Justin Haskins: Socialists in US beware – the lessons from Conservatives' landslide win in Britain - Fox News

If I may paraphrase Karl Marx: A specter is haunting the Democratic Party – the specter of socialism. Democrats have every right to be terrified of this specter – because if they nominate socialist Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont or Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts as their presidential candidate, they could suffer a crushing defeat, just as Britain’s Labour Party did last week.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party won a landslide victory over the socialist Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn in parliamentary elections Thursday.  Conservatives won 365 seats in the 650-seat lower house of Parliament, while Labour won only 203 seats – its worst election performance since the 1930s. Smaller parties won the remaining seats.

There are, of course, big differences between politics and government in the United Kingdom and the United States. But Johnson has often been compared to President Trump, while Sanders and Warren are similar to Corbyn in many ways.

PEGGY GRANDE: DEMOCRATS BEWARE – BRITISH ELECTION IS FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF THE GLOBALIST EXPERIMENT

Like Trump, Johnson doesn’t fit the traditional mold of the leader of his nation. Both men are blunt, have ignored protocol, and sometimes seem likes bulls in a China shop. They have plenty of supporters – but plenty of critics as well.

As for Sanders, to his credit, he’s honest enough to admit he’s a socialist – joining Corbyn on the far, far left fringe of the political spectrum. Warren, who tried for years to falsely pass herself off as Native American, now tries to falsely pretend she’s a capitalist. But an examination of her positions shows she’s just as much as socialist as Comrade Bernie.

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Britain’s general election was viewed by many on the left as a potentially revolutionary moment for socialism. It appeared for months that the Labour Party was poised to seize power in Parliament and install Corbyn as prime minister.

Even more importantly for many British and American socialists, after years of promoting relatively moderate policy platforms – well, “moderate” by European standards – the Labour Party had taken a sharp left turn under the leadership of Corbyn.

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In the run-up to Thursday’s election, Corbyn and the Labour Party promoted their agenda as the “most radical … in modern times.” They obviously thought this would attract voters. Instead, the radical agenda seems to have driven voters away in droves.

Karl Marx famously authored “The Communist Manifesto” in 1848, published in London. This year the Labour Party had its own manifesto that would have made Marx proud.

Labour's manifesto promised a Green Industrial Revolution that would eliminate most fossil fuel use by 2030 to fight the “climate emergency.” That would cause massive energy price increases and likely energy shortages – and apparently enough voters figured that out to reject the party.

Labour candidates also campaigned on a proposal to force large companies to hand over 10 percent of their ownership to workers and planned to create a pilot universal basic income program.

Additionally, Corbyn and other Labour Party leaders pledged to mandate a full year of paid maternity leave, build a million new homes for low-income Brits, nationalize key industries like energy, increase union collective bargaining rights, and mandate wage requirements.

Trump’s victory in 2016 was made possible in large part because of Democrats’ move to the left and rejection of values that had for decades won them support from working-class communities in the American Midwest.  Instead of learning from their 2016 loss, most of the Democrats competing for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination have moved even further toward socialism and globalism. 

Oh, and one other thing: Labour promised to raise taxes to pay for all this “free stuff.”

Sound familiar? Many of these same policies have been peddled not just by Sanders and Warren but by a lot of the other Democrats competing to run against President Trump in November.

The success for the Conservative Party Thursday was due in large part to the gains it made in areas of the United Kingdom that have traditionally been much more favorable for the Labour Party, especially working-class communities.

This conservative success is remarkably similar to Trump’s surprising 2016 victories in states Hillary Clinton was favored to win – including Michigan and Wisconsin.

Some on the left, including Corbyn himself, have attempted to write off Labour’s embarrassing showing as one due entirely to the party’s attempts to block Brexit – the British exit from the European Union that was approved in a national referendum in 2016.

But the socialist principle of collectivism is the foundation of the Brexit debate. This principle says that all people in society must share their wealth and property and make economic decisions as a group, rather than as free individuals.

Britain’s involvement in the European Union brought the issue of collectivism to the forefront of many of the most important public policy debates in the United Kingdom over the past decade.

For example, should the British people be forced to live according to the collective desires of the whole of Europe, or should they be free to chart their own course?

Must Brits redistribute their wealth to nations like Greece, or should they be free to manage their own economy and property?

When British voters chose to reject collectivism and endorse Brexit, the Corbyn-led Labour Party chose to double down on socialism rather than move back to the political center. That turned out to be a very big mistake.

The decision by working-class British voters in 2016 to reject the globalist, socialist policies of the European Union foreshadowed Trump’s election as our president.

Trump’s victory was made possible in large part because of Democrats’ move to the left and rejection of values that had for decades won them support from working-class communities in the American Midwest.

Instead of learning from their 2016 loss, most of the Democrats competing for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination have moved even further toward socialism and globalism. They have adopted radical economic policies like the Green New Deal and reckless immigration policies that would throw open our borders and call for massive tax and spending increases to fund free college and all sorts of other government giveaways.

Apparently, many Democrats have forgotten that in 1972 far-left Democratic presidential candidate Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia when he ran for president against President Richard Nixon, who won the other 49 states. And McGovern wasn’t as far left as Sanders and Warren.

The Democrats elected to the White House since McGovern’s loss – Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama – would never be described as conservatives, but they were to the right of McGovern and most of the Democratic presidential candidates today.

Outside of Democrats’ far-left, mostly urban strongholds, Americans have consistently rejected socialism. A November Heartland Institute/Rasmussen Reports survey found just 12 percent of all likely voters said they think socialism is better than a free-market economic system. Only 26 percent said they would vote for a presidential candidate who identifies as a socialist.

That’s why on Friday Democratic presidential candidate and billionaire capitalist Michael Bloomberg referred to the British election results as a potential “canary in the coal mine” and a “catastrophic warning” for Democrats. I disagree with Bloomberg on most things, but I’m in complete agreement with him on this point.

Most Democratic politicians seem completely unwilling to advance policies that the majority of Americans want. Instead, they appear focused on impeaching Trump – even though he’s done nothing to warrant his removal from office.

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If Democrats keep this up – and they almost certainly will – it’s looking increasingly likely that Trump will win another four years in the White House and Republicans could capture control of the House and keep control of the Senate in 2020.

The further to the left the Democratic presidential candidates move, the more voters get left behind. That’s why the Democratic embrace of socialism is very good news for President Trump.

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2019-12-15 14:29:20Z
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U.N. climate talks end with hard feelings, few results and new doubts about global unity - The Washington Post

MADRID — Global climate talks lurched to an end here Sunday with finger pointing, accusations of failure and fresh doubts about the world’s collective resolve to slow the warming of the planet — at a moment when scientists say time is running out for humans to avert steadily worsening climate disasters.

After more than two weeks of negotiations, punctuated by raucous protests and constant reminders about the need to move faster, bleary-eyed negotiators barely mustered enthusiasm for the comprise they had patched together, while raising grievances about the many issues that remain unresolved.

At a gathering where the mantra “Time for Action” was plastered throughout the hallways and on the walls, the talks failed to achieve their primary goals. Central among them: convincing the world’s largest carbon-emitting countries to pledge to more aggressively tackle climate change beginning in 2020.

Delegates from nearly 200 nations wrestled for more than 40 hours past their planned deadline — making these the longest in the 25-year history of these talks — even as workers broke down parts of the sprawling conference hall, food vendors closed and all but the most essential negotiators went home.

“We are not satisfied,” the chair of the meeting, Chilean Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt said. “The agreements reached by the parties are not enough.”

[Extreme climate change has arrived in America]

As officials scrambled to finalize a complex set of rules to implement the 2015 Paris climate accord, a handful of larger-emitting countries squared off again and again against smaller, more vulnerable ones. In particular, negotiators came to loggerheads while crafting the rules around a fair and transparent global carbon trading system, and pushed the issue to next year. Fights also dragged out about how to provide funding to poorer nations already coping with rising seas, crippling droughts and other consequences of climate change.

The painstaking pace of the talks stood in contrast to the mass demonstrations and vehement pleas from young activists, some of whom staged protests inside the conference hall and accused world leaders of neglecting the most significant challenge facing humanity.

“This is the biggest disconnect between this process and what’s going on in the real world that I’ve seen,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, who has been attending climate talks since the early 1990s.

“You have the science crystal on where we need to go. You have the youth and others stepping up around the world in the streets pressing for action,” he added. “It’s like we’re in a sealed vacuum chamber in here, and no one is perceiving what is happening out there — what the science says and what people are demanding.”

Sunday’s outcome underscored how, only four years after the Paris agreement produced a moment of global solidarity, international divisions and a lack of momentum threaten the effort to limit the warming of the Earth to dangerous levels.

“The can-do spirit that birthed the Paris Agreement feels like a distant memory today,” Helen Mountford, a climate expert for the World Resources Institute who watched the talks closely in Spain, said in a statement Sunday.

The tepid progress in Spain sets up a critical moment ahead of next year’s gathering in Glasgow, when countries had been asked to show up with more ambitious pledges to slash their carbon footprints.

But Sunday’s conclusion raised new doubts about the prospects on whether key nations would rise to that challenge. Already, many countries are not living up to the promises they made in Paris in 2015, when world leaders vowed to limit global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) — and to try to remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The world already has warmed more than 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and current pledges would put the world on a trajectory to warm more than 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

In Madrid, a cross-section of small and developing countries accused the United States and others, such as Brazil and Australia, of obstructing key parts of the negotiations and undermining the spirit and goals of the Paris accord. Countries already hard hit by climate change argued that large emitters continue to dawdle, even as other imperiled nations face intensifying cyclones, increased flooding and other climate-related catastrophes.

“This is an absolute tragedy and a travesty,” Ian Fry, the climate change ambassador from the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, told fellow negotiators. Fry specifically pointed to the U.S. for playing a destructive role in the talks.

The U.S. is in its final year as part of the international agreement it once helped spearhead. The Trump administration has said it officially will withdraw from the Paris accord on Nov. 4, 2020 — the day after the U.S. presidential election.

As delegates voted on the final texts, many seats were empty: Some negotiators, tired and with flights to catch, had simply gone home. Those who remained had technical trouble retrieving the documents, even as they voted on them, and continually stopped the proceedings to say they needed help.

“If you refresh, maybe?” Schmidt said from the dais.

This event in Madrid was not envisioned as a landmark moment in the implementation of the Paris accord. Negotiators had primarily been asked to iron out a set of complex but important details about how the deal will be implemented.

At the same time, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spent much of this year pleading with countries to leave here having pledged to produce more aggressive plans to combat global warming over the coming year.

“The point of no-return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling towards us,” he said as the climate talks convened, adding that the “world’s largest emitters are not pulling their weight.”

In the end, the promises of future action he had hoped for simply did not emerge.

One question that proved particularly contentious at the talks was carbon trading, an unresolved but crucial aspect of the Paris agreement. Some countries accused Brazil and others of pushing for accounting loopholes that they said would weaken transparency and mask actual emissions in a way that would undermine the integrity of the accord.

After days of a stalemate, officials failed to find a consensus and ultimately punted any resolution on the issue, just as they had done a year ago — a result that many negotiators described as a major disappointment.

The international gridlock comes at a time when scientists have made clear there is no longer time for delay, especially after a decade in which emissions continued to rise.

Last month, a U.N. report found that global greenhouse gas emissions must begin falling by 7.6 percent each year beginning in 2020 to meet the most ambitious aims of the Paris climate accord. Instead, global emissions are projected to hit another record-high in 2019.

The U.N.-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year detailed how warming is already threatening food and water supplies, turning arable land to desert, killing coral reefs and supercharging monster storms. A new federal assessment on Tuesday found that the Arctic might already have crossed a key threshold and could become a contributor to global carbon emissions as huge amounts of permafrost thaw.

One of the few promising developments during the talks came not from Madrid, but from Brussels, where European leaders on Friday pledged to eliminate their carbon footprint by 2050. Though the European Union talks revealed divisions of their own — coal-reliant Poland refrained from signing on for now — they provided a rare example of one of the world’s big emitters taking steps to draw up more ambitious reductions goals.

Roughly 80 countries have already committed to setting more ambitious targets in 2020, but the vast majority are small and developing nations that account for barely 10 percent of the world’s emissions.

During the talks, officials from many of those small countries spoke with exasperation about the pace and tenor of the proceedings, saying they had been excluded from key negotiations and stonewalled by major-emitting nations. But the most visceral displays of outrage came from young protestors, who held press conferences, chanted, and pressed — often in vain — for sit-downs with negotiators.

The teenagers were part of a broader group that has staged climate strikes across the world this year, many of them inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

“I am losing all of my trust in the establishment and the people who are leading this world,” said Jonathan Palash-Mizner, 17, one of the American leaders of Extinction Rebellion, an environmental movement.

As the negotiations headed toward their drawn-out conclusion, some 300 people joined in the middle of the convention hall, with one young speaker after the next holding a megaphone and calling for “climate justice.”

Outside, they gathered with others in front of the cavernous facility. “The oceans are rising and so are we!” they chanted.

But a day, a night and another morning later, when negotiators finally gaveled the divisive conference to a close, the protesters were long gone.

All that remained were the now-empty hallways, dead and dying potted trees and signs that people had passed each day as they exited the nearby subway, warning that time was running short.

“Tick tock,” they read. “Tick tock.”

chico.harlan@washpost.com

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2019-12-15 13:30:00Z
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What could North Korea's 'Christmas gift' to the US be? - CNN

A so-called "Christmas gift" for the United States, a year-end deadline and a new path have all been mooted by the Kim Jong Un regime in the past 12 months.

Kim and Trump have met three times in the hopes of striking a deal that would see North Korea trade its nuclear weapons and the missiles used to fire them in exchange for sanctions relief and normalized relations.

Whether this is actually achievable remains uncertain. Even the sharpest and most experienced minds studying North Korea say their predictions as to what happens next are educated guesses.

But there does appear to be some consensus forming -- that North Korea is frustrated by what it perceives as a lack of flexibility and creativity from US negotiators. And perhaps more worryingly, whatever it does next will be designed to capture the attention of US President Donald Trump.

Satellite launch

Most experts who spoke to CNN believe North Korea's most likely next step will be an attempt to use a rocket to launch a satellite into orbit.

North Korean state media reported on Saturday that a "another crucial test" was successfully conducted at the country's Sohae Satellite launching ground, a site that the regime had reportedly vowed to dismantle in talks with the US. It follows a similar announcement from the week before that said a "very important test" took place at the same facility.

Pyongyang claims its space program is for peaceful, scientific purposes. Kim often says he wants to build "the prosperous and powerful socialist nation" through a self-reliant economy based on science and technology. Since taking power after his father's death in 2011, the young leader has successfully placed two satellites into orbit.

But those excuses have hardly mollified the international community. A satellite launch uses the same technology as firing a nuclear-armed ballistic missile. Indeed, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the most recent test conducted at the satellite launching ground would bolster the country's "reliable strategic nuclear deterrent."

And while it is not yet clear what either of the recent tests entailed, each satellite North Korea puts into orbit could offer vital information to its advanced -- but likely incomplete -- ballistic missile program, experts say.

"They (North Korea) have yet to demonstrate the ability to bring a large payload back into the Earth's atmosphere, a critically important requirement for their military ICBM program," said Evans Revere, a former Korea expert at the State Department.

Revere, who is currently a senior nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that the international community shouldn't be surprised if this "'satellite launch' includes a demonstration of their ability to send a major payload into the North Pacific."

"The ominous message conveyed by that to the United States would be that the DPRK does indeed have the ability to strike the US homeland with a nuclear weapon," he said, using an acronym for North Korea's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

North Korea did something similar in 2012, when Pyongyang and Washington struck a deal exchanging a moratorium on ballistic missile and nuclear testing and the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear facility in return for several hundred tons of food aid.

But there was nothing mentioned about satellite launches. The so-called "Leap Day Deal" collapsed after the North launched a satellite weeks later, because the two sides fundamentally disagreed over whether a satellite launch vehicle counted as a long-range missile.

And that debate likely remains to this day.

After the summit between President Trump and Kim in Hanoi in February ended abruptly and without a deal, Trump claimed Kim had given him a verbal guarantee "he's not going to do testing of rockets or missiles or anything having to do with nuclear." Trump did not specify satellite launches, so they still occupy something of a gray area.

Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, says this discrepancy shows all the more reason why Washington should have pushed for a "clearly quantified a nuclear and missile test freeze that would have provided for the foundation for negotiation."

Mount says whatever Pyongyang chooses as its gift or new path, none of this should come as a surprise to the Trump administration.

"Over the course of this year, (North Korea has) consistently escalated its pressure on the US trying to force them to capitulate on negotiations," he said. "The Trump administration sort of sleep-walked through that entire process and it's only in the last couple of weeks that they've woken up and they face a potential crisis here."

An ICBM or nuclear test

An intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) or a nuclear test would be more provocative than a satellite test and would certainly get Trump's attention.

Back in 2017, Pyongyang referred to its first test-launch of an ICBM -- the type of missile designed to deliver a nuclear warhead to targets across the planet -- as a "gift" for Washington. The test took place on July 4 -- US Independence Day. Kim would go on to test two more ICBMs that year and conduct the biggest underground nuclear test to date.

"If you look at the history of Kim Jong Un, he becomes most provocative when people stop paying attention to him," said US Rep. Ami Bera, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation.

The Kim regime also knows either firing an ICBM or detonating a nuclear weapon would be seen as a major provocation by the US and the world, including its main ally, China.

"If North Korea wants to have sanctions relief, more testing and provocations are not the path forward," Bera said.

Revere said it's possible the US and South Korea could respond to such actions with "military exercises, new US military deployments on and around the Korean peninsula, a major ramping-up of tensions (a la 2017) and the breakdown of the diplomatic process and with it the end of any prospects for sanctions easing."

North Korea hasn't detonated a nuclear weapon or test-fired an ICBM since 2017. Last year, Pyongyang blew up some of the tunnels at its nuclear test site, Punggye-ri.

But experts were unsure if this was cosmetic and irreversible -- journalists, not experts, were the only ones invited to the detonation ceremony.

"Whatever the North Koreans have in mind, we should remember their capacity for exceeding our expectations of their capabilities and for doing whatever they deem necessary to enhance their nuclear deterrent, regardless of the diplomatic price to be paid," said Revere.

"Don't underestimate them."

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2019-12-15 11:38:00Z
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General election 2019: John McDonnell sorry for 'catastrophic' election result - BBC News

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Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have apologised over Labour's "catastrophic" defeat in Thursday's election, which saw them lose 59 seats.

Mr Corbyn said he was "sorry that we came up short", while Mr McDonnell told the BBC he "owns this disaster".

The leader and shadow chancellor said they would step down in the new year.

The race for their replacements has already begun, with Wigan MP Lisa Nandy saying for the first time she was "seriously thinking about" running.

Mr McDonnell said it would be up to Labour's National Executive Committee to decide the mechanics of the leadership election, but he expected it to take place in eight to 10 weeks' time.

Labour suffered its worst election result since 1935 on Thursday and saw its vote share fall by eight points.

The Conservatives won a Commons majority of 80 - the party's biggest election win for 30 years - sweeping aside Labour in its traditional heartlands.

Mr Corbyn apologised to Labour supporters in two articles in the Sunday papers, calling it a "body blow for everyone who so desperately needs real change in our country".

Writing an open letter in the Sunday Mirror, he said he took his "responsibility" for the result, but insisted he remained "proud" of the party's campaign.

He doubled down in the Observer, saying his own election campaign had successfully re-set the terms of debate and his manifesto would be seen as "historically important".

But Mr McDonnell has argued "it's on me" as he apologised for the performance, on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show.

The shadow chancellor said he was sorry for "not being able to articulate" the party's campaign message ahead of the poll.

However, he also blamed the "media portrayal" of Mr Corbyn, saying "of course the system will throw the kitchen sink at you" if you challenge it.

Former Labour MP Caroline Flint - who lost her seat on Thursday - placed much of the blame at the leadership's door.

She also criticised the party's position on Brexit for leaving some voters behind, telling Sky's Sophy Ridge that "ardent Remainers", such as shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, "contributed to sacrificing" seats.

She accused Ms Thornberry of telling one her colleagues from a Brexit-backing area: "I'm glad my constituents aren't as stupid as yours."

Ms Thornberry said the accusation was "a total and utter lie". She added: I have never said this to anyone, nor anything like it, and I hope needless to say, it is not something I would ever think."

Ms Flint added: "I don't believe anybody who have been the architects of our European policy in the last few years is credible to be leader. I don't think they can win back these seats."

Instead, she said Ms Nandy and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey were "worth looking at".

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Ms Nandy told the BBC's Andrew Marr she was considering a leadership bid after the "most shattering" defeat for Labour.

"In towns like mine, the earth was quaking as the entire Labour base crumble beneath our feet," she added.

Ms Nandy made a number of proposals - including moving the party's headquarters out of London - to help "rebuild that coalition" between "the Lewishams and the Leighs", and to regain a Labour Party that "speaks for both".

A number of other candidates are expected to join the race, including Salford and Eccles MP Ms Long-Bailey and Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips.

Ms Phillips wrote in the Observer an appeal to people to join Labour to change it, arguing too many working-class people do not believe the party is better than the Tories.

Asked about the contenders, Mr McDonnell said he would "prefer others" to Ms Phillips, naming Ms Long-Bailey, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner and shadow women's and equalities minister Dawn Butler as possibilities.

He said Ms Phillips was "really talented", but added: "I want someone who actually has been really solidly involved in the development of existing policy - that's why Becky and Angie and Dawn and others have been so good."

Mr McDonnell said it "should be a woman leader next" and was "most probably time for a non-metropolitan" leader, adding: "I think it is time for a non-London MP, we need a northern voice as much as possible."

Shadow justice secretary Richard Burgon also backed Ms Long-Bailey and said he was considering running to be her deputy.

"Colleagues have approached me about that," he told Sky.

Back to the Commons

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are preparing for the first week of their new government.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Rishi Sunak, told Andrew Marr it was their "intention" to bring back Boris Johnson's Brexit bill to Parliament "before Christmas" - although he would not confirm the date.

"As soon as possible would be perfect," he said. "But obviously those conversations are happening between the relevant parties and the House authorities as we speak."

MPs will return to Westminster on Tuesday and begin the process of swearing in, before the Queen formally opens Parliament on Thursday.

Mr Johnson's Queen's Speech will include a commitment by the party to put its NHS spending plan into law as a symbol of commitment to the health service.

Downing Street has confirmed there will be a review of Whitehall departments - and the Sunday papers report that the prime minister will work over Christmas on plans to merge and split different government offices.

The Sunday Telegraph says the PM's chief adviser Dominic Cummings is preparing an overhaul of the civil service to ensure it delivers on Mr Johnson's agenda.

But Mr Gove said the government would not grant Scotland another referendum on independence, despite the success of the SNP in Thursday's election.

The party, which campaigns for an independent Scotland, won 48 seats - up from 35 - and its leader, Nicola Sturgeon, said she had "earned the right to pursue the plan" for another vote.

Ms Sturgeon, who is also First Minister of Scotland, said: "They will rage against reality for as long as they can but Scotland has chosen a very different kind of future than most of the rest of the UK, and they cant stand in the way of the will of the Scottish people.

"Fundamentally democracy has to be offered and respected."

Meanwhile, the Sunday Times claims up to a third of cabinet ministers face the sack in February, Whitehall departments could be abolished and civil servants replaced by external experts.

It's also been confirmed that the government has ordered a review to consider decriminalising non-payment of the BBC licence fee - which costs £154.50 annually.

What will happen this week?

Tuesday

Proceedings begin when MPs gather for their first duty: to elect the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, who replaced John Bercow in November. Technically, MPs can hold a vote on this motion but this has never happened in practice.

Later in the day, the Speaker will begin the process of swearing in MPs, who are required to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown, or, if they object to this, a solemn affirmation. Those who speak or vote without having done so are deprived of their seat "as if they were dead" under the Parliamentary Oaths Act of 1866.

Two to three days are usually set aside for this process.

Thursday

This is the earliest possible day for Parliament's State Opening. The Queen's Speech is the centrepiece of this, when she will read a speech written by ministers setting out the government's programme of legislation for the parliamentary session. A couple of hours after the speech is delivered, MPs will begin debating its contents - a process which takes days.

Friday

Depending on how rapidly Boris Johnson wants to move, the debate on the Queen's Speech could continue into Friday.

This may be interrupted for a second reading debate on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. MPs previously backed Boris Johnson's bill at its first stage but rejected his plan to fast-track the legislation through Parliament in three days in order to leave the EU by the previous 31 October Brexit deadline.

After the debate on the Queen's Speech is concluded, MPs will vote on whether to approve it. Not since 1924 has a government's Queen Speech been defeated.

Read more from the BBC's parliamentary correspondent, Mark D'Arcy

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2019-12-15 10:12:24Z
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The surprising ads once used to sell tours to deadly volcano - CNN

(CNN) — With hindsight, it looks embarrassingly inappropriate, but long before New Zealand's White Island volcano erupted killing at least 16 people this week, it was once humorously marketed as a fun destination for risk takers.

The volcano, also known as Whakaari, has for decades been an attraction for travelers visiting by boat or helicopter from the town of Whakatane on New Zealand's northern coast.

It's not the world's only active volcano to attract tourists -- countries from Indonesia to Iceland regularly host visitors willing to dice with danger in their efforts to glimpse the natural spectacle of a smoldering or lava-spewing peak.

"Handle with scare" -- a brochure used to promote tours of White Island.

John Malathronas

But Monday's tragic events have spotlighted the tourism industry that's built up around White Island and other volatile attractions.

Perhaps emblematic of the willingness of both tourist and tour company to dance around the potentially lethal risks involved, is some of the material that has been used to promote White Island in the past.

During a visit made by this writer in 2006, it was being heavily marketed on the perils that tourists would face via literature that now seems toe-curlingly bad, particularly in light of this week's deaths.

"Single White Female," reads the headline on a jokey advertorial promoting tours of the volcano that's written in the style of a lonely hearts column.

"Steamy, very active, 200,000-year-old seeking similar to increase alert level rating," the piece, credited to a local tour guide, said. "Dormant/extinct volcanoes need not apply."

It goes on: "My curvaceous andesite bumps and mounds roll voluptuously down to the water. I have the aroma of hot sulphur and I change my look with my mood. If I'm feeling active, I wear layers of slippery grey ash..."

The lonely hearts ad isn't what tourists to New Zealand would've seen just before Monday's eruption. It appears on the back of a 32-page brochure-slash-newspaper, Discover White Island, that was originally printed in 2003 but being distributed at the time of my visit.

'Handle with scare'

"Single White Female" -- a joke lonely hearts ad used to promote the volcano.

John Malathronas

White Islands Tours -- which ceased operations after the December 9 eruption -- wasn't downplaying the risk of visiting the island -- headlining the newspaper distributed in 2006 with bold red letters that screamed: "Volcano, handle with scare."

For backpackers and other thrill seekers touring New Zealand, this whiff of danger has placed White Island firmly on adventure itineraries alongside bungee jumping, jetboating and white water rafting.

It was only when I boarded the tour boat and signed a disclaimer that absolved anyone but myself of any responsibility that the reality of the trip's dangers hit home, but not enough to dissuade me or my fellow tourists from continuing.

Visitors were equipped with gas masks for a tour of the island.

John Malathronas

Although my visit was incident-free, it would've been more or less identical to that experienced by those caught up in this week's disaster, right up until the point when the volcano erupted.

En route to the island, a school of dolphins appeared in the swell alongside the boat as our guide distributed gas masks and hard hats.

We were then given some basic facts and figures about our destination. Its size -- 11 miles by 10 miles. And its history: bought by a man called George Buttle in 1936. The island is still a private reserve belonging to the Buttle Family Trust.

According to my notes from the trip, the guide stressed that the volcano was "very much alive," and that the terrain we would be crossing had been formed relatively recently during a period of near-continuous volcanic activity between 1975 and 2000.

"The activity level now stands at one," he said. "Three means there's constant emissions. Five signals disaster. But remember: We can never rule out an eruption."

"The danger comes from the main crater that's covered by a shallow lake. An eruption would lead to a steam explosion and scald us to death."

New Zealand monitoring service GeoNet operates a five-point alert system for volcanoes. One means minor volcanic unrest, five means major volcanic eruption. At the time of Monday's eruption, it was set to two -- minor to heightened volcanic unrest -- an acceptable level for tours to continue under existing safety guidelines.

Corrosive air

After a couple of hours sailing, our party landed at White Island's Crater Bay, where we were greeted by what looked like an alien landscape.

The sea was lemon yellow, the rocks cinnamon brown, the sand pitch black and the air thick with the smell of an open latrine.

What was eerie, though, was the silence. I was expecting a roar, at least a muted grumble, but no, the island was silent.

The island resembles an alien landscape.

John Malathronas

"Wrap everything, especially your camera, in plastic bags," the guide warned. "Take it out for a photo and put it back in again. The air is corrosive."

"What about us?" I asked.

"You are alive and have repair mechanisms in place. Your lenses don't."

The guide led us through the skeletal, rusty remains of a factory. Despite the risks, people have been mining sulfur here on and off since the 1880s.

"Back in September 1914 a sudden slag flow buried the living quarters and killed 10 miners," we were told. "Only their cat survived."

"Mining resumed in 1923 but was abandoned in the 1930s. It became too dangerous to continue."

At some point he showed us a rivulet running through the ground.

"It's been raining, so you'll see a lot of small streams," he said. "Step over them. They're pure battery acid. Stick to the path and follow me."

With pewter-gray ash and scoria covering much of the land; the scene could've been described as lunar if it weren't for the mist over the steam vents.

These vents came in every shade of yellow -- from banana to butterscotch and all variations in between.

"Don't go anywhere near the vents," our guide said. "The coolest ones clock 95 C (100 F). The superheated ones can reach 200 C (400 F). Some go deep down to 600 feet below sea level."

Some of the big vents have names, we were told. There was Gilliver, Rudolf and Donald Duck.

Others were large enough to be classified as craters, with names like Big John or Noisy Nellie.

'Everything rusts'

Writer John Malathronas on White Island.

John Malathronas

Our guide showed us debris from an eruption in 2000.

"It only lasted for 12 seconds but spewed out five-foot-long rocks hundreds of feet away," he said. "I was here three days later. The rocks were still warm and you could pry them apart like toffee."

At some point, we reached a white line painted on the ground and were told to stop.

"From here on, the crust is thin," the guide said. "Walk further and the ground might give in under your feet."

In front of us lay the main crater cloaked under a vapor cloud, a gate to the center of the Earth.

Boat trips have long carried visitors to White Island.

John Malathronas

We stood there silently, taking photos before slowly heading back, skirting the white line.

Back on the boat, the guide changed his sneakers. He used a separate pair just for White Island. "Plastic laces, holes with no metal eyelets; everything rusts there," he said.

On the return journey to Whakatane, we were served warm soup to soothe our stinging throats followed by a meal of rice and baked fish.

This time the entertainment came from above as a company of gannets nosedived into the sea with spectacular plunges.

"Despite the eruptions, this gannet colony is well established," the guide said. "Amazingly, it's on the safest part of the island. This is where the miners built their cabins when they returned in the 1920s."

Today, looking back at my diary of my 2006 trip, I'm struck by a quote I scribbled down that's attributed to the island's late owner, George Buttle.

He supposedly said: "Strange as it may seem, the island is unbelievably beautiful."

In its own extra-terrestrial kind of way, it was. And I'm glad I've been there.

But like so many visitors over the years, I know that I've played with fire for the fun of it.

Others weren't so lucky.

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2019-12-15 06:29:41Z
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Scuffles break out in Glendale as Rep. Adam Schiff speaks at town hall - Los Angeles Times

At a town hall event on Saturday where an Armenian organization was thanking U.S. government officials for their support of resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide, scuffles broke out as Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a co-sponsor of a resolution on the issue, spoke in the auditorium at the Glendale Central Library.

As Schiff began speaking, a man and two women held up signs reading,"Don’t Impeach.” When they were asked to take down the signs, they refused.

Then, about a dozen people scattered throughout the auditorium began yelling, “Liar.”

When some in the audience asked them to refrain from yelling, scuffles broke out throughout the room, and the audience members who were yelling at Schiff removed their jackets, revealing shirts supporting President Trump.

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After about 15 minutes, the scuffles settled down, and the event continued.

There were three Glendale police officers at the event who helped deal with the situation, according to the Police Department. No injuries were reported, police said.

The event was organized by the Armenian National Committee of America - Western Region to thank the U.S. House of Representatives for recently passing a resolution affirming its recognition of the Armenian genocide and celebrating the U.S. Senate’s unanimous recognition Thursday of the genocide.

Schiff said he appreciated the opportunity to take part in the event.

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“I was grateful for the opportunity to share in the community’s celebration of the historic passage of the Armenian Genocide resolution in both the House and Senate, and thankful for the recognition of the efforts of so many people who made this day possible,” he said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, some came to the event with the intent to disrupt, but the Armenian community has had to overcome far greater challenges along the road to recognition than to be deterred by a few angry voices,” said Schiff, who as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has helped lead the Trump impeachment investigation.

In a statement, the Armenian committee said what made the act that much more “egregious” was that descendants of genocide survivors were in the room, many of them elderly, who had waited for the passage of such resolutions their entire lives and had attended the event to express their gratitude to all those who supported the cause for decades.

“While, as Americans, we value our right to freedom of speech, today’s actions by a select few were designed to disrupt an event that had no connection to recent political divisions and disrespected the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide,” the statement said.

“Though asked to leave, the disrupters instead remained and continued to behave in an appalling manner which lacked any semblance of human decency,” the statement added.

The committee said the issue transcends partisan politics in its appeal to properly honor and acknowledge the 1.5 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians who were massacred from 1915-23 under the Ottoman Empire, now modern-day Turkey.

“Our democracy deserves better than the disgraceful behavior of those who tried to disrupt a non-partisan, non-political event meant to express unity and gratitude on a purely humanitarian issue, and we strongly condemn any attempt to hijack its message,” the committee said.

Roa and Kellam write for Times Community News.

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2019-12-15 07:03:00Z
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Hong Kong protests test Beijing's 'foreign meddling' narrative - BBC News

A few months ago a Chinese official asked me if I thought foreign powers were fomenting Hong Kong's social unrest.

"To get so many people to come to the streets," he mused, "must take organisation, a big sum of money and political resources."

Since then, the protests sparked at the beginning of Hong Kong's hot summer have raged on through autumn and into winter.

The massive marches have continued, interspersed with increasingly violent pitched battles between smaller groups of more militant protesters and the police.

The toll is measured in a stark ledger of police figures that, even a short while ago, would have seemed impossible for one of the world's leading financial capitals and a bastion of social stability.

More than 6,000 arrests, 16,000 tear-gas rounds, 10,000 rubber bullets.

As the sense of political crisis has deepened and divisions have hardened, China has continued to see the sinister hand of foreign meddling behind every twist and turn.

The 'grey rhino'

In January, China's supreme political leader Xi Jinping convened a high-level Communist Party meeting focused on "major risk prevention".

He told the assembled senior officials to be on their guard for "black swans" - the unpredictable, unseen events that can plunge a system into crisis. But he also warned them about what he called "grey rhinoceroses" - the known risks that are ignored until it's too late.

While state media reports show the discussions ranging over issues from housing bubbles to food safety, there's no mention at all of Hong Kong.

And yet the seeds were already being sown for what has become the biggest challenge to Communist Party rule in a generation.

A few weeks after the meeting, the Hong Kong government, with the strong backing of Beijing, introduced a bill that would allow the extradition of suspects to mainland China.

Opposition to the bill was immediate, deep-seated and widespread, driven by the fear that it would allow China's legal system to reach deep inside Hong Kong.

Despite assurances that "political crimes" would not be covered, many saw it as a fundamental breach of the "one country, two systems" principle under which the territory is supposed to be governed.

It wasn't just human rights groups and legal experts expressing alarm, but the business community, multinational corporations and foreign governments too, worried that overseas nationals might also find themselves targeted by such a law.

And so, the first claims of "foreign meddling" began to be heard.

On 9 June, a massive and overwhelmingly peaceful rally against the bill was held, with organisers putting the attendance at more than a million.

The accusations made in person by officials, like the one mentioned earlier, were echoes of a narrative being taken up in earnest by China's Communist Party-controlled media.

The morning after the march, an English language editorial in the China Daily raised the spectre of "interference".

"Unfortunately, some Hong Kong residents have been hoodwinked by the opposition camp and their foreign allies into supporting the anti-extradition campaign," it said.

From the protesters' point of view, the dismissal of their grievances as externally driven explains, to a large extent, what happened next.

The city's political elite, backed by Beijing and insulated from ordinary Hong Kongers by a political system rigged in its favour, demonstrated a spectacular failure to accurately read the public mood.

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Three days after the march, with Hong Kong's leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, insisting she would not back down, thousands of people surrounded the Legislative Council building where the bill was being debated.

It was on the same spot just outside the chamber, less than five years earlier, that a phalanx of trucks with mechanical grabbers had begun scooping up rows of abandoned tents.

To the sound of the snapping of poles and the crunching of bamboo barricades - the detritus of weeks of protest and occupation - 2014's pro-democracy demonstrations finally ran out of steam.

Now the proposed law, one that may once have been seen as relatively inconsequential, was about to reignite the movement.

• What led to the first gunshot being fired?
• Most striking images from six months of anger

The protesters threw bricks and bottles, the police fired tear gas and by the evening of 12 June, Hong Kong had witnessed one of its worst outbreaks of violence in decades.

No-one could be in any doubt that the Umbrella Movement, with its demands for wider democratic reform, was back with a vengeance.

The few concessions - first the suspension and finally the withdrawal of the bill - came too late to stop the cycle of escalating violence from both the protesters and the police.

Beijing is right to point out that there are plenty of Hong Kongers who deplore the mask-clad militants building barricades, vandalising public property and setting fires.

Some of them are ardent supporters of Chinese rule, others are simply being pragmatic, believing that violence will only provoke the central government into intervening more strongly in Hong Kong's affairs.

But the authorities were stunned last month by a test of the true strength of those viewpoints, when - on a record turnout in local elections - the pro-democracy camp swept the board.

The poll gave its candidates almost 60% of the total share of the votes.

At first there was an astonished silence from mainland China, which had genuinely thought the pro-Beijing side would win.

The initial news reports mentioned only the conclusion of the voting, not the results, but then came a familiar refrain.

The state-run Xinhua news agency blamed "rioters" conspiring with "foreign forces".

"The politicians behind them who are anti-China and want to mess up Hong Kong reaped substantial political benefits," it said.

• Former UK consulate worker says China tortured him

As proof of interference, China cites cases of foreign politicians voicing support for democracy or raising concerns about its erosion under Chinese rule.

It has also blamed Washington for passing a law mandating an annual assessment of Hong Kong's political freedoms as a pre-condition for continuing the territory's special trading status.

Xinhua has denounced it as "a malicious political manipulation that seriously interferes with Hong Kong affairs".

But no evidence has been produced of any outside forces co-ordinating or directing the protests on the ground.

In reality, the young, radical protesters, with the ubiquitous use of the portmanteau "Chinazi" in their street graffiti, appear as much motivated by statements from Beijing as they are from Washington.

The very institutions - independent courts and a free press - that are supposed to be protected by the "one country, two systems" formula, are derided by the ruling Communist Party as dangerous, foreign constructs.

Where once Hong Kongers might have hoped that China's economic rise would bring political freedoms to the mainland and a closer alignment with their values, many now fear the opposite.

Mass detention camps in Xinjiang, a wider crackdown on civil society, and the abduction of Hong Kong citizens for perceived political crimes have all underlined the concern that their city is now ruled by political masters inherently hostile to the very things that make it special.

• China separating Muslim children from families
• China's Muslim 'crackdown' explained

And any appeal to universal values as underwriting Hong Kong's side of the "two systems", is anathema to Beijing, one that it rejects by conflating it with outside foreign meddling.

Despite earlier fears, the central government seems unlikely to send in the army - a move certain to provoke even more of an international outcry.

But nor can it offer a political solution.

Giving the pro-democracy movement any more of what the Communist Party strains every fibre of its organisational structure to deny to the mass of Chinese people is impossible.

Its values are stability and control, not freedom and democracy, and it struggles to understand how anyone would choose the latter over the former.

So Beijing finds itself bound by a sense of historical destiny to a territory with which it is - in large part - in deep ideological opposition.

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It is a tension that has not gone unnoticed elsewhere in the region, in particular, in Taiwan, the self-governing island that China considers a breakaway province.

Hong Kong's experience of one country, two systems, the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has suggested, has shown that authoritarianism and democracy cannot coexist.

Referring to the prospect of a similar formula being foisted on Taiwan she tweeted, in Chinese characters, the phrase bu ke neng - "Not a chance".

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2019-12-15 06:02:00Z
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