Donald Trump viewed negatively by 7 out of 10 Americans, poll finds - Independent

In the latest sign Americans are dreading their general election options -- and particularly one of them -- negative views of Donald Trump have surged to their highest level of the 2016 campaign, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Trump's unfavorable rating, in fact, far surpasses Hillary Clinton's even as the presumptive Democratic nominee receives her worst ratings in more than two decades in public life.

The poll finds 70 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Trump, including a 56 percent majority who feel this way "strongly." Negative ratings of Trump are up 10 percentage points from last month to their highest point since he announced his candidacy last summer, nearly reaching the level seen before his campaign began (71 percent). The survey was conducted Wednesday through Sunday among a random national sample of U.S. adults, coming after last week's primary contests, but with the large majority of interviews completed before Sunday's massacre at an Orlando club.

Clinton is also seen negatively, with 43 percent reporting favorable impressions and 55 percent unfavorable. Attitudes have not significantly changed since last month, but negative views of the former secretary of state have technically ticked up to their highest level in all Post-ABC polls since 1992, when Clinton had yet to become first lady.

Unfavorable ratings toward both Clinton and Trump are higher than for any major-party presidential nominee in Post-ABC surveys from 1984 onward.

While interviews were conducted before and after the Orlando shooting, results from Sunday showed no significant differences from previous days, though it will take several days to know whether the attack and political aftermath impact candidates' standing.

Where Trump lost ground

But Trump's recent slide has reopened an advantage for Clinton, whose 55 percent unfavorable mark is now 15 points below Trump's. Among registered voters, Trump's unfavorable mark exceeds Clinton's by 13 points (69 percent vs. 56 percent), a break from a Post-ABC poll last month finding both candidates' standings even at 57 percent unfavorable among this group.

Negative views of Trump have risen among a wide range of groups, jumping by double digits among liberals and conservatives and among both Republican women and Democratic men. But his standing has also worsened among two key voting groups: independents and white Americans who do not have a four-year college degree.

Trump's net favorable rating (favorable minus unfavorable) among non-college whites has flipped from a plus-14 in May to slightly negative minus-7 in the latest survey. Among independents, Trump's net rating has shifted from from -19 last month to -38 in the latest survey, returning him to roughly the same standing as in April (-37).

Both groups widely dislike Clinton, setting up a hold-your-nose choice for many in November. Clinton's net favorable rating of -47 among non-college whites continues to be much worse than Trump's, while her -29 net rating among independents is slightly better.

Party unity? Maybe later.

Significant minorities of Democrats and Republicans continue to express reservations about their parties' presumptive nominees. One-quarter of self-identified Democrats say they have an unfavorable view of Clinton (25 percent) -- a number little changed from 21 percent in May despite Clinton clinching the party's nomination last week. Clinton's negative ratings peak among Democrats under age 50 (31 percent, vs. 18 percent for those 50 and older) who have been more supportive of Sanders in the primary contests this year; her image could improve if Sanders concedes the contest and endorses her candidacy.

On the Republican side, an even higher 34 percent express unfavorable views of Trump, reversing about half of the gains Trump made from April (42 percent unfavorable) to May (28 percent). Several Republican leaders have renounced Trump's complaints that a the federal judge presiding over lawsuit against Trump University is biased due to his Mexican heritage, with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan saying Trump's comments were racist.

Trump continues to be deeply unpopular with Hispanics, with 89 percent saying they have an unfavorable view of him, his highest mark in Post-ABC polling this campaign. Three-quarters of Hispanics see Trump in a "strongly unfavorable" light (76 percent), similar to 78 percent last month. Clinton has a largely positive image among this increasingly Democratic group -- 64 percent favorable vs. 34 percent unfavorable.

Clinton's biggest popularity struggles continue to be among men, where her unfavorable rating stands at 63 percent, rising to 75 percent among white men. Her standing with women is significantly better, at 51 percent favorable and 47 percent unfavorable. The barely positive mark -- almost identical to 50-48 one month ago -- is a reminder that Clinton's success at becoming the first woman to clinch a major-party nomination for president has come without widespread popularity among women nationally.

Copyright: the Washington Post

Trump bans New York Times from reporting his campaign - New Yor Times

Campaign officials for Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, have denied credentials to several news organizations, including The Washington Post.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
You never know what’s going to cause Donald J. Trump to officially ban a news organization from his presidential campaign events.
For The Washington Post, it was a headline on Monday saying “Donald Trump Suggests President Obama Was Involved With Orlando Shooting.” Mr. Trump said Mr. Obama’s refusal to say the words “radical Islamic terrorism” meant that, “there’s something going on.” He did not say what Mr. Obama’s secret agenda might be, leaving it to others to interpret. The Post later changed its headline to read that he “seems to connect” Mr. Obama to the shootings. Too late — banned! (And, of course, “SAD!”)
For the Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger, it was, apparently, a story about internal Trump dissension over his campaign manager’s “quick temper and heavy-handed leadership” that got his credentials revoked. For The Des Moines Register news team it was the editorial board’s call for Mr. Trump to exit the race. Then there was BuzzFeed News, The Huffington Post, Univision, The Daily Beast and so on.
There is no obvious consistency to it, from a candidate who can also be as accessible as any in history. After all, The Wall Street Journal’s similar headline, that Mr. Trump “Links Obama to Extremists,” didn’t cost that paper its official entree.
Only Mr. Trump knows whether the bans are the result of pique or some carefully thought-out strategy (he denies the latter).
But that doesn’t matter.
As of now, there is only this: The all-but-confirmed standard-bearer of one of the United States’s two major political parties is actively stripping credentials from news organizations that report things that he deems unfair or inaccurate. He has a black list and, unlike the one that Nixon kept, this is not a secret. Quite the opposite.
I called and sent email to the Republican National Committee a couple of times on Tuesday, to see whether the party Mr. Trump will soon be nominated to lead would carry out the same bans, but I did not get a return call.

I did get a call back from Mr. Trump, who said that he was exercising his right to choose whom he grants credentials to as he runs a campaign that he has mostly paid for himself. “I’m from a different world, other than politics,” he said. “In my world, when people don’t treat you fairly … ” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to: You cut them off.
“I don’t want good stories,” he said, “I want fair stories.”
To his mind, The Post had not been fair in its coverage of his speech, as evidenced by its decision to change its headline. But why, I asked him, was that the incident that led him to ban the paper. It was “the last straw,” he told me. At The Washington Post, he said, “virtually every article is negative even when I have big victories.”
The New York Times was not much better, Mr. Trump said, citing a recent article about his relationship with women over the years. He rebutted the article after it was published and his lawyer demanded, unsuccessfully, that the paper retract it. When I noted that Mr. Trump had not removed The Times’s credentials, Mr. Trump said, “You’re marginal, you’re marginal,” apparently meaning we, too, were close to losing credentials to cover him. He added, “It’s always possible, anything’s possible.”
I asked Mr. Trump what, exactly, will prompt a credential ban.
“If people don’t cover me fairly, or if they actually make things up, I don’t know why anybody should be allowed,” he said.
Fairness, and, increasingly, accuracy, is in the eye of the candidate and his or her supporters. That is worrisome, especially if Mr. Trump takes his strategy to the White House.
But Mr. Trump said he would not impose similar credential bans if he won the presidency. “That’s different from me taking something away — there I’m taking something away where I’m representing the nation,” he said. As for The Post, he said, “If they start covering me accurately, not even well, just accurately — I don’t want anything — they will get the credentials back.”
Martin Baron, The Post’s executive editor, said the newspaper was not going to change the way it covered Mr. Trump, which he described as “fair, honest and honorable.”
“I don’t think we have to seek a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval from a presidential candidate — that’s true during a campaign and that’s true during a presidency,” he said.
There needs to be mutual respect between the media and the candidates, he said, and “in this instance, clearly no respect toward our role is being shown.’’ (Mr. Baron noted that The Post changed the headline of its own volition, to make it more accurately reflect Mr. Trump’s remarks, which happens frequently across the media).
“Anybody who aspires to be president of the United States should exhibit behavior as a candidate that he or she would display as president of the United States,” he said.
The idea of a presidential campaign, after all, is to give the public a sense of how a candidate will behave in office. And yes, Hillary Clinton’s resistance to news conferences does not exactly augur an open hand with the news media either, and I don’t add that as mere “false balance.” She should do more.
Republicans, more than Democrats, have used the news media as a foil for decades. And neither of the last two Republicans to hold the White House — George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush — loved the news media. But neither of them denied credentials to reporters covering them. A notable exception: Vice President Dick Cheney, who tended to not make room for New York Times reporters on his plane. I was personally was on the wrong end of that deal once.
But the campaign still gave us credentials for his events. And, either way, we made do, because it is the job of reporters to get the facts — and present them fairly and accurately — regardless of the obstacles. Mr. Trump made the same point, noting that reporters without official credentials were welcome to come to his events on their own, and report from the crowd should they manage to obtain entree.
“We’re not locking the doors where they can’t get in,” he said, though Mr. Schreckinger of Politico was recently escorted out of an event.
But doesn’t stripping credentials from out-of-favor reporters send a chill? “They send a chill by showing what a disgrace the media’s been,” Mr. Trump said.
Though Mr. Trump said his scraps with the media were not strategic, he noted they played well with some of his supporters. “Some people think they don’t like it,’’ he said. “Many people like it — they say, ‘They’re being punished for being dishonest.’’’
Brrrr.

6 events that will make Soros the winner - Bloomberg

6 Events That Could Make Soros a Winner
JUNE 13, 2016 1:00 AM EST
By
Mohamed A. El-Erian
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that yet another respected longtime investor was trying to call time on financial markets that are getting stranger by the day. George Soros started trading again, positioning himself for what he expects to be a significant decline in risk markets that he views as highly overvalued.
For his bets to be profitable, however, timing will matter a great deal. And that has been particularly difficult to get right in markets that are so heavily influenced by the words and actions of central banks.
There was further confirmation last week that the improbable and unthinkable can easily become reality in financial markets these days. Interest rates continued to fall around the world, as Germany’s 10-year bond closed just millimeters from negative rates and the average rate on the stock of government debt went below zero for the first time. In Japan, the nominal rate on the 15-year government bond joined its 10-year counterpart in negative territory.
Negative Interest Rates
The cascading decline in yields amplified the recent relentless flattening of yield curves -- often a sign of an impending recession, according to historical experiences (though in previous cases, without the degree of central bank involvement that has characterized this period). Still, despite selloffs on Friday, some equity markets, including those in the U.S., flirted with all-time highs and oil had a relatively solid week.

These anomalies -- and many before them -- have fueled fears of trouble ahead. But past warnings have tended to fall on deaf ears, and understandably so. A winning strategy in recent years has been to bet on the ability and willingness of central banks to repeatedly intervene to repress financial volatility and boost asset prices -- often at levels that are well beyond what is warranted by economic and corporate fundamentals.
Most agree that there is a limit to how far central banks can decouple asset prices from fundamentals. There also is broad agreement that, without some improvement in the political system’s ability to enact comprehensive policies that ease the over-reliance on central banks for growth, it will be hard to validate existing asset prices and push them higher in a sustainable fashion.
But this state of affairs isn’t sufficient to ensure that bets against the current valuations of stock markets around the world will be highly profitable. Timing matters -- particularly when it comes to pinpointing events that could be catalysts for a correction.
So, starting from the premise that either a policy dislocation or a market accident could have this transformative role, here are six major events to assess and monitor in the weeks ahead.
* A vote in favor of the U.K. leaving the European Union in the June 23 referendum could have a disruptive impact on markets, especially if that outcome is not followed quickly by a credible institutional alternative, such as a free trade-association agreement, that would maintain access to European markets.


* A major slip by China as it tries to implement financial policies aimed at balancing liquidity support for the economy with the orderly management of a credit boom, soaring internal corporate indebtedness and excesses in the equity markets.


* Indications that the isolationist tone of the U.S. presidential primaries is more than just rhetoric and posturing, but signals a decisive change in decades of U.S. leadership for economic and financial globalization.


* Large exchange rate moves that, by reflecting wider divergences in the world’s multispeed economic and policy conditions, spread volatility to financial markets as a whole.


* A renewed scare about the European banks that have lagged in raising capital and strengthening internal operating approaches and have yet to put behind them the legacy of a period of excessive risk-taking.


* Greater risk aversion among market participants who -- acting on their confidence that central banks are prepared to continuously step in to ensure stability -- now have taken on significant mismatches of maturities, assets to liabilities, benchmarks or currencies in their search for higher returns. And this is occurring in markets that have tended to experience periodic bouts of relative illiquidity.

官媒：唯我独尊致「一把手」「不得善终」- 法新社

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官媒：唯我独尊致「一把手」「不得善终」

作者  香港特约记者 麦燕庭发表时间 13-06-2016 更改时间 13-06-2016 发表时间 09:59

中国国家主席习近平路透社照片

中国国家主席习近平总揽政治、经济、外交和深化改革等多个中央小组领导人的位置，被指专权，但官方《人民日报》一篇专栏文章指出，作为领导的”一把手”，必须掌握好「把」的界限，若自以为是“老大”，把自己的话当政策而狂妄自大，唯我独尊，往往导致一把手“不得善终”。

侯立虹今(13日)天在该报理论版的《思想纵横》栏目刊登题为《一把手怎样名副其实》的文章，当中并没有点名，但开宗明义便引用中国开国领导人毛泽东的话「大海航行靠舵手」来带出「一把手」的观念，指一把手就是要替领导的单位把好舵，定准方向和目标，这是 “把”的基础。其次，是须把关严，带头反对“四风”。「四风」是指形式主义、官僚主义、享乐主义和奢靡之风，由习近平在2013年中提出。其后，他的讲话成为政策，变成中共党规的一部分。

候总结说，做好一把手，必须掌握好“把”的界限。「有的一把手以为自己是“老大”，把单位当成“领地”而为所欲为，把公权变成私权而我行我素，把自己的话当政策而狂妄自大，把单位变成针插不进、水泼不进的独立王国。这种唯我独尊的权力把持很危险，往往导致一把手“不得善终”。」

他续称，一把手应当抓大放小，但有的一把手生怕大权旁落，「于是“把”权、“把”财、“把”物、“把”人，事无巨细，什么都“把”，结果什么都“把”不好。」

他认为，优秀的一把手，都能“把”住执政为民的关口和党的阵地，创造业绩，无愧于一把手的称谓。

文章刊登后在网上热传，当中虽无点名，但有网民指出，这是拐弯骂庆丰。庆丰包子铺是2013年习近平像普通百姓般排队买包子吃的店。

不过，人民网的网民则只是把文章视为泛泛而谈，留言指教导当官的如何“把”好，只是一个人“单相思”。

These Are the Companies Conservatives and Liberals Hate Most - Fortune

These Are the Companies Conservatives and Liberals Hate Most

Posted: 07 Jun 2016 07:54 AM PDT

Call it the political retail divide. And it’s getting bigger.
Increasingly in America, it seems, our politics are dictating where we shop and what we consume. Asked on a survey of 10,000 U.S. adults, those who identified themselves as liberals indicated they were more likely to shop at Target. Conservatives showed a preference for Walmart. Liberals likely drink Pepsi. Conservatives, Coke.
Fortune has published the Fortune 500 list of the largest companies in America for over 50 years. This year for the first time ever we commissioned SurveyMonkey to conduct a poll on differences of opinion toward the top 100 companies. Respondents were asked about corporate reputations, trust, influence, and global impact. They were also asked to self-identify as liberal, moderate, or conservative.

Certainly, America’s political and cultural divisions are never more apparent than during a presidential election year. That is true this year as much as any. But those political divisions still exist even in years not divisible by , and they are something that business leaders and brands have to contend with, even when the markets they serve have seemingly little to do with politics.
What the survey found is that there are some striking differences (as well as as some similarities) between the companies conservatives and liberals think are bad for America, even for companies in the same business. The most notable example is Target and Walmart.
Liberals put Walmart as the No. 1 company on the Fortune500 that is the worst for America. They also ranked it as first on a list of companies in the Fortune 500 they would like shut down. Walmart has long been pilloried by the left for what liberals see as unfair wages and for fighting against unions.
Conservatives have concerns about Walmart as well. But higher on their list of companies that they want shut down was Target at No. 4. Walmart ranked at a lowly 10th on the conservatives respondents shut down list. Walmart did rank high on companies that conservatives think are bad for America, but not above some of the big banks.
Liberals on the other hand ranked Target all the way down at No. 62 among companies that they said was the worst for America, and gave it a similar rank for companies that they would like to shut down.
But here’s the thing, when it comes to workers wages and the other issues that liberals care about there is very little evidence that Target is any better than Walmart.
The conservative distaste towards Target could be explained by the the firm’s recent reaffirmation that transgender employees and customers at its stores should use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identities. Many conservatives responded to that announcement by boycotting the store.
The poll did find evidence that Republican minds are changing about companies like Walmart. Pundits have called Donald Trump “the Walmart candidate” for his ability to appeal to downscale voters, but Trump has also attacked large powerful corporations for their indifference to the plight of the American worker, and it’s possible that Walmart is being lumped into this group as well.
There were other areas were liberals and conservatives agreed or were close. When asked which companies on the Fortune 100 are are the “worst for the country,” conservatives and liberals agreed on six different companies, all which placed in the top 10:

• Walmart 
• Goldman Sachs 
• JPMorgan 
• Dow Chemical 
• Comcast 
• Bank of America 

It’s not surprising that Americans on both sides of the political spectrum are skeptical of big-name Wall Street banks like those above. After all, this year’s presidential race has often looked like a competition over who can bash big banks the most, even on the Republican side of the aisle. The same goes for Comcast, a company that hasn’t taken taxpayer bailout money but is one that millions of Americans deal with every day and which hasn’t exactly blown away its largely captive audience with its customer service.
The top four companies that conservatives think are bad for the country that weren’t on liberals’ hit list were:

• Fannie Mae 
• Freddie Mac 
• PepsiCo 
• Target 

Liberals exclusively had animus for:

• Exxon Mobil 
• Tyson Foods 
• Wells Fargo 
• Coca-Cola 

The conservative hatred for mortgage insurance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can be easily explained. The two firms are the quintessential example of so-called “crony capitalism” wherein a politically connected firm benefits from its relationship with government rather than its ability to win business on a level playing field.
Liberals one-upped their conservative counterparts by adding yet another large bank to its list of companies that are bad for America in Wells Fargo, while also putting oil exploration giant Exxon Mobil on the list, for reasons likely having to do with climate change. Tyson Foods also made their worst 10 list, reflecting liberal distaste for the mass production processes that are part of the meat industry.
The big head scratcher here is why liberals hate Coca-Cola while conservatives think PepsiCo is bad for the country. Perhaps it has to do their corporate colors. (Coke is red. Pepsi is blue.) Or maybe because it has to do with the general political leanings of where the companies have been based. Coke is in the South. And Pepsi’s headquarters is in the Northeast. But for whatever reason, the Coke-Pepsi political divide is just another sign that when it comes to politics, commerce is less immune than ever.
This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

The Problematic History Behind One of Donald Trump’s Favorite Ideas: Tariffs - TIME

The Problematic History Behind One of Donald Trump’s Favorite Ideas: Tariffs Posted: 07 Jun 2016 07:30 AM PDT Throughout the 2016 election season, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has made clear his admiration for an idea that hasn’t gotten serious play in American politics for nearly a century: tariffs. Though his official position statement on trade with China clarifies that his “goal is not protectionism but accountability,” he has said that he favors a 45% tariff on Chinese goods. And it’s not just China: he favors a 35% tax on cars made in Mexico and said “who the hells cares” if a trade war is the result of his policies. Even aside from the fact that many experts have said that such plans would be illegal and detrimental to the U.S. economy, Trump’s pro-tariff stance may sound a strange note to anyone familiar with the role of tariffs (or: taxes on imports) in American history. Though the subject was a controversial and common one in the 19th century, and could play a major role in presidential elections back then, it’s just not something that most candidates—or citizens—really talk about very much anymore. So what changed? For an answer, look to the 1930s. Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was correct when she said in a speech last week that “we went down that road” back then. Though questions over the value of free trade haven’t been entirely absent from political discussion since then, you have to go back that far to see a full-on trade war—and to see what happened next. “In the 19th century there had been sporadic trade wars, but I’d call them more skirmishes rather than wars,” says Douglas A. Irwin, author of Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s. “In the early 1930s it really was a massive outbreak of protectionism.” Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter Even before that decade, the tariff was on its way out. The early 20th century saw two major nails in the coffin of U.S. tariffs, says Joseph J. Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project. Each corresponds with a different function of a tariff: protecting domestic industry (or punishing foreign industry) and raising revenue. The first factor was that the U.S. economy was finally, about 150 years after the nation was founded, maturing. As U.S. industry became more able to compete on a global level, there was more incentive to help businesses trade freely with potential customers around the world and less of a need to use the tax code to protect them. The more important issue, however, came on the revenue side: World War I made the tariff stop doing its job. “Tariffs work very poorly as a way to raise revenue during a war, because ships get sunk and ports get blockaded,” Thorndike says. “Tariffs, which depend on a certain volume of trade, start to raise a lot less money.” The federal income tax had been introduced in 1913, right around when tariffs stopped being able to fund the nation and the war. Democrats—traditionally anti-tariff—happened to be in power during World War I, and they were “more than willing to pick up the slack with the income tax,” says Thorndike. Then, after World War I but before World War II, Republicans—who favored high tariffs—held the White House for several administrations in a row. And even after tariffs had lost their money-making power, they could be used to please certain constituent groups. A turning point for that strategy came in 1930, with the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, perhaps the last hurrah of the American tariff. “It was done for political reasons,” Douglas Irwin says. “It’s not like the U.S. was being swamped with imports. The Great Depression hadn’t struck in a big way yet. There’s no economic need for it.” The act raised tariff rates—which were already pretty high—to record levels. As TIME pointed out while President Hoover mulled whether to sign the bill into law, even though many business experts warned that the tariff could be a disaster, the general consensus was that Hoover would sign because “politically he could not afford to do otherwise.” Sure enough, he signed. The tariff went into effect, and played out just as some of the Cassandras had warned. Other countries around the world retaliated (hence, “trade war”) against the United States by imposing their own high tariffs. Plus, the decrease in trade meant that there were fewer international consumers able to buy American goods. The “beggar-thy-neighbor” policy led to what Irwin calls a “downward spiral in trade.” As a sign of how bad things got, one early-1930s tax law specified that “whenever the President finds that, under the laws of any foreign country, citizens or corporations of the United States are being subjected to discriminatory or extraterritorial taxes” the President could temporarily double certain taxes for citizens and corporations from that country. Though there remains debate over whether the Smoot-Hawley Tariff had a significant impact on the Great Depression domestically—or if that would have been bad regardless—Irwin says that “there’s widespread agreement that the trade wars of the early ‘30s were disastrous for the world economy.” After the shock to the world financial system that was the Great Depression and World War II, the tariff’s days were pretty much through. For one thing, as a revenue source, the income tax was here to stay. For another, Congress no longer had the power to set tariffs—the President had been given that power, to undo the damage—so they lost some clout as a political tool. Then, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the post-World War II precursor to the World Trade Organization, established international regulations about how and when tariffs could be instituted. Though there remain some tax quirks that would allow punitive tariffs—Joseph Thorndike points out that the current Section 891 of the tax code, which grew out of the 1930s system, still allows punitive taxation (and has gotten some recent attention)—it seems unlikely that Trump’s tariff plan would pan out, even if he were elected. Thorndike says that a “fiscal regime change” is always unlikely without a major revenue crisis, which in the past has usually meant boots-on-the-ground war. “That, to me, is the central fact of the fiscal history of the U.S.,” Thorndike says. “Things don’t really change until they have to.”

Free speech under attack - Economist

Free speech
Under attack
Curbs on free speech are growing tighter. It is time to speak out
Jun 4th 2016




IN A sense, this is a golden age for free speech. Your smartphone can call up newspapers from the other side of world in seconds. More than a billion tweets, Facebook posts and blog updates are published every single day. Anyone with access to the internet can be a publisher, and anyone who can reach Wikipedia enters a digital haven where America’s First Amendment reigns.
However, watchdogs report that speaking out is becoming more dangerous—and they are right. As our report shows, curbs on free speech have grown tighter. Without the contest of ideas, the world is timid and ignorant.

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Free speech is under attack in three ways. First, repression by governments has increased. Several countries have reimposed cold-war controls or introduced new ones. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia enjoyed a free-for-all of vigorous debate. Under Vladimir Putin, the muzzle has tightened again. All the main television-news outlets are now controlled by the state or by Mr Putin’s cronies. Journalists who ask awkward questions are no longer likely to be sent to labour camps, but several have been murdered.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, ordered a crackdown after he took over in 2012, toughening up censorship of social media, arresting hundreds of dissidents and replacing liberal debate in universities with extra Marxism. In the Middle East the overthrow of despots during the Arab spring let people speak freely for the first time in generations. This has lasted in Tunisia, but Syria and Libya are more dangerous for journalists than they were before the uprisings; and Egypt is ruled by a man who says, with a straight face: “Don’t listen to anyone but me.”
Words, sticks and stones
Second, a worrying number of non-state actors are enforcing censorship by assassination. Reporters in Mexico who investigate crime or corruption are often murdered, and sometimes tortured first. Jihadists slaughter those they think have insulted their faith. When authors and artists say anything that might be deemed disrespectful of Islam, they take risks. Secular bloggers in Bangladesh are hacked to death in the street (see article); French cartoonists are gunned down in their offices. The jihadists hurt Muslims more than any others, not least by making it harder for them to have an honest discussion about how to organise their societies.
Third, the idea has spread that people and groups have a right not to be offended. This may sound innocuous. Politeness is a virtue, after all. But if I have a right not to be offended, that means someone must police what you say about me, or about the things I hold dear, such as my ethnic group, religion, or even political beliefs. Since offence is subjective, the power to police it is both vast and arbitrary.
Nevertheless, many students in America and Europe believe that someone should exercise it. Some retreat into the absolutism of identity politics, arguing that men have no right to speak about feminism nor whites to speak about slavery. Others have blocked thoughtful, well-known speakers, such as Condoleezza Rice and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, from being heard on campus (see article).
Concern for the victims of discrimination is laudable. And student protest is often, in itself, an act of free speech. But university is a place where students are supposed to learn how to think. That mission is impossible if uncomfortable ideas are off-limits. And protest can easily stray into preciousness: the University of California, for example, suggests that it is a racist “micro-aggression” to say that “America is a land of opportunity”, because it could be taken to imply that those who do not succeed have only themselves to blame.
The inconvenient truth
Intolerance among Western liberals also has wholly unintended consequences. Even despots know that locking up mouthy but non-violent dissidents is disreputable. Nearly all countries have laws that protect freedom of speech. So authoritarians are always looking out for respectable-sounding excuses to trample on it. National security is one. Russia recently sentenced Vadim Tyumentsev, a blogger, to five years in prison for promoting “extremism”, after he criticised Russian policy in Ukraine. “Hate speech” is another. China locks up campaigners for Tibetan independence for “inciting ethnic hatred”; Saudi Arabia flogs blasphemers; Indians can be jailed for up to three years for promoting disharmony “on grounds of religion, race...caste...or any other ground whatsoever”.
The threat to free speech on Western campuses is very different from that faced by atheists in Afghanistan or democrats in China. But when progressive thinkers agree that offensive words should be censored, it helps authoritarian regimes to justify their own much harsher restrictions and intolerant religious groups their violence. When human-rights campaigners object to what is happening under oppressive regimes, despots can point out that liberal democracies such as France and Spain also criminalise those who “glorify” or “defend” terrorism, and that many Western countries make it a crime to insult a religion or to incite racial hatred.
One strongman who has enjoyed tweaking the West for hypocrisy is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey. At home, he will tolerate no insults to his person, faith or policies. Abroad, he demands the same courtesy—and in Germany he has found it. In March a German comedian recited a satirical poem about him “shagging goats and oppressing minorities” (only the more serious charge is true). Mr Erdogan invoked an old, neglected German law against insulting foreign heads of state. Amazingly, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has let the prosecution proceed. Even more amazingly, nine other European countries still have similar laws, and 13 bar insults against their own head of state.
Opinion polls reveal that in many countries support for free speech is lukewarm and conditional. If words are upsetting, people would rather the government or some other authority made the speaker shut up. A group of Islamic countries are lobbying to make insulting religion a crime under international law. They have every reason to expect that they will succeed.
So it is worth spelling out why free expression is the bedrock of all liberties. Free speech is the best defence against bad government. Politicians who err (that is, all of them) should be subjected to unfettered criticism. Those who hear it may respond to it; those who silence it may never find out how their policies misfired. As Amartya Sen, a Nobel laureate, has pointed out, no democracy with a free press ever endured famine.
In all areas of life, free debate sorts good ideas from bad ones. Science cannot develop unless old certainties are queried. Taboos are the enemy of understanding. When China’s government orders economists to offer optimistic forecasts, it guarantees that its own policymaking will be ill-informed. When American social-science faculties hire only left-wing professors, their research deserves to be taken less seriously.
The law should recognise the right to free speech as nearly absolute. Exceptions should be rare. Child pornography should be banned, since its production involves harm to children. States need to keep some things secret: free speech does not mean the right to publish nuclear launch codes. But in most areas where campaigners are calling for enforced civility (or worse, deference) they should be resisted.
Blasphemy laws are an anachronism. A religion should be open to debate. Laws against hate speech are unworkably subjective and widely abused. Banning words or arguments which one group finds offensive does not lead to social harmony. On the contrary, it gives everyone an incentive to take offence—a fact that opportunistic politicians with ethnic-based support are quick to exploit.
Incitement to violence should be banned. However, it should be narrowly defined as instances when the speaker intends to goad those who agree with him to commit violence, and when his words are likely to have an immediate effect. Shouting “Let’s kill the Jews” to an angry mob outside a synagogue qualifies. Drunkenly posting “I wish all the Jews were dead” on an obscure Facebook page probably does not. Saying something offensive about a group whose members then start a riot certainly does not count. They should have responded with words, or by ignoring the fool who insulted them.
In volatile countries, such as Rwanda and Burundi, words that incite violence will differ from those that would do so in a stable democracy. But the principles remain the same. The police should deal with serious and imminent threats, not arrest every bigot with a laptop or a megaphone. (The governments of Rwanda and Burundi, alas, show no such restraint.)
Areopagitica online
Facebook, Twitter and other digital giants should, as private organisations, be free to decide what they allow to be published on their platforms. By the same logic, a private university should be free, as far as the law is concerned, to enforce a speech code on its students. If you don’t like a Christian college’s rules against swearing, pornography and expressing disbelief in God, you can go somewhere else. However, any public college, and any college that aspires to help students grow intellectually, should aim to expose them to challenging ideas. The world outside campus will often offend them; they must learn to fight back using peaceful protests, rhetoric and reason.
These are good rules for everyone. Never try to silence views with which you disagree. Answer objectionable speech with more speech. Win the argument without resorting to force. And grow a tougher hide.

Ruchir Sharma Offers New Math for the World’s Economic Future - TIME Business

Ruchir Sharma Offers New Math for the World’s Economic Future Posted: 09 Jun 2016 08:47 AM PDT Most investors know that if something fundamental doesn’t change in the economic paradigm, we’re likely headed for a period of historically lower returns in stocks, bonds, and many other types of assets. Much of the low hanging fruit of globalization has been plucked, and other growth-driving trends, like the baby boom and the entrance of women into the workforce en mass have been tapped out. We’re entering a world in which the movement of assets across geographies and classes are no longer correlated as they once were. It’s a new world, and investors are looking for a roadmap to help them capture whatever return they can. Ruchir Sharma’s new book, The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World, provides a guide. (Full disclosure: Sharma has been a source of mine for years; and I was a huge fan of his last book, Break-Out Nations.) Sharma’s new book is ambitious in positing new rules that investors should take into consideration as they think about the growth prospect of all nations, developed and developing, in the coming economic era of bifurcation, political populism, growing inequality, and uncertain technological disruption. As Sharma eloquently puts it in his introduction, “The American playwright Arthur Miller once observed that an era has reached its end `when it’s basic illusions are exhausted.’ Today, the illusions of widening prosperity that defined the pre-crisis era are finally spent.” He adds that “economic growth is not a God-given right,” noting that research looking back 150 years at countries that had outperformed found that after periods of boom, the majority experienced slumps that lasted six years or more, with numerous downturns going on more than a decade. One thing that sets Sharma’s take on the new world apart straight away: He isn’t making 20, 30 or 50 year predictions about who will fare well or poorly as many banks like Goldman Sachs, or consulting groups like McKinsey have lately been wont to do. He points out sharply that even when all the economic vectors seem to be leading in a certain direction, unexpected human behavior, usually in the form of political change, can shift everything in a heartbeat. (Consider that the Asian Development Bank was located in Manila in the 1960s because, back then, everyone was absolutely sure that the Philippines was the future star of Asia.) Rather he looks to help readers navigate this turbulent world with rules that can help them identify which countries might, over 5 to 10 year time horizons, rise, fall, or muddle through. The first rule is that “people matter,” meaning more precisely that demographics matter. Economic growth is basically demographics plus productivity, and given that both have been falling for a while now, as the gains of the last tech boom have been tapped out and the new one isn’t showing up in the data yet, we’re more dependent on demographics to drive growth than ever before. Unfortunately, in most parts of the world, the birth rate is falling. Countries that can come up with ways to welcome immigrants without causing too much political backlash will have a leg up, as will those that figure out ways to employ more older workers and women. That will be easier in nations that elect political reformers (as Argentina recently did) rather than populists (by this logic, Latin America may be at a turning point since its already passed through the dark life cycle stage of populism that many parts of Europe and even the US are in now). Of course, the populists have risen because inequality has grown. Sharma counts billionaires as a mark of that, but he says there are “good billionaires” (the Steve Jobs and Larry Pages of the world) that can actually point to higher productivity and prosperity in a country, versus bad billionaires (from extractive- or land-based industries like minerals, real estate, oil etc). Too many of those point to corruption and slower growth (on the Bad Billionaire metric, Russia is, not surprisingly, flashing red). Other things to watch: Countries’ own investments (public and private) into their economies (when investment rises growth is much more likely to accelerate). Inflation following debt binges can be a growth killer too, as is a run up in debt itself. Sharma has been one of the prescient seers of the Chinese debt crisis. He pointed out early on that it now takes $4 of debt to create a dollar of growth in China following the 2008 financial crisis, whereas it was a one to one ratio before. He was right, China’s debt crisis has since led to market volatility and much slower growth. By Sharma’s own admission, “there are precious few nations that would qualify as rising stars by the standards of the before crisis era. In 2007…the number of economies growing faster than 7% reached a postwar peak at more than sixty.” Today, there are only nine economies growing that fast. Slower growth has hit every region of the world, and this new math will require a mindset shift for investors. But there are some (relatively) bright spots. Sharma is more bullish on the U.S., particularly relative to the rest of the world, than many American voters are, noting that the shale oil revolution and dominance of Silicon Valley are positive signs for the future. South Asia, home to recent economic laggards, may also be set to rise, mostly because of Sharma’s life cycle theory of boom and bust and boom. Germany is a bright spot in Europe, as are a number of Eastern European nations. And yes, as the author wisely reminds us, a lot can change in 100 years. Foroohar is an assistant managing editor at TIME and the magazine’s economics columnist. She’s the author of Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business.

Facebook new feature to hide personal posts - Independent

Facebook is introducing a feature that will let people “hide” their updates from their profiles – making them appear within the news feed but without attaching themselves to people’s profiles.

The site will let people post just into Facebook’s feed, meaning that they’ll show for friends and will be visible in search, but won’t show for anyone who heads straight onto a users’ profile.

Facebook has had increasing trouble encouraging people to post about themselves and their lives, rather than sharing links to other websites. The new move is presumably aimed at that audience, allowing people to share updates without the pressure of knowing it will stay forever on a person’s profile.

10 facts you didn’t know about Facebook

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Before the change, all Facebook posts appear on people’s profile and within their news feed, meaning that they will often show for friends who head to the Facebook home page, but can also be found by heading to the public-facing profile. The only way to post without leaving it for everyone to see is to hide it from the profile after the fact.

READ MORE

Facebook to force Messenger users onto separate app

Now users will be able to click an option that allows them to “Create Posts Just for News Feed”. Posting using the tool is the same as normal, but allows people to click the button and have the change enacted.

Facebook has increasingly let people have more control of what appears on their profile, offering increasing privacy options, the ability to not allow photos to appear there until they are approved and letting people hide messages. Posts can be sent out to just a specific set of people, for instance, or kept entirely private.

The site encourages people to use the page as a public-facing round-up of everything about a person, letting them fill in information like employment history and education. But for the moment it also shows the posts that a person has made, potentially causing problems with employers or others.

Only 10 countries are at complete peace in 2016 - Independent

Brazil is the country that has dropped out of the list, and as one of the worst performing countries year-on-year represents a serious concern ahead of the Rio Olympics, the IEP’s founder Steve Killelea told The Independent.
But perhaps the most remarkable result from this year’s peace index, he said, was the extent to which the situation in the Middle East drags down the rest of the world when it comes to peacefulness.
“If we look at the world overall, it has become slightly less peaceful in the last 12 months,” Mr Killelea said.
“But if we took the Middle East out of the index over the last decade – and last year – the world would have become more peaceful. It really highlights the impact the Middle East is having on the world.”

A snapshot of the Global Peace Index 2016
The index shows that 81 countries became more peaceful in the past year, while the situation deteriorated in 79.
Unlike with previous years, however, the IEP noticed a clear trend where the more peaceful countries improved further while the less peaceful countries got even worse – producing what they called greater “peace inequality” across the world.
“The key reason behind it is our inability to solve the conflicts which are emerging," Mr Killelea said. “The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going for well over a decade, then it spilled into Syria in 2011, and afterwards into Libya and Yemen. That [failure] is really the key to the problem.
“If we take battlefield deaths for example, they are up at 112,000 – a 20-year high. But again, if you took out Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, they count for 75 per cent of those deaths.”
The index shows that political instability worsened in 39 countries in the last 12 months, including what the report described as the “striking case” of Brazil.
It has fallen five places to 105th out of the 163 countries included in the study, due to increases in the number of people jailed, the number of security officers deployed by the state and also a slight increase in terrorist activity.
“It is very difficult to say how that will play out in terms of the Olympic Games,” said Mr Killelea. “It’s obviously a very volatile situation.”
Iceland was once again named the world’s most peaceful country, followed by Denmark, Austria, New Zealand and Portugal, the latter improving nine places. Syria was once again named the least peaceful country.

The index suggests the world is less peaceful in 2016 than at any point in the past eight years (IEP)
Asked how the rest of the world can learn from Iceland, Mr Killelea said: “It’s not just Iceland, it’s a whole range of countries which we can learn from. They are practising what we call positive peace, which are factors which create and sustain peaceful societies.”
The IEP tries to define positive peace in numerical terms, giving countries scores for a range of factors including “acceptance of the rights of others”, “low levels of corruption”, “the free flow of information” and a “well functioning government”.
“If positive peace is strong enough, then a country which is presented with shocks won’t actually have a deterioration in peace [as measured by violence],” he said.
Finally, the index identified Europe once again as the most peaceful region in the world, and by some margin, home to seven of the top 10 countries on the list.
Yet the continent is not immune to war – Britain, France, Belgium and others are heavily involved in external conflict in the Middle East, and face a growing threat to peace from international terrorism.


So given all the dire warnings from either side about the security of Europe if Britain leaves the EU, does the IEP foresee a change in the region’s fortunes in the event of Brexit?
“It’s unlikely to have an effect in the short term,” Mr Killelea said. “But the longer-term ramifications, more for Britain than for [the rest of] Europe, would probably depend on what the economic outcome of a British exit would be.
“If the economy was robust Britain would probably maintain its current levels of peace. However, if there’s a deterioration in the economy then that would come back and have a negative impact on peacefulness.”

There may be a fifth force in the universe - Financial Times

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94974922-2ca9-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc.html#ixzz4AzVm797W

A
sublime coincidence slipped by unnoticed last month. While audiences were thrilling to premieres of Tim Burton’s film Alice Through the Looking Glass, in which Alice steps into a strange world where everything is “contrariwise”, physicists in Hungary announced they had possibly found the key to an unseen portion of the universe.
The results, which are a talking point in laboratories the world over, are remarkable because they might point to the existence of a fifth fundamental force. The current model for nature’s physical laws allows for four forces: the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear interaction, the weak nuclear interaction, and gravitation. A fifth would, literally, be a force for revolutionary change.

In truth, a revolution is a little overdue. The reason is so-called dark matter, the hidden stuff that makes up more than 80 per cent of the mass of the universe. Astronomers know it is there because of the gravitational effect it exerts on celestial bodies, but it behaves differently from the matter that makes up the visible world.
One way of investigating matter is to engineer collisions between particles, and then detect the particles that flutter out of the debris; this is how the elementary Higgs boson particle was conjured up at Cern. To this end, Attila Krasznahorkay at Hungary’s Institute for Nuclear Physics, fired protons at lithium isotopes, which produced unstable beryllium nuclei. These beryllium nuclei then decayed, as expected, into electron-positron pairs that flew away from each other at various angles.
But, anomalously, these electron-positron pairs seemed to have a fondness for shooting away from each other at 140 degrees. The simplest explanation was a new, intermediate particle in the radioactive decay mix. Calculations suggested a mass of 17 megaelectronvolts (MeV), around 7,000 times lighter than the Higgs boson.
While the Higgs was forecast to exist, this new nimble particle was not. That is why the team spent three years checking their results before going public. It is, as Alice muses while being bamboozled by the Red Queen, exactly like a riddle with no answer.

Gravitational waves and our golden age of physics

Confirmation of Einstein’s theory vindicates the pursuit of science and technology for its own sake
One exciting possibility is that the new particle is a missing link between our familiar world of matter and the unseen world of dark matter. One theory is that it is a “dark photon”, the carrier of an as yet unidentified force that might be connected with dark matter. A reanalysis led by Jonathan Feng at the University of California, Irvine, does not quite support the “dark photon” suggestion but does back the idea that it represents a fifth force operating over super-short distances.
The finding has also piqued the curiosity of those on the DarkLight project, who are exploring the “dark sector” (both dark matter and dark energy), and are looking for dark photons at between 10 and 100 MeV. They will now target 17 MeV as a priority, in an attempt to unmask the same particle.
To say that confirmation would be thrilling is an understatement. The theories of physics may be elegant but they are incomplete, capable of explaining only a small fraction of the observable universe. To uncover a new particle that straddles our visible world and the invisible world of dark matter would unlock a new realm of physics.
Even so, both visible and dark matter together account together for less than half of what we know exists in our universe. The biggest constituent is thought to be dark energy, which, contrariwise, might have nothing to do with dark matter. The more we learn, the more mysterious things become. The White Queen, who took pride in believing six impossible things before breakfast, would surely be clapping her hands in delight.
The writer is a science commentator