,PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 28th March: Freedom of speech (internet)

Dear friends,

This Sunday we are discussing: Freedom of speech (internet)

Sara proposed the topic and has sent us a link to an info-video in
Spanish on hatred speech on-line:
Video Presentación del Protocolo para combatir el discurso de odio
ilegal en línea. 18 de marzo 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7fKlWtbRDg

In my short essay I take a general view of the subject and the
implications of free speech on-line:
Freedom of speech (internet)
https://www.philomadrid.com/2021/03/freedom-of-speech-internet.html

In the meantime you can link to the current news and notices here:
https://www.philomadrid.com/2020/10/news-and-notices.html

-Alfonso has a new website and he gave us link to his latest book of
poems: Después

-Oscar's book on his reflections on COVID-19 is still available

-David J. Butler has published a new book "Absent Friends" regarding the
Cementerio Británico in Madrid

Finally if you have problems with Skype try launching it again if you
have the App or browser. Send me a message for the link.

Best and take care
Lawrence

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com

PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 28th March: Freedom of speech (internet)

Freedom of speech (internet)

 

Freedom of speech (internet)

 

Topic proposd by Sara

Essay by Lawrence

 

The importance of free speech is not when we have something to say and saying it. But rather when we are prevented from expressing our opinion.

 

Free speech is a fundamental right recognized by the United Nations under Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

 

It’s a pity that two of the five permanent members of the UN completely prevent freedom of opinion and the UK has most of the traditional media outlets under the control of the extreme right wing government.

 

Having said that, freedom of expression is just as important as free speech. This is because legal systems take this term to mean the right “..to seek, receive and impart information and ideas…” we do not only have a right to express our opinion but we also have the right to receive information and the right to share our opinions.

 

But how should we interpret the right to be informed? No doubt this does not mean that we should have access to state military secrets, or even industrial intellectual property, everyone recognizes that such secrets are not in the interest of anyone. However, freedom to access information does include how those in power exercise that power: i.e. accountability and transparency. And most especially we have a right to know about the abuse of the human rights of others.

 

What is more important for us is whether the right to be informed is also a duty to be informed? In everyday life the legal system is there to hold people to account for falsehoods, for example in sale of goods, defamation, verbal aggression, maybe in the form of breach of the peace, and the use of threatening behaviour. And if this wasn’t serious enough, in functioning democracies, incitement, hatred speech and racial abuse are subject to criminal investigation. Hence, in freedom of speech, the freedom part is (ought to be) guaranteed by the powers of the state, but the speech part is our responsibility.

 

Free speech and freedom of expression are not only threatened by those in power, but also by normal subtle manipulation of information. When we think of freedom of speech we usually think of criticising our government or someone criticising our favourite political party.

 

A more serious threat to freedom of information is in science which fully integrated on the internet both for doing science and support services. It would be safe to say that today communication in science is mainly done digitally and most of that information goes through the open internet.

 

Many if not most scientific papers are sold on a for profit basis, when in most cases these publications are the result of public money investments. This implies that access to information is limited because of financial costs even though some journals make important papers free or free after a period of time: the OpenAcess initiative is also balancing the situation.

 

Other aspects of this debate are the policies of journals not publishing negative results of papers or relying too heavily on the p=.05 value.  The data from research projects can be manipulated to reach a significant result through p-hacking. Luckily there very few people manipulate data but on a world wide scale this might be relevant. But if we have a right for information we should have the right to receive unbiased information.

 

But it is the implication of not publishing negative results that is most controversial. For example, if out of ten research projects two results are positive and published and eight were negative results and not published: what is the reality about the project? The offending part is that scientists work on a similar project would not know about the eight negative results. Does this breach the right to be informed and correctly informed? And is unrecorded information the same as not making information available?

 

In the context of our topic, the internet should not be different for our topic. Just because the internet is a new “media and regardless of frontiers” it does not mean we can suspend rights and obligations.

 

The internet, however, introduces some new factors. The most important is that practically everyone has access to the internet (e.g. social media) to share their opinions with a relevant number of people: relevant meaning more people that one can meet at the pub. But that opinion is there forever and for people to access at will: it also means that the authorities can access that information. And for practical purposes fake and false information put on social media is no different than malicious gossip.

 

The problem is that we are not really trained to express our opinions on the internet. It’s one thing expressing opinions with friends and another broadcasting to the rest of the world. Consider the “Trump debacle” on twitter: Trump was a good example of using the internet without a clue or disregard on how to use it. But should reckless use of the internet only be “punished” when people are prominent and famous?  

 

However, the internet does give us immediate access to information, for example it took me less than 60 seconds to find the actual wording for Article 19: about 40 seconds to remember there was such an article and 10 seconds to get the link to the UN*. The point is that it is now a pressing issue on whether we have a duty to be informed before posting on social media. The Trump debacle suggests that we do have such duty.

 

*Universal Declaration of Human Rights

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

 

Best Lawrence

 

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813

Email: philomadrid@gmail.com

http://www.philomadrid.com

PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 21st March: The misuse of the term Democracy

Dear Friends,

This Sunday we are discussing: The misuse of the term Democracy.

The topic was proposed by Ignacio and in my essay I try address the
background of democracy before we can discuss whether the term is abused.

The misuse of the term Democracy. Essay by Lawrence
https://www.philomadrid.com/2021/03/the-misuse-of-term-democracy.html

In the meantime you can link to the current news and notices here:
https://www.philomadrid.com/2020/10/news-and-notices.html

-Alfonso has a new website and he gave us link to his latest book of
poems: Después

-Oscar's book on his reflections on COVID-19 is still available

-David J. Butler has published a new book "Absent Friends" regarding the
Cementerio Británico in Madrid

Finally if you have problems with Skype try launching it again if you
have the App or browser. Send me a message for the link.

Best and take care
Lawrence

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com

PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 21st March: The misuse of the term
Democracy

The misuse of the term Democracy

 

The misuse of the term Democracy. 

 

Topic by Ignacio

Essay by Lawrence

 

In my opinion there is a mistaken belief today within political society that the best electoral system is proportional representation. The argument is that PR represents better the opinions of political groups, such as political parties, and even individuals. Thus parliament is made up, in theory, by representatives of most of the political opinions in the country.

 

The first past the post system (FPTP), in theory, is designed to elect individuals who will represent the constituency. The mechanics are very simple; usually any individual can run for parliament and the person with the most votes is elected to parliament. This system usually elects strong single party majorities which maybe stable, at least more stable than multi-party coalitions, but they can also become blind to the needs of the country.

 

And this is more or less the sum total of what people usually mean by democracy: the electoral system that is the act of electing members of parliament. This is unfortunate since the electoral system is the most troublesome part of the whole democratic system.

 

The first past the post system is not designed to elect political parties. But in today’s world parties and groups represent the majority of the political opinions in a country: individual causes are few and far between. Indeed FPTP is an ideal system for dictators to manipulate and get the desired result to keep them in power. A dictator can eliminate the opposition and still go through the motions of holding elections and winning them.

 

The PR electoral system is just a civilized way of creating instability and maybe chaos in the political environment of a country. By virtue that PR allocates seats in parliament to represent most political opinions which means that there is hardly ever a party with an absolute majority to form a government and implement their manifesto. Thus the more disparate the beliefs in parliament the higher the chances there will be disagreements and short term governments. This is unfortunate since PR opens the door to power for extreme opinions which are not necessary for the good of the country.

 

But if we are to understand the term democracy as being misused we need to define what we mean by democracy. The issue is that for political philosophers there is more to democracy than just casting a vote and a parliament. Of course, this is not to say that the election process is not a legitimate concern for philosophers. Indeed the electoral process is a key opportunity for corruption and manipulation and therefore at the heart of political morality.

 

To keep the text short, I will only highlight the main points of what we usually mean by democracy. A functioning democracy should start with the division of powers: administration (government), legislature (parliament), and the Judiciary. The important aspect of the division of powers is that these institutions are independent of each other. Thus the practice of politically appointing judges is already, in my opinion, an infringement of the separation of powers.

 

The idea behind the separation of powers is to protect the citizens from abuse of power by the government. Theoretically parliament and the fourth estate (the press) are tasked with holding to account the actions and activities of those who exercise power. Transparency is the means of holding those in power to account but the challenge is to balance between accountability and protection of the state. Today the most vociferous voices at holding the government to account, in the traditional manner of the press, are found on social media on the internet. The traditional media tend to support parties with very few independent media.  

 

In effect there are four institutions whose function is to protect democracy, the state and the people: government, parliament, the judiciary and the press. Although it is reasonable to accept that no human organisation is perfect this structure of democracy is very fragile and unstable. Indeed I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a country with pure 100% honest separation of power instituions.

 

My final observation is that money is the means to create wealth in a democracy but it is also the toxic poison to corrupt the guardians of democracy. The sole function of money is to buy things and it takes a lot of will power for those in power not to succumb temptation. But in general the health of the economy reflects the stability of the country and this, in my opinion, affects the opinion of people maybe even fragmenting parties into extremes.

 

So the question is whether there are real democracies? Maybe we use the term democracy not to refer to a set of political standards and objectives but as a hollow term without meaning in the same way I might say my unicorn has a fluffy tail. Therefore, is democracy a real political term or a term from a fictional narrative?

 

Best Lawrence

 

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813

Email: philomadrid@gmail.com

http://www.philomadrid.com

Solving geopolitical issues

Solving geopolitical issues

 

Topic by Sara: Can we solve geopolitical issues?

 

Essay by Lawrence

 

For our purpose we can bring together both geopolitical issues and international relationships since there are overlaps and common causes in our topic. Of course, it would be reasonable to suppose that geopolitical issues are based on geographical factors and international relations of political relationships. But we might also take the view that geopolitics is all about conflict and international relationships are about peaceful relationships.

 

For example, I would argue that geopolitical issues would include: the Indo-Pakistan dispute, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Burma and China conflict and so on. International relations would include alliance forming for example the military alliance between the USA and Europe (NATO), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the European Union. Maybe the word politics in geopolitics should give us a hint on the nature of our topic.

 

Although geography seems to be a sufficient condition in a geopolitical issue, it is the political factor that would create an issue or a dispute. Indeed some geopolitical issues might seem to be a geographical issue, but in reality it is a local political issue made bad by international relations. The Palestine-Israel disaster is one such geopolitical failure. The issue comes down to who promised whom and what was promised as a consequence of helping defeat Turkey during the First World War and the Balfour declarations. The Palestinians believed they were promised their land back and the Jews believed they would be given the land for helping out. The bottom line is that two peoples who lived together were abandoned by the then world powers leaving them antagonised against each other. The problems that the League of Nations created were exacerbated by the United Nations.

 

What today we might label geopolitical conflicts are, under the surface, a failure of international political conflicts. In the second half of the 20^th century most conflicts were proxy conflicts amongst the USA, Soviet Union, and China. Most important of which are the Palestine-Israel conflict, North and South Korea, Vietnam War (Civil war), the various civil wars in South America and Africa.

 

In most of these cases geography had nothing to do with the conflict, but more to do with ethnic and religious disagreements amongst peoples exploited by world powers. We can safely argue that in Africa many geopolitical problems stem from reckless division of lands by colonisers who did not account for tribal lands. Many political problems in Africa and the Middle East would be solved by simply redraw countries by tribal boundaries: but I doubt this will happen!

 

Two factors that cause geopolitical problems are the interference by powers that are not necessarily from the region or from issues based on local disputes that might encroach on the influence of world powers. What is clear is that world powers exploit local ethnic differences. But reality is not that simple: the Vietnam war was directly influenced by the geopolitics between the Soviet Union and China. China has a land border with Vietnam, but the same communist conflict at the time in Malaysia it did not involve an all out war with Britain, unlike the French and then the US. Malaysia also happens to be far away from both China and Russia; maybe that helps.

 

The concern of our topic is solving geopolitical issues and not just identifying the causes of geopolitical issues. The best way to solve geopolitical issues must be to avoid them. And if it doesn’t work, in my opinion, the next best thing to avoid issues is to form alliances with neighbours and maybe even powerful countries. Political alliances are quite effective although in some cases it is not a matter of choice but default. Anyway, political alliances also imply military alliances and consequently they involve trade deals.

 

Alliances do not necessary solve geopolitical issues but might rather prevent issues from escalating. Economic and cultural relationships might be better to strengthen ties for example the European Union. The EU was a necessity born out of the ashes from the Second World War, but today the EU is more of an economic alliance not so much to prevent conflict but to fight economic domination.

 

Money and personal wealth have always been intertwined with geopolitical issues, but this is nothing new. A by product of financial movements for trade within a region is corruption. Trade between China and Taiwan still takes place even though this is not publicised at all. China and Taiwan are also a good example of geopolitical conflict based on politics but equally dependent on each other for entrepreneurial activities. Cross boarder investments and business links are still necessary although today international trade is much easier than ever before.

 

After all is said and done, geopolitical issues always exclude the general population of a country. Some people of course do benefit from geopolitical issues and others lose out, but the general population is at the whim of what might best be described as 19^th century international relations. And by international relations we mean relations amongst governments, states, and diplomacy. The evidence of this 19^th century attitude to deal with geopolitics is the brexit experiment. Brexit is basically an abuse of human rights for the sake of interests of two super powers (USA and Russia) who want to dilute the influence of the EU 27 countries working together. But of course, despite being a bad political experiment to damage the EU, the EU was not bothered with the loss of the rights of 65million people directly and 400million people indirectly, although a good proportion of EU citizens live in the UK. In practice human rights are not an issue for geopolitics.

 

Best Lawrence

 

 

 

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813

Email: philomadrid@gmail.com

http://www.philomadrid.com

 

PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 14th March: Solving geopolitical issues

Dear Friends,

This Sunday we are discussing: Solving geopolitical issues

The topic was proposed by Sara as: Can we solve geopolitical issues? but
it is somewhat long for the subject line.

In my short essay I discuss the causes of geopolitical issues and some
obvious solutions.
Solving geopolitical issues – essay by Lawrence
https://www.philomadrid.com/2021/03/solving-geopolitical-issues.html

In the meantime you can link to the current news and notices here:
https://www.philomadrid.com/2020/10/news-and-notices.html

-Alfonso has a new website and he gave us link to his latest book of
poems: Después

-Oscar's book on his reflections on COVID-19 is still available

-David J. Butler has published a new book "Absent Friends" regarding the
Cementerio Británico in Madrid

Finally if you have problems with Skype try launching it again if you
have the App or browser. Send me a message for the link.

Best and take care
Lawrence

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com

PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 14th March: Solving geopolitical issues

PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 7th March: The risk of human extinction

Dear friends,

This Sunday we are discussing: The risk of human extinction.

The topic was proposed by James and in my essay I try to argue that
extinction is very unlikely: either due to natural causes or human made
causes. In effect extinction is the least of our problems.

"The risk of human extinction" essay by Lawrence
https://www.philomadrid.com/2021/03/the-risk-of-human-extinction.html

In the meantime you can link to the current news and notices here:
https://www.philomadrid.com/2020/10/news-and-notices.html

-Alfonso has a new website and he gave us link to his latest book of
poems: Después

-Oscar's book on his reflections on COVID-19 is still available

-David J. Butler has published a new book "Absent Friends" regarding the
Cementerio Británico in Madrid

Finally if you have problems with Skype try launching it again if you
have the App or browser. Send me a message for the link.

Best and take care
Lawrence



telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813
Email: philomadrid@gmail.com
http://www.philomadrid.com


PhiloMadrid on Skype 6:30pm Sunday 7th March: The risk of human extinction

The risk of human extinction

“The risk of human extinction” topic by James

 

Essay by Lawrence

 

John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, said in 1923, "In the long run we are all dead." And so far this hypothesis has not been falsified. But the problem is not the dying but how we get there and for our topic what matters is getting there all together.

 

There are many ways human kind can become extinct. There are natural disasters such as meteorite impacts, catastrophic collapse of the Earth’s mantle that will contribute or cause the extinction of life on Earth, or multi volcano eruption. Except today, maybe we are better informed about these doomsday events even though there isn’t much we can do about it.

 

The more concerning form of extinction is what is called omnicide when only humans become extinct due to human activities or causes. The most common cited causes of omnicide are nuclear explosions or accidents, climate change, biotechnology failure, and chemical and biological warfare. It seems that nuclear extinction is not that high after all we’ve had three massive nuclear accidents and the effects have been localised: the Three Mile Island accident in the US; Chernobyl in the Ukraine; Fukushima, Japan; and to this list we must add Windscale (Sellafield) in the UK. Wikipedia lists many more incidents throughout the world in their article “List of nuclear power accidents by country.”

 

Of course, whilst nuclear weapons are headline news, and nuclear accidents are dinner party topics, what is really dangerous are depleted uranium ammunition that leave long term radioactive scrap for many years after the conflict. These radioactive remains are as dangerous to the local population as land mines. The reason why these radioactive weapons are not on the international agenda is because they first and foremost generate a nice profit for the arms industries and secondly they do actually work as intended.

 

I am quite sceptical that nuclear energy will cause the demise and extinction of humanity. Of course, nuclear energy does create problems and people do die at the local level from exposure to radiation, but it seems that nuclear “accidents” are due to human errors or negligence. If run properly and well designed nuclear structures and facilities need not be unsafe: whether nuclear energy is desirable is another matter.

 

A better contender for a human made disaster with the propensity of causing human extinction is climate change: that is the greenhouse effect, climate change, sustainability and local ecology. Of course, the dinosaurs eventually did die, or so we are told, because of the greenhouse effect. Climate change, to use a general term, can be both a natural disaster and a human made disaster. Multi volcano eruptions are a reality but they are not human made disasters.

 

In and of itself, the greenhouse effect is a desirable effect otherwise the Earth would be no better that an ice cube or one of Jupiter’s moons. The problem is when there is more heat than the planet can handle. What we know today is that there is a dangerous amount of greenhouse effect that is human made: this is not in doubt.

 

The problem with climate change is whether “climate change” is the best term to describe the disaster in the making. The way we name things in English is more suggestive of the context than a description of the thing in question. Looking at the meaning of climate change the key issue is not that there are changes in the climate: this has been happening since day one. But the key semantic factor of the term “climate change” is the use of fossil fuels that increase the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The question is how many people on Earth understand “climate change” to mean fossil fuels and carbon dioxide?

 

My point is that if the name of a human created phenomenon is misunderstood by the world community we risk mixing up our priorities. An unintended consequence of this is that we might not take the necessary action to manage climate change for the simple reason that the name itself does not generate the right reaction. Compare the well proven terms: “Fire” (especially in a theatre), “Shark”, “Free”, or “Stop” with “climate change.” Climate change does not exactly inspire adrenaline flow in human beings. Sure there are band wagons, but bandwagons have never replaced an orchestra meaning that advocating for a cause does not replace the need to do something now.

 

Once again we find that cutting costs is attractive than having healthy human being still alive in the long term. The alternative to fossil fuels is managed energy sources, maybe even safer nuclear energy which is anything but cheap. But managing CO2 emissions is something that can be done, if only people cooperated. So if emissions have unintended consequences they certainly can be responsible for unintended profits. The sooner the Arctic ice melts the sooner speculators can start drilling for petroleum in the polar sea, and access the North West passage for trade and military shipping. The shipping and transport costs between the US and Europe on the one side and Asia on the other would be greatly reduced.

 

Two additional benefits of opening the North West passage is that northern countries would have more fishing grounds to exploit and the other benefit is a massive reduction in military costs. Today regions like the USA, Europe, China and Russian need to invest heavily in their navies to patrol shipping lanes and protect their cargo ships.

 

But these tangible and real benefits are only available to even fewer countries. The consequence, however, is that many people living in costal regions would need to be relocated: for example many Pacific islands would disappear into the ocean and countries like Egypt and Panama would lose their monopolies with their canals.

 

Despite having lived twelve months living with a pandemic, chemical and biological weapon are not ideal weapon systems. At best these sorts of weapons are only efficient at the very local level: remember the chemical attacks during the Iraq-Iran war? These systems are not the best ways to attack an enemy. This was established during the First World War with the use of mustard gas. At the level of human extinction these classical contenders are inefficient, but this does not mean that many people won’t be victims of these activities.

 

Economic instability is probably a more comprehensive means to bring us close to extinction. The difference between climate change and nuclear war is that if we’re rich enough we can protect ourselves against climate change over sometime. The climate change disaster is not going to happen tomorrow. Climate change is more long term than Keynes was thinking off. All out nuclear war is immediate and we more or less we all understand this is short term.

 

Therefore, the short term risks of climate change are minimal for those with economic power, and the long term risks will first be borne by poor people. In the short term a few selected countries and regions will definitely benefit from the negative effects of climate change. It is not until the very long term that climate change would result in extinction or near extinction.

 

In the meantime all the initiatives that promote green policies are first and foremost trade war policies and nothing to do with climate change. Of course, any green policies will always benefit people somewhere, but green policies are first and foremost trade strategies to slow down the competition.

 

The new bandwagon is the Right to Repair initiative (see EU parliament initiative link below) is basically the right to have equipment repaired if it breaks down before ten years or so. This makes consumer sense and political genius because why should we have to buy a new product that can be repaired for much less money.  And the extra money we have to pay for the original product is justified by invoking the fight against climate change. But the most serious consequence of this initiative is to burden countries who model their international economy on making cheap use-and-trash products: e.g. China. Many European countries already manufacture products that are of high quality and can lasts more than ten years.

 

The risks of omnicide are very slim in my opinion; or at best more long term than what we can imagine. Of course, there might always be the impossible accident but if we are careful things shouldn’t be as bad as to lead to extinction. But it’s not an issue that localised disasters and even extinctions are not possible; they are and do happen. At the human level I don’t think we can compete with nature: we’re good but not as good as nature at creating extinctions. For the time being we’re only good at causing untold suffering, large scale death, and wonton abuse of nature.

 

Parliament wants to grant EU consumers a “right to repair” https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20201120IPR92118/parliament-wants-to-grant-eu-consumers-a-right-to-repair)  

 

Best Lawrence

 

telephone/WhatsApp: 606081813

 

Email: philomadrid@gmail.com

 

http://www.philomadrid.com