pong.

Metropolis 2055: Modular neighborhoods can detach and move to other seasteads or form new seasteads. These are the fluid mechanics of voluntary societies. Courtesy of Tyler Kreshover, USA.

Meanwhile, French Polynesia has offered to host the first pilot seastead. This ancient culture of navigators has been choosing among islands and founding new societies for millennia. Leaders in French Polynesia reached out to The Seasteading Institute to let us know they possess all the features seasteading needs to get started: calm warm waters, natural wave breakers and a youth culture eager to work in incubation hubs for blue tech.

On January 13, 2017, French Polynesia signed a Memorandum of Understanding with The Seasteading Institute, agreeing to work together on legislation for a "special governing framework," so pioneers can offer innovative societies in a protected Tahitian lagoon.

The prototype for their floating islands has already been built in the Netherlands by our Dutch engineers at DeltaSync in partnership with Public Domain Architects. The Floating Pavilion in Rotterdam is sustainable, solar-powered and mobile, a sterling example of what the Dutch call "climate-proof architecture."

So let's let a thousand nations bloom.

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Libertarians Seek a Home on the High Seas – New Republic

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Here on land, the seasteaders propose, ideas about how to govern societies have stagnated. Politics is too entrenched; societal change comes slowly, if at all. Our terrestrially trained minds are blind to the terrifying potential for tyranny in the power to claim landfixed, immobile, where people have no choice but to live, write the authors. Seasteads would upset this dynamic, since each floating city would be small enough and modular enough that individuals could come and go freely, shopping for governments and social structures. If residents didnt like one utopia, they could simply sail off to a new one.

Theres something seductive about this idea. Its the inverse of Francis Fukuyamas proposition, in his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, that global liberal democracy was the end point of politics and the world would seethe no morea notion at once comforting and deflating. The Seasteaders imagine the opposite: an endless flowering of new power structures. At a TEDx talk in 2012, Friedman likened the seasteading movement to the Cambrian Explosiona moment in evolutionary history when the globs and mollusks of the primordial soup gave way to a diverse array of complex organisms. Not only humans, but human societies evolve, Friedman asserted. We need new places to try new rules.

The authors dont say which new rules, exactly, they hope to try, and the Seasteading Institute makes clear that it will not be operating the cities itself. The particulars of each seasteads political system should be determined by its inhabitantsor an oligarch, if thats the way it turns out. Any set of rules is OK, the organizations FAQ page emphasizes, as long as the residents consent to it voluntarily and can leave whenever they choose.

Quirk and Friedman insist that their movement is apolitical: Seasteading is less an ideology than a technology, they claim. But the ability to choose among societies at sea is itself political, the expression of a belief that free markets are the ultimate guarantee of happiness. Whats more, the pitfalls of the free market seem even more dire when the commodity being produced is governance itself: In a world where citizen-consumers can move between societies as they choose, the poorest and most vulnerable could easily be priced out and left adrift. As with so many consumption choices on the free market, the choice is only available to those with means, while those with limited purchasing power are constrained and even coerced.

This might sound silly: Seasteading, of course, would be an option, an add-on to land-based societies, and those who dont want to go could simply stay on the shore. But if seasteading is also a grand thought experiment about decentralizing power and increasing mobility, it has to consider how those dynamics work for everyone. And that, by definition, means the nature of the endeavor is inherently political.

It is not hard to see why this free-market vision appealed to libertarian backers like Thiel. Libertarianism prizes freedom and autonomy, expressing skepticism of taxes, regulations, and any other version of state power that impinges on individual sovereignty. In 2009, with the world reeling from the subprime mortgage crisis that ballooned into a global banking meltdown, Thiel wrote that the crisis had been caused by too much debt and leverage, facilitated by a government that insured against all sorts of moral hazards. The response, he warned, would be even more government intervention; believers in the free market were screaming into a hurricane. The essay, The Education of a Libertarian, is also an elegy, lamenting the lack of truly free places left in our world.

Democracy did not strike Thiel as a path to the freedom he seeks. At the Seasteading Institutes conference in 2009, he spoke about his own intellectual development. Where he once saw political argument as a way to solve problems, he now viewed it as a problem in itself. It is not only ineffective at making the world freer, its also unpleasant: All the fighting over political ideals reminded him of trench warfare. As he had put it in his essay, he wished to escape, not via politics, but beyond it.

For Thiel, seasteading represented one of the few arenas in which individuals might still act free from any government restriction or regulation. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount, he opined in his essay. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism. This is more or less what Quirk and Friedman have in mind with their vision of life at sea. We dont trust people with power, they write. We trust them with freedom.

In 2011, Thiel funded Blueseed, which was to be a floating tech incubator based in international waters off the coast of Northern California, a short ferry ride from Silicon Valley. The idea was to provide a base of operations for entrepreneurs who wanted to bypass the hassle of U.S. immigration lawsan immigration hack, as Atossa Abrahamian put it in a Quartz op-ed. The idea eventually fizzled out when Blueseed was unable to raise enough money to get its business hub for cruise ships off the ground. The companys final missive, in January 2015, was a retweet: When 99% of people doubt your idea, youre either gravely wrong or about to make history. It closed, touchingly, with #inspiration and #start-up.

For all its failures, Blueseed did achieve one thing: It exemplified the impracticalities and contradictions of the seasteading movements anti-political vision. To dream up a cruise ship business hub that parks just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and sails under a Bahamanian flag, allowing for easy international movement free of immigration laws, is both truly innovative and deeply political. Its political to value open borders and internationalism, and to strive to create a center for innovation that would benefit from a particular system of governance.

The same can be said of the whole seasteading project. A nation where citizens can come and go freely, detaching their modular floating living quarters and sailing off to a better floating town, untethered by anything but their means and their free will, is not an island without politicsits an island with a very particular set of politics. I am, for instance, all for a carbon-negative island that floats over the ocean, clearing marine dead zones with its vibrant, submerged kelp forests and aquaculture structures, producing its own food in towering hydroponic gardens and recycling its desalinated seawaterall ideas put forward by Quirk and Friedman. But thats because of my politics.

Technology can do many things, many of them verging on the miraculousbut it cannot bypass values, commitments, interests, and beliefs. Hearing the language and philosophy of tech disruption applied to governmentwhen so many of the amazing technological advances that have fueled recent disruptions have done so at the expense of labor rights and individual privacywe landlubbers are right to be wary. Government is not simply an albatross around the neck of otherwise free individuals. When it works, it protects the vulnerable and guards the commonsessential tasks at which the free market so often fails. Ocean dwellers will also need those protections. Much as we might like to, we cant escape the political, even by walking into the sea.

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U.N. rights expert airs concern about Japan’s freedom of expression – The Japan Times

Posted: at 2:20 pm

GENEVA A U.N. rights expert who visited Japan last year noted significant worrying signals for the countrys freedom of expression and opinion in a report released on Tuesday in Geneva.

The lack of debate over historical events, restrictions on access to information justified on national security grounds and government pressure on media require attention lest they undermine Japans democratic foundations, said David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression.

The report, to be presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council in June, is the result of the first research ever on freedom of expression in Japan conducted by a U.N. special rapporteur.

Kaye criticized the governments influence over school textbooks, saying members of the Textbook Authorization Research Council are ultimately appointed by the education ministry.

Government influence over how textbooks treat the reality of the crimes committed during the Second World War undermines the publics right to know and its ability to grapple with and understand its past, Kaye said.

He noted in particular the gradual disappearance from textbooks of the issue of comfort women, who were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II. The issue was first introduced in textbooks in 1997.

While all seven 1997 junior high school history textbooks took up the issue, no description was included in textbooks from 2012 to 2015 and only one mentioned it in 2016.

Kaye also aired concerns about the contentious secrecy law for the prevention of leaks of state secrets that took effect in 2014.

Under the law, civil servants or others who leak designated secrets could face up to 10 years in prison, and those who instigate leaks, including journalists, could be subject to prison terms of up to five years.

While welcoming government efforts to clarify the four specific categories under which information may be designated as secret defense, diplomacy, prevention of specified harmful activities and prevention of terrorist activities Kaye warned that specific subcategories remain overly broad and thus involve the risk of being arbitrarily applied.

Regarding government pressure on media, Kaye raised concerns over the broadcasting law and particularly its Article 4, which provides the basis for the government to suspend broadcasting licenses if TV stations are not politically fair.

Kaye said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications should not be in the position of determining what is fair.

Government evaluation of such broadly stated norms would lead to deterrence of the medias freedom to serve as a watchdog, if it is not already creating such disincentives to reporting, he added.

Kaye, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, specializes in international human rights law and international humanitarian law. He was appointed as rapporteur by the Human Rights Council in August 2014.

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Give the Portland Heroes the Presidential Medal of Freedom – Common Dreams

Posted: at 2:20 pm


Common Dreams
Give the Portland Heroes the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Common Dreams
As we honored and remembered over the Memorial Day weekend so many who have died for justice and freedom, I found myself inordinately haunted by the Portland, Ore., stabbing of three men who came to the defense of two young women being bullied ...

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Ronald Reagan: ‘Freedom Is Not Bought Cheaply’ – CNS News – CNSNews.com

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Ronald Reagan: 'Freedom Is Not Bought Cheaply' - CNS News
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(CNSNews.com) - On Memorial Day in 1982, President Ronald Reagan spoke at Arlington Cemetery and observed that freedom is not bought cheaply, and ...

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Oslo Journal, Part II: A freedom festival and its astonishing … – National Review

Posted: at 2:20 pm

Editors Note: The Oslo Freedom Forum took place last week. This is the annual human-rights gathering in the Norwegian capital. Jay Nordlingers journal on the gathering, and related matters, began yesterday, here.

I see a man in the elevator whom I recognize. But I cant place him. Have we met? In a few seconds, I realize who he is: Guillermo Farias, the great Cuban dissident. I have read about him and written about him for years.

And here he is, in the flesh. Which to me is somehow astonishing. (Later, I will interview him at length.)

There is a reception in City Hall, site of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Among the many at the reception is a human-rights advocate I know, who is currently working on resettling endangered Turkish journalists in democratic countries.

I mention a recent episode in Washington, D.C.: where Erdogans goons set upon a group of peaceful protesters. Right on American soil. They beat the hell out of those protesters, including the women.

My friend says, Oh, thats just the tip of the iceberg. What they do at home is unspeakable.

She makes a further point, my friend does: For a very long time, democracies tolerated Erdogan in part because his Turkey was a buffer between Europe and floods of refugees and migrants even more than arrived in Europe regardless.

A big topic

The mayor of Oslo, Marianne Borgen, makes remarks. She is followed by Manal al-Sharif, whom I mentioned in Part I of this journal: She is the Saudi human-rights activist. (She has dared to drive a car, for example.)

She mentions similarities between her country and Norway: two oil kingdoms; beautiful landscapes (though very different); wonderful people. Yet the mayor of Norways capital city is a woman, and so, for that matter, is the prime minister.

Not very Saudi

The Oslo Freedom Forum gives a Vclav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent. Winners receive a statuette, in the form of the goddess of democracy, carried by students in Tiananmen Square. Manal al-Sharif is a past winner of this prize.

Here in City Hall, she tells us that she had never heard of Havel. Or Tiananmen Square. Or the goddess of democracy. In Saudi Arabia, you can be kept in the dark about many things, and that goes double if youre a woman.

Among the attendees is Rosa Mara Pay, a marvelous young woman. She is the daughter of Oswaldo Pay, the Cuban democracy leader, murdered by the regime in 2012. His daughter is carrying on his work.

I did a podcast with her last year. To hear it, go here.

This year, she tells me that Cuban democrats put up a plaque in honor of her father. Within a few hours, the government had taken it down.

Well, one day, I hope, there will be a big statue of Oswaldo Pay in Havana. Maybe one of Rosa Mara too.

I meet a friend of mine whos an expert in free speech. We discuss the situation on U.S. campuses. I say, I never thought Id live to see the day when free speech is treated as some kind of right-wing plot. We both shake our heads, virtually speechless.

In America, I dont see 7-Elevens much anymore. The most I have ever seen anywhere was Taipei. Oslo has its share, too. They often smell of those wieners, dont they?

At an intersection, the light tells us that there are 58 seconds left until we can walk. Everyone is waiting obediently. There are no cars coming. I cant stand it. Im a scofflaw. My American feet just want to move.

Come and get me, copper! (They dont, thankfully.)

At the opera house, there is a long, long slope concrete (or something). Its like a small mountain. Not a bunny hill. And little, little kids are riding their scootery things down it, going very, very fast.

I can barely look

At the Nye Theater, the Freedom Forum is taking place. First at the podium is Erna Solberg, the prime minister of Norway. She is a jolly-looking woman. (Is that hate speech?)

She begins, Ladies and gentlemen, friends of democracy, defenders of human rights. I like that.

I also like her occasionally creative English as in, The lackage of human rights fuels extremism. Why not? (And the statement is of course perfectly true.)

She mentions that May is the month of democracy and freedom in Norway. On the 8th, they celebrate their liberation after World War II. And the 17th is their Constitution Day.

In my experience, politicians rarely refer to themselves as politicians. Other people are politicians. I like that Solberg refers to herself as a politician as in not least for us politicians.

Later, she says something like the following I am paraphrasing, but closely: We should all be troubled when politicians invoke the will of the people to put themselves above the rule of law. This is a dangerous form of populism, which undermines democratic checks and balances and weakens democratic society.

Hear, hear.

After her formal remarks, she does a brief Q&A with Thor Halvorssen. Thor brings up the resource curse. He says that, of the top ten energy producers in the world, only two are democracies: Canada and Norway. Why is oil a blessing for Norway rather than a curse?

Solberg says, simply and rightly, that you have to have democratic institutions in place. Transparency and all the rest of it. Then oil is a blessing. But if you have a tyranny or autocracy, with a culture of corruption floods of wealth make it all the worse.

Thor also asks her about women in politics. As you know, Norway has plenty of women in high places. I love how Prime Minister Solberg begins her answer: I dont believe that everything good in Norway is due to the fact that we have women in politics, but

In Part I, I mentioned Wai Wai Nu, the young woman who represents the Rohingya minority in Burma. A brave person, who has already been through a lot too much in her life. Here in the theater, she is giving a formal talk.

Ill tell you something sad: Apparently, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese heroine, and Nobel peace laureate, is indifferent to the sufferings and persecution of the Rohingyas. I would like to know what she has to say for herself on this score.

Wai Wai Nu says that Buddhist nationalists target not only Rohingyas but Hindus, Christians, and other minorities too. (Typical, the majority lording it over other people.)

By the way, Wai Wai Nu has taken part in the Liberty and Leadership Forum at the George W. Bush Presidential Center. (Her bio from this program is here.)

Im not surprised. GWB, what a man. A great man. And doing a great deal of good.

Now on the stage is Grace Jo, a North Korean escapee. I wont give you too many details. They are very grim, as usual.

As a child, she was starving. For ten days, she went without food. Her body got very hot. Her black hair turned yellow.

Two of her brothers starved to death.

One day, her grandmother found six newborn mice under a rock. She boiled them and gave them to her granddaughter to eat. The little girl was five years old.

State agents beat her father to death. They beat her mother, too, though not to death, apparently.

I could go on. Anyway, Grace Jo is now in the United States, and takes part in a group called NKinUSA. She tells us that, in 2013, she gained American citizenship, and I am now considered Korean American. She then breaks into a wonderful smile a wonderful smile after all that grimness. Behind her is a picture of herself at what is apparently her citizenship ceremony. She is waving a little American flag.

Not a bad country, for all thats said about it

By the way, Grace too has an association with the GWB Center (go here). Not surprised.

Over the years, I have heard a great many speakers at the Oslo Freedom Forum, and interviewed a fair number: dissidents, expolitical prisoners, escapees. Its amazing how many of them mention Animal Farm, George Orwells parable. They mention it to say, This describes our situation.

How did Orwell know? He knew. And he expressed it brilliantly in Animal Farm and 1984.

Raed Fares mentions Animal Farm. He is a Syrian democracy activist and journalist. He tells us about the brutality in his country. He also shows us video, documenting the same. It all beggars belief.

The Syrian uprising began in 2011 in the midst of the broader Arab Spring. Despots throughout the region were under pressure. Two schoolboys in the city of Daraa daubed a graffito: Your turn, doctor. In other words, Youre next, Bashar Assad (the ophthalmologist-turned-dictator).

This triggered a hell that has not let up.

In the Nye Theater, Raed Fares says, Assad will continue to murder, but well keep going until our dream comes true: a free and democratic Syria for all.

At this point, Fares takes a guitar-like instrument I dont know what to call it and strums a patriotic song.

We have a coffee break. A young German entrepreneur says to me, How can we do normal things how can we have a coffee break and chat after hearing what weve heard? After seeing evidence of these horrors? Well, thats what you do. You keep on with life.

It can be jarring, however.

This young mans grandfather was in the war World War II. So were his six brothers. They all died. He survived. He had a body full of bullets, however, courtesy our boys in Normandy.

The things people go through

The term Arab Spring follows on from Prague Spring, of course. Garry Kasparov will make an important point. Hes the chess champion, as you know, and a democracy champion. Hes the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, the companion organization of the Oslo Freedom Forum.

He points out that the Prague Spring failed, miserably. It was crushed by Soviet tanks. Snuffed out by dictatorship. Just like the Arab Spring, most of it.

And yet it lit a spark, and 20 years later that country (Czechoslovakia) had its Velvet Revolution.

You never know. Ill see you for Part III. Thanks, dear readers.

A word from the National Review Store: To get Digging In: Further Collected Writings of Jay Nordlinger, go here.

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Oslo Journal, Part II: A freedom festival and its astonishing ... - National Review

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Memorial Day in York: ‘Freedom is not free’ – York Dispatch

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Robert Bush, 99 of West Manchester Township, is recognized during the the annual York County Memorial Day service at Veterans Memorial Park, Sunday, May 29, 2017. Bush, who served in the Army under General Patton from 1942-1946, will turn 100 in September. John A. Pavoncello photo(Photo: The York Dispatch)Buy Photo

Locals gathered at memorial sites and parade routes across York County on Monday to honor fallen soldiers as part of Memorial Day, which one local politician called a day to be meaningful, thoughtful and thankful.

In York City, local veterans, politicians and community residents gathered at Veterans Memorial Park, where York County Veterans Affairs Director Terry Gendron spoke about the memorial's founding nearly 55 years ago.

This monument tenders honor to each dedicated, unique, irreplaceable personality who went out from this community to serve to spare those of us who are the great beneficiaries of their sacrifice to live ever more fruitful lives,Gendron said.

Attendants of the event included Gendron, York City Mayor Kim Bracey, York City Council President Michael Helfrich, York County President Commissioner Susan Byrnes, U.S. Rep. Scott Perry R-Dillsburg, and state Rep. Carol Hill-Evans D-York City.

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At the ceremony, Byrnes announced a proclamation on behalf of the York County Board of Commissioners to mark Memorial Day in York County. She said the care and support for veterans is a No. 1 priority for all York countians and called on locals to be ever mindful of the total sacrifice that was given freely by our nations military men and women.

Perry delivered the main address at the event, telling onlookers that he wanted to tell them something that he recently experienced.

I said, Have a happy Memorial Day, and as I said it, I knew thats not something you say, he said. Thats something you should never say. The audience of about 100 applauded.

Its easy to get caught up into all the holidays, but its not just another holiday, Perry said.Weve got to think about that.

Before he was married and had children, the Iraq War veteran and brigadier general in the Pennsylvania National guard said he spent his Memorial Days by himself, just mowing the lawn and thinking about what Memorial Day was about, and he revealed his conclusions to those in attendance.

Its about the choices that we have, he said. Freedom is not free.

Perry concluded his remarks by thankingattendants and wishing them a "meaningful, thoughtful (and) thankful" Memorial Day.

Local vets: Many of those in attendance were veterans from wars past and present, and among them was a veteran who served under Gen. George Patton in World War II.

Robert Bush, 99, kept repeating Im glad I came to the many veterans who approached him to thank him and get photos with him. He enlisted in 1942 at age 24, and 75 years after his enlistment, he still urges men to enlist into the army.

We all had a number then, Bush said of the draft, but he enlisted before he formally received a letter about conscription.

I beat the draft by 12 hours, he said.

Bush said Memorial Day was a day of rest for those lost, and he appeared to echo some of Perrys remarks.

I never celebrated anything, he said.My wife and I, we never went out to have fun on Memorial Day.

"I know several men that didn't make it back," said Vietnam veteran Otto Sexton. He said he has attended the Memorial Park ceremony for the past 15 years and believes the ceremony reinforces the freedoms we have that many around the world do not have.

"Freedom, freedom of speech, just freedom in general," Sexton said."We just don't know how important that is."

Richard Leonard, left of York, and Ron Etheridge, or Dover Township, from VFW Post #556 talk with fellow veterans John Stambaugh, 96 of West Manchester Township who served in WWII and Korea, and Robert Bush, 99, who served under General Patton during WWII before the annual York County Memorial Day service at Veterans Memorial Park, Sunday, May 29, 2017. John A. Pavoncello photo(Photo: The York Dispatch)

Wrightsville parade: In Wrightsville, a parade brought out locals to cheer on the marching bands, police and pipers that marked the 15-minute parade.

Wrightsville native Gina Frey said she was glad that the ceremony took place after last years parade unexpectedly didnt occur.

Joe Taney, second vice commander of the American Legion Post 469, which handles the orchestration of the parade, said the event was scrapped last year due to confusion by newly elected officers over the jurisdiction of the parade.

They assumed the borough assembled the parade, he said, and since the officers were elected two months before the parade, they decided to postpone it until this year.

After the mix-up last year, Taney said he is glad the ceremony came back strong this year.

Based on feedback we got, it looks like everything went well, he said.

Taney said he looks forward to creating abigger and better Memorial Day parade next year.

Its great to recognize fallen soldiers, Frey said. She said she was told war stories from her uncle who served in World War II and grew to value the sacrificethat wasmade.

She said she also remembers the difficult reception many veterans received during the Vietnam War when she was youngerand said that alone should keep the parade going on in Wrightsville.

Even if it was just one little band (marching), wed hold the parade, Frey said. Thats the kind of town we are.

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Memorial Day in York: 'Freedom is not free' - York Dispatch

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