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omegaphilosophia · 2 months ago

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Types of Libertarianism

Libertarianism encompasses a range of theories about individual freedom, limited government, and the role of authority in society. Here are some key theories within libertarian thought:

1. Classical Libertarianism

Core Idea: Emphasizes individual liberty, minimal government interference, and free-market capitalism.

Theorists: John Locke, Adam Smith, and later, Robert Nozick.

Core Principle: The government’s role is to protect individual rights, especially property rights, and otherwise leave people free to pursue their own interests.

2. Anarcho-Capitalism

Core Idea: Advocates for the abolition of the state, with all functions typically performed by government, like law enforcement and defense, provided by private entities.

Theorists: Murray Rothbard, David D. Friedman.

Core Principle: Society should operate purely on voluntary agreements and contracts, with the market solving all problems through competition and self-regulation.

3. Left-Libertarianism

Core Idea: Combines libertarian principles with social justice concerns, emphasizing self-ownership, equal rights to natural resources, and opposing unequal wealth accumulation.

Theorists: Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne.

Core Principle: While supporting individual liberty, it advocates for shared ownership or redistribution of natural resources to address inequality, thus aligning with some egalitarian ideals.

4. Minarchism

Core Idea: A form of libertarianism that supports a "minimal state" (minarchism), with the state limited to roles like protecting rights, defense, and judicial enforcement.

Theorists: Ayn Rand, Robert Nozick.

Core Principle: Government should only perform functions essential to protecting individual rights, such as maintaining a military and legal system, and stay out of other areas.

5. Civil Libertarianism

Core Idea: Focuses on protecting individual civil liberties and rights, particularly freedom of speech, privacy, and autonomy from state interference.

Theorists: John Stuart Mill, associated with modern civil rights movements.

Core Principle: Argues for strong protections against government encroachment on personal freedoms, particularly those enshrined in the Bill of Rights or similar civil liberties.

6. Libertarian Paternalism (Soft Libertarianism)

Core Idea: Suggests minimal, non-coercive state interventions that "nudge" individuals toward making better choices without restricting their freedom.

Theorists: Richard Thaler, Cass Sunstein.

Core Principle: Uses insights from behavioral economics to encourage beneficial choices while preserving individual autonomy, such as default retirement savings plans where people can opt out.

7. Geo-Libertarianism

Core Idea: Proposes that individuals fully own their labor and the products of their labor, but land and natural resources should be shared or taxed for the common good.

Theorists: Henry George.

Core Principle: Emphasizes a tax on land or natural resources to fund public goods, thus ensuring individuals benefit from the natural resources of a society without impeding individual liberty in other areas.

8. Libertarian Socialism

Core Idea: Advocates for a stateless society that organizes around decentralized communities, focusing on collective, voluntary, and self-managed structures.

Theorists: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Noam Chomsky.

Core Principle: Seeks to reduce hierarchical power, including capitalist structures, through a voluntary and community-focused approach.

9. Moral Libertarianism

Core Idea: Grounds libertarian beliefs in moral principles, often derived from Kantian ethics or natural rights theories.

Theorists: Robert Nozick, Jan Narveson.

Core Principle: Libertarianism is justified on moral grounds, claiming that individuals have an inherent right to self-ownership and that government should not violate this right.

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darkmaga-returns · 8 days ago

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Trump Should End All Foreign Aid: My Interview with Georgian TV

by Jim Bovard | Feb 20, 2025

Will President Donald Trump end America’s corrupt foreign aid program and democracy promotion con games? Levan Akhalaia, a reporter with Georgian Public Broadcasting, and I had a lively conversation on that topic last week. Mr. Akhalaia has shown a lot of courage condemning brutal police attacks on protestors in recent times.

Below is a rough translation of the Georgian language article on our discussion, which can be read here. Here is a link to a Spotify audio version of the discussion with my voice dubbed into Georgian. And here is a link to a translation via Edge, reposted below with Akhalaia’s words italicized.

Akhalaia: U.S. President Donald Trump issued more than a hundred executive decrees on the first day of the inauguration. One of them was the temporary suspension of U.S. foreign aid. This also affected the programs of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration cited the Trump administration as the reason for checking these programs and determining whether these programs comply with U.S. interests and policies. To clarify this issue, Donald Trump instructed billionaire Elon Musk, who heads the government’s Department of Efficiency. More recently, it was also announced that funding was suspended by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). These decisions of the U.S. presidential Administration were met with dissatisfaction from some Congressmen. There are outlined positions in the U.S. on these issues, we will introduce you today to the position of James Bovard. The Washington Post calls it a “one-man squad of truths,” is the author of eleven books, a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a counterpoint editor for the publication “American Conservative.” James Bovard has been criticizing almost all federal agencies for decades. Among them are USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy. Mr. James, you wrote in detail about how foreign aid serves the covert and illegal funds of corrupt regimes and U.S. government-related contractors. Now that Trump has frozen his aid, do you think it will eventually reveal where that money was actually going?

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ask-zote-the-mighty · 5 months ago

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Hey Zote if you had to put yourself on a spectrum of Authoritarian to Libertarian and also a spectrum of right to left perhaps on this chart somewhere where would you put yourself

I believe the government should not exist! They should not control us and they should not control our geo! On your chart, that would place me on the bottom right.

#hollow knight #hk zote #zote the mighty #ask zote

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edwad · 5 years ago

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If you decided to become a sellout and give up your communist ideals what ideology would you pick instead? The funnier/wackier the better

i’d abandon communism in seconds and become a geo-libertarian with left-rothbardian characteristics if it meant that the FBI was willing to get me a nice apartment with my own personal study

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samueldays · 2 years ago

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It gets dumber.

Galileo was supposed to write a comparative account of the Copernican and Tychonic models, these being the Two Chief World Systems that astronomers were debating at the time.

(TLDR: The Copernican model is heliocentric, but it has literal epicycles that are kludged patches after the fact, and predicts stellar parallax which the astronomers keep not observing. The Tychonic model is mixed geo-heliocentric which is a major bizarre kludge up front, but it works and matches all known data so far. Both of these have all planetary orbits as circles and are in that sense wrong.)

Galileo instead wrote a comparative account of the Copernican and Ptolemaic models, when the Ptolemaic model was mostly discredited already. It was staying around partly out of habit and partly because the astronomers couldn't agree on which of the two possible replacements they should use.

This is sort of like if you're asked to explain the two major American political parties to a foreigner, and you describe the Republicans and the Libertarians, implying the Republicans are the only important party.

It gets dumber. The Galileo affair is a colorful story, and I encourage you to take a minute to appreciate some of the small details of people being dumb at each other.

A little while prior to the trial over the Dialogue, Galileo had the misfortune to catch plague and be bedridden at a time when a lot of other astronomers were making some great comet observations. These astronomers noted that the comets were definitely not moving in circles. The Copernican model assumes that everything moves in circles, and adds few epicycles (secondary circles) to compensate for the planets not being quite where they should. So the comet observations are a blow to Copernicanism.

Galileo is a partisan for Copernicanism, so he figures there's a conspiracy by these other astronomers to sabotage Copernicanism, and becomes a Comet Denier. These alleged comets can't be a real discovery, he says, maybe you guys forgot to clean your lenses or something. Then he gets into the namecalling and a grandiose declaration that God has chosen him to be the discoverer of all new heavenly things in this generation, so it is theologically impossible for these other guys to have discovered comets.

It gets dumber.

I remind you that all this is happening in Renaissance Italy, famous for its political intrigue and backstabbery. So now it's sort of like "Galileo is a crackpot at odds with the scientific consensus" but it's also sort of like "Some scientists form a mafia to slander Galileo". One of the forms this takes is headline puns - these are people who would have loved the fact that Weiner was sexting. But newspapers haven't caught on yet, so they use sermon topics instead.

In the Book of Acts, chapter 1, the disciples are asked after Jesus' ascension: "Why are you men from Galilee standing here and looking up into the sky?" with the context that it's pointless and they should stop doing that. In Latin, Viri Galilaei is a better pun on "Why are you men of Galileo standing here and looking up into the sky?" and so the scientist-mafia starts paying local priests to hold sermons on Acts 1 frequently. Ha ha, Galileo's guys looking at the sky and not finding anything, can't even see a comet, ha ha!

(This is funnier if you live in Italy and you speak Latin and the Bible context doesn't need to be explained.)

It gets dumber.

Galileo is operating under a prior injunction from 1616 telling him to stop spreading misinformation - specifically, not to teach Copernicanism as fact unless he can prove it. He is welcome to teach Copernicanism as useful mathematical model and keep it hypothetical.

Galileo presents his receipt for this injunction at the 1632 trial over the Dialogue. His accusers pull out a possibly-fake, definitely-contradictory version of the injunction telling him not to teach or defend Copernicanism in any way at all. Everyone is very confused by these documents that are both signed by appropriate authorities, and unfortunately the people who wrote them are dead so we can't go and check. The Pope decides that someone is playing silly buggers and he's not sure who, so he calls for a do-over of the trial. Galileo, is there something you want to say?

Galileo claims that well, as you can see by the Pope quote here in support of the Ptolemaic model, the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems is actually a rebuttal to Copernicanism, it is written to support the Ptolemaic model.

This is, as they say, a bold strategy. Let's see how that pays off for him.

Answer: it does not pay off. Nobody at the trial believes this. Galileo is now facing charges for roughly "perjury" and "contempt of court", in addition to the judges concluding that he is teaching Copernicanism as fact and is in violation of the 1616 injunction regardless of version.

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Fortunately for Galileo, everyone involved is distracted by the general problems of Living in Renaissance Italy + the specific problems of the Thirty Years War raging in the background, so they reach a plea bargain where Galileo will publicly apologize for his arrogant overconfidence and he will get sentenced to house arrest. Galileo is 70 and owns a nice mansion (partly due to having had the patronage of the Pope and also the Grand Duke of Tuscany), so this is very much a "don't throw me into the briar patch" sentence.

I didn’t actually know until recently that the character “Simplicio” in Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was based on the Pope, who up until that point had been Galileo’s friend and ally, and who had asked Galileo to include his own views in his book

Like, I’d be pissed off too if I asked the guy to discuss my opinions in his book, and then read the book and found them in the mouth of a character named, roughly, “Dumbass”

#all #history is full of stuff

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bearrepublicnetwork · 3 years ago

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If you want to know what your favorite libertarian wants for your future in America, watch Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film, Brazil. Repost from @stevendonziger • Stunned that a private prison company GEO Group that monitors me at home has a $2.2 billion deal with ICE to put 400,000 ankle bracelets on immigrants fleeing violence to cross the border. Shameful. U.S. penal system is a business that has far more to do with money than crime. (at 滋賀県琵琶湖) https://www.instagram.com/p/CapjpDfPsJF/?utm_medium=tumblr

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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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While incarcerated at the Stewart Detention Center, Wilhen Barrientos—an immigrant from Guatemala—was forced to labor for CoreCivic, the infamous for-profit prison company. During his incarceration, he worked in the facility’s kitchen, making between $1 and $4 per day as part of the ironically named “Voluntary Work Program.” Barrientos explained that in prison, he faced an “impossible choice”: he could either work for pennies, or attempt to live without necessities such as soap and toilet paper, which were not provided to detainees and had to be purchased. (Once, when Barrientos requested more toilet paper, a CoreCivic guard denied his request and told Barrientos to “use his fingers” instead.) And when Barrientos refused to work double shifts, or tried to organize his coworkers, guards would threaten him with solitary confinement. In 2017, CoreCivic punished Barrientos by placing him in medical segregation for two months, using the excuse of a non-existent chicken pox infection as justification for their retaliation.

Barrientos is not alone. On any given day, there are about 50,000 immigrants being held in detention, most of them in private prisons. Just to be clear, these immigrants are not incarcerated as punishment for a crime; rather, they are being held in what’s called “civil” detention until their deportation cases can be heard by an immigration judge or an appeals court. Under the law, “civil” detention is supposedly non-punitive; it’s simply an administrative measure to ensure that people don’t flee and disappear before their cases are decided. But for those on the inside, immigration detention is functionally indistinguishable from being in any other prison. Approximately half of those 50,000 detainees work in the “Voluntary Work Program,” earning a pittance for their labor, and many more are forced to do entirely uncompensated janitorial work. All across the country, detained immigrants are forced to labor to increase the profits of the corporations which keep them incarcerated.

The public debate over the use of for-profit prisons has largely focused on the privatization of prisons that incarcerate people convicted of crimes. Although most people—libertarians excepted—agree that profiting from incarceration is morally abhorrent, some critics have pointed out that private prisons are not major drivers of mass incarceration. Historian David Stein has accurately described them as “a camera, not an engine” of mass incarceration. In 2017, about 8 percent of state and federal inmates (121,420 people) were housed in private prisons. In the federal system, for-profit prisons play a somewhat bigger role: about 27,500 people, or 15 percent of federal inmates, were held in private facilities. The state with the highest proportion of prisoners in for-profit facilities is New Mexico, which holds about 42 percent of its incarcerated population in private prisons.

121,420 people is a huge number, but it’s a relatively insignificant percentage of the huge numbers of people currently imprisoned as a result of the world historical crime that is American mass incarceration. Thus, while ending the use of private prisons in the criminal punishment system is still a worthy goal, it’s not one that will likely lead to systemic change. On the other hand, private prisons are absolutely central to the “civil” system of immigration detention. The vast majority of detained immigrants—more than 70 percent—are held in for-profit facilities. The radical expansion of immigration detention over the last thirty years would not have been possible without the for-profit incarceration industry.

The story of the companies that have made this lucrative imprisonment of immigrants possible began in the 1980s. Privatized, profitable punishment had a long history in the United States prior to that point, but after the horrific abuses of convict leasing led to its abolition in the first decades of the twentieth century, profitable prisoner exploitation enterprises like chain gangs and prison farms were managed directly by state authorities, not by private individuals and companies. This began to change in 1983, when two entrepreneurs named Robert Crants and Thomas Beasley saw a business opportunity at the intersection of the rapid growth of incarceration and the Reagan Administration’s push for privatization. They decided to start a private prison company called the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). Neither Crants nor Beasley had any experience with managing prisons, so they reached out to T. Don Hutto, a warden with a long track record of running public prisons at a profit in Texas and Arkansas. It so happens that people incarcerated at these public prisons had previously sued Hutto because of conditions that were described by the district court as being “a dark and evil world completely alien to the free world;” conditions which included prisoners being whipped with a five-foot long leather strap, receiving electrical shocks to their genitals with the “Tucker Telephone,” and being fed a starvation diet while held in punitive isolation. Hutto’s sinister track record, however, did not stop Crants and Beasley from partnering with him; they believed Hutto could help them turn a profit. CCA received its first contract to run an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention facility in 1984 and went public in 1986. (Today, CoreCivic manages an immigration detention center named for T. Don Hutto near Austin, Texas!)

The founding of CCA marked the beginning of a new era of American incarceration. Just one year later, in 1984, the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation was formed. Both companies have since changed their names, as public awareness of private prison companies (and negative publicity around them) has increased. CCA rebranded itself under the blandly inscrutable name “CoreCivic” after journalist Shane Bauer went undercover as a guard at a CCA prison in Louisiana and released a blockbuster investigation highlighting the abuses there. Wackenhut, meanwhile, is now known as GEO Group. (GEO is not an acronym for anything, it’s just meant to obscure what their actual business is.) Through acquisitions, these two corporations have become by far the largest private prison corporations. GEO Group manages 124 detention facilities of various types in the United States while CoreCivic manages 108. Business is very good: in 2019, GEO Group had $2.48 billion in revenue, while CoreCivic had $1.98 billion. (Two other companies—LaSalle Corrections and the creepily-titled Management and Training Corporation—also incarcerate a significant number of people.)

Both CoreCivic and GEO Group have long had ties to Republican politicians. Thomas Beasley was once the head of the Tennessee Republican Party, and most of CCA’s initial investors—which included then-Governor Lamar Alexander’s wife, Honey—came from his party connections. GEO Group has been particularly active in courting Republican politicians, both nationally and in its home state of Florida. For example, before his election to the Senate, Rick Scott headlined a fundraiser held at the home of GEO Group’s CEO. In addition, GEO recently hired the outgoing president of the Florida Senate as head counsel and former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as a lobbyist.

Both GEO Group and CoreCivic donated heavily to pro-Trump political action committees. GEO Group also donated $50,000 to the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, which has strong connections to the Trump White House. In 2017, GEO Group relocated its annual conference from its own headquarters to the Trump National Doral Miami golf resort. In addition, both companies, whose stocks soared immediately after President Trump’s election, donated $250,000 apiece to Trump’s notably corrupt inauguration festivities.

It is no surprise that both corporations would enthusiastically support the Trump administration: immigration detention is central to their business model (and to Trump’s as well). In 2019, almost 30 percent of GEO Group and CoreCivic’s revenue came from detaining immigrants, and ICE contracts are both companies’ single largest revenue source. What’s more, much of these profits are essentially guaranteed by government policy. In 2010, Congress passed a law requiring ICE to maintain at least 33,400 detention “beds”: what this means, essentially, is that ICE is heavily incentivized to keep at least 33,400 human beings imprisoned at all times in order to continue justifying their receipt of this funding. (This provision has come to be known as “the bed quota” because ICE leadership has, in practice, interpreted it as a legal directive that they must keep the pre-funded beds continuously filled.) The majority of those “beds” are managed by GEO Group and CoreCivic. In the government shutdown and border wall fight of early 2019, Democrats beat back the Trump Administration’s attempt to require ICE to maintain 52,000 beds, but the average daily population of detained immigrants nevertheless remained above 50,000 for fiscal year 2019. In its 2019 budget, the Trump Administration asked for an even bigger 54,000-bed requirement.

It’s worth noting that the abuses of immigration detention pre-date the Trump administration. Conditions during the Trump administration have been awful of course: besides the COVID outbreaks and the forced hysterectomies, a USA Today investigation in 2019 found more than four hundred allegations of sexual assault or abuse, as well as numerous instances of inadequate medical care, frequent use of solitary confinement, and more than eight hundred instances of physical force against detainees. These abuses led detained immigrants to file nearly 20,000 grievances between 2017 and 2019. During the Obama administration, hundreds of detained immigrants reported being sexually abused by guards. Despite the administration’s promises, the mass detention of immigrants continued until the end of Obama’s presidency, and detainees were never provided with protection from abuse. The abuse of detained immigrants is caused by the fact of their detention, no matter who is President.

Private prisons, like all privatized services, make money by cutting costs. But once prisons are constructed, the two largest costs are labor and medical care, which are impossible to cut without making conditions worse inside the prisons. For example, labor and benefits costs make up 59 percent of CoreCivic’s operating expenses (even though its non-unionized correctional officers are paid as little as nine dollars per hour, much less than most unionized state prisoner guards). In addition to underpaying their own guards, a key way that CoreCivic and GEO Group further reduce labor costs is by forcing detainees to work for very little or no pay.

There are two main forms of coerced labor in immigration detention centers. First is the so-called “Voluntary Work Program” that Barrientos worked in. The program rests on a thin legal basis, and the going rate—$1 per day—was set in 1979 and then never renewed by Congress, leading some courts to determine that state minimum wage laws might apply to labor in detention centers. Although the application of state minimum wage laws to detained workers is complex, it is clear that absolutely nothing forbids GEO Group or CoreCivic from voluntarily paying the state or federal minimum wage—or more—for detainees’ labor.

Today, all detained immigrants are eligible to work in the Program. They perform a wide variety of jobs, from washing dishes to cutting hair to performing clerical work for the private facility manager. Any job performed by a prisoner for an extremely sub-minimum wage makes it unnecessary to hire an employee to perform the same task, thereby boosting the profits of the for-profit prison corporations. ICE regulations require detained immigrants to “maintain their immediate living areas in a neat and orderly manner,” and GEO Group and CoreCivic have frequently stretched this provision to force detainees to clean the bathrooms, hallways, and common areas of their prisons without any compensation.

ICE’s own guidelines for the Voluntary Work Program make it appear that the program is truly voluntary—so far as any incarcerated labor is voluntary. Officially, detainees cannot be required to work, and cannot be punished for quitting their jobs or refusing to work. These regulations, however, do not reflect the reality of labor in detention. An American Civil Liberties Union report found, “[e]ven though the program is supposed to be voluntary, detainees’ experiences are illustrative of its coercive nature.” The Justice Department has acknowledged that it is possible for facility operators to “illegally” force detained immigrants to work (although they maintain that the program, if run “correctly,” would be voluntary).

Detained immigrants have alleged that the program is coercive for two main reasons. First, participating in the program is the only way to buy necessities such as toothpaste, soap, and feminine hygiene products, which are not otherwise provided to detained immigrants and are sold at highly inflated prices. Second, GEO Group and CoreCivic retaliate against detainees by putting them in solitary confinement or changing their housing assignment if they refuse to work double shifts, refuse to work while sick, or protest unsafe conditions. In at least one GEO Group prison, the official policy was to place detained immigrants in solitary confinement if they refused to perform uncompensated janitorial work or encouraged others to do so. During the pandemic, protests against unsafe working conditions have understandably risen significantly, while at the same time facility managers have retaliated against protestors and placed immigrants who tested positive for COVID-19 in solitary confinement.

Current and formerly-detained immigrants have filed several lawsuits over the last six years, arguing that the work policies in GEO Group and CoreCivic detention centers violate the forced labor provision of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). The TVPA, first passed in 2000, is best known as an anti-sex trafficking law, but it also contains the most important federal prohibition of forced labor. If a person or company obtains labor through threats of or actual force, “serious harm,” or abuse of legal process, they can be charged or sued under the law. The TVPA is most commonly used to protect immigrant workers, but it applies to everyone in the United States. For example, if you threaten to pull a gun on the guests at a party and force them to clean your apartment, you have violated the TVPA (and several other laws. Please don’t do that).

The forced labor statute of the TVPA was passed in response to a 1988 Supreme Court decision ruling that a farm owner named Ike Kozminski had not committed the distinct crime of “involuntary servitude” when he coerced two mentally disabled men into working on his farm. The Court, always happy to disadvantage workers, held that “involuntary servitude” required physical or legal coercion, not psychological coercion, regardless of how vulnerable or powerless the coerced person might be. The TVPA was explicitly intended to circumvent the Supreme Court’s decision in Kozminski and protect workers from all forms of coerced labor.

So far, the immigrants and their attorneys have won a string of victories. Courts across the country have rejected GEO Group and CoreCivic’s arguments that the TVPA does not apply to for-profit detention centers and that they should therefore be allowed to force detainees to labor. In addition, three courts have certified classes of thousands of immigrants who were allegedly forced to labor while detained. As the lawsuits wend their way through the court system, it appears more and more likely that the plaintiffs could win a judgment which forces the corporations to pay massive damages and stop their illegal practices. The private prison corporations have already begged ICE to pay their legal bills, and one scholar has estimated that paying minimum wage for work in detention centers could reduce their profits by as much as 25 percent.

Other recent activist challenges have further threatened GEO Group and CoreCivic’s profits, compounding the importance of these forced labor lawsuits. Both companies’ stock prices cratered when it appeared the Obama administration would phase out federal contracts with private prisons, but rebounded after Trump was elected. In the last few years, however, activists have successfully forced institutions such as universities to divest their holdings, and, most importantly, forced major banks to stop lending to GEO Group and CoreCivic. Both corporations have acknowledged in SEC filings that “[i]ncreasing activist resistance” poses a significant threat to their profits. Consequently, their stock prices have fallen by more than two-thirds since peaking in mid-2017. Forcing private prison companies to pay up for stolen labor, while simultaneously choking off their access to investors, is a two-pronged strategy that has the potential to cripple their operations.

So what will happen to immigration detention if these lawsuits succeed, or if Joe Biden decides to reinstate the late Obama-era plan to phase out private prisons? Although we should never underestimate the ability of the carceral state to adjust to keep people locked up, without private prison facilities it would be extremely difficult to detain immigrants at the same volume. The roughly 30 percent of detained immigrants who are currently not held in private facilities are held in local jails. In theory, ICE could radically expand its use of jails to detain immigrants. But this may prove difficult: in addition to the logistical difficulties of shifting their detention practices, many localities have recently refused to allow ICE to detain immigrants in county jails. In the past, ICE has responded to these refusals by utilizing more space at private prisons: for example, in 2018 ICE moved detained immigrants to a nearby GEO Group facility when the city of Atlanta canceled its contract to lease jail space to ICE. Without private prison facilities as an option, ICE will have nowhere to put its intended prisoners if local jails decline to lease them space.

Obviously, the clearest moral, economic, and logistical solution to the problems faced by for-profit ICE detention centers is to stop detaining immigrants. The radical expansion of immigration detention is a recent phenomenon and could easily be reversed. But additionally, everyone should be able to agree that it is imperative to stop corporations from profiting from forced labor. The lawsuits against GEO Group and CoreCivic are being argued by dedicated advocates and organizations, but there are plenty of other ways to weaken immigration detention and the for-profit prisons that enable it.

For those who want to see an end to for-profit prisons, forced labor, and the mass jailing of immigrants generally, two useful sites for organizing are divestment campaigns and local elections. Although banks have distanced themselves from private prison corporations, institutional investors still own large chunks of them and can be pressured to sell them off. Vanguard, which likely manages your retirement fund if you’re lucky enough to have one, owns more than 15 percent of both CoreCivic and GEO Group’s stock. Vanguard also manages a number of unions’ pension funds, but so far has resisted divesting from its private prison holdings. Meanwhile, local elections for sheriffs and District Attorneys have a major impact on ICE’s ability to arrest and detain immigrants. ICE relies on the cooperation of local authorities to help arrest and detain immigrants, but local officials are free to withdraw that cooperation, as many have in recent years.

As dark as the last decade of deportation policy and mass incarceration has been, a world without immigrant prisons—and without for-profit prisons—may be much closer than it seems.

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nickgerlich · 5 years ago

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Data Pandemic

Much has been written the last few years about the decreasing amount of privacy we have in our lives, all as a result of the internet and our mobile devices. Everyone from Facebook to Google, Apple, our cell phone carriers, and every other third-party data analyzer has had the finger of blame pointed in their general direction.

Too many companies, it is argued, know too much about us. Everything from our likes and interests to stores we visit, things we buy, items we query, is being collected and parsed by someone somewhere, all in an effort to market more and better.

But now it turns out those same capabilities are being put to a different use, and all because of the pandemic. Apple and Google are partnering in a new effort to try to aid and abet contact tracing. The State of New Mexico has partnered with a firm in Santa Fe to track people’s movements within the state. Utah is using geo-fencing to spam our smartphones with a mandatory travel declaration form whenever we cross the border into the Beehive State.

I suspect that burner phones and VPNs will enjoy a surge in popularity in the coming days. That, or people will just put their phones on Airplane Mode when crossing borders, and rely instead on public wifi where available.

It all started a few weeks ago during Spring Break when a third-party firm analyzed people at one beach in Fort Lauderdale, and followed them--ostensibly anonymously--as they traveled home. The little dots of light on that map showed all the northern and eastern seaboard cities that quite possibly had unwanted viruses delivered to their doorsteps by these students.

Which then raises the critical question: Are we headed into a totalitarian state?

Social media outcry has been deafening from those most fearful of such a transition, while those on the other side of the aisle see it as a necessary infringement of privacy done for the public good. It’s a debate that probably won’t end quickly or easily, and much arguing and gnashing of teeth will go on for quite some time.

It’s one thing for companies to track us. It’s quite another for state and federal governments to do so. Orwell, anyone?

The logical, rational, analytical side of me says these efforts must be done, because stay-at-home orders are not working all that well, and officials need to resort to what some will see as over-reaching methods to control the disease. Naturally, critics will say their liberties have been infringed upon. It sucks to have to stay home, and many people have a hard time managing their boredom, not to mention their fears.

The irrational albeit Libertarian side of me doesn’t like knowing that I am now more than likely being tracked. As it stands, government overlords wouldn’t find anything terribly indicting against me, other than when I took the kids to Downtown Amarillo last Sunday for a very socially-distanced two-mile walk.

It all boils down to whom you trust more: The governments over us to somehow get us through this mess, or humanity’s ability to gain herd immunity and thus wrestle this demon virus to the ground, all the while conducting business and lives as usual.

I’ll let you sort through the methods, the issues, and concerns. As for me and my phone, I’m keeping it on. Because at the end of the pandemic, I don’t want anyone blaming me for someone else getting sick and/or dying. It is my social responsibility to be transparent, to live in such a way that benefits not just me but everyone else, to wear a damn mask and gloves not so much to protect myself from others but to protect them from me, and to be a part of the solution, not the problem.

Dr “Go Ahead. Track Me. I’m Good.“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

#marketing #data #pandemic #COVID-19 #coronavirus

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brettzjacksonblog · 6 years ago

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Crypto Tidbits: Bakkt’s Bitcoin Futures, Monex & Libra, Andrew Yang PAC Accepts BTC

Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. Bitcoin price action-wise, this week was rather boring. BTC trended lower, with volatility actually reaching multi-week lows on most trading markets.

However, the fundamental side of this industry saw a number of intriguing developments this week. These include the start of user testing for Bakkt’s Bitcoin futures, a European airline looking into launching crypto payment support, and a large partnership between Lolli and a large American grocer.

Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: “Unstoppable Force” Bitcoin Back at $10,000, Libra in Congress

Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits

Bakkt Starts User Testing for Bitcoin Futures Contracts: The most notable tidbit this week is the launch of Bakkt, the crypto exchange/startup backed by the New York Stock Exchange, Microsoft’s venture arm, and Starbucks. On Monday, the exchange started a “user testing acceptance” phase for its Bitcoin futures contracts, slated to be one of the first U.S.-regulated, accessible physically-deliverable BTC vehicle. It is unclear how exactly the products are being tested — meaning whether or not cash and Bitcoin are being exchanged — and who is involved in the beta. But, should nothing go wrong, Bakkt’s team have claimed that by the end of this quarter (Q3 2019), the Bitcoin futures product should be live for a global audience.

John McAfee Looks to Run for U.K. Prime Minister: After being released from a prison cell, John McAfee, the eccentric cryptocurrency pioneer and staunch libertarian, has revealed that he wants to run for the seat of the United States President and the United Kingdom Prime Minister at the same time. Per him, this is legal as he claims to have been born on the grounds of a U.S. military base that was once situated in England. It is unclear how exactly this is going to work, as Boris Johnson has taken office as the United Kingdom’s leader and the presidential race in America is already well underway.

Abra Blocks a Number of Crypto Assets in U.S. to Mitigate Regulatory Risk: Cryptocurrency investment service Abra has started to geo-block certain assets and services in the United States, as a result of “regulatory uncertainty and restrictions” in the country. Starting in late-August, users of the popular application will no longer be able to hold Qtum (QTUM), Bitcoin Gold (BTG), EOS, OmiseGo (OMG), and Status (SNT) through Abra.

Tron CEO Justin Sun Cancels Lunch With Warren Buffett: This week, Justin Sun, the chief executive of Tron and BitTorrent, revealed that he would be postponing his lunch with Warren Buffett — one of the most wealthy men on Earth. Sun cited kidney stones, claiming that the health ailment would prevent him from making it to the charity lunch, which the cryptocurrency entrepreneur had paid $4.5 million for. Then, reports arose that Sun was under investigation by certain authorities in China, and thus thought it best to fly under the radar by leaving the ballyhooed lunch to a later date. The details around this debacle as still up in the air, but the lunch didn’t happen — that’s for sure.

Monex, Firm Behind Hacked CoinCheck Exchange, Wants in on Libra: Monex Group, the parent company of CoinCheck — the once-popular Japanese exchange that was famously hacked for over $400 million worth of NEM (XEM) in 2018 — is reported by Reuters to be looking into requesting if it can join the Libra Association. If accepted, Monex would join a group of other potential partners that includes Visa, Mastercard, Spotify, Uber, Coinbase, and PayPal.

Huawei Founder Questions Libra, Says China Should Issue Own Crypto: Sina Finance, a top business news publication, reports that the chief executive-founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, has commented on Libra. Responding to a question from a reporter about if Libra is a way for the U.S. government to maintain global hegemony over finance, the technology tycoon, noted that China should launch its own cryptocurrency. This comes after a prominent representative of the People’s Bank of China confirmed that should Libra gain traction, the central bank could launch its own digital asset.

Bitcoin Earning Service Lolli Bags Partnership With Safeway: Just days ago, Lolli, a Bitcoin rewards service, revealed that it had teamed up with Safeway, a subsidiary of American grocery giant Albertsons. While the details of the partnership have yet to be fully released, the firm is expected to be offering up to a 3.5% rebate on transactions at the grocery chain’s website, pretty much allowing for investors to rack up dozens of dollars worth of Bitcoin over the course of a year’s digital grocery shopping trips.

Norwegian Air to Launch Crypto Exchange, Accept Bitcoin For Airfare: According to a recent report from Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv, the fittingly-named Norwegian Air, which is marketed as a low-cost, budget airline, is looking into directly accepting Bitcoin payments for airfare. Per the publication, this move stems from a pro-crypto attitude from the son of Bjørn Kjos, Lars Kjos. The junior Kjos purportedly has invested over $400,000 into the cryptocurrency market since at least late-2017.

BTC-Accepting Electronics Retailer Newegg Expands Coverage: Electronics retailer Newegg, which is especially popular in the U.S. and Canada, has been accepting Bitcoin via BitPay for years now. Just recently, the company revealed that it will be expanding its support for payments made via the cryptocurrency to other nations.

PAC Supporting Andrew Yang to Accept Bitcoin Via Lightning: This week, a number of pro-Bitcoin supporters of presidential candidate Andrew Yang launched the Humanity Forward Fund. This fund is a super PAC — a political action committee — that will be accepting Bitcoin donations via the Lightning Network to support Yang’s cause.

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michaelbennettcrypto · 6 years ago

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Crypto Tidbits: Bakkt’s Bitcoin Futures, Monex & Libra, Andrew Yang PAC Accepts BTC

Another week, another round of Crypto Tidbits. Bitcoin price action-wise, this week was rather boring. BTC trended lower, with volatility actually reaching multi-week lows on most trading markets.

Related Reading: Crypto Tidbits: “Unstoppable Force” Bitcoin Back at $10,000, Libra in Congress

Bitcoin & Crypto Tidbits

Featured Image from Shutterstock

The post Crypto Tidbits: Bakkt’s Bitcoin Futures, Monex & Libra, Andrew Yang PAC Accepts BTC appeared first on NewsBTC.

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workfromhom · 7 years ago

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What we can learn from the 3,500 Russian Facebook ads meant to stir up U.S. politics

On Thursday, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee released a massive new trove of Russian government-funded Facebook political ads targeted at American voters. While we’d seen a cross section of the ads before through prior releases from the committee, the breadth of ideological manipulation is on full display across the more than 3,500 newly released ads — and that doesn’t even count still unreleased unpaid content that shared the same divisive aims.

Russia sought to weaponize social media to drive a wedge between Americans, and in an attempt to sway the 2016 election. They created fake accounts, pages and communities to push divisive online content and videos, and to mobilize real Americans.

Here's how: pic.twitter.com/JqKSm5saAi

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 10, 2018

After viewing the ads, which stretch from 2015 to late 2017, some clear trends emerged.

Russia focused on black Americans

Many, many of these ads targeted black Americans. From the fairly large sample of ads that we reviewed, black Americans were clearly of particular interest, likely in an effort to escalate latent racial tensions.

Many of these ads appeared as memorials for black Americans killed by police officers. Others simply intended to stir up black pride, like one featuring an Angela Davis quote. One ad posted by “Black Matters” was targeted at Ferguson, Missouri residents in June 2015 and only featured the lyrics to Tupac’s “California Love.” Around this time, many ads targeted black Facebook users in Baltimore and the St. Louis area.

Some Instagram ads targeted black voters interested in black power, Malcolm X, and the new Black Panther party using Facebook profile information. In the days leading up to November 8, 2016 other ads specifically targeted black Americans with anti-Clinton messaging.

Not all posts were divisive (though most were)

While most ads played into obvious ideological agendas, those posts were occasionally punctuated by more neutral content. The less controversial or call-to-action style posts were likely designed to buffer the politically divisive content, helping to build out and grow an account over time.

For accounts that grew over the course of multiple years, some “neutral” posts were likely useful for making them appear legitimate and build trust among followers. Some posts targeting LGBT users and other identity-based groups just shared positive messages specific to those communities.

Ads targeted media consumers and geographic areas

Some ads we came across targeted Buzzfeed readers, though they were inexplicably more meme-oriented and not political in nature. Others focused on Facebook users that liked the Huffington Post’s Black Voices section or Sean Hannity.

Many ads targeting black voters targeted major U.S. cities with large black populations (Baltimore and New Orleans, for example). Other geo-centric ads tapped into Texas pride and called on Texans to secede.

Conservatives were targeted on many issues

We already knew this from the ad previews, but the new collection of ads makes it clear that conservative Americans across a number of interest groups were regularly targeted. This targeting concentrated on stirring up patriotic and sometimes nationalist sentiment with anti-Clinton, gun rights, anti-immigrant and religious stances. Some custom-made accounts spoke directly to veterans and conservative Christians. Libertarians were also separately targeted.

Events rallied competing causes

Among the Russian-bought ads, event-based posts became fairly frequent in 2016. The day after the election, an event called for an anti-Trump rally in Union Square even as another ad called for Trump supporters to rally outside Trump tower. In another instance, the ads promoted both a pro-Beyoncé and anti-Beyoncé event in New York City.

Candidate ads were mostly pro-Trump, anti-Clinton

Consistent with the intelligence community’s assessment of Russia’s intentions during the 2016 U.S. election, among the candidates, posts slamming Hillary Clinton seemed to prevail. Pro-Trump ads were fairly common, though other ads stirred up anti-Trump sentiment too. Few ads seemed to oppose Bernie Sanders and some rallied support for Sanders even after Clinton had won the nomination. One ad in August 2016 from account Williams&Kalvin denounced both presidential candidates and potentially in an effort to discourage turnout among black voters. In this case and others, posts called for voters to ignore the election outright.

While efforts like the Honest Ads Act are mounting to combat foreign-paid social media influence in U.S. politics, the scope and variety of today’s House Intel release makes it clear that Americans would be well served to pause before engaging with provocative, partisan ideological content on social platforms — at least when it comes from unknown sources.

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fabiofernandes · 6 years ago

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A Libertarian Guide to Internet Privacy

One thing that is always on my mind as a libertarian is Privacy. Our ancestors valued privacy much more than we do today, because privacy in the past was physical, visible and consequently tangible. Having your privacy violated in the past meant someone going through your things, following you around or simply constantly controlling and asking what you’re doing. Your physical freedom was at stake.

The idea we have today of privacy is much broader, less invasive, but not one bit less important and meaningful than it was before. The fact is we are now even more monitored, controlled, followed and spied than ever before, sometime by harmless things such online ads, but every now and then, by malicious people who are trying to fool, take advantage or steal from us, and that is when we finally notice how vulnerable we are online. Total Internet privacy is impossible, and anyone who claims to have it is lying. But anyone can increase their Internet privacy by adjusting their online behavior, because the power to be more private and decide what we share online is in our hands.

First, it is important to say that, not everyone needs the same level of Internet privacy. The way I use my internet connection may differ from yours, and where I usually connect can also change how likely I am to treats. You don’t have to use Tor all the time (which will slow your Internet) or communicate only through Signal encrypted messenger (which is useless unless your contacts are using it too). While such technologies provide a higher level of privacy, they may not be necessary for you and the kind of personal threat you are exposed to. In other words, you probably don’t need to take the same privacy precautions as a Turkish dissident, a Venezuelan protester or an NSA whistleblower.

Internet privacy is important for everyone!

If you have a smartphone, which almost everybody in the world does nowadays, even your grandmother, then privacy issues directly impact you. Without Internet privacy someone can steal your credit card or even your identity, potentially causing problems for your credit score or at the very least inconveniencing you while a replacement card is shipped. Internet privacy keeps hackers and criminals from infiltrating your online accounts and spying on your activity while using public WiFi.

On the other hand, as both citizens and users of the Internet, we all have a stake in the quality of our society. Privacy is a fundamental human right and a prerequisite for democracy. For authoritarian governments and profit-seeking companies alike, invasions of privacy are a useful means of control. If you value your freedom, then Internet privacy should matter to you.

Here are a few tips to keep improve your privacy:

1. Limit the information you share publicly

A lot of sensitive information about you is publicly available on the Internet. Some of it is a matter of public record, like court records, addresses, and voter registration. But much of it we put on the Internet voluntarily, usually via social media: photos (often location tagged), family members’ names, work history, and a variety of clues about our daily lives. In the end, without even knowing, we are putting ourselves voluntarily in danger.

Hackers can use these clues for social engineering and to answer security questions. Photos of you on social media can even be used to create deepfake videos of you. Almost all online services and Internet-connected devices have privacy settings you can update to restrict the amount of information collected and/or posted publicly online.

2. Limit the information you share privately

Online service providers can be vulnerable to data breaches, which can instantly compromise your privacy, sometimes in embarrassing ways. Even large services like Google or Facebook are not immune to data breaches. You can mitigate the privacy threat of data breaches by limiting the information you share with these services. For instance, you can use Google Chrome or Google Maps without logging into your account, or simply switching to a more privacy-friendly browser like Firefox.

If the services themselves (and their third-party partners) are overly risky for the type of life you live on, then you can switch to privacy-focused services that do not collect user data (and therefore cannot share it with third parties). I for example use ProtonMail, an e-mail account that i anonymous (not linked to your real life identity), and only collect as little user information as possible. Unlike other email service providers (like Gmail) the ProtonMail service also have no ability to read your inbox due to end-to-end encryption. When you use the free version of Gmail for example, the Google servers scan all your emails and accounts in order to offer you better suited advertising online. The same thing happens while using Facebook Messenger.

3. Strengthen your account security

Your password is your first line of defense. Make sure you use strong, unique passwords. A password manager can help you generate and store them so that you don’t have to write them down.

Your second line of defense is two-factor authentication (2FA). This is a way to secure your account with a second piece of information, usually something you have with you on your person, like a code created on an authenticator app or fob.

Avoid using public computers to access your accounts because these can be compromised by keyloggers. And if you absolutely must use a public computer, be sure to log out of your accounts.

4. Protect your devices

Most threat models should include the possibility of your device getting stolen or lost. So it’s important to also have strong passwords protecting your devices. There are apps that allow you to wipe, locate, and potentially identify the thief if your device is stolen.

Another important part of protecting your device is maintaining its software. You can help prevent attackers from installing malware on your device by keeping your apps and operating systems up to date. Software updates often include security patches for recently discovered vulnerabilities. You can also use anti-virus software.

If your device somehow is compromised with spyware, a low-tech privacy solution, ironically popularized by Mark Zuckerberg, is to cover your webcam with a piece of opaque tape

5. Practice email safety

Email is one of the easiest ways for hackers to get into your computer. So it’s important to be alert for phishing attacks, in which the attacker tries to trick you into clicking on a link, downloading an attachment, or giving up sensitive information (such as entering your username and password into a spoofed webpage).

6. Use encryption as much as possible

Encryption is the process of converting readable information into an unreadable string of characters. Without encryption, anyone monitoring the Internet could see the information being transmitted, from credit cards to chat messages. The vast majority of online services use some form of encryption to protect the data travelling to and from their servers. But only a few tech companies encrypt your information in such a way that even the company cannot decrypt it. This kind of encryption is called end-to-end encryption(E2EE). Whenever possible you should use services that offer E2EE because your privacy is protected by default.

Often, there is an E2EE alternative to less private services. For example, ProtonMail is a private alternative to Gmail. Instead of Google Drive, which can access your files, you could use Tresorit. DuckDuckGo is a private alternative to Google Search, and Brave is one example of an Internet browser that doesn’t track your browsing activity. For notes, Standard Notes is one E2EE option.

For instant messaging, you have a number of options. WhatsApp is one of the most popular chat apps, and it features E2EE. But Facebook (which owns WhatsApp) can see who you communicate with and when, and there may even be ways for Facebook to gain access to your messages if it wanted to. Facebook Messenger is not E2EE by default. WeChat offers no E2EE. For better chat security and privacy, I recommend using Wire or Signal.

For web services that are not E2EE, you should at least ensure that your Internet connection is encrypted from your device to the company’s servers. You can check that this is the case by making sure the URL of the website begins with “https”. There’s a browser plugin called HTTPS Everywhere to help you do this automatically.

7. Use a virtual private network (VPN)

A VPN encrypts your Internet connection from your device to the server owned by your VPN service provider. Using a VPN can help keep your web traffic safe from anyone monitoring the network at the local level: hackers, your Internet service provider, and surveillance agencies. A VPN will also mask your true location and IP address, allowing you to browse more privately and access geo-restricted content.

A VPN will not, however, protect your web traffic against the VPN provider. That’s why it’s important to choose a VPN service you trust that does not keep logs of your activity.

8. Use Tor

Lastly, if your lifestyle requires a very high level of Internet privacy (maybe you’re a spy), you should connect to the Internet through Tor. Tor is a technology maintained by the nonprofit Tor Project, which allows you to use the Internet anonymously. It works by bouncing your connection through multiple layers of encryption, both protecting your data and concealing its origin. Tor also allows you to access blocked websites (such as those offering E2EE services) via the dark web. However, the downside of Tor is that it is generally significantly slower compared to using a VPN.

Lastly, I want to say that just because you want privacy, it does not mean you have something to hide. Privacy, as mentioned before, is not only good for building stronger democracies but a fundamental right of the individual in our society. Creating a more private Internet is possible, but it will require a major shift in our culture and from the Internet’s current ad-based business model.

Hope you can use some of the tips here to improve you internet security against hackers and criminals and to regain your privacy. Mostly of the information was gathered in my favorite email provider ProtonMail. If you don’t have an account, go check them out, it’s free.

As always, be kind.

- F.

#Privacy #Liberal #Liberalism #Liberty #VPN #Email #Privacy Online #Internet

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gregglobal14-blog · 7 years ago

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An Introduction to Public Speaking Training and Exercises: Lessons from a Body Builder and Former President

Twitter: GregGlobal14

►Geopolitical Consultant (NATO) |Political Consultant |Freelance Writer |Speaker◄

When we need to train for a race, or any other sports competition, we have personal trainers and nutritionists to help us. But who do we turn to, to coach us, for; speeches, public debates and media appearances? Are there 'specific exercises' and training programs, to prepare ourselves for speaking engagements? Yes, there are.

Training Allied Forces:

Most recently, I delivered a number of speeches and military briefings at Vaziani Military Base, in the Republic of Georgia. There, I presented for the Scenario Team, during the NATO-GEO 2016 Exercise. Part of our role, was to provide training to a group of Allied and PfP (Partnership for Peace) forces, participating in the exercise.

-Vaziani Military Base: The Republic of Georgia

Unlike traditional boot-camp however, my role was to provide geopolitical trainingand analysis. Much like a fitness coach, our Scenario Team ensured these forces receive the appropriate level of engagement from us, for their given tasks. We would then check their ability to execute each task, while under stress.

Stress Adaptation:

Stress and stimulus, positive or negative, effects our ability to communicate, think and ultimately, react. Gradually increasing our body or mind, to increasing levels of stress, allows it to adapt. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not start his career doing a 100 reps of biceps curls. President Bill Clinton, was not born a natural speaker.

Through increasing level of reps, or exposure to the media, each of the individuals mentioned above, allowed their body and mind, to adapt to the increasing demands and stressors placed on it.

Before delivering my speech, I found I needed to quickly train myself again as well.

Recent Personal Experience:

It had been since the 2014 elections since I spoke before an audience; let alone one filled with ranking military officials and seasoned soldiers. I wanted to be PERFECT for them and our team.

Desiring Perfection is a Mistake

I became nervous, lost my train of thought, and kept changing the bullet points I thought were best to speak on. However, then I remembered my own advice.

[If you haven't, I recommend reading, My Strategic and Political Communications Consulting, Part I. It provides an overview of how I can help you, what industries I can help you communicate strategically in, and how my experience Serves You.]

Coaching Others in Stress Adaptation:

I will offer you and your team training for; speaking in front of 'friendly forces', aggressive reporters looking to make you the Front Page Headlines (by tricking you), publicized debates, and other scenarios.

Coaching with You

The SAID Principle: Now a lesson from personal trainers we can use to enhance our oratory skills.

Some of you may have heard your personal trainer, or those in fitness competitions, mention "functional training", and its related concept, the SAID Principle. It stands for Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands.

What are the common demands/stress factors, you face while speaking?

Is it:

1. Hecklers?

2. An unfriendly political audience?

(We can also work on rhetorical modification to mitigate negative reactions to controversial points you may need to make)

3. Criticisms over a past media performance?

(Negative media attention can have quite an effect on us, and I will help you work through this too)

There a number of ways we can:

Replicate, Minimize or Enhance the stress that you normally encounter. The approach is similar to how with weightlifting, the muscle breaks down and comes back stronger. Whether the current stressors are too much, or you have already adapted to them, we will modify our training program.

Does the Coaching Pay Off?

Lets take a quick jump back to the 1992 U.S. Presidential Elections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ffbFvKlWqE&t=3s

I will let you judge for yourself!

Contact Me At: [email protected]

I will analyze you rhetoric, non verbals and your behavioral responses to questions and other stress factors, that arise in the clips.

~Author's Social Media~

LinkedIn: Greg Voegtle| Medium Blog: @GregInternational14 Twitter:@GregGlobal14| Speaker Profile: Greg's Global Speaking

Bio: Greg is a U.S. Political Consultant and Geopolitical Consultant (most recently for NATO), who specializes in strategic communications and analysis. He has worked on humanitarian issues and lead Scenario Teams (for NATO) at Strategic and Tactical level Military Bases and Headquarters in Europe and The Republic of Georgia.

Value for You and Your Team: Do you want him to Write or Speak about your Cause,Career, be a freelance writer on your behalf?

-Contact Him here:

Article Sources:

http://www.rebootillinois.com/2014/10/24/editors-picks/matthew-skopek/treasurer-candidate-matthew-skopek-vote-change-system-voting-libertarian/27877/

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/26/12285312/bill-clinton-dnc-1988-speaker-late-night

http://thesportdigest.com/archive/article/said-principle-aerobicanaerobic-training

#Public speaking #communication #training #debate #stress

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duaneodavila · 7 years ago

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Kopf: A Contrarian’s View Of The Vanishing Federal Criminal Jury Trial

Over the last three decades, there has been a steady overall decline in federal criminal jury trials. For compelling proof and a penetrating explanation of why this decline has taken place, see Honorable Robert J. Conrad, Jr., United States District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina and Kathy Clements, The Vanishing Criminal Jury Trial: From Trial Judges to Sentencing Judge, 86 GEO. WASH. L. REV. __ (forthcoming Mar. 2018). I can’t compliment these authors too much. Their work is superb.

Consider the following charts taken from The Vanishing Criminal Jury Trial for the period of 1980-1999[i] and 2000-2016[ii]:

This has caused great angst.[iii] For example, a pipe-smoking[iv] Cato libertarian (evidently fearing black helicopters) tweeted the following recently:

While I do not wish to discuss in any great detail the reasons for the decline as explained by the authors of The Vanishing Criminal Jury Trial, any person who is serious about understanding the causes for the decline would be well-advised to read the article slowly and carefully. The authors’ explanations are finely reasoned, well-researched and compelling. Interestingly, some of those reasons are surprising or counterintuitive, but in my view eminently sensible.

For example, the discretion afforded district judges by Booker[v], which tended to ameliorate the harshness of the Guidelines, and the relatively benign charging policies of Attorney General Holder[vi], are two such unexpected causes for the decline in criminal jury trials according to the authors. But, overall, with a conviction rate hovering around 87 percent for all criminal jury trials[vii], “even the most daring and adept litigators would pause before urging their clients to exercise their Sixth Amendment jury trial right.”[viii] In short, the risk/reward ratio has never favored gambling with a jury in most cases, and that is especially true now given the stiff penalties that Congress has enacted.

What I am far more interested in is probing the normative question of whether we ought to fear the decline in criminal jury trials. I am not much concerned about such a decline, but the thoughtful authors of The Vanishing Criminal Jury Trial are quite concerned. I wish to scrutinize their judgments.

Greatly summarized and condensed, I next describe the authors’ conclusions that the decline in criminal jury trials is bad for business. After each point I will provide my brief take. Here goes:

Point 1: “The absence of jury trials makes the judicial process more secretive and contravenes the ‘presumption of openness [that] inheres in the very nature of a criminal trial under [the American] system of justice.’ Trials provide a public forum for the airing of grievances, yet the death of trials marks the end of doing justice where disputes are played out under the attentive eye of judge and jury.” Id. at 48 (citation omitted).

Kopf’s Take: As I have said before in this regard, “give me a break.” I have tried lots of criminal jury trials over the last 25-plus years as a district judge[ix] and I can count on one hand the cases that drew more than few members of the public. Besides, arraignments, detention hearings, suppression hearings, guilty pleas and sentencing hearings are public. Hell, they are not only public, but because the magistrate judges and I use digital audio uploaded to our computer system, anyone in the entire world can listen at home to those proceedings[x] that very evening at minimal cost.

Point 2: Without more jury trials, lawyers lack a foundation to know which cases to try and which not to try because they lack a sufficient number of prior cases tried to a jury to gauge the strength of their particular case and their client’s risk against past history. Also, appellate review of jury trials is shrunken and thus development of trial related law is impaired. Even further, the trial skills of judges and lawyers are harmed by disuse. Id. at 50-51.

Kopf’s Take: At least out here in flyover country, we have enough criminal jury trials to keep the district judges up to snuff and our Court of Appeals sufficiently busy to make whatever criminal law needs to be met. Frankly, you don’t need a whole lot of jury trials to keep your skills intact and the Court of Appeals busy fly-specking the application of the criminal law in the district courts during jury trials. Moreover, specialization is rapidly and inexorably changing the private bar. That means private CDLs will be fewer but likely better as the market weeds out the marginal. Great CDLs know when to hold them and know when to fold them. Still further, we have very experienced federal prosecutors and federal defenders who have tried loads of criminal cases to juries and who are ready willing able to pick a jury for the ones that need to be tried. Additionally, our Criminal Justice Act Panel is populated with lawyers who can find the courthouse and pick a jury as well. And the management of that panel provides training for baby lawyers through a sort of “mentoring” system.

Point 3: In close or weak cases, the absence of the potential for independent fact-finding by a neutral jury has weighty justice implications. Id. at 51-52.

Kopf’s Take: In my experience, that’s not convincing. As a practical matter, few close or weak cases get tried anyway. Just last week a relatively young but wonderfully devoted CJA panel lawyer got his client a sweet deal dismissing a drug conspiracy case in favor of a plea to misprision of a felony. I put the defendant on probation and approved a voucher for the lawyer that was twice the CJA limit.

Point 4: Without more jury trials, fewer citizens serve as jurors. “Studies show that jurors often leave the jury duty experience with a renewed sense of faith in the fairness and integrity of our government. However, as trials disappear, the risk of the public becoming increasingly disenchanted and distrustful of the American judicial system, and more importantly, of our democracy as a whole, becomes more real.” Id. at 53 (footnote omitted).

Kopf’s Take: The authors’ argument that jury service provides an important educational function is certainly true, at least for the judicial branch. But that educational function can only be provided to a tiny number of citizens even assuming that the federal jury trial rate increased exponentially. Moreover, we should never forget that we forcibly summon jurors upon pain of fine and imprisonment and we screw up their lives mightily in so doing. Simply put, we don’t try criminal jury cases for the purpose of educating our citizens.

Now, I will zoom out a bit and conclude. Nostalgia for a bygone era is not a sufficient reason to worry that the sky is falling. We must remember that criminal jury trials are a means to an end, and not an end by themselves. Ultimately, the federal district courts are intended to resolve disputes and we are doing just that whether by plea or trial. And, I should emphasize, we are doing so promptly and I believe more fairly than ever.[xi]

Having been a federal magistrate judge or a federal district judge for over 30 years, it is my view that the good old days were never all that great. Besides, we judges are not the ones who must prosecute and defend criminal cases—that is solely the prerogative of the prosecutors and defenders. If prosecutors and defenders, with the agreement of their respective clients, decide never to try another criminal jury trial, that is their call and not mine. In short, and while I don’t wish it, if the federal criminal jury trial vanishes altogether, I will sleep just fine.

Richard G. Kopf Senior United States District Judge (Nebraska)

[i] Id. at 19 (the hyperlink and the page citations are to the version found on the Social Science Research Network).

[ii] Id. at 5.

[iii] See, for example, Josh Gerstein, Why Petersen may not be the last judicial nominee with no trial experience, Politico (December 21, 2017).

[iv] I smoke a pipe too, but I am no libertarian. I am just a schmuck who sucks a pipe.

[v] The Vanishing Criminal Jury Trial at 25-29.

[vi] Id. at 31-42. “During Holder’s tenure as Attorney General, jury trials of drug prosecutions decreased by 45 percent from 1,035 jury trials in 2009 to 568 trials in 2014.” Id. at 33 (footnote omitted). Say what you want about Attorney General Sessions, but his comparatively tough charging policies for drug cases are likely to cause a bump in criminal jury trials.

[vii] The conviction rate for drug cases tried to a jury this year is slightly over 93 percent. Table D-4. U.S. District Courts—Criminal Defendants Disposed of, by Type of Disposition and Offense, During the 12-Month Period Ending June 30, 2017, at p. 2. If I never had to try another meth case I would be happy. Almost always, such cases are just unnecessarily long guilty pleas.

[viii] The Vanishing Criminal Jury Trial at 23 (footnote omitted).

[ix] Statistically, the District of Nebraska ranks 8th in the nation for criminal cases for the 12-Month Period ending September 30, 2016. My last criminal jury trial this year took three weeks to try. It involved 16 counts and it required a separate jury trial on the forfeiture allegations. It ended in a split verdict but prison sentences nonetheless for the defendants and a large money judgment against them to boot.

[x] To the chagrin of court reporters, I also use digital audio for my criminal jury trials. So, one doesn’t even have to come to the courthouse to hear the trial.

[xi] When I say “more fairly,” I refer to the process of resolving criminal cases and not to the draconian sentences that Congress has dictated. By the way, the biggest reason for the improvement in the process has been the near universal adoption of the Federal Public Defender system. I became a magistrate judge in 1987 when there was no such animal. Shortly before becoming a district judge in 1992, I was tasked with drafting the plan for the creation of the office of Federal Public Defender for our district. Trust me when I say the criminal process has improved by an order of magnitude since the inception of our Federal Public Defender’s office. Indeed, our Federal Public Defender, Dave Stickman, who was selected as the original Defender long ago, is now regarded by many as the Dean of the Federal Public Defense system nationwide.

Copyright © 2007-2017 Simple Justice NY, LLC This feed is for personal, non-commercial and Newstex use only. The use of this feed anywhere else violates copyright. If this content is not in your news reader, it means the page you are viewing infringes copyright. (Digital Fingerprint: 51981395c77d7762065ca2c084b63e47) Kopf: A Contrarian’s View Of The Vanishing Federal Criminal Jury Trial republished via Simple Justice

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ogxref · 7 years ago

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ON VERTICAL ZONING / Anastasia Kubrak + Sander Manse

Today, technologies are mainly implemented / instrumentalized by platform economies (serving the big capital of tech) → acquiring a tight grip on the way our cities work. The main strategy here is to capitalize on the information that is being generated by the augmented city. (They capitalize on patterns of our movements, monetizing the extracted data, or the so-called ‘behavior surplus’ generated by mechanisms of surveillance.)

Over the past few years the city has quickly become a mesh of hectic laws and virtual borders.

Notion that one physical location → virtually occupied by multiple zones, different actors on a vertical axis.

The process of urban zoning → traditionally defined as dividing topographically defined areas into zones (e.g. residential, industrial) in which certain land uses are permitted or prohibited by a political body. → As a result of technological augmentation, zoning today is not limited to regulations on building heights, but extends to new, intangible spaces.

New types of Zones, or vertical spaces → allow digital behemoth corporations to quickly exploit them as new markets and colonize the virtual ground outside of traditional jurisdictions, taking advantage of grey areas in the law.

The business model of the platform is based on:

the principles of militant growth over profit

extraction and aggravation of free user data,

and a hostile approach towards laws and legislation.

By implementing new services without consent, by default, platforms leave citizens and governments to opt out or object their effects retrospectively.

But what is life like in the privatized city, structured by this new urban zoning? → How can we benefit as citizens from the increase in sensing technologies, remote data-crunching algorithms, leaching geolocation trackers and parasite mapping interfaces?

Main question → Can the imposed verticality of platform capitalism by some means enrich the surface of the city, and not just exploit it?

Maybe our cities deserve a truly augmented reality → reality in which value generated within urban space actually benefits its inhabitants, and is therefore ‘augmented’ in the sense of increased / made greater...

Is it possible to consider the extension of zoning not only as an issue, but also as a solution, a way to create room for fairer, more social alternatives? Can we imagine the sprawling of augmented zones today, still of accidental nature, being utilized or artificially designed for purposes other than serving capital?

Free Trade Zones → Originally developed for purposes of warehousing and shipping, the early free trade zones, sprawling between 1500 and 1930s, were located along major trade routes. Further spreading around airports, manufacturing centers and container ports from the 1950s to 1970s, or offshore financial districts and office parks in the 90s, zones eventually formed mini-cities and even developed into megapolises on their own, as was the case with Shenzhen (established as China’s first SEZ in 1980, growing from 30.000 to an estimated 18 million inhabitants in the following decades).

The EPZ was initiated in the mid-twentieth-century as an economical accelerator that could help developing countries to enter the global market. But ‘rather than dissolving into the domestic economy, as was originally intended, the EPZ absorbed more and more of that economy into the enclave’. Today these zone-projects are increasingly built from scratch outside of existing cities, on the outskirts of state territories and even on reclaimed isles off the mainland. The Zone as an island provides an ideal blank canvas, clean slates for extralegal experiments.

The Zone → does not necessarily encapsulate an existing part of a city or a social community, it prefers to create new land, and to bring in new citizens to populate it.

Notion that from door handles to sensors, this ‘city in a box’ can be purchased as one singular item and reproduced anywhere in the world, becoming a spatial product on its own. Prime example of this type of city is Songdo.

The technologically enhanced city promises a life of luxury, while simultaneously turning the zone into a gated community. In a place devised for economic activity and designed to generate capital, its inhabitants might be assessed on their added value to the city. This brand new city of the future, in a box, won’t be for everyone.

“When new Zones are created as clean slates, tech companies quickly move in to develop the city’s infrastructure, introducing hardware and software that circumstantially pushes certain people out and helps to enforce the borders.”

Gated urban enclaves also proliferate within our ‘normal’ cities, perforating through the existing social fabric. Privatization of urban landscape affects our spatial rights, such as simply the right of passage. But how do these acts of exclusion happen in cities dominated by the logic of platform capitalism? What happens when more tools become available to scan, analyze and reject citizens on the basis of their citizenship or credit score? Accurate user profiles come in handy when security is automated in urban space: surveillance induced by smart technologies, from electronic checkpoints to geofencing, can amplify more exclusion.

“This tendency becomes clearly visible with Facebook being able to allow for indirect urban discrimination through targeted advertising. This is triggered by Facebook’s ability to exclude entire social groups from seeing certain ads based on their user profile, so that upscale housing-related ads might be hidden from them, making it harder for them to leave poorer neighborhoods. Meanwhile Uber is charging customers based on the prediction of their wealth, varying prices for rides between richer and poorer areas. This speculation on value enabled by the aggregation of massive amounts of data crystallizes new forms of information inequality in which platforms observe users through a one-way mirror.”

The Zone emerges from special legislation for finance, and subsequently also attracts tech giants for reasons other than merely tax holiday. This is not surprising → Silicon Valley has long been nurturing the libertarian dream of a lawless laboratory, an island outside of territorial waters, beyond the traditional nation-state jurisdiction. A Burning Man-like environment for new technologies, “a safe place to try out new things and figure out the effect on society”, as recurrently articulated by Larry Page...

Notion that the principle or promise of flexible citizenship is that there is a Zone for each of us, without exception

So if Seasteading is the ultimate liberal, capitalist utopia, what could be its social and more inclusive counterpart? And if there could be a test-site not for the rich technological libertarians, but for a more inclusive society, could that also be mapped onto existing cities instead of having to seek liberation in endless variations of offshore enclaves?

Vertical zoning → allows such exceptions to be located anywhere, granting users access to different regimes inside existing cities, without the requirement to physically move to a different location.

We need to imagine a type of counter-spaces that could be mapped on top of actual cities and profit from the temporary nature of new spatial zoning. The vertical aspect of this other sort of zone could enhance its elasticity, allowing it to change its shape and size according to circumstances. Elastic zones: fleeting, flexible and stackable → Could a meta-economic level of planning strategically transform the city, reinforcing governmental control and enabling measures against a Cisco, Amazon or Google monopoly on the digital infrastructure?

This ethereal urban density of Kijkduin relied on legal action and adjustments in the geo-spatial coding in the software: the creation of a No-Pokémon Go-Zone.

If platform economies take the city as a hostage, governmental bodies of the city can seek how to counter privatization on material grounds. The notorious Kremlin’s GPS spoofing fence sends false coordinates to any navigational app within the city center, thereby also disrupting the operation of Uber and Google Maps.

Following the example of Free Economic Zones, democratic bodies could gain control over the city again by artificially constructing such spaces of exception. Imagine rigorous cases of hard-line zoning such as geofenced Uber-free Zones, concealed neighborhoods on Airbnb, areas secured from data-mining or user-profile-extraction.

Can we think of more subtle examples of zoning that do not trigger new partitions in public space? Verticality can provide multiple options and platforms for one geolocation. Zones can be stacked on top of other zones, truly augmenting reality – adding onto what is already there.

“The platform economy extracts capital from the behavioral patterns of citizens in public space. What if physical zoning could allow citizens to gain agency over the systems of data extraction? GoogleUrbanism proposes a model which makes the added platform value, produced by – in this case – Google, flow back into the public space where the value is ‘mined’. This happens through exclusive licenses sold by the municipalities that allow companies to extract data from certain locations, forcing them to reinvest part of their profits in the maintenance of public space. Cities currently may not have a leverage to enforce such a platform/citizen partnership with Google, but they might get hold of their streets again by implementing and testing different kinds of legislation that bring forth new mechanisms of value creation.” (GU)

To prevent a total Songdo-like smart technology takeover, new urban zoning might enable citizens to self-organize and provide services themselves. The ideal utopian platform would be owned and controlled by its users, serving as a cooperative service where everyone is able to invest and everybody benefits. But building such a model from the ground up can be problematic (see platform co-ops such as the Green Taxi Cooperative), and gaining leverage through user numbers is difficult due to a lack of resources and the network effect. After all, the platform is only valuable to its users if enough people join in. Therefore we can think about a more practical, middle ground approach, utilizing existing corporate platforms and the network they provide. Even though the platform still profits off the user’s activity, the user begins to extract new, unintended value from its operation, exploring alternative social functions of augmented urbanity.

What characterizes this self-regulated hybrid space is that it offers entrance and exit by choice

Notion of “Vertical Futures”

In the future, we can imagine this soft zoning might offer counter-mechanisms that enable citizens to take action, utilizing the same tools and methods that generate so much value for the tech giants.

Taking action within the context of vertical zoning can be translated as a shift:

... from being approached as a user – one who benefits from the easiness and luxuries of the platform (and surrenders to its monopolistic tendencies)

...to being approached as a citizen – one who is politically empowered and bears legal rights to demand alternative models.

Political bodies can enhance citizenship through vertical zoning, repelling the current smart-city dogma based on information exploitation and the uneven nature of the user-platform relationship.

Notion of creating the circumstances for citizens to experiment with alternative approaches to new technologies, and creating financial instruments that support new initiatives → New Zones don’t necessarily have to draw out new land to reclaim and populate; they should be mapped onto the city as it is. A more collective, inclusive and social approach to Zoning might enable the city-state to prevent disbandment of urban life.

#vertical #zoning #anastasia #kubrak #sander #manse #gu

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