Month: October 2018

Russia Eyeing Military Base In Cuba As US Prepares To Leave Nuclear Missile Deal

A senior Russian official proposed that his country is seriously considering establishing a military base in Cuba in response to Trump’s plan to quit the INF treaty, predicting that “a new Cuban crisis” could erupt if the US and Russia fail to come to terms.

According to General Vladimir Shamanov, the head of the Russian lower house of parliament’s defense committee and a former airborne troops commander, with the US planning on walking away from the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) treaty, Russia’s response should be in the “spirit of those times”, by reactivating Russian military facilities in Cuba.

The U.S. and Russia have accused one another of violating the agreement, but President Donald Trump has announced his intention to now end it, paving the way for new nuclear and conventional weapons systems at a time of heightened tensions, Newsweek reported.

A display shows excerpts to US President John F. Kennedy’s October 22, 1962 televised address about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Photo Reuters

“In order to strengthen our military presence in Cuba, we need at least the consent of the Cuban government. After all, this question is more political than military, and today, it’s probably premature to talk about any specific measures in response to a possible U.S. withdrawal from INF,” Shamanov told the Interfax news agency.

“Now the active phase of assessing this scenario is underway and proposals will next be prepared with estimates,” he added.

This issue may be raised when Cuba’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, visits Russia in early November. Diaz-Canel, a fresh face of Cuba’s Communist Party, is wary of foreign military presence, but “politics is living matter,” Shamanov said, adding that “Cuba has its own interests and it was hurt by US sanctions.”

The Russian politician went on to say that he would “not exclude” the prospect of a Russian military base in the Caribbean country coming up during these talks, which would also reportedly include a $50 million Russian loan for Cuba to buy weapons. Selected by his country’s National Assembly to replace 86-year-old Raúl Castro in April, Díaz-Canel will then go on to visit the world’s four other communist countries—China, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos.

Aerial view of a Soviet medium-range ballistic missile site with notations indicating the placement of a launch control center, a missile erector, and a missile shelters, among other things, Sagua la Grande, Cuba, October 23, 1962. This was one of the photographs that precipitated the “Cuban Missile Crisis,” which some have warned could be repeated with a U.S. withdrawal of the INF treaty. Getty Images.

The retired Airborne General had previously urged Moscow and Washington to come to terms and get back to reconciliation.

Last week, Shamanov himself told the official RIA Novosti outlet that “if we don’t stop now and don’t sit down to talk, then we could, in the long run, create conditions comparable to the Caribbean crisis.” That same day, Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov told the state-run Tass Russian News Agency that “the danger is that the United States is pushing the world to another Cuban Missile Crisis.”

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a major confrontation that brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war in early 1960s after a failed CIA-sponsored attempt to overthrow the Cuban government in 1961. During the standoff, Moscow stationed Soviet nuclear-tipped missiles in Cuba in response to the deployment of similar-class American missiles in Turkey.

While Trump initially entered office expressing hope for a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, he has also called for an expansion of military might. Last week, he announced that he sought to pull out of the INF treaty, a measure that banned the deployment of land-based nuclear and non-nuclear ballistic missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers (310 to 3,420 miles).

The Kremlin has warned that such a move showed the U.S. was, in fact, working on weapons systems that would violate the INF and “if these systems are being developed, then actions are necessary from other countries, in this case, Russia, to restore balance in this sphere.” Other current and former Russian politicians have drawn comparisons to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Recently, former Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, who signed the INF treaty alongside President Ronald Reagan in 1987, also cautioned of a new arms race erupting should the deal unravel. In April, he cited the Cuban Missile Crisis as he urged the U.S. and Russia to come together because military incidents between them “in today’s charged atmosphere can lead to big trouble.”

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How Blockchain Can Build Trust—and Reduce Government’s Power: Podcast

Blockchain, the decentralized, incorruptible ledger system that undergirds bitcoin, “gives you an actual power to affect change in the world,” says hacker Lauri Love. “It’s gonna scare the shit out of some very powerful people.”

Love is one of the people featured in actor and filmmaker Alex Winter’s new documentary, Trust Machine, which explains how blockchain works and how businesses are using it to reinvent power grids, music distribution, and even grocery stores. For today’s Reason Podcast, I talk with Winter, whose previous documentaries include Downloaded, which looked at how Napster and other file-sharing services disrupted the music industry, and Deep Web, a sympathetic portrait of Silk Road and similar websites, about the potential for blockchain to change how governments—and corporations—go about their business.

Subscribe, rate, and review our podcast at iTunes. Listen at SoundCloud below:

Audio production by Ian Keyser.

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How Trump Boosted GDP (In 1 Simple Chart)

Authored by Robert Wenzel via EconomicPolicyJournal.com,

It’s all about catering to the military-industrial-complex. There is a big spender in the White House who loves the military.

In the goofy land of highly questionable macro measurements, the U.S. economy has expanded at a 2.9% annual rate since April of 2017, according to the Commerce Department.

Faster government spending, (government spending is more accurately measured than other parts of the economy), accounted for nearly half of the acceleration, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.

And get this, defense shifted from contracting at a 2.1% annual rate between June 2009 and March 2017, to growing at a 2.9% rate since April 2017. The turnaround added 0.21 percentage points on average to the nation’s overall economic growth rate, according to Commerce Department figures.

Defense outlays grew 6% in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, thanks in part to a bipartisan budget agreement to boost government spending this year and next by nearly $300 billion above limits set in a 2011 law, including $165 billion more for military.

WSJ notes:

Lockheed Martin Corp. , the world’s largest defense contractor, said Tuesday it expects revenue to increase up to 6% in 2019 as it boosts production of missiles and F-35 combat jets. The company reported a $1.47 billion profit for the quarter ending Sept. 30, compared with $963 million a year earlier. Its order backlog rose to $109 billion.

Boeing Co. , the world’s largest aerospace company by sales, raised its revenue and profit outlook for the year, thanks in part to strong demand for defense projects. The company won a trio of Pentagon contracts in recent weeks, after four years of sales declines in its defense unit.

Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group, said”

“I would expect that, with the increase in the defense discretionary caps, that its contribution is going to increase, and in fact it will be leading overall GDP growth by mid-2019.”

We’re gonna need moar war.

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Neither ‘Capacity’ Nor ‘Power’ Distinguishes ‘Assault Weapons’ From Other Firearms

In an editorial published the day after the shooting that killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, The New York Times erroneously claimed that so-called assault weapons like the Colt AR-15 rifle used in that attack are distinguished by their “high capacity.” In a news story posted yesterday, Times reporter Richard A. Oppel Jr. suggests that AR-15-style rifles are especially “powerful,” which also is not true.

Unlike, say, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, Oppel acknowledges that an AR-15, like any other semi-automatic, “fires one bullet at a time.” Still, he says, “it is a powerful weapon: light, easy to hold and to fire, with limited recoil, its bullets shooting out of the muzzle more than twice as fast as most handgun rounds.” The only part of that description that is related to “power” is the part about muzzle velocity, and here Oppel pulls the time-honored trick of comparing the rifles Dianne Feinstein hates with handguns instead of other rifles. Bullets fired from rifles generally move faster than bullets fired from pistols, mainly because a longer barrel gives them more room to accelerate. But that tells us nothing about the difference between the rifles Feinstein wants to ban—which are distinguished by features such as folding stocks, pistol grips, and barrel shrouds—and the ones she is willing to leave on the market.

If the comparison is limited to long guns, the .223-caliber round typically fired by AR-15-style rifles does have a relatively high muzzle velocity. But other cartridges, fired by guns that are not considered “assault weapons,” equal or surpass it. Furthermore, muzzle velocity is not the only factor in a bullet’s lethality; size also matters, and so-called assault weapons fire smaller rounds than many hunting rifles.

Oppel adds that “the standard AR-15 magazine holds 30 bullets and can be swapped out quickly, allowing a shooter to fire more than a hundred rounds in minutes.” The ability to accept “high-capacity” magazines does not distinguish “assault weapons” from other guns, and Oppel’s point about how quickly magazines can be switched undermines the argument that a 10-round limit would make mass shootings less deadly. In any case, any semi-automatic gun can fire “more than a hundred rounds in minutes,” which would require, at most, pulling the trigger about once per second.

The Times has been helping to perpetuate the myth that there is something uniquely deadly about “assault weapons” for decades. But it also has intermittently published articles pointing out that the distinctions drawn by politicians like Feinstein make little sense, or at least acknowledging that perspective. Critical readers, even if they had no other source of information about “assault weapons,” should be able to figure out that there is something fishy about the case for banning these guns. It’s too bad there are not more of those on the paper’s editorial board or reporting staff.

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Nearly $6 Billion Belonging To Dead Libyan Dictator Gaddafi Has Gone Missing

Nearly nine months after Politico first reported that interest payments stemming from nearly $70 billion in frozen assets formerly belonging to the regime of deceased Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had been paid to opaque accounts belonging to the Libyan Investment Authority, UN investigators are finally looking into where the money went. At last count, RT reported that interest payments generated by the assets had reached $5.7 billion. According to public broadcaster RTBF, which cited anonymous sources familiar with the money flows, the money may have gone to accounts controlled by Libyan militia groups that have been accused of human rights abuses. 

Back in 2011, as NATO bombs were falling over Tripoli, the United Nations voted to sanction Libya and freeze all assets belonging to the Gaddafi regime that were being held abroad. As Politico explained, the regime had spread its capital across Europe and North America, investing in companies as diverse as the Italian bank UniCredit to the British publisher Pearson. But Brussels-based Euroclear, which had custody of four of the regime-linked accounts, chose not to halt the interest payments flowing out of those accounts. That’s because in the EU, where national governments were charged with enforcing the sanctions, it was decided that only the assets themselves would be frozen, not the interest payments stemming from those assets.

Gad

Instead, capital continued to flow from these assets into accounts controlled by the Libyan Investment Authority, a nebulous quasi-state affiliated organization that controlled the seized assets when Gaddafi was still in power. These interest payments stemmed from stock dividends, bond coupon payments and other sources of revenue. So far, Belgian authorities have denied any responsibility for allowing the loophole in the sanctions regime. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders told reporters on Tuesday that he wasn’t involved in the decision to unblock interest on deposits.

“This [decision to unblock funds] is the responsibility of the Finance Ministry. I have not headed it since December 6, 2011, and have not made any decisions on this matter,” Reynders said. Instead, he pointed the finger at former Finance Minister Steven Vanackere, whom he said was in charge when the ministry granted permission to unfreeze the interest payments.

Meanwhile, the UN is also investigating the disappearance of billions of dollars that are believed to have been embezzled from the Gaddafi accounts, according to Belgian MP Georges Gilkinet.

“UN documents confirm that Belgium failed to comply with a UN resolution on freezing Libyan assets,” Gilkinet told RTBF, adding that he had only received fragmentary information from Belgian authorities. The politician said it is necessary “to clarify the situation, which may lead to a big scandal, because hundreds of millions of euros were sent to unknown individuals in Libya.”

As Politico Europe exposed in an investigation published back in February, interest payments from frozen accounts linked to Gaddafi had been flowing to bank accounts in Bahrain and Luxembourg in recent years, in apparent contravention of an EU order stipulating that the former Libyan dictator’s wealth was to be held in trust for the Libyan people to access once the country, still riven by conflict years after then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped toppled Gaddafi’s regime by pushing for a NATO-led intervention that helped rebels topple his regime.

Gad

Since then, Libya has fractured into separate fiefdoms ruled by competing warlords. A UN-recognized government still rules in Tripoli, while a rival administration has seized power in the eastern port of Tobruk, across the country, Islamist insurgencies also contribute to the instability.

While Gaddafi’s wealth is meant to be held in trust for the Libyan people until the war-shattered country stabilizes, interest payments flowed from frozen accounts in Brussels to bank accounts in Luxembourg and Bahrain over recent years.

The LIA’s finances remain murky, and the only aspect of this situation that is clear is that the interest payments are going to someone. But the individual or individuals who ultimately control the disparate LIA accounts remain a mystery. Though we’d be willing to wager that, whatever the money is being used for, it has nothing to do with the welfare of the Libyan people.

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“A Clever Technology Looking For A Home” – Bitcoin Is 10 Years Old Today

Via DataTrekResearch.com,

Ten years ago today (October 31st) someone going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper titled “Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System”. 

The system he or she outlined went live a few months later, on January 3rd 2009. The basic idea was simplicity itself: create a monetary system that doesn’t require a trusted third party intermediary like a bank. Technology – common software running on thousands of unrelated computers around the world – alone would power the public’s trust.

In the last 10 years, bitcoin has been through multiple booms and busts but it is still with us. And since anniversaries are times to look both at the past, present and future, we have a list of 7 points that do just that.

#1. Bitcoin’s current market cap is $110 billion, and the crypto currency ecosystem it spawned is worth $203 billion. For reference:

  • Bitcoin is worth more than much older entities like Goldman Sachs ($83 billion, founded in 1869) or Morgan Stanley ($78 billion, founded in 1935).
  • Its market cap is still just 9% of all the $100 bills in circulation ($1,252 billion) or 17% of all 100 – 500 euro notes outstanding.

#2. Bitcoin’s rapid price increase in 2016-2017 created a whole industry of other crypto currencies, and there are now just over 2,000 products listed on industry database Coinmarketcap, trading in 15,000 markets around the world. Thirteen other crypto currencies have market caps over $1 billion. All that said, bitcoin remains the industry’s gorilla with 54% of total market value.

#3. Bitcoin’s appeal is global, with top Google search traffic over the last year coming from South Africa, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Australia and Ghana. No surprise, but current global search trends are a shadow of their late December peaks, down 92% and still heading lower.

Bitcoin’s utility in countries where the banking system or even government are less than stable is something that crypto currencies’ first-world critics usually miss. They tend to assume that everyone has ready access to a stable local currency guided by a responsible central bank with legal protections against the arbitrary seizure of personal property. Spoiler alert: they don’t.

#4. There are 29.7 million bitcoin wallets in existence, a tiny fraction of the estimated 2.5 billion smartphone users in the world. That’s the most important statistic to understand both the opportunity and problem with crypto currencies just now. Mobile payments are the future – that’s easy enough to see –and bitcoin is mobile-ready. But right now virtually all global mobile money transfers hook up to the traditional banking system. For bitcoin and other cryptos to gain real traction, they need to offer great convenience/utility than dollar, euro, or yen-based payments.

#5. Bitcoin and cryptos generally are deep in a technological “winter” at the moment. After the boom/bust cycle of 2017-2018, that is natural enough. The current setup is much like US tech stocks in 2000-2005, which took half a decade to stabilize after the dot com bubble burst. Yes, Amazon traded for $10 back then, but so did a lot of other busted dot coms that ended up going to zero. Same goes for many of the 2,000 cryptos just now.

#6. While hard to quantify, everyone we know in the crypto space agrees there is a lot of intellectual horsepower at work trying to find the “next big thing” in the space. Blockchain technology – the decentralized underpinnings of bitcoin – is getting traction at big banks like JP Morgan in proprietary software development. But finding the right consumer use cases with a crypto currency and growing that business has proved elusive.

#7. Looking out over the next 10 years for bitcoin and crypto currencies, we see the following:

  • Like the 2000 – 2005 experience for US Tech stocks, many of the current class of cryptos will disappear.
  • The killer app in crypto has yet to be developed, but it will come and likely target emerging markets. It will build in volatility caps and offer some sort of interest-like component to stabilize day-to-day prices.
  • Bitcoin will rally again, likely during the next global recession. Remember when it started: in the teeth of the last global financial crisis. While the US banking system is sounder than in 2008, the jury is out on the rest of the world. In a severe economic downturn, bitcoin should do well again.

Bottom line: Bitcoin starts its second decade in a similar position to 10 years ago – a clever technology looking for a home.

While it has now well and truly entered the mainstream consciousness, there are still concerns that it has longevity, and could ultimately fail. Even Wences Casares, widely known as bitcoin’s “Patient Zero” for his role in spurring interest in crypto in Silicon Valley, expressed worries about its future.

“It may work, it might not work,” he told Bloomberg on Monday. “We are in the equivalent of 1992 for the internet.”

While we don’t yet think it is a “buy” based on Google Trend and wallet growth analysis, it is still worth watching.

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San Diego Police Creepily Forced Strippers to Pose for Photos. Now the City’s Paying $1.5 Million.

Strip showThe City of San Diego will pay a pack of strippers nearly $1.5 million for behavior sleazier that what you’d typically see at a club.

San Diego has an ordinance to license strippers, requiring them to get identification cards to show who they are. Then police got creepy. In 2013 and 2014, police came to two clubs, Cheetah’s Gentleman’s Club and Expose, detained strippers for more than an hour, and subjected them to bizarre inspections and lined them up to take their photographs, all using this ordinance as a justification. The women claim the police made demeaning comments to them and threatened to arrest them if they tried to leave.

Back then, police said they were taking these photos to document the women’s tattoos to track them—much like they do with gang members—because they change their appearances. Seventeen women saw this as a violation of their constitutional rights and sued.

In March, the women got a partial victory when a federal judge ruled that San Diego’s ordinance violated their First Amendment rights. The judge ruled that the ordinance didn’t have any provisions that prevented the police department from using it to harass the women or the clubs to discourage them from allowing or participating in strip shows without any legal cause. Therefore the ordinance violated the businesses’ and the women’s rights to free expression.

Unfortunately the judge turned aside—for now, anyway—a claim that the ordinance also violated the strippers’ Fourth Amendment rights protecting them from warrantless searches. The judge determined that the strippers all agree to “reasonable searches” when they get their license to be strippers. Given that it’s mandatory to get a license, he’s essentially saying that the city has the power to diminish their Fourth Amendment rights to some degree if they want to legally work. But he did say that the searches have to be reasonable, inviting the strippers’ lawyers to introduce arguments that they were not reasonable or consensual before issuing a ruling. So there’s still a possibility that the judge may further determine that there were Fourth Amendment violations as well.

The City of San Diego had been trying to the case dismissed and failing. So Tuesday, San Diego’s City Council approved two financial settlements–$110,000 to one dancer and $1.4 million to be split among 16 other dancers.

The city is also reviewing the ordinance for potential fixes to make it constitutional. Here’s a suggestion: The “licensing” process should consist of a simple check to make sure they are of legal age. Then leave them alone.

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Saudi Coup “Imminent” As Crown Prince’s Uncle Arrives To Oust “Toxic” MbS

The youngest brother of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has returned from self-imposed exile to “challenge” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) “or find someone who can,” reports the Middle East Eye.

Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz

Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz is reportedly hoping to oust his 33-year-old nephew in the wake of an allegedly state-sanctioned murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. MbS has virtual control over Saudi Arabia after a June 2017 shakeup in which King Salman removed Muhammad bin Nayef as heir apparent. 

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman

The septuagenarian prince, an open critic of bin Salman (MBS), has travelled with security guarantees given by US and UK officials.

“He and others in the family have realised that MBS has become toxic,” a Saudi source close to Prince Ahmad told Middle East Eye.

“The prince wants to play a role to make these changes, which means either he himself will play a major role in any new arrangement or to help to choose an alternative to MBS.” –Middle East Eye

Prince Ahmad has reportedly been meeting with other members of the Saudi royal family living outside the kingdom, along with “figures inside the kingdom” who have encouraged him to usurp his nephew. According to MEE, “there are three senior princes who support Prince Ahmad’s move,” who remain unnamed to protect their security. 

According to Saudi dissident Prince Khalid Bin Farhan Al Saud, he expects a coup to be orchestrated against King Salman and MbS, as reported by the Middle East Monitor, which reports that a coup is “imminent.” 

“The coming period will witness a coup against the king and the crown prince,” said Prince Khalid while commenting on the Khashoggi murder. 

Khashoggi, a 59-year-old Washington Post journalist who had criticized the Crown Prince, was murdered on October 2 after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain paperwork ahead of his upcoming wedding. His body has not been found, but is believed to have been dismembered after he was reportedly choked to death. 

Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, 76, has been living in the UK for several years after serving as Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister of interior between 1975 – 2012, and briefly as minister of interior in 2012. Ahmed was seen as a potential candidate to succeed King Salman in the early 2000’s, however he was sidelined in March 2014 amid one of several shakeups within the House of Saud. 

On November 4, 2017 bin Salman began arresting as many as 500 Saudi princes, government ministers and businessmen – detaining them in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. Private jets were grounded to prevent people from fleeing, while over 2,000 domestic bank accounts and other assets were frozen as the government targeted up to $800 billion in wealth that was reportedly “linked to corruption.” 

Prince Ahmad was protected from the purge, as MbS was unable to touch any sons of King Abdulaziz, founder of the modern Saudi state. 

Standoff with Turkey

As MEE notes, Prince Ahmad’s return comes amid a tense standoff between Saudi Arabia and Turkey following the Khashoggi murder. Turkish authorities have demanded to know what happened to the journalist’s body and have requested audio of the execuiton rumored to exist. 

In a thinly veiled attack on the crown prince, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday accused the Saudis of protecting the person responsible for the murder.

“A game to save somebody lies beneath this,” Erdogan told reporters following a speech in parliament on Tuesday. “We won’t leave Khashoggi’s murder behind.”

The Turkish president, who outlined some of the investigation into Khashoggi’s murder in an address last week, has promised to reveal more details about the killing but has so far refrained from doing so. –Middle East Eye

Despite Saudi chief prosecutor Saud al-Mojeb and Istanbul’s chief prosecutor Ifran Fidan meeting twice over the last several days, no progress has been reported. 

Saud al-Mojeb

The Saudis, meanwhile, continue to refuse Turkish investigators access to a well located at the home of the consul-general which lies 500 meters from the consulate. 

So far 18 suspects have been arrested in the murder, 15 of whom were members of a death squad reportedly sent to kill Khashoggi. MbS, meanwhile, has denied any knowledge of the operation which reportedly included five members of his personal security detail – three of whom have accompanied the Crown Prince on high-profile trips to Washington, London and Paris. 

Prince Ahmad’s opposition to MbS

The exiled prince has challenged his nephew at least three times, according to MEE. 

First, in the summer of 2017, when the king’s brother was one of three members of the Allegiance Council, a body of senior royals tasked with choosing the succession, to oppose bin Salman’s appointment as crown prince.

Prince Ahmed pointedly did not give an oath of allegiance to his nephew when he was made King Salman’s heir.

Second, when Prince Ahmad and King Salman’s brother, Abdelrahman bin Abdulaziz, died last year. Only two pictures were hung at the reception given by Prince Ahmad, that of King Abdulaziz and the current monarch. The crown prince’s portrait was notably missing.

Third, last month, when Prince Ahmad approached Yemeni and Bahraini protesters outside his London home who were calling the al-Sauds a criminal family.

Ahmad told the hecklers that the Saudi royal family as a whole is not responsible for the war in Yemen – just the king and crown prince. 

“They are responsible for crimes in Yemen. Tell Mohammed bin Salman to stop the war,” Ahmad told them in Arabic. 

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Here’s What You Need to Know to Argue in the Latest Immigration Debate

|||UESLEI MARCELINO/REUTERS/NewscomWith a migrant caravan making its way to the U.S.–Mexico border, Americans are once again split over an immigration debate and President Trump’s administration. A group of Central Americans began a march from Honduras to the United States in an effort to seek asylum. Though it is not the first of its kind, the migrant caravan has become a talking point just ahead of the midterm elections. Trump ordered over 5,000 armed troops to the southern border in response, referring to the migrant caravan as “invaders.” In a second display of his hardline immigration stance, Trump also announced that he wanted to get rid of birthright citizenship via executive order.

As pundits and Facebook users choose sides over the migrant caravan and the president’s actions, Reason has created a guide for the various terms and concepts appearing in the latest polarizing discussion:

The migrant caravan

The term “migrant caravan” is used to identify the group of people attempting to reach the southern border. According to the BBC, the journey began in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with 160 people gathering at a bus station on October 12. While making its way through Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, the group has since swelled to an estimated 7,000 people. Some who started the trip have since turned back or settled in Mexico. The group faces a number of trials, including lack of resources, run-ins with cartels, and clashes with various authorities.

Though this group is receiving a significant amount of attention, it’s not the first of its kind. Another migrant caravan was organized by Pueblo Sin Fronteras, an immigration advocacy group, earlier in the year. Reports at the time explained that migrants traveled in large groups for safety and to bring attention to the dangers encountered on their trek. The advocacy group also provided information about seeking asylum and other legal protection in the U.S. and Mexico.

In both cases, migrants expressed a desire to find a peaceful and prosperous life away from violence and corruption. During a cringeworthy attempt to bust the migrant caravan, a Fox News reporter learned from a woman in the group that she left Honduras in search of work “because the criminals [in Honduras] will always get your money.” Members in the earlier migrant caravan indicated that they were leaving Honduras to escape the political upheaval caused by the “the re-election of U.S.-backed president, Juan Orlando Hernández in an intensely disputed election.”

Asylum seekers vs. invaders

There are two major narratives about the migrant caravan.

According to immigration advocates, those in the migrant caravan are hoping to apply for asylum status. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) defines asylum seekers as those who either suffer from or fear persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. USCIS further qualifies that asylum seekers must be physically present in the U.S. or a port of entry and apply within one year of arrival. An application can also include spouses and children.

Conversely, hardliners believe the migrant caravan is actually a vehicle for much more nefarious characters. Several conservative sites, pundits, and even the president quickly jumped on a claim that Guatemala detained nearly 100 people in the caravan with ties to ISIS. The claim originated from Guatemalan paper Prensa Libre that got it from Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales. Though further details were not provided, Guatemalan Secretary of Strategic Intelligence Mario Duarte cited the 2016 detention of Syrian refugees who were in possession of falsified documents.

Despite the claim, even the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which generally opposes illegal immigration, said that a healthy dose of skepticism about supposed ISIS connections was needed. Others have outright criticized the attempt to villainize the migrant caravan. Fox News’ Shep Smith chalked up the tough rhetoric to a cheap talking point.

Birthright citizenship

The president’s immigration stances are predictably tough. Still, news that he recently expressed a desire to end birthright citizenship with an executive order managed to stun many.

Birthright citizenship is established in the 14th Amendment, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” While immigration advocates have argued that “all persons” truly means all people, hardliners maintain that the clause was not intended to extend beyond the children of U.S.-born citizens.

One reason they offer is that at the time the amendment was passed, no laws restricting immigration existed. So its authors could not have possibly meant to extend the privileges of citizenship to those who violated the law to those in the country illegally. But Reason’s Shikha Dalmia cautioned against this line of thinking, noting that if the failure to forsee future events is sufficient grounds for amending the Constitution, then no freedom would be safe. After all, when the First Amendment was passed, the internet didn’t exist. Or cop-killing bullets at the time of the Second Amendment.

Executive order vs. the amendment process

When the president expressed a desire to rescind the 14th Amendment, he indicated that he was able to do so with an executive order. But that is a dubious proposition, to say the least. Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin notes that although there is a broad consensus among law scholars that the amendment ensures citizenship to children of immigrants born in the United States, there are a few dissenters. However, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone defending the claim that citizenship can be denied by executive order. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress, not the executive, the right to establish naturalization rules. A federal statute, 8 U.S.C. Section 1401, extends birthright citizenship to any “person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Hence, at the very least, Congress would have to scrap citizenship for children of immigrants. The president can’t unilaterally do so.

However, if the courts determine that citizenship rights for the children of immigrants are guaranteed not just by statute but by the 14th Amendment as well, as Somin and others claim is the case, then Trump will have to follow the process detailed in Article V to amend the Constitution. This will require convincing two-thirds of both chambers, as was the case when Congress passed the 21st Amendment to repeal the Prohibition Amendment.

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5-Year-Old Has Meth Poisoning After Trick-or-Treating. It Probably Wasn’t the Halloween Candy.

BraylenFive-year-old Braylen Carwell of Galion, Ohio, tested positive for meth after he returned from trick-or-treating. (Galion schedules the Halloween tradition on the last Sunday in October from 2 to 4 p.m.)

This is a strange case indeed. The boy says the only thing he put in his mouth from his stash of acquired Halloween goods was a pair of novelty teeth. Was there meth on the teeth? Did he eat a piece of candy he forgot or didn’t mention, and that contained meth? Or did he ingest the meth from someplace else?

What we do know is that the boy told WBNS, “I was putting my socks on and then I started to shiver. And then I couldn’t move my arm or my fingers. Until I got to the doctor’s and I was sitting for a little bit, and then I could move my hand but not my fingers.”

According to The Washington Post:

His father, Cambray Carwell, told investigating officers that he had taken his children trick-or-treating on the city’s west side, according to a police report. When they got home, Carwell told police, the children removed their costumes — and Braylen “fell over having a seizure of some sort.”

Braylen had eaten only a couple of pieces of candy, his father said, but had placed fake vampire teeth into his mouth before he started shaking.

Carwell said he threw the candy into the trash, and police drove to the father’s house to book the child’s Halloween haul into evidence. Carwell and Pence did not immediately return calls from The Washington Post seeking comment.

No one has been arrested in the drugging, and investigators have not identified a suspect, Galion Police Chief Brian Saterfield told The Post.

And then there’s this: The parents admit they are recovering drug addicts, according to WBNS.

“I’m not covering up the truth,” mom Julia Pence told WBNS on Monday. “I’m just speaking the truth of what happened to my son yesterday. Nobody in my family or [Braylen’s] dad’s family would drug my children.”

There are two recorded cases of children dying from allegedly poisoned Halloween candy. The first instance involved a boy in Texas whose dad was $100,000 in debt and had just taken out an insurance policy on him. (Dad was convicted of the murder and executed in 1984.) The other involved a boy who obtained some of his uncle’s heroin, and the family decided to assign blame elsewhere. They went so far as to sprinkle some heroin on his candy.

As for Braylen, I don’t want to blame his parents and I am thrilled that they are in recovery. A case like this makes news because it is so extraordinarily rare—indeed, unheard of—for a child to get drugged or poisoned Halloween candy from a stranger. Even if someone, somehow, did give Braylen some meth, this does not mean all parents should be on the alert for poisoned treats, any more than drivers along the Long Island Expressway have to worry about getting hit by a frozen turkey, as one woman did years ago. Exceedingly rare cases are, well, exceedingly rare and shouldn’t influence our daily life decisions.

The boy’s mom warned other parents, “It’s your duty to protect your children from everything. You can’t protect them from everything. You just have to be aware and do the best that you can.”

But one thing you don’t have to protect them from is vampire teeth steeped in meth.

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