Trump Travel Ban: What Are The 6 New Countries Targeted By President’s Controversial Immigration Policy?

The Trump administration announced on Friday that six new countries would be targeted by the travel ban policy: Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. These six countries were chosen because they failed to meet U.S. security and information-sharing criteria.

Citizens of Nigeria, Myanmar, Eritrea and Kyrgyzstan will no longer be eligible for visas which lead to permanent residency. Sudan and Tanzania will no longer be eligible for the “diversity visa” program, which provides residency visas to countries with low levels of immigration.

"These countries, for the most part, want to be helpful but for a variety of different reasons simply failed to meet those minimum requirements that we laid out,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told reporters about the expansion.

The administration has said that nationals from these countries might still be eligible for a waiver from the ban. Individuals who perform work for the U.S. military or have a dire need may still be able to obtain an immigrant visa.

The presidential proclamation will be implemented on Feb. 21. Citizens of these countries who want to come to the United States for a limited period, such as tourists, business people or those seeking medical care, can still apply for visas.

Top Democrats criticized the expansion and have called for a repeal of the policy.

“The Trump administration’s expansion of its outrageous, un-American travel ban threatens our security, our values and the rule of law," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"The sweeping rule, barring more than 350 million individuals from predominantly African nations from traveling to the United States, is discrimination disguised as policy."

“We have no other answer to this shameful policy but to pass the NO BAN Act, which will amend the underlying law, repeal the existing travel bans and fix the hole in the heart of American immigration law that was created by this ungrounded decision,” Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., said.

There are seven countries already targeted by the Trump immigration ban: Iran, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, North Korea and Venezuela. Iraq and Chad were two countries originally on the travel ban list, but have since been removed.

https://www.ibtimes.com/trump-travel-ban-what-are-6-new-countries-targeted-presidents-controversial-2914272

Aussie Academic: 'Ethically Misguided & Downright Dangerous' NOT To Censor Climate-Deniers

University of Melbourne “Centre for Advancing Journalism” academic Denis Muller believes climate censorship should be added to legally binding journalistic professional codes of conduct.

Media ‘impartiality’ on climate change is ethically misguided and downright dangerous

January 31, 2020 6.11am AEDT

Denis Muller

Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne

In September 2019, the editor of The Conversation, Misha Ketchell, declared The Conversation’s editorial team in Australia was henceforth taking what he called a “zero-tolerance” approach to climate change deniers and sceptics. Their comments would be blocked and their accounts locked.

His reasons were succinct:

Climate change deniers and those shamelessly peddling pseudoscience and misinformation are perpetuating ideas that will ultimately destroy the planet.

…

But in the era of climate change, this conventional approach is out of date. A more analytical approach is called for.

…

Harm is a long-established criterion for abridging free speech. John Stuart Mill, in his seminal work, On Liberty, published in 1859, was a robust advocate for free speech but he drew the line at harm:

… the only purpose for which power can be exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

It follows that editors may exercise the power of refusing to publish climate-denialist material if doing so prevents harm to others, without violating fundamental free-speech principles.

Other harms too provide established grounds for limiting free speech. Some of these are enforceable at law – defamation, contempt of court, national security – but speech about climate change falls outside the law and so becomes a question of ethics.

The harms done by climate change, both at a planetary level and at the level of human health, are well-documented and supported by overwhelming scientific evidence.

…

External guidance is nonexistent. The ethical codes promulgated by the media accountability bodies – the Australian Press Council and the Australian Communications and Media Authority – make no mention of how impartiality should be achieved in the context of climate change. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s code of ethics is similarly silent.

These bodies would serve the profession and the public interest by developing specific standards to deal with the issue of climate change, and guidance about how to meet them. It is not an issue like any other. It is existential on a scale surpassing even nuclear war.

…

Read more here…

The problem with comparing discussion of climate change to shouting “fire” in a burning theatre is one of immediacy.

Shouting “fire” to create a fake panic in a movie cinema is punishable, because it has been amply demonstrated through experience that creating a fake panic causes immediate, measurable harm; we know through observation of past events that people can be hurt or even killed during the resulting stampede.

But a public comment disputing alarmist climate claims; not so much.

The author’s comparison of climate change to an imminent nuclear war is absurd. Climate change is a gradual process, with significant changes taking decades or even centuries to manifest.

Even if climate skeptics were totally wrong, there is no justification for shutting down our right to be wrong. Unlike shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre, no single climate “shout”, no matter how wrong, has the potential to alter the trajectory of society to such an extent that measurable harm could be ascribed to it.

If society lowers the bar of censorship to such an extent that publicly supporting a position which might be wrong but which causes no immediate harm qualifies as a punishable offence, then we have lost more than our right to free speech.

https://www.zerohedge.com/health/aussie-academic-ethically-misguided-downright-dangerous-not-censor-climate-deniers

India Announces $40 Billion Emergency Fiscal Injection As Economy Plunges

India's economy is rapidly decelerating and could be headed for a financial crisis.

As an emergency response to plunging growth rates and falling energy consumption, along with a manufacturing hub grinding to a halt, the government has just announced a massive $40 billion fiscal injection in its budget for 2020/21 to prevent a hard landing, reported Reuters.

Emergency fiscal measures by government are typically for an economy that is in a recession or certainly headed towards one.

However, India isn't in a recession, but growth rates are rapidly decelerating and now being referred to as "great slowdown."

"Look at electricity generation growth, it's falling off the bottom, and it's never been like this ever. So this is the sense in which I would say this is not just any slowdown, this is the great slowdown that India is experiencing and we should look at it with all seriousness …and the economy seems headed for the intensive care unit," former Indian Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian warned last month.

Economic growth in the country is expected to fall under the 5-handle this year, will be the weakest since the global financial crisis in 2008-09.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/india-announces-40-billion-emergency-fiscal-injection-economy-plunges