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A demonstration in Taksim Square, Istanbul, against the failed coup attempt on July 17, 2016. Turkey has remained under a state of emergency since, and a constitutional referendum was held and won with a narrow majority to convert the countrys parliamentary system into an executive presidency.

Last week I received a bizarre invitation. A bureaucrat in Istanbul asked me to help the Turkish government celebrate its commitment to democracy. I was invited to be one of about 30 journalists who will contribute articles to a special magazine that is to be distributed in Istanbul and six foreign cities on July 15.

Each article is supposed to be about the benefits of strong democracies.

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My friend Sahin Alpay, a veteran Turkish journalist who is also a political science professor, is better qualified than I am to write on that theme. As a young leftist, he was persecuted after both the 1973 and 1980 military coups in Turkey. He spent years in exile, mostly in Sweden. His political views moderated, and by the time he returned home, by his own account, he had gone from disillusioned Marxist to convinced liberal social democrat. He became a newspaper columnist and radio commentator. When Michael Dukakis visited Turkey in 1999, he translated Dukakiss comments for other Turkish reporters. In 2002 he surprised some of his secularist colleagues by announcing that he would vote for the rising political star Recep Tayyip Erdogan, arguing that Erdogans democratic promise outweighed his Islamist impulses.

Unfortunately, my friend is no longer in a position to write articles for anyone. He is one of more than 200 Turkish journalists and other media workers now languishing in jail. His crime was writing columns that are now seen as having expressed subversive opinions. Prosecutors have asked that he be penalized with three consecutive terms of life imprisonment, plus up to 15 years for membership in an armed terror group. He is 73 years-old and the sweetest guy I have ever known.

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After his arrest, the German newspaper Die Zeit called him one of the most important liberal voices in Turkey, and concluded that few arrests seem as absurd as that of Sahin Alpay. My friend may or may not be a hero of the Turkish press. After he was dismissed from several newspapers for writing articles that disturbed people in power, he landed at one that was loyal to the exiled Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen. Several times he called Gulen a supporter of moderate Islam. He did not jump to protest when anti-Gulen journalists were imprisoned. Perhaps he made some misjudgments a sin that many columnists, maybe including me, have occasionally committed. Now, for what he has written, he faces the possibility of spending years in jail. I am not allowed to visit him, but a news report several months after his arrest said that he was confined to a cell with two other prisoners and forbidden even to walk in the jailhouse courtyard. His wife brings him books and anti-depressant medication.

Turkey was progressive and free. Until it wasnt. Will the US take heed?

President Erdogan was once an ally of Gulen. They feuded, parted company, and became enemies. After a failed military coup in Turkey last year, their enmity turned deadly. Erdogan asserted that Gulen was behind the coup attempt. Anyone who ever worked for his newspaper or wrote a good word about him suddenly became the equivalent of a Jew in Nazi Germany: a vile traitor who deserved the nations hatred. I have no way of knowing whether my friend regrets anything he wrote. As a fallible newspaper columnist myself, however, I can only howl in protest at the specter of columnists being given sentences beyond those given to serial killers, simply because of what they published in a newspaper.

Turkey spent more than 80 years marching slowly, with many reversals, toward democracy. Now it is sliding in the opposite direction. President Erdogan, who rode to power partly due to the support of secular democrats like my friend, no longer tolerates the clash of ideas that is democracys essence. More journalists are now in jail in Turkey than in any other country.

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Sahin Alpays sad fate reflects more than the collapse of journalism in Turkey. It is part of a larger story: the terrible decline of Turkish democracy. Fifteen years ago the entire Middle East was abuzz with excitement over the Turkish model, a new mix of freedom and Muslim piety. Turkey seemed like the coolest place on earth. Now it is a world leader in repression.

Even bigger than that huge story is the global meaning of President Erdogans turn toward autocratic rule. From Egypt to Hungary to the Philippines, demagogues like him are using the tools of democracy to destroy democracy.

They show how fragile free institutions can be. It is a sobering message for all especially, at this moment, for Americans. Once in a while, after reading too much about the madness enveloping Washington, I catch myself wondering whether my friends in Germany or Costa Rica or Canada will one day be writing columns lamenting my imprisonment because of something I once wrote.

Rather than ignore the invitation I received to write an article celebrating Turkish democracy, I replied. My proposal was to contribute an article asserting that any leader who imprisons journalists for what they have written is a deadly enemy of democracy.

There has been no reply.

The rest is here:
My friend faces three life sentences in Turkey - The Boston Globe

Lots of things are said about students, on a regular basis. Rarely are they good; that were lazy and apathetic, entitled snowflakes, overeducated and under-prepared for the rigmaroles of life.

This has reached a fever pitch post-election, during which itis widely acknowledged that the youth and student vote played a large role in the surprise outcome. Its estimated there was a 13 percentage point increase in under-25s voting in this General Election compared to the last. Instudent heavy areas Canterbury, Devon and Sheffield Hallam, for instance, we played a decisive role.

This has led to a number of retributions in the aftermath of the surprise hung parliament. Society had begged, pleaded young people to engage with its democratic processes, only for us to find that when we did, we were doing it wrong.

So now the din of battle has died down in the distance, and we all start gearing up for what could well be another general election around the corner, Id like to unpick some of the things that have been said in the last few weeks

1. Its unfair for students to vote in their university constituencies

The most mendacious claims pushed by the likes of Andrea Leadsom and Philip Davies were that some students "double voted"in their family and student constituencies. This Trump-esque claim is the democratic equivalent of losing a game of football and blaming the referee. Try as I might, I simply couldnt find any evidence to substantiate this claim.

Linked to this, there have been ideas put forward for students to only be allowed to vote in their family constituencies, rather than being given the choice of where they study. This ignores the 73bn that Universities UK estimates universities add to UK economy, the millions of lives changed and communities improved by colleges, and the untold positive social impacts that students have on their communities each and every day. It ignores that their student constituency is where they, yknow, live.

But more than this, it is simply saying; students arent people like other constituents. Because you voted the wrong way, you dont deserve the opportunity at all. Its no wonder that only 12 per centof students we surveyed before the election think that politicians value the views of young people; it would seem to be because many simply dont.

2. Students were bribed

Theres a couple of things to this; you say bribe, I say "putting forward a manifesto that speaks to young people". The concept of giveaways in political party manifestos is hardly new, except it is, because it used to be solely for the elderly. This doesnt work on a more fundamental level anyway, as weve shown time and time again that students dont vote based on self-interest, but on the sort of society they want to see.

When we at the National Union of Students surveyed students before the election, weve found that they arent obsessed with niche concerns or self-interested they give importance to the same issues that the rest of wider society does. Just before the election over half (57 per cent) of students identified the NHS as the biggest issue in deciding their vote, with cost of living and education chosen by approximately a third each, and Brexit and student funding chosen by approximately a quarter each.

3. This was Revenge of the Youth

Firstly, this is not Kill Bill. Revenge doesnt look like under-25s queuing up to get into their polling station. But dont get me wrong; young people have every right to be angry, and to demand change at the ballot box.

This is the first generation who will earn less in real terms than generation before it (according to the Intergenerational Commission), while the average age of first-time home buyers is now 33 (according to the English Housing Survey 14/15)

Over half of studentsfear for their career opportunities, even while nearly four in 10 say their educational opportunities are increasing. And more widely they are pessimistic about fairness and wealth inequality, jobsand economy.

Once again, students are urged to change society by partaking in its democracy. Yet when we do so, we are criticised for it.

4. Students just dont understand

Weve been hoodwinked, tricked I tell you. We cant be trusted to make informed choices about our lives and rest of society.

Aside from the fact that this has been an argument employed to stop (in no particular order) working class people, women and the BME community from voting in the first place, this seems like a particularly foolish argument. The notion that "if only people were smart enough, to understand (my view), everything would be fine"doesnt feel particularly democratic.

Despite all this, 69 per centof students we surveyed told us that voting in a general election will make a difference to them and their peers. Despite all this, youth voter turnout is the highest its been ina generation. And despite all this, my generation are more determined, not less to vote for the sort of society that is worthy of our futures.

So, the results are in,students are people too. We vote, we care about the same things as others and we make our voices heard.

The challenge for our political leaders, whenever the next general election happens, is to show young people and students that there is something worth voting for.

Because we wont settle for less.

Richard Brooks is the outgoing vice president for union development at the National Union of Students.

Read the original post:
Students heeded calls to engage with democracy, now we're being told we got it wrong - New Statesman

Everybodys finding errors in Duke historian Nancy MacLeans work of speculative historical fiction on Nobel laureate James Buchanan and the libertarian movement, Democracy in Chains. Id feel left out if I werent misquoted, so Im relieved to find my name on page 211. Heres what MacLean says about me and some of my purported allies:

Now: Did I actually say that the poor and working class are intent on exploiting the rich? Or that they contribute nothing? Well, heres what I wrote on pp. 252-53 of The Libertarian Mind, which is the source MacLean footnotes:

Economists call this process rent-seeking, or transfer-seeking. Its another illustration of Oppenheimers distinction between the economic and the political means. Some individuals and businesses produce wealth. They grow food or build things people want to buy or perform useful services. Others find it easier to go to Washington, a state capital, or a city hall and get a subsidy, tariff, quota, or restriction on their competitors. Thats the political means to wealth, and, sadly, its been growing faster than the economic means.

Of course, in the modern world of trillion-dollar governments handing out favors like Santa Claus, it becomes harder to distinguish between the producers and the transfer-seekers, the predators and the prey. The state tries to confuse us, like the three-card monte dealer, by taking our money as quietly as possible and then handing some of it back to us with great ceremony. We all end up railing against taxes but then demanding our Medicare, our subsidized mass transit, our farm programs, our free national parks, and on and on and on. Frederic Bastiat explained it in the nineteenth century: The State is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. In the aggregate, we all lose, but its hard to know who is a net loser and who is a net winner in the immediate circumstance.

On the preceding pages I introduced James Buchanan and the concept of public choice:

One of the key concepts of Public Choice is concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. That means that the benefits of any government program are concentrated on a few people, while the costs are diffused among many people. Take ADMs ethanol subsidy, for instance. If ADM makes $200 million a year from it, it costs each American about a dollar. Did you know about it? Probably not. Now that you do, are you going to write your congressman and complain? Probably not. Are you going to fly to Washington, take your senator out to dinner, give him a thousand-dollar contribution, and ask him not to vote for the ethanol subsidy? Of course not. But you can bet that ADMs corporate officers are doing all that and more. Think about it: How much would you spend to get a $200 million subsidy from the federal government? About $199 million if you had to, Ill bet. So who will members of Congress listen to? The average Americans who dont know that theyre paying a dollar each for ADMs profits? Or ADM, which is making a list and checking it twice to see whos voting for their subsidy?

I also wrote on page 253 about the parasite economy, in which

every group in society comes up with a way for the government to help it or penalize its competitors: businesses seek tariffs, unions call for minimum-wage laws (which make high-priced skilled workers more economical than cheaper, low-skilled workers), postal workers get Congress to outlaw private competition, businesses seek subtle twists in regulations that hurt their competitors more than themselves.

Lets be clear: when public choice economists and I talk about rent seeking and concentrated benefits, and we point to subsidy, tariff, quota, or restriction on their competitors, were not trying to protect the rich. Were talking about ways that businesses, unions, and other organized interest groups seek to use government to gain advantages that they couldnt gain in the marketplace. And when we suggest limiting the power of government to hand out such favors, we are arguing in the interests of workers and consumers.

I do not believe that MacLeans two very short quotations from The Libertarian Mind and the paragraphs in which she situates them fairly depict my argument in the book. One might even say that she reversed the meaning of the predators and the prey. Unfortunately, selective quotation and misrepresentation seem to be MacLeans M.O., as Steve Horwitz, Phil Magness, Russ Roberts, David Henderson, David Bernstein, Bernstein again, Nick Gillespie, Michael Munger, and others have pointed out.

By the way, Professor MacLean derides me as a writer subsidized by wealthy donors. Well, yes, its true that the Cato Institute is supported by voluntary contributions, not by tax funding. And donors to organizations Duke University, NPR, the Sierra Club, Planned Parenthood, the Brookings Institution, the Cato Institute tend to be well-off. But I assure Professor MacLean that I was absorbing the ideas of John Locke, Adam Smith, F. A. Hayek, the American Founders, and John Stuart Mill long before I discovered that there might be jobs available to write about such ideas.

Although James Buchanan was not involved in the founding of the Cato Institute, as MacLean writes, we are proud that he chose to write frequently for the Cato Journal,speak at various Cato events, and allow us to count him as a Distinguished Senior Fellow. And we regret that he has been so ill treated by a fellow academic.

Read more:
Another Misleading Quotation in Nancy MacLean's Democracy in Chains - Cato Institute (blog)

CARACAS Venezuelas democratic institutions are in ruins, its coffers are empty, and its citizens are searching for food in garbage dumps. Its people are dying from starvation, from preventable and curable diseases (at much higher rates than the Latin American average), and from violence including, in some cases, gunshot wounds inflicted by their own government.

More than three quarters of Venezuelas 31 million people want to free themselves from the stranglehold of their rulers, a small group of no more than 150 mafia-like figures (mostly military) who have hijacked the countrys democracy, robbed it blind, and created a devastating humanitarian crisis. The 18-year-old regime established by Hugo Chvez, and now led by President Nicols Maduro would rather hold an entire country hostage than lose power and potentially have to answer for crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court. But how long can it hold on?

Venezuelans have actively pursued a change of government. In the December 2015 parliamentary election, two thirds of voters lent their support to the democratic opposition. That outcome should have loosened the regimes grip on the state and helped to re-establish the checks and balances envisioned in the constitution that Chvez himself drafted.

But the regime has systematically undermined the National Assembly through rulings from a Supreme Court that it packed with loyalists, using the outgoing legislature. At the end of last March, the Supreme Court went a step further, taking over all of the Assemblys powers a move so blatantly illegal that even the chavista Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Daz denounced it as a rupture of the constitutional order.

With that, desperate Venezuelans took their opposition to the streets. On April 1, they began holding almost daily protests demanding another general election, despite the mortal danger of public opposition. Indeed, since the protests began, the regimes security forces have killed 85 demonstrators and wounded over 1,000 more, including by throwing tear-gas canisters into crowds and launching pellets at peoples chests, at close range. More than 3,000 protesters face criminal charges, simply for exercising their democratic rights.

Cornered, the ruling clique has become defiant. Maduro recently announced that if the regime cannot muster the votes needed to stay in power, it will use its weapons instead. But he is also taking more extreme political action to protect the regime: he has now ordered, by presidential decree (rather than by referendum, as the constitution requires), a constituent assembly, to be chosen on July 30, to draft a new communal constitution.

The demonstrations have now become what is essentially a popular uprising, with Venezuelas people calling on the armed forces to evict the regime from power. Ortega, for her part, has called on the Supreme Court to annul the regimes push to rewrite the constitution, but the court declared her request not receivable.

Venezuelans recognize that a Marxist-Leninist constitution approved by regime-appointed deputies would complete Venezuelas transformation into another Cuba within a month. The question is whether the rest of the world will stand by idly.

Luis Almagro, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS), has called its member states attention to the Venezuelan regimes grave constitutional and human-rights violations. At last months OAS General Assembly in Mexico, 14 countries (Argentina, Brazil, Bahamas, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Jamaica, Mexico, the United States, Peru, St. Lucia, Uruguay, and Paraguay) proposed a draft resolution on how to initiate a dialogue with the Venezuelan regime to no avail.

Such a dialogue would have focused on pushing Venezuelas regime to comply with the commitments mediated by the Vatican last autumn, including holding free and fair elections this year, releasing political prisoners, restoring the National Assemblys constitutional powers, and accepting humanitarian assistance. But, though 20 OAS member states supported the resolution, ten did not, owing to their dependence on Venezuelan oil and financing. That left the resolution three votes short of the required two-thirds majority.

Emboldened by what it perceived as a victory, the Venezuelan regime has ramped up its violence against protesters and organized a bogus coup against itself. During the recent siege of the Legislative Palace, an officer of the National Guard assaulted Julio Borges, the president of the National Assembly the only institution with any legitimacy left. The regime is also set to appoint a tame new deputy prosecutor general to replace Ortega, who has had her bank accounts frozen and is barred from leaving the country.

The opposition is firing back, organizing via the National Assembly an official referendum, on the basis of articles 333 and 350 of the constitution. Venezuelans will be able to weigh in on Maduros plan to rewrite the constitution and the oppositions push for new elections, the restoration of all checks and balances, and the formation of a national unity government. The vote will take place on July 16, in all churches in Venezuela, and with international observers.

Having lost all legitimacy, Venezuelas kleptocratic and murderous regime is hanging on by a thread. Already, individual OAS member states have imposed targeted sanctions on officials affiliated with the regimes aggressive drug-dealing faction the sub-group responsible for murdering young people in the streets and torturing some 300 political prisoners. (The European Union has yet to join the effort.)

By rejecting a democratic transition, the regime is only prolonging its own agony and creating higher costs for Venezuela. While the ruling clique is not eager to negotiate, a deal offered via the OAS or at the United Nations Security Council could prove difficult to refuse in the current context.

Such a deal would require an immediate general election and the cancellation of the constituent assembly, and could be implemented relatively quickly and easily, according to the existing constitution. If successful, it could help reinvigorate international trust and cooperation. More immediately, it would give the desperate, starving, and repressed Venezuelan people their country back.

Read more:
Death or Democracy in Venezuela - Project Syndicate

IRINnews.org

Securitising Africa's borders is bad for migrants, democracy, and development IRINnews.org South Africa's National Assembly recently passed a bill to set up a new border management agency. The Border Management Authority will fall under Home Affairs, a government department long distinguished by its lack of respect for immigrant and refugee ... and more »

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Securitising Africa's borders is bad for migrants, democracy, and development - IRINnews.org