Monthly Archives: February 2022

The new right-wing deputy Javier Milei, raffled this Thursday his second salary as a legislator. On this occasion, the raffle was won by Jonatan Lewczuk, an audiovisual producer who works for the City Government.

Like some Pro leaders, Lewczuk sympathizes with Mileis ideas. Im following you to death, he told her when the deputy called him to inform him that he had won the award.

This time I play on our side, Milei told the press. The winner will take the sum of 369,828.99 pesos.

It should be noted that, a month ago, Federico Nacardo had won the first draw that Milei orchestrated. Far from having sympathy for the far-right leader, Nacardo had signed up for the contest at the insistence of his partner and assured that he will use a large part of the money to pay off debts.. We will continue to feed the financial system, he closed on that occasion, before a stunned Milei.

After the existing doubts about the management and protection of personal data requested by the economist to be able to register for his salary draw, weeks ago an anonymous user assured to put the sale the database of more than a million participants in an internet forum, allegedly from hackers, in exchange for little more than 10 thousand dollars.

The protagonist of the new chapter in the novel by the legislator of Avanza Libertad is H4ck3rArgentino, a user who at 3 oclock in the morning on Wednesday offered for sale Argentinian Deputy Milei database (database of the Argentine deputy Milei): according to what he assured, the ID and number of the candidate, names and surnames, email and document number of all the people who signed up. That is to say, 1,040,622 people, according to the post made in the same forum that, days ago, published the sale of data from the National Registry of Persons (ReNaPer). The alleged data package is offered in exchange for $10,500.

Sources from the computer security sector assured Page 12 that the supposed leak generates a series of doubts. On the one hand, the required cost per user was too high and the user who made the offer had been created just a few hours before publication.

The draw generated the National Directorate for the Protection of Personal Data open a process to investigate if the organization had taken measures to guarantee the privacy of the data of the participants, as well as to determine if there was a violation of Law 25,326 on the Protection of Personal Data.

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This time the draw for Javier Milei was won by a libertarian: "He played on our side" - Then24

Review of Freedom: An Unruly History by Annelien de Dijn (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 2020)

Freedom is life, declared a banner at a recent rally against public health measures taken to reduce the effect of the pandemic. Indeed, this has become a consistent theme during the pandemic, as the movement against vaccines and public health measures has claimed the mantle of freedom. In response, the Left has pointed out that our individual freedom relies on social solidarity, arguing that the public measures are needed to preserve our right to health.

At stake are two opposed definitions of freedom and this conflict is not new. In her recent book, Freedom: An Unruly History, Annelien de Dijn helps to shed light on these often contradictory meanings of the term. It is a sweeping history of the idea of freedom in the West, from Ancient Greece, to our time.

For centuries, writes de Dijn, western thinkers and political actors identified freedom not with being left alone by the state, but with exercising control over the way one is governed. As this suggests, de Dijn distinguishes between two types of freedom: freedom from versus freedom to, or, as they are sometimes styled, negative freedom versus positive freedom.

Freedom from is the kind of freedom most often deployed by the small-government, reactionary right. Supporters of capitalism regularly invoke this kind of negative freedom when justifying the deregulation of employment, rolling back health and safety laws or lowering minimum wages. Free market fundamentalists cite it to justify deregulating financial markets. And Christian conservatives claim negative freedom when arguing that religiously inspired bigotry should be exempt from antidiscrimination laws.

De Dijns thought-provoking book cuts through this rhetoric by explaining how this negative conception of freedom arose relatively recently, as a way to fight back against popular struggles for the freedom to participate democratically and actively in politics.

In Ancient Greece, and later, in Rome, freedom was defined in opposition to slavery. To be a slave was to be unfree; it meant having no say and no power over your future. When Ancient Greeks talked about themselves as free, de Dijn writes, they meant that, unlike the subjects of the Persian Great King, they were not ruled by another but governed themselves. This is what she describes as a democratic conception of freedom.

This is the basis of freedom to, or positive freedom, a conception of freedom that de Dijn traces like a golden thread through all subsequent debates over the term. After beginning in Ancient Greece, and continuing into the Roman Republic, this notion of democratic freedom begun to decline as Caesarism transformed Rome into an empire.

Much later, Renaissance thinkers like Niccol Machiavelli revived the democratic, positive meaning of freedom. As the great eighteenth-century revolutions in America and France established new, republican governments, masses fought for freedom to direct their governments once more. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the movements to win universal suffrage kept the idea of democratic freedom alive. De Dijns narrative ends with the postWorld War II period, and the transition into the twenty-first century, during which the concept of positive freedom declined slowly as neoliberalism became hegemonic.

This sweeping historical narrative is one of the strengths of de Dijns book. It allows her to show how an individual thinker like Machiavelli can be both situated in their time and also placed within a much broader historical context.

It also shows how the notion of democratic freedom has developed and deepened over time. For example, Machiavelli, took a more analytical approach to freedom in Discourse on the First Ten Books on Livy than the historians of Ancient Greece and Rome, such as Herodotus. As de Dijn demonstrates, this matters Machiavellis precepts had a considerable impact on subsequent treatments of freedom and political institutions.

According to de Dijn, the great seventeenth- and eighteeth-century revolutions also gave rise to a form of freedom staunchly opposed to the democratic conception favored by democratic and republican thinkers. Freedom from, or negative freedom, arose in opposition to the democratic, representative forms of government that were established in the United States, England, and France.

According to de Dijn, the period of Terror under Maximilien Robespierre, during the great French Revolution spurred the development of negative freedom, and was in large part motivated by fears among the elite of a democratic redistribution of wealth.

After this, the negative conception of freedom grew and developed during the 1800s, into the twentieth century, in which it was upheld by thinkers like Isaiah Berlin, who, according to de Dijn, introduced a new idea: that negative liberty was the very essence of Western civilization.

This development of freedom from, was not entirely valueless, however. It points toward a paradox at the heart of democratic freedom namely, that the majority can oppress the minority. De Dijn points out an example of this problem early in her book, by recounting how the ancient Athenian democracy decided democratically to execute the philosopher Socrates.

In the name of protecting minorities against the majority, however, freedom from has allowed minoritarian tyrannies to grow and prosper. This helps explain why negative freedom is particularly useful to property owners with access to extraordinary economic power that most people lack.

To illustrate the point, de Dijn cites an early antidemocratic tract from Athens, the Constitution of the Athenians. Although the author remained anonymous, historians refer to them as the Old Oligarch.

In this text, the author claims that Athenss poor majority ruled in their own interest and used the state to redistribute wealth, so that the poor become wealthy and the wealthy poor. Indeed, in Democracy: A Life, Professor Paul Cartledge argued that Athenian democracy is best understood as an example of Lenins idea of the the dictatorship of the proletariat, and represented a more democratic conception of freedom.

The comparison is apt. At the height of Athenian democracy, the state redistributed wealth to further democratic participation. The Athenian republic ensured that the working poor were able to participate in democratic decision by paying them to attend citizens assemblies. The Athenians also experimented with other forms of democracy, including election by sortition (that is, by lottery). Citizens elected to government roles received recompense, allowing them to leave their everyday jobs for the duration of office.

Importantly, de Dijn traces how the Old Oligarchy which was overthrown by Athenian democracy feared the redistributive power of political democracy. From the time of Ancient Athens until today, this fear has been a constant in reactionary thought.

Theres one obvious lacuna in de Djins book, linked to both types of freedom she traces: namely, the role played by human rights, since the end of World War II.

The Declaration of Human Rights includes both positive, democratic freedom and negative freedom from. For example, Article 21 states that everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country which, as we have seen, entails a democratic conception of freedom. By contrast, Article 17(2) states that no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property, which imposes restraints on popular government in line with freedom from.

On a broader level, the idea of human rights deeply informs contemporary discussions of freedom. Typically, those fighting undemocratic, repressive governments have drawn on the rhetoric of human rights for example, in Putins Russia. Increasingly, however, the reactionary right and Christian conservatives claim to defend freedom against democratic, representative governments. For example, they claim that taxes or laws prohibiting discrimination against LGBT people are a violation of their freedom to property and conscience, respectively. These developments have further influenced the way the Left thinks about freedom, and de Dijns historical narrative would have benefited by including them.

To de Dijns credit, however, she is at pains to highlight the limitations of historic forms of freedom. She makes it clear that historic political systems built around democratic freedom still excluded many people. For example, the Athenian Republic denied freedom to slaves, women and non-Athenian men.

Freedom: An Unruly History is an excellent book that captures the sweep of more than twenty-five hundred years of Western debate about the nature of political freedom. Of course, this scope precludes a detailed focus on any one historical period. At the same time, however, de Deijns long view helps ground differing and deficient conceptions of freedom in the political realities upon which they arose.

This historic breadth helps show that although an antidemocratic, elitist form of freedom may now be ascendent, this is a relatively new development that arose in opposition to the unprecedented expansion of democratic freedom and representative government from the 1600s onward.

This makes it clear that we will only win economic freedom if we win greater political freedom. And although this means overcoming freedom from, de Dijn reminds us that we can only build stronger political freedom if we extend it to minorities excluding, of course, the ultra-wealthy.

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Since Ancient Greece, People Have Fought for Genuine Freedom Against the Wealthy - Jacobin magazine

(cupephoto/Getty Images)

Remember when some people wanted to protect college students from the terrible influence of leftist speakers? In North Carolina, e.g., the state had a ban on communist speakers on campuses in the UNC system. (That law was eventually struck down.)

These days, there are still people who want to protect students, but now, apparently, the threat comes not from Communists but from conservatives and libertarians.

In this Law & Liberty piece, Oglethorpe University professor Joseph Knippenberg reviews a recent book by Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola, Free Speech and Koch Money.

Knippenberg writes, In a nutshell, Wilson and Kamola contend that in large measure the campus free speech crisis is a product of the efforts of the Koch network, which funds the small handful of . . . campus activists, the provocative speakers they host, the media network that amplifies the ensuing controversy, the legal organizations that are involved in any subsequent litigation or threats of litigation, the think tanks that develop legislative responses, and the faculty and academic institutes that provide a veneer of academic respectability to the entire enterprise. It is a tempest in a teapot, stirred up by the plutocratic libertarians for their own ends, which largely involve recruiting people to their network to bolster their policy efforts at the state and federal level and to put their political adversaries on the defensive.

How despicable!

Knippenberg doesnt find the book persuasive. He concludes, As someone who was attracted to the academic life understood as the pursuit of wisdom for its own sake, I find Wilson and Kamolas vision at least as threatening as other efforts to instrumentalize learning. It is just as much a threat to the independence and integrity of the university as that posed by the Koch network that they deprecate. Nay, it is more of a threat: its end is, in a sense, totalizing and those who embrace it seem currently to hold a good bit of the academic high ground.

Several years ago, the Martin Center published a pro and con with Wilson arguing that outside conservative money was a threat to the mission of universities and Hillsdale economics professor Gary Wolfram arguing that there was no true threat. Read both and see which advocate has the better argument.

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The Imaginary Threat of Koch Money to College Integrity - National Review

SciCheck Digest

As of early December, unvaccinated adults were about 97 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people who had received boosters, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. But a Twitter user falsely implied that the death rate for the unvaccinated included people who had only one or two doses of a vaccine. The CDC said unvaccinated means someone has not been verified to have received COVID-19 vaccine.

How effective are the vaccines?

All of the authorized and approved vaccines are effective at preventing symptomatic disease.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which is the first COVID-19 vaccineto receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration, showed a final efficacyof 91% against symptomatic illness in its phase 3 trial, meaningthat under the conditions of the trial the vaccine reduced the risk of getting sick by 91%. The Moderna vaccine showed similar results in its clinical trial, with an efficacy of 94%against disease at the time of emergency use authorization.

Johnson & Johnson, which partly tested its vaccine in South Africa when the beta variant emerged, reported an efficacy of 66% in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 and an efficacy of 85% in preventing severe or critical COVID-19.

Subsequent studies have demonstratedthat the vaccines are effective under real-world conditions, includingagainst the highly contagious delta variant, although they are lesseffectivein preventing infection and mild disease compared with earlier versions of the virus. Most studies show the vaccines remainhighly effectivein preventing serious disease, hospitalization and death from delta.

Data also suggest that vaccinated people arelesslikelyto transmit the coronavirus if they do become infected.

Link to this

A Feb. 5 tweet from President Joe Bidens official government Twitter account @POTUS said that unvaccinated individuals are 97 times more likely to die from COVID-19 compared to those who are boosted.

Thats accurate, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions most recent analysis of data from 24 U.S. jurisdictions.

The CDC says that, as of Dec. 4, the weekly COVID-19 death rate among unvaccinated adults was 9.74 per 100,000 population, and the rate was 0.1 per 100,000 population for people 18 and older who were fully vaccinated with a booster dose.

The White House confirmed in an email to FactCheck.org that the tweet was based on the CDCs data from early December.

However, a Twitter user falsely implied that the death rate for the unvaccinated was inflated by including people who had received only one or two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Heres the deal: classifying people who have 1 or 2 jabs as unvaccinated is ridiculous, Libertarians: Diligently Plotting tweeted in response to the POTUS account. An image of that tweet was posted to the Facebook page of Libertarians: Diligently Plotting to Take Over the World & Leave You Alone, which has over 71,000 followers.

But the CDC said it only counted people who had not received any COVID-19 vaccine doses as unvaccinated.

A footnote on the CDCs Rates of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by Vaccination Status webpage says unvaccinated means people who have not been verified to have received COVID-19 vaccine. In addition, that CDC page says partially vaccinated people who received at least one FDA-authorized vaccine dose but did not complete a primary series were excluded.

For most people, the primary vaccination series is: two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, given three weeks apart; two doses of the Moderna vaccine, given four weeks apart; or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Someone is not considered fully vaccinated until at least 14 days after the second dose of either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine or at least 14 days after one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

Whats more, the CDC separately tracks fully vaccinated people who have only received the primary vaccination series. As of Dec. 4, the weekly COVID-19 death rate among adults fully vaccinated without booster dose was 0.71 per 100,000 which was about seven times higher than the rate for those fully vaccinated who also had received a booster shot.

Weve reproduced the graph from the CDCs page below:

Heres how CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky explained the data in a Feb. 2 press briefing by the White House COVID-19 Response Team and public health officials:

Walensky, Feb. 2: Similar to what I showed you last week, vaccination and booster doses substantially decrease the risk of death from COVID-19. Looking at the data from the week ending Dec. 4, the number of average weekly deaths for those who are unvaccinated was 9.7 per 100,000 people, but only 0.7 per 100,000 people for those who were vaccinated.

This means the risk of dying from COVID-19 was 14 times higher for people who were unvaccinated compared to those who received only a primary series.

For those who were boosted, the average of weekly deaths was 0.1 per 100,000 people, meaning that unvaccinated individuals were 97 times more likely to die compared to those who were boosted.

She clearly provided different COVID-19 risk assessments for the unvaccinated, the fully vaccinated without a booster and the fully vaccinated who had been boosted.

Editors note:SciChecks COVID-19/Vaccination Projectis made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The foundation hasno controlover our editorial decisions, and the views expressed in our articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation. The goal of the project is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.

President Joe Biden (@POTUS). Heres the deal: Unvaccinated individuals are 97 times more likely to die compared to those who are boosted. Protect yourself and those around you by getting vaccinated and boosted today. Twitter. 5 Feb 2022.

Libertarians: Diligently Plotting (@LibertariansDP). Heres the deal: classifying people who have 1 or 2 jabs as unvaccinated is ridiculous. Twitter. 5 Feb 2022.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by Vaccination Status. Cdc.gov. Accessed 8 Feb 2022.

White House. Press Briefing by White House COVID-19 Response Team and Public Health Officials. Transcript. Whitehouse.gov. 2 Feb 2022.

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Latest CDC Data: Unvaccinated Adults 97 Times More Likely to Die from COVID-19 Than Boosted Adults - FactCheck.org

House Bill 1134 is Exhibit A of why the Colorado General Assembly should adjourn earlier, much earlier. The bill isnt just one of those solutions-seeking-real-problems proposals that proliferate the docket; it is illustrative of a flawed governing philosophy that is as pernicious as it is seductive.

The legislation forbids restaurants to give customers plastic tableware or condiment packets without first obtaining their express permission. It contains six pages of detail differentiating the types of restaurants that must get permission to give away a napkin and which may give a fork sans permission. It determines who can proffer a lid to avoid spillage and who must first inquire of desire for said lid. It defines exactly which utensils and condiment packets are covered, omitting only pickle relish perhaps from oversight. The bill even provides a definition for spill plug, the plastic thingy in the coffee lid. Its also called a splash stick. Who knew?

The only ambiguity is the enforcement mechanism which presumably will be added in a committee hearing on the bill. Will there be fines for transgression? Which agencies will ferret out malefactors secretly slipping unsolicited straws at the drive-through? As if theres not enough real crime happening to keep law enforcement occupied right now, they wouldnt mind organizing a statewide sting: Operation Unsought Spork coming to an unsuspecting takeout counter near you.

The lawmakers spearheading this silly little bill must think restaurants are foisting unwanted sugar packets, plastic spoons, and splash sticks onto customers too weak-willed to refuse them. These products are filling up kitchen drawers, glove compartments, and landfills everywhere. The government therefore must intervene and rescue us from ourselves.

Over the past century, this government-must-help-us philosophy has become ascendant. If something is deemed desirable, the government must promote it, subsidize it, and even provide it free at taxpayer expense to all comers. If something is deemed undesirable, the government must regulate it, tax it, curtail it, or ban it. Its not just a philosophy of the left. Corporate and farm subsidies enjoy strong bipartisan support.

Congressmen and congresswomen of both parties seek to regulate social media tech companies for the sake of individuals who voluntarily use the services. Examples of paternalistic government displacing personal responsibility are too numerous to recount within this space. The fact that lawmakers here in Colorado are targeting soy sauce packets demonstrates there is no limiting principle to this government-to-the-rescue impulse.

Since outright bans tend to provoke a backlash among voters, as these same lawmakers will no doubt experience when their plastic bag ban goes into effect in 2024, politicians are discovering ways to manipulate their subjects, I mean constituents, in less noticeable ways. Its called altering the choice architecture to advantage certain choices over others.

In this case, customers can still get packets of strawberry jam, they just have to ask for them. Customers will be better off without a drawer full of plastic, restaurants will save money, and landfills will be a tiny, tiny bit less full of waste. Best of all, politicians show they care about the environment and are solution-oriented.

In this way, the enlightened can nudge the hoi polloi to do better without actually resorting to more draconian means that elicit resentment like when customers discover they cant get a plastic bag for that greasy rotisserie chicken. Some call this manipulation paternalistic libertarianism, but if they were honest, theyd leave off the noun. Theres nothing libertarian about using the full force of law to compel restaurants to ask customers if they want a straw with that.

Ostensibly free citizens can figure that tricky transaction out by themselves.

Krista L. Kafer is a weekly Denver Post columnist. Follow her on Twitter: @kristakafer.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

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Kafer: When Do you want ketchup with those fries? becomes the law - The Denver Post

Early in the game, as Booker Dewitt is exploring Columbia and learning about the cloud city, he comes upon a raffle in front of a stage and takes a number, written on a baseball. It is revealed that the winner of the raffle gets to throw the baseball at an interracial couple, who is surrounded by racist imagery. While the scene can certainly be uncomfortable, up to this point it serves its purpose well. It shows the ugly side of Columbia in a single scene and it demonstrates that some people who live there don't necessarily agree with these ideals, in the form of the couple. What happens next is where things get problematic.

Players are presented with three options. To either throw the ball at the raffle announcer, throw it at the couple, or do nothing. Ultimately, all three options lead to the police noticing the "mark of the beast" on Booker's hand, preventing him from throwing the ball at anyone. The game, however, never reflects or discusses the player's choice. Instead, there is a situation where the "hero" of the story could have chosen to participate in a racist, hateful act, without any real consequences or conversation about it. There might be an argument that foreshadows a reveal at the end of "Bioshock Infinite,"but it seems more likely that this resulted from a need to have a choice in the narrative-driven game.

Excerpt from:
The Bioshock Infinite Scene That Aged Poorly - Looper