There is not much that can be said anymore in the wake of the Moslem terrorist attack in Manchester, England. This website has discussed at some length both the roots of Islamic terrorism and the reactions to it. Aside from the physical location of the atrocity, every single syllable of the Westminster Bridge Is Falling Down post applies fully to this one, too. A couple of further points can be made though.
The first concerns the, um, leader of what passes for the main opposition party in Britain. The avowed Communist Jeremy Corbyn has proposed that Moslem terrorism owes at least in part to the West's "foreign policy," in particular the various wars and alliances such as the quagmires of Afghanistan and Iraq, the support for Israel, the tolerance of the likes of Egypt's Al-Sisi, and so forth. Now, Corbyn himself can be easily dismissed as, to put it charitably, a total fruitcake: He said not that long ago that labeling the Islamic State troglodytes as terrorists was a subjective value judgment, hence undesirable. Yet, his contention about the West's putative share in the responsibility for terrorism is not an altogether novel argument. That canard and variations on the theme have been doing the rounds for years. "Poverty" causes terrorism. "Discrimination" causes terrorism. Even "climate change" causes terrorism. Yes. Seriously. Deadly seriously. Naturally, such assertions are readily recognized as risible tripe by the sensible majority but what is interesting is how mired in racism (for want of a better word) they are. They are rooted in the premise that Moslems are beasts who act on animalistic reflexive instinct. They see something on the news they dislike and their reaction is "I'll blow up a pop concert full of teenage girls." They are thus, redolent of the view of the Mandatory mindset of the League of Nations, essentially children, devoid of free agency and mental capacity to be either able to act rationally or be held responsible for those actions. They need the Leftist "white saviors" as surrogates for their personhood, in the way a group of schoolkids on a field trip are chaperoned and protected from strangers by their teachers.
That view is also supremely offensive to the billions of people, past and present, who endured untold privations, pestilence, oppression, injustice, and other types of suffering, but who forbore from channeling their misery in savagely destructive ways. The fine people of Congo were horrifically brutalized by the Belgians. The peoples of Latin America were decimated by the conquistadors. The folks in West Africa and India suffered unspeakably, for centuries, at the hands of the British colonists. The less said about Viet Nam (first the excesses of the French, then America and Agent Orange), the better. Yet, not a single one of those people ever shot up a theater in Brussels, suicide bombed a restaurant in London, took an elementary school hostage and executed hundreds of the kids in Madrid, or blew up an airliner over New York. What a collective indictment of Moslems, then, that they are considered to be incapable of expressing anything but the basest, caveman behavior... What an even more severe indictment of the Left, which forever virtue-signals about how anti-"racist" it is and hectors those it deems not to be...
The second point relates to the eye-rollingly predictable cheap platitudes expressed by the West's "leaders": the "unity," "standing together," "no Islamophobia," "nothing to do with Islam," and the other well-rehearsed banal cliches. It is becoming plain as day that such claims made by the elites (the governments, media, academia, professional activists, &c.) and the observable reality are wider apart than ever before. Indeed, the chasm between the two is so prodigious that there are few if any points of reference common anymore to the elites versus the general public. The proverbial ivory towers in which dwell the elites are easily as removed from the quotidian realities experienced by us peasants as they were in Louis XVI's France before the Revolution broke out. This constatation does not merely make for a neat rhetorical tableau; it entails practical repercussions also. In a democracy, the people are governed by consent, which is in turn engendered by a respect for and belief in the system. When there occurs an irreconcilable disconnect between the government and the governed, two scenarios can come to pass. Either the system collapses in part or in whole (as has happened in the West's history quite a few times in the wake of various scandals, such as Watergate) or the government transitions into a ruling class that maintains its position through force, intimidation, and repression. The emergence of "managerial politics" and phenomena such as asiktskorridor (on both of which more in a future installment) have been a part of that transition for a while now, as has what can only be termed as persecution of law-abiding people by an ideologically-driven police, but their tactics are reaching an unprecedented crescendo. The British prime minister put military troops on the streets--unthinkable in a democracy as well as utterly pointless--, and has openly and most unapologetically presented plans for a "new" Internet, monitored and censored by the--benevolent, of course!--government. Indeed, she has termed the Internet the "new battlefield" in the fight against "online extremism." One would have to be supremely naive to believe that such schemes are designed with solely Moslem terrorists in mind. After all, this is the same woman who less than four months ago designated the readers of Breitbart News as "extremists" to be targeted in a $75million campaign against online "hate speech."
It (almost) makes one hope that Corbyn dufus wins in the forthcoming British elections...
© 2017 Michael L.S.
The University of Manchester annually organizes a postgraduate conference in law. (This year's was held at the end of October at the Old Trafford.) It is an enjoyable all-day event, where selected doctoral students present their ongoing research in a supportive, semi-formal environment, devoid of the pressures of more rigid "peer-reviewed" conferences. The "rules" are more relaxed, in that e.g. a presenter speaks for a full half hour whereupon there follows a fairy generous Q&A part. As there were quite a few presenters, the session is divided into parallel panels, and the attendees chose to patronize the one in the morning and the one in the afternoon they envision to be of the most interest or otherwise stimulating.
Most of the ones I saw were highly thought-provoking and certainly worthy foci for academic inquiry. There was one exploring "domestic violence" experienced by underage women in abusive relationships. Another discussed the relevance of the current narcotics legislation--particularly the classification of substances--vis-a-vis the so-called "legal highs." Yet another explored the utility of the concept of "money-laundering," both legally and societally. (The latter evinced an interesting, if somewhat unconvincing, point that small-time money-launderers (e.g. street-level drug-pushers) sometimes proceed to invest their laundered funds into legitimate businesses. Entrepreneurs'R'Us!) One presentation though caught my undivided attention, and for all the wrong reasons.
A young man assayed to "reframe" the wanton, gluttonous riots that beset parts of Great Britain back in 2011. In his view, apart from practically a given that the initial riots were justified due to the police killing an unarmed man, both those and the subsequent mushrooming riots were pretty much legitimate manifestations of indignation by--you can easily guess the part that follows--"victims" of "marginalization" and "disenfranchisement" of the, naturally, lower (lowest?) communal strata.
How did he figure that out? Well, he interviewed those who had gotten arrested in the aftermath of the riots, and discovered that the preponderance of them had long had alcohol, drugs, domestic, etc. problems. In a most unusual turn of events, they also happened to be "poor" and jobless. Not only were they "victims" who were understandably (if not legitimately, at least not wholly legitimately) expressing their frustrations with the inequity and iniquity that is modern Great Britain, but the riots were not "mindless," as routinely portrayed in the media, nor were the rioters merely brutal thugs. Indeed, an anecdote was proffered about how one scumbag--sorry, "victim" of "oppression" by the "system"--was about to throw a brick through the window front of a charity shop, when another "victim" thwarted him in that mission on the basis that their beef was with such faceless corporate pigs as the banks and big businesses. Because, you see, vandalizing a Barclays or a Tesco is fine; a mom-and-pop store is apparently not. (No explication as to the grounds for an objective evaluation of such conscience-based, hence totally normative, judgments was adduced.)
Rather prosaically and anticlimactically by this stage, quite a few choice words were reserved for the police and the government. The latter (ab)used the ensuing prosecutions as a show of force, whereas the former engaged in unpalatable breaches of privacy and the hallowed "human rights" of the participants. How exactly did the police do that? Firstly, it plastered the faces of the suspects all over posters and billboards, including on vans driving around the city. That, ladies and gentlemen, the presenter in short shrift repudiated as a revolting invasion of the suspects' privacy. He then explained how the police was able to identify those it went on to apprehend by reason of their having had previous dealings with the police (read: they were "known" to the police). Thus, the narrative goes, the police perpetuated the vicious cycle of "victimhood" of those who were (and are) already among the most "vulnerable." Besides, does it not stand to reason that those who had already been chewed up and spat out by The System(TM) would be only too alacritous to rage against it, given an opportunity!?! All that was rounded off with some statistics about the conviction, incarceration, and remission (reoffending) rates, the corollary of which was the "prison does not work."
That, folks, is an example of doctoral-level thinking. One is tempted to weep uncontrollably in sheer despair.
If you could detect a soupcon of sarcasm and an overall casual tone in the foregoing, I congratulate you on your perspicacity. True: I am finding it difficult to write about this with the detached severity reserved for academic discourse. The reason is simple: With due respect to the gentleman in question, the above is dilettante hokum, in content and reasoning, more apposite to be found in a two-bit samizdat flier by a college Marxist appreciation club than the dissertation by a law doctoral candidate at a global-top-50 university.
The entire presentation was an orgy of the most extreme left-wing dogma, lacking even cursory mention of counterpoints and nuance, let alone a thorough treatment and critical analysis of the same. The "novelty" of the whole schtick was supposed to be embodied in the fact that it sought to depart from the established tableau of the rioters as criminals and of the riots as brainless, meaningless violence. It seems that--just as is the case in journalism--aspiring (and not just those!) academics make their names either by producing high-quality work or by being outrageous.
A county court judge who was in the audience ably rebuked the presenter for his assertion that "prison does not work." She enjoined him about the use of prison not merely as a locus of rehabilitation (by extension, wherein appropriate treatment is rendered to ensure there is no remission to a life of crime) but also as one of punishment. In that regard, prison indeed does work: The miscreants are removed from the society, protecting the latter from the former's continued pernicious malfeasance.
Then there is the matter of the candidate's very sketchy methodology. Why did he not assay to interview those who rioted but were not arrested? Could their motivation have been not pushback against putative "victimization" but something more trivial, yea, possibly wanton violence? Come to think of it, what is the ratio of arrested vs. not-arrested rioters: How representative is the presenter's study group of Manchester's rioters as a whole?
But the presentation evidenced a much more insidious problem, one increasingly visible in academia. It used to be the problem that students grew out of in the early stages of their undergraduate studies. Now, apparently it is observable among graduate students and even among seasoned academics, and it is this: prejudice... - or, if more detailed an explanation be necessary: espousing and exhibiting propaganda and rhetoric in lieu of objective, impassive, neutral research and analysis.
It was readily apparent that the presenter had formulated his conclusions before he had even conceived of his research, let alone embarked on it. Indeed, his dissertation is predicated on his personal dogma, not on the findings pursuant to extensive, comprehensive, analytical study. Epistemological arguments about the plausibility or otherwise of truly objective research aside, striving to illuminate a research question by prejudging it and then weaving the argument retrospectively to fit the predetermined denouement is surely the very antithesis of academic inquiry.
Back when I was a lecturer in rhetoric and research, I always endeavored to impress upon my (mostly freshmen and sophomore) students the indispensability of approaching a research area and the subsequent processes with an open mind. Sometimes a researcher knows a lot about the researched field, sometimes less, sometimes nothing. Sometimes they think they know a lot. Whatever the case, the scientific method is clear: One approaches the research as if one truly knows nothing, at least in terms of the possible outcomes. The mindset ought to be: I do not know anything about how this will turn out, I do not know what I will find; I will therefore search wide and deep for the answers, wherever the search may lead me.
You do not include your opinions, you do not choose which evidence you like, you do not discard facts you dislike. You are not down in the thick of it, participating in it or influencing it. You are high above the fray, espying the goings-on you witness, describing them, and attempting to find as many possible explanations for what you see (i.e. you hypothesize). You can use primary sources and your own experiments and/or secondary sources; but you keep digging in all directions, you keep asking questions, you keep wondering. You then set about trying rigorously to at once prove and disprove your hypotheses, until one remains standing: That becomes a theory (in the academic, scientific sense), i.e. your conclusion. Sometimes the conclusion conforms to your own intuitions and views; at other times it might not. But the conclusions must at all costs be arrived at independently from your intuitions, opinions, prejudices, experiences, and other views, conscious or unconscious.
Basing academic work on opinion is an insult to generations of academics. One does not require advanced education to put opinion on paper; rudimentary literacy skills are sufficient for such an exercise. The whole point of graduate studies is to detach every facet of oneself from one's work. Failing that, one does not end up with a thesis or dissertation worth its name, but with something not unlike an op-ed in Cosmo.
© 2014 Michael L.S.
Last month I attended a Ph.D. "master class" in which eight or so doctoral candidates presented their work-in-progress, preliminary findings, context of their research, etc. One presentation in particular caught my attention.
A young lady is examining compliance with international humanitarian law (the Geneva Conventions et alia). Her hypothesis is that the laws in question are often(?) not followed on the battlefield because military personnel receive inadequate training in this regard; in particular, the imperative of adherence to these provisions is not impressed upon them with sufficient urgency and sobriety. If only--she contends--soldiers were instructed more formidably in how critical it is to comply with the norms of international humanitarian law, the likelihood of instances of abuse such as the Abu 3'rayb prisoner mistreatment scandal or the more recent contretemps involving Sgt. Alexander Blackman would have been minimized if not altogether averted.
As I was absorbing her polemic, it struck me again how alarmingly insular and detached from the real world academia is becoming. College students and academics have been castigated for being "out of touch" on many issues. An apposite example is the now decades-in-the-making promotion of a happy-go-lucky mode of education for children that accentuates their right to personhood, individuality, having fun, and so forth, which critics claim (now supported by hard research) deprives them of the structure, discipline, knowledge, and skills that they require to grow into both competent workers and functional adults. Prison reform, human rights, civil liberties, sexual equality, and immigration are some other matters that lend themselves to such criticism, too.
The biggest difficulty with the issue in the docket is that it is being theorized on by someone who has no first- or even second-hand experience of the battlefield. It is not only unrealistic, but also egregious and insulting, for an adolescent ensconced in an armchair in Manchester to be prescribing to grown men and women situated in the midst of war how they ought to behave.
Imagine, if you will, the reality of the theater of war: Mines and R.P.G.s are exploding left and right, dozens of bullets are making the cracking sound inches away from your ears, you have witnessed people who an hour ago were laughing and planning Christmas with their families blown to smithereens a few feet in front of you, your friends' guts are spilling out of their bodies or their limbs are gone...
There is no Undo button to press anywhere.
There is no Pause button.
There is no Quit button.
Somehow you make it out alive and later on you come across a wounded enemy combatant who mere minutes previously had been launching grenades at you and spraying you with bullets. Can anyone seriously argue that in such a situation you can be reasonably expected to engage in an objective, dispassionate, detached introspection of the Geneva Conventions!?! "Ludicrous" does not begin to describe it!
I am not even remotely impugning the importance of both the existence and enforcement of robust international rules governing engagement in armed conflicts. Wanton destruction, revenge, brutalization of civilians or even coldblooded abuse of enemy combatants are to be unreservedly condemned, outlawed, and censured. However, there has to be a dose of hard realism present when presuming to prescribe the behavior of individuals placed under unimaginable levels of personal, existential stress. P.T.S.D. is a recognized condition, which affects the sufferers profoundly; this has to be accounted for in any discourse seeking to regulate the conduct of those likely to be severely afflicted by it.
After all, many of those insisting that soldiers should abide by the international humanitarian law even in the most stressful circumstances are among the first to characterize many types of criminals and societal transgressors as "victims" who should first and foremost be helped address their multifarious problems, and be punished only as an afterthought and certainly with leniency. Can they not extend the same kind of consideration to those who underwent experiences the "disenfranchised" and "marginalized" rioters of 2011 or violent robbers afflicted by assorted "substance addictions" cannot even fathom?
© 2014 Michael L.S.
October 15 John Dugard delivered a lecture at the University of Manchester. It was organized by the University's International Law Center as part of its resuscitated Melland Schill series. The lecture's topic was statehood. In particular, Dugard identified the principal obstacles faced by aspiring states in achieving recognition, furnished the basic history behind some of those obstacles, and proffered a possible solution. The main themes were the principle of territorial integrity, the prohibition of secession, and uti possidetis.
I enjoyed the content a lot. The brief historical précis concerning the decolonization of Latin America and the emergence of nation states on that continent was particularly intriguing being that it is history very seldom taught or (curiously) of only scant interest to those of us outside the region. The leitmotif pervading the talk was that political considerations almost invariably seem to subordinate international law--such as there is--in the context of state recognition. That was certainly a shrewd (and frustrating) observation.
However, I could not help but feel most uneasy about several facets of Dugard's talk.
- Dugard lamented how the Badinter Arbitration Commission--formed in the early 1990s to essentially demarcate the borders of the erstwhile constituent republics of Yugoslavia--decided to ignore the demographics of the region in the course of its proceedings. In particular, he reproached it for overlooking the existence and relevance of the autonomous regions of Kosovo, Republic of Srpska, and Krajina.
- The above betrays an ignorance (or, at least, ignoring) on Dugard's part of some basic historical facts.
- The Badinter Committee was in operation between 1991 and 1993.
- Kosovo is the only one of the three entities that has any historical precedent or merit. It was a constitutionally-recognized autonomous region within the former Yugoslavia. The other two never held any such or similar status.
- Krajina was proclaimed in 1991, around the time the Committee began its work. Its existence owed to the success of local Serb militias (with semi-official support of the regular Yugoslav military forces) in seizing control of sections of the territory formally part of Croatia qua a federal Yugoslav republic. No entity such as Krajina--de iure or de facto--had ever existed on the lands claimed by the instant entity.
- The Republic of Srpska was formally and legally established in 1995 (i.e. well after the Committee had wound down its operations) pursuant to the Dayton Accords, although it had existed in some form and within constantly shifting borders since 1992 on the same foundations as the aforementioned Krajina.
- The question arises: On what basis does Dugard ascribe legal or even political equivalence to Kosovo on the one hand, and Srpska and Krajina on the other?
- Is Dugard seriously arguing that an ability to conquer and continued control of a territory is or ought to be recognizable under international law; yea, that it should be rewarded with arguably the highest conceivable privilege in international law and relations: recognition of statehood?
- Does he seek to roll back one of the preeminent pillars of international law and relations, that took literally centuries to crystallize and solidify: the prohibition on the use of force? Is he advocating we revert to the brute ius victoriae?
- Lastly, is he not at the very least precipitate in chastising the Badinter Committee for ignoring "facts on the ground" when those facts entailed fluid and ambiguous developments contemporaneous with and even postdating the Committee's work?
- He--reasonably, in my view--denounced the possibility of carving up Africa along tribal lines, because doing so would have entailed the genesis of hundreds, if not thousands, of states. That would be impractical, unwieldy, and most probably beyond political pale.
- By arguing against using demographics in generating states in Africa, Dugard betrays breathtaking hypocrisy. Why should the national aspirations of Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have been acknowledged and accommodated by the Badinter Committee, but not those of countless African tribes?
- Are Africans' wishes qualitatively inferior to the European Serbs'? Is Africans' sense of identity, cohesion, and belonging somehow less worthy of recognition than the Serbs'?
- Ultimately, the many African tribes' national desires could have been acceded to far more easily and with better justification (at least historically speaking, and possibly even legally) when setting up brand new states a few decades ago than could maiming Croatia or Bosnia, both of which have a long and august history as states.
- Where is the consistency: Are or are not demographics (which are usually synonymous with ethnicity or nationality) to constitute a major, the main, or even the sole determinant in demarcation of states' borders and/or in state recognition?
- He advanced a solution whereby an international tribunal would be established, which would examine each petition for statehood in its own right, and produce a nonbinding declaration of the merits of each such case, presumably for the consideration of the Security Council and other international actors.
- This notion was verbalized by Dugard literally a half hour after he had narrated the story of Kosovo and the relevant advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the matter. In the event, he pointed out that the I.C.J. had issued an opinion of the case, which it described as sui generis, and which the Security Council promptly decided to ignore.
- The problem here is obvious. Dugard wants a tribunal; the I.C.J. is a tribunal (indeed, most would consider it the foremost, most authoritative and illustrious tribunal in the world). Dugard wants it to examine each case of prospective statehood on its own merits; that is precisely what the I.C.J. did with Kosovo. Dugard wants the new tribunal to issue nonbinding opinions; check: It is what the I.C.J. did in Kosovo, too.
- Apart, therefore, from the fact that we already have a tribunal that does exactly what Dugard proposes, the solution he advances does not address the core challenge: Whether it be the I.C.J. or Dugard's fabled new institution, what is to ensure that the Security Council does not ride a carriage and horses through its opinions just as transpired in the case of Kosovo?
- Furthermore, the antecedent problem aside, does the world seriously need yet another expensive talking shop? Would Dugard like to justify its establishment to the taxpayers who would foot the bill?
- He made repeated references to Palestinians and "Palestine" as well as the role of the United States in world affairs, which he casts in--to put it mildly--an unflattering light. Those remarks were in each instance laden with political connotations and messages.
- Dugard's rabid anti-Israeli paroxysms are well documented and need no revisiting*. Regardless of whether or to what extent he is justified in this regard, it is nothing short of outrageous that while mentioning "Palestine" at least a half dozen times, he did not throw even an innuendo the way of, say, the Taiwanese or the Tibetans. The Kurds got a single, rather perfunctory, mention. For someone who likes to fly the banner of equality and justice, Dugard propagates a world wherein some peoples are conspicuously more equal and important than others.
- Leaving aside thus what can only be deemed hypocrisy and favoritism, by making continual loaded political comments, Dugard undermines his own argument. If the problem of state recognition (the inequity, iniquity, inequality, inconsistency, illegality, etc.) owes to geostrategic and political deliberations of the powers that be, then what is the value of injecting his own political dogma into the argument? If there is too much politics and not enough law in the field of state recognition as it is, then should Dugard not be aiming to redress the imbalance instead of perpetuating it himself?
The foregoing certainly served to "put a damper" on the entire experience. One expects an international theorist and practitioner of Dugard's stature to demonstrate a higher degree of professionalism--particularly as far as academic neutrality and probity--than showcased in casu.
Nevertheless, he adverted to a thought-provoking and paradoxical issue, to wit: Being a state is the basic prerequisite for an ability to participate in the formation of international legal instruments and mechanisms. Yet, becoming a state is not at all determined by that selfsame international law, but by narrow, unpredictable, and often petty politics.
Law concerning state recognition exists, most notably the Montevideo Convention's four unambiguous, fairly easily ascertainable criteria. Yet, due to politics, entities that satisfy those criteria (including the Palestinians) have not been elevated to the hallowed club of the "international community" nor do they have much prospect of being admitted in the foreseeable future or beyond, whereas some who do not fulfill one or even more of the conditions have.
Should we just reconcile ourselves to the reality of Realpolitik and accept that law will always take a backseat in this regard, or is there a scenario whereby states can be persuaded to follow the objective letter of the law? That, of course, is not merely the dilemma informing the matter of statehood and recognition, but many other aspects of international law. Indeed, one could persuasively argue that there is no such thing as international law per se, but merely states' obligations in an international context, which states adhere to or not according to political dynamic.
* To illustrate: A day later, while commenting on a doctoral candidate's presentation on general ius in bello, out of literally thousands of blood-curdling examples of its violations, Dugard invoked the one single modern-day documented case of an Israeli Army's rabbi (and a retired one, at that) who called for an indiscriminate killing of Palestinians. Whatever his reasons, Dugard clearly has an extremely sharp ax to grind with Israel.
© 2014 Michael L.S.
