We all recall the famous photo in 1938 of the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain stepping off his plane holding up an agreement with Adolf Hitler that averted a possible conflict with Germany. He gave away the Sudetenland and the political independence of Czechoslovakia to do so. Chamberlain proudly declared “peace in our time.” [...]
Credo quia absurdum. “I believe because it is absurd.” -Tertullian Macrocosm and Microcosm One thing is certain. If Donald J. Trump should decide to run again, various condemnations and justifications would instantly spring forth from absolutely every segment of the political spectrum. The deepest and truest explanations, however, would not be discoverable in day-to-day politics. [...]
As we come closer to the opening of the Winter Olympiad in Beijing, China, a peoples in Western China is being destroyed “in whole or in part.” The world will assemble in the name of sport ignoring what is happening a few hundred miles away. It is a state-sponsored genocide by the very nation that [...]
“Where there is no Common Power, there is no Law….” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter XIII The “State of Nature” as “State of War” From its modern beginnings in the seventeenth century – more precisely, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 – international law has presumed firm distinctions between “national interest” and “world interest.” Rather [...]
Introduction: “Climate Change Crisis as a Child Crisis” On October 11, the UN Child Rights Committee (the Committee) ruled on a historic communications procedure brought forward by 16 children (plaintiffs) against Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey for failing to prevent and mitigate the consequences of climate change (Nos. 104-108/2019). Although the State parties have [...]
Twenty years ago this week, pursuant to a UN Security Council resolution, the United Nations (UN) entered into a bi-lateral treaty with the Republic of Sierra Leone, to create the world’s first hybrid international war crimes tribunal, the Special Court for Sierra Leone. A delegation travelled to the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown, to hold [...]
Interacting with the dead is no longer science fiction. Digital technologies have evolved to the extent that they can be—and are being used—to emulate the dead. During the last five years, media reports recount efforts of people who have tried and developed, with different degrees of success, chatbots based on a deceased person’s digital data: [...]
Starting from August 5th, the Taliban marched across Afghanistan in only ten days, seizing control of villages and cities across the country. They eventually took over the entire country on August 15th. After conquering the presidential palace, the historical seat of Afghan power, Taliban officials declared the establishment of an Islamic Emirate, vowing to re-configure the [...]
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” – John F. Kennedy Fukuyama’s “The End of History” paper claimed that the western liberal democracy is the final form of the human-governance evolution. His argument relied on the Democratic Peace Theory, originating from the early 1700s, which states that most democratic [...]
2021 is ending sadly for Americans who believe in the rule of law, the supremacy of constitutional rights and/or the institutional authority and reputation of the US Supreme Court. On September 1 and again on December 10, five Supreme Court Justices essentially hoisted the white flag of surrender when presented with different challenges to S.B. [...]
