The Pavellas Perspective

A Most Successful Life-form: the Humble Dandelion

Ron Pavellas — Sun, 20 May 2012 16:08:56 +0000

Homo sapiens have been on earth, as far we know, for no more than 200 thousand years. But this a blink of the eye compared to the Dinosaurs who appeared on Earth 250 Million years ago and populated the planet for almost 200 million years. But they disappeared as a species.

Consider, then, the extant cockroach who co-existed with the dinosaurs, appearing 200 million years ago, and which is still with us!

So, perhaps the fact that the humble dandelion (Taraxacum) has been on Earth only 30 million years should not impress us. But, this ubiquitous plant has lasted 150 times longer on Earth than Homo Sapiens. Would you agree that we have yet to prove ourselves as a successful life form?

I took this picture on my walk from home to the Alvik Metro Station on a recent morning, being impressed by the brilliance of these irrepressible yellow flowers. (click on all images for a larger view).

Eva and I have started our third spring as gardeners in a 65-square-meter (700 square feet) plot of land we are allowed to cultivate in Johannelunds Koloni near our apartment building in Minneberg. We spend much of the first few weeks of the gardening season in removing the deeply-rooted dandelions from the grass paths before they bloom, along with other unwanted plants from the garden such as ground elder, club moss, and grass which has invaded from the paths. We always miss a good many dandelion plants, but they later reveal themselves by their bright blooms. So, we undertake the second and subsequent rounds of removal. Most of our neighbors are not so fastidious in removing dandelions, so when the beautiful seed heads appear around us we know we’ll be repeating our spring removal ritual.

A visiting family member from Malmö, with a carpet of dandelion blooms at her feet

Because I admire the pretty yellow flowers everywhere along the paths, roads and highways, and in uncultivated and unused lots, I have misgivings about removing them every spring from our garden. But we don’t want these blooms to detract from the many others we are cultivating, along with food plants.

Ruderal species

The dandelion is a ruderal species, a plant which grows in poor soil and that is first to colonize disturbed lands. Ruderal means rubble. Dandelion’s affinity for grass is due to our habit of clipping it short enough for the seeds to take root, and for the leaves and stems of the flowers to reach sunlight.

Success Factors

As in many ruderal species, the dandelion succeeds because of: 1) Massive seed production; 2) modest seedling nutritional requirements; 3) Fast-growing roots; and, 4) independence from mycorrhizae, a beneficial symbiotic association between a fungus (mycor) and the roots (rhiza) which most vascular plants need. (Source).

Dandelion Seed

Dandelion Seed (4.bp.blogspot.com/)

The dandelion provides its seeds with a complex flying apparatus, a tiny disc of radiating threads that form a parachute. A dandelion presents these seeds to the wind hoisted on the top of a stem and arranged as a fragile elegant globe. (Source).

Dandelion Root

Dandelion has a strong taproot capable of penetrating the soil to a depth of 10 to 15 feet, but it is most commonly 6 to 18 inches deep. (Source). Dandelion is rich in beta-carotene and potassium. In herbal medicine, dandelion is typically used for its appetite-stimulating, digestion-aiding, and laxative effects. Some studies suggest that dandelion used as an herb may help lessen inflammation and kill bacteria. (Source).

Dandelion leaves

One of my favorite childhood memories is of my two maternal aunts, Angie and Bea, harvesting dandelion leaves in what were then swampy lands around Newport Beach, California, where Bea and her husband Tommy lived. We had the leaves for dinner, boiled as we did with greens such as spinach or mustard greens which our family loved–with olive oil and lemon.

Dandelion leaf is a natural diuretic, and is commonly used to help remove excess water and toxins from the body. Dandelion Leaf helps promote bile excretion from the liver so the body can more efficiently process foods and liquids while also purging harmful toxins. (Source).

Don’t Be Fooled by False Dandelions

Dandelions are so similar to catsears (Hypochaeris) that catsears are also known as “false dandelions”. Both plants carry similar flowers, which form into windborne seeds. However, dandelion flowers are borne singly on unbranched, hairless and leafless, hollow stems, while catsear flowering stems are branched, solid and carry bracts. Both plants have a basal rosette of leaves and a central taproot. However, the leaves of dandelions are smooth or glabrous, whereas those of catsears are coarsely hairy. Hawksbeard (Crepis) flower heads and ripe seeds also are sometimes confused with dandelions. (Source).

History

Dandelions are thought to have evolved about thirty million years ago in Eurasia. They have been used by humans for food and as an herb for much of recorded history. They were introduced to North America by early European immigrants. (Source). This information surprised me because I thought dandelions grow throughout the northern hemisphere. I came to this incorrect notion because when I lived in Alaska, at the same latitude as Stockholm, dandelions were everywhere large and healthy throughout the sunny months.

Final Thoughts

I had reason to drive around the city today with Eva, and noticed dandelion flowers everywhere. Since she has lived here all her life I asked Eva if there were more flowers than usual. She thought not and suggested I was attuned to them more because of my current obsession with them. I am enjoying them so much (but not in my garden) I hope I can retain this obsession.

—

Post-publication addendum: I can’t resist adding another photo taken several days after first publishing this article:

Filed under: Botany, Science-general Tagged: catsears, club moss, Crepis, Dandelion, Dinosaurs, False Dandelion, ground elder, Hawksbeard, Homo sapiens, Hypochaeris, Johannelunds Koloni, Minneberg, mycorrhizae, Ruderal species, Taraxacum

Jung’s Archetypes and the Quantum Sea

Ron Pavellas — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:10:02 +0000

While in university I electively read from Carl Gustav Jung’s works to learn about the collective unconscious and the archetypes which populate it. It seemed a mysterious, hidden world that Jung propounded and I wasn’t sure if this was science or mysticism, or something in between. But I wasn’t a student in psychology, so I let the matter rest.

After university, I continued to read widely and learned about Jung’s concept of synchronicity. I had a good feeling for this concept and became more conscious of “coincidences” that might well fit under or into Jung’s definition. At age 75, I am no longer surprised in experiencing, more and more often, instances of synchronicity.

Many years after university, a consultant to the hospital I was then managing offered to administer the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to my management team. It was a useful exercise and instrument for self-knowledge and team building, among other benefits. I was so impressed with the instrument’s utility I later attended a course to become qualified to administer and interpret the MBTI. Since the “types” in this instrument are personality types as described by Jung, his other work came again to mind, including the concept of archetypes.

Now that I have retired from employment and engaged in creative writing, I see where a greater understanding in the use of archetypes for my characters might advance me in this realm. So, I looked into Carol S. Pearson’s approach, and purchased her book to learn about the mix of archetypes within me. She uses twelve archetypes, as seen here in her “index”, to help a person understand his or her stage of development (click on all images for clearer definition):

(Source: Pearson, Carol S., Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World)

Finally, after doing a recent Internet search for more sources on archetypes, I came across the article which provides the basis for the remainder of this article: Archetypes, Neurognosis and the Quantum Sea, by C. D. Laughlin, published 1996 by the Society for Scientific Exploration in its Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 375-400.

A Physical Basis for Archetypes

The author, with many references to the relevant literature, hypothesizes that archetypes have a basis in one’s physiology, in the physics of the human structure, one that is shared among all humans. I quote in full his abstract of the article:

C.G. Jung left a great deal of ambiguity surrounding the ontological status of the archetypes and the collective unconscious. He did so because of the inadequacy of the science of his day. Modern developments in the neurosciences and physics — especially the new physics of the vacuum — allow us to develop Jung’s understanding of the archetypes further. This paper analyzes the salient characteristics of Jung’s concept of the archetype and uses modern biogenetic structural theory to integrate archetypal psychology and the neurosciences. The paper reviews some of the evidence in favor of direct neurophysiological-quantum coupling [the author’s term] and suggests how neural processing and quantum events may interpenetrate.

Beginning the Conversation on The Archetypes

Carl Jung reported on universal patterns in the ideation and imagination in his patients, in myth and other literature, and in his own experience with dreams and other ideations. He asserted that humans have instinctive structures which are ancient, transpersonal and transcultural. His earliest definition of these structures was “an independent constellation of primordial material inherited from the distant evolutionary past”, as written by Laughlin. Here is what Jung wrote:

[The] personal unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the collective unconscious. I have chosen the term “collective” because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behavior that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature which is present in every one of us.

Jung later named these structured “archetypes”. His conception and definition of archetypes evolved over his lifetime, which Laughlin incorporates into the development of his thesis.

Archetypes as Evolutionary Structures

Human archetypes are the result of the evolution of the structure of the human psyche. Jung emphasized that the archetypes are part of human inheritance. They are extraordinarily stable and enduring structures that form the fundamental organization of the psyche, that arise anew in every human incarnation, and that are akin to the instincts.

The archetypes may have changed during our evolutionary past, but in their present form they encode the recurrent experiences of human beings over countless millennia and across all cultural boundaries. In some instances the archetypes encode recurrent experiential material from our pre-hominid animal past.

Source: http://ultimatedm.com/

Archetypal structures underlie all recurrent, panhumanly “typical” ideas, images, categories, situations, and events that arise in experience. They contain no inherent content, but exist “at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action”.

Archetypes may manifest as “a priori, inborn forms of ‘intuition”‘. And as the instincts impel us to act in a distinctly human way, so do the archetypes impel us to perceive and understand the events we instinctively respond to in a distinctly human way. For Jung instinct and archetype are two sides of the same unconscious functional coin:

(T)he archetype or primordial image might be described as the instinct’s perception of itself or as the self-portrait of the instinct, in exactly the same way as consciousness is an inward perception of the objective life-process. Just as conscious through the archetype determines the form and direction of instinct. –Jung

Thus the archetypes may be characterized as being instinctual “meaning” and the collective unconscious as containing both the instincts and the archetypes; this system represents a panhumanly universal phenomenon.

Most discussions of the archetypes, including Jung’s, tend to emphasize a handful of relatively dramatic forms; e.g., the Wise Old Man, the anima and animus, etc. These few forms are those that arise in dreams and myths, whereas most archetypes mediate the very mundane functioning of cognition and activity in everyday psychological life. The total range of archetypes is the source for human beings everywhere of typicality in experience.

[This reminds me of Plato’s Theory of Forms which attempts to account for abstract notions such as “the good” and “fear”, or recurring patterns such as “leaf”.–RP]

Archetypes and their Transforms

Jung emphasized that we cannot understand the archetypes directly. All we can know are the archetypal images and ideas that arise in the symbolism of our own experience, or that we deduce from the ideas and images found in texts and other traditional symbolic forms. The archetypes are not material that was once conscious and somehow lost either in early childhood, or in some archaic hominid age. Rather, the archetypes have never been conscious during the course of either ontogenesis or phylogenesis.

These perpetually unconscious archetypal structures lie behind and generate the symbolism that is so essential to all mythological and religious systems. The archetypes produce such distinctive and universal motifs as the incest taboo, the unity of opposites, the King, the Goddess, the Hero, and so on.

It is clear in Jung’s treatment that actual engagement with the archetypes is a dynamic and developmental process, involving both the assimilation of archetypal contents into consciousness and, as a consequence, the transformation of the archetypes themselves. “We must bear in mind that what we mean by ‘archetype’ is in itself irrepresentable, but has effects which make visualizations of it possible, namely, the archetypal images and ideas”. (Jung).

Oedipus and the Sphinx (Source: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk)

Archetypes As Transpersonal Experience

Jung’s whole approach, whether in the consulting room or in his own spiritual work, was essentially phenomenological. The archetypes are not merely theoretical concepts, but are derived from direct empirical observation of patterns in our own experience. We know the archetypes, not by merely thinking about them, but by experiencing their myriad activities in the arena of our own consciousness and then reflecting upon them.

What makes the activity of the archetypes distinctive in human affairs is the sense of profundity and numinosity that commonly accompanies their emergence into consciousness. Their numinosity is derived from the fact that they store up and are conduits for affective and libidinous energies from lower levels of the psyche. So numinous and transpersonal are the symbolic eruptions of archetypal processes that the experience of them may lead to fascination and faith, and even to states of possession and over-identification with the imagery.

Archetypes in Development

The archetypes are not solely an adult phenomenon. They are present from the beginning of life and, indeed, are the only foundation of childhood psychic development. Another way to say this is that the ego is the result of the archetypes coming to know themselves. Jung was aware that a child’s experience is thoroughly archetypal: The child’s psyche, prior to the stage of ego-consciousness, is very far from being empty and devoid of content. Scarcely has speech developed when, in next to no time, consciousness is present; and this with its momentary contents and its memories, exercises an intensive check upon the previous collective contents.

It is the unfolding collective unconscious and its nascent archetypal structures that produces the highly mythological contents of children’s dreams. Eventually this unfolding landscape of archetypal material engages in a developmental dialogue with the emerging conscious ego that becomes the essential process of individuation.

Birdman the Heirophant
(rebeccayoussefi.
wordpress.com)

Archetypes As Organs

The archetype is as much an organ to the psyche as the liver is to metabolism. And as organs, archetypes develop during the course of life. The archetypes express themselves in emerging consciousness as images and ideas, and these transformations are actively assimilated into the conscious ego in such a way as to produce feedback which constrains further transformations. The process by which the ego assimilates essentially transpersonal, panhuman material gradually lessens the mysterious and numinous qualities of archetypal eruptions.

Indeed, the process of assimilation may become so active that the ego over-identifies with and feels responsible for producing these materials. Those of us who have spent time in spiritual movements may recognize the common phenomenon of individuals who over-identify with and personalize essentially transpersonal experiences. For Jung, this over-identification of ego with transpersonal experience may also account for certain dynamics of psychosis.

The Ontological Status of the Archetypes

Jung was unable to scientifically reconcile his conviction that the archetypes are at once embodied structures and bear the imprint of the divine; that is, the archetypes are both structures within the human body, and represent the domain of spirit, but the science of his day could not envision a non-dualistic conception of spirit and matter. (My emphasis—RP).

Jung did not intend to produce a dualism between psyche and the material world, for he held that these are but two aspects of the same reality. The archetypes, as structures, are also a system of limitations upon human experience. That is, they not only cause thoughts, images and actions, they are sets of limiting factors on the general range of experiences that may arise within the consciousness of an individual.

Jung was more inclined to think of the archetypes in biological terms in his earlier writings, while being more inclined to speak of the spiritual dimension in his later works. He early-on wrote that the archetypes are “ever-repeated typical experiences” that are somehow impressed upon the materiality of the body that they had been “stamped on the human brain for aeons”.

Frankenstein Monster
as Portrayed by Boris Karloff
(coyyonce.com)

The Archetypes in Summary

The archetypes produce all of the universal material in myth and ritual drama. Archetypal experiences tend to be numinous and transpersonal in their impact upon personal development, for they are the eruption of archaic and timeless meaning into the personal world of the ego. They are archaic in the sense that they have evolved over long periods of time, and are timeless in that they arise anew in the experience of each passing generation bearing recognizably similar patterns.

Beginning the Engagement with Modern Physics
(This where we cannot avoid using terminology which is new to most readers here—RP)

The Archetypes As Neurognosis

As it stands, Jung’s account of the archetypes does not allow a clear and easy engagement with modern physics. Biogenetic structural theory however introduces the concept that the archetypes are structures within the nervous system. Of course we have used our own (modern) terminology in developing these concepts.

According to biogenetic structural theory, a principal function of the higher processes of the human brain is the development of each individual’s cognized environment. The cognized environment is the total set of neurophysiological models that mediate all of an individual’s experiences. The cognized environment contrasts with an individual’s operational environment which includes both the actual nature of that individual as an organism and the individual’s external world. As discussed here, the concept of the operational environments has been extended to include the quantum sea. The primordial, biological function of the cognized environment is the adaptation of the individual organism to its operational environment by making sure that the world of experience is adaptively isomorphic with the world of reality.

Neurognosis

When we are speaking of the functioning of neural structures in producing either experience or some other activity unconscious to the individual, we use the term neurognosis. This usage is similar to Jung’s reference to archetypal imagery, ideas, and activities that emerge into, and that are active in consciousness.

All neurophysiological models develop from nascent models which exist as the initial, genetically determined neural structures already producing the experiences of the fetus and infant. When we wish to emphasize the neurognostic structures themselves, we tend to mention structures or models. The neurognostic structures correspond to Jung’s archetypes. Although much attention was given to relatively dramatic archetypal imagery in his writings, Jung actually believed that there were as many archetypes as there are species-wide, typical perceptions. Jung’s reference to the essential unknowability of the archetypes-in-themselves also applies to neurognostic structures in our formulation.

hyperbolic orthogonal dodecahedral honeycomb (forum.blockland.us/)

Neurognostic Development

And, as with Jung’s understanding of the archetype, neurognosis also applies to the genetically conditioned processes of development of neurognostic structures. In a certain sense the archetypes are indistinguishable from the instincts. Neurognosis, too, refers to both the initial organization and function of neural models, and to the genetically channelled processes of their growth and development, especially in early life. The entire course of what Jung would call “individuation” is highly influenced by neurognostic processes.

The Evolution of Neurognosis

Unlike Jung’s uncertainty in the matter, we have concluded that neurognosis (the archetypes) has changed over the millions of years of our species’ phylogenesis. We are forced to this conclusion due to:

the evidence of dramatic encephalization found in the fossil record of our extinct ancestors, and
the fact that social variation in the development of a system of fundamental, evolutionarily derived structures (i.e., culture) appears to be the primary mode of human adaptation.

The archetypes as structures mediating intuitive and symbolic knowledge are undoubtedly located in the areas of the nervous system that appear to have evolved most dramatically during the course of hominid encephalization and that produce the distinctly human quality of mentation, learning, communication, and social action characteristic of our species today.

Culture and Neurognosis

Neurocognitive development is exquisitely ordered by processes inherent to the growth patterns of the organism -an ontogenetic “package” that reflects the path of evolutionary change characteristic of the horninids. There is no such thing as the development of neural tissues that is not constrained and guided by lawful, genetically linked processes. (Emphasis is mine—RP)

Development is never totally plastic. The organism must be biologically “prepared” to learn something. That is, the neurognostic structures (i.e., archetypes) must be in place, be of the correct structural configuration and developmentally mature enough to begin to model the aspect of experience they mediate. If the neural tissues are not in place, the organism is “contraprepared” for learning, and thus cannot learn structure or function of the processes mediating experience. (Emphasis is mine—RP)

Human Blastocyst Division (carissawords.wordpress.com)

The Transcendental Nature of Neurognosis

The organism (or Self) is part of the individual’s operational environment. And the organism includes the neurognostic structures (or archetypes) themselves. The archetypes then are always transcendental relative to an individual’s consciousness Jung laid special emphasis upon the essential unknowability of the archetypes. He was saying in effect that there exists a zone of uncertainty in our knowledge of our own unconscious processes, of our archetypes and of our own Self.

Jung faced a dilemma that biogenetic structuralists faced until quite recently, a problem Laughlin has called the “quantum barrier.” It refers to our inability to reconcile what we know about how the brain and consciousness work with accounts by modern physics of quantum reality existing as “wave functions” that are only “collapsed” when “measured” that is, that the act of observation somehow has a determinant effect upon how the quantum world materializes in our experience.

Jung and the Copenhagen Interpretation

The so-called Copenhagen account is problematic. It presumes a schism between experience and reality. It establishes a fundamental dualism between consciousness which operates in a mechanical universe and reality which is organized as a quantum universe. By contrast, the experience of a contemplative person (including Jung) is one of a continuum of increasing subtlety from awareness of form (termed rupa mindstates in Buddhist psychology) through the awareness of the energies that make up experience, but without form (the arupa mindstates), to the experience of the Plenum Void (the nirvana awareness). There simply is no disjunction between the experiences typical of everyday and the experience of the Plenum. There is a continuum of experienced subtlety differing in degrees of materialization and level of structure. Experience thus parallels the range of organization of the world from the level of the quantum to the level of gross matter. (Emphasis is mine—RP)

vacuum gluon field of quantum chromodynamics,
Derek B. Leinwber (physics.adelaide.edu.au)

(Please click on the image for a dynamic view)

The Physics of the Vacuum

There are, of course, other interpretations of quantum mechanics now available in the literature. Jung had no access to these alternative interpretations, and for most physicists practicing even today, the Copenhagen account is merely quantum mechanics.

However, there are certain developments in modern quantum physics that are making it possible for us to better model the dimensions of quantum interactions, specifically with regard to consciousness: the current work on the physics of the vacuum. The entire universe is a monad of energy of various densities. There exists a structure of underlying “zero-point” energy that permeates the universe, even pervading the most complete vacuum—a quantum sea as it were.

In the modern view empty space or vacuum is never truly particle or field free, but rather is the seat of continuous virtual particle-pair creation and annihilation processes, as well as so-called zero-point fluctuations of such fields as the electromagnetic field.

Originally thought to be of significance only for such esoteric concerns as small corrections in atomic emission processes, it is now understood that vacuum fluctuation effects play a central role in large-scale phenomena of interest to technologists as well.

The Quantum Brain–an Hypothesis and Discussion

Increasing interest in the relationship between the brain and the “sea” of zero point energy permeating the universe indicates an increasing concern for the question of how the neurocognitive processes that mediate consciousness may also influence and be influenced by events in the quantum sea. Neurognosis operates not only at the level of the organization of neural cells into neural networks, but also at the quantum level by penetrating to and being penetrated by events in the sea.

Neural networks may be “prepared” (see above) to operate as transducers of patterned activity in the quantum sea. Transformations of neural activity may produce transformations in the structure of the sea, and vice versa. Thus local causation based upon biochemical interaction among neural cells may be transformed into non-local causation based upon biophysical activity between cells and the sea.

There are several avenues of research into possible mechanisms that have led a number of serious scholars to consider processes that mediate brain-quantum interaction. For example, Evan Harris Walker has suggested that the quantum phenomenon known as “tunnelling” may occur at the synapse. “Tunnelling” occurs when an electron penetrates a barrier that classically is impenetrable.

Quantum Mechanics on the Macro Scale
Sherwin Yu (yalescientific.org)

Others have attempted to demonstrate “coherent” effects in cell membranes related to weak external electromagnetic fields whose effects cannot be attributed to heating the system. “Coherence” is a central concept in quantum physics and refers to events correlated over time or space. Events in the sea may produce coherence, say, in membrane activity across the entire expanse of a neural network, or that the activity across a neural network may produce coherence in the vacuum energies beyond the organism. This picture makes it possible to contemplate a continuum of levels of structural organization from the cognized environment down through and into the structure of the quantum sea.

Recognition of the importance of coherence follows in the wake of research into the paradoxical Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen experiment (EPR). They demonstrated that once two parts of a quantum system are separated, they continue to act as a correlated unity no matter how far they travel from each other. EPR-type systems confound commonsense notions of local causation, for there exists no clear mechanism by which the two parts can “interact”at a distance. It is Laughlin’s presumption that this wholism is somehow mediated by the structure of the quantum sea.

There is now evidence pointing to the importance of electromagnetic oscillations at the cellular level that are not merely caused by changes in the ambient temperature. Herbert Frohlich has hypothesized that coherent oscillations (similar to the so-called “Bose-Einstein condensation“) in certain protein structures may be triggered by a common, low energy electromagnetic field, and thus may provide a mechanism for information storage and retrieval over a wide expanse of organic tissue, an inherently quantum process.

Such electromagnetic fields may function in many types of cells, including neural cells, to control physiological processes. Frohlich has also suggested that highly polarized membrane components may be deformed by external electromagnetic fields. It is now known that natural and man-made electromagnetic fields have effects upon biological processes.

One possible mechanism is the soliton. Solitons were first discovered in the nineteenth century as a property of water waves in canals. Waves propagate down a canal at a constant speed and are the result of equilibrium between the tendency of the wave to peak and its tendency to disperse. The wave reaches a steady state in its trip down the canal.

Electromagnetic solitons are energy waves that are related to quantum field excitation and that propagate in a non-linear, steady-state fashion with very little energy loss from one point to another in a system. Theoretically, solitons may encode a great deal of information in a small space with little energy expenditure. Frohlich and others have suggested that solitons may be integral to the functioning of membranes, or have linked soliton waves with cellular functions.

Microtubule Schematic
(migration.tebu-bio.com)

Another plausible biophysical mechanism of direct consciousness-quantum sea interpenetration is to be found in the coherent properties of microtubules. Microtubules form a protein latticework of cylindrical pathways in the cell that are known to be involved in regulating and organizing the activity of the cell. The ordered water molecules within the hollow core of these microtubules may manifest a property of “super-radiance” and much like a laser, transform incoherent electromagnetic energy into coherent, non-linear photon pulses within the tubule. Such a pulse would also be a kind of soliton in that it might propagate without energy loss and with little energy requirement. This picture of electromagnetic activity in the structure of the cell is consonant with the suggestion by Fritz Popp and his colleagues that the regulation of cellular organization in biological systems may be accomplished by a coherent pattern of biophoton emission.

Although there has not yet been a definitive demonstration of direct neural-quantum sea interaction, the evidence is sufficiently suggestive to prompt some authorities to hypothesize that brain-quantum sea interpenetration may operate something like a “quantum computer”. That is, information and computations may be organized within the pattern of coherent quantum activities. These computations may be detectable by neural networks and used in higher order processing. It does seem possible on the strength of parapsychological and ethnographic evidence that information exchange of a broader kind may be occurring between the conscious brain and the quantum sea. And it is clear that Jung may well have agreed.

Conclusion: Archetypes, Neurognosis and the Quantum Sea

The concept of neurognosis (and Jung’s archetype) refers not only to the initial organization of the brain during pre-and perinatal life, it also refers to the total pattern of coherent quantum activity represented in all of the neural networks in the brain. We may find that there are a number of mechanisms operating at the sub-cellular level by which the structure of the sea is transduced into patterned neural activity, and vice versa. So we may speak of neurognosis as mediator of the structure of the quantum universe and the structure of the individual consciousness.

But caution must be exercised here in order to avoid very common conceptual traps spawned by phenomenological naivete and over-zealous use of technological metaphors for how the human brain works. These are traps with which Jung was all too familiar. One such trap is the view that consciousness is the product of computations. This is a view peppering the cognitive science and artificial intelligence literatures, and is generally the product of reified computer models of how the human brain works. Another trap is the tendency to reduce consciousness to the quantum mechanical level; i.e., consciousness is quantum coherence of a specific kind.

Another of these traps is the notion that the brain operates like a radio receiver, picking up “spiritual” signals that come wafting in from outside the body. This is just one more version of the mind-body dualism that Jung wished to avoid. The brain-as-receiver notion reflects a basic principle in the evolution of technologies. We humans have a long history of building one thing to do another thing. For instance, we will fashion baskets and pots to hold seeds and carry water. In more modern times we build “hardware” to run “software”. But the body and brain do not work that way. The brain is not “hardware” that requires the inputting of “software” in order to operate. Most of the evidence we have on the physiology of the brain suggests that the activity of neural structures (the “hardware”) mediates aspects of mind and consciousness (the “software”). With respect to the brain, the “hardware” is the “software”. We can simulate the behavior of a duck and end up building an airplane that actually flies, but the airplane tells us almost nothing about the duck.

The essential attributes of consciousness described by various contemplatives, and available to anyone trained in techniques of mature contemplation—attributes such as intentionality, conceptual-imaginal knowing, the granular quality of sensation, the structure of internal time consciousness, emotion, etc.—-may be modeled within the phase space defined by

1. the functional dialogue (i.e., patterns of entrainment) between pre-frontal and sensorial cortex,
2. the functional dialogue between left and right cortical hemispheres, and
3. the functional dialogue between the cortex and specific subcortical structures.

Within this functional field arises the shifting, changing network of neural cells that mediate consciousness. Our experience of the world occurs as a selection for “designation” by the neural systems mediating consciousness among the eigenstates available in the local environment. Laughlin’s view is that this “designation” occurs at every level of structure from intracellular structures sensitive to quantum coherence through to the most complex level of neural network integration.

Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis
Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741 – 1825)

Jung’s genius was in steering a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of mind-body dualism—that is, between experiential relativism on the one hand and physical reductionism on the other. It was clear to Jung that an individual’s experience is both structured by processes universal to the human psyche, and the manifestation of individuation

In some ways all humans are alike, in some ways some humans are alike, and in some ways no humans are alike. Jung was able to integrate these various points of view into a single perspective on the activities of the human psyche. And where he had scientific or solid phenomenological data to back up his views, he reported them. But where the data were not forthcoming in the science of his day, he often remained purposely self-critical, ambiguous and incomplete in the formulation of his ideas. He was quite conscious of the pitfalls of over-systematized thought, and fully intended his approach to be a dynamic and open-ended course of inquiry.

So it was with his notion of the archetype. He insisted that the archetype is not merely another word for the physiology of the image or thought. While it included the physiological basis of knowledge, the concept was intended to run deeper -deep into the instincts and beyond, outward into the universal ground of existence. The archetype exists as the intersection of spirit and matter. We are now beginning to understand in a scientific way how this intersection might be possible, if by “spirit” we mean the order of the quantum sea.

Human experience becomes the localized instantiation of the universal—the transcendental— through the medium of neurognosis. And neurognosis is precisely the local embodiment of the structure of the sea, and at the same time the structures mediating consciousness.

By application of archetypal psychology, and by the current rendition of the biogenetic structural notion of neurognosis, we can see that by implicating neural structures in the mediation of various aspects of consciousness, we do not necessarily imply a reduction of the phenomenon to its neurophysiological foundations. For instance, certain experiences of unity with the Godhead may be mediated by structures in the temporal lobes, such an analysis need not imply a reduction of transpersonal experiences to neurophysiology. Among other things, to reduce these experiences to their neurophysiological foundations begs such questions as the profundity of insight, or the causation-at-a-distance that may accompany such experiences.

On our present account, this kind of analysis may further clarify our picture of how neurognostic, or archetypal structures in the human brain may transduce insights pertaining to the universal structure of the quantum sea. Each human brain may indeed prove to be a microcosm that contains like the proverbial mustard seed, or the more modem hologram -all the wisdom of the ages, requiring only the optimal conditions of development for each person to individuate into a sage.

(This is the end of my excerpted and edited version of Dr. Laughlin’s article)

Final Note:

In high school science we went through the history of failed theories: phlogiston, for one.

As I read here about the “quantum sea” I was reminded of the failed theory of the “Aether”. The aether was supposed to be a medium necessary to transmit light through the emptiness of space, much as air transmits sound. It needed to be both rigid and fluid. It needed to be rigid to transmit transverse light waves, but it needed to be fluid so that the planets could pass through it.

So now we have the hypothesis of a much more refined and defined “quantum sea”, but still a hypothesis.

Will it stand up to the test of time?

In any case, we see now that Carl G. Jung was a savant, as well as a scientist. He foresaw a scientific rationale for the archetypes which were, early on and to some degree still, dismissed by many scientists as unmeasurable “mysticism”.

And, meanwhile, Jung’s archetypes continue to fascinate and continue to be useful in understanding man.

Filed under: Archetypes, Psychology, The Self, The Unconscious Tagged: archetypal psychology, Archetypes, Awakening the Heroes Within: Twelve Archetypes to Help Us Find Ourselves and Transform Our World, biogenetic structuralism, Bose-Einstein condensation, C. D. Laughlin, Carl Gustav Jung, Carol S. Pearson, Collective Unconscious, conscious ego, Copenhagen Interpretation, Fritz Popp, Herbert Frohlich, instincts, Journal of Scientific Exploration, MBTI, microtubules, modern biogenetic structural theory, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Neurognosis, neurophysiological-quantum coupling, neurosciences, numinosity, numinous, ontogenesis, phylogenesis, Plato’s Theory of Forms, quantum events, quantum physics, quantum sea, quantum tunnelling, Society for Scientific Exploration, Synchronicity, the unconscious, zero point energy sea, zero-point energy

A Modern Exodus of Ethiopian Jews

Ron Pavellas — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 16:37:21 +0000

For the most of us who have not heard of the Jews who lived for thousands of years in Ethiopia, much less of their recent exodus to Israel, here is a story starting around 950 BC that you may find intriguing.

My friend Eric Gandy and I attended the weekly meeting of the Stockholm International Rotary Club on March 15 to listen to Bengt Nilsson, a journalist and documentary film producer. His presentation centered on the relationship between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon of Israel, and of the historical (or alleged) journey of the Ark of the Covenant from Israel to what is now Ethiopia. He has written a novel, Makeda, Queen of Sheba (currently, only in Swedish), which explores these facets of history and legend. His presentation was in English. (Note: Eric had much to do with the research and writing of this article).

Moses with the Tablets, Rembrandt (1606–1669)

Abraham, Moses, and The Covenant

Mr. Nilsson recounted the history of the Jewish people from earliest days, on to the times of their enslavement in Egypt, their escape under the leadership of Moses around 1200 BC, and then to his receiving from JAHWEH (God) the Ten Commandments inscribed on tablets. These writings were the laws which were to be followed by the Jews as their part of the covenant (contract) between God and the Jewish people. The Jewish people were to inherit the land God promised to Father Abraham, and now God had given them the Commandments which they must keep and observe as their part of the covenant. The tablets were the material reminder of the covenant.

For Jews, Abraham is, through Isaac and Jacob, the founding patriarch of the children of Israel. God promised Abraham: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you”. With Abraham, God entered into “an everlasting covenant throughout the ages to be God to you and to your offspring to come.” Abraham is primarily a revered ancestor or patriarch to whom God made several promises: chiefly, that he would have numberless descendants, who would receive the land of Canaan (the “Promised Land“). (Wikipedia)

Ultimately, the Jews of the next generation under Moses reached the land of Canaan and established what would become Israel under a succession of Hebrew kings, including Solomon who was King of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah from 971 – 931 BC. The covenant was eventually placed in an Ark and secured in the Temple of Jerusalem, built by Solomon

The Queen of Sheba Visits King Solomon

Solomon and Sheba, from "The Gates of Paradise", the Baptistery, Florence, Italy. Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 – 1455)

In 1770 AD, Scottish explorer James Bruce, while looking for the source of the Blue Nile, encountered the remnants of a large Jewish community in the mountain highlands around Lake Tana, in the northern province of Gondar in Ethiopia. He estimated this community then comprised about 100,000 persons. Their ancestors had been living there for centuries and called themselves Beta Israel – the House of Israel. One half million Jewish settlers were estimated to have lived in the area at one time, but time and circumstance had diminished their numbers.

Bruce described the peoples of Ethiopia as shepherds, warlike, of great size, prodigious strength, hunting lions, elephants, rhinos and other monstrous animals for food. They were rich in gold and silver, but had no grain or bread. The Jews of Ethiopia followed the Torah. Their neighbors called them Falashas – alien ones, the invaders – even after hundreds of years of coexistence and intermarriage, and with the same physical characteristics as the majority of people in Ethiopia.

Bruce elicited from the Falashas the legendary history of how their Jewish ancestors came to be in Ethiopia. I offer here a brief summary of the rich story told to James Bruce, recounted to us by Mr. Nilsson, and which can be more fully seen under several of the links in this article (all major sources will be offered in the endnotes).

The Queen of the land of Sheba (much larger than now encompassed by the borders of Ethiopia) had heard, possibly from Jewish travelers and traders from across the Red Sea on the Arabian Peninsula, of the great ruler of Israel, King Solomon. She wanted to learn from him about how to be a good ruler of her people and to establish trade relations, among other things. She traveled in a great caravan to Israel and brought Solomon gifts from her country. She stayed around six months and, according to legend, cohabited with Solomon only once, shortly before her return home.

From this brief union a son was born: Menelik. When he was 20 years old, he traveled to Israel at his mother’s pleasure, in order to present himself to his father, Solomon. The great king accepted Menelik as his own and gave him a charge: to transport the Ark and its Covenant to Sheba for safekeeping, as his country was under great threat at the time, and he was growing old and weary. (There are other accounts which are quite different, but this is the account presented by Bengt Nilsson and which is supported by the tradition of the Ethiopian Jews).

Menelik returned to rule Ethiopia, having taken the name “Menilek I”, accompanied by the eldest sons of the nobles of Israel. The Ethiopians believe that these elder sons who accompanied their prince brought from Jerusalem the original Ark of the Covenant, and this treasure is symbolized by a square oblong box kept in every Ethiopian Orthodox (Christian) church. (Source: Chris Prouty Rosenfeld)

The Growth and Decline of the Jewish People in Ethiopia

The Jewish Agency for Israel

Over the centuries, the descendants of Menilek and the Jews who accompanied him from Israel, the Beta Israel, came to number many tens of thousands and to have ruled their own community for significant periods. The Beta Israel enjoyed relative independence through the Middle Ages, but the fortunes of the Jewish community in Ethiopia were affected by events both within and outside the region over the course of centuries. Christianity spread throughout the Axum dynasty in the 4^th century AD. By the 7^th century Islam was spreading from the north. There was intermittent fighting with other tribes and the Beta Israel lost their autonomy after a battle in 1624 described in one account as an attempt to eradicate forever the Judaic memory of Ethiopia. Survivors were enslaved and forbidden to own land.

Despite persecution and discrimination, the Jews remained in Ethiopia. The situation for the Beta Israel worsened when the Mengistu dictatorship took over after Haile Selassie’s regime collapsed in 1973. In connection with Mengistu’s coup many Jews were killed and many more made homeless. In 1980 Ethiopia banned the practice of Judaism and teaching of Hebrew, while members of the Beta Israel were harassed and imprisoned. (Source: Jewish Virtual Library).

Aliyah (Repatriation) and Acceptance into Israel on “Humanitarian Grounds”

The Beta Israel

In 1973 the Israeli Ministry of Absorption prepared a report on the Beta Israel ethnic group which stated that the Falasha were foreign in all aspects to the Jewish nation. The report concluded that there was no need to take action in order to help the ethnic group make Aliyah to Israel. Shortly after the publication of this report, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardi chief rabbi, decreed that the Beta Israel are a descendant tribe of Israel and that giving them a proper Jewish education and the right to immigrate to Israel was a Mitzvah. Subsequently, Israel officially applied the Law of Return (Aliyah) to the Beta Israel community.

In the absence of full diplomatic relations with Ethiopia, The Israeli Mossad contacted officials in Sudan. Thousands of Beta Israel community from Ethiopia traveled by foot to the border with Sudan, and waited there in temporary camps until they were flown to Israel. Between the years 1977 and 1984, these immigrants were led from the camps to Israel by means of vessels of the Israeli Sea Corps, and by air. About 8,000 made a dangerous journey to Israel during which about 4,000 Beta Israel perished from disease or hunger or were killed by bandits. After it became clear that the immigrants who remained in the Sudanese camps were in danger, it was decided to pursue an operation of intense immigration, nicknamed “Operation Moses“, during which Israeli aircraft brought about 8,000 more immigrants to Israel.

Entire families undertook long and dangerous treks, which often spanned whole months. As a result of the difficult journey and bad conditions, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Beta Israel Ethiopians died on the way to the Sudanese camps. The operation ended prematurely, after a press leak in Israel regarding Ethiopian Aliyah via Sudan to Israel. After the media exposure to the operation, the Sudanese government was dismissed, and relations between Israel and Sudan were soured.

Despite this, more Beta Israel were brought to Israel, including 1,200 in the Operation Sheba and 800 more on Operation Joshua that took place in 1985, with the help of George H. W. Bush, who was then Vice President of the United States. (Source: Jewish Virtual Library)

Gondar Beta Israel Synagogue (roxanan.com)

The Falasha Mura

Missionary activity intensified at the end of the 19th century and large numbers of the Beta Israel community converted. These people who had once been Jews, or whose ancestors had been Jews, are referred to as the Falash Mura. The Falash Mura did not refer to themselves as Beta Israel until after the latter had begun to immigrate to Israel.

The Falash Mura were virtually unknown until Operation Solomon, when a number attempted to board the Israeli planes and were turned away. The Falash Mura said they were entitled to immigrate because they were Jews by ancestry, but the Israelis initially saw them as non-Jews, since most had never practiced Judaism and were not considered by the Beta Israel as part of their community.

Activists maintained that the Falash Mura had been forced to convert or had done so for pragmatic reasons without ever really abandoning their Jewish faith. The North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ) provided aid to the group in Addis Ababa, the capital city, who had not returned to their homes after being left behind during Operation Solomon. Once food and medical care became available, more Falash Mura left their villages for Addis Ababa, and soon began to overload the meager resources of NACOEJ.

In 1997, the government agreed to a one-time humanitarian gesture to bring to Israel everyone in Addis Ababa with some connection to the “seed of Israel.” Afterward, the camps were to be closed and future immigration was to be based on the criteria used for immigration from all other countries. Israel brought the 4,000 Falash Mura then in Addis Ababa to Israel in groups rather than all at once. This stimulated more Falash Mura to come to Addis Ababa in expectation of similar treatment. After an initial estimate of fewer than 10,000 Falash Mura, the number soon increased to more than 30,000.

In early 2001, nearly 20,000 Falash Mura remained in camps in Gondar and Addis Ababa. The Falash Mura received additional support in 2002 when Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef declared that the Falash Mura had converted out of fear and persecution and therefore should be considered Jews.

In January 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that all of the Falash Mura from Ethiopia would be brought to Israel by the end of 2007. But Israel realized that it could not bring in thousands of Ethiopians without the cooperation of the government of Ethiopia. In November 2005, Ethiopia and Israel signed an understanding to double the rate of Ethiopian immigration to Israel from 300 to 600 (per month). In 2007, an estimated 3,000 Falash Mura lived in Addis Ababa and another 12,000 in Gondar City. Altogether, approximately 18,000 Falash Mura were believed to still be in Ethiopia.

The last official airlift of Ethiopian Jews landed in Tel Aviv on 5 August 2008, bringing to an end Israel’s 30-year effort to bring all of the Jews to Israel. A month later, the Israeli Cabinet agreed to allow additional Ethiopians petition for aliyah. Some activists maintain that still more Jews remain in Ethiopia, but the government said it had brought the entire community to Israel, a total of roughly 120,000 people.

Still, more Falash Mura remained in Ethiopia after the “final” airlift. Several thousand were in a Gondar transit camp as of the end of 2009. In early January 2010, Israel began to accept small numbers out of Ethiopia again. The Israeli government said it would now accept approximately 3,000 Falash Mura.

Some Demographics of Modern Israel, from The World Factbook of the CIA

Where is Ark of the Covenant?

Mr. Nilsson did not state categorically that the Covenant, and the Ark containing it, were in Ethiopia, but no one can say categorically that it isn’t. Mr. Nilsson prefers to believe the account of the Ethiopian Jews; that is, the Ark was first ensconced on the island of of Tana Kirkos in Lake Tana, where it remained for over 800 years. When the Axumite kingdom converted to Christianity after 331 AD, the Ark of the Covenant was co-opted by the Christian hierarchy and brought from Tana Kirkos to the newly constructed church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, where it remains under the guardianship of the church. (Source).

Many of the references listed in the endnotes will point to, or state, different accounts. You are invited to explore these.

Today: The Third Temple?

According to orthodox Jewish people and Hebrew Bible, the First Temple was constructed by Solomon, the then King. This was also known as Solomon’s Temple and it dates back to the 10th century B.C. This Temple was the centre of orthodox Jewish belief and ancient Judaism. The Temple stood for around 400 years until Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians destroyed it in 586 BC.

There was a Second Jewish Temple built over the first one. Construction started in 537 BC and was completed in 516 BC. This Temple too was destroyed, by the Romans. In 19 BC, King Herod started the renovation with a vision of a grander Temple. However as soon as the complex was complete it was razed to the grounds by the Romans. After the destruction of the Second Temple, all Jews have included a prayer for the construction of the Third Jewish Temple in their daily prayers. (Source).

Plans for building the Third Temple in Jerusalem are under this link.

In that the first temple was built to house and protect the Ark of the Covenant, a question can be raised as to what Orthodox and other Jews will do to deal with this. There are some who claim that the Ark is buried under the ruins of the Second Temple:

The Ark of the Covenant is under the Temple Mount, in the Holy of Holies, awaiting its imminent placement in the Third Temple foretold by the Prophets and destined to become a House of Prayer for All Peoples. (Source).

The Covenant is hidden by the Ark not only for the safety of the tablets, but also for the safety of any on-looker:

The holiness of the Ark also made it dangerous to those who came in contact with it. When Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, brought a foreign flame to offer a sacrifice in the Tabernacle, they were devoured by a fire that emanated “from the Lord” (Lev. 10:2). During the saga of the capture of the Ark by the Philistines, numerous people, including some who merely looked at the Ark, were killed by its power. Similarly, the Priests who served in the Tabernacle and Temple were told that viewing the Ark at an improper time would result in immediate death (Num. 4:20). (Source).

Ark Carried on Poles by Egyptians in Procession. bible-history.com

Whatever its powers were when it could be identified as to place and time, the powers of The Covenant are visible today in the great interest it, and its Ark, elicit in historians, archaeologists, religions “of the book”, and in writers such as Mr. Bengt Nilsson who introduced the subject to me and Eric Gandy.

Now you have been affected, in some way, by the reading of this narrative.

—

Major sources used in this article:

Dictionary of African Christian Biography, Chris Prouty Rosenfeld

History of the Ethiopian Empire from Menekuk I, in 960 BC, to the Present

Is the Ark of the Covenant at Aksum?, by Roderick Grierson in The Wonders of the African World, PBS.org

Sacred Sites of Ethiopia and the Ark of the Covenant

The Book of James Bruce, Selected Pages

The Kebra Nagast, by E.A. Wallis Budge

The Lost Ark of the Covenant

The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son, Menyelek (Kĕbra Nagast), Translated by Sir E.A. Wallis Budge

The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant, by Stuart Munro-Hay: The True story of the Tablets of Moses

Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773

Other Sources:

The genome-wide structure of the Jewish people

Jewish ethnic divisions

Filed under: Archaeoology, Church, Religion, Geography, History, Religion Tagged: Abraham, Addis Ababa, Aliyah, Ariel Sharon, Ark of the Covenant, Axum dynasty, Bengt Nilsson, Beta Israel, Chris Prouty Rosenfeld, Church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, Dictionary of African Christian Biography, Ethiopia, Falash Mura, Falashas, Gondar, Haile Selassie, Holy of Holies, Israel, Israeli Ministry of Absorption, JAHWEH, James Bruce, King Herod, King Solomon of Israel, Lake Tana, Menelik, Mengistu dictatorship, Menilek I, Moses, Mossad, NACOEJ, North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry, Operation Joshua, Operation Moses, Operation Sheba, Queen of Sheba, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, source of the Blue Nile, Stuart Munro-Hay, Sudan, Tana Kirkos, Temple Mount, Temple of Jerusalem, The Book of James Bruce, The Kebra Nagast, the land of Canaan, The Lost Ark of the Covenant, the Promised Land, The Third Temple

A Milestone for this Magazine

Ron Pavellas — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 02:52:30 +0000

On this date, The Pavellas Perspective has logged 100,000 views since its inception in late February 2009. Thirty-seven months of statistics, including the 12-month moving monthly average, can be seen here:

The top ten most popular articles are, in descending order:

I have not published since December, 2011, but intend to begin again within the month.

Some of the subjects I am considering are:

The Three Eras of “Hellenism”: Ancient Greek Influence in Eastern and Western Cultures
Civilizations Before the Great Floods of the Last Glacial Maximum: A Speculation.
Gnosticism
Epicureanism

Other potential subjects will arise from my attendance at presentations of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), The Karolinska Institute (KI), and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI), among others.

I thank the subscribers to this blog who are my assured viewers each month. Please spread the word to your friends.

Warm regards,

Ron Pavellas
Stockholm, Sweden

Filed under: Uncategorized

The Outlook is Grim for the People of Afghanistan

Ron Pavellas — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:54:59 +0000

On what authority do I state this? I have one specific source and one general source.

The specific source is a day-long seminar held December 1 at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) on the campus of The Royal Institute of Technology entitled Afghanistan After 2014, which I attended.

The general source is the recent and current news of the world which has focused, again, more sharply on Afghanistan because of The announcement by President Obama that the US and NATO military forces will exit Afghanistan by the end of 2014; and, the convening of the Second Bonn Conference on Afghanistan held on 5 December 2011, ten years after the First Bonn Conference. In addition, there have been violent episodes within and without Afghanistan (in Pakistan near its border with Afghanistan), even as I compose this article, that bode ill for a strong and peaceful Afghanistan while the foreign troops leave over the next two years.

I have a small authority having worked for thirty days in 2005 as a volunteer consultant in Afghanistan, in the provinces of Kunduz and Wardak. You can see images and some narrative from this visit here.

I will offer links to current news and other sources of information after I present this summary of the seminar.

Seminar Summary, Four Sessions
(Note: remarks attributed to the participants are transcriptions from my hand-written notes; any errors of fact and interpretation are mine).

Twelve experts and scholars provided a comprehensive look at the history, current issues and possible outcomes for Afghanistan and the region around it. I will identify the participants during the course of this article. The sponsoring agencies for the seminar were:

FOI (Swedish Defence Research Agency)
SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute)
UI (Swedish Institute of International Affairs)

First Session: Reconciliation and Peace—a Possibility?

Masood Aziz, former Afghan Diplomat in Washington, D.C. began the formal presentations.

Ten years have passed since the first Bonn Conference in 2001. The news is generally bad in evaluating these years in Afghanistan. There has been some progress, but the outlook is bleak. Mr. Aziz is pessimistic because the Afghan government is weak, corruption is rampant, and the international community is losing interest.

There is a state of crisis, currently. The Afghan government may collapse after NATO/ISAF troops leave by the end of 2014. The Current USA conversation with the Taliban is going nowhere. NATO lacks a credible plan for transition for after 2014.

With a weak central government, and its possible collapse, the strongest remaining institution will be the Afghan army. (Here Mr. Aziz was not explicit, but it was clear that the prospect of a military dictatorship, or of the military playing a dominant role such as in Pakistan, was on his mind).

Counter-insurgency has been the main purpose of NATO and ISAF (International Security Assistance Force of NATO), not nation-building.

What to do?

Generally:

Redouble efforts to support and establish the legitimacy of the national government in the eyes of the Afghan people. If this confidence cannot be engendered, then collapse of the government is inevitable, with attendant violence between ethnicities and factions.
Need to buttress the rule of law, versus the rule of men.
Afghan security forces need to be at the service of the state.

From Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com)

Specifically:

Development of Afghanistan’s mineral resources may be the game changer, e.g., the Chinese-run copper mine and the Indian-run iron ore mine. However, the danger of the “resource curse” may be a down-side. A major portion of the state income from the development of natural resources should be directed as cash transfers to the people, as is done in other resource-rich countries such as Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Bolivia and Mongolia.

Mr. Aziz ended his prepared remarks thus:

The last ten years of NATO operations in Afghanistan have focused on strategic issues, mostly security. Since 2001 there has been a massive inflow of unconditional money from governments and NGOs causing the state to be dependent on these gifts. This is state-building from the outside, not from the inside and from the ground up via the people. Much of this money and other resources have flowed to former warlords.

Cash grants to the people from the income of natural resource development will force the government to rely on the people through the taxation of their income. This will also give new life and purpose to the National Solidarity Program and strengthen the governments and capabilities of the 34 provinces. Local communities will be empowered to take care of their own security and infrastructure projects. Not all security and infrastructure development need be performed by the national government.

Eva Johansson is head of the Afghanistan Section at the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). Here are some of her points.

Children are the most often forgotten in the issues addressed. Additionally, SIDA is interested in helping women to participate in the formation of the country. Sweden, through SIDA, has increased its support of these issues to become the second largest donor. The emphasis on security and counter-insurgency has put the issues of women and children in lower priority, despite efforts of SIDA and UNICEF. SIDA continues to be concerned about the condition of women’s rights in Afghanistan.

In the Bazaar, Kunduz, June 2005

Peter Brune, Secretary General of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA/SAK). The Swedish Committee has 6300 people in 12 of the 34 provinces. SCA/SAK have been on the ground in Afghanistan since 1982, providing education and other developmental services to people in the villages (not in the capital, Kabul).

In responding to Mr. Aziz’s comments Mr. Brune said it was a “tough call” to say we’ve failed. Mr. Brune introduced the discussion point that ten years is not enough time. This point was taken up and further developed by other speakers who followed.

Mr. Brune made these other points:

There needs to be a link between development and education.
It’s important not to be “diplomatic” in assessing and addressing the problems. We need to examine and learn from failures.
The state hasn’t failed yet. Girls are going to school; the army is being built, etc.
Others should do more of what the Swedish Committee is doing. [Link to a Power Point Presentation showing some of what the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan is doing]
SCA/SAK has zero tolerance for weapons in schools. It’s important to separate the military from education and other efforts at the grass roots.
We (NATO/ISAF, the Afghan government) are scrambling to build an army. Meanwhile the Afghan and Pakistan armies are facing each other on their common border.
There will be consequences in building a strong army in a weak state (thus buttressing Mr. Aziz’s argument).
What are the other institutions we can look to? The constitution, the executive and the parliament, none of which existed before the current government was established. [Note: he didn’t mention the judiciary, which is generally seen as corrupt and ineffective at the state level, although not necessarily at the local level).
Important people and entities are not talking with each other. For example, the Supreme Commander of NATO forces and SIDA have never met.
Real security is to strengthen the state.

Second Session: Reconciliation and Peace—a Possibility?

Robert Lamb is Director and Senior Fellow at Program on Crisis, Conflict and Cooperation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington D.C.

There have been talks about peace talks, but no peace talks. After the Taliban fell many soldiers and commanders went home without veterans’ benefits. Foes of the Taliban included the Northern Alliance, led primarily by warlords, some of whom are still in place.

In the 2001 Bonn Conference the Taliban were excluded and, since they had no part in the deliberations they have no stake in peace. Therefore, they went to Pakistan and became “insurgents”. The talks about peace talks continue, to date. Pakistan now demands to be part of the conversation.

Bad things began happening in 2010. An imposter apparently representing the Taliban conned the government of Afghanistan out of a lot of money, and created extreme embarrassment for all connected parties. In September of this year the chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council, Burhanuddin Rabbani, was been killed by a suicide attacker. He was meeting members of the Taliban at the time in an effort to negotiate toward peace talks.

It’s not clear what we can do to prevent civil war in Afghanistan. Former warlords, some of whom are now regional governors, are hoarding money and weapons.

We need to prevent the collapse of the Afghan state. (Non-military) development is important, “big time”, but will do no good if the government collapses. We need to keep the potential combatants (in a civil war) co-opted in the Afghan Government. This means tolerating “some very bad guys”.

thoseheadcoverings. blogspot.com

Helene Lackenbauer is an FOI analyst and former political aide to the Swedish Force Commander in Afghanistan.

There are very few possibilities leading toward peace. Who are the actors and what do we provide them? What are our prices for peace? Are we prepared to sell out women’s rights? What do we intend for the Taliban?

Mr. Brune responded: Afghanistan is at war. There are police, weapons, explosives and insurgents. The Taliban is not defined in any way. There can’t be a universal strategy; we have to address each group’s needs and grievances. Peace can be based on justice; all their rights have to be recognized and supported (implying the need for a strong and professional, not corrupt, national judiciary).

Robert Lamb “lifts the gloom”

Eleven years ago Afghanistan was a medieval theocracy. How long does it take to for such a state to become a representative democracy?
There is a civil service, although it is constantly raided for employees to the better paid NGOs and other private organizations.
Free speech exists, even if it may be dangerous.
There are radios and telephones.
Most areas are less violent than Northern Mexico.
Ten years is nothing in the history of nation building. Transitioning from Warlord rule to the rule of law doesn’t happen quickly or easily. Afghanistan is still in the warlord phase and will be for a long time.
Seventy-five percent of Afghans think the government is doing a good job, although the jirgas have more effect at the local level. If the state isn’t there, they figure things out (at the local level).

[Here I am not sure whether Robert Lamb continues, or whether Peter Brune and perhaps others are responding]

The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan has one-half million girls in school.
Students have TV and radios.
Rural areas are more negative on the future and are concerned about the return of the warlords.
Afghanistan is ethnically divided and is waiting for the next war. If the Taliban returns, they will bring Taliban rules. (Taliban are fundamentalist Sunni Muslims mostly from the Pashtun tribe).

(Note: Languages are Dari (official) 50%, Pashto (official) 35%, Turkic languages 11%, 30 minor languages (primarily Balochi and Pashai) 4%; Ethnic groups are Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4%. Religions are Sunni Muslim 80%, Shia Muslim 19%, other 1%.
[Source].

(Upon the likely collapse of the national government) a new Northern Alliance will emerge to oppose the Taliban.
The concerns of the people are: civil war, political collapse, financial crisis, jobs disappearing. The current president Hamid Karzai will not be running to succeed himself in the next election—who will rule? If the election collapses, who will emerge, and how?
Governors are more powerful than the national government in the eyes of the people. When the Soviets left there was chaos. Will there be the same again? After the Soviets left it was worse than with the Soviets.
People in Kabul are more positive. Children are always more positive (Note: the median age is 18 years: source).

Ann Wilkens, former Swedish ambassador to Pakistan and former Chairman of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, emphasized the point that there is not a unified Taliban group in Afghanistan. There are splinter groups, some interested in insurgency, some in drug traffic and some with other aims, for instance relating to religious practice.

Masood Aziz augmented this observation by noting there is a spectrum of different groups and there is a problem in assessing the association of any of them with Al Qaeda, which is of non-afghan origin led by non-Afghans. In addition, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the past and present leader of the Afghan Taliban, has been hiding out in Pakistan, even when he was head of state during the time when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

Middle East expert at UI Magnus Norell raised the question of the current objective of the Taliban. He suggested they want influence in the current processes addressing the future of Afghanistan. Ann Wilkens asserted that the institution of Sharia law is their objective. Norell said that these were not mutually exclusive.

Masood Aziz said this is not a valid question because there is no unified Taliban. He further noted that strict Sharia law alienated Afghans during their Taliban rule. Afghans felt an alien force took over their state. Mullah Omar, who has no stated or known religious education or lineage, alienated Afghan tribal leaders during his rule.

Kabul, June 2005

Third Session: Counter-insurgency

Context:

“All the bad stuff” is located in Pakistan: the Quetta Shura Taliban and the Haqqani Network, for instance.
The tribal and other leaders in Afghanistan have a common enemy in the various Taliban entities, but have no common strategy.
The stated US objective is to disrupt and destroy Al Qaeda. Is it working, or should the US change its objective? President Obama has shifted the focus to counter-insurgency.

Stefan Olsson of the FOI stated the problem with counter-insurgency is that it will take ten years to wipe out the insurgents. There is too little time for this (by the end of 2014) and it won’t work.

Harsh Pant of King’s College, London, said the current tension between the US and Pakistan over insurgents in Pakistan will come to a head as a result of a vicious cycle.

Masood Aziz said that the US military has ever-changing nomenclature for what it is they are doing. “Stability” is now in vogue. Previously it was “Clear/Hold/Build/Transfer”. Before that it was “Fight/Talk/Build”.

Military officers are talking to village elders about democracy; they aren’t experts in this. The US military is trying to embed itself in the culture and change it from the inside. It won’t work.

Stefan Olsson said “counter-insurgency is not nation-building”.

We have to realize our limitations in using only the military to bring “stability”.

Question posed to the panel: Will Afghan security forces be able to fill the vacuum left by the NATO/ISAF departure?

One response: The Afghan people would like the troops to leave, but “not too quickly”.

Stefan Olsson: The Swedish government doesn’t know what the end state should be, or when. The USA seems to want to fight the insurgents to the negotiating table.

In the Afghan security forces the Army officers are from the former Northern Alliance; that is, they are not of the Pashtun tribe as is the majority of the government officers. The Army may not feel itself subservient to a weak national government.

Other responses:

In that the USA/NATO have announced a time certain by which their troops will leave, the Taliban is in a position to wait to intensify their incursions.

The USA needs to stay after 2014, in some fashion, to deal with other countries such as Iran and Pakistan.

Neither the USA nor NATO has a strategy for filling the vacuum created by their departure.

Question from the audience: Can and will India be a force for good in Afghanistan?

Masood Aziz: Pakistan seems to want the opposite of what everybody else wants in Afghanistan. India, which is right next door, is the world’s largest democracy. In contrast, the military dominates Pakistan, but is not all-powerful because of the influence of organized groups such as the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which wants to oust the US-backed Pakistani government.

In response to another question regarding the possible role of the EU, Mr. Masood said that the EU has the talent and moral foundation to help build infrastructure for Afghanistan. As an example of “moral force” he recited a story of how a US Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s left an indelible impression on a now elderly man in a remote village.

Chief Engineer, local construction engineer, and driver -- employees of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, 2005

Fourth and Final Session: Geopolitics and the Regional Dynamics

Context: There has been a change in the global balance of power from West to East, in operational terms. The center of world politics has been Europe, but now is moving toward Asia/China.

Harsh Pant of King’s College, London opened the session.

American priorities are changing: Afghanistan is not as important as before, as China emerges as a priority.

Global priorities are going to be influenced/centered in Asia/Pacific.

Pakistan now realizes that it is not the most important ally the USA has in its region. The USA sees India as its most important ally vis-à-vis China, and Islamabad (Pakistan’s capital) is worried. Pakistan has to hedge its bets; it needs a friendly Kabul (Capital of Afghanistan) so as not to be flanked by enemies—India to the east and Afghanistan to the west.

Pakistan’s self-identity seems to have been that it is not India. The Pakistan military has never won a war, but the Pakistan army points the people of Pakistan to India for its raison d’être as an army. Pakistan has tried to marginalize India in insisting they not be included in Afghan talks. Washington finally realized that Pakistan was playing a double game.

India realized this marginalization and now has decided to invest in Afghanistan (refer to the previously mentioned iron ore mine in Hajigak). Additionally, India has been reaching toward Russia and Iran, both of which flank Afghanistan. India likes a western presence in Afghanistan, but Russia and Iran don’t—but India balances this somehow.

China is feeling encircled by the USA. They are reluctant to talk with the USA about Afghanistan and Pakistan. They don’t want to compromise their relationship with Pakistan.

Current events reveal a conflict between the USA and Pakistan, a symptom of the underlying problem of Pakistan’s feeling of isolation and loss of importance to the USA.

Neil J. Melvin, Director of the Armed Conflict and Conflict Management Programme at SIPRI, responded:

The USA is drawing closer to its Asia/pacific allies and courting new ones such as Burma. Therefore, Afghanistan will remain important to the USA in this context, but where does Afghanistan fit? We don’t know yet.

Russia is courting Afghanistan by encouraging it toward the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. (The six-nation SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan attend its meetings as observers. Source).

Harsh Pant added that Pakistan’s uncertainty about the USA’s intentions makes it difficult for them to know how to act.

Former Swedish Ambassador to Pakistan Ann Wilkens stated that the sequencing of events is unfortunate for Pakistan. There are conflicting messages to and from all players in the region. What does the USA want? She noted that the Pakistan army was built by the USA.

Magnus Norell: A report of the US Marines recommended forgetting nation building and to leave just a small counter-terrorism force in Afghanistan. It should be treated by the USA as a “marginal country”. We’re reading too much importance into it. You can’t solve Afghanistan unless you deal successfully with Pakistan. Let’s not look at Afghanistan as a regional issue. Keep it local.

From the moderator: From the perspective of Iran and Pakistan (which have long borders with Afghanistan) why is everyone waiting to see what the USA is going to do? The USA doesn’t have the leverage for a regional solution.

Neil J. Melvin: it is a dilemma. Russia, Iran and others want the USA out, but no-one else has the strength to do anything constructive on a regional basis. Iran has around three million Afghan refugees and doesn’t like the Taliban. There needs to be trust building between nations in the region. China is interested in stability and doesn’t want attacks from terrorists, so it keeps a low profile. One of China’s important interests in stability is due to the question of whether to build an additional gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China through Afghanistan.

From the moderator: the world economy affects Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan and things are looking austere for these countries. How does this factor into the regional issues?

Answer from panel: if the world and local economy were better, it still wouldn’t solve Afghanistan’s problem which is one of governance.

Last question form the moderator: What should we do? What should we focus on?

Reponses from the panel:

The West should continue to support Afghanistan economically.
Donor nations need more humility in their approach to Afghanistan.
Get out and stay out, militarily.
Spend aid on education, etc.
Don’t pull out (the military) gradually.

The moderators were:

Nathalie Besèr is Advisor to the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI)

John Rydqvist is Head of the Asia Security Studies Program at FOI.

END OF CONFERENCE

Links to information sources:

NATO in Afghanistan
Terrorism and Insurgency
Al‐Qaeda and Afghanistan in Strategic Context: Counterinsurgency versus Counterterrorism
The Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) and the Haqqani network pose the greatest threat to stability in Afghanistan
Quetta Shura Taliban
Haqqani Network
Mullah Mohammed Omar
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP)
Purdah
The pragmatic fanaticism of al Qaeda: an anatomy of extremism in Middle Eastern politics.
NATO/ISAF history and facts about its troops

Links to recent and current news affecting Afghanistan and the region

Afghan National Army prepares for life after NATO
‘West must see Afghan job through’, military chief says
Pakistani Taliban splintering into factions
Afghan Peace Effort Hits Wall
Attacks Point to New Afghan Conflict: Bombings of Shiite Worshippers in Two Cities Kill More Than 60 and Introduce Sectarian Strife Absent for a Decade
Kabul Promises Change, Gets Vow of Lasting Aid
A Counterinsurgency Success in Kandahar
Afghan opium production to expand after troops exit
Hornets’ nest: Why Pakistan may be America’s most dangerous ally
Pakistan Was Consulted Before Fatal Hit, U.S. Says; Deadly Border Strike Came After Forces Were Told Area Was Clear of Pakistani Troops, Officials Say
There Are No Moderate Taliban; the people of Afghanistan understand that accommodating the Taliban will result in fear and chaos.
India Wins Bid for ‘Jewel’ of Afghan Ore Deposits

Filed under: Geography, International Diplomacy, National and International Defense, Politics, War Tagged: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Ann Wilkens, Center for Strategic and International Studies, China, Counter-insurgency, Eva Johansson, FOI, Harsh Pant, Helene Lackenbauer, Iran, Magnus Norell, Masood Aziz, Mullah Mohammed Omar, National Solidarity Program, NATO, NATO/ISAF Military Forces, Neil J. Melvin, Northern Alliance, Pakistan, Peter Brune, Robert Lamb, Russia, SCA/SAK, Second Bonn Conference on Afghanistan, SIDA, SIPRI, Stefan Olsson, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Taliban, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, The Royal Institute of Technology, TTP, UI, United States

Putin’s return “a national catastrophe for Russia”

Ron Pavellas — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:49:28 +0000

Those are the words Yevgeniya Albats wrote in her political journal, the Russian New Times Magazine, of which she is chief editor.

Yevgeniya Albats

My article today will recount the facts, opinions and assertions that Albats offered during a seminar at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs on 15 November 2011. After her presentation a three-person panel, described below, responded to her talk and to questions from the audience.

Vladimir Putin was in office as president of the Russian Federation 7 May 2000 – 7 May 2008. On 8 May 2000, the second day of his first four-year term, he issued a secret decree (ukase) which gave him control over the nation’s alcohol production, then the second largest industry in Russia. Thus began a series of moves which ultimately put into the hands of the president, the governmental apparatus reporting to him, and indirectly and privately through close associates and family, around 15% of the current gross domestic product (GDP) of the nation. The CIA’s 2010 estimate of Russia’s GDP is US$1.465 trillion, so if Albats’s assertion is close to correct, the annual revenues controlled, directly and indirectly, by Putin are around US$220 billion.

Albats presented a chart showing, among others, these additional industries under direct or indirect control: financial services, oil/petroleum, railroads and other transport, construction, metal production, energy, chemicals, media, telecoms, and sport. Most important is that all the industries serving the military are under state control. These are not all owned by the state. Others are controlled through the state regulatory agencies and through ownership by Putin’s circle of associates, including family. (The three groups through which Putin exercises influence and control are discussed further below)

Vladimir Putin, Past president of Russia, Current Prime Minister, and... future President?

The Russian Duma, equivalent to the lower house in a bicameral legislature, has been made powerless to control the cash flow of state run enterprises. One result of this concentration of control and resultant power is that Putin and his inner circle have become extremely wealthy.

Putin’s presidency ended, per the Russian Constitution, after he completed his second term. His hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, appointed Putin as Prime Minster (formally, Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation) which position he still occupies.

In September of this year, President Medvedev announced he had decided not to run for a second term, and put forth Mr. Putin as his choice for the next president in the election to be held on 4 March 2012. Mr. Putin announced his intention to stand for President on 24 September.

This announcement, which serves notice that Putin will, in fact, become the president via the next national election has dismayed many people inside and outside Russia, not the least of whom is the speaker at this conference, Yevgeniya Albats. She refuses to use the term “election” in her news magazine saying “the word ‘election’ implies ‘choice’, but there is effectively no choice in Russia today”.

In the British news magazine The Economist, writer E.L. states “… Mr Putin, a former KGB officer, remade Russian politics in his own image after coming to power. He harassed and jailed opponents and confiscated their energy and media assets; he created a political system in which important elections always go the authorities’ way. The upcoming ones will be no exception…” (Source: The return of the man who never left, Sep 24th 2011).

Neil Buckley of The (UK) Fianancial Times reported from Moscow “… Mr Putin is coming back for a third presidential term, Russia’s intellectual and business elites, at least, are no longer sure this is a good thing. Debates at last week’s annual Valdai Discussion Club, a Putin initiative dating from 2004 that brings together top foreign and domestic specialists on Russia, revealed deep unease… (Excerpted from Rising unease over Putin’s return, 16 November 2011).

How does Putin gain and maintain control of the state apparatus and assets? Through three groups of people:

Siloviki (described below); members of a housing cooperative of which he is a founding member (Ozero); and, his extended family.

The Siloviki

Silovik is a Russian word for politicians from the security or military services, often the officers of the former KGB, the FSB, the Federal Narcotics Control Service and military or other security services who came into power. It can also refer to security-service personnel from any country or nationality. (Source).

“… The most commonly encountered description of the siloviki, a group of current and former Intelligence officers from Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg who wield immense power within the Kremlin and control key sectors of the Russian economy, is both incomplete and misleading. The siloviki clan’s core members—Igor Sechin, deputy head of the presidential administration; Viktor Ivanov, an adviser to the president; and Nikolai Patrushev, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB)—more or less fit this profile. Surrounding these powerbrokers, however, is a network of individuals who do not. Associates of Sechin, Ivanov, and Patrushev hold top positions not only in the Kremlin and government ministries, but also in the second tier of the bureaucracy, state-owned enterprises, and private companies…” (excerpted from The Siloviki in Putin’s Russia: Who They Are and What They Want, by Ian Bremmer and Samuel Charap).

Ozero

Ozero is a co-operative society allegedly instituted on November 10, 1996 by Vladimir Smirnov (head), Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Yakunin, Andrei Fursenko, Sergey Fursenko, Yury Kovalchuk, Viktor Myachin, and Nikolay Shamalov. The society united their dachas in Solovyovka, Priozersky District of Leningrad Oblast, which is located on the eastern shore of the Komsomolskoye lake on the Karelian Isthmus near Saint Petersburg. (Source)

I speculate that one or both of these compounds on the southeastern shore of Lake Komsomolskoye is “The Ozero”. Click on the picture for greater detail.

By now, its shareholders have assumed top positions in Russian government and business. As of 2008, Vladimir Putin is the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Yakunin is the Head of Russian Railways, Andrei Fursenko is the Minister of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Sergey Fursenko is a brother of Andrei Fursenko, the Director-General of Lentransgaz and the President of the Football Club Zenit (St. Petersburg), Yury Kovalchuk is the Head of the Board of Directors and a major shareholder of the Russia bank, Viktor Myachin is its former Director General (1995-1998, 1999-2004), Nikolay Shamalov and Vladimir Smirnov are prominent businessmen. (Source).

Putin’s Extended Family

Yevgeniya Albats did not dwell on this group, merely mentioning that “nephews” and others hold middle or higher level positions in the state government. The Internet does not quickly offer insight into Putin’s family, except for this from Wikipedia:

On 28 July 1983 Putin married Kaliningrad-born Lyudmila Shkrebneva, at that time an undergraduate student of the Spanish branch of the Philology Department of the Leningrad State University and a former Aeroflot flight attendant. They have two daughters, Mariya Putina (born 28 April 1985 in St. Petersburg) and Yekaterina Putina (born 31 August 1986 in Dresden). The daughters grew up in East Germany and attended the German School in Moscow until his appointment as Prime Minister. After that they studied international economics at the Finance Academy in Moscow. Vladimir’s cousin Igor Putin is a director of Master Bank.

Other methods of control are open to see. On 28 December 2004, the Los Angeles Times Wire Reports stated that “President Vladimir V. Putin set rules for naming Russia’s regional governors after pushing through a law that abolished their direct election. Putin signed the decree that gives the presidential chief of staff the task of drawing up and submitting lists of gubernatorial candidates to the president.” (Source: Putin Signs Decree on Naming of Governors).

Click on the image to view it more clearly

All the people who surround or are connected with Putin depend on him, in varying degrees, for maintaining their positions and lifestyle. Thus they have an interest in him staying in power. As Albats put it, “ it’s hard to break his spell over them” because they will lose power if he leaves the stage. And, by the nature of how he has gained power, he has trapped himself into continuing to do what he has been doing. He and his apparent stooge, Medvedev, have talked about reform, but little has been done in this regard.

Meanwhile, according to Albats: 2000 former business leaders are in labor camps and jails; 80% of all the top dogs in government are ex-KGB employees; the 83 regions keep only 30% of the taxes they collect and must send 70% to the Kremlin. The President of the Russian Federation is the effective ruler of every subordinate political jurisdiction.

In addition, Putin’s bullying of, and alleged murders of, independent commentators and journalists is notorious:

“The murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October 2006 shocked the world. ‘Yet for every Anna, there have been many less widely known journalists killed for their work across Russia,’ says the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in a groundbreaking report on the 313 Russian journalists killed since 1993.” (Source: More than 300 journalists killed in Russia since 1993, says joint report).

Russian human rights activists place flowers at a portrait of slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow on October 7, 2009 during a rally on the third anniversary of her death at the hands of an unknown gunman. (Source: www.lecourrierderussie.com/2011/08/25/)

Boris Nemtsov, former deputy prime minister of Russia and current opposition leader, suggested in a 2011 interview that only those in Ozero really support Putin any more: “Everyone is unhappy with Putin, save perhaps his closest friends, members of the so-called Ozero dacha cooperative [...] In only a few years these fellows turned from medium-sized entrepreneurs into dollar billionaires. For example, the Kovalchuk brothers have seized power over Gazprom; the KGB veteran Gennady Timchenko is now a trader who controls 40 percent of all crude oil exports; Putin’s former (martial arts) coaches, the Rotenberg brothers, continue to get lucrative contracts, and there are a few more people like this.” (Source).

In concluding her formal remarks, Yevgeniya Albats said these things (from my written notes):

Despite everything she has “hope”, but this is in her nature. People are getting sick and tired of seeing the same old faces in positions of power on TV and elsewhere. Rural people are offended by Putin’s “coming back”. Young people are angry at Putin’s announced return and are wondering whether to leave Russia. Only 36% of the people have access to the Internet, but as more come on line they will be able to connect with others who are dissatisfied with the regime.

The program ended with remarks from a panel of experts:

· Lena Jonson, Head of the Russia Research Program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs

· Carolina Vendil Pallin, Head of the Russia Research Programme at the Swedish Defence Research Agency

· Torbjörn Becker, Director, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economic s

· The moderator was Nathalie Besèr, Advisor to the Swedish Institute of International Affairs

Lena Jonson addressed the issue of Russian stagnation because its closed system is resistant to change. She asked Albats her opinion on the likely source of the possible collapse of the Putin regime. Albats responded by saying that there will likely be a confrontation over control of resources, especially form the trade unions, and, there are signs of cleavages inside the elite groups. There are no institutional avenues to accommodate necessary change, therefore action in the street such as currently in Tunisia and Egypt becomes more likely.

Carolina Vendil Pallin focused on the writings of the elite, especially through blogs. She sees that these elite feel “humiliated” by Putin’s actions and style of governance. She sees that growing Internet accdess wil play an important role in creating necessary change. (Personal Note: the Samizdat in the Soviet Union and European communist eastern states played a similar role).

Albats agreed and said that the PR of the Kremlin is out of synch with the rest of society. She said that Putin is aware of this but seems powerless to bridge the gap. He has tried shallow things such as trying to appear more youthful, through plastic surgery and public display of his athleticism, but these are not working. More than anything, there is loss of confidence in public institutions, especially the judiciary.

This could all lead to a collapse of the state, “which would be dangerous to other people, including you guys” (indicating the audience of, mostly, Swedes.

Torbjörn Becker pointed out that Russia looks “relatively OK economically” and still has general political support as a result. Albats agreed that economic times were (relatively) good in Russia right now, but Putin will not reform. She cited others who have heard Putin say that once you start reform, there is no way back, and he (Putin) used Mikhail Gorbachev (the last head of state of the Soviet Union) as an example as what he did not want to do. The growing middle class will put pressure on the current system to reform. The Russian economy has improved due mostly from the rise in the market price of crude oil. The grass roots issue is not economic, but one of representation.

Some final remarks by Yevgeniya Albats in response questions from the audience’s questions:

Putin sees the West as Russia’s enemy, especially the USA.

Putin wants to re-create the Imperial Empire, but it is not possible because of resistance in the “Stans” (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan).

Despite her native optimism, Yevgeniya Albats is afraid that Russia has lost its opportunity to change peacefully.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Anna Politkovskaya, Boris Nemtsov, Carolina Vendil Pallin, Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation, Committee for State Security, Dmitry Medvedev, Kazakhstan, KGB, Komsomolskoye lake, Kyrgyzstan, Lena Jonson, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nathalie Besèr, New Times Magazine, Ozero, Priozersky District of Leningrad Oblast, Russian Constitution, Russian Duma, Russian Federation, Saint Petersburg, Siloviki, Solovyovka, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Tajikistan, The Constitution of the Russian Federation, The Economist, Torbjörn Becker, Turkmenistan, Utrikespolitiska institutet, Uzbekistan, Vladimir Putin, Yevgeniya Albats

States of the United States vs. the Federal Government

Ron Pavellas — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:33:51 +0000

From before the adoption of the US Constitution in 1787, there has been strenuous argument, sometimes bordering on the violent, between those who wanted a strong central government and those who saw the individual states as the primary locus of governmental power—except for those 18 specific powers granted to the two houses of the federal government, as enumerated in the Constitution.

(Former President) Jefferson… maintained that the national and state governments were ‘as independent, in fact, as different nations,’ and that the function of one was foreign and that of the other was domestic. President Madison still declared that Congress could not build a road or clear a watercourse; while Congress believed itself authorized to do both, and in that belief passed a law which Madison vetoed. (Source).

Why am I bringing this up 224 years after the adoption of our Constitution? Hasn’t the primacy of the Federal government in almost all matters been settled? Perhaps not. See these recent headlines, and the articles under the links:

Sitting Supreme Court Justices, 2011

After the successful Declaration of Independence from Great Britain by the Continental Congress in 1776, eleven years passed before the delegates from the 13 former colonies, now “states”, adopted the US Constitution. The USA was governed during these eleven years by a series of Continental Congresses, each with a presiding officer, or “President”, under the rules of governance as contained in The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union Between The States.

Many of the delegates from the new states were dissatisfied with the Articles. In May, 1787, a remarkable group of men began publishing a series of 85 pseudonymous monographs in the New York press, under the general heading of The Federalist. These are now famously known as The Federalist Papers. The authors, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, advanced their criticisms and recommendations for improvement in the Articles that were “adequate to the exigencies of government and the preservation of the Union”.

Fearing a return to British-style despotism, some other people, mostly from Virginia, started publishing responses to the Federalist articles, now known as the Anti-Federalist Papers. Led by Patrick Henry of Virginia, Anti-Federalists worried that the position of president in the proposed constitution would lead to a monarchy. Jefferson was sympathetic to the Anti-Federalists.

The Federalists won public support and the Constitution was passed, along with ten amendments, the 9^th and 10^thof which were advanced by those with Anti-Federalist sentiments.

Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to theUnited Statesby the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Source: chogger.com

George Washington wanted a strong central government but he recognized there was danger in appearing as a monarch. During his eight years as the first president, famously saying his title should be “Mr. President”, he said and did as little as possible and deferred where and when possible to the houses of Congress. He did institute the system of departmental “secretaries” in a “Cabinet”, to which he delegated almost completely, including Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury and Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State.

As members of Washington’s cabinet Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton argued over national fiscal policy, especially the funding of the debts of the war. Jefferson later compared Hamilton and the Federalists with “Royalism”, and stated the “Hamiltonians were panting after…crowns, coronets and mitres.” Due to their opposition to Hamilton, Jefferson and James Madison founded and led the Democratic-Republican Party… Jefferson’s political actions, and his attempt to undermine Hamilton, nearly led George Washington to dismiss Jefferson from his cabinet. Though Jefferson left the cabinet voluntarily, Washington never forgave him, and never spoke to him again.” (Source)

Shortly before Washington’s Vice President and successor left his presidential office, John Adams appointed John Marshall, a Federalist, to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, intending that Marshall should provide a check against the “Jacobin” (i.e., revolutionary) and “democratic” (used as a term of opprobrium by Federalists) tendencies of the incoming President Jefferson. Marshall served 35 years and did indeed perform this function:

The Marshall Courtmade several important decisions relating to federalism, affecting the balance of power between the federal government and the states during the early years of the republic. In particular, he repeatedly confirmed the supremacy of federal law over state law, and supported an expansive reading of the enumerated powers. (Source).

Chief Supreme Court Justice John Marshall, 1801-1835

There still is much argument within and without the courts whether states can effectively nullify any given federal statute. We may well see this decided, again, by the sitting Supreme Court within a few years as the state actions quoted above, and others, are played out in the courts.

How do these states presume to “nullify” existing, or even future, federal legislation? Where does this notion of “nullification” come from? From resolutions, written by Jefferson and Madison, and adopted by two states: the Virginia Resolution of 1798, and the Kentucky Resolution of 1799 wherein the states said they deemed the Alien and Sedition Acts unconstitutional and would not recognize them, or any other unconstitutional law, as binding on the states or their citizens. The issue was never brought to a head and the four Acts either were repealed or expired during Jefferson’s administration.

There have been several other important attempts by states (and the Cherokee Nation) to nullify federal laws, but these have either been made moot by changing circumstances or have been denied by the Supreme Court.

It should be noted that the primacy of the federal government was greatly strengthened through the prosecution and eventual result of the “war between the states”.

A broader view of the relationship between the center of government and the people, from comments by a friend and correspondent, Jay Michlin of San Mateo, California:

An even more interesting question is not just about states versus Washington, D.C., but also about the competing virtues of individual and local liberty versus all forms of centralized governance.

These include questions regarding when individuals should retain autonomy, with neither guidance nor coercion from any governing entity, whether city, state or federal. It includes matters about which cities or towns ought to retain jurisdiction, without interference from state governments. And it includes states rights versus the federal government too.

At one extreme, Jefferson had little trust in governments. He wanted whatever government may be necessary to be as close as possible to citizens, and as much as possible under their control. We denote this with the term “Jeffersonian democracy“. The loose association of states under the Articles of Confederation enacted this concept and was ultimately seen as a failure.

Hamilton saw no way to allow the country to succeed as a loose federation without a potent central government. Yet he too understood the risks of ceding too much power to any government, and he further understood that it would be an exceedingly hard sell to a population fresh from revolution against governance by an unaccountable entity at a great distance—London. He, Jay and Madison wrote The Federalist Papers as a series to sell the idea of a more powerful central government, and more important, to allay citizens’ fears that it would become a tyranny enslaving them.

Busts of Jefferson and Hamilton, which Jefferson placed on opposite sides of the entrance hall at Monticello. This arrangement, he told visitors, showed them "opposed in death as in life". (mahg/ashland/edu)

The Bill of Rights was a political compromise along this order. Hamiltonians rightly said that no such bill was needed since the body of the Constitution rigorously enumerated the powers of the central government. But Jeffersonians didn’t trust a central government and insisted that rights be explicitly spelled out, even if redundant.

As we now know from the vantage point of more than 200 years, the Hamiltonians were right in theory, but the Jeffersonians were right in practice. And this underscores the remarkable gift the Founders gave us in the Constitution. It began with rigorous theory based on studies of governments from ancient times, to-date, then overlaid and strengthened these with brilliant insights into human nature, as the millennia have also taught us.

The Founders understood that the allocation of central authority versus local autonomy would forever be a tense and contentious matter, with each side vying for power. They knew they could not enshrine a division for time immemorial, and they perceived that the resolution would inevitably be political. So they gave us a framework by which each generation could make prudent decisions, with checks and balances to constrain either extreme from wresting definitive control.

Other societies have regularly suffered the same tensions, and usually resolved them by wars of one sort or another. The genius of our Founders is to have bequeathed us a system where we fight the battles politically and rhetorically and, therefore, peacefully.

Ending Summary and Comment

The question remains: how much power must and should the central government retain and exercise to fulfill the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the purposes of U.S. Constitution; and, how much power should be retained by the states to assure the liberties of people residing within each of them—all 50?

The Federalists (later, Republicans) didn’t trust the people and even used the word “democracy” and its derivatives disparagingly. The Anti-Federalists (later, the Democratic-Republicans and, still later, the Democrats) didn’t trust a strong central government, feeling it would lead to the despotism they fought against in order to be free of Great Britain and its hierarchies of power: king, church, aristocracy.

Current day Democrats have been successful in directing more power to the federal government in the name of “fairness” and other abstractions aimed at leveling social and economic disparities among classes of people.

Most elements of the current Republican Party, especially the Libertarian wing, see great danger in the power that has accrued to Washington, D.C. in the past Century.

The historical ironies presented here are worth contemplating. As Mr. Michlin points out, the amazing flexibility of our system allows for such shifts of political perspectives.

For example, without a strong central government would we have had the necessary attention paid to the inequities of “Jim Crow” in most of the southern states?

On the other hand, how far must and should the central government protect us from ourselves in matters of diet and behavior, for instance, without infantilizing the citizenry?

How do you see it?

Filed under: Democracy, Government Tagged: Alexander Hamilton, Alien and Sedition Acts, Anti-Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalists, checks and balances, Chief Justice John Marshall, Constitution of the United states of America, Continental Congress, Declaration of Independence, Democratic Party, Democratic-Republican party, Democrats, enumerated powers, fairness, Federal Government, George Washington, James Madison, Jay Michlin, Jim Crow, John Adams, John Jay, Kentucky Resolution of 1799, Libertarians, Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution, nullification of federal statutes, Republican Party, Republicans, states rights, Supreme Court of the United States of America, system of checks and balances, Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution, The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union Between The States, The Federalist, The Federalist Papers, Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Resolution of 1798, war between the states

“Science”: What it is and is not, and how it is misused in most public contexts

Ron Pavellas — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 14:02:20 +0000

How many times have you seen a headline, or have heard a politician speak, expressing something like: “Science shows that…”, or “Scientists say that…”?

The following four statements are mine alone:

- Do not accept anything written or said in the contexts described above.

- “Science” is not a thing, or a person, or group of persons which shows anything, or takes any action, or has an opinion.

- What any purported group of scientists “says” is inappropriate to quote, other than from a publication deemed “scientific”, and in the exact language in such a publication.

- Especially discard as false anything a scientist says or is quoted as saying if it contains any variant of the verb ‘to believe’.

How do I justify these dicta? So glad you asked.

What is “science”?

Here is what certain people whom we can comfortably label “scientists” have said:

Fiction is about the suspension of disbelief; science is about the suspension of belief.
— James Porter, Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor, Odum School of Ecology, University of Georgia, USA

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.
—Richard Feynman, Nobel-prize-winning physicist

So, suspend your beliefs and develop your skepticism if you wish to be a scientist. Note: Classical philosophical skepticism derives from the Skeptikoi (Greek), a school who “asserted nothing”. (Source).

Fundamental to all “scientific” inquiries is the concept of empiricism:

Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. (Source).

Which now brings us to the heart of the matter: The Scientific Method.

Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses…

Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results…

(T)he process must be objective to reduce biased interpretations of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established….(Source)

There you have it.

But wait! There’s more!!

I recently came across the newspaper article, Fraud in a lab coat. At the end, the writer, Gareth Cook, states: “We need to do better. Science is a quest for the truth. And to know what is true, one must know what is false.”

Is science, indeed, a quest for “truth”?

Karl Popper (Source: http://ub.uni-klu.ac.at/)

Here is what British philosopher of science Karl Popper says on this:

I think that we shall have to get accustomed to the idea that we must not look upon science as a “body of knowledge”, but rather as a system of hypotheses, or as a system of guesses or anticipations that in principle cannot be justified, but with which we work as long as they stand up to tests, and of which we are never justified in saying that we know they are “true” . . . (Emphasis added). —Karl R. Popper (1902-1994), The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

So, don’t “believe” in science.

A belief system is (comprised of) ideas that are taken on faith and cannot be scientifically tested. (Source).

I assert that, as compared with the realm of science, a belief system is a relatively closed system. The realm of science cannot be closed or complete. There is always more to doubt, more to hypothesize, more to discover, more to test.

To be fair to the conscientious scientist who is, after all, a human being with desires and goals, I here quote my friend Vasil, a retired MD, PhD psychopharmacologist who spent many productive years in clinical research. He responded to my arguments that a scientist can’t properly believe in anything when pursuing the proof of a hypothesis: “I’m sure that it is true, but not sure that it is absolutely true.”

Finally, I assert that to believe in anything is not a bad thing. Each of us has our set and systems of beliefs. Most of us in any given locale share these beliefs (whether or not we recognize them consciously as such) or the local society tends to disintegrate and disperse.

What a scientist must do, and very difficult it is, is to consciously identify her or his set or system of beliefs and to suspend it in the pursuit of new information about the universe.

“…the ideal of scientific neutrality is itself, like all other ideals, a human invention. And like other human ideals, it is subject to abuse if its character and function are misconceived.” – Philip H. Rhinelander (1908—1987), philosopher, Stanford professor emeritus, and former dean of the Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences.

NB: In the spirit of full disclosure, which is a requirement in any scientific paper (see above), I offer this: Regarding Belief, in the Realm of the Religious or Spiritual.

Filed under: Philosophy, Science-general Tagged: belief, empiricism, Gareth Cook, James Porter, Karl R. Popper, philosophy of science, Richard Feynman, science, scientific method, scientists, Skeptikoi, suspension of belief, suspension of disbelief, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, to believe, Truth

The “Charter 08 Manifesto” initiated by Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists in 2008

Ron Pavellas — Tue, 10 May 2011 13:17:33 +0000

There is much currently said, written and felt about the rise of China’s economic and political power in the world. I offer this view from the inside for some perspective on the discussion.

All of the following was written by someone else. I have performed a small amount of formatting and editing to promote clarity.

—

Charter 08 is a manifesto initially signed by over 350 Chinese intellectuals and human rights activists.^[1] It was published on 10 December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the [UN’s] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopting name and style from the anti-Soviet Charter 77 issued by dissidents in Czechoslovakia.^[2] Since its release, more than 10,000 people inside and outside of China have signed the charter.^[3][4]One of the authors of Charter 08, Liu Xiaobo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. [Source]

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THE MANIFESTO

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I. Foreword

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A hundred years have passed since the writing of China’s first constitution. 2008 also marks the sixtieth anniversary of the promulgation of the [United Nations] Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the thirtieth anniversary of the appearance of Democracy Wall in Beijing, and the tenth of China’s signing of the [United Nations] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

We are approaching the twentieth anniversary of the 1989Tiananmen massacre of pro-democracy student protesters. The Chinese people, who have endured human rights disasters and uncountable struggles across these same years, now include many who see clearly that freedom, equality, and human rights are universal values of humankind and that democracy and constitutional government are the fundamental framework for protecting these values.

By departing from these values, the Chinese government’s approach to “modernization” has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse. So we ask: Where is China headed in the twenty-first century? Will it continue with “modernization” under authoritarian rule, or will it embrace universal human values, join the mainstream of civilized nations, and build a democratic system?

There can be no avoiding these questions. The shock of the Western impact upon China in the nineteenth century laid bare a decadent authoritarian system and marked the beginning of what is often called “the greatest changes in thousands of years” for China. A “self-strengthening movement” followed, but this aimed simply at appropriating the technology to build gunboats and other Western material objects. China’s humiliating naval defeat at the hands of Japan in1895 only confirmed the obsolescence of China’s system of government.

The first attempts at modern political change came with the ill-fated summer of reforms in 1898, but these were cruelly crushed by ultraconservatives at China’s imperial court. With the revolution of 1911, which inaugurated Asia’s first republic, the authoritarian imperial system that had lasted for centuries was finally supposed to have been laid to rest. But social conflict inside our country and external pressures were to prevent it; China fell into a patchwork of warlord fiefdoms and the new republic became a fleeting dream.

The failure of both “self-strengthening” and political renovation caused many of our forebears to reflect deeply on whether a “cultural illness” was afflicting our country. This mood gave rise, during the May Fourth Movement of the late 1910s, to the championing of “science and democracy.” Yet that effort, too, foundered as warlord chaos persisted and the Japanese invasion [beginning in Manchuria in 1931] brought national crisis.

Victory over Japan in 1945 offered one more chance for China to move toward modern government, but the Communist defeat of the Nationalists in the civil war thrust the nation into the abyss of totalitarianism. The “new China” that emerged in 1949 proclaimed that “the people are sovereign” but in fact set up a system in which “the Party is all-powerful.”

The Communist Party of China seized control of all organs of the state and all political, economic, and social resources, and, using these, has produced a long trail of human rights disasters, including, among many others, the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957), the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969), the June Fourth (Tiananmen Square) Massacre (1989), and the current repression of all unauthorized religions and the suppression of the Weiquan Rights Movement.

During all this, the Chinese people have paid a gargantuan price. Tens of millions have lost their lives, and several generations have seen their freedom, their happiness, and their human dignity cruelly trampled. During the last two decades of the twentieth century the government policy of “Reform and Opening” gave the Chinese people relief from the pervasive poverty and totalitarianism of the Mao Zedong era and brought substantial increases in the wealth and living standards of many Chinese as well as a partial restoration of economic freedom and economic rights.

Civil society began to grow, and popular calls for more rights and more political freedom have grown apace. As the ruling elite itself moved toward private ownership and the market economy, it began to shift from an outright rejection of “rights” to a partial acknowledgment of them. In 1998 the Chinese government signed two important international human rights conventions; in 2004 it amended its constitution to include the phrase “respect and protect human rights”; and this year, 2008, it has promised to promote a “national human rights action plan.”

Unfortunately most of this political progress has extended no further than the paper on which it is written. The political reality, which is plain for anyone to see, is that China has many laws but no rule of law; it has a constitution but no constitutional government. The ruling elite continues to cling to its authoritarian power and fights off any move toward political change. The stultifying results are endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law, weak human rights, decay in public ethics, crony capitalism, growing inequality between the wealthy and the poor, pillage of the natural environment as well as of the human and historical environments, and the exacerbation of a long list of social conflicts, especially, in recent times, a sharpening animosity between officials and ordinary people.

As these conflicts and crises grow ever more intense, and as the ruling elite continues with impunity to crush and to strip away the rights of citizens to freedom, to property, and to the pursuit of happiness, we seethe powerless in our society²the vulnerable groups, the people who have been suppressed and monitored, who have suffered cruelty and even torture, and who have had no adequate avenues for their protests, no courts to hear their pleas²becoming more militant and raising the possibility of a violent conflict of disastrous proportions. The decline of the current system has reached the point where change is no longer optional.

II. Our Fundamental Principles

This is a historic moment for China, and our future hangs in the balance. In reviewing the political modernization process of the past hundred years or more, we reiterate and endorse basic universal values as follows:

Freedom
Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom, China will always remain far from civilized ideals.

Human rights
Human rights are not bestowed by a state. Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom. The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The exercise of state power must be authorized by the people. The succession of political disasters in China’s recent history is a direct consequence of the ruling regime’s disregard for human rights.

Equality
The integrity, dignity, and freedom of every person regardless of social station, occupation, sex, economic condition, ethnicity, skin color, religion, or political belief²are the same as those of any other. Principles of equality before the law and equality of social, economic, cultural, civil, and political rights must be upheld.

Republicanism
Republicanism, which holds that power should be balanced among different branches of government and competing interests should be served, resembles the traditional Chinese political ideal of “fairness in all under heaven.” It allows different interest groups and social assemblies, and people with a variety of cultures and beliefs, to exercise democratic self-government and to deliberate in order to reach peaceful resolution of public questions on a basis of equal access to government and free and fair competition.

Democracy
The most fundamental principles of democracy are that the people are sovereign and the people select their government. Democracy has these characteristics: (1) Political power begins with the people and the legitimacy of a regime derives from the people. (2) Political power is exercised through choices that the people make. (3) The holders of major official posts in government at all levels are determined through periodic competitive elections. (4) While honoring the will of the majority, the fundamental dignity, freedom, and human rights of minorities are protected. In short, democracy is a modern means for achieving government truly “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Constitutional rule
Constitutional rule is rule through a legal system and legal regulations to implement principles that are spelled out in a constitution. It means protecting the freedom and the rights of citizens, limiting and defining the scope of legitimate government power, and providing the administrative apparatus necessary to serve these ends.

III. What We Advocate

Authoritarianism is in general decline throughout the world; in China, too, the era of emperors and overlords is on the way out. The time is arriving everywhere for citizens to be masters of states. For China the path that leads out of our current predicament is to divest ourselves of the authoritarian notion of reliance on an “enlightened overlord” or an “honest official” and to turn instead toward a system of liberties, democracy, and the rule of law, and toward fostering the consciousness of modern citizens who see rights as fundamental and participation as a duty. Accordingly, and in a spirit of this duty as responsible and constructive citizens, we offer the following recommendations on national governance, citizens’ rights, and social development:

1. A New Constitution
We should recast our present constitution, rescinding its provisions that contradict the principle that sovereignty resides with the people and turning it into a document that genuinely guarantees human rights, authorizes the exercise of public power, and serves as the legal underpinning of China’s democratization. The constitution must be the highest law in the land, beyond violation by any individual, group, or political party.

2. Separation of powers
We should construct a modern government in which the separation of legislative, judicial, and executive power is guaranteed. We need an Administrative Law that defines the scope of government responsibility and prevents abuse of administrative power. Government should be responsible to taxpayers. Division of power between provincial governments and the central government should adhere to the principle that central powers are only those specifically granted by the constitution and all other powers belong to the local governments.

3. Legislative democracy
Members of legislative bodies at all levels should be chosen by direct election, and legislative democracy should observe just and impartial principles.

4. An Independent Judiciary
The rule of law must be above the interests of any particular political party and judges must be independent. We need to establish a constitutional supreme court and institute procedures for constitutional review. As soon as possible, we should abolish all of the Committees on Political and Legal Affairs that now allow Communist Party officials at every level to decide politically-sensitive cases in advance and out of court. We should strictly forbid the use of public offices for private purposes.

5. Public Control of Public Servants
The military should be made answerable to the national government, not to a political party, and should be made more professional. Military personnel should swear allegiance to the constitution and remain nonpartisan. Political party organizations shall be prohibited in the military.

All public officials including police should serve as nonpartisans, and the current practice of favoring one political party in the hiring of public servants must end.

6. Guarantee of Human Rights
There shall be strict guarantees of human rights and respect for human dignity. There should be a Human Rights Committee, responsible to the highest legislative body that will prevent the government from abusing public power in violation of human rights. A democratic and constitutional China especially must guarantee the personal freedom of citizens. No one shall suffer illegal arrest, detention, arraignment, interrogation, or punishment. The system of “Reeducation through Labor” must be abolished.

7. Election of Public Officials
There shall be a comprehensive system of democratic elections based on “one person, one vote.” The direct election of administrative heads at the levels of county, city, province, and nation should be systematically implemented. The rights to hold periodic free elections and to participate in them as a citizen are inalienable.

8. Rural/Urban Equality
The two-tier household registry system must be abolished. This system favors suburban residents and harms rural residents. We should establish instead a system that gives every citizen the same constitutional rights and the same freedom to choose where to live.

9. Freedom to Form Groups
The right of citizens to form groups must be guaranteed. The current system for registering nongovernment groups, which requires a group to be “approved,” should be replaced by a system in which a group simply registers itself. The formation of political parties should be governed by the constitution and the laws, which means that we must abolish the special privilege of one party to monopolize power and must guarantee principles of free and fair competition among political parties.

10. Freedom to Assemble
The constitution provides that peaceful assembly, demonstration, protest, and freedom of expression are fundamental rights of a citizen. The ruling party and the government must not be permitted to subject these to illegal interference or unconstitutional obstruction.

11. Freedom of Expression
We should make freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom universal, thereby guaranteeing that citizens can be informed and can exercise their right of political supervision. These freedoms should be upheld by a Press Law that abolishes political restrictions on the press. The provision in the current Criminal Law that refers to “the crime of incitement to subvert state power” must be abolished. We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes.

12. Freedom of Religion
We must guarantee freedom of religion and belief and institute a separation of religion and state. There must be no governmental interference in peaceful religious activities. We should abolish any laws, regulations, or local rules that limit or suppress the religious freedom of citizens. We should abolish the current system that requires religious groups (and their places of worship) to get official approval in advance and substitute for it a system in which registry is optional and, for those who choose to register, automatic.

13. Civic Education
In our schools we should abolish political curriculums and examinations that are designed to indoctrinate students in state ideology and to instill support for the rule of one party. We should replace them with civic education that advances universal values and citizens’ rights, fosters civic consciousness, and promotes civic virtues that serve society.

14. Protection of Private Property
We should establish and protect the right to private property and promote an economic system of free and fair markets. We should do away with government monopolies in commerce and industry and guarantee the freedom to start new enterprises. We should establish a Committee on State-Owned Property, reporting to the national legislature that will monitor the transfer of state-owned enterprises to private ownership in a fair, competitive, and orderly manner. We should institute a land reform that promotes private ownership of land, guarantees the right to buy and sell land, and allows the true value of private property to be adequately reflected in the market.

15. Financial and Tax Reform
We should establish a democratically regulated and accountable system of public finance that ensures the protection of taxpayer rights and that operates through legal procedures. We need a system by which public revenues that belong to a certain level of government²central, provincial, county or local²are controlled at that level. We need major tax reform that will abolish any unfair taxes, simplify the tax system, and spread the tax burden fairly. Government officials should not be able to raise taxes, or institute new ones, without public deliberation and the approval of a democratic assembly. We should reform the ownership system in order to encourage competition among a wider variety of market participants.

16. Social Security
We should establish a fair and adequate social security system that covers all citizens and ensures basic access to education, health care, retirement security, and employment.

17. Protection of the Environment
We need to protect the natural environment and to promote development in a way that is sustainable and responsible to our descendants and to the rest of humanity. This means insisting that the state and its officials at all levels not only do what they must do to achieve these goals, but also accept the supervision and participation of non-governmental organizations.

18. A Federated Republic
A democratic China should seek to act as a responsible major power contributing toward peace and development in the Asian Pacific region by approaching others in a spirit of equality and fairness. In Hong Kong and Macao, we should support the freedoms that already exist. With respect to Taiwan, we should declare our commitment to the principles of freedom and democracy and then, negotiating as equals, and ready to compromise, seek a formula for peaceful unification. We should approach disputes in the national-minority areas of China with an open mind, seeking ways to find a workable framework within which all ethnic and religious groups can flourish. We should aim ultimately at a federation of democratic communities of China.

19. Truth in Reconciliation
We should restore the reputations of all people, including their family members, who suffered political stigma in the political campaigns of the past or who have been labeled as criminals because of their thought, speech, or faith. The state should pay reparations to these people. All political prisoners and prisoners of conscience must be released. There should be a Truth Investigation Commission charged with finding the facts about past injustices and atrocities, determining responsibility for them, upholding justice, and, on these bases, seeking social reconciliation.

China, as a major nation of the world, as one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as a member of the UN Council on Human Rights, should be contributing to peace for humankind and progress toward human rights. Unfortunately, we stand today as the only country among the major nations that remains mired in authoritarian politics. Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China’s own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization. This must change, truly it must.

The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer. Accordingly, we dare to put civic spirit into practice by announcing Charter 08. We hope that our fellow citizens who feel a similar sense of crisis, responsibility, and mission, whether they are inside the government or not, and regardless of their social status, will set aside small differences to embrace the broad goals of this citizens’ movement.

Together we can work for major changes in Chinese society and for the rapid establishment of a free, democratic, and constitutional country. We can bring to reality the goals and ideals that our people have incessantly been seeking for more than a hundred years, and can bring a brilliant new chapter to Chinese civilization.

Filed under: Democracy, Government Tagged: Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957), Charter 08 Manifesto, Charter 77, China, Civic Education, Constitutional rule, Cultural Revolution (1966-1969), Democracy, Equality, Financial and Tax Reform, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Religion, Freedom to Assemble, Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), Human rights, June Fourth (Tiananmen Square) Massacre (1989), Liu Xiaobo, Protection of Private Property, Republicanism, Separation of powers, Truth in Reconciliation, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Weiquan Rights Movement

Nuclear Arms in Europe: Who are the Adversaries?

Ron Pavellas — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:11:58 +0000

This question arises from a comment made by Daryl G. Press, PhD at a seminar on “Nuclear Weapons and European Security—a good match?” in Stockholm, on 26 January this year.

Additionally, the seminar’s title raises the question of the potential enemy against which Europe remains armed, through NATO and therefore through the USA, with nuclear weapons. The Cold War is over. The quick answer is that the potential adversaries are found in East Asia and the Persian Gulf.

The full sentence uttered by Dr. Press that gives rise to this article’s title is, from my notes: “We need to be publicly frank about who really are the adversaries, otherwise our communications will lead toward hypocrisy.”

The sponsors of the seminar were the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI). The participants and their credentials are listed at the bottom.

Doomsday Clock

To frame the question more fully, here are essential facts gleaned from the seminar and the Internet:

What kind of nuclear arms are there and what are their purposes?
Which are the nations that have nuclear arms, and how many?
What are factors affecting the continued development and maintenance of nuclear arms?

Strategic: weapons with the greatest range of delivery, with the ability to threaten the adversary’s command and control structure, even though they are based many thousands of miles away in friendly territory. Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are the primary delivery platforms for strategic nuclear weapons. The main purpose of strategic weapons is in the deterrence role, under the theory of mutually assured destruction.

Tactical, or “non-strategic”: battlefield weapons, used by a theater commander to offset a numerically superior force. They will be targeted based on rapidly changing local circumstances, not pre-targeted like a strategic weapon. However, even the smallest nuclear weapon is considered a “threshold decision” and is under the control of the highest national authorities, not local commanders. (Source)

Active non-deployed: spare and “responsive” warheads, i.e., those warheads that could be returned to the field quickly to increase the number of deployed warheads. All active warheads are filled with limited life components (e.g., tritium) and are maintained through regular surveillance schedules.

Inactive: warheads still intact but with their tritium removed; thus, it would take longer to return them to service upon a decision to do so.

Nations with Nuclear Arms and their Numbers

Note: “Deployed” include strategic and tactical warheads. “Other warheads” are active and inactive non-deployed warheads.

Although not discussed in the seminar, the seemingly clear distinction between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons is no longer clear:

It is estimated that there are about 2,500 weapons designated as ‘tactical’, of which Russia possesses over 2,000. The United States has fewer than 500, and deploys around 200 of these on the territory of five European countries in accordance with agreements between the United States and its NATO allies. To describe these as ‘tactical’ or ‘theatre’ nuclear weapons (TNW) is misleading outside the context of the Cold War, when over 10,000 were deployed. Though China, France, Israel, India and Pakistan also have short to intermediate range weapons in their arsenals, it is unlikely that these would be classified as ‘tactical’ and considered distinct from these countries’ longer range (strategic) nuclear arsenals. Nowadays it is understood that any crossing of the threshold to use nuclear weapons would have strategic consequences.
(Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy).

Nonetheless, at least two of the four panelists made this distinction due, I believe, to the fact that governments and the communication media still use the terms. There seems to be a lag time between the development of current realities and the ability of the diplomatic and other organizational machinery, and the media, to keep pace. Also, publicly discussing the reduction of the number of strategic warheads provides good political theater for politicians in Russia and the USA.

Using the questionable distinction, it seems that strategic weapons, holdovers in Russia and the USA from the Cold War, are less of a threat than the smaller (but extremely destructive in their potential), tactical weapons. To quote further from the Acronym Institute:

Tactical nuclear weapons are portable, vulnerable and readily usable. They are potentially destabilizing and create additional risks and insecurities, including possible acquisition and use by terrorists. The risk of terrorist acquisition should not be over-stated, and the bombs are protected by a variety of timers, switches, mechanical and electronic locks and procedural safeguards against any attempt to bring about an unauthorised nuclear explosion, but the possibility of detonating at least a radiological ‘dirty’ bomb cannot be discounted.

Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev after signing the new START treaty

The latest START treaty deals only with strategic weapons, those held solely by Russia and the USA:

Under terms of the treaty, the number of strategic nuclear missile launchers will be reduced by half. The treaty limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550, which is down nearly two-thirds from the original START treaty, as well as 30% lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty… It will also limit the number of deployed and non-deployed inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers, submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 800. Also, it will limit the number of deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 700. The treaty allows for satellite and remote monitoring, as well as 18 on-site inspections per year to verify limits…The treaty places no limits on tactical systems… (Source). [Emphasis added by Pavellas].

NATO’s “tactical” nuclear bombs in Europe are all owned by the United States and are stored under the control of the US Air Force. So, a discussion about Europe’s security necessarily involves discussion of NATO and the USA, which it did during this seminar.

Although the tone of my article, so far, may be seen as toward the negative, the full discussion by the panel’s participants provided many nuggets which I duly offer here:

The new START Treaty is a positive development in that it will cause a reduction in nuclear warheads, will restore the idea of nuclear accountability and provides a legal framework for reduction.
For nations, it is quietly recognized that tactical nuclear weapons have no military value, but are used primarily for political purposes, e.g., in “signaling” other nations about capabilities and intentions. (This does not address the dangers of nuclear arms in the possession of non-nation entities, such as terrorist organizations).
The domino theory of nuclear arms proliferation (i.e., if country A gets them it will induce country B to get them) is contestable by the facts. For instance, North Korea has them, but South Korea doesn’t and says it won’t. But, of course, the USA has promised to defend South Korea.
Existing nuclear warheads need to be maintained to be operational, and this is a costly enterprise. The implication is that older warheads will not be maintained fully over time and that there will be a decline in their numbers and capability, everywhere. However, new warheads can be produced by those countries with the means in the “tactical” realm without violating treaties and other public promises.
Other perceived threats to humans seem more immediate and needful for attention that the funding of nuclear weapon development, such as: climate change, pandemics and secure national borders.
There is increasing transparency (i.e., visibility) of those activities that threaten national and world stability. This transparency aids the work of civil, i.e., non-governmental, advocacy organizations such as IKFF, university research departments and private think tanks, some of which were represented at this seminar (see below). Timely and publicly available oversight by such organizations can lead to more timely responses to threats to peace and freedom. (I refer the reader to my article Civil Society Must Succeed Where Governments Have Failed)

Seminar Speakers

Pavel Podvig: affiliate and former research associate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

Daryl G. Press: Associate Professor of Government, Dartmouth University.

Fredrik Westerlund: Security policy analyst, Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI).

Petra Tötterman Andorff: Secretary General, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Sweden (IKFF).

Suggested Resources

Nuclear arms control and non-proliferation: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Strategic Outlook 2010: Swedish Defence Research Agency (PDF)

Center for International Security and Cooperation: Publications on Nuclear Proliferation Issues

The Nuclear Dimension of US Primacy (PDF): by Daryl G. Press

Internet Links provided by: The Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy

Dismantle the War Economy Committee: Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

The Fallacy of Nuclear Primacy, by Bruce G. Blair and Chen Yali

The Future of Nuclear Weapons in NATO, by Ian Anthony and Johnny Janssen

Filed under: Government, National and International Defense Tagged: Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, Dartmouth University, Daryl G. Press, Doomsday Clock, FOI, Fredrik Westerlund, ICBMs, IKFF, Intercontinental ballistic missiles, MAD, mutually assured destruction, NATO, Nuclear Weapons and European Security—a good match?, Pavel Podvig, Petra Tötterman Andorff, SIPRI, START treaty, Stockholm Peace Research Institute, Strategic Nuclear Weapons, Swedish Defence Research Agency, Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom