[Other View] Trump's proposed database is shameless propaganda

President Trump declared Tuesday night that “we must support the victims of crime,” which sounds like a sensible and humane notion. But Trump didn’t have all crime victims in mind, just a certain type.　As he explained in his address to Congress, he wants to form a new agency within the Department of Homeland Security called VOICE, for Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement, to provide “a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests.” That follows his rece

March 5, 2017

[Justin Fendos] Immigration's dirty secret

The start to President Donald Trump’s administration has been nothing if not contentious. Nowhere has the friction been more obvious than in his push to remake US immigration policy. Trump’s position is clear: He views new immigrants, particularly those from specific parts of the world, as a threat to US security and economics. Although this position may seem like common sense on the surface, it does not reflect the economic reality behind it.Many international news reports have already done a g

March 5, 2017

[Ann Friedman] Fake news on the left

Last fall, as Native American protesters gathered at Standing Rock to stop the completion of the Dakota Access pipeline, several of my friends “checked in” at the protest on Facebook. They were nowhere near South Dakota. They had heard -- through urgent posts by other friends who were not present either -- that fake geo-tagging would protect protesters at the site from monitoring by law enforcement. NPR reported that more than a million people “checked in” at the protest camp, a digital version

March 5, 2017

[Mihir Sharma] Is Indian data turning Chinese?

Being the fastest-growing large economy in the world is India’s destiny, and even the most poorly conceived economic policy imaginable can’t stop destiny. At least, that is, if you believe the government’s statisticians, who said Tuesday that India’s GDP grew at 7 percent in the very quarter that the government withdrew high-value currency notes from circulation.Is India becoming another China, with incredible growth momentum and statistics nobody quite believes? One hopes not. But the governmen

March 3, 2017

[Other View] China's chance to lead

If South Sudan’s famine is “man-made” -- and it is -- then maybe man can also unmake it. Given the country’s unstable government and the US’ uncertain global leadership, however, most of the effort will have to come from China.　More than 40 percent of South Sudan’s 11 million people don’t have enough to eat not because of drought or other natural causes but because of their country’s civil war, which started in 2013. Mayhem and disorder have taken tens of thousands of lives and forced more than

March 3, 2017

[Rachel Marsden] ‘Capitalism’ is still a dirty word in French politics

For those thinking that the French could be on the brink of a collective epiphany, you might want to hold your bets. Even if the people of France wanted a badly needed economic upgrade to bring their nanny-state system into the 21st century, there's no presidential contender willing to give it to them.Any candidate who ever tiptoes into economic reality is promptly vilified and has to maneuver to avoid criticism. And while some say that the French would never go for serious economic reforms, how

March 2, 2017

[Irfan Husain] A tale of two Koreas

The two Koreas seem to exist on different planets: prosperity and democracy in the South, and grinding poverty and repressive dictatorship in the North. These differences were highlighted in the recent assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of North Korea’s dictator, the murderous young Kim Jong-un. Since the two Koreas went their own paths over 60 years ago, the North has become ever more repressive and closed off, with mass starvation an ever-present threat. But at the same time, the

March 2, 2017

[Elly Burhaini Faizal] Is media verification effective in stopping fake news?

China is the only major nation to be able to impose strict internet control. With a strong censorship apparatus, including a reported 30,000 personnel policing the internet, China is the major country with the harshest online control. Using its extensive internet control apparatus, China manages to crack down on online information deemed false or not in conformity with the country’s ideology, communism.Stressing its desire to protect the public from the plague of fake news on social media, Indon

March 2, 2017

[Noah Feldman] Trump's love-hate relationship with the First Amendment

President Donald Trump’s war on the news media violates the spirit of the free press. How far can he go before he violates the letter of the First Amendment? Case in point: the exclusion of CNN, the New York Times, Politico and other media outlets from a White House press briefing Friday. It violates the basic constitutional ideal that the government can’t discriminate among various speakers on the basis of their viewpoints. Under existing case law, however, the exclusion probably doesn’t violat

March 1, 2017

[The Kansas City Star] America is stressed out, and the cause won’t surprise - politics

Feeling stressed?We are. According to a new survey from the American Psychological Association, so are you.Freaked out. Anxious. Nervous. That’s what America is these days, and the psychological association places the blame squarely on -- you aren’t going to be the slightest bit surprised -- politics.That means the rise of President Donald Trump and the usual Washington crew that voters greatly mistrust.The poll (yes, we know: Can you trust it?) of 1,000 adults taken right before Trump’s inaugur

March 1, 2017

[Justin Fox] Time to restart that old capitalism death watch

The global capitalist system has been having a tough decade. We can probably all agree on that.Lots of explanations have been offered for why things have been going so poorly: inadequate regulation, excessive regulation, excessive monetary easing, inadequate fiscal stimulus, inequality, “secular stagnation,” you name it.Wolfgang Streeck has another possibility for you to consider: Maybe capitalism is dying.Streeck is a German sociologist, the emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the

March 1, 2017

[Other View] How Europe can defend itself

Say this for Donald Trump: He is forcing Europeans to think more seriously about how to protect and defend their continent. 　The US president’s disparagement of NATO goes too far, and his focus on getting Europeans to spend more on defense is misplaced. That said, European nations have for too long treated their defense budgets as an extension of social policy. Expenditure on personnel is more than 50 percent of military spending in nearly all EU countries, compared with about a quarter in the U

March 1, 2017

[Gina Barreca] Our secret treasures harbor memories

What object without inherent beauty or aesthetic importance has a deep and abiding significance for you? What do you treasure that nobody else would look at twice?　I have a black plastic shift key from an old electric typewriter on the bookcase above my computer at home. I’m staring at it as I write. To you it would look like nothing except a piece of junk, but to me it means a great deal. I’ve had it since 1982, from the days when I was living in a ground-floor apartment at the back of an old,

Feb. 28, 2017

[Adam Minter] How China can stop a pandemic

The deadliest outbreak of H7N9 bird flu since its discovery in 2013 is sweeping across China. It’s caused at least 100 deaths and has been detected in half the country’s provinces. So far, the virus seems to be spreading only between birds and the humans who slaughter them for food. But the potential for human-to-human transmission -- the trigger for a full-blown pandemic -- can’t be ruled out. In response, Chinese authorities have temporarily shut down live poultry markets in some of the countr

Feb. 28, 2017