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Despite promising to shore up the medias role as a pillar of Czech democracy, PM Petr Fialas track record in office is questionable. In fact, after his government announced plans to raise VAT on newspapers to 21 per cent, hes being forced to defend himselfagainst accusations that hes actually weakening the countrys quality media by drivingthe last nail in the coffin of Czech newspapers. EU Commissioner Vera Jourova warned over the weekend that the hike of the VAT rate to a European peak risks liquidating Czechias print media, and contradicts an EU trend amid the fight against disinformation to slash rates. Even countries like Poland or Hungary have not taken such steps, she noted. But Fiala appears unconcerned. He doesnt believe the move will kill off any newspapers, and anyway, people get access to information through internet sources, and public media are freely available, so there is no threat of disaster, he shrugged in a TV interview.

At the same time, its notable that the main victims of the higher tax will be the oligarchs that have over recent years bought up most of the Czech press, in a bid to add political influence to their economic power. The leading example of this trend is, of course, former PM and leader of the opposition ANO party, Andrej Babis. And with that in mind, the governing coalition will on Friday convene an extraordinary parliament sessionto discuss a bill that would tighten up the ban on media ownership by members of the government. The ban was introduced in 2016 as part of aConflict of Interest Act, which also banned companies owned by officials fromreceiving state subsidies.Lex Babis, as it was dubbed, forced the billionaire to cede control of his business empire theoretically at least by putting it into trust during his time in government. But the coalition now wants to amend the legislation so that it applies to ownership. Unsurprisingly, ANO has been delaying discussion of the bill for months. The governing parties, which insist the amendment is absolutely not aimed specifically at the ANO leader, say that if the obstruction persists, they will bypass any debate and force a vote next month. In 2021, the EU suspended subsidies to Czechia and demanded it tighten up legislation after finding that Babis had conflicts of interest.

Another bill due in the Chamber of Deputies soon will amend regulations governing the division of publicly-traded companies, which all sounds very dry but it paves the way for a fundamental transformation of Czechias energy sector.Approved by the government on Wednesday, the bill dubbed lex CEZ would reduce the required votes to split companies from 90 per cent of shareholders to 75 per cent, as well as the required quorum. This would allow the government to push through its plans to take control of the production assets of CEZ. Minority shareholders and financing complications have been blocking the energy group, in which the state holds 70 per cent, from building new nuclear reactors the main pillar in the governments energy strategy for years.

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Democracy Digest: EU Mission to Hungary Sees No Reason to ... - Balkan Insight

For three days this week an American think tank called the Edmund Burke Foundation has been hosting a conference in London to talk up what it calls national conservatism in the hope of signing up the British right.

So what? The NatCons didnt exactly set the town alight some spoke to a nearly empty hall but they did draw a few big names and they represent a defiant new brand of Christian nationalism that

Who are these guys? The Edmund Burke Foundation is named after Britains leading voice against the French Revolution but was set up in Washington in 2019. Its funding is opaque, but key figures include the Jerusalem-based academic Yoram Hazony and Christopher DeMuth, a former adviser to Ronald Reagan.

The NatCon UK audience is less easy to identify. Of the conference delegates who would speak to journalists this week and many were told not to none were Tory party members. Several had flown in from the US, keen to see if Trumpian politics could be exported.

Much of the focus was on social issues. One delegate said he was a socialist and not that keen on capitalism. There were clerics and theologians who believe faith should play a greater role in public life and want bishops to be willing to die on the hill of gender identity.

For this group, social conservatism trumped immigration as a priority.

God squad. The NatCon conference was held in a church and many of its speeches were shot through with religion. Does that mean England is ready for a US-style Christian right or a version of Germanys Christian democracy? In pockets of the electorate, perhaps. Danny Kruger MP, a former aide to Johnson, spoke of normative nuclear families with a mother and a father. Miriam Cates, a fellow backbencher, said the biggest problem facing the country was a decline in birth rates and a cultural Marxism that is systematically destroying our childrens souls.

Right flank. For Suella Braverman, appearing at the conference had more to do with politics than philosophy. The home secretary attacked government policy in defiance of the usual rules on collective responsibility and her resignation from Cabinet is now baked into expectations back in Westminster. She used the event to draw a line between the right she seeks to lead and relative moderates whore now openly calling her unfit for office.

Lost in translation. If England and America are two countries separated by the same language, NatCon underscored where the division lies. There is limited appetite, among MPs or the wider public, for politics laced with religion and a state that seeks to intervene in peoples private lives.

Meanwhile in Bournemouth, A separate one-day event, run by the Conservative Democratic Organisation and funded by Lord Cruddas, aimed explicitly to take back control of candidate selection and policy formation, and give it to members. Its implicit aim is to restore Johnson to the premiership.

Four days of soul-searching left three questions hanging:

The short answers are yes, yes / no and yes. Tory leaders always have to worry as much about their right flanks as their left. But for now Sunak can probably sleep easy. Neither conference had huge numbers of attendees. And while the CDO had a quaint Englishness to it, NatCon felt like an attempt to transplant a Christian alt-right movement that (so far) doesnt carry weight in the secular UK.

Thanks for reading. Please tell your friends to sign up, send us ideas and tell us what you think. Email sensemaker@tortoisemedia.com.

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The following is a guest contribution and reflects the authors views alone. For information on how to submit an article to the Opinion Section, click here.

At the first-year activity fair, you may have come across a booth for the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (JMP), where fellows advertised the program as an opportunity for those interested in American politics and constitutional thought to hear from a range of perspectives. You may have even read that it doesnt matter whether you regard yourself as on the right or left, progressive or conservative, or none of the above, as the Madison Programs Undergraduate Fellows Forum application form proclaims. All of this would, quite reasonably, lead you to believe that the James Madison Program is a Princeton program for those across the political spectrum to get involved with political thought on campus. One of us thought so, and joined JMPs Undergraduate Fellows Forum under this pretense, leading them to be listed as part of the program throughout their Princeton career.

Over our four years at Princeton, however, we have both come to understand that the Madison Program acts quite differently from how it markets itself. While the Madison Program represents itself as a non-partisan center on campus to engage with American constitutional law and Western political thought as Princetons center for American Ideals, the Madison Program in fact exists to further conservative viewpoints on campus, and in recent years, has increasingly provided a platform to far-right and extremist individuals.

For academic freedom to genuinely exist, groups such as the Madison Program must be honest about the ideas they favor. While we have no say over how the Madison Program operates, we hope to use this platform to alert students to where the Madison Program stands within the marketplace of ideas, a basis on which students can form their own opinions and engage with the program as they wish. The Madison Program has frequently invited speakers and research fellows who are affiliated with the far-right, some of whom have endorsed categorically disproven conspiracy theories, promoted and advanced antidemocratic policies, and espoused shockingly bigoted rhetoric. In addition, the programs sources of funding suggest a deeper level of connection between the program and organizations around the country working on heavily right-wing and anti-queer policies. Those may very well be relevant factors for individuals evaluating the credibility of the programs offerings and their desire to engage with it. Students, faculty, and staff should know what theyre buying into.

Professors Eldar Shafir and Uri Hasson recently highlighted the significant problems with the JMPs decision to invite Ronen Shoval the founder of an ultranationalist Israeli organization who has previously campaigned to silence academics and even shut down the program in political science at Ben Gurion University to be a lecturer at Princeton this year. Unfortunately, Shoval is only the most recent in the James Madison Programs history of repeated invitations to hateful and unreliable visitors.

Notably, in 2022, the James Madison Program hosted Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, as a visiting fellow for the program. In his book, written while he was still a fellow with JMP, Wolfe argues that Christian Nationalism is Americas way forward. Wolfe calls for a Great Renewal of Christianity in every facet of American life and governance and a return to what he calls Old America. He also affirms for his readers that violence would be a morally permissible way to create a Christian Nationalist state. According to Bradley Onishi, a faculty member at the University of San Francisco who focuses on tracking white Christian nationalism, Wolfes resonances with Hitlers view of the nation are uncanny, specifically in his calls to institute a Christian head of the people, his emphasis that nationality can only be rooted in racial identity, and his musings on interracial marriage that groups have a collective duty to be separate and marry among themselves.

Further back, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the JMP hired known right-wing couple Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying as visiting fellows who made headlines for supporting ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 which has since been thoroughly discredited and for denouncing COVID-19 vaccinations. We should be able to trust that our professors and our faculty will listen to the experts, especially when it comes to a national emergency where their own students and peers are in harms way.

In addition, Ronen Shoval is not the first right-wing Israeli to come to Princeton through the JMP. In 2020, the program brought Benjamin Schvarcz on as a postdoctoral research associate, and then in 2021 as a fellow. Schvarcz was hired directly from the Kohelet Policy Forum, an Israeli right-wing think tank credited with driving the judicial reforms in Israel, which have been heralded by many Israelis and policymakers as a threat to democracy.

The James Madison Programs list of advisors includes extremist individuals as well. Harlan Crow, who was recently found to have given undisclosed donations to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and who owns an extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia, including a signed copy of Mein Kampf, is on the list as a civic volunteer, as is his wife Katherine Crow 89. Crows Nazi and Hitler memorabilia, as well as a garden filled with statues of historical dictators and despots, demonstrates his ties to and support of hateful, alt-right politics.

Additionally, the James Madison Program has clear ties to the Witherspoon Institute, located just down the street from Princeton. The James Madison Program advertises seminars and summer programs hosted by the Witherspoon Institute and actively encourages students to attend their programming. The Witherspoon Institute, a right-wing think tank, has a long history of funding research that supports far-right objectives, including the notorious and widely-discredited Regenerus Study arguing against same-sex marriage based on a pseudo-scientific conclusion that children fare worse in queer households.

We also have to analyze the influence of conservative donors on the JMP. JMP was founded with $525,000 in support from the John M. Olin Foundation, which, as investigative journalist Jane Meyer writes, aimed to establish conservative cells, or beachheads at the most influential schools in order to gain the greatest leverage. The formula required subtlety, indirection, and perhaps even some misdirection. JMP has continued to receive financial support from other partisan institutions.

Over 20 years ago, the conservative nonprofit Philanthropy Roundtable advised donors who looked to shift campus to the right to support JMP and copy its model elsewhere.

Because the program receives no money from the university and has forgone any part of Princetons endowment, it has avoided entanglement in any ideological strings the university might attach, the article explained. At the slightest threat to the programs integrity, the foundations and philanthropists supporting it can pull their money.

It is not conjecture to suggest that these donors right-wing ideologies influence the operations of the James Madison Program, including the lectures it hosts, the fellows it hires, and the classes those fellows teach. As Professor Robert George the director of the program stated early in the programs tenure, You should reject the money if you cant follow a donors intent. You have a moral obligation to follow the donors intent. If the James Madison Program was supposed to achieve a goal other than advancing conservative ideology in academia, its founding donors certainly missed the memo.

We do not object to the James Madison Program merely taking right-wing funding or having conservative-leaning Ph.D. and postdoctoral fellows. But they should be transparent about it. The National Council of Nonprofits states that a fundamental financial transparency practice is to make it easy for visitors to a nonprofits website to find information about the nonprofit's budget-size and its sources of revenue, as well as information about board composition, programs, outcomes/impact, staffing, and donors (protecting the identity of those who wish to remain anonymous). Transparency on funding is important for non-profits and educational institutions especially because it often signals the organizations ideological leaning and goals. The Madison Program, meanwhile, provides no information about any donors in any of its annual reports.

A diversity of ideological perspectives is an asset to campus, and our aim is not to undermine that. However, it is essential that when engaging with the James Madison Program, students and faculty know exactly which values the program holds dear in its operation. JMP touts itself as Princetons program on American Ideals and Institutions, but it is clear they are choosing to platform an extremist, right-wing conception of American ideals.

Rooya Rahin is a senior from Highlands Ranch, Colo. studying politics. She is the emeriti chair of the Editorial Board and Financial Stipend coordinator of the Prince and an incoming Princeton MPA student through the SINSI program. She can be reached at rrahin@princeton.edu.

Dylan Shapiro is a senior from Atlanta, Ga. in the School of Public and International Affairs. He is an incoming 1L at Yale Law School and can be reached at dylan.shapiro@princeton.edu.

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What you need to know about Princeton's James Madison Program - The Daily Princetonian

John Farnham

The singers career was flagging when a strange, effusive protest track landed on his desk. A new documentary details how his best-known song came to be bagpipes and all

Wed 17 May 2023 11.00 EDT

Listen to any classic rock station in Australia, continental Europe and much of the rest of the world and youre likely to hear Youre the Voice. John Farnhams 1986 track is one of Australias most enduring global classics a pop song thats both sentimental and forceful in its convictions, and seemingly nonpartisan enough for alt-right groups to try to co-opt it. It hasnt been as heavily memed as, say, Daryl Braithwaites The Horses, another Australian hit of a similar vintage but its just as ingrained in the cultural memory among people young and old.

As far as immortal hits go, you could absolutely do worse: aside from being a musically strange, ineffably genius work, its also a song with a strange history that seems to act as a proof of concept.

By 1986 Farnham was out for the count, according to much of the Australian music industry. The then-38-year-old had been recording under his own name for nearly 20 years at that point, having broken out in the late 60s with a string of dinky but popular hits. As Johnny Farnham he had built a reputation as a gangly, grinning teen idol performing versions of tracks such as Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head and Acapulco Sun on TV shows such as Hit Scene and Happening. By the 70s he had begun to appear in musical theatre and was hosting roles on television, the relative shine of his early success quickly beginning to dull.

In the 80s after changing his stage name to John Farnham, the singer tried to pull off what so many teen idols have tried to do and which most fail at: a pivot to serious music. The relative lack of success of his first grown-up record, 1980s Uncovered, confirmed that Farnhams attempt to move away from the relatively cloistered world of cabaret and musical theatre would be harder than it may have first seemed. Salvation seemingly arrived in 1982, when Farnham was asked to join Melbournes successful soft-rock outfit Little River Band after the departure of its vocalist Glenn Shorrock. Rather than revive both careers and kill two birds with one stone, it sent each act into a relative downslide, the groups two albums with Farnham failing to reach the same commercial heights as their records with Shorrock in Australia or the US.

Farnham found his time in the band difficult, and there was acrimony at the centre of the group for his relatively short time fronting them. In Finding the Voice, a new documentary about Farnhams life and career, Glenn Wheatley, the manager of Little River Band at the time, describes working with them as akin to managing world war two a perhaps over-the-top but nonetheless evocative descriptor. By the time the bands final album with Farnham was released, 1986s No Reins, he had already left the group not with the resuscitated career he had hoped for but with a drive to create something under his own name that would.

Salvation finally came in the form of Youre the Voice: a huge, effusive and strangely timely single that would single-handedly reorient Farnhams career. Written by the British songwriter Chris Thompson, Icehouses Andy Qunta, Procol Harum songwriter Keith Reid and singer-songwriter Maggie Ryder, Youre the Voice was inspired by a 1985 nuclear disarmament rally in London that Thompson missed; saddened that he hadnt been there to lend support, he began writing a song that he felt captured the spirit of the massive protest.

Eventually the tape was passed to Farnham and his team, supposedly through Qunta. Although Farnham had previously been trying to hone a more rock-oriented sound, Youre the Voice is the product of mod-cons: producers David Hirschfelder and Ross Fraser used walls of samplers and synthesisers to create the songs trademark sound a rich, glossy universe of metronomic blips and synth sighs that sounds like one of Kate Bushs off-kilter hits given a buff and polish.

Although the track is deeply familiar now, at the time it was considered profoundly off-piste for a centrist pop song, using a sample of a car door slamming to form part of the drum track. (Finding the Voice dedicates much of its generally quite dull runtime to talking heads including Celine Dion and Robbie Williams saying why they love the track; the most thrilling sections, no doubt, are when Hirschfelder is mapping out the array of unwieldy synths he used to put the song together.) The songs most recognisable feature its bagpipes solo is still its masterstroke; a downright strange innovation suggested by Farnham that required the entire song to be redone in B-flat, the only key the bagpipes play in.

The tracks graceful, soaring intensity perfectly mirrored Thompsons guilelessly aspirational lyrics, which are decidedly softer and more amenable than more strident protest songs of the decade, such as Midnight Oils Beds Are Burning. And then, of course, theres Farnhams voice for much of the song, its little more than a wordless, mellifluous wail, occasionally pushing itself into an outright howl. Its the embodiment of the songs striver sensibility an instrument being pushed, arguably, to its limits.

Listening now, its almost funny to think of Youre the Voice as a protest song: capturing the profound individualism of the 80s, history has all but buffed away the tracks anti-nuke origins. Instead, it just feels as though it may have been written as a kind of battler anthem, or a simple call for unity. (In contrast to other hits of 1986, of course decidedly apolitical songs including Diana Rosss Chain Reaction or Starships We Built This City you can understand its resonance.) For Farnham, it was a lifeline.

Although it was initially rejected by radio stations because of its associations with Johnny Farnham, the track became a huge success, totally revitalising the singers career and leading to its associated album, Whispering Jack, becoming Australias all-time highest-selling album by an Australian artist. Its a once-in-a-lifetime success story to match a once-in-a-lifetime anthem.

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Make a noise and make it clear! How John Farnhams Youre the Voice became Australias anthem - The Guardian

Let New York State Senators hear your voice! Create a nysenate.gov user profile and set custom alerts for issues you care about, comment and vote 'yea' or 'nay' on bills, and access live streaming and archived Senate videos.

ALBANY Kaylin Gillis, the 20-year-old youth killed in a driveway shooting in Washington County in April, was repeatedly mentioned in a state Senate Codes Committee debate on a proposed Stand Your Ground law.

State Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, is a co-sponsor of the proposed law that would eliminate a requirement that an individual facing a realistic threat must retreat before using force, including deadly force, in self-defense.

I will be opposing this bill mainly in the name of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, who was shot twice after ringing the wrong doorbell (in Missouri) and Kaylin Gillis, who was shot after entering the wrong driveway, said Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, D-Manhattan, at the May 3 committee hearing, a video of which is posted on YouTube.

Contacted later, Assemblyman Matt Simpson, R-Horicon, who supports the proposed Stand Your Ground legislation, said the death of Gillis is not applicable to the legislation, because it was clear that Gillis did not pose a threat to Kevin Monahan, who fatally shot her.

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Gillis was a passenger in a car that turned around in Monahans driveway in Hebron when the group got lost.

I think it is clear that her party were not threatening to him, said Simpson, in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

The committee voted 9-4 against advancing the legislation S 1120 for further consideration in the Senate.

Friends of Kaylin Gillis cried as they gathered in Fort Hardy Park in Schuylerville on Thursday night to mourn the loss of the 2021 Schuylerville High School graduate.

I dont know that we need to be a Stand Your Ground state, in my opinion, at all, said Sen. Jamaal Bailey, D-Bronx, the committee chairman.

Sen. George Borrello, R-Hanover, the principal sponsor, told the committee that the legislation would allow the use of force in self-defense if the person threatened was lawfully in place.

This law is really about giving people the right to defend themselves, he said.

Borrello emphasized that under the proposed law there must be a reasonable eminent threat and the individual responding to the threat must be lawfully in place.

This is not about vigilantes running around. This is about defending yourself and your family, he said.

Borrello said perhaps the most significant change in the legislation would be in civil law.

It puts the burden on those that are trying to sue the person that there was not a justified use of force, versus the burden being on the person who defended themselves, he said.

Borrello said that 40 other states have so-called Stand Your Ground laws.

The decision to hold the man accused of shooting and killing 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis in April, in jail without bail was upheld by a Warren County judge on Thursday morning.

Debate centered around whether the proposed law would increase or decrease deadly shootings.

Sen. Dean Murray, R-Long Island, a supporter of the legislation, said it would not increase unjustified shootings.

With or without this legislation, someone who is that deranged that is going to shoot someone for no reason it happened in Washington County, a young lady turning around in a guys driveway I dont think this law is the impetus for doing that, he said.

Murray criticized the handling of a case in which Jose Alba, a Manhattan bodega clerk was charged with murder after he grabbed a knife and stabbed an angry customer who jumped over the counter and pinned Alba to a wall.

The charge was later dismissed.

The message that was sent was: Youre not allowed to defend yourself. If you even try, you could be in trouble, Murray said.

Opponents of the proposed law said in Albas case, due diligence was done and it was determined the charge should be dropped.

Murray said the proposed law, on the other hand, would send the message that you are allowed to protect yourself. You are allowed to protect your family.

Supporters of the proposed legislation said it would be a deterrent to crime in New York City.

Sen. Roxanne Presaud, D-Brooklyn, said crime is an issue statewide.

I havent seen lately in New York City where someone took a wrong turn in someones driveway and someone came out and shot at a car with four people in it and killed a young woman because she turned into the wrong driveway. And it was not threat. They were driving away, she said.

Stec, who does not serve on the Codes Committee, did not return voice mail messages The Post-Star left on Tuesday and Thursday seeking comment for this report.

Maury Thompson covered local government and politics for The Post-Star for 21 years before he retired in 2017. He continues to follow regional politics as a freelance writer.

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Washington County driveway killing raised in 'Stand Your Ground ... - The Post Star