How the Interplay of Fog, Friction, and Faith Resulted in the Unintended Atomic Annihilation of Nagasaki’s Christian Community – and Ended World War II 80 Years Ago
With populist and authoritarian leaders on the rise in the democratic West, and with traditional authoritarian states seemingly coalescing around China, now is as good a time as any to understand why this is happening and what happens next.
This is a dark, somewhat humorous, look at how communities navigate around US veterans struggling with trauma. A bit different from the usual (excellent) stuff found here, but worth your time.
Abstract: The principle of Indigenous sovereignty acknowledges the liberal imperative of state authority, and yet simultaneously transforms it. Fundamental principles of sovereignty embedded in Westphalian ideas of state and nation-state are counterpoised against in other rationalities—including concepts of cultural rights, human security and more localized sovereignties. Canada’s experience in laying claim to both the internal waters of the Canadian Northwest Passage, and its more recent claim to the extended continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean, are a case in point. In both of these cases Indigenous sovereignty challenges the right of the Canadian state to make such claims with- out the explicit permission of Inuit peoples. Yet, gaining such permission supports conventional sovereign claims much the way is conventionally associated with the Peace of Westphalia, even if history was more complicated and less immediate in its compliance with what became conflated over time with Westphalian ideals. Meanwhile, land claims treaties in Canada’s Arctic along with new understandings of climate change and human security support a reassessment of sovereignty in practice, and an expansion from the Westphalian ideal to a post-Westphalian synthesis of Indigenous and state sovereignties. Can we still call such arrangements “liberal”, and is decolonization consistent with- in a framework of liberal views of state sovereignty? The Inuit experience at the nexus of Indigenous and state sovereignty suggests we can indeed, and that Canada’s evolving conception of sovereignty re-introduces tribal sovereignty as a pillar of the new, post-Westphalian order. While
similar processes are under way across the Indigenous world, whether in the Far North or Global South, the experience in Arctic North America sheds important light on
the evolution of sovereignty in both theory and practice as
Indigenous values and conceptions are increasingly recognized and embraced by the sovereign states that emerged in
their homelands through colonial state expansion.
I really loved this article because it shows that ASI, and the control problem associated with ASI, isn't new at all. It has been around for a long time.
What this essay does is put ASI into historical context and put forth a solution to a problem that has also been around for a long time: republican constitutionalism (which has nothing to do with the GOP or Western right-wing movements).
Republican constitutionalism is a restraint mechanism on centralized power that has been popular -- in a more subtle form<https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138305/bo...> - since the end of World War II and has always been a part of conversations about restraining power. Cool stuff, all 'round!
With all the talk lately of the the UN's ineptitude (and it has been inept, and corrupt, and hypocritical, and...), perhaps its time to start re-thinking international governance and how it can be ordered.
The link above considers a libertarian approach to world government, which is not as oxymoronic as it first appears.
