Politics, policies & power: John Mearsheimer’s blunt analysis | Centre Stage
План Израиля по войне с Хамас до последнего палестинца, имеющий реальной целью ликвидацию всех палестинских анклавов на территории страны и значительное расширение её жизненного пространства за счёт территорий соседей, имеет одну важную отраслевую особенность.
Палестинцы – древний народ и Израиль стоит на их земле.
Сами израильтяне – их ближайшие древние родственники.
Тем не менее, совершенно понятно, почему никакого государства у палестинцев нет и быть не могло.
Как не могло и не должно было быть никакого государственности у бывших союзных республик – губерний, включая Финляндию и Польшу.
Вернее, они могли и должны были иметь государственность, но чисто номинальную, сохраняя ко всеобщему спокойствию выраженный политический и военный нейтралитет.
Почему?
По тому, что как Вы помните из Теории Рекламы, роль любой и всякой упаковки
состоит не только в сбережении самого Товара/Решения, но и в его идентификации, ибо Язык – критерий преобразования Опыта
.
Кроме того, значимая роль Услуги, как Упаковки Товара/Решения
состоит не только в защите Продукта от окружающей его среды, но и в защите окружающей Продукт среды от последствий такого взаимодействия – его Процессов.
Соответственно.
Если Израиль ликвидирует упаковку - инерцоид народов Палестины со своей территории и со своих границ, то это не только не приведет к решению проблем с безопасностью Израиля, но тут же снимет прежние ограничения в свободе действий его соседей – потенциальных противников (на территории которых эти палестинцы окажутся).
Важно помнить, что сами по себе палестинцы (как, например украинцы) никому не нужны, но вот поводом для консолидации усилий противников Израиля (как, например России), являются превосходным.
P.S.
Поэтому России не выгодно изгнание украинцев в Европу, но целесообразен их организованный регресс, политическая кастрация и низведение их государственности до совершенно номинальной.
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С пониманием и отраслевыми пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Весьма редко а.п. использует свою цитату в качестве мотива поста. И сегодня, как раз тот самый случай.
В своём
а.п. допустил схожесть новейших событий в США и событий 30-ти летней давности в СССР, когда несмотря на противодействие номенклатуры на пост главы России избрался Ельцин.
А спустя месяц, Горбачёва попытались отстранить от власти члены ГКЧП…
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По скромному мнению а.п., сперва произойдёт вот это:
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Инаугурация Ельцина.Б.Н 10.07.1991 Года
А потом, вот это:
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Время. Эфир 22 августа 1991
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Пресс-конференция ГКЧП, Москва, 19 августа 1991 г.
Тогда, как Вы помните, у ГКЧП ничего не получилось.
Ельцин вернул Горбачёва из Фароса в Москву
А спустя три месяца СССР не стало.
Фактор ГКЧП значительно укорил процесс распада СССР, но сам процесс распада начался ещё при Хрущёве.
При Брежневе его старательно игнорировали.
При Черненко и Андропове стало не до того.
А при Горбачёве распад из тайного стал явным.
Михаил Сергеевич пытался возглавить упущенный процесс, но не смог и только усугубил ситуацию.
Можно ли было предотвратить распад СССР?
Безусловно – да.
Но, для этого надо было иметь весь последующий опыт следующих трех десятилетий и решимость Путина.
А такого лидера во главе СССР тогда не было (и не могло быть), ведь Горбачёв старательно удалял от власти всех, кто, по его мнению, был способен решить проблему СССР по другому.
Впрочем, а.п. отвлёкся.
Победа Трампа подобна победе Ельцина.
США сейчас переживают тот же этап своего Жизненного Цикла, что пережила Россия 30 лет тому.
То есть Россия этот этап уже пережила и с честью из него выходит.
А у США, как понятно, все впереди.
Их Трамп – наш Ельцин.
Вопрос в том, Ельцин какой?
Июньский или декабрьский?
До ГКЧП или после?
Если дворцовый переворот и отстранение Байдена не считается, тогда это Ельцин «летний» и США ещё ждет изоляция Харис, свой «ослиный» ГКЧП и возвращение Байдена Трампом к власти…
А если считать дворцовый переворот и отстранение Байдена от власти и воцарение Камалы, аналогом нашего ГКЧП, то тогда нынешний Трамп это Ельцин «зимний»(Трамп «летний» - прошлая каденция). И тогда к декабрю США созревают и в январе Трамп констатирует очевидное – США всё.
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С недопониманием и очевидными сомнениями, Dimitriy.
Как почувствовать накал борьбы за власть в США на своем личном примере?
Напишите в Word Office на русском, с маленькой буквы, фамилии настоящего и будущего президентов США: «байден» и «трамп».
И Вы убедитесь, что имя:
• «байден» - обязательно будет подчёркнуто, как ошибка;
• «трамп» - точно, нет.
А.п. искренне надеялся, что после выборов, с ближайшим текущим обновлением это «недоразумение» будет устранено, но не тут то было.
Последнее обновление программного обеспечения Майкрософт было вчера и ничего не изменилось.
P.S. Да, действительно, такая же ошибка свойственна и «Телеграмм» Дурова, но Word Office это специализированный текстовый редактор и ему положено соответствовать.
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С сожалением и понятными пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Помните, в одном из постов лет десять тому, мы обсуждали, как Системы утилизируют ответственность?
Когда плохо:
• ИСО>ЕСО, например Россия – утилизирует ответственность внутри;
• ЕСО>ИСО, например США – утилизирует ответственность снаружи.
То есть, если США плохо, они тут же развязывают несколько маленьких победоносных войн.
Но, если перед США встает вопрос о будущем своей государственности, то маленьких победоносных становится не достаточно.
Что бы исправить такую ситуацию нужна одна, большая, единственная, под которую можно списать всё…
США сейчас больше, чем очень плохо – им сейчас так же «хорошо», как СССР летом 1991.
Выражая суждения о чужой стране, мы можем и должны не доверять себе, но мы не можем и не должны не доверять мнению патриотической интеллигенции этой страны, которая рефлексируя подобно нам, так же не понимает, что происходит с их родиной.
P.S.
Если а.п. прав, Трампу следует подавить «бунт на болоте» и вернуть Байдену власть (и ответственность).
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Jeffrey Sachs: Russia's Weapons Of Destruction In RED ALERT After Putin APPROVES Nuclear Doctrine
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Glenn Greenwald: Dangerous New Escalation in Russia, & Our Blackmailed Politicians
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С дежавю и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Australia Has Barred Everyone Under 16 From Social Media. Will It Work?
The law sets a minimum age for users of platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X. How the restriction will be enforced online remains an open question.
In Melbourne on Wednesday. Australia passed a social media ban for children despite feasibility concerns.Credit...William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Australia has imposed a sweeping ban on social media for children under 16, one of the world’s most comprehensive measures aimed at safeguarding young people from potential hazards online. But many details were still unclear, such as how it will be enforced and what platforms will be covered.
After sailing through Parliament’s lower house on Wednesday, the bill passed the Senate on Thursday with bipartisan support. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that it puts Australia at the vanguard of efforts to protect the mental health and well-being of children from detrimental effects of social media, such as online hate or bullying.
The law, he has said, puts the onus on social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent anyone under 16 from having an account. Corporations could be fined up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (about $32 million) for “systemic” failures to implement age requirements.
Neither underage users nor their parents will face punishment for violations. And whether children find ways to get past the restrictions is beside the point, Mr. Albanese said.
“We know some kids will find workarounds, but we’re sending a message to social media companies to clean up their act,” he said in a statement this month.
As with many countries’ regulations on alcohol or tobacco, the law will create a new category of “age-restricted social media platforms” accessible only to those 16 and older. How that digital carding will happen, though, is a tricky question.
The law specifies that users will not be forced to provide government identification as part of the verification process, a measure that the conservative opposition said was included after they raised concerns about privacy rights.
It is also not clear exactly which platforms will be covered by the ban. The prime minister has said that Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and X will be included, but YouTube and messaging apps including WhatsApp are expected to be exempt.
France last year passed a law requiring parental consent for social media users under 15, and it has been pushing for similar measures across the European Union. Florida this year imposed a ban for users under 14 and required parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, but that law could face constitutional challenges.
Leo Puglisi, a 17-year-old Australian teenager who runs a news site, 6 News, that is staffed mostly by teens, said he had full confidence that his 14-year-old brother would easily find a way to circumvent any restriction.
He described social media as an integral part of growing up today. He and his contemporaries are aware that it can cause harm, but they rely on it to find communities of people with similar interests, he said.
A blanket ban would do little to counteract the dangers of the platforms, he said.
“None of the harmful content would be removed. It just kicks the can down the road and throws you into the deep end at 16,” he said. “It might sound good on paper, but in reality it’s not practical.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Canberra this month.Credit...Mick Tsikas/AAP Image, via Reuters
But Dany Elachi, who has five children between the ages of 7 and 15, said the law would help to change the norms around social media usage. Many parents concerned about its harmful effects feel they have no choice but to let their children use it so they don’t feel left out.
“When you think your child might be isolated, that’s what puts parents under a lot of pressure,” said Mr. Elachi, co-founder of the Heads Up Alliance, a network of parents who are trying to delay their children’s use of social media and smartphones. “If everybody misses out, no one misses out.”
Kylea Tink, an independent lawmaker representing North Sydney, criticized the bill in the debate in the lower house on Tuesday as a “blunt instrument.” She said the law would stop short of holding social media companies accountable for the safety of the product they are providing.
“They are not fixing the potholes; they are just telling our kids there won’t be any cars,” she said.
During the same debate, Stephen Bates of the Australian Greens party cited his experience as a 13-year-old addicted to the video game “The Sims.” His father installed a program so his computer would automatically shut down after an hour, he recalled.
“It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get around that,” said Mr. Bates, now a 32-year-old lawmaker. “As the youngest person in this chamber and one of very, very few people in this place who grew up with this technology and with social media, I can say that change is needed but this bill is not it.”
Now that the law has passed, social media companies have a 12-month period to meet the requirements. The task of sorting out the details of its implementation will fall to Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner.
She said the technologies behind age verification were rapidly advancing, arising from past efforts to limit underage exposure to pornography or gambling sites. A trial commissioned by the Australian government is underway to test them.
In an interview, she said she had no doubt that tech giants would find a way to comply.
“They’ve got financial resources, technologies and some of the best brainpower,” she said. “If they can target you for advertising, they can use the same technology and know-how to identify and verify the age of a child.”
Цитата:
How Australia Will (or Won’t) Keep Children Off Social Media
Critics say big questions remain not only about how the new law will be enforced, but also about whether the ban will really protect young people.
The Australian government has called the legislation a “world leading” move to protect young people online.Credit...David Gray/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Australia has passed a law to prevent children under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms.
The bill, which the government calls a “world leading” move to protect young people online, was approved in the Senate on Thursday with support from both of the country’s major parties. The lower house of Parliament had passed it earlier in the week.
“This is about protecting young people — not punishing or isolating them,” said Michelle Rowland, Australia’s communications minister. She cited exposure to content about drug abuse, eating disorders and violence as some of the harms children can encounter online.
The legislation has broad support among Australians, and some parental groups have been vocal advocates. But it has faced backlash from an unlikely alliance of tech giants, human rights groups and social media experts.
Critics say there are major unanswered questions about how the law will be enforced, how users’ privacy will be protected and, fundamentally, whether the ban will actually protect children.
What’s in the law?
The law requires social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to verify the age of users and prohibit those under 16 from opening accounts.
It does not specify which platforms the ban will cover — that will be decided later — but the government has named TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram and X as sites it is likely to include.
Three broad categories of platforms will be exempt: messaging apps (like WhatsApp and Facebook’s Messenger Kids); gaming platforms; and services that provide educational content, including YouTube. Those 15 and under will also still be able to access platforms that let users see some content without registering for an account, like TikTok, Facebook and Reddit.
Ms. Rowland, the communications minister, said the restriction on creating accounts, rather than on content more broadly, would mitigate harms associated with online life — like “persistent notifications and alerts” that could affect young people’s sleep and ability to focus — while limiting the law’s effect on the broader population. And supporters of the ban say that delaying children’s exposure to the many pressures of social media would allow them the time to develop a more “secure identity,” while taking pressure off parents to police their children’s online activity.
But digital media experts and some parental groups have said that the patchwork nature of which platforms will and won’t be included in the ban makes it unclear what exactly it is meant to protect children from.
A more effective approach would be to address the problem at its root by requiring social media companies to do a better job of moderating and removing harmful content, said Lisa Given, a professor of information sciences at RMIT University in Melbourne.
The new law “does not protect children against potential harms on social media,” Professor Given said. “In fact, it could create other problems by excluding young people from helpful and useful information, as well as opening up a number of privacy concerns for all Australians.”
How will it be enforced?
That’s not yet entirely clear. The bill states that social media companies must take reasonable steps to assess users’ ages, but the platforms are left to decide how to do that. Those that don’t comply could be fined up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (about $32 million).
In a measure that was added in response to privacy concerns, the law states that providing a government-issued identity document cannot be the only option social media platforms give users for verifying their age.
Other methods the government has suggested include so-called age assurance technologies, like using a facial scan to determine a user’s approximate age, or estimating it based on online behavior.
Some of those technologies are already being tried. Facebook, for example, is teaching A.I. to estimate users’ ages by looking at things like the birthday messages they receive. The Australian government is conducting its own trial of such tools, and the results will inform how it defines the “reasonable steps” that social media platforms must take.
But Daniel Angus, the director of the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology, said it was unrealistic for the government to base its law, even in part, on that kind of technology, which is often driven by A.I., largely still in development and in no way foolproof. He added that “there are huge, huge privacy concerns around these, huge tracking concerns. All of this allows, in some way, the ability to track users online.”
What has the response been?
Polls show that the majority of Australians favor the ban. Parental groups have been broadly supportive — although some say the law does not go far enough and should cover more platforms.
Some parents who blame social media for their children’s deaths have been particularly vocal campaigners for a ban, such as Kelly O’Brien, who said that her 12-year-old daughter, Charlotte, died by suicide after experiencing bullying on and off social media.
“Giving our kids these phones, we’re giving them weapons, we’re giving them the world at their fingertips,” Ms. O’Brien told an Australian news outlet.
Social media companies have criticized the law. Elon Musk, the owner of X, said on the platform that it “seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians.”
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said the proposal “overlooks the practical reality of age assurance technology, as well as the views of a majority of mental health and youth safety organizations in the country.”
(LinkedIn argued that it should not fall within the scope of the ban because, in part, it “simply does not have content interesting and appealing to minors.”)
Some commentators have described the ban as performative. “The primary use of this legislation — let’s not pretend otherwise — is to make it look like our Parliament is taking a stand,” Annabel Crabb, a top journalist at Australia’s national broadcaster, wrote.
Human rights groups have also raised concerns.
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С завистью и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Tech Companies Chide Australia’s Under 16 Social Media Ban
Social media companies say they want to work with the government to promote teen safety.
Big Tech corporations on Friday hit out at a landmark Australian law that bans youths under the age of 16 from accessing social media, saying the law was “rushed” through parliament.
Australia approved the social media ban for children late on Thursday. The law forces tech giants from Instagram and Facebook owner Meta to TikTok to stop minors logging in or face fines of up to A$49.5 million ($32 million).
TikTok, the hugely popular platform where teen users upload and share videos, said in a statement to Reuters on Friday that it was likely the ban could see young people pushed to darker corners of the internet.
“Moving forward, it’s critical that the Australian government works closely with industry to fix issues created by this rushed process. We want to work together to keep teens safe and reduce the unintended consequences of this law for all Australians,” it said.
The government had warned Big Tech of its plans for months, and first announced the ban after a parliamentary inquiry earlier this year that heard testimony from parents of children who had self-harmed due to cyber bullying.
Albanese’s Labor party, which does not control the Senate, won crucial support from the opposition conservatives for the bill, allowing it to progress quickly.
The bill was introduced into parliament last Thursday and sent to a select committee on Friday where interested parties had 24 hours to make a submission. The legislation was passed on Thursday as part of 31 bills that were pushed through in a chaotic final day of parliament for the year.
Meta criticised the law saying it was a “predetermined process”.
“Last week, the parliament’s own committee said the ‘causal link with social media appears unclear,’ with respect to the mental health of young Australians, whereas this week the rushed Senate Committee report pronounced that social media caused harm,” it said in a statement in the early hours of Friday.
Snapchat parent Snap said it leaves many questions unanswered.
Australia has been at loggerheads with the mostly U.S.-domiciled tech giants for years. It was the first country to make social media platforms pay media outlets royalties for sharing their content and earlier this year said it plans to threaten them with fines for failing to stamp out scams.
Sunita Bose, managing director of Digital Industry Group, which has most social media companies as members, said no one can confidently explain how the law will work in practice.
“The community and platforms are in the dark about what exactly is required of them,” she said.
A trial of methods to enforce it will start in January with the ban to take effect by Nov. 2025.
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Big tech says Australia “rushed” social media ban for youths under 16
The bill was introduced into parliament last Thursday and sent to a select committee on Friday where interested parties had 24 hours to make a submission. The legislation was passed on Thursday as part of 31 bills that were pushed through in a chaotic final day of parliament for the year.
Big Tech corporations on Friday hit out at a landmark Australian law that bans youths under the age of 16 from accessing social media, saying the law was “rushed” through parliament.
Australia approved the social media ban for children late on Thursday. The law forces tech giants from Instagram and Facebook owner Meta to TikTok to stop minors logging in or face fines of up to A$49.5 million ($32 million).
TikTok, the hugely popular platform where teen users upload and share videos, said in a statement to Reuters on Friday that it was likely the ban could see young people pushed to darker corners of the internet.
“Moving forward, it’s critical that the Australian government works closely with industry to fix issues created by this rushed process. We want to work together to keep teens safe and reduce the unintended consequences of this law for all Australians,” it said.
The government had warned Big Tech of its plans for months, and first announced the ban after a parliamentary inquiry earlier this year that heard testimony from parents of children who had self-harmed due to cyber bullying.
Albanese’s Labor party, which does not control the Senate, won crucial support from the opposition conservatives for the bill, allowing it to progress quickly.
The bill was introduced into parliament last Thursday and sent to a select committee on Friday where interested parties had 24 hours to make a submission. The legislation was passed on Thursday as part of 31 bills that were pushed through in a chaotic final day of parliament for the year.
Meta criticised the law saying it was a “predetermined process”.
“Last week, the parliament’s own committee said the ‘causal link with social media appears unclear,’ with respect to the mental health of young Australians, whereas this week the rushed Senate Committee report pronounced that social media caused harm,” it said in a statement in the early hours of Friday.
Snapchat parent Snap said it leaves many questions unanswered.
Australia has been at loggerheads with the mostly U.S.-domiciled tech giants for years. It was the first country to make social media platforms pay media outlets royalties for sharing their content and earlier this year said it plans to threaten them with fines for failing to stamp out scams.
Sunita Bose, managing director of Digital Industry Group, which has most social media companies as members, said no one can confidently explain how the law will work in practice.
“The community and platforms are in the dark about what exactly is required of them,” she said.
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Tech companies put on notice as Australia passes world-first social media ban for under-16s
…
It’s the world’s toughest response yet to a problem that has seen other countries impose restrictions but not hold companies accountable for breaches of a nationwide ban. The ban is expected to apply to Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and X, but that list could expand.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese praised the new law on Friday, saying it sent a message to parents that “we’ve got your back.”
“Platforms now have a social responsibility to ensure the safety of our kids is a priority for them,” he said.
Albanese had previously told parliament there was no time to waste.
“We know that social media can be a weapon for bullies, a platform for peer pressure, a driver of anxiety, a vehicle for scammers. And worst of all, a tool for online predators,” he said.
The bill was backed by most members of Australia’s main opposition party, the Liberal Party, with Liberal Sen. Maria Kovacic describing it as a “pivotal moment in our country.”
“We have drawn a line in the sand. The enormous power of big tech can no longer remain unchecked in Australia,” she said Thursday before the vote.
But it met fierce opposition from some independents and smaller parties, including Greens Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young, who accused the major parties of trying to “fool” Australian parents.
“This is a disaster unfolding before our eyes,” she said. “You couldn’t make this stuff up. The prime minister says he’s worried about social media. The leader of the opposition says, ‘Let’s ban it.’
“It’s a race to the bottom to try and pretend who can be the toughest, and all they end up with is pushing young people into further isolation and giving the platforms the opportunity to continue the free-for-all, because now there’s no social responsibility required.
“We need to make social media safer for everybody.”
A rushed process
The government has faced considerable criticism for the speed of the legislation.
Submissions to a Senate committee inquiry into the bill were open for just 24 hours before a three-hour hearing on Monday. The inquiry report was released Tuesday, and the bill passed the lower house on Wednesday – 102 votes to 13 – before progressing to the Senate.
More than 100 submissions were made and “almost all submitters and witnesses expressed grave concerns that a bill of such import was not afforded sufficient time for thorough inquiry and report,” the committee said in its report.
However, the committee recommended that the bill be passed with some changes, including prohibiting the use of government documents, such as passports, to verify users’ age.
Tech companies Meta – the owner of Facebook and Instagram – and TikTok said in statements Friday that they shared the government’s goal of making social media safer for young users but the law had been “rushed.”
“The task now turns to ensuring there is productive consultation on all rules associated with the Bill to ensure a technically feasible outcome that does not place an onerous burden on parents and teens and a commitment that rules will be consistently applied across all social apps used by teens,” a Meta spokesperson said.
Snap Inc., whose messaging app Snapchat is popular with children, said there are still “many unanswered” questions about how the law will be implemented. It had advocated for “device-level age verification … to simplify the process.”
X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, said in its submission to the inquiry that the platform was “not widely used by minors” but expressed concern about the law’s impact on their freedom of expression.
Some experts had argued the legislation could expose children who evade the ban to unrestricted content and deter them from reporting any problems to an adult.
Despite those objections, surveys suggest Australians back the law.
A poll by YouGov conducted this month showed that 77% of Australians support the under-16 ban. The survey was conducted in the second half of this month and sought the views of 1,515 people with a margin of error of 3.2%.
Dany Elachi, co-founder of parent group the Heads Up Alliance, which pushed for the ban, said it didn’t go far enough. “Discord and YouTube Shorts for example are not subject to it – but I look forward to working with lawmakers in the months ahead to ensure the law is as effective as we can possibly make it,” he said.
The government will now engage in broad consultation before setting a switch-off date, when all children under 16 with accounts on social media platforms subject to the ban will have them deactivated.
Parents and children won’t be penalized for flouting the ban, but companies will need to show that they’ve taken reasonable steps to keep under-age users off.
Цитата:
Children and teenagers under 16 to be banned from social media after parliament passes world-first laws
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Tech companies also agitated for the debate to be delayed until the government's age-verification trial is finalised.
Under the laws, which won't come into force for another 12 months, social media companies could be fined up to $50 million for failing to take "reasonable steps" to keep under 16s off their platforms.
There are no penalties for young people or parents who flout the rules.
Social media companies also won't be able to force users to provide government identification, including the Digital ID, to assess their age.
"Messaging apps," "online gaming services" and "services with the primary purpose of supporting the health and education of end-users" will not fall under the ban, as well as sites like YouTube that do not require users to log in to access the platform.
Mixed views from mental health experts
The bill was introduced to parliament last Thursday and was referred for a Senate inquiry the same day. Submissions to the inquiry closed on Friday, a three-hour hearing was held on Monday, and the report was tabled on Tuesday.
Almost all the submissions raised concerns about the "extremely short" consultation period, the committee report noted.
"Legislation is a necessary tool, but it is not a panacea," Labor senator Karen Grogan wrote.
"Young people, and in particular diverse cohorts, must be at the centre of the conversation as an age restriction is implemented to ensure there are constructive pathways for connection."
During the public hearing, witnesses with experience working with young people on their mental health offered a mix of views on the ban.
Danielle Einstein, a clinical psychologist who has supported the campaign to raise the age at which kids can access social media, said social media offered no mental health benefits for young people as far as she could see.
But Nicole Palfrey from mental health organisation Headspace was more circumspect, telling the inquiry there was a need to balance any harms from social media with the benefits of connection and "help-seeking" online — especially for kids who live in remote or rural areas.
"When we hear from psychologists and parents they are very much confronted with [the] pointy end, they only see the harms and I think that's incredibly valid," Lucy Thomas from anti-bullying organisation Project Rockit said.
"But as people working with young people every day, we also see the benefits.
"We need to tread very carefully or we risk dialling back young peoples' rights and pushing them into more isolated, less supported places."
Цитата:
Australian Parliament bans social media for under-16s with world-first law
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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — A social media ban for children under 16 passed the Australian Parliament on Friday in a world-first law.
The law will make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts.
The Senate passed the bill on Thursday 34 votes to 19. The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved the legislation by 102 votes to 13.
The House on Friday endorsed opposition amendments made in the Senate, making the bill law.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the law supported parents concerned by online harms to their children.
“Platforms now have a social responsibility to ensure the safety of our kids is a priority for them,” Albanese told reporters.
The platforms have one year to work out how they could implement the ban before penalties are enforced.
Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the legislation had been “rushed.”
Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the platforms in Australia, said questions remain about the law’s impact on children, its technical foundations and scope.
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“The social media ban legislation has been released and passed within a week and, as a result, no one can confidently explain how it will work in practice – the community and platforms are in the dark about what exactly is required of them,” DIGI managing director Sunita Bose said.
The amendments passed on Friday bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses, nor could they demand digital identification through a government system.
Critics of the legislation fear that banning young children from social media will impact the privacy of all users who must establish they are older than 16.
While the major parties support the ban, many child welfare and mental health advocates are concerned about unintended consequences.
Sen. David Shoebridge, from the minority Greens party, said mental health experts agreed that the ban could dangerously isolate many children who used social media to find support.
“This policy will hurt vulnerable young people the most, especially in regional communities and especially the LGBTQI community, by cutting them off,” Shoebridge told the Senate.
Exemptions will apply for health and education services including YouTube, Messenger Kids, WhatsApp, Kids Helpline and Google Classroom.
Opposition Sen. Maria Kovacic said the bill was not radical but necessary. “The core focus of this legislation is simple: It demands that social media companies take reasonable steps to identify and remove underage users from their platforms,” Kovacic told the Senate.
“This is a responsibility these companies should have been fulfilling long ago, but for too long they have shirked these responsibilities in favor of profit,” she added.
Online safety campaigner Sonya Ryan, whose 15-year-old daughter Carly was murdered by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a teenager online, described the Senate vote as a “monumental moment in protecting our children from horrendous harms online.”
“It’s too late for my daughter, Carly, and the many other children who have suffered terribly and those who have lost their lives in Australia, but let us stand together on their behalf and embrace this together,” she said.
Wayne Holdsworth, whose teenage son Mac took his own life after falling victim to an online sextortion scam, had advocated for the age restriction and took pride in its passage.
“I have always been a proud Australian, but for me subsequent to today’s Senate decision, I am bursting with pride,” Holdsworth said.
Christopher Stone, executive director of Suicide Prevention Australia, the governing body for the suicide prevention sector, said the legislation failed to consider positive aspects of social media in supporting young people’s mental health and sense of connection.
“The government is running blindfolded into a brick wall by rushing this legislation. Young Australians deserve evidence-based policies, not decisions made in haste,” Stone said.
The platforms had complained that the law would be unworkable and had urged the Senate to delay the vote until at least June 2025 when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies will report on how young children could be excluded.
“Naturally, we respect the laws decided by the Australian Parliament,” Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms said. “However, we are concerned about the process which rushed the legislation through while failing to properly consider the evidence, what industry already does to ensure age-appropriate experiences, and the voices of young people.”
Snapchat said it was also concerned by the law and would cooperate with the government regulator, the eSafety Commissioner.
“While there are many unanswered questions about how this law will be implemented in practice, we will engage closely with the Government and the eSafety Commissioner during the 12-month implementation period to help develop an approach that balances privacy, safety and practicality. As always, Snap will comply with any applicable laws and regulations in Australia,” Snapchat said in a statement.
Critics argue the government is attempting to convince parents it is protecting their children ahead of a general election due by May. The government hopes that voters will reward it for responding to parents’ concerns about their children’s addiction to social media. Some argue the legislation could cause more harm than it prevents.
Criticisms include that the legislation was rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, is ineffective, poses privacy risks for all users, and undermines the authority of parents to make decisions for their children.
Opponents also argue the ban would isolate children, deprive them of the positive aspects of social media, drive them to the dark web, discourage children too young for social media to report harm, and reduce incentives for platforms to improve online safety.
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С завистью и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
В качестве повода к написанию текущего поста используем комментарий к
в соседней теме «Фанаты и Жизнь» Георгия Бовта от 29 редкого февраля этого года.
В этом материале есть такой фрагмент:
Цитата:
«Можете представить себе, тридцать пять тысяч одних курьеров!» Комментарий Георгия Бовта.
В России сейчас работают более 1 млн курьеров, и компании все равно жалуются на их нехватку. Дефицит к концу этого года, вероятнее всего, достигнет 300 тысяч работников. Почему курьер стал одной из самых востребованных профессий и что этот факт говорит о структуре российской экономики, разбирался Георгий Бовт.
...
Людям старой формации трудно понять, как это так случилось с нашей экономикой, что курьер без образования, разъезжающий на велосипеде по мегаполису, зарабатывает деньги, сопоставимые с зарплатой учителя, и побольше иного научного работника? Как так получилось, что людям лень выйти из дома, чтобы купить себе еду, и они привыкли, не вставая с дивана, заказывать завтрак с курьерской доставкой? То есть буквально в постель. Как так получилось, что вся экономика страдает от нехватки кадров, но при этом в такой экономике возможна армия курьеров, количество рабочих мест в которой примерно равно как раз численности всей армии России?
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Иначе, розница доведённая до абсурда.
Как Вы помните, до 1740 года в России вообще не было и не могло быть никаких легальных розничных магазинов!
То есть, всей легальной розничной торговле в России, всего 284 года!
В России, до 1740-х годов, продавать товары по месту жительства было запрещено.
За попытку розничной торговли полагались кнут и Сибирь.
И не по тому, что мы «убогие», а по тому, что традиционными формами торговли в России всегда были ярмарки, рынки, базары.
То есть, торг в России, всегда был публичен.
Взять тот же Гостиный ряд.
В лавках не торговали в розницу.
Боже упаси!
В лавках торговали по образцам.
Покупатель в лавке только выбирал образец и расплачивался, а уж после того шёл с приказчиком к амбарам и получал товар из кладовой.
Розница же вся творилась на рынках, базарах и ярмарках.
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С приходом импортной розничной торговли при Елизавете Петровне, национальные формы торговли стали потихоньку вымирать.
Покупателя последовательно и настойчиво выводили из публичного общественного торгового пространства.
Розничные магазины по месту жительства поглотили рынки.
Розничные и мелкооптовые сети поглотили магазины.
Интернет поглощает розничные и мелкооптовые сети.
Дробление акта розничной продажи стали личным делом каждого упакованного изолированного одинокого покупателя.
С точки зрения традиционных видов торговли в России, россиянам это ни просто ни к чему, россиянам это общественно-опасно.
По тому, что рыночная, ярмарочная, базарная торговля не просто специфический формат торговли Систем ИСО>ЕСО, но живая информационная среда играющая важнейшую роль в синтезе, обслуживании, утилизации социокультурного и политэкономического обмена страны.
Поэтому, если Россия хочет вернуть себе былую мощь, надо потихоньку подобные либеральные форматы торговли прикручивать. Россиянам с либеральными форматами розничной торговли не по пути.
P.S. Представьте себе действие этого произведения Николая Васильевича в магазине, в мегамаркете или в сети:
Цитата:
Сорочинская ярмарка
Менi нудно в хатi жить.
Ой, вези ж мене iз дому,
Де багацько грому, грому
Де гопцюють все дiвки,
Де гуляють парубки!
Из старинной легенды
Как упоителен, как роскошен летний день в Малороссии! Как томительно жарки те часы, когда полдень блещет в тишине и зное и голубой неизмеримый океан, сладострастным куполом нагнувшийся над землею, кажется, заснул, вес: потонувши в неге, обнимая и сжимая прекрасную в воз душных объятиях своих! На нем ни облака. В поле ни речи Все как будто умерло; вверху только, в небесной глубине дрожит жаворонок, и серебряные песни летят по воздушным ступеням на влюбленную землю, да изредка крик чайки или звонкий голос перепела отдается в степи. Лениво и бездумно, будто гуляющие без цели, стоят подоблачные дубы, и ослепительные удары солнечных лучей зажигают целые живописные массы листьев, накидывая на другие темную, как ночь, тень, по которой только при сильном ветре прыщет золото. Изумруды, топазы, яхонты эфирных насекомых сыплются над пестрыми огородами, осеняемыми статными подсолнечниками. Серые стога сена и золотые снопы хлеба станом располагаются в поле и кочуют по его неизмеримости. Нагнувшиеся от тяжести плодов широкие ветви черешен, слив, яблонь, груш; небо, его чистое зеркало — река в зеленых, гордо поднятых рамах... как полно сладострастия и неги малороссийское лето!
Такою роскошью блистал один из дней жаркого августа тысячу восемьсот... восемьсот... Да, лет тридцать будет назад тому, когда дорога, верст за десять до местечка Сорочинец, кипела народом, поспешавшим со всех окрестных и дальних хуторов на ярмарку. С утра еще тянулись нескончаемою вереницею чумаки с солью и рыбою. Горы горшков, закутанных в сено, медленно двигались, кажется, скучая своим заключением и темнотою; местами только какая-нибудь расписанная ярко миска или макитра хвастливо выказывалась из высоко взгроможденного на возу плетня и привлекала умиленные взгляды поклонников роскоши.
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Вам, верно, случалось слышать где-то валящийся отдаленный водопад, когда встревоженная окрестность полна гула и хаос чудных неясных звуков вихрем носится перед вами. Не правда ли, не те ли самые чувства мгновенно обхватят вас в вихре сельской ярмарки, когда весь народ срастается в одно огромное чудовище и шевелится всем своим туловищем на площади и по тесным улицам, кричит, гогочет, гремит? Шум, брань, мычание, блеяние, рев — все сливается в один нестройный говор. Волы, мешки, сено, цыганы, горшки, бабы, пряники, шапки — все ярко, пестро, нестройно; мечется кучами и снуется перед глазами. Разноголосные речи потопляют друг друга, и ни одно слово не выхватится, не спасется от этого потопа; ни один крик не выговорится ясно. Только хлопанье по рукам торгашей слышится со всех сторон ярмарки. Ломается воз, звенит железо, гремят сбрасываемые на землю доски, и закружившаяся голова недоумевает, куда обратиться.
...
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С надеждой и отраслевыми пожеланиями, Dimitriy.
Wait until you hear which Biden family member Joe could pardon NEXT! After the Hunter scandal, DAN MCLAUGHLIN's grim prediction
Trading on Joe’s influence was and always has been the whole family business. It also involves Joe’s brother Jim and a web of accounts that have allegedly funneled millions back to the family. With the President now in the habit of quashing potential crimes as yet unknown to the public, would anybody be surprised if Uncle Jim received the next pardon? (Pictured: Jill with Hunter, left, and Jim Biden in 2008).
The Hunter Biden pardon is an outrage.
It is not just leniency for Hunter’s two criminal convictions, it’s part of a long-running coverup of the alleged influence-peddling operation perpetrated by the whole Biden family – including Joe.
If we let this go without further investigation and exposure, the Bidens will walk away from the White House with no accountability for their alleged ill-gotten gains.
The Hunter pardon was a shock, but not a surprise. Nobody seriously believed Joe when he vowed repeatedly not to pardon his son. Nobody believed hapless White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre when she was sent out many times to repeat the lie. After all, Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger for cocaine trafficking.
But the sweeping scope of Hunter’s get-out-of-jail-free card is the bigger scandal.
Hunter was convicted by a jury of his peers for violating federal gun laws by lying about his drug addiction. He also pleaded guilty to avoid a politically embarrassing trial on federal tax evasion that would likely have lifted the lid on some sources of illicit income.
Old Joe didn’t want his son to go to jail for those crimes. We can understand that impulse, coming from a father who buried Hunter’s brother and sister. But it’s hypocritical nonetheless – not least because he could have waited until Hunter was sentenced in mid-December and then commuted those sentences to avoid jail time. He could also have simply pardoned Hunter for these two specific crimes.
Instead, he went so much further, issuing an open-ended ‘full and unconditional pardon’ for all ‘offenses against the United States which he [Hunter] has committed or may have committed or taken part in’ from January 1, 2014, through Decemeber 1, 2024.
Nobody has received a pardon that sweeping since Richard Nixon was pardoned by Gerald Ford fifty years ago.
There’s a reason why the Hunter pardon dates back 11 years. It was April 2014 when Hunter took a job on the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, a dodgy Ukrainian gas company, while his father was the serving US Vice President. Hunter had no qualifications for the job except for being Joe’s son. The pardon also conveniently covers most of Hunter’s other shady business dealings in China and Romania.
And to be clear: this wasn’t like long-established Trump hotels and casinos getting some extra business from foreign sources after his presidency in 2016. Trading on Joe’s influence was and always has been the whole family business. It also involves Joe’s brother Jim and a web of accounts that have allegedly funneled millions back to the family.
With the President now in the habit of quashing potential crimes as yet unknown to the public, would anybody be surprised if Uncle Jim received the next pardon?
The lies and the coverups have been going on a long, long time.
In 2019, Biden claimed that he’d ‘never spoken’ with his son about ‘his overseas business dealings’. He later claimed to have never met Hunter’s business associates.
Both a lie. Hunter’s former business partner Devon Archer testified last year about how Biden would regularly speak on the phone with his son’s foreign contacts, to let him show off his pull. Biden also met with Hunter’s Russian and Kazakh partners at Café Milano, a sceney D.C. restaurant.
When he debated Donald Trump in 2020, Biden claimed that ‘my son has not made money in terms of this thing about… China’. A lie.
He called Hunter’s laptop ‘a Russian plant’. A lie.
One of the emails on that laptop described ‘10 [percent] held by H for the big guy’ – a reference to Joe, as confirmed by another of Hunter’s old business partners, Tony Bobulinski.
In 2020, Joe’s campaign enlisted former heads of intelligence agencies to back up the false claim that the laptop was a plant. The Justice Department under Biden let the statute of limitations run out on influence-peddling charges, and IRS whistleblowers revealed how it had throttled their probes into Biden family business.
When a sympathetic Delaware prosecutor tried to close the book on this sorry saga and give Hunter a sweetheart deal last summer, it was only after a valiant judge dared to ask for more details that the attempted cover-up fell apart. It forced a humiliated DOJ to go through the motions of prosecuting the narrowest case it could make.
When Joe was leaving the vice presidency and his political heir (and only hope) Beau died, it seems the Bidens amped up their scramble to cash in because it looked like the gravy train might be ending.
Now the Bidens are facing down political irrelevancy once again, and the President is brazenly using his pardon power to cover his tracks.
Even Democrats are tiring of the Bidens. And Trump’s new Congress will have its hands full in the spring with other things.
But the whole Biden coverup and the sleaze it has no doubt concealed really ought to be exposed. A full-scale inquiry seems a good place to start.
This mess has corrupted at least two presidential administrations. It has made the public more cynical about our politics, our law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, and our foreign policy. It has poisoned a decade of American relations with Ukraine.
The history books, at least, ought to give more than 10 percent of the blame for all that to the Big Guy.
Действительно причину помилования выдаёт диапазон: «from January 1, 2014, through Decemeber 1, 2024».
Вероятно для Джо важно, что бы сына не прихватили не за его налоговые или наркотические дела, а за торговлю влиянием и гигантскую коррупцию, которыми жила вся семья, неотъемлемым звеном которых был Хантер.
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С подозрением и понятными ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Biden Team Considers Blanket Pardons Before Trump’s Promised ‘Retribution’
White House officials believe President-elect Donald J. Trump’s selection of partisan warriors for top law enforcement jobs indicates that he will pursue revenge against his perceived enemies.
Former Representative Liz Cheney, who was vice chair of the committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is among those whose names have been floated for potential pardons.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
President Biden’s staff is debating whether he should issue blanket pardons for a swath of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s perceived enemies to protect them from the “retribution” he has threatened after he takes office, according to people familiar with the discussion.
The idea would be to pre-emptively extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials for any possible crimes over a period of years, effectively short-circuiting the next president’s promised campaign of reprisals.
White House officials do not believe the potential recipients have actually committed crimes, but they have grown increasingly worried that Mr. Trump’s selections for top Justice Department positions indicate that he will follow through on his repeated vows to seek revenge. Even an investigation that results in no charges could drag on for months or years, costing those people hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and crippling their career prospects.
The discussion of blanket pardons, reported earlier by Politico, remains primarily at a staff level although Mr. Biden has talked about it with senior members of the team, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. It comes after Mr. Biden pardoned his son Hunter to spare him from prison on gun and tax charges. The White House declined to comment on Thursday.
Mr. Biden in effect previewed the approach with his son’s pardon, wiping away not just the counts he was actually convicted of but any crimes he “may have committed or taken part in” since 2014. That presumably will forestall Mr. Trump’s Justice Department from going after Hunter Biden on any allegations that did not merit charges by the prosecutor who has investigated him since Mr. Trump’s first term.
Such a sweeping act of clemency covering even theoretical crimes over the course of a decade went beyond the scope of any since at least the Watergate era, when President Gerald R. Ford pardoned his disgraced predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, for any crimes even though he had not been charged. Never before has a president issued mass pardons of government officials for fear that a successor would seek to prosecute them out of partisan vindictiveness.
But the choices of Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and Trump surrogate, to run the Justice Department and Kash Patel, a former Trump aide and far-right provocateur, to be director of the F.B.I. have put the issue front and center. Mr. Patel has vowed to “come after” Mr. Trump’s critics and even published a list of about 60 people he considered “members of the executive branch deep state” as the appendix to a 2023 book.
Democrats on Capitol Hill have been pressing Mr. Biden to do what he can to protect targets of Mr. Trump. Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, one of the president’s closest allies, urged the White House to consider pre-emptive pardons shortly after Mr. Trump’s election last month, and likewise recommended that the president pardon his son.
“I think there are a lot of people who are coming into this next administration who are telling us who they are,” Mr. Clyburn said in an interview on Thursday. “I’ve seen Kash Patel saying who he’s going after, and so why should we not believe them? And that’s what I said to the president’s staff: You all got to believe these people.”
He added: “I think it will be less than an honorable thing to do to leave this office and not do what you can to protect the integrity of their decision-making, especially when they were carrying out these responsibilities as patriots to this country, doing the things that are necessary in pursuit of a more perfect union.”
Ed Siskel, the White House counsel, is leading the discussions as part of a broader plan to issue pardons and commutations to more traditional recipients, including those convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, as is customary in a president’s final days. Among other aides participating in the discussions is Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House chief of staff.
But as White House officials weigh the matter, they are concerned that such a move would fuel the impression spread in conservative media that the recipients had actually done something wrong. At least some of those who would be obvious candidates for such pardons have said privately that they would not want one because of such an implication. Others who are concerned about retribution have lobbied for their own pardons.
Among those whose names have been floated are former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who was vice chair of the bipartisan committee that investigated Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the former top infectious disease expert for the government whose advice on Covid-19 made him a target of far-right attacks; Jack Smith, the outgoing special counsel who prosecuted Mr. Trump; and Senator-elect Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who was a lead House prosecutor at Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial.
Ms. Cheney and Dr. Fauci did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Schiff said he did not think blanket pardons would be a good idea. “I would urge the president not to do that,” he told NPR recently. “I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary.”
Others said they were torn. Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who has been a leading critic of the president-elect, was threatened by a lawyer for Mr. Patel just this week in a letter saying that “litigation will be filed against you” if she did not retract her criticism of him during a television interview.
“I haven’t committed a crime,” she said in an interview. But “these are very different times. Is it something that we’ve considered and are concerned about? Yes. But all I’ve done is tell the truth. I’ve not done anything wrong, and I haven’t committed any crimes, and that’s where it’s a complicated issue. These are unprecedented times. That’s what makes this so hard.”
Mr. Trump, who has argued that the many criminal and civil cases against him are part of a sweeping “witch hunt” that has “weaponized” the justice system, has done little to disguise his desire to use the law enforcement system to get back at his foes. He has threatened to prosecute Democrats, election workers, law enforcement officials, intelligence officials, reporters, former members of his own staff and Republicans who do not support him.
He has said on social media that Ms. Cheney “should be prosecuted for what she has done to our country” and that the whole Jan. 6 committee “should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!” He said that Vice President Kamala Harris “should be impeached and prosecuted.” He has promised to “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after” Mr. Biden and his family. He has suggested that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved execution.
He has said that Letitia James, the attorney general of New York who won a $450 million judgment against him for business fraud, and Justice Arthur F. Engoron, who presided over the trial, “should be arrested and punished accordingly.” He shared a post saying that the police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 “should be charged and the protesters should be freed.” He has said that if Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, does anything deemed illegal, “he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Mr. Patel’s own list of “deep state” enemies includes not just Democrats but former Trump appointees who broke with him or were seen as obstacles, including John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser; William P. Barr, the former attorney general; Mark T. Esper, the former defense secretary; Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel; Gina Haspel, the former C.I.A. director; and Christopher A. Wray, the current F.B.I. director.
“Trump and Patel’s threats of prosecution are real,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a homeland security official under President George W. Bush and a senior counsel to the independent counsel Ken Starr in his investigation of President Bill Clinton. “Biden has a moral obligation to defend all of those who risked their livelihoods for him and protect them, as best he can, from Trump’s authoritarian impulses. He should issue a pardon to anyone on Trump or Patel’s enemies list. It’s the least he can do.”
Some Democrats have echoed the argument. “The people they’re targeting include law enforcement officers, military personnel and others who have spent their lives protecting this country,” Representative Brendan F. Boyle of Pennsylvania said in a statement. “These patriots shouldn’t have to live in fear of political retribution for doing what’s right.”
But other Democrats said it would reflect badly on the party, making it look as though it were only protecting its own rather than the most powerless in society.
“The Democrats should be for reforming and curtailing the pardon power,” Representative Ro Khanna of California said in an interview. “Black and brown individuals incarcerated because of marijuana possession have faced and continue to face far more injustice than some of the most privileged individuals who have served in the Congress or Senate.”
Цитата:
Biden administration considers pardons for people Trump may target in revenge
President’s staff look into possibility of protecting public officials named by Trump in vows to seek retribution
Joe Biden’s staff are considering the possibility of him granting mass pardons to a broad range of public officials to protect them against the possibility of retribution and revenge from Donald Trump when he assumes power, it has been confirmed.
The pardons could be extended to people who believe they have committed no crimes but have been publicly named by Trump in multiple diatribes claiming that investigations against him have been driven by a political witch-hunt.
Such an array of clemency to shield individuals from the possibility of partisan criminal investigations have no precedent in US history, despite many instances of politically contentious pardons – most notably Gerald Ford’s post-Watergate pardoning of his predecessor Richard Nixon in 1974 before he had been charged with any crime.
But the idea has gained urgency due to Trump’s repeated vows to seek revenge and rising alarm at his picks to fill strategic positions in the justice department and the FBI.
Kash Patel, the president-elect’s nominee to be FBI director, has identified 60 individuals he would pursue in a book, entitled Government Gangsters, published last year that purported to uncover members of a so-called “deep state” supposedly engaged in undermining Trump.
Among those under consideration for clemency – according to Politico, which first broke the story – are Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who managed the first impeachment of Trump; Liz Cheney, a former Republican Congress member who was vice-chair of the House of Representatives committee investigating the 6 January 2021 insurrection; and Dr Anthony Fauci, the former head of the government infectious diseases body that spearheaded the fight against Covid-19.
Trump has named Schiff as part of an “enemy within” and has said Cheney should face a military tribunal for her role in the January 6 investigation.
But many others could be eligible under the terms being considered by aides to Biden, who has not yet participated directly in the discussions, according to reports.
They include judges involved in the various trials that have ended in verdicts against Trump; the special prosecutor Jack Smith, who led the criminal investigation into January 6 and allegations of Trump illegally possessing classified documents; and numerous figures from Trump’s first administration who later turned against him.
The incoming president has also issued a thinly veiled threat against Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff, saying that he should be executed for “treason”. Milley has told the journalist Bob Woodward that he fears being recalled to uniform and facing court martial under a future Trump presidency.
Trump has also said police officers who defended the US Capitol from the January 6 attackers should be prosecuted, and those who invaded the building freed.
The discussion comes amid continuing fallout over the unconditional pardon granted by Biden last Sunday to his son Hunter, who was convicted of gun and tax evasion charges but faced the possibility of future investigation by Republicans who had previously accused him of illegal influence peddling.
Several Democrats have fiercely criticised that pardon, accusing the president of putting emotional considerations above the national interest and saying it sets a bad precedent.
Schiff, who will become a senator when the new Congress is sworn in in January, has publicly said he does not want a pardon.
“I would urge the president not to do that,” Schiff told Politico. “I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary.”
But allies of Biden express a different view. Jim Clyburn, a congressman from South Carolina and a longtime confidant of the president, told the New York Times: “I’ve seen Kash Patel saying who he’s going after, and so why should we not believe them?
“I think it will be less than an honorable thing to do to leave this office and not do what you can to protect the integrity of their decision-making, especially when they were carrying out these responsibilities as patriots to this country, doing the things that are necessary in pursuit of a more perfect union.”
Another Biden supporter, Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania House member, said: “The time for cautious restraint is over. We must act with urgency to push back against these threats and prevent Trump from abusing his power.”
Some Democrats are urging Biden to use his presidential pardon power to grant mass clemency to numerous non-violent drug offenders.
Цитата:
Trump’s F.B.I. Pick Has an Enemies List. Biden Should Pardon Everyone on It.
Haiyun Jiang /The New York Times
There are few good things to be said about Donald Trump’s plan to fire the F.B.I. director, Chris Wray, and install in his place Kash Patel, a thuggish lackey who has spent years fantasizing about taking revenge on Trump’s enemies. But there is one: Patel has helpfully provided us with a list of people President Biden should pardon before he leaves office.
Patel’s 2023 book, “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” purports to show how government employees who defied Trump constitute a shadowy cabal that is “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” The “deep state,” in Patel’s telling, is “as treacherous and evil as the villains portrayed in books and movies.” Virtually every investigation of Trump and his allies, Patel suggests, is part of a monstrous plot against “the people’s president.” The book strongly implies that Jan. 6, “the insurrection that never was,” was encouraged by “deep state” agitators and then used as a pretext to persecute patriotic Trump supporters. In a blurb on the book jacket, Trump wrote, “We will use this blueprint to help us take back the White House and remove these gangsters from all of government!”
Who are these gangsters? Patel lists 60 of them in a useful alphabetized appendix. It is not, as he acknowledges, exhaustive, since he limits himself to the executive branch, leaving out “other corrupt actors of the first order” like Senator-elect Adam Schiff, the former Republican House speaker Paul Ryan and “the entire fake news mafia press corps.” His catalog of the “deep state” includes some of Patel’s bureaucratic foes from when he served in Trump’s first administration, like Bill Barr, who as attorney general said that Trump could make Patel the deputy F.B.I. director only “over my dead body,” and Wray, the man Patel would replace.
Patel also lists both the current secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and Trump’s secretary of defense Mark Esper. Cassidy Hutchinson, the brave young former aide to Mark Meadows who testified before the Jan. 6 committee, is on the list, as is Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump staff member who often criticizes her old boss on “The View.” Naturally, Biden, Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton are on it as well.
Except for himself, Biden should pardon them all, along with pretty much everyone else Patel has singled out by name and those who worked on the Jan. 6 committee. On Wednesday, Jonathan Martin reported in Politico that there’s a “vigorous internal debate” among Biden aides about issuing pre-emptive pardons to officials likely to be unjustly targeted by Trump. A drawback of such pardons, Martin wrote, is that they “could suggest impropriety, only fueling Trump’s criticisms.” After all, Biden may struggle to explain why he’s pardoning people who have done nothing wrong.
Patel’s appendix, however, makes the case for blanket pardons easier to convey. The breadth of it demonstrates his McCarthyite impulses better than his critics ever could.
Though Biden is not much of a communicator, he could give a speech laying out the well-founded fears that Patel may try to harass the people on his list with spurious investigations. In addition to justifying sweeping pardons, such a speech could prompt a useful nationwide discussion about what it would mean to put a man like Patel in charge of the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.
We are entering a period when the ideal of Justice Department independence will almost certainly be swept away. Political persecution — the kind Trump and his allies claim, falsely, to have been subjected to — will become routine. Biden tried to defend the basic integrity of our imperfect institutions against Trumpist aggression, and he failed. All he can do now is help the American people understand what’s coming and try to protect the ones with MAGA targets on their backs.
Those who view the federal government as a nest of criminal conspirators would, of course, interpret a raft of pardons as confirmation of their worldview. But the fear that Biden’s aggressive use of the pardon power might embolden Trump seems naïve, since all signs suggest that he will be unrestrained, no matter what Democrats do. The only reason for Trump to choose a person like Patel to lead the F.B.I. is to bend it to his will. Democrats can’t arrest that process through fealty to norms that are about to be obliterated. Yes, pardons will give Republicans a cable news talking point. The question is whether denying them that talking point is worth letting Patel ruin people’s lives on Trump’s behalf.
The pardons I’m proposing can’t cover everyone who is vulnerable to Trump’s vengeance. Elsewhere, I’ve argued that Biden should pardon all those involved in mailing abortion pills to states where abortion is banned, since the Trump administration could revive the long-dormant Comstock Act to investigate them. In doing this, Biden would be following a precedent set by Jimmy Carter when he pardoned most of those who dodged the draft during the Vietnam War. But you can’t pardon an anonymous mass of people for breaking unspecified laws; the pardon power wasn’t intended for those who’ve committed no conceivable crimes. If Trump and his cronies can’t use the justice system against those they hate most, they may use other tools, like the I.R.S., or find other scapegoats.
There’s no version of a Trump restoration that doesn’t result in both human and institutional destruction. Biden still has a duty to save who he can.
Цитата:
Коллективные настроение в «вашингтонском болоте» можно сравнить с
трагическими кадрами.
Некоторые чиновники еще надеются, но большинство понимают - администрация президента бросит их на расправу «талибов» Трампа.
По логики исторических событий это обязательно должно произойти и похоже это действительно случится.
_________________
С предвкушением и отраслевыми ожиданиями, Dimitriy.
Уровень доступа: Вы не можете начинать темы, Вы не можете отвечать на сообщения, Вы не можете редактировать свои сообщения, Вы не можете удалять свои сообщения, Вы не можете голосовать в опросах
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