Monthly Archives: March 2020

Alternatives to originalism have always existed on the right, loosely defined. One is libertarian (or classical liberal) constitutionalism, which emphasizes principles of individual freedom that are often in uneasy tension with the Constitutions original meaning and the founding generations norms. The founding era was hardly libertarian on a number of fronts that loom large today, such as the freedom of speech and freedom of religion; consider that in 1811, the New York courts, in an opinion written by the influential early jurist Chancellor James Kent, upheld a conviction for blasphemy against Jesus Christ as an offense against the public peace and morals. Another alternative is Burkean traditionalism, which tries to slow the pace of legal innovation. Here, too, the difference with originalism is clear, because originalism is sometimes revolutionary; consider the Courts originalist opinion declaring a constitutional right to own guns, a startling break with the Courts long-standing precedents.

These alternatives still have scattered adherents, but originalism has prevailed, mainly because it has met the political and rhetorical needs of legal conservatives struggling against an overwhelmingly left-liberal legal culture. The theory of originalism, initially developed in the 1970s and 80s, enjoyed its initial growth because it helped legal conservatives survive and even flourish in a hostile environment, all without fundamentally challenging the premises of the legal liberalism that dominated both the courts and the academy. It enabled conservatives to oppose constitutional innovations by the Warren and Burger Courts, appealing over the heads of the justices to the putative true meaning of the Constitution itself. When, in recent years, legal conservatism has won the upper hand in the Court and then in the judiciary generally, originalism was the natural coordinating point for a creed, something to which potential nominees could pledge fidelity.

But circumstances have now changed. The hostile environment that made originalism a useful rhetorical and political expedient is now gone. Outside the legal academy, at least, legal conservatism is no longer besieged. If President Donald Trump is reelected, some version of legal conservatism will become the laws animating spirit for a generation or more; and even if he is not, the reconstruction of the judiciary has proceeded far enough that legal conservatism will remain a potent force, not a beleaguered and eccentric view.

Assured of this, conservatives ought to turn their attention to developing new and more robust alternatives to both originalism and left-liberal constitutionalism. It is now possible to imagine a substantive moral constitutionalism that, although not enslaved to the original meaning of the Constitution, is also liberated from the left-liberals overarching sacramental narrative, the relentless expansion of individualistic autonomy. Alternatively, in a formulation I prefer, one can imagine an illiberal legalism that is not conservative at all, insofar as standard conservatism is content to play defensively within the procedural rules of the liberal order.

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The Right Constitutional Philosophy for This Moment - The Atlantic

Lebanese activists and journalists say they fear the Hezbollah-led Cabinet could be using the COVID-19 pandemic as justification to further consolidate its power through targeting dissent.

A state of emergency announced March 15 introduced strict restrictions on citizens. Activists deemed the step a "security plan that lacks regard for public health. They say the government could use its expanded powers to imprison activists who were involved in organizing protests last October.

The government activated criminal laws to arrest and charge people at a time that it did not stop flights from [coronavirus] epicenters like Iran and ignored taking necessary measures to protect the people, Jad Yateem, an activist and founding member of LiquaaTeshrin, told VOA.

LiquaaTeshrin is a group formed by Lebanese activists who demand government reform. The group last week called on the Lebanese government to change its state of emergency in the face the spread of the virus in the country. It said the government needed more effective measures to safeguard societys health and livelihood.

Lebanon has registered at least 333 coronavirus cases, and the number is growing, particularly in Beirut.

Since the announcement of the state of emergency, the government has shut public institutions and private businesses, closed ports and borders, and ordered its citizens to stay home unless they had an extreme need to get out. Activists see all of this as an unprecedented effort to increase the powers of the army and police without providing people with alternatives to secure their daily needs.

There is no transparency in revealing the readiness of the health sectors ability in Lebanon to deal with this issue, because this might uncover the amount of corruption, Yateem said, adding that many Lebanese families are unable to obtain essential needs during the lockdown.

Now this crisis is being used as a cover-up for former mistakes and to pass more political and economic gains by the ruling elite, he said.

Financial crisis

The epidemic comes as the country is facing its worst financial crisis in decades. Human Rights Watch said in a report last Tuesday that the virus spread had placed an additional strain on the deteriorating health sector marked by a scarcity of medical supplies.

The watchdog group in a separate report this month accused the government of pursuing a spate of prosecutions against journalists and activists critical of alleged government. The campaign was threatening free speech in the country, whose constitution says everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression, it said.

Lebanons criminal defamation laws are being instrumentalized by the powerful to silence many of the activists involved in the nationwide protest movement, the HRW report said.

Protests in Lebanon erupted in October after the government decided to increase taxes and gasoline prices. The demands of the protesters evolved to include combating alleged corruption and mismanagement by the ruling class. The widening protests later that month forced Saad Hariri to resign as prime minister.

Hezbollah influence

Many Lebanese politicians opposing the new Cabinet, led by Prime Minister Hassan Diab, say it is made up of Hezbollah and its allies. The new government, they argue, is excluding the mainstream Sunni bloc led by Hariris Future Party.

Some Lebanese experts say the economic and health crises, along with a growing discontent among the population, could take the country to the brink of collapse. The countrys officials say they are doing their best to salvage the economy, but the government's US $80 billion debt and increased instability are slowing their progress.

People dont trust in this government and they dont really know if they stopped the flights from Iran despite the governments announcement that they did close the airport, Hanin Ghaddar, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute, told VOA.

Hezbollah is a Shiite radical group founded in 1982 and supported by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The United States considers the group a terrorist organization that aims to advance Irans agenda in the Middle East.

When Iran became the first country in the region to record cases of coronavirus, the Lebanese government came under intense criticism from the opposition groups who said the government was unwilling to suspend flights with Iran because of Tehrans influence. To add to their frustrations, Lebanons first confirmed case of the virus was a woman who had returned from Iran.

The Hezbollah-led government initially rejected any reports about the outbreak, threatening to arrest journalists who reported on the case. Ghaddar of the Washington Institute said the governments initial denial and attacks on freedom of speech have only deepened the mistrust of the people.

With Hezbollah being in power today, if everything goes bad it will backlash against its government, because by the end of the day, they will be held accountable as the authority before the Lebanese people, she added.

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Lebanese Activists Fear Hezbollah-led Government Is Using Coronavirus to Solidify Power - VOA News

(GVG) - In times of uncertainty, data is certainly one of the levers to press. Over the past weeks, as a result of this unprecedented global pandemic, nations are making strategic decisions to protect their citizens, strengthen their health systems resource allocation and ensure security, in the face of this severe menace.

As a result, real-time, accurate data plays a key role to make urgent and necessary decisions backed by true numbers. In the developed world, the access to digital measurement platforms to track resources and movements is widespreading. In spite of the fact that leaders, in these technologically evolved nations, do count on trustworthy data sources, they are still struggling in this race against time to make the best and most appropriate decisions every day.

We can all imagine the huge pressure faced by developing nations, when in parallel to the challenges purely posed by this unheard of global situation, they lack the right tools to accurately track crucial data in which to back their decisions. At Global Voice Group, we are certain that access to real information is more than ever decisive for leaders and decision-makers to make the right choices, or at least the most reasoned ones. Especially when the spread of fake news is reaching new peaks.

Misinformation can surely have devastating effects. Not only can it generate unrest among the citizens, specially at a time when quarantines are spreading across the nations at the same pace as the virus, but it also misleads crucial decision-making processes which can have even more dramatic effects. Fighting misinformation is a task that should be carried out with the utmost rigour: tracking and erasing misleading contents should by all means be done without any interference over freedom of expression.

The spread of misinformation has actually been going on long before the existing sanitary crisis. The efforts to erase these detrimental contents are requiring social media platforms to strengthen their resources in order to remove these contents. What is crucial is for States and communications companies to only perform this exercise under the umbrella of transparency and norms. These shall be drafted, as a first step, in order to create a sustainable framework in which to secure freedom of speech and leave not a single space for censorship practices, of any sort.

Over the past weeks, the definition of this harmful content has broadened its scope for leading social media channels like Twitter and it now explains fake content in the following terms, the one which goes directly against guidance from authoritative sources of global and local public health information. This is an essential step towards ensuring a healthy digital news ecosystem, even for a self-designated free speech wing of the free speech party platform.

Countering misinformation through real-time, accurate data proves to be the most effective means to fight against the devastating impact of fake news that sometimes reach the highest decision-making levels. For instance, in the UK, the government had already put together a new counter disinformation unit, even before the virus outbreak, to jointly work with social media companies in the context of fighting against fake contents.

A same wave of regulatory efforts against disinformation has also hit South Africa, through its criminalization. The regulations were published in the Government Gazette under the 2002 Disaster Management Act and carry penalties including fines, imprisonment, or both. The key is for these procedures to be transparent and aligned with all other specific norms to fight against this growing phenomenon, but always preserving individual rights.

Different States are putting in place similar strategies to properly monitor and identify fake contents, struggling to keep only officially reliable sources of medical information on air and erase all other none cross-checked, fake information. While the risks of this threat, as well as the virus itself, affect all States, measures towards firm regulation to fight against misinformation are just beginning to be put in place.

This battle eventually goes way beyond the existing context and should be understood as a long-term problem which poses a threat towards decision-making and therefore good governance worldwide. In addition, it places the focus on the need for data centralization and cooperation at State level to promote sustainable decision-making and policy drafting, exclusively driven by data and avoiding all misinformation for the sake of societies well-being.

James Claude, CEO of Global Voice Group

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Improving decision-making in the face of growing misinformation - Ecofin Agency: Economic information from Africa

If we learn anything from the spread of COVID-19 around the world, it should be the importance of freedom of speech.

The Chinese Communist Partys decision to silence discussion of the emerging disease and punish doctors who raised the alarm created an ideal environment for this virus to spread throughout Wuhan, then across China, and eventually around the world.

File photo: GovHK.

As this virus continues to spread, infecting hundreds of thousands and killing tens of thousands, why would there be pressure in Hong Kong and beyond to silence discussion of this disease and punish doctors who are raising the alarm about its origins?

we will inevitably face SARS 3.0

On March 18,Mingpaopublished an opinion piece entitled This pandemic originated in Wuhan, the lessons of seventeen years ago have been completely forgotten. The authors Dr. Kwok-Yung Yuen and Dr. David Lung are unrivalled experts in their field. Dr. Yuen is a microbiologist whose SARS study group discovered the role of the coronavirus in the SARS epidemic in early 2003. Dr. Lung is also a microbiologist who has recently published on the detection of COVID-19 via saliva samples.

In their article, the authors offer practical advice on understanding the virus for the general reader. First, they explain how the World Health Organization and the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses name viruses, while also acknowledging that the colloquial use of Wuhan pneumonia is understandably more straightforward than COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 and thus does not need to be condemned.

Second, Yuen and Lung explain that genetic sequencing has shown the virus likely originated in horseshoe bats before spreading to an intermediate host in the Wuhan Seafood Market (most likely endangered pangolin), which then served as an amplification epicentre spreading from animals to humans, before mutating to enable human-to-human transmission.

Yuen Kwok-yung. File Photo: TVB screenshot.

Third, the authors point out that Chinas state-sponsored conspiracy theory tracing the origins of the virus the United States is completely baseless. The real source of this virus is Chinas wildlife trade, which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) failed to halt seventeen years after SARS spread from civet cats to humans. If this trade continues, the authors assert, in another decade or so, we will inevitably face SARS 3.0.

A frank discussion of the origins of this virus and the need to prevent another pandemic, written by two experts in microbiology who have been on the frontlines in researching and battling both SARS and COVID-19: this would appear to be precisely the type of opinion piece that we need at this moment.

Yet Yuen and Lungs article produced a storm of angry controversy on Chinese social media. Within a day, the authors had publicly retracted their piece. Yuen and Lung did not explain what pressures led them to this decision, but anyone who cares about increasingly fragile academic freedoms in Hong Kong should be deeply concerned by such developments.

Two types of stigma

The third section of Yuen and Lungs article discussing Chinas wildlife trade is undoubtedly the most controversial. The authors assert: the Wuhan coronavirus is a product of the poor culture of the Chinese people, recklessly capturing and eating wild game, treating animals inhumanely, disrespecting life, and continuing even today to eat wild game to satisfy their desires. The Chinese peoples deep-rooted bad habits are the source of this virus. If this remains unchanged, in another decade or so, we will inevitably face SARS 3.0.

File photo: GovHK.

It would be unfair, of course, to stigmatise the people of China as a whole for Chinas wet markets. It would also be unfair to denounce Chinese culture as a whole on account of the wildlife trade. This is not, however, what Lung and Yuen are doing.

It is not only fair, but indeed necessary, to stigmatise the wildlife trade and wet markets in China that have now produced two major illnesses (SARS and COVID-19) that have killed tens of thousands around the world.

It is not only fair, but indeed necessary, to stigmatise unscientific practices in Traditional Chinese Medicine that encourage the consumption of civet cats to nourish yourqior pangolin scales to treat male impotence. These are not, we must note, the beginning and the end of Chinese culinary or medicinal culture, but they are indeed components of these cultures that need to be confronted for the sake of global health.

It is not only fair, but also necessary, to stigmatise the political culture that has enabled the perpetuation of this wildlife trade despite obvious evidence of the risks involved. The CCP exercises extensive monitoring and control over so many aspects of life in China today, to the point that it can imprison civilians for random comments in private chats. Yet despite this power and control, the CCP has proactively chosen not to act against the wildlife trade for nearly two decades after SARS, facilitating the emergence of Covid-19.

Intra- and Inter-species Transmission of Coronaviruses. Source: Su et al. (June 2016). Epidemiology, Genetic Recombination, and Pathogenesis of Coronaviruses. Trends in Microbiology 24(6), 490-502.

It is also fair, and indeed necessary, to stigmatise the political culture of secrecy and suppression of bad news that has facilitated the spread of both SARS and COVID-19. The decision to reprimand Dr. Li Wenliang for comments on COVID-19 in a private chat among doctors shows both the Party-states reach and its horrid misuse of this reach.

These trends do not, of course, represent Chinese culture as a whole: there are other possibilities. These trends are, however, real components of the political culture in the Peoples Republic of China today which, just like the viruses they have covered over, cannot be simply denied away.

Political correctness facilitating political regression

If this story had ended with Lung and Yuens retraction of their article, this affair would have been just one more sad sign of CCP orthodoxies exerting pressure on academic freedom in Hong Kong. Yet on March 20th, Professor Jon Solomon of the Universit Jean Moulin in Lyon launched a petition onchange.orgaddressed to Zhang Xiang, the current vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, pressuring Zhang to fire Kwok-yung Yuen. There is a counter-letter here.

Photo: Facebook.

In this petition, Solomon claims that Yuen and Lungs article resurrect[s] the vocabulary of historical racism and has done grave damage to the University of Hong as well as Hong Kong and global civil society. He then asks Zhang to provide a public explanation of the universitys support for Yuen. He calls for a panel to investigate the living history of colonial racism at the University of Hong Kong, and pending further investigation, asks that the university reconsider its appointment of Dr. Yuen.

In Solomons curious eagerness to draw attention to the colonial legacies behind the University of Hong Kong, legacies of which all are aware, he ignores two far more relevant legacies.

The first is the legacy of critical intellectual work which extends, despite a parallel legacy of repression, from the origins of political writing in China to the present. While Solomon undoubtedly envisions himself as a valiant warrior struggling against Orientalism, it is in fact oddly Orientalizing to assume that a critical discussion of cultural practices must be rooted in colonial racism, as if the people of China were simply sitting around for a few millennia failing to recognize the potential for critical reflection, and as if any critical discussion of culture since then is shaped by colonial racism.

Jon Solomon. Photo: The Jean Moulin University Lyon 3.

This spectre of the colonising white devil who haunts cultural critique, however, serves a crucial role in this narrative by recasting Solomon as white savior. Yet we must ask, from what exactly is Solomon rescuing the people of China: an article inMingpaothat called on people to be honest about the origins of the virus? One hundred years after the May Fourth Movement, is eating pangolin now off-limits for critical discussion?

The second legacy that Solomon ignores yet also ironically enables is the CCPs increasingly obvious deployment of political correctness to protect its own political regression. With its typical essentialism, the Party is redeploying vigilance against stigmatising people as a protection against the urgently necessary stigmatisation of dangerous practices and political secrecy. The laudatory ideal of protecting people from stigmatisation then ironically serves the purpose of protecting from criticism the powers and practices that put the Chinese people and the entire world at the greatest risk.

If Solomon disagreed with Yuen and Lungs article, there is no clear reason why he could not write an article inMingpaoarticulating his disagreement and explaining his own understanding of the emergence of COVID-19. To instead publicly write to one of the authors vice-chancellors demanding an explanation and reconsider[eration] of his appointment is a clear threat to academic freedom, operating on the level of the thugs who have repeatedly rallied for the University of Hong Kong to fire Benny Tai.

Pro-Beijing demonstrators at a rally calling for Benny Tai to be sacked from HKU. Photo: Apple Daily.

What actual benefit would there be for Hong Kong if Yuen was in any way reprimanded for his reflections? And what real risks could there be for the world if Hong Kongs leading specialists in coronavirus research grow afraid to speak frankly?

Such suppression of academic freedom would be worthy of condemnation in any context. In the context of Hong Kong today, where both academic freedom and freedom of speech are under increasingly grave threat from a Party-state pushing the same line as Solomon, such suppression is doubly deserving of condemnation. And when such suppression of free speech got us into this mess twice and is likely to do so again, repeating this mistake is nothing short of dangerous.

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Ming Pao row: If we learn anything from the virus outbreak, it should be the importance of free speech - Hong Kong Free Press

Freedom of speech is the property of the left in Australia, while those on the other side of politics are vilified, demonised and intimidated in order to be silenced, according to Sky News host Alan Jones. I suppose it's no use saying that, as a nation, we must protect freedom of speech if you don't practice it, Mr Jones said. He said those on the left of politics can say whatever they like about you and get away with it. Mr Jones was critical of NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane for his recent praise of Chinas President Xi Jinping.Mr Moselmane had praised Preisdent Xis unswerving leadership in his attempts to handle the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Most knowledgeable people would say instead that China has betrayed the world, Mr Jones said.It did not notify the world that a crisis was upon us, he said. It seems the ideological enemy in this country is alive and well, some of them are well paid members of our parliament. Image: AP

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Freedom of speech 'is the property of the left of politics' - Sky News Australia

After all, student high jinx is par for the course. Yet in fact, the decision to exclude a former Cabinet Minister is part of a dark mission to destroy the essence of democracy freedom of speech.The sinister missionaries hand was evident again in the suspension of Trevor Phillips by the Labour Party and in a campaign by Guardian newspaper staff against their own columnist Suzanne Moore. In both these cases the targeted individuals appear to be guilty of nothing more than stating what to most of us is glaringly obvious. In Phillips' case his crime was to draw attention to the fact that members of vile paedophile gangs in Northern cities were of Pakistani Muslim origin, in the case of Moore she simply pointed out that being a woman is a biological fact, not a lifestyle choice. That Phillips, a brave crusader against racism as founding Chairman of the Equalities Commission, can be branded an Islamaphobe and Moore, a leading feminist writer, as transphobic should be a warning to us all - no one is safe from the puritanical poison of politically correct wokeness.

Too many leading institutions have, in effect, been taken over by an intolerant left wing elite who regard any viewpoint other than their own as unacceptable. Once, most academics put aside their personal political views to provide students with a balanced education. Today, much of academia has become the most narrow-minded branch of the liberal establishment. Consequently, it is increasingly difficult for academics with anything other than liberal left views to survive. A survey at the time of the 2017 election found that just 7 percent of university staff intended to vote Conservative. My friend, the late, great political philosopher Sir Roger Scruton recalled that when he taught at Birkbeck College, he was the only conservative there, apart from the lady who served meals in the Senior Common Room. Sir Roger was for years denied the recognition he deserved by the academic establishment.

Much of the student body is affected too, with young minds dulled by the simplistic dictums of political correctness. Which is why many student societies have become vehicles of cultural oppression, at best marginalising and at worst vilifying views that offend snowflake undergraduates. Presumably, university authorities are either complicit or complacent.

The dominance of the liberal establishment is aided and abetted by the echo-camber of social media, which has spawned a new form of ugly discourse where everything is understood through the prism of identity. It has become commonplace for someone to preface a statement with qualifications like as a member of a certain ethnic group, as a gay man or transgender female. As such statements are so ubiquitous we have become numb to just how disturbing they really are. Identity has become the ultimate arbiter of opinion. This is the triumph of relativism; of the ego over discussion, of opinion over knowledge. We live in an era where the national conversation is so degraded that, for wokes, it is acceptable to deny a speaker a platform simply on the grounds that what they have to say, even when evidentially based, might possibly make someone in the audience feel uncomfortable.

For most of us, busy with work and family lives, such issues may appear marginal. But in practice, the way debate is increasingly shut down, with speakers no platformed and books denied publication, should worry us all. It represents the ruthless exercise of power by the few over the many. Although the result of the General Election last December demonstrates that most people reject the woke agenda of the left, it does not mean that the culture war is won. Far from it, the liberal left elite are in control of almost all our leading cultural institutions, including the BBC, and are using their power to influence how people think. Even television adaptations of Agatha Christie mysteries now routinely come with an unsavory dose of political correctness and liberal moralizing. No element of our culture is safe.

The announcement that the government is considering legislation to strengthen free speech in universities is a welcome start, but no more than a beginning. Whilst institutions can be legally forced to allow certain speakers, legislation alone will not weaken the dominance of an ideology that vilifies those who dare to think for themselves. The only way lasting change can be made is by redistributing the power of the liberal establishment. The Government must proactively ensure that all appointments made to cultural bodies play a part in bringing about a greater range of views more in keeping with the sentiments of hard-working patriots. Perhaps communal panels of workers supported by worthy local organisations could vet applicants. Such an approach would leave the left up-in-arms because they know that it would give a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless.

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No one is safe from the puritanical poison of wokeness says SIR JOHN HAYES - Express