tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73024930122081182042024-03-09T18:47:41.010-08:00The Worden Report - International RelationsDr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-78266611831188482882024-02-23T13:56:00.000-08:002024-02-23T13:56:29.145-08:00On the Role of Agribusiness in Global Warming<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Agriculture is a major source
of carbon and methane emissions, which in turn are responsible for the general
trend of the warming of the planet’s atmosphere and oceans. In fact,
agriculture emits more than all of the cars on the roads. 10 percent of the
emissions carbon dioxide and methane in the U.S. come from the agricultural
sector. Livestock is the biggest source of methane. Cows, for example, emit
methane. Methane from a number or sources, including the thawing permafrost, accounted
for 30 percent of global warming in 2023. As global population has grown exponentially
since the early 1900s, herds of livestock at farms have expanded, at least in
the U.S., due to the increasing demand.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
We are biological animals, and we too must eat. More people means that more
food is needed, and the agricultural lobby in the U.S. is not about to let the
governments require every resident to become a vegetarian. Indeed, the economic
and political power of the large agribusinesses in the U.S. have effectively
staved off federal and state regulations regarding emissions. It comes down to
population, capitalism, and plutocracy warping democracy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In the early 80s, the farm
lobby in the U.S. “began to get concerned about environmental regulations” and
made sure the FDA would not regulate American farms.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The EPA has delegated permits to the States, but they have been “uneven in
issuing permits. In 2009, a law barring the EPA from applying clear air regulations
to livestock” took effect.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The agriculture lobby has thus been “extremely effective.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
This has been so even in spite of the Paris Agreement reached in 2016, and the
steadily increasing average global temperatures. A U.S. Government-sponsored
report admits that increased demand/consumption of meat impacts climate change,
which in itself is interesting given all the political donations and lobbying
by the agribusiness companies in the U.S., but the report concludes that people
in developing countries should eat less meat.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Apparently Americans are uniquely privileged to die of heart-disease. Perhaps
the hospital lobby wants to encourage more business thanks to third-party
payors.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The figures on the political
contributions and lobbying by agribusinesses (and oil companies) are
mind-blowing. For instance, American agribusiness spent a record $165 million
on federal lobbying in 2022.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
A total of $128 million went to political contributions to campaigns in the 2021-2022
cycle.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The sheer amounts spent lend credibility to the claim that wealth rather than
votes rule: plutocracy over the veneer of democracy in America. The capture of
regulatory agencies by the companies or industries being regulated has existed
in the academic literature since at least the 1980s. So too has the strategic
use of regulation. For example, the capture of methane at farms through technology
qualifies for government subsidies, but only the bigger agribusinesses can
afford this technology. Additionally, JP Morgan and other large banks have been
lending primarily to large agribusinesses because they are less risky than
smaller farms. It is no surprise, when all is said and done, that medium and
small farms have been going out of business for decades. I submit that this
cannot be explained by economies of scale alone.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">To be sure, a lot of agribusinesses
have pledged to be more transparent on the emissions from operations, but very
few of the businesses report on the bulk of their emissions.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Transparency only goes so far until entrenched concentrations of economic
wealth (e.g., agribusinesses) find that holding the curtains open too much can
hurt business. Moreover, both the political donors and their “elected representatives”
both have an interest in maintaining the veneer that the public interest is
being served. Adam Smith’s invisible hand only works in a competitive market,
whereas neither agribusiness nor the market for political donations in Congress
is a competitive market. In <i>Wealth of Nations</i>, Smith does not apply the
competitive-market price mechanism to government. In fact, political
contributions from businesses can be thought of as a special case of
price-fixing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The encroachments of
plutocracy on representative democracy are largely hidden from view, and the
corruption does seem to be ineluctable. Given large enough concentrations of
private wealth, the buying of political power seems inevitable. Smith wrote as
much concerning the use of government by managements outweighing the ability of
labor unions to do just that. He predicted the strikes and the one-sided involvement
of police and even military troops. The cost of plutocracy at the expense of
the public good is much more since public good and the viability of our species
came to depend on our baleful impact on the earth’s climate and ecosystems. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even so, the negative impact of a political economy
of business is dwarfed by the negative impact from the sheer growth of the human
population on this planet since the 1800s. As intractable as the partisan,
self-serving, and narrow involvement of business in government is, it would be
difficult for a population that has gone from 2 billion to 7 billion in the
twentieth century to begin to trim the sails by discouraging population growth.
For one thing, reducing the number of potential consumers would be bad for
business.</span></p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
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<div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">1.</span> Georgina
Gustin, “Climate Change and Agriculture,” Yale University, February 22, 2024.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">2. </span>Ibid.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">3.</span> Ibid.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">4.</span> Ibid.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">5.</span> Ibid.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">6. </span>Madison McVan, “<a href="https://investigatemidwest.org/2023/02/16/graphic-agribusiness-spent-a-record-breaking-165-million-on-federal-lobbying-last-year/"><span style="color: #783f04;">GRAPHIC:
Agribusiness Spent a Record-breaking $165 million on Federal Lobbying Last Year</span></a>,”
Investigate Midwest, February 16, 2023.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">7.</span> “<a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib?cycle=2022&ind=A"><span style="color: #783f04;">Agribusiness
Top Contributors</span></a>,” Open Secrets.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">8. </span>Georgina
Gustin, “Climate Change and Agriculture,” Yale University, February 22, 2024.</div><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><o:p></o:p></p>
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</div><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-84063387640200723712024-02-22T11:15:00.000-08:002024-02-24T13:21:13.479-08:00Energy and Global Population<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There is a temptation,
especially since the global average temperature reached the 1.5C increase threshold in 2023 much faster than anticipated, to focus narrowly on the
progress in renewable energy sources without placing it in perspective relative
to the total amount of energy being used globally, the annual increases in
energy demand, and the root cause, the explosive growth in human population
since the early 20<sup>th</sup> century. The strategic geo-political
international interests of countries impacted and should thus be considered as
well. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">According to Nick Butler, a
former advisor at BP, a European oil company, the global use of energy
increased 4-fold by 2024 since 1965. The increased use of energy commercially has
led to increased trade as supply has become global. The world has thus become
even more interdependent, which means that yet another basis for political
instability has sprung up. Interruptions in supply led to a political push in
the U.S. for energy independence. Even though as of 2024 every country still depended
on the global trade in energy, the U.S. was trending towards energy
independence and could eventually even be in a position of being able to export
energy supplies without importing any. It’s debatable, however, whether
exporting energy increases a country’s power. It had not worked for OPEC in
managing prices, although the oil shocks in 1974 and 1979 gave the impression
that OPEC could have considerable leverage over the U.S. As it turned out, substitution
and the development of new supplies undercut OPEC’s higher prices. In contrast,
Butler contends, building up sources of energy <i>is</i> a source of wealth,
though political instability can also result as fights can break out over the
new wealth.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Besides being at odds with
efforts to reduce carbon emissions if the stock is exported to be consumed,
maximizing stocks of oil, natural gas, and coal as a source of a country’s
wealth be wrongheaded. It may suffer from the same fallacy that is in
mercantilism. Under that economic policy, a country minimizes imports and
maximizes exports in order to accumulate as much silver and gold as possible. According
to Adam Smith, “The exportation of gold and silver in trade might frequently be
advantageous to the country.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Historically, “the exportation of gold and silver in order to purchase foreign
goods, did not always diminish the quantity of those metals in the [British]
kingdom. That, to the contrary, [the exportation] might frequently increase
that quantity.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> This
still assumes that increasing the stocks represents an increase in a country’s
wealth. Before critiquing that assumption, let’s look at the argument wherein
exporting gold and silver to pay for imports actually winds up increasing the
domestic supply of those metals to a net-increase.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">How could trading away some of
those precious metals that were used as money <i>increase </i>a country’s wealth?
If a country has gold and silver in surplus, part of it could be exchanged “for
something else, which may satisfy a part of [the domestic] wants, and increase
[the people’s] enjoyments” at home.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The benefits from the exports of the metals to pay for imports of goods extend
back to domestic manufacturers being able to produce more output, given the
increased demand, and thus increase the division of labor—Smith’s big thing!—and
thereby produce goods more efficiently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According
to Smith, “By means of [the increased demand], the narrowness of the home
market does not hinder the division of labour in any particular branch of art
or manufacture from being carried to the highest perfection.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The increased division of labor enhances efficiency of production, which in
turn makes the pricing of exports more competitive, and thus demand increases.
As exports to satisfy the increased foreign demand for the goods rise, the gold
and silver that are used abroad to pay for the goods come into the home country
and thus increase its supply of the two metals.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">As for the need to increase
the holdings of gold and silver as much as possible, the assumption that this
enhances a country’s ability to fight a war is something else that Smith
contests in his text. Regarding the need for stocks of silver and gold from
which to be able to send abroad some in order to pay for the home army while it
is fighting abroad, “(t)he commodities most proper for being transported to
distant countries, in order to purchase there, either the pay and provisions of
an army, or some part of the money of the mercantile republick (sic) to be
employed in purchasing them, seem to be the finer and more improved
manufactures.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> These,
rather than sending silver and gold, have the benefit of increasing the demand
of manufactures. “The enormous expense of the late war,” Smith contends, “must
have been chiefly defrayed, not by the exportation of gold and silver, but by
that of British commodities of some kind or other.”<a href="file:///C:/Users/euand/OneDrive/Desktop/Essays%20IN%20PROGRESS/Energy%20and%20Security.docx#_edn7" name="_ednref7" style="mso-endnote-id: edn7;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a>
So the need to accumulate silver and gold by minimize the imports of
manufactured goods while maximizing exports—the key tenet of mercantilism—is,
according to Smith, less beneficial than free-trade. Moreover, he holds that the
market mechanism is much better than government fiat in allocating goods,
services, and even metals used as money and wealth.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Similarly, perhaps exporting
other commodities than coal, liquified natural gas, and oil might benefit the
U.S. more by enhancing the efficiency of domestic producers of other goods (and
services), especially if economies of scale exist, and increasing employment
since more workers would be required and each could be more efficient and thus
valuable to the companies. Additionally, carbon emissions would not be as high were
the U.S. to sit on, rather than export, its stockpiles of “dirty” energy
sources.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Admittedly, the pressure from
unmet energy demand in other countries that are not energy-independent would
tempt the U.S. Government and American companies to respectively allow and make
more exports of coal, liquified natural gas, and oil because such sales would
be lucrative. Behind this pressure is the relationship between a steeply
growing global population and the ongoing prevalence of the “dirty” energy
sources in meeting the increasing demand from an exponentially growing
population. Indeed, because of shale, the US had become the largest exporter of
natural gas in the world by 2024.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">As of February, the world had
4 billion more people than in 1970. That translates into a 10,000 increase per
hour, which in turn means 200 million <i>new </i>customers for commercial
energy supplies every year.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Along with the increased global population, oil consumption increased by 150%
since 1970. Because renewables were still focused on electricity, which was
only one fourth of energy demand globally in 2023, the “dirty” sources were
still supplying most of the <i>increased </i>demand.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Put another way, the increased supply of renewables was not even keeping up
with the annual increases in demand for energy. In spite of the carbon-emission
targets, oil and gas still accounted for 80% of global energy in early 2024.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[10]</span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Most of the increase in energy
demand and all the increase in carbon emissions during the previous 20 years
was in Asia Pacific (esp. China).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
2024, China was importing a lot of energy supplies—even markedly changing the
patterns of global trade away from the U.S. being the dominant import market—and
accounted for about a third of total global emissions.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Crude oil imports doubled from 2013 and 2023.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[12]</span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Unfortunately, forecasts did
not include a dramatic reduction in oil and coal use. In China, 300 million
poor people in China were projected in 2024 to move into the middle class by
2050. This means more energy use, and thus more oil and gas. Nuclear energy was
being developed there, but coal was still a major source of employment in 2023,
and fit the Party’s goal of shifting wealth inland. Also, wanting to be the
world’s leading industrial power is not in the direction of decreasing the
commercial demand for energy.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[13]</span></span></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It is important to include the
impact on international relations. As of the start of 2024, China was dependent
on imports from Russia and the Middle East. As the U.S. strategic oil-imports
interest in policing the Middle East diminishes as the U.S. gets closer to
energy independence, the increased interest of China in exercising control in
that region meant that a new conflict-zone might open up between the two
empires.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">With the world going from over
8 billion people in late 2023 to a projected nearly 10 billion in 1045, we can
anticipate more demand for energy, and with it, more international (and
domestic) instability. With plenty of oil still in the ground and decreased demand
due to substitutes such as electric cars and nuclear energy, the world won’t
run out of oil.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> This
is bad news for our species as the planet continues to warm. Even as the press
highlights the increase in renewable energy sources, the default is much, much
larger and thus diminishing the share of “dirty” sources will not come as
quickly as we might think. In short, we are in quite a mess as a species both
because it isn’t easy to reduce our sluggish reliance on sluggish oil and
invisible gas, and our global population grew so fast and so much in the 20<sup>th</sup>
century and has continued to increase in the first two decades of the next
century that, as biological organisms needing external sources of energy, the
energy demand of our species is likely to keep on increasing even if we become
more efficient. The expediential increase in population can be so large that
its baleful effects outweigh any gain from increased efficiency. Again, the
baseline is so massive that changes from greater efficiency merely mitigate the
increased harm done. </span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Similarly, the large amount of energy consumption from “dirty”
sources relative to the increased supply from renewables renders any shift very
gradual. The Titanic could not turn fast enough to avoid the iceberg in 1912
because the rudder was too small for the mass, and thus momentum, of the ship.
We would like to turn away from “dirty” sources of energy, but our rudder pales
in comparison to the magnitude (and proportion) of those sources. We need a
bigger rudder, or we too may flounder. The global economy does not “turn on a
dime.”</span></p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">1.</span></span></span></span> Nick Butler, Lecture on Energy and Security,
Yale University, February 15, 2024.<br /><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">2. Adam
Smith,<i> An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,</i> 4<sup>th</sup>
edn., R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd, ed.s (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 1776/1976), sec 9, p. 433.<br /></span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">3.</span></span></span></span> Ibid., sec 7, p. 431.<br />4. Ibid., sec 31, p. 446.<br />5. Ibid., sec 31, pp. 446-47.<br />6. Ibid., sec 29, p. 444.<br />7. Ibid., sec 27, p. 443.<br />8. Nick Butler, Lecture on Energy and Security, Yale
University, February 15, 2024.<br />9. Ibid.<br />10. Ibid.<br /><o:p></o:p><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">11.</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Ibid.<br /><o:p></o:p><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">12.</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">13.</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">14.</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.</span></div><p class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: justify;"><o:p></o:p></p>
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</div><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-4964632424669286772024-02-18T14:38:00.000-08:002024-02-19T15:57:09.928-08:00On the Impotency of International Law in a System of Sovereign States: The Case of Gaza<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The sheer brazenness with which countries
ironically recognized as being sovereign states by international law ignore
international law even in regard to human rights that seeks to place boundaries
on said sovereignty reflects the impotency of international law, and thus even
that which recognizes national sovereignty itself. For the rest of us,
continuing to believe that upcoming cases before the International Court of
Justice, the UN’s court, are of consequence and thus even worth paying attention
to, demonstrates abject stupidity, as if we were herd animals without learning
curves. Admittedly, the stubborn, self-aggrandizing governments are ethically
worse than the world’s population that lets such governments blatantly and even
explicitly ignore judicial rulings of the International Court of Justice (and
the European Court of Human Rights), but culpability can also be gleamed from
the public’s truly pathetic irrational belief that another case against a
country that has just ignored a verdict of that very court might just work in
curtailing human-rights abuses and outright, even genocide-scale, aggression
that outstrips even the sin of retaliation. Either I am blind or the proverbial
emperor is not wearing any clothes. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">As a case in point, in January,
2024, the International Court of Justice announced its preliminary ruling on Israel’s
military incursion into Gaza. “The state of Israel shall . . . take all
measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the
scope of Article II of the Genocide Convention,” the court announced.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The court had not reached a verdict on whether Israel was committing a
genocide, and but was saying that one could be in progress and thus Israel is
obliged to see that it does not, and this includes allowing more humanitarian
aid to reach the Palestinians. The health ministry in Gaza had reported that thousands
of women and children were among the more than 25,000 people killed in Gaza by
the Israeli army, which did not “differentiate between civilians and Hamas
fighters.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
In addition, more than a million Palestinians there had become homeless.
Because only 1,200 Israelis had died in the Hamas attack in October, 2023, the
scale of the harm in Gaza is beyond the scope of “an eye for an eye” and
retribution or retaliation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Because we humans have flawed
judgment concerning punishment for those who harm us, John Locke of the 17<sup>th</sup>
century in Europe claimed that a major legitimating function of a government is
in providing impartial judges so that vigilantes don’t have to dispense justice
in their own cases. He wrote, “it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for
men to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make men partial to
themselves and their friends . . . therefore God hath certainly appointed
government to restrain the partiality and violence of men.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
We are too violent a species to be able to be fair judges against people who
have rendered us as victims. I submit that this holds for sovereign states,
which are in a state of nature, Locke insisted, with each other because there
is no higher human power that can restrain their lust for violence that goes
beyond justice and even retaliation. This is precisely why an international
court with no enforcement power, such as in the UN having its own military
force with which to “remind” wayward states that they had agreed to be bound by
international law. The lack of any such army is, I submit, the proverbial
elephant in the room that no one wants to recognize and discuss. By the way,
this is precisely why I view my non-academic short essays as a form of charity
to my species in spite of itself. I don’t ask whether it <i><a href="https://thewordenreport-highered.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-humanities-on-climate-change.html">deserves</a>
</i>it—only whether my ideas can possibly help it. I suppose I am benevolent in
spite of myself, for I am human, all too human.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Before the court’s preliminary
decision, Israeli Prime Minister Ben Netanyahu had said that Israel’s “commitment
to international law is unwavering,” and yet he added that the “charge of
genocide levelled against Israel is not only false, it’s outrageous, and decent
people should reject it.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
He would doubtless not be a fair judge in his own case, as he would doubtless
throw that case out without letting it be heard. This is precisely why an
international court is crucial, and, furthermore, that it must have a direct enforcement
mechanism such that its verdicts will stick rather than be dismissed by a
guilty defendant. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In its preliminary decision (not
yet ruling on whether Israel was committing a genocide), “the court said Israel
must restrain from the destruction of infrastructure, should support more humanitarian
aid into the besieged Gaza strip and prevent calls to commit genocide against
the Palestinian people.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
In reaction to the decision, Netanyahu said, “Israel has an inherent right to
defend itself.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Exactly
two weeks later, he announced that he had “ordered the military to prepare a
plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of an expected Israeli invasion” of
the city.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Rafah had been home to 280,000 people, but the addition of other Palestinians made
homeless in other parts of Gaza increased the city’s population to 1.5 million.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Forcing that many people to move in a short time span could itself be considered
a violation of human rights if not part of a genocide. Also, the planned invasion
itself would likely violate the court’s decision, which specified that Israel
must not destroy the infrastructure in Gaza any further. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">As for the court’s insistence that
Israel let in more humanitarian aid, Israel actually “imposed financial
restrictions on the main U.N. agency providing aid in the Gaza Strip, a measure
which prevented a shipment of food for 1.1 million Palestinians” in Gaza.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Not even on a humanitarian basis was the Israeli government willing to heed the
decision of the court whose jurisdiction Israel had agreed to, and whose law
Netanyahu himself had said he respects so much. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There should thus be scarcely any
doubt as to whether Israel would adhere to the court’s decision on a case set
to begin on February 19, 2024 “into the legality of Israel’ 57-year occupation
of land sought for a Palestinian state.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Rather than focusing on Israel’s war with Hamas, that case concerns “Israel’s
open-ended occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Palestinian representatives planned to “argue that the Israeli occupation is
illegal because it has violated three key tenets” of international law: “the
prohibition on territorial conquest by annexing large swaths of occupied land,”
the “Palestinians’ right to self-determination,” and the prohibition of “a
system of racial discrimination and apartheid.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
In reading about the upcoming case, I felt an instantaneous rush of hope that
the issue that had led to the Hamas attack in 2023 might finally be definitively
decided by a neutral court rather than by the warring parties themselves by sheer
might and strife in lieu of weak negotiations and weak allies on both sides. I
had momentarily neglected to consider Israel’s response to the court’s preliminary
decision—namely in dismissing or ignoring it outright and perhaps even going even
further by adding a forced exodus from Rafah before another ground invasion. If
you tell another person not to sneeze in your face and yet it not only happens
again, but at an even closer range, you would naturally conclude that it will
happen again unless some obstacle is brought to bear on that person. My point is
that an international system in which there are no viable and enforced constraints
on state-actors is incompatible with there being real obstacles on the wayward
states. Relying on pressure from allies or even an impromptu coalition “of the
willing” is not reliable enough to count on as a counterweight to such a severe
flaw in the very fabric of an international system of unfettered sovereign
nation-states.</span></p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p><span style="font-family: times;">1. Thomson
Reuters, “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/icj-decision-south-africa-israel-genocide-1.7095027"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israel
Must Take Steps to Prevent Genocide in Gaza UN Court Says in Ruling on
Temporary Measures</span></a>,” the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), January 26,
2024.<br />2. Ibid.<br />3. John
Locke, “The Second Treatise of Government: An Essay Concerning the True,
Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government,” in <i>The Selected Political
Writings of John Locke, </i>Paul Sigmund, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co,
2005): 17-125, sec. 13, p. 22.<br />4. Thomson
Reuters, “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/icj-decision-south-africa-israel-genocide-1.7095027"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israel
Must Take Steps to Prevent Genocide in Gaza UN Court Says in Ruling on
Temporary Measures</span></a>,” the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), January 26,
2024.<br />5. <a name="_Hlk159162817">Brad Dress, “</a><a href="https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4431217-netanyahu-casts-off-genocide-case-vows-to-push-ahead-against-hamas/"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk159162817;"><span style="color: #783f04;">Netanyahu Casts Off Genocide Case, Vows to Push
Ahead Against Hamas</span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk159162817;"></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk159162817;">,” <i>The Hill</i>, January 26, 2024.<br /></span>6. Ibid.<br />7. Najib Jobain and Josef Federman, “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-02-09-2024-d3229eec6a85c071248d3ddc2de2a73e"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israel
Seeks to Evacuate Palestinians Jammed into a Southern Gaza City Ahead of an
Expected Invasion</span></a>,” The Associated Press, February 9, 2024.<br />8. John Gambrell and Phil Holm, “<a href="https://apnews.com/rafah-gaza-population-surge-photos"><span style="color: #783f04;">From 200K to 1.5M
People: Startling Images Show the Ongoing War’s Impact to This Small Area in
Gaza</span></a>,” The Associated Press, February 8, 2024.<br />9. Julia Frankel, “<a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-unwra-bank-aid-4ed5e0652dd81b875055679a01a19371"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israel
Is Holding Up Food for 1.1 Million Palestinians in Gaza, the Main UN Aid Agency
There Says</span></a>,” The Associated Press, February 9, 2024.<br />10. Mike
Corder and Julia Frankel, “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/top-un-court-hearings-israel-occupation-palestine_n_65d22ae2e4b0f7fbe7b2f289"><span style="color: #783f04;">Top
U.N. Court to Hold Hearings on Legality of Israeli Occupation</span></a>,” The
Associated Press, February 18, 2024.<br />11. Ibid.<br />12. Ibid.</span></p><p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
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</div><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-50951163633547592802024-02-16T15:41:00.000-08:002024-02-18T15:08:22.371-08:00The Humanities on Climate Change<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">William Paley claimed that the “university exists to form the minds and
the moral sensibilities of the next generation of clergymen, magistrates, and
legislators.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The assumption at Cambridge in 1785 was that both “individual conduct and a
social order pleasing to God can be known and taught.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> To
know what is pleasing to God outside of divine revelation was typically
considered to be presumptuous back then because human finite knowledge cannot
claim to encompass all possible knowledge. This could not even be claimed of AI
a couple decades into the twenty-first century. Although infinity itself is not
necessarily a divine concept—think of infinite space possibly being in the
universe—it cannot be said that humans have, or even are capable of having
infinite knowledge. Theists and humanists can agree on this point. So, when a
professor decides that a political issue is so important that using a faculty
position to advocate one’s own ideology in the classroom, presumptuousness can
be said to reek to high heaven. I assume that any ideology is partial rather
than wholistic. Both the inherently limited nature of human knowledge and the
presumption to use the liberal arts, or the humanities more specifically, to
advocate a personal ideology were firmly on display on a panel on what the
humanities should contribute on climate change. The panel, which consisted
mostly of scholars from other universities, took place at Yale University on
Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day, 2024. Perhaps on that day in which the two
holidays aliened, both fear of our species going extinct—literally turning to
dust—and love of our species and Earth could be felt. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That we can scarcely imagine our planet
without our species living on it does not mean that it could not happen; and
yet I contend that the humanities should not sell its soul or be romanticized
ideologically to be transacted away into vocational knowledge, as if the
humanities would more fittingly ask how to do something rather than why
something is so. Going </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deeper</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, rather than departing from its
intellectual </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d’être </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">to tread water at the surface, metastasizing
into training and skills, is not only the basis of the humanities’ sustainable
competitive advantage in a university, but also the best basis from which the humanities
can make a contribution in getting at the underlying source of climate change. Neither
a political ideology or skills in “knowledge-use” can get at that; rather, they
are oriented to relieving </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">symptoms</i></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: times;">.</span></span></span></p><p></p><div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">The full essay is at "<a href="https://thewordenreport-highered.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-humanities-on-climate-change.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Humanities on Climate Change</span></a>."</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><div id="edn1"><div><span style="font-family: times;">1. A.M.C. Waterman, Political Economy and Christian Theology Since the Enlightenment: Essays in Intellectual History (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 211. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">2. Ibid., p. 212.</span></div></div></div></div>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-46944755789797793382024-01-14T13:28:00.000-08:002024-01-14T13:47:39.947-08:00Record Global Warming and Carbon Emissions in 2023: Exponential Population Growth and Beholden Governments<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">I submit that not enough
attention is brought to bear on the root of the warming of the planet: the huge
increase in human population in the 20<sup>th</sup> century. More attention could
also be directed to the disconnect between the warming running up against the
1.5 Celsius limit agreed to by governments in the Paris Agreement in 2016 and
the still <i>increasing </i>amounts of carbon emissions from humans. Finally,
the culpability of governments in not being willing to touch economic growth or
corporate interests warrants attention. It as if an adult steps on a weight
scale and realizes, <i>I’ve never weighed this much in my life</i>, and then
eats ice-cream that very night. Unfortunately, the diffusion of responsibility can
inhibit governments, industries, and an electorate from having the sort of
cognitive dissidence that an individual who has a record weight and then eats
ice-cream—not even low-fat!—should have. Such dissidence should trigger changes
in conduct. Even so, business and government are comprised ultimately of people
and thus have been culpable and are thus blameworthy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">In
2023, Earth “</span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/heat-wave-flood-wildfire-smoke-climate-change-c36078efbcba515a4c67b7d9d0bbb9fd"><span style="color: #783f04;">shattered
global annual heat</span></a><span style="color: black;"> records, flirted
with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a
feverish planet, the European climate agency,” Coernicus announced on January
9, 2024.<a name="_Hlk156138104"></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk156138104;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk156138104;"></span> The use of the word, <i>shattered</i>,
seems hyperbolic, or exaggerated, to draw attention, but sometimes small
differences in numbers represent significant change that is difficult for us
non-scientists to perceive. “Copernicus calculated that the global average
temperature for 2023 was about one-sixth of a degree Celsius (0.3 degrees
Fahrenheit) warmer than the old record set in 2016. While that seems a small
amount in global record-keeping, it’s an exceptionally large margin for the new
record, Burgess said. Earth’s average temperature for 2023 was 14.98 degrees
Celsius (58.96 degrees Fahrenheit).”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Very gradual change is
the default for the Earth’s climate, which is why a long-term perspective is
needed even to assess the impact of carbon emissions on the climate.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black;">“The
agency had calculated that 2023 was 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees
Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. “That’s barely below the 1.5 degrees
Celsius limit that the world hoped to stay within in the 2015 Paris Climate
Accord to avoid the most severe effects of warming,” the agency’s deputy
director, Samantha Burgess, said.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> To be sure, not all of
the 1.48 Celsius increase from pre-industrial times was due to pollution. </span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“Malte
Meinshausen, a University of Melbourne climate scientist, said about 1.3
degrees Celsius of the warming comes from greenhouse gases, with another 0.1
degrees Celsius from El Nino and the rest being smaller causes. . . . Other
factors including the natural El Nino — a temporary warming of the central
Pacific that alters weather worldwide — other natural oscillations in the
Arctic, southern and Indian oceans, increased solar activity and the 2022
eruption of an undersea volcano that sent water vapor into the atmosphere.”</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">
Even so, 1.3 accounts for most of the 1.48 degrees, and is thus significant. This
can also be inferred by the estimate that “2023 was probably hottest year on
Earth in about 125,000 years,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center climate
scientist Jennifer Francis. Our species, homo sapiens, has only been around for
300,000.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">It looks like hope is
running dry on whether economies will push us—or, more accurately, whether <i>we
</i>will push ourselves—beyond the 1.5 Celsius limit of global warming agreed
to by governments in the Paris Agreement. To be sure, “(f)or the first time,
nations meeting for annual United Nations climate talks in December [2023]
agreed that the world needs to transition away from the fossil fuels that are
causing climate change, but they set no concrete requirements to do so.”</span><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">
However, even though renewable sources of energy had “expanded at record rates,
fossil fuels maintained an 82% share of total primary energy consumption”<a name="_Hlk155690586"> in 2022.</a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk155690586;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk155690586;"> </span>Even at the same share, “carbon
dioxide emissions from energy rose 0.9% in 2022 to a new high of 34.4 billion
metric tons, indicating lack of progress in curbing worldwide carbon output.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Emissions thus “moved further away from the
reductions called for in the Paris Agreement.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Juliet Davenport, president of EI, said, “We are still heading in the opposite
direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="color: black; line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> So
even in the midst of <i>shattering </i>records, governments generally were
still allowing their respective economies to increase their emissions, or at
least enough governments were resisting taking measures that would reflect
knowledge of how rapidly the planet was warming overall.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The lack of concrete
requirements had rendered the Paris Agreement toothless, and thus no match for
the pressures that governments are always under to facilitate and not thwart
economic growth and not to stand up to corporate donors to political campaigns
in democracies. More abstractly stated, non-binding international treaties are
no match for the human urge for instant gratification and the desire for more
wealth (i.e., greed). In spite of our great reasoning ability, our species also
has expediency “hard-wired” into our biology. A big unanswered question is
whether research into means to “capture” carbon in the atmosphere (and oceans)
will undo the damage caused by our species’ heedless impulsive refusal to
self-regulate itself.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In the movie, “The
Matrix,” agent Smith likens our species to a virus because we keep spreading. In 1900, the global population was 1.6 billion; by 2024, 8.1 billion humans were alive on Earth. Clearly, such a enormous increase in just 123 years must be significant for the planet's ecosystems, even a shock. Few of us even realize that, in line with Thomas Malthus’s thesis that
human population can outstrip the world’s supply of food—which stirred
controversy among Deists who could not accept such a large flaw in God’s design
of the Creation—the exponential increase of our species’ population is a, or
even <i>the</i>, underlying cause of the rising carbon emissions from cars,
trucks, heating, agriculture, and industrial production levels. Simply put,
more people means more cars, and thus more exhaust; more people means more
widgets, which means more factories as well as more freighters on the seas,
more trucking and more freight-train hauls; and more people means more
dwellings, which means more heating and air-conditioning, and thus more demand
for heating oil and on coal plants for more electricity. These relationships
are really quite simple at the macro level of aggregation, though admittedly I
am putting to the side the shift from coal and oil to renewables. We are all
organisms, and thus we cannot but consume and use resources; the more
organisms, the more food, for instance, is needed. Malthus, an Anglican priest
and political economist, was right in his <i>Essay on Population</i>, published
in 1798, when the global population of humans stood at 1 billion (1900, a century later, being just 650 million more). If an intelligent design of Creation can indeed be inferred—an
inference challenged by Malthus’ theory of over-population wherein geometrical
population growth can outstrip arithmetic expansion in
resources—self-regulation would presumably be crucial in our species and yet
the laggard responses to the Paris Agreement would suggest that we suffer a
want of self-discipline on a collective (and individual) level.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">From the susceptibility of elected representatives to being beholden to
big business, and the insatiable greed etched into the very </span><i style="font-family: times;">raison d’etre</i><span style="font-family: times;">
and </span><i style="font-family: times;">being </i><span style="font-family: times;">of a company and the manager function, we can infer the very
weakness of the human urge to self-limit or voluntarily restrain ourselves
relative to an otherwise maximizing, or schizogenic, inbred and
culturally-encouraged tendency to resist or ignore soft limits (i.e., those not
subject to enforcement). Fortunately, the jury is still out on whether the technological
advancements that human reason is capable of (e.g., carbon capture) will rescue
our species from its own intractable instinctual urges that are felt so
strongly in the moment that our species would even allow itself to deconstruct
in the long-term as if this were pre-determined without free-will. </span><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div><span style="font-family: times;">1. Seth Borenstein, “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hottest-year-2023_n_659d3ff4e4b0bfe5ff64bd02"><span style="color: #783f04;">Earth
Shattered Global Heat Record in 2023</span></a>,” <i>The Huffington Post</i>, January
9, 2024.<br />2. Ibid.<br />3. Ibid.<br />4. Ibid.<br />5. Ibid.<br />6. Robert Rapier, “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2023/08/01/why-the-world-keeps-setting-global-carbon-emission-records/?sh=77ac9c9d1231"><span style="color: #783f04;">Why
the World Keeps Setting Global Carbon Emission Records</span></a>,” <i>Forbes</i>,
August 1, 2023.<br />7. Ibid.<br />8. Ibid.<br />9. Ibid.</span></div></div></div><p></p><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-40411991912205437882024-01-06T18:43:00.000-08:002024-01-06T18:43:12.208-08:00On Israel’s Public Relations Campaign against the Charge of Genocide<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">In theory, state media is more
vulnerable to doing the bidding of its sponsoring government than are privately
owned media companies. In practice, governments are able to pressure even
private news outlets to sway public opinion for political purposes. Even allied
governments can pressure the government of a country in which a private news
company resides in terms of what stories to air and when to air them, in order
to sway that country’s public opinion, and even global public opinion. The
sudden appearances in print, online, and on television news networks of former
Israeli hostages being interviewed just after the International Court of Justice
had announced on December 29, 2023 that Israel would be tried on charges of
genocide in Gaza. Not coincidentally, I submit, emotionally-charged hyperbole was
used to pull emotional “heart-strings” in order to convince the world,
including the justices at international court,<i> </i>that the Hamas attack on
October 7, 2023 had been so bad that even Israel’s extremely disproportionate
military attacks in Gaza were justified and thus should not be considered to be
genocidal. Besides the logic being flawed, for the infliction of such
disproportional harm was not justified, and even a justified genocide would
violate the Convention on Genocide, which Israel had agreed to be bound. In
short, I suspect that much was happening behind the scenes not only in Israel,
but also in the U.S. Government and even private media companies in the U.S.
immediately following the Court’s announcement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">On December 29, 2023, the
International Court of Justice announced that South Africa had filed papers
accusing Israel of being “in violation of its obligations under the Genocide
Convention” because “acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in
character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to
destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national,
racial and ethnical group.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
On January 2, 2024, a spokesperson for the Israeli government “announced that
representatives of the country would appear very soon before the court to
defend Israel’s position.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Being a signatory to the Genocide Convention, which had been adopted by the
UN’s General Assembly in 1948, Israel was not only subject to the court’s
jurisdiction on genocides, but also obligated to send representatives to the
Court when a defendant. In anticipation, Israel unleased a public relations
offensive, which included not only Israeli media outlets, but also American
ones too, perhaps from pressure from Washington, an ally of Israel. Not having
proof of the complicity, I am basing my hypothesis on the very convenient
timing involved, as well as the fact that multiple interviews were published
and aired within days of the Court’s announcement. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Admittedly, the first casualty in
war is truth, but even subjectivity goes only so far before it becomes
hyperbolic or otherwise excessively manipulative (i.e., used as a weapon of
sorts) by twisting the meaning of words beyond recognition. In fact, the 20<sup>th</sup>
century philosophical phenomenologists, including Jaspers, Husserl, Heidegger,
and Sartre overrated human subjectivity in using it to anchor their respective
philosophies. Those philosophers and others like them may have been unduly pessimistic
on the potential of human reason because the horrors in the Nazi Holocaust had
followed the optimism in the Enlightenment in the 18<sup>th</sup> century. As
Nietzsche wrote, a philosopher is not a person of one’s day. This means that a
philosopher worth one’s salt thinks outside the box, as it were, and so one’s
philosophy is not unduly delimited by one’s immediate context. In short, the
decadence in the bloodiest century so far had swallowed the philosophical
phenomenologists. Meanwhile, analytic philosophers allowed themselves to become
reductionists in obsessing on language. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Israel’s government responded to being
charged with genocide by exploiting the worst of the 20<sup>th</sup> century to
stir the world’s emotions against South Africa’s accusation of genocide. In
particular, the Israeli government spokesman announcing that Israel would send
representatives to the court described South Africa’s accusation as “a blood
libel” against what <i>The Times of Israel </i>labeled as “the Jewish state,”
as if the South African ministers were antisemitic.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The intended allusion was to the Jewish origins of the state due to the blood
of the Holocaust, and an implicit claim may have been that the heirs of victims
cannot become victimizers, which is not so. Indeed, vengeance against current
adversaries can be intensified by resentment of the unspent justice against past
aggressors. Such disproportionate vengeance is not fair to the contemporary
enemies unless they were also the past aggressors. The Israeli government
spokesperson suggested such a link in labeling the South African government as
an heir of the Nazis.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In being aided by South Africa, the
Palestinians in Gaza too could be vicariously linked to an old enemy. I would
not be surprised to find press reports of the Israeli government ministers
referring to Hamas as Nazis so as to justify expending even the unrequited
vengeance in the previous century following the collapse of Nazi Germany. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Of course, the Israeli spokesman’s
“heirs of the Nazis” comment was wildly off the mark. Real heirs would not have
waited to see Israel’s wholesale destruction and killing in Gaza before
attempting a genocide <i>against </i>not only Israelis, but Jews anywhere. Also,
filing an accusation in an international court pales in comparison with what
heirs would have done, and is not even close to what the Nazis actually did to
Jews in Europe. In actuality, the South African government had pointed to the
obligation of <i>any </i>signatory to the Genocide Convention to report
possible genocides to the court. With more than 1.8 million Palestinians
displaced from their homes and Gaza residents facing the “highest levels of
food insecurity ever recorded,” according to the UN’s emergency chief, Martin
Griffiths<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>,
the natural human sentiment of disapprobation—a visceral emotional reaction of revulsion—had
more than enough stimulus to be activated worldwide, including in South Africa.
Hume refers to such an activation to be what ethical judgment is, underneath—a visceral
emotional reaction rather than a Kantian contradiction of reason. In heeding an
ethical obligation, the officials in the South African government were hardly
heirs to the Nazis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another allusion to the Nazis
occurred just three days after the court had announced that Israel had been
accused of committing genocide. Jake Tapper of CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2024/01/03/the-lead-israeli-mia-schem-freed-from-hamas-jake-tapper-live.cnn"><span style="color: #783f04;">headlined</span></a>
a former Israeli hostage, Mia Schem, who had been held in Gaza for a harsh 55
days at the home of a Palestinian family (hence thankfully rape was not
committed). Schem, a young, beautiful woman who obviously deserves much
sympathy for her ordeal as a hostage, nonetheless shamelessly described her
ordeal as incorrectly as “a Holocaust.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhExWW5stevu7wVhNHkpFwZ-w7xZsppu2vy7tYe7JDNcWRfHh-NVMQXSuRh7Mtf9upzbfSoZ62aK3yZk5KShTsU5dncFI5G7M_ehibxHuMb7xdngWl_aM_fOwo5jYj9aKqvF7dAB-NIwhsnM7Js7Q3wqawo18zCtR30W92XKh_1wZwbGaitmd3IjpuvoLY6/s872/Mia%20Interview%20final%20pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="260" data-original-width="872" height="95" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhExWW5stevu7wVhNHkpFwZ-w7xZsppu2vy7tYe7JDNcWRfHh-NVMQXSuRh7Mtf9upzbfSoZ62aK3yZk5KShTsU5dncFI5G7M_ehibxHuMb7xdngWl_aM_fOwo5jYj9aKqvF7dAB-NIwhsnM7Js7Q3wqawo18zCtR30W92XKh_1wZwbGaitmd3IjpuvoLY6/s320/Mia%20Interview%20final%20pic.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">The deliberate misappropriation of such
an emotionally-tinged word—<i>and</i> <i>that an Israeli of all people would
use the word opportunistically and inaccurately beyond recognition</i>—suggests
an underlying motive to manipulate public opinion. Ironically, survivors of the
<i>real</i> holocaust would probably bristle at the attempted comparison. <i>What
you experienced for 55 days is nothing like what we experienced in Nazi Germany</i>,
the retort might insist. The implication that the Palestinians in <i>occupied</i>
Gaza—a “ghetto” so called by Israel’s Finance Minister Smotrich (who also said
on the day after the court’s announcement that “Israel must reduce” the
Palestinian population there to 100,000-200,000 from 2.3 million<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>)—are
like Nazis conveniently denies the decades of oppression exacted by Israel on
the residents of Gaza and the obvious difference between the attack by Hamas of
October 7, 2023, including the taking and holding of hostages, and Nazi
Germany’s many atrocities over more than a decade. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Besides exaggerating in furnishing
a label for her ordeal as a hostage, Schem extrapolated in generalizing concerning
the entire population of Palestinians in Gaza. Interviewed on Israeli
television on the day the court announced that Israel had been accused of
committing genocide, she accused every Palestinian in Gaza of being a
terrorist. “Everyone there are(<i>sic</i>) terrorists . . . there are no
innocent civilians, not one,” she said.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
She based her empirical claim on the acquiescence of the wife and child of the
man who had held Schem in his home. No auditor would make such a projection to
a population of numbers based on such a small sample size. After Hamas’ attack
of October 7, 2023, in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 were taken
hostage, Israeli President Herzog had claimed, “It is an entire nation out
there that is responsible” as Israel was ordering 1.1 million Palestinians in
Gaza to evacuate their homes.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The implication to be drawn from both
statements is that retribution against every Palestinian there would be
justified. Indeed, reports from the UN suggest that precisely that was
occurring. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">Gemma Connell, Gaza team leader for
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), referred to conditions
in even north Gaza as, “No food, no water, very little medical supplies.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
By January 4, 2024, many people in southern Gaza had been “displaced not once,
not twice, but six or seven times,” according to Connell. With 2.2 million
people in Gaza “in desperate need of help,”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
South Africa was on firm ground empirically as well as ethically, whereas Schem’s
attempt to justify the wholesale annihilation of the Palestinians living in
Gaza was empirically and ethically spurious. In outlining plans for Gaza after
the Israeli military attacks, Israeli Defense Minister Yaov Gallant said on
January 5, 2024 that the Palestinian “entity controlling the territory” would “build
on the capabilities” of “local non-hostile actors” already present in Gaza.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Clearly, not every Palestinian in Gaza was a terrorist, and did not deserve the
onslaught of Israeli “collective justice” as if they were. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">I contend that Schem’s interviews
were part of a coordinated PR offensive by Israel that reached as far as CNN in
America. CNN interviewed another former hostage, Doran Asher, days after the
Court had announced the accusation of genocide. She was more accurate in
labeling the infliction of “psychological warfare” on her during her 50 days of
captivity in Gaza.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
CNN claimed in its headline, "This is what she wants you to know." My question is, who else wanted the world to know?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Who would have had the motive and political power to see it it that you hear or read her story?</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmq-2kQPYPMHyht1UKBQ9KDYcw41hTUhqyG_QTfkky5GEBOpQoYxrGamASPcZNdUy1TyFSOdUI-RAVvDD1vjXm2nBbRkAloK-sr3yz6drsN3bbqaatNb22dX8fUNoFZDM19w0_tm6hHAIyENIwxblVI5f6tAL9vfH9-X32aNvY0cwhyphenhyphencVtLfyP7QQn8THd/s682/CNN%20on%20Israel%20PR%20Offensive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="598" data-original-width="682" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmq-2kQPYPMHyht1UKBQ9KDYcw41hTUhqyG_QTfkky5GEBOpQoYxrGamASPcZNdUy1TyFSOdUI-RAVvDD1vjXm2nBbRkAloK-sr3yz6drsN3bbqaatNb22dX8fUNoFZDM19w0_tm6hHAIyENIwxblVI5f6tAL9vfH9-X32aNvY0cwhyphenhyphencVtLfyP7QQn8THd/s320/CNN%20on%20Israel%20PR%20Offensive.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">That she wanted to tell her story would not
have been sufficient to get her on CNN, which would surely not have been acting solely on her behalf. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">It can also be asked what did not make
it onto CNN. For instance, the American media had been practically silent in
putting the Hamas attack in the wider context of decades of harsh Israeli
occupation of Gaza, maintaining it as a subjugated “ghetto.” Not that enduring
such harsh conditions for so long justifies the killing and hostage-taking committed
by Hamas on October 7, 2023; rather, the context is explanatory, and could have
resulted in a global public opinion less dismissive of Israel’s vastly
disproportionate destruction of Gaza. The omission of proper context can point
back to CNN’s bias or the media company’s role as part of a broader PR campaign
possibly being pushed by the Israeli government to set public opinion against
the accusation of genocide in Gaza in spite of the facts on the ground there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">In conclusion, Israel’s attempt
to manipulate global public opinion (and even the justices at the International
Court of Justice) may have eventuated into the following narrative: The entire
population of Gaza committed a holocaust by killing 1,200 Israelis and
kidnapping 240 more. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every civilian in
Gaza is culpable, and thus is a legitimate military target and deserves to be
homeless and starving. Furthermore, any serious effort to hold Israel back from
its extremely disproportionate “collective justice,” which is an inherently
flawed ethical theory because even people living in the same geographical area
do not all have the same beliefs, values, and ideology, is to be discredited as
“blood libel.” Unfortunately for Israel’s credibility in its PR offensive, much
more blood had flowed in Gaza than in Israel, and this alone, rather than any
antisemitism, had brought South Africa to the International Court of Justice. While
it is easy to throw public-relations “bombs” such as <i>Holocaust</i>, <i>Nazi
heirs</i>, and <i>terrorists</i>, such irrationality is expedient, and thus may
end up working against Israel’s interests. For instance, by inserting Nazi-era
terms into the public discourse, calls for <a href="https://thewordenreport-highered.blogspot.com/2023/12/calls-for-genocide-of-jews-protected.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">a
genocide of the Jews</span></a> could be transformed <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from constituting hate speech to being merely
countervailing political speech. Additionally, the hyperbole could ultimately
undercut Israel’s credibility at the International Court and in the court of
world opinion. Viewing an opposing political position on the war as antisemitic
even though Israel’s military response had been so very disproportionate could erode
Israel’s credibility further. The attack of October 7, 2023 was indeed horrific,
as were the ensuing experiences of the Israeli hostages, but so too was the ironic
banality of evil in the decades in which Israel occupied Gaza as a “ghetto” subject
to the flawed ethical concept of collective justice. To say it has not been a
fair fight, even taking the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 into account, is
not to be antisemitic. Rather, the charge is political, as were the interviews
given by freed Israeli hostages.</span></p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">1.</span>. <span style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); color: #1d1d1d;">Pierre
Meilhan, Bethlehem Feleke, and Tamar Michaelis, “</span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/29/middleeast/south-africa-icj-israel-genocide-intl/index.html"><span style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); color: #783f04;">South Africa Files
Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice Over Gaza War</span></a><span style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); color: #1d1d1d;">,” CNN.com, December
29, 2023; Jeremy Sharon, “</span><a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-confirms-itll-defend-itself-from-gaza-genocide-claims-in-the-hague-next-week/"><span style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238);"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israel Confirms It’ll Defend Itself
from Gaza Genocide claims in the Hague Next Week</span></span></a><span style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); color: #1d1d1d;">,” <i>The Times of
Israel</i>, January 2, 2024.<br /></span><span style="background: #EEEEEE; color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">2. </span>Jeremy
Sharon, “</span><a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-confirms-itll-defend-itself-from-gaza-genocide-claims-in-the-hague-next-week/"><span style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238);"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israel Confirms It’ll Defend Itself
from Gaza Genocide claims in the Hague Next Week</span></span></a><span style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); color: #1d1d1d;">,” <i>The Times of
Israel</i>, January 2, 2024.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">3.</span> <span style="background: #EEEEEE; color: #1d1d1d;">Ibid.<br /></span><span style="background: #EEEEEE; color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">4. Ibid</span></span><span style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); color: #1d1d1d;">.<br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">5. </span>Heather Chen and Eve Brennen, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/05/middleeast/gaza-famine-un-warning-intl-hnk/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Famine
in Gaza ‘Around the Corner,’ as People Face ‘Highest Levels of Food Insecurity
Ever Recorded,’ UN Relief Chief Says</span></a>,” CNN.com, January 6, 2024.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">6. </span>Sanjana Karanth, “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israeli-official-gaza-ghetto-palestinians_n_6591f45de4b0b01d3e40260c"><span style="color: #783f04;">Senior Far-Right Israeli Official Admits Gaza Is a
‘Ghetto’ For Palestinians</span></a>,” <i>The
Huffington Post</i>, December 31, 2023.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">7. </span>Amy Spiro and Michael Horovitz, “<a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/freed-hostage-mia-schem-i-experienced-hell-everyone-in-gaza-is-a-terrorist/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIt's%20important%20to%20me%20to,not%20one%2C%E2%80%9D%20she%20said."><span style="color: #783f04;">Freed Hostage Mia Schem: ‘I Experienced Hell. There
Are No Innocent Civilians in Gaza</span></a>,” <i>The
Times of Israel</i>, December 29, 2023.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">8. </span>Paul Blummenthal, “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-gaza-isaac-herzog_n_65295ee8e4b03ea0c004e2a8"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israeli President Suggests that Civilians in Gaza Are
Legitimate Targets</span></a>,” <i>The
Huffington Post</i>, October 13, 2023.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">9. </span> Michael Rios, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-01-04-24/index.html">’<span style="color: #783f04;">No
Food, No Water, Very Little Medical Supplies’: UN Aid Worker on Devastating
Conditions in Gaza</span></a>,” CNN.Com, January 4, 2024.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">10. Ibid</span>.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">11. </span>Amir
Tal, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/05/middleeast/israel-government-divisions-gaza-plan-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israeli
Government Divisions Burst into Open as Ministers ‘Fight’ over Post-War Plans</span></a>,”
CNN.com, January 5, 2024.<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">12. </span>Christian Edwards and Bianna Goldryga, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/04/middleeast/israel-hostage-doron-katz-asher-interview-hamas-gaza-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Freed
Israeli Hostage Says She Endured ‘Psychological Warfare’ during 50 Days of
Hamas Captivity</span></a>,” CNN.com, January 4, 2024.</div>
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</div><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-34384504256030362312024-01-01T12:38:00.000-08:002024-01-01T18:27:09.792-08:00Toothless International Human Rights: Genocide in Gaza<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">It strains credulity to believe
that vengeance against the Palestinian residents of Gaza was not among the motives
of the Israeli government’s ministers in retaliating for the Hamas attack
against occupation on October 7, 2023. Within days, Israel’s president publicly
accused every Palestinian in Gaza of being guilty. Because it cannot be assumed
that every resident of Gaza who had voted Hamas into office was in favor of the
attack, and the residents who had voted for the PLO could even less be assumed
to be supportive of Hamas, the Israeli notion of collective justice is
ethically flawed. Deficient as a subterfuge for the very human instinctual urge
to inflict disproportionate vengeance, the espoused justification did not hold
South Africa off from charging Israel with genocide at the International Court
of Justice (ICJ). At the time, both South Africa and Israel were parties to the
Genocide Convention. Because the ICJ was at the time the principal judicial body
of the United Nations, the UN’s lack of enforcement power—notorious even on
resolutions <i>passed </i>by the Security Council—meant that even a conviction could
send the message that a national government can get away with even genocide. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">In its accusation, South Africa
claimed that Israel was “in violation of its obligations under the Genocide
Convention” in that “acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in
character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to
destroy Palestinians in Gaza.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
At the time (at the end of 2023), over 21.5 thousand people had been killed by
Israel in Gaza since October 7, 2023, far outstripping the 1,200 Israelis who
had been killed by Hamas and the 240 hostages during that period.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The disproportionality alone eviscerates claims of retaliation and thus “justice.”
That a significant number of the Palestinians killed were innocents, including children,
and 85 percent of the 2.3 million Palestinians there had been left homeless<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
and at least as many without sufficient food and medical care supports South
Africa’s claim that “there are ongoing reports of international crimes, such as
crimes against humanity and war crimes, being committed as well as reports that
acts meeting the threshold of genocide or related crimes as defined in the 1948
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, have been and may
still be committed in the context of the ongoing massacres in Gaza.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Also in the final days of 2023, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich publicly
accused the “2 million people” in Gaza of aspiring “to destroy the State of
Israel” so only a few hundred thousand should be allowed to remain there.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Hence, South Africa’s government stated that it was “gravely concerned with the
plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due
to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">One way to massively decrease population,
the use of “indiscriminate bombing” was, according to U.S. President Biden,
being used by Israel. Even though the unguided bombs could get at Hamas’
underground tunnels, the use of such bombs, especially in a densely populated urban
context, was prohibited by international humanitarian law. American
intelligence assessment suggested “that nearly half of the air-to-ground
munitions that Israel has used . . . have been unguided.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
The Israeli government put out the following statement: “Israel is committed to
international law and acts in accordance with it, and directs its military efforts
only against the Hamas terrorist organization and the other terrorist
organizations cooperating<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with Hamas.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Astonishingly, the statement added that Israel had been making “every effort to
limit harm to the non-involved and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza
Strip.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
This flies in the face of the nearly 2 million residents who had been displaced
from their homes and with the extent of starvation. Just weeks before South
Africa’s application, thousands of Gaza residents desperate for food had mobbed
food-aid trucks in the city of Rafah.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Even Israel’s finance minister admitted that Gaza was a ghetto (so decreasing its
population was justifiable).<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[11]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Masha Gessen, who won the Hannah Arendt prize for speaking truth to power as
Arendt did during the Eichmann trial, wrote that Gaza is “like a Jewish ghetto
in an Eastern European country occupied by Nazi Germany.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[12]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
That Gessen was herself Jewish and had lost ancestors in the Holocaust did not
stop her from “catching hell” for her statement. The presidents of Harvard,
Penn, and MIT also caught hell for asserting that the context (of the war) could
make political speech redressing Israel’s genocide with a corresponding one
against Israel protected as free (rather than hate) speech, while <a href="https://thewordenreport-highered.blogspot.com/2023/12/calls-for-genocide-of-jews-protected.html">Yale
caved</a>. Even a Yale alum can tip his hat to Harvard in the hope that Yale
might take a lesson rather than fortify its truth, and instead humbly improve. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">For its part, the Israeli
government was in denial. As South Africa’s charges were made public, the state
founded for victims of German atrocities had become a victimizer in striking
back with vengeful disproportionality, and yet this was too much for the
vengeful to see in their mirrors. The Israeli government’s Ministry of Foreign
Affairs played the antisemitic card in claiming that South Africa was “calling
for the destruction of the State of Israel,” which was blatantly untrue.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[13]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
For his part, Prime Minister Netanyahu was saying that the attacks would
continue for months.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[14]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Clearly, the Israeli government would dismiss any adverse ruling by the UN’s
court on crimes against humanity leveled this time against Israel. For nothing
short of a brick wall can arrest such stubbornness, especially when it is fueled
by disproportionate vengeance. Yet the UN has shown itself to be utterly
feckless, shirking even from standing up to its own members. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">The root of the problem that
enables a government to commit even a genocide with impunity, or invade another
country unprovoked (e.g., Russia) and intentionally bomb civilians, is the
absolutist interpretation of national sovereignty, which had come out of the writings
of Jean Bodin (c. 1529-1596) in <i>Six Books of the Commonwealth</i>. Given the
Reformation-fueled strife of his day, he “was convinced that peace could be
restored only if the sovereign prince was given absolute and indivisible power
of the state.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; line-height: 107%;">[15]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> The
state’s sovereignty was absolute. A century later, Thomas Hobbes carried this political
theory further in <i>Leviathan</i>. To be fully sovereign must include having
the last say on theological doctrine and Biblical interpretation. Hence, the
monarch in Britain is head of the Church of England. In the turbulent sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries in Europe, absolute sovereignty was deemed worth the
risk of the power being abused in tyrannical rule without any internal check.
As for any normative check by other monarchs, none of them would have wanted to
see their own absolute sovereignty impinged by an invading prince from another
realm. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">The norm that a government’s rule
is a matter of a country’s internal affairs had survived even into the
twenty-first century. The governments of Russia and China had been the most
explicit in insisting that this norm be universally accepted. With the advent
of human-induced climatic change and modern weapons of mass destruction,
however, we might expect the norm to be challenged, but the ongoing impotence
of the UN and the want of any serious proposals of reform that would involve national
governments giving up some of their sovereignty suggests that the norm still
had considerable staying power and would thus require a lot of energy to be
dislodged from its privileged status as the status quo default. In other words,
even as the harms from unchecked national power have increased tremendously,
Bodin’s theory of absolute sovereignty has remained hegemonic. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">So the Israeli government could
simply enunciate false claims and not really have to worry about anything more
than bad public relations from the charges at the International Court of
Justice. Even genocide in retaliation for a much lesser, albeit horrific,
attack could be protected by the sovereignty of the Israeli government. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">The silent culprit may be the
diffusion of responsibility globally as the rest of us watch the ongoing dire situation
in Gaza (and Ukraine) as if we were paralyzed from demanding that our
respective governments cede some authority militarily to the UN or a new international
body empowered to enforce its decisions. The governments refusing to go along
could be excluded commercially as well as diplomatically from those who have
been willing to be held accountable themselves and thus cede some sovereignty
in exchange for a voice (and vote) at the global table. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;">After more than a century of
tremendous technological development—my grandfathers, for instance, witnessed
the coming of cars, airplanes, radio, television, huge medical advances, and
even computers—the <i>retarded</i> condition of political development really
stands out—or should stand out—given the increased global interdependence and
threats, including the scale of harm that a government can commit by means of
military technology. That Nazi Germany could follow the Enlightenment should
give us all pause in the trust we place in our governments, including their
police and military forces. If we are Kantian rational beings, so too are we
capable of tremendous rage that can snuff out what Adam Smith pointed to as the
human imagination enabling sympathy for others in a “fellow-feeling.” Both
Putin of Russia and Netanyahu of Israel have recourse to tremendous military force
and yet arguably little if any sympathy even in the midst of such large-scale, <i>disproportionate
</i>suffering. That the two men can get away with continuing to inflict even
more suffering as long as they feel like it is reason enough for the defeat of
Bodin’s political idea.</span></p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div>1. Pierre Meilhan, Bethlehem Feleke, and Tamar Michaelis, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/29/middleeast/south-africa-icj-israel-genocide-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">South
Africa Files Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice Over
Gaza War</span></a>,” CNN.com, December 29, 2023.<br />2. Ibid.<br />3. Waffa Shurafa, Bassem Mroue, and Tia Goldenberg, “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/netanyahu-gaza-war-thanks-united-states-weapons_n_6590dec4e4b03057f5cd538a"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israeli
Strikes in Central Gaza Kill at Least 35 as Netanyahu Says War Will Continue
for Months</span></a>,” <i>The Huffington Post, </i>December 30, 2023.<br />4. Pierre
Meilhan, Bethlehem Feleke, and Tamar Michaelis, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/29/middleeast/south-africa-icj-israel-genocide-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">South
Africa Files Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice Over
Gaza War</span></a>,” CNN.com, December 29, 2023.<br />5. Sanjana Karanth, “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israeli-official-gaza-ghetto-palestinians_n_6591f45de4b0b01d3e40260c"><span style="color: #783f04;">Senior
Far-Right Israeli Official Admits Gaza Is A ‘Ghetto’ for Palestinians</span></a>,” <i>The
Huffington Post</i>, December 31, 2023.<br /> 6. Pierre
Meilhan, Bethlehem Feleke, and Tamar Michaelis, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/29/middleeast/south-africa-icj-israel-genocide-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">South
Africa Files Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice Over
Gaza War</span></a>,” CNN.com, December 29, 2023.<br />7. Ibid.<br />8. Ibid.<br />
9. Ibid.<br />10. “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-67741610"><span style="color: #783f04;">Chaotic Scenes as
People Run after Lorries Carrying Aid in Gaza</span></a>,” BBC, December 27, 2023.<br />11. Sanjana
Karanth, “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israeli-official-gaza-ghetto-palestinians_n_6591f45de4b0b01d3e40260c"><span style="color: #783f04;">Senior
Far-Right Israeli Official Admits Gaza Is A ‘Ghetto’ for Palestinians</span></a>,” <i>The
Huffington Post</i>, December 31, 2023.<br />12. David Mouriquand, “<a href="https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/12/18/author-masha-gessen-receives-german-prize-despite-comments-comparing-gaza-to-nazi-era-ghet"><span style="color: #783f04;">Author
Masha Gessen Receives German Prize Despite Comments Comparing Gaza to Nazi-era
Ghettos</span></a>,” Euronews, December 18, 2023.<br />13. Pierre
Meilhan, Bethlehem Feleke, and Tamar Michaelis, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/29/middleeast/south-africa-icj-israel-genocide-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">South
Africa Files Genocide Case Against Israel at International Court of Justice Over
Gaza War</span></a>,” CNN.com, December 29, 2023.<br />14. Waffa
Shurafa, Bassem Mroue, and Tia Goldenberg, “<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/netanyahu-gaza-war-thanks-united-states-weapons_n_6590dec4e4b03057f5cd538a"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israeli
Strikes in Central Gaza Kill at Least 35 as Netanyahu Says War Will Continue
for Months</span></a>,” <i>The Huffington Post, </i>December 30, 2023.<br />15. “<a href="https://iep.utm.edu/jean-bodin/"><span style="color: #783f04;">Jean Bodin</span></a>,” <i>Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy</i>.</div><p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p>
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</div><br /><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-45049540622651163792023-12-13T15:36:00.000-08:002023-12-15T01:52:06.780-08:00On Calls for a Genocide of the Jews: Harvard vs Yale<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">A university administration can
be susceptible to creating an unlevel playing field in the name of truth but with
political ideology in the driver’s seat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amid controversial political disputes wherein
ideology is salient and tempers are flaring, free speech can be arbitrarily and
prejudiciously delimited as academic freedom is eclipsed by ideological
intolerance. More abstractly put, the ideology of an organization’s dominant
coalition can be stultifying. During the fall 2023 semester at Yale, for
example, I attended a lecture at which the lecturer, a faculty member, held his
own topic hostage by deviating to an unfounded ideological presumption of
systemic racism in Hollywood. The leap in his assumption evinced an ideological
agenda capable of blocking even his intellectual reasoning, and the resulting
irrational intolerance easily impaired the academic freedom of the students to
even question the unfounded assumption or ask what had happened to the
advertised topic. Whether the label is systemic racism or antisemitism, the
highly-charged application thereof into a political dispute can be act as a
weapon to weaken or block outright an unliked political position and thus
unfairly limit free speech and even academic freedom. I have in mind here calls
for a genocide of the Jews as Gaza ceasefire rallies were occurring on college
campuses. Which is more fitting: university codes of conduct against
hate-speech or the protection of free speech, which is vital to academic
freedom and a university’s academic atmosphere? In other words, are such calls
more accurately classified as hate-speech or political speech? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The full essay is at "<a href="https://thewordenreport-highered.blogspot.com/2023/12/calls-for-genocide-of-jews-protected.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Genocide of the Jews</span></a>."</span></p><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-20206514673635115202023-09-23T12:39:00.003-07:002023-09-30T10:44:12.437-07:00European Federalism: Beyond “Sticks and Stones"<div style="text-align: justify;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Domestic governance is perhaps
more difficult than international relations in that real enforcement mechanisms
are in force only in the former. Flaunt a UN resolution and that feckless
organization is unchanged; if a state official flaunts a federal law, on the
other hand, the viability of the federal system can collapse as governors and
legislators in other states get the same idea. Before long, the states are once
again sovereign. Unfortunately, it is easy to get distracted by political
theater and miss such existential threats from the point of view of the
viability of a system of public-sector governance. Yet we depend so much on
governments, so to tamper with necessary beams (or cards, as in a house of
cards) is quite dangerous. Along with the governors of Hungary and Slovakia,
Poland’s top official knowingly compromised the viability of the European Union
(E.U.) in 2023, but, unfortunately, I don’t think many people stood up and paid
attention to the danger. Political theater staged for election purposes is more
tantalizing, which raises the question: who in the E.U. was watching the
proverbial store? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In response to Ukraine’s
President Zelensky’s depiction of Poland’s government as engaging in “political
theater” in making a “thriller” in objecting to the E.U.’s lifting the ban on
Ukraine crops traveling through and being bought in the union, Poland’s Prime
Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to the Ukrainian “never to insult Poles again.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
To remark that a politician, especially one up for re-election, is using hyperbole
to appease Polish farmers for electioneering purposes is not to insult the
Polish farmers or the Polish people as a people. So it is outlandish, not to
mention a bit strange, that Poland’s prime minister told journalists, “The
Polish people will never allow this to happen, and defending the good name of
Poland is not only my duty and honor, but also the most fundamental task of the
Polish government.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> If
so, then the Polish people had a terribly reckless judgment concerning the
rationale for war and the prime minister lapsed terribly in not knowing that
the primary responsibility of a government is to protect a people from being
attacked from abroad. Retaliating for <i>one </i>insult is not generally viewed
by political theorists as a legitimate (and even smart) reason to go to war. Furthermore,
“<i>Never insult us again!</i>” strikes me as childish. Were Zelensky to resort
to that jejune mentality, he might have replied, <i>sticks and stones may break
your bones but names will never hurt you</i>, and then stuck out his tongue
just for effect. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">One of the benefits of <i>representative
</i>democracy is that reflection by elected representatives who enjoy the
buffer of a term in office can hold statescraft off from the momentary
excitements of a mob. Both Plato and Aristotle viewed the mob as the bad form
of democracy. To Plato, reason in a just person and polis controls the
appetites, or emotions. Indeed, structures of governance, both public and
private, are instituted in order to subject flaring passions to reasoned-out
routes. As a E.U. state, Poland committed an egregious error when Morawiecki
refused to recognize the federal (i.e., E.U.) change of policy lift the ban on
Ukrainian grains in the E.U. In this respect, the prime minister’s political
tactics could compromise the viability of the E.U. as a system of public-sector
governance (i.e., a system of government). The E.U. is hardly alone; the U.S.
has also been susceptible to resistance from the governments of member states. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In 1832, the legislature of South
Carolina decided that it could lawfully void any federal law from being valid
within South Carolina; it was a matter of that republic defending its interests.
President Andrew Jackson sent troops to the wayward member state, whose
government had even drawn up an “exit” document, which was used in 1861 to exit
the U.S. In 2023, Alabama ignored the U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming “a
lower court that had ordered the state to redraw its seven-seat congressional
map to include a second majority-Black district or ‘something quite close to
it.’”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
After the decision in June, the Alabama legislature “again approved a
congressional map with only one majority-Black district.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Just as the history of the E.U. has included instances in which state
governments, and even state supreme courts, have ignored decisions by the
European Court of Justice, the government of Alabama was saying, in effect,
that rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court could be ignored. Considering that this
was hardly an open question, considerable gall as well as denial went into the
recalcitrance of the state officials. The judges of the lower court whose
ruling the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed wrote, “We are deeply troubled that
the State enacted a map that the State readily admits does not provide the
remedy we said federal law requires.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Flouting federal law is no small matter, as the supremacy of the federal
judiciary in adjudicating on federal law had long been established by U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Marshall’s ruling in <i>Marbury v. Madison </i>(1803). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In 2023, the governors of the
E.U. states of Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia announced that they would continue
to ban Ukrainian wheat even though the E.U. had just lifted the ban. Specifically,
the European Commission rejected the state bans on Ukrainian grains, dairy,
sugar, fruit, vegetables and meats.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
A spokesperson for the Commission said, “In this context, it is important to
underline that trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore,
unilateral actions are not acceptable.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Yet those states persisted. In fact, Slovakia and Bulgaria enacted bans! In so
doing, all of those states weakened Ukraine, which was defending its territory
against the Russian invasion. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The states
indirectly aided President Putin. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Because the E.U., like the U.S.,
was aiding Ukraine militarily, the illegal state bans thwarted E.U. foreign
policy too. The E.U. had “decided to suspend duties and quotas on a long list
of Ukrainian exports . . . , including many agricultural goods, in a bid to
help the war-torn country cope with the economic fallout from Russia’s war and
facilitate trade for Ukrainian farmers.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
So at the federal level, the decision taken involved an acknowledgement that
helping Ukraine as a matter of foreign policy to thwart Russian aggression
would entail economic costs within the E.U. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The governors of Poland, Hungary,
Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria had jointly written a letter to E.U. President
von der Leyen, “If market distortions causing damage to farmers in our [states]
cannot be eliminated by other means, we <i>ask the Commission </i>to put in
place appropriate procedures to reintroduce tariffs and quotas on imports from
Ukraine.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
As states being directly represented at the federal level in the European
Council, the recalcitrant five were obliged to abide by federal law rather than
be sore losers when their joint request was denied. For each state had agreed
to cede some sovereignty to the E.U. even in the federal qualified-majority-voting
procedure itself—not to mention the <i>exclusive </i>competencies, such as trade—so
to continue as semi-sovereign states and yet act if those states were <i>sovereign</i>
state, just as South Carolina had done and Alabama would do, is nothing short
of duplicitous and egoist. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">A federal system simply cannot
function viably if every state can decide for itself whether a certain federal
law is valid within the state’s boundaries. Such a federal system would reduce
to a confederation, in which governmental sovereignty resides with the members
(i.e., states). Just as the U.S. discovered from 1776 to 1789 in the Articles
of Confederation and the E.U. was discovering in 2023 both with regard to
raising money and enforcing federal law, a confederal system has too many
vulnerabilities to be viable except internationally. With a bicameral
legislature (i.e., the Parliament and Council of the E.U.), an executive branch
(i.e., the Commission), and a supreme court (i.e., the European Court of
Justice), the E.U. is not an international body; rather, like the U.S., both
national and international principles of governance are included in the system.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">So even though not nearly as
childish as making threats on the basis of an insult erroneously inferred to be
against the people, Poland’s refusal to recognize a federal law is much more
significant than even whether Poland would permit Ukrainian wheat to pass
through (or be bought within) the state, and definitely more important than
whether someone insults the Poles. When I was a kid in America, telling Polish
jokes was a stable. In hindsight, it seems so silly, and only a fool gets upset
over childish things. Certainly, heads of governments should not. Chief
executives of governments, and CEOs for that matter, should not talk to each
other as if drunk in a bar. Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers swore like a sailor
and was very immature in his “empire building” of real estate, and his
emotional immaturity was one reason why the investment bank collapsed.
Governments, however, cannot simply collapse, and so people who represent
others have a responsibility to talk like adults rather than children. Being an
adult includes being willing to submit to constraints, such as federal laws,
and even international law were they to be given any enforcement power.</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Maija
Ehlinger and Mariya Knight, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/23/europe/morawiecki-ukraine-zelensky-insult-poland-intl-hnk/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Never
‘Insult Poles Again,’ Poland’s Prime Minister Tells Ukraine’s Zelensky</span></a>,”
CNN.com (September 23, 2023).<br /> <span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ariane de Vogue and Fredreka Schouten, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/politics/supreme-court-alabama-redistricting/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Supreme
Court Rejects Alabama’s Attempt to Avoid Creating a Second Black Majority
Congressional District</span></a>,” CNN.com, September 26, 2023 (accessed September
30, 2023).<br /> <span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Ibid.<br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Robert Greenall, “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65292698"><span style="color: #783f04;">EU
Rejects Ukraine Grain Bans by Poland and Hungary</span></a>,” BBC.com, April 17, 2023
(accessed September 30,2023).<br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Jorge Liboreiro and Sandor Zsiros, “<a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2023/04/17/not-acceptable-eu-decries-bans-on-ukrainian-grain-imports-imposed-by-poland-and-hungary">’<span style="color: #783f04;">Not
Acceptable’: EU Decries Bans on Tariff-free Ukrainian Grain Imposed by
Neighboring Countries</span></a>,” Euronews, April 17, 2023 (accessed September 30,
2023).<br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<br /><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid., <i>italics </i>added. </div><p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p>
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</div><br /></div>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-14212373461364855502023-08-28T10:04:00.005-07:002023-08-30T08:09:54.482-07:00Oppenheimer<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">An artificial sun rose on an
otherwise dark night when the nuclear-bomb test named Trinity ushered in the
era wherein our species’ aggressive instinct could render homo sapiens extinct.
Given the salience of that instinctual urge—for we are related to the chimpanzee
species—the wise (i.e., sapiens) species can be its own undoing. For it took a
lot of intelligence in sub-atomic physics to invent the nuclear bomb, yet very
little smarts went into deciding to use it against Japan, an enemy that would
have lost anyway, in order to save American lives from having to invade the
mainland (as if conventional bombs could not have reduced the casualties). Even
less thought was put into the need to contain the proliferation of nuclear
bombs. Expediency without heeding long-term risk is not a virtue. Kant wrote
that even if our species were to institute a world federation, presumably having
nation-states that would be semi-sovereign as a check against global totalitarianism,
peace would merely be possible, rather than probable. This does not speak well
of human nature, and this in turn renders the Trinity test something less than
redeeming. “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” In the film, <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_3_nm_5_q_oppen"><span style="color: #783f04;">Oppenheimer</span></a></i>
(2023), Robert Oppenheimer reads from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita,
as a woman is on top of him in sexual intercourse. The irony of him being an
instrument of mass destruction as director of the Manhattan Project and yet
being engaged in potentially reproducing life with a woman is doubtlessly the
point of that scene. </span><span style="font-family: times;">Hindus who leap to the conclusion that Nolan is insulting their religion miss this point.</span><span style="font-family: times;"> </span><span style="font-family: times;">Had </span><span style="font-family: times;">the director included a scene in which Oppenheimer is
praying, for example for the Jews in Nazi Germany at the time, a quote from the
film, </span><i style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107007/"><span style="color: #783f04;">Gettysburg</span></a> </i><span style="font-family: times;">(1993)
would have been similarly fitting. In that film, Col. Chamberlain of the Union
army remarks, “What a piece of work is man . . . in action how like an angel!”
Sgt. Kilrain replies, “Well, if he’s an angel, all right then . . . But he damn
well must be a killer angel.” In the nuclear age, </span><i style="font-family: times;">killer angel </i><span style="font-family: times;">takes on
added significance. The question is perhaps whether we have left </span><i style="font-family: times;">angel </i><span style="font-family: times;">behind
as our species’ intelligence has outdone itself, whether in terms of developing nuclear
weapons or heedlessly emitting so much carbon that the Earth could someday be unsuitable for us. Or, can we catch up by inventing antidotes? </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The full essay is at "<a href="https://thewordenreport-film.blogspot.com/2023/08/oppenheimer.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Oppenheimer</span></a>."</span></p><br /><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-30077874353114572252023-08-14T14:25:00.001-07:002023-08-14T14:27:40.686-07:00Applying Justice to Nazi Jurists in the Context of the Cold War<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><i>Judgment at Nuremberg </i>(1961) is a serious film that enables the viewers to wrestle with the demands of justice for atrocities enabled by German jurists in NAZI Germany and the post-war emerging Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., for which the American military needed the support of the German people against the Soviet Union. The film accepts the need of such support as being vital in 1947, when the actual trial took place (the film has it as 1948). To the extent that acceptance of this assumption is deemed spurious, the viewers would likely view the tension as being between the need for justice, a virtue, and expediency, a vice. Accordingly, the pressure from an American general on the prosecutor to recommend light sentences so not to turn the German people against the Americans and thus from helping them in the Cold War can be viewed as being astute political calculation in the political realist sense of international relations, or else undue influence or even corruption of a judicial proceeding. <br /><br />The full essay is at "<a href="https://thewordenreport-film.blogspot.com/2023/08/judgment-at-nuremberg.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Judgment at Nuremberg</span></a>."</span></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-53294039895337016852023-07-12T14:06:00.005-07:002023-07-12T14:09:47.052-07:00Turkey’s President Enables Euroskeptic Ideologues<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">The European Union is not a
military alliance like the contemporary NATO or the ancient Spartan League. Nor
is the E.U. merely a free-trade agreement like NAFTA. In terms of the history
of federalism, the E.U. instantiates “modern federalism” rather than
confederalism. Whereas all of the sovereignty lies in the members in the latter,
governmental sovereignty is split between the head and its members in modern
federalism. Both the U.S. and E.U. instantiate modern federal systems, although
the U.S. originally instantiated a confederal system. In likening the E.U. to
NATA, Erdogan of Turkey unwittingly committed a category mistake. This in turn
weakened his attempt to leverage his power in approving Sweden as a country in
NATO with his demand that the E.U. admit Turkey as a state. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Just prior to the NATO meeting in
June, 2023, Erdogan stated at a news conference, “First, let’s clear Turkey’s
way in the European Union, then let’s clear the way for Sweden, just as we
paved the way for Finland.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Becoming a state in a political union, whether it is the U.S. or E.U., is
qualitatively different than joining a military alliance. Joining the latter
does not involve a transfer of some governmental sovereignty to a federal
executive branch (e.g., the E.U. Commission), legislative branch (e.g., the Council
of the E.U. and the E.U. Parliament), and judicial branch (e.g., the European
Court of Justice). A state in such a federal system is qualitatively different
than a country being in a military alliance because an alliance itself has no
governmental institutions and sovereignty. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">To characterize a state in a
union and a country in a military alliance both as “member states” is
misleading. In fact, efforts to do so may stem from an ideological “state’s
rights” (or Euroskeptic) effort to deny that the E.U. is a case of modern
federalism rather than confederalism. In remarking that “almost all NATO member
countries are European member countries,” Erdogan unwittingly fell into the
trap of the ideologues who refuse to recognize that the E.U. and U.S. fall within
the same genre of unions of states (i.e., modern federalism rather than
confederalism).<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 107%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Because
the term country implies full sovereignty, both E.U. and U.S. members are
states in the sense of being semi-sovereign political units in a federal
system. The U.S. states are members of the U.S., because they joined the U.S. from
being formerly sovereign countries (or assumed to have been of such status) and
the members of the U.S. Senate, which is based on international rather than
national law. The Council of the E.U. is also founded on international
principles, wherein political units rather than citizens are the members. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">It follows that the countries
that are members of UNESCO, the UN, and other international organizations are
not states thereof, and should not be referred to as member states. To do so in
an attempt to imply that the E.U., unlike the U.S., is also an international organization
flies in the face of the very existence of the E.U. Commission, the European
Court of Justice, and the European Parliament. International organizations do
not have legislatures and high courts and executive branches to implement law
and federal judicial rulings. That the Euroskeptic ideology denies this just shows
the downside of ideology in general as being intellectually dishonest as
regards empirical facts. To want to remake things as they presently are is one
thing; to claim or insinuate that things are already different than they are is
quite another. I contend that the Turkish president fell into the trap laid by
the intellectually dishonest ideologues in Europe.</span></p><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">1. </span>Hande
A. Alam and Christian Edwards, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/10/europe/erdogan-turkey-nato-eu-sweden-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Erdogan
Links Sweden’s NATO Bid to Turkey Joining the EU</span></a>,” CNN.com, July 10, 2023.<br /> <span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">2. </span>Ibid.</div><p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
</div><br /><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-38941095821185748422023-05-24T14:19:00.006-07:002023-05-25T23:17:25.752-07:00Putin's Fear: Autocratic War Triggering a Russian Revolution<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Having watched Oliver Stone's lengthy interviews of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, which had been taped several years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I noticed something very different about the autocrat's demeanor in a video made after a year of the war: his shifty eyes.[1] It was not difficult to infer that the former KGB spy's trained suspiciousness of people had intensified. At the very least, the man looked pensive or nervous. A few weeks earlier, an anti-Putin Russian group may have been responsible for flying a drone over the Kremlin to blow up the dome, and even more recently such a group may have attacked militarily on Russian soil elsewhere. </span></span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Putin may have been afraid of being assassinated. It is even possible that he had realized that a full-blown revolution could happen.</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: x-large;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEU7k3yS8wYeoSGjfLR2edSyTYpv4xirr0R_j1BPgxQU6y9LSvrZOA7-VhuTjiNG4I61PJG9miFLXmQLbUDhBHvUTJlyQtBLKd9bWVzZEOil5GVsUK643oV_GOZocovP0OyHGxDocC_KPby4pkLtT8To78fZAxPImoO3tKKDcmnmVUWtp-CXPytb6goA/s468/Putin1a.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="328" data-original-width="468" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEU7k3yS8wYeoSGjfLR2edSyTYpv4xirr0R_j1BPgxQU6y9LSvrZOA7-VhuTjiNG4I61PJG9miFLXmQLbUDhBHvUTJlyQtBLKd9bWVzZEOil5GVsUK643oV_GOZocovP0OyHGxDocC_KPby4pkLtT8To78fZAxPImoO3tKKDcmnmVUWtp-CXPytb6goA/s320/Putin1a.jpg" width="320" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDJKJat3k72kdxVWPYakixetniSIOoH767s2Dv8j5kuDjUeHHTSCQzTb-gnBC8vS8M1MZ-Y4SPZzRgOPr37yszJC2XjhP9YwVJ8SFcBxn8JhzBBvGg5crmjjmsASmO47UOnOrQVKzzaBBCoqXxxLrhqvJf5ezVAlcpG2KbblKP7JEKc1r08gX7RD9QKQ/s482/Putin2A.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="327" data-original-width="482" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDJKJat3k72kdxVWPYakixetniSIOoH767s2Dv8j5kuDjUeHHTSCQzTb-gnBC8vS8M1MZ-Y4SPZzRgOPr37yszJC2XjhP9YwVJ8SFcBxn8JhzBBvGg5crmjjmsASmO47UOnOrQVKzzaBBCoqXxxLrhqvJf5ezVAlcpG2KbblKP7JEKc1r08gX7RD9QKQ/s320/Putin2A.jpg" width="320" /></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnB56MpF9CnBJAhSK76MqQgYLHS6iX8r4CGwWwkMg-HwGagXCZcPyxB_KSe0yrqQgPlYST4Xn2iBOG_s10AQ97v__cArioiaTzu9J4UgU7srkV9vRCxIUwSBO7yK88pBRIh7WvH--zFK9OiqAUUkEC9T543wfp1drnECapWKdpqSIMnomz2mA0i5buEQ/s468/Putin1a.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="328" data-original-width="468" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnB56MpF9CnBJAhSK76MqQgYLHS6iX8r4CGwWwkMg-HwGagXCZcPyxB_KSe0yrqQgPlYST4Xn2iBOG_s10AQ97v__cArioiaTzu9J4UgU7srkV9vRCxIUwSBO7yK88pBRIh7WvH--zFK9OiqAUUkEC9T543wfp1drnECapWKdpqSIMnomz2mA0i5buEQ/s320/Putin1a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Days after an anxious Putin had sat down with the head of Russia's constitutional court, the head of the mercenary military Wagner group, which fights for Russia, warned that if Russia continued to suffer more casualties, "all these divisions can end in what is a revolution, just like in 1917."[2] It is highly improbable that Vladimir Putin would release power as easily as the weak Russian emperor Peter III did after just six months of his reign when Russian troops loyal to Catherine enacted a coup even though she was German and the Russians had been fighting a war against Fredrick's Prussia. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Whereas the Russian revolution in 1917 was in line with Russia's autocratic-state historical culture, a revolution against Putin could be in democratic direction because Putin had squandered the opening for democracy in the 1990's by incrementally tightening his reigns until it could be said that he had become a dictator. Russians were being locked up during the war just or calling the conflict a war; protests against the war were firmly put down by police wielding clubs. Police <i>initiating </i>violence against non-violent people, as if they were disobedient dogs, naturally triggers the impulse for democratic accountability rather than for tightened autocracy. While this impulse was up against a formidable cultural headwind when absolute monarchy was the norm in the world, the world in 2023 provided the prospective Russian revolutionaries with enough functioning democratic republics abroad for there to be a tailwind in moving in a democratic direction. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Of course, I am biased in that I was born and raised in a democratic system in which the ideology was instilled in me even when I was a child. Even so, I have not read of a country in which its dictatorship has been held accountable from within the system of government. Furthermore, Rousseau had a good argument against dictatorships in claiming that we are born free but live our lives in chains. The liberty is innate whereas the chains are artificial, hence, I submit, a natural right can be derived. </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div>1. "<a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/05/23/erin-burnett-monologue-map-putin-ukraine-17-century-ebof-vpx.cnn"><span style="color: #783f04;">Putin's Latest Move Includes a Map of the 17th Century</span></a>," CNN, May 23, 2023 (accessed May 24, 2023)<div>2. Rob Picheta and Mariya Knight, "<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/24/europe/wagner-prigozhin-russia-manpower-ukraine-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Wagner Chief Warns Russians Could Revolt If Invasion Continues</span></a>," May 24, 2023. (accessed same day)<br /><p><br /></p></div>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-23768140709219487452020-10-31T16:06:00.004-07:002020-10-31T16:06:53.389-07:00The Tyranny of the Veto: Eviscerating the U.N.<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on October 4, 2011, effectively tossing a life preserver, according to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i>, to Syria’s president. The toothless proposal would have condemned the Syrian government for its violent crackdown of popular protests in which more than 2,700 had been killed. The proposal’s language had been softened from targeted financial sanctions; the council would merely have been charged with considering unspecified measures after a 30-day period. Two reasons can be cited for the two vetoes: commercial ties and a vested interest in forestalling any more threats to the doctrine of national sovereignty.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The veto-provision itself of the Security Council can be questioned here, as it allows allies to protect even a government that has, in the words of Gérard Araund of the E.U., lost its legitimacy in the world. The <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times </span>reports that the arms contracts that Russia had with the Syrian government at the time of the vetoes were valued at $4 billion. “Beyond jet fighters and tanks, Russia has varied interests in Syria, like oil and gas and cement.” Russia is Syria’s fifth largest trading partner. Accordingly, Russia’s foreign minister issued a statement condemning extremists in Syria who were engaging in “open terror” through violence. Russia was betting on Assad. Aleksandr Shumilin, director of the Center for the Analysis of Middle East Conflicts, told the media that as “soon as it seems that the opposition has become comparable to [Assad] in strength and there appears a possibility they will win, Russia will change its behavior.” One could add that such a change would occur if and only if Russia’s commercial interests with Syria are threatened. This approach is known as realism in international relations. States pursue their own strategic interests internationally, taking for granted rather than challenging the system of sovereign nation-states that permits realism to be the driver even though it does not take into account the broader public good.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN;">The continued hegemony of the nation-state system and the impact of realism are both evident from the fact that even such a weak proposal could successfully be blocked against a government that had killed over 2,700 unarmed protesters. The message being sent by the U.N. is that a government can use its claim to legitimate force pretty much any way it wants. Put another way, an implication from realism in a nation-state system is that the U.N. is merely a conference, or discussion, without much attention to the broader (i.e., international) system of governance, at least in so far as the Security Council is concerned. We are thus left in a Bodinian/Hobbesian world wherein every government is looking out for its own narrow interests, which allow for governments to turn against their people.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN;">To be sure, opponents of the resolution did have a leg to stand on. They claimed that the no-fly-zone resolution on Libya had been abused by NATO bombing pro-Gadhafi positions even when no civilians were in danger. There was a sense in both Moscow and Beijing that the West had been using economic sanctions and military actions under U.N. auspices to further Western-friendly regime change. According to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i>, there “is a sense in both capitals that the West in general, and the United States in particular, is feeding the protest movements in the Arab world to further its own interests.” Both Russia and China are “determined to reassert their long opposition to anything that smacks of domestic meddling by outside powers.” Lest it be thought that this is for the protection of other governments or for national sovereignty as a virtue or ideal, Russia faced outside pressure concerning Chechnya and China has Tibet. In other words, the national sovereignty doctrine is a manifestation of realism, wherein international consensus is the result of narrow national interests rather than a view of the good of the whole.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN;">In defending Assad with the doctrine that ultimately protects them, Russia and China must also deal with the inconsistency in letting Assad get away with his killing spree while Gadhafi had killed less yet been stopped. In other words, why does Gadhafi’s opposition deserve help while those against Assad are “extremists”? If abuse of the Libya resolution by NATO were really the problem, then Russia and China could have insisted that U.N. officials oversee any action to defend Syrian protesters and report regularly to the Council, wherein Russia and China could nullify the resolution by a veto if either government suspected any abuse taking place. In fact, the U.N. Secretary General could designate Russia and China as coordinating the operation. The U.N. should not have delegated the Libyan operation so much to NATO, but this does not mean that the same thing would have to be accepted in an operation against Assad.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN" style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Going beyond the strategic interests esteemed in realism, the question of international governance can be broached, particularly as there are several truly global issues (e.g., global warming). The development of communications technology means that wholesale human rights abuses occurring on the other side of the world can be instantly seen. Out of this greater awareness, a greater groundswell of opposition to unfettered national sovereignty can be expected, with implications for how international governance is structured.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Given the greater need for international governance, the U.N. should be reformed from a confederation to a modern federation such that a few friends do not have sufficient influence to block a resolution against an abusive government. The veto itself should be eliminated, though this might require that a new organization be formed in lieu of the U.N. Otherwise, we will be left with a world in which Hobbesian sovereigns are allowed to violate their citizens’ basic human right to life while friendly government officials attend to their countries’ respective financial and political interests at the expense of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">system as a whole</i> and the general good. I contend that enabling violent, abusive dictators is not in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">our </i>good, so their friends ought not be allowed to prevent the international community from policing its basic standards. National sovereignty should be limited, just as international governance itself would be subject to constraints.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div></div><br />Sources:<br /><br /><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Joe Lauria, “<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204524604576611443084688006.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Russia, China Veto U.N.’s Syria Move</span></a>,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wall Street Journal</i>, October 5, 2011. </span><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Neil MacFarquhar, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/world/middleeast/with-united-nations-veto-russia-and-china-help-syria.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">With Rare Double U.N. Veto on Syria, Russia and China Try to Shield Friend</span></a>,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i>, October 6, 2011. </span></div></div>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-49867761695182438592020-09-25T17:01:00.001-07:002020-09-25T17:04:30.908-07:00On the Arrogance of Self-Entitlement during a Pandemic<p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In the midst of the 1918
Spanish Flu pandemic, libertarians in San Francisco, California objected to
wearing face masks. Other people there were simply fed up with wearing masks by
late 1918. The libertarians, who objected on the basis of rights, actually
prevented the Board of Health from renewing a mandate to wear masks.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%; vertical-align: baseline;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span>
In early 1919, another spike in influenza cases there led the board to put a
mandate in place. So in March of 2020, the failure of mass transits and retail
stores to enforce physical distancing and the failures a few months later to
enforce mandates on wearing face masks to reduce the spread of the coronavirus
can be seen as recklessness (and fecklessness) that could have been prevented
by looking back a hundred years. But could the willful disregard of store
policies and local law both by customers and store managers have been prevented
had business had heeded history? I contend that human nature, which had not
changed in such a short time by evolutionary standards, played the heavy, or
anchor.<br />The selfishness of business
managers can be regarded as the obstacle to historical progress in dealing with
pandemics. As against history and even “organizational learning,” the current
profit-motive wins over managers. God forbid that a customer be offended by
being confronted by a store employee for not wearing a mask even though
mask-wearing was “required” not only by store policy, but also by local law! Of
course, a store or business policy barring enforcement of a requirement
nullifies it, even if managers could not grasp this simple point. Also,
allowing customers to break a local law is itself criminal, even if managers
could not grasp this simple point. Ignoring a company policy and even local law
could somehow be justified by the interests of profit-seeking. <br />The selfishness and
inconsiderateness of customers came with a presumptiveness or sense of
entitlement to break not only store policies but local law as well. The mantra
by the individual that that individual is above store requirements and the law
rings with a shallow arrogance. The presumptuousness of the weak of being
self-justified brings with it a bad odor, Nietzsche would say. This pathology
was especially prevalent in places such as Arizona in the United States.<br /> According to Jeremy Brown, an
expert on the 2020 pandemic, it showed how strident selfishness can be. Such
selfishness, joined by the related lack of consideration and empathy for other
people, was perhaps greater than expected among American business managers and
customers. “I think that the message we’ve seen is that people are selfish to a
remarkable degree that I don’t think we’ve seen before,” Brown said.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%; vertical-align: baseline;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span>
That is, the refusal of retail managers to enforce a company requirement
because doing so might turn some customers away, and thus their money, is
steeped in short-sighted selfishness that recognizes no business responsibility
in society. Similarly, the refusal of customers to wear masks, which put other
people at risk, can show us just how much of a force selfishness can have in
certain people. “The selfishness of people and their inability to have empathy
for others who aren’t like themselves is one of the very, very worrying aspects
that the disease has highlighted, Brown suggests. “I think this is a deeply
rooted part of American society.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%; vertical-align: baseline;">[3]<br /></span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></span>I submit that it is a gross
overgeneralization to gloss American society, as there are many, just as many
exist in Europe. In having lived in several of those in America, I was stunned
in 2020 by just how much aggressive selfishness and stubborn weakness I
witnessed in Arizona by how people reacted to the pandemic. Many bus drivers,
for instance, refused to wear masks even though they were required by company
policy and the local law. Many retail stores had policies forbidding employees
from even approaching customers who were not wearing masks. Many light rail, bus
passengers, and store customers went maskless with impunity. Light rail
security guards were not allowed even to ask passengers to put masks on, and
bus drivers rarely did even though they could have at least informed violators
of the company policy mandating the wearing of masks. The local police
department managers unilaterally decided not to go after organizations allowing
customers or riders to break the law. Apparently some laws, especially if they
are important to public health, are not worth enforcing.<br /> In short, in some places more
than others, just as the extent and depth of selfishness became more apparent
with the coronavirus pandemic, so too did human weakness and the related
organizational corruption. That these defects had the gall to defend themselves
aggressively rather than recognize themselves are faults is perhaps another
stunning realization that was made possible by the coronavirus pandemic. This
can easily account for the fact that lessons learned in 1918 were so easily
dismissed in 2020. </span><hr size="1" style="text-align: left;" width="33%" /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">1. Kristen
Rogers, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/health/1918-flu-pandemic-lessons-coronavirus-wellness/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">What
the 1918 Flu Pandemic Can Teach Us about Coronavirus</span></a>,” CNN.com, September
25, 2020.<br />2. Ibid.<br />3. Ibid.</span></div><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;"><!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<p class="MsoEndnoteText"><o:p></o:p></p>
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</div><br /><p></p><p></p>Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-25987127482923133252020-07-18T15:54:00.000-07:002020-07-18T15:54:27.018-07:00Deforestation in Brazil: Exacerbating Climate Change<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">On July 17, 2020, satellite data from Brazil's space agency showed that deforestation in Brazil's Amazon was accelerating. "Nearly 3,000 square miles of tree coverage were lost in the 11 months that ended June 30 .That is a 64% increase from the year-earlier period, when 1,772 square miles of forest were destroyed."[1] The deforestation in 2020 was "likely to exceed 2019's total of 3,900 square miles by a 'wide margin," according to a senior scientist at the space agency.[2] Under normal circumstances, which the Wall Street assumed, we would consider the government's claim that not enough troops were available to patrol enough of Brazil's massive Amazon jungle to even slow the acceleration. According to Ricardo Salles, the environment minister, the government wanted to "attract foreign investors to fund sustainable economic development in the jungle."[3] That is to say, the matter boils down to (international) political economy. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">However, the circumstances were not normal. I am not referring to the coronavirus pandemic still ravaging globally, though the refusals of a significant proportion of people to wear masks indoors and on public transportation coupled with the lack of will, competence, knowledge, or ideological inclination to even to enforce the relevant laws, especially in Arizona, reflect the same mindset as that which does not take climate change seriously by electorates and governments around the world. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Just a week earlier, the World Meteorological Organization had announced that the global temperature-increase threshold set in the Paris Accord of 1.5C (2.7F) over preindustrial levels could occur before 2024.[4] At this level, the impact of the accelerating deforestation means less CO2 being absorbed by vegetation such as trees, and thus more of the gas being left in the atmosphere. Just as the case of governments of Florida, Texas, and Arizona lifting economic restrictions too early in May, 2020 only to have skyrocketing cases of coronavirus in June and July, governments were also failing in not only not reducing carbon emissions, but also permitting them to continue to increase such that the threshold global temperature could come sooner rather than latter. Given the priorities given the lack of political will over economic and political expediency, we could expect other, more dangerous, thresholds whether in terms of pandemics or climate. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps it is precisely because of the mentality that heads in the opposite direction from that which leads to the species' viability that Nature's own instruments for constraining and even eliminating such a species were really beginning to kick in by 2020. Whether the Brazilian government was quietly looking the other way as illegal deforestation was occurring or that government could not supply enough military troops to protect the massive jungle is a question that pales in comparison to the observation that the deforestation itself came at the expense of reduced carbon in the atmosphere. The fact that continued deforestation rather than increasing forestation was happening--that humans living in Brazil (or the world) werte not up to the task of stopping the trend--evinces a weakness in our species that may finally render us extinct by Nature's means, which we cannot necessarily control. As with any overpopulated species, Nature's tools are disease, starvation, and war, according to Malthius. It seems that the refusal of humans to adequately protect ourselves (and societies) even in the midst of a raging pandemic and increasingly urgent climate change may have already doomed our species. It is also possible, though not probably, that the species' ineptitude in protecting itself will be countered by technological innovation. Yet even so, making things worse rather than better does not render our species particularly attractive, at least to Nature. </span></div>
<br />
1. Paulo Thevisani, "Brazil's Forest Losses Quicken," <i>The Wall Street Journal</i>, July 17, 2020.<br />
2. Ibid.<br />
3. Ibid.<br />
4. Associated Press, "UN Report Predicts the World Could Surpass Dangerous Warming Theshold by 2024," <i>NY Post, </i>July 9, 2020.Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-9985168484274347382020-04-18T18:46:00.000-07:002023-11-18T14:49:20.288-08:00The Plague, the Spanish Flu, and the Coronavirus: Equivalence and Progress in Infectious Diseases<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">History forgotten is history to
be repeated, for evolution occurs over such vast oceans of time that for our
purposes, human biological nature is fixed. Yet history kept fresh can permit
progress such that the species is better equipped to combat problems such as
pandemics. At the time of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, serious comparisons
to the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Black Death of the fourteenth century were
lacking in the American media, including by public health officials and
government officials even as claims of vague equivalence were made. Such
claims, I submit, were erroneous. In fact, they did more harm than good by
instilling excessive fear in the population. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Hearing the coronavirus being referred
to as a plague on National Public Radio in the United States, I instinctively bristled
at the assumed equivalence. A plague is a contagious bacterial disease with a
high mortality rate. Coronavirus is a virus rather than a bacterium. The Black
Death was a plague pandemic that “devastated Europe from 1347 to 1352 CE,
killing an estimated 25-30 million people.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span> Paris buried 800 dead each day of the peak,
or apex, there. “On average 30% of the population of affected areas [in Europe]
was killed, although some historians prefer a figure closer to 50%, and this
was probably the case in the worst affected cities.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
In 2020, two months after the first recorded death from the coronavirus in
Europe, 97,000 people there were dead. The global mortality rate of coronavirus
as of March 3, 2020, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), was just
3.4%, which is much closer to the 1% from seasonable flu.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
Therefore, the coronavirus pandemic was not a plague. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The coronavirus pandemic was also
publically likened to the Spanish Flu, which hit the U.S. in 1918. At least
both were viruses, unlike the Plague. “The Spanish flu of 1918 lasted only a
few months but took an estimated 50 million to 100 million lives around the
globe, including 675,000 in the U.S.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
Ten days short of two months since the first death from the coronavirus in the
U.S., 38,917 people were dead from the disease and less than 5% of the
population had been infected. Worldwide, at least 158,000 people had died.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
Clearly, the two pandemics were not equivalent. The assumed equivalence in the
comparisons in 2020 demonstrates not only ignorance, but also a lack of
interest in acquiring even a bit of historical knowledge so as to make
tolerable comparisons. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In spite of historical knowledge
being available and there being advances in knowledge, weaknesses of our
species exerts a countervailing wind on the road of progress. The Spanish flu
itself may not have been more virulent, however, because medical and
public-health knowledge was so significantly less in 1918 than a century later.
To put the two eras in perspective, model-T cars were on the road in 1918,
whereas electric (and hybrid) cars were being driven and self-driving cars were
being tested by 2020. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Parades and “other large public
gatherings were common, contributing to the spread” of the Spanish Flu.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
American governments facing the coronavirus pandemic prohibited or recommended
people to maintain a physical distance from each other and stay home as much as
possible (e.g. shelter-in-place orders). Retail businesses either shut
voluntarily or by government order. Medically, antibiotics “to treat secondary
bacterial infections that often accompany the flu had yet to be discovered” by
1918.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
In addition to antibiotics, physicians in 2020 could put patients struggling to
breath on ventilators. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It cannot be assumed, however,
that people in 2020 could not have improved their chances of staying healthy by
learning more about the 1918 societal protocols. During the Spanish Flu, it was
thought “that keeping windows open would deter the spread.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
Trolley cars in Cincinnati, Ohio displayed fliers encouraging the practice,
“which was utilized nationwide.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
In contrast, bus drivers in Phoenix, Arizona kept the bus’s narrow upper
windows closed during the coronavirus pandemic a century later. Missing the
larger point, the bus company’s management claimed that even open slits were unsafe
because passengers could throw small objects out of the buses. Even though
medical knowledge was clear that the coronavirus stays airborne relatively long
due to its small size among flus and could even be transmitted by normal
breathing, the bus company in the desert did not bother to read up on how
trolley companied had dealt with the pandemic in 1918. Nor did the passengers
figure that physical distancing applied to getting on the bus (i.e., giving
deboarding passengers some space). In grocery stores in Phoenix, employees and
customers alike overwhelmingly ignored the store policies on keeping at a
distance from other people. In spite of the signs and announcements, the
managements did not have control over their own employees.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwpCENp-4hEGOtPgPZStTGDzfQ1v3ilIGpJJJaolOCOyw9htq7GgftqWkrco6AU_G94o3VTwXRFuk1Mvq9zDw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dysfQjML2ZPoWQFOFip0xVA6ItOH4QWBStztxnmOzdRiQudZRXBQ0KUrPp-Xi-le_Vo7nBSDQ0r0wxFBjucnQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In grocery stores in Phoenix, employees and
customers alike overwhelmingly ignored the store policies on keeping at a
distance from other people. In spite of the signs and announcements, the
managements did not have control over their own employees. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Arizona at the time had one of
the worst public education systems in the U.S.; even bad judgment could be
traced back to this factor. Perhaps it is too idealistic to assume that
everyone can be educated enough to reason his or her way to better secure even
self-interested self-preservation. Even with historical knowledge and advances
thereof available, human nature presents a limit as to how much actual progress
can be made against infectious diseases.</span></div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Marak Cartwright, “<a href="https://www.ancient.eu/Black_Death/"><span style="color: #783f04;">Black Death</span></a>,”
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ancient History Encyclopedia</i> (accessed
on April 18, 2020).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.ev<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Tedros
Ghebreyesus, press briefing of March 3, 2020. As Director-General, he headed
the World Health Organization at the time. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Aaron Kassraie, “<a href="https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2020/spanish-flu-pandemic.html?cmp=SL-DSO-OUTBRAIN-DESK-CATCHALL-CORONA-CPC_Spanish+Flu%3A+How+America+Fought+a+Pandemic+a+Century+Ago_006bc633a3a0b0332c998846347514ff84_CNN&dicbo=v1-cc45c0aa052ba50c55c0886f28c93375-00b0d91fea41c4b1db6f9822c0399f54d7-ha4tazrsmvsteljqmq2wkljugvstkllbmq4tiljshbstamrrgvrtsyrzge#quest1"><span style="color: #783f04;">Spanish
Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago</span></a>,” AARP (accessed April 18,
2020).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ben Westcott et al, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-04-18-20-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Global
Coronavirus Death Toll Passes 158,000</span></a>,” CNN.com, April 18, 2020.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Aaron
Kassraie, “<a href="https://www.aarp.org/politics-society/history/info-2020/spanish-flu-pandemic.html?cmp=SL-DSO-OUTBRAIN-DESK-CATCHALL-CORONA-CPC_Spanish+Flu%3A+How+America+Fought+a+Pandemic+a+Century+Ago_006bc633a3a0b0332c998846347514ff84_CNN&dicbo=v1-cc45c0aa052ba50c55c0886f28c93375-00b0d91fea41c4b1db6f9822c0399f54d7-ha4tazrsmvsteljqmq2wkljugvstkllbmq4tiljshbstamrrgvrtsyrzge#quest1"><span style="color: #783f04;">Spanish
Flu: How America Fought a Pandemic a Century Ago</span></a>,”<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn7" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn8" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn9" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="line-height: 115%;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-24764068004348530552020-02-01T16:25:00.000-08:002020-02-02T09:59:31.642-08:00Climate Change: Human Failure or Divine Will?<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">First Reformed </i>(2017) contains fundamental ideas concerning the human condition and wrestles with the relationship between religion and politics. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ideas play a significant role in the film, hence it can be used in support of the thesis that film is a viable medium in which to make philosophical (and theological) ideas transparent and derive dramatic tension from clashing ideas. In this film, the ideas that clash concern the role of religion in the political issue of climate change—or is that issue primarily religious?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The full essay is at "<a href="https://thewordenreport-film.blogspot.com/2020/02/first-reformed.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">First Reformed</span></a>."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiByM_QYrTO82CLaM5BmHfozcfi_czRuvzVebsO0rdgNjIKj6c_HMQ-wgyb7Ipx-MRbLKJaePfjTjKaYn-4bNvLs2EKVSMQN_9NfjVjmu4nCQ-8ZfLdT2hJQ9fNqO-CDADMczVnPnFF4XY/s1600/First+Reformed+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="268" data-original-width="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiByM_QYrTO82CLaM5BmHfozcfi_czRuvzVebsO0rdgNjIKj6c_HMQ-wgyb7Ipx-MRbLKJaePfjTjKaYn-4bNvLs2EKVSMQN_9NfjVjmu4nCQ-8ZfLdT2hJQ9fNqO-CDADMczVnPnFF4XY/s1600/First+Reformed+pic.jpg" /></a></div>
Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-80981763602617727622019-11-19T17:40:00.000-08:002023-11-19T10:35:41.600-08:00Will Breakthroughs Save the Planet?<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The dire predictions
concerning the probable impact of climate change on ecosystems, ocean-levels,
and food-production, as well as on our species itself have understandably been
made without taking into account the countervailing impact of technology yet to
be invented. Instead, the focus has been on governmental, rather than business,
efforts aimed at reducing carbon emissions. This too is understandable, as
companies have consistently been oriented to their own profits rather than
reducing externalized costs, such as pollution. This focus has left the element
of technological innovation or invention out of the equation. Moreover, because
it is not possible to predict whether our species will have invented technology
in time for it to counter the predicted impacts of climate change, relying on
such technology so as to obviate the need to act so as to limit or reduce
carbon emissions would be foolish and reckless. Put another way, it was
irresponsible as of 2020 at least to say that government restrictions on carbon
emissions were not necessary because technology will be invented that will
substantially reduce emissions or even remove the excess carbon from the
atmosphere. This does not mean that such inventions will not be made in time to
make a significant positive impact. It is indeed possible, moreover, that our
species, homo <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sapiens</i>, will be saved
by its own knowledge after all, even though we do not seem capable of regulating
the innate desire for instant gratification even if the species’ survival lies
in the balance. An invention by Heliogen in 2019 was such a breakthrough that
it was arguably the first invention capable of giving people such hope. That
is, the step-forward represented by the invention was such that people at the
time could hope that the most noxious future impacts of climate change might
not be inevitable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Heliogen, a clean-energy
company, announced in November, 2019 that artificial intelligence and a field
of mirrors could be used together to significantly reduce greenhouse emissions
by industry. The invention could generate extreme heat above 1,000 degrees
Celsius—a temperature that is about a quarter of that which is on the surface
of the Sun. “The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated
solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement,
steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free
sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the
economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
These industries were “responsible for more than a fifth of global emissions,
according to the EPA.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Accordingly, Soon-Shiong, who sat at the time on the Heliogen board, said, “The
potential to humankind is enormous<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>. . .
The potential to business is unfathomable.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Such statements have been unusual, to say the least. They connote hope even
beyond their particular instance because they show that such breakthroughs are indeed
possible. Indeed, more such breakthroughs would still be necessary to stave off
the feared effects of climate change. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Bill Gates, founder of
Microsoft, was an early backer of Heliogen. He characterized the invention as “a
promising development in the quest to one day replace fossil fuel.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
As laudable as this, as well as a titan’s investment in such a widely
beneficial venture, is, replacing fossil fuel does not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reduce </i>the accumulated carbon (and methane) in the atmosphere. At 410
ppm, the carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere was already highly problematic from
the standpoint of eventual harm to the planet. At least at the time of Heliogen’s
invention, it would do nothing to reduce carbon that had or would enter the
atmosphere (or the oceans). Ultimately, staving off climate change due to
carbon emissions would entail <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">extracting </i>carbon
(and methane) from the atmosphere and oceans.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Therefore, the breakthrough itself was not
enough to relieve governments and businesses from pressure to drastically
reduce carbon emissions. Indeed, carbon would continue to accumulate in the
atmosphere from the cement and steel industries before the full implementation of
the ovens (and storage for rainy days), as well as from business more generally
in which the new technology is not applicable. Methane would still be emitted
from permafrost as it melts at northern latitudes. In short, the breakthrough
could be expected to reduce the emission of carbon while the remaining
emissions increase the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere and oceans. Even so,
the sheer existence of one breakthrough pertaining to climate change can give
us hope that other breakthroughs, even pertaining to reducing <i>accumulated </i>carbon and methane, will
happen even if we could not factor them in.</span></div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">1.</span></span> Matt Egan, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/19/business/heliogen-solar-energy-bill-gates/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Secretive
Energy Startup Backed by Bill Gates Achieves Solar Breakthrough</span></a>,” CNN
Business, November 19, 2019.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">2.</span></span> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">3.</span></span> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">4.</span></span> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
<br />Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-67873297860330778802019-11-07T16:48:00.000-08:002023-11-19T10:48:41.373-08:00China's Population: Demographic Imbalances and the Climate Emergency<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In his treatise on <i>Understanding</i>, David Hume posits that we
don’t know as much about causation as we think we do. Often times, positive
correlation (i.e., two or more things present at the same time) is confused
with causation (i.e., one thing causing another). That umbrellas tend to be out
when it is raining does not mean that umbrellas cause rain (or that rain causes
umbrellas). Rain and umbrellas have their own distinct causes, which Hume would
say we don’t understand as well as we think we do. It is very difficult, for
example, to determine whether climate change caused by methane and CO2
emissions caused October 2019 to the hottest October globally on record; more
data-points covering long stretches of time are needed to distinguish even a
few outliers from being part of a broader trend. By October of 2019, not only
had scientists obtained and analyzed enough samples over a long enough
time-frame to be confident (99%) that climate change had been occurring due to
human carbon emissions. Not since roughly 60 million years ago had the carbon
parts per million in the atmosphere stood at 410 ppm. In having to repeatedly
accelerate their forecasts regarding the various impacts, such as sea-level
rise due to melting ice (on land, such as Greenland), scientists had
demonstrated that our understanding of the causation <i>on the various impacts </i>was still far from perfect. Even so, 11,000
scientists knew enough by November 2019 to declare <i>unequivocally </i>that humanity was facing a climate-change <i>emergency</i>. That is to say, drastic
changes in terms of carbon emissions (e.g., energy sources, lifestyles) would
have to be quickly made to avoid the worst-case scenario (e.g., mass food
shortages, mass migrations from coastal areas and the loss of cities, and
disease). This scenario is in line with Mathias’ theory of population ecology
wherein a population of a species increasing without reaching an equilibrium
maximum faces an increased risk of war, disease, or starvation. Once a species’
population pierces the semi-permeable constraints of the wider ecosystem (i.e.,
natural environment), Nature has its own ways of arresting the schizogenic
growth of a species if it fails to limit its increase. During the twentieth
century, the global increase of our species’ population was expediential, going
from 1.6 to 6.1 billion. Sadly, even many policy-makers were oblivious to the
fact that such a huge change must surely have consequences, at least some day. China’s
one-child policy was an exception, making the relatively unconstrained
population growths in India and Africa more noticeable as potentially
problematic. Why did China need its policy while India, also with a population
of over a billion, did not? In fact, the growth mantra generally subscribed to
by countries across the globe acted as an incentive to make matters worse! Even
a population with a low birth rate was generally taken as a problem. The
negative impacts on a labor force and economic growth more broadly gave
governments an incentive to increase birth-rates and thus populations (even
though immigration served as an alternative). I want to look further
into the case of China as a means of assessing how seriously the world was
taking the climate emergency.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">China’s one-child policy,
wherein a couple could only have one child, was instituted in 1980 and
abandoned in 2015, when couples could have two children (but not more). With
one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, China faced the “prospect of
fewer and fewer workers to support retirees amid a rising median age.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
In other words, the pressure of a temporary demographic bind had come to
outweigh concerns about the population level even though 1.3 billion people was
a significant part of the species’ distended population level of 7.5 billion. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Considering that as living
beings, humans must consume energy, 1.3 billion people cannot but have a
considerable impact on how much energy humanity consumes. Even were fossil fuel
sources entirely eliminated in China and abroad, food scarcity would still be
strained, especially considering that India’s 1.3 billion people are also
consuming energy. This goes back to the point that a huge increase in the
species’ population must have significant repercussions concerning energy
(including food). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">To their credit, even though
China’s policy-makers in 2019 were “well aware that a rising crop of retirees
threaten[ed] to drain household savings and derail [economic] growth” and that
the population could start to decline in 2030, birth limits remained in effect
in the two-child policy.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span>
Policy-makers argued that technological advances and automation would increase
productivity such that fewer young workers would be needed. I submit that the
government could step in to increase funding to retirees to take the financial
pressure off of their family members who are working. Even absent immigration,
demographic tight-points can be managed such that the overall goal of a smaller
population is not compromised. Therefore, it is irresponsible to say that China
should abandon its two-child policy, even if China’s demographic pinch would
turn out to be worse than expected in 2019 when the global population stood at
7.7 billion, heading in the wrong direction! <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Given the climate emergency,
the scientists strongly advised the world that drastic measures needed to be
taken as soon as possible. Correcting for the incredible increase in our
species’ population that occurred in the twentieth century can be considered a
necessary part of the drastic measures. The world would be wise to offer China
assistance (e.g., knowledge) such that the corrective is successful, and to
pressure India to make a similar corrective. In the culture of growth, it is
important to point out that an economy can be expected to contract as its
population decreases significantly. Productivity advances, however, can mean
that a lower quality of life does not go with the contraction. Indeed, economic
contraction is itself part of the decreased demand for energy that goes with a
smaller population. To sustain itself rather than be cut down by natural
processes, our species must decrease its demand overall rather than only shift
off fossil fuels. The planet contains limited resources, including habitable
(and farmable) land. Overpopulation can trigger war, disease, and starvation,
and even changes to the atmosphere that could render the planet itself very
uncomfortable or even uninhabitable for humans.</span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Listening to a talk given by a NASA
public-relations person, I was stunned that he admitted that in NASA’s view we
can no longer rely “on this rock” for the survival of our species. Hence the
plans to colonize the Moon and Mars. My
reaction was that those are artificial environments for us, and thus inherent
unstable, whereas we are suited naturally to living on Earth—just not 8 billion
of us! Getting back in sync with our natural environment seems to me to be
vastly superior to relying on artificial environments. The twentieth
century—the bloodiest century ever as of its close—can turn out to be a
population bubble or a jump in terms of population. The bubble-effect requires
our species to push itself back down, whereas a jump goes to a
higher-population plateau. China deserves credit for resisting the temptation
to see its population increase unabated in the false assumption that economic
growth is most important.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr size="1" style="text-align: left;" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]--><div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;"><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">1.</span></span> Liyan Qi and Fanfan Wang, “China Left One-Child Policy Behind, but It Still
Struggles With a Falling Birth Rate,” The Wall Street Journal, October 31,
2019.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span face=""calibri" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">2.</span></span> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
<br />Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-50904669599026395662019-10-21T18:39:00.001-07:002019-11-01T13:52:14.765-07:00Do You Believe in Global Warming?<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">On September 16, 2012, “Arctic ice covered just 1.32 million square miles—the lowest extent ever recorded. ‘The loss of summer sea ice has led to unusual warming of the Arctic atmosphere, that in turn impacts weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, that can result in persistent extreme weather such as droughts, heat waves and flooding,’ NSIDC scientist Dr. Julienne Stroeve noted in a press release. ‘There's a huge gap between what is understood by the scientific community and what is known by the public,’ NASA scientist James Hansen said, adding that he believed, ‘unfortunately, that gap is not being closed.’ What the scientific community understands is that Arctic ice is melting at an accelerated rate -- and that humans play a role in these changes. According to the panel, humans are ‘really running out of time’ to prevent atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations from reaching levels that would precipitate runaway climate change. Hansen warned that even maintaining current concentrations of approximately 390 parts per million for several centuries ‘guarantees disaster.’”[1] Nevertheless, record amounts of carbon dioxide were emitted into the atmosphere in 2016 to at least 2018, and 2016 was the hottest year on the planet as of 2019.[2] What makes an intelligent species, homo sapiens, go in the wrong direction even from the outset of an announced, guaranteed disaster? Timing and mentality have a lot to do with it. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">I suspect the non-scientist public, including the people with vested economic interests in continued pollution, dismissed the warning of disaster in 2012 in part by erroneously considering the scientific knowledge to be <i>belief</i>. Had news of an astroid due to hit the planet in seven years been announced in 2012, I suspect the astronomical <i>knowledge </i>would have been considered as such, rather than mere belief. It is interesting that the timeliness of a disaster, specifically whether it will hit the people living or those yet unborn, bears on whether knowledge is viewed as knowledge or just belief. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times"; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3YTWXGi3vIRu9xS3EzLJzewtqsB8nFWVqCUQsq07sJf0hTPJZ1WqEqNp6kxyZ7xExRKYy5SsxpfjoRnPiUMWtN3ZSkOlCPjqCA5sswzz16Hk7YBM0wm94zX0tELRqve4i1J13XBZ0_ag/s1600/ice+melting+in+Greenland+-+nyt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3YTWXGi3vIRu9xS3EzLJzewtqsB8nFWVqCUQsq07sJf0hTPJZ1WqEqNp6kxyZ7xExRKYy5SsxpfjoRnPiUMWtN3ZSkOlCPjqCA5sswzz16Hk7YBM0wm94zX0tELRqve4i1J13XBZ0_ag/s320/ice+melting+in+Greenland+-+nyt.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ice melting in Greenland. NYT</span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The mentality that sustains the gulf between what the scientists know and what the public believes includes the odd belief (held nonetheless as knowledge!) that scentistics only have beliefs regarding the climate might say, “I don’t believe in God,” or “I don’t believe it is going to rain today,” but people don’t usually say, “I don’t believe in math,” or "I don't believe in chemistry." That is to say, belief is not typically applied to replace the appelation of <i>knowledge </i>in fields of knowledge! In effect, the mentality contains a refusal to respect the enterprise of science. This is not only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ignorance that can’t be wrong</i>. How can ignorance make such a claim? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anti-foundationalism </i>knows no better example than the arrogance of ignorance that cannot be wrong. The mentality <i>assumes</i> that recognizing knowledge in science would undercut a cherished political ideology. This assumption is an over-reach, as is the application of belief itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">So the ice has kept melting as our scientific community has been relegated epistemologically into mere opinion or politics by too many people. The astounding implication is that this has occurred even though we as a species do not have the luxury of such a mentality. Even the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">possibility </i>of “guaranteeing disaster” suggests that we as a society or species cannot afford to ignore the scientific consensus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">even though science is not perfect</i>. That is to say, science does not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prove </i>a hypothesis; rather, successive null hypotheses are rejected, giving us added confidence but not certainty that the remaining hypothesis is valid.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span><span style="color: black;">Generally speaking, when even the survival of our species is flagged, or at the very least continued human habitation on Earth is to come with disasters, the rational self-preservation motivated recourse is to err on the side of what the scientific data is telling scientists. To presume an overarching hegemony of political ideology may in retrospect look reckless. The choice of such a priority may even look pathological. Perhaps this is an element in human nature that could bring the species itself down. It should come as no surprise that the human mind can be a double-edged instrument capable of achievement and self-destruction even of the species itself. Even ideology may be viewed as a double-edged instument capable of giving people something to believe in yet also capable of embellishing arrogance and beligerance. Both the ignorance and ideological tartuffery seem to enjoy presumption when the disater is guaranteed for far-off generations. The basic instinct for self-preservation is more easily subdued or drugged. It would only be just, therefore, for the currently-living to suffer at least some of the effects of the guaranteed disaster themselves.</span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> Greed, selfishness, arrogance, and ignorance, which may all be hardwired into human nature, are to blame. Flying so high to the sun on the supposition that man is divine, a human being is bound to fall to the ground in a fiery mass of self-conceit that takes itself to be a falling star but is actually just a confused mess. </span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">1. Joanna Zelman and James Gerken, “<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/19/arctic-sea-ice-loss-record-low_n_1897602.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Arctic Sea IceLevels Hit Record Low, Scientists Say We’re ‘Running Out Of Time</span></a>,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Huffington Post</i>, September 19, 2012. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: black;">2. Kelly Levin, "<a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/12/new-global-co2-emissions-numbers-are-they-re-not-good"><span style="color: #783f04;">New Global CO2 Emissions Numbers Are In. They're Not Good</span></a>," World Resources Institute, December 5, 2018 (accessed October 21, 2019).</span><br />
<br />Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-26518834550166528772019-10-09T18:29:00.000-07:002023-11-19T11:03:33.697-08:00The U.S. Enabled Turkey to Invade Syria: Absent the U.N.<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Turkey invaded Syria on
October 9, 2019 “to flush Kurds allied with the US out of northeastern Syria.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Strategically, Turkey wanted to distance the Kurds from Turkey so they could
not aid Kurdish separatists in Turkey should the latter rise up in attempting
to establish Kurdistan. U.S. President Don Trump, who had just cleared American
troops from northeastern Syria, had advanced knowledge from Turkish President
Recep Erdogan that he planned to invade the area once the American troops were
out. A rare bipartisan unity in Congress criticized the removal of American
troops and the president’s acquiescence on Turkey’s plan to attach the Kurds,
an American ally—a plan that could possibly give ISIS a toehold in the region.
Both the Congress and the president had their respective rationales, yet
neither side looked past the apparent dichotomy to arrive at a solution
consistent with the points made by both sides. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Backing up the arguments made
by the bipartisan critics in Congress, “Pentagon and State Department officials
had advised Trump against making the move, arguing a US presence is needed to
counter ISIS and keep Iran and Russia, both influential inside Syria, in check.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Rep. Ro Khanna asked why the president would not at least have asked for a
concession from Turkey. That the U.S. was turning its back on “allies who [had]
died fighting for a US cause” was also objectionable.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Certainly some erosion of trust could be expected. Help the Americans on one of
their causes and the next administration may turn on you anyway. To put friends
in harm’s way and disavow any responsibility that goes with having received
help points to a deep character flaw. While less obvious than is the mentality
in preemptively invading another state, the U.S. President’s treatment of the
Kurds was also culpable (and the U.S. Government had also preemptively invaded
another state—Iraq). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">President Trump’s rationale
stemmed from his opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the long,
senseless war that ensued. He pointed, moreover, to the eight trillion dollars spent
by the U.S. and all the dead and wounded American soldiers “fighting and
policing in the Middle East.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
He had campaigned on getting out of such long, senseless wars whose benefits to
the U.S. do not justify the costs in lives and money. His solution in gradually
pulling out American forces involved leaving a power-void that could be
exploited or filled by adversaries. For example, ISIS could establish more of a
presence in northeastern Syria under Turkish occupation. The Syrian Democratic
Forces wrote that they were suspending military operations against ISIS in
northern Syria following the “Turkish aggression.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I submit that both the concerns
of the Congressional critics and President Trump could have been obviated had
the U.S., a major financial contributor to the United Nations, sponsored a
resolution in the Security Council for U.N. peacekeeping troops to replace the
American forces in northeastern Syria. A contingent coalition could have been
put together should Turkey have invaded anyway. American geopolitical interests
would have favored a peace-keeping force over a force that could enable the
spread of ISIS (like Turkey). <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In general terms, the more the
world organization of countries can step into troubled areas in peace-keeping
roles, the less the world will have to rely on self-interested large countries,
such as the U.S., to act as a global policeman. A <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Institutional-Conflicts-Interest-Business-Public/dp/1521969523/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Skip+Worden+institutional+conflicts+of+interest&qid=1556641241&s=books&sr=1-1-spell"><span style="color: #783f04;">conflict of interest</span></a> exists
in having one of the state-actors to be such a policeman because the temptation
will be to put the state-actor’s own strategic interests above peace-keeping. I contend elsewhere that even if the state does not indulge such a temptation, the conflict-of-interest arrangement, which includes such temptation, is inherently unethical because of the existence of the temptation, <i>given human nature</i>.[6] </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In
northeastern Syria, the U.S. was oriented to rooting out (and preventing) ISIS
more than keeping the peace. Even if the official American objective had been peace-keeping, the U.S. would have been tempted to attack new ISIS outposts. Especially in political realism (but also in neorealism), to assume that a state would not act in its own strategic interests is naive. </span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Had the U.S. pursued the U.N. option, the tension
between the Congressional critics and the administration could have been
avoided. This type of problem-resolution—a third way—is particularly beneficial
in cases in which both sides to a dispute have good points. I suspect the human
mind, whether from nature or nurture, goes to either-or dichotomies too
readily. The back-and-forth in a debate is supposed to come to the better
answer, but what if a third is even better?</span></div><div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]--><div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;"><div class="MsoEndnoteText"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Nicole
Gaouette, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/turkey-syria-us-anger-ramifications/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Republican
Anger at Trump Grows as Turkey Launches ‘Sickening’ Attack on US Allies</span></a>,”
CNN.com, October 9, 2019 (accessed same day). <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span face=""calibri" , "sans-serif"" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
[6] Skip Worden, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Institutional-Conflicts-Interest-Business-Public/dp/1521969523/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Skip+Worden+institutional+conflicts+of+interest&qid=1556641241&s=books&sr=1-1-spell"><span style="color: #783f04;">Institutional Conflicts of Interest</span></a></i>, available at Amazon. </div>
</div>
</div>
<br />
<br />Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-58574558864455880102019-09-16T16:11:00.000-07:002019-09-17T16:26:49.825-07:00Israeli Secret Ops Undermining the United States: Political Realism as Undercutting Allies<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">On September 14, 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
was “giddy with excitement” after U.S. President Trump had communicated “the
possibility of moving forward” with a mutual defense pact.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
This communication was punctuated, however, by “cautious wording.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
Trump had recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s state capital and recognized
Netanyahu’s annexation of the occupied Golan Heights. What accounts for the
caution regarding a defense pact? Moreover, why had Trump been quiet concerning
the Israeli election that was coming up in a week or so? Netanyahu was polling
behind his contender, so vocal support from Trump, such as on Netanyahu’s
campaign pledge to annex the Jordon Valley, would have been valuable to the
sitting prime minister. At least part of the answer may have something to do
with Israel’s undercutting military action in Iraq. American allies have their
own geo-political agendas that can include undercutting the United States
militarily. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX_XnnKjVn2cicWqZXBuUWfcVpQV-b5oujFrpwRFPfnSkTvrfh9w7Zzo5O3NuC8a2i0hQ0mvJlCZMcDXHpgapP-jp_G4c_vxKX1j6lbGDPm222JHuIogSEVb26DbCV_QucbwuF2gqjJ2SG/s1600/America+and+Israel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="780" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjX_XnnKjVn2cicWqZXBuUWfcVpQV-b5oujFrpwRFPfnSkTvrfh9w7Zzo5O3NuC8a2i0hQ0mvJlCZMcDXHpgapP-jp_G4c_vxKX1j6lbGDPm222JHuIogSEVb26DbCV_QucbwuF2gqjJ2SG/s320/America+and+Israel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">
There is the public relationship, which is all smiles, and there is what is really going on secretly. Which is real? </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">First of all, just two days before Trump conveyed a vague interest in moving forward on a defense pack, <i>Politico </i>had broken the story that U.S. Government had determined over the last two years that Israel had been behind the "StingRay" cellphone surveillance units found around the White House.[3] Those machines could act as cell-phone towers and thus obtain cell-phone calls, texts, and data from people in the White House, as well as coming and going. Although Trump publicly claimed that he didn't believe that Israel had been spying on him, his reaction in secret may have been different, as he was known to be lax with his cellphone security and may have had personal information extracted. In public, the U.S. president and the Israeli prime minister denied the story, but in private, their relationship may have been damaged.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Secondly, according to the U.S., Israel had likely been involved in
a strike near Baghdad in July, 2019. According to two U.S. officials, the
strike complicated America’s relationship with Iraq.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
It was in Israel’s interest to target militia groups with close ties to Iran. Pentagon
spokesman Sean Robertson pointed out that the U.S. military has “repeated
spoken out against any potential actions by neighbors that could lead to
violence in Iraq.”[5<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
It is interesting that one of the closest U.S. allies would act so anyway. In
an interview, Netanyahu, who also acted at the time as Israel’s defense
minister, admitted that he had “given the security forces a free hand and the
instruction to do what is needed to thwart” Iran’s plans “in Iran itself, in
Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[6] </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Whether Netanyahu merely relegated the fallout for the
U.S. or had an interest in driving a wedge between the U.S. and Iraq goes
beyond my intel. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Thirdly, Israeli military forces, dressed as Iraqis, had secretly
entered Iraq before, using complicit British guns to shoot at American soldiers
and thus destabilize the situation in the eyes of the Americans and thus manipulate
them to increase their involvement there. Both the British and Israeli states
had an interest in keeping the U.S. mired in the Middle East, though I doubt
the British interest was principally to weaken the dollar. Israel’s interest is
rather obvious in having a powerful ally close by militarily. In any case,
special relationships tend to get weakened by undermining actions on the
ground.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps political realism, a theory that maintains that states pursue their respective interests rationally, really does explain how states
act in secret. But is such a narrow preoccupation of interest rational? A single-minded privileging of immediate interests is not rational, I submit, because the longer-term benefits from a longer-term interest are discounted or ignored outright. Allies can realize such benefits unless either state puts short-term opportunism (from short-term interests) above the sort of self-restraining motivation that respects as binding the other state's interests. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">In secret, states may indeed be opportunists even in trying to weaken an ally while proffering supportive platitudes in public. After all, the present-value of money, which holds that having money today is worth more than having it tomorrow (hence interest on a savings account is compensation), stems from the importance of instant gratification in human nature.</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"> Given this genetic staple, trust simply does not exist between states, even allies. The maxim that a state will only act in concert with an ally when the immediate strategic interests are in line is not rational, I submit, because the benefits from self-constraining immediate interests are given up; such benefits, if allowed, would result in a more optimized state interest being realized. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Even medium-term benefits may not be realized. Netanyahu, for instance, </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">may find that his desire to be
re-elected is not sufficiently supported when a “trusted” ally is more hesitant than usual in offering support. From the American standpoint, it may not even make
sense to have a mutual-defense pact with an ally that takes cell-phone data from near the White House and plows ahead militarily at the detriment of the United State's costly work in Iraq. </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Why would the U.S.
agree to spend money and lives to defend Israel unless America were itself attacked? To be in a mutual
military pact, both sides must be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">capable
of </i>and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> willing to</i> recognize and
act on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">obligation </i>even when the
immediacy of interest could benefit by acting contrarily even if in secret. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]-->
<br />
<hr size="1" style="text-align: justify;" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">1. Oren Liebermann, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/16/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-trump-intl/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Trump
May No Longer Be the Gift that Keeps on Giving for Netanyahu</span></a>,” CNN.com,
September 16, 2019 (accessed on the same day).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">2. Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">3. Daniel Lippman, "Israel Accused of Planting Mysterious Spy Devices Near the White House," <i>Politico</i>, September 12, 2019.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">4. Barbara Starr et al, “<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/israel-iraq-airstrike/index.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Israel
Likely Had a Role in Iraq Airstrike that Has Roiled US-Iraqi Relations</span></a>,”
CNN.com, August 23, 2019 (accessed on September 16, 2019)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">5. Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">6. Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-27348896896326381782019-07-04T16:07:00.000-07:002019-07-04T16:07:00.145-07:00President Obama's Justification for Limited Military Intervention in Libya: Driving a Wedge between the Bushes<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the early evening of March
28, 2011, President Barak Obama addressed the American people and the world to
explain his administration’s involvement in the international coalition that
had been implementing a no fly zone over Libya while protecting Libyan
civilians from their own ruler. He sounded much more like the first President
Bush than the second in terms of foreign policy. Similar to how the
elder Bush had restrained himself from going all the way to Baghdad after he
had joined an international coalition in removing the Iraqis from Kuwait, Obama
said that directing American troops to forcibly remove Colonel Qaddafi from
power would be a step too far, and would “splinter” the international coalition
that had imposed the no fly zone and protected civilians in rebel areas of
Libya. Interestingly, in taking the elder Bush’s route, Obama came out strongly
against that of Bush II. Referring to the alternative of extending the U.S.
mission to include regime change, Obama stated, “To be blunt, we went down that
road in Iraq . . . regime change there took eight years, thousands of American
and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. That is not something we can
afford to repeat in Libya.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
In effect, Obama was exposing a fundamental difference between George H.W. Bush
and his son by saying essentially the same thing as the elder Bush had done
while excoriating the foreign invasion of his son. Yet Obama did not stop
there. He added a theoretical framework that the elder Bush could well have
used.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The<i> </i>New York Times</span> put the theory quite well. “The
president said he was willing to act unilaterally to defend the nation and its
core interests. But in other cases, he said, when the safety of Americans is
not directly threatened but where action can be justified — in the case of
genocide, humanitarian relief, regional security or economic interests — the
United States should not act alone. His statements amounted both to a rationale
for multilateralism and another critique of what he has all along characterized
as the excessively unilateral tendencies of the George W. Bush administration.”<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span>
In other words, even in providing a basic framework, Obama was able to distance
Bush the father from Bush the son. Interestingly, Obama had awarded
the senior Bush with the Metal of Freedom over a month earlier. I would be very
surprised if Obama would award Bush the Son such a prize. In terms of foreign
policy, the philosophical line in the sand clearly distinguishes the second
Bush from both his own father and Barak Obama.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Of course, the President’s
speech left his audience hanging in other respects. For instance, averting a
large-scale massacre in Libya is in the U.S. strategic or national interest
because of our humanitarian values as well as the proximity of Libya to the
nascent upheavals in Tunisia in Egypt. So would not protecting a mass protest
in Yemen, which is next to Saudi Arabia, or in Syria, which has particular
strategic interest to the U.S. on account of Syria’s connection with Lebanon
(and thus relevant for Israel) and Iran, also be in the American national
interest? The President could argue that neither Yemen (or Bahrain)
nor Syria had come to the point where the civilians in a major city were at
risk—but it could still be asked, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what if?</i> Must
there be a baleful hint of genocide in a city commensurate to the Libyan city
of Benghazi for protesters to warrant invoking principled leadership with or
without allies when a ruler has effectively lost his right to rule by having
turned on his own people?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I contend that the President
treated the U.S. strategic interest quite broadly by including the protection
of large numbers of civilians against their own ruler, particularly when even
the portent of carnage could destabilize emergent republics next door. Such interest
is broader than questions such as, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how
the civilians would view the U.S. were they to gain power?</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what effect would a new government have on
Iran and Israel?</i> Such questions pertain to a narrower conception of
national interest—one that is much less of value to a country. Viewing the good
will of protesters as an opportunity—essentially taking on the wider,
humanitarian-inclusive, notion of national interest—Syria, Bahrain and Yemen
become like Libya as soon as their respective protests and prospect of
government brutality reach a certain threshold that Libya had surpassed. What
that threshold is—meaning in terms of scale as well as brutality—is something
the American Congress and President needed to decide. For had that been set,
attention could have turned to the mechanism involved in forming an
international coalition should a country cross the line. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Differing from Obama, I submit
that the establishment of a threshold can be relied up such that principled
leadership could be invoked by the U.S. even in the absence of partners at the
outset. Such unilateralism would differ appreciably from that of Bush the
Younger, whose invasion of Iraq was based on a criterion used for that one case
alone (WMD). In other words, unilateralism need not mean
capriciousness or impulsiveness. A humanitarian threshold undergirded by a
strategic interest in there being a world wherein rulers serve rather than
violently turn on their own people can justify not only international
coalitions, but also instances of principled leadership.</span></div>
<div style="mso-element: endnote-list;">
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<div id="edn1" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Helene
Cooper, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/africa/29prexy.html?_r=1&hp"><span style="color: #783f04;">Obama
Cites Limits of U.S. Role in Libya</span></a>,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
New York Times</i>, March 28, 2011.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7302493012208118204.post-41040759719813598592019-05-18T16:32:00.000-07:002023-11-20T12:08:52.781-08:00Israel and the United States on Palestinian Democracy<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I contend that the furtherance of democracy in general and more
specifically in the Middle East can be regarded as a strategic pathway toward
regional peace. The philosopher Kant wrote a treatise on a global federation as
a means toward achieving world peace. The founders of the United States
reckoned that all the republics within that regional federation must be
democratic for the Union itself to be sustained. A United States of the Middle
East would also stand a better chance were it's states republics in form. It
follows that especially when <i>democratic </i>bystanders put
short-term tactical and strategic advantage above furthering or just permitting
the development of a young, unstable democracy, the hypocrisy puts off rather
than furthers peace. The reactions of Israel and the United States to a
Palestinian achievement in 2011 are a case in point. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">The two main Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, announced on
April 27, 2011 “that they were putting aside years of bitter rivalry to
create an interim unity government and hold elections within a year, a surprise
move that promised to reshape the diplomatic landscape of the Middle East. The
deal, brokered in secret talks by the caretaker Egyptian government, was
announced at a news conference in Cairo where the two negotiators referred to
each side as brothers and declared a new chapter in the Palestinian struggle
for independence, hobbled in recent years by the split between the Fatah-run
West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza. It was the first tangible sign that the upheaval
across the Arab world, especially the Egyptian revolution, was having an impact
on the Palestinians . . . Israel, feeling increasingly surrounded by unfriendly
forces, denounced the unity deal as dooming future peace talks since Hamas
seeks [Israel's] destruction. ‘The Palestinian Authority has to choose between
peace with Israel and peace with Hamas,’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
declared in a televised statement. The Obama administration warned that Hamas
was a terrorist organization unfit for peacemaking.”[1]<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A</span>n
agreement that puts aside years of bitter rivalry is in itself morally praiseworthy
not only because of the heightened possibility for peace, but also because just
achieving such an agreement is not easy; rather, this is the road less
traveled. As reported at the time, “A desire for unity has been one
goal that ordinary Palestinians in both areas have consistently said they
sought. Until now it has proved elusive and leaders of the two factions have
spoken of each other in vicious terms and jailed each other’s activists.”[2]
Tit for tat much more conformable to human nature than putting faith in trust
where none has existed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">More specifically, an agreement by rival parties in a young
democracy to have common elections furthers the ideal of representative
self-government. Putting an ideal before partisan advantage is also morally (and
politically) laudable because such a priority is not easy given human nature
(nature and nurture). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This is not to say that the results of an election agreed to by
rivals (assuming a fair and transparent one) are pleasing to interested
bystanders nearby or halfway around the world who gave their own agendas. If
such bystanders brandish themselves as beacons of democracy to the world and
yet act on their own agendas, the charge of self-serving hypocrisy can
stick. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">To be sure, both Israel and the United States had at the time a
long-term interest in the furtherance of the democratic form of government, so
assuming a stance of enlightened self-interest would have avoided the noxious
cloud of hypocrisy. Unfortunately, the two bystanders, who still claimed to
value representative democracy, held the furtherance of the form hostage to
their hostility to an enemy. It can be said, in fact, that democratic
governments that refuse an opportunity to permit a young and not yet
stable democracy to strengthen are not themselves worthy of self-government,
for they are not sufficiently mature, politically, in putting their respective
partisan agendas first. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed in retirement after
the American Revolution that a self-governing citizenry must be educated and
virtuous to sustain a viable republic. I submit that both formal education and
virtue require and strengthen self-discipline, as well as foster maturity. To
skip class and not study for tests, for example, flaunt self-discipline,
whereas to follow the rigors of a course of study requires (and builds)
self-discipline and thus maturity. The relationship between self-discipline and
virtue is more widely understood. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">To the Israeli government, the sheer possibility of unity among
the Palestinians translated into having a more formidable opponent in
bargaining. Surely, however, more was at stake than jostling for strategic
advantage. As it turned out, such a concern dominated at the expense of peace.
Even the increasing dominance of Israel itself over the Palestinian Authority
did not bring peace any closer. </span><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">1. Ethan Bronner and
Isabel Kershner, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html"><span style="color: #783f04;">Fatah and Hamas Announce Outline of Deal</span></a>,” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The New York Times</i>,
April 28, 2011, p. A1.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">2. Ibid.</span><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Dr. Wordenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02867414605883311000noreply@blogger.com