Australia’s Department of Home Affairs says it wants to use facial recognition technology to limit children’s access to online pornography. Those who want to watch porn would have their faces scanned and matched to the photos on their official IDs to show they are adults. Critics say this would allow the government to know every porn site someone goes to. In fact, the Home Affairs office would like to use facial recognition for a number of purposes. But so far, Parliament hasn’t approved the creation of the biometric database needed for widespread use of facial recognition technology.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2pSsGBU
via IFTTT
Australia’s Department of Home Affairs says it wants to use facial recognition technology to limit children’s access to online pornography. Those who want to watch porn would have their faces scanned and matched to the photos on their official IDs to show they are adults. Critics say this would allow the government to know every porn site someone goes to. In fact, the Home Affairs office would like to use facial recognition for a number of purposes. But so far, Parliament hasn’t approved the creation of the biometric database needed for widespread use of facial recognition technology.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2pSsGBU
via IFTTT
Eurasia has most of the world’s wealth, resources, and population — yet there is very low economic connectivity. A Sino-Russian partnership can collectively create a gravitational pull that allows them to capture the geoeconomic levers of power by creating an alternative to the Western-centric model. This entails developing new global value chains that captures the high-value activities in strategic industries and energy markets, developing new transportation corridors through Eurasia and the Arctic, and constructing new financial instruments such as development banks, trade/reserve currencies, technical standards, and trade regimes. Russia’s comparative advantage derives from its geographical expanse by developing an East-West corridor connecting Northeast Asia with Europe, and a North-South Corridor that links India, Iran and Russia. Moscow sees itself as a stabilising factor in Eurasia by bringing together the entire continent with economic connectivity to ensure that it becomes multipolar and no one state or region can dominate.
The EU stands to lose much from Russia’s Greater Eurasia ambitions. Russia’s original Greater Europe project, which they EU rejected, would have endowed the EU with a powerful ally to collectively project influence deep into the Eurasian continent. In contrast, Russia’s new Greater Eurasia initiative will marginalise the EU’s role across Eurasia as socio-economic and political decisions will be made by BRICS, the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the Belt and Road Initiative. The EU is faced with a dilemma as it has strong economic incentives to cooperate with the development taking place in Greater Eurasia, yet this would contribute to the shift away from the Western-centric geoeconomic infrastructure. Glenn Diesen. The Global Resurgence of Economic Nationalism.
Halford Mackinder said we don’t think of Asia and Europe as a single continent because sailors couldn’t voyage around it. Today the Northeast Passage, NEP, along Russia’s northern coast, links the Pacific and Atlantic coasts while a network of pipelines and air, rail, road and fiber routes are knitting Mackinder’s World Island into ‘Eurasia’ despite Kissinger’s warning, “Domination by a single power of either of Eurasia’s two principal spheres–Europe or Asia–remains a good definition of strategic danger for America. For such a grouping would have the capacity to outstrip America economically and, in the end, militarily.”
As the West pursues an increasingly dystopian future, Russia and China are knitting Mackinder’s World Island into a vast, increasingly prosperous community. Their vision is so seductive, their alliance so strong, their weapons so advanced and their pockets so deep that their momentum is almost unstoppable. Russia’s leaders–Putin, Lavrov, Nabiullina, Siluanov and Shoygu–is the best in the country’s history and, as President Trump observed, China’s matches it, “People say you don’t like China. No, I love them. But their leaders are much smarter than our leaders. It’s like taking the New England Patriots and Tom Brady and having them play your high school football team.” President Xi has visited Moscow more than any other capital city and as of August 2019, he and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had met thirty times and Xi gave Putin China’s first-ever friendship medal, calling him “my best, most intimate friend.” Here are Eurasia’s current trade, security, and cooperation blocs. After the June, 2019 Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Putin stressed that all of them should be integrated.
* * *
Colonial nations lost their political and economic freedom because imperial centers of capital needed to control resources crucial for their survival, wealth, and power. This is the real meaning of the terms ‘national security’ and ‘national interest.’ Powerful nations’ ‘national security’ is the control of an economic empire of subject states and the strategies through which this is carried out are ‘national security secrets.’ They practice the antithesis of what they preach. Their trumpeting of peace, freedom, justice, rights, democracy, and majority rule disguises those strategies for controlling other people and their resources be kept secret. The most pernicious is that multi-party democracy and a free press and must precede successful development. In fact, such a combination ends all hope of development. No nation has ever developed under multiparty democracy nor, as Lee Kwan Yew observed, with a free press,
The Philippines press enjoys all the freedoms of the US system but fails the people: a wildly partisan press helped Philippines politicians flood the marketplace of ideas with junk and confuse and befuddle the people so that they could not see what their vital interests were in a developing country. And, because vital issues like economic growth and equitable distribution were seldom discussed, they were never tackled and the democratic system malfunctioned. Look at Taiwan and South Korea: their free press runs rampant and corruption runs riot. The critic itself is corrupt yet the theory is, if you have a free press, corruption disappears. Now I’m telling you, that’s not true. Freedom of the press, freedom of news critics, must be subordinated to the overriding needs of the integrity of Singapore and to the primacy of purpose of an elected government.
Russia and China offer an alternative to the imperialist model: security without coercion, aid without conditions and, instead of the WTO’s agreements that prevent sustainable development, trade and development pacts to promote it.
The blocs in play are the European Union; The Eurasian Economic Union; The Shanghai Cooperative Organization; The Association of Southeast Asian Nations; The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership; The Belt and Road Initiative. Note that all but one of these are Russo-Chinese. Let’s look at them in more detail.
The European Union, occupying Eurasia’s Western peninsula, is tired of the status quo. President Macron said, “We are undoubtedly experiencing the end of Western hegemony over the world…Things change, and they have been deeply shaken by the mistakes of Westerners in certain crises, by the choices that have been made by Americans for several years..And then there is the emergence of new powers whose impact we have probably underestimated for a long time. China is at the forefront, but also the Russian strategy, which has, it must be said, been pursued more successfully in recent years…They think about our planet with a true logic, a true philosophy, an imagination that we’ve lost a little bit.” [Saker’s Translation]. Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England added, “The world’s reliance on the US dollar won’t hold’ and needs to be replaced by a new international monetary and financial system… It is worth considering how an SHC [synthetic hegemonic currency] in the IMF could support better global outcomes.”6 Germany is completing Nord Stream II and installing Huawei despite US threats, and Hungary, Greece, and Italy are turning east. One more downturn in the US economy (where manufacturing is already in recession) and the rest of the EU will follow. Turkey’s President Erdogan, on NATO’s Eastern flank, said he bought Russia’s S-400 so Turkey could safely withdraw from NATO: his country is already a dialog partner in the world’s largest security association, the SCO.
The Shanghai Cooperative Organization, SCO. (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, China, and Pakistan; with Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia and Belarus as observers and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey as dialog partners).
The SCO is the world’s largest security organization and counts four nuclear powers among its members. Its objectives are to (i) strengthen relations among member states; (ii) promote cooperation in political affairs, economics and trade, scientific-technical, cultural, and educational spheres and in energy, transportation, tourism, and environmental protection; (iv) safeguard regional peace, security, and stability; and (v) create a democratic, equitable international political and economic order. SCO members have completed an intergovernmental agreement facilitating international road transport and are finalizing one on rail transport. The Bishkek Declaration, adopted by SCO members, emphasizes the security guarantees of the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone Treaty, the ‘unacceptability of attempts to ensure one country’s security at the expense of other countries’ security,’ and condemns ‘the unilateral and unlimited buildup of missile defense systems by certain countries or groups of states.’ Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, speaking to Presidents Putin, Xi, Modi and Imran Khan, blasted the US as ‘a serious risk to stability in the region and the world” and offered preferential treatment for all fellow SCO nations, companies, and entrepreneurs to invest in Iran’s market. Xi responded that Beijing will keep developing ties with Tehran ‘no matter how the situation changes.’
ASEAN. Established in 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations–Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam–agreed to accelerate their region’s economic growth, social progress and cultural development through joint endeavors in the spirit of equality and partnership in order to strengthen the foundation for a prosperous and peaceful community and to promote regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law in the relationship among countries in the region and adherence to the principles of the United Nations Charter. Russia and China are strategic ASEAN partners but, though ASEAN had a much longer dialog partnerships with the Western countries like America and the EU, none of them proposed a free trade agreement for ASEAN. China did so in 1988 and then concluded the ASEAN-China FTA in record time with the result that total trade between ASEAN and China, $8 billion in 1991, grew to $600 billion in 2018 with a goal of $1 trillion by 2024.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand). The world’s largest trade bloc, the RCEP accounts for half the world’s economy and, in contrast to the WTO, is biased in favor of developing nations and excludes investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS)mechanisms that advantage private corporations over states.
The Belt and Road Initiative. Scheduled to launch on June 1, 2021, the BRI integrates four billion people in one-hundred thirty countries across Eurasia, Africa, Latin America and the South Pacific. BRI focuses on policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and people-to-people ties. It is building power plants in Pakistan, train lines in Hungary and ports from Africa to Greece, replacing Western institutions, refashioning the global economic order, forging new ties, creating new markets, deepening economic connections and strengthening diplomatic bonds. Iran is a key BRI node and Tehran sees it as the way to full integration into the Eurasian economic ecosystem. Cargo transiting from all over India via the International North-South Transport Corridor, INSTC, to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas reduces shipping costs to Europe by forty percent. The INSTC will soon merge with BRI’s global transport network.
The BRI’s Eurasian Land Bridge exemplifies its cooperative model. Added value production–like assembling component parts from different origins–can be conducted tax free in its border Free Trade Zones, where wages are one-fifth of China’s. This allows for the addition of lower cost labor, depending upon the location, to be factored into the overall production cost rather than being exposed to one salary band in just one country. Goods entering these FTZs are considered to be outside customs borders, so attract no customs duty or VAT, and companies operating within them are exempt from all taxes. The nodes: Huoergousi Export Processing Zone (China-Kazakhstan Border); Khorgos Eastern Gate Special Economic Zone (Kazakhstan); Aktau Special Economic Zone (Kazakhstan); Alat Free Trade Zone (Azerbaijan); Poti Free Industrial Zone (Georgia); Hualing-Kutaisi Free Industrial Zone (Georgia). Turkey’s East Anatolia Free Trade Zone is the most interesting, since Turkey’s Custom Union with the EU admits Turkish origin goods free of tax. Over 6,300 trains made the journey last year, one every ninety minutes. Trans-Eurasia transit time has fallen from three weeks to two, and should be ten days by 2024. Ultimately, Russia aims to connect China’s northern provinces with Eurasia via the
The Trans-Siberian and the Chinese Eastern Railway–with Chita in China and Khabarovsk in Russia, are already totally interconnected. Across the spectrum, Moscow aims at maximizing return on the crown jewels of Russia’s Far East; agriculture, water resources, minerals, lumber, oil and gas. Construction of liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants in Yamal vastly benefits China, Japan and South Korea. The same applies to gateway Vladivostok, Eurasia’s entry point for both South Korea and Japan, as well as Russia’s entry point to Northeast Asia. Kazakhstan shows how Greater Eurasia and BRI are complementary: Astana is a member of both the BRI and the EAEU.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
The Polar Silk Road sea route is five-thousand miles shorter than the Suez route that runs mostly in Russia’s coastal waters. In 2010 the first cargo ship sailed the entire route without icebreaker assistance and in 2017 the Christophe de Margerie became the first ever ice-breaking LNG carrier to transport LNG from the Yamal peninsula through the Bering Strait and south to Japan and China. Russia’s Sovcomflot and Novatek signed an agreement with China’s Cosco Shipping and the Silk Road Fund to establish a Maritime Arctic Transport joint venture to manage an ice-breaking tanker fleet in the transportation of LNG for current and planned Novatek projects including Yamal LNG, Arctic LNG 2 and others.
Pipelineistan. The IEA calculates that oil will remain the world’s dominant source of energy in 2040, accounting for one-fourth of global energy consumption. Russia accounts for fifteen percent of the world’s energy reserves and the Persian Gulf region for 65%. Russian and Chinese-built pipelines are distributing this energy wealth across the continent resurrecting the South Stream gas pipeline to supply Europe as an extension of TurkStream after the Trump administration also furiously opposed the Nord Stream 2. Russian gas will start flowing to Turkey via TurkStream this year and Russia and Bulgaria have begun work on the Balkan Stream Pipeline to carry gas to the southern EU.
The Global Electric Interconnect. Beijing launched GEIDCO in 2016, an ultra-high voltage grid that will transmit clean energy around the globe continually, following the sun. GEIDCO has seven regional offices, forty global offices, six-hundred regional and national members and has invested $1.6 trillion in eighty generation and transmission projects across Eurasia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and North America.
The Digital Silk Road. The DSR is strengthening internet infrastructure, deepening space cooperation, developing common technology standards, and improving the efficiency of policing systems among Belt and Road countries. It gathers space-based remote sensing data for multiple projects along the BRI and China is promoting BeiDou-2, its global satellite navigation system as an alternative to America’s GPS. Pakistan, Laos, Brunei, and Thailand have already adopted BeiDou. Construction has begun on the Pakistan East Africa Cable Express, connecting Pakistan to Kenya and Djibouti. In 2012, under one percent of Myanmar’s population had broadband access but the country expects to launch 5G broadband service by 2025, leapfrogging even Singapore.
Russia and China’s Electronic Funds Silk Road will Replace the US-dominated SWIFT network.
The Silk Road International Bank AIIB guarantees a trillion dollars annually in long-term, low interest loans for regional infrastructure, poverty reduction, growth and climate change mitigation and allows Eurasia’s four billion savers to mobilize local savings that previously had few safe or creative outlets. Nothing could be more sensible for the new Pipelineistan deal than to have it settled in yuan. Beijing would pay Gazprom in that currency (convertible into rubles); Gazprom would accumulate the yuan; and Russia would then buy myriad made-in-China goods and services in yuan convertible into rubles. The merger of Russia’s Mir payment system and China’s Union Pay appears inevitable because their bilateral trade is growing by an astonishing half a billion dollars a month and Beijing’s fully convertible digital yuan may debut as soon as this year, adding to the fun.
Invulnerability to attack. In the past eighteen months, Russia and China have demonstrated their ability to defend themselves against any attack and, in turn, to destroy every city in the United States inside forty-five minutes. They now operate from a position of strength, particularly in Eurasia.
HEGEMONY AND HUMANITARIAN LEADERSHIP.
According to Chinese philosopher Xunzi, there were three types of leadership: humane authority, hegemony and tyranny. Humane authority begins by creating a desirable model at home that inspires people abroad. Xunzi, proposed that, though hegemons know how to win wars, “The ruler who makes his own state act correctly will attain international primacy.” The domestic determines the international and, since humane authority based on morality rather than power, is superior to hegemony it is more important to win over people than territory. States wishing to exercise humane authority must be the first to respect the norms they advocate and leaders of high ethical reputation and great administrative ability will attract other states. “To be compassionate in great matters and overlook the small makes one fit to become lord of the covenants. Loving friends, being friendly with the great, rewarding your allies and punishing those who oppose you, the lord of the covenants has a definite duty and his moral standing should match it.” Presiding over the meetings of other states grants international recognition of humane authority. Two centuries later, Confucius summarized Xunzi thus, “Moral superiors and inferiors relate to each other like wind and grass: grass must bend when the wind blows over it”.
A warming, moral wind is blowing across Eurasia and the pieces are coming together.
Erdogan: Baghdadi’s Wife Captured Along With Sister, “We Didn’t Make A Fuss” Like US
A day following Turkey’s announced capture of the sister of slain ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan indicated for the first time that Turkish forces have also captured one of the wives of Baghdadi.
Erdogan announced in a speech Wednesday, which comes over a week since the US special forces raid that killed Baghdadi in a hideout just miles from the Syria-Turkey border, “We captured his wife”.
Oddly, however, in a reflection of increased Turkish frustration at international criticism over both the ongoing ‘Operation Peace Spring’ and over accusations that Ankara and ISIS fighters are in cahoots, Erdogan framed the alleged high level captures by Turkey in a way that sought to “prove” critics wrong.
“The United States said Baghdadi killed himself in a tunnel. They started a communication campaign about this,” declared Erdogan in the speech at Ankara University.
“But I am announcing it here for the first time: We captured his wife and didn’t make a fuss like them. Similarly, we also captured his sister and brother-in-law in Syria,” Erdogan said provocatively.
Baghdadi had four wives, but Erdogan didn’t give her name or any other details, other than to claim Turkey wouldn’t use it for PR purposes, as Erdogan suggested the White House did.
On Tuesday Turkish officials announced that the 65-year old sister of Baghdadi, Rasmiya Awad, was taken alive in an operation described as offering “an intelligence gold mine”. Thus far the only “proof” Ankara authorities have offered is to show her ID card to media outlets, but Washington officials have yet to confirm Turkey’s latest claims, including the alleged apprehension of Baghdadi’s wife.
Ankara announced Baghdadi’s sister (pictured above) was being interrogated after she was apprehended in Turkish-controlled Syrian territory near the border early this week.
Turkey has appeared ultra-sensitive of late to western criticism of its handling of the Syria war, with a presidential spokesman lashing out Tuesday saying, “Much dark propaganda against Turkey has been circulating to raise doubts about our resolve against Daesh,” and added, “Our strong counter-terrorism cooperation with like-minded partners can never be questioned.”
After the Turkish offensive into Syria, European governments are confronted again with the thorny problem of what to do with the “foreign fighters“.
Foreign fighters are Muslim extremists who left their countries of residence to join ISIS and fight against Western civilization and values. Most of them are men, but many women joined them to support the Caliphate. Many of these women later became pregnant with the children of ISIS terrorists.
Since the fall of Mosul and Raqqa, most of the surviving fighters are currently being detained in Iraqi or Kurdish jails. Some are also in detention in northern Syria, a territory whose future is uncertain. Most women (and their children) live in refugee camps, often in miserable conditions.
Up to now, Europeans governments have remained reluctant to bring their nationals back, and have merely organized the repatriation of women and children on a case-by-case basis. There is currently, however, growing pressure to bring all of them, jailed or not, back to Europe.
In Belgium, a group of 300 academics launched a petition in late October, asking for the “urgent return of the Belgians from Syria”. In an op-ed published in a major Belgian daily, De Standaard, two senior fellows of Belgium’s Royal Institute for International Relations advocated that the repatriation of Belgian fighters is “the right choice”. The European Council of Foreign Affairs supported a similar idea in its report “Beyond Good and Evil: Why Europe should bring foreign fighters home?” Even Frederic van Leeuw, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor (in charge of fighting terrorism) pleaded for organizing the repatriation of jailed terrorists and holding their trials in Belgium.
Their arguments may vary but are, in substance, that as Iraqi (or Syrian) courts and prisons do not meet international standards, the return of ISIS supporters to Europe would be the best way to ensure they remain under control and that they can go through programs of de-radicalization and become moderate Muslims. Women are often portrayed as innocent victims and children at risk of radicalization if they remain in the region’s camps.
A common pattern of these calls for repatriation is that they never mention the immense suffering imposed on Europe, the Middle East, and the world by the Islamic State.
All those appeals fail to address the main issue.
By joining ISIS, these men and women made a choice. They decided to leave behind their European citizenship and join a “state,” the fundamental values of which are totally incompatible with those of Western societies. These men and women decided to join a terrorist group whose objective was mercilessly to murder people of their home countries, as they did in Nice, Berlin, Brussels, Paris and many others places; a group that burned alive in a cage a captured Jordanian fighter pilot and raped hundreds of Yazidi women, to mention just some of their atrocities. At the time they joined ISIS, they knew what they were doing and could not ignore the nature and the acts of this terrorist group. They should be stripped of their Western nationalities because they themselves renounced them by joining a terror organization.
Almost all the persons concerned are first — and more often, second or third — generation immigrants to the West. In most instances, they also retain the nationality of the country their families hailed from: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia or Pakistan. So, by losing their Western nationalities, they would not become stateless.
From a legal point of view, it is a principle of international law that crimes committed in a country should be tried in the country where these crimes were committed. There is no reason to show mercy to people who tried to kill their fellow citizens and destroy their societies. Women and their children born in Iraq or Syria should also not be allowed to return to Europe. Their other countries of citizenship are free to take them back, but there is neither any duty nor responsibility for European governments to do so.
Advocates for repatriation usually raise the “moral argument”. Children born in the Caliphate, they say, are not responsible for the crimes of their parents and should be taken care of. That is certainly true. But why would they deserve better treatment than other children born in Iraq or Syria? What about the children of Yazidi women raped by ISIS fighters? What about the Syrian, Kurdish and Iraqi orphans whose parents were murdered by ISIS? Don’t these mothers and children deserve our help and support more than the women who were already living in Europe and, now, pretend to have “made a mistake” by joining ISIS? A bloody mistake, indeed: they are, at the very minimum, accomplices in the crimes and atrocities committed by ISIS. As the British commentator Piers Morgan wrote:
“These are the women who leave their homes, families, friends and countries to go and marry the world’s worst terrorists. They have sex with them, they breed with them, they cook for them, they clean for them, they love them and they worship them. And while they’re doing all this, their husbands are busy raping, torturing, stoning, beheading and murdering people.”
This debate about repatriation is another example of how confused the West has become when trying to apply its moral principles. The real victims here are the people who were murdered, wounded, raped, tortured or displaced by ISIS. Their children, if still alive, will have to live with the consequences of ISIS terror. In Iraq alone, after the fall of the Caliphate, more than 200 ISIS mass graves were discovered. ISIS victims worldwide probably number in the millions.
If European governments have to choose between supporting a Yazidi rape survivor and her unwanted child or a woman who willingly left Europe to spit in the face of Western societies and the values of her country of origin to join ISIS, they should choose the former. Sorry, do-gooders. These deserters should not be allowed back to Europe.
The Eighth Circuit has just published its decision in Rodgers v. Bryant, a case that concerns, among other things, the scope of an injunction prohibiting the enforcement of a state law. Two plaintiffs sued to prohibit the enforcement of an Arkansas anti-loitering statute; they did not bring a class action. The district court nevertheless granted a preliminary injunction that prohibited the state from enforcing the statute against anyone, including non-parties. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the injunction 2-1, and the dissent by Judge Stras is the most detailed and learned decision yet on the history of equity and the scope of injunctions (on either side of this debate that has been running since 2016). The dissenting opinion should be required reading for anyone interested in national or universal injunctions.
I want to highlight two arguments in particular. First, Judge Stras shows that equity would give injunctions to protect parties or those represented by parties, and that the latter category of representative suits is now carried on by the class action. It is exclusively carried on by the class action, as Judge Stras demonstrates from the continuity in the equity rules and the FRCP, the text of Rule 23, and the Supreme Court’s rejection of the idea that there are off-FRCP common law forms of class action (in the context of virtual representation). This analysis is on pp. 17-21, and it shows a sound grasp of equity’s history and doctrine.
Second, Judge Stras has a footnote on Califano, a Supreme Court decision that has been widely cited and quoted in opinions embracing the national injunction. Judge Stras shows how little support Califano offers for an injunction that protects non-parties. This is footnote 10 on p. 24.
The responses in the opinion of the panel majority (by Judge Melloy, joined by Judge Lavenski Smith) are several. They argue that broad injunctions have been given in recent years (correct), and suggest that it would be unthinkable that the plaintiffs would need to bring a class action to get relief protecting everyone (incorrect). And they rely on Califano and Ashcroft v. ACLU. The judges in the majority do not engage with the dissent on Grupo Mexicano (though they could have argued from Justice Scalia’s opinion in that case that there is some room for development and analogy in the law of equity). Both the majority and the dissent are careful to note that the policy arguments are different for national injunctions and their state counterparts (and both cite on this point the excellent work of Amanda Frost).
Whether this case will go to the Supreme Court is unclear. But it is clear that the case, and especially the dissenting opinion, will be widely read and cited.
SB
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Q53uDh
via IFTTT
The Eighth Circuit has just published its decision in Rodgers v. Bryant, a case that concerns, among other things, the scope of an injunction prohibiting the enforcement of a state law. Two plaintiffs sued to prohibit the enforcement of an Arkansas anti-loitering statute; they did not bring a class action. The district court nevertheless granted a preliminary injunction that prohibited the state from enforcing the statute against anyone, including non-parties. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the injunction 2-1, and the dissent by Judge Stras is the most detailed and learned decision yet on the history of equity and the scope of injunctions (on either side of this debate that has been running since 2016). The dissenting opinion should be required reading for anyone interested in national or universal injunctions.
I want to highlight two arguments in particular. First, Judge Stras shows that equity would give injunctions to protect parties or those represented by parties, and that the latter category of representative suits is now carried on by the class action. It is exclusively carried on by the class action, as Judge Stras demonstrates from the continuity in the equity rules and the FRCP, the text of Rule 23, and the Supreme Court’s rejection of the idea that there are off-FRCP common law forms of class action (in the context of virtual representation). This analysis is on pp. 17-21, and it shows a sound grasp of equity’s history and doctrine.
Second, Judge Stras has a footnote on Califano, a Supreme Court decision that has been widely cited and quoted in opinions embracing the national injunction. Judge Stras shows how little support Califano offers for an injunction that protects non-parties. This is footnote 10 on p. 24.
The responses in the opinion of the panel majority (by Judge Melloy, joined by Judge Lavenski Smith) are several. They argue that broad injunctions have been given in recent years (correct), and suggest that it would be unthinkable that the plaintiffs would need to bring a class action to get relief protecting everyone (incorrect). And they rely on Califano and Ashcroft v. ACLU. The judges in the majority do not engage with the dissent on Grupo Mexicano (though they could have argued from Justice Scalia’s opinion in that case that there is some room for development and analogy in the law of equity). Both the majority and the dissent are careful to note that the policy arguments are different for national injunctions and their state counterparts (and both cite on this point the excellent work of Amanda Frost).
Whether this case will go to the Supreme Court is unclear. But it is clear that the case, and especially the dissenting opinion, will be widely read and cited.
SB
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2Q53uDh
via IFTTT
Activism in the liberty movement often requires a painful examination of details. We look at political and economic trends, identify inconsistencies in the mainstream narrative, point out inevitable outcomes of disaster or attempts at collectivist power, and ask – “Who benefits?” Ultimately, the analysts and activists with any sense of observation come to the same conclusion: There is a contingent of financial elites embedded within the political world and the corporate world that have a specific ideology and malicious goals. They create most geopolitical and economic crisis events using puppets in government as well as influence in central banking. They then turn the consequences of these events to their advantage.
This group is identified by their intent as well as their associations. Their intent is utter dominance through globalism to the point that national borders are erased and all trade and governance flows through a single one-world edifice that they seek to control. As Richard N. Gardner, former deputy assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations under Kennedy and Johnson, and a member of the Trilateral Commission, wrote in the April, 1974 issue of the Council on Foreign Relation’s (CFR) journal Foreign Affairs (pg. 558) in an article titled ‘The Hard Road To World Order’:
“In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.”
They want to reinvent civilization and mold it into a homogenized and highly micromanaged global hive. Within this collective, they see themselves as not only the future masters of social evolution, but also as demigods that are worshiped by the masses. And, they are willing to do almost ANYTHING to achieve this endgame.
In an article I wrote last year titled ‘Global Elitists Are Not Human’, I outlined the connection between globalist ideology, globalist actions and the psychology of narcissistic sociopaths (narcopaths or pyschopaths). I theorized that the globalists are in fact a stark example of tightly organized psychopathy. In other words, like a criminal cartel or cult, they are a group of psychopaths that have unified their efforts to become more efficient predators. And like many psychopaths, they have conjured elaborate philosophical explanations for their abhorrent activities to the point that they seem to have developed their own disturbing brand of religion.
There comes a moment in the life of many liberty movement activists or analysts when they are confronted with this reality: The reality that we are not fighting a faceless “system” that was built passively by mistake, or built in the name of mere random greed. No, the system is only an extension of a greater agenda and the weapon of a conspiratorial army. What we are really fighting are very evil people with psychopathic desires to dominate and destroy. Attempt to change the system without removing the cabal behind it, and you will fail every time.
This is where we hit a wall of indecision and find ourselves at an impasse on solutions within the movement. There are even some people who argue that “nothing can be done”.
This is, of course, a lie. Something can indeed be done. We can fight and remove the elites from the equation entirely. In fact, we have no choice but to fight if we hope to retain any semblance of our sovereignty or foundational principles. But sadly, there are people in the movement with some influence who do not seem to understand the difference between fighting to survive, and fighting to succeed.
Let me break it down a little further…
The liberty movement is obsessed with the concept of “survival”. We see the globalist efforts leading to the ruin of the common man’s future and we know that the threat is very real. So, we prepare; we prepare to survive, but not necessarily to prevail.
Survival in itself is meaningless. There are many ways to stay alive. A person could just as easily sell out to the globalists and help them, and that person would probably have better “odds” of survival than I will farming my homestead as a producer and living off my preps in defiance of them. If survival alone is your goal, then you are NOT a liberty activist and you have missed the bigger picture.
Even in the event that you can weather the storm of economic chaos or political civil war safely in an isolated retreat somewhere on a far off mountaintop, what kind of world will you be coming back to when you finally have to leave that idyllic castle? What kind of world will your children be coming back to? And their children…?
I’m certainly not dismissing the usefulness of survival culture. I’m a big proponent of it. But there are self proclaimed survival “gurus” out there that are misleading the movement into thinking that survival is the final goal. And to this end, they have criticized people for organizing or preparing to fight the establishment. They claim it can’t be done. We’ll be “wiped off the face of the Earth”. The enemy is far too strong and what can a mere rifle do against a tank? But if survivalism requires running away and hiding like a coward from a known evil or refusing to take action for the sake of future generations, then I don’t want to be a survivalist…
Freedom cannot be boiled down to a dream or a wish; something that might happen someday if we are able to stay alive long enough. Freedom is a responsibility that is already born into most human beings. It’s not a cheesy or childish ideal, it’s a timeless ideal. Freedom and the fight for peace and balance in the face of would-be emperors is an infinite battle. It never ends. The fight IS freedom. Without the fight, freedom disappears.
For each person that defies collectivists and totalitarians, even at the risk of their own life, the shadow is held back another day. This is what matters, and this is what the survival purists don’t get. You have to make yourself WORTHY of surviving, by standing for principles and values that are bigger than you are. Otherwise you’re not worth a damn to anyone, even yourself.
As for the notion of the impossible mountain; the lone rebel taking on a vast globalist army…this is not a delusional fantasy and these people are not alone. There are millions of us out there, getting ready and forming pockets of resistance. In the meantime we fight the information war, because the globalist’s most powerful weapon is not a tank or even a nuclear bomb, it’s propaganda. The ability to turn a population in on itself and cause it to self destruct is far more dangerous than any technological advancement or military marvel.
As a long time mixed martial artist, I have seen the biggest and most intimidating opponents toppled by clever strategy and willpower. There is no such thing as an unbeatable man, nor an unbeatable army. There is always a way to prevail.
Finally, when I consider the claim made by some people that beating the elites in a direct confrontation is a “pipe dream”, I have to ask a fundamental question: Why do these people assume we have a choice? I’ve witnessed some pretty desperate attempts at silver bullet solutions to globalism in my years in the movement, from presidential election campaigns to change a system that cannot be changed from within, to “revolutionary” cryptocurrencies that the banking elites happily invest in and co-opt.
People misplace their faith in corrupt politicians and the rigged political process, even though they should know better by now. In the final analysis, politics is designed to keep society in stasis, frozen with inaction or fighting in the name of a false leader. Always, when the dust settles the elites escape blame and scrutiny while the public picks up the pieces and tries to understand just what happened. The current chaos surrounding Donald Trump is no different; it is only different in that Trump is a puppet whose job is to appeal directly to liberty activists. For once we’re getting recognition, but it’s not the good kind…
And while building alternatives to the mainstream system and removing yourself from the grid is a step in the right direction, this alone is only a stop-gap. One day, the establishment will come to take what you have. There is no way around this. Narcopaths are like ravenous parasites feeding on every last morsel of humanity. They take whatever can be taken.
The question is, when they come to digest that which you hold precious, how will you respond? Is fighting back impossible, or is it preferable to slavery? Is dying for a better tomorrow a fool’s errand, or the only errand we are put on this Earth for? These are questions that need to be answered and answered soon. The time left to ponder them is running out.
* * *
If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch. Learn more about it HERE.
The more I follow the Democratic presidential campaign, the more I see how little I understand some people. After all, we can have differences when it comes to ideology, and we can aspire to different things in life. We can even have different understandings of what morality means. Still, there are things on which we should all agree: Because our government is $23 trillion in debt and its annual budget deficits are permanently heading north of $1 trillion, every American should agree that there isn’t much space for more spending.
And yet Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) promises that if she becomes president, she will spend $49 trillion over the next 10 years on programs like “Medicare for All,” “free” college, and many new family entitlements. Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) would like to spend as much as $97.5 trillion over the next decade. That’s on top of a $15.5 trillion baseline deficit, according to Brian Riedl at the Manhattan Institute. None of these politicians has a plan to pay for most of what they propose, and the tax plans they have so far are mostly a recipe for less revenue and seriously slower economic growth.
To be fair, Warren and Sanders aren’t the first candidates to make promises they can’t deliver. Nor are they unique in campaigning on platforms that would be disastrous for our economy. Most politicians behave this way. In fact, both parties are to blame for implementing bad policies that failed to deliver advertised benefits while adding significant sums to the national debt (think the Affordable Care Act and Medicare Part D, for example). And of course, the lack of fiscal responsibility by the current president is evidenced by the speed at which the budget deficit is rising.
But what is unique about Warren and Sanders is the scale of their schemes to grow the size of government in America without any consideration for fiscal sanity.
What truly puzzles me is that while the math doesn’t add up at all—and the worlds they want to produce won’t see the light of day without serious pain for most Americans—they have hundreds of thousands of people cheering them along the way. This is crazy. Let’s be honest, the plans by Warren and Sanders almost sound like a 4-year-old’s wish list to improve the country (e.g., more candy, more unicorns, more desserts, cartoons throughout the day, all of which is to be paid for by the Wicked Witch of the West and Captain Hook).
Adults, however—such as Riedl—aren’t cheering. The amount of spending Warren wants is astronomical. She had planned to finance some of this additional spending with a wealth tax and other levies on the rich. When taken to task for having no plan for her $32 trillion Medicare for All proposal, she eventually delivered a plan. But it doesn’t hold water, as Riedl spells out in brutal detail in a recent Daily Beast column.
Nor is there any word yet on how to reduce the gigantic deficit that the current Medicare system already faces. As Riedl explains, that shortfall “is projected to total $44 trillion over the next 30 years—plus an additional $28 trillion in resulting interest costs—that will need to be financed with general revenues.” Warren’s new plan would not address that math problem. In fact, says Riedl, “the large Medicare-For-All taxes would leave few remaining options to close this baseline gap.”
Meanwhile, Sanders would like to spend twice what Warren proposes. This additional spending would be on a $30 trillion guaranteed-jobs program, on top of Medicare for All and “free” college. He, too, doesn’t have the money to pay for most of these schemes, but at least he acknowledges that there is no way around raising taxes on the middle class. Warren is still trying to create the illusion that rich people and bad corporations will be the only ones paying for the spectacular increase in spending.
But again, they’re politicians. It’s difficult to live in Washington and take them seriously. What I would like to know, though, is how their followers—many of whom are highly intelligent pundits—can honestly justify the scale of the deception.
The more I follow the Democratic presidential campaign, the more I see how little I understand some people. After all, we can have differences when it comes to ideology, and we can aspire to different things in life. We can even have different understandings of what morality means. Still, there are things on which we should all agree: Because our government is $23 trillion in debt and its annual budget deficits are permanently heading north of $1 trillion, every American should agree that there isn’t much space for more spending.
And yet Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) promises that if she becomes president, she will spend $49 trillion over the next 10 years on programs like “Medicare for All,” “free” college, and many new family entitlements. Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) would like to spend as much as $97.5 trillion over the next decade. That’s on top of a $15.5 trillion baseline deficit, according to Brian Riedl at the Manhattan Institute. None of these politicians has a plan to pay for most of what they propose, and the tax plans they have so far are mostly a recipe for less revenue and seriously slower economic growth.
To be fair, Warren and Sanders aren’t the first candidates to make promises they can’t deliver. Nor are they unique in campaigning on platforms that would be disastrous for our economy. Most politicians behave this way. In fact, both parties are to blame for implementing bad policies that failed to deliver advertised benefits while adding significant sums to the national debt (think the Affordable Care Act and Medicare Part D, for example). And of course, the lack of fiscal responsibility by the current president is evidenced by the speed at which the budget deficit is rising.
But what is unique about Warren and Sanders is the scale of their schemes to grow the size of government in America without any consideration for fiscal sanity.
What truly puzzles me is that while the math doesn’t add up at all—and the worlds they want to produce won’t see the light of day without serious pain for most Americans—they have hundreds of thousands of people cheering them along the way. This is crazy. Let’s be honest, the plans by Warren and Sanders almost sound like a 4-year-old’s wish list to improve the country (e.g., more candy, more unicorns, more desserts, cartoons throughout the day, all of which is to be paid for by the Wicked Witch of the West and Captain Hook).
Adults, however—such as Riedl—aren’t cheering. The amount of spending Warren wants is astronomical. She had planned to finance some of this additional spending with a wealth tax and other levies on the rich. When taken to task for having no plan for her $32 trillion Medicare for All proposal, she eventually delivered a plan. But it doesn’t hold water, as Riedl spells out in brutal detail in a recent Daily Beast column.
Nor is there any word yet on how to reduce the gigantic deficit that the current Medicare system already faces. As Riedl explains, that shortfall “is projected to total $44 trillion over the next 30 years—plus an additional $28 trillion in resulting interest costs—that will need to be financed with general revenues.” Warren’s new plan would not address that math problem. In fact, says Riedl, “the large Medicare-For-All taxes would leave few remaining options to close this baseline gap.”
Meanwhile, Sanders would like to spend twice what Warren proposes. This additional spending would be on a $30 trillion guaranteed-jobs program, on top of Medicare for All and “free” college. He, too, doesn’t have the money to pay for most of these schemes, but at least he acknowledges that there is no way around raising taxes on the middle class. Warren is still trying to create the illusion that rich people and bad corporations will be the only ones paying for the spectacular increase in spending.
But again, they’re politicians. It’s difficult to live in Washington and take them seriously. What I would like to know, though, is how their followers—many of whom are highly intelligent pundits—can honestly justify the scale of the deception.
