The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: On Speeching Terms

On March 22, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

What We’re Following Today

It’s Thursday, March 21.

‣ Flooding in Nebraska after a bomb cyclone this week has caused more than $1 billion in damage, the state’s governor said. More than 2,000 homes and 340 businesses were estimated to have been damaged or destroyed.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

A Little Redundant: President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to “take appropriate steps” to make sure colleges receiving federal research funding are promoting free speech on campus. The thing is, colleges are already legally required to do that.

Long Time Coming: President Trump on Twitter encouraged the United States to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a disputed territory on the border of Israel and Syria. But this was no impulse tweet, Kathy Gilsinan writes: It was at least one year in the making.

What to Expect From the Health-Care Conversation: Despite the ongoing debate among Democrats over the future of universal health care, and the advantages and disadvantages of various Medicare for all bills, the 2020 presidential race won’t just be about single-payer health care, writes Ronald Brownstein: Trump still wants to repeal Obamacare.

A New Home for Hate: Since 2016, social-media companies like Facebook and Twitter have come under harsh scrutiny for allowing accounts to spread misinformation and preach white supremacy and other extremist ideologies. But that misinformation is also thriving on Instagram.

Four Big Myths: As the most segregated school system in the U.S. grapples again with diversity in its student body, the debate is rife with misunderstandings. One is the persistent myth that reforming the high-school admissions process will solve schools’ diversity problem.

The Art of the Argument: Most American families are in step with one another politically (though at least one family—the White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and her husband, George—made headlines in recent days for disagreeing publicly about the president). Here’s a framework for how to have a peaceful, productive political conversations with your family members.

With the Eyes of the World Upon Her: In the aftermath of the deadly mosque shootings in New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has spoken out against publishing the gunman’s manifesto and announced a ban on semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles. Her leadership, and her country’s response, contrast with the standoff politics currently roiling the U.S. and Great Britain, writes Krishnadev Calamur.

— Elaine Godfrey

Snapshot

Kansas state Representatives Susan Concannon, left, and Suzi Carlson, right, watch an electronic tally board as the House approves a Medicaid expansion bill on Thursday at the Statehouse in Topeka. (John Hanna / AP)

Ideas From The Atlantic

Nazis Have Always Been Trolls (Adam Serwer)
“Ultimately, as with the New Zealand shooter, every joke, every pithy reference, every pretend gesture toward the moral standards of liberal democracy has the same punch line: We are going to kill you.” → Read on.

Chelsea Clinton in the Hall of Mirrors (Conor Friedersdorf)
“This episode illustrates that when the constant focus is on the boundaries of legitimate speech, little time or attention is left for substance. And what’s said to constitute bigotry keeps expanding without any apparent limit.” → Read on.

Midwestern Flooding Isn’t a Natural Disaster (Christine A. Klein)
“Back in the nation’s flooded regions, it is inspiring to watch midwesterners help one another rebuild. But the key is to rebuild without repeating past mistakes.” → Read on.

The Intensity of the Debate Makes It Hard to Formulate Sound Public Policy (David Frum)
David Frum responds to criticism of his latest story on immigration, “If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will”:

“But the existing people of the country, in all their imperfection—don’t they have to be a first concern? Immigration eases the consequences of disregarding their troubles, and corrodes the political consensus for social reform. Maybe it does not always have to be that way. But in the United States, it has been that way.” → Read on.

What Else We’re Reading

‣ Inside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Unlikely Rise (Charlotte Alter, Time)
‣Mitch McConnell: Nihilist in Chief (Alex Pareene, The New Republic)
‣How Trump Is on Track for a 2020 Landslide (Ben White and Steven Shepard, Politico)
‣Katie Couric Reflects on That Controversial 2008 Interview With Sarah Palin (David Mack, BuzzFeed News)
‣ Why Donald Trump Is Desperate for Britain to Declare Independence (Edward Luce, Financial Times) (? Paywall)

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The Supreme Court and Dual Citizenship

On March 21, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

As AIPAC preps for its annual policy conference entitled “Connected for Good” with an expected attendance of 20,000 committed Zionists, its most zealous Zionist Congressional supporters will also likely be in attendance; that is, those who have signed the loyalty oath as well as those who retain dual citizenship to Israel and are thereby entitled to AIPAC campaign support.

There is always more to the story when it comes to AIPAC and how it has been allowed to circumvent and or manipulate US law as it continues to function unfettered by legal requirements that every other foreign country must adhere to. To take a critical eye to AIPAC should not be construed as anti-semetic as AIPAC can take credit for motivating and finagling the US into wars in the Middle East at a cost of $4 trillion from the American taxpayer.

With allegedly hundreds of members of Congress and Federal government employees with dual US-Israel citizenship, what has been missing since the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision is scrutiny of the unintended consequences of that decision as it has affected American foreign policy.

To date, there may be no way to confirm which, if any, Members of Congress have dual citizenship with Israel although the informed rumor mill claims that to be the case. In a 2015 interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Diane Rehm, claiming to have a list, unequivocally stated that “you have dual citizenship with Israel” to which Sanders responded just as unequivocally “No. I am an American.” It is essential for Members to be forthcoming about their citizenship since real or imagined conflicts of interest can only result in misguided speculation and further alienation.

If the Russians had ever inserted itself into American politics as intimately as the Israelis have, both political parties would be loony-tunes but especially the Dems who appear to have more of a fondness for Zionism. Clearly no other country has taken advantage of the US largesse as Israel has with its hustle of $233 billion (as of 2014) in foreign aid since 1948 including $38 billion in ‘military assistance’ in 2016 plus other unaccounted-for military projects over the years. It takes chutzpah.

The history of dual citizenship in the US is an outrageous example of how easily the US abandoned its responsibility to secure its own national security rather than protect its economic well-being from foreign manipulation. The consequences of that duplicity have yet to be fully explored.

The artist Beys Afriyum, born Ephraim Bernstein in Poland, became a naturalized US citizen in 1926. In 1950 he traveled to Israel, voted in the 1951 Knesset election and remained until 1960 when Mr. Afriyum applied for a renewal of his US passport. The State Department refused citing that by virtue of voting in a foreign election, Afriyum had given up his citizenship in accordance with the Nationality Act of 1940 which stated that a US citizen would lose their citizenship if they voted in an election in a foreign country. In 1958, the Supreme Court adopted Perez v. Brownell (6 – 3) which reiterated the 1940 Act regarding loss of citizenship by voting in a foreign election.

Mr. Afriyum sought a declaratory judgment from the District Court claiming that the 1940 Act was unconstitutional. However, both the District Court in a summary judgment and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of Congress to strip a citizen of their citizenship.

Mr. Afriyum then appealed to the Supreme Court which ruled 5 – 4 in his favor in overturning its earlier decision in Perez v Brownell. The Court further concluded that there is “no general power to revoke an American citizen’s citizenship without prior consent”.

In a compelling dissent, Justice John Harlan argued that in its power to regulate foreign affairs, Congress has the power to expatriate any citizen who intentionally commits acts which may be prejudicial to the foreign relations of the United States, and which reasonably may be deemed to indicate a dilution of his allegiance to this country” and, in a prescient glimpse into the future, that “allowing Americans to vote in foreign elections ran contrary to the foreign policy interests of the nation and ought to result in loss of citizenship.^”

Further, Harlan referred to Black’s opinion as a ‘remarkable process of circumlocution” with “unsubstantiated assertions,” “a lengthy albeit incomplete survey” and that he “finds nothing in this extraordinary series of conventions which permits the imposition of constitutional constraint upon Congress.”

After the Court’s decision, it was determined that Afriyum had voted in the 1955 and 1959 Knesset elections and that Afriyum later became an Israel citizen.

Despite the 1967 decision, the Homeland Security oath for naturalized citizens has not yet incorporated the new standard which still reflects US citizenship based on the one person/one country concept as established principal: “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, state or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject of citizens.”

While the LA Times editorial “The Problem of Dual Citizenship” asks “How can a person be equally loyal to two countries? “ and in citing the Afriyum v Rusk case, the Times understates its warning that “dual citizenship can present a security issue whether to permit access to classified information..”

Since the days of the Afriyum decision, the potential for betrayal and conflicts of interest have intensified dramatically for Members of Congress and Federal employees and those holding national security clearances given the unparalleled financial and political support that the US provides to Israel. In addition, the 2018 adoption by the Knesset of the Basic Law which establishes that Israel is now specifically a Jewish nation raises First Amendment issues regarding the establishment clause as it prohibits state-sponsored religion.

ASTRONOMER: Aliens might zap black holes with lasers to travel galaxy…

On March 21, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

Astronomer says aliens might zap black holes with lasers to travel the galaxy

An astronomer at Columbia University has a new guess about how hypothetical alien civilizations might be invisibly navigating our galaxy: Firing lasers at binary black holes (twin black holes that orbit each other).

The idea is a futuristic upgrade of a technique NASA has used for decades.

Spacecraft already navigate our solar system using gravity wells as slingshots. The spacecraft itself enters orbit around a planet, flings itself as close as possible to a planet or moon to pick up speed, and then uses that added energy to travel even faster toward its next destination. In doing so, it saps away a tiny fraction of the planet’s momentum through space — though the effect is so minimal it’s pretty much impossible to notice. [9 Strange, Scientific Reasons We Haven’t Found Aliens Yet]

The same basic principles operate in the the intense gravity wells around black holes, which bend not only the paths of solid objects, but light itself. If a photon, or a light particle, enters a particular region in the vicinity of a black hole, it will do one partial circuit around the black hole and get flung back in exactly the same direction. Physicists call those regions “gravitational mirrors” and the photons they fling back “boomerang photons.”

NASA scientist says space alien search should be more ‘aggressive’

Boomerang photons already move at the speed of light, so they don’t pick up any speed from their trips around black holes. But they do pick up energy. That energy takes the form of increased wavelength of the light, and the individual photon “packets” carry more energy than they had when they entered the mirror.

That comes at a cost to the black hole, sapping some of its momentum.

In a paper published in the preprint journal arXiv on March 11, David Kipping, the Columbia astronomer, proposed that an interstellar spacecraft could fire a laser at the gravity mirror of a fast-moving black hole in a binary black hole system. When the newly energized photons from the laser whipped back around, it could re-absorb them, and convert all that extra energy into momentum — before firing the photons back at the mirror again.

This system, which Kipping termed the “halo drive,” has a big advantage over more traditional lightsails: It doesn’t require a massive fuel source. Current lightsail proposals require more energy to accelerate the space shuttle to “relativistic” speeds (meaning a significant fraction of light speed) than humanity has produced in its entire history.

With a halo drive, all that energy could just be sapped from a black hole, rather than generated from a fuel source.

Halo drives would have limits — at a certain point the spacecraft would be moving so quickly away from the black holes that it wouldn’t absorb enough light energy to add additional speed. It’s possible to solve this problem by moving the laser off the spaceship and onto a nearby planet, he noted, and just precisely aiming the laser so it emerges from the black hole’s gravity well to hit the spaceship. But without re-absorbing the laser light that planet would have to burn fuel to generate new beams constantly, and would eventually dwindle away.

A civilization might be using a system like this to navigate the Milky Way right now, Kipping wrote. There are certainly enough black holes out there. If so, that civilization might be sapping so much momentum from black holes that it would be messing with their orbits, and we could possibly detect the signs of alien civilization from the eccentric orbits of binary black holes.

And if no other civilizations are out there doing this, he added, perhaps humanity could be the first.

Originally published on Live Science.

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And Now Algeria

On March 21, 2019 By admin

• Breaking News

It has now been nine years since protests broke out across the Middle East and North Africa. After citizens took to the streets, the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen all were deposed during the Arab Spring. What about Algeria – the tenth-largest country in the world, the largest in Africa and a country with the tenth-largest reserves of natural gas? Up until now, there has been no change of government since 1999, no calls for revolution despite a gross inequality of wealth and no overthrow of its leader. Understandably, Algeria has been off the media’s radar.

The country has been ripe for revolution. Economic conditions have worsened since the 1980s with declining oil prices. There has been high unemployment. Between 1988 and 1995, for example, the percentage of the population below the poverty line increased from 8 to 14 per cent. Almost 70 per cent of the poor live in rural areas.

For four consecutive Fridays, hundreds of thousands of Algerians have protested throughout the country. Revolutions can spread, such as in 1848 in Italy, France, Germany and Austria. While during the Arab Spring Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hasni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Ali Abdullah in Yemen left power, Abdelaziz Bouteflika has remained president of Algeria. Although there were protests in Algeria in January and February 2011, he and his followers have dominated Algerian politics for two decades.

The government has provided stability. The 1991 to 2002 Algerian civil war was a devastating armed struggle between the Algerian Government and Islamic rebels. The total number of dead has been estimated at around 200,000, during what has been called the “dark decade” in Algerian history.

Memories of how the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was poised to win an election in 1992 when hundreds of thousands took to the streets have been omnipresent and reason to accept the important position of the military. Bouteflika, his circle, and the army, with obvious support from the West, have provided a buffer against fundamentalist radicalization and ensured that there would not be another “dirty war” or takeover by groups like ISIS.

History has been on Bouteflika’s side. He has been a respected leader during much of Algeria’s post-colonial era. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1963 to 1979 and first elected president in 1999. Despite a stroke in 2013, and his recent frail health, his four terms in office have allowed Algeria to avoid the regional chaos.

But it seems that the historic need for stability has now been overcome by calls for anyone-other-than-Bouteflika elections. His announcement that he would seek a fifth term while continuing declining health – reports had him dying or near-death last week – have proven this to be the election too far. His stay in a Geneva hospital and incapacity to be physically in Algeria to present his candidature have finally created the momentum for a radical change some 20 years after the Arab Spring.

What will happen? Bouteflika and his political party, the National Liberation Front (FLN), have dominated Algeria for twenty years with support from the West because of easy access to the considerable reserves of natural gas and oil. Post-Bouteflika is not clear. Many Algerians say they have learned the lessons of the Arab Spring; Algeria is not Syria. While the presidency of Bouteflika was superficially democratic – there were, after all, four presidential elections – the young are questioning the legitimacy of the regime in power and those around him.

Opposition political parties have been hindered by a lack of access to national television. The major news outlets have been controlled by the government. There is no well-organized institutional opposition. On the other hand, Algeria does not lack talented political leaders. Ali Benflis, former Prime Minister and twice presidential candidate has said he will not run because he doubts the legitimacy of an upcoming April election. Former Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the United Kingdom Ahmed Attaf has been active in opposition, but for the moment no major opposition candidate has stepped forward.

Even if Algeria has been off the media’s radar, there is no doubt that some preparations have gone on for the post-Bouteflika era. The current protests and the president’s worsening health have accelerated the process. But, there has been no obvious roadmap for who will take over. If the lessons of the Arab Spring have been learned within the ruling party and the demonstrators, there will be a peaceful transition. For the last twenty years, Algeria has been an exception in the region. A peaceful, democratic transition would be an exception as well.