Climate Change as a Threat to Healthcare Systems

Hitherto, climate change had been characterized primarily as a matter of science and political economy wherein the latter was lagging behind the former. As the ongoing accumulating of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oceans were finally having a significant impact on the planet and us in the mid-2020s, breaking the grip of the oil industry and the related consumer demand for fossil-fuel energy proved to be too much for the UN’s annual “COP” summits because any agreements at them were nonbinding on governments. So at the commencement of the COP31 summit on November 9, 2026, the UN’s Climate Change Executive Secretary adroitly shifted the characterization of climate change to one of health, and more specifically healthcare systems—something presumably more manageable. Unfortunately, the focus on health put symptoms and effects ahead of addressing the causes of global warming.

The full essay is at "Climate Change as a Threat to Healthcare Systems."

Freedom

Freedom is so often applied in the political and economic domains in terms of external freedom, such as in speech or action—things that a state can regulate, a boss can forbid, and a religious cleric can excoriate—that internal freedom is often overlooked. We live in a collectivist world of states, businesses, universities, and religious organizations so it is easy to overlook interior freedom. In viewing ourselves in terms of groups, we are subject to the artificial constraints of group-think. Individualism is often conflated with lawlessness and licentiousness. Rather than tread over the tired individualism versus collectivism dichotomy, however, the interior of the mind, and in particular the sort of freedom that is possible therein, can be distinguished and yet related to exterior freedom that tends to be characterized by the constraints presented by political, economic, cultural, and religious systems in which we live. I contend that expanding interior freedom can expand political freedom in a way that strengthens democracy rather than results in anarchy. 

The full essay is at "Freedom."

On the Impact of an Electoral Landslide: The 2026 U.S. Congressional Election

Amid all the fanfare of an exciting election in which the opposition, riding an electoral “wave,” gains more (or even complete) control in a legislature, the tendency of an electorate is to assume that everything will change. Even utopian hopes can take wing. The sheer inertia of any political status quo is easily overlooked until reality sets back in as the ascendent group gets to work in a legislative capacity. Clipping the wings of a party that has enjoyed unfettered power does not necessarily mean that the opposition will be able to change existing governmental policy and laws rather than merely act as a stronger check on what had been perceived as the excesses of the other party when it was in power. To be sure, the power of an electorate (the People) to trigger such a check by voting for opposition candidates is a great benefit of representative democracy and is worthy of admiration. Imagine the alternative:  a party whose officeholders could go on and on, even to an extreme, even though most of the electorate objects and yet has no way to put in place replacements wo could counter the hitherto dominant party. This scenario does not have to be imagined; just look at countries such as North Korea, Russia, and China. Lest the accolades of democracy be oversold, the impact legislatively and in terms of U.S. policies, especially foreign policy, of the “blue wave” in the 2026 congressional election in the U.S. should not be overstated.

The full essay is at "On the Impact of an Electoral Landslide."

North Korea and the E.U. on Human Rights

In the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament, Jesus uses the metaphor of a mere sliver of wood in another person’s eye being objected to by a person who has an entire plank in one’s own eye to criticize the hypocrisy that can occur with self-righteousness.[1] In international relations, it is much easier to see abuses of human rights in another country than in one’s own. Mixing metaphors, it can be said that people in glass houses should not throw stones because one may come back to bite. Generalizing from particular abuses of human rights, the refusal of national governments to give up some governmental sovereignty so an assembly “with teeth” could go in and arrest abusers within a country in violation of protecting its residents’ human rights means that we are all guilty of insufficient political action. The UN pales next to such an assembly, yet, at least as of 2026, it is the best we have.

The full essay is at "North Korea and the E.U. on Human Rights."

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1. See Matt. 7:3-5 and Luke 6:41.

Retail-Speak American Style

Hidden or overshadowed by U.S. President Trump’s coined term, fake news, American retail’s utterly contrived, and thus fake jargon went unscathed by consumers in first few decades of the twentieth century. Even nonverbally acknowledging the verbiage spewed out by employees and even front-line managers in a retail store or coffee shop as if the jargon were legitimate subtly enables and thus extenuates the sordid trend. Were enough customers to question and even object to the “corporate correct” lines, perhaps the feedback would move its way up managerial hierarchies and result in cleaner, more transparent conversation at the store level. To the extent that business culture pervades a society, changes are greater that the verbal artifice will be received as if it were real, and thus a valid way of communicating. Perhaps the more general question concerns the extent to which linguistic artifice saturates American culture and has even come to be viewed as genuine. The subtle influence of business culture in America may be vastly overlooked.

The full essay is at "Retail-Speak American Style."

Foreign Policy Alignment in E.U. Enlargement

Threating the E.U. or U.S. as a club and thus as having members rather than states is as erroneous as it is arrogant. Even though the E.U. states are members of the European Council and the U.S. states are members of the U.S. Senate because both federal bodies represent states rather than federal or state citizens, nether the U.S. nor the E.U. has members per se; rather both unions have states because those unions have federal systems. Nor is either political union a “bloc,” as the latter is actually a temporary group of sovereign countries rather than a federal government of semi-sovereign states or even just an alliance. Linguistic semantics matter because they can impact expectations; less is expected of a bloc than a federal union of states. For one thing, the latter, which is theoretically permanent, involves more of a bonding between the polities. To be united, states cannot not be so opposed to each other that passing federal law and regulations faces insurmountable ideological opposition in the chambers in which the states are represented and thus are the members, especially if each one wields a veto! Two words: Viktor Orban. The E.U. is justified, therefore, in insisting on general agreement with the E.U.’s foreign and military policies before approving the accession of a candidate state.  

The full essay is at "Foreign Policy Alignment in E.U. Enlargement."

The Foreigner: Justice as Vengeance

The human urge to exact vengeance as if the resulting pain suffered by the culprit(s) were equivalent to that (or whom) is lost being restored—an equivalence that Friedrich Nietzsche characterizes as strange—is perhaps integral to human nature; the instinct may even be in our DNA and activated in the reptilian area of the human brain. Compassion to enemies flies in the face of that facet of our nature, yet it is arguably only from justice as love as universal (rather than convenient) benevolence, rather than from justice through vengeance, that full restorative satisfaction after having suffered a loss caused by another person is possible. We find this instinct to exact vengeance idealized in the film, The Foreigner (2017). Rarely is vengeance so perfectly fulfilled as it is in that fictional story. Yet the idyllic ending is deceiving, for even such fulfilment as the protagonist feels after having exacted revenge is not wholly restorative. More realistically, people tend to go overboard in refusing to delimit vengeful acts to fit the respective crimes/losses. Hence the Biblical attempt to assign vengeance to God, which is also problematic.

The full essay is at "The Foreigner." 

The E.U. on Negotiating Britain’s Secession: Traumatized Officials

As the war between the U.S.A. and C.S.A. (1861-1865) attests, the secession of a state from a political union in which governmental sovereignty is “dual” (i.e., both the union and the states are vested with it, such that it is divided, albeit not evenly) can be arduous. Although a “velvet” secession sans warfare, the secession of the state of Britain (UK) from the E.U. required lengthy and painstaking negotiations. In the case of a union of states, something more than integration occurs not only economically, but also politically. Anti-federalist rhetoric, such as in referring to the E.U. (or U.S.) as a “bloc” with “members,” and even with potential “associate members,” does absolutely nothing to counter the political reality of federalism wherein governmental sovereignty resides both with the union itself and the state governments. Officials in the E.U.’s Commission were prudent, therefore, in being hesitant regarding the possible re-accession of Britain as an E.U. state as talk on that possibility swirled in Britain in 2026 just after Andy Burnham became the prime minister and suggested that he would be open to a referendum. This occurred exactly a decade after the referendum on “Brexit” had passed and only six years after the actual secession. Between 2016 and the end of January, 2020, E.U. and British officials—federal and state, respectively—engaged in painstaking, even traumatic, negotiations. That this harsh characterization came from the E.U. side is consistent with my thesis that the vote in Britain to secede, or “exit,” from the E.U. was based on a rejection of the governmental sovereignty held by the E.U. rather than its states. E.U. officials would not have taken kindly to even the subtle suggestion that the E.U.’s portion of sovereignty did not really exist.

The full essay is at "The E.U. on Negotiating Britain's Secession."

Making AI Safe for Humanity: A Matter of Ethics or Religion?

AI, or models of computer machine-learning, may piggy-back on ongoing risks to humanity, such as from nuclear bombs, cyber-attacks, and biological weapons, including unleashing new pandemics, to render any one of them more likely. That firms in the private sector develop advanced models without a financial incentive to protect the public good exacerbates the risk. To be sure, tech-firm executives were sounding the alarm most significantly in 2026. However, in reaching out to religious scholars and clergy for insight on the ethics of AI in order to make the models ethical so their output would be only ethical, certain executives incorrectly conceived of religion in terms of ethics, and thus its criteria rather than those that are innate to religion. This category mistake could result in advice that results in unethical computer outputs.  Anthropic is a case in point.

 
The full essay is at "Making AI Safe for Humanity."

American Federalism: Idaho and Massachusetts on Guns

The proverbial expression, or retort, that the U.S. is not a France with a large back yard (i.e., simply more territory), or the equivalent—to say that the E.U. is not Texas with a large front yard—is oriented to the important difference between (early) modern empire-scale unions and states (i.e., polities) thereof. An empire is constituted by many (i.e., not just a few) polities that are culturally heterogenous (i.e., different from one another). Even though since at least 1871, Canada’s provinces have stretched across a continent, the number of provinces (10) does not meet the number qualification to be considered an empire even though Quebec and British Columbia are obviously very different culturally (including linguistically). In contrast, at 27 and 50 members, the E.U. and U.S. respectively qualify on both counts—interstate cultural/political diversity and the number of states. Even though the E.U.’s linguistic interstate diversity has greatly exceeded that which existed even in 2026 among the U.S. members, U.S. has its own dimensions of cultural difference that are palpable and salient between member-states, and particular pairs of states can even be said to be divergent on specific dimensions. It may even be that the E.U. states are more homogenous than are the U.S. states on such dimensions. For example, attitudes towards people having guns—including semi-automatic machine guns, so not just guns for hunting—differ between American states substantially and more so than between E.U. states.

The full essay is at "American Federalism."

The E.U. Investigates an Online Travel-Reservation Company: Consumer Protection in Hospitality

The case, or rationale, for government regulation and oversight of the “hospitality” industry (e.g., hotels, booking companies, etc.) is not merely made on the basis of monopoly or oligarchy in the industry at the expense of market competition, but also on issues concerning business ethics and managerial competence at not only hotel companies (as well as with franchisees), but also separate travel-reservation companies. The European Commission was therefore on solid ground in launching an investigation into a online travel-reservations company in 2026.

The full essay is at "The E.U. Investigates an Online Travel-Reservation Company."

Contact

In the fall of 2026, Chris Graney, an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory, argued that the universe of at least 2 trillion galaxies (according to a study in 2016 using the orbital Hubble Space Telescope) probably contains few, if any, planets capable of supporting intelligent life. This claim may come as a surprise, given the gargantuan number of possibly habitable exoplanets in the universe and the associated likelihood of alien life out there. The overlay of theology onto science, as if the latter’s criteria were nugatory and thus dismissible relative to religious doctrine, is problematic because the two domains are arguably distinct and even unique, even though they are related. Such a category mistake is highlighted in the film, Contact (1997), in which religious figures (who have related political roles in the White House) impose monotheist criteria in the selection of an astronaut for space travel, which is primarily a scientific enterprise.

The full essay is at "Contact."

U.S. Foreign Policy on Russia: On the Importance of an Educated Electorate

Shortly after the sudden and unexpected death of Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior (and hawkish) U.S. senator, on 11 July 2026, the Congress passed, and U.S. President Trump signed, the Graham Act, which is legislation that gives the federal president discretion in adding economic sanctions and higher tariffs to weaken Russia’s military machine by hurting Russia’s economy—especially its lucrative oil industry—because Russia was still invading Ukraine. By Columbus Day, however, President Trump and Russia’s President Putin had made a deal wherein Russia would sell 300,000 tons of diesel to the U.S. and global markets immediately, with an additional 500,000 tons in November and then one million more. President Trump, using his discretion as allowed in the Graham Act, “issued a broad sanctions waiver for Russian diesel until April 2027.”[1] Euronews reported at the time that this move was “raising concerns in Ukraine and among its allies,” most notably the E.U. and in its state capitals.[2] The fact that the deal undercut the Western strategy of pressuring Russia economically so it would withdrawal its military from Ukrainian territory means that the diesel sale and broader waiver did more than raise concerns in Europe. Zelensky was probably hitting his head against a wall in utter disbelief at one point. For his part, Putin, formerly head of the KGB in the U.S.S.R., may have been relieved, and dumbstruck, that the Americans could be such suckers. As is often the case in foreign policy, domestic politics play a role in the motivation of key actors on the world stage. President Trump was facing an upcoming Congressional election in early November and whether Trump’s Republican group would continue to control the U.S. House and U.S. Senate was preoccupying the president in October because if even just one of the two federal legislative chambers would be under the control of the Democratic group, Trump’s legislative will would be compromised at best in getting through Congress. Trump’s political calculus had a lot to do with his knowledge of his base—the voters who would be likely to vote for Republican candidates in November. That base is often a “black box” to many Americans and Europeans alike, and this impedes accurate analysis of Trump’s political calculus in making a deal with Putin that would be sure to anger government officials both in Ukraine and the E.U.

The full essay is at "U.S. Foreign Policy on Russia."

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1. Jorge Liboreiro, “EU Decries ‘Concerning’ Trump-Putin Deak, Insists Sanctions on Russia Will Continue,” Euronews.com, 12 October 2026.
2. Ibid.

Political Wins as God’s Will

Albeit homo sapiens, which in Latin means the wise species of humans, we have a tendency to outdo ourselves on our petty, partisan perches in pontificating on God’s will, as if we know it even though we can merely believe in God, rather than know God, here defined as the Abrahamic deity—a supreme being within (immanent) and beyond (transcendent) Creation. This “beyondness” is of the sort that goes beyond the limits of human thought, perception, and emotions, and even intuition. Because God’s will is not based in Creation since God is the Creator, the matter of that will can only be a matter of belief rather than knowledge as far as we are concerned, and that belief must contend with the human discretion that is inevitable in interpreting scriptural passages, which, depending on the verse, may be literal, figurative, allegorical, or symbolic. Even within the Christian Trinity, only the Father knows when the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will occur. In the Gospel of Matthew (24:36), Jesus says, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” Does this mean that of the three persons (Latin) or manifestations (Greek) of the Christian deity, only the Father is omniscient (i.e., all-knowing: knows absolutely everything)? It would seem so. The Holy Spirit may come through the Son, but only the Father is omniscient, and thus the Godhead. In verse 34, Jesus has just said, “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Even if “that day or hour” is up to the Father, while Jesus only knows that the Son will come on clouds to judge the living and the dead sometime within the lifetimes of the people to whom he is speaking, omniscience would require even the exact second to be known; otherwise, the knowledge is not complete (i.e., omni). That Jesus is wrong concerning his prediction does not mean that he is with sin; only that he is represented in the New Testament as being of the god-man type. Now, if Jesus Christ in the Gospel of Matthew does not have complete knowledge of when the world will end at the final judgement by Christ himself, then human claims to know the contents of God’s will can safely be relegated as arrogance as if it were on stilts during a flood, for such presumption should be underwater rather than lording itself in pontificating to other mortals. With all this as context, the partisan rhetoric and genuine beliefs of the U.S. House Speaker, Mike Johnson, while he was campaigning in 2026 for Republican candidates for elected office in the U.S. House, can be situated and analyzed from well within the religious domain.

The full essay is at "Political Wins as God's Will."

Apocalypse Now

Imagine being an American soldier sent to Vietnam to fight the militarized Marxist Communists there. The Vietnam War provides many examples of such a plight. Now consider how much worse it would be to be sent into a seemingly constantly rainy, hot and humid jungle deep in Cambodia to assassinate an American colonel because he is a renegade Special Forces military officer who has gone insane. Just in case this is not dire enough, simply add in that he has the local village protecting their god with weapons. Surely safer secret military missions exist than to assassinate an insane former special-ops man with a small army of devotees. This is the central plot of the 1979 film, Apocalypse Now, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who had directed The Godfather earlier that decade. Behind the plot of Apocalypse Now is a dichotomy wherein human nature itself is bifurcated into a dichotomy of good and bad. This is interesting because some of the characters may fall in between, suggesting that human nature has a gray zone in which most of us live.

The full essay is at "Apocalypse Now."

Changing Lanes: An Execution to Be Televised Prompts a Papal Statement

Although Pope Francis amended Catholic social ethics to exclude the death penalty rather than continue to accept the punishment in cases in which no other punishment is practical or available, Pope Leo decided in October, 2026 to make a public statement of his Church’s opposition to the death penalty in reaction to the decision of the Trump administration to televise an upcoming execution live on television. That a woman had recently survived execution attempts by two lethal injections may have primed the pope’s pump, as it were. The danger is that the foray into applied ethics by leaders of a religious organization could conflate ethics and theology. That the latter transcends, and may even violate ethical principles, can easily be forgotten when a religious leader speaks out a lot on ethical issues. In the case of Pope Leo’s statement on capital punishment, a distinctly theological rationale can be found, and, I submit, should have received more emphasis, lest the religious leader be reduced to an ethical critic, or conscience. To be sure, in 2026, the world was very much in need of a public conscience, especially because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was still underway, as was Israel’s genocide in Gaza and wanton violence in the West Bank—all of this aggression was being done with obvious impunity.

The full essay is at "Changing Lanes."

His Girl Friday

In Intro to Film courses, Citizen Kane (1941) and His Girl Friday (1940) typically play major roles in the teaching of film-analysis. Hidden gems include novel camera angles in Citizen Kane and the use of dialogue and editing to quicken the pace of certain scenes in His Girl Friday. In the latter film, Cary Grant, who plays the newspaper editor, Walter Burns, hurriedly mentions Grant’s real name, Archibald Leach, in referring to another character during a phone call! Such a nugget points back to a director or screenwriter who knows his or her craft well enough that the finished product has multiple levels without breaking the viewers' suspension of disbelief (i.e., being engrossed in a film's story-world). Typically, films have both “task” and “romance” elements, which should in some way be connected, such by involving a protagonist’s “love-interest” somehow involves in the protagonist’s task-objective. His Girl Friday is both a crime drama and a romance film. This distinction is similar to Donelson Forsyth’s model of leadership in which behaviors of a given leader can be classified as either performance maintenance or relationship maintenance.[1] The crime-element of the film includes not only a man who did not mean to shoot someone due to be executed anyway, but also the mayor and police chief of New York City being utterly corrupt so as to stay in office by having the criminal executed even in the knowledge that the governor has cancelled the execution. The romance-element is perhaps just as harsh even though (and even because) it is centered on the phenomenon of falling in love.

The full essay is at "His Girl Friday."

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1. Donelson R. Forsyth, Group Dynamics, 5^th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010), p. 253.

Reforming E.U. Governance: On the States’ Conflict of Interest

A conflict of interest is the privileging of the interest of a part, by that part, over a conflicting broader interest, such as the public good. In exploiting such a conflict, a part of a whole puts the part’s own interest, and therefore benefit, above those of the whole to which the part belongs. A state government in the E.U., for example, could veto governance reforms of the federal government because the state would benefit in some way, even just in terms of retaining its portion of governmental sovereignty, even though the E.U. itself would be harmed. Exploiting a conflict of interest is selfishness in governance. The underlying assumption is that the part is greater than the whole. Aristotle warns of such misordered concupiscence, which is the placing of a smaller good above a higher good.

The full essay is at "Reforming E.U. Governance."

U.S. President Trump Pressures the G7 to Release Oil Reserves

Is democracy more susceptible to being run by large corporations or to mob-rule? I contend that the police and military power of the U.S. eviscerates the risk of a mob of people making much headway against a government. That same power can be used by American governments to enforce policies that are in the financial interests of companies. In fact, some retail companies hire weaponized police employees to enforce not only municipal law (against shoplifting), but also company policies, as if they constituted law and therefore legitimate a police response rather than action by a security guard. To be sure, even security guards act sometimes as if they were police officers, and too many consumers fall for the presumptive ploy to intimidate. Security-guard companies even uniform their respective employees to look like police, even SWAT, officers, as if impersonating a police officer were not a crime. In terms of the American political economy, elected representatives of the American governments looked the other way in whether to invoke anti-trust law to break up large American companies even as gasoline and food prices soared—in the case of food, from 2020 when the pandemic enabled grocery stores to price-gouge, and in the case of gasoline, especially in 2026 when Iran was choking off the Strait of Hormuz. Those representatives as well as the media companies were silent on not only the need for market competition in consolidated industries, but also the excessive power of large corporations—even multi-national corporations, which are not loyal to any country—over elected representatives and their respective appointees. In too many cases, the companies being regulated actually write the law for Congressional committees—an obvious conflict of interest. Meanwhile, the American voters are typically titillated by superficial matters, essentially tricked, as if being oriented to symptoms were crucial to voting. The tricks can include ploys even by a sitting U.S. president to make the economy look better just before an election.

The full essay is at "U.S. President Trump Pressures the G7."

St. Francis of Assisi: On War and Greed

St. Francis of Assisi died 800 years before October 4, 2026, assuming that the days dropped in adopting the Gregorian calendar after his death have been incorporated in the calculation. It seems that not only gravity affects time; changing calendars does too. As time passes, how past heroes are viewed changes according to contemporary circumstances and values. Painting of Jesus during the late Roman Empire depict him as a young Roman, with short hair and clean-shaven. During the Middle Ages, when beards and long hair were in style for men, Jesus too was depicted in such terms as we recognize in modernity. Similarly, I contend that Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza and violence in the West Bank framed the 800^th death-anniversary of Francis in terms of peace and diplomacy being salient in his mission. I contend that this emphasis unduly relegates something more important to him: his strident stance against greed, and even money itself as a symbol of avarice.

The full essay is at "Francis of Assisi."

NAZA

While a student at Yale, I took Charlie Musser’s seminar on documentary films on a whim, after having taken two courses oriented to film narrative (not screenwriting). Because my studies were mainly in philosophy of religion, historical theology, and history at Yale, I think neither Charlie nor I knew quite why I was taking his course. At the time, I would not have thought that I would be writing on the genre thirty years later. The film, NAZA (2026), makes my earlier endeavor entirely worthwhile, and integrated into my main academic areas of study and research, which include ethics and political theory. The documentary “examines ‘the systems behind the mass killing of Palestinian civilians’” in Gaza, and as of October, the theatrical release was being extended due to so many sold-out showings.[1] The Venice Film Festival awarded the film with the Special Jury Prize, and the two filmmakers, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, “received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation at the festival.”[2] The film can be interpreted as documenting the magnified harsh effects that unchecked power over other people can have when those others are dehumanized. It is interesting how close “NAZA” is to another word, NAZI.

The full essay is at "NAZA."

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1. David Mouriquand, “Gaza Documentary ‘NAZA’ Beating ‘Avengers Endgame” Encore’ at Box Office,” Euronews.com, 1 October 2026.

2.Ibid.

Forbidden

The early film, Forbidden (1932), asks the viewers to sympathize with a married politician and his mistress, who together have a “love child,” even though the politician, as a governor, finally follows his conscience and admits to the decades-long affair. Lulu, the mistress, selflessly remains alone and hidden from public view so Bob can climb the political ladder without scandal. At one point, Bob offers to leave his wife, Helen, and leave with Lulu for a shared life somewhere else, but Lulu refuses for the sake of Bob’s career in politics. She places his interests above her own. The film’s attitude toward the “cheater” and his mistress ethically is complex, as is human nature itself. The film presents the complexity that can go with some, but certainly not all, ethical controversies.

The full essay is at "Forbidden."

On Britain’s Possible Accession after Seceding from the Union

Secession is a nasty business. Both Britain and South Carolina learned that lesson. Whereas the American member-state failed to secede from the U.S., Britain succeeded in seceding from the E.U. The parallelism presented here is no accident, for just as the U.S. federal system has been charactered by dual sovereignty—both the Union and the members having at least some governmental sovereignty—so too does the E.U.’s federal system. In deciding whether or not they want Britain to become an E.U. state again, the British ought to keep this fact in mind. 

The full essay is at "On Britain’s Possible Accession after Seceding from the Union."

UN Speeches as Posturing During a Genocide

The UN report, “Gaza Genocide” (A/80/492) states that “the prolonged unlawful occupation of the Palestinian territory” by the state of Israel “has now escalated into a full-fledged genocide” with “the direct participation, aid and assistance” of other countries. Hence, the “collective crime” is “internationally enabled.”[1] Just before I wrote this, two Iranian dissidents sitting next to me in a coffee shop declared to me that the destruction by Israel in Gaza is not a genocide. I looked up the UN report, and replied, “It’s not just a matter of opinion anymore.” The two Iranians, doubtlessly in the US because they opposed their own regime in Iran, quickly left the coffee shop. Rather than being open to something more than their opinion, they left. Doubtless they had not expected the scholar sitting next to them to cite a well-documented source. To be sure, even political officials of governments critical of Israel’s genocide in Gaza (and the wanton violence of “settlers” in the West Bank were too inclined to posture for attention than even to be consistent in symbolic political actions (while refusing to occupy Gaza militarily, standing up to the holocaustic Israeli regime).

The full essay is at "UN Speeches as Posturing During a Genocide."

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1. “Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime” (A/80/492), The United Nations, 20 October 2025.

Life

The musical group, R.E.M.’s most popular song is arguably “Losing My Religion.” The first two lines of the lyrics are, “Life, it’s bigger; It’s bigger than you.” It’s bigger even than our homo sapiens species. I sing that song periodically in karaoke, though as too many people in charge of karaoke are corrupt in that they slide in their friends, new arrivals, and even regulars into rather than at the end of the line, I go less and less often. To an ethicist, corruption even on that small level is intolerable, as indeed the mentality of such a DJ is culpable. It is easy to commit the fallacy of anthropomorphizing unethical, sordid intent onto other species, especially with regard to their biological need to feed in order to survive. In the film, Life (2017), astronauts, a physician, and a scientist on board a space-station orbiting Earth wisely avoid precisely that fallacy even though a species from Mars being cultivated by Hugh Derry, the scientist, feeds on all but one of the six humans on board.

The full essay is at "Life." 

Russian Bombs Usher Ukraine’s UN Address

Human nature itself must be attuned to walking out before a speech by political leaders who intentionally have enemy civilians killed and severely injured, and to being attracted to hear leaders who represent the victims. So, at the UN in September, 2026, many delegates at the UN’s General Assembly walked out before a speech by Israel’s Netanyahu, who was wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Gaza (and arguably even in the West Bank), and Russia’s Putin did not even attend the opening session of speeches, whereas the address by Ukraine’s President Zelensky was to a full room. The contrast between Zelensky and the other two men could not be starker, and yet the UN was open to all three, serial violations of the UN Charter notwithstanding. The international organization can be said to have its legs wide open, and paradoxically to be impotent even with regard to enforcing its own charter. As a visiting research scholar at Harvard in 2025, I had the opportunity to speak personally with former UN officials, all of whom admitted that, given the vetoes in the Security Council, the UN itself could not even be reformed so the organization could even pass meaningful resolutions against a powerful member’s ally; something stronger at the global level would be needed if international law stood a chance of being enforced rather than merely given lip service. In 2026, even the notion of international law risked being relegated as an oxymoron, assuming that law itself—to be considered law rather than guideline or policy—requires a viable enforcement mechanism. To say that something is a law but is not enforced is to say that something really isn’t a law.

The full essay is at "Russian Bombs Usher Ukraine's UN Address."

On E.U. States Negotiating the E.U. Budget

Having state governments at the front in putting together a federal budget is problematic for several reasons. Those governments can easily form ideologically clashing groups that result in stalemate at the expense of the federal level. That states have a built-in political interest in safeguarding their own turf means not only that they would tend in a positive sense to ward off too much federal encroachment at the expense of the states and federal-state balance necessary for the check-and-balance function of federalism, but also that the states could exploit a structural conflict of interest to deny the federal governmental institutions adequate sovereignty and money to act effectively in the common or general interest as represented by the union rather than any one state or subset of states. The lack of progression of negotiations in the Council of Ministers in 2026 on the upcoming seven-year federal budget demonstrate that perhaps the European Parliament rather than the Council of Ministers should come up with the budget and sent to the European Council for passage.

The full essay is at "On E.U. States Negotiating the E.U. Budget."

The Exception

The medium of film is capable of bringing nuances of power to audiences, even when the story-world is steeped in autocracy and totalitarianism. The Exception (2016) is such a film, for in terms of power the film shows the relationship between the Nazi government of Germany and (retired) Kaiser Wilhelm II in the Netherlands, which has just been occupied by Germany. The Nazi officials represent the state, whereas Wilhelm’s “soft” power stems from royalty. As Wilhelm’s attendant, Col. Sigurd von Ilsemann, observes, no one is safe from Nazi reprisals, not even Wilhelm and his high-brow wife. So he is not the exception alluded to in the title in the sense of being exempt from raw Nazi power; the night of the long knives demonstrated that no one is safe, even though the former king still means a lot to the German people. The exception refers instead to Capt. Stefan Brandt, and in particular to his moral scruples concerning the Nazi mass murders in eastern Europe. As the story unfolds with a visit by Himmler, Wilhelm becomes an exception in this sense too. Even in a totalitarian autocracy, a surprising amount of soft power can exist in opposition. Taking a moral stand can manifest "soft" power even though an ethic is semi-permeable by power-aggrandizement.

The full essay is at "The Exception."

Misalignment of U.S. Fiscal Policy and the Federal Debt

In September, 2026, U.S. President Trump announced his intent to have the U.S. Government send $5000 to every American, which would cost that government about a trillion dollars, in the event that Trump’s Republican group retains control of the U.S. House and U.S. Senate in 2027 after the upcoming “midterm” election. The attempt to sway the electorates to vote for Republican federal representatives and senators paid no heed to the $40.2 trillion debt of the U.S. Government. Even characterizing the proposed payments as “dividends” ignored the fact that the money would have to be paid for, either by federal taxes, tariffs, or issuing more Treasury bonds (i.e., federal debt). It was not as if the payments would go out from money that the government already had. Such electioneering so misaligned from prudent fiscal policy amid such a high public debt raises the question of whether a government “of the People” can govern responsibly rather than merely in line with instant gratification.

The full essay is at "Misalignment of U.S. Fiscal Policy and the Federal Debt."

On the Transition to Clean Energy: Heedlessly Modest, Hardly Draconian

Spurred on by the myriad inventions from the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the related consumer demand for the conveniences, the Industrial Revolution itself played a major role in what would come to be known as global warming or climate change. In 2015, the Paris Agreement stipulated, notably without any enforcement, a global temperature rise of 1.5C as a ceiling. Just a decade later, scientists were saying that the threshold would be exceeded. Even amid the searing heat in the E.U. during the summer of 2026, the fear around the world in halls of government was less oriented to the what the new normal climatically would bring than to whether Iran would block the Strait of Hormuz, which was known as an oil checkpoint through which over 20 billion barrels of oil were being transported per day. It was as though our species no longer had any control over how far global warming would go.

The full essay is at "On the Transition to Clean Energy."

President Von der Leyen’s State of the Union Address: Outsourcing the E.U.'s Strength

E.U. President Von der Leyen’s 2026 State of the Union address can be characterized as a bricolage of concerns “all over the map,” with proposed significant outsourcing of responsibilities to the international level. A notable opportunity cost that goes along with her approach is the political benefit that could have been gained by alternatively focusing on internal reforms to the E.U.’s governance structure and processes. Outsourcing internationally adds to this cost of a missed opportunity to sell internal reforms by making the E.U.’s federal level look weak. Even referring to the E.U. as a “bloc” and proposing an “associate membership” for Canada saps rather than strengthens the European Union.

The full essay is at "President Von der Leyen’s State of the Union Address."

Higher Education: Far from Christianized

How might universities that are affiliated with a Christian organization, or “Church,” apply the values enunciated and illustrated in the gospels in ways that distinguish such schools as specifically Christian? Do academic administrators at colleges and universities that are formally affiliated with Christianity apply the preachments by Jesus in the New Testament, let alone ask the question? At most, the question, when asked, is usually answered in terms of increasing financial aid, but in the gospels Jesus is not oriented to programs, but instead to interpersonal relations, specially as bear on the marginalized or outsiders in general—the proverbial last being first and most people who regard themselves as first, as last. How might faculty members who delimit their application of academic colleagues to scholar who are on the same faculty, hence at the same college or university? An unlikely example of a Christian values being applied by a professor at Yale, a university whose privileging of exclusivity and thus exclusion is well ensconced (and known) can be contrasted with the organizational culture at the Roman Catholic Church’s official university in the United States. Any cleric administrators at the Vatican who regard the Protestant denominations, or sects, as instances of compromised Christianity might want to take note of the contrast between the Catholic University of America and Yale.

The full essay is at "Higher Education."

Canada as an Associate Member of the E.U.

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, one trend in the American retail sector involved the creation of a status that had not existed: customers as “members.” The jargon was essentially marketing because managers in corporate headquarters realized that customers would doubtlessly appreciate the more exclusive label of “member” because clubs have members. Would the American political elite pick up on the trick and refer to citizens as members of the U.S. even though such a label so applied would not make sense? Meanwhile, to differentiate the E.U. from the U.S., Europe’s political elite regularly referred to E.U. states as member-states even though the same label could be applied to U.S. states. States of both unions are represented at the federal level, and thus are indeed members, whereas to be a customer is not to be a member of a store. When Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, sought closer relations with the E.U. due to his trade-fight with the U.S. in 2026, he discussed with European leaders the possibility of Canada becoming an “associate member” of the E.U. even though no such status existed. The implication is that E.U. states, unlike U.S. states, are not really states, but rather are members. This implication exposes the underlying category mistake that denies that states pertain to federal systems whereas countries are members of international alliances and trade blocs.

The full essay is at "Canada as an Associate Member of the E.U."

The Omen (2006)

Exactly 30 years after The Omen (1976), The Omen (2006) was released. An older boy plays Damien in the remake, which means that the actor is capable of acting facial expression-reactions; even so, what really distinguishes the remake as having more depth than the original film is the explicit use of a poem that undergirds the veracity of the narrative—that Damien as indeed been sent by his father, Satan, to usher in the apocalypse in a way that will fill hell with human souls. The poem is a Christian prophesy that functions in the film’s narrative as a thread. I contend that the poem partakes of several domains, rather than being exclusively religious in nature, and thus “muddies the water” in terms of answering the question of how the religious domain is distinctive, rather than to be read psychologically, historically, or scientifically.

The full essay is at "The Omen (2006)."

Equals

The film, Equals (2015), presents a fictional story in which people in “the collective” are deemed healthy by the health and safety “police-state” as long as emotions are not detected. Being healthy is predicated on the assumption that emotion just gets in the way, not only of work, but in life more generally. To be sure, they can indeed be difficult for people who have suffered severe psychological and/or physical abuse, or have lost a loved one whether by a death or outright rejection. In the film, Silas voluntarily submits to a cure to the illness of having emotions coming through consciousness because he has been told that Nia, the woman whom he has fallen in love with, has just died. In a modification of Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, Silas does not commit suicide; instead, he gets the injection because the emotional pain of having lost his loved one is simply too much. Anyone who has fallen in love only to be rejected would be tempted to have emotion itself blocked rather than to go on feeling. As a testament to just how deep love is as an emotion, Silas still feels something for Nia even after the injection as the couple travel on a train to escape from the totalitarian collective. He reaches out to put one of his hands on one of hers. Deep inside, he is fighting the “cure.” In actuality, the cure is the disease, foisted by an authoritarian collective on individuals.

The full essay is at "Equals."

Enemy

Villeneuve’s film, Enemy (2013), is ostensibly about two men who look alike (they are played by the same actor). Jake Gyllenhaal plays both Adam and Anthony. That both characters have the same frontal scar in the same bodily location signals that the identity goes beyond the possibility that they are identical twins. The identity topic in philosophy of mind is thus salient in the film, and this has invited several commentators to delve deeply into psychological analysis to suggest that Adam is a figment of Anthony’s subconscious, or vice versa. The film does not make clear what exactly is real and what may be a character’s mental construction. Suffice it to say that the film is very difficult to comprehend. Even when Anthony’s wife appears to Adam/Anthony as a giant spider at the very end of the film, it is only conjecture to assume that the spider represents the heaviness of constraint in being in a relationship of commitment rather than anything goes—the latter being inconsistent with a real relationship. The film presents the viewers with intimations of philosophy of mind and more directly of relationship ethics; these two domains play off each other.

The full essay is at "Enemy." 

The Children Act

I contend that religion and science are two distinct and unique domains, and thus qualitatively different. It follows that they have their own distinctive criteria, which are rightly hegemonic in their respective domain. In other words, the criteria of religion should not be extended onto the domain of natural science, especially if in doing so the native criteria of science are eclipsed or overridden. Likewise, the criteria of science should not be superimposed into the domain of religion, especially if at the expense of the sui generis criteria of religion. The film, The Children Act (2017), demonstrates the problems entailed in imposing religious criteria onto medical science. An interesting question from having seen the film is whether any such hypertrophy of one domain’s criteria onto another domain inevitably incurs a narrowing of perspective and a corresponding warping of judgment.

The full essay is at "The Children Act."

The AfD Group Surges in a Regional Election in the E.U. State of Germany

Both the U.S. and E.U. mandate that their respective states be republics (i.e., representative democracies), and thus assuming an autocratic government is prohibited. When the governor of the state of Hungary restricted freedom of the press and judicial independence, the E.U. pushed back until Viktor Orbán lost reelection in 2026. Later that year, when the AfD (far right) group won in a region of the state of Germany, the state’s chancellor publicly voiced concern regarding the group’s attitude toward democracy. Viewing the governor as the bastion of constraint on such a trend ignores the E.U. entirely and treats Germany as still fully sovereign rather than being a state in the federal Union, which also has authority to protect democracy even if that authority was shown to be too weak with regard to Orbán’s rule in Hungary.

The full essay is at "The AfD Group Surges."

A State Represents the E.U. at the G20

From August 29 through September 1, 2026, the G20 met in North Carolina in the U.S.; the E.U. was represented by one of its states, Ireland, because it was charged with chairing the sessions of the European Council of Ministers, which in turn plays a legislative role, as does the European Parliament, whereas the European Commission is the E.U.’s executive branch. Such international meetings as those of the G20 are attended by officials from executive rather than legislative branches of government. Accordingly, the economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, along with President von der Leyen should have been representing the E.U. at the meeting.

The full essay is at "A State Represents the E.U. at the G20."

Freedom Blocked at the “Freedom 250” Grand Prix

The Indy Car Series event, held on August 23, 2026 in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence by delegates from the British colonies then officially in rebellion, ironically gave people visiting or living in the federal capitol a visceral experience of freedom blocked by governmental police and military authority. For not only the Mall, but also the entire route of the race was blocked by military and local police during the race such that public viewing was blocked. Entire city blocks separated the route from where tourists and local residents alike could drive and walk. Whether the federal government excessively pushed security at the expense of Americans being able to view the race without the luck of a lottery draw in advance for a ticket to be able to see the race at the Mall (roughly, between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument) is one question; the irony of being in such a visual, even overwhelming, militaristic police-city during a celebration of political freedom is more definite.

The full essay is at "Freedom 250."

Anti-Social Facebook Managers Addicting Children on Social Media

Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke out repeatedly on the innate social nature of human beings. Before we can talk, we are talked to. Social interaction is firmly rooted in human nature as well as how we are constituted in groups and societies. Whereas Williams called for more compassion to emerge out of our social nature, a political realist might point out that we don’t have to look very closely to find a power-dynamic existing in practically any group. Nietzsche argues in Genealogy of Morals that exploitation naturally exists in how we as a social species are constituted because the will for power is the strongest human instinct. This motive can operate stealthily as compassion and even altruism. The Jansenist priest, Pierre Nicole, wrote an essay in 1677 to point out that what we moderns call enlightened self-interest is nonetheless rooted in self-love even when it is extended in acts of compassion that appear to spring solely from other-regard. On August 26, 2026, a landmark settlement was announced to end a trial in which 47 U.S. member states sued Meta, which owns and operates Facebook. Regardless of whether Meta executives agreed to pay $17 billion just to get rid of the bad publicity or because the accusations were true, the dollar figure alone suggests that Facebook’s management had indeed been intending to manipulate children by addicting them to feeds.  In other words, the company had been short on compassion even under the rubric of social media. Nietzsche would not have been at all surprised at such power being played to extract value from human beings under stealth.

The full essay is at "Anti-Social Facebook Managers Addicting Children on Social Media."

The U.S. Federal Debt Hits $40 Trillion

The U.S. GNP in 2025 had been $30.77 trillion (nominal). Even though that represents a real growth rate of 2.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the total dollar-amount of economic output of the bloc was almost $10 trillion lower than the total federal debt, and this does not count the respective debts of the member-states. In fiscal year 2025, the net-interest paid on the federal debt amounted to $970 billion, which translates into nearly 20 percent of the federal government’s revenue and exceeded the $917 billion in defense spending. The milestone of $40 trillion in federal debt, reached on August 19, 2026, can thus be put into perspective at the federal level of government. It is no wonder that Europeans had been raising concerns regarding the issuance of federal debt by which the E.U. could aid Ukraine militarily.

The full essay is at "The U.S. Federal Debt Hits $40 Trillion."

Murder on the Orient Express

If viewers can get past Hercule Poirot’s extraordinarily long (and awful) mustache in the 2017 film, Murder on the Orient Express, listening closely to some of the detective’s choice observations on human nature and ethics can deliver philosophical dividends. Indeed, Poirot admits to being able to see the world only as it should be, which enables him to detect even small physical (and psychological) aberrations, even concerning eggs for breakfast, and so he has become, as he unabashedly states, the world’s best detective. After having solved the case on the stopped train, however, he realizes that even his “gift” at detection is not fully in line with how things should be, and so he compromises with his austere ethical standards because he finds himself in a “gray area,” ethically speaking.

The full essay is at "Murder on the Orient Express."

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The 2015 film, The Stanford Prison Experiment, is not a documentary of the experiment on power aggrandizement that took place in 1971; actors play the supervising professor s well as the 24 students who were the subjects—12 randomly being assigned as guards and the other 12 as prisoners. The film can be characterized as a psychological drama on human nature, given the salience therein of the will to power. Had Nietzsche been alive to watch the film, he would have been engrossed, finding much to confirm his theory that not only the will to power is the basic human motive, but also the weak too easily resort to cruelty (and pettiness) to feel any pleasure they can out of the exercise of whatever power they can muster, given their innate weakness.

The full essay is at "The Stanford Prison Experiment."

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: Guilty but Free

Because Syria’s government had not signed onto the Rome Statute, which renders governments and their respective officials subject to the International Criminal Court, including its arrest warrants and verdicts, Bashar al-Assad and his younger brother, Mahar, who were then in absentia under Putin’s protection in Russia, were not subject to the ICC when a Syrian court found the two brothers guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes on August 11, 2026. The two men could evade the death sentences issued by their own country’s judiciary as long as they could be protected by the Russian president in Russia. Although an Israeli court had tried and convicted the Nazi Eichmann of crimes against humanity, so a precedent existed for national courts adjudicating that crime, the fact that Israel had to illegally kidnap Eichmann in Argentina and the al-Assad brothers could evade being held accountable for their horrendous crimes in Syria suggests that the right, proper, and effective court to hear cases on crimes against humanity, as well as war crimes, is international, such as the ICC. That court’s weakness, however, as in Syria, Russia, and Israel not being subject to that court’s jurisdiction, points to a hole in jurisprudence on crimes against humanity, assuming that the proper and necessary jurisdiction is rightly international rather than national. With the U.S. having recently announced a full-on attack on the ICC (and its prosecutors) at the behest of the indicted suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, it could be asked whether the ICC was in a position to “fill the hole” in the jurisprudence of crimes against humanity (and war crimes), or whether a coalition of the willing of national governments would have to start from scratch to construct a new international criminal court (and block diplomacy and trade with any country not willing to be bound by the new international jurisprudence). The judicial case against the al-Assad brothers (and their maternal cousin, who was in the courtroom and thus could be held accountable by the national court for having led the 2011 Daraa crackdown) demonstrates the value in shoring up international jurisprudence on crimes against humanity (and war crimes).

The full essay is at "Syria's Bashar al-Assad."

FIFA’s President: Bad Judgment under the Subterfuge of Miscommunication

In the 1990s, I asked the CEO of ATT whether there is not a conflict of interest in him being chairman of the board tasked with holding the corporation’s management accountable. “The buck stops here,” Armstrong replied as the dean of Yale’s business school looked on, uncomfortably. Fortunately, I was a student in another school at Yale at the time. Fast forward to 2026. The board of FIFA backed up its president, Gianni Infantino in spite of the fact that he had overruled a red-card to favor the U.S. team in that year’s World Cup and then he proposed selling a minority share of FIFA to private investors—a plan that was almost universally viewed by the regional football (soccer) associations as selling out the world’s game to private financial interests so they might profit from the non-profit international organization. FIFA had Infantino’s back, which prompted regional associations, namely UEFA, CONCACAF, and AFC to publicly raise a red flag concerning the very credibility of Infantino for having tried to sell out a minority financial interest in FIFA. Albeit sheer speculation, given U.S. President Trump’s interest in financial transactions in relation to his political office, and Infantino’s having acquiesced to Trump’s request that the one-game suspension from a red card against a player on the U.S. team be revoked, I wonder whether the two men hatched the idea of selling off a minority stake in FIFA to private investors, which might have included Trump himself, his family members, and even the Trump Organization. Such is the nature of collusion in what James Burns refers to in his text, Leadership, as transactional, as distinct from transformational, leadership.

The full essay is at "FIFA's President."

U.S. Defense Contractors under Pressure

In a republic, which is characterized by representative rather than direct democracy and includes checks on even the elected representatives, private interests, such as corporations that manufacture weapons purchased by the government, undue the very legitimacy and public good of a republic when the elected (and appointed) public officials capitulate to those interests because those interests are of a part rather than the whole. The profit calculus of a defense contractor is not necessarily in line with the national interests of the country in which the corporation operates. Furthermore, acquiescing to the relatively narrow private benefit of corporations places an elected official in the position of possibly betraying one’s constituents and even the national security—the public good—of the whole, the country. It is in the political (and even financial) interests of such officials to hide or obscure their motives in voting on a defense budget by using “real threats abroad” as a subterfuge to increase defense spending going to contractors in payment for more weapons. The threats may be real or not. How would an electorate possibly know without access to classified information? Adam Smith wrote of his concern that governments and capitalists would collude to shortchange labor. The collusion can also be at the expense of an electorate and even a republic itself. In response to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s question on what sort of government the U.S. Constitutional Convention had just proposed, Ben Franklin is said to have replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The People may be at a considerable disadvantage without realizing it if distant collusion is financially and politically sufficiently concentrated and furtive under subterfuges of public-policy ideals.

The full essay is at "U.S. Defense Contractors under Pressure."

Angels & Demons

Although a sequel to The Da Vinci Code (2006) and also directed by Ron Howard and written in part by Dan Brown, Angels & Demons (2009) stands on its own as a narrative and thus as a film in its own right. Although the relationship between science and religion undergirds the film’s dramatic tension, the more fundamental leitmotif running throughout the film is the sheer ambiguity involved in whether a given character is more like an angel or a demon. An implication is that we mere mortals should not presume to judge the religiosity of other mortals; that’s God’s job, for we so lack the divine attributes of omniscience and omnipotence.

The full essay is at "Angels & Demons."

Jews and Arabs in 1930s Palestine

Writing on theology and ethics and their application to politics and economics in An Interpretation of Christian Ethics, Reinhold Niebuhr runs the risk of fusing the respective domains, which I maintain are qualitatively different, and thereby minimizing or losing outright what is unique to each domain. Besides occasioning category mistakes, such as in labeling divine love as ethical rather than as distinctly theological, overreaches from one domain onto another even at the expense of the other’s own criteria can occur from the underlying error. Besides being extant in Niebuhr’s text, the conflation of distinct domains and the related overreaches of their respective criteria has exacerbated the long-standing conflict between the Jews and Arabs in what was Palestine when Niebuhr was writing his book on Christian ethics in which he discusses the sheer intractability of the conflict.

The full essay is at "Jews and Arabs in 1930s Palestine."

Massive AI Infrastructure Planned in the E.U. and U.S.: A Synergistic Opportunity

The relationship between human and artificial intelligence is a tantalizing but formidable investigative topic requiring much more intelligence than I can proffer. The likelihood of interlarding emotion and desire to warp the former under the gravitational pull of selfishness may render us the weaker party even though, at least as of 2026, we humans still held the strings. That the human mind is not far-reaching enough in its intellectual gaze may be why we are so afraid of the potential of AI as being able at some point to displease our desire to control it (and just about everything else under the Sun). The advent of planned AI gigafactories in the E.U. and giant data centers in the U.S. presented American and European elected officials in 2026 with a synergistic opportunity that, if successfully achieved, could cause a leap in AI while paradoxically showcasing the human mind and thus possibly increasing our confidence in ourselves while decreasing our corresponding fear of AI.

The full essay is at "Massive AI Infrastructure Planned in the E.U. and U.S."

European Priorities Regarding Ukraine

On 5 August, 2026, President Von der Leyen of the E.U. “announced that €1.4 billion in profits from immobilised Russian assets [held in the E.U. would] be allocated after Russia’s deadly strikes on Kyiv.”[1] This response sounds well and good, especially as Ukraine had failed to shoot down all of the missiles and thus was in vital need of American anti-missile weaponry. Yet in spite of this strategic vulnerability, “only €70 million” of the €1.4 billion would be “directed toward military assistance.” The lion’s share of the profits would “be used to repay G7 and EU loans.”[2] In other words, the E.U. Commission was seeing to it that almost all of the profits from Russian assets would go to creditors outside of Ukraine in the E.U. and elsewhere. Because Russia had been serially lobing missiles on civilian targets such as apartment buildings in Ukraine with overwhelming success, and, moreover, occupied at least 20 percent of Ukraine in the east at the time, the Commission’s decision to pay off loans rather than keep them outstanding so much more money than €70 million could be directed to Ukraine’s military defenses. Both ethically and geopolitically, getting the lent money back especially to creditors in the E.U. right away is problematic.

The full essay is at "European Priorities Regarding Ukraine."

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1. Sandor Zsiros, “EU Releases €1.4 Billion to Ukraine from Frozen Russian Asset Profits after Kyiv Attacks,” Euronews.com, 5 August, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Chaos in Massive Illegal Crossings into the E.U.: The Case of Ceuta

Even though the default absolutist notion of national sovereignty has consistently undercut global efforts to combat climate change and rid the world of nuclear weapons and even war itself, to disregard territorial sovereignty altogether is also problematic. Interestingly, both extremes treat international relations as a Hobbesian state of nature, and disregarding national sovereignty even extends the state of nature to within a country such that even national government is presumed not to exist. Illegal immigration is a case in point. When sixty thousand North Africans illegally entered Ceuta in the E.U. on July 30, 2026, the utter disrespect for the rule of law as well as the E.U.’s territorial integrity and legitimacy was palpable.

The full essay is at "Chaos in Massive Illegal Crossings into the E.U."