Saturday, December 14, 2024

Democracy Breached: Georgia Unfit for E.U. Statehood

On December 14, 2024, Mikheil Kavelashvili became the president of Georgia, further cementing the Georgian Dream Party’s grip on power at the expense of the sovereign state’s accession as a semi-sovereign E.U. state. From the standpoint of representative democracy, what a contrast with the U.S. state of Georgia. The Georgian Dream Party implicitly conflated the qualitative difference between the U.S. and state-scale polities by misappropriating the term, Electoral College, which elects the U.S. President. There is a reason why that College does not apply at the state level, yet in its haste to consolidate power in 2017, the Georgian Dream Party replaced direct presidential elections with an Electoral College, which the party could control. Sure enough, Kavelashvili was the only candidate in 2024, and he got the votes of 224 of the 225 electors who were present for the vote.


The full essay is at "Democracy Breached."

Israel Invades Syria Preemptively without Declaring War: A New Norm?

In the wake of the downfall of Syria’s Assad in December, 2024, that he had used chemical weapons against civilians in rebel areas against international law not only means that the victors of the coup would have ready access to chemical stockpiles, but also justifies other governments in breaking Syria’s national sovereignty by bombing the locations at which the noxious chemicals were being stored. This does not justify, however, governments hostile to Syria invading the country and destroying its military. Otherwise, the norm could be established, as valid, that any time there is a coup in a country, it is “open season” (a hunting expression) for any government in the world to snatch up territory and destroy the military. Although absolute sovereignty, which ignores international law, is too much, presuming a country with a new government to be valid prey goes too far in the other direction. I contend that both absolutist and nullified national sovereignty are contrary to the interests of the whole—the global order—wherein the protection of human rights (and thus international law) is in the interest of humanity especially given the horrendous destructiveness that a government can have against its own people and other countries in the nuclear age.


The full essay is at "Israel Invades Syria Preemptively."

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Protests in Belarus: Raw Violence Versus Moral Power

Once Syria’s Assad regime folded, Travis Timmerman, an American who had entered Syria on a religious pilgrimage, was freed from a prison after seven months there. A border guard had thrown him into prison. That Timmerman is Christian may have had something to do with it. Austin Tice, an American journalist who had been missing since his abduction in Syria 12 years earlier, was still unaccounted for days after the fall of the Assad regime. Incredibly, Timmerman said of his prison experience, “I was never beaten. The only really bad part was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom when I wanted to. I was only let out three times a day to go to the bathroom.”[1] Timmerman’s experience can be used to calibrate just how violently police handled Belarusians who protested the rigged election in 2020 in Belarus, and the quick, unexpected fall of Assad can remind us of the plight that could be in store for Lukashenko. For as soon as enough state “riot” police decide not to follow orders to beat, falsely imprison, and even torture non-violent protesters, what seems like a solid dictatorship could unravel surprisingly quickly. This is especially so because, like Assad, Lukashenko has used violence solely for the same of retaining power, rather than to further an ideology. This renders the violence committed on the orders of Assad and Lukashenko as more shameless than Mao, Stalin, and even Hitler, all of whom sought to radically reshape society in the broad sense, including the economic and political systems. The shameless systemic violence against non-violent individuals is especially ripe for a Gandhian approach of resistance wherein moral power is intentionally set against the raw power of violence.


The full essay is at "Protests in Belarus."

1. Mohamad El Chamaa, Abbie Cheeseman, and John Hudson, “U.S. Citizen Found in Syria Says He Was Imprisoned for Months,” The Washington Post, December 12, 2024.

On the Hidden Police Power of Corporate America

After the UnitedHealthcare chief executive “was gunned down by a masked man outside a Manhattan hotel” in New York City, “a days-long manhunt” occurred that “spanned several states.”[1] The fact that only a few days were needed to find the suspect, Luigi Mangione, indicates just how massive and public the manhunt was. For it was not just any murder, as if the murder of a person who is the chief executive of a large corporation were worth so much more than that of the rest of us. I suspect that the influence of the company, and, moreover, corporate America, on local police in any U.S. member state is more than reaches the headlines. The case at hand my even suggest that that influence includes even tacit instructions to treat anti-corporate suspects of murder violently both in retaliation and as a visible reminder to other potential killers that CEOs are off-limits.


The full essay is at "On the Hidden Power of Corporate America."

1 Jessica Parker and Nadine Yousif, “Luigi Mangione Fingerprints Match Crime-Scene Prints, Police Say,” BBC.com, December 11, 2024.


Monday, December 9, 2024

Ranking Technological Innovation: The E.U. and U.S. as Unions of States

“With the rise of AI, self-driving cars, and wi-fi connected appliances, it can feel like innovation is everywhere these days.”[1] Lest the BBC be presumed to be referring to California, the fifth largest economy in the world, with Caltech and Stanford University, government investment in IT and data infrastructure, and a high concentration of science/technology graduates and employment, California (as well as Massachusetts) is absent from the BBC’s rankings of technologically innovative countries. So Switzerland comes up in that ranking as the world’s foremost in computer technology, while the U.S. comes in third, with states like California and Mississippi being lost in an average that does not correspond to any actual place.


The full essay is at "Ranking Technological Innovation."

1. Lindsey Galloway, “What It’s Like to Live in the World’s Most Innovative Countries,” BBC.com, December 5, 2024.

The United States: Complicit in Genocide

In December, 2024, Amnesty International, a highly reputed human rights international organization “found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip.”[1] The International Criminal Court (ICC) had recently issued arrest warrants for a former defense minister and the sitting prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, and the UN’s high court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had also ruled that Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank violates international law. When Amnesty’s report came out, the ICJ was considering whether to declare a genocide in Gaza. Considering the series of determinations against Israel in Gaza, did it matter that the ICJ had not yet ruled specifically on genocide? Formally yes, but the currency of formal rulings and determinations regarding Israel based on international law had lost considerable de facto value, given Israel’s ongoing infliction of such widespread and dire suffering on civilians in not only Gaza, and Russia’s attacks in Ukraine (the ICC had already issued an arrest warrant for Russia’s sitting president. Oddly, news that Israel was committing an apartheid genocide seemed at the time to be old news, whereas that the U.S. was complicit, as an accomplice in providing the weapons, in a genocide was news.


The full essay is at "The United States: Complicit in Genocide."