The European Commission(EC) is negotiating an agreement with the US the "Privacy Shield" designed to protect personal data of EU citizens in the US. Privacy Shield will replace "Safe Harbour" which was struck down by the European Court of Justice last October because it did not sufficiently protect citizens data protection rights. The US has no data protection rights such as are in the EU where citizens have rights of access, to erasure, and processing of their data among other rights. However the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) argues that Privacy Shield also fails to protect EU citizens' data when it is sent to the US. They claim that the limits imposed on US tech companies that can profit from the data, fall short of standards set in the EU data protection law. Monique Goyens, Director General of the BEUC said: “It is disappointing that the EU is showing so little appetite for defending its pioneering data protection rules. Consumers usually do not know or control where companies are sending their personal data. Their privacy rights should not be weakened just because data is transferred to the US or elsewhere." Goyens said that the EC should have listened more to data protection groups and advocates for privacy. Instead they gave in to pressure from the tech industry and the US government. Goyens complained that the agreement was "cracked beyond repair". She said that the agreement is not likely to survive scrutiny by the European Court of Justice. Goyens said that a fundamental problem is "the US side of the shield is made of clay, not iron". The data involved can refer to any transaction, web purchases, cars, or clothing, involving any EU citizen whose data is held on US servers, but also includes Internet and other communications. The Safe Harbour agreement was shut down in part on the basis of a case in which the revelations of Edward Snowden about NSA spying were involved. However, Vera Jourova of the European Commissioner for Justic, Consumers and Gender Equality said of the deal: "Strong data protection obligations will be more robustly enforced by US authorities. Secondly, reassurance from the US Government that any access to personal data for law enforcement or national security purposes is limited to what is necessary and proportionate, building on the important intelligence reforms by President Obama. Thirdly, easier redress possibilities for European in case of complaints about how their data is handled." Many critics disagree and complain that the agreement was slanted toward the rights of tech corporations and the government.
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U.S. Defense Secretary, Ash Carter, announced that he will send 560 more troops to Iraq to help capture the city of Mosul still held by the Islamic State (IS).
Ash made the statement during a surprise visit to Iraq. Most troops will go to the Qayara air base about 40 miles south of Mosul. The troops include engineers and logistics personnel among other forces. They will help Iraqi forces plan to encircle and in time retake Mosul.Carter said: “These additional US forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight.” Ash was speaking to about 120 troops, members of the 101st airborne division, in a building at the Baghdad airport. The total number of US troops is now officially listed as 4,647. It comes just three months after Obama's last addition. Obama recently also reneged on his troop-reduction promise in Afghanistan.It is not yet clear when the attack against Mosul will begin. The capture of the Qayara base on Saturday is a key strategic victory in the advance towards Mosul. One potential job of the new troops is to help the Iraqi forces bridge the river into Mosul. Although anonymous US officials said that American advisers were already working with Iraqis at the brigade level they have not yet accompanied them on operations. Obama has allowed US troops to assist Iraqi forces closer to the front lines. The IS captured Mosul in the summer of 2014 and has used the city as their main Iraq headquarters ever since. As well as Qayara, Iraqi troops have retaken, Ramadi, Fallujah, and a number of other towns en route to Mosul. Carter said: “At every step in this campaign, we have generated and seized additional opportunities to hasten ISIL’s lasting defeat. These additional U.S. forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight.” While losing territory the IS has turned to terror tactics including a bombing in Baghdad last week that killed almost 300 people the most lethal bombing so far. The Iraq government has been unable to reform and it is quite possible that protests in Baghdad may erupt again soon unless the PM is able to announce significant reforms. Earlier protests broke into the heavily-fortified Green Zone where the parliament is located. Almost no significant press coverage is given to third party candidates for the US presidency, a factor that helps ensure that the election is a race between two major parties even as this time around both the presumed Republican candidate Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats are heartily disliked by many Americans. Yet there are third party candidates on both the right and the left who voters can choose in states where they are able to run. I have already written an article on the leftist choice, Jill Stein of the Green Party. This brief article is on the "right" choice Gary Johnson. I put "right" in quotes since while Libertarians are very much on the right with respect to economic issues demanding smaller governments and less government spending and reliance on free markets, on social issues or foreign policy they can very well be on the left. Johnson has considerable experience as a politician having served two terms as Republican Governor of the state of Arizona, He won his second term even against a popular Hispanic Democratic candidate. He was widely praised for his leadership during fires in the state even by Democratic member of Congress Tom Udall. Governors are limited to two terms in Arizona. In 1999, Johnson became the first high-ranking elected politician to advocate the decriminalization of marijuana. He claimed that the "War on Drugs" was a high-costing bust. He advocated not just decriminalizing marijuana but the adoption of harm-reduction policies for other illegal drugs. He said that illegal drug use should be considered a health issue rather than a crime problem. In January of this year, Johnson announced that he would seek to be the presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party. In May, he chose former Republican Governor of Massachusetts, William Wald as his vice-presidential running mate. On May 29 he won the nomination on the second ballot with 55.8 percent of delegates at the Libertarian nominating convention. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows Hillary Clinton at 45 percent to 35 percent for Trump while Johnson has 10 percent. This is about twice what Jill Stein polls when she is included. However among younger millenials Johnson and Stein do reasonably well. A Quinnipiac poll shows that among those aged 18 to 34 , Clinton polled 45 percent, Trump, 21 percent, with Johnson at 12 percent and Stein at 10 percent. The two third party candidates are obviously hurting Trump among this group. Johnson is expected to get on the ballot in all 50 states are rare occurrence for a third-party candidate. Bernie Sanders has been invited to continue his bid to be presidential nominee by running for the Green Party candidacy for president. Stein said she would step aside to allow Sanders to seek the nomination at the Party's nominating convention coming up in August at Houston Texas. Stein is expected to be nominated then. Stein claims that overwhelming numbers of Sanders' supporters are joining the Green Party rather than supporting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Stein has a near term goal of reaching at least 15 percent national support so she can join televised debates alongside Trump and Clinton. Nevertheless, Stein said: “I’ve invited Bernie to sit down explore collaboration – everything is on the table. If he saw that you can’t have a revolutionary campaign in a counter-revolutionary party, he’d be welcomed to the Green party. He could lead the ticket and build a political movement.” Stein said she had made the offer to Sanders at the end of the primary sessions. She had yet to receive a response. Sanders has been busy trying to ensure that more progressive planks are in the Democratic platform. He has been successful in introducing such measures as the $15 minimum wage. However he has not been successful in introducing opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership even though Hillary Clinton changed her position from supporting the measure to opposing it. A recent attempt to add opposition to the TPP was defeated by a vote of 10 against to 5 four. Only Sanders' supporters voted to add the opposition. All 187 members of the platform committee are meeting today and tomorrow in Orlando Florida. If Clinton has her supporters vote against opposition to the TPP, perhaps more Sanders' supporters will join the Greens. Hillary faces a dilemma in that Obama is a strong supporter of the TPP as is Wall Street and most of the business community. Trump has made opposition to the TPP a key part of his campaign. If Clinton blocks any mention of opposition to the TPP in the Democratic platform, Trump will say that this shows she really does not oppose it. The New York Times and other sources indicate that Clinton will pledge support for Clinton early next week. If he does so without getting a plank in the Democratic platform against the TPP, he may find that even more of his supporters move to support the Greens. Stein said of Sanders: "If he continues to declare his full faith in the Democratic party, it will leave many of his supporters very disappointed. That political movement is going to go on – it isn’t going to bury itself in the graveyard alongside Hillary Clinton.” Stein, an environmental activist and former doctor, is trying to woo young voters by promising to make college free and cancel all existing student debt. It remains to be seen if a plank on the issue is added to the Democratic platform as Sanders wants. Stein at present is polling only between 4 to 6 percent far from enough to join the presidential TV debates. Five percent is required to get federal funding in the next election. Being a third party candidate ensures that the press will not bother to cover you. Nine out of ten voters did not know enough about Stein to know if they supported her or not. A poll of those who would vote for Sanders if his name were on the ballot showed: “Of those who vote for Sanders when Sanders’ name appears on the ballot, 13% say they will stay home if Sanders name is not on the ballot, 41% vote for Clinton, 15% vote for Johnson, 11% vote for Stein, and 7% defect to Trump.” Gary Johnson is the Libertarian candidate. So the largest number of Sanders' supporters will still vote for Clinton with only 11 percent going to Stein less than to the Libertarian Johnson. Stein worries little about the fact her candidacy could hurt Democratic electoral chances and result in Hillary losing, saying: “She is the fracking queen. We would be fools to expect Hillary to deal with the climate crisis – the day of reckoning will come closer with her as president. As scary as Trump talks, Hillary has a scary record for warmongering and the neoliberalism. It’s a mistake to think the lesser of two evils will fix things. A lot of people are in the target hairs of a neoliberalist nightmare. Wars are bankrupting us morally and financially. At least when Republicans are elected, people fight – when Democrats are elected, people are lulled into complacency and fall asleep.” The Australian election results are still being counted with the results too close to name a winner and neither of the top two parties winning enough seats for a majority. Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister said he accepts full responsibility for the campaign that leaves him on the brink of losing office. However, he said he remained confident that he would get the seats necessary to form a majority government. He denied that he intended to call a new snap election as claimed by opposition leader Bill Shorten.A party needs 76 seats to have a majority but so far neither the Liberal coalition nor the opposition Labor party have managed to win that many but 10 seats still are not decided. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation have called 68 seats for the Liberal-National coalition, 67 seats for Labor and 5 for independents and other parties. Eighty percent of the vote has been counted. The count is going slowly as there are large numbers of absentee and postal votes to be processed. It could be several days yet before the results are certain. Turnbull said; "It's too early for definitive judgments … it will take time to absorb the learnings from the campaign, I want to make it quite clear that as Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal party I take full responsibility for our campaign. There is no doubt that there is disillusion with the mainstream parties and we respect that." Turnbull said that his party needed to rebuild trust in the party especially with regard to the health system. He complained about the Labor Party's constant claims that his government planned to privatize the public Medicare system. He said that the claims were a "grotesque lie". Some analysts think that the labor negative attacks helped the Labor opposition and even criticize Turnbull for having too positive a campaign.Turnbull himself noted that many Australians believed his government would carry out privatization and said that his government had to show the people that it was committed to health and to Medicare. Bill Shorten leader of the Labor party has demanded that Turnbull step down. He called Turnbull's admission the he was responsible for the results "a desperate statement from a desperate man trying to keep his job". It is quite possible that Turnbull will be able to keep his job. Even if Turnbull does not end up with a majority analysts predict he may be able to form an administration that works closely with crossbenchers to pass legislation. Turnbull has had a varied career. He was once a Rhodes Scholar. He was once Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Australia. He is also a venture capitalist. His current estimated net worth is above $200 million. Bill Shorten the opposition Labor leader is insistent that Turnbull should resign because he cannot command his own party, and voters have concluded he is "out of touch".Shorten said that he would work to provide the stability that Turnbull promised by reaching out to the crossbenchers in the new parliament. Both sides are courting the crossbenchers in order to have a majority to pass legislation. |
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Ken Hanly
Ken is a retired philosophy professor living in the boondocks of Manitoba, Canada, with his Filipina wife. He enjoys reading the news and writing articles. Politically Ken is on the far left of the political spectrum on many issues.
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