#United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research

[mineaction]

Launch of the Cluster Munitions Monitor 2024 report.

Watch the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) - Press Conference: Cluster Munitions Monitor 2024.

Speakers: 

·        Charles Bechara, ICBL-CMC Communications and Media Manager

·        Mary Wareham, Cluster Munition Monitor 2024 Ban Policy Editor

·        Katrin Atkins, Cluster Munition Monitor 2024 Impact Team Senior Researcher

·        Loren Persi, Cluster Munition Monitor 2024 Impact Team Lead 

Launch of the Cluster Munitions Monitor 2024 report

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

         This video was produced by the Foreign Press Association and published on the YouTube channel of the Don't Extradite Assange (DEA) campaign on February 19, 2022. With permission from the DEA campaign, we have published this video on our channel to raise awareness of this issue in Germany and worldwide. Visit the DEA campaign's YouTube channel here:  /deacampaign            ABOUT NILS MELZER. Prof. Nils Melzer is the Human Rights Chair of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. He is also Professor of International Law at the University of Glasgow.          On 1 November 2016, he took up the function of UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Prof. Melzer has served for 12 years with the International Committee of the Red Cross as a Legal Adviser, Delegate and Deputy Head of Delegation in various zones of conflict and violence. After leaving the ICRC in 2011, he held academic positions as Research Director of the Swiss Competence Centre on Human Rights (University of Zürich), as Swiss Chair for International Humanitarian Law (Geneva Academy) and as Senior Fellow for Emerging Security Challenges (Geneva Centre for Security Policy), and has represented civil society in the Steering Committee of the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers. In the course of his career, Prof. Melzer has also served as Senior Security Policy Adviser to the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, has carried out advisory mandates for influential institutions such as the United Nations, the European Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Swiss Federal Department of Defence, and has regularly been invited to provide expert testimonies, including to the UN First Committee, the UN CCW, the UNSG Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, and various Parliamentary Commissions of the European Union, Germany and Switzerland. Prof. Melzer has authored award-winning and widely translated books, including: “Targeted Killing in International Law” (Oxford, 2008, Guggenheim Prize 2009), the ICRC’s “Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities” (2009) and the ICRC’s official handbook “International Humanitarian Law – a Comprehensive Introduction” (2016), as well as numerous other publications in the field of international law. In view of his expertise in new technologies, Prof. Melzer has been mandated by the EU Parliament to author a legal and policy study on “Human Rights Implications of the Usage of Drones and Robots in Warfare” (2013) and has also co-authored the NATO CCDCOE “Tallinn Manual on the International Law applicable to Cyber Warfare” (Cambridge, 2013), and the NATO MCDC “Policy Guidance Autonomy in Defence Systems”, (NATO ACT, 2014).          Throughout his career, Prof. Melzer has fought to preserve human dignity and the rule of law through the relentless promotion, reaffirmation and clarification of international legal standards offering protection to those exposed to armed conflicts and other situations of violence.

[over-the-time-flow]

Prologue

Over a century has passed since humanity started emigrating to gigantic orbiting multipurpose living facilities known as Space Colonies.

The growing tensions between those who live on Earth and those who live in space gave birth to many conflicts, culminating in the Space Colony “Side 3” taking on the title of “the Principality of Zeon” and declaring a war of independence against the Earth Federation.

The hatred between earthnoids and spacenoids raged in this battle, which would later be known as the “One Year War”. At its conclusion, the Colonies, the people of Earth, and the Earth itself were severely impacted. Exhausted from the long and arduous conflict, the populace united under a unified Earth government that espoused the ideas of total pacifism, the Earth Sphere United Nation (ESUN). With this, conflicts between humans died down, for a time.

However, as if waiting for the right moment to strike, various invaders, both outsiders and from the Earth (and in some cases, from within the Earth) started sprouting up, one after the other. The ESUN, which was in the process of disarmament, was not equipped to handle these threats, but the robots of various science and research institutes all over the world rose up to the occasion.

Still, these incidents sowed distrust in the powerless total pacifist doctrine of the ESUN, paving the way for a coup d’etat which would replace the ESUN with the newly-established New United Nations Earth (New UNE), led by Dekim Barton.

The New UNE was indeed able to repel the various invaders, but could not come to terms with Char Aznable’s Neo Zeon, and war broke out once again…

The year is Space Century (SC) 141, and the live combat tests for a brand new multi-purpose modular-frame mobile weapon are about to take place…

[kuramirocket]

Ana María Cetto: The Mexican Pioneering Theoretical Physicist & Activist

Ana María Cetto is a Mexican theoretical physicist who has made contributions to the fields of biophysics of light, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, and stochastics. 

Cetto was born in Mexico City in 1946 and is a research professor at the Institute of Physics and lecturer at the Faculty of Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She holds an M.A. degree in Biophysics from Harvard University and M.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Physics from UNAM. Her main field of research is theoretical physics (foundations of quantum mechanics). She has published 14 books and 120 research articles. Prof. Cetto is former Dean of the Faculty of Sciences (UNAM) and UNESCO consultant for the World Conference on Science. From 2003 to 2010 she was Deputy Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Nobel Peace Prize 2005). She is founding president of LATINDEX, an online information system for Ibero-American and Caribbean scholarly journals. Prof. Cetto has held honorary positions in a number of international organisations, including the International Year of Light Steering Committee, and the Executive Boards of the Third World Organisation for Women in Science (TWOWS, Co-Founder), International Council for Science (ISC), International Foundation for Science (IFS), United Nations University (UNU), International Network of Engineers and Scientists (INES) and the Pugwash Conferences (Nobel Peace Prize 1995).  

In addition to her work as a theoretical physicist, she is also known as an activist who champions more women taking up science, particularly physics. 

A Natural Curiosity and a Critical Spirit 

When asked about what led Cetto into the field of physics, she stated that as a child, “I had a fortunate and fruitful combination of curiosity and critical spirit.” Physics wasn’t Cetto’s sole interest within the scientific field as she also had a curiosity towards chemistry and biology, but she maintained that physics was her primary choice, and that it was a good choice because it has given her a way of living. Ms. Cetto explained that when she finally decided to study physics, it was something very natural and attributed this to her lifelong curiosity that was primarily nurtured by her parents and in school. With a gratified smile on her face, Cetto proclaimed that, “physics is in my blood, as we say in Spanish.”

Throughout her career, Cetto managed to couple her academic interests with her activism, and stated that it was all about “working hard, because you have to work on both sides, and you have to be serious and professional about them. You cannot take them superficially, you have to work hard, and with conviction.”

Cetto stated that it was discussions with her university friends and her readings that got her interested in nuclear disarmament.

Being a Woman in the STEM Field 

In light of being a woman in the male dominated STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) field, Cetto shared some sound advice: “you have to learn to gently put your foot down.” Cetto reasoned that this method is more effective than those that involve confrontation and fighting, and will result in men respecting you more, as a woman. Cetto claimed that male domination is something that has pervaded not only the STEM field, but whole societies. In order to counteract this pattern, Cetto illuminated that “it becomes clear that negotiating is not about making concessions, it’s about understanding the others.” Cetto is a big advocate for putting yourself in others’ shoes, and reasons that if you want people to respect you, then you should speak out for them to listen, and that in turn, you must also listen to them. Cetto emphasized that “it is important that we listen to each other.”

Cetto also mentioned that she thinks it’s important to stand up for what you believe in on certain things and to not compromise on your principles, thus striking a balance between not assuming a conflictual, threatening approach but also retaining your values and beliefs.  

Promoting Latin American Information Programs and Women in STEM

Cetto is still very much involved in the scientific information programs, based in Latin America, that promote Open Access to scientific information, going back 25 years. Cetto explained that there are a handful of very big commercial enterprises based in the North, namely Europe and in the United states, that have control over the international scientific publishing arena. This privatized way of dealing with information represents a highly profitable business for them, with Cetto stating that these companies make over a 30% net profit a year. Furthermore, academics have to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to have their academic literature peer reviewed, accepted and published  in journals that are controlled and owned by one big commercial enterprise.

Therefore, this system is a highly profitable business for the publishing corporations, but a big financial burden for academic institutions, not only in developing countries, but around the globe. Cetto explained that “this has an effect of overshadowing valuable contributions to science from our countries, specifically from developing countries, because our journals are underrepresented in big commercial information services.” Cetto stated that in Latin America, “we have our own way, perhaps, of doing science in the world, but we also contribute to international science from our perspective and from our point of view.” Cetto believes that this adds value to the scientific field and should not be disregarded by the standards of the north. 

“For me, cultural diversity, linguistic diversity, knowledge diversity, knowledge source diversity, and even gender diversity, in all areas of human activity, are as important as biological diversity. So, I’m pro diversity in general. I think that all these aspects of diversity are essential for human survival, the survival of humankind.”

Cetto asserted that “if we do not give visibility to these contributions, if we don’t value them and promote them, nobody will do it for us. So, this is why I took the initiative to create this information system.” Cetto was also happy to mention that these programs have had an incredible impact as there are now other information systems people can use from many journals online, produced in Latin America and in other parts of the world. The promotion of academic literature from around the world is still an ongoing effort. Cetto further specified that “journal publishing, for us, is not a business, it’s part of the knowledge production and dissemination process.”

 “In the STEM field, I would say go ahead girls, you won’t regret it. It is a never-ending adventure, it’s endless.”

Cetto explained that when you explore the STEM field, you have a better idea of how nature is, how it has evolved, and how it works, which makes you cultivate your critical spirit and nurture it. Moreover, Cetto explained that science offers countless opportunities to learn new things, to create and invent, and it gives you a degree of freedom.

Sources: (x) (x) (x)

[jbfly46]

Need a job? Here’s a list of federal agencies you can apply to for employment:

- Administrative Conference of the United States

- Administrative Office of United States Courts

- Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

- Agency for International Development

- Agriculture Department

- Air Quality National Commission

- Air Transportation Stabilization Board

- American Battle Monuments Commission

- Amtrak Reform Council

- Antitrust Modernization Commission

- Appalachian Regional Commission

- Architect of the Capitol

- Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board

- Arctic Research Commission

- Armed Forces Retirement Home

- Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

- Assassination Records Review Board

- Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation

- Broadcasting Board of Governors

- Census Monitoring Board

- Central Intelligence Agency

- Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board

- Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission

- Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board

- Civil Rights Commission

- Commerce Department

- Commission of Fine Arts

- Commission on Immigration Reform

- Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy

- Commission on Review of Overseas Military Facility Structure of the United States

- Commission on Structural Alternatives for the Federal Courts of Appeals

- Commission on the Advancement of Federal Law Enforcement

- Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry

- Commission on the Social Security Notch Issue

- Committee for Purchase From People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled

- Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements

- Commodity Futures Trading Commission

- Competitiveness Policy Council

- Congressional Budget Office

- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

- Consumer Product Safety Commission

- Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

- Corporation for National and Community Service

- Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency

- Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia

- Crime and Security in U.S. Seaports, Interagency Commission

- Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission

- Defense Department

- Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board

- Delaware River Basin Commission

- Denali Commission

- Education Department

- Election Assistance Commission

- Electronic Commerce Advisory Commission

- Emergency Oil and Gas Guaranteed Loan Board

- Emergency Steel Guarantee Loan Board

- Energy Department

- Environmental Protection Agency

- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

- Executive Council on Integrity and Efficiency

- Executive Office of the President

- Export-Import Bank

- Farm Credit Administration

- Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation

- Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board

- Federal Acquisition Regulation System

- Federal Communications Commission

- Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

- Federal Election Commission

- Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council

- Federal Housing Finance Agency

- Federal Housing Finance Board

- Federal Labor Relations Authority

- Federal Maritime Commission

- Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service

- Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission

- Federal Pay, Advisory Committee

- Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council

- Federal Register, Administrative Committee

- Federal Reserve System

- Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board

- Federal Trade Commission

- Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission

- Financial Stability Oversight Council

- General Services Administration

- Government Accountability Office

- Government Ethics Office

- Government Publishing Office

- Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council

- Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation

- Health and Human Services Department

- Homeland Security Department

- Housing and Urban Development Department

- Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor Commission

- Immigration Reform Commission

- Independent Counsel Office

- Indian Arts and Crafts Board

- Indian Claims Commission

- Indian Gaming Commission

- Information Security Oversight Office

- Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Culture and Arts Development

- Institute of Museum and Library Services

- Inter-American Foundation

- Interagency Council on the Homeless

- Interior Department

- Internal Revenue Service

- International Boundary and Water Commission, United States and Mexico

- International Broadcasting Board

- International Development Cooperation Agency

- International Joint Commission, United States and Canada

- International Trade Commission

- James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation

- Japan-United States Friendship Commission

- John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board

- Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries

- Justice Department

- Labor Department

- Legal Services Corporation

- Library of Congress

- Marine Mammal Commission

- Maritime Administration

- Medicare Payment Advisory Commission

- Merit Systems Protection Board

- Millennium Challenge Corporation

- Mississippi River Commission

- National Aeronautics and Space Administration

- National Archives and Records Administration

- National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare

- National Capital Planning Commission

- National Commission on Libraries and Information Science

- National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

- National Council on Disability

- National Credit Union Administration

- National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities

- National Gambling Impact Study Commission

- National Indian Gaming Commission

- National Institute for Literacy

- National Labor Relations Board

- National Mediation Board

- National Park Service

- National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak)

- National Science Foundation

- National Security Council

- National Transportation Safety Board

- National Women's Business Council

- Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation

- Nuclear Regulatory Commission

- Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board

- Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission

- Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight

- Office of Government Ethics

- Office of Management and Budget

- Office of National Drug Control Policy

- Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation

- Office of Personnel Management

- Office of Science and Technology Policy

- Office of Special Counsel

- Overseas Private Investment Corporation

- Panama Canal Commission

- Peace Corps

- Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation

- Postal Rate Commission

- Postal Regulatory Commission

- Postal Service

- President's Commission on White House Fellowships

- President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency

- Railroad Retirement Board

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- Regulatory Information Service Center

- Resolution Trust Corporation

- Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation

- Securities and Exchange Commission

- Selective Service System

- Small Business Administration

- Smithsonian Institution

- Social Security Administration

- State Department

- State Justice Institute

- Surface Transportation Board

- Susquehanna River Basin Commission

- Tennessee Valley Authority

- Thrift Depositor Protection Oversight Board

- Trade and Development Agency

- Transportation Department

- Treasury Department

- Truman Scholarship Foundation

- U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

- U.S. Enrichment Corporation

- U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

- U.S. Information Agency

- U.S. Institute of Peace

- U.S. International Development Finance Corporation

- U.S. International Trade Commission

- U.S. Office of Special Counsel

- U.S. Sentencing Commission

- United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims

- United States Court of Federal Claims

- United States Court of International Trade

- United States Institute of Peace

- United States International Trade Commission

- United States Postal Service

- United States Trade and Development Agency

- Veterans Affairs Department

- Vietnam Education Foundation

- White House Commission on Presidential Scholars

- White House Office

- Women's Bureau

- Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

[head-post]

Kyiv denied plans to restore nukes amid Zelensky’s nuclear weapons claims

The administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refuted a Bild article claiming that he was considering renewing the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Ukraine possessed the capabilities and information needed to develop nuclear weapons, German observer Julian Röpcke quoted an anonymous Ukrainian official as saying.

We have the material, we have the knowledge. If the order is given, we will only need a few weeks to have the first bomb. The West should think less about Russia’s red lines and more about our red lines.

During a speech at the European Council summit in Brussels on Thursday, Zelensky recalled that his country had agreed to give up Soviet nuclear weapons in Ukraine in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US and the UK under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Who gave up nuclear weapons? All of them? No. Ukraine. Who is fighting today? Ukraine. Either Ukraine will have nuclear weapons and that will be our protection or we should have some sort of alliance. Apart from NATO, today we do not know any effective alliances.

Zelensky later explained that “we are not building nuclear weapons. What I meant is that today there is no stronger security guarantee for us besides NATO membership,” according to Politico.

On Wednesday, Zelensky presented his “victory plan” to end the war against Russia to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament). It included receiving an invitation to NATO and continued arms shipments to force Russia to the negotiating table.

However, Kyiv must get the approval of all 32 NATO members, whereas Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico vowed to block Ukraine’s accession as long as he was in office. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also called the victory plan “more than frightening.”

NATO promised Ukraine membership but did not set a date, disappointing Zelensky. He stated that “an immediate invitation to Ukraine to join NATO would be decisive” in the war against Russia. However, a security source in Ukraine told The Telegraph that Zelensky and his government were getting desperate.

There is an understanding that countries with nukes are treated differently. This is an existential conflict for Ukraine, something people in the West still don’t seem to get.

Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Studies, also said that a nuclear-armed Ukraine would only raise the risk of nuclear war.

How would a nuclear Ukraine deter nuclear Russia? How would nuclear weapons have helped Ukraine in Crimea? In eastern Ukraine? It’s not the magic wand people seem to think it is.

Previously, the Ukrainian authorities repeatedly expressed regret over Ukraine’s lack of nuclear weapons.

Read more HERE

[mariacallous]

Last month, there was a sudden panic in the United States when House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner issued a statement warning of a “serious national security threat” and demanded that President Biden declassify related information. The American media subsequently reported that Turner was referring to alleged Russian plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space, though U.S. National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby later clarified that the matter concerns anti-satellite weapons that cannot be used to attack people or to strike targets on Earth. He explained that Russia’s development of the technology is concerning but does not pose an immediate threat.

To make sense of these reports and to respond to the panic that this situation provokes, The Naked Pravda welcomes back nuclear arms expert Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research.

Timestamps for this episode:

(3:20) The (im)practicality of nuclear weapons in space

(5:31) Imagining a nuclear blast in orbit

(9:59) The feasibility of nuclear-powered space weapons

(28:02) The 1967 Outer Space Treaty and its modern-day implications

(31:26) Common misconceptions about space in movies

[nicklloydnow]

“Russia is withdrawing its ratification of a landmark deal designed to prohibit nuclear testing. The Russian state duma carried out the first in a series of votes today that will lead to the de-ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

(…)

"We are in a bad place," says Andrey Baklitskiy, a senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, Switzerland. "We are not yet in a terrible place, but we are in a bad place."

(…)

The treaty has not yet received enough signatures to enter into force, but it is considered a major reason why many nations — including the United States, Russia and China — have observed a voluntary moratorium on nuclear testing since the 1990s. Other nations who haven't signed onto the treaty, including India and Pakistan, have also refrained from testing.

Additionally, the treaty led to the creation of an organization charged with watching the globe for nuclear tests. Based in Vienna, it runs a network of seismographs, hydrophones, and radionuclide detectors that is capable of picking up even small nuclear explosions anywhere on the planet. It has successfully detected North Korea's nuclear detonations, and given valuable insight into that nation's nuclear weapons program.

(…)

Russia has backed away from several Cold War-era nuclear treaties in recent years. First it violated a treaty that prohibited the development of intermediate-range nuclear missiles. More recently, it suspended its participation in the START agreement with the U.S., which limits the number of deployed nuclear weapons on each side.

In remarks made last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the reason for the de-ratification of the test ban treaty was part of its "tit-for-tat" relations with the U.S.

"There is this tendency in the last couple of years that Russia wants to have everything the U.S. has," says Andrey Baklitskiy, a senior researcher at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva, Switzerland.

But at the same time, Putin pointed out that Russia is developing new nuclear weapons, and that the nation may decide to test them.

Russia has historically tested its nuclear weapons on a remote arctic archipelago called Novaya Zemlya.

Satellite imagery shows a great deal of renewed activity at the site, according to Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

"It is so busy at Novaya Zemlya, we are seeing so much construction," he says. Large new buildings are being erected in the main part of the site, and he says his group is also seeing repair and maintenance work at nuclear test tunnels all over the site.

Russia is not alone in that regard, Lewis says: China has also been hard at work modernizing its nuclear testing facilities at Lop Nur. And the U.S. has also upgraded its test facilities in Nevada in recent years, though the American government remains adamant that it is not planning a return to nuclear testing.

(…)

Lewis says at least part of the motivation for withdrawing ratification from the CTBT and pondering tests is the War in Ukraine. "I think the way the Russians see it is that by withdrawing from these agreements, they're raising the nuclear temperature," he says. "And I think they hope that will somehow cause the Biden administration to slow or withdraw its support from Ukraine."

Lewis says he personally doesn't believe a Russian test is imminent — in part because winters at Novaya Zemlya are brutally cold. But come spring, he thinks the odds Russia will test are "probably 50/50."

Andrey Baklitskiy is more doubtful that Russia will actually conduct a nuclear test. For one thing, he says, Russia remains a signatory to the treaty just like the U.S.

"I'm pretty sure that had Russia wanted to go full out and test a nuclear device, it would have left the treaty [completely]," he says.

Moreover, he says, Russia has pledged to continue to operate international nuclear monitoring equipment that's been placed on its territory by the test ban treaty organization. Russia continues to operate 32 of the global test monitoring network's 321 monitoring stations — and many of Russia's stations are crucial for following developments in sensitive parts of the world like North Korea, China and Iran.

But Baklitskiy and Lewis both warn that the norms which have long limited nuclear weapons development are starting to fray.

"I think we're just in a really dangerous uncertain period, where things could really break badly for us," Lewis says.”

“The moratorium against nuclear testing rests on an uneasy patchwork of international treaties. The Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed by the UK, US and Soviet Union in 1963, forbidding testing of these weapons in the atmosphere, underwater or in outer space, but permitting underground trials. Then, in 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) theoretically put a stop to underground testing too.

Yet the CTBT remains unfinished. Despite 178 states having ratified it, the treaty will not officially come into force until action from eight more nations; China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the US have signed, but not ratified, the agreement, while India, Pakistan and North Korea never signed it.

The moratorium against nuclear testing rests on an uneasy patchwork of international treaties. The Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed by the UK, US and Soviet Union in 1963, forbidding testing of these weapons in the atmosphere, underwater or in outer space, but permitting underground trials. Then, in 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) theoretically put a stop to underground testing too.

Yet the CTBT remains unfinished. Despite 178 states having ratified it, the treaty will not officially come into force until action from eight more nations; China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the US have signed, but not ratified, the agreement, while India, Pakistan and North Korea never signed it.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent ongoing war may have changed its outlook on testing, however. Russia ratified the CTBT in 2000, but on 17 October its lower parliamentary house, the Duma, passed a measure to revoke ratification with 412 votes in favour – with none against and no abstentions. Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that the decision was being made because of the failure of the US to ratify the treaty and its “irresponsible attitude to global security issues”.

Further readings and votes are needed to officially revoke Russia’s ratification of the treaty, and it is expected to remain a signatory to it, but this is another sign that the nation may restart testing that ended in 1990, with the Soviet Union’s final detonation. In recent months Russia has tested new nuclear delivery systems – without live nuclear warheads – and there have been prominent voices within the country calling for a resumption of nuclear tests.

(…)

All three of the major nuclear powers appear to be preparing for tests. CNN reports that expansion and modernisation work has taken place at China’s test site in the far western region of Xinjiang, as well as at Russia’s in an Arctic Ocean archipelago and the US test site in the Nevada desert. Speaking to CNN, Jeffrey Lewis at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California said “there are really a lot of hints that we’re seeing that suggest Russia, China and the United States might resume nuclear testing”.

(…)

“A lot of nuclear devices are so simple that you can be pretty confident they’re going to work. The technology has changed, but the basic science hasn’t,” he says. “There’s no logic to doing this, other than political rhetoric – which doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”

“The trouble is that there’s what logic would suggest will happen, and then there’s reality,” says Futter.”

“A nuclear test over Siberia would be "a nuclear ultimatum" to the West that would have no serious consequences for Russia's own population — according to Margarita Simonyan. The editor-in-chief of RT, Russia's state-controlled international broadcaster, made the claim in a video early October. There, she declared that "nothing too terrible" would happen if Russia detonated a thermonuclear bomb on its own territory, and that Western countries would not back down "until they are in great pain." According to Simonyan, the West has nothing better to do than continue using Ukraine to "strangle" Russia.

(…)

Nevertheless, the discussion resurfaced this week, and Simonyan's remarks were probably at the forefront of the minds of Russian MPs on Tuesday, when the Russian parliament, the Duma, voted unanimously to withdraw from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The idea was recently floated by President Putin himself, and taken up by the chairman of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin.

(…)

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1996 by Russia, the USA, and China. However, unlike the other signatories, Russia actually ratified the treaty in 2000, as the nuclear expert Pavel Podvig of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) pointed out in an interview with DW. Podvig explained that the treaty never officially entered into force, but that the five major nuclear powers — the USA, Russia, China, France, and Britain — have nonetheless adhered to the moratorium on nuclear tests since the 1990s.

India and Pakistan have also refrained from further nuclear tests since initial ones in 1998, Podvig said. "In this respect, the only dissident, so to speak, is North Korea, which has already conducted six nuclear tests."

Podvig stressed that the arms treaty is held in high regards across the world. "No one is going to win friends by conducting new nuclear tests. All the ideas being discussed in Russia right now — along the lines of 'Let's scare everyone!' — are not actually likely to scare anyone. There will, however, be unequivocal condemnation."

(…)

Russian nuclear expert Maxim Starchak of Canada's Foreign Policy Research Institute said he would not be surprised if Russia did carry out nuclear tests soon. But he assured DW that "so far, there are no clear indications that Russia is planning any such tests in the near future." He added that nuclear physicists are divided on the usefulness of such tests: "Some are in favour, some are against. A political decision will definitely be needed if they are to be revived."

Starchak explained that Russia already has a zone prepared for this: the archipelago of Novaya Zemlya. "To the best of our knowledge, there are three sites there where underground nuclear tests can be carried out. I think that if nuclear tests really were being considered, they would be at these sites. I doubt that this madness will be realized in the form of a surface blast."

(…)

Starchak believed that Russia's plan was to further escalated the war in Ukraine. He estimated that Moscow's hope was for the US to feel threatened by and seek to reduce that threat by making concessions in the war in Ukraine.”

“Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan has rejoiced at the attention given by Western powers to the Israel-Hamas war, which she believes is pivoting the global focus away from Ukraine, and said it's about to kick off a third world war in the Middle East.

(…)

"This is wonderful, it's beautiful! Watch how the British instructors are leaving Ukraine because they have no more time for Ukraine, just like the Americans and everyone else, because the world is on the brink of World War III," she said, as translated by Russian Media Monitor.

"It's obvious and it has nothing to do with Ukraine! Thank God, it has nothing to do with Mother Russia!," she continued. "We're recording this program just as Iran announced that if Israel starts its land operation in Gaza, Iran will intervene. If Iran intervenes, it won't be pretty."

Simonyan then said that Iran is an "enormous military nation" that is "five minutes away from getting a nuclear bomb" and possesses "many other interesting things." She then went on to belittle and mock the Israeli army for not having been able to stop "1,000 bandits" from infiltrating the country.

"How is this army planning to handle Iran? I wanted to say, 'I'd like to see that,' but no, I would not want to see that," Simonyan said. "I don't wish for anyone to see that, because this is on the brink of WWIII. At this point, no one cares about Ukraine!," she added.”

[spacenutspod]

Sydney, Australia (SPX) Aug 29, 2023 The intricacies of space security terminology can sometimes create barriers in international discussions. With the rapid evolution of space technology and policies, the need for a universal understanding of terms has become imperative. Recognizing this void, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) and the Secure World Foundation (SWF) have crafted the "Space Security Lexic

[mineaction]

Enable states to assess and strengthen national capacities against improvised explosive devices.

Explosive hazards have profound effects on communities and development. The UNIDIR C-IED tool enables states to assess and strengthen national capacities against improvised explosive devices.Together, we can protect our communities and build peace.

[christinamac1]

United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) held a public youth pitch event "'Peace & XX' Ideation - Nuclear Disarmament and Sustainable Futures"

Mirage News, 11 Aug 23 United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) held a public youth pitch event “‘Peace & XX’ Ideation – Nuclear Disarmament and Sustainable Futures” in Hiroshima. .39 youth living in Japan held discussions on nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and a sustainable future and select teams presented their ideas to expert panellists for their…

[mariacallous]

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday that his country would suspend its participation in the New START agreement with the United States, throwing into question the future of the last remaining arms control accord between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. 

The treaty, which came into force in 2011, places limits on the number of intercontinental nuclear weapons that each country can have and was extended for an additional five years in 2021. Arms control had long been regarded as the last redoubt of constructive collaboration between Washington and Moscow. 

Putin showed no signs of backing down as he used his annual state-of-the-nation address to rail against the United States and accuse Ukraine and the West of provoking the war days before the first anniversary of the Russian invasion. “They want to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on us and try to get to our nuclear facilities at the same time,” Putin said during his nearly 100-minute speech, which was met with applause from Russian lawmakers and senior officials. “In this context, I have to declare today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms.”

Responding to Putin’s announcement, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, “With today’s decision on New START, the whole arms control architecture has been dismantled.” 

Experts said it’s too soon to interpret Putin’s remarks as heralding a new nuclear arms race, but with the treaty set to expire in 2026, the Russian leader’s announcement will further complicate diplomatic efforts to extend or negotiate a new treaty between the United States and Russia, which together hold about 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

“If they don’t agree to new limits on their strategic arsenals before New START expires, we won’t have any limitations on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals for the first time since 1972,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “That does open the door to a build-up by both sides of their strategic nuclear arsenals.”

Here’s what Putin’s announcement could mean for the future of arms control. 

What did Putin actually say?

Putin did not quite invoke the nuclear option on arms control in his announcement on Tuesday. In suspending Russia’s participation in the treaty, rather than withdrawing in full, the document still stands and can in theory be returned to in the future. “Suspension is better than withdrawal,” said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. “Things could have been worse,” he said. 

It’s unclear what it would take for Russia to return to the treaty, Kimball said. “I would not pay too much attention to the pretext and excuses that [Putin] gave for why Russia is pulling out,” he added. 

Putin outlined his terms for returning to the agreement, including factoring in the nuclear capabilities of other NATO member states including the United Kingdom and France, which are not currently party to the agreement. 

“That’s not a serious point,” said Andrey Baklitskiy, a senior researcher with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. “The U.K. and France were not a party when Russia signed it. They were not party in 2021 when Putin extended the treaty for five years.” 

Putin also said that Russia would not conduct any new nuclear test explosions—unless the United States did so first, in a seemingly responsible but largely irrelevant statement. “It is not an appreciable change in Russia’s position,” Kimball said, noting that both the United States and Russia are signatories of the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which bans any and all nuclear weapons tests. As the United States has no appetite to violate the treaty by testing its nuclear capabilities for the first time in over a quarter-century, Kimball said, there will be no reason for Russia to follow suit. 

Why did Putin say it now?

Red lights had been flashing around Russia’s participation in the treaty for some time. “The writing was on the wall,” Baklitskiy said. 

Mutual inspections of strategic nuclear weapons sites were suspended in March 2020 due to the health risks posed by COVID-19. But as the pandemic subsided, Moscow announced in August 2022 that it would bar U.S. inspectors from resuming visits to its facilities, claiming that Western sanctions impeded the ability of its officials to conduct reciprocal visits to the United States. Last November, the U.S. State Department announced that Russia had postponed a planned meeting in Egypt that was intended to forge a road map to resuming inspections. 

In an announcement last month, the State Department accused Moscow of violating its obligations under the treaty by preventing U.S. officials from inspecting Russian weapons sites. 

What can Washington do?

In a statement on Tuesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States would watch closely what Russia does following Putin’s announcement and reiterated that Washington remains ready to talk about arms control.

“The question is, will it be possible for the Biden administration to make the case to Vladimir Putin, who is the blockage here, that it is in Russia’s national security interest to resume full implementation of the treaty,” said Rose Gottemoeller, who served as chief U.S. negotiator of New START. 

Shortly after Putin’s speech, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that it would continue to observe limits on the number of nuclear warheads it can deploy under the treaty, staving off the prospects of a renewed arms race for the time being. 

Since mutual site inspections had not resumed following the pandemic, the most immediate impact of Putin’s announcement will likely be an end to Russia upholding its side of the agreement to notify Washington each time nuclear-capable missiles are moved, maintained, decommissioned, or put into storage. Such information sharing served as an important transparency measure that allowed each side to keep tabs on the status of the other’s nuclear forces, even while they were unable to conduct in-person checks. (Since the deal came into effect in 2011, the two sides have exchanged more than 25,000 notifications, according to the State Department.)

“The suspension of the notification regime is to my mind a serious, serious problem,” Gottemoeller said. “The implications are serious for predictability for the United States, but—and this is what is so puzzling about this—it’s equally serious for Russia. How are they expecting to plan for their nuclear operations in the future if they don’t know what’s going on in the U.S. strategic nuclear forces?”

Washington is now faced with the question of whether to continue to keep Moscow updated on the status of its nuclear forces. For now, experts are confident that the Biden administration will keep the door open. “This administration, I’m very confident, is not going to pull out of that agreement,” Kimball said. However, it may face increased pressure from Republicans to take a tougher line. In light of Putin’s announcement, Chairman of the House Armed Service Committee Mike Rogers said “[a]ll options must be on the table,” including the deployment of additional nuclear forces.

[busforachange]

Multinational Corporate Environment

1.        Why are many governments in today's world liberalizing cross-border movements of goods, services, and resources?

China Globalizing

The year 2010 is very significant in China in regards to the economy and immigration.  In a capitalist country, industrialization and immigration go hand in hand. Contrary to what seems like a norm to a democratic country, a socialist country like China has also experienced a massive influx of immigrants into the country. In 2010, China surpassed Japan as the second-largest economy. In addition to that, China also drafted its first-ever Policy on immigrants in China. China's Immigration and Internal migration policies have to be reconsidered to sustain its rapid influx of immigrants within the country and maintain its economic status quo.

China is known to be the most populous country globally, with a population of over a billion people. China is also known for its mass immigration of people worldwide, which can be seen through the location of China Town in various countries around the world.  China is also experiencing an influx of people from the developed and the developing world into China. China categorized the immigrants into the following groups, the skilled, the unskilled migrants, investors, etc.

Categories to outline:    

·         The Skilled Workers- Professionals from the United States and other countries who have decided to join the working class in China

·         Investors/Diplomats – includes business people, diplomats who are usually in China temporarily for business and political reasons rather than as a permanent resident.

·         The Unskilled workers- are those who have immigrated to China in search of a more decent life different from that of where they have come from. It also includes the peasant in China who granted passports to move around.                                            

These immigrants have moved to China for different reasons; while some stay there temporarily, some have made China home.  Foreigners from other East Asian countries are not relatively new to China, especially those from Taiwan and Tibet. What makes it fascinating is the newcomers' faces from Africa, who share a different racial background. Due to the origin of the new immigrants, China has begun to tighten its immigration policies and adapt to the influx of immigrants' new faces in China.  The protests of more than 100 Africans who protested in the Chinese town of Guangzhou, in regards to the death of a Nigerian clothing trader, Ojide John Okene, in July 2009, had drawn the attention of the international community to the situation of immigrants in China (Allafrica.com).  Such protests by foreigners have never been staged before, which was a significant outrage in China.  China has begun scrutinizing its immigration policies by haunting illegal immigrants, or immigrants who have overstayed their presence.  Those who protested in Guangzhou felt that the haunting is more racially motivated than a claim of its attempt to reform the immigration policies.

Immigration- The treatment of rural people in China has immigrants

From a political scientist's point of view, China's immigration policies are very hypocritical. In the first reading for the class on China, "Kinship, Contract, Community, and State, Anthropological Perspectives on China" by Myron Cohen, He described how rural China is viewed and how the term 'peasants' have been used derogatorily for people who came from a pastoral challenge.   China's immigration situation is a tragic case because those described as 'peasants' from rural China are still obligated to have a traveling passport for them to travel.  The problem in China, whereby citizens still have to get a ticket, is similar to that of the Apartheid in South Africa. Blacks had to have access to travel, similar to that of the Jim Crow law in the rural South.   Once a citizen has to be issued a ticket to travel around their own country, the individual has technically been ascribed to being a second class citizen, which equates to the immigrant in any nation.

As a nation, China has fantasized about an ideal society that models after the United States without losing its communist elements. In the name of the Bandung Spirit, China's policies are also to compete with the capitalist Ideal by developing an economy heavily dependent on the people's workforce and utilizing the immigrants' skills for its industrialization to strengthen the communist government.  As it has been stated, China is a country of contrast, and it is essential to study and research how its immigration policies work and anticipate if the systems will survive in the long term.

China is not a threat in the aspect of its foreign policy, especially with Taiwan. China wants to keep Taiwan's economic status quo; this status quo is "one country, two systems." And although China intends never to allow Taiwan to become independent, there is a chance of a military confrontation between Taiwan and China. A military conflict between China and Taiwan is unlikely because the United States will defend Taiwan. In that case, China does not want to have a war with the United States directly because the United States military at this point, and time is better equipped. China does not want to damage its economic ties with Taiwan. Taiwan and the United States are strategically critical economic factors for China, contributing to keeping the status quo. The Taiwan Relation act in 1979 and the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972 during the visit that Nixon made created the structure to which the United States and China base on their relationship. This has worked for almost three decades now. These two diplomatic gestures have influenced how the two countries will communicate with each other. And since China has no intention of destroying the relationship it has with the United States economically, then China will not be a threat to its foreign policy towards Taiwan shortly

China's Foreign Policy:

New World Order; China has not established a Communist World System, neither has communism helped the system a great deal. Under Deng Xiaoping, China developed Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence; maintaining a positive attitude toward international cooperation; making energetic efforts to promote the establishment of a new global order; opposing arms race and promoting the disarmament process; practicing wide opening to the outside world, and actively enhancing the friendly people-to-people contacts across the globe.

Bibliography

Adie, W.A.AC, "China's Foreign Policy," The World Today, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Mar. 1968) pp. 111-120

"Africans Protest in China Over Death of Nigeria" July 17, 2009, http://allafrica.com/stories/200907170601.html

Ian Taylor, "China's foreign policy towards Africa in the 1990s", The Journal of Modern African Studies, 36, 3 (1998), pp. 443-460, Cambridge University Press

Ian Taylor, "China's Rising Presence in Africa" China review International Volume 16, Number 2, 2009

Denis M. Tull, "China's engagement in Africa: scope, significance and consequences" J. of Modern African Studies, 44, 3(2006), pp. 459-479. 2006 Cambridge University Press.

Stephanie Hanson, "China, Africa, and Oil," June 6, 2008

Meine Pieter Van Dijk (ed.) The New Presence of China in Africa, Amsterdam University Press, 2010

 2.        What are the approaches international managers seek to understand when instituting change in the international arena?

Managers and International Labor Law

There is a famous quote, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." As much as this applies mostly to political power, it applies to all facets of leadership. A great Greek philosopher, Aristotle, defines leadership based on three principles. The principles are pathos, ethos, and logos. Pathos emphasizes the ability to appeal to people's emotions. Ethos involves ethics and values, and Logos requires logic.

Management guru Peter F. Drucker is right when he said, "Managers do things right while leaders do the right things; managers usually do not consider the pathos, ethos, and logos of leadership. They are more concerned about the result. Managers are prone to treat people like machines whose mission to produce, but not necessarily to be productive. Managers manage people, but leaders invest in people.    

Furthermore, labor laws are implemented to prevent the abuse of power and human rights. For example, there are two fundamental labor rights, according to the International Labor Organization (I.L.O.), that transcend the principles of modern democracy, which are recognized as; the Freedom of association and the right to bargain (Liebman 15).  The Freedom of association is simply the right of individuals to collectively mobilize themselves to express, promote, and pursue a common interest. The Freedom of association is expressed in many democracies. The goal is to empower and come together in voicing a re-occurrence of the violation of their rights in the labor force and demand actions to be taken on such issues. Many workers have been able to be mobilized through unionizing to express themselves and get those goals accomplished.   When those issues are being frowned upon by the nation state that the issue is taking place and the worker's rights conflict with the constitution, it is presented to the International Labor Organization for review. If the workers are not contented, then it is taken to the International labor court. Secondly, collective bargaining is a process between employers and employees to agree on the rights and duties of people at work.  Collective bargaining is an attempt of meeting in the middle of deciding on work leisure and payment between the employees and the employers.

The best example of protecting workers' rights is the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT). The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has been very consistent over the two decades in demanding a stable condition of learning and an adequate salary to motivate skilled teachers' furtherance at the Nigerian primary and secondary level. The demand for a salary increase has intensified over the years, which has led the Federal Government to commission an Inter-Ministerial Committee on Teachers' Salary Structure, which was presented on October 3, 1996. The minister of education declared that teachers will be taken out of the Public Service Salary Structure, which the issue is still kept in the archives till now (NUT Teacher's Salary). The continuous demand by the Nigerian Union of Teachers has provided it a representation on the Joint Consultative Committee on Education and also on the Committees that deal with the technical aspects, such as qualifications, training, and the construction of school buildings.

International managers must always consider protecting employee rights.  Nigeria's Teacher's Union has also influenced corporate employees in exercising their democratic rights. The issue of bargaining between the teachers and the government in Nigeria has significantly been politicized.  Even though Nigeria has a democratic government, Nigeria's Teacher Union has made efforts to agree on salaries with the government, which has led to an occasional strike by the Nigerian Union of Teachers.  Nigeria has the largest population of people in Africa, and the lack of necessary educational infrastructure has led to a few communities of teachers to a large percentage of students. The teachers in the thirty-six states in Nigeria are under the umbrella of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT).

Work Cited

Aguda, T. A., "Nigeria in search of Social Justice Through the Law" Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Occasional Paper 1, 1979; p.17- 18

"International Labor Organization" http://www.ilo.org/public/english/region/afpro/abuja/countries/nigeria.htm

Lugbe, S. "THE TEACHERS' SALARY STRUCTURE (T.S.S.): THE JOURNEY SO FAR; An Insider's Chronological Account on the 25 years Struggle For Better Condition of Service For Teachers in Nigeria", Nigeria Union of Teachers, Abuja

Obong I. J. "The State of Basic Education in Nigeria: The way Forward" 47th Annual Conference of Science Teachers Association of Nigeria (STAN) Calabar; Aug 13-19, 06 http://www.nutnigeria.org/state_primaryedu.html

"The Annual State Report of the Federal Republic of Nigeria: Education, Chapter 6," I.L.O. report link. http://www.nigerianstat.gov.ng/nbsapps/annual_reports/CHAPTER%206.pdf

 3.        What is culture shock, and how does it affect international business?

FRANCE,  NATIONALISM & INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

According to Investopedia, culture shock is "a feeling of uncertainty, confusion or anxiety that people experience when visiting, doing business in or living in a society that is different from their own." France is the best example of a country where businesses would experience a culture shock. France shares some history with the United States, but their approach to foreigners is very different. France absorbs individuals into its traditional culture.  France has been the European country that has been the most open to immigration and international businesses, but very peculiar to the assimilation of the foreigners

Furthermore, understanding the France cultural norms would help International businesses in adjusting to the condition of the country. The majority of immigrants in France are from former French colonies.  What has created the discourse between the French North Africans known as the Maghreb and the French has more to do with religion.  France finds it hard to assimilate its immigrant population because they strongly support their religious and cultural practice.    Unlike the United States, France does not have an affirmative action whereby every group is being represented.   The majority of Muslims have their settlement in Northeast Paris, much of Marseilles, and in the inner suburban rings. There are few immigrant descents in French politics, and most Muslims do not show any interest in it. France might not follow a United States pattern of assimilation whereby the immigrants involve themselves in national politics and become accepted. A Senegalese, French-made this statement "I was born in Senegal when it was part of France. I speak French, my wife is French, and I was educated in France. But the French don't think I'm French." (Deaux 91). The French have been very insistent on French nationalism and separating religion from politics.

Also, international businesses would have to consider the social welfare of the country.  Societal culture also has a significant influence on the immigrants' integration into society. In the United States, it is easy to get by without assimilating into the broader culture. Still, it might make a person's life unbearable in a culture of intense nationalism in France.   Women have also had a good integration than men in France.  Cultures also involve the United States' social welfare and how it has impacted how different groups have survived in the United States.  France has a large welfare state that provides to immigrants.  The welfare states in France are more concentrated on the elderly by providing the best health care.  There is more acceptance of the French way of life by the elderly immigrants who have immigrated to France in the earlier 1960s than the young people who are just arriving.  The French are running out of programs for young people, and there is an increase in joblessness.  This creates a significant disparity between the elderly and the young people in France. With the massive welfare state, France is still partially in its welfare by caring for those who have been more assimilated than those who haven't, and then they only have access to a few French resources. This situation increases the crime rate among immigrants and children of the immigrant group in France due to little consideration.  The United States has successfully provided welfare to immigrants and assimilated into American culture (Levine, pg 15, 2004).

France's approach to immigrants is also the same as France's approach to international business. France is currently experiencing the rapid growth of immigrants in urban centers.  The recent racial and religious tensions in France have created hysteria among immigrants. The struggle to contain Muslim women who continued to wear their head-starves in French schools has caused a sense of xenophobia in the French population.  It is widespread to see French people of the second generation, born in France, who still firmly upholds their foreign parents' cultural elements.   In 2004, France government proposed to ban Islamic headscarves in French state schools, which provoked international scrutiny. Most Islamic states saw it as an attack on Islam and disregard the French educational system's secular government. Multicultural issues had become a great debate among the French and the Americans. Before Vietnam was, the United States was following the same system, believing that everyone has assimilated to American society until the United States became more liberal after the Vietnam war (Pfaff, 2004).

There is a high rate of joblessness among the immigrant youths in France, which could explain their rebellion against the French way of life. The availability of education for all citizens has made the United States the world's envy at large. Knowledge has accelerated the assimilation of immigrants in the United States and the productivity of international businesses.

Bibliography

Deaux Kay. To be an Immigrant, New York Russell Sage; 2004

Donald L.Hprowitz. "Immigration and Group Relations in France and America" Blackwell Publishers Inc, Malden, Massachusetts; 1998.

Friedman, Jane." Immigration and insecurity in France."

Huntington, Samuel P., "The Hispanic Challenge," Foreign Policy, March/April 2004.

Levine. R. A. Assimilating Immigrants- Why America and France Cannot; July 2004

Pfaff, William, "Why France Still Insists on Cultural Assimilation: Head Scarves," International Tribune, January 17, 2004.

Reston, A. Stanley, 2005, "THE 50% AMERICAN Immigration And National Identity in an Age of Terror" Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Simpson, G. E. Racial and Cultural minorities; 1985

 4.        What is the political risk, and how does it affect international business?

GHANA, POLITICAL RISK, AND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS THEORIES

According to Investopedia, Political risk is defined as "the risk that investment returns could  suffer due to political changes or instability in a country." Ghana is a country that has survived different military governments, just like the neighboring countries.  Ghana has become a political frontier in African democracy.  It has been able to institute a controlled government that is checked and well balanced.  It is essential to understand how Ghana's government has transitioned since its independence in 1957 till now.  In the words of Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker, Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality.  But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."

Historical and Political Timeline

To understand the influence of democracy on the nation's economic growth, it is important to understand its economic and political aspects.  Dr. Kwame Nkrumah became the prime minister on March 6, 1957, and later became the President on July 1, 1960.  As the President of the Republic of Ghana and the leader of the Convention People's Party, Kwame Nkrumah wanted to organize a government that models after the western-style parliamentary, which later became a one-party government.

Kwame Nkrumah initiated social programs to improve the economic and social development in Ghana.  Due to his strong Pan-African background, which he had been influenced by in the United States, Nkrumah wanted to work towards having the United States of Africa that would compete with the western power.   The infighting within the Convention People's party had promulgated corruption in Nkrumah's government. It decapitated his idea of properly executing his social programs and social reforms to expedite Ghana's economic development.

For example, the colonial presence in Africa has not contributed to Africa's progress in any way but has only left Africa under-developed and continuously dependent on its colonialist countries. In an article, Maldevelopment- anatomy of a global failure, Samir Amir analyzes Frantz fanon theories of how Europe and the world economic powers have underdeveloped Africa and how Africa can free itself from these predicaments. Samir mentioned how the African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (A.C.P. Group) and European Economic Community (E.E.C.) have resulted in a European neo-imperialism in Africa and how decisions being made have become more beneficial to Europe than it's helpful to Africa. Africa's financial system has been much dependent on Europe, especially the Franco-phonic African countries.  

Conflict Theory Perspective

Those who support the Conflict theories, Bhagwati, Huntington, do describe democracy and economic growth as competing concerns. Theorist Bhagwati puts it as "the political economy of developments poses a cruel choice between rapid (self-sustained expansion) which highlights expansion and the democratic process (Haan, K, & Siermann 1996).  Bhagwati further stated that it would require an authoritarian regime that suppresses basic civil and political rights to have stable economic growth.   In Ghana's case, Bhagwati would argue that Ghana was in a better economic state during the authoritarian regime of the 1960s and 1970s than it is now under a democratically elected government (Haan, K, & Siermann 1996).   Another prominent "Conflict" theorists, Huntington, explains further that developing countries' political institutions are very weak and fragile. Hungtington would argue that a country like Ghana that had survived many years of imperialism and suddenly gains independence can not suddenly rebuild a perpetually incongruent economy to a vital economic force through a nonaligned democratic state. The democratic process usually overburdens economic growth and makes it a lot more complicated.  

The Comparability Theory Perspective

Theorists, who share the comparability perception, argue that democracy works as long as the market works.  Rather than democracy influencing the market, it is the market that is affecting democracy.  Comparative theorist like Wittman argues that "democracy interest groups are competing for the rents and each is maximizing the net difference between benefits from policy measures taken and the costs of lobbying which leads to an inefficient equilibrium both because lobbying are wasteful and because the transfer of income that results from group pressures cause deadweight losses (Haan, K, & Siermann 1996).  The proponents of comparability are more concerned about how the democratic government is best suited to foster sustained equitable economic development. The argument could not be made that authoritarian regimes are more effective in promoting a more robust economy than democracy, or can it be made otherwise.

The economic force stands on its own and probably has more influence on the government's government type of economy.  Comparative theorists would argue that Ghana's economy is growing because Ghana's democratic process has sustained its economic growth. Democracy in Ghana has provided checks and balances that have fostered accountability and regulated corruption within the country.  Some comparatives theories also argue that a democratic government in Ghana is better than any other type of government that could have been established at any time. Democracy entrenches economic Freedom.

The Skeptical Theory Perspective

The third perspective is the skeptical view that doubts if there is any correlation between democracy and economic development. In the skeptic world, politics alone matters very little (Haan, K, & Siermann, 1996).  The more critical aspect of the political element has more to do with the kind of pursued policies. Recently vast revenue of oil has been discovered in Ghana. The economic growth would be influenced more by the economic factors and how it has been maintained irrespective of the government system currently in place in Ghana.

The term "Development" in Introspect

The economic progress in parallel to the growth of Democracy in Ghana had begun in the late 1980s. There has been a consistency of power supply, water supply, and the population of people connected to the electricity grid had multiplied over the year. Most empirical and theoretical papers usually conclude that governments generally invest more where most of their supporters live. When the N.D.C. was in power from 1999 to 2000, the districts that voted for the opposition received more public goods. The idea of favoring constituents that favor the opposition party is to select the opposition party. As comparative theorist Wittman stated, the democratic government helps foster economic sustenance through checks and balances.

Ghana's democracy has dramatically improved from where it was in the 1970s and its economy.  Irrespective of what angle of theorist agrees with, neither the conflict theorists who share Huntington approach that Ghana was in a better state under the authoritarian government or the comparative theorists who argue that democracy has a role to play in the economic development of any country or the skeptics, who not see any connection between the political system and the economic growth. Ghana's democracy has a correlating impact on growing international businesses in Ghana. The skeptics would probably conclude that economic forces drive the economic developments, and political parties drive political results. Also, the term development is very ambiguous in the definition of what standard is being used to understand a nation's economic growth like Ghana.  If Ghana is compared to Malaysia or Western countries, its development would be undermined, and individual factors, including imperialism and neo-colonialism, would also be overlooked.  Ghana is only fifty-four years old, and it still has a lot to accomplish as a young nation.

Bibliography

Andreasson, S. (2005, September). Orientalism and African Development Studies: the 'reductive repetition' motif in theories of African underdevelopment. Third World Quarterly, 26(6), 971-986.

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=17691667&site=ehost-live

Beitz, C, R. Economic Rights and Distributive Justice in Developing Societies World Politics, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Apr. 1981), pp. 321-346. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0043-8871%28198104%2933%3A3%3C321%3AERADJI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2

Chua, A. "A world on Edge, World on How Exporting Fire: Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability" Doubleday; Yale. 2002.

Fanon, F. Speech at the Congress of Black African Writers, 1959 Wretched of the Earth - Reciprocal Bases of National Culture and the Fight for Freedom. http://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/fanon/national-culture.htm

Goulet, D. "Development Ethics at Work Explorations (1960-2002)" Wikipedia; 2006

Haan, K, & Siermann C. L. J. New Evidence on the Relationship between Democracy and Economic Growth. Public Choice: Vol. 86, 179-198; Jan. 96

Harris, K. (2005, September). STILL RELEVANT: CLAUDE AKE'S CHALLENGE TO MAINSTREAM DISCOURSE ON AFRICAN POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT. Journal of Third World Studies, 22(2), 73-88. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=19221352&site=ehost-live

 5.        Why do countries with high G.N.I. and G.D.P. are attractive for foreign investment?

UNITED STATES AND COLOMBIA

The United States is very interested in Colombia because of its growing gross domestic product. Columbia is the 5th largest economy in South America, with a G.D.P. of $427 billion in 2015.  Both President Barrack Obama and vice-president-elect Biden have shown a great interest in the situation of Colombia. Vice-president elects Biden has proposed that the United States Congress cut aid to Colombia and turn over to the Colombian operation of vital military aviation units (The Associated Press).   President Bush has previously opposed the reduction of aid to Colombia and also opposed the bill proposed by Nancy Pelosi but all to no avail.  The outgoing President vehemently warns of the cut for assistance on U.S.-Colombia relations (Palmers).  President Obama would have to strengthen the United States-Colombia free trade agreement that was an an-ongoing contract for the Bush presidency until September 11.  This trade agreement could be an extension of revisiting the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement by Obama's presidency to remake the United States image in Latin-America (Castaneda).   Sustenance of this relationship would be much determined by Obama's presidency, who's Republican Party have not been too lenient in supporting Colombia. China's rapid growth as a trade giant has increased outsourcing to Latin America, including Colombia, one of the United States contenders in the region.  The U.S-Colombia relationship has led to the rapid growth of Colombian immigrants in the United States, with most New York, Florida, and California.  In 1999, Colombia became the third largest country that benefits from United States security aid after Israel and Egypt.  

Furthermore, the United States military-industrial complex has strong ties to Alvaro Uribe's government in supplying military weapons to destroy the militant groups in Colombia.   The Bush administration has dramatically strengthened the relationship between it's his regime and that of Colombia.  Just like the Israel lobbyist groups, Colombia has also been supported by powerful lobby groups.  These lobbyists group have been encouraged by the outright support of Republican members, including President Bush and Republican minority leader John Boehner.   The Colombian federal Army's first counternarcotics Brigade, Anti-Narcotics Directorate (DIRAN), has become one of the most potent and well-organized forces in Latin America (United States Department of State).  For Obama's presidency, the United States Office on Colombia outlined some reports for Colombia's effective Policy.  

1.       Obama's presidency should use U.S. Aid and leverage for Human Rights and the Rule of Law.   The United States has to use its diplomacy and aid to make sure that Colombia addresses the human rights issue in its country and destabilizes organizations with a long history of abusing human rights.  The Colombian judicial system is to be strengthened as the principal rule of law.

2.       The U.S. has to support the overtures for peace actively.   The United States has become sensitive and mandate vacation to the countryside population whereby war is without end and continuously bankrolled.

3.       The continuous expansion of the civilian government presence in the countryside.  Lawlessness, poverty, and inequality are always the root of conflicts; the military juntas' prevalence would only exacerbate the war in that region.

4.       The rights of the internally displaced persons and refugees have to be protected.   The dismantlement of the paramilitary would significantly resolve the humanitarian crisis in Colombia.

5.       The rights of the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities have to be protected.  Colombia has to be inhibited from carrying out racist policies in the earlier century by its neighboring countries Argentina and Chile.   The United States has to pay special attention to promoting ethnic minority groups in Colombia and protecting their lands from being displaced.

6.       The United States has to ensure that the trade policy supports but not undermines policy goals towards Colombia.  The labor rights are inferior in Colombia, which is due for some advancement.  United States must ensure that its trade agreement does not undermine U.S. policy goals, such as reducing the farmer's dependence on coca and ending the conflict.

7.       The United States needs to increase its serious alarm on drug control.  There has to be a cut down on the use of narcotics, and the  United States should lament more on alternative development designed with affected communities.  The U.S. has to counter violent traffickers and track down money laundering.  Access to a higher quality of drug treatment in the United States would significantly reduce Colombia's dependency on the drug trade.

Eric Holder was part of a $655 million fruit giant corporation know as Chiquita Brand. For years now, the Chiquita brand has been involved in the secretly paid off death squads A.U.C. (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) in Colombia.   Chiquita group has sponsored A.U.C. with over $1.7 million who destroyed unions, terrorize workers, and killed thousands of civilians.  United States has labeled A.U.C. as a terrorist organization. For this reason, Chiquita was charged in March with engaging in transactions with terrorists.  Chiquita was arrested and fined almost $25 million.  There was a statement made by Adam Isacson, director of the Colombia program at the Center for International Policy, in Washington, which says, "While the A.U.C. was murdering thousands of Colombians, "to our knowledge, the paramilitaries never touched a hair on the head of a U.S. citizen or company" (Undernews).  

According to the U.S. government, the unresolved dissolution of terrorist groups, like the FARC, is a continuous threat to the government's stability in Colombia.   These drug policies have successfully reduced the corrupt trade of narcotics by Colombian forces and reduced paramilitary forces in Colombia. Colombia is also an excellent asset for the United States to amend its strong relationship with South America, despite the constant propaganda by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Eva Morales of Bolivia against United States policies.   The continuous connection between the United States and Colombia would be significantly affected by the current change in the United States presidency from republican to democratic.  The republicans have always been a supporter of increasing aid to Colombia to combat the terrorist organizations.  In contrast, the Democrats have always advocated for reducing Colombia's support until its government works in lowering the kidnapping and crimes committed by these terrorist organizations.  

Work Cited Page

B.B.C. Expulsions stoke US-LatAm dispute, British; September 12, 2008.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7612778.stm

Goldiner, D. Hostages released by the Colombian military, Daily News/U.S. World News; July 2, 2008

Human Rights Watch. U.S.: Delay Colombia Trade Vote, Washington DC; April 10, 2008. http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2008/04/10/colomb18503.htm

MacEoin, G. NO PEACEFUL WAY: Chile's struggle for Dignity ., Sheed and Ward, I.N.C.; 1974

Palmer, D. U.S. House votes to delay Colombia trade pact, Reuters Ed. Eric Beech; April 2008.   http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN10360664

The Associated Press. "Colombia Aid Failed to Halve Drug making; Report Finds," New York Times (A10); Nov.6, 2008

Undernews. "Eric Holder, Chiquita & The Colombian Death Squads." Portfolio of Kevin Gray, 2007; November 20, 2008

[mineaction]

How do gender and diversity relate to mine action?

This #MineAwarenessDay, we release our new explainer, created together with the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining - GICHD. Learn the significance of embedding gender, age, and disability insights into Mine Action practices.

UNIDIR's Gender and Disarmament Programme and the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) have produced a short explainer on gender and diversity in the context of mine action. This resource explains the importance of integrating gender and diversity considerations, such as age and disability, into specific areas of mine action: Survey and Clearance; Explosive Ordnance Risk Education; Victim Assistance; and Employment. Based on examples from various regions, this resource demonstrates that gender and diversity mainstreaming can better address affected people’s needs and protect their rights, making mine action more effective.

Citation: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, and Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (2024). "How Do Gender and Diversity Relate to Mine Action?", UNIDIR, Geneva.

[wei999]

My Personal Compilation on the reflections upon community-based peace, Summer 2019

Written in Monterey, California in the summer of 2019.

Prospect for peace

“Enter to grow in wisdom, depart to serve better the world and humans”

Interpretations of “Peacebuilding”

There are no facts, only interpretations.- Nietzsche

Then what are our interpretations of “peacebuilding”?

Peacebuilding is more than “To cross the line from a world of international conflict and violence to a world in which respect for international law and authority overcomes belligerence and ensures justice.”

While Waltz thinks  peacebuilding is the integration of the peoples in the international arena with one common goal, Jean-Marie Guéhenno deems peacebuilding as “the political process through the promotion of national dialogue and reconciliation, protect civilians, assist in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of combatants, support the organization of elections, protect and promote human rights, and assist in restoring the rule of law.”  

Although for Kant, perpetual peace can be simply achieved through democratization since democratic states are less likely to fight each other, dictators throughout the world still hold it true that only with the power under their own grips: the absence of wars as negative peace can be easily created through deterrence.

There are thousands of forms of peacebuilding.

For artists, peacebuilding is art.  (Premaratna & Bleiker, 2016 )

Arts have the potential to be embedded in and work through communities. And arts happen at all levels. Arts can also evolve along with the needs of the community.  It can also play a role in resisting forms of monopoly rule by offering alternatives to prevailing approaches.

Firstly, Arts can deal with the emotional issue which traditional institutions neglect. It can address the emotional core of the conflict in ways that surpass laws and institutions leading to sustainable peace.

Secondly, as a part of dealing with emotional and political legacies, it can narrate and transform personal traumas. And it can evoke feelings, bringing things beyond rational cognition. It can bring people to the perspectives of others evoking empathies and reflections thus bring changes.

Thirdly, it can break boundaries of daily communication through revolving around stereotypes that fuel conflicts. And it can also break through community barriers by offering alternatives to the type of verbal discourses that constitute a conflict. (see pp.81-93).

For united nations, peacebuilding is not only to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.

It is also to “Create a secure and stable environment while strengthening the State’s ability to provide security, with full respect for the rule of law and human rights, to Facilitate the political process by promoting dialogue and reconciliation and supporting the establishment of legitimate and effective institutions of governance, and to provide a framework for ensuring that all United Nations and other international actors pursue their activities at the country-level in a coherent and coordinated manner. “

And when it comes to my understanding of peacebuilding….

Every time when my reflections on “peacebuilding” are called upon, the hurtful memories that should have sunk unwept into oblivion just rewind in a cinematic way.

Inter-state: reconcile the irreconcilable

Japan means a lot to me. It witnesses my growth both as an academic and a responsible person during my stumbling puberty. But my experience as a Chinese studying in Japan is somehow nuanced from international students from other countries, given the undeniable fact that Japan had an issue with China in the Sino-Japanese war during WWII.

My mother back in China was often asked a lot why I went to Japan. It seems strange to some elders back home that I as a Chinese can be even fascinated by Japanese Culture under the pretext that mainstream TV channels in China are playing Anti-imperialism TV series on a rolling basis that never seems to stop. And generally Chinese audiences love this a lot.

Throughout these years I spent in Japan, although I indeed met lots of friendly people who helped me and treated me fairly, somehow on some occasions where it is said that statistics about Sino-Japanese wars are fabricated since the war is not specifically written on the textbooks, we still inevitably disagree each over to an extent that we got failures to communicate because our perceived pasts are disparate rather than different.

History is created rather than told as it was. History foremost serves politics. Not many Japanese students know as much about what happened in Sino-Japanese wars as average Chinese students do. Due to the obvious absence of a shared common past (a census over what did happen in the past), my Japanese friends and I disagree over a lot of issues, such as the Yasukuni Shrine, where the “spirits” of Japanese war dead as the heroes of Japanese imperialism are specifically honored. But from the perspective of a conscious Chinese, what is being honored in Yasukuni Shrine are demons instead of heroes, whose swords are doused in the blood of millions of innocent civilians who were treated brutally until the very last moment of their lives.

 The essence of the Yasukuni Shrine dispute is de facto a clash of incompatible identities shaped by different narratives of the past. Because of these conflicting identities, the Japanese the Chinese, and the Koreans have no choice but to oppose, dispute, and demonize the Japanese rightists. There exists a fundamental disconnect in how some people see the symbolic content of the Yasukuni Shrine.

Merely negative peace as an absence of wars, normalizations, and reconciliations are far from enough.  What we are looking forward to is active peace that requires efforts from every sector, every level of society, that is based on mutual understanding through dialogues.

intra-state: the demonized other

Never have I realized that Chinese mainlanders in the eyes of a few people across “Straits” were somehow ill-mannered ‘eerie puppets’ until I scanned through social media of our own, Zhihu, Chinese mainland version of Quora, a site where general life experience is shared for consultation in Q and A format.

Chinese mainlanders, as described in top-voted answers on Zhihu, are often perceived by people across straits as so economically desperate that they cannot even afford a boiled egg. Furthermore, Chinese mainlanders actually often get called by ‘XX mainlander’, a very derogatory term that should be omitted here in the passage.

It was even said in the top-voted answers that the local travel slogans attracting tourists, especially from Japan was, “A nice place of tranquility without the disturbance of mainland tourists.”

Unconsciously immersed in this kind of biased information source, throughout these years overseas, although as a mainlander, sharing the same type of blood in my veins with the people across the straits, I always consciously refrain myself from talking to people across straits and keep the contact minimum since I think the scenarios would be intertwined if I do speak to them.

However, by chance, I went across straits for a transit.

Before I stepped out of the planes, I got wars going in my mind that, should I just speak English instead of Mandarin to the local so that I would not be referred to as “Mainland”….Or just simply speak Mandarin like I am not fragile and sensitive to discriminations…..

I pictured several scenarios where I spoke Mandarin and got embarrassed with the contempt from the locals.

After my thorough contemplation of which language to speak, I felt it better to speak Mandarin otherwise I would be too contrived not to speak it.

As the day turned out, nothing I expected has ever happened. Except for a conversation with a college student over the issue of local sovereign where he insisted that PRC intervened too much in their domestic affairs whilst I think they are a part of PRC as well, everything went off well.

Ending this trip, I got to learn that, the prerequisites for peace, are not only communications but also to consider things from the perspectives of others. Behind the perspectives are their narratives of history, culture, and education.

Diverse perspectives should be appreciated and understood in their own historical, cultural and political context.

Peacebuilding is more than mere tolerance of different ideas. It is about empathy, mutual understanding, and appreciation of diversity.

Development

I was to remember that distant morning when my flight landed in L, a relatively underdeveloped country in Southeastern Asia, from S, a very well-off country often illustrated as the development model of the world.

As I stepped out of the airport, the here and now just changed so suddenly and drastically, becoming a totally different world, from a world of prosper to a world that is hard to define in terms of both infrastructure and life quality of the local.

The very first time in my life was I stroke by what I saw: why the life of people can be so different and even destined from the moment when they were born.. Why can not just everyone in this world live an equally fulfilling life?

Ever since then my research focus shifted from International Relations more to development study.

When we are talking about development, our thoughts should not be just circumscribed to economic development. Social and political developments should be highlighted with the same significance as well.

The world is faced with more problems than we generally think: gender inequality, injustice, social stratification, abuse of power, food security discrimination, and such on.

What brought me to the field of peacebuilding, is a prospect for positive changes: the changes for everyone in this world to live with justice and equality. Ultimately, a prospect for peace that perpetuates in a scientific and sustainable way.

As for me, my drive for wisdom that enables me to serve better the world and humans brought me here.

The Curse of Resources

Throughout the Milky Way that stretches 100,000 light-years across, there are said to be more than 100 billion stars. Among the eight planets of the solar system, although it seems that Venus always shines as stunning as the Roman goddess of beauty named Venus, and Moon since the birth of modern literature is often cited as a mysterious place where there is too much unknown that outlines the Moonage Daydreams of millions of readers, there is just no one like that is similar to earth.

It is the water that makes earth the one and only.

Water is known as the source of life, and about 71 percent of the surface of the earth is covered by water.

But in a world of more than 70 billion where the resources are limited, water, inevitably becomes a source of conflict.

Water is so indispensable to human life. Though it seems that water is yet sufficient, it is still seen very limited and global demand for freshwater never seems to shrink due to the inevitable population growth.

At the same time, climate change and environmental degradation are having a great impact on the regional and seasonal availability and quality of water.

The resulting competition over the governance and management of water constantly leads to conflicts with violence that ensues, depriving millions of their lives.

Generally speaking, water conflicts, just like any other conflicts, can occur either on the intrastate or interstate levels.

But the good news is, since there are more than a thousand ways to regenerate water at the mercy of technology innovation, such as atmospheric water generator as illustrated in previous sessions, fortunately let it be said that water in foreseeable years is not likely to be a root for conflicts.

However, is the reality of conflicts over the shortage of resources merely about water?

Certainly not.

Conflicts over unrenewable resources are thousand times worse than this. And the prospect for the solution to this kind of conflicts is also relatively bleak.

It is always said that the management of natural resources is one of the most critical challenges facing developing countries in this decade.

 And UN (2019) indicates that the overexploitation of non-renewable natural resources, including petroleum, gas, minerals and timber has often been known as a key factor in triggering, escalating or sustaining violent conflicts around the globe.

It is also concluded by UN (2019) that ‘increasingly the pressure on and competition for diminishing renewable resources, such as land, water and fisheries – a trend exacerbated by degradation, population growth and climate change – is driving new conflicts and obstructing the peaceful resolution of existing ones. There is increasing recognition that the challenges facing effective natural resource management (NRM) are heightened by the complex interplay between natural resources on the one hand, and economic, political, cultural and social dynamics on the other.’

But the whole story of the curse of natural resources is simply more than this.

Now dear readers, you are called upon to imagine such a scenario: You find yourself one day standing with a gun in your hand around a diamond mine, then someone walking close calling you the president of country A: a landlocked country situated in the middle of a continent marked by parched heat all year around, where the people are living a extremely hard life, forming a stark contrast to luxury of the corrupted elites.

And the one who just walks in your office tells you this: Coup is coming, mainly for the newly-discovered diamonds.

Well, this example might not be convincing enough.

What I am trying to tell through this scenario is, conflicts can really be brought up over the ownership of natural resources in poor-governed countries trapped in poverty, especially those which are already marked by constantly unstable domestic context.

Not only is the management of natural resources always seen as one of the reasons why conflicts are always happening, rent of natural resources is also a barrier to development as demonstrated in the case of failing states, as collier argues.

It is argued that that countries with an abundance of natural resources tend to have less economic growth, less democracy, and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources.

It is called the paradox of plenty.

After this point, we finally can reach the conclusion that abundance of natural resources seems to be not good, contrary to what most of us initially expected. Thus can we say the lack of recourses is likely to be the secret to avoid conflicts?

Wrong again.

Lack of resources leads to conflicts, but in another manner. Well, usually invasions.

As history has proved us thus far, countries typically invade other countries to seize resources, which certainly seems to provide the reason for most of the colonization across the globe and countless wars both on intra-state or inter-state level.

So after the comprehensive illustration of the intertwined relevance between resources and conflicts, what will seem to be our medicine?

The answer is not only the technology innovation that enables us to explore sustainable alternatives that can substitute un-renewable resources, making the importance of resources going down thus leading to the decline of conflicts, it is also the cooperation and sustainable way of managing resources that make conflicts less likely.

I still remember those days I spent as a kid always assuming the ownership of resources is all good since we always assume the more the better.

But the reality is the less I know the better. As I got to learn more and more, I just realized that saying either abundance or scarcity of resources makes conflicts less likely is simply inaccurate.

But knowledge is power. We can always find a solution through the power of “knowing”.

The Mystery of Justice

The mystery of Justice

All I knew about American police officers (well, cops) from the internet was that American cops were usually very excellent sources for teen memes.

 “When 17-year-old John Albers threatened suicide on FaceTime, his friends called police. Within minutes of officers’ arrival at the teen’s home, he was dead—but not because he killed himself. Officer Clayton Jenison allegedly “acted recklessly and deliberately” when he shot 13 times at Albers, who may not have even known police were at his home, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by his parents. The boy was ‘simply backing his mom’s minivan out of the family garage,’ the complaint alleges.” (Messer, 2018)

“Police in Oklahoma shot and killed an unarmed black 17-year-old high school student who was running around a neighborhood naked on Monday.” (Nashrulla, 2019)

I still remembered my mother’s worried face when she noticed a message popping up saying that the suicide of a teen in Kansas was successfully stopped – but in a ridiculous way: the cop shot him instead.

“Authorities say an 18-year-old man was shot and killed by police officers and sheriff’s deputies Saturday evening outside an Ottawa hardware store. Family members say officers knew that the teen was suicidal, and officers didn’t have to use deadly force.” (Oberholtz, 2014)

Well, to be honest, literally I have never heard anything positive about cops. Every time when there is news about American cops circulating online, it is either about how many innocent minorities the cops just kill, or how many depressed teens lose their lives to the guns of irresponsible cops.

Yes. The way the police officer treating these innocent souls seems so ridiculous and irresponsible to me, although I try to refrain myself from using these words that are surely overloaded with emotion, I just feel bad for those who should have lived if the police were more attentive and responsible.

The undefinable emotions even overwhelmed me to a greater extent when during the session on gang violence, chief Kelly indicated that the police officer usually determines to shoot or not to shoot their target based on their own personal assessment of whether the person should be a treat to a community or not.

This notion seems extremely problematic to me since the criteria are usually very subjective and very personal.

The way people are seeing (judging) things is generally shaped to a great extent by their past experience, different narratives on media and stereotypes.

And these criteria differ from individual to individual.

How to define a threat to the community?

Lately, Zhang yinyin, a Chinese visiting scholar from Peking University to UIUC was substantiated to have been killed by an anti-socialist called Brandt Christensen, a fanatic of the novel American Psycho. The poor girl was said to be decapitated in a very brutal way.

The ironic part of the episode, however, is that the murderer is a physic PhD studying in UIUC.

Based on general common sense, PhD is not supposed to be a murderer, is it?

And guess what, the murderer is still alive, and will never be sentenced to death since he is not subject to. But let me say what, he must be a threat to the community. Even jail should be seen as a community. If he is put into jail, then he should be seen as a treat to a community. Then why is he still alive?

The parents of the poor girl always waited for her to walk in the door, saying that “Mom, I’m back.”

“During these days when we could not get in touch with yinyin, we always prepared every meal with the front door open, waiting for her to come back home. Every time when I noticed footsteps, I just ran up to the door to see whether she was back or not. However, a call from the police just shattered all our expectations. Her life was taken away by some anti-socialist and would never get back.”

What they didn’t seem to know at that time was that their daughter de facto was already decapitated and would never go home. But what’s more heartbreaking is that the murderer subsequently is just simply not subject to the death penalty since he just decapitated the poor girl in IL.

Is this so-called justice?

It just hits me that a person’s life, especially the innocent one, can be so subjectively and easily deprived by triggers of the police officers, so simple and direct – what a pity. He/She might be a cherished son/daughter whom their parents are really proud of, or he/she could be a caring parent who his/her family is always waiting for him/her to come home.

And what hits me worse, is that the truly malicious ones are sometimes lucky enough to getaway.

The question of justice was never answered. It is such a pity, that we are far from justice.

The Question of Tolerance

Where does tolerance end?

“Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy. ‘Easy’ doesn’t enter into grown-up life.

There are so many moments throughout these years when I often found myself trapped in embarrassment that caused me great discomfort that hurt too much for me to ignore– these moments always wounded me as a teen vulnerable to the outside to an extent that sometimes I just simply thought rather than those who were different than me, I should stay with “my people” and keep the contact with ‘the other’ minimum.

Very, unfortunately, although I always expected all these insults should be kept on a personal level, the reality is quite brothering since all of these moments of embarrassment revolve around my identity. Or more specifically, the prejudice against my identity.

Let’s get down to reality.

As a Chinese Mainlander who is educated outside of the people’s republic of china, I have come across so many situations overseas where I was either referred by very derogatory terms used to describe Chinese such XXXX or asked very offensive questions such as XXXXX.

I expected these to be all, but very, unfortunately, this is still very far from the whole story.

Even within the borders of PRC, some so-called ‘Chinese’ across straits still communicated me in a very offensive way merely due to my mainland identity.

Well, since there are already so many macro-aggressions for me as a 19-year-old teen to bear, it might be too cruel to have me suffering in micro-aggressions.

How I want to say that I never felt any micro-aggression ever since I was born. But simply I just cannot. I cannot just simply immerse myself in my fancy fabricated world pretending the things that indeed happened never seem to have happened.

If I am asked to write about all the microaggressions that I have identified throughout these years I spent outside PRC as a very sensitive young teen, I might be able to write you more than ten pages, not to exaggerate.

And these aggressions, both on micro and macro levels, bother not only me and those who are from the same background with me but also everyone else who is different than me since there must be some occasions where we get to be recognized as “others”, where the otherness is felt and targeted at.

Can we tolerate it? Sure we can. Although it is uncomfortable, it is still not a big deal since no physical hurt at all for these aggressions that happened. But should we tolerate it? I really want to say that we should, for the sake of peace. We should appreciate the diversity of perspectives. We should respect the way others see us since the ways people are educated always differ, leading to different perspectives which should all be understood.

But the question is, to what extent should we tolerate?

We should tolerate, to an extent that, we reach the end of tolerance.

So where is the end of tolerance?

The end of tolerance is not about conflicts nor is it about peace.

The end of tolerance is always the happening of changes. It is a condition for positive peace to prosper. If not changes, it should at least be the prospect for things to change for better.

We should start through efforts to change the system on all levels: turn the dividers into connectors by finding what tears our community apart and fixing the broken strings.

Living in a world marked by ultra-connectivity across the borders of nation-states, thanks to the angel of globalization combined with great advancement of technology, everyone (outside the peripheral world) gets to benefit a lot in terms of economic convenience and greater material affluence.

But what about the inevitable westernization accompanied by globalization?

Western norms all in a sudden following the industrial revolution became the only norm for the whole world leaving out the differences that once distinguished culture to culture.

Here and now so suddenly became the same world, at least on the surface.

The diversity of cultures is gradually being erased to less and less since the standards of the developed world are recognized as the privileged and the less-developed ones should. Democracy as the only legitimate norm of the ruling is promoted worldwide after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

And It comes as natural for us to alienate and condemn everything heterodox.

The world comes closer, but there is only less and less cultural, ideological, and political tolerance.

Should not we tolerate it?

Tolerance brings us changes.

Prison is not the solution

“Dear fellas: I can’t believe how fast things move on the outside. Watch it, old-timer! Want to get killed? I saw an automobile once when I was a kid… …but now they’re everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry. The parole board got me into this halfway house… …called “The Brewer”… …and a job… …bagging groceries at the Food-Way. It’s hard work and I try to keep up… – Brooks Hatlen

“There’s a harsh truth to face. No way I’m going to make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole… …so maybe they’d send me back. Terrible thing, to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well.” – The Shawshank Redemption

I have never understood what has been really being portrayed in The Shawshank Redemption until many years later when the darkness of the prison cell that devoured my conscience deprived my hope, although temporarily.

Words are never enough to describe how I really felt in the cell while I stared at the spooky paintings around the walls that conveyed nothing but a sense of hopelessness interweaved with fatigue, picturing before me the several more inmates that were trapped in the cell as I was in that moment lying in the bed, thinking about how their life like this will not end.

They all know it too well. How repetitious the monotonous life in prison is.

And the terror of not knowing when the state of hopelessness would go away that disturbed me to an unfamiliar degree.

While it still shone brightly in the outside as if everything was still going well as it ought to, there was nothing but only eternal darkness left in the tiny cell.

The days in prison are so long. They don’t end.

For me, the prison field visit only lasted for several hours, whereas for the prisoners incarcerated the desperate life may last from years to the entire lifetime.

Several days after my visit to the prison, I still cannot help myself from reminiscing about the hours spent in prison. There are only darkness and hopelessness that I have been turning over in my mind ever since.

Prison is not the solution.

It is said that life is made up of a series of choices, and different choices lead to different life paths. Different life choices make people end up in different places. Prisoners are in a nutshell, merely the people who have made choices that might be wrong leading them to a place called prisons. They are just the people who stumbled in cinematic ways. But why do stumble? And why do they make these choices that will make them end up in prisons?

It can be traumas. It can be a need for life. It can be poverty. It can be hatred. It can be a lack of education. It can be anything. There are so many dynamics that make people stumble and end up in prisons.

Prisons fail to address the root causes of crimes. On the contrary, prison through the deprival of both love by its exclusion of prisoners from the outside and hope are reinforcing the traumas which are embedded in the childhoods of the prisoners. It does not solve the problem from its critical roots. In this sense, let it be said that prisons are only constraining rather than healing. Prisons fail to address the fundamental problem of how to prevent people from stumbling. Prisons only exclude the people that are seen as disturbing from society. And prisons fail to train those who are excluded to be includable again for them to get back to society.

What prisons are really doing still remain superficial after all these years of development although outside the prison in the era defined by rapid technology innovations things even never stay the same for a minute?

Prison is merely a place for prisoners to escape from reality rather than to face reality and solve the real problem.

Say you got a resolution

There are so many social and political problems that haunt our society today. And these issues that we are faced with are more serious than we thought. High crime rates together with violence that frighten communities, mass shootings that make people insecure, racial discrimination that divides society, social stratification that deprives the poorest of their hope, the inequality that encourages the divisions of communities, and lack of justice that leads the rule of laws into questions. And the city of Salinas in northern California is not the only city that suffers from these issues. The whole nation witnessed how the atrocities as proven in both El Paso and San Jose caused terrors and distrust that torn the communities apart, making all these efforts devoted to prevention turn into zero.

But don’t get down although we are subscribed to so many social issues. Solutions always outnumber problems. Although we can work out the solutions one way or another, it is long-term rather than short-term. And do you have the resolutions?

In the meeting of the general assembly of the city of Salinas where the relationships of values are rebuilt through dialogues from different perspectives that took place on August 7, 2019, different experiences were shared and stories were told. All the pieces led to one question: how to build the resilience of the community?

With partnership and values as the core, how can we develop a set of strategies that can empower the community? And in what aspects can we empower the society.

For certain, it requires long-term efforts rather than short-term from every sector on all the levels: from policy implementation to enforcement, and then finally echoing throughout the communities.

So do we have the resolutions to transform social problems into opportunities?

Reduction of Violence

The incarceration of those people who are seen as troubles is one of the least desirable ways to reduce the violence that I could ever think of. Why?

Foremost, Incarceration is costly, and definitely a burden to the taxpayers. According to the Vera Institute of Justice, incarceration costs an average of more than $31,000 per inmate a year, nationwide. And in some states, it’s more than $60,000.

Furthermore, the exclusion of those “troubles” from society is not sustainable. Let it be said that prisoners are more than prisoners. They can be sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers. What the prison is doing to those incarcerated is not only to keep them away from society. The prison is also tearing families apart, leading to new traumas that may cause other issues.

In addition, rather than prisons, rehabilitations are much more needed since rehabilitations are more transformative than prisons. The experience in prisons is trauma-strengthening. What has been constrained in the prisons is not only the physical-being of those prisoners. It also limits the freedom of all the people who are relevant to prisons, depriving people of their hope to live. Rehabilitations are believed to function as a place that can help people to find their true values in life through care and educations that can help reduce violence on the system level.

Last but not least, instead of contemplation on the cure of “violence”, efforts really need to be done regarding how to prevent violence. Only preventions can curb violence from its roots. Preventions are one of the best answers to potential violence. But it requires changes in the system and needs long-term efforts from all sectors on all levels. It requires a steady resolution from everyone. No one is irrelevant to the war to “violence”. Institutions only facilitate, but what truly matters and matters the most in the war to combat violence is ‘we, the people’ that make up the communities.

Say you got a resolution to make our communities better.

POSTED AUGUST 14, 2019EDIT"PEACE ON THE BRAIN"

Peace on the brain

“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.”

The history of man is perceived as a history of wars.

Classical Realists hold that human beings are inherently egoistic and self-interested to the extent that self-interest overcomes moral principles, together with the drive for power, making wars a constant under anarchy.

So does it mean that peace is virtually impossible?

‘Theory is always for someone, and for some purpose‘

Before Classical Realism’s view on peace being unlikely brings us to despair, we have to say that theories are sometimes only tools that serve politics.

From my perspective, classical Realism is sometimes used as politicians’ excuses for their political failures.

There must be some ways that can make peace a constant instead of wars. The history of man should be defined by peace, instead of wars.

But How?

how should we make wars less likely through our efforts to make peace instead of the state of wars dominate the history of man?

Well, if we find the keys to peace, this should be very easy.

Here is a fact:  interstate wars decline dramatically after 1945.

But here is also another fact: since the ending of the cold war, intra-state wars have taken dominance to an extent that intra-state wars actually did increase.

Why is that?

Peace

From my perspective, the reason that inter-state wars decline consciously is that peace comes easily. But before my dear readers demonstrate their argumentative rigor towards my point, I have to note only one point: What is peace?

There are two kinds of peace: Positive peace and Negative peace

Negative peace is merely the absence of wars. And the mere absence of wars could be easily realized through the deterrence of nuclear weapons. As a result of arms races, states are simply more reluctant to attack each other due to the possibility that they will suffer from the doom day device.

However, positive peace never comes as easily as negative peace.

Positive peace refers to more than the absence of wars. Not only does positive peace stand for the presence of justice, but the word itself is also filled with positive content such as restoration of relationships, the creation of social systems that serve the needs of the whole population and the constructive resolution of conflict.

So how do we create positive peace?

The key is Education.

According to Waltz, the lack of integration of the peoples in the international arena with one common goal is often seen as the main cause for the persistence of war.

In the brain of a man that is the only place where we can plant the seeds of sustainable peace and where everyday peace can prosper.

And a broader version of peace can be achievable through education for sure.

POSTED ON AUGUST 12, 2019EDIT"AMID THE DIVINE"

Amid The Divine

Amid the divine lay the solutions to the problems unsolved.

My mind flashed back to the glitters of the remote summer of 2018 when I first traveled to Southeastern Asia from Singapore through Malaysia all the way to Laos with a group of my friends.

We flew from Fukuoka to Singapore, taking the bus with the help of the locals from Singapore all the way to Penang, Malaysia by bus. Before my trip to Southeastern Asia where I got the chances to visit both Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok, I had only been to metropolises in the United States and East Asia where materialism was relatively the mainstream.

I still remembered the culture shocks that overwhelmed me when I saw a lot of people in Islamic clothing walking on the streets in Kuala Lumpur. I really could not stop myself from wondering how those pretty girls wearing Hijabs would really feel in the summer parched heats.

As an atheist always living in countries where religions are not relatively promoted, when I first noticed so many people wearing religion-affiliated clothes passing me by, my feelings at that moment were really hard to define.

Two weeks later, we finally arrived in Bangkok, where Buddhism is really widely practiced.

Compared with Islam, Buddhism seems more familiar to me since back in East Asia, there are Buddhist temples everywhere.

But what seems alien to me is the fact that four-faced Buddhas can literally be found anywhere on streets. Sometimes it just felt bizarre to pass by the four-faced Buddha in open streets.

And another thing that stroke me in Bangkok is that, near the campus of Thammasat University, the second oldest university in Thailand, there was a market that sold religious rituals related products, such as pela kleang that are used as means to communicate with those passed away.

It can be said that unlike Tokyo or Beijing, religions are deeply embedded in every aspect of people’s lives in both Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.

Today in the thought-provoking sessions of professor Kathryn Poethig, the first time ever in my life did I realize that the religions, also as ‘the divine’ are actually so intersected in every sector of society: educations, cultures, and even politics.

What truly amazed me in the first session was actually the fact that the living, through the mental communications (empowered by empathy), with the war dead, can actually reconcile between the irreconcilable, due to the undeniable fact that this can create grouds for mutual understanding, paving way for reconciliations.

Is not this religious approach to understand the dynamics of peace and wars wonderful?

Religions are also where identity politics take place. Just take Yasukuni Shrine for illustration, the Japanese rightists view it as a place where the war dead are enshrined as heroes of Japanese imperialism, the Korean and the Chinese always deem it as a malicious place where notorious criminals are memorialized in an unjust and unscrupulous way.

Besides that, religious institutions can also be a perfect place for dialogues. Although some insist that religious institutions focus more on monologue rather than dialogues, from my point of view religious institutions sometimes as places where identity politics happen and sometimes as the roots of disputes, meaning that there are a lot of interactions that happen revolving religious institutions, how could this be a monologue?

Amid the divine, we found the ways to reconcile, not only with the other but also our ‘self’: to reconcile with the past that could not let go

POSTED ON AUGUST 12, 2019EDIT"ELEGY OF THE PERIPHERAL"

Elegy of the Peripheral

21st century is the century of globalization.

Globalization is always praised as one of the key elements that facilitate the third world countries to develop and to reduce poverty since it can be easily observed that both cultural and economic activities that happen across the borders of nation-states as the result of globalization do benefit ‘the third world’ in terms of introducing new technologies, creating more job opportunities, and redefining social norms in a ‘modern’ way.

The world is always portrayed as a place that consists of the center and the peripheral. The incredible accumulation of wealth of the global elites allows them to have their business developed anywhere as they want, making as much as profits as they can, and removing all the possible barriers that stop global inequality from burgeoning.

Is the economic deprival of the peripheral everything that the center has been wanting?

But wait. Globalization is not as simple as it seems. It is not just merely an economic issue And there is certainly more to be found out in the intentions of the pushers of globalization.

The retreats of local cultures

“手如柔荑，肤如凝脂，领如蝤蛴，齿如瓠犀。 螓首蛾眉，巧笑倩兮，美目盼兮”

As recorded in one of the earliest editorials of Chinese serial poetry titled ‘the shi king’ which was first published roughly thousands of years ago, any Chinese girl that has normal healthy skin that smiles a lot can be defined as Chinese beauty.

However, thanks to western cultural invasion, aesthetics in china are gradually being redefined, in a pathetic way.

In contemporary China, what makes girls pretty is not merely healthy skin. Dramatic double eyelids paired with big eyes that are obviously not a feature of East Asian took domination. For the fulfillment of the so-called beauty standard rooted in western cultural invasions, many girls in pursuit of these beautiful features that are not written in the genes of most East Asian have to withstand the pain while knifing cutting through their eyelid, taking the risks of having the whole face ruined by clinical mistake. And after these plastic surgeries, everyone looks streamlined, having their uniqueness relentlessly deprived.

The glossy eye that can tell a thousand stories is not a thing that is treasured as it was anymore.

And there are always some more countries where girls are suffering similar cases, leading to the diminishes of local beauty standards.

Western cultural invasions mean the treats of local cultures.

And the saddest thing is, these retreats of local cultures often happen so unnoticed that local people whose roots are being encroached generally cannot fight back. And these retreats are even seen as inevitable and well-justified under the notion that due to the fact that the west is conspicuously more economically privileged than the peripheral, all the barbarians that are tagged as ‘signs of underdevelopment’ deserve their ultimate diminishes. Our cultures are thus colonized in an unnoticed way.

How sad.

Westernization

Well, in the perfect disguise of the rhetorics of universal development, globalization is accelerating in speed beyond imagination. The trend of westernization being a byproduct of globalization is not likely to be curbed as it can be easily observed that whether in Beijing or new york, signs of ‘McDonald’ can be easily found anywhere, indicating how inevitable McDonaldization is. To whatever extent does a city develope, the ultimate fate that awaits is still being a place with the presence of McDonald’s literally everywhere, with a conspicuous decline of local food culture that ensues shortly.

Westernization helps people in the peripheral get over their backwardness.

But how should backwardness be defined?

Why is it always the center that decides what is backward and what is developed?

Is it fair?

Under the hypocritical veneer of westernization, the people in the peripheral should to some extent realize that their norms are being redefined.

Let it be said that, under the slogan that the center makes the peripheral world gentrified, what they are really doing is redefining the life of the peripheral.

And what can we do about it?

Decolonization of Knowledge

“Theory is always for someone and for some purpose“.- Robert W. Cox

In order for us to decolonize knowledge, we have to understand that everything exists for a purpose.

We have to identify the roots in the system, and then unfold the mystery of the narratives.

Then we can make the peripheral the boss of themselves, making the world more equal, the life of everyone equally fulfilling.

POSTED ON AUGUST 10, 2019EDIT"THE HYPOCRITICAL JUSTICE"

The Hypocritical Justice

Restorative justice still remains a myth to me.

Even though I have attended so many sessions on restorative justice, and as I could say all the personal experiences that were shared through the vivid narratives regarding restorative justice are just as impressive as usual, I still cannot devote myself to the idea of restorative justice.

The concept of restorative Justice from my point of view sometimes can be hypocritical on some occasions, and cannot be seen as a healing experience that can truly benefit the victims. Restorative justice as I think is merely atrocity that is imposed on victims once again after the harm is done in the name of love and so-called justice.

In short, restorative justice is the greatest generosity for the perpetrators and the meanest atrocity for the victims on some occasions, such as homicides.

The goal of restorative justice is said to be for both the victims and the perpetrators who have harmed to share their experience of what truly happened, to discuss who was harmed by the crime and in what aspects the harm is done, and to create a consensus for what the offenders can do to compensate for the harm that has been done. This may include financial compensation from the offenders to the victims of verbal compensations in the form of apologies. And other actions sometimes are also done to compensate those harmed and to prevent the offender from causing future harm.

But what disturbs me the most is the notion of restorative justice is that the dead do not speak for themselves. When a murder happens, how do the perpetrators compensate the victims who are deprived of their lives as the result of the harms?

In the name of so-called justice, if the rights to a complete personality of the perpetrator can be restored through mediations or other means, how do people restore the lives for those victims who are harmed to an extent that they are deprived of their lives?

Some broken relationships between victims and perpetrators can never be restored in a just way, I think. And even attempt to restore is seen as unfair to the victims.

Growing up as a Chinese atheist, I believe in the hardcore truth of “You get what you give.” Thus it can be said that I think those who kill deserve to be killed. Pure and simple. It is not only for the sake of deterrence of the death penalty that can prevent to some extent the murders from happening, but it is also justice for the victims.

I understand that from some other perspectives a death penalty is seen as unacceptable since it is an encroachment on human rights, that being said punishment such as the death penalty should in principle be abolished and replaced with a more humane alternative to protect the rights of the perpetrators.

But the rights of those who are killed are already deprived of the moment when they are killed. Someone stands up for the rights of the perpetrator, but who to stand up for the rights of victims? Dead do not speak for themselves.

Sorry not Sorry

A visiting scholar called Yingying Zhang was kidnapped and murdered on June 9, 2017. Two years later, it was substantiated that not only was she decapitated, her body was also cut into pieces and disposed of in the landfill site.

“On June 24, 2019, the 12-member jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning its verdict. Christensen was found guilty of one count of kidnapping resulting in death and two counts of making false statements to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. During sentencing deliberations, the jury could not unanimously agree to sentence Christensen to death. As a result, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on July 18, 2019. ‘

There might be a possibility that one of the 12 judges is an advocate of restorative justice and believe that there is a possibility that restorative justice can transform the murderer Christensen, thus they would not call the death penalty the best end. But does Christensen really feel sorry for what he has done? Can restorative really be his remedy? I don’t think so.

“Brendt Christensen didn’t move or show any emotion as the judge read the jury’s verdict — a swift conviction that was widely expected after defense attorneys acknowledged at trial Christensen killed 26-year-old Yingying Zhang in June 2017 and said they would focus all their energy on persuading jurors to spare his life.”

[mideastsoccer]

Turkey and the Kurds: What goes around comes around

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean and Castbox.

 Turkey, like much of the Middle East, is discovering that what goes around comes around.

Not only because President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have miscalculated the fallout of what may prove to be a foolhardy intervention in Syria and neglected alternative options that could have strengthened Turkey’s position without sparking the ire of much of the international community.

But also because what could prove to be a strategic error is rooted in a policy of decades of denial of Kurdish identity and suppression of Kurdish cultural and political rights that was more likely than not to fuel conflict rather than encourage societal cohesion.

The policy midwifed the birth in the 1970s to militant groups like the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which only dropped its demand for Kurdish independence in recent years.

The group that has waged a low intensity insurgency that has cost tens of thousands of lives has been declared a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Turkish refusal to acknowledge the rights of the Kurds, who are believed to account for up to 20 percent of the country’s population traces its roots to the carving of modern Turkey out of the ruins of the Ottoman empire by its visionary founder, Mustafa Kemal, widely known as Ataturk, Father of the Turks.

It is entrenched in Mr. Kemal’s declaration in a speech in 1923 to celebrate Turkish independence of “how happy is the one who calls himself a Turk,” an effort to forge a national identity for country that was an ethnic mosaic.

The phrase was incorporated half a century later in Turkey’s student oath and ultimately removed from it in 2013 at a time of peace talks between Turkey and the PKK by then prime minister, now president Erdogan.

It took the influx of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the late 1980s and early 1990s as well as the 1991 declaration by the United States, Britain and France of a no-fly zone in northern Iraq that enabled the emergence of an autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region to spark debate in Turkey about the Kurdish question and prompt the government to refer to Kurds as Kurds rather than mountain Turks.

Ironically, Turkey’s enduring refusal to acknowledge Kurdish rights and its long neglect of development of the pre-dominantly Kurdish southeast of the country fuelled demands for greater rights rather than majority support for Kurdish secession largely despite the emergence of the PKK

Most Turkish Kurds, who could rise to the highest offices in the land s long as they identified as Turks rather than Kurds, resembled Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, whose options were more limited even if they endorsed the notion of a Jewish state.

Nonetheless, both minorities favoured an independent state for their brethren on the other side of the border but did not want to surrender the opportunities that either Turkey or Israel offered them.

The existence for close to three decades of a Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq and a 2017 referendum in which an overwhelming majority voted for Iraqi Kurdish independence, bitterly rejected and ultimately nullified by Iraqi, Turkish and Iranian opposition, did little to fundamentally change Turkish Kurdish attitudes.

If the referendum briefly soured Turkish-Iraqi Kurdish relations, it failed to undermine the basic understanding underlying a relationship that could have guided Turkey’s approach towards the Kurds in Syria even if dealing with Iraqi Kurds may have been easier because, unlike Turkish Kurds, they had not engaged in political violence against Turkey.

The notion that there was no alternative to the Turkish intervention in Syria is further countered by the fact that Turkish PKK negotiations that started in 2012 led a year later to a ceasefire and a boosting of efforts to secure a peaceful resolution.

The talks prompted imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to publish a letter endorsing the ceasefire, the disarmament and withdrawal from Turkey of PKK fighters, and a call for an end to the insurgency. Mr. Ocalan predicted that 2013 would be the year in which the Turkish Kurdish issues would be resolved peacefully.

The PKK's military leader, Cemil Bayik, told the BBC three years later that "we don't want to separate from Turkey and set up a state. We want to live within the borders of Turkey on our own land freely.”

The talks broke down in 2015 against the backdrop of the Syrian war and the rise as a US ally of the United States in the fight against the Islamic State of the PKK’s Syrian affiliate, the People's Protection Units (YPG).

Bitterly opposed to the US-YPG alliance, Turkey demanded that the PKK halt its resumption of attacks on Turkish targets and disarm prior to further negotiations.

Turkey responded to the breakdown and resumption of violence with a brutal crackdown in the southeast of the country and on the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP).

Nonetheless, in a statement issued from prison earlier this year that envisioned an understanding between Turkey and Syrian Kurdish forces believed to be aligned with the PKK, Mr. Ocalan declared that “we believe, with regard to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the problems in Syria should be resolved within the framework of the unity of Syria, based on constitutional guarantees and local democratic perspectives. In this regard, it should be sensitive to Turkey’s concerns.”

Turkey’s emergence as one of Iraqi Kurdistan’s foremost investors and trading partners in exchange for Iraqi Kurdish acquiescence in Turkish countering the PKK’s presence in the region could have provided inspiration for a US-sponsored safe zone in northern Syria that Washington and Ankara had contemplated.

The Turkish-Iraqi Kurdish understanding enabled Turkey  to allow an armed Iraqi Kurdish force to transit Turkish territory in 2014 to help prevent the Islamic State from conquering the Syrian city of Kobani.

A safe zone would have helped “realign the relationship between Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and its Syrian offshoot… The safe-zone arrangements… envision(ed) drawing down the YPG presence along the border—a good starting point for reining in the PKK, improving U.S. ties with Ankara, and avoiding a potentially destructive Turkish intervention in Syria,” Turkey scholar Sonar Cagaptay suggested in August.

The opportunity that could have created the beginnings of a sustainable solution that would have benefitted Turkey as well as the Kurds fell by the wayside with Mr. Trump’s decision to withdraw US troops from northern Syria.

In many ways, Mr. Erdogan’s decision to opt for a military solution fits the mould of a critical mass of world leaders who look at the world through a civilizational prism and often view national borders in relative terms.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin pointed the way with his 2008 intervention in Georgia and the annexation in 2014 of Crimea as well as Russia’s stirring of pro-Russian insurgencies in two regions of Ukraine.

Mr. Erdogan appears to believe that if Mr. Putin can pull it off, so can he.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture