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Oxford Law Vox: deposit protection and bank resolution

In this episode of the Oxford Law Vox podcast, banking law expert Nikoletta Kleftouri talks to George Miller about banking law issues today.

Together they discuss some of the major legal and policy issues that arose from the financial crisis in 2008, including assessing systemic risk, pricing risk appropriately in order to avoid moral hazard, and whether the notion of “too big to fail” is on the road to extinction. They also discuss the balance between the theoretical and the practical in Nikoletta’s career, and the research and advisory functions she fulfils.

Amongst the many topics Nikoletta covers in her interview concerning regulatory regimes and crisis management, the question of what key aims regulatory regimes set out to achieve is addressed. Alongside common objectives such as protecting financial stability and limiting the use of public funds, Nikoletta particularly highlights the importance of managing the social impact of regulatory regimes.

Below are selected excerpts from their wide-ranging discussion, and you can also listen to and download the full podcast via SoundCloud.

“Another key objective is protecting public confidence, so when you create such a regime you want to make sure that people continue to have confidence in the stability of the system … There is always this element that you can’t predict. For example you can see from the Northern Rock case, when there were all these queues forming in front of the bank, you can’t really predict this, or do anything to address this at the time. But by having a clear framework in place you help creditors, depositors and other stakeholders understand that these are the rules of the game. We do have some rules here, and we’re going to abide by those rules during a crisis or during an annihilation bank failure. So it definitely helps boost public confidence when there are clear rules in place … in addition to having clear rules you need to execute some resolutions, so people need to see that you are applying those rules and you are committed.”

Nikoletta also discusses the concept of “too big to fail” institutions, and the impact that this has had since the financial crisis.

“It’s definitely a troublesome concept. So following the 2007-2008 financial crisis we have all these new phrases and acronyms: too big to fail; too big to liquidate; too important to fail; too interconnected to fail; too big to jail … or some Icelandic institutions in 2008 were even considered to be too big to save. The existence of too big to fail institutions has generated a lot of discussion following the crisis … they are seen to create a moral hazard. The concept distorts pricing risk appropriately; it distorts competition because they receive these implicit government guarantees; and it also creates fiscal burdens for governments and ultimately tax payers. There is therefore a consensus among policy makers that ‘too big to fail’ should become a now dated concept.”

The podcast closes with Nikoletta’s final comments on what key issues she is looking at regarding the current and future landscape of banking and financial law.

“I am extremely interested at the moment in the upcoming regulations and rules on ring-fencing. So this is about structural reform, for example in the UK we had the Vickers report in 2011 which suggested that regulators should ring-fence the retail activities of banking groups from the other investment activities. Another key open issue is non-bank resolution, for example resolution of other parts of the financial system such as central counterparties and investment firms, so there is a lot to be done in these areas. As well as, of course, the impact of all these rules that have come into effect following the crisis, so we have a big package of reforms taking place in the European Union and in the UK … and it will be interesting to see the implementation and the effects of all these new regulations.”

To hear the full interview with Nikoletta Kleftouri – and to listen to more podcasts from a range of law experts – check out Oxford Law Vox on SoundCloud.

Featured image credit: Forex by Allan Ajifo. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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Dickens, Dickens-Style: How the BBC are making use of the ‘streaky bacon’ effect

This Christmas sees the premier of Dickensian, a 20-part series, written by a former EastEnders scriptwriter, described as “a beginners’ guide to Dickens’ books for a soap-loving generation”. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst was asked to take the role of literary adviser for the series. 

‘What connexion can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabouts of Jo the outlaw with the broom,’ asks Dickens’s narrator in Bleak House. As the novel develops, it offers various possible answers, including disease, family, money, and friendship. Dickens’s world turns out to be a spider’s web that connects everyone to everyone else: touch it in any one place and the whole structure quivers instantly into life.

But Dickens was also interested in possible connections between his novels. When the sales of Master Humphrey’s Clock started to flag, his solution was to add a guest appearance by Sam Weller, the wisecracking Cockney servant who had previously been such a huge success in The Pickwick Papers. Today we might call it a fictional mashup, like the recent special episode of TV’s Family Guy that saw them meet The Simpsons. At the time it was simply viewed as more evidence that Dickens’s novels were not wholly separate worlds. As G. K. Chesterton later explained, they were rather ‘lengths cut off from the flowing and mixed substance called Dickens’. Characters like Sam Weller were not only larger than life; they were also larger than their novels. Trying to keep them between the covers of just one book was like chaining Houdini inside a casket and expecting him to stay there.

The BBC’s new 20-part drama Dickensian takes this idea and develops it into one of the most gleefully audacious pieces of Christmas television for many years. But of course I would say that: I worked on the series as a literary adviser, so expecting an impartial judgment from me is a bit like asking the parents of a child in the school nativity play what they thought of little Jimmy’s star turn as a shepherd or donkey.

Tuppence Middleton plays Amelia Havisham in Dickensian . Dickensian airs on Boxing Day at 7pm and 8.30pm on BBC One.

The work of a literary adviser is far more straightforward than trying to explain it to other people. In my case, it began with a meeting at the London offices of Red Planet Pictures, at which the show’s creator, Tony Jordan (an ex-EastEnders staff writer who has since been responsible for a string of TV hits including Hustle and Life on Mars), outlined his vision. Dickensian would bring together some of Dickens’s most popular characters – Fagin, Scrooge, Mrs Gamp, Miss Havisham, and others – in an imaginary mid-Victorian London where they could interact. We would see the stories existing behind and alongside the ones we already knew. The plot would bring together a murder mystery, a romance, and a rich tangle of other narrative strands. Dickensian would not only be inspired by Dickens’s novels: in its alternating layers of melodrama and comedy, like the ‘streaky bacon’ effect he wrote about in Oliver Twist, its style would also be truly Dickensian.

All of this sounded like a hoot. It was only when I visited the set for the first time, built inside a former warehouse in West London, that I realised the serious ambition of the project. It was huge. An entire London street was being constructed, including immensely detailed interiors for places like The Three Cripples pub and Inspector Bucket’s police station. The cast included Pauline Collins (Mrs Gamp), Anton Lesser (Fagin), Peter Firth (Jacob Marley), and dozens of equally starry actors. There were to be 20 episodes, 6 writers, 4 directors … while carpenters hammered and painters painted, I sat on a bale of straw and wondered what I had let myself in for.

The answer turned out to a hugely rewarding insight into how much care goes into everything that appears on screen. My main tasks included discussing details of the set with the production designer, checking the scripts for historical inaccuracies, and generally doing my best to ensure that the world being created looked and sounded as authentic as possible. Inevitably there were compromises: Miss Havisham’s Satis House is relocated to London, as is the workhouse where we first meet Bumble, and CGI replaces some parts of the world, such as the Thames, that Dickens knew so intimately. But otherwise this is a London that is as battered and mud-spattered as the real thing.

Will viewers enjoy immersing themselves in it? That rather depends on what they are expecting. If they are hoping for cosy chocolate-box Dickens, where every urchin is clad in picturesque rags, and every line of dialogue sounds like a reproduction antique, then they might be disappointed. On the other hand, if they are prepared to surrender to Dickensian’s punchy half-hour episodes, they will discover a world that is as terrifying, surprising, and joyful as anything to be found in the novels that inspired it. Fingers crossed.

Image Credits: All-Star Cast: Tiny Tim (ZAAK CONWAY), Bob Cratchit (ROBERT WILFORT), Emily Cratchit (JENNIFER HENNESSY), Peter Cratchit (BRENOCK O’CONNOR), Martha Cratchit (PHOEBE DYNEVOR), Meriweather Compeyson (TOM WESTON-JONES), Young Amelia Havisham (TUPPENCE MIDDLETON), Arthur Havisham (JOSEPH QUINN), Bill Sikes (MARK STANLEY), Nancy (BETHANY MUIR), Artful Dodger (WILSON RADJOU-PUJALTE), Fagin (ANTON LESSER), Inspector Bucket (STEPHEN REA), Boy (BENJAMIN CAMPBELL), Jacob Marley (PETER FIRTH), Ebeneezer Scrooge (NED DENNEHY), Mr Bumble (RICHARD RIDINGS), Mrs Bumble (CAROLINE QUENTIN), Mrs Gamp (PAULINE COLLINS), Captain James Hawdon (BEN STARR), Honoria Barbary (SOPHIE RUNDLE), Frances Barbary (ALEXANDRA MEON) and Mr Venus (OMID DJALILI) in the BBC Drama Dickensian. Dickensian airs on Boxing Day at 7pm and 8.30pm on BBC One.

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Christmas calamities

It’s that time of year again: chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, halls are decked with boughs of holly, and everyone’s rockin’ around the Christmas tree….

As idyllic as this sounds, sometimes the holiday season just doesn’t live up to its expectations of joy, peace, and goodwill. According to the UK’s NHS, over 80,000 people a year need hospital treatment during the festive period. Pause 12 days of Christmas – here are seven Christmas health calamities to be aware of.

1) Stress


The pressure to impress has the potential to send your otherwise calm self into a sherry-fueled frenzy. Money troubles, family feuds, gift idea woes – all contribute to the lack of an ideal steady state for all physiological processes. The result can be stress; the state we find ourselves in when this ideal is threatened. Symptoms can include palpitations, irritability, difficulty sleeping and concentrating, and fear of losing control.

2) Nightmares on Oxford Street


Over-crowded shops, over-crowded streets, over or under-stacked shelves, Black Friday… It might not only be the prices of presents that are being slashed – keep your distance from savage shoppers to prevent bruising.

Incandescent by Steve Jurvetson. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

3) Electrical shocks


Putting up fairy lights? Implement safe practice when testing these pretty additions to your tree to avoid common injuries including burns and negative effects on your heart and muscles.

4) Lack of sleep


All of your shopping and decorating is done, and now it’s time to sit back and wait for the jolly old man in the red suit to drop by. Tradition says you should be asleep when he visits. Easier said than done. The excitement can be too much, and that teamed with the stress of festive preparations can mean you have difficulty falling asleep. “If mentally, emotionally, or physically arousing activities take place near our expected sleeping time, then the time to fall asleep will be longer than usual” – according to OUP authors Dr Sue Wilson and Professor David J. Nutt. Not to mention that glass or two of port you’ve had after dinner: Sleep processes are controlled by a wide range of neurotransmitters and brain receptors, so any drug that affects these transmitters and receptors can alter your sleep pattern.

5) Alcohol misuse


Alcohol can do more than just affect our sleep. Alcohol misuse comprises a substantial amount of the accident and emergency department cases in the western world. Being aware of the limits and mindful of symptoms of alcohol abuse can ensure a merry, A&E-free Christmas.

6) Over-eating


It can be hard not to over-indulge – and although we might feel like we have a distinct lack of willpower as we reach for our fifth minced pie – there is actually a science behind our cravings. Some researchers argue that environmental factors including colours, food packaging, smells, and socializing can influence and determine our eating behaviours more so than basic hunger cues. Why? Because such environmental factors help us to suggest alternative reasons for consuming food. So don’t feel too bad about that second helping of Christmas pudding.

7) Choking


Beware of that turkey wishbone, and know how to respond to this emergency.

Above all, enjoy a happy and healthy holiday period.

Featured image credit: Christmas Market by Gellinger. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Finding a new perspective on psychedelics

Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, took an acid trip in late 1950s that reportedly allowed him to revisit the mental and spiritual condition that had inspired him to swear off booze in the first place. Although AA has no religious affiliation, the numerous references to God throughout the twelve steps make its emphasis on interior discovery and redemption an indispensable part of the program. The psychic state occasioned by Bill W.’s experimentation with LSD was so powerfully therapeutic, in fact, that he was inspired to recommend the drug to other recovering alcoholics.

But his particular brand of unorthodox spiritualism, which included Ouija board séances and further experimentation with psychedelics, didn’t sit well with the AA membership at large. The risks of the chemical compound—or lack thereof—had not yet been established, but LSD and other psychedelics had already gained a reputation as drugs that fueled the subversive attitudes of the counterculture that would prevail in the following decade.

While the full history of psychedelic research cannot be summarized concisely, it seems to have ended, at least for a time, with Richard Nixon’s signing of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970. The statute placed compounds like LSD, psilocybin, and other psychedelics in the Schedule I category—rendering them illegal to manufacture, distribute, or use—and designated them as having no accepted medical use for treatment within the United States. The reputation of these compounds is undergoing rehabilitation, but we can’t know how long it will take to shrug off the weight of the mischaracterizations that have been heaped on them for years.

In fact, a renaissance in psychedelic research has taken place over the last decade. Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics, which will celebrate its tenth anniversary next year, is a hub for researchers to share their findings on everything from clinical psychedelic research to advances in public policy. Kevin Balktick founded the conference in New York City to bring together leading researchers in the field, and the conference has seen impressive growth since its inception in 2007. Horizons has assembled some of the most pioneering figures in the field of psychedelic research, including Anthony Bossis, the principal investigator of the NYU cancer anxiety study; Earth and Fire Erowid, the leaders of Erowid, a non-profit organization that documents experiences with psychoactive chemicals; and Dennis McKenna, brother of famed ethnobotanist, psychonaut, and mystic Terrence McKenna.

Among this year’s list of speakers was Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, who spoke about the use of MDMA in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Doblin, something of a hero in the movement, founded MAPS to facilitate research into scheduled substances. The organization helps scientists fund, design, and obtain approval for their studies. Neil Goldsmith, a psychoanalyst who spoke about the relationship between death and psychedelics, served as the event’s emcee and set the tone for the event.

Academic conference each have their own atmospheres (entomology gatherings feel different from political science conclaves, for example); perhaps it is because of the relative freshness of the field, but this one was shot through with a sense of wonder and optimism rarely found in other disciplines. And despite a distinctive mood of conviviality, the aesthetic trappings of hippiedom one might expect of a psychedelics conference were limited to a smattering of tie-dyed shirts.

Psychedelic inquiry hasn’t yet gone mainstream, but it is no longer restricted to the fringes of the research community. Oxford University Press’s own JNCI: The Journal of the National Cancer Institute published an editorial in 2012 recognizing a number of early-stage psychedelic studies, such as the NYU cancer study, that show promise. More recently, UK-based medical journal The Lancet encouraged readers to “turn on and tune in to evidence-based psychedelic research.” A TED talk from Roland Griffiths, as well as an article by Michael Pollan in the New Yorker, have been other sources of good press. And though these substances could still be better understood, there is strong evidence that their effectiveness is linked to measureable activity they cause in the brain, wherein a mystical experience—indistinguishable from those experienced by the devoutly religious—is induced in the test subject.

The first talk was given by Michael Bogenschutz, who oversaw addiction treatment programs at the University at New Mexico Health sciences center. This year, he came to the NYU School of Medicine to complete the first study of psilocybin-assisted treatment for alcohol dependence; he is now testing a similar model with a multi-site randomized trial. His session focused on the study, but began with a brief history of psychedelic interventions in the treatment of alcoholism. This included an account of Bill W.’s forays into LSD experimentation and William James’s prescient observation that “the only cure for dipsomania is religiomania.” When asked by an audience member to comment on his personal feelings about the research, Dr. Bogenschutz told the audience that this research has been the most personally rewarding of his entire career.

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The business of inequality

Recently, debates about inequality have risen to the forefront in academic and public debates. The publication of the French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century in 2013 did not, to say the least, go by unnoticed. And many other prominent economists have partaken in the debate about global inequality: Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Angus Madison, just to name a few.

This spectacular inequality debate goes far beyond the writings of economists, however. Legal scholars have suggested looking much more closely at the kinds of laws which have been passed which have furthered inequality. They have pointed out that capitalism is not just an economic system, but also a legal and institutional construction. Efficient property rights, for example, are fundamental for the workings of a capitalist market economy. And therefore, from this perspective, the perpetuating and rising of inequality under present-day global capitalism has not just got to do with the ‘natural’-like economic laws of capitalism, but also its – actual – juridical laws.

Human rights scholars have also turned their attention to inequality. Their question is this: why have human rights been so inefficient in countering the rise of inequality? And why is it that social and economic human rights (such as the right to an adequate standard of living as stated in the United Nations Human Rights Declaration of 1948) have been much less legitimate than political and civic human rights?

The inequality debate has also been taken up by sociologists, who indeed have had a long-lasting interest in the topic. They have inquired into the social consequences and the causes of inequality and poverty. One prominent example was French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who tried to explain many riddles of why unequal social orders tend to reproduce themselves. Bourdieu looked at – and inspired many subsequent studies of – dimensions of gender, ethnicity, and class.

Inequality, then, surely has economic, legal, and social aspects. One dimension which seems to cut through all of these aspects is a historical one. After all, no aspect of anything human seems to escape the dimension of time. And so historians, as well as economists, legal scholars, and sociologists, have been struggling with understanding the historical dynamics and patterns of inequality.

The other dimension which cuts through all these aspects is a conceptual one: how can one define inequality? How to adequately distinguish between, for example, inequality of resources, of opportunities, of capabilities, of wealth, and of health and life expectancy? Such questions are not just relevant to philosophers, who – like economists and sociologists – quarrel about which levels of inequality are desirable or undesirable. It is also highly relevant for the ongoing political debates about what to do with inequality. Should we raise taxes? Opt for more redistribution? Aim at economic growth, accept initial inequality, and then wait for the level of inequality to decline?

Questions concerning inequality is keeping a lot of people busy, and is likely to do so in any foreseeable future. Hopefully all this ‘inequality business’ will make us understand the multiple dimensions of inequality better. Hopefully this inequality business will, in the end, inspire some new initiatives which will help dramatically lower the current levels of extreme and absurd global inequality.

Image credit: NYC Skyscrapers by Kevin Jarrett. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

But one particular aspect, however, which remains understudied, at least from a historical point of view, is the remarkable development in recent decades where business organizations, wealthy businessmen and women, and businesses themselves became crusaders against inequality. In brief: inequality is not just the business of academics, politicians, and activists, but it has also become a business matter – something that the world of corporate leaders and the business elite cannot ignore. Some examples will demonstrate what I am alluding to.

First, at the level of high politics and international organizations, the United Nations have, under the leadership of former secretary-general Kofi Annan, embarked upon a new approach to corporations. From the initiation of the so-called United Nations ‘Global Compact’, first pitched to business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 1999, corporations were to be seen as ‘creative partners’, embracing universal values of human rights, labor, and environmental standards. Annan appealed to the corporate worlds’ self-interest in avoiding any backlashes against globalization, opting for a ‘globalization with a human face.’ Since then, the line of the United Nations is to involve corporations as partners in achieving its high-profiled Millennium Development Goals (as of 2015 Sustainable Development Goals), arguably one of the most important current inequality or poverty reduction programs in the world.

Second, influential business, management writers, and development economists have argued that, in a world where the neoliberal Washington consensus as well as the state-based approach to poverty has failed, businesses should be directly involved in the battle against poverty. They have thus suggested that businesses should target ‘the bottom of the pyramid’, that they should ‘create shared value’, have a wider sense of their ‘corporate social responsibility’, or that they should exhibit sound ‘corporate citizenship.’

Third, wealthy individuals and their foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have engaged in large-scale projects, often dwarfing individual states’ contributions to foreign aid assistance.

Fourth, individual companies have actively joined the crusade against inequality. Take Starbucks as an example: in March 2015 it launched a campaign called #racetogether, where baristas were to write this hashtag on their coffee servings, to start a discussion on race. The campaign turned out to be a disaster and was quickly pulled back. But it surely showed that inequality had become a business matter.

This development brings testimony to a major, tectonic shift in the institutional landscape of the world. It took its departure in the 1960s, when people increasingly turned their attention to multinational corporations as major players in the world economy. With their rising power also came rising demands about their responsibilities for world affairs, leading up until today where inequality has become a business matter. This raises several questions, of course, but one which we should constantly be asking ourselves and our politicians is this: what are the best and most just ways of combating inequality?

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The ISIS emergence: Enemy of the international community

Labeling ISIS simply a terrorist organization or an apocalyptic sect of fanatics does very little in terms both of explaining and of confronting the phenomenon. What – among other things – lies at the basis of its emergence, behind and through its acts of brutality, is a different vision of international community, one hostile to that which the vast majority of states and international organizations share.

ISIS is neither the first religious, fundamentalist organization, nor the first heavily armed organization, encompassing acts of terror in furtherance of its goals. It is, however, the first entity which from a non-state status has been de facto upgraded at a statehood status, possessing for an already significant period of time, territory, population, as well as exercising commercial activities and state authorities. In addition, the so-called Islamic State, meaning the de facto state that shares parts of Syria and Iraq, doesn’t wage a campaign of terror simply to harass its enemies and discourage their fight against it. It actively seeks a wider confrontation so that it can gradually expand its authority and eventually materialize an ecumenical goal of an alternative international integration under its material and ideological domination.

In this sense it is the first entity combining some type of statehood with an alternative goal concerning what the international community should be, rejecting the most fundamental Enlightenment principles. This combination differentiates the Islamic State both from other theocratic states such as Saudi Arabia, which don’t advance a different model of international community, as well as from organizations such as Al Qaeda, which remain de jure and de facto non-state actors. Ιn addition, the Taliban regime of Afghanistan did not seek further expansion, and in this sense it was rather alienated than actively hostile and antagonistic to the international community. The international community is challenged by an outcast, possessing part of its territory and attempting to build an antagonistic and hostile international community, contradictory to the core principles which are enshrined in the UN Charter.

The magnitude of this challenge might not have yet reached the scale of an imminent, global disaster concerning the existence and prevalence of the international community but still is significant. On the one hand, the Islamic State seems capable of taking advantage of the fragmentation among the major powers of the contemporary world, exploiting divergent regional interests, propagandizing its goals and finding followers, evolving into a key player in terms of re-shaping borders and regimes throughout the Middle East, committing attacks in various parts of the world, of possibly possessing weapons of mass destruction, and provoking the strengthening of Islamophobic voices. On the other hand, the active and profound promotion on its behalf of genocide, slavery, torture, raping, trafficking, antiquities smuggling and destruction, mass violations of human rights necessitate the elimination of the Islamic State by the international community. It is in this sense, that the Islamic State is in existential terms the enemy of the international community, both fighting against its most valuable and fundamental principles and promoting an antagonistic version of international community.

Berlin against ISIS by Montecruz Foto. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

In any type of community, the emergence of such an actor, acting in such ways and with such goals would lead to the declaration of some type of public emergency. After all, the war waged by the Islamic State, even though the latter does not constitute a legally recognized state, fulfills all the criteria of the UN Charter in relation to the existence of serious breaches of international peace and security by a de facto state-entity: violations of territorial integrity and political independence of several states, mass and grave atrocities, racism, illegal threat and use of force. Therefore it seems only natural to ring the alarm of an international public emergency against such a threat.

But what does public emergency actually mean in the framework of the international community and against the Islamic State in particular? First, it should be a public emergency of the community as such and not of some of its actors. (In the second case, not only the declaration of emergencies might be proven inefficient but even further could lead to further fractures within the international community.) Second, it should be an emergency within a constitutional normative framework (within the framework of the UN Charter). Third, the organs of the international community – the UN Security Council or UN General Assembly – should declare the international emergency.

Fourth and most significantly though, what should an international public emergency foresee? A widely shared view identifies the emergency with restrictions on human or political rights. My view is the exact opposite: the declaration of an international public emergency in response to the Islamic State emergence should materialize an effective and (as much as possible) democratic version of the responsibility to protect doctrine. This would include the use of force against the Islamic State by a coalition of states with respect to Syrian and Iraqi self-determination and central authorities, whether we like them or not; a political plan for reconciliation, democratization, and stabilization, primarily but not solely for the two states, with respect for all minorities, to which all of the international community will be committed under the aegis of the UN Security Council or UN General Assembly; the isolation of all states or actors which do not support such an international plan; and a significant plan for the reconstruction of the war-torn societies, again primarily but not solely of the two states, with respect to the economic self-determination of the people. In other words, the international public emergency should be nothing more than the most concrete commitment to the rule of law and the unification of the international community actors around it.

Of course, it is not easy to combine the delicate legal standards required for such action with the need for immediate and efficient political action, but it is the only way. Otherwise, either the bending of international law in the name of public emergencies declared by different states, or the actual tolerance to the existence of the Islamic State will gradually erode the foundations of the international community, intensify the fractures within it, and deprive our international community from its global perspective and influence, making it a lesser and more unstable community.

Featured image: Vintage world map on Rock. (c) CollinsChin via iStock.

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How much do you know about wine? [quiz]

The world of wine is developing rapidly, so much so that the updated fourth edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine has added 300 new entries, including wine apps, aromatics, geosmin, minerality, natural wine, social media, and tasting notes language. The wine map as a whole has changed with countries like Hong Kong and many in Northern Europe developing as substantial wine producers.

How much do you know about this rapidly-developing area? Do you know your Merlot from your Shiraz? Or your Chardonnay from your Sauvignon Blanc? Take the quiz below and test your knowledge of the rich and varied world of wine in preparation for the holidays.

Quiz image credit: Wine Barrels by Jon Connel. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

Festured image credit: Wine at Saltus by Ken Hawkins. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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What does the Paris Agreement really mean for climate change?

This is not the first significant global agreement on climate change. In 1992, the Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed by 154 countries at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and was subsequently amended with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. So what is different about the Paris Agreement?

Developing countries have made a formal commitment to sharing responsibility for tackling the problem of climate change. 

Under the Kyoto Protocol, developing countries were not required to join the industrialized world in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In 2001, I interviewed Anthony LaVina, the lead climate negotiator for all developing countries during the Kyoto meeting, which organize themselves as the Group of 77, or G-77. He reported that many developing countries were prepared to commit to reducing emissions at the time, and were surprised that the Clinton Administration caved in so quickly to their initial negotiating position of assuming no commitments. The Paris Agreement includes the idea of a universal commitment, at least in principle, by essentially all of the world’s countries.

The Paris accord does not include specific national commitments for emissions reductions. 

Vague treaty language is generally undesirable because it makes it quite difficult to measure compliance. The reason that the Paris accord does not include specific national commitments for emissions reductions is that participation by the United States would have been impossible if these had been included. Although no one political faction can take credit or blame for the current state of affairs, this is a major victory for leaders in the US Republican Party, who almost single-handedly caused the world’s countries to avoid making binding quantitative commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Under US law, such an agreement would have constituted a new treaty, rather than an elaboration of the 1992 treaty, and any new treaty requires approval by the Republican-dominated Senate. The Obama administration devised a legal runaround: without specific national commitments, this is not a new treaty and does not require Senate approval.

On the positive side, the vague language of this agreement is only the beginning.

Under the framework convention-protocol model that is a common practice in international law, framework treaties typically establish broad, overarching goals at the outset (Climate change is bad—we should so something). This facilitates agreement by a wide range of countries and typically includes, as does the Paris Agreement, a process for regular meetings and revisions. Subsequent protocols negotiated by the Parties to the Convention then elaborate more specific commitments. So we can expect to see more details in coming years. Pay special attention to something called REDD+, which is expected to mobilize billions of dollars annually from polluters in rich countries to promote forest conservation in the tropics.

Finally, keep in mind that international treaties only matter to the extent that they catalyze national policy change.

There is no international government. The United Nations, the climate treaty Secretariat, and all international treaties, despite all the pomp and circumstance, are created purely at the discretion of member governments, which decide whether to contribute funds, enforcement personnel, and so forth. As a result, any attempt to manage planet earth is an effort at governance in the absence of government.

Nations hold the political power, regulatory authority, and purse strings that decide whether the transportation sector, energy investments, agricultural development, and other sectors move toward or away from climate-friendly practices. (Local governments hold comparatively little power, except in decentralized countries like the United States, Brazil, and Germany. There is, however, a major global trend toward giving a larger share of regulatory power and tax revenues to local governments.)

The Paris Agreement will be significant only to the extent that it can motivate domestic policy change, cross-national technical assistance, and social pressure to reduce nations’ dependence on fossil fuels. In this regard, the Paris Agreement’s new emphasis on transparent national approaches is potentially significant. When civil society organizations have access to high quality information about their governments’ policies and performance, this can be a powerful force for change.

A significant body of research shows that even when policy reformers have fallen short of their substantive policy goals (such as binding national climate commitments), revisions in how decision-making occurs—in this case, subjecting government performance to greater public scrutiny—can have salutary long-term effects.

Image Credit: “Cool Globes Chicago Hands Working Together” by John Legear. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr

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Not quite there: 15 years of women, peace and security

The fifteenth anniversary of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 has prompted considerable analysis on the achievements of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. To date, 52 countries have adopted a National Action Plan (NAP) for the implementation of Resolution 1325 and, within the United Nations, the number of women in senior leadership positions has increased. Despite this progress, the implementation of the WPS agenda has experienced setbacks; for instance, the Global Study on Resolution 1325 (Global Study) reveals inconsistent implementation of the WPS resolutions that have caused the agenda to fall short of its aims. Furthermore, the Global Study argues that militarization has perpetuated a cycle of violence that increases women’s insecurity and detracted from the importance of conflict prevention as a means of mitigating new security threats.

Beyond the Numbers

Since the landmark resolution was adopted in 2000, the focus of the WPS agenda has shifted from protecting women (women as victims) to enabling women’s participation (women as actors). Broadly speaking, Resolution 1325 and its seven follow-up resolutions were designed to increase women’s participation and representation in the prevention, management, and resolution of armed conflict at all levels, provide special protection for women from sexual violence during armed conflict, and meaningfully involve women in peacebuilding and post-conflict recovery.

Incorporating women into existing military structures rightly addresses military gender imbalances. However, as a number of women’s rights organizations have pointed out, the ‘add women and stir’ approach is insufficient in and of itself. For example, rather than evaluating and correcting the structural inequalities and gender constructions ingrained in existing security processes and institutions, some countries have simply incorporated women into them. Efforts to increase women’s participation should not overshadow other key components of the WPS agenda, namely conflict prevention and peacebuilding.

The Negative Impacts of Militarization

Resolution 1325’s adoption was due, in large part, to advocacy efforts by civil society groups that were opposed to increasing levels of militarization and wanted to shift security investments from armaments to human rights and development. Today, there is little evidence that such a shift has taken place and global military expenditure, which has increased by 59% in real terms over the last 15 years, suggests that militarization has actually increased.

Women’s empowerment and gender equality are critical to conflict prevention and increased international peace and security.

However, increased militarization has not contributed to better outcomes with respect to the WPS agenda. The Global Study argues that the rapid proliferation of armed conflict and frequent use of force to resolve disputes is partly a function of increased militarization and has contributed to increased insecurity. Militarized security approaches prioritize the use or threat of force over non-military mechanisms and, while military interventions can forestall armed conflict in the short-term, they fail to address the underlying sources of insecurity. A majority of the the security threats that women face on a day-to-day basis, such as economic insecurity, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality, are the result of structural inequalities best addressed through development interventions. Furthermore, increasing transnational threats, like those posed by terrorism, armed non-state actors, climate change, and illicit trade, challenge the effectiveness of militarized approaches to security.

For example, despite unprecedented military spending to counter Boko Haram over the last four years, in 2014, Nigeria experienced the biggest increase in terror-related deaths (7,512) ever recorded in any country. The on-going conflict with Boko Haram has fueled an influx of troops and weapons to northern Nigeria, resulting in extensive displacement and allegations of serious human rights abuses perpetrated by both Islamic militants and the national security forces.

Women’s Essential Role in Peacebuilding

Women’s empowerment and gender equality are critical to conflict prevention and increased international peace and security. Resolution 2242 reiterates this message and goes further to encourage integration of the WPS agenda with efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism.

By recognizing women’s role in conflict prevention and violent extremism in particular, Resolution 2242 may also help facilitate wider appreciation for ongoing conflict prevention work and draw attention to the role women can play in implementing early warning systems. In as early as 2011, grassroots women’s organizations had identified the threat posed by escalating violence in northern Nigeria and flagged the need to address increasing radicalization in order to prevent the further proliferation of the conflict. Unfortunately, the threat posed by Boko Haram was not sufficiently recognized by the international community until the high profile kidnapping of over 200 schoolgirls in Borno State in 2014. In several other conflicts, including in Ethiopia, the Palestinian Territories, and Yugoslavia, increasing levels of violence against women also immediately preceded the escalation to armed conflict. These examples suggest that increasing levels of gender-based violence may serve as an early indication of armed conflict.

By contrast, Nigerian women groups received broad recognition and praise for their conflict prevention activities during the 2015 elections. Established by a coalition of women’s organizations and civil society groups, the Women’s Situation Room trained and deployed 300 female observers throughout Nigeria to monitor and report election-related grievances. Working closely with public agencies, these women helped provide rapid responses before the incidents escalated to violence. It expresses the Security Council’s intention to consult civil society on WPS activities and to convene informal expert groups to facilitate a more systematic approach to their implementation.

We’ve come a short way and the world still has a long way to go.

Prioritizing Prevention

Civil society organizations have repeatedly stressed that conflict prevention should be given greater attention. The Global Study affirms this view and divides prevention methods into two categories: operational and structural. Operational strategies, which are short-term and designed to provide timely practical responses, are exemplified by the previously mentioned Women’s Situation Room in Nigeria. In operational prevention strategies, information and communications technology (ICT) can play an important role in reporting threats and informing community of risks. Preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping are other types of operational conflict prevention. Structural approaches are long-term and seek to address the root causes of conflict. Such strategies aim to reduce structural inequalities, the proliferation of weapons and build resilience against threats like climate change.

We’ve come a short way and the world still has a long way to go. Only 20% of official development assistance (ODA) is gender-related and, within that fraction, only 3% is allocated to projects with a principal contribution to gender. When compared to the immense sums that states spend on military budgets, ODA gender outlays reveal the extent to which we undervalue the effectiveness of peacebuilding and gender equality as security tools. This prioritization further reflects the UN’s rhetoric-reality gap and while part of this challenge relates to the ability identify and address militarization, it’s also about realigning our social values.

Featured image credit: ‘Four F-15 Eagle pilots from the 3rd Wing’ by the United States Air Force. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Old Nick on the ‘net: on Satanic politics

On 19 October 2015, the tech culture website Geek published another installment of procrastination-inducing click-bait lists, namely a rundown of “The 11 best Satanists.” Here, writer Aubrey Sitterson introduced major figures associated with Satanism, from Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey to music icons Marilyn Manson and King Diamond (the latter of which seems to be the “best” of the lot). The list also included some doubtful entries, like entertainer Liberace and the “Weird Satanist Guy” from recent news, who is actually actor Andrew Bowser. That said, it covered most celebrities directly associated with the Church of Satan in historical overviews, including Jayne Mansfield and Sammy Davis Jr., and some recent newcomers, like the Satanic Temple’s Lucien Greaves, most famous for the huge Baphomet statue unveiled in Detroit this summer.

All in all, good enough for a brief coffee break. Not a high-water mark in investigative journalism, but our interest lies more with the highly toxic commentary section. Evolving in the days after publication, the piece quickly became a battleground between supporters of the Church of Satan and the Satanic Temple.

The battleground

The spark comes from the original post, which states that the Church has been largely inactive since the founder’s death and the Temple seems to be “picking up steam.” Both are widespread sentiments in the larger satanic milieu outside the Church of Satan. While correctly pointing out this fallacy—the Church of Satan has been active for 50 years and actually seems to be picking up steam as well—Church supporters simultaneously condemn the Temple as inauthentic (“a coattail-riding bad joke of a cheap publicity stunt,” “cute performance art project”), anti-Semitic, and transphobic.

They also challenge the Temple’s ideological consistency. Compared to the mostly silent, individual work done by Church members to influence society and culture, the Satanic Temple seems to them nothing more than a series of pranks representing nothing, least of all Satanism as an adversarial stance. Supporters of the Satanic Temple, on the other hand, argue that the Temple is hugely successful exactly because of its ideological breadth, and that visible political activism is the logical next step for modern Satanism. “Individual work in the shadows” is nothing more than inactivity, they argue, and the Church is a backwards-looking personality cult out of tune with the larger satanic community.

Just another flame war?

On the face of it, this is just another internet flame war between two groups, peppered with snide remarks and ad hominem attacks. For example, the accusation of anti-Semitism is built on Lucien Greaves’ mid-2000s involvement as illustrator in the re-publication of a nineteenth century far-right tract called Might is Right, mentioned in a popular VICE interview from 2013. Given that LaVey wrote the so-called “forward” to the book, and that he had previously used sections of it in The Satanic Bible, this is definitely a double-edged sword.

“Der Daemon Baphomet” by Eliphas Lévi. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In the same vein, the Satanic Temple’s alleged transphobia relates to how the Temple statue mentioned above differs from the “original,” which had both female breasts and an erect phallus, encircled by a caduceus to symbolize the unification of opposites and the meeting of microcosm and macrocosm. In the Temple version, the breasts are gone. The statue also includes two happy children as companions. Temple supporters, including Greaves himself, argue that this is done to remove a potential avenue of misunderstanding and focus on the positive message of the statue.

Sanitizing a satanic statue to please mainstream gender stereotypes does seem rather ironic. But claiming that it is inherently sexist towards transpersons—or even reading pedophilia into it—is perhaps a bit over the top.

Authenticity and the Church of Satan

To understand this conflict, we need to follow the charge of inauthenticity. Even though they seem to agree on a basic definition of Satanism, the two groups promote distinct interpretations of how Satanism actually manifests itself on a practical level, especially in terms of public activism.

The Church of Satan started out in a flame of public showmanship. Their brief period of public appearances and media events included religious services, witches’ workshops, and nude photoshoots deliberately playing with diabolic imagery. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Church of Satan toned down the public theater, most notably by individualizing ritual to the ritual chamber and closing down independent local chapters. This individual, non-conformist strain was strengthened by a general theory of withdrawal from massified society.

In this way, LaVey and his Church transitioned from a position roughly congruent with the surrounding counter-culture in terms of occult exoticism and theater, a (somewhat) optimistic view of human potential, and a healthy dose of carnality, to a closed group of diabolical collaborators aiming for change of a wholly different order. This tied satanic authenticity directly to Church principles and the heritage of LaVey, as enshrined in the Church of Satan. Disagree with these principles and heritage, and you are not a Satanist. Even though the current leadership led by High Priest Peter H. Gilmore has opened up quite a bit in the new millennium, the Church of Satan still shuns political activism, eschews public pranks and “satanic” happenings, and avoids any sort of satanic ecumenism.

Satan as political champion

In contrast, the Satanic Temple has continually made the spotlight through public “pranks” tied to serious political activism, such as the proposed Baphomet statue in Oklahoma, satanic coloring books in Florida, the Reproductive Rights Campaign targeting restrictions on abortions, and satanic holiday displays in Florida and Michigan. Not even the football field is sacred. Since the inception in 2012, these activities have rallied over 40,000 online supporters, while the most active members have organized in local chapters offline, most of which are represented on Facebook.

Some of their activist pranks explicitly address the disjunction between “authentic” and “satire,” and exploit it to make a political point. They defend a secular society by following arguments to their logical conclusion: If you want to allow religion a privileged place in public spaces, this must also include Satanists. As such, the Temple utilizes public media events similar to the early Church of Satan. They have, however, a different goal: to effect political change in tune with satanic enlightenment values, formulated online as a set of core principles. As such, the Temple understands authentic Satanism along political and practical lines, freely associating with similar interest groups.

Satanic politics

Consequently, the two groups see satanic authenticity in two different ways. On the one hand, they both belong to one clear strand of the satanic milieu; both define Satanism along atheist and symbolic lines, distancing themselves from devil worship and occultism. On the other hand, they draw different conclusions from that, viewing Satanism as an individual project and as collective program, respectively.

When Anton LaVey formulated a “political” program called Pentagonal Revisionism in the late 1980s, outlining “a set of goals/guidelines that are clear, concrete, and that will effect significant changes,” he attacked the myth of equality while defending secularism as a principle of state governance. But he also made the ultimate goal of Satanism an individual matter, namely the creation of “total environments” and the use of “artificial human companions” to insulate and empower the Satanist.

Rather than changing the world, the Satanist creates a world by surrounding him- or herself with things that have emotional resonance. The goal of the Church is to facilitate this project on an individual level. Hence authentic Satanism is the Satanism of the Church of Satan, as it manifests in the life of each individual Satanist. There is no “us” in any political sense—it is up to each individual to decide.

Conversely, the Satanic Temple is inherently political. For example, when Jex Blackmore, leader of the Detroit chapter of the Temple, national spokesperson, and member of their Executive Ministry was recently asked on a Reddit AMA of her practices as a Satanist, she simply answered “Activism as worship.” In the same vein, founder Lucien Greaves repeatedly underscores the centrality of sanctioned Temple campaigns to “fight for secularism and religious plurality.” In a sense, this makes a specific definition of what Satanism is less important than the collective fight for equality as Satanists. While both Church and Temple champion active satanic individuals, they stress “active” and “satanic” differently.

Satanic authenticity?

The Church of Satan has changed over time, and yet it has solidified on a course of absolute individualism laid down early and strengthened during the 1980s. Ambiguous about collective ritual and magic, and preaching an absolute individualism, the Church is, in a way, more the visible symbol of a heritage than a collective enterprise. Authenticity and originality is its coin, and it is jealously guarded.

The Satanic Temple may not be denying the coin’s provenance, but they are issuing their own, drawing on a less ambiguous Enlightenment heritage and a collective activist enterprise clearly centered on the age-old debates about state and religion in American society. They address current debates, and do so in a form well adapted to current media. Political relevance in everyday life is central to the coin, with activism in favor of equal individual rights and freedoms for all taking the place of stratification and a “quietist” individualism for the alien elite.

Image Credit: “Domestic Satanism” by Thawt Hawthje. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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