Month: May 2018

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Quick Analysis

Internet Freedom Debate Continues

Senate passage, via a quirk of the rules and the cross-over of three Republicans resulting in a 52-47 vote on a measure (which faces relatively poor odds for approval by the House) that seeks to reimpose Obama-era net neutrality rules (scheduled to expire on June 11) has re-opened the contentious and confusing debate on the future of freedom of the internet. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had previously voted against the measure.

On the surface, net neutrality sounds attractive. It mandates that internet providers treat all equally, despite claims by providers that certain customers who stream heavy content such as movies require faster speed than, say, a casual user who only deals in words.

Alex Bugaeff succinctly described the issue to New York Analysis of Policy and Government readers in April:

“Prior to 2015, the internet was open and operating freely, albeit in a rough-and-tumble fashion at times. Then, after the Congressional election of 2014, the Obama Administration tried to take complete control. The President ordered the FCC to implement the regulations found in Title II of the 1934 Communications Act. Those regulations had been designed to reign in the monopoly that Bell Telephone had on landline phone circuits. Though outmoded, those regulations gave control of the internet to government.

“The White House named this order “Net Neutrality” in an attempt to put a benevolent face on this takeover of internet operations. They claimed that the big companies were stifling innovation and that the regulations would impose a level playing field for the small service providers. The implementation of Title II had the effect of freezing in place the rules which benefitted the big companies and gave the FCC (and its Obama appointees) the power to enforce government regulations as a form of public utility.

“In fact, the term “Net Neutrality” appears nowhere in the law or regulations and has no legal definition. It is a fiction designed to serve a larger purpose – government control of communications and internet commerce. So, the 3-2 vote of the FCC after Trump took office merely returned the internet to open and competitive business. Innovation is once again unfettered by government bureaucracy.”

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“I favor a free and open Internet…My concern is with the particular regulations that the [Obama era]  FCC adopted two years ago. They are what is called Title II regulations developed in the 1930s to regulate the Ma Bell telephone monopoly. And my concern is that, by imposing those heavy-handed economic regulations on Internet service providers big and small, we could end up disincentivizing companies from wanting to build out Internet access to a lot of parts of the country, in low-income, urban and rural areas, for example. And that, I think, is something that nobody would benefit from.

“There is significant evidence that investment in infrastructure has gone down since the adoption of these rules. For example, there is a study by a highly respected economist that says that among the top 12 Internet service providers in terms of size, investment is down by 5.6 percent, or several billion dollars, over the last two years. And amongst smaller providers as well, just literally this week, 22 Internet service providers with 1,000 customers or less told us that these Title II regulations have kept them from getting the financing that they need to build out their networks. And, as they put it, these net neutrality regulations hang like a black cloud over our businesses. And so what we’re trying to do going forward is figure out a way that we can preserve that free and open Internet that consumers want and need and preserve that incentive to invest in the network that will ultimately benefit even more consumers going forward.”

The left’s move to bring the internet under government control through the net neutrality concept should be seen as part of a two-pronged effort to bring this vast medium to heel.  In 2014, President Obama announced that the United States would surrender administrative control of the internet.  America loosely had jurisdiction over areas such as domain names, with the input of international concerns. But a number of foreign governments, such as Russia, China and Iran complained.  Those nations engage in censorship over their domestic internet users and are angered when the citizens of other nations openly criticize them. First Amendment restrictions prohibited similar actions within the United States, but internationalizing controls was a step to overturning those protections.

Regulating the internet as though it were a public utility gives the government the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent to control this most free and open source of speech and ideas.

Illustration: Pixabay

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Ignoring Good News About America’s Economy

In the aftermath of the election of 2016, America’s economy has made a significant comeback following a decade of recession and poor decision making in Washington.  But you wouldn’t notice it from major news media reports.

Part of the problem established by the media’s replacement of objective coverage of the news with editorial opinion is that significant information simply does not get reported, outside of specialty publications and sources that happen to favor the political interests that gain from a particular piece of information.

Currently, many general media sources are ignoring or downplaying the national economic revival.

The Congressional Budget office (CBO)  has reported that real GDP growth is relatively strong this year and next, as recent changes in fiscal policy add to existing momentum. Productivity growth, after the ravages of the recession and the Obama economy,  are returning to nearly average over the past 25 years.  The Trump Administration’s changes in fiscal policy have boosted incentives to work, save, and invest. CBO also estimates  that receipts for the first seven months of fiscal year 2018 totaled $2,012 billion, a figure which is $83 billion more than the amount during the same period last year. That is somewhat surprising. Receipts collected in April, for example, were $30 billion to $40 billion larger than CBO expected.

The good news is, according to CBO, mostly related to economic activity in 2017 and may reflect stronger-than-expected income growth in that year.

Economic and business publications, unlike the general media, have noticed. Forbes notes that  “A strong job market will likely lead to higher consumer spending in the summer months as employment and incomes keep growing. Inflation isn’t expected to be as volatile. HSBC estimates 1.9%, or thereabouts, for the foreseeable future.”

The temperature of the room ought to be in the civilian world. pharmacy online viagra I am sure you know that these products have different price ranges but, even when it comes to the product itself, you want the best product that will help you in acquiring rid of the issue. generic vs viagra One tablet cannot be repeated before you 24 buying tadalafil hours have been completed to the first pill. And it does not make 1 have an instant erection without having cialis buy india having physical sexual stimulation. The Hill reports that “Fourteen states have set new records for low unemployment rates in the last year, nearly a decade after the recession put millions of Americans out of work… Such a tight job market means businesses are competing for workers, rather than workers competing for scarce jobs.”

These aren’t abstract figures that are merely statistics good for Wall Street while not helpful to Main Street, a problem that was prevalent during the Obama Administration.  Middle class employment is finally rising. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics  monthly report disclosed that Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 164,000 in April, and the unemployment rate edged down to 3.9 percent. More important than the overall statistic was the type of jobs that were increasing. Job gains occurred in professional and business services, manufacturing, and mining, solid middle class occupations which had been declining over the past decade as a result of poor policy decisions. BLS found that “In April, employment in professional and business services increased by 54,000. Over the past 12 months, the industry has added 518,000 jobs. Employment in manufacturing increased by 24,000 in April…Manufacturing employment

has risen by 245,000 over the year…In April, employment in mining increased by 8,000…Since a recent low in October 2016,employment in mining has risen by 86,000.

BLS also found that  the median weekly earnings of wage and salary workers in the first quarter of 2018 Median weekly earnings of the nation’s 113.4 million full-time wage and salary workers was 1.8 percent higher than a year earlier.

In a statistic that may prove somewhat disruptive for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, who heavily depend on black and Latino support, the Trump Administration’s economic policies have been particularly helpful to both those communities.  The unemployment rate for black workers dropped to 6.6 percent, beating the previous record low of 6.8 percent set in December. Similarly, Hispanics had an historic low  unemployment rate of 4.8%, matched once before in 2006.

Photo: U.S. Department of Labor

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Bias in the Media, and on the Streets, Part 2

We conclude our report on the odd media coverage of the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and the growing problem of Anti-Semitism.

It is not coincidental that, as leftist influence grows greater both within the Democrat Party and academia, anti-Semitism gains. In both Europe and the United States, leftist politics has had a long flirtation with this form of bias. Philip Spencer, writing in The Guardian, notes that “The shame of antisemitism on the left has a long, malign history… The current antisemitism crisis on the left has not come out of nowhere. Instead, it has its roots in a tradition on the left itself, which, at best, has always had difficulty in responding swiftly to antisemitism and, at worst, excused or condoned, even promoted it… This first became a serious problem on the left in the late 19th century, as antisemitism first became a political force in the modern world. Some on the left flirted with the response that there might be something progressive about antisemitism: that it was a kind of anti-capitalism, however crude, which could be harnessed to the socialist cause.”

In Europe, writes Qanta A. Ahmed in National Review, the extraordinary wave of Muslim immigration from nations with a long history of anti-Israel, anti-Semitism has reinvigorated the problem. “Islamist anti-Semitism courses through Europe’s Muslim migrant communities. No country has been affected by this frightening development more than France, which in 2015 alone saw the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the killings at a kosher supermarket a few days later, and then the Bataclan shooting. Less recognized is the steady onslaught of lethal anti-Semitism on Europe’s streets, claiming one Jewish life at a time. The rise in French anti-Semitism is undeniable. Knoll was the eleventh French Jew to be murdered in twelve years. New York Times columnist Bari Weiss places the murders in context: French Jews are less than 1 percent of the country’s population, but 51 percent of racist attacks in France in 2014 were against Jews.”

France 24 notes that “a string of anti-Semitic killings in France…have caused increasing alarm in the country’s Jewish community. ‘Since 2000, there’s been a rise in anti-Semitism in France,’ said Robert Ejnas, executive director of CRIF, an umbrella organisation of French Jewish groups…”

RT News notes that “In an interview with Israeli TV, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, much-maligned for her open-door immigration policy, has said Germany is facing a new form of anti-Semitism from refugees and people of Arab origin. ‘We now have another phenomenon, as we have refugees or people of Arab origin who bring another form of anti-Semitism into the country… No Jewish nursery, no school, and no synagogue can be left without police protection…’”
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The Gatestone Institute’s Yves Mamou asks “Has Europe Even Tried to Fight Anti-Semitism? Each time an anti-Semitic attack in Europe receives media attention, politicians rush to condemn it. But verbal condemnations alone change nothing. Anti-Semitism just gets bigger. The European Union has adopted anti-Israel policies out of fear of upsetting Muslims, but this fear of upsetting Muslims has been fueling Muslim anti-Semitism… On one side, they condemn anti-Semitism but on other, they are just whipping it up.”

The Clarion Project reports that A “letter was drafted by former Charlie Hebdo editor Philippe Val. Signatories included former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, actor Gerard Depardieu, former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, former Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia, five imams and singers Charles Aznavour and Francoise Hardy. The letter explicitly identified the threat as emanating from ‘radical Islamists’ in specific predominantly immigrant Muslim communities. ‘French Jews are 25 times more at risk of being attacked than their fellow Muslim citizens,’  the letter continued. ‘Ten percent of the Jewish citizens of the [Paris region], meaning about 50,000 people, have recently had to change their residence because they were no longer safe in certain neighborhoods and because their children could no longer attend government schools. This involves quiet ethnic cleansing.’ This is not the first time such concerns are being raised. Dr. Guy Milliere, a lecturer at the University of Paris, wrote a policy paper for the Gatestone Institute earlier this year, noting that the Jewish population of France has dropped from 500,000 in 2000 to 400,000 today. In addition, he explained that Jews have been driven out of certain neighborhoods by extremely anti-Semitic Muslim gangs. ‘Graffiti was spray painted on Jewish-owned homes calling on the owners to ‘flee immediately’ if they want to live and anonymous letters containing live bullets were sent to Jewish mailboxes,’ he wrote.”

There is an upswing in anti-Semitic violence in the United States, as well. An ADL study found that those incidents in the U.S. surged more than one-third in 2016 and jumped 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017.

Photo: Dachau Concentration Camp (Pixabay)

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Bias in the Media, and on the Streets

The plague of religious persecution survives despite all the lessons of history.  It does so under ever-changing guises, employing excuses that defy truth, logic, and basic human decency. The depredations of terrorist organization such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS against Jews, Christians and even other Moslems who define their faith differently have been well documented.

The danger, however, is not restricted to the embattled Middle East. In both Europe and the United States, in different degrees, anti-Semitism is once again increasingly part of the political environment. Some of this can be seen in news reports about the Middle East. At other times, it can also be seen on the streets of Europe and the political comments of certain officials, predominately on the Left.

Media coverage of the opening of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem concentrated substantially on the Palestinian demonstrations and the lack of support by European nations, rather than the fact that this move was authorized by Congress in the 1995, and supported by Presidents Clinton, Bush (43) and Obama, and simply reflects the reality of where a sovereign nation chooses to place its government headquarters. The move did nothing to change the status quo, either in the city with its separate Israeli and Palestinian sections, or in the control of the religious and historical sites.

In two separate reports, the Free Beacon pointed out key news items much of the media  downplayed. The first involved an Iranian organization, the “Iranian Justice Seeker Student Movement,” which has offered a $100,000 reward to any person who bombs the embassy. The second is that those Palestinian demonstrators were far from peaceful. What has been described as “light weapons” were possessed by some.

Bizarrely, the Free Beacon notes, “NBC News reporter Matt Bradley on Monday called Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip ‘unarmed’ before immediately acknowledging they ‘had some light weapons,’ adding they were ‘not peacefully demonstrating’ but were peaceful in comparison to the more heavily armed Israeli military… On the day of the U.S. embassy opening in Jerusalem, violent demonstrators urged on by Hamas, the terrorist group in control of Gaza, sought to breach the fence to penetrate Israeli territory…Bradley took a stridently pro-Palestinian tone in his coverage, saying the Israelis should not have felt threatened by the violent demonstrations. One Palestinian told the Washington Post that he would try to kill people if he got into Israel.”

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It should come as no surprise. The acceptance of those sympathetic to anti-Semitism has become notable within the Democrat Party, particularly in the ascension of Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) as Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison has close ties to America’s leading anti-Semite, Louis Farrakhan, and has attended a private dinner with Iranian President Hassan Rohani.

WTOP News reported that Democrat D.C. City Councilman Trayon White “ignited a firestorm on March 16 by posting a short video on his Facebook page claiming that an unexpected snowfall was because of ‘the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters.’ Fellow council members and Jewish community leaders accused White of spreading an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about Jewish control of world events. The Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish family whose banking dynasty dates back to the 18th century, are a frequent target of global conspiracy theories.” A D.C. city official featured a city official who said that all Jews were ‘termites.”

The Report Concludes Monday

 

Photo: Jerusalem (Pixabay)

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Secularism: An Official State Religion?

As Christians celebrated Easter and Jews observed Passover in March, the usual disputes over the recognition of those holidays in the public sector was expected, but there is a growing new dimension to the legal battles. The prior Obama Administration’s attempts to run roughshod over religious objections to portions of its health care legislation represented just one aspect of this growing trend.

Mary Eberstadt, author of  “Its Dangerous to Believe” wrote in Time Magazine  that “vigorous secularism has catapulted mockery of Christianity and other forms of religious traditionalism into the mainstream and set a new low for what counts as civil criticism of people’s most-cherished beliefs…Some of the faithful have paid unexpected prices for their beliefs…:the teacher in New Jersey suspended for giving a student a Bible; the football coach in Washington placed on leave for saying a prayer on the field at the end of a game; the fire chief in Atlanta fired for self-publishing a book defending Christian moral teaching; the Marine court-martialed for pasting a Bible verse above her desk…Anti-Christian activists hurl smears like ‘bigot’ and ‘hater’ at Americans who hold traditional beliefs about marriage and accuse anti-abortion Christians of waging a supposed ‘war on women.’…Some secularists argue that Christian schools don’t deserve accreditation, period.”

Throughout American history, there has always been a vigilance, since the Constitution was ratified, against one creed taking precedence over others.  However, despite the Constitutional prohibition against the establishment of a preferred theology, there is increasing evidence that atheism is taking a prohibited place as an official state doctrine.

Examples abound, far beyond the usual arguments over holiday decorations in government buildings.

Examples abound. Heartland reports that Montana officials have proposed the exclusion of religious schools from a state scholarship program.

“A draft of the rules by the state Revenue Department excluded religious schools from receiving funding through [a scholarship] program. If the rule stands, it will set a precedent calling existing Montana tax-credit programs into question, “because these programs also allow donations to go to religious groups,” Smith said at the hearing. “These tax credit programs include the college contribution credit, the qualified endowment credit, the dependent care system credit, and the elderly care credit. According to the department’s position that tax credits constitute public funds, these programs would also be unconstitutional…According to officials at the state Department of Revenue, religious schools were excluded in order to adhere to the state Constitution, which has provisions prohibiting direct or indirect funding of religious organizations.” Opponents of the move say it violates the U.S. Constitution.”

The American Civil Liberties Union  notes that some of the restrictions against religious activity in public schools are wrong.

“The Constitution permits much private religious activity in and about the public schools. Unfortunately, this aspect of constitutional law is not as well known as it should be. Some say that the Supreme Court has declared the public schools “religion-free zones” or that the law is so murky that school officials cannot know what is legally permissible. The former claim is simply wrong. And as to the latter, while there are some difficult issues, much has been settled. As a result, in some school districts some of these rights are not being observed.”

The trend towards restricting traditional religions has affected the military.  The military newspaper Stars and Stripes  recently reported the concern of Ron Crews, a retired Army colonel and chaplain. “There has been a growing concern about chaplains being able to continue to minister what I would call ‘the full counsel of God’ in their ministries.”  The article notes that “For 240 years, since the U.S. Army’s founding in June 1775, chaplains have been welcome in the military. Generals from George …to George C. Marshall considered chaplains indispensable to a unit’s emotional and spiritual well-being…” In recent years, Carew notes, “Washington has issued wave after wave of new regulations, some of which conflict with many chaplains’ long-held religious beliefs…[he cites] multiple cases, in which he contends chaplains have been censored or had their careers effectively ended for espousing their beliefs.”
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Atheism as a creed is a growing practice in the United States. In some ways, it is, rather than merely an absence of religion, a philosophical practice that increasingly takes on the attributes of faith-based sects. In 2013, the Huffington Post described how, on Sunday mornings, atheists in Houston gather together for services:

“Sunday mornings at Houston Oasis may have the look and feel of a church, but there’s no cross, Bible, hymnal or stained glass depictions of Jesus. There’s also nary a trace of doctrine, dogma or theology. But the 80 or so attendees at this new weekly gathering for nonbelievers come for many of the same reasons that others pack churches in this heavily Christian corner of the Bible … inside the conference room in a nondescript office building on the city’s west side, it’s hard to ignore the structural similarities to a Sunday morning church service. There is live music played and performed by members that is intended to spur reflection as well as entertain; a collection is taken up in a passed wicker basket.”

Huffington also described the appointment of an atheist chaplain at Stanford “There’s an atheist chaplain at Stanford. John Figdor has a degree from Harvard Divinity School and he does what chaplains do. He counsels those in need and visits the sick. And what’s more, he’s welcomed as part of the Office of Religious Life.”

 A research project from the Liberty Institute finds that “Attacks on religious liberty in the public arena are perhaps the most widely recognized and one of the fastest growing forms of hostility to religion in the United States today.”

The current battles in religious affairs in the public square can be substantially distinguished from past precedent.  Unlike prior disagreements, they do not involve one religious sect (Catholics vs. Protestants, Christians vs. Jews, etc.) against another, as much as they do a growing atheist philosophy that opposes any place for faith systems in public life.

The complete elimination of religion in public life does not have legal precedent to stand on.  In fact, it runs afoul of the First Amendment mandate that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” which prohibits favoring one creed over another, since the forced absence of any religion is essentially the forced placement of atheism as a preferred or established creed.

The forced acceptance of secularism as a form of state religion, moves to remove all references to Christian culture in the public square, and the worrisome and growing presence of antisemitism are trends that should be noted.

Photo: Model of Annapolis Chapel. Could such a structure be added to a government facility today?

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A Better Deal for Black America

Some who claim to represent the black community have correctly pointed to the reality that poverty in their demographic remains higher than the rest of the nation.  They note that young black males have higher rates of incarceration and altercations with police.

Defensively, some respond by pointing to a half-century of anti-poverty and affirmative action programs. Some blame police-black tensions on a higher proclivity to respond negatively to law enforcement on the part of those youth and suggest an absence of fathers as benevolent authority figures leading to that attitude.

Both have a point.  Yes, there have been extensive anti-poverty programs, but those efforts have been a failure.  Nationwide poverty rates remain virtually unchanged in the half century since they were begun.  The fact is, those endeavors have been a great benefit to the politically connected who administer them or who had the opportunity to work in them, but they have done precious little for the intended recipients.  The rise of “poverty pimps” illustrates the problem.

After the elimination of officially sanctioned segregation laws and the end of the Jim Crow era, it seemed that the path to full financial equality would finally begin.  The results have been disappointing.  In truth, because of those programs and the restrictions placed on the American economy at the federal, state and local levels by high taxes and excess regulations, blacks have been inadvertently denied the economic environment that allowed other ethnic groups who were once discriminated against to progress.  It is doubtful that, given these conditions, any prior downtrodden groups would have had a viable shot at moving up the economic ladder.

The National Center for Policy Research has just provided an important study addressing the issue. The just-released “Blueprint for a Better Deal for Black America” notes that “It has been over a half-century since the enactment of landmark civil rights legislation targeting the scourge of racial discrimination. Unfortunately, too many black families today suffer from a non-racial scourge – conditions that undermine upward mobility and perpetuate unacceptable levels of poverty, crime and other social ills. The vaunted social safety net has become a web that ensnares black families in a vicious cycle of dependency.”

This is not a politicized report performed by remote academics. It is the work of “Project 21,” a network of diverse black leaders from across the nation.

The study identified ten key areas of reform.  Here’s a very brief summary of the key points:

Promoting K–12 Educational Choice: Establish federal needs-based vouchers.

Improving Higher Education: Require schools to meet minimum graduation rate standards for both general and minority student populations to be eligible for federal student financial aid.

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Strengthening Faith-Based Communities: Establish federal Tax Credit Scholarships; repeal the Johnson Amendment; create a tax credit for families paying for nursery-12 fees and tuition.

Promoting Self-Determination: End fraudulent election practices that dilute black votes. Require proof of citizenship to register; vigorously prosecute those who target minority communities for fraud.

Improve Police Relationships: Get police out of the regulation business; transfer the resources to support police community outreach programs; increase use of body cameras; end gun bans and put police in charge of safety training.

End Excessive Regulation: Require “Minority Impact Assessments” for new regulations.

Stop Wealth Transfer to Non-Citizens: Bar illegal aliens from using public services, except in emergencies.

Reduce the Economic Harm of Excise Taxes: Repeal federal, state and local sin and gas taxes, all of which have a disproportionate negative impact on low-income families.

Reform the Criminal Justice System: Require convictions for assets to be forfeited; prohibit incarceration for fine-only misdemeanors; require fines and forfeitures be transferred to general funds instead of enforcing agency budgets and consider ability to pay in levying fines.

Photo: Pixabay

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NATO Prepares for Difficult Times

NATO’s Military Committee  will meet on Thursday. General Petr Pavel will preside. The sessions will focus on key strategic issues facing the Alliance, including the alliances southern flank, the ability to provide deterrence against any threat, and how to modernize the alliance.

NATO recently initiated a significant training mission, named Exercise Siil  in Estonia. 15,000 troops from 19 different nations took part.   According to the alliance, “The exercise focuses on defensive territorial maneuvers in the context of both conventional and unconventional warfare. In addition to military forces, the exercise brings together Estonia´s volunteer paramilitary Defence League, the Women’s Home Defence Organization, and police and rescue workers to train a broad-based defence. Over 30 observers from 15 countries, including  Russia and Belarus monitored the exercise.”

According to the alliance, “The exercise focuses on defensive territorial maneuvers in the context of both conventional and unconventional warfare. In addition to military forces, the exercise brings together Estonia´s volunteer paramilitary Defence League, the Women’s Home Defence Organization, and police and rescue workers to train a broad-based defence. Over 30 observers from 15 countries, including  Russia and Belarus monitored the exercise.”

As the Cold War has returned, NATO has had to readjust to a higher level of tension. The alliance has developed a study  on how it can adapt to what it calls “an unpredictable and fast-changing world.”

Key points made in the study:

NATO is at a crucial decision point. With new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing fast entering the defence domain, the role, function, method and structure of the Alliance must undergo radical change if collective deterrence and defence is to remain credible.

Yes, the Alliance has adapted well in response to the watershed events of 2014, rebuilding deterrence against threats from the East, increasing its engagement with the Middle East, and forging a closer partnership with the European Union – and it is already taking steps in some of the other areas set out in the recommendations below. However, as the Alliance approaches its seventieth birthday in April 2019, NATO risks falling behind the pace of political change and technological developments that could alter the character of warfare, the structure of international relations and the role of the Alliance itself.

New strategic realities

Adaptation will only succeed if the Alliance confronts new geostrategic and transatlantic realities, including the need to deter a revisionist, militarily advanced Russia, while also projecting stability to NATO’s South, and dealing with threats posed by states such as North Korea. To establish equitable burden-sharing between the United States and its Allies, the Defence Investment Pledge made at the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales (Allied leaders agreed to halt the decline in defence expenditure and aim to move towards spending 2% of Gross Domestic Product on defence and 20% of national defence budgets on major equipment and related research and development within a decade) must also be honoured in full and new money spent well.

Flexible Response 2.0

NATO’s deterrence and defence posture must be strengthened if the Alliance is to prevent conflict and deter aggression. Enhancing the readiness and responsiveness of NATO conventional forces must be the Alliance’s overarching priority. NATO’s nuclear posture and strategy must also be modernised if the growing gap between the conventional and nuclear deterrents lowers the threshold for nuclear use.

Warfighting ethos

Along with powerful, agile and resilient conventional forces, Allies need to adopt a warfighting ethos as core Alliance doctrine. NATO must re-establish the capacity for the swift generation of force mass and manoeuvre if NATO is to meet the force-on-force challenge. NATO should promote integrated deterrence, building on reforms to the NATO Command Structure, as well as undertake more systematic contingency planning, to ensure effective command and control across the conflict spectrum.

Military ambition

NATO must at least be able to command simultaneously operations in a large-scale state-to-state conflict (a Major Joint Operation-Plus) and undertake a sustained strategic stabilisation campaign to NATO’s South. NATO’s crisis management mechanisms are still far too complicated. NATO’s role in the defence of the global commons must also be enhanced with multi-domain forces able to operate to effect across air, sea, land, space, cyber, knowledge and information. NATO must train and think as it plans to fight. Impediments to battle-critical information-sharing must also be removed.

Counter-terrorism

The terrorist threat to the Euro-Atlantic Area will increase. NATO’s Counter-Terrorism Policy Guidelines and NATO’s support for the Global Coalition Against Daesh are vital. NATO must also contribute more to preventing terrorist attacks on its members, including home-grown plots. While this is primarily a national and EU responsibility, with law enforcement and interior ministries in the lead, NATO’s newly upgraded Joint Intelligence and Security Division, with its secure communications links to Allied capitals, could become a clearing-house for exchanging classified terrorist threat information.

Defence and dialogue

NATO must engage with Russia and Ukraine on the basis of principle: A new political strategy is needed for NATO to better engage with Russia. Dialogue must go hand-in-hand with defence with the goal of managing competition and reducing risks until fundamental differences that prevent a return to cooperation with Russia are resolved. At the same time, the Alliance must help Ukraine, Georgia, and other Eastern European neighbours to defend themselves and continue to promote the Euro-Atlantic integration of the Western Balkans. The Open Door policy, and the possibility of future membership, must also be upheld.

A broad security agenda
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The enduring mission in Afghanistan is a reminder that the security of the Alliance does not stop at its borders. NATO needs a broader security role to reinforce the engagement of the Alliance across the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. Defence capacity-building to NATO’s South will be an important contribution to peace and security, working closely with regional security institutions, such as the African Union and the Arab League, as well as with individual partner nations.

 

Smart NATO

If the Alliance is to both protect people and project influence and power, NATO should better integrate the many centres of excellence into a network of excellence, and establish new centres to address new challenges. A bespoke Hyper War Centre of Excellence would help generate an urgently needed coherent approach to future war, including work on Artificial Intelligence and expanded NATO cyber defence within its defence and deterrence measures. Such a Centre would necessarily need to train and educate NATO’s civilian and military leadership, and include staff courses for the North Atlantic Council, NATO staff and and member nation civilians.

The vital NATO-EU Strategic Partnership

The European Union will become an increasingly important foreign and security actor and partner of NATO, with the NATO-EU strategic partnership increasingly important for the management of transatlantic relations. For many Europeans, the EU Common Security and Defence Policy will be a, if not the vehicle for defence policy. The European Defence Agency will also be the mechanism of choice for the development of military capabilities for many Europeans. Therefore, NATO and the European Union must overcome current barriers to foster a more substantial and mutually beneficial partnership and reinforce practical cooperation. A NATO-EU summit at heads of state and government level should be held at least once a year.

NATO’s wider strategic partnerships

NATO must also create a world-wide network of strategic partnerships and institutions. Indeed, at a time of globalised security NATO needs to better forge functional political, civilian and military partnerships across the world. The creation of consultative councils with states such as Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea would be an important indicator of such ambition.

Equipping and affording NATO

NATO must innovate as an alliance and streamline the delivery of new technology and equipment. On average it takes 16 years from conception of military capability to operational effect, which is far too long. Capability fielding timelines must be shortened and commanders given a greater say in requirements development. NATO should promote a common standard for shared assessment, harmonised requirements and common specifications, and expand the use of common funding, and conduct an Alliance-wide platform and systems audit as part of a Future Requirements Framework.

 

Partnerships with defence industry – old and new

NATO must gain a far better understanding of the impact of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing together with their defence applications. Many of the companies driving new technologies are not defence giants, nor are many of them defence-focused. Such companies will need to be sure that if they invest limited people and resources on NATO projects, their existence will not be threatened by sclerotic acquisition practices.

NATO and the future of war

NATO needs a future war strategy that fully integrates hybrid warfare, cyber war, counter-terrorism and hyper war, and the continuum between them. Critically, NATO must leverage the impact of new technologies on the security space and battlespace. NATO must better grip and exploit new information technologies, and systematically trawl newly-available artificial intelligence-powered capacities to exploit big data. To that end, NATO should consider creating an agency similar in mission to that of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

 

Next steps?

NATO leaders should commission a strategy review, which might be embodied in a new Strategic Concept. NATO needs a forward-looking strategy that sets out how the Alliance will meet the challenges of an unpredictable and fast-changing world.

Photo: NATO preconference (NATO picture)

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Quick Analysis

Partisan Coverage of Politicians’ Misdeeds

The left does not retain a monopoly on misbehaving and corrupt politicians. But, because of the reluctance of much of the media to criticize their ideological soulmates, leftist politicians have had the opportunity to move high and fast in their takeover of the Democrat Party, since the misdeeds they commit tend to be glossed over until they can no longer be hidden.

The tide may be changing, however, at least for male politicians who suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of the fury of a group they had courted for so long. The days of Bill Clinton getting a pass despite a history of sexual misconduct may be over.

Eric Schneiderman is the archetype of the leftist elected official who claims to adhere to a strict path of political correctness and devotion to group identity causes, but in their own lives make a mockery of all they publicly stand for. Similar to a predecessor in the office of New York State Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, Schneiderman abused his position by using it as a vehicle to harass those who disagreed with his political beliefs. Spitzer, shortly after winning the governorship, left office in disgrace for sexual misdeeds.

Sexual misdeeds are something of a tradition with New York’s leftist politicians.  Former Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, another Democrat, even used taxpayer dollars to provide hush payments to victims of sex abuse by members of his legislative body. He was eventually convicted of money laundering and fraud.

Both Spitzer and Schneiderman evaded criticism for their stunning abuse. As the New York Post noted, “Touting his lawsuits against the Trump administration on the travel ban, environmental issues, immigration, and other matters, Schneiderman embraced his stature as a ‘resistance’ figure. In a February video made for the leftist MoveOn.org to encourage voting in local elections, he said: ‘If you really, truly want to be part of the resistance, this is where the fight lives.’ Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, chairwoman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, called Schneiderman the ‘ringleader’ of anti-Trump activists fighting the president in the courts. ‘As Schneiderman leaves office in disgrace, his impact and influence with activist Democrat state attorneys general and candidates cannot be overstated,’  Rutledge told The Daily Signal in a prepared statement.”
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Schneiderman filed 100 lawsuits or administrative actions against the Trump administration in 2017, The Daily Caller News Foundation reported in December. The City Journal offers  this description of Schneiderman: “New York’s progressives scored a breakthrough by electing as the state’s attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who had no prosecutorial experience but, as Ben Smith noted in a Politico profile…had ‘spent his career building an ideological infrastructure for the left.’ n Economist study emphasizes that “Lawsuits are likely to be a critical form of resistance for Democrats in the Trump era…On January 29th, 17 Democratic attorneys-general signed a letter vowing to ‘use all of the tools of our offices to fight this unconstitutional order.’ Four Democratic attorneys-general have officially filed or signed onto lawsuits challenging the restrictions. … the city of San Francisco sued Mr. Trump over another executive order demanding that federal funding be withheld from so-called ‘sanctuary cities’ that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities.”

Similarly, Spitzer, as Attorney General, abused his office. The Wall Street Journal noted that “As attorney general, Mr. Spitzer pursued a self-aggrandizing crusade against Wall Street without regard for the costs to New York companies, their shareholders, or his state’s position as the global capital of finance. He targeted high-profile business people and institutions on flimsy pretexts, abused his powers as prosecutor, and destroyed careers, reputations and companies through leaks to the press, rumor-mongering, and threats. Mr. Spitzer knew that an indictment, even if never proven, would seriously damage a company’s reputation and even put it out of business. Among other things, federal securities laws do not permit indicted companies to manage money. Thus his targets in the heavily regulated securities industry could not call his bluff and have their day in court to prove their case, choosing to settle instead. This made for easy prosecutorial prey for a man with boundless political ambitions. His cases grabbed splashy headlines, but most people never knew the full story until it emerged years later.”

Neither man suffered for their abuse of their position for partisan political goals. The major media, for the most part, gave them a pass. The press only took note when they engaged in actions which were not only repugnant, but also offended a group which the left courts as a key constituency. The horrifying act of another icon of the left, Senator Ted Kennedy, received a complete pass for his horrendous action which lead to the death of female friend, just as he received a pass for his attempts to work with the Soviet Union to prevent the election of Ronald Reagan.

Illustration: Pixabay

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Germany Fails to Fund Military

Angela Merkel’s visit to the White House came at a time when both trade and defense issues highlighted the relationship between the two nations.

Despite a six-year high rate of economic growth  and a surplus of revenue over expenditures, Germany continues to starve its armed forces of necessary funding.

According to Warfare “Many primary weapons systems in the Bundeswehr are not available for training exercises or deployment, according to a new study for the Federal Ministry of Defence, the Bundesministerium der Verteidigung (BMVg).” The publication outlines key portions of the problem:

“Number of weapon systems ready for action:

  • Eurofighter Typhoon jet airplanes: 39 of 128
  • Tornado jet airplanes: 26 of 93
  • CH-53 transport helicopters: 16 of 72
  • NH-90 transport helicopters: 13 of 58
  • Tiger helicopters: 12 of 62
  • A400M transport planes: 3 of 15
  • Leopard 2 tanks: 105 of 224
  • Navy frigates: 5 of 13”

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Business Insider reported in February that “Over the past several months, the entirety of Germany’s submarine fleet has gone out of action, the Bundeswehr, its armed forces, has outsourced helicopter training to a private company because its own helicopters are in need of repair, and more than half of the Bundeswehr’s Leopard 2 tanks, its most common model, were out of order, with just 95 of 244 in service. Those are only the latest reports of German military deficiencies…During a visit to Germany at the end of January, US Army Secretary Mark Esper, a former Raytheon executive, said he would take the German government at its word that it would increase defense spending to the 2% target, but he cautioned against falling short. ‘It’s important for all of our NATO allies to live up to their commitments,’ Esper said. ‘If not, it weakens the alliance, clearly, and Germany is such a critical member of NATO’.”

The European Security Journal  found that, in addition to the fact that only a fraction of Germany’s crucial weapons system are capable of working, “21,000 positions are vacant within the German army… The armed forces situation of the biggest EU member state raises concerns for EU collective defence. Even with the planned increase of €5.4 billion by 2021 in the defence budget, Germany will still only spend 1.15% of its GDP in defence, far below from the NATO’s 2025 target of 2% of GDP. “

The problem is not new. In 2017,Berlin reported  that “…active servicewomen and men are still being overburdened just as much as in the past in many areas… Since the 2011 Bundeswehr reform – following the suspension of compulsory military service, the number of German temporary-career volunteers and career soldiers has been 170,000 on paper, but this target had still not been reached by the end of 2016. In addition to this, however, the armed forces will, according to their own calculations, require 14,300 more servicewomen and men in order to close the personnel gaps that have now been identified; initially, though, only 7,000 new posts are to be created and filled by 2023. Seven years for a four-percent increase in personnel! This is taking too long. The situation is very similar when it comes to the full materiel resourcing of the Bundeswehr that is now envisaged. …everything new seems to be being put on the on hold, and nothing is happening quickly, from the new multirole combat ship to surface-to-air missile systems and the 100 second-hand Leopard 2s that will need to be modernised before they go into service alongside the 225 battle tanks the Bundeswehr currently has at its disposal. The Leopard 2s are to be available in 2023, but no contracts have been signed yet. There has already been sufficient discussion of the delays to many ongoing procurement programmes that are having such momentous consequences, from the A400M transport aircraft (Air Force) and the NH90 helicopter (Army) to the Type 125 frigates (Navy). It has not even been possible for the new combat clothing to be issued according to plan in the quantities required.

“In order to strengthen Germany’s capacity to contribute to collective defence, and fully perform its obligations under European security policy and within NATO, it will not only be necessary to rapidly expand the Bundeswehr’s manpower. Full materiel resourcing will also have to be driven ahead. There are shortages of heavy major end items such as tanks, helicopters and ships, but also munitions and personal equipment for servicewomen and men, from uniforms to night-vision devices and protective clothing . The shortages are making themselves felt everywhere. They are having impacts on training, exercises and the confidence with which equipment is handled in action. The often excessively long amounts of time taken for the repair work carried out in the private sector are part of the problem when it comes to the major end items that are in short supply…Furthermore, large and small procurement projects must be sustainably speeded up. For example, planned decommissioning measures mean the Navy only has nine of the 15 large combat vessels that are supposed to be in its fleet today, and minesweepers, tenders and tankers are filling the gaps, its operational capability is in a critical state, to say nothing of the scandalous shortage of operational Navy helicopters (at a time when it theoretically has a total inventory of 43 helicopters). But it is not only the objective shortages of personnel and materiel themselves that represent a problem, for the laborious business of administering this scarcity is burdening the Bundeswehr additionally as well.”

Photo: German Bundeswehr

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Should America Return to Paper Ballots? Part 2

The New York Analysis concludes its study of electronic ballots vs. paper voting.

A study in the Atlantic by Dan Gilmor notes that “Accountability is a crapshoot. In some jurisdictions, voters use machines that create electronic tallies with no ‘paper trail’—that is, no tangible evidence whatsoever that the voter’s choices were honored. A “recount” in such places means asking the machine whether it was right the first time… For reasons that remain unclear, Congress has been largely uninterested in doing what’s needed to make voting safe, secure, and verifiable (perhaps because the existing system is how members got elected)…Barring a national commitment to getting this right, maybe the answer is to change direction entirely. Maybe we should abandon electronic voting systems and do everything on paper, and count by hand. We’d wait longer for results, a lot longer. If it ensured accurate results, though, I’d call that a reasonable trade.

Fox News  reports that Georgia is looking to return to paper ballots. “The most secure elections in the world are conducted with a piece of paper and a pencil,” said Georgia State Rep. Scot Turner. “It allows you to continue into the future to verify the result.”  Turner has proposed a bill that would retire Georgia’s electronic touch-screen voting machines and switch to paper ballots that voters would fill out and then be counted by optical scan machines. The technology has been in use for decades to score standardized tests for grade-school students.”

You should prevent hand practice and indulge in lovemaking with viagra brand online a trusted female. If any of these serious symptoms are noticed then immediate visit to doctor is essential. cialis tadalafil online The best thing about penis enlargement supplements is cost of viagra pills that they also improve overall sexual stamina. Well, it viagra free shipping is all a false. Cyperscoop reasons that “Paper ballots may seem like an antiquated voting practice, but hacking fears are now pushing an increasing number of states toward a return to the basics. State legislatures and election directors are heeding warnings from Washington that hackers may tamper with electronic voting systems in the 2018 midterm elections. On the national level, lawmakers have made several attempts to push legislation aiming to strengthen election cybersecurity through grants to upgrade equipment and to increase cooperation between the federal government and lower jurisdictions. So far, no such legislation has passed either chamber of Congress. Amid all this national attention, a number of states have started to act on their own bolster the integrity of elections they run. With these states, the focus has been on doing away with direct-recording electronic voting machines (DREs) that don’t produce a paper record. Experts and advocates say it might be impossible to create an unhackable system, so the next best thing would be to ensure that a system is fully auditable, so that any tampering would be detected with a review.”

The National Association of Secretaries of State  notes that “Just as we must have contingency plans for floods and all kinds of natural phenomena, we must also be ready to deal with man-made threats. The risks posed by foreign government hackers, cyber criminals and everyday hacktivists are not new to election officials. States and localities are committed to working with national security agencies and other federal partners, including the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to solicit input on threats and risk mitigation in our elections. States are already deploying numerous resources for this election cycle, including extensive testing for cyber threats described by the recent FBI alert, and best practices guidelines produced by the EAC. Additional steps may be taken based upon credible or specific threats that are identified in the run-up to Election Day. Secretaries of State are also part of a DHS Election Infrastructure Cybersecurity Working Group, created for sharing resources, best practices and technical advice. To be clear: The equipment that people vote on is NOT connected to the Internet. Vote counting is NEVER done with systems connected to the Internet, and tabulation systems are not networked. Election systems must be physically secured when not in use, with public accuracy and performance testing that anyone can observe. Post-election audits can help to further guard against deliberate manipulation of the election, as well as unintentional software, hardware or programming issues. Again, there are no documented cases of flawed voting results linked to alleged cyber hacking.”

Of course, there have been calls in some states to allow voting via internet, despite the NASS statement.