Political Critique: Belarus Let them pray for death. Belarusian war on drugs

Alexei was sentenced for distribution despite only sharing some cannabis with his girlfriend. Every year in Belarus, several thousand people go to jail for violating Article 328 of the Belarusian Criminal Code or “illicit trafficking in narcotic and psychotropic substances, their precursors and analogs.” The duration of imprisonment ranges from two years for manufacturing, acquisition, or possession of drugs without intent to twenty five years for drugs dealing if it results in the death of a person. In the first half of 2017, 1,568 people were convicted of drug-related crimes, according to official reports. In 2016, courts in Belarus sentenced 3608 people and almost 4000 a year earlier. Independent lawyers and human rights activists believe that about 12,000 to 13,000 young people have been convicted in the past three years.[...]

In Belarus, where all key decisions are taken by the head of state or under his direct control, drug policy could not be designed without the participation of President Alexander Lukashenko. In December 2014, during a meeting on illicit drug trafficking, the president, in his characteristic manner, declared war on drugs. “I should have broken your necks, like of ducklings, a long time ago,” the President swore at representatives of police and other law enforcement agencies, lamenting that their actions were tardy and conditioned by expectations of the conclusions of special committees and commissions. As a result of that meeting, the commander-in-chief gave the Minister of Internal Affairs full powers to coordinate the actions against drug trafficking. He also made a proposal to increase the duration of imprisonment for those “particularly distinguished” drug distributors to 25 years and make jail conditions even tougher: “Let’s set such a regime in these prisons so that they pray for death,” Lukashenko said. Other participants of the meeting suggested to introduce responsibility for being in state of drugs intoxication in public, to reduce the minimum age of criminal responsibility for those accused in manufacturing of banned substances, to create a database of drug users, as well as the other measures. Three weeks later, on December 28, Lukashenko signed the now famous decree No. 6 “On emergency measures for countering the illegal trafficking of drugs” (in Belarus the president’s decrees have the force of a law). Starting from 2015, the procedure for classification of new psychoactive substances as drugs is considerably simplified, criminal responsibility for manufacturing and sale of drugs is applicable from the age of fourteen, the maximum terms of imprisonment for convicts under article 328 of the criminal code increased: from 8 to 15 years for a sale to a teenager, from 15 to 20 years for sales operated by an organized group, from 8 to 20 years for manufacturing in a laboratory. In March 2015 an electronic database of drug users was created, and the Ministry of Health is responsible for its maintenance. A witch hunt ha begun. [...]

There is no division between “light” and “hard” drugs in Belarus. It also does not matter whether 0.1 grams of marijuana or a kilogram of synthetic drugs were found on a defendant. If the judge finds the charges in the trafficking as true, the = accused can be put in jail for at least 5 years. Often in court statements one can read phrases like “drugs were transferred to an unidentified person at an unidentified site”. Judges routinely consider these grounds sufficient to deprive liberty. Once the decree which has already been mentioned, entered into force, many opportunities for acquittal were abolished, and convicts began to be placed in the specially allocated colonies – a third special prison was created recently as the other two have been overloaded. Last month, the president, a big ice hockey fan, was photographed with an ice hockey stick made by prisoners. It was not specified in which colony sports equipment is produced exactly, although there are also woodworking, sewing and other workshops in prisons across the country. However, there is not a sufficient number of workplaces and pay is extremely low; usually people get around one euro cent per work day. Moreover, for several years now, visual segregation has been practiced: patches on prison clothes of those convicted for drugs are of green color.

read the article

Vox: How democracies die, explained

Democracies, in this telling, don’t die so much as they decline. The rhetoric that underlies democracy, the self-identity that is adopted by a democratic people, all that is hard to dislodge. In 2011, long after Venezuela had tumbled into authoritarianism, a majority of Venezuelans said they lived in a vibrant, thriving democracy. The genius of modern tyrants has been in realizing you don’t need to dislodge democracy; you need to co-opt it, you need to make it your own.

Many government efforts to subvert democracy are “legal,” in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process. Newspapers still publish but are bought off or bullied into self-censorship. Citizens continue to criticize the government but often find themselves facing tax or other legal troubles. This sows public confusion. People do not immediately realize what is happening. Many continue to believe they are living under a democracy. [...]

That these norms are slipping into the mist is uncontroversial. By one count, there were 385 Senate filibusters between 2007 and 2012 — which is, Levitsky and Ziblatt note, equal to the number of filibusters in the seven decades between World War I and the end of the Reagan administration. The confirmation of circuit court appointments, which was over 90 percent in the 1980s, fell to about 50 percent during Barack Obama’s presidency. [...]

It’s these underlying trends, they argue, that are making it harder for Americans to tolerate each other, harder for partisans on both sides to accept each other. The parties have become more distant ideologically, racially, religiously. They look over the divide and see a coalition that doesn’t look like them or think like them, that doesn’t like them, that actively fears them — indeed, a recent Pew survey found that 49 percent of Republicans, and 55 percent of Democrats, say they are “afraid” of the other party. Keep that in mind as you read this paragraph:

read the article

The Atlantic: China's Surveillance State Should Scare Everyone

China’s evolving algorithmic surveillance system will rely on the security organs of the communist party-state to filter, collect, and analyze staggering volumes of data flowing across the internet. Justifying controls in the name of national security and social stability, China originally planned to develop what it called a “Golden Shield” surveillance system allowing easy access to local, national, and regional records on each citizen. This ambitious project has so far been mostly confined to a content-filtering Great Firewall, which prohibits foreign internet sites including Google, Facebook, and The New York Times. According to Freedom House, China’s level of internet freedom is already the worst on the planet. Now, the Communist Party of China is finally building the extensive, multilevel data-gathering system it has dreamed of for decades.

While the Chinese government has long scrutinized individual citizens for evidence of disloyalty to the regime, only now is it beginning to develop comprehensive, constantly updated, and granular records on each citizen’s political persuasions, comments, associations, and even consumer habits. The new social credit system under development will consolidate reams of records from private companies and government bureaucracies into a single “citizen score” for each Chinese citizen. In its comprehensive 2014 planning outline, the CCP explains a goal of “keep[ing] trust and constraints against breaking trust.” While the system is voluntary for now, it will be mandatory by 2020. Already, 100,000 Chinese citizens have posted on social media about high scores on a “Sesame Credit” app operated by Alibaba, in a private-sector precursor to the proposed government system. The massive e-commerce conglomerate claims its app is only tracking users’ financial and credit behavior, but promises to offer a “holistic rating of character.” It is not hard to imagine many Chinese boasting soon about their official scores. [...]

While Westerners and especially civil liberties groups like the ACLU are horrified by such a prospect—one commentator called the possibility “authoritarianism, gamified”—others argue that because lack of trust is a serious problem in China, many Chinese welcome this potential system. However, a state-run, party-inspired, data-driven monitoring system poses profound questions for the West about the role of private companies in government surveillance. Is it ethical for private companies to assist in massive surveillance and turn over their data to the government? Alibaba (China’s Amazon) and Tencent (owner of the popular messaging platform WeChat) possess sweeping data on each Chinese citizen that the government would have to mine to calculate scores. Although Chinese companies now are required to assist in government spying while U.S. companies are not, it is possible to imagine Amazon in Alibaba’s position, or Facebook in place of Tencent. While private companies like credit scoring bureaus have always used data to measure consumers’ creditworthiness, in any decent society there must be a clear distinction between private-sector and public-sector scoring mechanisms that could determine access to citizen rights and privileges, without recourse.

read the article

America Magazine: Creationism isn’t about science, it’s about theology (and it’s really bad theology)

The Creation Museum is a $27 million example of how Christians can lose their way fighting the culture wars. After spending time there this Christmas, I left convinced that as wrong as the museum’s science is, the most frightening driver of its “logic” is an impoverished theology, which is coupled with a desire to win moral arguments. This toxic combination propels devout people into strange and unnecessary battles with modern science. [...]

This concern about evolution and what it implies about God reveals that creationism’s core motivation is not science, but questions about evil, pain and suffering. Can a loving God use a process of death and competition to create life in all its awe-inspiring diversity? Can the biblical tradition give us insight? How and why can we trust that tradition if the narratives in the Book of Genesis do not match up with scientific facts? These are great theological questions, but they are not scientific ones. The Creation Museum has a serious theological problem that needs theological scrutiny. [...]

Strangely, in their attempt to provide definitive empirical answers to moral and theological questions, creationists like Mr. Ham have more in common with some of their most strident scientific opponents than with the broader Christian tradition. They are proponents of the strictest form of biblical inerrancy and literalism. And in this mode they are actually advancing a mirror-image of scientism, in which God’s revelation, both in Scripture and in creation, is meant to convey a list of facts.

read the article

Quartz: Ghana’s first president accurately predicted what Africa’s former European colonizers would do

Nkrumah defined neocolonialism as a situation of infringed and compromised national sovereignty where foreign interests remain economically—and hence politically—dominant in strategic decision making. Nkrumah led the nation to a legal form of independence from Britain in 1957 and yet was toppled by a CIA-sponsored coup in 1966, in no small part due to the publication of his 1965 work condemning neo-colonialism in Africa as “the last stage of imperialism.” [...]

It is imperative, however, for progressive Ghanaian politics, and for African politics more broadly, to recover Nkrumah and the concept of neo-colonialism. Nkrumah accurately predicted how European former colonizers would manipulate newly independent countries through disadvantageous aid and trade relations. “The essence of neo-colonialism is that the state which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty.” In reality, its economic system and thus its political policy is directed by the outside’. Foreign “development” assistance and donor aid, he warned, allowed for “control over government policy in the neo-colonial state [to] be secured by payments towards the costs of running the state.”

In Nkrumah’s analysis, aid “is merely a revolving credit, paid by the neo-colonial master, passing through the neo-colonial state and returning to the neo-colonial master in the form of increased profits.” Accordingly, African states under the sway of neo-colonialism would enjoy a mere flag-independence, stripped of genuine state sovereignty. Nkrumah advised that only collective action through pan-African institutions would imbue African politicians with the necessary clout to resist foreign policy impositions and to diversify their economies away from colonial patterns of raw material production. Interestingly, the formation of sub-regional organizations such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was seen by Nkrumah as a potential distraction and stumbling block to the urgent task of realizing a federal Union of African States.

read the article

The Atlantic: Tillerson to Latin America: Beware of China

China’s trade with and investment in the region deepened at around the time of the great recession of 2008. Between 2015 and 2019, it plans to invest $250 billion in direct investment in the region and about $500 billion in trade. It’s well on its way: China is already the largest trading partner of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru.

As I’ve previously written, countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have a hard time securing international financing because of poor governance, corruption, and their economic policies. But China goes to them, builds desperately needed roads, railways, and ports, and uses these new facilities to transport raw material to feed its growing economy and population. China is an attractive investor not only because it has a policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of its partner countries but because its projects are completed at a speed that developing nations are unused to. More importantly, perhaps, it offers to finance these projects on easy terms. But there’s always a catch, Tillerson said Thursday at the University of Texas, his alma mater. [...]

“China is experimenting with market-based solutions, and moving incrementally in its international economic efforts, much as it did during its domestic development,” he wrote. “Its approach to global economic affairs appears to be more pragmatic than ideological—and may be more likely to defend than upend the liberal economic order.”

read the article

Quartz: Jaitley’s stuttering Hindi is more proof of the Modi regime’s penchant for identity politics

Jaitley became the first Indian finance minister to use the Hindi language, at least partially, to present the budget. He began with English, switched to Hindi minutes into the speech, reverted to English shortly, and so on. The pattern continued for a good measure of the presentation. [...]

For the last seven decades or so, the budget had been presented to the Indian parliament in English. This is because in India, where nearly 60% of the population speaks a language other than Hindi, English is the only one understood in all regions, even if only by some sections. English has gained further traction in the country after its economy was opened up in the 1990s, creating a number of jobs that required proficiency in the language. [...]

Several measures taken by the Modi government since coming to power in 2014 have been seen as attempts to extend the sway of the Hindi language in non-Hindi-speaking areas of the country. This has, in turn, sparked a backlash. [...]

Animosity towards the Hindi language—rather towards its imposition on non-Hindi-speakers—is always just below the surface in other parts of the country, too. Particularly so in areas like Maharashtra and Assam. This has often taken violent turns, too, prompting assaults on Hindi speakers and their business establishments, besides even Bollywood movies.

read the article

Quartz: What you need to know about the Vatican’s monumental U-turn on China

The developments are still not finalized, but in an interview, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, confirmed that talks are taking place, and that the Vatican is willing to compromise on some issues. [...]

Zen made a sudden trip to the Vatican earlier this month in order to directly pass on a plea to the Pope over the situation of the underground bishops. In an open letter this week, he expressed his surprise at the latest moves by the Vatican, and even said the Holy See is “selling out the Catholic Church in China.” For that, he was subsequently rebuked by Greg Burke, the press office director of the Vatican. [...]

“The Pope is from Argentina, and he looks at Communism from the prism of South America,” said a Catholic priest in Hong Kong requesting anonymity. “I do not want to criticize the Holy Father, but he does not understand what Communism in China means. And he doesn’t see that if we give up on the appointment of the bishops, or on full diplomatic recognition, the Church and its faithful would be giving up the only bargaining power they ever had.”

read the article