Political realism remains a powerful theoretical framework for thinking about international relations, including the war on terrorism. For Morgenthau and other realists, foreign policy is a matter of national interest defined in terms of power. Some writers view this tenet as weakening, if not severing, realism's link with morality. I take up the contrary view that morality is embedded in realist thought, as well as the possibility of realism being thinly and thickly moralised depending on the moral psychology of (...) the agents. I argue that a prima facie case can be made within a thinly moralised realism for a relatively weak ally like Bosnia to enter the war on terrorism. An inflationary model of morality, however, explains how the moral horror of genocide in an ally's past may lead to a thickened moralised realism such that allied policy-makers question their country's entry into the war. (shrink)

In combating international terrorism, it is important to observe some basic principles, such as that international law must be complied with, care should be taken that one does not proceed in such a way that future terrorists are recruited, and one does not oneself become a terrorist. Unfortunately, the war on terrorism.

What is the appropriate legal response to terrorist threats? This question is discussed by politician Tony McWalter, The Philosophers' Magazine editor Julian Baggini, and philosophers Catherine Audard, Saladin Meckled-Garcia, and Alex Voorhoeve.

This paper focuses on a comparative analysis of the legitimate exercise of democratic power in the philosophies of Montesquieu and Locke. This analysis not only highlights a strong bifurcation in liberal thought, it also sheds light on the contemporary practice of liberalism through the example of the United States’ ‘War on Terror.’ I argue that although it is Locke who at first blush gives an account of the exercise of democratic power that is more opposed to tyranny, it is Montesquieu’s (...) broader conception that is in many ways more effective at tracking and combating tyranny. (shrink)

Wittgenstein taught us that there could not be a logically private language— a language on the proper speaking of which it was logically impossible for there to be more than one expert. For then there would be no difference between this person thinking she was using the language correctly and her actually using it correctly. The distinction requires the logical possibility of someone other than her being expert enough to criticize or corroborate her usage, someone able to constitute or hold (...) her to a standard of proper use. I shall explore the possibility of something opposite- sounding about laws, namely, that there could in principle be laws whose existence, legitimacy, goodness, and efficacy depend upon their being private, in this sense: their existence is kept secret from those who legitimately benefit from the laws and yet who would misguidedly destroy them were they to come to know of them; and it is kept secret from those who would illegitimately benefit from being able to circumvent the laws, and who could circumvent them if they knew of them. The secrecy of the laws increases their efficacy against bad behavior, and since were the public to come to know of these laws the public would lose its nerve and demand that the laws be rescinded, it prevents the public from destroying laws that are in fact in the public interest. These laws are therefore in a way logically private: they cannot at the same time exist, have the foregoing virtues, and be public. After proposing conditions under which such laws ought to be enacted, I moot logical objections to the very idea that there could be such laws, practical objections to their workability, and moral objections to their permissibility. I conclude by suggesting that, while we normally think of secret laws as creatures of the executive branch, things functionally equivalent to secret laws could also be created by other branches of government and societal institutions, and that all of this would be compatible with the form of sovereignty that is democratically grounded in the will and interests of the people. (shrink)

Just war scholars are increasingly focusing on the importance of jus post bellum – justice after war – for the legitimacy of military campaigns. Should something akin to jus post bellum standards apply to terrorist campaigns? Assuming that at least some terrorist actors pursue legitimate goals or just causes, do such actors have greater difficulty satisfying the prospect-of-success criterion of Just War Theory than military actors? Further, may the use of the terrorist method as such – state or non-state – (...) jeopardize lasting peace in a way that other violent, for instance military, strategies do not? I will argue that there appears to be little reason to believe that terrorist campaigns are in principle less able to secure or at least contribute to a lasting peace than military campaigns; quite to the contrary. Or, put differently, if terrorism is an unlikely method for securing peace, then war is an even more unlikely one. (shrink)

Without doubt, terrorism is one of the most vehemently debated subjects in current political affairs as well as in academic discourse. Yet, although it constitutes an issue of general socio-political interest, neither in everyday language nor in professional (political, legal, or academic) contexts does there exist a generally accepted definition of terrorism. The question of how it should be defined has been answered countless times, with as much variety as quantity in the answers. In academic discourse, it is (...) difficult to find two scholars who use the term ‘terrorism’ in the same way. -/- While it is impossible to formulate a definition which satisfies everyone, discussing the definition question is indispensable. The necessity to review existing definitions with a view to improving them is especially obvious in legal and political contexts. How terrorism is defined in these contexts has serious consequences, and if we lack clear definitions we run into problems. How can we have laws or take political measures against something we have not clearly defined? Without doubt, there exists a practical necessity for a definition in these fields. It is important to have clear standards for defining terrorism. -/- In my view, the definition should meet three basic criteria: first, it should cover those cases that we concurrently consider to be instances of terrorism (such as the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in September 2001 or those on commuting trains in Madrid Atocha in March 2004). That is, ideally, our definition of terrorism remains close to uncontroversial usages of the term. Second, the definition should abstain from morally judging the act in question. Later I will say more about so called “moral” definitions of terrorism. For now, it suffices to say that defining an action and evaluating it are distinct tasks and should remain so. Third, the definition must identify characteristics that are specific to terrorism alone, characteristics which clearly distinguish it from other phenomena. (shrink)

Terrorist violence is often condemned for targeting innocents or non-combatants. There are two objections to this line of argument. First, one may doubt that terrorism is necessarily directed against innocents or non-combatants. However, I will focus on the second objection, according to which there may be exceptions from the prohibition against killing the innocent. In my article I will elaborate whether lethal terrorism against innocents can be justified in a supreme emergency. Starting from a critique of Michael Walzer’s (...) account of supreme emergency, I will argue that the supreme emergency exemption justifies the resort to terrorism against innocents to avert moral disasters such as genocide and ethnic cleansing, provided that the criteria of last resort, proportionality and public declaration are satisfied. (shrink)

Just war theory − as advanced by Michael Walzer, among others − fails to take war seriously enough. This is because it proposes that we regulate war with systematic rules that are comparable to those of a game. Three types of claims are advanced. The first is phenomenological: that the theory's abstract nature interferes with our judgment of what is, and should be, going on. The second is meta-ethical: that the theory's rules are not, in fact, systematic after all, there (...) being inherent contradictions between them. And the third is practical: that by getting people to view war as like a game, the theory promotes its ‘aestheticization’ (play being a central mode of the aesthetic) such that those who fight are encouraged to act in dangerous ways. And war, it goes without saying, is already dangerous enough. (shrink)

“Terrorism” is a polysemic, emotionally laden term. Belligerent groups could be labeled “terrorist” by some and “freedom” or “guerrilla” fighters by others. Similarly, the same organization or group could be labeled “terrorist” by some and “humanitarian organization” by others. Hence, depending on which perspective people take in a given conflict, and how the international community reacts to the conflict in question, members of different organizations or groups might end up being classified in a negative sense as terrorists or in (...) a positive sense as freedom fighters. Such perspectivism partly explains why so much disagreement exists on the meaning, justification, or excuse of terrorism. (shrink)

Debates about terrorism and technology often focus on the potential uses of technology by non-state terrorist actors and by states as forms of counterterrorism. Yet, little has been written about how technology shapes how we think about terrorism. In this chapter I argue that technology, and the language we use to talk about technology, constrains and shapes our understanding of the nature, scope, and impact of terrorism, particularly in relation to state terrorism. After exploring the ways (...) in which technology shapes moral thinking, I use two case studies to demonstrate how technology simultaneously hides and enables terroristic forms of state violence: police control technologies and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones. In both these cases, I argue that features of these technologies, combined with a narrative of precision and efficiency, serves to mask the terroristic nature of the violence that these practices inflict and reinforces the moral exclusion of those against whom these technologies are deployed. In conclusion, I propose that identifying acts of terrorism requires a focus on the impact of technologies of violence (whether they are “high tech” or not) on those most affected, regardless of whether users of these technologies conceive of their actions as terroristic. (shrink)

James Olson, author of the book Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying (p.15), questions “What actions by a state are permissible in pursuing the state’s interests? Are lying, cheating, manipulation, deception, coercion and other techniques of espionage and covert action justifiable in national self-defense?” To expand his thought, to that end, I say, “Can different moral and ethical theories co-exist during war or conflict?” Can we extend our range of options in dealing with terrorism globally in an effort (...) to satisfy our national security objectives using principles outlined in the many moral and ethical theories? In short answer, yes. This paper will address moral and ethical theories that I believe justify the use of a range of options or extended options to combat terrorism to meet our national security objectives without severely corrupting our universal morals or ethics. -/- Strictly speaking from a theory basis, and a common sense approach-with no religious affirmations-I ascribe to a combination of principles of the Just War theory and Moral Absolutism philosophy. It is my belief that we cannot engage terrorists’ Realpolitik and normative ethical relativist frame-of- mind to justify the use of force based on one moral or ethical theory or philosophy. A combination of principles from the Just War theory and Moral Absolutism philosophy can morally and ethically justify engagement in combating terrorism. (shrink)

On September 11, 2001, Americans were painfully reminded of a truth that for years had been easy to overlook, namely, that terrorism can affect every person in the world – regardless of location, nationality, political conviction, or occupation – and that, in principle, nobody is beyond terrorism’s reach. However, our renewed awareness of the ubiquity of the terrorist threat has been accompanied by wide disagreement and confusion about the moral status of terrorism and how terrorism ought (...) to be confronted. Much of the disagreement and confusion, I contend, is rooted in an inadequate understanding of just what it is that constitutes terrorism. In this paper, I offer the beginnings of a response to the challenge of terrorism by providing an account of what terrorism is and of some of the philosophical issues involved. My account is divided into two sections. In the first section I examine some of the difficulties involved in defining terrorism, and show that some of the most common “ordinary” understandings of terrorism are inadequate. In the second section I offer a working definition of terrorism that overcomes many of the difficulties outlined in the first section. I argue that terrorism consists in the use of “systematically unsystematic” violence (whether directed at combatants or noncombatants), and that the random or indiscriminate character of terroristic violence points us in the direction of seeing what is distinctively wrong with it. The fundamental problem is that terrorism is not committed to any rules of armed conflict or any principles that would facilitate the eventual containment or termination of the conflict. (shrink)

After the 9/11 attacks the U.S. administration went beyond emergency response towards imperialism, but cloaked its agenda in the rhetoric of fighting ‘terrorists’ and ‘terrorism.’ After distinguishing between emergency thinking and emergency planning, I question the administration’s “war on terrorism” rhetoric in three stages. First, upon examining the post-9/11 antiterrorism discourse I find that it splits into two agendas: domestic, protect our infrastructure; and foreign, select military targets. Second, I review approaches to emergency planning already in place. Third, (...) after reviewing what philosophers have said about emergencies, I recommend they turn their attention to the biases inherent in and misleading uses of antiterrorist terminology. (shrink)

This paper examines the tensions at play in three important documents involved in the ‘war on terror’: the “Application of Treaties” White House Legal Counsel Memo of 2001, the “National Security Strategy” document of 2002, and the 2004 Supreme Court decision Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. Reading these documents, it becomes clear that there is an overarching misunderstanding and confusion of the traditionally separate concepts of ‘criminal’ and ‘enemy’ in the struggle against globalized terrorism.

Fifteen years after the September 11th terror attacks, the United States still exists in a state of exception or state of emergency, in which the executive branch claims extraordinary powers to carry out bombing strikes or drone attacks in foreign nations and to engage in surveillance against its citizens outside the boundaries of international and constitutional law. This blog-piece argues for a restoration of the constitutional limiuts on sovereign executive powers and a cessation of the war on terrorism.

This paper explores whether terrorist violence could be morally justified or excused. It defends the absolute immunity of innocent people against those who might want to sacrifice them for other goals. The defense is based on recognizing people’s stringent natural duty of nonmaleficence, which entails an obligation on moral agents to refrain from intentionally bringing about harm or significant risk of it to the innocent. The paper is divided into two parts. The first part distinguishes between unconditional and conditional critics’ (...) arguments regarding the use of terrorist violence, and between a narrow and a broad definition of terrorism. While unconditional critics accept the narrow definition or one akin to it because they equate terrorism with murder, conditional critics accept the broad definition or one akin to it because they attempt to justify or excuse the use of terrorism based, e.g., on an analogy with a just war approach, consequentialism, moral relativism, supreme emergency or last resort. Exception is taken with the latter arguments since they attempt to justify or excuse morally unjustifiable and inexcusable actions such as the deliberate use of violence against the innocent. The second part explores plausible conditional critics’ reasons for justifying or excusing the 9/11/01 attacks and find them wanting. If the argument works, then, with minor modifications, it could also apply to the 3/11/04 attacks in Madrid, the 7/7/05 attacks in London, and similar attacks elsewhere. (shrink)

Hamas’s deliberate attack on October 7th against innocent civilians is absolutely wrong. Therefore, it should be universally condemned. And yet, I wonder how a universal recognition of an absolute duty of respect for human dignity can help solving the existential conflict confronting Israelis and Palestinians. Ideally, a two-state solution proposed by the international community can be seen as a reasonable and fair compromise. Nevertheless, the reality on the ground is different. Thus far the existence of one state has precluded the (...) existence of another with no end in sight to their mutually destructive violence. Their conflict demands that people who are reasonable and fair-minded try to understand it holistically and to offer an impartial assessment of this intractable conflict without relativizing the undeserved human suffering of all those involved and affected by it. (shrink)

In its reaction on the terroristic attacks of September 9th, 2001, the US-government threatened Afghanistan's Taleban with war in order to force them to extradite terrorist leader Bin Laden; the Taleban said that they would not surrender to this kind of blackmail – and so, they were removed from Kabul by means of military force. The rivalling versions of this story depend crucially on notions such as "terrorism" and "blackmail". Obviously you'll gain public support for your preferrend version of (...) the story if you are able to determine how those notions are to be used. So we had better reflect about their very meaning and about the moral implications of their proper usage. To gain a deeper understanding of our notions of "blackmail" and "terrorism" I shall propose an extreme thought experiment: Cassandra's plan. Cassandra foresees that sooner or later one of the nuclear powers might take the liberty to use atomic bombs. From fright she founds an NGO for blackmailing the statesmen who are in charge of nuclear weapons; she announces in public that all ministers and leaders of any government shall be hunted down, and executed, whose soldiers drop but one atomic bomb. (Cassandra's NGO keeps killer teams in constant training so as to increase the effect of the threat; this is being financiated from private donations). In my paper I shall raise two questions (without claiming to provide definite answers). First, would we have to say that Cassandra's NGO was a terrorist organisation? Second, would it be morally wrong if Cassandra blackmailed statesmen in the way indicated? (shrink)

A fundamental tension exists between Rawls's ideal Kantian conception of justice as fairness (JAF), which requires respecting people as ends, and his realistic non-Kantian consequentialist conception of a supreme emergency in a just war. By justifying the targeting of objectively innocent noncombatants during a supreme emergency exception, Rawls allows for treating them as means only. Hence, his appeal to a supreme emergency is insufficient to avoid this tension. First, since for him JAF is ideal but also practical, one might argue (...) that his fictional people in the original position must reflect on the justification for using force on behalf of JAF. And second, since Rawls justifies targeting objectively innocent people during a supreme emergency exemption, he justifies what one might conceive of as emergency terrorism. Emergency terrorism, however, treats people as means only. Therefore, Rawls's Kantian conception of JAF is in tension with his consequentialist justification of a supreme emergency in a just war and hence with emergency terrorism. (shrink)

Christopher J. Finlay claims “that a principle of moral or legitimate authority is necessary in just war theory for evaluating properly the justifiability of violence by non-state entities when they claim to act on behalf of the victims of rights violations and political injustice.” In particular, he argues that states, unlike non-state actors, possess what he calls “Lesser Moral Authority.” This authority allegedly enables states to invoke “the War Convention,” which in turn entitles even individual soldiers on the aggressive side (...) to use military violence against soldiers defending the victim state. Non-state actors, in contrast, have to fulfill more stringent requirements. If they do not, then even their attacks on military personnel can properly be called "terrorist." In the following I will argue that Finlay’s attempt to show the importance of the legitimate authority criterion of just war theory and to demonstrate that non-state violence has to satisfy heavier burdens of justification than state violence fails for a number of reasons: his claim that defenders would wrong victims if they defended them against their will is mistaken, he overlooks the fact that non-state agents need not claim to fight on someone’s behalf, the full moral authority he mentions is redundant, the powers he ascribes to “Lesser Moral Authority” are, depending on interpretation, either morally irrelevant or nonexistent, and his claim that granting states “Lesser Moral Authority” is beneficial from a “moral pragmatic” point of view while granting the same authority to non-state actors is not, is unwarranted. (shrink)

In this article, I present a view on the future of nuclear war which takes into account the expected technological progress as well as global political changes. There are three main directions in which technological progress in nuclear weapons may happen: a) Many gigaton scale weapons. b) Cheaper nuclear bombs which are based on the use of the reactor-grade plutonium, laser isotope separation or are hypothetical pure fusion weapons. Also, advanced nanotechnology will provide the ability to quickly build large nuclear (...) arsenals and AI could be used in designing, manufacturing and nuclear strategy planning. c) Specialized nukes like nuclear-powered space lasers, hafnium bombs and nuclear-powered space ships as kinetic weapons. Meanwhile, the nuclear war strategy also has changed as the bipolar world has ended and as new types of weapons are becoming available. The first strategy change is that Doomsday weapons for blackmail will become attractive for weaker countries which can’t use ICBM to penetrate the anti-missile defense of the enemies. Secondly, the cheaper nukes will become available to smaller actors, who may be involved in “worldwide guerilla”. Cheaper nukes and a larger number of actors also encourage nuclear terrorism and anonymous or false-flag warfare. This will result in the normalization of the use of nuclear weapons in war and growing nuclear arsenals, now distributed between many countries. The third change of the strategy is the use of nukes not against primary military targets but on other objects, which could increase their effects: nuclear power plants, supervolcanos, EMP, tsunamis, taiga fires for global cooling, and even more hypothetical things like asteroid deflection to Earth. All these unconventional means and strategies of nuclear war could become available somewhere in the 21st century and may cause or contribute to the civilizational collapse and even human extinction. (shrink)

Russia took the advantage of the contribution of the Armenian armed organizations in order to possess Istanbul, straits around it, Eastern Anatolia, to weaken Turkey, to be strengthen in the Southern Caucasus, organized the rebellion of the Armenians living in Turkey against the government. Russian ruling circles put forward the Armenian matter in order to take advantage of them. Armenians involved in the war to create their own government by obtaining the territory including Van, Bitlis, Tigranakert, Erzurum, Kharberd and Sebastya, (...) as well as Cilicia from Turkey, to solve their Armenian problem. But in fact, Russia, France and England tried to blow to Turkey pretending to try for building an independent Armenian government. The grade of contribution of Armenian military units in the First World War can be characterized as following: 1. Creating the Armenian volunteer units. 2. Establishing the regular battalions and infantry regiments and forming the national corpuses. The organizations of Hnchak and Dashnaksutyun actively participated in creating the Armenian volunteer units. Dashnaks mobilized 40 000 people to destroy the Turkish people. They established tens of khumbas. The Armenian volunteer units were commanded by Andranic Ozanyan, Dro, Amazasp, Keri, Checho, Vardan and others terrorists. Armenian volunteer units which were supposed to move in 4 directions, should act in the directions where the Armenian people were densely populated. These 4 Armenian volunteer units fight against Turks in all important combat operations from Sarigamish to Erzurum. The same time Russian army and Armenians triggered the rebellion of the local population against the Turkish government. 50000 of Armenians were fighting in French, England and USA armies. The Eastern legion of Armenians was established in French army on November 1916. On November 15, 1918, the Eastern Legion was named Armenian legion. The number of the Armenians in the legion riched to 4000. In the beginning of 1916, there was an announcement about subordination of the military detachments to army and establishment of infantry regiments based on that. Establishment of the separate Armenian corpus started at the end of December 1917. In 1917, 8 Armenian shooter regiments were established. From the mentioned 8 regiments two Armenian shooter divisions, the special Armenian division of Andranic, 3 infantry brigades of western Armenians in the Southern Caucasus region, some guerrilla troops in Erevan, Igdir guerrilla infantry and rider regiments, Zeytun regiment in Tbilisi were established. At present, Armenia often raises false claims such as the "Armenian genocide" in the parliaments of the world, trying to confirm this lie. This research proves that Armenians betrayed the Ottoman state during the First World War and also committed Turkish genocides. (shrink)

Peter Sloterdijk's 'In the Shadow of Mt. Sinai' and Alain Badiou's 'Our Wounds Are Not So Recent' represent distinctly different attempts to come to grips with the conflict between the West (the US, the UK, France) and the Muslim world after the September 11th attacks. Although Sloterdijk finds the source of conflict in the religious zealotry of the Abrahamic religions, while Badiou blames the multinational capitalist system for drating a disaffected underclass, the two complementary perspectives work together to make this (...) ongoing conflict intelligible, if not, finally, to stop the war on terrorism. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the notion which Michael Walzer calls jus ad vim might improve the moral evaluation for using military lethal force in conflicts other than war, particularly those situations of conflict short-of-war. First, I describe his suggested approach to morally justifying the use of lethal force outside the context of war. I argue that Walzer’s jus ad vim is a broad concept that encapsulates a state’s mechanisms for exercising power short-of-war. I focus on his more narrow (...) use of jus ad vim which is the state’s use of lethal force. Next I address Tony Coady’s critique of jus ad vim. I argue that Coady highlights some important problems with jus ad vim, but these concerns are not sufficient to dismiss it completely. Then, in the final section, I argue that jus ad vim provides an appropriate “hybrid” moral framework for judging the ethical decision-making outside of war by complementing other conventional just war distinctions. A benefit of jus ad vim is that it stops us expanding the definition of war while still providing the necessary ethical framework for examining violent conflict outside that context. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the proposed use of combinatorial derivatives markets for event prediction, especially for catastrophic events such as terrorism, war, or political assasination. Following a presentation of the philosophical principles underlying these politico-economic tools, I examine case studies (U.S. DoD proposals) that evaluate their advantages and disadvantages in terms of both efficacy and moral considerations. I conclude that these markets are both fatally flawed due to internal conceptual contradictions and morally problematic.

This paper aims to offer a comprehensive overview of René Girard’s reflections on the issue of modern jihadism. It addresses three key aspects of his reasoning: (I) the rise of Islamic terrorism in the context of a globalization of resentment; (II) modern jihadism understood as an “event internal to the development of technology;” (III) the hypothesis that modern jihadism “is both linked to Islam and different from it.”.

What It’s Like to Chill Out With Whom the Rest of the World Considers As The Most Ruthless Men: Ratko Mladic, Goran Hadzic and Radovan Karadzic (+) Confessions of a Female War Crimes Investigator By Jill Louise Starr NJ USA -/- Read My Entire Book Here (True Story) http://sites.google.com/site/thelawprojectscenternycoffices/what-it-s-like-to-chill-out-with-whom-th e-rest-of-the-world-considers-as-the-most-ruthless-men-ratko-mladic-goran-hadzic-and-radovan-karadzi c-confessions-of-a-female-war-crimes-investigator -/- Retrospectively, it was all so simple, natural and matter of fact being on a boat restaurant in Belgrade, sitting with, laughing, drinking a two hundred bottle of wine and chatting about (...) war and peace while Ratko Mladic held my hand. Mladic, a man considered the world’s most ruthless war criminal since Adolf Hitler, still at large and currently having a five million dollar bounty on his head for genocide by the international community. Yet there I was with my two best friends at the time, a former Serbian diplomat, his wife, and Ratko Mladic just chilling. There was no security, nothing you’d ordinarily expect in such circumstances. Referring to himself merely as, Sharko; this is the story of it all came about. Diplomatic / International Relations Consultant & War Crimes Investigator - War - Peace - Preventive Diplomatic Strategies - International Law - Charitable Causes - International Business - International Political Economy - Human Rights - Politics - War Crimes Investigations - Anti-Terrorism - Law Projects Center Funded Projects (YCICC) Internationally LPCYU Home Website -/- Irrefutable Proof ICTY Is Corrupt Court/Irrefutable Proof the Hague Court Cannot Legitimately Prosecute Karadzic Case By Jill Starr I want to stress, in this particular meeting , there was no observer status at the ICC Preparatory Meetings at the United Nations in New York City in 2001. What I did, made a historical precedent. I was asked by, Darko Trifunovic 1st Secretary of the Bosnian MIssion, to take his place, in a CLOSED DOOR UNITED NATIONS MEETING. This means, ONLY HEADS OF AMBASSADORIAL MISSIONS WERE ALLOWED IN THE MEETING. There was no "Observer Status for say NGO's such as Amnesty International." I represented a Country as an American Citizen that day; the Repuklika Srpska. This never occurred before to my knowledge ever. It was an error. My former professor, Arnold Stark, walked me in, A former State Dept. man chosen to be the former Ambassador from the USA to Bonn/Germany (and he declined years back because of his wife at the time). He knew it was illegal. It said on these paper I picked up in the meeting, Anyone, Richard Holbrooke, sat across from me, discussing this meeting outside the meeting itself thereafter , "would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of int'l law." I heard the Ambassadors of the world ALL DISCUS TRADING MONEY FOR ICC AND ICTY COURT VERDICT AS WELL AS FUTURE JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS -/- http://sites.google.com/site/thelawprojectscenternycoffices/home/irrefutable-proof-icty-is-corrupt-c ourt-irrefutable-proof-the-hague-court-cannot-legitimately-prosecute-karadzic-case -/- http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa/IrrefutableProofICTYIsCorruptCourtIrrefutabl# (The Documentary Secret United Nations ICC Meeting Papers Scanned Images) OR http://community.jigsaw.com/t5/media/gallerypage/user-id/903610# -/- Rea dMore Here _> Read the entire story here My testimonial video on Youtube _> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKe-5LORsGs -/- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKe-5LORsGs (My YouTube VIDEO) -/- This legal technicality indicates the Hague must dismiss charges against Dr Karadzic and others awaiting trials in the Hague jail; like it or not. -/- Unfortunately for the Signatures Of the Rome Statute United Nations member states instituting the ICC & ICTY housed at the Hague, insofar as the, Radovan Karadzic, as with the other Hague cases awaiting trial there, I personally witnessed these United Nations member states having a substantial conversations, and, openly speaking about trading judicial appointments and verdicts for financial funding when I attended the 2001 ICC Preparatory Meetings at the UN in Manhattan making the iCTY and ICC morally incapable trying Radovan Karazdic and others. -/- I witnessed with my own eyes and ears when attending the 2001 Preparatory Meetings to establish an newly emergent International Criminal Court, the exact caliber of criminal corruption running so very deeply at the Hague, that it was a perfectly viable topic of legitimate conversation in those meetings I attended to debate trading verdicts AND judicial appointments, for monetary funding. -/- Jilly wrote:*The rep from Spain became distraught and when her country’s proposal was not taken to well by the chair of the meeting , then Spain argued in a particularly loud and noticably strongly vocal manner, “Spain (my country) strongly believes if we contribute most financial support to the Hague’s highest court, that ought to give us and other countries feeding it financially MORE direct power over its decisions.” -/- ((((((((((((((((((((((((( ((((((((((((((((((((((((( Instead of censoring the country representative from Spain for even bringing up this unjust, illegal and unfair judicial idea of bribery for international judicial verdicts and judicial appointments, all country representatives present in the meeting that day all treated the Spain proposition as a ”totally legitimate topic” discussed and debated it between each other for some time. I was quite shocked! The idea was “let’s discuss it.” "It’s a great topic to discuss." -/- Some countries agreed with Spain’s propositions while others did not. The point here is, bribery for judicial verdicts and judicial appointments was treated as a totally legitimate topic instead of an illegitimate topic which it is in the meeting that I attended in 2001 that day to establish the ground work for a newly emergent international criminal court.)))))))))))))))))))))))))))) -/- In particular., since “Spain” was so overtly unafraid in bringing up this topic of trading financial funding the ICC for influence over its future judicial appointments and verdicts in front of every other UN member state present that day at the UN, “Spain” must have already known by previous experience the topic of bribery was “socially acceptable” for conversation that day. They must have previously spoke about bribing the ICTY and ICC before in meetings; this is my take an international sociological honor student. -/- SPAIN’s diplomatic gesture of international justice insofar as, Serbia, in all of this is, disgusting morally!SPAIN HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD THE TRUE DEFINITION OF AN “INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.” -/- I represented the state interests’ of the Former Yugoslavia, in Diplomat Darko Trifunovic’s absence in those meetings and I am proud to undertake this effort on Serbia’s behalf. http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa (My Political Satire Blog) Diplomatic / International Relations Consultant & War Crimes Investigator - War - Peace - Preventive Diplomatic Strategies - International Law - Charitable Causes - International Business - International Political Economy - Human Rights - Politics - War Crimes Investigations - Anti-Terrorism - Law Projects Center Funded Projects (YCICC) Internationally http://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite -/- -/- . (shrink)

This paper sets out to examine the ideals of rebranding in the national image rebuilding process, fetching examples from Nigeria’s experience. The discourse also examines the concepts of image and the impact of anti-social behaviour of citizens on the nation’s image within the international community. This includes indiscriminate imaging of violence or crime scenes through photographs and written reports by citizens of the country. The paradox of the development of indiscriminate imaging and reporting of violence through photographs is antagonistic to (...) Nigeria’s image rebranding project. This paper acquires data through observational and analytical methods. This paper concludes that the rebranding of Nigeria and other African nations where violence, corruption, and anti-social behaviours strive is almost impossible until there is a change in the attitude of the citizens. The paper recommends that the war against corrupt practices, suicide bombings, and terrorist attacks on innocent citizens of Nigeria should be a collective effort of every Nigerian who wishes the country’s image well, otherwise the country will continually suffer the risk of perpetual alienation effects. (shrink)

Fanatics judge a lottery with a tiny probability of arbitrarily high value as better than the certainty of some modest value, and they are prone to getting swindled. You need only make the lie “big enough” to get one over on them. I put forward an elegant solution to the fanatic’s problem. When coming to a fully rational decision, agents may ignore outlandish possibilities.

"The concluding chapter, penned by C. E. Emmer, both revisits and greatly expands upon disputations within the contested territory of kitsch as term and tool in cultural turf-war arsenals. Focusing on debates surrounding two visual responses to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Dennis Madalone's 2003 music video for the patriotic anthem 'America We Stand As One' and Jenny Ryan's 'plushie' sculpture, 'Soft 9/11,' Emmer utilizes these debates to reveal the coexisting and competing attitudes towards ostensibly kitschy objects and (...) the contentiousness of deploying kitsch as a term in these debates. The buzzing activity of the internet provides much of the raw material for his arguments. Through his close reading of both the works themselves and the public response to them, Emmer once more focuses attention on the competing and overlapping attitudes towards kitsch and the way in which it and its semantic cousins remain a viable and valuable resource with which to police the borders that surround the artworld. Ultimately, his contribution further grounds a wider premise operative in this collection--namely, that a simple and rigid dichotomy of kitsch and (high) art does not and indeed cannot capture the elusive and mercurial nature of kitsch." --from the editor's introduction. (shrink)

Mandatory minimum sentencing provisions have been a feature of the U.S. justice system since 1790. But they have expanded considerably under the war on drugs, and their use has expanded considerably under the Trump Administration; some states are also poised to expand drug-related mandatory minimums further in efforts to fight the current opioid epidemic. In this paper I outline and evaluate three prominent arguments for and against the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs—they appeal, respectively, to proportionality, (...) consistency, and efficiency. I ultimately defend the view that the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs is unjust. -/- . (shrink)

In a recent study appearing in Neuroethics, I reported observing 11 significant correlations between the “Dark Triad” personality traits – Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy – and “conservative” judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey. Surprisingly, I observed no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments. In order to determine whether these results were an artifact of the particular issues I selected, I ran a follow-up study testing the Dark Triad against conservative and liberal judgments on 15 additional moral (...) issues. The new issues examined include illegal immigration, abortion, the teaching of “intelligent design” in public schools, the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the war on terrorism, laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and environmentalism. 1154 participants (680 male, 472 female; median age 29), recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk, completed three surveys: a 15-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), the 28-item Short Dark Triad personality inventory, and a five-item demographic survey. The results strongly reinforce my earlier findings. Twenty-two significant correlations were observed between “conservative” judgments and the Dark Triad (all of which were significant past a Bonferonni-corrected significance threshold of p = .0008), compared to seven significant correlations between Dark Triad and “liberal” judgments (only one of which was significant past p = .0008). This article concludes by developing a novel research proposal for determining whether the results of my two studies are “bad news” for conservatives or liberals. (shrink)

The most astonishing by-product of the events of 9-11 is undoubtedly the renewed legitimacy, in the eyes of many, of some forms of torture. Since many centuries, the most brutal dictators have felt the need to lie and deceive about their torture prac-tices, and now we have political and intellectual leaders of the free world openly arguing in favor of the use of torture in certain cases. The most commonly cited of these cases is the one described in the so-called (...) "ticking bomb argument" (hence-forth TBA). -/- The kind of torture that is supposedly justified by this argument can be characte-rized as benevolent torture, well-intentioned torture, or even moral torture because it is different from torture as it is commonly used by certain oppressive or authori-tarian governments. "Ticking bomb torture" is not a method of terrorizing and sub-jugating a population, and neither is it a form of criminal punishment or a means of establishing innocence or guilt. On the contrary, its declared purpose is to protect the population and to avoid a terrorist attack on civilian targets. It is benevolent tor-ture because its objective is not fear or punishment, but safety and security. It is moral torture because reluctance to engage in it would endanger the lives of inno-cent civilians, and would therefore be immoral. "A society that elects to favor the interests of wrongdoers over those of the innocent, when a choice must be made be-tween the two, is in need of serious ethical rewiring". -/- Proponents of the TBA readily agree that they discuss an exceptional case which is unrepresentative of torture in general - most real cases of torture have absolutely nothing to do with the example given in the TBA or fail to conform to the hypo-theses present in the TBA - and which in no way justifies torture that has other, and less benevolent purposes. Yet they believe that this exceptional nature of the case does not render it insignificant or irrelevant. In the setting of a "war on terrorism", it can be extremely important to agree on the soundness of the TBA because no matter how exceptional the case may be, when it occurs it has important conse-quences. A clear agreement on the TBA is necessary in order to save many lives in exceptional cases. -/- I will argue in this paper that the TBA is fundamentally flawed because it is based on a number of untenable assumptions. Moreover, I argue that the TBA, when thought through until its logical conclusions, ends up condoning torture of a much less exceptional and benevolent nature than the torture it started with. In other words, the TBA proves too much. It would not only put us on a "slippery slope" towards ever increasing levels of torture, but also destroy our democracy and free-dom. It is, in the words of the title of this paper, the little door to hell. The TBA tries to force a small opening into an area of human activity that is shielded by a very strong, and perhaps even absolute moral and legal taboo, and then finds that it has allowed this activity to take over civilization. (shrink)

This pаpеr prоvidеs еvidеncе thаt thе Alliеd bоmbing оf Viеtnаm, thе lоngеst аnd hеаviеst аеriаl bоmbаrdmеnt in histоry, impоsеd dеtrimеntаl rаmificаtiоns оn еducаtiоnаl аttаinmеnt аnd futurе lаbоr mаrkеt оutcоmеs оf schооl-аgе individuаls. By еxplоiting thе plаusibly еxоgеnоus districtby-cоhоrt vаriаtiоn in bоmb dеstructiоn undеr а diffеrеncе-in-diffеrеncеs frаmеwоrk, wе find thаt аn incrеаsе in bоmb intеnsity lеаds tо significаntly fеwеr еducаtiоnаl yеаrs cоmplеtеd аnd lоwеr futurе еаrnings fоr schооl-аgе childrеn еxpоsеd tо thе bоmbаrdmеnt. Wе furthеr shоw thаt bоth thе supply-sidе fаctоrs (inаdеquаtе (...) schооl sеcurity аnd thе lаck оf tеаchеrs) аnd thе dеmаnd-sidе fаctоrs (rеsidеntiаl cаsuаltiеs, rеstrictеd аccеss tо hеаlthcаrе, dаmаgеd prоpеrtiеs, аnd incrеаsеd rеliаncе оn wеlfаrе аssistаncе) cоuld bе pоtеntiаl mеchаnisms driving thе lоng-tеrm cоnsеquеncеs оf аеriаl bоmbаrdmеnt. Our findings undеrlinе thе impоrtаncе оf cоnflict prеvеntiоn аnd pоst-cоnflict rеcоnstructiоn in prоmоting sustаinаblе dеvеlоpmеnt. (shrink)

Historically, laws and policies to criminalize drug use or possession were rooted in explicit racism, and they continue to wreak havoc on certain racialized communities. We are a group of bioethicists, drug experts, legal scholars, criminal justice researchers, sociologists, psychologists, and other allied professionals who have come together in support of a policy proposal that is evidence-based and ethically recommended. We call for the immediate decriminalization of all so-called recreational drugs and, ultimately, for their timely and appropriate legal regulation. We (...) also call for criminal convictions for nonviolent offenses pertaining to the use or possession of small quantities of such drugs to be expunged, and for those currently serving time for these offenses to be released. In effect, we call for an end to the “war on drugs.”. (shrink)

The paper aims at finding a way out of deadlocks in Malthus scholarship concerning his relationship to utilitarianism. The main claim is that Malthus viewed his own population theory and political economy as Hifsdisziplinen to moral and political philosophy, that is, empirical enquiries required in order to be able to pronounce justified value judgments on such matters as the Poor Laws. On the other hand, Malthus’s population theory and political economy were no value-free science and his policy advice – far (...) from being “utilitarian” – resulted from his overall system of ideas and was explicitly based on a set of traditional moral assumptions. These in turn were justified by a peculiar meta-ethical theory, which has been named in a somewhat improper way “theological utilitarianism” and which I propose to name instead “consequentialist voluntarism”. The issue of poverty and its remedies is the one where Malthus’s peculiar approach, once applied to a real-world issue, displays it potentialities, yielding a kind of policy-advice that is softer and more flexible than the one that may be drawn from Benthamite utilitarianism. The reconstruction shows how, through subsequent approximations and under pressure of critics, Malthus yields finally a kind of Institutional approach to policies concerning poverty, making room for generalized basic education, free markets for labour and for corn, colonies, and private beneficence. Such a mix of policies should bring about for the lower classes of society “the means of being respectable, virtuous and happy”. -/- . (shrink)

Geoengineering; specifically Solar Radiation Management ; has been proposed to effect rapid influence over the Earth’s climate system in order to counteract Anthropogenic Global Warming. This poses near-term to long-term governance challenges; some of which are within the planning horizon of current political administrations. Previous discussions of governance of SRM have focused primarily on two scenarios: an isolated “Greenfinger” individual; or state; acting independently ; versus more consensual; internationalist approaches. I argue that these models represent a very limited sub-set of (...) plausible deployment scenarios. To generate a range of alternative models; I offer a short; relatively unstructured discussion of a range of different types of warfare – each with an analogous SRM deployment regime. (shrink)

The bi-polar confrontation between the Soviet Union and the USA involved many leading game theorists from both sides of the Iron Curtain: Oskar Morgenstern, John von Neumann, Michael Intriligator, John Nash, Thomas Schelling and Steven Brams from the United States and Nikolay Vorob’ev, Leon A. Petrosyan, Elena B. Yanovskaya and Olga N. Bondareva from the Soviet Union. The formalization of game theory took place prior to the Cold War but the geopolitical confrontation hastened and shaped its evolution. In our article (...) we outline four similarities and differences between Western GT and Soviet GT: 1) the Iron Curtain resulted in a lagged evolution of GT in the Soviet Union; 2) Soviet GT focused more on operations research and issues of centralized planning; 3) the contemporary Western view on Soviet GT was biased and Soviet contributions, including works on dynamic stability, non-emptiness of the core and many refinements, suggest that Soviet GT was able to catch up to the Western level relatively fast; 4) international conferences, including Vilnius, 1971, fostered interaction between Soviet game theorists and their Western colleagues. In general, we consider the Cold War to be a positive environment for GT in the West and in the Soviet Union. (shrink)

The history of civil disobedience until the 1960s is, historians and political theorists have shown, the history of a fundamentally anticolonial, anticapitalistic, and antimilitaristic political practice. This history was progressively erased from our political imagination as the phrase was reconceptualized by American liberal lawyers and scholars in the late-1960s and early-1970s. These liberals argued that civil disobedience was not a revolutionary but an essentially reformist form of action, at a time when social movements were accused of endangering American democracy amidst (...) rising crime rates in the United States. Civil disobedience, the argument ran, would encourage a criminal attitude toward a legitimately elected government. In the midst of conservative calls for law and order and the election of Richard Nixon to the presidency, affirming that civil disobedience was not a radical form of political action became a key rhetorical strategy for American liberals during the so-called War on Crime. In this essay, I retrace debates about civil disobedience and criminality in this context. I consider in closing how liberal conceptualizations of peaceful protest have served to delegitimize and criminalize activism until today. (shrink)

The period known as the “War on Terror” has prompted a revival of interest in the idea of moral dilemmas and the problem of “dirty hands” in public life. Some contend that a policy of targeted killing of terrorist actors is (under specified but not uncommon circumstances) an instance of a dirty-handed moral dilemma – morally required yet morally forbidden, the least evil choice available in the circumstances, but one that nevertheless leaves an indelible moral stain on the character of (...) the person who makes the choice. In this chapter we argue that, while dirty hands situations do exist as a persistent problem of political life, it is generally a mistake to classify policies of target killing (such as the current US policy) as examples of dirty hands. Instead, we maintain, such policies, if justified at all, must ordinarily be justified under the more exacting standards of just war theory and its provisions for justified killing – in particular the requirement that (with limited and defined exceptions) non-combatants be immune from intentional violence. Understanding this distinction both clarifies the significance of dirty hands as a moral phenomenon and also forestalls a set of predictable and all-too-easy appropriations of the concept to domains it was never intended to address. (shrink)

An examination of the applicability of conventional and revisionist just war principles to the global war on terror.

Reading Anthony Gregory's massive tome on the development of habeas corpus from fourteenth century England through its incorporation into Common Law, and then into Article One of the US Constitution and finally, down to the Patriot Act and other more recent modifications of the “great writ,” I am reminded of something that I heard as a graduate student many decades ago, when I asked a professor about reading a particularly demanding book. I was urged to plunge into that text, providing (...) I could spare a few months. Unlike the book I asked about then, which was a total waste of time (as I soon discovered), Gregory's study is a monument to meticulous research. (shrink)

While there is a budding literature on media ethics in the light of characteristic sub-Saharan moral values, there is virtually nothing on wartime reporting more specifically. Furthermore, the literature insofar as it has a bearing on wartime reporting suggests that embedded journalism and patriotic journalism are ethically justified during war. In this essay, I sketch a prima facie attractive African moral theory, grounded on a certain interpretation of the value of communal relationship, and bring out what it entails for the (...) ways journalists should report on war. My aims are the normative ones of showing how this Afro-communal ethic can provide a unitary foundation for a wide array of plausible conclusions about reporting on war, and, in particular, can avoid objectionable implications such as support for embedded and patriotic journalism. (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering a (...) wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

In my paper, I develop a phenomenological and pragmatist reflection on the fragility of liberal democracy’s moral foundations in times of war. Following Judith Shklar’s conception of the “liberalism of fear”, the legitimacy of the liberal-democratic order is seen as grounded in experiences of suffering caused by political violence. It is also assumed that the liberalism of fear delivers an adequate conception of the normative foundations of the European project. With the help of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (...) and Michel Henry, the paper ants to philosophically deepen the liberalism of fear by outlining a theory of “pathic evidence” as a normative foundation and the concept of a common “flesh of the political” as a shared moral sensitivity that sets boundaries to political conflict as well as the political imaginary, excluding what I call the production of “monumental meaning”. It then examines the question which political conditions are needed for this evidence to become a shared, communal criteria of ethical thought, and considers inner and outer challenges to the transmission and reproduction of this evidence in time, drawing especially on John Dewey’s ideas of democratic communication and social intelligence. In the current war, the following problem appears as crucial for the “soul” of European democracies which are confronted with the need to respond to Russia’s attack: How can a political morality grounded in pathic evidence be sustained, once it is challenged by an aggressor who, out of cultural and political reasons, shows a higher level of toleration towards violence? Besides aggression from an external foe, there are also temporal dynamics that further the loss of the inhibiting force of pathic evidence from the inside. As it shall be argued, boredom can be such a factor. The paper concludes by drawing conclusions for the current war in Ukraine. (shrink)

The just war-criterion of legitimate authority – as it is traditionally framed – restricts the right to wage war to state actors. However, agents engaged in violent conflicts are often sub-state or non-state actors. Former liberation movements and their leaders have in the past become internationally recognized as legitimate political forces and legitimate leaders. But what makes it appropriate to consider particular violent non-state actors to legitimate violent agents and others not? This article will examine four criteria, including ‘popular support (...) and representation of a people’; ‘monopoly of violence and effective control over a people’; ‘compliance with international legal and just war standards’; and ‘predisposition to strive for a lasting peace’. It will be shown that out of these four criteria only the first can be defended. Furthermore, it will be illustrated that non-state violent agents may perfectly well satisfy this criterion. In contrast, state actors may clearly fail in this regard. But, it will also become obvious that in exceptional circumstances violent agents do not require explicit approval from the people on whose behalf they act. Finally, the article will argue that – in principle – individuals should be entitled to employ violence for political objectives. (shrink)

Revista Intelligence Info este o publicație trimestrială din domeniile intelligence, geopolitică și securitate, și domenii conexe de studiu și practică. -/- Cuprins: -/- EDITORIALE / EDITORIALS -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Considerații privind necesitatea educării și formării resursei umane pentru intelligence–ul național Considerations regarding the need to educate and train human resources for national intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Epistemologia activității de intelligence Epistemology of intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Rolul serviciilor de informații în război The role of the intelligence agencies in a war Nicolae SFETCU (...) Evoluția inteligenței artificiale în domeniul securității naționale The evolution of artificial intelligence in the field of national security -/- INTELLIGENCE / INTELLIGENCE -/- Ovidiu BOUREANU O scurtă istorie a spionajului: spionajul modern de la Războiul Rece la Războiul împotriva terorii A Brief History of the Spy: Modern Spying from the Cold War to the War on Terror Ioana PĂIUȘ, Tiberiu TĂNASE Securitate și informații într-o lume în schimbare Security and intelligence in a changing world Nicolae SFETCU Activitatea de intelligence - Ciclul intelligence Intelligence Activity – Intelligence Cycle Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul asupra Intelligence –ului Control over Intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Informația și nevoia de gestionare a resurselor informaționale Information and the need to manage information resources Tiberiu TĂNASE Controlul parlamentar al serviciilor de informații Parliamentary control of intelligence services Tiberiu TĂNASE Mecanisme de control democratic al activității serviciilor de informații Mechanisms of democratic control of the activity of intelligence agencies Nicolae SFETCU Analiza informațiilor Intelligence Analysis Bogdan-George RĂDULESCU Cum ar trebui să fie utilizată analiza intelligence pentru a contracara războiul cognitiv? How should intelligence analysis be utilized to counter cognitive warfare? -/- ISTORIE / HISTORY -/- Tiberiu TĂNASE Biroul de Informații al Secției Militare din Transilvania și rolul său în campania pentru apărarea României Mari The Intelligence Office of the Transylvanian Military Section and its role in the campaign for the defense of Greater Romania Stan PETRESCU Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard și românii Pacepa, Kuklinski, Pollard and the Romanians Tiberiu TĂNASE Contracararea de către SSI a activităților informative și acțiunilor Serviciilor Germane și Sovietice de Informații implicate în evenimentele din 21 - 23 ianuarie 1941 Countering by the SSI of the informational activities and actions of the German and Soviet Intelligence Services involved in the events of January 21-23, 1941 Tiberiu TĂNASE Alexandru Ioan Cuza, fondatorul Intelligence-lui statului modern românesc Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Founder of the Intelligence of the Modern Romanian State Tiberiu TĂNASE, Bogdan MUSCALU Puncte de vedere privind tradițiile romane în istoria intelligence-lui Viewpoints on Roman traditions in history intelligence Tiberiu TĂNASE Istoria Serviciului Român de Informații – serviciu de intelligence competitiv, și strategiile de intelligence History of the Romanian Intelligence Service – competitive intelligence service, and intelligence strategies Rodica LISEANU Reformele serviciilor secrete de la Mihail Moruzov la Eugen Cristescu, între inovație și decadență Secret service reforms from Mihail Moruzov to Eugen Cristescu Rodica LISEANU Take Ionescu – O biografie vectorială în istoria partidelor politice și în semantica diplomației Take Ionescu - A Vectorial Biography in the History of Political Parties and the Semantics of Diplomacy Remus MACOVEI Trădători și trădători Traitors and traitors -/- GEOPOLITICA / GEOPOLITICS -/- Antoaneta AVRAM Pandemia de COVID-19 și consecințele ei în peisajul anului 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences in the landscape of 2022 Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Ioan MANCI Analiza conflictului ruso-cecen din perspectivă militară Analysis of the Russian-Chechen conflict from a military perspective Lisa-Maria ACHIMESCU Apusul universalismului european The decline of European universalism Emilian M. DOBRESCU Hegemonia chineză în producția de pământuri rare Chinese Hegemony in the Production of Rare Earths Ionuț-Daniel GORGOVAN ”Descurajarea integrată”. Analiză asupra strategiei SUA în Pacific "Integrated deterrence". Analysis of US Pacific Strategy Tiberiu TĂNASE, Violeta Ioana NAGÂȚ Conflictul arabo-israelian. Percepții privind cauzele și natura conflictului. Repere istorice și actualitate The Arab-Israeli conflict. Perceptions of the causes and nature of conflict. Historical landmarks and current affairs -/- SECURITATE / SECURITY -/- Tănase TIBERIU Minighid de pregătire și protecție contrainformativă Counterintelligence preparation and protection mini-guide Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ ISIS - Jocul morții - Martiri, asasinate și fascinație The Killing Game - Martyrdom, Murder and the Lure of ISIS Traian OSTAHIE Abordări generale ale conceptului de cultură de securitate For a 21st century realism Dalia Elena SILAGHI Terorismul cibernetic: o formă contemporană de terorism Cyber Terrorism: A Contemporary Form of Terrorism Paul Alexandru HELER Conflictul asimetric și consecințele sale în securitatea Asiei Asymmetric Conflict and Its Consequences in Asian Security Daria-Maria TÂRNĂVEAN Confruntarea informațională și repercusiunile sale asupra mediului actual de securitate The Information Confrontation and its Repercussions on the Current Security Environment Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ Analiza atacurilor cibernetice, precum APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) și ransomware Analysis of cyber attacks such as APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) and ransomware Daniela Georgiana GOLEA, Oana Ștefania COȘA Nevoia de adaptare managerială a noilor probleme de securitate modernă The need for managerial adaptation to new modern security issues Darius-Antoniu FERENȚ, Corneliu PREJA Implicarea NATO în domeniul apărării cibernetice NATO's involvement in cyber defence Alexandru CRISTIAN Paradigme în mediul internațional de securitate Paradigms in the international security environment Alexandru CRISTIAN Schimbarea paradigmelor în mediul internațional de securitate Changing paradigms in the international security environment Dan D. FARCAȘ Adevăr și dezinformare în fenomenul OZN Truth and disinformation in the UFO phenomenon Alexandru CRISTIAN Un nou mediu de securitate A new security environment -/- ȘTIINȚA INFORMAȚIEI / INFORMATION SCIENCE -/- Oana Ștefania COȘA Rolul structurilor de intelligence medical în atingerea obiectivul de consolidare a sistemului de sănătate The role of medical intelligence structures in achieving the objective of strengthening the health system Nicolae SFETCU Preocupări legislative în mineritul datelor Legislative concerns in data mining Nicolae SFETCU Utilizarea analiticii rețelelor sociale în intelligence Using social network analytics in intelligence Nicolae SFETCU Ingineria cunoașterii în colectarea informațiilor Knowledge Engineering in Intelligence Gathering -/- ISSN 2971 – 9089 ISSN-L 2821 – 8159, DOI: 10.58679/II26972. (shrink)