Thomas Paine's version of "you didn't build that":
"Separate an individual from society,and give him an island or a continent to possess,and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end,in all cases,that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore,of personal property,beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice,of gratitude,and of civilization,a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came"
Submitted by Leah
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Nearly all of these are English-edition daily newspapers. These sites have interesting editorials and essays, and many have links to other good news sources. We try to limit this list to those sites which are regularly updated, reliable, with a high percentage of “up” time.
Proposals to ban unflattering coverage of the military threaten press freedom
The McGlynn
We should realize by now that Israel is not “the only liberal democracy” in Western Asia. It lost this stature years ago. It is now a fascist oligarchy. Some will say the previous statements are anti-Semitic. And I say BULLSHIT back to them.
The killing, subjugation and dehumanizing of the Palestine people is a monstrous violation of international law.
The McGlynn
Israeli troops take position as they clash with Palestinian youth near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images
On the day the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers opened fire on unarmed Palestinian protesters who gathered at the border fence on the Gaza Strip.
Sorry. That requires a rewrite to reflect “the truth” as promulgated by the Israeli government.
On the day the US moved its embassy to Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers opened fire to prevent an invasion of their country by Arabs living in the Gaza Strip.
This is a typical instance of the divergence in reporting that has become a hallmark of recording the conflict in Israel/Palestine.
Indeed, the use of term Israel/Palestine is also a matter of dispute. No matter how hard journalists may try, they find it virtually impossible to make a neutral, factual statement when writing and broadcasting about the Middle East.
Both sides perceive bias in every report. It’s as if facts – those statements of reality underpinned by evidence that can be verified and which are supposed to be a reporter’s stock-in-trade – do not exist. But there is one reporting medium that continues to have value: the camera, moving or still. It enables people elsewhere to get some perspective on events. Although contextual explanation, inevitably loaded with propaganda, quickly follows, it is impossible to erase the images from viewers’ minds.
Now Israel’s parliament is being asked to consider a law that would prevent us from having even that momentary, partial view of what members of the Israel Defence Forces are doing. A bill has been proposed that seeks to prohibit “the photographing and documenting” of IDF troops “with the intention of undermining the spirit” of the army. It recommends a five-year prison term for offenders and 10 years for those judged to have harmed state security.
According to its proposer, Robert Ilatov, chairman of a minority rightwing group supportive of the ruling Likud party, the “worrying phenomenon” of the monitoring of Israel’s soldiers by pro-Palestinian organisations through video, photographs and audio recordings is a “biased and tendentious” act with “a clear anti-Israeli agenda”.
Reports suggest the idea has the support of Israel’s defence minister, Avigdor Lieberman, the founder of Ilatov’s party. That prompted Israel’s liberal newspaper, Haaretz, to treat the matter seriously in an editorial that called the proposal “dangerous”. Its aim, said the paper, was “to silence criticism of the army and in particular to prevent human rights organisations from documenting the Israeli army’s actions in the [occupied] territories”. The International Federation of Journalists also condemned the proposal, arguing that it “constitutes a serious breach of the freedom of the press” because it “criminalises the work of journalists”.
Haaretz agrees, believing such a law would harm press freedom: “The public has a right to know what the reality is and especially what the ‘people’s army’ is doing in its name and on its behalf.”
I couldn’t put it better myself. Any restriction on the freedom to report inhibits the possibility of holding power to account.
One trigger for the Ilatov initiative is obvious. In March 2016, a Palestinian attacker who was lying wounded and immobilised on the ground was shot dead at point-blank range by an IDF soldier, Elor Azaria. The shooting was caught on video and posted on social media by the Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem. As a result, Azaria was arrested, convicted of manslaughter and served nine months of an 18-month sentence before being released last month.
People waving Catalan independence flags in Barcelona last year. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
The Catalan independence leader Jordi Sànchez who has been in prison for eight months, has called on the Spanish government to reconsider its adherence to the principle of “the indisputable unity of the homeland”, saying it is the only way out of the political crisis.
Sànchez, a regional MP and former leader of the Catalan National Assembly, is facing sedition and rebellion charges over the part he played in demonstrations in the run-up to the unofficial independence referendum last October.
In an interview with the Guardian conducted before Pedro Sánchez replaced Mariano Rajoy as prime minister, the Catalan politician called for a complete overhaul of Madrid’s approach to “the most important political crisis” Spain has experienced since its return to democracy following the death of the dictator Francisco Franco.
“The only way to restore democratic and political normality is a paradigm shift,” said Sànchez. “Spain has to exchange the principle of the indisputable unity of the homeland for the principle of the indisputable mandate of the popular will of citizens expressed at the ballot box.”
Sànchez is facing sedition and rebellion charges over the part he played in demonstrations before the unofficial independence referendum. Photograph: Javier Soriano/AFP/Getty Images
The Spanish government’s direct control over the region lapsed on Saturday after the new Catalan president, the hardline nationalist Quim Torra, abandoned plans to reappoint jailed or fugitive members of the previous administration.
Catalonia is divided over the independence issue: the overwhelming majority of Catalans want a referendum agreed by the central and regional governments, and the vote called by the ndeposed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was shunned by unionists. 90% of participants opted for independence on a turnout of 42%.
“We are facing an indisputable democratic challenge,” said Sànchez. “We are debating whether to move towards the 21st century or to cling to the Francoist impositions of the transition [to democracy] which also informed the current constitution when it comes to judicial power, the unity of Spain and the monarchy.”
He lamented the lack of communication between Puigdemont’s government and “the state powers”, calling it “the principle mistake” of recent years. “In politics, even in the worst moments of a crisis, there have to be communication channels,” he said.
“They have ceased to exist in the political conflict in Catalonia and the interlocutors have faded away. We’ve had more than five years of non-existent dialogue and now we’re suffering the consequences.”
A change of tack in Catalonia, he said, would allow the Spanish government to abandon its forceful approach as well as permitting the judicial authorities to “stop violating the political rights of elected people”.
Pedro Sánchez, who relied on the support of the two main Catalan pro-independence parties to depose Rajoy in a no-confidence vote on Friday, has said he will engage in dialogue to try to resolve Catalonia’s “institutional crisis”.
But he said any negotiations would have to abide by the constitution, which stresses the “indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”.
Roman Abramovich gained Israeli citizenship after experiencing delays in renewing his expired UK visa Photograph: Anton Novoderezhkin/Tass
It’s the must-have accessory for every self-respecting 21st-century oligarch, and a good many mere multimillionaires: a second – and sometimes a third or even a fourth – passport.
Israel, which helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich out of a spot of bother this week by granting him citizenship after delays in renewing his expired UK visa, offers free nationality to any Jewish person wishing to move there.
But there are as many as two dozen other countries, including several in the EU, where someone with the financial resources of the Chelsea football club owner could acquire a new nationality for a price: the global market in citizenship-by-investment programmes – or CIPs as they are commonly known – is booming.
The schemes’ specifics – and costs, ranging from as little as $100,000 (£74,900) to as much as €2.5m (£2.19m) – may vary, but not the principle: in essence, wealthy people invest money in property or businesses, buy government bonds or simply donate cash directly, in exchange for citizenship and a passport.
Some do not offer citizenship for sale outright, but run schemes usually known as “golden visas” that reward investors with residence permits that can eventually lead – typically after a period of five years – to citizenship.
The programmes are not new, but are growing exponentially, driven by wealthy private investors from emerging market economies including China, Russia, India, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the Middle East and more recently Turkey.
The first launched in 1984, a year after young, cash-strapped St Kitts and Nevis won independence from the UK. Slow to take off, it accelerated fast after 2009 when passport-holders from the Caribbean island nation were granted visa-free travel to the 26-nation Schengen zone.
For poorer countries, such schemes can be a boon, lifting them out of debt and even becoming their biggest export: the International Monetary Fund reckons St Kitts and Nevis earned 14% of its GDP from its CIP in 2014, and other estimates put the figure as high as 30% of state revenue.
Wealthier countries such as Canada, the UK and New Zealand have also seen the potential of CIPs (the US EB-5 programme is worth about $4bn a year to the economy) but sell their schemes more around the attractions of a stable economy and safe investment environment than on freedom of movement.
At least 24 countries offer a new home to people willing to invest in a business, property or government bonds
Experts from the many companies, such as Henley and Partners, CS Global and Apex, now specialising in CIPs and advertising their services online and in inflight magazines, say that unlike Abramovich, relatively few of their clients buy citizenship in order to move immediately to the country concerned.
For most, the acquisition represents an insurance policy: with nationalism, protectionism, isolationism and fears of financial instability on the rise around the world, the state of the industry serves as an effective barometer of global political and economic uncertainty.
But CIPs are not without their critics. Malta, for example, has come under sustained fire from Brussels and other EU capitals for its programme, run by Henley and Partners, which according to the IMF saw more than 800 wealthy individuals gain citizenship in the three years following its launch in 2014.
Critics said the scheme was undermining the concept of EU citizenship, posing potential major security risks, and providing a possible route for wealthy individuals – for example from Russia – with opaque income streams to dodge sanctions in their own countries.
Several other CIPs have come under investigation for fraud, while equality campaigners increasingly argue the moral case that it is simply wrong to grant automatic citizenship to ultra-high net worth individuals when the less privileged must wait their turn – and, in many cases, be rejected.
The president of the Fair Work Commission, Justice Iain Ross, has announced the new national minimum wage will increase by 3.5% to $719.20 a week, or $18.93 per hour. It amounts to an increase of $24.30 a week. The increase is still well below the 7.2% that unions called for, but above the inflation rate of 1.9%
Private letter published by the New York Times also asserts the president’s absolute authority over all federal investigations
Staff and Associated Press
The special counsel Robert Mueller in Washington. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters
Donald Trump’s lawyers sent a private 20-page letter to the special counsel Robert Mueller to assert that he cannot be forced to testify in the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, according to a report.
They also argue that Trump could not have committed obstruction because he has absolute authority over all federal investigations.
The memo is an assertion of presidential power and another front on which Trump’s lawyers have argued that he cannot be subpoenaed.
In the letter, the legal team argues that a charge of illegal obstruction is moot because the US constitution empowers the president to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon”.
In the letter, according to the New York Times, the president’s legal team write: “It is our understanding that the reason behind the request for the interview is to allow the special counsel’s office to complete its report.
“After reviewing the list of topics you presented, it is abundantly clear … that all of the answers to your inquiries are contained in the exhibits and testimony that have already been voluntarily provided to you …. all of which clearly show that there was no collusion with Russia, and that no FBI investigation was or even could have been obstructed.
“It remains our position that the president’s actions here, by virtue of his position as the chief law enforcement officer, could neither constitutionally nor legally constitute obstruction because that would amount to him obstructing himself, and that he could, if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired.”
The memo goes on to say that the investigation has had the cooperation and backing of the president and White House despite it remaining a “burden” on him and the administration.
Trump has called the investigation a “witch-hunt” and on twitter on Saturday continued his attacks on the special counsel investigation.
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